Cambridge Diary X

Somehow I only managed to pen 9 entries about my life in Cambridge last year. One year of undergraduate studies in an 800-years-old institution surely worth much more than that.

The workload may be a valid excuses. However, there are plenty of periods that I didn't do anything meaningful. Just sitting there mindlessly browsing the net or wandering from kitchen to toilet and my room.

I didn't upload any photos either. Any person reading this must be really bored. The blog probably stayed too true to its name; just writes. I am just too lazy to upload photos that were already uploaded onto facebook.

So much for the diversion. Anyway this year I'm living in an very old room in D staircase. It has sort of 2 parts: one for sleeping and one is sort of a living room (but no sofa). Size-wise I am very satisfied. It also has a slanted roof, and combined with its old age, can more or less give me some inspirations. Facilities wise it was horrible compared to last year. The gym room is small, toilet doesn't have a sink, and the bathroom literally just has one bath tub. For shower I need to go down all the way to the first floor. Good thing that on the staircase there are Daniel and Yongsheng so things are much easier and more convenient in a lot of ways.

On the work front, Monday, Wednesday and Friday are completely packed. After heeding advices from Dr Keeling and Guanghao I had chosen practicals to be on two separate afternoons. This would allow me the weekend to think through the experiments, but at the same time means traveling to Cavendish twice a week. This journey so far has been quite enjoyable in some sense as Pembroke physicists cycle together there. My supervisors are much better than last year. They know their stuff and are quite easy to talk to. However I need to prepare much more than just the supervision work and I have not been doing that.

Will probably leave it now as my eyes are trying too hard to stay open. Will talk about being a "parent" and other happenings.

Isn't this what you want?

This has been a hot topic in China for many years. Given its population, total economic power, and rich history, shouldn't at least one Chinese have won the Nobel Prize. Technically there are. Quite a number of ethnic Chinese have won the award, especially in the sciences, but none of them were citizens of the People's Republic of China at the time of award. If we use proportions, 1/5 of the prize should have gone to Chinese. This is clearly not the case as well.
It can be quite an embarrassment to certain people, and some are puzzled. Go to any bookstores in China and you're bound to find books explaining the current situation. Titles such as "we will win the Nobel Prize in a certain number of years sells pretty too. The entire country seems quite obsessed with this. To them, winning Olympic (Olympiad) medals and Nobel prizes are signs of a stronger nation. To me, this is just silly. A country or people's achievement can't be measured using such parameters, not evenly remotely.

Now the irony comes. Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel peace prize! He is a proper Han Chinese (unlike the 14th Dalai Lama) whose citizenship is not disputed. The country should have been immersed in jubilant celebrations marking this historic moment. However, such a heroic achievement to the Chinese people was absent from all news channel in China. People don't hear a thing about this (as was the case with Dalai Lama). This just shows the level of censorship in Mainland. I feel sad for the nation and sad for the people. Clearly the communist party is set to continue its policy on human rights and rule of law. Any attempts to induce changes were met with "you're meddling with my internal affair". The crackdown on such reform-minded people can only increase as it feels more threatened than ever. The change will come someday, one way or another, yet the struggle ahead for Liu and his friends will be long and hard.