Love Is Magic

I’ve been in love for more than three months. The longer I’m with him, the more I’ve learnt, no matter in relationship, in schoolwork, in family matters, or in friendship. Last night, I went to a pub with my best friends and my boyfriend. This is the first time that I’ve ever been to a pub with my boyfriend and even with my friends. During the process, I kept trying to balance my attention on both my friends and him, and eventually, after talking to him afterwards, I’ve found that it’s quite an interesting experience.

For all the time I went to a pub dancing, I went with friends, especially my close friends, Bon. Playing with girlfriends is a great pleasure and enjoyment. I can completely relax, have fun, and meet new friends. Yet, playing with boyfriend is totally a different matter. First, you’ll be only seeing your boyfriend and completely ignore others’ existence for most of the time. It happens so naturally. Maybe during the process, you feel tried; you stop and get some rest, but still hold his harms. However, when going out with friends and also with boyfriend, I needed to learn to adjust myself and be equal, at least as equal as possible. I couldn’t let my friends feel like they didn’t even have to come and I really enjoyed playing with them, singing with them and screaming with them; nevertheless, I couldn’t leave my boyfriend playing alone, because I knew the only reason why he was there was me.

He asked me last night when we finally got home, “Did you get high?” I answered very calmly, “I wouldn’t say I was high. I preferred ‘enjoyed,’ and I was very enjoyed.” He couldn’t understand in the first place. I explained, “To get high is to feel extremely released, caring about nobody else except for me and girls. But while I was dancing with you, from time to time I needed to take a look at my friends and saw if they were alright, not feeling boring or being bothered by geeks. And when I was dancing with them, I couldn’t help turn around and look into your eyes, telling you that I cared about you all the time.” Finally, he got it. He told me he enjoyed it very much as well. He didn’t feel bored when I was dancing with my friends. He likes to play with us because he enjoys spending time with me with my friends, feeling that he’s a part of me already.

Even though I couldn’t concentrate in playing last night, I got a chance to learn how to play a good role between friends and girlfriend at the same time. How to let friends not to feel uncomfortable and feel they are important to me, but in the meantime placing boyfriend above all is really a new subject to me. Being the person involved, it is hard to think and act reasonably and wisely. But I know there’s no perfect answer. The answer only exists between me and him, basing on communication.

Is the Exam System in Taiwan Efficient?

When I was in high school, I was never interested in learning English grammar. I’d rather believe that acquiring a language didn’t depend on techniques but on experiences. I learned neither the sentence structure nor the skills when taking a test. All that I did was to read the questions word by word, after my thorough comprehension, and then I answered. However, I seldom got outstanding grades in class.

However, since I needed to prepare for the entrance examinations, I determined to change. I gave up my “intuition theory” and took the “skill theory” instead. I started to learn how to answer a question without reading the whole, which is far more quickly and sometimes even more correctly. I was learning how to guess the “best title” of an article without comprehending it, and how to play with grammar skills in writing so as to gain higher scores in tests. Thereafter, my English grades increased dramatically. I entered a national university and got a pretty nice result in TOFEL iBT last year. Is seems that my English has a great improvement since I started to learn the techniques. However, is it real? Most of the time we use tests as the way to identify people’s ability, yet how can we accurately observe the person who is truly good in the subject or merely a master in taking tests?

Of course, how to properly examine students’ knowledge and ability is always a tough task for teachers. Nevertheless, it is also abnormal to depend on tests’ result only. Unfortunately, almost all institutions in Taiwan put great emphasize, maybe too much, on exams and licenses, such as the government, the enterprises, and schools. Have they ever questioned the testing system? Generally speaking, to get high scores, the most efficient means is to recite. Yet reciting doesn’t promise a thorough understanding. As a result, if we look forward to better the education in Taiwan, we should reconsider the goal of testing, instead of simply reforming the system blindly. Because we are all very clear that as long as there is an exam system, we Taiwanese will eventually find a way, like the techniques I’ve learnt in the cram school, to get high score.

Reality Is Greater than Ideality (The Revised Essay)

According to a report from the site of ReligiousTolerance.org, in August, 1996, there was a 21 year-old woman in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada being 5 months pregnant and hopelessly addicted to glue and solvent sniffing. Having previously given birth to three children, she had at least two of them permanently harmed in the womb as a result of her addiction. Social workers tried to obtain help for the woman, but she had refused treatment. In such a case, she had already violated her responsibilities of being a mother-to-be. Even though abortion is not the perfect answer, it could be a better solution to prevent another inborn harmed child.

Promising fetuses a future is to provide them with a complete and happiness-oriented future, not a broken and miserable one. Not only from the Canadian case, lots of women who suffer from rape or incest mostly give birth to their children unwillingly. In other words, their children are doomed to be disliked, or worse, ignored by their parents. If so, this kind of kids is very likely to commit crimes in their future since they cannot have a normal loving family and parents. Take a study of the American crime rates for example; since 1991, the rates have thirty to forty percent fall, half of which, according to experts’ analysis, mainly results from the legalization of abortion. They explained that there was a remarkable fall in crime rates occurring under the age of 25 and this is exactly the age group that would be affected by the legalization of abortion. Therefore, if we insist on illegalizing abortion and forcing those women to have their children, we are not only forcing those mothers to give birth to a child but also putting our society into a bigger risk—promised enhancing crime rate.

