From Ambrose Bierce’s Dictionary

Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon.

Jealous, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.

Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.

又见炊烟，旧梦不须记， 情雪 （翻唱：Fiona Rawsontile)

Coming Out in November

When the European Rosetta sends its lander to Comet 67P, my Rosetta will send HUMANs to Comet 195F!

All in November!

最近翻唱的几首歌曲

1） 都是夜归人 （国语）

2） 难道（国语）

3）夜机（粤语）

4)  爱与痛的边缘（粤语）

5）夜半小夜曲（粤语）

6）你的眼神（国语）

On Being a PI (Book Review---At the Helm)

(This is a book review I recently published on a forum.)

“Scientists are notorious for being unable to say ‘No!’ and are very poor managers of their (limited) time. This leads progressively to an over-burdened, over-worked, harassed and distracted individual who has no time for lab or family.” (Caveman 2000)

1. The missing training with a well-trained scientist

So far I have recruited four undergrads who volunteered to work for 8-10 hours per week in my presently-empty lab. During interviews I told them, “You set your own schedule, but once you’ve decided on it, please try to stick to it. You’re welcome to bring homework to the lab if there isn’t much to do.” Having flexible hours is one of the biggest advantages of working in academia. The reason for me to be strict came from past experience working in my advisors’ labs. That is, for unpaid undergrads, except a few highly motivated, once they are used to not showing up, you’ll see them less and less often over time.

This is one example of what new PIs do---they make decisions and establish styles based on previous observations of what have or have not worked for their advisors. With extensive training in almost every aspect of academia, they have never been trained on how to be a PI. Although replicating the labs they have worked in can be an effective strategy in some situations, sooner or later they will run into challenges, because they are in a new institution, with different student qualities, and most importantly, what have been proven to be golden doctrines in an established lab with an experienced PI may fail a starter.

This book focuses on all kinds of issues that are likely to be encountered in the early stage of a PI’s career. I especially appreciate the fact that the opinions are not from a single source. For most of the topics that are covered, the author, Kathy Barker, has interviewed dozens of successful PIs throughout the country. Some of the arguments are contradictory to one another, because there isn’t supposed to be a universal answer. Given your skills, personality, and the environment, you choose your style and come up with your own solutions. As mentioned above, beginners tend to imagine there is an ideal way of surviving every situation, and they often resort to memories of their mentors. With the many options listed in the book, you may gain more freedom when designing your career, and the author tries not to make judgments on your preferences. There are questions with no answers, just to bring up your attention on the issues. Even if you have no idea what you would do facing those situations, learning the questions in advance can be a great help. “There are occasions when you have to rush, but more than often, composure is what people want the most from their leader.” (The Starlight Fortress)

Note that this isn’t a book that is meant to please you, i.e., to make you feel good about yourself (nor is the career as a PI in general, to be fair). It will point out mistakes you have made, and may even forecast the regrets you are going to have later according to others’ experience. You will read about issues you wish you’d never run into in your entire career, but bear in mind that the intention of the book is to be preventive; living through an imagined crisis is, after all, easier than handling it in real life. In the worst case when things do happen, it can be comforting to know that you aren’t the sole individual in the world who is suffering from an imprudent hire, or crying over the permanent loss of experimental data.

2. The guts to say “No”

Recently someone on this forum complained about being frequently occupied with various administrative duties and left with only scattered time slots for research. We really can’t afford that to happen! A PI should never grant others the right to take charge of his schedule. I work at an institution where everyone uses Google Calendar that allows colleagues or students to see one another’s schedules (they know you’ll be busy at a certain time without knowing the exact details). It’s easy for people to assume that, for any blank period on your calendar, you’ll be available at that time and they can just pop up or send you a Calendar Invitation to schedule something.  A colleague once shared his schedule with me, and I saw that he even put down “12 pm, lunch” on every single day! Poor guy, I thought.

A request can be difficult to decline if we indeed have an open slot, not one with which we forgot to note an event. However, having nothing scheduled does not mean you are obligated to fulfill someone’s request. Especially if that chunk of time has been intended for you to read papers or write grants or visit your lab, it’s actually not an open time slot and you should say no. Find another time, and if the meeting doesn’t demand much thinking, find a time with which you can’t do intellectual things anyway. If we can’t control our own time, how are we going to be the masters of our labs?

