Noise

Facebook is just not an appropriate place for notes. So I'd like to save this here. Day one, I was just immersed in the welcome from Big Apple and the excitement of traveling from the work place in Manhattan to my "home" in Queens. In mu suit and high heels, I felt I've stepped on the way towards professional legal server. Day two and three, I just sat in front of computer translating between Chinese and English, making up files, copying and typing--all the job of a lowest-level secretary. Suit and high heels were turning into the source of trouble in the hot office, and excitement fading as well. My only "happy hour" was in the train, reading "Words that Work" with my ipod. Plus, the worst started to surface: I had to work like a dog, twelve hours a day having no break, with kicking my boss's ass from time to time in response to her boast. In contrast, my internship as a journalist in Junior summer always occurred to my mind as some "golden times." Day four: I was numbed by the non-stopping repeat of copying and filling out multiple forms, as well as getting over the exhaust. Everything is no rosy at all, and I'm getting used to the routine life and no more sick of my tedious flattering words, even when my boss is becoming more bitch. I can tolerate her screaming voice, also can deal with her "you-are-idiot" attitude by putting myself as a newbie, but I find her so repulsive with her "I *beep* more than a rabbit" tone. That's just very annoying. Honestly I really don't care how many guys she laid, neither does her "guys around me are chasing me" fantasy bother me; but I just can't take her never stopping brainwashing us to buy her rule of "sex-money-exchange" game: hook up with rich guys (age is no an issue) to dig gold. So gross, so disgusting. Every time when she begins her old "lessons", I feel I'm sitting on the top of volcano and always figure out some excuse of going to John's to be sheltered. Shoot, I never met a 30+ woman as bitch as she is, one of the type of person I'd least like to know in the world. I'm almost like a robot, with empty mind, hollow heart, but big smile in the face to anyone, including those of my opposite. All are fine, though, except for one thing: where are my values and ethics going? In the daytime, I'm lost in the jungle of complimentary words, while in the night, still lost in the translation of true self standing in front of mirror. I'm wondering.

