Family

My grandma is in hospital. She's got hypertension. As High blood pressure has no symptoms, my grandma didn�t notice there was something wrong with her blood pressure until she took a free checkup for old people in a park last Sunday. Her blood pressure was 220/125mmHg--that was extremely high. She doubted about the result, so she went to hospital to have her blood pressure checked again the next day, but the result was the same. Her conditioned didn�t get better after staying at home for the next couple of days, now she has to stay in hospital. The doctor says it would be very dangerous if her blood pressure stays such high.

I worry about my grandma a lot. I couldn't believe such thing would happen on her, my grandma has been in good shape all along. I'm scared, I'm scared of losing her. I've been living with my grandma since I was six months. She's been taking care of me for more than twenty years, but what I've done for her? I'm 21, and I'm the most stupid adult in this world. I couldn't even think of one thing I've ever done for my grandma.

I once lived in campus for two years, but I didn't like campus life that much, so I moved back, staying with my grandparents and my mom. We�re really close, getting alone perfectly well. I love my family, they are the people who really care about me, and the ones who I could always count on. I was looking at our old family photos the other day. They seemed so young in the pictures, which made me a little bit sad. Like my grandpa, he used to be a strong man, but now he looks so old and his health condition is getting worse. Life is comfortable at home, sometimes I even get the idea that we could live like this forever. My grandparents won't get any older, and I�m their dear granddaughter who's always gonna be with them. They�ve done so much to me, I wish I could give something back to them. I know love is not exchange or something, I just really want to spend more time with them, taking care of them when they need me, and they�ll never feel lonely when I�m around.

My great-grandmother lost her husband in her early twenties, so she stayed with my grandma until she died. My mom got divorced about ten years ago, she�s been living with my grandparents and me ever since.

Then, what is my version? Where is my future? What kind of life will I get? I've been thinking about these questions a lot recently. Next year I�ll graduate from the college, and I haven't figured out what I�m gonna do yet. If there�s no such thing as family, what would I really want? Hmm...I wanna be different. I've been living in Hangzhou all my life, I feel stagnant, so I really want to get out of the town. And I'm sick and tired of meeting the people who seem pretty much alike, I'm eager to meet people from different places. I want to leave China for a year or two to see the world more. Studying in some English-speaking country would be nice.... But these are all my imagination, I can�t just leave everything behind. Studying abroad costs lot, I couldn�t afford by myself. My family probably could support me, but I'd feel guilty if I take the money they've been saving all their lives. They�ve already done too much for me. Maybe I should stay with them for more years? They�ll definitely feel lonely without me. Maybe I should get a job and do what I wanna do when I can support myself? Maybe I should stay in Hangzhou and that�s my life? ...

Am I too Chinese on family issues, or I just love my family too much? What is my future? Should I chase my dream?... I've got one more year to figure these questions out.

Summer Vacation

Done!
Just finished my last final paper, it's a long essay; so now all the exams are over. There'll be two months summer vacation: no school, no homework, no exams, totally free, wow!

What I wanna do most is...hmm...because of the exams, many things have been delayed, I want to finish them all: meeting up some friends, writing a couple of emails, visiting my grandma in hospital, logging in some instant messages, reading many blogs...and most of all -- working on this site. I set up this site in a hurry, and there're many problems still unsolved. I want to fix all these problems and improve the layouts. Then...I don't have any specific plans right now. I think I'll spend most of my time on reading, writing, learning computer, practising my spoken English, taking pictures and travel.

Gotta go to school to hand in my paper, talk to you later!

Where is Wen Jiabao???

"Where is Wen Jiabao? Have you seen any news about him lately on the Internet??" My grandpa asks me this question a lot recently. He notices that Wen Jiabao has been hardly ever seen on TV for quite a long time. Right, me too! I don't watch too much TV, but I do see the faces of Hu Jintao, Jiang Zemin, even George Bush... every now and then. As for Wen Jiabao, China's premier, hmm...the last time I saw him appearing on TV was....when SARS situation was getting really messed up in China, I saw him visit some schools, hospitals, factories...giving a bunch of boring speeches, and showing his sympathy to people he didn't really care about.

