太长了，懒得proofread了。。。

"How come she can marry such a handsome and rich guy, but I am still single?"

"Why is he making all the money? I am so much better than him?"

"Am I hallucinating, or is she getting prettier and younger?"

...

The enigmas go on, and the resentment piles up. In China, there is a time-honored yet straightforward saying, "comparison with others cuts deeper than a knife." Ever since the day of a baby's birth, it has been subject to various comparions, voluntary or involuntary, ranging from appearance, career, to love life. In the case of our mental check to those around us during the lunar new year, the verdict is in: the world is OCCASIONALLY or ALWAYS unfair, and there are always people less worthy living a better life.

The world we live in is riddled with things or people beyond our comprehension, pushing curious-natured people to seek answers with science or religion. We call the things and people we don't understand "enigmatic" and the try to give them strange explanations, which reminds me of a story: 

A group of people are visiting a guru in the morning, to observe and learn from his wisdom. When the guru was dressed and came out of the door, he stood there, closed his eyes, frowning, and started moving his right hand up and down his belly. 

"See? The master is contemplating on the meaning of life!" one observer exclaimed in excitement, which was immediately agreed upon by his companions who held their breath, locked their eyes on the guru's movement, and waited.

"Poof!" a blinding sound came from the rear of the guru, who took a sigh of relief, looking content, and murmured, "much better, much better."

...

The guru was clearly farting, which had somehow been interpreted as something spiritual or complicated. The group of people must feel embarrassed or even humiliated afterwards. But the guru was not really doing anything. He was just standing there, minding his own business. I guess the idea we can take from this story is that there is no need to use difficult assumptions to explain things that could have been quite easy to understand.

When I came out of the bathroom this morning, my roomate casually asked, "why were you in there for so long? I thought you were drowning in the toilet" Then I realized I must have lost track of time reading Yahoo news with my mobile while going. 

This kind of things happen almost every morning lately. Yet, for some strange reason, I was caught up in the realization, my mind drifting to the question my friends asked me a few days ago when my new TOEFL score was published, "how come you always do well in exams despite a lack of preparations?"

Ever since high school, I have never really prepared for any tests, important or trivial--college entrance exams, CET, SET, TOEFL, IELTs, etc. I hated exams, never did many exercises, was never the best, but was always able to swim comfortably in the top five or top ten percentile. In college, my roomate, who was from the same hometown I came from and was quite competitive and proud of his English was outraged when he found out that I got nearly 700 in CET band 4 and 6 during the freshman year, yet he was trailing far behind me. In his mind, I always skipped classes to watch movies, I never spent time with any vocabulary books, and I did not even spend time doing module tests before the tests. Naturally, he assumed I did not deserve the scores and got lucky. To be honest, this issued was only troubling to him. I did not even care, neither did I wonder why I did well in English tests. To me, it is very simple: it is a test of English skills; I love reading English novels and watching English films, so it is only natural for me to do well in all tests.

However, my roomate was over-complicating the whole thing by focusing too much on the things I did not do but was clearly considered very important to him. It is very similar to the situation of losing weight. There must be one person around you who claims that he or she always eats a lot, never work out, but is always skinny. We see that on the interviews of celebrities all the time, "I never stop eating but never gain weight. I don't know why."

Usually, this is the time you want to smack the smug smile off their faces. Then comes a wave of resentment, accusing all gods for being unfair and giving you a body that easily puts on weight. Some people even go so far as to look for explanations, such as, "some people just have very fast metabolism." I used to buy into the same load of crap, but not anymore. If we take a approach as suggested by Einstein, the answer is quite simple: our body is like a bank account, and the energy we take in is like the money. The more money we put in, the bigger our bank accout becomes. That's it. If some one claims they put a lot more money in the bank but their account never changes, something is wrong. Either they have been seceretly spending the money, or they do so unconsciously.

Conan used to say, "remove all the unlikely elements, then whatever remains, no matter how improbable it may seems, must be the truth." Sometimes, I did feel good of myself for doing well on my job and all the tests that come with it without much preparation, but as I take a closer look this morning, I realize that I did prepare for all of them, only my preparation resides in different time and engagements from others. 

When they were playing computer games or watching reality shows during the weekend, I was enjoying English novels. When they were sleeping until 10 am during the holidays, I was having a great time reading tennis news and writing interesting topics. When they were laughing at sleezy jokes from the mobile on the toilet, I was listening to SSS and amazed at the fun-facts of different disciplines. Even if I spend 80% of my time not working, travelling somewhere or watching films at home, I would take notes of all my whimsical ideas about teaching and writing, and convert them into my own curriculum instead of relying on others' books or methods for teaching. It is not about being origional or creative, it is about being loyal to who I am and what I do.

I once read a very sensible article defending many phenomena accused by many in the gay community as "unfair". It goes someting like this, "when you complain that cutes guys are not talking to you but to someone with a great body, have you noticed the time he has devoted to the gym? When you accuse all gods of giving you a generic face, have you considered the amount of time the good-looking ones spend on making themselves look presentable? What's easier to understand is, when you are angry at the society for not giving you any chance for success, have you idea that those successful wake up at 4 am in the morning and forsake all their holidays?"

This entry is not an attempt to defend anything, although, to be honest, it does sound more and more like it with every word. Don't you just hate it when a great idea is spoiled by bad execution... I guess what I am trying to say is that the world is quite simple, hush yet simple. I used to have a lot of questions, much like those I have presented in today's writing. But as time goes by, many confusions have been cleared, and it occurs to me that there is no overnight success or dum luck for those in the battlefield of career or love. If a mediocre guy is together with a cute one, then either the cute guy is somehow flawed or the mediocre guy is well-endowed, in fame, money, or...bed.