At 2:31pm, Randy said: "iGEM 2010 will be over in just a few minutes."

When you read this text, iGEM 2010 is over.

How did it go for us? Not good I'd say.

The night before the award ceremony, after all the presentations and poster sessions and talking and preaching, MIT sent every iGEM kid they could find to Jillian's in Boston, a sports club specially reserved for iGEM social. As we saw how the people were dancing, bowling and having such a blast, those of us who went there just weren't in the mood for it.

Because we were all too tired. The road to iGEM Jamboree 2010 of hard labor, late hours in the lab, in-fighting between group members and communication issues made the project anything but enjoyable. Reaching the end of the road wasn't much of an accomplishment. It was more like the end of hell. I have had two loyalties: the CSSAU community and iGEM team of Uppsala. Bouncing between these two wasn't easy, especially when the long hours in the lab consumed all of your time. One day I missed two calls from a diplomatic attache when I conducted experiments. He got angry. It took both me and Mr. Shi considerable amount of effort to quell his anger. And it was just one of the many instances when my two duties clashed.

After coming back from the party, it turned out our team didn't submit the safety questions. Me and three others finished the questions at 4am. The day after, well, I mean later that day, the iGEM award ceremony was held in Kresge auditorium, after the six finalists did their project presentations for the second time. The awards were delivered soon after. Team Uppsala didn't have much to do with it. Since the medal requirements for iGEM was criteria-based, meaning by fulfilling certain criteria, one could get a gold, silver or bronze medal. The number of medals weren't necessarily skewed, with fewer gold than silver. In fact, a lot more teams received gold than silver this year. As it turned out, so many of the teams who actually put their effort into the project were bloody serious about winning. There were also awards for each track and aspect of the Jamboree, e.g. best project in environmental science and best presentation at Jamboree. This year the winner of the iGEM grand prize was Slovenia, the team who streamlined BioBrick production and submitted 151 finished genetic constructs as a result. The 1st runner-up was Peking University. They tried to genetically engineer a bacteria to fight water pollution. They were also the winner of the Environmental track. The 2nd runner-up, or third place was Bristol, who constructed bacteria for agricultural purposes. The other three finalists were Imperial College London, Cambridge and TU Delft. Aside from their gold medal, they were all winners of their respective track or specialty.

Bing had to leave earlier to visit her relatives in New Jersey. Hsin-ho and Imtiyaz also left for New York City. Me and Antonio went separate ways. I ran into Sophia at the entrance, must to my amusement. We exchanged a few words, and she told me how little I changed since 2006. She recognized me right away. I ate lunch with Allen, who happened to be a judge for the Human Practice aspect of various projects. On Tuesday, I'm meeting Mengxiao. My mother's old colleague Jifa invited me to dinner. I told him to pick me up at my hotel, because I had to get my gift for him. So I walked the same way me and Antonio did on the first night of this event.

Without the excitement and anxiety of my iGEM anticipation, I felt like I was drained off all the energy. Without any glory or honor in competing against the other teams, I was just another visitor lost in Boston. Or Cambridge. Back in my hotel room, I called my parents and told my friends about what transpired here. Also, I've been thinking about the next year's iGEM in Uppsala. This time with a regional qualification round. You have to beat more than half of the European teams to make it to the iGEM final in MIT. The scale of iGEM Jamboree is growing out of control so MIT won't even have a big enough auditorium to gather all the participants. Hence, this decision is a necessary pain. If Uppsala is to make it to the final round, the information from this iGEM must pass on to the next. Furthermore, the organizational structure, team dynamics, interaction with the university, company and social sector must undergo major improvements. At the moment there is one guy at the X program who's involved himself with the iGEM 2011. But he has no prior experience. In my opinion, many of the guys who are currently recruited don't seem like the kind of people you'd expect to see in the lab. After the iGEM Jamboree, I have lots of ideas I'd like to try with iGEM 2011. If my ambitions of iGEM 2011 are to be realized, first I have to find myself in a position where my experience can come to use. I suspect it requires more aggressive negotiations than I like. One of the possible obstacles is the influence of a certain person. But that we'll have to see. In order to get the International student coordinator involved, initially our team discussed the possibility of showing our image as a way to help recruit foreign master students, countering the drop with the fee introduced. However, right now I've got reasons to worry that it might not turn out as planned. For personal reasons, I'm not going to disclose this part further.

