ASIA'ZINE: The Different Types of Asians
weird. i'm a asian in denial + banana/coconut + asian fob.
i have no idea what asia'zine is, but i do believe that stuff in taiwan kicks the ass of stuff everywhere else.
oooooooh!!!! bootiful new computah es here today. what should i name it?
is my ups woman?
come to me.
my laptop bring to me.
unleash days of games,
hours of euphoria,
processor speed to match my wit,
gbs to make me giggle.
(chorus) oh where or where
is my ups woman?
i am suffering from mania today. that, my friends, is caused my excessive norepinephrine, which can be attributed to the catecholamine hypothesis.
so i ask you -- who is your daddy?
i can't study. either i don't care and am starting to wonder if 6 years phd + internship + fellowship + fighting to get tenure + worrying about grants and publications and conferences = something worthwhile OR i'm just being paranoid and am ready for this exam. i'm a strange melange of determinism and closet laziness. sometimes i think i want nothing more than to see my friends, read books (to kick meta's ass in our count), travel, and learn about people, find love, have a family, yada yada yada. at other times i feel like i need to accomplish something. that i have something to prove.
i digress.
question of the day : has anyone here ever smelled evil? in that, you saw a stranger and immediately sensed that the person was evil? and, you were accurate? it has to be a very compelling sort of feeling, and it has to be very rare, methinks, because you can't go around randomly applying the label "evil" to everyone.
goonley says he has, twice. i have thrice. two stalked me at mit (one lied and the other left dead flowers at my door), and the third tried to blackmail me and get me fired from my old job. i think it's possible. it's probably hardwired into our brains to an evolutionary advantage -- you want to stay away from those individuals who are sinister and can cause damage, regardless of whether it's an immediately noticeable thing.
so the question is -- have you ever seen someone who seemed to you immediately evil, and if so, were you accurate? just curious. i want to hear stories.
thanks to everyone who came to wish me a happy birfday. i had a great time, even though i woke up this morning kind of groggy and *extremely* tired.
this drinking thing seems to be becoming a frequent occurrence. must stop.
thanks to all my friends who listened to me freak out and complain about my horrible teaching experience. and especially to those who know me so well that they had the sense to tell me to go to sleep and shut up when my irrationality reached an unbearable point.
i took the last two days off to recuperate physically and mentally, and to give myself some time to meditate and relax about my finals. i reordered my computer (they cancelled the original order for some insane reason), i spent time looking at apartments, slept, ate, got a chance to talk to corinne (which btw, was very missed), and to study a bit. so i'm back to being calm and centered.
i've decided to cut back on teaching hours, or at least wait until school / research / ta'ing has settled before i take on more teaching. luke and radu found an apartment for which they put down an application that is also in the sunset, and i got my head around the abnormal psychology material for next week's test.
it feels damn good to be doing something right.
i think i'm going to cry.
first of all, i'm a retard. i'm sick and i'm working 65 hours a week. so today, i was running a fever and i decided to go into work today, because i felt bad cancelling. well, it was a disaster. i couldn't teach anything, i couldn't think, i could barely talk, and i couldn't multiply numbers in my head. 3 x 6 seemed like i was multiplying 523423.234234 by 197^234. the room started spinning, my students started looking at me like i sucked (and i probably did), and i couldn't answer basic math questions. so i basically clawed my way through half an hour of them teaching ME math before i was like, okay, i need to go home and sleep and stop teaching. my boss looked at me like he was going to kill me and then sent me home.
i hate f*cking up on things. i further more hate f*cking up when someone else's ass is on the line (namely, that of my boss), and when i know that the f*cking up is preventable. i'm probably going to get fired. who the hell can't teach high school math? i went to mit for god sakes and derived things 10 million times more complicated that this.
i'm feeling sorry for myself and am scrounging for sympathy and consolation. i really need to cut back on something.
i'm really upset about this.
i'm sick again.
i've been drinking e'mer'genC like a mutha.
take that. a mutha.
too much work. too much play. i need to play less. work more. or maybe work less. i just need my new laptop. then all would be good. oh. maybe the ability or time to go run a few miles every few days would make things much better.
f*ck. i hate being overworked, tired, and sick. i have the feeling i'm going to be in bed with a fever this weekend.
gahhhhhhhhhh.
at least i get to go to germany this winter break for 10 days. and i might see my best friend on her way back from thailand.
otherwise, f*ck. being sick is grody.
