It is almost 中秋节, Mid-Autumn Festival This year it is celebrated on the 1st of October 2020, which is also, 十一 , the PRC National Day of China. During this festival, Chinese get together with their families and eat moon cakes and look upon the moon.
I promised you that I would share some poems with you. This is a poem about missing the family reunion of the festival. It describes how beautiful it is, in a quiet yet sad way. The sadness and longing is very prominent. I cannot celebrate the festival with my family this year either, so I feel deeply connected to this poem. I hope everyone who celebrates can be with their 家人 family (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡
Our law system is different from the law system in English speaking countries, so there might be words missing/different and I did not include every single word related to law, because that would be a bit enthusiastic lol
Advocaat (de) = lawyer
Arbeidsrecht (het) = Labor Law
Bestuursrecht (het) = Administrative Law
(Geld)boete (de) = fine
Civiel/Burgelijk recht (het) = Civil Rights Law
Gerechtshof (het) = Court of Appeal
Gevangenisstraf (de) = imprisonment
Griffier (de) = registrar
Hoge Raad (de) = Supreme Court
Jurisprudentie (de) = case law
Slachtoffer (het) = victim
Strafrecht (het) = Criminal Law
Taakstraf (de) = community service
tbs (terbeschikkingstelling) = a type of sentence for criminals with a psychiatric disorder
Ondernemingsrecht (het) = Business Law
OM (het) = Public Prosecution Service
Personen -en familierecht (het) = Family Law
Pleidooi (het) = plea
Raadsheer (de) = judge at higher courts
Raadsman (de) = lawyer
Rechter (de) = judge
Rechtbank (de) = court
Schuldig bevinden = to find guilty
Spreekrecht = Victim Impact Statement (it’s mainly for the victim to be heard in the Netherlands, but it doesn’t really count for the final verdict)
To thank you all for following my blog I’ve decided to host a giveaway.
What can you win?
The winner can choose oneof the three Dutch magnets above. I will buy it once the giveaway ends, so if the magnet of your choice is not available anymore you can pick a substitute from the website.
How can you win?
Send me an ask (make sure you’re not anon) stating what you like about Dutch/The Netherlands and why you would like to win the giveaway. I won’t publish the ask, so you will still remain anonymous.
The winner will be picked at random, but with the rule above I want to make sure that people don’t only enter for the sake of winning something, but truly have some type of connection to the language/country.
Rules:
Anyone younger than 18 needs parental permission to enter, since I have to send the magnet to your address.
Your entry is only valid when you have sent it in ask form. Any replies to this post will not count as an entry.
Respond before the closing date.
Closing date is 1st of January 2021.
Good luck!
Don’t forget to enter the competition if you want to participate!
To thank you all for following my blog I’ve decided to host a giveaway.
What can you win?
The winner can choose oneof the three Dutch magnets above. I will buy it once the giveaway ends, so if the magnet of your choice is not available anymore you can pick a substitute from the website.
How can you win?
Send me an ask (make sure you’re not anon) stating what you like about Dutch/The Netherlands and why you would like to win the giveaway. I won’t publish the ask, so you will still remain anonymous.
The winner will be picked at random, but with the rule above I want to make sure that people don’t only enter for the sake of winning something, but truly have some type of connection to the language/country.
Rules:
Anyone younger than 18 needs parental permission to enter, since I have to send the magnet to your address.
Your entry is only valid when you have sent it in ask form. Any replies to this post will not count as an entry.
If anyone wants to learn the harsh truths about Dutch history, this book might be interesting. I haven’t bought it yet myself, but definitely interested in buying it.
- Person 2: Ik heb moeite met poepen. Mijn keutels zijn groot en hard en ik moet hard persen om ze er uit te krijgen. Daarnaast is mijn poep een vreemde kleur.
(I have difficulty pooping. My poop is big and hard and I have to push hard to get it out. Furthermore, my poop is a strange colour.)
- Person 1: Welke kleur is uw poep?
(What colour is your poop?)
