Confidant Today I learned a new word - confidant, which is another word for friend, very closed friend. There is an old Chinese saying which reads "一个好汉三个帮", and it means each great man have 3 friends to help him. By this sentence, it shows how important and necessary Chinese reckon friends are. To me, it is more important, as I am no great man, and I hate doing things by myself. I would always love to have a companion by my side. However, the more you grow, the more you realize that sometimes it's crucial that you can achieve things on your own. Also, a friend you trust with all your heart might turn his back on you. Anyway, I still love to be with my friends and share my thoughts with them. I am very proud to say that I have a few confidants that I trust and love deeply.

Bad temper I was angry with my husband today, for something stupid he said. But mostly I think I was angry with myself, that I am currently not working and don't exercise enough, so I got fatty liver disease, and since I don't work, I am worried about paying for the gym membership, also due to the money issue, I have hesitation for sending my daughter to the painting class. My husband suggested that I should save the money for my daughter's painting class in order to buy the gym membership, and that's where I got mad at him. Well, I think he should pay for my gym membership and also pay for my daughter's painting class without me even mentioning it. But even after I mentioned it, he didn't say anything. I know we are not rich, but when he paid for his own mobile phone which costed almost the same price as my gym membership, he didn't hesitate a second I believe. Okay, I know that I am 100% right about this and I know that I should work to support my daughter and myself too. I am preparing to have a second child and that's why I am taking the time off, but I will try to find a translation work or interpretation work to do. I think that should solve my problem from the root...

What a beautiful day wasted Today was such a fine day, but I stayed inside the apartment for a whole day, and I didn't recite any new word, so I am regretting about this right now. T_T

Parents are catching up My dad, who is in his 60s, has recently amazed by internet. It's all because we got him a modern phone which can access to the internet lately. Since then, he started to have millions of questions of how to use it. Such as just now, he had trouble watching a bird video from a website, he said he has been struggling for a couple of days and that bird was pretty rare to see. Not too difficult, I successfully found and downloaded the video for him. He was thrilled and shared that video with 3 of his best friends immediately. They exchanged their joy of watching that through Weixin (a chatting tool that is very popular now in China), and I heard my dad laughing. I felt happy that I was able to help him, and made him laugh. We will all getting old and out of date, I hope my child will help me catching up as well just like what I am doing for my dad.

Chinese Spring Festival Soon it will come to the end of the Chinese Spring Festival, during which 'the big family', mostly cousins and their siblings get together to have meals, playing mahjong, or sitting together enjoying some tea afterwards. For example, yesterday, my parents in law and us three went out for Korean Barbecue, and today my mom and dad and my parents in law, and my mother's youngest sister's family will have Hui style lunch together.

How to Make My Daughter Stop Watching Mobile Phone My daughter, a five year old, has a very bad habit - watching mobile phone. She can watch the phone for a very long time none stop. We all know it's a very bad habit, but it is very difficult to control, because everyone is watching mobile phone all the time. Her grandpa, grandma, and also her parents, yes, including me. Just now, she just had a big fight with me because I only give her 10 minutes of time to watch the mobile phone, and she didn't want to pass me the phone when the time was up, so I took the phone out of her hands, and she was very angry and throw my clothes on the ground and pushed the things on my table to the floor. After all that, I was mad too, I let her sit on her punishment chair for a while. When she was sitting on the chair of punishment, her grandpa was sitting on the sofa playing with his mobile. I suddenly realized if we - grown ups don't control our time of playing with mobiles, our kids will never learn how to control playing with it. First of all, I put my phone away, then I asked her grandpa to put his away as well. Surely he was not happy to do it, but I insisted. Finally he put it away. I will have to talk to my husband about this too, but I know it would be very difficult for him to make a role model for our daughter, because he is addicted with the phone pretty deep.

Backbiting Today I learned a new word - backbiting, which is the most thing that I hate. There is an old Chinese saying which reads "谁人背后不说人"，it means that everyone will talk about others behind their backs. Although I know that individuals shouldn't care too much about what others think, as no one understand you more than yourself, I couldn't help thinking about how they judge me for the things I did inappropriately or I said carelessly. I try to be nice and helpful, but I also don't want to be regarded as weak.

I made chicken curry today Today I made chicken curry for my family. I chopped potatoes, carrots, onions and also chicken into small blocks and fried them, in the end, I put all the materials into a pot and boiled them for around 20 minutes before I put in a lot of Japanese flavor curry into the pot. At the mean time, I boiled rice as well. So when the chicken curry was ready, rice was also ready. Everyone in my family likes to eat my chicken curry, and I feel happy to cook for them too.

Shall We Flee Big Cities or Not ? A lot of us might have heard this: Flee Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. There are many reasons behind this as people who support this idea might say, such as, the cost of living, a shortage of educational and medical resources and air pollution. However, to the ones who disagree, proofs seem to show that people are actually only thinking about leaving instead of actually doing it. As to the fact the population of the big cities are continuing to rise, some people think that fleeing the big cities is just people’s good wishes to escape from the pressure of living. I, born and raised in Beijing, whose husband also works in Beijing and child attends kindergarten in Beijing, have thought about leaving Beijing too. It’s because of the air pollution. There are all kinds of rumors flying around, such as, in 7 or 8 years, lung cancer will burst in Beijing. But I did see my child cough very often and several friends of my mom dead of lung cancel. So I couldn’t help thinking about leaving Beijing just for the sake of the health of my child and my parents. However, this is also a good wish of mine. With all the friends and relatives of my parents in Beijing, my mom and dad wouldn’t want to move to another city. And it’s not easy for my husband to find another job in a new place neither, which makes it even harder for me and daughter to move to a brand new city. The good thing is, the government seems to making effort on controlling the air pollution, and we did seem to see more blue skies nowadays than before. I would like to do whatever it takes to make the environment better for my children, so maybe fleeing is not an option, but how to face it is what we really need to think about.