WebJournal 3- Write Down Your Heart and Send It

A hand-written mail may be considered old-fashioned nowadays; however, this way of keeping in touch with a faraway friend is what I most prefer to. Two years ago, my friend, Grace, left for Canada to study mass communication. Even though she had already told us half a year earlier, still her leaving was abrupt to me. She and I did not make a promise that we must keep in touch with each other. Grace even did not give me her address, either. Nevertheless, her first letter arrived to my mailbox by my 19th birthday, August 10.
That was the beginning that I started to write her letter every month. From then on, many of my friends kept asking me why I use written mail instead of E-mail. They always said that a traditional mail wastes too much time on writing and delivering. That’s truth. Writing a whole page letter takes me almost two hours each time. I never deny that it needs a great deal of time to write a hand-written mail; however, I do not consider this as a hard work or inconvenient at all.
I always write with a pen which is full of ink. Though it may occasionally stains the paper, it makes the script of each word looks different and therefore vivid. As the different scale of the thickness of ink marks, the writing becomes more lifelike, as if the words are alive instead of merely cold, lifeless group of letters. As a result, I do not like to use correction tapes or correction pens, either. The reason is that they will ruin the harmony of the whole letter. Just imagine it: a white or blue letter paper which is filled with beautiful hand writing, somehow a few dead white points abruptly come out as if some lost kids straying in a wrong place. Thus, when I make some mistakes on my writing, I will just draw lines to cover it. Though many of my friends say that this will make the letter paper looked messy, I think this can let the receiver know that I am thinking carefully when I am writing and I am willing to display my thinking process. The touch of air mail letter paper is one of the reasons that why I prefer hand-written mail. When you hold the paper, you can feel the lightness and softness if it, which give me a kind of content while I am writing.
A hand-written mail not only can deliver the message, but also carry the writer’s feelings, while an e-mail cannot. You can feel a writer’s emotions from his/her writing, while a type letter delivered through the Internet can tell you nothing about its writer.
The time of sending an e-mail to another side on the earth takes merely few seconds, while sending a mail to Canada takes almost two weeks. By e-mail, you can receive and deliver your message very fast; however, the subjects you can talk as topics in your e-mails may soon be used up. Taking the correspondence with Grace as an example, when we wait the letters written by each other, many fun things or sad things or more thoughts about some specific issues may happen during the two weeks. We can write down these things to share with each other. As you write more and more letters, you can find that your writing and thoughts are getting more and more mature, while writing an e-mail is too fast and too convenient to rething and accumulate your thoughts and emotions.

