I am sitting on the rug.
The air conditioner is a little too cold. Half a cup of yogurt. My back against the sofa. Outside the window, giant tropical leaves.
Another evening.
A thousand evenings folded into this one.
U-ám-mê.
Where did I first come across that phrase? Such beautiful words.
I think of sunset, too.
One day after work, we were waiting at a traffic light when someone beside me suddenly said,
“Look here. Today’s sunset is beautiful.”
Sapientdream — Past Lives
Listen on YouTube ↗
Somehow, all at once, I have everything I ever wanted.
Which is exactly why I keep wondering whether this is only a summer afternoon that refuses to wake up—a dream drifting lazily through the heat.
Your tongue moves, yet still no word feels large enough for the blue-violet silhouette of the mountains, for the clouds burning themselves into dusk.
The 7-Eleven sign stands high above the road.
Motorcycles hum.
Your palms are still warm.
Your hair has not quite dried.
On the way to the greenhouse, you pass a group of university students singing and dancing.
The drums taste faintly of fish sauce and tropical islands.
Girls circle a boy who keeps leaping into the air, chanting something in rhythm.
Their voices dissolve behind you.
Tamarind pods crack beneath your shoes.
The brittle sensation travels through the foam of your ASICS, tapping gently against the soles of your feet.
You look down at scattered shadows of leaves.
What’s “小孔成像” in English?
Pinhole imaging.
The answer arrives before the thought has fully formed.
I’ve changed the way I learn vocabulary.
Instead of memorising word lists, I collect words from life.
One from face-to-face conversations.
One from papers.
One from text messages.
One from the internet.
One from literature.
Five words make a day.
I send them to ChatGPT, ask about their meanings, their texture, how people actually use them.
Then I turn them into Anki cards.
Sometimes I note where they came from.
Sometimes I simply keep a screenshot.
Little by little, I add new words while old ones quietly return.
After a while they stop sounding borrowed.
They begin to sound like mine.
Crunch.
Crack.
I’ve been watching so many films lately.
Reading even more books.
Every day there is now a stretch of time reserved for doing absolutely nothing.
Curled up on the sofa.
A book.
An iced latte.
Or an iced Americano.
An independent film enthusiast.
Someone who insists on finishing one book every week.
I like that version of myself.
This afternoon I should probably go to the gym.
And buy tickets for Spider-Man.
We were talking about which Spider-Man we grew up with.
Apparently Hulk is the most popular shirt these days.
Maybe today I’ll wear Guardians of the Galaxy instead.
Tomorrow I have RNA extraction.
Tomorrow isn’t a cinema day.
The day before yesterday we were wondering whether people here simply don’t hold hands or kiss in public.
The cinema, thankfully, provides little sofa seats.
A yellow dog wearing an Elizabethan collar turns around to look at you.
In the mirror, you catch your own reflection.
Among all the young students around you, what feels different is your pale legs, muscles quietly appearing and disappearing beneath the movement of walking.
How on earth did naturally and actively become words I actually use?
I’m almost flattered.
The price of watering plants in the greenhouse is a pair of mosquito-bitten legs.
Luckily there’s a Japanese ointment that works beautifully.
Cool against the skin.
The coolness lingers for a moment before another tropical evening settles over it.
The only unpleasant thing recently was the diarrhoea.
Fortunately, my English teacher—the cheerful little chubby one with the smile of an angel—recommended yogurt.
I’ve finally understood why teachers and doctors should always have smiles like that.
They come with their own halo.
Imagine Robert Downey Jr.’s eyes on Timothée Chalamet’s face.
He smiles at you and says,
“You need some probiotics.”
Problem solved.
Then films again.
The first one must have been Lost in Translation.
My fourth time watching it.
Probably the first time for a Southeast Asian cat with half a tail.
She kept jumping at Tokyo’s neon lights.
There is a loneliness you have never truly experienced, yet somehow already understand.
You roll it around in your hands.
Earlier today you joked about Yu Dafu disappearing somewhere in Southeast Asia before his death.
Then you think of someone far away.
Your route crossed mine once.
You led me back to the last barbecue we had beside the old National Southwest Associated University campus.
The place is called MALA now.
We lay beneath the magnolia trees, talking about all the places we would someday go.
Great-grandfather.
That afternoon beneath the magnolia tree, you told me,
“Stop being so hopelessly romantic.”
“Once I transfer into the international programme, you’re definitely going to get yourself into trouble.”
One of our classmates—the former playboy—became the first among us to marry this morning.
By some miracle, I wasn’t the first.
Mother still asks,
“At your age, why aren’t you married?”
I mumble something about master’s degrees, PhDs, poisonous laboratory chemicals.
None of it really answers the question.
Looking back now,
you were right.
Every single time.
Only today have I finally admitted something to myself.
That wish I carried through adolescence—
to become someone popular—
had already come true.
I just never noticed when.
