permanent disruptions to this blog, and subsequent new meaning in blog title

August flew by in a flurry of birthday celebrations and well wishes, but it ended in a most unpleasant, life endangering, most inconvenient accident. No part of the accident was my fault, and in no way could it have been anticipated, not with an underage drunk person driving their car into your house and demolishing everything in it inside a gated community (not one of those ratty neighborhoods) under their deranged illusion your house is their driveway. If I sound upset and mean referring to that incident it is because I am still plagued by the consequences of the drunk driver's actions.

Understandably, I've shifted my priorities in a different direction and will no longer force my undisciplined self through the rite (or pretense) of writing 500 words per day about who-knows-what. Fortunately, URL addresses do not yet take proper Chinese characters, only pinyin, so I am fully able to claim now that "emei tian wu bai zi" now means something else. Instead of picking something that sounds a tad absolute, I hereby declare that as of this day those 14 letters spell the meaning to "did not fill 500 words". Yes, yes, it's quite ironic compared to what it stood for before, but I fully deserve it as I can no longer even hope to live up to that expectation. I also think that freeing myself from this sort of obligation allows me to write with more quality and fresh perspective.

In my post-accident life I have taken a lot of pleasure in listening to good audiobooks while starting up cross stitching. In all honesty, I began in 2011 during my trip to China, but messed up by miscounting squares, and gave up. However, on bed-ridden days I nevertheless thought I could do something with my hands while listening to books, and actually took out the wrong stitches (a substantial part) and redoing them correctly. I am now almost finished with a pair of the most adorable puppies, which I hope to give a friend in good time.

I've also been generous enough to upgrade my brother's computer. Unfortunately, contrary to what I had hoped for and believed, his i2 processor and motherboard were definitely bottle-necking the performance of the GTX 660 I bought for him. Thus interestingly enough, the situation calls for more generosity in the near future to render my past generosity useful, not useless.

I was also able to give my brother an early Christmas gift in the form of acquiring some Leninade from BevMo!, which he has been wanting for some time for the clever quips on the bottles.

I returned Under the Dome by Stephen King and The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley on Audible because I just did not like those books. The urge to know what happens at the end drove me onward listening to all of it, but in one the ending was too unbelievable, and in the other the ending was all too predictable and convenient. I'll admit that both were creative, and each took its own creative liberty, but at the end those were just stories I never really care to hear again. Not in the way that I would listen to epic fantasy series for a second or third time, or even non-fiction books and mystery books. I do really need to finish all the books I have currently checked out from the Sacramento library, such as Fuschia Dunlop's memoir about eating in China.

The next language I seek to master is Japanese, and I'll eventually return to learning French and more German after that. As soon as I figure out how to type in those languages (which, knowing me, may actually be never), I'll post in those languages.

I had really forgotten I had this blog, almost. Then A Hyperbole and A Half came back, and I discovered Riyira. Did Google do away with the bar of links to other services (Blogger included) in the Gmail window, or did I make it go away by accident? In any case, I'm going to try to find a way to restore it. Nothing good ever comes of repressed insanity (<-just joking), so I think trying blogging again may not be so bad, if it lets out my crazy.

past hiatus and current status, and a past crush?

I let this blog go dormant for the past few weeks since I had some urgent business to take care of. Then I had to move, and then there was family drama, so for a while this blog was far from top of my priority list.

I'll be posting more starting tomorrow. To make up for the lost weeks, I'll be posting 2000 words per day, and in 10 days or so when I will have to lie the blog lie fallow again while I am traveling and whatnot, I should be caught up until I return from that trip.

I am really excited about living in a new place, but I'll have to go back and clean the old place too, to see if I get my deposit back. I can eat so much healthier over here in Sacramento compared to Davis, because here there is fresh produce on the cheap, as well as a very well stocked Chinese supermarket that also carries Japanese and Korean cooking ingredients/materials.

My best friend will be visiting me one weekend after our trip to Napa Valley and after a wedding but before her birthday this year, so I am excited about that as well. There is so much shopping in Sacramento! Shopping, eating out, etc., is all pretty convenient, but I wonder if there will be anything unique the state capitol has to offer.

