ELISA ENGLISH's Blog 英語園地

What prompted me to write today was a Facebook friend invitation that I received recently.  Mostly, I am indifferent to accepting cyber friends.  Who are they exactly?  I don’t think that I truly want to know or care to know.  It is extremely hard for me to warm up to people.  To tell you the truth, I still struggle to understand the purpose of having a Facebook account.  One day, I received an email from a cyber friend.  He informed me that he had stopped blogging and started interacting with others via Facebook.  He gave me his Facebook account information.  In order to view someone’s Facebook information, you have to sign up for a Facebook account and that was how I got a Facebook account.  I suppose that I am somewhat old-fashioned and out-dated.  Am I alone?  Not really.  I can’t seem to find any of my real world friends having a Facebook account.     

This article is my reflection of a cyberspace event which happened to some people whom I encountered.  It is sometimes amusing to watch things that went on the cyberspace.  Watching it is like watching a soap opera unfolding in front of my eyes.  By the way, I don’t watch soap opera.  I consider it a waste of my time.  So why would I spend my precious time watching a cyber soap opera.  Oh, it is just to get ideas for my articles and sometimes to interact with others.  Do I interact with people online?  Yes, to the extent that I feel comfortable and have time since most stuff to me is trivial.  If you get to my age and when you have a family of your own, you would understand how I feel about priority.       

On Truth

What happens to basic courtesy?

Did I truly ask for nothing in return when answering strangers’ requests?  Not entirely.  I do feel that it is basic courtesy that people at least thank for the time I spent answering their questions without asking for any monetary rewards.  What happens to basic courtesy?  Don’t take it for granted that it is my duty to answer your questions and within a certain timeline.  Please appreciate the time I spent clarifying your confusion.  Please remember to be polite and say please when you ask a question.   Please remember to say thank you when you get my answer.  Please remember the most important thing, "basic courtesy".    

I am emotionally drained after attending a funeral service.  I was caught up in waves of grief even though I barely know the deceased.  I need to find something to cheer myself up.  This sadness is not good to my health.  This is why I was contemplating whether to go to the funeral or not.  It is hard for me to face death, be it mine or others’.  I would probably collapse if someone close to me dies.

When my father-in-law passed away, I was surprised at the calmness that his family showed.  Today, I saw the same calmness in the face of the family of the deceased.  How did they manage to stay so calm?  I would break down and crumble to pieces.

A hired-gun

I can’t remember the entire story and where I read it.  What I remember is the plot that the protagonist asked his best friend to write love letters to his girlfriend on his behalf.  His best friend was also in love with that girl.  The girl was deeply touched by the love, so boldly declared in the notes.  I always wonder why some people would ask others even strangers to write love letters or love notes to their love ones.  Wouldn’t that be cheating?  Is that true love?  How strong is their love?  Why couldn’t they express their love to the ones they love so dearly?

The never ending story – Part II

The story continues and the subliminal effect carries on.  This time, the protagonist is my brother.  He was active like any typical boy, not too mischievous to be considered a bad boy, yet not diligent enough to be considered a good student.  Who would think that he would one day become a chief/senior engineer of two global top 5 semiconductor foundries!  In the eyes of his teachers, he was someone with borderline intelligence. 

It all started with a story – Part I

I did not sit there idling.  I have been thinking.  Thinking about what?  Where to start and how to start?  My mind wanders.  The subject is so broad.  How can I organize my thoughts?  What am I trying to convey?  What is the theme of my article?  How do I formulate my thoughts more cohesively so it gives you a clear picture?  Maybe it is easier to start with a story.

About work ethic and integrity

I am actually a person pretty easy to work with.  I would shoulder the responsibilities of most of the honest mistakes committed by my subordinates or my peers.  However, I will not tolerate gross negligence.  There are quite a few tech onshore or offshore contractors from China or India that my colleagues work with.   I am glad that I don’t have much direct interaction with these contractors.  Most of the time, I just complain to my colleagues of the poor quality of work provided by these onshore or offshore contractors from China or India.  I don’t know how many that I have let go over the years for their poor performance.  I do have to say that I am not biased.  I do agree that not all of them are bad performers.  However, the number of poor performers is alarming to me.  Since I do oversee the success and failure of a project and am responsible for it, I have to make sure that the right person with the right skill is assigned to the project. 

I have long heard about the year 2012?  What is the significance of it?  What will happen in year 2012?  I do believe in the authenticity of the claim, but what is the probability?  How likely will the claim come true?  It all depends on the people.  I cannot help but think of what Benjamin Franklin said.  “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty”, a motto on the title page of “An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania” published by Franklin Benjamin, rings so true.  I strongly believe that we control our own destiny and shape our own future.  Can you argue with such a wise man when he stated that it was in the religion of ignorance that tyranny began and that the best security for maintaining our liberty was a nation of well-informed men of the rights that could not be enslaved?        

