"watashi wa sarah desu! doozo arigato."
i had my first japanese lesson yesterday. it took about an hour for me to review hiragana and katekana (sp?) and to learn a few words in japanese. the japanese alphabet is insane. all the letters look the same, all the squiggly lines go in the same direction, and they have two alphabets for the same sounds! though i think it may be fair to say that the chinese alphabet is no easier. after the age of 12, it becomes exponentially more difficult for one to acquire a new language. although one might acquire words faster, the grammatical rules are much harder for one to internalize. the process of speaking and understanding a language becomes much more an active, rather than automatic, process.
okay. sorry about that. just so you know, i am learning things in psychology.
i despise planes. i landed in nyc 45 minutes after the blackout, and that was okay. i was still amused at that point. two days ago, however, returning to sf from nyc, took me 15 hours. my flight from nyc was delayed for an hour and a half and i missed my connection flight to oakland. when i got off the plane, they told me to run to the gate, which i did, but then american airlines attempted to tell me that it was my fault that i missed the flight. most people who know me well know that i'm very courteous to customer service, and can be quite patient when rudely spoken to. so, after being told in an insinuating manner that i missed i flight, i was then told that i was placed on a flight 4 hours away to oakland. i politely told them no and requested to be put on a flight to sf. the very next flight to sf available. when the chap denied me, i went nuts. i firmly declared that i was extremely unhappy with how they had handled the situation and that it was their obligation to accomodate me in any way possible. so, on to the flight to sf i was put, but with the possibility that they might lose my luggage and that i'd have to go to oakland to pick it up. so i went nuts again. i told them that, as my flight was two hours away, they had enough time to retrieve my luggage and place it on the correct plane, and if they failed to do so, it was their responsibility to send it to me or reimburse me.
needless to say, i did get my luggage, but my connecting flight was delayed for 1.5 hours due to inclement weather. and then the shuttle i took back from the airport was beeping the entire way. the transmission was experiencing difficulties.
so that was the whole deal. i must say, in going *nuts* at the flight agent, i never really go insane or become rude. i just do some asian woman yelling, which consists of firm, but not volume-elevated, insists and demands. i tell you - it's great being a little asian woman. you can get almost anything you want.
"no chance at stardom"
an estimated 10,000 people showed up today for the american idol auditions. 10 seconds per auditioner, without all people being guaranteed an audition, and you can imagine how long that must have taken. people lined up for blocks and blocks and waited for two days to get into the audition. i, however, did not. as much as i would have loved to have been a famous pop star, it wasn't worth sleeping on the ground and waiting in the sun for that long. i rather have spent it with my brother and friends.
in any case, this weekend brought much insane fun. on saturday morning, i caught a bus at 7:30 to boston, met up with hua, dragged him grocery shopping and then went to chinatown to meet up with some friends for taiwanese brunch. mmmm. i missed taiwanese food; i can't find it anywhere in sf. saw catpoo, momo, hua, huru, liana, hersheybutt and her boyfriend. we chatted, ate a lot, and then i dragged huru and hua to the new balance outlet for some shoes for the big sur race. i wanted to get shoes that would prevent pronation.
so let me talk about these shoes.
a few years ago, when goonley and i were in europe, i remember telling him about my bad ankles and we kept arguing about the importance of shoes. he told me "if you get good shoes, you won't do damage to your ankles. it's in the shoes." and huru, the 10 million time marathon runner, says the same thing to me. "your knees are very important. get good shoes. i spent tons of money on shoes." but i'm asian. and i hate spending money on things that aren't on sale.
but i did expressly the opposite this weekend. i splurged on a good pair of shoes that have specially designed heels to prevent turning. (i opted not to get the awkward looking wide toebox). these shoes are almost bordering on ecstasy. they are *so* comfortable, and so light, and so beautiful. if i were another pair of shoes, i'd make love to them. repeatedly, too.
so afterwards, stan and i hauled over to beckfat's to help her pack her belongongs into her van. sigh. it was so sad to be moving her out. in any case, let me tell you about uhaul and her huge fiasco. unbeknowst to me, i guess uhaul is very bad about keeping reservations and are actually quite reliably unreliable in delivering vans on time. so she went someplace else and was fortunate enough to get a cargo van in the last minute. unfortunately, it smelled horrendous. i named it the "putrid dog" smell. good lord. i have never smelled anything that vile in a vehicle. it wasn't even a remotely human smell. huru and i ran to star to hopefully find some salvation in the "oust - odor sanitizer" and although i practically *fumigated* the car 10 times, it still wreaked. the worst was when we turned on the ac unit. i thought we were going to pass out from the smell.
we made it back to the home, ate dinner, drove to yale, unpacked everything, drove back home. got a movie. passed out. huru brought back the van yesterday am at 6 and beckfat and i headed off later that day - her to yale, me to nyc. and here i am. today, i will conquer the city albeit not with my singing prowess =(. alas!
