Do you still remember …?

Dreams are like classics, never fading but growing more precious with time passing by.                                                                                      ---《old boys》

Do you still remember what were you doing at this time last year? I still remember, there were only 8 days before the university entrance examination. At that time I was struggling just to make me better prepared for the coming exam. Meanwhile, I was also looking forward to the unknown university life. Those days were simple, but we all had a specific dream. It was laborious but ace.

Do you still remember the day you took your first step into the campus? I still remember, everything around was new and all my roommates are excellent. There were many activities to welcome us news. After a few days` freshness, the military training came. After 2 or 3 weeks training, black became the mainstream. We washed out laziness and at our best to cope with the university life. But I do not know what I will be after 4 years when I graduate.

Do you still remember the first you come to Singapore? I still remember how exciting I was.  At that time I do believe I had gone to a better place where I will be better than someone. We traveled around this new country and know more about it. The first time I went to Jurong Point, the first time I took the MRT, culture tour, bridging course, learning journey and till now we have adjust the life-style in Singapore.  I still, however, do not know my future after 4 years but luckily I have this course, I have you my friends, I have our lovely tutors and at least I have a dream.

What I want to say is memories are your treasures, do not forget them. Our bridging course is coming to an end and I will miss you all my friends and tutors.

China's sorrow

 

(In case of any political problem, I declare that this is only my own opinion...)

  There is a hot current affair which is highly discussed around China. This case is about Confucius institute. On May 17th, USA government made an announcement that all Confucius institutes in USA should be identified(ps. Other countries' similar institutes do not need to...) and their Chinese teachers should leave USA before June 30th . But on May 27th, USA government made another announcement saying that Chinese teachers do not need to leave US this year and Confucius institutes in USA is legal. This case turned out to be a technical issue--"strict visa policies"(ps.as reported...). However, Chinese people got hurt by this, they think that USA government did this deliberately. 

  Because of this case, I started to learn something about these institutes which are named with Confucius. First of all, these institutes are mainly to teach foreigners to learn Chinese rather than spreading the "Ru" culture as some Chinese people think. Secondly, all these overseas institutes are all built by the invitation of foreign countries, and all the fees are paid by the Chinese government. That is to say, foreigners are using Chinese people's money to learn Chinese! I think the reason why Chinese government does this is because they want to promote China and have a better international image. Chinese people felt hurt because even we paid money for American, our institutes are still treated unfairly and our teachers are forced to leave by an excuse which is even like a joke. 

   This case reminds me a comment made by a famous host in CCTV, Bai Yansong,he said that :why China always helped other countries but still had few friends? Yes , that is China's sorrow. When we were short of food, we bought food to help Albania, but at last we became enemies with each other. We supported Vietnam freely, finally we had war with them. In 2007, CNPC(China national petroleum corporation)became "Asian's most profitable enterprise ". When wenchuan broke out an earthquake in 2008,they only donated 10 million yuan. But when Japan suffered from earthquake, they donated money and oil which worth more than 200 million yuan! Why they donated 20 times of the money as they donated to wenchuan to Japan, a country which invaded us last century! What's more sarcastic , Japanese still said that we Chinese did not donate money to them after earthquake and burned our national flag! What else can I say? Well, I am speechless. Why Chinese still treat foreigners far away so well while our own people still struggle to survive? 

  I am not against foreigners, I just want China to be clear that taking good care of ourselves first before we help others.   

Our English Tutors( Part Two)

Hi, I am back now! This is my last blog. I will try to write as much as possible XD.
Our Thursday tutor is Ms Yap. The first time she entered the classroom and said hello to us, I found her a graceful lady. She always wears beautiful tradition clothes which I learn a lot of Singapore culture from. Sometimes she will tell us about some Malays and my most familiar Hokkien which made our classroom very interesting. She only speaks English and Cantonese which make me have more chance to use English other than my mother tongue. When we talked about Ms Yap, we may think about a word that I will never forget which is "Subtle". Why? You may wonder the reason. Actually Ms Yap trained us not only to learn the word but also use the word. She always said " Subtle influence" to remind us to speak English everyday. Ms Yap always bring some traditional Singaporean food like Nian Gao (Whether it is called Gui here?) and share with us before New Year or some other days. She bring Indian dessert for us, too. We not only enjoy the food but also learn the Singaporean culture. For me, some Singaporean food is quite similar to some Hokkien food like the Nian Gao which makes me warm as if I was still celebrating the Spring Festival in my beloved hometown. Ms Yap's topic for oral reports are very difficult but I think it is nice to have chances to report in Thursday. We all remember the most classical topic is " If you are a .____ ( flag, one Singapore Dollar, a song,etc), explain your one-day life or what kind of song will you be" After our report, our tutor will give us her version which is very beneficial for us to learn how to describe things in a more native way. Anyway, thanks to Ms Yap so we learn some different and useful things,too.
The last tutor is Qizhong. You may wonder what I am so rude to call him directly without proper address. If you come to our class, you will understand the reason. The first time I saw him, I guess the whole class are shocked. He wore the earphone and carried a cup of coffee.He was in a very hip-hop style cool dressing!  He looked like a student among us and sometimes he seemed to be regarded as a student who enter the teacher office without permission. He is a very easy-going person. From him, I learnt an different aspect of Singapore youth life style. To tell the truth, I really learnt a lot of things from him, I mean the attitude or some other things which I cannot learn from our " American" textbook. You know we all live in Singapore and we will stay in Singapore for at least ten years, but after half year in Singapore. It is essential for us to know more about local people. He is a musician so he need to play a lot of shows in his spare time. Sometimes he will show us the video which recorded his playing. I used to go to Mosaic Music Festival at Esplande to see his performance. I was very happy to see a person I known  foreign country!!! He told us what happened to him in his life and shared his true feeling to us. He told us about his high school life and the university life. We cannot experience the Singapore Junior College life and we are lucky to get this chance to know about the local high school life. He will set aside the books sometimes and analysis our English essay for a long session. Since his major in Linguistics, he told us about a lot of professional knowledge. Even though we cannot remember all of them but we have a better understanding in how to write the native English essays.

