a passage from _s/he_

My lover of six months sits watching on the edge of my tousled bed. I walk toward her, playing at being one of the ships come sailing in on Christmas day in the morning. I make the scarf billow and puff, silky cloth about to carry us toward reefs, shoals, the narrow opening between rocks, the way to safe harbor. I advanced toward her, my breasts dangerous and innocent. She says, "stop it." She looks away, repulsed. Then she says Iremind her of a girl she wanted in high school-- blonde, hetersexual, femme. She doesn't say if she ever touched the girl. She says, "Don't act like that." I sit down on the bed; she puts her arms around me. The creamy warmth that flowed as I walked toward her congeals and stiffens in the crotch of my panties.

page 57

some connection failure

wanted to replace the evil emily cat picture with this one at the left-hand side and yet it kept on having this 'connection failure' message blinking at me. *sigh*

picture from http://home.kimo.com.tw/bzb_grafik/top-en.htm. thank yunin for lending me this nice little black cat picture.

christmas dinner party

a photo taken on the 24th at our christmas dinner party.

deals.

the recent 'thrills' of life have been about shopping gains. one was an italian 6-cup espresso maker bought at aldi, which cost as nearly much as the 1-cup one purchased in Rome this past april. due to this fact, i want to claim that Aldi miraculously beat down the myth of euro-circulated countries being cheaper to live in than the uk.

the other was the three low-priced dvd's- bound, closer and tipping the velvet. all of them totalled out to 11 quid. i was especially happy about finally getting a copy of bound. after watching it in class four years ago, i'd never ever come across it and very few people would know/remember it either. it was such a nice surprise to see it on the shelf waiting to be picked up at the price of 2.99.

what has happened?

it's been as if i am/were/had been in love. but i don't know if this statement is truthful. one thing is that my life has been disrupted/changed in a way that resembles the way things were in my past relationships.

the page with angry terri picture

did this page some time ago but wasn't sure if the photo was a good one and so didn't really let people know. my housemate c disliked this picture because i looked angry and unnatural to her. she asked me to find another one for it, but i feel lazy. my mom's also seen it, well, she asked me if wearing glasses made my eyes stick out a bit. i thought it was really about my eyes looking bigger than those she remembered.

another reason for delaying publicising this page was that i again managed to screw up my introduction bit by writing long sentences to the extent of making them syntactically paralyzed with too much information. not until yesterday afternoon did ann remind me and we fix some part of it together.

the last thing that was funny about setting up this page was that i forgot to include my MA thesis topic (the one about _the dark room_) while i had no problem remembering putting in topics of past essays, papers and other odds-and-ends articles i've written. isn't that weird?

the day school we organised is now on here.

draining. . .

blind certainty or arrogance; distance, or being embarrassed or restricted in the communications- any of these easily put me a bit on the defensive or guarded side when it comes to making a connection.

i've been avoiding or ignoring emotional appeals, curiosity, or face to face confrontation that might otherwise sway my thinking or actions, and meanwhile being stubbornly punctilious, discrete, or formal in conduct or discourse for the purpose of being correct. i keep on doing them, so that i can convince myself of the rightness of my motives, which has to be a logical or reasonable procedure for avoiding a repeat of past legitimate hurt, loss, complications, exposure, or else. but it takes a lot of effort and tension to maintain such a stance, stick to one story, or to keep my guard up, and therefore, it is only a temporary, albeit passive, measure.

but then stooping to tirades or other indiscriminate, promiscuous, or random measures are beneath me.

In response to Pricsilla

as a long response to your comment:

it- what taiwan means to me- is a question that will stay alive for longer than i'd like it to, simply because it's the most exhausting thing in the world to be caught in contemplations regarding identity, positionality, subjectivity etc. what i find most challenging is that there are some real emotions and feelings involved. for me, it's _not_ a matter of choosing one over the other, but it often does look like one from the outside. but as i was saying, i feel almost equally awkward in taiwan and in here. although in taiwan i can (relatively; comparing with the outsiders such asmigrant workers) effortlessly overlook the awkwardness and strategically merge into the socially centred group of people. yet it does not mean that i don't find life in taiwan alienating, lonely and painful (which was part of the reasons why i came to europe in the first place).

