A Topic-Less Day

Come on in ladies and gents, welcome to the mind of Showbeddy, coming up next… nothingness.

There you go, guys. A post without a topic. I knew it’s coming eventually but I’ve got to admit… it’s a lot sooner than I’d expected.

I’m not exactly running out of topics, you see. But at the moment in my shiny “idea" chest the only things available are one unfinished story plot and a whole lot of movies I watched… and I really hate to turn this into a movie blog.

But that’s all I’ve been doing… watching a lot of movies and reading a lot of books. If I don’t talk about movies, I’d have to talk about my life — and everyone knows I’m not doing that well right now. Anyway I’m reading up on “STUDYING" and “MEMORY POWER." I ain’t ashamed to say out loud that I’m seeking help in “how to studying," I just wish I had done it… say, like oh… 8 years ago.

It’s actually pretty funny. All my life it’s the only thing I knew how to do and I thought I did it pretty well. But I didn’t even know why and how I did it. It’s kinda like people know how to chew and swallow but when it comes to EATING… the subject is so complicated and philosophical it’s almost like… an art.

But NO, studying is not an art (thank God). It’s sets of systems developed that best suit people’s lifestyles and learning habits. What really surprises me is how much of these so-called systems and techniques I’ve already known and used for a long time without realising that they are beneficial. What’s frustrating is that whatever system I’ve been using my whole life comes from a long, long series of trial-and-errors and repeated failures and disappointments in school. Imagine, if I’ve approached these books when I entered college… how much different my life would be.

But then again, I would have never joined LE, and my life would have meant nothing (Oh Yeah Babe!)

(You ass-kissing sonabitch)

Before I hit the [publish] button… you know what’s interesting though? This whole post only took me 22 minutes. I wonder if I write faster in English. Yesterday I was writing about 【500 Days of Summer】and I kept having to translate what came to my mind into Chinese. It was SO MUCH fun (not).

Random Thoughts：書局

Trondheim, Norway. 來源: Wikipedia (作者Aqwis)

– 好久沒有逛中文書店了，自上次和老LE在台北偶然走進書局後，根本記不得還什麼時候逛過書店了。

– 記得在某個地方讀到，「大學畢業前走進書局看的都是Fiction，大學畢業後看的都應是non-fiction。」那我想我應該比較晚熟，我到現在還在看陽牧看朱天心，還在買Crichton (雖然他去世了) 買Stephen King (雖然他退休了)，最近也讀完了像字典一樣的小說「The Swarm 」(Frank Schätzing, 2006)。

– The Swarm 原文是德文，英文版本是翻譯的，書寄到的時候整個把我嚇到，跟大學時的英德字典一樣厚。昨天在書局看見了中文譯本「群」，中文譯本分成上下冊，但加起來還比英文版還要薄許多。這或許就是「中文的力量」。

– The Swarm充滿了硬邦邦的知識，至少個人來說還算容易上手。多半是因為讀的科目相近 (生物/基因)，書中涉獵到的概念，是早已接觸而接受的邏輯。而且小說的其中幾個場景，我都恰巧曾走過，例如 Nanaimo的賞鯨船，Trondheim的河岸，美國東岸….

– 挪威的建築看在外人眼裡，真的會讓人懷疑他們蓋房子是準備要被水淹的。我記得在Trondheim的那個清晨，我們沿著Nidelva河繞過舊城試圖尋找一座教堂。平靜的河道兩旁幾乎低及水面的房子。如果下雨怎麼辦？如果刮風怎麼辦？如果海嘯怎麼辦？

– 雖然充滿知識性，但是故事發展稍為直線了一些些。現在回想起能讀閒書的日子，突然覺得能夠讀小說是很幸福的事情。

-但是昨天去書局，買了四本書，都是non-fiction。所以我想我老了。

– 現在在讀的書：Delivered from Distraction, Edward Hallowell, MD & John Ratey, MD, 2004，是關於ADHD的書。