Entry 30: Symbols of Heritage

Some things in my home that represent heritage are the paintings by my grandfather and teapots.

My grandfather learned to paint in his later years, but he was talented. I don’t remember when we hung the paintings but it was a long time ago. I have gotten so used to them that I couldn’t even recall them until Jeremy said something about calligraphy in his home. The big painting that we hung just above our couch is a landscape done with brush and ink. It has about the same width as a couch. Ink is one forth of Chinese (or Asian) culture, literally. Our calligraphy, other writings, and paintings, are all associated with ink. Growing up in Taiwan, I am also exposed to a large portion of these things outside of my family. The paintings on the wall of our house will always remind us of our grandfather and the deep Chinese culture we inherited.

My father has several teapots. He uses them to boil Pu’er tea leaves. Tea is part of our lives, our culture and heritage. Some of those teapots are actually quite artistic. Often after dinner each one of use would hold a cup of tea and enjoy the freshness it brings by washing away that greasy feeling.

Entry 29: Your Family Traditions

My family, like any other Chinese families, have reunions every year on New Year. There was once that we didn't go, but usually we would travel south to my father's parents, my grandparents' house in Tainan. There my father's brothers would also come with their families. (except one because he is single) It seems like we get together just for the sake of traditions. Sometimes it seems like visiting my grandparents would be better if it is on another occasion, not New Year. Then there was the old religious tradition problem. We have to pay our respect and prayers to our ancestors with incense sticks. What if you are Christian? For us, my mom, my sister and me, we could either choose to follow the custom or refuse to do it. Both have positive and negative consequences. My mom, however, since she is an adult, she has to at least pretend to do it. My sister and I can be ignored. In the evening we would have our reunion dinner at a good restaurant. Since my grandmother is vegetarian, usually the meal would contain less meat. That is a good thing. The atmosphere around the dinner table is usually awkward, but that has to deal with not traditions but family problems.

Entry 28: Thanksgiving

It's Thanksgiving!
I'm thankful for the lunch today. It was very relaxing and we all got very full. I'm thankful that I've got a good education and supportive parents. I thank my mom and dad for taking care of me and letting me do what I want. Thank the internet! It really helps me a lot in both learning and entertainment. Thanks to illegal downloads; I got a lot of cool music and movies because of it. Thanks Youtube, Facebook, deviantART, and Tumblr, they bring joy to my life and allow me to keep in contact with my sister and friends. Thanks my parents again for buying me my guitars and ukelele. They are an important part of my life. Without them I would probably die from stress. Thanks my roommates for being so kind to me. They are the perfect roommates. I'm thankful that my locker is just right before my dorm room. It's so convenient. I'm thankful that I have a goal in life, and I would work hard to reach that goal. I thank God for giving me the ability to draw. Art is always the core of my life; it's a part of me. I'm thankful that PAS is a very art-supportive place. I get to experiment with a lot of materials in school. Thank God I'm alive!

Entry 27: Doing The Right Thing

I think there are more people who take principles as ornaments (I like this simile) than people that live strictly according to them. In my opinion, most people are more or less selfish, including myself. That's human nature. However, not all the people dare to break the rules. Some people, even if they really want to get something, they would think about ignoring the principles but end up not doing anything. Or some people might deceive themselves that they are doing the right thing, thus feeling better for not following the rules. I really don’t know the population of people either living according or not according to the principles in these places. Taiwanese people, maybe a bit not following the rules? Just look at people who speeds and not wearing helmets, haha. In my family, I believe we live relatively righteously. I think the life style we have is not very extravagant, therefore we don’t do things that would potentially break the rules. For myself, I’m somewhere in between. I would never ignore the principles if it involves serious crime or immorality. I could commit small crimes such as downloading stuff illegally. That I totally love doing because I don’t think it harms anyone, except maybe letting the company losing a bit of money but that’s all.

Entry 26: Conflict Avoidance

Most people would of course avoid conflict, because it means trouble. When you're in trouble, you need to work to overcome the trouble. That requires extra strength and energy; people are lazy and most of the time try to avoid conflicts. However, people also stay away from conflicts because sometimes if the conflict involves other people, the relationship between the two people might get worse. Conflict creates enemies, too. The reasons stated above are all good reasons to avoid conflict. Conflict could harm people's relationship with each other and even harm the person involved in the conflict, literally. If the conflict is the extreme external kind then maybe the person would get hurt. But there are times that conflicts actually help. A conflict can motivate a person to work harder. People sometimes purposely put themselves in conflicts; we call it to "challenge" one's self. For me, I would prefer avoiding conflicts when trouble is not necessary but constantly challenging myself. Like most people, I don't like things to get bad and tense, especially between people. Conflict can really affect your mood and your behaviors. If I have time and energy, I would like to challenge myself in subjects such as art. I really wish to experiment with different media and styles, and draw things that I don't normally draw. Even though I get frustrated when I cannot draw a thing, that is a part of learning and I would certainly welcome it.