So where is Wen Jiabao? Maybe he happened to be infected with SARS?!? That's the first thing I could ever think of. My grandpa has got the same idea too. We're insane. If there was something wrong with Weh Jiabao, I'd already heard the news. I know I could check out what's up with Wen on the web in a minute, but I'm too lazy to do it, as IE crashes a lot when typing these names in search engines. Plus, it's pure fun to let my imagination flow. Okay----Wen Jianbao, SARS, China....wow, it would be really interesting if Wen Jiabao was infected with SARS, that'd be the biggest headline all over the world, and these politicians would lose all their faces. What if he died of SARS? I'm sure they'd give us a convincing excuse, like he was hit by a car, or his plane crashed, or he suffered from a heart attack, or...anything but SARS. Another possibility--they'd probably release the news when SARS is under control, then they could say Wen sacrificed himself for China, how great he was or something... Whatever, I'd be very interested in seeing how they cope with such tough situation.

Disappointedly, I finally saw him somewhere yesterday. He is still alive and kicking of course, no fun. It's kinda weird that as the premier of China, Wen appears so little on TV, it seems he doesn't have too much power at all.

Anyway, SARS seems to be completely over in China. Great! There're only 7 days left until summer vacation! I'll definitely travel a lot this summer.

Chinese VS. English

I wrote a Chinese entry in my old blog a couple of weeks ago. And I saw some comments, here's the one from dxw:

"wow, what a interesting experience reading your first chinese blog after reading so many english ones. I can actually visualize your face through your words on this post. I am not saying you don't express your feelings well in english, which you do, but it tend to be too 'cleaned up' and proper at times. there was just an extra kick of emotion in this particular post.... and what a kick it was!"

Recently, I've started blogging in Chinese too, Ken Loo left this comment last week,

"I personally enjoy your Chinese very much, not that your English isn't good, as someone already commented already, sometimes you tend to be formal, try to be grammatically correct in English. Nothing wrong with it, but I sense that you have more things you want to say. Same as me, it takes time to write well in a foreign language. But, don't give up. Oh yes, I found "the thing" which I don't get in your English but from your Chinese writing. The Wit. Oh, I love it."

Excellent points! They're excatly right! I do feel the same way.

I'm not a good Chinese writer, not at all. But I'm pretty much myself when blogging in Chinese. Like Andrea said, "I like your blog in Chinese better. =) It's nice to read 'hangzhou style' spoken Chinese." Yeah, spoken Chinese, exactly, I write the way I talk. And that's the type of style I always enjoy. I don't like reading any Chinese classic, I like contemporary pieces much better. And formal styles bore me a lot, I love informal stuff. When making Chinese blog entries, I don't think I know anything about writing. I just put down the thoughts on my mind without too much thinking, and sometimes it takes me less than 10 minutes to finish an entry.

I started blogging in English six months ago, and started (seriously) blogging in Chinese recently. Without comparison, I used to think I could express myself all right in English. But by writing in Chinese lately, I've been more and more realizing how little I can express myself in English. I know many Chinese English-learners have the same problem. More specific, my main problem is when writing (and speaking) in English , I'm losing my personality, and I'm not myself. The archives finally work. I'm reading over my old entries sometimes. I laugh at myself a lot, as some entries are just so boring. I'd never ever write anything like that in Chinese, not even I try to. Like last time I told you how I was tricked by the TV girl. I wrote down the whole thing, but in a pretty boring way. If I spoke (in Chinese of course) in front of you, the story would be more interesting and vivid, and let you know more about how silly I was. Though basically I could make my points clear, it's not the way I actually am. I sound so formal and serious sometimes, but I'm not a serious person at all.

I think as for writing in English, being more myself is my goal. I'm not trying to be an intellectual blogger, as I'm not. I'm not trying to practice my English by writing every day, as I don't really want to. I'm not trying to sound like a native English speaker, as it's unrealistic and out of my ability. I don't know why, but I feel kinda unnatural to use some slang and unfamiliar words. It seems they don't belong to me. If I ever used them, I'd feel like I was showing something new I just learned, rather than simply using these words.

Why can't I write (in English) the way I want? I think the answer is clear. I like informal style, I like spoken language, I like being myself, but how am I supposed to write naturally without having the ability of speaking English well? I've mentioned my spoken English sucks. By my standard, speaking and writing are pretty much the same. I've never lived in an English speaking environment, and I don't really know how to speak English naturally; formal stuff is what I've learned mostly.

Though still not satisfied with my English, writing in English and writing in Chinese are two different things to me. I mean I use English to write certain things, like this entry you're reading, I don't think I could do necessarily better job in Chinese. I use Chinese to write totally different things and I don't even know how to say these things in English. Summer vacation will be coming soon, I think it would be the perfect time for me to improve my English and Chinese.

(P.S. Didn't mean to make the ending as boring as this, but I've got an exam to prepare, gotta go now...)

Finally, I'm on TV

I can't believe that I was tricked by an innocent looking girl! I can' believe that I was tricked by the hidden camera! I can't believe I was tricked by a TV show!!!

