One year ago, a snail mail from the other side of the globe totally changed the orbit of my life. The surprise and joy was delayed two months by some unknown reason but the happiness was still fresh.
Things you deserve cannot be deprived from you as long as you make efforts on them. At least so far it still makes sense to me.
I’m working on the 400 pictures I took along the trip. Most of them are crap but still cherishable souvenirs to my young days.

I’m back, still alive but starving. Just let you guys know about that. I’ve got to do my laundry.
Talk to you later.
Special thanks to Yinyin. You keep my blog alive all the time. Your support are greatly appreciated.

My horoscope is Cancer, that partly explains why I wanna carry all my stuff in the backpack. Everything is done and I’m waiting in the cool breeze of morning for the start of the trip.
We’ll visit these places:
Mount Rushmore

Yellowstone NP

Grand Teton NP

Salt Lake City

Arches NP

Black Canyon NP

Denver
Rocky Mountain NP
So I’ll be away for 9 days. Take care, guys. See you soon.

Via rebecca, Robert Thouless’s “Thirty-eight dishonest tricks which are commonly used in argument, with the methods of overcoming them“.
Pretty worth reading. Keep them in mind and try to avoid being fooled by those tricks.

9000 ladybugs for sale?! It is one of the weirdest stuff I’ve ever seen sold on Amazon.

Due to the absence of the product manual, I am wondering how customers will use them? Let them fly all over the house? Seems some guy has found a good way to enjoy the bugs. Don’t forget to read the latest review posted on June 15th at Amazon. That guy is nuts!!!

I had a disaster dream last night. Very rare for a person like me who seldom dream. This is the dream genre I’ve never experienced before. So I’d better write it down for future analysis in case I would forget about it soon.
I couldn’t recall how the dream started. Anyway, a big fire broke out in the residential district I ever lived in about 10 years ago. Buildings are not exactly the same like before but I still could recognize them. The fire was so fierce that it swept over a row of buildings in a second. What’s the worse, the fire kept rushing ahead partly due to the limited distance among buildings.
Some friends and I escaped from the building and ran towards the opposite direction of the fire. The fire expanded so wide that we realized it would be no use attempting to run across the fire and get to a safe place. The only choice was moving ahead.
From time to time we looked back just to find rows of buildings swallowed by the fire. I couldn’t remember how long we’ve moved forward and the road seemed endless. What comforted me was that the fire seems further and further and finally it was out of our sight. Totally exhausted and frightened, we decided to have a rest in the building before us.
It was an ordinary apartment building, just like thousand of that in the district. It was weird that one of my friends had the key so we entered into an apartment with ease. We sat on the floor and planned to get some drink. All of a sudden, I saw smoke rising in the corridor and fire was dancing. Oh my goodness, the fire had caught up with us!!! We jumped up and rushed out of the building. Then I could even feel the heat of the fire.
So the escape started over again and seemed no end. Several times we had thought we’d beaten the fire temporarily but whenever we slackened our pace the fire would return again. At last we got to the border of the residential district [ thanks God there was a border! ] and hundreds of people had been waiting there. There was a bus stop!!! Waiting for the next bus, I saw the fire blowing across the building relentless. In despair we finally pushed ourselves into a crowded bus and left the hell.
…
Update: Comared with Xiao Xiao Feng Ye’s thriller dream, mine is nothing.

Don’t do unto others what you don’t want others do unto you.

I’m not talking nonsense. Just remind myself.

There is an old Chinese saying describing fake smiles, “Skin smiles while flesh doesn’t”. As a person of low EQ, I’m never confident with my ability to distinguish people’s fake smiles especially when there is no any other clue for me to make a judgment. That’s exactly the challenge I faced in a psychology test titled “Spot the Fake Smile“. But…I do love this and the idea is wonderful!!! Found on BBC Human Body & Minds, 8th Annual Webby Award Winners on Education.
I got 13 out of 20 right. Interesting enough that 3 times I made second mistakes after the first one.
This is my result:

According to the explanation along with the test result, the mechanisms of fake and genuine smiles are totally different– the former one is at will while the latter is automatic. There are some tips for us to tell a fake smile from genuine ones,

…when a smile is genuine, the eye cover fold - the fleshy part of the eye between the eyebrow and the eyelid - moves downwards and the end of the eyebrows dip slightly.

Even so, I do wish to purchase “a coding system called the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), which was devised by Professor Paul Ekman of the University of California and Dr Wallace V. Friesen of the University of Kentucky”. FACS facilitated the scientists to make the judgments. How lucky they are!!!
A bunch of surveys and psychology tests are also available.
Update: Don’t try the Disgust test if your stomach isn’t strong enough. I’ve lost my appetite but finally survived the test. Yuck!!!

A very interesting essay about the embarrassment of motto confronted by Chinese educators.
The Education Committee of Dong Cheng District in Beijing conducted an investigation on mottos of all the elementary schools in this region. Among all the 50 schools examined in the survey, 49 of them utilize the style of motto as a slogan of 4 words 8 characters [ two characters per word ]. Altogether 38 words were employed in all the mottos. Four of the most frequently used words are diligence [ used by 38 schools ], solidarity [ 26 schools ], creativity [ 21 school ], and civility [ 20 schools ]. In a similar investigation of 122 middle schools in Nanjing, factualism is used 64 times; diligence 60; solidarity 54.
I can’t recall what the mottos of my elementary school, middle school and high school were. The only thing I can remember is that they are all of a unexceptionally 4-words-8-characters style. I don’t know how much children can understand those so-called mottos and how they will follow them. As for me, a motto is a belief, an ideal, a goal and anything but a slogan.
I collected some mottos of US universities in hope they would be enlightening.
Harvard University: Veritas [ Latin for "truth" ]
Yale University: Lux et Veritas [ Latin for "light and truth" ]
Standford University: Die Luft der Freiheit weht [ German translation of Latin text "the wind of freedom blows" ]
Columbia University: In lumine tuo videbimus lumen [ Latin for "In thy light we shall see light" ]
Princeton University: Princeton in the nation’s service
The University of Chicago: Crescat scientia; vita excolatur [ Latin for "Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched" ]

Yin Yin expressed her dissatisfaction with my recent entries in her comment. I feel the same way. I was blogging for blogging, that’s it.
I’m asking myself a question all the time: why people read my blog? It’s not that analytical, not too much fun stuff, not too much privacy revealed and I’m never a good writer. Why you folks read something like this from time to time? Is there fun out there? I can understand why friends knowing me in real life [ especially those back in China ] do that coz it’s a window through which they can know my life on the other side of the globe. But how about people who just read my words? I’m curious about that.