1^st April, 2004 (Thur)              Cloudy

It’s not just the April’s Fool!!

My memory of what happened on the April’s Fool of last year was still fresh.  I bet everyone in HK should remember what happened that day.  I can’t imagine how fast one year has passed.  It was like yesterday when we heard the surprising news… Actually I was so busy with a report for the Chinese community centre that I didn’t have time to read the news and watched those pics.  And I didn’t care much about whether it’s April’s Fool coz all my attention had been put to the report. 

2^nd April, 2004 (Fri)    Sunny spells

A tiring journey has started!

In the afternoon I lost half part of the key ring that my friend made for me and I felt anxious to find it because it was a gift and I got it only a few days ago.  I didn’t know how to tell that friend of mine of this.  I tried very hard to find it out in the kitchen, which I suspect was the place where I lost that half of my key ring since I found a small piece of cloth in the kitchen.  I searched the litter bin but nothing was found (and it smelled!).  I asked some of my flatmates but they had no idea.  So desperately, I placed a note on the table of the kitchen to ask anyone who knew about my key ring to let me know.  Luckily, accidentally, I found the key ring under the toaster!!

My classmate and I were setting off for Newcastle tonight…

3^rd April, 2004 (Sat)    Rainy with sunnyspells

A short trip to Newcastle!  Exhausting, cold…

My classmate and I talked in my room until 2:45 p.m. when we had to set off for Piccadilly.  Out of my expectation, there were quite a number of people on the street but those were youngsters or people who just had gone to the pubs.  When we got to Piccadilly, there were a few people, perhaps they were waiting for a train to the airport.  We were not alone in taking the train for Newcastle. 

We slept for two hours before we arrived at York where we had to change for another train to Newcastle.  York was much colder than Manchester.  We waited in a warm waiting room.  It took us another hour to get to Newcastle from York and the sun had already risen then.  The University of Newcastle wasn’t far away from the city centre.  We took the Metro, which is like London Underground but much cleaner and newer than the latter.  We took a few pictures around when we got to Haymarket, which is just next to the university.  It wasn’t difficult for us to find the venue for registration.  After we had registered and paid for the conference, we got a delegate pack, which included an abstract book, an ugly bag designed especially for the conference, some ad and a pen.  We got to the venue for the talk by Auer, a linguist on conversation analysis, and the lecture theatre was full.  But we found it quite boring and almost fell asleep. 

We attended one of the presentation sessions after a coffee break.  The speakers of all four presentations were great and the last presentation was brilliant.  The presenter was a girl from Hong Kong who was doing a similar study to mine.  Her English was very good, very fluent and I was wondering if she was a native speaker of English or if she had been in the US for a long time.  Later she told me her English was not considered the ‘non-main stream’ and carried some features of Hong Kong English.  But I think at least her English is much better than mine.  I think the best way to improve one’s English is by having some English native speakers as friends and talking to them every day.  I felt ashamed of myself after her presentation coz I don’t think I had learnt much from my course so far and I don’t think I’ve got that talent, that capability to give a presentation as wonderful as hers.  We also got to know a guy who was doing a similar study to my classmate’s. 

We weren’t much interested in any presentation after the buffet lunch and decided to go to the city centre.  We took some pictures and we went to the Gateshead Millennium Bridge.  We felt exhausted, having walked a lot with our heavy backpacks.  We went back to the university for the last talk of the conference.  I believe the talk should be wonderful and I think the speaker (Lesley Milroy, a well-known linguist) was a confident woman, a great linguist but I really couldn’t help resisting the temptation of the sleeping devil and slept throughout her presentation!! Wasn’t it a waste of time? Maybe we should have skipped her presentation and went back home earlier for a sleep?

We took a train an hour earlier than we had planned to but in the end we went back to Manchester later than as planned. Because the train to Manchester from York stopped at many stations, it took us more than two hours to get back to Manchester.  When we got back to Manchester, it was raining and it was really a long way to walk from Victoria back to my residence.  Of course it was more difficult for my classmate as she had to walk for half an hour more.  We both were exhausted.

Was the money (75 pounds) paid for the conference well spent?  On a positive note, we got to know what a conference is like (and we are thinking of submitting a proposal to some conferences) and know a few students who are doing research similar to ours.  I also got to know more about my classmate as we chatted a lot about each other.

4^th April, 2004 (Sun)   Rainy

The aftermath of the trip…

I was very sleepy today.  I almost fell asleep while having a chat with a friend on the phone in the late afternoon.  I wasn’t enthusiastic about talking with mom and dad.  I wanted to sleep but I knew I had to start doing my part-time work. 

5^th April, 2004 (Mon) Cloudy with sunny spells

I helped a Chinese woman by being her interpreter.  It wasn’t a difficult task for me since quite often she could express herself in English to the solicitor though with some grammatical mistakes.  I wonder if there’re many cases in the UK where a woman from China got married to a British and then got divorce soon after they got married and flew back to the UK.  I’m also not sure if some British men are really so bad. 

