Letter V: The Belated TAS Show Afterthought and more about My Background

Dear Tim:

Greetings!

Almost as a routine, this week was not any more relaxing; quite the contrary, due to the extra day of school we had this Saturday. How tragic! This was actually a compensation to one of the days of the "Double Tenth Day". This holiday is one of the biggest national holidays in Taiwan. It will take place on October the tenth, a Tuesday. However, to make it a bigger and more relaxing holiday, our government made that Monday -October the ninth- a holiday as well, which ensures us a vacation of four consecutive days -from 10/7 to 10/10- and this is when we should toss our bags out the windows and cheer. Though to our disappointment, our mid-term examination is two days after the holiday. Therefore, we possibly have to wave our four days goodbye and get our bags back, take out the books, and study through the days. But let's not dwell on the impending studying depression and look back on the last week's events! On Saturday, I accidentally left my laptop at school, so I'm typing on my cell phone, fearing that I might update too delayed.

The Twelfth Night

Maybe you have already heard from other classmates, the performance was amazing. And since I was so intent on submitting the letter promptly, this is my turn to tell the story in my fifth letter.

After the school bell rang, indicating the end of the last period, we excitedly packed our bags and left school. TAS, here we come!

The majority of the classmates took the bus while others flagged down some cabs. Former EHP students like Tiffany, Megan, Red, Vivian joined us as well, obviously thrilled as well, about the show we were going to watch.

A picture was taken prior to the show; Priorities well-sorted.

For this year, the TAS students brought out a modern rendition of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, with a lot of pop music from the 80's meddled within. The Twelfth Night was a comedy with the elements of love (a typical Shakespearean comedy) and gender confusion, and a quite unrelated but hilarious subplot. There was no intersection between the ninety-minute play, so watching the whole plot from the beginning to the end without pausing was awesome.

The amazing stage & setting

I'm not quite familiar with the music from that era, but the emotions inside the lyrics and the tunes were complements to the play on stage, hence creating a really nice momentum for the audience.

The part that I liked the most about the show -and also the most amusing- was that they used the lines from the original play so that they aren't just creating a completely new set of dialogues.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from this play:

"How does he love me?" "With adorations, fertile tears,

With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire."

"If music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it; let that surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die."

You must have heard how Candy likes the guy who acts as Sir Toby, and though he had that repulsive artificial belly, we were still pretty much infatuated with him.  The two times, in these two years, have we seen him in the TAS play. In the two times, he had taken the role of a character that was a lot older than he really was. But somehow, his voice, his posture, how he speaks and how he articulates were so mature that we were actually convinced that he really was that old. The first question that we had after the play was that whether he is still going to be around next year, just case that we will attend the next play.

It was not just the actor who acted professionally finished the play; the other actors all danced and acted as if they had really lived that character for all their lives. This is the kind of attitude I hope we can have on our yearly performance.

Duke Orsino and us.

The Lurch last year is this year's Andrew

Candy and the beloved Toby.

We heard that the show next year will be a musical, and I think all of us are drooling and anticipating for that day already.

My Dad and his Job

So from last week's article, you have heard about my dad. He works as a mechanic on a coal ship that ships coal from both Indonesia and Australia. Most of the time he was on the sea; no reception, no internet. Sounds miserable, I know. Though I heard from my dad that there are a variety of movies to choose from and he does have his laptop with him. During his duty, he has to stand by and act upon any sort of mechanical emergencies. Though he has his fellow colleges, my mom and I both know that it feels lonely on the boat for such a long time.

My dad has always sacrificed so much for this family. When I was young, he had worked overseas in China, with little time to spare to come back and spend time with us. It wasn't until he had fallen off the stairs when changing the light bulbs on the stairway. He had to come back to Taiwan and undergo surgery treatments because he got his back injured. I was so small that I barely know what had happened. All I knew was that mommy was really worried and I had to stay at my aunt's house when mommy goes abroad to get daddy back.

After he came back, he resigned from his job in China and we moved to another city, into a house on the first floor so that my mom and dad could sell betel nuts. I know that they weren't healthy, with all the chemical substances, but it was the easiest choice then because my uncle had a close friend who is also selling such things and could promptly help us settle down in the business. When I was 14, we moved to the house we currently live in. My mom took care of my cousin (they are both in school now, and my mom is applying to a course on accounting) as my dad worked to get a certificate on ship mechanics. And when he did, he had to leave home again and work for us. We aren't exactly a wealthy family, and I think I should be more grateful than I now am, being able to live such a happy and beautifully-lived life that someone else might not be able to. I love my family and no fights or anything else can alter the fact. It is as if the ever-changing universe; changing, but always there.

