愛戀十年

君傳來一則簡訊：「強辯十週年 01Jan2009 @河岸留言 西門紅樓展演館」。
強辯不是天團，但他們曾是我菁華歲月裡的點綴，標記著我跟青攸君欣星追地下樂團的那些夜晚。
我們也追小劇團、追舞團。追逐時候的夥伴到現在都還是我的夥伴，創造共同的回憶讓我們很有向心力的繼續互通消息，繼續一起出遊追逐著創造共同回憶的機會。

可是回憶有時是很累的東西，尤其是愛戀的回憶。
十年了，一路走來，總覺得愛戀是漂泊的，即使在最幸福的當時看了電影「心動」居然立刻大哭的謾罵為什麼命運要讓年輕的我體驗完美的愛情，唉，相見恨早相見恨早啊。我說，我們注定要分離，因為我們太年輕。
「你是她第一個男友喔？肯定分啦。」我一直記得第一個男友的室友的這句話。真愛果然不存在我和他之間。後來，遇到真愛，我沒有選擇留下，飛走了，心動的散場淚沒有白哭。相見恨早。

完美的愛情在最漂泊的歲月裡昇華成夢想裡的神話，每每不如意，就偽縮在夢境裡幻想著甜蜜，就躲藏在小小的駕駛座裡落著淚鼓勵著自己：我在長大，我會變老，老了漂泊就會停止，一切有可能有意義。時間總是會告訴人意義在哪裡，自己當起自己的歷史學家，後設的定義著緣分，哪些人是貴人、過客還是冤家，哪一件事取決於哪一個人物，哪一個時間點的衝動停止了徘徊卻也阻斷了可能。意義，自我說服了就算。時間若是告訴我這一切沒有意義，我也要承受住，因為我已經愛過了，愛過了，過了。那我就繼續漂泊吧， 接受「漂泊不是過程而是目的」的想法。
才發現我有多恨漂泊。
我是一座島，朋友漂進來漂出去，情人來來去去，主流文化和次文化衝擊著，硬學 科和人文科學激盪著。中文退步了，英文成了主要語言，歐美不再是刻板的標籤，被細分成英法德義、美國人分成受過高等教育的、莫名奇妙迷信的、不同地方腔調 的、十足保守的和開明的。這個世界也不再是地球儀上的幾何，朋友來自各地，千百種口音的英文跟我訴說著漂泊的美好，他們樂見我這個島，萍水相逢喝一杯酒跳一支舞學一句中文，而我默默的期待著神話裡的愛情。我仍然夢見那些年的美好，想要大喊慾望城市最後一集裡 Carrie 聲嘶力竭分手的理由。
聲嘶力竭。聲。嘶。力。竭。
那一段費力的愛，得到的回報是費力的不去愛，心狠狠的碎過一遍之後，更討厭拔剌的情歌。真愛又如何？太痛了，自虐狂才要再重來一次。

"Do you often worry about the past?" 我第一次問病人這一道題的時候，總覺得這題目出得沒有意義，過去有啥好擔心。問了十幾個病人同一道題之後，才發現我自己的答案是憂鬱的，回憶是個負擔，好的壞的都是負擔。愛上一個人一點也不輕鬆，尤其是強烈情感加持下的回憶永遠不會抹去，既然不會抹去，將來就會成為莫名的負擔：完美的那一段愛情成為神話， 心痛的那一段愛情成為地獄，兩個極端的拉扯，我似乎瀟灑的試試看這個人那個人，好像是在尋找漂泊的目的，卻是在履行的漂泊的行為，矛盾的一個人往前走不停不看不聽，最後只好定下目標：先定居下來再說。

無奈啊，活著因為有希望，希望著什麼呢？已經愛過了，也試過心痛的滋味，還有什麼可以期待的？然後忍不住在記憶裡找答案，越找越陷在回憶裡，越不明白愛過痛過的目的是什麼，越盼望著自己快點老去，古老的靈魂情願活在年老的身軀裡。

於是十年過去了，距離那第一次的心動已經十年了。
然後你問我的感想。我說沒有恨晚也不恨早，相信這是時機剛好的緣分。可又來了一場淚，愛哭鬼老了還是愛哭。

我願
你是我最後一個愛上的人
不再漂泊的是我

beautiful taiwan

I love Taiwan, not in a way how a politician claims his patriotism, but in a way how a Taiwan-born Taipei-er who now lives in the US expresses her pure love to her mother land.

In June 2007, I visited Taroko.

太魯閣 TAROKO

In December 2008, I went to the Sun Moon Lake

日月潭 Sun Moon Lake

... and Sitou.

溪頭 Sitou

Welcome to click on these pictures to see their series and imagine how awesome my trips were.
Now they are not simply existing in my childhood memory but also refreshed in my adulthood.

be merry

Superstar fixed my coat.
I don't know how people learn this kind of things. Time is the factor. Where do they get all the time for making a meal, sewing up a button, planning a surprise party, or shopping during this crazy shopping season? Is it true that I have 24 hours a day but others have 36? So not fair.

Let's talk about them one by one. First, make a meal.
One night, Superstar decided to cook. If you ever came to my place, you would imagine how clean my refrigerator was. It preserves air, basically, in case I need fresh air for abrupt panic attacks. You know, I like to be prepared for my health condition.
Therefore, in order to cook, ingredients were needed. I was like... oh no.... that would take a long time to get everything. So how about pasta? Get noodles and a jar of sauce?
Superstar: sauce? I never bought prepared sauce.
I was literally in shock and thought I met another Italian. Immediately I had a deja vu of the 30-min public scolding, led by the second-generation Italian research center director, on how unbelievable it is that I do not cook. The director even made noodles in his house.
Pei: how did you make pasta?
Superstar: flour and milk. um... do you have flour?
Pei: Do I? Can we just get a jar of white sauce? It's much easier.
Superstar: alright, I'll trust it this time. White sauce means seafood. Let's get fish. Which fish do you think better in pasta?
Pei: No idea.
He picked the fish and said that cooking should never go easy and got some fresh squids and scallops. He walked around, sniffing herbs, touching vegetables, wrapping spices. I followed.
Grocery shopping took an hour. Cooking another hour. We finished dinner within an episode of Sex and the City.

Second, sew a button.
I did take the class, in both junior high and high schools. Mama helped a lot in this domain, however. She sewed a stuffed animal and knitted a scarf for me to submit them for my grades.
You cannot blame me on my impotent skills. I don't have 30 minutes for fixing a hole on my shirt. I don't have 20 minutes for ironing a skirt. I don't have 10 minutes even for thinking about repairing clothes.
Alex, Zabeth, and Mama all fixed my clothes for showing how much they loved me or showing how much they could not stand watching me doing anything. I prefer to believe the former.
Superstar took my coat and asked why I was frowning. I said I might need to carry this long coat back to Taipei for Mama to show her love.
I can do it in 5 minutes. He said. That was one of the most romantic things to say. My body was dancing. I was free from worrying time that might be wasted. Super.

Third, plan a surprise party.
On Monday the 12th, Dr. Anna called me in the morning and asked me to be in the lab asap. What did I do wrong? Why was I thinking that I might do something wrong? Did I do something wrong? I hurried to the lab. What greeted me was an incoherent shout of "happy birthday!"
I was truly surprised.
This officially was my first ever surprise party. I had had no clue that she would plan a party for me, two weeks ahead of my birthday. Wow, it was awesome. They sang the birthday song. Paola showed up late, and I easily forced her to sing the song in Italian. I was flattered, totally.
When did they find the time for planning such a party?
Well... I myself have throwing parties for friends, and most of them were openly known what was celebrated. It was an effort for making people merrily surprised.

Fourth, shop in December.
Since the black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), every store has been on sale. I had been good and not joined the madness. Macy's was one mad place to visit now. I could not find my breath in Macy's on the 34th street in NYC. People were everywhere. Lines of lines. Waiting for waiting.
Thus, I went to Macy's on the JFK express way in NJ. It was better but still took me 4 hours to get things matching my expectation. My expectation was not easy to match. I may have tried on 10 and not taken any. I may have liked one thing, but that thing was out of my size. I may have wanted a specific item and never seen the item in the specific texture that I wanted.
I was so tired after 4 hours battling with clothing and cashers. I didn't even walk around to see other things in other stores in the mall. My left arm was paralyzed from carrying kilograms of the to-be-tried-on.
I wish the trade-off of time and money was pure pleasure.

If I had 36, instead of 24 hours, a day, I would not spend more time on any of the four things mentioned above. I might be less cynical. I may read more books. I will watch more movies. I am going to hang out with witty friends more..... so that they will take their time doing the four things mentioned above for me :)

Oh, be merry!

start santa-ing

I don't know who Susanne Manning is but I googled for minutes and finally found this sexy sandy voice for my favorite Xmas song.

