Love at First Web Site
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
This is great (I think):http://thegirlincircles.blogspot.com/ although I was lost after the first two sentences.
¶ 20:32 0 Comments
Monday, June 23, 2008
P.S. I was a little bit pissed in that Fondue Party photo
¶ 21:28 0 Comments
Cracking jokes at work and laughing at them alot
I have begun inventing movie titles at work.
One of the computers at reception has a crappy mouse, one of those ones where the arrow flies to the other corner of the screen for no reason (very irritating when using Excel).
I called it "The Curse of the Flying Mouse." Ok, so not that funny, but it's funny if you laugh at it for long enough. Laughter is contagious, you know.
The next was a bit funnier. Check out my school's website: www. sydney. oise. com
The girls in head office in the UK have been making changes at our direction to this website. They have created a work in progress "Social Life" page, and called it "Social Life 2", and have left the original Social Life page there as well. Us girls here in Sydney got annoyed that they captioned one photo of Bondi Beach "Bondy Beach" and another one "The Bondi Beach."
So this week's movie title is: "Social Life 2: Return to Bondy Beach"...
HAHAHAHAHHAA I laughed for ages while my colleagues briefly smiled. But they at least got it.
Ok bye! ¶ 21:19 0 Comments
I have begun inventing movie titles at work.
One of the computers at reception has a crappy mouse, one of those ones where the arrow flies to the other corner of the screen for no reason (very irritating when using Excel).
I called it "The Curse of the Flying Mouse." Ok, so not that funny, but it's funny if you laugh at it for long enough. Laughter is contagious, you know.
The next was a bit funnier. Check out my school's website: www. sydney. oise. com
The girls in head office in the UK have been making changes at our direction to this website. They have created a work in progress "Social Life" page, and called it "Social Life 2", and have left the original Social Life page there as well. Us girls here in Sydney got annoyed that they captioned one photo of Bondi Beach "Bondy Beach" and another one "The Bondi Beach."
So this week's movie title is: "Social Life 2: Return to Bondy Beach"...
HAHAHAHAHHAA I laughed for ages while my colleagues briefly smiled. But they at least got it.
Ok bye! ¶ 21:19 0 Comments
Saturday, June 21, 2008
It's a beautiful day today. Rainy weather gets me down. I really shouldn't move to London if that ever happens in the next five years or so. Maybe sleep on Kuba's couch (or somewhere else) for a summer then move on to Mallorca or some other sunny place. Maybe Fiji. I wonder what jobs there are in Fiji. Kubus is in Poland at the moment no doubt having an absolute blast catching up with his friends. So happy for him, yet so sad that I'm not there having a blast with him :-(
That is all!
Oh wait. Tonight I'm having birthday drinks in Newtown and I really need to pluck my eyebrows. ¶ 14:54 0 Comments
That is all!
Oh wait. Tonight I'm having birthday drinks in Newtown and I really need to pluck my eyebrows. ¶ 14:54 0 Comments
Thursday, June 12, 2008
This website is very inspiring: http://creativewritingprompts.com/
I've got a good writing prompt I just made up myself. I just saw an ad on tv for life insurance. One of the conditions was that "suicide is not covered for the first thirteen months".
Ok, so are there actually people out there who take out life insurance before they commit suicide? Why 13 months? Is 13 months the average amount of time that it takes to change your mind, worked out by an evil genius-like actuary professional?
That is all.
Otherwise, life is grand and I took a day off work today and really relaxed. Finally sent Kuba the photos I had been meaning to send him, and wrote back to my German penpal. Experienced nostalgia for penpalling. Remembered my passionate letter-writing. I used to receive up to 5 every afternoon. Used to go down to the letter box and check, knowing there'd be letters for me from Americans, Germans, French, Italians.
Fantasised that I would become the next Virginia Woolf (the full package, of course) and my detailed and heart-felt recounts of my day to day life at age 15 would be auctioned off for millions long after my death! Actually I wouldn't mind reading all those letters I sent out week by week. I wonder where they are right now. In a little shoe box under someone's bed in a caravan on a property in Virginia (not unlikely - I had such a penpal.)
But email killed the penpalling star.
I met two of my German penpals during my trip to Germany. Last year, one of them sent me a letter after a 7-year hiatus. She is currently studying graphic design and living at home. I don't think she's ever had a full time job yet. I reflected on how I have changed while writing in my letter today that my trip to Asia wasn't successful, I was down, and was rethinking my career. Age 24. This is what we write letters about now. At least, what I write letters about now. My penpalling hobby peaked at a time of 'social failure' during my first year at Gossy High. If breaking into a new crowd is hit or miss, I missed, and it took me a year and half to make some genuine friends. My friends were my penpals, and I explained my life to them in lots of detail. My penpals liked my letters. It's true. Writing again today, it all flooded back. The passion is gone, but I at least realised that I had once had it.
I kept a stash of girly stationery, a supply of stamps, girly stickers to stick at various positions around the envelope, postcards and even aerogrammes and other miscellaneous letter-writing goods. I was a full-time letter writer. I would sit at my desk writing a letter to a penpal in France, and Mel, standing in the hallway looking in to my room while on the phone to a friend, would tell them that her little sister was reading the French dictionary again. (By the HSC French exam, it had been a long time since I had written a letter in French. The inspiration was gone!)