Speaking of time management, we all have some ideas about priorities, about sticking to our plans, but why do we still struggle for more time to do what we really want to do? The book categorizes a PI’s common activities into four categories.

1) Urgent and important, such as grant deadlines, personal (e.g., health) or professional (e.g., tenure) crises, equipment problems (e.g., broken machines).

2) Not urgent but important, such as reading papers, lab meetings, thinking and planning.

3) Urgent but not important, such as certain phone calls or mails, administrative meetings or duties.

4) Not urgent and not important, which can include a lot of things.

We admit that urgent and important things (Cat-A, grants, etc) have to be dealt with seriously in a timely manner. We don’t ignore urgent but unimportant duties (Cat-C, meetings, etc.), however reluctant or resentful we might be in carrying out the tasks. What matters is that, with only that many hours every day, plans that are important but time insensitive (Cat-B, reading papers, etc.) often get pushed aside. Sometimes Cat-B can even yield to Cat-D, such as sitting on meaningless committees or listening to gossips, mainly because we are unable to say no (another reason may be that Cat-B doesn’t pay off immediately). You could argue that we aren’t machines; what the fun of life is if we aren’t allowed to relax. That’s absolutely true when you have the leisure to dissipate, but not when little time is left for research.

We have probably all met a few businessmen-typed PIs. If you ask them about their current schedule, they have meetings every day, and two incoming grant deadlines.  Check back two months later, the same thing. This may work for a senior PI whose lab has several postdocs or scientists, each being responsible for his own project, attending conferences and keeping up with literature. In other words, the PI has well-trained people who are doing the Cat-B for him, and all he needs to do is pay for the publications. For a new PI with at most a technician and a few students who count on him to write programs and papers for them, this can be suicidal. Under the current funding situation, we are often advised to “keep sending proposals out”. Well, yes and no. Why should any organization fund you if you no longer advance in science?

The book especially urges beginner PIs to spend adequate time thinking and planning. It can be tormenting not to have publishable data for the first year or two, and the quickest way to circumvent the problem is continue on your previous projects---“to tie up loose ends, to bolster earlier conclusions with still more evidence, and to explore side issues” (Vermeij 1997). Different opinions are offered here. Some think that having a productive project as soon as possible is all that matters; you can always explore new ideas later. Others caution on this strategy because once you have something going, you are less willing to take a risk in a new area that may involve investments in new equipment and endless trial and error.

Whichever path you adopt, be sure to think carefully and don’t rush into actions. I once came across a quote related to novel writing. “One of the problems we have as writers is we don't take ourselves seriously while writing; being serious is setting aside a time and saying if it comes, good; if it doesn’t come, good, I’ll just sit here.” (Maya Angelou) So instead of putting down “12 pm, lunch” on my calendar, I have reserved a whole afternoon every week marked with “Cat-B”. I’ll go all the way to protect that sacred time, and if on a particular day, for some reason, I couldn’t read papers or write computer programs or create research plans, I’ll just sit there.

Note that sometimes we have to say no to offers that appear to be attractive but do not essentially agree with our best interest. After I had recruited the undergrads, I was called for a meeting with the Director of the Graduate Program in our college. He encouraged me to take a couple of Master’s students by promising full tuition coverage. Had I not read the book, I might have considered it. At the moment I have enough to worry about my own future. The last thing I want is the responsibility of another person’s future. I don’t feel too bad to engage the undergrads in cleaning and shelving, but I would be sleep-deprived knowing that, in a year or two, the Master’s students will need something for their theses. On this forum we have also read stories about the regrets a PI can have by taking Ph.D. students that have been offered “for free”. After spending a tremendous amount of time and energy in training a student, a PI may end up in a fruitless mentorship. The frustration to both the PI and the student can be painful, although it may bring excitement to other lab members as they speculate “Is he going to fire her?”

