2nd babysitting experience today....
Shi Min: hey you want to go out for a stroll?
Kai: yeah.... i need exercise...... let's take the stroller!
Shi Min: (in questioning tone) the stroller..?! can't you walk?
Kai: nah.... (hmm whatever happened to acknowledgment that he should exercise...)
and so it ends up that the guy who wanted to 'exercise' sits comfortably in stroller i spent ages trying to open, while Shi Min wheels him around neighborhood for a while, at times giving in to his whims (eg. hey let's go fast down this ramp!) and naturally, ends up getting ALL the exercise... even though at times he tried to trick me into going to get candy (hey... why don't we go to the gas station?) certain things he says are just so cute it's just so funny =P
somehow, while watching pride and prejudice today, i also couldn't help noticing all the high-waist long dresses the girls were wearing, esp those Keira was wearing... they actually look kinda plain, but at times they really do look just so simple and elegant... then bunch up hair with tiny white pearls in head... aaah so sweet. hmm but of course you hav to hav the right figure, the right looks etc etc..... else might turn out looking er.. rather odd i guess. =P
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Friday, November 11, 2005
though i foresee a weekend of work ahead, little treats shall serve to motivate me. shall try to catch the new Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightley (who looks so charming in the movie poster...) and cos it was one of my favorite Jane Austen novels... ya lah. back then i really bought into the Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet romance, though i dunno what i think now. i'm prob very cynical haha. anyway shall try to reread it one day.
and i'm gonna try two new restaurants over long weekend. and i just made myself very happy by redeeming my $25 Amazon certificate 1 hr ago. and just received an email from an elated sis (because she got selected by NIE to be a primary sch Chinese teacher) and i really do share her joy...
guess trying to delight in such simple pleasures can make me a happier person...
and i'm gonna try two new restaurants over long weekend. and i just made myself very happy by redeeming my $25 Amazon certificate 1 hr ago. and just received an email from an elated sis (because she got selected by NIE to be a primary sch Chinese teacher) and i really do share her joy...
guess trying to delight in such simple pleasures can make me a happier person...
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Nerdy unhealthy Shi Min (eww. sounds gross haha)
ha so i've been accused of being nerdy. ya, i'm kinda nerdy these days. and i have to be, really, else i will prob accomplish nothing and graduate with no honors at all... and.... the scary thing is... i kinda enjoy being nerdy! i feel happy when profs email me back, telling me to go for their office hours. ha. well... i think it's tiring though. i'll be SO happy when i'm done writing my prospectus.... then i will have to hope very very hard that it gets accepted. in the meantime, it's still more reading and narrowing down of topic...
decided to be healthy and turned up for this "Abs and Back" class at the RSF today =P and it really lives up to its name...the baffling thing is everyone else seems to be able to do all the exercises with relative ease... and i seriously think that ppl who go for these classes really exercise regularly and so it's not surprising that they can keep up with the routine... and they prob do so to look good rather than to lose weight or something, cos almost everyone was slim and toned! felt so embarrassed haha. i'm prob one of the few i-feel-flabby-today-so-i-shall-do-25 min-of-exercise-today type there. nmind good thing i didn't know anyone there. though somewhat strenuous for me, it was kinda fun actually cos the instructor's this big black guy and he comes around 'intimidating' you (in good humor) when you don't seem to be pushing yourself hard enough.
ha so i've been accused of being nerdy. ya, i'm kinda nerdy these days. and i have to be, really, else i will prob accomplish nothing and graduate with no honors at all... and.... the scary thing is... i kinda enjoy being nerdy! i feel happy when profs email me back, telling me to go for their office hours. ha. well... i think it's tiring though. i'll be SO happy when i'm done writing my prospectus.... then i will have to hope very very hard that it gets accepted. in the meantime, it's still more reading and narrowing down of topic...