I think to some extent I am emotional because I haven’t drawn a clear line between what I should do and what I shouldn’t.  A staff of the Chinese community centre gave me a good advice that I should set myself limits when doing my volunteer work and helping some clients.  As she said, in the end what’s important is that the client herself could become independent and no longer needs our help. 

7^th April, 2004 (Wed)  Sunny

I went to the Chinese community centre at noon when they were rehearsing for the launch day of a project.  I got to know a few people that would be doing a play on that launch day.  We had lunch together at a Chinese restaurant in the China Town.  After lunch, we were busy putting  the reports (that were written by me!) in a nice folder.  I didn’t feel like rehearsing the presentation but I had to do it anyway at the end of the day.  I enjoyed my volunteer work coz the people at the Chinese community centre are nice; I can gain some experience of trying different things and get to know more people.  And I’m thinking if one day when I go back to HK, I may also try to find a chance to be a volunteer?!

8^th April, 2004 (Thur) Sunny

These days I didn’t sleep well.  Actually it has been a problem since I started preparing my presentation a month ago.  I went to bed early (usually I didn’t mean to go to bed initially, just wanna have a nap only) and woke up in the middle of the night and stayed up until the next day; in the daytime I was so sleepy that sometimes I needed to have a nap. Quite often these days when a friend was sending me icq messages, I went to bed! The acnes on my face kept growing and they are a warning to my health.

After a nap in the afternoon, a flatmate invited me to her room for a chat.  She had bought some chocolate for Easter at the supermarket today and she wanted to show me those lovely Easter Eggs.  She asked me to take some chocolate but I took a small bar of chocolate only in the end.

9^th April, 2004 (Fri)    Sunny

I seemed to have a problem concentrating coz from time to time I got distracted to different things and although I didn’t sleep much in the evening, I did take a nap from time to time in the daytime.  The deadline that I set for a task has been extended time and again.

Mom called me in the afternoon.  At first I felt a bit worried when she called me coz she rarely took an initiative to make a call to me.  I was worried if anything unpleasant had happened.  But actually she just wanted to ask me to send her something.  Sometimes no news from the family back home is good news?

11^th April, 2004 (Sun) Sunny

How happy I was about finishing a task!! I felt so exhausted that I didn’t want to work on it any more when the afternoon came.  As I was so eager to finish the task, I seemed to succeed in focusing all my attention on it. 

So jealous that a friend of mine can enjoy her life in oz.  I wish I could be traveling too.

12^th April, 2004 (Mon)   Sunny

Taken a break.

I slept a lot today.  In the morning I went to bed again after my breakfast as I started having stomach ache.  I still had stomach ache after lunch. I slept for another few hours before dinner.  I stayed up until 4a.m. the next day and then slept for another two hours… I really felt like a pig!

The talk of the allegations about Beckham’s private life was still ongoing.  I don’t think all of them are true since I believe some media (from all over the world) don’t report the truth and they just want to attract the readers.  For certain anything about Beckham can hit the headlines.

13^th April, 2004 (Tue) Sunny

Good experience as an MC in English…

Yoko was very efficient in helping me to exchange for pounds today.  I called her in the small hours of the morning and then transferred the rest of the money required for the transactions and five hours after my transfer, the pounds were already in my account.  I am now eager to get a new job coz I really need money and I am worried about whether I could have enough money to support my life and study here.  I can’t believe that after I had got the pounds, the pounds were depreciating!! Oh… maybe it shows again that the money isn’t mine…

Today was the launch day of the parenting project of the Chinese community centre.  I went there before 10 a.m. I was a bit nervous.  There were not many attendees today.  Not even many representatives from other organizations came.  We started the event from 11:30 a.m..  There were a few English-speaking people and I had to interpret everything my partner said in Cantonese (and she stopped saying anything and looked at me).  I don’t think I performed well and occasionally my English was broken.  I had to present the report and described each scene of a play in English.  When the workshops started, I could be relieved, take a rest and wait for the lunch. 

This launch day is a good experience to me.  I got a chance to write a survey report and the powerpoint for the presentation, be an MC and speak English in front of many people and get to know other volunteers and I enjoyed a lot in the process of preparation for the event. 

After leaving the Chinese community centre, I helped a Chinese woman sort out the problem with her payment to the bank.  I went to Halifax, Phones4u and Vodafone to help that woman ask about the charge by the bank over her over-due payment.  The problem still wasn’t sorted out but I’d meet that woman again tomorrow to help her sort out the matter.

I found another problem with my MP3 player.  When I pressed a button to try to listen to the recordings, the MP3 player shut down immediately!! I am worried about my MP3 player coz more and more problems arose and it is very important that it functions well at this critical time of my data collection!!