i just had a hot pot party with other taiwanese students at our house last night. probably because i got accepted somewhere and was overally excited about the publishing opportunity, i was unconsciously expecting this occasion to be very enjoyable for me, if not celebratory. but then i realised that i could not agree with their social practices and their implications. for example, people cared more about the food than a good talk and each other's company. it made me feel sad. also, topics circulated among people were self-interested, prejudiced and narrow-minded. i am not accusing them to be who they are not- they are not mean at all. they are just inside their own keyhole, as we all are, but without being aware of this keyhole vision, buying into it as though they had already seen the world. i felt there were so much that needed to be questioned, challenged and discussed without withholding and hard feelings, but it was so impossible.

i think it resonated well when i read what you'd written the other day 'Whenever I meet people from home these days, they seem to me alwaysto some extent naive, timid, and intellectually un-curious'. i agree that most of the taiwanese people i have met, probably like those from other parts of the world too, are not interested or engaged with things taht are not directly connected to their interpretations of life experiences. there's a sense of unitariness that congeals people while it also disappoints and at times irritates me.

about receving university education in tw and n.america, i am sure it makes a big difference. but i am not in the place to make a comparison as i only know one side of the story and however similar the education system in tw is to that in the states, i reckon at least several things to be quite different. the most obvious is the value systems, english language skills (for someone like me doing english lit. for major), the meaning of doing a bachelor's degree and social and cultural hierarchy.

what is valued in tw and america is ultimately diffenrent and of course it is to be reflected in the education/teaching/learning. for one, it's still considered important to memorise things such as who wrote which piece in literature and things as such in tw, but i'd tend to think that it might not be so in the states (at least in auckland, new zealand it was a whole different set of approach and championed close reading more than anything else). i am not ready to judge which one is necessarily better or worse, and i do believe that both of them have shortcomings and advantages, depending on how people cope with it and how things are worked out.

also, 'the meaning of doing a bachelor's degree' is very intereesting. i didn't realise this until fairly recently. in the states i believe entering college has more to do with becoming a person capable of independent thinking and critical understanding, as part of self-fulfillment. but in tw, it's still related to getting a better job with higher pay; making yourself more marketable for the companies- very practical and profit-orienting. it's interesting because this is what the muslim emigrants in the uk generally think about college degrees- that it shall be helpful for their family finanice-wise and facilitate their upward mobility in social class hierarchy, which again will contribute to the prosperity of their family. tw for more than half a century has been a for-all-purpose independent country, and yet its people still feel insecure about the life and tend to believe in education only when it promises competivity and economic wellbeing afterwards. the implication of this might be that tw is still highly dependent on the global policies, markets and western countries' leads in relation to the world capitalist games. in a way, then, tw has not really been out of the soft-power colonialisation.

. . . oh, i think i should try to turn this into an artcle or something. XD i'll just stop here. my mom is online now and we're about to talk on skype.

a million things

i think i have done a million things today and am totally knackered now- it's just 9pm. i think i will hang on there for one more hour at most and then be oblivious in sleep for like a hundred hours. can't believe i still have so much more to do tomorrow.

good news, i am going to publish something! well, if everything else goes well that is. should celebrate it with friends with our hot pot party and rosé wine tomorrow night.:)

from a game of soul calibur

You're used to people telling you that you're cute because you simply are! Your love for beauty and all things social makes you a positive force amongst any group of people. Although you may seem delicate and fanciful on the outside, you're a lot stronger than people think you are. Purity, inner strength, and a sense of aesthetics is what makes you Xianghua.

Which Soul Calibur character are you?

this quiz was made by david park

_saving face_

before i go on talking about the film, let me just clarify that i've also been working hard! my days aren't just spent on watching films! i am sending ann an essay this thurs and it's already half way thru now. (though have to admit that i've been more relaxed recently)

ok, so that was just my little comforting myself and getting away from the uneasiness of watching too much movie. first, thank vanessa for lending me this dvd and thank my lovely laptop which showed me this movie for the past one hour, forty-four minutes and twenty-eight seconds (why do i spell out all the numbers?) and thank the tasty salmon cheese plus egg sandwich i'd just made. . . XD

. . . anyway. _saving face_ is an interesting film, not as cliche as i'd thought. Michelle Krusiec (born in taiwan!) deserves a big hand for her acting. joan chen also did a nice job. she's such a character full of conflicts. joan's part is really caught in between the two distinct generations- the first generation chinese emigrants and the third generation who are the so-called abc.

