Forgiveness

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To some people, forgiveness means a complete victim-offender reconciliation without offenders' efforts, which gives offenders opportunities to hurt victims again, and victims should no longer whine over the pain (basically a task of Saint!); to some people, forgiveness simply means victims' giving up the ideas of revenge, shifting focus from the past to current, moving on with their own life.

Forgiveness = X - Revenge (X is a "variable" defined by different persons).

My Life Relativity - Offence

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Offence, to many people means some serious physical or verbal attack, but to some people, it can be a few words that state a difference opinion.

Offence =  physical or mental sensitivity / physical or verbal attack or verbal assertion  .

My Life Relativity - Suffering

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When facing same adversity, persons with less endurance suffer more than those with stronger endurance.

Suffering = adversity/endurance

My Life Relativity - Courage

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It takes much more courage to a person who has vertigo standing on the second floor balcony than to a healthy person climbing a thousand foot high cliff.

Courage = Difficulty/Potentiality

Knowledge & Wisdom

Knowledge is gained by learning, wisdom by insight.

My Thoughts On Tolerance

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Tolerance is refer to differences (ideas, life style, etc.), not to offence, abuse or injustice. (The "tolerance" to latter is better to be defined as "forgiveness".)

Tolerance to injustice is the best "gift" humans offered to Evil. It does help injustice prevails.

A healthy relationship is built on understanding, or accepting/embracing (without understanding) each others' differences, NOT on one-sided tolerance to mistreatment, or abusive behaviors.

If violence were not avoidable, I rather see guilty persons punished by violence, than seeing innocent people keeping suffering by never ending violence that escaped by "tolerance".

Quotes From "Dexter"

"You used God, not another way around."
"Light cannot exist without darkness. Each has its purpose. If there is the purpose to my darkness, maybe it is to bring some balance to the world. "
Dexter - "a father, a son, a serial killer"

 

Harmony of Friendship --- Inspired by "Golden Girls"

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I always believe that true harmony is built on embracing the differences, not on conformity.

Making "Golden Girls" as example: each of them has distinguishable personality: Dorothy is so wise and sharp that she could throw "judgement" at any moment like "Goddess"; Rose is so naive that she virtually believes everything; Blanche is so incredibly sexy that she believe she is obliged to be the first one to attract all men's attention among her friends (actually among all women on this planet). However they get along perfectly well - each of them totally accept others' differences, and support each others special quality. This means, among three of them, no one would constantly go against Dorothy's wit, scorn Rose's being innocent, or be judgmental about Blanche's being "bitchy". This acceptance makes each of them feel so appreciated. And the reason they could do so, I believe is because each of them feel content about who she is (in other words, feel completely ok with their own "limitation"). If not, they would not feel comfortable about what others two have, and be harsh on each others', compete with each other with what they lack, thus the harmony is impossible.

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Jealousy might be one of major causes of breaking up (or fading away) of friendships. So what is jealousy? I think it is basically an uncomfortable feeling toward the fact that others possess something we lack. To feel comfortable about who we are, requires not only being content about what we have, but also what we lack. I once wrote, the wisdom is not measured by the amount of our knowledge, but how much we know about our limitation. The harmony shown within these Golden Girls demonstrates this idea perfectly: each of them know exactly what's their own limitation is, do not "invade" others' "specialty" easily. Therefor, even if each of them has different level of intelligence (with Dorothy on the top obviously), they are all WISE girls to me.

Of course I do not mean our intelligence or strength should not be challenged. No. As matter of fact, I believe Dorothy loves challenge, Rose does not mind criticizing, Blanche enjoys competing, but, deep in their hearts, they respect each others' quality, prove this quality as their strength. And I sincerely consider this approval as true meaning of "embracing the difference".

"Golden Girls" - the friendship of dream!

4 Musts For Personal Happiness

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1, decent physical health;
2, decent income that covers all basic expenses;
3, freedom;
4. love (esp. self-esteem).

Everything else is secondary.

