Tag: delay

Flight Change: An Alternative Choice

There are only 3 days left for my summer vacation due to my schedule of going back to Wuhan to continue my preparation for GRE and my admission to the graduate school.  Everything seems quite okay and I am just wondering what to do as my plan when back. But everything changed when I get a short message from the China Southern Airline that my scheduled flight has been delayed due to some reason to 9 p.m. And two choices are offered: I can either accept the change, quite arbitrary, or to cancel that seat.

If there is nothing urgent as my classmates, such as GRE exams, I would directly postpone this flight but continue to stay at home. But now I have to go back on time, since I don’t want to suffer the same situation as that happened in June.  A direct consideration on train directly draw me to a check on the timing schedule, but unfortunately, the only train to Wuhan would be arrived at 10:30 p.m in Hankou, no earlier than my flight.

While fortunately I get the flight from qunar.com, a famous search engine in China for hotels and air tickets, that there is a 300-yuan ticket from Xiamen Airline to Wuhan. Though it is a bit expensive and I have to go to Hangzhou to take that flight, it is acceptable, comparing to the price that can be twice of much from other airlines. Wish this flight would not be cancelled. I really don’t want to stay in a bar at the airport for hours.

So I firstly asked the refund from the China Southern Airline.

cs-air-refund

And then make an new order from Xiamen Airlines, frankly speaking, their website and ordering system needs to be improved.

xa-ticket

Comparing to the delay that I suffered, the informing in advance is a progress on their service, but in fact, some compensation to the customers should be offered as well according to the conventions of airlines overseas. For this, the companies in China needs to be improved. And, why not send me an email but a short message to my cell phone?

Delay on GRE Writing: Depression

It has been quite a long time since the last passage with the language of English. I don’t have a strong desire to make an English writing blog, I don’t have the feeling of this language, but unfortunately, I don’t have the capability of wrtting this passage in Chinese as well. I envy the good writers, either in Chinese or English, that describes the sights naturally with beautiful words and marvelous feeling like a poem.

The postponing of the writing section do harm greatly on my mood. Not only the moeny that I spent for, but also the failure that I get from my heart as a deny to my decision perviously. I don’t know if it is called self-induced pressure, but an approaching of an exam without any good feeling is absolutely not a good signal, which exists not only in exams, but in any realms of lives. As a modern student who is surviving in an emerging economy, it is getting too many choices to make, too many alternatives to consider, and too many failures that may occur. Frankly speaking, I don’t have the intention to take such an exam, a high-level challenge among the English exams, but my consideration of my future is making his full efforts to persuade me to do so. Hereby, three kinds of pressure, parental, peer, self-induced are all intertwined.

But we do have to re-consider the nature and purpose that we study English. As a most developed unit globally, the American pie is pouringly influencing the rest of the word, from economics, military to socialism, even to our daily lives. A primary purpose of English thus comes out that English is to be a key to the door that one can step forward outside the motherland that feed him, and TOEFL and GRE as well as IELTS and GMAT are becoming a popular topic on campus permanently. For my own history of learning which can be dated back to 15 years ago when I was still a lad of 11 and started to know what ABC was like, I never reached the beauty of this language, refered to as English literature such as poems and arts, and the related civilizaton and culture, such as a basic introduciton on the christian conventions. While instead, I have participated in tens, may be over hundreds of English exams and contests, size and levels varying.

An exams-oriented education obviously fails to bring us good usage of the knowledge that we were infused, not only of English, but for many other subjects. A trip to Hawaii in December contributes me great feeling on this. Even though the paper can be fully presented at a symposium, and a discussion can be conducted, big troubles occurs on dining. If the surviving is treated as a criteria here, I dare say, the English education don’t provide me great support on my survival in US. While, I am surely these words may be argued as unsubstantial and unpersuasive by referring to the fundamentals.

Even there are some sort of complaints, I am not Mark Twain who had the courage to quite the election that I fully respect for, stepping forward under the intertwining of all the pressures can be the only solution for me. I don’t know how the future will be, will it be a sunny day? Or will it be of great fog? No one can tell me, and no one can answer it convictively, I suppose.

I appreciate very much a piece of words from Ode to the West Wind, written by Shirley,

If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

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