Gabriel Garcia Marquez: “生活并非是一个人的经历，而是他的记忆，以及叙述这些记忆。”

 

我对诺贝尔文学奖得主 Marquez 的这句话有着独特的共鸣。如果说自己的信条是应该过一个精彩有意义的生活的话，那么如果你无法记住她，这一壮丽辉煌的生活又有什么用呢？就像汉语说的，人生健忘，白活一场。具有讽刺意味的是，尽管我被认为是一个记忆研究专家，我的一个主要弱点却是记性很差。所以，多年来，我习惯于将一些重要事件、人物和经历的想法和感觉记下来。我的初衷是，记下我对那些事件、人物的感觉，及只对我自己来说是重要的或有趣的事件的想法和感受。慢慢地，它演变成了一种不定期的笔记，包括我对事情的经验和观点，甚至还包括我与一些有趣的人的谈话。

 

更有甚者，我开始与一些朋友分享这些笔记。一天一位老朋友跟我说：“为什么你不把它们放到一个博客里去呢？”那时她正在纽约做着一个挺出名的网站。她志愿纠正我的英语表达，编辑并润色我的文章。 我对开博这一想法很激动。由于一些不可控制的情况， 这一梦想一直没能成真。2009年7月1日，我回到上海定居，并加入葛兰素史克中国研发中心工作。可生活一直如此繁忙，“狂热”，我甚至发现自己有一些睡眠缺乏（据研究，这会影响记忆）。我仍然记下自己的一些想法和经验，以期保留生活种的那一片感动，冥想和精彩。在朋友们的一再鼓励下，我终于迈出了第一步，将这篇文字放进博客里。

 

　　　
　　introduction

 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: “Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers it and how one remembers it in order to recount it”.

 

This quote by the Columbian Nobel laureate for literature had a particular resonance in my mind. While I have championed my belief that one needs to live an interesting life, what is the use of that splendid life if you cannot remember it? To put it in simple Chinese 人生健忘，白活一场。 Ironically, despite the fact that I am considered an expert in memory research, one of my major deficits is poor memory. So for many years I have developed the habit of writing down my thoughts and feelings over important events, people and experiences. My initial purpose was to write about my thoughts and feelings over events in my life that I felt important or interesting strictly to myself. It gradually evolved to become a journal that also included my experiences, opinions over things, and even record of my conversations with interesting people.

 

Worse, I started to share some of the notes with some friends. One day an old friend said to me: “why don’t you put them on a blog?” At the time she ran a fairly popular website in New York. She volunteered to correct my English and edit and polish the articles. I was excited about the idea. Due to unforeseeable situations, this dream did not come true. In July 1, 2009, I came back to live in Shanghai and work at GSK R&D China. Life has been so hectic that I felt that I often have partial sleep-deprivation (which affect memory, according to some studies). I still wrote down some of my thoughts and experiences, for the same reasons I mentioned above. After repeated encouragements by many friends, I finally made the first step: to place this first one on the blog.