My goodness!!! I thought today’s meeting with Barbara would be a serious one, something sort of like a formal interview for a postion, but it turned out to be the very casual gossip between two housewives. The basic common grounds for both of us to develop this conversation was not only the interest in the job, but sharing some interesting Chinese experience with each other. She apparently wanted to speak out, while I was willing to keep the communication going in that particular way. So everything just happened so naturally.
Sorry for my confusing narrating, I should have told the whole story from the begining. Actually Barbara is a senior consultant working in a job agency. She rang me to ask me to meet her in her office for a position I have recently applied for. I prepared a little bit for the coming meeting prior to our appointment, even though my attention being occupied by a more hopeful job somewhere else. Anyway I went. She has her own big office room with one whole side of wall windowed. Her apperance looks very professional, dark suit and neat short hair, and I was assuming she was going to ask me some questions.
She did, but just for a while, let me see, maybe no more than 10 minutes. When I mentioned that I used to work for Lenovo, she got excited. She told me her both children working for Lenovo in Sydney’s office now and in order to prove that, she brought out a diary book from her drawer with Lenovo logo printed on the cover page. I guess she couldn’t help doing that and I also couldn’t help asking her how come both her kids chose the same company. She told me they used to work for IBM, but since Lenovo took over the PC department of IBM, all the staff just became Lenovo employees.
Well, the conversation didn’t stop at that point yet. We got back to job issue for another 5 minutes, but soon after, she started to tell her experience of her last year’s Chinese tour again. She’s been to Beijing in last August and luckily got two completely clear days when they were climbing the Great Wall and visiting the Summer Palace. She was amazed with the non-stop city rhythm overlooking the cars coming and going on the major roads of Beijing city. She also mentioned how they drove to Datong to see hanging temple and engraved Buddhas and because they can’t speak Chinese and Chinese people didn’t understand English, how they went to a wrong way and missed the fast freeway. Yangshuo is the third city of China she arrived. She particularly thought the on-the-water show directed by Lee An (or maybe Zhang Yimou) was wonderful and absolutely unforgettable. Then we talked about the big issue on the environment pollution and what measure she saw in China to improve the environment.
I was happy to find her love her experience in another world, and she was happy to meet someone like me from the background she has some knowledge and started to make some sense of it. I guess we could have talked about it for a whole day if we didn’t have to act as our own identities, I mean a job seeker and a consultant.
So, you might have known how I would describe the meeting with Barbara. It was odd and out of my expectation, but it was nice and relaxing.
By Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976)
但是Schmidt的作品让人对印象派画风有一种耳目一新的感觉。比起早期印象派代表人物的作品来说，他的色彩偏暗些，但是整体搭配却并不晦暗；他擅长使用 黑色勾勒轮廓，显示出他对立体主义的浓厚兴趣；而他的用笔很有点中国丹青画的写意感觉（除了色彩不象），看起来简约但恰到好处；而他对形状参差不齐的描绘 和使用的大胆而刺眼的色彩则显示出非洲雕塑对他的影响。在他的画里，我看到的是许多现代画派技法的大融合，而发扬到一种极致的反映。虽然他的画往往是铺满 整个画布的，但却总给人一种适当留白的感觉，似乎在这些画中有停顿、间隔和喘息, 这也许是他很善于在深色画面中利用小块的白色空当来强调光照的角度。他在另一幅作品Kakteen里对色彩的表现，其实更合我的胃口。但是到现在我也不太 清楚那是不是一张真正的油画，因为当你看到它的时候，觉得它很象是一张介于水粉和水彩画之间的作品，这也是Schmidt给我留下颇不寻常的深刻印象的重 要原因。
