hello?

So the password was correct. I am impressed. It's been a year since I typed anything here. That's what happens when someone gets really occupied- or simply turned to other blogging services. A lot's happened over the time but I might as well fastforward them all.

Looking forward to the long long train ride to Beijing tomorrow; will probably fly there for the Olympics in August.

Midi Festival has been cancelled but we are going anyway. Can't wait to see Ni and other fellows, Haidian Park for the first time and the Forbidden City for the second time. No Great Wall and Mao's corpse, thanks.

Oh by the way, this is lame and old but.. how I miss home. Back to papering now.  

I hardly recognize Xanga anymore.

Semester II began this week. A lot has happened and I really meant to keep a record of everything but oh well. Like, I finished the Cattle Depot Project and the artists-or-however-you-call-them were unexpectedly cool to be with. Like, the Cattle Depot Bookfair 2006 was a somewhat lonesome blast. Like, I stepped out of the plane, expecting the regular windtight passage directly to the boarding building, yet found myself on the dim, concrete parking apron of Beijing Airport on Christmas night; and the first welcome message as I turned on the cellphone reminded me that, the air I was breathing was at -1'C. Like, the two-hour train from Tianjin to Beijing steered behind schedule for over an hour on Jan, 1st. Like, I hadn't had such a good time with my mother in a long while. Oh yeah, travelling with mommy, as uncool as it sounds. Like, the train from the Capital to Guangzhou was comfortably nice. Like, winter break has just came to its cold end.

Anyway it only occurred to me that I have to write something because I need help.

She's been the weirdo among us but I never realized the severity until today. Bringing a flower or a mini bonsai to every class, wearing a Hello Kitty raincoat on a perfectly sunny summer afternoon, covering her face under sunglasses all the time, sitting on the ground cutting newspapers during an English class, moving to new dorms several times a semester, and her hysterical fashion of talking, she is in no way, ordinary. Oddly, I have no problem chatting with her whatsoever. There must be a reason for all this and it definitely intrigues me. Though it could simply be that her introversive nature was giving her a hard time fitting in here. Honestly I've always thought it was no big deal. Everyone has to go through his eccentric teen years, and sooner or later most of us are shaped into boring, decent, normal adults. 

However while talking to her today, her calm tone and superficially peaceful, sickly slow voice scared me. It sounded like she's been scathed too deep, like a confused puppy which has stopped resisting and protesting after being thrown into a strange cage for long enough a time. Even if her friends want to drag her back on track, it's impossible to ignore the looks in people's eyes. After all, just so she behaves differently, it doesn't mean she doesn't have a heart like the rest of us. It just can't go on like this. 

Now the problem is we don't know what can be done at all. Changing her personality would be ideal but is in fact impossible. Bringing out the sanity inside her shouldn't be so hard though. I know this is blah but she needs to be happy. And happiness we can't give. She must be haunted by unfriendly messages from our reactions, our judgemental guesses, our random gossips and all the awkward silence in between conversations. How can she ever understand that no one here actually hates her or anything, that we are actually ready to take her in, and all that she needs to do is simply relax? I mean, I can't just stand in her face and say, hey drop that damn flower and come back to the real world.

HK rocks, so far. I know this feeling will be gone soon though. Especially after my second third unsuccessful laundry experience. Why do washers hate me anyway?

I've managed to make a mess of my part of the room. My floormates are international. My roommate is a mainlander. We've just fed our mini fridge. It's feeling semi-home with all my junk stuffing the place. I've got used to comparing prices in the supermarket like those middle-aged housewives. Some teachers are great. The courses are all right. I need to do some budget control though. Next month I'll take with me just enough cash to get by. No more excuse to shop!!

There are some 130 Foundation Students so consequently I don't know all of them. Prof. Huang of the Journalism falcuty invited us to a dinner the other night, however a mysterious future classmate was nowhere to be found and missed the occasion. My impression besides the food was that Year 1 sounds exciting. And the greatest thing was that our Prof. is a friend of Mantao ahahahaha.

Since the foundation course is designed for mainland students, chances are we don't get to know students from other backgrounds in class. The university encourages us to attend hall activities including the Orientation Camp(or O'camp) and join different interest clubs. I don't know how you call O'camp, Mike says they call it the "Frosh Week" there, KatKat refers to it as "ice breaking games". Basically freshmen form groups and play games, get soaked, do the camp fire thing, do the investment games, and the craziest part was checkpoint. We rushed all over HK to accomplish various tasks, most of which were, hmm, entertaining. Have you ever taken off your shoes, entered the MTR, dropped them to the floor crying out, "I'm home!", and put them back on? Or drawn a watch on your wrist and said to a passerby, "Excuse me, my watch is out of order, may I know what time it is?" Some people may find lining up as a human train along Park Lane more embarrassing though. Oh and we've learnt a lot in the investment games: you can't keep all 6 coins standing in 1 minute; you can get 3 dices of the same number in 30 seconds; and Group 6's advice was: don't gamble.

