Sunday, November 8, 2009

Sundays

The problem with Sundays is that they're right after Saturdays but right before Mondays. There's no transition time between Saturday and Monday. All of a sudden, time goes from relaxing/partying time to homework time.

If you stay up late Saturday night, it's easy to sleep half of Sunday away. That'd be fine, Sunday seems like a lazy, lounging day, except not when you have midterms and whatnot.

I wonder if I'd work well on a four-day week. I guess it depends on how busy and stressful those classes would be. Maybe I should try.

Today, next Sunday, and Saturday the 21st are going to be spent at Tzu Chi Chicago headquarters. I love Tzu Chi, so I want to do it, but it takes up so much time. Time spent at Tzu Chi is time well spent, but I'm torn by the fact that I also have so much else to do.

Sometimes, I wish it were possible to sleep an hour a day for weeks on end without suffering. I could get so much more done!

If only I were superhuman.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Fall (The Season Not the Verb)

I know I posted a photo or two last year of fall, but I just wanted to share this.

I have better photos, taken on an actual camera, that I'll try to put up later today when I get home. Fall! Leaves are changing colors, and falling, and everything's beautifully changing.

I love being here for seasons.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

New Phone!

After a lot of problems with my last phone, I finally got a new one.  It's a Samsung Intensity - keyboard for texting, but no touchscreen.  

The most exciting part is that it's finally here after a whole bunch of shipping drama.





But it's here now, and working!  A working phone that lets me call, text, everything.  Finally. I'm glad to put that nightmare phone behind me.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

I Went To The Library!

Me: "I went to the library today! After lunch I went to the Reg and was there until I went back to Pierce for dinner, aren't you impressed?!"
Hurricane: "Not really.."
Me: "What? But it sounds so studious!"
Hurricane: "Yeah, if anyone else had said it.  You probably didn't even go to study."

He was right, if it makes a difference.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Fortune Cookie: Learning


Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Housenet

Apparently, UChicago has a (new?) website called housenet.  Housenet.uchicago.edu.  It is scary!

I got an e-mail saying that I had a package from Amazon at the Broadview front desk.  Confused, I clicked "more details"... and found out who sent the package, when it arrived, where it is now, and which person checked it in!

And then I looked around some more.

There's a person-finder.  The directory on crack.  It doesn't just tell you what someone's e-mail is, it lets you know what dorm they're in, what house, what room number, and what their dorm phone number is.  Crazy.  Edit: And it lets us see what people's student ID numbers are(?!)

It lets you place a work order.  Online.  And then keep track of it there.

I'm kind of excited.  This seems baller like all get-out. But also kind of creepy.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Obama's "Jackass" comment

Obama called Kanye West a "Jackass." I think this comment might just accomplish everything he wanted: reach out to people of all political views, reach out to the middle class, create unity.  Nice.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Kanye at the VMA's (Just Keep Reading..)

If you weren't watching the VMAs on MTV yesterday night, I'm sure by now you've heard about Kanye coming on-stage to take the mic from Taylor Swift and tell the booing crowd that Beyoncé had one of the best music videos of all time.  This post isn't really about that, because I don't think I need to waste any more time giving publicity to the whole thing.  For what it's worth, I think the whole episode just gives more publicity to MTV, the VMAs, KanYe, Taylor Swift, and Beyoncé.


Not sure how much harm it did to KanYe, though I think it's funny that Power 96 is having some sort of Kanye boycott where they edit him out of any songs he's featured on.  The artist label also quite conspiciously cuts him out; I just listened to "Run This Town - Jay-Z/Rihanna/NOKANYE".  Way overboard.  But that's not my point.


No, what I'd rather point out is Kanye West's hair:




Oh, great.  Now, people will think I'm trying to bite his style.  When I left Chicago, my hair was like this:




This is terrible.  I don't know if I can cut my hair like this anymore!  If people are going to be comparing me to KanYe, or thinking I'm copying him, it'll be incredibly annoying.


Wooonderful.


(Fine, I spent more time talking about the incident than about the hair, but my main point is the hair.)

Thursday, August 27, 2009

To Remember

Today, August 27th, 2009, is a day (for me) to remember.  An explanation to come.

(Okay, so it's August 26th in the States, but 27th for me when everything happened.  And the necessary explanation is long and complicated.  No time now.)

Also, heading back to Florida tonight!  23:10 flight from TPE to SFO, then to FLL via ATL.

I'm so ecstatic right now I'm literally shaking.  AHH!

Saturday, July 25, 2009

“Duck! The Policeman’s Turning Around!”

It was 1:00 in the afternoon when Winnie, one of the people at the Jing Si Café, first warned me about what was to happen that afternoon. “At 1:30, there’s going to be an air raid drill.” Not certain I’d heard correctly – after all, it’s not like we practice hiding from invasion very often in Boca Raton, Florida – I asked her to repeat herself.

“An air raid drill. They’ll turn on the siren and then we have to turn off the lights and not move. You can’t go outside and you have to hide inside.”

An air raid drill! A real air raid drill! I hadn’t known that Taiwan practiced them, but it made sense when I thought about it; after all, a country constantly threatened by war to the point of having forced conscription probably should have air raid drills. I asked a few more questions, and learned that we’d be having the “easy” drill today. There are two drills a year, one easy and one hard.

At 1:30 the siren began to sound, and sure enough, a policeman came to stand outside our door and we were told to turn off our lights and sit in the back room. We had customers, but they (clearly) knew what was going on and had to just sit at their tables and not move. Half an hour of sitting in the dark would have been torture, if it hadn’t been for the novelty of the whole affair. I was incredibly excited, especially when two Americans walked into our café from the inside door (the café is part of a larger building, so they came in without ever having walked outside.) They were confused at the lack of staff and stillness of all our patrons. One of our staff ran, ducking his head, to pull them to a table and sit down, but they couldn’t speak Chinese. That’s when they called me, and I had to hide from the policeman as I ran to the table and explained the whole thing to them.

“Duck! The Policeman’s Turning Around!” I immediately ducked my head, and watched the policeman take a quick scan of our café. I guess I was in time, since he turned back around. Back in the safety of the back room, I asked what happens if someone’s caught moving around. A fine, I was told, with increasing amounts for repeated violations.

This was the easy drill? I wondered what the hard one’s like! That one, they told me, was an hour long, and wasn’t just about turning off the lights and not moving around – the people in cars who were told to just pull over this time would have to park and hide inside during the “hard” drill; doors are locked; the MRT (subway) stops running; electricity is cut; everyone must hide out of sight from outdoors.

Can you imagine having air raid drills like that, even if only once a year? It must be difficult to force yourself to be quiet and still in a small back room for so long. Don’t you “Anne Frank” me, it’s not the same.

Air raid drills and forced conscription? I think I’ll stick to the US. The mandatory military service was the reason we chose not to apply for Dual Citizenship, I don’t want to have to serve in the military for a year (it was a two-year term up until last year) - especially when I don’t even live in the country. Steve can go enlist and carry the big stick; I’ll do the soft speaking part.

(A quick note: obviously, Chinese is spoken in Taiwan. The quotations are all translated.)