Thanksgiving Holiday 1

November 23, 2009 Monday
Thanksgiving Holiday
It’s dad’s birthday today. Happy Birthday, Dad.

I’ve gone back to Taipei for 26 hours now and is enjoying in the most pleasant way and looking forward to the rest. A break I’ve always planned to give myself after the intensive, stressful, oppressed two week midterm has finally carried out thanks to the series of activities for the school international cultural festival. I’m giving myself a 5 day break by not attending the activities in order to stay in Taipei as long as possible. Leaving all the responsibilities and school work in Hualien, I came back to Taipei with one bag with not much in it and a relief heart. Though Taipei city is noisy and crowded as usual, I have enjoyed my ‘thanksgiving holiday’ I called it anyway.

My thanksgiving holiday starts by the time I finished my last midterm test (my horrible chemistry test) last Friday morning, and will probably end by the first class (French Class Friday afternoon) I’ll take when I’m back in Hualien. So an approximately one week time to relax and recharge by doing nothing particular ;D
Since I’m still having my thanksgiving holiday in Taipei, four days to go, I’ll report the first half of my holiday.

Last Friday evening was a laugh. Sharon, Patty and I went to a concert on Friday evening. 東華大學演藝廳11/20(五)晚上七點 台北愛樂室內樂坊《三弦主義+海角七號 = 十分音樂》演奏會: 大提琴家呂超倫，旅日小提琴家李商宇，法國楓丹白露國際吉他大賽銀賞得主蔡世鴻所組成的跨界三重奏 Oh dear, it was hilarious! Seriously, I’ve never, ever, ‘watched’ a concert like this before. Yes, watched. There were three professional musicians: a violin guy with personality hair style, a modest guitar player, and an absolute entertaining cellist. Their musical skills were no doubt professional, but the real drama was carefully hidden between the three masters’ facial expressions and the movements and most important, in the conversation between the lines and only the front seat sensitive audience would really know what was going on. Because of the unusual combination: violin, guitar, and a cello, they have to write their own pieces or rearrange written works so that three of them can have something to play. In doing so, according to Mr. Cellist, they sort of improvise music pieces, even on stage. And that was so true! Their performance was obviously improvising most of the time, and cellist seemed to be the naughtiest boy among the three, that he constantly forced the other two to improvise by not following the rehearsal deal. To give you a better picture, imagine an animation cartoon: the violin a talented gentleman, the guitar a shy lady, and the cellist a decent young man with many things to brag. It was interesting to see the conflict and the drama between the three. Like when the cellist wanted the guitar to play out loud, and made a nasty face when the violin was doing his long solo or the times when cello wanted to take the lead and go first when violin was supposed to be the leader. To put it simply, cello was the one that caused the performance so incredibly dramatic and unbelievably entertaining!

Thanks to Sharon’s clever choice that we were sitting in the very front second row of the ‘rock and roll’ area where we could clearly see the drama: the acting motions and hear the drama: the conversation with the lines of the melody between the three. Perhaps the most impressive sensual one would be when the guitarist made a circle with his instrument while playing the music, the turn you see at Ballet performance, and followed by the cellist, a big turn with the huge cello, and the violin ended it with a funny awkward turn with the little violin on the neck! It’s absolutely the most dramatic, entertaining, and pleasant performance I’ve ever watched. Not to mention the encore pieces, with the talented music skills and the genius rearrangements of the pieces, a little improvise as a flavour, just brilliant. Brilliant. Sharon and I were trying hard to hold ourselves not to ‘lol’! but failed. It was just too fun to watch, as if it were a mime talk show secretly going on. They sure did have a sense of humour. I couldn’t get my eyes off the stage. If they ever have another performance in the campus, I’ll definitely invite everyone I know to go to the concert! C’est Genial!


