52

There was a man, who had so great a bravery to be the first pioneer of joining the minor league, and fighted for the tiny possibility of advancing to Major League Baseball. However, he was unlucky. Every factor seemed to block his path to M.L.B. After seven years struggle in America, he returned to Taiwan and joined C.P.B.L. (Chinese Professional Baseball League) in 2006. But, instead of being admired for his experience in America, what made him have the high status as a god in the heart of baseball fans in Taiwan is his amazing performence in many international games. Everytime, he used homerun to tell the fans in Taiwan: No matter how great our opponent team was, and how difficult it was to win the game, if we never gave up, there was always possibilities. The man's name, is C.C.F, Chen Chin-Feng.
I still cannot tell clearly about the reason why I always feel moved when thinking of his performence in the past. I like to search his homerun video on the internet when I meet obstacles in my daily life. Feeling the nervous atmosphere in the ball game, looking the little white ball flying out from the home base and then falling on the ground outside the field, listening the crowds' shouting, I can re-experience his glorious time over and over again. It gives me strength and recover the energy to have faith in life. Really, it does work everytime. I'm not a person who is easy to cry, but through watching his homerun video and those music videos which are made for him, I usually have tears in my eyes. And then I realized, they are not only the thing which is called "homerun" in baseball, they are images of the swinging of life strength.
Now he is 31 years old, which is the golden age of a power batter like him. I hope he can still play in the field for another ten years, or even more. If the day of his retire finally come, I think I will never forget the spirit inside the number 52, which I always see on that reliable back.
He is Chen Chin-Feng, the hero in my deep heart.

(This the best music video made for him I have ever seen on the internet!)

Summary: "Cynicism and Mistrust Tied to Early Death", page 67

In the past, it was believed that Type A people, people under stress who work too hard and are always in a hurry, were twice as likely to suffer heart disease as relaxed people, but a series of studies conducted in the 1980s failed to prove that there was a connection between Type A personalities and heart problems. A researcher, Dr. William said, "Now we can claim that only those personalities of hostility and anger really lead to heart problems." Dr. William said that hostile and nonhostile people seem to have different nervous system. When nonhostile people become angry, their nervous system acts like a "stop switch" that calms them down. Hostile people, on the other hand, seem to have weak nervous system, which can't calm them down. There are also differences between their blood pressure. Hostile people also have higher blood pressure which is easy to damage the heart and blood vessels. There is no evidence that the Type A personality is likely to die young. But there is lots of evidence that people who are hostile and angry do.

desert

We are all surrounded by the desert. The place we are staying in is only a oasis.

Recently, I had read a novel named Desert,written by Kotaro Isaka. It is a story about five college students. Through reading the whole novel, we readers also experience four years of college life with them. It is a great happiness that I am at the same age with the characters. Since we have similar maturity and intellectual development, it is not difficult for me to understand their confusion toward the world, emotion on love, thoughts of normal people's attitude, and the searching for dreams. But what draws my attention is the character, Nishijima. He is a strange guy who always talk about the terrible things happening in the world right now, such as "How can you guys still drinking so happily here without thinking of the poor child who still hunger for food in Africa?" or "America had already used 'stopping terrorism' that kind of stupid excuse to invade Middle East Asia to search for its own profit, how come Japan government is still arguing on whether to send out troops to assist or not? " Actually, the issues he says are all true and is happening in the world simultaneously, but everyone considers him a weird guy instead of listen to him. Why? Is he saying anything wrong? No! He is absolutely right! The reason which makes people don't want to listen to him may be that, they don't have the feeling of reality.

We are all living in a happy environment. Our daily worries are only on school work, or the interaction with friends. The life just seems so easy that we cannot imagine in some totalitarian country, the scene of soldiers killing civilians in street is as simple as you click your mouse right now. Our kids grow up with toys, while their kids playing with machinegun and grenade. Even we know how cruel the world is, we still can't do anything. The power of only one person is too small. No matter how gifted, a person along cannot change the world. The only thing we can do may be not to take everything for granted or complain a lot when facing a small problem. We should always remember: there are always some people who suffer more than us. They are struggling for survival, while we are worrying about what to eat for dinner.

