沪江博客 - CaptainDaniel's blog

2009年7月2日

Passion and Partner

Of “Dream, Passion, Success”---the Crazy English’s motto, passion stands out as the most important factor, the drive for the dream, the fuel for the success, and the success of Crazy English is that of filling the learners with passion, fanning it inside until it burns like a blaze, boiling the blood in every cell.

Whatever you do, passion is the bridge across the river with the dream on one bank, the success, on the other.

Many with the dream fail to reach the bank of success simply because they lack of passion;

Many with the dream and passion still fail because they lack of an ideal partner or partners.

Does passion have something to do with partner?

Certainly. Your passion, sometimes, is like a candle that may die out due to a blast of an unexpected wind of life, and needs a partner’s helping hand to light it up again. So have you ever had such an experience as a partner’s passion refueling you or arousing your interest that has nearly disappeared like some light blue smoke?

Occasionally you may doubt if it is reasonable to possess that passion, a passion for something, a passion for someone, or a passion for success that appears too remote to be true.

Why should I have passion instead of reason? You ask yourself once more, with a wish to gather enough reasons to support, justify your passion otherwise you’ll abandon this stupid passion.

Passion, more often than not, stands for love, love for someone, for something, and love, basically, has no reasons.

You love sports but I love music;

You love painting but I love poetry;

You love Mr. Right but I love Ms. Soft.

You see, actually you first have the passion or love, and you try to persuade yourself by listing some reasons or excuses afterwards---such as sports benefit body, or music refreshes mind. However, one often falls in love with another before he comes up with any reason, or if any, in this case, passion is the reason, or love itself is the very reason.

Now, do you have any precious passion and excellent partner?

If you do, please cherish your passion and your partner, and ask no whys---just ask yourself---how.

(July 2, 2009)

posted @ 2009-07-02 07:50 CaptainDan 阅读(29) | 评论 (4) | 编辑收藏

2009年6月30日

Change Yourself

Change Yourself

Three large pits have been dug in the yard, a small project compared with the ambition of “Basic change within three years” which has so quickly turned the city into a deafening worksite, dusty, noisy, bumpy, yet lively.

In face of different changes in life, what is supposed to be your response? Accept it or resent it? Adapt to it or escape from it?

Cheer or fear, appreciation or disapproval, expectation or disappointment, the reaction and attitude to the changes are so various and distinctive that some become winners, victors; others, the losers, the victims.

Attitude is decisive, and reaction is vital.

Some people are like petrels that scud singing in the rainstorm over the rough sea; other people are like sparrows that hide gossiping in some hut to shun a rainy day.

There is nothing more fearful than the fear in your heart;

There is nothing more disappointing than the disappointment in your soul;

There is nothing more delightful than the delight you’ve experienced with some achievement by bravely facing the change and tactfully changing yourself in attitude and reaction.

Dignity, dignity!

Do you often worry about your own dignity if you take a step forward towards change?

Suppose for a unique new friend or a sincere old friend, for your familiar spouse or your excellent lover, would you like to change yourself, your attitude and reaction more or less in order to keep them in your life or would you like to risk losing them by abiding by your so-called principles and safeguarding your so-called dignity?

Last week in Ted’s office one of his friends asked my opinion on the principles which he regarded as key quality for a businessman.

Principle and flexibility, I replied.

Oh, it is easier to be said than to be done.

The leopard can’t change his spots, and a man can’t change his nature---this is the principle;

We can change our attitude and reaction in face of changes---that is flexibility.

(June 30, 2009)

posted @ 2009-06-30 06:50 CaptainDan 阅读(32) | 评论 (3) | 编辑收藏

2009年6月28日

Deja Vu

Déjà vu

The first time I came across this strange word was when I was chatting online with someone choosing it as a name, then it appeared in the college oral English I taught, then I heard it last night when that American friend described his experience with this very word, déjà vu.

Apparently, it must be originally a French word, meaning according to the dictionary: feeling that one remember an event or scene that one has not experienced or seen before.

“It is like a sight in dream or a scene in movie, and you may find it somewhat surprising or even scary at the moment,” I exclaimed, recalling such feelings or experienced I had once been confused with.

How could it happen? I still wondered in the morning, resting my gaze at the silent willow.

“Perhaps we have inherited from the parents, the ancestors not only genes, but also their feeling, their memory of some experience that live, and passes itself on to the later generation in blood and fresh, in cells and tissues, in code and enciphered code, a set of mysteries and wonders that neither biologists nor psychologists can decipher.” I hit upon such an idea with a thrill spreading about the body, “Oh, actually, we are living our life and partly reliving the ancestors’ life.”