The three of us gone home with delightful spirits and decided to continue this pleasant atmosphere by the plan to go to 七星潭 beach for the sun rise the next morning. We headed off to the beach around 05:00 ish from Dong Hwa Main campus to Meilun campus. It took us 40 minutes to get to the beach by our little scooters, faily fast. It was still dark enough to see the stars when we set off, but by the time we arrived there, the sky began to light little by little. I think I should ask Sharon for the pics and so that you guys can have some idea of what’s it like to see the sun rise there. The way the light hits the cloud, as a silver line they say, and slowly but fast enough to hit the sky, making a little pink and orange colour, then moves to the sea shore, the Pacific ocean, the stones, and finally the land. We were lucky to catch and see the sun rise around 06:00 and had a beautiful rainbow accompanied us to be even more romantic. Words can hardly describe the amazing feeling we’ve experienced. People think of sun rise as a new start, we love sun rise like it’s something holy or sacred in a way that nobody can ever describe enough for the sake of its holiness and mystery. It is the most amazing gift that God has given His children to appreciate the master piece of The consuming love.

So a new start began.



Charity

The A+ effects

My my.. I haven't got this feeling of 'happy' for a long while.

I had two classes today: Modern English Critical Thinking and English Speaking Class

In the morning, the professor of critical thinking class gave our midterm test sheets back and talked about the grading. There were two parts of this test, one was vocabulary test to match the words and phrases we learnt during the first half of this semester, another part was essay question. I was pretty surprised that I didn't make any mistakes in the first part. To be honest, I wasn't being a 'hard working' student when professor asked us to look up the important words we don't understand. I was being very lazy(無可救藥的懶惰) and didn't bother to look up any word! I even made up this excuse that looking up words in a dictionary wouldn't do much help but only slow you down on your reading progress. I thought it would be more important to finish the reading assignment and guess the words' meaning by the context and thus lead to the final goal of knowing the thesis of the article. In fact, a third of my answers for the first part vocabulary test were done by guessing. I was only guessing around when having my major test!

Now I'm not encouraging you to not to look up in a dictionary, don't get me wrong. Either electronic dictionary, online dictionary, or the heavy dictionary on the self, all of them are very useful when learning a foreign language. What I’m saying here is that sometimes and very often, looking up words constantly would kill the pleasure of reading. And like I said, it would only slow you down and there would be no more fun, then you wouldn’t want to read any further. So before you look up the word, try to guess the meaning by the context first. Is it an adjective or a verb? If you still can’t figure it out, see if it’s an important key word to know. Is it going to affect your understanding of the plot or logic? Read, guess, and think. From my experience, usually the words you look up in the dictionary won’t stay in your brain for too long; on the contrary, the words you read so many times that you eventually figure out the meaning, those are the words that stay in your mind forever.

I think I’m a little off subject.

Anyway, I was surprised. But that wasn’t just it. I thought the professor might not be conscious enough when grading my essay. I got 39 out of 40 for my essay. Shocking. Perhaps I should type out my essay and let you be the judge. ‘Well done’ was his comment. Well done? My Writing Class teacher thought my writing on the darn IELTS test was okay and tolerable. I was pretty discouraged by the disastrous IELTS writing practice and thought my English writing would be forever tolerable. But this gave me a little hope and confidence. I’ve always enjoyed this class the most. Modern English Class has been a comfort and that it reminds me the reason why I transferred. We would talk about issues and share our thoughts and the opinions on an issue, sometimes we would even have a little debate, which I thought was really cool. I like throwing out different thoughts when everybody seems to flow in one thought. I even wrote that global warming may be a swindle at the bottom of the paper after discussing about the consequences of global warming in my essay. From Critical thoughts to Skeptical, Innovative, Interesting, Weird, and finally crazy. lol People who think too much may become crazy in the end.

Another A+(100 out of 100) for my English Speaking and listening test was fairly easy. We had our listening test based upon a lecture, which obviously much slower than a real life lecture in an English speaking country and had some blanks to fill in the vocabulary. Again, I was only guessing the words I wasn’t sure (most of them I knew the meaning already) Well, perhaps guessing the meaning is a useful way when taking tests, so it’d be worthy to learn it, eh? Read the sentence, see if you recongnise the prefix or the root of the word and etc.

