Have yourself a merry little christmas...

I'm bad at writing Christmas cards to each and single one of you out there, but I do want to say "Merry Christmas and happy new year to y'all!!!" (along with the best voice and nicest sound on the planet... I think).

Holiday Mood

All the students are gone, the work place has gone back to quietness, and it's funny how human psychology works: when the students were around and work was abound, I often dread going to school and wonder how much longer I could last without going insane; right before they left for home, myself preparing as well, I already missed the fun times (sometimes not so fun times) in the classroom already. Better enjoy and relax NOW before I have to drag myself back to work in a month.
I actually enjoy the all quiet and almost uneventful Christmas here, rather than the parties, feasts, gift exchanges, etc. which are sometimes a little too much for me to handle. It's Christmas, i.e. Christ's festival according to etymology (I still identify myself as a linguist!), after all we may be better off spending time on reflecting and contemplating what HE really means to us and what we can do to others to be more like and become closer to HIM. And I'm glad I'm going home after Christmas which gives me more time and space to regroup and get organized for the beginning of a new year.

A couple posts ago I promised myself to express thanks to people that matter to and have great impact on me. As I happened to get in touch with a few former teachers and professors of mine at the Y these past few days, I am going to reflect and write a few anecdotes on them. There are six particular teachers/professors that I truly appreciate at the Y.I met my thesis chair Dr. Eggington almost by accident. I felt like taking a religious class at the Y and I decided to take a D&C class and sort of randomly chose a section 2 weeks into one semester. Dr. E was the instructor and surprisingly he was so kind to give me a 1-on-1 tutorial to make up the classes that I missed. Then we started talking as we realized we are in the same department and in no time he became my mentor, my boss for my research work, assisted me in obtaining scholarships, hooked me up with another professor for TA work, and eventually played a key role in helping me finished the thesis, passed the oral defense, and graduated. He is such a typical nice Australian dude with a very similar work style and philosophy as mine: slightly unorganized by multitasking a million things but have a very clear priority set for what matters most.

As for the other professor Dr. E hooked me up with, it was Dr. Dallin Oaks. No, he's not the apostle but his son. It was another random acquaintance that I was in Dr. E's office when he came in and said he was looking for a TA and I couldn't believe I had the courage to recommend myself there on the spot when I didn't quite have a clue who he was and what I was getting into. Since then I had tutored four sections of a total of about 360 students of mostly English and English Language majors on English linguistics while not being a native English speaker myself! I was quite nervous to begin with and I was horrified to substitute for Dr. O when he was not around but it turned out to be such a great learning and teaching experience that I felt like I've got more out of it than most of my graduate courses. It solidified my love for linguistics as a subject.

Both Dr. Christensen and Dr. Bourgerie in the Chinese department have given me ton of opportunities to work and gain experience on Chinese teaching and translation work both on campus and off. Dr. C often talks to me on a personal level while Dr. B on a professional level.

Dr. Anderson was rather intimidating when I first met him, and to be honest, maybe it's his bow tie. I'm so blessed to be hired to teach at the English Language Center to gain insight on the art of language teaching while having a blast with the fellow teachers and the great students from around the world. I will never forget I was really amazed that I could somehow communicate and teach the level zero community English class when some of the students almost did not speak a word of English. I also loved one of my grammar class so much that I treated them all to a buffet meal after the last day of school. How can one not love them when they gave me a standing ovation to welcome me into the classroom as they found out I passed my thesis oral defense! And Dr. A at one point tried to help me from losing my job because of my change of work status.

The last amazing teacher and friend of mine is Sister/Mrs./Dr. Tinney. I was not excited about an ESL advanced academic writing class I had to take as an international student. But Sister T was very serious but at the same time easy about the class that I did enjoy it. She talked to me a lot out of class and shared her personal stories in words and in a book she published. She offered to let me attend the LDS Book Association Convention several years in a row that I thoroughly enjoyed and received many goodies from it. I was pleasantly surprised she took her time out of her busy PhD work schedule to attend and cheer for my thesis oral defense. I'm glad I passed and otherwise it would be so embarrassing and disappointing to both her and myself.

I feel strongly about putting these on record which probably do not mean much to anyone else and I doubt it if anyone is still reading up to this point. Nevertheless I cannot help but still am in awe that these mentors would go out of their ways to help students succeed and many of them have become personal friends. Having one or a couple in life is a miracle itself, let alone having half a dozen. This is what I cherish most while attending the one and only BYU. A BIG THANK YOU to you all!

Surviving China

I confess that I am a Survivor fan. I have pretty much watched every episode of the past 15 seasons, except the second half of Palau I think. At one point, I thought the show was losing originality and good cast that I thought I would lose interest but I was sure glad to find out they finally came to China for the latest season and it turned out to be quite interesting.