Human is the only creature on Earth that will feel compassion to the tragedies far away. That is the reason which makes us worry about the things outside of the oasis which we are staying in. But, it is the merit of human nature, because we must have to enter the society which so-called "desert" some day.

Finding the Truth

Detectives, a kind of character exists in the novels who has outstanding observation ability, keen judgement, calm mind, and usually excels in one certain sport. Since such a perfect person cannot be seen in the real society, it is an great enjoyment for detective novel readers like me to meet them in the detective world. Through reading the plot of murder, robbery, or any other strange events, detective novels gave us the chance to deal with crime cases. And usually, the truth behind the reason that makes human to do illegal things are some mournful tragedies that worth thinking. However, now I am only going to introduce two famous detectives around me recently.

Shinichi Kudou, a senior high school detective who once witnessed an illegal trade of a secret organization. He was too attentive to the conversation of the two men, which made him unaware of the other one behind him. He was hit to faint, and then they fed him a poison which was still under experiment and then left him there to die. But he didn't die, a more strange thing occured on him. He was changed into his child-like appearance. After on, the story developed with every kind of cases and sometimes his battle with the secret organization after he got some new clues of them.

I think almost everyone in our generation must know him a lot, so I don't have to introduce the story too much. But I got a totally different feeling and deeper thinking toward many of its plots after reading this comics again this year. In the past when were only children, we were too young to understand the tragedies that cause people to kill another one. To reread it made me gain lots of ideas on human nature, and also remember some childhood memories. Sometimes, after a case was closed, Kudou would have some thoughts in his mind which always made readers feel a little bit sorrowful, but it is truely human nature.

Ok~I know you all like to see some handsome guys, here is one, Masaharu Fukuyama. Of course I am not going to talk about him, what I want to introduce is the character performed by him, a strange genius physics adjunct professor Manabu Yukawa. I read the novel first and then know that there was a drama adapted from the novel. Unlike other detective novels which always focus on finding the murderer, the events in this novel are focus on "how to do it." In the plot, murder cases happen with many mysterious phenomenon such as human head suddenly burns and a scary house which always shakes on 8 p.m. In the plots, we can see the writer's knowledge on science and ususally amazed by him.

Finally, I had one question. Is it nessary that detectives need to be so handsome??

After Sweet Rain, There is Sunny Day

Sweet Rain, it is a novel written by a Japanese writer, Kotaro Isaka. Kotaro Isaka is a young star of recent Japanese writers, who is knowledgeable in many aspects, such as science, art, history and music. In his novels, readers can usually see his sharp and impressive perception on human beings. The amazing characters and original plots created in his novel are his feature. Plots may be a consecutive arson events happens in a city which always accompanied with mysterious words daubed on the wall, or a story between three professional killers. The characters can be a scarecrow who has the ability to talk, or a god of death, such as Chiba in Sweet Rain.

People's image of god of death is like a skeleton in black cape with a big scaring sickle. But this image doesn't fit to Chiba. In Sweet Rain, god of death is a jod, they work under an organization. When they get the message sent by the department of imformation, it is time for them to work. The content of work is to observe an assigned human for seven days, on the eighth day the god of death will decide whether his target shall die or not. In order to make the observation work easier to do, the department of imformation will tell the god of death how their outlooking is like this time. It is helpful when they need to approach their targets.

Chiba is one of the god of death, the one among them who is enthusiastic at music. He considers music as the greatest invention of human. The love of music makes him different from his colleague. However, there is a special thing always comes with him. That is, he has never seen a sunny day. When he is on his work, it is always raining. As a god of death who has a totally different thinking logic than human, he doesn't care much about that.

In the novel, there are seven people in his investigation. (In the movie which adapts from the novel, he meets three people). We see the variety of human lives. Every person has their own life story and living philosophy. Through the eyes of Chiba, whose thought will not be affected by emotion, we can observe humanity transparently.

