I was a Queen, it was then... (Monologue)

I was a Queen, it was then... 

It was the end, they shot him, we had a wonderful dream and that was all…

Delphinium leaning on the aureate gate, asters twisting around the benches. Flowers were blossoming, the sun glared out from the bright blue sky – every day I wake up, with brioches; macaroons; croissants and crystal clear flute served on my gilded console table.

My everyday routine is simple to be said. Simplistic designed tiled floors and inlaid taps,

with a special herbal blend with my copper glazed tub, ready to be bathed and the gown was made of English linen and buttoned up to the neck, topping up with silk covered crinoline and pale ashen perukes with my faired skin. Luxury.

Most of the time, actually, every day I read, unlike the others, my life was trapped in a mirrored prison, what makes me happy? Books! And no one truly loves me, everyone was forced to love you, my entire existence is to help the country itself to gain more authoritative within the European estate so as my sisters, therefore since I was little I was seen as a property to my very own country, or should I say – a product?

However, it was about to come to an end, travelling solely as an immigrant to France, miles away from where I was born. It was a thrust upon the throne at seventeen, and little time to prepare for the arduous roles a naive girl such as myself faced. All I wanted and needed was love, a childhood of mine was stolen. And standing upon my own ground, I do but take responsibility for the course of my own actions, not those in which the court has accused me of. Yes, it is true the fact I have led an extraordinary lifestyle; I have heard it all, I have seen it all and I chose to ignore it all.

One day, the gate was opened, more than one gate, we were terrified of the sound of anger so as he, thin-lipped and I could feel the cold within him. ‘Louis!’ I cried. Louis is gone before me. I too followed his footsteps, following all the punishments that he has left for me to redeem. Red on white. I was a fallen angel.

I have never imagined it will end up a tragedy, for all to end so savagely. So cold outside, so blank and grey and unfeeling, untouched. Centuries of rule gone, the streets of Paris running red with blood, it was torn from the crying poor, and I still feel nothing, and it weighs so heavily upon me. The tumbril door opens. Did Louis step here also? Did his death’s feet pave the way for mine?

I trip, I stumble step on the executioner’s left foot. I look up at him, he looks rather unkindly on me, he cries out in pain for a moment, I realised I have caused many problems to make the people suffer, I was the centre of everyone’s pain, particularly in France, the problem will never be solved until they cut me off. So many watching, if I were naked it would be no less violating, it would make no difference, maybe I should strip now just to defy them all, no don’t be stupid, you die with a sense of dignity, die as a Queen even though a crown was taken off but I will leave a mark on history, I want to die all with dignity don’t give them the satisfaction…my head tells me I should have no such care because I will be dead anyways, I try to take a deep breath but the air seems stoppered completely, an anvil on my chest.

Starvation; War; Incest; Murderer of the country they say and once I was the top of the world, now I have fallen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. . . Only the gentle love of a mother can bear the wounds I so agonisingly possess. For a mother, who so lovingly and tenderly doted upon her own children, to be accused of such hideous crimes as incest? My neck was then locked, skin was scattered with scars. , don’t rest your hands on my dress, I said, the combination feels uncomfortably stark, white on white, all is pale in the darkness, stop it, and stop thinking of it, knowing…why did I choose white? Knowing the dress will make the blood stain all the more visible, I realise that soon I will know. I tremble like a leaf.

Don't be mainstream! 'TRAVEL BLOG'

My extraordinary life! To one of the world’s most exciting forest!

The sun rises from the East, shining bright across the Amazon River, as known as home to over 3000 species natural habitats where they crawl and slay little puny midgets.

The Amazon Forest, situated in South American and it is often described as a ‘dangerous place’, a place that it is very unusual If the guardian or parent’s taking little monsters – referring to mischievous kids here. So what experience was it like? Dangerous, dangerous and dangerous I suppose!

Unexpected.  That’s how I would describe Amazon as a place that has kept its tradition, though has been said many random species will come and bite little kids! – Ouch! Often being described as a ‘threatening’ ‘dangerous’ ‘mysterious place that if you get lost no one could come and find you’ and so much more. Amazon is definitely not the most recommended place in the world to go on a family trip with your monkeys if they don’t behave well. So what was my experience then?

Tough, but enjoyable.

This is the furthest and probably the toughest challenge I have been ever taken in my life, visiting  a place where you can get slaughtered to many different ways that you wouldn’t even expected how ‘they’ will be doing it.

Touch the poison dart frog, I dare you if you want to become the parody of sleeping beauty, or should I say a meal to be? – ah!

Walking down alongside the river bend as the shallow water rushing and flushing down so quickly, water splashes and hits the rock like they’re having a fight, this is extremely necessarily looking after little monkeys as they might end up the piranha’s meal.

