The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

In my medical anthropology course in undergrad, I read the book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. It's a story about an epileptic Hmong girl and the narration of her story from worldviews of her parents and of her doctors.

Imagine my excitement when I learned she was giving a guest lecture at my med school earlier tonight! Of course I had RSVP'd like a month ago in advance. How could I miss the opportunity to meet the author of a book that captured the beginning of a shift within the medical profession? How could I miss an opportunity to hear what pearls of wisdom I may gain from this lecture, especially as I'm involved in the Hmong Health Education Program (HHEP) committee here? How could I, as a med student, not sit in on a lecture so relevant to cultural competency to aid me in better caring for a diverse patient population in the future (especially since cultural issues largely aren't discussed at length throughout medical training)?

It was a great lecture. She was more down-to-earth than I had envisioned. She discussed the conflict that could occur between two cultures due to mis-communication. Indeed, there is a medical culture that contains within it almost everything you'd expect of a culture - it has its own hierarchy, it's own rules, it's own language, it's own special clothes, it's own rituals, and it's own worldview. One thing she said that will stick in my mind is the idea of a Venn diagram of patient-physician communication. There is always overlap, however small. Sometimes the patient, sometimes the doctor, often both, must venture to the periphery of their circles into the area where the two circles overlap - to where there is common ground between patient and doctor. This overlap is (apparently) called the "lune," and we must seek it as both patients and doctors to promote maximal outcome.

Afterwards, I had the luck (and patience) to have her sign my book! Okay, I actually left my original copy back home in another state. But an M4 (incidentally the M4 who started the HHEP) gave me a free copy of her book for the signing, so now I have 2 books and one of them has her autograph!! She drew that Venn diagram in my book, reminding me to find the lune. I also got to take a picture with her. This must be the first time I was so close to a celebrity, lol.

Her work is well-known in medical anthropology and in the medical community. To think that a journalist would have such a profound effect on the way physicians, bioethicists, anthropologists, would view cultural differences and how those differences impact healthcare (Mirrorboy, if you read this take note, maybe one day you'll produce some work that'll be the beginning of a paradigm shift). Unfortunately, formal training in medicine concerning cultural differences is severely lagging, even today.
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Now, for the other randomness in my life.

1. Apparently I'm no longer fit (I was never that in shape, but I was way more in shape 2-3 years ago). I judge my fitness by my cardio endurance, and right now I'm at under a mile on the treadmill. This won't do as I used to be able to run 2.5-3 mi. Then again I hate the treadmill as I usually can't run as long on treadmills as on ground (oddly enough). Anyway, exercising has now been bumped up into my top 5 priorities.

2. I participated in the disembowelment of the dead today. After 2 of my labmates left early, leaving just Jon and me in the lab, we decided to disembowel our cadaver so we could expose the posterior (back) abdominal cavity. We stumbled upon a whole new world! After we ripped, tore, and cleaned away the fascia (which one of my labmates describes as being "incredibly satisfying" - it is), we were able to expose the abdominal inferior vena cava (main vein going into the heart), the renal veins leading from the kidneys, and the kidneys themselves. There was definitely something satisfying and exciting as a result of this disembowelment (which, might not be a "true" disembowelment as we just moved all the intestines upward until they sat in the upper chest cavity).

3. It's creepily humorous in lab these days. In order to get at certain things to dissect, one must remove organs and place them all over the place. We had the left lung on our cadaver's face, his massive heart on his groin, his right lung next to his head, and his ribcage and calvaria (skullcap) near his ankles. Yeah . . . organs everywhere. The more one dissects, the less human the body becomes.

Okay, that's all for this episode of anatomy lab. My eyes can't seem to focus tonight, blah.

Want to Reads

I came across this interesting post on Mike's blog, Random Thoughts In My Life.

"The BBC apparently says most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here."

Instructions:
1) Bold what you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Italicize those you plan on reading.
4) Put in a note with your total in the subject.
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1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien +
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling +
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman +
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield- Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

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Count: 16 read, another 9 or so that I plan to read (someday . . . >.>).

Two of the ones I bolded, the Bible and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, I've only read part of (I mean, really, how many people have read the entire Bible from cover to cover?). There are a couple I'm not sure I've read or that I should've read by now, but somehow haven't. And some of the ones on that list I've never actually heard before.

