this is from the taiwanese movie "tropical fish".

阿強
你上次說
在海裡看到很多熱帶魚
小時候﹐我也和你一樣
一直以為海裡到處都是熱帶魚
長大後﹐才知道我們這裡的海
是不會有熱帶魚的
可是﹐上次淹水的時候
我發現這條熱帶魚竟然靜靜的
游在路旁的水溝裡
也不知道它是從哪裡來的
我決定把它送給你
希望你會喜歡
雖然﹐我們一直沒有說過話
可是
我知道你是一個愛做夢的人
其實我很羨慕你
你可以的無憂無慮唸書
甚至參加聯考
這些都是我所不能擁有的
一年前﹐大哥要我放棄升學
到高雄的工廠工作
在那裡﹐我愛上了一個人
可是﹐沒想到後來
他竟然和他的朋友一起強暴我
我曾經是一個愛幻想的女孩
可是
現在我已不再有任何夢想了
人生的路很長
光有夢想是走不動的
你應該好好珍惜你現在的一切
好好加油﹗面對你該走的路吧﹗
祝你聯考順利

ah qiang
last time you said
you saw tropical fish in the oceans
when i was small, i was like you also
always believing the ocean was filled with tropical fish
after growing up, i finally know that these oceans
won't have any tropical fish.
however, last flood
i surprisingly found this tropical fish calmly
swimming in the drain
don't know where it came from.
i decided to give it to you
hope you will like it.
although, we never talked
but
i know you are a person that loves to dream.
actually i envy you
you can study without any worries
even take the entrance exam
these are things that i can never have.
a year ago, big brother made me give up advancing
to go work at a factory in kaohsiung.
over there, i fell in love with someone
but, i didn't expect that
he and his friend would rape me.
i used to be a young girl with dreams and fantasies
but
now i don't have any dreams left.
life's journey is long
dreams won't be enough
you should cherish what you currently have
work hard! face the road that you should take!
wish you a smooth journey on your entrance exam.

there's going to be a new movie called "formosa betrayed." it's another movie about the 228 incident and white terror in taiwan. (last major movie was city of sadness by hou hsiao hsien in 1989). instead of being about a taiwanese family in that generation, this time it is about an american outsider that goes into taiwan and sees the conflict between the kmt and taiwanese. i really have mixed feelings about this. sure, it is nice that taiwan is getting some recognition, but the trailer looks like it's going to be a brainless hollywood action conspiracy movie. also, don't know whether it is good to bring this topic up again. the kmt party has already apologized for this, but the dpp party always brings it up again and again to show kmt corruption. there's many examples of corruption on both sides, so i think they should stop dwelling on it. i guess it is just the most extreme, murdering tens of thousands of taiwanese. (it's kind of like how china will always dislike japan for nanking.) i guess it is a good (or bad) time for this movie. china is gaining power and still has thousands of missiles aimed at taiwan. political mess in taiwan. and all that.

oh well, controversy!

humans took so much energy and work to invent logic to understand things. yet, human nature runs on something completely different. how illogical. why didn't they just invent some other thought based on whatever human nature does?

people don't make any sense at all. no logic. all random. no rules. completely illogical. how are we supposed to understand? no sense at all.

Rest in Peace Geocities



my first website in fourth grade was hosted on geocities. today, geocities has been shutdown. i will miss the days.

it's weird. last time i used geocities was in middle school. yet, i still feel like a part of me has died with geocities.

what is happening? so obsessive. not good. need to fix. need to know the truth.

i think it's really funny that a lot of cancer chemotherapy drugs are carcinogenic. kill cancer with cancer? maybe. but it works sometimes, so i guess that is okay. i eat cavity-fighting candy.

i wonder if mentally unstable people think they are mentally unstable. maybe some do, because mentally unstable doesn't mean everything is unstable. so some thought processes should still be able to be formed. a person could see themselves as depressed and think "i'm depressed." or does that mean the person isn't depressed? can a person acknowledge his own disorder? if they could, would the depression be from some outside stimulus or from their own belief that they are depressed? it's a positive feedback loop, so avoiding that might be preferred. maybe that is a part of the disorder. or another disorder that makes yourself think you have a disorder. disorder within a disorder. and this could go forever. recursive function. f(x) = f(x-1)*. what's the exit condition? maybe there isn't one. have to debug the program.