All right, there is a fine line between selling a book and pirating its content, and I should probably stop here. If I have to give a negative comment, I’d say that the arrangement of the topics can be improved. For example, the section on Working with a Secretary / Administrative Assistant appears quite early in the book. Maybe it’s just my field, but I’ve never met a PI who has the luxury of hiring a full-time secretary to work solely for him. When fifty pages later I saw the prudence one needs to have in evaluating candidates, I had already finished my hiring process.

A final message. It’s not rare to come across negative or passive attitudes from PIs on this forum, evidenced by complaints of losing interests in research, or statements that being a PI is just another job to pay the bills. There can be various reasons for it to happen (some are listed in the book), but I hope people realize that it is to their own benefit to stay motivated with their projects, because research is more productive if we genuinely care about it, and life is more gratifying when we feel proud of what we do (this applies to any type of job). Off topic here, over the years I’ve noticed a trend of “devalulization” (I know this isn’t a real word) among certain Chinese, here and in China, towards arts, science, and faith. Does it look smart or cool if a person appears to care nothing about spiritual things, I wonder. But it’s a personal choice. To me, being a PI is about enjoying the fun of science despite funding pressures, setting realistic goals without forgoing your wildest dreams, hanging on a little longer after others have all quit.

About being yourself and yourself alone.

CLAM is alive!

My space science fiction short story, CLAM, was published today.

Link to Amazon

When Devin arrives at Planet Mullos 17 b twelve years later, he is determined to retrieve his lost memory about the last mission, during which three astronauts were mysteriously gone. Before he and his new colleagues land on the planet, they find themselves on an exotic journey to one of the planet’s moons. As their adventure proceeds, the past and the present coalesce to unfold the destiny of an advanced civilization. The hard part is not to believe the unbelievable, but to discover what they thought they had known.

CLAM - A Short Story (Chapter 1 The Moon)

CLAM is a short science fiction I hope to publish in a couple of weeks. Here is the first chapter.

Chapter 1   The Moon

“Looks like you are holding the last can,” said the old man, leaning back in his chair, his hand fumbling inside a pocket. Before he put a simulated cigarette in his mouth, he murmured something like hate it.

“Aren’t you a biologist?” Devin said as he peeled the lid off the can and poured the precooked clams into a bowl. With a deep breath, he momentarily forgot about the gray-haired biology professor sitting at the same table. To Devin, eating was an effective way to deal with anxiety, and his anxiety had been progressing as they approached Mullos 17 b, a planet located eighty light years away from home.

“Why would somebody ask me this question every time I smoke?” Roland smiled. The wrinkles around his eyes reminded Devin of the growth rings on a clamshell. Roland had a small figure, an aquiline nose, and eyes that always expressed interests in his surroundings, although at the moment, Devin could not think of anything fascinating in the windowless kitchen of a spaceship.

“A biologist is a human,” Roland continued. “And humans don’t stop doing things just because they know the harm.”

Devin made no reply and quietly ate his clams. He tried to concentrate on the food and ignore the questions that kept popping up in his mind. Was he really here twelve years ago? How could there be no memories left? And his three colleagues who …

“Sometimes I wonder,” Roland interrupted at the right moment, “what’s the point of living a life as a clam, or … or a lobster? Well, at least lobsters have brains.” He gazed down and frowned at the fake cigarette, but soon decided to resume smoking. “As clams, do they even know they exist? I mean, after they are born … You know, in my junior year I was once interested in clams’ reproductive systems. They can be male, female, or hermaphroditic …”

Devin suddenly lost his appetite. The idea that the mushy gooey stuff in his mouth may have been self-conscious turned his stomach. He enjoyed talking to Roland most of the time. Well, most of the time! He dumped the unfinished clams with the shells into a garbage bag and cleaned up the table. He needed a moment alone.

* * *

He climbed up with ease the long and narrow stairs leading to the bridge. At the age of forty-nine, Devin was swifter and stronger than most of his peers as a result of regular exercise. He had tanned and tight skin, bright eyes with superb eyesight. Health, career, and personal life had been great, barring the last mission that had made him a hero to some people, and to others “a coward who ran home alone with his colleagues left to die”.

