Six Months in Limbo

2006-09-06T06:00:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone - It looks as though the Chinese internet censors aren't a
big fan of Blogger, so I'm switching back over to my old blog at
http://sek8586.livejournal.com (don't ask why they like Livejournal
better - I don't). But keep reading and please please tell me what
you're all up to back at home!!
Zaijian!
s.

Bound Feet, Baijiu, and Other Dining Adventures

2006-09-04T01:46:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a weekend in Tonghai for orientation, which is a small-ish city where we had orientation. (answer to the weather question: it's actually really hot here, probably in the mid-80's or low 90's even. I hope it cools off, because I didn't bring many really light pants.)
So I don't actually know much about Kunming, our home base, but I can tell you about all the adventures we've had so far!

On Saturday, we saw an amazing performance by nine or so 80-year-old women with bound feet doing tai chi, and then tai chi with a sword. (The taiji form they did was almost exactly the same as the one we did in class in the spring, which was pretty exciting!) It was absolutely astounding to me that they could move so gracefully - but then I could also understand why bound feet were so prized, because the women with the very smallest feet seemed to have a sort of dignity about it when they walked that made them really beautiful to watch. Though it was also kind of painful to watch them, and especially bad to hear the official who brought us there talk about how foot-binding isn't as bad as people think, because it's the mens' job to leave the house and the womens' job to take care of domestic affairs. Then (and this might have been the best part) we all got in a circle and they put on music and showed us their version of disco dancing, which involved (understandably) very little foot movement... and really wasn't like our disco at all... but was really fun. Also the woman next to me was about 4 1/2 feet tall and her feet were at least half the size of mine. Pretty crazy.

Yesterday, we explored a mountainside with a bunch of old temples that were really beautiful and peaceful and really made me think about trying to spend my Independent Study period at a monastery.

Then in the evening was the real adventure. Because SIT doesn't want to seem rude, we had a big dinner with the Tonghai officials, where more or less all of them came around to our tables (separately) to sing a toast. (Their toast is in song form - I really want to learn it, because it's loud and fun and pretty amazing coming from drunk people.) And toasts were not just sips, they were mini-shots of baijiu, which translates to white liquor but is really like a very strong ouzo-type beverage - it isn't bad, especially after the eighth local official to come toast you.

The local officials totally drank us under the table, but it was worth it because we were treated to an impromptu rendition of Beijing opera, featuring a totally wasted lanky man with sideburns in the part of the woman (and his falsetto was mind-blowing). So it was a cultural experience not to be beat, and only one of us was even particularly hung over in the morning. So good times all around.

(P.S. I totally tried to drunk-dial you guys, but for whatever reason my phone wasn't working in Tonghai. So consider yourselves drunk-dialled in spirit.)

Today we went to see some more temples, which was nice, and went to a Mongolian village to have some pretty crazy lunch. Meaning, among 15 dishes on our table (all our meals so far have been an incredible amount of food) was eel. Not like the eel in sushi places. Like thin, maybe 10 inches long, curled up whole cooked eels of varying girth. They all have their mouths open, which I thought was pretty cool. To eat them first you have to pull off their heads, and then you peel away the spine (which has meat on it and is soft so you can eat it too), and then you have to pull out the intestinal tract, which is the only part you can't eat, and then you can eat the belly. The sauce was pretty spicy, so I can't really say if the eel itself was good, but the sauce was great and they were really fun to eat so I enjoyed it.

Also, they served us whole duck, including the head with the beak and everything, so for the entire meal we had a duck looking at us.

I will try to think of more things we've done, but so far these have been the highlights. My only complaint so far is that everywhere (except maybe Kunming, around the university area) smells like shit. Literally - their plumbing is really bad, so you can't flush toilet paper, so the dorm bathroom has a lingering bad smell, but worse than that, all the streets in Tonghai and all the little villages we've stopped at smell like human waste. Also, little kids walk around with butt-less pants, so there is often actual human waste in the street. It's pretty disconcerting, because everything else around here is surprisingly clean and well-maintained. There are also pit toilets more or less everywhere except the dorms and the hotel in Tonghai. They flush... but they're still kind of an adventure.

Another interesting thing is the way everyone stares at us when we walk down the street. It's like we're local heroes, only we also came from another planet and have really fascinating horns or tails or tentacles. And children often flee when we say hi. (They are usually curious come back, though - or at least look back at us, laugh, and run away.)

Anyway - we start getting ready for classes (getting textbooks, meeting our Chinese language buddies) tomorrow, even though they don't start until next Monday, so I'll have more news then. We also have a phone number where you can reach us in the dorms, if you feel like calling an international number and factoring in a 12-ish hour time difference (depending on where you're calling from). I forgot to write it down, though, so next time I come I'll try and remember to post it.

Arrived!

2006-09-01T07:36:00.000-07:00

OK, the short version is: I'm safe in Kunming and my group is nice and things are all good. Lucky for you guys, I kept a little journal throughout my entire flight(s). So you get to read the unedited saga of my journey, beginning on August 30, 6:30 PM NY time:

6:30 pm
After not checking for liquids at all (why didn't I fill my water bottle?) we board for the 7 PM flight to LA.

7:30 pm Eastern
We've been on the runway for half an hour when the pilot announces that there are 30 planes ahead of us and bad weather to our southwest, so he's shutting off the engines and we'll be waiting for at least another half hour. No panic yet: we scheduled to get into LA at 10:30 pm (LA time), but the flight to Hong Kong doesn't leave til 2 AM. There's time.

In other news, A.J. Jacobs' "The Know-It-All," a book about how he tries to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica cover-to-cover is really amusing, and I'm about to eat a really delicious turkey-tomato-avocado sandwich.

8:00 Eastern
Damn that sandwich was good. As was the episode of Frasier I just watched. Still no news on flight status, though - I'm a bit concerned.

8:30 pm Eastern
We're cruising in the air, I won't be too late to meet my group, and I've got a quote from "The Know-It-All" that pretty much sums up this semester. It's by, of all people, Ian Fleming: "Never say 'no' to adventures. Always say 'yes,' otherwise
you'll lead a very dull life."

Also, if my life were organized alphabetically, it would be so convenient. The M for midlife crisis is even in the right spot!

9:30 pm in NY, 6:30 in LA
I got up to I for identity and realized I'd been reading too long to be very excited about wrapping my mind around such a vast subject, especially when the entry immediately following it is "illusion."

So I took a break to read the letters my parents wrote with the express instructions not to open them at leass than 30,000 feet. I was kind of hoping for deep dark family secrets but I wasn't getting my hopes up; what I really expected was more like the fairly ridiculous but not very surprising (or annoying) cheesiness of the way they stood outside security and waves their arms until I was all the way through the checkpoint and out of sight (they could be still waving their arms as I write, but I suspect they got tired.)

Well I can't say I was totally wrong about the letters - no dark secrets, your fairly artery-clogging dose of cheese - but they also made me happy in the way that only parents can really pull off, in the realization that after 20 years, they still haven't run out of new ways to say they love me.

So, thanks, guys - love you, too.

(Now if only that love really COULD sure jetlag or travellers' diarrhea...)

9:45 NY time
The first moment of boredom/neck soreness from reading on the plane has set in. Maybe I'll plow through the I's after all.

10:45 NY / 7:45 LA
Apparently Horace Mann's last speech included the following quote: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." Too bad my lovely high school of the same name operated more along the lines of, "be proud of your rich private education because the few of you who have gleaned some sense of social consciousness from this mess of Ivy-league college prep might eventually win a victory for humanity by donating some of your hard-earned corporate lawyer wages to Planned
Parenthood and spending Sunday mornings reading NY Times articles about genocide in Sudan."
Nah, no bitterness there.

P.S. The entry on Madonna? Way less fun than I had hoped.

10:55 NY
When Jacobs starts talking about monkey poop in the "manure" section and I'm totally unamused, I decide it's time to take a break from sitting in the same posture and watch some of the inflight movie.

11:00 NY
We pass over a brightly-lit metropolis. I pretend it's Minneapolis even though it probably isn't. Also, the woman next to me is watching the movie with no headphones. At first I want to offer to lend her mine, but then I remember the broken English she used to ask me the time, and I realize she's not listening because she can't understand anything they're saying anyway. I feel bad for her. Then I think: welcome to the next 4 months of my life.

1:00 NY / 10:00 LA
Hopefully not too much longer. I'm getting sleepy. Hopefully by the time we get onto the plane to Hong Kong this will translate into complete fatigue and I can get some sleep. My back hurts from this chair. Maybe they have free massages in the LA airport... well a girl can dream.

1:35 AM NY
Going down! I really hope the misty haze over LA is a cloud, but it really looks like a second atmosphere of smog.

4:55 AM NY / 1:55 AM LA / 4:55 PM Hong Kong
Aborad the plane and ready to go! The rest of the group seems nice and the seat next to mine is empty, so (fingers crossed) there may be sleep!

11:15 AM . 8:15 AM / 11:15 PM
I took a Lunesta and officially got 5 hours of sleep on a plane! It was glorious. Maybe I can squeeze in a few more after some reading. I feel like the world of sleeping on planes has been unlocked to me. (cue cheesy: "Thanks, Lunesta!")
Also, I got a cookie from the all-night snack stand and then I looked at the little screen and saw where the plane was. Through some strategic pacing of bites, I now have another statistically improbable thing:
- have eaten same cookie on both sides of the International Date Line.
Good cookie, too.

9:45 AM Hong Kong
Well, we're here - we've been sitting around for a while. Here are some trip highlights so far:
- sleeping on the plane. A definite first.
- Really tasty noodle soup in the airport.
- impressing views of a starry night sky, the mountains around Taiwan, and even the surroundings of Hong Kong: I'm excited to be back in December and be able to explore.

12:00 PM HK
Dragonair planes have multi-colored seats and you can see the mist from the air conditioning as it pours into the cabin.
In other news: I feel very non-Asian.

1:25 PM
Some more observations:
I knew what the man in front of me said when he asked for red wine. So at least I can get by in a bar... :)
There seems to be very little inhibiton about slurping noodles. This is good, 'cause the ones they gave us were damn slippery.
I'm almost done with my book. This seems suitable, since in my mind 32 volumes of encyclopedia is almost equal to 30+ hours of travel.
Maybe it's because I know I'm almost there, but this flight is awesome.

