清晨阳光明媚，在紫禁城北墙下，倾视护城河中西北角塔楼倒影。阳光透过翠绿
的垂柳，投射到河心，使得水面波光闪烁。那轮廓模糊的倒影，仿佛也在日光下
添加了几分清幽的光彩⋯⋯

Words : Chinese : 我们应当留住历史

Uploaded an old Chinese essay from 2005, written a few months before the Yulan one. I wanted to upload another one that I wrote one year ago, but I couldn’t find it on my computer. It’s strange, I have the folder and all researches associated with the paper but just not the actual paper. I hope that I didn’t accidentally delete it (I spent so much time/effort on writing it). I will have to check my old desktop when I go back home during Winter Break.

Fall Break is coming up this weekend, so I’m waiting…and waiting. I got unreasonably excited about planning out my next 2 weeks this afternoon. I was originally going to take a 30-40 min nap before my last class, but somehow I ended up spending the whole time on writing in my planner…crazy. So now the time slots for my next week or two are completely filled with things-to-do in different color writings — I doubt I’ll be able to accomplish half of them though.

Well, again I got very distracted this evening while studying…so I still haven’t finished going over the notes for Thursday’s Classical Studies exam, which I should have started studying for last week instead of today. All the distractions are due to the anticipation of designing multiple websites (that will hopefully happen, at least according to my planner) during this Fall Break. In addition to my personal goal of trying to revive this blog (and make a new layout for it), I got surprising offers to join several organizations on campus as webmaster/designer. I haven’t done web design in a while, and I’ve never considered myself as a good designer, so I was shocked upon receiving those offers. I still don’t get how some of the people who recommended me knew that I can build websites (and I’m positive that they have never visited K-net). Strange.

Self-reminders:
1. Rewrite theme to fit the new WP version
2. Or…make a new theme? (not sure how long that will take)
3. Change site name…

Edit// As much as I wanted to get my own theme, I’m afraid that this site will be stuck with the simple WP default until later next week… I just realized that I have a paper due for Ecology & Evolution (the same day I have an exam in that class…I can’t believe the professor scheduled that), and bunch of chapters to read for Plant Community of NC, in addition to the two exams coming up next week. Grrr. The real problem is that I’m going on a three day field trip to the coastal plain this weekend (for my plant class), so I doubt that I’ll get any work done during it. Well…I hope that the weather will be nice and hot, so at least I’d be able to go swimming, or if we have break times, I might get to go canoing! We’ll be staying at the Duke Marine Lab at Beaufort, NC, where I took my Summer Term I last year. I had so much fun back then, so despite all the works, I’m glad that I’ll be returning to Beaufort. =)

This blog, and I suspect the whole Kaiyosei network, have been getting way too much spam: WP Akismet caught 1400 spam messages in the past 15 days alone, unbelievable. I’m considering switching to a new host server (not exactly when that’ll happen), perhaps that will ease down the spamming a bit…

Although the trip was too short for us to really enjoy it, I had fun, it was the first time I visited Miami and Key West — I rarely go outside when I’m home in Tampa, and I haven’t really traveled around in FL since I’ve moved here.

In the Everglades
We went on a boat tour. The tour guide told us that there are several manatee habitats in the Everglades, in fact, during the winter, the Everglades is the only place where manatees can be found in the U.S. However, we waited and waited, and saw no emergence of manatees, I suppose the weather’s probably too cold on that day so the manatees stayed beneath the surface, and the boat probably scared them away. All in all, we were unlucky, and I was very disappointed… Since it was cold and very windy, I was mostly hiding under my thick coat and blinded my wild wind-blown hair throughout the tour, and also the stupid me forgot the bring the battery charge for the camera (I took the only digital camera in the family to college), so the camera ran out of battery pretty quickly and we didn’t get so many pictures… Though, later on, we encountered a lot of dolphins — first two single dolphins each on their separate fish-hunt, then two groups of dolphins playing together (I think there was 5 dolphins total), we saw a small new-born dolphin along with its parents, too!! That was awesome, my first time seeing dolphins in nature. =) After the tour, we drove to this river along which aligators gathered. Again, due to the weather there weren’t many aligators. Last time I came in the summer (or spring/fall), I saw at least 20-30 aligators around this one region of the river, it was so cool and scary at the same time, I was too afraid to get off the car to take pictures of them, hehe, because some of them were just meters away on the shore…

