dreaming

winter

2012-01-04T04:21:00.001-08:00

winter:

Bourbon and tea. bourbon cut with tea. or tea cut with bourbon? I'm not really sure which it is, it's basically equal parts of both.
hooray.

surrounded by snoring dogs who cuddle aggressively.

I wondered if the world was going to end,
and wouldn't that be a horrible thing - although I had a rather long and pointless discussion with my mother over this. Apparently it's not horrible - apparently it's what we are 'supposed' to be waiting for.
perspectives.

I tutored an influx of boarding school students, dozens and dozens of discussions about Of Mice and Men and Great Gatsby. Some more clever and in-depth than others (the meaning of mercy, the significance of a dreary landscape, the juxtaposition of man and animal, man dehumanized) and others not as much (dreams are important, the ending was depressing, rich people are mean)

Taking meditation classes,
I was told I was bathed in white light
It was such a beautiful image. I wish I could have kept it always.

echoing

2012-01-03T04:09:00.000-08:00

You are now bathed in white light he says.

My hand is particles
my arm lengthens, reaching

with every breath the white light deepens
with every exhale, the negativity exits your body

I think of tunnels
of loud music
of summer lights
and balloon wars
of windows
of light streaming through them
I think of beethoven
indian arrows and whales of shale
a tutu the color of lemons

of promises
the devastations of a whisper
of overtures proclaimed
symphonies
skies

I think
of walls of mirrors of streamers
of rage of tiles of green and voices
exiting

you are now bathed in white light he said.
i am, i am

pride

2011-12-10T23:00:00.000-08:00

I think I've gotten much better at fitting in in Hong Kong, I can mimic going through daily interaction in Cantonese, although most of the time I seem somewhat stunted. But still, better stunted than mute. I can navigate things a lot more than I used to be able to, and while I still don't have the nerve to pick out the live chickens they offer at the wet market, I have gone on to pick out fish. (Which they then smash on the head with a cleaver and de-scale it vigorously while it's still moving. It still makes me flinch.)
But I try my best to seem as cool as possible, particularly with food. When faced with unfamiliar things, headfirst, no questions. No asking for help. Perhaps I have a bit too much pride, I've been accused of that before, but I guess I just like feeling some dignity. With that motto, I've become a pork knuckle, intestine lining eating, rice bowl in my hand, crustacean snapping individual.

Anyway I went to a noodle shop with my guy's family a few weeks ago. It was like a hole in the wall type of place, with plastic utensils and a makeshift roof. We each had to pick out an order from the mysterious and unfamiliar items floating at the counter. I had no idea what to choose, but I didn't want to seem completely lost, so I looked at the menu board, and picked the simplest one. Noodles with only one item in it. Simple I thought and probably the best way to avoid anything strange. A7- I said in cantonese. confident. nonchalant. Yes, I belong here.

"Are you sure?" C was looking at me with a slightly puzzled look, as was his mother.
"Yes. I know what I want," I said. (Unfortunately, I may have said this in a slightly aggressive way - with an undertone of Don't patronize Me.)
I could tell he wanted to say something, but I tried to look as nonchalant as possible. He shrugged.

I ate confidently at the table, heartily and with vigor. I could tell the vibe was a little awkward but I didn't really understand the reason. His mother had gotten noodles with an all-included special, and she kept giving me items from her bowl,"Since you like it."
And I'd keep taking it, like "Oh thanks Aunty!"
I thought they both looked a little uncomfortable, slightly intrigued and disgusted. The way I felt when I first was handed a bowl of pork knuckle.

I finished the bowl, and felt good that I had made my point. And then I forgot about that day.

A week later, C mentions to me that his mother had been slightly freaked out by how enthusiastically I had eaten cow penis. She had wondered why it was the only thing I ordered, and whether all Koreans liked eating things like that.

silence.
So A-7 was noodles and cow penis.

approval.

2011-12-10T03:43:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I slid down a flight of stairs on a sofa cushion. My 3 students (elementary school sisters)were clapping and shrieking as I achieved "flight." I would find out later that I was the experiment, they wanted to see if it was dangerous or not.

It made me wonder what I was doing.

I don't feel that way often, only every once in a while:
for example when a student asks me to explain the study guide "translations" of Shakespeare. (It turns things like "My hour is almost come / When I to sulfurous and tormenting flames / Must render up myself" to "My time is up, I must go back to hell. Horrible. Fire sucks."
and "How now" to "Hey you")
"Hey you? I don't get it..."
"It's a greeting."
"Oh...like hey?"
"...Yes."

Or when I get the occasional angry "rebel" attitude in a student.
"Yea, well you're just a tutor." snort.

I don't know why kids say things like that, they tend to look at me with triumph afterward. Like maybe they think it'll send me into a spiraling existential crisis, like a breakdown of "What DO I have to respond to that?" :claws self in despair: "Get me a sofa cushion.. i need to escape this place."

Most of the time I just blink as a response, with a polite, "Yes, that is correct." For once.
Or if I'm not feeling particularly generous I say something equally rude and then afterward as I walk home, I'll feel immature for not rising above the level of a snotty angsty hormonal teenager. "Yea, and you should tell your parents to stop paying me and save the money for that library they're going to have to donate to make sure you GET into a school."

sigh.
sofa cushion.

---
Sometimes I feel like I am too attached to our dog. She sleeps with us, she eats when I eat, she shares beer with me, she waits in the bathroom while I shower. We converse. (And it's not just me, her papa shares wine with her in her food dish. Bordeaux for the dog - yes.)

It's like she's my daemon (recently re-read the series, so good).
Although maybe not a daemon, I've come to realize that she may not be as in tune with me as I thought. Once I sprained my ankle while we were walking. I was fallen on the sidewalk, I thought she'd stop and turn and intuitively know that somehow she'd have to heal me, but instead she kept going and I was dragged for a few feet before she turned, circled me, looked puzzled and finally stopped, only to defecate near my hand.
Truly a man's best friend.

I've been in denial that she's spoiled, until we took her to obedience school. It was so embarrassing.
She barked incessantly and jumped and ran and sprinted, snatched treats from the teacher, frantically joyful, while the other dogs cowered and hid behind their owners. She kept turning to look for my approval, but mostly I just wanted to hide.
The teacher kept asking survey questions about how we raised our dogs.
Does anyone here sleep with their dog in the room?
Does anyone here let their dog sit in their lap automatically?
Does anyone here let their dog jump on them when they first come into the house?

We stopped raising our hands eventually because it got too sad having to explain.

inigo montoya

2011-10-10T00:39:00.001-07:00

To the coward who robbed our apartment and stole my engagement ring. Come back. I have a baseball bat I would like to acquaint you with.

Acquaint in the Biblical sense. And the typical Louisville slugger sense.

blue

2011-10-02T08:04:00.000-07:00

Last month I spent a week diving in Bali - it was the first time I really overcame my fear of water, I guess all the preparation of walking around with a mask of water on my head and mental exercises worked. It wasn't really the idea of dying that made me panic, but the idea of flailing and having to fight under the water, suffocating. "It takes 3 whole minutes to drown," my teacher said. Apparently he meant it as a reassurance. Helpful.

Our guides were very matter of fact, their favorite expression was "goodbye until the next life," which they'd say with a smile and a wave. "The currents are very strong today so watch us. Don't look at the big blue... otherwise good bye until the next life."
"Excuse me did you say life? until the next life?" And then they laughed at me, not realizing it was a serious question. "One minute you're there, and the next WHOOSH, you disappear into the big blue. Two weeks ago, one of the divers whoosh - he was gone. We just found him now." Initially I thought that story was a happy ending, but I had misinterpreted the meaning of "him" - him meant the diving gear.

With those words in mind as I was rolling backwards off the boat, I didn't feel like it would be a very promising experience. But the moment I managed to descend into the water, and there was no surface to be seen, being underwater felt so peaceful, almost right. It was completely serene.

I couldn't help looking into the "big blue," it was endless. The water was cold, and the guides were right, the currents were so strong that sometimes we were forced to hold onto the sticks of coral in an effort to keep from being pulled down into the depths.

By the 4th day, I was comfortable enough to go deeper and follow the leader looking for the mola-mola. When I first saw a picture of mola-mola I didn't realized fish like that actually existed. They're fish that are approximately the height of a house about 2-3 meters high, but completely flat, like a disc.

We reached 36 meters that day, it was 14 C (yes now I think in metric... I had that realization underwater and it was enough to make me panic. I was shivering and looking at my watch, wow 14 celsius how cold. Wait what I think in metric now? Gasp gasp. gasp...") And out of the blue there was this silent shadow. A giant fish silent, unblinking. We would see 5 on that dive, all of us with our arms crossed floating with a stream of bubbles in this cold water, facing an endless blue, and a giant mola-mola floating within a couple meters. (sigh meters).

I wish I had better language to explain the way it feels under the water, the complete peace. I remembered some fragment of some quote I once heard about the color blue, and how looking at it made the brain feel both happiness and sadness at the same time. It's an unusual color in that way.

But that's how I felt, the big blue - I felt wonder at how something could be so vast and endless. It didn't look like it had a beginning, to reach into it would be to reach for a color. And how is that possible? It was a calming thought, silent and free, a place without a beginning or an end.

let's run away

2011-08-14T22:39:00.001-07:00

I remember reading a quote that said that every healthy human is capable of running. I had trouble accepting this until I heard that my nearly blind father had finished a 10k without any training. He is very absent-minded, and apparently agreed to run in a company event without realizing it.

My brother was saying how he plans for him and my parents to do long-distance runs together.
"We could be like a family running team. They have those family marathons."
"What about me?"
"uh..."
"I'm family too."
"You could hold the sign? Pass out water?"
sigh.

In high school, it was mandatory for us to run a mile every week for gym class. The only way to pass that part of the running segment was to run a mile in 10 minutes. According to my gym teacher this was "impossible" not to be able to do. You can walk it in 10 minutes! You can crawl it in 10! he'd shout at me.
In the class of 35, I was always last, well not always... The competition for the last slot was between three people: me, a girl who had just moved to our school from Africa and never taken gym before, she ran while wearing a veil and a pant/dress thing which was like a long version of a skort, and a girl who had narcolepsy. The girl with narcolepsy wasn't even required to take gym, but she wanted to do it anyway on principle.

So I could understand my brother's hesitation.
"I'm just not a runner. Not everyone can run."
Then he showed me a link on people with cystic fibrosis who run marathons.
it was amazing.
-.-

Running is one of those things I see as very necessary, ever since I've been aware of natural selection. I don't want to be the slow antelope. I have a fear that one day I'll have to run to catch the last plane out of disaster, or run long enough not to be up caught in an ocean wave.
It's kind of like my fear of not being able to pull my own body weight. If I was dangling helplessly from a sky-rise and the only thing I need to be able to do is bend my elbows so I can just ... pull myself ... ok no. death fall.

So a few days ago, I read H Murakami's book on marathon running and writing, "What I talk about when I Talk About Running." Besides being struck by his discipline, he runs at dawn for a couple hours and then sits down to write yet another book; I was struck by the way he described running. He made it sound so peaceful and liberating, so I decided I should try yet again.

The only place to run right now is straight up a mountain. It's very steep, I read some background which said that running uphill is actually "easier" than running on a flat surface. Well, apparently not.

I tried to jog but mostly ended up trudging and gasping for air and at the view (which was quite beautiful). It was peaceful and liberating... although not really for the reasons of running.
Must try again.

in flight.

2011-08-14T02:11:00.000-07:00

As I've grown older, I realize that I hate flying.
It was a strange realization.
I used to love airplanes, the food, the view of the clouds, the excitement of the airport, standing in the arrivals gate. I used to visit the airport and sit at the arrivals gate because I liked seeing people reunite.

This time both my flights to the U.S. and coming back to Hong Kong were delayed. The first was delayed by two days, and coming back was delayed 5 hours. I sat on the floor at the chicago airport, my head pounding while people shouted in Cantonese (I know people say Korean is hard on the ears, but Cantonese sometimes sounds like braying animals to me). The seats seem smaller, my legs are cramped and pressed against the seat in front, I have the leg reach of a child so I don't see how normal people manage it. It's like we have to decompress and fold ourselves into the seats accordion style.

On the flight, the middle seat was empty which I thought would be a good thing. However, mid-flight, when I woke up, I noticed this strange blob right next to me. I didn't have my glasses on, so I kept patting it to try and figure it out. It was prickly yet fuzzy (an animal? a sweater? a suitcase?) until I realized I was patting a man's head. It was the middle aged man in the window seat who had kept asking me about robert pattinson (i guess he had a fascination with water for elephants.)
"hey uh what's this movie about."
"um they're training an elephant."
"oh... that's neat."
(10 minutes later) "tell me about the guy that's in this. he famous at all?"
"I suppose."
(5 minutes later) "he's that vampire right?
"Yes. I think so."
(during love scene) "they make a good looking couple don't they.. they got that necessary chemistry. you know these things don't work without chemistry."
"i guess."
"yea that type of chemistry is hard to find. hit or miss."
"well actually. they've been in a movie together before.
"oh no way.. well that makes sense, good chemistry."
"yea. he played her son in vanity fair."
end of conversation.

Anyway this pleasant man had thought it would be ok to lie down so that his head was practically in my lap.

rawr.

third wheel

2011-08-05T18:58:00.001-07:00

My parents have been married for 30 years. It wasn't until this summer that I realized that even after all this time they act like a honeymooning couple.
They still walk with their hands clasped in public; they sit on the same side of the table at restaurants; in the evenings, they spend hours talking to each other and laughing, my father always walks around the car to open the door for her; and every night even though he hates it, they take an hour long hike around the park.

My father works a few states away, but he flies back every Friday and always gets to the airport early in the morning so he can wait on stand-by. This is a person who refuses to step into a Starbucks because the background music is too loud and "heathenish."
I'd never thought of him as being particularly romantic, but I realized that was a really sweet gesture, and someone who truly loves his wife.

It's been disconcerting for me to feel like the third wheel, an over-grown awkward daughter. They actually forgot about me when we went out to dinner, I had gone to the bathroom, and when I came out, they were gone.
I called my mom from the hostess's phone in a semi-panic, what had happened, had something gone wrong? Medical emergency? No they'd just forgotten, paid the bill and left. They had laughed, hysterically... ha ha our kid? what kid?
And then I saw them walking back to the restaurant, slowly strolling hand in hand to come claim me.

I suppose it was cute.

the following has been approved for..

2011-08-04T20:31:00.000-07:00

My dreams have been so violent lately I wish they'd come with a guidance rating before they start. like hey tonight will be R, there'll be chainsaws and decapitations involved so get your mind glove on.
Tonight is pg-13, but R for emotional trauma - people are going to butcher your dog and you'll have to shoot and quarter them.
Tonight is NC-17, multiple decapitations, a face stabbing and some disturbing nudity.

(Speaking of ratings my friend and I got carded going into watch friends with benefits -yea chick flick - and rated R as it happens.
I didn't realize what was going on til after - I just thought the lady was trying to see id for my credit card, so I was offended when she quizzed me on what year I was born and how old did that make me.
I tend to get nervous being carded for any reason - even if it's legitimate like being questioned at the airport, so my reply was a stutter and it sparked an inner monologue and crisis of oh goodness how old am I? 22? 24? No 25.. like a quarter century but no that's still young very young age is a number, keats had written his poems by then, wait he was dying by then and uh "uh 25?"
This only made her more suspicious. But we got in and had a nice mindless two hours of chick flick fantasy, and it erased my momentary mental crisis.)

Anyway being trapped in dream space, thankfully there is still some cognition and power. I always end up taking control, even if it means chopping and slashing my way out, "ugh gosh I have to chainsaw you again?" "quartering? ugh why so old fashioned?" but I suppose that's a relief. I just wish there would be some beautiful dreams within the nightmares.
I showed my mother the movie Inception thinking she'd be amazed but she was profoundly unhappy that the "bad guys won"
"What? No he goes home to his kids."
"They were criminals."
"But that was a bad company they were turning to a monopoly."
"They manipulated that poor boy. I don't like stories where the bad guys win!"
And that was the major debate we had about the movie.
Not whether it was a dream or the top spinning at the end, which she said wasn't the point, "who cares he's a criminal! Dream or not hes a criminal in both!"
Oh. True I had never thought of it that way. As she said, I suppose I missed the point of the story.

If I had that sort of pragmatism/ resolve, I would probably never have bad dreams. They wouldn't dare to occur.

es muss sein

2011-07-29T18:42:00.000-07:00

if my dissertation is a stone tied to my feet
time is the ocean rising.

ooh metaphor.

and i am holding the scissors staring at the rope
but instead of sawing away -
the hours pass and
i'm daydreaming
thinking of books
sitting in the sun
laughing at stephen colbert
going through my high school journals (that girl was funny)
writing about villains
watching vampires on my computer
running outside on the track (even that)

and i can't help but think of procrastination in the context of Se7en (i know this is an old movie, but I just saw it recently). which leads to more mind maps of punishments and fears of self-drowning, goldfish and impotent villains, and thinking of kevin spacey which leads to thinking of brunch - because i saw him at brunch once, he was with a male model, and i was surprised because i was thinking of american beauty and then the plastic bag scene and ordinary-ness, and then i think of summer days in new york and music and the park in the evening, mint mojitos, and the old men who play chess, and ...

all roads lead everywhere but to my thesis.
lalalaa.

disappointment

2011-07-26T15:43:00.000-07:00

I played violin for my mom's church on Sunday. It's very beautiful, a simple wooden church with arching rafters and ceiling high windows with a view of this forest of oak and pine tree. It's an anglican church, so the service is always very proper with ritual and silk cloth and little white paper-thin wafers during communion.

I usually play each time I come back, because most people there never get to hear music in person, and mostly because I know it's one thing I do that I can count on making my mother happy. The structure of the church is perfect for acoustics, and I'd attempted to practice so that morning even to me, each note sounded like it was on a wing. It was like the sound was yearning for the pine trees outside, as though it was reaching for the gravestones in the garden.

Afterward, people came to talk to me, some shook my hand, some were crying. They told me how they'd heard the song at a wedding, or how it reminded them of the past.
An old man held my hand and asked me solemnly if I would play at his funeral (His tone was as though he were asking me to get married, or go spend a day picnicking. My response was an awkward laugh / misplaced guffaw - which was probably the wrong reaction.)

One woman said it was her and her husband's favorite. "I'm sorry he couldn't have heard it in person today."
Tactless me: "Oh that's too bad why not? Tell him he should come next time!"
Her: "Oh honey, he's always listening, but... he passed on some years now."
-.-

I know I should have felt some kind of happiness or maybe some accomplishment, but mostly I felt like a fraud. I know I used to have talent, but I had mediocre effort - and I was just skating by on some former learned technique and acoustics, nothing extraordinary.
They assumed I was studying music or playing all the time - when in actuality, I didn't feel like admitting I'd quit years ago before I really got anywhere with it. Then they asked about school and what I study, and how I was probably all set to be a lawyer - when in actuality, I was/am horrible at law school, and if I could have, I would have quit that as well. And that I've had a dissertation to write that I've put off for months.

I'm not trying to be a severe self-critic or revel in emo-pity, 'oh the rain how it mirrors my tears' but in those moments I realized that there is so much room for giving and improving the world, doing something wondrous. A simple song like that could create such an echo, such meaning. And I've been living with no effort, like I'm just trying to get by, only a step above quitting. Self-contained and self-involved with no echo.

checklists.

2011-07-19T08:42:00.000-07:00

Eaten at chipotle: 1 (day 1 actually)
Gone to the gym: 2
Days spent unable to bend legs: 4 and counting (I fell up a set of stairs due to non-bending)
Attended church: 1 (and felt very out of place)
Harry Potter books read: 4
Harry Potter movie seen: 1 (Sobbed over Snape, who knew he would be the true romantic hero of the series)
Moments spent tempted to name a child Severus: too many
Math textbooks read: 0 (I did try - but Deathly Hallows was more interesting)
Alcohol quantities: 1 inch depth (is that called 1 cubic inch?) of wine, 1 spoon of Kentucky bourbon in my coffee
Pages of dissertation written: 0
Days spent thinking about dissertation: daily (the anxiety comes and goes)

Begged out of not going to the track to run laps: daily (jetlag is the very legitimate excuse)
Watched TED talks: daily
Practiced violin: daily
Missed air conditioning: daily
Felt incredibly wholesome: daily

process.

2011-07-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

In attempt to be healthy, I agreed to go to the gym with my brother. Well actually, I forced him to take me, and somehow persuaded him to act as a trainer.
The result was 2 hours of being reduced to hysterical laughter (apparently I laugh when I'm frustrated) and muscle pain.

My brother doesn't believe in cardio, at least not on a treadmill (I didn't bother bringing up elliptical because that would have only earned me a look of extreme disdain) - only weight circuits, so that's what I did.
I used to think I was pretty strong for "a girl", I hate that expression... but apparently I'm not even that. To my trainer's frustration, I couldn't lift my body weight, I couldn't hang from the pull-up bar, much less pull myself up, and I had to keep asking for less repetitions. Asking for less only resulted in more repetitions.
He kept telling me that it was all mental; he ignored any crying or laughing "what's so funny?" :frown: and when I told him I really was going to drop the weight bar so HELP, he only walked away, which did force me to lift the bar back up so that I wouldn't be crushed to death. It was effective teaching I guess.
Overall I learned that sibling disapproval is a very motivating thing.