Out of all things, I usually enjoy the food challenge and the final reunion show the most. Seriously I think I would not be able to go through any of the challenges myself easily. But this Chinese food challenge would have been a piece of cake for me. Maybe not the turtle part. I have even had Balut once. Thanks to Sister Malana and Sister Gellor on my mission. I only drank the content of it and could not down the fetus with feathers and the beak. It did taste like chicken soup and was not bad. But if it was a million bucks on the line I would have no problem eating the whole thing. Ha! And the so-called "thousand year old egg" is a myth to most non-Chinese. I was talking about it with my students the other day and it is actually a fermentation process caused by alkaine that turns the egg black, not because of age and mold. I never find it disgusting and it is so true that taste is a cultural habit and a nurture thing. It's funny finally a Mormon won this time but I did not root for him at all! I was betting on Amanda since almost all past winners had high EQ and she seemed to have it all. Thanks to Todd's calling her out in the last second (accidentally or not) and Todd's better performance facing the jury she lost. He deserves it though. And the whole season is available at www.cbs.com if you want to watch it now!

In the news...

I'm soooo relieved having finally done with projects under pressing deadlines and now can be prepared for the upcoming holidays both mentally and physically. While working in front of the computer a lot, I've been following the news quite a bit mostly during breaks in between work sessions (and more often the breaks lasted longer than the work sessions...)

First of all, finding out Mr. Tung to be receiving an honorary degree from my Alma Mater was really disturbing and even enraging. People say give him a break as he is old or the protesters should not have ruined the ceremony. You give me a break! He was not young when he stepped in as the first Chief Executive of the SAR to begin with and look at what he has done to HK. Does the so-called "contribution to the smooth transition" offset the cost of lives he is responsible for (the magic number 85,000, SARS, messing with the legal system, to name a few)? I actually applaud the students and graduates who voiced their opinion on that day. As for "ruining" the ceremony, who's the culprit? The party who honored a criminal, or the students who just disagree and ask for justice? If I were one of the parents, I would be more upset of his presence than to the protesters. His patronizing tone totally bugged me as h/well. Now I feel for the graduates at the Y when Cheney came. The issue was the students had no say of who the honoree would be and that could potentially spoil the fun of graduation. Lately I feel like academic credentials and titles often times do not mean anything anyways. Not that they are bad per se, but often times the system which grants them is not without flaws. My first hand experience is quite a few colleagues at work boast their such and such PhD degrees from so and so Ivy League schools but the way they run things are just horrifying. I can't help questioning how come I almost died getting a Master's while these maniacs get their PhD's with no common sense.

I'm glad than Anson Chan won the election in HK and she seems to be one of the rare "colonial leftovers" that is actually sane and makes sense with the clear conscience of what is right and wrong. Thanks to YouTube that it only takes a few clicks to take one back to 1989 and see the passion of HKers and mainlanders. People have changed a lot and they seem to have lost values and morals. Along with that I find political elections in general to be more interesting than I used to. I used to stay from anything political but I guess now as one grows up, or gets older to be exact, things seem to matter and relate to life more. 2008 will definitely be a much anticipated year with interesting outcome.

Enough of "serious" stuff. Has anyone seen this? People should know that I'm a die-hard Gene Kelly guy and who would have thought Usher would do something like this?It's almost exactly like the original except in the ending he's supposed to be giving his umbrella to the cop (See? I know the movie well!) but I like his stylized rendition of such a classic.

Holiday Season

It's December already! Holiday season has begun and for me this year is marked by this movie. "Enchanted" is the second movie I ever watched in the movie theater ended with applause from the enthused audience in the theater (the first one being this one). Almost every plot was predictable but the production and acting are very fun and enjoyable that people totally are entertained by Disney poking fun at themselves. Amy Adams totally shines and stands out in the show.

It's very very rare that I get to talk to every single person from my family on the phone the same day while I'm over here in the US (well, Doris through MSN but I guess that still counts). I'm so glad mom brought up the idea that these days even though the internet has virtually connected the whole world but people actually communicated less. People spend more time in front of the monitor screens more often than really talking to people. I did a google search on the word "addiction" because of work (we are teaching about "drug addiction" in class) and surprisingly in China the top searches are all about internet addiction. I think people in China are in desperate need to fill their apparently empty social and spiritual lives on the internet. Of course I'm sort of isolated here in this part of the world the computer has been a major way of communication for me but I do not consider online communication the replacement of real life communications. And I have learned the hard way more than once not to take things on the web too seriously. Anyways, I can never say enough that I am truly grateful for my family's unwavering support and freedom provided these many years.

Thanksgiving leftover...

While many people are still going through their thanksgiving feast leftovers, I don't have that kind of worries because I didn't even have any solid plans for the holiday, and it turned out to be a peaceful, quiet, and even inspiring one for me. I didn't have turkey (but roast chicken instead), feast, or any specific celebration per se. The reason is that there were so many things going on at home, at work, and in personal life that I didn't make any plans as it's not celebrated back home anyways. That's also why this blog went on a hiatus for a couple weeks. But somehow I managed to read a great classic book Chicken Soup for the Soul which got me into A LOT of thinking, and I guess I was well fed in a different way and hence the following thoughts.

