Merry Christmas everyone!

Merry Christmas everybody! It is a really nice holiday, many of you should have a great day with family or friends. However, I have to finish my stupid PBL report. That is the worst Christmas gift ever!

PBL questions are about DNA methylation. I don't care if DNA methylation is age-dependent or not. I don't care if DNA methylation is the reason why we get cancer. I don't care what the paper is saying. I just want to have a normal holiday, but it's impossible.

It's really boring to be a graduate student. I shouldn't be here. This is not what I can bear. Damn it! Well, I am sorry that I say this word in this beautiful holiday, but my life really sucks.

I am tired of reading papers, just come here and complain a while. I think this is the shortest article that I have ever write on this blog. Who cares!

Mobile template is available for Blogspot

Blogger have launched a new function of mobile template which makes people much more easier to read articles on blogger. However, this function is still in beta state so anyone who uses blogger and wants to activate this function should sign in from this website: http://draft.blogger.com to make this option show up. After that, you can change the option from "setting" > "Email & mobile". There should be a "Show mobile template" option.

I don't have iphone or android phone or other smartphone so I don't know how it feel to browse my blog in mobile template, even there is a "mobile preview" bottom in the setting. preview could be different with the reality.

Speaking of smartphone, I really want one. Unfortunately, smartphones are too expensive for me to have one. Recently, I think HTC desire Z is pretty good. If I am rich, I will definitely buy one.

Snowing on Chrome

It's almost winter. It should be snowing in some places in high latitude. Unfortunately, Taiwan is located in low latitude so it doesn't snow here usually. There is only a little chance to snow in the high altitude mountains in Taiwan. I have ever seen snow in my life. That is my pathetic life.

Anyway, today I'm introducing a google chome extension which makes chome start snowing. This extension only produce snow effect on the web browser but nothing else.

Google extensions - Snow


After installing this extension, all you have to do is restart the web browser and the effect should be appeared. It should snow on your chome for every pages. It could possibly not work sometimes.

Wow, I found that the snow effect is really fit for my blog's front page. It's really beautiful. You should try it. It make me imagine the scenery that it snowed in Taipei city. Well, it's impossible, I know, I'm just imagine.

Last but not least, I am not sure that if this extension consumes the ram a lot. It's just for fun. I think people who have ever seen snow would like it. If you feel so could when you use chrome, just remove it at chrome://extensions/ and restart the browser again. You will not be able to feel cold anymore.

My seminar subject: CXC chemokine ligand 4 (CXCL4) is a platelet-derived mediator of experimental liver fibrosis

My seminar presentation was finished, and I did very terribly. Anyway, here, I am going to talk about my seminar topic. As the title, my topic is "CXC chemokine ligand 4 (CXCL4) is a platelet-derived mediator of experimental liver fibrosis." First, I would like to introduce CXCL4 and liver fibrosis.

I think I would start with liver fibrosis. Liver fibrosis is cause by chronic liver disease and would lead to liver cirrhosis, end stage of liver failure, or even hepatocellular carcinoma. According to statistics of United States and Europe, the main reasons to cause liver fibrosis are HCV infection and steotohepatitis. The most important thing is that how does liver become fibrosis. The fact is that there are many myofibroblasts in the liver, and the main reason of liver fibrosis is that myofibroblasts secrete type I collagen which accumulates in the liver tissues and leads to liver fibrosis. However, there are many kinds of precursor of myofibroblast. They could be the cells derived from bone marrow, such as fibrocytes, or fibroblasts which are in the tissues originally, or sometimes hepatocytes could be changed into myofibroblast by stimulation of specific chemokines, but the main precursor is activated stellate cells. Hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) are in quiescent state in usual time, and they contain abundant lipid droplets which can store vitamin A. Quiescent HSCs could be activated by some conditions which could be liver injury, stimulation of lipopolysaccharide which is in the cell walls of gram-negative bacterium, or stimulation of specific chemokines. After HSCs being activated, they might have extra abilities such as proliferation, contractility, fibrogenesis, altered matrix degradation, chemotaxis, or releasing inflammatory signals. In addition, infiltration of immune cells could also lead to liver fibrosis.Fortunately, these mechanism of liver fibrosis could be regulated by some proteins like Timp-1, Tgf-beta, Mmp9, and IL-10.

