It is true that everything has a monetary value, but money cannot/shouldn't determine everything.

I read a blog entry about a worrying issue, "Can we afford to cuts to the British Library Funding?"
According to the post and another discussion on the Guardian, if the cuts come to fruition, it will inevitably result in limit opening, service charge, and difficulties in securing its comprehensive collections.

Eventually, I think, it will become another more serious question of the nature of knowledge.
If any of the possible changes of library services has to be enacted due to the cuts, the change somehow implies that the access to knowledge is limited to the privileged--the privileged, I mean those who can afford service charges, and those who can make it to the library at a specific opening hours. I admit that I sound a bit hysteric at this point. But behind the mere political question of cuts in budget, there lies another issue of how we treat words, history, and culture.

Of course I am speaking of this issue from the view point of a reader who benifits from free library service. Surely I am now one of the privileged and am worried if I might not be able to enjoy it any longer. It's a selfish complaint as it appears, but the issue is worrying in that monetary worth seems to rule everything . Any change to the BL funding is very likely to result in a more foundational problem for a public library like BL: decisions have to be made between what publication has to be catalogued and what can be abandoned. What follows this decision, then, can be an alternation in its collection policy, that is, the structure of knowledge will be restructured. What will happen if the structure of knowledge is reshaped is unkown to us. However, the problem for me is more that, shall we allow money decides everything about the future of culture?
Can we afford the price, in its both literal and metaphorical sense, that the cuts of funding might incur?

Yes, perhaps, some would say, this change is also part of the cultural development.

Time

I have been thinking about "time" these days not only because it's something that I am working on at the moment but also because I am approaching a specific age this year. In Chinese culture, by this age I should be quite established in my career and life.

Something important, in terms of how it has been an indispensable part of my childhood, happened last November. My mother's family closed down the logging business that they had run for 30 years. When I was home last December, most of the building had gone. An empty space there was. The nice smell of wood was gone too.
Mom was nostalgic but the family didn't have many choices. The business had been down after the 921 earthquake years ago.


I spent most of my childhood in the factory as my mother had been working as an accountant there even before I was born. Everyday after school, the spacious factory was my playground. It was very noisy as the machines never stopped cutting woods. The ear-piercing noises were never pleasant, but they were the rhythmn of life. The business fed many families.

From today's viewpoint, the factory was very dangerous for children to live in. It was crowded with all kinds of machines, sharp things like nails, hammers, knives, trucks busy moving around. But I had a good time there. I always climbed up and down piles of logs, playing hide-and-seek with my cousins and brothers, and shouting out loud to compete with the mechanic thunders.

The memory about my grandmother that I keep was mostly taking place in that factory. My grandmother was a pretty and quiet lady. While my mom was busy, grandmother helped take care of us. I had great fun playing with a good number of rabbits that she kept in the garden. It was not a proper garden in fact. It was just a piece of land growing tall grass and bushes where we sometimes encountered snakes or strange insects. Every sumer My brothers and I would climb up guava trees to pick guavas for her. She made delicious pickled guava. In particular season, she would pickle kinds of fruits and vegetables. Thinking about the sweet and sour taste of pickled plums makes my mouth watering. I remember how I always sneaked into the kitchen in the afternoons, opened the cupboard, and stole crispy pickled plums from the gracious jar of sauce. Ah... what a grace!

She is an amazing woman, and once in a while when I remember her I still regret for not spending more time with her before she passed away. I didn't quite know how to remember her until recently.

I kept my first puppy in that factory. Its tender body and bright eyes are still fresh to me. He feels like the sun taming the world in winter afternoons. In the same place, however, I also lost that puppy.

It was about 2 years ago (or more) that I saw this photo for the first time. It was taken against a temple which my family visits every new year. It was just a randon discovery when I was wandering around waiting for my mom to finish her prayer.

When I visited the temple last December during my stay at home, I managed to locate the photo again on the vast bulletin board that has been crowded with pictures taken during these two years. It is still amusing, the photo, an interesting note to my experience of religion indeed.

It is supposed to be a group photo of the religion committee after a certain annual event. Everyone looks quite serious despite that they are smily. However, there is one grandfather-figure, on the right to the center of the picture, posed victory among his solemn-looking peers. That pose is an ace! He does make me laugh out loud in that temple and keeps me smiling everytime I remember it. (Sorry, my weird sense of humor, I know.)

Hey hey, I am back!
Eating a lot, talking nonstop, upset a little, quiet for a pause, feeling exhausted for just a moment, getting excited all the while are all parts of a journey.
I am grateful while traveling around, being accompanied by caring family and friends.

Check out my flickr for photos.