$0.02

Something was caught in my throat--maybe my heart, maybe my pride, maybe just my tongue or my breakfast. Whatever it was, it was making it hard to sit without fidgeting wildly as I watched her tiptoe with her words and make commentary with her eyes.

"So you seem to be someone with a lot on her plate," She said, cocking her head to one side and giving me the playful look of suspicion out of the corner of her bright blue eye. Her hair is platinum flawless and her suit is the perfect combination of polka-dot retro 50s hourglass housewife and high-powered, high-priced administrative academian. My Allston Burr Senior Tutor (something like a Resident Dean), whom I've always considered from afar to be a tragic woman (unbearably cute and unbearably spoiled child, distant and only mildly attractive husband), was now giving me a talk about the precariousness of my academic standing.

"You know, I give this talk to a lot of students every semester. And really, I don't know what your goals are. There was one student several years ago who has since graduated who just, who just wanted to...to pass," A wide sweeping gesture with her hand, attempting to indicate his physical passing out of Quincy house, or perhaps to show her own suspension of disbelief in dealing with the student, or maybe this is how she emphasizes her speech. "Give him all Cs, he was thrilled! And I don't know what your goals are, but remember I'm only sad about this if you are."

"This" being failing my first math midterm and being in danger of failing a class and being put on academic probation.

I have been on an ambitious quest to create a concentration here at Harvard that would allow me to explore materials from an engineering perspective, from social and historical perspectives, and in context of their uses in the art and architecture of daily living. Of course, I dicked around so much with courses during my first year and a half here (choral conducting, French A, neuroscience, linguistics, oil painting), that now I am left with a c.v. which leaves me few options for graduation and a resume that is painfully thin in expressing any coherent interest in future vocations.

My quest, with its strong (and I assure you, very genuine) personal motivations and resulting exquisite theoretical expositions on its legitimacy as a study, has crumbled in practice. I withdrew from my Engineering Sciences class after struggling through weeks without sleep or exercise. I couldn't find time to go to classes in order to complete the work for the classes; I couldn't find time to think between problem sets or lectures or reading. I was taking the perfect schedule to accomplish my goals on a 4-year Harvard timeline, and I couldn't hack it.

There is a tremendous and disheartening disconnect between the theoretical ideals I learn about in this liberal arts setting and the manner in which I am told to learn them. While the Resident Dean can tell me through her ruby lipstick that learning is lifelong and that an undergraduate concentration is no blip on the radar, she only says this because she knows that she has to pad her real message with something consonant with the trendy theoretical underpinnings of all the hundreds of pages of reading that social studies concentrators pretend to do every week. Really, she knows that i-banking interviewers, law schools, and whoever else can provide recognition--the keystone of academic success, for in this society learning is only for yourself in coincidental circumstances--needs something more than genuine personal motivation in order to give a seal of approval. She knows that taking more than four years, or a year between graduation and grad school, or taking the summer easy just doesn't look good, and will get you no further than your bachelors. Maybe she even knows that my mother, with all of her good intentions for my wellbeing, places so much less emphasis on hoping for my cultivation as a moral human being and positive contribution to civil society than my current academic success in the form of fellowships and degrees and future economic success in terms of job security and advancement.

I like reading. I like writing. I even like math when given the time to do it. Above all I love comprehension. But I can't do it all--not with only 24 hours in the day.

It's hard for me to keep a level head about this. It's hard for me to keep this in perspective, to remember, as a good and great friend told me as I sobbed to him on the phone just after the meeting, that failing a class is the least of my worries, and that my parents will always love me. It's so simple and so true, but everything in my life signifies messages to the contrary. I have been greatly discouraged by my environment and I would so like to succeed, but failing that, I would like nothing more than to break and live life somewhere out of the way--where nobody cares that I don't have the money for a nice suit or the resume to fill it. I want to keep a good attitude and take advantage of my situation, but I just don't feel like I know how.

I left her office with no solutions, just an ultimatum. And I cringed as I hit the air outside the building--air that, later in the April day, would bring snow--and I started to cry. I was trying hard to be neither jaded nor in despair, and as a result I just felt alone. And I was; I am, mostly because I choose to be. I don't want to share these feelings and I don't know that external advice can do much besides ease the symptoms--dry the tears and so forth. Whatever is stuck in my throat, I will have to clear myself--and if I believe, I have a lifetime to do it.

Southward!

Off on a 15-hour drive for a week and two days ultimate frisbee, Southern hospitality (?) and general spring break revelry. Oh and hundreds of pages of reading on Confucian Humanism.

Onward, ho!

puzzling

In response the the new-blogger, old-blogger question: I don't know who's the creator. I'm not because i just switched over and it wouldn't let me switch this one. Maybe Juli? We're the two admins.

no more booty calling!

My cell phone died, so please e-mail me if you need to contact me.

Oh my gosh, I just realized that means I don't have anyone's number. Oh. Oh, that blows.

Eye Candy, Food for Thought

One of the best photos that was overlooked.
-------

"Before, I spoke of clear periods, those on which the light fell. Now I'm talking about the hidden sketches of that same youth, of certain facts, feelings, events that I buried. I started to write in surroundings that drove me to reticence. Writing, for those people, was still something moral. Nowadays it often seems writing is nothing at all. Sometimes I realize that if wirting isn't, all things, all contraries confounded, a quest for vanity and void, it's nothing. That if it's not, each time, all things confounded into one through some inexpressible essence, then writing is nothing but advertisement. But usually I have no opinion, I can see that all options are open now, that there seem to be no more barriers, that writing seems at a loss for somewhere to hide, to be written, to be read. That its basic unseemliness is no longer accepted. But at that point I stop thinking about it."

Marguerite Duras, The Lover

Boys with Guitars

They are a rarity here.

What a shame.

Scraps

Air - Talkie Walkie
Album of the Week

--------------------

Choice quotes from recent reading for class:
"Fat sheep make good mutton but poor parchment."
Thompson, The Materials of Medieval Painting.

"...Or take the umbrella. It is an ingenious, thoroughly functional device, neat and practical. But you simply cannot imagine it in company with the racquet or the riding boot. They do not speak the same language. There seems to be something finicky about an umbrella, something rather cold and reserved--an air of diginity which the racquet utterly lacks."
Rasmussen, Experiencing Architecture.

"When the possbility of sudden failure exists, a larger factor of safety should be used than when failure is preceded by obvious warning signs."
Beers et. al. Mechanics of Solids.

"The 1370 foot high tower that serves as a prow for Manhattan continues to construct the fiction that creates readers, makes the complexity of the city readable, and immobilizes its opaque mobility in a transparent text." This one isn't funny. It just makes no sense.

It's Saturday afternoon in San Diego and it's 84 degrees out. I'd love to stay here and tell you more, but I'm going out to my balcony to enjoy this crazy February weather. I have homework due tonight so I'll be doing that... but it's so nice out I don't think I'll mind too much.

My bone

My intention is not to make you jealous (hey--i might be in your neck of the woods next year) but it's probably in the 40s or 50s? And it's not raining yet though it's supposed to.

Have I ever told you that I love your words? I love your words. You say everything I want to say, everything that's trapped in my mind and i'm afraid to admit, everything I can't articulate in words or sounds... i'm so far gone into journalism that I can't write about my day without a lede and a nut. Feelings? They have no place in a news article. And I can't talk to anyone without my list of questions.

The "you" I am talking to is LeeAnn.

Four years into college I can finally admit I do not like weekends. Weekends in college are like bricks thrown into my face every week, bricks that tell me I do not have any friends, nor can I do anything productive with limitless free time. I've almost given up on them, content to stay at home on a Friday and watch a movie by myself, content to not even make an effort to go out. It's always the same boys and beer and shots anyway, walking with heels and taking makeup off, making meaningless conversation. I used to go out with the hope that i'd meet a boy. But now that i'm on the older end of the college crowd, most do not exude the level of maturity i'm looking for. I then went out for the alcohol. The amazing freedom of conversation and action it provided, the endless random excitement. But now I never really get drunk enough to stop thinking about what I really think of the guy i'm talking to. I also went out because I knew people. And now I know people, but if I see them we stay in. So it's the weekend. And I have a paper to write and four books of Victorian blank verse to read and a future to plan and a full Netflix queue and a whole week of work ahead of me. And a few actual plans. Can't I just enjoy that?

I could just enjoy that. I might just enjoy that.

My random evening that consisted of everything I already mentioned also consisted of me and two friends ending up in the apartment of two girls I barely knew in high school. Different social circles, that sort of thing, but four years later we can have a beer together and admit we know each other's names and had classes together four years ago. It's funny the extent to which all that just doesn't matter anymore.

Hey Halfwhat

I'm losing perspective, here. Throw some bones from your respective Californian locations--I'd like to forget that it's 20 degrees (feels like 6) out!

Are you hip?

Ukulele's are so hip right now.

Measurements

I am testing the space between his jaw and his shoulder, measuring with the modified arc built of my forehead nose and lips to see if I fit there.

