Now it is a precious transient break in the middle of the two-week long exam week.I managed to push myself through the passed five days in some way, finishing three subjects and have my mind merged by chaos during the process. Nothing goes well, I lost my braces retainer just made last week. Besides the hard time of reviewing and preparation, I also had to finish with my brases and change into a retainer this whole month. I go to dentist once a week at least. That’s far away from my dormitory but I need to go. And, I have to go there during the exam week one more time for my careless mistake. Maybe two, and i should pay extra 800 yuan.Three exams next week is harder and difficult for me to pass. Not to mention I am one of students looking forwards to scholarship. There is a uncentain message says we have to move to another school area next term which the removing should be done before summer holiday. I also attend a project to go to England for medical study and sightseeing start just at the beginning of the holiday. So the uncertained notion really bordered me a lot. It takes me a lot of efforts to apply for the project and i even haven’t get prepared for the 20 days travel in another country____that’s the first time I will leave china and spend time in an unknow place alone. There must be plenty of things to do before taking off. But I’m short of time.If someone ask me “Aren’t you looking forward to your travel?”, I’ll definetely tell him “i know it’s just troubling troubles before applying”. All college go aboard these age, and i’m propeled by parents. That’s the reality, instead of some ambicious dream or just simple couriosity to go out for the young. But I know what i am doing, and it is me who deside what to do and what i want to be.Nevertheless, I take myself doing well in today’s imageology exam, comparing with the time I spent on it. No matter how tired and impatient I am, I should take another three exams, packing and move to another dormitory, and manage to enjoy my 20 days out of country.It is said pressure push people forward, but I still hate it on earth. I want to have a peaceful and bound job for the whole life in future. Chances are, fredom surround me now for i’m an adult, no teacher limit my studying time. That’s a point hard to judge.

I probably would never talk this with anyone
who knows me in real life, people won’t understand. But it’s online and I need
an outlet. And it’s just becoming overwhelming. Perhaps I am just
over-concerned, hysteria maybe. Hope I could feel better once I sort it out in
words.

A vista opened out just for a minute before
this holiday, short family trip, and all the fun we could have in the
neighborhood, food, natural beauty and pure joy of being together. However, the
blackness shut down again. The blackness has another name as “midlife crisis”
or more precisely, husband’s health, physically or probably mentally.

My husband felt dizzy, so we went to the
hospital. Brain scan showed he had minor cerebral atherosclerosis. It’s not
something you can shrug it off. You need to take precautions, regular
exercising, eating healthier and taking pills. I guess it’s part of midlife
where your body simply is going down.

Some people might just leave it at that.
They just elevate their nose with a sniff of indifference and dismiss it from
their minds and go on with their life. I am one of them. I know that’s not
sensible. My husband, on the contrarily, goes to another extreme. It worries
him to death, occupying his whole mind, turning him into a total stranger. Honestly,
I don’t know which side is worse.

I should see it coming. I have married him
long enough to be on my guard against this fatal tendency of his. Still I don’t
understand why someone who can handle pressures so well, either at work or in
family, would be so panicked and scared to get sick?

Now life stretches before him—endless—in a
series of days darkened and poisoned by his physical problems. Like that is
going to help! No, I know better, how could his anxiety, his worries would
worsen his condition, multiple times worsen.

I really got sick of going from one doctor
to another, putting him through one treatment to anther which did him no good,
repeating words that supposed to be comforting but actually not, and hearing
his worries, his endless complaints of pains. And I’m not sure this time we could
be lucky enough to stumble across one doctor, not any doctor but must be the
doctor of the best—only that he would listen—and that doctor must speak truth
and speak it in a vehement way: “A lot of people are worse than you. I’m worse
than you. Stop whining, man up and find a job, get back to your life! You
should feel luck that your wife is still there. You are in my black list, I would
not waste any of my time in you.”

That’s pretty much what happens in last
year when he was diagnosis as slipped disc. I really, really didn’t want to go
through that nightmare again.

You know what is the worst part? The worst
part is, after going through all these, when coming to his health condition, I can’t
trust him. When he feels terrible, I’m not sure if it’s a physical one or a mental
one. And my mistrust him irritates him a lot, and we fight over it like a
thousand times. Now I’m trying to hide my mistrust, but honestly, I don’t
succeed very much.

There is nothing I could do about it.
Because it’s his battle, his demon to fight. Saying “don’t worry”, or “it’s not
the end of the world”, or “calm down” don’t work—these words would just roll
off him like water off a duck’s back.

They say that anxiety and depression isn’t
contagious. That’s wrong. It’s highly contagious, indeed, only to one who is
the closest to the patient.

I’m so, so, so tired.