Pro-abortion advocates emphasize more on practical living capacity than on ideal right of living. Even though the Constitution has promised each one of us the right of living, there is an unclear area to define who are exactly the ones to be promised; does fetus have the right as well? Can we call fetuses human beings as well? These are issues that remain unresolved, but crimes are ongoing, so do the unwanted children keep being produced. Sometimes, unwanted children not merely involve in the parent’s unwillingness of raising them but also concern with the parents’ inability of raising them. Some poor young couples might not have full knowledge about contraception or might have financial problem in contraception. Under this kind of situation, if abortion is illegalized, which is like forcing those young and naïve mothers to give birth to as many children as them can’t avoid, it can only make those young and poor parents’ living situation worse. They will have no living quality, and their children might therefore suffer from hunger, such is the condition in most African countries.

Certainly, the Opposition would argue that those unborn fetuses are potential human beings; thus, they should have their basic human right to live. They claim that as long as the tiny organism has the possibilities to become a human being in the future, we should ensure their rights and treat them simply as human beings. There shouldn’t even be any conditions or limited circumstances to judge whether the fetuses deserve to live or not. However, between people having been born and fetuses still in wombs, we can still distinguish them clearly and obviously. In English, we call a human organism that leaves its mother’s womb a person; however, we never call fetuses people. In our belief, the difference between something and someone is consciousness. Apparently people are conscious. They can think and express themselves. Comparatively, a fetus, especially before the second and the third four weeks, is unconscious. It is a part of the flesh, not a human being. As a result, when we do abortion, we don’t call it killing, because killing results in death. Death is the permanent end of a life of a person or an animal, causing grief of the person’s family or other people’s anxiety about their own safety. However, abortion causes neither.

In my opinion, abortion is more a practical issue than a moral problem. If pregnancy can only bring misery and troubles, the beings that are already existing should be the ones we consider first, not those who are not formed yet. For reality is the foundation of ideality, without dealing with reality—living—it’s impossible to talk about ideality—the right of living.

Project Nim

Few days ago I heard an interesting news on the Net which is about a chimpanzee named Nim. It's called, the "Project Nim." "Project Nim," run by Columbia University psychologist, Herbert Terrace, was hope to disapprove Chamskyan, the MIT linguist, about his theory of the uniqueness of language to humans, and to show that chimpanzee could develop language. To Terrance, the question is, "What would Nim do?" Nim was assigned Stephanie LaFarge to be Nim’s fake mother. For LaFarge who was studying psychology, it was thrilling. However, in the end there came raising problems…Nim started to break things all over the house. Finally, Nim was put into a different home. Nim learned about 125 signs then, but was he really learning language?

One day watching a video with Nim signing with a teacher, Terrance found that Nim was tracking most of the teacher’s signs, imitating most of the teacher’s signs, and Nim almost never made a sign spontaneously, Terrance came to believe that Nim would never use language the way humans do, perform sentences and express ideas. That was the end of the project. Therefore, Nim was returned to the research institute to live a very different life, in a cage with other chimps. Later, Nim was sold to a medical lab because the institution ran out of funds. Thanks to Nim’s supporters managed to rescue Nim out of it and finally taking Nim to an animal sanctuary so that Nim could rest in peace in the year 2000.

Here comes an ethical problem. Should a chimp be treated and raised like a human for a research purpose and even with no plan whatsoever of protecting the animal? Or should any animal be treated like that? Of course the scientists will never agree that they’re unethical deeds or they will have a hard time to do the research. But should we treat other animals like we own them and destroy their lives merely to satisfy our own curiosity. We curious about how other animal communicate with their kinds, so we cage them, change their nature, and study them. The most ironic thing is that lots of knowledge we’ve now discovered were mainly found out by this method. My point is, since the ethical issue has been raised, should we stop doing this and find a new way out, or we simply ignore it?

Stop Wondering

There are only three weeks left in this semester, but unfortunately, I'm just about to wake up. Looking back at what have happened in the past few months, I've become a lousy student which is totally out of my expectation. What happened? Is that because of my succeeding in applying for the Exchange Student Program or because of the new relationship? Neither of them, in my opinion, is the one to be blamed except for my own weak mind.

Am I regretting? Certainly, the answer is yes. “Why haven't I thought more carefully before I made any decision?” “Why do I always have to wait until the situation is about to be out of control then I see the seriousness?” I'm now almost 24 but still act like a childish irresponsible kid. Yet the most ironic thing is that in fact, this is not the first time I blame myself for this kind of shitty matter. What’s worse, the last thing I want to do is to regret. However, whenever it comes to the corner of making choices, I can’t always be clear-minded and wise. Therefore, I make mistakes. Maybe I didn’t make the wrong decision; it’s just that I’ve used the wrong method to execute it. It’s too over. I wanted to have some relax because I’ve got the permission to study abroad, but it’s carelessly too over. I wanted to cherish what I have now and here because I’m about to leave, but it’s too over to be able to balance between schoolwork and my personal matters. “I can only have lived once, and all these are never going to experience again!” this was what convinced me then. Nevertheless when things go too far, it can only bring disaster. And disaster is just what I’m about to face.