So, how many have you read? :P

Winter Break!!

ZOMG, I'm done with exams and Winter Break has finally arrived for me. I don't even care what I get on those exam, haha. Now that I'm home, it's going to be a pretty chill break with me not going anywhere really. This break I hope/plan to (in no real particular order of importance):

• hang out/catch up with a few friends in town
• catch up on several blogs and link them
• sort my blog list
• sort my pics on my laptop
• sort my music on my laptop
• sort my bookmarks on my internet browser (I've way too many bookmarks)
• watch TV shows, anime, and movies I have on my USB
• watch, sort, and delete porn off my laptop (too much that's just there and that I don't watch)
• finish reading The Spanish Bow by Andromeda Romano-Lax
• read The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• watch all of the Planet Earth series on DVD
• draw the pic "commissioned" by my friend, SA-F (like 2 years ago, lol)
• draw the pic "commissioned" by Hish of Minding the Heart
• draw the pic(s) "commissioned" by James of Just me
• play my piano
• master DDR (or at least get to 5-feet/5-star solidly)
• finish the game story plot for the Neverwinter Nights module my friend JW-M and I are making
• write 2 chapters of my story (I'm not the only blogger out there writing a book, though this story's not meant to be a published book)
• do my "homework" for public health (I know, right?!) and other online "errands"
• come up with a workout plan and "diet" that I'd actually follow next semester (and hopefully lose 20 lbs - I only went to the gym like 4 times between Thanksgiving and now)

I think that's about it . . . If I can get through all that it'd be pretty amazing, honestly. And now, some Lolcat. :D

Bored in Chicago

Actually, I'm currently in my uncle's house in a suburb just north of Chicago. I don't actually have the audacity to call Chicago itself boring - because it's not. This whole so-called week-long "trip to Chicago" with my grandparents have been mostly me accompanying my grandparents. I love my grandparents to death, but they move at the speed of slow (as do all elderly folk).

In any case, at this pace I'm beginning to suffer from ennui. All we do is walk around the area randomly. We don't go anywhere or do anything, and I don't have the means to go anywhere by myself. I would require a car to get me to the nearest train station at the very least. I'm also getting tired of the same rotation of Chinese foods too now. Ah well, the family gossip is somewhat interesting to listen to.

The first two days weren't so bad. The first day basically consisted of a 6+ hour train ride, which was actually kind of cool since I've never ridden on the Amtrak before. That consumed a large part of day 1. I also finished reading Xenocide on the train. This African-American woman talked to me briefly about it, as she read Ender's Game and the sequels and loved all of them. That was amusing.

Day 2 my aunt's family in Chicago came over for dinner. This was at the insistence of my grandparents, as they haven't seen them in many years. I don't know anyone on my aunt's side of the family, so they were all new faces (except for her parents, I've seen them before). Now, the interesting thing here is listening to all the shifting Chinese dialects/accents being spoken. Shifting from Mandarin to Cantonese to 2 small regional dialects/accents that I can't remember, but for some reason was able to understand. I'm rather impressed I was able to follow almost everything despite the dialects/accents. Clearly, my family is from diverse parts of China. I say dialects/accents, by the way, to distinguish for example the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese - almost 2 different languages sometimes - and Mandarin and a regional accent that sounds similar but ever so slightly off.

It's weird having my uncle and relatives praise me and my brothers, as they always do. Of all the people my generation in the family, my brothers and I are always at the top. We always get straight-A's, we're clearly college-bound (if not already there and we're doing well there too), and now I've graduated and got "accepted" into a med school. I am praised as the paragon of the family, and my uncle wants me to teach my cousin how to do well in school and get into college (his prospects right now are somewhat dubious). If only they knew about me being bi - or possibly gay, can't rule that out for sure right now. I don't know if they even are able to comprehend that concept, much less accept it. It's a weird dark secret I keep. So for the time being, I remain the paragon of the family . . . until my brother supersedes me, which I know he will.

Anyway, let's see what the next few days bring. Perhaps I'll meet up with my friend JL-M. I didn't really get a chance to see him after graduation.