From my two blog, I guess you must have a overview about our four tutors. As our senior said, the four tutors shall be very different. I cannot help praising the arrangement done by CELC. Our four tutors all tried their best to help us adjust ourself to the new life here. They brought their stories to us. They shared their views with us. I am very lucky to have chance to listen to our four tutors' classes. Now the English Bridging Course is going to end. I hope all the best to our four tutors and our group members. Thanks to all of you, we are not alone in this country. I hope we all can get a nice result in our QET. Thanks again to our tutors sincerely !

To grow up or not to grow up

I still remember the scene when I did my first oral report in front of the class. It was more than five months ago, and all the strangers in class have already become friends since then.

The topic I chose in the first time of my oral report was Peter Pan. Though I have already watched the film and read the book for tens of times, I still think of this little boy all the time. As we all know, Peter Pan is different from others because he is the only one who will never grow up. As long as he stays in the wonderful island, Neverland, he will be a boy forever.

I guess that most people wish to grow up as fast as possible when they are young. At that time, adults have countless authorities in their eyes, such as staying up late at night and refuse to eat something they don’t like. After saying goodbye to their childhood and really become an adult, however, people will wish again that they could never grow up, for there are much more things that you have to do even if you are unwilling. Children think adults owns so much freedom while adults find the freest period is their childhood; this is why so many human never enjoy their life.

Well, what confuse me a lot are the reasons of the different choices that different characters make in the story of Peter Pan. Why does Wendy insist to leave Neverland, go back home and grow up? Why do others homeless boys choose to go with Wendy and grow up together? And why does Peter keep refusing to leave with Wendy and prefer never growing up? 

Suddenly I recall the famous poem, The Road Not Taken: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both.” To grow up is one of the roads, and not to grow up is another one, even though it seems that we do not have the right to choose at all. We have to grow up.

Sometimes it is very sad to see a naïve kid becomes sophisticated, for he loses his courage to say no to unfairness and all he cares is his salary. Peter believes that he will be sent to school and then become a bank clerk if he grows up, so he choose to stay in the Neverland alone and never grow up. Our life cannot be so simple and predictable as Peter’s, but it will not be relaxing for sure. We will learn to take our responsibilities.

To grow up or not to grow up, this is a problem. As far as I am concerned, I hope I could be forever young, but I also know it is impossible. Maybe all I can do is trying hard to keep my childishness. I am proud of my childlike innocence, and I wish I could still say so after ten years.

On the way

It’s a long long journey

Till I know where I’m supposed to be

It’s a long long journey

And I don’t know if I can believe

------Journey 

This is one of my favorite songs.

Someone has said, “Go travelling, or do some reading. Either your body or your heart, at least one of them should be on the way.” I cannot agree more. People ought to keep themselves on the way, otherwise they can hardly make any progress.

I like travelling, and there are so many places I would like to have a look. The first option is Taiwan. It is known that Taiwan is famous for its human landscape and abundant culture, as well as delicious traditional food and fresh fruits. What is more, a lot of Taiwanese literature works have not been imported to mainland, which attract me a lot. Japan is another place where I always want to travel. It is said that the view of Chang’an in Tang Dynasty can only be seen in Kyoto. It is sad but true. Besides, I also look forward to going sighting in Korea, Thailand, Europe, and so on.

However, for such a lazy guy as I am, travelling is not an easy thing. If go with travel agency, there is very little freedom; but if go by myself, I have to start preparing everything long before the journey, which is so tiring. This is one reason that I prefer do reading rather than go travelling. Meanwhile, another reason is that travelling costs much more than reading. As we all know, an ordinary book is no more than twenty or thirty dollars, but we can read it again and again until we get tired of it; if the book happens to be a masterpiece, we will never be tired of it. Compared with travelling, which costs us thousands of dollars at once, it is so obvious that books are much more worthwhile. No wonder it is said that we can never pay a book up.

