On Christmas Time

I hope everyone is having a great time during the Christmas period, no matter their culture celebrates Christmas or not. In Chinese culture, we don't. But being so far from home in this fairy land called Great Britain, I couldn't help myself to get some Christmas spirit on. Therefore, it has totally nothing to do with my laziness that I have been almost motionless in my room and living on all kinds of junk food and takeaways.

Chinese doesn't celebrate Christmas, traditionally. But a little bird called ‘Economical Globalisation’ has brought everything about Christmas to China. During Christmas time, every single street in the city is playing this big Christmas extravaganza. Young people find a good reason to go out and drink their head off, most of who have no idea of what Christmas is celebrating. That's why I almost blanked out when I heard a tiny piece of news on six o'clock at the Christmas Eve afternoon on BBC 1: ‘if you are celebrating Christmas this year in China, you can get arrested’. How much have those young people been drinking, or the BBC 1 editors?

I was on the phone with my parents that day and my father reminded me a little Christmas tale. I was only about seven back then. We started to have English class in primary school that time so we read this thing about Christmas and Santa. We knew nothing about it but some nice old man giving out free gifts. I told that to my parents and I got so excited that year's Christmas time. Of course no one in my class believed any thing about Santa but my mother told me that if I put my socks at the head of the bed, I could get gifts from Santa, who would put the gifts in the socks. I put a clean pair of socks there before I went to bed and I found they filled up in the morning I woke up. I can still remember how excited I was. There was a card on the floor as well, written in English with a foreign stamp at the corner. I rushed into my parent's room and woke them all up. They said it must've been Santa. Then I told everybody in my class. No one believed me. I showed them the card and they couldn't care less. But that didn't spoil my exciting mood. And for the following few years, Santa visited me every time. The socks were filled with all kinds of gifts every time, although the only one I can remember is a can of coke because the sock looked so stuffed. A card with foreign stamp came with gifts every time as well.

Of course, it had been my mother. She was in English training herself back then and knew a few friends from states. That must be how she got hold of those stamps. I didn't suspect it at all until I was too old to believe Santa when I was about twelve or so. But even now, I can still remember how happy I was when I opened my eyes and thought Santa just visited. What a nice piece of sweet memory!

Days B4 X'Mas

Only days to go before Christmas and I have become lazier than ever at a time that I am supposed to be more productive than ever. I am trying very hard to get myself in the role of hard working though. However, watching film on TV at half past one in the morning now doesn’t convince anyone, does it? Well, I have got plan in my head already and I shall see how it works out in the next few days.

Christmas is coming and it is so clear that SONY is trying its hardest to do some damage control of PS3. To be fare, PS3 is the game console packed with cutting edge technologies and state-of-art concepts. But also, it comes with a totally failed market perspective. SONY has had totally biased idea of how luxury people would like to go on gaming. Its sky high price has put PS3 on the worst market performance ever. However, it is Christmas and SONY sees a new opportunity coming. Many game companies have new PS3 games published right at this time as well. So, it has been all over TV channels these a few days: ‘Entertainment like you’ve ever seen before’. It is rather tempting, which I have to admit. Isn’t marketing just powerful? And SONY seems to get it right this time.

And, also people tend to be less productive before Christmas and this can give bosses a big headache. This is one of the letters a senior staff sent to his fellow colleges yesterday. Isn't he lovely?

Colleagues,

There has been a noticeable drop in productivity in the School in the past few days. Just because the students have gone does not mean
that we can slow down.

I can only assume that this disgraceful situation is as a result of low blood sugar levels during the day. With this in mind, I have put boxes of chocolate biscuits in the kitchen and in D437. Please take one as a matter of urgency.

Oh, and Merry Christmas,

Someone I Know

It was just a annoying Monday morning. I woke up as planned at about eight and I got up as usual around ten. I went out to send off my visa extension application. Well, the whole process of getting all supporting documents for visa extension had been painful. It wasn't supposed to be but everything just had some extra hassle added. Anyway I was just glad it was over.

I went home after picked three huge bags of supplies for next two weeks. I then just realised that I forgot to buy rice. That meant pasta for tonight. I turned on my laptop. I really should write something in my thesis that I had to finish by the end of February. But before I started, I thought I'd blog a little. It had been over a week since my last post. I let my mind to wander, trying to figure out some easy topic. There were quite a few I could moan about. And right at that time, someone popped up in my MSN. Someone I haven't heard from for three years. We chatted for a while and I wished him a good new year at the end. Then, I couldn't help myself to write something about him.

We never met in person but only on the internet. It was the gay society on the internet. It was early 2003, if I recalled correctly. The awareness of homosexuals were just started back then in China. It was a forum that we hung out a lot. It was great fun. Right before I was about to come to UK. He told me he was about to marry a girl. When I asked why, his reply was just simple and just Chinese: for my mother.

It would an extremely bizarre reason for most of the people in other parts of the world. But for Chinese, that's what we do. Nothing could we put beyond our family, and our parents are one of the most important parts of it. It is impossible to explain this in a few words so I will just leave it here. Anyway, I told him and if I were him I wouldn't but he did anyway. They had a happy wedding, a few months latter.

About another few months latter, I was still struggling to get used to the life in UK, I met him again on MSN. He told me that he didn't use MSN that much. He was happy about everything back there. He was very good to his wife, in the way that any good husband could possibly be. He also told me that he had a boyfriend somewhere else. They met occasionally. He said everything was just working out. I wasn't so convinced though. But that's his life and that's what he wanted.

