2 years, 142 days ago (April 13, 2008)
It’s very difficult to avoid these two issues recently when you are a Chinese living and working in London. Whether they are my Chinese friends or from different countries, discussions will inevitably come up as conversations start. I want to write what I think and feel about what happen recently in the Olympics Torch Relay. It’s not easy, but I will try to write them down.
Olympics Torch Relay in London
I went with my friends that day, to support and welcome the torch. But what came to my eye was very sad – protester pointing fingers and shouting at supporters ‘shame on you!’. On the other side supporters holding Chinese flags and shouting back ‘liars!’. What disheartened me most was to see innocent children (some of them were even infants) in both groups. Was that the impression they are going to have towards China and Olympics Game? I was standing in front of protesters pointing fingers to me and shouting very aggressively, my friends and other Chinese supporters were shouting back to them. Among them, I was speechless.
No Violence
It’s not difficult to see violent scenes on the TV news these days. After all, newspaper and news channel are all commercial bodies. They need to feed what readers and audiences want to see. Quite often violent scenes are more eyes-catching than peaceful ones when it comes to attracting people’s attentions. I respect different opinions, people can have protests as they wish, but violent behavior is something that I can never agree on. Expressing viewpoints is good, we need different opinions to make us think and communicate, but if you expressing in a violent way then regardless what a good point you are making, IT’S WRONG!
Objective vs. Subjective
As I said, it’s not difficult to see violent scenes on the news recently, but from my personal experiences, protectors and supporters were 50-50 on that day. Why our supports weren’t shown on the TV? Since the outbreak in Tibet last month, all you can see are ‘military crackdown from China’ and ‘how many people die’ in western media. On the other side, my parents in China saw a relatively peaceful image of the issue. So which one shall I believe?
Before I tend to believe Western media was more ‘objective’ and report the ‘truth’. But now I realise there were nothing like ‘truth’, Western media are just as subjective and the Chinese media. What you see in China is what the media (which are controlled by the government) want to show you – a peaceful and harmonious society. Whereas Western media is determined by income revenue. As I said, the more eyes-catching ones come first. If you take a look at anti-CNN.com, do you still think what you see is ‘the truth’? I guess what drove most people to protest are their believes which based on what they see on TV. But I hope they could think again or even make a trip to China if they haven’t been there. Seeing is believing, but try to see things from your own eyes rather than from cameraman’s focus or editor’s selection of today’s breaking news, especially when you want to make an action on what you believes.
Peace!
I’m not saying that what I think is correct, but it’s my personal feeling and point of view based on my experiences up to now. I respect other people’s opinions but I don’t like hate speech or violence. After all, peace is what we aim for, and that’s part of the Olympic spirit.
Tagged as:
China,
Media,
Olympics
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2 years, 159 days ago (March 27, 2008)
While I was walking through Liverpool street station after work today, there was a stall with a bunch of girls talking and collecting people’s email address. It was a promotion stall of Blackberry. After one of the staff took down my details, she offered me this free 128M memory stick with 3 blackberry games inside. She asked how I like about the phone. I said I love it, but my only problem is the network provider – Orange. Then I started to moan about how I was cheated to sign the contracted and on and on, until she lost interest of listening these irrelevant information to her job – collect Blackberry user’s contact details.
With Apple rolling out their SDK for the iPhone, RIM certainly needs to make some move as well. There was news about Apple trying to target more Business people, who have been the largest user group of Blackberry. It’s very easy for iPhone to contact their users with iTune. Whenever there is something they want to tell you, you will definitely get it when you plug your iPhone into computer. On the other hand, blackberry doesn’t seem to have such a strong connection with their users. The only time I submit my personal information to RIM was when I need to download the latest version of Desktop managers. But how often will a Blackberry’s users need to do that, compare to how often does a iPhone user need to transfer songs and photos? Clearly, iPhone’s got a better to connect their users.
I’m happy with Blackberry, although it hasn’t got a fancy interface as the iPhone, it’s quicker and more efficient with emails and messaging. But if one day I can afford to get a iPhone, I will consider get one as well.
==Ps==
Right after I posted this article, an email from Blackberry’s owners lounge came to my inbox. That was my email for. Looking into it now.
Tagged as:
Blackberry,
iPhone,
Phone
{
2 years, 162 days ago (March 24, 2008)
For the last weeks John and I was discussing a new idea to integrate his class with MyShantou.net. And now I’m excited to announce that we’ve an English news site for Shantou – news.Myshantou.net!
From the About page, you can find a brief description of what this blog is all about:
News.Myshantou.net is committed to covering Shantou and its surrounding areas as thoroughly as possible. To our knowledge, it is the only online news site in English devoted to comprehensive reporting on the area.
We strive to hold ourselves to high standards of accuracy and fairness. Our mission is to provide insight on the city for the English-speaking community here and abroad.
The site is comprised of eleven students from Shantou University’s Cheung Kong School of Journalism and Communication. Contributors are providing summaries of what’s happening in the Chinese media, and reporting and writing their own original stories.
We are still working on it and ideas are still being generating about how we can run this news site. But it’s a pretty exciting thing for me.
Tagged as:
Blog,
MyShantou.net,
Shantou
{
2 years, 164 days ago (March 22, 2008)
I haven’t managed to update blog recently. Time is limited when you are working people. Assuming that you have 8 hours sleep, then after your 8 hours in the office working, there are only 8 hours left for your personal life. If you take off a few more hours for cooking, commuting, exercising, then the time you can have to write something is tiny. But perhaps blogging has been degraded in my to-do list, there are more important things to do in life now, like, of course, working, networking, traveling to Durham to see Jenn etc etc…
So what’s up with me lately? Working as usual, standard 8am to 5pm. While I’m still enjoying my work, there are spaces that I’m seeking to improve myself. I need to push myself to work on that. The job I’m doing now is relatively easy, but it also depending on whether you want to seek self-improvement or not. I like the company culture – it’s all up to you! Maybe I’m too ‘young’ to see the deeper side of how the management structure yet, but for now, it’s good to me.
I went back to Durham two weeks ago, for Jenn’s Birthday. We had a good time and she enjoyed the surprise party I pulled out for her. I’ve uploaded some photos in Flickr, check it out.
That’s pretty much what I want to share for now. It looks boring, but in fact there are lots of things going on with my life. Am I becoming too reserved to share too many things on the Internet now? I’m still thinking on this issue. Let me think until I figure it out!
Tagged as:
Jenn,
Life,
Work
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