1:55 PM
Finished the book. Beginning our descent into Kunming.

Finally, I think, ready to be here.

------------------------

Now: Not too much to add except that Chinese food is amazing and they served us the hugest feast I have ever witnessed. Lazy Susan filled with plates. Overlapping each other in stacks.

More in a few days - we leave tomorrow for orientation in Tonghai, a nearby city.

cheers!
s.

Farewell, adieu, auf wiedersehen, goodbye, 再见 (zaijian)!

2006-08-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

As promised, a last goodbye from this hemisphere! I love you all, and I can't wait to see you again in December/January - until then, I'd better hear about adventures. This keeping-in-touch thing isn't one-sided, guys.

And for everyone going abroad, travel safely! and when you're sitting on the plane wondering when your flight will ever end, just think of me and my 30-hour funfest. :)

Hopefully I'll be able to post semi-regularly from China - at the very least, to let you guys know that I've landed safely in Kunming - but if I can't, I'm sorry, and that will just mean even more stories to tell when I get back.

Departure for the airport in just a couple of hours... eeep! So I guess that's it. Have a wondeful fall! and stay in touch!

love,
s

Popping the Angst Bubble

2006-08-29T22:26:00.000-07:00

OK, so you know how when you're overinflating a balloon, in the few breaths right before it pops you think it won't possibly expand any further, and then finally it explodes and all the air comes flying out?

Angst is totally like that.

Now I'm not one to go airing my relationship laundry all over a blog for everyone to see, so I will keep this short. There was a breakup, after a marvelous weekend which completely prohibits me from being angry or harboring any bad feelings (this in some ways makes breaking up even worse, but at least I will remember things well). It was more or less mutual (in that it wasn't my idea, but I agreed that it was the right thing) and based on the fear that I'd get back from China and we'd become one of those couples out of comfort and convenience (both of which were/are abundant) that don't have the relationship "stuff" and eventually fizzle out to a slow and painful death. So that's the short version.

Obviously the whole thing was totally awful and not fun and I was really unhappy, not to mention the fact that none of my friends were picking up their phones so I couldn't get any of that "he is so not good enough for you" stuff that always makes things better.

On the other hand, there has been this big bubble of fear and anxiety, all centered around going to China (but less really about going to China than about leaving home), that was finally pushed over the threshold by this new little angst fiesta and has now totally exploded. So yes, the breakup is still a downer, and I'm still a little perturbed by the fact that I don't know where I'm going to be sleeping my first night in Kunming, but all the pent-up ickiness has been let out into the ether for someone else to enjoy, and instead there is room in my little emotional space for excitement. Therefore:

I'm getting on a plane to China in less than 20 hours! This is going to be totally incredible!

And of course wonderfully, thrillingly, terrifying and angst-ridden. :)

I've got a whole day of laundry and packing to do tomorrow, so it's off to bed for me. One more post on this side of the Pacific!

Killing Time

2006-08-28T13:00:00.001-07:00

It's gotten to the point where I've done pretty much everything I have to do, seen pretty much everyone I need to see, and have a rough idea of what I need to pack. And yet there are two whole days until I leave. I've also said goodbye to almost everyone I need to say goodbye to, so calling them up and doing the goodbye thing again, just because I'm bored, feels like beating a proverbially dead horse. This is the worst part of traveling, I think - the waiting around with nothing to do and no one to talk to before you go. So then I just sit around and think about the other people I still need to talk to one more time, and plan out when I'm going to fit them into my incredibly busy schedule, and miss them a lot in the meantime, which also is neither productive nor fun.

Things I have been doing to kill time until I go:
- look briefly at lists of Chinese characters and decide I should just review them on the plane, because what else am I going to do for 30 hours.
- look up hostel listings in Hong Kong and decide it's useless to do this now, when I won't even be in Hong Kong until mid-December.
- kick my parents' butt at Scrabble. Not as gratifying as it sounds, given that it's travel Scrabble and kind of ugly to look at.
- watch videos online, inluding (but not limited to) this amazing sneezing baby panda.
- read. I finished Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami in 3 days. It was really good, I give it top marks for readability, intriguing plot structure, and smartness.
- exercise. But time-killing exercise is so much less fun than, say, aikido. Aikido is tiring because you fly around the room. Running on the elliptical machine is tiring because there's nothing else to do, and there's only so much time you can watch the calorie counter slowly go up while distracting yourself with bad TV shows. And believe me, TV shows really prove how terrible they are when you're relying on them as a distraction from what is perhaps the most boring form of exercise ever. (There's a lot you can say about "Lost," but one thing is that it's really good for exercising to - lots of cuts, lots of cheap thrills and intrigue. "Pirates of the Caribbean," on the other hand, is not. The action sequences are too protracted.)

So I guess what I'm saying is, it is time to go. I can't even say I'm more than just fleetingly excited for this trip, because I'm so brain-dead from all this waiting around, but I am very twitchy to get going. Oh, and if you wanted to talk to me before I left, now's your chance to call (it will make me very happy).

And the moral of the story is:
You can try to kill time all you want, but in the end it
Just.
Won't.
Die.

10 statistically improbable things about me

2006-08-26T18:33:00.000-07:00

Saw this on another blog, thought it was a cool idea (basically, things I've done that most other people haven't). Except that my life isn't particularly extraordinary, so digging things up is very challenging. Especially when I'm cutting out all the not-safe-for-parents things I could put up here (there goes Paris...) Uh, just kidding.

1. Been on reality TV. (Un-glamorously. It's not as cool as you'd think.)
2. Was in Alaska on the longest day of the year.
3. Climbed a mountain at 2 AM while it was still light out.
4. Saw a grizzly bear in the wild (same trip as #2 & 3).
5. Had dreadlocks for 2 1/2 years.
6. Have had meaningful relationships with 4 guys of the same name - this includes the guy who spent 3 weeks putting in my dreads and the 2-year-old I babysat this summer, but those are both pretty meaningful, in their own way :)
7. Came very close to getting tear gassed by a bunch of cops on horses.
8. Biked 110 miles in a day (and didn't regret it!)
9. Been compared to Claire Danes, the White Witch (of Narnia fame), and Sonic the Hedgehog.
10. Have an irrational fear of water. (Not like the shower. Like large unknown bodies of water.)

Now I feel so prepared for the "2 Truths and a Lie" that's inevitably going to come up on the flight to China. I just need to think up some good lies about myself!

Also, this is totally off-topic, but I was in the Museum of Natural History today, and overheard a funny little piece of conversation.
SCENE: In front of the polar bear diorama.
Enter mother and 4- or 5-year-old daughter.
Mother: Look, there's the polar bear!
Daughter (points to dead seal at the bear's feet, complete with realistically blood-spattered snow): ...and there's it's baby!

Imagine explaining that to your kid.

Details, details

2006-08-25T14:52:00.000-07:00

As it gets down to the wire (five more days til takeoff!) I’m starting to realize how much getting ready to leave for a long trip is just a series of little details waiting to be taken care of.

Examples:
- Buying homestay gifts (that were not made in China!) and good airplane reading
- Obsessing over whether or not to bring my laptop (the verdict, finally, is not.)
- Obsessing over whether or not to bring my iPod (the verdict, tentatively, is yes - but I'm leaving it in a plastic bag and only using it in homesickness emergencies!)
- Paying my credit card bills so I don’t have to worry about making payments while I’m abroad
- Getting traveler's checks
- Collecting, and figuring out how to use, all the medical supplies my mom is sending with me (just in case). These include: syringes (just in case I need vaccines), Malarone (just in case of malaria), Tamiflu (just in case I’m worried that I have avian flu), Lunesta (just in case I can actually sleep on airplanes), Pepto & Immodium (OK, these transcend “just in case” and enter into the realm of “when”)
- Printing out family photos to show my host families... Zhe shi wo baba, wo mama, wo jiejie. Things in Chinese I actually know how to say!
- Putting a couple of crucial phone numbers into my international phone so when I’m crazy drunk at 2 PM US time I can tell people I love them from across the world

But mostly, I've been sitting around thinking up details and things I can obsess over. Like dumb things, though, because really this China trip is more or less completely taken care of. No, I'm thinking about things like whether I want my parents to get my room repainted while I'm away, and which ones of my many buttons I want to put on my backpack when I go back to Carleton, and whether I should bring the nice case that my insulated mug came in, and whether the people at security will get mad if I bring an empty water bottle in my carry-on, and whether the stewardesses would let me fill it up from the water they have on board the flight, and what the best strategy is for resetting my watch, given medications that have to be taken at 24-hour intervals...

What this all means, I think, that it's time for me to leave the country.

A Very Long Weekend

2006-08-23T09:56:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was pretty much a series of goodbyes to Carleton friends - and unless I get to meet up with Carisa in the city before I leave, probably the last Carleton goodbyes I say before I leave in a week. Did I mention I depart in 7 days? yup. One week.

But all this being said, all the time spent since this past Friday was pretty uniformly wonderful. It started out by meeting up with Max and Rachel and Nik in my house up in Massachusetts and seeing the modern cinematic classic that is "Snakes on a Plane." Now aside from this being an absolutely awful movie with a lot of totally gratuitously cringe-inducing moments (especially the first few snake attacks, though I think Rachel and I both appreciated the concept of the "trouser snake"), we had a marvelous time. It also had the unexpected side effect of making me actually look forward (a little bit) to my rapidly-approaching thirty hours of snake-free transit time. Compared to "Snakes," the flight to China is going to be awesome.

Saturday and Sunday were spent hiking and swimming and boating and watching movies, as well as making some sublime guacamole and an obscene amount of weirdly sticky pasta. We said goodbye to Rachel and Max on Sunday afternoon, and on Monday had lunch with my parents and then headed off to Sterling for a very relaxing evening at Nik's house.

