My Mother

My Mother

Like all mothers in the world, my mother loves me very much. Her behavior has influenced me deeply. Many of my good habits are given by her. Thanks to her concern and her education, I become a moral, optimistic, and discerning girl.

I heard from my father that my mother doted me when I was a little child. When I was too young to speak, she went to shops with me, and bought everything I showed interest in.

As I was growing older, she seemed to become a bit “harsher”. When I was in Junior High School, I was too lazy to get up early. Thus, although my mother got up earlier to cook breakfast for me, I often did not eat. Having been told many times the harm that not eating breakfast would bring about, I still did not want to get up early to eat. Then, my mother, who was angry, made a decision that she did not allow me to go to school if I did not have breakfast. I just sat there and thought she was not serious. However, she really did not allow me to go to school! Being afraid of being scolded by teacher, I had to have my breakfast. Since then, I dare not escape breakfast any longer, no matter how busy I am. I should thank my mother because it was she who “forced” me to develop this healthy habit.

There is another thing which moved me deeply. When I was in Senior High School, I did not want to bother to bring my raincoat. One day, it was raining heavily after school, and I was stuck. My father would work late that day and my mother was having a fever because of catching a cold. I thought that I had to be soaked through. To my surprise and delight, my mother should come to our school to bring a raincoat to me. I will never forget her familiar tiny figure from distance in the rain.

My mother always cares me, no matter where I am, and what I am doing. I still remember her tears when I left her and came to Singapore. Evert time I thought about this, my eyes are also full of tears. What I want to say is that I also love my mother, very very deeply, and I will not let her down.

The end? The end.

No matter you realize it or not, our English course is coming to the end. I guess most of us will jump joyfully for that. Months of learning English only did frustrate us a lot. We can see our enthusiasm declines from the beginning to now. However, during our long-term “boring” course, a strong friendship was built among us. Through days of chatting, days of suffering bunches of assignments, days of joking and killing games in class, days of cooperating in research report and variety show…we experienced happy and sorrow in the past five months, we linked together because most of us left home for such a long time. It is so lucky that we have each other.


Maybe some of you guys haven’t notice this because you are bored to death, but I believe that only after we go to NUS, have only two people in one room and a big lecture theater full of unacquainted locals, then we will realize how friends values. We will miss the leisure time in CELC (though it has exams occasionally); miss the happy time we spent together; miss the noon nap with noise around; miss our tutor Ms. Nora, the funniest teacher who totally changed our opinions about Muslins; Ms. Jenny, a kind-hearted lady who is earnest to our assignments and our feelings; Ms. Leo, the most critical thinking teacher, we learned a lot from her even sometimes feel quite speechless; Ms. Sonali, an Indian lady who has a warm smile and Mr. Ng, hehe, very interesting man. I’m sure we will miss them very much.


All in all, value the only 3 weeks we have, remembering more and let this period of memory exists in our heart, as long as we miss Group 3, SM3 17th.

Good, or evil?

Confucius, the greatest philosopher in ancient China, once said: “Man's nature at birth is good” and “To render good for evil”. It is not to come singly but in pairs that the Bible also tells: “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also”. The two greatest persons told us to be good, to forgive and not to be evil. From years of my traditional education, I believe humanity is good as well. People make mistakes sometimes, whereas, they are kind-hearted inside. However, what I see from a movie, A Clockwork Orange, humanity is totally evil.


This movie is a bittersweet ironic tale. A rascal, Alex, together with his droogs, wanders around, doing orgies of random, opportunistic violence everyday until he is arrested for the crime of murder. In the prison, he becomes the subject of a classical conditioning technique designed to make him “a clockwork orange”, someone who is incapable of doing harm unto anyone in order to reduce his prison term. After he is released, the infirm he once bullied torture him in revenge. He cannot stand the misery and come to suicide as a result….


This is a movie including countless vicious violence and rape which astonished me a lot. No one is innocent. No matter the gratuitous, psychopathic violence Alex did at the anterior of the movie, or the so-called karma effects later, these are all belong to evil. It seems that devil exists inside everyone, once the Pandora’s box is opened, nothing is limited.
I am wondering: Are we born good or evil? What is good, and what is evil? Is it true that everyone is evil? Or good and evil are integrative?


