Spring

It dawned on me yesterday that between mid-March and mid-April I have a lot of shit going on:

1. 15-page paper due for English (race and visual imagery)
2. 15-page paper due for History (comparative colonialisms)... don't even have a topic yet
3. 15-page conference paper for the Assoc. of Asian American Studies (haven't started it)
4. Pack up all my shit, clean the apartment, book a moving van
5. Move to a new apartment, and unpack all my shit
6. Get utilities and Internet set up at the new place
7. Finalize my reading lists for qualifying exams
8. Write and submit my program of study (due last quarter)
9. Present my paper at the Assoc. of Asian Am Studies in Chicago
10. Organize a dinner with my Asian Am conference buddies at the conference

I pretty much don't get to stop and breathe until April 19th when I get back from Chicago. Speaking of which I need to book my flight. Robyn, we should coordinate...how many nights you plan to stay, which airport you flying into, and when?

psychology

I was sitting here at Suzzalo Espresso reading Landscapes of the Jihad for my history class when an older white woman came up to me holding a file folder full of papers. I thought she was going to ask if she could sit at my table. Instead she asked, "do you speak English?" Given a different context, time, place, state of mind, I might have unleashed my fury on her, verbally of course. I had a flashback of the time a white woman at McDonald's in Orlando asked if I was part of the Splendid China circus performance she just saw because, you know, all Asian women do acrobatics and spin plates on their heads.

Anyways, I replied only with "yes." She asked if I could do a 5 minute psychology study and out of curiosity I agreed. Knowing that these tests always involve tricking participants I wanted to see what this was about. The task involved coming up with as many words as possible out of 6 letters. I filled the whole page. Then came the survey and it was about feeling American and wanting to be American and my level of anger at the beginning of the task. The debrief at the end explained it all. It was a study of Asian Americans and confusion/anger about not being accepted or thought of as "American." Cool. I wonder how they record reactions of people who refuse or comment on the "do you speak English" introduction and how that factors. Actually it probably doesn't since it's a social science study and all this stuff probably falls by the wayside. But I do also wonder if they use the same research assistant to collect participants and if they're all white and female and older. You would have to control for that I'd imagine. Man I'd hate to be that research assistant walking around the campus of an English-speaking American university asking Asian American students if they speak English. Basically getting paid to be an asshole. Sucks to be her. But it's cool that someone is doing that study.

allergies

Most people know I'm allergic to all sorts of shit and the sunny weather lately has caused me to wake up really congested which means I get to make gigantic snot and tissue wontons every morning. I was just reading my university's daily newspaper and there was an ad for some company that collects plasma from people with various issues, like allergies, so they can use it for research in developing new drugs. I haven't quite thought through the ethics of all this but they give you a hundred bucks for the donation and some sort of screening and it'd be nice to figure out for sure if I'm allergic to bees without doing the allergy test through my school's medical center which I'm sure will cost me money I don't have. Anyways, I was browsing the whopping 2 pages of that company's web site and found something I had read about before. The relationship of certain ragweed and pollen allergies to fruit allergies. They write:

Some people with ragweed allergies may have a "cross- reaction" to melons such as watermelon, cantaloupe, or honeydew.
Some people with tree pollen allergies might have a "cross- reaction" to fruits like cherries, apples, pears and peaches.

Go figure. I'm allergic to cantaloupe, honeydew, cherries, apples, pears AND peaches. The only thing on that list that I'm not allergic to is watermelon which I find too tasteless and messy to be bothered with. So should I whore out some blood for a hundred bucks or what?

moving

Well that was quick. I was just notified that I was the applicant chosen to get the 1 bedroom I looked at on the weekend. Here are the specs:

2 Story, 1 Bedroom, 1 Bath, 650 Square Ft.
- Rent $710, Deposit $600, 12-month Lease
- View, Quiet, Sunny
- Seattle U is just across the street
- Hospital in walking distance
- Shopping nearby
- Secure Entrance
- Water, sewage, garbage included, just pay electricity
- One free parking spot

Most small studios in the First Hill/Capitol Hill area are going for about that price and without parking. The one I saw last week was cheaper but it was 200 square feet (that is not a typo) which is unlivable in my opinion. This one gives me some room to stretch out since the living area is big and the bedroom is upstairs. Task completed successfully without missing a beat at school. I am a Craigslist superstar. What's scary is that this will be the 9th home I've lived in since October 2000, so I'm averaging more than 1 move per year.

Let me recall the homes:
1. Pacifica/Daly City, CA
2. South San Francisco
3. couch surfing in Potrero Hill in San Fran
4. South San Jose
5. Schooner Bay Apartment in Foster City, CA
6. Miramar Apartment in Foster City, CA
7. The Admiralty in Foster City, CA
8. My current place in the Lake Shitty area of Seattle
9. My apartment in First Hill/Capitol Hill as of April this year.

