At last, I boarded the flight to Paris.

Early in the morning, I was woken up by the noise in the plane; someone was shouting how beautiful the view was. I jumped up and ran to the window and I saw a wonderful landscape in the distance, there was a line of orange between the gray and the black sky. That view, with the white stream from the airplane and the bright, deep blue air near it made such a pretty picture. As soon as I saw it, my first thought was to take a picture of it, so I took out my camera as quickly as possible and ran to the back of the plane. How lucky I was to get three pictures of it.

After another 40 or 50 minutes, I was woken again by another loud exclamation of admiration. This time it was over the view of the sunrise. I was so sleepy and also I had a middle seat, so it wasn’t convenient to get my camera out or to find a place to take pictures. I was a little hesitant. Anyway, I stood up, took out my camera and ran to the back of the plane once more; however, I missed the opportunity…

When I returned to my seat, I no longer felt sleepy. I asked myself: why did I miss taking the beautiful picture? Too much hesitation made me lose the opportunity. In our life and in our work there are many opportunities too, and if we do not treasure them and take them, they will quickly pass. Opportunity is always fleeting, it never waits for anyone.

Although I missed the sunrise, I found another beautiful view. I found the Arabian characters on the VT screen very interesting, they looked like some Uigur words in China. Some of the characters were like small hills and others like the moon. The bright white words against the bright green of the land and the light blue of the sea on the flight map made them look beautiful, just like some art work. I took a picture of them even though I don’t know anything about these characters, I just felt that it was something wonderful and kept the picture as a beautiful pattern.

Finally, I reached the airport in Paris after more than 27 hours travel. I altered the time on my watch to the local time, which was 10:05, 27th Sept. 2000. I got on an Italy Travel bus at the airport. I would travel more than 3300 miles on it through Europe.

Can you imagine? Just at that time and on that airplane, I wrote down this essay and made a big decision, to do something I really wanted to do for a long time. Then, 2 years later, in Oct., 2002, I published my first translation series of 4 books and 0.97 million words… :-)

--Shirley

Written in 2000,

Edition on 30th.,April,2005