Aey....

Somehow I feel that there is tension around my chest as if some air is trapped and cannot be removed. A day without a maniac boss around is not as stressful as the days when she was here, but the post-stress cause by her presence is pretty tensional. I do blame her for taking away the fun of work at the centre. Banning the table viciously with death penalty face when she saw us having a brief discussion in an observation. Savaging people with her power being an boss when she realized she has not sufficient knowledge in discussing any academic issues. Anyway, so glad that she is away and I will try to enjoy my work for only a couple of days without her in presence in the office.

Almost have spent the whole two hours of time watching Youtube videos. Somehow, just by watching other writers' stories, that made me feel comforted. My fear towards writing is explicit in other's words. I feel I become no more vulnerable although in fact I still am.
I don't remember which video says so but it gave my neglect ion a touch :" when you don't how to write or what to write, go to experience something and live a life." I forgets to live my life especially when i am getting emotionally low and defeated. The experience with Alice, my boss, was not comparing to traumatic events like death or separation with your love but it was pretty anxiety related, bad energy generated. I don't hate her any more but want to keep far far away from her.

Asian Film Award, what a dissapointment!

Briefly glanced at the Asian Film Award ceremony last night, I could sense that how odd the live situation can be. There were sitting some excellent actors and actresses off the stage, on the stage a single male host presenting every now and then different awarding guests who seemed to have no passion of what they are doing there, not matter how good they tried to act like a pretty one, not until the best actor and actress were awarded, I had to turn off the TV since it made me feel bored and close disgusted. It seems to me that they would like to copy from the Oscar, but didn't have strong culture to back up this. Therefore, the whole ceremony looked like a typical amertuer work. Asian film without Asian identity. Tanwei didn't attend this award. Through online news I only realised that Tang Wei was boycotted in China, her ads was boycotted, no more film roles for her inside China, and I hope she was not 'imprisoned'. I imagine that it were around cultural revolutionary time, she would for sure end up staying in prison for this. Luckily, that horrifying time was over. Stupid, isn't it? for the stupid political reason, a excellent actress is baned to act. I doubted she had any motive for free speech but acting what was in the history. The government and maybe the masses in China are not ready to listen to opinions other than their own on history. I guess the government wanted to warn everyone else who has attempt to try out any "unpatriotic role" like the role of "Wang Xiang Zhi" in Lust and Caution Tang Wei played. Certainly the communist part holds a very strong vision of and experience in exercising the power of film and literature. For the government, maybe it is something they have to do to protect their public image and glorious history in this current unstable Chinese society. However, how long their authoritarian parenting style can really work in the growing society of individualism. For Tangwei, never know if it means any positive or negative impact on her career or life. 塞翁失马，焉之非福。If I were her, I would make use of the money and time to study films in Europe, learn several languages and enjoy life there before anything would happen... Bless her...

Young children's reading

It is my dream coming true that I am paid to read and write on topics I care about and am interested in- child development in language. My current project have directed my attention back to children's foreign language learning as I used to teach young children English. The motivation of the research interests came from an experience my current boss encountered in a kindergarten in Beijing (She is very impulsive towards research ideas). Her partner in Beijing had a grand-daughter, who was learning English in the kindergarten, but the kid came back home with an aucward pronunciations (e.g. lesson becomes laison). From there, these academics realized how important to teach young children English properly. It is true that it is not the situation just solely belongs to one kindergarten, it is indeed many educators and parents' worry and anxiety. How to make young children bilingual and literate? Talking about literate, in this circumstances, it means reading and writing. In the understanding of child literacy development, reading is, at least in western society, recognized as the core and key to writing and composing. It is also true in the Chinese society, however the concept of reading is not as widely accepted as that is in the UK, US or any other western society. It is very dangerous that this statement may go far from reach. I had better stay still with just reading. Reading is seen important, and treated seriously in Chinese education. However, reading is somehow not encouraged or motivated. It is more of a task, a homework, it is not supposed to fun. Maybe it is too generalized, saying this may hurt many teachers' feelings. However, the reality is that reading for fun is never a culture. I still remember that how I was criticized for reading novels in my middle school, because it took too much of my study time. The situation may be different now, but I doubted that students nowadays have much more time reading for fun than before. What's the point of reading? especially reading for fun! Developmentally, reading for fun builds up one's fluency in reading, therefore the comprehension of the content of a book. Reading enriches one's language from vocabulary, syntactics to tones. Readers can replicate the talk from a story in their real life. In this case, reading is particularly more important for second language learners who particularly lives in an non-second language environment. Second language learners do not always have opportunities to communicate with people in the second language verbally, but reading a novel or even just a story provide them a context that shows how the second language is used. Through reading, the learner can also practice their language skills such as decoding and comprehension. Why reading is so important for children? Children learns from stories, children's literature is usually narrative with simple languages at the beginning. For young children starting to learn another language at age of 3 (true in Hong Kong and valid in many major cities inside China), reading is the most efficient source for the literacy development. Through reading, children will be able to get to know characters that was built in the stories and discuss about the character and things happened to the characters. What's more, children can act out the story or even retell the story. Therefore, reading is not just about reading anymore. Reading is a door to communication that will be eventually expressed through writing. More reason why children should start reading early...?

Sitting in front of my computer, my mind is packed with news on Tibetan protects, now it has developed into riots and my own research project. Like many people have projected that there must be some protects or riots against Chinese government happening around the Olympic time, a couple of weeks after Bejork cheekily hummed 'free Tibet' at the end of her concert, the Tibetans started their large scale protects over human rights and cultural invasion just over one hundred days before the Olympic day. To be independent is every one's dream and life-goals, it seems. Few people would say:" I would like to rely on someone else", maybe for a short period of time one would think it before they can be independent but it is unlikely to be one's claim for ever. The reality seems to me that no one can be completely independent from another, especially one who had close relationships with, physically, mentally, materialistically. I guess politics is a very different story, it is more about what small groups of people want over the mass. Maybe the small groups of people have more visions, otherwise China would not be China today, America would not be America today, the same with Great Britain, and the world would be much more peaceful, a big maybe! Only if we have the exact same standards, the exact same executives. Even so, there is so many uncontrollable variables... There is no way one standard can make every one feel it is fair... Fairness is just poetic word that expresses human being's good willingness. Like what is said in Animal Farm, some are more equal than the others... It is such a good spirit that equality becomes to every one's attention in life, but it has been taking western societies hundred and hundred years to fight for equality, given the fact that the equality is written in most western societies' constitution.
I don't really know how to continue saying what I will say about Tibetan monks' protects... What are they really protecting about? Really about human right? cultural invasion? or really about globalization, or the erosion of the human society...