Also during my absence from the states, my parents have apparently become NRA supporters. While they've been members of the NRA since we were kids, now there's an NRA sticker on the car, and my father wears an NRA hat. They also told me about bills the NRA has successfully lobbied. When I mentioned the bill about concealed weapons on college campuses, they said it sounded like a wise idea.
cue speechless confusion.
I still don't know what to say about all this, it's too surreal, but last night I dreamt of revolvers and shotguns. I think my brain is still processing it.

delay

2011-07-16T03:50:00.000-07:00

After a 2 day flight delay and layover, I am finally back in the U.S.

It was embarrassing, I ended up saying bye to the dog and home a total of 3 times. The first time, I made a big hoopla about it, dramatically hugging my dog and cooking an elaborate meal (attempted to), and doing the whole drive to the airport, wave at the security gate thing. I then sat on the plane for 3 hours before they told us that the flight was delayed til the next morning.
So I sheepishly went back home, the dog was confused and then the next morning, went to check-in only to be told that the flight had been moved to that evening.
Went back home, dog was even more confused, and then the 3rd and final goodbye, the ride to the airport felt very deja vu. By then, I think everyone involved was just ready for me to leave. Elongated good-byes are so anti-climactic.
Parting is only sweet sorrow - if the parting happens quickly.

My layover was in Chicago, we were given the night to spend at an airport hotel. I'd never stayed in a hotel by myself before, and the whole experience felt surreal and falsely grown-up. I feel like I always read about strange things happen in airport hotels. And I had dreams of myself disappearing and no one knowing where I'd gone. "She was last seen at the O'Hare hotel."
Ohh...

Being back in virginia feels familiar and uncomfortable at the same time. It's like I'm in middle school, I can't really identify the feeling. It's feels as though there's a pressure in my skull, but I think that's also because my parents don't believe in air conditioning. (That sounds very spoiled, but honestly sometimes it feels like time is stagnant from the heat.)

I've realized that being in the U.S. is so much more 'interactive'. In Hong Kong, people try to pretend that others don't exist. If you fall or you brush into someone else, there is no eye contact, and people just move on their way. Here, everyone seems to have comments about things, I felt like I've had a dozen mini conversations with people, when I just realized it was only interaction. strange.

deep water

2011-07-12T05:10:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to finish my diving license. I never finished the one I started a couple years ago, because of my failure to pass the basic exams.
Apparently for an upcoming trip, it's best if I'm also an "advanced" diver, so I figured I should make the first step and get my basic license first.

The reason I failed last time was that I couldn't "clear my mask". Clearing a mask requires you to fill up the mask with water, and then somehow use air pressure to snort it out.
I didn't really understand the physics principle of it, and each time I'd end up gulping a huge maskful of water and then gasping and coughing my way to the surface.
It's even worse with the second step of the test, which requires you to take off the mask and then swim around and put it back on. I never got the chance to swim, the moment I took off the mask I'd start inhaling water.
The instructor tried to act like it was all right, but after 30 minutes of this, he stopped me. I think he was worried he was going to have a student drown herself in the 5 foot pool.

So last week, in the days before my training, I practiced walking around the apartment with a mask filled with water, breathing only out of the snorkel. It took some time, and I wondered if I could become the only person to drown above water.

I'm not sure why I am so afraid of water. It's not the thought of dying that scares me, but rather the moments of panicked breathing, coughs and gulps of water and lack of oxygen. I heard that babies are natural swimmers, and that there is a class where parents will take the newborn infant and drop them into the pool, but catching them right before they hit the water. Apparently this erases any fear of water and creates a life-long love of it. I wish my parents had signed up for that one.

After getting over the initial fear, and acing the mask clearing tests (walking around with the fish tank over my head was helpful!), there was something calming about being underwater beyond the fear... it felt peaceful. Free.

spin spin

2011-06-28T23:55:00.001-07:00

I have a new student, he's 12. Our lessons are early in the morning because apparently that's when he concentrates best.

Student is twirling in the spinning chair. spin spin spin spin spin..
I keep talking about grammar like I don't notice that I'm talking to a revolving head.
Every once in a while I will say something which makes him stop spinning.
"So if the sentence is My son is interesting, that's a linking verb which is -"
Halt.
"You have a son?"
"No."
"Oh." spin spin spin spin spin "Good cause that would be weird."
halt.
"How old are you?"
"Well technically I'm old enough I could be your mom."
"OH. ew that's old." spin spin spin spin spin.

Sometimes he turns his chair to frantically scratch his crotch with a long comb for an uncomfortable number of seconds. I suppose his theory being that if he can't see me I can't see him. theory disproved.

And then every once in awhile, he tries hypnotism tricks on me. He imitates that British guy on youtube who does those mind games like paying with paper money and persuading people to hand him their wallet and keys.
Unfortunately for him, I've also seen it.

"So an example of a declarative sentence?"
"Give me your wallet."
"That's not a declarative but... oh."

That's when I realized the rest of the lesson would follow the format of youtube clip #1.

--
would be hypnotist: "I want you to think of a word. Wait no, I'm supposed to show you a card first so don't don't think of one! Are you thinking of one?!"
"No no don't worry."
"Uhh I'm going to flash this card at you and THEN you are going to think of a word."
"Oh I already know it.. the word is apple."
amazement. "How did you do that? You didn't even see the card!"
point for teacher.

--
"I want you to think of a blank television screen, now look at this word closely, and think of a c-"
"3 of diamonds."
"whoaaa i haven't even finished yet. how did you do that? You must have crazy Extra perception."
"Yep."

I know it's kind of cheating, but at least it has gained me temporary respect.

le nouveau

2011-06-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

My grandfather is a missionary, and he used to say that the most successful way to become part of another's culture is to share their food. (Although he said this in a slightly racist, ambiguously offensive way.) It surprised me as he's someone who won't eat cereal because it is too Western. But his friends would describe my grandfather smiling peacefully in an African desert, gracefully eating anything that was offered, the only one to drink from a jar that was dug out of the ground and looked like it hadn't been opened in years (they found out afterward that was a close approximation). Apparently he was the one everyone remembered years afterward.

I've always admired that quality. I remember the anger and embarrassment I used to feel when my parents had guests over. The kids would whine and stage whisper to their parents whether it was ok they didn't eat something.
"well just try it! it's something new. No I don't know what it is, but just eat it!" And my mother would politely show them the pizza she'd already heated up just in case. Even the adults would poke at the dishes as though it were an alien thing, refusing the japchae glass noodles that my mother had taken all day to prepare. Someone once exclaimed that something had rotted in the refrigerator, only to blush when it became obvious that it was the jar of kimchi cabbage on the bottom shelf.
Actually thinking back, I'm not sure why we had guests over so often anyway, but I guess oblivious persistence is my parents' virtue.

I was determined not to make the mistake when I was first invited to eat with the namja's family. I felt like Belle in the scene of Beauty and the Beast with the prancing dishes and plates. Except the dishes prancing in front of me were of fish intestines, marinated chicken feet with minced vegetables, congealed blood with beef intestines. Pork knuckles and fermented beans, beef tongue, stomach lining, fish liver in steamed egg.
They politely declined eating anything, and instead watched as I finished all the dishes, including an extra dish of beef tongue.
The crowning dish was a platter-sized bread stuffed with all the leftover dinner items mixed into one. The waiter smiled when he set it in front of me, a wobbling meat tower the size of my head, which I managed to finish three quarters of before giving up.
I found out afterward that the dishes weren't usual ones; I suppose it was a kind of test and also a slight form of amusement.

It's been many months since then, but as I still don't understand enough Chinese to contribute to a conversation, my role is to sit and eat with healthy enthusiasm. It's a challenge, if I ever place my chopsticks down, I get a concerned look.
Passing food is a form of love and respect, and to refuse is impossible, so I end up being the one to eat most of the dishes.
The last piece of intestine, please give to her.
no no it's ok, please take it... oh ok thank you thank you.

I suppose it's better than the Korean way, in which the challenge is to drink as much alcohol as is presented.
Why is your glass not empty?
Because once I drink it you will just fill it again.
and the question will repeat once more. paradoxical.

rainy days.

2011-06-21T22:09:00.000-07:00

I joke that my dog is my only friend, which like all jokes is only funny because it is partially true.

It's been starting to concern my mother. She has this vision of me turning into a woman with a semi-moustache wearing pleated trousers and raising a posse of hounds, or an eccentric who clothes her dog and takes it to the spa. Both visions are childless spinsters of course. It has led to several serious conversations that "dogs are no replacement for children."

yes.
I only thought of this because today I was taking the dog on a walk and it looked like it was about to rain.
"Hey I'm sorry I think it's going to rain.." and she looked at me.
"You don't want to get your feet wet do you?" :look:
"Yea well you don't mind but I do. We can walk more next time, I promise!"
And she seemed to shrug and we turned around.

So now we are conversing.
--

I realized that my mind has regressed. It's a depressing thought, to realize that I'm never thinking or learning anything new. I think the main cause is the internet. The internet and pop culture have taken over my brain, a stream of particle facts crammed through me. Do I really need to check the news every hour? Every 15 minutes? Does it matter what snarky comment someone is going to post on such and such forum, or how a critic views the latest episode of something? I recognized something was very wrong when I realized I knew every contestant on american idol, but I'd never actually heard them sing. I was just reading the recaps. hah it's like being in the matrix.

I suppose I need a filter.
--

There's a girl I see sometimes near our apartment, I think she must work in one of the buildings near by. She only has one leg, and she walks with crutches that strap in at the wrists. The amazing thing is that the only reason I first noticed her was because of her outfit and how put together she looked. It was winter and freezing cold, but she had on a dress. Her hair was perfectly blown out, she had make-up on, accessories, vest, jacket, and was even wearing heels with a fur trim sock. (that's when I realized it was *a heel*) I then started seeing her every few days, each time in another accessorized outfit and high heel, walking all the way to the bus stop.

I sometimes saw her on the bus, each time she stood, she never pushed for a seat, even as able-bodied people were shoving each other to sit down first. She looked so calm and balanced that I don't think people realized she was on crutches... with a high heel! It was impressive.

It made me feel slightly ashamed for looking like such a slob. Each time I happened to see her, I looked like I was escaping some disaster zone, unbrushed hair, bundled in some unfortunate man's sweatshirt or hoodie, loose jeans and converses, my books crammed into a shopping bag. As my mother would say "how rude" of me to force my sloppiness on the public, "Are you a man or woman? Please decide."

After a hiatus, I saw the girl again the other day. It was so hot I felt like I was melting onto the sidewalk. I was in flipflops, shorts, a shapeless t-shirt. And there she was, briskly walking, blown out hair, in a fresh lemon yellow dress with a tiny sweater and platform sandal. She didn't even look like she was sweating.

dissonance.

2011-06-21T10:36:00.000-07:00

A girl came to dinner in a shirt that proclaimed in huge letters: I AM NOT A LABEL WHORE!
While also wearing:

Louis vuitton monogram bracelet.
Chanel handbag.

It made me laugh. What a whore. Joking...

It's the occasional attitude I come across in Hong Kong which irritates me and leaves me with a metallic taste in my mouth.
I've heard it too many times, people describing their family as "working class."
While there is a live in maid and several namebrand sports cars sitting in the garage.

Well. Working class are people who work in factory towns and support families on minimum wage, and even they would probably be offended at the classification.
Being employed and working for a living does not equal working class... at least not since the 18th century English concept of the 'gentry', when people had money and property entailed on them. "Oh my dear, Sir soandso is working class! Why don't you know his father was a merchant! They actually WORK for their living!" :shock:

The gentry speech only works so well, the reaction is usually that I'm being a judgmental american snob. well yes I suppose so, but at least I'm not being a hypocrite.

The last time I had to say this was to my student who is preparing to apply to college in the U.S. Like most international students I teach, she has always had a live-in family maid who does her laundry, folds her clothes, washes the dishes, makes her bed, walks their 4 dogs. Her 12 year old sister and 4 year old brother both have ipads and macbooks (their school has made macbooks mandatory). The family doesn't have a driver, but she does have a car which her dad gave to her for getting As and Bs on her semester exams. They go skiing in the Alps every year, and she spends her summers volunteering and trekking places like Africa and Asia. She has a team of tutors, including myself who are paid by the hour to make sure she has an edge in school.

She's a really nice girl, and like most of my students, surprisingly very grounded. (I don't think that I would have been in that situation). But in this bubble, that lifestyle is the norm, and it never occurs to them to feel any awkward privilege.
So I knew she was being completely earnest when she told me her choice of college essay was about understanding others' struggles. She cited her experiences as a volunteer at an orphanage in Southeast Asia. It was well-written, sensitive, full of empathy, just completely unaware.

"We had helped build the roof of a school, and I thought about how lucky I was to live a normal life.

normal?

ending lines: "I waved to the children as we got on the bus for the hour long ride back to the hotel. They had taught me so much."

"As a daughter of a working class family in hong kong..."

cue: speech on the gentry.

I know this all sounds very negative. It's just that for all the things I like about hong kong, there is a current underneath it which makes me feel hollow. It's like a discordant note in a harmony I can't exactly pinpoint, and whenever I try to it makes me sound bitter.

It's better just to laugh.

magic

2011-06-19T02:08:00.000-07:00

The past weekend my cousin invited me to chaperone his daughter's 7th birthday party. They rented a party room and hired a magician. And since it was a Korean party, there was a huge table of Korean food, gossiping mothers comparing their children, and only a sole father who showed up (my cousin). Apparently Korean fathers don't do child birthdays.

There were about 30 kids, a few Chinese and Indian kids came too, so it was a mix of yelled korean, english and chinese. It was a wild afternoon. I spent a good hour blowing up balloons and tying knots in balloons for kids who would proudly hand me the balloons they'd blown covered in slobber. It was a good way to get over my balloon phobia. I've always had a fear of balloons being popped. I hate the sound the rubber makes when it's being stretched, and a popping balloon always makes me scream. I heard before that balloon popping is actually a fetish, I once watched this video of a woman rolling around on the floor with a giant balloon and she'd giggle like crazy when it finally popped. Do not understand.

I witnessed at least 3 broken friendships (all were promptly forgotten in about 5 minutes).
Sobbing girl in frilly socks.
"They don't like my dress. They don't think I'm their friend I'm going to sit in the corner."
"Did you guys tell her you didn't like her dress?"
"NO!"
"Ok, so she can sit with you guys right?"
In a serious tone. "Well, she's our enemy."
sobbing girl cries even harder.
poutpout. 5 minutes later, they're giggling again and sharing cake.
Apparently they'd just learned the word 'enemy' in school, which made me wonder, once the word is learned then is the feeling learned as well?

I forgot how easy it is to have fun when you're a kid, there's just so much to do and see, you always run, no time to walk. One game was running onto a couch and then jumping back off it. Again and again. And then I was dragged by a crowd of girls into the bathroom where they giggled hysterically and danced in front of those funfair mirrors that make you look really squat.

The magician was an entertaining Cuban man who managed to hold their attention for an hour and a half. The kids were amazed, and I thought it was really charming and cute how a middle-aged man was dancing the limbo with kids, until he kind of ruined it afterward by asking for my number in front of my cousin and disapproving korean mothers. Then he handed me a business card after dramatically lighting his wallet on fire. yes fire in my heart.

glass bottles

2011-06-19T02:06:00.001-07:00

If I had to characterize my relationship with alcohol, it would probably be like the one between Smeagol and Gollum. A false beckoning friend, that pretends to be a comforting hand on the back, but is actually twisting your insides and freeing feelings of self-hate. It's like the scenes in the second movie, when he's crouched in the dark rocking back and forth, "smeagoll.... smeagolll." Ok that sounds dramatic even to me HA. "I told you he was tricksy..."

My family never drank much, when we were kids, my parents would split a beer with us on Fridays. Meaning, a can of beer poured and split four ways, anymore than that and they swore they felt too dizzy.
So I don't know where the fascination comes from, although my mother told me that when I was little she would push my stroller around the ABC store to look at all the glass bottles, which apparently I loved. (Proof that the south needs more places for amusement.)

Maybe it's the ritual of drinking that is so comforting. It's the sound of whiskey being poured, and the amber color of cognac on ice, and the way red wine feels luxurious and heady on the tongue. It's even true for the rubbing alcohol smell of soju. The look of the green glass bottles, and the sound of clinking soju shotglasses, even how cute the brand names are, like "chu-eum", meaning "first time".

It's been some time since I've felt comfort rather than escape, and I haven't forgotten that the alluring sense of freedom that is waiting on the other side is a false one. That the splendid banquet is a lure, there is only a sleeping creature with eyes in its hands waiting to devour you.

summer lists

2011-06-15T06:59:00.001-07:00

il volo
This past month, I've constantly been listening to an italian pop-opera (pop-era?) group called Il Volo. If you've never seen them, they look like very fashionable hobbits (not meant to be an insult, hobbits are adorable.. and I couldn't think of any other way to describe their adorableness), but they sing with these powerful voices. They're also 16, which always slightly disturbs me as their repertoire is seductive love songs, but anyway, yes the voices are otherworldly (click link above and prepare for amazement)

classics. I have been trying to read more classics, mostly because they're the only free e-books I can read on my phone. Some of them I don't understand at all (yay english degree), I think I only got through a few chapters of War and Peace. But Vanity Fair was actually very suspenseful and entertaining.

man vs wild. I know some criticize him as a gimmick, but watching the earnestness and devotion he demonstrates, I can't help but admire him. He just ... tries so hard. My reaction is usually awe and then hysterical laughter. I don't know why, the show makes me laugh harder than anything else.

game of thrones. I read the books a few months ago, before I found out about the hbo series. Starring boromir! Anyway, while I can appreciate the story and the writing, I do think the author has a sadistic streak. He enjoys torturing and manipulating his characters and readers. I watched the most recent episode and I understood the commenters who said they wouldn't watch anymore, I felt the same way when I read the first book. But like most abusive relationships, I went back in anyway. By the time I got to the third book, I chucked my phone across the room in anger (I was about to stomp on it, before I remembered it wasn't a book, it was my phone).

Summers in hong kong are so humid, stepping outside can feel like walking through water. Girls here don't seem to feel heat. In 90% humidity, girls are wearing tights and leggings. Some wear boots with pleather leggings, and sweaters. Sweaters? It makes me feel like I'm missing something, some ability. It's like when I see girls who walk long distances in high heels or the girls in Korea who wear short skirts when it's snowing. how?

pistachio ice cream.
never let me go. both the novel and the film - life changing.

to be awake

2011-06-09T03:57:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school I went through a phase where I was obsessed with Henry David Thoreau. I think most adolescents go through phases of obsession, and it wasn't like I was as obsessive as that girl in the 10 things I hate about you movie where she thinks she's going to the prom with Shakespeare. (That portrayal was a bit startling.)
It was more realistic, I read passages from Walden every day, and re-wrote lines that I thought were very inspiring into a notebook. Although it ended up I was basically copying it out.

It didn't matter that his experiment in natural isolation was basically in his mother's backyard, or that his last words were "Moose." and "Indian." Everything he wrote seemed beautiful and true. It was enough to make you want to throw out all your possessions and clear the dust from the "recesses of your mind." I suppose it could be a partial explanation for my general anti-social attitude, "Ah I have never found a companion so companionable as solitude!" right.

Even though the Thoreau phase passed, I think next up was John Donne, and then after him V. Mortensen in LOTR, I still think about Thoreau from time to time. Especially because in Hong Kong I feel like I've lost any connection to nature or the life that's free of possessions that he's talking about. I can go weeks without feeling like I'm stepping on the ground, or actually seeing a clear view of the sky. It feels artificial, and although I love the city, sometimes with all the lights, I feel like I'm like Winston in 1984 in the room where it is never dark.

The other night after a lesson I stepped outside and was hit by a familiar wondrous smell. I know how people say smells are kind of like immediate time travel, but I have such a poor sense of smell I never really understood what that meant. It was like I was a kid again, we were playing little house on the prairie, building bonfires until it was dark. I was walking around this fancy luxury apartment complex, trying to figure out the source, trying to remember exactly what the smell was.. so joyous! it was fresh grass! it was cut trees! it was days spent horseback riding at a barn on the edge of town, and just before I was going to take off my sandals and walk barefoot on true ground as Thoreau would have wanted, I realized what it was that I was smelling.

It was manure.
I was smelling fertilizer.

inadvertent

2011-06-07T22:00:00.000-07:00

I made the accidental discovery that a circuitous route that I've been taking to a cafe (about 20 minutes) could actually have been made in about 5. This entire past year I've been making a long roundabout path to a coffee shop that has always been around the corner from where I live. sigh. I'm not really sure how I didn't realize this.

The discovery was completely accidental in that I had gotten lost off the wrong bus stop and then happened upon the same street as the cafe. It was a "how did that happen?" "Did I just tesser?" It was like I was in the unfoldable world in Inception, except that I was not the 'architect'.

It's part of the reason why I was never a very good driver. I only memorized routes going from point A to point B. House to restaurant. House to supermarket. But if I had to drive from restaurant to supermarket, or something even crazier like supermarket to library, then I'd have to drive back to house and then start from there.

It makes me sympathize with those lab rats that are stuck in mazes. The ones that are supposed to get smarter each time so they run through the maze faster, find more efficient routes or they get electro-shocked. If I were a rat, I would be electro-shocked to death, hrm point A to point B...

So now I've decided to wander on purpose. In one day I found that almost every route I've been taking is basically a path that takes a wide circle around my destination. why.

outdoors

2011-06-06T00:10:00.000-07:00

The past weekend was surprisingly sporty. Well as close to being sporty as possible for me.
I think subconsciously it was a result from a conversation I had with my mother earlier in the week. She was telling me that she was frustrated because her daily gym class had been too difficult.
"How so?"
"They made us run outdoors."
"Oh your first time running?" (While my mother is good at kickboxing or generally aggressive things, her definition of running is limited to the ajumma style - which is fast walking with rhythmically swinging arms.)
"Yes..." :dejected sigh: "We ran 6 miles. I felt so tired."
"6 miles?!"
Oh. :dejected sigh: An innocent conversation always turns into a lesson in feeling inadequate. I didn't want to tell her that the most I'd ever ran was prob 5 kilometers.. and it was on a treadmill. and by accident. I'd been watching a particularly enthralling episode of CSI so I'd forgotten to fast-forward the lab scene parts.