And unless he retrieved his lost memory, he could argue against neither, even to himself.

The bridge was a circular room with windows providing a 360-degree view. Pleasant hums surrounded various machines that had been deliberately arranged to make use of every available spot. To his surprise, Mina was still sitting at her station, and he couldn’t recall seeing her at all in the kitchen. The young Asian woman was scrutinizing something on the screen in front of her. The long smooth hair lay freely on her back, and her right hand was habitually holding the black-framed glasses. With simple and effective eye surgeries—Devin reflected—few women still wore glasses nowadays. Somehow she persisted.

“This isn’t right,” she glanced at him and said. She had a freckle-free face with long eyebrows and limpid eyes. A very “clean” look, Devin always thought.

He kept walking and ignored her comment. Girls are always paranoid. He knew that as a father of two teenage daughters. He stopped at the front of the room and surveyed the blue planet ahead. Still far, it resembled Earth in many ways with notable dissimilarities. The side of the globe they were facing at had a single ring-shaped continent. Inside the ring there was a large lake or a small ocean. A massive white cloud with a swirl hole at the center perched on the northwest of the continent. There could be an island hidden underneath the storm, but Devin couldn’t tell unless he resorted to the computers.

Then the sour feeling stirred his heart again. How could he not remember seeing the planet? Over the past twelve years not a single day had passed without him trying to recall details of the previous mission. And what happened to his colleagues?

“This just can’t be real!” Now Mina was almost screaming.

Devin exhaled and left for her desk. Her screen showed a shadow-like image, roughly oval-shaped except for the large crack that ran all the way from the surface to the center. Mina tapped her fingers on the screen to make the object rotate. At certain angles the crack was revealed as a hollow sector of thirty degrees or so, and it went so deep that it almost split the whole thing into halves.

Creepy! Devin straightened up and shook his head. He knew they were looking at the smaller moon orbiting Planet Mullos 17 b, since he had just spotted the other moon in front of the planet. It wasn’t uncommon for celestial objects to carry signs of intensive collisions, normally in the form of humongous craters or cracks on the surface. But such a clean and deep cut could not have been natural.

“What do you think?” he heard Mina asking.

“That’s why we are here, right?” He tried to sound relaxed. “Looking for evidence of life. This thing gives us a heads up.”

It was true that the goal of this mission, as well as a series of other missions to different planetary systems, was to discover extraterritorial lives, but Devin had just realized they weren’t ready for what was waiting ahead. To date humans had also built various facilities on Earth’s moon, but what would be the reason for taking away a large chunk of a celestial body? And how could anyone have managed to carry out the task?

Soon, Roland and Kenton joined them after receiving Mina’s brief message. The four of them gathered in front of a large screen, watching new details being filled in as Belief-II slowed down and entered the small planetary system. Just as Devin thought things couldn’t have become eerier, the scanning of the moon surface was completed. Rather than an olive with a chunk of it taken, a better description of the moon would be a relatively flat bottom attached to a half-open lid, or valve. In fact—Devin swallowed hard—the whole thing looked like one of the clams he had just consumed.

Quotes for Today II

“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.” ~Steve Jobs

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

“The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.” ~Oprah Winfrey

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.” ~Benjamin Disraeli

“If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” ~Jim Rohn

“If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.” ~John D. Rockefeller

On Public Speaking

If you ask me to offer some advice to all the WSNs, I would tell them: to me, the biggest problem with you lot is not your sloppy clothes, or untidy hair, or your awkward English. Not even the stinky smell. (Ugh!) The first thing you need to learn is stand straight. Don’t droop your shoulders or tilt your head or bend a leg. If you don’t believe me, go watch a video of any political leader in the world. They may be tall or short, lean or brawny, dressed in different styles, but they always keep their bodies upright.

The same goes for public speaking. The moment you step onto a stage, before you have a chance to open your mouth, people will begin judging you. Unless you wear inappropriate clothes, their first impression will be determined by your spirit, and not standing straight is never associated with passion or self-respect. Some of you may worry about being too stiff or serious on an informal occasion, but relaxation should come as a result of your friendly speech or warm smiles. A slack posture doesn’t win you favors.  

