i'm becoming rather unsure on who reads my blog now. nevertheless, what's on here should be ok for everybody to read right? and i mean EVERYBODY.

facing a dilemma lately. ew this keyboard is sticky. anyway.. i seem to have this same problem over and over again! something must be going wrong in my brain for me to make the same mistake time after time. and i'm sure i have some, if not all, free will over these decisions i make. so why does it still happen? almost awe-stricken.

i'm so indecisive. or maybe it's just that i don't have enough faith. what's been happening doesn't exactly give me the faith i so need right now. i'm slipping.. and i can feel it. slipping away from it. slipping out of it. how do you slip out of it? i'm dumbfounded by the entire process, yet it is real, it is happening, it is happening to me.

and yet, i still don't understand it.

很愛很愛你 可是 也...

rot

maybe this is the way it always ends. yeah.. remember this?

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river


i think it will end. for the first time, i can actually see it happen, like a little video clip being played inside my head. and then it's all over. not with a bang but a whimper.

it wasn't as grand as we thought it was.

here we go round the prickly pear? game over, it's time to go home. what used to be our passions became food leftover, lukewarm, lying lifeless on the table. waiting for itself to rot.

whatever, it wasn't supposed to mean anything in the first place, right? i'm tired..

and one more thing..

at NTU they seem to take delight in activities american kids do in elementary school. like they have show-and-tell during english class, and i think a spelling bee is coming up at the end of this month. who knows.

from berkeley to horrid novels written in the tang dynasty (charlton should i hold you partly responsible for this?)

whoa..! i got my student ID and pin number for my berkeley summer session classes, and guess what, they're exactly the same ones i got for when i was admitted to berkeley last year! and everything was still there, like my telebears account and everything!!! except that it said i had no classes, which was the only difference from when i last saw it. HAHA. what irony. and to think, when i clicked the "cancel registration" button i thought i'd never see these blue-and-yellow screens again.

it's funny, i still sort of feel like a berkeley student. i guess maybe somewhere deep down in the sentimental part of me, i still wished i had gone to berkeley? i don't know.. or maybe just knowing that i'd have a college to belong to whenever i go back is a comforting thought on its own. hmm. i love how i have some advantages of a berkeley student and yet, i'm not REALLY a berkeley student. like i have the cal student ID card (although it doesn't work when swiped, i remember last using it to buy bus tickets?). and like i mentioned before, tele-bears. and little things like the aman berkeley schedule planner. and little pieces of tidbits like the better food at crossroads, the rowdier crowd at the units, etc etc. everything makes me feel like i just veered off the right path by not going there.

it's even more annoying now that i have to do a huge chinese project and write an essay about a story written in the tang dynasty. -_____-;; oyyyyy.. the book i found in the library to help me actually looks like.. one of those artifacts you'd dig up. or back in the days when they used to write books using nice caligraphy and connect the pages together by tying it with a rope. and when i read my own writing, it feels like i went back in time to when i was in fourth or fifth grade, my first two years in the states, because it is freakin frustrating trying to express my thoughts exactly. not to mention typing in chinese is an even bigger pain. although i must brag a bit here, that my typing speed is already a lot faster than many of the students here, and THEY have been typing chinese for as long as they could type! muahahhaha... ^o^

*ahem* anyway, someone save me from this horrid, horrid chinese essay i must now go back to... wah.

quizzie, just like the old days

Ballet shoes- beautiful, graceful, and creative,
you enjoy dancing writing and music. You are
often very poetic and sometimes dramatic. You
keep to yourself aside from a few close friends
that you can relate to.


What Kind of Shoe Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

flying from one mutually exclusive thing to another

maybe it's because i know i can't ever become like those kinds of girls that they disgust me so much.

the school year isn't quite ending yet, but i'm already looking back on my first almost-year in taiwan. i've changed a lot. i don't know if it's because of taiwan, or college, or just simply gaining one more year of life experience. the changes are subtle, so subtle i almost didn't think they took place, until i had those talks with my mom.

whenever i'm with "new" people, i can convince myself that this is the way i've always been. but whenever i'm with "old" people, or "always-been" people, i convince myself i haven't changed out of my old ways either.

just like sylvia plath's esther, i am still flying back and forth between two mutually exclusive things. and this i will continue to do. whether i like it or not. and i do like it. i love it.

i love being weird. even if this means that people will start to understand me less and less. not weird as in unsociable. i think i will still keep the socializing part for all its useful and practical purposes, because i'm stupid about useful and practical and efficient things like that. but i feel as if the most real and pure and deepest part of me is starting to detach itself from all these useful and practical daily actions.

someone said, "speak your mind." but who said that is the only thing you should speak? i want to speak other people's minds. or i want to make up people's minds and then speak them. or i want to speak the exact opposite of what i really think. maybe there's some fun in that, too. or maybe i want to change my mind every so often. since i've given up on having people fully understand me (and who would want to be fully understood anyway? that's no fun), i'll do my best to have different people understand different shelleys. perhaps that is an easier task.

perhaps that's what i've always been doing, but only realized it just now. *shrug*

jing di zhe wa. translated literally it means frog of a well. it's used to describe (insultingly) people who have very narrow horizons, people who haven't seen enough and done enough in their lives. (i'm not sure if it includes the meaning of them being content with this lifestyle? maybe..) i'm sure these frogs are happy. i once wished, so very fervently, that i could be in a well and never come out. ignorance is bliss. i wanted to be happy. i wanted to be content. i wanted to never have to wonder if i'm "living it up." but now, having seen certain things in the past year, allow me to boldly (and perhaps, arrogantly) say that i have jumped out of the well.

