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.

the long weekend

July 4th, Independence Day, was spent eating, napping, swimming, thinking, and watching fireworks. For some of my relatives, the day was spent checking out the shipment of air guns that arrived the evening before and practicing target shooting. Despite the heat, I stayed cool with the air conditioning indoors, and watched (caught up with) some Asian dramas. I am really generally wary of getting addicted to the longer Korean dramas, but now and then I like to watch the more manageable and contained Japanese dramas, like Galileo 2. Fukuyama Masaharu is like, the dream man who can take on any role with an unexpected coolness and ease. It sure doesn't hurt that I like his voice also. Really, though, I've been able to "crack" the cases of Galileo 2 halfway through the episode or sooner for more than half the episodes, and I have to say, Episode 9 was quite annoying with the egotistic antagonist whose method of murder, I think, really required no crazy equations written in lipstick on a mirror to prove.

Friday I drove around town regarding a summer course for my brother's school credits, and then it was fixing lunch and dinner while working on patent writing. I got done with the first draft around 9pm at night, and then it was time to prepare for the family fishing trip Saturday. I took a shower, started writing some fiction while waiting for my hair to dry, and probably fell asleep by midnight.

...To be woken up at around 3:30am. I was the designated driver, driving alone since no one else can as of yet drive my stick-shift Corolla. We took the 5 to 46 to 101 to 1, and while driving through the twisting and totally unsafe Old Creek Road near Cambria, we saw two unhorned deer cross the road. One of my family (I won't say who) wanted me to run into the does(?), so we would have some roadkill venison, but they were too cute so I didn't listen. Just before 7am we arrived at Virg's Landing where they sold the tickets for the fishing trips.

I couldn't believe it, but I had clearly called a month earlier for a reservation, and that morning they were booked up but lost my reservation. I guess I got quite upset at the idea of driving for so long to the sea only to be told we weren't going to sea. Anyway, Bob the owner of the shop said he'd try to get us on a boat that day. At first they weren't sure if the 8am-2pm trip would be full (some people just fail to turn up sometimes), so they had us wait until 8am before they had the skipper (who was totally hot) take us down to the boat. We were charged for the tickets but the tackle and rod rentals were for free.

None of us anticipated how windy it would be. The waves were pretty high. After an hour, I began to get dizzy, and I finally threw up at the two-and-a-half hour mark, so there went the California rolls that I had for breakfast! I felt better after heaving into the trash can, but before the trip would be done I would be hunched over that trash can two more times.

It was quite fun, being out on the open sea, fishing for some rock cod. I saw no less than three otters, utterly *adorable* creatures, but they were so camera-shy! In the end I gave up taking pictures and gave my phone to my brother. He spent quite a bit of the time with my mom inside the galley, trying to fight the seasickness. We would've had even more fun had it not been for that. In the end, I caught six fish.

Morro Rock, one of my favorite locations to watch a sunset. California sunsets are the best, even if I didn't stay until sunset this time!

Pulling away from shore, my brother said he felt like the protagonist setting out on  "The Hunt for Red October,", haha.

From Morro Bay, the captain took us south, and sometimes the fish were this close to shore.

SIX FISH FROM A SIX CHICK, only if I still were a SIX chick; in total they weighed almost 10 pounds. The red rock cod in the center was my first catch and weighed 4 pounds and cut my hands when I tried to bag it.

In my opinion, it was an untypically bad weather day for the Central coast, which is usually beautiful, with the sun not coming out until 2pm. Later on Saturday I drove my mom to work and drove everybody else home. All right, I have a garden and rabbit post to come, but I may just decide to do that in partial Chinese if I can't find the English names for the plants. Then I'll get to post fiction!