Then it had been three years. I never heard from him in these three years and I doubted if he would ever appear again. It might just be the Christmas spirit playing tricks and there he was on MSN here. He said hi. He said he just had a baby girl ten days ago. They gave the girl a very beautiful name. He said he was so happy and he was indeed a good husband. He didn't fool around outside anymore, and he had told everything about his homosexual history to his wife. His wife probably got the promise that it was just the past and he was just a family man now. I wouldn't know. We couldn't talk more because it was late in China at the moment we were chatting and his baby girl was crying. But I guessed that somehow his wife accepted it and forgived him. It might be the evidence of true love without border or just a sacrifice for the family made by a woman. I have no intelligence to comment at all. But I could see he was really happy.

Normally I would be judging him now but I decided not to. I did't even want to comment as such. It was just something I thought like to make a note on my journal, if I had one.

It's Late Afterall

It was two days before someone's birthday and I just remembered that I haven't got anything for him yet. I couldn't possibly have any energy back then to figure out a perfect gift for him, so I thought I would just pick up some card on my way home that day. ASDA was way too far for my mood to venture to when I left the university. The nice British sky in winter was all dark by five. I thought I would just go to the CO-OP shop that was only a few extra steps away from my way home.

I went to the shop with a friend of mine, who was leaving to Taiwan for holiday. We walked down to the shop, talking nonsense on the way. To my surprise, I found another friend of mine was working at the checkout in the shop. Well, actually, I am still mad of him now for not going out with the girl I set him up with. Anyway, I went to the card section and was trying to get some card nice. The small shop didn't have a brilliant collection and I was really struggling to get something won't mark down my taste. Finally I picked this card with a lovely teddy bear on the cover. There were not many options in the shop.

I said goodbye for my friend who was going to catch the coach to the airport and went home. That night I wrote down some normal birthday wishes in the card and I noticed the cover which says: Belated Birthday. There was no way I was going to get another card so I just wrote a yellow post-it note on the card says sorry about the cover, etc. I posted it the next morning.

About four days after his birthday, he got the card. I thought I must have forgotten to write down the property number of the address or maybe it was just his flatmates misplaced the card. Either way, the card was late and it became a 'belated birthday' card after all. The card I picked turned out to be quite appropriate. Could you ever possible to argue with life?

I Am Judgmental

I am judgemental. I judge everything I encounter as well as everybody I meet. Many of us think that being judgemental is a bad thing. People often collect judgement to discriminations and prejudices. Judgemental has become a negative term for those hard-headed and short-sighted shallow people.

I can't play deep. It is far too tiresome to bear and emotionally impossible for me. As long as I don’t be shallow when I think I am being deep, it will make me less a clown. I am short-sighted as well. The big pair of glasses on my nose are there for a reason. Hard-head? I am a PhD student on AI and robotics. How soft can you expect my head to be? So, facts have again proven that I am judgmental.

I am judgmental, yet I am respectful still. The judgements that I draw are kept to myself. I won't say my attitude towards people is not influenced by my judgments. But there is little reason to force ourselves to like everybody we met. I actually know such a person who tries to like every single human being he encounters and to not judge at all in any sense. That is barely a positive attitude of existence, being judgmental here if I may.

I judge because I am made of principles. Those principles emerge and change along with my growing-up, my education and my life experiences. My recognition of this world is based on fitting my perceptions to my principles, which forms my process of judging. Hence I read good and bad, right and wrong, though which I interpret the world I am living in. Such interpretation offers me awareness of my own existence.

However, judgment can indeed be shallow and superficial as people say. My big-worded discussion of me being judgmental doesn't me any better in this matter. I am wrong all the time, especially when it comes down to the judgment of a person. There is nothing more exciting and more surprising than a living human being can be. So I always stand corrected. It is rather exciting to update my judgment about a person and refreshing my knowledge of their nature.

So, if you know me, unfortunately, you've been judged. Yet am I judged as well? what will my label be?

Simply No Sleep Tonight

I haven't been doing this for a while, working without sleep. To be honest, I need my sleep. I can't do that much overnights now. This is such a strong evidence of aging. Six years ago, I normally did my exam revision for a few nights, went to the exam directly and had a sleep afterwards. I did my Probability and Statistics exam in that way and still had a mark of 98 out of 100. I was good. A few nights without sleep wouldn’t have any effects on me at all back then. Now, I might as well just call the next day off.

But I have nothing on my schedule tomorrow. The weather is going to be upsetting, says the forecast. Stronger wind and shower give me no initiative to venture to my office tomorrow. I think I will take it easy. I am attempted to go down the city again but probably still have to see what the weather suggests.

I was going to do some work in the evening. As I am moaning here now, I think we all know how that went. A friend online told me he was playing Guild Wars, a good online game, which totally stimulated my desire of gaming. I dare not to start my online gaming again, too addictive. So I spent a few hours playing the arcade simulator. I also wanted to write something comforting for another friend who was a little blue recently. Unfortunately, I found myself totally incompetent to do so and ended up sending him some rubbish. Hopefully, he will get a laugh on my stupidity and take his mind off the troubles for a minute or two. Then, here I am, midnight, works undone.

However, like most of other scholar you might see (is it just fun to call myself a scholar), I actually like to work nights. Nights are quite and offer much less distractions. I do find it much easier to concentrate. Moreover, I have got huge piles of work to finish now. Besides my thesis, I still have 6000 words worth of casual work to finish in ten days.

How could I leave so many works undone till now? I think I have recovered from my ‘low phase’ that is a period of time I feel low for all kinds of ridiculous reasons and use them as the excuses to skip work, exercise and any other things that are supposed to be good to me. I am proudly to say that it is gone for now, though I have no idea when it will return. I might just use tonight as a start to get some work done first seriously.

Coffee is ready.

The picture is taken by Rob, where http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinlondon gives more