there was an erratum in my blog entry yesterday. haha i talk as if i published a news article. anyway, the erratum was in my peasant figures; while translating today i found out the tax burden wasn't 6 times but 4, but then i also found out that that's given that an urban dweller earns on average 4 times as much as a peasant. even worse now huh. ok not that i thought anyone frequenting this blog would really care about that figure, but just wanted to correct it. i learnt today that one 'yi4' is actually 100 million. so silly; i've always heard it on tv, radio etc but i never really thought about its actual quantity. ashamed of myself. it's interesting though how the Chinese and the English have different 'conceptions' of quantity. ok i dunno how to put it. but ya.
it snowed all day today and it's still snowing. so am cooped up at home, as usual =P and at home, tensions run high... and the dense me, as usual, didn't really sense what was going on exactly and then ended up upsetting ppl a little... but nothing serious, I'll just keep these things in mind and hopefully i'll recognize and do the right things at the right times. i'm baffled though that even when ppl are assertive usually, they choose not to address issues upfront and complain to other ppl instead. seems like such things happen everywhere pretty often.....

today i was very drawn into the book i'm supposed to translate because I started reading a chapter examining why despite the central govt's 'decrees' to reduce peasants' tax burdens, numerous peasants are still overburdened... I was horrified by how corrupt the local governments can be, how heartless officials can get, the kinds of ridiculous taxes they invent to extort money from the peasants... and according to the book, the tax burden of peasants in some villages in Anhui can be as bad as six times that of an urban dweller.... as an 'outside audience', we witness numerous instances of how developed Beijing is getting, how more and more Chinese can afford luxury goods, but perhaps that's like 30% of the population... many many ppl in the rural areas are still extremely poor and i don't think there has been sufficient attention given to these problems. i feel more inspired to do research on this now. it would be cool to play a tiny role in raising awareness. or finding out how what ppl are actually doing to help. =)
trooped down to the food court today to get Chinese food and while sitting there having lunch, to my horror, i saw three persons consecutively emptying whole packets of soy sauce into their fried rice. just seems like a really weird thing to do to your fried rice. hmm i know i should not generalize, but is this the way many Americans eat their Chinese food? I've never really bothered to observe...

i think i've grown AS and have stopped trying to hav lunch in the lunchroom and instead will alwyas sit by the sofas and eat my sandwich and try to read soemthing to look occupied when in fact it's just to prevent awkwardness with ppl u kinda know but dunno what to say to. pathetic me huh. there are rare occasions when i get to talk comfortably with ppl, but I just find it a little discouraging how most ppl aren't that keen to really befriend you. guess circumstances are such that we're all just interns happening to be working on various projects in the intern room.
also tried very hard to come up wiht a research statement today, thinking hard about what i really want to write about but i have a disappointing research statement that done'st look very interesting and i wonder if it's feasible. but nmind, will try to refine it in the days to come =)
and strangely i was offered a second chance to buy my Naruto dvds and i did... =) i hope the quality is decent...

Site makeover!
i tried... but of course, the new look didnt turn out the way i wanted... the tag board has two funny black lines that i can't rid of. i dun like the font of my title but i dunno how to change it... and my lovely quote says 'About'... aargh. shall figure out slowly. one day.
went to the Pentagon City mall today; it's only about 4 metro stations away and has all the big chain stores (again!) somehow US malls are rather predictable... even on the East Coast, you see the same retail stores... well u see some new stores, but it then turns out that they are East Coast chains... why are there so few independent stores?
i finally experienced for myself the addictive power of Naruto. watched 4 episodes today and then left with one for an entire lifetime (for now) since the bidder who was supposed to sell me 117 episodes got his account suspended. =( and the jingle at the end of episode has started to ring in my head... cannot believe that i actually getting hooked to anime and crazy ninja stunts haha. instead of doing work.

i finally succumbed to my cravings and bought a pint of mango-flavored haagen daaz ice cream yesterday cos it was on sale, after abstaining from supermart ice-cream for a month... cos i knew once i had it in my fridge i would finish it... and i guess i was right. i finished 1/3 of it after dinner at one go... =( ravioli with portabello mushrooms and cheese filling was on sale at safeway yesterday too and so i bought a packet... hav been having home-made pasta at least once a week nowadays... strange how pasta is part of my staple diet these days...
am feeling a little upset now cos my roommate before going to sleep decided to ask me what the names of her sis, mum and dad were and what was her address and i coudlnt' remb what her sis's name was and neither could i remb her neighborhood even though she had told me some point in time in the past month.... and then upon hearing that i couldn't answer just went silent and went to sleep. leaving me with a feeling of unease on whether she was offended or just wanted to make me feel bad or just asked me for fun? sigh. i wonder if it reflects that i dun really care? i get the sense that she tries to impress upon me how i treat her more as a companion than as a friend and i don't think i do, but i wonder if i subconciously do. and if i do, i don't know why. and if i do, i really don't mean to...i wonder if she doesn't really like how i offer less information about myself... but it's just the way i am i suppose and i find it really difficult to be significantly more enthu towards just one person just because i feel that he/she isn't comfortable with me being the way i am... yet not doing anything about it is a sign of indifference/bo-chapness towards our friendship? sigh... this is not a very nice feeling.

it was freeeezing yesterday =( did a touristy thingy today, went to Richmond and Fredericksburg in Virginia with a tour bus... our center organizes these tours for us on Saturdays sometimes, but of course have to pay... and it was one of the worst things i have done here so far haha. cos firstly had to wake up at 7am... then had a whole morning of 'history lessons' on the Civil War, which wasn't exactly very appealing when u are sleepy and starving.. haha we only had lunch at like 3pm... i guess it was partly my fault cos was rushing a tiny paper yest night so slept at 2am, then i was dozing off when the tour guide was going on and on about diff statues along this Monument Ave and my roommate and i were just like when are we going to get lunch?! haha. though i knew it was going to be a 'historic tour' it was less interesting than i thought it would be...
felt slightly accomplished that i tried speaking up in class yesterday when we had a mini debate in class.... but then i was very nervous and was rattling off like a train i doubt anyone really heard what i said. haha a bit wasted. but then felt like it's a small step forward and i hope to try to continue, since if i cannot even contribute in a tiny class of 25, when will i get a chance to? am also excited to work with our program director, cos its about the only chance i'll get to work more closely with a professor at Berkeley, (though technically in DC).... hope i can write a decent research paper in the next 2.5 months or so!