Business trip Next week I will be very busy because my two coworkers are going to go on a business trip to Germany on this Sunday. I have to take over some work of theirs and be their backup. For me, I think this is a challenge and also an opportunity to prove my working ability. I had two times of business trip last year, once was to Beijing and another one was to Shanghai. As a junior staff, I was only allowed to take an economy class of a high-speed train. But if the plane ticket is cheaper than the train ticket, I can take the plane instead. I went to Beijing for the vehicle road test of a project which I was engaged in. I went to Shanghai to visit a quality management expert for getting some information. I only spent three days for each time including the travel, so I didn’t have much time to walk around or eat some local delicacy. Some people like going on business trip because they can travel to different places, see different views and the company can cover the expense of the traffic and accommodation. Maybe they even get more paid than usual because of the allowance. Especially for somebody who like travel, they and do their hobby with their work at the same time. In my opinion, if there are two or three times of business trips per year, I can accept that. But if it happens very frequently, say two times per month, I think I may get another job because I would lost my time to accompany my family.

Shopping Summer is going away and the weather is getting cool recently. I’m start thinking about buying some new clothes. I like shopping and I believe most people love shopping. I think shopping is a good way to spend someone’s leisure time. Especially after a whole week’s work and the weather outside is quite good, go shopping with your friends or family can make you feel relaxed and pleased. The shopping mall always has cinemas, karaoke lounges, arcades and restaurants in it. You can take a walk, have a good meal, buy something interesting or watch films, almost you can do anything you want. And they always have some sales promotions on festivals like Christmas or Valentine’s Day. But sometime you don’t have so much time to go outside and you need to buy something immediately. Shopping online may help you with this. Like eBay or Amazon in USA, we have shopping webs like Taobao and JD in China. It’s really very convenient and efficient to go shopping online. You can save your time and money for the travel and you can do this by using your fragment time. The payment way of shopping is changing as the time goes by either. Mobile payment is more and more popular in China recently. I can use my phone to pay almost everything and don’t need to take cash or credit card with me anymore. And ‘Sharing economy’ is also a new concept which is getting into our daily lives. We already have sharing bicycle, which I use every day, sharing umbrella and sharing car. You can rent a sharing BMW in Shenyang with paying only 30 yuan per hour, and you even don’t need to fill up the gas for yourself. Sounds cool, doesn’t it?

Keep pets Many people keep pets, they may keep dogs, cats, birds or fishes. The most common pets which people keep are dogs. They are the most loyal friends of ours and they are really very cute. Some kind of dogs seem to have higher intelligence quotient than others, they can help to pick up newspapers to their masters. Most of dogs can follow the order after being trained, they can be a good helper if you want. I always want to keep a dog as a pet but I had never have one. My parents didn’t allow me to have dogs when I was living with them. They thought it’s very troublesome to clean the room because pets always lose their hair and they may defecate everywhere. I thought I would keep pets as long as I live by myself, my parents won’t be against me anymore. While I’m already living without them now, but I still haven’t keep dogs. Because I don’t have enough time to keep them company. For everyone who wants to keep pets, raising a life shouldn’t be just for fun. They are your responsibilities. If you keep dogs you should walk them every day, otherwise they won’t grow strongly. And they may get depression if you don’t keep them company well. For your dogs, you are their best friends. They won’t leave you along no matter you’re rich or not. They’ll protect you from the one who wants to attack you. They can make you laugh when they are chasing their own tails. You should treat them as your own family just like what they do to you.

Vacation It’s summer now, the hottest days of the year. The air temperature is constantly higher than 30 degrees centigrade recently in Beijing. Many people don’t like summer because of the hot weather, but I like it. I think it’s a very good time for people to take their vacations in summer. The day time is longer in summer than other seasons, you can do more outdoor activities. If you like the sea, you can go to the beach to see it or swim in it. It’s a good choice to spend time at seaside especially for people who like eating sea food. If you like mountains, you can climbing in summer. The sky is clearer in summer morning. And if you get up early enough, you could get a nice view at the mountain peak when sunrise. If you like prairie, you can go there and ride a horse. Normally you could eat roast beef or lamb at those places, it’s very delicious. Taking vacation is a good way to free yourself from work temporarily. You can get enough rest, learn something new to recharge yourself or travel to somewhere to have an interesting experience. When your vacation is finished and you get back to work, you could be more energetic. Students are having their summer vacations now. Some of my German colleagues have already gone back to Germany to take their vacations too. I haven’t taken any vacations since I started work, maybe I should take one sometime later. What do you do when you take vacations?

Health I’ve been having a cold for 4 days. Being sick feels very bad, I can't stop running my nose and my throat feels burnt all the time. What's more, the most annoying thing is I would feel sleepy during the day time because of the cold medicine I took. This made me hardly concentrate my mind on my work. Mostly I won’t get sick frequently, only about two or three times one year and it always happens on when the season changes. But this time is different. It’s not happened during the season changing period. I’ve been very stressful since I move to Beijing, I can't sleep well or get fully rest. Maybe that makes my immunity declined. And recently I opened air conditioning all night when I was sleeping, so I got a cold. Health is very important to everyone. It’s the foundation of life. A healthy physical condition will be helpful in working, learning and living. Most office worker like me doesn’t have much time for working out. We sit at the dest, look at the computer, type at the keyboard whole day. When the task is urgent, I have to work overtime or even overnight. And sometimes I eat fast food for convenience, it’s not good for health too. Before I joined work, I went to gym two or three times per week. That was helpful to shape my body, and made me feel more confident than ever. I don't have time to go to gym after work now, I hope I can do more exercise in leisure in the future. And actually I have done something good for my health, I’ve already quit smoking for 85 days, it’s a very good news to me. Some people may have some disease or disability just from birth. That makes them live harder than others. But most of them have stronger beliefs and spirit. They can do some specific works as well as normal people and maybe even better. They inspire me all the time.