Let me give you two more examples of Santa Baby, and you tell me if you agree with me on Susanne Manning's voice. Oh yeah, Kylie Minogue was physically very sexy.



This one was from 1988 (wow, 20 years ago):
This woman is a category by herself.



Last night was the annual holiday party of the research center.
I had been to the holiday party last year and bored. This year I still went because at first it was some political reason. Once I got there, I was very happy that I went and stayed almost till the end.
It was the same fancy country-club-style restaurant, the same delicious food, the same tree where we had to pose for picture taking.
More than twice of people showed up. My lab actually occupied the entire 10-person table.
For a party, more people more fun.
Moreover, there was a vocal quartet! Two pairs of man and woman with matching red and green 19th-century outfits. They were so cute. Their voice was so good and warm. The carols they sang were so lovely and joyful. I could not help but smile all the time. They hopped table to table and sang various carols on demand. I wish I knew more than a few carols!

Around 7:30pm (the party started at 5 pm), most people had left. This was about the time when the singers were more comfortable with themselves and started playing around with people and singing in a more modern jazzy way. They went up to the stage and I said I wanted santa baby.
So they did.
That was one of the best live performances I have ever seen this year. The green gal sang the main melody with R&B-kind of feel. The green guy went for the bass with a warm santa granda's hohoho. The red gal provided a higher pitch tangled with the melody. The red guy was sometimes humming like an instrument and sometimes singing along to harmonize the entire group.
Snow was perfectly sprinkled outside the window. San.ta. ba.by~

Let me share one more.
Stay tuned. I probably will post one entry a day because I am so happy and would like you to be happy too.

lack of coffee

This is the season of giving and forgiving.
I am going to blame the lack of coffee. Yes, I am going to give this abstract noun phrase a status -- guilty.

It has been raining all day. Bungbung's rear tires had been diagnosed as too thin. The technician suggested me to have them changed or to drive slowly in a wet weather. I did not have time to have them changed before my thanksgiving trip, so I made an appointment for another day.
That another appointment got canceled because the VP of the research center could only have a meeting with me that morning. Unfortunately, VP's pregnant girlfriend twisted her ankle, and VP decided to be out sick. That is, I got a good morning catching up with my work and re-scheduling Bungbung's checkup. In the meantime, I drove more carefully. The rescheduled appointment would be tomorrow.

This morning I was determined to have warm oatmeal for breakfast and consequently did not have time to make coffee. (Or because I had not had coffee, I forgot to make coffee.)
I drove to Chester to meet the most intelligent and functioning post-stroke participant I've ever had. She finished all the tests quickly and accurately. Her cat loved me. All in all, I liked the experience with her very much. But I did not have coffee.
My windshield was foggy because it was foggy out with rain or because my lack-of-coffee vision was foggy.
Carefully, I came to the office and got informed that I am going to give a lab tour tomorrow to a group of Chinese doctors who came all the way from Sichuan where the terrible earthquake killed thousands this year. They want to take a look of the hospital and the research center as their references for building a rehab facility in Sichuan.
I was like, What? this is really the last-minute notice. I am not a last-minute kind of person. I submit a grant one week before its deadline. I like to plan things ahead.
My eyes were almost closed, and I decided to have tea since it was half day and I wanted to sleep well tonight.
With tea, I called to reschedule the last session with the intelligent-cat-loving post-stroke participant, and to reschedule Bungbung's checkup again.
With tea, I gave a presentation to postdocs. What an aweful presentation. I was presenting data that could not answer the questions. Well, which is the actual purpose of the so-called pilot data placed within the grant, and now I think back, it was actually not so bad, and the data did sell the idea of a promising project that may answer the questions. Anyway, my brain was criticizing my project and begging for coffee at my presentation.

Kerline came over, saying she was not functioning today, thinking 11 am was two hours away from 2pm, and believing I was presenting at 11 am, so that she was convinced that she could not make it to my presentation as she left her place at 11 am.
Paola came over, saying she totally forgot about my presentation and asked me why I didn't call her.
Dr. Anna emailed me, saying please help Paola find a set of data that no one actually produced.
Kerline never drinks coffee. Paola, who is Italian, never has enough coffee. Dr. Anna... may or may not use coffee... I go with the may-not. (She loves using "may" instead of definite statement.)
See? The lack of coffee is guilty.
I was about to have a headache at 4pm but did not leave because I was obsessed with the power analysis, which I ran yesterday but now believed I did it wrong. By 5pm, evidence showed that I didn't have to change the power analysis. If I have had coffee, this hour would have not been wasted.

In the rain, I walked to do grocery shopping after parking Bungbung carefully.
In the rain, I walked back home.
A car hit me when I was crossing the road with all my right. It was turning right. It hit my left medial soleus muscle. I fell down with my left palm and butt hitting the ground first.
Ow! I said. My bag and grocery bag and umbrella were on the ground, wet.
I stood up. The car driving behind the criminal car stopped, and the driver came to see me. Are you OK? He asked.
I know you are not the one who hit me. Did you see who hit me?
He shrugged but asked me again if I was alright.
Another car stopped farther away, which was the criminal car. The criminal driver came over. Are you OK?
You hit me. My light was green, and you were supposed to stop.
My light was green too. Are you alright?
I stared at him. I said I am ok. What a lucky asshole.
Do you need my number?
No.
Can I buy you dinner?
No. Ow! My leg hurt.
Are you sure?
Yes. I am fine. You give me a ride home, two blocks down there.
Let me help you. Finally he was helping me. I am sorry. Finally he said he was sorry.
Man, you gotta be careful next time. I said as if I was teaching a child not to run with chopsticks in hand.
I didn't ask for compensation or anything. I just wanted to go home. I forgave him at the moment when he stopped the car and asked if I was alright. I was alright and somehow my lack-of-coffee mind was not as angry as I would believe.
As I stepping out of his car, he asked me where to get back to Seton Hall. Oh, kid, you are lucky that I did not have coffee today.

Coffee is essential in my activities of daily living. In the field of rehabilitation, activity of daily living (ADL) is some holy grail to achieve. You rate a person's ADL and determine if he/she can function independently as a dignified individual. If not, fix him/her.
I'm definitely having coffee tomorrow morning.

to move

I'm moving out of South Orange. Soon.
After the terrible thing happened to me 11 months ago, something even more terrible happened in my building a month ago. Similar kind of crime. But the recent one involved a show of hand gun.
Also, since some time ago, my buzz from time to time got ringed up after sunset, and I never buzzed anybody in because no one answered at my request. Yes, just like the 777-777-7777 caller. Oh, the caller was a woman with a non-native-English accent. She did say "hello" at the third call. Next time, please introduce yourself in detail with understandable English. You will not receive a thankyou note from me.
Right, I am talking about moving.

Where to move?
My first pick is Hoboken. It's close to the Village, just one PATH stop over the river. I heard nice things about it. Nice things that only a city animal like me likes to hear. Things like safe to walk around past mid-night. Things like crowded street with people all the time. Things like the residents are mostly young professionals. Things like Hoboken has its own social scene.

Hoboken is expensive, however.
I found a cool website hotpad.com where they show sorta 3D google-map-like resident housing map. But housing no more than three blocks away from PATH is barely affordable. Let me give a couple of examples:
1000-sqft, 1 BR with 1 full bath, plus parking space asks for $2700 per month.
1200-sqft, 2 BR with 2 full bath asks for $3400 per month.

Then I found an ideal apartment in a good location for a short walk to PATH. The apartment contains units of studio, 1 BR, 2 BR, and 3 BR, including the following amenities that I like: Dishwasher, Cable Ready, Sun Deck, Walk-in Closet, Doorman, Health Facility, Internet, Parking Garage. And short-term lease available.
Price?
Studio: $2,070 to $2,480
1 bed: $2,400 to $2,665
2 beds: $2,925 to $4,120
3 beds: $4,205 to $4,470

Hm.... I am a poor scientist.

I read in the Sunday times that some places offer a kind of deal called rent to buy. Perhaps I should look into that. Perhaps I should know Hoboken better. I am going there every other weekend until I move over there.

To start integrating my future with my present, I am going to dedicate my blog space talking about Hoboken. As a starter, let's find some cute true stories about it.

Why is it called Hoboken?
My google results immediately brought me to wikipedia, which is never my favorite place to look for causal information because wikipedia is too... too ... not me. My eyes hurt after 10 hours of work, and wikipedia worsens the symptom.
Google prioritizes its bloggers. So I was brought to Finding myself in Hoboken, and the blogger talked about the name! Some europeans named it long time ago. Now it's a brand name for its culture and people.
See? They seem like nice people.
South Orange needs this kind of spontaneous PRs to improve its image. What a shame. I liked South Orange. Now I just want to break up with it.
However, the story of the naming of Hoboken is not some cute story that I wished.
OK, next.

