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Right now, the most important thing to me is probably my thesis. The deadline for the submission of the first draft is on the 20th. I’ll be barely sleeping this week. Argh
I almost freaked out yesterday (or was it the day before? The lack of sleep is getting to me. ) when I tried to switch on my computer (I have a desktop.) only to see a black screen. I tried again to no avail. I put off the power supply, remove the cables, plug them back and tried to switch on my computer again. This time the screen was black with a couple of weird colorful circles and words. According to the message on the screen, my computer hard disk wasn’t being detected. I panicked. It’s been almost 4 years since I have this computer and I didn’t have any major problems with it.
I was like.. Please don’t die on me now. Come on. A couple more months. Let me finish my thesis. I don’t have a backup. Please.
In my panicked state, I phoned Desmond and told him to come over. Meanwhile, I opened the casing and the amount of dust inside made me sneeze. Atchoum. Let’s see. The last time I opened the casing was 2 years ago when I connected a friend’s hard disk to mine.
hmm . Maybe it’s the dust which is causing this problem, I told myself.
I started cleaning but it took me a long time because I couldn’t find my computer brush. By the time Desmond came over, I was only 1/3 done. He helped me with the rest by.. using my hairdryer ! (using the cold air option of course) I didn’t think of doing that.
It seems that the problem was really because of all the dust because after cleaning, my computer was running normally once again. The first thing I did after that was to backup my works on my external hard disk. I told Desmond that I’ll probably kill myself if I lost the content of my hard disk. I exaggerated of course. I won’t kill myself over such a matter but I’ll get really depressed. Among the material things important to me, my computer (or rather, the hard disk and its content) is in the top 5. hehe.
As soon as I have some free time, I’ll start doing a backup of my current hard disk. Hmm maybe I should do 2 backups.
——
Now, someone please enlighten me. Hard disk or Hardisk?
I’m asking because I’ve seen people write it both ways. Google. You’ll see.
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- Questionnaire about learning Mandarin in Mauritius-
Are you a Mauritian who has studied Mandarin in Mauritius before? If yes, please let me know. The duration doesn’t matter. If you know and have the contact details of other people who have studied Mandarin in Mauritius (anyone, whether in primary school,secondary school or adults.. ) or even better, if you know some of the Mandarin teachers in Mauritius please let me know. Like I said, I’m writing my thesis and I’m looking for people to fill in a questionnaire. You’d be of great help to me. I’ll let you know the details.
Contact me via the form there or leave a message here and I’ll contact you by email or MSN if you’ve used your hotmail address here. Thank you!

It is getting warmer and warmer. We can finally say goodbye to winter and enjoy spring (which came a bit late.. )

This will be my second and last entry about Shanghai winter 2008.
Note: More than 20 pics in this entry

It snowed for a few more days after my last update about snowing in Shanghai. In fact, we had about a week of snow here. Shanghai didn’t look the same. The first few days were great! I was in a wonderful mood each time I went out and saw everthing covered with snow but after 4 consecutive days like that, it started to get annoying and I kept wishing that it would stop snowing.

In fact, there was so much snow that I was able to make a snowman. My first ever snowman! Well I didn’t make it by myself. Desmond and I walked in front of the soccer field that day at around noon and saw this:

Snow-covered soccer field

Some people were already making snowmen. It looked fun! We decided to make one too but first, we hurried to the dorms and knocked on our friends’ doors to ask them to join us. Some of them were still sleeping so it was only at around 3 p.m that we started on our snowman. By then, the snow on the ground was already melting.

Working on our snowman
We used an empty plastic cup for the nose, orange peel for the mouth, leaves for the hair and the eyes,a branch,etc.

Desmond working on the snowman’s hand to add the V sign simply because euh.. we are in Shanghai. To those who are not familiar with it, I’ll just say that anyone who has been to China and who has Korean or Japanese friends do that V sign at least once when taking pics.

Laughing at our snowman.
The head looked so strange.

Two Chinese guys came while we were busy making the snowman and started taking pics of our chef-d’oeuvre (*cough*) and us. It felt so weird having strangers openly taking pics of us like that. The 2 guys stayed until we left the soccer field after we got tired from the snow fight and all. Desmond left his number and email address with the guys, asking them nicely if they could send us some of the pics that they took of us and one of them really sent us the pics.

Group pic with the snowman. See the v sign?
One of the Chinese guys took this pic for us.

~The soccer pose~
Free kick! Usha shoots!
Guys: We need to protect our private parts. Karina: I want to join too!
Check out the snowman goal-keeper and the tracks made by the snow ball that we rolled around to make the body of the snowman
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Yesterday was Valentine’s Day and it was like any other day for me. For the first time since 2004, the boy and I are both in Shanghai for the school holidays. The one month winter break is going to end next week. Usually the boy is back to Singapore at this time of the year. Yesterday was our first Valentine’s Day spent together. Knowing him, I didn’t expect any gifts or any flowers and I was right. I’m dating a guy who doesn’t have a romantic bone in him.

We saw many girls carring big bouquets of roses and I jokingly asked my bf where mine was. He was like “Oh? You want flowers?”. He would probably buy me roses if I asked him to but it doesn’t come naturally to him. I teased him quite a lot but the truth was that I didn’t want him to spend money like that. Flowers will just wilt anyway. Furthermore, we are both only students. I still think that Valentine’s Day is over-commercialized. Spending the day together was enough for me and I noticed that he was nicer to me than usual.
We intended to go have dinner at Bakerzin in Raffles City. (near People’s Square) I love Bakerzin! When we reached Bakerzin, we were told that there were no free tables until 8 p.m . A lot of people had called to make reservations. In the end, we had to go somewhere else for dinner.

Something which happened yesterday:
As I was going inside Raffles City,a woman carring a baby tried to steal my purse which was in my handbag. I felt a tug on my bag and immediately turned around. The woman hastily removed her hand from my bag and walked out of the door. I lost sight of her in the crowds so I just turned my attention to my bag. The zipper on my bag was half-opened but luckily, nothing was missing. My bag was quite in a mess as usual and my camera & purse were at the bottom, underneath my map of Shanghai (which I was carrying around since the week before, when a Mauritian friend came to Shanghai) and other things. I suppose that the woman couldn’t find my purse among all those things. Well, it’s a good thing that my bag was so messy then. After that incident, I was more careful and chose not to open my bag unneccessarily. Therefore, I didn’t take any pics yesterday. My camera didn’t leave my bag at all.

Happy Chinese New Year to everyone!
It’s the year of the rat now and hopefully, it’s going to be a great year for me. (I was born in the year of the rat. )
After almost a week of snow, it has finally stopped snowing a couple of days ago. I’ll upload more snow pics soon.

I had dinner with Desmond and the other Mauritians in Tongji yesterday. Desmond made lamb curry, Jean Noel & Karina made fried rice and potato salad, Ashish made a shrimp dish, Kailash made a chicken dish, Dominique made fruit salad, I brought the naans and the beers, Vricksha brought the soft drinks. The others helped in the kitchen.

Some photos:

Jean Noel, making fried rice.

Karina at the sink.

My plate of food. I took a bit of everything.

Photo of half of the group. None of the sino-Mauritians wore red. I wore red gloves (not in this pic) . Does that count?

After dinner, we continued to watch the Chinese New Year show on CCTV 1, played cards, domino, Pro Evolution Soccer (the guys of course) and then went to the rooftop to watch the fireworks.There were other students up there already.
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