"Never too late!" is a fancy slogan to encourage "older" people to start over with their life. In reality, sometimes, the magic timing does pass by us without significant warnings. I have been 39 years old for 6 days now. So far so good. I have started my "possible" new career - teaching preschoolers since this March and looked forward to soon working as an teaching assistant for a child development program under a public school system. Will I be good at working with young kids? I honestly don't know that yet. I understand that it is too late for me to start a new career but I have to give myself a fair chance to try. Besides, I really have nothing to lose at this point. Through these couple months of working with young children, I've enjoyed interacting with them and am fascinated to see them learning new things. I think I can tolerate the physical exhaustion of cleaning & washing heavy paint and dirt, bending, squatting, kneeling and occasionally crawling although I am a little too old for those labor work. I hope I am able to continuously bear with the heavy labor work as long as my knees and back don't hurt too much.
It is very hard to face my own mother who raised me as hard as she could and brothers who grew up with me and looked up to me years ago, so the only way to ease my guilt is to hide myself and talk to them as little as I can. I have been really losing my own identity for a long time and often don't know who I am and who I am going to be. Now, the worst part is that I cannot even make my own living. I feel like I have disappointed every one who loves and cares about me. I don't know why I cannot find a job I like and make myself useful. I am not afraid of getting old but frightened by being useless most of the time. Am I fading away? It is sick to avoid calling my own family members, but I feel like a big loser whenever I have to contact them. Sometimes, I really wish there is a power that can wipe me out from their memory, and I can be a loser without tremendous guilt. Do I really care about being a loser? Or, I just fear me being a loser worries my mom... Oh, god, please just give me a damn job, would you?!!
My goodness! I would not be able to imagine what the poor 14-kids' grandma is going through. I promised myself that I would not pay any more attention to the ridiculous Nadya Suleman, but the most recent TV interview popped up on TV. Of cause, the grandma was paid to speak up. Damn it! This stupid news is everywhere.
This TV commercial of Taiwan Acer's TravelMate C100 won the first prize of British Television AD Awards in 2003. The scene was filmed in AliShan, JiaYi County, Taiwan The commercial film doesn't only promote Acer laptops but also shows the beauty of Taiwan. The only issue I have with this film is why they used a male western traveler's perspective again. Isn't the method over-used and too cliché? Would it be more interesting to switch genders? A female westerner visiting and encountering a native Taiwanese male might be more fun.
Would you decide to be a single mom for 14 children by fertility technology? I understand people have rights to do whatever they want as long as there is no harm to others but just cannot believe her doctor actually helped to make this kind of irrational decisions to bring so many little lives to this world at the same time. It is debatable how many children a single mom(by choices but not by force) can have and apply for free/low cost public childcare services. Since Ms. Suleman said in the interview that she has never been on welfare, I wish her good luck and continuing her good spirits of being independent. Her free choice of being a strong single mom should not be a burden of our society.
A friend of mine lent me a short film "Mei" directed by Arvin Chen in 2006. Mei means beautiful in Mandarin but is a young Taiwanese lady's name and a name of a noodle stand in this film. I had not heard Arvin Chen until Mei was introduced to me. Arvin Chen seems to have a pretty unique way to capture Taiwan even though he grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. I like the atmosphere of Taiwanese night streets he presented in Mei. It is so real and makes me homesick. As Arvin Chen said in his interview below, most of Taiwanese(including me) love night streets but seldom consider them romantic. "Mei" gives those night streets different kind of feels with a common family struggle-young people wanting to go aboard.
I just completed 12 units of early childhood education credit from a local community college. Even though I got straight A for four courses I took last semester, I cannot be cheerful at all. It is not easy to land a job. Every school requests some kind of previous teaching or childcare experience, which I have none. I have to continue volunteering and see if some preschools would consider my volunteer work as experience. It is depressing and stressful to search for jobs.
Gosh!! It is really hard to teach Mandarin in English. I tried my first time last Sunday morning and felt like a big loser. The three girls were so bored, which made me realize that I am not a very charming person and don't have enough fun techniques to tutor young English speakers to speak Mandarin. Of course, I am not going to charge people for my experiments. I really appreciate my friend let me try out on her daughters.
There were two seniors striking my head within two days; one was a 60+year old Caucasian lady I encountered in front of a UPS store, another was a 73 year old African American gentleman I met at a warehouse. They both got me very sad in different ways.
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