Yes, Benjamin.  I will echo “Where liberty dwells, there is my country”.

How Much to Reveal?

What to reveal and what not to?  It is never easy to draw the boundary.  Sharing one’s intimate thoughts or spilling one’s secrets seems all so much easy these days while hiding behind the computer screen.

I like to write about myself and my thought.  However, this article is especially difficult for me to write and to share with you.  This is an article about my mom and the various emotions I have around her.  I have  been contemplating whether to share this article with you or not.  It isn't easy to share with you my vulnerability and my innermost feeling.     

I thought of my mom, when writing the article “What is your priority?”.  She is probably the only person in this world who causes me so many mixed feelings, guilt, anger and sadness.  I am sad because I can no longer feel the closeness that once existed between us.  I am angry because she treats me like an outsider.  She has the strong and stubborn concept that a daughter once married is like water splashed outside the door.  This daughter of hers is now someone else’s wife and she is bound to never burden, bother or trouble her daughter.  The feeling of isolation from her makes me sad.  In her mind, she is protecting me by not reporting any bad news.  The fact that she would only tell my brother who is also married makes me mad.  To her, my brother is not someone else’s husband; he is still considered as her son.  I know.  She still thinks me as her daughter but it makes me sad when she treats me differently and with courtesy.  It hurts to feel like a stranger to her. 

What is your priority?

My husband often says that I am an odd person, not easily influenced, with a strange logic and a stubborn mind that is beyond anyone’s comprehension.  I can only say that I am a unique person with my own sense of priorities and principles.  I am oblivious to many trivial stuff, trivial compared to my sense of priorities.  Life is short.  There is so little time for so many things, so it is important for me to focus on my priorities. 

About Marriage

Before I get to the central point of my argument about why some Asian women prefer marrying a Caucasian, I want to express that I do see successes in some interracial marriages where the Asian woman or the Asian man does not carry a hidden agenda to purposely or exclusively seek out an American husband or wife to marry.  These couples met by accident and later fell in love, which eventually led to their marriage.  In their marriage, there are no strings attached, no hidden agenda, nor ulterior motive.  These couples are not the protagonists of my article.

Identity Crisis:

This is somewhat in continuation to my previous blog– what is the purpose of education and why homeschooling? http://elisaenglish.pixnet.net/blog/post/12259843

Please slap my hand or smack my head for my urge to answer the questions.  It is none of my business, yet I felt profoundly puzzled.  Are teachers so unapproachable that students have to resort to asking for clarification of an answer online?  Aren’t your teachers the best resource to clarify your confusion on the answers they provided?  Aren’t they paid to demystify your puzzlement?  By the way, this is not to say that I am unwilling to answer your questions.  I do see that there are many students who truly want to learn English and have asked me some interesting and thought provoking questions.  I do enjoy answering their questions.  I am just questioning what drives the students to seek clarification online. 

If you are an English major, I would suggest that you ask your teachers first before resorting to internet.  At least, you know the credentials of your teachers.  I would think that for a teacher to be able to teach English in college, he would at least need a master degree in English.  On that account, his English shouldn’t be too bad.      

I have been thinking of writing an article about my view for homeschooling adopted by some Taiwanese parents and the purpose of education.  I finally get the time to sit down to talk about it.  What prompted me to touch on this topic was the suicide news(1), the article about the overbearing Asian parents(2), the infatuated obsession of a Taiwanese friend over her friend’s homeschooling and my stumble upon an article on homeschooling by a Taiwanese living in the US.  I hope this article serves as a wake-up call for some parents.    

The reason for that Taiwanese blog author to start homeschooling was her impeachment of the education system in the US.  In her view, the public K-12 education system in the US is a failure.  She based her argument on the 2006 NCES report that stated that US students ranked at the bottom third and fourth in Math and Science literacy respectively, when compared to students from other nations.  However, when I quickly glanced through the report she provided, she seems to have over-exaggerated the problem and painted a false picture.  What the report stated was that among the 40 countries participating in the 2003 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the U.S. ranked 28th in Math literacy and 24th in Science literacy, not at the bottom third or fourth.  This is the link to the report she provided http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33434.pdf.  She also stated that she sided with the author’s analysis in that the public k-12 education system had shifted its focus from the basic academic subjects to both liberal and environmental issues.  This statement baffles me.  Nowhere in the report did I see a suggestion of the shift of the American education system.  Maybe there were hidden messages that I didn’t pick up.  Anyway, she went on with her complaints about the many earth day projects that public schools participated in.  I am sorry that I cannot get her point.  What is the problem with teaching kids about earth day?  What’s wrong with teaching our kids to protect the earth?  Shouldn’t we increase our kids’ awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment?  Does solely focusing on Math and Science and ignoring other subjects the right way to teach our kids?  Is teaching our kids to excel in academics the sole purpose of teaching?  What’s wrong with liberal studies?  I am sorry that I am just too dumb to understand the teaching and child-rearing philosophy of some Taiwanese parents. 

