I’m moving!

Here.

“thank god for tenure!”

As we get closer to the end of the first week of February, talk of spring break plans has been cropping up everywhere. Unfortunately, these conversations aren’t very interesting with most of my friends. I get two answers: “going home” or “studying for the MCAT.” (Yes, most of these people are Asian). It just makes me so sad. Life as a premed must be so boring. Hours and hours of lectures about cells and vectors and subjects beyond my comprehension. As an English and Educational Studies double major, I get hours and hours of:

“What does it mean that Helen sleeps with Leonard?”
Student volunteers, blahblahblah.
“Are you saying it was a mercy fuck?”

“All I need in life is the Holy Trinity. Good women, good food, and good liquor.”

“So what keeps her from doing the nasty is…?”

“Women troubles. The one I want to call doesn’t call, but the one I don’t want keeps knocking.”

I’ll keep updating this with my favorite and most outrageous quotes of the semester as we keep going. All of you in 300-person classes, be jealous!

[02.09.09]

“It’s a free country. You can do whatever the hell you want. You can play your stereo as loudly as you want way late in the night…dumbass hillbilles…”

Cracked computer lid

It might soon be time for another Ode.

:’(

A momentous time in history

Joe said last night, “I’ve decided that I owe it to my parents, and to you, to play less games and spend more time doing work and sleeping.”

Music swelled and glittering confetti showered down upon our shoulders.

Only time will tell how much men mean their words…he wouldn’t repeat them when I asked, tape recorder in hand.

The Christmas St. Louis never had

Monday night, I came out of Philosophy of Education to find the quad powdered lightly with snow here and there. Haha, I said to myself, knowing what everyone knew. In the morning, all that would remain would be the slightly warmer apres-neige weather.

Wrong. St. Louis woke up to a world of white — and I’m trying very hard not to sound like a cheesy holiday children’s book here. What we were even less prepared for was the stuff that kept fluttering down from the sky. Then started pouring. And pouring. By the end of the day, there was probably about 5-7 inches of snow smothering all visible outdoor surfaces. Facebook statuses from all over campus welcomed the weather. People ran out for snow fights. But truth be told, I thought it was hell. Apparently, shovelling snow from the major walkways first means that the smaller walkways get shovelled not second, but never. Slip, slop, splat — right on the face. Almost, anyway, on more occasions than one. It was cold. It was wet. So I felt miserable.

To make things worse, I had to go on campus the next day for a meeting. I was not looking forward to another slippery, flippery wet trek on a day I did not have class. And like usual, I woke up late and rushed out the door. I power-walked as fast as my short little legs could carry me.

The faculties of the human brain will never cease to amaze me. Because as I was concentrating on minimizing the distance between my feet and the ground as much as possible, squinty-eyed and jiggly-cheeked Hiro style, I saw something else. The campus was all aglitter. The snow, in fact, looked pretty. It wasn’t grey (yet) or gloomy or somber. It made everything shimmer in the early afternoon sun. And all of the sudden, it felt like the Christmas season we didn’t have time to enjoy between a late Thanksgiving and winter break.

Then I felt very disappointed in myself. The angle of the sun threw formidable shadows behind scraggly trees. The wind had blown some snow into precarious waves that somehow haven’t collapsed. The dome-shaped caps on the little benches, the grassy ledges, and even the trash can lids were adorable. So many sights to see and so many frames to shoot — and, of course, I had left my all-new, 14.7 megapixel love of a camera at home. After the batteries died within a whole sixty seconds of making its debut at a dinner over the weekend.

But despite it all, I wasn’t whining. I wasn’t lamenting angrily about the cold in my head. I wasn’t wishing for spring to come with all my might (with more squinting eyes and jiggly cheeks). That in itself was quite the miracle, and rather shocking upon realization. And as always, I at least had my camera phone. Whew.

So even though we’re in the middle of getting through the worst of it — dirty slush, wet streets, dripping buildings — I’m surprisingly content. I secretly feel a little festive. That might sound latecoming and trivial, but with a semester of 10am-6:30pm days I’m taking nothing for granted. It finally feels like Christmas and smells like Sweet Violet. (Yankee Candle sale from Bed Bath & Beyond clearance. More details on the new candle obsession to come.)

Decisions decisions

At the Taoyuan International Airport, I was contemplating helping myself to a mudslide and blogging. Now, I am happy to report that I’m doing both

For some reason, leaving Taiwan this time feels a lot like attending the class of 2005’s graduation four years ago — part sad, part somber, part sappy. Maybe it has to do with the fact that, once again, I find so many friends and myself at the brink of inevitable and drastic change. Four years ago, we were saying goodbye to high school seniors going off to college, both excited and apprehensive about our own turns to leave. Now, we will soon be saying goodbye to the same seniors again — except some of us will even be joining their ranks. We’re running out of time. We can’t put off really, truly growing up much longer. Yes, most of us still have three semesters left. But then again, it seems like we had just graduated and gone off on our exotic senior trips.