decided to be healthy and turned up for this "Abs and Back" class at the RSF today =P and it really lives up to its name...the baffling thing is everyone else seems to be able to do all the exercises with relative ease... and i seriously think that ppl who go for these classes really exercise regularly and so it's not surprising that they can keep up with the routine... and they prob do so to look good rather than to lose weight or something, cos almost everyone was slim and toned! felt so embarrassed haha. i'm prob one of the few i-feel-flabby-today-so-i-shall-do-25 min-of-exercise-today type there. nmind good thing i didn't know anyone there. though somewhat strenuous for me, it was kinda fun actually cos the instructor's this big black guy and he comes around 'intimidating' you (in good humor) when you don't seem to be pushing yourself hard enough.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
i just sat in an interesting book discussion, well worth the 30 min or so spent trying to find a parking lot near campus in the rain and another 3 min or so of humiliation and extreme guilt when i finally discovered a spot and then did an illegal turn to secure my spot (holding up traffic for like 2 min or so cos visibility was low and i suck at parallel parking.....)
so. anyway, i thought Jung Chang was an interesting character... and somehow Westernized Asian ladies are especially unpredictable (as in you can never really tell from their looks if they are totally Americanized/"Britainized???" (Since JC lives in London) or still fobbish or in between, just like how i mistook my History Prof for some housewifish figure in my first lecture). hmm ok i've digressed again. back to JC. anyway, when she first stepped in she reminded me of a Chinese version of a local female politician, with her straight, waist-length tresses...ha. the most interesting parts, for me, was how despite moderator Orville Schell's attempts to tease out something new and perhaps more neutral from the authors, I don't think I recall any occasion where they deviated from the argument they made in the book... even when JC was forced to acknowledge that women won more rights under Mao's regime, she had to add that that's cos the ultimate aim was to make them available as laborers... there was also some obvious tension towards the end after the Q&A session started.... and i thought one of Jung Chang's responses really dented her credibility.... i think at some point she really tried to defend her book, and almost insisted that what she presents in the book is "the truth" and that she felt obliged to present the "truth" to the people...just as what the moderator tried to hint at, if her documents are really as authentic as she claims they are, and that all of them lead to the conclusion she and her husband eventually arrives at, perhaps there's no need for them to reiterate the point over and over again? hmm i mean i'm sure not everything in the book is fabricated... but i thought it seemed pretty clear that she has personal grudges against this man...
so. anyway, i thought Jung Chang was an interesting character... and somehow Westernized Asian ladies are especially unpredictable (as in you can never really tell from their looks if they are totally Americanized/"Britainized???" (Since JC lives in London) or still fobbish or in between, just like how i mistook my History Prof for some housewifish figure in my first lecture). hmm ok i've digressed again. back to JC. anyway, when she first stepped in she reminded me of a Chinese version of a local female politician, with her straight, waist-length tresses...ha. the most interesting parts, for me, was how despite moderator Orville Schell's attempts to tease out something new and perhaps more neutral from the authors, I don't think I recall any occasion where they deviated from the argument they made in the book... even when JC was forced to acknowledge that women won more rights under Mao's regime, she had to add that that's cos the ultimate aim was to make them available as laborers... there was also some obvious tension towards the end after the Q&A session started.... and i thought one of Jung Chang's responses really dented her credibility.... i think at some point she really tried to defend her book, and almost insisted that what she presents in the book is "the truth" and that she felt obliged to present the "truth" to the people...just as what the moderator tried to hint at, if her documents are really as authentic as she claims they are, and that all of them lead to the conclusion she and her husband eventually arrives at, perhaps there's no need for them to reiterate the point over and over again? hmm i mean i'm sure not everything in the book is fabricated... but i thought it seemed pretty clear that she has personal grudges against this man...
