Tennessee Waltz

When we are getting older, we tend to think about some of our good old days. To me, one of them is Tennessee Waltz and Patti Page. Perhaps it is too old for our generation since my father-in-law also remembers this song very well. Strictly speaking we belongs to the decade of 1955-1965, a period that influenced us most. I remember the first time I heard 'Tennessee Waltz' was around the first year of my Junior High. Later I also heard 'Changing Partners'. Since I didn't know the title & lyrics of the songs, I had no idea what the content & meaning of the songs let alone Patti Page. Surprisingly, I always got confused about these two songs & mixed them up. When time went by, I entered the college & attended some dancing parties & found that these two songs always popped up. They are in waltz style and so I often waltzed around some girls with these two songs. This was our good old time & I always remember those moments up to these days. While I was in Oklahoma & people there told me they got a world famous singer Patti Page. I started to take note & found the good old Tennessee Waltz & Changing Partners. I am sure most of you are familiar with these two songs & so let's enjoy them again (重溫舊夢) and get familiar with the lyrics. It occurred to me that 'Tennessee Waltz' is a very sad song & 'Changing Partners' is much warmer to the heart. I will not mix them up any more.

(Tennessee Waltz)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XCvfy6Huyc

You can see the lyrics of Tennessee Waltz by clicking 'Show more' button. By the way, 'I introduced him to my loved one' in the text should be 'I introduced her to my loved one'.

(Changing Partners)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG60xIYFl1Q&feature=related

Lyrics:

We were waltzin' together to a dreamy melody

When they called out "change partners"

And you waltzed away from me

Now my arms feel so empty as I gaze around the floor

And I'll keep on changing partners

Till I hold you once more

Though we danced for one moment and too soon we had to part

In that wonderful moment something happened to my heart

So I'll keep changing partners till you're in my arms and then

Oh, my darlin' I will never change partners again

[Instrumental Interlude]

Though we danced for one moment and too soon we had to part

In that wonderful moment something happened to my heart

So I'll keep changing partners till you're in my arms and then

Oh, my darlin' I will never change partners again

Patti Page was the best-selling female singer of the 1950s and has sold over 100 million records. Her 'Tennessee Waltz' recorded in 1950, was one of the biggest-selling singles of the twentieth century, and is also one of several official state songs of Tennessee. Page had anoter big hit 'Doggie in the Window'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AkLE4X-bbU

Patti Page is still around at age 84, living near San Diego in Southern California.

A Free New World

Since I came to America, I left all my books & personal belongings at home. The only thing significant I carried over the ocean was the memory in my brain. Since then I lost almost all my belongings at home due to the flood & family moving. In America I started a new life & gradually I collected physical things. Every time I move to a larger house, I collect more stuff, buy more furniture and so make each new move more difficult. One thing I notice well is my music collection. While I was in graduate schools, I was exposed to a lot of music over radio. Anyone living in Dallas, Texas knows WRR FM 101. It is a 24-hour classic music radio station. After a while of listening I started buying some music with my little saving. When time goes by I found that the media of the music keeps changing & so the hardware player changes too. I remember I bought some records and pretty soon a Wollensak reel tape player in 1967 & an Ampex reel tape recorder with many reels of Beethoven's music. Then came the age of cassette tape. I started to collect hundreds of cassette tapes from 1975 to 1985. And then came the age of CD & VHS (replace record & movie). Pretty soon I found that I collected hundreds of CD & VHS tapes and all the previous tapes (reel to reel & cassettes) were moved to garage. Since 1997, VHS was gradually replaced by DVD & I found that hundreds of VHS tapes were moved to garage as well. The only thing didn't change during all the time was the music contents & they are the only things I am really interested. With Apple's iPod, people suddenly can buy a single piece of music without committing to a CD with some other music that they are not really interested. With new technology, music is put in digital format & becomes a file that can be stored in electronic memory. I found that all my CD collections can be crammed into a 32G iPod & carried with me most of the time. With the late smart phone & cloud computing, it seems most of the information we need can be stored remotely in electronic forms. All we need is a smart mobile device to access the information. Nowadays when we buy books or music, we are given the options to download or save in some remote area called Cloud. Thus we no longer need to move books & physical media while we move to a new house. It also seems possible to make all furniture & cooking utensils some kind of utilities that is part of the standard house design. With this we can move around, stay or live anywhere in the world without moving anything physical except yourself. We thus almost achieve a complete personal freedom in our life, a Free New World indeed.