I got an Easter gift from a gift.  It included two pieces of chocolate and a lovely Mcmug stamp chop with words ‘Miss you’.  Wow…

14^th April, 2004 (Wed)            Cloudy

My Waterloo Battle…

In the morning I had a meeting with the woman that I tried to help yesterday.  Vodafone said they didn’t deal with the case of the woman and Phones4u said the same thing.  So finally we had to make a phone call to a company at the Chinese community centre and the payment problem of that woman finally got sorted out.  She gave me three apples when we parted. 

A flatmate told me she’d be returning to China this weekend.  I want to go home too…

I was frustrated and disappointed about failing to stay in a restaurant for data collection this evening and I walked back home instead of taking a bus.  I followed the route of the bus that I had taken but at a certain point I almost got lost.  Fortunately I remembered there was a church-like building near the supermarket where I do my food shopping every week. When I saw it at a distance, I tried to walk in its direction and finally I found the supermarket and it took me an hour to get back home.  But the weather was not cold today and I could have a chance to think.  So it wasn’t a bad walk. 

15^th April, 2004 (Thur)           Sunny

A friend told me he had quit his current job and was going to work in a chain café shop because he wanted to do something different when his age hit 30.  It occurs to me that people like to (and need to) have a change at a certain time in their life….

16^th April, 2004 (Fri)  Rainy

I didn’t do anything but watching a TV drama.  When I finished it, it was already midnight and I felt so tired that I went to bed…

17^th April, 2004 (Sat)  Cloudy

A flatmate living opposite me left for China this morning. The flat seemed to become quite quiet these days. My next-door flatmate is also away.  And I was quite lazy today, though I told myself to work hard time and again.  These days my shower habit was not regular.  Sometimes I took a shower in the morning, sometimes at lunchtime and sometimes before dinner time.  Just like my daily life.  I didn’t follow the timetable and just did whatever I feel like to.

18^th April, 2004 (Sun) Rainy

I watched ‘Golden Chicken’ and ‘Love Actually’ in the late evening and stayed up until 3:30 a.m.  The former was fun but there were some touching scenes as well (related to Sars); the latter was meaningful and good too.  Hopefully my English hasn’t got worse as a result of my frequent contact with Cantonese/Chinese stuff…

My flatmate doesn’t agree with my plan to go to discos for collecting data as she thinks it’s not safe and the environment may be too noisy for recordings. 

19^th April, 2004 (Mon)           Sunny

My friend postponed her return to Hong Kong until 13^th May as Chris’ concert has been postponed to 21^st and 22^nd of May, as announced today in a press conference.  She said she was more concerned about the effect of the postponement on the overseas fans, who have already booked everything and some of them may have to miss the concert as a result for various reasons while suffering the losses in terms of money and chances to see the concert.  They must also feel disappointed when they are preparing to come to Hong Kong this weekend.

My friend said she no longer cared much about what was going on with her favourite singer.  Another friend of mine said she no longer watched as many football games on TV as before.  It seems people have different interests and shifts their attention from one interest to another in different stages of their life.  That’s the same case with me too.  I still pay attention to some football news but I don’t have the same enthusiasm about football as before. 

20^th April, 2004 (Tue) Sunny

I read a job advertisement at Linguist List.  It is a post of post-doctoral fellow in Sociolinguistics at HKU.  That’s my dream job.  I’m not sure if I could finish my thesis.  I also have a thought that I stay in the UK and work for a period of time just to earn money for traveling before going back to HK.

There was a dispute between some HK and overseas fans of Chris’ over the postponement of his concert.  The root of the problem was the fact that the decision on the postponement wasn’t made until only a few days prior to the concert.  If Chris and the organizers had made the decision earlier (they should, coz they were supposed to have worked out the plan for the concert the moment they announced the ticket sales of the concert!!), there wouldn’t have been so many problems or troubles to the fans. 

21^st April, 2004 (Wed)                        Rainy

I had a discussion with a staff in the Chinese community centre about what would be done in the rest of the year, especially for the summer, including some outdoor activities.  She wanted me to do more casework for her and attend some training courses.  I agree with her that it may be a good chance for me to gain some experience in something different from my study.

I have been given some tasks to do at home by the Chinese community centre.  I gotta finish a press release for a parenting course and a piece of paid translation task.

I was late for the seminar meeting.  My classmate gave a very good presentation today and I raised questions much more often than usual.  It may be partly due to the fact that the topic of her presentation is related to my study. After the meeting, one of my classmates and I went to the Starbucks for a drink until 9 p.m.  My classmate said her initial motivation for doing a PhD study was to travel but now she found in fact we had no time to travel!