Oh yeah, this weekend was also my birthday but I'll post about that later. Man, too much going on. I need a vacation that doesn't require planning, thinking, coordinating, scheduling, reading or writing.

sun?

What the hell is that bright thing in the sky? I don't recognize it. Check this out. A sunny weekend in Seattle in the winter. Holy shit, I can't wait.

Weather for Seattle, WA

Clear
Wind: N at 0 mph
Humidity: 76%

Fri

50°F | 38°F

Sat

52°F | 36°F

chchchanges

Another month another adventure. The last one involved putting chains on my tires in a sudden snow storm, the one before that involved pumping several inches of water out of the floor of my car, and before that the busted radiator... at night... on the side of the I-5... in Bellingham...alone. Luckily this adventure does not involve my car. My roommate D has decided to move to Maui to join his folks... in two weeks. Luckily I'll have until the end of March to get re-situated. So the plan is to move to Capitol Hill as we had planned originally, only I'll be looking for a studio, or if I find a very very suitable match, sharing a 2/2. I think I need to push for the studio though as qualifying exams are coming up this Fall which means I need to be reading piles of books and articles starting Spring and for me reading requires silence or at most, soft music with no words (or at least not in a language I understand). Ack I have more to say but I have to finish reading a book tonight to stay on schedule.

weekend

Dictionary.com's 3rd definition of weekend is "any two-day period taken or given regularly as a weekly rest period from one's work." However, I usually use the term like this, "I can't wait to catch up on my reading and papers on the weekend" which means that I'm not actually resting during that two-day period.

In fact, the only time I actually devote to not doing reading/writing/grading or other schoolwork is late Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings after I spend about 5-8 hours during each of those days on school work. During that time (daytime Saturdays and Sundays) K usually manages to do a 2-3 hour ride on his bike, have a long shower, take a nap, buy groceries, clean his house, and do chores. When he is done doing all that, I'm usually still sitting in the same chair in front of my laptop pulling out my hair and cussing.

I'm typically too fried to use my brain after 7pm on weekends but sometimes I have to do that too. Weeknights look like this: Get home from school at 8pm, make dinner, eat dinner, clean up, do homework (and simultaneously do laundry) until bedtime at midnight.

I think that if you actually count the number of hours that Ph.D. students spend at school or on schoolwork per week, it would easily rival the hours spent at work by software programmers and i-bankers...but they make a tonne of money and we're broke. So I ask myself once again. Why the fuck am I doing this?

-------

Having said all that I do have to share the non-school related stuff I got to do this weekend which was unusually busy with non-school related shit. Friday night had take-out sushi for dinner, returned some stuff downtown, and watched Flannel Pajamas. The movie was kind of plotless. It was like being a fly on the wall watching a relationship begin and end over a 4 year period of time. It was touching and realistic but sort of boring. Saturday, homework day as usual except for a 2 hour break where I tagged along to a caucus to see American politics at work. I was shocked by how antiquated, confusing and disorganized this whole caucus system is. Later that night, dinner at K's friend's house where I got to play with two awesomely fun dogs. Sunday was a break from homework but it was a long busy day consisting of a course on how to use my digital SLR camera which ran from 8am to 5pm followed by a 3.5 hour dinner show at Teatro Zinzanni (K's Christmas gift for me). Show was a pretty awesome combination of musical theater, comedy, and circus acrobatics and a delicious 5-course meal.

publishing

So the biggest pressure as a Ph.D. student aside from getting as many conference presentations under my belt as I can is to publish. I have nightmares about this. Currently I have zero publications. I have two papers under review, one of which has been held hostage by the editors for over a year. I've also got some entries I wrote for an encyclopedia which is way behind schedule but encyclopedia entries count for almost nothing in the wonderful world of academia. Publishing is a difficult process because you can only submit a manuscript to one journal at a time and the review process takes forever. If you escape that immediate rejection, you often get a "revise and resubmit" letter which means a whole lot of work on the manuscript but even that would be a huge success for me at this point in my career. I am watching a recent discussion take place over an academic listserv about open access publishing which is an interesting concept that I sort of didn't understand because I thought the point of peer review was to ensure that what gets published is solid work. But then I read this part of one of the emails:

The most successful scholars in any discipline form a group who all know each
others' work, monopolize editorial board positions, and tend to inflate
the value of each other's work and that of each other's students such that
papers by those outside the group are denied publication much more than
consideration of quality warrant.

Great. It's the who you know, not what you know problem all over again. Should I spend more time reading and developing insightful arguments and theories, or making friends at the top? I pose that question with tongue in cheek but honestly, I'm going to have to accept the fact that there will be politics everywhere I go and it's unlikely that I'll ever benefit from any of it.

huh?

