I placed an order for Harry Potter and Dan Brown (and got them)

Dan Brown

Harry

I placed an order for two box sets, one containing six Harry Potter books and the other four of Dan Brown’s novels. This order costs me 532 yuan (about USD 70). weeping.gif Why so sad? Because this means that I earn Chinese wages to pay for U.K. books: Too EXPENSIVE. Though the money will well match what I’ll get in return.

I’m the kind of people who like buying books more than reading them. More than that, I like owning books better than borrowing them from libraries. I look on books as part of my family, not as come-and-go guests.

My friend in Egypt

I’ve known Mostafa Elmasry for around 6 years. We used to chat over Yahoo messenger when I worked in Harbin, Heilongjiang province.

I wanted to say sorry to him about me not contacting him just because I’ve been quite busy with life since I came to Beijing. But, being busy is always an excuse. Everybody is busy, or at least busy with doing nothing!

Reading for knowledge, peace of mind, and more…

* Like in any country, you need to have enough literary, historical, artistic and philosophical knowledge to appreciate the culture that nurtures you and the people admired in your society. I want to appreciate the cultures of the English-speaking world and their roots and origins. And I want to be admired. One old friend of mine, who used to be my colleague back in Harbin where we both worked for his brother’s company, teased me: “You continue learning and studying English? You want to teach Englishmen English?”. I wish I could. But, not to be mistaken. Such deeds have been accomplished by others whose native tongues are not English at all and whose books on the English language have become authoritative ones in the English-speech world. I can set my goals as ambitious as theirs. After all, as I said, or rather I quoted another person as saying, “Nothing happens unless first a dream.” Who can be sure you, Chang Guohua, are not to become Guohua the Great for Something?…

Global Competitiveness-Getting the U.S. back on Track

*This is my book report for reading Global Competitiveness-Getting the U.S. back on Track.

*This is a book written by some worrying people in the late 1980s about the seemingly likely decline of the United States. They were afraid that the U.S. was losing its competitive edge out to its international competitors, such as Japan and Germany. (Of course, no China-relating issues were mentioned in the first chapter depicting those days when Japan was the star performer, except the fact that China was one of the biggest exporters of immigrants to the U.S.) In the first chapter, author Richard D. Lamm insisted that everything in the U.S. ranging from its legal system to its political system, tax system, and even Americans’ “hubris” be changed to regain the U.S. dominance over its competitors. The United States needs a “generation” to conduct institutional before it can lead in the pack again, he declared.