Sore eyes...

These morning I always woke up with sore eyes. Winter is coming here in England, or, north hemisphere.

Therefore I bought a humidifier to increase the humidity of the room, which seems helpful, but there are still several concerns; like, I am starting to worry about over-humidity, and, how is the interaction between my heater and humidifier: when should I switch on the heater and when should I switch on the humidifier.

My gf always says I am worried about too much. It is indeed. I am such a worry-like person. And I often sigh, which is not so good as well. It is said ppl sigh too much are usually unhappy and unlucky. I have already started to change it.

Thankfully, my eyes are getting better, not as sore as yesterday, as the humidity level has been raised by the humidifier.

The last two days in Torino continue...

Just drop by here to cast a new thread. :P (Thanks for Kate asking whether these pictures are all taken by my camera. Yeah if you don't count that dancing plant in. I have just found my ASUS wireless mouse having some sort of problem so that I think I will not post too much pics and articles today. Does anyone know why my mouse trying to keep in the state of "selection" sometimes, and I have to click it again and again to deselect the things it selected. It is a little frustrating.)

Allow me come back to what I wanna say about this picture on the left.

Before I went to Italy, I had no knowledge about this river. Maybe I've learnt it maybe not but I'm sure had no memory about it.

It's Po.

It is the largest river across Torino just near its centre, lying beneath the small mountain. We had spent three days before today (the day I took this picture) in Torino but I had no time to have a closer look of it. Everytime we were on the coach quickly passing it leaving us a glance with a little sorry not having chance to take a picture. It was nice to have chance at the last day I stayed in Torino as long as we were not trapped in the conference therefore we can hit the street of Torino.

I am good at taking night views this stands without saying. Especially with my old Minolta DiMage X. You can check the series of this camera here. I like the function of long exposure time since I can hold the camera to capture the night view even in a very low light source condition.

The first night in Torino after conference we (me and Faik) walked all the way through the river Po and found a place in the city side of Po for dinner. It was a little bit expensive but at least I think it worth spending it. A clam spaghetti with a drink cost both of us about 13 Euro.

After the dinner we dashed into the old city centre where filled by the students and locals. Night views of Torino gave me a very warm (apart from the chilled atmosphere of England) feeling. I feel homesick at that time because the humid air mimic the air of Taiwan somehow, but it's bit different. I found I like Torino not from the feeling of the air but from the feeling of the ppl there. I felt they were all very good in enjoying their life. Most of them are friendly and helpful. Polite and warm-hearted. Maybe I didn't see the dark side of here but I rather like to believe what I believed.

Dancing Plant

I have just read a news which was about a kind of dancing plant they claimed it was discovered in Southeast China. Then I started to find the relevent news in google in English, and here it is, the dancing plant where first discovered by Darwin in 1855. An article about this plant can be found here and there is another article tells a more detailed story.

It is interesting that I didn't know a plant can dance and I somehow a little bit ashamed of myself as I studied biology in my under.

This dancing plant is certainly dance with sound waves according to the posts. I wonder how it dances and how fast it can move in its motion. It is really a intriguing question "Why does a plant respond to sound waves and how?".

This plant is named "Desmodium gyrans". I guess the last word has a gyr- prefix in its name becuase it moves somehow clockwise and anti-clockwise in its dancing behavior.

If anyone has seen this kind of plant could you please tell me more about it. I would like to hear your description. Thanks.

How life goes with emotion?

Today after I took bath I sat on the carpet blow drying my hair by a hair dryer. I started to think about the peaceful life of these days. There were several episodes in this week. Some of them are disturbing, some of them are amusing.

I remind when I was a youngster (I am not already) I was always getting irritated easily where I felt my right was violated. These days there were several occasions which made me unhappy but at those moments I held myself and thought about what have I done to incur these misfortunes?

If there are two ppl against each other in a very event. Most of the time ppl get angry and they start to defend for themselves. When one of the persons at the scene make a start of the defend, the other will find other ways to fight it back, and then there will be no end.

I think I did very good in these occasions these days at least I didn't think into bad directions when I was accused for something. I then complied with the person's opinion and do the way what he/she think of. In this way I persuaded myself I am not the smartest people in this room when another is trying to dominate it. And then, in the end, I found it very useful. The reasons are below:

• when I persuaded myself to do something I found it is obviously easier then persuade the other
• the opinions of others are not necessarily bad enough to make me uncomfortable
• if there is something wrong with it, there is always a solution later to solve it
• I don't have to be the source of trouble in this case

Sounds a little irresponsible huh...?! But it is truly hardy dame it right. I am gonna keep it in my mind. There is always a solution when you are trying to deal with "reasonable" people and the solution has a crucial point which is do make people think you pay respect to them. Then, things are mostly going to be fine.... :-)