This afternoon I flew from San Francisco to Boston, the airplane was very empty. The passenger who sat between the empty seat next to me immediately focused on his computer right after sitting down. Hearing him punching keys on his computer, I guessed he was working hard, on this Friday afternoon’s flight.

When I heard him swearing, I couldn’t help but turn towards him and see that he was editing and flipping a structure diagram similar to the carbon-60 on his computer screen. I learnt the carbon-60 structure diagram more than 30 years ago from Prof. Qiu’s “Carbon Structure and Superconductivity Principle “ elective course. The carbon-60 diagram reminded me of the pleasure of learning as a graduate student, living a very simple and basic life. I couldn’t help but point to the carbon-60 diagram on his computer screen and ask very politely: “Excuse me, what are you studying? ”

“A design of a city art museum.”

It turned out that he was not studying the structure related to carbon-60, I asked again:”What do you do?”

“I am a design engineer.”

I suddenly wanted to know the difference between this kind of design project and software projects so I asked: “I used to be a software engineer, and I worked on many projects that involved multiple teams across the global, because of this, I had to work long hours. Is your design project involved cooperations across global? Do you often have to work overtime?”

“The design itself is not a global project, but the funder of this project had chosen abroad manufacturer after design. So it could be considered a global project. I need to complete the design today as the product is scheduled to be installed in March next year.”

I commented: “There is still a lot of time before March next year!”

“Our project takes the completion of installation as the finish line. Because the production and transportation of products are unpredictable before the installation, the design itself has an earlier deadline and cannot be extended.”

“How many people does your design project have?”

“About ten, including design engineers, material engineers, a project manager, etc.”

It sounds to me that projects in any field need project managers, although the project managers are often the first to be let go during big layoffs. Thinking of his design for the city art museum, I asked, “Is this a government funded project?”

“No, it is privately funded. It will be given to the city as a donation project.”

I didn’t chat with him any more, but from time to time I looked at the three-dimensional mesh on his computer screen, which was rotated and magnified. I saw that each link point of the mesh had huge rivets so I guessed it was a steel mesh. In the general climate of economic downturn, I was surprised that there were still such non-profit private donation projects. I guess the rich are more resistant to economic downturns.

The product on the designer’s computer screen is very similar to the carbon-60 structure diagram:

C60 and Superconductivity

Google search results:

“Superconductivity in a single-C60 transistor | Nature Physics 2009 · Cited by 130 — Here we demonstrate the realization of superconducting single-molecule transistors involving a single C60 fullerene molecule.”

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1996 was awarded jointly to Robert F. Curl Jr., Sir Harold W. Kroto and Richard E. Smalley “for their discovery of fullerenes”

Superconductivity. C60–the hole story中提到：“in 1985, chemists discovered a new form of carbon5— known today as buckyballs or fullerenes. crystalline C60 is normally an insulator, but can be made metallic by chemical doping. In normal C60 there are no charge carriers because the energy bands in its electronic structure are either completely filled or completely empty. To create a metal, the conduction band has to be partly filled with electrons (electron doping) or the valence band has to be partly emptied (hole doping).In 1991 it was found that adding alkali atoms to C60crystals leads to charge transfer from the alkali atoms to C60— that is, electron doping. Such alkali-doped compounds(A3C60) can become ‘metallic’ and, at low temperatures, superconducting.”

I had a short visit to Boston at the end of October. On Thursday November 3rd, I flew back to San Jose, the flight from Boston to San Francisco at 6:00 PM was full. During the six hour flight, the cabin was dim, it seemed like many passengers were resting. The middle-aged man sitting next to me said, “I will transfer from San Francisco to Reno for the weekend tonight.” I replied, “It sounds exciting!” During the flight, he was sleeping, probably conserving energy for the weekend.

Having nothing to do in the dim cabin, I watched the film “Nomadland” by Chloé Zhao, the Oscar winning director in 2021, with anticipation but a sleepy mind.

“”Nomadland” tells a story about Fern，a woman in her sixties, who after losing everything in the Great Recession in 2008, embarks on a journey through the American West in search of seasonal work, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.