I Love "Golden Girls"

I don't remember when was the first time I watched this sitcom, all I remember is whenever I saw this show on TV, those girls made me laugh!
I never felt tired about this show. Why? Not because of "brilliant" story lines, not because of any magnificent philosophy, or psychological stunts, but simply because of vivid "personalities" of those "golden girls": the always wise and sharp Dorothy; innocent and naive Rose; and that sexist woman of planet Blanche. Of course, I won't miss that "the older she gets, the naughtier she is" Sophia - who seems to be so disconnected biologically with her daughter Dorothy but psychologically she does have the best chemistry with her giant daughter.

Susan Harris was the writer of this show. She was also a victim of CFS/ME, which let her wrote an episode "Sick and Tired" - a humorous demonstration of a disease that is still yet to be understood. Below was the part of this episode when Dorothy "claims" she was sick but it ends out that Blanche is the "sick" one. I do think this is the best performance of Blanche (Rue Mcclanahan) in the whole show!

Really, each of these girls is a genius to me (with Susan Harris behind all of them). Words cannot express how much I adore their daily plain but fun life.

The Circulation Of Life

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Don't feel, but LOOK;
Don't look, but SEE;
Don't see, but MEMORIZE;
Don't memorize, but UNDERSTAND;
Don't understand, but (just) FEEL GOOD.

Relativity vs. Absolute

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In my previous post I quote Liu Xiaobo's view on "absolute". However, I just realized that based on Einstein's special relativity, all relativity of space and time is based on a single ABSOLUTE: the invariant speed of light. (experts please point out if I am wrong)
I always consider myself a skeptic so basically I doubt everything. And at the same time I would keep a possibility in my mind that there might be an "absolute" exists. It seems Einstein's theory proves I am right. Of course, if there is no ABSOLUTE, where does RELATIVITY  come from? 

Friendship "Crisis"

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Since my life got into "middle age" problem, which was a combination of my health decline and career struggle, I found I was also in relationship crisis - my old friends were all estranged from my life, more or less, one by one.

I often wonder, what made my friendships faded after all these years (25 plus)? I don't know, but I at least know it happened during my "middle age crisis". Most of my friends take my struggle as an action driven by my "selfishness" ("you only think of yourself, but not your family, your parents", as one of my friend pointed out), but in fact it is an action of individualism, which seems to be the same by their understanding. This fundamental difference between my old friends and I seems to be very hard to overcome just by my effort (I tried very hard to explain, but most of my effort were taken as "excuses").

I have to wonder, what had really kept my friendships for this long (25 plus years is not a short term)? For so many years I thought I had the best friends in the world, I thought they would accept me no matter what. And I do not find myself changed, except my thoughts: individualism, a gradually matured life attitude during my life in America. I guess this is it. It was along this "change", my old friends saw a "different" me, who had so many useless ideas they were not familiar with. I must say, none of my old friends are fond of "thinking" (I had these type of friends mostly because I grew up and educated in art environment).

As I always understood, Chinese culture is a culture of uniformity, not diversity. I consider I was one of "victim" of such culture. Of course, I should not jump into conclusion that I have already lost these friends, and I am sure in future it is totally possible that we embrace each other again. However, meanwhile, there is no better way to deal with this situation than "looking forward". Plus, I no longer live in that country, neither should I live in the past anymore.

Between Extraordinary & Ordinary - A Forgotten Artist Guan Zilan

I grew up in an artists' family, entered the same art college my parents worked, but I never really knew anything about Guan Zilan - a woman artist who died in 1986 (I was in college at the time ). I seem to remember I heard of her name, but never paid any attention to it. Yesterday during a discussion in a Chinese forum regarding my article about value of art works, one person mentioned her name again. Out of curiosity, I googled her name and found her works. Immediately, I fell in love with her art. 

Simplicity, boldness, unpredictable composition was my first impression. And the freedom she had in her paintings amazes me: even though I did see very little traces of the influence of western modern art, but overall, I saw herself: a distinguish style that mixed both Chinese and Western, low toned in subject matters which are playfully & cheerfully depicted. Nothing is affected, but natural, fluent and beautiful.