When Jifa was paying for the nicest dinner I ever had in America, I took a fortune cookie from the table and opened it. The paper strip said: If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it. I saved this paper to remind myself in times of difficulties and doubt, like this one.

The first days at iGEM Jamboree, Cambridge MA, hosted by MIT

Let me tell you what happened these two days.

I flew with Antonio to Boston via Amsterdam. The landing at Amsterdam felt extremely dangerous. It started with the wings shooting two jet streams from below the wings; next you knew, the plane started to bounce randomly like it was caught in a turbulence. Well one could've believed it was indeed turbulence, before seeing the plane was actually 50 m above the ground, at most. Then came the landing. The first touchdown pushed the plane right back into the air, like an athlete's final step on the ramp when doing the long jump. Fortunately, this time the athlete didn't fall over. It was the worst landing I ever experienced.

The flight to Boston from Amsterdam had its AC turned a bit too low. I couldn't help my runny nose. Once we landed, Antonio was "random selected" by the border control. I waited for him outside, and he was angry why I didn't try to find him. Well, I said, if he got sent back to Europe, I don't wanna follow him by claiming to be his friend. The road from Logan airport to Hyatt Regency in Cambridge was long and painful. The hotel turned out to be 15 min from the nearest public transport and food. So strategically located, I thought. Now you have no choice but to buy their expensive food, like the 20$ breakfast buffet.

On Friday, me and Antonio got ourselves haircut. I also bought the iPad for my friend, draining my HSBC bank account almost empty. In the evening we tried to practice the presentation at MIT, and saw another group having their presentation. To our horror, our presentation lacked a lot of information. We spent hours correcting them all. Today we finally got over with the presentation. It was alright.

Actually it was not "alright". One day ago, I thought that me, Antonio and Hsin-Ho are the only ones representing Uppsala. However, Bing and Imityaz got their US visa approved last-minute. The pity was, Nagarjun who made the modeling couldn't come. We convinced Bing to take part of our presentation. Imityaz was persuaded into explaining the modeling. And he got so nervous during the presentation that it was almost funny to watch. When being asked a question that was expected to come from the judges, he tried to point at the huge screen 30 meters away with his fingers. I'm not saying my part was flawless either. I got a bit high in the midst and dragged out my part like always. If things stopped there, then we would've thought our presentation was "alright".

When the next team took over, we were totally stunned. At least I knew I was.

Imperial College London tried to create a biosensor for fast detection of Schistosoma parasite. It was done through a simple protein-protein interaction mechanism. They incorporated engineering designs and modules into the project, something Prof. John March at Cornell also taught me. The most scary part was, by the end of their presentation, they showed a "prototype" of their biosensor. Actually it was just a fake prototype, a wooden model showing how the product should look like. With their over 50 slides, we wondered how they could keep the presentation to less than 20 minutes. When I saw how the guys were alternating paces from fast to slow to fast, I realized how much they must have practiced the entire speech and timed it perfectly. Maybe they even planned ahead as much as knowing which minute shall finish with which slide. Their over 50 slides finished almost exactly on 20 minutes. My first impression of the overall project along with its presentation is summarized in one word.

Flawless.

Yes flawless indeed.

Compared to Imperial College London, our presentation looked like a pathetic attempt to sneak into this prestigious International competition. It was like a kid showing the mother the first poem he wrote, while your brother just composed something Shakespeare-ish. We looked like a bunch of fools.

After the break, an even stronger Cambridge showed up. They submitted 20 parts, recorded stunning footage of what their genetic product was capable of, and wrote a RFC for future BioBrick standards. On the way to Jamboree, they wrote three biochemical calculator and file conversion tools. Other than software, the Cambridge people even invented a device for bioluminescence measurement. The Cambridge team of iGEM 2010 is pure awesomeness.

After all the presentations, it was poster session. To cut the diary short, I'll just explain what I found out about the other teams. Things that the future iGEM team of Uppsala should know about.