The Pre-freshmen are Here

Sigh, first I must express my odium for the construction on the dorm across the street from me. They start sometime between 7:00am and 7:30am, and work Monday through Saturday. This means I can almost never get enough hours of sleep as I tend to go to bed after 1:30am at the very earliest. Today it sounded like they were breaking glass (which they probably were, destroying the windows). I got up around 7:30am and put my ear buds in my ears, hoping to dampen the construction noise. Didn't do much. So I just got out of bed around 8:15am. I was not happy.

For a while I walked around campus, rather aimlessly. I then settled and sat under a tree in the very heart of central campus. I sat at one of the benches and read more of Xenocide for an hour or two. And then I saw them. The "pre-freshmen," the summer orientation people.

This reminded me of the other day when I went to eat lunch with AG-F, my friend from the lab. As we walked across campus, we saw several orientation groups. They all had on name tags or the student ID cards about their necks. They were walking across the fountain, as is the tradition here upon becoming a freshman. You're supposed to walk across the fountain in the other direction upon graduation, but I haven't done so yet and I forgot which direction that is now . . .

Anyway, we saw them and we started to reminisce about freshman year, the good and the bad, what we liked and our regrets. In retrospect, there were many things I wish I could've done differently but I'm not sure things would've worked out the way. For one, I would not know many of my current friends had I not taken the classes I did in the order I took them freshman year. That's when I made the vast majority of my friends here - as freshman year forces you do make friends as few people know each other.

My other friend, JW-M, works summer orientation for the poli-sci peer advising, or something like that. So he gives his little talk to all the pre-freshmen. He calls them "freshman embryos" or "freshman larvae" (a reference to Starcraft, lol), but I'll call them pre-freshmen. They're not really freshmen until they've selected their classes and started the school year. Sometimes I think I might've liked to work as a summer orientation peer adviser. Except I wouldn't make things as rosy as they kind of require. Even JW-M had to resist the urge to say that some things just didn't matter, though the speech he had to give said it did. In private I would just be like, "Yeah, that's good" or "Ugh, that sucked. Avoid it."

Back to this morning. I was reading on a bench under the shade of trees and several orientation groups came by. They all seemed to have cameras with them. And I thought, "You're going to be spending at least 3-4 years here, why take pictures now? That's a bit touristy." And they all had their name tags on that just made me laugh inside because it looks so, um, freshman? They all seemed to be lost and only a few of them had maps. They seemed to be on some kind of scavenger hunt to look for things around campus in order to become familiar with the area. There were also some Campus Day tours, and I knew a few of the people giving them too. It's funny listening to the stuff they say: it all sounds so rehearsed, the parents judging the place, the students already knowing whether or not they want to come - so some seemed to have eyes that glazed over with boredom.

In any case, what really hit me was the excitement all the orientation people seemed to have. I miss that excitement - being in a new place, around new people, no one knows you, discovery. If nothing else that's what I missed about freshman year - the fresh start. Making friends from scratch, meeting people who know nothing about you, getting lost and then finding your way. Now there's something I wish I had done differently, but at the time I just didn't know (about myself like I do now). But do I regret? No, not really. If I were to go back in time and let events play out de novo, I'd probably end up pretty close to where I am now.

Still, what I wouldn't give for a taste of that excitement again . . . I don't think grad/med school can provide that on the level that undergrad did.

Halcyon Days

This post is actually kind of two posts merged into one - I meant to write one yesterday but never got to it . . .
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From the moment I left my apartment, I knew it was going to be a good day. As I stepped out from the stairwell into the open sun, I could feel its warmth basking my skin. It was still a bit cool out - in the mid-60s Fahrenheit - but I was excited that the days were finally getting warmer. I walked towards the diag, the central heart of campus.

I feel the spring days slowly rolling into summer. Everywhere people were out, but the density had dwindled significantly compared to the academic year. As I walked closer to the diag, I could feel the pulse of a campus still very much alive, content on living out the next few months in a lazy dream.

People sat at nearly every bench or on blankets on the grass. I walk under the shade of the trees for but a moment, and yet I could still perceive the cool shadows on my skin - still a bit too cool for me to actively seek its company. I close my eyes for a moment and I could smell the green grass, the maples and pines, the sunbaked concrete, the distance fragrance of flowers. I could feel the gentle breeze flow by me, brushing across the small hairs on my arms, encompassing parts of my fingers while leaving other parts of my hand untouched. It's as if the wind were trying to hold my hands as it moved by, as if trying to put a secret message in my hands.