Spring, A Fresh New World

Spring is here again & this is the First Spring of our Second Spring, 人生第二春的第一個春天. I look around & find that this is a fresh new world quite different from the one we used to have not long ago. The world changes so fast that we are overwhelmed physically & emotionally most of the time playing catch up games. Are these changes for the better or the worse? It depends on what & how you look at the world. For me, most of them are for the better although there are many bad side effects go along with them. The following is something that changes our life one way or the other.

Emails: Replace postal mails & stamps.
Google Search: Dramatically reduces the time in fetching information.
iTune/iPod: Changes the way we listen to music & the music distribution.
YouTube: Makes audio/video media available & shares among people.
Wikipedia/Online Dictionary: Replace encyclopedia & dictionary of book form.
Google Chrome: Makes multitasking run smoothly & effectively.
Amazon: Replaces department stores & book stores.
Skype: Reduces the cost of long distance call enormously.
Netflix: Changes the way we watch movie.
Fidelity/Vanguard: Changes the way we invest & manage money.
Internet: Replaces libraries as Internet behaves like a giant library.
Electronic News: Causes the decline of conventional newspapers.
GPS: Changes the way we drive & reduces the need of paper maps.
Google Map: Changes the way we see the world.
Expedia: Change the way we book airline tickets.

Several springs ago, I mentioned Schubert's "FruhlingsGlaube" (Faith in Spring). Let's listen to it again & hear the message:

Now, poor heart, be not afraid!
Now all, all must change.

Now, poor heart, forget thy pain!
Now all, all must change.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_WMgEu63FA

Spring is beautiful, spring is brilliant & spring is full of changes. Let's embrace & engage the spring as the poem from 徐志摩:

春,這勝利的睛空彷彿在你的耳邊私語,
春,你那快活的靈魂也彷彿在那裏迴響.

愛國獎券 和 統一發票

最近在書架上找倒一本舊書,翻看一下,很是有趣. 最令我驚訝的是居然找到一張1960年的愛國獎券和一張1958年的統一發票.可說是老古董,是我們高中時代的產品. 仔細欣賞,勾起不少少年的回憶. 愛國獎券像是Lotto的前身. 在那時二十萬元 是天文数字,就像現在 Lotto 大獎 100 million 一樣. 不同的是愛國獎券有很多小獎,中獎的机會比較多. 仔細查看,這張愛國獎券是八月二十曰開獎. 那時联考巳經放榜,我一定是忽發奇想,繼考上台大電機系,不妨再試愛國獎券的好運. 既然這張安好的夾在書裏當書韱,一定是没中奖了. 1960 八月二十日和我們台大新生註册的日子一定很近. 我還記得那天早上在離台大校門不遠的地方排隊登記. 去了才曉得已經有好多人在排隊. 在以後的日子裏才知道台大的学號是按你的排隊順序决定. 我的学號是 495330. 49是1960, 5是工学院, 3是電机系,30是排隊第三十位. 我想李純儀是包打聽,他老兄一定早知詳情,說不定大清早就在那兒打地舖,因為他是第一號. 陳英亮是495329, 牟在勤是495331, 在我一前一後. 可是我完全不記得和他們有任何交談. 陳英亮音量很小, 猶可解釋. 但牟兄声如洪鐘,我不可能沒有察覺到他的存在. 大概時隔半個世記,一定是記憶力衰退所致. 聽說記憶力的好坏是由公式 exp(-t/RC) 决定,R(Retention Constant), C(Brain Capacity). 這和電容器的漏電公式完全吻合.

