life is good

thanksgiving. mr p didn’t exactly grow up looking forward to this holiday each year, or even celebrating it in any way until around age 30. and then maybe only by default. so spending this american holiday with mr p was great, but not exactly turkey and stuffing and all things traditional. it’s not really that big of a holiday for me either, and when we realized that neither of us could cook or make anything more than a salad, we made reservations at the restaurant across the street and celebrated our own way. it was wonderful. and unless my husband’s some amazing cook, we’re eating out for every thanksgiving. or maybe ordering a pizza.

the whole break was wonderful, and i had no right to complain or to wish i was in ny. i didn’t complain, but i did wish i was in ny. and i will be, in 3 looong weeks. actually i’m sure they’ll fly by, but not b/c everybody’s having soo much fun.

finals time. chaos. bring it.

 我学中文学了六个月。我上了暑期学校。 我去了 - 学校跟 – 和别人。我们一起去了吃饭，打球了， 游泳了，学习了，上课了。

现在我跟他们一起学中文了。

 我 要去纽约可太贵了。我每年去了我的家两个次，一次 在放假， 一次在(度)暑假。我的朋友上大学在纽约还是在 - 。 他们每年去家几个次。可是北卡 里纽约很远。这是不错，因为我比我的朋友想去家。

我喜欢北卡。我可以做什么东西在纽约约我就可以做什么东西在北卡卡我在我的中学游泳了。我也在北卡游泳。

我的家乡是纽约。纽约里北卡远一点儿。

冬天的天气，很冷。纽约的天气比北卡的天气冷。

在纽约，夏天的天气又闷又热。北卡的夏天太闷了。

(谢谢!)

and last night’s phrases 
sick with lack of basis
are still writhing on my floor

what a week. feels like a month. time is so weird here - it goes by sooo fast, but when you think back to 5 days ago, it feels like it was last year..or at least last month. i never think ‘damn it’s only monday’, cause i know that in an hour or so it’ll be friday again.. so sleepless though. the things i’ve been saying doing and hallucinating… yesterday was clearly a high point: econ class, population: 400 - who all showed up that day because there was a test, + 1 professor whom i adore. right before the test, in answering someone’s question about the multiplier effect or something that was the least difficult of the topics on this test, the prof points me out and asks what was basically ’what is 500 divided by 4′. i replied that it was, of course, 20. duh. i just checked the postings though and by some miracle i got a 90. i didn’t remember to bring my calculator either, so i was doing that same genius math that i had performed for the class - on my test. anyway.  

came back two nights ago after 6 hours in the library. polisci. wasn’t finished studying in any way, wasn’t even tired or lacking the motivation to study more, just sort of cut myself off around 6 hours. humans need to move - three walks down the hall for bathroom breaks and some fidgeting around the cubicle do not count. neither does writing, typing, or moving your eyes from left to right. i don’t even mean significant activity - just enough to make sure blood still circulates, bed sores don’t form, and carpal tunnel doesn’t develop.

so i  walked home. all 100 feet. but i was glad that it was only 100 feet, cause the temperature had dropped about 60 degrees in those 6 hours. i had great intentions. i was gonna go for a short run, come back and finish up making flash cards of all my class notes, and then go to bed so i could get up early and finish studying.

this is not how the evening went. i changed into my running clothes, sat down at the computer, and started reading some online bbc news. 3 hours, no runs, no sleep, and no studying later - i accepted that my night was not going to be happening as planned. it instead, included hours of interesting discussions about everything political and international. my roomate is amazing. probably the best roomate i’ve lived with so far. and as it turns out - our ramblings that night weren’t so much a distraction as they were preparation.

we talked about political beliefs and social injustice, about random chemical plant disasters from 1984 india, vegetarianism, travel, and how people should be more outraged.. then we talked about how little we know about all the things that we were talking about and how it seemed hard to find unbiased information in our classes. - she’s an anthropology major and i’m polisci/global econ, which seem to be biased in the opposite directions… i feel sometimes like i’m being trained to defend everything capitalist, globalist, realist… big business and mncs and why does the environment matter?

literally, that was the defense in the last reading for my poli class: “but really, how much is greenery actually worth?”. another amazing defense: for homogenizing cultures/americanization the author explained that this was impossible: the US follows principles of laissez-faire - which is a french word. obviously other cultures are entering the US just as much as the US is entering other cultures. - I know from other readings/ assignments that there exist much stronger arguments - ones that have statistics or some sort of evidence backing them up; arguments that don’t disobey chronologically the events of history..  

but then when i hear some of the ideas from the roomate all i can think about is why they would not make sense, be an economic disaster, etc. 

