Blog 6：My Most Precious Gifts

Just as many people, I have received many gifts ever since I remembered. I cherish each gift that I get, but some of them, in my opinion, are the most precious ones.

I can still remember on my birthday of last year, I got a gift from one of my best friends in senior high school. It was a quill pen with a bottle of ink. I was excited and extremely surprised when I saw the present, as I really wanted to get a quill pen but I did not tell my friend about it! Moreover, the pen was made in Britain and it was mailed to China from Britain. As a big fan of Harry Potter, I truly love this gift. However, there is one more reason why I cherish it as one of the most precious gifts that I have got. After asking my friend, I got to know how she got this present. She told me that she knew I love Harry Potter very much and I have a hobby of collecting pretty pens, so she decided to buy a special present for me. She contacted one of our classmates who went to study in the UK and asked her to buy a quill pen that was made in the hometown of Harry Potter, and then mail it to her. Her action was extremely touching for me. Now, I regard the quill pen as a representation of our deep friendship and I would keep it forever.

I once thought the quill pen would be the only one gift that has so much significance for me, until several days before, which was also my birthday, I got another gift that I believe I would cherish for a life time. It was a video from the boys in our group. I have to admit that it was a big surprise. In my own experience, the birthday gifts are usually some small objects, such as a candle, a pen, a toy, a music-box and so on. These were the most common gifts I have received or sent. Therefore, I have never thought of receiving a video as a birthday gift. When I watched the video, I was totally moved. I could tell from the video that you must have spent a lot of time on making it, as the songs sounded so nice and your performances were also brilliant! Actually, I am not a talkative or active person and I did not expect that you would put so much effort in preparing such a gift for me. I was surprised and happy! (^o^) Thank you very much!

In the end, I would like to say that I am really grateful for what you have done. I would keep the video and cherish our friendship forever!

Blog 6:Areastrological signs really related withone’s personality?

Astrological signs are equal segments or divisions of the ecliptic, usually associated with the twelve signs of the zodiac. According to astrology, celestial phenomena reflect or govern human activity on the principle of "as above, so below", so that the twelve signs are held to represent twelve basic personality types or characteristic modes of expression.There are "sun" signs and "moon" signs, which both depend on your date of birth.

The above is the basic explanation for astrological signs from Wikipedia. Even nowadays, the astrological signs are still hot issues among adolescents. There was once news saying that a girl broke up with her boyfriend just because a book she read said their star signs didn’t match with each other. However, can the star signs really affect humans’nature? I believe you can find the answer after finishing reading this composition.

Every zodiac symbol has a description of this group of people’s personality. Teenagers believe that it exactly describesthem, so they begin to believe everything about astrology. It’s quite an irrational action. Some scientists carried out an experiment in which they handed out two types of questionnaires.One contained the so-called authoritative descriptions for each star sign’s personality; the other was the messy version. They asked the students to answer the question whether the description for their own zodiac symbol was correct or not. As what they hadexpected, the rates from two different questionnaires of students whose answer is “yes” were almost the same.This result could be explained by the following two reasons. Firstly, every one’s character is complicated, so one could find something quite correspond to his or her disposition in every description. Secondly, the descriptions were fairly vague, that is, they described the common individuality of human beings and they said most of the good things. That’s why astrological signs have gained such great popularity. There are also many common senses which are against the zodiac symbol. For instance, how can humans only have 12 different types in terms of personality?

Nonetheless, why individuals especially the juveniles are so crazy about it? The most important reason is probably that adolescents are in a stage of life where they start to find the meaning of life and the unique identity of themselves, but it’s a question with no answer and thus, they turn to an easily accessible way-astrology-to get the answer. For me, Ithink it shouldn’t be to blame too much because things like the star signs act as a good topic for conversation in modern world. It is not only for teens but also for adults to use as a diplomatic tool at some special occasions.In addition, apart from the use in astrology, constellations themselves arebeautiful and magic enough.

Blog 7: Dream and Reality

Our life is filled up with all kinds of dreams. The dream can be complicated or simple, funny or serious, etc. But they are all our desires for a certain period of time.

