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关于我买到了一本盗版书

准确来说，我买到的这本书其实连盗版都算不上，这是一本影印书。

一个多月前我被推荐了这本Essential Scrum，其实之前也有大致了解，书中内容覆盖了推行Scrum过程中遇到的多数问题的解决方案以及工具和方法推荐。我想这正是我现在需要的。因为我从系统地接受敏捷开发的理论都是通过英文的形式，因此这本书的英文原版成为我的购买目标。

在中国各大网站搜寻一遍后发现有出售这本书的商家并不多，因此我选择在某猫上好评较高且号称国企的中国国际图书专营店中代购此书。下单后被告知因为海外购买且是疫情期间需要等待，60天内将会发货，这对我来说并不是什么问题。一个多月的时间后，也就是最近，当我收到这本书时却感到十分愤怒。作为一个了解常识且判断力正常的普通人的我，对于这本书的第一反应就是：我花了几百块钱等了一个多月结果买到了一本影印版？

书为A4大小，无论是封面还是内容页四周都有留白2厘米左右；第一张封面图并非照片像素问题，而是肉眼可见的印糊了；书的书脊空白，完全没有内容；书中的插图质量十分模糊；书的背面除了二维码以外全部空白。这就是我通过这家国企商家代购到的英文正版书籍。

拿到书的第一时间我同商家联系，商家以负责产品的同事已经下班为由让我明天再联系。第二天他们主动找到我，但始终坚持书是从美国购回，并且将书本出现此类问题归咎于出版商。最后让我无力反驳的是他们真的提供了一张采购证明。

证明中所显示的信息，包括日期、书名以及编号都能与该书对应。我表示深深佩服，已经十分明显的一本影印书最后还真成了正版书了。我想过联系国外供应商和出版商，但发现十分费时费力。最后我只能选择退货退款，自己还倒贴了五元运费。

没错，发这篇文章纯粹是为了表达我的不满。最后再次强调本次购买这本书的销售方是号称国企的：中国国际图书专营店。

Calm Down Please

Let’s talk about one of the bad news today.

I was informed that one of the job applications has been rejected. The company I applied for is one of the few firms that meet my expectations: well-known, large-scaled, IT industrial, doing Agile, etc. etc. But I was not surprised by the result because I have realised there will be a struggle again for me to seeking an ideal job when I search for opportunities online. The biggest obstacle is that one requirement of the positions I would like to apply is having abundant experience in Agile practice in business, while I have only obtained some certifications but little experience with working as such a specific position.

I admit that I am a ‘perfectionist’. Due to the lack of relevant experience, the only thing I can do to make myself ‘perfect’ is grabbing the theoretical and empirical knowledge from books, articles, videos and so forth. It’s completely true that the accumulation of theory cannot make up for the lack of experience. But at least keeping learning helps me keep thinking. In fact, I am not in a hurry to find a job right away, because my goal is to do the things I expect, not just a normal job. More precisely, the only factor that makes me feel anxious now is not that I can’t find a job, but that I can’t immediately inspect and adapt my thinking in practice.

Anyway, I believe the passion for my next career will always exist in my heart. And thanks again to the stranger who posted the sentence below which means if you are missing yourself, choosing the more struggling path to go. This has inspired me once, and it gives me courage again.

Happy Birthday to My Grandma

To be honest, I feel quite ashamed that I can’t even remember the birthdays of my grandpa and grandma clearly. Fortunately, my mon reminded me a few days ago.

To my mind, my grandma is a very traditional Chinese senior who was born and grew up in the coastal countryside throughout her entire life. She was not the youth who was at the forefront of the era having the chance to get a higher education. In her early young age, she got married to my grandpa who was one of her neighbours. As a result, she hasn’t experienced the time of feeling the love that young people are accustomed to these days. Throughout her life, she has experienced the founding of New China, the Cultural Revolution, and reform and opening up, while there have been no major ups and downs in her mind. what she often says are all about us.