Guan Zilan, born in 1903, graduated in University of Shanghai (in art department), went to Japan continuing her art education in 1927. In Japan, she was influenced by western modern art, especially post-impressionism and fauvism. She came back to China in 1930, and worked as an art professor in an art college of Shanghai. During that time she was quite active and made herself  a very famous young woman artist. Married when she was 35, she had one daughter. 

After 1949, she pretty much lived like a "hermitess", especially during Cultural revolution, she did not paint anything. Beside her regular job (based on internet source she worked in a history & art museum in Shanghai), she lived as a plain housewife until she died of heart disease in 1986.

Guan painted mostly oil paintings, in which I saw mostly "Chinese" style - a similar atmosphere I see in Chinese traditional (brush) paintings. I always have a thought on Chinese traditional painting, that due to certain limitation of traditional Chinese painting technique, contemporary Chinese (brush parinting) artists do not have to stick on traditional mediums, rather, they could adapt to western art technique and transmit Chinese art "spirit" in western art medium (such as oil painting or acrylic painting). I had this idea back when I was a student, when many artists struggled with creating "brand new" effects by using Chinese brush painting materials. The fact is, that Chinese painting materials have very strict and limited attributes and can only produce certain special visual effects, and this limitation gives artists very little room to be creative and unique. However, since I believe that mediums and techniques are not the most important elements in art, working with western mediums can be a better choice for those who really want to be creative. Oil painting (and acrylic) might be the freest art medium in the world (in terms of effects) and it really gives artists maximum freedom to be unique. Furthermore, I do not believe technique alone can define "style", Western or Chinese. So, my point is, the spirit of Chinese art can be continued in western art technique. I think Guan Zilan proved my point. 

Guan's talent struck the world when she was young (both in Japan and China), but during communist era, she stayed as ordinary as possible. People knew her in real life mostly recognized her as a housewife and a widow (her husband died when she was 55). Art in China since 1949 has been tied to politics (Communism). Was it the reason that Guan did not paint that much anymore? Or she gave up painting simply because she found passion in her ordinary life as a wife and mother? No matter what reasons, during all those decades of her later years, within Chinese art circle almost nobody talked about her anymore. After she died quietly in 1986, as she wished, her ashes was scattered in West Lake of Huang Zhou City - one of the most beautiful lake that inspired most of her landscape paintings. 

Agatha Christie said "the best time to plan a book is while you're doing dishes". I wonder Guan would think the same way. Or maybe to her, washing dishes WAS as same as painting a masterpiece. After gaining such a fame as a young artist (she was the first Chinese woman artist who painted oil painting), it is said that she was happy and satisfied with her plain daily life. I believe that, because from her paintings, I do see a "plain" women with a "plain" heart, which resonates with every beautiful detail of the Nature. 

Guan was a beautiful old style women. Is God really fair to give her both beauty and talent? (Just kidding. :-)) However, both her career and personal life stayed low-toned. Maybe, it is exactly because of this quality of being "ordinary", Guan enjoyed her life in its maximum scale. From this view, being forgotten by this noisy world really does not do any damage to her life. 

Columbo: Try And Catch Me - A Masterpiece of Mystery

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I first heard of TV series Columbo was almost 15 years ago, when I was a student watching the movie "Wings of Desire" in graduate writing class. Professor mentioned that one of actors in the movie - Peter Falk also played Lieutenant Columbo in TV series of Columbo. I did not pay much attention untill 15 years later, when I finally started watching this show, and found it incredible. I actually have to rand this show as my #1 personal favorite mystery TV show (I like it even slightly better than Hitcock Presents. )

The episode I just watched is Try and Catch Me, with Ruth Gordon as killer - a well known wealthy mystery writer. I must say, while Peter Falk was just as good as usual (maybe even a little better), Gordon's performance is absolutely brilliant. She made the character so alive and pleasant, even though with a unthinkable murder she committed. Every conversation between murderer and lieutenant was witty and amusing, and how Columbo solve the puzzle at the end pushes the whole show to a breathtaking climax. It is truly an intelligent thriller! Without any bloody gruesome "special effects".