10 years ago, I first visited this city as a high school student, for the Asian Pacific Youth Leadership Program, and I have nothing but good memories of the people I met and the places we went. I got to present and debate real bills on the California Senate floor, in a mock senate hearing kind of thing. It was BEAUTIFUL inside the state senate, and I thought it a real bummer that they didn't allow any cameras or photo-taking inside it, on the senate floor at least. However, I doubt that that is a place I could actually show my best friend. I'm not working for any state legislators, after all, but 10 years ago I was a little entranced by the people who did work in state politics and public policy that way.

What's more, I had a crush on someone who graduated from UC Berkeley and was from Oakland, and worked as a staffer for a female Asian American legislator. I was 17 and he was years older, and there were other girls who also developed crushes on him. One such other girl hugged him pretty tightly while we were saying our goodbyes, and I was going to shake his hand like everybody else, when he pulled me into a hug, and his ears were cold against mine. I think from the impulsive way he did that, and how I was the only one he chose to hug, he also had a crush on me. On the train back to where I was living at the time in Central California, I kept thinking about that hug. Back then I was no good at talking to guys unless spoken to, so I didn't ask for his contact or anything. I also knew by then that I was going to attend MIT, not Berkeley, so the odds were that I would never see him again, which made me sad. I thought, he's just the type of guy who dispelled all the myths my parents told me about Japanese men, and years down the line I'd probably wonder about him and hope that he's happily married. And now, I'm remembering him again. If I could have married him, I'm sure I'd be exceedingly, exceedingly happy right now. He was Japanese American, so I think he wouldn't have been too traditional in his expectations of me. I met him two months after things ended with my first love, which happened partly due to the long distance between us, but not pursuing either my first love or this Japanese guy were both regrets that I still hold.

For my birthday wish this year, I wish that I would meet somebody as wonderful as he was, so I can show him my appreciation and experience love anew.

Speaking of coincidences, today marks the birthday of my first online boyfriend I ever had. I don't do romance online anymore, but seven years ago how could I not be taken with a New Zealander who, apart from the accent, also had one of the most alluring male voices I've ever heard? The one with the #1 sexiest voice, however, still belongs to my first love, who's somewhere in California. I hope that he's well, too. =)

the long entry: the week of 7/10 to 7/17

I've been so absorbed in books and entertainment recently that I haven't been able to meet my quota of 500 words per day. In order to compensate, I'm shooting for a really long entry that hits 3500 or so that so on average my goal isn't completely abandoned or hopessl Actually, I think I might also break up these 3500 words into two entries, because goodness knows I do have the start of a novella to sort out from the manuscript. There's sideways notes, so many words replaced, that it takes a while to figure out what the final version of it should read like. In this blog entry, I'm going to recap my week.

Last Tuesday, July 9, after I received the new hard drive in the mail from HP, I made a trip to the library, deciding to rent out a couple of chick flick movies and some audio books, because I so enjoyed listening to Stephen King’s Joyland recently. Then, over the next three days, I completely indulged. On Wednesday, I replaced my laptop’s hard drive and started reinstalling the system and drivers, which took from morning to afternoon. Then, in the afternoon I started downloading and installing World of Warcraft on it, which did not finish downloading/patching until almost around midnight, although I did get to raid on Whisperwind while it was still doing that.

I finished listening to The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua first. It reminded me of a world from which I was exiled. I was disappointed, however, in that it was a memoir more concentrated on her daughters’ achievements rather than more of an expose on the parenting styles and attitudes Asian mothers have. Still, I was glad her sister was able to beat leukemia and have that bone marrow transplant. It’s also nice to hear that her daughters were free to have fun and make their own choices. She ends up perpetuating certain stereotypes and underscoring the fact that if so many Chinese mothers and didn’t try so hard, their children would be nowhere near as accomplished. I myself think that Asians succeed because they have this culture that pushes them to work hard, but on the outliers and the black sheep like me unwilling to subject myself to such total obedience and selflessness, that pressure can be almost unbearable.

