the view at the peak of Mount Tamalpais was simply breathtaking... and from high up above all the cities seemed so insignificant compared to the vast expanse of mountains, trees and rocks...and human beings are but little specks seen along the mountain trails... and so on day 2 of the "shimin-explores-the-bay-area" long weekend I continued to be mesmerized by the beauty of my natural surroundings. then in the evening, after accepting an invitation from my housemates to go watch the July 4th fireworks at Berkeley Marina, i found myself sitting on the rocks by the waters watching a slightly foggy sunset with cold wind blowing in my face... i am really really struck by how beautiful these places close by can be. and really quite horrified by how i have never bothered to really explore any of them. i now have in mind destinations i want to visit/ visit again in fall before term starts... =)

and i found myself above a sea of clouds... 

imagine watching the sunset here... 

at the top of the world...? 

thanks to ziyang and sumei today i explored places close by but never ever visited...it was somewhat amusing though that i spent bout 2 hours on a morning trail in a state park in Napa only to find a somewhat disappointing and obstructed view of the valley at the peak; whereas when cruising through Tilden Park in air-conditioned comfort in the late afternoon i was able to get an awesome view without even trying... this was my very first time going to Tilden Park in the 3 yrs i've been here and i'm pretty surprised that we actually have a gem of a park right in our backyard... perhaps just 5/10 min away from Lawrence Lab and we enter this world of difference... of course it isn't as spectacular as the popular national parks... but for something that's so close to us, i agree with Sumei that it really is something to 'crow over'...
and i am extremely pathetic at playing frisbee... despite trying yesterday and today to learn the correct method of throwing it i still cannot get it... what a letdown to my dear patient coach, Sumei... guess certain things u really need some talent.. =P oh well... i will take a break for now then return in fall and attempt to master the art of the frisbee throwing, the seh3 way...

summer sch is finally over, but strangely instead of feeling really relieved i feel like i'm gonna miss it. even though during that 6 weeks half the time i really just wanted more time curling up under my comforter every morning; fell asleep on countless nights over matters classical thinkers spent their lives mulling over and writing about, i still had a pretty productive and enjoyable time... and i'm really really happy with my lamp. even though it might not seem much, but for the first time almost i embarked on something i thought i couldn't do, yet with every step i took i could really see the whole thing materializing... it's just such a satisfying process that for a while it really convinced me that if i really set my mind on doing something, perhaps it isn't that impossible... now i am pressured to pursue all those lofty goals i once had... haha. oh well, but glad that i now have some free time to read all the novels i wanted to read, over summer... =) and i can't believe i just bought this book that i never would have taken a second look at had i not taken PEIS 100 this summer... hopefully i will go on to shock myself by finishing it =P

the revolving lamp i spent hours and hours making... yes, looks kinda out of this world, still imperfect, but that's also kinda what i like about it... in a nutshell it has my friends revolving round me... and if you think you see your own lun2 kuo4 don't worry, your eyes aren't failing you, since some of you who frequent this blog are probably in it... =P

i really do respect individuals who are really brilliant yet extremely humble and do not make ill-informed individuals like me the least bit uncomfortable even though i can ask silly questions =P it also turns out that some of the best instructors i had at Berkeley are mere GSIs... i would rank my PEIS instructor as one of the best instructors i've ever had, not only cos he's passionate about what he's teaching...he also REALLY knows his stuff and tries to make dry, more philosophical material at least more palatable... i'm really inspired though there is so much more i dunno or cannot understand properly... and just a little piece of trivia that i probably ought to have known long ago but don't: where did the left-right terminology in politics originate? was enlightened during office hours today. can't put it properly in words myself, so here's a mini explanation from Wikipedia-- The terminology of left-right politics was originally based on the seating arrangement of parliamentary partisans during the French Revolution. The more ardent proponents of radical revolutionary measures (including democracy and republicanism) were commonly referred to as leftists because they sat on the left side of successive legislative assemblies. And though it doesn't make much sense now, use of these terms have kinda stuck...

just to convince you that i really am not obsessed with child rearing, there shall be no part III nor any other instalments in the near future. the weather these few days has been horrible. it's cold and foggy, totally unlike summer. dunno why i am blogging at 3am in the morning instead of sleeping; just spent a good 4 hours finishing up my frame and selecting pics for my lamp and i am hoping that everything will turn out the way i want... actually i'm mad, spending so much time over this when i have my PEIS prob set and finals due on friday!! but i dunno, i just cannot forsake it just cos i really really want my idea to materialize... we had a pinhole camera workshop on monday and i got some really cool 'negative images' on photo paper.. if i have time to take pics of them in the next day or two, shall post them on this blog ... but prob not cos i foresee an almost sleepless 2 days ahead=P didn't know that there's a darkroom in Wurster till 2 days ago...=)

Child Rearing Part II

and so i continued my mini investigation this evening and asked my landlords if they ever beat Kai, cos it's somewhat unimaginable if kids never ever get spanked even when they are really bratty... and i guess it's somewhat misleading for me to make a sweeping statement-- that angmohs don't spank their kids while Asians do.. cos i'm sure different people, even within the same culture, educate their kids differently... and while generally Americans don't use canes, many of them (according to my landlady+ speaking for her friends...) do spank their kids, when they really need to... so the main reason why my landlords never beat Kai is cos he is usually never that 'bad'... and also because it doesn't work on him... and apparently once his dad got so mad at him he slapped him; yet Kai just started laughing...(seems like we have quite a cool crazy kid here) and so just as his dad said, "you lose all leverage... what can you do? slap him harder??" it seems like child rearing really does have to involve some creativity too...