Along the landscape of a longer neck that fit upon a broader collarbone, one that usually smelled of bread and cigarette smoke and sometimes of sheets and soap, I had once found a hollow that held my cheek and my closed eyelids and my hair-draped forehead against it as a cradle held its charge; that is, dutifully and gently.

The space is smaller, though, on this one. His jaw is in the middle of my forehead, my chin rests on the plain of his chest. I think I can fit here, though; I can imagine getting comfortable with this uncomfortable position. After all, crossing the street, opening the front door, embracing, kissing-- at different, earlier points in my life I didn't like to do those things, either; and all still hold their small and thus insidious elements of danger and risk.

His hands aren't much bigger than mine, and he wants to hold me in them. They get clammy fast, with too much touching, and I let go to spare him the embarassment of realizing this for himself. I know exactly what to do and what to say, which words and expressions to deliver in how many doses to make him sufficiently desirous, to make him feel sufficiently at ease. I am overestimating him in order to feel like less of a predator--he must know my game. (This conclusion, of course, is irrational. He doesn't even know me. He wouldn't know a game from the most genuine sentiment. He is nothing to me; I could be anything to him.)

But at some point, I didn't play and I didn't know, either. I took it slow and did it by intuition, by touch, by moving slowly, uncertain day by uncertain week, feeling my way through and closing my eyes when hoping not to come up short or overshoot. I wrote pages filled and overflowing with those innocent expressions of first infatuation; I wrote and deleted and saved countless emails; I waited for him to emerge and I waited for him to leave. I couldn't control anything. It brought about the best sort of inexact and overwhelming and satisfying love--slowly built by serendipity after serendipity. I can't hope for it again, so I won't. I won't wait for the shoulder that's just right; he's come and gone. I could settle for this. I could settle for a little bit smaller, a little safer, a little more sterile. I can't adapt, I can squeeze in like I belong here. There's no infatuation to swell me up and give me away; there's no uncontrollable desire to make these lips move in ways I don't want. This could be safe; this could be right by decree.

But decree leads to repression; safety leads to curiosity; I will balloon with guilt and longing for nothing in particular.

This is bullshit, dude. Can't do it.

Blank Wave Arcade

The Faint
Blank Wave Arcade

---------------------------------------

And to continue in my return to regular program, I'll blog about the weather.

"ARCTIC AIR WILL CONTINUE TO INVADE SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND TODAY. THE
MERCURY IS ONLY EXPECTED TO REMAIN IN THE TEENS DURING THE ENTIRE DAY.
THE WINDS WILL BECOME STRONGER AS THE DAY PROGRESSES...WHICH WILL ONLY
ADD TO THE BITTERLY COLD CONDITIONS WITH WIND CHILL VALUES REMAINING
BELOW ZERO FOR MOST OF THE DAY."

Cookies for you, then, buddy.

Dear Self-Righteous Pole Vaulting Star,

I find it terribly silly for you to say in that terribly haughty voice, "I don't smoke marijuana" just after telling me that your butt is covered in marker from your drunken evening of Track & Field Initiations.

Sincerely,
Me.

SPAWN!

When did Harvard become a breeding ground for bankers?

For God's sake, keep your souls for yourselves and let Goldman Sachs suit up someone else! (This I sigh when I know the girls who work those 15 hour days and go for schmoozing weekends in New York--not weekends in museum galleries that aren't opening, closing, or throwing a gala--are the ones who can afford to try on heels at Christian Louboutin. It is a twisted world.)

Heads Up

The Roots will be in Universal City with Jill Scott & Lupe Fiasco on Feb. 10, and then at the House of Blues in San Diego on Feb. 12 (without Jill Scott).

Or come to Boston and see them with me in March!

Another journey on the road has yet to be documented. New York, New Jersey, three museums, one concert, one surreptitious jam session, some really spicy vindaloo--altogether a good time.

Hell freezes over?

Leeann's post reminded me, last week there was snow in LA. Weird, yeah?

I don't own a camera; this is better.

The View from Here

It's snowing.

It's beautiful.

I'm... almost done with finals.

Revelation

So cool.

Just wondrin'

Is it against some kind of unwritten law if I listen to the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas after Christmas? It should be called A Charlie Brown Walk in the Cold Morning Air.

What to Do When you Get a Splinter

Yesterday, I was gleefully sanding down the edges of my simple woodshop project of the weekend (backing Masonite boards with frames for my triptych), moving my hands quickly as if to simulate an expertise that I surely do not have. Suddenly, my hands fly apart, and before it's actually registered with my brain, my eyes are staring at a sliver of wood peeking from my cuticle. It appears to be very small, and begins to moisten and become translucent as it settles into my finger. I'm picking at it with my fingernails, trying to act the part of tweezers and tug it out, but it doesn't want to budge. I think first that I might just be picking at flesh, but wiggling it causes a sharp, hard sensation; I then imagine that the monitor on duty in the shop reading his paper might be able to help, but he hasn't looked up yet, and it looks small enough to get out with some perseverence.

I am starting to panic, and it's trickling blood; I wonder if I could just leave it there till I get back to the room and ask my roommate for eyebrow tweezers, but I still have quite a bit to finish up. I wonder why it's hurting more and sort of flail my arm to make it stop. Finally, the adrenalin and frustration peak, I shut my eyes, and take a final, swift, wild pull at the nub, and then stare in wonder at the inch-long splinter that emerges as my finger begins to throb and pump blood. What a terrible relief.

I can hardly see the entry wound now, but just beyond my cuticle, the finger is sore for about 3/4 of an inch.

On New Year's Eve, I made some bad choices involving gin, rum, whiskey, vodka, and champagne (although, in retrospect, I think the champagne doesn't count), and ended up with my head in a bucket, letting the tears flow along with the other internal juices. They say alcohol makes one more truthful, and there I was in Taiwan with a few near-strangers (including two saints) telling them, emphatically, without reserve and with the greatest humility the most plain truth of all: "I miss him. I miss him so much."

It's the special kind of drunk saved for New Year's Eve. A total uncorking of the last repressed feelings, a total disregard for responsibility or decorum or precedent or consequence as you panic in that moment between last year and new year. All of that residue lodged numbly in your being is removed; it's catharsis, or at least, it's a giant vomitous mess, unleashed. And boy, it's the kind of drunk that makes you really glad you're leaving the country later that day and not going back for a long time.

I am currently attempting to create a special concentration involving elements of Engineering, Chemistry/Physics, Visual & Environmental Studies (Studio Art), and History of Art & Architecture. I know, it takes multiple breaths for me to say it, but I like to call it "A Comprehensive Study of Materials." I hope it will take me to Venice this summer, Paris next spring, and to a dozen labs, firms, and studios where I can work hard with my hands and forget what I'm feeling in my heart.

If I could rule the world

It should be a law of physics that whenever I'm bored, there is always something I want to watch on TV.

P.S. No, I don't have on demand or TiVo, you spoiled ninnies.

Time.

Time's Person of the Year is YOU.

Both Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert made fun of it in their shows and I thought it was silly until I actually read the magazine and realized it's true... we make things happen. The Facebooking, Blogging, Googling, YouTubing, iTunesing, My Spacing generation is what it's all about. The UCLA taser cell phone video on YouTube is a perfect example of how many people are active participants in the Internet, how many people see the little things that happen around the world. As a future journalist (or, as a current journalist), this trend is very important to me. It makes my heart beat faster and puts a warm feeling of contentment in my belly... people do care. And of course, this Internet phenomenon makes my job that much more convenient. Remember the days of looking students' names up in the school directory? Now we just use Facebook.

And then I realized I have a blog and I should use it, after all my voice is part of this revolution too. I had a lot to say when I was in Spain, but my flow of words seems to have stopped since I returned. And then I come here and see that LeeAnn and Jen do use our blog and their voices. Of course they do. That warms my heart too.

I'm going to Disneyland tomorrow.

I wish I had an ounce of musical talent

Emily Haines and Neko Case. Both known for their work in more rockin' music projects (Metric and The New Pornographers). Both put out solo work this past year. I enjoy both CDs very much. It's all about those voices.

EDIT: Also, hour long The Office episode was on last night. You better have watched it. The new Ricky Gervais project Extras is also very funny, even though I only watched about an episode and a half of it (I do not have HBO at my apartment). Anything involving Kate Winslet teaching someone to talk dirty while dressed as a nun is awesome in my book.

NEWSFLASH: Sleep-deprived interns kill people, hurt themselves

Wow! Finally! Scientific proof that working for 30 hours straight is not good for you or your patients' health!

Doctors in training who fall asleep during surgery or while examining patients make four times more errors that cause deaths than their better-rested colleagues, the research reveals.

Young doctors also suffer from their mistakes with emotional problems that can haunt them for years. They admit that their distress includes fear, guilt, anger, humiliation, and decreased compassion. What's more, the distress coupled with reduced empathy can increase the odds of more medical errors and even alcohol and drug abuse.

