Hairy issues on my mind

I dreamt last night that I flew into a teenage-rebellious rage and took scissors to my hair. Except I couldn't find a pair sharp enough to cut through my thick hair, and I opened drawer after drawer, testing out each pair I found and getting more incensed as each proved as effective as trying to gnaw my hair short. Finally, I find scissors that snip through hair cleanly and begin cutting away, handful by handful.

As I am losing all of that pesky hair, it begins to dawn on me what I'm doing, and I suddenly panic at my impulsive decision. I think I might've started crying, or screaming, or something, at that point. But I'm pretty sure I continued snipping away. After all, now that I'd started, I couldn't very well stop.

And after that the scene slipped away into some other, more forgettable dreamscape, and I'm surprised I even remember that particular segment. I guess I have had haircuts on my mind a lot recently. To trim, to cut, or to shave? Decisions, decisions, decisions. A part of me wants to hack off all my hair, which currently reaches the small of my back. I could then donate it to Locks of Love, for instance.

And a part of me has gotten too attached to the river of hair to consider more than a neat trim to get rid of split ends.

I don't know, though...a change could do me good. And I've wanted to shave my head for awhile. I wonder what I would look like with a buzzcut? Or maybe I could go for a pixie look...

hi, bye

A very belated, non-blog-related update seems to be in order. I know it feels like I've abandoned ship here, but here's a last try at reviving it (besides the hours I spent prettifying it).

So here's a peek at the room:


Classy, I know. I love having a hardwood floor though. Makes sweeping up all the hair I shed from brushing that much easier.

And here's the cutest resident of our apartment, Charlie:


Who at the time of the picture could fit on my flip flop. She's outgrown it now and is getting a bit of a potbelly. But still completely adorable, and she definitely livens the place up with her antics.

So...not much else to say. I work, I play, I hang out with a certain guy a little more frequently than with my housemates. It's an exciting time, and I'm coming to really love this little "right-outside-Boston" city with its smorgasbord of ethnic treats. Not a 5 minutes' walk out of my apartment and there are Ethiopian, Malaysian, Taiwanese, Korean, Mexican, and Italian eateries to be found, among the more familiar fast food joints and classic American restaurants. And it's all so cheap! I'm really going to miss those $4 burritos when I go back to campus...

fo' sho'

The weekend, par excellence

Dear Diary,

It's been a busy busy week here, culminating in a wonderful packed weekend of events. I shall review each day and write of their merits, starting with Friday. Thus we begin.

.friday

I slept pretty late, till 11am, due having watched Daily Show clips till around 3 in the morning the night before, after chatting with Dawn and cartoonist Paul Hornschemeier (whose name I just copy/pasted directly because I was not about to attempt spelling his last name) till about 1am. But I am slipping into Thursday's events, so let me get back on track. Friday I worked a little bit more on animations for Lorie Loeb in their sweet new lab room with the dual screen mac station, which I must take some pictures of because it is so sweet. Then I went grocery shopping with my boss and another UGA for various events.

The best part of the day, though, started at 7pm after I took the minivan I reserved from the college's parking/car rental office, as I was chauffeuring people to a fraternity's formal that night. I basically circled between two dorm clusters for 2 hours looking for dressed up people to take to the formal at the DOC House. Then I picked up a friend and we spent my hour and a half off from driving at the formal, eating delicious appetizers and dancing. It was a really nice formal, and they even had a 200 pound ice sculpture of the head of the Sphinx.

Then I had to get back behind the wheel and drive people back to their respective dorms, but it was a pleasant experience because it was a dry formal and I did not have to deal with drunk students. Excellent!

.saturday

Phew. Saturday started at 9:30 with our first dorm breakfast, which is an event the UGAs do as a service to the residents, cooking breakfast for a couple hours, all-you-can-eat for $1. Quite fun, as I enjoy cooking. Afterwards we sat around in the lounge reminiscing on favorite book series, movies, and TV shows, and the others decided it would be necessary to watch Pleasantville very soon. But they agreed to wait for me, as I was heading out to a wood turner a friend had pointed out to me who lived a town over, to see what secrets of the woodworker he could impart to me.

THAT was awesome, hands down. With two friends in tow, we drove to his house/woodshop/gallery, took in the rustic scene, and were blown away by his woodworking masterpieces. Like the geodes and gems he used as metaphors to explain to us the beauty of wood burls, his place was a geode, with a roughly hewn exterior and a spectacular, beautiful interior. The guy's name is Dusty Coates, and here is a small sampling of just a tiny part of his work. Anyway, we were all extremely inspired to work in wood after hearing him talk, and he gave us some scrap pieces of wood to play with. I will definitely be revisiting this guy He's promised to show me his workshop and his lathe!

So, after we finished visiting with him, I dropped my friends back off on campus and went back to the lounge to watch Pleasantville. A great movie with great social commentary, in a hilarious way. And before we knew it, it was 5, and at 5:30 all the UGAs gathered in our boss's apartment for a quick dinner before we were off on our retreat! We had planned this two weeks ago, and it was finally happening! Our head honcho had rented a cabin up near the Dartmouth Skiway for us to stay a night and basically bond as a cluster team. So we all packed into three cars and headed north!

I have to say, the roads north of campus are the most awful roads I have ever had to drive on. It was not good for my car, unfortunately, and we think I might have done something to the muffler, as the car now has a constant loud "purr." We'll see when I take it to a mechanic tomorrow. Anyway, it was otherwise an okay drive, and we parked by the skiway, then walked a little bit back along the road to the trailhead. There was still a good 8-10 inches of snow since we were pretty far north, and the trail was packed down and slick from previous hikers. We went slowly up, skirting the really icy patches and not very successfully crossing streams without getting our feet wet. Thank god for wool socks!

