Field trip

 I visted the Craft Museum. The museum guide lady was very nice, willing to show us around and answer any of our questions. We've been introduced to the Art of Tea. There were various kinds of tea pots, as well as the other tools.  

Beacuse of the expo was about tea. The suvinior store has plenty of tea products. I bought a cup mat with a "Goblin-dog"(狗怪) on it. Taiwan is not famous for fairy-tales or elves. In fact this "Goblin-dog" is orgin from Taiwanese. It means "freak" in our language. There are other kinds of cup mats. Such as the "Belly beast"(巴豆妖), which the Taiwanese meaning is "Humgry".

I also went to visit the Provincial Consultative Council. I'm not interest in politics and modern history, I personally think this place was very boring.   

Life

  For me, life is made up of three colors - red, yellow and blue. Apart from these three raw colors, there are also two kinds of elements that compose our life, light and darkness.

  We were all born like a bucket of pure white paint. When we first bathed under the bright yellow sunshine, our skin turned red and pink. As we saw sapphires pouring down from the murky grey clouds up in the sky, a blue gloomy shadow came and shrouded us. While the muddy ground dried out by the warm sun, a splendid rainbow came out from the other side of the sky-blue sky. When we first tasted sickness, we took pills in green and purple. The experience of having friends was like eating a sweet and sour orange, which we sometimes get tired of but never get rid of. We became gravely brave to cross seven seas in seven colors for the sake of staying next to our lovers. When grey hair started coming out from our jaws, we finally realize that the Dark Knight brings darkness and nightfall at the end of the day as well as the limit line of our life-span. The aftertaste of the memories was just like tasting fruity, colorful gummy bears, as if we were still six years old. Then we all turned into the same color as the soil and joined into part of the mother Earth. Life after life, just like the sun goes up and down at the dawn and dusk, day after day.

  Life is really something, full of meanings and very interesting. Treasure your life and you may be as colorful as you like.

My winter vacation

I spent some of my time preparing for IELTS, and some of it photographing.

Talking about IELTS is pointless, so I'd like to share some of the photos I took during my vacation.

I'm not sure if it were the factories that release smoke and smog have holidays also, the air was fresh and the sky was clear when Chinese New Year. It was so easy to see the stars.

I went to the roof and took some pictures. This is one of the star signs, we call it 北斗七星 in Taiwan, but Little Dipper in the Western countries.

Looking upon the night sky reminds me of a fancy line from the many movies and novels.

''Whenever you feel homesick, look at the starry sky that we might be watching at the same time." 

This may work in the old days, but not now anymore as our technology had improve over the past few decades. We could easily travel to whatever places, even the time zones could be different. While my place is still at dawn, where you live dusk might had fallen. Not to mention to travel to the southern hemisphere, where the night sky is completely different to the north. 

Frankly, I felt contradictory when found out the facts of some beautiful quotes like this. For example, our ancestors didn't believe that mankind would one day reach the moon, so they could make a legend of a lady living up there.  

So, I guess innocent makes beautiful things.

Another photo I took was this store in front of a Mazu Temple in 北港. Really Taiwanese style, very bright, shinny and red-coloured. The traditional Taiwanese pie there are super tasty. 

This photo was taken at my grandma's place in 高美, even though she's gone, we still often go visit her/there. Gazing at the wetland and the spinning giant fans, wondering how short the distance is between the fire power plant and the wind farm. 

Mum loves to talk about how her childhood was like in this small beach village.    

Pressing the shutter is simple as, yet taking good photos is still challenging. However, I enjoy the moment when I was at present rather than watching the pictures that last eternal. I lost so many chances to take photos of breathtaking views, but I'm not regret at all. Those scenery are only beautiful in live and are still vivid in my mind.     

English study plan for 2016

I'll go through the 4 main parts of my 2015 study plan, Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing.