Thursday and Friday I reviewed Spanish, which I am picking up on along with German. Since about a year ago I have suspected that one of my ancestors was China’s first diplomat to Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands as well as Russia. He didn’t speak Russian but was purported to be excellent in German and English. I am working on a cocktail of foreign languages to have something to work on during my long drives between Sacramento and Bakersfield. Since I already have Spanish, I am looking to learn French (to better sing Zaho songs and maybe eventually read Victor Hugo in his native language), German (because I’ve always wanted to read Herman Koch’s Het Dinner without buying the translation; it has such a kick-ass concept as a book), and Italian (hello operas and Dante)! I’ve also really wanted to learn Russian for Pushkin’s poetry, but I would have to learn a new alphabet for that, so I’m putting it off until sometime later.

Also on Thursday and Friday I played World of Warcraft with two friends while listening to Living History read by Hillary Rodham Clinton. I thought she was honest but awfully single-minded about some things. It reminded me of this TED talk on “The danger of the single story” from Chimamanda Adichie. Politicians so often just take one story, one side, form their opinions prematurely without giving themselves time to understand a more complete picture, which is probably what disinclined me towards politics. The only people that I have actively liked that worked in government have been diplomats in spirit, not evangelists for democracy and “freedom”. Otto von Bismarck, Henry Kissinger, both the Roosevelt presidents, and some other consultants and diplomats I have all admired, but not the people who take just one side while entirely discrediting the other side of the story. I believe sometimes, as in the case of Falungong, one side is pure bullshit, and I agree that the Kenneth Starr thing was bullshit, but I disagree with the foreign policy decisions that Hillary Clinton threw herself behind 100%. I may not vote for her the next time she runs for president, if there will be a time like that. It would be amusing, for sure, to see what a First Husband would do in the White House, someday.

I also watched the chick flick movies. To my surprise, I found Letters to Juliet heart wrenchingly moving and beautiful in every which way—plot, characters, cinematography. It’s one of those rare movies I would watch again. And what a delight to Google the actors and find out that the movie plot was pretty close to Vanessa Redgrave’s real life! I found the British actor absolutely adorable and thought that this movie completely blew away Dear John (even though that one had starred Channing Tatum!). Even now I can’t think of a single romantic Hollywood movie I’ve enjoyed more; for me it was on par with Casablanca. The other chick flick was pretty forgettable in comparison. I got some laughs out of it, but it didn’t leave me with a strong impression; I won’t mention the title in case one of my girl/guy friends get offended that I didn’t like the film. I once had a guy friend who joked about a reference to How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, which I completely missed because I can’t remember a thing about that movie either even though I have definitely watched it before, maybe even twice, with different girl friends.

Let me just say again that I LOVED Letters to Juliet. It made me cry: tears of anguish, lament, relief, and joy. Only the best scenes move me in that way, and there were a lot of scenes like that in the movie.

Friday and Saturday I raided Throne of Thunder with my Mannoroth guild, but my priest friend wasn’t around. I started listening to Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and had many moments of hate for the strict adherence of Islam and the outdated Koran, which forever treats women as worth only half a man. I have serious doubts about any holy text, but the way so many branches of Islam expect people to obey without ever questioning assumed beliefs and practices goes against my capacity for reason. I can accept if enlightened, educated Muslims want to follow their cultural traditions, but many people in countries in Islamic nations in Africa and the Middle East are never really given a choice about what they can learn, say, and believe. In Saudi Arabia, I learned through the book, women are stoned and people have their hands and feet cut off in public, which to me is redolent with the same barbaric stink of the Mayans and Aztecs and their human sacrifice rituals that they treated as sport.  I haven’t read the Koran, but tell me, does it explain just how Allah is merciful? Or is it primarily a rulebook about what people must believe, or how people should live their lives without any justification other than that’s what the holy prophet Mohammed said?

