tiny strings of blood are slip out of my mouth when i spit. it is definitely appetizing.
for like.
maybe
a vampire.
"I still can't face jello. To me, jello is the food of illness, dental work and death."
- Random Wisdom Tooth Extraction Forum Person aka BeaN
On the other hand, rice porridge is a happy food of breakfast and delicious.
And when you invite it to your mouth it brings its savory fried pastries friends.
20 June 2009
18 June 2009
rabbit update 4
It is the last straw. vegetables are ok, but eating flowers?
We have fenced off our garden with a white fence to protect our greens. The petals of all the small soft flowers are mostly nibbled off.
no more rabbits. now it is ant season.
Though smaller, ants are definitely less cute.
We have fenced off our garden with a white fence to protect our greens. The petals of all the small soft flowers are mostly nibbled off.
no more rabbits. now it is ant season.
Though smaller, ants are definitely less cute.
I gave my cousin some chocolate.
My mother is against unhealthy foods, so fried things and sweets are banned from my cousin's diet as long as he lives in the US.
Although, a couple of days ago I was abetting his sweets addiction. But I did get the bag of candy for free. I mean, who else is going to eat it, right? No one under the age of 10 at this point is within reach, and why waste a perfectly good bag of candy.
In broken English, he acts out the situation in which I am the dealer and he is the addict, my mother being the police interrogator.
"Ey, do you have the?"
"Oh yeh yeh, I have" (opens imaginary jacket)
(gunpoint) "STOP! FREEZE. WHAT IS THAT"
"OH nonono , nothing!"
"GIVE ME IT!"
I gave him the Funsize Mr Goodbars, Crunch and Hersheys and I took out the dark chocolates. They sit on my desk next to my computer. I started out with 5 and I have only eaten 1. There are only two left.
Mysterious disappearance of Dark number 2:
"咦， 孟凡、我这么只有剩3个糖？” (Hey Meng Fan. How come I only have 3 left?)
“哦～我吃掉了一颗” (Oh...cause I ate one.)
"I knew it."
Mysterious disappearance of Dark number 3:
Later, I am online buying books for him I eye him pop another one of my darks in his mouth.
"Hey! I thought you didnt like dark chocolate!"
"(mouth full) Oh... Sorry I didn't realize. I just saw candy so I ate it."
"What! So you stuff it in without even thinking!?"
"Heh heh..."
Never again! No chocolate for you.
"Lailai, can we go get fried chicken?"
"Oh. Okay."
Although, a couple of days ago I was abetting his sweets addiction. But I did get the bag of candy for free. I mean, who else is going to eat it, right? No one under the age of 10 at this point is within reach, and why waste a perfectly good bag of candy.
In broken English, he acts out the situation in which I am the dealer and he is the addict, my mother being the police interrogator.
"Ey, do you have the?"
"Oh yeh yeh, I have" (opens imaginary jacket)
(gunpoint) "STOP! FREEZE. WHAT IS THAT"
"OH nonono , nothing!"
"GIVE ME IT!"
I gave him the Funsize Mr Goodbars, Crunch and Hersheys and I took out the dark chocolates. They sit on my desk next to my computer. I started out with 5 and I have only eaten 1. There are only two left.
Mysterious disappearance of Dark number 2:
"咦， 孟凡、我这么只有剩3个糖？” (Hey Meng Fan. How come I only have 3 left?)
“哦～我吃掉了一颗” (Oh...cause I ate one.)
"I knew it."
Mysterious disappearance of Dark number 3:
Later, I am online buying books for him I eye him pop another one of my darks in his mouth.
"Hey! I thought you didnt like dark chocolate!"
"(mouth full) Oh... Sorry I didn't realize. I just saw candy so I ate it."
"What! So you stuff it in without even thinking!?"
"Heh heh..."
Never again! No chocolate for you.
"Lailai, can we go get fried chicken?"
"Oh. Okay."
17 June 2009
learning chinese
from the zero-start, first grade level is pretty sore-thumbs and brain-freeze, also bringing to the surface again in a sort of stirring-up-the-starch-in-the-miso-soup kind of way, and suddenly the tofu-cubed memories of a horrid chinese school experience are in motion.