If interested in official publication of more things we already know: Links to an article and a study.

There's Something Happening Here

For a few weeks now, there have been some mysterious, vague, uncomfortable rumblings.

Last week, there were a few considerable shifts in the ground beneath my feet, some visible churning in the water.

Next week, I predict another seismic shift, a sudden surge of the waters, an eruption--something new, spontaneous, and slightly ominous.

I'll keep you posted.

So that's where it was hiding!

Remember that gore I was looking for when watching Hostel? I just watched Apocalypto last night. FOUND IT!

The night before I went to see The Faint/Ladytron/Ratatat/DJ Aoki (You know that weird-looking asian girl from Sin City and those Fast and the Furious movies? Her brother) with Oliver and some of his friends from the O.C. (shout out to the O.C.! Wha what!). It's nice when you go out to hang out with friend's friends and everyone just gets along so naturally that it soon just turns into a group of people talking. No weird divisions within the group, no one trying to accomodate the one person who just can't relate to the main conversation going on. NICE.

Too Much Monkey Business!

Yesterday, three stops, one concert, a whole lot of good stuff.

1: Newbury Comics. I'm at this stupid chain store (music, movies, and a whole lot of Massachusetts ultra-liberal 'tude) to buy a fun Secret Santa gift. I am drawn by neon stickies "8.99!" and "9.99!" (...and "USED") sprinkled throughout the CD section.
Booty: Elliott Smith "XO" and Squirrel Nut Zippers "Perennial Favorites." Hooray for sweet packaging. Total (less fun Secret Santa gift): $20.

2: In Your Ear. On a "just bought stuff" high, I go down to the musty old basement that is the In Your Ear "Records Tapes Bought and Sold" store. Lots of dusty old things. More neon signs. I take another adventure into a jungle of cheap stuff by artists I recognize. Last time, I ended up with a record by Andy Stochansky that was so bad I almost threw it out of the car the first time I heard it. So bad. Hope I fare better.
Booty: Leah Andreone "Veiled" (this is a surprise for my roommate, who loves Leah Andreone, a tortured angry chick who happens to be from San Diego). The (International) Noise Conspiracy "Armed Love". Remy Zero Promo EP. Total:$15.

3: Tower Records. The neon signs outside this one have been changing for months: "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE," "EVERYTHING MUST GO," "10 MORE DAYS!" I stop inside. It's very sad. Tall piles of CDs no one is going to want even at 99 cents. Bad hip hop, ruins from the 90s, best of's that suck. Hopefully I can go back in a few days and see if the better CDs are even cheaper.
Booty: Fugees "No Woman, No Cry" Australian Tour EP. Elvis Presley "Elvis Sings Flaming Star." Total: $5.

4: Sanders Theater. My roommate sings with the Harvard Radcliffe Collegium Musicum.
Booty: They sing Josquin des Prez, contemporary composers Donald Martino and Lorten Lauridsen, Brahms, and Bach. My soul expands. This stuff is beautiful even if you hate music and happiness and all of humanity.

Summary: So I binged. But you miss the point. The point is this: Elvis Presley is the shit. I had no idea. No joke! So good!

Boobies+Blood=Moderately Successful Horror movie

I just watched Hostel, mostly because I wanted to see how gory it was. WAY disappointed. It's funny how bad horror movies always compensate with naked women. It was like entire rooms of nakedness in the form of a whorehouse, a spa, and a hostel. And I guess us consumers have no shame because enough of us keep watching them that they keep making more. Oh well, bring on the (only kind of) grusome!

Correction

In junior year, I wrote a review of Belle & Sebastian's Dear Catastrophe Waitress for that high school publication we all grew to love so well. I gave it a B and called it trite and nothing special. Danny Mullin said I was a whore.

I was.

What a fantastic album.

Cool kids

You know what's cool? "Down by the bay..." Oh yeah and beating USC. Take that Mothafuckas!

On the Road vol. 2 Mary Poppins rejoices!

College makes you cherish the trips whose destinations do not require you to pack shower shoes, towels, or sleeping bags.

On the Road vol. 2 Mary Poppins Reincarnate!

There is something very satisfying about being able to fit two books in addition to your umbrella, wallet, hairbrush, pens, change purse, keys, chapstick, iPod and IDs into your purse.

Then again, it also makes it so much sadder if it gets lost or stolen.

On the Road vol. 1 The Bus to New York.

Veteran's Day weekend, I took my second annual Birthday visit trip to New York City to see Matt Franks on his birthday (if you all lived on the East Coast, you could bet I'd be on your doorstep with a batch of brownies and a big hug on all those October birthdays, too). After what happened last year (a few hours of sleep in piles of silly string, crushed potato chips, and other puddles of foul, sticky spoo), I decided it would be wise to bring a sleeping bag, despite my new mantra of packing as light as possible. This would also be my first trip to Princeton New Jersey to see, for the first time, my brother's band play a show. Friday morning, toothbrush, shower shoes, PJs, towel, change of shirt socks underwear, sleeping bag and 500-page biography of Willem de Kooning in bag, I made my way to gate 3 at South Station around 1 p.m., despite my long history of early morning departures.

Bus trips (and plane and train trips) have always been a very romantic idea to me. The trip, from the gate to the destination, feels like a complete dramatic episode, one with an exposition, a conflict, a climax, and the sort of abrupt and inevitable resolution that leaves one a little nostalgic and a little relieved. It's the people being held in an intimate, anonymous, and palpable (by the end) tension for the entirety of the 5-hour journey that really do it. You wait around with people who may be coming from somewhere different and may be going somewhere different, but for the timebeing will be just like you, on the Peter Pan schedule 1886 to New York City, Port Authority.

At the gate, the signs, big and friendly like the ones in the San Diego airport, and the tile and the stainless steel framed a bustling scene of Veterans Day travel. The wait for New York City is the longest, and I find myself in the company of a rich girl who's wrapped in the spandex and leather boots of the season, fiddling with her iPod and sipping at her coke; a clean cut white kid in a striped polo who is highlighting a coursepack in between checking the clock; a couple arguing in Canadian French over how the schedules work and when they need to be where and whether or not they need IDs; a mother-daughter pair of overweight midwestern tourists doing the same in English; a girl in a BU sweatshirt, a guy in a Tufts sweatshirt, a guy in a UMich sweatshirt, a girl with matching Vera Bradley quilted paisley totes, a girl in a Williams sweatshirt; an older black gentleman in a Red Sox cap and quiet. There is almost a sense of antagonism in the air, although none of us are really going to have to passive-aggressively fight each other for a seat (that happens later, on the ride home from New York at the end of the weekend). Everyone sneaks peeks at each other as though wondering who will have the balls to try and sit next to them when it comes time to settle in on the bus, and when it's perfectly clear that they're happy sitting alone with their music and their head against the window.

Of course, nobody sits alone on a bus to New York. So, slowly, and with adorable, hesitant steps (or not-so-adorable, forceful motions) everyone fills in the seats next to each other. A small woman with dyed red-black hair who speaks as though her mouth is full says, "Man, full bus, huh," and sits down next to me. She barely fills the seat. She is pale but has shadows in her face and under her eyes. We don't talk and both fall asleep. When I wake up two hours later, she is even crumpled even smaller, with her pale face hidden in her oily red-black hair and blacker coat, looking like a wet bird buried in sleep, or cold. Everyone is sleeping or pretending to, and so I look out the window and drift off.

Eventually, about 3 hours into the 5 hour ride, people are awake, talking on cell phones (loudly, about picking classes or being really wasted the night before or about who played whom where and who won), or reading coursepacks. I guess I don't really know what the non-college kids were doing because they aren't so vocal. Or so brightly colored. We stop at a Roy Rogers, and my bus-mate comes back with a burger meal. We start to talk. She's from Maine, living with a man she met on the Internet. It was love at first email, she jokes, and laughs, and wheezes. She's commuting home to New Jersey by bus this time, because her husband's mom is sick. It's cold up there, and it's cold on this bus, she says. She asks if I'm going home, and I say no, that I'm going to New York City, but I'm from San Diego. She doesn't hear me and asks if I'm going to see my folks at the station. We have trouble understanding each other; I think I speak too quietly, and she speaks as though her teeth are getting in the way, but really she is just slurring her words.

Just outside New York City, we start to hit traffic, and here, as it would in a movie, little things begin to pile up and stick on our nerves--people try to call their parents, friends, and family telling them that we'll be late; my busmate falls asleep and drops her Coke on the ground, and apologizes profusely, saying that she's just so tired, and I tell her that I know, and I get paper towels from the bathroom and clean it up for her while she frets and attempts to soak it up with a stationary envelope from her backpack, the black, bespectacled woman a row behind us wakes up the college girl the row in front of us to tell her to move her bag before it gets wet, the college kid with the coursepack to our left looks over wondering if he should help, wondering if I'm annoyed.