Please don’t get me wrong, I understand that there’s a diverse range in the way that Islam is practiced. I don’t want to condemn the religion itself. But when it is pointed out to me that the Koran has passages that indicate it is OK to beat one’s wife and that a wife may not refuse sex to her husband at any time except for religious times, and during her period, I have real issues when those passages are interpreted and practiced in a literal sense. It’s unfair to women that way. It seems to me that Islam is the largest religion that tolerates violence and justifies that violence, such as honor killings when a young woman in the family is unfortunately raped. Really, then, are those women just liabilities that serve no other purpose than to bring shame upon the family the moment that she is violated? Does it automatically restore honor to the family as soon as that woman is killed? These things do not make logical sense to me and the best explanation seems to me to be Hirsi Ali’s, that Islam is used to justify the enslavement of women in nations that are less enlightened and want to hold on to their status quo in rejecting modern ideas and preventing any dissent.

Saturday night I was up until 5AM, by which time I was sleep-deprived and I didn’t think I was even sane anymore. Hearing Hirsi Ali’s story made me think of how I was unpleasantly manipulated in the past by someone I loved, and how we are now forever estranged because I realized he never treated me with sincerity and respect whenever those would inconvenience him. He’s not the type to apologize, either, since he’s so far up his own smug, self-satisfied, amoral, jaded ass to care about the effects of his actions and words. I let slip some imprudent remarks in my bitterness, to an online friend, who might know that same person. However, I felt much better on Sunday when I drove to the Bay Area to meet two friends I had only known online before this. What was to be an afternoon of hiking actually turned out to be a brief tour of downtown Berkeley, hours of playing board games, which I immensely enjoyed, some sightseeing by car, and a nice dinner followed by a visit to Fenton’s for ice cream. (That reminds me, I still want to see the movie Up.) Between a hot dog lunch from Top Dog, dinner, and part of a Black-and-Tan, I definitely surpassed my daily calorie count, I think. The nice lady who made us dinner intimidated me, but the leftovers from the ice cream and from the dinner (soft tacos and burritos with chicken and pico de gallo) took me through breakfast, lunch, and dinner the following day, Monday. I was still in a food coma Monday and my sleep schedule got messed up very badly.

Monday I caught up on a number of shows, both in English and in Japanese. I finished watching Galileo 2 (Fukuyama Masaharu is fantastic) and 35-sai no Koukousei (Yonekura Kyoko is one of my favorite Japanese actresses, especially with her performance in Koori no Hana, which is one of the darker movies in which a pianist gets away with murdering her husband, who murdered her uncle, and also gets away with murdering a lesbian blackmailer friend/lover from her university days).

Monday night I mailed back the defective hard drive to HP from the FedEx office, and got a fresh batch of books, CDs, and DVDs. I listened to Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, which created a dark and somber atmosphere as I gamed. Tuesday I began reading a couple of different books, one of which was Amsterdam by Ian McEwan, which I have yet to finish. I also started to do a little research related to the project I should be working on full-time soon, and dug out some notebooks whereupon I rediscovered my as-yet untitled science fiction novella. I am only going to be at around 2000 words by the end of this post, so I will probably edit or rewrite the beginning of that novella for the remaining 1500 words. What will be coming up this weekend is a visit to my family, some consulting, and a lot of tutoring for my brother.

I also hope to visit the Bay Area again with my best friend next week or perhaps next weekend, and to start and finish the Firefly series I checked out from the library. The Cuckoo's Calling from Audible is my next audiobook...I still think it’s strange to be writing and posting what essentially belongs in a diary online, but it is much easier counting words this way.

Novel #1: Prologue

What is it that arouses someone's suspicion? Is it the absence of the cheating husband, flimsy excuses, changes in behavior that seems like overcompensation for some still-secret wrong? Is it that as soon as you turn your back, the person's demeanor changes immediately, like the guy you see from your rear-view mirror pumping his fist in the air, practically skipping in the direction away from the gas station with the $20 that you just gave him after hearing his sob story about how his credit card was declined and how he needs gas money to get home to the hungry kids? Gas money, indeed. Or could it be that somewhat furtive and unpleasant looking smug smile that you just happen to catch on the face of a greedy salesman right before you sign on the dotted line that causes you to change your mind about making your purchase?

