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Located in a remote island, Hong Kong International Airport was among the
busiest airports in the world and its passenger terminal was perhaps the
world's largest enclosed space. Certainly, it was one of the most energy
efficient buildings yet created. Refracted sunlight, a soaring arched roof and
unobtrusive air-conditioning created a comfortable and natural ambience all
year round. Adjacent to the terminal was the ground transportation center
where fast transfers to urban Hong Kong could be made via the Airport
Express, public buses and taxis. I took the Airport Express which was
actually a high speed train running at a speed of hundred miles per hour. I
enjoyed the spacious seating, the cleanness and quietness of the
compartment while the train was running at full speed over suspended
bridges. Through the large clear windows, I could see the boats, the islands
and little hills beyond the blue sea, chain upon chain, all the way to the
horizon, where islands and sky merged in bluish uncertainty and could no
longer be told apart. The sky was gray except for a few small restless clouds,
which floated over distant island mountains, holding the golden light of the
setting sun for an unusually long time.
.......... He studied the protocols, the general rules, the pattern on various networks, and tried to discover the relations between patterns and to reduce infinitudes and multiplicities to simplicity, to system, to concept. However, this was a steep learning curve for him to climb. The world surrounded him like a picture book full of inexhaustible mysteries. From time to time, when he attempted to grasp the details of two peers' communication, the acknowledgment and anti-acknowledgment, the timer and the sync patterns, the blocking and non-blocking, he felt exhausted and lost quickly; he found all his understandings and assumptions were in contradiction and more often he was compelled to put the books aside and to get back to assembling PCs or practicing Windows networking. There were times that he felt he finally got the concept only to find that his understanding was again in contrary with new readings and he experienced a feeling of lightness and despair, such as sometimes occurs in seashore, where a seagull glides above water to target a prey, and when it rushes down to catch it only to find that the target is a shadow and is swiftly repelled again. He experienced this gain and loss in knowledge like a mystery within himself, and suffered with it. Every time he plummeted back into the unknown world, disappointed, he thought about asking me to give him lessons, to clear the hurdles, to initiate him into the secret arts of networking. But at the end, he never made such a request, either because he recognized that I was extremely busy or because he wanted to accept the challenge of doing it himself. ..........
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