April 27, 2004 (Tue) Fair

Today is my 27th birthday, I believe I should write down something, but today I just feel blue and have no special feeling.

Then now I am having a retrospect in my mind how I lived the past 26 years.

When I was a tiny kid, I guess around 3, I loved drawing. Once I had drawn dozen of chicken (with a hen in front of the line) on the wall, my parents felt angry and hit me heavily (physical punishment was acceptable at that time). Then they bought me a set of crayons and note pad and I was only allowed to draw on the note pad. Then what I did when boring was drawing.

When I was a primary school student, competition started among classmates, mom & dad always told me studying hard was my responsibility, their repsonsibility were raising the family. In that age, I felt that I started to have desire in this materialistic world, I wished to have those fancy stationaries my classmates had, like Hello Kitty eraser, Melody note book, etc. I think the comsuming culture of children in that decade was highly influenced by the Japanese culture.

It was my great fortune that I have a great daddy, at that period, my daddy introduced me a lot of local and foreign great novels, including Jane Eyre, Great Expectation, Love Education and Garfield comic. It aroused my reading interest. I visited library every Sunday, accompanied with my daddy and sister. My mom was a traditional decent housewife, she would prepare the meal for us at home.

When I was a secondary school student, my parent thought that I was too quiet and too shy, they encouraged me to participate in lots of extra-curricular activities. It was honestly, quite different with other parents' practice. They suggested me to join the Girl Guide community. I realized that the girl guide activities did totally change my personality. I became a confident person to offer public speech. In Form 2, I decided to join the life-saving team in school, I suddenly grew much taller in that summer as I kept swimming practice through the whole summer. My happiest time was in secondary school, I somehow enjoyed the school life, I studied in a girls school, our school motto is Brave, Gentle and Sincere. Mostly, our girls were brave, partially sincere but not gentle. We were as active as boys.

I found that my personality had great transformation when I had dating. I became much more girlish and sentimental. I seldom cried when seeing tragedy before, but then I usually associated my feeling to those movie characters and cried a lot. And I also found that someone you supposed he loved you will hurt you bad. They were different from family members, friends and classmates I met before in my life. I found I became more fragile and pessimistic, I started to hate myself at that moment.

It was my great turning point to meet my husband Jeffrey. He gave me a role model of how to live in an optimistic way, his life was not smoother than anyone of us but his mentality and value was great. Surely Jeffrey is not a perfect person but he is flawless to me.

After we became together, I worked harder in my study, and lived healthier than before.

In 2001, I made a brave (or silly) decision to quit my fairly good job to study Anthropology. Studying something you're interest in but without any economic value seems crazy in Hong Kong, but I wanted to walk my path different from others, then I met lot of smart people and good friends. I had no income that year, but thanks so much that my parent gave me some pocket money. I would not forget how they supported me to actualize my dream. At that year, I grow a lot mentally. I experienced what eternal happiness means, I put greatest effort in my study and cut all the material consumption. The feeling was just fantastic.

Now I had got married with my beloved husband, I still had a close connection with my parental family, especially my lovely sister. My life is blissful and full of joy. Difficulties and painfulness only polished me to be a stronger person.