統一發票很早就出現,小時候不知其中道理,祇知道這玩意也可中奖. 後來才知道這和財政稅收有關係. 台北市街頭地攤一大堆, 大家現金交易,没人付稅. 於是財政廳才設立統一發票,徵收銷售稅. 凡是有登記的商家一定開發票給顧客,否則可以依法檢举. 我這張發票是1958 四月二十六日,是我們高一,高二的日子. 這使我想起念范氏大代数的年代. '大代数'聽來很堂皇而又重量级. 說來也是,光是厚厚六百頁就挺嚇人的. 每次親戚問起我在学校念些什麼,我就祭出'大代数'來. 他們聽來,嘖嘖稱奇. 又知道我上建中,更是肅然起敬. 現在想想,高中生涯,不失為人生中一段美好的日子. 還記得那些時日,教代数的是鄭孟華. 他有點学究派,似乎不把联考當一回事,和譚嘉培教三角学完全是不同的模式. 他自稱看過原版的范氏大代数,对中文版頗有微詞,認為有些地方翻譯不妥. 看來他當時才三四十歲左右,教了一年,另有高就. 接下去是頂頂有名的王文思先生來教大代数. 他當過建中教務主任,科班出身,是賀翊新校長的左右手. 其人風趣,教來駕輕就熟. 除了吳冶民以外,他可能是建中最好的老師. 一般說來,代数是非常實用的一門課,給我高中一段美好的回憶. 我還記得第一次期中考有一試題如下:
假設 a,b,c 是實数 和 a+b+c = 0; 求証 a^3 + b^3 + c^3 = 3 * a * b * c.

現在看看很簡單, 可是當時還費了一番功夫才解出來.

Moby Dick

When I was a little kid in junior high (about 1957), I saw a movie in 台北双蓮戲院. It was '白鲸記'. I was so excited at the white whale that I couldn't sleep well for a few days. '白鲸記' was refreshing as I had never seen the whale that big roaming the sea & destroyed a whale ship in such a dramatic way. When I grew older & learned that the tale was from the book 'Moby Dick' by Herman Melville. It was published in 1851, a story of a struggle between a mad man & a white whale Moby Dick. I first read the book in Chinese translation and then later moved on to English edition. The English version turned out to be very tough for me. In novel, Melville spent a lot of pages describing the whaling industry & the way they processed the whale on the ship. You need to have a lot of interest and patience to read it in details. It also refers a lot of materials from the Bible. If you are not familiar with stories in Bible, you will miss a lot of metaphors and meanings of the adventure.

When I grew up & watched the movie again. I found that my interests in this novel got more intense. Captain Ahab lost a leg in one encounter with the white whale & vowed to revenge. The whaling ship Pequod, however, was own & operated with the purpose of commercial profit, the welfare to the investors & the crewmen. But the Ahab's motivation & ambition ruined the whole operation, led to the destruction of the ship & the drowning of all crewmen except the story narrator Ishmel. It has been suggested that Hitler's adventure during WWII is awfully resemble to Captain Ahab's saga. Hitler fought on German side & got injured during WWI. German was in a shamble state after WWI with a running away inflation & jobless society. Hitler vowed to revenge. He found & set his demon to the Treaty of Versaillies & Jews. We know the rest of the story & it was so much like the fate of Ahab (Hitler) & Pequod (Germany). At the later stage of the WWII, it seemed there was no hope for German to win the war. But Hitler kept going & so some Germans rose to kill him but failed in the plot. Hitler than dragged all German people in a total defeat. The whole crew of Pequod perished except Ishmael who survived to tell us the story. Fortunately, many Germans survive to rebuild the country. If the scenario happened 2,200 years ago, the German might meet the same fate as Carthaginians---got wiped out from the map & history. A nation or people sometime got extinguished due to the lack of wisdom of the rulers. One example was 準噶爾 around 1757. 準噶爾汗國 and 準噶爾人 cease to exist and 準噶爾盆地 is only a geographical term (地理上的名詞) now.

