Recounting My Baltic Cruise - June 2014 - Day 1

Day 1 - Copenhagen - Denmark

Here are some pictures taken while I was in Copenhagen...
https://picasaweb.google.com/112493637103914445314/CopenhagenSelected?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCMbCzKj0xr_UtQE&feat=directlink

The city seems rather gloomy, bleak and cheerless to me...the buildings are old, not modern at all.  Apparently, there are some new buildings with new styles architecture, but we were in the old city and we didn't see the modern buildings of this city. 我們只看到歌本哈根的舊城, 覺得很不現代化, 不過其實也有新的建築物, 只是沒有時間去看.

I was more interested in Hans Christian Andersen, the famous Danish author of fairy tales, notably The Little Mermaid.  he wrote many other famous children stories such as The Little Match Girl, Thumbelina, The Wild Swans, The Ugly Duckling and many more. 小時候, 我很喜歡讀丹麥童話作家安徒生寫的故事, 他的作品有火柴女, 醜小鴨, 拇指姑娘, 小美人魚, 野天鵝等...

The Little Mermaid is a story about a young mermaid willing to give up her life and her identity as a mermaid to gain a human soul and the love of a human prince.

美人魚 (童話)

在海底深處有一座城堡，內裡住著幾位人魚公主，其中以最小的公主長得最為美麗。她常常聽她的姊姊們說許多海面上的新鮮事，但她因為未成年所以不能上水面，所以她經常想著到海面上看看。

結果在她十五歲生日的時候，她悄悄的游到了海面，遇到一位王子由船上掉落海中，漂流到海面上。她便立即救了那位王子。但此時因有人接近，她沒法子，只得走了。而王子醒來時見到一位鄉村少女（另一說是鄰國公主），便以為是那位少女救了他。

人魚公主無法把王子忘記，於是去求助女巫來幫助她達成心願。女巫幫助了她，但她走路的時候，那由尾巴變成的雙腳會像刀割一般地疼痛。而且王子和別人結婚的話，她便會化成海中的泡沫而死去。同時亦要人魚公主把美妙的聲音送給她。

人魚公主雖然上岸見到王子，但王子卻不認得她，最後更與那位鄉村少女結婚。人魚公主只得回到海底，但她將會化成泡沫而死去，這時她的姊姊們因為深愛最小的妹妹，去向女巫求情，女巫給了他們一把匕首，要人魚公主把匕首刺進王子的心臟，這樣人魚公主便不用死去。但人魚公主最後下不了手，寧可自己死去亦不願刺殺王子。最後人魚公主回望王子一眼，然後變成泡沫，並往雲彩的深處飛去。

(初版故事安徒生把結局定為：人魚公主並沒有即時滅亡，她變成泡沫後又昇華成空氣中的精靈。)

Crazy Notions...

It just dawned on me that we are not living in the present!

We are in fact living in the past!  Everything now and in our future had happened already and we are merely "acting" our parts to make it fall into place!  Our future had already took place because no matter what we tried to do, the results have been crafted for us.  Why?  Because it had happened!  So we are living in the present which is in fact our past!

One of my former students mentioned to me once, "Time equals space."  That means, if we can travel in space, we can also travel in time.  Somehow, we had made our choice before, perhaps in another dimension.

Just think again.  Jesus had prophesied that one of his disciples would betray Him.  He also prophesied that Peter would deny Him thrice.  If Judas knew that Jesus knew one of the 12 disciples would betray Him, he would have guessed that Jesus would know who that disciple was.  Then why couldn't Judas change the fate by changing his mind during the last moment?  No, he couldn't, because it had already happened and Judas had to finish acting his part correctly by betraying Jesus.  The same applied to Peter!  I really think we just travelled back in time to act our parts.

Also, we were, we have been and we are told about the end of the world will happen one day...and the Bible even describes it in the Book of Revelation as if it had happened already and someone just wrote it down for records.

Another notion is that we are actually actors and actresses living on a world stage playing our parts.  But our parts have been written out already for us.  Oh yes, sometimes it seemed that we were given a few choices in life, but those are equivalent to ad-libs on stage; we couldn't be far off.  Somehow, the director(s) would send other actors to correct us so that eventually we would still go into the right direction, or else our part(s) would be eliminated!

That explained why we sometimes didn't want to do certain things; but somehow we did it and we couldn't understand why on earth we did what we did!

Then there were places we never had been before, and yet when we first saw it, it seemed familiar!

Somebody out there is watching us and He also directs the play and guides us along - He is our God!