Congratulations to all the singles out there!

Are you single?

Congratulations on not being stuck with the wrong person at this moment!!

"Christmas is all around me. Come on and let it snow."

"The Trouble With Love Is" by Kelly Clarkson

Why don't you dance with a raincoat?

This is still about the night I spent at the new social ballroom dance place.

There was one guy who was probably the only one doing American style/willing to do American style, so we did a couple of dances. He is an advanced dancer and I always like to have advice/comments from advanced dancers. Ironically, he told me that he didn't care about how well the partner could dance, e.g. frame, familiarity with the figures, etc., as long as she could move her feet to the rhythm of the music so she wouldn't drag him down.

If he really meant what he had told me, then OUCH!! Here is some of my thought: why don't you dance with a raincoat?

BBC vs. VOA

My dance teacher always said that being an *educated* dancer is like know the *language* of leading and following so that you can *communicate* with another *educated* dancer nicely.

I went to check out a new social ballroom dance place last night (and hence missed my favorite movie on TV). When the music was on, it was quite a *shockingly* amazing scene: every single person in the room started their international routines, most of which looked not bad. They are *educated* dancers, of course. However, the problem is that they only did international-style ballroom dances while I love my American-style dances and have almost zero knowledge about international-style figures. As a result, I had to fake some *international-style-ish* steps for the whole night.

The whole situation reminded me of my dance teacher's words right away. I feel like someone who speaks American English accidentally bumped into Yorkshire in England through Doraemon's door and has to fake some funny British accent in order not to be singled out as *foreigners*.

Of course, British English is not easy to fake: e.g. I could hardly do a heel-turn, so I guess that I did get *recognized* as a *foreigner*. After all, I could still dance with them, not very gracefully though, which made me believe that we both speak the same language, with very different accents, though. LOL

P.S. Later that night, I learnt that around ONE THIRD of the people at the dance are dance tutors teaching somewhere.

Holiday shopping is *fun*.

I planned to stock up my favorite product during the holiday, but couldn't find what I wanted on the shelf.

Me: Excuse me. I can't find product XXXX.
Salesgirl: If it is not on the shelf, we probably don't have it.
Me: So is the product discontinued?
Salesgirl: Oh yes, I hope so.
Me:... ^&*#

I don't get it.

It is totally understandable that someone who has had a very close relationship, either a good friend or a partner, will definitely get underneath your skin no matter how the relation ship ends up. However, what I don't get is that how come a nodding acquaintance, or shall I say a *dancing*-nodding acquaintance also possesses such great power?

What my hair-dresser said

On Monday I had a hair cut b/c I wanted to look better as my birthday is coming this Friday. However, it turned out to be a big disappointment. There was some mis-communication b/w my hair-dresser and me, so when I put on my glasses and checked out myself in the mirror, I was like "NO WAY". To make a long story short, I paid and walked out of the place into the cold, cold night, disappointed.

You may be able to guess what had happened. I tried to hold my temper while she tried to save it and said a lot of things trying to make me comfortable. I can't remember everything she said but these two.

"You look nice. Ask your friends and I can guarantee you that they will tell you that the like it." (Of course they will, with the motivation that is totally understandable and appreciable.)

"You look fine. You are simply not used to it. Once you are, you will like it." (Let me translate: after I get used to my ugly-looking hair cut, I will forget how much better it could be.)

A final friendly notice for my friends who will see me later this week/weekend, be prepared. ;)

Be fair to Mr. Collins, please.

Quoted from "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austin:

“You judge very properly,” said Mr. Bennet, “and it is happy for
you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment,
or are the result of previous study?”
“They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and though I
sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant
compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always
wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible.”

I know, I know. You probably sneered at Mr. Collins as I did when you were reading these conversations b/w him and Mr. Bennet. In addition, he was also laughed at by Mr. Bennet and Elizabeth Bennet in the book. However, after my *little* communication tragedy last Saturday night, all of a sudden, it occurred to me that I should have learnt something from Mr. Collins; aka there was some positive points in his words.

First of all, we all agree that communication is important, whether it is for the benefit of one party, like in Mr. Collins's case, or for *mutual benefit* as we always claim. Second, some people are gifted in their communication skills while others are not so lucky. Last but not least, if you are among those not-so-lucky ones, there is at least one thing you can do: practice/preparation.

As my friend CF has pointed out, I really need some practice, especially in the situation I put myself in. And of course, I didn't or didn't have the chance. As a result, I missed a great opportunity to make some impression/give some hints last Saturday night. Frustrated. ;) Okay , it's not the end of the world.

Finally, for the remembrance of the little communication *misconduct*:

"I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz

Could I be any more pathetic?

