Living In Gaogang...Part 7  

高港记事-第七章

Navneet

Walking the beaten track

[This blog has nothing to speak of Gaogang but well..the Heading of my blog series is “Stories from Gaogang and not Stories of Gaogang ]

本篇博客与高港没有太大关系，然而，我的博客系列的标题是“来自高港的故事而不是高港的故事”。

I was away for a week to the sea for a sea trial of a newly built ship. The ship has to be taken for trial of all its machinery, to the sea once its construction is complete. It has to pass the stringent performance tests. Like all the children have to go for the final examination each year for testing whether they deserve to be promoted to the next class or not and the main stress is on their parents, so it is with us. The level of stress comes to a climax before the sea trial and after returning, the process of removing the defects and issuance of certificate starts.

我出海了一星期，去对一艘新造船舶进行试航。一艘船造好后，就必须通过严格的性能测试检验船上所有机械。就像孩子们每一年都需要参加期末考以检验是否能顺利升学，父母们总是觉得亚历山大。我们也是如此。压力最大的时候，一是试航前，一是返航后，开始消除船舶缺陷及签发证书时。

译文来源：三泰虎 http://www.santaihu.com/44431.html

Carrying out with the analogy of the examination of the school children, it is the time to see the report cards. Why I have liked the thought of the Exams of the School Children is that they are not really stressed, especially when they are very young. They do not understand why their mothers are so worried and so anxous about their performance. We get overtly anxous about our children and press them to perform, we give them the affliction of “stress”.

以学生考试为例，就是发成绩单的时候。我为什么喜欢举学生考试的例子，因为他们其实没有太大的压力，特别是年幼的时候。他们也无法理解为什么家长总是特别挂心成绩。我们总是过于担心自己的孩子，强迫他们做这做那，把压力转嫁给他们。

We compare them with other children. We compare them with their elder siblings or the kids of in the neighbourhood or of our relatives and friends, children of anyone we know who we know are bright in studies. We do the same when it is the time to judge them in sports, in performing arts, in anything. We judge them, we compare them, we criticize them all the time. In the name of motivation, in an attempt to inspire them to do better than they can, by constantly tell them about others, berate them, sometimes punish them emotionally or even use a switch when we are very angry. By doing this we kill the child in them for ever.

我们总喜欢拿自己的孩子跟其他孩子比，跟兄弟姐妹，邻居的孩子或者是其他亲戚朋友的孩子比。无论是学习、体育、艺术或是其他方面，只要我们听说哪个孩子好，我们就会拿来跟自己的孩子比较。我们总是评判、比较、苛责孩子。为了使他们进步，我们就打着激励的旗号，喋喋不休地叨叨其他孩子，不断地斥责、惩罚，甚至鞭打孩子。这样做，其实是在扼杀孩子的天性。

From being gay, bubbly, talkative children, they become, unsure, faltering, hesitating, reticent and recluse. They start avoiding being paraded before the guests, they start remonstrating. They become stubborn and disobeying and in their little hearts, they try to retain liking for the things they feel naturally inclined to. Sometimes they can keep the flames of their natural tendencies from getting snuffed, but many times they can’t and with the death of their natural tendencies, a part of them dies for ever and gets buried for good deep somewhere in their little hearts.

原本快乐、活泼、健谈的孩子会渐渐变得迟疑、自卑、犹豫、沉默和孤僻。孩子越来越不喜欢在人前展示自己，越来越固执，越来越叛逆。然而，他们心里仍然会小心翼翼地坚守自己的天性。某些时候，他们的天性可能侥幸不被扼杀。但更多时候，他们无能为力。这些天性永远消失了并埋葬在他们心灵的最深处。

Most of us have been such parents, many of the young children will become such parents tomorrow. It has been going on and on like this since, this mad race of being better than our compatriot started when the focus of the world shifted towards commercialization, some hundred or so years ago. We try to pass this blame to the Western world, which we say made us materialistic, competitive, selfish, heartless and ruthless. We understand that something is wrong with it but we shrug our shoulders expressing our inability to change our attitude. We see ourselves as straws or the moths fallen in the raging river.

大多数父母都是这样的，很多孩子以后也会变成这样的父母。自从几百年前，这个世界上的焦点开始转向商业化以来，这场疯狂的比赛就开始了。我们试图把责任推给西方，我们辩称是他们使我们变得物质至上、好胜、自私、冷血和无情。即使我们意识到这是错误的，但我们仍耸耸肩表示我们就像稻草与飞蛾一样渺小，在波涛汹涌的河流中无能为力。

Only few of us have the courage to resist, to stand up and face the fury of the flood and dare to walk against the current, caring little for the ridicule and the cat-calls. Only few of us, can walk the “roads less taken” to show that it is ok to be different. And when they are depicted in the films as "Wonder Women" and Superman, the film become super-duper hit, grossing millions as the viewers can live their fantasies in the auditoriums where they sit through the thrills for an hour or two, disconnected from the challenging world outside, wearing the armours of their heroes performing impossible feats.

