傷逝

- In Memory of Prof. Samuel Chanson

http://www.cs.ust.hk/chanson/

To express my highest respect, I have chosen to write this passage here. My teacher has been a key person who started my dreams and made my heart stays in the valley of HKUST. I in humble have him introduced here as a memory for my heart, a reminder for my later life, a stopper of tears and sadness.

Sam and I have had our first conversation in English. It was a spring day that my FYP team knocked his door for an interview. With an innocent mind we decided he must be an English speaking professor by simple interpretation of his surname. We talked for one whole hour in English with hundreds of grammatical mistakes and wrong pronunciations. When the meeting finished he sent us to the door and said, in perfect Cantonese, "I will let you guys know the result next week".

Talking to him always burnt me a lot of energy. His office is usually just in the right room temperature - not too cold not too hot, but after sitting 3 more students in there together with his difficult questions, I almost felt suffocate in his office. Talking to him is like playing a Chinese Chess game in mind: I need to observe what objective he wants, guess his next move, remember his previous moves and then give responses; while actually what he was doing is to force me to build up my own form, my own strategy and my own goal -- not to follow his goal. We usually have only 1 hour in each meeting which is definitely not enough to make a stupid B-grade students like me to become a good player there. It took me a few conversations to understand that actually he thought and talked in networked way; while I was still in a linear thinking stage. It was a painful experience, I must say, to find out the way to communicate with him, but eventually I understand that this training was the most valuable lesson he had given me. I might not receive too much from the Java projects but with all those FYP meetings, he had forced me to enter a higher level of intellectual experience.

Sam has never been the kind of salesperson-like type of scholar but he had made a big effort to spill out UST's research results to business. On the teaching side, Sam was a very strict teacher who always required the highest standard of work. He took the best graduate students for research. All his FYP students prior to my group were A-grade students. Until now I do not know why he had taken us for his FYP project. There were a lot of moments that I felt I have disappointed him in terms of academic and research performance.

Sam could express himself extremely well but never talked too much. I especially like listening to his nice English with words like "anyways" in between. His high-standard academic requirement was not only in programs, algorithms or calculations, but more importantly in our written essay work. I considered myself with ok-English but I still remember the shock I had in one of our FYP paper review meetings. Sam handed me back the paper and I saw the sheets full of red marks -- to be precise I think there were more red than black. He made every single correction for my paper, from the smallest spelling mistake, to how to write a sentence in a more professional way.

Sam had bravely faced and fought the cancer. I believe the way he dealt with it is exactly the way he dealt with research difficulties -- with the same courage, consistency and insistency -- but with one difference: he had been more relied on God than ever. Sam had been a Christian for a long time. During my years in UST he had only talked about his religion once. After the sickness, in every single email and conversation I had with him, he showed great dependent and faith in God. I trust the sickness is actually a beautiful gift God has given Sam and the people around. God reminded Sam He is always there to look after him, while He is the one who rules as well. From my conversations with Sam I believe he has accepted this gift as a blessing to his life. I cannot imagine how much struggle and questions Sam had in behind the scene; I only know he has finally chosen to be obedient.

Being a teacher, Sam had not only taught me and guided me in the UST days, but with his own life as well in his final days. There was no touching story like "Tuesday lessons" we had but deep in my heart, I am very attached to this teacher. There is sadness in me but I clearly know I will meet him again. I think there is no need of encryption technologies in heaven but I guess I might see Jesus playing a decryption game with Sam there, when I meet him again.

I am ending this passage with what I said to Sam always after our meetings, "I will see you". And I know he would reply me, "I will see you too."


Tag: 中通外直