(In this metaphor, the slimy seaweed pieces are the curly-permed-almost-pubic-like hairs atop the chinese teachers' heads, the gritty taste in my mouth similar to the one i would feel in my stomach when they read things in an exaggerated tone, as if we were babies.)
on the one hand I really wish I had continued to learn chinese, but on the other hand, going through such a vulnerable stage as puberty with added psychological trauma was something I am glad I cut out of my life early. I don't think I would have been strong enough to overcome the situation with the right attitude either. Continue this Saturday-School terror and I would grow resentful of these gracious volunteer A-yi's and Shu-shu's and my fellow students instead of now looking back on them with a sort of forgiveness and understanding.
My least favorite memory of Chinese school:
For most of my Chinese school years I had one close friend. Kun abused me much to her amusement, but I knew she was probably angry or bitter at things that had nothing to do with me. She was funny and we shared the common and perplexing suffering of being in the same class as 2nd and 3rd graders while we were already in middle school. We laughed together at our silly and hopeless situations.
People also confused us both in Church on Sunday for being the same person, probably because we both were social outcasts, had large foreheads, wore thin and round gold-rimmed classes, and parted our hair in the center. But we shared the loneliness and thank God. I didn't mind, not even when she kicked in the back of my knees to make me trip. I didn't mind because I didn't trip and it was kind of a funny feeling, your body propelling forward without you knowing, and then at the last minute, pulling yourself back as if you were a spring bouncing up.
Her father taught Go as one of the after-Chinese school extra-curricular culture class. Go is the game with black and white pieces and the object of the game to win as much territory and kill as many of your opponent's pieces as possible. It was a war game and Kun was aggressive. She'd be my partner because we were friends and that's how you did it in middle school; you cling as hard as you possibly can to social safety, lest you be swallowed by the waves of-- uh
whatever it is we were so afraid of.
In Go, when the opponent's pieces surround you from four sides, your piece gets removed, like in chess. But even when the opponents pieces may not surround a cluster completely, you could be stuck anyway. If you try to escape, you end up killing even more. The opponent doesn't need to remove them, and you can't touch them. The pieces are left sitting there, stuck in this limbo, liminal space, in a double-bind, a catch-22.
One time, Kun was winning all the games. Well, actually, she always wins, but this time I wanted so desperately to win one. For some reason, perhaps out of deep resentment, I felt an evil hateful feeling each time I saw her pluck my little black pieces out. When I saw that I was losing, I felt as if I wanted to cry. But I didn't cry because I kept the tears and convulsions deep in my stomach so no one could see it. I almost-cried because I thought I was a failure. At Chinese, at math, at Go, and at making friends, at just keeping my cool. I almost-cried because I thought I was so stupid to cry about a game. But as much evil-hate as I had for Kun building up at this point, I almost-cried most of all because even if I won, the thing I wanted most desperately and stupidly, I thought maybe Kun would be mad and she wouldn't be my friend anymore. I sucked it all up and had it storm up in the nerves of my brain. I stormed, thinking I couldn't win at all.
My favorite memory of Chinese school:
I am in my Junior year of high school, 16, my self-esteem perhaps above-average for most girls my age. I haven't been in Chinese school in a couple of years. The principal asks my mother if I'm available to teach an after-Chinese school culture class. It's a 1st to 2nd grade drawing class, and all I have to do is do a step-by-step drawing on the board in front of the class and have them copy it. It's rough at first, handling 20 kids. At first they are reluctant. I know how it's like. More school after Chinese school? Come on. I want to go home.
But I am determined to make this class cool. To make this my anti-experience of Chinese school.
They warm up to it. They like that I am young and understand English. They also like my choice of stickers for rewards. My stickers are awesome and are not lame like other A-Yi's, and I let them choose. I do not punish them for telling me that I do things wrong. I say sorry when I make a mistake.
I ask the kids what they want to learn how to draw next. I offer them the options for a vote.
"So, next time, do you want to draw DINOSAURS?"
"ooh! ooh!"
"let me finish...or Pokemon?"
"OOOHHH! POKEMON!"
"POKEMON!"
"YEAH!"
There is no vote. Next class is Pikachu.
The youngest kid in my class is in kindergarten and his mother must sit in class with him. He calls me Miss Lai Miss Lai and his mother says he talks about the class at home and wonders when the next drawing class is, is it tomorrow? No Joshua, it's next Saturday. How many days is that?
The class is such a silly class. I teach no long-lasting skills whatsoever to children who will forget how to draw sharks and animals the next day. But I am filled with pride. His mother calls me over and tells me that Joshua has something to show me.