For these reasons, I spend most of my spare time reading various books. Most of the books that I have read are novels, including fairy tales, romantic novels, Kung fu novels, science fictions, and so on. These books teach me a lot about how to deal with the complicated real world. Poems and stories about poets are my favorites as well, especially Chinese ancient poems. The world inside books is so fabulous that I cannot leave it at all.

St. Augustine said, “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” You see, travelling and reading combine together again. Be on the way, and always gain something new. Thus the life must be rich.

whatever this is

I didn't know we should write a blog until this morning, so it seems that I have to pick up a topic quickly and start writing. But the problem is, I cannot decide any topic.

Maybe I could write whatever I think about.

Yesterday night I read some books  - Animal farm & Twilight - on my bed, Twilight was quite interesting, but every time when I read the book Animal farm, I begin to fall into sleep. This phenomenon made me confused, because both of these books are in English. I've thought about the reasons, and I guess I found Twilight not so difficult is because the language level in it is easier and close to our daily life, in addition, I have watched the series of Twilight movies, and I'm pretty familiar with it's story line.

Yesterday night I also called my best friend, we chatted a lot until my phone was ran out of power. The friendship between us is still strong, which make me fell really appreciate.

This morning I was wake up by my wierd roommate's alarm o'clock at 6:13, which is quite annoying, because I used to decide to get up at 7:40 this morning. What makes matters worse was my roommate's attitude. I have to say we really cannot get along well, and I'm so happy that this relationship between us is going to the end, I'm really looking forward to moving into NUS hall.

Rooftop Prince

   Recently, a new Korean TV series called Rooftop Prince which started showing in March becomes very popular in eastern Asia. I spent five days finishing its twenty episodes. In my opinion, Rooftop Prince is a very good TV series. In this TV series, the male lead is a Korean prince who lived 300 years ago acted by Micky, a member of TVXQ, and the female lead is an extraordinary girl acted by Han Ji min, a famous Korean actress. As a pass through theme of love comedy, it describes a prince who lived in Korean era 300 years ago went through time accidentally and underwent many things in modern days.

   Prince Li Ke has a wife called Huarong, who used some evil plans to replace her younger sister Furong and became the wife of the prince. However, one night, Li Ke found Huarong dead in the lake. Li Ke thought that there must be some conspiracies behind the whole incidences. He found three retinues to help him investigate Huarong's death. However, he was attacked by some killer. During the escape, he accidentally went through time with his three retinues and came to the modern society.

   At last, they appeared in Piao He's house. Afterwards, Piao He helped them adjust to the modern life. With many complex and mysterious things happened, Li Ke sensed that there were something wrong and he must find the answer for Huarong's death in order to go back to his era. After many things, Li Ke found that there was a man called Tairong whose appearance was extremely like his. So, he thought that Tairong was his reincarnation and he pretended that he was Tairong. What was more, he also found the reincarnations of Huarong and Furong. As the time passed by, he found that there were many more conspiracies behind his seemingly peaceful life. As staying together, Li Ke fell in love with Piao He gradually. However, there were still someone doing something harmful to Li Ke. In order to find the truth and protect his lover, Li Ke did all what he could to struggle against his enemies.

   In the end, Li Ke successfully found out the truth and went back to his era, leaving Piao He alone in the modern society. However, true Tairong appeared as the reincarnation of Li Ke and continued the love story.

   Rooftop Prince gives us the feeling that true love won't be changed by time. Its ending gives us blank space to imagine what may happen and what are the meaningful things in our lives. Compared to most of Chinese TV series which have the same themes, Korean TV series are much better and more popular, meaningful and moving. Therefore, I often watch Korean TV series in my senior high school.

Please forgive me

When I surfed the internet, I read a piece of news of one of my dormates. He was injured when he was played football. He has already been in hospital for more than 1 month. I knew it yesterday! I felt so sorry.

I still remember that when I was a student in Nanjing University. Both of us are not familiar with Nanjing. We went shopping together. We bought shoes and bags. We played football. When he scored, I can’t help cheering. When he was dancing in the ceremony, I screamed for him. Although I just spent less than three months there, he became one of my best friends.

I remembered that when I was leaving, he gave me several songs. One of them is Thick Black Mark. The song mentions that if I can prove my heart was bigger than my eagle, would I expert my friends to forget me for the things I made me wrong. If my behavior made me better than my fancy heart, would I demand I be counted among the clean and stand and strong.

It reminded me of my behavior. Sometimes I did something wrong, but I did not realize that. I hope all friends can forgive me for my mistakes.

At last, wish my friend can recover soon.

Ancient version VS Chinese version

 I was a person who likes music. I like Chinese ancient version songs very much, but most Chinese cannot clarify the difference between Chinese ancient version and Chinese version, so this time, I want to talk about their difference.

 First of all, we need to clarify their names. Actually, we usually call Chinese ancient version as ancient version. In order to make sure foreigners know that this “ancient” is “Chinese ancient”, so I add that “Chinese” in front of “ancient”. From the name, you can see that ancient version faces to China, Chinese version faces to the whole world.