So with new motivation, this past weekend I took my dog "hiking" up a mountain in hong kong. It was more of a walk than a hike, as the path was paved in concrete. The majority of walkers are elderly couples, they walk with sunhats and visors, armed with these long extending walking sticks which they tend to swing like weapons. They walk very briskly and with an impressive energy. The other group of walkers walk at a more leisurely pace, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee while breathing in the 'fresh' air. But if you can ignore the sharp walking sticks and smell of smoke and people posing for pictures while walking, for a moment it actually feels like being part of nature.

Afterward I took my dog to an outdoor cafe, where we were promptly ostracized by the rest of the dog walking community. Most dogs lie politely on the ground, next to their owners' feet. Mine refused to sit anywhere except on my lap with her head on my shoulder. After all the disgusted looks and not wanting to seem like an obsessed dog lady, I tried to place her on the ground, "WHY won't you stay down there?!" Each time she'd only somehow climb up my leg back onto my shoulders, clinging on koala bear style. It made eating or moving very difficult. Sometimes she'd move a little, but it was only to try to snatch food from my plate. Embarrassing.

The next day I went kayaking for the first time in hong kong. It was the first time kayaking in the ocean, I'd only ever kayaked in rivers before. We kayaked for a couple hours in a beautiful part of the ocean, to several sandbars and islands and eventually laid out on some rocks. It was amazingly peaceful and just a reminder of how beautiful hong kong can be. I'd brought a paper bag lunch which I'd forgotten and left on shore, but thankfully we hadn't forgotten the essentials - wine. yay for priorities.
And I am no longer the color of florescent lighting, so that in itself was an achievement.

--
favorite image - in a coffee shop, a very proper looking man in a business suit and white hair was tapping his feet and bobbing his head to the S&M song by Rihanna. "Feels so good being bad blahblahblah..." I think then he heard the lyrics, because by the time it got to "But chains and whips excite meee" he immediately stopped and glanced around to make sure no one had noticed.

That same song was also my 13 year old student's ringtone... I was initially disturbed, but I think her parents thought it was a song about self-worth and kindness to others. I'd asked her mother about it, and she said she knew the message. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
Right.. Could be.

like a translation

2011-05-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

One of my middle school students told me that they had just started a unit on Shakespeare. She goes to an American system school. They were going to read Romeo and Juliet.
Initially I thought great finally on par, another middle schooler student of mine who goes to a British system school was doing Romeo and Juliet as well.

She told me that they'd read the play for the first time in class.
All in one day? I asked.
And then she showed me "the play". It was entitled Romeo and Juliet at the Mall.

The opening line, "Two households alike in dignity" had been turned to "Like this is totally a sad story."
I wish I were joking.

The story continued with "and then the characters had these geeky names like Tybalt and Benvolio... not cool ones like J.Lo or Ke$ha."
"And then her nurse pulled Juliet away and totally freaked out because she was kissing some guy."
"And then the chick Juliet was like hello where are you Romeo?"
"And he was like hey hello I'm standing right underneath your balcony."
"Tybalt didn't know they were married but he should have been happy because he totally got out of buying a wedding gift... and then Mercutio was like 'screw both your houses.'"

Like no way and then they die at the end? Uncool.

While she's reading Romeo and Juliet are like dying at Verona Mall, the British school system middle schooler is reading the actual text of Romeo and Juliet and then moving on to Macbeth. They do have one "fun" project which is to do an illustrated research paper on Shakespeare and the Elizabethan era.

This American system middle schooler's project is to construct a paper mache representation of the Globe. They are also supposed to create a talk show interview between Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare.

"You know this isn't the real version of Romeo and Juliet right" (just in case.)
"Yea I know, but it's a modern translation."
"NO.. no it is not. At all!"
She shrugged.
"We are going to read the real text ok? Two houses alike in dignity yes? I want you to understand the language, the imagery, the..."
shrug.

anti gravity

2011-05-25T07:58:00.000-07:00

Hong Kong advertisements are never subtle. There are dozens of billboards and posters pasted around the subway station, on street corners. Most are aimed at women. The most common are posters for weight loss, they show a slightly pudgy girl with a downcast expression. They even print her weight, before 55 kg and then after, blown up to life-size is the same girl at 49 kg! wearing a bikini and a radiant smile.

There are posters for cleavage enhancers, skin brighteners, facial reconstruction. The least subtle are the bra ads. The message of the bra ads is quite clear: padding. Revolutionary padding that is probably manufactured in the same factory as the shoulder pads that go into a football uniform. It is a mentality that also extends to swim suits, which have hard cone padded inserts that could provide floatation.

Anyway, there are even bras that have a sling that actually fits under the chest, pushing it upward, then it has these compression things that come in from the sides to push the bust together. Something out of nothing. It defies physics. The brands have names like Voila! Illusion! Triumph!

Triumph! I cannot breathe but I have created the semblance of a figure! The model's arms are raised like an olympic gymnast who has just stuck the landing. It sounds a lot like the method that I once read was used on Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind. The producers taped her chest together to create a figure worthy of a southern belle. Apparently it cut off her circulation. Triumph!

At the risk of sounding like a shrill commentator, I wonder if Clark Gable should have had his own attempt at triumph. Some sort of anti-gravitational compressing insert/sling to make him look like he could properly fill out those tight pants of his.
Maybe I should invent one of those.

the radio said

2011-05-19T22:15:00.000-07:00

If the world were to end tomorrow
Today
I would eat a tray of oysters
Drink vodka with extra olives and vermouth
Paint my nails a red too bright.

I would chase away all mean thoughts with a big stick and
only let the bright ones in.
I would have no cruel words only kind ones.

I would listen to opera even though I don't understand the words
I would take deep breaths and watch the clouds swing past

I would watch the night parade and stars
I would hold the one I love
Hear the universe in his breath
And we would dream in color

If tomorrow the world ends.

It sounds like such an extraordinary thing, an announcement meant to cause fear and awe. When actually every tomorrow is a possible end.
I don't know why it's so easy to forget this. I only remember it in the off-moments, the hush before something begins.. the pause before the light is turned off, the moment before the water starts in the shower, and then I panic until I can forget again.

Maybe we are trained to forget, so that we don't live everyday with a frantic necessity, it would drive the world into chaos. Instead we keep our heads down and worry about the grocery bill, the cost of oil, what new things to buy.. anything to distract and cushion us from the truth.
Because the truth is harsh and it is as unforgiving as it is unknown
There will be an end, whether or not we dream in color.

oh insight

2011-05-18T22:56:00.000-07:00

12 year old student:"what is that?" She's pointing at a spot on my face courtesy of exam week and sleep deprivation.
Yay observational skills.

"It's a sign of wisdom why you want one?"

"Oh... no."

"No it's just from stress.. actually it happens in adolescence."

"Aren't you kind of old?"
-.-
"It's stress."

"From what?"

"From you. Keep reading!"

----
"Ugh I hate english it's so boring. I'm bored."

"People used to say only boring people get bored."
( great now I'm quoting my mother)

"Oh I like that quote.. I'm going to remember it."
Oh good.

--
"I'm never going to use this vocabulary... it's so useless."

Hm. "Justin bieber holds a certain Allure. When he has a concert there is Pandemonium. He has a huge Ego. If he wants to be Incognito he should use an Alias."

:Speechless: i'm guessing from awe. Or possibly horror at her idol being associated with vocab words.

25.

2011-05-15T06:17:00.000-07:00

For my 25th, we went to an Italian restaurant, one of those nice ones with waiters in bow ties, place settings and 10 different types of forks. It was a place with white tablecloths and napkins, a sure sign of elegance, as my godmother would say "real fancy. White? My goodness do they trust their customers!" Of course restaurants like that wouldn't say "customers" they wouldn't say "restaurant" they'd prefer "dining experience". The menu descriptions read like odes "angel hair capellini essence of white asparagus" "reductions" and things that are "foam". The appetizers were announced as "medallions of melon with sea salt and carrot sea foam," which then arrived as a button size cucumber slice with orange fizz on it.

I think growing up in a small itown it's hard to be discerning about food. Food was hearty, quantity is king, why be refined as long as it tastes good? Italian meant fazolis or olive garden. Steak was a slab of nuked beef with gravy or maybe even breaded. Asian meant Chinese - general tso's or orange chicken (although it's mandarin orange). Cheese was either orange Kraft slices or the powdered kind, nothing fermented or god forbid moldy. And anything slightly foreign was viewed with suspicion. It may not be like this now, but it was back then.

I remember the first time eating sushi it was a revelatory experience, although I could say the same about pancakes. So I don't know that unrefined palate is something so wrong.
I think my introduction to 'higher' dining was from my grandfather, a minister who has a taste for earthly luxury. He shook his finger at me when I stuttered over how a steak should be done -um well? "No! Rare! It should bleed on the plate!" And then he showed me by poking his with his finger til there were trails of blood.
Oh.
Trauma.
he was convinced my parents were raising me as a non lady - and decided to drag me out to eat "refined things" although that was hard to find in our town. I think as a concession we drove an hour to a red lobster.

And then in new York almost everyone was a foodie. It was something to be discussed, to have a opinion about. Food was fetishized, almost worshipped. I didn't really understand the crowds of people who would line up everyday for the sushi or the oyster bar next door (until I tried the lobster roll once - I started to believe).

I remember ordering a bottle of wine and when the waiter poured like a half cm I wondered why he was being so stingy. And then being told to "try" it? Uh OK.
Although note it is important to pay attention to the ceremony of the waiter presenting the wine and asking you to try -it would have saved me a lot of shock / embarrassment / money when a few years ago I accidentally ordered a half bottle of Lafite from the 1950s. We merrily downed it wondering why there was so much sediment stuff, and a tiny voice in my head wondered whether the waiter had really said 1956? That sounded old.. when the bill came we realized we'd chugged 600 dollars.
People asked whether I could tell the difference. Well no, at least not then.

Anyway sitting in this beautiful restaurant with a beautiful view wondering what it meant to be "grown-up" and why I didn't think oh how grown up this place is.. I guess that was the quiet realization.
And as we drank and talked and ate squid ink muffins with truffle butter, looked at the fresh cut flowers and the white linen of customer trust, I thought of time passing and how things come to be.

book it.

2011-05-02T05:55:00.001-07:00

I went to Macau over the weekend to see Ferry Corsten in an attempt to escape from the reality of exams and possible failure.
It was pretty amazing, we stood in front and just jumped around. Completely sober, but drunk on lights, although by the end my legs were shaking and I felt like I'd been running a marathon.

The only downside was that the concert was at a club, a club that just opened a few weeks ago. I guess I'm the type of person who overthinks things or feels self-conscious at the wrong times, but clubbing has always seemed a bit of a bizarre concept.

It's sort of similar to the feeling about house parties. slow realization - yes we are standing around awkwardly. We are attempting to talk to each other over loud music. We are drinking out of plastic cups. yes and we are in a house.

But try feeling hyper aware at a club. Hrm... We are standing in a room with lights and music. Males and females are going to rub up against each other rhythmically in a socially accepted imitation of fornication. (This is usually in my head in a National Geographic voice. The male ascertains a female's intentions by her attire. The female's high heels limit her mobility, but give her an exaggerated posture while the pigment which stains her lips red mimics arousal... The female then accepts the male's attempt at courtship.)

In Korea they've had a specific type of clubbing for awhile, it's called "booking". Guys pay a fee for tables at a club, and girls get in for free, but in return they are brought to the guys' table by "booking" waiters. If the guys don't like the girls they can ask for a new rotation, and vice versa. The girls drink, they talk to the guys etc, and perhaps afterward if things go well, they can move to the hotel upstairs where there is a discount rate. It's like getting a ticket validation. Booking waiters who are particularly good at matching people will receive a tip.

When people hear about this they tend to react in shock, how crass.. etc. but actually it's just very efficient. It cuts all the extraneous bits and eliminates the formality of 'hey do you want a drink?' and then the customary 10 minutes of 'dancing' that is expected in exchange.

Something that's always made me uncomfortable about clubbing in the U.S. is the way that guys dance at asian clubs. I know that it's unfair to generalize and it's a stereotype .. these are unclear statistics and as my mother would say, is this the correct sample size? But many asian guys at clubs seem to approach dancing like one would a ride at an amusement park. A group of guys will approach the 'ride' (girls who are dancing) and then surround them in a sort of semi circle and watch. They wait their turn one by one to hop on a girl and latch on until a) they are shaken off or b)are allowed to grope and grind.
if it's a) and they're shaken off, then they shrug their shoulders and leave to approach another ride, while another one of their peers decide to try doing the same.

I suppose it's necessary to recognize that it's difficult to approach a girl and it's unfair that a male is expected to make the first move and still deal with rejection. It must be crushing to tap a girl on the shoulder and ask her to dance only to be ignored or rejected.
Maybe hopping on is the only way.

But anyway in Macau at this trance concert, I realized that that approach was actually not so bad.
In Macau guys will do this watching and waiting, but they do it individually, spread out within the crowd. The worst part is, they will creep up behind a female and then stand there pretending that they are doing anything but trying to get the female to bump into their crotch. They will look at their phone, adjust their shirts, look pensively in the distance, all the while creeping towards so that one's hand or body bumps against them. And if a girl finally turns to realize that there is some creeper behind them, the guy pulls out his phone, acts like he's mortally offended but still keeps standing there.
It's disgusting and offensive... it was crass.

peep.

2011-04-22T05:47:00.001-07:00

I think I have my own wind tunnel that follows me around. It's been very disconcerting, and it occurs at unexpected times when there should be no wind at all. On my way to school, my arms are full of books and suddenly I can't see anything, I wonder what's going on (the novel blindness?) until I realize that it's just my skirt. 'oh just my skirt.'&*@#$* 'oh hello queen's road west' :frantic scramble:

One of the reasons I even began wearing skirts was to be more modest, like the long flowy kind that goes past the knee. Sometimes it makes me feel like Julie Andrews in that scene in sound of music when she's skipping around with her guitar and is all "i have confidence in sunshine!.. I have confidence in ME!"
Although I suppose that shouldn't be a positive thing because when she gets to the von trapp house one kid tells her that it's the "ugliest skirt I ever saw".
And then maria admits "even the poor wouldn't have this one."

hrm.

It's easter holiday in hong kong, it's a national holiday with 4 days off. It's interesting because the majority of people don't celebrate Easter, it would be similar to the U.S. having a day off for buddha's birthday. I think the main reason is just that hong kong just likes national holidays, or maybe it's a sign of broad cultural appreciation.
yes.

What I would really like are peeps.
My parents used to buy a box, let us eat one bunny each and then leave it outside in the garage because it was too sweet. My brother and I would sneak outside and eat them once in awhile. The open package would keep all year until the next easter. Frightening but delicious.

steering lessons.

2011-04-13T08:55:00.000-07:00

I don't know how it happened, but somehow I've become represented as an ADHD student specialist. About half my students are special needs, and without sounding fake, it actually has taught me a lot. I never really knew what to think about ADHD or 'behavioral learning challenges'. But if I ever questioned its existence, that has disappeared from trying to teach a literature class to one of my adhd students. Maybe it was the Asian upbringing, but try explaining the need for medically treating ADHD to a traditional Korean mother and she would find it ridiculous. Can't concentrate you say? Yes I have a prescription for that: Tie child to chair. Administer smacks often. Limit food consumption until the lesson is learned. Repeat as necessary.

Unfortunately I was witness to this a few days ago, one of my Korean students has a younger sister, a 5 year old who wears purple tiaras and likes to run around and color. She usually greets me at the door by slapping a sticker on my thigh and screeching "teacher teacher guess what I AM!"

Anyway that day when I came in, she was sitting in a dining room chair, crying while stuttering through "where is the dog?" Apparently her school report card had come back with a complaint that she couldn't sit still in class and that she was still behind the class requirement for reading. I spent the next two hours trying to ignore the sounds of crying and repeated smacking.

It was disturbing and not at all funny, but I wonder if later the mother will realize how ridiculous the situation was, and the amount of perspective she is missing as a parent.
screeching mother: "Where is the DOG?!"
lisping girl: "the dog ith in the"
"The where?!" smack smack.
"ith in the house?"
"No! why is my daughter so stupid? read it!"

awful. it was traumatizing.. i called my own mother afterward, which was a mistake because she got overly agitated and made me promise that next time I would interrupt the lesson and smack the mom instead.

yes totally.

--

When I first started, I was given instructions and notes about the students - various diagnoses that I would have to look up. For example, inability to convert spoken directions to paper, only learns "kinetically", must incorporate sound and rhythm in lesson, best if items rhyme..

I still don't know if I have incorporated kinetic things or rhythm in the lesson - the most I could do with that was tapping a beat on the desk when the student seems to be drifting off. The hours usually pass with my gesturing as enthusiastically as possible, writing quotes in different colors, acting out scenes. Most days this is successful and then there are the occasional days when a student starts to color inside the books, then repeatedly stabs the pages with a pen and then in the last half hour, silently shred the pages. One of my students has shredded through 5 copies of "Of Mice and Men" already. (In his defense, the book is thin)

But I've realized that the most basic thing is to be able to steer a conversation.
It makes me wonder if this is how driving school instructors feel like.. we're going off the road! off the road!

failed steering:
Discussing Streetcar named desire - student: "I have a friend who wants to name her kid stella. Actually she just got her tongue pierced last week, I couldn't tell if it hurt but omg it totally looked like it did i took a video do you want to watch it see she's not even flinching but i think she's just one of those girls who has a high pain tolerance. is that possible? see like it's so cute and it's clear so her parents have no idea she has it..." By this time the phone is out and the video is playing and yea teacher fail.

Discussing A Doll's House: "I don't get it... why is the loan such a big deal nora did it cause she loved whatshisname and it's not like she cheated on him actually i think cheating is awful like one of my friends.."
"cheating! it could cause venereal diseases like the doctor character, you see how ibsen uses the doctor as a physical embodiment of the..."
"Ew what did he have again syphilis? Like isn't that when... oh I saw the grey's anatomy episode where they all get it right, like have you seen the musical episode where they sing, you know one of them was on broadway I saw spamalot like in new york once it was hilarious my father used to make me watch like all of the old monty actually here let me show you the song - i love this song if i ever got married it would be my song... "
"Marriage! Yes what is Ibsen's view on marriage in the play... Ibsen! Ibsen!"
phone is out, song is playing. we are off the road stuck in a ditch..

successful steering:
Discussion Of Mice and Men, the puppy death scene - student: Omg so you know the dogs I have now well once they killed my pet rabbit there was bloodeverywhere and I was so...
"Rabbits, well you know that was Lenny's dream, to tend rabbits. Let's turn to that first scene about the rabbits. How is that referencing the american dream?"

--
"Is there really lots of killing in America? It seems so dangerous with the guns and stuff, like on CSI .. well it's funny there was this video parody..."
"CSI NY, well gary sinise played george in the movie version, how do you think he dealt with the ending? Is it sympathetic?"
--
"So my friend..."
"Friendship! That's a key theme in this book. Let's talk about the friendship between George and Lenny."
still on the road.

learning to walk

2011-04-13T08:10:00.000-07:00

I think my dog is going through a drama queen phase. She is super sweet and very loyal, but there are some things that she finds unforgivable. It's like living with a volatile adolescent, except her form of retribution is to urinate on the floor. We decide to not let her play in the room, she pees on the floor. I don't give her a piece of the bread I'm eating... she looks at me like I'm slowly starving her and pees on the floor. I lecture her for jumping too much... she marches over to me and pees on the floor. She acts like she's sorry but I think she gets some satisfaction watching me scrub floors.

The most embarrassing thing was when I tried to get her to walk around outside on a leash. I thought this was natural for dogs, I always see happy looking dogs following their people around, there's even dogs without leashes and dogs that hold their leash in their own mouth. I envisioned her being happy to be outside, trotting alongside me. Instead, every time she came outside, she acted like the sidewalk was burning her. She dragged her feet so that her stomach was touching the ground, and if I tried to lift her with the leash she dug her claws into the concrete so hard it left marks. She whined and cried, and people looked at me like I was trying to murder this poor animal. Eventually out of embarrassment I would lift her up and carry her home.

Last week I had to take her to the vet, she refused to walk so I carried her there. The vet's office is mid way up a hill (Hong Kong sometimes seems like a perpendicular city). Being out of shape, I was breathless by the time I got there.

I decided that I was putting my foot down. We would walk back down.
It's been three weeks! In Alaska you would be dragging me on a sled! In the cold! In wind and snow! And if I needed to win my race I would leave you behind and you would wait for me when I come back days later.
(Yes I've become one of those people who talk to their pets. -.-)
I had to drag her for a block - the one block took about 10 minutes to walk. I had angry women elbow me and a few men who grumbled as they glared. All looked sympathetically at the dog who seemed to be physically melting on the sidewalk.

I guess my lecturing and dragging inspired her. She eventually started to walk, she even seemed happy about it. Next I just have to find a sled.

conjugate that.

2011-04-06T06:43:00.000-07:00

Teaching high school students sometimes means being the target of insults. I think it's the moodiness that comes with being a teenager. It's not very healthy for me because it just makes me feel like responding with some not very kind thoughts. I've realized the best way is to respond with a discussion about grammar.

