Thứ Bảy, 25 tháng 2, 2012

Về tài năng

Bạn KHÔNG cần là một thiên tài để trở thành một nhà toán học chuyên nghiệp!

Trong một số trường hợp, một tài năng quá đặc biệt lại có thể không có lợi cho một quá trình phấn đấu lâu dài. Nếu lời giải đến một cách quá dễ dàng, người ta có thể đánh mất sự chăm chỉ, không đặt những câu hỏi mang tính sơ khai, quên đi việc mở rộng những lĩnh vực quan tâm, và những điều này sẽ khiến tài năng bị thui chột. 

Ngoài ra, nếu ai đã quen với những thành công dễ dàng, thì rất khó rèn luyện được tính kiên trì cần thiết để giải quyết những vấn đề thực sự khó. 

Tài năng là quan trọng, nhưng quan trọng hơn là việc rèn luyện, phát triển và duy trì nó !!

Terence Tao - Gíao sư toán tại UCLA Los Angeles từ năm 24 tuổi, giải thưởng Fields 2006

Thứ Năm, 23 tháng 2, 2012

Su's fiction writing practice

Đề bài là viết 1 câu truyện ngắn 500 chữ maximum bắt đầu bằng câu : "The nurse left work at five o'clock"

“The nurse left work at five o’clock”
He wanted to continue typing, but his hands froze on the keyboard. He typed a line, deleted the whole thing and typed another. 

After thirty minutes, the blank page was more intimidating, maybe because there was still nothing but one line: The nurse left work at five o’clock. He stared at the screen, admiring the line’s beauty in many aspects. He didn’t know what to write. Fumbling in the dark, he tried to look for his other stories on the table full of coffee cups, candy wraps and books. 

A few heavy books fell down to the floor, making a big thump. But he didn’t care to pick them up or afraid that the apartment owner would wake up and yell at him, because he had got what he wanted.

“The nurse and the wolf”, “The horrible death of a nurse”, “Nurses are angels”… He muttered the titles as he flipped through the pile of stories. He even reread some of them, engrossed himself in the very fantasy he created.

“Beep, beep, beep” the alarm clock cruelly reminded him that it was 4.am already. Sometimes he just wanted to smash that annoying clock, hoping that when it turns to pieces, the time would stop going.

“F**k!” The man let out a groan and dropped his face onto the table. It was four hours until deadline, and he still hasn’t got a story to submit. He imagined himself lying to his son about how good mashed potatoes and canned beans are for his body, and that meat is the source of all diseases.

His mind was drifting in between the fragile boundary of reality and dream for a while before he could see Emily again. His wife was more beautiful than she ever was. He saw her on the beach with their son, splashing water at each other. He also saw her in the blue uniform, consisting of a dress, a pinafore apron and a cap. His right hand was holding a box of rice and stewed pork for her so she wouldn’t be hungry during her shift in the hospital ….

He shivered. A cold breeze woke him up, leaving a chill on his spine. He closed the window and took a look at his son, who was sleeping soundly and peacefully. Let out a deep sigh, he deleted the only line he had on the page. Every letter deleted was like a stab right at his heart. But finally, he has done it.

He wrote a new story, without the word “nurse” or anything associates to it.

Thứ Ba, 21 tháng 2, 2012

Blog mới - Twin blog

Bố vừa mới tạo thêm một blog mới, anh em sinh đôi của blog này trên wordpress.
Tên của nó cũng là Su Nu Nhat - Ba trong một
Địa chỉ là sununhat.wordpress.com. Link với blog này nằm ở trên cùng cột bên trái.
Blog trên blogspot này sẽ dành riêng cho các việc liên quan đến chuyện học hành của Su.
Còn blog trên wordpress sẽ để ghi chép các sự kiện, thông tin, hình ảnh của gia đình.
Hai blog cũng là sẽ để phòng ngừa nếu có sự cố với blog này thì vẫn còn ở blog kia

Thứ Hai, 20 tháng 2, 2012

Một phương pháp học

Trích dẫn kinh nghiệm học tập của một người Việt thành đạt ở Mỹ.

"Khi cầm cuốn sách lên, nếu là textbook thì đọc mục lục trước, để hiểu đại cương. Đọc đoạn mở đầu và kết luận từng chương, để có idea. VIẾT LẠI ngay, tầm xàm bá láp cũng được. Hình dung ra trong đầu các chương này, SAU KHI VIẾT LẠI ĐỀ CƯƠNG TOÀN QUYỂN SÁCH. Sau cùng mới đọc các chapters, và khi đọc cũng vậy, lướt qua trước, XEM HÌNH, rồi cuối cùng mới đọc chi tiết.