Let us look back to the movie. Alex’s self-indulgence outrage and ferocities is pure evil for he considers his behaviors as entertainments, just like many rascals today. What is more, Dr. Branom, an assistant of the Ludovico treatment, does the inhumanity therapeutic while she thinks she is “for Alex’s own good”. She is the second kind of evil who cannot identify whether her action is good or bad, worse, regards perpetrations as sacraments. Like an apothecary who gives wrong medicine to patients accidentally or like the USA, which offers its people over-the-top welfare. On surface, the government takes good care of its people, actually, the policy led to deregulation which contributed to the financial crisis.


Furthermore, the most horrifying evil is hypocrisy. The minister does extremely cruel conditioning on Alex and takes advantages of him for political motives with tricky words which make him look good. I cannot help but think of George W· Bush’s maladroit and cunning excuse to attack Iraq. “Weapon of Mass Destruction”, what is that? Is that his business? Of course not. Infinite profit of oil is more attracting and believable.


Finally, I think I was convinced of the concept that “Humanity can be evil”. Sometimes good and evil are even integrative. Despite what you have done is intentionally or not, evil thoughts hide inside everyone. Be careful, everyone can be a devil, everyone can be the next victim.

The Victory of Old guard of Aware

In the extraordinary general meeting held by Aware, or Association of Women for Action & Research in May 2, the old guard won back the leadership. That was after a no-confidence vote against the new guard, which took over the power in the annual general meeting held in March 28. The vote turned out more than 1400 against the new guard with merely 700 for it. The famous lawyer advised the new guard to step down, citing precedence. After a 45-minute discussion, the president stated that they would step down graciously. During the past five weeks the new guard criticized that the old guard promoted lesbianism and homosexuality whilst the old guard contend that they aimed at ensuring all people of the equal right and the new guard lacked of tolerance.

For my concern, the victory of the old guard eliminated the potential threat to bring about social tension, division and unrest. People are different from each other and all the citizens ought to tolerate others to an appropriate extent. As Deputy Prime Minister said, if you push some people ahead too much, there will be a pushback from them. As you know, the new guard is strongly against homosexuality. How could you expect that it is tolerant towards gays? Gays under the discrimination will definitely try to voice their idea and even demonstrate, which will threaten the stability of society. As I know, there was a gay demonstration on a large scale in Singapore in 2007. During the economic downturn, any harm to the stability of society will push downwards the already-weak economy. In addition, all the core committee members are Chinese and Christian, which is lacking in diversity. The involution of the religion may probably transform the secular organization into a pulpit. Religions have already their own ways to advocate their beliefs. If they take force in secular transaction, they may be so powerful that others, especially the opponents, might be deprived of the right to speak out their opinion. Consequently Singapore can hardly remain a secular and tolerant state if religions take too much power in society.

Ultimately I am delighted with the victory of old guard and wish award a brighter futher.

Liu Guodong not nominated for the year award for coach

National women’s table tennis team won the year’s Singapore Sports Award for their historical achievement in Beijing Olympics last year. In Beijing they won an invaluable silver medal, the first Olympic medal of Singapore since its independence. However, Mr. Liu Guodong, the coach of national table tennis team was denied the nomination by Singapore Table Tennis Association, or STTA for the year’s award for coach. The main reason, in the words of STTA, is that he is not well-respected by all his players. Mr. Liu allegedly paid most of his attention to the women’s team and relatively cared less about the men. As a result, Singapore best male player Gao Ning found himself with no coach in his Olympic third-round singles match and then crashed out to a low-ranked Croat. Most people felt disappointed and had considered Liu as a shoo-in. Many members of the selection panel urged that Mr. Liu should be put in the ballot even without precedence. However, the final result turned out disappointing that the decision of STTA was respected. That meant Mr. Liu was out of the ballot and had no chance to win the coach’s year award. The panel later announced there would be no coach winning the award for no candidates met the criteria. So for the first time since 2001, there is no winner in this category.