I still remember my first dream is to become a biologist and live in the jungle playing with those creatures for the whole life. At that time I really like all kinds of insects. My father told me that I always brought some strange insets back to home trying to feed them and when I felt bored I would kill them without hesitation. I couldn’t imagine how I could be that cruel and brave we I was young, because now I’m even afraid of getting closer to the insects. Whenever an insect appears I am always controlling myself not to scream.

My dream is always changing as the time goes by. But the longest dream I’ve had is to become an architect. This dream starts from my love for painting. Spending the days painting a lot of pictures sounds really perfect. However, to be realistic, supporting ourselves or even the whole family by being an artist is almost impossible. Many masterpieces were admitted after the painters died. Painters like Vincent Van Gogh was extremely poor throughout his life. I'm just an ordinary person wishing to have a good living condition. Then when I was studying in middle school my art teacher introduced the architect Gaudi Antonio. His works were really amazing and I was deeply attracted by those buildings. Since then I've set a dream for myself. But between dream and reality there is always a long way to go. After the college entrance examination in order to ensure to major in architecture I went Chongqing University. However, to my great surprise, another person with higher marks was also making the crazy decision as I did. Thus I had to become a student of civil engineering, preparing to change my major to architecture when studying the master's degree. After two months' studying, I found myself gradually falling in love with civil engineering. But it was at that time I was selected to be one of the SM3 scholars. In NUS we are not supposed to learn architect so my plan was to learn civil engineering. But after searching on the Internet, the civil engineering in NUS is really far away from what I though before. That is to say, maybe it's not the right way leading to my dream. 
Perhaps now it's the time to give up and try to be practical. Nothing will last forever in the future I'm sure to find something else worth working hard for my whole life.

Blog 6:If We Have Tails

This week,we have talked about the origin of the human beings. Affected by the evolutionism,most of us think that human beings are evolved from the apes. However,can we say that all of our physical features are better than that of apes? So,out of curiosity, when we are talking with each other at break time,we began to imagine the life with tails of ourselves.


If we have tails,what will our lives be like? The first question I can think of is that how to make our pants. Is it necessary that we leave a special part especially for our tails or just let our tails stay with our legs? I do not know how you think about it, but I do think that it will be good if we make a protuberant part of our pants for our tails. If so,we can use our tails do a lot of things. To begin with, we can use our tails to answer the phones. We can invent a new type of phones so that the phones can be fixed on the edges of our tails. When our phones begin to vibrate,we can use our tails to place our phones near our ears. Isn't it convenient? Besides,we can also use our tails to fix us,sometimes. That is for the police. Sometimes,the police need to use their two hands to grab a rope so that they can shift from one side of the cliff to another side which is extraordinary dangerous. It is known that the triangle is stable, so if the police are able to take advantage of their tails………


That is my idea of the tails. Don't you think it is better? It is true that we are evolved from apes, but can we say that all of our physical are better than that of apes?

Blog6: Who Watch Who

  Have you ever noticed that when you go to the zoo to observe animals, some of them are observing you too? Perhaps this idea is amusing, but it is the truth. When we regard ourselves as the most important, we will ignore many important things.

  Today I went to the Singapore zoo to see the animals. One of impressive things was that most of the animals were not in the cases and live freely. They should live in nature more freely but as a zoo, it had shown enough respect. Animals lived on an island and were separated from us by a small river or the distance in space. There was an area in which orangutan can play freely without limits of space which is unique in the world. I have heard about a kind of zoo in which human is in a car and animals are outside. All of this kind of zoo shows the harmony among humans and animals. However I do not want to share this point with you here, for there was already a blog in which the point was stated.

  What I noticed today was a lion, which stayed outside the house that I was in. The lion looked gentle and did not move too much. The reason why I noticed it was that it was looking at people in the house. This causes me to think. I go to the zoo to observe the animals and saw only a few, but the lion stays there and see large amount of different people every day. Perhaps it is the nature reaction of a lion to watch the living things or moving things. Assuming that the lion has a little intelligent, it also observes human. We cannot regard ourselves as the owner of the nature. We are merely a part of nature. Human does have intelligent but it is just a feature of human. The lion interesting for us and to the lion, we are also interesting.

  We, human, are consuming nature resources and have made huge improvements in building a civilization. We hardly cannot do anything and have achieved a lot already but we do not show enough respect to nature which we rely on. Along with the development of human beings, here come a lot of problems. It is time for us to think about the behaviors of ourselves. Although there are still suspicions towards whether the human activities affect the nature environment, we do have had adverse influences on nature. The reason why we still damage nature is that we regard human as the highest class feature.