As a Canadian I totally do not understand this caucus/vote/delegate business. I especially don't understand the caucus thing but I'm going to go to one on Saturday with K, who as a good citizen, is skipping his team ride to attend. Yay for him because I have no tolerance for political apathy.

Here is some info from my colleague who has discovered that many people in our program, even with 6-10 years of university education, are confused by this ridiculous and inefficient process. I thought it would be useful to share for you Washingtonians:

You can vote in BOTH the caucus and primary as long as you vote in the SAME party. For the Republicans, both votes will count for selecting delegates. For the Democrats, ONLY the caucus vote will count. It probably wouldn't hurt to mail in your ballot anyway as a symbolic or reinforcing gesture, but at least as things stand now, it won't count. If you don't believe me (and you shouldn't because this whole thing is so convoluted that it doesn't really seem logical that it could actually be the case), do your own fact-finding. If PhD students are having problems (and I include myself here) getting the correct information about how the process works, I imagine there might be some general voter confusion.

Start here: http://www.wa-democrats.org/index.php?page=display&id=266
and here: http://www.secstate.wa.gov/elections/2008/WAsCaucusesandPrimaries.pdf

chains

K's company hosted its annual Whistler trip this weekend which was good fun once we got there. The getting there part was far more challenging than I expected. We got to Squamish fast enough and thanks to my lead foot we were well on our way to getting there in the expected 2 hours from Vancouver when all of a sudden it started to snow and that snow stuck. It must've only snowed for about 20 minutes but in that time my car decided to lose traction so I pulled over and K had to figure out how to put on the chains we'd borrowed from his coworker. Luckily another driver was just finishing up putting on his chains and gave him some tips but it's never an easy process and I don't think K really cared to pick up this new skill. With chains on, we were on the road again for a mile or two. We got within a few hundred meters of the Welcome to Whistler sign when the cars just beyond the sign got into a collision, then the tow truck that went to help became part of the collision. Which meant all of us behind them were stuck there for over an hour as they untangled the mess. Total drive time 4 hours. Man was the trip up ever a test of patience and ability to not drive each other crazy. Totally felt like the Amazing Race but we managed to make it unscathed and relationship still in tact.

Once we got there, it was Whistler so it was worth it. The snow was awesome, it was clear and sunny the next day, and I got to eat a beaver tail with sugar, cinnamon and apples. I even got K linking turns on his 2nd time snow boarding. The biggest hurdle on the slopes for him was that wretched heel side to toe side turn which he described as "really freaky." For me, I learned how to navigate trees efficiently without having to dig myself out of too many tree wells or making any face-to-tree contact.

In comparison, that time it took 7 hours to get back from Tahoe to the Bay Area, totally not worth it.

survival

A few weeks ago a student at my school was moving her car when a man attacked her with a hammer. Yeah, a hammer. That's two random violent attacks since new years on women in neighourhoods I spend a lot of time in. The other attack was in Capitol Hill where a paranoid schizophrenic who should have been institutionalized stabbed a woman to death. Anyways, this UW student is going to survive, which is miraculous, but her attacker is still at large. What's crazier about this story than the fact that it happened at all is that she is a refugee from Rwanda who already lost her entire family and then came here, lived in foster care, and is now getting a 3.5 GPA in engineering. There are several groups raising money to help pay her medical bills but this story was one that really stood out for me.

You can help too. Contribute at any Wells Fargo Bank branch. Ask for the Pink Blanket Fund for the assaulted UW student.

disappearance

And this is why Beijing should not be allowed to host the Olympics. In supporting the Beijing Olympics, the world is complicit in their human rights abuses because we're watching as they sweep their shit under the rug and not doing a damned thing. Tiananmen Square was really not that long ago. That tragedy should be etched in our collective memories. And still today nothing has changed. When people dissent, the government makes them "disappear" literally. It's so outrageously fucked up. Oh and don't forget they fucked Tibet too. And you know what, those dissidents in China won't be able to read this because that great firewall of China blocks all blogger content. What the fuck are my people doing?

Hu Jia, my thoughts are with you (even if you can't read this) ...

Some more reading for those interested (and you should be):

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Prince-accused-of-straying-into.3719179.jp
http://current.com/items/88812990_tibetans_to_protest_beijing_olympics
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/13/asia/letter.1-113324.php
http://cbs2.com/local/Rose.Parade.Pasadena.2.619933.html

Australia

They finally dethroned that racist old man who served as PM of Australia. This official apology to the aborigines would not be happening otherwise. While it will never mend the damage done, I hope they follow up with programs and financial support to help their native people. They really fucked them over even more so, in my humble opinion, than Canada screwed our First Nations people not that these things should really be quantified but they were still denying it just 8 years ago for Christ's sake.

career

I've been stuffing envelopes (and playing Scrabulous) the last hour or so. The admin gig (along with my job as a research assistant) is a half time assignment I got in lieu of teaching this quarter. So here I am folding paper and running envelopes over this white ceramic thing that wets the gum on the envelope and I can't say that I'm in any way stressed out. In fact the repetition is almost calming. Every other job I have had, including teaching, has had me doing a million things at once, and every one of those things required thinking, problem-solving, decision-making and interacting with other people. To be honest, that kind of thing keeps me sharp but it also burns me out really fast. I've had this sort of dilemma before and I see two basic career paths that people generally follow:

1. Take a job that is challenging but fulfilling. Work will be hard and long but meaningful.

2. Take a job that is easy, pays the bills, and leaves you plenty of leisure time to do the things you really want to do.