Child rearing 101

having lived with my 'family' for about a month or so, there were quite a few occasions whereby Kai started crying for no apparent reason and i never once saw my landlady/landlord hit their kid to 'teach him a lesson'... and today was esp funny. Kai didn't want to wake up to go for dinner and started crying.. after initial stern attempts to make the kid stop, the parents decided to cry along with their kid.. and so from the living room (where i was sitting trying desperately to twist my wire), for a few min, i heard this communal howling emanating from Kai's room... and i really felt like laughing... i dunno, i just felt that their way of bringing up their kid is so different and 'fun'.... such stark contrast to the caning or threats of policemen arrest or 'babu-singh-kidnappings' that i'm so used to... or for that matter, many of us are used to... the group confession of having once been caned by our parents before, and comparisons of the diameters of the canes our parents used to own (at In and Out some weeks ago) still remain fresh in my mind... =P and the scary thing was (which i didn't really dare to voice out then) that out of the 4 girls and 2 mums present then, 3 of us agreed that the best way to discipline the kid is to cane the kid.. else the kid wun learn.. i didn't say anything, cos i really dunno what i would do... does caning really work? is it a very Asian thing to do? i should ask my landlords one day what they think about caning...

don't you ever feel like some ppl though you have known them for so long, kinda well but you never really talked to them? in a way i feel like i'm making friends with my old friends all over again and it's nice in a way cos though i might have known them from last time, yet in a way both parties have grown and changed and so in a way it's like a new experience for both parties again... and i dunno i kinda like this feeling... and it's nice too cos like there's already this basic 'foundation' in place, yet it's possible to go a step further...
i hope to make my own revolving lamp for my very last art project, but i wonder if it will end up being a total flop cos i have never tried doing anything like that before and am just going to experiment... it will be so cool if i can replicate the image i have in my head. but if not, then i will be screwed! sigh, but i def wun be able to spend the bulk of my weekend fretting over this, cos i have lotsa PEIS readings to do... prepare for finals... only 5 more days of summer sch... so fast..

i guess the issues raised in this article will sound very familiar to many of us at Berkeley?

i'm exhausted from the endless assignments and readings i have to do.. i really want to just sleep all day but i'm so torn cos i really do like both my classes... my PEIS instructor is really so good i feel that i'm doing him an injustice by being lazy, by being unable to gain a deeper understanding of my material.. by falling back on my readings... and Art yesterday was so cool; i was really impressed by everyone's projects.. to see so many different manifestations of the same fundamental idea... shall post some pics here.
Even though i'm so busy, i am somewhat reluctant to take too long a break from blogging. it has really become something i'm almost addicted to. why? i'm not sure either. perhaps i just like to hear myself rambling on and on about things that excite me, things that bother me, but fear that no one wants to listen. so if i just blog, ppl have the freedom to choose if they want to read whatever i write (assuming some bored/kpo/amused/concerned individuals out there frequent my blog regularly... =P) while i have the freedom to express myself without being imposing on any particular person...and of course it's nice when your friends leave little msgs from time to time... anyway, here are the pictures, complete with one-liner introduction/commentaries... enjoy.

this, in my opinion, was one of the coolest projects. this girl, a musician, tried to attach strings tied to tubes of paint, to her violin, such that paint would drip onto the canvas as she played...her set-up didn't work very well, but the whole idea was really cool and the resulting piece of art, though totally spontaneous, turned out to be really unique.  

if i dun say anything, u wouldn't be able to tell that the table is really made of cardboard, and the box, wood. so subtle yet so clever! 

these images were really made by poking needles into the banana skins and leaving them to rot... and u can see the 'aging process' from right to left 

larger-than-life furry veges... some kinda commentary on GM food,, 

after repeated failures, lotsa precious time wasted, i finally came up with my tiny collection of 'fleece tank tops' for my art project... started off destroying my nice towel and making a small towely tank top that i ended up really liking but cannot fit into no matter what; then progressed to making this huge light blue furry one that ended up looking like some sort of animal skin on some ppl... figured those didn't give me the really summery feel i was trying to create.. then i found some cheap fleece and finally created these bright summery ones that aren't very well sewn (cos i was getting backaches sewing and sewing) but good enough to serve my purpose... haha and they look better from afar... i really like the yellow one and the pink toga-looking one in the picture =P hope that the string that i bought from Ace Hardware will allow me to replicate this backyard set-up at the balcony in my Art Room tmr afternoon =) wonder if ppl will get the point though.

my fleece summer collection...