Since I am only a 19 year old student, I don't think I have the qualification to talk about the true meaning of human life. But I did get some thoughts after watching this movie and then reading the novel last year, that was -no matter what difficulty you encounter in your life, face it! Every person's life story is fascinating. If you don't keep going, you will never know which way your own story will go to and how will it develope. In the end, Chiba sees a beautiful sunny day scene beside the sea. It seems saying to us: after sweet rain, there is sunny day!

Silent dancing in the field---CHIA CHIA

I am the kind of person who like baseball, love baseball, and cannot eat, sleep or have the fun of living when there is no baseball. But I am not going to explain what makes me become a crazy fan. In this entry, I want to introduce a baseball player in Taiwan who is outstanding both on field and, more being respected, his humble mind.

Unlike Chien-Ming Wang, who is now a well-known sport star not only in Taiwan but also in the States, this man doesn't seem to have that kind of luck to show his skill and the quality of star to the world. He is Cheng-Min Peng, nicknamed CHIA CHIA. Of course, he does have the good capability for being a player, which all the baseball star should have. But what makes him so unique and respectful is his humble and smooth disposition. If you had once watched a baseball game, you should have notice that it is quite usual when a batter hit a homerun, he will do some motion and pose or sometimes shout out loud to celebrate for himself during his running to the homebase. Since hitting a homerun is of some difficulty and has the worth of celebrating, it is acceptable and common. However, when you watch CHIA CHIA's baserunning after he hits a homerun, you will never see him do any special pose, and you even can't notice any change of emotion on his face. He always lows his head and runs seriously toward the homebase. What makes him do this is that he considers those celebrating poses are humiliations to the pitcher, so he just does his right thing. After game finish, when all the players, audiences and staff left, he will bow to the baseball field, to show respect to the God of baseball.

At last, he is still a human who may have emotion sometimes. He had once hit the transformer on the wall in player restroom out of anger in August, 2005, which occured by his discontent from his performence that night. The result of that event was a fracture at his right hand, which caused him away from field for almost a year. It was since that terrible event he grew maturer and maturer psychologically. Although it was a stain in his career, it made him know the importance of tranquility and shape what a popular baseball star he is today.

The First Black President of South Africa

Nelson Mandela was borned in 1918.After his 20s, he had started to organize a lot of organizations to resist the contemporary South Africa government. Due to his action which was regarded by the government as armed rebellion, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964. After being imprisonmened for 27 yearas, he was released by president F.W Klerk in 1990. In 1993, they both shared the Nobel Peace Prize for breaking the hence between the black and the white. One year later, Mandela became the first black president of South Africa, which made him a image of hero in black all around the world.

Lupin the gentle thief

Arsene Lupin, a character created by a Franch writter Maurice Leblanc, is a thief who is great at imitating other's voice, disguising other's looks,and entering and bring out his target from the building which is guarded sternly by the police with ease. No one in the world knows his truly look and original voice. In short, Lupin is a figure covered by thick fog to the public.

What makes him an attractive gentle thief is that he always steal precious artistic production such as paintings, statuary, and sometimes dimonds or jewelry from politicians and nobles who get their money, authority and fame through illegal and ashame measures. He kept some of his captures in a secret storehouse for appreciating by himself. But most of the time, he usually sells the stolen items for money and donate it to orphanage and philanthropic institution. The reason that makes him to do that may be out of his compassion since he was also growing up from that kind of environment without complete love. That's why he is notorious to the police and authority people, though, being admired by the society.

As a patriot, he once had stolen the blueprint of submarine from Germany to Franch government. And then he joins the French army during World War Two as a doctor since he is also knowledgeable on medical science. Moreover, his courteous manner attracts almost every women who met him, that is how the title "gentle thief" comes from.

Although Sherlock Holmes is more well-known then Lupin in the world of dective, but for me, a character with such special disposition different from the stereotype we would have toward thief before, he is really out-standing.