I thought that I had said,"I quit!" In less than two days, one simple message made me a tail-wiggling puppy again. J, you are PATHETIC~~~~~~~~

282

As a not-so-objective observer, I still have to say," Congratulations, 282!"

Multi-tasking?

Something that I am never good at...

"Oh, I know that person, you know..."

"Kinda..."
"Sorta..."
"In some way..."
"Though we never really talked..." (Last straw~~~ *Shut up*)

A placeholder?!

MH told me that that person was like a placeholder for me. I don't think that I agree. I would have more control over it if that person were just a placeholder.

It is okay and frustrating at the same time to really know what is going on. Whatever...

Scared...

I just realized that I am now everything but not what I used to be, in almost every aspect of life.

And I am scared...

How long do I have left?

Last night, a very pleasant one ended with sad news: again, someone was diagnosed with brain tumor. Although no details were available at this moment, if it is a malignant one, we all know what it means. As for other type of tumor, there may be some "miracles", but malignant brain tumor means hopelessness, suffering, and death.

After all the time, energy, and money spent on cancer research, we have better diagnosis techniques, but still don't have any "major" breakthrough in cancer treatment. "That sucks", I grumbled to myself on my way home, "Cancer almost equals 'you are doomed'. Unless it is diagnosed at a very early stage, the doctors are really to calculate in their heads how long the patient has left. They are good at doing that, very accurate."

All of a sudden, my sad and ironical thought took a sharp turn. "How long do I have left?" As a clinically healthy person, I have no idea. Will it change my life if I know exactly how long I have left? Absolutely. I think that I would work out a great plan for the days that I have left and make sure that I really follow the plan. In that case, when my last day came, I would lie down and rest in real peace. Of course, living a life that way is not very practical for a healthy person. However, I do think it a good idea to make a list (the "MY list") about things you want to do as if you didn't have much time left. We set all kinds of goals for ourselves and make plans accordingly to achieve them. Sometimes we are too focusing on this or that goal so that we forget about what we would write down on the "MY list".

"No, I don't think that was a dellusion."

If you did see it, it was NOT there.

Sad news and other thoughts

I have been to this dance facility many times since last December. Most of the time, my attention was occupied by the movements of my own and of others on the dance floor. I barely talked to our DJ except for a quick "Hi"/nod/smile for greeting when he walked from his computer to get something to drink. My first and only time talking to him was last Friday.

Me: Excuse me. What is the name of the song that you are playing now?
DJ: It is called "Someone must feel like ..."
Me: Sorry, what was it?
DJ: Let me write it down for you. (He grabbed a pen and a piece of paper at hand and wrote down Someone must feel like a fool tonight", "Back Home Again", and "Kenny Rogers" for me. )
Me: Thanks. I really love this song. I'll try to find it.
DJ: You know what? These old songs are hard to find. I actually got the CD on ebay. If you can't find it, let me know next time and I'll make a copy for you. (;) *wink*)
Me: Wow, thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.

That was less than two minutes. Then I walked away and enjoyed my whole night of dance. (Actually we stayed a little late than we were supposed to, so the DJ had to *ask* us to leave.)

It is Friday today. As I still remember our conversation very well , I got an email around noon, saying that the dance place would be closed for the weekend because the DJ had passed away the night before due to a heart attack.

I was shocked, sitting in front of my computer, speechless. Although we only talked once, I have met him almost every other Friday for almost four months when I went out to dance. To me, we will always show up on Friday nights; we will always enjoy ourselves on the dance floor while he will be there, ALWAYS, playing one song, and then another, and then another, and then another... for us.

I am sure that you have had the same experience. Those *strangers* whom you meet on a regular basis or even everyday. They may be someone always standing next to you at the bus stop in the morning, someone always escorting kids at the same intersection on your way to work, or someone working at the CVS closest to your house ... It did hit me HARDER with the thought of how much uncertainty we will be handling in our life when I heard a sudden death of these *strangers* than a sudden death of a much more closely related person whom I had only met or talked to once in a while. I believe that's because that I am so used to having them as part (no matter how trivial that part is) of my daily life and thus I would take it for granted that they would be there, *always*.

Let the dead rest in peace and let us remind ourselves of, not just whine about, the uncertainty about our life so that we will understand better how to live our life so as to leave less regret.

Finally, I will post the song again, to Ed.

Tuesday night magic

My very first time that I felt like a MUCH SMALLER pumpkin when I was spinning around.

P.S. All the lovely songs are simply lovely songs until there is a memory tag attached to them. Like "L. O. V. E." by Nat King Cole.

Not sure why it is funny

"Arrestedcloud"??

Not sure where this nickname really came from and not sure why it sounds so funny to me.

