During my recent trip visiting home, my Travel Companion and I saw this, "Never give up" and he took a picture of it. Like the words.♥ every page of my imagination
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It's been about 15 years since I last played with little babies. Actually I don't have that much chance in playing with babies, other than my own siblings. And when I said "played" it was truly spending time with those little human-beings to amuse myself. It's literally a picture of an extremely big kid fooling around and bullying a five-to-six times reduced size kid.It's been a long while since I last visited my friend, Mr. Nice and his family. The last time I was there, my friend's daugther was just a few-month old and was just learning to crawl. But now she's already 1.5 years old and already riding on her small bike knocking on me deliberately.
One hilarious scene was, her parents (my friend and his wife) told me that they have set a little punishment for the baby. When she makes a severe mistake, the parents will order her to "stand at a corner". Although the baby barely speak, she understands a lot of our adult words. So when her parents were describing her "stand corner" punishment to me, she was standing aside paying attention to our conversation. The parents told her, "Show Jie-jie (older sister; referring to me after I insist that she should call me sister instead of aunty) where is your 'stand corner' and how do you do that.". Next I saw two fat clumsy legs moving fast to the corner of the room and I looked up, finding this smart cutie little one pointing to herself smiling and making some funny sound. She was telling me "Hey Jie-jie, this is my 'stand corner'!" Seeing that scene I burst into laughter.
Her parents certainly have devoted a lot of time, patience and effort in bringing her up. It is extremely difficult since my friend is still completing his doctorate degree whilst the wife gave up her career in their home-country to come here and join him and soon after they had their first child here. What makes it tougher is to raise kids in a foreign country where you don't even speak its language and they were just relying on his low stipend.
"Babies grow fast. Looking at them learning every little things and making baby steps, really makes me feel all those sleepless nights bringing them up is worthwhile," the wife told me.
I asked my friend who will be defending his thesis next month, "What do you think about your four-year here?"
"Life's been good to me. It would be if I could be richer but I won't complain about it," he said jokingly.
My friend's and his wife's words made me felt touched. I felt a little ashamed of myself after talking to them; the way they perceive life is so positive. Eh, maybe I should be the one to "stand corner" and reflect on myself.Go stand corner now. Okay...
♥ every page of my imagination
0 people traveled to my fantasyland
There is a custom, well sort of, for the doctorate candidate to give a small token of appreciation to his/her supervisor(s) on the day of his/her dissertation. Usually this is done during the dissertation party or for some who choose not to have a celebration party, the gift section could be done during the post-dissertation reception.
Although it is still a big unknown as to when I am going to have my dissertation, I have started thinking about what to get for my three supervisors. I had a few ideas for the gift but had not been actively doing the shopping. Well I would love to but just did not really have chance to shop for dissertation gift.
I was showing my Travel Companion around during my recent trip home. We went to a departmental store doing some shopping for him. While we were done and began to move to the exit for dinner, something caught my eye. I stopped. Yes that would be a nice gift. A set of elegant chopsticks with oriental design printed on them. I personally like the set a lot. Great. This will be a meaningful gift. Since I am Chinese and chopsticks do resemble Chinese culture, it will remind all three of my supervisors who are Europeans that they once had a Chinese student. It must be expensive. I looked at the price; did the staff mark the price tag wrongly? How could it be so cheap?! So without hesitation, I know what I should be getting for my supervisors as my dissertation gifts. Apparently my Travel Companion also likes the design of the chopstick. I told him to choose a set with the design he liked most. At the end, I checked out four sets, three for my supervisors each and one for my Travel Companion for his new condo's decoration. When I got home, I showed my good purchase to my family and they liked the chopsticks too. The funny bit was none of my family members had the price guessed right; they thought it was costly.
This is how I like it, a good buy. To me a good buy means you do not have to put too much effort in searching for the item; rather it appears to be serendipitous and better still it will not cost you a fortune. Hmm, come to think of it, I do apply similar concept to many aspects in life.
♥ every page of my imagination
1 people traveled to my fantasyland
I always wonder how some people managed to quit their job/school, take a long time-off from work/school, or perhaps to get away from their commitment and left their home/family/friends behind for an extensive vacation. Recently one of my labmates just returned from a three-month backpacking to the far east. He and his girlfriend had been planning for this trip for a long while back. I could recall when this labmate of mine just joined the lab and started his life as a graduate student, he mentioned that he was saving up and preparing for this trip. I would love the idea of going away for an extensive vacation, but I would probably do it when I am done with school or between the period of switching job (the waiting time). The idea of getting a few months unpaid leave from work or differ a semester or two from school has never struck me.Since I moved to this country for graduate school I had tried to make my family, especially my parents happy to go home to celebrate Chinese New Year with them. Since I have to travel 5808 miles to get home, I had been taking three weeks off from work for this event. This also serves as my annual long vacation that I am entitled to. Since my family in particular my grandmother would like to meet my Travel Companion, therefore my travel plan was altered a little. When I broke the news to my supervisors that I was going to take a month off this time, they were surprised. To me, I really needed the break from work, four weeks were barely sufficient to cover 3/4 of the world.
This trip was no where close to my luxurious trips with my Travel Companion, nor it was anything like my coworker's backpacking trip; it was more of meeting up families and relatives from both families and it certainly involved a lot of traveling. Within 30 days, I traveled to three continents and visited four countries. Needless to say I was exhausted from all the traveling. Not to mention my biological clock was totally messed up with different timezone, first tuning the clock for six hours behind, then 13 hours ahead, followed by 13 hours behind and then finally six hours ahead.
Although this time I did not manage to stay at home for a longer time. I did not even have chance to meet one of my sisters, who had already went back to school in another country before my arrival. Not only I could not meet this sister for three years in a roll, I also missed my best friend whom I haven't met up for three years. My mom was even unhappy that we could only spend one week there. Anyway, at least the main purposes of this trip were met; I succeeding in introducing my Travel Companion to my family and also to show him my homecity, so that when I mention certain things such as certain famour food from my country, he would know exactly what I am trying to describe.
My Travel Companion and I wished that we could extend our vacation longer; there were still a lot of things we did not cover this trip. Oh well, we hope that we will make the same trip again soon. Meanwhile there is so much to catch up at work and I am still recovering from the long journey. Can you believe that I could travel around 3/4 of the world in 30 days?
♥ every page of my imagination
4 people traveled to my fantasyland