He flips to a drawing of a tree with a million apples, on the tree, off the tree, filling the page up to the sky. The next page is the page he wants to show me: A million colored Pikachu's filling the page from the left to the right.
"WOW," I say. "That's good! Very good. He's talented. And ... 真的很努力， 哦." (very hardworking)
His mother smiles a tired smile. I will think later maybe Joshua had a learning disability. Just being 5 years old doesn't mean your mother must sit in class with you.
One time he asks me how to draw a cockroach. I draw it on the side and he copies it dutifully, down to the lines in the wings.
It is the best damn cockroach ever drawn by a 5-year-old.
It is the cockroach to dominate all the bad things that have ever happened to me ever.
In my psyche, Joshua's cockroach leads an army of Pikachu's across a huge Go board, destroying the rigidity of black and white, replacing each piece with a small and crayon-red apple.
(In this metaphor, the slimy seaweed pieces are the curly-permed-almost-pubic-like hairs atop the chinese teachers' heads, the gritty taste in my mouth similar to the one i would feel in my stomach when they read things in an exaggerated tone, as if we were babies.)
on the one hand I really wish I had continued to learn chinese, but on the other hand, going through such a vulnerable stage as puberty with added psychological trauma was something I am glad I cut out of my life early. I don't think I would have been strong enough to overcome the situation with the right attitude either. Continue this Saturday-School terror and I would grow resentful of these gracious volunteer A-yi's and Shu-shu's and my fellow students instead of now looking back on them with a sort of forgiveness and understanding.
My least favorite memory of Chinese school:
For most of my Chinese school years I had one close friend. Kun abused me much to her amusement, but I knew she was probably angry or bitter at things that had nothing to do with me. She was funny and we shared the common and perplexing suffering of being in the same class as 2nd and 3rd graders while we were already in middle school. We laughed together at our silly and hopeless situations.
People also confused us both in Church on Sunday for being the same person, probably because we both were social outcasts, had large foreheads, wore thin and round gold-rimmed classes, and parted our hair in the center. But we shared the loneliness and thank God. I didn't mind, not even when she kicked in the back of my knees to make me trip. I didn't mind because I didn't trip and it was kind of a funny feeling, your body propelling forward without you knowing, and then at the last minute, pulling yourself back as if you were a spring bouncing up.
Her father taught Go as one of the after-Chinese school extra-curricular culture class. Go is the game with black and white pieces and the object of the game to win as much territory and kill as many of your opponent's pieces as possible. It was a war game and Kun was aggressive. She'd be my partner because we were friends and that's how you did it in middle school; you cling as hard as you possibly can to social safety, lest you be swallowed by the waves of-- uh
whatever it is we were so afraid of.
In Go, when the opponent's pieces surround you from four sides, your piece gets removed, like in chess. But even when the opponents pieces may not surround a cluster completely, you could be stuck anyway. If you try to escape, you end up killing even more. The opponent doesn't need to remove them, and you can't touch them. The pieces are left sitting there, stuck in this limbo, liminal space, in a double-bind, a catch-22.
One time, Kun was winning all the games. Well, actually, she always wins, but this time I wanted so desperately to win one. For some reason, perhaps out of deep resentment, I felt an evil hateful feeling each time I saw her pluck my little black pieces out. When I saw that I was losing, I felt as if I wanted to cry. But I didn't cry because I kept the tears and convulsions deep in my stomach so no one could see it. I almost-cried because I thought I was a failure. At Chinese, at math, at Go, and at making friends, at just keeping my cool. I almost-cried because I thought I was so stupid to cry about a game. But as much evil-hate as I had for Kun building up at this point, I almost-cried most of all because even if I won, the thing I wanted most desperately and stupidly, I thought maybe Kun would be mad and she wouldn't be my friend anymore. I sucked it all up and had it storm up in the nerves of my brain. I stormed, thinking I couldn't win at all.
My favorite memory of Chinese school:
I am in my Junior year of high school, 16, my self-esteem perhaps above-average for most girls my age. I haven't been in Chinese school in a couple of years. The principal asks my mother if I'm available to teach an after-Chinese school culture class. It's a 1st to 2nd grade drawing class, and all I have to do is do a step-by-step drawing on the board in front of the class and have them copy it. It's rough at first, handling 20 kids. At first they are reluctant. I know how it's like. More school after Chinese school? Come on. I want to go home.