Cho dù không nhớ chi tiết, thì cũng nhớ hình. Vô học y khoa, tôi học bằng hình ảnh là nhiều. 206 cái xương, tôi hình dung ra, vẽ ra, cho dù xấu hoắc. Rồi mới tính đến tên. Sau đó vẽ các bộ phận và/ hoặc các muscles, cũng xấu hoắc thôi, rồi ghi tên, nerves nào innervate muscles nào.

Tôi có thể dạy cả 2 năm đầu chương trình y khoa tại bất cứ lúc nào, ở đâu, chẳng cần phải ôn bài. Do vậy mà thi tốt nghiệp đạt điểm Tối tối ưu hạng. Vì theo lối học ba tôi dạy: nhắm mắt hình dung sự việc, và đây là toàn cơ thể con người. TỔNG THỂ TRƯỚC, như đọc cuốn sách vậy, chi tiết sau, tên sau.

Chứ cầm cuốn human anatomy lên đọc thứ tự từ trang 1 đến trang 2000, thì 20 năm không xong, không hiểu. 

Học ngoại ngữ cũng vậy, tôi không học chi tiết, mà học tổng quát, đọc cho HIỂU, rồi viết lại, đọc lại, viết theo ý mình, ví dụ đọc Notre Dame de Paris, tôi viết lại, mẹ tôi đọc, cầm cây chổi lông gà rượt tôi chạy có cờ.


Vì tôi viết ông cha Claude Frollo bỏ dòng tu lấy cô Esmeralda! 

Và đó là cách làm sao mà 12 tuổi tôi đọc được Notre Dame de Paris, còn viết lại 1 cách rất lâm ly bi đát nữa! 

Ở trường trung học, tôi viết rất nhiều, viết chê bai, viết chúc tụng, v.v... Voltaire, Descartes, Rousseau, v.v... và thế là rành philosophy, sociology, history, hồi nào không hay, do phải đọc sách nhiều mới viết chê, khen họ được. 

GS Pháp không ngại ý tưởng, miễn là tôi viết có lý là được. 1 năm ở Paris, tôi viết có thể đến cả chục ngàn trang, mỗi ngày 50-100 trang. Đa số đáng liệng thùng rác, nhưng qua đó tôi HỌC rất nhiều.

Chứ theo kiểu VN, phải nắn nót, thầy cô trách mắng từng chút từng chút, phải theo "bài văn mẫu", thì suốt đời đa số học sinh chẳng rành cả tiếng Việt, sử Việt!" 

Chủ Nhật, 19 tháng 2, 2012

Su's second short fiction story


Undeniable Truth

I hear and see you everywhere… I hear you in the back seat of my car, yelling and laughing and screaming and singing. Your voice is always deafening and annoying. It drowns the engine’s sound and turns my favorite songs into meaningless blabbering. I see you at the dining table with your bold head, refusing to eat broccoli but choosing to mess with the forks and spoon instead. I hear your hurry footsteps at the door, excited to tell me your day, no matter how ordinary and mundane it was. I see you on the blank page that I write every day for a living. I see you alone on the balcony, watching the bright stars. Whenever you asked me to join you, I just wanted to say: “Get real! You make me sick!” But I did not. I was too tired to talk every single time.
Why the f**k won’t you leave me alone?
I got away from you. I swear to god that after several nights woken up soaked in sweat I did not dare think about you. If it were not for Ralph, you would have never been born, and I would have never been your father, at least not in my mind.

