My Silly Journals 4

[Living in Another Country]
I lived in China for two months and live in the U.S. now. I didn’t have any special feeling about living in another country, although I have to spend some time to know the culture of them at the beginning. I like to try the different life style, so I came here and try to get close to the American life. I think the most interesting things are the ways people celebrate holidays in the U.S. and the special social behavior in China. Last month, I went to the downtown Tempe with my friend on the Halloween, we were so surprised about people’s dressing. It was our first time to join the real Halloween “party”, and I really like it for people’s rich imagination. During my first trip to China in 2000, I was so surprised about their behavior in the public especially in scenic spots. No matter what places, there were more than hundred and hundred people around you. When you want to take a picture, you have to keep saying: “excuse me” or you will see some people you don’t know in the picture. When you want to buy something to eat, you have to keep going in the line and tell the waiter what you want loudly or you will have nothing to eat, because the waiter and the people who beyond you will ignore you. I very enjoy living in another country because I can experience different cultures!


[My Favorite Season]
My favorite season is autumn. Someone may say: “autumn makes people sad because of the falling leaves.” I like autumn for the cool temperature. When I came to Tempe this August, it was so hot and the shining sunshine even made me couldn’t open my eyes. During the summer time here, I always stayed inside the buildings. I went to school in the early morning, and went back my apartment in the evening. I also don’t like the summer in Taiwan for its hot and humid weather. Now, it is autumn in Tempe. After class, sometimes I like to take a walk or ride bicycle from ASU to the Salt River and take some pictures for my friends, because they always ask me to introduce Tempe to them but I didn’t want to go outside in summer. I really enjoy the cool weather now, and finally I can go outside and take some beautiful photographs to introduce my friends how beautiful Tempe is.


[Hot News]
Most of the narcotics are illegal in Taiwan, but recently, there are several famous people who have become suspects for taking in the narcotics such as hemp, cocaine, amphetamine, MDMA, etc. Before that, some of them just finished the imprisonments, but they still keep taking drugs. They are TV stars, singers, or sport stars, and they also have a lot of young people as fans. It’s a big problem to Taiwan’s society, because it’s not only a crime but also affects other people especially the adolescents.

情感這東西

為了寫一篇有關周歲前民俗慶典的作業，找到一個詳細記載台灣風土民情的網頁，細細看了一回，又更覺禮節繁瑣。也不是有時候，而是很深刻的知道自己能夠承受的情感深度在哪裡。很久沒有頭疼了，因為那段曾經已經離我似乎很遠，會想起來的週期也漸漸拉長。

人生也不過三個階段，出生、延續生命及死亡，也許會少掉中間那一項。對我而言，死亡後生者的哀痛似乎比迎接一個新生命的喜悅來的深刻，我幾乎不記得迎接新生命的喜悅，有的幾乎都是逝者已矣的感覺，不過也因為這樣，更珍惜今後的陽光。

有出生就有死亡，而死亡後是什麼？沒有人知道，知道的魂都不知道漂蕩在哪個時空裡。習俗帶著期待與希望迎接生命，卻用敬畏來送走未知的魂，讓我有些錯愕。

生命無法永恆，永恆的是精神。

The Mid-Autumn Festival in Taiwan

[My I2 Writing-2]  This is an exercise about a descriptive paragraph. Describe a national or traditional holiday in your country.

At the Mid-Autumn Festival, we eat many delicious foods. This festival is on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month to memorize the goddess of the moon, and it’s also one of the three most important religious holidays in the Chinese societies. We hold wonderful barbecue parties and eat moon cakes and pomelos. Families like to get together and have a barbecue party. We prepare meat slices, all kinds of vegetables such as green pepper, golden pumpkin, and eggplant, and beverages. We arrange the party in front of the house, on the rooftop, or in the park in the afternoon and wait for the others who live far away from home to come back. We start the party around 6:00 p.m., and it’s an important time to show who can light up the wood coal first. After lighting up the fire, everyone leaps at the toaster because we all like to barbecue. We have the juicy meat and the colorful vegetables for dinner. Then we eat the moon cake and the pomelo and watch the moon. The moon cake is a kind of pastry, and it looks like a mini cake. The brown exterior of the moon cake is made of oil, flour, and sugar, and the interior of it is the sweet and fruity legume stuffing. The pomelo is a kind of fruit that looks like a big orange, but its peel is olive green. We like to cut off the peel of pomelo and put it on children’s heads to wish them health. I like this holiday very much, but I couldn’t come home this year. My family still celebrated the festival, and my dear sister emailed me the photographs of their barbecue party. I really wanted to join them at that moment.

