Questions and answers

"No."

If the questions are -
Whether I get the scholarship.
Whether I feel regretful after spending much time and energy contacting through 104 emails.
Whether I will punish myself and think if it's because I am not good enough.

I seldom cry. I can't even recall when the last time I cried was. But I admit when I checked the school website this afternoon and found out that my name wasn't on it, I could feel some warm liquid was trying really hard to blur my eyes.

I totally understood those words my friends tried to enlighten and comfort me. I still felt a little bit depressed. But I think I have a right to feel depressed and I know it will not be long and I will not be hysterical.


After I knew the outcome, I just can't stop humming a song - "Fix You" by Coldplay.


and "Yes."

If the question is whether I am OK or not. Because Coldplay is trying to fix me now.



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Now playing: Fix You - Coldplay
via FoxyTunes

Have fun, you law school students!

It is a pretty tense period for most of law school students in Taiwan now. During this period, there are some key words that may better be avoided in daily conversation, such as "the exam" and "a lawyer".

I call it a disease that only infects law school students who are waiting for the outcome of a Bar exam. The prevalence of the disease peaks in late October every year. The symptoms are being utterly anxious and become very conceited, depressed or even extremely elusive when the outcome is announced.

Yi-Wen, my law school classmate, told me she has tossed and turned at night in bed recently because it is the third time she took the exam and it will be almost the end of the world if she still can't find her name on the website this time. Although I have never prepared for a Bar exam, let alone taking a Bar exam, I can still understand how Yi-Wen feels now.

In fact, getting the disease is not the worst part. It is the stage before getting the disease a law school student really suffers. To prepare for a Bar exam, most students will go to a cram school and try to study for ten to thirteen hours a day, almost seven days a week for a whole year in a library or at home.

Every morning when you wake up, there will only be two places that you are going to - a library or a cram school. You will have your breakfast on a bus because you may rather spend more time getting some sleep in bed. You may not want to brush your hair or make yourself look nice because all textbooks and rules that you need to read and memorize will exhaust you first. Watching a movie, having dinners with friends, daydreaming will all become a luxury because time will never be enough. You will feel guilty and hopeless to pass the exam if you give yourself three days on vacation. Because everybody is still studying so hard in a library.

I am not exaggerating it and it is certainly not just Yi-Wen's story. It is a lifestyle that many law school students have right now.

How much time do we law school students have to afford living a lifestyle like that? To what extent we will consider it is not worth to sacrifice our chances to explore the world for merely a piece of paper which proves we pass a Bar exam?

Sometimes I am wondering if those students know that there are a lot of choices besides being a lawyer. You might just be a good paralegal that provides legal opinions. You might become a novelist who writes an interesting novel about law. You might become a secret agent working for the government. You might even choose to run for the president!

I doubt if it will be the end of the world for me if I never pass a Bar exam in my life. But living a lifestyle like that will surely be. I can be a paralegal because spotting the loophole in a contract is like a treasure hunt. It is usually fun. Writing a novel about law sounds a great idea because I might become next J.K Rowling. Who knows! Even though I have never thought about being a secret agent, it might be an interesting job, too, as long as there is no limitation of height to be a secret agent.

After getting some working experience and watching some classmates preparing painfully for a Bar exam, I question myself a lot recently if I will be happy when I really become a lawyer. I think I can only find out the answer when I really become a lawyer.

The answer about my future career may be still unknown. But one thing is for sure that after I get my master degree, I will also try to prepare for the exam but I will do it in my own pace and also try my best to keep my own lifestyle at the same time.

The interpretation of friendship

There is a Chinese idiom as "Like attracts like" trying to say that we will make friends with people who are the same or at least similar to us. But what kind of similarity does it mean? Can the idiom be proved between my best friend, Karen, and me?

If I start to look over the similarities between Karen and me from our appearance, well, I admit I was shocked a little bit when I saw Karen in her extremely colourful pink heels. It is just not the pink that will be on the list of my Top 50 colours of heels. But don’t get the heels wrong. Karl Lagerfeld, one of the most influential fashion designers, will agree that a pair of heels, like Karen’s, with a candy-like colour and covered with a layer of sparkling syrup was a must of the year. Honestly, I have only seen a few girls looking good in it and for some unknown reasons Karen did look gorgeous and stylish.