I suppose I am the one who is the least aware of my grandma among my peers. Like, I can’t realise that pair of badminton bats in my house was bought by my grandma several years ago, cuz we did not even see her doing any sports. My grandparents have moved to live in the countryside since my cousins growing up. They always said they feel much more happiness than other seniors in the village. Their children are filial and their lives are rich. However, she must be always looking forward to being asked if any kid would like to play badminton with her. Like, she used to be a beautiful woman. In my memories, I have sometimes been asked for seeking some skin cares effectively for freckle removal since I studied in the city, while I did not care it a lot. After working, I used to buy clothing stuff for my grandparents several times, but every time she was not satisfied with them so much. Once I knew the reason from my young sister that she actually likes those clothes. My grandma once told her that she thought these freckle on her face made her not confident even in delicate clothes. I guess she may have accepted the fact that she is getting old, but there has always been a lovely girl in her heart.

Since my childhood, I have not paid much attention to the so-called ‘matter of adults’. So far, they still treat me as a kid and have not completely told me what happened in my family over the years. Now that I think about it, I seem to understand her love for us without expressing it. She was keeping saying it’s not necessary to celebrate her birthday when we brought out the cake. After I tried to persuade her, she pushed me slightly away and went into the bedroom. After a while, she was coming out with tears, and all of the families were enjoying this peaceful joy. My grandma made a wish with for nearly more than two minutes. She just had too many wishes to fulfil. This celebration came too late so that everyone did not know how many candles should be put on the cake so that our love for her was so full and so deep.

I would ‘appreciate’ the epidemic that I could have the opportunity to stay at home with them for such a long time, from the Spring Festival to my grandma’s birthday. But of course, I really hope that it will go as soon as possible and everyone will keep health and return to a normal and happy life.

22nd Feb. 2020

About Fitness

I had a quite thin body when I was a kid, and I always felt envious when I saw those muscular people. In addition to being more powerful, they always emit more attractive charm. So I have tried to doing fitness since high school. But for many years, the time to walk into the gym has been intermittent, and the real “effective” effort for me in the gym can be said to be almost zero. Even if it went smoothly and gradually, there was no destination for that equipment in vain. But I feel very fortunate that I finally made up my mind and successfully persevered in the end. This should be one of the great things I made recently.

I believe the moment to start fitness was after buying these types of equipment. At that time, I also left something on some social media: “I always think that fitness is a very ritualistic thing. I must choose a good day to start it. For example, on the first day of the year, the first day of the month, or at least the first day of the week. Before that day, a minimum of two sets of fitness clothes and a new pair of shoes should be prepared well. Then, I must own a long-term membership card once I first time come to the gym nearby. The entire process went down, I couldn’t help feeling that I had grown a strong pectoral muscle. ” I admit that I am a fairly ritualistic person.

At the same time, I also prepared a variety of fitness supplements and diets that are ‘very necessary and healthy’ to my mind. I suppose there must be some friends who are just starting to work out, just like me, who are keen to buy fitness supplements without any theoretical support. However, after learning from some popular fitness bloggers and my own feelings over the past few months, I have selected several supplements that I personally believe have significant effects in fitness, including pre-workout, BCAA, creatine, whey and casein. Of course, some pre-workout and BCAA also contain creatine. But on fitness rest days, I think creatine is also helpful for the body properly. When it comes to protein, I was always confused at the time and dosage of protein supplementation. Then I learned that protein powder is just an additional way to supplement your protein and doesn’t need to be treated specially. Now in my daily fitness, in most cases, I would drink whey after the workout, and drink casein every day before going to bed. As for the dosage used, I did not calculate it so accurately. I just basically consumed 70g to 140g of whey and 70g of casein per day. There is a saying that if you add excess protein daily, you will fart more often than usual. According to this funny ‘mechanism’, this amount is quite appropriate for me. As for my daily diet, I have a few requirements for myself. But while living in the studio near the uni, I was very fond of yellow fried eggs with shrimp, one avocado and two hashes, and served with 200ml American, 200ml orange juice and 500ml water. This was the only meal of my day. Almost no starch intake kept me full of energy in my afternoon study. For almost a month, I gained 3kg but lost fat from 18% to 17%. sounds not bad.

After finishing my master’s project, my studio also expired, so I moved to another city not far away. This life was even more singular, with almost nothing for fun except for the gym in almost three months. And I felt very happy that the best gym in the city was only around fifteen minutes away from where I lived. I was very impressed with the door of this gym. It is not necessary to take a card or other credentials. I just need to remember the password to enter and exit. What I want to say is that compared to domestic, the cost here is very low. And the experience in all aspects is far better than most commercial gyms in my country. There are no sales or fitness coaches to promote fitness classes, also no stranger eagers to give you some suggestions on your fitness. In my view, the reason is that people in the two countries have different attitudes towards fitness. The proportion of Britons who consider fitness as part of their daily lives is far greater than that of Chinese people today. Of course, this is just my such subjective feelings from the experience during this time.