a visit to my best friend

On Tuesday July 2, I drove to the Bay Area to visit my best friend, whom I hadn't seen in a few months. During the past few months, I've had internal and work-related struggles of my own, and so hadn't really checked in with her. I arrived at her apartment complex expecting a lighthearted afternoon/evening of shopping and dinner, and we certainly did do that, but she also had for me a real life story that was so heart-wrenching it moved me to tears. While we were driving, shopping, eating, and watching a film at her apartment afterwards, we also reflected on life and love, and the ephemeral beauty of having someone wonderful come into your life only to be snatched away by cruel twists of fate. The world is how it is, and we as humans are powerless to avert devastating events and unfortunate circumstances. The only control we have over our lives, at times, are our attitudes and how we face the circumstances that we are placed in. To grieve and despair and question the purpose of life, or to savor and celebrate what we cherish, or to draw inspiration to change our own lives based on what has happened; often times these are the only choices that are left to us, in this incredibly cruel and beautiful world.

It makes me recall a Japanese song, the ending theme of the anime "Shingeki no Kyojin"/"Attack on Titan", which is titled "Utsukushiki Zankoku na Sekai", which can be translated to "Beautiful, Cruel World". Here is a portion of the lyrics to the song, with my translations.

Sono yume wa kokoro no ibasho
That dream is where my heart belongs
Inochi yori koware yasuki mono
A thing more fragile than life
Nando demo sutete wa mitsuke
More than once I have left it and rediscovered it
Yasuraka ni saa nemure
(Now) it sleeps peacefully
Myakuutsu shoudou ni negai wa okasare
(With) my wish invaded by the pounding of my heart
Wasurete shimau hodo mata omoidasu yo
I almost forget it, then remember it

Kono utsukushiki zankoku na sekai de wa
In this beautiful, cruel world
Mada ikiteiru koto "Naze" to tou bakari de
Still we keep on asking "Why" we are alive
Aa bokutachi wa kono tsuyosa yowasa de
Ah, we have this strength, and this weakness
Nani wo mamoru no darou mou risei nado
What will we choose to protect? When reason
Nai naraba
Is no longer there?

Kono utsukushiki zankoku na sekai de wa 
In this beautiful, cruel world
Tada shinde yuku koto "Mate" to kou bakari de... 
We (can) only beg of death: "Wait" a little longer...
Aa bokutachi wa kazamidori  tobesu ni 
Ah, we are like the weathercock that cannot fly
Shinjitsu wa uso yori  kirei ka douka 
(And) whether the truth is prettier than lies,
Wakaranai
We just don't know.
So what was the story, you ask? It's not my story to tell, or elaborate on the details, but I guess I can paraphrase it a little. The life of a wonderful 28-year-old man was recently claimed by cystic fibrosis. He had obtained a master's in philosophy to think deeply about life and death, and he had reached out to touch the lives of hundreds of people. Handsome, intelligent, kind, and caring, he was at that age when everything in the world should have been within his reach to achieve--if only he was not afflicted with the chronic disease called cystic fibrosis. By all accounts he lived his life to the fullest every day, so Inshallah, may he "finally breathe free", in the words of his fellow cystic fibrosis patients, and may his family find peace and cherish the miracle of his life and what he made of it.

Cystic fibrosis is an autosomal recessive genetic disorder, caused by an individual inheriting two copies of mutations in the CFTR gene, which leads to ill-formed CFTR proteins that malfunction and cause the slew of observed symptoms. The disease is the most common of the rare genetic disorders. 1 in 25 Caucasian Europeans, 1 in 30 Caucasian Americans, 1 in 46 Hispanics, 1 in 65 Africans and 1 in 90 Asians carry at least one (recessive) mutation. This is truly a disease that supersedes  race and gender. There is a list of people that are dead or dying from the disease on Wikipedia at this address, and I was surprised that my favorite piano music composer Chopin is on this list. 65_Redroses also appears to be a touching story that made its way into a documentary and onto CNN when the girl died, and I will probably check out that blog sometime in my life even if I'm too wrapped up in my own life to do so now. If I ever strike it rich someday, I think I would dedicate some donations to gene therapy research for cystic fibrosis.

brainstorming and completing fanfics

I will probably be busy on holiday with my family this coming weekend, so I'll be rushing ahead in case I'm too busy polishing up a patent or cooking or fishing on the open ocean or collecting seashells or wandering the rocks of the beach around Morro Bay to write or post.