Gero tours - walking unsteadily on bamboos; bamboo sticks everywhere; birds singing; actively hot during the day and cold as the Antarctica at night due to rapidly change in the climate, hot and humid. It could lead to dehydration if you don’t drink a plenty of waters, even though water is available anytime due to there is a ‘river’ but be careful as it may be lice’s looming inside the water – Yuck! Devil and the deep blue sea, water splashes, shocking, and unconsciousness...carnivores lurking around the edge, a sick and dying manatee’s had been taken down and finished off by a school of ravenous piranha during the dry season when they are notoriously aggressive. From miles away you can hear my tacky voice – apparently shouting was a definite action in this trip because you will never know what will happen to you next in terms of you might be followed by trillions of bullet ant, who knows?’

The next following morning we were strolling down the forest – the smell of the species richness’s in the biodiversity, green; red; blue – so colourful and tall gigantic attention-getting tree trunks within a maze-like forest, and the monsoon rain could drag down these brutal trunks, where you had to jump in and out and not to fall. Keep your balance.  ‘How am  I going to conserve this place?’– the question throws me into a thought of , indeed it is extraordinary to see such things especially we live in the inner cities  where nature has been buried alive and unrevealed due to civilizations – or never be able to reveal. Shocking.

 As we reached down an unknown forest, greeting the natives with their house being built on branches, sounding so dramatic and satisfying as there are over 30 different of them living in such awe-inspiring environment – blue fronted amazon; spectacled owls; hyacinth macaw as they are looking very glamorously for the ‘Carnival do Brazil’ or more like a haute couture being held in the forest.  It  seems like an animated film being brought to life whereas they are so amazed of Mother Nature’s creation.

As the weeks goes by we finally reached our final destination ‘Meetings of waters’, standing between the dark Rio negro and pale sandy coloured Rio Solimões, learning about the reasons behind the river colourations, made myself appreciated what I have learnt from their chemistry class in school, great opportunity on applying knowledges in nature. I was very surprised that they were fighting over trying to explain the idea behind to me. Amazon isn’t just an ordinary place, it is a place that stretches your children’s mind.

Being mainstream isn’t good, visit some other countries and be an extraordinary family unlike the others.

English is not sexist, it has been altered to become sexist by stereotyping

PLEASE NOTE: JUST A MADE UP ESSAY

It’s hard to discuss whether a language is sexist or not, as our language is undergoing gender neutrality in terms of more gender-neutral alternatives has been created within the past 20 years. Which shows a big improvement on how the power in discourse is shifting within our society embedded with the patriarchal ideology. Recently I have been watching an interview with the BBC, interviewing a female engineer about her daily life – marked form is used positively within this context. 

How shocking and strongly how the patriarchal ideology has been embedded in my 6-year-old son’s mind as he has questioned me ‘Mummy why could this woman become an engineer, she is a woman though’. My first reaction was to freeze and unsure how to answer his question. But it was absolutely normal having this kind of thought, as we all know living in the UK means you have to accept the fact this is a country which speaks a language with an inequality. Even the EU has strongly emphasized banning the use of marked forms, but why do we still use it, though? Is it still valuable in a society moving towards gender neutrality? 

Well, blame the English teachers in primary school. English teacher has always taught us the vocabs about jobs, food or even just normal words we use in our daily basis, but reinforcing what has been discussed, the educational system is responsible for the use of marked forms and ideology. Because the teachers tended to teach us words such as ‘Policemen’ ‘firemen’ ‘surgeon’ and quite unfamiliar to see words that associates with women gender being taught unless it is a nurse or ‘mid-wife’. A reflection on a feminist theory published by linguist Dale Spender, he said adding the suffix ‘men’ or ‘ess’ strengthens the perceptions that the male category is the norm and that it corresponds the female category is derivation and therefore less important. 

Or maybe because women are seen to be ‘weaker’ sex as linguist Robin Lakoff published her deficit theory in the 70s about the fact women uses weaker language, may have illustrated an imagery to the others where woman are not strong enough to catch thieves or save the day. Indeed you may have noticed that the ideology has started embedding since we were young but we have not been aware of it, furthermore to bring out a concept on jobs which some jobs can only be carried out by a specific gender. I am sure you are very aware that no one uses these terms anymore and are becoming more obsolete as there is more gender neutral phrases are being created within the past years. 

Therefore I do not see the point why do we have to judge people what work should they be doing depending on their sex. 

Just like how women has to identified their marital status, for example attending my son’s parent evening, the school he goes to would ask me to fill in a slip with a title ‘Mr/ Mrs’ has already been filled in by the school itself automatically by computer, they were the only 2 options. Like do I have to be married to become a mother? Since when does the title ‘Mrs’ has been used as one size fits all? The Swedes has recently introduced a new gender-neutral title ‘Hens', I’d be so much happier if they have used that instead of being stereotyped as a married woman. 