Happy
70th anniversary. Don’t get me wrong, I love my country, I really
do. I have always been rather proud of my patriotism. It’s just a bit
overwhelming to see the red flags all over the street, and everyone is busy
preparing for all kinds of celebrating parties at work, at school and even at your
communities.

I love
my country. But it doesn’t feel right that you MUST show it and it’s your
obligation to SHOW it. And I think I would certainly love my country more if I could
get treatment and be able to claim my social security in an easier way. Here,
nobody talks about super power, and everyone tells you that we are still in a
developing country and we really should feel appreciate…

I know
it’s a bad timing to bring up this patient-doctor crap but whatever. My husband
exploded again in hospital. I know it’s not a good idea for him to get my
prescription, the hospital always sets him on edge and brings out the worst of
him, but my WBC hit pretty low and I didn’t feel well, so…

The
queen of universe, like always, decided to hold him up for another half an hour
before prescribed. Okay, I am trying to be considerate and put myself in her
shoes. Suppose, I am working at a stressful job, and I have some files to fill.
And a patient shows up and asks for a prescription. Yes, it’s just a minute’s
job. But I need to check out from whatever I am doing. And I know there would
be more showing up, keep misquoting around me, peppering me up with endless
questions. Why not holding him up until everyone else is there so I could
handle them all at once? It’s pretty convenient, right? As for they had to wait
until their legs were shaking, and they probably didn’t have enough time to get
it confirmed (it usually takes half an hour in line) and accounted (another
half an hour), so they probably had to come again at the afternoon. What’s that
fucking business with me? Besides, it’s probably kind of funny to see them all
in line, with suckup and pleading smiles on their faces.

But
this time it’s my husband. He is really not a suck-up guy. So he exploded,
threatening to sue a complaint, and even pretending to live broadcast about it.

Honestly,
nobody dares to offend the doctors—especially the patients like us, our lives literarily
hang in their hands. My husband didn’t care. I’m not sure if it’s right thing to
do, but he got my prescription in time.

I told
him I would not be surprise if one day I didn’t die of the cancer but a medical
accident instead. He laughed. Yeah, I was probably thinking too much.

It is not hard for us to say and write something simple. It means the possibility of mistake-making is not easy to occur in a brief talk and a short message. We more or less pay attention on pronunciation, spelling and grammar. Focus can be controllable.Problem appears as we use it in a long conversation or an article. Since we unconsciously tend to do it follow the way in mother-language and just input words one by one with little consideration of tense. Then it is obvious to see errors from words, sentences. We never know that till we seriously reread what we said and wrote. “God,I did not notice that,” we may be surprised by that a lot.Is there a way to improve it? The effective method is to think everything in the English way. To build a brand new model of thinking, we have to be involved in the custom of English, fullly soaking the western culture and history. To read more and practice more, it does favour us greatly.Do not give up halfway. Actually, learning a foreign language is interesting. We do not need to be feeling awful when it comes to the practical use. Based on years of learning, we do have accumulated certain knowledge of English. With appropriate introduction, the mastery of this language is not a hard job.Imitatation of dialogues from novels, transcription of good words from great books and recitation of poems, by means of that, you definitely improve it quickly. The use of a language should be in line with life. Therefore, the local news is recommended to read. The more you get close to local culture, the better you understand the use of its language. Since the communication becomes wide and convenient, with internet, we browse sites and obtain information. By the way, we know it better, including its slangs.Do not be a theorist who talks the talk. I’d like being a person who acts it right now.

Again the haze is warping up the whole city. The land can not purify it by itself. It only depends on the wind and rain to clean up the mess in the air. How ironic it is. Where are the greens? And the rate of disease related to respiratory system obviously is increasing greatly. Even lung cancer is not rare to hear of.Being in that circumstances is equivalent to staying in a smoking room. Some guys, especially for those who are allergic to dust or have the problem of rhinitis, have to wear a mask to go out. Here it is the thing, how much does a mask can help?

This weekend is in the hot, moist and damp status. As a result it turns out to rain which is to cool off for a while soon. According to the workout, I have run over 60km this month. As long as I am available, I go for that after work in every two or three days. On weekends, I double its distance to run longer. Besides, I design the line to run. On the way of running, I view something that I have never met before. I could meet some guys who run against me in the opposit direction. I know I am not alone. Though we do not know each other, we are all for the same purpose of doing better and changing something. After suffering blisters on toes, I run easier as they recover to be fine. As it is getting hot, this moment is much better to consume fat. Last year, a friend was convinced to run. I told him I just ran and he probably could follow it. He never thought he could do it. Especially he had one of his ankles twisted in a basketball play. He joined to run as of he came through the bad memory of ankle hurt. Now he becomes much confident. Just last month, he informed me he would take part in a cross-country race with the distance of 30km. He never ran that long before, but he still tried and finally he did it. Though he had legs cramped halfway, he hung in there and stepped forward foot by foot. In more than seven hours, he passed the finishing line. A man’s potential is huge if he keeps it and develops it. Why do we always have to complain a lot but do nothing to change? The main reason is we do not want to be moving forwad. Since there is always enormous resistence right there which is not easy to change. The cost to alter something is usually painful. That kind of cost is definitely worthy of being paid. Rebirth is the time of another living.