* programming =, not math.

so this week is drug awareness week. the drug awareness committee handed out these small fliers to help promote this week. it has a red ribbon and some "did you know..." facts. the first one says "20 percent of pharmacists reported using a prescription drug without a prescription at least five times in their lives." wow! what a great thing to write for items handed out in a pharmacy school. but it gets better. "11 percent to 15 percent of pharmacists are dependent on alcohol at some point in their careers." thanks, i'm really aware of drugs in my future life now. but no worries. "pharmacists can help prevent prescription drug misuse and abuse with proper consultation and being diligent with prescription fraud inspection." yay. we can help!

i had a dream that i was trying to sign up for classes. usually my sign up date is on the first day, since i have a million units. however, since i already graduated (true not just in dream), my sign up priority was pushed to the end. somehow in my dream, i was convinced i hadn't taken ecology class yet. so i was trying to sign up, but it filled up on the first day. so i was panicking that i wouldn't get the class and be able to graduate. then i was complaining that just because i graduated, doesn't mean my sign up priority should be pushed all the way back. then i realized, if i graduated, i must have taken the class before. yes. summer 2008. bam! i woke up. ugh.

i really have to stop watching arthouse movies. they are so artsy fartsy and don't have much story. just a life. i guess the viewer is supposed to ride the movie's emotions and enjoy it that way. sometimes some movies can make me feel it, and sometimes others don't. but when i see the movie rated higher than 7.5 on internet movie database, i really want to like it. but it seems, if it is an artistic movie, the higher the rating, the harder it is to enjoy. but all the reviews are like "oh my god. this is the best movie ever. it was so deep, and made me cry and laugh. i felt everything the director had in mind. watch it now."

recently i watched tsai ming-liang's "what time is it there?", pen-ek ratanaruang's "nymph", and apichatpong weerasethakul's "syndromes and a century." and i don't really know how to feel. i kind of understood nymph, because i've seen pen-ek's films before, but the other ones just left me hanging. it's like i didn't dislike the movie, and i didn't like it. but it's also not in the middle. maybe it's on a different scale. an artistic scale that my simple mind can't understand. it's not just a one-dimensional spectrum of "like". instead this artistic scale is 117 variables that are all variables of each other.

maybe. or maybe i'm just trying to be artistic and "high-class" by justifying to myself that these movies aren't bad. trying to agree with the arthouse folk. oh well.

well, i did enjoy nymph. it was a nice movie. at least the cinematography was beautiful. thailand is a beautiful country. well, what they show in the movies.

the speed of light.
the speed of sound.
the speed of time.

it would be cool to be able to measure the speed of time. except it's units would be sec/sec. which cancels out to nothing. i guess it's the fastest speed of all. transcends all units. good thing it's not accelerating. maybe.

mania = the condition of man?

mania
man- / -ia
-ia = condition of

怎麼突然感覺好寂寞
胡思亂想
一百萬個為什麼
這是什麼意思

別想了
讀書

there is a gate around my apartment complex. usually, when i put in the key, i turn it to the right and the door opens. however, suddenly, a few days ago, the key didn't turn to the right anymore. it changed to a left turning lock. odd.

remember, you are alive.

i had a dream about a conversation. except the conversation was through facebook chat, which is weird because i don't usually use that. anyways, i was walking around with a floating keyboard and typing my conversation. eventually the conversation got to a point that i didn't know what to say, and that made me wake up. it's my own mind making up the conversation. how come i can't talk to even myself? i must be really bad at conversing. and, oh no, my conversations have deteriorated to computer contact. i'm doomed.

today i learned somewhat about the mechanism of aspirin. how it reduces inflammation. when cells are sad, they take this fatty acid called arachidonic acid and change it into something else, which causes inflammation. so aspirin works by blocking the enzyme that causes this change. a really good mechanism too, because aspirin gets permanently stuck, making the enzyme completely dead and prevents inflammation for a long time. this type of mechanism is preferred compared to all the other drugs being produced now, such as hiv drugs. the hiv drugs that i learned so far can get stuck in bad enzymes, but they can be displaced, so it isn't really as effective (as compared to what a theoretical irreversible mechanism would be. and i can't really compare hiv drugs to anti-inflammatory drugs).

then someone asked about how aspirin can fit in the enzyme, when it looks completely different than arachidonic acid. anyways, take a look at the shape of the substrates in question.



aspirin is on the left and arachidonic acid is on the right. notice how they don't look anything alike, unless you use your imagination.