Secondly, the melody between ancient version and Chinese version has a little difference. They all would use Chinese ancient instrument, but ancient version would use more and Chinese version would use less. Chinese version would add more piano and guitar

Thirdly, the biggest difference between ancient version and Chinese version is their lyrics. Chinese version’s lyrics would use words like poetry and add some Chinese elements, but ancient version would use ancient Chinese to write its lyrics, so ancient version’s lyrics would be much harder to understand.

Lastly, the difference between ancient version and Chinese version is their commercial purposes. Chinese version is much popular in the society, for instance, Jay Chou is famous as Chinese version’ singer. Therefore, there are a lot of Chinese version singers and albums. However, it is very hard to find ancient version albums. Usually, ancient version singers just active on the Internet, and they sing those ancient version songs just for fun, not for money. If ancient version singers want to make money, they can sing songs for those games.

At last, I recommend two songs to you to clear the difference between these two. One is an ancient version song, called <琴师>, the other is Chinese version’s song <若相惜>. 

Something I learn from playing football

In my early memories, matches are not occasions to make friends, but somehow enemies.

When I was in the middle school, there would be some interclass football competitions. At that time, I found it hard to play with my opponents in harmony. Actually, many of my classmates hated their rivals after matches. We even took a neighbor class as our enemies after a basketball match. Once I said four-letter words to one of my opponents in a football match and got a yellow card. I almost fought against him the other day, due to other conflict related to football.

Several weeks ago, a football match helped me to make a change. The team I belong to had a football match with a Malay team. It was a friendly match, but there were quite some body contacts. However, this time, inspired by the senior teammates, I became a friendly adversary. I gave my hand when a Malay guy fell onto the ground to help him stand up. We shook hands after the match was over and said to each other “a great game”. Indeed, I felt much better to become a friendly opponent.

Matches are not designed to turn people into enemies. In fact, people should be grateful that they have adversaries. It would be sad that no one were willing to become your opponent. Believe me, matches can be played in harmony and you will feel great to do that.

Anyway, as time goes by, it is good to see that we have become more and more mature and overcome some drawbacks.

The Trolley Problem and its variation

Last time, I talk about a dilemma about benefit. This time, I will come to another dilemma which is about morality.

Actually, this dilemma is well-know. It is The Trolley Problem: A madman tied 6 people up. He put 5 of them in one railway which trolley supposed to pass by and put 1 of them in another railway. Now, the trolley is coming and 5 people are going to be killed. You have a chance to switch the trolley to the other railway. If you do so, that means only 1 man will be killed instead of 5. Should we choose to switch it?

This problem seems quite easy because it is obviously that only 1 man died is better than 5 man die. But according to our morality, if you switch it, you should take some responsibility to the death of one man. However, if you just do nothing, you also should take some responsibility for do not do anything to save these 5 men. So, whatever you do, you are reversing the morality. That is the dilemma.

Maybe you still insist that this guy should switch the trolley and actually you are right. According to a survey involving more than 10,000 people, about 70% people choose to switch the trolley.

However, in another similar problem, people behave completely different.

In this question, 5 men are tied up in a railway and the trolley is coming. You have a chance to kick a fat man down from a bridge. If you do so, this fat man will certainly die and the trolley will certainly be stopped. Will you kick the fat man down?

It is not difficult to find out that this question is essentially the same as the first question. But when it comes to a survey, 70% people choose not to kick the fat man down. This result is totally contrary to the first question!

That is strange. I think this happened because the latter situation give people an indication that they are killing someone with they own hands. That makes people feel guiltier. As for the first one, people may soothe themselves by cheating themselves that it is the trolley that kills this guy not them.

Let’s back to the topic. In fact, these questions have no standard answers otherwise they won’t be called ‘dilemma’. What these questions tell us is that there is no perfect morality in the world.

From these 2 questions, we can expand them to another topic:

It is just to kill some innocent people in order to save more people’s life?

Will the situation change when we only need to kill 1 innocent people to save 100 people’s life or we need to kill 100 innocent people to save 101 people’s life? Besides, is it an OK choice to kill innocent people in order to save equal people?

What is your opinion?

Students in a school of Shandong province said they ate whales

“Recently, a post posted by some students from a university of Shandong was spread on the internet. These students said that their canteen provided whales’ meat. As we all know, whales are protected and it is illegal to hunt or eat whales in China. This is why the post was spread. “

I was surprised to find this news after I went back to my hostel today. We studied this today and when our tutor asked us whether Chinese in the mainland of China ate whales, I said “no” confidently. However, this case happened in my hometown. That’s quiet allegoric… Back to our topic, some students said that they found whales in their canteen. If what they said is true then it will be a serious question, so the reporters went to that canteen to see whether there is or there was a whale. When the reporters arrived there, they did not see the whale but according to the stuffs of that canteen, there was a dead whale with its mouth injured in that canteen. That is to say, the news was basically true and that whale is not stranded. It turned to a serious question. So where was this whale from? The reporters tried to contact the person in charge of that canteen but could not get through. The reporters from “胶东在线网” said the whale was given to the person in charge of that canteen by one of his friends. Originally they wanted to sell the meat of the whale to students, but after everyone knew this they are scared to be arrested and the person in charge of that canteen give the whale back to his friend. Till now reporters still cannot contact the person in charge.