i've seen more of these two in the past two weeks than i did for the first 6 months of this year. staggering.
most of the time revolves around my finding out deficiencies in my grammar or logic (the former being attributed to meta, the latter to goonley), and last night it included instant inebriation. i enjoy it profusely, however, because it's often hard to click with your good friend's significant others. you always hope that if your good friends find a special someone, you can get along with him/her/it, and that he/she/it won't change the dynamic at all. really though, that is quite difficult.
in any case, i met their friends, one of whom i actually know, and afterwards we split, with my intention of getting their friends into cafe du nord for free, and then heading home to pass out. yah right. i was up till 1:30, after my friend at cafe du nord bought me three rounds.
ugh.
today i am hurting. but back to work. but the pain was worth seeing those two. they are hilarious. but perhaps not as much so as me. i'm funnier.
i'm a loser so i'm gonna copy goonley, meta and mike and do this book bolding thing. i'm so braindead from working this week, i'll just be a follower and do what they are doing. i am buzzing and should be sleeping, but heck, i have nothing to do tomorrow except study and a 5 mile run.
that being said, i'm a big book freak, perhaps biased towards the classics. but i'm trying to branch out. afterall, austen and dostoevsky can't write anymore. so any suggestions as to good modern day lit is welcomed. note : i hate stuff like dan brown. he's sorely lacking in strong plots and crafty prose. the plot is interesting, but the book is a wasted read, methinks.
does anyone know why this fellow picked these books, specifically?
new computer arrives in: 5 days. the countdown has begun.
1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. 1984, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far AWAY From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Susskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
101. Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
102. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
103. The Beach, Alex Garland
104. Dracula, Bram Stoker
105. Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz
106. The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens
107. Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz
108. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
109. The Day Of The Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
110. The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson
111. Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy
112. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 1/2, Sue Townsend
113. The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat
114. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
115. The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
116. The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson
117. Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson
118. The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
119. Shogun, James Clavell
120. The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham
121. Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson
122. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
123. The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy
124. House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
125. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
126. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
127. Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison
128. The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
129. Possession, A. S. Byatt
130. The Master And Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
131. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
132. Danny The Champion Of The World, Roald Dahl
133. East Of Eden, John Steinbeck
134. George's Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl
135. Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett
136. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
137. Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
138. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
139. Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson
140. Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson
141. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
142. Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson
143. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
144. It, Stephen King
145. James And The Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
146. The Green Mile, Stephen King
147. Papillon, Henri Charriere
148. Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett
149. Master And Commander, Patrick O'Brian
150. Skeleton Key, Anthony Horowitz
151. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett
152. Thief Of Time, Terry Pratchett
153. The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett
154. Atonement, Ian McEwan
155. Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson
156. The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier
157. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
158. Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
159. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
160. Cross Stitch, Diana Gabaldon
161. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
162. River God, Wilbur Smith
163. Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon
164. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
165. The World According To Garp, John Irving
166. Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore
167. Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson
168. The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye
169. The Witches, Roald Dahl
170. Charlotte's Web, E. B. White
171. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
172. They Used To Play On Grass, Terry Venables and Gordon Williams
173. The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway
174. The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco
175. Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder
176. Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson
177. Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl
178. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
179. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach
180. The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery
181. The Suitcase Kid, Jacqueline Wilson
182. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
