Cleaning out a keepsakes drawer yesterday I rediscovered a stack of diaries circa 2000-2001, and found that I wrote entries daily - if I missed a day, I apologized profusely to "Diary". Unsurprisingly, most of my entries followed a pattern - something like this (think big, curvy kid-penmanship):

February 12, 2001: Monday

Dear Diary,
Today has been an awesome day. Misie and I went to another dentist appointment, but this time we went to Dr. Bilodeau. We got our teeth cleaned, flossed, and fluoride-rinsed. Then we got to choose a sticker, pencil, toothbrush, and we got cherry-berry floss. After that we went home and got ready for the party we were having at our house. Eilen Liu, Marissa, Jack, and their parents, Alex and Ashley with their parents, Chris (Alex's cousin), and Christine (Eilen's friend). It was awesome. We ate, played, and drank. Well, that's about all - Good Night!

Sincerely,
Jennifer Yang

My analysis?

A) Lists. I was afraid of forgetting the eensiest detail -- there was one entry where I listed all of the food at a Christmas party, and I did not write the entry at the party. I can't even imagine memorizing a list of 2+ words these days.
B) A dentist appointment was a high point?
C) I didn't get injured! In every other entry I was either sick or injured in some way. I kicked off the diary with the breaking of my tooth while flipping over the handlebars of my new awesome purple mountain bike, moved on to getting hit my hockey pucks by the gym teacher, throwing up 3 times in a day, having a 102-degree fever, and hey - I didn't even write about my chronic nosebleeds.
D) People! Some I remember, many I don't. Alex & Ashley above are none other than Alex Chen and his little sister. I even drew out class seating charts in some entries, pulling out names of people long drifted away - Katie Cleary, the two Jackies, - hey, one entry even detailed Billy Ferriter getting punched in the nose and bleeding all over the playground.

I'm realizing that over time, very little has changed about me (ok, my favorite movies aren't "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Bring it On" anymore). It seems like these days everyone "grew up with...['60s records, whittling, what-have-you]" and thus became a natural at "..." which has led them to a life of certainty and/or success. We've raised birds all our lives and to this day we still talk about "becoming an ornithologist" in that same tone - the one that says - not gonna happen, but it would make sense. We talk about opening up shop, running an aviary, owning tons of birds. I remember dreams and sketches where I designed my "future home" with the "bird room" as the focus.

Things haven't changed much. I guess I never really had much hope in making it all a reality because I was all set on my path already - something with the word "doctor" in it, and a mix of parental approval/control. Growing up, it was my constant, and it was the reason why I never put the aviary or the ornithology on a serious to-do list, or even worked toward it. I could probably still do it, but now I'm suffering from a combination of "it's too late to start now" syndrome and "maybe I should just be a teacher/journalist, screw science" laze. (I call it laze because right now, it's the automatic path for me - I've worked on 3 publications, I've got the clips, I'm in the Nashua School District system as an instructor and will soon be a Chinese teacher too. But I also acknowledge that I'm just not that intense - and that won't do at all for journalism.)

And here I am taking sociology, field botany, german and chinese next fall. God, I need to straighten my life out. I still have a deeply entrenched fear of commitment, and I hate to completely turn my back on anything - opportunities, open doors, fields of study. But I do need to declare by the end of said fall semester, and I'll need to have a plan to stick with.

Ok...originally I was just going to write a journal entry as a throwback to the days of my diary-writing, because I've gotten some great laughs and memories out of reading the entries. I'm going to cut out of the class talk and just do that, so I can get back to sleep.

