FUN Target Trip

It was right before my Halloween Party. I went to Target with a group of friends and we were trying to find the best fitting costumes for the party.

     We were talking and laughing. One of us started telling horror stories. All the stories were so thrilling that everybody was focus on them and nobody realized the time.

     "What a shocking theme!" my friend Judy shouted.

     As soon as she finished her last word, the lights went off and people in Target were all locked in the doors.

     "What has just HAPPENED?!" people shouted and screamed. However, all of us were not prepared for what happened next.

     Skeletons and the costumes started moving and sounds were made when the costumes touched each other, just like the sounds of broken glasses. Then, the floor began to shake. To maintain our balance, we had to sit on the floor. The noise of baby crying started everywhere.

     By the time we sit down, three giant skulls with green eyes appeared on the ceiling.

     "Haha, you are ALL DEAD today, that is what makes the party FUN!!!" The kee-jerk voice came from the skull that sounded approaching to us. Our ears could hardly bear the sound. The echoes were so loud.

     "What? Are we dead?" I heard people crying helplessly. My hear was pumping out of my heart. I looked up and found monster eyes all over the ceiling.

     ...

     Perhaps this continued for hours. When I wake up, I found myself lying on the couch with my Asian Doll costumes on and bloods all over myself. Everyone else was enjoying the neon lights and music from the Halloween Party.

     "What a shocking theme!" Judy came one inch in front of me with her bloody eyes in her pale face and giggled away...

A Person Accompany with You

     If I plan to have a visit to the Hell, I would like to choose Buddha to be my ally.
     There are two Noble Truths that make me believe in the Buddha. The first one is that all suffering is caused by selfish craving. Craving in turn is rooted in ignorance, a distorted understanding of ourselves and the world. The second one is that by eliminating ignorance and craving we can overcome suffering and thereby attain true happiness and peace.
     Hell is a place where sinners suffers from their sins. Those sinners described in the Inferno are often impenitent. Though they go to the Hell and have all different sufferings on their bodies, those souls do not realize their actual sins and keep themselves like what they were without improvement. I'm thinking if I ask a Buddha to visit the Hell with me, we may help the sinners understand their sins and make progress in their inner minds so that one day they may have the opportunities to go to the Heaven.
     Another reason that I would like to invite Buddha to be my accompany is that Buddha has no fear in their minds and the peace inside out their body can encourage me to talk with those dead sinners.

There was once a chance I didn't take...

     There was once a chance I did not take.

     I use to be a really talented Chinese brush work student. I started my Chinese calligraphy study when I was six, a beginner of elementary school. My teacher was odd and strict, but I heard from my parents that she liked me a lot because my born-talent on calligraphy.

     However, I hated her until I changed my view when I was fourteen. I came over the US and saw the magic of my brush work. I went back to China and visited my "odd" teacher.

     "If you come back to my class, you have to promise that you are going to put calligraphy as the major in your future. Not just a hobby." She said with a mysterious smile. "I will teach you free classes and help you become my private tutored calligraphy master."

     Sometimes, when I look at my biology books, I would like to imagine: what if I accept her suggestion? Maybe right now I'm in her house standing straight and doing brush work. Maybe I do not have to do any of these English studies. My life would have changed entirely because of that one word response with the teacher.

     She told me that after I refused her, she did not sleep well for weeks. I totally understand her because she is a teacher who cares about nothing but likes the talented students. I like art. In addition, calligraphy is a branch of it. I might change my mind and have another talk with her in the future but who knows?

Prologue: Dr. Sito

There is a teacher, Dr. Sito,

who is too shy to be an idol.

Teaching physics though major in Chemistry.

His tousy beard must has some sort of history.

He is always wearing a tie,

With a happy lead-in of "Hi, guys".

Three essential questions appear on the quiz,

as bonus points to improve our grades.

When hard problems show on the board,

he'd like to teach us word by word.

He is nice, funny with awkward utterance.