And then she gets on the phone to call Steve. Steve, I gather, is her brother. And for the next hour, as the traffic thickens, and the sky darkens, and the red and orange and yellow lights of cars and street signs and New York City life fill the windows, the conversation that fills the bus at terrifying intervals goes something like this:

Steve, it's me.
No, listen to me. No. I tell ya, I ain't on anything. I fell asleep on the bus. I've been on the bus, I'm so fuckin tired and I'm sick of this.
No, I ain't. I told you, I ain't.
Have you talked to her yet? She's supposed to talk to
That evil bitch of a woman what's she been sayin'
I told you. I ain't. I ain't. I just got out today, and I got the bloodwork and everything. I am so fuckin tired, physically, mentally
I told you. I'll tell you what, Steve, after this I ain't talkin to nobody in the family. Ever.
Please, Steve. Just do this for me. Talk to her. Talk to Aunt Fina. What'm I supposed to do?
So what're you gonna do? Just leave me in Newark?
Yeah I wish Aunt Fina was on my side, she's supposed to be on my side. She'll have the cops out there. Just call her. Steve, just call her.
I got out today. I ain't on anything. I'm just tired. And you want me out there with the fuckin bronchitis, I can't believe this.
So what, the kids are gonna be fucked up because I'm sleeping in one goddamn room in the house? She'll have the cops there. She's supposed to talk to my mother.
I can't yell. I'm on the fucking bus and everyone's gonna be lookin at me like I'm a fucking insane person.
Look, I'm tired. Just call her. Steve, just call her for me.

And by the end of it, at 8 p.m. as we inched our way toward 42nd street, she stared out the window, defeated. And I was small in my seat, trying not to be there, and trying to avoid the stares in our direction, the black woman over her spectacles, the kid out of the corner of his eye, everyone else, from the backs of their heads and behind my head. And before the bus unloads with steamy haste into Port Authority, before most of us are swept up into the arms and legs and coats and bags and hats of New York she says "Man, it's a long ride, isn't it?"

Brief Ultimate Confession

Since I haven't burdened you all with much ultimate news lately, I do want to make this funny little confession:

At points during Peter Mulvey's set last night, I started to nod off, and I had little snippets of dreams that would really have been a nightmare all strung together. I was seeing brief scenes of getting point-blocked, being turned around by my girl on defense, and seeing a huck go off of my crappy mark. I sort of panicked, physically (a brief thought of, "Oh crap!") until I came back to the music. I wonder if having a phobia of bad playing helps someone be a better player. Maybe I could induce some sort of morbid fear of being out-run or out-jumped or dropping discs and then it'd never happen again.

*Note: I have been reading papers about behavior therapy for anxiety disorder. Man, I need to not be a psychology major. Also, stay tuned for photos of me dressed and playing as Elastigirl this past weekend at Brown's Huck a Hunk o' Burnin' Pumpkin Halloween tournament.

A Pixie Full of Tunes

So the wife of the brother of the guy that my brother is going on tour in LONDON with this Thanksgiving came to play in Cambridge last night. She opened for Peter Mulvey, an Irish Catholic singer-songwriter with a growling baritone and a penchant for impressions, guitar tricks, political humor and other liberal intellectual stuff (pokes at Edvard Munch and Lord Byron, angry ranting against the institution that is TV).

Devon Sproule (pron: Sproll like roll and troll and boll) was tiny and delicate and lovely; not a manhandler of the guitar and exploiter of the voice like Ani Difranco, but a plaintive, humble coaxer and whacker of the guitar and a whimsical plucker and stretcher of her voice.

I'm a walking advertisement, I know, but it's always a bittersweet thing to know the opener of the show and not the main event. I get a little bit resentful of the main act, wondering why Devon has to play a humble little set to polite applause when Mr. Mulvey gets a full, whooping crowd. Anyway, her stuff is on iTunes for the buying. E-mail me and I'll give you a song preview, if you like, and then you can buy! All of a sudden I'm into this whole support musicians and artists by buying their shit.

-----

In other news, I think I've given up a $30+ Ani Difranco concert in favor of a $20 student rush ticket to the Kirov Ballet's production of Swan Lake. I wish I was around 10 years ago when she was still hopping folk clubs, open mics, opening acts or small headlines; I don't think I'd dig seeing her through binoculars 100 yards away, but all she plays are theaters now, and for over $30 a pop. Oh well, everyone's got to eat; I guess she's earned her feast.

Straight out of the movies

Have you ever had a moment where you thought "hey, that could have been straight out of a movie?" Well last weekend Jenna and I were doing some last minute shopping in Pacific Beach. We were standing on the corner waiting for the light to change so we could cross when this bus drives by. I just so happened to be wearing a skirt and yep, whoosh, up flew my skirt and exposed my cute underwear, little pink bow and all.

I can't stop.

I keep eating chocolate.

Help!

Damn you Eric!

I was supposed to have spent all weekend studying for my cell biology midterm tommorrow. Instead I spent about a third of the weekend studying, a third sleeping, and the last third watching episodes of The Office that Eric put on my ipod in exchange for all the Calvin and Hobbes comic strips in existence. That show is really funny. Watch it. Like right now. Go on, go.

Hahaha

Cnn.com headline: George Michael "smokes joint" during interview

I like that "smokes joint" is in quotes.

I'm cooler than Lindsey

Why? Because I'm gonna tell what I did on my 21st b-day... which kind of lasted over three days. Midnight on Wednesday (Tuesday night), a few friends came by and surprised me with a cake and cheap wine... the weakest they could find, they told me. This was fun, eating cake and drinking late at night, but it was a surprise and i wasn't prepared. After they left, I ended up having to study until 4 am. I'm okay with it now that I've slept all friday afternoon.
Wednesday night me and a group of people that included Eric, Steve, Marijana, Alex and Angela (last two are my roommates) went out to dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Everything Forrest Gump... the drinks and dessert card ads that you find at chili's were on a ping pong paddle and the waitress quizzed us on Forrest Gump trivia. Eric stumped her with a question... jerk. The question: Who plays Forrest Jr.? The food was really good (I got shrimp... of course) and Eric bought me a Peach, Love and Rock n Roll as a drink for me, of which I could only drink half, Eric finished it off. I think he's going to go drinking with me more often just so he can drink the girly drinks that I can't finish.
Okay, so Thursday night we all went out to this 21 adn over bowling place, Lucky Strike. There were seven of us (same list as Wednesday night but minus the roommates and add Shanon, Nikki, and Aneri), and the van cab we called never came. Instead, we found a regular cab whose patron had not showed. We asked the guy if he would fit 7 people, and he said okay and did it off the meter. So we fit SEVEN people in a cab, Eric and me in front and the other 5 somehow fitting in the back. The driver ended up getting so freaked out about getting found by the cops, that he told us he was shaking. So shady factors include: fitting too many people in the cab, doing the job off the meter, AND the displayed license was NOT him. We got to the place alright, and bowled a game. I lost. Like I'm not very good at bowling, but this was bad, even for me. Still had fun, perhaps I'll put up pictures. A friend ordered me a Midori sour, but I got a headache before i could finish it, I have got the be the biggest lightweight. The group bowling next to us used really dirty names to display on the tv scorecard... too inappropriate to say on here. After bowling, we ate at Mel's down the street, and then took a cab home. This driver was not nearly as cool as the one we had there, just a deaf chain smoker. Nicest part was, my friends didn't let me pay for a thing... not even the food I ordered at Mel's (had I known this, I would have gotten my BLT without avocado and without the onion rings). It was very sweet of them, and I understand that it will never happen again.
And that was how my 21st b-day went. Now it's time to order chinese food, watch some tv, and recover before it's study time!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Jen!!!
You're finally a real person! You can go out with all your friends to all the awesome LA hot spots and have a drink or two and get smashed (cuz that's what us light weights do)! Next time I see you I owe you a drink ;)

Happy Birthday!

Speaking of 21, Little Richard says...



You're now the envy and the potential boozehound of all of your little Nexus underlings and other underage friends.

Of course, you have always been fabulous to me!

I wich I could dance at 21...

...but I don't want to wear the clothes. I was helping my neighbors dress for their night out clubbing tonight. Tight jeans, cleavage-bearing tops, and too much makeup would make for a very self-concious Jen. Too bad, I was dancing the hell out of the techno beats playing at the Beverly Center yesterday.

On another note, an H&M opened up in Pasadena. I just have one question: WHO'S COMING WITH ME?!?

PADRES!!!
They're going to the playoffs. That's all I have to say.

Last Night

I discovered that Joanna Newsom makes much more sense in person.

It helps that the Boston Museum of Fine Arts courtyard has an otherworldly weeping willow looming in one corner and other looming, luminous trees scaling the surrounding limestone walls, and that they lit the stage from below (as there was no roof) with the pink red purple light common to all indie concerts, because when she came on the stage with lemon and honey in a wine glass and her bangs grown out and hair flowing down behind her onto a similarly flowing dress, she looked like some nymph, druid, mystical creature taking her place behind the harp. It makes so much more sense to see all that and then hear her sing.