Naturally, the same ambivalence is there, but this time around it’s also kind of different. The Real World seems much more real, because we are getting closer to actually being in it. For me, this means deciding between starving as a journalist and starving as a teacher — or, eventually, both. But in the Real World, everyone will also be scattered in the four corners of earth. It’s only (or already?) the winter of junior year, and yet half my Taipei loves weren’t even close to Asia. How do we deal when our support systems just spread too far apart? What happens when goodbyes turn into byes for good? We still have time, but it seems like it’ll get pretty hard pretty quickly. I can’t wrap my head around it yet. I’m not sure I really want to.

But to end on a slightly less depressing note, aspects of Taiwan I  have come to love on this trip and will miss dearly:

1. The food. Need I say more?
2. The very public dog owners who have begun popping up everywhere in very public places carrying their little dogs in their arms. Or in strollers. In Stitch sweaters. Complete with a hat with Stitch ears. It’s absolutely ridiculous, but also absolutely amusing. It’s free entertainment on the streets, at the nightmarket, in high-end department stores, and anywhere the people roam.
3. The panda politics. Because you feel better knowing you are so much above forbidding your family from visiting the new, supercute furballs in the zoo, seeing them as Green or Blue when they’re clearing black and white. Well…maybe I won’t miss this so much after all.
4. The growing numbers of the metrosexual/androgynous. Guessing whether its a man or a woman who sports the spiky haircut that’s now oh so popular over there is a great wait to pass time while waiting for the MRT. And once on a train, chic cowboy boots, dangling phone charms, sparkling rings, pretty long nails, and blinding bling make a good story when they belong to a man sitting next to you.

I just needed to express…

…the irony of writing “Self De-stressing Remedies” for the winter issue of Mochi. Really, as someone who is “taking a step back” in her relationship (in a good way), has been having trouble falling asleep within two hours of lying in bed, and has six books to read before crafting one out of three papers due next week, I somehow don’t think I’m in the position to tell others how to de-stress.

Mm mm good

There’s nothing like hot cocoa on a blustery day. Or, if that blustery day is today when you have cramps and a sore throat, honey and chamomile tea. But for such a nose-nipping and symtpom-ridden afternoon, I’m feeling surprisingly content. Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that my meeting was cancelled and I now have time for a much coveted nap, or that my suitemate has smothered the common room with a tree and other festive decor. But as I think about life and people and wax nostalgia on the way home, I find myself thinking about the holiday season.

This might be a little latecoming (surprise, surprise), but for the first time since I started college, I didn’t fly to the Big Apple for Thanksgiving. The situation was particularly upsetting when I discovered I won’t be seeing one of my high school friends over winter break, but I got over myself when he told me why: two days before Christmas, he’ll be donating bone marrow to save a little child’s life. I always knew he was something else, but I just wanted to share with everyone how amazing and generous he is. And I also can’t help but be extremely nervous and scared for him — he will be undergoing a major surgery, after all, and one which is supposed to be considerably painful — but I won’t tell him that because he’s still “really calm and rational” and I don’t want to trigger the first freak out sesh. In any case, if you’re interested in following the story, he’s decided to record every related episode on his blog.

As for missing out on the secret Thanksgiving dinner menu my friend planned in New York City, Joe and I planned a menu and whipped up a decent meal of our own. And by “planned a menu” I meant I searched for all our recipes on epicurious.com all alone, and by “whipped up a decent meal” I meant Joe set off the fire alarm.

Twice.

The first time, he sloshed turkey juice on the electric stove. Out of ignorance — “I thought it was water so there would only be steam!” — and probably out of laziness too, he let the mess smoke until loud sirens and flashing lights went off. The second time, the spilled turkey juice in the oven began to smoke when I preheated the oven for my apple pie. I turned on the fan and opened the windows, closely escaping another evacuation. Until the genius opened the oven again in wanting to investigate and let out more smoke.

I’ve never been more embarrassed. As we slunk out into the open cold, after hiding in the next building for a good five mintues, we saw the maintenance guy sitting on the windowsill, awaiting our return. As was my RA. We loitered on the stairs for as long as we could, then unlocked the door to face the threats: “I called the cops off this time, but if the alarm goes off one more time tonight, the fire department is coming down and we’ll have to pay a fee — DON’T do it again.”

But dinner, when we finally got around to it, was actually quite good. Roasted garlic and chive mashed potatoes, sauteed green beans with onions and bacon, honey-glazed sweet potatoes, cranberry and pomegranate sauce, and orange and strawberry sangria — mm mm good.

