a-l-i-n-e.com

I’m sitting in bed right now, using the laptop. After being in this position for one hour, my legs are a bit numb but I’m trying my best not to move because Sushi fell asleep in my lap. Sushi was whimpering earlier, pawing at the bed, obviously wanting to get on the bed too. Minutes later, she’s sitting in my lap.
She managed to get on the bed by herself. She fell alseep not long after. I probably shouldn’t let her do this but it’s quite cold today. My lap is warmer than her own little ‘bed’.

I used to be so scared of dogs. I think it’s because I once saw someone get bitten by a dog back in my childhood days.
When Desmond and I go out and he sees someone with a dog, he’ll go nearer and even try to pet the dog. He loves dogs. As for me, I stand a few meters away. Well, that was what I did before Sushi came into my life.
Now, I stand next to Desmond while he pets other dogs but I don’t pet them. I’m not ready for that yet.

I took the HSK advanced level exam yesterday. I almost didn’t sit for the exam because I didn’t prepare at all. I was reluctant to go but when I thought of the RMB 400 that I had spent to register for the exam, I decided to go. Frankly, I think the date chosen for the HSK exam is very bad. Only a month has passed since the semester began. Like my friends, I’m not really in a studying mood yet. I’m still busy trying to get used to the new classes(International trade law, Guide to thesis writing, Business negotiation, International settlement, Advanced Chinese,etc) that I have this semester after not touching any books during the 2 months summer hols. I think that it would have been better if the HSK exam was around the end of the semester. Anyway, it was a nice experience. I didn’t do well this time but at least now I know what the real exam is like. I’m looking forward to my second attempt next year in April.
—————-
Comments about the exam and the location:

The exam was as hard as I expected. Compared to this exam , the HSK intermediate level exam is a piece of cake.
I took the exam at Fudan University. It is quite near Tongji University. There were too many students in each classroom. The majority were Korean and Japanese students.
During the oral exam, I was wearing a headset and had to talk into the mouthpiece. I could hear everyone talking. The reading aloud part was fine but when it came to answering the 2 questions, it was a bit hard to concentrate because I could hear the people around me saying their replies to the 2 questions. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the guy on my left was done with the exam. He had removed his headset. This caused me to panic a bit. I was only half-done replying the second question. I was perfectly aware that his head was tilt to one side and he was listening to me now that he was done. It was so hard to stay focused like that. Arghh. I think most people were like me. They hurriedly finished the oral exam because they noticed that the people around them were done already. I remember that there was a Korean girl who was still talking by the time everyone was done. I was thinking: “Wow, she managed to ignore the people around her and stayed focused” .

A few tips for next time:

Prepare for the exam! Starting now! Buy HSK books to practice doing mock exams and try to finish the papers within the allocated time. Practice writing essays.( I did poorly in the essay writing exam this time.) I also need to watch TV more often, especially the news.

Bring a mechanical pencil to use for the essay. I had brought a blunt 2B pencil to be able to shade the boxes in the answer sheet fast. I had another extra pencil which wasn’t blunt but it wasn’t sharp either. I had to erase and rewrite many characters(esp. those with many strokes) because they looked horrible.The strokes looked out a tad too thick when written using that pencil I had brought. I wasted a lot of time because of that.

Wear a watch. Or bring a clock. I wore a watch this time but not everyone did that. There was no clock in the room where I had my exam. I guess it might be different for other universities.

Stay focused during the oral exam. Ignore the people around.

hmmm I can’t think of anything else to add to the list for the time being.

I hear that the results will be out in about a month. I’m expecting the worst.
My Japanese classmate Aki and I are planning to go to the bookstores on Fuzhou Road this Thursday. I plan to buy a few books which will help me get ready for the next exam. I’m also thinking of buying some Japanese books. I want to learn Japanese!

Something I want to get off my chest: Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I can’t believe I missed Lin jun jie(JJ Lin)’s Shanghai concert yesterday!

wow, it’s been so long already?
I’m beginning to hate the wordress maintenance mode plugin. It’s just too easy to activate it and then put off updating for months. I think I activated the plugin in order to update to the wordpress 2.2 but then because many people were having trouble with that upgrade, I decided to wait for version 2.2.1 to come out instead and now, it’s finally out. The current theme is only temporary. I’m quite busy with my exams right now.

So how I am doing… ? I was so happily typing the above words that I actually forgot about my food poisoning. I’ve been quite miserable for one and a half weeks. No more seafood for me for a long time! I have to be very careful about what I eat until I recover completely. I need to get better by Friday 29th because it’s a BIG day for me. More about that later.

Something I wrote on my other blog(MI) not long ago…

Confession

No news, no mails from me doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten you.
It has been more than a year… 2 years for some…. I’ve been through a few rough times but wanting to be ’strong’, I prefered to keep quiet instead of sharing everything with my old friends. I didn’t want to make anyone worry about me and stupidly, I thought that not keeping in touch was the best thing to do. I went through a phase of depression too and felt like going back to Mauritius at some point. Shanghai is a great city. Life here is good. It’s just that certain things have happened and made me very confused.
It took a while but my joie de vivre is coming back little by little but the feeling that something is missing is still here.

————–
Even people who regularly read this blog might go ‘huh?’ when reading the above. I don’t write everything here after all,especially private matters.

Very often, living in a new country means living a new life. I’ve been guilty of not keeping in touch with many people and I really regret that. I often think about this and ask myself if I should try to get in touch with those old friends .Some of them have new email addresses, got engaged/married or moved to other countries and I don’t know how to get in touch with them. Some are still using their old email addresses but I don’t know what to tell them in my mail. I often wonder how people would react if they got an email from me after such a long silence. I’ve never been the type to email first. I’ve always been the type who waits for the other person to email then I reply. I know that many people have new lives now. Maybe some are like me too, waiting to be emailed and not making the first move or not emailing because of doubts about how the other person might react. If you are an old friend reading this entry, drop me a few lines will you? Click Contact me and use that email form or even better, email me on my first hotmail address (the one which starts with an a). I’ll be very happy to hear from you. Please forgive my ’silence’.

I have 6 email addresses now. Often, some emails go unnoticed because of the huge amount of spam mails I get. I tend to scroll down the page and click ‘Select all’ and delete all mails which seem to be spam. Moreover, I have more than 1000 unread emails in one of my accounts. Today I deleted all the emails in my hotmail junk mail folder but then realized that a high school friend had emailed me. Her mail went in my junk mail folder instead of my inbox somehow. It’s impossible for me to recover that email now and I don’t have her new email address. (Shash, if you are reading this, re-email me please) Now I wonder if I’ve accidentally deleted other emails in the past.
I’ll be going through all my email accounts to look for unread or unreplied emails. It will take a while but it’s something that I have to do. Unfortunately, the emails which went into my junk folder and got deleted cannot be recovered.