Ralph and his wife, who go to the same church as I, invited me to stay with them last weekend. After some talking, Ralph and I went out to get some chicken for dinner and also to pick up Julia, one of their daughters. As soon as we entered the supermarket, he did not go to the food section but walked along the cashier stands, and stopped after a few minutes searching for something, or someone.
“That is my older daughter Alicia,” he said and pointed at a cashier girl in uniform like others with the ponytail and big round earrings, “She works very hard to keep this job so she won’t talk to us. She doesn’t want the manager to catch her not focusing”. And so we just stare at the girl working for like five minutes until she turned around. The smile she wore on when talking with her customer quickly turned into a frown when she saw us. Alicia continued working, but the smile has disappeared and she would sometimes look at us stealthily, the what-do-you-want-from-me look. As if we could read each other’s mind, Ralph and I stride big steps to get the chicken and get out of there, without saying anything else. When we returned to the car, he let out a deep sigh and said:
“You know, sometimes I just feel like Alicia just don’t like me as her father. I mean, I love the fact that she is devoted to her work and such, but…” He stopped halfway, like he was choking on something. This made me think of you, the one that I spent bottles of tequila to forget[TA1] . I was glad that you were dead, because you would make me suffer like him when you grow up. I would have to endure that sight, and I would most likely teach you how to respect your dad with my fists. You would cry and say that you hate me, that you wish you were never born or have never had a father like me. Thank god I got rid of those pesky annoyances, just simply because you got blood cancer and could not be cured. You became weaker and weaker every day, until you could only lie on your bed, whispering breaths of air to me and your mom…
Ralph disrupted my flow of memories by start calling his wife. The fact that you, my worst fear, fade out of my mind usually make me relief. But when his wife did not answer after two calls, I wished that she had a car accident and died. That would be something dramatic to write about, I giggled at the idea.
We went to pick Julia up at her aunt’s house the next day. Since Ralph’s house is very far from school, Julia has to stay with her aunt for most of the week, and only comes back home for the weekends. While I was admiring the design of the aunt’s house, which is elegant and luxurious like the houses of dukes in the old times, the annoying dogs kept barking relentlessly. So I kicked them to shut them up. And they did, just like the old saying: “only coward dogs will bark loudly”.
“Dad, please! Mary is having a big party at her house, they have wings and pizza and ice cream cake. Can I go?” Julia asked while we were watching TV. Her tone was high and her eyes were opening wide, making them look like two glittering emeralds. She was looking for one answer only.
“Just a little bit dear” Ralph said “I will drive you there at 7 sharp”
“But… But that is like another two hours of doing nothing!”
“Don’t make me change my mind, Julia. I just want you to stay here so we can have some quality time together.” Ralph said, occasionally glancing at me who was pretending to ignore their conversation. The entire family and I then went for a walk. It was nice to enjoy the fresh air once in a while. Only at these moments could I be free from the stifling atmosphere created by the limiting walls of a house. We said nothing to each other, just indulged ourselves in the beautiful scenery. When we have walked about a mile, Julia stopped walking and started to use her boots to splash the water puddle nearby. Ralph and his wife were in front of us, unaware of Julia. I shook my head, knowing exactly what was going to happen next to this family. On the way back to the house, we met Julia standing with one foot, trying to get something out of her boots.
“Julia, if you can get rid of that attitude, you will be much more successful” Ralph said. I was amazed by how calm he was at that moment.
“Sorry that my boots were stuck in the mud” With a slight smile on her face, Julia answer, her eyes fixed on the road ahead “I thought you guys… would come back for me, but you all just kept walking.”
At that moment I couldn’t help but imagine Julia working at the cashier stand, staring at me. It was that same look, same facial expression. Suddenly I was filled by a feeling of pity for all those parents in the world. They embrace and cherish their children, even when the child is not even born. All the love and caring and time were devoted to the baby, only to see the stubborn attitude and ungratefulness when their kids grow up. When we sit down and ponder, we will certainly realize that parents are like saints, their love is limitless and they don’t ask for anything in return. I felt special. I am one of few fathers who could keep his kid’s kisses and hugs, hand-drawn birthday cards, paintings of our family in crayon forever, before all are replaced with moments of awkward and depressing silence.
That day, I arrived to Ralph’s house just on time. Had I been late for just a couple of seconds, Ralph would have had a hard time of getting all the vomit off the road.[TA2]
Today is one of the days that I have a full bottle of tequila waiting for me on the table when I wake up. The heater was left on too high, and the radio was still playing. With the bottle on my hand, I entered the bedroom. Your mom was sleeping soundly, so different from the woman that stayed up every night to take care for you in hospital. I went to your room, which I had locked and prohibited anyone from going in since you died. I smelled your clothes. Every breath I inhale made you become more vivid: your blue eyes, bold head, gaped teeth that you do not hesitate to show when smiling. My shirt was soaked with sweat.
Panting, I rushed back to the kitchen, smashed the bottle against the wall and started gulping water until I could not take in anymore. I wished I could have a “Julia” or “Alicia” to stare and say that she hates me, that she wishes she has never been born. Ralph is just so damn lucky.
Now I’m screwed. Your voice keeps echoing in my head and it would just not stop, your trembling near-to-whisper voice:
“Momma, Papa, don’t worry about me. I’m just going to go to a happy place where people dance and eat and have fun every day, right mom? Just don’t think about me, knowing that I am perfectly safe.”
Yeah right.