Subtitle Group

Name one thing that links Prison Break, China Internet censorship and NY Times together?

For most Chinese people, especially those who are referred to as the Internet Generation, the most likely answer would be SUBTITLE GROUP!

For china, every year only about 20 Hollywood films are imported, translated and shown in theater, and a even smaller number of TV serials are imported. The reason why Government set such a limited number is that they hope this can give protection to Chinese film industry and help it develop. No one can deny that such a policy did help local film industry develop in the past decade. Yet, despite of the improvement, there is still a long long way for local films to go. People want to watch Hollywood films/ TV serials. Yet they cannot have legal access to them due to the protection policy. Apparently, there is one thing everyone can count on --- internet. People can always find resources from some foreign websites and saves money and enjoy themselves at the same time.

Surely, download is a way to solve such a problem, or, to be more specific, it solves half of the problem, which means you can have access to those films now. Yet the other half of the problem is the language. Even for students who have learnt English for years, understanding an American film is difficult, since there are a lot of slangs and the plot may have much to do with American cultures.

This is exactly the reason why subtitle groups come into people’s sight. They are not professional translators, yet most of them have a good knowledge of English, or even have stayed abroad for a few years. They volunteered to do the translation job--- no pay at all, they do this completely out of their interest in English language and western culture.

What first drew people’s attention to them was the TV serials Prison Break. At that time, some local TV channel did import the first season and it won a lot of fans. Yet they just stop introducing the following seasons. Fans of PB turned to internet for help, and there they found their savers--- subtitle groups. It were not for Prison break, subtitle groups would not be so famous. They were even regarded as the Marco Pole by those who are super fans of western cultures.

What is more, in 2006, New York Times did a special interview to one of those groups, which made them even more famous as well as brought them trouble. Since so far there has not been law on such kind of downloading and translating stuffs, they can still continue with it. Yet it is likely that such download links will be censored someday and this is surely a disaster for all the movie fans in China. 

Summary of the bridging course

       According to the schedule, this is the last blog of the bridging course; meanwhile essay, supplementary material, oral report and everything are going to end which all remind me of the finish of the bridging course. Thus, in this last blog I intend to write about my feelings and experience in this unforgettable English learning journey.

       Every time I chat with my parents and friends, they always ask whether my English has been improved; and my reply is always just so-so. However, when I consider about this question carefully, I think my English level really has big progress in listening, speaking reading and writing; moreover I also benefit a lot from bridging course.

       I want to elaborate according to the order, so first I am going to talk about the listening part. At first, I had a little difficulty in understanding every sentence that tutors said, sometimes because of the accent, sometimes because of the speed and sometimes because of the limited vocabulary. If I did not listen carefully and concentrate on tutors, I could not catch up with them. After the six-months study, I find I have no problem in understanding them, unless there are some new words. Even if when I play my ipad, I can also make clear what they are talking about. Moreover, I always translate English into Chinese before, but I force myself to think in English way without translating. As for now, I have not change my way of thinking completely, but I have changed a lot and I am on the way.

       Next, it comes to the speaking. To be frank I think this is the worst part of my English, and I improve a little on it. Still, there is a little progress made on it. Initially, I am self-abased to speak English, and do not speak a lot in class. I always envy the beautiful accent of others and hate my own voice. Before every oral report, I will write down my speech and recite it; but now, I just prepared an outline of my report. Maybe, I cannot express myself clearly and fluently, but I have the confidence to speak out, which I think is the first and fundamental step.

       As for reading, I really ashamed that I have not finished just one book during the bridging course, but I read a lot of news and magazines, which has become the routine of my daily life. I remembered when I had the interview of SM3 program, one of the interviewers asked me if I have the habit of reading news. At that time, I was so frustrated since I never read news before that. After the interview, I began to buy China Daily to read; and I remembered how difficult it is to read just one paragraph, with numerous new words and complicated structure. For now, I downloaded the China Daily app that enable me to read newspaper from my ipad, and I find it is easy to understand and less new words in it. At the same time, I fell in love with reading news, and I am challenging myself to read some more difficult passages, such as time magazine and national geography.

       Finally, I will talk about the writing ability, which I think is my fastest progressive part. In senior high school, I only need to write about one hundred words, and we are often required to do practical writing, such as writing a letter or notice. I have never written English composition, in which I can express my own opinion before coming here, so it is really a challenge for me to write essays. In the beginning I cannot write many words and the statements are not strong. As the more I write, I eventually love writing and enjoy the process of writing. I remembered the time I posted a statement saying that I enjoy writing essay and blog more and more, and I remembered the blog about Science Centre is the first blog that I devoted my passion. Also, my writing skills have been improved a lot; at the beginning, I always think in Chinese then translate into English, and now I try my best to avoid it.