In Miami
Miami was beautiful! (The hotel was so expensive though.) We eat a great dinner, and then walked around the South Beach area, went into the stores there — the window-shopping was fun. It was there that I decided that if I were to take the MCAT and go to Medical School in the future, I’ll do it for the money, so that I can buy expensive designer clothes and accessories… Haha, that’s a great goal to me at least, since I absolutely love shopping and cannot ever live without it.

The Florida Keys
The sea was unimaginably clear and blue, the white sand so clean. I’d definitely return here again. I wanted to go kayaking, however, we didn’t have enough time (and we didn’t make reservations beforehand). So we just drove to Key West and visited some of the historical sites there. Time passed quickly, it was already turning dark while we were still walking along the streets of Key West. Hoping to catch a glance of the sunset, we drove out to look for a good place by the sea where we can see the sunset. Unfortunately, our luck ran out again — the weather turned bad in less than 30 mins, darks clouds covered the sky and blocked the beautiful view of the sunset. =’( We couldn’t see anything at all…

And…Today (unrelated to the above trip)
I went to the beach with my parents and cousins and aunt/uncle. At a pier, my cousin and I saw an injured brown pelican, its left wing was tangled up in fishing line, as a result it was unable to fly. It was incredibly painful to watch the poor pelican struggling to open and lift its wings but couldn’t, in the end it just slowly drifted away into the ocean, it probably won’t survive the next few days… My cousin was almost in tears and kept asking us if we can go save the pelican, however, we didn’t have access to a boat, so all we could do was to watch… =’(

Also, since I was taking all science courses, and no humanity courses, my language skills had been on a straight decline (as you may be able to tell from reading this entry). I think I’ve gotten more moody due to the studying, and when I’m not in a good mood (which is almost constantly) I tend to avoid people and don’t speak, so ending up with even less opportunities to practice my English — and Chinese. My new friends have been constantly teasing me about my bad English/Chinese lately…it’s really annoy, but I deserved it. So I’m planning to read a lot and practice speaking this Winter Break…just to prove them wrong after I get back on campus.

I think one of the reason that I was somewhat depressed this past semester was because I lived in a dorm relatively far away from my old group of close friends (from last year), where as all of them (except one) lived in the same dorm. So they got to spent a lot of time together and I felt left out… I rarely know what they are talking about anymore, and they stopped calling me for hanging out times…(well, my best friend’s phone was broken for the whole semester and she’s even more of a study-freak than me, I can never find her on weekends). Well…it’s part of my fault too, I should have visited them more — this will be one thing I’m planning to do in the Spring semester.

Another reason could be that I pretty much ignored my websites for the whole semester… So besides studying, I didn’t have a hobby that I could otherwise engage in to relax. Hmm…I think I need more hobbies. I should pick up drawing and crafting again, they are time-consuming but definitely worth doing in refining one’s life.

I’m still (perhaps even more) addicted to the internet… I spent too much time reading fanfictions… T_T Fanfics don’t help me in my language skills since most of them are easy to read and don’t require much thinking, and I usually skim through the whole fanfiction really fast since I can’t wait to know the ending… Well, I suppose I need to change this too.

Hm, I can’t wait till New Year, I think I will have a quite long new year resolution this time.

P.S. All those nights of studying didn’t pay off at all, I was pretty disappointed, considering last semester I didn’t study as much but did a lot better in my classes.

INTRO BIOCHEMISTRY I — A
CELL & DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY — B+
CONTEMPORARY CHINESE CULTURE — A-
GENERAL PHYSICS II — A

(I was surprised in getting an A in Physics, and so mad that I still couldn’t get an A in Chinese class…)

~Peace until the end of December.

Yeah I know that I’m always so slow on posting and everything, even though I’ve been thinking of writing this post for the past several weeks, I’ve just made my mind to do it today… Sorry!