Our lives with physics are generally fabulous.

Island Story

     Muscles were cramping, throat was hurting, and sky is shuffling. Am I in a dream? With my eyes barely opened, I realized that I was deadly lying on an island and I could not recall anything happened to me.
     I got up and washed my body with salt water. I saw myself in the water and surprisingly, I found there was a black box behind me near the foot of the hill! I crawled to it and a black suit case appeared on the sand. What a pleasure! Immediately, I felt hope had come.
     However, tragedy came in. As soon as I opened the suitcase, I found out that there was nothing inside. With heart beaten down, I sat down and decided to wait until some strangers come and help me get out of here.
     I waited and waited, but nobody came. The island seemed to be a creature out of the universe and nobody knew it.
     In the middle of the night, I heard something, like a bird's singing. I listened carefully and tried to find the source of it. I followed the echo. The sound was coming under the black suitcase. Because of curiosity, I dug the sand under the suitcase without fear.
     I couldn't believe what I found! At the bottom of the hole, I discovered fresh water! In the middle of the water, there was a book glowing with dim lights. The sounds were actually coming out of it. I took the book out, and something even more fun happened.
     A little person came out of the book with a pair of flying wings. He smiled at me and said "Hello". He pointed to a direction and asked me to follow him. He lead me to a purple tree and I found an ipad. The album in the ipad showed me my pass and my history.
     With the fairy , I lived happily and observed the wonders of the world.

The Transformation of Calligraphy

        “The art of calligraphy is the transformation of fineness and thickness.” This is Ms. Scary’s famous quote. I call her this to protect the guilty.

        Just like what you may guess, Ms. Scary was my Chinese calligraphy teacher. She was an old woman with huge, dark cotton clothes to cover her “king size” body. She always put a pair of thick glasses on her nose to hide her piercing eyes. I have nothing good to tell about her but everybody else tended to admire her knowledge and talents. To me--a six-year-old girl’s point of view, she was the beginning of all the disasters in my life and this is why I would like to call her “Ms. Scary.”

        I have to say that she was super strict and rigid with each of her students, especially students in her advanced class. She never let us talk or sit in her class and she never gave us perfect grades. In order to satisfy her, we could only compare the fineness and thickness of each Chinese character and be patient till the class ended. I hated her so much that I even started to detest my brush work. Whenever I put up my brush, I felt like she was right behind me. Whenever I looked at my practice paper, I felt like I saw the reflection of her. Finally, I could not bear the nightmare she gave me and I decided to quit the practices.

        After 10 years, I got my first chance to visit America and somebody asked me to present my Chinese Brush work. I hesitated. However, when they gave me several rounds of applause, I suddenly felt the magical power of my little brush. In the deep blue eyes of the audience, I saw the attraction of the glamour within calligraphy. After that successful performance, I decided to continue developing calligraphy skills. Those intrigued eyes helped me find the value of calligraphy. The applause and attention made me finally realize that my love of calligraphy was not something that could be changed by an odd teacher.

        Without any unwillingness, I lifted my brush up, thought about the structure and details of each character and started to write. Just like the flowing wind, the tip of my brush moved smoothly throughout the entire poem. With different thickness of strokes, each of the characters was like a person with different motion. I finally experienced the actual art of calligraphy and became dedicated to this traditional Chinese art. 

        Calligraphy, the constant change between thickness and fineness, helps me transform my attitudes when I am confronted with difficult tasks. From each exquisite stroke, I learned to change my hasty temperament to a peaceful state of mind. In my mind, the “Ms. Scary” illusion has changed into the figure “Ms. Helper” after my revelation over the Chinese calligraphy.

        Looking at a master piece hanging on the wall, I heard the echo “The art of calligraphy is the transformation of fineness and thickness”.

Anglo-Saxon Riddle

I'm standing in the center,
turning all year long.
With my three little fingers,
I tell you all the time.


Answer: Clock