Elon Musk Creates Our Future

Elon Musk, the current most revered inventor, a visionary who extends his talent from electric car, solar power to space travel, a dreamer who convinced us that the hyperloop could be a reality and a true innovator who gets his ideas during morning showers.  He runs three companies, serves as CEO for two and chairman for one.  Yet he still has time to tweet.  He posts for magazine covers like a true hero.  With his charisma and super brain, he is one of the most exciting inventors of our time.  I truly admire him.

I married an inventor once before, Dr. Arnold Lande, son of a famous Germany physicist Alfred Lande.  A trained heart surgeon and a talented medical device inventor, Arnie has invented the first commercial produced membrane oxygenator with the founder of Medtronic, Dr. C. Walton Lillehei.  He puts himself to sleep by inventing a upside-down catamaran.  His invention includes an wearable artificial kidney, an artificial lung, a diving gill and a frozen yogurt machine.  The following is a story about my exciting life with Dr. Arnold Lande.

            Lolita II: A Chinese Student's Story

            Call me Lolita if you want, although I am not fourteen.  Sometimes I hold his neck, whispering into his ears sweetly, "Manny, you are so cute."  Sometimes, at the end of our daily running, when he mercilessly passes me by, I will say angrily, "Yuck".  Manny and I run along the Mississippi every morning and evening, in the rain, after the snow, under the sun and in the wind.  We have left so many pairs of invisible footprints that even the road begins breathing the same rhythm.  Only in the winter, our two pairs of foot prints are visible on the snow.  His is the one with toes slightly pointing inward; mine is the one with toes slightly pointing outward.  Now these two pairs of feet diverge and are no longer next to each other.  They go off to the different directions and will never come together again.

            I have to see him again, my husband, Manny, whom I just separated from a month ago.  I have been very slow on moving.  It has been almost two months since I moved out.  I have not yet finished the moving.  I am a little scared of seeing him.  Scary may not be an exact word.  But it is close.  Nowadays, whenever I think of being with him alone in his office at the quiet quarter of Doctor's sleeping rooms, I always imagine him hitting me on the head or jabbing me with a knife.  That is how much I think he will hate me for leaving him, for ending our five years of wonderful marriage (he would say so).

            I have to see him now.  I want to show him I am determined and will not change my mind.  It did happen once when we were dating.  I went away and came back.  That was almost six years ago.

            I was a graduate student in the Biomedical Engineering Program at the University of Houston then.  I came to the United States in a way like most other Chinese students did --- going to the graduate school.  I met Manny in the Cardiovascular Fluid Dynamics Laboratory where I worked as a research assistant.  Manny was trying to do a joint research project with my boss.  It turned out the project did not work and Manny got a girlfriend in compensation.  He started the relationship by teaching me how to drive.  By the time I got the driver license, we had also gone to the movie theaters, concerts, ballets and sailing trips.  I had a wonderful time.  Then one day, I suddenly disappeared (in his words).  I left him for a handsome young Chinese student.  Actually he happened to be my roommate in a same house.  He dated me out of convenience (I did not know at the time).  He was so possessive that he did not even let me answer Manny's phone call.

            On a Saturday afternoon, I ran into Manny in my lab.  That was not exactly the case.  Since he no longer collaborated with my boss, he was not there by chance.  He went to see me there.  Although I was the only one in the lab at the time, his sudden appearance did not scare me.  At age fifty-four, he had a youthful, pleasant look, even with his salt-pepper hair.  He wore jeans, a red button-down cotton shirt and a pair of new-balance running shoes.  His slender, medium-sized body looked fit and healthy.  His eyes were twinkling.

            "Bonnie, how are you?"

            "I'm...I'm fine."  I stuttered.  I was not good at patching up misconduct.  I did not know how to explain my disappearance.  For a girl from China, going out with men was something new.

            "Have I hurt you?"  He asked earnestly.

            "No."

            "So why do you leave me?"

            "You...you are too old."  I finally uttered the real reason.

            "Okay, I hope I did not hurt you."  He patted me on the shoulder, winked at me and left swiftly.

            After I broke up with my handsome roommate, I made a point calling him, although without any serious intention in mind.

            He recognized my voice right away.  "Bonnie, it's so nice to hear from you."  He sounded so sweet that I decided to try again with him.

            On my birthday, he took me out to a nice seafood restaurant along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.  We had fresh oysters and shrimp.  Then we went back to his house and swam in his swimming pool.

            After we both dried ourselves with towels, he suddenly held me tightly against his naked chest, nothing sexual though.  