I've never been able to choose #2 because I usually can't stand to spend even 7 hours a day on something that is meaningless to me. Actually when I worked in the tech industry I spent more like 10-12 hours a day on really hard work that was meaningless to me...but I made about $10K more 7 years ago than I will as an assistant prof for a public teaching university in 3 years.

But as I sit here and stuff envelopes I wonder if it isn't such a bad thing to do really mindless work that pays the bills (barely) but doesn't leave me exhausted, stressed out, and worried. And why the hell can't I ever settle for something in between? I'm actually working toward lower pay and greater workload...

But I have to say that every moment I spend reading and writing, no matter how hard it is at 1 in the morning or after working for many consecutive hours, is valuable to me because I'm learning something new or thinking about something in a different way. I guess I have to remind myself of that. Or win the lottery.

snow

Less than an inch of snow overnight and the whole city freaks out. My bus came 20 minutes late and it wasn't the usually extra long accordion bus. Needless to say it was packed full of people. The scary part came when the bus driver asked everyone to stand above the bus' rear wheels to give us more traction to get up the hill. That was scary because not making it up the hill means dragging my ass on foot up a slippery hill and that would suck tremendously.

It needs to not snow this week anymore so I can get up to Whistler where snow belongs.

match

I think this match.com FB application is going to really take off.

games

So last week when I went up to get bubble tea in the U District with K, it dawned on me that not everyone in the whole wide world knows how to play Big 2 (or choy die dee in Cantonese). Every 1st to 2nd generation Asian (or at least Chinese) kid in Canada who had other Asian friends (as I did but only after entering university) seems to know how to play but alas that is a rather narrow demographic. I guess that means that D's tattoo of the 2 of spades is a big mystery for a lot of people. So anyways I taught my Sacramento-raised hapa bf to play. It took about 10 minutes. I forget how easy that game is to learn. Now I'm on to Scrabulous which I hear is in trouble from the makers of Scrabble. Those dummies. They have no idea how I'm sure this online game has rekindled fond memories of playing Scrabble. And I will bet that many people have gotten hooked again and bought a Scrabble set for home. Ohhh now I'm itching for some Texas Hold 'Em. That is one game I refuse to play online or I'll never finish school.

townhouse

D and I are gonna check out an open house for a one-year-old place near Seattle U this Saturday. It's pretty much perfect except it could use another parking spot, another 1/2 bath and a reduction in rent by about $200. So I've decided to pimp out D by having him flirt relentlessly with the agent/landlord whom we already know is an Asian woman about our age. We'll see how this goes. Turn on that boyish charm D, this girl needs to move out of our shitty ass neighbourhood.

Oh and I don't remember if I mentioned that there is a Volvo still abandoned on our street after the big flood. That car must've had about a foot of water in it. There is now a notice from the city on the windshield. I took a look inside and it looks like a science experiment now. Mold growing all over the seats. Can't wait for them to tow that piece of shit.

commodities

"Same shit, different colour." I just figured out that Dania Furniture = Scandinavian Designs. Crate and Barrel is also pretty good at making expensive shit that looks good but really sort of sucks. Their furniture doesn't piece together properly as K and I found out when putting together his $550 bed. Hinges don't meet up with hinges they way they do in the instructions.

So for you snobs who think that any one of those stores sells furniture that is superior to IKEA's, you're wrong. Just because they have a fancy showroom and fancy/snooty sales staff and flashy catalog and higher prices does not mean you're getting a better product. You're still getting particle board pieces that you put together yourself, shit that falls apart, and couches that go flat. They probably even come from the same factories in China for all we know. So those of you who like to say things like "I don't shop at IKEA, I only buy my stuff from Dania/Scandinavian Designs/Crate and Barrel" can shove it. Funny how this week's English seminar dealt with commodity fetishism. Damn straight Walter Benjamin.

Oh and one of my favourite couches to sit/nap on is K's awesome super comfortable window sofa which came from Costco. So there.

Dania II

Dania Furniture just called in response to my letter and has ordered me a new futon. The same one. Perhaps mine is defective but honestly it looks to me like the design is just flawed. Oh well, a new defective futon is better than an old defective futon. Dania has narrowly escaped making it on my "bad company" list.