Monday, November 07, 2005
just spent a good 2 hrs preparing dinner and trying out a new baked salmon recipe =P also ended up having so much (rich) food to myself that my landlady couldn't help remarking, "you're having quite a gourmet dinner there.... is it your birthday or something?" haha. that's prob cos i dun usually cook very fancy stuff and can easily whip up something (i myself find) edible in 30 min or so... =P i've been pretty adventurous with my meals the past few days... really want to make chawan mushi one day... unfortunately fancy home-cooked dinners take up time and money... =(
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, authors of a new biography on Mao, will be at Berkeley tmr evening! (ok dun think it's that NEW; it's new in the sense that it only hit the stores in the US prob a couple of weeks ago) Here are the details, if anyone's interested. think the name 'Jung Chang' should be pretty familiar to many ppl, cos she's the author of Wild Swans (a novel that was pretty popular about 7 yrs ago and which seemed like a must-read novel for many RGS girls then... it was on my reading list some time ago too but cos it was like four five hundred pages long i never got down to reading it... =P) anyway this new biography is apparently very controversial, for painting (according to critics) an overwhelmingly negative picture of Mao... the general take was that it's well-researched, yet it's such a shame that the authors (once again, according to 3 reviews i came across) seemed only bent on using all these documents to convince their readers that Mao was 100% megalomaniac, discounting whatever notable achievements he did also make... doubt i'll hav time to read it myself, but anyhow, it should be interesting to sit in the session tmr. =)
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, authors of a new biography on Mao, will be at Berkeley tmr evening! (ok dun think it's that NEW; it's new in the sense that it only hit the stores in the US prob a couple of weeks ago) Here are the details, if anyone's interested. think the name 'Jung Chang' should be pretty familiar to many ppl, cos she's the author of Wild Swans (a novel that was pretty popular about 7 yrs ago and which seemed like a must-read novel for many RGS girls then... it was on my reading list some time ago too but cos it was like four five hundred pages long i never got down to reading it... =P) anyway this new biography is apparently very controversial, for painting (according to critics) an overwhelmingly negative picture of Mao... the general take was that it's well-researched, yet it's such a shame that the authors (once again, according to 3 reviews i came across) seemed only bent on using all these documents to convince their readers that Mao was 100% megalomaniac, discounting whatever notable achievements he did also make... doubt i'll hav time to read it myself, but anyhow, it should be interesting to sit in the session tmr. =)
Sunday, November 06, 2005
i turned a 3-hr "Ma-Ri-A!" this evening when my landlady and landlord decided they needed to talk and so went out on a "date"... wah, shouldn't' it be the other way round?! haha no lah. i'm too unhappening. and they wanted to get a surprise birthday present for Kai...
so i watched this funny kids video and a sled dog movie, which i actually quite enjoyed ha. but what i found funny was that in both videos, there was some 'side-kick' character... speaking in some funny Indian accent... aiyoh. wonder if that was intentional or something or am i just too sensitive... hmm i feel like these days i hang out with kids more than i do with adults... and you realize they aren't just 'kids'.... every single one of them has his own character... and autistic kids are especially interesting to work with (though i really haven't had that many chances to work with them)
yesterday i did a home visit with a kid tutors have described as hyperactive and more 'violent' but surprisingly i found him pretty mellow and sweet. and whenever he wanted something, though he doesn't know how to tell me, he just picks up my hand and puts it on whatever he wanted to get... and then think his toe was itchy or something... then he just led my hand to his little foot and wanted me to squeeze it or something... u know sometimes i think nonverbal cues can express so much more than words...yet it frequently gets 'overshadowed' by 'loud' and attention-grabbing vocalizations... only after observing and working with autistic kids was i reminded of the power of body language... at this stage, i think i'm totally over this "oh kids are so cute" phase... if anything, i've learnt that they can be rather bratty and annoying if they really want to be. but it's their frankness, innocence and lack-of-fakeness that draws me to them... dunno.. ok this sounds a little strange but consequently they are just easier 'humans' to deal with sometimes...
so i watched this funny kids video and a sled dog movie, which i actually quite enjoyed ha. but what i found funny was that in both videos, there was some 'side-kick' character... speaking in some funny Indian accent... aiyoh. wonder if that was intentional or something or am i just too sensitive... hmm i feel like these days i hang out with kids more than i do with adults... and you realize they aren't just 'kids'.... every single one of them has his own character... and autistic kids are especially interesting to work with (though i really haven't had that many chances to work with them)
yesterday i did a home visit with a kid tutors have described as hyperactive and more 'violent' but surprisingly i found him pretty mellow and sweet. and whenever he wanted something, though he doesn't know how to tell me, he just picks up my hand and puts it on whatever he wanted to get... and then think his toe was itchy or something... then he just led my hand to his little foot and wanted me to squeeze it or something... u know sometimes i think nonverbal cues can express so much more than words...yet it frequently gets 'overshadowed' by 'loud' and attention-grabbing vocalizations... only after observing and working with autistic kids was i reminded of the power of body language... at this stage, i think i'm totally over this "oh kids are so cute" phase... if anything, i've learnt that they can be rather bratty and annoying if they really want to be. but it's their frankness, innocence and lack-of-fakeness that draws me to them... dunno.. ok this sounds a little strange but consequently they are just easier 'humans' to deal with sometimes...
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