it really struck me today, after listening to a presentation on online advertising in China (touted as the next big market blah blah) that the way a presenter chooses to present the material to his/her audience can really skew the "receiver's" consequent view of a particular issue.... ( i doubt she did it intentionally but it somehow turned out that way in my opinion) esp for an unsuspecting person, and esp if he/she happens to possess no prior knowledge of whatever he/she's are told... i'm not claiming i know a lot about China though, nor that i'm critical about everything i'm told (on the contrary, there are plenty of instances of my gullibility, i have to admit....) sigh i guess i can't blame ppl wanting to invest to target big cities... maybe i get a little worked up whenever ppl seem to neglect the fact that the urban population makes up less than half of China's population.... just reminded me of how one can be made so "powerless" by being unknowledgeable and uninformed...

the rest of the week will be very rough cos things erm arent going that well... shall try to ban myself from blogging too... hopefully =P

i got home this evening to find christmas lights hanging outside the house. heard the bells hanging on the other side of the door upon entering, and found an undecorated christmas tree and a crackling fire at the fireplace in the living room.... and a whole bunch of ppl having dinner. the house had such a cosy and festive atmosphere.... a refreshing change from the probably si3 qi4 chen2 chen2 house i would prob return to if i were living with fellow Berk students stressing out over finals.... yet i felt oddly 'alone'... i dunno. somehow the house being so cosy and decked up for Christmas suddenly exacerbated such a feeling... not that i was made unhappy or anything, just really aware of them being a family and me being just me...

and i will be terribly terribly busy next week, with 4 things due and a midterm in the last week of class... and extremely worried.

if heaven were a single most treasured memory you'll relive for eternity, what would you choose? just watched this japanese film, afterlife, and was very drawn by this really kinda bizarre but interesting idea (i chanced upon it at the East Asian library when doing research and couldn't resist borrowing it... =P)

but what if I want to choose a "memory" I don't even have?

Sebastiao Salgado's pictures

This picture above comes with the following caption: The children must be weighed and measured in order to adjust their rations. In a nutritional center, Gourma Rarhous, Mali, 1985.


i really cannot prioritize =P am reading about this Brazilian economist-turned-photographer for our Chinese class tmr and got sent his website by our prof... and i couldn't help blogging about it... He takes such hauntingly beautiful but depressing pictures. Check out his other pictures

sad to say, i think i've reached the point in the semester whereby interest in every subject is starting to wane and i just want to get over everything... am looking forward to my holiday... bout 17 more days... unfortunately there are so many things due from now till next Fri!! aargh and a 142 midterm next Wed! sigh i fear the worst for my GPA.

a series of unfortunate incidents

just when i got up early enough to drive down to Honda for an oil change, i see a sign "open tues-saturdays" upon pulling up at the service window... (when its normal service reception opens on Mondays too) Yesterday, when deciding to reread the history response paper i turned in on Monday night, i discovered to my HORROR that it was nowhere to be found and the file i saved it under turned out to be an incomplete (2 out of 4 pgs!) file... and that i actually sent my GSI that incomplete file... really dunno what happened cos i distinctly remembered saving the final copy... so had to rewrite bits of it to turn it in again and prob will suffer some penalty from turning it in late now. =( aargh. and my wisdom tooth also chose the best moment to start aching... and i might have to extract all 4 of them before finals, esp if the evil one tooth continues to give me trouble. why why why...
ok the first i only hav myself to blame; cos i checked the opening hours some time ago and didn't recall them taking Mondays off and so didn't bother double checking again before driving up. and it's not a big thing lah-- it isn't that far. second incident... i dunno why i was so careless... i REALLY did save it.. why screwed up on me i have no clue =( and i'm upset cos i really spent so time on it to make it good...hmm as for my tooth, perhaps all the crap and sweet stuff i ate over Thanksgiving weekend made it overworked so it's now complaining and punishing me... sigh whatever. i need those cute chocolate band aids they sell at Fisherman's wharf for life's "boo boos"....

hmmm. dun really know where to start but that Courtney's family was really kind and hospitable and despite being a first-time visitor, i really felt comfortable and at-home =) Disneyland was fun, shopping today was enjoyable (when is shopping ever a horrible let-down =P) but baffling as it might sound, my favorite day was the first day, spent at home most of the time, baking, having dinner and just chilling out... having a pseudo-family for a day... =P nevermind how many calories i put on these past 3 days.... i shall (hopefully) shed everything over the next 3 weeks or so stressing out. it was a minor tragedy though that the careless me brought the faulty converter for my camera battery charger and batt went flat on first day... so... anyhow, still hav a few pics to share!

our grand creation

front and back of our gingerbread house! the gingerbread house kit from target was initially for Courtney and I to 'play' with, but we ended up getting almost the whole family involved! it was extremely funny how when the Dad decided to make his small contribution, he unfortunately 'tore down' the whole house and got a mini scolding for it...everything was fine in the end though. it's supposed to contain a total of 53 servings of 120 calories each... but considering how we added all the additional m&ms, marshmallows and what not. i shall not even venture a guess =P anyway, it's not meant to be eaten...though i totally had the intention to do so before we started...
yes, it's me with a stroller again... but with a most unusual passenger-- it's a cat stroller! i''ve never seen any family that loves cats this much... out of the 4 cats in the house, 1 was extremely affectionate and friendly, 2 were moderately afraid and the white furry/fluffy one (and most comical-looking too, cos its face made him look as if he were perpetually in shock or something) was extremely wary of me... so ya, didn't get to hug him even though he looked the most cuddly.

hmm what else? guess shopping today (esp during the holiday seasons when there are so many nice things to buy) just made me realize that even though getting rich definitely isn't one of the big priorities in my life, money can make buy you so many lovely things and when i saw things i really liked, i did wish i were rich =P while not all expensive things are good/chio...(in fact, some can be extremely ugly) it also happens to be true that chio things are often expensive... but ya, i guess even if i did become really rich, i still cannot bear to be too extravagant...

today i baked..... a french apple tart, choc chip cookies and decorated a gingerbread house... had a rich but delicious dinner and strawberry jello cream cheese dessert.... AND... am gonna have a piece of tart and pumpkin pie and ice cream for dessert in a while.... how many calories!!!