Student: "Wow if I was you I would never have studied English. It's so dumb."
yea so dumb That's why you can't understand it.
smiling "Well now, that's a great example of when you should use the subjunctive. This is wishful thinking, so you should have said if I were you... Let's discuss that."

--
Meeting my student after a sleepless night of cramming for exams and wearing my woody allen glasses...
Student:"What have you been doing? You look awful." :smirk:
nice to see you too. sigh..
sitting slowly "That's interesting, you chose to use the present progressive verb tense... Let's talk about how you would conjugate that. What about the past does the present progressive suggest? Why shouldn't you have used the present perfect tense? Let's discuss that."

--
Student:"Why aren't you wearing makeup today? Your face looks better when you do."
well too bad nothing can be done about your face...
"Well that's a good example of using parallel construction when comparing things... map out this sentence. Let's discuss that."

It's like conditioning. Insult me and we will learn grammar until it's painful.

endeavors

2011-04-02T19:11:00.001-07:00

I've been trying to become better at cooking.

I was never a natural cook. I don't know if it's because I lack the imagination or a sense of timing. Maybe it's that I'm too absentminded, but cooking for me is an exercise in chaos... dodging flames, falling knives and spills.

Anyway this year I've decided to be better. I had an image of myself as capable, sophisticated, maybe even elegant. The result has not been any of those things.

What have I made these past couple weeks?
Skillet fried pork chops. Breaded fried chicken. Chicken fried pork. (who knew that was possible?) fried potato skins. Corned beef hash with home potatoes. I did make pasta one night, but it was in a 3 cheese alfredo sauce, recipe reviewers said it was modeled after Olive Garden's. oh sophistication. -.-

Fortunately the recipient of my cooking is appreciative, probably because he's amused by the novelty of american cuisine. Unfortunately for me (and him I suppose), he's a natural cook. His cooking involves things like dry rubs, effortless wine sauces, subtle spices.
How about seared lamb in a wine reduction?

If someone gave me lamb i'd probably just bread it and fry it.

loops

2011-03-29T05:14:00.000-07:00

I found cheap bagels a couple weeks ago. I think bagels must be a relatively new thing in Asia. I remember visiting korea as a kid; the only thing one of my aunts would ask for was 1 pack of bagels, which she would freeze and savor over a couple months. It was too bad we couldn't bring over cream cheese, she said she would dream about it.
When my grandmother came to stay with us for a couple months, she was very disconcerted about the bread with the hole in it. She looked at it like it was deformed, I suppose since she's so frugal she could reuse the same piece of aluminum foil for years. I told her the bread was supposed to be like that. "You pay for a hole in your bread?" and she shook her head, upset that we would let ourselves be cheated this way. We also took her to a dunkin donuts - which only led to more head shaking.

But bagels remind me most of the woman I worked for in college. I was her "personal assistant". The quotations make it sound shady, but I only mean it in that personal assistant doesn't really seem to fully cover my responsibilities. She hired me my first week in New York, the official job description was something like "letter writer", although the small print would have said 'laundry deliverer, personal shopper, courier, housekeeper.' I qualified for two reasons, good handwriting and naivety. Good handwriting because I wrote letters for her, and naivety because I never questioned anything she asked of me.

She was a single lady in her 60s living the wealthy life in New York, she was concerned with upkeep and playing the dating field.
The first time I'd ever heard of the concept of bikini waxing was from her. She wanted me to book her an appointment, "Brazilian" she said. "And ask them what Swarovski crystal designs they have.. or maybe well ask them if it interferes if I decide to go for a bit of a runway instead."

On my notepad, I'd written "Brazil? Swar crystal? being on a runway?" I thought she meant interfering with airplane travel.
It was a fun and instructive phone conversation.

She was on a very strict eating plan, which involved a detailed grocery itinerary. Diet Chocolate soda cans from a shop on the lower east side, vegan muffins from Avenue B, a 'small' portion of tasti delite in a 'large' cup. (I suppose that's psychological). I once came home with a medium size portion of tasti delite in the large cup because a worker had tried to be generous with me. I thought it was a nice gesture too, but apparently I had brought chaos into her day's food plan.
"What am I supposed to do? My GAWD what am I supposed to do? What can I possibly do?!"
thinking: "um... just don't eat all of it?" such a genius solution deserves a raise.

The lady had very specific directions that were also extremely vague. She would have made an excellent politician. Every day was a scavenger hunt, the shopping list she would leave on the desk for me would have descriptions like

"rice cereal puff, green and pink label, a bunny or a small child's face on it."
"lean cuisine meal - 135 calories, beef or lamb label with cream? fusilli?"
"currant jam french or italian brand, purple sticker label, picture of seeded fruit."
"salad dressing. swirly with seeds in it."

And every other week or so, she would buy a dozen bagels. I would get them fresh from a shop in the east village, these huge bagels the size of a face. When I got to her home I would carefully scrape out the filling with a sharp grapefruit spoon until all that was left was the rind. And on the counter when I left would be stack of autopsied bagels.

Of all the things, that was the thing I felt was so bizarre.

At the beginning I'd attempt to eat the inside part because I hated leaving it to waste, but it seemed kind of demeaning, and I couldn't ever finish 12 bagel fillings.

My grandmother would have shaken her head.

always summer

2011-03-28T23:48:00.000-07:00

One of my students is a very clever girl, a rare thing I've realized. She's 10 years old and applying for boarding school. She manages to sit patiently through 2 hour lessons of mapping sentence grammar and gravely talk about world issues like the death penalty, environment, Libya, the problems of poverty, the middle east conflict.

Most of the time she gives very nuanced answers, but I can tell that there are times when steadfast childlike logic takes over. "Why can't we just tell them to stop fighting" was one. "Why can't we just split the land in half? Right in the middle." It's almost painful for me to have to respond with a counter argument, so that she has to consider the "worldly realities" when she has such pure answers already.

I know that increasingly simple answers are considered naive, and it's true that people with steadfast conviction and stubborn faith sometimes frighten me, but in a child, it is a lovely thing.
Anyway last lesson I asked her to write about a childhood memory, as a kind of break from essays about war and poverty. I thought like most girls she'd write about going to an amusement park, or her favorite birthday party. I asked her to read it aloud, and I soon realized she was writing about the last day with her dog.

It was a simple story about the dog she'd grown up with, one of two puppies that their family had adopted, one for her and one for her sister. Yellow Labradors with "gold fur the color of the sun's smile in summer" she said. Her dog had to be put down because of cancer, and she wrote that they'd had a picnic and a tea party so that "her dog wouldn't know what was going on", and that they'd taken one last family photograph in the mountains before they took the dog to the vet.

I had managed to hold it together, until the end when I rather unprofessionally started crying. "I used to worry and wonder whether there's a dog heaven. But I don't wonder anymore, because I can see her running there. It's always summer, and she looks so happy... I know that she's waiting for me like she always did."

gestures

2011-03-28T22:19:00.000-07:00

The past year has opened up so much more of Hong Kong to me, it's like I've seen a completely different city. I've even gained more confidence in Cantonese.

The extent is still limited to pointing at things and saying "This!", and handing over the correct amount of money without taking several minutes to translate in my head. But I think it's mostly that the intimidation and fear has lessened. I have learned to buy baskets of dimsum from a sidewalk shop (shumai fish dumplings are only $14hk for a kilo.. which converts to $2US for a half pound? 10 ounces? something cheap), socks from the lady screaming into a loudspeaker (socks don't just sell themselves!), get bus money from the recycling men who pay for paper and metal by the kilo.

small steps.

After all this time my lack of cantonese ability has made me realize that I probably should have listened to everyone's advice and just began with mandarin. It only took me 2 years to accept this.

My mandarin teacher is a very jolly looking lady. She has a way of speaking that makes it sound like she's laughing at the same time. She also has a habit of smacking my arm when I don't answer correctly, or shaking my shoulder when I'm not speaking loudly enough for her. I'm never sure whether I should be afraid or laughing.

We sit at the coffee shop, loudly gesturing at each other. She likes to act out things, rather than explain them. And because I'm confused I mirror them back at her.
I'm sure we look like we're half-mad, especially because of the occasional smacking. But I've given up being self-conscious and any attempt at dignity. I'm trying to learn a language don't judge.

From the beginning, she has never taught me in English, so most of the time the lesson is her rattling something in mandarin and me saying "sorry shenme? what?" and then her smacking me and pointing her middle finger at my head, as in "Use your brain" until I finally figure it out.
Violent charades.

I'd made the point of telling her at the first lesson that I wanted hardcore teaching, tough love, none of this "Ni Hao" "Ni Hao" for an hour. I want tough! I'd said.
She looked skeptical, saying that Chinese education tough and American tough is different.

Apparently so.

rainbows

2011-03-28T03:24:00.000-07:00

I've been attempting to walk more ever since I was inspired / guilted by an article about a 90 year old man who runs the New york marathon each year... when he crosses the finish line, he celebrates by downing shots of scotch.

I was walking home from work the other day when I saw three women. They looked like the type of women my mother would go to church with. Frosted hair and manicured nails, color coordinated outfits from Talbots and Ann Taylor, and bags made of fabric patchwork.
For a moment I wondered if I was seeing projections, some mental flicker. But no there they were at the corner of Western district, the three of them huddled over a map, standing in front of a dried fish stall and next to a counter where a man was solemnly chopping the hooves off a pig's leg. They flinched each time he slammed his cleaver.

They were trying to look like they weren't lost, but unfortunately it was dinner rush hour, and they stood out, a solitary still island jostled by the waves of people pushing to catch a bus home.

I asked them where they were trying to go. And they turned to me, blankly relieved. They wanted to go see the light show they said. They were going to take the ferry to the pier, to see the lights from the harbor.
"I was so worried we'd" one of them said, her voice lowering to a whisper, "wandered into the wrong part of town.."
Wrong part of town? "Um.."
"You know like we'd accidentally crossed into the ghetto."
She giggled as she gestured around her. The man with the pig feet was still cleaving grimly and glaring at us.

I laughed too, couldn't help it. The ghetto? I guess she hadn't noticed my grocery bags.
"No this is not the ghetto... " Far from it lady... look at the cities in the U.S. "No this is a real nice area." Real nice area? my English. "Actually I live here. It's residential. Kind of like the suburbs. A real nice area." I repeated. Not really like the suburbs at all, but I didn't know what else to compare it to.

She looked slightly surprised, still unconvinced, like she wanted to say something, but she only said thank you.
As I watched them walk away, I wondered what it was that she saw. Perhaps it was just after seeing the chemical shine that is downtown central, the decapitated pigs and ducks hung by their long necks was a shock. The rows and rows of mysterious looking dried things set out on the sidewalk, the laundry flapping outside the windows of what seem like grimy buildings, the men with rolled up sleeves pushing carts of trash, the flickering lights of chinese lettering, the bamboo scaffolding with men sitting on it, while shoveling rice and chopped goose into their mouths.

I suppose I understood why they were confused. It's the panic of seeing any new place, it's hard to see past the foreignness. I remember the first time I saw New York, it was orientation week at NYU. I came out of 4th street station, duffel bag in hand, and all I could see were the rows of 6th avenue sex shops and the court where guys played pick up basketball, while people cheered and rattled the chain link fence. There was a small area of benches were people were sleeping and a man sweating in a huge coat was screaming into a megaphone and passing out pamphlets. And I thought oh no... what have I done.

Of course a year later, I was living behind those 6th avenue sex shops, and realized that what seemed like dark mysterious streets were actually expensive oyster bars and underground wine clubs. And the basketball court, a place for talent agents to scout new talent.

With more time, they would have noticed that within the rows of what seem like carelessly dried seafood, a fistful of dried maggot-like things is the cost of a small diamond, and a few dried phallic shaped sea cucumbers is worth more than a fabric pattern bag. They would have heard that the high humidity is what makes the buildings look rusted. And underneath they would have seen the buildings shine in pastel paint, robin's egg blue, mint green, and vivid orange.

As I walked the rest of the way home, I remembered riding the ferry by myself in the first year, whenever the dust and chemical clouds seemed to be suffocating and too dark. And I would watch the way dancing lights shone through the fog, like seeing the faint rainbows in spilled oil.

counting

2011-03-06T07:09:00.000-08:00

The past weeks, I've moved on from self-help books back to fantasy. I guess I'd had enough of drawing mind maps and reading about list making and circular sleep cycles and mice.. Instead moved on to sci-fi vampires (the passage!), dragon eggs and war of the roses.
"nerd!" says the crowd

Someone recommended Game of Thrones to me - I can't remember who.. but I wish I could thank them, so good I finished it in a day.

I've been reading books on my phone, which is probably burning my eyes from the inside, but it's so addicting, and even better causes it's not embarrassing to carry. I used to read a book while I walked, but it looked pretentious and seemed to invite people to knock into me. Now I just look busy. I know that I should be spending my energy reading the law - but I guess reading pages and pages on debating the official procedures of how to "summon" someone (just summon them?) or "deliver a letter" (just deliver it to them?) isn't very compelling.

--
I finally taught my dog to shake hands. Maybe not that momentous, but after two weeks of bribing and begging - and finally to resigning myself that maybe my girl just wasn't the future Lassie ":shrug: who needs smarts anyway, my love for you is unconditional... Ahh please just shake hands!" she finally did it. sigh so proud.

--
sometimes I feel like I'm in that scene in the matrix, where neo is surrounded by numbers and code - except that while he reaches out with a hand in a cool keanu way, my life is like code fragments pouring down on me.
Dates are wrong, my timing is wrong or off by weeks. I prepped for an exam that was apparently a week later, I went to class and when I got there campus was closed (I was 2 days early), I tried to watch the super bowl, but miscalculated the time difference, then did the same thing with the oscars. I don't know what's wrong with me.

I have one very coherent memory about numbers from when I was a kid. We'd just learned the time tables in school, up to the 8s. 1x2 is 2. 2x2 is 4 blahblah - kind of an annoying chant that I was cheerfully chanting in the car on the way back home. To me it seemed more like a poem of sounds, rather than numbers. We pulled up to the garage, and my father, always the mathematician asked me what 8x12 was. I told him we'd only learned up to the 8s, 8x8. And he said that if I understood the concept of numbers I should be able to figure it out. And that I couldn't leave the car until I'd figured it out - and then he went inside, shut the car doors and locked the garage. My kindergartener brother stayed with me in the dark, and tried helpfully to count with his fingers and toes.

I think this was supposed to be my father's Gausss-like experiment - Gauss, the mathematician who as a child was forced to add all the numbers from 1-100 as a punishment, but then did it in like 5 minutes to the amazement of his teachers. He'd figured out some theorem.
Obviously I was not Gauss. or a prodigy. I didn't understand the concept of numbers. It took so long my father lost track of the fact that we were inside, because eventually he came looking for us, and asked us what we were doing in the car.

I'm still not sure what 8x12 is. hah

Kids

2011-01-19T05:42:00.000-08:00

2011 realizing time really has passed when a 16 year old student said to me very wearily, "kids these days".
Which made me want to snap "yea you're right, kids these days...You kid!"
although I suppose she doesn't think she is one. That day she was wearing her I <3 BJ shirt.
Which wouldn't be anything, as BJ apparently refers to Beijing, (I asked) but at the end she'd written an "s" in black sharpie.
Clever.
Along with the middle schooler kid who wrote an essay on conformity about giraffes with phallic necks and another middle schooler who chose to write about buying jeggings for the topic "If I could change one mistake in my life it would be..."
I felt weariness.

I suppose that's how my shipping professor feels- a very old and dignified British man who speaks about ships as though he were from a time when those new fangled 'aeroplanes' just wouldn't do.

Our class is a lesson in failing geography
"is anyone familiar with the ports in Turkey? No?"
silence
"oh well.." continues with a disapproving stare.

"how about ***?"
silence
"ah that is a small port town in India on the southern part near the isles of ******

"Is anyone familiar with German geography?"
a german student raises hand
"have you heard of port vuw@&$?"
german student looks down in shame.

I suppose his distaste is justified, especially as I still giggle each time he says "seamen"
sigh.
Kids these days.

New year, I'm ready.

am present.

2010-12-28T08:44:00.001-08:00

my booklist has been taken over by a series of self-help books. Never thought I'd be the person to say, "so i was just reading this book about love languages and..."
=.=
But it is addicting, each seems to hold a promise of some self-improvement.
currently - how to control your emotions. ha great.

Was reading an interview, the writer was saying how hard it was for her to remember what person she was. Vague, but somehow I understand exactly what she means.
Floating along - in some space. And then suddenly with a jolt - perhaps on a bus, sometimes in the middle of a lesson, on an escalator. This isn't right. Wait I'm a alive. Where am I supposed to have been? And as I stumble and fall, it's like I've become an abstraction. And I have to grasp at something, some certainty, what was past what was present. What was merely a dream, what was real, what was imagined. what made me happy. what is being sad.

And then like those schoolday equations a=b=c, a=c.. slowly, the mind reaches and slow steps, dogs with caramel spots, ice cream left on a spoon, covers spread like the ocean, slow certainties, moment caught, bodies alphabet shapes, skylights from a bus, and the present is present. am present. and that is All There Is.

New things.

2010-11-05T01:05:00.001-07:00

I like.

Riding the tram in autumn. Especially at night when it's quiet and all you hear are the sounds of metal and rail.
Milk swirls in coffee. (everytime makes me hear that lyric - clouds in my coffee)

The diner scene in True Romance - it's perfect.

Looking out the window to see sky. If I could I'd walk around with my head tilted upwards. Or maybe ask for another set of eyes on the top of my head.

Disney songs. Walking around with a very serious expression and headphones. What hard-core music could she be listening to?
"He could clear the savanna after every meal! Lalalala"

Hku library 'leisure reading'. People don't do anything for leisure, much less read. so all mine :)

Black hair. Honey. The moment of a student finally understanding something. Rare but it happens.
Description in duras' the lover - the paper thin dress and gold heels. Bright umbrellas in grey rain.
Dreamless sleep.

Physics

2010-10-21T01:00:00.000-07:00

Never understood the physics of falling up stairs.
And yet it happens to me so often it's like a disease.
And all I can think as I try to pick myself up off the ground with some dignity is.. "how?"

perspective

2010-10-12T03:08:00.000-07:00

The life that I have is all that I have
And the life that I have is yours.
The love that I have of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have, a rest I shall have
And death will be but a pause
For the years I shall have in the long green grass
Are yours and yours and yours.

-WWII

apparently was used as a code
Funny to imagine secrets in an open heart,
war in a love poem.

march madness

2010-09-21T06:02:00.000-07:00

Whenever I tend to feel like a failure, I remind myself that it could always be worse.
During middle school, I made a very misguided decision to start playing basketball. It was a short-lived and horrific basketball season.

By then, I had achieved a height of four feet, wore thick glasses, and had no concept of athleticism. My only knowledge of basketball came from watching Space Jam during after school daycare, and even then I was pretty sure that Michael Jackson was the name of the lead. I'd heard he could also sing some.

My mother had already recognized my lack of sports ability. A pragmatist,she didn't see the point in wasting my time in encouraging something I didn't have, so she had failed to introduce my brother or me to any form of physical activity. (Well she made a mistake on him, the athletic overachiever that he is).

She bought us a basketball to play with when I’d told her I needed to practice, but neglected to install a hoop because it was too expensive. And you know, how necessary is a hoop in basketball anyway.

But being resourceful, we noticed a cluster of odd colored bricks on the wall above the garage, and figured it was a lucky coincidence - it could be our target.
So we spent our afternoons throwing the ball against the side of the house, aiming for the trio of bricks above the garage.

I was very dutiful during practice, running when the coach told us to run, tossing up the basketball for lay-ups. I remember feeling like it was such a pointless exercise, running back and forth. The coach only ever yelled two things, “Pivot!” and “Backboard!” And I had no idea what either instruction meant.

As no one bothered to explain the rules to me, I learned from trial and error. No running while carrying the ball. it was cheating to stop and then run and start dribbling again. Pushing and tackling - illegal.

I was a starter on the team so needless to say, most of our games were a failure. I don’t remember winning a single one, or even making a basket. The only thing I was somewhat good at was defense. I was good at knocking people over, and that was mostly an accidental skill. Already being low to the ground, people tended to trip over me.
The one time I did have the ball - after tripping a poor giant of a girl, my own teammate took it away from me. I'd been running the wrong way.
So when facing failure I think of basketball. It can't be as bad as that.

autumn nights

2010-09-14T05:27:00.000-07:00

I saw stars for the first time in weeks last night.
I was frustrated because I'd just missed the bus, and the next one wouldn't be for half an hour... And as I put down my bag to sit and pout, I looked up. There they were. The moon, stars - caught in the sky which was black and slick as oil - still wet from the past days of rain.
And breathing - I heard the waves taking the shore, footsteps of children running on the sand, and the sounds of silverware and diners from the restaurant balcony - and above it, peaceful again those stars waiting to be noticed.

On these types of summer autumn nights, I think of days from elementary school

We'd just seen the disney Pocohantas - and so for weeks my brother and I would play Indians in the backyard. We were the Indian tribe - and the sun was the settler. Our land was the shade, and wherever the sun hit belonged to 'them'. As the day passed, the sun rose further and further, and pushed out, we were stuck playing in the tree branches, shaking our fists at the sun until eventually it crept away to nighttime. Victorious, we would light a bonfire and chase fireflies with glowing ember sticks. We'd smoke makeshift "pipes" that were stuffed with old herbs, and hollered disney rhymes of what we thought was an indian song.

(which actually thinking now was a really inappropriate song from peter pan - 'what makes the red man red? what makes the red man redddd. you squaw! go fetch firewood!")

