“OK, now put your pen down please!”. As announced by the examiner this afternoon at 12:30pm this morning, my last exam (translation) finished, which means my third year study is finished too! I feel so relaxed right now, although I don’t think I did well this morning. Basically it’s an exam that I have to translate from a third language to second language. And I am a slow writer, I actually used up the last minute in the exam and no time to check. This is the worst one I did so far I think, BUT ANYWAY, it’s finished, it’s all finished!

What’s next?

It going without saying that the word “Party” will become the keyword from this moment on until results come out. Probably I will be pretty depressed by then, but F it, I just want to go crazy and enjoy the time of no exams and lectures right now!

Two major events are coming in the next two weeks:

1) AJS Football Cup

Just called up Medain Castle this morning and booked a full court for our AJS football cup this Sunday (4th). It’s going to be Durham members VS. Teikyo members. I was originally planning to mix the teams and just have a friendly game, but those keen players from both Durham and Teikyo strongly suggest to have a Durham vs. Teikyo match, so here we go! It’s going to be fun I think. Although I am not a football person and rarely play, I will on for this time, just for a laugh :)

2) AJS boat Party

As written before, the boat party (8th) it’s going to be the major event of this term. We have got a almost 100 people so far and some more are reserving tickets.

I went down to town to get my custom this afternoon, will post a photo here when I try them on. It’s going to be an awesome party, I am sure! So if you are in Durham, you are a movie fan, you finished exam, you want to go crazy, you can swim, come to our Movie Night Boat Party. Leave a message here and I can reserve a ticket for you. Be quick, because they will be sold out very quickly!

Caution: the following few days might be some drunk photos of my posted in my Flickr, don’t visit!

About one month ago I change my blog description into “When a Chinese boy is not in China”, there are several reasons for this.

1. Don’t be too geeky

I am very into IT stuff and like play with codes and design. Sometimes I can sit in front of the computer for hours without even move my eyes away from the screen. It’s very bad, I know. So I don’t want to write too much tech stuff in this blog, instead I prefer to write some more thoughts on cultural aspect and life.

2. To document my life while I am abroad

In about one month and a half time, it would be the fourth year of my overseas life. I have been living in England for three years and in Japan for about one year, it’s priceless experience to me and I want to write it down and document my life while I am still abroad. I don’t know whether I will be going back to China after graduating from university or work in another country, but while I am still here I hope to write down something that I can look back in future. If I go back to China, the title might be changed to “When a Chinese boy is back to China” (:

3. To let you know how does a Chinese boy see the world

After living in England and traveling around, I supposed my value and the way of thinking had changed a lot. However, I am still Chinese.

There are uncountable amount of articles and news everyday talking about China (mostly Chinese economy). A lot of companies and business want to go into China and take a piece from this big market cake, so they are doing a lot of homework and try to understand this country. It’s interesting to read some articles about China written by foreigners and how they perceive my country. However, I rarely found Chinese people write about their point of view about outside world in English. There are huge amount of overseas Chinese students like me study abroad, and most of them have blogs and write about their lives and views on foreign countries, but only few write them in English. English is the language of the world, whether you want to accept this fact or not, but it is. So I want to write down my thoughts and experiences in English and hopefully it would be valuable to people who want to know about China and how do Chinese perceive outside world, understanding is mutual.

4. To “attract tigers”

The name of my Chinese blog is from a famous Chinese idiom “初生牛犊不怕虎”, which means “newly born calf is not afraid of tigers”. Why? Because it doesn’t know what a tiger is! I see myself as a newly born calf since I left China and start my life of exploring the outside world, a lot of things are new too me. Some of them are opportunities, but some are threats, like tigers. But luckily I am a challenging person and I believe making mistake is a good way to learn. This is why I am a Chinese “boy”, not “guy”. A boy is young enough to learn, whereas people expect more from a guy.

That’s all for now. Better off to bed and start my revision for the last exam next Tuesday. Good night :)

I just read this post from Trump blog about “Matsui’s Apology“. First of all, you may ask about the Trump blog as Donload Rrump’s blog? Yes, it’s Donald Trump, the big boss in “The Apprentices“. He has a blog too, but I am not sure whether it’s written by him though.

Anyway, in his article he tired to quote the story of “Matsui’s apology” to address a point that loyalty and apologies are important to team works or to organisations. I agree with that, but he might not quite understand the Japanese style of apology. One typical example here is the expression “Sumimasen (すみません)” in Japanese can both mean “Thank you” and “Sorry”. Say if you are walking in the street and crash on someone accidentally, “Sumimasen” can be used as “Sorry”. But if someone you barely know give you a present or offering you something, when you accept it you can use “Sumimasen” as “Thank you”, which imply “I am sorry to let you buy me a present”.

My housemate Arata was the president of AJS last year. It’s interesting when I received newsletter from her, seven out of ten I could see “I am sorry to…” at the begging, for example “I am sorry to fill out your inbox again” or “I am sorry to inform you within such a short time”. Although she had been living in England for more than 7 years, I can still tell she is very Japanese from this aspect.

I heard a story before about this Japanese style apology as well. A Japanese tourist drove a car in America and had a accident. When he came out to the car the first thing he said was “Oh, I am so sorry”. Unfortunally that was in America, so once you apology then must be your fault. So of course that Japanese guy suffered a loss by apologying first, even though it was the American guy’s car crashed into his.

When I was in Japan I experienced this kind of polite apologies a lot, especially in shops or any services industries. Maybe Donload Trump is making a good point there, but the example he used is not persuaded, because Japanese perceive the word “sorry” differently to westerners do in a lot of aspects.

There are three more exams left: Business Japanese oral tomorrow, Management the day after tomorrow and Translation on 30th (Tuesday).

The Biz Japanese oral is going to account for 20% of that module should it should be fine. I can’t really prepare anything for it because it’s going to be giving speech based on materials that examiner provides. But I guess it’s likely to be car related, because my teacher is interested at cars.

Management module is called “Theory of Organisation and Work II”, I took the level one in my first year. To be honest it’s not a very interesting module in my first year because it involved too much sociology stuff, but this year’s one is better and more practical. But I don’t think I have done hard enough as I supposed to do. Anyway it counts for 50% and it’s going to be 2 hours with three questions, which mean they don’t expect us to go into too much details.

Last one is translation. Although language is part of my degree, but I don’t like translation much. To me, language is like a tool, I learn it and use it to communicate with people from other cultures and to see a bigger world. As long as I can make myselfunderstood by others and understand what other people’s saying, that’s enough. Translation, of course, is important and useful. But it’s like playing game with words,which word is better, where to put it is better etc.

Anyway, only three more to go! It’s not the time to relax it, keep the breath!