Rumor say Heidelberg ran a 4 million SEK project. Each member gained 20 000 euro for completing iGEM, and they have 20 members. Uppsala's budget is around 2 % of theirs. Heidelberg's studies involved testing of viral strains on mice, which in itself is expensive enough.

Slovenia submitted 151 new parts to the registry. They won iGEM twice already. Uppsala this year: of the 6 parts to be submitted, only 2 got submitted.

Cambridge got most of their funding directly or indirectly through the university sector. One of their advisors is a lab director with extensive connections to the biotech-industry (my guess is he's Gos Micklem). He could personally get all the sophisticated equipments borrowed from companies to campus for wetwork over the summer. Our lab certainly didn't have all the equipments, nor the same kind of connections.

BIOTEC Dresden came up with a smart reporter system to normalize the fluorescence expression to a reference. They made a construct where the expression of YFP is induced; on the same construct, they inserted a constitutive RFP generator, using the red fluorescence as the reference value to the yellow fluorescence. The result was great. Apart from the companies they contacted, the university department offered them frequent and free sequencing. The Rudbeck lab at Uppsala was such a bitch about sequencing and getting the primers. While they agreed to sequence our construct, they did not want to make the necessary primers for us. So we had to ask some company to make our primers. In the end there was so much hassle that we never sequenced anything.

Imperial College London had all the company contacts taken care of by the university administration, as well as all the lab equipments. Furthermore, they received money for working and living over the summer.

Students from UCL had to contact the companies on their own, as told by a person from Imperial College London.

Chris Andersen of Berkeley is a judge at iGEM this year. His students worked on a cool project, and an open source program called Clotho. A super-senior of the Berkeley team told me how good it is for coordinating group works in synthetic biology. Uppsala students used Google Wave. The useful information was easily drown among the useless information. Mostly it wasn't up-to-date.

It seems like Cornell did something relatively trivial this year, they used a few somewhat non-conventional fluorescent proteins so they could contribute to the parts registry. We should have submitted all our intermediate parts, if they weren't in the registry already.

That's all for now. Tomorrow I'll check out Slovenia, UCSF, MIT, Harvard and some other big shots in this field.

Multiple Man

While in Cornell, one of my best friends said he admired me for living a three-men-life: Asian, Swedish, and American. This dude saw me as an Asian-born human being, cultivated in European values and moral, while learning the American attitude to find success. There are some truth in it after all. While in Sweden, people see me as just another immigrant dude, in US, I could sell myself labeled as Asian European in America, and people would buy it.

Living like this however, is not always that easy.

Sometimes it's all about choosing your side(-s). It could be from the smallest thing of who to hang out with on a Friday night, to big issues such as forming relationships. For example, if I were to pick the wildest party animals to get most out of partying, in Uppsala I might end up with some exchange students. For the long term benefit however, going for the Swedes is better. But the party won't be as wild, besides, it also takes some time for them to relate to you. The Chinese students usually never party in nightclubs, instead, casino nights, game nights appear periodically on their calendar. It's fun from time to time, but it won't give you the same adrenaline kick.

Since I have the options, choosing becomes a problem. Sometimes I envy the average dude who grew up in one place, and never moved outside his country. If you can't speak Chinese, you don't even think about hanging out with Chinese. That somehow forces you to only meet the locals, and in the end, you don't have as many "what ifs" in your mind.

Before finishing this post, I need to clarify something. What defines if a person is Asian, European or American? To be an Asian, you somehow have to know a lot of Asian stuff. Like what kind of pop singer is on the chart today, what Korean drama is on the air, etc. Your real-Asian friends wont bring up Bossa Nova with you. Likewise, the Swedes don't know anything about Jay Chou. However, if you find yourself having so many commonalities with all the groups of people, will that make you a many-faced person? If I'm with Swedes, I can sing drinking song with them, they see me as one of them; when I'm with my Chinese friends, I can talk about the trendy personalities on the Internet, they also see me as one of them. If this is the case, then what am I? Am I half Swedish, half Chinese, or neither? Maybe I'm a Swedish undercover in the Chinese, or an Asian undercover in the western culture?