Tuesday was kind of an adventure. We were supposed to go out to Russell's house in Hingham, a suburb of Boston, and from there take the T into the city to meet Laura on her lunch break. First of all, Hingham is a very confusing town, we got madly lost and Russell had to talk us through a mess of back roads to get to his house. We arrived a bit late, so we headed straight out to catch the train. On the way, we encounter the world's slowest opening bridge (what's the name for those bridges?) and had to wait twenty minutes while a boat passed underneath. Then, just around the corner from the T stop, Russell's car stalls out. So that was the end of that adventure. We did have a very interesting tow truck ride with a guy who could not wait to get out of Massachusetts (he just bought a 4-bedroom house for less than $50,000 in upstate NY). And since Hingham, aside from being confusing, is also really lame, we hung out at Russell's all afternoon and played Life and cards. Which was an excellent time anyway, aside from it being a bummer not to be able to see Laura before I left.

Last night was spent in Sterling, which brings us to this morning, when Nik and I got breakfast and I dropped him off at work on my way back home. Somehow, even though all the goodbyes were really tough, I can't help feeling like they were a lot better this time around (compared to the ones I said in June, thinking I wouldn't be seeing any of these people for at least 6 months). I don't think it's just that now it's only four months of separation. Saying goodbye after all the stress and anxiety of finals weekend was rushed and busy and full of regrets for time not-well-spent. The past few days were more or less stress-free and relaxed. So while it's never easy to leave people, at least all the partings were on a good note.

And now I have the whole week to stare at the mess in my room and think about how to organize it into something that resembles a packed backpack. Oh joy!

The Perils of Facebook - nah. Cat Puke.

2006-08-16T21:20:00.000-07:00

Just as I sat down to start writing a wonderfully humorous and insightful post about how bad Facebook is for making first impressions, my cat (whom I love dearly) puked under my bed. And this was by far the grossest-smelling puke (and, to share the joy of cat puke with you all, the most peanut buttery in texture and appearance) I have ever encountered. So aside from having to clean up a big pile of vomit, I am now suppressing a really strong urge to hurl. I started to write my post anyway, but I am so damn cranky that I just can't do it. Also I am now inhaling the fumes from the carpet cleaner I just put on, which is not doing anything for my normally cheery disposition.

Gah. It's OK. I'm getting a pedicure tomorrow with my best friend from 2nd grade. I will look like I just rolled out of bed and she will have a wonderfully co-ordinated outfit and impeccable makeup, and yet we will gossip like she never went off to Catholic school and I never turned into a crazy hippie with dreads. That is to say, it will be wonderful and I will forget all about how much I love having a cat who cares about me enough to puke right under where I sleep.

Blast from the Past

2006-08-15T21:42:00.000-07:00

Like, way in the past. I went out to see my grandma today. She's turning 93 in December. There are a couple of options for how she is when we visit:
1 - chatty and will not stop asking questions
2 - mildly morbid about how old she is
3 - super reminiscent.

Today we got option 3. But this wasn't the usual stories she told. Today we heard about when she first met my grandpa, in what must've been the early 40's, during the war. I hadn't heard anything about that before, and it was really cool. Apparently some friends had set her up on a blind date with him, but it was a dinner party with her friends, my grandpa, and one other single woman. She was very impressed by the 6'3" man in the lieutenant's uniform, and she obviously beat out the other woman, whose name she doesn't remember. (She says this in a way that makes it sound like there was no real competition.) Harry asked if he could drive her home that night, and they stayed up talking on the front stoop until 3 AM. They met on December 8 and got married on the 16th, because he was stationed in Iceland and was being called back to service. Since everything was done in such a hurry and lieutenants were well-paid, Harry's family thought she was a gold digger for a while, but I guess they got over it.

A blind date, and an 8-day courtship? My grandma uses a walker (but proudly accepts no help with it), and her main occupations are reading, watching opera videos, and walking up and down the ramp into the backyard garden - but 60 years ago, she married a soldier after an 8-day courtship. And something about her pride, and the sense of mischief she still has, makes that story surprisingly un-surprising.

I wonder what stories I'll be telling at age 93?

Where are the snakes when you need them??

2006-08-11T20:46:00.000-07:00

So, you know what isn't going to be allowed on planes? (aside from snakes. We knew about the snakes.)

Water.

The latest word on the street is the Transportation Security Administration has banned liquids on planes. First of all, all selfish reasons aside, this is just a dumb idea. The air on planes is really, really dry. People are going to get sick if they can't drink water on planes. And unless the flight attendants are kept going continuously up and down the aisles to refill beverages, those little tiny plastic cups just aren't going to cut it.

Aside from dehydration being unhealthy, here are some other side effects of people like me not being allowed to bring their Nalgenes on board:

1) Sinus problems, of which I have many, are aggravated by dehydration. That, plus the dry cabin air, is going to make for some really sad landings after 15 hours in the air.

2) Headaches are also not improved by lack of water. I get headaches, particularly when I don't get enough sleep. I can't sleep on planes. No sleep + no water = very unhappy person upon landing in Hong Kong.

3) It just comes down to mathematical analysis:
The first thing you learn when you go backpacking is that the first sign of dehydration is crankiness.

Cathay Pacific uses Boeing 747's to fly from L.A. to Hong Kong.

Given that first-class passengers better not ever be cranky, lest they appear ungrateful, that still leaves up to 324 (if the flight is full) cranky economy class passengers on a nearly 15-hour flight.

That's 4860 passenger-hours of crankiness.

That is equivalent to 202.5 DAYS of crankiness.

Granted, this is a very simplistic analysis, as crankiness will probably not stay at a constant level througout the flight: it will increase geometrically overall, with a slight dip during and immediately after sleep hours. If crankiness can be banked, though, the extreme crankiness just before landing will more or less balance out the low crankiness levels mid-flight, creating a more or less constant level crankiness (probably at around 32%). I have illustrated this in an over-simplified (and rather optimistic, given how cranky I usually am on plane flights) chart - click, for a larger image:

This calculation also fails to account for the fact that a cranky baby is way more persuasive than a quietly cranky, well-behaved adult. However, I think we can overlook this fact for two reasons: one, that babies won't be more cranky than usual because formula is allowed on planes, and two, 15 hours of suppressed adult crankiness has potential for more explosively violent oubursts than a baby, whose outbursts are consistently explosive and therefore not powerful.

So, to summarize: one trans-Pacific flight without water can fuel the cranky machine for over 6 months.

One might think this is a terrorist plot to create national unrest.

So as not to succumb to said terrorist plot, I am accepting all suggestions for protest, including (but not limited to):
- filling a carry-on bag with tins of baby formula and distributing them to the passengers
- sending 4860 empty frowny-faced water bottles to the TSA
- snakes. Because dammit, if I can't have my water, I want my snakes.

The Pride of the Midwest

2006-08-10T21:20:00.000-07:00

So I just got back from a get-together with my New York friends, who were fun and pretty much the same, which is reassuring. But it was eventful for two reasons:
First, on our way out of the (very tasty) Yaffa Cafe on St. Mark's Place, we got caught in a torrential downpour and totally soaked. So the rest of the evening was spent in very cold and wet jeans.

But more entertaining, we went to see a concert of a couple of bands from Skidmore, where one of my friends goes to school. The opener was a couple of guys from Bloomington Indiana who proceeded to make me very ashamed to go to school in the Midwest. (Yeah, I know Minnesota is NOT the same as Indiana, but tell that to a bunch of girls who've never lived outside New York!) This was a white rap duo who took themselves TOTALLY seriously. They wore - and I am not making any of this up - jean jackets with the collars turned up. They rapped off their new album entitled "Enforce the Yin Yang." And one of their songs contained the following lyrics:

Shit, Grandma, these pies is fo' real;
These strawberry rhubarb fuckers best be knowin' the deal.

I kid you not.

just plain Lost

2006-08-09T18:06:00.000-07:00

I was just checking to see if anyone had commented on my blog, which they haven't cause they're SLACKERS, and I realized, given the title of Monday's post, I should mention that I have fallen into the abyss of no return that is known as "Lost."

To explain: one thing about recovering from surgery is that you sit around a lot. (Not that you particularly want to do anything else.) And one thing about being in the family of someone recovering from surgery is that when they want to watch compellingly suspenseful and addictive TV shows on DVD with no commercials, there is really no good reason to say no. Thus my father and I have just finished the first DVD of Season 1 and are moving on to DVD #2 momentarily.

But lest you think I am just twiddling my thumbs! let me assure you that this is the backdrop for some wildly productive studying of Chinese. Although now if you were to ask me how to write the character for the verb "hurt" I may just draw a picture of an undefined and very menacing jungle beast.

I'm sure the kind residents of Kunming will understand.

I'm really good at drawing jungle beasts.

Lost in the Shuffle

2006-08-07T21:27:00.000-07:00

I just read Rachel's blog, and it reminded me of all these wonderful things that I'd forgotten to post about because of all the suicide-birthday-leaving Northfield-surgery drama of the past week. So to briefly fill in (and sorry, I'm just stealing all your ideas Rachel):

Last Sunday, before the bad news hit, Rachel and Julie and I went for an afternoon of shopping in the Cities, followed by delicious Tibetan food - they make this thing called a Shara, if I remember the name right, that's like a lassi only thinner and with cinnamon instead of mango. And amazing. And then we went to a Futureheads concert at a very nice venue which was way more civilized than any concert I've been to in New York - lots of dancing and fun, but much less rowdy drunkenness and sticky floors. The Futureheads, as Rachel says, are like a cross between The Clash, Franz Ferdinand, and The New Pornographers, and if that means nothing to you, think cute British pop-punk. To sum up, one of the most fun concerts I've ever been to. Which makes me sad, in a way, because since I heard about my friend's death about 15 minutes after we got back from the concert, I totally blanked out the whole evening and would've totally forgotten about it if Rachel hadn't posted about it just now. So thanks!

