About me.........and my memories

My name is Woody, and you should know me already. I was born in Hong Kong in the year of 1980. When I was 5 1/2 years old, I attended Poo To Primary School and studied all 6 years. That was a pretty good school though. Then I started my middle school in Pui Ching Middle School, which is a school that pretty famous in Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou, China (called ¼s¦{°ö¥¿¤¤¾Ç). I came to the United States in March, 1994, to live in the southeastern region in Houston, Texas. There, most of the Chinese people are from Taiwan or ABC. The schools there are the on the top of the national list, with average SAT score of 1400 or higher. Then I came to this New York City to continue my education, which is the period now.

Pre-12 years...... Years of unknown

Since I have no brother and sister, the 7 girls that grow up with me are my best friends, we were like brother and sisters. And I wasn't so lonely in Hong Kong because of them. When I was a little kid, I was really naughty. No one liked to be my friend at all, not until I was a P.3 student, I won the prize by a play composed, organized, and played by me in a school competition. I began to socialize after that, and was being recognized by school staffs and students.

12-14 years Years to be remembered

I did not attend the middle school section of my primary school. As you know, Poo To is a female only middle school. So I had to find another school to continue. Because Poo To and Pui Ching are interconnected, so I attended my new school easliy. However, the first year was my hardest year, since I was the only one that attended the new school, I had to deal with a new enviroment, met all new friends, and to handle pressure as a foreigner(came from another school). Fortunately, I got some help from some of my new friends, they are still my best friends until today. Thanks to Frankie Ma, Steve Yuen, Feon Tse, and Fiona Lee.

For my middle school years, I was a member of Photo-Journalism, School Journalism, and also a computer network destroyer. I always made the whole network down by input codes to the server. Soon after that I was put under "Black List" and was denied the access of any computer in school except in class. So bad! As a writer and photographer of the school, some of my works were posted on the newspaper and the school magazine, and the first essay I wrote was about Guangzhou in 1993. Soon I was being criticized by my friend, they said I liked China too much. Most of my friends didn't like there so much because of the result of Tiananmen Square Protest. I lost some friend, but I still liked to write about China until I came to United States.

I was also a member of YCA, which they invited me to attend their meetings and camps. Most of the time I spent there was to talk to social workers, to understand their works, their goals, and what are the major problems of present time human life. And I met a lot of new friends there, including my first "girlfriend". We were together until the day my mother forced me to come to the United States, on the 6th day of March, 1994.

14-18 years Years of happiness and sadness

After I came to this country at 14 years-old, and I started my new life in American style schools. I lived in Houston, Texas. But my home was actually 30 miles southeast of Downtown Houston, we called there "Clear Lake CIty". I attended 8th grade in Space Center Intermediate School at March, because the school was ended in May 20, so I didn't get anything at that point. There were only a few new immigrants from other country. Most of the students were White, and Balck. Imagine only one class of ESL was needed each day, and the classroom was only 15 people. Inside of the school was very pretty, white walls, orange lockers, floor mats in classroom and air-conditioned. It was one of the best school I'd ever seen. The first friend I met in the U.S. was an ABC, called Karen. Because she could speak Cantonese, so she helped me in English and introduced a lot of new friends to me. Right after the school was over, I went back to Hong Kong immediately to escape from the heat during the summer holiday. My father died in June, of lung cancer. Then my grandmother died 2 weeks later.

I got my first computer in 1994 also, and I selected every parts I wanted. That was really the best multi-media system ever had--a 486DX-2/66 system with 32MB of RAM. I was exciting about that, because as least I got something that my friends in Hong Kong never had at that time--a CD-ROM, sound card, and laser printer. Keep in mind that 5 years ago, in computer industry, there was nothing called "Pentium", nothing called "Wave Table Sound Card", no "Computer Sub-woofer". For the price I bought it, I can buy three AMD-K6 350 system now.

I'd sucessfully attended 9th grade in that year. The new high school, Clear Lake High School, gave me some terrible feeling: "How I can graduate from high school by using my limited English?" The graduated pictures were hanged on the wall of the main hallway. I can remember that most of the faces were White. That year's statistic was 80% White, only 8% were Asian, in that 8%, only about 150-200 Chinese speakers in school, including all immigrants and ABC. My actually plan was to graduate an honor student, which 5 of 22 classes were honor(H) class. Foregin language higher than level 3 (3rd year) counted as honor class too, so that made me got 3 honor credits easily (2 credits in Chinese 3,4, and 1 credit in Physics). But it failed because one day I ran out from school, something happened to me, and I was so upset at that time. I didn't get back my mind and goto school again until I came to New York City.

The most happiest thing ever happened to me was that I got my own car in summer of 96, which I found a job. Then I started to know friends all the way to the little China Town (I should call it China Street, because everybody was on the same street, and it was small too.) 38 miles away from my home, it took me about 35 minutes to go there. Too far?

I came to New York City 2 times for travel. The first time was in summer of 1996, to escape from the southern heat wave. The second time was Christmas in 1997, which I came to feel the cool weather and hoped for snow. Well, it didn't happen until I was on the airplane, I could see snow came down and froze on the wing. After I went arrived Houston, the first thing I did was to take off my coat and left only one short sleeve T-shirt. So, feel it?

My first new car, the Honda Prelude, arrived on my 18 year-old birthday. The car that I'd dreaming of it since I was 16. Actually I liked the old (92-96) version, but the comany designed a new verion to release for the 97-2k1 year, so I could just accept the new one......

I went to work for the almost whole year in a Japanese restaurant as a sushiman. I didn't want to step into the school anymore, because my feeling was hurted. Until one day I suddenly thought about to goto New York City. There, my life changed...........