Recently, the relation between coagulation cascade and liver fibrogenesis has been found. When coagulation cascade is activated, thrombins will be formed and platelets aggregation will be caused in the same time. If platelets aggregation occurs in liver, it will lead to HSCs proliferation. However, the key molecules of this mechanism are still unknown. One thing we know for sure is that platelets aggregation is caused by platelets activation. When tissues were injured, the collagen in the tissue may contact with blood stream, and the Von willebrand factor (vWF) in the blood stream would bind to collagen. The GPIIb-IIIa receptor on platelets membrane could bind to vWF and be activated after that. The activated platelets would release some coagulation factors, stored in platelets granules, to blood stream and caused clot formation, and one of the coagulation factors called fibrinogen could also bind to GPIIb-IIIa receptor. This would also make platelets to be activated and have the ability to link with each others and cause platelets aggregation. Interestingly, there are not only coagulation factors but also chemokines that are stored in platelet granules, and these chemokines would also be released to blood stream when platelets are activated. CXCL4 is an abundant chemokine in platelets. Actually, CXCL4 is both a chemokine and a coagulation factor. It is also called platelet factor 4 and it cause the formation of thrombus as a coagulation factor and it could activate monocytes as a chemokine. Recent studies show that CXCL4 mRNA was detected at elevated levels in the livers of patients with alcoholic liver disease ,and CXCL4 serum levels were elevated in patients with viral hepatitis. These evidences indirectly imply the potential of CXCL4 in liver disease. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate the role of the platelet-derived CXCL4 in human experimental liver fibrosis.

In this experiment, both serum concentrations and intrahepatic CXCL4 mRNA were measured in patients with chronic liver disease and in mouse models. Electron microscopy and immunohistochemistry were utilized to determine platelet aggregation. Wild-type and CXCL4-/- mice were treated with CCl4 and thioacetamide (TAA) which are used to induce chronic liver damage. Intrahepatic infiltration of immune cells was investigated by fluorescence-activated cell sorting, and hepatic stellate cells were treated with recombinant murine CXCL4 in vitro. The results showed that CXCL4 serum levels and intrahepatic CXCL4 mRNA concentrations were increased in patients with advanced hepatitis C virus-induced liver fibrosis or nonalcoholic steatohepatisis. Platelets aggregation was obviously near collagen fibrils in the liver tissue. The treatment of CCl4 and TAA caused an increase of hepatic CXCL4 levels, platelet activation and aggregation in mice. Deletion of CXCL4 could reduce liver fibrosis significantly which is proved by histological and biochemical examinations. The results showed that the expression of fibrosis-related genes (tissue inhibitor of matrix metalloproteinase 1 [Timp-1], matrix metalloproteinase 9 [Mmp9], transforming growth factor beta [Tgf-β], interleukin 10 [IL-10]) were changed significantly in CXCL4-/- mice. In addition, infiltration of immune cells (neutrophils and CD8-positive T cells) into the liver was decreased in CXCL4-/- mice. In vitro results showed that hepatic stellate cells were activated after treating recombinant murine CXCL4 and showed the abilities of proliferation, chemotaxis, and chemokine expression.

In conclusion, when liver injury occur, platelets could be recruited to the injured site and be activated. Then activated platelets secrete CXCL4 which activates quiescent HSCs, and activated HSCs start to proliferate. This might cause the increasing of myofibroblasts since activated HSCs are the main precursor cells of myofibroblasts. Thus, increasing of myofibroblasts accelerate the accumulation of type I collagen. The collagen was accumulated in liver tissue not only cause liver fibrosis but also recruit much more platelets aggregate in liver and be activated at the same time. Then activated platelets secrete CXCL4 again. This mechanism speeds up the progress of liver fibrosis. However, when we knock out CXCL4 gene, activated platelets could not secrete CXCL4, so HSCs could not be activated. Which means that there are no more myofibroblasts increasing and no more accumulation of type I collagen in tissue. Therefore, the progress of liver fibrosis will be slow down.