Happy Thanksgiving

this shall be my first (but also last) truly American Thanksgiving here, cos i'm gonna head down to LA tmr morning to stay with my UCDC roommate (and her family... and her cats!) till Saturday =) and am going to go to Disneyland for the first time ever (so suaku right haha) and of course, will get to see Courtney again. kinda miss her actually, though i'm also reminded of the occasional 'harrassment' i received throughout the semester... =P sigh, it's actually a break i can ill afford, but perhaps really do deserve and really need. i shall toss away everything's that bothering me for 3 days... hopefully.

though i've tried quite hard this sem to not get upset too easily, i sometimes feel like my self-comforting mechanism gets overused... and breaks down from time to time. and sometimes at the most untimely moments, too. yet i prob only have myself to blame that i also wun want to cry on any available shoulder kind souls might be willing to offer...

"You visit illegal websites"

sitting in VLSB and just finished most of my history response paper. and just got this seemingly intimidating email with the above title. it's obviously some kinda virus email, but perhaps i'm exceptionally wacky after 2.5 hrs of writing or so and decided to look more closely at this virus email...
ok so the sender is "Department@fbi.gov" and so just these two bits of info made me 10% scared when i first got it. but as i thought a little more about it, it seems almost laughable that they think their recipients would fall for their ploy. Firstly, if i really committed some crime visiting "more than 30 illegal websites" why would FBI care about such petty crimes and why would i be so 'easily let off' by answering the questionnaire they attached with the email? Secondly, Department@fbi.gov actually makes little sense.... so vague, so many depts... highly unlikely that any or every dept's gonna give a damn (i dun usually use such phrases, but just for the sake of flow for this sentence =P) whether you surf illegal websites? What's interesting though is that they included a Washington DC address and phone number... i wonder how authentic that is. but aiyah what i mean to say is that if you invest so much energy creating some lethal virus, at least invest more time in making it sound authentic right? else waste so much energy and no one gets the virus cos it seems like a horrible joke....

alright i'm officially bo liao. i should take a break and go for lunch..... =P

i just spent most of the weekend trying to learn about 2 decades of Chinese history in order to piece together yet another history response paper... though eyes feel extremely strained, i feel extremely happy and def less ignorant about 2 of the most interesting decades in twentieth-century China... and if anything, it also made me realize the havoc bad government policies can wreak... though consequences were mostly unintended. and i dunno, i think i really have a 'soft spot' for good English... i also liked the book partially because the writer writes really well... =P hopefully one day i can unabashedly say that about myself...
i'm really spending a disproportionate amount of time on my history class... but i also feel like in history i learn a lot more on my own. these days lectures have somehwhat deteriorated into watching documentaries in class and everything i've learnt recently about the Mao era i picked up from the readings assigned... whereas for things like Econ, i really do learn most of the stuff in class; somehow i cannot imagine myself spending hours and hours reading up on free trade agreements etc haha. i dunno, for history i really process a lot of things on my own whereas for Econ it's more passive; i'm told a lot of things but haven't spent that much time thinking over deeper stuff on my own.... i'm such a bad Econ student =P

my previous post led me to think randomly about religion; it seems like ppl who are religious set the percentage for 'fate' (or in this case, their faith?) at a pretty high level? not to be offensive to anyone, but i just don't see how one can live thinking your whole live is planned out by some 'higher being'... well maybe i have some fundamental misconception about religions cos i don't really care much for it at this point and consequently never bothered to really delve into it; but you know, it really beats me how some ppl can be SO religious.... it becomes kinda freaky.

on the other hand, even though i believe that perhaps 5-10% of stuff you attribute to fate, isn't it so sad that you just can't change that 5-10% of the things you wish you could change and you're just powerless to influence... but i guess it's a really bad idea to get really sore and upset over that 5% of stuff though it's so tempting to. such is life. =( and then there are things lurking out there, out of that 5-10% that you don't know exist that will one day turn your life upside down... and cos we don't constantly think about that we think it doesn't exist.... alright, i'm getting carried away.

just wrote a paper analysing this Chinese film in which fate seemed to be the ultimate determinant of one's lot... and argued for it so much that i suddenly am led to believe that it really is true. some things just aren't fated to be.... and no matter how well things are going, everything can just disappear overnight. well but of course we should prob attribute say a 5% chance to fate. but always bearing in mind the small possibility... and i guess it's also good to designate say 20-25% to variation of innate characteristics/abilities across individuals... then remaining 70% or so bear in mind we have the ability to change... if the former two percentages are too high it's probably rather tempting to grow lazy or gradually lose control of our lives/lose motivation...

actually feel quite lost and tired and am freaking out as propspectus deadline draws near. but will try hard not to give up... sigh it's not like i haven't been working on it; i think i have been counting too much on what resources other ppl can provide me with; or reading papers with studies too complex for me to undertake and really not spending a lot of time on thinking over what I can undertake nor spending enough time thus far to hunt for data available for that purpose. sigh. i really am not very good at this...

hmm on a lighter note, i finally have enough miles to redeem a flight to Europe! and encountered the most amusing Mileage Plus representative ever; esp when he ended the conversation with something like this "we're open 24 hours; we don't sleep you know, faster that way" or something in his thick Hong Kong accent (or something similar), i really felt like cracking up but had to suppress laughter cos it was obviously quite rude... and he really tried to be as helpful as possible.... i really have nothing against ppl with Hong Kong accents, nor do i want to intentionally ridicule ppl with HK accents, but cos usually these reps speak with either Indian or American accents it was just kinda funny cos i felt like i was talking to some elderly, fatherly Asian person... and at times he did seem to display such mannerisms too... like gently reminding me what i ought to do, what i ought not to do... and getting 'audibly' irritated that i didn't seem to understand certain letters he tried to pronounce when giving me the reservation code( i really tried... and was quite embarrassed too that i took a long time to get F for France.. i kept saying... S for Swank? till he was F for France, F for Friend! etc etc.... bleah)

ps: actually i'm to blame too lah. my brain prob wasn't working properly... who thinks of S for swank?!! =P

am confronted by numerous deadlines and readings this week and i'm not in good shape... it seems to always be the case that when i have the most work i am also not in the most studious of moods...
nor the most awake of persons ha. (if there's such a phrase) but despite being not very on task, i feel extremely human.

the little fella turns 4

it's a challenge to get kids to keep still and so i can never get a good picture of Kai... and so the usually handsome him turned a little double-chinned jumping up and down in this picture... anyway, i got him the Cal hoodie he's wearing! =P

i did a lot less work this weekend than what i had planned to thus far... but an evening out with good company and a night wasted online yesterday made me really happy... if only everyday were like that... sigh, i seriously have self-control problems.

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

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...

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.

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...