I remember having read two novels of this kind with the heroines related to or suffering from “Déjà vu Effect” or “Déjà vu Syndrome”. So both Chinese and foreigners share such a miracle in common.

“People are no different,” stated the American. “There are two things everyone must experience in life, who can tell?” he asked. “Death, right! Another, taxes.” Jolly and Leo nodded their heads.

“But not everybody here is aware of their identity both as a citizen and as a taxpayer,” I put in a word, and then examined the words the American jotted down on a piece of paper: déjà vu, precognition. Oh, I thought of such words as empathy, sympathy, telepathy; apathy, indifference, callousness. Foresee, foretell, predict.

“A few days ago in the countryside we met a predictor,” said Louis.

“That is fortune-teller,” corrected the American.

“Okay, a fortune-teller who predicts that he is bound to hurt himself if he gets married.”

“Yes, and I felt so upset that I got drunk at the party” the American forced a smile and held his partly bald head in hands.

“Spiritually or physically? When, where, how and why? Why didn’t you ask the fortune-teller these in detail?” I teased Louis, and a hearty laughter broke out.

Déjà vu, déjà vu! This seemed to have happened before, in some teahouse. I looked around and silently reached for my cup of tea.

(June 28, 2009)

posted @ 2009-06-28 09:13 CaptainDan 阅读(24) | 评论 (2) | 编辑收藏

2009年6月27日

June's Fairytale

June’s Fairytale

You are born to meet someone, bound to experience something as an invisible hand of fate has predestined it, some time, somewhere, believe it or not.

Someone, then, has become a unique part of your life, and something, an extraordinary portion of your love because someone is so outstanding, something so peerless.

Oh, please take it for the Heaven’s arrangement or fate’s blessing since within this valuable yet transient period of life---valuable than anything in the world, transient as a glow of some meteors in the evening sky---you can’t meet more than one or two real good companions who may genuinely touch your heart in the way you enjoy in surprise, and care you in the way you recall with a pounding heart.

Still remember how you met him that today, that year, that summer by chance, when a tedious morning suddenly turned out to be an exciting one, and when the talk was over, a glance up at the bright sun in the sky, became a forever warm memory, so unforgettable that you annually cast a glance at the same yet different sun that day, that moment, that way.

Yes, yes! Appreciation is easy, and tolerance is hard.

When all the merits become as clear as sunshine, the shortcomings also look as obvious as some black spots in the sun, but the sun has its black spots by nature, and it is too glaring for you to detect them at the very beginning.

However, if you are reasonable, you’d consider these questions:

What’s the proportion of enjoyment and resentment?

How much can you appreciate and tolerate?

Who else may you share so much in common with?

Haven’t you got the moments of being dissatisfied with yourself and of finding yourself unacceptable and unpredictable?

No one is a saint, and no one, nor even you yourself, can read your heart all the time.

After recalling this June’s fairytale, watching the summer setting sun, you may come across some miracle by putting your right hand on your left breast and asking yourself:

Isn’t it silly of me to be blinded by a simple leaf and throw the baby away with the bath water?

What if I could forgive him, forget the hard feelings and start all over again?

How many sunset and sunrise can I enjoy in the rest of life?

Well, miracle needs action more than inspiration.

(June 27, 2009)

posted @ 2009-06-27 07:44 CaptainDan 阅读(30) | 评论 (2) | 编辑收藏

2009年6月24日

My Pride

My Pride

“Whole life the wonder such you bring the beauty
I can see but I keep deep inside on it
Oh life I feel that I can bring it again

In the world where love will still remain”

For the first time I found the English version of the song “Later” by Liu Ruo Ying with a new title “Life” and sang it like a child, following the singer, also the first I resumed some passion recently by singing an old song.

The exam was over yesterday and the summer vocation began today with a cloudless blue sky, glaring, scorching sun as well as a record-high temperature----40 centigrades, which certainly failed to surpass my passion, a passion growing out of a peerless pride.

Pride is what a man should always have and maintain, almost as valuable as life itself for a man without pride is like a life without value.

What pride do I really have? I asked myself.

The way I read and speak English, the way I learn and teach---that’s where my pride comes from as an English learner and teacher and that’s more than what a man with talent could have achieved. Just think that so many people have been trying to read and speak fluently and pleasantly, to learn and teach effectively and efficiently, but failed to catch up with me in this very regard.