1. It’s all about the atmosphere.

We sometimes hear people say, “I’ll just give the same speech again.” You can never give the same speech again when the audience changes. Below is how William Safire, author of Lend Me Your Ears --- Great Speeches in History, defines a speech (my review of the book can be found here: http://fionarawsontile.blogspot.com/2014/05/book-review-lend-me-your-ears-great.html).

“When did a speech become a speech---when it was drafted or when it was given? … What makes a draft speech a real speech is the speaking of it; but without that articulation, without the strong presence of the deliver, without the audience to be aroused or moved, all you have is a polemic on a page. A speech is an event.”

Recently I gave two research talks within a couple of months. The first was to a group of forty faculty and students, the second to a lab of six members. During the latter presentation, I was shocked by how differently I organized the phrases and explained the science, with the same Powerpoint presentation. Speech is a type of communication. It should be interactive. Even though the audience remains silent during most part of your talk, you need to have an expectation about how your speech is likely to be received, constantly monitor their reactions (mostly reflected by their body languages), and adjust your loudness, tone, speed, but most importantly, the content. You may have to give more basic background or skip certain things if the audience look confused. Kill the question you’ve planned to ask if they don’t appear enthusiastic, or add one if you believe you will succeed.

Sometimes it’s impossible to see actual faces of your audience. The worst scenario is to give a speech to a camera, while knowing that thousands of people might be watching it now or later. Still, your speech is affected by the occasion. The size of the auditorium, the echoes of the microphone, the gravity added by the camera, everything will make your talk different from the rehearsals at home. Some suggest creating a few imaginary listeners in those situations. When you can’t have eye contacts with individuals, you don’t want to stare at a fixed point in the air or sway your gaze too frequently. Novice speakers tend to make the second mistake, thinking that they’ve got everybody “covered”. Have a steady gaze, and occasionally looked in different directions.

I never read. I’ve been giving public speeches since I entered elementary school. Some of them required memorizations of long stories. I know many politicians have a few cards to remind themselves of possible topics they may want to cover, depending on the time and atmosphere. (Queen Elizabeth II has been criticized for reading prepared drafts, but considering how many speeches she has to give in her entire life, we can’t be too hard on her.) Imagine that one of your colleagues comes to your office and before you say anything, pulls out a piece of paper and starts reading to you. That’s not communication! Besides, how could you speak one sentence in the perfect manner without knowing what will come next. You may argue, “I do know. I wrote the whole thing.” Well, you don’t; otherwise why would you need to see the draft? Have everything written in your mind. Let it grow itself like a fruit so that you have to deliver it when it’s time. Or it’ll fall.

I know it’s hard to remember every word of a long speech, but this should be treated as an advantage. Many politicians intentionally add pauses and uncertainties to their well-rehearsed speeches, to give the audience an illusion that they are thinking on the go. In that sense, it’s better not to recite. Yet I bet you’ll remember the exact phrasing of your crucial points. If not, maybe they aren’t as crucial as you’ve thought.

2. Aim low to achieve high.

Believe it or not, it’s hard to speak slowly. Most people naturally speed up when they are nervous.  A few of them do this to achieve the effect of fluency. If you can, record your performance and examine it later, because you always speak faster than you’ve thought. Remember this: whether it’s in China or western countries, talking too fast with no pauses is usually a sign of low social status. It reflects the lack of confidence, i.e., the fear that the listeners may lose their interests at any moment. We’ve seen TV programs in which everybody talks fast, either due to a time limit, or as a result of “diluted content” with which you have to talk a lot before a meaningful point is reached. The speeches we normally give should never be rushed. Ideally, every word you say should be clear to most of the audience. What’s the point of saying something that’s not intended to be heard? You may skim through certain words like articles or conjunctions, but the audience should be able to fill the gaps easily. You don’t want them to wonder, “Ur, did I just miss something important?” After each critical message, pause for a few seconds to let the words sink in.