Sat., Aug. 22, 2009. 1:45am.
Dear future-me,
It's almost the end of summer now, before sophomore year. I've been tying up some loose ends and spending a lot of family time around Nashua, going to malls, doing some sports, bickering. Went to the Cinemagic in Hooksett yesterday - first time setting foot in a theater in years - to watch Ponyo with an old ASP friend, Binh. As a bubbly person in the extreme, the fact that a street sign right next to her house reads "Gay Str." is made of win. Heard about the hijinks of her first year at Yale, and failed at guessing the Albatross Soup story after asking about 30+ yes/no questions; Melissa managed to get it in three tries. Dad imposed a midnight curfew today, so M. & I are in my room, typing in the dark. We're extremely lame like that, and I hope it's not destroying my eyesight even more. I do this too much. Stopped by at a Petsmart today and saw the cutest conure - he followed us around in his giant empty cage - despite a lack of bars, and I wanted to take him home so badly (just $400...). It's sparked all this bird talk - Melissa's been reading the Cockatiels entry on Wikipedia for awhile now, and spontaneously asked me what I would've named the conure. Melissa said "Scarlett", I said "Blue" - completely independently. Weird. Ended the day watching a Tarantino interview on Charlie Rose, unfortunately not as entertaining/informative as some others (Philip Pullman and Guillermo del Toro come to mind). Hopefully will get up before noon tomorrow, as we're still trying to plan a family vacation before M. goes back to college next Sat. Currently hiking is on the table.
-j.

I have to-do lists on paper, on notepad documents, on word docs, in my email, on random envelopes, on two calendars, and in my head.
These do not cohese.  Something needs to unite non-laptop, laptop, and laptop-internet documents; can I glue my brain to the internet?

Ouch, moving on...it seems time to tackle my promised not-really-weekly scene of the moment entry.

Current scene:

Woke up at noon, got a call from the parents about whether I wanted those Buffy comics for the Joss event and what my summer plans were, interspersed with "You should just go have breakfast now" moments - Oh my gosh there's an adorable tiny bird in the bush outside my window!  It's the same color as the bush (dark brown, darkish berries, no leaves yet) and also from this angle/lighting everything immediately in front of my window looks dark brown, whereas in the distance there's distinctly green-yellow grass and lighter brown trees and faded cement paths.

Let's see...I cleaned my room yesterday - and holy crap there's two birds! and they're flitting around and being all playful! And I think they have gray bellies! Ok, officially out of my sight. The wind blew a bit and the fluffers hopped below my vantage point.

Oh, my college has officially terminated a contract with our food services. Next year we have the questionable honor of being served by the same company that is known for using illegal prison labor, driving down food quality, and being generally sketchy.  Or something to that effect.

Speaking of, it's about time for my cereal break.  My brunch earlier today consisted of pineapples & cottage cheese, orange pecan french toast, a bit of mexican rice, cucumbers & red peppers, and apple juice.  Without the cereal and milk it just feels incomplete though. Ja, ich habe ein bisschen Hunger.  And I've recently taken to saying everything four times in my head - english, spanish, german, chinese.  Just to see if I can. Last night on a walk between Founders Hall (at 3am to turn in a German essay "by the end of the day") and Tower Court (to pick up a Rammstein DVD as an early semi-educational $5 birthday present to myself) I believe my phrase was "...[ok, fail, I suddenly completely forget]..." but anyway, it's another way to engage my mind in a more practical way than daydreaming.

Also, I've taken to singing "Happy birthday" twice each time I wash my hands, just because it's been on all the spam about 20 seconds of hand-washing ("It's two rounds of Happy birthday!"). And really, I never run out- Facebook is showing 6 birthdays today from my friend-list, though I swear some people have changed their names, because I recognize their photos but am iffy on their surnames.

What else...I am newly in love with the trailer for Something Blue (via buffyworld.com)- I can just imagine having such WTH/holy-crap moment if I'd seen it in its original run, sans-spoilers.  Some of the trailers are great at over-dramatizing, and also rather fixed on the Buffy-centric romantic upheavals no matter how small a part it plays in the actual episode.  And now that I'm rewatching season (4 and) 5, I'm noticing a lot more of the Buffy-Riley romantic drag. As in, they seriously drag out every mundane relationship frustration, don't they?  Episodes like Superstar, or basically anything within a 10-episode radius, center around what essentially feels like a "how to" manual of relationship troubles.  And Riley...I never disliked him before, but whether it's because I'm over-analyzing focalization from narrative theory class or nitpickiness from third/fourth-time-watching, it's obvious the writers don't even try to make Riley anything more than a stereotype. Seriously, they forgot to give him a personality.