No one announced it.
Only our adolescence itself
will never meet us again.
I don’t dislike marriage.
It’s just that when I think about why I started a PhD,
escaping marriage somehow sits alongside becoming a fifty-year-old postdoc wandering the world,
making one life-changing piece of work and retiring early,
or learning programming as quickly as possible and finding someone else’s shoulders to lean on.
Too many futures are trying to exist at once.
After the film, I wanted to recommend Past Lives to him.
What was I thinking?
Who asks someone they’re dating to watch Past Lives together?
My brain must have been broken.
Past lives really do become past lives.
Looking back now,
they feel like another film.
Someone else’s story.
The sunsets over Cuihu Lake.
The seagulls.
Cold rain over West Lake.
Ten million extravagant dreams.
Ten million unbearable hurts.
All of them disappeared here.
Without a sound.
Like tamarind shells cracking beneath shoes somewhere very far away.
Every wish I ever made came true.
The highest degree I once dreamed of.
My mother’s approval—
mostly because of my English,
and because my relationships have slowly become transparent enough for her to understand.
“How are you going to introduce yourself to my mum?
She’ll definitely ask what you do.
She’ll never understand digital nomads.”
“Just say engineer.”
May my sister’s spirit watch over us.
Otherwise I’ll probably have to sit through what may become the worst HR interview in a foreign language that I’ll ever witness.
Or perhaps I’ll simply have to improve my English enough to rescue the conversation.
It feels almost impossible.
Beautiful evenings.
An endless tropical youth.
Friends returning across time and continents.
Books I’ll never finish.
A body growing fitter and fitter.
Somewhere along the way,
everything I wanted as a child quietly moved into the same room.
There is a cat.
So soft.
Oh, Biscuit.
This afternoon he asked whether this blog was about Biscuit.
“No,” I said.
“It’s just me rambling.”
I remembered wanting to become a scientist as a child.
Later I always thought mathematicians were the real scientists.
Life science didn’t quite count.
And yet here I am—
a weed researcher.
It makes me happy.
I know I’m reasonably smart.
I’m still good at moving my body.
That feels enough.
Outside, it has grown a little darker.
The tropical leaves remain beyond the air-conditioned room,
holding one evening after another.
The last time I spoke Chinese,
it was because a motorcycle taxi driver had been learning Mandarin on Duolingo.
He tried a few hesitant sentences.
I answered without thinking.
Only then did I realise my Chinese had somehow begun to sound a little like my grandfather’s.
Perhaps from now on,
people will mistake me for someone from a tropical Chinese-speaking place.
What ancestry did that DNA report say I had, anyway?
坐在地毯上。空调吹得有一点冷，酸奶喝到一半，背靠着沙发。窗外是叶片巨大的热带植物。又一个黄昏。
千万个黄昏叠在这个瞬间。
《乌暗瞑》——是在哪里看到的？真是好美的词。又想到 sunset。有一天下班，等在十字路口，身边的人忽然说：“Look here, today’s sunset is beautiful.”
Sapientdream — Past Lives
在 YouTube 收听 ↗
突然就拥有了想要的一切，免不了日日怀疑：这会不会只是夏天一个睡不醒的午后，晃晃悠悠荡过去的梦。可你的舌头动了一下，还是找不出一个词来形容此刻蓝紫色的山影、燃烧的云。7-Eleven 的灯牌高高立起，摩托车引擎嗡嗡作响。手心的触感发热，头发还没有完全干。
去温室的路上，你穿过一群唱歌跳舞的大学生。鼓点让人想到有鱼露味道的海岛。女孩们围着一个正在跳跃的男孩，有节奏地喊着什么，喊声很快又落到身后。
酸角壳一踩就裂。碎裂的触感隔着 ASICS 的泡棉，有节奏地传到脚底。
低头看地上疏疏落落的叶影，“小孔成像的英语是什么？”这个念头忽然闪过脑海。是 pinhole imaging。
最近换了一种背单词的方法。新词都是从生活里捡来的：面对面聊天、文献、文字聊天、互联网和文学，五个真实来源，各捡一个单词或表达。凑满五个就发给 GPT，让它解释意思和用法，再做成 Anki 闪卡。来源直接记进备忘录，或者干脆截屏。每天添一点新的，也复习以前的。词卡还可以分享给朋友，让他们在对话里诱导你把词用出来；或者写进日记里。过几天它们重新出现，已经有一点像自己的话了。
嘎吱嘎吱——咔！
最近看了好多电影，也看了好多书。一天里自然留出一块“什么都不做”的时间：窝在沙发上看书，手边放一杯冰拿铁或者冰美式。独立电影爱好者，每周规定自己读完一本书者——我喜欢。
今天下午依稀还得记得去健身房，顺便买一下《蜘蛛侠》的票。说起大家小时候看的是哪一版蜘蛛侠；现在最受欢迎的衣服是绿巨人，今天也许试试看银河护卫队。但明天要提取 RNA。明天不能看。
前天中午，你们还在讨论，这里是不是没有当街牵手接吻的文化。不过电影院很贴心，准备了沙发座椅。
一条戴着伊丽莎白圈的黄狗回头看了你一眼。你从镜子里看见自己。和周围年轻人不同的，是那双浅色的、随着走动隐约显出线条的大腿。
100% amazing Nija actively beautiful sweet legs.
