1996 was a big year for Hollywood: |Mission: Impossible|, |Independence Day|, |Broken Arrow|, |The Rock|… And before that 1994 is another one: |The Shawshank Redemption|, |Forrest Gump|, |Schindler’s List|… As a high school boy, I feel fortunately to grow up with those good movies.
“The Rock” is the one that I watched mostly, over 12 times so far. And I named myself Sean since 2003, the only reason is to follow Sean Connery, aka John Mason from “The Rock”.
Sir Connery died two days ago (1930. 8. 25 — 2020. 10. 30), I feel sorry about that. May him rest in peace.
“The Rock” gave me directions to my life, to a young boy’s life.
Before seeing the movie I had know idea about Ph.D, or Ph.D are weak nerds in my young mind. After the first watch of “The Rock”, I was impressed that a Ph.D. can be strong and brave, a Ph.D. can save the world. That’s Stanley Goodspeed from the movie, F.B.I. specialist of chemical weapons. I once tried to use Stanley as my name, later I found I like Sean more than anything else. So in college I already plan to pursuit my Ph.D. in the Digital Signal Processing space. I was not successful because I was not committed enough.
When John Mason (by Sean Connery) went out of his Jail room, the camera shot at his books: <The Art of War> by Sun Tze, <The Complete Works of William Shakespeare>. This reminds me read build wisdom and I kept reading philosophy and history books since then.
When Dr. Goodspeed met FBI Director Womack, the Director was impressed by his resume, this builds my passion for Ph.D. even more. And Goodspeed said: Well, I’m one of those fortunate people who like my job, sir. This is one the most impressive sentence to me, from any movie. I start to build my interested and my career into one: audio, and later Digital Signal Processing. After 24 years, I never change.
Three men, three respectful men, three background and three interests. But they stand the same value: integrity and love. I almost watch this movie once every year. And the OST background music plays many many times in my playlist, from Spotify to QQ Music.
Thank you Sir Sean Connery. May the peace be with you. While this younger Sean is building himself with integrity and love, with humor and wisdom.
p.s. I recently found a bar in Shenzhen where there is The Sean Connery cocktail, taste as rich as the gentleman.