I was pleased to see Nate's quote on "the greatest things in life aren't things". It's getting out of hand here in America that a holiday supposed to be giving thanks is becoming all about feasts and black friday shopping. Even though I admit I was tempted to wait in line at the wee hours on black friday morning because of the great deals, I came to realize it's not worth it to sacrifice my precious rest hours and even my health just to save a hundred bucks. Now I can easily earn that same amount of money or even more with the same amount of time and energy wasted. I came to realize I should focus on the spirit of the giving part, not just lip service of "oh, how blessed I am and how poor all those people in the world around us are" kind of attitude. It should mean we are in a position to give, not to get so as not turning thanksgiving into a holiday of "giftgetting". I made a decision to begin with doing a few things to the people that I will ever be indebted for. First it's my family, especially under such challenging circumstances, I need to put them in the first place. Then for the next few days I will put either into words or actions to a few people that I've always wanted to express my gratitude to. I know there are a handful of people who are reading this and please bear with me some of the details in the coming days about the things I am going to write which may not mean much to anyone else but are really personal and meaningful to me in many ways.

The Chicken Soup book reminded me of this quote from Mr. Keating in Dead Poets Society:

All of us are walking around with some kind of birthday card we would like to give -- some personal expression of joy, creativity or aliveness that we are binding under our shirt... Carpe Diem (Seize the Day)!

Happy belated birthday, dad and Anthony! Hang in there! :)

It's all about COMMUNICATION!!!

Have been heavily involved with a couple work related projects that I'm devoting my whole holiday weekend to them. And I realize lately that whether work is enjoyable or successful or not depends a lot on communication. I'm learning this the hard way again that unfortunately some of the people I am now working with are not good communicators at all. They delegate work without clear instructions or what is expected of me that I have to make a lot of guesses amidst confusions. Hence my students and the work suffer. I recall the experience of a couple of the so-called "miracle companionships" (named by others, not myself!) on my mission that things went amazingly well only when we got along and communicated well. It tended to attract good things to happen. I guess that is what happened with my former teaching team that we "attracted" good students or what actually happened was bringing out the best of them if the teachers work well together. When there is no communication, bad things are bound to happen.

On a totally different note, these are what I call real talents:
I'm obssessed with Wade Robson's choreography lately.


And this has been my favorite song the past month.

My apartment rocked (not in a good way)!!!

More than ten years ago one night I was working late into the wee hours in front of my dorm room desk at the U of U. Then came a quick shake of the entire room. I jerked my head around and saw my roommate still sleeping soundly. The next day I asked him if he felt it and of course the answer was "no". Later it was confirmed as a real earthquake of a magnitude of about 3. That was my only experience with earthquakes.

Again tonight I was sitting in front of my desk watching some trashy Hong Kong TV shows. Then came the shakes. I thought it was my body's muscle spasms due to lack of sleep. It was first a kind of small geyser eruption type of movements followed by a couple more seconds of my desk shifting and even the house was rocking. It was short and abrupt but had it lasted longer I would have freaked and run out of the house. I just experienced mock quakes from an earthquake simulator at the Tech Museum in San Jose a few weeks ago with my fam and little did I know I would feel the real thing first hand originated from the San Jose area. It's a magnitude 5.6!!!

No-no teachers, weightwatchers, and money matters...

For some reason, thoughts about my teaching filled my mind this morning (noon, or afternoon to be exact) when I woke up. Students from my "dream classes" out of the many I've taught came to mind: one from my Cantonese class, one my community English class for TESOL practicum, one English grammar class at the ELC, and my current but former team's Chinese class. I already "miss" these students of my former team even though I'm still teaching them. It's a pleasant surprise to see them thrive, especially the ones who everyone including themselves thought were low achievers. The class leader who was so behind on everything before is much more relaxed now and shocked the class today by answering a rather complicated question. I felt like I was prompted to ask him and it was funny to see the other students' jaws drop when he answered it perfectly. I have such a good rapport with these wonderful classes that working with them is more fun than work. And the best compliment I get from these students would be "Time flies!" which means the class is enjoyable. I became very reflective of my teaching these days trying to look at teaching from the students' perspectives. I strive to avoid things I dislike about my own teachers. I've learned from the few great teachers I've had (my thesis chair, my English TA boss, my first Japanese, Spanish, and French teachers, and many of my dance teachers) that they never patronize me or talk in a condescending tone which unfortunately many other of my teachers or current fellow teachers do. I actually looked forward to the classes with teachers I liked. I hate it when teachers or people talk to me like I'm a dumb-dumb. I think that's the first no-no rule for me.
I'm pleased to report that I've lost six pounds over the past month and many might find it surprising that I do have a bit of a weight problem. The thing is that it does not quite show but on my face and the scale only. I used to only pay more attention to what I eat. But to lose weight is more a simple math problem. One needs to lose more than the intake. So my workout and swimming do pay off in spite of my occasional indulgence in soda and chips! And another thing is I sometimes park further from where I need to be on purpose. It's partly because I dislike parallel parking and it is a good excuse for me to walk a bit more. People think I am weird when they ride with me that I park so far away from the perfect parking spot. :)
The last thing or question I want to bring up is why things keep popping up every time I think I can have a little extra money or savings? Like car breakdown or some government documentation fees or insurance down payment and stuff. Just like today I got called by this stupid new insurance company that I thought I saved money on but was told they had to raise the premium because of miscalculations. So I had to call my old insurer to reinstate my policy but it requires a down payment. What a hassle (say the last word fast and you would know what word I REALLY meant to say ;p)! The lesson learned is NEVER jump into any commitment where money is involved!

HP Quote...