            "Bonnie, I don't want to loss you again."  He said.  Although he did not cry, I could sense the deep emotion hidden behind his bony, tan chest.

            These words were like religion, the gospel of my life.  I obeyed.  We got married a year later.

            Now six years after that incident, I cannot think of any reason why it should happen again.  Things change, situations change, I tell myself.

            He has taken away my car, yet I feel the most free, even though I have to go to work by bus every day.  Today I am driving my boyfriend's car, I feel very restrained.  I am going to see these people, people I use to see everyday in the hospital, the nurses, volunteers, janitors and cafeteria workers.  They are used to see us, an odd couple, and everyday, coming to work together and having lunch together.

To be continued in my book:

Paperback of "Last Kiss In Tiananmen Square" is On Sale at $4.86

                                          Get a copy of paperback for $4.86

Paperback for "Last Kiss In Tiananmen Square" is ON SALE in Amazon for $10.79

"Last Kiss In Tiananmen Square", a love story between a Peking University student and her mother's formal lover set in the midst of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre is selling like hot cakes.  It has been reduced to $10.79 per copy by Amazon due ot its popularity.  See the following excerpt.

Get your copy

Inferno

A soldier jumped off a truck next to the tank, carrying a pack of rope-like things.

As a short stout man, he approached her slowly as though he was afraid of her. When he was two feet away from her, he released the black rope in his hands. It was a two-meter long black leather whip.

The whip was like a snake dancing in the air and hit Wu Zheng's body. She did not move and did not even look at her torturer. Instead, she ran towards him.

"Give me back my husband!" Wu Zheng cried like a wild animal.

The whipping continued. Her white blouse was broken into shreds and was full of bloodstains. Then she caught the whip in her hand. She started pulling at it. With God's power in her hands, she got the whip away from the soldier and started whipping him.

While this was happening, Pumpkin struggled in her husband's embrace. "Let me go! Let me save her!"

"Are you crazy? You are going to be killed. I'm not going to let you go!" His face touched her face, and their tears mixed. This was the most intimate act they had ever shared.

Wu Zheng tightened the whip around the soldier's neck and began strangling him.

Cheers came from the crowd. "Kill him! Kill the bastard!"

The tank started rolling and crushed them both.

The angry people moved over towards the tank.

They threw fire torches and gasoline; the tank caught fire. It blazed in the dark and moonless night.

Everyone cheered as if they were the ghosts in Dante's inferno as the two soldiers were forced out of the tank.

The soldiers stumbled towards the angry people. As soon as they were away from the blazing tank, they were in the hands of the mob.

They beat them with sticks and metal bars. They spit on them. "Shall we kill them?"

"Of course. Why do you speak for the enemy?"

"They are not our enemies. They don't even know what they are doing."

"What do you mean? They have already killed innocent people. They are criminals." A middle-aged man went over, pulling at the collar of a young man as though he wanted to start a fight.

The soldiers disappeared in the crowd as their bodies were torn to pieces, and they quickly disintegrated through hundreds of angry hands.

Red-eyed people threw body parts back at the burning tank.

They held up their hands in a 'V' sign, until a spray of bullets from another vehicle gunned some of them down.

Jeremy Lin Got to Realize His Dream While My Dad Wouldn’t Allow Mine

When I was 14 years old, I was 5”6’ tall.  A basketball scout came to knock on my apartment door in the campus of the Beijing Institute of Aeronautics and Astronomy.  The scout said I should go to a Basketball training center.  My dad told him that we were not interested.  I, who had never played basketball before, didn’t know what to say.  All I remember was that my dad told me I should spend my time studying and playing violin.  Playing a sport was a waste of time. 

In China, people don’t believe someone could be good at both sports and academics.  They consider athletes to be dumb and stupid.   So my dad took away my one chance to utilize my tall body in a promising way.  Now after so many years, I wish that my dad had let me play basketball.  I think it is far-fetched that I would become a basketball star but at least I would have learned how to become a team player, a trait which I have acquired recently in my middle age.  I have become a sports nut in my own way, but my favorite sports are running, swimming, bicycling, skiing and skating, all of which are individual sports. 

So Jeremy Lin, the Knicks new star, an Asian American NBA basketball player was lucky to be born in the US.  If he were born in China, he would probably be forced to play piano or violin.  If he were “lucky” and discovered as a potential basketball star at a young age, he would most likely be sent to a basketball training camp far away and not allowed to see his family often.  So a normal family in China doesn’t usually let their kids pursue such a career at a young age unless they were orphans.  So my dad was being selfish for not letting me go to the basketball-training center. 

