George Santayana

I learned to play crossword puzzle with my friend Marcelle for over 18 months while I worked in SCP. The trick, IMHO, is to fill in the known answer first and once you get more filled-in, the other, thougher, hints will be more obvious to you since you have more characters to base on from the previously filled-in answer.

I guess it is the same about knowledge. I went to the book store and browsed through a literary magazine last Saturday. I found out an article about George Santayana. I would have skipped it if it was two months ago. I got interested then and read through it. From the article, George, as a philosopher, was as famous as William James during the first few decades of the last century. Nowadays, he is much more obscured. I guess his "value" philosophy is not a good subject to debate in an "academy". It doesn't mean that he is a bad philosopher but just his philosophy is not an easy "subject-matter" to "debate" about in a class.

I have a date with spring festival!

George Santayana, a Harvard university professor, inherited a fortune while he was 50. During his class on a beautiful april morning, he saw robins singing outside on top a tree. He grasped the beauty and, turning around, announced, "Gentlemen, I have a date with spring." He walked away and never came back.

It is such a romantic life that I can't afford. But as Li Ao, one famous Taiwan writer, say, I am pessimistic with my reason but optimistic with my sentiment. I always wait and expect my date with spring. Anyway, I will have a one week vacation in the spring festival week this year. So, at least, I have a date with spring festival for 7 days.

Recently, I have a chance to sit on a girl's car re-listening to the theme song of "I have a date with spring(我和春天有個約會)", a musical turned movie in Hong Kong. The story is about the friendship of four ladies in a humble musical production house. Though with low budget, it stirred quite some rememberance of nostagic stories with lovers and friends back then in the early 90s.