I’ve always heard people complaining about the difficulty of providing sufficient background information without sacrificing the “fancy” stuff. My philosophy is, whenever you try to explain something, explain it well. Make it thoroughly understandable. You may not be able to cover all the great stuff you’ve done, but that shouldn’t be the aim of any speech. Pick the important ones, and however abstruse the science is, there should be a way to make it conceivable. “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.” (Albert Einstein)

3. Draw them right in.

I began this article with a message to WSNs. Alternatively, I could’ve presented you with the definition of speech by William Safire. The fact that you’ve read it this far indicates that I’ve succeeded in hooking you up. I know, especially for scientific talk, sometimes we have to go with the traditional way, but giving an example related to our daily life, creating suspense, or throwing in a quick joke in the early stage of the talk can usually bring up spirit and attention, which sometimes would last for the duration of your talk.

Now I’ll say a little more about jokes. When people experience a catastrophic event, they often remember the details both before and after it. The same with jokes. If you make your audience laugh hard, they are more likely to remember the science, and they’ll do better not to fall asleep. Many believe jokes that work best in a talk are self-deprecating. They can instantly abridge the distance between the speaker and the audience. This works particularly well when the speaker is an authority (“So he isn’t that formidable!”) or is from a different culture (“I didn’t know Chinese got humor.”). I still remember the joke given by a professor in our department when he introduced a more senior woman professor at a seminar, “Although her judgments were usually right, she did make one notable mistake during the three decades she worked here, which is the decision to hire XXX (his own name).”

I heard in the “gold old days”, you didn’t have to start a grant proposal with the Significance. It’s hard to convince people that you are doing something fascinating without first telling them what it is. But we live in a practical world nowadays, and there is a good reason why we should start with the significance. I’ve been through talks that went like---we did this, we found this, and we’ll do this in the future. Who cares? Whenever you introduce a new concept, say something about why it matters. Better still, bring up the problem you aim to solve before introducing the concept.

4. Kill the fourth tone.

I don’t have a scientific explanation for this, but based on experience I think we Chinese use too many “downward” tones than we should’ve. Below is an example. Try to read every word in the fourth tone that has a preceding asterisk.

“I *think this *is the best we could *find, but I could be *wrong.”

To me, a speech has to be rousing. Yes, that includes research talks. Otherwise, why don’t we just sit there and read papers together? A speech is like a novel. When well delivered, it can be quite convincing, persuasive, and intriguing. A monotone or a series of downward tones are just not that rousing. If I am to speak the above sentence, I’ll only have the fourth tone with the very last word, “wrong”. For the word “find”, I’ll use the second or the third tone.

And there are other habits you have to work hard to get rid of. I once had a colleague who didn’t know he frequently touched his chin with a hand until he saw it in the videotape. I say too many interjections in between meaningful sentences. Can’t help it. The worst I’ve seen was a student in a public-speaking summer class. We all knew he was a Christian because he would make several Signs of the Cross during a speech that lasted a minute.

5. Walk around the question.

What’s the strategy to deal with tough questions for which you don’t have an immediate answer? If it’s completely out of your knowledge, just admit it. If you need time to think about it without creating awkward silence, some people suggest repeating or rephrasing the question. I don’t think it’s a bad idea, except that when you repeat a question, people know what you are doing. Another way to handle the situation is to walk around the question and bring up relevant things that, even if in the end you fail to come up with an answer, may still provide the audience with some insights on the topic.

（插入作者高妹/Fiona的话：向大家推荐我正在连载的玄幻---武打---佛道---言情故事《魅羽活佛》，晋江链接：http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=4880087  故事简介：鬼道中的魇荒门，七个师姐妹都以绝世美颜著称。然而这次的任务中，二弟子魅羽却要化作一个中年油腻肥秃僧，卷入佛国、道门，和修罗界的斗争. 还要让咱们古往今来文采武功都称霸天下的帅哥活佛，对她一见倾心，矢志不渝。）

I once talked to the professor I mentioned above before going to a campus interview. He said our ability to carry out a conversation during job interviews is often overlooked. We are advised to be prepared, but we shouldn’t be too prepared. That is, few people want to hire a colleague who considers going through a list of prewritten questions as the sole purpose of a one-on-one meeting. You may have some vague ideas about what you want to discuss with the person, but the execution really depends on how your conversation goes, and you may end up not mentioning your ideas at all. He suggested that I watch some of the popular TV shows and study how the host and the guest managed an engaging conversation for half an hour with a topic that was far from being meaningful?