I remember when we were kids, we dreamed of having superpowers. Forget teleportation, flight, eye-beam, or time travel. If there is anything that I can get good use of, it is self-duplication. I'll make clones of myself, sending one into the Asian crowd, one to chill with Swedes, and one more to pursue my California dream with the American attitude. Once in a while, all of my clones return to me to share their experiences. Maybe then and only then, I can finally figure out a way to live in the present.

It sounds crazy eh? Hahaha you don't have to take it seriously.

今天看到的消息...

今天下午在实验室看到facebook上一条新闻。刚开始只是感觉有些意外，然后心里稍稍高兴了一下，告知几个好友，说我今晚要把新买的Beaujolais红酒开封畅饮。回到家了，看看冰箱里储存的红酒，想想还是没喝。

坐下来后，感觉又回来了。跟康奈尔的“老大姐”聊了几句，她叫我设想一下如果自己还在美国Ithaca，那么今天的生活完全就是另一个样子。白天上课，晚上学习，有空出去见见朋友，到处跑跑。而且，那样的话如果熬到今天就不会是孤身一人了。有些事情明摆着的，自己迷在局中才看不见。我原先就说有些事情不会长久，果然被我说中了。可惜老天总是给人玩一个时间差的游戏。也许是年龄还小涉世未深，对于生活的点点滴滴没有经验，就像是给个孩童一只整鸡，尽管饿极，这个鸡还是大得让他不知从何处下手。有人天生就会吃鸡，有人后天摸索出来吃鸡的方法，还有人是从别人那里学来的。如果这个孩子的父母一直把鸡撕开给他鸡腿，那么恐怕这小孩长大后都不知道鸡是何物。饥荒的时候即时抓到了一只鸡也不知道如何把其变成盘中餐。这人很可能守着食物而仍然饿死。想想至今所有错失的良机，也只能继续走下去了。毕竟生活的脚步是不会停下来等你的。

今天要申请奖学金，与SKS开会商讨这个学期的活动，又是忙碌的一天。

Thriving like a cockroach

Saturday night was Uppsala cultural night, an annual event hosted by all the activity clubs in town.

I went out with some friends. We took a drink at Upplands Nation, we went to an improvisational salsa lesson, and hanged out with some exchange students for a while. I was the one who brought groups of people together, and it was fun.

All of the guys who went with me to the salsa lesson thought it was an excellent idea. To them it meant getting intimate physical contact with scores of beautiful girls with hardly any effort. To me it wasn’t anything new. After all, it seemed like a smart idea to attend that dance lesson that night. Luckily the jousting show wasn’t as long as I thought would be. So I could make some positive adjustments to my plan. After the salsa lesson, we checked out over a hundred people dancing in circles on the square in front of the train station. A girl in our group suggested we should join the circle. So I ran over there with her. Then a funny thing happened: it took us like two minutes before we realized the dancers were all Iraqis, except us two Asians. We crashed the gathering of a local Iraqi community. But we were high, we were excited and in that moment, nothing in the world could stop us. We danced for a while before going back to our friends, who were still shaking their heads in disbelief of our little adventure.

Enough report on cultural night, let’s get down to my epiphany.

Mr. Hu the president of CSSAU once said to the graduate freshmen, that one ought to live like a cockroach in order to get used to the Uppsala student life. Roaches are die-hard creatures. You stomp on them a hundred times, they can still get up and crawl away flattened. They recover miraculously fast. To all the SC2 nerds out there, you know what I’m talking about. Just to make it clear, I deal with computer games only in past tense. Roaches even live through atomic blast. When all other sophisticated life forms perished in the nuclear winter, roaches remain, ready to dominate the earth and direct a new round of evolution in its own image.

Roaches are tough. So should men. Remember the Asian Playboy article I posted? A pickup artist should have thousands of approaches, with the number of rejections in the same order of magnitude as the approaches. Only then can they achieve their goal. In the seduction community, there is a saying that the best PUAs have had more failures than the average men. An average frustrated chump have never tried, thus, his statistics could potentially look better, because his number of rejections are zero. In the end, no matter how many battles you fight, you will only be remembered for the ones you win, and not the ones you lose.