A recent copyright violation incident prompted me to look into book publishing again.  My blogging history is short.  It started March 2008.  My blog entries touch various topics, encompassing several different themes.  I have been pondering on the idea of publishing my own books for some time.  However, I don’t think that I have written enough articles to publish a book.  I am not a career writer.  I work full time and have two little children and a family to care for.  After work and picking up our kids from school, I have to cook for the family.  After the meal, I have to either work with my son on his homework or play with my daughter to sway her away from disrupting her brother’s study.  After the study time is over, usually half an hour, it is family time again.  We either watch TV or play games or read books.  Time flies quickly.  Then it is time to wash the kids and prepare them to sleep.  Our work with the kids doesn’t end with tugging them in bed.  They are afraid to sleep alone, so one of the parents has to stay with one of our kids.  My daughter prefers her dad so I am the one staying with my son.  We have to wait until they fall asleep to have our own personal time and that is usually after 10pm.  The only time I have to write articles is to sacrifice my sleep.  Sometimes, I slept less than 2 hours a day, reading books, so I can write a book review.  Sometimes, I spent precious sleep time researching the meaning of a Chinese poem, so I can more truly reflect the essence of that Chinese poem when I translate it into English.  At times, it is exhausting to me.  Yet, I get the sense of satisfaction and achievement when I finished writing one article.  It is easy to imagine my anger towards people who copy and paste my creation if you understand the time and effort I put in each creation. 

I have always thought about publishing a book, not for making a profit, but for my own personal satisfaction and as a keepsake for my children.  With this incident, I thought about publishing my own books again.  I started to do some more research about it and found some pretty good information.  Createspace is a cheap solution to publish your own books.  Signing up as a standard member is free unless you request professional services such as designing or marketing your books.  See more details at the link below https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/  Book on Demand is a media I would suggest for self publishing and distributing your own books.  You earn royalties for the sale of your books.  You can also order books on your own behalf, for which you pay only the fixed and per-page charges plus shipping and handling fees.  It is approximately $3 for an order of your own book before tax and shipping and handling.  You don’t earn royalty for the book you order on your own behalf.  There is however a restriction on the number of pages required to publish a book, which is between 24 and 828 pages.  In addition, you must obtain all applicable copyright licenses for artwork used in your book.  You can register your work electronically at the website of United States Copyright Office.  http://www.copyright.gov/.  The cost is $35 to register your unpublished work online.

Why going through surgery?

A surgery is nonetheless a surgery, no matter what type of surgery it is.  Be it a laser eye surgery or a C-section, there is always risk involved.  So many people jump on the bandwagon of getting a laser eye surgery for the myth of a risk free surgery that will cure myopia.  The most common laser eye surgery performed in the US is LASIK which surgically alter the cornea without pain.  To claim it risk free and safe proven when the fibrils holding the cornea are cut through and the thickness of the cornea is scrapped off is false advertisement.  Laser eye surgery has the potential of leaving your eyeballs at risk of disintegration and your cornea dislocation in addition to an entire cornea transplant.  Its complication and side-effects are often muted.

Last night, we went for buffet for the only reason that my son wanted to eat sugar bread and my idea of going to a decent Chinese restaurant to have decent Chinese food went down the drain.  I don’t like to dine at restaurants offering Chinese buffet for their poor quality of food.  Though plenty of seafood was served, the freshness of the food was questionable.  In addition, they are good at selling a pig in a poke.  A so-called ginger-and-scallion crab is nonetheless just a crab shell stuffed with watery fish slurry.  I hated the meal until I got to the dessert portion.  I was pleasantly surprised to find “longan”, a fruit I have not tasted for more than two decades.  I filled my plate with about two dozen of them.  After pigging out on half of them, I realized that I might have been swallowing worms without noticing them.  I took off my glasses and started examining each longan before I put it in my mouth.  Suddenly my mind wandered back to the time when I was still a single living in an apartment.  At that time, I was very close to an old lady who lived right above me.  We often dined together.  Somehow, I was puzzled by her oblivion of the ants on her utensils and the leftover scraps stuck on her clean plates when she served the dishes at home.  It is probably hard to understand it until you get to the age when you develop presbyopia.  The closer you get to an object, the blurrier it gets.  I suppose that I am somewhat lucky to have shortsightedness.  All I need to do now is to take off my glasses and everything will look crystal clear even with the fine prints. 

Written by Elisa English

Unemployed not Allowed

It is the cynical me talking again.  I was shocked to read a news article from Yahoo Finance regarding job screening.  This is the link to that article: Out-of-work job applicants told unemployed need not apply.  http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Outofwork-job-applicants-told-cnnm-3498252371.html?x=0