同仁堂和大宅门

前几天把《大宅门》第一部看完了。第一次看《大宅门》还是去新加坡前，2001年七月份走的时候中央一套还没播放完，然后一直都没补上。这部戏经典就不用多说了，它倒是勾起了我对同仁堂的兴趣，在网上看了不少相关的历史。无巧不成书，波士顿华埠有一家中医药店南北行，跟纽约同仁堂分店是同一个老板。药店挂着长长的扁，上面有这么一首诗。


法自天成
扁鵲神醫
華佗妙手
千金濟世
本草源芳
經絡針灸
丸散膏丹
承傳有序
博大精深
康熙八年
同仁始創
供奉御葯
普惠眾生
炮製雖繁
不吝人工
品味雖貴
不惜物力
滄桑閱畢
古木回春
改革盛世
再造輝煌
誠信為本
仁德為魂
創新進取
精益求精
國葯振興
蜚聲寰宇
中華文化
萬古流長

Arrow to the knee

"Arrow to the knee" is a phrase made famous by Skyrim back in 2011. It was made into numerous memes, but its usage has faded away. Interestingly, the Chinese game 轩辕剑6 made a reference to it in one of its DLC 浊山铸篇.

"When I was young, I was very handsome and excelled in martial arts..."

"But the first time I went to a battle, I took an arrow to the knee.. I was crippled and my health has been much worse than before."

The Quantum Theory of Life

In Physics, quantum mechanics is a theory that describes the world in atomic scale. It is probabilistic in construction, and claims that everything is non-deterministic with the famous uncertainty principle. To put things more mathematical, this theory uses wavefunction to describe the wave particle duality behaviour of matter and energy. Any wavefunction can be written in terms of a linear combination of basis state, which resides in the Hilbert space. The modulus square of the coefficients give the probability of that state, and they are normalized. When a measurement is made, the eigenvalue of one state will be observed. I shall not go on to the collapse of the wave-function interpretation as they are highly debatable.

Now if we want to define our life, we can think of it in terms of defining a wavefunction, in a very similar way that we define the state of matter. For example, the languages we speak can form a basis state, with the coefficient representing how well we speak that language. In my case, it can be approximated easily as (using Dirac notation for wavefunctions) |Yun> = 1/sqrt(2) |Chinese> + 1/sqrt(2) |English> . However, this is approximation, as I know a few words of Japanese and German, but they definitely don't count as the coefficient would have at least 20 zeros after the decimal point.

Another interesting basis set we can use is the countries we have stayed in. In this highly globalized world, more and more people are born in one place, raised in another, and working or studying in a third country. Maybe for some none of these are their ethnic native country. Quantum theory somehow can sort of model this highly dynamics society.

So what is your wavefunction?

Be strong, Japan

The images are shocking. Entire villages are destroyed, totally annihilated from the map. Cars float on water, as if they are toys. The saddest of all are those of the people affected. They have lost everything, maybe some of their loved ones. Their current and future are uncertain.

BUT it is Japan we are talking about here. They are the 3rd largest economy in the world, their buildings are designed to withstand strong Earthquakes, and their people are civilized and prepared for such disasters. If I were to name a country that can recover the quickest from a such a natural catastrophe, it would be Japan without a doubt. The problem is, it is not one, but 3 disasters, that struck almost immediately after the other. The earthquake was strong, but happened offshore, and most buildings were intact. Then there is the tsunami. I don't think any man-made structure can withstand a wave of 10m. And worst of all, all these are followed by the possible nuclear fallout from the power station. The nuclear part of the problem is still a ongoing battle. I wish all the best to the team behind it and you guys are heroes.

There might be some media hype about the radiation level. Rumors are rife that Japanese products are no longer safe, and there have been comparison of this with other nuclear accident. Certainly we cannot dismiss anything to do with a nuclear reaction as a "small thing", but we need to remain in perspective. Risk communication is vital during such crisis to prevent any unnecessary stress and irrational behaviour.

It is a test of unity and resolve. I sincerely hope that everything will be under control soon, and effort to be focused on rebuilding the affected areas, and offer support to the victims. The world is behind you Japan.

It is also very unfortunate that the Pembroke international programme is at this time of the year. The university part of it was cancelled, but the high school one will still go on. It can be a very delicate task to approach them at these time. But I hope they are not too affected by the events back home, and can enjoy their time in Cambridge.

Cambridge Diary XI

Pembroke Mile is an annual charity event held by the college. Like the London marathon, it is a day of funfair. Some people compete for the ultimate prize, while most others just turn up in fancy dresses and attempt to finish the race. Distance wise it is not particular challenging, but coming up with a good costume takes quite some preparation, and winning is not easy.

Matt suggested to me this crazy idea of completing the race as wheelbarrow. It sounded really ridiculous. There is no way that as a pair we can do that for a mile, so I turned it down. He then somehow persuaded Mark to do it with him, and started practicing on Saturday morning. They soon figured out it was quite difficult and instead of quitting, they asked me again if we can do it in the group of 3. I went down to try with them, and it wasn't THAT bad, and we sort of figured out some good ways of holding the crawling person. It was quite embarrassing as we inevitably drew some attention from some friends and a lot of tourists who were in college at that time. They really had a good laugh and definitely thought we were nuts. Even the Master saw us, and seemed unconvinced. At that point, we were not totally sure if it was all worthwhile. Naturally we thought of asking people for donation to our cause, which is a rather common thing here in the UK. That was the last persuasion needed, and I was on the team.

Matt put up some suggestive posters around the college. He also physically "pressured" quite a lot of friends to sign up. By the end of the day, we have around 100 pounds worth of pledges, which was pretty impressive for just one day of fund raising. He had done a really good job.

Then came the impossible task of completing the race itself. We started off really slowly, and had to stop much more frequently then we thought we would. The gloves we bought was torn well before the first 300 meters. However, there were some really supportive people with us and they encouraged us and cheered us along. We were really grateful for their support. We also tried different ways of doing it and just took a small distance at a time, and kept on rotating. My arms were hurting really badly almost right from the start, and I didn't know how I managed to continue to be able to doing all the carrying and crawling. A lot of people and small kids were literally laughing at us. The most difficult part of was the not the crawling but the carrying as there is no natural place to hold on to. I am also the weakest among the team and had to reply quite heavily on Matt and Mark, and somehow by sheer determination, craziness, the tolerance of pain and the thought of all the support we have received, we made it back to the College Hall to be received with applauses. And the free brunch was just awesome!

I would really like to thank everyone who has donated, and encouraged us. To be honest we looked really stupid, but I think it was worth it.

I'm off to collect my bike in the pitch now.