I happen to have a son who is 16 years old, 6”3’ tall and an aspiring basketball player. So Jeremy Lin intrigues me even though I don’t watch basketball games.  My knowledge about basketball has been gained from watching my son playing at middle school and high school games.  I normally don’t have time to watch games due to my duties as a working mother.  .  My interests fit into a stereotype Asian’s tastes.  I like classic music, theatre and movies.  If I have time, I often choose to go to these activities.  Sports are not something I would watch unless my son is playing.  As though fate is working against me, my son who has been taking piano lessons since he was 7, is very talented in sports.  The sport we encourage him to do is fencing, which we think it is not a very popular sport, so he has a chance to get ahead.  He also plays baseball with his friends in the summer and became the pitcher of his team for a couple of seasons.  As for basketball, he always shies away from it.  He was a scorekeeper for his Quaker School team for two years before he decided to try playing in middle school.  Then he flourished.  He quickly became one of the best players on his team.  At the same time, his body is telling him that he should be a basketball player because he was 6 feet tall in eighth grade and has kept growing to 6”2 in his freshman year in high school and 6”3 now in his sophomore year.  He even made it onto the better freshmen basketball team in his high school, whose man’s basketball team is among the top 5 in the state.  That was quite a challenge because he was playing with basketball players whose first words were “Basketball”.  Compared with them, his two years of playing is just not enough.  He was benched a lot but has also learned a lot.  This year, he didn’t even make the JV team of his high school.  He felt a little discouraged yet he went to play in a recreation league even after he promised to go back to fencing.  I know in his heart, he still loves basketball.  So let it be.  I’m not going to force him to do things he doesn’t like.  


Books by Fantasy Island Book Publishing

Terps by Elaine Gannon

After Ilium by S. M. Swartz

Children Of The Elementi by Ceri Clark

Emeline and the Muntant by Rachel Tsoumbakos

Miranda Warning by Marilyn Rucker Norrod

Brother, Betrayed by Danielle Raver

Ednor Scardens by Kathleen Barker

Land Of Nod, The Artifact by Gary Hoover

Losing Beauty by Johanna Garth

The King Of Egypt by  J. J. Makins

The Last Good Knight by Connie J. Jasperson

The Night Watchman Express by Alison DeLuca

Black Numbers by Dean Frank Lappi

Beloved by Patty Sarro

The Last Guardian by Joan Hazel

The Story Tellers' Anthology

Sand by Lili Tufel

Sin by Shaun Allan

Sakuri by Jacob Henzel


Enchanted Heart by Brianna Lee McKenzie

Silent No More by Krista K. Hatch

Sons of Roland: Back Story by Nicole Antonia Carson

City of Champions by Daniel Stanton

I'm Chinese Lolita

I'm also featured in Alison DeLuca's blog for Valentine's Day where you can read an excerpt of another one of my romantic short stories:

"Wild Fire" by Lisa Zhang Wharton

I'm sharing an excerpt from my award-winning short story, "My Uncle" in which the main character fell in love with her mother's lover.  This story will come out as an Amazon Single very soon as well as in my next book "Chinese Lolita".

  My “Uncle”

It was a Sunday morning.  Mother said she was leaving for work.  Father hollered:  "You god damn woman, get out of here.  Go, stay with your fucking boyfriend.  You all get out of here, get out of my house!"

Father had just awakened.  His eyes were still fogged.  He sat on the bed, meditated for a while, and then stood up.  He stumbled a few steps toward the door and poked his head out of his room.

"Meihua, come back.  Who said you could go?"  He caught me before I slipped out the door.  "Go to the kitchen, and see if the garbage needs to be emptied.  God damn shit!  Why do you always have to be reminded?"  Waving a filthy athletic shoe in his hand, he stared at me with his half-open, beady eyes.  It seemed he might throw the shoe at my head if I did not obey him.  I went to the kitchen and did as I was told.

            

"Where are you going?"  Father saw me put on my tight nylon sweater which showed my two small breasts, and a few dabs of blush on my round face.

"I'm going to work!"  I said and slammed the door behind me.

It was a cold winter day.  The sun moved slowly from behind the white clouds like a shy girl.  Water from melting ice was dripping from the roof.  "Dita, dita."  It sounded so crisp.  With slightly softening soil under my feet, I opened the metal buttons on my grey down-coat and untied the blue wool scarf from my face.  I breathed deeply and let the unmuffled air enter my nostrils and flow into my lungs.  What a beautiful day!  I wanted to cry out.  Everything was going exactly as I had planned.  Father was right about Mother meeting her boyfriend.  But he did not know my secret.  I was going to see one of Mother's boyfriends too, of course a different one.  I used to call him "Uncle".

