Ji's Corner

Mike Piazza:美國職棒大聯盟球員，於2008年5月20日宣佈退休。生涯大多在洛杉磯道奇跟紐約大都會，守備位置主要是捕手，另有79場比賽擔任一壘手。擁有連續15場打點記錄、以及大聯盟捕手擊出最多全壘打的記錄。 維基百科

Danny McBride

tiki 提基像: 木刻或石刻人面像

Celibacy builds character; solitude makes you stronger.

How many  broken hearts and sultry thoughts has the inkly sky collected from humanity in only one night?

I conceal the war on the inside. I turn to be a stone; if I feel nothing, then nothing can bring me down to my knees and make me gush upward my prayer of desperation. I still feel for pleasure and sadness; cry for happiness and some moving films. But feelings they never stay long. Their visits remind me of my original form of existence. Like rain water penetrating a stone, I cannot keep them for later tasting as I know that when  the night wind of solitude will freeze water into ice, thus splitting the stone. It is a matter of time that the stone will eventually groud into sand, which become countless dots on the horizontal line.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) could give Taiwanese businesses an opening to “move further up the value chain and develop more of [their] own branded goods and services,” a new analysis by the Brookings Institution says.

However, in the view of Brookings Taiwan studies director Richard Bush and economics expert Joshua Meltzer, the reasons for Taiwan to join the TPP go beyond the potential market openings with major trading partners and are “more strategic in nature.”

They say that the TPP’s liberalization agenda will require Taiwan to undertake a range of economic reforms that will have a “significant and positive impact” on Taiwan’s productivity, competitiveness and economic growth.

“Joining TPP can become a driver of domestic economic reform in Taiwan and in this respect could have a similar impact as the World Trade Organization,” Bush and Meltzer say in the analysis.

The TPP was built on a free-trade agreement between New Zealand, Chile, Singapore and Brunei.

This video is something I happened to find in one of the articles on Professor Tseng's blog.(http://hugoscorner.blogspot.tw/2013/09/blog-post_22.html)

I didn't expect that what moved me the most would be the film but the music over which the blogger expressed admiration.

While watching, it occured to me that each of us is like a moving cable car, slow or hasty, or more aptly, the passenger on it.
Imagining being one of the passengers boarding on a San Francisco cable car over 100 years ago, when the population there was about to grow, I felt the same as a commenter of the video:

While watching, it struck me how much these people are like us. They ARE us, in a sense. When studying history, we often forget that we are studying the history of our own human race. We are not so different from the people from a hundred years ago. We're probably not even much different from the Greeks or the Persians. It's important to remember that we are all responsible for everything that happens, happened, and will happened to us. We are all human, and we always will be.

雖然抗癌成功的例子時有耳聞，但癌症發生在周遭的人或自己身上時，幾乎每個人都會把它跟死亡做很直接的聯想，悲觀的人甚至會將其劃上等號。死亡在各種人文呈現如文學、電影、音樂中，跟愛情一樣都是寫不完也演不爛，無限詠唱的主題。相信很多Mitch Albom的讀者跟我一樣，看完Tuesdays with Morri後對死亡有豁然開朗、無所畏懼的感想，「生命有始有終，一個人才可以審視他的一輩子，然後知道走這一遭的目的。」上周陪母親到長庚接受子宮頸癌的診治，才發現我只是自以為豁達的看待生老病死，那天，我卻沉默寡言，同理心根本無法讓我體會母親承受的恐懼有多大，我不該叫她正面思考，她有權也應該發洩任何情緒，以下這本書跟其中一段字句很撫慰人心，把它們翻譯出來可以幫助我理解跟思考，也希望對某些人而言是有幫助的。

The reality and possibility of serious illness evokes soul from the first moment it registers:

it might be after hearing a report that something serious was found on the X-ray

or more sophisticated scans or in the specimen sent to the lab,

or after an illness announced itself with the sudden onset of an acute pain,

6樓的女人_每個人都有權利擁有屬於自己的快樂，你快樂嗎?

一輛巴士從西班牙Burgos抵達Paris的公車載著一群疲憊的女人，年輕到老年的都有，剛從巴士下來的Maria，雖然扛著一只大皮箱步履蹣跚下車，看到自己的阿姨Concecion瞬間笑顏逐開，互相擁抱，跟她阿姨一樣，Maria來到巴黎當家庭女傭，在前往住處的路上巴黎女人時髦搶眼的套裝、小圓頂帽、高跟鞋和手提包與Maria身上沉默的黑大衣，頂多圍上帶些色彩的領巾型成強烈對比，Maria的視線停駐在她們身上的時間因為趕路而不得不抽離，進入不便與狹窄的女傭宿舍安頓好後，Maria坐在床上眼神裡閃爍著希望也同時感到不安。前任女傭因受不了朱伯特夫人種種不知感恩的行為而辭職，在沒有人打理家務下，朱柏特先生與他妻子最後都答應雇用Maria，只不過除了朱伯特夫人之道的250法郎(這是1962年的法國)月薪外，朱柏特先生願意再付出150雇用他，起初只因為Maria主出男主人要求的3分半鐘的水煮蛋，但之後卻慢慢被西班牙人的活力所吸引。

然而朱伯特夫人與她的姊妹淘在討論各自的女傭時卻好像在挑選產品，女傭來自哪裡就是品牌，願意在星期天上班就是一種優勢，因為星期天大部分西班牙女傭都會去教堂做彌撒，在她們貴婦間把活生生跟他們一樣沒有權利上的差別的人互相評比，不難看出勞資之間不僅物質相差很大，勞工也常為被歧視的對象，但事實是，$$沒有他們所想像的萬能。雖然是很真實嚴肅的問題，電影還是以輕鬆溫暖的畫面呈現。住在6樓的女人們就是一群西班牙女傭，只隔著一層地板的5樓就是朱伯特一家了，前任女傭離開之前，從沒有人過問樓上的生活狀況，也從沒有法國人上去過，在這裡，人之間的隔閡不是水泥地板，而是人心，沒有人是不值得好好對對除非我們可以主動去關心，去了解。影片中，沒有好人或壞人，但可以清楚看出個人價值觀上的成長與頓悟，很容易使觀眾隨著劇情思考。

這部電影我非常喜歡，有著法國電影特有的節奏，即時無聲無對白，一個眼神舉止就能訴說一切，了然於心，以上我只點開了核心議題，編織在周邊的劇情同樣值得慢慢體會。

如果我是馬拉松選手，在終點迎接我的不是如雷的歡呼聲，是刺破每個人心臟的爆炸聲，我還有沒有站立、前進，甚至衝入爆炸點救人的勇氣?

3 dead, 138+ injured

每日起床第一件事就是打開CNN，看看這個世界發生什麼事也順便練習聽力，而我卻聽到三名罹難者中，有一位只有八歲。不管是誰或他有什麼理由放置了那兩枚炸彈，那個人心中一定沒有愛，更別說有神了。

希望受傷的人得到慰藉，死者生前周遭的人們在未來找得到溫暖