|
roujia86
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: roujia
Country: United States
State: California
Birthday: 3/30/1986
Gender: Female
Interests: sewing, knitting, any form of craftage, reading....yup i'm a regular old grandma
Expertise: eating, sleeping....hmm going crazy too
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
10/23/2002
|
|
| hello wordpress!
new blog: http://baragouin.wordpress.com/
because xanga, you have too much junk. | | |
| i have group meeting next friday, a committee report due the tuesday after, and my committee meeting the friday after that. yeah....really don't want to do anything for any of those...but i got a somewhat productive few hours in after lab at the law school, so i'm feeling a little more jazzed about group meeting at least, so this procrastination is my reward :)
i was thinking about berkeley the other day, about this english class i had to take, scandinavian R5b (at berkeley, and i think actually across the UCs, if you pass with a 4 on your english AP test you have to take one second semester of english class, in their attempt to make you well-rounded), which was basically a survey of REALLY WEIRD scandinavian literature (they get really bored up there....), including reading the original version of hans christian anderson's "the little mermaid," which is 1. really sad, and 2. has so much phallic imagery that it makes it hard to enjoy the disney movie any more. anyways, the reason i bring this up is 1. i took it with thuy, one of the few classes i got to take with a good friend, so there were lots of fun memories in that, and 2. there was this guy in the class who was one of those existentialistic philosophical people that probably belong somewhere in paris with a beret and a cigarette, looking down their nose at you as you stumble around being a tourist because you are disturbing their "vibe." whatever that is. anyways, he was fairly interesting as those sorts of guys go, and we talked online often enough for me to get the sense that he was REALLY bitter and unhappy with certain things in his life, but on the whole channeled that into witty and sharply sarcastic remarks that, at times could be appealing enough. anyways, i usually stayed on campus for thanksgivings, and that year while i was taking the class he invited me over to his apartment to have thanksgiving with his brother and him (his brother was a few years younger, and was visiting). surprisingly enough i actually went, and he (the guy) ended up making this ginormous turkey (he was a fan of cooking) and they opened a bottle of wine (apparently their dad was a chef or there was a lot of cooking in their family, so they were food snobs like that. not that having wine means you're a snob, but for my mindset then drinking wine was like WHOA you're classy O_O), and i remember thinking ermm not really into wine but is it rude to not have some oh okay have some ew gross okay let's just sit here and try to think of things to say. because the two of them weren't that conversational, and it was a little strange because i wasn't such good friends with carl (the guy). at the same time though, it was nice of him to ask me to join them.
lol, and the other random memory i had, haha...so i generally wore the same pair of khakis, a t-shirt of some sort, and my tutoring sweatshirt, practically every day. sometimes i'd wear a skirt, but those occasions were kinda rare. sometimes when i felt like looking presentable though, i'd borrow this skirt that thuy had, it's a khaki knee length skirt that is cut so it flares out a bit, i liked it a lot and since we were the same size i could wear it. anyways, i distinctly recall this one day, when i actually looked (in my opinion) good! wore the skirt, a blue collared shirt, and these black (pleather...yeah they were from Ross, i actually got them for interviews and ended up never wearing them in that capacity :)) tall boots that hit just below the knee. and i remember thinking, hooray, i look cute! and i just happen to have r5b today! sweet!
that story is probably not that significantly amusing, now that i look at it, but knowing how i was at the time, it gives me the giggles. for all my talk of wearing comfortable shoes, i hauled my butt all over that hilly, unevenly asphalted campus in poor quality pleather boots, just to look cute for class. just silly. but funny :)
what was my point? oh right. so this guy has a facebook account (of course), and we've been "friends" via that for a while, but he's been kind've MIA for like, the past few years. and since i thought of those memories fairly recently (although- he never knew why i tried to look nice that day), i just figured i'd send him a message, the out of the blue "hey how are you just thinking about old times wanted to know how you're doing, hope things are going okay wherever you are!" message. kinda wonder if he'll reply. if he doesn't, well i hope at least he's happier now. | | |
| but wikipedia didn't. i refer to this episode.
| | |
| i've been told i should be writing more, and blogging more. so here goes.
the past few weeks have been...let's just say very interesting. i don't know really how to start, and i don't really want to go into excruciating detail for it all, so when all else fails...bullet points!