The scenes that the movie showed me about Amazon made me realize the job opportunities and hopes that Amazon provided for Fern and her friends with the seasonal work offered in Amazon’s warehouse. After watching this movie, I felt that Amazon is “a farmland for a nomadland”. Like the farmers in the past hoped for the harvest of the crops from the land in the next year, Fern hoped for Amazon’s seasonal work income in the future. This hope was the only chance she had of repaying her sister the money she borrowed to repair her van.

From my working experience in the early days of eBay’s I remember that around 2001, everyone was enthusiastic about eBay becoming a service company that collects monthly fees, just like collecting electricity and water utilities; no one was thinking that eBay would continuously create simple and necessary job opportunities for the general population.

As a previous software engineer, I feel like “eBay made online shopping from scratch. While, Amazon made online shopping close to people’s daily life”. Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” shows the seasonal and ecological nature of Amazon warehouse jobs, similar to the seasonal and ecological nature of crop harvest. The former provides urban laborers with opportunities and hopes of earning money, a new concept; while the latter provides rural laborers with opportunities and hopes of earning money, since ancient times.

After watching “Nomadland”, I can feel the convenience of life created by high-tech online shopping also created many job opportunities for ordinary people. From this I can feel that science and technology can certainly produce many new job opportunities that only require simple skills.

In 1995, when my daughter was two years old, I ran into a middle school classmate at George Mason University in Virginia where I took my computer science courses before switching from chemistry to software. He told me: “‘The Joy Luck Club’ talks about the generation gaps between mothers who grew up in China and daughters who grew up in the United States. You have a daughter. It’s worth watching it. ” So I rented the video tape of “Joy Luck Club” to watch it carefully at home and I learnt not to be too strong of a mother like Lindo in the movie.

On the plane, I sat next to a born-in-the-80s mother of two daughters. We chatted casually and I learnt from her that she earned her Ph.D. degree in agriculture in the United States, that she is the only child of her parents, and that her family last name is Chi. This is the first time she and her husband brought their two preschool-age daughters back to China. Seeing me watching “Joy Luck Club” with tears, Dr. Chi asked: “This is an old movie, as I never heard of it before. Is it good? “

I said, “The film tells a few stories about the generation gap between mothers grew up in China and daughters grew up in the United States. You have daughters. It’s worth seeing. “

More than 20 years later, I passed the same message to a young China-born mother of “Joy Luck Club”, which is worth watching, because it reveals the challenges of dealing with cultural differences between China and the United States.

On the airplane, after watching the Joy Luck Club, I once again felt the ordinary human-sustaining nature of being a mother as well as the beauty of Chinese culture in terms of food and clothing. I also had a new discovery based on my previous reaction towards this movie.

In 1995, I was surprised to see the standing sex scene in the “Joy Luck Club” for the first time, so I remembered it.

In 2019, when watching the once surprising scene in “Joy Luck Club”, I immediately noticed this scene was shot in the hall of the main building of Filoli garden. Actually, “Joy Luck Club” borrowed the Filoli garden to shoot many scenes that took place in Shanghai in the 1940s. The movie of “Joy Luck Club” I liked came across with my favorite Filoli garden in Silicon Valley, which made the movie more personalized and interesting for me.

Recalling of the couplet of Jingxi Pavilion in Yongan temple in Beihai Park: “Stillness suits contentment. No need of long journey to grasp (悦性适应静，会心何必遐).”

Comprehending heartedly without going far requires a hardened mind.

Little Episodes

1. List of movies on the flight:

2. One of scenes in movie “Joy Lucky Club”:

3. The main building of Filoli garden (03-18-2018):

5. The Hall in the main building of Filoli Garden (03-18-2018):

In March 2019, I went back to China and lived with my father for a week to celebrate his 90th birthday, which was his first birthday after my mother passed away. On my way back to Boston, while waiting for the midway transfer in the quiet and empty airport lounge, I drifted off to sleep as I was very tired.

Suddenly, I heard a big noise and opened my eyes to see a group of youngsters coming to the lounge and talking loudly using a language I didn’t understand.

I woke up and looked at them, although they wore different clothes, they all had a green backpack, and I guessed they were a group of college students, as many of the boys had beards on a very young face, pretending to be mature; and all girls were tall and slender, absolutely modern western beauties.