"american idol blowout"
i can't believe this.
audition lineup for american idol, which opens monday morning at 8 am, starts tomorrow (saturday) at 12. people sleepover for TWO days.
click here for the article on cnn. there's no way i'm that motivated. i like sleep.
drat. i'm really bummed. it would have been fun.
"the star wars kid"
this is hilarious. i don't mean to partake in this poor kid's suffering, but read this article and then go to google and type in "the star wars kid." he's pretty passionate about what he's doing, and admirably so. if only we were all like this... :)
"nihongo, desu ka?"
in the 4 days that i've been at home, i've learned 10 japanese words from my grandfather. i learned the difference between all different types of teas and soups, how to say "no, i don't want this," how to differentiate "me" in female and male terms. i've forgotten all the words. funny how a 24 year old can be more senile than her 84 year old grand-pappy.
so, last week, feeling like a turd after seeing how talented goonley and his marathon-running gf are, i came home, cleaned out my apt and made a list of all the things i've wanted to do but haven't had the chance to. my roommate and i decided to run the 10k big sur race. okay, it's not 26.2 but it's a formidable effort given that i've been on crutches for 2 months due to tendonitis injuries in my ankles and that i had physical therapy last year because of my knees. i'm a brave one, as beckfat sometimes says. and i started working on my book again. it's about disturbing and disturbed people. and i started to look for a place to do soup kitchen work on sunday mornings. so good. i whettled down my list. but boy, i see the talent some other people have, and i feel like i'm exploding with turdity.
i do have the talent of making up idiotic words. just ask my friends. maybe that'll compensate for my inability to do anything particularly nifty.
right-o.
carrying on, i've done nothing in ct except sleep and eat. oh. and today, i went to the library and borrowed four akira kurosawa movies for my grandfather. and a real taiwanese movie. i mean, this is hardcore taiwanese stuff - filmed taiwanese and spoken entirely in fujianese. and i understood it. anyhow. i digress. was the cartoon "akira" named after kurosawa? does anybody know?
okay. beddy bye. i'm sleepy.
"the east coast trip"
leave it to me to return to the east coast on the day there is a blackout. not just a blackout, not just a rolling blackout, but the *biggest* blackout in the history... i suppose the fact that it is the biggest isn't such a surprising affair, afterall, the nation is growing in resources and population, so it makes sense that the blackout should be bigger in 2003 than in 1973 (was that the last one?).
nonetheless, i left the state of rolling blackouts at 3 am and arrived in a chaotic new york at 5 pm. it took me another 7 hours, btw, to return home, a distance that is usually traversed in 2.5 hours. i was dismayed when i arrived at jfk, because i had intended to go into manhattan to see my brother and spend an evening with him, exploring times square. as the plane approached jfk, however, we were told to stay in a holding pattern for 30 or so minutes, and afterwards, we spent an hour on the runway because our gate was dysfunctional. the ground crew were running around like headless chicken, trying to use radios to communicate with each other while people on the plane were screaming out their theories of terrorism. it was really sort of surreal.
my favorite is the chap who tried to buy a soda out of the soda machine. yes sir, there is no electricity, therefore the soda machine isn't working. the best part was that he continued to deposit coins after the first one elicited no reaction. duh!
it made me ponder exactly how "evolved" we have become as a society. we are terribly dependent on electricity and machines to make our lives simpler, more efficient, easier, but when those machines on which we so readily survive are no longer functioning, it is as if we cannot do anything at all. it's hard to imagine how the native americans thrived with coarse spears and fire. if you were to put me in a forest with those two things, i'd starve to death. perhaps, though, i'd die of typhoid first.
so the cool thing about the whole 15 hour trip home from sf was that i got to see mars! it was sooooo clear that night due to the utter lack of light pollution that i could see all the stars and mars. no green martians tho. =(. maybe next time.