A ship in a vast ocean is like a country in isolation. The captain is like a ruler with absolute power. In fact a ship with people on board is more like a totalitarian regime than a democratic society. 'Moby Dick' gives us some warning that we should not seek personal revenge by dragging other people in. It also gives us some lesson that we must use the reason (理性) & wisdom (智慧) to avoid conflict and war in dealing with the world affairs.

歲末感言

俗語'一年之際在於春',但最能夠利用春的利益是有充分準備的冬天. 秋天是豊收的季節,冬天是思考冥想的時節. 冬至剛到,這是歲末總結和計畫來年春天的時侯.

Gradually we find that we are the oldest one in most of the social gatherings. We most of the time think the older people are those 15 years senior to us. However when we find that a lot of well known or accomplished people are not only younger than us, but also younger than our children. This is the time we feel in our soul that we are really quite old. The old is not necessarily bad, the Golden Age must be golden and good. Each period of our life has its own meaning and we must embrace it with positive attitude and fulfill it fully.
'健康是一切之本'. Without good health, we can't make decisions in a positive way. Health influences the way we think about life and so determines our life style. But like any other activities, it is an art to maintain the balance among various activities. If we forfeit all the enjoyments of eating just for the reason of health, it may just prolong our life but lose one of the basic enjoyment of our life. So every once in a while, we may indulge in some food without feeling guilty. As long as we have guidelines and stick to it most of the time, we should feel good. Life is full of trade-off and compromise.

In many early mornings of winter, I stand in my backyard & watch the blue sky. While the cirrus lines up in the blue background (藍天馬尾雲), I can never miss the upright redwood thrusting toward the sky. They are always green, erect & tall. they give you an awesome feeling of loneliness but elegance and loftiness (遺世孤高之感). Every time I watch them, I have an urge to measure their heights. Some of them can tower up to 250 feet & keep going up. The redwood species contains the largest and tallest trees in the world. These trees can live to a very old age, with some for hundreds to thousands of years. The most humble experience may be the one when we are near a redwood tree & know that it has been around here since the time of the birth of Confucius, about 500 BC. I once visited Sequoia National Park near Fresno. I have never forgot the experience the first time I saw 'General Sherman', the largest living thing in the world in volume & weight. 'General Sherman' is a sequoia, related to redwood & has a name Sierra Redwood. I am glad California adopts The Redwood as its State Tree. It is interesting to know that the redwood only found in the northern coast of California with a thin strip of about 50 miles wide. Somehow I think men should be like redwood, serene in mood, elegant in personality, erect in character and immune to a lot of violence and mistreatment.

Steve Jobs passed away this year. He left the company he founded with the most value of asset in the world. The more stunning fact is that he accomplished this feat in just about ten years though we have to trace it back to 1976. I consider he was a failure in PC business. Apple is never a major force or mainstream in the PC world although it started the Personal Publishing with Macintosh & laser printer. The three major products relive & transform Apple are iPod (with iTune), iPhone & iPad. The iPod rewrites the way music industry operates & is the more important than the iPhone & iPad. But to judge his position in history, we have to wait, only the time will tell. I think when time goes by, iProducts may not dominate for long as the competitions heat up. However, we can not judge Steve Jobs only based on the iProducts. We must judge him based on the impact of industry & activities influenced by him. Jobs's influence is in the area of Graphic Interface, Personal Publishing and Music Distribution. Many people adore him and shower an overwhelming admiration on him. Some even put him on the same pedestal of Thomas Edison & Henry Ford. I think people overreact. Jobs is more like Ford but Edison is in the another league. Although only time will tell who is more influential, Jobs is not a true inventor like Edison. He only repackages the existing technology with his aesthetic acumen to create a new market. Edison however truly invented the phonograph, motion picture and light bulb just to name a few. Each of the three inventions creates its own industry and continues for more than 100 years. Imagine even today we are talking & working on video, audio & lighting. Our PCs are still trying to optimize these three activities. One thing interesting is to find out how Jobs could accomplish the feat in just about ten years. I think it was the past twenty years from 1976 to 1996 that molded & prepared him to grab the opportunity that was matured to the state he could take advantage at the right time. The fruition of spring is from the seeding and budding of winter---最能夠利用春的利益是有充分準備的冬天.