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. =)

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...

i found it really coincidental that one day after i decide to change topics, an article highly relevant to my new topic appears in the NY Times... =) printed like at least 6/7 papers to read, and 2 of them seem somewhat dubious and crappy but i can't tell if it's cos i dun understand what they are trying to do, or are they really kinda crappy? sigh anyway hav to go revise my 171 stuff in order to make better assessments of all these things. and so i'm going to have a nerdy weekend.... =P

and it's starting to get cold... and heater's not on except for like 15 min in the mornings... i'm so tempted to get a down comforter to snuggle under... well not like my bed isn't comfortable enough.... but it's even better to have a comfortable AND warm bed right. =P but they are ex. =(

a morning at the Center for Chinese Studies Library made me pretty convinced that it's probably impossible for me to get hold of any statistics on unrests and things of that nature from official statistical yearbooks... and i prob have to switch topics.... there seems to be data however on rural and urban stuff and i foresee myself doing something on rising income inequality in China instead... prob focusing on the hukou system that dates all the way back to the decade after the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. sigh. but that's still pretty vague and i'm starting to read up on a totally new topic. luckily it seems pretty interesting, and more econ-ish, less poli-sciencish. i now officially have 1 month to the deadline for turning in my 20-30 pg thesis prospectus... and given that everyone has abandoned me (my fault!) and that i prob irritated half the profs i tried to get help from for being so vague..... i'm really left on my own =( but somehow, my new topic seems more tangible than the one i was stuck with the past couple of months or so... so hopefully that's a good sign? and hopefully a sense of impending doom and failure would pressure me to be super disciplined =P

Happy Halloween

hmmm. ok a quick post then i'll have to get out of the house before all the trick-or-treaters in the neighborhood all come knocking on my door =P just gave some cookies away, but then shall be left speechless when i'm left with no treats for these enthu kids...
baked cookies for Halloween yest cos 1) saw these really cute orange and brown choc chips and 2) decided that I had enough of work for a while.... =P hmm.. still have things to say but sadly i really need to get out of the house for a few hours..... will continue later.

CONT'D

so i wanted to give some credit to Kai for trying very hard to be useful while i was baking. while at times i got really exasperated, (cos he's really not the most obedient kid...) he also got me into quite a few laughing fits... so when i told him to pour the brown sugar into the bowl, he wasn't very successful cos the brown sugar was kinda clumped tog. so i wanted to make a bigger opening to make it easier for him to pour. but he wanted to do it. so ok let him do.... then just like how sometimes when we try to open packets of titbit with a little too much force and prob 2/3 of the contents end up on the ground, the sugar packet kinda 'exploded' in his face and he ended up with a lot of brown sugar in his face and shirt... on the table.. on the floor... but he was so nonchalant about it and then proceeded to scoop up all the sugar, with all the dust and what not on the table back into the bowl.... at this point i had no idea how much sugar we had in our mixture already but was just like heck lah.. whatever =P then he wanted to crack the egg... ok so let him crack. but he practically crushed the whole egg, tried very hard to get its contents out later, then at the end of it all, absent-mindedly thrust all the eggshell into the bowl of batter.... dunno.. i just couldn't stop myself from laughing he prob thought i was a bit kuku. well, anyway, with a little salvaging, everything still turned out fine in the end, with Kai and I (and even my landlady) "pigging out" on bits of the delicious uncooked batter.. and yes, so ends my slightly traumatising but pretty erm... refreshing experience of baking with Kai.

Dinosaur Mugshot

Height: abt Shi Min's handspan
Weight: abt 80 grams?
Age: unknown
Crime: Scared Shi Min twice by lying in her path on the night of 10/28/05, by resembling a giant lizard
hahaha. poor thing. it's innocent lah. imagine committing a crime just cos you look scary, or cos someone is just blur...

Giant lizard hallucinations

i got scared out of my wits TWICE yesterday night, by mistaking Kai's inanimate brown dinosaur toy lying in my path on the bathroom floor for a giant lizard each time i entered the bathroom. it was extremely silly (the 2nd time, especially) but perhaps pretty telling about my mental state last night. was rather panicky cos was frantically trying to do the readings required for writing my paper... hopefully i can emerge happily from a week of work tonight...

when i first saw my grade for my Chinese paper (written in English) my first instinct was that my prof was being really harsh and that i probably really didn't deserve that grade... and i even asked how the class fared... and later tried to justify my grade with the knowledge that even with 4 grad students in the class there was only one A-.... shifting blame to him... but on hindsight, after going for office hours to talk about it, i concede that i really didn't do a good job. yes, he might be a little strict, but not unreasonable... and after reviewing some errors i made, i figured i really did write a mediocre paper... which reminds me how it's so easy/tempting to grow complacent if one receives good grades consistently... there's always room for improvement but we don't always consistently progress in that direction, whatever the reason might be... and so my next challenge is to try to get an A from him (instead of secretly cursing how evil and harsh he is; in fact, on the contrary, he's actually a very approachable and friendly prof)
also didn't do too well for history midterm.. i almost failed my IDs!! haha. i just am rather bad at giving these nitty gritty details. and so i have to work extra hard to churn out a good response paper on Saturday. seriously i'm so tired from doing work all week... but sigh. just two more days and i can finally rest on Sunday. it helps though that we are starting to read texts on Mao Zedong, which i find really interesting. =)

after turning in my prob set and reading through my notes i feel like at least i kinda understand my 142 class material... only that i prob wun ace my exams. it's actually pretty cool stuff, just not really my cup of tea. can't decide if i should change it to p/np though. let's see how my MT goes on thurs. and decided to drop in at KC's office finally to ask some questions... i went in at 420 and before i knew it it was like 530 and i think i learnt the answers to 2 econometrics questions, along with what hormone replacement therapy is, how to deal with ppl who just BS, how sharp KC's doctor has to be given that he knows all these stats about all these health studies etc....and when i checked my watch and got a shock how he actually went on for like an hour, think he noticed my expression and coudln't help laughing at himself either... and so i happily trotted down to MLK building at around 540, thinking that i prob shouldnt' be too late for the talk on poverty by Senator John Edwards (doors open at 530), only to be greeted by this snaking line that reached right up to the Dwinelle courtyard... but still managed to get in =)

hmm. actually i'm so tempted to share some really funny things KC said in class today... but i guess i shouldn't. my turn to practise self-control. anyway, this is random, but a couple of days ago, while reading things related to still-up-in-the-air thesis, i came across a blog with a pictorial summary of some of the issues i care about.... and such injustice probably isn't an isolated example. actually, it's prob not just limited to China, either...

