Every time when I’m on a biz trip, lying in bed in a strange hotel, I always feel myself going off track of my normal life. The messes and unhappiness seem like a million miles away, a million years ago, as though they were not mine but someone else’s.
这次住在郊区，周六一早忙完收尾工作便赶到市区，和好朋友聚一聚。又一次来到淮海路，去了新开的Barbie旗舰店。每次到上海总能发现北京没有的东西，也算不枉来一趟。
昨天下午地铁里还开着冷气，而北方这时候已经来暖气了。
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
A Language of Smiles
An interesting article from the NYT:
Say “eeee.” Say it again. Go on: “eeee.”
Maybe I’m easy to please, but doing this a few times makes me giggle. “Eeee.”
Actually, I suspect it’s not just me. Saying “eeee” pulls up the corners of the mouth and makes you start to smile. That’s why we say “cheese” to the camera, not “choose” or “chose.” And, I think, it’s why I don’t get the giggles from “aaaa” or “oooo.”
The mere act of smiling is often enough to lift your mood; conversely, the act of frowning can lower it; scowling can make you feel fed up. In other words, the gestures you make with your face can — at least to some extent — influence your emotional state.
(The notion that facial expressions affect mood isn’t new. Edgar Allan Poe used it in his story “The Purloined Letter”: one character reports that when he wishes to know someone’s mind, he attempts to compose his face to mimic the expression of that someone — then waits to see which emotions arise. And the idea was developed, in different ways, by both Charles Darwin and William James. But telling stories and developing arguments is one thing. Showing, experimentally, that making a face can make a mood is harder; it’s only in the past 30 years or so that data have started to accumulate.)
Exactly how frowns and smiles influence mood is a matter of debate. One possibility is classical conditioning. Just as Ivan Pavlov conditioned a dog to associate the sound of a bell with the expectation of food, the argument goes, so humans quickly come to associate smiling with feeling happy. Once the association has been established, smiling is, by itself, enough to generate happy feelings. Another possibility is that different facial gestures have intrinsic properties that make them more or less pleasant, perhaps by altering the way that blood flows to the brain.
But here’s what interests me. As anyone who has tried to learn a foreign language will know, different languages make you move your face in different ways. For instance, some languages contain many sounds that are forward in the mouth; others take place more in the throat. What’s more, the effects that different languages have on the movements of the face are substantial. Babies can tell the difference among languages based on the speaker’s mouth movements alone. So can computers.
Which made me wonder: do some languages contain an intrinsic bias towards pulling happy faces? In other words, do some languages predispose — in a subtle way — their speakers to be merrier than the speakers of other languages?
As far as I can tell, no one has looked at this. (It doesn’t mean no one has; it just means I haven’t been able to find it.) But I did find a smidgen of evidence to suggest the idea’s not crazy. A set of experiments investigating the effects of facial movements on mood used different vowel sounds as a stealthy way to get people to pull different faces. (The idea was to avoid people realizing they were being made to scowl or smile.) The results showed that if you read aloud a passage full of vowels that make you scowl — the German vowel sound ü, for example — you’re likely to find yourself in a worse mood than if you read a story similar in content but without any instances of ü. Similarly, saying ü over and over again generates more feelings of ill will than repeating a or o.
Of course, facial gestures aren’t the whole story of emotions; moreover, languages can potentially influence emotions in many other ways. Different languages have different music — sounds and rhythms — that could also have an emotional impact. The meanings of words may influence moods more than the gestures used to make them. And just as the words a language uses to describe colors affects how speakers of that language perceive those colors, different languages might allow speakers to process particular emotions differently; this, in turn, could feed into a culture, perhaps contributing to a general tendency towards gloom or laughter.
Separating these various factors will be difficult, and the overall impact on mood through the facial gestures of a language may well be small, if indeed it exists at all. Nevertheless, I’d love to know whether some languages, by the contortions they give the mouth, really do have an impact on their speakers’ happiness. If it turns out that there is a language of smiles, I’d like to learn it. In the meantime: have a giggle with “meeeeeee.”
http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/a-language-of-smiles/
Say “eeee.” Say it again. Go on: “eeee.”
Maybe I’m easy to please, but doing this a few times makes me giggle. “Eeee.”
Actually, I suspect it’s not just me. Saying “eeee” pulls up the corners of the mouth and makes you start to smile. That’s why we say “cheese” to the camera, not “choose” or “chose.” And, I think, it’s why I don’t get the giggles from “aaaa” or “oooo.”
