FishboX - 我怀念的-迷失新西兰

Today is Chinese Moon Festival or Mid-Autumn Festival, time for family reunion, appreciating the full moon, enjoying moon cakes, etc... It certainly reminds me the rabbit lantern I used to play when I was a little kid. My dad made a few for me, the frame was made by bamboo pieces, wrapped by thin half transparent white paper or colour ones, put four little wheels under it then I pulled it behind myself and ran as fast as I could. A candle was placed inside the lantern, children wait for the night, light the candle, go outside to the streets, drag their lovely rabbits happily. As far as I can remember, all those rabbit lanterns my dad made for me ended badly, either I burned it by the candle inside carelessly or I broke the paper outside. And when I asked my dad for another one, the festival was gone, I had to wait till the next year. Probably these days not too many rabbit lanterns are made by paper or even with a real candle inside, but plastic outside and lamp bulb with battery instead, somehow I always feel some joys are missing. I miss those old days.

But it has not too much to do with me anyway, just like other normal days, and it's cloudy tonight, hardly I could find the moon. How sad.
"The moon is always there, we could watch it anytime, who was so bored to invent this festival?" A gal said to me. Well, all those traditional festivals make ppl either happy or sad, that might be the purpose. On the mid-autumn festival of the year before last year, I still lived with homestay, and I told them the folklore about this festival. It has been two years already.. I'm a sort of free these days, I finished a few tests in the past two weeks, I bought the plane ticket and I'm going back to Shanghai on Nov. 14th, I'm pretty sure it's going to be busy as hell in next month, assignments, exams, and maybe some other unexpected shit.

Papers for 2005 are available now, I have to take one L2 paper, five L3 papers next year, the shitty thing is that the paper fee for International students has been increased again!! DAMN the school! Blood sucker! One L2 computer science paper is up to $3001 now, and it used to be only $2417 in 2003. But I still have to choose them. I'm going to take one L2 management system paper and one L3 management system paper, though I don't know much about management stuff, but... they're cheaper, only $2667 each, compared with the same level CS papers they're cheaper of course.. I'm coming back to New Zealand Feb. 28th next year, I'll stay longer than last time I went back, and I probably will not going back to Shanghai in next two years.

Happy mid-autumn festival!

Rouge(胭脂扣), a movie filmed in 1988, stared by Leslie Cheung(1956 - 2003), Anita Mui(1963 - 2003), a tragic love story, a courtesan Fleur(如花, Anita) who was infatuated with a guy Master Chen,(十二少, Leslie) who was the second son of a notable and rich family in the old feudal society, and they loved each very much. However, at that time, conventionally a courteasn couldn't marry with a notable family, they were two different classes and living in totally different society levels, though they tried to struggle against the rule, Chen's family resolutely opposed them to be together. Eventually, Fleur and Chen suicided for love by over-swallowing opium, that was 11pm, March 8th, 1937, and they made a pact that in next life, after they were reborn if they couldn't remember each other, or their appearances changed, whenever who saw the number "3811" should realize that the other one was looking for him or her then they could meet together.

After 50 years, the ghost of Fleur came back to the man's world to look for Chen, becaused she couldn't find him in the underworld. He asked a young journalist to help her find her lost lover. Fleur realized that in the past 50 years, everything has changed, the old theatre disappeared, and only aged people remembered a little about what happened 50 years ago. But she still believed that in March 8th, Chen would come to meet her. The nice journalist helped her put a advertisement in a lot of newspapers. But Chen didn't turn up, neither his ghost, nor a real person. Fleur couldn't stay too long in the man's world, she was so depressed, neverthless the journalist and his lover still didn't give up helping her look for Chen. Occasionally, they found a newpaper in 1937 when Fleur and Chen committed suicide, and news said Fleur was dead, but Chen was saved from the death. Chen might be still alive! Fleur was even more disappointed when she read the news, she thought Chen let her down since he broke their promise and cravenly cling to life. Finally they found Chen, he was in declining age like a candle in the wind, who was young handsome highspirited and vigorous, but were now grey-headed, weak and poverty-stricken, a extrememly poor guy, his wife and son dumped him, and even he couldn't get a place to sleep. Apperantly he had no connection with what he used to be, but he was Chen. Fleur gave their love token, the rouge box, back to him, Chen remembered and called her name. Finally, Fleur went back to the underworld where she was supposed to be, and waited for a chance to be reborn.

It's a very old movie, and the makeup, film technique can't be compared with films today, but the story is very impressive itself. The two movie stars both died in 2003, Leslie Cheung jumped from the building, Anita Mui died for cancer. As the film says that, life is drama and drama is life, the drama directly present the suffering, but after acting, life is still filled with suffering, you can't do anything about it. I haven't got a chance to watch this film entirely, though it's a story about ghost, but it's not thrill or horro at all, you don't need courage to watch it, but the patience, the pace is quite slow, and no very strong dramatic scenes, but you feel like finding out what the end is going to be. The song of this moive is pretty good, sung by Anita, her unique style, charming.