I don’t know what you would feel if you have two A+ s in one day. Maybe you would go have a feast with a bunch of friends or go to KTV and sing until morning. Well, I’m kind of a milder one that I couldn’t help but smile to everyone. And when classmates asked me about my weird phenomenon of high nineties, like “goodness, how in the world did you got this score for your essay!?” I was very pleased to tell them that they did a good job, too. I was just being bold enough to give strong (sometimes ridiculous) opinion and specific examples to a certain issue.

I felt happy today. And I feel happy this evening. Not only because of the A s I got today, but also the confidence I gained that encourages my frustrated soul. A final A+ s effect will be happening in a minute when I will have a good rest tonight and dream about going back to Taipei this weekend. With Mom and Dad, Gloria, Maranatha, Joy, and my little brother Emmanuel.

Cheers,

Yahsin

Live Right

I'm back!
I've decided to get back.
It's hard to explain but yesterday evening I got it all figured out (thanks to Mr. Don Miller) It was my first major recongition in my 19 year life. Oh dear, I was so blind. I realised that it wasn't some what a spiritual battle, but a real battle between me and myself. It was all about my problem, not God's. I can't really tell you what had happened. I was steressed, miserably unhappy, terribly gloomy. In the past two months or so, my life has been a mess. But, I have decided to pull myself together again and ready for a real life. Life without people isn't life at all. So Hi there, this is me, a soon-to-be content, stubborn, college girl is back.

Life is short, Live Right.

Cheers

Yahsin

Coffee from Bean to Cup

English Speaking Class Presentation: Coffee from Bean to Cup
(approx. 15 mins with powerpoint) November 03, 2009

Coffee from Bean to Cup

There are many people who sleep heavily through out the night and wake up groggy. Then there are other sets of people who sleep very badly, say he had a cat puked all over the house, stayed up late for no reason. Both these kinds need a coffee jolt in the morning just to get away from the feel of 'I need more sleep'.

These days we’re never far from a coffee shop. There’s one on almost every street corner. Well at least in Taipei city where I grew up.

I wonder how many of us would realize while drinking coffee that after oil it is the largest traded commodity, which means that coffee is the second-most traded product in the world. In this presentation, I’d like to talk about coffee manufacturing: From bean to cup. Understanding from cherry, bean, roasting, all the way to the cup.

But before we go any further, I’d like to share a little story about coffee that you may find it interesting. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, there was a goat herder. Mr goat herder in Eastern Africa around 300 AD, well he must have not been a good goatherd because some of his goats gone astray and ate some red berries from a bush. The goatherd thought it wasn’t a big deal, they were just eating some fruits eh? But guess what? Have you seen the movie Alvin and the chipmunks? 鼠來寶 The bad guy gives the three chipmunks some coffee to drink right? And the chipmunks are jumping and dancing and screaming non stop! So pretty much like that, the goats, well maybe not that dramatic, but the goats were very excited and hyper, as if they were on drugs, until late in the evening. So the goatherd was like ‘what is happening? Hmm, this is very strange. Wait, is that the bush that makes my goats so lively? I’d better try it myself!’ The goatherd tried the red berries himself and experienced the same effect. He then mentioned this to the monks in the nearby monastery, who from then on took coffee to stay awake during the nightly prayer gathering. The legend also records that these monks discovered by chance that the beans could be roasted and that a beverage prepared from the roasted beans not only produced the same effect, but also tasted far better. The coffee beans and the beverage made from them, were from then on regarded as a luxurious stimulant.

The legend was long long time ago, but we didn’t start planting coffee until 15 century. Now it is widely spread all over the world, cultivated in over 70 countries across the globe. As you can see, the geography of the coffee plant is in a tropical 25 degree latitude belt on both sides of the equator. About two-thirds of coffee is produced in the Latin America, others in Africa, Arabia, Java as well as Sumatra. Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexico etc are the major areas where coffee is cultivated. Among all, Brazil is the world's largest coffee producer.

