She is good at everything, except finding the cheese...

I went to Emilie's concert at City Hall on Wednesday.

She is not only a great singer, but also a talented writer.

Read her blog here.

Here is a poem Emilie recently wrote:

(This poem is in Cantonese, and is rhyme with "-au" and "-aau")

有時候

人叫劉

放學後

去長洲

有時候

人叫劉

在酒樓

見朋友

有時候

人叫劉

吃鳳爪

說可口

有時候

人叫劉

喝紅酒

快睡覺

有時候

人叫劉

然之後

痛苦頭

How do you say this in Cantonese?

After a few attempts to say this sentence during their lesson, Brian and Richard almost thought that it was a mistake to start learning Cantonese!

"The ghost of my expensive turtle is sometimes strange, and sometimes well-behaved."




Hints:

Ghost: gwái

Expensive: gwai

Turtle: gwāi

Strange: gwaai

Well-behaved: gwāai


Have fun :-)

Under The Hawthorn Tree

“我不能等你一年零一个月了，我也不能等你到二十五岁了，但是我会等你一辈子。”

“我不能等你一年零一個月了，我也不能等你到二十五歲了，但是我會等你一輩子。”

This was the line that first moved Zhang Yimou. You need to watch the film before you can understand it.

"Under The Hawthorn Tree" is the latest film directed by Zhang. The film was based on a true love story during the Cultural Revolution in China.

I was moved by the film,

more than once.

An Empty Glass with Happiness

An Empty Glass with Happiness

空杯子的幸福

我常常去我房子对面的餐馆，

是一种习惯。

工作后我很累，

想喝酒一杯。

那个时候，

没有做菜的理由。

我穿舒服的衣服，

慢慢走路。

买半只鸡，一碗玉米，

一杯啤酒，我想这就是

世界上最足够的幸福。

都在转眼间，

但是我看见

微光里一种热情的招待。

一个人和自己温暖的宴会，

一瞬间结束，

剩余空杯子和幸福。

Ji Hoon was asked by me to write a poem with rhyme, I fell in love with it when he read it to me...

We are supposed to talk about this in class tomorrow, but I don't think he will mind if I share it with you now!

This is his poem with a few lines changed by me. I hope he likes my title.

禾口

In the book Eat, Pray, Love, Gilbert's friend mentioned that every city has a word. Rome's is "sex," the Vatican's is "power", and New York's is "achieve".

How about countries? A recent article in Wall Street Journal discussed what Chinese character reflected China the most.

It's 和.

If 和 is separated into two parts, they are 禾and口. 禾and 口 mean crop and mouth respectively. Every "mouth" is fed by "crop"-no one is starving. It seems match with the communist ideas quite well. (but is China still a communist country?)

和hé means "peace" , "harmony" and many others. 家和万事兴,和气生财and以和为贵are both Chinese sayings emphasising how important 和is. It brings you good luck and wealth. It is a virtue. Interestingly enough, these sayings tell us the promises of 和, but not many sayings out there show us how we can maintain it.

Maybe it's not about HOW, maybe it's all about the MUST to maintain it. One of the ways to maintain 和 is to punish any "act disturbing the peace of the society".

In some contexts, 和 is also pronounced as huò, it means "mix" and "blend". There are 56 ethnic groups and more than 6 religions in China, the meanings "mix" and "blend", to some extent, seems to reflect the reality quite well.

Though, I think it would be nice to have some "mixed VOICES" in China.

A poem that makes no sense, but...

makes you laugh! (hopefully)

One Saturday in September, Jun Wen got fed up with his school work, so we decided to do something more interesting:

(The poem is in Mandarin, and is rhyme with '-a')




我家有一个爸爸，
我家有一个妈妈。
我爸喜欢喝茶，
我妈喜欢吹喇叭。
妈吹喇叭，
爸就在地上乱爬，
爸吹喇叭，
感到尴尬。
因为他一吹，
妈就大骂，
妈大骂，
连鸟儿也乱爬。
对他们俩，
我简直没办法，
使弟弟想自杀，
妹妹很怕。
凡是我们在吵架，
奶奶就会说停一下。
妈妈感到尴尬，
低头坐下，
爸爸脸火辣辣，
开门离家。
弟弟感到内疚，
便去吃麻辣。
好好的一家，
到底在干吗？

Hope to read your (silly) poems in the future.
Think you are not creative enough?
Maybe all you need is an opportunity!

Language Style

In the summer of 2008, my friends and I went to Los Angeles to attend a friend's graduation ceremony. After staying in the same house for more than ten days, we acted, and talked each other. I remembered one of my favourite questions at that time was "really?", soon it became everyone's favourite question too.

It was a happy summer.

According to new research from psychologists at The University of Texas at Austin, mimicking other's language style shows a happy relationship. A psychology professor and a psychology graduate student teamed up to find out how people's language styles could affect each other, and how the language styles tell us about the relationship between two people. The happier the two people are in their relationship, the closer their language styles are. The researchers are now trying to analyse whether language style matching can be used to predict the beginning and end of romantic relationships.

Do you think a relationship stage can be truly revealed through analysing the language styles of the two people?