When I was a boy, I was always happy to see those little brown coins. After years I was still very happy to pick up pennies on the ground, I usually saved them up. I usually bought a pack of gum(口香糖) or a bag of chips when it was enough. After growing up, I heard a story about coins. It was said that our loved people sometimes would leave pennies on the ground in front of us. People wanted to show us that we were loved and watched over kindly. I never doubted that story even as an adult. It is difficult for me to find a lot of money on the ground, but pennies are there all the time. Maybe that is why I still enjoy seeing them and picking them up, no matter how dirty or old they are.

A few months ago, I was walking to the local post office to mail a letter. As I entered the room, I saw not one, not two, but four pennies shining in the sunlight. I smiled and picked them up. I kept them in my hands as I walked in the post office. “Four is OK,” the post worker said to a lady. The lady began searching her purse, turning it inside out twice in vain. Her face went red. I understood what had happened. I laughed to myself for this surprising moment. I placed my pennies on the desk before her. The smile I got in return was worth a thousand dollars.

The coins weren’t so valuable to me, but they did matter to her. I just performed a little kindness. I was happy.

Standing in my office 25 years ago was an unknown young astronomer with a half-smile on her face. She had come with an impossible request that my team modify (修改) our thoroughly tested software to make one of our most important scientific instruments do something it had never been designed for, and risk breaking it. All to carry out an experiment that was basically a waste of time and couldn’t be done-to prove that a massive black hole lay at the center of our Milky Way.

My initial “no way” gradually gave way in the face of her cheerful but firm determination. Andrea Ghez, one of three winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics，impressed me with her work on providing solid evidence of a supermassive black hole with the mass of four million suns living at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

That determination and the willingness to take calculated risks has always characterized Andrea. For 25 years she has focused almost completely on Sagittarius (人马座) A *—the name of our own local supermassive black hole. It is remarkable that an entire field of study has grown up in the quarter century, of searching for and finding evidence of these monsters thought to lie at the heart of every large galaxy.

Andrea did her work at the W. M. Keck Observatory’s twin telescopes on Maunakea, Hawaii, in the calm and clear air almost 14000 feet above the Pacific Ocean. She started using the very first instrument fixed on Keck Observatory’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRC), now gracing the lobby at our headquarters.

Andrea is fond of pointing out that one of the reasons for her success has been this tight and rapid loop (循环) between the needs of the astronomers and the engineers who respond to the challenge.

This is my friend and longtime colleague, the one who refused to take “no” for an answer: Andrea Ghez, winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics.

When I was a teenager, I knew nothing about mental health. If you'd have talked about “safe spaces”, I'd have thought that you meant a bank. And, what's more, I didn't care about mental health. Why would I? Like my Dad always used to say, “If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

But, unfortunately my mental health did "break". Aged 17 I developed anorexia(厌食症).I didn't realize at the time; it was something that developed, rather than “began”. It took me a good few years to realize I had a problem, but I never felt to get help because 1 never felt ill enough.   When I was 23., I was diagnosed as severely clinically anorexic. I had fast-tracked treatment at The Maudsley Hospital in South London and went through 2.5 years of therapy.

People are always interested to know what helped me recover and among many things, it was simple: comedy. I'm a professional stand-up comic. Comedy for me, began as a hobby and has progressed into a job.

The word "comedy" is believed to derive from the Ancient Greek kōmos meaning “to reveal". It is comedy's job to “reveal” things, to analyze, explain and understand. I’d never been able to explain what was going on inside my head; trying to explain what's going on in your mind is like trying to explain a color to someone who's blind. So, comedy became a way of understanding and explaining things.

Dr. Dicter Declercq, lecturer at The University of Kent, believes that humor can shift our perspective on a difficult situation. In his new book, he notes that stand-up comedy is enjoyed with others, and it is crucial for good mental health and recovery.

Stand-up comedy was essential to my recovery. I know I'm not alone in that. So. I want to show other people that your mental health doesn't have to be “broke” before you can “fix it”.