aspirin is another one of those drugs that were discovered to work and then the mechanism was described some time after. the professor said that by "rational drug design" aspirin would not have been a candidate as an inhibitor.

another drug that works in a similar irreversible mechanism as aspirin is penicillin. penicillin also gets stuck permanently in an enzyme of bacteria and causes it to die because it can't get displaced out. guess what? penicillin was also discovered by accident and then the mechanism described years later.

therefore i propose that all drug research cease, since obviously all the methods to find the preferred mechanisms of action are accidental and not rational. or maybe i'll create my own branch of pharmaceutical science called "irrational drug design!"

or maybe more research should be done to make the irrational rational. i guess that can happen in science. not in math. unless you round or truncate the number.

today i was filling my brita filter. near the bottom, only some water can be filtered. when it is at the top of the filter, it is at its maximum amount of water that can be filtered. and beyond that, the holes don't increase, so only that amount of water can be filtered. so i guess there are equations that will suddenly change direction and level off. so these sudden changes are okay, i guess.

i'm 21 now. i can do everything now.

except to be young again.

i watched four movies this weekend.



the first movie is the anime "paprika." i don't usually watch animes, but this was recommended to me, so i decided to watch it. it turned out to be pretty good. it's about dreams and stuff. it compared the internet to dreams, saying that it was a secret place for people to vent all their feelings. and, i guess i agree. anyways, the whole thing was very surreal. like a dream, i guess. makes it confusing sometimes, but it is still understandable after a while. it also says that science is worthless when it is compared to dreams. which is true, but dreams aren't reality, unlike the movie.

next movie was "in the mood for love." this is by the famous wong kar wai. it's about affairs and stuff. tony leung and maggie cheung are next door neighbors. it turns out both their spouses are cheating on them. so they are lonely at home a lot, so they start to become friends. they always claim they won't be like their spouses, but things progress and it becomes a tragedy. but it is very well done, especially the scenes that blur everything together until their fake talk and their real talk becomes a mess.

then i was like oh, i'll watch another wong kar wai. so i watched "chungking express." this is another romance story thing, except divided into two parts. i didn't like the first half as much. something about takeshi kaneshiro's character didn't make him believable. although some parts were funny. the second half was where this movie was interesting. this time it is between faye wong and tony leung. faye wong is actually quite an interesting actress. did a good job with it. anyways, i don't know what to say without giving all the story away. it was good.

last movie, which i just finished a few minutes ago was "tropical fish." it is a taiwanese movie, by some guy named chen yu-hsun. it's about some kid in middle school who is preparing for high school exams. in taiwan, exams are emphasized heavily. however, this kid is a lousy student who will probably fail the exams. he spends his times dreaming about tropical fish and some tropical fish superhero. everyone tells him he will fail and be worthless. one day, he accidentally gets kidnapped and that's where this humorous story begins. all of taiwan is suddenly afraid of that his kidnapping will interfere with his exams and the kidnappers are so sorry for kidnapping him at such an important time, so they are making sure he studies while being held for ransom. in the end, he learns that people can't get through life through dreams alone, but there must be some balance between dreams and reality. the ending really touched me. but, maybe that was because i could somewhat relate.

how do we measure success? good grades? money? satisfaction? happiness? is it even possible to put a numerical value? maybe, it's just yes or no. true or false. all of the above? a and b only.

so i watched the latest episode of house. in this episode, they treat a dictator from africa who is planning a genocide and going to murder everyone. so they are stuck with the dilemma of fixing one guy and indirectly killing a lot of people or saving thousands of people, but killing a person.

so i wonder what is the right thing to do. either way, someone will die. if i save the guy, i'll be stuck with the guilty conscience that i assisted in the deaths of a lot of people. but not killing the guy can also leave a guilty conscience of killing a guy, and not doing my job. but i can justify that by saying i saved a lot of others. likewise, saving him can be justified that i was "neutral" and did my job. everything can be justified, everything can be wrong.

i guess the best way is to avoid the problem. if i got that patient, i would probably send them to another doctor. but where does that end? not treating a person because of his actions/beliefs. in a not so extreme case, can i not treat people because i don't like their political views? if i help them, they will spread the view i don't like and i don't want that. further down the slippery slope, i'll just stop treating them because i don't like the way they look and don't want them to spread more ugly genes. can't keep running away forever. at some point, i just have to do my job and deal with people that i might not completely agree with. but where does that end? or does it never end? the world should be more black and white.

