我有个小舅舅 (the younger of my mother's two brothers)，据说小时候非常顽皮。等我记事时他已经 in his late teens，印象中他还是经常惹祸。他教过我如何打斗，就在他的床上。例如：对方拿住你的副领（是一种居高临下、不把你当回事儿、可以把你推开也可以把你拎到自己面前的手法），怎么办？他教我反关节同步拍对方的肘部和手腕，即可解开，如果出手狠一点还可以解除对方那只手的攻防能力。我现学现用，回到自己学校，课间打斗时用了一下，全场哗然。很多年后发现，这是咏春的看家动作之一，近似第二套“寻桥”里的“摊手加伏手”的同步组合（这个组合一定有个名称，但我不知道）。

据我母亲说，我小舅舅小时候听说扒手喜欢偷钱包，就在家里翻出一只废弃的皮夹子，里面塞满草纸，揣在兜里，钻进人堆。果然，他从人堆里出来时，皮夹子没了。他兴奋得不得了，一路狂奔回家告诉大人（包括姐姐）：那扒手偷了一叠草纸回去了。

他姐嗤之以鼻：“皮夹子不值钱吗？被偷了还高兴？”他顿时像泄了气的皮球，觉得自己真够蠢的。

我现在想想，其实他并非真正失算，从发现皮夹子被偷，直到有人告诉他这不是件划算的事情为止，他快乐了。代价并不高：一只本来就没用的钱包。

跟此事有可比性的是小额赌博。小赌怡情也。

但如果那只皮夹是家里人舍不得用的LV，那就一点都不怡情了。

如果那叠草纸其实是祖传的镇宅之宝（王羲之墨宝真迹, for example），那么赌王何鸿燊也会告诉他：Don't do it.

这里黏贴一下关于何鸿燊赌博观的报道：

作为“赌王”，何鸿燊自己从来不赌钱。何鸿燊说，几十年了，我从来不赌钱的。我为什么不赌钱，我讲给你听。赌场刚开的时候，我天天去看，发现赌的人并不多，但一天营业结束的时候，一开箱发现好多钱，这证明，赢的都是庄家。你去赌不就是笨了吗?博彩更多的是娱乐成分，千万不要沉迷。所以我这个赌牌持有人40年从来没赌钱。我私下劝你们一句，也不要赌钱。

Once in a (very long) while, or once in a blue moon, as they say, I would come across an idea which is so stimulating that I would mull over it in rapt fascination for days and even months.

Last time this happened was 1998, not long after I joined the Wing Chun （咏春）club in Oxford. One of my sparring partners was an astrophysicist by training (though he was a regular OG - office guy -for some oil company at that point; maybe he was a specialist of sorts, but he didn't bother to tell me and I didn't bother to ask).

I remember there were quite a few "lost souls" at that club, me included probably. I realised then that lost souls are searching souls in most cases. If you don't search, you never get lost. 按下不表.

During Wing Chun sparring, we were encouraged to chat with each other, taking our mind off the "techniques", so we could learn to rely on our nerve reflex and muscle memory, bypassing the cerebral process.

In some of my conversations with this astrophysicist (we did not have fixed partners, but it was a small club), I asked him lots of questions about blackholes, speed of light, cosmic expansion, what-have-you.

One day, I asked, "Is the speed of light the fastest speed in the universe?"

He said... well, I can't repeat what he said exactly, but here's the gist of what he said:

The most unnerving idea in quantum mechanics may be "spooky action at a distance"--the notion that certain particles can affect one another almost instantly across vast reaches of space. Recently in Geneva, that aspect of quantum surreality survived the most cunning trap so far, a series of experiments that pitted it against basic principles of Einstein's relativity. The results gave the most accurate estimate yet of how rapidly the "spooky action" might operate.

He explained it in the context of an experiment that had been conducted in France... and that experiment succeeded!

I was very excited by the idea. I could hardly sleep that night. However, it was way out of my depth, so there was little I could do with it. "Admire" it I did, but that's all I could do.

A few days after that conversation, he gave me a book, which I still have to this day: The Tao of Physics, by Fritjof Capra.

去年年中，我搬了家。整理上一手房客留下的各种杂物，准备拿到垃圾房时，发现一台很旧的Tamashi收音机，黑色的，上面还有装修时留下的石灰水的斑点（见照片）。但外形让我感到，这家伙的音质肯定很好。我试了一下。没猜错，它的音质一言以蔽之：Sensational!

留下了。

但很少用。

一直调在中波BBC World Service的本地频率那里(perhaps for sentimental reasons)，就搁着。

昨天夜里临睡前，心血来潮，接通电源，打开。

是个访谈。话题，不知道；嘉宾，没搞清。反正就听两分钟，准备睡觉。

这时，主持人说了一句话。那个瞬间就是那个once-in-a-blue-moon的瞬间：

性，和死亡，密不可分。在有性生殖之前，没有死亡，无性生殖（例如克隆）使母体的生命直接延续。但有了有性生殖，才有了“死亡”这个概念。

哇......