Frank Sinatra was born in Hoboken.
But he left Hoboken in his 20s, only returned twice before he left to another world for good.

What else?
It is just difficult to learn a place without living there. I need something visual. I need something for me to imagine. Even the project by the Hoboken Museum looks marvelous, I still need to experience those locations before feel anything significant about its history.

What else?
Let's get some lottery tickets, and perhaps I will afford or even own an apartment in Hoboken earlier.

kosher

What am I supposed to do? Never get married and build a family?
We both know there is no fairy-tale happy ending for us. Marrying him would be against my religion, which I will never do.
Yardena said.
She came back from a vacation with her current love of life Muhammad. It was the worst vacation ever in her 23 years of life. She and Muhammad basically cried for three days and nights without digesting any food: Yardena threw up everything out of her stomach every night after a round of crying.

What are you supposed to do? You ask me?
Never get married and build a family. Not exactly correct answer, my dear, but you may have mine: Do not get married with him but have a happy life with him for now.

Yardena is the most respectable, likeable, strictly kosher young woman I have ever met. She follows everything I could not imagine.
She never wears pants. Even when she is driving ambulance and moving patients in scrubs, there is a skirt covering her scrub pants.
She eats kosher food from a kosher kitchen with kosher utensils. One time when Millie the secretary bought a cake from a kosher bakery, Yardena did not take the chance to try it because she never heard of the bakery and was not sure if the kitchen was kosher enough.
She takes all Jewish holidays off. There are a lot Jewish holidays last and this months. But when she is at work, she is 200%. She goes home before sunset on Fridays to prepare for Sabbath. Sunset is pretty early in winter, like 3pm. She cannot use electricity, drive or ride motor vehicles during Sabbath (Friday evening to Sunday morning), and walks everywhere. New Jersey is not a pedestrian-friendly state. One time she had to walk to a patient's place to do follow-up tests. That was a one-hour walk from her place. What a wonderful RA.

Why?
Why are Orthodox Jews so serious about these rules made by people thousands of years ago in a place thousands of miles away?

They are just rules. Rules made by people. I said to her.
No. Not in my religion. She was implying that she believes those rules were made by god. She rather suffers in this state of forbidden love than evaluates what her religion has done to her and her people so unfairly.
Other peoples are loveable too! You youself love a man of the other people. It is not wrong. No, I didn't say those but wanted to shake her hard and wake her up to the world where she is allowed to choose whomever she likes to share a life with.
I know that I know nothing about her religion. But I know there is some fundamental failure in the strict law of hers. A religion that does not allow its believer to question, challenge, and modify its law over time is so out of fashion and against natural evolution. Well... do they "believe" evolution? Go to a zoo or aquarium! You will believe and accept it immediately.

Naureen is a new RA. She is kosher too, but only on meat and does not care about whether the kitchen is kosher. I have met many Jews who are not kosher. I have met many Jews marrying non-Jews. They do not encounter problems like Yardena's. They worry about things that make me worry too: Is this cake delicious or not? Does this person like Jazz?

I did tiny research on kosher:
The only kosher flesh foods are from animals that chew the cud (really!? because it's recycling and good to the economical concept?) and have cloven hoofs, such as cattle, sheep, goats, and deer (what about giraffes? ); the hindquarters must not be eaten (because they are too fat? But delicious.). The only fish permitted are those with fins and scales (save more lobsters, king crabs, octopus, and shellfish for me); birds of prey and scavengers are not kosher. Moreover, the animals must be slaughtered according to ritual, without stunning, before the meat can be considered kosher.

Pigs have cloven hoofs but do not chew the cud, so they are not kosher.
Camels chew the cud but do not have cloven hoofs, so they are not kosher.
Horses do not have cloven hoofs and do not chew the cub, so they are not kosher.
I don't care much about these meats. But no rabbit? No goose? No shellfish? No eel? I found that eel is not kosher because the scales on eel are not removable but part of its skin. I have to say that I shall not say anything right now that is not politically correct to Orthodox Jews. I have to express my unbelievable wordlessness. Unbelievable. Kosher rules may be why it is very rare for a Chinese to convert.

Will Muhammad convert?
Yardena never asks him to. She wishes he would do it by himself, but she knows it is out of her boundary to make such a request.
I love him for who he is. I did not love him because he is Jew. She walked away from my desk with those words flowing around in my cubicle.
Oh, my.
God please help her. Release her!
Release her to free love and the entire ocean of seafood.

Woody Allen could speak for me: (For the record, I didn't enjoy much the movie "Deconstructing Harry" for Harry is such an annoying guy although right-on on religious comments.)

shout from water

No more fMRI before the end of 2008.
This is my decision.

How much can I push this project? I have priorities too, tall guy.
Alright, this project has been there before I came to the research center. I was very excited that tall guy was going to resubmit the proposal so that I might be able to see the superior colliculus getting hot in front of me. Right, I did see it. Because I pushed tall guy to scan some healthy people and to get some nice pilot data in the proposal. But the pilot project kinda died after our connection in the medical school decided to be unhappy about his career and life and everything in general and left. He left without a word to me. How uncool was that? I called and emailed him thousand times. His voice mail box was always full so that I could not leave a message. His cellphone was always unanswered so that I could not know if he ever used it. His email was as useless as his cellphone. Tall guy made excuses for him: He was really unhappy now.
So?

So I pushed again. I pushed tall guy all the way to UPenn. That was summer. UPenn doctors were lovely. They liked the project and immediately asked us to email them a proposal so that they would let us play with their scanner. They would give us money! Oh, the research center is always hungry for money. No money, no research. No research, no money.
Weeks later, there was no proposal, so I pushed tall guy again: Hey, where is the proposal?
He did not do anything. So I did. I trimmed the original 15-page proposal into a 3-page. He made some edittings and submitted it without knowing any rules from the UPenn side or from our research center side. So the proposal got puked back. He re-did it as if someone owed him something.
Finally, the proposal went there. It seemed like money would come anytime or we could go there scanning people anytime. Yeah, seemed like.
Weeks after, I popped a question: Do we need to apply for an IRB there?
Tall guy said: Yeah... we do. Can you whip up an IRB application here and then base on it to do a UPenn IRB?

What? Can I? I can but I will not. We means you and me, not just me.
I know I am capable to do things and to do things well. But I am not your b*tch. Man, this is your project. You are the PI. You have not paid me anything or recognizd me in anyway since I got myself involved for the sake that I love the idea of the project. You know, love can be killed too.
You wanna play it slow? Let's play it slow. I am fully occupied, and I found my priorities which do not include your stuff.
You say I rock. Hey, I know I rock and do not suck up your laziness anymore.
Do your own IRB. I am busy.


I am a proud little fish flying in the big ocean, yelling up to the land called reality, yelling up to the tall guy whose ears are so far away and so not receiving correct sound waves passing water and air. All I can do is to shout at him here and be passive until the next time the urge of my push comes again: Hey, are we going to do the project or not?

de-seven

Hello?
Hello?
Hello?

I pressed it off and got back to the business in the International Office. The administrator said it was difficult to get cellphone signals in their office. I smiled and did not accept this lousy excuse for the caller ID 777-777-7777.

More than a year ago, I wrote about this digit 7. I still do not believe in lucky numbers. For the sake of argument, you can say that my disbelief is because 7 has not brought luck to me at all despite its frequent appearance in my life. It just does not feel random from a random person's point of view.
I do not particularly want 7 in my life. It simply happens very often.
I do not want 777-777-7777 in my life ever. Whoever you are, speak or don't call me the third time.

I have no evidence who made those calls, but my first intuition has caused some trouble already. I made Superstar mad at me. I fail to turn my mind totally off a person I had been in love with, no matter he had always been my sun or had consistently hurt me right into the core of my heart.
I realize that love has a special imprinting effect. Love imprints the person a special position into my heart. His position may be promoted or hidden, but it's always there becoming a part of me.

Love is at work again.
For me, Superstar is the happening luck without a number attached.

loud

She was very loud without a word.
She was extremely loud without a movement.
She was extremely loud without overdoing the role.
After seeing numerous movies about women losing their children, this was the first time that I was moved and felt for the mother.
Angelina Jolie was excellent in Changeling.



I am not a huge fan of the director Clint Eastwood probably because the stories he told in previous movies are not the stories that normally attract me. However, I do like the way he tells stories. Like Ang Lee, Eastwood delivers human warmth from the interactions between characters, from the sound track, from the color or tone used, and from a dimension that fancy digital effects cannot bring to the audience. Eastwood and Lee are among the greatest contemporary artists.