for the very first time, before getting into bed himself, Kai ran to my door and said precociously, "Go get into bed!". aww.

i think i'll go mad soon. spent half of yest and half of today trying to figure out my econometrics prob set 2 rather unsuccessfully. 142 shall be the BANE of my already low econ GPA... and i'm past the point of no return (cannot change to P/NP anymore!!!) can't believe i took a fatal class that i dun even need just cos prof says amusing random things in class.... aaarrgh. but still maintain that KC is a good teacher and have to admit i have been neglecting class material the past few weeks...

can feel that i'm finally getting better and so feel really thankful =P but it also means that i'm gonna start binging again cos the precious eat-too-much-will-feel-uncomfortable feeling is starting to subside.... sometimes i wish the stomach wasn't expandable; that way when you finish your proper meals then it says... uh-oh... i'm full. then i can't eat anything else. haha. but then if that really happens i'll complain why stomach so rigid, dun give me space for dessert... =P
was really excited when Telebears started on Tues cos i thought i could sign up for this digital animation art class... unfortunately i misread the prerequisites... and i only fulfilled 1 out of 3. =( but i signed up for Visual Studies 181, which is Introduction to Photography.... unfortunately that gives priority to students from College of Environmental Design so i might not get it in the end either.... ASUC art studio actually offers a class on Digitial Video come this Oct 26, but it's like 100 something bucks for think 5 lessons! too poor to afford it. must save up to travel this Winter =P

so i've kinda been conditioned to daily after-meal bloatedness and weird grumbling noises and i can't even bear to think about what's going on inside. just hope everything will be ok again soon. and was also thinking that i now perhaps have an inkling of what many hunger-stricken African kids are going through... only perhaps ten times worse. my mild bloating and other unpleasant symptoms have already caused me a lot of discomfort; i can now totally imagine how awful it must be to have stomach viruses in your tummy all the time. it's not like i haven't seen pics of starving kids with distended abdomens before... it's just that i NEVER really wondered how that might feel like... now that i can imagine the pain they must be going through.. it's really quite upsetting. but then, what's the use of me feeling sorry for them, like it would lift their suffering... ONLY if i can do something about it one day, will such feelings of sympathy be of some use right. =(

apple sauce tastes pretty bad (well at least the one i got does; not sure if they all taste the same but don't care to venture) why do ppl even eat it! esp babies/toddlers/kids at CHAI/my little housemate...well actually i can kinda understand lah. i mean it's pretty nutritious and easy to swallow and digest i guess. i feel sorry for them. esp for babies, who can't even protest. i shall just revert back to eating normal stuff cos i'm really not that ill. =P

i can't get back to sleep with funny noises in my stomach and so i decided to look up the EVIL stomach virus disease... also termed Gastroenteritis, apparently. and very unfortunately i am now almost 90% sure i contracted this... and i feel like it's worsening instead of subsiding.. and it also sucks that no medicine helps.... 2 more random facts after my surfing on the internet-- apparently it is one of the most common acute illnesses in the US and it can last from a couple of days to say around 10 DAYS!....!!! i will die of dehydration and starvation by then.... ok just exaggerating. i think my case isn't that bad since i haven't been vomiting. but feel weak and may skip some classes later, though will try hard not to. and i will be thriving on things like bananas and apple sauce perhaps for next couple of days.... *casts myself a pitiful look* =P

after consulting the 'advice nurse' at the Tang Center i figured that i prob didn't get detergent poisoning but instead fell victim to some evil stomach bug. (ha, to think that i totally underestimated my body's ability to expel toxic compounds!) and apparently there has been a few going around and since it's contagious i prob caught it from someone... sigh. how unfortunate. and so i am expected to feel horrible for a few more days and no medicine can cure my discomfort since it's (according to her) some kinda virus attack. oh well. i mean i can function properly, just perhaps at 75% of original energy level. and meals are merely to prevent myself from getting gastric pains and i barely enjoy whatever i eat. it must really suck to have anorexia...

i'm quite positive i poisoned myself else why would i be suddenly feeling nauseous these 2 days for no reason... aargh. now i feel like throwing up at the sight of my chips... felt better after sleeping a whole lot yest night, but then it's coming back to haunt me again. it had better go away soon else it would spoil my entire week. VERY thankful that problem set deadline has been extended to next tuesday... hmm so anyway i think i poisoned myself cos i think i might have accidentally ingested some detergent yesterday. was washing my waterbottle with detergent.. then was in rush to catch the bus so i suspect i didn't get all the bubbles out. then in sch i discovered this layer of bubbles floating on top and realized that i actually drank a mouthful earlier before going out of the house (of course, without realizing that it was contaminated...) so now i'm wondering if body is reacting to the tiny amt of detergent in stomach?? but can't really tell what happened either.. maybe i was too stressed over midterm? maybe got heat stroke. aargh. nmind, at least it spoils my appetite and i can jian fei in the meantime ha.

when we fall

am reminded that we really can't tell when each of us will meet with unexpected problems/ frustrating incidents/weak moments... and also struck by how independent and strong each of us has to (or has to learn to) be, with no families close by to fall back on whenever things crop up. and it's gratifying to feel like i can be a 'shoulder' for someone to lean on, to be a tiny source of comfort to a friend... definitely no substitute for a family member or a close loved one... but don't think that matters...

nice ppl.

i suddenly really miss my mum after discovering this little thing she did for me which was so sweet. so i have this top with a hole in it... and though i've always meant to sew it up i never really got down to doing it... then yest when i pulled out the top to wear it (and to reaffirm that hole hadn't maliciously expanded) i couldn't find it... and came to the realization that my mum must have mended it when i brought that top home over summer... just felt like giving her a big hug at that point... am also very thankful to someone who has been a really great host, to the extent that i had to (at times) fight over sleeping on the floor... =P

decided that i deserved a mini break after my midterm, so went with Sumei to Elephant Pharmacy to rent a movie.... and we found this 1994 Jet Li Movie- Zhong1 Nan2 Hai3 Bao3 Biao1, which we both watched on TV a long long time ago! and so i got really excited and decided to rent it. =P it's not GREAT, but nonetheless enjoyable... and some parts i was just like shuai4 dai1 le! er, not that he's very shuai4 lah and i am NOT a Jet Li fan btw...just some scenes... ha, but of course, falling in love with your bodyguard is somewhat far-fetched lah...
oh well, it's back to more work this weekend...