Sunset through birch trees as we finally neared the cabin

In all, it took us roughly 30 minutes to get up the 0.7 miles of trail to the cabin. It was a gorgeous cabin, though, with a woodstove, mattresses in the attic, and lots of supplies and wood.



We were so eager to get a fire going in the awesome woodstove that we neglected some basic rules, like turning on the flue. Thus the fanning and open doors and window to get the smoke out. But after awhile the smoke dissipated and the fire settled down to a nice clean glow. Mmmm, I love making fires! We also lit and hung lanterns and had candles on the table.

Mittened feet on one UGA while her socks dried by the woodstove

After a night spent eating our many snacks and playing Catchphrase and Apples to Apples, and discussions of axe murderers and the ax downstairs being all too convenient, we finally crashed around midnight.

Well, I need to start getting some work done, so I will wrap up our adventure in the mountains, which ended in us slipping and sliding our way back down to the road, another time.

Sinfest

Newest addition to my "Sugar High" list: Sinfest. It is highly vulgar, slapstick, and sometimes crass. And it throws together God, the devil, Buddha, Jesus, and the Oriental Dragon alongside its human characters. Quite an interesting comic. The cartoonist, Tatsuya Ishida, used to be a comic book penciller.

lolzers?

I've long been steadfastly against the use of any internetspeak in my online correspondences. I may have dropped an "lol" once or twice when I first started using instant messengers, but that has all fazed out. I think it's a travesty that so many people use internetspeak, and especially younger generations that are growing up on mySpace and AIM. I've already made it clear to my younger brother that he needs to write his words out completely if he's going to be e-mailing and IMing me.

"Inside jokes" of the internet are interesting, though. The LOLcats phenomenon was something I hadn't even really encountered until recently, but a friend of mine just sent me a link to a new one: LOLscience.

I have to admit, they are pretty amusing, if only at first. The extreme mutation of words and grammar gets a little tiring after awhile, though. And so far, I haven't actually laughed out loud from any of them.

But the top 100 4chan pictures? Yeah, I lol'ed on a lot of those. Or more like sol'ed...snorted out loud.

With that, here is physics cat:

Ghost Month and followup

Yesterday my Chinese teacher notified us that it was the first day of "Ghost Month": the 7th month of the lunar calendar, when all the ghosts are released into the world for the entire month. It's the time of year when locals warn against going near water (ghosts might drag you in), changing housing (your new house might be inhabited by ghosts), and going on trips (er...they might follow you?).

There's consequently been even more burning of ghost money and incense on the sidewalk. Great for my lungs, I'm sure.

I've been surprisingly busy since last post, though little of it is because of class. Ah, the blessings of photographic memory on Chinese vocabulary. I have to wonder, though, what will happen if or when we have an end-of-term cumulative exam. Teacher has not made clear whether or not we will have one. The suspense!

I finally went to LUXY on their Wednesday's ladies night, along with every other ABC in Taipei, and some other ShiDa students. It was fun for what it was, and the bartender's fire show was definitely the highlight of the night.

Friday I had dinner with some cousins, then did the nightmarket thing with them, before we all returned to one of my aunts' houses for a late night game of mah-jong. Then we crashed there. My mom flew up the next morning at 6am, but I didn't see her at all that day. I left my aunt's house, went home, and changed for the Sunday Breeze's Saturday pool party. Although I was apprehensive about it, due to the fact that I was going alone and the weather was less than stellar, it turned out to be pretty fun. Went to Forumosa's monthly Happy Hour, this time at the Taiwan Beer Garden, afterwards, which was also a lot of fun.

Sunday was the requisite family gathering to celebrate the arrival of another family member-my mom-to Taipei. The whole lot of us (15) slept overnight at a hot springs hotel in Beitou (北投), though there were more than 20 of us eating together that night. Most of the uncles returned home due to work the next morning. What a strange phenomenon, that most of my aunts do not work, whereas my mother does.

And, finally, I have been to two expos in the past two weeks, the first last Monday to a Computer Expo at Taipei's World Trade Center, and one this Monday to a Comic Expo.

花蓮

Spent the weekend on the lovely eastern coast of Taiwan, namely, Hualien City. My cousin set it all up, and there were 10 of us altogether. For most of Saturday, though, I wasn't with them as I was the only one who wanted to tour Taroko Gorge. The others went white-water rafting. So I ended up taking this tour with a bunch of other students from 台大, also doing the MTC program there, as well as some Singaporeans and Malaysians. Ended up having a great time. Taroko is very beautiful, and I wished we could have explored some of the less "touristy" trails.

Anyway, also walked a bit around the streets of Hualien later that night, and early the next morning as well, where I found some graffiti (yay!). Sunday was spent packing, and then dolphin watching (which they advertised as whale watching, which while technically correct is still a misnomer, dammit).

Stinky tofu, and no I didn't try it

Fun with sparklers and my camera's ISO speed

Taroko Gorge tour:

Graffiti along one 自由街, 花蓮
Lunch

Fun with sparklers, part two

Thai-scapade

So, it's the eve before I go off on another trip, and I'm finally organizing this Thailand post. It's been at least two weeks, but better late than never, I suppose. But rather than try to recall everything that happened each day, I've organized pictures into general categories, for hopefully a more cohesive look at what was albeit a brief and narrow glimpse into Thailand and its culture.

::Warning: photo-intensive.

People

Simon's Cabaret:

Places

Wildlife

Food