HOWEVER, I did LMAO~~~ (Sorry) You gonna love internet..

"Someone must feel like a fool tonight"

(I finally remembered to ask the DJ about this song. It is "Someone must feel like a fool tonight" in the album "Back Home Again" by Kenny Rogers. A sweet ballad and a great dance song as well. Notice: sound will start around 0:00:05 in the video.)

Someone must feel like a fool tonight

knowing they let you go.

Someone is wishing they`ve done you right

regreting they hurt you so.

Now that you`re here in my loving arms.

Forget all your yesterdays.

Someone must feel like a fool tonight

For letting you slip away.

When I see the moon shining in your eyes

A feeling comes over me.

The warmth of your touch makes me realize

Just how lucky can I be.

Surely he knows and he`s sorry now

That he turned your love away.

Someone must feel like a fool tonight

Knowing you`re here to stay.

Something good may happen, occasionally.

My life sucked recently. However, something (as fabulous as an "unexpected visitor", I mean it in a very POSITIVE way) good happens, occasionally to make your life, er, suck less.

Guilty, doubled

I got a long-distance phone call from my mom last Friday night with sad news that my grandfather, the father of my mom, just passed away. My mom was hardly able to speak in the phone. I could only caught pieces of sentences in between her sobs. I tried to calm her down and comfort her while I was trying to recover from the shocking news. I guess that I went numb at that moment because I didn't cry, not that I was holding it, until the very end of the phone conversation of about forty minutes.


I felt guilty. As soon as I hung up the phone, I felt guilty b/c I, as the ONLY child in the family, could not be there with my mom during the hardest time for her since my dad passed away. I know that she needs nothing more than a hug from me NOW, but I can't because I am so far away, separated by the Pacific, from her. I never feel myself as so HELPLESS.

While I was blaming myself for not being with my mom, all of a sudden, it occurred to me that my first feeling about the news had not been feeling sad about my grandfather's death. I was shocked though later I realized that it was not surprising given the kind of grandfather-grandchild relationship b/w us. My grandfather and I were never close at all in my whole life. I am not sure about him thoughts. For me, I just behaved as a well-behaved grandchild, visiting them regularly, helping with some housework during my visit, calling them regularly while I am abroad... Although this sounds cold-blooded, he is someone whom I care about simply because he is my mom's father. It was more about blood-bond than emotion-bond. In addition, my mom is a very filial daughter, I believe that I must have inherited part, if not all, of the virtue from her. Anyway, I didn't feel so sad about his death because we were never close enough, which ironically seems not too bad at this moment because I would feel less pain now.

I dwelt on this point for a while and felt overwhelmed with guilty, doubled guilty.

Mission accomplished.

Whatever...

Downtown Phoenix in 1 word: boring; Downtown Phoenix in 2 words: very boring

I was at a conference held in the convention center in downtown Phoenix since last Saturday. In general, the conference sucked, full of sh#tty researches (I'll talk about that later), though not very surprising to me. What bothered me most was the BORING dowtown area of Phoenix. There are a couple of high-rises, but most of them are just hotels and others all have names of some banks/companies over the top.

I arrived on Saturday and Monday was a holiday. It seemed to be a DESERTED area in those couple of days: you hardly saw any local people.: For three days, all the small diner-like places were CLOSED! No kidding. We checked out 4 closed restaurants (1 Japanese, 1 Thai, 1 breakfast-&-lunch place, and 1 Italian) before finally had lunch at an Irish bar on Sunday. In a word, there is not a single decent restaurant within walking distance. Okay, maybe one, 'My Big Fat Greek Restaurant'. The food was decent, though my PI still had a lot of complaints. You can eat on a outdoor patio facing small fountain and small waterfalls. There were heaters in the ceiling to keep you warm and sometimes they even lit some tiki torches as well. However, it is still a weird restaurant. We first went there on Monday evening. It was a pleasant dinner (other than they sold out the wine and beer we really wanted) until the waitress came over to say "Good night" for the third time and it was not even 9:30pm yet. The night after, when I was hanging out with some friends from one of my committee members' lab (not expected him to be there as well), two other PIs joined us and started to complain about the restaurant: the restaurant turned off the ceiling heaters to drive away the customers. One of the PIs (I think it was LC, not sure after a mojitos and a martini) had a great comment on it," They are not used to having customers".



P.S. A couple of other small things.

You hardly saw any local folks downtown after working-hour, yet there is a BIG AMC theater.

There are NO convenience store within walking distance to get cheap bottled water but like 20 Starbucks in the area. (When you drug yourself enough, you don't feel dehydrated?!)

Sun lost (not much) to Lakers on Wednesday. Never a fan of Sun, but never even like Lakers at all. Sun really needs to work on their defense.