Quote of the day: It is our choices, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. ~Albus Dumbledore

P.S. Yes, I'm finally reading Harry Potter... better late than never!!! ;p

Mighty Mormons Marie and Mitt

I hate to use such a tacky title, but this is really how I feel about these two. They both appear on CNN.com today for different reasons. One took a fall.While the other confused "Obama" with "Osama".I just read a feature story of Romney on Newsweek and I think he is a decent candidate but with a slim chance winning the election. Nevertheless, these two are real so-called "troopers" (referring to Osmond in DWTS). These are the high-profile people who practice their religion with their actions, not with their lips. They even shy away from mentioning their beliefs when it is not necessary. It is not because of shame but actions speak a lot louder than words. I think often times people who profess they belong to such and such religion are actually doing a disservice to whatever or whoever they believe in because their actions do not quite match what they preach. This applies to any religion (or the lack thereof).

Anyways, I saw one of the coolest things in life this past weekend. As a former biology major I always love animals of most kinds, especially the ones in the ocean. Seeing humpback whales (not one, but three!!!), dolphins, otters, sea lions swimming wild and free in the ocean totally made all the dizziness, freeze, starvation, and wait worthwhile and made me appreciate life even more.Not much can be seen here but underneath the waves in the middle actually are three whales swimming. I was too cold and dizzy to take the snapshot at the right moment...I did see something like this though...

Vacation... or not...

For a brief moment a couple nights ago I felt exactly like that salmon that all the effort and planning for my vacation had come to a tragic end. My grandma's passing away totally changed our plans unexpectedly. Fortunately with people's help my family was able to scramble air tickets at the last minute so that my mom can attend the funeral. It means the sudden end of my vacation but well, that's life. My time with fam was short but fun and beautiful. I'm already thinking ahead for the next one!!!

Treasures...

After all the moves and changes at work, I've been very moody these days but I never showed it (I'm professional!:p) that I don't think my students or colleagues could tell. I'm glad my students took the news well nevertheless.

These "treasures" found in YouTube totally helped in lightening things up for me...
I can't believe my eyes as I found this show because I was in the audience at the time and I was in awe... And Anita and Leslie have both "moved on"...

Muppets "live"!!! I'm luvin' it!!!

More, but Not Merrier

The article above pretty much affirmed and elaborated in a nice way what I said and believe about the virtual social network online. Very well put.

Yesterday was pretty much spent in Silicon Valley / San Jose. The Wincestor House was... weird, as advertised. And we accidentally discovered a very hip and upscale shopping area known as Santana Row, which is comparable to Beverly Hills.I took this picture sitting on a really comfy couch in the middle of the road!

And I finally saw wild otters in the ocean today! Not one but three!!!

Thought of the day: If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?

Mixed...

This is quite laughable but it does ring true to how I felt for the past week at work. After all the frustrating waiting, negotiating, delaying, discussing, promoting, demoting, gossipping, all the way up to today's eventual moving of my office, all I can say is it's rather disappointing what has happened at work and I really despise bureaucracy and sticking to the norms for no reason. At one point I was so angry to the changes that I wanted to quit and I felt so underappreciated for all the things I have done. This is not the first time things have gone this way in my life. To make things worse, I was really disappoionted that none of the students from the graduating class got to talk to me or even say bye yesterday despite my taking time off to attend their graduation ceremony. I can't really blame anyone as I had to leave early because of class but I thought I could at least talk to a few of them. Oh well, everyone has to move on, I guess. I'm fine now but I hope history won't repeat as I will be sort of leaving another group of students that I even like better starting next week.

I'm not in desperate despair though. I can't be happier hanging out with my family now that I get to eat a lot better, sleep a lot more, and show my family around whenever I get off work. My work schedule these days have been very cooperative and sort of flexible as my boss is very understanding that she allows me to maximize my time spent on my family's visit. I can't wait to travel in 10 days! And I will be watching Dancing with the Stars live!!!

One year... more randomness... and happy moon!

It's been exactly one year since I am here landed on this job. What a year.

In hindsight, I realized I've grown to be very comfortable at teaching now. Even while teaching at the Y and for the first few months here, there were still frequent panic moments right before I stepped into the classroom. "What am I gonna do?", "How would they react?", "When should I say what?", and things like that kept flashing through my mind. I am always this extremely shy person that I recall when my cousins found out I'm a teacher now that they were as shocked as I myself was at the time. I guess only through experience had I got the hang of how to teach in spite of not feeling prepared, lack of organized materials, and even a bad vibe in class. It's actually a lot of mental and psychological work. If I have things mapped and planned out in mind and always think about the desired outcome, I'm already off to a good start.

Talking about thoughts and mind, I watched this very interesting movie based on a self-help book "The Secret". It reminds me of the book "Drawing the Powers of Heaven". I kind of agree what the movie says that our mind is limitless and it can bring about many goods. We need to nourish it with good thoughts and stop feeding it with "junks" and all the negativity. I'm amazed not too long ago I was just thinking that people who whine and complain tend to "attract" more bad things that happen to them. And I find people who are uplifting and positive attractive. That's probably what a "bright person" really means. Anyways, I think this is only the first step, thoughts need to be converted to actions in order to become "things", not like what the movie implies things will happen without actions.