It was eight years since I had last seen Uncle Weiming.  I had lost track of him completely, but I was quite sure that he was still working at the same place.  People in China do not move until they scuff a hole deep enough to bury themselves.  Therefore, what should I do if I wanted to visit him?  Just go to the factory?  Like the old saying says, if you want to go north, just follow the North Star.  In this case I followed my instinct.

           

Sitting on the bus, I gazed at the trees that passed by so fast that I wished the bus would slow down.  Questions kept going through my mind.  What was I doing here?  Visiting Mother's old lover who had disappeared eight years ago?  Begging a married 35 years old man to be my father while I was old enough to be his lover?  Asking him to be my sister Mingming's father again when Mingming did not even know he existed?  It was like I was trying to pick up an old rotten melon.  My only accomplishment could be to soil my hands.

              

But in the last couple of weeks, a memory kept haunting me.

           

It was in 1976, a few weeks after Chairman Mao had died.  In an early afternoon, Uncle wandered into our one-story red brick apartment without knocking and sat down on a chair by the dining table.  Father, who had used to Mother's varieties of friends, nodded stiffly and walked out of the door.

            

"Uncle!"  Having not seen him in two weeks, I was excited.  Uncle looked at me and did not respond.  "I'll get Mom for you!"  I went in front of Mom's bedroom where door was shut closed.           "Mom, Uncle is here."  I knocked.

            

"Yes, just a minute."  In a while Mother strolled out with a cigarette in her mouth.  She closed the bedroom door (where she had a visitor) and sat next to Uncle.  They both kept silent for a while. 

            

"Got someone new?"  Uncle directed his chin toward Mother's closed bedroom.

            

"It's none of your business."

            

"You pick up fast.  Let me say this, if I may.  I know who he is.  He is a notorious asshole."

            

"OK!"  Mother stood up, ran into her bedroom and rushed back with a paper box in her hand.  She openned the box and smacked the whole box of photos of hers and Uncle's onto Uncle's face.  "Get out of here, I don't need you anymore!  You'd better go back to your pretty young girlfriend!" 

            

Uncle rose up and strode out of the door.

            

"Uncle, don't go!  Uncle, come back!"  I chased him and burst into tears.

            

From then on, laughter and happiness had disappeared in my life.  My heart along with those memories had become frozen until now.  There had been enough chaos at home.  My quiet, hard-working nature had pleased Mother and Father.  I had become such a useful child for them.  Gradually I had taken over the household.  I cooked, I shopped and I even managed the money.  When Mother had a problem, she would complain to me; when Father was hungry, he would ask me to make something for him to eat.  I had been used to the life and felt proud for the responsibilities until I went to college.  My vision for life suddenly changed.  I realized people did laugh and joke in life; life did not just consist of constant working.  I felt incompetent.  I needed help.  But who could help me?  Uncle, the long disappearing Uncle suddenly came back into my memory.  "Go to see him.  Go to see him."  A voice was telling me.

Coming soon from Fantasy Island Book Publishing:

                                   

"Last Kiss In Tiananmen Square" is FREE today with a #130 Amazon Free Book Ranking

My Best Ranking ever:
#130 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
#4 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Historical
#38 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Romance

                    
                         Press this link to get a copy at Amazon.UK
                         Press this link to get your FREE Copy At Amazon.com

The Best Part In "Last Kiss In Tiananmen Square": Baiyun's Dysfunctional Family in a Dysfunctinal Society

                                     An Excerpt from Chapter 4

It was a small, odd-shaped hallway, with the kitchen and a room on the left and an entrance that led into two rooms on the right. The white wall in the hallway was cold and smooth like porcelain under the late afternoon sun.  Dried-up bok choy, muddy turnips and tall spinach lay, looking tired, against the wall.  In the middle of the hallway, to one side, stood a refrigerator and an old bamboo dish cabinet set on top of a wet-looking wooden rack. 

Baiyun walked in her father's bedroom, which was also the dining room. Her father was sunk down into a cushioned wooden chair trimming the end of a twig.  A pot of sand sat next to the twig.  In the dim light of a desk lamp, he examined the twig to make sure the cut was perfect.  After several tries, he buried the end of the twig in the sand and set it next to a row of pots on the windowsill.  With the help of the magnifying glass, he examined them one by one.  "Meow, meow!"  He yowled, and Baiyun took it as a sign of pleasure.        

"Father," said Baiyun, which startled him.

"Oh.  What are you doing here?"  He looked at Baiyun with his old eyes and went right back to his trimming task.