That is pretty much it about my seminar subject. Honestly, it takes me about a week to finish this article. Maybe this article doesn't make any sense because of my unsuitable description in English. Let me know when it does happen.

Welcome Arjunan to join this blog!

The main reason that I set this blog is to practice my English writing, and my dream is that there are many people who join my blog and practice English together. I am very glad that Arjunan join my blog, and also shared some very useful information of how to improve English. I have to say thank god that I made a great step to my goal, even I don't believe god.

I was so happy that I couldnt' wait to write a welcome article for Arjunan on this blog. Therefore, I wrote this while I was preparing my presentation for the next day. Honestly, I planned at first to write this article in the next next week because I would be a little bit freer in those days. I am sure that the more people there are in this blog, the more motivation I will get to practice English writing.

Arjunan's joining really encouraged me a lot. Now, I am very sure that there is at least one person who will read my articles, or share good experiences, or even discuss things with me. I am so excited about it.

In the end, I would like to thanks Arjunan for the two wonderful articles and I hope he will write more and more great articles on this blog. Anyway, welcome to join this blog, Arjunan!

Good Sites - English

Hi Friends

The following sites are really helpful for Esl students.I Have learnt a lot of things from these sites.

1.www.phrasemix.com
    It is a very good site where you can learn many English phrases which helps in our day to day life.They are updating the informations everyday.Just take a look!!

2.www.talkenglish.com
     This site is Awesome where you can find many phrases.You can improve your listening practice as well.

3.www.voanews.com
No words to express about this web site.it is really helpful for non native speakers.You can improve your listening practice tremendously.The way they pronouncing the word is really good.we can improve our listening skills.

4.www.speakspeak.com
 Good site For grammar.grammar is very important in English which will help you to sharpen your grammar skills.

5.www.manythings.org
 It is heaven for ESL students where you can find many good stories in English and you can improve your listening skills and many English tests Etc.

Steps to improve English language skills

Hi Friends...I am very happy to talk with you by using this blog..Let me introduce myself first before moving to subject..I am Arjunan from Tamilnadu .I had finished my Engineering.This is My life few years back..Till 10th Standard i don't know even a single sentence to write or talk in English.

When i was joining the college,I came to know how the English communication plays a very important role.Many of my friends used to tease me a lot because i was from Tamil medium(local Language).From that day itself i have started to improve my skills.I have been improving my skills since 2005.I had a lot of obstacles when i was improving my skills.Many students are suffering a lot to improve Communication skills.

Follow these steps given below(It is from my experience).I am sure ,one day you will become master in that language.

1.Try to be very patience to improve your language skills.It is not a over night process.It is STEP BY STEP process.

2.Vocabulary is very important for any language.So take steps to improve Your vocabulary.Try to watch BBC, CNN IBN,NDTV,Times Now which helps a lot to improve your skills.Try to listen a news minimum for 30 minutes.you can improve your listening skills.you will find many unknown words.Try to put a separate Notebook and write down those words.

