Last Thursday and Friday I joined two parties at the local friend’s house. That were all large house. On Thursday, there was a birthday party, the husband is from India and the wife is from Malaysia, and the house is near Sambarwang. There was a ‘giving day for the children’ on Friday. The couple, Mehrdad and Mojgan, is from Australia, they were very nice, the house is near C.K.Tang building, Orchard Road. At the end of the party, their youngest daughter had sang two songs with playing her guitar (Hey Jude and Imagine), and then a guest played the Hotel California with guitar too.

Melic and Lalitha brought me to those parties and I have a very good time with them. Thanks a lot. Although I still need time to improve my speaking English, Melic help me a lot by taking me to his friend’s parties. I can meet a lot of people from different countries and they’re all very nice.

Hey Jude - The Beatles

Read the rest of this entry »

My teacher told us yesterday that Feb 29 is a special day for woman in England. That’s a traditional day in which a woman can ask her favourite man to marry her. We have the Feb 29 this year, that means we’re in the leap year.

A leap year (or intercalary year) is a year containing one or more extra days (or, in the case of lunisolar calendars, an extra month) that occurs only every four years, in years evenly divisible by 4(with the exception of century years not divisible by 400, such as 1900) for the Gregorian calendar, in order to keep the calendar year synchronised with the astronomical or seasonal year. For example, in the Gregorian calendar, February would have 29 days in a leap year instead of the usual 28. Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat at an exact number of full days, a calendar which had the same number of days in each year would, over time, drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting (or intercalating) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year which is not a leap year is called a common year.

I saw this advertisment of the Republic of Singapore Navy on my bus to Britisch Council this morning. It’s quite interesting and creative.

the Republic of Singapore Navy - day dreaming commercial

在新的第二月可以说是在各处走马观花，时光卢梭，岁月菲戈，明天又是一个新Module，British Council的赚钱速度没有丝毫减慢的现象。请允许我穿回迷蒙的时光，用昏花的眼光慢慢打量曾经的足迹。

Liu Jie从国内给我带来了一个oppo的MP3，她考虑到携带方便所以选了一个娇小的外形，一条橙色带包裹着黑色的外表显得刚中带有，在这里谢谢了。过了没几天她那里闹贼了，她的S$500不翼而飞，一同不见还有Junhao的RMB200和Yang Yang的RMB(?)200，她们在这个hostel住了一个星期就搬出去了，离学校很近的地方找了个房子合租，那个住宅还有其它的几个来自中国的学生。那个贼只拿了Junhao放在一块的RMB600元中的200表明是内贼所为，如果不去数还发现不出来。没有办法，就当是交学费吧，以后就会将所有的钱放到银行去了。据说这两天安装上了摄像头，还不允许外人进出，补牢晚已。Liu Jie说我所说的乱是由于没有目标所造成的，她分析的头头是道，平时胡思乱想不能集中精神，而且平时混混僵僵，让我更加惭愧虚长了这……么岁。

上个周日，Melic约好了带我去一个朋友家，大概在Kallang MRT站附近，在那里碰面后，沿着Kallang河绕了一圈，经过National Stadium，包括露天和市内运动场，他说他曾在新加坡国庆节的时候做了几次露天运动场的警备工作，至少有三四个狙击手分布在周围的灯塔上。而离运动场不远的一栋政府公寓靠运动场的那边完全没有窗户，都开着另外一边以便减少境界任务和风险。去到Sim TH家才发现那是一个有点庆祝他儿子玄齐满月的聚会，Sim家大概是小型3居室，不一会儿屋内挤满了人，第一次看到Melic的妻子，她会说几句广东话，对闽南话在行。有几个会说客家话的耶，跟紫金声差不多，但她们来自马来西亚（或许是印度尼西亚，my poor memory)。刚到不久就有几个believer跟我讲述一下巴哈伊信仰的历史，之前Melic给我看过那本中文简略版的书了，从礼貌上来说好像除了点点头哼哼哈哈表示兴趣外没有其它的选择的。吃了简单的自助餐后，哦，那个芋头泥很美味，就围坐在客厅里面开始唱歌，唱了很多中文经典的流行歌曲。当唱了一首巴哈伊的歌后，有个小孩子说不要再唱这么无聊的歌曲了，然后她的阿姨就把她叫出去训了一句。当然这是小插曲，不过我觉得那个阿姨执行度不太好，小孩子哪能理解什么时候该表示尊敬啊。之后由Heany说了两个小故事，中英文各一遍，大概说的是自己平时要努力提高自己，总有一天会遇到同样跟你那么努力的另一个人。故事讲完后差不多说goodbye的时候了，我是粘着Melic两夫妻去Heany夫妻的家逛逛，因为如果留在那里她们估计会跟我说另外一半简略版历史了。Heany夫妻是教师，Heany写一首不错的毛笔字，而且还能画色彩鲜艳的画，很有印度风格。他俩住在一栋公寓里，那栋公寓的电梯只在1，5，10三层楼提供服务，听说过这种只在几栋楼停靠的电梯，算是经历过了，一般是每三层一个进出口。他们的家是两个标准的公寓连在一块修改过的大房子，有电影厅、书房、观景台，很大。Heany的妻子Mrs. Sin非要我写几个毛笔字，说每个到她家的人都要写的吧，以表示对我的好意头。只能用我那童子功写下了了“花开富贵，鼠年吉祥”八个小字，下面贴出。Mrs. Sin还在新加坡读书会发展协会（Reading Development Association (Singapore)）担任活动组副组长。在他们那享受了两首印度歌曲的HiFi后，她让我将对联带回，再加上一个红包。Melic最后送给我一本名为“巴哈伊教，一个新崛起的世界宗教(Bahai Faith, the emerging global religion)，”作者是威廉.S.汉切尔 与 J.道格拉斯.马丁(William S. Hatcher & J. Douglas Martin)。忘记在段前加上“那天我度过了一个美妙的晚上”了。

