Let us Jam with Rappers

Who fetter your fanatic heart?

Have you ever got fed up with rap music when you was struggling to figure out what the performers mumble about? Have you ever simply skipped the rapping part when you prefer describing the music as annoying noise? Whether it is yes or not, the impression rap music leave on us is unusual. Exactly, rap, as well as hip-pop in narrow sense, completely breaks the routine of musical creation with its non-stop and non-tone. Whatever, we do not need to look at it in a different light.

I am willing to repeat "I love rap music" trillion times, though, every time I cheerly recommend a rap song to my parents and my friends, they show no interest at all. However, it can not cool my passion down. I has been searching for what on earth it is that leads most people to dislike the rap music. First, as what I mentioned above, most of us are unable to keep rhythm with song lyrics, that is why the monotone can easily distract us. Actually, it is the same with me, but I set aside the lyrics and tend to focus on the remarkable rhythm and background music, which is always exhilarating me. The great pull given by rap music results from exposing myself to the beats. Besides, it keep me positive all the times.

Second, it is the vulgarity contained in the song that keeps many people away I think. Rap means "talking" in the black's slang, originating in the slums of negro in New York. Obviously, as a relatively backward area, violence and sex was overflowing there, worse, as a result of racial discrimination, rap can always be a channel to let black's voice heard by the nation. Therefor you may also come across plenty of songs that are related to politics. For me, I acknowledge the fact that the content of some songs is offensive, aggressive or even immoral. Nevertheless, they are just an expression of the diverse society. Also the songs represented the voice of a group of people. Having a knowledge of them will somewhat contribute to true understanding of one country. If you are enwrapped by the amazing rhythm, I think you can start to remember the lyrics to think about the society. Perhaps you may find another way to remember English words and another kind of recreation.

Whatever you think of rap music, I sincerely hope that you may finish the song as well as start it.

How do you practise rapping? The key point is clarity of pronunciation, then the word speed and the feel for music come second. Remember speed does not mean blur! Rapping in English requires rappers to pay more attention to the linking sounds, so first you need to read English passage aloud again and again until you can blurt them out anytime. Second, you spare no effort to accelerate your word speed to form a good linguistic sense. During this period, it is necessary for you to listen to a large number of rap songs and simulate the performers until two voice coincide. Last but not the least, perseverance makes perfect.

Wish I can meet more and more like-minded inpiduals!

Wish you all fully enjoy the world of rap!

BTW: My favourite rapper is EMINEM! (Hardcore Rap)

Something about Our Interest Groups

Recently, we have set up some interest groups, among which are essay writing, debating, movies, music, jogging and so on. Though I thought about the policy of autonomy, it seems that merely few people would be interested to be the organizer. So I had a little discussion with Xu Kuo, the monitor of Group 2, about how we should conduct activities based on these interest groups. They are barely some suggestions with which may be able to keep things going.

Since I volunteer to be the organizer of the essay group, I would like to clarify something about our group. This essay writing group was set up in the hope that with the help of other members, everybody in this group would have stronger motivation to work harder and see dramatic improvement after the intensive course of English. I have created a group in QQ and some members have been admitted to join the group. Please allow my application to be your friend, thus I will put you in the group. The members in the essay writing may check the billboard to get some information about what to do.

The latter part is preserved for other groups. Xu Kuo and I reached the consensus that some groups should be conducted loosely because all of us do not have plenty of time to spend on that and have own things to be done or goals to be achieved. As regards the groups of sports, it is preferred that members just gather round to do the sports and have fun. Likewise, groups of games will be conducted in the same way. Other groups including movies, music and reading will be joined to form one group. Xu Kuo will have a discussion group created in DouBan. Then members in this group can share resources and discuss. Unfortunately, I scarcely know anything about C language. However, I know several seniors majored in CS. I think I can invite some of them to solve our problems or give some suggestions regularly.

That is all what I want to say about our interest groups. If anyone has any brilliant idea, please leave a message or have a little discussion with me. I hope we will have time to hold an informal meeting to have further discussion about our interest groups.

Uncle

Even before we came to Singapore to stay in Eton Hall, we have already known this uncle’s outstanding reputation from our seniors. It said that he was a humorous, warm-hearted, easy going, pleasant, smart and glamorous man in Eton Hall. At first, in response to all this names entitled to the uncle, I hold some doubts about it. Nonetheless, when I came here and had some personal connection with this uncle, I was totally convinced by all the sayings about the uncle; in fact, there was a lot more good qualities in uncle than that.
Uncle is a mid-aged man, which he denied for he thought he was a young man, who worked in the kitchen. He always wear his black-dotted white shirts and colorful shorts as his working uniform. Every time you saw him, if not working in the kitchen, he must be walking around in the dining hall, greeting all the students he knew about. He joked about everyone he met and smiled to everyone he talked to. The only complexion he had was happiness.
I was quite curious about why a human could maintain his or her happiness in such a long time. One day, I asked the question to him, uncle, why you were always happy? Hearing what I asked, uncle grinned and turned to me, well, there were something which may not be what you expected, but life is not only consist of one thing, there are tens of thousands of things happening throughout your whole life, that is why you should not be entangled in one thing and could not drag yourself out. You should face everyday and everything with smile. If you were not satisfied with something, just ignored it. Life is supposed to be happy, wasn't it?
Interpreted what uncle said, I was drastically impressed. Bitterness in life was consecutive, no one could predict nor prevent. However, bitterness was not the essence of life; life was supposed to be enjoyable, colorful and pleasant. The best way to deal with bitterness was to ignore it. Because no matter what, life was going on. What artery to human body was what happiness to life, so face the life with your pleasure.
I think I have learnt a very significant thing from uncle, that is try your best to be happy at every moment in your life.