Xun2 Ren2 Qi3 Shi4

Crystal, if you read this blog, can u drop me an email? haven't heard from you since you left for Cambridge... and think you changed your email add...

1220 am now. couldn't concentrate half the time in class today; haven studied AT ALL for history midterm on thursday; have to move out temporarily for another 3 days starting tmr and there's just so many things on my mind... and it doens't help that the next 2 weeks will be lined with more midterms and deadlines. aargh. but i'm not upset or anything... just need to really focus on the correct things. =(

oh dear. i have problems keeping my hands off pita chips, my new favorite snack! (packet says 40% less fat than potato chips, so that's a consolation....but i'm also sure that's written to deceive ppl like me) though they really do taste like croutons (but think smashed up and flattened...) they are pretty addictive... =P perhaps it's a good thing that they are rather pricey... and i'm poor... so my craving will pass..

thanks to ziyang this morning, i got a taste of sailing at Berkeley Marina... it was nice going out 'to sea' in such great weather but it really wasn't VERY fun, unlike what i was told to believe, cos it's just like sitting in any other boat what. ha. and quite slow.... but then i thought it was fun that Siswi and I prob made ZY puke blood when he let us steer the boat and we kept going round in circles... for at least 15 min or so. have to admit it's probably not that easy to learn how to sail properly.... ha but considering how we prob took ONE HOUR to get the whole thing into the water, (and i wasn't even the one tying the knots ha) it's just too much of a chore for me to want to learn how to do it =P and not that worth all the trouble ha. and actually.... the most fun (but really COLD, cos obstinate me refused to wear those stinky wet suits everyone puts on haha) bit was when we intentionally capsized, despite my initial protests...

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?

dunno why but there's nothing really worth blogging about this week... feel a bit xian. and little tired i guess, with 3 hws due today didn't really sleep that much yest. spent the longest time trying to figure out STATA and trying to complete my very long 142 prob set. even so i bet i'm prob still not half as zai as some of my classmates in this class. oh well, that's ok. at least i enjoy this class. sitting at comp now i'm suddenly reminded of the d&a dinners we used to hav two sems back and i kinda miss that. not that it was worth 'commemorating' or anything. guess just little things that made you happy that u miss now that things aren't the same anymore.

unfortunately it seems that other profs i've tried approaching so far all refer me back to the same prof who has declined to help me... one's on sabbatical... think if this happened to me say 2 yrs back i would have felt like a total failure... but now i guess i do try to not get too emotional over things, or just lose hope easily. must admit that what happened was negligence on my part too. i mean i'm kinda discouraged... but doesn't mean that without that prof's help i can't write my thesis right? =) and my history prof recommended some books for me to read... so i mean i guess i just hav to put in a lot more effort on my own...hmm but wonder if i sometimes appear too studious to my housemates? (more than once i fell asleep in middle of night with light on and sometimes they think i'm studying but obviously i conked out) because somewhat out of the blue my landlady said to me yesterday, "you need to fall in love, Shi Min"... to which i could only say, "that's not really up to me to decide, is it"... then she just laughed...not so sure getting attached for the sake of getting attached is that wise a thing to do huh?

A Fistful of Quarters

parking enforcement folks must have pissed off quite a lot of ppl, for someone to make a video like this... =P i'm sure most of us at Berkeley can empathise with the female lead? (coincidentally she's called 'squish'.. dun ask me why) i found the signboard esp funny... NB: might take few min to load though for some ppl...

braindead and upset today. need a break...
just spent whole of Sat writing a history response paper due tonight and the past 2 hours or so recovering from shock after receiving an email reply from this prof who believes that i intended to plagiarize something from a paper. sigh, perhaps i should have been more careful in writing up my research question... because it was just a tentative and early draft of what i'm interested in investigating, i didn't quote my sources and i think that's why the prof (who has apparently came across the paper i quoted from) thinks that i have the intention to cheat and warned me that that is behavior not acceptable of Berkeley students. i'm upset cos i really hav no intention to plagiarize and now he definitely wun help me... and he happens to be the prof on campus most familiar with the issues i want to look at... well i guess i can look for other ppl. but i'm just really upset that he totally misunderstood my intentions (though i can only blame myself for screwing things up). =(

ha, since when was i this enthu about sch? i just knew how to fall asleep...

i had a very good day at sch. and i just feel this sense of euphoria that i'm majoring in whatever i'm majoring in...although lotsa science majors would prob disagree with me, i feel that i am getting such a good education taking the two social science majors i'm taking... i prob would hav been really dull if i were.... say.... a Math/Engineering major or something. ok nmind, should not make generalizations like that. but in short, i love my majors lah.

sorry this is going to be long, but i really have to blog about some things that happend in class today. first, i really admire profs who sometimes have to be really patient or manage to keep a straight face even when students ask stupid questions. well, i guess i mean it's part of the job... but it also requires some skill.... so today ken chay was asked some repetitive questions by a student in class and so even though he just explained the concept like 1 min ago, he redid it without showing any sign of disgust or like impatience... and i was really impressed. well maybe also cos i already have a colored 'vision' of what he's like... like somehow perhaps cos of what other ppl have said, i get the impression that he has the potential to be mean. and then in Chinese class i witnessed another instance of the professor being really professional... (erm no word play intended) ok. so we are all supposed to each do a 10-min presentation of a city image for this class... to capture say different ways one can look at the city... and so this girl, not only did she not really do the assignment properly (cos she did a whole slide show that took up a lot of class time) she also did some self-promotion which was totally bewildering and immature in my opinion... as in.. there were 2 slides of herself wearing some flowery tank top against background of SF... which served NO purpose at all... but the prof just patiently waited for her to finish the whole presentation... then attempted to construct some meaning/ argument that could link up the somewhat random images in her whole presentation... like halfway through i already felt like laughing.... (yes i am very bad)... anyway the point of all this is that i really admire profs, or just people who can put up with such things... like i'm sure at some point in time i've also said stupid things or really DUH things... and i'm thankful to ppl who didn't like totally shatter my EGO by telling me that i'm really stupid or something...

