http://lang-8.com/418028/journals/rss 薄萊枷's latest journal entries Lang-8 Inc. Wed May 22 08:21:12 UTC 2013 Wed May 22 08:21:12 UTC 2013 Lang-8 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Lang-8
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest

2013/2/23

Today is windy and freezing.
It’s been over a month that I am off this website.
As you can see, my last composition was an autobiography written for an exchange student programme.
So, today I want to share an excitement with you all from a good news, which is I got chosen by my university!!!!!!!!
Surely, I am still waiting the approval from the sister university, but this matter is pretty much fixed.
Thanks for you all for helping me with this.

My last winter vacation started from the 18th of January.
During this break, I went on a journey in Shanghai with my sister, just us two.
It was a gift from my father. It was also a test on our ability to travel alone.
That was my father’s purpose, but I thought he had been belittling his daughters.
Come on, what was Shanghai? It was a Chinese-speaking city!!!No way we would get lost or had trouble with transportation.
Naturally, everything went very well.

Actually, I am not going into any details about my trip in Shanghai.
I didn’t write a single English word in the break, although I kept reading English novel. I am just thinking about cultivating myself a habit of keeping a journal, of course, in English. It is kind of a gift for me to kick off this new year. (I knew it’s already 2 months gone, but um, in a sense of traditional Chinese year, it has just begun…

So, I want to talk about a novel today.
Strictly speaking, it’s not a review. Don’t look at it as a review. I just want to share some feelings about it after I finished this novel.
Here it goes!

Some may’ve heard about it or not; some may’ve read it or not.
Here’s a brief introduction of it.
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest is Swedish crime novel by Stieg Narsson, which is also the last installment of the Millennium series.
The book picks up where its previous installment left off, starting as Salander is flown to a hospital to have a surgery. She got shot in her head, her butt and shoulder severely injured, if my memory serves me right. She had a fight with her biological father in the previous novel; that is why she is badly injured. After the surgery, she is miraculously getting recovering slowly. However, as soon as she is discharged from the hospital, she will face a lot of crazy charges for the crimes that she has never committed. So, basically, this is a story of this leading character, Lisbeth Salander, fighting back her justice.

So far, you probably will think it sounds pretty normal. Nothing special about this novel among a load of other crime novels, right?
You are very wrong!!!
First of all, the leading character, Lisbeth Salander, is not normal in the first place from her looks. As she is described, she is a thin, pale and a short girl. What unusual about her is that she gets a dragon tattoo all over her back and rings all over her body. She wears punk hair. She dresses all in black. She smokes. She drinks. She absolutely is a victim, but she is not victimized. She is just like a hedgehog: small but powerful, highly defensive and reserved.
What makes this character so outstanding and charming is that she is a patient of Asperger syndrome. She is highly intelligent, way too much than everybody else can imagine. The way of she retrieving justice is to use her laptop. Actually, she is a “hacker.” Simply with a laptop, she can be unbeatable.

I admire her very much. Through these whole series she is a victim. She is marginalized. She is mocked. However, she never whines, never complains and never feels sorry for herself. She has great perseverance: Once she decides one thing, then she will carry it out to the end. She has different ways of valuing this world and she sticks to them. She gets principle and a sense of justice. Every time I encounter a problem I think of her; then, I feel like there is nothing that one can’t go over, right?
Come on, she gets shot in her head!!!

This is the first time I feel great sorrow about an author’s passing away.
It is a great loss to the world.
Stieg Larsson demonstrates the excellent craft of story-telling and his ability to arrange plots carefully. He brings up several issues and describes matters from different angles. To me, his death not only takes away several unrevealed brilliant stories with him, but also buried those charming vivid characters. This world, from that moment on, lost a pair of calm and neutral eyes to observe this world and a warning pen that could keep us aware of the invisible ongoing underhand things.

Alas!

If you are interested in this series, please check them out.
You won’t be disappointed!
It would be better if you read them in order, or you might get confused.