And to elaborate on our last couple of days of aikido training, they made me really happy for a couple of reasons - aside from ending on a strong note, with a good class in the Cities and a big mess of birthday breakfalls, they made me realize what a very good group of people I'd been training with all summer. And not to give the boys short shrift, because the two of them were awesome, but I was really happy that it was just the three of us girls on my birthday, being super tough and pushing ourselves. It was a great girl-power kind of moment and I felt very lucky to have had it. Aikido (at least Yoshokai aikido, I don't know much about the other styles) is one of the more gender-balanced martial arts out there, probably because it relies less on strength and size, but still, martial arts can be very male-heavy if only thanks to the mental connections between men and fighting. And I have had to deal with a guy who was kind of a jerk to me because (I hypothesize) of his insecurities about being the same rank as a woman. So it just feels really nice to know that you're in a group of people who don't feel like they need to prove anything to anyone but themselves, regardless of gender. The five of us had a really amazing summer of training, reinforced by our visits to the Kobukan, which reassured us that Carleton is not an anomaly - aikido really does attract genuinely good, kind human beings. (The jerk I had to deal with stopped training early spring term; I think something about the art fits well with certain types of people, and they just happen to be good ones!)

What else did Rachel mention that I missed? I cut three heads of hair this past week (very successfully, I might add). And the birthday party was a resounding success, with hordes of people and drunkenness (read: totally wasted) and revelling, with none of the icky side effects like vomit or hangovers or massive cleanup efforts.

Oh, and I got my plane tickets to China in the mail today, which means I'm actually going to China! This is terrifying. There are FIVE plane tickets in there (NY->LA, LA->Hong Kong, Hong Kong->Kunming; and then the return trips: Beijing->Hong Kong, Hong Kong->NY) for a total of about 42.5 hours on airplanes. Not to mention layovers. Not to mention the fact that SIT hasn't told us any of those minor details like where we're going to live in Kunming. Not to mention the fact that I don't know any of the people on the program, and my last "study abroad" experience, a summer program in Switzerland after 11th grade, involved:
- 3 drunk/chauvinistic Southerners (the one redeeming side to this was the long, slurred discussion of the beauty of our derrières),
- a girl who was "secretly" cutting herself, and
- a girl who was simultaneously quitting smoking, drug use, and promiscuity.

So basically there's a lot that's up in the air (sorry, sorry) about this trip. It's exciting, yes. And so is bungee jumping. Or shooting yourself out of a cannon.

Back in the Big Apple

2006-08-07T16:24:00.000-07:00

So I’m back in New York after almost two short months in Northfield. It’s been a great summer (funny how somehow it feels like the summer is over, since the next couple of weeks are very preoccupied with going abroad).

Things I have gotten out of being in Northfield:
- two holes in my dogi (the thick white aikido pajamas)
- abs that come out of hiding if you catch them at the right moment (hence the oft-quoted-in-Northfield, “No, my abs are not a closet!”)
- new friends, most notably my house-mate (bonding over Bollywood and "Project Runway") and my co-birthday partier and June hotel (bonding over "Sex and the City"). How well trashy TV brings us together.
- mad cooking skills, especially if they involve vegetables, rice, and coconut milk
- a new appreciation for how quickly toddlers learn new things
- excitement about a new adventure

Things I have not gotten out of being in Northfield:
- male company. OK, this isn't strictly true, and NO, it's not what you're thinking! But I was having this conversation about a week ago with Rachel about how, even though all this girl time has been awesome, we kind of missed watching boys play video games (and the accompanying "distracting boys from playing video games"). And now we can pretend I never made that comment in a public forum.
- money. Working 28 hours a week is great, especially when rent and food are cheap. Unfortunately, paying for a new car radio (see “Minnesota hoodlums” post) is not. Sigh.

Anyway, my dad got his prostate surgery today, and I’m happy to report that all went smoothly. I saw him in the recovery room, and he was pale and dopey but doing fine. I’m very proud of both my parents, actually. I think my mom was more anxious than she let on, and given the circumstances both of them have been super-sane. And since it turned out well, I feel entirely justified about not being too freaked about the whole thing. And props to Memorial Sloane Kettering for being the poshest hospital ever. It’s all new and shiny, and while that may be all a big marketing ploy, it worked – I felt like he was in good hands. The worst part of the whole experience, I thought, was seeing some of the kids in the elevators. You don’t want to see an eight-year-old hooked up to an IV. It’s not right.

And, so as not to end this post on a sour note, one awesome thing about being home is that I’m divesting of all this old stuff I don’t use any more – clothes, books, shoes, posters, etc. So the mess on my floor from being too lazy to do a good job at unpacking is totally justified by the four bags of stuff that I’m giving away... right?

Happy Birthday to Me

2006-08-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

So I'm not a teenager anymore! Not like it really makes a difference. But that's newsworthy. :)

I've had a very excellent past couple of days, starting with an early birthday celebration/goodbye to West Gym yesterday, doing 20 of each breakfall with the girls (which amounts to 220 breakfalls of various kinds). It was really fun and a good way to close out my summer in Northfield. And you may be incredulous about the "really fun" part, but after the first 110, you learn how to totally relax in midair, and then not only do the breakfalls get better but they also get less strenuous. So it was really fun.

Then Rachel and Jessie I went to the MN Fringe Festival, to see "The Depth of the Ocean" which was basically like "No Exit" in a pool. All these characters from different periods basically end up arguing on an inflatable raft for an hour. It sounds worse than it was - the characters were sort of annoying, but hey, Estelle and Inez and Garcin aren't super-lovable either.

Today was the last day of aikido in the Cities, which was nice, and a tasty lunch at Khan's Mongolian barbecue. Then a lot of packing and random party preparations - I'm having a joint party with my friend Julie, who turned 22 yesterday. So hey, the average age is 21...

Better posting will follow in a day or two. My internet connection here is very unreliable, and packing has been eating my time.

A eulogy for a missed funeral

2006-07-31T09:30:00.000-07:00

How do you remember high school? I usually see it in broad strokes: this was the year I spent inexplicably sick, this was the teacher I hated, these were the people that I loved, or envied, or that made my life difficult.
How do those memories change when you find out the person you're remembering is dead?

Maybe this is too raw to write about right now. (Maybe I don't care.) But it seems to me that my high school is picking off its students one by one, and I can't help but stop to think about how it all is affecting me.

The first one was, I think, last spring, when a girl in the year below me was in the car with her mother and got hit by a drunk driver. I didn't know her.

The second was this past fall, the former drug dealer who, in tenth grade, decided he didn't want to live past 25 because it was all downhill from there. He'd gone on to be really popular and active at college. On his way home from his 21st birthday party, walking home by the side of the road, he got hit by a car.

The third was in the spring, another automotive accident. This was my class valedictorian, the model prep school student. Frankly, I thought he was pretentious. But he was genuinely a nice person, and he was probably going to find the cure for cancer or something. He got hit by a truck at 10 AM on his way biking home from crew practice.

And now this. A friend kills himself. And that's all I know right now - it happened on Saturday, his 21st birthday, he hadn't been doing well lately and he'd been doing lots of drugs, but I don't know how it happened, or whether it was accidental or on purpose. Or which would be worse. I think I'd rather it was on purpose. At least it would've been what he wanted.

You know this guy. This is the really good guy who experiments with lots of drugs, and you hope it's just a phase he'll grow out of. The one who plays the guitar in the corner, the one whose response to a hello could either be a smile or a snarl (though only his very meanest of mean faces was meant un-ironically), and you could never predict which.

Every morning, we had our first two classes together: French and Calculus. Every morning, I'd be just about ready to leave the student lounge and get to class on time, and the two of us, making fun of our teacher (whose name sounded very much like a solo sexual practice and who had a personality to match) the whole way, would buy hot chocolate at the cafeteria and arrive in class, laughing, 5 minutes late.

He referred to everyone, male or female, sometimes affectionately and sometimes not, as a slut or a cunt or a whore. He wasn't as technically good a guitarist as another friend of ours, and this bothered him to no end - I can remember the awkward way he'd move, as if he wasn't comfortable in his skin or on the ground, as he demanded, "Mike, stop being such a cunt and let me play the guitar!" When, halfway through my junior and his senior year, he realized that I no longer cared what he called me and stopped calling me names, I was proud, both of him and of me: I knew I had earned his respect. And when you'd get one of those rare, genuine smiles - the ones that weren't tinged with sarcasm or exaggerated to mask a real feeling - you could see the boy who just wants to goof around and enjoy his life, and whose manic depression and problems at home were too much for him to handle.

The little memories you have of someone.
The memory of the last time you saw the person, at New Year's 2005, when he looked like he was doing so much better.
The memory of trying to go see him (was it last summer? or winter break?) after he was already in bed, and leaving a crazy note with his doorman that I never knew if he got. I think I drew a dinosaur on it.

And the memory of finding out that his funeral would be today.

How can the present change the past? When you can see the full length of a person's life: what you hoped for the person and what they wanted for themselves, the way you saw them and the way you wanted them to see you, and, in the end, the ironic twist or quiet failure that all those memories lead up to? When the story has an ending, does the plot make any more sense?

Aiki-photos

2006-07-30T12:46:00.000-07:00

I realize I haven't written much lately about what I've actually been doing. So I thought I would tell you in pictures. Jenny, my housemate, took them for a project she's doing about different interpretations of physical concepts (balance, being supported by only one part of the body, etc). The guy doing the throwing is Reid.
PS. In none of this pictures did I hit my head or sustain any bodily injury whatever. Don't worry, mom. :)

For those of you who know what I'm talking about, this was just before a jump-back. But since you know what I'm talking about, you can probably tell it wasn't the greatest jump-back. oh well!

This is SO cool.

2006-07-27T21:18:00.000-07:00

I just downloaded software so I can write stuff in Chinese. Now I can write totally grammatically incorrect things in a language I hardly know! yay!

你好！我叫Sophie，我没有汉语名子，可是星期四，Zhao (I don't know how he spells it in Chinese) 老师给我一个名子。我工作在他家。我有三个东西：他们不是狗可是我不知道怎么说 "cat"；我的老师不喜欢他们。他是狗的人. (我说一个太不好的东西吗？我要说，他喜欢狗。)昨天我说，我不很喜欢狗。他很不高兴！我们的棵是〇块，可是他要吃饭。常常她问我，你有没有男朋友？可是他不喜欢美国人, 是 ok!

Well that's enough of that. Want to know what I (think I) said? it's super lame...