ok i was totally carried away and forgot to explain why it was a good day at sch. so anyway, in Chinese class, we also analyzed the film we watched... and while the prof was pointing out things that i saw but didnt' really see in the film... like the juxtapositions of certain images... and asking us to ponder over the intentions of different settings and stuff.... i just thought what incredible pieces of works each film can potentially be... like these film-makers... they spend so much time trying to portray things to get a certain msg across... like it's just so amazing. but then sadly what percentage of their audience 'gets' it? i have to say that i prob didn't really appreciate half the things i've watched so far...
and i really like my history class. i've read so far, two books that led me to think more critically about Sun Yat-sen and Mao... and even though both of them kind of shattered the predominant founding father type images of these two 'cult figures'...(and as my GSI reminded me, which could also be biased since it's still say, one scholar's opinion...) it's kinda 'mind-liberating' to come to the realization that a lot of mainstream icons or things that we are so used to thinking (say, due to like general images/ideas circulated by the media) might just be totally inaccurate or distorted....

nmind. i think i'm talking too much. my 2 other econ classes are good too, though i dun really blog much about them. i think that i now appreciate my classes a lot more. a bit late, but never too late... and i've also found that doing all my readings and actually saying meaningful things in class can be quite rewarding... sadly it really takes me so much time. but somehow i feel quite happy to do all the work... so i intend to be nerdy the rest of the year and try to do all my readings... but i think it's actually worth it =)

i knew there must be loads of like-minded (and cheapo? haha) individuals out there unwilling to pay for NYT op-eds... here you go...

Cheapo Chinese?

was reading an article on Hong Kong Disneyland in The Economist when i came across the following...

The park's layout and opening date are ruled by strict feng-shui principles, but Disney may need more than this to persuade the cost-conscious Chinese to spend. Rather than buy official photographs, they tend to snap their own, even posing with shop toys which they then do not buy...

the image that it evoked just really tickled me... =P hey jun, if you ever visit Disneyland during your stay in Hong Kong, it would be really funny if you happen to make similar observations =P

i think it's infuriating we now have to pay for the used-to-be-free NY times op-eds... =( not that i read them religiously everyday.... but I kinda like Kristof and Friedman...esp issues Kristof writes about. i wonder if there's a way to read them for free?
i dunno if i have reason to be happy but i was really thrilled in Auffhammer's office when he said, hmm... this is so much better than last week.. and i think you have something interesting there... after wading around in literature broadly related to rural poverty in china, poverty alleviation, decentralization and peasant tax burdens for the past few weeks, i finally have something that i can delve into... question is still broad, but now i can finally approach ppl to ask them what they think of my question! and narrow down, if possible. so i'm excited. but i hope i'm not too optimistic though. can't believe one encouraging sentence really made me feel motivated once again...i guess it need it cos it's one long journey ahead...

I wanna gobble up the whole thing...

had a mini MAF celebration at home with my landlords and Kai, after discovering that they haven't tried mooncakes before...we weren't exactly very successful in convincing Kai that he prob shouldn't eat the whole thing at one go, but not that it really mattered anyways...(the pic above was very intentional though... i just had to get a pic of the mini cultural exchange tonite) it was fun watching him get all excited over these miniature mooncakes... which came in 4 diff flavors... my landlady liked the red bean paste one... but the date paste one was perhaps just a little too exotic for our liking. i wished though that i still had my little lanterns. happy mid-autumn festival. =)

my skin test bump seems to be growing bigger by the day. and it's achy... i'm going to die of TB...
anyway i am so confused i dunno what it means. back in p6, i would have jumped with joy cos means dun hav to take BCG... but i didn't anyways. just that bump seems even bigger now.. wonder why. am i carrier? or i have such high level of resistance? i dun really care haha. just glad that i still convinced nurse at Tang Center to declare me TB negative and so i'm medically cleared to volunteer... hehe.
i'm somewhat inspired by all the films i've been watching recently... it would be REALLY cool if one day i can make my own documentaries/ films and bring to the world issues that ought to be brought to their attention. or travel around the world taking snapshots of diff cultures/ diff aspects of ppl's lives i come across... do some form of photojournalism.... ya rite. if only... sigh i have so many "if onlies"....

Google is becoming somewhat omnipresent... so now not only is there Google Maps, Gmail, Google News and GoogleTalk, there's also Google Scholar, which has definitely made scholarly articles a lot more accessible for the general public! we can even browse content pages/ intros/chapters of more 'academic' books online... i wonder what's next?
and for ppl who wouldn't mind some free but decent entertainment on a Thursday evening, the Insitute of East Asian studies is gonna screen Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern at Wheeler at 7 pm tmr... =)

you know, sometimes actually i do feel a bit lonely. like though u have homework to do, readings to catch up on, but you just don't feel like doing them and even if you try to do them, you can't really concentrate. i wonder why this is the case. quite a few ppl have told me they feel the same way too and we wondered if it gets aggravated as we grow older...hmm better be cautious. correlation's not equal to causation! ha. hmm but i mean i'm not upset or anything... it's a self-imposed choice in a way....like i can go for random parties if i really wanted to rid myself of the occasional boredom, but it just seems really pointless. to be with people for the sake of having people around you... at the end of the day, do you feel less lonely? i don't think so.... i was just in Chinese class today and some classmates were like bitching about the readings among themselves in front of the prof (they were soft, but i'm sure they still could be heard!) if i really wanted someone to talk to i could jolly well have joined in, but i just thought it was rude to talk "behind someone's back"... esp right in front of the person some more! or compromising your own principles just to fit in... i feel like i've grown a lot more discerning or better at guessing ppl's characters... i also feel less pressured to speak up, cos i feel like i'm better at deciding whether ppl are saying smart or stupid things and not like a lot of ppl say a lot of smart things anyway... but of course i'm not going to say something for the sake of saying something lah. just when i feel like i have something useful to contribute...
i also feel that the stage of your life you do things really affect your experiences and things u take away from doing whatever.... cos in History class, prof was just talking about Ba Jin's novel- Jia1... which i read in sec sch... i was now learning its contents under a very different context and i totally felt like i wasted all my time reading the book when i was in sec sch... i totally treated it as a normal novel and prob didn't appreciate any of the important themes and issues raised in the book...
hmmm sorry for such a long-winded entry. blogging really does make a difference for me, esp when i have so many thoughts i want to vocalize but dunno who to tell... =P there's perhaps no better audience than friends who frequent this blog and derive some form of utility (i hope!) from sharing my thoughts? =)

coincidentally, the two films i watched in the past 3 days revolve around the theme of educating prostitutes' kids... Born into brothels was about how an American photographer tried very hard to help some students in her photography class (kids of women who worked in Calcutta's red light district) get a decent education... and The Goddess or Shen2nu3 (a1934 silent movie starring Chinese actress Ruan Ling-yu) was about how this prostitute tried very hard to give her only child a decent education, only to be mocked by peers prejudiced against her (and in turn her son too) due to her lowly and supposedly degenerate occupation... it just makes me sad.. how sometimes to a very large extent our subsequent paths in life are dictated by our family backgrounds... the types of families we were born into... while there are definitely cases of ppl who manage to succeed etc; how many unheard, unseen individuals are there, who work hard all their lives but still don't manage to overcome the 'natural' disadvantages they started with?