In other news, wouldn't you all think I was a lot kooler if I had a keytar?

Two things I learned today

1) How to use a macbook (because I have a brand new one!!)

2) My mom knows more about computers than your mom.

I learn slow. ly.

The anger and frustration that accompanied my meteorish landing in Cambridge have faded, a little, so that they're vaguely stuck like smoke in the air after one of those great Moonlight or La Jolla Cove bonfires that we used to fuel with anything we could find on the beach. And a shot or two of lighter fluid for good measure.

I miss my friends. I succumbed to this great and novel realization in trying to figure out where the rage was coming from. (Ah, introspection, the first step to a great blog entry, eh?) It always was a silly idea to me, to miss people, as I always felt I'd see them again, or could keep in touch by mail, email, and phone, and that distance and time were never any reason to despair. But this summer I was shocked by not really not being able to keep in touch while I was in Taiwan, and then, when my time at home was shrunk down to a day, I was shocked by the how limited the time felt, that I would have only three hours or a few minutes to sit and talk with the greatest people I know, and I was shocked by the pangs of disappointment when I realized there were many people I'd have to go another four months (hopefully not another year) without seeing. I always took it for granted that there'd be more nights at Hot Java or with chalk in the park or for midnight burritos or even for movies at the Highlands or for the concerts at the Che and elsewhere.

There won't be, though. The next great step in the realization is that there may never be. In the future, if I ever have the good luck of seeing these kids again, we won't be kids (at least, some won't), and the rendezvous will be tamed into lunches and coffee dates and drinks after work things in between our real lives, and always they'll be somewhere else--Seattle, New York, the Carolinas, wherever we may roam. People are astonishingly irreplaceable. Emails, blogs, letters, phone calls even-- they're insulting. But I guess it's all I've got. So it's time to sack up, and be quaint, and go write some letters. If nothing else, at least the recipients can ball up the paper and build a fire when it gets cold wherever they are.

Re-entry

I told someone today that I didn't even want to go to ultimate frisbee practice and he said, "Wow, something must really be wrong with you."

And there is. Since freshman fall I have not not wanted to play ultimate or throw if given the chance. But I arrived back at school late Thursday night, and went to practice on Friday and then two days of a tournament for which my poor excuse of a body was not ready by any means. Load jet lag onto general out-of-shapeness onto no longer being a rookie on a undermanned team, and you get a little Asian who's neither speedy nor fierce. I have been back at school for four entire days now (back in the States for five), and I'm still sitting here very uncomfortable with my new surroundings, the old atmosphere of Harvard, the absurdity that is college, and the terrible, big empty sadness that I find to be distinctly American.

I played a lot of ultimate this summer, and yet the tournament was a slap in the face--physically and mentally. Forget the physical part--I can get in shape, start running and lifting and swimming--but it's the mental attack that's astounding. I'd forgotten what it felt like to have the pressure, the strange reminders of the politics of an all-female team, the implicit expectations, the tacit understanding and acknowledgement that everything is a competition to be won, that we ought to be better, that we ought to have INTENSITY, yada yada yada. I played a lot of ultimate this summer, but it was all for love of the game. Playing for hours in rain and muck, or through ungodly humidity and sun, layouts and battle scars and the big guys getting pissed on bad plays or bad D--it was all intense, and some of it was really good playing, but none of it ever left a bitter taste. A bad point was a bad point but it carried no repercussions. Celebrations were never forced for the sake of team morale. It was good disc with no strings attached. There's so much bullshit to be caught up in here.

And it doesn't just apply to Ultimate. It's just the general college (or perhaps Harvard) view of things. Everything for the sake of image or impression, everything for the fear of results and repercussions. It's this general feeling of intensity to the point of unfocused frenzy--it's all very meaningless and I don't know what to do about it. Most likely nothing. Classes will start and maybe I can bury my nose in the books and tune out everything else.

Ewwwwww green and orange? Ew.

OKAY

We're switching to http://halfwhat.blogspot.com.

I hope. So...i'll give you til Friday to change your bookmarks and then we're switching! Get ready! On your mark! Get set!

The end

I hadn't checked in a while, and I figure none of you have either, but in case you're interested, the end of the saga: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/06/27/news/coastal/21_08_506_26_06.txt

My legacy at Torrey Pines: a blown up newspaper that was scorned by Atlanta but more memorably by a one Mr. Will Harvie, a huge fundraiser that lost money, a musically dilapidated version of the Mystery of Edwin Drood and a scandal-ridden, profane Literary Magazine that drew a lawsuit and was really pink.

Well, at Harvard I've already had my hand in letting the music in musical go to rot; hopefully I won't continue the curse by thinking big again, losing the respect of an incredible professor, and getting Harvard sued.

I think I should just focus on playing frisbee from now on.

Taipei

The Chiang Kai Shek Memorial


And just across the plaza, students and other dissenters call for Chen Shui Bien's impeachment and/or resignation. This photo was taken in early July. The impeachment never passed, though these kids vowed to stay at CKS fasting and spreading the word until he was. He wasn't impeached, he hasn't stepped down, but I believe they've gone.


A typhoon was coming. Below on the left is the National Theater, and the tower is the Shinkong Mitsukoshi department store which I believe was the tallest building in Taiwan until Taipei 101 came along.


Penguins along the rails of one of the train stations. I forgot which.


Spotted: POCKY in bag form.


Asian Schoolgirls. I hope this doesn't bring fetishists to our site.


Worn out and split open. You've served me well *sniff*.

A few Photos

I've been completely negligent in travel-posting, but for some reason I haven't felt any particular urge to take photos or otherwise document this experience. I think it's mostly because I'm in denial about being a tourist in the country where I was born. As suddenly as it was announced, so suddenly the Italy trip has been cancelled, so halfwhat readers will have to wait for tales of another European excursion.

Some photos that I took of Green Island and miscellaneous Taiwan hotspots.

Boats at the dock. These looked particularly shady and ready to sink. We hoped they were just for decoration.


A Goat on Green Island


The Green Island Memorial for Political Prisoners. Green Island used to be the KMT's
Alcatraz for locking up those who spoke or acted or thought against the government. This wasn't all that long ago; some of the names of currently prominent politicians, so on the wall of the memorial covered with names of past prisoners, these politicians' names shine from being rubbed over by tourists and admirers.

This was a sign outside the prison. I'm not sure why it says youth lost.


My cousin Steve looking at Goats on Green Island


In addition to goats, there are deer on Green Island. This is a deer having lunch.


After Green Island, we came back to the Eastern part of Taiwan, to "Ci Shang" or "On the Lake/Lakeside." We stayed near what was probably once a very pretty tourist attraction (as evidenced by the impressive photos of it in our hotel), but when we went out in the morning to take a looksee, it was broken down and in sad disrepair. There were uncared for animals, a horse that evidently had not had anything to drink or eat in a long time, his legs were covered in open sores and bleeding, a bunch of bleating goats, and I think there were supposed to be sheep somewhere. This is a statue of a lady whose story I've forgotten.

important decision

Do we want to renew our halfwhat domain, girls?

Where did all my roommates go?

I'm all alone. It's sad. And scary. Especially with my weird imagination. I end up locking myself in my room every night, just to put one more lock between me and the psycho murderer who will most definately break into my apartment. On the plus side, I have watermelon in my fridge. I love watermelon.

Oh yeah, a note to the frat boys across the street. NO, you don't party as hard as you think you do. You go to UCLA, 'nuff said. NO, you can't play bass well, so stop trying to play the bass line from that DFA1979 song, you're driving me nuts.

Me and Eric are going to Greece next summer. There, it's in print, now you can't back out Eric!

Now to eat some of that watermelon...

My boogers itch

I think I'm going to grunt more often to make myself seem tough. And high five. Not like Hankerchick high fives, but like MANLY high fives, followed by chest butts. Like Buff Indian Guy, who walks around with his arms out to the side even though he doesn't need to.

In San Diego for the weekend before summer school starts!!

Sorry for my leave of absence. It's just so hard to sit at a computer for 9 hours and then come home and sit at a computer. It's funny how tired sitting at a computer makes me, but I'm just worn out. The last four days have been especially long and trying. When three of my best girlfriends went off to Spain last semester I thought not being able to talk to someone you really wanted to was the worst thing in the world. Now I realize waiting plus not being able to talk to someone is the worst thing in a world without a doubt. Now add in not knowing what's going on, and that's how I was last night. I've missed out on friends' birthdays and dinners with friends all to just sit and wait, but I can't risk being somewhere where I can't hear my phone and hop in my car at a moments notice. So from now until I don't even know when, that's my life. Speaking of which my phone isn't within arms reach so I really must go.

*think good thoughts for bobby*

My heart feels all warm and fuzzy

I gave Eric the best belated b-day gift ever. Totally makes up for the fact that it's about 3 and a half months late. I gave him a comic book. I gave Joe a comic book for his b-day. Whoever's next, watch out.