"Hi! My name is Sophie. I don't have a Chinese name, but on Thursday Professor Zhao will give me a name. I work at his house.
I have three things: they are not dogs but I don't know how to say "cat"; my teacher doesn't like them. He's a "dog person." （Am I saying a very bad thing? I want to say, he likes dogs.) Yesterday I said I didn't much like dogs. He was very unhappy! Our class is 0 dollars, but he wants a meal. He often asks me, do you have a boyfriend? But he doesn't like Americans, it's OK!"

This is awesome.

High School Nostalgia...

2006-07-27T20:17:00.000-07:00

... three words I never thought would come out of my mouth. But I was recently going through some old Word documents, and came across some pretty decent stuff I wrote back in high school. It kind of made me sad - I had so little faith in my abilities back then, and I haven't done any creative writing of nearly that quality since I came to college. But I'm also glad I got some of the things I was thinking back then down on (electronic) paper.

So in the interest of blowing the mothballs off my dirty laundry, I started up a new little blog to post some of my old writing. I'm not looking for comments or praise or anything (though you're welcome to leave it!), I just hated the idea of all this stuff sitting on my hard drive and festering. I'll be going through it, making some minor edits (mostly for my dignity's sake) and posting a new piece every once in a while. So, enjoy. Or not. I don't really care.

http://formerlywritten.blogspot.com

Nice little notes about life

2006-07-26T18:11:00.000-07:00

1. I hit back breakfall #1000 today! Doing a thousand of something really makes you appreciate the value of hard work, even on something pretty basic. It also makes you appreciate how large 1000 really is.

2. The other day, as I was driving to the rec center, a perfectly straight line of maybe 8 geese marched across the road. I stopped the car to watch them (I didn't really have a choice); there was something inexplicably nice about it.

3. In babysitting, I'm using some of the same things my old babysitter used to do with me - for example (and I owe her big time for this one):
"Round ball, round ball" (rolling a finger around their palm)
"Pull (someone)'s hair" (pull their hair)
"One slice, two slice" (slice up their arm. With your hand, not a knife.)
"TICKLE UNDER THERE!" (tickle under their arm. obviously.)

I really liked my babysitter as a kid, and it makes me happy that she's been helping me out!

My New Motto, from the genuis mind of Mark E. Rogers

2006-07-25T09:34:00.000-07:00

"Glory's going to stick to us whether we like it our not," Shiro said, "so we might as well be comfortable with it. We have to be honest about this. We're two fearsome studs. Someday they'll have to make a movie about us. A real gory one, like those samurai flicks back home. You know, the ones where the blood's bright orange, and it squirts out forty feet - "

"Shiro, I've shed a great deal of blood," Tomokato said. "And I've never seen it squirt out forty feet."

"Well, maybe you haven't," Shiro conceded. "But it is a splendid effect, isn't it?"

Tomokato made no reply. Still, deep in his heart, he knew the kitten spoke the truth.

A Brief History of My Failed Career Goals

2006-07-24T22:33:00.000-07:00

I just had a really interesting conversation with a friend about failed idealism and how neither of us knew what we wanted to do with our lives. I don't feel at all bad about not having a life plan, but I wish I could pour myself into something the way I used to, with that conviction that I could make a difference to people.
In any case, that's not what this post is about. This post is a brief venture down memory lane, into all the things I used to think I wanted to do with my life (in roughly chronological order)...

Veterinarian Despite my love for animals, my fear of needles and complete lack of interest in medicine quickly did away with this one.

Ballerina An obviously poor choice. I don't know what my stated reason was for quitting ballet at age six, but really it was because I thought I looked silly in a leotard. I stand by that decision.

Teacher I never really wanted to be a teacher. It was going to be my day job, while I pursued my passion for something else (like being a ballerina).

Writer This one lasted a while. I was going to write novels and screenplays in French and English and live in a little flat in Paris. This may stem from the fact that I got a lot of encouragement (both offical and unofficial) as a child, and my early poetry includes such classics as "Porcupine is Running Around the Room in Underwear" and "We Eat Pizza in My Van, Dude." I think the aspirations for being a writer, or at least a poet or novelist, actually ended when I started reading real authors write about how they are passionately driven to write, and they couldn't dream of doing anything else. I could. And, as evidenced by the fruits of a year-long writing mentorship, I don't have the staying power to write stories longer than 5 pages.

Actress Every middle schooler's dream of turning into a star and being able to flippantly laugh about how unpopular and nerdy she used to be in middle school. When it became clear that no matter how decent an actress I was, I don't have the temperament and single-mindedness to be a star, and no matter how popular I got, I was not going to rise out of nerdy status, that dream fizzled.

Eco-Terrorist OK, this only really lasted one summer. But "The Monkey Wrench Gang" is a really fun book, I had just gotten dreads, and one of the leaders of my volunteer trail crew got around the country by hopping trains and dumpster diving. Also subverting the system is damn cool. Maybe this one isn't totally dead.

Director I loved, loved, loved directing the short plays I did. But "The Flies" kind of killed it for me. I realized that, while other people might be different, if I'm going to be happy with my life I've got to still have faith in what I do, even when the whole thing is falling to pieces. Directing has been a fair weather friend; I came too close to quitting and/or falling asleep from pure exhaustion during the performances of my own show to think that this is actually what I should be doing with my time.

Super Secret Assassin/Bad-Ass Employee of European Dictator I get a really hot outfit. And job security, even without robotic dreads. However the castle has not yet been built, the territory has not yet been conquered, and (more importantly) there are no business cards yet.

I'm sure there are more that have been on my list at some point or another. I am taking this not as a sign of fickleness but as a sign that I haven't been grabbed yet. But it's interesting: in high school, my friend and I used to come up with ridiculous ideal jobs for people we knew - the perfect, totally implausible job. But no matter what ideas we threw out there, we could never come up with one for me. Does that mean I'm not particularly well-suited for anything? Or have I just not stumbled upon it yet?

One thing's for sure, I've worked enough unsatisfying jobs to know that I'm not making any compromises.

A New Top Summer Read!

2006-07-23T13:37:00.000-07:00

Among many adventures (including Ethiopian food and failed attempts at getting into places with college ID's) I had in the Cities yesterday, I went to Midway Used & Rare Books, on University & Snelling in St. Paul. For the New Yorkers out there, this is like the Strand with fewer miles and waaay more comic books. Basically, a great way to blow far too much money on cheap books.

And it is there that I unearthed, in the $2.50-per-book bargain basement, the next great classic of our age.

That is, Mark E. Rogers' The Sword of Samurai Cat.

I was skeptical of this book. It was in the young adult section. I thought it would be really lame and funny. However, when I pulled it off the shelf I quickly realized that this was no trivial piece of literature. It follows the adventures of Miaowara Tomokato - yes, he is a cat, and yes, he appears on the cover and inside illustrations in full samurai armor - and his nephew Shiro. In the first twenty pages alone (which is honestly all I have read so far), our fearless hero defeats not only Meister Rodgerz and his traveling Nazi performance of "The Reich of Make-Believe," but also does battle with a horde of undead Communists. Before you think too hard about the political message in this, consider that the author is clearly sympathetic to his victims:

"'But seriously folks,' der Kommissar went on, 'Why is a Muscovite putting his clothes on like what you get in a salad?'

'I don't know, why?' a dozen decomposing voices asked.

'Because it's a Russian dressing!'

Tomokato opened fire again, blowing another five hundred cadavers into stench sauce. When he relented, squinting though the gunsmoke, there wasn't a single zombie left on its feet.

'Gee, Uncle-san,' Shiro said, 'I kind of liked that last joke.'

'You will never be a true samurai,' said Tomokato."

Genius. And this book is obviously not only meant for children, as it contains such erudite references and imaginative bits of imagery as, "Gleaming wickedly, Eisensteins montaged."

The author is even so humble as to admit his own failings in recounting such an epic tale: "The carnage that followed was indescribable - so I won't describe it."

And with that, I will take a lesson from the sage and enlightened Mark E. Rogers, and not attempt what I cannot achieve. I cannot fully encompass in one blog post the utter magnificence that is The Sword of Samurai Cat. You will just have to read it for yourselves.

Oh, the shame...

2006-07-21T10:58:00.000-07:00

You may wonder why this is going on a blog that my parents are going to read.

Perhaps this is a bad idea.
Oh well.

So I was pulled over by a policeman for the first time ever last night. But let me defend myself! It's 3:30 AM, we've just been to (another) gay club and (another, more friendly!) diner with Rachel's friend, and we're headed back to Northfield on a totally straight and mostly deserted stretch of highway. I am going 71 mph - which anyone who has driven on 35W knows is not fast at all. A gigantic trunk gets on the on-ramp just to my right, and it looks like he's about to change into my lane, so I swerve a bit and go around him. No danger, everything's fine. A little while later, I am being pulled over for going 71 in a 55 mph zone.

So here's the theory - cop sees out-of-state car full of college students swerving around a truck at 3 in the morning, and thinks they might be drunk. This makes sense based on his actions, too. As much as I'd like to demonize all police officers, this guy was perfectly civil, and basically asked me a bunch of questions to determine (I think) whether I could answer coherently. And I guess since I had no prior DWI's or anything, and I was super calm the whole time (if a little reluctant to share that we'd just come from a club - I left out the fact that it was a gay club) he let me off with a warning. (And might I add, he pulled me over literally 50 feet before the speed limit changed to 65.)

So, no harm done, no fines, no strikes on my license, and I maintain that I did nothing particularly wrong, just... damn. There's something kind of shameful about getting pulled over. Like, you see the lights in your rearview mirror and it's like you're five, and your hand is in the cookie jar, and you can hear your mother's footsteps coming down the hall, and even if you get your hand out in time, it's just - too - late - to wipe the crumbs off your fingers. And even if she doesn't notice, or doesn't care, you knew you could've gotten in trouble for something totally dumb, and that's just embarrassing.

Not like anything like that has ever happened to me.

