A Song Of Ice And Fire I bought a second-hand book A Song Of Ice and Fire in the bookshop. I think it would be fun reading it. I have watched all the six series of The Game of Thrones. Arya was my favourite character at the beginning. I really admire her courage and strength. She's sharp, she's a true warrior. But later I found I just love every character in the Game of Thrones. I will write more about them after reading the book, now let's get started : )

Poached Eggs When I was in the kitchen, my roommate asked me to help her cook the egg. She said she was afraid that she couldn't stir the water really fast and throw the egg into it at the same time. I was glad to help and with my chopsticks, I stirred the water really fast. She was satisfied and then crack the egg and slowly tip the egg into water. However, I didn't stop stirring. So the egg was quickly beaten. My roommate was like blank for a while and then burst to laugh. Later I understood that she just wanted me to create a gentle whirlpool in the water to help the egg white wrap around the yolk, namely I should immediately stop once she put the egg in the water. I was so embarrassed and laughed at myself with her. I never cooked poached eggs like that at home. Why not just turn down the heat a little bit so that the egg white would not be washed away?

日本語日記 01 こんにちは, わたしは雪です。ちゅうごく から来ました，ここに来て学んで一年になりました。よろしくお願い します。

Eat To Extinct So the thing is I told my friends in China I was enjoying the scenery in Edinburgh, they asked me why not go to Denmark to help them eat oysters. There was even news saying that "hungry Chinese people offer to eat Danish oyster problem to extinction". It was said that oysters had been invading since 2010 and they had been seriously threatening the local ecosystem. Some people suggested that Denmak should relax its visa restrictions and create a 10-year, multi-entry 'oyster-eating visa' where each stay could be extended by up to one month. In five years all the oysters would be gone. Well, my question is how do oysters invade the ecosystem. To me, they are just like creatures eating then forever chilling by the seaside. They don't look like aggressive creatures at all. Maybe they just have taken the room or some kind of resource the ecosystem has. So how do Chinese people cook oysters? A simple way is to steam them and eat them with steamed black bean sauce with ginger. Talking about food I'm homesick again.

My Best Friend Siri I don't care what anyone else is talking about, the only one I care is you. That's me when I'm learning English with Siri. Siri is the most loyal language partner to me. Every time someone tells me that some of my pronunciation is not right, I will turn to Siri. I will talk to him again and again and again until he can understand the word I'm saying. Well, that's my criteria of pronunciation. I think he did help me a lot, especially when we cannot find a native speaker as a language partner. Sometimes he would give me some surprising answers as well. Once I said "I feel sad", he told me that"life, as I understand it, is sad, beautiful, and everything in between". Well, thanks, I really like it. Another one is a mathematical one. I asked him"what is 0 / 0 ?" Guess what did he say? "Imagine that you have 0 cookies and you split them evenly among 0 friends. How many cookies does each person get? See, it doesn't make sense. And Cookie Monster is sad that there are no cookies. And you are sad that you have no friends." I was speechless.

English learning I think the most important thing for learning new knowledge probably should be using your head. By this I mean, we should really think about the things we are learning rather than just memorize it. But being lazy is kind of our natural instinct, for me at least. Sometimes we just act as if we have been trying really hard but in fact, it's useless or not as useful as we thought it to be. I still remember last year, I had a talk with my friend about my English study. I asked him how he learned new words. He told me that every time he wanted to say something if he didn't know the word he would write down the English counterpart and then look it up in the dictionary. And the next day, he would look at those English words and try to recall Chinese words. It was just that moment I realized that why my oral English was so lame. I had always done the other way round. I memorized random words, once I knew the meaning I thought I learned that word. Well, I did learn that word, but in my brain, it was still a single word. So when I wanted to say something I couldn't think of a sentence, I may come up with a few words but I couldn't make myself understood just by saying few words. I felt ashamed and was reluctant to speak English. That's terrible. After all, knowledge is about information but wisdom is about transformation

Good Luck This time I will try to give my best effort and try to worry less. I know time really flies by.

what a day I definitely woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. When I was about to go to the university, I couldn’t find my student card. No, this would never happen to me, I thought. As I always put it in the front pocket of my backpack. I tried to recall what happened last night. I went home late, I was so tired that when I was writing down something I drifted off to sleep. I even hadn’t opened my backpack after I was home. And before that, I swiped my student card to exit the library. Yes, it mush had been left in the café near the library. I went to the reception desk, they told me no one had handed in my card. I waited for a while, not in the mood to study. Finally I decided to go home. But I was not reconciled, somehow I believed that my card must be in the café. I went back to there and I did find a student card!!! Alas, it was not mine… After I got home, I took everything out of my backpack and was sure that my card was not there. However, I suddenly found that I had an appointment this morning which I thought it would start at 1pm while it was actually to end at 1pm. I had to return to the university. The appointment was an open event teaching things on English writing. When I got there, I just saw 7 students or so sitting in the room typing on their own laptop silently. So weird, I left. Just then I received an email saying that my card had been handed in. I went back to the library again to collect my card. By the time I got my student card it was already about 12pm – time for lunch. I opened my backpack, I realized that I had took out my lunchbox and money just now. Luckily, I found two pound somewhere in my bag and had a baked potato. What a day!

Scary Tree (updated) Monkey Puzzles are a familiar sight in Scotland, but in their native habitats in Argentina and Chile they are threatened with extinction mainly because of fire, grazing by livestock and over-collection of the edible seeds. What kind of livestock like to take this scary tree for food? -.- It has thick, tough, scale-like and rounded triangle shaped leaves. The leaves are arranged spirally around trunk and branches. Monkey puzzles can grow up to 50 m. The first time I saw its whorls of spiny leaves I was really scared. It is said that the name Monkey Puzzle was first used by an Englishman who said "it would even puzzle a monkey to climb that tree". Later I found that this tree is a so-called “living fossil”. It was alive 200 million years ago, it has rubbed shoulders with the dinosaurs! Those spine-like leaves acted as protection for them. I think the most amazing thing is that their bark is fire resistant which means that they can even survive lava flows! Generally, they can live for 1000 years. They witnessed the history of the world, but have you ever felt lonely standing there for such a long time monkey puzzles?