Surprise!!!

        You serve, I price; we both get surprise.  Everybody love surprise!  According to my electronic dictionary, the word, surprise means an unexpected or astonishing event, fact, or thing.  And today, I got a very special surprise.

        It is about a month ago.  After I went back to my hometown during my summer vacation, my brother told me that a Taiwanese style shop next to our high school just opened recently.  In addition, it serves great sesame seed cake which tastes even delicious with sizzled pork slice, over-easy egg wrapped inside.  Upon hearing this, we discussed with our parents for having breakfast there.  "Oh, that's one.  "Ok, since you have not tasted it, we will go eat there tomorrow", my father agreed while my mother protested, "No, last time we went there, I had that and I think it is too greasy.  You three are not going to have that again!"  That's why we did not put this plan into practice until...

Sesame seed cake with pork slice
and over-easy egg 

        This morning, my mother and brother went out.  On the other hand, I stayed at home packing for my new semester because I have to go back to the city Kaohsiung where my college is located.  Suddenly, I heard a key-put-in cracking, then the bolt thudded back.  The door opened.  Standing by the door with a villainous smile was my brother smirking at me proudly.  He strode inside, one hand taking off the helmet, a plastic bag was swaying on the other.  The bag was whitened with steam drifted upward. 

     "What is it?", I asked.  "It is the sesame seed cake with pork slice and egg I have said", he lifted the bag higher enough to let me see the loot of sin, then continued," I bought it because after tomorrow we will not be able to eat it.  Besides, Mom was out."  This time both of us smirked.  The sesame cake was still steaming when we put it on a plate.  My brother took out a knife, stacking the pork on the egg, which took the half size on the cake, pushing them to one side, cutting it to half.  I asked why he took the pure sesame seed cake part.  His answer is because I haven't tasted it.

P.S.

Drew by Angel Pao
Left: My brother/Right: me

Summer Night

        Ok! Let's see.  I believe people have at least one memory they will cherish for the rest of life.  I am no exception, too.  In this article,  I want to describe an extraordinary experience which is still etched in my heart and which I considered to be the one that people still remember: the twinkling, twinkling stars.

Drawing by Angel Pao
Left: Angel (me)  Right: My brother
My brother and I were enjoying looking at stars
during the summer starry night.

        When I was one-year grade, every summer night in my neighborhood, my family and I would take a walk at a square in front of a huge Chinese temple.  We lived in a small community in suburb.  Due to such small amount of people living there, the whole area appeared to be very quiet.  Besides, with few cars passing by, with no factories standing nearby, ecosystem had thrived, especially at night.  Within earshot, chirps from crickets showering through the quietness accompanied with the pounding of the tide.  As the sea was washing the port, it breezed cool to fill lungs of passersby with salty, refreshing air, to rid people of pressures from work, from school, from everyday life.  This made us cannot help but throw our head back as we look up into the sky with ruffled hair.

        Scattering up up on the dark canopy were those glittering stars so bright so spectacular that it looked as if a sea of diamond was swirling.  Every time, we looked those shimmering stars, my mother and my father would start to tell my brother and I some old folktales and we would also start to run around at the square pretending we were fighting a Star War.  Later, on the way to home,  I would wonder what it would be like if one day I could travel into space.

        However, because of the reason like greenhouse, environmental change, so far so forth, this sacred performance shows up scarcely and almost no child can be so honored to witness this wondrous natural firework.  Nevertheless, this picturesque view has been smeared into my heart and will live on throughout my whole life.  That's why by writing this, I hope I can share such an ordinary scene into extraordinary.