Last year the same conference was in downtown Dever, CO and everyone complained a lot. I never thought that I would miss it one day.

Feb 14

A perfect LOL for today.
Check out Jason Shogreen's flickr page for more.

(What am I doing now? Working, Of course.)

1/12

I know this sounds really annoying...

" 1/12 of the Year of 2008 has passed by." :p

ADDICTED

I know that I always liked it. Then I would say that I loved it. Finally, starting from a month or so ago, I found that I got really ADDICTED to it (more and more)!!!!!


It is not just about having fun. It is more about feeling good (I mean, really, really good) about myself (even if I am still a "pumpkin", a smaller one). ;)

(Don't worry. It also starts with the letter "d", but it is definitely not "drug".)

One of the stupidest things that I have ever said...

"How come that it is wrong? It is a TEXTBOOK!"

I wanted to bite my tongue and bang my head against the wall when I said it. SERIOUSLY!!! Shame on me.

Wallflower

from Merriam Webster Dictionary online

Main Entry:
wall·flow·er
Pronunciation:
\ˈwȯl-ˌflau̇(-ə)r\
Function:
noun
Date:
1578

1 a: any of several Old World perennial herbs (genus Cheiranthus) of the mustard family; especially : a hardy erect herb (C. cheiri) widely cultivated for its showy fragrant flowers
b: any of a related genus (Erysimum) of herbs with showy flowers

2 a: a person who from shyness or unpopularity remains on the sidelines of a social activity (as a dance)
b: a shy or reserved person

Let it snow. Let it snow. Let it snow.

I know this is a Christmas song, but such a snowy day reminds me of it.

Creepy...

I wanted to watch "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" for a while. It was hard to resist it when I saw huge posters everywhere in NYC during Christmas.

I watched it today with a couple of friends TOTALLY by accident. (One of my friends thought that it was another movie: "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story". I had no idea why I didn't find it wrong when we got the ticket. The funniest thing is that none of us found anything wrong until the movie started. LOL~~~~ That never happened in my whole life.)

Okay, about the movie, it is a well-known story about revenge. Johnny Depp did a decent job, not his best though. I like Mrs. Lovett (played by Helena Bonham Carter) better. In short, it is a movie with not-so-complicated storyline and 500 throat-cutting scenes. Like my title, I consider it creepy for mainly two reasons. First of all, it makes you want to kill the visual effect supervisor and people in charge of the props (I mean, whoever prepared the fake "blood".). The "blood" looked so "fake" that the throat-cutting scenes seemed gross instead bloody, violent, or revenging. Since there are like 500 of such scenes in the movie, how the "blood" looks will have a big overall impact. Second, there are so many actors and actresses from the Harry-Potter movie, I kept on seeing Snape, wormtail, and Bellatrix instead of Judge Turpin, Beadle Bamford, and Mrs. Lovett.

Okay, my favorite scene: when Sweeney Todd first came to Ms. Lovett's pie place, Ms. Lovett was preparing pies and serving Todd at the same time. The scene was in a extremely filthy kitten featured with a lot of flies, cockroaches, and other unmentionables. You will see those small creatures get in and out of the scene while Ms. Lovett was busy making pie crust and, of course, singing. I am extremely curious about how they shot this.

In addition, I have never had any mincemeat pie and have no idea how regularly it shows up on the dining table of the British, but I am sure that I will never eat it myself after watching this movie.

P.S. I hadn't recognize, until my friend pointed it out, that Helena Bonham Carter is the one played one of the leading female roles (Lucy) in one of my favorite movies "A room with a view".

"You do not need to evacuate out of the building. I repeat. You do NOT need to evacuate out of the building..."

I was working late this evening. Around 7:15pm, someone used the broadcasting system of the building to tell us that there would be a test of the fire alarm. At the end of his notice, he said,

" You do not need to evacuate out of the building. I repeat. You do NOT need to evacuate out of the building. Thank you."

"Okay, no biggie," I thought and went on with my stuffs.

Ten minutes later, I knew I had been so wrong. The loud and sharp siren went on over and over and over again. The siren was accompanied by really blindingly bright flashes from many "emergency lights", one every 10 (or less) feet. It pounded on my eardrum and irritated my nerves. I started to develop a headache and wanted to scream. 20 min afterwards, a maintenance guy walked past our workplace.

"Excuse me", I said,"do you know when this will end?"
"After we walk through every floor to make sure it works", he replied with a smile.
"Oh... okay."
"Yeah."
"Er... Great..."
"It will be another 20 minutes."
"Ah, thanks!"
He smiled and walked away. Although I was not very pleased with the answer, I, at least, got some hope now.

Everything did end in another 20 min. (I mean, everything except for my headache...)