Changeling is a true story. True stories are usually more amazing than fictions. When true stories are very dramatic, people believe they are too dramatic to be true. It turns out that nothing is too dramatic to be true. Things do happen, no matter whether they happen under a writer's fingers or under the sun.
Over the years of human history, the society evolves in a direction promoting respects to all human beings. Every time when a milestone was set, it was set with a dramatic incident, often brought or initiated by certain individual(s) who were brave enough to speak out loud and to act outright.

I was doing people watching by a window by the outskirt of the Grand Park in Chicago. It was very cold, but too dry to snow. My eyes were open but my mind was sleeping. Coffee in the early morning did not last its effect after 13 hours. Suddenly a rainbow flag crossed by my window, and my smile woke me up. Protesters against California's Proposition 8 were walking by.
Go for it!
No more discrimination against same-sex couples!
Separate State and Church!
Love is all we need!
I didn't shout but smile widely. I was too tired to do more than giving a thumb up.
And I thought about the keynote speaker Daniel Kahneman's presentation: married people reported less happiness than singles. So if you really dislike homosexuals, let them get married! What do you lose if they can marry each other? The earth is still not flat. The sun is still not revolving around the earth. You still pretend that only heterosexual couples understand the true meaning of togetherness.

As mentioned, I feel the society is improving its attitude toward minority and any other underrepresented populations. Although it's not perfect yet: people (especially straight men) express much more approval about lesbians than about gays, I believe one day homosexuals will earn their respect. Women took thousands of years to be able to have the current not-inferior-to-men status. Lefties took probably similar amount of time to convince the majority that they are as weird as right handers. Homosexuals should not take as long to reach the as-normal-as-heterosexual status. Minorities may keep their unpleasant labels, but soon labels will become joking nicknames which do not represent anything more than a linguistic symbol for a historic fact.

Don't tell women how we should behave.
Don't judge gays or lesbians' love.
Don't allow anyone to justify their biases. So let me say something, just for the record that I try my best not to bias.
White American men can learn how to appreciate non-Americanized Chinese food.
I will not determine the level of my fondness of you if you wear pink.
Queer as Folk is not the homosexual version of Sex and the City. Both are awesome and fabulous in their own ways.

Friday short pieces

Isn't he cute?
He called his mama Col-ber-t. Not Col-bear :)



Hey, Mama, one day if I am as famous and as successful as Stephen Colbert, I will sing you a song on TV too.

*****

I met Yardena's "good friend". Muhammad came to the hospital for seeing "this lovely young lady".
Why? Because Yardena had to go home before sunset and does not come out until the sunrise of Sunday. She is very orthodox. She follows everything in the Jewish religion and backs up everything beneficial (even just superficially beneficial) to Israel.... indicating she voted to .....
Despite the differences we have in religion and politics, I like her. She is a wonderful co-worker. She is funny. She doesn't mind people questioning her faith or daily routines. She is very likable and has a deep sexy sandy voice. She is super patient with patients. She cares.
She works two jobs, both related to the medical business: here in my lab working with stroke patients, and she drives ambulance every other night. She also volunteers for something related to charity.
The volunteering work made it happen. It being her meeting Muhammad. As his name suggests, he is a Muslim.
Muhammad is a handsome hot young guy. I would've stared at him if Yardena was not at the table. However, Muhammad's eyes were full of Yardena. Soooo obviously in love with her. Yardena is obviously very fond of him as well. They held hands sometimes. They made fun of each other. They were arranging a horse-riding lab field trip for us.
I wish I could stay here this weekend. They were almost to decide to go this weekend, but they decided not to because of my absence. They were just so cute.
It will feel heartbreaking if they can't be together because of their religious conflict. Why? You are in a religiously free country (well..... actually not as free as I had expected). Those rules are ancient and distant and remote and unnecessary to your current lives. I wish you at least kissed each other if not further.
"Oh, dance is not your people's thing." Muhammad said to Yardena, and she said something to fight back but kept her hand in his hand. Oh~

It is hard to be the second generation of immegrants from an extremely conservative country. Parents are still bathed in the previous thoughts and traditional values, and forget to integrate with the spirits of being American, or do not allow their children to differ.
Oh, well, what can I say? I am glad that I am so selfish, and no one is qualified to determine who I should be with.

*****

I was very productive today. Unbelievably finished something I thought I would not have done until the end of my trip back from Chicago.
This week has been great. Two grants out of my desk. Blue rules the States. One manuscript and one new idea. Liu talked me to sleep. No snow. The whole frontyard covered with golden leaves. The whole backyard covered with bright red leaves. Flu virus failed staying in my throat.
I ... am cautious. Things can't go so well. There must be something horrible about to occur.
"Do you often worry about the future?" This is one of the depression questionaire. Sometimes I do worry because I am a person who often twists my ankle walking on a perfect flat ground. Anything can happen to me. Anything did happen to me.
Chicago is going to snow tomorrow according to the weather forecast. My plane may be delayed. I may be stuck in the airport. Well... if it happens, it is something ordinary in the States anyway, so I don't worry about it. I am quite experienced with delayed air flights.
So I turned up the music and dance to it. So I am dancing and not worrying.

*****

Dance
hajksldurfwqbjc Dance
asdbflwbsldbDanscfdce
asdbfjaskldbfjksadueibfDance
asdbfalsDance

asdbfhaljsbehl, ebwlbffdbfues Dance
sdfdhsjfd. Dance

Black eyed peas
Madonna
Aquilera
Timberlake
Outkast

All right all right I'm gonna pack.
I don't wanna pack.
Packing always lasts for too long.
Arrrh...

O

I just watched Obama's acceptance speech.
Great speech.
Could be one in an English textbook.
What he said may be the reason why I stay in the States.

He was a great speaker too. He knew what he was saying and he meant it.

At the end of his speech, Joe Biden came out. And their wives. And their families. They hug and kiss and hug and smile and hide their fatigue and smile.
How nice. Makes me smile. Makes audience scream and cry as if they were rock stars. In this country, family means a lot in a person's life. It's a real thing, not just something taught in school. (In Taiwan, you hear people say "Friends always come first."; in the States, people prioritize their family all the time.)
I believe the new President and Vice President and their families will be great models of the people in this country. I hope they will do at least half of what they said during the campaign. I hope they don't disappoint people too much.... like the former President of Taiwan.

Tonight was a great show if anything like the O show in Vegas. Unlike the O show, the end of the campaign is the beginning of the show actually. Obama said this election is not the change but the chance to change. Yes, you can.

Yes, you can. Please do it. And do it right.

tell him

I Love My Wife!!!
He wrote this message in the writing test. I gave him the full score, which I should have not done because in a regular English sentence capital letters are not used after the first word. I gave him the full score because he is German and because he loves his wife so much that I believe his writing rightfully expressed his feeling.
Mr. AR is going home today. Oh, I miss my wife. He had been in the hospital for only a week after his stroke, which is the shortest inpatient stay I have ever seen among my patients.

A week ago, I worked with Mr. HN who loves carving small pieces of wood into woman figures with a Swiss knife. He showed me his art work at the end of the study. He insisted I see them. His wife brought a bag of probably 15 pieces of figures for him. Because of his stroke, he couldn't carve wood for weeks but he missed his art.
He had shown the wood figures to all the hospital staffs he liked. I was a bit flattered and then felt a bit awkward as seeing his women in the bag. Not because all of them were naked. It was because they were all in a posture of showing their private or of raising their arms for being bound together.
I like to give my art to women. They can hang it at the doorway or in the car for reminding their men of not cheating.
I don't quite get it, but for the sake of being polite and continuing the conversation, I asked about his encounter with his wife. He had told me that he traveled to many European countries when he was young. I had learned that his wife is Italian.
Oh, I met her across street. Just right outside my apartment. Yes, in the States. In New Jersey! I spotted her and asked her out and later asked her to marry me.

Two weeks ago, Mr. JC finished a two-week study as the first pilot for that particular study. He was, like the two gentlemen mentioned above, very talkative. Being talkative might be induced by my self-introduction as a neuropsychologist, and patients thought I was the psychologist commonly protraited on TV. All I do is listen. I don't analyze because I am not that kind of psychologist.
Anyway, Mr. JC frequently told me how wonderful his wife was and how grateful he was for having his wife with him and how much he loves his wife. Sometimes, he got so emotional that tears came to his eyes and he apologized.
He had not wanted to go to hospital right after his stroke because he didn't believe he had anything wrong. Several hours later, his wife insisted and called the ambulance. Mr. JC was mad at his wife. I told you I am fine! I don't need to see a doctor. Now he felt he was blessed that his wife had forced him to be treated.