Well, I’m not here to talk about seduction community. Getting rejected in clubs is nothing compared to those rejections for life. One of my friends at Cornell went on probation for failing numerous classes in one semester. He wasn’t dumb or lazy. That time, he took on too many projects and was way over his head. He spent half a year studying at home, fixing credits from summer school, and finally returned to Ivy League. In my opinion, he will accomplish great deeds, simply because he recovered from such a blow and learned his lesson. For someone who has always been successful, he/she won’t possess this potential. Well, if the winning streak never ends, then luck can be seen as ability. However, once the walls fall around you, some people just won’t walk around with the same confident stature as before.

It’s not about never failing, it’s the recovery. To realists, “failures” occur when things don’t go your way. They are bound to happen. You just have to live through them. Remember Mystery once brought a fake cigar to bars and night clubs. It was just another prop he wanted to try. Unfortunately, within minutes of conversation, his targets could always realize the cigar wasn’t real. They asked him why he brought a fake cigar when going out. The first time it happened, he didn’t have any good answer. He was like “uh, I don’t know…” Whenever somebody looked through his trick and confronted him about it, it was like catching a pig in a bag. No thrill, just slaughter. However, Mystery came up with an excellent way to recover from his blown cover.

He said: smoking disgusts me. Then he would puff the cigar as if it was real. This line made a humorous turn and his status was reinstated.

In real life, you don’t always find a fast and easy recovery as Mystery did. But you have to recover anyway. When Boston Celtics were facing off the Kobe-led Lakers, their head coach told the Celtics: Kobe will always score. He’ll score no matter how far away the hoop is, he’ll score with your hands in his face, and he’ll score with you performing a perfect block on his shot. You just have to take Kobe’s hits and hit back harder. In that game, Kobe scored a game-high 38 points. However, the Lakers lost with almost 20 points. It’s your right to get whatever you want, but it’s the right of the universe to grant you failures. Countering failure is like stopping Kobe Bryant from winning a game. They’ll always hit you, and sometimes hurt you. Just stand up like those hits weren’t real, and try again.

Nothing goes according to plan

A brand new semester, back in Uppsala. New friends, new faces and new allegiances. Also, a new set of plan of my last academic years. At one instance, it seemed like everything is fitting into a perfectly knitted grand scheme of things to come.

Only if the things went according to my plan.

Scenario one: finding a housing in Uppsala this year is difficult beyond belief. The youngsters born in the 1990s have graduated from high school. Due to the worldwide recession, those folks who didn't choose academia, ended up jobless. This year is the time when everyone turned their eyes from the depleted job opportunities to higher education. The university officials, incompetent as they are, admitted more students than what the local housing options can possibly accommodate. Also being the last tuition-free year for master students coming from outside EU, the influx of international graduate students is at a historic high. With my 1700 days in the line at a major housing company, I only got an apartment after three rounds of selection. The move-in was set at September 1st, two days since the semester start. During my first ten days in Uppsala, I lived at a friend's place. He was kind enough to let me sleep on a comfortable mattress in his living room. This guy and me, we were in the same class since freshman year. Now he's doing his master thesis. It's like living a life connected by three dots: BMC, the institute where he works; home; the ICA store where he purchases grocery. Life is boring and it sucks.

Scenario two: most of the people I knew since earlier are either taking a year off, or working on master thesis. There are few familiar faces in my classes. My social circle in Uppsala is facing a decline. My friend Anna with astonishing prowess in Chinese, went to China; Sven the nice dude from Chemical Engineering chose one year in Shanghai after losing a student board election; A clique of girls in my major either transferred to Gothenborg or remain in Adelaide on exchange. Other than my friends who departed, more are on their way to leave the town. Mohammad my IBO-alumnus is going to Chicago for his master thesis in a few months. Without the company of my closest friends, I'm yet again a new guy in town.