I just heard from a few of my former students, one from Columbia, a couple from Mexico, and one from Peru. It is so good to see the progress they have made in their lives. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing my students change and grow in a positive way whether I have anything to do with that.

Going back to last week, our students just took their much dreaded big tests and they anxiously waited for their results. Quite sadly, still half of the class failed and much to our surprise, most of them failed two and a couple of them even all three tests that it's alarmingly unusual. I was nervous and almost afraid to go back to the classroom as I didn't quite know how they would react to the news. So the first thing I did was to offer a few words of comfort and encouragement as best I could. I was so glad they took it well and school went on as usual. There were still laughter and jokes in class. Quite a few of them seemed to work even harder than before. Not until the end of the week did we realize we made a mistake in scoring and most of them actually passed the tests they usually did well on. Everyone was ecstatic as we found out right before the weekend, and so we had a good one.

Last but not least, have a happy mid-autmn/moon festival!

Rambling in/on Chinese...

After having been "immersed" in teaching Mandarin Chinese with all the mandarin speakers around for the past year, I came to the realization of these thoughts on the language:

~Cantonese IS Chinese! It's sad that people equate Mandarin as Chinese solely based on the number of speakers and the enforcement of the "official language" by the CPC government. There are many Mandarin teachers who keep saying Cantonese is "just" a dialect. I can't be more frustrated whenever I hear this. All we need to do is just to trace back a couple centuries ago and see how close the language then is to today's Mandarin.
~Chronologically Cantonese has a longer and richer history than today's Mandarin, e.g. I realized from teaching that Cantonese still uses the more formal and older form of negations "無" and "未" as opposed to the less formal and later inventions in modern Chinese equivalent of "沒有" and "還沒有".
~Cantonese and Mandarin have technically developed into two separate languages that neither one is necessarily better than the other. They just evolve under different cultures and environments. One can hardly find a native speaker of either being able to speak the other without some sort of, or often times heavy, accent.
~As much as I find simplified Chinese convenient to write, I still prefer traditional Chinese. It makes better sense semantically and is easier to read because of the disambiguation. And aesthetically it is needed to do calligraphy.
~The UN's abandonment of traditional Chinese is a rumor on the net as I suspected but the UN did make a choice to use simplified now simply because of political motivation as it recognizes China as its member nation, not Taiwan, or Hong Kong (part of China already).
~Unfortunately Cantonese is on the verge of being marginalized and I blame it on many speakers' sloppy use of it, especially in HK. People tend to simply "mix" it with English words, while not having a good English command, thus producing a pidgin-like language nowadays. And I see it as a sign of lack of eloquence and vocabulary. It would be just sad the death of Cantonese is due to the speakers lack of effort to refine their native tongue.
~One strength of Chinese, regardless of dialects, is its resilience that it can integrate foreign vocabulary by using Chinese itself, in which Mandarin speakers are doing a way better job than the Hongkongers.

I love Cantonese not only because it's my mother tongue but also due to its culture and "craziness" in retrospect. Its decline means the decline of a culture, I mean the culture of Hong Kong, which is vastly different than that of Mainland. While the assimilation is unavoidable after the turnover, it will simply be phased out if nothing is done on preserving what we have now. It will be tragic for me.

6 years

She's MY dreamgirl with an angelic voice. =)

And six years... since I came here... when it all happened... but moving on... and looking forward...

Shots...

Was very sick when I was little. Visited the doctor so often that doctors, nurses, hospital beds, medicine, and even needles were no strangers to me. I was so used to needles that I was not afraid of the pain and blood associated with them at all. But now I took three shots in the past three days for my physical (one for TB test, one for vaccination, and one for blood test) that I really was nervous. The last one I took today I could tell I was sweating even though I could hardly feel the pain until after it's done. Weird.

And "摩爾門經"? Oh my...

Who am I?

No more silly personality tests that girls like to do. A colleague of mine reintroduced me to this Myers-Brigg's 16 personality test. This one is more scientifically based that we even used it in teaching to understand our students. I am definitely an INFP. Check out my personality profile!

And I realized my world view has changed quite a bit in the past year which might be surprising to some people who know me. I think this is a good description nevertheless that I am more a postmodernist now.

You scored as Cultural Creative, Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational. Cultural Creative 94% Postmodernist 75% Idealist 69% Existentialist 63% Materialist 56% Romanticist 50% Modernist 44% Fundamentalist 31% What is Your World View? created with QuizFarm.com

More shows...

I could hardly believe I found this show which used to be a favorite of mine on TV. This was from like 15 years or so ago and way before the reality TV craze. And I always dreamed of being in the Crystal Maze myself. The slightly creepy but wacky host and the always changing games were great fun. Would I be good at games mental, mystery, physical, or skill?

And I accidentally saw this on TV featuring the smartest Mormon ever (at least many people and I think), the Jeopardy-made-millionaire Ken Jennings.

Heavenly...

Honestly I am not the biggest fan of Pavarotti, but I found these interesting renditions amazing.


For some strange reason I really like this quote from the strange movie the Weather Man:
Robert Spritzel: David, sacrifice is... to get anything of value, you have to sacrifice.
Dave Spritz: I know that dad, but I think that if we continue down this road, it's gonna be too detrimental for the kids. It's just too hard.
Robert Spritzel: Do you know that the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing? Nothing that has meaning is easy. "Easy" doesn't enter into grown-up life.

