How are you? I do hope that you are doing well and enjoy your weekend.

There are many pleasantly surprises and some bad surprise on my side.

The good surprises are:

-- One of the stock price index products that our company edited for the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (to edit stock price index is one of our company’s duties) will be listed in Hong Kong Stock Exchange Jan 29, 2010.

-- Our company will distribute yearly bonus to most of employees much more than last year. We will also fire the employees who are listed at the end in every department at the same time, not for they have made any mistakes, but for they are listed at the end.

-- After making departments' yearly work summary, all of the department managers have to make a talking with every employees even though some department has employees over 100, has a department work dinner. Then the company will have a company's yearly summary, work party and work dinner next weekend.

-- I have received my diploma of MBA from the US and I also have gotten the responding from almost all of my American professors and friends. I am happy that they enjoy the Chinese paintings that I painted and sent to them on Christmas. Some of them have hung the paintings in their sitting rooms; some of them have hung them in their offices.

The most typical and the excited are:

Dr. Meinert, the assistant dean of our College of Business Administration of the University has required all of his Chinese students to go to his office once in 2010, to have a talking with him while to see my painting.

Mr. Brad Bodenhausen , the executive vice president of Springfield Area Charmer of Commerce not only read the poem in my painting and talked the story of mine to his colleagues, but also, he would find a suitable place to hang the painting in the building of the Charmer of Commerce, to show it to every one who comes there as a symbol of the friendship between American and Chinese people.

Ms. Leah Hamilton Jenkins, the director of the Springfield Art Council has sent a beautiful painting by her mother to me via the post station. Can you imagine what is in the painting? The Creamery Arts Center that I had my first art exhibition in the US from Sep 4 -- Sep 25, 2009.

What a thoughtful gift it is!

From their wonderful responding, I have felt so much friendship and sincerity; I have learned how to be a good manager as they did -- not only have the necessary professional knowledge and skills, but also have kind personalities, to agglutinate a team with both of the power from right and the charm of an individual.

-- Besides, another good surprise is that Shirley’s World has been listing No. 1 by www.google.cn for 2 years; be listed No. 5 by www.google.com recently; be listed No. 2 by www.baidu.com -- the biggest Chinese search Engine in the world right now.

I often check and analyse the list of the best search engines in the world and in China -- Google and Baidu for they list the web sites according to their quality instead of the amount of money that the web sites paid.

Via the list’s change of my little web site in the past 4 years and 8 months-- from nothing to No. 200, 110, 55, 30, until entered top 5, each little moving ahead, includes much hard work and makes me realize that whatever we do, as long as we keep working on it with continuously creating and innovating, we would be certainly success along with the time.

So, after made some innovation on my combined art and Chinese classical poem last weekend, I have made some innovation in my music column this weekend via adding some literature and language elements for it.

So, in the first song that I have sung in 2010, you will find a new Character Board via click the blue link in the new song, to learn Chinese characters and lyrics in the song by following me to read them and listen to me explain them, see their Chinese Pinyin and pronunciation; listen to me sing the song in Chinese and in English; Review the characters via click any Chinese character ? to see its different meaning in different place in whole of the web site.

I am going to keep my exploration and creative jobs in the art of painting, music and Chinese Language fields for whole of my left life.

-- A bad surprise is that my eyes cannot see clear often. It is difficult for me to work on the computer more and more, so that I had to check my eyes in an eye glasses store that I have been there for many years. They did not think that my glasses need to be changed, but they guess I used my eyes too much or there is some illness in my body. I hope it is just for the first reason, but, I will have to see an eye specialist soon. : -)

How about you? Is there anything special in your life?
I am just a learner on art of painting, music and English, to work on the web site in my free time. I would really like to do a few things with what I have learned to make this little web site to be an Electronic Bridge of Culture Exchange, Chinese Language Learning & Friendship making. To help the others while to improve myself.

I would like to appreciate your understanding, directions, supports and hope to get your friendly direction and help.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, you are welcome to write to shirley@ebridge.cn or shirley004@yahoo.com, or to publish your opinions in the forum.

Shirley Yiping Zhang
Sun.,Jan 23, 2010