So far I have not met a female patient enthusiastically telling me how much she loves her husband. She usually told me how great the god was. She usually mentioned about her children. Why is the husband or the male life partner so not loveable?
At such advanced ages as most stroke survivors are, women express less affection toward their partners than men. Why is that? Because I am a stranger, and women prefer not to openly express their love in front of me? Because men were usually not the care giver in the house, and women seldomly felt being taken care of by their husband?

Kerline met a male patient who wanted to recover as soon as possible because he wanted to go home to take care of his wife. He is 92. His wife is 91.

Being a care giver, men seem to express their love more explicitly than women. Well... I know I should not come to this conclusion from a single case. But if I were a social psychologist, it might have been appropriate to make this argument.

Oh, women, tell your man that you love him. It is not a bad romantic movie if it happens in real life. It is just very touching and sometime life-changing.

I love my superstar.

as if it was a hummer

The longest winter in my life started on October 28th, 2002. It lasted for 6 months.

Coming from a city where snow is not possible, I was surprised by the first glance of my first snow storm. Pennsylvanians told me that I was lucky to meet an early snow fall. Six months later, they told me that I was unlucky to be in a white world for so long.

On February 17th, 2003, as if clouds had all fallen onto the ground, everything was covered, and the sky was so blue and clear. Nothing could be recognized easily. Curbs and roads were not differentiable. Cars all looked the same.
An original 5-minute walk took me 30 minutes. My whole leg was drowned in the snow. I was sweating badly in my jacket even though my mouth was smoking. I was in a high spirit. I forgot to have home-sickness. I could have hot chocolate day and night with this great excuse. I realized that I was a tiny tiny unimportant element, soon could be the same as the rest of the world - white. Nothing had been so overwhelming. I felt like a new person.

Friends are for building memories together. Old friends are for sharing experience in the same situation. Where were you during the earthquake? What were you doing before the blackout? How did you get your car out on Feb 17 of 03? My old friends in hometown can never answer the last question. My life has separated from theirs. I took a different route, no turning back.
They would not understand how water crystallized on my eyelashes. Some crystals were tears of excitement of growing up and being independent.

The above paragraphs were originally posted on Helium.com with a pen name.
Now the reason I dug them out and posted here is because exactly 6 years later on the same day -- Oct 28 -- I experienced the first snow storm of the year.
Damn.
I was seriously cursing as driving through the storm and stuck in the storm. You may have already learned my stories of driving in snow and understood how much I hate it.

Fall is the best season for driving in Chester. Classy colors such as golden, red, yellow are so pure and so proudly display everywhere.
Today they were everywhere including snow, which made the driving even trickier than simply (which is so not simple) driving in snow. Fallen leaves mixed with dirty wet snow created a horrible condition on the road. Even though the view was unbelievably full of oil-painting colors, being a bug driver suddenly could not appreciate the nature more than worry about my own safety.

Bungbung has been through a lot. As if he was a hummer rather than a beetle.
Just after he mysteriously recovered from lock dysfunction, he was playing snow yet again. No one was prepared to meet snow before they left their houses. Beautiful maple trees were still holding their colorful leaves. Snow suddenly came. The roads were covered with thick white dirt, scaring some drivers off road. Trees couldn't endure the burden and fell, blocking the already heavily messy traffic.
Bungbung's smile went cold.

So I made a decision that I should've done before Paola and I called for help, which did help us spiritually but not practically. We safely got out of the storm in three hours and went back to south (several towns away) to work at our desks (doesn't sound more fun than being stuck in snow).
I was a bit grumpy but not too grumpy. All I did was taking today's experience as a good chance to meet Ms. Solo who has a severe neglect disorder and frontal symptoms. Talking to her challenged my English because she somehow appeared understanding but could not follow any command as simple as "draw a vertical line" while she was totally cooperative and energetic and never frustrated failing almost all paper/pencil tasks. An amazing case.

Then I remembered what Paola had asked me just last week.
"Does it snow here?"
"Yes."
"Cool. I like snow."
"I like it too. But I am not going to drive to work in snow."
"Really? That bad?"
"Yes."
"So how can I drive to see patients?"
"You can't."
"We don't see patients in winter?"
"We write papers in winter."
It was Paola's first time driving in snow today. I bet she got a closer interpretation of our previous conversation.

Bungbung will not be a hummer. See how ridiculous they are:

The Colbert Report
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bench

"It's a nice weather, isn't it?" A stranger said.
I was reading newspapers, not paying attention to him. The weather was not nice. It was windy. Last night, a storm damaged the roof of the Park, making the garden of the Park dripping, making the supposedly-feels-like-outdoor part of the restaurant feel like outdoor. The storm also hit all the leaves in the City down to the earth. The fall was called off over night, and it was not nice.
I was in my fluffy coat with the hood on to protect my head and hairdo, with mittens protecting my fingers.
The stranger got the signal of I-am-not-sorry-that-I-am-not-interested-in-talking-to-you from me and left.
A stranger's boring pick-up line would not kill my day. Even though it looked like I was doing one of the things that are listed on my "least favorite" list, I was actually not waiting on a cold bench for something uncertain to happen.
I was doing my favorite thing out of the museum while Liu was doing his thing inside the Met.
I'm not a big fan of the Met. I especially don't enjoy the weekend crowd fighting for air indoors. I love my Sunday papers. I was reading them with a good mood. Yeah, it was a windy but at least sunny day.

And my phone rang.
Claudia called for help. She was supposed to go back to my neighborhood in New Jersey by train. Her car was there. Javier, a Penn Stater who she and I had just met last night in the Park, was going to take a ride with her.
While she was hurrying to catch the train, she left an important bag in the train station in Manhattan. She called me from New Jersey.
I jumped up and gathered the papers into my weekend luggage and jumped into a cab.
Time was the only important factor now. If I could get to the station before anyone took her bag, I might save her life. I wished I were the spider man.

It was a wrong idea of hopping into a cab on the fifth ave. The traffic was not moving. While there was a credit card machine in the cab, it was broken, so the driver dropped me at an ATM after we finally got out the crammed traffic.
The driver felt secure that he would get cash for his job, and he finally started to behave like a New York taxi driver. I arrived in Penn Station and looked for Claudia's bag. I didn't find it. The cleaning lady had not seen it. The staff sitting in the customer service booth had not received anything from anyone.
I waited.
For Liu to join my waiting.
For Claudia to return.

Two police officers did the lost report for Claudia, asking her what was in the bag.
"Halloween costume." Claudia said. Later, she expressed how upset she was that she had just bought it for a great price. The police spelled the word incorrectly: Holloween.
"Other valuable things?" The officer asked.
"Hm. Tea. Three boxes." Claudia replied. I looked at her and disbelieved that she had not mentioned about her hand bag which held her cards and keys. The police wrote "Tea-3".
"And?" The police asked again.
"And my hand bag." I was relieved and leaving her with the police. Well, I should not have. She left her backpack in the police station without noticing it. She was embarrassed later when retrieving it from the police.

Liu and Javier were waiting. I joined them. Claudia was trying to reach her credit card companies.
We, then, all waited for a subway train to the Chinatown for Claudia and Javier to take a bus back to State College. Well... there was no 5pm bus but a 7pm bus, which meant more waiting. Thus, we decided to get fed. In this unbusy hour, the kitchen was almost closed. So we waited for waitresses to bring food.

The whole incidence must not feel nice on Claudia's end. I am not making jokes out of it. I totally understand her lost, physically and psychologically. However, I wish she did feel lucky that we were there with her, waiting. I wish she didn't feel alone, dealing with everything on her own.

Life does not teach me how to be tough. It has taught me how to soften myself and appreciate help and company from others. It has taught me that living alone does not mean living in isolation. It has taught me that it is great to get warm hugs when I really need them.

Waiting on a bench is boring. Waiting on a bench for a person you care is showing your support. Waiting on a bench with a person who care about you is a blessing.
I realized that there is no such thing as running out of luck. I am lucky that there are people that I care, and that there is a person who care about me.

Be calm. Keep breathing. Things will be better.

bungbung episode

Bungbung is getting weird.
He and I have bad times and good times. Recently he has been doing something weird. Actually this is not the first time he shows his attitude. When it happened for the first time, it lasted for three days. This time is longer than three days.
He randomly responds to electronic commands for locking the door on the driver side, which is my side. There are three electronic commands for the same outcome (door locking): 1) pressing the lock button on the remote key, 2) pressing the lock button on the door, and 3) once the car runs faster than 8 mph, it automatically locks itself. For two or three weeks, Bungbung refused to follow any of those commands--- only on the driver side. I had to manually lock it, which is very annoying and makes me paranoid.
Last weekend, Liu drove it. It locked itself by all the three commands mentioned above. I was not happy about it.

