Was sagst du? 樣樣都德

The once-in-a-century storm at the start of March in Melbourne has almost ushered the end of summer, but fortunately the fond memories of summer have not been totally blown away. 三月初墨爾本的一場世紀狂風暴雨，差點把夏天打得落慌而逃，幸好夏日的回憶仍未被風雨徹底吹散和沖洗。 These memories are not confined to only this summer, but also include my reminiscences of the bygone days in Europe. 這些回憶不止於這個夏天，還包括我藉此緬懷歐洲零零星星的片段。 Not long after I came back from Hong Kong in early January, my family and I went for strawberry picking in the Mornington Peninsula just south of Melbourne. While there was a strawberry field just a stone’s throw away back in where I lived in Munich, this strawberry field in Mornington was a good 77 km from home in Melbourne! It was a fair drive, and we decided to break it up by stopping over in the seaside town of Dromana for lunch and the fresh breeze by its beach. 一月初剛從香港回來不久，我和一家人一同到墨爾本以南的摩寧頓半島（Mornington Peninsula）採紅草莓。從前在德國慕尼黑，紅草莓田近在咫尺，但摩寧頓半島的紅草莓園，離家足足77公里，去一趟採紅草莓就有如郊遊，而且因為車程長，我們中途也得在一個海濱小鎮Dromana稍事休息，吃頓中午飯和在海灘...

This morning after hanging out the laundry, I discovered a newly woven spider web, anchored on a pine shrub on one side and small bushes on another side. That was actually quite a large span, and the web itself was also quite large with a diameter of about 30 cm. It wasn’t too hard to spot the web under bright sunlight. 今天早上在後花園晾衣服後，驀然發現一個新的蜘蛛網。這個網一端繫在松樹，一端繫在較矮的花叢，展開來頗大，直徑有30厘米左右，在耀眼的陽光反射下顯而易見。 What made the web noteworthy was not its size – I’ve in fact seen larger ones, and won’t be surprised if they were spun by the same spider – but how effective it was. After 3 hours or so, 20 or 30 small flying insects have already fallen prey and were trapped by this web. I was quite stunned with the success of this web. Its size obviously helped, although there were also big gaps in between threads to allow so many other small insects to fly through. But it wouldn’t be a big surprise that those unsuspecting insects wound eventually get caught when they have flown enough times. The spider obviou...

Not long after I arrived at work yesterday, the departmental secretary led the electrical engineer of the institute into my office. The engineer asked if I had placed a job order for him through the phone. I was caught totally surprised, as I have neither made a phone call nor any job that required his attention. He insisted that it was someone called Geoffrey Kong who left a message on his phone, but my colleague told him that there were four people called Geoffrey or Jeffery in the whole department and asked him if he had the right Geoffrey/Jeffery. He was sure that the surname was indeed Kong. All I could tell him was that I had not made the job request at all. The stalemate went on for a couple of minutes, but just as the engineer was about to leave, someone told him that a light bulb needed to be changed in an office which belonged to another Jeffery. Happily for the engineer, his trip to my department wasn’t a total waste of time after all. 昨天剛上班，部門秘書帶着電器技工找我，那技工問我是不是有工作請求。我給他弄糊塗...