First Post: Opening the Gear Box

Hi, my name is Peng Shi, and I'm a Chinese Canadian currently completing my undergrad at Duke University. For a while I've wanted to write a blog, following several friends' successful examples. It seems to be the perfect way to vent my feelings, to articulate the opinions I believe in, to allow geographically separated friends to keep touch with my life, and to improve my writing abilities. However, due to my laziness, busy schedule, and perfectionist attitude, I never managed to actually sit in front of the computer and start posting. Recently I have some built-up feelings and thoughts that I want to record before my mercury-tainted brain forgets, and I will borrow this impetus to help me take the always-difficult first step.

I do not want my blog to simple chronicle my daily activities: neither you readers nor I have such time and extra energy to waste. Neither do I want this blog to be purely an intellectual discussion on some public issue: my life is still the main subject and theme. What I want to capture are what I think are gems in my life--the sudden realizations, the spontaneous impressions, the Wow's and Eureka's, the feelings that seem trivial later yet at the moment encapsulates so much meaning, the beliefs that shine in my mind in unblemished truth and beg to be shared--these are the inner substance that defines a person and I hope that despite my inarticulateness, this blog will help show you who I am, what I think, and what I feel.

This brings me to the title: "Inside the Gear Box." (Because I didn't want to further delay my starting the blog, I didn't think long about the title, so excuse me if you think the title is lame. This is the best I found, and it must do.) Many who know me would say that I am usually reserved and overly-logical，almost like a robot or a machine. Taking this metaphor further, one may say that the essence of a primitive machines is its gear box, intricate and exact as it transforms the input forces and combining them into useful output. To understand the gear ratios would be to understand the underlying workings of the machine. The gear box may also seems mysterious: normally one only sees the black cover but not the intricacies inside. As one who wishes to understand a machine opens the gear box, so now I open my mind and heart--that which normally hides under a reserved, unemotional and lack-luster cover. This is what this blog is about.

So now we begin: With my big and cumbersome screwdriver--unfortunately the only one I have--I carefully unscrew the top cover of the metal case, brushing away the dust and rust built-up from years of neglect. The light is dim, but as we let our eyes focus, we see the outline of complicatedly interconnected gears. This is a new experience for me as well: many of the gears I do not currently understand; some I haven't known existed before. While I hope not to convince you of the logic of my gears, I do hope that you find them at least interesting or thought-provoking; I also hope that as you peek between their gaps, you may find that, underneath, a beating, tender, heart of flesh also lives inside.