A temporary life in Melb.

Yay, the blog seems to be deserted for a long time... It's time for me to bring it back to life again.

I was very glad that I had my graduation ceremony finally in August (yes I know even that was three months ago).  I had waited for 8 months for that so I think I really deserved to say it once more here.  Congratulations me!!!  But the bad news is, I'm still out in Australia and haven't had worked for quite a while now.  I'm not too worried, since I've made up my mind to go back to HK and find a proper job by next year (finger-crossed).  So now I'm just wasting my life here for a few more months (who doesn't like doing it anyway).

Not a total waste though, I am having my "last chance" to be my boyfriend before I head back and he'll stay here for another year or maybe a few more years before... god knows what would happen after next year.  Our plan is to live separately in HK/Aust for a few years, work, earn and save enough for the marriage.  You may ask why live separately?  Well, 'course he still has one year to study and he really wanna apply for PR after that.  So at this point I still don't know whether he'll come back with me after that year or continue staying and working in Aust.  I don't really care if he could successfully applied for the PR, although I like Australia, it's a lovely place and has a much slower paced life-style that one could never find in HK, HK just feel like home to me and I just want us to be together at the end no matter living in which place.

I also keep myself under a learning atmosphere although I've got passed that stage already.  I'm now learning a new language!!!  Ha, my English is not perfect but somehow I feel not so threatened to speak/hear/write English after living in here for a few years (wow, it really worked!) so it's time for me to learn another language whilst still keeping up improving my English skills.  So what the next language would it be... Not much of a surprise... It's 日本語 Japanese!

Funny enough, I've tried to pick up a book that I bought 10 years ago (and never really read it) and read it this year.  And you know what, I finished it within a month!  That book was a self-learning Japanese book that I bought after I had taken a short Japanese course when I was in Form 1 (secondary school).  Never would imagine I'd pick it up again and really finish it.  Then I bought the whole series after reading that Book 1 and now I'm on the last few chapters of Book 3 out of the 4 books in that series.  Ha!  Really can't say it's a total waste of time of my life right now!

Social Intelligence

Social intelligence - I'd say I do not know how to define it even I wrote a post about it. I've got a few social setbacks recently back in Hong Kong and I desperately want to improve my "social intelligence" - a book that I saw on the self-help section of a book store. I haven't bought it yet since there're too much self-helps these days that I wouldn't risk my money on this one book I happened to see among many other books which were also focused on the same topic. Well, how do I know about "social intelligence" is the right thing for me? Well, it just sounds right!

Later I came across a book with a similar topic, "How to Win Friends and Influence People". I read a few parts to just know if it's the right book for me. Well, I hesitated. Yeah, the whole concept about being tolerant of others and don't argue with your friends to win your friend's agreement is a bit "too coward" or just simply "not right" for me. I know if you're doing business then you should be able to see the whole picture (and that is, the result) and not let your emotions interfere with the business. But in a purely friendship situaion, should we do the same? What do we want from a friendship? To show that we're not alone or even popular? Or to find ones (though may not be a lot) who we can communicate with honesty and still care for each other; can share the joy with and also sadness/burden?

Few days ago, I got a "friend" who stood me up few days before told me I shouldn't be disappointed by her/her kinds of people because I didn't have a great social life in Australia anyway (and now I'm in HK for holiday). Well, suddenly I asked myself wasn't it HER problem that she failed for the gathering but why she thought that I was the one to blame? It also sounded like I was a sad little person to her because I didn't get drunk every night with "friends" (which was also her glamerous reason to stand me up).

Well, I have every good reason to just to ignore this person because one, she did not know me at all but thought she did, very well. Two, we were never really close friends but only mates in uni studying the same subject. And almost 90% of the time I'd see her was she got problems with her studies and asked me to help her. Three, she insulted me to cover her own mistake and even made her the right one and I the wrong. What kind of person was that???

I hated it more was when I really questioned myself, "am I a terrible person (and have low social intelligence) so people stood me up? (I've been stood up twice this week)". My other friend comforted me, "I didn't understand why she (my ill friend) thought meeting friends are "social?" (What she meant was the term "social" is only used when we meet people we know but not too close, while close friends won't "social" each other). I was so surprised to hear it from my friend becuase we have been really close friends for many years and this wasn't just comforting but also showed how my friend saw me as a really good friend.

Then again, I asked myself, I had a good boyfriend who really cared about me. A few close friends who would want to know how I did and asked me out every year I came back. A loving and caring family. And her? Well I didn't really know her much other than a drunkard... But I knew her personality well enough to say that she was a selfish and ill-hearted person, that not many people would want to be close with her. I didn't care how many "friends" she got and how many "party nights" she had, that's just not what I want in my life. So, piss off. Don't try to evaluate my social life with your distorted concept of friendship and sociality. One example, I'm "socialing" with you but you can never be my friend.

All the Free Time

Since I've finished uni, I have loads and loads of free time.  I've tried to get a part-time job but no luck.  I'm heading back to Hong Kong for a month 2 weeks later so I am in no favour of getting a job right now.  IELTS speaking test this Sunday and paper test next week so you can see what a hectic I'm in.

The only realistic thing I do in this holiday is to try selling some of my stuffs online.  It is not easy to sell them out in good price except for those which are "brand new in box".  And if you're selling things on eBay, the fee's high too.  The ads fee, the final fee of your sold item and the Paypal fee.  How much's left after all the fee deduction?

And if you're selling things on Free Ads Website, like an online classified page, you're unlikely to sell things out quick, like a week or so, if you want a reasonable price.  Well, I insist that if you don't get the price you want, don't sell it. (I mean a reasonable price.)  You know the market outside and the price of your stuffs so don't give them up quickly to harsh price-cutters because I believe second hand sales should give both sellers and buyers a win-win situation.  And if at the end, you can't find a suitable buyer, just keep the stuff!

I also started to revise English grammars and vocabularies (finally!) for the IELTS.  I love the English language and also quite obsessed with the western culture.  However I just couldn't turn myself into a native English speaker after so many years of English learning.  I can't get rid of the Chinese way of speaking (I'm not talking about pronunciation or intonation, I could get rid of most of those) like I couldn't quite understand or remember some of the advanced levels of English sentence structures (eg. I need to think hard just to put the words in the correct order in this sentence.  Starting off with "advanced structure of English".  Doesn't sound right.  Oh put "level" in to become "advanced level" and add "sentence" in to make it clearer and swap the position of the words.  Finally sounds okay to me.)  and don't know what words can be put together and what not and I don't remember a lot of them after all.  I have put hard work in, you know, like taking notes of what this vocab means and read all the English grammar books.  Somehow I still couldn't reach what I want.

I guess if I need to clearly describe my current English learning situation I need a lot more paragraphs and time.  So I'll just stop here.  Oh, just one more fact.  You see how I'm frustrated over a sentence but it's still okay when I'm writing.  It gets a lot worse when comes to speaking because you're searching for a suitable word (and not too simple sometimes) and worried about the grammar at the same time.  Hell, learning a language is not easy!

And speaking of that, I realise I do not speak Chinese very good as well.  Well I'm all confident to speak Chinese (more specifically, Cantonese) but the words I use are sloppy.  I guess people of a younger generation don't want to use words that're too formal in daily life (to show that they're cool) and maybe it's also the reason why many of us couldn't speak and write the beautiful words and sentences anymore that the older generation used to.