Well, first, photos taken in Beaufort, NC, where I took the Summer Term I. In the first week I was there, my class went on a boat to the Outer Banks, which’s only accessible by boats and ferries. It was fun. For a part of the trip, the boat was going really fast, it was almost flying — most of the students left the deck to go inside the boat since it was really rough, but I stayed outside. The boat was rocking hard and I couldn’t stand, had to sit down and hold on tight to the ground to keep from falling off…haha. Awesome. Then there was several big weaves and everyone on the deck (including me) got soaked. Hehe.

After the exam, my parents drove up to Beaufort and on the morning before we left, my dad and I canoed to the island near the campus to see wild horses. As soon as we got on the island we saw horse feces and hoof prints. We walked around for awhile but didn’t see anything at all. But when we went more inside the island and couldn’t see the beach at all, we saw a small family of horses in the distance, they were going into the bushes, dad said that where they spend the nights, “their homes”. We tried to go near the horses, and then all of a sudden, a lake came into view (it was hidden behind thick bushes), and there were a lot of horses!! We were so lucky.

We took a lot of pictures while hiding in the shade of a nearby bush. Then, an amazing thing happened — a group of wild horses walked toward and passed us to go the lake, they runned for a while too. And when they walked right in front of our hiding place — they were 2-3 meters away (!!) — one of the horses stopped, we thought that it was a female. I was trying to take a picture of her but my dad stopped me, he was scared because the wild horses could easily hurt us, so we held our breathes until the horse started walking again… Phew, what a moment!

Here are photos taken in New York. I thought that the sign in China town was funny, a lot of other tourists were taking a picture of it too. I should take more notices of such things when I next visit China, hehe. My cousin was taking my parents and I around the city, and we saw this cafe. Since my cousin graduated from Duke, and I’m attending the university right now, we was interested in how the name came about. We went inside and didn’t see anything noticable that would indicate its origin, but we didn’t want to ask the workers there, we’d probably be sounding stupid if we do.

Oh, by the way, I got disqualified for my driver license practical test!! Haha, my friends would be laughing so much if they found out… I messed up while backing up the car — looked into the front mirror too much when I’m supposed to look back only. I still feel not safe only looking back, though… I don’t know, I just think it’s always better to look both ways… Oh well! I think one of the main reason I didn’t pass is because I had no motivation whatsoever — I don’t particular like driving, and ever since I was little, I always wanted to be drived around, not actually do the driving… Haha.

I’m tired of my job and wishing everyday that I can just stay home or go somewhere to relax. I’m not sure if that’s what I really wanted, either. My job does not require too much work, or more often, any work at all. Since I’m only helping out instead of having my own research project like before, and my mentor (the scientist I’m working with) is so busy tha the rarely has time to give me tasks and explain to me the background informations, procedures…etc. My lack of things of do at work as also partly due to my lack of enthusiasm — I don’t always go up to ask for things to do. The lab supervisor scolded me this afternoon since I was just sitting around, reading a non-work-related novel. (Even though I thought that I heard from my mentor that it’s also my supervisor who told him to not le tme handle too serious or important experiments…which I think my mentor misunderstood as to not let me do much experiments at all.) I understand that I do not have many experiences and I tend to be clumsy and mess things up, but I still feel bad that I’m not doing anything. I’ve never had this much free time at work (perhaps this is why I’m so bored). Despite my current reluctance to come to work, this job was my decision in the beginning, and now I feel that I’m letting my supervisor down since I’m basically taking his money for doing nothing! This would be much better if I’m just volunteering instead of getting paid. In fact, I don’t care about money right now, I just want to stay home, but of course I feel bad in quiting so soon. Personally, I feel like a failure. I’ve done research for five years (including this summer), since 1st year highschool, and four years I spent in this cancer research lab. Still, I feel that I have not learned anything. I’m always too lazy and hoping to get pass things without trying, but everything just backfires after a few years. Well, I wish that I’d be assigned a lot of work to do so that time would pass quicker and I’d be able to talk my supervisor into letting me go a week after my birthday (that’s around the 2nd week of August) so that I can finally enjoy a few weeks of relaxing, carefree time that I was so looking forward to since long before the beginning of summer.