and i'm not happy, now that my sky doesn't have edges enclosed by the walls of my well. but in a strange, ironic way, i'm happy about the fact that i know i'm not happy. perhaps happy is not an accurate word to describe this emotion. i should say content. i thought my "but.. why?" phase meant that i was not content with all that is given to me and that i kept a questioning mind toward everything i encountered. but now that i look back on it, it seems so naive and pointless and childish. it was only curiosity. curiosity is great, but it doesn't get you anywhere unless you start to search for answers. or unless you start to realize that answers aren't everything.

answers change.

or you can make up your own answers, as long as you look arrogant enough doing it. then they change the answer key and make your arrogant answer the right, standard one. or you can bubble in the answer you know will get you the point, but still maintain your own thoughts on the true answer for yourself.

and no one will ever have to know.

isn't that great? you can get an A+ without answering any of the questions right. as long as you bubbled in the right bubbles.

and no one will ever have to know.

yay yay yay!!!

christina is coming to taiwan! :D

hrm. that's NOT a secret, is it? haha.. :P

and as you all can see, there's still much work i need to do on this blog. AND my apartment, with its never-ending mess of clothes and books..... gah.

finished the bell jar. *brings tips of fingers together and brings them toward lips and makes a kissing noise* MUAH! loved it. i especially liked the part where she went, "I am, I am, I am."

it's gettin hot (in) here.

what could be more exciting to a blogger

...than NEW TEMPLATES!!!!

eeeeeeee!!!!!!!!! ^o^

i registered

hooray! although very unsure of what classes i'll actually be able to get into (partly my own fault, for not registering earlier), i am finally done with scheduling and registering for berkeley. here is my schedule for those who are curious.

i'll be in berkeley from july 4 (!) to aug 13. but not sure exactly when flights will be and stuff.

currently reading plath's the bell jar. it is so incredibly good. why didn't someone tell me to read this book earlier?!

frankly,

i'm a bit disappointed at the results. i thought i invested enough time? enough energy? was i just not passionate enough about it? i don't know.. i kind of feel like i failed at it, and this was the proof, right in front of my eyes.

then again, maybe this failure was exactly what i needed to realize my true motives behind this.. desire. one of these days my pride will get me into some big trouble. i guess it's a good thing this happened.

onto happier thoughts.. good birthday overall! except for the part where we opened the birthday cake box and saw the words "i love you mom." both my mom and i looked like this: -______-;; and then asked my dad why he bought that. and he said, "well i figured that on your birthday you should say 'i love you mom' for all the pains she went through to give birth to you." haha.

yesterday after chinese class some of us did a small-scale celebrating at this restaurant with really good smoked salmon salad. but we didn't have cake, we had french puffs instead. and we sang happy birthday in five different languages! chinese, english, japanese, cantonese, and indonesian. i'm sure we got some strange glances in the restaurant but oh well. and in fellowship on thursday i didn't get my cake!!! because it was a special meeting and i didn't get to see my whole fellowship group. grrRRRR... i shall have my cake and eat it too! >_< (who said that? i know that comes from somewhere...)

i think i will have my hair straightened in the near future. not sure how much i want to spend on it though, there's a big range...

thanks for the card, if you read this. for some strange reason, when i saw it it was as if i half-expected it, even though i had no reason to expect it at all. you didn't forget.. you never forget.

i knew that.

and if tyson sees this, happy birthday!!! :D high fives to the may 8 children. we are born on the best day of the year. :)

and happy mother's day everyone!

preliminary

so it looks like if i do decide to go to berkeley during the summer, it will be the session starting either june 21 or july 6. all because our school has darn finals until end of june. sucky~

it's nearing mother's day,

so i thought i'd post something motherly-related. you know, i think as we grow older, our parents become nicer and nicer to us. or at least, we perceive that they become nicer parents. age is directly proportional to the degree of nice-ness we perceive our parents to be?

when we're small and our parents (esp. moms) have to nag and/or yell at us to do small things like take baths and go to bed and take medicine, we think they're horrible people don't we? and then we grow to be teenagers and in between the fights/conflicts we still know somewhere deep down that they love us. NOW i think.. well a parent's love is really unconditional. now that i live by myself and have to take care of EVERYTHING within a household, i realize how great women are. how amazingly patient and self-sacrificial and hard-working my mom is.

even though "in this day and age" housework is divided somewhat equally between the mother and father, ultimately there is this invisible responsibility on the woman's shoulders that if something in the household goes wrong, she should be the one to blame. if the dishes pile up too high in the sink, our first reaction would be, where is the mother? or if the baby's crying for his diaper to be changed, our minds would flash the IDEAL picture of a mother hurrying to the baby's aid. which is probably WHY some men consider their wives to be very naggy. kinda like marge simpson. nagging at them to take out the trash, to catch cookie crumbs with a plate, to vaccum, to mow the lawn, blah blah blah. because if they didn't nag, the average man probably wouldn't take care of it. why? because "it's not at the top of my priority list." and what THAT translates to is "i don't care" or "it's none of my business" or, most commonly found in esp. traditional households, "THE WOMAN WILL DO IT."

if you're reading this and you disagree, there are two possibilities: 1) you're lucky enough that you grew up or currently live in an above-average household, or 2) you're a guy. and if you agree, you probably hold either the attitude that 1) yes! we should definitely do something to change it! (in which case, is futile) or 2) life is unfair, deal with it. i semi belong to the latter now, which is why i'm rambling about this to mr. blog and also saying,

mom, thank you for doing everything you did so that i turned out acceptably normal.

now i just have to translate this into chinese and write it in a card........

am i seeing things?

*rubs eyes*

WHAT?! mr. eldrdige has a xanga???? how could he have not told me about this???? i bet he forgot all about me... :'(

seeeeee? i told you, mr. eldridge is cool. but some people just never understood his humor. hahaha i love mr. eldridge :D