Example:-
```````````
Compile - Select ,Collect

Ex - The police have compiled a list of suspects.
It is the easiest way to remember the words.Read minimum 5 words.Try to use that word in Conversations.
If you cultivate the following habits,You can find many new words.

*Reading News papers

*Watching News or English movies.

3.Pronunciation is very important in English.Many softwares are available in net,Download it.

* Wordweb(it is a dictionary which helps to know the meanings and gives a pronunciation)

*Speech(you can find this in your system(control panel).

4.Grammar.Don't Read too much grammar,Try to know the basics which is more than enough to talk.

*Tenses

*Voices(active voice & passive voice)

*Conditional Sentence

5. Don't be Shy...Practice is the key to Enhance your skills..Practice Practice Practice as much as possible..

I am sure,One day you will post your experience like me in your Blog..

Bye Friends..

Arjunan.S

Backup files automatically!

When we use a computer, our files will store in the computer. Of course, all of us have known that we should backup our files frequently. Otherwise, when the hard disk is broken, our priceless files would be gone at the same time. If we use laptop, there will be another risk of loosing it or be stolen. In addition, I think that laptops are much easier to be broken, and when laptops are broken, they should be sent back to the service center to be fixed. There will be no chance for us to backup our files after laptops are broken. Unlike desktops, we can try to save our files after the desktop is crashed.

As I mention before, we should backup our files frequently. You may ask how frequently should we do? There is no standard answer for this question, honestly. It depends on how often we use computers. Take me as an example, I am postgraduate now, I have many important files every day, so I backup important files every day, and backup less important files once a month. The followings are some method I used to backup my files.

Dropbox
http://www.dropbox.com/

Dropbox is a web storage space which provides 2GB after we register an account. We can earn more spaces by inviting friends signing up in this website. The maximum space we can use free is 8GB. This website also provides a synchronized software. After we installing this software, there will be a new folder named "my dropbox" in the "my document" folder. When we put files in "my dropbox" folder, the files we put will be uploaded to web immediately. Last but not least,  we can install this software in many computers of ours even in iphone or android phone, and then all files we put in "my dropbox" folder can be accessed in these devices. Therefore, if one of our computer is broken, we can still use the synchronized files from other devices or from the website directly.

 There is an official video of introducing dropbox:




If you are interested in dropbox, and want to give it a try. Then sign up with this link:http://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTMxOTk3MjI5, and you will get extra 250MB after you register an account.


Windows batch files and a 500GB external hard drive

Dropbox is a very ideal tool to backup our files, but unfortunately, there is only 2GB for us to use. That is not enough for me, so I bought a 500GB external hard drive to backup some files which is less important. My less important files are the files which I don't use very often such as the projects I have done, or the photos I took. I would backup these files in the external hard disk. However, these files are not in the same folder, so it would be very troublesome if I copy and paste these files manually, and plus, these files are really large. Therefore, I use 7zip and write a batch file with xcopy command and 7zip command to backup my files automatically.

Here is my batch files:

@echo off
@echo Backup Files
@echo.

@echo The following files will be backup:
@echo d:\software
@echo d:\chw
@echo d:\research tools
@echo.
@echo.


@pause

cls


@echo Backing up files please wait................
@echo.
@echo.



rem set date value
@For /f "tokens=1-3 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /t') do (set date=%%a-%%b-%%c)

rem @echo date is %date%


@echo Copying software files
xcopy d:\software d:\backup\"backup files"\backup-%date%\software /e /i /h /q
@echo.
@echo.


@echo Copying chw files
xcopy d:\chw d:\backup\"backup files"\backup-%date%\chw /e /i /h /q
@echo.
@echo.



@echo Copying research tools files
xcopy d:\"research tools" d:\backup\"backup files"\backup-%date%\"research tools" /e /i /h /q
@echo.
@echo.


@echo Creating log file in backup-%date%
cd d:\backup\"backup files"\backup-%date%\
@echo ==================================================== > "backup log".txt
@echo Files location: >> "backup log".txt
@echo ==================================================== >> "backup log".txt
@echo software        d:\software >> "backup log".txt
@echo chw            d:\chw >> "backup log".txt
@echo research tools        d:\ research tools >> "backup log".txt
@echo. >> "backup log".txt
@echo. >> "backup log".txt
@echo ==================================================== >> "backup log".txt
