The hill was covered with green grass, and there were soft, white material, like cotton, hanging from the flowers of the grass. Dozens of kangaroos were roaming this hill. It was a warm, sunny autumn day in the country side. Not one piece of cloud was in the sky.
Suddenly, a hill fire was approaching. Within minutes, it wiped out the hill. The grass, the cotton, and the kangaroos were burnt to ashes. When the kangaroos were being burnt to death,however, they appeared to be calm. They did not show the slightest signs of fear, or pain. Just plain acceptance of their death.
That is the scence from a dream I had. I told this dream to my friend, and asked her to guess what it meant. She told me what she thought, and I knew she was right.
It was about my growing up, about my conceding to the world.
Two years ago, I had to make one of the most important descisions of my life: Do I go to college in US, or stay in Hong Kong and go to medical school? With the academic achievement I had, I could have easily entered the medical school. Going to medical school in Hong Kong was an appealing choice because the social status of doctors in Hong Kong was better than that of the US, and I would have a relatively stable life.
Every person I have talked to advised me to stay in Hong Kong. But I had a different idea about how to live my life.
For some reason I felt I had a mission in my life - a calling, one may say - to be an environmental scientist. I wanted to help environmental science become a hard science, one that is capable of explaining, and more importantly, predicting environmental events. I thought environmental science have to be able to predicte impacts of human activites on the environment as surely as astrophysics can predict the filght path of a rocket to the moon, before the voices of environmentalists be taken seriously by the society.
So I applied and got accepted to UC Berkeley as an environmental science major.
My mind changed after I arrived at the US. For one thing, I learned that environmental science was not a the kind of science as I envisioned. I am much less talented in it than I had thought. And I learned there is a long way for environmental science to go before it enters the stage of maturity I had envisioned; I realised that I may not live to see when the time would come. For another, there was an experience which got me thinking: What am I going to do with an environmental science degree?
I tried to apply for a job as a research assistant in an ecological field study. Since I have volunteered as assistants in a similar study before, I thought that my chances were good. However, it turned out that there were 6 other applicants who are also experienced and overqualified. Therefore, I did not get the job. Then I realized there isn't much I can do in this field. Any person could have done the job I intended (which was counting bugs), and I could have put my talent somewhere else. With this in mind, I applied to a software consulting firm in the area (I was minoring in Computer Science) and eventually got accepted. Later I switched my major to Computer Science. (Well, I'm still counting bugs... only a different kind).
But I told myself I did not forget what I came to the US for. I was going to become a modeller (someone who write programs to simulate the ecosystem so that they can predict and explain environmental events). I had this believe in my head, and was still thinking that I was going to help save the environment until weeks before I had that dream of the kangaroo hill.
One day, a few weeks before I had that dream, I took an assignment to write a part of a conversion program for my programming job. The conversion program is part of the upgrading of our desktop publishing tool. My boss told me that the desktop publishing tool was used extensively by the publishing industry. The "environmental science" mentality I acquired during my first year of studying environmental science sprung into action. It went in my head: "support the publishing industry ... use a lot of paper ... kill a lot of trees ... destroy a lot of forests". I realised I was writing a program that supported an industry that destroys millions of acres of forest every year; forests that I originally set out to protect!
However, what was so troubling was that I was not troubled at all. I just went ahead an finished that part of the conversion program, without a trace of discomfort, guilt, or unhappiness. It seems as if I the thought of helping the environment never passed my mind at all. But at the same time, I realized I was not going to finish the dream of become a modeller - because I knew, that after all, I don't care.
When I told my friend about that dream of the kangaroo hill, she said the white material on the grasses represented my innocence. Kangaroos represents the country which, in my opinion, is most dedicated to the protection of it's environment. (Also, by co-incidence, I happened to have a kangaroo pencil case that I loved to use in my ecology class). So the kangaroos came to represent the idea of protecting the environment. And the sunny day in the hill, reminded me of the sweet memories at the ecological field trip in which I voluteered as a research assistant - the hill, the grass, and the landscape was the same as the place where the field trip was.
My innocent idea and the memories of the filed trip, all wiped out in a fire.
The kangaroos, however, were calm. They did not seem to care that they were dying. Neither was I.
So let the kangaroo hill burn.
Simon, July 98