Read Between Lines

In our previous writing works, we are taught that we cannot have our own thoughts as we don't have our own studies. Then, we are taught how to express our opinion in very cautious language. Now, we start to learn how to express our own idea between lines.

First of all, the articles we selected express somehow which side we stand. Then, the selection of words also express how much we believe in that. For example, 'indicate' is stronger than 'suggest'. The most important part is how to conclude others' ideas. There is very subtle difference and I still cannot understand. I need to read more papers and see how people do this.

Academic Writing Skill

As a graduated student with a master's degree in Computer Science, I am supposed to have good academic writing skill especially my thesis was in English. However, I found that the presessional course taught me a lot of things which I should know when I was doing my previous master's degree and I might save a lot of time. Although I already knew some of them via trying by myself and reading a lot of articles, I still benefited a lot from the systematic way.

As my IELTS score meet the requirement of 6 week pre-sessional course, I was not so happy when they asked me to take 10 week pre-sessional course because my speaking score was only 5.0. Now, it's good that I took the 10 week course since I will not know most things told here even I got IELTS 7.0, and they are certainly very critical while I will be doing my next Master's degree in Accounting.

New furniture - Sofa

This flat we are living in was unfurturtured. We had to buy our own bed, table and chairs. We considered to buy a sofa but we only got cash and my bank account still had problems at that time. This week, I got my bank account working and my debit card also worked well. We decided to buy a two-seat sofa in IKEA, since sitting in a sofa is much more comfortable than sitting on a hard chair and we ere very tired after class everyday.

I believe that the main reason of my tireness is long walking time. Everyday I spent at least 1 hour to walk between the university and home. Every 2 or 3 days we may go shopping for food and we walk more.

IKEA told me that the sofa will be delivered on Sunday. It's good that they can deliver on weekend as I canot stay home to wait them on weekday.

2011/7/31

Review of Engliash Learning Program

In the Language Resource Center, I tried a funny program: President For A Day. Actually, it's a game, in which I play a role as a president in a virtual African country. There are several stages and I have 3 special advisers who will give their opinions in each stage. After listening to their suggestions, I have to make a decision on each stage. If I make a good decision, I can go on to the next stage, or my people may start an uprising and may kill me. The stages are related to the political and economics situations in the real world. The player need to choose between developing modern industries and keeping simple agriculture, or make a decision to cut off public expense in health and education to lower down the debt risk. While listening to the advisers, I not only can practice listening but also can learn political and economics phrases. In addition, the advisers have quite different accents which helps me be familiar with more accents. As there are only 10 stages, I think it's worth to take 1 hour to play this game.

2011/7/31

I Cannot Make A Payment To Landlord on Internet Bank

It's very strange that I cannot pay my landlord via Lloyds TSB Internet Bank. I got a text message telling me that my payment request made on Internet Bank was under review, and I need to call a number. So I called, the lady asked some questions(of course this was a long story), then she told me that I have to visit a branch in person. I was mad at that. It's very inconvenient.

Communicated With Lloyds TSB

Before I came to the UK, I heard that it will take 1 month to create a bank account, 1 month to set up phone and finally another month to set up the broadband network. Currently things went much better: I got my bank account after 2 weeks, and the network and phone may be ready at 8/1, that is 1 month after my arrival. Although I have my account number and I had transfered my money from Taiwan, I still cannot use debit card as they didn't sent me the PIN code. I got my debit card last Thurday, and it's Tuesday now. They said that the PIN code and the debit card will be delivered seperately for security reason. But it's really slow.

This morning, I made a payment to my landlord via Internet bank, then my account was suspended. The web page told me that I should call the service to know the reason. I called, and it took me about 10 minutes to understand their questions and it took another 10 minutes for them to understand my answers. Finally, they understood that I was just trying to pay rent and then resumed my account. That's really not easy to talk with local people on telphone eapecially I cannot see their faces and gestures. I need to keep working on listening.

2011.7.25

London Trip & Meeting An Egypt Man

Yesterday we joined the free tour hosted by Student Union. My girlfriend, me and another 2 friends just went to Oxford street to do shopping as we didn't bring enough clothes and it was on summer sale! I bought 3 jackets and now I have options in the morning. My girlfriend, Peggy, bought a coat, a shoes and a wallet, and they were totally 100 pounds.