Team building The team which I am working with are going to have a team building next month. It’s the first time I participate in a collective activity since I started to work. To be honest, I don’t really like to take part in a collective activity like this. As I told you before, I’m not quite good at getting along with other people. I would feel a little uncomfortable especially with these guys which I met (or should I use ’know’) for such a short time. And there’s another thing which is we have some foreign team members that means we need to speak English during the whole activity. I feel very anxious about this. I still can’t speak English fluently during my daily life. If I can choose, I’d rather stay at home alone. But I still need to be there when the day comes. It’s part of my work which I can’t reject. The team building will last for two days including a night. We will have a half day roundtable meeting at the company at first. The boss will give us some inspire talking I think. Other team members will talk something about their work or how they want to improve their working in the future. For me, I don’t know what I should say for now. Maybe just like other people. I just hope I can say that fluently in English. After the meeting, we will order something take-out for lunch. Then we will start the ‘activity part’. We’ll drive to a karting venue for driving karts. I like driving and I haven’t driven karts before, I think that will be fun. We are going to carry out some other team-building exercises at the second day. No matter what those would be, I wish I could let my colleagues understand what I am talking in English. So I am going to learn some new words relative to the activity from now on. Actually, I think I should thank for that I can have a good opportunity to speak English whole day like this. It’s really helpful to practice my speaking English.

Birthday It’s my birthday earlier this week. That’s why I thought about this topic to discuss with you. I was born in July, it’s summer and the hottest time of the year in China. It’s really hot in Beijing these days, I have to turn on the air conditioning all the time when I am at home. Although many people don’t like summer because of the hot weather, I do. Maybe the reason is my birthday is in summer. I still can remember very clearly how much I love to celebrate my birthday when I was a child. It was always rainy on that day in my memory. My mom always took me out, we went to some specific places to celebrate that day. The first place we went was always the photo studio. I would took a picture of me for that day, it’s kind of a fashion in that time of China. I believe most Chinese young people of my age have the similar photos. After that, we would have a meal at KFC. Eating fired chicken is not a big deal now, but it was very luxury for us in 1990s. The first KFC restaurant enter into Shenyang was 1994, and it was not cheap. Before then I even didn’t know what hamburger is. So I could ate all foods up, even the mayonnaise of the hamburger. At the end of the day, my mom would buy a birthday cake for me. I remembered once I want to eat cakes, but my mom didn’t allow me because she said it wasn’t the day of my birthday. So from then on, I only eat cakes at the day of my birthday. And speak of my dad, he would buy a gift for me for that day. I can remember he had bought me a football, a remote-control racing car and a handheld electronic dictionary. I loved those gifts so much. As the time goes by, I don’t expect to celebrate my birthday as the old time and I don’t know why. I can take photos or eat KFC on any day now, but it doesn’t make me feel as happy as past. Maybe it’s just because I’m not a child anymore.

Metropolis Beijing is one of the most famous metropolis in the world, and it is the only metropolis which I’ve been lived in. So today I want to talk with you something about Beijing. Beijing is the capital of China, it is the national politics, economic and culture center. Beijing was the ancient capital of three dynasties of China (Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasty). It still has many ancient builds and gardens here, like the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and Summer Palace, which are very beautiful and magnificent. If you like photography, I recommend you go to the Forbidden City which is one of the biggest royal palace in the word, especially go there in winter. That will let you feel you come back to the ancient time and you will surely take the photos which make you satisfied. Beijing has the most and best universities of China. I studied here several years ago. The thing that have impressed me the most is it’s very convenient to get knowledge sharing from other universities. You may have many opportunities to take lessons from other better universities or other more famous professors. If you want to get a job in China, Beijing is a good choice. Here has the most working opportunities. No matter which industry you want to work in, multinational company or local company, you may find a good position which will suitable for you. But like other big cities all over the world, Beijing has the population and air pollution problems too. The house price is incredible high for most of people. The traffic is always jammed during the rush hour. And if you want to live here for the rest of your life, you probably need to get a local household registration or at least a living permit. However it’s harder and harder to get them. So, what does other metropolis like?

Family Today let’s talk about “Family” At first I’m gonna tell you something about my growing up background. Because of the implement of the one-child policy for the past 30 years in China, people of my generation here almost don’t have blood brothers or sisters. So I’m the only child of my family, so does my girlfriend, by the way. When I was 8, 20 years ago, my parents got divorced. I lived with my mom. About one year later, they were both married and built their own family again. I have a stepbrother who’s 7 years older than me from the new family. He treated me well, we played and studied together all the time like blood brothers. We lived like that for about 3-4 years, then my stepbrother studied abroad to Japan, and my stepfather moved to another city for business. So it’s only my mom and me we two at home. We became a single parent family again. When I was in high school, I left home and lived in school. From that time till now, I never lived with my mom-side family. Actually I lived in high school and universities for almost 11 years, except last year I went back to Shenyang and lived with my dad for one year. So I have few memories about my family, I mean my real parents family. And the relationship between my parents and me is not very good. We don’t meet a lot. We have phone calls, but not much. I’m not quite good at getting along with other people, especially in a long term relationship or an intimate relationship. I’m a little concern with this. Now I’m living with my girlfriend who comes from a happiness family, and she’s a very extroverted girl. We live together for a month already, I think everything’s good for now. I want to rebuild the relationship with my parents in the future. We can meet more. Maybe I will build my own family, I am looking forward for that day.