You see, this is something I absolutely have to ask myself because I have a healthy dose of self-doubt. I admit I may just have a suspicious mindset, so before I accuse my boss of shady business dealings, I need to figure out the source of my suspicions from my jumbled thoughts. I mean, something as cliched as a "sixth sense" or "a woman's intuition" simply would not do for a legitimate reason to request for a formal investigation of a person or a business, would it?

I have been at my current job for over a month. I work as a secretary in an office situated in the Prudential Tower in Boston, with quite the nice nighttime scenery. Designer Auto Parts, LLC recruited me off of Craigslist. They hired me based on the fact that I am proficient in Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian and Japanese. They suggested that I will handle ordering parts and drafting up rudimentary business documents for business lawyers to finalize, and offered me $50/hour. Considering the fact that I am a college dropout, this seemed like a pretty good pay rate for me, and I did need the money. Basically, I am handed a list of customers here in the States and what they want to buy, and I contact European offices to order car parts for shipment into various US ports.

My boss, Ed Bunsen, has a no-nonsense air about him, and does not crack jokes. I can't pinpoint anything that suggests he is untrustworthy, but he made it clear to me during the first week of my job that he does not trust me yet, and I am to leave the shipment of the goods from the ports to the warehouse to him. There are only five people at the office full time: the boss, me, an accountant, a marketing and sales manager, and an IT guy. I am told the company also has a warehouse somewhere else. My boss occasionally greets some men in business suits visiting him, and does not let me contact the customers directly, only the suppliers.

I guess it was the numbers on the orders that first struck me as peculiar. In the auto industry, for example, I had expected that the small repair shops across the US that service high-end foreign cars, who comprise our supposed customer base, would order things such as tires or wheel rims in multiples of four. Instead I see the  quantity ordered for those parts in multiples of six, seven, or nine, which I considered pretty odd. However, when I put the list of parts to be ordered to the suppliers and arranged for shipments, the suppliers (supposedly companies like Rolls Royce, Fiat, and Masserati)  never complained.

In one of my idler moments at work, I thought to look up information regarding the supplier companies and once even sent an anonymous email asking why someone might want to order in multiples of three rather than two or four, for which I received no reply. I also noticed that the phone and fax numbers that my boss gave me were different from the numbers listed on the websites.

My hunch tells me that there's something fishy going on. Whether or not the company's dealings actually constitute what the CIA would consider a threat, I don't know. I just felt that the situation needed to be reported and investigated, but on the down low, and without really compromising my job if the business actually does turn out to be legitimate.

Thank you for your time,

Sophie L.

Joyland and misc thoughts

Sorry, I was busy listening to an audiobook of Stephen King's Joyland and didn't get around to editing my writing, which will start to appear with the next post, which I guess is some hours away. After that I was running errands with my head completely free associating. Out of the blue, I got a call from "Unknown". I've been getting these calls that are creepy, the person on the other end doesn't say anything, when I use English or Mandarin. Is it an automated message that doesn't kick in until more than 10 seconds have elapsed (I don't have that kind of patience!)? Or, is it someone from the past who had my number?

About a year ago, I was deliriously and foolishly in love. When you're ready to give someone your heart, only to find out that person never meant to be sincere with you, had always planned to withhold information from you, because that person was selfish and didn't really have your interests at heart, it's a betrayal so deep  and hurtful that it's practically impossible to forget. Had this been a year ago, I would've been sure that the "Unknown" person calling would have been that person calling me from Europe. Now I can't be sure that it was anyone I know.