the kind of chinese community depicted in queens was horrifying though- they were so unbelievably out of it. but the part of constantly watching soap opera with her mom as if that would solve all the problems in the world _is_ realistic to me. whenever i go home, i always have to watch soap opera with my mom. she doesn't really talk about her feelings and things with me. she watches the tv. and so by watching the same thing with her, it's as if we communicated.

and i have to say the soy sauce part is so hilarious! so is the part of falling without hurting yourself.

what taiwan means to me.

i am constantly aware of a kind of lack of connection with taiwan, no matter how much i have come to realise the meaning of being a taiwanese abroad. it is about the same way i feel about it here: different cultural and social practice, meaning, understanding and everything. i grew up and lived in taiwan for more than 20 years and so i am supposed to know the unwritten rules, but still i find myself feel alienated, just like how i'd feel about it here.

well, it is much easier for me to earn some money in taiwan, as i can be passed for the central crowd- that's def. the difference.

knitting . . .

a day filled with various things. i lost a book of the library, _telling sexual stories_, in summer and they asked me this morning to pay 75 quid for it. way too much, cuz the paperback was out of order, they figured they'd get the hardcopy, which was 70. i was told that i could find a copy by myself, as long as it is good as new. managed to find a much cheaper one online from barnes and nobles, though had to have it delivered to me by international express- but even with the shipping fees it's still a lot less than £75.

as one can imagine, i was for a moment panicking. not just because of the money i owed, but also that the library freezes my account, and that all my one-week loans have to go without the possibility of being renewed- and i was like: for god's sake, i am working on my thesis!

but supposedly the damned book will get here next week and i will then be able to check out all the books that i want. the librarian was really nice; she extended duration of the book i recalled to the end of next week. i've also bought a copy of _telling sexual stories_ for myself, so that i don't have to check out the book and irrationally feel that it might be lost again. . . (to be fair, i lost it while carrying it on way home in my bike basket, not somewhere in my messy room that sort of thing)

after the book thing came the knitting. we had a fun event this afternoon of knitting with wine and cakes. i learned again how to knit, the last time being at the age of 8 with my grandmother on a typhoon day. i was still not very good at it, but it was fun. it's just that my knitting is like me, tight and dense.

and then came the news of my abstract being accepted in BSA. didn't quite expect it- always thought that my thing would be too 'region-specific' for big and general conferences. but i suppose it's nothing but good. had a look at the 'culture stream' and excitingly seeing a bunch of papers on ict. very looking forward to them.:)

listed out all the conferences that i am going/might go next year and sat down with ann to go thru each of them, in an attempt of dropping some. eventually i dropped only one, and there's about one that generally i'd like to go but actually feel ambivalent- it's just too far and i hate long-distance flights. ann joked that she'd never thought that anyone would hate to go to santa cruz, california. ah well, i'd probably be said hating taiwan for the same reason- i really want to avoid long-distance flights as much as i can.

but then i _am_ flying to west canada. . . think that will be more than 13 hours. oh no. Q_Q

gia

watched _gia_ while i really should've done some work. but it was such a compelling telefilm. so compelling.

i cried when gia saw linda for the last time- gia quickly left and the door closed abruptly after she repeated to linda that she had always been the only one in her heart (despite the fact that gia previously chose the drug over linda).

it also dawned on me towards the end of the film that i didn't remember seeing any representation of aids in movies after _Philadelphia_, and _Gia_ was the second one after _p_ in 1996(?)- how weird it was. (and things like _angels in america_ don't count; it's aids-related definitely, but it doesn't, in my opinion, get dirty with this disease.) it was so real too that gia's mother got scared at aids, and that gia was just left in a hotel room, as the hospital at that time couldn't do anything to aids, and so she was supposed to 'rot' by herself, waiting for 'the time' to come. . .

(seems to me hospital nowadays cannot do much either. patients are still left to live on their own and lead a life highly dependent on drugs)

what else is left there to be said? all the horrendous things that happened. it was sad and intense and realistic.

this does not come straight from the film but it's still part of it: i really feel distressed thinking about all the misery and terrible things that happen in the world, to people, to me and to others, and that how little i can do to make a change, though at the same time i do, however paradoxically, believe in myself and believe in what i can do if i try hard enough. films like this remind me of my optimism and cynicism at the same time.

narnia and a sense of guilt

went to see narnia this afternoon. the movies here in the afternoon is way cheaper than those in sweden, and of the same price in taiwan, so it's actually not too bad. the movie was faithful to the novel by the same title which i'd read as a child at 9. watching it was comforting. i recalled a great deal of descriptions in the book i'd once read and re-read and cherished in between the pale days of endless studying, sitting exams and dreaming about leaving behind all those dull days.

