sweet life

After taking this course, I’ve gotten a general idea of the implications of online culture for sociological concepts and constructs such as community, identity, agency, democracy and education.

Among all the things I learned in this class, i’m especially impressed by the fast development of internet and how it has dominated in our daily life. Online social networks, such as Myspace and Facebook have become the major online communitcation tools for the students, as well as business place.

I strongly believe that , with the huge influence of internet, there will be a significant change in our life in the near future.

Those are the pictures I took when I was travelling in Vancouver this May. I heard a lot of people said that they don’t like the rainy days in Vancouver, but it surprised me that how sunny vancouver was during the week I was there. Maybe it’s only luck, but I really love the weather in there, fresh air, sweet breeze, blue skies and beach, happy kids, beautiful flowers…

OH, God! I started missing Vancouver now:-)

The name is Dennis Liu 刘润禾 born on April 18 2007 A.D.He is the very first of  Charlie’s Junior Series Lineup of Babies. He drinks a lot milk and poops at will. Precautions must be taken because he will cause havok if slightly unsatisfied with my services.
My boy’s a Genius!, learned to swim at two days old!!!… gonna be the president some day, yep, yesssirree BOB!!!  but first he’s gotta learn to respect his old man

This is the email my brother-in-law sent me when he got his 1st baby boy in China, it shows how happy he was to get his baby boy even though this little guy pops at will!

Dennis looks so cute and I cannot wait to see him;-)

I was in a trainning class of rock climbing. I was so nervous that I could not learn how to tie that rope in a correct way. I can sense that the trainer was getting impatient with me

I know little about cars, but this won’t affect my passion about cars. I love those big stylish cars, especially giant trucks:-)

It’s a good thing to see so many people hanging around in Lethbridge, it was a super sunny day that day, my boyfriend and I all got sunburned but we had a lot fun together:-)

Today’s my boyfriend’s birthday, I planned a lot  for today because this is his 1st birthday we spend together. About half a month ago, I was planning to make him a birthday cake by myself and I did collect some real good cake receipts for beginners, however, I didn’t realize how time flies, and I didn’t even get the basic material ready:-(

To make things better, my plan B is asked him out and have a nice romatic dinner in the newly opened KEG in the south,  I know the steak and lobster there are very tasty. However, my plan B didn’t cheer him up at all, he told me he just want some home made chinese food instead.

OMG! What else can I do?

At last, I made him this ordinary chinese food, which iam not very good at and bought him flowers and a cake.

He seems satisfied and I feel alright.

Anyways, I really wish him a happy birthday!

My boyfriend is a big Lego fan and he becomes extremely crazy about it these days, since he’s done with school and he gets a lot of time doing what he real loves about. He would spent hours on ebay shopping and bidding for his favorate lego series, and he would be as excited as a little boy if he buys t his lego at a good price.

However, for me, I had a little hard time to understand this whole Lego thing. First of all, I don’t think a 24-year-old adult should be such crazy about Kid’s stuff(i.e., every lego is suitable for children between 6-12 year olds). Second, I didn’t see anything special in Lego, they are just as ordinary as other toys, little people and buildings with lots of colors. Last but not least, I cannot believe there are so many lego fans all over the world. They are just as crazy as my boyfriend, or even more. They own tons of legos and put their lego pictures online in Lego club. Their ages ranged from 8-50!  “Wow, what can I say about this?” I asked myself.

Ok, ok, to prove that I’m an open-minded and understanding GF, I’m trying to get into this Lego world. For example, I played lego soccer(which he got as a birthday gift from his friend yesterday) with my boyfriend last night, he was little disappointed that I won him but I knew he was still happy, because I saw that happy look in his face. And be honest, I had a good time too.

So what lesson I may learn from this, I asked myself.

” Good surprise happens if we are brave enough to try something different:-)”

Since we shared our thoughts about cellphones in today’s online class, and Paul and his friend also told their close relationships with their cellphones, I also want to share one little story of mine with you guys.

I’ve been in Canada for more than 4 years, and I bought a cellphone the 1st week i got here because I cannot imagine my life without it. It’s the only  efficient way I can  get in touch with my family(they don’t use internet as much as I do).

There’s no need for me to repeat the importance of cellphone in our daily life, everyone who owns one knows it. And the story I’m gonna tell you now is a story about how a cellphone saved my life in a damn cold winter night. It was  around 2005′s New Year’s day.  I drove to Calgary with my roommate to do grocery shopping. We had a lot of fun that day and bought lots of Asian food.  It was late at night when we started to drive back, and I went to the opposite direction  on the high way. I didn’t realize i was driving the wrong way until my roommate finished her little nap one hour later. When she woke up and told me she thought we were in the wrong direction, i was just scared since the snow was too heavy to see the signs on the highway and I didn’t know where we can make a turn. Fortunately enough, I got my cell which was low in battery already, i made a phone call to my friend who lives in Calgary and told him the situation we were in. He asked us to calm down first, then look the exact position we were in online and told us how to get the  correct direction.  After talking with him on the phone about 10 minutes, we finally got the right highway and drove home safely 4hours later.

I know  people will realize that i’m a bad driver after i tell them the story, but i really want them know how thankful i was to get home safely

One of Castell’s key ideas about the network society is that “This information age has never been a technological matter. It has always been a matter of social transformation, a process of social change in which technology is an element that is inspeparable from social, economic, cultural and political trends.”

According to his statement, we can probably say that the development of information technology itself has never been a single part by itself. It’s related to the social, economic and cultural development in our society too. Like the video we saw yesterday, the hackers started their evasion with the telephone first, then with the development of the technology and economy, they moved their focus to computers and made big money through it, the security of the cyberspace is threatened by hackers.

Just as Castells said, “A new world is taking shape in this end of millennium…”.

A new way to establish the security of this new world is needed too.