只有少数人有勇气去反抗，直面怒吼的洪水，敢于无视嘲笑和嘘声，挑战现状。只有少数人能另辟蹊径，以示与众不同。就像电影神奇女侠与超人这类电影，引起了巨大的轰动。数百万观众坐在电影院里，与世隔绝一两个小时，幻想与他们穿着英雄的铠甲，完成不可能的壮举。

The actors who perform in those movies become household names, riding the wave of popularity, but some like Christopher Reeves (before, my mind could return the name “Christopher Reeves” google page had opened and I decided to look what Wikipedia had to say. I was surprised to read that so many people who played in Superman character in the movies or cartoon films died under mysterious or tragic circumstances before Christopher Reeves died tragically that it has got a superstition attached to it and it is called as “Superman Curse”. Christopher Reeves at the prime of his career fell from a horse back. After the fateful fall he became paraplegic and after living in the so called vegetable state for nine years, eventually died of a heart attack. Perhaps it’s nature’s way to make us stay grounded.

电影里的演员都成为家喻户晓的任务，深受欢迎。我之前用谷歌与维基百科搜索了一下克里斯托弗·里夫。我意想不到的是，许多在电影或卡通电影中扮演超人角色的人，都离奇死亡。而克里斯托弗·里夫的死也充满神秘色彩。这被称为“超人诅咒”。克里斯托弗·里夫在事业处于鼎盛时期时从马背上摔了下来，全身瘫痪。9年后，最终死于突发心脏病。也许这是大自然告诫我们要安于现状。

The thoughts come to me like floods and every time I drift from the subject, I decide to write about. Whatever I write is extempore. I just can’t sit, review and edit. If I try to do that, I end up writing something entirely different, totally new, a flood of new thoughts overwhelms me. Already, what I have written here is more than what people like to read in a blog. I don’t know how to get back to tell you about the story of the ship I took for a sea trial. I have a mind to end this blog here, but I must finish writing today’s thoughts or else they will be lost for good.

思绪像潮水般涌来。每当偏离主题，我就决定写下来。我写什么都是即兴的。我不能仅仅坐着，检查和编辑。如果我这么做，我最终会写一些完全不同的、全新的东西，一大堆新的想法淹没了我。我在这里所写的不仅仅是人们喜欢在博客上阅读的内容。现在我不知道该怎么扭回去写船舶试航的故事。我想应该就这样结束这篇博客，但是我又必须写完今天的想法，否则就永远都失去它们了。

I will never be able to recall them, as there are hundreds of others waiting to be penned down…well, we can’t use this phrase now, this has become obsolete. I think thoughts waiting to be punched through the keyboard seems more appropriate to me, but to associate ‘punching’ with the thought even if it is for defining the activity of the keys doesn’t appeal to me. It’s like entering the temple with the shoes on or like extinguishing the wick of the lamp lit for the prayer by blowing at it. It’s not a done thing, my father would get angry, if I would do that. The exhaled breath is impure. The right way to do it is by stirring the air by waving the hand sharply near the flame. Any ritual may seem meaningless to one who doesn’t know why it is performed, but it has a deep significance for the believer who does it with deep reverence and love. I am getting too distracted. I will have to postpone, telling you about the sea trial until the next blog, but what about my Chinese fans who love to read my praises for China or those who like to read only that in my blogs, like the specific pages of erotic descriptions, young adults would read in the English novels replete with those, when I was growing up. Forget about video clips exchanged freely through WhatsApp and WeChat now a days, we didn’t have access to even stills for visual delights in those days and thus we had to invoke our imagination for all the pleasure. No wonder, I have it strong and going even still, although I don’t need to employ it for titillations, but means are there at my disposal alright.

我将永远无法回想起它们，因为还有成百上千的想法等着被写下来……嗯，我们现在不能用写这个词了，这已经过时了。我认为等待被键盘敲击的思想似乎更适合，但即使把它定义为按键的活动，我也不愿意把“冲”与“思考”联系在一起。这就像穿着鞋子进入神庙，或者像用嘴垂快熄灭灯芯一样。这是不应该的。如果我这么做，我父亲会生气。呼出的气是不洁的。正确的方法是通过在火焰附近挥动手来搅动空气。对于一个不知道为什么会这样做的人来说，任何仪式似乎都是没有意义的，但是对于那些怀着深深的崇敬和爱去做这件事的信徒来说，这个仪式有着深刻的意义。我太心烦意乱了。我得在下一篇博客里才能告诉你们试航的故事了。我的中国粉丝喜欢我的博客中对中国的赞美，有些粉丝喜欢读其中某些色情描述的页面。在我的成长过程中，年轻人可以从英语小说中读到。在那些日子里，没有WhatsApp和微信免费交换的视频片段，我们甚至无法获得视觉上的乐趣，因此更激发我们的想象力。虽然我不需要用它来进行挑逗。