@echo Files informations: >> "backup log".txt
@echo ==================================================== >> "backup log".txt
dir d:\software /a >> "backup log".txt
@echo ------------- >> "backup log".txt
dir d:\chw /a >> "backup log".txt
@echo ------------- >> "backup log".txt
dir d:\"research tools" /a >> "backup log".txt
@echo. >> "backup log".txt
@echo. >> "backup log".txt
@echo ==================================================== >> "backup log".txt
@echo These files were backup on %date% >> "backup log".txt
@echo ==================================================== >> "backup log".txt
@echo Log file has been created

@echo.
@echo.

rem compress files to 7-zip
cd d:\backup\
7za a -scsUTF-8 -mx=9 d:\backup\"backup files"\backup-%date%.7z  d:\backup\"backup files"\backup-%date%\

@echo.
@echo.


@echo done!
@echo Files has been backuped in d:\backup\backup files\backup-%date%.7z
@echo.
@echo.


@pause

rem delete the folders
del /S /Q d:\backup\"backup files"\backup-%date%\
rd /S /Q d:\backup\"backup files"\backup-%date%\

I have to say it is not easy for me to write this file. I spent two hours finishing this files. If you want to try this method, you should download 7-Zip Command Line Version, and refer to the xcopy read me file. Other commands I used are echo, del and rd in the batch file. You can learn how to write a batch file in here, or just google it. I am sorry that I don't know how to write because I am not familiar with batch files, and I finished this batch files with google. Wish you enjoy it!

PS.
This is my first time to write a how to article. I hope all of you can know what I was writing.

Listen to the music online.

In the past, when we want to listen to some music in computer, we must save music in the hard disk before we listen. The good thing is that we can listen to our favorite songs whenever we want, but the bad thing is that sometimes we don't save every songs. Thanks to the internet, now we can listen to our favorite songs even we don't have these songs in the hard disk. We can just surf on youtube and search for the songs.

However, it is not good enough for people who likes to listen to the music all the time. Because it is pretty annoying to add every music we like in the play list. It should take us many times to finish. So, I'm here to recommend some music website for people who like to listen to music a lot.

Last.fm

Well, it is a very famous website. I think many people have used it before. This site can record what you listened after you install the music player plug-in, and then there will not only show the songs that you listened but also recommend you some music you may like. If you pay a little money every month, you can use the radio function. Radio can play music which is related to the songs you like. For example, if you like Jason Mraz, you just type the key words in the radio, and then it will play music which is similar to Jason Mraz's music. That is pretty cool, right!

Jukefly

Jukefly is very incredible. It sorts songs from youtube albums by album. So you can listen a complete album on this website. However, music form this website is actually from youtube. Therefore, the quality of some music is not very good. You don't need you sign up an account to use this website, you can just listen to the music as a guest, but if you want to set up your own play list, you would need an account.

Playlistnow.fm

This site is pretty interesting and creative. You cannot search the songs you like in this site, on the contrary, this site will recommend songs after you type what you are doing or what you are feeling. There will be may play list for you to choose. Of course, you can check what songs are in the list after you click it. If you don't like the list, you can just try another. By using this site, we can find some nice music that we haven't heard it before. Playlistnow.fm also link to social websites. When you type what you are doing or what you are feeling,  the message can be post directly on the social website, and also tell your friends what play list you are listening to. If you don't care this function, you can visit this site as a guest, but there will show up a windows to tell you to login or to sign up again and again. Don't worry, that won't affect you to listen to the music.

These music websites that I just found recently. Hope you like it, and I will be very glad if you can suggest me some other music websites. Enjoy it yourself!

Lame experience with Asus

It is a really long story about my notebook. I bought a  Asus U35jc in the beginning of July. I was really excited because this is my first notebook. The feeling is just like the first time I got my own computer. However, one month later, it was broken. It couldn't be turned on after a crash. The broken timing  was very awful. It was the time that I was preparing moving and getting really for lab. So, I couldn't fix it in my home town, I had to take it and fix in another place where is near my new house. That would make me have no computer to use for about a week so I had to move my old computer with me.