Entry 25: Heritage Revisited

My heritages that help me are my intelligence, my language, and my ideas about life. I have a rather capable brain...I'm not bragging, just saying I'm not stupid. With my intellect, I can do a lot of things. I can also do well in school. I'm glad that my native language is Chinese. It's a beautiful but super complicated language with all those different characters with multiple meanings. Even now I cannot write out a sentence in Chinese without using the dictionary (actually I used to be able to but I forgot after I came to PAS). I love my language, but sometimes it's such a pain in the neck. Okay...back to the point, of course knowing a language can help me in a lot of situations. I can read writings in Chinese, communicate using Chinese, be able to understand what a Chinese person says, and all that wonderful stuff I can do with Chinese. As for my ideas about life, they are like my philosophy and my values. I got them from my family, especially my mother. These values and ideas help me get through numerous hard times.
Some heritages that I think get in my way are my hand size, my height, and my allergies. I have small hands. My small hands sometimes make it impossible for me to press a certain chord on a guitar. I'm short. Although being short can be an advantage in other times it is still a disadvantage. But I'm not really bothered by that. The last thing is my allergies. They really annoy me during winter and spring, when I sneeze the most.
And the heritage that I'm most proud of...FOOD! Chinese food is the best!!

Entry 24: Crossing the Rubicon

This situation happens when a person makes a terrible mistake, putting him/herself in big trouble. Or a person could invest all his/her money in a risky business that he/she would either become extremely rich or lose everything. People react to this kind of "no-turning-back" situations differently according to their personalities. Some may be brave and determined; they stand up and face the situation and fight for the best they could get. Some may try to hide, or escape from the challenge. Some like to stay neutral; they just wait and let the flow take them to wherever the situation leads them to.
I think the time when I "crossed the Rubicon" was when I decided to come to PAS. I put myself in an environment which language I did not speak and ways I found strange. But I knew I could not go back to local school, not the life I'd already left behind when I began home-schooling. The first several months of complete deafness and illiteracy in English was awfully difficult to endure. I remember the day I cried my eyes out because of the setback, the frustration and humiliation. Somehow, though, it became the past; all those tears now only flow in memory. I guess I managed to hold on to myself during those years. When I collapsed from time to time, I picked up the pieces and put them back, sometimes losing a few parts and soon I found new ones.

P.S. I typed this entry twice. The reason is illustrated below...

Entry 23: Influence of Childhood

Writers, or just everyone, when they are creating a piece of art, writing, or music, they always take ideas from what they have experienced. It's almost impossible to do without a source of ideas; it's how inspirations come about. I believe every person has his or her own experiences that are worth talking about. My own experiences that I could recall, are of course unique to myself. Still, what makes a writer or a musician different is their ability to turn unnoticed ideas into enjoyable writings. Not everybody is good at manipulating languages and words.
In the movie 3 Idiots, the educational system in India reminds me of Taiwan's. I still remembered the years I spent in local school. I hated the school, the teachers, the textbooks, everything. Compare to 3 Idiots, I have no idea how to turn my own experience into an interesting story.
Every time when a movie or story have the plot of a character training hard in dancing or martial arts, I can so relate to that. I love it when the character screams during a stretching exercise. (that may sound sadistic but I'm just simply relating to it) That was what my life was like when I was still dancing. There were hard times. Stretching was extremely painful. For once I actually burst into tears when the teacher pushed too hard. Well I don't know if other people would find my experiences interesting, but I've always wanted to write this particular experience during the time all the students slept in my teachers' house and  prepared for a performance. It meant a lot to me.

Entry 22: Your Character

A person's character is revealed through that person's thoughts, actions, reactions to environments, and interactions with other people. Sometimes a person would say directly what kind of a person he/she is to other people, for them to get a better understanding of him/her. A person gets to know his/her own character base on other people's reactions to his/her action. Other times it is based on the person's knowledge about characters. That person observes others, groups them into types of character that people made up names for, and looks back at him/herself to see where he/she belongs. For characters that are good, people are usually rather honest to themselves, but for bad characters - not so honest, even if he/she knows deep down in his/her heart. Human beings are always like that; we take all the good things without hesitating and hide or deny the things that are flawed. I believe my character is pretty throughout in different situations. I've always been a perfectionist since I was before three years old. I'm kind of stubborn; if I don't have to, I won't do things that displease me. I'm rather fearful of many things. I'm afraid of the dark, of fast-moving objects, and etc. I usually take things seriously. I prefer not to show many of my emotions. These are some of the characters that I think I am.