I have to agree with one of reviews of this show (from online), that the best part of Columbo is that from beginning of all episodes you "witnessed" the murders and know who are the killers, so the rest of show all your attention is channelled onto Columbo and the killers, watching how Columbo plays with them, and feeling tremendous satisfaction when Columbo - the seemingly slow-witted one - eventually outplays the bad ones - usually the arrogant hypocrites - and brings them to justice.

I enjoyed most of Columbo episodes I've watched, but this one - Try and Catch Me - renewed my passion to this TV show. I watched this episode twice with equal joy! Highly recommend for mystery fans!


P.S. just got the "news" that Peter Falk died in June of this year. R.I.P the best detective in history!

Reason of Falsifiability - Quote from Liu Xiaobo

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The biggest mistake within all mistakes humans ever made is avoiding making mistakes; the most foolish foolishness within all foolishness of humans is believing in absolutes; the weakest weakness within all weaknesses of humans is establishing power. There is no omnipotent power, not God, not science, not Truth itself. This is the enlightenment that "Reason of falsifiability*" brought to human kind.

--- Liu Xiaobo, Spirit of Reason





*"Reason of falsifiability" is my temporary translation which may not be entirely correct.

We Are Not (Only) Equal Before "God"

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Instead, we are equal before each others.

I found, after turning into Christians (or any other religions), many people learned to "tolerate", to tolerate something once made them unbearable, such as family violence, abuse, etc. In other words, after turning into religions, they learned to obey the power, simply because of the promising payback - "justice" in "next" life, or "happiness" in that "infinite" life. So "we are equal before God" in many cases (to me) sends a message as such: "we are not equal before each other".

Don't you find this a huge convenience for injustice to prevail? I do. Even though I understand their choices - we humans mostly ARE fragile, especially regarding to our capability of enduring loneliness. That's how many people rather choose yielding to injustice than living alone, rather choose following others' thoughts than believing themselves. And this temporary "harmony" composed by "tolerance" of weak side and "aggression" by powerful side does exist everywhere and last very very long, only interrupted by periodic "crusades" - a never disappeared collective violence.

P.S. I do understand that "we are equal before God" also sends a positive message: giving hope to this hopeless world. I believe that these two sides of same coin are not mutually exclusive.

What Is Art About?

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I've done quite a few essays in Chinese recently and one of them is about the value of art works (ha, I do take break from criticizing Chinese culture sometime). It is a long writing so I have no energy to translate all of them in English. However I am quite happy about the ending of this writing,which I shifted a little from "art works" to "art":

I don't think the essence of art is about "works", either "quantity" or "quality", rather, I believe it is about experiencing life - the wonder of life and the beauty of life. This is because that art, as a spiritual creativity, is nothing more than a "re-creation" of our original life. Furthermore, this original life - every one of ours, is an ultimate masterpiece of artwork that no one can surpass. So, as long as one can enjoy every bit of living process, feel touched by every sunrise and sunset, feel marveled by every seasonal change every year, he/she is a true art master just like Michelangelo. Only if we have such recognition, could we fully understand what "everyone is artist" means, what "equality" means, and what Lao Zhi said over two thousand years ago means: "do nothing and everything is done".

What Is Life About?

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Life is not about what we achieve or what we do, but HOW WE FEEL.

Knowledge, Chinese Intellectual class and Political Power

Image via WikipediaIf we define "knowledge" in terms of "epistemology", there have never been knowledge existed in China. "Knowledge" in ancient Chinese intellectuals minds only existed by its pragmatic terms: either for practical productiveness or political power. This tradition, created a "spectacular" phenomenon - that most Chinese intellectuals (Chinese people as well) take it for granted that knowledge serves power. And this understanding of knowledge, inevitably made Chinese intellectuals as a social class that is the most selfish, weak, and in many cases sycophantic group, which always leans to the powerful sides without the least conscience.