Joyland was, in its way, a coming of age story about a summer and fall that had redefined the protagonist's life. I found it more engrossing than Full Dark, No Stars that I read in January earlier this year during my stay in Florida. Joyland was about a young man losing his first love, finding meaning in his summer job, and finding it in himself to love both a dying boy in a wheelchair with a dog and a Jesus kite, and his grieving mother. On another level, it was about a dying "old timer" amusement park in its final days before franchises like Disney and Knott's ran it bankrupt, and the murder that had happened in the "fun"/horror house. The narration and portrayal of the characters was superb, making me feel like they were genuine people whom I knew intimately. What's more, the story had hooked me in a way that I was just as much in the dark as to who had committed the crime as the protagonist, not realizing until just before the end, from where it was pure adrenaline and purely fictitious miracles propelling the reading to the ending.

The boy in the wheelchair flying a Jesus kite on the beach, that's the image King said had been with him for twenty years until he wrote this. Where did he get this? Had he actually seen a boy like that somewhere in his memories, or had it appeared to him in a dream? Anyway, you never get a peak of this image until you're past the halfway point of the novel, and then it kind of sticks out here and there, with that same image overpowering the ending of the novel, which I think was quite beautiful. The book is kind of resonating with my life at the moment, with the theme of moving on from my past relationships, realizing that some lovers are meant to stay apart, and that some invaluable lives are robbed from the young every day via horrible chronic diseases.

Seriously, I read the story on NPR highlighting King and this novel, where King talked about choosing to believe in God. Some people in the commentaries were taking his words so literally. Do those people know how to appreciate true fiction? Why should someone have to be "an expert on religion or science" in order to say something like "you're missing the stars in the sky" if you don't believe in God? He doesn't mean that people can't literally see stars or sunrises or sunsets if they're atheists, just that belief can create or attach additional meaning to some everyday stuff. What constitutes expertise in religion on science, anyway? I don't believe you need a degree to be an expert in either, both are such fundamental parts of philosophy. It's not difficult to understand science, as people are teaching it everywhere. Some people, pure rationalists are finding it perfectly acceptable to see the universe in purely materialistic terms, and some are not, and choose to believe in superstition or whatever they personally believe in.

For me personally, even if religion is a human construct, I find the experience deeply humanizing, edifying. Just because fiction isn't real doesn't mean that it has no value whatsoever. It highlights some of the experiences we have as humans, inspires us to think about our lives, and I think religion acts in much the same way, regardless of whether it's "real" or not, and therefore not worthless.

Now, organized religions have done some serious evil in the history of humanity, no doubt about that, but that's probably another story/topic, since you can argue the same for weapons research. I consider myself an intelligent person, but I don't think that on the topic of science vs religion one side necessarily wins. I just wish everyone can just leave those philosophical sorts of beliefs to themselves and not try to argue or forcibly "prove" which is superior to get everyone to agree. The fact is, it's entirely the individual's choice, as long as your beliefs don't harm other people.

RuRu the mild-tempered rabbit

I picked RuRu up out of the fenced part of our backyard so she could chew on some of the weeds. Here she is, doing just that, but then she found taro leaves were more to her taste and I took her back after that.

By the way, I am totally frustrated that the Windows Chinese text input system on my desktop is messed up again. Reinstalling. 

rampant growth of the garden

Beds of on choy with two rows of taro plants popping out obstructing the view of our koi pond in the background, and long beans with some amaranth growing out of the on choy in the foreground.

Cucumber.

Six chili plants, differing varieties. Habanero, jalapeno, California long, seranno, chaotian, and some kind of round pepper that's only just now flowering. Maybe I shouldn't have planted these beneath a tall jujube tree that is blocking their sunlight.

This vegetable bed has two rows of chili plants with a crude irrigation ditch in the center.

Here is another vegetable bed showing the results of haphazardly strewn chili seeds.

Gorgeous Asian eggplants.

Daikon on the left, then a vegetable, then a raspberry plant, with amaranth at edges. It's a little ironic that the raspberry plant is the first thing I planted there and nothing else was intentionally planted, yet now they're all outgrowing the poor raspberry plant.

Quite a different story for the blackberry plants, which are thriving despite the other vegetables that sprouted from nowhere.

Concord grape plant that I hope will bear fruit. I think I planted all of these too late.