So not fair. I am your master, boy. What's your problem?
Your behavior is not rational and just emphasizes that you're a gay boy, which I've known because that is the sexual identity I assigned to you while naming you.

Kim said it is all because I named him and talk to him.
So? Guys call their cars wives. Why can't I name it? In English, cars should be female. But Bungbung is not English. By all means, he is German.

I should take him back to the dealer and re-set the electronic circuit. That's what the dealer always does: re-set the circuit, and everything is fine. But I am too busy to spend an entire morning just for re-setting the loop. I am going to wait for the next oil change and do them at once.

He responded to me yesterday. He locked to all the three commands.
You're tired of giving me attitude? Or the weather makes you want to lock out all the cold air?
Try me. It's ok. I love you anyway.

When something random happens, people prefer to believe that it happens for a selective reason. Such as miracle. Such as Bungbung actually listens to me.
People prefer to take things personally.

Oh, relax. It is nothing personal. Don't get offended so easily. Bungbung's nerve system is functioning but a bit abnormal. It can be fixed.

Exactly. I not only talk to my car but also talk to myself. I hide this trait pretty well, I believe.
Everyone should learn how to talk to themselves. This is a good exercise for allowing yourself some time to think things over from an outsider's point of view.
I have started talking to myself in my head since 5 years old. At first, I talked to myself when daydreaming. I daydreamed a lot because I had to walk 30 minutes to school, and because I had to tell myself bedtime stories at 9 o'clock every night. When I was 10, I started to use English. Mama spoke in fluent English when she was drunk. So I thought it was cool to speak English like an adult.
Then I found my daydreams and my thoughts getting more and more negative and upset --- all teenagers like to think that they can foresee sad things to happen and pre-experience all the horrible things in life. So I started listening to music distracting my mind from being depressed. See? I was able to monitor the down trend of my psychological life. This is called the logical mind. Sometimes I am pretty amazed by how my mind works. And proud of myself.

Alright. Enough of self-pride. Sweet-talking to him obviously, theoretically, and as-matter-of-fact-ly is not working. Bungbung will eat my money again to get better. Oh well... [shaking my head]

as simple as it can be

Went around the globe.
Found myself sinking into the same kind of simplicity.
As simple as that.

She was worried that I sank into something out of my kind.
She was wrong. Because there actually is one thing shared by all the guys I've fallen for: the opposite of a father figure.
She doesn't know me. It is okay. I don't know her, either. Our friendship is like the relationship between a mailbox and a fruit stand.

He was worried that I would not have a happy marriage. Which was quite a prediction out of his little knowledge about my personal life.
Well, brother, don't you think both of us should be on the marriage-track before exchanging opinions on this issue? And I do wish he will have a happy marriage if he eventually goes into one.
I have to say that I am touched that he was worried. He doesn't know me. It is okay. I don't know him, either. The fact that we are still connected is because we deeply love our mom.

People start worrying about me because of my history, I guess. I am not flowing with expectation, am I? But I never think how I should flow. I just flow with my feelings and roll the way I feel like to, even though over the years, I have tried to use more cortical than subcortical part of my brain. You know, as a woman ages, she tends to think ahead a lot and hesitates a great deal for all possible reasons.

I have liked you since I stood on your bike.
Happy birthday, Liu.

星嫁娘

位在 Chester 的醫院真的很偏遠，遠到收聽不到我愛的爵士頻道，我就會切到CD。

我已經不常聽 CD了，雖然幫幫的 CD player 可以唱 mp3，我養成了聽收音機的習慣，不是爵士台就是美國的全國聯播網。直到最近，我去 Chester 的機會多了，I-80 往西過了 Exit 35，就聽不到我愛的電台，才轉到 CD player。

CD player 裡放著一張國語與英語歌夾雜的 mp3，很多國語歌是我大學時代的歌曲，眼前的景色是台灣看不到的秋天：滿樹的楓紅，一棵樹接著一顆樹，松鼠野鹿奔跑在唦唦撒撒的落葉上。
搭配著彭佳慧的死心眼。

啊！
小星今天要嫁了！

大二大三的時候，我的寢室裡充滿著國語流行音樂，音樂來自小星的電腦。
想當時，我是個很自負的年輕人，拔辣歌絕對賺不到我的錢，王菲、楊乃文、蔡健雅、陶吉吉的音樂才吸引我，但是我不能遮住耳朵不聽寢室裡的拔辣歌，於是彭佳慧、周蕙、梁靜茹的聲音我也不陌生。
我難相處，但是我沒有叫小星換音樂，因為她經常借我電腦上BBS。

我跟著唱死心眼，結果很難跟呢，副歌重複到不知道第幾遍的時候，我完全唱不上去。只有小星辦得到。

小星的在我眼前的轉變是女孩變女人的過程，從全年無休的黑色 T 和運動鞋，到現在粉色系娃娃裝；是鄉鎮變城市的過程，從歌仔戲天后到 KTV 裡搶麥克風。她還是有沒變的地方，湯麵太燙會等不急它涼下來就拼命加冷水，即使在我們這麼熟的朋友面前還一直戒不掉客套的 "謝謝喔" (而且要娃娃音)。

小星對我的重要性不只是讓我深夜裡掛在BBS上跟男生打情罵俏。
胚，是她開始叫的。在她出現以前，我沒有一個人人會記得住的中文名字。我的中文名字只是官方說法，認識我的人只叫我的英文名字。

忽然覺得熱淚盈眶......
啊，小星嫁了，我沒參與到......



康太太，恭喜

www.pbase.com/cckang/wedding

password:1234

十二月底再請一次酒吧 ;p

jazz bear

Tickets were sold out as we arrived at Village Vanguard.
With a disappointed mood, we walked back to West 4th and West 10th. Yes, these two streets do cross each other in Manhattan. It sounds unlikely, but it is true. When you are in the village, no matter the east or west village, the checker-board map of the city is not valid. You will be either surprised at the next corner or felt very lost in the next block.

We walked back to West 4th and West 10th. Back because that was the restaurant we'd just had dinner. We walked back there because Smalls is there.

I was hesitating. Last time when I went to Smalls, I did not quite enjoy the jazz performers that night.
But we did need to kill the time, and I hated to send Nat home after she'd spent 90 minutes on subway from deep down Brooklyn to the West Village. And I didn't feel like doing anything else.
The entrance fee to Smalls was twenty, which was thirteen more than Village Vanguard, which has much a better reputation than Smalls. I was like WTF let's do it because I need jazz tonight.
So we went in.
It was not totally packed, and we got three seats together, very close to the stage.

The 9pm band was horribly unendurable, reminding me of my marching band in high school.
I was a tenor and baritone saxophone player. I was not a musician then, and I am not and will not be one. But at least I learned how to appreciate good saxophone performance or performances of other instruments.
The 9pm band was led by a saxophone player, who did not understand that he was not making any jazz sense at all. No wonder three front vacant seats waited for us.
Besides the saxophone, the drum, guitar, and cello players' performance were like their young appearance: unexperienced. The lady next to Nat were seriously protecting her own ears with her hands.

Somehow I was not very mean, perhaps it was because I just had a good walk with an awfully romantic dance by the lake in the Park. Anyway, I didn't say let's just leave and pretend we had a super expensive meal. Rather, I said let's wait for the next set.
I am glad we waited. Twenty dollars were totally worth it for the following band: Teddy Charles Tentet.

Exactly ten but actually eleven. Perhaps twelve right after we left the club (because I had to get back to South Orange... oh I need to move to the city!). Smalls was so packed, and even more so when the tuba arrived at 11:50pm.

That is, Teddy Charles' tentet, eleventet, and twelvetet.
Ten plus one or two musicians were playing on stage.
The club is pretty small, bearing the name Smalls. I did not believe they could fit ten chairs, music instruments, and musicians in front of us. But they did.
I did not believe ten instruments would not break my ear drums or blow off the roof. But they did not. They did not overload my hearing system like the saxophone at 9pm. By them, I mean one piano, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, baritone, trumpet, drums, cello, guitar, and vibraphone. This is ten. The eleventh was a trombone! The twelfth was a tuba!!
Can you imagine all of them fit in Smalls and deliver the legendary jazz notes?
I could not until I witnessed it with my own eyes and ears.

Teddy Charles is a short round old man. He looked extremely harmless and cute, like a teddy bear. He stood in front of the vibraphone, picked up the sticks slowly, and suddenly his hands went like fire. Fast and smooth and breathtaking. With a seriously focusing look.
I was like wow. His musician heart never ages.

now

then

Look at the picture when he was young, I could not believe that was the same person I saw in Smalls two nights ago. He is 80 years old now. Last time when he performed with ten or more musicians was 1957, according Chris Byars, the alto sax player. Why ten or more? Because that was how the music was written, how the pieces were played, how the spirit of those pieces could be expressed fully. So Teddy Charles came back playing in the old fashion.