My point is just that i don’t know exactly what my opinion is, and i definitely can’t support it. i don’t feel like i’m getting the information i would need to back up whatever i think - whenever i figure out what that is. even if i agree with what we’re learning, i still want to know why other people don’t. now being the only underclassman in a seniors-only core class, i thought that i was probably the only one who knew so little and felt so intimidated - especially when my classmates sit there pulling out the most detailed and random references and discussing things at a level so far above my head, that i would need maybe 2 more years in school and some classes on the eu/international economy/pre-1700s asia/etc. to keep up with them. but during this 3-hour talk, i learned that i am not the only intimidated one, that seniors don’t know what they think even after all these classes, and randomly a lot about burma.  

which, was the main essay question on my test yesterday. this term, we didn’t discuss anything at all about burma/myanmar. so, like most of the essay questions, it was a little bit unexpected. also unexpected, is that i was prepared.

 this brings me to another point: i know so little, i’m definitely going to need another 2 years here. maybe 10. but i guess that’s what grad school’s for. i like being in classes with people that know so much more than i do. if i graduate early though, that’s a whole year’s worth of knowledge - do you know how many possible random references i could obtain in a year’s worth of classes?…i could be right there front row citing the rioting in that obscure southern chinese village in the summer of 1485. for now though i’ll stay in the second row and keep my mouth shut. or maybe ask more questions..  

i hate drugs. not the life-saving, pain-reducing pharmaceutically-endorsed prescriptions that have done great things for mankind. we did that project in fifth grade: the greatest invention of mankind. i think there was a tie between penicillin and eli whitney’s cotton gin. personally, i have some problems with the cotton gin, but that’s not what this is about. 

i don’t hate the people, my problem is just with the doing of the drugs. there’s that joke about how only in America would crack be invented. that only in America would someone snort a line of cocaine and go ’that was okay, but no..that’s just not good enough..i want something that makes my heart explode as soon as i smoke it. sigh, death: the ultimate high..’.

and i’m sorry if this post is offensive. i’m offended. by people never learning. because it’s not just the uneducated and optionless that go with drugs, it’s also a whole lot of bored white kids with too much of their parents’ money. it’s the majority of the hometown and most definitely the entire high school. anyway. whatever. my point is just that it’s a proven fact that drugs won’t leave you better off. for the short-term i’m sure they’re spectacular. better than reality. but in the long-term what you have is reality. i’m done now.

“so-and-so OD’d” was always a cause for concern- but not exactly abnormal with my hs friends. this information would usually be followed up with some scandalous details, the name of the hospital the person was taken to, when they’d be back at school, and how angry their parents were. last year, there was no hospital, no scandalous details - there was the date of the funeral and some long shock-induced pauses on the phone. the ironic part of this, was that after things settled in and we all had time to realize what had just happened - not that i actually do - the same people that had gone away to school ready to start a new life - quitting smoking, no more drugs, ‘living it right’, etc. - all went right back to their cigarettes and their old habits. i understand that it’s a crutch, but i feel like there was a clear enough indication that it was time to find a different crutch.      

people always seem to go back though. maybe it’s just whenever absolutely-any-other-state has become preferable to reality that it starts again.. maybe it’s just that those people have experienced something so much better than reality and don’t want to come back. i don’t know and i don’t understand and i don’t know how to say what i’m saying without some melodrama getting in there. i just know that drugs are stupid. that’s my profound conclusion.  the end.       

This week, like many other weeks of my life, is chaos. bad chaos. it will most likely suck. this is one of those weeks where stress replaces sleep, panicking replaces breathing, and luna bars and multivitamins replace any real form of nourishment. who am i kidding i don’t actually take my multivitamins anymore i just look at them in my drawer. and you can go ahead and replace ‘luna bar’ with ’shit’. today for example, dinner included a stolen bag of peanut butter ritz that someone had left in the classroom, and 2 chocolates that my professor brought to class. you know this is sinking low for me, because aside from not eating things like that, i haven’t eaten anything peanut butter-related in about a decade. after class i bought a salad, but it’s still sitting here next to me cause after a dinner like that i feel ill and not so much like eating anything else..

maybe i will take a vitamin or two..

