又是一年南瓜灯

纽约时报上刊登的乔布斯悼文，超级感动。让人看到身为全球众多果粉膜拜的教主，同时也是一位父亲、丈夫和哥哥。

A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs

By MONA SIMPSON

I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.

Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.

By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me — me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance — and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying.

When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif.

We took a long walk — something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I don’t remember much of what we said that first day, only that he felt like someone I’d pick to be a friend. He explained that he worked in computers.

I didn’t know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.

I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: something called the Cromemco.

Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful.

I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying.

Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day.

That’s incredibly simple, but true.

He was the opposite of absent-minded.

He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.

When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited.

He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.

Novelty was not Steve’s highest value. Beauty was.

For an innovator, Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church.

He didn’t favor trends or gimmicks. He liked people his own age.

His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like this: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”

Steve always aspired to make beautiful later.

He was willing to be misunderstood.

Uninvited to the ball, he drove the third or fourth iteration of his same black sports car to Next, where he and his team were quietly inventing the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide Web.

Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.

Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing, he called out, “Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?”

I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. “There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.”

When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.

None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.

His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still.

Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him. Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable. But one. Broccoli. In season. Simply prepared. With just the right, recently snipped, herb.

Even as a young millionaire, Steve always picked me up at the airport. He’d be standing there in his jeans.

When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered, “Your dad’s in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?”

When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween, Steve, Laurene, Erin and Eve all went wiccan.

They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old. But — and this was a crucial distinction — it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that.

This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there.

And he did.

Steve was humble. Steve liked to keep learning.

Once, he told me if he’d grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn’t known about before, thinking of what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus.

Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O. knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose?

He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I’ll venture that Laurene will discover treats — songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer — even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened The New York Times and saw a feature on the company’s patents, I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase.

With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun.

He treasured happiness.

Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once, he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.

Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.

Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.

I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther.

Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.

“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.

He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.

I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.

Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.

One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything — even ice. We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially.

I told him: Steve, this is special treatment.

He leaned over to me, and said: “I want it to be a little more special.”

Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.

For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his sketchpad. He looked up. You have to.

By that, he meant that we should disobey the doctors and give him a piece of ice.

None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.

We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us.

What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.

Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.

He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”

“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”

When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.

Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.

Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.

His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.

This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.

He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.

Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.

He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.

This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.

He seemed to be climbing.

But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.

Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.

Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.

Steve’s final words were:

OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs, on Oct. 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.

吃喝玩乐中国行（一）

从国内回来已经一个月了，可是感觉象是一年，因为这一个月忙得让人马上又期待下一次休假了。

说起回国，当然首先要说吃。某名人说，同在一饭馆吃饭，吃货青年一见上菜就举筷子，文艺青年一见上菜就举相机。我承认，我是一文艺吃货。

印象最深刻的是大董烤鸭店，我们去的是东四十条皇家粮仓的那家。惊艳从菜单开始，每道菜都配有一首诗，菜上来之后，摆盘也相当诗意。

这道菜是什么雀巢，小鸟蛋是鸭脯做的。大家都觉得这么精致的小鸟吃下去也太残忍了。于是两只都进了我的肚子。
来大董当然是来吃鸭子的，他们家有两种饼，一种传统的春饼，一种是中空的烧饼，我还是喜欢春饼。

Mike的朋友请我们去吃西贝莜面村，我们去的是双井店。里面的装修很民族风，Mike去过厕所后非让我去拍照，看来他比我文艺。

这就是莜面窝窝，吃起来没什么味道，要蘸旁边的汁。不过我最喜欢的还是凉皮：
现在国内饭馆拼的不光是味道，更重要的是服务。想当年，沸腾鱼乡刚开张时，服务员给客人挂在椅背上的衣服套上套子，免的弄脏了，让我第一次有了上帝的感觉。现在这已经不算什么了，包厢里都有大衣架。莜面村给每个客人一个这种塑料袋，用来套手机的，不过文艺青年我没用上，手机不是在拍照吗。
在点评网上看到这家山西饭馆口评不错，叫“晋膳尽美”，很多山西人都说非常正宗。门脸并不起眼。
他们的招牌菜，吕梁凉粉和平遥牛肉，山西人做菜果然很舍得放醋。

这个是什么山西大烩菜，其实就是大锅菜，我们为了多尝几样菜没点主食，这个单吃有点咸。
这个叫“炒萼”，是山西特色菜，，冻土豆粉做的，有点象韩国年糕，也有点象魔芋，味道嘛，还是舍得放醋。
这是路边随便进的一家陕西面馆，我的油泼扯面，Mike的是什么不记得了，不过他说非常好吃。

又是一家随便进的小饭馆，在东四一个胡同里。豆角炒肉，豆角切的细细的，很家常，很好吃，另一个菜是小锅牛肉。从这张照片看，谁是吃货青年，谁是文艺青年？

其实在国内几乎每顿饭都好吃到不行，大多时候都是吃货大于文艺，没有拍照留念。比如，东四另外一条胡同里的“9号食库”，酸汤鱼非常美味。还比如，我们住的胡同口的烤羊肉串。夏末夜晚，凉风席席，和闺蜜坐在脏兮兮的桌子前，一边吃着烤串，一边聊着逝去的青春和永不退色的友情，还有比这更文艺的吗？