Ok, that paragraph was getting too long, but I'm still on the same topic.  Riley gets characterized with direct definitions from basically every 'real' character on the show- every character with a semi-authoritative voice, meant to be relatable to the audience.  Stuff like, "You're a corn-fed Iowa soldier boy" and "You can't stand being weaker than Buffy and have manliness issues" and "Whitebread/Cardboard/Joe Normal" and "you'll never be dark enough for her"-  it just never changes.  Does anyone in the audience manage to connect with him, or even try to focalize through him?  In fact, he became *more* stereotypical as the healthy, supportive boyfriend, albeit with esteem issues, when Buffy relegated him to "Dawn duty" in all the hospital episodes.  Then, the vampire--sucking was shown with a montage.  What do montages do? They distance the viewer from narrative realism- it's like reading a novel, and getting summary instead of a scene.  Essentially, we're held at a distance and not evenly allowed to invest in Riley's downfall; we get a straight-on shot of Riley dusting Sandy, the dust, the stake - all separate shots.  Part of it is just nice editing, but part of it is like a detraction from Riley's mind, and we never really get to bother connecting the dots or forming some Riley-based, from-Riley's-head insight.  Basically, Riley's entire definition through two seasons can be summed up as "Not the point". He's a token, placeholder boyfriend.  Seriously, in their big Buffy-declares-her-devotion-to-Riley scene, her line is, "If I wanted superpowers, I'd be dating Spike."

Hah.
And that teary, dramatic moment was drowned out by uncontrollable laughter for my friend & I, for just about the rest of the Riley-almost-dies scene. YIkes.

Enough about...that.  And, end scene-of-my-life. Or, tiny ranty projectile thinking.

Later

See you later.
I predict this won't be the last of my to-do list woes, if until the end of time I spend every hour writing a to-do list for what I need to get done that hour.  It's an effective life I'm running.  Actually, a friend recently commented that I am incredibly fortunate, and am incredibly bad at using my fortunes.

Latest example was my housing lottery number. If going by class, I basically had 41 out of 500ish. My roomie-to-be had 98.  We have an awesome average, and are shooting for...yep, the exact same type of room (dorm and all) I had as a first year, which is the kind of room that was left to a first-year because nobody with lottery numbers picked it the year before. Hah. Well.

Then, as a major fail-moment, I mentioned that I didn't apply for the Summer Research Program at Wellesley, since I assumed every sophomore/etc science major would be trying for it.  Turns out, it's the perfect first-year opportunity. So, my fellow first-year goes:

Lu: "Hey, did you apply for the research program?"
Me: "No, I figured I didn't have a chance."
Lu: "Are you kidding? You're [insert complimentary phrases about my intelligence]! You would definitely have gotten in."
(turns out, yay, a bunch of first-years I know got in. Including people I practically tutored in bio. Sigh.)
Me: "Well, I missed the deadline too."
Lu: "Oh, that sounds more like you.  I bet when you win the Nobel Prize, you'll miss the ceremony. They'll be calling 'Jenn Yang'...and you'll still sleeping."

So, I guess I'll steal that for my Future section.  My guess is that I'd actually miss the deadline for even applying, though, and therefore not even have a chance to begin with. [And seriously, I've had the "Nobel Prize" comment thrown at me since 3rd grade.]

So...despite all my efforts at "bettering" myself, aka ridding myself of horrible life habits, I'm seeing that they're called habits for a reason--somehow I still give off the exact same impression to everyone (profs not included- they "only see the best" in students. hah.) that I get to know in college, as in 3rd grade: that, despite all the crazy (and questionable, imo) smarts, I am incredibly unreliably irresponsible in managing my own life. So, yes. FML.
That is all.

Check it out:

An excellent month of incoherent writing, indeed.
Now just give me a few years to edit it up so the plot even makes sense to me.

"Asylum for Two" revolves around the adventures of ex-mental-patient Bennie Stines and the duo of best friends Tober Cruzie and Joanna Werk (don't laugh, I like my names), and this gripping novella may come to you via a stealthy Google Doc sharing if ever requested.

Again, this hypothetical situation would be emphatically post-major-editing. Wordcount sprints occasionally translated as random lunacy (the advantages of an insane protagonist) and segments of on-the-spot poetry.

I am so thankful for Thanksgiving break, during which I was mostly thankful for turkey.
Excuse me while I go uncramp my hands.