and i can handle this. cause i can handle most things. but the problem is that i’m crashing. last week’s diet of caffinated beverages and mini-marathons of isolation where the only distractions i leave myself are the cubicle i’m sitting in or the walls of the 8th-floor group-study room that smells like something died in it circa 1940 and just disintegrated into the floor, this has left me somehow so worn out that i’m capable of sleeping 20 hours a day. it’s like hibernation. i haven’t heard my alarm clock for the past 2 days. and 8:59 is not the ideal time to wake up for your nine am. worse though was getting up at 9:38 for my 8am. i have some explaining to do to my professors. oh the drama..-the point, though. is that all i’ve got keeping me conscious this week is adrenaline. and if i’m this exhausted now, i don’t wanna even know what i’ll be like friday afternoon.

school work, thank goodness?, is not the most important thing in my life right now. maybe it should be… i do have to work some things out there though, because going back and forth between taking a normal courseload and trying for that 4.0, and taking an insane amount of courses and trying for that 3-year graduation - is not working for me. a 4.0 gpa, and graduating within 3 years, is not possible for me. i can’t do it. idk if i’m not smart enough or if i’m not trying hard enough or both, but it’s not happening. mr p needs to realize this - actually realize this, and i need to stop getting so stressed out over it and just do what i can.

personally, i’m thinking that the 3-year graduation should be out. you never hear people say things like “college - now that’s the worst four years of your life right there”..”hurry along through that one cause facing the ‘real world’ and having a real job is amazing..” and if i can’t afford to go to school for 4 years and graduate debt-free - that’s okay. most people can’t. this semester was the 3-year plan. this was trying out packing in all the core courses you could fit in a week. this semester, is not the way the next 2 years can go. if it’s 1.5, fine - it still can’t be like this. i’ll go crazy.

melodrama? reminds me of the movie we just discussed in lac092. le fate ignoranti. it was the first movie that didn’t leave you in a mild week-long depression - but no worries, the discussion did. naively thinking that this was just a slightly melodramatic movie about an eccentric and not-at-all straight group of friends, i was excited to leave lac in a decent mood. no questioning the meaning of life or the goodness of humanity - just thinking about a very cliche, stereotypical homosexual’s tableau de famille, and all the happy endings they have. 5 minutes later i was shown that no one will ever know anyone else, that identities change, people die, and love does not exist between people - it’s just an idea or a memory. so if the tone of this ramble is somewhat melodramatic or down - that’s the way anything i say will be tuesdays and thursdays around 10pm. g-ddamn lac092.  it’s like shakespearean tragedies - it’s finally possible that there’s a happy ending and that things work out for everyone - but then everyone dies instead. next week if something happy happens i’m walking out right then and waiting in the bathroom until class is over. and this is a four-hour class - so that’s a lot of waiting. but it’ll be worth it when i see everyone else walk out crying and devastated or doubting humanity, and i’ll just be thinking that it’s super how good things happen sometimes.

i’m done. done with that anyway. i could ramble on for a few more days about pretty much anything. cheese, for example. but it’s past my bedtime and i’m hoping - praying, that maybe tomorrow i hear my alarm clock and make it to class on time. maybe even wake up early and read some textbook.. so much to look forward to this week. thing is, it would just be some stress and some hard work and then all would be over at the end of the week - but i’m busting my ass for c’s. if i’m lucky. i’ve never gotten bad grades in my life. i’ve also never ’busted my ass’ for a class ever in my life. that part i don’t mind - that part i’m working on, my problem is that i have nothing to show for it. bof. une mois et elles sont toutes finies. 

et: apres le jeu est avant le jeu. la balle est ronde. le match dure quatre-vingt-dix minutes.                     

my friend’s in nursing school. tonight she watch open-heart surgery. quadruple bipass triple valve replacement. tonight i watched the graphs in my econ textbook come to life.

while i definitely couldn’t have handled being anywhere near open-heart surgery, i still really like hearing about it. doesn’t compare to the exciting library life and textbook-reading chaos they have here though.
egads.

it would be a better story if it were true. it would prove my point. but i actually attended a lecture given by refugees from Burma about the conditions of their country. before that i watched a film from the cannes film festival and discussed immigration laws in french. and before that one i adopted the identity of a 35-year old non-smoker who weighs significantly more than my 5-foot-tall body could, and began training (they were desperate - working last minute and didn’t have enough people who fit the demographics..). so today wasn’t exactly boring. no day is. i don’t do boring. however, for the sake of the 30-second point i was originally trying to make - before i began the novel recounting the details of my day - let’s just say all i did most days was read textbooks. ha. : 

I love free food. I love the people in my hall. I love distractions.

