Meet Ying-Lan
Is that Ying-Lan on the left, or on
the right? |
Ying Lan has
her own web page here: http://tinyurl.com/yinglan.
In the
summer or fall of 1998,Ying Lan met Vance in the Palace by coincidence. At the
time, she was in Vera de Mello's online class. Since then, Ying Lan has
had much to say about the way she uses online classes to help her learn
English.
Ying Lan has appeared at numerous
online presentations at international conferences on language teaching,
including the TESOL Conference in Vancouver, March 17, 2000, at which Vance
presented a live Webheads synchronous chat class with online partners Michael C
and Maggi Doty: http://www.netword.com/vance@tesol2000;
Here are some urls to help you catch up on
the news in Taiwan |
Ying Lan is returning to Taiwan via Hawaii (Jan 15,
2003)
I am leaving for Honolulu in the early morning on Jan 15,
2003. I will arrive in Taiwan on Jan 20, 2003 at night (9:20 p.m. at CKS
airport). I will stay in Hilo with Elia's family for few days until Jan.19,
2003. Hilo is located on one of the islands of Hawaii. Elia was my homestay-mom
in Vancouver, I went to Vancouver in 1996.. Remember that? It's driving me nuts
now... I still have too much stuff... it looks like I'll be overweight. I am
working on reducing the weight of my luggages. Please wish me good luck... Ying
Lan
Vance visited Ying Lan in New York in April 2002.
Click here or on the picture for details.
Ying Lan went to New York City for a year from November 2001.
Here's her news from August 2001:
I am not working IN the Service Dept. anymore. Finally, I got rid of
being a call girl. My manager told me that I would be in New York from this
November. It is not good, if I put everything off to fly to New York in
November. It takes time to train another guy to take over my job. At the same
time, we lost 5 co-workers in August.
We have a new Investigation of Credit Center at our Taichung Branch (I
was suppose to transfer to work there before I got the notice to go to New
York). From August, I have been transferred to work in Export-Import
Documentary to check those documents. It has been hard for me to just stick
myself in a chair and settle down and keep quiet doing paperwork. I used to
work outside of my office and communicate with people, but the worst thing is
that I have to work late. Especially on Friday night, I have to make sure every
document will be done, since all of them have to be sent out then.
Ying Lan made some interesting trips to
the Appalacian Trail and the American west, October 2002 <-- click
here to see her description and pictures.
Since we've known her, Ying Lan has been through major earthquakes
and typhoons in Taiwan. Here's her account of the typhoon in the summer of
2001:
On the day the typhoon was coming I was on my way to work. I was driving
in Taichung County as usual, and it was difficult to see everything in the
heavy rain. Fortunately, my small car still worked even though water overflowed
a small river, and I made it to work ok.
At noon, I got a phone call from my colleague, who told me that the
government had just made an announcement. They had decided to give everyone a
half day off. For some people it was a bad decision, because they had to go
home in such bad weather. They criticized the government because they had not
decided to make the announcement before 8 a.m. For some bosses though it was
good to make this decision late. Because the staff had to work in the morning,
they had enough people to move merchandise, material, and other stuff to save
their property from the flood.
I made a phone call to my mom, but I could not reach her. I heard the
first ring but after that there was nothing, only a buzzing sound. Then we got
a call from my colleague who was on his way home. He said the flood had blocked
some main roads by then including the road near my parents' house.
I was in a rush to go home. When I was driving, I remembered that
another colleague had told me it would be o.k. because Feng Yuan City is
located on high land.
How lucky we were!! When I got home, my parents were in the bedroom
taking a nap. My brother was on the computer, but because of the heavy rain,
the phone line was down. I watched 4 movies using the power-player on my
notebook.
I knew something was wrong outside of my house. After the 921
earthquake, I had discussed this issue with my co-workers. I remembered that a
few years ago I had read an article about the power of nature. I definitely
understood that after the earthquake, we would have flooding because the system
of drainage had been changed by the earthquake. We need water to rebuild the
system in the mountain by the power of nature. Otherwise it will cause disaster
to human beings. We should block those mountain areas to stop people from
visiting or working there. But it will be a difficult decision. The Mayor of
the Taichung County made that decision after 921, but one month later, because
people were against it, he changed his mind. This time, We saw how nature
showed its power again.
