一九一四年，日德戰爭畢。神尾光臣信步至吾國鄉村之小學堂。神問：中國中誰最為偉大？小學生答曰：孫逸仙先生也！復問：日本何如？答曰：福澤諭吉也。學生今昔又何如？ 

雖中文終究為母語，惟相隔逾五年再復執筆，造句用詞皆不順心服貼。至留學英倫，雖晝夜誦讀英國報章之評論，錙銖必較精讀企鵝文庫之經典，猶感不足。英文用作議論傳意或勉強馬虎明白，倘欲抒發細緻情感，則神采欠奉矣。如斯窘迫之境俱為童稚時未有把握光陰，勤勉向學，如今何以弗懊悔耶？

It is another night that I cannot sleep. 

If guilt is an irrational outcome, I fail to find a rational way out in a shipwreck of which I am a passenger, that aggravates the situation. What I need least is a feeling of helplessness, what I need most is a compass that can cleave my way through this land of troubles and sea of sufferings. 

What else I can possibly say when the family is on the brink of collapse and there is nothing you can do about it. The sofa is in living room is occupied now with a sleepless mind. This sucks. I feel not humiliation in such case, unlike my brother who holds a rather traditional mind. I only feel helpless and disappointed. I say this to Dad a moment ago, this is very, unfortunate. The more you give thought on such thing the least you would come up with anything helpful to an outcome that has long determined. 

I cannot quite recall the last time when the family is on the brink of collapse. I was protected from this news since I was too small when they got divorced. This time I am no longer a kid, but the obligation and burden of a son draws me into this second unfortunate shipwreck. I do not only witness but also involuntarily participate in this. I instinctively consider this a duty, though I do not enjoy it, at all. 

The problem is that I notice there is a perceptible change of heart and attitude of mom toward us. This makes me suffer. The long-standing complication of this matrimony scares me, and I have never wished to assume a position to judge for who is to blame. Things go nasty. I just want to leave all these terrible mess behind. At the same time, it seems that I am irresponsible. But I can do very little.

They are still quarreling now. The light is off, but it is too bright to open my eyes. I am very tired, and sleep is not inviting. 

Under the shade of neron light shedding from the Bank of China tower, the familiar uneasiness that I thought I had overcome and put aside many years ago returned. I have not felt this sickness, which my limited language fail to capture, for quite a while. This is sick. A conversation I was having with an old gweilo whose banking career is as booming as his figure, seemed to be irrelevant. I was asking a gentleman who is entering into the legal industry some advice, and the significance of his words, vanished once I left the Supreme Court Road at Mid-Level. Glasses of red wine, tone of British English, bankers and lawyers laughters - bloody hell, after half a year absence at St. Andrews, I am totally out of place. I literally wanted to step back and take the first train home once I stepped in the reception. Well my pride did not allow me to. After a dinner with friends,  I walked through the half-empty PP,  squeezing myself into Admiralty MTR Station to catch a train home. It took me to cross the harbour, swish through the mountains and finally I see a jungle of obsolete buildings. A place where I truly belong to, however reluctant I want to admit in the presence of my St. Andrews Colleagues. I got off the West Rail with a crowd putting their head in their phones. Their faces were disfigured with exhaustion and listlessness. I see no purposes in their eyes in their mechanical bodies.

This evokes another trivial thing happened to me the other day - S whom I've recently made acquaintance with on a friend of mine's birthday dinner, asked me how did I celebrate count-down. She was skiing in Japan with her family. I replied her that I went to a local tea-restaurant with a childhood friend of mine. She uttered disbelief, and frowned with a mixture of doubt and confusion, as if asking: "Are you fxxxing messing up with me?" Honesty seems to the best policy only when it is convincing. I did not say much after that. To be fair, most of my 'friends' are either in Europe or Japan throughout the whole holiday. It is quite hard for them to understand that there are people working hard on the last day of the year and their presences are not counted by media, by government, or by anyone.

There are many questions for which I fail to find answers, though I thought I understood them and solved them well. They re-emerged. Dad asks me tonight how was the St. Andrews networking going - I was not in a mood to talk much about it. He tried to offer some advice to me and I cut it off, and I felt guilty for being rude to him. He, with his very limited education, is offering what he knows as the best to me. However I think he did detect a sense of frustration from me. The problem is that, I do not feel comfortable being with these people, these "elites". I do not live in the same world with them. They live in Tai Tam, Repulse Bay, and Mid-Level. I am the only one who take the MTR back to Yiu Shing House, a flat of 350 square foot, housing four adults. I have to do my reading and homework in my bed simply there is only one table and chair.

I could not help being enveloped by a feeling of guilt every now and then. Dad is struggling paying my tuition fees this year and the coming year. Do I regret declining the Law School offer from the CUHK, yes I do sometimes, especially at the high time of present economic crisis. But I am also convinced that difficult phase will pass and a good St. Andrews degree will surely take me a higher level than the short-term comfort of going to a local law school. The cost of the pathway to St. Andrews is so heavy to my parents that I could not help but reexamine and rethink my decisions I made a year ago. At the depth of my heart I still believe that it was a difficult, tough decision that ensures a great pressure to me and my family, however opens a potential of a better-off future ahead. But the pain and pressure causing to my family, to me, is insufferable. I know at the end of the day Dad will be able to collect the tuition fees I need - this is not the first time we walked into a tuition fees crisis. But the pain and cost bother me deeply.