- Person 2: Mijn poep is soms rood en soms zwart.
(Sometimes my poop is red and sometimes black.)
- Person 1: Ik denk dat u last heeft van een verstopping. Ik vraag een inwendig onderzoek voor u aan.
(I think you suffer from constipation. I will request an internal examination.)
we’ve all been in this situation for different reasons, anxiety, procrastination, work, way too many assignments in a week. but fear not my friends, hopefully, this masterpost will help you get A’s and organize your study schedule.
also please only do this every time you need to study for a test, cramming is not good for learning and pulling all-nighters frequently isn’t healthy.
we’ve all been in this situation for different reasons, anxiety, procrastination, work, way too many assignments in a week. but fear not my friends, hopefully, this masterpost will help you get A’s and organize your study schedule.
also please only do this every time you need to study for a test, cramming is not good for learning and pulling all-nighters frequently isn’t healthy.
icon credit: @nerdastically. to request a post, send me an ask here, and for more tips, visit my tips page here!! i hope this tips have helped you, and have a wonderful week ahead! (❁´▽`❁)*✲ﾟ*
these are small things you can add to your day to be 10% more productive with the estimated time it’ll take! these are things i do (or try to do) most days. they’re small enough to feel manageable, and i for sure don’t use all of them but i find that when i use at least 2-3 in a day i feel a lot better about the material.
retype notes in google docs (10-15 min/1 hour lecture)
Utilize pomodoro technique for at least one subject (25 min work/5 min break. total 30 min)
Look over notes before class (5 min)
Look over notes after class (5 min)
Make notecard summary after class (i find this one especially useful for calculus!) (10 min/notecard)
Explain short concept to a friend (10 min max)
write down to-do list of tasks (5 min)
Go over concepts in your head on your walk to class (absolute FAVORITE because of my daily calculus quizzes within the first 10 minutes of class) (as long as your walk is!)
i hope these are helpful, i need to learn more small tips myself too
character development, characterization, unnecessary characters
point-of-view consistency, showing vs telling, voice
motivation, goals, conflict, tension, tone
back story, plot holes, loose story threads
scene order, flow, and pace
2. Line Edit
This step zooms into the paragraph and sentence level of the story. The intention here is to tighten up and smooth out the writing, and iron out any style issues. Things that will be looked at include:
sentence structure, wordiness, paragraph flow
word choice, word repetition, overused words
clichés (the phrase kind, not the concept kind)
weak transitions, overall clarity
3. Copy Edit
This step is about clean-up and consistency. It’s the phase where a fine polish is buffed into the surface of the story. No major edits will occur from this point onward. Things that will be looked at include:
grammar and punctuation
use of active voice over passive voice
continuity and overall cohesiveness
4. Proofread
The goal of this step is to look one last time for errors and things that need to be changed. Things that will be looked at include:
typos
overlooked errors in grammar, punctuation, and capitalization
5. Formatting
If your book is being traditionally published, you only need to worry about putting your manuscript into the format preferred by the agent or publisher you’re sending it to. If you’re self-publishing, this stage is a little bit trickier, because e-books and print books require slightly different formatting. There are guides online for how to do it, or you can pay someone to format your book for you. Just do your homework to make sure you’re choosing a good service. There’s also software that will help you format your book, or you can look into services like Pressbooks.
Research suggests that being an early bird or a night owl is actually down to genetics (an interesting article to learn more about that here). Whilst many are getting their beauty sleep, you, brave night owl, are burning the midnight oil by choice! (One study has even shown that night owls are more intelligent than early risers.)
There are benefits of studying in the evening/at night: you are less likely to be distracted by phone calls/texts/emails/active social media, you are more likely to feel calm and relaxed because the bulk of the day is behind you, and most people experience a spike in creativity at night- meaning out of the box solutions or deciphering problems by approaching them in a different way. These tips are for you, my nocturnal friends, to get the most out of your time!