As we all know, Canada Goose has been a best seller down jacket in China in recent years. The brand has successfully introduced itself to Chinese consumers by fully utilizing the celebrity effect — Ma Yun (马云), Huang Xiaoming (黄晓明) and Zhou Dongyu (周冬雨) all wore Canada Goose on different occasions on TV. To follow suit, people scramble to Canada Goose stores and line up in long queues both at home and broad.    Something you might not know about the Goose: it was initially made specially for scientific expedition team members  to help them fend off the freezing cold in the polar regions. Gradually, this brand had become a must-have down jacket for those who live at extreme cold regions like Canada.     In China, however, especially in the south, like Shanghai, despite the fact that the average temperature in winter is always above 0, sometimes even reaches over 10 Degree Celsius, people are still crazy about this needless jacket. The reason is simple: it is fashion. Its dear price tag indirectly showcases one’s financial status.      However, as people run to the store to own a Canada Goose, they seems never to think about the behind-the-scene story: the killing.      One feature of the garment the company is very proud of is that they use real animal fur, instead of artificial ones. For example, the fur that surrounds the brim of the hat (帽檐) comes from coyotes (郊狼), a kind of Canadian wild wolf. The fur of coyotes is allegedly ideal for shield the wind. As a result, hundreds of thousands of coyotes are killed each year just to decorate the brim of the hat of a Canada Goose down jacket. The way they are killed, in order to have a whole piece of intact fur, the hunters set up traps (捕狼器), rather than shooting them directly, which will leave gun holes on the fur, which in turn will decrease their value. Once a coyote steps on a trap, there are only 2 choices left for them: wait for the blood to run out and die; bite and break their leg, and run for their lives. To put it simply, hundreds of thousands of Canadian wild wolfs are killed each year just because their fur makes perfect decoration of a famous garment brand. 




 The truth is, more and more internationally prominent companies, such as Gucci, Armani, Calvin Klein and Versace, are boycotting the use of real fur, and instead starting to use artificial fur. The sad thing is, in China, people still rush to the stores to purchase clothes made by taking countless animals’ lives. I really hope that one day we Chinese people could wake up and see that what makes us better is not buying more expensive clothes or purses, especially by killing animals, but through self-transcendence in all aspects of our lives. I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that one day humans, at the top of the food chain, can make good friends with animals and friendly co-exist with them on this planet. I hope that one day there will be no more bloody killing of animals on earth. 

Does the Popular and Highly-Advocated Teaching Model

Really Work?

Nowadays, almost all English teachers find themselves in a deep
dilemma. On the one hand, they’re all trying to change and improve their teaching
style, sincerely hoping to enhance their classroom efficiency; on the other
hand, however, they’re thrown into a hard situation where they’re highly
expected to produce more excellent students in academic performance, while at
the same time they’re required to strictly follow what is actively advocated
and pursued the so-called advanced teaching model.

On the face of it, this teaching method or style seems to be the
full implement and application of those highly-boosted-and-applauded advanced
teaching theory, advocated by some English-teaching experts in China, but actually,
so many problems do exist in this type of teaching practice, of which a most
obvious one is that many students find it difficult to have a thorough
understanding of the whole passage that they’re assigned to read through,
because in the process of reading students will meet with many strange or some
seemingly familiar words or expressions that in fact they don’t know at all. In
this case, even though students have no trouble finding out the general idea or
the topic sentence of a certain paragraph, they still have a lot of difficulty
fully understanding the whole passage, and especially when it comes to those
subtle and flexile usages of some words and phrases. Thus students can hardly
get to the core and essence of the English language. How can you expect those
who can only be said to know some English to truly enjoy and appreciate the
charm of the English language?

Besides, English to the Chinese people is a foreign language, not a
native or even a second language. Based on this simple fact, English-teaching
experts should not expect English teachers in China to organize English classes
the same way the Chinese teachers will do in organizing their Chinese classes—just
work out the main structure of the passage, pick out the general idea or the
topic sentence in each paragraph, or try to pretend to appreciate the beauty
and charm of the English language; there’re far more for our students to do in
their English classes; after all, English to them is a foreign language; they
should first learn to thoroughly understand the whole passage, and grasp and
master all the words and expressions occurring in this passage. Native language
and foreign language should be treated and done a little differently; they do
have something in common, though.

I think habits which a man have in twenties can have effect in all her life。

I think habits which a man have in twenties can have effect in all her life。