- Mayfair! every now and then harvardsquare.com organizes a fair of some sort in the square, usually just an excuse for a bunch of vendors to come and set up tents and pack all of cambridge into about 3-4 streets' worth of jewelry vendors, shoe sellers, breakdancers trying to raise money for "arts in cambridge," your standard assortment of thai and indian restaurants trying to outmaneuver each other to get you to buy their tikka masala or whatever (all the while having everything cost the same price as the other vendor, so really it's just a matter of whose stall you happen to be closest to when you're hungry). throw in lots of families, some ice cream, and this time, lots of sunshine and that's what the mayfair today was like. usually it's just a reason for me to skive off lab and go drop money that i shouldn't be dropping on silly things like earrings and such, these things are so dangerous because they give the impression that everything is hand made and that you're supporting all these artists in the area (maybe it has something to do with all the big signs that say "HAND MADE" "ONE OF A KIND" "SUPPORT CAMBRIDGE ARTISTS" that are usually draped over these stalls). either way, background description aside, it was lovely to be walking into the square thinking i was going to spend an afternoon reading and be surprised by the spectacle of booths and smells and sounds.
they also do sidewalk chalk art, some of which gets fairly impressive. i liked this one, it was on a square of sidewalk sponsored by MIT:
something about the smiling reaper towing a little toy elephant (which seems to have gotten cut off a bit in this image..) seems to put this lighter spin on darker things...sorta reminds me of the nightmare before christmas.
so that was a nice sunday out. ran into a gamut of people, including brian (postdoc from the lab), teresa (his wife), and fynn (their super adorable baby that just gets cuter every time i see him :)). speaking of babies, shaunna and i did some babysitting last weekend for fynn, to give his parents a night off. what was supposedly going to be easy (phrases like "oh he'll be out like a light" "you guys will be so bored.." "he goes to sleep so early now!" were tossed around as they were leaving, which, if this was a made-for-tv movie, would be accompanied by some deep heavy foreboding music, because...), but then he ended up not going to sleep until 9 because he was miserable and had a cold and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD we couldn't get him to sneeze! we tried my camera, with the flash, with the idea that the bright light would shock him into sneezing (works for me sometimes), but it just ended up bemusing him, and after a few flashes he seemed to like it. everytime the camera got within his range of sight he'd just stare at it fixedly...
pre-crying, when he was all cute and droopy-eyed
example of failed sneezing attempt: it's a bit hard to see, but he's chomping on both his hands.
but in the end it was fun :) i like spending time with babies, they just..i don't know, remind you of when everything was new and fun and all the little things that could be amusing. and in watching them laugh or smile at the most inane things (like for example, shaunna or i making some silly face), it kinda reminds you that sometimes it's more fun to just laugh than think about why is that funny or ugh that's so sad it's funny or oh my that was a bad joke or oh it's so cheesy or whatever. it's just funny! makes you re-enjoy the simpler things in life. like being able to chew.
you know, i used to think i had a lot of willpower. i can almost remember the exact moment when i had this thought, it was sometime (okay, sorta exact) in middle school, or early high school (exact is a state of mind), i remember i had just got home from school, and was trying to scour the house to find something to eat (my dad had this nifty "system" of "organizing" the kitchen that basically meant he knew where normal edibles were, and i knew were "edibles" that wouldn't really qualify as healthy substantial food were, like the little one-use things of cream cheese or the soy sauce packets you nick from the sushi counter at supermarkets, or the jar of peanut butter), and after finding one of these treasure troves of edibles once, after eating...i believe it was 2 of those single serve cream cheese little tub things, i looked at the third one, told myself, "you should stop eating now, and just wait until later, this canNOT be good for you," and i put it away. and i gave myself this little mental pat on the back for being SO good and having SO much willpower to control myself.
