Happy Leap Day, everybody… now LEAP!
農曆二月十二日，古人叫做「花朝節」，是百花的生日。今年﹝壬辰百一年﹞花朝節是陽曆三月四日，請大家保密！！>>click<<

我們今晚到國家音樂廳聽Bobby McFerrin的演唱會~~我很想聽他潄口！
This evening we went to here Bobby McFerrin live at the National Concert Hall. I would love to hear him gargle!!
and I bet two thirds of the audience are making all sorts of strange sounds after they got home. We are.

今二月二日卯時春雷驟雨。

早上開前門，Tlahuy、Byajing躺在玄關，一步外有一條紅竹蛇(紫灰錦蛇)。你們兩個都沒看到嗎？
好了，遇上蛇第一步當然是把相機拿出來，「鼠牛虎兔龍~~~！」乖！拍好了，拿棍子推牠走。Yumin也來了，對蛇很好奇，用棍子擋住Yumin，蛇很快遁走。
好了，沒事了，可是我想，大概八、九年沒看到紅竹蛇，而且，以前看過的沒這麼大。很好，有蛇就表示生態健全。

到後門叫小朋友來吃飯，Byajing跑來，她奔跑真美~~~她踏過一條紅竹蛇！我叫阿超來看，是不是同一條？怎麼可能一下子看到兩條？肯定不是前門的那一條，但差不多大。牠們是不是剛約會完？相機！我靠近看；紅竹蛇被Byajing踩一腳沒反應，但我才拍了一張，牠倒退到石堆裏面去了。這是我第一次看到蛇倒退，動作與前進一樣快。真是奇妙！

This morning when I opened the front door, Tlahuy and Byajing were lying there waiting for us, and a step away there was a red bamboo rat snake. The dogs were totally oblivious to it. The first thing to do, of course, was to whip out the cameras and photograph it, say snaaaake! That done, I got a stick to nudge it away. Yumin came over to investigate, but didn't bark, apparently aware that it is non-poisonous. It left quickly.
It had been about eight or nine years since I had seen one of these, and none so large. Snakes mean the environment is healthy.
I walked to the back door to feed the dogs. Byajing came running. She's beautiful to watch running… and she ran right over another red bamboo rat snake! About the same size. Possible? I called Sabiy to come look. Could it be the same one? No, it was another snake. Two in one morning. Cameras! Maybe they were on a date? The snake didn't mind Byajing treading on it, but when I came close to get a photograph, it did something I had never seen a snake do: it reversed into a pile of rocks. Its movement in reverse gear was as smooth and swift as in forward. Nature never ceases to amaze me!

The scientific name of this snake is Elaphe porphyracea nigrofasciata
(Cantor, 1839)；我不知道泰雅語怎麼說，以前也問不出來，所以提議取名mqu ptasan，文面蛇。不覺得額上那條很像文面嗎？I have not been able to find the Tayal name for this snake, so I propose mqu ptasan: the snake with the tattooed face. It has the same stripe on its forehead that Tayal warriors had.

人生嘛，發奮圖強，拼命向上，最後跳進灰熊嘴裏。
that's life. Struggle against the current, fight for all you're worth, and just as you're about to reach your goal, you get eaten by a grizzly bear.

This is weird. This morning, parts of the sky have turned blue, and there's this bright, shining ball up in the sky. It's been so long since I've seen it that I forget what you call it… the stun… the soon… oh yeah, the sun, that's what it is.
This has been an unusually rainy fall, winter, and spring, even for northern Taiwan. Taipei had the rainiest December on record, with about thirty hours of sunlight throughout the whole month (at this latitude, about eleven hours of daylight on solstice day.) Wulai probably got less than a quarter of that amount of sunshine.
Don't you wish you lived in a rainforest?

奇怪，今年蛇都不怕冷。上個月破紀錄，十度溫度有龜殼花<(按)>，今晚Yumin一直吠，出去看，果然又是龜殼花，同樣十度溫度。怎麼解釋？
當然，先不解釋，先念佛，用一根長竿將來賓推進草叢，請他離開。
For some reason, snakes this year don't seem to mind the cold. Previously, the coldest I had ever seen a snake was 11C, a record broken last month by a snake, a qimbahu, out in ten degree C weather <(link)>. This evening I went down to see what Yumin was barking about. He was facing down a coiled qimbahu. I got a stick, told the snake some mantras, and nudged it into the grass, asking it to find someplace else, and for crying out loud, isn't it past your bedtime?

書展那幾天在公館捷運站看到兩個大一大二模樣的男生，顯然從書展回來，各背一個很大很大的包包，很明顯買了電玩。包包畫的是日本漫畫形的少女，眼睛像茶盤大，鼻子一小點，嘴巴又一小點，穿的很少，胸前兩個西瓜等等，一點也不像真實的女孩子，可是也沒關係，因為會買那種電玩的男生，這輩子也搭不上真實的女孩子。
我心中油然而生一種很幸福的感覺。我那個年齡，時間都花在看韓非子、論語、史記、經史百家雜鈔、詩經、古文觀止。我真的很幸運！
年輕歲月，你是花時間嗎？或者投資時間？
The mammoth Taipei International Book Exhibition has come and gone. One day during the Exhibition, at a subway station, I saw two college boys, freshmen or sophomores, who had obviously come back from the Exhibition. Each had obviously bought computer games, because each shouldered a gigantic bag, covered with Japanese manga style illustrations of "sexy" girls: eyes the size of CDs, tiny nose, tiny mouth, scantily clad, watermelon size breasts, bearing no similarity to a real girl: the obvious auxiliary rule being that it doesn't matter, because anybody who would buy that sort of computer game is never going to get anywhere near a real girl anyway.
But this caused me to reflect how lucky I have been. At that age, I was working my ways through the great works of Chinese literature and philosophy, grappling with challenging ideas that still stimulate, forty years down the line.
We say, spend time. Did you spend your youth? Or did you invest it?

