His name is Fred.
Fred likes to play,
When it's very late.
Whenever I see Fred,
I scream and I fret;
Poor poor little Fred,
Around the corner, he fled.
Little does Fred know,
This is hardly the show.
For the Exterminator comes tomorrow,
To bring Fred lots of sorrow.
So eat up, Fred,
The crumbs, the chocolates, and the bread.
Tomorrow your neck belongs to Ed.
A quick "snap!" and Fred is dead.
MY GOD, it's July already? What happened to the month of June?? *sob sob* I only finished a few items on my June To Do List, now my July To Do List is looking twice as big - UGH!!!
I attended my first Masala Bhangra class today at the New York Sports Club, taught by Sarina Jain, who created the workout. Hmm, I think she looks a bit different from these videos? It was a great class, a very good workout. Typically most NYSC classes are 55 minutes, but this one was only 45 minutes. Yeah, I thought I could handle this one. Well, I almost DIED at the 30 minute mark. Yes I persevered to the end, but I was looking at the gym clock so frequently I really thought the clock was broken because it just wasn't moving! I guess I will give it another try next week, ha ha:) Most people in the class know the routine pretty well, so it's going to take a while for me to catch on.
- Turned down four party invitations for this past weekend. I already went out on Friday night with a friend whom I haven't seen for months, so can't go out Saturday and Sunday again.
- What the hell?? The sun comes out and all of a sudden everybody wants to party? There is no sympathy for the swamped *sigh*.
- More parties this week. Mandatory attendance for two of them:
- Wednesday going on a cruise around Manhattan, already paid for it and invited guests so can't flake out.
- Saturday office picnic - department funder is going to show so need to start preparing small talk material. Com'on I'm totally worth my paycheck!
- Saw the American Ballet Theatre production of "Sleeping Beauty" at the Metropolitan Opera House last week.
- TOTAL DISASTER!! Of course Gillian Murphy is still the best, but there should be a law against bad choreography.
- Finally finished "Bush at War" by Bob Woodward. Must blog about it on VOX.
- Poor Colin Powell, he never had a chance. How can rationality prevail when the president trusts his own "gut instincts" (aka "truthiness" ala Steven Colbert) more than reason?
- I beat God of War on PlayStation2! Yay!! Even with a glitch at the end, I still prevailed. I am now the new God of War!!
- No wonder the gaming industry has a hard time breaking into female consumership - Kratos (the protagonist) is really ugly. If it weren't for the cool Greek mythology sceneries I would totally ditch this game based on his looks.
- My first sole author manuscript got rejected by the journal *sob sob*...
- It was a really prestigious journal, and it was a special issue, so I was glad that they even decided to send it out for peer review. Got some helpful comments back, totaling 11 pages - pretty rare for reviewers to write this much. So ultimately it turned out well, will work on revising the paper and send it out to another journal.
- Finished entering all my dissertation references into EndNote - 385 thus far. Now I just need to finish READING all of them... damn it.
I was tagged by semblance's book meme, so here it goes, my response to the challenge:
(Wait, I think I'm suppose to tag five more - Lorelei, legal beagle, Chayenne, lemon, and mo!)
Total number of books owned: >500
(Including books in Chinese and a small comic book collection from Taiwan and Japan.)
I also have over 100 books checked out from the library. Thank GOD for semester loans and three-year automatic renewals. I wonder what it says about your research when you have a library book for three years and nobody ever missed it... hmmm... Most books are now available online from ebrary or ebooks, so I tend not to buy books as much any more. Plus moving and storing books is such a pain.
Last book bought: 中國農民調查, by 陳桂棣 and 吳春桃.
The last book in English I bought is: The Identity Theft Protection Guide, by Amanda Welsh, PhD
Even though the book is about China, this edition is in complex characters because I was only able to find it in Taiwan. It is banned in China, so a little harder to find. The English edition is titled: Will the Boat Sink the Water? The Life of China's Peasants.
A friend of mine recently had his bank account cleaned out. He wasn't sure if it was identity theft, bank error, the IRS, or what, but it was quite a scare. Given these times and how easy personal information can be found on the internet, I thought I'd better begin safeguarding my identity as well. Even a little is better than being a sitting duck.