183. The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay
184. Silas Mar(i)ner, George Eliot
185. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
186. The Diary Of A Nobody, George and Weedon Gross-mith
187. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
188. Goosebumps, R. L. Stine
189. Heidi, Johanna Spyri
190. Sons And Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
192. Man And Boy, Tony Parsons
193. The Truth, Terry Pratchett
194. The War Of The Worlds, H. G. Wells
195. The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans
196. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
197. Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
198. The Once And Future King, T. H. White
199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
200. Flowers In The Attic, V.C. Andrews
201. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
202. The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan
203. The Great Hunt, Robert Jordan
204. The Dragon Reborn, Robert Jordan
205. Fires of Heaven, Robert Jordan
206. Lord of Chaos, Robert Jordan
207. Winter's Heart, Robert Jordan
208. A Crown of Swords, Robert Jordan
209. Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan
210. A Path of Daggers, Robert Jordan
211. As Nature Made Him, John Colapinto
212. Microserfs, Douglas Coupland
213. The Married Man, Edmund White
214. Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin
215. The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault
216. Cry to Heaven, Anne Rice
217. Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, John Boswell
218. Equus, Peter Shaffer
219. The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten
220. Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
221. Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn
222. The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice
223. Anthem, Ayn Rand
224. The Bridge To Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
225. Tartuffe, Moliere
226. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
227. The Crucible, Arthur Miller
228. The Trial, Franz Kafka
229. Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
230. Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles
231. Death Be Not Proud, John Gunther
232. A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen
233. Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen
234. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
235. A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry
236. ALIVE!, Piers Paul Read
237. Grapefruit, Yoko Ono
238. Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde
240. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
241. Chronicles of Thomas Convenant, Unbeliever, Stephen Donaldson
242. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
242. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
243. Summerland, Michael Chabon
244. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
245. Candide, Voltaire
246. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, Roald Dahl
247. Ringworld, Larry Niven
248. The King Must Die, Mary Renault
249. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
250. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L'Engle
251. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
252. The House Of The Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
253. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
254. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
255. The Great Gilly Hopkins, Katherine Paterson
256. Chocolate Fever, Robert Kimmel Smith
257. Xanth: The Quest for Magic, Piers Anthony
258. The Lost Princess of Oz, L. Frank Baum
259. Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon
260. Lost In A Good Book, Jasper Fforde
261. Well Of Lost Plots, Jasper Fforde
261. Life Of Pi, Yann Martel
263. The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
264. A Yellow Rraft In Blue Water, Michael Dorris
265. Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder
267. Where The Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls
268. Griffin & Sabine, Nick Bantock
269. Witch of Black Bird Pond, Joyce Friedland
270. Mrs. Frisby And The Rats Of NIMH, Robert C. O'Brien
271. Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt
272. The Cay, Theodore Taylor
273. From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg
274. The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Jester
275. The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
276. The Kitchen God's Wife, Amy Tan
277. The Bonesetter's Daughter, Amy Tan
278. Relic, Duglas Preston & Lincolon Child
279. Wicked, Gregory Maguire
280. American Gods, Neil Gaiman
281. Misty of Chincoteague, Marguerite Henry
282. The Girl Next Door, Jack Ketchum
283. Haunted, Judith St. George
284. Singularity, William Sleator
285. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
286. Different Seasons, Stephen King
287. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
288. About a Boy, Nick Hornby
289. The Bookman's Wake, John Dunning
290. The Church of Dead Girls, Stephen Dobyns
291. Illusions, Richard Bach
292. Magic's Pawn, Mercedes Lackey
293. Magic's Promise, Mercedes Lackey
294. Magic's Price, Mercedes Lackey
295. The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Gary Zukav
296. Spirits of Flux and Anchor, Jack L. Chalker
297. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
298. The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices, Brenda Love
299. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace.
300. The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
301. The Cider House Rules, John Irving.
302. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
303. Girlfriend in a Coma, Douglas Coupland
304. The Lion's Game, Nelson Demille
305. The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars, Stephen Brust
306. Cyteen, C. J. Cherryh
307. Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco
308. Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
309. Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk
310. Camber of Culdi, Kathryn Kurtz
311. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
312. War and Rememberance, Herman Wouk
313. The Art of War, Sun Tzu
314. The Giver, Lois Lowry
315. The Telling, Ursula Le Guin
316. Xenogenesis (or Lilith's Brood), Octavia Butler (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago)
317. A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold
318. The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold
319. The Aeneid, Publius Vergilius Maro (Vergil)