I reach an unoccupied concrete bench. I could feel the warmth left by the sun on the concrete as I sat down. I could once again feel the sun's embrace once again as it beamed down from a sky with few clouds. I put down my backpack, took out a book, and began to read. Occasionally I would see a family with young children pass by. Sometimes they stopped at the fountain a little ways in front of me, playing by the sides. At one point two dads jogged by and talking, their toddler sons half-asleep in their strollers. Every now and then I would see a couple kissing, holding hands, and though normally I would feel lonely at this sight, I did not mind it much today. Nothing was going to get between me and my book. I welcomed the solitude.

Hours passed, I could feel the sun wanting to set. It was time for dinner anyway.
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The above was an attempt at prose-like writing, just something different to describe how I felt. Whether or not I achieved that depends on the reader.

Anyway, my Sunday was quite amusing. First I went to do laundry. Now, this in itself isn't remarkable. But first some quick background: my apartment uses laundry card keys rather than being coin operated or whatnot. I had $3 on my card, and I needed $4.50 to do 2 washes and 1 drying. So I debated whether or not to just wash and dry half my laundry, or wash half my laundry while hand-washing the other half and then drying both, or just washing both and air-drying all. I decided to take the last option. I took every cloth hanger I had and hung my wet shirts and jeans on them. I found a length of twine in my drawer, with which I made a drying line by tying one end on the frame of our bunk bed and the other to inside my closet. I was successful! I had my socks arranged in a neat ring on the sides of my laundry basket, and my towel occupied its own rack in the bathroom. Only time would tell . . . and now more than half a day later, I can say most of my clothes are dry (but it's way too late at night for me to fold them). So that was my silly laundry idea. Hey, if my parents could air-dry all their laundry back in their day, surely I can survive one day without a dryer.

By now it was about 1:30pm. I still hadn't eaten anything all day. I didn't feel as hungry as I probably should've been. I debated making eggs and toast, then French toast, then pancakes, then biscuits with nutella (except I don't have any nutella), and then to brownies (didn't have any brownie mix either - and I wasn't actually considering that an option). I kept going back and forth on these ideas. Finally I just decided to go out to a sandwich place to get a sandwich and a malt. That was a strong call.

I read some more outside somewhere on campus. I relocated myself a couple times as there are some very large bees residing in the area. It makes me nervous when they constantly fly near me for more than a few minutes. About an hour later, I get a call from SC-F asking to play baseball. I readily agreed, and 10-15 minutes later I was ready to go. I met her, JW-M and their friends for a game of baseball. Bear in mind I haven't touched a baseball glove nor a bat in just over 6 years. I didn't even have a glove of my own and had to borrow one of theirs. That didn't work out optimally as I'm left-handed and the only left-handed person there. That felt awkward . . . But all things considered, I did pretty well.

I ran/walked along the railroad tracks partway back to my apartment. There were "No trespassing" signs everywhere with severe warnings - I kept kind of thinking someone would shoot me. But I got back in one piece and rehearsed trio music with SR-F (violinist) and EA-F (violist). My apartment's rather dim, so I turned on several lights including some Christmas lights I had been too lazy to take down. I have a special place in my heart for Christmas lights.

Later, we went to go see the new Indiana Jones movie. It was alright, it was certainly different from the previous movies in many ways. But in some ways, it was exactly the same. Also something else I noticed: when did Shia LaBeouf become cute or - dare I say it - even kind of hot? My fellow blogger at Minding the Heart maintains it was Tranformers when he became attractive. Whatever the reason, I'm just a bit envious how he turned from that once-dorky/nerdy kid into someone quite attractive. Sometimes I wish I could undergo such a transformation with as much grace.

All in all, it was a pretty good and relaxing weekend. Though I still have laundry to fold . . . I'll do that in the morning. And I didn't finish my book, though I've only about 25 pages left to go. Yet another thing to finish tomorrow morning.

22nd Birthday

Most of my birthdays have been rather underwhelming. For the last 4 years it's been after school has already ended and I'm already home for the summer. There aren't many people in my hometown that I'm particularly close to, so my birthdays tend to be celebrated at home with just my family . . . which is okay.