Entry 21: Bullies

Bullies want to make themselves feel better by degrading others. They are often very insecure unconsciously and or had been treated badly before. They like to have control over a thing or many things. A lot of times, in my opinion, it is also the natural tendency programmed in people's genes that makes a bully and a victim. A victim is usually weaker or someone who cannot stand up for themselves. They are insecure too, but they choose to deal with the problem silently, unlike bullies, who take it out on other people. That is why I say it's in the genes, because people are born with certain personalities.
I remember in elementary school I had almost become a bully. I joined a group of classmates who were dividing the class into two groups, and we look down at the other group. We made really mean remarks about the other group, calling them names and distaining them. I and a few others soon realized it was wrong and dropped out. The groups dissolved after a short while, fortunately. Other than that incident, I had never been a bully or a victim. Somehow I managed to stay out of those things. I have seen people getting bullied, though, as a bystander. There was a boy in this school that got bullied. All the other boys in the same class teased him endlessly, both verbally and physically. Due to my poor English back then, I didn't stand up for him. But once I drew a sketch of the boy and other boys while he got surrounded and teased.

Entry 20: Character Questions

The character Rukmani is believable, because we are able to see her different emotions toward things that we can relate. Rukmani, being married at the age of twelve, learned to be mature in a very short time. She is smart and content about what she had. In the story Rukmani said "while the sun shines on you and the fields are green and beautiful to the eye, and your husband sees beauty which no one has seen before, and you have a good store of grain laid away for hard times, a roof over you and a sweet stirring in you body, what more can a woman ask for?" (page 8) This passage shows that she is satisfied and grateful directly. Then a bit later in the book, "I tried not to show my pride. I tried to be offhand. I put the pumpkin away. But pleasure was making my pulse beat; the blood, unbidden, came hot and surging to my face. / After that, ten times more zealous, I planted beans and sweet potatoes, brinjals and chillies, and they all grew well under my hand, so that we ate even better than we had done before." (page 10) This one shows that she tried to be reserved, but she still couldn't really hold back her emotions. And she would find some other way to express them. Rukmani's motivation is to make the best out of what they had. She always kept hope and had been content.

Entry 19: Nectar in a Sieve

At first, the epigraph seemed incomprehensible. Then, (after knowing what a sieve is) an image of nectar escaping from the holes of a sieve came to my mind. That's when the epigraph started to make sense. In order to work, you need hope to make your efforts worthwhile. If you don't have hope, or a goal to work for, your work receives nothing good in return. Even if you do get some, they wouldn't last, just like using a sieve to pick up nectar. Nectar symbolizes sweet, rewarding things. And a sieve is work without hope; hollow efforts. Your hope comes from your desire for something. Hope just can't be hope if there is no object to wish for. To summarize the idea, work needs hope to succeed, and hope needs an object.
I think this epigraph applies to many aspects of my life. When I work, there must be something I hope for, a goal that I wish I could achieve. For example, although I don't like homework, I do them and hope. Most of the time I hope for getting a good grade or if I work quickly I could have some spare time to do what I want. To set a bigger hope, maybe I could get into a better university. I don't know about the latter, but I do get good grades by doing homework. That's the nectar I'm collecting. The same concept applies to when I'm working on my artworks. I work on them while thinking that I could become a better artist by practicing. I hope I can draw better, and that's what drives me to work and in the end I improve. Improvements are the nectar from the efforts I spend on drawing. I think there's nothing more to say about "And hope without an object cannot live," because it's apparent that hoping without actually hoping for something just doesn't work.

Entry 18: Character in Painting

The two people are sitting and probably both thinking. They might have been talking and now the conversation has slid into an awkward silence. The woman seems a bit uneasy from scratching her neck, and the man is sitting in a more comfortable position while staring at his hands. The foreground is taken up by the man. The woman is between the foreground and background. The background is divided by two colors: yellow on the left and lavender on the right. The most prominent details are the man in the front and the face of the woman.
The woman has blond hair and blue eyes. She wears a yellow shirt, blue jeans, and a ring on her left hand. She is looking backwards, kind of averting her eyes from the man. The man has brown hair and dark eyes. He wears a purple suit jacket, a yellowish white shirt, and jeans. The way he puts the fingers of his hands together and stares at it makes him seem nervous. The facial expressions and body language are the most striking. It takes a few more seconds to notice their appearances and colors.
The two prominent colors used in this painting are yellow and purple. The left side is mostly yellow and the right side is purple. The woman has blond hair, yellow shirt, and is set before a yellow background. The man on the other hand is in a lavender background and wears purple. Yellow usually means hope or happiness, and yellow ribbons are used to welcome loved ones returning home from far away. This might suggest that the woman remains hopeful in the conflict she and the man are involved in. Purple symbolizes nobility and mystery. Light purple is more sensitive and delicate. The man in purple might be described as sensitive, and he seems to be in a trance of unrevealed thoughts, appealing to the mysterious mood purple gives.