Connections

It's been a year since I started this blog, and it has been an interesting one. My transition from a student into a US federal employee, relocation from UT to CA, moving on from the old DELL laptop to this new one, and all the accompanying changes can't have been better. No complaints.

During this week of class break plus the long weekend, I have lots of opportunity to really play around on the internet. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, (Just read an article about him on Newsweek. What a smarty. He's already a millionaire at 23.) I found Facebook a really great tool since I started using it a couple years ago. In the past week I was able to reconnect with quite a few high school and mission friends that I have totally lost touch with. A few thoughts on using Facebook though:
1. I don't really consider all the connections as friends. They are more like acquaintences because a lot of them are just connected with me with absolutely no interactions.
2. I hesitate using the Top Friends application as I always remember a good friend of mine once said he never ranked his friends. To be honest I don't really consider those Top Friends requests as from my "top friends" as I still yet hear anything from them personally. I just see the application as pointless.
3. Talking about applications, I found a lot of the applications annoying and I prefer a "cleaner" page with real communications that people really put thoughts into their own words and mean what they say. Just my opinion.
So what does "friend" mean anyway? Oh, well I guess I'm taking all these a little too seriously.
And I saw this live on TV (I don't know if I am considered lucky or not), I was puzzled and shocked at the time, but little did I know it would have become the talk of the country and on YouTube! Hilarious though.Poor girl. It's so ironic that she's the perfect person to be asked such a question because it's likely she's among those 1/5 of the "US Americans" and "such as". And the conclusion that my friend and I came to is that beauty pagent is a BEAUTY pagent. We can't really expect more from it. And she should have just said "World peace" like Sandra Bullock did in Miss Congeniality. LOL.

Tech faux pas...

For some unknown reasons, I had a strange vibe last night that today was going to be a weird day. Now I believe in my intuition even more than before.

We were going out for a farewell lunch for a former-classmate-present-colleague. It took a few trys to start the car as usual as it has been happening for a couple tmonths. We found a great parking spot in downtown but my car's engine kept running even AFTER I pulled out the car key! This was the 2nd time it behaved like this and I thought my solution last time was to drive a little bit more and the problem would go away... it didn't work this time. Then came the burning smell, and the smoke as we checked the engine. I couldn't even shut the window or lock the car because they are all electronic. Good thing this is downtown Monterey so I wasn't concerned about the safety of the car at all. We just kept going for lunch while I tried to call the insurance company to have the car towed. Then my cell phone didn't work. It would stay connect for about 30 seconds and then shut down. I tried my best to stay cool in front of everybody so as not to ruin their lunch. Well, to make the long story short I was able to get the car towed right after we finished lunch but I was forced to take a half-day leave but fortunately it is our class break so it's not a big deal. I am still waiting for the car dealer's call and I don't know when I'll get my car back at this moment. And my cell phone is totally fine after the fiasco that I guess it just can't handle stress. My lesson learned is a backup plan is ALWAYS needed whenever technology is involved that you never know when it would fail you. I moaned in pain every time I have to pay my insurance bill but I was so thankful for it today. And thanks to Xinyi for her cell phone while mine just wouldn't cooperate.

Wow, I'm so long-winded.

Ok, change of topic. I'm such a slow reader that often the movie of the book would have already come out before I'm even half way through reading it. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Da Vinci Code... now even for a non-fiction 1421. I learned about this book when I was invited to attend the Speech Day of my high school. I found it strange as the speaker was so enthused about the book and I checked it out briefly from our school library. The theory proposed by Gavin Mensies was Zheng He, the Chinese navigator reached America about a century before Columbus did. He suggested Zheng even circumnavigated the whole world. Now I found this PBS produced documentary in our school library that I could know what he talked about in one seating without reading hundreds of pages from the book. It's quite fascinating to see the journey but strangely the poor Mensies was ripped apart by the interviewer and scholars because of lack of "scolarly evidence" to support his view. Well, who knows? Weren't Galileo, Newton, and many more of the great minds mocked in the first hand?

Relaxing...

With the students gone for a week for classbreak, I am expecting a very relaxing work week. I watched Hairspray over the weekend without much expectation as I've seen the show on Broadway and I found the movie trailer a little awkward and John Travolta just looked ridiculous. Boy, was I in for a nice surprise! I LOVED the movie! It's even better than the live show probably because it totally clarified what is going on in the story for me and all the cast acted and sang superbly. The theater wasn't even half full because it is almost the final week of the show but the audience was laughing, cheering, and even clapping in the end! I have never experienced anything like this in a movie theater. I just could not help having a big smile throughout the whole time.

They are soldiers...

Just watched another awesome movie...I always like this kind of movie storytelling about survival in the extreme circumstances. As I watched this one, I kept thinking about my students. Sometimes we take it for granted that there are thousands of people risking their lives to protect ours and fight for cause they deem worth dying for. And this mentality of sacrificing for higher cause is something where HK or even China lacks. People there nowadays confuse patriotism with being submissive to the government or political powers. It's just sad. Going back to the movie, I totally admire Christian Bale and Steve Zahn's performances. Very convincing. And there's an oddly interesting quote toward the end by Dieter (Bale): When something is empty, fill it. When something is full, empty it. When you have an itch, scratch it. Hmmmmm...