This year, however, I was still on campus for my birthday (now yesterday on 5-21). This was nice, as a few of my friends did stay in town for a while. So I had lunch with some and dinner with another group. That was fun. I had more dessert (mostly ice cream) than I've ever had in a single day. But hey, it was free! Now I need to work out hardcore, lol.

The highlight of my day was going to Borders and buying several books for my "someday shelf." My aunt gave me a $50 gift card to Borders last August when we visited them in California. I used up almost all that was left on that gift card today.

So I bought The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, all 4 books in a box set for $7.99. That's ridiculously cheap for 4 books!! I then later bought (at another Borders) Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide by Orson Scott Card for $7.99 each. Both Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide are sequels to Ender's Game that I finished reading earlier this week. My friend, JW-M, recommended that first book to me. I bought it, read it, and really liked it. So I bought its 2 sequels as well. There's a 4th book that I may/may not get, we'll see about that.

Right now I have like $2.39 left on that gift card. Since I participated in one of my university's studies by submitting a term paper, I got another $10 gift card to Borders. So I have a total of $12.39 left that I could spend at Borders. Not bad.

Lastly, I think some of my friends are getting sucked back into WoW. Sigh, and after they've denounced that game for years for its addictive nature. And I watch them play that game again as they alternately try to convince me to also start up again (with them) and telling me I shouldn't. I must resist. Besides, I have books to read!

Bouts of Happiness

So even among my depressive mood and general malaise (yes, it's still going on), I do have bouts of happiness, fun, and laughter interspersed about. Let me share some.

1. So, a couple weeks ago, I was going home from the mall after returning my tux. And in the parking lot, as I got to my friend's car, this little kid sitting on top of his dad's shoulders saw us. He said, "Hi!" and waved at us. I responded with "Hi!" back. Then he asked, "What are you doing?" His dad was like, "He's not shy, haha." I told him, "I'm going home!" Then he waved again and said, "Bye!" To which I waved and said the same thing.

Kids are so cute! I want one, or two, or three . . . but no more than three . . . some day. Not today. They're so innocent and straightforward. They have no tact, no hidden agendas, no false faces. They're just pure fun and curiosity (until they cry). Kids are so predictable and it's so easy to keep their attention, once you realize they have like permanent ADHD. They're also like a blank slate. You can tell them anything, teach them anything, and they'll just absorb it with awe. Yeah, I personally think kids are awesome. Teenagers less so - they get grumpy and weird, and sometimes mean.

2. Bread pudding! I made bread pudding last night. I think it was the best one yet. It had the right consistency - not too runny, not too dry. It was sweeter than usual, though I added the same amount of sugar. It was the variable ingredients - aka, the fruit I add. This time it was raspberries, blueberries, and mango. It was delicious. Next time I make bread pudding, I'm sticking to this combo. Usually I add in apples, bananas, and cinnamon.

3. I really like reading the books (in the English translation) in my Chinese literature class. I was talking with SR-F last night about our respective "some day" list. In other words, books that we want to read "some day." Books like Monkey (more commonly translated as Journey into the West) and The Story of the Stone (more commonly translated as The Dream of Red Chamber) have been on my list for quite some time, and I like taking classes that "forces" me to read them.

It's interesting that the professor keeps saying how different Chinese fiction is compared to Western fiction. It's true, but it doesn't read any worse, or even really different sometimes. Western fiction utilizes heavy character development and tends to focus solely on the main character(s), with the other characters just being there. Chinese fiction delves into all the characters in depth, so you have their background and their whole personalities. However, Chinese fiction doesn't really have much in terms of character development. The development tends to be the development of a group of people on the whole.

For example, there are 4-5 main characters in Monkey. Each of them has their unique story, unique personality, and represents a part of a person in the allegory. But, each character doesn't develop much, but as a whole, they do. So the parts of the individual don't develop much, but the individual as a whole does. If any of that makes sense. In The Story of the Stone, there are about 400 characters in total. And for each one you learn about their background, their relations, and their personalities. Yet the whole story really centers on 3 characters.

It's said that Chinese fiction isn't so much "linear" as it is "circular" in a sense. Linear is basically cause-effect, where an event causes something that causes something else in a linear fashion, contributing to the development of the character. Chinese fiction focuses on the network and branches of relationship between each character and the next. These relationships change and evolve, though each of the characters not so much. Also, every detail counts. Something you read in chapter 1 might come back or be fulfilled like 10 chapters later.