Compared to Karen’s wardrobe, mine is quite boring because the styles and colours of my clothing are all quite simple and similar to each other. I don’t know what kind of style my clothing is. But if someone can put more fabric on Britney Spears’s clothes, I will be very open-minded and love to give them a try.

Even though Karen and I have totally different tastes in fashion, it just also explains why Karen is always a good shopping partner - I do not need to worry that I will have to fight for a short skirt with her.

I like Japanese food, but Karen doesn't. She is good at mathematics and can do big sums in her head very quickly, but I am even too lazy to take out my cell phone to do the calculation. She also has the talent to make incredibly ingenious birthday cards or presents with her hands, but I can only knit clumsily my boyfriend a scarf with holes.

A man who is an American-born Chinese and with a real accent is like a powerful magnet to Karen, but for me, ok, I admit that a tall man will make me want to know him and ask him if the air above is fresher.

Karen is sometimes too nice to reject others' unreasonable request or is easy to compromise after some marathon-like persuasions, but I am usually the kind of person who will still do what I want when I have already made up my mind.

Am I feeling bemused if I have something in common or at least similar to Karen? Well, not at all.

We will get very excited if we find each other a pair of heels that she/I feel it has my/her name on it. If we both like the heels, it means that it may gain some compliments even from different styles of fashion lovers.

Because of being attracted by different types of men, we are somehow equipped not the same, but quite similar radars that enable us to detect if an American-born Chinese or a tall man is a wanker and try to remind each other.

We have a similar personality that like to be thoughtful to people. Karen will provide a good and creative idea for me if I don't want to knit my boyfriend a scarf with holes as a birthday present. She will always do the math for me even before I try to take out my cell phone.

Some female friends I know will call or meet their best friends almost everyday even there is only what kind of food they had that they can talk about. Luckily, Karen and I have similar ideas that we will need some space for ourselves.

I don't feel embarrassed or uncomfortable at all if we sit in a starbucks and have our coffee quietly. She will understand that it is not because we have nothing interesting to share or to gossip about.

If smiles can be marked into different sizes like clothes, I think we will have a similar size of smile - XL. Except Japanese food, Karen will love to have a food safari with me. We both like to be a teacher if she needs someone to teach her how to be defiant or if I want to learn how to use my brake when I am too anxious about something I can't control.

As a law school student, I have been taught and required to be capable of interpreting laws from different points of view. Similarity literally and logically seems to imply that there must be something different. But I am just wondering if the concept of difference and similarity will always be contradictive to each other. As far as friendship is concerned, I think I will try to interpret and believe that differences may become the components that constitute similarities in friendship. I am not sure if my professor will agree with my interpretation, but I know at least Karen will.

Things to do on my summer vacation

When I was a child, my teacher usually encouraged us to have a plan for our summer vacation, but the plan she meant often referred to a plan which helped us do a small part of our boring homework everyday and complete the whole in the end of the vacation.

It was still a mystery that every time when the vacation came, somehow I would be shifted into an unknown time zone where there were not even 24 hours in a day, or how come I only spent some time playing my barbie, forcing my sister to act a student or a maid to play with me, who played a teacher or a princess, taking a nap, watching some cartoons and then it came to bedtime? Therefore, my plans were seldom carried out at the time.

When it came to my adolescence, I was quite materialistic. I naively believed that being on a vacation only meant to take a few days off and go to another country, or at least stayed in a beautiful and expensive resort or hotel in south of Taiwan.

But after some practical and extremely stressful working experience, I was reluctant to admit that in reality, budget, time and my boss's permission played a very big role when I thought about getting a vacation. This also forced me not only to readjust my idea about the way to be on a vacation but also to reinterpret my definition of vacation.