As an IELTS warrior (That's how I call people that are preparing IELTS), I do Cambridge IELTS text books and listen to BBC radio or sometimes watch English TV series, just to get more use to British accents. (Most of my English teachers were South Africans and Americans in Taiwan.) I found that IELTS listening test has not only British accents, but also Australian, New Zealand, South Africans and even Indian accents. There's a big portion of Australian accent indeed, IELTS headquarters is in Australia. It is a fun experience to identify different accents by practicing IELTS. The pronunciation of  'Laboratory' is not the same though.

That was my listening part for English study. As for reading, I prefer reading English novels, however I only read the English book that I've read in Mandarin. Apart from this, I also switched all of my languages settings into English on my mobile phones, computers, etc. Write down some fancy lines from English articles, such as TIME, National Geography, BBC news, the list goes on.

Speaking is the most difficult part from most of the Taiwanese. Owing to not much opportunities to speak English around myself, I skype with my foreign friends, doing language exchange, which is quite interesting and efficient!

How I improve my writing skills is to keep writing and writing and writing. I usually look up my notes, which I collect some nice quotes and lines from the English articles or novels.  I also write short stories in English, but that doesn't work really much on me.

I think I'll remain the same on studying English for 2016 until I reach my IELTS 7 goal in next February. Maybe add some new methods, such as turn off the subtitles of any kinds of English videos. And spend more time in the museum being a English guide.

A questionnaire result of Dreams

Q1.What is your gender?

12 participants (8 females and 4 males)

Q2.What is your biggest goal or dream?

All of the female participants not only want to live themselves a better life, but also willing to make the whole society better, though the jobs they want to do in the future varies, it is quite obvious to see they have the same goal in some ways. However, the male participants are tend to be more individualistic.

Q3.What is your ideal self?

3 out of 4 male participants do not know what their ideal self is. On the other hand, female participants are all capable of telling their ideal selves accurately, such as be humourous or be more confident.

Q4.Are you living the life of your dreams now?

Most people do not think they are living in their life of dreams.

Q5.If you have one year left to live, what would you do?

Almost every participant would like to spend their last year on traveling.  

Q6.If you have one day left to live, what would you do?

Every participant would stay with their friends and families at their last day, some would donate or assign their money to the others.

Q7.What's stopping you the most from pursuing your dreams?

Female participants are likely to be lack of confident when pursuing their dreams, however, male participants think that no money is the strongest factor in this case.

The Road Goes Ever On

The Road Goes Ever On - JRR Tolkien

The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

Life is long, but somehow also very short.  

Are we really brave enough to step out our first step to an unknown adventure?

Maybe yes, or maybe not. If yes, we'll have stories to share once we return. 

My review of the Art Museum

1. What is the name of the exhibition?

Forever Young

2. Who are the four artists featured in the exhibition?

Nick Dong

Charwei Tsai

Nara Yoshitomo

Li Hongbo

3. Where are they from?

Taiwan

Taiwan

Japan

China

4. Which was your favourite artist? Why?

Charwei Tsai

She is a learner of philosophy, but not a religious artist. Tsai wants to know what the Heart Sutra is about, especially one of the lines, “All reality is a phantom, and all phantoms are real.” The form is nonexistence, and the nonexistence is the form.  (色不異空，空不異色。色即是空，空即是色。) She tries to comprehend the principle of it, and while she’s thinking, she made her art works. Though we may not understand what her arts mean, we could still appreciate the beauty of her works.

5. Which was your least favourite? Why?  

Nara Yoshitomo

I don’t like art works that looks like cartoon characters. The eyes of the little girl makes me feel uncomfortable.

6. Which was your favourite piece of art?

Singularity

7. Why?

It describes how our universe starts, the big bang theory. Everything becomes possible in that instant.   

8. What are the ideas/concepts behind your favourite piece?

One is so tiny in such a big universe, but one could dream big if he/she is willing to step outside. That instant of changing your mind could change your life.

9. Describe your favourite piece:

It’s a ball floating and spinning on a platform, the bottom of the floating ball has a peak.

10.  Describe your least favourtie piece:

White Night

Again, the little girl’s eyes doesn’t look very nice.