there were moments in which i felt like crying, especially when it was about the four kids' choice between 'going home and forgetting about narnia' or 'sticking around and doing their best to help the people in narnia fight off the white witch'. things as such easily stirred up strong emotions in me and i felt helping others was ultimately the thing to do; there's no other option for me. i was glad that the four kids felt that way too in the story; it had been/was the part that touched me, even after all these years. (but then it was really just a visual materialisation of the novel; nothing more.)

i went home and had supper with my tw housemate, c. c finished earlier than me. when she did the dishes, c suddenly gave this comment as if to have just discovered something: 'x hasn't been around and had dinner in the house for a long time'. x was the one who gravely harmed me during the summer. my first reaction to that comment was like: it probably serves her right to feel uncomfortable having dinner at the house. but then it got me thinking- or feeling guilty: why am i thinking this way about her? no matter how disappointing she might have been to me, i should not revenge my wound on her. it makes no sense and does nothing but reproduce the same harming effects. but i still cannot forget about it, let alone 'fogive' her in my heart. i still feel now how unfair it was, the whole thing. she could and can just get away because she's in a more previliged position and she's got voices, resources, everything.

but i do also feel guilty. she's probably fed up with losing access to talking to me and sharing her life with me. but you know what? i really cannot be as friendly to her anymore. i wasn't even so sure up until i typed the first sentence of this paragraph. i do feel bad about it, and don't want to keep on hating her, but i really cannot put up with what she's done. i am not ready to let go, and so the best i can do is really to not think about it as much as i can, and try to live in this house as peacefully as possible.

cyborg me

reading bits and pieces of _virtual girl_ and _body of glass_ makes realise that i can identify myself with the two cyborgs- maggie and yod- very very much. i can be just as 'out of it' in various social scenarios as they are often presented in the novelistic depictions, and raise many as stupidly basic questions as they often do, meanwhile not getting a lot of signs or signals around me. and multitasking too, it's like what i do all the time.

since childhood, i always feel that i have some sort of metaconsciousness that takes on a passer-by stance towards everything i do. i often feel watched- not in a literal sense as being watched by other people/eye/entity, and not necessarily about controlling, regulation or discipline either. i just feel that, because of this metaconsciousness, i have to be reasonable, rational, logical. and so i often fight with my desires and do instead whatever that seems to be more 'righteous' and 'truthful' to me. later of course i found that the world does not operate in such a way and my persistence was usually considered weird and 'unnecessary'. i've come to find a more comfortable way of doing this, not afraid of being who i am. but i've never figured out why i was like this from an early age. nobody in my family is like this- it's as if i were programmed.

'subaltern cannot speak'

(the original title was: 'those who are oppressed are deprived of a voice', but then spivak has already provided me this ready-made sentence- so why not?, though this title has perhaps gotten some baggage now. . .)

today's research day meeting was 'internationalism' and it was a bit disappointing. it was good that we finally had a space to talk about certain things such as being hurt or ignored or stereotyped simply because our race, nationality and other things that are usually not equated to represent overally who we are of our own accord.
the disappointment was that among overseas students, the two american white people dominated in the integrated, whole-group discussion. they juxtaposed their experiences of being challenged as american because of george bush and 'the american way' with experiences of being thrown with a stone or yelled at as 'chinese pigs'. as ann pointed out at that time, there is a difference between dealing with naivety and intended harms. i thought, too, that it was very unfair/unjust for the hurting experiences of racism to be washed away, or even neglected, because of their hasty emphasis on their experiences with people's ignornace or lack of sophistication in dealing with the americans.

i thought i could say something to balance out the american concerns. but the thing was that i personally have never been yelled at, attacked or thrown with a pack of milk/a stone, and i didn't want to put on the spot the people who were there and who had been thru these terrible acts done by 'the locals'. i was afraid that anything i said _for them_ will further oppress them, making them confronting things they are not yet ready to. i also know how experiences as such can be almost too hurtful, embarrassing and difficult to tell, especially in front of a group of people who are your colleagues and who might identify themselves as locals. but i just felt it was so sad that their experiences of being unrighteously treated could not be voiced, and neither could i voice these stories for them.