So, the life-ways of Taiwan by me-the-tourist lasted for a good two entries here, and then I got distracted and went to Japan, and then came back and then went to college, and now seems like a good time for a topic change. As a fan of weekly things, among other more specific things, I'm making this into an 'of-the-week (or whenever)' journal rather than a one-trip travel journal. Since I no longer have a diary, and also have a godawful memory, this gets to be my type-space to fill with the essence of me at eighteen, going on directionless. Also, it's not really going to be weekly. It might be daily, or bimonthly. Such is life.

Current scene:

Melissa just exclaimed, "Overwhelming carrot taste!" and ate half of our newly bought spreadable Brie. She's watching an episode of The Office on her perpetually breaking laptop, ignoring her actual dinner of turkey-rice-mash for crackers and dip.

I'm sitting with a bag of Snickers and Reese's peanut butter cups next to me, which I assume is left over from Halloween. Since we're home on Thanksgiving break, our parents are making food and going to the YMCA almost nonstop. I was dragged along to a yoga session, something Melissa did all last summer that I was completely unaware of, and I'm adamant that yoga is not relaxing. Screw sun salutations; my elbow hurts.

Shopping today was a dangerous thing; Mom went out and made the daring Black Friday purchase of a vacuum cleaner and a camera, which came with YAFP: yet another free printer. We have, what, four printers now? Ink's too expensive, though, and neither Melissa nor I have brought printers to college. Yes, I go for a nice 5-minute jog to the Science Center every time I need to print out a problem set.

Back to the dangers of shopping: people now literally kill for bargains. Mom was watching the news, and periodically informed us that the following crimes occurred: two men shot each other in a Toys R' Us; a mob stampeded Wal-mart, killing an employee.

Melissa kindly pointed me to the Story of Stuff (www.storyofstuff.com), which reminded me that Consumerism Kills is really an ongoing, universal sort of death that is kindly ignored by our decreasingly happy populace.

In these past few minutes, Melissa has steadily demolished our Brie and I have steadily upped this entry wordcount at the expense of my Nanowrimo novel wordcount, which is at 27,103 words, or calculated in context of my goal, is -19,564 words for today.

I've learned that realistic goals are really helpful, and unrealistic goals lead to holing up for days in front of my laptop with junk food and comfort fic.

Past scene:

In other days, unrealistic goals would mean curling up on the living room couch (the couch hasn't changed) and reading any number of sci-fi/fantasy books borrowed from the Nashua Public Library. Tamora Pierce, anyone? Diana Wynne Jones? Brian Jacques? Junk food would invariably consist of hoarded up candy, or possibly cereal. There were also those round cheese things with the red wax, which Melissa brought up today. What were those again? As far as dairy goes, I also remember the Go-gurts and the Fairgrounds Junior High (now Middle School) lunch of a Breyer yogurt with the crunchy toppings.

I remember the track people swearing off dairy before a race, and the Mathletes gathering 'round the vending machines after school for fruit snacks. Some people opted for those bags of raw carrots and ranch, too, which just bring out the gag reflex in me, because of my pseudo oral raw-veggie allergies. Cooked carrots are the way to go.

There was also the flag competition in the Fairgrounds cafeteria, which was mentioned once and then never again. A student was brought in by Principal Santa-fund-here!guy (before Principal Belanger) who apparently had the strength and skill to slay the vampires name all the world flags our cafeteria could afford.

Things didn't really get crazy until the fundraising days though. Public school systems take their Yankee Candle catalogs seriously.

Future scene (99% guesstimation):

Fundraising will continue to be my job. My work-study as a student phonathon caller inspires me to greater levels of pledge-wins and snack-choosing, the benefits allotted to the alumnae telemarketers such as myself who go in for the long haul. I continue to make $10/hour, as I'm never quite committed enough for a Supervisor position, but I'm too into a shiny resume to consider quitting and turning to a different work-study, such as a job in the Science Center.

I learn that for all my language practice in and outside of class time, my Spanish accent never quite takes off with my inability to roll R's, so I ditch it after almost failing a 300-level Spanish class in my sophomore year, during which I had simultaneously chosen to take 200-level Chinese, organic chemistry, and drawing, all of which sap my will to learn and grow as a person, since I'm too busy combating memory loss and hallucinations induced by sleep deprivation.