I do want to work on my fantasy novel and science fiction novella (too hard to keep it to a short story), but then I also worry about people seeing it before I can publish them in a final, complete form. Therefore I think I will be posting some snapshots from my life, and working on brainstorming ideas or completing my ideas for fanfiction in the near future.

For example, I've wanted to write an account of the First Age of Tolkien's Silmarillion since about 10 years ago, but found the task and characters too daunting.

Also, I was thinking about chapter titles for one of my fantasy novels, and found so many words starting with P suitable for titles. Such as:

Premonition
Peril Personified
Pretext for Pretense
Pride and Propriety
Proper Use of a Knife
Preternatural Ability
Philosopher
Piety and Prophesy
Perfidy
Prayer
Planning
Preparations
Punishment
Postprandial Poetry-making
Painstaking Undertaking
Perilous Negotiations
Propensity or Predilection?
Political Prodigy
Peace and Prosperity

etc. and etc., like some mental exercise.

After a while, though, I suppose these big words get kind of awkward. You know how some novels use some sort of quotation from another work at the beginning of every chapter? Yeah, I find those a bit...

Pretentious? Annoying? Awkward?

I think I'm good at coming up with names, but ask me to title something and unless it's totally straightforward and gives away the plot in some way, I'm at a loss as to which title to pick. It'll probably be better for me to number my chapters instead of title them. After all, I still haven't thought of a title for the as-yet unfinished science fiction short-story-turned-into-a-novella I started writing 3 years ago. For that one I kind of want to pick some biblical reference to underscore the irony, and I kind of just want to leave it at "Awakening". Guess I'll figure everything out once I finish it and show people.

From more than 10 years ago, I still have the beginnings of a Fushigi Yuugi fanfic that I think I'm going to ditch, and the same with Tekken. It would be kind of fun, though, to dig out and continue my World of Warcraft character background story I started five years ago. Come to think of it, though, I'm pretty sure I left that journal in Massachusetts when I left in 2008.

Maybe I'll just ask some friends for ideas on what to write about...nothing too controversial, probably. Wouldn't want blurbs turning into rants.

So, until I get more ideas, I guess I'll be starting off exercising my imagination with a Silmarillion fanfic series. I have already decided upon the character; what remains is to figure out the time at the start of the story and how to use the flashbacks.

the story of little RuRu

Towards the end of April, our first mother rabbit (whom we call MuTu or Guaiguai) had her second litter of bunnies this year. Of her first litter of 8, born in mid-January, only 3 (HeiBiZhi, DaNan, and PersianKitty) had survived to adulthood. 10 bunnies were born in this litter. The weather was warmer, and so we expected a higher percentage to survive. We especially prepared a very nice "maternity care center" for her, constructed out of wood and square grid wires. This time, she did not carry dead babies out by her teeth to the outside of the rabbit hutch, so we assumed all was well.

About a week after the births, I was feeding MuTu and noticed this one little scrawny rabbit that hadn't yet grown fur rolling out of the hutch and then clawing its way about blindly and pathetically, eyes closed. Normally baby rabbits will stay inside the warren or hutch for the first two weeks, subsisting only on their mother's milk. This one appeared to be hungry, but MuTu didn't seem interested in feeding it. I opened the top of the rabbit hutch and looked at the other little rabbits. Some of them were moving around inside, and had grown fur. There was one limp little body in the corner, probably pushed or rolled there, with ants beginning to crawl over it; sadly, even though I took it out immediately, I could tell it had stopped breathing. I buried the dead baby, and there were 9 remaining alive, including the scrawny malnourished bunny that had rolled out of the hutch.

We didn't want the scrawny one to die, so we fed it soymilk with a syringe. It resisted at first, and then it finally became tired and let the soymilk slide down its throat. We returned it back to the hutch with the other eight, hoping that we gave it a fighting chance at life.