At the thought, I once again began reading the book in my college years, the text “Johnson”, feeling the fluency and pleasure I used to have, imagining the jealousy many must have to hear, losing myself momentarily in narcissism. Certainly, an excellent, qualified teacher because of whom a student couldn’t help her tears yesterday morning when learning that she would no longer be taught later. Actually after the exam I didn’t go to the classrooms to bid the students a farewell also because I was afraid to experience the feeling when uttering such words. Oh, though passion comes from pride, yet passion may also damage pride.

“Take me to your heart; take me to your soul; give me your hand before I'm old.
Show me what love is, - haven't got a clue; show me that wonders can be true.
They say nothing lasts forever, we're only here today;
Love is now or never, bring me far away”

The music swelled and I began to follow another song “Take me to your heart”, filled with pride, passion and inspiration:

Yes, pride in some people may wither and fade away like flowers in the first shower of summer rain or drop like the yellow leaves in the first gust of autumn wind; but in some real gentleman pride like gold can always survive any fire and flourish after having undergone difficulties, setbacks and even hardships.

(June 24, 2009)

posted @ 2009-06-24 16:25 CaptainDan 阅读(43) | 评论 (6) | 编辑收藏

2009年6月22日

The Poppy Flower

The Poppy Flower

Exceptionally beautiful, extremely appealing, it grows in damp, dark, remote areas, usually out of your reach, and you won’t reach hands for it as soon as you know it is really the poppy flower.

But someone likes to keep and nurse such poppy flower in her damp, dark, remote area of the heart---the poppy flower of jealousy that often grows wild, entwined, out of control.

Though I’ve never seen any poppy flowers so far, yet a friend’s reminding leads me to the awareness of its dreadful existence.

“In a school or college, you can never expect the other teachers’ genuine praise and sincere recommendation even if your English, your oral English, is the most excellent.”

Why not?

“Jealousy. Admitting your success means their failure; recommending your excellence means publicizing their incompetence. Everyone has to make a living and, they are not so foolish as to drive their students to you and expose their shortcomings to the others. Don’t make a fuss about how they’ve turned a blind eye, a cold shoulder to you. On the contrary, you’d thank the Heaven and Earth if they haven’t spoken ill of you openly!”

Jealousy, jealousy! I could imagine the poppy flowers of jealousy in full bloom.

Oh, perhaps it is a cruel truth: mediocrity can earn you friends whereas superiority gets you foes.

What if you were in their footing?

You would feel pressured and threatened, unsafe and uneasy, breathless and choked, perhaps.

You would suddenly feel something missing, so instinctively you’d harbor nothing but jealousy to keep a psychological balance.

Gee! Now that you’ve grown your first poppy flower, congratulations!

(June 22, 2009)

posted @ 2009-06-22 06:45 CaptainDan 阅读(37) | 评论 (4) | 编辑收藏

2009年6月20日

From Pictures to Words (English Study Series)

From Pictures to Words (English Study Series)

“My mind often goes blank after reading the text, with no clear traces of words, phrases and sentence patterns left, a real headache.” A student complained one day.

She raised a question or difficulty many students often face helplessly, and for this, I shared my methods by citing an example of New Concept English study, which meanwhile inspired myself a great deal as a result.

Children first learn by reading picture books or comic books---the pictures with a few words illustrating the story or the simple pictures representing more words; later they are able to read stories or novels to produce the pictures with the words that come to their eyes. We regard the first stage of reading as a process of turning pictures into words, then second, as a process of turning words into pictures.

The woman picking blackberry first saw a puma, then the businessman on a fishing trip witnessed the “Puma at large”, these are two pictures or scenes you may reproduce on your mind’s screen to remember the first lesson of New Concept English (3), I explained.

It is reported that Germans like to keep a small notebook with them to record their daily life, accurate, accessible and reliable. So I learned that a couple searched a lot of information before coming to China, and kept on their notebooks their tour schedules by pictures, sketches, charts and words. Obviously, the notebooks, or rather, pictures, sketches as well as charts make it easier for them to store and recall their China tour impressions.

Let’s examine and think about such facts: a painting makes a wordless speech, or tells a colourful story; a poem depicts a speechless picture, or draws a visual scene. So does music that brings to the listeners the pictures or scenes the musician has seen or imagined.

As for the articles, charts and outlines can be used for us to trace the initial, logical structure on the writer’s mind, a reverse process.

Now we’ve come to the most important conclusion if not discovery today: the pictures are to replay or reproduce; the words are to condense or compact. In this way the brain may store much more if such digital techniques are adopted, with normal or reverse process, I thought with digital cameras, portable disks, mp3 music and wavering willows, singing birds constituting some movie scenes---oh, montage!