4. So I've been good at running every day this week (today not so much, but I played basketball). I've lost like 4 lbs this week, yay! Too bad I just ate out tonight with several friends at a German restaurant, consisting of lots of meat and starch (potatoes), and some desert. Sigh, haha. More running and working out tomorrow!

5. Now, for the final (and most meaningful part). I had lunch with ES-M. To jog the memory, he's the guy from Malaysia in my Chinese class last semester that I had a crush on. While he's taking Chinese this semester as well, we're not in the same class because our schedules conflicted. He did want to be in my class because I've helped him out a lot in Chinese (though, I probably couldn't have helped him much this semester - the vocab's much harder).

Anyway, I waited for him to meet me. Apparently, he overslept and was very apologetic. I kept telling him last semester that he should sleep more regularly, and not in the middle of the afternoon (or morning, in this case). But, that's a habit he's not likely to change soon. When I saw him, he looked much thinner (he was originally pretty lean). I asked him why. He reminded me how he got the chickenpox a month ago or thereabouts. That was kind of funny, to think that he had never gotten chickenpox before, and hasn't been vaccinated, and then got it in college.

So we had lunch at a noodle place. It was good. We only had about half an hour to talk and catch up, since he overslept. But that was still good. He's staying in town for the summer, and I'm almost certainly staying for about 2 months over the spring/summer. Before he went to class, he told me that if I were doing something (concerning the gym/running/whatever) that I should call him. That's pretty cool, it'd be a good way to hang out.

Lastly here, though rather unrelated, I saw my RA (resident adviser) from my freshman year. He's a med student here at the university. I had a mini-crush of sorts on him. He has such a great body. And he's so smart. He just has very piercing eyes, and a mind that's equally piercing. All the same, he's a pretty good guy. Eccentric too though - wears an emo/goth-like attire, but detests both such groups . . . yeah.

Anyway, enough randomness. I'm done. ^_^

The Written Words

I get these . . . moments of epiphany, I guess. All of a sudden I'm hit by a profoundness in something and my mind dwells on it for hours, or even days. It can be the simplest thing, or it might be something entirely esoteric.

A couple days ago I read a very short selection of the I Ching (or The Book of Changes) for one of my classes. And as the professor lectured on the profoundness of this text - of how it was the "first crystallization of the Chinese mind," I was struck with a certain nostalgia. Listening to him recount the ways in which this text has influenced Chinese culture for millennia, and listening to him discuss how the Chinese world-view was so radically different from the West, there was the feeling of a kind of connectedness.

It's the kind of feeling that almost whispers, "This is a part of me, and has been ever since before I was born." That I can hold even but a sample of a version of this text, and even though it has been translated and commented on and edited, it's still the work of my ancestors. And their voices were calling out through the words of my professor.

Sounds strange, doesn't it? But perhaps not so strange. I felt something eerily similar when I last read Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War. Through reading that text, discussion on the readings, and the words of the professor, I could almost hear his warning to Western, and perhaps all, societies.

The voices of the past have only ever been maintained in their most pure form in writing and texts; and by "pure" I mean relatively unchanged. For but a fleeting moment - a second, a few minutes - I could almost hear them. I think I'm really going to like this class. We'll be reading selections (if not the entire works) of books and texts that I have always wanted to, but probably wouldn't have been able to, if not for a course on them.

---TANGENT---
This is completely unrelated to any of the above.

So, 2 nights ago, my roommate tried to invalidate chemistry to me, saying it was useless. He stated that if one took enough physics (and math) courses, and knew the concepts underlying everything, the entire chemistry major is irrelevant. Then he almost tried (again) to extend that to biology. He also does this to my poli-sci and other social science friends.

It astounds me how he see no value in almost anything beyond his own majors of physics and math. He once told me that biology hasn't given us (human society) anything useful, and that physics (and math) has given us all these wonderful things. Umm . . . okay then. I still think math is but a tool to be used by other disciplines.