A week after that, we had MuTu and her bunnies relocated to a cage that we moved from time to time on the grass so the babies would have fresh grass besides their mother's milk. The littlest rabbit was slower than the others and couldn't get milk. Its eyes were closed from infections, and the other bunnies pushed it around in their struggle to be fed. One of the other eight bunnies also couldn't get at the mother's milk, because it had its leg injured somehow and was limping around. My parents temporarily nicknamed them GuaiTui ("cripple") and XiaYanJing ("blind"), and took them in a newspaper lined box inside our house. The two of them were too weak to nibble on carrots or cookies without taking long breaks and rests (yes, rabbits will eat crackers and fortune cookies). We chopped broccoli crowns for them, and made carrot shavings with the vegetable peeler, so they wouldn't have to expend much energy getting the food down. For a few days afterwards we would feed them soymilk with a syringe until they didn't want it anymore, and we treated the blind rabbit's eyes with our own medical supplies, antibiotic creams and eye drops. Then we returned them to the cage on the grass lawn while their brothers and sisters frolicked and played freely in our backyard. Those two had become the smallest in size, the runts, and while we let the healthier and more energetic bunny siblings roam freely on the lawn, we were afraid that the foxes that roam around the golf course would catch and eat them. (We had previously seen and shot two opossums and a fox in our very own backyard, and had seen another fox viciously pawing around, too.)

Anyway, in May the crippled rabbit recovered and its leg healed so well the only way to distinguish it from the others was that it was a little smaller in size. It also got along fabulously well with the little blind rabbit, who remained very thin. The smallest rabbit opened its eyes, and after we washed away the infection it appeared that its right eye was clouded over and it had trouble with closing its left eyelid, so its left eye had another bout of infections that oozed pus. I named it RuRu then, because it was so pathetically weak that it would be a runt among runts. At a month old, RuRu was so small any of us could hold it in one hand.

RuRu required the most care of all the rabbits. We were concerned about its nutrition and how its immune system was doing, often feeding it by hand rather than just leave the food outside (other rabbits would get to it before little Ruru could). RuRu was very docile, and I recall one lazy spring afternoon when, tired from the exertion from eating the carrot I was feeding it, RuRu slept in my lap, and I took a nap along with RuRu in a reclining chair. RuRu was the only rabbit who would stay in my lap if I left it there, without jerking and turning around, contemplating escape. I think it's because RuRu took comfort in our presence and care.

Anyway, for the whole of June I was away and figured that RuRu would probably have forgotten me by the time that I came back. I couldn't even recognize RuRu at first, because RuRu's eyes had healed. Since May there's been three more new litters of bunnies. I only guessed that RuRu is RuRu because I found a rabbit standing on its hind legs trying to crawl up into my lap, and well, because of the terrible heat outside I took RuRu indoors to get a better look at her. Yes, I think that she is female because she's finally becoming rounder and flatter in the rump, while males maintain narrow and straight hips.

Now the telltale sign that it's RuRu is her left ear, which flops down probably due to malnourishment and poor development of the muscle(s). She likes to romp around, so she sometimes still has little pieces of dirt in her fur. Nowadays she no longer fits in the palm of one hand, and it takes two hands to carry her around safely, though of course she's still small for rabbits of 2+ months.

the start of something new

For some time now, I've wanted to write fiction, and I've got the beginning of three or four stories and/or novels in notebooks. I made up names, I made up characters, and plot twists aplenty; I could not make, however, the consistent effort of writing a little bit every day. As many people have told me, I should develop the habit of writing a little each day, even if it's all crap, even if it's not particularly a part of my fictive works in progress.

For some time now, I've been keeping a diary, but the word's pretty misleading, as I do not write in it every day. It's silly to hand write and then to count the words one by one, so if I'm to get a sense of how much I've written over a month or a year, it's much more practical to write electronically and over a blog. I've recently had a Trojan-related hard drive problem with my laptop, so I figure that recording words somewhere it'll be backed up would be preferable to the risk of perhaps losing it on a hard drive someday.