关于巴哈伊信仰，他们相信：

一个神(One God)
人类合一(The Oneness of mankind)
个人独立探索真理(Independent investigation of truth)
所有宗教同源(The common foundation of all religions)
科学与宗教互相协调(The essential harmony of science and religion)
男女平等(Equality of man & woman)
消除所有偏见(Elimination of prejudice of all kinds)
普及强迫教育(Universal compulsory education)
以灵性原则解决经济危机(A spiritual solution of the economic problem)
一个普及辅助语言(A universal auxiliary language)
一个世界性政府维持全球和平(One worldwide government for peace)

心里对把自己交给上帝不能接受，但是在现实生活中却对别人言听计从，毫无主见形成强烈反差。在我的心目中，真正的宗教，真正的相信有个上帝的存在，首先是要解除物质的束缚，那将是没有差别的世界，但现实告诉我只要人的存在这种“大同”世界永远不会到来。今天下午在牛车水跟Melic座谈了半天，我也说明了我的困惑和真实想法，他告诉我没有关系，你可以尽量参加他朋友的一些读书会，你的目的是锻炼英语，其它的不用去管。Melic也是这样帮我的，或许他早就不打算要把我“发展”成巴哈伊中的一员，但是却每个星期总是找个机会大家坐坐，以便锻炼我的口语，对我不懂的单词一个个写下来。尽管我不喜欢心中有个上帝，但是关于巴哈伊的信仰却是很有兴趣，因为它交待它的信徒首先要用自己的脑子想一件事情，而不是看别人怎么做就怎么做。第二不必去做礼拜，信徒根据自己的条件自行祈祷，没有什么要求，而且也没有教堂可去，大家聚在一块的时候可能只是要一个人带领大家读读经典，没有主教，大家都是平等的。第三是对上帝和另外一个世界的弱化，按巴哈欧拉的理解是人脑还没有发展到可以理解人死后所发生的事情，所以专注于现在的工作与生活才是首要任务。第四是没有地狱与天堂这么一说，而是你所做的事情决定了你离上帝的远近。第五是一个人类一个语言一个政府这个思想。这里只是暂时的理解，其中也有Melic对我问题的解答。等我看完了那本介绍后，可能会具体介绍一下上面他们的信仰，不得不说书本的中文翻译太差劲了。

Read the rest of this entry »

SHUIZILIU News: In the last day of 2007 lunar year, Hu Jintao, the president of China, visited Chinese workers and students in Singapore and wishing them a happy new year, also hope they can earn more money, then come back to china to build a He Xie society together. After this, Hu will turn back to Beijing. (Xinhua photo)

Wishing everybody having a good holiday and enjoy your time with family.

GONG XI FA CAI

There are two kinds of dictionaries in the market, electronic and paper dictionary. Which on is your favourite dictionary? I have been attended a lesson for ‘improving ways to access English vocabulary and to help Senior Teacher Neil with his research project’. I brought a electronic dictionary when I came here but finally I found out it had been broken for the screen problem. I had to bought a paper dictionary at ‘Books Kinokuniya’ inside the ‘Ngee Ann City’, a handle dictionary because it’s more cheaper then the electronic in Singapore. Well, the little handle Longman Dictionary cost S$10. ‘Ngee Ann City’ is also called as ‘Takashimaya‘, it’s a an investment and managed by a Japanese Group, and it’s a famous shopping center you can find the information on the Tourism Guide in Singapore.

As for the Electronic Billngual Dictionaries, there’re several advantages as follow:

1. help poor spellers
2. have better portability
3. have a variety of look-up methods
4. easy and fast to use
5. can focus on specific language problems such as ‘false friends’
6. allows students to ’search’
7. easier to understand the definitions

And the Paper Monolingual Dictionaries have the advantages as:

a. doesn’t use the technology ‘wow’ factor
b. better for memory retention
c. teachers understand these better and can help their students
d. teachers understand the languages so can check if students are correct
e. uses better mental processing and makes students ‘think’
f. better for collocations and lexical phrases
g. uses example which put the words in context

Neil asked us to do some exercises to check which one is better to find out the meaning of the words or fill the gap for some short phrase in the class. I think the advance electric dictionaries are enough for learning new words, there are also have billngual and monolingual dictionaries in one electric dictionaries, and there have some example sentences if your electric dictionary is really a high-tech product.

I like the Lingoes Dictionary software for the computer users, it’s simple and you can download different kinds of dictionaries as a component, like the ‘Oxford Dictionary’, ‘Longman Dictionary’, ‘Collins COBUILD Advanced English Dictionary’ etc.

Takashimaya (Ngee Ann City), it has two towers, named as Tower A and Tower B.