So, if I were an editor of a dictionary, the definition would be something like this - without any geographical limitation and no fancy resort or hotel is required. If you can spend a few days doing nothing or something makes you happy and relax, then you can say you are on a vacation.

Doing nothing absolutely will not be my option since I have known myself for 26 years. I know after the initial thrill of saying goodbye to the life of getting up at six every morning, I will start complaining about being bored very soon. For this reason, this time I am going to be a good student and take my teacher's advice to list the things I want to do during my summer vacation.

1.To bake some triple chocolate brownies on the first day of my vacation
It will be a kind of ceremony, just like the Olympic opening ceremony, to announce my vacation has officially begun. But why brownies? Well, how can people say no to brownies, especially when they are not just brownies? They are triple chocolate brownies! Of course I do care about my weight and I always gain a few pounds easily. But compare to a taste of happiness, it will be a necessary evil that can be neglected. Moreover, if an obese problem can be coped with merely through jogging for extra twenty minutes after having a brownie, then I don't see why I should be panic when I have one. Furthermore, if baking and eating some brownies can bring me good luck to win some brownie points in the future, then why not?


2.To have a movie marathon in a second-run cinema
Second-run cinemas in Taiwan are always top five best places for students to go. No matter you are a student who just needs a place to kill time for skipping a class or you are patient young lovers, you or both of you can always be satisfied when the lights are off.

In a second-run cinemas, you can watch six or even eight movies in the same day and the best part of this "marathon" is you can "cheat". You can always stop and go out for lunch or some coffee to feed your mouth then come back to keep feeding your soul.

I have been nowhere near any cinema since I started my internship which really depresses me. Because I am so behind schedule, my aim is three movies in one day at least but the dream goal will be five which I think I will feel dizzy if I really do that. But I am not worried about it because I can always "cheat."


3.Drinking capacity training
It is said that beer is liquid bread. I love bread and unlike some Taiwanese people, I can have bread for three meals a day. But when bread becomes liquid, it is totally another story.

Don't get me wrong by what I say about getting some drinking training. I don't want to be a drunk. I just think that when I hang out with some friends in a pub, I want to stay conscious at least while most of my friends still are, after all, I love chatting with my friends and I will never want to miss any laughter.

Although I am not very good at drinking beers or any alcoholic drink, practice makes perfect, right? Therefore, I will try to have more beers when I go to a pub and my target is to shorten the time it takes from five seconds to two seconds when I answer some questions, like "how much is one plus one" or only have red ears after having three or four half pints of beer.


4.To do bicycle riding or jogging at least three times a week.
The audience will probably tell me to get off the stage if I want to give them a speech about the advantages of doing exercise. Keeping your body in good shape, becoming healthier, releasing your stress and so on are all cliches that people have already known. But I might have a new discovery.

It rained cats and dogs last Saturday afternoon and I was in my black shorts and blue T-shirt at Chishan MRT station and waiting for my friend to have some coffee together. The ensemble was not tarty at all. Actually, it was quite close to what I will wear to welcome the garbage truck.

After getting ourselves some coffee and a cozy seat, my friend told me that he saw me across the street while I was waiting for him. But he doubted if that was really me. Because he thought the girl's legs seemed too long so that girl couldn't be me. He even asked me if I am taller. I admitted I was quite pleased and I must clarify that the heels I wore that day were not even heels to me.

I had been thinking about every possible reason why I looked taller. The only explanation I could find is I jog more often and start bicycle riding this year which might help keep my body in good shape.

Although I have already got used to be a Hobbit, I still won't mind being taller and I believe that if doing exercise can make a petit woman like me, who is no longer in her adolescence taller, it will be one of the most important discoveries that cheer many short women up.


5. 100 words for my dissertation everyday
Look up the dictionary I edit again. I never say it will not count a vacation if you do a little work during your vacation. Frankly, if I can easily leave my dissertation aside just like that, I should not have any sleeping problem. Besides, 100 words everyday doesn't count work. On the contrary, it may remove my sense of guiltiness when I take a long vacation and even helps me enjoy more about my vacation for my vacation.