(June 20, 2009)

posted @ 2009-06-20 08:41 CaptainDan 阅读(30) | 评论 (3) | 编辑收藏

2009年6月18日

Play to Learn (English Study Series)

With a farewell poem written on the blackboard, I finished my last day teaching Foreign Trade English Dialogue, but a student’s inquiry about English poetry’s rhyme and the possibility of my teaching Tour Guide Oral English course struck me with something like inspiration on my way home.

Why not choose some top students and demand them to practise English reading and speaking every day by strictly following my methods?

Why not act as a playwright to specially write some One Act Plays or Sitcoms for them to rehearse after class and perform at class?

Why not create an actor named “Daniel” and an actress named “Maggie” and work out some interesting, inspiring dialogues for them?

Why not prepare some scene or plot or topic to combine my daily writing with those Sitcoms, or talk shows, or even take the form of some very meaningful chats online?

Okay, wait a minute! I can let two speakers speak for me, speak my mind, act out my teaching methods in a pleasant, playful way so that the student who asked about the poetry rhyme might better understand it amid joyful atmosphere. For example, the two speakerS may talk to each other this way:

Maggie: I am thinking about writing a poem with these words: kiss, hiss, this, bliss. Can you think of more, Daniel?

Daniel: piss, miss!

In this way, the students can play to learn or learn to play, finding the process a pleasure instead of a pressure. Perhaps afterwards, Maggie and Daniel will be the hero and heroine in my plays.

What do you think of my idea, my dear friends?

(June 18, 2009)

posted @ 2009-06-18 18:41 CaptainDan 阅读(34) | 评论 (2) | 编辑收藏

2009年6月17日

Memory on Campus

Memory on Campus

When the days I teach you become the history

Your familiar voice may echo in my memory

With a picture in spring of chirping sparrows

Matched by a scene in summer of returning swallows

Remember the time we meet in the morning sunlight

And what I like you to repeat, retell and recite

Standing up, you appear bold or coy

Looking back, you’ll picture the moments with joy

Oh, we’ve walked hand in hand through the knowledge’s gate

Then there comes your turn to explore the wonders in fate

When the campus willows bid us a farewell

With you and me struggling under the destiny’s spell

(June 17, 2009)

posted @ 2009-06-17 20:58 CaptainDan 阅读(34) | 评论 (2) | 编辑收藏

2009年6月16日

Passion and Challenge

A cuckoo’s singing woke me up in the early morning, a cloudy morning, later certainly a rainy day as the weather forecast predicted last night, so the classmate’s invitation for the lunch together is more likely to be rescheduled for another day.

The cuckoo sang for the wheat harvest, yet so far I hadn’t seen the wheat fields, a sea of shining gold with tides and waves in the southeastern wind, under the scorching June’s bright sun, nor had I been able to smell that familiar mixture of wheat and earth, grass and flower. Oh, perhaps it was because there were fewer cuckoos this year or the cuckoos were reluctant to sing as before.

Like a cuckoo, I remember, some girls began their speech contests by singing an English song, an effective way to overcome their nervousness; others by speaking in a very loud voice to boldly demonstrate their passion, their excellence.

Normally, any contestant may feel nervous more or less with a thought of success or failure, but some, like those mentioned above, are clever enough to plunge themselves into a kind of passion, and thus they can, actually, with one stone, kill two birds---of course, not cuckoos here---releasing their pressure to be able to bring their excellence into a full play as well as challenging or scaring the other contestants whose courage and guts may suddenly disappear like an empty ball that has already got its air squeezed out in a blink of eyes.

A bird that sings very aloud and beautifully undoubtedly silences others, so does a contestant, a man in life or at work.

Facing some passionate, crazy, excellent speaker or competitor, we, adults tend to silently disarm ourselves before putting up any strong resistance by thinking to ourselves: “He is too excellent and we have no hope to win.” So secretly we surrender, we give up, we raise our hands or simply quicken our feet---flee like a scared rabbit.

“You have your strong passion, and I have mine, and I’d like to challenge you, like a sword man who would rather die than lay down his sword---his dignity.” Another voice inside us may also echo.

If failure is not what we fear, defeat is not what we worry about, we should summon our passion and courage to challenge whatever and whoever challenges us, like that cuckoo which sings its unique tune despite cheers or sneers.

(June 16, 2009)

posted @ 2009-06-16 06:53 CaptainDan 阅读(36) | 评论 (1) | 编辑收藏

仅列出标题下一页

最新随笔

留言簿

随笔分类

随笔档案

文章档案

最新评论

阅读排行榜

评论排行榜