Not really, I think it was just a coincidence. Besides, I gave Joe a Calvin and Hobbes book, Eric's present was much more emo than that. Hehehe.... emo....

killing trees in the meantime

In protest and in defiance to LeeAnn's claim that all the halfwhaters' fingers have been my claimed by gangrene or some freak accident involving margarita glasses, piranhas, and a lot of silly string, I decided to return from my leave of absence. My fingers are fine, thank you, if not a little tired. I'm still keeping up my travel blog, which has now become a "random thoughts while i'm bored at work" journal about reimmersion and the pointless differences between my two favorite countries.

Girls who haven't seen each other for a long time talk about weird things over dinner, sitting streetside in twilight Isla Vista. Namely paper toilet seat covers. Europe doesn't generally stock toilet paper or seat covers in their bathrooms, but back here in sanitary America I have recently become aware of a little seat cover trick. Apparently it is not necessary to take the extra three minutes to carefully punch out the middle, as the paper just dissolves on contact. I have officially become a voracious tree killer and paper seat cover user in response to this revalation. Thank you friends.

The trouble with summer

I can't sleep. This happens all the time during the summer. I stay up to the point where I'm too tired to get ready for bed, so I just stay up a little longer.

Now it's almost 3:30 in the morning and I'm not getting up early tommorrow like I wanted to.

In my defense, I had to read a couple of articles today for some research I'm going to start this week.

Then again, at 2 am I was playing sudoku and talking on aim.

Whatever, I'm jsut gonna blame the heat.

Then again, it's a lot cooler than it has been in the past.

I just can't win.

Slave of Duty

I've decided to begin facing this summer as if I am the average, bright-eyed bushy-tailed American college student out in big wide world for study and travel abroad. As an 11-day stay in Italy has just been tacked on to my summer itinerary, this should give Halfwhat some fodder, since, once again, my fellow bloggers appear to have been rendered incapable of posting because their fingers claimed by gangrene or some freak accident involving margarita glasses, piranhas, and a lot of silly string.

By nature, I'm perpetually bashful and afraid--I don't like to make a stir, I don't like to have public trouble, I hate to be late, and I don't like it when my answers don't fit in the squares or the choices provided on applications--and I can't quite decide which sort of foreign excursion would bring out the best in me: one in a country where I look like everyone else, can linguistically pretend to be a native as far as describing what I like to eat and where I'm going, and have family and friends scattered here and there; or one in a completely enchanting and novel place where I can't speak a word, look a tourist (four-fold, with my family at my side, and perhaps more on tours), and don't know what there is to eat or where I'm going. It's comfort versus curiosity, and I wonder which one I care more to satisfy.

In France, I believe I shared a tiny tale of watching five big Americans plop themselves down in a cafe near Notre Dame Cathedral and butcher the French language as the waiter replied to them in English. I know that the only thing that kept me going in Paris was being able to figure out the Metro system, reading the map, and having an elementary French vocabulary; at least "Pour aller au..." and the sense to say "s'il vous plait" and "merci" as often as possible. (Also, it probably also saved me to be able to say, "How much is all of this?" when I accidentally knocked over a basket of asparagus in a grocer's shop while I asked him how to get to the Funiculaire of Montmartre, which we didn't ride.)

I'm terrified of not knowing Italian, of being Taiwanese, and being in big groups of tourists. Apparently, trips in September are calmer than the overdrive months of June and July, but I know I still will be wrought with the guilt of being an intruder and an ear and eyesore. I guess I can comfort myself with the fact that I'll contribute to their economy both by buying things and probably by being robbed.

To pay some attention to the here and now, I have a test for which I am not prepared and an assignment to do which must be done now or never. It's rather ridiculous that even with only one class, I still seem to avoid devoting the proper amount of time to studying.

Traveloguer, I am not

Souperlindz, travel journaler extraordinaire, who kept us fed heartily with internationally flavored running commentary of her journeys through many countries and many months, should be congratulated for her work. I have been in Taiwan for almost two months and not produced a single substantial insight or quirky story.

I don't have as many pictures available as I would like, but I've discovered that the jarring sensation of stopping a moment to photograph it is becoming less and less appealing. The photos I have taken are on film (thanks, Norman!) and I am still anticipating getting back to the States to find that I have seven rolls of overexposed or poorly lit or generally awful photos. No matter, my cousin's friend Tomoo took some beautiful digital photos of our trip to Green Island that you might sink your teeth into.



A little over a week ago I went with my cousin, his girlfriend/fiancee-to-be, and his middle school friend Tomoo to Green Island (off the eastern coast of Taiwan) and Taitung (Taipei is "Tai North," Taitung is "Tai East). It was outrageously hot and I bought a correspondingly outrageous straw hat which I also wore under my scooter helmet throughout our one-day stay in Green Island.


Steve, Me, Jessica after sunrise on Green Island

This photo was taken as we left the vista from which we'd planned to photograph the sunrise on the morning we were to leave Green Island. We got up at 4:35 only to find as we arrived around 5:00 a.m. that there were already three groups of tourists there. The sunrise itself was a bit anti-climactic, as (mercifully) there were clouds off the coast, I suppose preparing the way for Mr. Bilis, who was supposed to hit Taiwan sometime in the next week.

Mr. Bilis turned out to be a fairly quiet typhoon. A little rain, a little wind, but no holiday or disaster. It's alright, we've got another one coming.

There's not much to report on the ultimate front, although I have learned much about diagonal stacks and ho stacks and catching swilly silly stuff and throwing IOs and OIs. I've been getting terrifically tan (or skin cancer, as some like to call it) and playing disc with a few more random frisbee-fetching vagabonds: a Bella Donna sophomore named Eyleen and Nancy Sun's little brother Jeff, a senior at Yale, as well as some more British, Costa Rican, and Hungarian pickups.

This trip has been bittersweet, but I have gotten used to the weather, and learned a bit about Chinese, family, boys and girls in their late 20s and early 30s, how Bob Dylan feels, Chinese medicine, stray dogs, riding buses, and choosing what to wear when it rains.

That's all from this side of the Pacific for now. My last two bits of wisdom: if you stick ginger in a cat's nose, it'll pee, and that pee can be used to drive out earwigs. Western doctors don't tell you these things!

Full grown.

Happy Birthday, Ray!

I'd post a funny picture of him, if only I was on my own computer.

Goals

Short-term Goals
- Fixing my Right Leg
- Boost Endurance
- Knowing/being able to figure out where my handlers want me to go
- Hops
- Less Falling. More Running.
- Every range of throw. Then developing the know-how for OI and IO.

Mid-range Goals
06-07 Season
- Recruiting a solid 18+ roster for Quasar 07-08.
- Top 5 College Regionals Showing with Quasar, 07.
- Not losing to Northeastern or BU or Yale. Like, ever. Beating MIT. Like, at least once.
- Lefty flick. Teehee.

Long-term Goals
- College Nationals with Quasar, 09.
- World Games 2009: Kao Hsiung, Taiwan

Forget it. I don't know how to write in English no more.

Alright, well that was an awful, disjointed, often grammatically incorrect post. In summary: I started playing on Friday and Sunday, am happy to be getting dirty, tired, sore, and bruised again, and will be playing like a 26-year-old, 6-foot tall man when I get back to Boston.

I'm keeping up alright, though I'm out of shape. My throws, honed on the hours in the Law School Quad, in front of the Science Center, and in the MAC Quad, still have a long way to go, but are progressively getting more accurate in scrimmage situations. Defense is a new game now. I think I may have to learn to effectively poach sooner or later (and conversely, learn to recognize it quickly when I'm being poached), and how to effectively call for help. I think I may have to learn to effectively... uh... well, mark.

I had some pretty good flow with the guys who didn't throw it miles over my head (and even some of those who did), but perhaps in a game I'll still only be good for a deep cut to the break. I guess I'll find out next week.

A rundown on the teammates I've met:

Geoff - Australian, in Taiwan for 3 years working for Industrial something or other, pretty fluent with the Australian accented Chinese. Muscular guy, my guess is late 20s, early 30s. Fun and a defensive badass, as Quasar might put it. Point blocked basically everybody at the first practice I went to.

Craig - American, in Taiwan for 2 years or so as a Kingergarten English teacher, knows only enough vocabulary to get around and not starve. Had a "Freakshow " Jersey on at practice (which, with some superficial Internet stalking, could either be Singapore or U. of Delaware). Handler. Calls the shots as he wants them.

Gerritt Something - Toronto..an, in Taiwan for I don't know how long, 32 years old. Well built, says "aboot," goes up for everything. Don't know much about him yet.

Erich the Swede - Swedish, been in Taiwan for a few months and staying in Taiwan for a few months longer, 30 ish. Experienced, bad knee and elbow and back. Handler. Looks like he could kick your ass in a military way.