Talking about the military. I had my close encounter of what they go through last week. There was a gas leak somewhere else on campus and I was in the middle of teaching. All of a sudden there was a guy screaming with maddening voice and my first thought was there could be a student upset by his failing of his test (half of the class did not pass because of its difficulty). Then it turned out a cop banged on our door for evacuation and all my students jumped to their feet and put their caps on. I had a second of panic moment and did not quite know what to do. Everyone ran to the door and one student just asked me to follow suit. I guess I must have looked stupid at the time. I sense that they are so well trained that they are highly alert whenever they hear anything like an order or command and it is just an automatic reflex for them to jump into action.

On a totally different note, even though I am not an avid dancer at all but I'm hooked with the show "So You Think You Can Dance" because this is the only reality show that the contestants do have real talents. I got tickets to the finale but I can't go because of work! Grrrrrrrgh!


And I can't wait to see Survivor China! I'm such a geek!

Shows

Watched a few more interesting shows lately.

The Constant GardenerReally liked it. Reminds me of Blood Diamond. I find both the African continent and its people gorgeous and beautiful. It's my lifetime goal to go visit and do humanitarian work there.

Evan AlmighyPredictable but funny. Steve Carell is my current favorite comedian. He is not as wild and over-the-top as Jim Carrey and Robin Williams. I was surprised by a couple lines from the movies that struck me:
~Let me ask you something. If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If he prayed for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for the family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does he give them opportunities to love each other?
~Change the world through the ARK: Acts of Random Kindness!

The Office (UK & US)Thanks to Netflix that I am able to watch both the UK and the US version of the Office with just a couple clicks. I just saw Season 1 of the US version and barely started with the UK version. At this point I prefer the American version as I can relate to it more and understand the humor and jokes better. Steve's character creates such discomfort that makes you cringe but laugh out loud at the same time. The characters' occasionally looking into the camera is the funniest part to me. It's a wonder to see "The Office" phenomenon spread to France and Germany as well with their own takes on the mockumentary of the office culture.

幸福... Happiness...

Came across this cute little story that I used in my class as the vocab fits perfectly with what we just taught. As soon as the students understood they let out a "sigh of sympathy" --- oh...

小猪问妈妈幸福在哪里，妈妈说幸福就在自己的尾巴上。于是小猪开始用嘴咬它的小尾巴，却总也咬不到，它沮丧的告诉妈妈自己抓不住幸福，妈妈笑笑说：傻孩子，只要你一直往前走，幸福就会一直跟着你的……

Little piggy asked his mom where happiness is, and mom said happiness is right there on his tail. Therefore piggy began to bite his little tail but with no success. He desperately told mom he could not catch happiness. Mom said with a smile, "You silly, as long as you keep walking forward, happiness will always follow you..."

Learning...

Lately have been reading and learning a lot more from areas I am not familiar with but find very interesting once I started getting into those. Things like US politics, immigration issues, environmental issues, modern Chinese history, world economy, and even Middle East conflicts. I always hear about the dispute between Israel and Palestine but find it very puzzling and I'm clueless about what actually is going on. Little did I know it has a lot to do with the cultural and historical clashes between the Arabs and the Jews. Anyways I've been reading all these partially for work (course material and OPI practice with the advanced students), the rest is just leisure reading, especially from free magazines like Businessweek, the Economist, Forbes, etc. that I got from my unused air mileages.

Talking about the students again, once in a while I would have totally blanked out class periods because of various reasons. One happened the 2nd day of this 2nd semester last Thursday. The students just barely learned the long list of vocabulary but apparently haven't digested them all. And I was not aware of what the previous teacher has done and I just taught at usual pace and it was a disastrous class. One slower student just gave up and the atmosphere just went downhill from that point. Everything that could go wrong did. Problems with the computer, stumbling on reading in pinyin to the students, students losing concentration because of the difficulty in the materials, failing of group work, etc. It truly was a test of everyone's patience.

One more extremely interesting but strange and almost kind of creepy incident was at the immersion activity a couple weeks ago. A higher rank student from the other class was introduced to me because he used to live in Hong Kong and his parents are natives form there. We found out he's just one year older than I am and we lived in the same community back in HK and attended the same kindergarten!!! We may have rubbed shoulders there. Crazy.

On learning a new lingo...

My new computer has been having issues but I'm glad at this point they are all resolved. First the DVD drive stopped working, then the CD drive, and last night the browser would not open if I begin with my blog site... I guess this is the flop side to technology. No more surprise please!

Today our class officially finished the first semester with the last final test. The oral interviews were dragging long but I could not help listening in awe to these Americans who have only learned Mandarin for 5 months. They definitely speak better than many Hong Kong Chinese! And I love them to death as they are so fun to teach but they take learning seriously at the same time.