所以说，做人和做事一个道理⋯⋯哈哈，权当博君一笑。 从《笑傲江湖》看投资策略 正月初五添了一位小千金，于是向公司请了长假作"实习爸爸"，枯坐尿布堆中读金庸的旧著《笑傲江湖》亦有所得，在此与大家共飨。 《笑傲江湖》一书可算是讽世之作，写尽了命运无常、人情冷暧和人性在功利中的挣扎，不过令狐冲和任盈盈的爱情却始终贯穿全书，并且最终以团圆收局，成为令人心旷神怡的一道风景。股谚云："选股如选妻"，可见爱情与投资确有相通之处，而从某种角度看令狐冲的命运往往是由他的个性所决定的，即所谓" 一念之间"，因此他的情缘圆满自然与其爱情观息息相关，换言之就是投资策略正确而有丰厚的投资回报。其实金庸笔下的男性主角以杨过最为特立独行，其独具慧眼选择了小龙女，历经小龙女失贞、再嫁、中毒等重大利空打击都未三震出局（而且如果他止损的话还可以换股如程瑛、陆无双），终于熬到苦尽甘来，超过十六年始终不渝的长期投资策略委实不同凡响，堪称中国的巴菲特；不过我觉得剖析令狐冲更有现实意义，因为他的感情中间走过不少弯路，有个返璞归真的思想斗争过程，而且他是性情中人，往往就在一念之间作出重大抉择，并且经常运气不错，我们可以讨论他的"市场感觉"问题，总而言之令狐冲更富人性化、更接近于目前的投资者个体。 令狐冲在故事之初用情于小师妹岳灵珊，这种投资理念当然是受师傅和师娘（可谓华山派龙头）的影响至巨，就象九七年市场所鼓吹的"长虹发展不倒"一样颇有号召力，表面上他坐庄的筹码雄厚无比，华山派首徒、甚得同门拥戴有群众基础兼之与师妹青梅竹马、在感情上也有控股权，不过以师傅岳不群深不可测的 权谋机心，这个任侠好义、一身傲骨的准女婿却的确不宜以衣钵相授，假使没有林平之和辟邪剑谱的出现，为求华山派的自保岳灵珊也极有可能充任与嵩山派通好的"王昭君"而轮不到令狐冲，这一点有如君安之于申华董事会，虽有控股权在手也只能坐视它琵琶别抱、投资自己不看好的江西科环；何况岳灵珊自己未必是值得长期投资的稳定成长股，趁他关在思过崖上就搞了一次违规操作，移情于林平之（虽然她后来出了澄清公告说与令狐冲始终只是兄妹之情，但以她在前文种种心系师兄的表现如"冲灵剑法"、私上思过崖等等，只显得她在洗脱负情的托辞而已），并且后来出于内疚还偷了一次"紫霞秘笈"给令狐冲疗伤，使令狐冲愈加神魂颠倒而不能自拔，在金刀王元霸家里丑态百出，令读者为之扼腕叹息。令狐冲数年的感情投资终于付之东流，我想最大的原因还在于没有形成自己的投资观点，盲目崇拜权威导致择股失误，更要命的是明知投资失败而不敢果断止损，所以局面自他下思过崖后就急转直下跌破所有均线开始走熊，一再误事最后搞到不能见容于师门，华山派传书天下"祈我正派诸友共诛之"。返观去年的证券市场操作亏损者众多，有不少人正是栽在绩优股情结和不知止损上，可见这也是人之常情啊。 令狐冲的命运自是在见到了任盈盈之后触底反转，他第一次见面就"一时情动"，在她脸上吻了一下，可说大胆已极（其时他不知任盈盈的背景，权且算是试盘罢）。不过任盈盈之于他倒的确是个明智的抉择，首先她出身高贵是魔教教主之女，武功机智都堪与令狐冲相颉颃，而且她自视极高又十分害羞，一般少年才 俊也不放在眼里，自然只能孤芳自赏，有如潜质极佳的超小盘贵族股由于股价过高而无人问津；更重要的 是她在魔教的特殊地位使她的感情生活实际上无人关心，可谓流通筹码极少易于收集，事实上她在令狐冲 穷途落难之时情有独钟，自此一缕芳心所系尽在这个痴心汉子身上，居然上少林寺自囚以换取方证大师为 令狐冲疗伤，这段感人至深的爱情乍一开始就说明令狐冲控筹集中度有多高了。其次，难能可贵的是任盈 盈对令狐冲十分理解，非但不嫉妒令狐冲与岳灵珊、仪琳之间的情感纠葛，而且深谙"两情相悦，贵乎自 然"的爱情三昧，从不以情义挟人，最典型的是在少林寺师徒比剑，令狐冲故意相让岳不群之时，眼见三 人就要终生囚于少林，以任我行一代枭雄也沉不住气示意女儿去提醒令狐冲而盈盈不为所动，其对于爱情 主业用情之专应是岳灵珊远不能及的，因为后者曾在五岳盟主大会上以"冲灵剑法"打动令狐冲相让，爱情 境界高下立判。当然任盈盈也有手辣心狠的一面为令狐冲所不喜，好在后者并未拘泥于正邪之分的传统投 资观点而是大胆进行资产重组，最后使任盈盈改变形象，放弃了教主之位与之携手归隐，成为一段江湖佳 话。我想令狐冲最幸运的就是无意中在盈盈的股价低点吸纳了大量筹码而不自知，其时盈盈不满东方不败 所为，在绿竹翁处散心从而听到令狐冲尽吐心声，芳心为之掳获；不过此后令狐冲在种种不利情势下不断 增持筹码倒是有相当的气魄，比如岳不群曾以重归华山门户并许配岳灵珊相诱，而任我行则以不传授"吸 星大法"的解除之法相胁都不能动摇，确实做到了"问世间情为何物，只教人生死相许"。总结令狐冲的成 功经验，就是认真筛选小盘绩优、主业能够高成长的个股，一旦遇到循环低点就大量介入，并且能做到局 势愈坏而信心弥坚，不断补仓增持筹码，在现实的股市搏杀中也往往是取胜之道。 令狐冲的一大特色是性情中人、容易冲动，再重大的决定往往也只在一念之间，例如任我行邀请他加入魔教，他本因盈盈之情和向问天之义觉得加入也无不可，不过一旦对方有意拿解除"吸星大法"的窍门相换，他立即斩钉截铁地拒绝了，同样穷途末路之时方证大师要传他武林人士梦寐以求的"易筋经"既可解毒保命又可托庇于少林门下，他也断然拒绝了，所以后来才有一番奇遇成为江湖中人人敬仰的大侠，也算是置之 死地而后生。纵观令狐冲的抉择，往往是选择了表面上较为不幸的一面，但到头来都因为他心存善念反而 因祸得福，因此可以说不是他选择幸运而是幸运选择了他，试想假如他果真成了方证的弟子（虽然当时他 不知道代价是盈盈自囚于少林），则必将为武林人士所不齿，自然也就没有率五霸冈群雄二度上少林救情 人的风流佳话了；又比如争夺五岳盟主之战，令狐冲为改变旧日芥蒂故意自伤让岳灵珊赢了关键性的一 场，却因此将系念于小师妹的往日情怀就此解脱，并且赢得了任盈盈的真心相对（车中养伤一段描写十分 浪漫绮丽，实在是令狐冲一生中最快活的时光，使他不由生出"若得永远如此``````"之想）。不过令狐冲 的许多"一念之间"的决定原是他任侠好义、豁达坦荡的个性之必然选择，本无须经过深思熟虑，其实他的 投资观诸如信义为先、以诚待人、一身傲骨等等是一以贯之的，只不过他懂得就低不就高，屈人不如屈 已，总是在低部默默吸纳而已，这一点有如今年的梅雁股份，虽素质不错但早已深深跌破配股价而无人问 津，不料业绩优异且推出在大盘股中罕见的高送方案，而使敢于在低部不怕套牢大胆吸纳者大获其利，反 而是部分公布业绩前就已在高位的所谓"白马股"则套你没商量。 令狐冲另外可爱的一点就是善于吸取教训，如果说他当初在华山派混得狼狈不堪是因为不知及时止损之故，那么他娶了任盈盈之后正当盛年就夫妇双双隐退，的确是见好就收、落袋为安之举（这一招好象乔丹 也用过）；更加难能可贵的是岳灵珊临终前将已瞎了双目的林平之托付给他，使读者不由为令狐冲捏了一 把汗，难道他真的为了这个本不该答应的承诺照顾林平之这种小人一辈子？而令狐冲的作法却出人意料， 把林平之送进了任我行当年住过的梅庄黑牢，看来真的是汲取前车之鉴懂得通权达变了，较之目前市场上 的许多投资者每逢投资失误不是认真总结、吸取教训而是自怨自艾，投资境界相去不可以道里计。 自少年起就以"金庸迷"而自居，不过只是欣赏金庸作品情节的诡异繁复、故事的曲折离奇，再年长，则惊叹于其描写人性的深度和世事的苍凉，但从未尝试过从一个投资者的角度来诠释金庸笔下的人物，是次 新鹂试啼，希望朋友们能够喜欢。古人云：书本乃养心第一妙物，诚哉斯言。