Political Correctness

is modern belief system designed to "equal" intelligent levels: to lower the higher - the minority of intellectuals, to fit the lower - the majority of dumb middle class.

Can One Be Completely Happy?

Just found out that a Chinese lawyer Zhicheng Gao, who was brave enough to defend vulnerable/ disadvantaged people, was arrested several years ago and possibly dead by now. He was not only put in jail, but was tortured in a unspeakable and inhumane cruelty.
Again, I asked myself, how can one be happy when hearing something like this? Again I asked, is this country, my motherland, worth any individual's sacrifice? My answers for both questions are "no".

Peace and War - My Brief Thought Over Gaddafi's Death

"You need two willing parties for a war, but only one for a genocide."
by ranfuchs

I think this is a spot on insight. I also like to add: You also need two willing parties for a peace.


I believe humans situation is very complicated that cannot be dealt with a single action, either kindness or meanness. Not all the violence is the same, not all the peace is the same. Some peace is not "peace" at all, like China's today's "prosperity"; and some violence is not that "violent" either, because it meant to be that way (as it happens).

I do not have sympathy to a monster like Gaddafi. I am sure he deserved much worse, such as a trial and die slowly in prison. But people had anger, the anger which takes a SAINT to get eased. And people are people, not saint, so they killed the bad guy. That's all. Justice is done!

Yes, Libya may not evolve in democracy very soon with violence like this (but please let them worry about that tomorrow), but I am sure it will be democracy sooner than those countries who had no guts to kill their monstrous leaders (such as Mao) but had plenty of "guts" to violence each others, such as during Cultural Revolution (a different kind mob violence from what happen in Libya now, by my understanding).

What's Wrong With China!!!!!?????

For long time I have not read much Chinese news. Today I went to a Chinese forum which I used to hang out a lot, and encountered a thread which shows video of a little girl being run over by a truck (twice). It is extremely emotional disturbing and doubtless ruined my day!
A beautiful girl (about 4 or 5 year-old) was run over by a small truck. The truck stopped for a few second, then started again, ran over the girl by the back tire again. For about 10 minutes, people walked by the girl, as if she did not existed, until later a middle aged lady came, saw what happened, and rush back in building. A moment later, a young lady looks like the girl's mother came out, took the girl and rushed away. Later of the video shows the interview of the father, and the mother's desperation. It's heart breaking!
The article in the thread tells more details: the girl is dying. She ran to street while her mother was doing laundry...
I am not giving out the link of the video, cause it caused me trouble already.
There is something wrong with China, something very very wrong! I am not worry about those corrupted government officials, hypocritic "intellectuals", complacent new riches, but only one type of life: CHILDREN, the only lives that are innocent, not responsible for all the darkness, poisonousness of society, yet suffer the most, from some extremely distortion of human nature.
What it is? I do not know (at least not with 100% certainty), yet I am still speechless!

Measurement of Wisdom and Ignorance

Image by dullhunk via FlickrThe measurement of wisdom and ignorance is not set by amount of knowledge, wealth, social status, even (not necessarily) our intelligence level, but by the acknowledge of our limitation: both the limitation of human as a whole, and as individual.

In What Aspect We Are Equal?

My answer is: in aspect of "value" - the value of life. I believe we are all different in aspect of intelligence, knowledge, wealth, or social status, but these differences should not alter our value of life. Thus we are all essentially equal (not include those life offenders and destroyers) and we all respect each others. If this is well understood, there would be no arrogance, bigotry, power abuse, self-pity, etc..  

Destructions vs Creativites

I captured part of "History of World in Two Hours" on history channel and found it very interesting, so I re-watched it online from beginning. It was a very educational documentary, with a big picture that covers the most crucial moments of the whole history of universe, not only the "world". It was just what I needed: brief and important!