[TA1]Lik!!!
[TA2]confusing

A home-work writing - Kidnapping

Bài tập là viết về một tội phạm mà phải loại bỏ yếu tố phạm tội (tức là làm sao cho nó không sặc mùi phạm tội)


Last week, as I jogged along the deserted road, my T-shirt soaked with sweat, when suddenly...


Oh wait! There is something you need to know.  I lost my child when he was only five years old. He was a bright, handsome kid. God was too cruel, taking him away one month after he had measles. Measles! Can you believe that? He was all I had; he was the glue adhered our small family together. But he was still somewhere in this world, I knew it. 


I knew he cannot just leave me like that. So as I said, I was jogging and thinking about my miserable life when I suddenly I saw… my boy. He was standing there, playing with the soccer ball like he used to, in front of a big red house. 


Although he wore different clothes than the last time I saw him, I could still recognize his smooth white skin and hair like strands of sunlight. I remembered myself bursting into tears, running to him and giving him a big warm hug. 


Although he did not say anything to me and denied his own mother, it was fine. I was a bad momma, who worked all day and did not care for him, so he might hated me. “But I can fix that! As soon as we get home I will bake him cookies the way he liked it and play with him all day,” I thought. So I scooped him up with my arms and started walking back home. Gracious god! What have I done to make him hate me so much? 


He started to cry, yell and punched my chest continuously. Each stroke from his tiny hands was sharp and painful, like a knife stabbing my heart brutally.  After what seemed like eternity, he cried himself to sleep, just as I stopped to rest in a small forest. Having laid him down onto a old, dusty log, I went to the river nearby. The water was fantastic and tasty that day, it tickled my senses and refreshed my mind. I stored some in my water bottle for him too.


But when I came back, he was gone…


My mind stopped working and my arms drooped as if there were no muscles in it. The next thing I know was the surroundings running towards me, and wind blew furiously by my ears. I could not lose him anymore; I would not let my dear child be taken from me again. “Willie, Where are you?” I shouted out loud as I ran through trees and bushes, but only my own echo answered me. 


At that moment it felt like the whole world was collapsing right before my eyes. Tears flew from my eyes and dropped to the ground. Maybe the higher power have heard my prayers and sympathized with me, so I when I looked up from the ground I found him! He was running too, but his little feet did not allow him to go far. “Oh dear Willie, you should have told me you wanted to play hide and seek!” I thought. And I leaped forward, holding him by the arms. I cried, shedding the tears of happiness. And he cried too, maybe he was like me, so happy to find his momma again.

Su's fourth Pontefract article

Now that we are going towards the end of winter term and spring term is near, the question that hasn’t yet been answered arises once more. 

This question is so important that it requires the entire school, both students and faculty, to sit down and ponder carefully in order to find the answer: should we keep the new schedule for spring term (and on) or not? 

In this article we will look at the quotes from students and faculty, whose identity is hidden to create a more comfortable for people to state their opinion, about the negative side of the new schedule. Undeniably, we have to thank and appreciate the effort that many faculties have put in creating the new schedule. However, for a body of 391 students, there will be an inevitable discrepancy in the opinions about the schedule.

The most common complaint about the schedule is its effect on day students. One day student commented: “I have many mornings when I come into class ready for a nap. I might as well wear pajamas to class because of this schedule! Especially being a day student, you don't get anywhere as much sleep as a student living on campus. This is a major disappointment to me and some of my fellow day student friends. This idea should be thought over with more consideration of people from all points of view next time. Thank you”

Some day students have members in the family that have to go to school early, and the day student has to go too for convenience. Therefore, the amount of sleep some day students have don’t increase, but they get tired by waiting half an hour more before class starts, stretching their day unnecessarily.

Beside the conflict between day students and the schedule, some students complained that the new schedule is too routine and boring in the order of blocks. One student commented: “The order of the classes gets routine and extremely boring. I need variety.” Before the new schedule was released, some students complained that they could not remember the blocks, and this element was also brought into the discussion of the schedule committee. 

However, now some students feel that the new schedule is mundane with its alphabetical order. People will always know what class will come next every week, and this might have a negative effect on students’ performance in class.

Also, Pomfret has to consider what direction it plans to head toward as a school. By reducing one full block, five minutes of each classes and all the Saturday classes, we have cut down a lot of academic time. One student commented: “No schedule is perfect; students are missing the 8th block (a free for most and used for study and/or play and relaxation)”, another student said: “It occupied my valuable H block, we should have eight blocks, especially for those who needs to take all eight courses”. This need for more time to study has some crazy logic to it. 