Improve your lighting
It’s natural to want to work in dimmer lighting come night-time, but working from the glow of your computer screen might not be the best for you (plus this can cause unnecessary eye strain), so switch some bright main lights on and see if that changes your energy
Alternatively, you might continue to work with bright lighting but may find that you work better with softer lighting. Play around with a desk lamp/fairy lights/dimmable lights if you have them, to create the ambience that makes you the most productive
Commit to your study environment
Just because it’s night-time doesn’t mean it’s bed time - create and use the workspace you’ve set up (at a desk or table) and avoid crawling into bed with a textbook
Hit the library
If your institution has a twenty four hour library, this is the perfect time to get the best seat in the house to study in. With the exception of the weeks leading up to the exam period, libraries will usually be very quiet!
Switch your phone off
Unless you need it to set break timers, switching off your phone is BLISS because not many exciting things will be happening when it’s late. Allow yourself the freedom to study without wondering who could be texting you/who just posted another beige facebook update
Keep to a sleep schedule
Just because you stay up later than some doesn’t mean you still can’t have a schedule and wake up early - in fact, it’s been suggested that night owls are actually better at waking up than the early birds! It’s a good idea to have a cut-off point for studying. There may be times when a creative streak or an academic rush propels you through the early hours of the morning and you find yourself still working when the birdsong breaks, and that’s okay. Allow all nighters to happen sometimes, because that’s when the best work can happen! But ensure you do still get enough sleep and keep a loose routine
Music: destructive or productive?
During the day, I am most productive when listening to music (I make study playlists that you can find under my playlists tag!) After about 10pm, I find that music becomes a nuisance and instead prefer working in silence. Rules can change at night. Find out whether this is the same (or the opposite) for you
Stay hydrated
Don’t forget to have a big glass or bottle of water with you (if you’re bad at remembering to drink enough water, there are lots of cute apps to remind you such as Daily Water for iPhone/iPad or Drink! for Chrome)
Allow yourself time off
Don’talways feel the need to study if you don’t want to- use the still of the night to work on that novel you’ve been writing, read a book for pleasure, paint, etc.
ok i’ve been rly busy nowadays + i’m rly sorry that i haven’t been able to sit down and just answer a bunch of asks in my inbox rn ;; however, i took a quick glance at it and a lot of them are abt your individual schedules / classes / extracurriculars / mental health / situations + asking if this is good enough for college or if it’s good enough for a prestigious college. i think it’s easier for me to address all of those general questions into one quick post, so here we go:
there is no set formula to get into college.there is no magical combination of classes or set of extracurriculars or certain gpa that will automatically land you in college. the things that really matter is how you present yourself in your application (ie: essays, sometimes extracurriculars) and what the college is really looking for that year. the first part is something you can influence; the second part is something left up to probability and the types of applicants applying that year.
grades / gpa / scores: i’ve also mentioned this in my college video, but gpa / grades / scores are not the sole determining factor in your application. there are other aspects to the application such as the essays, the recommendation letters, the extracurriculars, etc. it’s possible to bounce back from a bad year, it’s possible to put yourself in a different light, it’s possible to make other aspects of yourself shine more than a single number on your application.
extracurriculars: you do not have to have as many ec’s as me. in fact, i’d discourage it because i felt like i only had a shallow involvement in them since i was stretched too thin + i would like to repeat my sentiment about choosing the few that you care about and sticking with them rather than trying to do every single one on the planet. if you don’t have any extracurriculars, you could pick a few up. if you don’t have any clubs or things that interest you, just pick one and do it anyways because you might end up finding something that you really enjoy. if you’re starting late (junior or senior year), i think it’s still worth it to join, but make sure you really involve yourself in it instead of just joining for the sake of putting it on your college app.
classes: take on as many honors / ap classes as you can handle but no more than that. sure, you might think that colleges will want to see it on your transcript, but if it ends up severely impacting your grades / gpa, you might want to decide whether or not it’s worth it. i know i said gpa / grades don’t matter as much, but they’re still a part of your transcript. show that you can handle a lil more but don’t purposefully make yourself suffer needlessly.
