Hi my lovely people,

I am so sorry to announce that I'm not using xanga anymore.

Instead, I am going to use tumblr.

www.musicalcookies.tumblr.com

Love,
Jacqueline 

        It has been ages since I do a random shout of everything, which means doing a blog freely without checking grammar, sentence and paragraph structure carefully. My xanga was supposed to be a diary but since two years ago, debates and sensitive topics have been discussed. In one way, it shows that I am growing up and am learning that the world is more complicated than I thought. However, it also means that I have been missing out the little things in life that are just simple and beautiful.

        These few days I have been staying at the beach house far away from the city with my boyfriend and his family. To be honest, I miss city life so much even though I have been experiencing interesting things in this countryside. We went to plum-picking, watered the garden, cutting beans from the garden and cleaning the 2-story house. These activities may sound ordinary and simple but I never had the chance to do it growing up as a city girl.

       Few days ago, we went to a neighbour's garden and picked plums from their huge plum tree. The neighbours were so generous with the plums because there were too many of them. Also, the neighbours has been away for quite some time that the plums would rot if it is not eaten. We picked 3 big bags of plums, i'm guessing it is about 8 kilos, and had them for breakfast, lunch and dinner... Just kidding! We washed and seeded all the plums and made them into a big tub of plum juice. It was a beauty. It is excellent with ice-cream and just for drinking! Plum, plum, plums... I think I washed more than 500 plums, it was crazy and tiring. But when you can have the plum juice with ice-cream, all the hard work is worth it!

        I guess plum-picking is the highlight of my trip here so far. There will be a Chinese New Year party tomorrow at our place and we are going to have steamboat. This morning I helped to wash the vegetables and arranged the Chinese candy into a box for tomorrow. The weather has been crazy as always and I hope that tomorrow will be a beautiful day.

        There is so much to say yet I feel quite tired. Hopefully you are going to see a new post from me tomorrow! Belated happy Chinese New Year and have a lovely and productive day!

xoxo
Lotsa Love,
Jacqueline <3<3<3 

    The number of Facebook friends you have can roughly tell which generation you are in. If you have 100 friends or below on Facebook, you are probably 40 years old or above; If you have between 100 to 200 friends, you are likely to be in your 30s… Indeed this is an improper classification and it is inaccurate. However, there are significant differences in all generations. It can be easily seen as very often there is an obvious communication gap between kids and their grandparents. The reason is not merely because of the acceleration of technology, but the set of doctrines that we believe, such as life goals, love and money have greatly changed. Being in Generation Y with parents in Baby Boom Generation, it is interesting to observe that most disagreements between these two generations are due to generation gap.

    In my generation, it is a common statement for someone to say ''I don’t feel like this is what I want to do’’ while making decisions, especially in education and work. This often leads to dangerous decisions that may upset our parents. Some baby-boomers want to decide the future for their children, for example, in following their footsteps or a job that can provide a decent income. However, it seems to be reasonable for Gen. Y to do what they desire as they believe that they only live once, thus  should get the most out of life. However, Baby-boomers are people that were born after World War II; they start everything from zero and the ultimate goal in their lives is to rebuild a normal and stable life. It can be a crazy idea to Baby-boomers or older generations about doing whatever you want to do because it was impossible during their time of wars and destructions. Most Baby-boomers have a long-lasting and stable career for life while job-changing is frequent for my generation. For Generation Y, most of us believe that when something goes wrong in our career or when we feel unhappy about it, it is acceptable to change to a job that is suitable for ourselves. Moreover, most of us already have resources to be supported for daily life and education without moving a muscle. Therefore, risks are always taken as we know that no matter what happens, a family is always behind our back to support and protect us.

    Despite the different cultures of life goals between generations, the expression of love has always been important within and across generations. Marriage is an essential ceremony in many countries to demonstrate the everlasting love commitment between two persons. In today’s society, many married couples have become self-centred and divorce is commonly witnessed. Statistics have shown that the divorce rate in America has risen to more than 40% recently and the divorce rate for second and third marriages are 60% and 73% respectively. A few reasons for the increase of divorce rate is because of the adjusted divorce legislations and reforms which make divorce easier than before. A number of societies have approved gay marriages and some are considering. Moreover, E-divorce, which is an online service to end marriages, is very convenient and has become more popular in South Australia. The understanding of love has changed between the Baby-boom Generation and the world today. The strong emphasis on freedom today has changed the definition of love in some people’s dictionary. Indeed, love is a choice; it can be easy but it can be hard. Some people are creating problems and playing with love because they believe they have the right and freedom to do it. Back to the years in World War II, love was sometimes not a choice.

     It is impossible to choose our parents as well; thus it is vital to learn about their world. Indeed, there is a generation gap between parents and their children as the perspective of the materialistic world is different. When having a conversation with people of different generations from yours, it is worthwhile to learn about their backgrounds, listen to their life stories and share yours to them. You may find interesting similarities and differences which compose the generation gaps and disagreement on personal perspectives.

Q: What similarities or differences have you found between you and your grandparents/parents?

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Love,
Jacqueline