Could I take up letter writing again? What about turning up to parties and telling people your favourite hobby is penpalling?
So if I started again... Are there people out there who still do it? How do I 'break' back into it? As a 14 year old, there's no harm in writing someone a letter introducing yourself to them and asking them if you want to be their penpal. It was just fun. But as adults, is there a different etiquette involved? I think I should look into it. And if I do turn up to parties and tell people that my biggest hobby is writing to penpals, well, so be it. ¶ 17:28 0 Comments
I've got a good writing prompt I just made up myself. I just saw an ad on tv for life insurance. One of the conditions was that "suicide is not covered for the first thirteen months".
Ok, so are there actually people out there who take out life insurance before they commit suicide? Why 13 months? Is 13 months the average amount of time that it takes to change your mind, worked out by an evil genius-like actuary professional?
That is all.
Otherwise, life is grand and I took a day off work today and really relaxed. Finally sent Kuba the photos I had been meaning to send him, and wrote back to my German penpal. Experienced nostalgia for penpalling. Remembered my passionate letter-writing. I used to receive up to 5 every afternoon. Used to go down to the letter box and check, knowing there'd be letters for me from Americans, Germans, French, Italians.
Fantasised that I would become the next Virginia Woolf (the full package, of course) and my detailed and heart-felt recounts of my day to day life at age 15 would be auctioned off for millions long after my death! Actually I wouldn't mind reading all those letters I sent out week by week. I wonder where they are right now. In a little shoe box under someone's bed in a caravan on a property in Virginia (not unlikely - I had such a penpal.)
But email killed the penpalling star.
I met two of my German penpals during my trip to Germany. Last year, one of them sent me a letter after a 7-year hiatus. She is currently studying graphic design and living at home. I don't think she's ever had a full time job yet. I reflected on how I have changed while writing in my letter today that my trip to Asia wasn't successful, I was down, and was rethinking my career. Age 24. This is what we write letters about now. At least, what I write letters about now. My penpalling hobby peaked at a time of 'social failure' during my first year at Gossy High. If breaking into a new crowd is hit or miss, I missed, and it took me a year and half to make some genuine friends. My friends were my penpals, and I explained my life to them in lots of detail. My penpals liked my letters. It's true. Writing again today, it all flooded back. The passion is gone, but I at least realised that I had once had it.
I kept a stash of girly stationery, a supply of stamps, girly stickers to stick at various positions around the envelope, postcards and even aerogrammes and other miscellaneous letter-writing goods. I was a full-time letter writer. I would sit at my desk writing a letter to a penpal in France, and Mel, standing in the hallway looking in to my room while on the phone to a friend, would tell them that her little sister was reading the French dictionary again. (By the HSC French exam, it had been a long time since I had written a letter in French. The inspiration was gone!)
Could I take up letter writing again? What about turning up to parties and telling people your favourite hobby is penpalling?
So if I started again... Are there people out there who still do it? How do I 'break' back into it? As a 14 year old, there's no harm in writing someone a letter introducing yourself to them and asking them if you want to be their penpal. It was just fun. But as adults, is there a different etiquette involved? I think I should look into it. And if I do turn up to parties and tell people that my biggest hobby is writing to penpals, well, so be it. ¶ 17:28 0 Comments
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Breaking News: The Middle Kingdom Shuns the World
China watchers never fail to mention at the beginning of their travel memoirs or China novels that the word for China, Zhong Guo, literally translates as 'Middle Kingdom.' In fact, you get sick of hearing it. It has taken me over five years to truly appreciate what it really means, and just why it is always the first point that is made.
I have never found it easy to have what I consider a 'normal' conversation with my Taiwanese/Chinese friends. They say one thing, they mean another. You say one thing, you mean one thing, but they think you mean another. And so helpless confusion follows.
In Taiwan last week, just seeing my friends again after four years solidifies what may have previously been more superficial foreign-guest-in-Taiwan friendships to something of more meaning. You could feel it, especially with Jeccy, who I spent time with in Shanghai as well. And I am so very grateful that I have reached such a point with any local Taiwanese person I knew in Taiwan.
