03 Feb 2024 18 min read weekly

DPS 周刊 134 - 2024年的第一个月

时不时地还会说2023年，而2024年的第一个月已经过去了。

这一个月旅行了两次，一次回国，一次去了雅加达公干。

收获都非常大，回国见了不少新老朋友，随手记录了一些谈话感受

桌上有许多牌，如何决策取决于你自己的经历和条件。当然所有决策都伴随着权衡，所以决策的实质是基于当下的条件做出权衡。

决策没有对错之分，只要你能承受后果或者承担对应的风险。当你做出选择时，你是基于当时的情况做出的权衡，那将是局部最优解，或者当下最优解。

雅加达之旅让我打开眼界，尤其是见到了一位认识了六年多才第一次见面的朋友。

印尼人很友善，整个雅加达混乱中有着自己的秩序。比如很多摩托都无视红绿灯，但是看到行人又会减速。

这个月读完了两本书，一本是 Lee Kuan Yew - The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World，中文书名是《李光耀论中国》。一本是 Paul Theroux 的 Ghost Train to the Eastern Star。

读这本十多年前出版的书，正好让历史检验了其中一些观点。大部分被李光耀言中，也有一小部分和李光耀的想法并不一样。总体而言，不得不佩服李光耀老到而毒辣的眼光。

Chief among these are their problems of governance: the absence of the rule of law, which in today's China is closer to the rule of the emperor; a huge country in which little emperors across a vast expanse exercise great local influence; cultural habits that limit imagination and creativity, rewarding conformity; a language that shapes thinking through epigrams and 4,000 years of texts that suggest everything worth saying has already been said, and said better by earlier writers; a language that is exceedingly difficult for foreigners to learn sufficiently to embrace China and be embraced by its society; and severe constraints on its ability to attract and assimilate talent from other societies in the world.

至于 Ghost Train to the Eastern Star，这本书非常厚实，Paul Theroux 一路从欧洲写到了亚洲，最后又回到欧洲。其中关于新加坡的那章是我最喜欢的一章：

"The university students I had in Singapore were the brightest, the best, the most hard-working of any students I'd ever taught. And they spoiled me. I never found students that good anywhere else, so I gave up teaching."

When I first arrived to teach at the University of Singapore—and was told by the vice chancellor to get a haircut.

正在读的还包括 Gerrie Lim 的 The Invisible Trade II 和 Fuchsia Dunlop （扶霞）的新著 Invitation to a Banquet。

The Invisible Trade II 是 Gerrie Lim 关于新加坡色情产业第二本著作。全书都是访谈，由外围，嫖客和妈妈桑三者的视角展开，揭示了很多不为人所知的心态。

比如：

“It makes me wonder,” she says, “if I can ever have a real boyfriend anymore. I’m not sure how it would feel to have sex with someone you really love, when I’m always having sex for work. And I’m not even nineteen yet! Is that sad or what?”

A lot of the emotional energy that goes into what I do, that’s really the hardest part of this job. The sex is easy.

Many of them had revealed in press interviews that the Singaporean men they serviced were usually the worst performers in bed—many of them were clueless about sexual techniques and fumbled around like nervous nellies, making them total killjoys who had cash to burn but less fervor to match.

扶霞不仅在中国大快朵颐，而且中文了得，能把中文用英文非常准确地表达出来，比如：

In Chinese, the word used to describe the delicious smells of roasting is xiang, typically translated into English as ‘fragrant’ yet far richer in its connotations, because xiang also refers to incense, to the smouldering aromatics whose smoke wafted heavenwards to the spirit world during ancient rites of sacrifice, along with the scents of sacrificial food.

Throughout Chinese history, culinary traditions have been influenced by foreign imports, like the carrot, still known as a ‘foreign radish’, the tomato (‘western red persimmon’), the chilli (once known as ‘barbarian pepper’ and still called ‘sea pepper’ in Sichuan) and the round onion (‘foreign’ or ‘ocean’ onion).

而且她对中国的了解非常深入，比如她解释为什么国外的中餐馆都不太正宗，其中一个原因是因为很多厨师还在中国的时候都不是厨师，而且也没有尝过好吃的。到了国外，迫于生计才开始掌勺：