Pomfret has numerous electives, including art courses, to offer. By reducing one block, most of the students can’t experience the wide array of interesting and awesome electives  because they are usually full with core courses. Because of this, we may consider the possibility of recovering the 8th block.

There are other minors complain about the schedule too, like some people talks about the unreasonable break on Wednesday, which is already a half day. “Why is the break on wendsday and not, for example, on Thursday?” one student questioned. Others don’t like the too many meeting blocks: “During the meeting blocks teachers always have meetings, so I can't meet with them.” And also: “the new schedule was supposed to create more time for meeting blocks; I find is hasn't achieved that objective; we still can't even find time to meet as advisee groups.

The schedule is and will still be a topic open for debate for a long time before we can decide to keep it or not. Until then, we have to make a lot of surveys to find out how people feel about the new schedule

Su's third Pontefract article

Teacher's past: Mr Marshall Eaton

Mr. Eaton (Marshall) has been working at Pomfret for more than 36 years. This longest time working as a faculty has earned him the title: “Senior Master”. What is interesting is that he did not plan to be a teacher. “I was interested in becoming an engineer,” he said “I actually earned an engineer degree at Tufts University and also had a job moved from Boston to Texas”. 

So what had caused a sudden career change for this young engineer to become the most steadfast faculty at Pomfret? People will wonder because the two jobs seem to be irrelevant to one another. He answered me with a smile on his face: “I never thought I would teach here. I guess it all started at one time in … during which Pomfret was kind of short on math teachers. 

Mr. Per-Jan Ranhoff, who was a math teacher and also assistant of Headmaster at that time, knew about me so he asked me to teach for 6 weeks while the school searched for a new math teacher. I accepted. After that experience, I realized how much I loved working with students and teaching math, so I stayed and became their new math teacher!”

What a simple yet unbelievable story right? Well this next fact will be mind-blowing for some Pomfret students: Mr. Eaton is also a graduate from Pomfret School! That adds four more years to his time at Pomfret.  

Through him, we can know how Pomfret has changed over a long period of time in construction and in students’ life also. “Pomfret has a history of moving buildings from one place to another”, he said. He told me about how different the school campus was twenty years ago. Pine dorm used to be at the place of the Centennial Building, and the turf field and the student center did not exist. The house to the west of the football field was moved to create the turf field, and … The school campus has changed a lot, but not as much as the students’ life. “At the time I went to Pomfret, it was an all-boy boarding school and we all lived at the four “bricks” dorms,” he said “Pomfret has grown a lot, since there was only 210 students and about 32 faculties then”. 

I gasped in surprise and also horror when he said: “ We had to dress formally to every meal, since every meal was sit-down, in which the students serve food. That is a total of 20 sit-down meals a week. Only the brunch meal on Sunday was not sit-down.”  The school has also paid more attention to students’ life, such as weekend activities now.  Mr. Eaton’s favorite teachers were Mr. Bill Hrasky and Mr. Gene Roure, both worked in the science department. He still sees Mr. Roure occasionally because Mr. Roure lives about a mile from campus. These two teachers, he said, had sparked his interest in science, math and also his dream of becoming an engineer.

Recalling his studying time at Pomfret personally, he was full of distinctive memories: “I remember being the first group of day student to go to Pomfret, since it was an exclusive boarding school then. I also remember my ‘silver’ season of football (because they lost only one game – Writer)”. 

Mr. Eaton was a 3 year varsity football player, which was pretty impressive because it was so hard back then, and even now, for a sophomore to be on the Varsity football team. He eventually earned the most Varsity letters in his class, and still holds the schools’ record for Shot Put “partly because Pomfret does not offer that anymore,” he laughed. 

Mr. Eaton also recalls participating in the math team, helping the school win second place in the Amherst math meet. In Junior year, he was one of the first students who had exposure to computers, particularly the “PDP- 8”, which literally had only eight kilobytes of memory. 

Another technology means was the tele-type machine, which punched letters the user typed onto paper ribbons, and then the ribbons are put into “readers” to translate into text again.

I offer this paragraph exclusively to cherish the two personal experiences of Mr. Eaton ,to thank him for sharing with us, and also to end the column. When he was a student at Pomfret, he was one of the few students who had a car. This made him popular to the boarding students and to day students as well. Mr. Eaton, along with his 3 senior friends used a car to do business. Together they ran “The Lower Four Food Store”, which sold candy, donuts and hamburgers…etc. That meant that the tuck shop, at that time, had to close up because Mr.Eaton’s store stole all the “customers”, making no one want to go to the tuck shop for food anymore.