Now let’s get started with the coffee manufacturing. The first stage is growing and harvesting. The coffee 'tree' is in fact a type of tropical evergreen shrub. In this stage, the coffee tree produce small berries called coffee cherries. About five years after the tree is planted, and nine months after the flowers appear, the coffee cherries are ripe and can be harvested. Harvesting is mainly carried out by hand.

The second stage is the processing stage. This is when the red coffee cherries are changed into green coffee beans. During this stage, the outer fruit is removed from the coffee cherries, so only the coffee seeds, or beans, are left. The beans are then dried, sorted, and put into cloth sacks for shipping.

The next stage is the roasting stage. This is the beautiful part that coffee’s characteristic flavor and aroma develop during this roasting process. The flavor is locked within the green coffee bean until it is roasted. Heating green coffee beans sets a series of complex chemical reactions in motion that release the flavor compounds hidden within each bean. During this stage, the beans are placed in a roasting machine and heated to around 240 degrees Celsius. The length of roasting time determines the beans’ color and richness.

The final stage of coffee manufacturing is the grinding and brewing stage. This is when the whole beans are crushed into a powder and mixed with hot water to make a cup of coffee. There are different methods of grinding and brewing, depending on how strong you want the coffee to taste.

That completes the coffee-manufacturing process: growing and harvesting the coffee cherries, processing the fruit, roasting the beans, and finally, grinding and brewing the coffee.

I know very little about Hualien, not sure how many locals actually enjoy drinking coffee. I personally enjoy the flavor of it very much but never stopped and thought where it’s coming from, or how is it done? So I figured it would be nice to do a little research about it and found it quite interesting. And felt grateful realized that it takes a lot of efforts and time just to have a cup of coffee. So if you keep that in mind, you wouldn’t think 60 NT is that expensive for a cup of coffee. The last thing I want to say is that you may dislike coffee, I don’t expect everyone to like coffee, and go for other stuff. I just hope my presentation can motive you in a way to find out more about the little things in your life. Because that is the spice of life. Thank you.

(approx. 15 mins)

Charity Huang

Get out of the box

I’ll start from the beginning.

I am a transfer student from National Dong Hwa University Meilun Campus English Department to National Dong Hwa University Main Campus English Literature Department. To make it simple, I transferred from a small campus to a huge campus.

Lots of teachers and friends have asked me why I wanted to transfer. They couldn’t understand why bother transfer from English Department in Meilun to English Literature Department in Main Campus when the things students study were so alike. “Isn’t that the same thing?””Major in English?” they would ask. When encounter those questions, different people I tell different stories. Some I would say, ”Oh yeah, but here the teachers suck!”. Others I go, ”Yeah, but you know what? Here we put our focus on teaching whether we want to admit it or not. You know, Meilun campus was a former teachers college. But the Main Campus is about English Literature. And I love literature!” I am not a liar, what I said were so darn true. But I’m going to be real honest with you here on my blog. Those weren’t the motifs that really made me want to transfer.

The truth is, I don’t feel like I belong there. There’s always been a gap between us. Classmates and I. Teachers and I. The Fellowship and I. To be honest, I don’t think I belong to anywhere. I don’t even know the real reason that made me want to transfer. I guess I was just getting sick of the people there and wanted a change of everything or anything. I don’t want to see myself being like everybody else, giving in, compromise, and eventually, have no passion for life. It’s like a box, we put ourselves in a tiny little box, saying “yeah, that’s me, tiny little me,” while God made us to be a giant! Giant! We limit ourselves unintentionally when God wants us to be out of the box. So why stay in that little comfort zone?

Ok, I don’t know what I’m talking about. And nobody who’s involved in it is going to read this whole bunch of English anyway. Doesn’t matter. God knows how I feel. And that’s enough.