Life & Loss

While we are young, we seldom think about death except that it imparts some fear in us. When time goes by & we age gradually. We start to see or hear some of our role models like teachers, movie stars or some celebrities died one after the other. Suddenly, we feel a sense of loss. We no longer feel invincible & understand some day it will be our turns & nobody is exempt from this destiny.

We lost Mark Yang last year & this year professor Ma and KY Cheng, our classmate. Per AJ, KY suffered from oral cavity cancer last year and was cured later. Unfortunately, the cancer spread to become Lymphoma & he just couldn't make it this time. I have to admit I know very little about KY. He was a good table tennis player & was talkative sometime. However, he kept low profile most of the time. The last time I saw him was in a Taipei city bus returning from the airport after seeing someone off. It has been 46 years since but felt just happened not too long ago. I still remember the way he talks, smiles & makes jokes. I have never seen him since and he seemed never wrote anything or appeared in any of our reunion trips. Recently I visited his website and learned a little bit about him. Here is the information of his career:

鄭國揚
中央研究院資訊科學研究所
台北市南港區 11529 研究院路二段一二八號

博士, 應用數學研究所, 紐約州立大學(石溪), 美國 (1967/9–1972/6)
碩士, 電子工程研究所, 北達科達州立大學, 美國 (1966/9–1967/6)
學士, 電機工程學系, 國立台灣大學, 中華民國 (1960/9–1964/6)

副研究員, 中央研究院資訊科學研究所, 中華民國 (1978/07-1979/06)
副教授, 清華大學資訊/應數所, 中華民國 (1975/07-1978/06)
客座副研究員, 中央研究院數學研究所, 中華民國 (1972/09-1974/09)

Research Interests:
Chinese Processing
Computer Graphics
鄭博士的研究工作包括電腦圖學和數位幾何處理。負責視覺化環境實驗室，主要工作為發展一套實用之臉部動畫系統。

KY published several papers in some professional journals. The descriptions & contents of the papers look impressive. His research is in the image processing using digital techniques & algorithms. His research interest includes Chinese Processing though I didn't see any of his papers related to this discipline. I am surprised why he didn't participate in the discussion of Chinese language in the past few years as we did in our blog or forum. As far as I can remember, he never showed up in our email communication even after MarkYang urged him once to say something. Instead, MarkYang & a few of us were quite vocal arguing the pros & cons of Mandarin as a language comparing to the Western Language System. Perhaps he considered our discussion not professional enough for him. However, I think he should have said something no matter it is positive or negative.

We hear someone dies almost everyday but life keeps going on. We feel a sense of loss if the person passed away is close to us or somehow influenced us one way or the other. I think this sense of loss is inevitable. The positive attitude is trying to learn something from the dead and keeps our head high and straight. The future is always awaiting us and we should embrace it joyfully.

PS: Notable people died in 2011:

Steve Jobs (age 56) and Elizabeth Taylor (age 79), two completely different personalities and careers.

Elizabeth Taylor was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery of Glendale with other celebrities like Michael Jackson, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow and Nat King Cole.

Steve Jobs was buried in Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto, right across Gunn High School with other famous people like David Packard (HP's founder) and Frederick Emmons Terman (Father of Silicon Valley). Terman was the author of "Electronic and Radio Engineering", a famous book (1,078 pages) we referred to at least a few times in our school years. I bought this book (Fourth Edition, 1955) a few years ago in a Palo Alto Library book sale at $1.00. This is one of the most nostalgic bargains in my life.