An Ethical Dilemma and an Eventful Weekend

2006-07-17T20:54:00.000-07:00

The first part first. Say an hypothetical employer is supposed to give a hypothetical employee 20 hours a week of work. But said employee is perhaps a fast worker, and for the past couple of weeks she has had to make work for herself to feel productive. Even giving herself extra work, she still has not filled the 20 hours. Said employer has not made comments on employee's work, or given her any specific directions in a long, long time. Since it's the employer's responsibility to assign the employee 20 hours worth of work, and this hasn't happened, is it ethical for the employee to lie on a timesheet and get paid for the 20 hours anyway? Thoughts?

This weekend was exciting and fun. A friend had friends in from out of town, so we hit the town last night. First, we discovered the gem of the Twin Cities, the best movie theater I've ever seen. It's called the Riverside Theater, it's in the middle of a totally random residential part of Minneapolis, but it is absolutely beautiful - it looks like a concert hall - and it charges $3 a ticket. 3 dollars. 3.

Also, the movie we saw there, "Thank You for Smoking," was amazing. It's about a tobacco lobbyist - so, not the funniest person you can think of. But this movie is hilarious. I don't often laugh out loud in movies, but in this one, I did. A lot. Go see it now.

So then we went to the Gay 90's, which used to be the gay hotspot in the Midwest and, perhaps, anywhere outside New York or San Francisco, but is now full of women looking for a safe place to dance and have fun - and the sketchy, sketchy straight men who have realized that women go to gay clubs. But they confine themselves to the hip-hop room, and all the gay guys are upstairs in the retro room or at the drag show (which, by the way, is so impressive - some of these women are hot), so it's still loads of fun.

Then followed a very ill-fated dining excursion. First, we had a lot of trouble finding the highway after the club, so we ended up making a big circular detour. But that was OK, because on the detour we saw a sign for Perkins (which, if you East Coasters don't know, is an all-night diner chain which is usually quite respectable). Given this inspiration, we got off a few miles later at a Perkins in Burnsville. A Perkins which has a rather inept staff, apparently, because they a) took two trips back and forth just to figure out what pies they had left; b) put our order after the order of a nearby table of eight who actually ordered after us, thereby making us wait FOREVER for our food; c) put ham in my egg & cheese & veggie wrap after I specifically asked them not to; d) when I pointed this out, were not particularly apologetic and took away my plate (more specifically, my plate full of very tasty hash browns - grrr); e) put my meal on the bill, even though obviously I shouldn't have had to pay for it. Well it turned out OK, the replacement wrap was really good, and when we asked them to, they took my meal off the bill (yay free food), but still. All that and we didn't get home til 4:15 am. Which was a drag.

Today was fun too though, as I spent the day at Valleyfair, an amusement park & water park, for free because I volunteered to buddy up with a local middle schooler and ride the rides with her. Well she was nice, her two friends were superfun, which was cool, and I hadn't been to an amusement park in ages. I had lost faith in kids after last summer's ecology camp experience, but really, one-on-one, they're pretty cool. Being ten is awesome.

And now after all this wild updating it is time I think for me to crash. Lots of sun today, and all that.

Oh and in case you were interested I hit back breakfall #610 today. only 390 more to go! hell yeah.

Thrown for a Loop

2006-07-12T20:53:00.000-07:00

So after being on a 5-day exercise-induced endorphin high, I have finally officially crashed. Walking up the stairs is hard. Keeping my eyes open is hard. Thinking is hard. Doing breakfalls, oddly enough, is less hard, maybe because it is the only thing I know how to do anymore.

But somewhere in all the haze of not falling over, there is a beautiful sense of contentment with the world. Maybe because I totally brought this on myself. Maybe because I am too tired to care about pretty much anything. (Example: I got a long-awaited email today with lots of details about my study abroad program, which objectively sounds awesome, but all I could really process was, "oh. this is nice.") Or maybe because in retrospect the last five days of feeling blissfully on top of the world were totally worth it. In aikido (because of course I can only speak in terms of the activity that has so seriously impaired my cognitive abilities) we talk about being shite, the one in control, and uke, the one who is off-balance, and the fact that a complete study includes both parts. We can never always be in charge of our lives, and sometimes things will go badly and we have to regain our footing later on (after a stunningly impressive breakfall, perhaps?). Well, for now, I am definitely studying being off-balance. And while this might be the extreme fatigue talking, it feels a whole lot like that moment when someone's just executed a throw with perfect timing, and you don't quite know how you ended up in the air with your feet over your head, but it's rather comfortable and there's air flowing past your face as you spin. And even though you have absolutely no idea what is going on around you and you may appear to have just been thoroughly beaten, your body knows exactly what's going on and in a split second, you will absorb the shock, land unharmed, and come right back for more.

right back...*yawn*...or maybe not til tomorrow.

Newsbytes

2006-07-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

It's been a little while since I've posted, mostly because nothing very exciting has happened, but I thought I'd give a little update of the goings-on in my life.

I'm making Channa Masala tonight. The chickpeas are currently soaking. I am excited, even if the chickpeas aren't.

This is really only of interest to aiki-junkies, but thanks to some inspiration by the Kobukan, we're setting out to do 1000 extra-curricular back breakfalls in the next month (basically, before I leave Northfield). I hit #200 yesterday. That was 200 in 3 days. But I don't know if I can keep that up.

Yesterday's lesson: don't go to Cub Foods when you're hungry.
Yesterday's deal: 87-cent cans of coconut milk.
Yesterday's question of the day: What is ghee, and how do you cook with it? Is it a good adventure, or a bad adventure?

This Taoism book is honestly just getting boring. Maybe the book isn't boring, but the work is boring. This is because I am now working on version #6, and Professor Zhao hasn't read or commented any of the versions I've sent him. I have told him things I need (for example, citations of the books he quotes from, or more writing on a particular concept) but I have not gotten any feedback on a month's worth of work. The potential fun in getting paid to spin your wheels definitely has an expiration date.

Like it or not, you can apply "Sex and the City" to real life.
Especially if you've been drinking a potent combination of coconut rum, melon liquor, pinapple juice, and Sprite for the past hour and a half.

Oh, and here's a short little PSA: The girl who was going to live in the third bedroom of my house all year next year is now not living there any more. So the house now has a totally empty bedroom, and my landlord has been so aggravated about this that she said she'd give priority to someone I knew, even if they were abroad in the fall. So if you, or anyone you know, needs housing after they get back, drop me an email! It'll be a party.

Arrr, me hearties, yo ho... and all that

2006-07-07T08:37:00.000-07:00

Last night I went with a bunch of people to the midnight showing of "Pirates 2." First of all, it was awesome. The movie runs a little bit long, but the battles are varied enough so it doesn't get repetitive. It includes such wonderful moments as a formerly-undead pirate, when asked about the one thing that troubles all men, replying, "the dichotomy between good and evil?" Keira Knightley finally stops being a total loser (it takes her a while, but by the end of the movie, I had faith that she might actually rise to cool status in Pirates 3), there are big gross undersea tentacled pirates (as if the undead crew in the last movie weren't icky enough), and last but definitely not least, the filmmakers finally acknowledge the undeniable sex appeal of a certain Capt. Jack.

I'm not going to spoil the ending, but I want to say that although 2:30 AM saw 5 theaters worth of discontented people (including what seemed like the entire high school population of the greater Lakeville area - I felt old) staggering tiredly back to their cars, I have enormous respect for the sense of humor of the people who made this movie. Because "Pirates 2" is a pirate movie of the truest kind - it gives you romance and swashbuckling and high-seas adventure, but at the last minute, it totally betrays everyone. And something about that made for a very satisfyingly unsatisfying ending.

Also Johnny Depp is in it. That could really have been my whole post right there.

Independence is Boring

2006-07-04T19:10:00.000-07:00

So I have realized that, what with all of campus being closed for the past two days, the Fourth of July is a really boring holiday. The highlight of the past two days was the bike race around Northfield: there was a series of 45-minute races along a circular course that went down Division St. and around to Union and College St., with different heats for men and women and so forth. Apparently these were kind of a big deal, because there were a fair number of good cyclists there, and they must have come especially for the race, because I can't believe there are many serious bike riders in Northfield. And not only did we enjoy watching the races, but the fit 20-something men wandering around town were quite the attraction...

But anyway, if it weren't for my new status as an avid supporter of cycling, there is nothing to do when everyone is off work! The gym was closed, the stores were closed, the school won't even pay us if we work today (which didn't keep me from logging a few hours under a different day...)
And while fried cheese curds and mini donuts are very tasty, less appealing is the feeling in your stomach after you realize what you just put into your body and called "lunch."

But I'm going to head out in a minute to watch fireworks, so maybe there will be something redeeming about the 4th after all.

Side note: saw "The Devil Wears Prada" the other day. Meryl Streep is a goddess of film. The movie itself was totally entertaining in a completely mindless way, but I shudder to think what it would do to women who are less sure of their self-esteem. Even I left the theater feeling like my wardrobe was totally inadequate. But don't worry - this feeling lasted right up until the quick realization that I would much rather eat chocolate mousse in my PJ's than worry about spilling lettuce on my Chanel.
And besides, Manolo Blahnik probably doesn't even make size 11 shoes.

Making Harmony with the Minnesota Hoodlums

2006-07-01T12:59:00.000-07:00

So after having lived my whole life in New York, and having driven around the city for a few years with nothing happening, my cousin's car (which I've been borrowing) was just broken into today in the great and friendly state of Minnesota.

I find something ironic in the fact that this occurred just around the corner from the aikido dojo, in broad daylight, while I was training in making harmonious relationships with black belts in a martial art. The damage isn't actually very serious - the radio was stolen, and one of the rear side windows was broken, but they did a very professional job and didn't touch anything else. And hey, they even locked the car again after they stole from it - how's that for Minnesota nice?

A real piece of actual news

2006-06-29T23:20:00.000-07:00

So I've been putting off posting about this because it wasn't 100% sure, but now it is, so it's going up. As you probably knew, the family was going to go to Botswana in August for my mom's - wait, I won't say the age, 'cause she's reading this blog, and in any case we all know she looks no more than 45. (This is totally where I should be asking her for more money or something.)

