Mr. Tama sipped the beer, which reflected the glares emitted from the ceiling lamps, and the happy-radiating faces all around. His ears stuffed with the boisterous chatting in enormous languages, most of which he could barely fathom. This was an annual Welcome Party, held on the beginning of every semester: a tradition for international students of Zhejiang University. Fresh enough, Tama had not yet gotten familiar with the whole new atmosphere presenting since his recent departure from the city of Fukui, Japan.
  Half drunk, totally dizzy, Mr. Tama summoned his courage to make the Chinese question shooting at a young girl sitting by, who had caught his attention ever since her first appearance in the party. 
  "Are you also a student?"
  Tama had been trusted into the mysteries of Chinese language for not long, thus it was still a great feat for him to make a complete Chinese sentence, and being polite was well beyond his ability.
  No sooner this impolite, if not reckless, question blow into that girl's ears than Tama was nudged by a guy next to him. "Are you kidding? She is my Chinese teacher: Ms. Cui." the guy murmured, enunciating every syllable faint enough for Ms. Cui, but moderate for Tama, who at once felt a spur of embarrassment, which was luckily hid in the flush of alcohol drinking. Nothing betrayed his embarrassment.
  But he really embarrassed.
 
  From that day on, Cui's face lingered in Tama's mind for days and nights: never receded, never faded. And still from that day on…
  "Good evening, Teacher Cui!" Tama, holding a book but reading nothing, bowed at Ms. Cui, who was walking out at a set time via a set path from her office to the main door of the teaching building everyday. Tama, also everyday, sat on the chair near this path five minutes earlier to miss nothing. But everyday Tama made this greeting routine more like a pure coincidence than a well-thought-of scheme, in any form he would conceive so Cui would never be bored.
  Several weeks later, Tama depressed at the hearsay that Cui had already got a boyfriend. But he still reserved a dim hope: at least it was only an unwarranted hearsay, wasn't it?
  Tama ended the greeting routine on the day that the hearsay was verified to be a truth, but resume after knowing that her boyfriend was in Shanghai.
 
  Cui wanted to learn Japanese, and one guy in her class was her teacher. Unfortunately that lucky guy was not Tama himself; but fortunately that guy was Tama's good friend who shared beer, pipes in their cozy dorm.
Another way to contact Cui came into being.
  Without request, Tama always lent Cui Gong Qijun's cartoon CDs to refine her listening: one CD one time. Had Cui forgotten to give CDs back, he would contact Cui via cell-phone messages: first lightly mentioning the CD, then shifting to something else – anything else. But Cui never made quick reply, which saddened him. In rare time, the lucky designated teacher would be occupied by other things, so Tama would be the temporary surrogate, and time flied especially fast during his patient teaching. Cui's tiny progress would immerse Tama into great happiness lasting for days.

   "Merry Christmas!"
Tama sent the message to Cui at eleven o'clock a.m. today, which although had got little meaning for both Chinese and Japanese, maybe just another day. Whenever his cell-phone shook, informing the arrival of a new message, Tama excited to check but depressed to find the sender was someone else.
Tama dreamed he would say Merry Christmas to her, personally.
  But now, he was not merry. Not merry at all. And still not until the expected massage was from the expected HER, whose plainest greeting might mean more than the most romantic poetries.
 
  Mr. Tama, now 30-year old, still single, would leave China on Feb., 2007, in less than 60 days.

 

“But a man is not made for defeat,” he said, “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

(pp 89, Arrow Books Publishing)

Children's mind is as pure as crystal. Despite their tiny and frail physical bodies, children have their own strong wills, determined hopes, and stick to them obstinately. But what if they are heading for something they will definitely never get? Sometimes, a white lie makes things even worse.

 

Next door, Oswald sat in his room thinking about what an odd concept time was and how it never seemed to be just right. There was either too much of it or never enough. Before his doctor's prognosis, time had been just a round circle ticking on his wrist to check now and then, to see if he was late or early. Looking back on his life now, it seemed most of his time had been spent waiting for something to happen. As a kid, waiting to be adopted. Waiting to grow up. Waiting to get over some cold or for some broken bone to heal. Waiting to meet the right girl, find the right profession, find a little happiness, some reason to live, until his time was up. Now the waiting was over and he had never found one thing he had been looking for until he found painting, and it had come too late. Somebody had sure handed him the short stick in life. And this year, probably his last, Patsy, just as he had, was also waiting for something that was never going to happen. He had watched her from his window walking around in the yard, looking for a dead bird she was never going to see, and it made him mad. This kid was going to have her heart broken. He was one thing, he was tough, but she didn't deserve it. He sat looking at the painting he had worked on all year, of Patsy and Jack on their birthday. He had wanted to give it to her for Christmas, but again it was too late. She didn't want a picture, she wanted to see the real Jack, and he wanted to get drunk. He knew all the dangers of picking up that first drink but he didn't care. He couldn't bear the pain of having to watch Patsy grow up and realize that nothing is real. There is no God. No Santa Claus. No happy endings. Things die. Nothing lasts.
(pp 180)

 

As soon as she saw Oswald, Patsy went up to him and took his hand and - with her face flushed and her eyes shining - said, "I saw him, Mr. Campbell. He came back just like you said he would if I wished hard enough. He came right to my window and blinked at me. Look," she said, and pointed to the birds. "There are all his friends. I just knew he'd come back!"
(pp 186)

 

This is an old story, which might have been told for countless times. Its English version, however, is totally new to me, which I came across today when reading “Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas”, one of James Patterson’s masterpieces, and first published in 2001. Had the story of the five balls been spread widely no earlier than the publication of “Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas”, I would have found the real origin of it!

Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day, you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls – family, health, friends, integrity – are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered. And once you truly understand the lesson of the five balls, you will have the beginnings of balance in your life.

This paragraph appears on page 24 (Headline Book Publishing).