320. Hanta Yo, Ruth Beebe Hill
321. The Princess Bride, S. Morganstern (or William Goldman)
322. Beowulf, Anonymous
323. The Sparrow, Maria Doria Russell
324. Deerskin, Robin McKinley
325. Dragonsong, Anne McCaffrey
326. Passage, Connie Willis
327. Otherland, Tad Williams
328. Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay
329. Number the Stars, Lois Lowry
330. Beloved, Toni Morrison
331. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, Christopher Moore
332. The mysterious disappearance of Leon, I mean Noel, Ellen Raskin
333. Summer Sisters, Judy Blume
334. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo
335. The Island on Bird Street, Uri Orlev
336. Midnight in the Dollhouse, Marjorie Filley Stover
337. The Miracle Worker, William Gibson
338. The Genesis Code, John Case
339. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevensen
340. Paradise Lost, John Milton
341. Phantom, Susan Kay
342. The Mummy or Ramses the Damned, Anne Rice
343. Anno Dracula, Kim Newman
344: The Dresden Files: Grave Peril, Jim Butcher
345: Tokyo Suckerpunch, Issac Adamson
346: The Winter of Magic's Return, Pamela Service
347: The Oddkins, Dean R. Koontz
348. My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok
349. The Last Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
350. At Swim, Two Boys, Jaime O'Neill
351. Othello, William Shakespeare
352. The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas
353. The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats
354. Sati, Christopher Pike
355. The Inferno, Dante
356. The Apology, Plato
357. The Small Rain, Madeline L'Engle
358. The Man Who Tasted Shapes, Richard E Cytowick
359. 5 Novels, Daniel Pinkwater
360. The Sevenwaters Trilogy, Juliet Marillier
361. Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
362. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
363. Our Town, Thorton Wilder
364. Green Grass Running Water, Thomas King
335. The Interpreter, Suzanne Glass
336. The Moor's Last Sigh, Salman Rushdie
337. The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson
338. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
339. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
340. The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
341. Pages for You, Sylvia Brownrigg
342. The Changeover, Margaret Mahy
343. Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
344. Angels and Demons, Dan Brown
345. Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo
346. Shosha, Isaac Bashevis Singer
347. Travels With Charley, John Steinbeck
348. The Diving-bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
349. The Lunatic at Large by J. Storer Clouston
350. Time for bed by David Baddiel
351. Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
352. Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre
353. The Bloody Sun by Marion Zimmer Bradley
354. Sewer, Gas, and Eletric by Matt Ruff
355. Jhereg by Steven Brust
356. So You Want To Be A Wizard by Diane Duane
357. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
358. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte
359. Road-side Dog, Czeslaw Milosz
360. The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
361. Neuromancer, William Gibson
362. The Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
363. A Canticle for Liebowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr
364. The Mask of Apollo, Mary Renault
365. The Gunslinger, Stephen King
366. Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
367. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
368. A Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
369. Ivanhoe, Walter Scott
370. The God Boy, Ian Cross
371. The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Laurie R. King
372. Finn Family Moomintroll, Tove Jansson
373. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
374. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Blade Runner), Philip K. Dick
375. Assassin's Apprentice, Robin Hobb
376. number9dream, David Mitchell
377. A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin
378. Five Quarters of the Orange, Joanne Harris
379. Bridget Jones - The Edge of Reason, Helen Fielding
380. Yann Martel - Self
381. Totto chan - Tetsuko Kuroyanagi
382. Underworld, Don DeLillo
383. The Remains Of The Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
384. The Periodic Table, Primo Levi
385. To Ride Pegasus, Anne McCaffrey
386. Riding a Pale Horse, Piers Anthony
387. The Blackstone Chronicles, John Saul
388. Runaway Horses, Yukio Mishima
389. Lost Illusions, Honore de Balzac
390. Trents' Last Case, E.H. Bentley
391. The Popes Rhinocerous, Lawrence Norfolk
392. Scoop, Evelyn Waugh
393. The Thought Gang, Tibor Fischer
394. The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl
395. Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman
396. The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Allan Poe
397. The Player of games, Iain M. Banks
398. Islands in the Stream, Ernest Hemingway
399. American Tabloid, James Ellroy
400. Confessions of a Homing Pigeon - Nicholas Meyer
401. An Equal Music, Vikram Seth
402. Blindness, Jose Saramago
403. Maurice, E.M. Forster
404. Symposium, Plato
405.If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Jon McGregor
406. The Awakening, Kate Chopin
407. The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Diana Wynne Jones
408. Guilty Pleasures: An Anita Blake book, Laurell K, Hamiliton
409. Obsidian Butterfly, Laurell K, Hamilition
410. A Caress of Twiligh, Laurell K, Hamiliion
411. Chocolat, Joanne Harris
412. I Have Lived A Thousand Years, Livia Bitton-Jackson
413. Something from Nothing, Phoebe Gilman
414. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
415. Sabriel, Garth Nix
416. Ring of Endles Light, Madeline L'Engle
417. 44 - Dublin Made Me, Peter Sheridan
418. To The Hilt, Dick Francis
419. The Andalite Chronicles, K.A. Applegate
420. Bobby Sands: Writings from Prison, Bobby Sands
421. Sybil, Flora Rheta Schreiber
422. Confessions of an Actor, Laurence Olivier
423. "The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman," by Angela Carter
424. "Sweet Thursday," by John Steinbeck
425. "Life Before Man," by Margaret Atwood
426. Three, Ann Quin
427. Survivor, Chuck Palahniuk
428. She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb
429. Barbara Kingsolver - Animal Dreams
430. Robert Heinlein - Time Enough for Love
431. Robert Heinlein - The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
432. Man's Search for Meaning - Victor Frankl
i just got a new computer.