Here's what happened (well, actually I don't yet know what's really going on) --

My friend Yao left me a message on OICQ this afternoon. He asked if I knew a girl... (more later...) I said yes! I met that girl in campus two weeks ago. But I only left her my email address, how did Yao know that girl??
"Hahaha...Sure I know her." Yao said.
"What are you talking about??" I was really curious. "Tell me more about it!"
"You know what? -- It was a trap, you were tricked by her!" Yao said.
"How come?!?" What first came up my mind was that girl sent junk mail to Yao.
"The hidden camera was behind you and her. You were caught by a reality show! Hehe...I just watched that show!"
"What?!!" I was so surprised! I was on a TV show, and I didn't know!!!

I remember I was walking in campus that day. A girl stopped me all of a sudden, asking if I could do her a favor. She looked nice, and I thought she was a salesperson or something. Coincidentally, I was doing a survey for some class in campus that day. I stopped random people all the time too. So I was willing to be stopped and listen to her words patiently. And then she told me her (fake!) story. She's a graduate looking for a job. She just found a company she really liked. That company was kinda interested in her too, but they had a weird requirement: each employee had to help three people in the street, and get thanks letters from them, in order to show they were good people. The girl asked if I could pretend to be the one she helped, and write a thanks letter in my name to that company. Sounded ridiculous, but I said yes immediately. I knew such thing did happen sometimes, and she seemed to really need my help; it'd nice if my letter could help her get that job. Then she asked if I could bring the letter to the company in person. I said Okay, you took me to the front of the company, and I came in to bring the letter to the manager, no problem. The whole thing was nothing but ridiculous, I didn't have any reason to trust her, but I'd like to help her anyway. The girl told me before stopping me, she'd been standing in the same place for a long long time, as she felt awkward to ask other people. She stopped me because I looked like a warm-hearted person, and pretty easy to talk to. I said thanks, and I was happy to offer her my help. She did a copy of survey for me. And I left her my email address, telling her to feel free to email me anytime.

That's the story. I was like a fool. I was waiting for her email, I even thought about writing to her asking what's up.

She didn't write to me, of course. Two weeks later, I was on a popular show.

The story is funny, I am totally stupid, and I laugh at myself. But I'm sort of sad too. I was trying to trust her, and I thought she really needed my help. But the truth is she stopped me not because I looked like a nice person but I was the one they needed, the one who might look like a clown on TV.

As they didn't contact me before the show, I missed it. Curious what the show was about, I called the station, but it was too late today, nobody picked up the phone. I'll do it again tomorrow, if I could get the video tape of that show, I might put it here.

You've probably known that I always want to be on TV. Well, I did it, finally. But my debut on TV ended up like this, that's the last ending I ever expected.

My Mom's Keyboard

My mom bought a keyboard. It's not a regular keyboard, but the one just for learning typing. It could connect to TV, and the typing program runs on TV screen.

Like many people of her age, my mom doesn't know how to type, and she has difficulty using computer. But mom seems interested in the Internet a lot, and she's enthusiastic about learning these new stuff. My grandma doesn't know how to read; my mom is sure that several years later, lack of computer skills would be like illiteracy, so she doesn't want to end up like my grandma. And if I go somewhere else in the future, connecting with her by the Internet would be the most convenient and cheapest way. She wants to learn how to send emails and use instant messengers, in case she'd need them someday.

I'm my mom's teacher. Surfing the web is the easiest thing for her to learn, but she's always nervous sitting at the computer, worrying something wrong might happen. Like sometimes she closes some window by accident, and doesn't know how to reopen it; pop-up ads disturb her a lot; once the computer crashes, she doesn't know how to reboot... When I'm at home, I use the computer a lot. Mom could use it when I'm out, but she's too afraid to do so -- She's worried that she might do something harmful to the computer or delete some useful files by accident. I tell her don't worry about them, but she's still not comfortable. she feels safer when I'm at home.

Now she's working on learning typing. It is the most important and urgent thing for her to learn, as now she couldn't input anything on the web. Typing Chinese is much more difficult than typing English. Most people use pinyin to type -- first we have to find the right pinyin, and then search for the right words. I used to type very slowly, and I didn't like typing Chinese characters that much. My typing speed is getting faster, but sometimes it still takes me lots of time to find the words I need. Like this morning, I was writing a school paper. It's a Chinese history class, and I used some quotes from other books. But I didn't know some uncommon words; without knowing their pinyin, I couldn't input them on the computer. Looking them up in the dictionary, finding out their pinyin, and then putting them on the computer were what I should do. Too complicated! I thought the teacher wouldn't check the quotes carefully, so I skipped most unknown words anyway.