I have 2 tests tomorrow and am sleepless and very jealous of my roomate’s 2-day hibernation.

I fell asleep this afternoon, but then had to get up and go to class again. you’d think ‘i overslept’ is -maybe not an acceptable excuse, but at least understandable. but i guess when it’s a 6pm class that one’s out. bof. so i went. and i liked it.

i have a new job assignment, with the same people. there was my first assignment with her mildly scandalous ways, and now the pharmacy school has hired my bosses to hire us to test the pharmacy students. my role, really really coincidentally, happens to be a woman with not only the same last name as role #1, but also similar BC issues. If i have to hear anything more about BC, which i absolutely do, i’m gonna go crazy.          

and this time, it’s not 16 doctors in 8 hours, it’s 15 per session, 3 sessions per night. at least it’s at night and not 6am anymore, but still. that’s a lot of BC talk. you go crazy in these things i promise. it’s also every day of the week this time - not just once a week. i’m not gonna remember which dr said what after hour #1. but i will know everything there is to know about ortho evra.

i went to a business etiquette dinner on tuesday, and failed. honestly, if it’s possible to fail etiquette - i did. i read ’etiquette for dummies’ a few weeks ago because i’ve always been insecure that i’m not following proper procedures, but after that dinner i don’t even care. i’m proud to not have etiquette after that. 

surrounded by really uptight overdressed people, talking about uptight overdressed things, i sat there and realized the beauties of etiquettelessness. par exemple: i have never been too afraid to sweeten my coffee. i don’t actually sweeten coffee, i think it tastes nasty that way, but that’s not the point here. the point is that i will never suck-it-up and drink unsweetened-coffee out of the fear that people will judge me to have poor etiquette. i’d rather be seen as having poor etiquette than being too afraid of judgement to do things like sweeten coffee. - and if i was too afraid, i certainly wouldn’t sit there and whine about how nasty my coffee tasted, and how i wish i could sweeten it - if only sugar packets weren’t against the etiquette rules..  i’ll get over this one soon i promise. i’m done.

i did get a semi-free 4-course meal out of it, and i got to talk to some interesting people, and all-in-all it couldn’t have been that bad of an experience, because i’ve signed up for at least one each month for the rest of the year. :free food. food that doesn’t have that packaged-preserved-plastic quality of all the other foods on campus… it was lovely. even worth getting all upset for a night. or perhaps i can get over that before next month..  

so my sleeping habits have always been somewhat atrocious, but lately i’ve been really scared. this year i started fainting sometimes, and now recently i see things. i’ve always hallucinated somewhat just because i’m crazy, but now i’ll look at poles or people - and i know that they’re not moving, but the images of them - i see about 20 of them on either side..kind of stretched out.. i can’t explain it well.. i tried telling my friends as they were talking to me, but they thought i was kidding. i wasn’t. and i see sparkles. i think i wrote about this before.. it happens more now. i feel like this is what people mean when they say “seeing stars”. kinda scary, kinda entertaining.

i’m gonna stop before i sound completely bonkers. too late? no. because completely bonkers, is my textbook today. to illustrate some aspect of french grammar, the authors wrote a dialogue where a patient explains his problems and depression to a doctor. it starts out being a little bit weird, and then tout d’un coup, the patient starts talking about his dreams of professors chasing him down with red editing pens filled with blood…and ogres and all things sketchy. in all honesty, if i were writing a textbook about french grammar rules and had made it to chapter 10, i’d probably be a little bit insane too. maybe throw in some dialogues and examples that i found entertaining, but still… That, is bonkers. my delusional visions - which by the way i referred to as ‘delusionary’ the other day in my journal - those are understandable.

i also wrote “weightlisted”. and then thought about how much sense it made. no joke. at first it looked so wrong, but then i just thought about it and decided that it made too much sense to be incorrect. see also: coaches not couches. i’m not stupid. i promise. perhaps some mild-retardation, but these things - these i blame on the impressive lack of sleep in my life.       

things are getting fuzzy. i’m gonna go have some fig newtons and tea. maybe see where in the global economy my t-shirt is traveling to tonight.. mmm..shui jiao…mmm…

in 17 hours it will be weekend. hooray hooray