But I am determined to make this class cool. To make this my anti-experience of Chinese school.
They warm up to it. They like that I am young and understand English. They also like my choice of stickers for rewards. My stickers are awesome and are not lame like other A-Yi's, and I let them choose. I do not punish them for telling me that I do things wrong. I say sorry when I make a mistake.
I ask the kids what they want to learn how to draw next. I offer them the options for a vote.
"So, next time, do you want to draw DINOSAURS?"
"ooh! ooh!"
"let me finish...or Pokemon?"
"OOOHHH! POKEMON!"
"POKEMON!"
"YEAH!"
There is no vote. Next class is Pikachu.
The youngest kid in my class is in kindergarten and his mother must sit in class with him. He calls me Miss Lai Miss Lai and his mother says he talks about the class at home and wonders when the next drawing class is, is it tomorrow? No Joshua, it's next Saturday. How many days is that?
The class is such a silly class. I teach no long-lasting skills whatsoever to children who will forget how to draw sharks and animals the next day. But I am filled with pride. His mother calls me over and tells me that Joshua has something to show me.
He flips to a drawing of a tree with a million apples, on the tree, off the tree, filling the page up to the sky. The next page is the page he wants to show me: A million colored Pikachu's filling the page from the left to the right.
"WOW," I say. "That's good! Very good. He's talented. And ... 真的很努力， 哦." (very hardworking)
His mother smiles a tired smile. I will think later maybe Joshua had a learning disability. Just being 5 years old doesn't mean your mother must sit in class with you.
One time he asks me how to draw a cockroach. I draw it on the side and he copies it dutifully, down to the lines in the wings.
It is the best damn cockroach ever drawn by a 5-year-old.
It is the cockroach to dominate all the bad things that have ever happened to me ever.
In my psyche, Joshua's cockroach leads an army of Pikachu's across a huge Go board, destroying the rigidity of black and white, replacing each piece with a small and crayon-red apple.
12 June 2009
09 June 2009
03 June 2009
it is a small and fragile i who speaks a string of pearls from a mouth shaped like an o,
one by one
maybe prayers or half-thoughts blown out like soap bubbles from the spaces in my spiderweb nervous system into opalescent candies with
shells of nothing and break like small eggs.
the dust becomes and falls together, lines up like a cocaine intake, it dreams being blown off by the wind, sucked up dreadfully into the mind of God, becoming something maybe something like the chilling consciousness of a clear blue morning, if that's what exploding in His nervous system is like.
but i mean, who am i kidding? there is hardly any breathing when i open my mouth to speak.
it is the small and fragile i who talks about you and we and the next couple of days,
one by one
time leaves as if the ocean on the orange horizon is really licking up the sun into lines until the sky swallows the ocean in a large black mouth. no one wanted this, really,
being up all night wondering about an answer, waiting to come out the other end of the universe into light again, waiting for the damn the baggage to slump out of the black hole and around the metal carousel number 8, imagining that it would instead be all of the questions of the world solved and packaged, coming through to us
one by one
maybe prayers or half-thoughts blown out like soap bubbles from the spaces in my spiderweb nervous system into opalescent candies with
shells of nothing and break like small eggs.
the dust becomes and falls together, lines up like a cocaine intake, it dreams being blown off by the wind, sucked up dreadfully into the mind of God, becoming something maybe something like the chilling consciousness of a clear blue morning, if that's what exploding in His nervous system is like.
but i mean, who am i kidding? there is hardly any breathing when i open my mouth to speak.
it is the small and fragile i who talks about you and we and the next couple of days,
one by one
time leaves as if the ocean on the orange horizon is really licking up the sun into lines until the sky swallows the ocean in a large black mouth. no one wanted this, really,
being up all night wondering about an answer, waiting to come out the other end of the universe into light again, waiting for the damn the baggage to slump out of the black hole and around the metal carousel number 8, imagining that it would instead be all of the questions of the world solved and packaged, coming through to us
30 May 2009
my dreams before I forget them
I am in North Korea. They are holding a celebration of some kind for their beloved leader, and to commemorate their nuclear weapons testing. The festival is huge and glamorous and they have exotic fruits like mangos and strawberries that I wonder about. How did they get there? The street vendor has an icy smile.