Another motivation is that I've gotten advice telling me to be more open, less secretive, etc., to get over my social anxiety. It's not as comical or severe as Lucy from the last season of the Big Bang Theory, but I think I have a problem. It's easy for me to go out with a specific objective or agenda, to meet with people regarding specific business, with a facade up that leaves everybody none the wiser as to who I actually am. In reality there are enough things that I hate about myself that I feel as though I should hide from others, so even while meeting some of my friends I'm not able to feel and act the same way as while I am alone. So, perhaps this is not exactly social anxiety, but it's a problem to not be able to act naturally around people until I know them well. So sometimes I come off as difficult, distracted, or defensive, without any real reason for acting so.

I am who I am, and I'm never going to get approval from everyone. For my self-approval and well-being, I'd like to develop some healthier habits, such as writing about things that I love (cooking, reading books, rabbits, music!) instead of being the computer/couch potato all the time. Over the past seven years, for example, I've played too much World of Warcraft, to the detriment of other pursuits that might have kept me more physically fit. Instead of just sitting back consuming and being inactive, I want to make or "produce" things for a change, or learn new things.

I visited my family this past weekend and shot actual firearms at a 100 yard shooting range for the first time on Saturday. I guess I'm not a bad shot, but I'd definitely have to practice to keep competitive or hit the bull's eye. My best shot was a 9, that landed really close to a 10 at the 25 yard range; at 100 yards, I was off by a few inches but which near-sighted beginner like me could really see that far with the iron sight? My biggest thing to work on would be to steady my hands while breathing and aiming quickly. Who knows, I may even go big game hunting one day!

I cooked throughout the weekend, and the results looked/smelled so good that I took pictures. I'd be at a loss to point anyone to a recipe, though, since I mostly cook by intuition, taking what ingredients (meat, vegetables, and spices) are available and mixing them together in amounts and proportions I estimate. In fact, most Chinese home cooks cook this way, perhaps checking for taste just before transferring the food from the wok to a bowl or a plate.

Here were the yummies on Saturday after getting home from the range:

I guess I'll name this Spring-Time Squash, but it's really simple: add a bit of chicken buillion after stir-frying cut squash and chili in hot cooking oil, then simmer the squash (without adding water; there's enough liquid that emerges from the cooking squash) and add in some starch and scallions just before turning off the flame.

Ma-La Krab and Mixed Veggies: a rather quick-and-dirty 3-minute "dish" for my brother who is picky about eating unprocessed vegetables.
Exactly as suggested by the title: tongue-numbing dried-chili-flakes-and-peppercorn oil (no actual peppercorns) add flavor to 16 oz of frozen mixed vegetables and 4 oz coarsely chopped imitation crab meat. 

Also, the "Main Event": Xiaocaoyan: Stir-fried Lamb. First time making it(!!)
Sun-dried chilies and serrano chili combined with onion, ginger, and garlic to bring out the fragrance of the lamb. 

Then, Sunday:

Clockwise from top left: edamame boiled with Chinese spices; beef cooked with pepper, onion, a tad of ginger and soy sauce; my specialty long bean stir-fry that is both crisp and tender, flavored by chili and soy sauce.

There have been three litters of bunnies that have hopped their way out of the warren(s) in our backyard. The heat was abominable so even though I took considerable pleasure in feeding them, I did not take my phone out to take any pictures of them. However, on Sunday I was surprised by a smallish rabbit when I was feeding Mu-Tu/Guaiguai some squash peel shavings. This smallish rabbit was leaning and crawling into my outdated denim long skirt that I wore to protect myself from the hot weather (109 F)! This rabbit also let me take him/her into my arms and into the house without a fuss. (Since we let them run around freely in the enclosed part of our backyard, most rabbits will run or move away disinterestedly after a petting, so this is pretty rare behavior.)

Upon entering the house I was informed that I had finally discovered the blind rabbit who isn't blind anymore, whom I privately named RuRu a few months ago.

Since I'm sure I've satisfied my word count for the day, I'll save the story (thus far) of RuRu for next time. I'll post her pictures then, too.