网坛名人访谈

Youtube实在是一个非常能浪费时间的地方，最开始你可能只是搜一个你想找的视频，看完了也许就随手点了一个旁边的其它链接，结果一个连一个，就停不了手了。今天最初是看非诚勿扰，结果一个link接一个link就看到了这个凤凰卫视的名人面对面，主要是因为这次的名人是桑普拉斯。看完就停手了，因为有些话不吐不快。

看的出来主持人许戈辉也是打几拍子网球的，前一阵北京中网她也有去看比赛。但作为访谈节目的主持人，你的职责是问观众想知道的问题，让采访对象讲出精彩的故事。可是，许戈辉刚上来就等不及要卖弄自己网球知识的渊博，让老桑评价这次中网与他同台表演赛的萨芬，当然老桑肯定要提到2000年美网惨败给萨芬的情景。许体贴地说，当时萨芬比你年轻呀。老桑说，那倒是。许继续，他那时候才20来岁吧。老桑，我也记不清了，可能比我年轻个4、5岁吧。许卖弄地说，不止。事实上，的确不止，当年老桑29， 小萨20。要是许单单只是卖弄也就罢了，可是整场20多分钟她就没问出什么有价值的问题。她问，你有信心吗？你还能打好网球吗？老桑实事求是地说，还成，跑是跑得慢点了，毕竟老了。她就盯着人家的腿问，那就是因为老了呢还是有啥伤病？老桑说，就是老了。这时候凤凰的字幕也特给力，老桑说，这两年训练不那么勤，开始觉得hip和back有时候有点痛。凤凰的字幕说，这两年觉得头疼。然后许让桑神给中国的年轻选手一些建议，老桑提了一些，但作为观众来说，我更想听他评价一下现在网坛的顶尖高手。老桑提到教练的重要性，说起他的启蒙教练让他从双反改单反。许很内行地指出，这是一个重大的转折点吧，老桑承认。桑神当年凭单反和发球上网的两大神功称霸武林，至今费费与老桑谁的单反更强，以及单反是否要退让给双反的话题仍是网球迷们不断争论的话题。但是许没有抓住这个话题问下去。也许凤凰不想把这个访谈做得只迎合网球迷的需求，可是整个访谈没有任何亮点，乏味得很。

看完这个视频，让人想起Jay Leno采访Djokovic的节目，同样是采访网球明星，显然Jay Leno的团队做足了功课，在不到10分钟的访谈里几乎涵盖了关注Djokovic的观众想提出的所有问题，而且整个访谈笑料不断。不过，也许不象Djokovic，老桑本来就是个乏味的人，这也增加了采访的难度。但是在调动采访对象、挖掘背后故事上，凤凰显然差得还太远。

Ron Weasley as a Sick Stalking Fan

I'm recently reviewing Harry Potter on kindle and found a puzzling fact. The set of seven books covering six years of wizard school life do NOT contain any discussion regarding to music in the wizard world, well, except for a very brief mentioning of a popular wizard musician group playing at the Yull Ball in Potter's fourth year at Hogwarts.

I know there are tons of things in the wizard world J.K. Rowling has to describe in length. But what about music? Don't they listen to music on iPuud? Don't wizard girls fancy someone like Justin Bieab? Some may argue that these kids have so much to be excited or worried about, such as Quidditch, O.W.I.s..., that they don't have time for music. COME ON. Hogwarts is in England, where the Beatles, the Zombies, and Susan Boyle, are produced. It just makes no sense that music doesn't play an important role in their life, either muggles or wizards.

Maybe Ron Weasley feels as puzzled as me. That's why he shows how sick a music fan could be in real life. Check out this video:



One of the comments I like:

RONALD WEASLEY! HOW DARE YOU CRASH ED'S CONCERT AND TOUR BUS! I AM ABSOLUTLY DISGUSTED! YOUR FATHERS NOW FACING AN INQUIERY AT WORK AND IT IS ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT! IF YOU PUT ANOTHER TOE OUT OF LINE, WE'LL BRING YOU STRAIGHT HOME!

Monday Brunch

Few things are better than a homemade brunch on a working home Monday morning.

Mike学中文（四）

Mike要我把家里的东西都贴上中文名字的标签，于是......见上图。Mike回家高兴地拉开抽屉，兴奋地说：“袜子！袜子！”

Yard Sale

今天小区举办yard sale，参加的每户每个桌子交5块钱，用于在报纸和网上登广告。结果天公不作美，从8点各家各户摆上桌子就开始蒙蒙细雨，直到风雨交加。最明智的一家卖帐篷，大家都在凄风冷雨中瑟瑟发抖手捧热咖啡取暖时，这家人在帐篷里悠闲地坐着。

这是我的摊位。比起邻居寒酸得多，但收获还是不错的。两个小时，卖出去两个包，一个苏绣绣屏，一个花瓶，一条围巾，三条项链，一副太阳镜。毛收入29块，刨去摊位费，净利润24块。