代价是去温室浇一次水，就会收获一腿的包。好在有一种日本的蚊虫叮咬药很好用，涂上去凉凉的。那点凉意沿着皮肤留一会儿，很快又被热带的傍晚盖过去。
唯一不太好的，大概是前两天腹泻。好在那位有天使般笑容的小胖子英语老师推荐了酸奶。我算是知道为什么教师和医生最好要选有这种笑容的人了，简直自带圣光。
请想象一下：Robert Downey Jr. 的眼睛，长在 Timothée Chalamet 的脸上。他对你露出笑容，告诉你：“You need some probiotics.”
药到病除。
又想起看电影。第一部好像是《迷失东京》？是的，我都已经看第四遍了。东南亚尾巴残缺的猫却是第一次看电影吧，对着东京的霓虹灯上蹿下跳。
你对于一种未曾体会、却提前知晓的孤独了然于心。你把玩着这种感觉，想起下午看书时还调侃过郁达夫失踪前流亡东南亚的故事；又想起那个遥远的人。你的路线重叠在我的路线上，带我回到我们在联大旧址最后一次吃烧烤的日子。现在那东西叫 MALA。我们躺在玉兰树下，说以后会去哪里。祖爷爷啊。
玉兰树下的那个下午，你告诉我，不要再恋爱脑了。你转去国际班以后，我一定会出幺蛾子的。我们共同的同学浪子回头，荣幸在今日早晨成为第一个早婚的人；我也侥幸逃脱，没有成为第一个早婚的人。只是妈妈说起，这年纪还不结婚，算什么事情。只好拿硕士博士读书耽误、实验试剂有毒之类的话胡乱搪塞。
回头看才发现，你说得对呢。每一次你都知道呢。
直到今天才肯相信：青春期时因为自卑而开始追寻的那个“成为 popular 的人”的愿望，其实早就实现了。不知道是哪一天，也没有人宣布。
只是我们的青春期，已经不会再相遇了。
这个过程其实十分享受。我并不抗拒婚姻，只是想到读 PhD 的理由里，既有逃婚，也有成为五十岁老博后、继续周游世界；还有“干票大的从此躺平”和“抓紧转码抱大腿”。诸多未来挤在一起，实在让人头疼。
那天看完电影，你想给他推荐《Past Lives》。到底是怎么想的，要一起看那种电影？脑子真是坏了。怎么会有人觉得 3D 打印猫项圈是无限浪漫呢？
过往人生，真的就这样过去了。回看的时候，仿佛是另一部电影、别人的故事。那些翠湖边的落日和海鸥，西湖粘稠寒冷的雨夜，一千万个热烈的幻想和剧痛，全部消失在这里。没有响声。像酸角壳碎在很远的鞋底。
你许下的愿望尽数实现了：
最高的学历。
妈妈的认可——主要来自英语和日渐透明的人际关系。
“你要怎么向我妈介绍自己？她肯定要问工作，可她理解不了数字游民。”
“你就说 engineer。”
祈祷姐姐显灵吧。否则我大概只能坐在桌边，亲眼学习可能是这辈子最糟糕的外语 HR 面试教程；或者试试看，抓紧把英语学到能救场的程度。难如登天。
美丽的黄昏，永不结束的热带和青春；
从世界各地跨越时间重新回到身边的朋友。
还有三块屏幕和一张升降书桌，3D 打印机，草莓味乳清，联邦网络周边卫衣，一把屁股分区可动的人体工学椅，一盒一千片的 BKK 拼图；读不完的书，以及享受每一次运动的身体，fitter and fitter。小时候想要的东西，不知什么时候都搬进了同一个房间。
有猫。So soft. Oh, Biscuit.
下午他问，这篇 blog 是否和 Biscuit 有关。你说，没有，只是碎碎念。
耳边又回荡起小时候说要当科学家的事情。后来总觉得，数学家那才叫科学家；生命科学嘛——现在倒是真的成了一个 weed researcher。我很开心，知道自己挺聪明，运动能力也还不错。
窗外又暗了一点。热带植物的叶子仍在空调房外，承接一个又一个黄昏。
上一次说中文，是因为摩托司机正在多邻国学中文。他生涩地开了口，你也跟着答，才发现自己说出来的中文，不知什么时候有了一点爷爷的感觉。从此大概可以被误认作来自某个热带中文地区。
基因报告究竟说我有什么血统来着？