2010年11月4日星期四

Month of Thanksgiving

The Stories of Reach

Oh sh*t and its alternative

Reach was playing with his transformer last night. And I heard him saying:"Oh, shit!". Loud and clear.

So I stopped him, “We don’t say ‘shit’, it is really a bad word.”

He looked puzzled and said:”But Mommy, when Daddy watched football, and if somebody is blocking another person, Daddy said: ’oh, shit!’ “ So I told him:”Ok, if Daddy said that again, you need to tell him that ‘shit’ is a bad word.” He gave me a short reply “oh, ok” and quickly ran downstairs.

A minute later, I heard him having this conversation with his dad:"Daddy, when you watch football, and if somebody got blocked, you should not say ‘oh, shit!’. Shit is a bad word." His Dad replied:"Oh, really?” He confirmed:"Yeah, you need to say ‘oh, man!’ "

Lighting Shoes

(This happened in the past summer. Reach'd been begging for lighting shoes for a while. And I told him that he didn't need lighting shoes because they were for babies.)

I was bathing Reach last night and found all his toe nails had black dirt under. So I took a nail clipper to trim his toe nails.

As usual, he started to whine and didn't want me clip his toe nails believing I would cut him. So I explained to him, "The black dirt is all the germs and bacterias. If Mommy didn't take it out, it could really make you sick."

He still kept whining, so I said, "Ok, you can't wear sandals to school anymore. They make your toe nails black. You need to wear socks and sneakers all the time." The whining suddenly stopped, and he told me:"Mommy, I need lighting sneakers, like Brian, he is 6, I am almost 6, so I can wear lighting sneakers like him. And when I wear the lighting shoes, the germs gonna think it is an alarm."

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2010年10月28日星期四

On Writing Well -- by William Zinsser

这几天在看William Zinsser的这本书On Writing Well. 总的说来,它算得上是一本工具书吧,因为整本书的目的是要我们意识到写作语言累赘重复的危机,以及提供能让文字简洁而有力的写作方法。

这是本工具书,但又不本工具书。怎么说呢?整本书没有像一般工具书那样的dos and don'ts。 相反的,Mr. Zinsser用生动的文笔,幽默的语言,和像朋友间轻松交谈的方式把要点铺陈出来。

这几年--自从儿子出生后--我养成了一个坏习惯。喜欢买书,却很少真正去读。图书馆借来的倒还看得快些。记得有个可以设时间自动关闭的烤箱广告说:"Set it, and forget it!" 我是,Buy it, and forget it!

这本书我买了已有一段时间,前几天终于被发掘出来。看了前面几页,我就被Mr. Zinsser的文字给吸引住了。今天看到第三章Clutter(冗乱) 里的一些话,实在让我忍俊不禁,现在摘录下来和你们分享:

"Clutter is the laborious phrase that has pushed out the short word that means the same thing."

"It's the language of the flight attendant demonstrating the oxygen mask that will drop down if the plane should run out of air. 'In the unlikely possibility that the aircraft should experience such an eventuality, ' she begins--a phrase so oxygen-depriving (哈哈哈) in itself that we are prepared for any disaster.

Clutter is the ponderous euphemism that turns a slum into a depressed sociaeconomic area, garbage collectors into waste-disposal personnel and the town dump into the volume reduction unit. I think of Bill Mauldin's cartoon of two hoboes riding a freight car. One of them says, 'I started as a simple bum, but now I'm hard-core umemployed(哈哈哈)."

Mr. Zinsser目前在纽约新学校(The New School, New York)和哥伦比亚研究院新闻系(the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism)任教。

很值得看的一本书,向你推荐。

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2010年10月13日星期三

Ocean City

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Goose Rules

除了冬天,春夏秋三季,我公司的外面都有这些鹅旁若无人的走来走去,到处拉屎,甚至制造交通阻塞。对此,没有人微言之余,还放了一个交通标志在那些鹅经常穿越的街上,以示车辆,行人让路。








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2010年6月3日星期四

Graduation Ceremony 奇恩毕业典礼

Today is Reach's special day -- He graduated from Pre-K, Hooray!!

Signing & Singing "World Greatest"
用手语来演唱“World Greatest"




Reach and friends demonstrated fraction

Can You Eat a Fraction?



Receiving Diploma 领毕业证书




We asked Reach to perform once more "World Greatest"
在家里奇恩再次表演"World Greatest"


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