Nevertheless, I forge on with my newspaper editorship and my tennis club membership and my bouts of activism in WEED (Wellesley Energy and Environmental Defense) and my plans for a grand future in biological research under our new pro-stem-cell-research U.S. administration.

Livejournal, at this point, is obsolete, having been replaced by a technology simply called "Me!", a throwback to the 1980s "Me!" years and a tribute to its creator, Charlie Me, who dropped out of Iarvard College, a hippy school offering free tuition to the highest of high school intelligentia, instead implementing an envisioned Brain-to-Brain memory transfer, which fuses the human race into one equal-opportunity whole, and transcends our human world right before the planet explodes.

This is my mental cue to return to my novel about insane people, and their problems.

What do I remember from visiting Taiwan for the first time over ten years ago?
A couple things. The narrow streets, the fruit candy tins, the little lizards all over the walls. Here's a quick rundown:

- Grandma bringing us around on her motorcycle; we stood in the front, she wove all around the backstreets and alleyways full of shops.
- Bread shops. Little candy tins on the shelves, mints or hard candy.
- Snapping turtle in a bucket.
- Slug trails all over.
- Bathing with buckets of water splashed around.
- Not knowing how the toilets work.
- Fishing incidents and throwing up too much oolong tea.
- Waking up to a centipede in my shoe.
- Sleeping on a hard bed on the floor.
- My mini Hello Kitty pillow.
- Gutter smell.
- Matching short-sleeve/shorts outfits, with pineapples and floral print.
- Fighting fish and Little T.
- Walls of salamanders? Newts? Baby iguanas?
- Fields, open wild grass.
- Less people.
- Making fortune tellers.

I learned things in class today., and will now pay it forward.

1. Sports stars become thieves.
One time long ago, a Taiwan policeman caught a thief, and recognized him.
Policeman: "Hey, aren't you that guy that won some huge international little league baseball thing?"
Thief: "Pshh. Yeah. Wish I'd never done that. Lot of good it's done me."
Police: "Man! That sucks!"
[Puts him in jail. Tells the press.]
People of Taiwan: "Wow, being an athlete really doesn't pay off. We feel kind of sorry for all the wannabe sports stars in Taiwan that are generally ignored and possibly looked down upon."
People in charge of Taiwan money: "Hey, let's put that awesome winning Taiwan baseball team on our $500 bill!"

So now starving athletes have their place in the hearts and pockets of Taiwan people.

2. Deer disappear.in body, but not in spirit.
There once was a deer in Taiwan.
It had a mom, dad, brothers and aunts,
family and friends, and uncles and sons.
The trees went away.
The sky stormed all the day.
Taiwan had no deer left to see in its land.

So they put that on the other side of their $500 bill.

3. There's a sticker in the language center's bathroom that depicts the earth as a melting scoop of ice cream at the top of a candied cone.
I agree.
Mmm.
Ice cream.

4. Regulating small talk.
Learning how to hold conversations in Chinese, we received a packet of generally accepted responses.

e.g., "Hi, you look beautiful tonight!"

1. "Thanks!"
2. "You're also looking great tonight!"
3. "I really do [love this outfit]."
4. "So I'm not usually beautiful?"
5. "Aw, I don't think so, not really."
6. "Really?"
7. "What are you talking about, I don't look good at all."
8. "Don't say that. I'm not pretty."

The more negative responses are encouraged, because they can lead to actual conversations.
Just practice a good jocular tone, tweak it for Chinese, and go forth and wield the power of small talk.

Here be words! 你是陌生人

Here be a link! Link

Here be a window into foreign lands!  口


Here be another one.
_______
|)peru|__(|
|)__|__(|

Take a moment to stare at the bright colors and happy elephants.
Doesn't it remind you of home? No?
Does it remind you of Taiwan?
Yeah, pretty much. Or New York City, except without the elephants.
Scratch that, there's no elephants here either.
If you can't tell this is filler, I clearly habitually make no sense when I talk.
Kudos to the older shorter sis for setting this LJ up for me, epilepsy-inducing cuteness and all.
I like to just stare at the layout.
I may even add words.