Comparing to Chinese, I love typing English. Typing words directly by spelling is such an easy job, it actually makes me write English more often. When I see typewriters in movies, they amaze me a lot. It seems so advanced that people could do writing without pens long time ago. I was still using pen to write anything two years ago. But now, I've gotten used to writing over computer. My mind seems frozen every time I'm holding a pen to write.

As for my mom, pinyin is extremely difficult for her. She once learned it, but that was 30 years ago. It's not easy to pick it up. And she's still not familiar with the keyboard, it takes her some time to find the right key. Though not easy, my mom works pretty hard, and she's been doing great. Last night, she typed a little poem without any difficulty, that's something. I'm happy for my mom, and I'm sure she can conquer typing someday. Good luck, mom.

The new site

I'm frustrated.
It seems no matter how hard I try and how much time I spend, there's always something with this new site: some links are dead, the archives don't work, some pages look odd in Netscape... The problems and the fixing work seem to be endless.

It's nearly the end of the semester. I'm supposed to study for the exams and work on some school assignments. I'm supposed to call the teacher who flunked me last semester. I'm supposed to put more heart into school where I never enjoy. Or I'd probably do lousy jobs on exams like what I've done last semester.

But where's my mind? I'm still stuck with this messy site, and I can't concentrate on doing anything else. It was two weeks ago that I thought the site would be ready in no time, but it wasn't at all. Until today, it's still not ready. What's worse, I haven't written anything for long long time; the site building work is draining my motivation to write, totally depressing.

I used to be so sure that I would post something like "Hey guys, this is my new site! I'm so excited about it!!" to started with the first entry of the new site. But today's entry ends up so depressing, as I'm not that excited about it at all.

Anyway, the photo albums section is almost done. I must be stupid, such a simple blog looking site drives me insane. Rearranging the photos seems to be the only thing I've accomplished past couple of weeks. Please take a look, and let me know what you think.

I'm still working on the site. Sorry for the messy layouts and some dead links, I'll try to fix them as best I can. And the archives are still missing, the old entries are here.

Thanks for visiting my new home:)

Learning computer

Sitting in front of the computer all day, I'm getting dazed. My eyes are sore and dry, and my right hand turns stiff. It's been a couple of days that my daily life is all around the computer.

I'm working on setting up a website. Past few months, I've been blogging over the free hosting servers and posting the pictures here and there. Free is good, but there're many problems along as well -- blogspot is blocked in China, the template of blog-city can't be changed a bit, the space of free web photo alums is too small and the pictures can't be linked to the blog... Searching for free services takes me lots of time, but the results are usually disappointing. I like managing a personal web space a lot, but I don't think I could go any further over the free services. Encouraged by Ryan, I think it's the right time to set up a real website.

I used to be a complete computer idiot. At school, I never liked computer classes, they seemed boring and useless. We spent the whole semester learning some program, but at the end of the semester, I didn't even know what I could do with that program in practice. At home, surfing the web was the only thing I knew, and a little problem could get me. Though ignorant, I was incredibly comfortable with my computer skills. I thought I'd already known enough-- Turning on and turning off the computer, visiting the websites, downloading the music, listening to the audios and watching the videos on the web... That was all I needed. There were many people pushing themselves to learn more about computer or taking some qualification exams, I thought it'd be surely boring to be like them, and I was not interested in learning anything new.

But now, a few months later, my take on computer has been totally changed-- I really want to learn more about computer. Not for finding a better job in the future or something, but I'm really getting into the computer stuff, especially the Internet. Through blogging, I've been learning unintentionally. In the past, I was learning because I had to. But now, I'm learning not for learning itself, but getting enough knowledge to solve the problems I can't figure out or do some creative things.

I'm using Dreamweaver, Firework, Frontpage, Photoshop, and HMTL to get the new sites started. Before, I only knew a little bit of each, but couldn't use any of them well. Now I'm learning all of them, it seems to be a pretty good opportunity to get familiar with these basis stuff. I've got free time, and learning by real practicing is fun -- once I learn something new, I could use it in my website.

Speaking of the website, hope the work could be done by next week. I've got a few thousands pictures, managing them is a pain in the ass, as I'm checking them one by one. Selecting pictures, shrinking down the sizes, editing some of them in Photoshop... the whole process is tedious. I love taking and viewing the pictures, but I'm easily gettnig bored and impatient by the work in between.

Okay, time to go back to my work, talk to you soon!