So I studied a few Late Night with Seth Meyers on Youtube (since my son was born six years ago, cartoons are the only programs we see on the TV), and that’s how I came up with this walk-around-the-question idea. Let me make up an example here. If you ask me, “How do you like Mitbbs?” I’ll say, “It’s a fun website and I visit it often.” So that’s it! The conversation is done in a few seconds. What would be Meyers’s way of expanding the question?

“We’re really glad to have you here, Fiona. You look fabulous.” “Thanks. I was on maternity leave when you last saw me.” “That’s right. Congratulations by the way. So my question is related to Mitbbs, an online forum based in the US for users who can at least read in Chinese. We know there are a few major websites like this, each having its own established culture and readership. To me, this website is notable for being constructive and informative and it seems to have developed a self-censoring mechanism that can effectively subdue the occasionally-observed profanity, personal attack, etc. My question for you is, I know as a writer and scientist you’ve been participating in a few learning communities and constantly thinking about issues related to public education. So, in your view, what would be the influences on this website as Mainland China keeps adjusting its educational philosophies and sending fresh blood to the US? During the clash of two major cultures, what should we do to thrive as a whole without scarifying individuality?”

Well, that’s the walk-around way of making up a question, but I think the same principle apples when you’re trying to answer a question. You start with something remotely relevant (not the maternity leave, though). You walk around it, trying to tackle the problem through different perspectives. As you close up the distance, you yourself may have gained a better understanding of the topic. Remember, to address a question you don’t have to solve a problem. Can you come up with an experiment that has the potential to provide us with an answer? Can you make a prediction of the possible outcomes? A logical elaboration is usually enough to satisfy your audience.   

6. There are no informal speeches.

In my department we have a Friday-morning seminar series. I used to treat it as an informal gathering of students and faculty for exchanging preliminary ideas, until one day I saw a senior faculty canceling her student’s talk, because she wasn’t sure about the conclusions the student was going to make. In academia, there is no such thing as an informal speech. People judge you based on what they see. Their memory of your presentation at an international conference may not be stronger than what they get from a casual conversation with you, or one of your students. To me, informality always has the risk of being mistaken as carelessness in research. Given that our colleagues are the ones who have the biggest impact on our careers---they decide on our tenures and write support letters for our awards, I would always show them my best side.

John W. Gardner said, "Life is the art of drawing without an eraser." Anything that has been said cannot be taken back. So, practice before you give your speech. You may say something wrong, but you don’t want to say anything you are uncertain of. After months or years of hard work, this is the time to “live out loud”.

Between Mother’s and Father’s Days

“There is no such thing that’s age inappropriate. Individuals are vastly different from one another, yet our society has a tendency of mass producing a few prototypes.” – My father’s philosophy transcribed.

That’s why I got the book, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres by Copernicus, as a fifth grader. I didn’t have a clue when I read it through, but for kids, books don’t have to be understood; the critical part is the exposure. Long before I entered college, I had sampled all kinds of outlandish books about religion, philosophy, UFOs, Qigong, and certain Western literature that was generally considered age appropriate. I guess it’s not common to see parents exchanging books with their teenagers on a daily basis. We visited temples and churches; we participated in several major forms of Qigong in the early nineties; we had planned a trip to the Purple Mountain Observatory, although that never happened with the arrival of his next marriage.

He’s a person with an unusually broad interest in almost everything. He majored in western medicine, but is more accomplished in Chinese herbs (he currently works in a pharmacy and occasionally teaches in a hospital or an institute). He plays guitar, accordion, digital piano, and probably other instruments I never heard of. He composes music and songs. He creates mini-symphonies using simulation software. Less often does he write short stories and crosstalk. When I was in second grade, he had me apprentice with a professional storyteller who used to perform in those Tea Taverns in the old days. I only had several classes with that old man, but the influence on me as a writer and speaker was enormous.