The mere act of smiling is often enough to lift your mood; conversely, the act of frowning can lower it; scowling can make you feel fed up. In other words, the gestures you make with your face can — at least to some extent — influence your emotional state.
(The notion that facial expressions affect mood isn’t new. Edgar Allan Poe used it in his story “The Purloined Letter”: one character reports that when he wishes to know someone’s mind, he attempts to compose his face to mimic the expression of that someone — then waits to see which emotions arise. And the idea was developed, in different ways, by both Charles Darwin and William James. But telling stories and developing arguments is one thing. Showing, experimentally, that making a face can make a mood is harder; it’s only in the past 30 years or so that data have started to accumulate.)
Exactly how frowns and smiles influence mood is a matter of debate. One possibility is classical conditioning. Just as Ivan Pavlov conditioned a dog to associate the sound of a bell with the expectation of food, the argument goes, so humans quickly come to associate smiling with feeling happy. Once the association has been established, smiling is, by itself, enough to generate happy feelings. Another possibility is that different facial gestures have intrinsic properties that make them more or less pleasant, perhaps by altering the way that blood flows to the brain.
But here’s what interests me. As anyone who has tried to learn a foreign language will know, different languages make you move your face in different ways. For instance, some languages contain many sounds that are forward in the mouth; others take place more in the throat. What’s more, the effects that different languages have on the movements of the face are substantial. Babies can tell the difference among languages based on the speaker’s mouth movements alone. So can computers.
Which made me wonder: do some languages contain an intrinsic bias towards pulling happy faces? In other words, do some languages predispose — in a subtle way — their speakers to be merrier than the speakers of other languages?
As far as I can tell, no one has looked at this. (It doesn’t mean no one has; it just means I haven’t been able to find it.) But I did find a smidgen of evidence to suggest the idea’s not crazy. A set of experiments investigating the effects of facial movements on mood used different vowel sounds as a stealthy way to get people to pull different faces. (The idea was to avoid people realizing they were being made to scowl or smile.) The results showed that if you read aloud a passage full of vowels that make you scowl — the German vowel sound ü, for example — you’re likely to find yourself in a worse mood than if you read a story similar in content but without any instances of ü. Similarly, saying ü over and over again generates more feelings of ill will than repeating a or o.
Of course, facial gestures aren’t the whole story of emotions; moreover, languages can potentially influence emotions in many other ways. Different languages have different music — sounds and rhythms — that could also have an emotional impact. The meanings of words may influence moods more than the gestures used to make them. And just as the words a language uses to describe colors affects how speakers of that language perceive those colors, different languages might allow speakers to process particular emotions differently; this, in turn, could feed into a culture, perhaps contributing to a general tendency towards gloom or laughter.
Separating these various factors will be difficult, and the overall impact on mood through the facial gestures of a language may well be small, if indeed it exists at all. Nevertheless, I’d love to know whether some languages, by the contortions they give the mouth, really do have an impact on their speakers’ happiness. If it turns out that there is a language of smiles, I’d like to learn it. In the meantime: have a giggle with “meeeeeee.”
http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/a-language-of-smiles/
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
This Is It
Michael Jackson’s This Is It premieres at 12mn. As staff members of Sony Pictures, each of us was given a movie ticket.
MJ’s fans must be dying for such a chance. But I won’t go tonight because it’s too late for me. I’m never a night owl. I can’t imagine myself wandering in a deserted street in the wee hours of the morning.
And I’m not alone. It’s even more unbelievable that some of our clients, who are of my age, also refused the offer saying the time is not good. Yes, it’s right the middle of the week and people are working tomorrow. My ticket finally goes to a colleague.
A wonderful night I dream of is staying at home, making a fire in the fireplace (if I had one) on a cold day, listening to the sounds of firewood crackling and spluttering, watching the little sparks in the dark and going to bed early, drifting into sleep with an unfinished book in my hand…
This will be a perfect end of a day.
MJ’s fans must be dying for such a chance. But I won’t go tonight because it’s too late for me. I’m never a night owl. I can’t imagine myself wandering in a deserted street in the wee hours of the morning.
And I’m not alone. It’s even more unbelievable that some of our clients, who are of my age, also refused the offer saying the time is not good. Yes, it’s right the middle of the week and people are working tomorrow. My ticket finally goes to a colleague.
A wonderful night I dream of is staying at home, making a fire in the fireplace (if I had one) on a cold day, listening to the sounds of firewood crackling and spluttering, watching the little sparks in the dark and going to bed early, drifting into sleep with an unfinished book in my hand…
This will be a perfect end of a day.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Drag Me to Hell
For so many years, horror movie has always been my favourite.