"fried brain"
i studied for 7 hours today. i'm not very impressed with myself, as afterwards i went home and basically drooled for a few hours. the material in the class is really poorly organized because of the book, and therefore hard to abstract. so you basically get all these cognitive, empiricist and nativist theories thrown at you, and they discuss it, and you have to try and wade your way through it. i spent most of those 7 hours just trying to categorize information and i think that's probably why i did so well on the first test. i've come to realize that a lot of learning is about seeing patterns, being able to group theories together.
after i stopped drooling, my roommate and i drove to twin peaks. although it was clear in my 'hood, it was quite foggy up in the hills. they say that the fog rolls into san francisco like 'the hand of god' and it certainly seems like it. the veil of mist was so heavy when we got there that we could feel it condensing into raindrops and a light layer of condensation blanketed the car. we could see the moon intermittently between the breaks in the cloud, and every now and then, we could see market and the civic center emerge from the fog. san francisco is soooo purdy. in the distance, i could see the lights of berkeley twinkling. the best part of the whole experience was that the mist smelled like cooked corn. as if i haven't eaten enough already today, i felt famished when i smelled that corn. there's something about useless carbohydrates that make you hungry.
anyhow, i think my tush is really sore from studying for so long.
i picked "summertime" by ella fitzgerald for my american idol audition. what think you of this song?
"the exodus"
i moved my blog because unwelcome viewers were frequenting my hot blogspot. i know, i know. thoughts are just thoughts. maybe they aren't that important. but sometimes i post private ones for my buddies. i'd like to keep them that way.
"wubu an idol?"
so i've had some encouragement from friends that i ought to try out for the third season of american idol.
auditions in nyc will be on monday, august 25th. i'm going be in nyc then.
dur.. should i?
oh. happy one year blogging aniversary to me.
"more evidence of my stupidity"
i can't even begin to expound on how ridiculous i am. yesterday, after a prolonged absence from physical activity due to that nasty stomach bug, i finally gathered any remaining shreds of motivation and courage, and hauled myself on a long run through the golden gate park. i basically looped through half of the thing and finished off the run by sprinting up some stairs and then bolting down a mountain. notice that i used the word "bolt." it's quite a good word. i was quite proud of myself, yesterday. i've been quite lazy of late, but yesterday's 3.5 mile run was a testament to my ability to motivate myself.
today i awoke a bit sore. a healthy sore. as the day progressed, however, i felt more and more sore. my quads were not in a happy state as dinner time approached. so what did i do? i pulled on my running shoes and went for a fast sprint. up several hills. not one, but several. and now, my left quad is very unhappy.
i like how extremely unintelligent i am. i amuse myself when there is nothing else at which to laugh.
notice that i did *not* finish my sentence in a preposition. that means i might be slightly clever or crafty. you take your pick.
so the weather has been unbelievable this past week in sf. in the high 60s, low 70s, without a single cloud in the sky. before i went to meet up with sliu, i dragged marshymarsh out into the city. we went down to ocean beach, fished for some sand dollars, screamed at and ran away from these blue-amorphous-like-jelly-fish-sea-anemone-grody-things (articulate am i, says yoda), drove to the palace of legion of honor and posed dramatically in front of the dorian columns. watched the sea lap against the sea cliffs. the palace is so beautiful. we then took el camino del mar through the presidio and walked around the palace of fine arts. we noticed that all the stone gods that are perched at the top of the columns are facing *away* from the center of the atrium. you only see their backs! isn't that nifty?
we helped a newlywed couple who were still in their wedding wear take pictures. the bride had orchids weaved into her hair and the groom was fidgeting with his wedding band. i suppose he wasn't adjusted to it, yet. love is so beautiful. it was as if i could feel their happiness hang in the air.
so i just had to restate that i *LOVE* this city! i can't say it enough. i'm so ridiculously blessed to have the opportunity to live in a place like this and study something that i'm rabidly passionate about. i'm so fortunate to have a wonderful apartment, to be liberated from the evil depths of legal and patenting hell, and to be three miles from a beach. sometimes i'm just shocked at how surreal this all is. i'm living my dream.
so it was nice to see my friend sliu. she's a friend i met through rather surprising circumstances (namely, an ex to whom i no longer speak). in any case, when i was walking home after our study session i decided to ponder about friends. i think i'm so blessed to have met the people i know and to have the friends i do. i know i never need to worry about being alone, and i have the comfort of knowing that there are many wonderful people who have me in mind. i have companions who, for no apparent reason, help me haul boxes up stairs, who bring me medicine when i'm sick, who organize goodbye parties for me. and i don't mean to say this all with an edge of conceit or unabashed pride. i'm just sometimes so awed and grateful for all i have.
that being said, i just baked three dozen chocolate chip cookies. yah. life is good.
