Two Interesting Holidays Other than traditional holidays, there are two interesting holidays in China originated from the internet: Double eleven holiday. It’s called “the Singles’ Day”. Because there are four “one” in the date, it feels so lonely, so it’s a holiday for the singles to celebrate. But since about three or four years ago, this day has become an online-shopping festival. Internet Valentine’s Day on May 20th. Because the pronunciation of the date is similar like “I love you” in Chinese.

Cats and Dogs I like them both. But whether having a dog or a cat means that you need to shoulder a big responsibility. Once you get one of them home, their whole life relies on you. Compared with dogs, cats are much more independent, but there are also cats which like to stick to their owners. Dogs need more attention, at least, you need to walk them every day. I have a colleague who gets nervous when she needs to do overtime, because there are two little dogs waiting at home. When I was about 9 years old, my dad brought me a special little furry friend one day after work- a little cat. I was thrilled, while my mom wasn’t. It turned out she had a good reason that she wasn’t so content about it, because she had to take care of the cat, while my dad and I just played a lot with it. But my mom turned to like our little family member later on.

“Hong Bao” (The Red Package) “Hong Bao” means literally “red package”. It’s a red envelope with money in it. Kids always get “Hong Bao” on Chinese New Year from parents and grandparents. When I was young, I always looked forward to the first day of the lunar calendar, because I could get rich over one day. As I have grown up and have to make money by myself, I don’t like “Hong Bao” that much any more. Because usually I’m not the receiver. Instead, I need to give “Hong Bao” to friends if they get married or get babies. But, it’s like a circle, you’ll eventually get the money back someday – when you get married or on other occasions. I thought sending “Hong Bao” to each other was useless, because in the end, there’s always a balance. But my Mum’s comment was, through this, people get closer. Well, that makes sense. Now, there’s another form of “Hong Bao” – Wechat “Hong Bao”. Wechat is a chatting tool like “What’s app”. It has a function that people could send “Hong Bao” through it – the condition is, you need to connect your Wechat with your bank account. It is quite practical, e.g., if you go to a restaurant with friends and you want to go Dutch, one of you could pay the bill first and the others could just send “Hong Bao” on Wechat.

The Worm in your Ears These’s a word in German called “Ohrwurm”, literally it means “The worm in the ears”. You all have the same experience, I mean, you all had a “worm in your ears" before or maybe, just now. Actually it means the catchy tune that stays in your head / in your ears for quite a long time. You must have this kind of experience, right? Like there’s one song that you like so much and you played it over and over again. In the end, you can’t drive the tune away from your head. Or, maybe just one song played in a café, where you read a book or met a friend. Sometimes I find it annoying, so I try to play other songs to cover the “worm in the ears”. Well, sometimes, it works! But sometimes, I'll get another "worm" instead of the former one.

Health I got a call this morning from a friend, she told me that she wanted to participate an exam last weekend, but she wasn’t able to go there because she had an appointment with the doctor which she couldn’t postpone any more. She has a nodule on her thyroid. Now it becomes a normal disease. My friend told me that the incidence of this disease is pretty high right now. It could be caused by pressure and bad habits like staying late in the night. I have an aunt who had a thyroid nodule, too. She had her thyroid cut a few months ago. Now she has to take some special medicines every day.

11.11. So I decided to go shopping today, as I heard from friends that there’s discount right now in one big shopping mall. As I stepped out of the subway, I saw a big commercial poster on the wall visualizing the founder of Alibaba group, Jack Ma, and the Kungfu star, Jet Li. It seems like a film poster. Well, I looked it up on the internet. It is sure a film, but it’s a commonweal film aiming to promote Chinese culture. I’m very curious about it right now. As this film was introduced recently and Jack Ma is in it, I had to connect this film to the online-shopping festival. The online-shopping festival is on November 11. On this day, many online-shopping platforms are going to have big promotions. Last year, the sales on the online-shopping platform “Tmall” has reached 120,7 billion Yuan. I didn’t have a good afternoon in the mall, as it was very crowded. I haven’t bought any thing, so I decided to come home, sit on the bed comfortably and do some online-shopping.

Day-light Saving Time A few years ago, when I was in Germany in one October, I was told the clock was going to be set back one hour at 2:00 o’clock in the morning. I knew that there were summer time and winter time in Europe before that, but still, I was amazed how it was realized technically. It’s not that logical to me who wasn’t accustomed to it. To someone who’s not that clever like me, having different time zones is already complicated enough. When my boss was in the US, all I remembered was he contacted me before I went to sleep and after I got up. I was told that there were 15 hours difference, but I wasn’t happy to do the calculation at all. I think if it’s under 12 hours, it’s easy to calculate, but as long as it exceeds 12 hours, it’s not that easy to handle. I read a piece of news today that the EU is considering to cancel the summer time. Great news to me!

Smog and Traditional Cars Before my colleague left the office today, he told us that we would have heavy smog this weekend. I attended a meeting a few days ago, in that meeting I learned that the vehicles are one of the most important reason for the smog. (I forgot how much percentage it makes up, but it’s absolutely a big number.) So the government is now promoting e-vehicles. In my hometown, the buses are electrically driven. Now it’s very hard in Beijing to get a car license, but to get a license for e-car is a little easier. (But that couldn’t solve the traffic jam.) Considering the air pollution we could cause by generating electricity, is e-vehicle really clean?