Anyway, this didn't bother me the most. The thing that bother me the most is that my notebook couldn't be fixed for a month. In this period, the laptop was fixed three times but none of these times it was completely fixed. Of course, Asus service officially claimed it was fixed every time when I got my laptop back but actually it wasn't. There were still problems every time. Finally, the service couldn't find the the way to fix the problems so they said that the problems were caused by installing incompatible software. I was very angry about that because if I installed incompatible software the problems should be showed up immediately not a month. Obviously, they were finding excuses.

Therefore, I told them if they couldn't fix the laptop, they should give me a new one not making excuses. Because I didn't want to waste my time on a broken computer. Fortunately, they agreed to change a new one for me at last ,but it still took a long time to get a new one.

I am using new one to blog my experience ,and I am hoping that my new notebook can be fine for a long long time, at least two years. I have to say Asus service is not bad actually. At least they would inform you the status. Nevertheless, the way they handle problems is not good at all. This may be caused by the useless repairer or the fact that they actually don't care about users' feelings. I am not sure I would give Asus another chance. I would like to say Asus is the last choice that I consider if I want to buy a laptop again.

Beating your kids

This video is quite interesting. When I was a kid, my parents beat me very often, as long as I did something wrong. The most interesting things is that my dad had said the same words as Russel said, "It will take them some time to get here, and someone is going to be hurt bad." when I told my Dad I can phone the Childrens' Aid.

Honestly, I agree that children should not be beaten when they can tell the difference between wrong and wrong. However, baby should be taught by beating because they don't understand what you mean, but they understand what hurt is. Besides, good habits should be trained when we are little. Beating properly can make a great help.

The main purpose of beating kids is try to teach them but venting our emotions. So, if we can find other way to teach them, beating can be unnecessary.

Qwertick: Make your keyboard to a typing machine.

Is there anyone who miss the sound of typing machines when you are typing? I do. Even though, I have never used a typing machine before but I am still attracted by the sounds. The good news is that there is a software which can make typing machines sound when you are typing. It can brig you back to the old days.


This software is called Qwertick. You can download it here or from its' official website:http://www.nattyware.com/qwertick.php

Some of you may ask, "Is there any other special function of this software?" Unfortunately, no. It is just a software which makes sounds when you are typing, and nothing else. Your keyboard is still a keyboard and could never have chances to become a typing machine. When you run this program, there would be an icon in the system tray. If you feel that the sound is annoying, you can turn it off from the icon or just shut it down.

By the way, I really like the sounds especially the sound by pressing Enter. It could do me a lot of favor when I need to write something. The sound makes me want to type. Enjoy yourself!

You know, we can download hundred millions personal data on facebook via BT torrents!

 I am not bluffing. This is truth. There is a person named Ron Bows who provides a torrent which has hundred millions of personal data that he search from facebook on his blog.

Bows claimed that this torrent contains:

• The URL of every searchable Facebook user's profile
• The name of every searchable Facebook user, both unique and by count (perfect for post-processing, datamining, etc)
• Processed lists, including first names with count, last names with count, potential usernames with count, etc
• The programs I used to generate everything

 This is horrible! I can't believe that our personal data is so easy to get if we use facebook. We can say there is no privacy in facebook. Honestly, sometimes I am considering to delete my facebook account. However, most of my friends using facebook, and I think this is the only way that they share their lives. The advantage for me to use facebook is that I can know what my friends doing recently if they volunteer to share, and it makes it easier for me to meet them in the future because even we didn't meet each other often, we still know something in common.

I know that this attitude is not healthy at all. We should interact with people in a normal way, not on the Internet all the times. This is one of my things which needs to be changed.

My first interview.

I have never had an interview before. Today is the day when I have my first interview. It is an interview of applying a graduate school. And this is a really long story.

Long time ago, I decided to apply for graduate schools so I went to cram school preparing the exams. However, I don't really want to go to graduate school so I stopped studying after chinese new year. Before I took the exams, I just finished less than one fifth of all books. I never expected to pass.