I got the idea of this article when I was on my coach back to Hsin-Chu from Taipei on Sunday night. Don't know why after couldn't think of any interesting things to write about for the whole week, the idea just popped out.

I complete this article piece by piece from Monday to Thursday. Although my vacation is going to begin next week and currently I am still trapped in the office in Hsin-Chu and maybe I will be still like a 10-year-old child, who can't carry out her plan for the summer vacation, through writing and thinking about what I am going to do next week is like a warm-up or a "pre-vacation" to me and I just can't wait for my vacation!

My Waterloo Sunset....

Although it rained cats and dogs because of the burgeoning typhoon, I was not annoyed at all. How could I complain? I mean, after all, I was definitely not a greedy person and got a day off on Monday would be completely enough. Therefore, with my satisfaction, I stuffed myself into a comfortable fluffly sofa with my rose tea and tried to find something interesting to learn from BBC News website and enjoyed the unearned day.

With such a versatile website, I always wished I had 48 hours a day to read everything. Before I could find any method or person to make my dream come true, I recently choose to focus on "The Flatmates" which provided educational and entertaining conversations that not only irrigated me with more advanced vocabulary, phrases and idioms but sometimes also reminded me of an exotic and memorable journey.

The memory came powerfully toward me just like the overwhelming wind and rain outside when I saw the idioms--It's daylight robbery. I smiled. I thought it would only appear in Chinese, but it was not the reason that I laughed. It was because I used to say it almost everyday when I was in the UK.

I remembered vividly that it was a sunny cloudless Sunday morning, I invited a friend to join in my first adventure in London to Spitalfield Market. She recommended fervently I tried a quite famous stall of hamburgers. A hot, juicy and with high calorie hamburger that was much more than I could expect in my first adventure in London. How great that was, especially after eating cold sandwiches for almost three days in Leeds, York and Manchester. That was definitely one of my dream food at that time. I was pretty quiet on our way to the market because my mouth was full of expectation.

I saw the queue before I got closer to the stall. It was absolutely a good sign--a long queue. I loved a long queue because it often suggested that the food was good, well, at least in my country. Although it was quite cruel I was only allowed to feel the hamburger until it was my turn to order, I still waited patiently. But the closer I got to the till, the more mysteries I had.

Why everything on the grill all heavily burned? Was it really the food that I was going to pay for? Or were they just some accidental imperfections that would not be sold to customers? It cost about 3 quid a hamburger so did that mean they burned the food in a completely tasty way?Well, like I said, I was definitely not a greedy person. The hamburger was good because at least it was totally hot and with high calorie.

That was the first time I said it's a daylight robbery in London. Besides food, there were lots of things I found they were insanely expensive compared to my country, such as flats, the tube, trains, toilets and so on. After watching my friend eating a 2 quid small ice cream without any guilt, I started wondering maybe it was a reward for working from 5PM to 3AM as a waitress in a fancy restaurant.

Luckily, I was not the only person to feel it was quite expensive to live in such a beautiful country and I could still find myself numerous and amazing enjoyments without costing any penny. All the free and wonderful memories might be in a certain way to explain why I yearned for going back to the UK again so much.

Listening to Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks from my IPod Nano, I spent my last night in London at the patio of Royal Festival Hall and tried to compose my own Waterloo Sunset. With a little sip of my homesick tea and a big bite of my unwilling-to-leave cake, I started to write a postcard to my family to tell them how much I gained from the journey and how grateful I was to have their support. I told them I was very proud of myself that I had done another special thing in my life and there was only one thing I felt regretful that was no matter how hard I tried to keep everything in my diary and took as many pictures as possible. There would still be no way to share all the marvelous experience I had with them.

Well, obviously, my mum was quite moved by my postcard. Although it was completely not my main purpose to send them a postcard like that, my mum still decided that after ten years from our last family overseas travel, we all went to Japan for a vacation after ten days I went back to Taiwan.

Pessimistic Optimist Doctrine

Sign the attached non-disclosure agreement before you read this post.


The following content will reveal a discovery which takes me 26 years to verify. After my countless experiments and expensive clinical trials, I now announce formally the doctrine-- Pessimistic Optimist.