       I should have written so much without realization! All in all, after the bridging course, I really benefit a lot and make big progress in English. Thank our tutors and my classmates!

Sonali-Liu Yifei-ranked love

This is supposed to be blog 9, but it is finally dragged out until blog 10. I reviewed the schedule of week 19, trying to recollect some inspiration that I leaked out of my mind in the last two weeks. Fortunately, the topic of “the nature of poetry” grabbed my attention. It reminded me of the symposium my best friend Vivien was to throw. The symposium was about “the love which moves the sun and other stars”, extracted from <Paradiso> (which means Heaven in Italian) written by Dante, depicting his journey through heaven, which was comprised by 9 concentric spheres surrounding the earth and the destination-Empyrean. Interestingly, the process is quite matched with what he portrayed in <Divina Commedia> about the Inferno.


The 9 spheres, which was represented by the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars,Jupiter, Saturn, the Fixed Stars, and the Primum Mobile, individually symbolized different traditional associations such as “inconstant” (moon),”ambitious” (mercury). Now stop the meaningless talking I got from Wikipedia. What I really want to talk about is the only word that appears repetitively in 3 spheres: love. The first “love” is in the third sphere-Venus, traditional associated with the Goddess of love. However, since Venus can fall within the shadow of Earth, the love it represents is veiled by an unfavorable sense-temperance. The second “love” appears in the eighth sphere-the Fixed Star with other words like “faith”, “hope”. The positive symbolic may came from the fact that the Fixed Star is out of the shadow of Earth. The last “love” came in when they reached Empyrean, a region beyond physical existence, the abode of “God”. This is when the sentence “already my desire and will were being turned like a wheel, all at one speed, by the love which moves the sun and the other stars” finally comes out. 


Honestly, I rejoiced to find the beauty of coincidence. One is about the previous three loves “human’s love”, “love of hope” and “the love which moves the sun and other stars”. The other is about the book named <7 loves> I mentioned in one oral report about marriage and family. In the chapter of affection, the first love is about “love of desire”-like Venus herself restrained with resentment, suspicions and other frustrating chains. The second love is “love of blessing”-such as letting go with the hope of happiness for the lover. The third is “the eternal love”. No matter possessing or losing, the love will not be dominated by emotional feelings. As long as knowing the person’s existence or once existence, the love will persist. 


Three are all love but not simple fancy. Even the marvelous word “love” also can be ranked in to decent and not-so-decent queues. Shouldn't both passionate love and selfless love be equally beautiful and unforgettable? Maybe love can never be equal or theoretically proved their discrimination between one another. After all, it is time to come to the end of the blog. The light touch of dragonflies to the water surface is always better than completely revealing the vein.

The most beautiful Chinese university school beauty

In every university, there is always a school beauty, which means the most beautiful girl in that university. However, who is the most beautiful school beauty in China? This question seems to be hard to answer, but no need to worry: Tencent, the biggest web company, is ready to give people an answer.


Few weeks ago, Tencent started an online poll named "the most beautiful school beauty in the nation" and many its users join this activity. People have voted for the girls they like, and there were already top ten beauties who are the most popular. Nevertheless, it is still not the end. Just a week before, some Internet users also started a campaign to vote for Xu Aoshuang, a girl from Zhejiang University. Actually Xu is not as charming as other girls, but the users said they vote for Xu because Xu dose not use neither cosmetics nor photoshop. About 120,000 people have become her fans during last week while at the same time other girls only have at most 70,000 fans.


However, reasons for supporting Xu may not be what is claimed. Tencent is the biggest web company in China, but at the same time it is also the most unpopular one. Many Internet users hate the company, but they do not know how to resist the company since most people could not live without the company's popular instant messenger. This poll gives people a chance to make fun of Tencent, and also brings great excitement to their everyday lives.


Will Tencent be tricked by these Internet users? Of course, the answer is no. Yesterday evening, Tencent just said Xu has made an unfair competition with other candidates so the company withdraws her candidacy. Naturally Internet users are extremely angry, but no way to vent their anger.


During this event, it is Tencent that made fun of the internet users. The company said it gives everyone the right to vote for his or her own favorite candidate, but when people vote for a candidate who is not as beautiful as others, the company broke its promise easily. So why does not Tencent straight tell people who they think are the suitable champion for this poll instead of making such fake rules?  And as for the Internet users, they are fools. How naive they are to think they can make fun of Tencent, a company which used to make fun of them? Actually similar things always happen in China, but people never learn something from them.

We Are What We Do

 We Are What We Do

Barack Obama is facing a big problem: how to persuade his people to vote for him for a second run? There is no doubt that a large sum of Americans is losing faith in him, for they will never forget what Mr. Obama have pledged before, however failed to carry out. Before long, this gentleman made a shocking-world utterance that gay marriage should be legitimated in the United States. Is it a begging for polls? I am not sure, but it is possible to be. People who have lost faith in him said that, he is much more like a persuader rather than a doer. Obama does have a gift in persuading and his “yes, we can” used to impress me massively. However, we are what we do. His performance may be hard to satisfy the majority.