it was then i truly saw the mechanism of how the oppressed is deprived of a voice. it is exactly because the status of being a subaltern that they cannot speak. they are still under the influence of being subjugated and subordinated. but what worries me was that people from a less powerful country generally lack support in an infrastructural way: the language, the culture, the system. . . and their sense of security is generally much lower too, which results in a whole set of 'difference' in their daily life- they might just speak less, be more self-protecting or even 'secretive' in their dealings and so, in some people's eyes, simply 'strange'. these are the real and concrete evidence to their anxieties of living in a drastically different environment, and they don't even have the luxury of recognising some projected stereotypes or putting ideas as such into understandable english.

i am however in a totally different place. i am no longer deprived, though marginalised- but no longer deprived. while i earnestly hope that i can do something about this, the process of gaining a say for oneself, in my experience, is such a personal process that nobody can be part of it. it's something i am struggling with: the more i want to do something, the less i realise i am able to do.

all i can do is write, keep people company, be as helpful as i can, lead a good life and be sincere and honest with people and things around me.

a few things about the colloquium yesterday

for the most part, two things struck me as unexpected: one was that i was amazed at the sociable nature of such an occasion, and the other was that this event unwittingly provided me a necessary distance from what i am doing.

it's probably weird for me to say that i found the sociable part of conferences surprising and unexpected, given the number of conferences i have previously been to. but when you're the organisor, it seems quite another story. in the first seminar we organised this past feb., i didn't feel the need of socialising too much because you have all the native-english speakers taking charge; the only a few things that worried me was if the technology would go wrong as i was in charge of it, whether my presentation would go well in front of all the familiar faces from the centre, and how my chairing for the workshop session would be (which turned out a disaster, though not directly related to me as a chair).

this time, though, i somehow was the person determining 'what happens next', 'how long the next break is' and 'whether we do this or not'. i felt so unfamiliar with being put in the spotlight and yet, it was not like i couldn't do it- practically it didn't feel hard; rather it was simply just like another thing to be taken care of in daily life, though obviously i don't get to be in that role of a hostess every day. what amazed me more was how adept i was: i enter into that persona effortless, checking on people and being diplomatic. but i did feel quite disoriented when i found out that in these social moments, communications were not meant to be only about communications- you speak certain things not necessarily to discuss any thing in-depth, rather the focus was to keep each other company, producing a friendly atmosphere. i was not quite used to it.

the other thing about the colloquium was the 'distance'- so well needed. on and on, i have this problem of being immersed in what induce passion and anger in me about my thesis, and so i end up appearing, for example, a nationalist, as in what wendelin finally plucked up to ask me last weekend- whether i was a nationalist. i've also been sensing the danger of not keeping the necessary distance from the topics and materials, but didn't quite know how to strive for some 'clearer vision' before yesterday.

this was how it worked: discussing issues with others within the framework of east asia/taiwan, i was immediately forced to look at things from a totally different perspective and to try to bridge over that difference in perspectives, and so such efforts distanced me from what i saw as problematic. it was as if some kind of extra bonus of participating in a space as such and being patient and attentive etc. really good stuff. didn't really expect it, but i am glad that this happened- now i just ahve to try to remember it and don't let go of that crucial distance.

other than these two things, i think yesterday was a success. many people at different time points during the day came to me and expressed how much they appreciated this space for discussion. i also have gotten some emails saying similar things. i am really glad too that i invited lim over and he's surprisingly sociable, experienced and wise. you learn so much by just being around him. it's always by knowing people as such that makes you feel comforted and optimistic about what the future might hold.

learning all your common wisdoms from tv series

i used to do this with _angels in america_ and now i am doing it with _the l word_. these words: 'there's only one thing that cuts across all our realities. it is love. the bridge between all our differences'.

it's interesting love becomes the bridge over. personally i am more inclined towards donna haraway's 'affinity, not identity' than towards love. not that i hold anything against it, i am just thinking about Hainan ji fan, a film released in 2004, touching quite a few gay viewers situated in the chinese culture. the mother in this story just doesn't understand why her three sons are all in love with men (and one of them even emigrated to taiwan- i thought that was so funny- but not so funny. singaporeans probably thought that we had been more liberal than we really were). at the end of the film, although the mother still doesn't believe in homosexuality, she shows her unreserved love for the sons and it was exactly on the note of love that the film ended with a hint of happiness- everything is gonna be fine because they still love one another despite the gaps and differences.

naive, yes, but not stupid. it managed to be popular. which meant that 'love conquers all' still had good resonances with people.