Continue reading "a nightmare" »

I buried myself in the lab working on the group project for COMP304 these days, it almost drove me mad... It was due 8:00 AM Friday, and we just finished it almost near 7:30AM. Frankly, I had a few group work before, but this one is the most difficult one I've got so far. We've got 5 students, having different study background, for instance, computer science, software development, graphic design, and we're supposed to distribute fairly equal to the project, someone did graphic part, someone did script part, cooperated like that. A guy who was supposed to be our group leader, he never attend our gourp meetings, and a student who's doing Computer Graphic Design(the major I wish I could study!!) doesn't feel like doing it, because he's not interested in our multimedia title at all.. Our lecture put each a group at least one student who studies computer graphic design, they know more about Director, the main tool we used to do our project, then other students. And certainly they could do graphic design and animation part much better. But he didn't do sth useful even in the end. And that "group leader" surprisely turned up in the last day, and stayed very late with us, he finished the part that graphic design student was supposed to do. He's not too bad, but he definitely could start doing sth earlier. Another girl from Indonesia is the most Ambitious I've ever met, I ain't say that being ambitious is not good, but that should be reasonable at least, you can't try to beat everyone else, or always want to achieve sth which is far more beyond your head. She always asked me to do them, and if what she asked was what I could do then there was no problem at all, but if it wasn't, I really couldn't help too much... That kills me. Damned I was almost mad at the end. She never stopped asking me what I was doing at the moment, because she had nothing to do at that time, and I was working on what she asked, she distracted me so much, I damned appreciated if she could shut up and being quiet for a while. I drew not only for my own part, but for them as well, and the intro animation. We finished it anyway, and I pray that I don't want to have any group work like that.. I'll be killed...

Doing this kind of work is suicide to me, I always work in lab or at home several straight days, no sleep at all. The next one is individual project, haven't got any idea yet, but I guess there must sth new to me, 3D moduling, I don't have any experiment before. And two more tests in next week.

I opened my eyes, it was only 4:20 am, fiercely silent, I couldn't even hear my breathing, felt slight headahce. I'm used to wake up like this, I couldn't hear my think, what I always think at that time? Just like most dreams I make, only I remember there's a dream, but I can't tell what's it about. Each time I wake up like this, I can't go back to fall sleep again, at least not within 2 hours. To try to close my eyes then force myself feel sleepy only discomforts me more. Sometime I could hear the snoring from the next room, but more time everything sleeps, or I should say everything is dead, and I'm sort of dying. So I keep my eyes open, I feel like having a cigarette, watching the smoke rising, vanishing into the silent dark, and myself is gradually drowned in the dark. Only I dont have any cigarette, and all are in the dark, I couldn't see anything.

I go to sleep before 12pm, and get up 8am these days. People always want to change themselves for some reasons, in some way, only they may or may not change to be what they're supposted to be, or what themselves feel like being. After the recess, all of a sudden I don't have any desire to do anything, don't want to watch any movies, don't want to surf the Internet, don't want to chat with my friends. Even don't want to talk with people. The school never changes, students drive around the main car parking again and again for place to park their cars, in the classrooms they group and talk like old friends haven't met for ages, the lecturer of COMP201 seems to have less hair each time I see him. I borrowed Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami from the library, a girl lent me the same book but in Chinese once, but I didn't finish reading it. That was a very embarrassing thing happend, I had one hour free before the next lecture, so I went to the library, and I found that book, I sat and read a few pages then I took a nap, I quite forgot the time, and there was only 5 mins left when I woke up. So what I did was I grabbed that book into my bag, and rushed out of the library, I forgot to go to the reception to register, then the alarm sounded piercingly when I passed it, meanwhile everyone was looking at me. The worse was I didn't even realize why it alarmed when I went through it, and after a few seconds I figured out. My face felt burned when I was explaining to the reception I can tell. What a damned thing.

I cleaned my room more carefully then ever, vacuumed the carpet, wiped the furniture. The rest potato has burgeoned, and I'm not going to buy them anymore till I completely forget how do they taste. I couldn't live with mess any more, I'm going to be sicker. One good thing when I get up earlier is I can have enough time to prepare for the breakfast. It's getting warmer, and day time is longer.

The ATHENS 2004 Olympic Games is completed Aug 29th sucessfully. China won total 63 medals, 32 gold, 17 silver and 14 bronze. There's a story we may or may not know behind each medal, behind every player, we can't simply judge our athletes by if they won medals or not, though those medals do mean sth significant, we might not have any idea how much efforts they put in training, how much they sweat, how many times they try, how many times they falls. So no one is the loser in the competition. It's a real pity that I didn't watch any match in the past 17 days. I didn't have the chance since I don't have a TV set. Boy, is it sad.

I have only less than one week before the second half semester begins, the bad thing is I haven't done anything about my study. Another thing scares me is I seem to be getting fatter and fatter! That really worries me, and I feel like altering my daily schedule right now. I'm such a lazy bone, never get up till noon, and I stay up so late, sometimes even 4, 5am. My friend whom I met in MIRC a couple of years ago told me that those who used to join a channel named #Darkisland in a past MIRC server has found a new MIRC server and a new BBS board, they are looking for all those who used to join that channel before. Frankly, I'm really excited about it, not only that it sounds very exciting when you can meet someones again after you lost contact with them, but I feel like talking with ppl in that way, and that's the only way I can communicate with ppl that I know when I'm here. So what I'm doing these days is being online in that chat room, spending most of the time that I'm awake on it. Even though I dont always sit in front of my computer typing, I prefer watching they talking on the screen to some extent. Just simply watching, quietly, lonesomely. That reminds when I first came here, because there's 4 hours time difference between China and New Zealand, what I did was turned on my laptop(I didn't buy my desktop yet), ran the MIRC application, joined the channel, waited for my friends coming in. But there were always very few friends there when I was there, or though there were some, but none were awake... I felt thirsty to have conversation with them, I did and I do now. I enjoy being there, neverthless, I always feel there's difference between them and me, hardly can I tell what exactly the difference is, but I do feel the difference worries me somehow, only I can't express. It's a depressing thought.

Continue reading "A new month begins" »