I remember mostly the moments before the sun would set and we could claim 'our land' - lying under the oak tree, where there was a slight mossy bank scattered with dark violets. And we would lie there breathing in violets, waiting for the shadows to come back, while the sunlight filtered down in streams through the oak leaves lighting up the helicopter seeds which floated and clung to the branches around us.

i confess i do not believe in time.
nabokov

Starlit

2010-09-14T01:22:00.001-07:00

School has started, and I’ve taken to studying at the mall. I used to try studying at the school library, but it was like a factory straight out of some sci-fi movie. Rows and rows of desks with fluorescent lighting and kids hunched over silently in frozen stares at their textbooks. After a few minutes it's enough to make you feel like clawing yourself just to feel / hear something.

The only problem with the mall is that there are so many distractions. After an hour or so, I usually end up wandering into the bookstore upstairs to browse. Browsing a couple pages turns into reading the entire book while standing in a corner, trying to avoid the glares and elbows of salespeople.

The other day I tried to avoid that temptation by sitting at the opposite end of the mall from the bookstore. Instead I ended up wandering into the cinema and watching a movie. I had the choice of either Bright Star or the Expendables. It’s sad to say, but it took me a while to decide on bright star.. (so much for being an English major).

My memory of keats is a particularly bitter semester of romantic poetry where I felt horribly out of place, surrounded by people who wore tweed and smoked hand-rolled cigarettes. They carried scuffed and vintage briefcases (meant to be ironic) while I carried a Chinatown totebag with a talking panda on it. They could sit straight-faced while our professor talked about about the mastubatory elements in so and so and the obvious vulvic references in blake. And then there was me trying not to giggle, but mostly feeling strangely foreign and confused – is vulvic a word? What? I thought this was a poem about hell?
“yes the paternal references in this passage where blake is keenly babblebabble- a clever suggestion to the female vulva’s motivations of paternal angst and emotional need to be filled.” Filled?
*tweed wearer raises hand. “actually I felt that it would be more accurate to characterize that as a clitoral conceit.”
I wish I was joking.

But anyway while watching Bright Star, I started to forget about that semester, and even felt a bit open to keats. The love story was beautiful in its own way– these two lonely people finding each other, but then having it end without ever beginning.

When the movie finished and the credits began, something strange happened. People were getting up to rush toward the exit, when the actor’s voice came on, reciting one of keats’ odes. There was a hush, and everyone in the theatre was still, and stayed. No one moved… listening to those words until the credits had finished and the lights came on. It was the first time I had felt a sense of complete quiet in hong kong. Of suspended action, and it was beautiful.

Thinking of sad love stories, I recently re-watched the korean movie, A Moment to Remember. I came across it online while I was on a bus. I don’t know why I thought it would be a good idea to watch it, it makes the notebook seem uplifting. I ended up crying so much that it was actually physically painful, and got random looks from strangers who probably wondered if they were witnessing a mental breakdown.
I’m glad no one came up to me… I would have felt the need to come up with a justified reason to be crying in public. “Korean drama” doesn’t really sound like a legitimate excuse.

2010-09-12T05:49:00.000-07:00

I spend my time walking
so much that now the polluted air just seems like a mist
a mist to walk through

Somedays I feel like I'm walking a neverending road through candyland.
egg tarts, mango drinks, coconut milk with sago, pineapple buns, and custard rolls, shaved ice with condensed milk and sugar beans, sour fruit candy.
By the end my skin feels stained by sugar.

I realized while riding in a taxi yesterday that people in hong kong must think I sound very rude - my lack of vocab makes me sound like a toddler (although to be honest a toddler could probably outspeak me) Things have improved a lot, now that i've stopped calling cab drivers "SiuJe (Miss!)" (In my defense, I thought it meant Excuse me) but still.. translated with what i understand. a cab conversation goes like:

driver: "chinesechinesechinese go asdfawerasdv where?"
me: "address"
driver: "asdfwaerawvasg traffic. lots cars. aweravawebserf way?"
me: "fast"
driver: "awgasdvawer asdfasdf"
me: "yes." smile.
driver: "asdfawerawer"
me: "yes. faster."
driver: SIGH.

and the words of Buffy:

"Lots of people lose themselves in love. It's no shame. They write songs about it. The hitch is, you can't stay lost. Sooner or later, you have to get back to yourself."
"And if you can't?"
"If you can't... Well, love becomes your master, and you're just its dog."

kindness of strangers

2010-09-09T01:10:00.000-07:00

The other day I got my dress stuck in an escalator in Central. I was wearing a long dress, the kind that goes to the floor. It made me feel miles tall, and for some reason there’s some imagined elegance in wearing a floor-length dress… Although there’s probably nothing elegant about cleaning the floor with your clothing as you walk. A public service maybe?

Anyways it was right before the lunch hour rush, and I was trying to sprint shuffle down the escalators – a sandwich in hand, a book in the other. Mid leap, I felt a sharp tug pull me back.

When I turned I saw that the fabric had been caught in the stair. I was absentmindedly tugging at it still eating my sandwich – but it just kept getting more and more consumed by the escalators – until I was at the bottom and the dress was caught up to my knee.
A man behind me was yelling– and before I knew it, he'd sprinted to the bottom and on the floor tugging at my dress. I told him it was fine, but he kept saying it was dangerous – and I giggled as I had this image of myself being dragged and shredded into a smeared, bloody mess into the escalator.

This was then replaced by the more realistic and even more horrifying image, the dress ripping off me and me being left to wander around central without clothing. Then I started panicking too and pulling frantically at it.

Somehow in the midst of it, someone pressed the emergency stop, and the business people in suits were forming a small crowd around the two of us and bickering amongst themselves about what advice to give me. “Just cut it off.. No don’t ruin the dress, call management. I think you can reverse the escalator some way. Just pull at it, it’s not that stuck. Go get some scissors. Who gets stuck in an escalator?”

Eventually the only way I got out was by being cut out of my dress – which the man did handily because (like so many hong kong people) he was carrying nail clippers – massive ones, like industrial size.

By the end, any possibility of imagined elegance was sadly and decisively gone. I was left wandering looking like I'd been mauled by forest animals, but I told the man it looked chic. My students probably thought I was trying to make a statement.

Victory for nail clippers.

to dream.

2010-07-23T23:45:00.000-07:00

All my dreams lately end the same way... with me killing someone. It'll begin a quiet scene, a kitchen table, hands deep in flour; in a classroom florescent lights above ; on a bus legs sticking to vinyl seats. And then just as quietly a person will appear. And I know without question that this is my enemy. And I do not hesitate. I do not run. I merely lunge. Quiet desperation.
vegetable peeler to the throat. Pencil to the heart. Umbrella across the skull. And then blood spills and I wonder about cannibals and reversing time and rage, but mostly I feel sad. A shivering red sad..
And then I wake up.

I blame the jetlag. 'blame it on the a a a alcohol baby.'

Anyways... speaking of dreams. Inception.
It's been awhile since I've been lost within a story and its telling.

I saw the movie in Chicago when I was visiting my brother. He was determined to not let me see the movie by myself. Somehow he finds my watching movies alone the saddest thing - I've found that all I have to say is, "When i was watching that..well you know, by myself..." :trail off: - and suddenly I've gained immediate power over him.

But I've always liked going to the theater alone. Sitting in a dark cool theater... when I know that outside in the city it's hot and the sun is melting and people are bumping against each other. It's so freeing and calming, randomly deciding to spend a few hours alone in some other place.. although of course, in New York a lot of the time a movie theater audience in the daytime can be a distracting experience. I'll look over and see in another row some man muttering and jacking off, usually to something wholly unerotic... like Ratatouille or The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Anyway, this time in Chicago - I was amazed by this machine that dispenses liquid butter. You press a lever and there's an endless stream of butter (? yellow colored oil?) to drown your popcorn in. The machine is parked away from the concession stand, right outside the theater door, in case you know - one is ever in need of more butter midway through the movie. I took pictures of it, and forced my brother to buy us popcorn, "Well you know :sigh: i usually don't get popcorn cause i can't finish it when i'm watching movies BY MYSELF.." for the experience of this butter dispenser. We ended up with more butter than popcorn, but still... pressing the lever felt like 'Americaaaaa'.

It did feel kinda strange going to the theater with my brother... when we were growing up movie theaters were a banned place. We were in a compressed bubble of carefully filtered books and encyclopedias, fiction was limited to Wind in the willows - where animals talked and had picnics (wild!) or abridged versions of Shakespeare. And while I knew faintly that there were stories of other 'wilder' things, there are limits to the imagination. It was in grade school, our class took a field trip to the local theater (I don't know why that counts as a field trip) to watch the Special Edition version of Star Wars.. the moment Carrie Fisher came out with the doughnut hair and the stormtroopers shot their taser guns, the world I knew multiplied and seemed to explode in all the possibilities. It was like being in a trance. A new dream of robots and light years, outer space and galaxies.. fiction. And when the movie ended I cried. At the sheer beauty and visceral impact of it.

When I told my mom of my new-found experience of 'rapture' and how there were sequels! and all I had to do was go to a theater to find out what was going to happen, she was rather unimpressed. And so I ended up savoring that memory for a few years,.. Until some years later I found out what happened in the rest of the story. Which was also even crazier than I could have imagined - although by then I'd replayed so many fantasies of Luke and Leia together that I almost vomited when I found out they were twins.

Anyway.. this has turned too many tangents - but Inception - I have to say, made me remember that moment again. Of being a girl frozen in my seat, eyes wide as the credits came on.. and understanding that line, "that, when I wak'd I cried to dream again."

river tubing pros.

2010-07-21T22:10:00.000-07:00

I spent independence day weekend river tubing on the james river. River tubing is probably the most Southern concept of an outdoor activity, as activeness is not a requirement. The most strenuous part is the occasional sit-up in order to reach your cooler of beer. The concept is to sit in an inner tube for several hours as the 'current' - (which is snail pace) floats you along a river. To prevent this from being a very boring activity, heavy drinking is involved.

The beer is strapped in its own inner tube, which is then tied to your foot. Amateurs like us had one cooler for the 5 of us to share. We were to realize that pros have a cooler per person.

The pros - well not to label, but the only word to use would be - rednecks. So southern that even the kentucky blue I grew up with would have blushed at the caricatures they were. (But since rednecks is offensive, I'll just use 'river tubing pros') The river tubing pros came in groups - spilling out of pick up trucks - beer guts proud, tattoos out, the women in confederate bikinis. (I have no idea where one goes to buy a bikini with good ol' Dixie printed on it - I wish I'd asked). The tattoos were variations of cherry stems with dice and flames emblazoned on skulls -usually with a large cross for good measure. They were obviously expert at river tubing, one hand holding a half-lit cigarette and the other tying easy slip knots for each of their beer coolers, which as one man announced to our group were filled with "Schlitz - a 12 pack is 3 bucks y'all!" PAUSE. as he seemed to mentally try to calculate, but then turned and walked away, implying 'well don't know how much one beer comes out to be. but if it ain't cheap!'

The only drawback to this river tubing activity becomes obvious later. As you float along this river, eyes closed, sun beads on your face, feeling 'one with nature', ice cold beer in hand, thinking... I am the sky. yes I am the trees. I understand you spirit of the river. I will ask the grinning bobcat why he grins. And hrm whatever else is in that colors of the wind song..

And as you hear the sound of water on your skin, pebbles and moss at your dangling feet - every so often a sudden warm current will pass by and then another and another... and as you wonder, you will realize you are downstream of half a dozen floating river tubing pros - who are pissing their 12 pack schlitz's in the river. 5 hours on a river - with coolers packed with beer - becoming one with nature = adding to the water cycle.

that seems to define independence.

had i

2010-07-16T19:52:00.000-07:00

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

wb yeats.

listlessly listing

2010-05-07T02:50:00.000-07:00

It's exam time... and my mind will only think in abbreviated list form. sigh.

Things that are under appreciated:

Pigeons - it wasn't until I got to new york that I realized people didn't love pigeons... that actually pigeons were something disliked.
The calming, scurrying sound their little claws make, and the soft cooing, the rustling of their wings as it releases caught dust.. oh pigeons. =]

My childhood memory of pigeons was the scene in mary poppins with the pigeons swirling "feed the birds.. tuppence a bag". In the summers when we visited Korea, every morning my brother and I would beg my mom to let us go on the hour walk up a mountain with my grandmother to feed the pigeons with handfuls of sweet popped corn.

I tried feeding pigeons once at wash sq park, only to get some woman snap in horror, "what, why are you feeding them!? are you actually feeding them??"
I fed pigeons one last time at a plaza in venice during a year abroad (where this was actually encouraged) I held the birdseed in my hands, scattered it on my arms, running as pigeons landed on me as my friends watched in horror.

And now, since I've moved to hong kong, pigeons feed us, as a culinary dish. For some reason the restaurants always serve them in deconstructed broiled pieces with the head proudly propped on the plate. As if the customers need some more proof that the bird has truly been conquered.
There's something operatic about it. "Where's its head?! bring me the head of this bird! So that it can gaze at me while I feed upon it."

mayonnaise - mayonnaise is so good.. I know it's unhealthy and like butter, might as well be a product of demons.
In new york there were many butter haters - this woman at the office cafeteria would order her omelette with a frantic intensity, "egg whites. only the whites. no noo butter, no butter no butter! and a spritz of - hello! JUST a spritz please of Pam."
While I'd be getting my bowl of grits with tabs of butter melted in.. and she would walk past me and leave me with a glance of pitied disgust.

but yes. mayonnaise makes everything better.

During nutritionally dark days in london (and economic semi-darkish days), if I was tired of ketchup and peas or wanted to refrain from eating oatmeal for dinner.. I'd treat myself to rice with mayo mixed in.
mmm. try it.

electric fans - Korean people have this "medical" fear of electric fans. Specifically of sleeping with one on or blowing on your face in a closed room. It is believed that this will kill you. It's called 'fan death'. I don't really know the explanation, I've heard all the different ones from: your body forgets to breathe, or the fan takes all the air out of the room in some air vortex, or your body develops hypothermia... And most Korean people I know will say this in all seriousness. Colleges do tests and there've been several scientific studies on the mystery of 'fan death'. (All the theories are listed on wikipedia - 'fan death')

When I was little, I asked my mom if death by hypothermic air vortex was the reason she would never let me sleep with a fan on, she said that no, she just wanted to save money on electricity.

That explanation made more sense.

fictions.

2010-05-05T02:35:00.000-07:00

it's one of those hawk-eyed nights
where even i seem to have wings
feeling haunted
by wind
by the promise of metal under my feet and
a breeze hard against the body or a taste of concrete.
the night holds the terror
the secret that you are alive.
you are living!
the night is a question
and it is demanding the answer
the whole being yearns
for completion
for the embrace of safety
wishing for power
for conviction
to no longer hunger
for the heart to stop mid-beat.

--
she traced orion in the black velvet of sky
the sharp line of his belt
the shoulder clasped hard in her fist.
she was wearing a dress as black and soft as the night,
tied up to her knees as she moved through the ocean.
listening to the waves shape the shore -
walking as though she'd become a shadow
a single shadow blurred into the edges of night.

--
again again
the human body can take more than one would believe.
skin and bone when thrust upon will press back.
A hard slap across the face - a punch to the head
yes there will be noise and the emptiness will ring
Stomping on the feet
a kick to the gut
slashing of a belt and buckle
ad yet the skin does not break. It learns to stop bruising
not to swell - quietly retaining its own protest.
one would think there is something glorious in it
some triumph or rebellion from the pain
feeling the ache the reminder of life
but there's nothing glorious about it
there's only the desperate echo - a desire to claw to hang on to keep life.
again and again
you will the body to break
but it won't.
it remains
and you are its prisoner -
but safe in its cage.

reckon

2010-05-05T01:58:00.001-07:00

Things that I wish I could do better:

planting flowers - I have 3 dying pots of flowers on my balcony, they look like they're gasping for air. No matter how often I water them, or say positive things to them, the faster they seem to die.

The only time I had a very successful flower garden was one spring in grade school. I'd just read "Secret Garden" and wanted nothing more than a key necklace and a friend named Dicken to run around with. With all this enthusiasm, I'd managed to make a vast meadow of flowers - crocuses, marigolds, cosmos, wildflowers...

Unfortunately, my father absentmindedly bulldozed over them with his mini tractor when he was mowing the lawn one day.

flowers never forget.

cycling - whenever I go to a spinning class at the gym, it's an exercise of how inadequate I can feel for 50 minutes. There is the amped up music and the instructor whose sweat runs off like a constant stream while he shouts into his headset - rpm! rpm! Resistance should be at 10! (Mine's at 3.) Rpm should be at 100! (Mine's hovering at 70.) Give it all you've got all you've got! (All I got was when you said that five minutes ago.) sigh.

Sometimes in moments of clarity between the feeling of collapsing, I feel strangely aware that I'm pedaling so hard and staying stationary, and that's multiplied by looking at the mirror wall, and all I see are about 30 of us pedaling like crazy making these silver disc wheels spin around.
And then I wonder what a discovery channel guide would say to explain this to those people who live in isolated tribes in the desert or on a mountain or jungle. "In places where there is not much space to move around, these men and women get on these contraptions and work as hard as they can to pretend that they are moving and ... no they do not go anywhere, no they do not mind it."

angel on being

2010-04-24T12:12:00.000-07:00

Francesca Woodman

periscopes.

2010-03-31T01:05:00.000-07:00

I know that I can't consider myself a newcomer in Hong Kong anymore. But even though it’s been over a year, every day I feel like I discover something new.

For one thing, I learned that the word I thought meant “Excuse me”, was actually the word for “Miss”. So for the past year, I’ve been heckling so many people shouting “Miss!” at taxi drivers and waiters, who would approach me with reluctance and confusion – like who the heck is this girl. While I angrily wondered why I was being ignored and grumbled to myself about the lack of service manners in HK.
Embarrassing. =.=

I also learned not to sit with my legs up in buses, well at least not on the second story. Most Hong Kong buses are double deckers, and it’s still a novelty for me to sit at the top, so I always do. Several times a week I have to ride for an hour to see one of my students, so I sit at the very front, which has a ledge that I can rest my legs on, usually with them spread out.

Not very ladylike I know, my mother would probably be shocked - but I figured HK bus etiquette was lax enough, and compared to the people cheerfully picking their various orifices or the ones loudly cutting their toenails – I thought I was ok. What I didn’t know was that I was sitting with my legs like that in front of the driver’s periscope. And probably in such a way that for the driver, the view of me would’ve blocked everything else in sight.
I’d noticed the mirror hanging on the ceilings before, but I’d never been able to figure out what it was for, just thought it was a bit useless. Apparently not.

So that I’m not just writing about my failures… I recently gained the courage to shop at the street market below the apartment.It might not sound like a big deal, but I was always too intimidated about shopping there. For one thing, the majority of the street carts don’t have any price tags, and so trying to decipher the price was always a minor ordeal for me. So for example, buying avocados.

Did the woman say $5 or $50 for 3? Or how much is one? And then she’d say to me, $1 or $100 or maybe $10. To me it all sounds so similar. And then trying to guess involves trying to remember how much was reasonable for avocados in the U.S., and then translating the price to HK., multiply by 8 – and then guessing the market price for what avocados should be in Hong Kong vs. the U.S., where are avocados grown anyway? South America? So more expensive in shipping? Or maybe South Asia? Or should I account for less demand?

It’s like playing Price is Right – helloo bob barker.

Inevitably, I’ll have confused myself, so I have to choose between looking obnoxious – paying for a $5 item with a large bill, or looking stupid – holding out my inadequate coins and smiling.

It also made trying to bargain an almost impossible task. “No! Not $40, I’ll pay $20!” I'll say with conviction. And then realizing that the original price was actually $8.”

But luckily, rather than taking advantage of the useless girl who can’t count, even when I pay them 10 times too much, the vendors always give me back change, and look at me sympathetically.

People from home have asked me what Hong Kong is like, and it’s difficult to describe. Just as I’d never imagined before what it could be like – it’s a place that’s a combination of things.
There are skyscrapers like New York and businessmen and women in suits. There’s buildings marked with name brands, luxury is King. Armani building, bulgari, chanel, LV, Gucci building, the name brands have it. There’s the alleyways with noodle shops and chefs in wife-beaters, sweating as they chop beef bones and sauce beheaded ducks.
It’s a port city, because there’s ocean on all sides, with harbors and construction ships, and it’s also like San Francisco with streets that look more like mountains because of how steep they are.
At night time there’s blocks and blocks of people drinking on the street, and the sound reminds me of London, with pub music blasting and the clinking of beer pints. While also at night, there’s the people who come out to push carts of trash, massive carts up and down the steep streets. It takes a lot of strength, and patience to navigate around the crowds of drunk people. And for some reason the majority of the cart pushers are old men whose faces look at least 60 – 70 years old, but have the body physique of the hulk or a ninja turtle. They work with their shirts tied to their six pack waists, and a cigarette sticking out of the corner of their mouth.

And even just on my street, where there’s a French bakery and boutiques with ridiculously overpriced brands– there’s also a street market with butcher carts and ceiling hooks of meat, and a print shop that smells of ink and blocked metal where a man makes name cards on rows and rows of paper sheets. There’s a 7-11, and next to it a man who sits in a chair in front of his shop, who’s so old his eyes barely open and he only has a couple of teeth left, who will squeeze fresh fruit juice for you.
There’s antique shops with only vases in the window, and several high end art galleries, where the art consists of a tv screen that shows blue tattooed belly buttons that breathe in sync. And also another gallery with a pornographic pig sculpture in the window, sucking its own strangely human boobs. (It is just as disturbing as it sounds).
Next to a kebab shop and a frozen yogurt place, there’s a small bakery on the corner, a hole in the wall without a door that sells trays and trays of egg custard tarts. The strangely bright yellow glazed kind that glow in metal tins. They look like little circles of sun resting in a plate of silver. All day, there is a line going into that shop to buy egg tarts. And for me, it all comes together on that corner outside the shop, the men in business suits, the school uniformed kids, the expats, the shirtless men who push trash – as they stand on the street corner, one hand in their pocket as they eat the bright yellow custard out of a tin.

pistachio green. knots.