-----

the quote i picked up in _angels in america_ was: 'there is a genuine violence in softness and weakness. sometimes self-interested is the most generous you can be.'

--------


and i have tomorrow to prepare my talk on saturday. which means i am still eating biscuits and watching _nip tuck_. XD

pains

she told me if you have done everything you can, and it's still not getting any better. you should perhaps walk away, cuz there's nothing you can do. let it go because it's nothing you can change. it's not because you're not good enough.

'it's not because you're not good enough'. i thought that was it.

despite constant struggles and clear pains, i still enjoy and desire a lot of things in this world.

and it's ambivalent all the time. i hate how habituality for one conceal, or disguise, the process of naturalisation, and love as much how it for the other creates a deep sense of belonging and identification.

sometimes you're really spending time solving others' problems projected onto you.

my thumb nail hurts

am writing some christmas cards and my thumb nail on the right hurts. haven't written chinese characters for soooo long- i just don't know how to write them so that my thumb nail doesn't hurt as i write. it feels so stiff, my right hand. . . well, it's not even like i handwrite a lot these days anyway.

had a wonderful day. printed out 96 pages this morn and handed them to ann for our next supervision meeting. facilitated a session on _nearly roadkill_ and it was a great one- most of its greatness was that people seemed to have enjoyed it and i managed to sumbit some interesting ideas about the lack of racial play in this novel. (gees, i am good. XD)

and then went to the one-hour transferable skill session on 'how to strcture a 20-min talk'. the facilitator was the same beautiful, sophisticated and yet really sincere woman as in the last-time session i went to weeks ago, who is (allegedly) the director of graduate training unit. it was a good session, providing lots of hands-on knowledge, though not that useful as i've kind of sorted things out myself anyway. but i appreciated her work, and so filled out carefully the evaluation sheet.

before home, i took some photos as i went (one of them as illustrated up there). it was fun playing with light and colour thru my camera. i really enjoyed it. haven't been able to spend time doing that for so long.

and then after getting home, i cooked myself a nice plate of diced salmon with colourful peppers and mixed herbs. i ate it with toasts. too lazy to cook carbs. it was nonetheless fantastic, and purely out of my own invention (ok, it's not that original, but i didn't read any cook book for ideas). got my haircut, cleaned the kitchen, took out the garbage, cleaned my floor, brewed some coffee, listened to al start, painted something, replied emails, uploaded photos, and updated my blog. it's been quite interesting how people in life start to take an interest in me and what i think and have to say. it makes life more exciting as i go along.

now, it's probably time to work on my presentation on saturday. can't put up with handwiting christmas cards anymore.

one quick note

trust in yourself and that you're worthwhile being loved as you are.

ett Hål i mitt hjärta

a film filled with disturbing, horrible and unbearable violence.

i went to see _ett Hål i mitt hjärta_ by mistake. i meant to see _3 rooms of melancholia_ and thought mistakenly that it would be played at 12.05, while it was really at 1.10. no wonder i thought the title of this film did not seem familiar at all.

so i missed the one i wanted to see, and instead saw this really violent and brutal film. i kept on suppressing my desire to leave, because it was actually a good one. there was a good dose of honesty and sincerity that i appreciated. but it was really brutal. it reminded me of _requium for a dream_. the thing was that it was brutal for a good reason, and i think it was that reason so deeply connected to humanity that really bothered and frightened me.

the director's previous films are _show me love_ and _lilja 4ever_. _show me love_ was soso, but kinda sweet i suppose. _lilja 4ever_ was too much of a 'teenager' genre for me. i saw _lilja_ first (right before i went to sweden), and then i watched _show me love_ while i was in sweden. the kind of sweden depicted in _lilja_ was so alienating and foreign to lilja that it made me feel nervous about my going to sweden for a year at that time- so contrary to the general knowledge of sweden being a peaceful and humanism-promoting country (though they do produce weapons. . .) thruout the film, it seemed that one could never know what would be in store for the future until one made the choice of being physically there. but in _show_, the kind of simplicity and predictability of sweden sort of came back as something taken for granted, which was an interesting twist in terms of my own viewing sequence of moodysson's works.

now that i've made a connection between the three films, i can't help but wonder why lukas moodysson always focuses on either sexuality or sex businesses (prostitution and porn) in sweden?

when i was there, sexuality seemed so invisible, almost not a concern, to me and to the people i knew. what might that possibily mean?

another day has gone.