Yahsin

雅信 2009年九月十四日Re: 媽媽的Email

我感覺，甜蜜的靈在這裡... 雅信 RE: 羅淑芳寫「懷念可愛的阿弟仔」‏



親愛的媽媽爸爸啟慧曉是乃一主行：

親愛的上帝爸爸，為什麼我眼淚會一直流？我記得兩年前說要養寵物---一隻楓葉鼠---的時候我不是很討厭、很不想養的那個嗎？ 什麼寵物不養養一隻老鼠!? 算了，反正我不去碰他他不來干擾我，咱們倆井水不犯河水，面對家裡七位成員多了一隻鼠的事實。

兩年了，我無法想像小曉是居然已經念國中，是個少女了。如果不是因為阿弟仔，曉是不會是今天的曉是，乃一不會是今天的乃一，主行不是今天的主行。美麗的回憶如電影般一幕幕在眼前，你們開心的在客廳地板上大笑的樣子，拿了一個紙箱，把阿弟仔捧在手心上，阿弟仔跑來跑去，一會兒跑到曉是手臂上，一會兒又逗主行笑得合不攏嘴。原來家裡這位鼠成員能帶給我們這麼多歡笑，每次看爸爸又餵他雞骨頭，和媽媽吵嘴的樣子，又好氣又好笑，無不也是增添家中的娛樂效果。漸漸的，阿弟仔成為我們家的一份子，彷彿是主行的弟弟，看著牠從小baby不到一個掌心大，到後來長得一個手掌大又大又可愛，連討厭老鼠的我，都不由自主的喜歡他可愛的模樣。


為什麼，阿弟仔，你要離我們而去？姐姐我都還沒摸過你一次，為什麼我正開始喜歡你，想抱抱你的時候，你卻開始生病了。


自從咱們鼠弟弟開始生病後，我就很少往咱們家客廳的鼠區域靠近。聽起來很殘忍，好像我很冷漠。但事實是，我每次想去看他的時候，淚水在眼眶打轉，我不敢看，也不敢靠近，心裡的難過筆墨難以形容。於是我放棄了。我避開這段時光，逃開醫療現場，企圖躲開離別的過程。但現在，我發現我躲不了，終究，我得面對經過鼠地帶沒有籠子的難過，打電話沒有牠運動的聲音，大半夜沒有窸窣窸窣的呢喃。隔了一天，發現籠子不見了，問主行老鼠在哪裡，主行用食指比了比上頭，彷彿在指天花板。「在上面嗎？」我問。輕微的點頭，沒有作聲。我不甘心，不願意面對事實，到媽媽房間，又在問主行一次老鼠在哪？牠死了嗎？牠現在在哪裡？告訴我牠在哪？「在天堂。」主行趴在媽媽床上，拿著故事書，低著頭，彷彿他是大人我是小孩，大人看著小孩無理取鬧的打轉加大叫「老鼠給我回來！老鼠你快回來！老鼠為什麼你要走！」主行的低頭不理會我更難過，手裡拿著故事書，眼睛看著床的另一頭，彷彿他能看見阿弟仔的身影，這顯示他比我更難過。乃一在我們一旁竊笑我小孩般的大叫，我們三個一起又叫又笑又低頭又悲傷的想念阿弟仔。如果主行都這樣，那曉是是不是難過得哭也哭不出來了？


媽媽說得對，這似乎是阿公過世的重演。一切都發生的這麼快，時間已到，上帝的靈如輕巧的風，牽著阿弟仔的小爪，輕輕的，領著他回天家。謝謝上帝爸爸愛阿弟仔，阿弟仔在我們家的日子，是我們的幸福。可愛的sweet heart，上帝爸爸你看！阿弟仔以前和弟弟妹妹們你儂我儂的樣子，很可愛吧！我們知道祢一定會好好照顧牠的，因為牠也是祢的寶貝。

於是我哼唱著，

我感覺，甜蜜的靈在這裡...

啟示錄21:4


爸爸媽媽妹妹們還有弟弟跟阿弟仔
我愛你們！

雅信