O'night for mainland students tonight. I'm sleepy. Just updating for the record. When I look back one day I hope I'll remember how happy I've been at the very beginning of college life.

Currently Reading Meow the Cat see related

So I've been home since about two weeks ago, leaving again this Saturday midnight for Guangzhou, and school begins at the end of this month.

Summer is over for me.

I need to figure out how to make the most of the following two days, and stuff my to-do list into limited time: visit my grandma, check on my ex-cat, meet up with a few relatives, clean up the huge mess in my bedroom, fix my PC, cancel the internet connection, get a haircut, try the new ice-cream place, shop up and pack up. I don't see much sleep in the near future..

The thing is, this should be the "say-bye" time, but it doesn't feel like it.

I remember that night at Citic, Nana and I sat by the beach, watched the sea water eat up the sand we had just walked on, saw the faraway waves draw a long white line along the skyline and together crash to the shore, witnessed how the sea shapened the beach, and heaved the damp air. I remember exactly how nature awed us in the dark night; but I can't recall a word we said.

She slept over here last night, and this morning she said bye when I was still half asleep, then we'd be officially apart for don't-know-how-long.

I look around and it's not just Nana. The only special thing I do with some of my most precious friends always concerns eating. Looks like we've all forgotten about the plans we had for summer, or we're just pretending we still have time.

Anyway I love all these hasy farewells. Maybe I'm heartless.

And Meow the Cat is the cutest book I've ever received. I repeat, Russin Blues are beautiful.

Back to DSL, couldn't submit long entries with the wireless connection.

Entry on the Hunan trip later. Whoever prayed for us, it worked. The weather was perfect wherever we went. To unstable browsers: be aware of the coming photo attack. :P

Now that I see my future right in my face, it all seems so surreal. Maybe it's because I didn't aim too high in the very beginning, everything came as good news to me. I was happy enough to know XISU wants me in, later LingnanU and finally HKBU. If all goes well I'll be studying Chinese Journalism in HKBU's School of communication. Oh well sweet victory.  

Okay so far everything's been fine. However Prof. Huang suggested I take International Journalism instead of Chinese. So I changed my major.

LingnanU's interview was on July 4th, I didn't need to take that one, a week later the professor had a phone interview with me though. But Nana had to go to the interview so we accompanied her. It turned out all right, however she hasn't been accepted yet. We're waiting for the second list.

I took HKBU's interview and English test two days after that. Thank goodness I didn't do too much preparation for the interview, most questions were unexpected, and I have a feeling that it wasn't reciting written answers that they wanted to see. When it was over, I figured I wasn't at my best; there're only 130 places for thousands of mainland students; School of Communication was the most popular... So I was ready to go to Xi'an. Anyway my name showed up on the list. Now it's the visa thing we have to take care of. 

The Beijing trip is postponed. I'll be staying in Guangzhou for a while, can't rest my mind until all the forms are sent out. This time Nana is coming with us. We probably won't do much sightseeing to avoid the crowds. Any recommendations?

Most friends are not satisfied with their Gaokao scores. Fortunately many of them have been accepted to their schools of first choice. Wenqi said she sucked yet she's accepted by ZhongShan U.  The rest are waiting for admission.

I just heard CityU of HK is giving out full scholarship to students with scores over 737. A classmate back in junior high got half of it, she scored 734 or something; that is about RMB 200,000 Yuan. Yes I'm choking.

*Unnecessarily* having trouble with my high school. I had a good time there especially the first two years. But some people need to stop acting they are taking all the trouble for me. It wasn't I who wanted to apply for the award of blah-blah-blah. If it's soooo much of a hassle for them, why lectured me when I refused to apply in the first place? We've offered them at least three "NO's", there isn't much I can do if they insist on the application.

As for "how can you be disappointed with school after three years?" I don't know how, how about why? Mama knows I usually prefer happy endings. Well I've complained long ago, the whole office heard it. And clearly no one gave a damn. It's funny the side effects showed through after I make an 841 in English(2)... It proves the theory that if you're an average student, you simply don't have a say in a Chinese school. 

This school is huge and there are all kinds of people. I remember and thank those who enlightened me and gave me a helping hand in the three years. And those who had never heard of me before Gaokao, never seen me, never taught me, and forbad students from taking English(2) alone as an X subject can shut up. They probably forgot how they declared that our performances in English(2), good or bad, would have nothing to do with the school since they don't encourage us to take it, nor do they have standard courses for it as other subjects. All of a sudden my scores have something to do with them after all, but they do keep in mind less-than-perfect performances are none of their business.

I miss Nini.