the “i don’t think i’m good enough for this college” mentality: ditch it. ditch it as fast as you possibly can. i don’t care what you’ve done or what classes / scores / extracurriculars you have. ditch this mentality as fast as you possibly can. i know it’s easier said than done, but truly, this kind of mentality has a tendency to bleed into your essays and interviews and prevent you from advertising yourself as best as you can on your application. ditch it and start focusing on the good parts about yourself. if you can’t find any, ask someone else and then focus on that + highlight it in your essays. show why you are a compelling candidate, and if you can’t find a reason, then make one out of your experiences. arrogance isn’t fantastic, but excessive modesty will hurt you in the process just as much.
mental health: this is written in the description of my ask box and in my faq, but please don’t send me messages about depression, suicide, etc, especially if they’re detailed because they are triggering for me and generally remind me of terrible memories that i’d rather forget. however, i will tell you that it is possible to recover and bounce back. that requires you to take the initiative and reach out for help though. from my personal experience, reaching out and telling someone that you trust about your fears and your struggles and finding help has been immensely helpful. the problem doesn’t go away if you ignore it. in fact, it generally tends to get worse. stop suffering in silence, and reach out. i know it can be scary, but you gotta do that in order to start the recovery process.
that p much covers all the asks i’ve received abt this topic! thank you for your patience!!
According to this list, these are the top 10 surnames in China as of 2020*:
李 Lǐ
王 Wáng
张 Zhāng
刘 Liú
陈 Chén
杨 Yáng
赵 Zhào
黄 Huáng
周 Zhōu
吴 Wú
I’ve seen articles like this one discussing the regional distribution of surnames. I wanted to take a look myself and compare the top surnames in different provinces/municipalities. For instance, do any locations have a top 10 list that is the same as the overall country top 10? Which surname is ranked #1 in the most locations? Let’s explore and have some fun along the way.
*The top surnames for 西藏 Tibet are not included. I believe this is because the population is vast majority Tibetan.
1) Find how many surnames in a location’s top 10 are also in the national top 10.
Most in common
Arrows: grey = same as national rank, green = higher than national rank, red = lower than national rank Circles: orange = in national top 10 but missing from top 10 of individual location, blue = outside national top 10
2) Find the average national rank for each location’s top 10 list.
OK, this section is a little confusing. Basically, I was thinking that just counting overlapping surnames this isn’t necessarily the best metric. When it comes to surnames outside the national top 10, just counting like I did above can’t distinguish a rank of 100 from a rank of 11! So I decided to take averages.
For each location, I found the national rank of the its top 10 surnames and averaged them. This should give me an idea of which location’s top 10 surnames collectively rank the highest in the whole country. If you add up 1-10 and divide by 10, you get an average of 5.5, so that would be the minimum possible average.
Lowest average
Highlighting: red = lower than national rank, green = higher than national rank, no highlighting = same as national rank Blue circling = outside of national top 10 Annotated numbers = national rank
湖北 Hubei - 6.2 average Outside national top 10: 胡 Hú & 徐 Xú
安徽 Anhui - 6.3 average Outside national top 10: 徐 Xú & 孙 Sūn
江苏 Jiangsu - 6.5 average Outside national top 10: 徐 Xú & 朱 Zhū
Highest average
海南 Hainan - 30.5 average Outside national top 10: 符 Fú, 林 Lín & 郑 Zhèng
广西 Guangxi - 28.2 average Outside national top 10: 梁 Liáng, 韦 Wéi, 陆 Lù & 卢 Lú
上海 Shanghai - 16.2 average Outside national top 10: 朱 Zhū, 徐 Xú, 沈 Shěn & 陆 Lù
3) Add the difference in rank of surnames for each location to create a composite score.
Then I started to think about order within the top 10. After all, a province for which 李 Lǐ ranks #10 should be treated differently from one where 李 Lǐ is #1. So I wanted to capture the difference between a surname’s national rank and its rank for individual locations.