also, the dictator guy also justified his actions, saying that the enemy would do the same if they had power. his people were oppressed before and now this time he has power, so he is fighting back and overall bringing stability to his country. (but he denies genocide; says that's made up in american media.) he sounded really earnest when he said this. maybe it is because he's a politician, but maybe he really thinks that is the right way to go. and the different circumstances bring out different actions for the same goal.

take marijuana legalization for example (today i read an article about lsd research being revived, so it's the first thing in my head.). one side wants to legalize it so people can use it without getting in trouble, control the sale of it (whatever that means), tax it to earn money. the side that doesn't want to legalize it mostly thinks it is detrimental to people, their health, their minds, and society as a whole. both sides want the world to be peaceful and harmonious, they just went in through different approaches.

speaking of harmonious, china's favorite thing is harmony. but they go through it by communism or socialism (or whatever they are now.) which is evil by american view. but china never really had a history of democracy, so it's natural they moved from their warring states to emperors to mao zedong to the communist party. america started off as a democracy and it's stayed that way, so it thinks it is right. but both sides have the same goal (arguable, maybe), which is to promote a peaceful society. china just suppresses all the dissidents and prevents any disagreeable ideas from forming. america deals with these disagreeable ideas after they are formed, so everything has to go through a lengthy democratic process and sometimes nothing happens.

so maybe the problem lies in the fact that the terms weren't defined properly. maybe a harmonious society has to be defined in what it is, how to achieve it, how to run it, how to spread it, etc etc. so it will be defined until there is absolutely no ambiguity. everything will be defined. then we'll have the equation of life. and we just need to plug and chug through that. no more worries.

actually, if everything was defined, there would be no variables to plug and chug. so in the end, it's just a constant. a number. i wonder what that number is. what a lucky number.

i really need to stop watching house.

everyday is so routine. i get deja vu feelings all the time. but it's just because i am doing the same thing. is that a bad thing? hopefully not. it is good to have order. it prevents heart disease and diabetes. and other bad things.

a study found internet addiction to be linked with ahdh and depression.

uh oh.

anyways, apparently this study is meant to be a warning for pediatricians about the future of childhood chronic diseases. how lucky! i wish i was born in this era. i want the internet at such a young age!

hiv vaccine was made, but it's only 30% protection. which is not enough to be really a vaccine. circumcision gives 60% protection against hiv, so i guess it fails. i am wondering if they can give this vaccine multiple times and the 30% can compound. like hepatitis b vaccine. they give it 3 times to make sure the person gets an immune response. maybe hiv vaccine works similarly. although, to get it up to 70-80% that's required might take quite a few vaccines. and another failure is that it might make a person not get hiv, but they can still spread it. don't know how that works, but i guess that makes the situation worse. anyways, good research, i think.

adding on to my beard thing from yesterday. critical miscelle concentration! it's adding phosophlipids into water. and then when it reaches a certain concentration, they suddenly all form into a miscelle sphere thing! and before that, nothing at all, just distribute randomly. after that, make spheres, and no more reduction in surface tension!

there's some argument logic philosophy thing about beards. let's draw a chin. draw one hair. that's not a beard. so we add another hair. one hair more than one hair isn't a beard. 3, not really. 4, not really. 5, not really. and we keep adding and adding. but each time we add one hair to a non-beard. just one hair. that won't push it over. so no matter how many hairs we draw, there will never be a beard.

in the same way, we can start with a beard, and keep removing. each one is just one, so it doesn't count. eventually we'll have no hairs, but have a beard.

a lot of things in life are like this. there's no definition that 6204 hairs will count as a beard. also like the difference between a peptide and a protein. usually it is up to 40 amino acids = peptide. but then why is insulin which is 60 some amino acids still commonly considered a peptide? hm. arbitrary names that people made without clear objective definitions.

but some things in this world that are very clearly defined and create a change are also weird. like melting points, boiling points. why is it that suddenly, at 0 degrees celsius (sorry, 32 fahrenheit), ice will suddenly break up into liquid? there's nothing in between? and at 100 C (212 F), that fluid will suddenly disappear into the air. such a drastic change. it's like once the 6204th hair is added, the mind will think BEARD!

anyways, there is some intermediate thing between liquid and gas, but that is past the critical point. blows my mind. can't imagine intermediates between liquid and gas. but also blows my mind that there isn't any in the normal conditions.

but even that is weird. why is it a certain point that differentiates where there is a point that distinguishes liquid/gas and a blend of liquid/gas?