Scenario three: I finally moved into my new apartment. It seems like the previous patron from either India, Pakistan or Bangladesh abused the condo badly (his name was still on the mailbox). The wallpapers are completely greased. The doors are full of dents. The funniest part is, he even removed the light bulbs from the kitchen, the bathroom, and the closet. Something you definitely shouldn't do in a Swedish apartment for rent. This apartment came unfurnitured. The first few weeks in school are totally wasted on buying furnitures and making my home look good. Whenever I'm cooking or just hanging around, I keep finding new traces of past abuse. I don't wanna act like a racist. Though I strongly encourage people to not live into their own stereotype, giving the true racists reasons to justify their actions.

Scenario four: One of my best friend is supposed to write his bachelor thesis in Economics. However, due to a misunderstanding between him and his faculty advisor, he failed to register the thesis-writing as a course. This semester, he got no course registered. Which in turn meant no study aid from CSN, the Swedish Board of Study Aid. Initially we were supposed to share the apartment together with a third patron from China. Since he got no money, he had to back out. To fund his living, my troubled friend must find a job. I can't blame him, although I sincerely hope this transpiration won't disturb our perfectly maintained friendship. I'm sharing the apartment with two Chinese graduate students now.

Scenario five: it's gonna take longer before I can graduate. If I insist on having my master thesis in US, I must wait. Mohammad is going to Chicago in January, and he was accepted as early as in May. Two people from my major started their own iGEM team. Both of them got projects to work on stateside. They were admitted when I was still in Cornell and they are going in January as well. The lapse of at least one semester is required from the point one gets admitted til the actual visit. I realized when I was indulging myself with the Cornell experience, my Swedish classmates weren't sitting around doing nothing either. Since they stayed for a prolonged time in Uppsala and obtained experience within the local research sector, they gained an upper hand. Even with the valuable trainings Cornell offered, I ended up "in their game". For example, the iGEM folks would never peer into iGEM if they went abroad. They wouldn't know enough people in Uppsala to build a team and get financial support. In some sense, it's better to stay at one institute than moving around. It's good to get new experiences, but if you want to accomplish something, sometimes you have to settle down and let time fullfil its promises. I have no clue of what's gonna happen to me next semester. It would suck so much if I can't make it to USA before summer. I'll become a super-uber-senior who takes too long to graduate. Besides, I won't even have those friends with master thesis around me anymore. They'll be graduating in spring and leave the town.

Even with a few difficulties in my social as well as academic life, there are a few things I haven't lost my grip on. I'm mostly interested in synthetic biology. Unfortunately Uppsala has no research program or courses offered in the field. I want to find a lab in US working on it. To prepare myself, I signed up for a literature project course. You are to read articles on a given subject and submit a review. I chose synthetic biology. I want to read up on the subject so I will know for sure what I'm gonna work on. Also, it's a chance for me to prove myself for my future lab supervisor that I know a great deal about synthetic biology even without having worked in a synethic biology lab. My friend who offered me housing earlier suggested since Uppsala has no synthetic biology, I can perhaps bring it here. After working and gaining enough experience from my future research abroad, I should try to lead my own synthetic biolog team in Uppsala and become a professor. When that day comes, I must hire a bunch of good-looking babes as my students, and put my friend right in the middle of all those wonderful creatures. "By then, you can finally repay my favor!" He gave out a laughter.

Tomorrow is a big day. My parents are coming to help me furnish my room. After that it's an important meeting. I still love US much more than Sweden. Hopefully I'm going to see the "land of freedom" again in the near future.

Predators, let the survival begin!

今天看了新片《Predators》，中文好像叫《捕食者》或《钢铁战士》。对不熟悉这个系列的童鞋们，我给来个简短的介绍，就算是如个门吧。

Predator 这个系列应该可以算是科幻，动作，血腥与恐怖合四为一。第一部由施瓦辛格主演的《Predator》在1987年进入影院后便一炮打红（万分注意结尾的 s）。如今围绕这个主题展开的有五部电影，多款游戏，和无数漫画及动漫。在欧美，Predator的fanbase十分庞大。Predators是一类人形外星生物，又称捕食者。他们的科技比人类要发达很多。他们可以在星系之间航行，并且把自己的人和宇宙飞船用隐形装置隐蔽起来让人无法发现。在拥有发达的科技下，捕食者们保留了武士和猎手的文化。一个捕食者在同伴中的地位以捕猎的技能有关。他们佩带猎物身上摘取的骨头作为战利品，以此展示自己的捕猎能力。资深的捕食者一般身上挂满了各式各样外星生物的头颅。年轻捕食者必须经过的成人礼，就是被送到一处猎场，捕猎并且存活下来。



