i went on my first home visit today with another volunteer at CHAI and it was pretty fun, though child fell asleep halfway. honestly every fri morning i feel like going back to sleep after alarm clock goes off at 730am, but somehow once i'm there time passes by really quickly and before i know it it's like 530pm already. it's definitely one of the best volunteer progs i've participated in so far. the staff is really approachable, friendly and extremely 'democratic'... and though i don't know any of the other volunteers well, it nonetheless feels very comfortable. i'm still not doing that much cos i'm still very inexperienced... but at least i'm making myself useful these days =P

sometimes i walk out of econ 142 wondering if i learnt more econometrics or more random (but sometimes awareness-raising) things... well but at least i appreciate how kc doesn't impose his views on you... he always tries to qualify that's what he thinks. just that he has slight difficulty keeping those views to himself ha. =P ok i think i'm unwittingly devoting too much blog space to 142...
should finally give some credit to Econ 181 (international trade) cos Ann Harrison's a really good lecturer, classes have been enjoyable and i doubt i mentioned anything about it so far. i really liked her presentation on Globalization and Poverty today... it's just a summary of her upcoming book... hope this link leads you to the site with downloadable chapters. makes me want to write Econ thesis on something related to things she presented...(this is random, but she also included some images to illustrate certain points she wanted to make; and i really appreciated that...i feel like i've def grown more sensitive to images and how ppl use them) but i also know that before randomly approaching her and saying can you give me thesis ideas or something... i should prob read up more on my own. which i always want to do... but i often find myself having to devote my very short weekend to finishing sch work, with hardly that much time left to read all the papers i want to read. but ya, i dun only like her lectures.. i like her style of teaching and how she presents her findings... and i'm probably being too idealistic here... cannot even find a topic for PEIS yet then now dreaming about writing a good Econ one...

1 "revelation" (that i can identify with) and 2 compliments (for me!)

we were just talking about epsilons and error terms in class and as usual, it created opportunity for digression. and so kc was making jokes about frats before revealing that actually he was in one too... and thinking back about things he did... said something to the effect of "things you thought were ok when you were 18 are really not so ok as you age"... i dunno i think it's so true. how as you age your perceptions of things change... i don't think you even need 10 (or more) yrs... even 3 yrs is enough...ok. maybe wisdom does not necessarily come with age. but guess many things change over time. your mindset? though some things really dun. aargh. ha ok dunno what's my point. =P
we also got back our history response papers today and i felt really happy that my GSI actually said to me, "I really enjoyed reading your paper, it was very well-written".... u know, seriously, now that i look back on all the papers i've written over the past 3 yrs... i can't even count how many crappy ones i wrote. ok not that this one's perfect or extremely outstanding or anything, but at least upon completion i felt that at least i think i'm 'getting there'... i wasn't sure if it was a well-written one cos i still had some questions and doubts, but at least i felt that i was kind of thoughtful and slightly clearer than before...
then today i bumped into one Chinese class classmate bout 2 hours after class and he said, "i think you have some talent in photography".... that was really encouraging...i know that i still cannot take very good pictures but i'm definitely motivated to improve further =) i hope i'm not being very egoistic blogging about these tiny compliments i got today... it just makes me childishly happy when ppl have positive comments to make... =P
and faintly connected to these incidents-- i have very recently started toying with the idea of incorporating images into my thesis cos after all i still dun hav anything very focused... i was looking for books in the lib when i chanced upon this book on Chinese propaganda posters in the 20th century.... they were just very fascinating and intriguing.... i'm thinking.. i can take a totally different angle in looking at state and society relationships, via analyzing these images... and it would be something really close to my heart too, cos incorporating art and politics/history would be really quite fun for me (i think)

ok no more happy stuff to share. i will have a scary moment tmr, cos i committed myself to explaining in person to prof who misunderstood me that time by signing up for his office hours tmr... cos he didn't reply to my email...though i really do fear having to deal with a situation like this, i also know that it really wun do me any harm to explain to him in person... just need some courage i guess. i'm quite useless, still bit nervous though i didn't do any kui xin shi. but i also figured that i was also in the wrong and it's actually not very unreasonable of him to come to the conclusion he came to. if it really turns out that after that he still chooses to think ill of me, at least i know that it's not worth getting upset over this anymore. =)

The invisible

Colorful lives behind each of these homogeneous, deceptively-lifeless windows?

Exploring the same idea but wonder if just doing it to a window makes my msg more powerful? (these are hotel windows btw)

Duh. of course someone has to do it...

So these are the final images i decided to put in my city image presentation... dabbled a bit more with photoshop and changed the colors of the windows! but actually job not very well-done, cos i dun really know how to control that function properly so even the building in the first pic has tinges. but nmind, this is not art class =P for the third one, i guess it was just really coincidental that i saw this Latino-looking guy cleaning the sign... and i personally feel it's something we tend to overlook even though we know it's there. (but that's also prob cos they do it either early in morning or in evening? dunno. thought it was quite lucky i captured this at like 10am in morning) i set out thinking of taking pics of fire escape ladders, some of which can be really pretty... but looking at building after building i forget many of them are actually apartments, hotels, with ppl living in them, housing very different folks all in one building... till in one window i saw like this man sitting by the balcony... was i reminded of this fact. for many of them, there's nothing hinting that ppl live in them...well, till i came to Chinatown and found ppl hanging clothes on the fire escape ladders! and thus my very amateurish dabbling with photoshop to create the above images. not sure if my msg got across... guess i'll find out tmr..

under the pretext of creating city images for my Chinese class, i went to SF today... but found myself deviously walking towards Japantown and ended up buying lotsa titbits from nice Jap supermart i discovered... dunno. just felt really happy in the Jap supermart even though i couldn't read like 80% of the labels... saw this very pretty 'package' of jap titbits for $3.99 so couldnt resist and bought it! then walking through Kinokuniya i was once again awed by the brilliant pieces of art in Howl's Moving Castle unfortunately the $38 price tag was definitely too pricey for me... and i wanted to buy all the cute cheap plates at Ichiban Kan... i was definitely reminded of how much i love Jap culture. will definitely visit Japan again. and hopefully... continue with Jap 10b next sem =P

hmm anyway i wasn't exactly very productive today. think i have a lot of random pictures, which i'll slowly look through again and pick the best few to present. but i realized how powerful Adobe Photoshop can be! i really dunno how to use it, but i tried one of its really cool functions, which turned this..
to.... this!
there's prob tons of cool things Photoshop does, just that i prob wun hav time to learn them in the near future.... suddenly i wonder how many of the (seemingly perfectly 'normal') images we see everyday are unmanipulated portrayals of reality?