最近对巴赫（Bach）很着迷。一直对古典音乐有着很原始的爱好，没有乐理基础，更不发烧。纯粹觉得好听动人，没有技术含量的爱好。但就是这样似乎很“装”的爱好居然从初中持续到现在，虽然基本呈地下状态，但事实是，我在音乐方面的绝大部分支出都是花在这个默默的爱好上⋯⋯ 今天之所以想起这档子爱好，无非觉得对音乐的喜爱其实和人的状态有着微妙的联系。在还是磁带年代的初中，绝大部分都是贝多芬（Beethoven）。小学毕业的暑假，我买的第一盒磁带是“皇帝”。在那个极其郁闷、第一次有痛苦感觉的暑假，一个小屁孩每天的最大欢乐就是在“皇帝”之中YY自己在指挥⋯⋯所以初中，甚至是高中，我的最爱一直是老贝。众多交响和协奏之中（别的实在听的很零碎），除了挚爱“皇帝”之外，通篇喜欢的是第三和第九，第五和第六中部分实在爱不起来（至今还记得第一次听第六时被“暴风雨”给吓到了），其他无感。在耳朵还没有被污染严重的年纪，我很高兴遇到老贝。虽然可能无形之中赋予我的一点勇气和豪情现在看来可能不那么温柔可爱，但回想起来还是很感激老贝多变的音乐陪伴了枯燥压抑的岁月。最遗憾的就是我始终是用磁带听老贝，这个有点对不起，辜负了他那么宏伟的设计⋯⋯ 念高四的时候遇到一个知己，并进而在我那人生的第一个低谷认识莫扎特（Mozart）。小莫命运比老贝好点，因为这时我已经用CD听了，而且选的还是企鹅推荐，一般三星以上。小莫纯净的快乐真的给当时我那煎熬黑暗的生活吹来一股清新之风。刚开始听的是小提琴协奏曲之类，每一曲都很好听，透明的欢快。像天使一样的音乐和小莫，果然是雅俗共赏，入门推荐，老少皆宜⋯⋯ 读了大学之后时间大把，除了口味多元，其实大部分时间都是“恶趣味”。肖邦（Chopin）没有系统听，被乱七八糟的店的背景音乐弄到兴趣索然，不过买了些精选之类；德彪西（Debussy）的《牧神午后》和《大海》美则美矣，却未能引起什么共鸣；亨德尔和海顿也各听了一两张，很不错却没有继续。主要还是把小莫剩下的著名作品听了；但是当占有变的容易，却少了以前的感动。歌剧只有《费加罗的婚礼》和《唐璜》，交响曲也只是40和41，钢琴方面更是杂。小莫一如既往的好听，我的心灵却愚钝了，除了对《安魂曲》（Requiem）。 被一部烂片《莫扎特传》引向Requiem的我，整个身心都为它颤动。并不完全出于它和小莫悲剧一生的传奇相连，而是真正被音乐震动。安宁也好，悲恸也罢，每次心里都会升起一股神圣崇高的力量，慢慢遍布整个世界。人生的尽头，世界的尽头。在执著探寻死亡和生命意义的年龄，在试图捕捉崇高厚重感的时间，音乐超越了文字和感受，让生命的原初和尽头融为一体。对生命和死亡的兴趣，因而有了后来对拉二（拉赫马尼诺夫 Rachmaninoff，Piano Concerto No 2）的好感，更延续到今日对Bach的热爱。 拉二完全是为了排关于死亡的剧的配乐找来，仔细听完非常感动。虽然整部作品意在别处，但部分章节的表达相似、有力。当下就觉得自己语言贫乏，见识短浅。这样沉重而异己的话题再多的阅读也显得轻薄。艺术形式虽然没有高低之分，然而到了感受的层次却有直接和间接；而语言的想像空间比起音乐来显然缺乏震撼。但是对拉赫马尼诺夫的兴趣在两张盘后也消失在ipod的一片汪洋之中。其实当ipod取代CD机开始，古典音乐就慢慢淡出生活。音乐免费下载，更何况最初的shuffle方式让人失去了对古典音乐的最后一点耐心。虽然iTunes里保留了多数的古典音乐，但却沦为skip的对象⋯⋯直到shuffle不再，直到老巴。前者关系播放方式，后者则是我，或者是我的回归。 老巴的全面占领之前有两张铺垫：著名的《勃兰登堡协奏曲》（Brandenburg Concerto）和杜普蕾（Jacqueline Du Pre）的一张cello精选。是我出国前听的最后两张，都是老巴。很难说清楚心中的感觉。既不是初遇老贝的兴奋，也没有对小莫的心动。但不听会很思念。听完后觉得完整。与老巴的新旅途还在路上，渐渐丰满起来，成熟起来。我的感受是模糊的，如同行走在苍茫的大地上，却心灵澄明。 推荐一个不错的巴洛克音乐博客： http://blog.yam.com/davidlee0123/archives/cat_2677.html 实在痛恨这样不能分行的！Space果然诡异⋯⋯