For the first time ever, I also had a bonding moment with my sister over Thanksgiving break. I got a very personal glimpse into her life when I was going over her college application essays (yeah, remember those?). In one of the essays she shared a series of events that she’s been dealing with for the past two years, the effects of which I’d notice but hadn’t guessed the reasons for. A series of events that quite frankly remind me of the few skeletons in my closet, which I plan to share with her when I go home this winter. In the past years, we’ve stereotypically turned to our friends at school as teenagers do, but now that we’re both a bit older, I’m hoping we can really start to count the other as one of these friends.

Now, Thanksgiving is all over, and along with that holiday the random 15C nice days of winter. But this also means it’s time for Christmas lights and all that cheer. For some unexplanable reason, streets of light-decorated, life-size gingerbread houses and rows of glowing trees make me incredibly happy. They’re simply unbelievably warm and fuzzy. They evoke images of steaming mugs of hot chocolate in front of chestnuts roasting on an open fire, without fail. They’re the only thing that makes the unbearable cold and fake snow outside okay.

And as the semester comes to a close and friends begin to graduate, I find more justification for the sentimentality to carry forth. I begin to think about those I’ll miss, those I’ll always have a soft spot for, those I can’t live without. A lot of these are my friends from high school. There’s just no replacing the people you grew up with. I remember freshman year in college, when I tried so hard to make friends like everyone else was doing. Many nights, we stayed up exchanging life stories and fusing bonds. But then there are those with whom you have nothing to share — because they were already there. Like I said, irreplaceable.

It’s now time for my nap. But if this not-so-small dose of sappiness still isn’t enough for you, I suggest checking the “100 Little Things That Renew Your Faith in Love” in the December issue of Glamour — it embarassingly melted my heart and partly inspired some of this post.

Another bad day

Because what else would push me to finally post again after many complaints and accusations of blogging failure? Not a same old same old ordinary day for sure.

It’s one of those blustery fall days in St. Louis, the place that’s colder than New York City for a good portion of the year — a fact that in my almost two and a half years here that I haven’t started feeling a bit less bitter about. All I can say is: thank god for the crunchy leaves. When it doesn’t sporadically begin to pour, of course.

After a very fitful and restless night of sleep, with the sudden but long-coming revelation that those college twin XL beds simply aren’t big enough for two, I managed to get myself out of bed for a meeting at 11:00 am. For those who know me, this is a great accomplishment. That all my courses start at 1:00pm this semester says it all. In any case, it was cold, cold, cold. Luckily, there is one beacon of hope on main campus, known as the Happiness Machine. In other words, heaven in the form of a Nescafe dispenser of delectable hot cocoa and hazelnut mocha coffee for a budget-friendly 75 cents. As I walked into the library, however, I spotted an ominous white piece of letter-sized paper taped onto the Happiness Machine: “Out of Order.” To make things worse, they apologised for the inconvenience. I might as well just head right home and sleep through the next three months.

But since I’m running out of time before next class, I’m going to doing something rare and plug the whining right there. Because I have an exciting new plan for xtinew.wordpress.com! Now that I no longer have three hundred page books to read a week for History of Education, and layout craziness will soon be over, I have decided to do my best in committing myself to save Tuesday or Wednesday nights for blogging. Never mind that resolutions are made to be broken. Expect me soon!

Humdeedum

I have lost the will to speed read “We Mean to Be Counted” by some historian or other so that I can pull answers out of my ass in two hours. Especially after I’ve been sitting in the library for three hours trying to get my hands on a volume of primary documents on reserve. Honestly — why don’t we have more copies? The school spends a bajillion dollars on installing brass water fountains in a new building. Like Madonna (education professor) said, I’d rather have air conditioning.

Mary’s right though. It’s time for a new post, and this one can hardly count as one. I really have been meaning to write something, but I haven’t had the time to truly hash out my thoughts. In the past two weeks or so, I’ve encountered some pretty inspiring men and women through my Rediscovering the Child class, where we spend half the semester developing a 7-week curriculum for kids at Adams Elementary and the other half actually teaching it.

To provide some entertainment, I’m going to publicly embarrass myself by announcing that I set off the fire alarm in my dorm a couple of weeks ago.  Yes, I’ve become one of those. It’s tragic. But at least it wasn’t from popping popcorn in the microwave. I was actually heating some yummy wontons on the stove for Joe, but forgot about it when I somehow — mysteriously and rather suprisingly — found myself very engrossed in “Ulysses.” Of course, the pot boiled over. It wasn’t till I heard the sizzling sound of burning soup that I ran out of my room — to see smoke wafting everywhere in my common room. The fire alarm better not go off!! Was the first thought that popped into my mind after a string of expletives. I turned on the fan in the kitchen and the bathroom, and propped open the hall and bathroom doors in hopes that the smoke would disperse. A few seconds later, steady beeps exploded in my ears and all Millbrook 3 residents ran out the building. Oops.