Next, I would like to introduce what I had done in the gym those days.

At first, I would do some warm-ups, such as swinging the shoulders with both arms and the upper back using lightweight dumbbells. Then proceed directly to the workouts. I have been doing upper body exercises these months, so dumbbells are essential. The following are my common training methods for different muscle groups. Shoulder: Dumbbell side press, dumbbell front press; Biceps: Attached curl, Up oblique curl, Standing curl; Triceps: Attaching to the back arm flexion and extension; Pectoral muscles: downward slanting birds, downward slanting bench press (the reason why the downward slanting method is compared to lying down and upward slanting, downward slanting can effectively relieve shoulder discomfort due to excessive gravity).

Compared to dumbbells, this following one is more suitable for me to fully practice my upper body. I love it so much.

After workouts, I would run 1 mile on the elliptical machine.

The last step is stretching. I usually stretch my waist and legs. The whole practice costs me around 2 hours.

This was the picture I took when I last time went to the gym in the UK. It was still winter, and the weather was not as cold as usual. The sky is still so low, the sunset in the sky was pink-orange.

Next to the gym is a fine brewery. It was Friday, music and noise came from inside before it was dark. The sunset on Friday evening shows the signal for the party beginning.

This is a basketball court on the way home from the gym. It often rains here. And in the evening on a rare sunny day, more children are playing football here. I can remember when I just moved here, I met a handsome local boy on my way home and played basketball alone. I was very excited to join the game. After that, we had a few chances to play basketball together. At that time I really hoped that he could go to the gym with me. Glad to meet him.

Fitness can be said to be one of the very important things I have learned in the UK. It is a very effective way for me to release stress and build confidence. I think I’ll keep doing it no matter where I am.

These days after finishing uni stuff

I have been really long time no writing something.

Human always gets lazy without any pressure. The last several days in the uni, I suffered from extreme stress due to the final project. Feeling nervous, getting insomnia and even losing my hair… And after that, I have had some travels to Switzerland and Turkey. To be honest, I would really like to share those travelling experience here after finishing each trip. However, as you know, I always get lazy without any pressure.

And after that, I also have something to do actually. I put three the most important goals into my wish list. Til now, one of them I have known is I got the distinction of my master’s degree. So I think it was worth losing so much hair and I also never regret that I had no one trip out of the UK during the academic period. In fact, in the study abroad circle in Europe, many Chinese students often use their free time to travel to neighbouring countries. So basically every day in my social media, there were many photos of different people in different countries, and with positioning. Who does not like to have fun! So my times was basically spent in envy and anxiety. But at least, I am masted in being self-controlled and also got the not bad result. The second one is successfully inviting my mon to the UK to attend my graduation ceremony. It must be a very nice experience. The last goal is about a specification I am trying to apply. It’s about project management. And because of this, I made a decision of my future career plan that I would like to be a software project manager. Indeed, it’s hard. But it’s because it’s hard. So I suppose only after I get this certification, I will be ready for the next work. Also because of this, there are so many thoughts about software project management, daily management and agile I would like to share and discuss. So I promise I will find some time to write them down!

Alright, let’s say something I really feel exciting. I bought a set of suit recently! And this is the first formal suit of my life! Maybe because I didn’t have the opportunity to wear a formal suit in my previous life environment, so I didn’t have a set. When I first wore it, it was like the feeling of stealing my dad’s clothes when I was a kid. I felt that I really grew up at that moment. And it looks nice right!

About a kind of relationship problems

以下是喝完这三瓶最爱的黑啤之后的对感情方面的想法。就不用英文来说了，英语实在是太难了。

先说起黑啤成为我最喜欢的饮料都原因吧。我妈前两天说出了我一直在想，一直觉得不可思议的一件事，她说她怎么也没想到我会在这个年纪做出这种决定，最后还成功了。确实这是一段非常非常，不可思议的一件事。甚至在我踏出国门的前一年，在当是在职场奋斗的年纪，我竟然选择了这种类似懦夫的逃避的方法，最后还真让我得逞了。黑啤刚喝第一口，甚至第一瓶的时候，苦的口感是由心而发的。