Our language is changing anyways but it takes a bit of time – nowadays the use of a male pronoun to refer to both men and women. Using ‘he’ or ‘his’ to refer to humans in general (known as ‘male as norm’) is actually still fairly common, probably because no-one is actually completely sure what the grammatically correct alternative is. 

Using the plural ‘they’ or ‘their’ never sounds quite right when we are actually referring to the singular. Another option is to change the focus of whatever is being said by the second person, using ‘you’ and ‘your’ – but, of course, this can completely change the register of the sentence. It’s difficult to determine whether or not language is sexist or not, it may have been like this all the time. I realized the way how I greet my friends using a word that looks like gender neutral but actually has the implication of manpower, such as calling my female friends ‘Hey guys’ or the utterance ‘oh, man’, our language is littered with expressions refers to men as the powerful collective. it is unbearable in the English language as men have the power and the authority in charge within our society. Until we have equality in our language, it’s difficult to argue for equality in language elsewhere, which is why it’s so important that change is encouraged. And we can quite easily encourage it by giving a little more time and thought to the words we use, like use more gender neutral alternatives. Surely this will take a while in our lifetime, probably 20 years? 30? 40? – all we can do now is that simply make little changes and live happily. Eventually one day we will have equalities within our language or in every language. 

*Please note this is based on my personal views, no offense 

Kelsey

HONG KONG - LAN KWAI FONG!!!

 Welcome to LAN KWAI FONG, before I start this article, I would like to introduce you a little history behind LKF.

Lan Kwai Fong as an area is defined by D'Aguilar Street and the smaller lane, Lan Kwai Fong, an L-shaped, cobble-stoned lane. Both streets turn 90 degrees to form a rectangle. It is near the Mid-Levels. Its eating and drinking establishments are considered upmarket in price and the area is also considered a tourist spot. From the west side of the rectangle, Wo On Lane and Wing Wah Lane extend to host several more spots for drinks and food. The area arguably extends to Wellington Street and Wyndham Street, through to the Hong Kong Fringe Club. It is also home to a small number of art galleries.



Clubbing and drinking is a must 'DO' in LAN KWAI FONG, even though it could get so crowded and dangerous at night but it was a good experience to see and experience the night life in HK.

Eating Godiva Ice-cream 

 @ Hard Rock with my Blue devil!

Happy National Poetry Day!

Happy National Poetry Day! Am very excited because it is the day when people celebrates poetry's.



 Here, I am dedicated to tell everyone about my favourite poem through out my life, not full of encouragement but I love the words about it and how the poet trying to represent himself in this poem.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone

W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Kelsey x

'Movie' or 'film'?

BRITISH ENGLISH OR AMERICAN ENGLISH?

All the time, all the time , there has always been some words that do confuses people, for example, words such as 'Fall' and 'Autumn'.
They both have the lexical field of  'weather' but described in different ways, to the people who are not familiar with American English like the British people, they might think 'Oh yeah, that's a pile of bullsh*t'.

Back in the days where English has originally formed from French/ Latin words, could have been much more and more histories behind the whole thing if you're talking about history. However, I am definitely not going into such deep talk about it. - it may bores you and me!
Recently I have been reading an article about English Language and noticed that the 'TH' sound in British english will be gone by 2066. whereas no more proper British language due to the muticulturalism said by the linguists in this research.
As a linguist in English Language, I do feel disgraced, devastated and concerned about the whole situation we are in now.

'Th' sound to vanish from English language by 2066 because of multiculturalism, say linguists

Multiculturalism is important;

According to researches from the tourists, visitors came from different places around the world expecting to see and hear Queen's English (or Standard English you may refer to) on the street while banging on the street. but this may be gone after 50 years due to multiculturalism, SE could be extincted forever!

'Given the status of London as the linguistically most influential city in the English-speaking world, we can expect to see significant changes between now and the middle of the century' - Dr Dominic Watt, a sociolinguistics expert from the University of York.

We're an English speaking country (proud to be!) - however, a lot of the things are influenced by the Americans such as TVs, Magazines, Films or even netflix.

The majority of the people, including 'you' who is reading this article may have been using some American slang words at some point, does not matter where are you from or which language do you speak.

90% of the people in the world are learning english, but only 25% could speak proper English because American English has evolved to become less formal and much more simpler, so foreigners does find it easier to learn American English.

A lot of non verbal communication skills are also replacing English Language, so Emojis may be part of your life by the time we reach to 2066.






Reporter - Kelsey Wong