then in college somewhere down the line, i got the faintest feeling that maybe i don't really have much willpower at all. specifically while working at the calfund, where one of the program managers managed to get safeway to donate all their leftover pastries to us as a tax-deductible donation (great for them, more sugar to feed crazed callers), and i knew that having a slice of chocolate cake with a breakfast danish wasn't quite a complete meal, that the small dollop of green icing decorating the orange iced carrot on top of carrot cake didn't really qualify as a vegetable, but i ate that stuff for dinner probably at least 3 nights a week, and in the true words of any parental unit saying this will come back to haunt you, i'm still probably trying to right my metabolism now after that really bad nutritional year. but whatever, i digress (notice how everything's been related to food so far? kind of scary. it seems as though i have a one-track mind).
all silly food references to willpower aside, i suppose now is the first time i've really thought about how much willpower do i have, in the context of something non-food related (i know! crazy). it's been a bit of a rough few weeks, interspersed with lots of talking, and thinking, and mostly just trying to hold it all together (i THOUGHT i didn't like crying in front of people (except in movies)...well i suppose i still don't like it, but i'm not very good at preventing it it seems. i'm learning the art of blink-very-fast-think-of-something-boring-like-math though). it's a bit like this really: picture...i don't know. this plateau at the top of a very tall canyon. valley. undersea mountain range. whatever. basically being very high up over something that doesn't really end (personally i'm picturing a nice flat plateau that might overlook something like the grand canyon). now picture a nice little folding chair popping into the scene. place that folding chair about, oh let's say...10 yards from the edge of the plateau. in my head there's an artsy blurred version (or maybe a funny cartoon version...i can't quite decide...no really, in my head there's none of this going on. just some air and maybe some brain tissue) of me just sitting there. and i'm trying to summon the willpower to just get up, and walk away from the edge, or just sit there and stare and this lovely view. maybe set up a little tray table and get some margeritas goin' or something.
in case none of my weird imagery was clear (kind've reminds me of this trippy simpsons episode), i'm basically not sure if i want to stay in grad school. or if this is what i want to do. or if this is what i should be doing. there's the third year slump when you realize all your experiments suck and that you have no data and that you might never get out, and then there's just "realizing" you suck at this and everything you do and feeling like there's nothing really good about you and that you're just a disappointment to everyone.
how did i get from babies to this?! this is why i shouldn't type so much. anyways, that was probably the worst of it. lots of talking, to friends which i have to say, i am infinitely blessed with, has been good. even when i really don't want to talk, it's still good to know that i have such lovely people that not only listen, but prod a bit to make me talk. so now, that folding chair, is about, let's say, 50 yards away. the end goal is to chuck that folding chair over the edge (into a recycling bin waiting for it at the bottom) and for me to just walk away (preferably into a glorious sunset, but i'll take what i can get). there is a goal. and goals are good. just have to get there.
okay, so in order to not end this on a depressing note, let's talk about...SPRING!
cuz it's in the air and it's BEAUTIFUL (but the pollen, curse the pollen, pollen is bad (i'm sorry allergy-sufferers))!
(very cute kitty i saw in a window on my street while i was taking all these flower pictures)
two random things i thought of recently:
- in my future house, i will have a garden of tulips and daffodils.
- i want to see the aurora borealis. | | |
| I HATE PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE.
IF I AM EVER IRRITATINGLY PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE TO YOU, I GIVE YOU FULL PERMISSION TO SLAP ME (although, please do explain why afterwards; otherwise there's no way for me to improve and there'll just be endless slapping...).
ARGH!
mood: currently REALLY ticked off and trying to not yell in the middle of harkness commons. although, there are so many people jabbering away that doubtful anyone will notice. trying to calm down with music. | | |
|