"i committed one of the seven sins"
i just had to add that lately i've been a sloth.
let's look at a list of what sarah has seen in the past two weeks:
dances with wolves
rushmore
royal tenenbaums
a.i.
mr. deeds
high crimes
he-man (the movie)
the story of marie antoinette
chungking express
hero
star wars: attack of the clones (that fight scene with yoda was amazing)
roman holiday
gangs of new york
i'm so lazy. i think moving to cali did something weird to me.
"the life of a student"
now that i am without visitors, and am just left to writing my book and studying, i have had plenty of free time again. most of this time has been happily dedicated to reading, talking to long distance friends on the phone into the late hours of the night, and trying to overcome this blasted bug/cold/fatigue illness from which i have been suffering.
today was dedicated to making dumplings and watching movies. i saw both A.I. and the royal tenebaums. the former made me cry.
i also feel compelled me to say that haley joe osment is a prodigy. how can someone so young act with such ingenuity and grace? i remember when "home alone" first came out. macauley caulkin was heralded as the next genius actor, and the critics lauded his cleverly comical antics and his ever so endearing personality. he crashed and burned a few years later when the american pubic grew weary of his all-too-adolescent-like charm and mannerisms. and then we find a haley joe osment who, in sixth sense, exhibited such genuine fear and trepidation that i couldn't sleep for weeks after seeing that movie. in A.I., his earnest desire for love and to see his mother made me cry so hard that my roommate thought i was in need of psychiatric help.
it's just ridiculous how much talent people have in this world. it makes me feel like such a useless, ungifted drone. i guess i'll just stick to the dumplings =).
"wwwhaarrrrr errrr wwaaaaannttttt eeeennn aaa meeeaaann"
i'm pretending to be nory from finding nemo. i think that going to pixar messed me up. i am experiencing urges to be a fish. a marine animal. an aquatic being.
if you pronounce what i wrote above slowly, it comes out to be "what i want in a man."
i forgot to add that last night, when mhao and i were having dinner, we discussed our versions of the "perfect" chap. i guess mhao started thinking about it when she read my blog entry about my ideal man the other day.
when i originally posted that blog, i wasn't that serious about it - i think the man i fall in love with won't be able to dance the way patrick swayze does, and he probably won't be able to sing much more than the barney song. i think, in the end, it will probably be his bungling inability to dance swiftly that'll make me fall in love with him. in any case, mhao brought up the point that our criteria changes over the years, that we seek different things as we get older. i think that's true. when i was younger, it was important to me that a guy could fix a car, run faster than me (which isn't really hard), be 5' 10" or above, blond hair, blue eyes, well-educated. i guess i was seeking really concrete abilities, traits that could be quantified or proven true with a piece of paper, or a number. and i guess, as i've gotten older, i've stopped objectifying chemistry. i've come to realize that it's not something that can really be predicted, and that when it exists, it's not even something you can explain or justify. and with that change, i know that i've started to seek different things. i wonder things like - is he someone who can keep a promise, follow through with his word, and make me laugh when there isn't anything to laugh at but just ourselves? would my brother like him? is he passionate about anything and everything? would he open the door for a stranger or abdicate his seat to the elderly? does he pass the homeless man on the street w/o giving him a quarter?
maybe these things will change over the next few years. actually, they inevitably will. but i guess i just realized that i don't care for the highly desirable-adonis-man-magnet anymore. i've met men who seem perfect. they only stay that way until you realize that they've completely lost sight of things that they can't write down on their resume or application.
i'll pass on those. send me the fellow without the impressive credentials, without the titles, without the gold placards on his office door. i'll take the one who smiles at the weary, hugs his mater and loves his pater, and makes my parents laugh. and even if he sings like a demented piglet, and dances like an ass-backwards monkey, i'll be perfectly content.