The documentary not only tells the whole development of universe, the Earth and human, but also focuses on the progress of "energy", which is the most essential element of life. So I would call this video "History of Energy", or "History of Life". After watching the video, I did have a better understanding on how our human life connected with all universe. It is also quite "interesting" to know, that each new "happening" within the progress of universe was always started after some immense explosion, or destructions, such as Big Bang, such as how Stars were made, how the Earth and the Moon were made, how the new life forms emerged, etc. This leads some thoughts come to my mind about human history: a repetition of war and peace. Maybe that's the way it is?

Here is a more comprehensive review on NYT:
http://tv.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/arts/television/history-of-the-world-in-two-hours-review.html

Is Life a Choice? - My Speculation on Existence of Life

In my previous post Finding Ultimate Causes, two short paragraphs contain the most important thought I gathered through my life experience. It is not 100% "mature" yet and will be continuously examined by my further observation and reasoning. This thought is such: (human beings') life existences is a mixture of (no more than) two simple elements: our born nature and our life experience.

Image by Road Fun via FlickrWhat is human nature? in the post I wrote: our nature is a "package" that contains both our mental and physical capacity which comes together with our life. And because it comes together with our life, it is almost UNCHANGEABLE.

I used word "almost" to give a room for the plasticity of our nature, which makes changes possible, but only to some extent.

I believe we humans are ultimately limited by our nature. Not only human beings as a whole has an overall limitations, each race, each sex and each individual, all have their own limitations, both physically and mentally. Of course, this limitation is in terms of GENERALITY, and under this generality, SPECIFICITY also has its rooms (with certain space) to play. Thus taking generality as "absolute", or exaggerating specificity to universal sense are both mistaken.

In the post Finding Ultimate Causes I further I wrote: I do not suppose our nature has difference of being good and evil, but I do believe that it has the difference of being "strong" and "weak". And I believe all our postnatal efforts are to keep our nature from being harmed, so that we could achieve its strongest potential - as "perfect" as possible.

"Strong" and "weak" here refer to how well we resist threats and offences to our life (or the capability to adapt to environments, as evolution puts). A stronger person do better than a weaker one on resisting threats of life, also the greater threats or offences can weaken strong person. Thus how well one can survive is depend on not only how strong one is born, but also how good or bad the living condition is.

Based on such understanding, a born strong person could appear to be "weak" because of the "strong" (rough) life conditions, and a weak person could appear to be "strong" because of better life conditions. Also people with similar natures can end up very differently because of a totally different life experiences, and people with very different natures might hold similar attitudes toward life because of a similar life condition.

So, the combination of these two elements, nature and experience, decide what we are. The interaction of these two factors creates unlimited diversities which makes each of us unique. And in case of a born nature is so strong that it surpasses its life condition (still in certain limitation), "transcendence" takes place and a genius is born.

According to this logic, Life is not a choice, but a result of these predetermined factors. We may feel like we have choices, but when look deeper inside, or from a wider perspective, we don't. As matter of fact, we did not even choose to be here.    

Advantage of being a Bad "Listener"

For long time I consider myself a bad listener (it's also a "complaint" from a few close friends). Now I am doing much better on this, especially when interacting with people. I would conscious the moment that I interrupted others' talking and make apology to let people continuing. However, for lots of stuffs going on TVs, I found I am terrible on catching up what's going one with the world. So, I am still concerned very much about my poor English listening skill. But today perspective shifted: I found I am glad about my poor English listening skill because it is exactly because of this, I could have more room to listen my inner voice. How blessed I am!

Emerson Quote on Self-reliance

"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. "

Is Human Worse Than Animals?

Image by p_valdivieso via FlickrJust read a fellow blogger's blog (PSACHNO's) about animal right (and it was related to my country China!), I had to ask me this question again: is human worse than animals? ...
Not necessarily. I think the only difference is that human is fully conscious about his being good and evil, while animals are completely unconscious about it. In this case, both the "idea" and "actions" of "good" and "evil" are extraordinarily amplified in human world.
I do not know if this is a bless or curse, or both, but I am quite certain that there is no way to go back our unconscious "heavenly" origin.

Great, Ordinary and Small (2)

Image via WikipediaAnother thought jumped into my mind:

Great minds share ideas, ordinary minds share information, small minds share gossips.