One fine day






i love the sky. and whose bei4 ying3s do we have here?







this is actually a failed picture. tried to take macro then not clear cos wind was blowing rather strongly... and gives absolutely no info on anything! ha. but i still kinda like it.
and so today instead of being sociable at Berkeley Marina i 'ran away' and attempted to experiment more with my new digicam... er unfortunately most of them turned out looking too random. =P

i was thinking about quitting even before starting as a CHAI tutor due to concerns about coping with volunteering and taking 5 classes at the same time... but a day at the center today made me change my mind. i mean i really want to stay on and see how it goes. it's not that i was particularly drawn to the adorable autistic kids; in fact, i really wasn't. it was mainly because through observation sessions today i could really see for myself that there was some 'method' behind interacting with kids. the very friendly behaviorist tried to explain the kids' behavior and how tutors ought to facilitate/encourage the kids to interact...prior to this, when i did play with kids, i was just totally random and didn't even think that there were so many cues we could pick up... the observation skills, patience and sensitivity required of a tutor convinced me that there's perhaps a lot i could learn (not for any particular purpose, but learning for the sake of learning?) but it's seriously tiring! from observing my own housemates do parenting... CHAI tutors engage the autistic kids... i have concluded that parenting really isn't an easy task, esp if you want to do it well. really pei4 fu2 all those parents out there... which makes me wonder how it was like for my parents...haha but my mum alwyas likes to 'boast' how guai1 my sis and i were when we were little.... but now that i think about it, i must have been a little mystery if i were this quiet little kid walking around, staring blankly at ppl when they ask me stuff... =P er, just kidding.

this is random but was just rereading paragraphs from the Little Prince and feel that everyone should read it =P i wonder why there aren't more ppl who appreciate or read beyond its seemingly childish conversations. it's so beautifully written...You are beautiful, but you are empty..... One could not die for you...

Excerpt from Chapter 21...

"What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince.

"You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me, like that, in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day..."

The next day the little prince came back.

"It would have been better to come back at the same hour," said the fox. "If, for example, you come at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at three o'clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o'clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you... One must observe the proper rites..."

"What is a rite?" asked the little prince.

"Those also are actions too often neglected," said the fox. "They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all."

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near...

"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."

"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you..."

"Yes, that is so," said the fox.

"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.

"Yes, that is so," said the fox.

"Then it has done you no good at all!"

"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." And then he added: "Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret."

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses. "You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world." And the roses were very much embarrassed. "You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you, the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.

And he went back to meet the fox. "Goodbye," he said.

"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."

"It is the time I have wasted for my rose..." said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose..."

"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

actually i also dunno what these things are, but found them strewn all over the ground while trying to hike up a trail at Tilden... initially i thought someone dropped a pile of rusty screws on the ground, but upon closer examination they were actually some kind of acorn-shaped fruit! and i was so amused by these well-formed thingies that i decided to collect some of them to attempt to take a nice picture. yes, i'm trying to take better pictures, but progress is slow. but hopefully i'll get there, some day. =) and i realized that i am perhaps not really cut out for hiking... ppl just enjoy admiring trees, nature etc, but i do random things like pick up funny fruits from the ground and lag behind everyone else. or spend 3 min trying to take pic of this pretty orange flower jacqui plucked for me...
tomorrow my monopoly over the house shall end cos housemates are coming back... and within 5 days two of Kai's fish died... even though i really tried my best to remember to feed them... sigh. fished out one guppy on Sun night and there's this stationary gold one at bottom of tank lying on its side. dunno if it's sick or dead... =(

a frivolous research question

i for some reason have recently become rather aware of how many authors dedicate their books to their spouses for the support given to them throughout the whole process of writing... or words of gratitude along the lines of, "if not for him/her, i wonder if i could have pulled through this"... of course ppl acknowledge the help and support of colleagues and family members too, but i get the sense of ppl being esp grateful that there's like this ONE person he/she can always rely on/ who is always there for them...
and i'm really curious. is such emotional support really crucial? i suddenly am thinking if any study on correlation/ relationships between say, marriage and authorship has been done? like to what extent can we really be self-sufficient; self-reliant? out of those bestselling works (be it books, art, films or what not) we have, how many percent of the creators are married/ have had long-standing, happy relationships with their partners...can any meaningful and more structured investigation be done to look into this? is there even any causal relationship between 'unflinching' emotional support (which i guess can be best estimated using marriage, though not exactly very accurate also, since ppl marry for so many different reasons) and corresponding success of person? hmm...... right at this moment i realize i'm actually trying to delve into how true the "saying"--' behind every successful man there has to be a woman', is.
possible Econ thesis for next sem? or pysch/sociology project?? any suggestions/ comments out there? =P am i being totally weird to wonder...

recently i've actually had a few ppl telling me that i seem happier and a teeny bit more self-confident... and i do think so myself too... it's not that suddenly good things have been happening to me; nor did i suddenly turn smart; pretty or whatever (ha, of course i wish i did, but these really aren't the most impt things in life) but i guess i've gradually changed my mindset... well. i guess there are always things that i wish would happen but never will, things i'm dissatisfied about; but ultimately there's nothing in my life that i should be seriously upset about... so why not just treasure everything i do have. not everyone gets to come to Berkeley for college... not everyone gets chance to make some really good friends in college... guess the list can just go on.
and i'm going to try harder... and hopefully write a good PEIS thesis this sem too... well, my only fellow classmate in H195 seminar has done most of his work and has even collected all his data... and i really do feel threatened cos everything for me is still pretty much up in the air, but instead of sitting at home and fretting at least i'm trying... i borrowed all these books and shall force myself to piece up something decent to talk about next class... and while my UCDC paper really wasn't fantastic, at least it made me read up more about my area of interest last sem..and it helps that i have a lot of time to myself this sem. i'm starting to feel like i can be alone for the most part, but perhaps not lonely. perhaps also good that i wun hav much free time to worry too much either =)

yay Berkeley's screening Born into Brothels at Wheeler next fri!