We are not special and we are only the result of nature. Show respect to nature and we will live better because we are a part of nature.

blog 5: Why Chinese leave a bad impression in overseas?

Why Chinese leave a bad impression in overseas?

Before I went to Singapore, I had learned that Chinese people do not have a good reputation in foreign countries. As it was my first chance to step out my homeland to a completely new world, I was more sensitive to how foreigners think of us. Some people hold the idea that the people who are not well educated and do labor jobs in the overseas are the ones to blame. Due to their less educated knowledge and lack awareness in moral, they initially set an impolite and non-personal-responsibility impression in foreigners. However, my thought goes deeper as I stay in Singapore for a few months. In contrast, I gradually enlighten that this is not just as simple as a matter of earlier bad impression. This disgusting impression gets updated with an enormous number of Chinese immigrating to foreign countries every year. I always see Chinese people behave improperly in public. For instance, they talk loudly in a place where people are required to lower their voice; they sit on a bench in the MRT in a disturbing manner, which caused people around feel unease and disgusted; they speak sex-related words loudly in public areas without face going red. All of these behaviors result in leaving others bad impressions, and later accordingly they contribute to people’s unfriendly attitude towards Chinese people.

The root of this problem can be dated back to the recent history of China. Before the foundation of Republic of China, considered in the long lasting invasion, the situation made less chance for Chinese people to receive knowledge and focus on moral education. Even after the foundation of Republic of China, the significance of knowledge and morality did not awake too many people. After the market leading economy policy was released, the society developed so fast that people left even less room for moral consideration. In addition, due to the one child policy, in most cases we are the only children in our families. Our parents do their best to meet our demands and we sometimes take it for granted without showing our gratitude.  Some of us do not know their concerns for others and how to share when facing team works.  

We Chinese people have a long way to go if we want this situation to go into reverse. Our words should be consistent with our actions after we always talk about moral issues. Only if every one of us lifts a hand to make a difference, then the promotion of our impression will have a better prospect.

Blogger 6: My opinions towards ghosts and spirits

My opinions towards ghosts and spirits

Suppose that you are sitting in front of your computer reading a ordinary story, then suddenly a pale and frightening face of a "girl" appeared on the screen. There is blood on her lips and the two red and blood-curdling eyes are staring at you. Will you be scared for a long time? Or you can clam down quickly because you refuse to believe the existence of ghosts.

On 1st April, I and a friend of mine just experienced such an awful thing. At that night, I went to his room and found that he was reading a PPT. With curiosity, I came close to the computer and started reading it with him, and nothing seemed abnormal at first. However, while he clicked the mouse for the third time, the face suddenly came up with a very loud sound of screaming. I admit that I was scared at the moment, but it was not too serious for me to run or cry. Unfortunately, my friend was so frightened that he shouted and jumped to me unexpectedly. What would you do on this situation with a nervous mood?

Without hesitation, I pushed him on the face forcefully because I was startled by him rather than the "girl". What a poor boy! He was terrified by the "girl" and then beat by me on the face. After he calmed down and felt painful on his nose, he told me that he would not be peaceful for the next few days, notwithstanding that he realized it was just a hoax. Moreover, he had to ask his roommate for sharing a bed because he almost dared not close his eyes.

The story ends, and the PPT which we were looking turned out to be a joke. However, the effect is still there as you can see. My friend has even taken a psychological toll, and he said yes when I asked him whether he think there are ghosts. So, is there anything like ghosts or spirits in the world? My answer is that I do not know. First of all, I have never seen one so I will not readily believe it. As a consequence, some awful thoughts will not jump into my mind when I do something or go somewhere that considered unlucky or evil to some people. On the other hand, nobody can prove that there are no such things exist, so I will not take part in some activities such as evocation. In conclusion, I am a little afraid of "ghosts" from my bottom of heart because there are so many frightening stories on the Internet nowadays, so I will always change my mind to avoid thinking of them.

As a freethinker, I think the way people treat with ghosts is like with religions. They exist if you believe, or they are just vision. In my view, people are scared by themselves for most of times and the best way to calm down is to distract their attentions. Finally, may my friend recover.