My First Time to Leave My Hometown to College

[My I2 Writing-1]  This is a narrative paragraph which describes a story by time order. It's also an unforgettable story in my life because it makes me recall my dear mother.

I will never forget my first time to leave my hometown to college. Before I became a college student, I had never left my hometown — Kaohsiung, the biggest city in southern Taiwan — for eighteen years, so I decided to choose a school which is far from there to meet the new world. On that day, I left my home with my mother and elder sister May. We took a train at midnight and arrived at dawn in Taoyuan where is three hundred kilometers away from Kaohsiung. I remember a typhoon was attacking Taiwan that day, so just a few people were on the streets. We took a taxi from the railway station to my school. About an hour later, we arrived at my dormitory, and I met one of my roommates Lee. My mother and May went to a shop in campus and bought some things for me. They helped me to set up my bed and desk; then, we went to a restaurant and ate some noodles for lunch. We didn’t talk too much, and they went back home in the afternoon. I could tell that my mother worried about me pretty much, but she never told me that and just wanted me to call home sometimes. I had three roommates, and we always talked about the new life in college, hobbies, classes, and our hometowns and families. I met many new friends and joined a lot of activities held by my department. I really loved the new life in college, but sometimes I still felt lonely because I missed my family, friends, and my dog in my hometown.

Tim

不知如何講述這幾天的心情，我是真的很喜歡 TIM，一種欣賞的心情。佩瑩說這是精神外遇，也許！對我來說，總可以理性地把愛跟欣賞分清楚，這算不算是一種壓抑？我永遠都記得在系圖小杜傳來的那張紙條。從認識他的第一刻，我就知道他是我喜歡的那種男生--陽光男孩，不管遭遇多少挫折與現實，他總是可以很樂觀地面對，臉上總是帶著笑容。在我所經歷的世界裡，很少看到這樣的男生，我選擇保留這個美好的回憶。:-)
到了ASU，第一次見到 TIM ，是在講述美國簽證相關規定的 Orientation，只覺得他是個嚴肅傢伙，還是掌握生殺大權的 Student Adviser，很難親近的樣子。很慶幸他是我的文法老師，這是他唯一在AECP上的課，我卻幸運地當上他的學生，也讓我有機會認識這個大男生。上星期五，在開往Grand Canyon的路上，他坐我旁邊，一路上這位文學碩士竟然跟我講了很多 Arizona的環境跟生態、電影、小說、冒險故事跟他親愛的老婆。我們帶了一樣的水壺(佩瑩的)跟穿一樣的背心，我在Bright Angel幫他拿了兩次咖啡，我們兩個在回程的路上各自啃著自己的小說。有時候，你總是會對這種很神奇的巧合感到興奮。一樣的，我喜歡上了 TIM的笑容。
我當然最愛我家的帥哥，尤其現在離他很遠，沒有爭吵的機會。:p 雖然他很機車，從不懂逗我開心，但我最喜歡我們兩個神奇的故事跟同樣的生日數字。經歷過時間考驗的總是真實。

An Important Event in My Life

[My I1 Writing-Essay]   This is the story about Tau my favorite dog in my life.

After I had finished my B.S. degree and worked in Department of Earth Science of National Central University from 1994 to 2000 in Taoyuan, northern Taiwan, I changed my interest from earth science to ecology. Then I studied very hard by myself for two years to pass the entrance exam of the Graduate Institute of Natural Resource Management of National Dong Hwa University in Hualien in 2000. It was a marvelous experience for me, because I never thought that I could be a graduate student in ecology, especially because ecology is such a different field of study from earth science. Before I started to move to Hualien for my first semester, my father died. I began a new life in Hualien, but I always felt sorrowful because I missed my father so much. Then Tau, my dog, came to my life and changed me.