I consider it more of a consequence of conflicts between Coach Liu and STTA late last year. After the historical victory in Beijing, Mr. Liu expected more power in selecting players for national table tennis team. Unexpectedly the new guard which took over STTA soon after Beijing Olympics spurned the request of Mr. Liu. This episode ended up with the resignation of Mr. Liu. That thrust STTA under the spotlight and put it in a position to be blamed for letting such a prestigious coach go. So I am afraid STTA’s not nominating Mr. Liu is an action taken to get even with him. Despite Mr. Liu’s own fault, STTA is the head of the snake and should be blamed for its intolerance. It just wants to hurt Mr. Liu even at the cost of no winner of the year’s award. As a responsible association, STTA should behave tolerantly and apparently. Revenge is definitely not the right thing to do.

In memory of my friendship

It is an old story of not being grateful for what we have until we lose it, of not being conscious of friends until we are lonely.

 

Yao was my best friend during the three years in Shanxi Experimental Secondary School. As one who was from another city, I did not have a sense of belonging until Yao took an initiative to step into my life. She was a sensitive and kind girl and treated me as well as, my mother. I am not exaggerating. At that time, I did not pay much attention to my health. Instead of going home to have dinner, she went to the canteen in school together with me in order to help me form a healthy habit of diet. However, I did not pay her back. Yao was popular in our school and had very good interpersonal relationship. Boys liked her and she indeed had special relationship with several boys. I though she did not work hard and only wanted to marry a rich man and then enjoyed her life, which I looked down upon. I was too young to understand her. The result was that I did many things that hurt her deeply. Now I regret what I did, but it is late already.

 

Before Yao, I had another friend Siqun. Different from Yao, she was passionate and hard working. She cared about friends much and gave me a hand many times when I turned to her for help. At that time, I read many books about spiritual explosion. I thought that we should treat everyone with the same kindness no matter what they did to us. One day, after watching a movie on friendship, she asked me whether she was very important to me. Can you guess what I said at that time? Without much thought, I said no, everyone was the same to me. As a friend, I did not regard her as someone special. What I said also, hurt her deeply. No wander I saw big disappointment in her eyes, which I will remember in my lifetime.

 

Of course, besides these regrets, there is much precious memory between my friends and me. Actually, I have never stopped even a moment missing my friends in China since I came to Singapore. The days, months, years we went through together often appear in my mind as vividly as all of that happened yesterday. The friends I have either in Shanxi Experimental Secondary School or in Xiangya Medical College are treasures from which I can always find courage to go on with my life. Although life is unpredictable, one thing I can guarantee is that they are always there no matter what become of me. They are ones I can turn to especially I have problems. Anyway, what one experiences today will become the memory of tomorrow. What I can do is to appreciate what I have now.

 

 

 

How to stay fit

Good health is our most valuable wealth. We cannot take it for granted, because once we loss it, it is difficult to regain. Person who has good health is more efficient in caring out his task, either as a student in school or a worker in factory. Fitness is so important and valuable, so how can we stay healthy? In my opinion, we can keep healthy in three ways: balanced diet, enough sleep and regular exercise.

To begin with, health is closely involved with a balance diet. Proper nutrition is important for good health. Our body cannot function well unless it receives the proper kind of food. We should eat more vegetables and fruits, which can provide necessary vitamins and minerals. Plenty of foods that are high in protein like lean meat, fish, beans, and nuts are helpful to our health, too. And we had better reject much junk food, as well as foods rich in sugar and fat, which can do a lot of harm to our health.

Having enough sleep is the best way to make us refreshed and energetic. It is essential to our health. If we do not have enough sleep, it is impossible for us to have a healthy body. This is because when we are sleeping, our bodies are refreshing themselves. Furthermore, our brains are having adequate rest, too, and our memories are also refreshed.

Most sports are good for keeping the body in good shape. Without exercise, our hearts and lungs cannot function well. Regular exercise can contribute to our health. This process also can create some chemical, which can excite us and get rid of our depression and stress. Thus, we should do exercise moderately to keep us fit.

In a nutshell, if we would like to have a healthy body, we had better have these three habits: having balanced diet, guaranteeing enough sleep and exercising regularly. As long as we persevere, we will own the most valuable treasure: health.