Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Total Solar Eclipse - 行/Travel

Total solar eclipse is when the shadow of the moon cast on you. So, it's a meeting of the shadow of the moon, the sunshine and you on the planet Earth.

However, it's not always easy especially if you stay in the same place. Total solar eclipse is not a rare event if you can travel. Life is funny in the sense that you can move, you can fight for something you really wanted.

In order to chase the shadow of the moon, we chose to travel.

Weizixia is a very remote place, a small town with less than 1000 people. In order to be there, we took a very early bus from Hong Kong to Shen Zhen, three friends with a common goal started there. As a amateur astronomer, we brought our gears as well.


So after that bus trip, we took taxi to the Shen Zhen airport. And after more than 8 hours of flight, we arrived Urumqi, the only big airport that we can reach. China is really big! It has a saying that if you don't even go to Xinjiang, you don't know how big China is. Yes, it's real. I can't imagine to fly that far but yet we were still within China.


It has a 2 hours difference, but for the sake for administrative ease, we share the same clock. So after our dinner, we arrived the train station nearly on the next day, that means we have travelled for more than 20 hours already to this point, but we were still far away from Weizixia.


Actually, I loved to travel on train. You can sleep along the trip and thus you actually use zero time for travelling, nothing is wasted. However, this is not the case this time. The compartment is very crowdy and hot at night, I couldn't sleep well until maybe 3:00am.


Ok, after another 9 hours, we arrived Hami.


The next big city that we can reach with mass transit. We still have another 11 hours of bus travel, and now we met all the friends from Hong Kong, over 140 of us! The local police even arranged a police car to open way for us.

How long did we travel? I forgot. Just extremely exhausting, no way to take a bath. I don't even brush my teeth. Sugar free chewing gum is the only viable option.

Upon arrival, we found our "tent" is very undesirable as well, but then we have no choice. Anyway, we all say, if we can see the totality, everything is worth.
And you know, we actually can:-

So, life is a means to create "coincidence". We travelled so far and so long to chase the shadow, and I know many people did try, but only part of their rendezvous success... since cloud can move in to ruin every effort.

--

日全食就是一個巧合, 但這是一個可以捕捉的巧合...

你要守株待免, 可能等一生也沒有這機會, 但只要你去追, 幾乎每年都有機會!

我們為著這個月球的影子, 跑到老遠的小村落, 遇到許多本來沒有機會相遇的人, 也看到許多本來沒有機會看到的事情!

生命就是製造相會的能力, 有生命就有選擇權; 但當然, 一切還當看天意

我們追趕了好幾天, 險些就讓一點點雲破壞了一切!

機會 - 於人來說當然要爭取, 但努力了, 卻不一定會成功!

似乎很悲, 但這卻正是生命有趣的地方!!!

看到了! 這當然極其中要, 但過程當中的領悟和感受, 也十分寶貴

這是認識世界, 也是認識自己的好機會...

我碰上了一首好歌, 碰上了一班好人, 碰上了月影, 也遇上了自己的某一面!

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