I cannot say that our people are stupid but they have to take some
responsibility by themselves and not just expect action only from the
government. You know how difficult it is to persuade people to take difficult
decisions.
Ying Lan has written on the following Webheads writing topics.
Read what she has to say about ...
Here are some other things that Ying Lan has written for us to
think about ...
This is Ying-Lan at the Palace
Click for big picture |
 |
Ying Lan often shares
her favorite poetry and music with friends and students in the Writing for
Webheads eclass |
Ying-Lan has suggested a theme song for English for
Webheads: Open Up. << find out
about it here.
Bora sent the card on the left, and
Naeem sent
the one
on the right
on Ying Lan's birthday
March 8, 2001 |
 |
 |
On 11 Mar 2001, Ying Lan wrote us about how she spent her
birthday: There was an urgency in my company. One of the employees had
just taken off for one week. So, I had to help them to handle some documents
during the rest of the working days of this week. I had no time to do my spread
sheets. I was supposed to work this weekend alone in my office. That was how I
celebrated my birthday.
As Moral said, it was also a Woman's Day in
Taiwan, but it is not a holiday. We have to work on Woman's Day. On that day,
people are always having fun, because my managers always give female colleagues
a surprise. Like today, we had an unexpected extra dessert-- a piece of pie
this afternoon. Someone told me that in other companies female colleagues were
given a rose. In Chinese, we might describe a woman using the word "38"; like,
"She is very 38." It is not a good word - it means "spinny", or "airhead" (she
is spinny; she is airhead... or something like that). My friends or classmates
always said "Waaa.. it is really you, you are so 38," when they found out it
was my birthday day. It is fine, it is fun, I don't care about that.
Ying Lan's page (this one) caught the attention of "someone out
there." Ying Lan sent us this message:
Vance
I am so happy to read the email from someone whom I don't know.
Ying Lan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Spaceman Spiff"
<spiff@flashmail.com>
To: <yinglan@gcn.net.tw>
Sent:
Wednesday, February 21, 2001 12:51 AM
Subject: thank you for the song
hello yinglan,
i just wanted to send you an email to say how grateful i am to have
been able to locate your website. the story goes like this. a few years ago (i
think it was in 1999), as a student in university, i was surfing the world wide
web one night and i chanced upon the website of the webheads. i was browsing
through the pages of the different students and found yours. what intrigued me
most was the song you had written about called 'Stories' and sung by Chyi. it
was hauntingly beautiful, and listening to it then, i could help but share it
with another friend who was online.
a year after that, my computer harddrive crashed and i lost that song.
as hard as i tried, i couldn't remember who sang it and what the lyrics were. i
only remembered remnients of your page and the tune. try searching the internet
with that! i asked my friend too, but he simply couldn't remember what i was
talking about. i was so upset. how could he not have remembered it? i suppose
that moment when i first heard the song was only magical to me.
i do not know why, but i was watching a show on television earlier and
because of a tune they were playing, i was suddenly reminded of the song. this
time, i managed to remember the lyrics "no one to wipe away my tears" and i did
a search for that. however, i was unable to find that song again. i tried so
many different variations of searching, different software and after nearly 2
hours, i found out that a song called 'Stories' by Viktor Lazlo had similar
lyrics. searching for that also proved futile. i nearly gave up then, but
decided to read in detail how i could better my search, in particular to search
for your page. of course, i was hoping all this time that i would be able to
find the song in mp3 or something downloadable so i could listen to it.
when i finally typed in a very long search list with a lot of '+' and
'-', it finally popped up. your webheads website! it appeared! i was overjoyed.
it seems almost the same as before, including the trip you took to Nordkap. the
funny thing i can say about all this is, i thought the song was in mp3, but
it's in realmedia format. i was so sure it sounded much nicer and clearer than
realmedia. well, the song must have made quite an impression, because in my
mind, it was crystal clear.
once again, i thank you.
sincerely yours,
nicholas tan
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Last updated: October 10, 2009 at 6:45 GMT
To
link to where we moved Ying Lan's files from Geocities to here :-)