这次闲话是关于男女感情。在这二十多年里，我确信了那些我曾喜欢过的女孩的出现，确信了那些不经意就能想起的或是甜蜜或事悲伤的事的存在，确信了我的过往中的多情。

而对于现在，我更像是一个明明有了指引却始终无法到达海滩的船，那光太亮，太理想。

在这一年里，我并没有和太多人来往，而仅有的几个异性最后也鲜有联系。我一直坚信世界上有个人与我一样，一直在静候我的到来。

一年前，我并不会为这些事情苦恼，那时有理想，有憧憬。但我可能并没有想到家人对这件事的期望。这是一件极为矛盾的事情，所谓幸福，我想让我的家人看到幸福，但我也害怕为此所带来的不幸福。毕竟不幸福的最后只能由自己一人承担。

所以对于现在的我在苦恼这件事的同时也在惊讶为何我会因此而感到苦恼。难道不是应该担心马上开始的hackathon，担心接下来的工作规划，担心剩下的人生旅程吗？不过说到底，人生的旅程谁都不希望能孤独走完。

对于感情，如果能排序的话，这件事比从事管理更难。我得不到任何明确地指引，相反地确让自己花尽心思地猜忌。试探和无所畏惧最终换来的结果都是不可预测的，而可能不经意间的举动却能带来前所未有的收获。总之，努力这个词并不适合这件事。

不过还是希望能遇到那个同样一直在静候我的人吧，希望你们也是 🙂

About my impression of English education in China

This was a serious question for me how to use ‘though’ or ‘then’ at the end of a sentence.

Cos all of my English teachers did not teach me about it before. You can see that at least in the period of my studying in China, the education system, the schools and the society did not pay more attention to improving students’ oral English skills. I can remember that before I attended my college, there was only one very odd method to do oral English practice, which was reading the English articles, together, in almost every morning. And the teachers always mainly focus on teaching English words, grammar and even the skills for answering questions of exams. Cos there is a very important exam series happens every year and the English exam only consists of listening, reading and writing, NO SPEAKING. Of course, every student would like to have a high score, so speaking? how cares. Even in my college academic life, every English exam has the same situations. Until I was preparing the IELTS exam, I found that it was so difficult for me to speak English. Maybe it was my fault, I did not study hard, while the English teaching style in China was definitely wrong, even if there are several reasons which lead to this result I could understand.

Anyway, now I can grasp that

though: however

then: therefore

when they are placed at the end of a sentence.

E.g. I really like living in Xiamen; there are so few opportunities to find a profitable job there though.

Reference

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/radio/specials/1535_questionanswer/page29.shtml

About Avengers Endgame

This is quite late actually, I was busy in my study, my anxiety and my life. But there is no doubt this is a special period of my life. After those busy days, I had a time to watch this movie finally. No pic, No details, just tear.

When I was a undergraduate student, the first movie of Marvel, Iron Man, was on. I was curious because of his because of his handsome face, his all boys dream of steel armor. At that time, I was like tony, regardless of the life. I felt that no one in this world can understand me, and no one can feel my troubles. My distance from my father was so far away, my dreams with me was so far away. During these 11 years, I have forgotten those who watched the Marvel movie with me, Iron Man, Captain America, Spiderman, Ant Man, Avengers. Dazzling, all passed.

I am so touched by this movie. After it, I told my fiend that I was crying several time during it. She said She said that she was also touched by the scene of the gathering of all the characters. But for me, it’s because the deep feeling of my life from the deep heart. I recalled that when I watched Iron Man for the first time in 2008 which he said “I am Iron Man”. These eleven years are like flying through the gaps, so I can’t believe that time is so ruthless, so that I can’t completely remember everything that happened during this time. Util he said it again with his gone. I hate that I have forgotten the pain and happiness I have experienced in these years, but I am happy for every unexpected experience I have experienced.

After that movie, I talked with my friends about the detailed story of it. They said they were all crying at that time. I believe there is a superhero dream in the heart of every boy. We wanna become a superhero to save the world, we wanna everyone can remember us. But on the road to growth, we lack ourselves to lose these dreams again and again. I am so sorry for my friends who are sincere, my families who really care for me, my lovers who put me in their heart. I am so sorry.

Like I said, I am not a boy any more. There is a tough way that I have to go. And there is not a life I expected. The only thing I can do is try my best to get it instead of hating it. For the tomorrow, for the future. I drunk three bottles of beers, and I will try my best to love you three throunds.