Turn off the lights. Switch off the mobile phone. Allow me 90 minutes in a make-believe world, where all the real annoyances are forgotten.
Turn off the lights. Switch off the mobile phone. Allow me 90 minutes in a make-believe world, where all the real annoyances are forgotten.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
黄昏
初秋是北京一年中最美的季节，而黄昏又是一天中我最喜欢的时刻。
初秋的黄昏，空气中还残留着夏日的余温，萧瑟的秋风和枯黄的落叶仿佛还很遥远。
天色渐暗，华灯初上，路上行人的步履也不像清晨般匆匆忙忙。
国庆将至，昨天下班回家的时候发现马路上每隔几十米就站着警察，加上九月份以来隔三差五的交通管制，给平淡的城市平添了紧张气氛。
九月这最美好的时光如同黄昏般昙花一现，在不知不觉中被湮没了。
初秋的黄昏，空气中还残留着夏日的余温，萧瑟的秋风和枯黄的落叶仿佛还很遥远。
天色渐暗，华灯初上，路上行人的步履也不像清晨般匆匆忙忙。
国庆将至，昨天下班回家的时候发现马路上每隔几十米就站着警察，加上九月份以来隔三差五的交通管制，给平淡的城市平添了紧张气氛。
九月这最美好的时光如同黄昏般昙花一现，在不知不觉中被湮没了。
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Cloudy with a chance of mooncakes
The other day I was taking a box of mooncakes back home. The concierge saw me and said: “Why is everyone carrying mooncakes today?” Of course, it’s Mid-Autumn!
Every August, our team would brainstorm a non-mooncake yet presentable gift to our clients. Still, the majority would yield to convention. Just like dumplings for the lantern festival, chocolates for Valentine, mooncake is a deeply ingrained part of the Mid-Autumn festival. That is the strong power of tradition.
For a whole week, I’ve been eating the high-sugar, high-protein and high-cholesterol food for breakfast. But I wasn’t so lucky to discover a bottle of wine, a crab, or a Buddha bead in it, which are sometimes incorporated in the elaborately packed box.
Every time when a festival approaches, the streets become more crowded than usual. Maybe people are busy exchanging gifts. Actually the festival itself doesn’t really matter; all I expect is a long holiday.
Every August, our team would brainstorm a non-mooncake yet presentable gift to our clients. Still, the majority would yield to convention. Just like dumplings for the lantern festival, chocolates for Valentine, mooncake is a deeply ingrained part of the Mid-Autumn festival. That is the strong power of tradition.
For a whole week, I’ve been eating the high-sugar, high-protein and high-cholesterol food for breakfast. But I wasn’t so lucky to discover a bottle of wine, a crab, or a Buddha bead in it, which are sometimes incorporated in the elaborately packed box.
Every time when a festival approaches, the streets become more crowded than usual. Maybe people are busy exchanging gifts. Actually the festival itself doesn’t really matter; all I expect is a long holiday.
Friday, September 18, 2009
City Rouge
The national day celebration rehearsal is held on this cloudy Friday. Traffic on main roads is blocked. People whose offices are near the Changan avenue don't need to go to work today. Our office is closed at 3pm. I went to the 7-11 at 4pm, only to find the door locked. Last year when the opening ceremony of the Olympics was held, we also had one day off. Special “holidays” – it's one of the priorities of living in the capital.
As the 60th anniversary approaches, cinema schedules are full of historical/political mainland Chinese films. They should be categorized as film rouge. We’d seen a lot of them at elementary school as part of our education. Two decades is gone. Are they still preachy? Are they more attractive with a cast of big stars?
The national day and the mid-autumn festival overlap this year. Moon cakes, red banners, red lanterns… the holiday is coming.
Oh…one more thing. Sally, my elder sister, a couple of months older than me, is engaged in Italy. Since she left for the UK, I haven’t seen her for how-many-years-i-don’t-remember. We just choose differently and grow so different. Congrats~
As the 60th anniversary approaches, cinema schedules are full of historical/political mainland Chinese films. They should be categorized as film rouge. We’d seen a lot of them at elementary school as part of our education. Two decades is gone. Are they still preachy? Are they more attractive with a cast of big stars?
The national day and the mid-autumn festival overlap this year. Moon cakes, red banners, red lanterns… the holiday is coming.
Oh…one more thing. Sally, my elder sister, a couple of months older than me, is engaged in Italy. Since she left for the UK, I haven’t seen her for how-many-years-i-don’t-remember. We just choose differently and grow so different. Congrats~
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