Posted at Sat Feb 23 02:49:23 UTC 2013
]]> http://lang-8.com/418028/journals/214372118438589993989935445582845812324 http://lang-8.com/418028/journals/214372118438589993989935445582845812324 薄萊枷 Sat Feb 23 02:49:23 UTC 2013
These days, more and more times you walk down the street and all you see are people, head down, staring at their smartphones with one hundred percent concentration to text, surf, and post wherever they go and whenever it is. Such kind of scene seems so perfectly normal and common that we do not feel something special about it, much less give an extra attention to it. Undoubtedly, smartphone has become an important part of our life. We use it to check local weather condition before we go for work, search for information to solve our random curiosity, share everything interesting by connecting with any social network and so forth. It is so indispensable that we even cannot imagine what our life would look like without it. However, are smartphones really smart enough to make our life easier? Or the opposite?
Since its appearance, smartphones have received numerous compliments and positive reviews from all around the world. Supporters consider it as a private assistant; say how it saves all this time. Nevertheless, have you ever wondered where the saved time goes to? Usually, it is turned into another busy work. Think: When you use your smartphone to accelerate the speed of processing the workload, the way your boss rewards you is to assign you more work because he/she thinks you are available and excellently efficient. In another case, while the smartphone is your friend at work, which helps you get things done more quickly, it turns against you when you are off duty by its ability to connect with everything about work. You no longer belong to yourself even after work; nor does the excuse that you were not in the office exist to reject any bother from work. In other words, “thanks to the existence of smartphone,” you are expected to be available all the time to handle any emergency arising. Are you still sure smartphones can make our life easier or busier?
There is no doubt that smartphones have borne evidence of one of groundbreaking inventions of the world and they do bring countless benefits in our life. They help us organize our schedule and provide a window to knowing the world through its little yet exquisite interface. However, it is impossible that there is no disadvantage with so much convenience they have given us. Distraction issue caused by multi-tasking, estranged relationship with friends and family, waste of our time caused by addiction and so on. Actually, it requires time to prove we really use it well to make our life easier as we think. There is one thing for sure that we have to be the master of our technological products. It is us who take advantage of them, not they take advantage of us.


***A little reflection***
***I had been resisting the attraction of smartphones so hard. Yet after I watched the movie, Before Sunrise, which is an excellent movie and definitely worth your try, I really set my mind not to buy one for me. I got inspired by one of the conversations about technology in that film.
What do you think of it? Do you like smartphones??
Anyway, thank you in advance!!

Posted at Tue Jun 12 15:01:59 UTC 2012
]]> http://lang-8.com/418028/journals/1527427 http://lang-8.com/418028/journals/1527427 薄萊枷 Tue Jun 12 15:01:59 UTC 2012 *** What part should I write more about? Should I extend it longer ? ***
*** Any suggestions and corrections are extremely appreciated. ^__^ ***


Late on the third day of March in 1992, I was delivered to the world under the full expectation of my parents. My advent added another member to my family, which then contains five members as total, including my father, mother, an older sister, grandmother and me. My father is a funny, wise man, who addresses his words of wisdom from time to time. My mother is featured as sensible and charitable, who donates a fixed sum of money to help orphans and people in need. Both of them are strict with me on the cultivation of moral values. Honesty, righteousness are emphasized here. My parents always expect me to be a caring, considerate and discriminating individual. They also set a physical good example in our daily life. Furthermore, they are accustomed to deliver their opinions on news reports and express their viewpoints on some social issues in order to let me judge one thing from more sides, not totally be swayed by the mass media. My parents’ teaching shapes me; love, nourishes me. It is in this background that I grow up to become who I am now. Then, who I am? My name is Huang Brighga.
While my parents define the essence of me, there are more other influences on my way to growing up. Born into a better-off family, I grow up without the bother of the lack of money, which is the result of my parents’ hard work: They were engaged in their job to keep a roof above us. Absolutely, the price is that they could not have much time to be with me. Therefore, early in my childhood, I have developed an interest in books. I am an avid reader, who reads a variety of books to widen my horizons and has an enormous, bottomless appetite for knowledge. Books have an immeasurable effect on shaping me. They serve as my teacher: They impart imagination to me, enable me to distinguish between right and wrong and provide me an access to knowing the world as a whole. Additionally, I learn something more outside the world of books. In the course of education, I learn teamwork through various competitions. Actually, I have always been passionate about participating in activities, whether sports or cultural. In my high school times, leadership became an important ability required when I acted as vice class leader, secretary or others. In university, I was honored to be the basketball team leader to compete for the freshman basketball trophy. All the experience combined leads me to where I am and gives me courage to move on.
However, why am I eager so much to be part of this meaningful activity? To be honest, I am not born with a yearning to get to know international affairs. Early in my adolescence, I focused much more on information about design, art, indigenous affairs and so forth. I did not shift my attention until I entered Kaohsiung girl’s senior high. There was a girl in our class who impressed me very much by her glittering confidence, amazing eloquence and her brilliant presentation performance. After we became friends, I found out she enjoyed foreign review magazine considerably. I thought it was the absorption in a large amount of information that made her stand out. From that moment on, I deliberately formed a habit of checking what is going on in the world by reading newspapers and magazines, which turned into an interest later on. To me, she is one of inspirations that helps me find what I am passionate for.
To sum up, I am a person whose belief is if I work hard, then at least I can win a fighting chance to be rewarded, whose core value lies in self-motivation which constantly drives me to challenge more, whose mission is to try my best to be committed to improving the world and whose vision is to be able to learn humbly in my whole lifetime. I always bear this quote in mind that no one can get out of this world alive. So, why not experience my life to the fullest and seize every chance to make me better? That is the very reason that prompts me to be writing this now. Hopefully, this biography can be impressive enough to win me an opportunity to take part in the activity.


Posted at Sat Jun 02 04:43:28 UTC 2012
]]> http://lang-8.com/418028/journals/1508363 http://lang-8.com/418028/journals/1508363 薄萊枷 Sat Jun 02 04:43:28 UTC 2012