2010-02-07T05:05:00.000-08:00

on a particularly grey day,
I'm sitting at IFC drinking a cappuccino with a cream heart and an over-expensive slice of opera cake.
I'm scraping off all the pistachio filling - I have to admit the only reason I bought the cake was for the pistachio.
It looked so green and mint-like and foreign. I had to have it.
The waitress is looking at me reproachfully, while the done-up taitais aren't wondering why I'm only eating the lining of a cake, but why I would ever drink a beverage with cream in it. And I'm wondering why they're wearing 4 inch platforms when it's raining outside.

knots. When we were little, every couple weeks my father would let my brother and I "destroy" our minds with television. Which meant, we were allowed to watch a videocassette about the mathematical properties of knots. A man's voice came on, and it would portray a couple of hands making different knots, which would then be analyzed through computer animation with the same man's narration. (It says something about the power of the screen that my brother and I used to look forward to that 30 minute video.)

I don't know why I suddenly remembered this but I think it was because I felt out of sync, sitting in between a long row of carefully done up women in high heeled shoes.
And whenever I feel out of sync I think of A Wrinkle in Time - and the boy on the other planet, who couldn't keep the ball in time with the other children and ends up being tortured by IT. And in that novel, there was the concept of traveling in space and time, I think it was called tesseract-ing, and it was described through a series of knots.
And in the brief couple minutes of opera cake and pistachio green, I remembered the excitement of watching that knot video, and tried to remember what happened to Meg and Calvin and the happy medium who once loved a star.

reunion

2010-01-21T01:32:00.000-08:00

I went back home over the winter break. It was the first time I'd been in the States in a year. I didn't know what I expected, nostalgia maybe, relief at English signs, relaxation from seeing people who weren't only Asian.
(Groups of Asians still intimidate me, during college, one of the most stressful events was walking through Stern courtyard to use the free printers.)

But I didn't feel nostalgic, instead I felt bizarrely out of place. Nothing was familiar anymore, the loud Newark security guards who shouted "Hey you", the girls in the fake-bake tan and velour jumpsuits,... it was all disconcerting.

I had expected a tearful reunion with my family, the prodigal child's return home from the Far East. It had been a year...there would be embracing, "let me look at you", slow motion running Homeward Bound style.

Instead:
"You look like Woody Allen" -my brother backing away(looking disgustedly at my 'emo' glasses)
"Uh ok. Hi." -me
My mom pushed him away, "Tsk noo no she doesn't-"
Turning gratefully to her..
"He's thin."

Burn.

But being back was nice, eating Chipotle, being trapped in snow blizzards. And as always, reverting back to my parent's lifestyle - lots of church. Lots of books.

On my way back to Hong Kong I had to take a small 'commuter' plane from Virginia to Newark airport. The idea of a 'commuter' plane frightens me, but that's what they called it. There were only 9 rows on the plane, and only about 30 people. The ceilings were so short I had to crouch (which gives you a perspective... it was not a plane meant to be in the air). It was a minivan with propellers.

Unfortunately that day we were delayed because of wind. I wouldn't have thought this was a problem for most airplanes, isn't wind supposed to be helpful? But for a commuter one it most definitely isn't. We took off anyway, and because we never even got close to skimming the clouds, we were right in the wind channel.

I thought it could be my last flight, either from the plane's failure or my inability to deal with the constant feeling of falling.
Every time the plane shook, my whole body shook, and a few times I thought the plane would just give up and flip over. The pilot came on the intercom several times, his voice shaking "don't worry! this is just a bit of turb --" :cut off:
I wanted to tell him to stop talking to us and just work on flying, actually I probably could have shouted it, HK minibus style, the plane was so small there was no need for an intercom.

I was sitting next to a 90 year old woman from south carolina, she kept clutching my arm every time the plane lurched. And she'd say, "oh lord not yet. Not yet. I'm not ready to see you yet." Then turning to me accusingly, "This little chinese girl's not ready to see you yet. "Are you?"
As I tried not to flinch from pain, "I'm korean... but yea I mean No no I definitely am not."

And as I was sitting in the plane thinking of all the ways I wasn't ready, I also thought of these things:

1) a misquote.
There's a semi well-known quote about Kentucky girls from Ashley Judd.

"Sure, girls from New York, they are tough. And girls from Georgia, they are sweet. But those born and bred feisty Kentucky girls, they are the ones you have to look out for. We have sugar and fire in our blood. We can ride a horse, be a débutante, throw a left hook and tell you the entire UK line up all while making sweet tea. And if we have an opinion, you get to know it. We're both the pride and the downfall of the bluegrass..."

Growing up, I knew this quote by heart, I guess it made ky girls proud. Just as listing any celebrity from Kentucky would make us proud - Johnny depp, yeap and so is george clooney.. and two of the backstreet boys - yepyep, henry clay and daniel boone too. (i liked throwing in the last two, although they rarely impressed anyone)

When I moved later on to Virginia, a girl I knew at high school would always quote this quote- it was on all her internet profiles... except that she had it changed to "Virginia" girls. And somehow I guess people didn't know the difference. I hadn't had the heart to tell her it's actually "Kentucky girls". Which makes the quote mean a lot more sense that way. Particularly cause the part of Virginia we are from is more free-way than it is country. Who rides horses or makes sweet tea in northern va? And does Virginia even have a basketball lineup? (Not that I know, but I highly doubt it.)
I dont know where this girl is now, but I wished I had told her.

2) Whether Jin the rapper was succeeding in Hong Kong.
Jin the rapper came to hong kong about the same time I did - a year ago. I happened to see him give a rap performance at New Year's ball last year to a crowd of slightly dumbfounded older HK couples. His rap was a combination of English and Cantonese. He kept repeating helplessly, "put your hands up UP up. Come on! Do it with me." Commands like that don't really work across cultures or rather across generations. And after that, I wasn't sure how he would do.
But then a couple months ago I saw him on a huge billboard, advertising Vita boxed lemon teas - so I supposed he must be doing well.

3) new years resolutions.
I used to always have a lot of new years resolutions. I'd write them down on sheets of paper feeling glorious and 'alive'. Some would succeed, most would fail. "graduate. Go to class. Learn to do a pull-up".
Some were succinct. grow taller.
Some were ambiguous "learn to love without hurting others. Find a life purpose. Be. "

This year, maybe it was because I was traveling and still jetlagged.. I hadn't written any.

If by sitting in that plane next to a chanting old woman, I was hoping for an epiphany or a moment of clarity for a beautiful resolution, it didn't happen.
The only thing I could think of was, "wake up early."

Like most people who aren't morning people... for me waking up early in the morning feels automatically like an accomplishment. Walking around outside in morning air, still fresh because the rest of the world hasn't yet gotten up to breathe in it, feels dizzying and exhilarating. It sets off a lot of self-congratulation and "yay!" as though one should be high-fiving the other people on the street, "you're up too? yay us!"

I thought of the past year, I thought of all the law I hadn't yet learned, and how it was too late now cause I'd already been tested on it. I thought of how clever the name yo mama was for a yogurt place, and how I should really eat more hui lau shan mango drinks and try the egg tarts near the apartment. I thought about seeing the long escalators, and the view from our balcony.

And as we landed in shock and relief (relief for my arm mostly - the red marks on it didn't fade til several hours afterward) but I realized that I did have some moment of clarity..

I remembered hearing this expression of having your feet face the same direction as your heart. that when you're aligned you are where you've been longing for.

And for a time I'd always been thinking of the places I'd left - my backyard swing surrounded by maple and lilac branches, washington sq park, a library bench..
I guess I was always facing backwards.
And for once this time where I was heading was the place I was thinking about.

dress up

2009-12-14T09:13:00.000-08:00

Holiday season in Hong Kong is quite beautiful..
Sparkly, lots of lights, I don't want it to end.

I was trying to remember what I could from holiday season as a kid.. The plastic Christmas tree, cookie baking with the psychotic neighbours' kids, bicycling with my brother at night trying to claim which house's christmas decorations we liked best. There was a house with a snoopy santa theme, or the one with the stone reindeer in front, and another with a bright 'UK Wildcats' outlined on their roof in blue lights.

But what I remember most was having those Advent calendars with the little doors on them. Every day you'd open the door and find a little picture, most people use ones with little pieces of chocolate behind each door... but ours had Bible verses. (I guess in our family a bible verse was like the equivalent of finding chocolate, "ooh no way a verse from Isaiah??")

--
I took a break from exam studying on Saturday to walk around Sheungwan and Central. We walked the antique alleyways with the old clocks and Mao watches (the second hand is actualy Mao's arm going up and down in salute), past the flower shops with poinsettias and restaurants with the women who brunch.

We stopped at the Christian Louboutin store because I'd always wanted to try on their shoes, and I suppose trying on ridiculously expensive high heels are a way to pretend that things like constitutional law exams don't exist.

Thinking now it was rather embarrassing.
The girls and women who were there were nonchalantly slipping their feet into sky high heels, sitting as they yawned their disapproval and boredom to their boyfriends while salesmen waiting eagerly. "no.. I don't like." "Any other colors?" "no...no"

And then there was me running around the shop floor tottering and tripping in 6 inch scarlet heels as though I'd just discovered flight, "I can walk omg I can walk!!" "Look look! This is the height I was meant to be! wooooooo!"
While the salesmen waited anxiously, what a disaster.. please don't fall...

But it was like dressing up again. Becoming the little girl in a disney fantasy, spinning around with my friends at the church reception hall, lemon cookies in one hand and the other outstretched in a competition to see whose dress could pouf up the highest.
Our competitions always ended in a dizzy tie (I think we just liked spinning) and we'd collapse in a heap of tulle, lemon cookie, and pastel colored dresses. Until we found our way back up again to run outside with the boys and play tag while the snow fell.

strangers alike.

2009-11-19T21:45:00.000-08:00

I'm at home on a Saturday alone. Studying and ill.
Angrily wrapped in a fleece blanket thing and leg warmers because Hong Kong suddenly got super cold and there is no indoor heating. I've lit all these ikea candles but there's no warmth from them and for some reason they keep melting and within an hour the candles turn into a flat 2-d thing of wax.
so sad. are there no candles that can light for me?
I feel like the little matchstick girl.

I keep thinking. what if.
what if I fail my exams.
what if
I look at my test paper and realize the only thing I have to say about hong kong's basic law is that I have no basic idea of what it is basically. but it is basic.

somewhere my elementary school nerd self is looking at me and shaking her head in disapproval and disgust.
-
It's strange - I see the same woman every time I go to the gym. (Well maybe not so extraordinary because I don't go very often).. But anyways, she's a woman in her 60s, although from a distance she could pass for 20s. She's asian - but her skin is the same color as the Southern country club grandmas I grew up with - baked a bizarre brown-orange color from too much time in tanning beds (on wrinkly skin it makes the person resemble a walnut).

I've only ever seen her in the locker room, standing on the scale in her underwear or putting on makeup in front of the mirror. Each time I see her I want to feed her something. Like a bag of lard or maybe a gotta have it coldstone. Her legs are easily half the circumference of my arms, and she has a gap between her thighs that a 'little person' could walk through without worrying about bumping their head on anything(weird image). Her arms look like fingers, and her chest is the definition of concave. She always stands on the scale wearing only underwear, moving the silver lever back and forth back and forth, impassive but somehow also upset.
I looked over once out of curiousity, the lever hovered around 78 - 80 pounds. Although I couldn't really tell because she kept moving the lever so much.

I don't know, I've always hoped that with age, you earn the right to care less about what you look like, or at least not have body issues. Maybe next time I go I'll bring a bag of lard... It's hong kong, can't be that hard to find.
-

newly discovered -
cappuccinos. Who knew foamed milk could be so good. whenever I drink one it reminds me of three failed weeks I spent as a barista in london. I could never figure out how to foam milk and had to rely on the Polish bartender from the shop next door to come in and do it for me... mostly I remember because of what I can't remember. I can't remember the name of the cafe, the street it was on, the name of the polish bartender, or actually even how I came across that job.

portraits. Outside of our apartment building there's a man who paints portraits in oil paint. He hangs his canvases on the side of a brick building. It took me a few weeks to realize that the paintings were commissioned, because every few days, it is a different group of faces on the wall. He paints faces throughout the morning, working on several faces at once. One hand holds a photograph, the other hand paints the eyes of a woman and then the hair of a man - so that every face takes on some resemblance to each other.
Strangers who become alike - it's kind of a beautiful thing.

By the time I come home in the evening, the paintings and the man are gone. And the only hint of the faces from before are the colors of oil fallen on the sidewalk.

-
I know it is silly to be deeply affected by celebrity deaths. Why should the death of one person mean that much more than anyone else's? But I have to say I was really sad to hear about Daul Kim. She seemed very charming, and while not conventionally beautiful she had a beauty that seemed dangerous, sharp like a knife. the edges of a line.
I'd kept one of the things she wrote:

i never thought i was innocent
but i was pure

i believe that i am pure

now i just feel misunderstood.

guilt.

-
When you're a teenager and in your early twenties [love] seems desperately eternal and excruciatingly painful. Whereas as you grow older you realise that most things are excruciatingly painful and that is the human condition. Most of us continue to survive because we're convinced that somewhere along the line, with grit and determination and perseverance, we will end up in some magical union with somebody. It's a fallacy, of course, but it's a form of religion. You have to believe. There is a light that never goes out and it's called hope.
— Morrissey

2009-11-02T06:16:00.000-08:00

Things learned:

It is embarrassing to walk around Central in a backpack.
In a city where girls don't switch to flip-flops at lunch and wear heels no matter if it's raining or typhoon status black rain or whatever - then there's me shuffling through the sidewalk with a backpack like Sam going to Mount Doom.

I carry a backpack that looks kinda like those LL Bean ones, the ones that used to be cool in middle school. (Ok maybe not everywhere, but at least in kentucky, LL Bean backpacks with the initials were the rage... I think).
The backpack stunts my growth (potential growth) and makes me look pretentiously 'studious', when sadly I wear it because I pulled my back a month ago and carrying even a handbag on my shoulder makes me want to flinch.
On the bright side, the backpack is an effective defense tool - anybody who tries shoving past me in a "queue" finds it impossible. Hah.

Hong kong minibus system. (This might not seem very momentous but I feel so native now) =]

Haven't learned:

How to teach. I tutor every weekday, with a new batch of students in IB English. IB English is quite difficult - asking a high school sophomore to figure out the incestuous themes / Greek tragic elements in a play seems a bit overdone.

Most embarrassing moments: explaining that a scene with "kind, loving uncle character" is actually supposed to be about incest.

Defining what impotence is. I still don't think I explained that one quite well.

The law. It's a bit dangerous teaching so much because sometimes I forget that I'm in school as well - and now exams are coming and three months in, I still have no idea what the law is about. Panic panic.
It's like the longer I stay in school, the worse I get at it.
I can already imagine my professor saying "DUHH. As if!" as he reads my exam. Completely possible reality because that's his favorite phrase to say in class. Well not the "as if" but "Duh" is his catch phrase as he looks at us in disgust.

---

It's been awhile since I've read anything... but the last book I read was Shantaram the rare kind that stays and colors everything that goes on outside of it while you're reading. At points it gets draining and overwritten, but at the same time it's so generous in what it's saying and trying to give, you have to respect it.

"We should've built a life from the stars and the sea and the sand. And I should've listened to her- she told me almost nothing, but she did give me clues, and I know now that she put signs in her words and expressions that were as clear as the constellations over our heads."

spelling

2009-09-15T22:07:00.000-07:00

In the past couple of weeks I've become a law student. HKU is a campus on top of a mountain.. well built into the side of one. Going from class to class is like living in an escher fantasy, a neverending trail of stairs, elevators, escalators, and then more stairs.

I like going to the classes, but I've realized that sitting in a 3 hour lecture is something I'll never get used to. There's always a lull period - maybe at the 1 hour mark, where inevitably, I can feel myself start to fall asleep. Coffee doesn't work, neither does sugar, so I've taken to doing what I used to do in college - stabbing my arm with sharp asian pens. (The asian pens have the best points, especially the .38 ones, which could double for ninja weaponry.)

I still have a few students that I tutor. My youngest student is in 3rd grade, a very artsy kid. At first it was hard to learn what would help him pay attention, but after some trial and error, I figured out that he likes to play hangman, mostly the part of adding extra bleeding heads around the hangman's feet or other creative accessories -
-is that a belt?
kid (ignoring me): yea. for the dress.
-It's got sparkles on it?
kid: yea.
-why's he wearing a dress?
kid: cause it's a girl. Duh. (starts to thoughtfully draw teeth falling onto the ground)
-oh. right. oh hey. now you're adding books? why's she holding books?
kid (carefully shading in the hair): cause it's you. hahahahaa.

yay...

stop

2009-08-27T22:26:00.000-07:00

*patrol on the border of Texas*

"The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal."
C.S. Lewis

summer's end

2009-08-07T09:47:00.000-07:00

I tried to overcome my fear of deep water by learning scuba diving for a trip to Malaysia. I had to take a four day workshop in Hong Kong in order to get licensed. It was very humbling, 3 of my 4 classmates were under the age of 11. For example while I almost failed my swimming test, the 11 year old girl in the lane next to me swam butterfly stroke.

By the time I finally got under the ocean in Malaysia, I had mentally said all my goodbyes. I tried to remember that I just had to breathe through my mouth, and I shouldn't worry because I didn't have any life insurance on me so no one was going to be turning off my oxygen (haha. actually apparently some horrible guy killed his wife underwater by turning off her oxygen tank. on their honeymoon. for her life insurance. o.o)
Supposedly going underwater was going to feel 'calm' and peaceful, something "automatic" and nirvana-like would happen. It didn't.

I gamely held on to my guide's four-fingered hand (he was missing his left thumb, probably because he had some compulsion to touch everything that was underwater, including giant clams and eels with teeth. We saw a shark and he was racing to get to it, dragging me with him.)
I thought of mermaids, and Ariel and Sebastian, I sang Under the Sea in my head - well the parts I remembered, which was just that line, 'under the sea, under the sea', and tried not to imagine octopus Ursula appearing behind me, for some reason I remembered the part of her song 'And don't underestimate the importance of booooddyyy language! Hah!'. Repeated in my head about 20 times, it became a bit annoying, even to myself.

The rest of Malaysia trip was pretty amazing, kayaked, mountain biked, fished (for them big fish). It was the first time I'd felt remotely sporty in my life.
The possibility that I could replace that Survivorman on the Discovery channel became that much closer. No crew, no cameras, just HIM, battling to survive in the toughest places on earth. (I don't understand how they do that anyway... they have a camera shot of him setting up his camera... it's confusing. Maybe he has more than one camera? He's filming himself filming himself filming himself?)
--

Whenever I needed anything in New York, my working method was to pick a direction, and if I walked far enough I would eventually find what i needed. Whether it was a hammer, rope (for hanging curtains - the sales person did ask me what the use was for, apparently it was a 'liability thing), a portable map of the world, gum... The method doesn't really work in Hong Kong, a search for Post-its lead to streets with stores that sell only wheelchairs, then a street of stores for crutches, a street of clothes for pregnant women, sports gear, wigs, lights (Actually the street of lights I see everyday, and it's beautiful. A small block of shops and each shop is blazing with light from the inside - the lights bounce and reflect from their own reflections, multiplied glass chandeliers and lamps.)

I've been trying to prep myself for law school, we have summer reading assignments that are supposed to be relatively light and helpful. I usually read them during the day but inevitably after a few chapters I'm not sure if I'm asleep or awake. One is an advice book that the author writes to a fake law student named Sam(the disclaimer that Sam isn't real is on the first page. I guess he wanted to save me from feeling HORRIBLY cheated.)
But anyway his advice included "put down a boring book immediately! If you find yourself bored by your text, put it down...2 pages of filler explanation later...it could be the author's fault in not engaging you, the reader, in the material."
Hrm. dilemna.

things to be thankful for: tea with lemon, the sound of a dial on a diver's watch, sugar syrup, olives, lee byunghun's eyes in GI Joe, vermouth, the tram.

peach season

2009-07-03T02:40:00.000-07:00

It's been a couple weeks since I've had any students to tutor. All of them, even my 12 year old have been carted off to Korea to attend SAT 'hak-won', a voluntary summer school that lasts all summer (i say voluntary - cause from what I remember when I was in middle school, summer school was just someplace you had to go to if you couldn't pass your classes).

today I took a cooking class to make "chicken a la king". I had no idea what that was til today, but it's basically chicken with vegetables and bechamel sauce. The class doesn't really do much for technique - the attitude is more like a frenetic one of "go free! go! gogogogogogo..." with instructions shouted in both english and cantonese. I sliced my finger within the first 5 minutes of class while chopping carrots, and midway through the teacher's presentation, a huge roach walked out next to my foot, before it was promptly and casually stomped on (by someone else, not me). But I do feel fulfilled, who knew I'd ever learn to make bechamel sauce.. so yay, life goal attained.

I've realized that sometimes I read books that I just don't understand. It makes me feel very stupid, and also somewhat cheated (So much for getting a lit degree. 4 years! *shakes fist*). The most recent book I didn't get was "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safron Foer. It made me sad because this is a movie adaptation book (which means a lot of people did get it.) And there were so many passages that were so beautiful and others that made me laugh.. I wondered why I didn't understand it in the beginning, and still in the middle - and by the end.. I still hadn't gotten it.
sigh..