Here's what I think of him:
Original link: http://xkcd.com/356/

::drop kicks roommate:: Sigh.
---END TANGENT---

Mask of Faith

I was not raised in a religious house, and the closest thing to religion was to live according to a rather Asian philosophy - to be concerned about this life and living a "good life" and how to achieve that life. The key was always education, as that opened the doors to everything and my parents have emphasized that like no other.

This is not to say that religion is foreign to me. My cello teacher was Lutheran, and we had recitals and concerts at the churches she belonged to. I also played for her church a few times for their Sunday morning service. When I went to Hong Kong in 5th grade, my mom and one of my brothers (and I) went to the grave of some family member I didn't know and prayed/paid our respects in the Chinese-Buddhist (not to be confused with Indian Buddhism) way. We also went to a monastery place in Hong Kong, and that was actually really cool. In my second semester at the university I'm attending, I had a class where we had to read parts of the Bible (as a piece of literature, not as a religious text) - that produced some very . . . interesting conversations between the Christians and the Jews in my discussion (I never want to experience that again). And towards the end of that class, I attended a Catholic mass with a devout Catholic friend of mine. I was amused that they read a passage from Matthew that I had to read for my class a few days prior. I also have some Jewish friends and celebrated a few Jewish holidays with them (mostly out of curiosity).

In all of those instances, the closest thing I've felt to God or anything Divine was in the monastery place. I've never really liked to discuss my beliefs and the topic of religion, as there's a lot of closed-mindedness there. But under this "Mask of Faith," suffice to say I don't belong to any one religion or world philosophy, but I have developed my own beliefs. And where did I find my beliefs? In my major - biology. It's interesting how many people either see science as an antithesis to religion or otherwise a way to disprove religion, but I disagree. I am more in concordance with Einstein and his beliefs on science and God.

There's also a line from Dan Brown's book Angels & Demons that I particularly liked (it's actually on my facebook profile). The line goes: "Science tells me God must exist. My mind tells me I will never understand God. And my heart tells me I am not meant to." It's such an elegant quote, so simple and true (for me).

So then, where do I "find God?" Or rather, as I'll call it, "the Divine." I'd have to say, in a leaf. Has anyone actually taken the time to look at a leaf, I mean, really look at it? (I'm talking about an archetypal leaf.) To notice how the top side is often darker than the underside, how there are veins running through it like veins under your skin, to see the patterns making up each leaf and iterated to all leaves of the same tree/plant. To see a world of complexity in something so "simple" as a leaf. And with some knowledge of how a leaf works - how chlorophyll works with a single atom of magnesium that literally resonates when struck by electrons that're powered by photons of light, like sound waves of an instrument, how photosynthesis turns carbon dioxide into oxygen and creates starch - how can one NOT be impressed by something so simple containing such complex mechanisms? And that's barely scratching the surface.

Here then, is a leaf. A massive collection of atoms and molecules that somehow knows what to do, something composed of non-living particles that acts with so much life. In the same sense, the regulation of DNA is equally amazing. How DNA fixes and prevents errors and mutations so effectively, is something to be awed. Even something like evolution provides such a simple yet complex explanation. I believe that it was Einstein who said something like "Science is the mind of God." And I believe it truly is, and we're just unlocking that mind.

So then, what might the sum of my beliefs be? That everything is connected in an endless cycle of birth, growth, death, and recycling. That life, consciousness, after-life, whatnot, is also a part of that endless cycle. Do I believe in reincarnation? Maybe, I don't know. But I believe everything has a reason, a meaning, a purpose - though it might be beyond human comprehension. I believe that everything is simple, and everything is, at the same time, complex (think of the leaf).

Again, there is a quote that sums this all up fairly well. It's from the movie Latter Days (a decent movie), and it goes: "When I was a little kid, I used to put my face right up to them [the Sunday comics] . . . and I was just amazed because, it was just this mass of dots. I think life is like that, sometimes. But, I like to think that from God's perspective, life, everything, and even this, makes sense. It's not just dots; and instead we're all connected. And it's beautiful, and it's funny, and it's good. From this close we can't expect it to make sense, right now."

There is so much more that I could say, but they're not coming to mind at the moment. Perhaps I'll leave it at this, for now. It seems like a decent start. I'd also like to say that perhaps "God" is not what we think, and all the religions and beliefs of the world are merely "manifestations and ways" for the Divine to reach people. If there is "one true religion," then honestly, why do all the other ones exist?