so i had my own taste of Ken Chay's lectures today.... he prob spent like half the time digressing from lecture stuff lah; but it was kinda interesting and amusing, from hearing him shoot down (not so subtly) an economist XXX (quote: winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, who recently published a BS bestseller) to presenting Gwyneth Paltrow's Sliding Doors plot as an example of a 'counterfactual'..... i guess i would have bits of trivia presented to me every tues and thurs from now on... =P
and i really enjoyed my History lecture today... i also don't understand why... the stuff is really interesting. i dun really understand why i can get excited over individuals trying to reform China in the early 1900s...factions within the imperial court... how Cixi usurped power... but i really did. it's just fascinating... i mean i prob wun remb this 10 yrs from now (or even 2? cos i'm so forgetful) but i just really enjoyed learning about them.. but 10 thick books in 15 weeks??
and so we were discussing famous Chinese sociologist Fei Xiaotong's text about xiang1 in Chinese class, as in like countryside... one of the characteristics being that ppl had tendency to settle down in little clusters and stayed in these communities (usually) throughout their lives... and as such there's this sense of familiarity and there's actually no need for the rule of law.. cos there's like this mutual trust among individuals.. whereas in the cities, ppl are usually strangers and we have to come up with all these rules/laws to ensure ppl keep their word etc.... and i was just thinking it's actually pretty true... (but i guess laws are also in place to make things more organized, more orderly....) then in the evening, i got a surprise cos something similar actually happened, though we're not exactly in any kind of rural area... picked up my long coats from laundry place on University and found that i had no cash to pay the auntie, and she actually let me take my coats home without paying... she was like... you can pay me when you drop by the next few days... i was just so touched... well, i've only been there once like last year, yet she trusted me so much... i'll be so totally guilt-stricken if this thing slips my mind and i forget to go pay her by this weekend...

today was a long hungry day... actually wanted to go from 930-630 with no break in between but i gave up and didn't sit in the 330-500 lecture. and was nodding off in my 5-630 lecture...(on 2nd day of class! typical me, some ppl would say...) but of course schedule's not confirmed yet. so no hungry tues and thurs yet =P
my most interesting classes were my two chapalang classes. i'm actually going to read stuff in Chinese for once! and will get to watch films and read authors like Lu Xun and Zhang Ai Ling... hope doing readings in Chinese wun take me ages. for History 116d i actually got a shock when i entered the room, cos i somehow thought my lecturer was supposed to be a guy, but was greeted instead by this taitai-looking middle-aged Chinese lady with a slight fobbish accent.. she was a lil long-winded initially, but eventually delivered a pretty decent first lecture. so hopes are still high =) only afraid that after 3 lectures in a row i might be a bit too braindead to absorb what she has to offer each time.

though it got a little draggy at times, i think Beautiful Life's one of the most romantic dramas of its kind. not many shows can actually make you feel like the couple's really in love. but then again i prob haven't watched enough dramas to make any sound conclusion... but i thought i could really feel the chemistry between Shuji and Kyoko... sad show, but really liked most of the characters in it.
then again, 'love' is so subjective. but no matter what kind of love, i believe it's something that comes really naturally/subconsciously... like caring about someone "involuntarily". not easily controllable. will miss. mmm..purely wanting someone to be happy? not intentionally seeking reciprocation. aiyah but of course, who doesn't like reciprocation. humans are feeling creatures after all... nmind... just rambling =P

To the lighthouse

it was such a beautiful day today... and it so happened that sumei and i decided to go check out the Marin Headlands near Sausalito this afternoon... i seriously LOVE the weather here. hmm anyway this lighthouse's at Point Bonita (haha name tickles me cos it brings back some silly but fond memories) the view wasn't GREAT, but nice nonetheless. and the drive up there was just so soothing, esp when it was still a little cloudy in the distance and i felt like i was driving into a sea of clouds! Feel like i want to check out a new place every weekend... what have i been doing the past 3 years??? either stoning in front of my computer or hanging out in libraries?? definitely aim to visit more places around the Bay area this year... and improve driving skills...=) Sch's starting in a day's time. am actually pretty excited about some of my classes. but feel like i'm morphing into such a chapalang major, cos i'm really looking forward to my Chinese 159 and History 116d classes! of course, look forward to taking Econ 181 too... =)

Point Bonita, Marin Headlands

mmm... intriguing idea... champagne-in-watermelon on she who eats...

i aim to be healthy this semester... free stupid Cali fitness in sg (compliments of Jeannice, who signed up for membership) says that i need to do weight training and cut down on fats! hmmph. weight training... as if i'm not heavy enough. cut down on fats... hmmm i guess erm that's partly accurate.. haha (deceive deceive myself) ... which also means like maybe one year ago i was REALLY fat.. hmm. oh well, ya lah still need to exercise more =P good lah, exercise more, eat less, then save money also... let's see how long i can sustain this... i hav feeling maybe two weeks into plan i will give up and succumb to like yummy cheap Haagen-Dazs...

i finally hav internet! haha. just one night without internet and i was feeling hun2 sheng1 bu4 shu1 fu2... i even dreamt about discovering the wireless password... quite scary how dependent on internet i have subconsciously become... but finally got wireless password this morning =) sigh i got jet lag so even though i didn't sleep all day yesterday i still couldn't make it. woke up at 330am and tried very hard to get back to sleep but just couldn't. good thing i had my jap dramas to pei2 wo3, so watched my Beautiful Life starting from like 4am... the quality's really good and i really regret not getting more Jap dramas to keep up with listening to Jap. plus relistening to the nice piano piece in the song was really heartwarming too. oh well. =(
received a piece of bad news yest... that they uncovered my dishonest reporting for car insurance and so premium will be raised to like $2900!!! crazy. have to look for car insurance again today. wondering if i should drive without collision insurance.... sigh and there are funny bumps on my tires i guess i would have to send it in for inspection. it's actually really rather cold here, for a normal summer morning... but i like... haha and i hav little Kai crying in the morning not wanting to go to sch again... haha a bit noisy, but somehow unlike some ppl, i just dun think i can ever hate kids... =P

i'm flying back to the US for the last time... i know i will really treasure this last year so much... yet knowing that i prob wun be back till next June makes me feel a little bu she de my family... not that i haven't been away for a year before, but this time it's like planning to be away till i graduate...and after bout two months of being showered with love from parents i feel just a teeny bit hesitant about leaving=P hmmm but anyway, plan to keep myself very busy this year and aim to study harder... so there prob wun be much time for me to miss home and before i know it, i'll be yearning i had another year in the US... k... back to last min packing =P