Last book read: Bush at War, by Bob Woodward
My summer reading list begins with the three Bush-era books by Bob Woodward: Bush at War, Plan of Attack, and State of Denial, and finishes with George Tenet's At the Center of the Storm. Besides the political intrigue, I feel it's an American citizen's duty to know what the administration did and what our hard earned tax dollars went toward, at the expense of domestic needs. Not to mention these are the events that set the stage for a new global history.
Five books that mean a lot to you:
- The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein. One of the first books I read in ESL, the English as a Second Language class in elementary school when my family and I first moved to the US. I hate this book with a vengeance, having never been satisfied with any interpretations.
- The Stories of the Sahara, by Sanmao. Autobiographical account of the author's life living in the Sahara desert - her encounters with local cultures, her crazy adventures, and married life. This book is funny, adventurous, romantic, and oddly empowering.
- Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck. Ahhh, the best laid schemes o' mice and men...
- Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda. Exploring dichotomies of finitude versus infinitude.
- Development as Freedom, by Amartya Sen. Works of Sachs and Stiglitz on poverty and development may have more mass-appeal, but Sen is the true blend of history, vision, and humanitarianism. Not bounded by the hegemonic economic discourse but authoritative in the discipline, he provides readers with an ideology, the visionary backbone to a real understanding and critique of economic development.
It's the summer in New York City, so it's that time again when the American Ballet Theatre performs popular productions at the Metropolitan Opera House. Last year I saw Giselle, Manon, and Sylvia with Gillian Murphy, one of my favorites. This year the ones I want to attend are: La Bayadere, Sleeping Beauty, and maybe Cinderella or Swan Lake (w/ Murphy again).
This last saturday I saw La Bayadere with Diana Vishneva and Ethan Stiefel at the lead. It was a great production, lavish sets and costumes, grand choreography, and great performances by the cast. What Gillian Murphy holds in technical prowess, Diana Vishneva has in expressive lyricism. Vishneva is definitely one of the most expressive ballerinas I've ever seen. Last year she did a great job with Manon as well. With Ethan Stiefel, they make a great pair for these ballet tragedies. It's surprising how many ballets there are where the heroine dies in the first act. I always get a bit nervous when Ethan Stiefel does these ballerina lifts and twirls, but since Vishneva is so tiny, they actually look great together.
I seldom attend the more avant-garde performances during the year, since I don't really consider myself a ballet connoisseur. These more *mass market* performances, however, are so great for entertainment on the hot summer afternoons.
New York City seems to have two of everything - opera troupes, baseball teams, and two ballet theatres as well, and both are world class. Besides the ABT, there is also the New York City Ballet, which does wonderful performances.
One of my biggest goals in life is to: Wash my car in my private driveway while looking fab in a bikini.
To do that, I need to:
- Have a car
- Have a driveway
- Have a bikini
- Look fabulous in a bikini
The reason most people cannot stay thin after they diet is the same reason why most thin people cannot stay obese after weight-gain. You must STAY in permanent starvation mode to keep the weight off, or else it will come back with a vengence. Do I have the will power to overcome the basic primal urges to satiate hunger? The most fundamental of survival instincts?? Do I??? I think I"m doomed....
The New York Times has an obsession with sex. Not hot, erotic, passionate sex. Rather, animal sex. Survival of the species sex. First they wrote about caretakers in the China Panda Sanctuary showing pandas in the zoo "panda porn" to teach them how to mate, then it was the evolution of duck genitalia, complete with graphic descriptions of the duck penis. Today, it was about poor Lonesome George, the bachelor tortoise living single since 1971 on the Galápagos Islands, possibly the last male of his species.
But what does this have to do with grad school?
First, there has to be a grad student who devotes her life to the duck phallus. A person who has watched countless duck copulations and knows duck sex inside and out. That would be behavioral ecologist and post doctoral researcher Patricia Brennan. Yes, yes, her work has made serious contributions to the field of evolutionary biology, but a career path as an expert in duck penises? Well, I guess they do say that specialization is the only path to success in academia.
Then there is Lonesome George's Girlfriend '93. The poor graduate student from Switzerland named Sveva Grigoini who masterbated Lonesome George many times in order to examine and document his virility. According to the article, she has had better luck with other male tortoises. I wonder how Lonesome George felt about that. But who cares about Lonesome George? THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE TO DO TO GET THE DAMN PHD!!! Always the silent researcher who does all the dirty work and gets no credit. Sveva I hope you at least graduated!