The girl, sitting next to me, was chatting and waving her hands at the same time happily, she looked friendly and I couldn’t help asking: “Where are you from?”

I was surprised when the girls close to me started to speak English fluently and enthusiastically. They told me that they were Spanish high school students who had just finished their two-week American study trip and were now on their way back home to Spain.

I curiously asked, “Did you eat, live and have classes in American schools in the past two weeks?”

They said they had been eating and living in American families in the past two weeks. Three days a week, they attended high school classes to experience the life of American high schoolers; and the other two days they went out with their host families to experience American life.

Their experience sounded very interesting to me, I asked, “After living in the United States for two weeks, what do you like about the United States?”

The girls told me that they like the big shopping malls in the United States, they like the fast food restaurants with drive through, and they like big houses of American families. They also said that in America, high school students were very happy because they can choose easier courses unlike in Spain where high school students cannot choose courses and some courses are very difficult! I also learnt that they applied for a scholarship for this trip to the United States, so their food and accommodation in the United States were free.

In the airport lounge, these short conversations provided me a first time opportunity to be close enough to feel the vivacity spicy tempered Spanish young beauties and to hear their high-pitched voices which were full of emotion. Looking at them, I started to compare the Sichuan girls I am familiar to, as Sichuan is my home province. I felt that the Sichuan girls could easily match the Spanish girls in terms of vivacity spicy and fast high-pitched talking, while the Sichuan girls possess more subtle oriental beauties, in other words, at first glance Sichuan girls usually lack the sculptured facial and body features in comparison with the Spanish girls. It is also apparent that the visual differences from the two races cannot be ignored. I hope many of us are proud of the characteristics of our own race.

Recalling of the couplet of Jingxi Pavilion in Yong’an temple in Beihai Park: “Stillness suits contentment. No need of long journey to grasp (悦性适应静，会心何必遐).” Comprehending heartedly without going far requires a hardened mind. Grasping heartedly in a far place is a harvest.

In early January 2019, I flew from the sunny California to very cold Massachusetts. Walking outside on a sunny day in Massachusetts, I felt the cold wind stabbing my face like many small needles which was very painful. I didn’t like to go out for a walk even during the day, and I didn’t think I would walk in the cold night of Massachusetts to ask for help. This is an airport story about different styles.

I drove my daughter to Boston airport to pick up her friend Shirah. Before leaving home, my daughter searched online in advance and learned that it would take about 30 minutes for international passengers arriving at Boston airport to pass through the customs.

When we arrived at the airport at 6:50pm, we saw Shirah’s flight had landed at 6:30pm. Thinking we could pick her up within 20 minutes, my daughter went in the arrivals hall to see Shirah and I sat in my car along the side of the street, waiting for them to come back soon.

There were two rows of cars, in total more than two dozen, waiting along the side of the street at the Boston airport, as some cars picked up their passengers and left, I moved a few feet and stopped for a while, then moved a few feet and stopped for a while again. I didn’t expect that my daughter and Shirah would come back only after more than an hour. I also didn’t expect that our car would not start after moving slowly for more than an hour, because the battery was dead.

I had to get out of the car, walk in the cold night, knock on the window of the cars waiting along the side of the street one by one asking for help. Seeing me approaching, the majority of the drivers in the cars shook their hands and refused to talk to me, only very few drivers rolled down their windows on a cold night for me. I told them: “The battery of my car is dead. Do you have a cable? Can you help to jump start my car?”

I passed by more than ten cars without engaging in conversation, asked a few drivers and got the help from two kind middle-aged ladies.

At this time, my daughter and Shirah came back. The kind ladies helped us jump start my car on a cold night, then my daughter got into the driver’s seat to start the engine. I learned to wait for the engine to run for one minute before disconnecting the jump cable.

On the way home, Shirah apologized for her delay in passing the Customs: “Because the government is shutting down, there are very few customs security agents and I had to wait in a very long line to pass the customs.”

The shutdown of the government impacted ordinary people like me in such unexpected way, which made me see the beauty of mankind and my own personal resilience that I don’t usually feel.

After that, we bought a charging line and a charging battery, just in case. We hope we are able to help others in the future.

In 2021, we did use our battery to help Rachel.