It's JK Rowling's speech at the Harvard commencement on June 5 when she received an honorary doctor degree. No news anymore but it's still worthy of repeating and posting here even though I quickly finished it at the breakfast time. The fact that I'm not a big fan of Harry Potter has little impact on my adore of this speech. The first glimpse is that she talked about two things changing her life; but the true story she wanted to tell seems more than this: by what one can lead a good life? There are many sub-themes under this topic, which she kind of mentioned. Anyway, I'll stop since her real life talks more. The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination J.K. Rowling President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates, The first thing I would like to say is 'thank you.' Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I've experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world's best-educated Harry Potter convention. Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard. You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement. Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this. I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called 'real life', I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination. These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me. Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me. I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents' car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor. I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom. I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools. What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure. At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers. I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment. However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically. Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew. Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality. So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default. Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies. The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned. Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes. You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared. One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London. There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes. Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind. I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness. And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country's regime, his mother had been seized and executed. Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone. Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read. And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before. Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life. Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places. Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise. And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know. I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid. What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy. One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing. But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people's lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden. If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better. I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children's godparents, the people to whom I've been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I've used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister. So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters. I wish you all very good lives. Thank you very much

在情人节停博，感觉有些奇怪。

但是这个电脑上打中文分行很诡异，太不方便了⋯

所以只能搞的跟写诗一样

其实这个博已经长草很久了，现在不过是个仪式而已。和当初从猪博客转到这里一样，不过是人生的某个阶段而。l

来Buffalo一月多，开始感觉并不好。没完没了的雪，风，以及稀疏的阳光，还有每个中国人都会遇到的适应问题。我不是很positive的人，自己会给自己很多压力。不过现在一切都有了转机：至少心态上如此。

新生活慢慢开始，并且慢慢觉得美好。虽然还是有很多事要去解决，有很多挑战要面对，但我真的开始热爱生活了。充满感激宽容的心。

所以现在来停博。希望在这个阴沉很久的博上，有有个光明的告别。

毕业之后经历了一些事情，生命前所未有地打开，我决心告别从前地的己。

找到了一直想找到的东西，自己也朝着心中的方向而改变着。

去年怨念很深的事情和人，随着自己的改变，也有了新的想法。在新的契机来临的时候，不逃避改变，然后观念、生活就不一样了。

我喜欢自己的改变，喜欢新的自己。

我从前那么喜欢的人，我也不强求自己忘记。自然就好了。还是像朋友一样相处，不再有心动的感觉，却很亲切。

我曾经那么纠结的事，有了转机，有了努力的基石和希望，对自己也有了更多信心。

过去的晦暗日子里，我最想感谢的是我的父母。帮还有朋友们。

我将从这里开始。打开心胸，朝向未来。