So this time, I decided to try to be honest about the differences in communiation style between Westerners and Chinese and talk to them about it. I have always found the Chinese to be ridiculously polite, sometimes to the point of absurdity. So to each of my Taiwanese friends, I talked about how in Australia, when someone offers you something, you either say 'yes' or 'no' and leave it at that, whereas in Taiwan, they offer three times and you decline three times, before you finally decide whether you want to accept whatever it is. I felt confident that with Hans, who speaks unusually good English with natural intonation and therefore makes you feel at ease to express yourself, would be able to have a normal discussion with me about this topic. What I found was that rather than acknowledging that there was a difference between two equal cultures, in his reponse he implied, without saying it outright, that it is not that there is a difference that should be respected between the two cultures, but that all other cultures are simply not as polite as the Chinese. Being ridiculously polite, as I would call it, is a sign of sophistication, which outside cultures have yet to attain. The implication is that sophistication equals culture, and because noone is as sophisticated as the Chinese, Chinese culture is in fact the 'only' culture. Even looking at it that way makes me feel as though we foreigners are indeed lacking something of that. Chinese cultural arrogance is fierce and those who never felt neither proud nor unproud of their own culture, would be extremely vulnerable to believing that Chinese culture is indeed superior to their own, just through not having the arrogance to match that of the Chinese. The Chinese lack of respect or appreciation for other cultures is in fact not a stereotype that foreigners make of the Chinese. It is completely true. They can be the nicest, most educated people in the world, but this feeling of cultural superiority is deeply ingrained into the Chinese mentality, and unless you are ready to be made to feel ashamed that your own culture is not as good as theirs, then I would recommend that you go to China with a thick skin, and remain ignorant to all of this, if it means not reaching a level of friendship with your well-intentioned Chinese friends that you would with any other friends.
China or Taiwan, therefore, offers a bizarre experience when making friends. You are approached as a celebrity and then played with like a toy with your occidental appearance and your ghastly height and build. Later, when you have broken ground with your hosts and have reached a certain level of familiarity, it dawns on you, once their cultural arrogance becomes apparent, that they consider themselves condescending to be your friend the whole time. Not condescending as we would use to the term, but condescending in the way that in the back of their minds, they will always perceive you as less cultured and less sophisticated as themselves and their countrymen despite their good intentions. It is a commonly observed fact that the Chinese consider many foreigners to be naive and gullible. This accounts for the directness in our communication style, and whereas we consider this honesty to be a virtue, they consider it to be a lack of finesse.
God help me. I majored in Chinese Studies. What now? ¶ 14:08 0 Comments
China watchers never fail to mention at the beginning of their travel memoirs or China novels that the word for China, Zhong Guo, literally translates as 'Middle Kingdom.' In fact, you get sick of hearing it. It has taken me over five years to truly appreciate what it really means, and just why it is always the first point that is made.
I have never found it easy to have what I consider a 'normal' conversation with my Taiwanese/Chinese friends. They say one thing, they mean another. You say one thing, you mean one thing, but they think you mean another. And so helpless confusion follows.
In Taiwan last week, just seeing my friends again after four years solidifies what may have previously been more superficial foreign-guest-in-Taiwan friendships to something of more meaning. You could feel it, especially with Jeccy, who I spent time with in Shanghai as well. And I am so very grateful that I have reached such a point with any local Taiwanese person I knew in Taiwan.
So this time, I decided to try to be honest about the differences in communiation style between Westerners and Chinese and talk to them about it. I have always found the Chinese to be ridiculously polite, sometimes to the point of absurdity. So to each of my Taiwanese friends, I talked about how in Australia, when someone offers you something, you either say 'yes' or 'no' and leave it at that, whereas in Taiwan, they offer three times and you decline three times, before you finally decide whether you want to accept whatever it is. I felt confident that with Hans, who speaks unusually good English with natural intonation and therefore makes you feel at ease to express yourself, would be able to have a normal discussion with me about this topic. What I found was that rather than acknowledging that there was a difference between two equal cultures, in his reponse he implied, without saying it outright, that it is not that there is a difference that should be respected between the two cultures, but that all other cultures are simply not as polite as the Chinese. Being ridiculously polite, as I would call it, is a sign of sophistication, which outside cultures have yet to attain. The implication is that sophistication equals culture, and because noone is as sophisticated as the Chinese, Chinese culture is in fact the 'only' culture. Even looking at it that way makes me feel as though we foreigners are indeed lacking something of that. Chinese cultural arrogance is fierce and those who never felt neither proud nor unproud of their own culture, would be extremely vulnerable to believing that Chinese culture is indeed superior to their own, just through not having the arrogance to match that of the Chinese. The Chinese lack of respect or appreciation for other cultures is in fact not a stereotype that foreigners make of the Chinese. It is completely true. They can be the nicest, most educated people in the world, but this feeling of cultural superiority is deeply ingrained into the Chinese mentality, and unless you are ready to be made to feel ashamed that your own culture is not as good as theirs, then I would recommend that you go to China with a thick skin, and remain ignorant to all of this, if it means not reaching a level of friendship with your well-intentioned Chinese friends that you would with any other friends.
China or Taiwan, therefore, offers a bizarre experience when making friends. You are approached as a celebrity and then played with like a toy with your occidental appearance and your ghastly height and build. Later, when you have broken ground with your hosts and have reached a certain level of familiarity, it dawns on you, once their cultural arrogance becomes apparent, that they consider themselves condescending to be your friend the whole time. Not condescending as we would use to the term, but condescending in the way that in the back of their minds, they will always perceive you as less cultured and less sophisticated as themselves and their countrymen despite their good intentions. It is a commonly observed fact that the Chinese consider many foreigners to be naive and gullible. This accounts for the directness in our communication style, and whereas we consider this honesty to be a virtue, they consider it to be a lack of finesse.
God help me. I majored in Chinese Studies. What now? ¶ 14:08 0 Comments