Somehow the colors are vibrant, like a Chinese New Year. People dress up in costume. Am I insane? I guess I've never been here before and I walk around writing things down in my mind while over the loudspeaker spoke Korean and an English Translation by Michel Norris talk about the history of this wonderful nation.
I see my aunt and uncle and grandmother. I run to them surprised but when I opened my mouth no Chinese came out. They barely recognize me. My cousin is there too. He starts a chant
"Kim Jong Il!" And everyone would reply:
"Kim Jong Il!"
"Kim Jong Il!"
"Kim Jong Il!"
And screaming and shouting and clapping and everywhere there is noise as thick as the hot summer air. How did I get there? I am about to tell my family I somehow got a free weekend pass when a tall, lanky Korean man comes to face my cousin. The man has long hair. His beige button-up doesn't look very proletariat, I think. Glasses and leather shoes, he could snap in half if he leans down any lower, staring at my cousin, nose to nose. My cousin's mischievous smile responds look for look. When the tall man turns to look at me, I am ashamed and I look at my feet. He laughs, walking away.
"Dont pretend, we know", he says.
I walk along a hallway with my cousin I hadn't seen for a year. I want to tell him everything, but on the loudspeaker, Michel Norris started to talk about recipes and food.
"So, tell me about this dish, what's in it?"
I look at my cousin, I try to ask,
"Are you understanding this?"
I wake up to the radio. It is about a lentils recipe, under $5, the interviewer was Michel Norris. Bryce was listening to npr while I was asleep.
"Did they talk about North Korea?"
"Yeah, but that was about three minutes ago."
Somehow the colors are vibrant, like a Chinese New Year. People dress up in costume. Am I insane? I guess I've never been here before and I walk around writing things down in my mind while over the loudspeaker spoke Korean and an English Translation by Michel Norris talk about the history of this wonderful nation.
I see my aunt and uncle and grandmother. I run to them surprised but when I opened my mouth no Chinese came out. They barely recognize me. My cousin is there too. He starts a chant
"Kim Jong Il!" And everyone would reply:
"Kim Jong Il!"
"Kim Jong Il!"
"Kim Jong Il!"
And screaming and shouting and clapping and everywhere there is noise as thick as the hot summer air. How did I get there? I am about to tell my family I somehow got a free weekend pass when a tall, lanky Korean man comes to face my cousin. The man has long hair. His beige button-up doesn't look very proletariat, I think. Glasses and leather shoes, he could snap in half if he leans down any lower, staring at my cousin, nose to nose. My cousin's mischievous smile responds look for look. When the tall man turns to look at me, I am ashamed and I look at my feet. He laughs, walking away.
"Dont pretend, we know", he says.
I walk along a hallway with my cousin I hadn't seen for a year. I want to tell him everything, but on the loudspeaker, Michel Norris started to talk about recipes and food.
"So, tell me about this dish, what's in it?"
I look at my cousin, I try to ask,
"Are you understanding this?"
I wake up to the radio. It is about a lentils recipe, under $5, the interviewer was Michel Norris. Bryce was listening to npr while I was asleep.
"Did they talk about North Korea?"
"Yeah, but that was about three minutes ago."
26 May 2009
Congratulations! lai is boring
Karen: I need sleeping pills
Lai: you need a boring movie
Karen: nn.
Lai: you sound like you're almost there, though.
Karen: I'm faking it. Oh I know. you should read me GRE words.
Lai: haha. Ok. How about denigrate?
Karen: What?
Lai: Denigrate? probably has to do with lowering the status of a person. Or something. Like that other word relegate.
Tina: Oh.
Lai: Hm. How about hegemony? Maybe that'll be on the GRE.
(20, 30 seconds later)
...and that would be an example of hegemony, or a hegemonic system.
Lai: Karen?
Karen: nn.
Tina: That did it.
Lai: you need a boring movie
Karen: nn.
Lai: you sound like you're almost there, though.
Karen: I'm faking it. Oh I know. you should read me GRE words.
Lai: haha. Ok. How about denigrate?
Karen: What?
Lai: Denigrate? probably has to do with lowering the status of a person. Or something. Like that other word relegate.
Tina: Oh.
Lai: Hm. How about hegemony? Maybe that'll be on the GRE.
(20, 30 seconds later)
...and that would be an example of hegemony, or a hegemonic system.
Lai: Karen?
Karen: nn.
Tina: That did it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