So far I would say, he’s probably had several thousands of friends in his life. I’m not talking about acquaintances. When he gets to know people he knows them well. He served in the navy for almost forty years. In fact, I can’t even estimate how many soldiers he had interacted with before he retired. He routinely took me to those yearly veteran banquets held in the base. It was mindshaking to watch those big men hugging one another, crying and collapsing to the floor. That’s why I always feel a special attachment to the military, especially the navy. After he retired he continued to befriend people with various social backgrounds, from jobless loners to managers of four-star hotels, from youngsters of my age to old ladies who could barely see or speak. He has the talent of winning people’s trust in a short time period, if not instantly. “Talking to the patients is an indispensible part of Chinese medicine,” he said. “望，闻，切，问。The modern clinics are so crowded that the patients often get the prescriptions even before they have a chance to describe all the symptoms.” His philosophy made him a popular doctor among old people.

Regardless of the type of a party, he’s always the focus of people’s attention. He has numerous stories, jokes, anecdotes, tricks. Never runs out of topics. To give you an example, he said he once met an old man, who told him an couplet displaced on the door of an old temple.

He said some of the words can’t be found in dictionaries, but are real. The second and the fourth words in the first half of the sentence read Ying3 and Hua2; the third and the fourth words in the second half read Suo3 and Lang3. I don’t know how true this is, but I loved it!

He always has sleep issues. Once he said to me, “Those who fall into sleep as soon as their heads touch the pillows just can’t be too intelligent.” I said hey, Dad, please don’t say that, although I think it’s generally true. His first marriage with my mother was almost ideal. I heard they never had a fight or an argument. They met in college before he went back to the army and she volunteered to go to the poorest village as a request of the Party’s Call. My mother had four younger siblings and was the only one who went to college. She was a diligent student, a singer and a dancer. Now my aunts and uncles still speak of her with ultimate admiration. “The moment I entered high school,” my oldest aunt always said to me, “I was recognized by all the teachers as XXX’s sister.”

To be fair, I feel bad for the aunt who was outshadowed by my mother. My aunt is an extremely nice woman who’s highly accomplished in women’s work. “See!” My uncle-in-law once showed me a yellow bed sheet. “Your aunt embroidered the whole thing before our wedding. All the flowers, the butterflies, the garden. Isn’t that amazing?” My grandma is strict with our women’s work. A constant criticism I received from her as a child was “Your stitches are too coarse. Be more patient!” I know this ancient activity is more about cultivating one’s virtues. Unfortunately, I’m never a person with much patience.

So when my father was remarried in less than two years after my mother passed away, you can imagine the fury from my mother’s family. Dare I say I was the only one who understood him? We are the same kind of persons who would tell everybody the minor mishaps that occur in our daily live, but the true suffers we endure are deeply buried in our hearts and revealed to nobody including family members. Since the funeral day some 26 years ago, the only brief conversation we ever had with regard to my mother was my inquiry about the disease that took her life. We never discussed about our sorrows. We never showed tears in front of each other. The one incident that almost slipped past my father’s guard happened when, one day, I attempted to improvise a melody on the piano (for a while, he had the habit of taking naps during my practice, although now, in retrospect, I wonder if those were true naps). It was a very short and simple melody. At the end I heard him saying, “I’d like to name this song, I’m Waiting for You.”

After I finished my first novel, I once tried exploring how my protagonists, Geneva and Sterling, would have gone through at the end of their lives. I had Geneva die a few years earlier. Sterling actually got remarried and had another son right before he left. I should never have done this! During the few weeks I was writing it, you could’ve caught me running experiments alone with tears all over my face. The pain of losing a loved one can be unbearable. It seemed logic to me that, if Geneva had outlived Sterling, she would’ve stayed single, but not the other way around. That’s because emotion-wise, men are more fragile than women. A lot more.

Because my father wasn’t able to face the loss and the loneliness (or the “desertion”, you may call it), he rushed into another marriage that made his next ten years miserable. I’m so glad to see that he’s living happily with his third wife now, so that I need only worry about my own stuff. It’s a real fortune to be born as a descendent of a wise man, who constantly exceeds the boundary of life, and helps others do so as well.