3-5-3, and a friend of mine

[pez]

There's a guy nearing his retirement age working upstairs. When I first joined the company, every time he saw me he had to ask "Oh, are you Chinese?" and tried to speak "hello" to me in Mandarin ^^" I almost never work with anyone upstairs since they do highway structures, but we had to get some structures done this time so he joined the meeting yesterday briefly. And he saw that I am left-handed and seemed fascinated... O_O" I guess he was just trying to be friendly.

Later on he came to my desk to give me his sketch of the retaining wall, and asked if I've been in this country for a long time, which uni I went to etc. Turns out he's also an Imperial College graduate, but it was in the early 80's when he went there to get his Masters after working for a few years, and I was only just born then XD But he still said "gosh, that's a tough course isn't it?" XD and I bet back then, the courses are much harder, just as O-levels are harder than GCSEs, etc.

But what I actually want to say is that his drawing, OMG. It's one of those really simply cross-section of an L-shaped retaining wall in the ground, but the precision of the lines, the 3-5-3-ness of the writing - remember those handouts we got during lectures when they had really pretty hand-drawn diagrams? Or just think hand-drawn plans that were made prior to the introduction of CAD. It was really one of those O_O!!! moments.

Right, maybe not many understood my last paragraph. -_-



Friend of mine loves reading. He reads a lot of Chinese novels and non-fiction, but in English he only reads non-fiction - he's the type of person who wants to stuff all the knowledge in the world into his brain before he reaches 30. And he thinks that, because he reads English very slowly, reading English novels wastes his time. He'd rather spend that time reading other things.

He reads everything - world atlas, Churchill biography, ancient Chinese history, world history, politics. He thinks that it is very important to understand something as much as you can - for example, HK is using a version of proportional representation in its law-making place, so what is proportional representation? Where did it come from, where has it been used, why are there so many versions and why has the Chinese government made us use that particular version? How does this version benefit the China-leaninng politician more? How does this affect our choice and freedom? He likes to know these things, likes to learn about a country this way.

Whilst this is all well and good, he is getting to a point that he thinks everything else is mundane. He thinks gossips are for idle minds. Which, to a certain extent, I suppose is true, but to be in a country, to learn about it is not just about its history. History, politics and culture from past and present affect each other, but I seriously think he's ignoring the culture part. He's only 26 but he is detaching from the world. He doesn't understand culture. Whilst it may not be important to know Jade Goody's getting a boob job, I think one should at least have heard of the Glastonbury festival, Count Down and Delia Smith. It may not be a topic of (intelligent) discussion, but culture shapes people's minds as well. He is so stuck in the past, and ignoring basic things that I worry he wouldn't be able to tell me where Scotland Yard is in London, or why David Blunkett resigned, although he might be able to tell me a lot about Scotland Yard and the Home Office.

My friend doesn't think it's as important as history, and I don't know if it's something comparable, really. He thinks he doesn't have the time to learn/find out/immerse himself into any of that, but I think that if he doesn't change, by the time he reaches 30, he'll be just a boring scholar, one of those nobody wants to talk to. And how said that will be.