When we came back in the bus, an Egypt man sat by me and we had some talks. He will do his master's degree in risk management and he got full sponsorship from the Egypt government since he passed a very competitive exam. He is married and has 2 children and his family will come here to live with him at September. I told him that his family must be very proud of him and congratulated him. We also talked a little about the current political situation in Egypt. He doesn't like last president. And I told him that although the last Egypt president is bad, he was willing to quit after many people wanted him to leave. In Taiwan, our last president, Chen, also did some bad things, and many people went out to ask him quit, but he insisted to stay until his duty is off(4 years). It's good to talk with him, although he had many words which I don't understand and he didn't understand me much. Anyway, it's a nice experience to me.

2011.7.24

Busy Day In Pre-sessional

Before I came to the UK, I heard that studying in pre-sessional is to make you adaptable to the environment. But I found that the courses are really very heavy. We have 3 courses everyday in average, and each course takes 1.5 hours. It's much heavier than what I have in my colleage and in my master program. Furthermore, I need to walk a lot to and from school and I feel really tired after class every night. I really don't understand why someone can live in pre-sessional course hapily.

2011.7.18

Titanic Museum

Yesterday was Sunday, and we took bus to visit the Titanic Musuem. Actually, the museum name is Maritime Museum. Anyway, it was famous for the Titanic exhibition.

There was some models of some famous liners, but Titanic was not there! I don't really understand why they didn't make one for Titanic. There were also some personal belongs of the victims there, and we could read their stories. To be honest, the Titanic exhibition was not so great. The musem should show more about Titanic.

Another interesting thing was the steam engine. There was 2 real engines and some models to illustrate how the engines work.

2011.7.18

Students With Weak English Ability

I was grouped with a Chinese girl in the class yesterday, and I was almost crazy as her English was really really not good. The tutor asked us to discuss, but I could not discuss with her since she didn't want to talk in English. Another girl was much better. I knew where I should sit next time.

One more thing, we went to Lloyds TSB and booked the time to open our bank account. We don't need student cards once we got bank letters. Oh ya!

2011.7.14

Academic Writing And Reading

We started to learn something today. In speaking class, we discussed and practiced eye contact. Everyone is very nervous and only one did good in eye contacting. In writing class, we were taught that a academic writing should be impersonal, cautious and usually passive. In reading class, we learned about how to do scanning and skimed-reading. I really hoped that someone could tell me these when I was doing my master's degree in Computer Science then I might waste less time.

2011.7.13

Meet Tutor and Go To Church

Yesterday was the our first to meet the class tutors.And they had a wring test for us in the first day! I did it so so, but Yuan didn't do it well. There are 12 students in my class, only 2 are from Taiwan, and all others are from China.

In the welcome party of student union, we talked with Sean and Berlinda. After leaving CL, they went to Australia for 1 year and stayed in Taiwan for another year. Sean will study MBA and Berlinda is going to study the same subject with Yuan: information system.

We went to another welcome party in a church at night. People are very nice there and everyone talked with a smile. I guessed that they were tring their best to be friendly. What I wanted to say is 'please relax, just be easy, ok?'. They prepared a little game for new students and we all had fun. Both Yuan and I agree that church will be the best place to practice English for us, at least in the beginning.

2011.7.12

Telnet To PTT!

Yesterday, I finally connected to PTT and made the Chinese fonts work correctly with Putty.

Thanks to this blog:

Putty as a Chinese Telnet client

http://yyhh.org/blog/2005/11/putty-chinese-telnet-client

Due to lack of admin privilege, I cannot use Boshiamy here(the public computer room of the Southampton University). Even the no-need-to-set-up version cannot work. Hopefully I can make it work soon as my WiFi connection at home is very weak and unstable and I need to come here to access the Internet.

First Day to Language Class

Today is our first day in the class. My reading/writing tutor is Denise, who is a doctoral student in her 3rd year. It seems that she will put high expectation on us. It's good as I hope to improve my writing a lot here. The speaking/listening tutor is Simon. He is a funny guy. Today we just had some small talks, so I cannot figured out much about him.

After class, we went shopping at ASDA. When we were done, we found that we missed the last U1 bus. What we can do is only to call a taxi.

Chinese Market & Chinese Food

We went to a Chinese market and shopped a lot of sauces, noodles, rice and foods.

We also bought plates and bowls at ASDA. I felt my legs getting stronger.