Choosing a Major, Any Suggestions?

As is known to all, we will have to choose a major we’d like to study in April. This must be a huge event of this year, and even, our life. I am struggling on this decision all the time recently.
In fact, we have already chosen our major once back in China for our last university. I think many of us would have chosen the most popular one of that university even if we didn’t like it. All right, another question has been raise, what major do we exactly like? To me, it is a tough question, how can I know whether I like it or not without having a single class of it? I thought I would like applied math which I chose to study in Xi’an Jiaotong University, but it turned out to be that math in university was not as interesting as in high school. As a matter of fact, I prefer to choose engineering in NUS.
So far, Civil Engineering (CE), Electrical Engineering (EE), Mechanical Engineering (ME) and Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) have been taken into consideration. If I were not bad at Chemistry, I would choose CE without hesitating because my dad works in this field which may benefit me a lot, and most important, I like buildings. EE has an obvious advantage over others. You can get your NUS bachelor degree as well as a master degree of a Britain school when you graduate. However, I don’t know whether I can do well in it because I am not sure what exactly will be learnt. ME is also a major I am interested in, but I don’t know whether I can draw the 3D pictures well. ISE sounds perfect, but according to my performance in college entrance exam back in China, I may not be chosen.
What’s more, I haven’t yet closed the door for science and computing. Such majors like Statistics and E-Commerce also sound interesting to me.
You may think I can get some advice from my parents, but apparently neither of them wants to take the risk of being the “sinner” who leads the son to a wrong field. They want me to choose by my own.
This whole thing about choosing a major is really annoying me a lot. Can you guys give me some suggestions?

My Teacher

When I opened my laptop in CELC as usual, everything went normally. At about one o’clock, something shocking came to me. One my best friends told me on QQ that our Chinese teacher in junior school died from a car accident.
At that time, I was amazed. I could not believe what had happened. I quickly took out my mobile phone and called my father. He said,“Yes, that’s true.” I was silent for a while and then I hung up. I told my classmates that my teacher was killed by someone. They were not disturbed. I knew it should be like this, for my teacher had nothing to do with him. That does not matter. Maybe, I was too emotional.
He was an ordinal people. After his death, nothing about him would remain except memories and his grave. I could still remember clearly that how responsible and diligent he was. He was the vice headmaster of my school. The school time in the morning began at 6:30, but he would come before that time and he was earlier than I every day. When all of the students were sleeping in the dormitory, he was still outside making sure that there were not any potential dangers. As a result, I often saw him sleeping on his desk. Sometimes he could not go back home for a whole week.
When he was teaching, he would make us laugh. He taught me throughout the middle school. I learned not only Chinese but also morality from him. Especially when it was in the Grade Three, all of us had a great deal of pressure and confusion, he encouraged us and helped us to cope. To tell the truth, I was very depressed at that time. When my performance was bad, he would ask whether I had some problems. It is likely that every teacher does the same thing, but I think you will remember him or her for a long time.
When I was on the bus, I thought about that when he was dying, what he would think about. After a long time, I could not figure out. It is awful for me to imagine that. A person who was not more than 40 died suddenly. I cannot accept that, but this is the truth. I wish that he will have a good life in the paradise.

A journey to the botanic garden
Several weeks ago, three of my roommates and I went to the botanic garden in Singapore, and we had a good time there.
We set off at 11 o’clock, and arrived at 2 pm. Even though we had not had a good sleep at noon, we felt excited when we were on the journey. When stepping into the garden, we were impressed deeply by the quiet environment. Trees danced gracefully and the stream flew peacefully. Though it was a bit hot, we just sat down to enjoy the luxury. Following the stream to its end, we found a big stone ball rolling in water. On the other side of the stream was wide grassland, interspersed with some trees and quite a lot couples. Then we realized it was Valentine’s Day, and they were in date. Further, we seemed to step into a European country. There were springs, statues and beautiful buildings all around. Expecting the better scene, we came to the Orchid Yard, the only place in the garden requiring a ticket to go in. However, we were attracted by a paradise just beside the yard. It actually was just grassland but resembling surprisingly what we saw in cartoon. It was like a dream land if there were not so many people on it. Tearing ourselves from it, we reached a big lake. To our surprise, there should be so many tortoises there. They seemed not to be afraid of people at all, crawling leisurely to us. Along the road, we arrived at the Botanic Evolution Garden. It was designed quite well, and we encountered a lot of ancient plants there. By then, we had gone through most part of the garden, and we all felt a bit tired. To our delight, after we came out of the evolution garden, a great rest building showed up. We rushed into the building and took a sleep there.
We made great efforts to find the gate, when we went out, we all enjoyed ourselves very much. So, I recommend you strongly to have a journey there if you have not gone there before.