Sabrina's Composition

I was checking out all of my classmates’ blogs to see if they had updated their letters yet when I saw Sabrina's article. I wasn't reading the whole thing but I knew it was well written. Now that I had given a closer look, I would like to praise a bit.

Firstly, her writing was the neatly clean kind, with a clear and cut-to-the-point structure, which takes only once of reading over to understand. That is something I can't achieve so far since my style of writing has a lot of insinuating and beating around the bush and it takes only the interested persons that can fishing reading a whole article. Hers was clean and easily understandable. Moreover, her kind of "clean" wasn't because she used common words. If you read it, you can find expressive words like "grievous", "calamities" etc. Can be found in the article, and they don't at all sound intimidating as long words sometimes give readers. Casually blended into sentences, she writes very naturally. She obviously cares a lot about international relationships, events, and affairs. She gives precise and spot-on opinions. No wonder you advised me to read it!

She is as much a bookworm as I am, albeit with different genres of books in her hands. She squeezes time out of little places to read books about sociology, social psychology, international relations, and I think now she is reading about the European Union. She is really impressive, and sure will she achieve greatly writing on her blog as well!

P.s. If you could, please ask her to pay my blog a visit :D

by the way, Sabrina's blog is over here.

Dilemma in English Club

As any normal student in school does, we EHP students have clubs to go to. Since the first year of high school, I had joined the English club, and already then had I acquainted Sabrina and Amy. They are still in the club now, but the difference is that this year I have the teaching duty to fulfill. We are an English club, but we know that we cannot only teach English or the students get bored. We have a lot of games that aren't even English-related. I was confused by this system since I had joined this club last year. Determined to change this a little, I taught them a quote from Dr. Seuss at the beginning, and some of them already seemed a bit disinterested. However, at the end of the class, we heard some of the juniors complaining about why there were so little in English-related elements, and I think that this is not the solution; we really have to teach.

The quote I taught the students.

These days I have been thinking how I can my lessons more interactive and more informative simultaneously. I thought about teaching them a little bit of Shakespeare since he is a big contributor to the English language, and with all the wise-cracking insults might not be so boring to the students. Though since they don't and they won't have the same level of English, I have to try making them simple as possible. Gladly, we have the next two weeks without a club period; I can try to plan the teaching better. Teaching starts at high school: Thrilling but exhilarating.

An Afternoon with Cousins- Nail Polish Involved

This (or the last) Sunday, my mom and I went over to my cousin's house to have a somewhat relaxing day. Only after I had finished my math homework, though. My niece was also having a stressful hectic day because she had her chemistry to deal with.

After she had gone out for her classes, after I had delved into the blank-stare-mode-when-solving-unsolvable-math-problems, the doorbell rang.

I snapped out of my inanimate state and went to the door, wondering who it would be. Came the baby cousins my mom was taking care of! Turned out they also happened to be around here and decided to pay a visit. I quickly did all I could to finish off the math homework and when Eliza (my cousin/niece with whom I have been sharing wonderful memories since childhood. Okay. I'll explain later on.) Came back exhausted from her course. Then out of the blue, she said she wanted to do nail polish on Sophie, my baby cousin who looked so hesitant. She obliged, then, but with a tinge of reluctance in her voice. I tried her metallic nail polish on the pinky of my left hand, but for the sake of my beautiful blog, let's not ruin it with my awful picture-taking skills :D

She's focusing when my baby cousin tries to block me from taking photos.

Zooming in, in hope of seeing the color.

It has white blotches on the pastel blue nails; costly.

So why is Eliza technically my niece, though she is three months older than I am? I believe, it was because of the large extended family my mom has on her side. She has around ten siblings (Yes. 10.)

And while my mom was the smallest sister, Eliza's grandma was the eldest of the siblings. When my cousin got pregnant with Eliza, my mom was about the same age as my cousin was, and that was as well about the time my mom got pregnant. Eliza and I, we have been a mild team since birth. We goofed around together, we get scorned for goofing around together. She decides naughty plans and we put them into practice. We hefted her mattress onto the floorboard and sleep on it during the sleepovers. She would smack me on the head and I would smile at her; we have never fought and though she can be stubborn and bossy sometimes, I still love her very much. She will go going to England for college and I have no idea how much I will miss her, all the carefree attitude we had when we had fun together. Maybe I can go visit her someday.