Mikey - Mr. Nice Guy. An American in Taipei 10ish years. Past his prime but a fierce runner for 10 seconds at a time when he cares to be. A jolly little man with a round belly and a chipmunky smile. Eager to teach new players.

CK - From what I saw, a skinny kid who can do disc tricks and run fast. Don't really know much else.

Josh - VP of Dahon, makes folding bikes. Stanford Grad '90, former captain, last year playing with Stanford '92. Now 30 ish? Captain of the team. Big on teaching. Big on getting really pissed off when people don't work as hard as he does. "If you guys aren't going to f-cking run I'm taking a f-cking point."

Old Dan - 20 something studying Chinese Art History at National Taiwan University. Formerly of Rutgers.

New Dan - Junior-to-be studying Chinese for the summer at National Taiwan University. Currently of Case Western. An excellent cutter with good feet and a knack for getting into the endzone when on the receiving end of a dubious, almost in the endzone throw. Said he'd heard of Quasar (!).

Henry - Taiwan born, to America at 10, Johns Hopkins grad, back here for work. Into proving his machismo.

Morris - Taiwan born, Canadian grown, back here for work. Newbie and really sweetly naive about it.

Tina - "Peanut". Junior Wellesley Handler. Little girl with lots of spirit and little inclination to run. Also studying Chinese at Shi Da. Wants to start a womens team.

Steffi - Taiwanese 20 something, maybe early 30s working for Josh at Dahon. Fast and spunky.

I'm pooped and confused as to what language I'm thinking in. Better luck with this English thing next time.

Weird, huh?

The girl in picture isn't me. If you look close enough, you can tell. Still weird though, eh?

You know you're not posting enough when you have trouble remembering your blogger password

A homeless-looking guy came up to me in westwood yesterday. I mean homeless-looking as in he had no teeth and smelled, because who can tell the difference between a hipster trying to look like he's homeless and someone who actually is homeless these days? He was carrying a tennis racket in his right hand and asked me "If you get hit in the head, can you get up?"

This is after I've been having really paranoid dreams about random people shooting at me. One of them was a clown and it was while he was getting off an elevator and I was planning on getting on. Almost comedic, I suppose. Anyways, this guy triggered all sorts of paranoia in my psyche and I end up being really direct with the guy, saying "you are NOT hitting in me in the head with that thing" and I ran off.

Honestly, being in LA, sometimes I feel like I just came off the bus from Kansas.

By the way, about the comic. It's completely unrelated to this post, but it made me laugh. I don't want you all thinking I'm a complete downer or anything. Any more Brian Regan fans out there?

Sharing. Is Caring.

Elvis Costello - My Aim is True
Mediocre Vocalist. Awful Cover. Great Album.

AAAAAAAllison, I know this world is killing yoooouuu
Oh, AAAAAAAAAlllison, my aim is true.

Plug.

Paul Curreri - Songs for Devon Sproule

Good man. Good album. Listen!

The Twilight is Falling Much Harder Tonight than Ever Before

I, like Douglas Adams, am a huge fan of towels. They are by far the most under-utilized utility known to modern man. Simple to obtain, simple to maintain, simple to replace if the need arises. They can clean up messes, be used as wrapping to protect les choses fragiles; they can be tied up to suspend, dry off pool water and tears, they can be used for makeshift warmth when you crowd around the bonfire after a day in the ocean. They don't complain; they take abuse well. Even if frayed and dirtied, you may still rinse them, wring them, hang them on a rack where they will drip until dry, and there's nothing left, and they are ready to be reused.

They promised rain

But the sky brought sun!

These are the things that give me illogical hope. It rained for a week without pause, and the forecast promised another week of the same. Yesterday, though, the sun came out, I turned in my paper, danced like an epileptic fool to the Blanks, and this morning, Annenberg served watermelon! It is funny how completely Annenberg can control the mood of the freshman class. They know that serving fresh fruit (pineapple! watermelon!), ice cream, and additions to the salad bar make us really happy, so they save it for reading period and finals period and parent visiting weekends. If deprivation leads to appreciation, I guess they gotta do what they gotta do.

"Stop looking; it's not pleasant"

During a rousing game of Apples to Apples a few nights ago with my roommates, roommate's sister and sister's friend, I was talking to Samy and he mentioned that he was reading about the Abu Ghraib Scandal. I took a look a look at Salon.com's coverage of it, and promptly became a rather depressing addition to the game.

279 photos of despicable, disgusting, and utterly disheartening evidence of total disregard for human life. Conducted in the name of protecting my liberty and me. They held (hold?) prisoners there under suspicion of involvement in all sorts of bombings and conspiracies, and yet many of them were "ghost prisoners:" "whose imprisonment and death would not normally have been included in official prison records," and who may or may not have had roles in the crimes. Yes, I've heard that the MPs weren't given any orders but to "keep the prisoners awake;" yes, I've heard that they were "under unimaginable stress " and that they're not to blame. Yes, I've heard that they were "just a few bad apples." And if anyone thinks these statements are an excuse, they are despicable, too.

All this after my own mother has shown her bright and shining colors as a prejudiced American who believes that Muslims can have multiple wives and drape them in burkas while they stroke their beards and plan the destruction of all things good and pure.

And yet I can't bring myself to allow my terrified and constant sadness at the situation to decompose into anger. Forgive the Anne-Frankishness, but really, I like to think to myself that those specialists were deranged, mentally insane or unclear, actually under duress or at least so much stress that they were not acting in their right minds. I know that those specialists were at one point good to people in their lives; they have values, they are human, they had some logic turning in their heads that validated their actions in their view. I'd like to think they didn't knowingly hurt, kill, and humiliate. And my mother? My mother is not evil. My mother is not so irrational, not always; she cares about her family, she strives to be a good and virtuous person. And even if both of their systems of logic fall short of perfect or perfectly good, who am I to judge?

I don't know what to think or do about inhumanity as an American governmental standard or bigotry as a family sentiment. Maybe I should just give a shit and be articulate for once, create an argument as to why every American should see these photos and weep or why even Asian Americans should feel comfortable allowing Muslims into their homes and families, and share it with whatever powers that be.

But then again, who's going to listen? Whatever is going on in the Middle East, or anywhere else prisoners are being held, under American forces or otherwise, we'll only hear a little bit of it, 3 years and thousands of unnamed corpses later. And what good's an argument over guns and troops and government sanction? What good's an argument over your family's convictions?

Amazing.

I ran into a fire hydrant.

JEN'S ALIVE!!!

Haha, I don't know for how much longer though. I'm scared I have some sort of encephalitis or something that's attacking my cerebellum. I fell down for the second time from just nothing but my body being weird. That's right, that's the first place I go to: degenerative brain disorders. Not lack of sleep, not poor nutrition, but mad cow disease. Then again, when I found a lump in my throat, I was scared I had cancer. I'm crazy.

Worst thing is that the second fall was in a middle of a run. I had no phone to call someone to get me. So I had to run home with blood running down own both my legs from my knees. It was probably a very bizarre image.

Going back to crazy, no old men have hit on me lately, but a younger guy did last week at the free clinic. I know, I know, not NEARLY as weird as an old dude, but the guy TRIED to look like an old dude by growing a ratty little mustache. Yeah, you're right, it's a lame story. Um, I saw a strange girl's nipples when she flashed me and Joe as he was driving me home. But I think she was more hitting on him then me, so that's doesn't count either. Okay fine, no interesting people hitting on me stories right now, but that should probably be a good thing.

P.S. I love that Milhouse clip you posted leeann.

I'm sorry!!!! I have some ridiculous pictures that I may think about posting. I've been crazy busy lately. Mostly becuase I've been keeping myself busy. One of my bestest friends just had her 21st birthday and the party was crazy. When I'm not studying for finals I'll post at least one picture so you guys can see how we do it at State :). We went to a club downtown, which is the first time I've been down there and it was soooo much fun. Tonight I went to the Padres game (baseball news!) and the Padres won! That's their 9th straight win, pretty darn good! It was a little weird, but I guess it always is kinda weird hanging out with someone for the first time after you break up. There! Now you're updated. I'm done with finals one week from tomorrow and my Jenna gets back two days after that! Why isn't Lindsey back yet?!?! :(

I'll try to post more next week. Alright, Jen- GO!

JEN AND JULI ARE YOU DEAD?

Post because:

1. West Coast news is the best kind of news.
2. Reading my posts is not fun for me.
3. I'm boring .
4. I'm sure Jen has good stories about old men hitting on her.
5. I'm boring.
6. I'm sure Juli has fun party pictures and lots to say about baseball.
7. I'm boring.
8. Lindsey's saying all she has to say on her other blog.
6. I'm boring.
7. The Half What contributors list names four!
8. I'm really pretty boring.
9. I need to think about something other than frisbee.
10. You are cool. And I'm so damn boring.

Back to the Future

As an addendum to my previous statement, I learned this weekend that there IS a future in sport ...when you're sitting on a sideline.