Many people ask the secret to mastering a foreign language, through this experience of teaching with encouraging results from both "low acheivers" and "high achievers" my conclusion for effective language learning without too much of the theories from the academia includes the following factors:
~courage to take risks: mistakes are your best teachers!
~determination to work hard: you need to put in your effort to lay a foundation of knowledge to be built on.
~good rapport: working with fellow learners and teachers as friends definitely help ease the nerve and you can always swap ideas and tricks to do better.
~multiple resources: references, internet, software, media, and even background knowledge and experience just make things easier that one can relate to or associate with.
~open mindedness: just be aware of the many different ways of expressing thoughts and ideas with different languages.
~passion to learn: the more opportunity one finds to use the language, only the better will one get.
~sense to culture: I realize when I learn a new language, it opens a door to a whole new world to me. One good illustration is that I used to detest and frown on anything written in simplified Chinese. But once I get used to it, there are million more books that I can enjoy, and look where it has brought me... landing at this wonderful job. :)

Update

Another couple weeks. Or even another year has passed. Birthday does not mean as much for me now but I still managed to take a trip to Vegas, West Grand Canyon in Arizona, and San Diego last weekend. These are the places I always enjoy or long to go. Quite an experience. We drove a total of about 1600 miles in 4 days but it was very enjoyable. Stayed at Planet Hollywood in Vegas the first day and I had my free birthday seafood buffet at Todai. The seafood platter I created was way better than a birthday cake!Then we were headed to my much anticipated West Grand Canyon and experienced the Skywalk.It was smaller than we expected but the view was spectacular and it did feel scary when I took the first step onto the middle of the glass floor with 4000 feet deep of Grand Canyon clear below. I wish they had built a complete glass platform instead of a U-shape walkway with only a tiny path of trasparent glass. We chose to stay at the cabin there in the ranch for the night. It was shockingly barren and primitive when we arrived at the "cowboy town" but it turned out to be a nice, peaceful, and quiet stay in contrast to the hustle and bustle of the concrete jungle we are always in. We even befriended a local native Hualapai tribe member that he taught us how to toss horseshoes, throw axes, and even play with guns. He also told us a little bit about his background and the area. My friend said the horsewagon ride was even more fun than Skywalk. I would not mind doing this kind of living in the wild more often.Horse wagon ride towards Grand CanyonPlaying with a gun!Being a silly and stupid cowboy...Sunrise looking out from our cabin.We also drove pass the Hoover Dam en route to Grand Canyon.
San Diego is rather cool and hip with its rich and diverse culture.Historic building in Balboa Park
Our last event for the trip was the Wild Animal Park. I love animals. Especially those from Africa! How can this be possible?! I did see both zebras and giraffes at the zoo which is waaaayyyy coooool.

Getting hi-teched...

I found technology more and more amazing each day. The DVD drive has been having problems on my new laptop and I've been working on that for the past week with technicians from Dell over the last week. You know these days much of the IT service is outsourced to India from the US and so what happened was a bunch of tech guys remotely accessed my computer from India (cuz I could tell from their names). It's so crazy watching some invisible guy working on my computer through the internet. Their conclusion after a whole week of investigating on my system is that I need a new drive that they will send me a new one. I'm glad I get the problem fixed without taking the computer anywhere or even leaving my desk at all.

I'm also addicted to YouTube these days that I found so many lost gems and hidden treasures like my favorite cartoons from childhood, tv shows from around the world, and lots of hilarious stuff. If you download the latest version of Real Player you can even save them onto your own computer! Here are some of my new founds:

I think I saw this quite a while ago but it still looks better than many shows you pay to watch now!

I was so glad I was referred to this that I never got to read the books even though I have them. It is even more interesting to see and hear first hand with Patten what was actually going on the few years before the handover.

When I first listened to this girl sing, I didn't quite like it, but as I saw her on different episodes I was mesmerized by her grace and poise. She's just a heaven-sent angel.

I think I saw this documentary in the theater when I was very little. Sky is the limit of what humans can do.

I saw this dog on another tv show and I guess there are times people can learn from dogs...

Last but not least this is my favorite cartoon of all time! So funny, random, and hip at the time. It's like the asian version of the Simpsons. I used to rush home after school to watch it to get good laughs.

Ok, enough idly sitting and watching stuff. I'd better go out do something more active to shed off my extra few pounds...

My latest slide show!

Wonders

I like today's date. 7 has always been my favorite number.

I've been quite occupied by what I considered as errants but something can't live without: figuring out the new computer, fixing the internet connection (I do have internet withdrawal syndromes), fixing my car, someone's birthday, and some important legal paper work (no, I'm not suing or being sued by someone). Amidst all this madness I was able to experience and enjoy some of the natural or man-made wonders in the area.

We had our first class outing about a week ago and the weather was perfect. After the "Chinese" lunch at a restaurant we headed to the beach for a few games. Had a great time. It's incredible to see these soldiers playing Chinese kid games!
Last weekend I finally made it to the well known Hearst Castle. The media magnate millionaire William Hearst made his dream of building a European style castle dwelling come true by working with the bold female architect Julie Morgan. (I finished reading a children book of her biography at the giftshop!) Owning over 250,000 acres of land, he constructed a castle spanning over 100 acres with 165 rooms and two humongous swimming pools. I would die to swim in those!

Then we checked out the Point Lobos Reservation on July 4th and the view is so stunningly beautiful and it was surprisingly calm and quiet except for the sound of the waves and the occasional noise from the wild seals.That is the remains of a whale the fisherman caught years ago!