这里关键细节呢，就是：他们捕的猎物之一，是人。你看的没错，叫human也好，叫Homo sapiens也好，就是人。这里所涉及的是对传统道德观的挑战。当今人们捕猎，已经不是为了食物，而是寻求回归原始的暴力感和刺激。捕食者作为科技更发达的文明，捕猎科技落后的蛮荒人类。你还可以把它跟非洲殖民者比较，拥有机枪的白人屠杀使用长矛弓箭的黑人，也曾经被美化为文明铲除野蛮的过程。 Predator这个系列造就了一个假想天敌，把处于人类文明鼎峰的战士们放在猎物的位置，然后再把屠杀演给人看。在捕食者刻毒的高科技武器面前，人仿佛小孩脚下的蚂蚁一样弱小。在捕食者面前，低级的人类是牲口，是猎物，是娱乐的工具。在捕食者的枪口下，伟大的人与伟大的蚂蚁毫无差别。一千五百年前，蛮族首领，匈王阿提拉（Attila the Hun）率领铁骑大军席卷欧洲文明的罗马帝国，使其灭亡。阿提拉为日后的历史学家上了一课：文明与野蛮的界线，是由刀剑画出来的。残忍的捕食者之所以能把文明的人类变成牲畜，只是因为他们的科技和武器给了他们这个特权。到最后，为了存活，人类所有的道德观，价值观纷纷飞灰烟灭。唯一剩下的原则是强者存，弱者亡这个简单事实。丘吉尔曾说过：“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”为了存活，为了能撰写自己的历史，有时候人需要脱离并超越简简单单的“对与错”这个层面。

（透剧警告！！！）

《Predators》是Predator系列的第五部大片。电影开始，Adrien Brody（The Pianist男一号）同学以自由落体速度从天空下坠。处于昏迷状态的他在半空中惊醒，就在快要摔死的前几秒，降落伞张开，他落在了一处热带雨林里。落地后，Adrien在雨林里遇到了七个与他经历相同的人。他们几个要么是职业军人，要么就是杀人不眨眼的职业罪犯。这里有：俄罗斯特种部队先锋兵（Spetsnaz alpha group），以色列国防军狙击手（Israeli Defence Force sniper），墨西哥贩毒团杀手（Los Zetas enforcer），日本极道稻川会成员（Yakuza Inagawa-kai），非洲塞拉利昂叛军战士（Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone），FBI通缉的头号死囚，和一个连环杀人犯。Adrien的角色在片中既没有给出自己的姓名，也没有透露自己的背景。不过片中的以色列人，也是唯一的女角色，说他应该是该行干雇佣兵的前特种兵。逆境让一行人团结起来，合力寻找离开这片雨林的路。很快，他们发现，这里并不是地球上的任何原始森林，而是某个外星球。紧接着，他们遭到了未知生物的攻击。很快，捕食者们显形了：他们的能量武器可以瞬间把人降解成一滩血肉；他们的隐形装置能让自己与猎物近在咫尺而不暴露；他们的速度和灵活可以穿越布满陷阱的危险地带；而且捕食者力大无比，人远远不是对手。Adrien同学很快明白了：整个星球是个庞大的狩猎场，而他们是捕食者精心挑选的猎物。他们几个人被选中，完全是因为他们代表了人类社会最擅长杀人的人。捕食者们希望在猎取人同时强化自己的战斗技能。身边的同伴一个个倒在捕食者刀枪下，Adrien却在暗中琢磨如何返回地球……