Without any hesitation, my friends will all definitely agree that I am one of the most energetic and enthusiastic people they have ever met. I will also consider myself as an advocate of optimism. One of my mottos is "Everything will be better after I get some sleep". I thought God will be pleased and satisfied with how optimistic I am. But, on the contrary, I felt punished when I was optimistic and confident. The more optimistic and confident I was, the more I suffered. I also found out if I pretended to be pessimistic, humble and understated inside my heart, everything would work smoothly without facing any difficulties that I expected.

Take the presentation I gave the day before yesterday for example, my supervisor assigned a legal issue for me to research as my first job to start my internship and asked me to give a presentation to all colleagues in my division after 2 weeks. Although I had already been here for 2 weeks, I still had not know everyone or been known by everyone yet. This was not only the first time that I could let all my colleagues and supervisors realize how professional I could be even though I was merely an intern, but also a perfect chance to make them consider me as their potential employee in the future.

There were my evident footprints in books, articles and court decisions which were related to the issue. After I plowed all the documents, I was still very anxious about the presentation. With scarce confidence, I entered the vast conference room. But, since I started to give my presentation, my doctrine was proved again. All my colleagues said they couldn't feel my tenseness but calm instead.

I know you can't wait to retort me that it was because I was well prepared. Then, how do you explain my presentation in my Internet and Law class last semester? True to form, I did all the research I could and even made an extremely fascinating slideshow about it. Couldn't stop giggling because I thought I would have all the spotlight on me due to give such an excellent presentation. However, somehow everything just got out of hand and I came under fire after the presentation. It ended up in a totally disaster and I was in a huge blow. If you think that it was because I didn't work hard enough, then you would definitely hear my outcry now.

After 26 years' experiments and clinical trials, this doctrine has already deeply embedded in my mind. Therefore, according to this doctrine, in order to share my exciting news with you without being punished by God at the same time, let's keep our voice as down as possible and pretend to be the humblest and most modest people for the moment.

Are you ready?!

Ok, my exciting news is I got more "Yeses" now. Besides, Queen's University Belfast, I also have Aberystwyth University, Brunel University, University of Stirling and Nottingham Trent University.
Shh! I have told you to keep your voice down.

If global warming is Al Gore's inconvenient truth, then mine will surely be pretending to be a diffident pessimist when I am not. Please feel free to contact me if you find my doctrine is terribly wrong, I will absolutely be happy to hear that. But, before that, let me remind you again, you have already signed an non-disclosure agreement.

What can a notebook tell?

In an internal meeting early this morning, all employees of my division were required to attend. As an intern in Technology Transfer and Service Center at Industrial Technology Research Institute,this is my first time to join in a formal meeting here. I was prepared, well, actually I didn't have to prepare for anything for this time since I just started my internship last week. With my curiosity and excitement, I got there on time.

After finding myself a understated seat and glancing round the conference room, I suddenly noticed something funny and embarrassing. Why was I the only person with a red and slim notebook which has a cat on the cover showing its queer attitude to ask for kisses while others all carry a fat and big "brick"?

When I was a girl, I used to wish that one day I'll become a successful lawyer wearing a fitted ARMANI black business suit and black patent leather heels. I thought that was very cool to be a pretty and professional business woman and help people with my legal advice at the same time. But among my limited working experience, it is sometimes annoying that there are always some dress codes to obey and they will even give you a professional yellow pad that have their name printed on it and force you to take notes with it. I know that a law firm needs to be attractive to their clients and it is always true that splendid appearances win a better impression. But after getting clients inside the firm, then? Anyway, the meeting was quite boring and after seeing a colleague's amusing drawings of my boss wearing a green hat in her brick, I am more convinced that it's the thing on our neck that matters, not our fancy business suits or our professional notebooks. Besides, I thought this is our client's or the market's choice to decide whether they want to hire a stupid but wearing luxury suits and heels lawyer or an intelligent but just neatly dressed lawyer.

So, dear boss, can I wear my mini skirt next Monday?