Don’t know why.  I feel very energetic this evening when I came back home.  My adrenaline was still rising and I didn’t feel like going to bed.   That’s why I started working on the translation task given by Lisa and hope that I will have finish it and other tasks by tomorrow.

This evening I asked for a friend’s advice on getting a mobile phone after my failure to buy one on the Internet.  She suggested me looking at another online shop and she said I better tell them, if they ask, that I had been here for 3 years or it’d be difficult for me to buy a mobile phone.

These few days I started thinking about when I will go back to HK.  Actually it depends on my financial situation and the progress of my study. 

22^nd April, 2004 (Thur)               Sunny

I want to return to HK!!

Suddenly I want to return to HK.  I don’t know why.  Maybe because I feel a lot of pressure with my study?  My flatmate gave me some valuable suggestions on where and how to collect data.  I decided to make a plan for my data collection in the rest of the year.  I hope I can finish my data collection before the end of this year so that I can start the data analysis and writing from January of next year, when there’ll be only one and half a years left! My data collection can be a motivation for my return to HK.

24^th April, 2004 (Sat)  Sunny

Feel bad today…

I had a chat with mom on the phone this afternoon.  Mom would be travelling to China with a sponsorship from my two elder brothers.  I felt guilty of having my two elder brothers taking up the whole responsibility of supporting the family.  I felt guilty that because of my own desire to further my study and lead a life in another country, my parents can’t have a better life since they have one less person to support their living.  I could have been able to give them some money to do things like travelling, if I hadn’t furthered my study and if I continued working.  Now what I can do is to study hard and treat my parents well after graduation. 

The weather is quite warm today and even though I have opened the window to let the wind come in, I still feel very hot, perhaps because I’m sitting close to the heater.

26^th April, 2004 (Mon)                       Cloudy with sunny spells

I seemed to enjoy working in the Chinese community centre more than facing my part-time work and my study.  I finished one (simple) task after another.  I was just asked to photocopy and sort out leaflets and fax the press release for a parenting course.

The weather was quite warm today.  The BBC website said it was 14 degree Celsius at 12 p.m. but I felt like it was having over 20 degree Celsius when I went out at 2:30 p.m.  Maybe I’ve already adapted to the cold weather and 14 degree Celsius, which could still be considered as ‘cold’ in HK, means a warm weather to me?

27^th April, 2004 (Tue)             Rainy

So nice that overseas fans got compensation for the postponement of Chris’ concert by having a chance to meet Chris in person!! I didn’t expect he’d do so.  If I were one of those fans, I’d feel very happy, though I’d have to miss his concert.  My friend asked me if I'd go back to HK to watch Chris' concert in May. I told her I wouldn't return to HK in the next 6 months for money reason and for my study.

I feel sad when thinking of the fact that one day my parents may leave us. I don't know why I had such silly thoughts. Maybe when we get older, we tend to start thinking about those questions about life and death?  Suddenly I want to treat them better but feel sad that I can't do so at the moment because of my study.

My friend suggested me leaving a note in the kitchen, telling people to ask for others’ permission before using their stuff but the way I deal with the unauthorized use of my baking tray is a bit pessimistic; I just put the tray back in my room!

I agree with my classmate that doing leisure reading doesn't involve much use of one's brain.  Perhaps we like to let our brain take a break from time to time.  It’s tiring to have to think all the time.

28^th April, 2004 (Wed)                        Cloudy

I attended a seminar with some staff of the Chinese community centre on research in the Ethnic Minority communities.  We all sat at the same table and there were around 30 other people sitting in the same room as we did.  Some people ventured to express their opinions and spoke a lot while few of us said much among others.  The seminar and what people in other communities do were not very relevant to my study but it’s still good to attend a seminar like this as I could get to know more about what’s going on in different ethnic minority communities, which share the same problem with the lack of resources and money available to them. 

I am glad that from now on until October we don’t need to go to the university and I can concentrate on my study, though to be honest, I still have to work hard on it.

I had a chat with two of my classmates after the seminar.  One of them will be returning to her home country in late August, by which she’ll have finished writing up her thesis. I’m glad for her because finally she can go back home after a 3-year study.  The other classmate will be going back to her home country in early July.  She encouraged me to submit an abstract to a conference.

A friend of mine in HK said that there were so many ‘free travellers’ from the mainland China that she didn’t feel like going to those popular shopping districts and tourist attractions, esp. since this week is the ‘golden week’ for the Chinese mainlanders.  But I think it’s unavoidable to come across those ‘free travellers’ when more and more people from China are allowed to travel in HK.  Perhaps they've become part of Hong Kong people’s life?!

30^th April, 2004 (Fri)              Cloudy

I didn’t join my flatmates’ dinner party.  I was trying to revise my CV and CL for my application for a part-time job… A friend said I was more suited to the British way of life.  In the past I thought so but now I’d rather stay in HK…