I've been trying to find loans to go to grad school here in Hong Kong. For some reason, it's been a lot harder than I thought it would be. I might as well find a scholarship to go to the moon. I called some bank hotline today and talked to a sweet Southern boy rep who kept calling me "Ms. Chow". "Cho" I'd correct him each time, but I guess he thought it was an echo on the phone or maybe a tick of mine that he would politely ignore, because I remained "Ms. Chow" for the rest of the half hour.
During the half hour I explained that yes, the school I was going to was in Hong Kong. Which was the country name. Yes it is a country. And a city. Yes it is both things... the city is in the country, like New York, NY except that New York is a state. yes and a city, just not a country. rawr.
twenty minutes later:
"Aha! Ms. Chow"
"Cho"
"Yes! I've found some loans I think would help you.. it's for schools in Singapore? Now, is that a city near you?"

-.-

My brother is biking across the country for habitat for humanity - my mom calls me every morning to tell me how many miles he's biked that day. "88 miles! Can you believe it? Now what are you planning to do today?"

--

It's the beginning of peach season here - I ate one today and it was amazing. (haha I could use that as my answer to my mother's question. "i'm going to eat a peach!") It reminded me of a part from 'goodbye to all that' - not really in that context, but still - somehow anything can make you think of new york, even if it's something as distant of not belonging there anymore.

"I was late to meet someone but I stopped at Lexington Avenue and bought a peach and stood on the corner eating it and knew that I had come out out of the West and reached the mirage. I could taste the peach and feel the soft air blowing from a subway grating on my legs and I could smell lilac and garbage and expensive perfume and I knew that it would cost something sooner or later—"

my brother's photoblog of his biking trip :click:

a month since

2009-06-04T04:15:00.001-07:00

It's June.. and I've broken my promise to myself and haven't written all month.
May passed by so quickly which means is been a month since:
I started taking Cantonese classes at a school in Wan Chai. Every morning for two hours I sit with 3 expat women, and we judiciously take notes.

"Do you like Western food?" "Are you Canadian? Are you French?" "No he doesn't like Japanese tea, he doesn't like any tea."

Our teacher is a flamboyant old woman who wears flowered dresses and barks at us whenever we get something wrong. It actually gets very competitive, and I never thought I'd feel the same annoyance I'd felt in grade school when some punk kid was showing off or trying to steal questions to answer. Except now the punk kid is a 30 something woman in a house dress.

It's still so difficult though, trying to figure out a language where a slight inflection can mean the difference between the number 9 or dog or a part of male anatomy..
-
It's been a month since my mother's visit. She came and left, a whirlwind. Before we got to the airport, I had a fear that because I hadn't seen her in so long she'd have changed or become older so that I wouldn't recognize her. But she was just the same, lovelier than ever, with the usual energy and constant stream of approval, disapproval.

Why do you look like that? How'd you get so... I thought Asian food is less fattening? What's this? I thought you said you'd learned how to cook.

I'd expected we were going to have a lot of things to debate but our main point of contention was about air conditioning.. she never wanted it on. "Wasteful. Haven't you heard of this glob-al warming?"
And she refused to let me turn it on when we slept. I lay awake and although it's sad... I think I cried cause it was so hot... and watched as the tears turned to steam and rose to the ceiling. haha.
I miss her.
-
It's been a month since I bought a pair of shorts that don't fit me anymore. I tried them on the other day and kept them on to stretch them because I thought they were just small because of being in the laundry.
But no that wasn't why.
Instead I spent the day feeling suffocated and trying to ignore the looks of suppressed horror from passerbys. For fun (and distraction) I counted the number of girls in shorts vs. the number of pregnant women. There were more pregnant women.
---
It's been a month since I've turned 23 (I guess this really means I have to give up on growing any taller);
a month since I found stars in Sanya, and stood with my head tilted back wondering; and it's been a month since I've decided to stay here and go to grad school.

"I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live."

Scraps

2009-04-27T04:49:00.000-07:00

Thoughts at the end of April:

Trying to take yoga classes during the day. Mostly feel overwhelmed by the very fit, very buff crowd of hong kong Tai-Tais (housewives). Twice my age and they could easily bench-press me in between manicures and luncheon. While we are trying to relax with downward dogs and Warrior Is, I look at the mirrors, all I can think of is "SPARTANS ~ Hoohaa... For Tonight we shall dine in HELL... I brought more soldiers than you Arcadian... What Does a man want of his queen?" And then whatever zen I had been seeking is permanently lost.

But it is rather awe-inspiring, and I guess it's an effective way to keep status and husband.

---

I can't believe it is already the beginning of may.

contrast

2009-04-24T01:05:00.000-07:00

what is love. I have heard many things. A man says to his grandson, regretfully, it was softness. she was softness, bu-duh-ruh-wuh.
"But then it is too simple to say that you love someone. It hides a list of things. Tangles of things… the way I could forgive him, and he has been forgiven.
If I lost him and he were a ghost, he would be the first thing I’d call for, the imprint of his shoulder in my bed, the touch of his hand on my waist, the fights, the games. sight, touch, taste… and then… the bond of what we’ve seen and promised never to tell."

Poem

Sole Survivor
He walks away
No surveying
the catastrophe
Of covers and torn sheets
An open diary of past mistakes to fill.
He puts on his clothes quickly and doesn’t turn to see
Her lying
hand outstretched -
Doesn’t turn to check if she’s breathing .
His hand lingers on the door
Where hers will be
When she shuts it in the morning.

Hole in the sky

2009-04-15T19:27:00.000-07:00

It always comes as news. The news that I heard today... as though phones are still only the styrofoam cups with strings - hello hello. over.
the sadness of a small town spreads across the world. prayers.
and hope becomes something smeared across the glass-
or just a hole in the sky for the stars to pour through.

It seems silly because it's been years, and the memories I have are those of a child, dream shadows, laced with giggles and whispers and deteriorated by time.
catching ahold of what is left. candy hearts I remember, spun sugar, greased hair and shaky valentines.

a boy with elvis curls and a wide grin.

screaming around the playground - 2nd graders enacting our version of romance, love as war, girls against boys, stolen kisses and laughter, the swinging of ponytails, plastic barrettes and jump rope.
paused
as you screamed that a girl should not kick a boy 'there'
even if it was for a kisser team war and the odds were tight.

middle school tag as the sun sets in the church garden, stomachs full - pigs in blankets, baked beans and chili cheese, cinnamon apples. Ran past the grey statues and warnings of ghosts or after-dark wanderers. a game of tag in the dark turns to accidental hide and seek, screaming until the statues echo back, admitting the night time terror of being alone.

basketball game in the afternoon - laughing mouths open, back and forth.
braiding hair. moving past ocean water.

not all was kind: games became more cruel, chasing a wasp til a girl cried, charades of heartbreak and flirting, the sketches of naked women with bodies like vases, women with legs splayed, posing in impossible ways - posted on the windows of the church van. alcohol and detergent.
but still you laughed. everyone laughed. reckless and proud, youth and beauty.

and then childhood and memory were put away, folded and tucked, left and abandoned to shadowland.
---
i don't know how the story got so much worse.

It shouldn't have been written. It wasn't meant to be written that way. A cruel game? A joke, where somewhere the string pulls and it all comes apart, and we are all left laughing. Hope for that.
But it seems too much has gone for that now. Maybe in another life, in another place. It is wishful.

Or maybe
it's like we are all running in the dark, looking for that hole in the sky, and you found the stars first.

lessons.

2009-03-22T23:41:00.000-07:00

I now spend most of my evenings tutoring a succession of Korean students. I wish someone would study how a Korean mother network works.. it has the same efficiency necessary to deploy weapons. I started with one family, and somehow it all began after that.

So I end up tutoring from 5 to around 9 on most weekdays.. SAT verbal, essay writing, middle school history.. Working in the evening makes my sense of time interesting. Sometimes when I'm on the subway and hopping on mini-buses, I wonder how night-shift workers or prostitutes feel - I see that the sun is setting, thus my workday begins. Not that I'm comparing being a tutor to prostitution.. besides a strange time of day, going to the students' apartments, charging by a clock. heh. ok no. :)

Overall I like tutoring, and I think I do a relatively good job. Parents like me because I don't short them on time, and I guess also because I am strict. Sometimes when I'm starting to raise my voice, I notice that outside the room is suddenly quiet, so the mother can hear what I'm saying. I've always thought of myself as a patient person, but I guess not.

Twenty minutes of patiently explaining and arguing - so much that my throat is dry and my voice is shot to a semi-baritone:
Student 1 (yet again): "But why do I have to map out my essays? Can't I just write it?"
me (patiently): "no, you must map and plan. Otherwise it's like you're shooting a gun with a blindfold on." (nice metaphor - mentally pats self on back)
Student 1: "But.. I don't think I have that much time to do it. I think I should just learn to write well."
me (starts to silently shred bits of paper): "Planning is writing well."
Student 1: "But .. but.."
me: "OK. Look. Right now what grade do you have? What grade do you have???"
Student 1: "A 17 out of 40.."
me: "Yes. You have an F. Not even a high F. If you want to keep getting Fs do it your way. It's the lazy way and it's not particularly smart.(pounding desk with fist) Just. do. It. MY WAY! Ahhhhhhhh.

Update: 2 weeks later and the mother called to quietly tell me her son "just didn't want lessons with me anymore."
Bahhh

defined.

2009-03-22T18:26:00.000-07:00

In any statutory definition of a crime, malice must be taken.

1. A desire to harm others or to see others suffer; extreme ill will or spite.
2. Law. The intent, without just cause or reason, to commit a wrongful act that will result in harm to another.

Real

2009-02-19T03:19:00.000-08:00

happiness is best when unrealized. Or unconsciously felt. Because the discovery of it is so beautiful that it's worth the not realizing.
It creeps on you, so then with a sudden awareness - a different bodily sense - a calm and euphoria that everything is all right.

I'm sitting at the Hong Kong version of Times Square.. Which is actually a building with a department store with Times Square written on the side. Deceiving, but still it feels like a link.
There is a big tv screen which plays music videos. Actually I'm never sure what they are, but the music is very empowering and operatic and so I always look up and stare while people grumble past me thinking, Why is she watching the refrigerator commercials?

I like this area a lot... it pulses like a living thing, from the movement of people. maybe it's just because I have a bad sense of direction, but each corner brings something different. on one side, the chestnut man, on another a mcdonald's and american brands, on another a japanese snack store... other way sweet pork or mango drink shakes, there's the arm-less man who paints names with the brush clenched in his mouth, the fish market, the store with yellow buns in the window.

walking there's not enough time to think. just image.

gingko nuts with green hearts. the threat of rainstorms with no thunder.

--------

my mother called to tell me that the tree my brother and i used to climb on had lost half its branches in an ice storm. It was a very elegant tree, it still is I hope... a maple with low-reaching branches. I think we'd called it Marigold or was it Meredith? I can't remember.

'I try to think of us playing in the trees during thunderstorm season, in the yellow calm when the storm is about to come. We are in the maple tree, the one with the shaky third branch. He sits where the branches begin to spread, the tree's heart. I'm waiting on the first branch, because I know I'll have to help him get down. The air smells like bourbon and we can hear the storm and thunder that's about to come... We wait as long as we can, shaking in anticipation as the sky changes and the trees around us turn gray. Our mother calls us in, and I help him down so that we can run to the house before the downpour.'

morning

2009-02-09T17:13:00.000-08:00

found yesterday from 2006 - in a box of paper:

I'm a step behind -
trying to catch up from a world of shadows.
Not enough air in my lungs, breath to push.
falling back - only there's nothing to fall into.
becoming a map of bones
just enough for traces to tell-
for people to remember
the curve of a shoulder
the slit of a mouth.

But
It seems silly to feel desperate when there's nothing dangerous threatening me.
I'm not running from a robber or trying to fight a fire. There is no gunfire, no bombs falling around me.
Instead
I am sitting on a bed with cotton sheets and pillows with daisies on them, and yet it might as well be a raft on an ocean, with sharks on all sides. Quiet desperation and the sense that somehow I am suffocating from the inside.

----

student / teacher

2009-01-21T23:50:00.000-08:00

I am taking Cantonese classes - tutoring sessions in the mall's coffee shop. Two hours each time, while I'm trying to concentrate on hearing the difference between high level and mid level to high slanted tones.

"High level. Mid to very high. Mid to not so high." Etc. Etc.

I don't think I'm an amazing student or anything, but I do think I try hard.
I do my homework, I've made flashcards, and I try to stay awake for my tutor as we go over the words yet again. And more importantly, I've gotten to like the sound of Cantonese.
But still, my tutor never seems very happy with my progress - and I feel like a lazy American person.

I do have an appreciation for my tutor as I've become one myself- I've started tutoring a Korean businessman who wants to improve conversational English. The challenge really is to keep up a conversation. After a bit of trial and error as he did not want to discuss Obama; politics; economics; the financial crisis; Korean beef; hobbies - meh; being in Hong Kong - well the food was good...

I found that what we could talk about was tv. Specifically, The Office, which he enjoyed but did not find that funny. So more specifically, the jokes from the Office - which I never realized, were actually pretty complicated.

How do you explain a double entendre? It made me feel like those high school days when the teacher laughed hysterically while reading Shakespeare plays, "Bite your thumb, get it?" "Explore a country, get it?" and the students would be sitting in sullen silence.
"Mmm... that's what she said? all right well, that's Michael Scott's way of .. uh. well. trying to put things in a context of a woman. For example... he says, I need two guys on this... that's what she said? haha? Get it?"
:sullen silence:

sputnik

2009-01-21T23:17:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami. I mostly caught bits and pieces of it while I sat on the bus going back and forth through Hong Kong. When I finished it, I was also on the bus, swaying back and forth in my seat in the upper level. We were going up a large mountain, and we were about to reach my favorite part of the ride, a certain moment of view, where the city building lights are behind me.

It is a view that needs a soundtrack, but usually I don't have any - just the sounds of the tv in the front wall, tourists chatter, Cantonese, and occasionally the clicking of nail clippers (I've noticed that people really like to use commutes for that)

Sputnik Sweetheart is a lonely sort of love story - well, not love but rather obsession. There is the struggle of obsession, love and the loss of self. The plot is rather suspenseful, or at least has urgency. One of the main characters disappears, and so through half the book, the reader is trying to make terms with a character's absence.

I've gotten used to it when reading Murakami's stories, or maybe it's just that my brain is so tired that I'll accept anything - but his resolutions or explanations are always fantastic or extraordinary. And not to ruin the story - but it's the same for this novel. A disappearance that has no earthly reason, but is a combination of the "impossible". And even - this part was what made me wonder most - the idea of being abandoned by the self, a complete solitude - so then is one existing or non-existing?

There is a passage about the strangeness of the satellite name "Sputnik" - "Traveling companion", when in actuality "lonely little lumps of metal spinning around the earth in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality... each of us is locked up alone... When the orbits of these two satellites happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing."

suitcases

2009-01-04T16:43:00.001-08:00

I left New York a couple weeks ago, without much fanfare or tears - in a car filled to the ceiling with all my material possessions. I forgot to look back at the skyline and say goodbye, but it may have been because I was too preoccupied in preventing myself from being suffocated by my things. I had a stuffed dog balanced on my head, a potted plant in my lap, even my legs were curled under and stuck holding a random box in place.

I came back to New York later to fly to Hong Kong out of JFK. My brother volunteered to ride the bus up with me and then drop me off at the airport. It should have been a simple enough thing, but unfortunately, I discovered a whole corner of things in the apartment I'd forgotten to pack. We spent all night packing and stressing over what to throw away, while everything else was packed and tied up in plastic duane reade bags.

In the morning, as we got to the airport, we ended up abandoning more and more things, like a trail through JFK.. a nearly full bottle of febreze, the bottle of Gain, a box of cereal, clothes hangers... my fake snowboots. It made me feel like a refugee or one of those pioneers headed west, leaving things one by one at the side of a river.

I said bye to my brother.. it wasn't a very sentimental goodbye, mostly because I had to watch him stumble for a subway with plastic bags tied to his arms and strapped to multiple duffel bags, while balancing 2 pillows I refused to part with. sorry sorry.

---

I had bought a huge suitcase from Chinatown for my move. It was the biggest I'd ever seen; I could probably have lived in it. Even though Chinatown had failed me so many times, I figured the suitcase was just so big it had to be a good bargain, and besides how could a suitcase really go wrong anyway. The saleswoman promised it was good quality. She made a big show of zipping every zipper and pulling all the straps and showing off the pockets. There was even a combination that would lock the zippers into place.

It was the zipper lock that really persuaded me, I'd never seen one before - although afterward I was told that almost every Asian suitcase has a zipper lock and it's not really that special of a thing. hmph. I should have known better.

By the time I got to HK airport, when I pulled the suitcase off the luggage strip, a wheel fell off and bounced across the floor. Looking closer, the sides of the suitcase were coming apart, the seams were open and part of the fabric holding the top together was gone.

I was disappointed, but thought maybe the zipper lock could be redeeming. However, on opening the suitcase, nothing would get the combination lock to open. On the bright side, one thing that was lucky about it being so cheaply made was that I was able to pry open the zippers from the lock with a pen. Rawr. *shakes fist*

---

I like Hong Kong - it's always felt like a kindred city somehow. I think the landscape is really lovely, and the lights - well it's why I liked the city so much in the first place. And I get to see and hear the ocean everyday, I never would have thought that possible.

I've even gotten to like the sound of Cantonese, which I am currently learning. I'm determined to become good at it. If most urgently because I have to be able to order my own hui lan shan. (mango pudding shake with crystal jelly or sago... although I'm not really sure still what sago is).
motivation.

I've tried to compare Hong Kong to impressions of other cities in my past... and it's hard to do. I thought of London, a city that wanted to kill me - with the constant grey weather and opposite street ways and crazy cabs (here in Hong Kong they do have opposite streets, but there is a polite cute noise that indicates when the lights are changing - and also signs on the road with arrows to let you know which way to look)...

Seoul was easy to get to know, but a somewhat snobby/intimidating one (but maybe that's just because of the crowds of Korean girls with high heels and Lv bags and identically made eyes is just naturally intimidating)

I guess that's one thing about living in a foreign place - a new place, is that there is nothing from the past that I really can relate it to. In a way, comparing it to the past or what's familiar is not doing it justice. Instead it's like discovering a new word, a new definition has to be made. It's a strange feeling, but a kind of wondrous one.

December

2008-12-01T12:07:00.000-08:00

It's the beginning of December,
which means that I haven't written anything in 2 months.
By now I've realized that if I don't write for awhile, my speech pattern
starts to deteriorate, and I forget to enunciate words and everything that comes out of my mouth is just garble + half thoughts + falling sentences and ends with a ...

My family are usually the first to point it out to me, "What?" "What are you saying?" "Are you speaking?"

So here I am... ready to ramble.

I've been taking the train to D.C. to visit. The past couple of times, I've fallen asleep. No one ever bothers to wake me, and so when I wake up the train is deserted. It's a really disconcerting feeling, being left behind.. and I always shake awake with mild panic of apocalypse or ghosts or my life was a dream.

It had bothered me that people wouldn't take the time to wake someone, but then maybe they think they're being polite, or maybe it's concern that the sleeping girl is actually dead, and it'd be so messy to have to deal with a corpse and who wants to bother with that.

Thoughts like that have made the city has seemed less charming to me. It's hard to explain, but there's an essay 'goodbye to all that' by didion that describes it so well. There's a part where she says that New York is like a playground, a fantasy world - and how can one "live" in a playground, one is merely 'staying'.

And it's true, only with new york magic could a couch be a bedroom, that curtains are walls, a 4th floor walk-up is fun (saves money for a gym), the mice that run along the floor are pets, a hotdog and pretzel is a meal, and chicken with rice may as well be a banquet dinner.
Not that there haven't been beautiful things either - 5th avenue, Times Square electricity, ballet sequins, chinatown egg tarts and milk tea...
I wouldn't say that I'm getting jaded, but I think the Pollyanna in me has gone somewhere else to live.

bandaid

2008-10-21T15:06:00.000-07:00

My only thought about work right now is that it has become hazardous.

I don't mean to be a complainer... (=.=) I guess I've had hazardous work before: A sore back from carrying extensive loads of laundry across town, having strangely protruding forearms from coldstone days, to burning my hands holding hot plates while waiting for people to move food out of my way. "Please sir, be careful it's hot" thinking "%*^%$^$% SIR move your stupid bread bowl out of the way before I burn you on purpose. Rawr."

But I thought once I transitioned to the professional world, that manual pain was supposed to be over. But no, if anything now, I have a more vicious enemy. One that is ever-present. Paper.

Currently my hands are wrapped in band aids from freaking paper cuts. And it's not the cute little kind, but the gaping gash kind - the manila folder kind. Been shaking hands with edward scissorhands? no.. unfortunately not. *wistful* johnny depp. But yea I have paper cuts on my palms, under my nails, the tips of my fingers... it's like a game or a competition for attention, and I lose because I can't decide which parts of my hand I value more.

My one consolation is that the bandaids are cute... they're hello kitty, and I remember when I bought them I'd (stupidly) wished that I'd have some purpose to use them. I even tried wearing them for no reason. But now at least my wish has come true, and my hands are very decorated.

I am a little disturbed though that everytime I get cut, the first thing my mind registers is panic, the agh i'm bleeding and oh no the documents! i haven't bled on the documents right?!
then pain is registered second.