But anyway, she's turning an important age and has wanted to go on safari forever. Only now, my dad needs to get surgery in August and we had to cancel the trip. (In anticipation of people being concerned - it's not an insignificant surgery, but all probabilities say, and I have utmost faith, that it'll go smoothly and all will turn out OK. So, obviously everyone's a little anxious, but you don't need to be worried on my account.)

So this puts me in an interesting spot.

a) It sucks for several reasons, the obvious one being that my dad needs surgery, and second of which is that my mom has been wanting to go to Africa since I was little. She's been doing all this research and everything, and it's a big disappointment all around.

b) It is an enormous relief for me, because I'm leaving for China on August 31 (I think), and that's a whole lot of traveling to do in a very short period of time. The flight from NY to Johannesburg may actually (though I'm not totally sure) be longer than the one from LA to Beijing.

c) This also means I'm going to have a lot of free time on the east coast, to visit people and relax and get ready for a really intense fall term. And I'm very grateful for that.

So, sorry this isn't a very entertaining post, but I thought you all might like to know what's up, so you can start planning fun things to do while I'm in NY!

****************************************

To end on a more amusing (and potentially edifying) note, I have been experimenting a lot with spice combinations on stir-fried or sauteed vegetables. Here are my latest seasoning creations - all of which are very tasty and easy, for those of you cooking for yourselves this summer:

- Thai green curry paste : comes in a jar, and use it sparingly, because it's hot! i.e., don't choose this one when you're using up the hot pepper. Also, serve the stir-fry with coconut rice. It's incredible. Well really, serve anything with coconut rice and it's incredible.
- cilantro, olive oil, & vinegar : I know, a little more traditional, but easy and tasty on couscous.
- fresh ginger & ground mustard & a bit of chopped hot pepper: I recently stumbled upon the ground mustard in stir fry idea, and it may be the next best thing since sliced bread.

Other tips that I have discovered:
- use less oil! I was definitely drowning my veggies too much. If they start sticking, turn down the heat instead of adding more oil - when they cook a little more, they'll release liquid, and they won't stick any more.
- also, add the tofu on the earlier side. I used to add it at the very end of the stir-fry, but now I realize that if you add it with all the rest of the vegetables, by the time the veggies cook, the tofu has a lovely faint golden color and a little firmer consistency.
- Can you use mint in a stir fry? I don't see why not, and I have all this mint to use up... I'll let you know how it turns out.

As you can see, my summer has been very productively spent perfecting the art of vegetable preparation. I may not be pro yet, but, I'm telling you, ground mustard.

Life, The Universe, and... Colin Firth?

2006-06-27T14:40:00.000-07:00

So many of you out there will have to forgive me, but until today I had never seen the entire 6 hour A&E "Pride and Prejudice." I know, this is scandalous. Well, Nikki (the prof I'm housesitting for) had it on DVD, and I had all these Taoism things to look through, so I thought, what better way to do my work than in front of Jane Austen?

Also, as you might know I was never such a huge Colin Firth person.
Wait, wait, before you get too excited, I am still not a huge Colin Firth person.

But I now have a new appreciation for why everyone loves Mr. Darcy: basically, he's been playing hard-to-get for 6 hours, and you're spending the entirety of those 6 hours waiting for that one chaste kiss at the end. So when it happens, it's such a relief, and so satisfying, that you can't help but be a little bit in love with him for finally doing it.

Like the other day, I was very hungry, and I walked by the Rueb, and there was this scent of fried food wafting out the door, and suddenly I really wanted some. But then I had to go meet Rachel over at Monday's, but I ended up walking out to meet her at West Gym, and then we walked back, and then the waitress was really really slow taking our order... but when the chicken strips and steak-cut fries finally came out, they were quite possibly the best thing I had ever tasted.

So if I may compare Colin Firth to a basket of fries and chicken strips, the moral of the story is:
Delayed gratification is damn good.

Homeless no more!

2006-06-25T17:12:00.000-07:00

So I'm finally settled in my summer house, with Kitty (yes, that's the cat's name) and Jenny, my housemate. It is lovely. I am very much enjoying eating real food - I made some delicious cold cucumber soup today - and being able to have a fixed place to work and put my stuff.

The weekend has been excellent, too - lots of aikido, lots of socializing, a little bit of work on the Taoism book... This project is pretty interesting, too. My latest challenge is to go through a box of student work from the term and pull out quotable or interesting passages, so he can have a section of student responses and interpretations of Applied New Taoism. (Picture a pile of 60 journals of responses to class notes, and 60 10-page final projects. It's going to be a big job...) A lot of it is really boring, because some people not only can't write but also have nothing original to say, but every once in a while I've stumbled on something really smart, often written by really improbable people. The Tao has been connected to the Sistine Chapel, Aesop's fables, Bob Marley, Rene Magritte, the Grand Canyon, and Woody Allen - and I've barely put a dent in this box. So it's not bad, compared to some other peoples' boring summer jobs.

It's nice to be a little more settled. It finally seems really like summer; there's much less to worry about when you're not sleeping on someone's spare bed and living out of a duffel bag.

edit: I've just been searching for potential publishers for Qiguang's book, and I've been looking on Amazon to see who else has published Taoism books, and guess what I've found? "The Taoist Manual: An Illustrated Guide Applying Taoism to Daily Life." uh oh. I guess someone's beat him to the punch... So do I tell him his revolutionary new book has already been written?

Lessons From Babysitting

2006-06-21T22:58:00.000-07:00

1. Any lack of cuteness in a small child is definitely because they missed a nap.

2. What nobody tells you about pregnancy is that it makes all your ligaments and basically everything else relax so your hips can spread, but a side effect of this is constant sinus problems, carpal tunnel syndrome, and crying. (This is according to the woman I'm sitting for, who is 5 months pregnant with her second child and opened the door in tears and wearing a wrist brace, saying, "Don't worry, I'm just pregnant.")

3. Even the tastiest, least gross-looking food (avocado, couscous) looks really disgusting when it's all over somebody's face.

4. If the kid wants to feed himself the yogurt, just let him do it even if it slides off the spoon, because you're going to have to clean up the mess he made with the couscous anyway.

5. The secret of diaper changing: the reason diaper changing is worth it (and not that bad) is that when they're wearing a clean diaper, they aren't radiating poo smells all the time. Not smelling like poo = much cuter and more lovable child.

6. All these things make having a kid sound awful. And then there are those moments when they have taken a nap, and eaten lunch, and had a diaper change, and they're dancing around to one of those mats that plays really annoying songs when you push the buttons, and they think the animal noises you're making to keep from going crazy are the most entertaining thing since Peter Rabbit - and you kind of see why people do it.

What I Really Did on my Summer Vacation

2006-06-19T22:56:00.000-07:00

Rachel, Reid and I have just set up a martial arts training schedule of around three hours a day, at least five days a week - not to mention the possibility of going to Minneapolis to train on Saturdays. (I almost wrote Ann Arbor instead of Minneapolis. I don't even want to think about it, I'll be too tempted.)

While this may sound totally crazy, I am really excited - not just for the massive amounts of aikido training, but also for that feeling of being physically tired all the time. I haven't gotten that since the last of my crazy summers of backpacking, what, 3 years ago? It's a good feeling, and I've missed it.

And basically what this means is that with a weekly total of a 20 hour Taoism job, 8 hours of babysitting, at least 12 hours of aikido and 3 of Soo Bahk Do (I'm getting lessons from Reid), as well as 2 hours of being tutored in Chinese and the requisite time studying up, with all the down time I'm going to have I may as well be a full-time student.

...if by "full-time" you mean "paid, trilingual, incredibly fit, and totally badass."

I love summer.

Aikido, the ER, and a Long Day of Nothing

2006-06-18T19:24:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a break from my incredibly difficult evening of "Sex and the City," so I thought I would write a little bloglet about my weekend.

Saturday was very eventful, as Wade and Liz, two aikido alums from Ann Arbor, were in for Alumni Weekend, and a couple of alums also came down from the Kobukan (dojo in Minneapolis) to train for a couple of hours. So we had a very awesome class where some burning questions from the spring were answered in under five minutes, which was one of those satisfying moments of "oh, so that's how it works!" And I finally learned to do a proper fourth control, which means nothing to most of you, but basically it's a tricky (but useful) way to get your partner to do what you want, involving a pressure point in the arm. It was also nice to have a real class, which won't be happening for a while unless we make it up to the Cities.

Then we had an adventure in which Wade was playing frisbee in sunglasses with a lens that popped out and cut his eyebrow open. It was very bloody but not super-serious, but Liz and Rachel Voorhies and I still took a nice long trip with Wade to the ER to make sure he didn't need stitches. And lemme tell you, the Northfield Hospital is a friggin' hotel. There's a sculpture in the lobby and a gift shop and elevator music and nice carpets and things. Not a bad place to be, if you're going to be in a hospital.

So after all that busy-ness, I've been taking it easy today. Got a free brunch at Dacie Moses, and Felix made lots of stew so I haven't even had to cook (if by "cook" you mean "heat up Campbell's soup"). And I've been doing a lot of really boring work on this Taoism book, which will look very nice in the end, but transcribing hours and hours of lecture is not my idea of a roaring good time.

Also I have decided that no matter which way you cut it, this summer is going to be weird. Carleton is very nice in the summer, but it's a different kind of nice that involves a lot of sitting around with fun people you don't really know that well, rather than having adventures with all the people you would have picked to be there. It also seems that everyone I know is waiting around for something - to start a study abroad, to see that one friend they've been missing, to hear about medical results, to get settled in a new job or house or both. So I guess I'm not the only one with a vague sense of not knowing what's going on all the time. That's kind of reassuring, I suppose, and in any case, all those things are just going to have to resolve themselves - in the meantime there's a lot of highly productive sitting around to do.

(Don't you like that neatly resolved ending? I reread this post and realized that I have gotten to know Carrie Bradshaw and co. far too well over the past couple of days...)

need... vegetables...