I was freaked out when I took the exams. Most of the questions are questions and answers, not multiple choice, so rationally, I did it very bad. All I answered were only one third of whole questions and I was not sure for half of my answers. I took them very easy.

The consequences showed that I failed in two school, and passed in one school. I was really surprised that I can pass for the exams. I can't believe it at all. Therefore, I got a chance to interview. If I make it, I will go graduate school. The interview was not easy to prepare. I need two recommendation letters, and a report card, and my autobiography. The report card are easy because I can just apply one, but the others are difficult. First, I don't know how to write a good autobiography. I don't know what are needed in an autobiography so I searched in the internet, asked some people, and even copy some templates. I wrote one finally, but it seemed not good enough. Anyway, it is much better than nothing. Second, I have to ask two professors who is willing to write me an recommendation letter. Wow, I didn't know who should I ask because there are some records that professor would turn students down in letter, or even refuse to write one for students. Whereas, I was lucky to have two letters in the end.

Last but not least, I don't know what should I wear to be proper enough. Some people said I should wear very formally, some people said I don't need to wear too formally. besides, it cost me a lots of money to prepare what I wore. That is really a big deal!

When I was interviewing with professors, they asked many questions which is not related directly to the graduate school. They were like chatting. They didn't ask any professional questions. That made me really relive indeed but I just have a bad feeling of this interview. And the worst things is that I finished this interview much earlier than the other candidates. Dose it mean that I don't have any hope to go to that graduate school?

My body is killing me!!!

Since I have been preparing for applying postgraduate school, it has been a long time since I stopped playing volleyball. Yesterday, I got a free time, so I went to a ball game. Honestly, the game was not intense, but I got up from the bed this morning with pain all over my body. All of my muscle complained me about over exercising.

However, I disregard my pain and hang out with friends this afternoon. I rode my motorcycle to had my lunch with my friends. And, wow! This lunch was great. I could possibly go to it next time. Then, we went to a department store. On the top of the department store, there is a amusement park. There are archery, Ferris wheel, arcade games, and other stuffs. Anyway, I played archery and some games. I found out that doing an archery really needs some strength. I got too painful this day so I couldn't shoot the arrow on the target. Maybe it is just an excuse. Whereas, my friend is good at archery. He shoot all of his arrows on the target. Good for him!

After that, we went home right after we finished the dinner. When I sit down on my desk, I can't believe I spent so much money today! I think I have to save money in the couple of days.

About the future

The things I see in future of my life are miserable, depress, and dilemma. I don't know why I am so pessimistic. There should be some light in the dark. As the saying goes, "When god closes a door, somewhere he opens a window." But, I just can't find the window.

In Taiwan, people get high graduation with high degree. Too many people got master degree or PhD. Therefore, we have a myth that people who have higher degree will find better jobs. I can't deny all of these words. A good job with high payment and respect can only be done perfectly by people with excellent abilities. However, a person who got higher degree doesn't mean they have better abilities. Nowadays, many people in Taiwan went to a postgraduate school just for degree. That is ridiculous.

I don't like research very much so I don't really want to get a master degree right now. But, if I don't go to postgraduate school, I have to get a job. It is really difficult to get a job in this economical depress. Even if I go to postgraduate school just because I don't want to find a job now, I would face the same problem when I got a master degree. What am I supposed to do then? Should I face the music and find a job, or keep avoiding to get a PhD? And what should I do when I have gotten PhD? These are really hard questions for me. But there is one thing I am sure is that when I got PhD, there will be less things that I could choose.

The reason is simple. If I got a job after I finish junior high school, I can do everything as long as the job can feed me and this kind of jobs are pretty many. However, if I am a PhD, I may not be like a waiter for living. I should be supposed to be a professor or a researcher, and if I don't good enough, I will not have any job.

The progress of the class