整个电影动作片成分占了绝大部分。虽说剧情背景如此阴暗，但如果说写剧本的想引起人们思考什么，那绝对是不可能的。满分10分的话我给它打个7分。主要靠剧中人物的“真实性”。虽说这是个科幻片，讨论真实不真实有些可笑，可我还是要说几点。首先，剧中的人物比观众聪明。受过训练的特种兵，杀手和战士都精通杀人招数。作为被捕杀者，他们能够很快识破捕食者用以捕杀他们的伎俩。某个角色通常会解释捕食者为何如此如此，然后女狙击手会问他如何知道。解释的这个人会说：“因为我如果是猎手我会这么做”，或者“我以前就这么杀过人”。跟杂牌军相比以色列国防军的狙击手反而显得无比菜鸟，除了扣动扳机什么都不懂。大部分观众就像这个女兵，被蒙在鼓里直到有人指点才恍然大悟。由于角色们的平均智商比较高，他们每人都有很多不上银幕的小动作。因此，剧中时常出现没有任何前提而突然发生的现象。Adrien说“the sun hasnt moved since we got here”，给人感觉是“WTF？”以色列兵对周围发生的事不知情，却一眼就认出了捕食者。原来以色列军人可以随便偷看军事档案，像wikileak对阿富汗战争了如指掌。她看的资料提到美国特种部队1987年在Guatemala的一次任务中被捕食者猎杀，说的是1987年的第一部《Predator》电影的情节。FBI通缉的死囚不知何时偷偷穿上了捡来的防护背心。他背上挨了一炮都没死。可是之前剧中说防护背心只能用来屏蔽体热从而让捕食者发现不了。既然捕食者看不见他，那一炮，最不该被打的就是这个死囚。日本稻川会成员在逃跑过程中突然停下了，他要与来敌决斗。在这里还能看出好莱坞对日本武士道的神化。日本黑帮抽出武士刀，与佩带合金钢爪的捕食者大战三百回合，最终以平手告终。既然解决一个捕食者只需要牺牲一个日本武士，那么如果剧中所有的人都改行当武士的话，这八个人有大半可以活着回家。日本的铁匠也太敬业了。日本钢刀不仅可以开膛破肚，还能挡住未来金属爪的切削。死得最冤的是Lawrence Fishbourne（The Matrix里面的Morpheus）演的Noland，一个流落在行星上多年的老兵。此人亲手解决过好几个捕食者，他想尽了一切办法活下去。 Noland为了能得到更多的武器甚至想暗算我们的主人公。而Predator出现时，他随便一炮就被打死了，没有任何特技动作。剧中唯一的大腕影星所占戏份不过五分钟，看来导演把工资都花在建造这个行星上面了。虽然以色列女兵脑子不好使，她说了全片两句最有哲理的话。一句是“我们被魔鬼选到这个行星上来，是因为我们在人类社会就是杀人无数的魔鬼”，另一句是“敌人的敌人并不一定是你的朋友”。对于电影的结尾，我还是比较满意的。至少导演没给设个 “happily ever after”，那样的话就没法看了。

一本正经的雇佣兵终于说出了自己的名字：Royce；以色列女兵告诉他：My name is Isabelle。剩下的两人与最后的黑色大捕食者对决。无奈对方太强壮了，Isabelle被长矛钉在了地上，Royce被打得满脸是血。黑色捕食者伸出钢爪，准备砍下Royce的头……就在这时，Isabelle的手枪响了。黑色捕食者的胸膛被大口径子弹穿透！Royce乘这个机会，甩掉自己的刽子手。他抬头向天上望去，血色的天空中绽放开一朵朵白色的降落伞：后面的一批猎物又到了。他像天空伸出双手。每只手的手背上纹了一颗六芒星。他想起了儿时在 Auschwitz度过的地狱，向远方的耶和华祈祷……

空中有个没有张开的降落伞。一个黑点从天而坠，在Isabelle视野中越来越大。轰的一声，天空赠与的不明物体砸在刚刚爬起来的捕食者身上，把他拍扁了。地上只剩下了一滩绿色的血肉。Royce定睛一看，耶和华下赠的救命法宝，竟然是一台钢琴。他坐下来，为了感激上苍的恩赐，弹奏起肖邦的《Andante spianato et grande polonaise brillante》。曲终，Royce搀扶起倒在地上的Isabelle，看着远方落地的降落伞，说：“答令，我们找个途径离开这个星球！”

你要是相信我编的这些胡话你就傻X了。结尾你还是自己去看吧。