Living in a new year and an old world, William Ng

Does a new year follow a new start and new life? British historian J.M Robert points out the arbitrariness of calendars and sees no necessary connection in the causation of the events in by looking at history in an annul manner. It is indeed unlikely that a democratic Hong Kong would arrive overnight or the Israel-Pakistani hatred be dissolved after midnight. Many of us are celebrating all the same. Even a five year old know that Cinderella the lady turns back into Cinderella the laywoman as clock strikes. Magic is transitory, so are celebration of a night, and pleasure. Life goes on. People still suffer and starve. It is, however a convenient time for us to pause and review the tumultuous past. Should there be anything that we hold firm about in the world of uncertainty, it is that the fortune of human beings hangs on a thread of the mercy of nature, as well as the will of human beings themselves. I am reminded again by the news on the last night of 2014.

What hit the headline on the first day of a new year fits as a perfect footnote to this point. 35 people were trampled dead in Shanghai Bund, as the jostling crowd was out of order and was after the bar-vouchers thrown from the building. A pleasant night ended up a nightmare. This echoes neatly to stampede happened in Lan Kwan Fong in 1993, Hong Kong. The British Hong Kong Government conducted an inquest into this event afterwards. This reflection laid ground for a better crowd control in years to come. Back in 2015 Shanghai, whether it was a mismanagement of crowd control that could be avoided, or an accident, an independent investigation is needed to ensure a lesson is learnt and thus reduces the likelihood of its repetition. However this will inevitably touch upon a question of police accountability and responsibility. Any suggestion of this sort in the Mainland can be seen and interpreted as a menace of national security. But an open review from the authority is significant in avoiding repetition of such tragedy. This is not an issue about national security and a pride of the administration, but how people in power value and respect human lives. This should be one of the many aspirations on the long catalogue of “Chinese Dream”. 

A lot more men-made disasters can be avoided if people in power take human lives more seriously. We should be pleased that at least we could make a difference in something, as there are circumstances under which we can do little about. My heart goes with the family and friends of the passengers and crews on the QS8501 flight. It is believed that it went into an aerodynamic stall as the pilot climbed steeply to avoid storm. It serves as a heart-ending and cruel reminder of human beings’ subjection to pure chance and randomness in life. People manage to muddle through, some by cultivating a faith in religion, some by deriving consolation from reading literature like Greek Tragedy. The story of Oedipus the King portrays fatalism at its best, with its dramatic storyline. This unexpected disunion of people comes as a sudden blow that has no detectable hints. There are around 100, 000 flights in the air every day. The percentage of accidents is still incredibly low. A live with unknown future in which we are all placed is no difference from Oedipus. Today, people living in developed world are in many aspects of life, entrust our lives upon those who do not know and never meet. From food and transportation we assume a comfortable position and take security and safety for granted. Despite an advancement and maturity of science and technology, a train of accidents in the air proves that human beings have never been so relied and fragile on such transportation, and never have we put as much faith as with our own lives in them.  

One may easily find as many reasons to be optimistic as being pessimistic about the future. The Guardian Editorial reviewed 2014 as a year riddled with troubles as it did with many other years in the past, but it also counter-balanced its editorial view with an article titled “Not such a bad year after all.” We can do little with things like storm and thunderbolt. But for things that we are able to improve and make a difference, do it in a resolute manner with gentle words.

It has long ceased to surprise many that poverty and pressure shortens life expectancy, and this strengthens people tolerance, if not frozens their sympathy into indifference to a matter of life and death as such. A tightening budget usually accompanies a loosening belt. Obesity is prevalent to the bottom of the society. A light purse comes long working hours and invites little sleep. All these symptoms as well as side-effect of poverty, ignored by the government and general public, are palpably riddled in many aspects of our daily life. Given the fact that my mom still works as a waitress in a Shanghai restaurant around the clock to for little more than the minimum wage, plus a two month holiday living at my tiny ripped room yearly, I am still, fortunately and regularly alarmed by how 60% of the Hong Kongers actually live. Not that I am rich now, but I am only free of the cage only at the tremendous expense of my mom and dad. And this is a good reminder and contrast to living in a bubble and mingling with blue-blood who takes elitist education and many other luxury for granted. 

Even one has a shelter (like a public estate in which I has been living since birth) in Hong Kong, which is an enviable luxury now, it is not that promising when it comes to health . It is quite complacently true that I have never encounter any rats yet and the frequency of cockcockes self-inviting themselves into my kitchen is still way less than Indian slums. To a flat that is directly opposite to two tall garbage bins, hygiene was maintained by daily meticulous clean-up (Thanks, dad and mom.) and so it has not been that bad. But what more invidious is the invisible second-handed smoke that wafts from my close neighbour and fill my lung. There is very little I can do.

Desmond did quite well tonight in learning a vocabulary table tonight, to the delight of me and Dad. We have finally made some progress after months. I hope a minor success tonight will repose more confidence in him, of which he has none, and to to whom is most important at the moment. 

In many ways I think Desmond is a better person than I am. He is more generous, selfless, and caring about his families. But he has also been a victim of my mom manifest preference to me since boyhood. He has handled it quite well but fails to hide his disappointment sometimes. 

Dad is grateful for my decision I can tell, I should say in what he will call a sacrifice, was beyond his expectation. Anyway I only have one brother in my life. Fate wills us to meet. I cherish such chance, and only see it as a fortune to have a brother of such great character. 

My academic work has long been put side since I left Adelaide. I have not read much for the past two weeks. Only Elie Wiesel "Night" and a few speeches. Having just started the Alain de Botton "essays in love", a light-hearted collection of prose revolving around his philosophical thoughts and his personal amorous experience. It does not bring many ideas in a way we see the world. But the way he wrote was indeed interesting and deserved to be learnt from.