In my university, teachers still teach students in Chinese. Only few of courses are taught in English. All of them are in the department of medicine because there are international students in department of medicine. I have heard that teachers didn't do well in the English taught classes. Most of students didn't understand what teachers was trying to express even international students. Yeah, that means teachers are not good at speaking English. Therefore, the attendance rate of the courses became lower and lower because many students decided to study by themselves. However, English taught courses still went on without any hesitation.


Last week, one of my teachers, in department of medical laboratory science, told us a news that our department will accept international students after about two years, and it means all the professional courses in our department will be taught in English. If everything goes well for me, I would not take the English taught courses. Whereas, the English taught class is not only difficult to students but teachers. All of us don't have experience of this kind of classes, so Miss Huang, one of our teachers decided to try it in this semester. She held a course which will be taught in English. Actually, this course is more like PBL, problem based learning in short.

Today, in the first class of PBL course, Wanda volunteered to be the first one to introduce the first case of the course. She is good at English. She also speaks English very well, but she seems very nervous, and so do I. I am not used to speak English in front of people even though I would speak English to myself sometimes. She introduced the case fluently and brought up some questions for us to discuss. All of us used very suck English communicating, and we got stocked very often because we couldn't understand each others. Every body tried very hard. As for me, I could mostly understand the conversation, but I couldn't speak even a word. I don't think the reason why I couldn't speak is because I am too nervous to speak. I think the main reason is that I am too shy. I would not speak even the class is taught in Chinese.

Nevertheless, the class was end perfectly. All of us spoke English while we were discussing the case. None of us spoke Chinese. This course is not essential but optional. Many people dropped it because of English, but I didn't. I think it is a great chance to practice professional English. It is not easy to have this opportunity.

Being shoot can be exhausted.

I am going to graduate from university, so every one in my class have to take a commemorative graduation photography. Since I am in an university, taking this kind of pictures can be very different from the time when I was in high school, or elementary school graduation. Being shoot alone, with friends, or with all classmates and teachers, there are too many kinds of pictures to be shoot now, and there are also different places for us to be shoot.

Today, I got a lots of pictures shoot with different places, different clothes, and different people. The most tiring thing I think is about places, and clothes. Because the sun was very big today which made me feel sun burned after I went out for 10 minutes, and we had many clothes to change, like casual wearings, academic dresses, and lab coats. So, it was hot when I put on each clothes, not mention how harsh it is when I was doing it. Besides, the photographer asked us to do many different postures while we were taken photos. This is the first time I feel that being taken pictures can be so exhausted.

I always don't like to be taken pictures because I feel weird to smile at nothing but a camera, and I don't think I am looked good in photos. Maybe I am not looked good at all, but at least I don't need to look myself in usual time. However, I like to take pictures of others cause that makes me don't need to be taken photos by others. Ha Ha!!!

I get very lazy recently.

I really don't know why I get lazy recently. The thing is that I am going to have exams for applying postgraduate schools, and there is no any power for me to study. Besides, I am also too lazy to do what I am interested in, like computers, movies, playing balls, or going outside. I don't want to do all of them at all. The worst thing is that I don't want to stay at the room either. This make me feel like I am wasting my time, and the true it is.

I should find something to cheer me up, but I just don't know what things can work. Maybe I can start some project of some interesting things. That would make me find some things to do. However, I have a feeling that I will give up at last.

Honestly, I went to a fortuneteller couples of weeks ago. He told me that I would be lazy and not satisfying for anything. Therefore, I would have a lot of big changes in the next ten years, but all of these changes are not going to help me in the future. When I heard that, I felt very frustrated. If this is the truth, I would be very very pathetic.

But, what can I do? If this is my fate, I can do nothing but accept this. Don't tell me that I can fight with fate because I don't, and I won't. I have heard many stories about people wanted to change their fate, and they truly worked very hard, but they failed at last. The things they did are too hard. I would rather accept it than fight against it. It is not worth at all.