We saw a lot of girls and women wearing pink clothes walking in the Common park. There must be a racing or some kind of activity there. Some girls had wings and some had big fake hair. It was funny.

Yuan cooked rice, pork and vegetables at home. That was pretty delicious and I was really glad that we will have our own food from now on.

2011.7.10

Walking, Walking and Walking

Yesterday is a walking day.

We walked a lot from home to bus stop, to super market, IKEA, TESCO and back.

Finally we got basic kitchen stuff done, and Yuan cooked pork for the dinner.

It was really good as it tasted like from Taiwan!

2011.7.10

A Kind Guy in IKEA

Yesterday, I was totally tired out.

In the morning, we went to see the administrator of pre-sessional course and told her that we don't have enough cash to pay the tuition fee until we got our bank accounts created. As we expected, she said that's not a problem at all. She told us that our bank accounts should be created next week, and it will still be fine even we pay 2 or 3 weeks later. That was really a good news as we heard from the Internet that it may take 1 month to create a bank account. Now we gonna have bank accounts in 1 week.

Then we went to westwood road to assemble our table, chairs and bed. We started from the easiest part: chair. Although we have some little arguments in the process, we completed the chairs and the table soon. When we started to check the manual of the bed, we found a serious problem: 1 leg of the bed was missing. We never encounter this kind of missing components problem in IKEA before. We called the customer service and the lady told us: "just go the store we bought the bed with the receipt." After we got there, we told the guy in 'Return' department our problem. He searched the manual, showed the picture of the bed on a screen and asked us if we know which part is missing. After we told him a leg is missing, he let us to take a seat and entered the warehouse. After several minutes, he returned with 2 legs. I just wonder if they are different in color, he told us they are opposite. Then we just realized we didn't know which side of leg we missed. After a few seconds, he just gave all of them to us and he also told us we don't need to return the redundant one. He was such a kind guy.

Although we got the legs, it was too late to complete the whole bed. We assembled about half of the bed and then went back to ETap hotel.

台灣證券交易所和證券櫃檯買賣中心提供的資料

上市公司股價:

http://mis.twse.com.tw/data/{corp_id}.csv

ex:

http://mis.twse.com.tw/data/2498.csv

http://mis.twse.com.tw/data/5203.csv

上櫃公司除權息:

http://www.otc.org.tw/en/stock/exright/preAnnounce/Exright_E_DATE.CSV

上市公司除權息:

http://www.twse.com.tw/en/trading/exchange/TWT48U/TWT48U_PD.php?chk_date=$y/$m/$d&Sort_kind=DATE&type=csv

ex: http://www.twse.com.tw/en/trading/exchange/TWT48U/TWT48U_PD.php?chk_date=100/07/09&Sort_kind=DATE&type=csv

大盤:

http://mis.twse.com.tw/data/TSEIndex.csv

http://mis.twse.com.tw/data/OTCIndex.csv

Enrolling Day

Yesterday is the day to enroll. We were required to arrive a lecture theater at 9:30 AM. When we got there, we saw a LOT of Chinese students there. Yuan and I were not happy about that, even we already knew there were many Chinese students in Southampton already. By the way, when I said Chinese, I mean the students from mainland China.

In the afternoon, IKEA guys delivered our stuff home. We tried to assemble the bed, the table and the chair, then we found that we don't have necessary tool, a screwdriver. So we just left them there and hoped we can borrow one or can buy one soon. You know, it's hard to buy a thing when you really need it in a place you're not familiar.

We were lucky to see a post selling some second hand goods on the HelloUK forum. We bought a HP printer, a toaster machine, a Brita and a small carpet. All of these only took us 44 pounds. We are still looking for more second hand goods as they are really cheap and most of them are in quite good status.

Hi, UK!

I just came Southampton for about 1 week. Finally Yuan and I got a house to rend and it's quite good.

Yesterday we shopped at IKEA and all the stuffs took us 400 pounds!

Another thing to mention is that I ran into a CyberLink colleage, Sean, in ASDA last night.

He will attend the MBA program in the University of Southampton. He didn't mention what program his girlfriend will attend. Anyway, we will meet today as we need to register for the pre-sessional course this morning.

IKEA stuff said that they gonna deliver the things, including bed, table and chairs, today.

I cannot wait to assemble them to have a new house!