Can you believe how many times I have used the word "believe" in this entry?

Trying to find more about his music, I came across to his website: teddy-charles.com
I realized how lucky we were to listen to him and his band last weekend because that was his last scheduled performance in the States this year! If you missed it, go to his MySpace page, and his music will immediately make every cell of your body smile.

I shaked my head a lot recently.
Things have come up unexpectedly. When things come up unexpectedly, I shake my head.
My luck has not been very good for the past one year, and I can't believe things just come up.

Spider, one of the Anansi Boys, said "Things come up. That's what things do."
Well, easy for him to say so. He is a god.
I am a human who does not quite appreciate surprises. But I have to say I am quite happy about my recent luck. Like the encounter with the jazz bear (I hope Teddy Charles doesn't mind this nickname). Like the dance by the lake. Like the messages in the fortune cookies.

a hero

Why do I share this video with you?
Because TED always introduces the contemporary best thinkers, and Philip Zimbardo is one of the greatest thinkers. After serving as an expert witness during the Abu Ghraib trials, he wrote The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. He showed some disturbing Abu Ghraib pictures in this talk and provided his theory on why American soldiers and any ordinary people would do such things to other human beings.
He also showed some precious clips of his controversial Stanford Prison Experiment (shortened for SPE in his presentation).

This 23-min video is worth watching, and there is a personal highlight at about the 20th minute when the audience broke the depressing air and laughed.
Here is a Chinese saying: do a good thing a day, and the good thing I do today is to spread Dr. Zimbardo's talk on being a hero. He himself is a hero.

If you can't play the video below, try click here: How ordinary people become monsters ... or heroes .

happy birthday

Long long time ago, pei fell in love. With the greatest entertainer in the Chinese-speaking Asia.
A successful entertainer in Asia has to do everything: TV series, movies, song albums, commercials, and anything you can think of. Of course, the basic element of an idol is a handsome face. Andy Lau definitely has it. After 20 years, he still has it. His career never goes down, no matter how the political environment has changed dramatically in Hong Kong. He does not just survive. He rules. Everyone loves him.

In the early teenage, I collected things about him. I memorized all the lyrics of his songs (including both Mandarin and Cantonese). I saw all his TV series and movies repeatedly. I bought his posters for my walls, pictures for my wallet, and autobiography for my book shelf. He was my religion during those years living under the pressure of getting into the best high school.
In the late teenage, one night I was bored in my dorm room. My university is a small one. We had a pocket-size directory with everyone's personal information. The personal information that interested me at that boring night was birthdays. Why did we publically list our birthdays is beyond my logic.

When I was in teens, my memory of birthdays was impeccable. Anyone told me his/her birthday, and I would remember it. Even until now, I still remember birthdays of lots of my junior-high classmates.

That boring night in the college dorm, I flipped through the directory, only filtering in birthdays.
I found one person born on the exact same day as me. I found several people having the same birthday as my mom. I found one person born having the same birthday as Andy Lau: September 27.
You know, as a bored college geeky girl as I was, I went not so far to try to search for this person. It turned out he was not as far as Andy Lau who was out of my reach. So I got close to him and fell in love with him. The rest of the story is not the point of this entry, although it is a good story. Let's just say, Andy Lau's birthday has changed my life.

So you see, Kirua, I guess I can't forget your birthday, either.
This is for you, my dear friend. Happy birthday!
Should not be too difficult for you because it is now the beautiful autumn in south France. Even if you are awfully alone, you are luckier than me. My birthday is in winter, of which I had no choice. I believe your first birthday in France will not be worse than my first birthday in America.

I was in L.A. With Gina, who didn't remember my birthday that day. I was there with her relatives. At the dinner, I said I wanted a lighter because I wanted to blow off a fire for my own tradition. Until then, no one at the dinner knew it was my birthday. Which was actually kinda cool that I had a little secret going on. But it was not so cool that I could not convince myself that my day was happy and cool.
Once they knew, Gina and her cousin took me to make a head-shot sticker, a very popular Japanese thing at the time. Although it was super popular, I had only done it twice in Taipei. The one I did in L.A. was my third and last time. I am just not a Japanese kind of girl. Japanese fashion just does not blend with me well.

Candle blowing is a must. Go tell everyone that today is your birthday, and ask them to bring a candle. See if the number of friends matches your new age.
Call me, birthday boys. I will sing you a song.
Let's see if Andy Lau will call me. Too bad that he doesn't have my number. (Yeah, I wish.) (Even if I wish, it's not my birthday, and the wish would not come true.)

beautiful moments

"My job is to make you beautiful. Your job is to allow me to do my job." He said.
I smiled but immediately realized that he could not see my smile, so I said yes.

"Just relax," He said, "and imagine how beautiful you are and express it."
I smiled and relaxed my shoulders and palms. He felt my beauty and led me into a wonderfully slow walk, with music. I felt so beautiful.
And he changed lead when music changed. I moved in a wonderland called tango, only accessible when the leader knows how to make me beautiful. We were a great pair, naturally elegant.

Edmund is always so gentle and polite with a soft but firm voice. His posture is strong but not stiff. His embrace makes anyone want to embrace him back. My cheek bone is embraced by his cheek, so he talks directly to my ear. Between songs, we separate and carry conversations purely relevant to tango without any other meaningless or gossiping contents.
I don't care if he is a totally different person out of the dance floor. He is perfect on the dance floor, which is what keeps me expecting his invitations and keeps me staying with him for the entire practica or milonga.

"Don't be humble. Don't deny how beautiful you are." He liked to say.
But I found the most beautiful thing was how he induced preciously beautiful moments with me.

When a girl finds this kind of perfect tango partner, she imagines she is the luckiest person in the world.

After the perfect practica, I met a red balloon.
I've grown a fondness for red balloons since 2005 when first seeing Paul Klee's painting in Guggenheim.
Like sunshine, a red balloon in the sky simply makes me smile. It's like I was the red balloon, and being in the sky made me feel great and happy. Being round and flying with a string attached is the best non-living thing I want to be. I don't want to be free as extremely free of any anchor point. I want to be free as being looked-after kind of free, such as my traveling plans: go far far away but always can go back to the place called home.
Such as the free leg will move according to the lead. Edmund knows it.

I guess I am looking for a string. However, it is not very visibly attached to the balloon. Under the candle light, it doesn't exist. Under a brighter light, it almost disappears. I have to stare at the painting with effort in order to see it.
I still smile. You make me feel cared and beautiful. If this is your job, I allow you to do so.

happy moments

Being in traffic means sitting in a slowly moving line of cars. Often, the line is not obvious; cars surround me everywhere.
Thus, I may look around. When looking around, my eyes may meet other people's eyes.
What do you do when accidentally making eye contact with a stranger? As the basic rule of eye contact clearly says: avoid eye contact. See through the people. I have discussed about this previously. You may take this entry as an update.
Usually this strategy works pretty well because all the drivers have this common sense. Like elevator riders, subway passengers, and city walkers, drivers stuck in the traffic should learn how to avoid eye contact.

A person waved at me with a big smile.
I made my face smile back and looked away.
Was I rude or was he?

Last night I finally caught up with this awesome movie "Into The Wild".
Supertramp wrote: Happiness only real when shared.
Poor him realized it too late and died lonely. His happiness might not be real but is real now because it is shared through the book and the movie. His happiness has become immortally real.
Hey, Jason, let's go to Alaska before we are not too old.

Perhaps that driver was happy and had to share his happiness to anyone. He may have just felt the tiny ticklish sensation of happiness. I may have been the first person right after the feeling hit him. He couldn't help but share it with me.
Better than not sharing, he thought.
I don't care who that woman is in that bubbly cute blue car, he kept thinking.
I have to tell her that I am happy at this very moment, he was getting prepared to raise his hand.
Oh, she is looking to my direction, he opened his palm and waved.
She saw me! She smiled back! Well... her smile looks fake, he kept waving and smiling.
Fine. At least I am happy, he drove forward and left the bubble car behind.

This past week was insane. (Paola would say I was totally destroyed. I love her English.)
I didn't have time to do laundry.
Because I went home late.
Because I got up early.
Because I didn't have energy to do anything to tidy up my apartment.
Because I didn't have enough quarters.
Because I didn't have time to go to the bank to get loads of quarters.
Today, after being jammed in traffic, I was determined to do grocery shopping while bearing the idea of doing laundry in mind. I timidly asked the cashier to give me changes in as many quarters as possible. She did! Five dollars of quarters!
I was so so so happy. I walked out the Whole Food Market with my heavy wallet, with a big smile.
Yes, I nodded and smiled and showed my teeth. The more I nodded, the more I could feel how happy I was. Try it. Nod and smile at the same time. You will feel even happier :)
If smile is contagious, nod gives the prolonging effect.

