Cohabitation

In my opinion, cohabitation before marriage is better than going straight into married life. First of all, living together can make the couple see what each other’s shortcomings or strengths are. Dating couldn’t tell you exactly what your lovers are like; only by observing their behaviors in everyday life can you get the idea of what personalities your lovers have. Your girlfriend might look like a princess while you’re on a date; however, once you two live together, you may get to know that her room doesn’t look the way you imagined. Or your boyfriend might always be generous to you when dating, but things change when he argues with you over trivial things like who should pay the rent.

Second, cohabitation will show you what your marriage will be like in the future. Some say that cohabitation is a test for a couple, and I couldn’t agree more. You will realize that things are completely different than they used to be. It is quite common to have quarrels with each other; almost everything in your daily life can be the source of fighting. When a couple don’t live together, they may feel ridiculous to fight over things like who should take out the trash or who should buy groceries. Then, they will soon find out that it is quite amazing not to have fights over these small things once they get married. Some couples cannot stand fighting all the time, so they quit; in other words, they divorce. Wouldn’t it be better if they’re only cohabiting? This way, they won’t be bothered by all the “documentary work”; they could just pack their things and move out.

Next, marriage is a crucial matter to almost all women. Therefore, they shouldn’t get married without a second thought. I believe if a couple cohabits first, they can avoid the consequence of getting the relationship going too fast. As a result, divorce rate could decrease.

Be careful !

This week, there’s a scandal about a soldier using the Internet as a tool to entice teenaged girls into sexual intercourses. Most of the girls are only junior high students, and they had already lost their virginity because of this pervert. Now this soldier is going to be brought to trial on charges of his unforgivable crimes.

Well, can anyone guarantee that there will be no such cases in the future? Of course that’s impossible. We live in an advanced world; almost every house has at least one computer now, and we use computer just about every single day. Teenagers would surf the Internet, chat with their friends on MSN, or even go to online chat rooms to have a “talk” with some completely strangers. A five-year-old child knows that it’s dangerous to talk to strangers, but what about these teenaged girls? Perhaps they think it’d be ok if they “talk” on the computer, after all, there’s no urgent danger of being kidnap or some other threats. Indeed, it’s not that dangerous compared to facing strangers face to face. However, once these girl chat with those “friendly” guys, the danger is around the corner. These guys don’t have any good intentions, being nice to these teenaged girls is only a way to make girls trust them. They would be “friend” for a while. When they think the timing is right for them, they would ask the girls to have a date with them. As we can imagine, these bastards raped young girls on the day they first met. Who should be responsible for all these? I’d say everybody! Teenaged girls should know that chatting on the chat rooms is not a good way to make real friends; it’s risky because they don’t know who they are talking to. Girls should protect themselves, and not going to any of the chat rooms is a way to prevent it from getting any harms. Parents should also notice and monitor what kind of website their children go to. If they pay attention to this, maybe there will be lesser victims of such online frauds.

All in all, be careful of those potential dangers out there. We never know who the “bad” guy is; we can only avoid not putting ourselves into these kinds of situations.

Down

These days, more and more people "protest" against our president everywhere he goes. I can see that people's rage is bigger than ever; they are letting out their resentment to make the president realize that life is truly getting tougher. However, the audiences can see how our president reacts to those who make complaint on the news. Whoever dares to shout out something to him, he gets angry and would fight back in a very sarcastic tone. I don’t know how he could act like those people are his enemies, I mean, we, people, are his master, aren’t we? So this is the way he treats us when we suffer from economical problems? Instead of attempting to make an exit for our difficulties, he chooses to ignore us and view our resentments as provocations. He seems to know nothing about how people’s life is like outside of his luxurious palace. In the reality world, the price of our daily needs is more expensive than what it used to be. The problem is that we don’t get a higher payment to cope with all these skying prices. The government doesn’t try to steady the price of staples, but keeps claiming that everything is fine and we need not to worry that much. How could they be so ignorant? They kind of forget that their top priority is to solve all the problems that we have, because that is the reason we elect the president to form a government. Otherwise, why do we need you to be our president if you only use your mouth to debate with your own people? We need a president, not a lawyer. Some certain officials also make me want to ask “What the hell are you doing?” President behaves like he is the emperor of Taiwan, and those officials whom we “hired” are irresponsible of their duty to make us a better place to live. I guess most people are feeling down as I am. When can all this stop?

A Nice Speech

The week before last week, we listened to Professor Elliott’s outstanding speech in Listening Class. I found that there are some useful tips and suggestions that we all can use in the future. In his speech, Professor Elliott mentioned that gaining a Ph. D in English shows that we can do anything. Naturally, it has become everybody’s desire to acquire this certification. And the first step is important; we have to write our personal statement, well, an “honest” statement. This proposal probably is the most valuable thing we would ever write in our life. We have to consider carefully about what we should write in it, moreover; we’d better make our inquiry from someone who is good at this procedure of composing the statement of personal experiences in schools and life. This paperwork perhaps could be the key to success, so we have to make highly effort with it.
When a student asked the question: What are the most important qualities that we have to have as a good scholar? Professor Elliot simply pointed out: a sense of your own self. In other words, we have to believe in ourselves that we are able to do the work that we set out to do. Be confident in ourselves so that we can convince others that what we are doing can really make a difference in our society. There are some convictions in the literature field: humanity, society and world. People always doubt that what literature can do to make our world better. However, we, the students majoring in literature, have the ability to interpret the works better than other people. So what we can do is to use this as a tool to let others know these works and understand more of the culture of our own country.
He also talked about that what people value the most now is getting rich. It’s all about acquiring, acquisition, and gathering something. Like getting a Ph. D, many think that this is the best way to earn more money in the future. Professor Elliott definitely cannot agree with it. He thinks being a professor; he has the power to change many students’ life. By writing recommendation for his students, he realized that he is constantly affecting students. So I think he was trying to say that if making more money is our top priority once gaining a Ph. D, then it is not the spirit of Ph. D.Acquiring a Ph. D means that we have to start to think how can we make our world better by the research that we have done. I will always remember what he said that day and will try my best to pursue this goal of using what I learned to affect others in a nice way.

Why?

Can’t remember when I started to be crazy in love with rock ‘n’ roll. I just know that since the day that I began to listen to the rock music, I couldn’t stand other genres of music anymore.

I used to listen to the radio and enjoy all kinds of music that DJs played in their show. But, I kind of restricted my ears in the world of rock in the past few years. When I heard those “poppy” songs played on the radio, I would turn off the radio as soon as possible. Those pop singers couldn’t attract me at all; in fact, I hate all those pop singers. I think most of them can’t even sing a song. They are popular only because of their nice looks or fashionable dressing styles. They cannot be classified as “singers”, I think “models” would be much more appropriate for them. Anyway, I like rock ‘n’ roll because the songs all come from the band itself. The band members not only play the instruments but also write their own songs. Composing songs is a work that needs many skills, so I admire those who can write songs and sing it by themselves.

I also found that the lyrics of rock songs are quite different from the so-called pop songs. Bubble gum music seems to focus on “love” all the time. I get tired of listening to “I love you.” “I don’t love you anymore.” these kind of things over and over again. It’s funny that sometimes I could even figure out the following lyrics when I had only heard the first part of the song. It’s like watching some cliché movies; people always know what is going to happen next. I get bored of these stereotyped, standardized things pretty easily, so now I hardly listen to the pop songs, rap, or something that keeps telling me the same thing. I just want to know why would people want to listen to those bubble gum songs anyway, aren’t they sick of hearing the same tunes?