美國很多自由、人權的概念、以及憲法結構，源于Iroquois易洛魁印地安聯盟。
易洛魁 (亦名Haudenosaunee)聯盟建立于西元一一四二年前後 (宋高宗紹興年間)，議會迄今已連續開八百七十年。
他們有一點，我認為臺灣亟須效法：每次開會儀式中強調，今天討論的事情，要考慮到七代的子孫。
七代！臺灣議員能想到七天後的事已經是人民很大的福祉，還七代！
另外，他們議會上不許任性、不得輕浮，需莊重、要嚴肅。臺灣立法院已淪為國際笑話。很像個穿西裝打領帶的幼稚園：一不順心就鬧脾氣。自己情緒沒能管好，怎能管理臺灣？臺灣政府形象隨著立法院鬧事而喪失地位；哪一天與中共有甚麼過節，外人會想，反正他們議會只會鬧，最愛抗爭，不如讓中共去管一管。
我們應該要求所有立法委員要長大，要成熟！君子動口不動手。如果在議會甩杯子、掀桌子、破口大罵、甚至動手推人、打人、踢人、咬人、吐口水等等不成熟的行為，立即消除立法委員的資格，並限制下屆不得參加選舉。
(我本來想說，立委動粗，立即推出去斬，梟首示眾。但這麼個法律可能比較難通過，所以我們稍微緩和一下。)
想想看。如果所有立法委員冷靜、理智，就事論事，謀臺灣七代之福，該有多好！

我們自己要先好好修，才能有偌大的福報。

六藝有射，可以修定，又好玩。從小偶玩弓箭，都以三指引弦，但一直想學韘射(韘，或謂扳指，套右拇指引弦)。
昨拜訪弓人卓漢卿先生，他送我一枚他製的韘。今天好不容易沒下雨，我拿我最輕的弓~~蔡明川製的二十二磅單體竹弓~~立靶三步，引弦‧…‧還沒引滿，第一枝箭一下子飛出去了！再慢慢練習。韘與三指射非常不同：幾乎不著意即射。感覺上，用韘，比較需要聽弓聽箭。
I have always enjoyed archery, and have for a long time wanted to learn how to shoot with a thumb ring. Yesterday we paid a visit to the bowyer Mr Cho Hanching. He kindly gave me a thumb ring he made.
Amazingly, it didn't rain this afternoon, so I got out my lightest bow, a 22# bamboo bow, and stood three paces from the target. The first time I pulled the string, the arrow flew out at half draw. I worked on it for a while. Shooting with a thumb ring is a whole different game from the three finger "Mediterranean" draw. It requires you pay more attention to the bow and the arrow.

說文：韘：射決也。所以拘弦，以象骨，韋系，著右巨指。从韋枼聲。詩曰：「童子佩韘。」

清、丘逢甲：元夕無月
三年此夕無月光，明月多應在故鄉。
欲向海天尋月去，五更飛夢渡鯤洋。

今答：元夕見月
半祀逢朢無月光，每天多雨在山鄉，

欲向嫦娥索月來，日落飛月渡峰巒。

不經刺骨冰雪，難曉春花之可喜、
未經霃霃久雨，焉知曦光之可貴。

現扗是壬辰年春~~
大家要有心理準備。壬屬水，辰為龍，春乃一年之首；首，頭也。所以壬辰春就是水龍頭；水龍頭是做甚麼的呢？就是放水~
雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨

今天去了一個不該去的地方~臺北國際書展~~也還好，買了十幾本而已~~
Today we went to the Taipei International Book Exhibition, one of the world's largest. Through valiant self-restraint, we came home with only a dozen new books. It was a struggle, though!
and happy Groundhog's Day to you.

政府早涉入烏來，讓我最感到僥倖的是，當年文學素養猶存，所以取的地名很不錯。村落有忠治、孝義、信賢、福山；可能還必須為現代人解釋，「信賢」源于『武經』的『黃石公三略』：「夫為國之道，恃賢與民，信賢如腹心，使民如四肢，則策無遣。」均為有涵養的地名，至于瀑布取名「雲仙」，真有一筆。
看看近年取的名字：情人步道。多乏味！
淡水有情人橋，臺東也有一座情人橋，臺中有情人木橋，基隆有情人湖，嘉義大埔有情人公園，高雄茄苳有情人碼頭，新竹也有情人碼頭…夠了沒有？
這個年代嘛，誰愛情人？現代人情淡薄，這些俗氣、沒想像的名字根本不合現代人的心聲。應該改為適應時代的名字：
簡訊公園
臉書碼頭
愛鳳橋
iPod步道
上網公路