i'm bugging out.
aaaaaaaaagh!!
gah!
doh!
aaaughghhhhhhhhhghghggh!!!
i quote:
"i got these chapter outlines, and they sure rub me the right way. i dont
know what happened the first time, but i got all three this time.
thank you very much.
i will see you on monday."
an email from my student this morning. weird.
does anyone else find the smell of newly printed pages (a.k.a. hot laser jet ink) somewhat comforting? kind of like how gasoline really doesn't smell bad?
i'm embarassed to admit that. but it somehow smells bad and good at the same time.
i'm lecturing tomorrow. gah! wish me luck!
i think yahoo! has finally responded to gmail.
i got an email yesterday from yahoo (who provides my pop service) that i was getting 2 gb of free memory, no promo tags, and free virus checking software. not bad. so far it seems to be working. lately, i've been spammed by ***** enlargement ads, and i didn't get any this morning like i usually do. (no, i am not terribly disappointed).
when i logged into my other yahoo accounts, i noticed that the interface was completely different. pretty bubbly tabs, blue welcome signs, more memory. mm. i love market competition. may the games begin!
btw, i have three more free gmail accounts. write if you want one.
i never realized how stressed out undergrads can be. i guess i was one of those. i'd sit in the front seat in class, taking meticulous notes (sometimes color coded -- shut up, i don't want any flack) and i'd rewrite problem sets to be perfectly aligned. i'd look scornfully at people who fell asleep in lecture. my first bf in college fell asleep next to me in recitation once and sort of drooled a little. i remember thinking, good god, i'll never be or date someone who is as uncommitted and disrespectful as he! i care about school!
hah. then sophomore year came. and sleep came willingly to me in my eyes through lectures on diodes, market competition, organic compounds. notes stopped being that neat, and i stopped staying frantically on top of everything. it felt better that way.
now that i'm a ta, i see my past-neuroticism in my students. after the first day of class, a student wrote me and asked me how to get an A on the midterm. another asked me what types of questions would be on the exam. another called me ms. pepper (my last name replacing pepper, of course). and then the way they write me is hilarious:
dear ms. pepper, i am trying to add the class but am afraid i can't. can you please help me? i am so sorry to bother you! i'll make up the work.
sounds like emails i used to send. the other day i made a comment about not liking that i'm aging. actually, i like it. with it comes calm, the wisdom not to freak out about little things, and the ability to handle more pressure and be more relaxed simultaneously. i'm glad i still don't color coordinate my books and binders anymore.
next up: lecturing next week on cognition and behaviorism. should be interesting.
sometimes i pretend that my keyboard is messed up. so i will type random things and let them my im friends be confused. it usually takes people quite some time to figure it out. but this one is too damn smart. he annoys me sometimes because he knows too well what a dork i am:
friend: wassup?
rcp: booc
rcp: aewr anif ?
friend: eh?
friend: oh
friend: asdkf asdfw3r
rcp: to cbu bdf er aiudnanf.
friend: afe adf easdfasdf
rcp: damn it. you're too smart. you catch on too quickly.
friend: dalkjsdf asdoif you too
friend: so did you get my previous message aboot the city?
rcp: dork. it usually takes people like 45 seconds to catch on.
friend: i'm sorry i failed your intelligence test
i'm majorly screwed over for my master's thesis. where the hell am i going to find 50 pregnant women? i'm majorly pissed that i had such a good time in taiwan and returned to all this bullshit.
it is times like these that i wish i hadn't left my stable, money paying job for a foray into the unknown.