One day, my classmates and I wanted to go to the playground to do some exercise. Halfway there, a little, ugly, stinking, homeless doggy followed us for a long time. We played with her for awhile, but we didn’t want her to keep following us, so we ran and left her far away. Then we arrived at the playground and jogged. About a half hour later, we started to go back to our dormitory. Suddenly, the little doggy appeared in front of us and kept following us. We felt very sorry for her, so my friend Abowl and I decided to find someone to keep her. We named her “Tau”, which in Chinese means a horse that carries something on its back. We wished she could be like a horse: be strong and take care of herself.

We posted an ad to find someone who wants to keep a doggy. We took her to see a veterinarian and treated her skin disease. After a few days, a girl e-mailed me and told me she want to see Tau, because her dog had died a few weeks before. Then she came to my dormitory and played with Tau for awhile, and she wanted to keep Tau because Tau was like her dog so much. We made an appointment with the girl, and I kept looking after Tau for a few days, but my classmates and I all liked Tau, and we couldn’t bear to part from her. On the day the girl would come to take her away, we felt so sad and took all the time to play with her. But the girl never appeared! We were so angry that she didn’t keep her promise, but I was happy to keep Tau again.

After a long discussion with Abowl, we decided to keep Tau, but it was really a tough challenge to look after a doggy. Abowl always left Hualien to Ilan for field experiments for a long time, so I had to spend a lot of time to take care of Tau by myself and cooperated with my roommates to prevent the housemaster from detecting that I was breaking the rules about not having pets in the dormitory. During that period, my life was alarmingly dangerous, and I almost failed my accomplishments that semester. As time went by, Tao grew up from an ugly doggy to a beautiful dog. She brought me a lot of troubles, but she always made me happy because she looked happy all the time and she took most of my sorrow away.

健忘症

一直有很嚴重的健忘症, 需要一個地方隨時記起來, 不然過一分鐘肯定忘記, 就連剛在想啥都不記得. 最近都在想行李箱裡要帶啥, 在美國要做哪些"自訂功課", ....., 這些想法連寫在哪都可能會忘記, 真是無可救藥的記憶力.

企業唯才是用

有時在想，逢迎拍馬是否為職場必備的能力之一。當然在一般年輕人心裡，”理”應當是最行得通的準則之一。大多數人都會期待老闆懂得賞識人才，那如果事實並非如此呢？又該怎樣說服自己進了一家有願景的公司？甚或擁有讓人生充滿願景的未來？
這個問題我還沒有參透，要依從自己的意願或是保全大環境。

戰爭

聽著 There You’ll Be 珍珠港的主題曲，細想電影裡的情節。戰爭是人類罪行中最殘忍的，上位者操弄愛家愛國虛偽的意識形態，迫使千千萬萬人家的父母兄弟姐妹前往戰場與一樣無辜的對手在戰場上廝殺。海珊在前些時候伏法了，看他所受的折磨跟死法，跟眾多賠上身家性命的無辜受害者相比，他受到的待遇何其高尚與尊嚴。如果有上帝，海珊離開軀體後會前往哪裡？想起李家同在陌生人裡的一篇文章，貪得無厭的人到了天堂卻想早點下地獄。
仇恨是這些罪惡行為的起源，如果都沒有了仇恨，我們將會生活在一個很快樂的世界裡。為何佛教會說人來到這世間是來受苦的，要贖前世的債。其實你我都有能力讓這個世界更美好。修身齊家治國平天下，越覺中國五千年文化真是寶典。

珠海的第一天

高雄小港機場實在小的可憐，精品名店當然少不了，只是缺少了特色，喔～至少名產店還是存在，新東陽或滿是太陽餅芋頭餅的商店。想說要到湖北與小郝先生會面，印有阿里山字樣的高山茶可缺不得，在店員大力推銷下，買了半斤就要一千五的茶，平常可喝不起。就這樣第一次拎著”Duty Free”的袋子在候機大廳裡閒晃。見到無線上網可樂的很，馬上開啟小黑，結果卻讓我失望！又是個遭受無情打擊又飢餓的夜晚。
晚上跟阿美約在拱北商場的咖啡廳。飛機早了二十五分鐘抵達澳門，以為她會遲到，自己可能得等一下。進了咖啡廳，竟然先見到司徒(達劭)，才看到這位已經熟識三十幾年的大姊，看來兩個多月也沒變多少，似乎瘦了點。

ps. 剛敲了一聲巨響，珠海的雷聲可真大！如果小馱在這，肯又定嚇得躲到桌子底下。