I have no idea why I would want to share such kind of funny feelings here. Maybe I just need somewhere to write it down and clear my head. What I want to say is that I know I was wrong but I’m not going to give up. Even though I don’t know how much I would be able to change and improve the situation, but as long as I don’t quit, there is always hope, isn’t it?

Never Give Up

Haven't watched the NBA for years, this morning I accidentally watched the beginning of the Western Conference Finals with the Lakers vs. the Spurs. The Lakers has always been a well-known and super team for me since they have the genius Kobe Bryant playing for them. However, the Lakers didn't star in the first two quarters. The Spurs scored about twenty points more than the Lakers when it came to the third quarter. Not until Kobe had his first three points shoot did the Lakers begin to work on lessening the difference. In the last forty seconds of the game, two teams were still fighting for winning. Finally, the Lakers won the game by four.

The reason why I like to watch NBA is because it's exciting: every second counts. Since NBA players are usually good in shooting—which seems to be their basic skill—a single shoot can make a huge difference to the result. Therefore, the key point is about persistence, both of the energy and the belief. Of course, every athlete should be strong and have a certain degree of endurance. Years of practicing merely are for the moment, maybe just a couple of minutes, on the stadium. Without the root of the fundamentally good physical condition, it's impossible to make them a sportsman. Therefore, what impresses me more is their persistence. If it was me on the court, only had several seconds left, I would easily give up. "What differences would I be able to make?" I'd wonder. However, in the game, in their eyes I saw none depression nor abandonment. Concentration was what I saw. It was glittering in the eyes of the players of both teams. You can never imagine that the championship can switch in one second, no matter it is early before the end of the game or few seconds before it. And this is why NBA is always popular, because you can not only watch a wonderful game, having a great entertainment, but also learn from them or be encourage.

I really enjoy watching NBA. No matter how many years I haven't watched it, the spirit of the game and the players never change. I think it is a great teaching material that can inspire youngsters, enlightening them the code of life, "Never give up! Not until the end of the game!"

The Crying of the Earth

On May 12th, 2008, an earthquake up to 7.8 Richter scale, which epicenter was at Wenchuan, Szechwan, China, shook the entire country and also the global media. It was the most serious earthquake to China for a hundred years. Over one hundred thousand of people died, hundreds of thousands of people wounded, and countless victims are now homeless.

Yesterday our government proclaimed that Taiwan was going to donate two thousand billion NT dollars to, fist of all, supply the rescuing equipment, and secondly, to rebuild the disaster area. However, as soon as the announcement was made public, it was soon attacked on the Net. “If the national treasury has too much money, why doesn’t the government subsidize the international raising price of the crude oil or help those Taiwanese children who don’t have the money for lunch?” The government argued that the assistance is out of humanism. However, the Chinese government only prepared to supply 3.5 thousand billions for the disaster. Besides, comparing to the September 11 earthquake, in which the Chinese government not only didn’t gave Taiwanese a hand immediate, but also pressured other nations, except for having their permission, no country should assist Taiwan directly. Therefore, today, when China has also face the extreme calamity, some of the Taiwanese, unlike most people in the world, started to question why should Taiwanese help a country which has always been a drag to us.

Now, it is very conflicting situation: to help them or not? As now the world has become a global village, many countries are count on mutual assistance. As long as you aid others when they are in need can you have the opportunity to get others’ help when you are in trouble. Secondly, love is what we should hold in our hearts. Instead of caring hate all the time, we should commiserate others first. This is also the beauty of Chinese culture. However, are those protesters wrong? Aren’t there some serious financial problems in our country? Yes, there are. But here comes the critical question: comparing between a life of a stranger and the poor of a kindred, which one is more important? Without ant question, saving a life is more urgent, but most people care about themselves more than the others. As for me, it is also a difficult question.

As a member of humans on earth, when I saw other people hit by a natural adversity, I feel pity for them. When I saw the news and those scared faces, crying children, I can’t help but think of those who have also undergone this misfortune nine years ago. Even though I will never know what kind of torture it is for them, but I can imagine how frightened they should be. To see anyone confront such a blow, we should all feel not only compassionate but also grateful for what we still have now, safety. Even if our living quality is reducing, at least we are not fighting for living. But of course, when it’s your foe standing in front of you, seeking for help because he or she is going to die, it’s a though decision to make whether to save him/she or not, since you don’t know after he/she is recovered will he/she stab at your back again?

However, I still think we should have a microscopic view. It is not the commoners of China who go against Taiwan; it’s the government of China. It’s just like the case of Chinese and Japanese; we don’t hate every Japanese since the slaughter was done by the army of Japan. The country and the people of the country, in this case, seem to be different stories. We should still have mercy in our hearts. Do our best to help others. For me, this is the right way to live.