Question Answering

1. We celebrate the Moon festival on 8/15, according to the lunar calendar. Though we can make it a lot less complex by saying that it is the celebration of the first full moon after the autumn equinox.

2. It seems peculiar that we call the festival "mid-autumn" because it really is not what the name has indicated. I didn't look the fact up on the internet, but I think what Mr. Maher said makes sense. The festival might have originated in place a little bit in places with higher in latitude.

3. Chang'e floated? Levitated? Flew? Either verb we used, she is supposedly on the moon now because of the immortal vial/elixir she got. Not driven by greed, but by reasons that are a lot nobler.

4. People nowadays "rejoice" the festivities by barbequing and pomelo eating, and a lot of mooncakes that are too sweet.

5. Full moon on September, a.k.a. Harvest Moon means that it is the month of agricultural harvest, indicating that they were to spend more time out on the field.

6. From December to February are the Cold Moon, the Wolf Moon, and the Starving Moon. Simply put, there are cold, starving wolves. I mean, these three months are the coldest months of the year, the lands are frozen and barren. People starve, and the world starves.

7. I am not so sure about the three consecutive months of harvest, but I guess they are August, September, and November whose full moons' names are Sturgeon, Harvest, and Hunter. They ensure the big amount of fish, wheat & plants, and meat for them to somehow manage past the harsh and relentless winters.

8. The Major League Baseball, consisting of 162 games, starts from April to September, passing the Pink Moon to the Harvest Moon. The playoffs, though, starts on November the first.

9. There are two leagues in the playoffs and three divisions in each league, and there will only be six teams from each of the division, and two from the "wildcard system", which makes eight teams in total.

10. To make it to the World Series:
I. Beat the Colorado Rockies
II. Beat the Dodgers
III. Beat the winner of the Washington Nationals-Chicago Cubs Series

The Full, Full Moon

I am not exactly an astrology person, so the feelings I have toward the moon is blunt and straightforward. When I look at the moon, I don't think of it as cold or distant. It is tender, a welcoming gesture to all of us. It was bright, pale like the grey, aged walls of an antiquated building. It was calming, just staring at the serene round of the moon. I don't think we will be celebrating Mid-Autumn with a whole set of barbecue, but I planned to Eliza's for a sleepover on Tuesday.

To celebrate the festival of the moon, I went online and looked up some lines about the moon:

"The moon is a loyal companion. It never leaves. It's always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Every day it's a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human. Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections."
-Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

I like this one a lot because the text basically summed up all the different perspectives we have for the moon, and I understand why the author made the moon relatable to humans; ever changeable and unpredictable.
Reading your article on the interesting names for the full moons, I was reminded of the Taiwanese also have another name for almost every month. I did some research, and it turned out they have intriguing origins! For example, we also call December "臘月", which is literally translated into "wax month" or "the month of the wax". Not that it has something to do with wax, but 1) there was a time when the word "臘" has the meaning for "presenting offerings to the gods in winter" which is what they do in the past, and(2 it used to be colder than it now is during winter, so to sustain a sufficient amount of nutrition, people used to make "臘肉"(lit. Translation "wax meat"), a kind of salt-preserved meat. I don't really like eating those because it really tastes like wax sometimes. Really salty wax.
Another superstition of the moon that came to my mind was more like a taboo, in which you should never point your fingers at the moon, or you'll get your ear cut. I tried that once, but nothing did happen, though. :D
This year is another day for the tranquility of the autumn moon.

A Belated Birthday Wish

Dear Tim:
I have to apologize. For not wishing you happy soon. That day when you told me when your birthday was, I should have reacted soon enough. That time, I just haven't registered that your birthday had passed already. What I thought was that your birthday is coming soon, not several days ago.
Happy Birthday, Tim. Thank you for reading all my updates and letters and replying them very quickly. I know I can be impatient sometimes, but with this blog we work on, I really have a goal and determination to write more and more and look at this!
This week's letter practically has more than 3000 words! There was a time when I dreaded writing, either in English or Chinese. You can ask my elementary school teachers and they would tell you how horrible a writer I was. Several years after that, when I was in middle school, I found the passion for English writing, and you gave us a path to furnish our skills over and over, and I am very grateful.
Have a nice week, have a nice year, with your large family.
Happy belated birthday, Tim, and please give my regards to your family.

Longest Article yet!

This article basically has over 3000 words, and I am drained.... :D

The first mid-term of the semester is coming, so I'm not expected to write next week since the others don't even have to write a letter.

I'll just keep myself updated.

Yours sincerely, 

Hugo