For example, in 广东 Guangdong, 陈 Chén ranks #1, but it’s #5 in the whole country. The difference is 5 - 1 = 4. I did this for the other 9 surnames in 广东 Guangdong’s top 10 as well and added the numbers to get a composite score. Then I repeated this for the other locations.
I used absolute values—otherwise a positive difference and negative difference would offset each other! But I used + and - signs in the images below to show more information. You could also divided by 10 to get the average difference for the top 10 surnames each location.
Lowest score
Highlighting: red = lower than national rank, green = higher than national rank, no highlighting = same as national rank Blue circling = outside of national top 10 Annotated numbers = difference b/t national rank and local rank, with (+) indicating a higher rank locally and (-) indicating a lower rank locally
安徽 Anhui - 14 score
四川 Sichuan - 15 score
宁夏 Ningxia - 20 score
Highest score
海南 Hainan - 264 score
广西 Guangxi - 253 score
山西 Shanxi - 113 score
上海 Shanghai - 113 score
4) For each location, determine how many surnames have no difference in rank.
As an extension of the above, for each location, I counted the number of top 10 surnames that had no difference in rank compared to the national rank. Let’s look closer at locations whose top 10 lists had the fewest changes:
I’ll also list the locations for which no surnames had the same rank as in the top 10:
广东 Guangdong
福建 Fujian
江西 Jiangxi
江苏 Jiangsu
贵州 Guizhou
Summary: Which location’s top 10 is closest to the national top 10?
We just saw several different ways of looking at this. Someone who is better at math than I am would probably devise a way to combine the different metrics into a single score. I’m just going to recap which locations we saw appear the most.
Overall most similar: 四川 Sichuan & 安徽 Anhui
Overall least similar: 广西 Guangxi, 上海 Shanghai & 海南 Hainan
5) Find which surnames appear on the most and least location top 10 lists.
This wasn’t something I was initially curious about, but after my analyses above, I grew curious. I’m just looking at the national top 10 surnames here. There are 30 locations total, so 30 is the highest possible number.
So 李 Lǐ and 张 Zhāng are the only two that appear in the top 10 for all 30 locations!
I also thought it would be interesting to see which locations are missing for the surnames that were close to 30/30:
This questions grew pretty naturally off of the question above. I spent far too long making this map to go along with the numbers!
The winner is…王 Wáng with 15 locations! It’s so interesting to see how 王 Wáng is dominant in the north, 陈 Chén rules the southern coast, etc.
王 Wáng - 1st in 15 locations
李 Lǐ - 1st in 6 locations
陈 Chén - 1st in 4 locations
张 Zhāng - 1st in 3 locations
刘 Liú - 1st in 1 location
黄 Huáng - 1st in 1 location
The winner is…王 Wáng with 15 locations!
7) Mainland China vs. Taiwan vs. Hong Kong
I thought this would be an interesting comparison. I wanted to include Macau as well, but I had difficulty finding a list. Here is the Hong Kong data source.
Arrows: green = higher than Mainland rank, red = lower than Mainland rank Circles: orange = in Mainland top 10 but missing from the HK and/or TW top 10, blue = outside Mainland top 10
I was actually surprised how similar the top 10s are for Taiwan and Hong Kong!
I also wanted to compare Taiwan and Hong Kong to Fujian and Guangdong, respectively. These are the two provinces in Mainland China that they are closest to.
Now, I’m no history expert, but I know that a lot of Taiwanese have roots in Fujian, so it makes a lot of sense that their top 10 lists look so similar. I don’t know much about the history of migration to Hong Kong, but as such a major economic center, I’m guessing people from all over China came to Hong Kong.
Thank you!
If you actually read this whole post, I’m impressed. Thank you!
I initially began working on this post in September 2021. Needless to say, this post ended up being a lot longer and taking up a lot more of my time than I had anticipated. I asked my dad to read over an earlier draft of this post for me, and he literally asked me, “why are you doing this?” I didn’t really have a concrete answer. I just thought it would be interesting to explore surnames a bit. And so here we are :)