Today my topic is not about this guy. Let us talk about this saying: we are what we do.

First let us talk about masks. It is not an exaggeration if I insist that people all have their masks in this sophisticated society, and for some people, they may have several. We may all know how to disguise and how to perform well before someone else, since we may want to implant a positive impression in them. Sometimes this kind of disguising works. For example, to buy a girl’s heart, a guy knows the importance of performing well and concealing his shortcoming in front of her and sometimes this kind of concealing literally works. I do not intend to blame it since it is we human beings’ intuition and sub-consciousness. We are born to know it. What I want to say is no mask is abiding, or long lasting. Sooner or later, your mask will put off and people will see your true face ultimately. Like the preceding example I just mentioned, even the guy tries his best to pretend to be good-tempered before his girl, he will expose his true temple sooner or later. It is possible a marvelous mask may exert a perfect first impression on others, yet others’ impression on you will ultimately change after they witness what you have done.

So, is it means that we should be ourselves all the time and throw our mask forever?

It depends.

For a politician, it is a must to have a positive mask in front of media, whatever they really are. Take Bo Xilai as an example. In China, he is more or less a hero. He is a hero who has fight against gangsters and has made Chongqing province’s economy soaring dramatically. That is what we all know about him: a hero, a good leader, a good husband and father, before his step down. Now we know he is far more than a leader, he is also a schemer, a politician with huge ambitions, and even a killer. However, he can never expose all these ambitions, schemes, and scandals to us before he quit the screen. Someone failed to disguise something, yet someone succeeded.

However, for a transcendent artist, it is impossible to hide his emotions since emotions are inspirations of masterpieces. A sophisticated artist can never work out an astounding masterpiece. That is true. For them, to be themselves is necessary. They do not have masks.

It seems that I have shifted the topic, but never mind, this is a blog and may be I am free to write something irrelevant⋯⋯

Let us come back to this topic now. What we do literally defines ourselves. We cannot change others but we can change ourselves. A former criminal can change others’ view towards him through his benefactions. Also, a former hero can become a public enemy if he chooses a wrong way. What we need to do is not pretending, but literally change something. We cannot pretend to be good to win others’ trust and acknowledgment but we can change to be better to obtain others’ respect. Never refuse change and just do it. We are what we do and we are the one who defines ourselves. 

Mrs Yap---WangYan-----pick up my love

 recently, i am very happy and my excitation is out of control. i have not sleep about 4 night just for seeing my favorite cartoon, can you imagine how surprise i was when i found a web where i can see the serious movie that i have seen about 8 or 9 years!! when i came to Singapore i found i cannot go to baidu or tudoo web to see video, because the movies that in those webs can only be got in china. there are not open to foreign users. it means i have to give up my favorite cartoon,and say good bye to it for about 10 years or longer.so when i see the cartoon again recently i cannot control myself and watch it again and again.
  sometimes, we never found how cherish we own until one day it disappear in our life. we people never learn how to cherish what we have owned until one day it appear again.the things have not brain,they won't go away. however, the people will not stay at the same position to wait for us.the moment we give up them, they will choose a road where we don't belong. when we want to come back to find those people who we want to cherish again, we will found the emotional gap has already been built between each other,and it is too difficult to jump over it. it is just like we can see and touch colors in papers. however,we can not touch the rainbow even though it is in front of us.
   someone we lost is lost actually,if we cannot go back to their world, it is better for us to choose to let it go. because we have to know there are other people who are waiting for us to love and cherish,so we won't feel to miserable and that is a reason for us not to loose more.
     after several years,when we go back to pick up some memory, we may found the thing are still in there. at the same time, the people have already gone away. fortunately, many new people exist in their life and so do we..........

Our English Tutors(Part One)