2006-06-16T07:39:00.000-07:00

OK so my personal nutrition is all going to hell. I'm going to be cooking lots of lovely food in, oh, a week or so, when I actually get to move into Nikki's house (I'm housesitting for my piano teacher this summer), but for now I am living on the extra bed in Megan Ward's room, which is lovely and hospitable except that there is no more room for groceries or for me to feel like figuring out whose cookware I can use. So, does anyone have any ideas for meals that require minimal refrigeration, no cooking, and that have some nutritional content (ie. Ramen doesn't count!)? I've got those Campbell's soup things that you heat up in the microwave, I've got bread and hummus (there was room for hummus in the fridge)... but that's going to get real old real quick.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

2006-06-15T12:49:00.000-07:00

I had my first "day" of "work" today.
Here is what it involved:

9:30 - get to Professor Zhao's office. We talk about the project. He has problems with technology, such as how to save the textbook in an accessible place. I help him fix said problems.
10:00 - Zhao opens up the computer lab so I can access my account. The alarm starts beeping. Then the beeping turns into a steady high-pitched noise. No other consequences.
10:30 - We go to Zhao's house in Northfield. He makes me tea. Lots of tea. We don't talk about the project. What do we talk about? I don't remember. It was very slow paced.
11:00 - Maybe we start talking about the textbook for like 45 minutes. He shows me some passages from a book he was working on, but stopped because an English professor didn't think it was interesting. He wants to incorporate some of it into the textbook. (I think it actually is pretty interesting.)
11:50 - We have lunch. He heats up dumplings. They are very very tasty.
12:30 - Zhao makes coffee. We sit outside and drink it.
1:00 - We work a bit on a proposal to send to publishers. It is clear that really, he just needs to write it himself, and then I can edit. Also I look through the Writer's Handbook for potential places to send it to.
1:30 - Zhao is a judge for the international Emmys. He asks if I want to watch any of the entries. I say OK. The first one is this terrible, overacted Japanese show that could have been anime except it's live action. It's that bad. The second one was actually good except 10 minutes into it, the dialogue track cut out, and the subtitles just weren't making for an entertaining show. The last one was a Phillipino show, the title of which was a 25-letter Phillipino word that is mostly consonants, but despite the title it was pretty good, if a little cheesy.
2:20 - I decide that this afternoon is going nowhere, and while watching TV at a professor's house isn't the worst way to spend my time... there are better ways too. I also feel silently grateful that Zhao is extremely non-sketchy, 'cause honestly, hanging out watching TV at a professor's house could be pretty darn sketchy. I tell him I need to get back to campus. He is going to lend me his copies of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, so we stop by the LDC to get them. The alarm in the computer lab is still going off.
2:30 - He drops me off with the comment, "Thanks for your work, we got a lot done."

Voilà. 5 hours of paid work.

Taoism is awesome.

PS. If you guys are actually reading this, you should totally leave me comments - it would make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside... and you know you wanna do that...

Lies, lies, it's all lies...

2006-06-13T21:40:00.000-07:00

So my last post was totally a lie, because 7 hours later I was definitely back in the familiar dazed realm of not knowing what was going on and wanting desperately to sleep. But the last two days have been (really honestly) pretty awake, or at least, I made it til 9 or so at my friend's barbecue before I started to pass out, and today I've got full consciousness, enough to work 5 hours for my part-time job editing the Taoism textbook. This is progress. By Thursday maybe I can actually (*gasp*) exercise. Now that would be a novel idea. And about time, too, because Wade (3rd-degree aikido black belt, and way hardcore) and Liz and probably people from the Kobukan (aikido dojo in Minneapolis) are going to be down on Saturday for alumni weekend to throw us around. Which will be awesome, now that I'm awake enough to enjoy it.

Yep, I'm going back to Minnesota tomorrow. I can't say it's not kind of a relief. Somehow the summer has been more stressful so far than the school year... or at least the school year post-"Flies," because I don't know what could top "The Flies" for stress.

But we saw a quite excellent play on Sunday. For those of you who don't know Martin McDonagh's plays, you should. This man is brilliant. My favorite of his is The Pillowman, which you should all read because it is phenomenal - satirical and scary and funny and political and dramatic, and the main character tells these crazy stories, and I suppose it doesn't help that when I saw it last year it was with Jeff Goldblum and Billy Crudup. If there were more amazing male actors at Carleton, this is the play that would motivate me to stop being so down on directing. Maybe next year.

But in any case, the one we saw on Sunday was "The Lieutenant of Inishmore," which is much - much - more bloody, and also more heavy-handed with the moral-political message, but it's a good message (about violent extremism being generally a bad thing which leaves the innocents to clean up, or in this case, hack up the corpses) so you can excuse him. Also at one point there is a very friendly-looking live cat on stage, whose life you genuinely fear for. (Note to directors: live animals in seeming threat of execution = powerful stage device.)

Anyway, next post from Minnesota! I'll be leading a fantastic nomadic lifestyle out of my car for 10 days, so I may or may not have time/motivation to post... but hey, nobody really reads this anyway, so it doesn't much matter, huh?

Non-adventures in normalcy

2006-06-11T09:11:00.000-07:00

I think I'm finally getting back to a functional mental state - this is the first morning all week that I haven't wanted to go immediately back to sleep as soon as I woke up. This is exciting, as I have definitely been feeling bad about being so exhausted around my parents all the time and probably being a big downer. Especially since they have their own anxieties at the moment.
And we're going to the theater this afternoon, and I'll actually be able to stay awake the whole time! yay!

You should all go to your local Chinatowns and try bubble tea. It is awesome. Basically you get a smoothie (I recommend taro, it is tasty plus it is purple!) and put tapioca pearls in it. And it is good.

Anyway, really I am just writing because I'm at my friend's house and she's trying to figure out what courses she's going to take for the next few years (she just transferred so everything is confusing). But I don't want to inflict my time-killing on you guys too much (too late) so I guess I will wait until I have something interesting to say.

Oh except this one more thing: Columbia has a course on pirates. It's a fairly upper-level anthropology course on gender and capitalism and high-seas raiding. Carleton definitely needs to take the hint. If we had a course like that, SOAN would totally be the most popular major ever.

Final paper topic: Choose one of the following questions and answer in a 10 page analytical essay, citing sources and specific examples -
1) What is a pirate's favorite school?
2) Where do pirates go running?

The potential for that class is endless...

Saving the universe, one New York liberal at a time...

2006-06-09T21:44:00.000-07:00

So I just went to see "An Inconvenient Truth," the Al Gore global warming movie, with my parents, and it's surprisingly good. I mean, it's a documentary, but it's interesting and Al Gore comes across as pretty genuine, which I wasn't expecting from a politician. Top marks. Makes you want to bomb the oil companies' headquarters or something. (Or maybe that's just me. Has anyone else read The Monkey Wrench Gang? It's really good. I want to do stuff like that.)

Also on the subject of saving the world, I just saw two of my high school friends last night.
One of them, Izzy, is going to be on the Supreme Court. You think I'm just saying that, but this girl has the entire Constitution practically memorized. She can recite all the U.S. presidents in order, backwards from Bush down to Washington, in eleven seconds. Right now she's interning at the Brooklyn DA's office.

The other one, Liz, has a ten-year plan, to do ROTC, go to law school, and go into JAG like her brother and be an army lawyer. So she's a big conservative, but whatever. I knew her back when she played with a family of teddy bears.

So anyway, the point of this is that I want to declare publicly that I'm very happy without a ten-year plan. Thank you.

Is there really no place like home?

2006-06-07T19:08:00.000-07:00

So I'm at home. In lovely Dobbs Ferry New York. My cats are nice. My parents are nice. Everything is very disconcertingly the same. Not like I really expected it to change, but somehow being really tired and having had such a traumatizing past few days (more on that later) made me think coming home would be more emotional or scary or disconcerting. But no, it's just... coming home.

I have this mural on my wall that me and two friends of mine, Gershon and Mike, painted in the spring of my sophomore year of high school. We put masking tape up in the shape of a jazz band (trumpet, piano, drums, and acoustic bass) and splattered lots of colors of paint on top, in swirls and spirals and snakes and polka dots, and then we took the tape off so there's an outline of a jazz band in the midst of all this paint. Anyhow, I have this incomprehensible urge to get rid of it. Paint over all the paint on the walls, take down the brick wall of concert tickets and old posters that covers almost half the room, get rid of the posters we took marching against the war in Iraq. It's not that they aren't all part of my history, but somehow, and maybe this is just the complete exhaustion talking, they don't feel emotionally relevant anymore. With the wall, this is a good thing; there's a lot of things about high school that I'm really really glad are not emotionally relevant any more. But, coming home in general - it feels weird, how it's no longer the crazy emotional rush of memory and history that it used to be.

But I promised to talk about my traumatic weekend. Just because, as if having to leave everyone wasn't enough, it included such highlights as:
- getting nearly bitten by the dog I will be living with for winter and spring (the skin isn't really broken - well maybe a little bit - but there's a huge painful discolored mouth-shaped bruise on my thigh)
- getting attacked by a cat on the mini Bald Spot (scratches on left hand)
- having to drive through a massive zero-visibility thunderstorm to get back from Lakeville

anyway. So it's been dramatic. And spending the past day in Northfield with so many people gone, and then sleeping in the quad with hardly anything there except Rachel, Russell, and garbage, has just been weird, and scary, and really lonely. So maybe it's good to be at home, and then I can come back to Northfield with a clean-ish slate. -ish.

The beginning...

2006-06-04T09:31:00.000-07:00

So good news and bad news: Rachel is back from London, and Shannon left yesterday for a week at home before she comes back to Northfield for the summer. This is not such bad news for me, because I'm going to see Shannon all summer anyway. But having all the happy reunions with Rachel, and seeing all the sad goodbyes to Shannon, and trying not to keep a mental tally of how many people I'm going to have to let go of temporarily-for-a-long-time, has inspired me to start this thing: both as some kind of record of the adventures I (hopefully) have over the next six months of being on two different sides of the globe, and also as some kind of a way for people to keep in touch with each other. Especially if I do a better job than certain other people with blogs.

But anyhow, there are still two and a half more days until everyone leaves, and I should go out and make the most of them rather than sitting and writing about how much I'm going to miss people who haven't even left yet!

Maybe there will be a terrorist threat at the airport and no one will be able to leave.
No, I definitely should not joke about things like that.

Except Northfield would totally be a 24-hour party.