C.C. Journal2 - Shi-Da Night Market

To many students or young workers nowadays, Shi-da night market is a shopping heaven. Though the shopping area is not as big as other famous night markets, its taste of clothes (also cheap), unique foreign foods, and numerous coffee shops attract hundreds and thousands young people to visit here.
The foreign foods and coffee shops are very famous in Shi-da night market. They are not like those chain stores; they are all unique in their own way. There are foods from the Middle-east, France, Italy, Southeast Asia, etc. You can even taste five different countries’ foods on one street. So are the coffee shops. There are no Starbucks or Dante around the Shi-da night market, but many one-and-only, independent-operated coffee shops. They are different from style, decoration, music, etc. The only commonplace is that they all have their own characteristics.
In fact, I have lived in Shi-da night market since I was born. During these twenty years, Shi-da night market actually changed a lot, and is still changing now.
When I was a little girl, Shi-da night market did not have so many clothes shops or stalls, therefore not this crowded. At that time, Shi-da night market was not so commercialized; coffee shops and foreign foods (both number was not that many as today) were the two main characteristics of Shi-da market, instead of clothes shops. Most of customers were the students of N.T.N.U., or residents like my family in this area. However, due to the advantage of transport nowadays, there are so many visitors and customers coming from the other regions. Every day after sunset, they fill the streets and lanes around Shi-da night market.
Though it is extremely convenient to live in Shi-da market now, I still miss the old Shi-da night market. I remember that about ten years ago, around the corner of the street where I live was a little grocery store. The goods always placed randomly and confusedly, and the light was so dim that I usually dared not to go in there alone when I was very little. After I grew a little older, when I was allowed to buy eggs or newspapers by myself, I always would stay there to chat with the boss couple and they would give me some candy. Sometimes when I needed a restroom immediately after elementary school, I would run to their store and ask for the help. In opposite of the grocery store was a video store. Before I was fifth grade or sixth grade, VCD and DVD were not popular yet, so the video store was indeed one of the most important parts of my childhood memory.
There were also some small food stores which I was very familiar with; however, they were already disappeared, included that grocery store and the video store. Now, the old stores I knew very well are all replaced by clothes stores (it is true). Moreover, there are more and more clothes shops appear these five years, because some residents sell or rent the first floor of their apartment to shopkeepers.
For the shopping-lover part of me, this is an attractive change. However, as a resident of Shi-da night market, more clothes shops mean more customers, and more customers mean more garbage and noise. The problem of noise is the most annoying part of the development of this area. Despite of the load noise made by those customers, every day till midnight, even two or three o’clock after midnight, there are still many stallholders or shopkeepers crowded on the street, even the stores are already closed. They talk and laugh so loud that every house can hear their voice. This is actually a very serious problem, because they disturb our sleep badly. The residents here called the police several time, however the peacefulness always could not survive long.
Nevertheless, I love this Shi-da night market so much. Though the change is not always positive, this place has already been part of my life. After all, everything has its both sides. The good side which is wonderful and special is fantastic and enjoyable, and the bad side which is noisy and annoying, well, it is bearable, at least in the next five years.

C.C. Journal 1 - Zheng-da Bookstore

(apologize for late assignment : ( )


I have been a loyal customer of Zheng-da bookstore (政大書城) in Shi-da night market for almost eleven years. I remember deeply that when I was an elementary student, I bought (to be honest, it was my mom’s money) the first volume of Harry Potter from there. And that was the first time that I demanded so eagerly to buy a certain book. From then on, I began visiting Zheng-da bookstore frequently. This was not only because I was big enough to hanging around the streets alone near my house and the bookstore is just on the next block, but also because I started more intensely with my reading habit. I became conscious of which genre I am interested and what books are worth consuming.
So, I picked up a habit that whenever I am available, I will at least take some time to the bookstore. When I did not have enough cash, I would just walk around the bookshelves with empty hands, looking for the books or magazines and write their title down as book lists. Though usually the book lists would remain unrealized, I still enjoy the satisfaction and expectation of doing so.
However, this summer, heartbreaking news was released in July. Zheng-da bookstore is going to transform into virtual bookstore, like Book.com.tw (博客來), and left only the NTU branch bookstore as the real store.
When I first saw the poster of the news outside the bookstore, I was in total shock. For years, Zheng-da bookstore has been sort of my home, where I can always find a sense of belonging; a place where full of my dream, my fantasy, and part of my soul. Besides, in the area of Shi-da market, there is no other bookstore whose collections are big enough. A branch store of Eslite (誠品) bookstore though is just next to NTU, it is still a bit faraway from here. What a life it would be, if without such a bookstore?
After reading an interview last month, I knew that it is because the high cost and low income makes the boss decides to close the real stores and sell the estate. However, the most important reason is that people are getting much lazier to go to the bookstore themselves; they tend to purchase books from the virtual bookstore instead. This changing habit of the public makes Zheng-da bookstore cannot afford the cost anymore. Realizing the main reasons, I started thinking that, what if the real bookstores are all closed in the future? What if they all transform into virtual bookstore? Isn’t it boring that you cannot touch the book and leaf through the pages when you buy it? At least there are still small bookstores exist around this area, so the worry is not emergent yet.
Even though three months had passed, and the Shi-da branch store is not close yet (but soon after four days it will close), I have already felt extreme sad. The reason why Zheng-da bookstore is so special is not because it offers a reasonable lower price than other bookstore, but the memory and experience we readers have about it. Under the financial and social depression, Zheng-da bookstore has to change their operating mode for survival. However, no matter what form it changes, the status of Zheng-da bookstore will never change in my heart.