I am looking forward to the end of the English bridging course, however, I enjoy the lessons here actually. CELC are so considerate then the coordinator arrange four different teachers to our group Six. The four tutors are different at all from the teaching style to the life experience, however, what I think is in common is their patience and kindness. I am going to talk about our four nice tutors and hope our juniors( If any) are lucky enough to have their lessons.I will talk according prior to the first time I met them.
"Now you can follow your tutor to the tutorial room in the CELC." said the coordinator. "Group Six, Ms Kong!" I saw her waving to students behind her. According to the introduction to the tutor present, I found her the most beautiful one and I am very happy to become her students. Followed by her, we went to the classroom and did the mutual introduction among the class. In Ms Kong's class, the luckiest part of our bodies should be the mouth for she always brought some yummy food for us! I still remember how sweet I felt about the Scotland cupcake and the chocolate she gave us on the Valentine's Day. What she gave us is not only the food but also a lot of linguist knowledge and the method of essay writing. I am her mentee, so I also got some special treat! Ms Kong would print out our blog writing and correct every mistake we made. The first time I submitted the blog, what I receive was so frustrated. She gave me the saddest comment that I wrote a lot of Chinglish in the blog, which meant that there were too many direct Chinese-English translation in my blog. However, as time went by, I guess I do better! She is interesting person. She almost speak English in her daily life , so she downloaded a Chinese English Dictionary in order to have a better communication with us! Sometimes, we ,her mentees, are envied by some other students for Ms Kong will ask us to meet her after the lessons. She will ask us how our Singapore life goes and whether there is something that we need her help to do. My heart was warmed by her concern on us.
The second tutor I saw was Ms Sonali. Ms Sonali cannot speak Chinese, so this forced us to talk to her in English. What impressed me most was her opinion on understanding parents. The first oral report I gave was about that I found my mother secretly followed my Weibo(Micro Blog) since I came to Singapore. I talked about how I felt unhappy and my actions towards this. After the oral report, Ms Sonali told me that you should ask your mom to come to see you. I had a son, so I can understand her feeling. It is the first time you was far away for her and she must feel worried and concerned about you. She is your mother, what she did was quite natural because of her strong love to you. I learnt to be more understandable from Ms Sonali's advice. She was not a Chinese, so her accent is a little different from us which makes me feel like listening to her. I think I should say her accent is very cute( no offensive, really very cute! )She was a considerate tutor. She also brought us food twice which made me touched! The first time is when we were celebrating the Chinese New Year! I knew she did not celebrate this festival, but she should give us the chocolate as her wishes to us! The second time is when we watched the movie and she gave us chocolate and some nuts. She said I think you may got bored with the movie without something to chewed.
Because of the limitation of the blog word, I will introduce our Ms Yap and Mr Chang to you! Please look forward to it !!!!!

An ugly move

The following content aims to bring up a phenomenon, instead of criticizing certain individuals.

This Monday’s afternoon, I took the shuttle bus to head to the RV hostel as usual. As the bus approached the hostel, some guys stood up and they already stood at the front door of the bus before it stopped. After the door opened, they rushed to the gate of the hostel and then the canteen. One of them even intended to go to canteen through a shortcut which is not allowed to be used by boarders.

This happens almost in every weekday afternoon since May.

That standing up before the bus stops does not happen if the bus’s destination is NUS. Apparently, the ugly move only happens when bus sends us to the hostel, because people want to avoid standing at the back of the long queue in the canteen. We NUS boys have supper in the hostel which has limited food providers. Thus, it is common to see dozens of people in only one queue. If people can be in the front of the queue, they can save some time.

So why do I call it an ugly move? The first reason is that it is not decent at all. Basically, everyone is supposed to have an equal chance to stand in the front of a queue as well as the back of the queue, if we think in a mathematical way. However, there are always some guys who finish their supper before some other people get the chance to order their meals. Obviously, they gain the priority at the expense of sacrificing others’ profits. The price is to be running while others are walking and to be standing while others are sitting. Seemingly not so decent, isn’t it?

The second reason has something to do with the forming of this phenomenon. I believe at the very beginning, few wants to be the indecent one. As time goes by, some guys broke the tacit agreement and started to walk faster. Some other guys considered it unfair and started to run in turn, which led to a vicious circle, which means the move is so ugly that it arouses people’s selfishness in their deep within.

Should someone be blamed? My answer is “No”. No matter whether we are active runners, passive runners or walkers, we human beings are all selfish fundamentally. I do not think selfish people have the right to accuse others of being selfish. After all, that ugly move is immoral rather than illegal. In short, it is all about human nature.

Finally, let me give an interesting assumption. If we let those runners get off bus first and then everybody walks to the canteen decently as we are supposed to do, it will not make any difference in terms of the order of the queue. However, we all know it will not happen. Maybe one reason is that there are always some guys who are afraid others are more selfish than them.

I do not expect the ugly move will be extinct one day. Anyway, this phenomenon reflects many problems which are worth pondering even after reading my essay.

computer games

When I was being interviewed for SM3 program, Pr Chow, the professor from NUS, asked me only two questions. The first question is: do you play computer games? I said yes without thinking. Then his second question is how long do you play computer games in a week? At that time I just realized that he was testing me whether I am a person addicted to computer games. 

We all know that if a student love computer games, he would spend less time on study. Thus I just explained that I seldom played computer games every week, instead, I used my computer mainly to see news online. To make my explanation more convincing, I also added that after playing computer games for a long time, I was tired of computer games. However, since Pr Chow was always smiling, I did not know whether he felt content with my answer.

The reason why I want to talk about this interview is that after playing a computer game for a whole evening I was thinking whether I told the truth in that interview. Finally I concluded I did not tell any lie because what I said are all truth. First, I really seldom play computer games, normally less than two hours a week. Second, I am also tired of most of the computer games. The reason I spent the whole evening in a game is just that that game is a new computer game which I had never played before, and after three day I deleted it.

Nevertheless, I still do not pay all my free time to study. Why? As I mentioned above, I prefer to go to some websites to see the news rather than play games. Most time I open my computer, the only thing I do is click Internet Explorer. Since I have this interest, I cannot be a very hard working guy, which may not be what the professor expected. After all, I am still honest because I told him the truth.