Why was the driver so happy? He must have seen Bungbung's smile.
I love my theory (nodding).

hot for making fun of

Just about the time I was going to stop following American politics, Sarah Palin was added on the Republican ticket.
Yes, she is beautiful.
Beauty is an extra bonus point for a successful, intelligent, educated, witty person, especially a woman. People would like to see her for one more second beyond the first impression, to try to understand her more, to try to listen to her, and to try to accept what she's trying to sell.

But Palin's only strength is beauty. This obviously is not enough for being the Vice President. And I don't know why half of Americans don't see it obvious. She cannot even understand a question when being interviewed on TV. No blink to terrorism? This is the answer to how you're going to deal with the problem? She must be living in the well, looking up at the sky light and thinking that's the actual size of the sky.
Tina Fey looks exactly like Sarah Palin! Beautiful as well. Somehow I believe Fey is more qualified than Palin to the candidate. Hey, children need someone to look up to.
Perhaps Republicans think adding her on the ticket would encourage female voters to back GOP. I think it only encourages men to do so:
What a beautiful woman, waiting behind the President! Let's get her on board so that I can see her face more often for the next four years.
Oh, see how old McCain is. Palin may be the President in two years! We Americans will have the most beautiful president in the world.

Women, on the other hand, would just totally be turned off.
To convince a woman that the other woman is better than herself is not by showing a beautiful face. No way. She will only be jealous and try her best to ruin the pretty face.
Palin is so conservative that her mind stays with her grandma's generation, and that her religious belief is way more shocking than GW Bush's.
Matt Damon questioned whether Palin denies the existence of dinasours. He doesn't want his children to grow up and be taught in school that God only created human kinds, and that species before humans were fiction.

Is she really that naive or ignorant?
Or she pretends so? (A lot people think GW Bush is pretending.)
McCain picked her for the purpose of making himself look more sane?
Anyway, she cannot be a leader. America deserves someone much better than her. The so-called "Leader of the Free World" deserves someone much better than her.

By the way, I was chatting with a patient. He said America is not free; it is soooo expensive for people who are ill and need treatment. He said he has paid a lot of money to the insurance company and the government, and guess what, his treatment is not covered. What? he asked, I paid for being covered, for being able to get sick even if I don't want to. It's not a free country! It's a ridiculous country where the government doesn't take care of the people.
I just nodded and patted his arm. Well, I hope he get better, go home, and vote in Novemeber.

beetle for hyundai?

I don't get much mail everyday. My mailbox is small but only is crowded by magazines I subscribe. In the middle of a month, my mailbox can get quite empty.

Thanks for Kirua and Ching and others who occasionally sent me postcards. The post officer should not feel pity to me even though sometimes nothing arrived in my mailbox.
I don't get many ads either. Well... at least the amount of ads received here cannot compare to that in Taipei.

One day I got an ad asking me to trade my beetle for a hyundai. A brand new hyundai. With my name on it. There were many exclamation marks all over the ad, suggesting that I should feel very excited to get a brand new car with my name on it. Oh really? I see all the exclamation marks as question marks.

What on earth is the dealer thinking? Asking a bug driver to give away her bug for a, what, hyundai? What kind of promotion is this? Not convincing. Not enticing. Totally a turn-off.

If it were a mini cooper, I may have seriously considered about it.

When something like this happens, I can't help but feeling humilitated. Yes, sometimes I can take such tedious things very personal, especially after a long day of work, not much goodness of me left.
Is this how the dealer think about a beetle owner? That she may somehow suddenly prefer a hyundai over a beetle? If so, she would have bought a hyundai because it was sooo much more fun to drive it. Of course, this is not true. Hyundai has to make a great lot of changes, at all levels and aspects, to capture her attention.
The direction is: hyundai drivers want to trade their cars for a vw new beetle. Not the other way around. Dear Mr. Dealer, you are kinda confused.

It makes me to think about recent events related to bad persuasion. I don't get it. Why would someone try to persuade me into something even though he knew the technique or the bait was not sweet? Because he wanted a firmly negative answer? Because he could not make up his mind and asked for my help to terminate his advertisement?
The failure does not come from how the idea is promoted, but from what the idea itself. I don't want a hyundai.

I love coffee but not the bitter kind.

my first support group

Chester, NJ feels like the central PA. The rehabilitation facility in Chester is deep in the woods. I would love to work more there in fall. Driving to work will be a visually comfortable colorful experience everyday. How nice.

I was going to see two patients. One had been discharged earlier today. Good luck to him. I hope the reason for his discharge was because he was capable to live without a professional medical monitor, not because his insurance program decided to terminate the payment.
Last week, the wife of a patient was so upset to learn that why her husband had been kicked around between hospitals was because of the insurance company. Oh, Americans, please vote for someone who promises a much better health insurance system. You don't want to be kicked around when you're sick. You want to be treated when you're sick. Don't let the insurance company decide for your doctor. How pathetic.

The other patient in Chester was in a support group. Well... bad timing for me. I decided to sit in and listen to the guest speaker, who is a stroke survivor sharing her experience of recovery.
I observed the patient, Mrs. PL who I wanted to see, in the audience. She definitely does not look like a 92-year-old to me. Later, I talked to her. She remembered my labmates had visited her yesterday. She showed a highly positive attitude of getting better.

Patients feel supported when they are surrounded by people like them. Hey, we all can get better! As a team, we will. Yes, we can. Yes, we will. We work hard. We rest. We will walk again. We will talk again. We will drive again. We will cook again.

I felt supported.
My research is trying to do some good to them. I feel a positive purpose of my existence.
This probably is the first time I feel not so bad after my saying long ago: I'll never work in a hospital, for it's too depressing.
It's not bad now.

a wish for me

Oh my mama is getting old.
Since I left Taipei, however, she has appeared younger and younger with a more and more beautiful smile on her.

She was not prettier than me when she was at my age. Because she just had my brother and was fat.
But now she can fit into more hot shorts and jeans than me.
Jeans tell all about the body, enhancing the most impressive part if the body is gorgeous, revealing the most appalling part if the body is nothing sweet to be looked at.
Which is why I like to see guys with jeans. That's how I judge their rear end.
Appreciating a woman's body in jeans is a different kind of judgment because women usually wear jeans fit. Thus, belly and thighs are taken into account too. Which makes it more difficult to look great in jeans for women. Which also makes it more profitable if someone designs a pair of jeans that make all women happy.
The point is my mama can wear jeans at the age of 53. Women in her age are jealous. How fabulous. I am not only very proud of her but also very happy for her that she is very happy about all the compliments about her shape. This is all superficial and all important. Any person needs compliments, even on superficial subjects, strengthening self-esteem a whole lot. Then she will display a smile like an endless horizon barely separating the sky and ocean, embracing everything on the earth.

She never smiles like a flower.
That's her charm.
She has a kind of quality that I never found an English word for it. The Chinese word says it all. But how can I express it in English? It's like the quality you find in Juliette Binoche or Maggie Cheung. It is a way a woman carries herself. Not particularly in any mood, but when people see her, people remember her image with that quality. That quality makes "beautiful" so superficial and "elegant" so phony.

Don't get me wrong. She is not perfect like a unreachable goddess. She can be crazy. Tearfully huge laughs. Hysterical angers. Heartbreaking cries. She makes weird faces and says the most inappropriate thing at odd situations. If she allows herself, she dances and sings well.

Life has taught her something profound that I won't be able to understand until reaching her age. Probably I will never fully understand because I don't know what my life will teach me yet.
She is so fearless and independent. But she is also so lovable and dependable.
Her uniqueness is not because of what happened to her, which I can write several books for her, but because of how she dealt with what happened to her. I've seen much of her in horribly shitting situations. She has been crashed into pieces, but always put herself back together. She never escapes but absorbs.
Some people just grow old but never grow wisdom. Their romantic excuse is keeping their spirits young. Right, but being young doesn't mean being childish/unrealistic/irresponsible/arrogant.
Cruel life experiences enable my mama to be childlike, humble, tough, and confident. She never stops growing up to the next level of maturity. Mamas are amazing, especially mine.

When I said happy birthday to her some hours ago, I found my wish redundant. Of course she would have a happy birthday. I called anyway because I wanted to hear her happy voice.
Happy birthday sounds more like a wish to myself. I am happy because of her birthday.