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■高錕(右)與妻子黃美芸(左)早前發公開信，感謝香港朋友的支持。 資料圖片
■Fai
The View from Shatin Around this time every year, the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm announces to the world the outstanding individuals who have been chosen to be honored with the Nobel Prize. Last week, we heard the happy news that Professor Charles K. Kao, the former Vice-Chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, will be awarded the Prize in physics. Hong Kong is, rightfully, in ecstasy. Since then, not a single day has gone by without our hearing reports about Professor Kao and the Nobel Prize.
Although I cannot claim any personal friendship with any Nobel Prize winner, I have come into contact with a few of them, and read quite a bit about them when I was writing a series of articles on famous speeches two years ago. On the whole, I find many of them to be exceptionally modest, almost in inverse proportion(成反比)to their fame.
It is a characteristic of modest people not to take themselves or their accomplishments too seriously. They understand that while they may be good at the very thing they specialize in, they are otherwise no different from any other people. Consequently, they are able to make fun of themselves–a trait(特徵、個性)I can readily see in William Golding, the 1983 Nobel laureate(得獎者)in literature, whose Lord of the Flies used to be an assigned reading for many schools in Hong Kong twenty or thirty years ago. Nobel laureates are expected to give a speech during the prize award ceremony. Those in literature often take the opportunity to give air to(發表)their views on questions about life and the world. Golding talked about the effect of fame in his speech, which he ended with a personal anecdote(個人軼事).
On the day that he had won the Nobel Prize, Golding found himself in a country town. Carelessly, he left his car in a no-parking area. When he returned, there was a parking ticket taped onto his car window, with instructions printed on the back that the violators had to send in the fines by mail. Golding was in a hurry, and so when he saw two police officers a while later, he asked whether he could go directly to the Town Hall to pay the fines in person. The senior officer was very polite and patient. He explained the rules once again: Golding would have to go through the process of writing down his address, putting a cheque in the right amount in the envelope, pasting a stamp on it and sending it out. At the end, the police officer added, "And may we congratulate you on winning the Nobel Prize for Literature."
The joke is quite pointed and is directed at himself. For all the honour that he had won, Golding was no different from any individual. The police officer knew that he was speaking to a Nobel Prize winner, but like everybody else, Golding, Nobel laureate or not, would just have to pay the fines in accordance with the rules. The experience was funny and sobering(令人清醒過來). If Golding was floating in the air at that moment for winning the Nobel Prize, it pulled him back to the solid ground. In his own words, it made him "remember my smallness in the scheme of things."
Getting back to Professor Kao, he, together with his wife, released an open letter on the 13th October, in which they thank the support of their friends in Hong Kong. More poignantly(令人辛酸地), they spoke of the unpredictability of life. For all his brilliance as a researcher and the healthy habits that he keeps, Professor Kao has unfortunately fallen victim to the Alzheimer disease(阿茲海默症，俗稱老人痴呆症). Yet, there is not a sign of despondency(絕望)in the letter, which ends with a note that recalls the twinkle that one used to find in Professor Kao's eyes in the olden days: "Now you know who is responsible for those fiber optical cables that enable all the excessive information, both true and false, good and bad, that circulate on the internet." Once again, Professor Kao has shown the world that he is still capable of a good joke.
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