After taking care of the plants, Father returned to his desk.  He began scribbling on scraps of paper.  Once in a while he would crumple the paper and throw it into the wastebasket.  Then he took a new piece and scribbled some more.  Finally he held a sheet of paper in front of his nose and laughed loudly.

"One and a half rats per flower pot, my honored citizens.  That's right.  Ha, ha..."

He spun around on his chair and picked up a white plastic pail from underneath the desk, which was full of dead rats.  He took out the rats one by one and laid them on the dirt in flowerpots.  Returning to his desk, he began cutting the rest of rats in half with a huge pair of rusty scissors, one after another.  Blood spilled on the floor, and sprayed onto his clothes and face.

"Meow, meow!"  He seemed to enjoy the taste of blood in his mouth.

Watching this, Baiyun couldn't stand it anymore.  She ran out of the room and thought about leaving that disgusting place.  Then she remembered her duty to bring food to father.  She opened the refrigerator and found some cold stir-fry.  She heated it up on the gas stove in the small kitchen and walked back to the dining room with one hand on her nose.

Father was writing comments between the lines of a textbook using a magnifying glass.  The book itself revealed why he had to use the magnifying glass.  It was a textbook of advanced mathematics called, "Special Function" that had equations and words.  However, a handwritten version also was superimposed on top of the print.  In fact most of the printed version had been either crossed out or pasted over with handwritten text. 

Baiyun left the food on his desk. Underneath the glass on the table, Baiyun noticed many new pictures of red and purple roses.

Father wolfed down his food and continued his writing on the textbook.  After a few minutes, his head nodded. His hand dropped with the weight of the magnifying glass.  The pen stopped; blue ink soaked through the page and created a large stain on the page.  In a minute, loud snoring sullied the silence. Under the dim lamplight, the flushing of his face made him look like a roasted animal.

Baiyun looked away and only to set her eyes on pots of roses in full bloom.  Their color ranged from yellow to pink and from red to black.  But most were bloody red like a girl's lipstick ready to be kissed.

Baiyun realized her parents were in no mood or shape to talk to her.  Before she decided to leave, she heard a motorcycle approaching. She decided to sit at the desk at the middle of the room.

Lao Zheng rushed into the apartment without knocking. He nodded to Baiyun, winked at her, and then went straight to Meiling's bedroom after letting the curtain down.  The curtain on Meiling's bedroom door was like a woman's summer dress—just long enough to hide the mid-parts of the body.

Meiling asked him "How much do we have now?"

"Oh, about twenty thousand," Lao Zheng answered.

"No, I don't believe you.  You must have put away some for yourself."

"Come on, woman.  You can't be serious.  Have I ever cheated you?"

"Stop!"  It was the sound of Meiling slapping Lao Zheng.  "Don't think you can lay me as soon as you get here.  Get serious for a minute.  If a civil war started, we wouldn't have anything left.  We'd better find a way to save our hard earned money."

"Okay, but let's talk about that later."

"Oh!  What do you want?  What do you want?  Ha, ha..."Meiling's hysterical laugh indicated she was no longer ill.  The handsome tiger embroidered on the dark brown knitted curtain suddenly came alive.  His widely open mouth and pointed teeth revealed his great hunger.

"Don't be too rough with me!  I'm sick."

"Come on, I'm the cure for your illness."

Two pairs of feet in slippers appeared in the space beneath the curtain.  One was big and strong with bulging veins under rough dark skin, the other tiny and elegant as marble.  They moved closer, separated and rose up onto the bed.  The door was closed shut.

The tiger on the curtain seemed to roar.  The curtain was thick and impenetrable.  Peering through the tiger's eyes, Baiyun could see Meiling's and her boyfriend's ecstatic faces that made her look away immediately.  Just before she was about to leave, she saw her father go into the kitchen.

Father lit a burner, took a fire poker and laid it on the fire.  When the tip was red hot, he picked it up and marched toward Meiling's bedroom.  Without hesitation, he jabbed the fire poker directly through the eye of the tiger on the curtain.  A hissing sound told her Meiling's bedroom door was closed and Father had also burned a hole through the wood.  Then he burned another and another.  Finally he threw down the poker, jumped at the door and, like a lizard crawling on a wall, spied into Meiling's room through the holes he had made.  He leaned against the door, making it squeak, then he turned toward one side and slid down.  Something was growing in the front of his pants.  He put his hand in, rubbing and squeezing.  His face was scarlet and twisted.

"Aaeh!  Aaeh!"  This time his moaning became harsher and more intense.