At half of an incredible game by the Harvard men (Regionals Champions, on the way to Nationals for the second year in a row), I went to watch the womens finals between Darthmouth and Tufts.

My coach looked over at me and said,
"Three more years, LeeAnn."
"What?"
"Three more years and you'll be in this game."

I just smiled and sighed. We were knocked out on the first day of the tournament, losing to Yale and Vermont. I played a few points, but as a rookie mostly watched from the sideline as the veterans failed to meet their own expectations and we as a team failed to hold our seed. We weren't expecting to win a bid to nationals, but we wanted, expected, and with harder running and at times a different attitude, could have earned a second day, which would have meant three wins instead of two. There were a lot of tears, and not of joy or relief. There was just too much sadness on the field.

And then for hours afterward, all we had was talk about the future. Saturday was over, and what we could do but watch the other teams and try to figure out what stood between us and them? A bigger roster, a better mental game, a consistent warm-up routine that wakes and pumps us up, a different mentality toward risk-taking, good dumps, and at this point? Something that always reminds us how much fun ultimate is. The point and a half I played in the Yale game, I was up on my toes defending a girl with a gemini tattoo on her neck; I didn't bite when I knew she was faking, I beat her to the dump cut she was supposed to make, didn't bite again when she faked again, beat her again to the dump cut she was supposed to make, and I saw her get frustrated. Then I think there was a turn, and I remember running upfield and thinking, damn... this is fun!

Granted, it's easier for me to go out on the field, nothing on my shoulders, only one point to think about, and have fun running around and beating my girl, but what happened to that feeling of being exhilirated instead of frightened of what the next point might bring? Instead of dreading fucking up, why not get pumped to lay out? I'm sure I'll feel differently when I'm a senior or a first-year grad, banking on a bid to nationals, playing my last tournament ever... but I hope that even then I'll be psyched to go up against whoever the current superstars are, and be psyched to get a layout D (have yet to do that) or go deep for Nina or watch Lucy pump us up with pom poms. I hope all of the rookies this year will come back to play. I hope some scoped current freshmen will come play as sophomores. I think with enough coercing and personal favors, some of these things will happen...

Another odd thing I noticed--less to do with playing ultimate than being a part of an ultimate community, was the pervasion of ultimate couples. On day two, I tried to find myself a place on the sideline, somewhere between Kolthammer and Lucy, Mack and McDunks, Katie and Sam, and Jefe and McCrazy's flirtations; keep in mind that Harvard Men's (regionals champs!) coach Josh McCarthy and Tufts Women's (regionals runner ups!) coach Sangwha Hong (?) are also married. I not only felt young and short-- but a little pathetic playing with a disc by myself.

Anyhow, on to the nearer future: this summer, I'll be in Taiwan studying at National Taiwan Normal University and I've contacted the Taipei team (Renegade) about playing. It looks to be fun and probably low key as they only practice once a week and sometimes meet up a second time. One of the coordinators is a former captain of the Stanford men's team, though many of the players probably have just about as much experience as I do, and I know I've still a lot to learn, so I'm looking forward to it.

And that's all. The weekend's over.

Time to turn my attention to my nearest future: FINALS.

They can't take that away from me

The great thing about sport is that there isn't a future and there isn't a past-- it's this point, this race, this finish, this layout. It's immediate. You can talk as much as you want about the mistakes you've made, but it really comes down to what you're doing now. It's how I've always wanted to live-- from muddy catch to fierce D and back.

I'm not good with initiative. I'm not good with consequences. It leaves me here in this place, relieved after a shower and proud of my bloody knees, knowing that no one is thinking about how or whether I will play Saturday, no one cares how I played in the fall, knowing that even today's practice won't matter in a half hour when I'm working on my physics problem set.

And finally...

And a last update on what I've been doing: Harvard's going to Regionals!

Last year, Harvard slipped in after another team dropped out. This year we're legit. Sweet. Photos to come.

On the Heir

The illustrious Five-person Musical Orchestra

"The most glaring defect of the production, however, was the awkward relationship between the Agassiz, the orchestra and the singers. The five-person orchestra delivered very polished pieces, doing justice to Commins’ exceptionally inventive compositions. But because of the inconvenient shape of the stage, the orchestra had to be muffled backstage, making it very difficult for the actors to listen to it during the performance.

While Commins tried to improve the musical and acoustical aspect of the production by tailoring the songs to the vocal range of the actors and reducing the size of the orchestra, the lag between the singers and the ensemble was, at times, noticeable.

While professionalism and technical perfection were not expected from a production put together entirely by freshmen, the cast stimulated its audience by being consistently animated and engaging.

Overall experimentally delightful, the show was not only a stretch for the capacities of the production team, but also for the audience’s imagination. In the penultimate scene, the unsightly vulture (Simon J. Williams ’09) clambered onto the stage and it took a moment for me to decide whether it was real or just the protagonist’s hallucination.

There are few mistakes that a passionate kissing scene amid a full-cast dance number can’t redress. The closing number, “On the Air,” an anthem to short-lived fame and unrealized fortune, was so spectacular that I hardly cared whether the cast was singing in the correct key or knew the words to the glorious song. Whether the final scene was improvised or not, the audience’s thunderous applause was justifiably approving."

Swingin it!

The Ex-Friends: featuring "string virtuoso Ray Suen, 20"

Sectionals. But not really.

Unifying lessons of the past week:

I am not clutch.

Yale Cup

Unifying lessons of the past week and Yale Cup:

1. I am better at frisbee than I am at music.
2. I'm scary when I run.
3. I need more than four hours of sleep a night.
4. Nobody likes it when I'm snappy.
5. Colored leggings excite people.
6. Yale has a prettier campus than Harvard.
7. Harvard has a prettier city than Yale.

As that crazy Sartre put it

Unifying lessons of the past week and of Paradise Playoffs:

1. Take responsibility
2. Don't run your mouth.
3. Make time.
4. Have confidence.
5. Don't run your mouth.
6. Take responsibility.

Seven rookies, two rehabs, and the plague.

Don't you hate it when you bring shampoo bottles on a plane and then the air pressure gets all messed up and then when you open it shampoo starts gushing out and then when it's finally fixed the bottle is warped?

I do.

Sink Pair Sons

On March 28, my mother and I visited Notre Dame de Paris, where in 1572, King Charles IX manually nodded his sister's head in consent to marry Henri de Bourbon and in 1804 Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself emperor as the indifferent Pope looked on. As we left the cathedral, looking to get some coffee at a local brasserie, it began to rain, and so we shuffled into a busy, tourist-y looking contraption called the "Quasimodo Cafe" or something to that awful effect. Not long after we sat at a table par deux, a man whom I might describe as a very large, fleshy egg, says to the waiter with his hand up, fingers splayed: "Sink pair sons, sill voo play."

Granted, I don't speak anything near perfect French, and the effort to speak a few words to the locals is something, if not admirable, but it seems to me that if this lumbering American with his quadruple chin and non-existent neck clearly cannot reproduce "cinq personnes, s'il vous plait," then the imitation seems more of an insult to the language and to the waiter, who can speak and understand English. It did not help my disheartened humor to see that the four following Sink Pair Sons were equally large, egg-shaped, and poly-chinned.

Meanwhile, at the Place de la Republique and the Place de la Bastille thousands of etudiants, lyceens and union workers were staging a manifestation against a proposed labor law less absolutely abominable and more hated due to the circumstances of its proposition. It's a grand tradition of revolution and demonstration That they have in France. My half-French, half-Chinese 32-year-old unemployed artist cousin was among the demonstrators, though not of the ones at the Republique who were sprayed with water cannons and tear gas, I don't think. He may live in a small Communist ville just outside Paris, but as he put it, "I happened upon it and how could I not get caught up? This is my generation." He went on to talk about how he hated the extreme indifference regarding politics and national and generational identity that he noticed growing up in San Diego. He didn't like the lack of citizenship, the lack of concern with community and courtesy; he didn't like the selfishness and gluttony that leads to egg-shaped people and people "falling out of their clothes."

I've suddenly become very concerned with the history of Marguerite de Valois (we read and watched La Reine Margot in class, and I lived in a hotel at 8 Place de Marguerite de Navarre, and we rode a boat named the "Isabelle Adjani," who played Marguerite in the 1994 film versionLa Reine Margot.) even though I suppose it does not concern me at all. I suppose France shouldn't concern me at all, but I am drawn to it for several reasons, not the least of which is that there are carrousels at every corner in the city, the way there are hot dog stands on every corner of New York City. It's the first time I've ever been interested in history, probably because I got a fictionalized, romanticized version of it first. No matter, another reason I like France is because all of its truths are just about as romantic as their fictions.

On another note, I just put my phone through the washing machine, so it's out of commission. After the number of times it's been accidentally dropped, emotionally thrown, and generally mistreated, I suppose the drowning put it out of its misery. It had a lot of good photos on it and 200 phone numbers on it, though. Crap. So e-mail me your number if you want me to have it. Merci bookoo.