Descriptive Writing - My Cousin

    At the first sight, my cousin, Mr. Xiao is a man who can easily ignored. A height of 5 feet, 6 inches does not make him outstanding as it is a common height that the majority of male adults can reach to –neither too short nor too high. He is not fat or skinny, just the average build of a man. Even his hair style is quite common, a crew cut has been kept from his childhood to today. His face is narrow and long with a pair of small eyes which usually give others a feeling that he is falling asleep.  Perhaps he has spent too much time staying at home, the skin color of him is the same as that of a whitewashed wall. He is deeply in love with causal styles of clothes – shirts and jeans in black, grey or dark blue and with few patterns.
    Though it is difficult to find some highlights from his appearance, the judgment of Xiao being an ordinary person can be turned upside down after chatting with him for half an hour. They would agree that Mr. Xiao is a charming and amusing person. When having a conversation with someone, his back often remains straight like a birch. It makes him appear energetically and heartily. People may feel he is really into the conversation since he would keep facing them, looking into their eyes and responding with feedbacks. When he talks, his voice is deep but strong like the sound from playing a cello; his speech is continuous and fluent, just like that he is repeating a written text; his language is humorous as he is good at making jokes and listing examples to enrich the content of what he says. What’s more, it is easy to find him amazingly knowledgeable. He can tell you how the advanced mathematics is applied to programming. When talking about the newest laptop with him, Xiao is able to list the advantages and disadvantages of it after comparing with the previous products.  And he can identify whether a piece of music belongs to Chopin or Liszt through listening.

    The personal style of Mr. Xiao is contradictory. In most of his time, he has a low-speed lifestyle which is similar with the elder. It may take half an hour for Xiao to finish a bowl of rice. He only takes a small bite every time and would not stop chewing until the food cannot grind down any finer. No matter when he walks, he walks slowly, just like that he is wandering in a garden and enjoying the beautiful natural scenes. When he stays at home, it may give others a feeling that he is a statue as he spends much of his time sitting on a chair with few moves. But the situation would be totally different when he starts to work. In his senior year in university, he finished reading four 500-page books every week for his essay. After graduation, he became a composer. Then his mother started to complain about her son destroying her sleepiness at late night since whenever the inspiration hits him, even he has already gone to bed, he would immediately rushes to his piano, playing his new song. He always maintains a painstaking and passionate condition when working. I guess that is why his mother has decided to relocate the noise barrier in his bedroom and the study.