#$%^&*!
on top of it all, i'm turning 25 soon.
damn you, life!
is finally done. good god. talk about a long story. and talk about characters and details of who kills whom! homer had a lot to say.
the book almost had as many characters as dream of the red chamber, one of the most famous books in chinese history.
i have made it a habit to read books before i see movies, because i find that movies often limit my interpretation of books i read afterwards. NG (another New Guy) debates the validity of this and thinks that movies open doors to interpretation but i readily disagree.
in any case, i know now not to name my son agammemnon, achilles, or paris (that wasn't ever going to happen anyhow). none of them are portrayed in a very positive light. perhaps hektor or odysseus will have to make do. or apollo. poseidon sounds the best, methinks, but he's too whiny in character.
i am back in san francisco, but this time it did not feel like i was coming home. it felt like i left home when i left taipei yesterday night, and when i arrived in san francisco, i embraced all that i loved but felt that i was in a foreign land.
so this is how my parents feel. they left everything 30 years ago, and came to the united states, and they say that although taiwan is a different beast now, it is still their homeland. they see remnants of their childhood in dilapidated buildings, in the tradition people still keep, in the way i act towards my elders. i miss it already, and yet i have never found myself missing taiwan the way i do now. it's not that it was just an exotic place to be. it most definitely was, but it this trip back felt to me to be a step in the completion of understanding who and why i am in the way i am, to returning to my foundations. it's very grounding.
in any case, the grind of summer term is about to start. heavens knows how i'm going to manage two classes, ta two classes, do research at stanford, and teach ap physics at night. all this while still trying to train for a few 15ks. i've decided to try to whettle down my interests. i've always had a lot of passions but my energies have always been scattered. with age, you feel a need to focus and nurture a few of those passions. i have also decided to focus my energy on a few friends instead of spreading myself so thinly to too many causes.
so, i'm slowly going to whet down the list of those with whom i keep in touch, and the endeavors in which i participate.
in now particular order, amongst the list includes:
physical training (schedule of running, yoga, pilates, spinning, swimming)
graduate studies and research
volunteering with young children
keeping in touch with the exceptional few friends
buddhism work
reading / writing
studying for GRE psychs / applications
that is it for now.
literal translation in taiwanese means "to have your fortune told." i don't really believe in these things because i've always thought that life is really what you make of it. some things make common sense, like that i'll never be a basketball player or a world famous baseball player, but for the most part, the possibilities are endless.
and then we went to get my fortune told.
*shudder*
it was pretty demented what the guy told me. actually, it was pretty demented in general. i went in with about as bland of a facial expression as possible, and said as little as possible so that he couldn't tell me generic things like "oh, you are outgoing," or "you are intelligent." i just sat there. and what he determined from my "ba tze" (eight letters, meaning birthdate, time, in chinese calendar) really freaked me out.
he basically spelled out what education i had had, what my experience at mit was like, what my past relationships have been like, what it is i am doing now and what i am suited for now, where i am currently living and what my living condition is, and what my health problems are. not like general "oh sometimes you get allergy symptoms," but things that only my doctor and i should know, and that he knew. then he told me when i'm going to get married, what i will do in the future, he even told me how tall my husband is going to be and what his profession is going to be. he even spelled out specific personality traits of mine that no one should be able to tell from my just sitting there motionless in a chair.
oh. i've never met this person before in my life. and neither has my parents or my uncle and aunt who accompanied me.
weird. i don't know what it means. how much of it is mutable, how much of it is set. how much leeway i have to break the path of what is supposed to be and still achieve what i'm supposed to achieve. i don't know. but it was just eerie. in some ways, it's almost better not to know these things or to have preset ideas of what is supposed to be. you'll learn more about yourself in the process of erring. it just makes my head turn sometimes trying to place together everything i've believed or learned in life. maybe it's better not to think about these things at all. you'd still live your life to the best of your ability, no?
so other than that, i went down to taichung, was completely bombarded by my two nephews who decided that i'd be their nurse and human jungle gym for two days. i could barely finish eating my dinner last night when they swarmed my edamame. one climbed into my lap and dug his hands into my bowl asking to be hand fed while the other sat beside me putting at my arm to be spoon fed. after spending the entire day tending to them, i was exhausted. kids are truly, truly, truly a tremendous obligation, both temporally, physically and emotionally. turn your head and -wham- this gets knocked over or that gets pushed over. it's a nightmare when they're so young.
and yet they're the most loving, unbegrudging, impressionable, innocent, sweet things on earth. it's weird. studying developmental psych seems to be having a weird effect on my desire to have a family. before, i had frequent thoughts about how great it'd be to not get married and have kids. and now i'm starting to wonder how great it would be to *have* them.
nonetheless, we visited some graves, had a family dinner with 40 people, including my cousin from la, did some shopping, looked at some taiwanese art, did some shopping, ate some damn good sashimi and hot pot, and also got bitten by some more mosquitoes.
tomorrow i'm going to a 'yah qi-ah' to do some more crazy night market bargaining. a saw a beautiful leather purse the other day for 9 dollars. insane.