The Maple Leaf Rag

The title of this blog is from Shakespeare. Do you know what play it's from? Does anyone know the rest of the dialog that usually goes with this line? 

Many of my friends in China want me to give them English names. Some already have some kind of name that is English based but isn't really a name. One of my friends has chosen 'onion' as her name. She told me that her foreign teacher  asked her to pick anything to use as a name and that this would be fine. In truth, I think the English teacher was laughing at his students and didn't really care what word they chose as a name, as long as it was easy for him to remember.

Although most of my friends are Chinese, I mean the friends that I help with English, it's only in China that I find this curious phenomenon.  Everyone else I speak to never even considers an 'English' name. I've begun to wonder if this name thing is based in a teacher's ignorance and disrespect more than in the student's desire for a new name. 

Although I don't know all of my friend's real names, the ones that I do know sound wonderful and are quite easy to pronounce. For this reason I am mystified as to why someone would want an English name that makes them sound like a vegetable over their Chinese name which makes them sound interesting and wonderfully mysterious!

You know, some foreign teachers are both ignorant and lazy. They don't want to take the time to get to know your real name and feel that by giving you an English name, it will make it easy for them to remember you. Alternatively, they may give you a silly English name for their own amusement. Perhaps they really don't want to be where they are so they play a little game with their students by giving them ridiculous names. 

What do you think? If I ever get the chance to teach in another country, it would be my honour to get to know everyone's real names.

Thanks for reading! 

I think most people here know that I do English videos for Youtube.com. Recently, because China has blocked Youtube, I have uploaded most of my videos to youku.com. Youku.com is a Chinese language video website that is available in China. 

It never occurred to me that people from other countries whose governments have blocked Youtube might be able to have access to youku. Countries such as Iran and Turkey sometimes block Youtube. If you can't access my videos on youtube.com, try to see them on youku.com. My name there is mapleleafman so search for that and you will find most of my videos.

The site is completely Chinese but I am able to find my way around it and I'm sure that you will find it easy to use. If you use Google Chrome as a browser, it will translate the pages for you.

Let me know if this works or if you have problems accessing the site or my videos. Thanks for reading! 

Two of my friends recently got into trouble on Skype and MSN. They were send a message by a stranger, a girl, who chatted with them and wanted to see them on their webcams. No problem, it seemed, since this was a girl and she was on her webcam too. 

The girl chats for a while and then asked my friends to show their body. The stranger shows her body so my friends thought it was ok to show theirs on their webcam.

My friends did not know that this girl was recording the webcam video and would later sell the video to a website.

One of my friends thought this was funny since she isn't too shy at all but the other girl was very shocked and upset. She felt scared and was terribly afraid that her family would find out about what happened. 

The reason for this blog is to warn any girls out there who think they can trust another girl on the Internet. Well, they can't. Women are just as bad as men sometimes.

If you are going to do anything on your webcam that involves showing your body, make sure you know who is watching and make sure you are comfortable with it. And if a girl asks you to show your body just because she is showing hers, then DON'T! The girl will be recording it for sure.