My first note

Hello, I am new to this place. Hope to find some friends here.

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Patio garden

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This year, I decide to create a little balcony garden. I used to buy annual flowers every year. This year I decide to get more perennial ones, and I want different shades of color, not just green. So I bought three hardy plants and put them in the wood flower box. They will give me blue, pink and purple flowers through out the summer. I still have the strawberry plant, which does not growing so well. I moved it from the porcelain pot to a plastic pot. I think the porcelain pot is suffocating it because it is thick and does not drain well. Actually any flower I grow in that pot died. I move the Japanese Primrose into it and hope the shade-like plant will break the spell. I also have tomato plants and sweet peas. Harvest is not expected, as the balcony only gets 3 hours of sunshine at day time. More work is expected, however, to fight the invasion of slugs and aphids. The dwarf lilies are easy to care and each year reward me with their bright yellow f...
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Darling, I remember

I remember the campus cafe in the corridor where we met briefly before our classes began the coffee was diluted and flavorless but we didn't mind I remember the table in the library by the window where we minded our homework listening to our favorite band from your laptop I remember the cold snowy night when we strode together from campus to dorm but making hot tea and peanut butter toasts with such a haste I remember our days in Kauai when we lost all our luggage during transfer at Chicago the blizzards delayed our flight I remember on the beach, waves upon me taking me away, desperate I was I hold tight to your feet, flipping you over you laughed - honey, this is not the right way to get rescued you also said - don't be scared, I am not far away I remember we drove all day only to discover the waterfalls thin lines of trickls but had the best lunch at Ono's burger the red dirt chicken were curiously close some dared to rob from our ha...
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Poems etc.

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It is hard, I recon, to translate classic Chinese poetry into English. I took a comparative study of English and Chinese classic poetry in college, and have to say, structurally they are incomparable due to huge cultural and language differences. Chinese classics, like the Dream of Red Mansion , the Journey to the West , or the Outlaws of the Marsh , are even more difficult to translate. I have the English translations but they fail to catch the spirit and vividness of the originals. It is interesting to read them side by side, as a reminder of how disparate the two languages are. This is not to deny the humongous work that the scholars had to undergo to complete the project. It is just sometimes impossible to loyally and artistically translate a masterpiece into another language. Of the handful female poets, Li Qingzhao is my favorite. She lived in the late South Song Dynasty (1127-1278), a chaotic period when central China was under constant inva...
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