I figure this is the mini-revenge of the trees. Every week I'm sure I'm responsible for printing through a forest.. I imagine all those walking trees from Lord of the Rings - marching through New York and burning everything down..

And in the broad perspective of things.. my job is to be the boat person who takes them into a new life... and the cuts are their revenge that they're not being made into the page of a novel or a love letter, but a page of a document to be thumbed over. So I'll take it. at least the bandaids are cute.

hitmen.

2008-08-23T04:34:00.000-07:00

The other day I was walking through Chinatown buying groceries when an old Asian man hit me on the arm with his fist for no apparent reason. He'd been walking toward me on the sidewalk. When it happened his face expression was impassive, like what it isn't normal to hit a girl's arm? Why can't I hit you on the arm HA. It was somewhat of a punch except that he was weak and the only thing that hurt about it was that his fist was pointy and thin, so it felt like a hard jab.

I was too shocked to do anything or say anything. What had just happened, I turned my head and he was still strolling along. I didn't feel like being the immature one making a big deal about something so "normal". Why did you do that?! Why why? and so I stared at him strolling and wondered how it would've been to throw down my grocery bags, rice wine and the bloody chicken all over the sidewalk.

Instead, it made me think of a month or so before when I was on the subway platform at City Hall. Again, nothing out of the ordinary, I had just gotten off the train when suddenly the girl behind me kicked my back. It didn't really hurt because she'd tried to do a fancy wheel kick or something - the kind where the foot goes past one's head. When I turned in shock, I saw that she'd almost lost her balance. She was a black girl, my age, and looked profoundly normal. She was wearing a t-shirt that had sparkly writing in script across the chest, and I tried to remember vaguely if I had the same shirt, and did it say Princess or Miss or ??.

"Bitch!" she screamed as she walked by. "Try looking at my face you bitch!" In the next moments, I was screaming back blindly and tossed my bag down (very intimidating I’m sure.. it had a panda on it). “It’s too ugly! %^78#$%. COME BACKKK AWRRRR.” And as she turned her head, she looked at me as though I were the insane one. And so I picked up my bag and tried to walk calmly to the other end of the platform, as though this was all very normal interaction.

I don’t know what’s happening. Do I inspire violence? Maybe there’s a hit on me… *knock on wood*. but FINE wannabe martial artists bring it.

tombstones

2008-07-08T23:52:00.000-07:00

current life-
Begin narrative here (I am practicing my format for billing time at the office. We are to keep "narratives". *Note the use of action verbs and succinct diction and style.)

1) fall out of bed. (on certain mornings - go to the gym.)
a. if at the gym - congratulate self and run for a little bit. think about the possibility of achieving "running high" but remember sadly that usually the only high i get from running is when i stop.
b. on uncertain mornings when not at gym - sleep, congratulate self on not having to shower (haha joking?)

2) dressed and pressed. walk to work. laugh at the people on wall st, and then sadly realize that i am one of them. "i am your people!" inevitably end up sprinting because I am late.

3) glide into lobby like the serene professional I am, attempt not to collapse on floor from loss of breath.

------ work ------
4) come home. the end - i can't write succinctly and i'm running out of action verbs.

It's the 2nd week of work and it still feels like a game, some strange large illusive mind-trap. An alternate version of me - one that's dressed up, so much taller (heels as transforming?), and gets to have an id card with a snapping string thing.

My favorite thing about work is the office view. It's like being in the sky, constantly flying. I could see myself agreeing to stay and work for free, just for the view. It's that amazing.

I would say something about corporate world and games and the stakes being "getting to keep my soul", but it's too early to make fun yet.

On the theme of narratives and souls - I pass a cemetery and church on the way to work. It's a beautiful church. I used to try to hold my breath whenever I walked by it - but I don't have that great of lung capacity and it would just earn me really strange stares from people around me.
So now, I just take my time and walk through it, read the tombstones - the ultimate succinct narrative complete with action verbs. I don't mean to be morbid - it just has become a good way to set my day, like a cheaper replacement for coffee. And more poetic too.

fine me?

2008-06-26T04:30:00.000-07:00

Because of my jetlag, I’ve been sitting in bed watching tv shows online at 3 am. My current one is Secret Diary of a Call Girl. It's not exactly pornographic... because it has a plot. hah. But there's something intriguing watching this character have sex with a succession of repulsive men. I haven’t figured out if I’m feeling disgust or fascination or what, but I wanted to keep watching it til I figured it out.

Anyway, today while watching an episode on a website with streaming vids and Chinese subtitles, a small chat box popped up next it. At first I thought it was a computer generated ad, but five minutes in, I realized it was an actual conversation. There were only 2 participants. Anon5532 and Cindy12.

Anon5532 was asking Cindy how old she was.
Anon5322 said he was 22
cindy12 said oh jeez I’m only 16
anon5532: ok.
Inadvertently no longer paying attention to the show. ("ok"?!)

He said he was a carpenter from Netherlands named Dirk.
Dirk the carpenter was at home because he had a cold and he was “coughing” and “lonely.”
transition.
anon4196: are you on facebook?
cindy12: yupyup. why.
-.-
anon4196: what is yours profile?
anon4196: I want to fine you.
anon4196: what is yours profile?
anon4196: I’ll fine you.
don’t type back cindy12.
anon4196: what’s your name so I fine you?
NONONONO. RAWR. don’t let him fine you!!!

but she gave her name (first and last!) and said that she was from X town in Texas.
he asked her what she was doing awake
she said she was watching diary of a call girl.

My first thought was oh goodness me too and at the same time, isn’t she young to be watching this and wow I’m so old to be thinking like that. And then I imagined how many other people were awake at 3 am looking at this chat box instead of diary of a call girl and hitting their computers NONONONO.
And of these people how many were signing into facebook and trying to find if either of these people existed and who were they.
And then of those people, how many were loading up their chainsaws to drive to X town in Texas to find cindy12. I didn’t do so well in stats class, but I don’t think the probability is that low.

Anyway dirk and cindy12 signed off to talk more “privately”. And I was left with the sick feeling of ugh. clear disgust.

Maybe I have too much of an imagination or I’m not being fair. Who says strangers can’t meet or chat. It could be simple, he really is a Dutch carpenter who’s lonely and sick and wants to see happy cute pictures of sweet 16 year olds. That’s not so bad.

Maybe she’s not 16, maybe she’s 61. Maybe she’s not a she but a he... or neither. She could be one of those women in Albania the NY Times wrote about who become men for life and take charge of the family when there’s a male shortage. (aren’t there fish that do that? it’s a really good article to read by the way). maybe they’re a husband and wife playing games. maybe they're future soulmates. maybe he's a patient lying in a hospital bed, hoping on a whim to find a stranger that could be his kidney donor. maybe maybe.

Sigh. meh still, I hope he didn’t “fine her”.

pebbles in your tea

2008-06-19T07:34:00.001-07:00

Since being in Korea, I have learned that to be considered an ideal female, or at least a house-trained one, doesn't mean losing the ability to think, but actually increasing thinking ability to include not only oneself, but the possible needs of everyone else. everyone being men.

The perfectly run house could probably be compared best to a model of the solar system. The male head of the house is like the sun or whatever, and every female is just a planet / piece of astro dust making revolutions around him. (if i want to keep going with the metaphor, I guess I could be pluto. The furthest one that was thought to be a planet but then actually just turned out to be... a dwarf planet / random spherical object and banished from that cool mnemonic about pizzas and eager mothers). haha eager mothers.

anyways, this means that sweaters are laid out on beds, pillows are fluffed, chairs are pulled out, shoes are straightened, water bottles are handed over uncapped, (having to make the wrist motion of turning a water bottle top is a strain I'd never realized before), tissues are kept on hand just in case sniffles are heard,
but all is done with the fluidity and ease of falling down.

My relatives used to brag that they were so progressive because in their family, the men preferred having daughters. Well now I know why, who wouldn't want more free help...

And so I've learned that the key to being a successful housewoman is anticipation. Which doesn't seem that amazing, but actually, it is a superpower:

An average person (a sane person?) wakes up in the morning and opens the window to see that it's a nice day and thinks: "yay, oh look it's sunny."

Successful house-trained female's monologue is slightly different (thought in the same amount of time that average person takes to go "yay oh look..."):
"oh look, it's sunny. which means he will probably want a glass of juice an hour than he usually does because he will be hot sooner, so I should probably take out the oranges now, and will he sweat because then I should probably switch the sofa pillowcase covers to the non-flowered ones because laundry isn't going to be for another few days and."

Super senses I tell you!
And scarily, given a few more weeks, it could be a less than foreign possibility.

Before, when setting the table I'd have innocently seen a fork, I will instead see the length of the stem and wonder at the angle that it would be held, and if that would hinder the time it would take to eat off a plate at lunch and so then would he be a few minutes late for his afternoon show, because then the pillow's fluff won't have held up by the end.
conclusion: fluff pillow again. or perhaps, switch fork.

HAH.

Last sunday, singing a hymn, in the middle of the 2nd verse, my grandfather accidentally skipped to the 3rd. everyone else automatically followed. While, slow me, struggling to keep up in korean, just assumed what I was hearing was just my wrong reading. At the end I was left singing hesitantly for a few words by myself, until I swallowed them at everyone's confused stares. I felt like that boy in A Wrinkle in Time who couldn't bounce the ball or jump rope in sync with the other children.

ending with happy thoughts: i saw more funny t-shirts (^-^)
"I asked God for love and I got you. I asked God for a river and he gave me an ocean. let us swim. perhaps."
"make war. maybe love. someday."
"they are not looking at your face, they are staring at your queer glasses."

and my dark favorite:
"suicide hotline. please hold."

just say yes

2008-06-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

the things I've learned in korea:

1) soju is a beverage. Not a painful alcoholic poison. It's a beverage, meant to be slowly sipped and savored with dinner, especially with items such as meat (not beef, which koreans are protesting) but like say, chicken kalbi or pork. the glass is also never supposed to be empty, trickily, not because you're not drinking, but because you're drinking it so often that it gets refilled constantly. It is considered cheating to hide one's glass. This is usually punished, "rewarded" with more soju.

2) formal speech rules, which were carefully broken apart and explained to me, in every possible scenario. Formal speech usage is just confusing, so I've decided to just use it all the time. Apologies to everyone I've inadvertently disrespected.

3) learning to say yes, i've learned that my relatives hate the word ok. I guess they have a point, as a response it doesn't really mean anything. But really, the korean word for "yes" sounds like a goat bleating when it's said too often or in succession, which is what I usually have to do.

My grandfather, who's a minister, has various complaints or directions for me, which is included in every dinner and morning prayer. It's a little disconcerting to be referred to in the 3rd person.

But the prayers are kind of helpful, it's like a very passive aggressive way that I can learn exactly what is wrong with me.

"Dear Father, ....4 minutes pass.... please help our catherine be a better christian and a better daughter. Help her grow taller and wiser under you and ... She does not clean her room very well... help her do this."

The first supper:
grandfather: "You, you are too skinny."
oh wow thank you.
"No, that's not thank you."
oh. sorry, :force feeds self:.
"American girls. grumble grumble. Starving themselves, that's not a "Lady". males, males, they like the "ba-boom"...
??!!!!-.-
"you know, something to hold." Gestures a violent shaking motion.
o.o hopefully in a prayerful context? oh ok.
"O-kay? what is that? you are going to eat?"
yes grandfather.

After the first supper, I learned to just say yes.

"Eat that, you are too short."
yes grandfather.

"eat that, why are your legs all banged up, that's not a lady."
from kneeling because i pray so often. haha?
"Eh?"
yes grandfather.

"eat that, it'll make you smarter and maybe taller."
:goat bleating:.

touch the hands

2008-06-10T07:57:00.000-07:00

... of my clock.

my favorite shirt that i've seen in korea so far. it sounds so cute and somewhat dirty at the same time, it's amazing. that and, "live in your eyes, die in your lap, breathe in your heart".

it is a little sad that my impression of korea is so shallow as cute shirts, but really there are so many. i've bought a collection, with my 2 second decision time of "AGH CUTEEE" completely overshadowing any reason or sense that I should never be allowed to wear a shirt with a doll on it that says "find me a garden... nearby. far away. clouds are my love, are you? " If I did wear them in new york, I'd probably be used as target practice by taxi cabs. But really, I can't resist.

I think Korea is so amazing and beautiful, but I know exactly what this feeling is. It's the honeymoon phase of the relationship, where everything is so right and even the faults are endearing. the constant soundtrack of "opppaaaa. WHINE" sounds cute, and being elbowed by a halmoni on the street is like a kiss from heaven. (that should be a shirt. "kissed by heaven").

i finally got my hair fixed today, it's back to black, for which my relatives are very grateful.

a bear walks into a bar

2008-06-04T01:30:00.000-07:00

I'm trying not to fall asleep so I won't miss my flight.
The past couple of days, I've been re-visiting korean dramas (aghh why) and listening to epik high mvs as prep for Korea. Hopefully soon soon I will be in Korea and free to begin my mission to find So Ji Sup.

Today I was trying be more self-sufficient, which basically turned into me wandering financial district trying to find a hardware store. I figured that if I kept walking, eventually there'd have to be one. It was kind of smart, except that I was also carrying boxes. I could barely see over the top of them, so I guess I kept going in circles. All the construction sites looked the same, and every few blocks or so, I'd hear "Oh look, it's the box with legs again."

I tried asking people for directions, but it turned into like a strange joke. I don't know if it's just because of lack of good sleep where everything sounds dirty, but I couldn't help feeling embarrassed every time I asked, "Do you know where I can find hardware? tool boxes?" just sounds wrong.

After an hour, I did finally find a hardware store. I felt relieved and happy that I wasn't completely useless, that lasted until I got back to my apartment and slowly realized that just buying the stuff wasn't enough, I actually had to fix / put things together. yea... i don't know how i forgot that.

Later I went to hear david sedaris read at Barnes and Noble. It was crazy, everyone packed in trying to hear him speak. He was so funny and basically just so charming. at the end he told a lot of bad jokes, A bear walking into a bar was one of them.
"the bear says i'd like a beer .... and a bag of peanuts." and the bartender says, "why the big pause?"
^-^ I thought it was funny.

As I was leaving, had one of those accidental stare downs with a stranger, 'strange staring'. Usually it's because I'm not paying attention and I just seem like I'm giving the eye to people. But this time it was cause he was standing at the foot of the escalators and as it was going down closer and closer, i was thinking oh how cruel intentions and lalala what happened with ryan phillippe anyway, and did that soldier movie ever come out... and then realized i was 'strange staring'.

He asked if i'd care to update him on current pop culture like somewhere. yea exact words. It was kind of endearing, but too perfect and anyway current pop culture where to begin?
on the subway home, i thought maybe in a parallel universe, I'd have said yes and then hopped on a bicycle to 'like somewhere' and it would have been nice 'updating current pop culture' except we'd turn out to be cousins or half-siblings and then one of us would die of cancer, but then the other would kill themselves right after anyway, so both would be dead. yay the end.

this is what happens from watching too many korean dramas.

Room of One's Own

2008-05-31T20:02:00.000-07:00

Moved. It's the first time being in New York that I have my own room. Within four years, I've gone from adjacent beds, to a couch, to a curtain for a wall, and now an actual room. I've upgraded and I don't know what to do with myself. The possibilities really are endless.

Today I had chicken and rice for the second day in a row. I ate under a red sculpture thing, trying to count all the lights I saw, and hopping over rain puddles. Realizing now that I probably looked disturbed. The financial district is kind of beautiful. All the lights, it's like music, my version of wonderland.

Remembering this line from a short story I heard at a reading a few months ago. I can't remember exactly what the line was referring to, I think it was about soldering metal, but it was so poetic, and he said it so casually. "You've got to let it heal before you hit it again."

a kind of poem

2008-05-27T12:01:00.000-07:00

It used to be when I made mistakes that I would think, Well, I'm much better than that.
And it would be a kind of relief, a coming back into self, but I'm losing that certainty.
The more mistakes, the more space it seems to take up, and the less I have to fall back on that's not been infected.
Becoming jaded - the word makes it sound like a beautiful thing.

I'm dying my hair back, maybe a dark brown. No one ever warns that orange hair can be dangerous. Ha.

this is a trailer for a new movie, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", which looks so beautiful. The spanish version is the only one that I could find. It's based on the F.Scott Fitzgerald short, about a character who ages backwards.

Games with Strangers

2008-05-24T18:39:00.000-07:00

Landing at LaGuardia today, I'd decided in a moment of empowered confidence, that I could be frugal and take the bus and subway into Manhattan. It was harder than I thought it would be, being screamed at that the bus does not take dollars, 'how do I not know that get on already', and then bargaining for change, all while trying to carry my duffel bag in a way that would be least likely to stunt my height.

When I finally got off at the subway station, there were no subways running because of a switch malfunction.

Instead, somehow, I ended up taking a cab with a stranger, who found me sitting dejectedly on the sidewalk. The stranger was in his 40s, a slightly drunk man from out of town with an asian 'preference'. (I've decided not to say fetish anymore, seems unfair). I've always said I can sense 'asian preferences', but I guess it's not really a gift, because the moment the person in question starts talking, it's a pretty standard conversation, with few variations:

"Where are you from? Oh, I mean like your family :gestured wave:. Oh really? Well, I love kimchee. Yea I like spicy things. Love 'em. And barbecue. You know, I visited Korea once. And my friend's brother's cousin's boss's wife is a korean lady. charming girl. yea... and Japan, I love Japan. Have you been there?"

Usually, I wouldn't have agreed to being picked up to share a taxi, but I think maybe all the traveling and the 'we are all connected lights' thoughts made me feel more receptive. In the cab, he asked me how old I was, and stupid me thinking I was being funny, said "17," with a smile.

I saw him quietly flinch, "You look... very.." I didn't want to find out if I'd inadvertently stepped into 'Catch a Predator' territory, so I told him no, I had graduated college, and the rest of the ride was listening to nostalgic life advice - which was actually, considering he was on his third straight day of beer, very helpful.

As we crossed into Manhattan, there was a moment where the cab paused, seemed to hover on the metal bridge, right before the skyline. The sun was setting, and I could see it falling behind the buildings. Even he stopped talking, "It never stops to amaze, does it?" he grinned and I had to smile back, it was like finding light, finding home.

Jump

2008-05-23T17:27:00.001-07:00

From the Windy City.
All I wanted was a jumping picture ::sniff::
photographer: my patient younger brother

It only proved my inability to get off the ground. Or maybe he just wasn't able to capture the vast height of my jumps quickly enough.
sigh, i even put my bag down. (could represent the abandoned weight of earthly burdens?) ha.

"Am I embarrassing you?"

final resort, "Why don't you ... try jumping off the ledge?"

hmph.

updated.
If I remember correctly - from the amazingly horrible speech of John Paulson at stern graduation -'twas Winston Churchill who so wisely said, "never never never give up." ever ever. Although I prefer the version "try again and then quit. there's no point in being a damn fool about it."

The renewed motto combined with my brother's fear and desperation after I told him I was not leaving Chicago without a jumping picture:

yay.

kill, marry, fuck

2008-05-22T14:18:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning with a nagging question from the past...
And really it made me lose sleep, especially because I can't remember how I answered.

kill, marry, fuck? fuck, marry, kill?

Tom Cruise, Flava Flav, Spencer from The Hills

think about it...

Summertime things - watermelon soju and pat bing soo =]

SES forever

2008-05-19T16:20:00.000-07:00

I got my hair dyed in Chinatown yesterday.

I wanted originally something like:

intriguing yea?
but I changed my mind after watching "Bride with the White Hair", apparently her hair is white from grief. And I figure I don't need to look anymore evil. I did fall for Leslie Cheung in that movie. He was so charismatic... I only wish he weren't dead. Or gay. Double obstacles. Dead doesn't really affect my imagination, but the loving men part is a little harder to overcome in my fantasy.

So anyway, after a few hours of processing, prodding, feeling very non-chinese, my hair looks like this:

SES forever =] haha.

90s kpop singer hair. I can just imagine my relatives whispering in confusion, "maybe she thinks things are like when she last visited? poor girl, trying so hard to fit in." I should dig out my platform flipflops and UFOs. Maybe visiting Korea can be like time travel.

I'd prefer to say I look like a sunset. a Botticelli piece? Or maybe a tangerine. I don't know.

Waking up to the real world

2008-05-16T08:12:00.000-07:00

I've graduated, turned a year older, it was a double slap in the face from reality.
and the week ended last night with a guy peeing on me.
Or i think he did. I was on a street corner somewhere in the east village, kind of lost, and my dress kept blowing out from me. I felt wetness on the front of my dress, rain? water? spit? I look over, and there's a guy zipping up saying, "Ohhh sorry. looks like you peed yourself haha."

And I was so under the influence that for a few minutes I thought I did. I started crying, was I one of those girls? It was like I was in kindergarten again looking at the little girl wearing the telltale polyester shorts the school kept for that purpose.

I ran, dripping randomly at intervals. Tried to dry myself by running. It was so cold, and I'd stop and catch my breath, but couldn't smell anything. Maybe it hadn't really happened. Maybe it was a sign from God, Run, run your life so you can dry off when things piss on you.

When I got home I scrubbed myself off and went over it again in my head. I went to sleep feeling reassured, no it hadn't happened. Maybe it's all the power of revisionist memory, but it was just water or alcohol... it hadn't been warm, and I don't know how someone could really aim that far. Bah.

Anyway, I started this cause I wanted something new, and it seems easier than xanga. I'll try to be good about it and write everyday... hopefully no more stories like the one above. It's disjointed because I'm still hungover.
Graduation made me a little depressed, no more chances to turn in a paper on time, revise my gpa. It's done, get to start over.