September 29, 2005, 10:17pm

Thank you so much, Psyche! This is really a surprise. :)

Right after my statistics exam, I was back to my apartment with an exhausted brain. Then I got this cute little teapot! Thank you so much, Psyche, you really boost up my life today. I'll make tea with it soon.

I also got a letter from my dear friends in Scotland. Ann said they're doing well as usual. I simply love to hear that. Since knowing them, and knowing that some of their friends died, I usually think, why do good people die? If evolutionary theory is correct, why don't we have the genes developed so that good people stay strong forever? (Erin and Jenny, I really miss you.)

Though it's a really short time that I came to meet some of Ann and Bert's friends, I really learnt a lot from them. To know that we can learn so much from all these ordinary-looking older people. All of them have so many stories to tell. For instance, Bert told me about World War II and how sentimental it was to meet a German 50 years after the war, who was a soldier, thus an enemy of the British. To realize how stupid we can be, that once people wanted to kill each other but perhaps they can be really good friends.

When Ann and Bert took me to Eyemouth to see the beach and the sea, it's a really nice day (well, in the Scottish perspective, no rain is nice already). The sea was really calm and I was enjoying it. Ann said, "You really don't know why how terrible sometimes the sea can be." I simply don't (and don't want to) think about the negative side when things seem to be so good.

Erin was having lung cancer for years before he died last year. When I greeted him and asked "how are you?" he'd say, "Very bad. It's so painful I couldn't sleep for many nights." You see, normally and normatively, we're used to reply a greeting to say, "I'm fine," "Good" and so on. Yet, I learnt from them that it's OK to say we're not OK when we're not.

It's also because of Ann that I stopped my coffee addiction. She would order me very strong coffee in the cafe because I liked it that way (or I simply didn't have a choice when I was addicted). But once she said, "When you're lying in bed in the hospital, you'll say you shouldn't do this."

It takes a life to have wisdom I guess. But when we have achieved that, it's about the time we have to go. Is life that stupid? This may become my dissertation question. :)