Make a Change

During those impossibly stressful high school days, I was trained to constantly feel nervous, anxious, and that I shouldn't be relaxed because there were important study tasks I should be dealing with. At that time, those feelings were, frankly, quite helpful. They helped me be very good with exams, and being good with exams was possibly the most important thing for any high school student in China. You see, the process of college application in China was very different from that in many western countries. In China, one's application was almost entirely depended on the score they got in the annual, nationwide College Entry Exam. Good score equals good school. (Also the "hotter" a major was, the higher a score it required.) Simply put, there was the exam that defined you, and you only got one chance.¹ So I was, of course, very pleased with those feelings. But once I stepped into college, problems appeared. There was no more that one exam. But I needed it. I still felt the need of having a goal that I was all for. It was almost impossible for me to enjoy myself since no matter what I was doing I felt that I was wasting my time and even worse, I didn't know what I should spend my time for. So I started to set myself goals. Ace the finals. Ace those standardized tests for grad school. Get that kick-ass internship. Goals came and went, but none of them was as satisfied as the one I had in high school. But boy how obsessed I was with them.

I knew that wasn't right. The irony was I wasn't even the kind of person who wanted to be a huge star. I was the kind of person who would choose a balanced life over power and wealth any day. I was the kind of person who read so many books, watched so many movies, thought they knew the meaning of life, and kept telling people around to live in the moment. Yet I couldn't shake off the feeling that I should only be doing things for an ultimate goal.

I knew I got to change.

I got to stop being so obsessed with goals. I got to learn how to enjoy the moment. I got to understand that goal was merely an illusion and I just needed to make the most out of every day and that's it — not because making the most out of every day would help me achieve any goal. But change was hard as it always was and always would be. I spent four years in college trying to change only ended up falling into the same trap over and over again. Then I sort of just gave up and went on to grad school, hoping maybe grad school would magically fix me. Well, it didn't. Now that I finished grad school, I really don't see any more excuse to procrastinate the change because I know I still want to change.

The theory is sound. What I need to do is clear. I just need to you know, change. I hope it goes better this time.

On Finding the Perfect Solution

I tend to get over-obsessed with finding the perfect solution. It's easy when the best option is obvious. Most of the time, however, each option has its own advantages and disadvantages (and that's usually the case). I would go through every option in my mind with all the possible scenarios that I can think of.¹ But this is usually what I get: option one looks good here but bad there, option two, on the contrary, looks bad here but good there, option three looks good both here and there but doesn't seem like a future-proof solution...

The process is not worth it. It consumes me. It requires a lot of energy and made me feel unsettled. The thing is, even after all the thinking and considering, the solution I choose is not likely to be perfect. Perfect solution simply doesn't exist. There is only contextual best solution. Finding one that is relatively good for now and stick to it. It can always be altered according to what happens along the way.

Back to the example, now it's clear that I should just go with option three. There is probably going to be a much better solution in the future, and I'll probably switch to it no matter what I choose today. Sounds like a decision has been made.

From Scriptogram to FarBox

Scriptogram is coming to an end. I've been with Scriptogram for the past two years and always loved it. It's where I seriously¹ started blogging. It's also where I learned a little about web design so that I actually made the site look the way I liked. While I'm sad Scriptogram is shutting done, I'm happy for the team — I've heard they joined Pinterest. Wish you guys all the best.

Saying goodbye wasn't so hard, but finding the right one to fill the vacancy that sat in my heart is a whole 'nother story. Luckily, after some research, I found FarBox. Farbox is a lot like Scriptogram — it also uses plain text files, also supports Markdown, and also syncs with Dropbox. So basically copying files from one Dropbox folder to another was the major part of the switch. Only this time I fiddled with the code a lot more. After some work, here sits the new site.

Now, to the pleasant beginning with FarBox and to many more years to come.

I Can See the Stars from America

Recently I (shamelessly) read a young adult book, The Fault in Our Stars, and really enjoyed it — it has a beautiful story and it brought me back to the middle school/high school days, which I loved dearly.

Last night, I found Ed Sheeran, one of my new favorite singers, had a song for the movie adaptation. If you are like me, who get really happy about such small, random things in life, you could probably imagine how excited I was.

Clicked play. The chills. Oh how I love the chills. I knew exactly what needed to be done. I turned off the lights in my room and closed my eyes...

I saw the stars.

Now I really need to watch the movie. Hope it doesn’t suck.

Why Learn English

So this blog has been pretty quiet since my last post almost a year ago. I’ve actually drafted quiet a few since but none of them made it to the site for various reasons. Today I all of a sudden really, really wanted to put something here, so I picked one from those drafts, did some light editing, and here we go. :)

“How can you not get tired of learning English?”

A friend asked last night while we were having seafood hotpot. “Don’t you get frustrated that even though you study your ass off, your English can’t even be half as good as that of a high schooler from an English speaking country?” he continued, “Don’t you get tired of spending thousands of hours learning something that millions of people born knowing? Plus if you want to watch a TV series or read a book that’s in English, why not just simply wait for the translation to come out.”

Exactly. How can I not?

I couldn’t give my friend a satisfying answer immediately but I was able to more or less solidify my reasoning after some thinking.

Well, the answer is simple: English happens to be the language spoken by people from different areas of the world. I remembered about a story that I learned in middle school, La Dernière Classe (The Last Class) by Alphonse Daudet. The story was about the last French class in a small French town, as the Prussians would soon take the town and there would be no more French class allowed. In the story, M. Hamel, the teacher, told little Frantz, the student and the main character, to never forgot French because language was the key to a culture. This is exactly what English is now. On so many levels, English is the world's lingua franca, the key to the culture of the world.

It’s estimated over 1.2 billions of people speak English worldwide. That’s 1.2 billions of minds from all kinds of cultures and backgrounds. When you know the language spoken by that many, you gain the freedom of confirming information on your own instead of doubting if the translator did a decent job. You gain the freedom of talking to and learning from billions more. You gain the freedom of voicing directly to the world. Admittedly, when speak English, I can’t construct my sentences with eight adjectives and six adverbs but that doesn’t mean I can’t use it to tell what I think. I can’t choose verbs and nouns like a wordsmith does but that doesn’t mean I can’t tell a beautiful and touching story about eat, pray, or love.¹ You get the chance to talk with that Indonesian guy who sits next to you on a flight about that very important grumpy cat meme you saw last night because you both speak a little English. You get the chance to go out with that girl from Czech Republic because you like each other and you both speak a little English. You get the chance to discuss how big of a part Matthew McConaughey’s thick accent plays in True Detective with people all over the globe on the internet because you all speak a little English.

So no, I really don’t get tired of learning English. I don’t get frustrated by the fact that my English might never be as good as a native speaker's no matter how hard I try.² But learning English is not just about mastering. To me, it's about a great communication tool, a language spoken by people from all over the world. That language happens to be English.