Several days ago, I saw a video of a piano player. He was improvising by playing a ton of octave jumps. The jumps were so clear, powerful and brisk that I was shocked by his extraordinary talent. In an instant, I sent this video to my mum. Just some background information: My mum is a very typical Asian style ‘Tiger Mum’. She used to have great faith in my musical talent and hoped vehemently that I would become a professional pianist. Unfortunately, I never liked playing the piano so I quit it at the age of 15. I clearly have let my mum down and shamed her by doing a PhD at Cambridge. Nah, I’m just kidding. She is still very proud of me. 几天前，我在网上看到了一个人即兴弹钢琴的视频：他弹了很多八度大跳，弹得清脆有力。震惊于其高超的琴技和不同凡响的天赋，我把这段视频发给了我的妈妈。（这里需要补充一点背景信息：我妈是非常典型的亚洲式“虎妈”。从小她就对我的音乐天赋信心十足，一直致力于把我培养成专业的钢琴家。然而，弹琴对我来说始终都是件比较痛苦的事情，所以我15岁的时候就彻底放弃了我的钢琴生涯。我没有成为钢琴家却成为了一名剑桥大学的博士学生这个事实显然让我妈大失所望，甚至让她蒙羞。没有啦，开个玩笑。我妈还是很为我感到自豪的。
I told my Mum, “Check out this dude’s amazing octave jumps. He is a real talent, unlike me. I couldn’t help making mistakes while I was doing large jumps as a kid.” She answered, as expected, “No, I think you were indeed very talented. But you were just very fickle and lazy when it came to practice. If you had had more patience, just as the way you treat your research studies, you could have also played beautiful large jumps.” 然后我告诉她：“你看人家八度大跳弹得多好。这才是真正有钢琴天赋的人啊！不像我，真的很缺乏弹琴的天赋。小时候只要弹大跳必碰错音。”她回答道：“没有啊，我一直都觉得你还是很有天赋的。只是你在练琴这件事上是真的很浮躁，也很懒。如果你能拿出你搞学术一半精神搞钢琴的话，你肯定也能弹得很不错的。”嘿！我猜她就会这么说。