've been avoiding my us housemate for ages; been very quiet and actually content with my writing without leaving traces of going about my regular life in this house for ages, and exactly for these 2 reasons, i've also started to show restlessness.

had high hopes for today, walked to uni and went straight into the campus store to meet up with various conference-packs-to-be stationary items. among the chatting, shopping and deciding colours of paper folders, yi-han and i started to exchange completely daily-life nonsense and it felt so warm and dear to me, though i've always understood that we are just so not connected because of the age difference and the consequent generation gaps, despite being raised in and surrounded by the same society.

so we chatted and jumped among topics and being sort of lax about things and yet still managed to agree upon a worksheet for the one week to come before the conference day. obviously i am just being a lazy jerk, 'i have to hand in stuff next wed and facilitate a session the same day and. . . so could you do this and that and this pleeeeease?'

and yet i am getting bored with what i am set out to do- writing, preparing the session, presenting whatever that can be counted as 'transnational queer', thinking about 'geek' and x-men, worrying about money for netherlands and canada etc. my adventurous nature does not let go of any opportunity to go do something different and be away, and yet i feel the materiality and physicality of these things is just going to kill me in the end (translation: extremely limited resources, budgets, time and energy).

. . . and still have time completing one of those cheesy online tests where the result page says:

What makes you a good partner and friend?

You're not likely to be clingy in a relationship
Your adventurous nature keeps life interesting
You can adapt easily to different situations
You are one who is dependable in times of crisis

oh well, i guess you're right; even though you don't know me and are nothing more than a computer-run programme connected to the internet. *grin*

there are roughly still another 20 pages to be finished before the 23rd and at the same time i have a hundred other things to do before the end of next week; but i am still determined about going away for the weekend, in the name of this.

and in the name of getting together with a good friend.

writing is fucking undesirable. sleep instead sounds just right. an appointment with the hairstylist next wed. totally braces me up: yes, i yet again cut my own hair and it yet again looks embarrassingly hilarious in the back. . .

in the past one hour, i listened to cheerio chen, got connected to the BBS community, counted the number of familiar ids and wrote two sentences, along with reading 3 essays. but yeah 2 sentences.

my firefox weather forecast just said that it's 0 degrees out! cool. a cold winter we're having aren't we? definitely looking forward to some white noise falling down much sooner this year! it was only 5 days in feb last year- so disappointing, esp regarding the amount of crispness, or at times dampness, and heaps of flaky snow we used to get in southern sweden in 2003. but at least the 3rd winter in europe cured my seasonal depression and actually have me enjoy the slanted, wintry sun in the mid-afternoons.

although i frankly have absolutely no idea where i'd end up after this fleeting 3-yr period, i know the revelations of my laziness and indolence in things are definitely signs of my settlement in it here. and what this signifies is yet to be observed in the days to come.

human beings are so hard to understand.

i feel like maggie in _virtual girl_. . . always wondering, always observing, and always not getting it. and yet programmed into having all these socialised emotions and reactions, wanting to help and to understand, only to feel more and more confused and disoriented.

writing

writing is a painfully beautiful and mesmerising expereince. (spoken in scottish accent where 'experience' has this funny 'r' thing to it)

lesbian as chic?! -_-|||

it first happened on the train going back to y* from london. we were 3 on the return trip and there were a str8t woman, one queer and me (and i think they weren't sure what i was, since i was/am not sure either. anyway) the str8t one started to say, in a curiously reassuring tone, that she is really not that str8t because she thinks beyonce is hot. she would totally go to bed with her but she thinks beyonce wouldn't want to. then the queer woman said 'she might you ask her nicely'. i didn't say anything. i found myself confused with the conversation- i felt there was something more to it and yet i didn't understand what it was. at the same time, i found that conversation really weird.


then the first private conversation i had with my british housemate after moving in took place when she borrowed my laptop for the internet and realised that i had natalie portman on my desktop at the time, she went: 'i think she's really beautiful. i'd totally marry her if i could'. and there i was, tongue tied- i mean, what was i supposed to say? (i think i said something like 'ok'- which sounded prob. really stupid.)


my british housemate is a mormon, and she's duly obsessed with (of course heterosexual) marriage just as mormons are supposed to. (in the beginning i was a bit worried that she might be uncomfortable with the idea of homosexuality because of her religion- anybody who's seen _angels in america_ would know- and since there was no other way to find out, i deliberately let her know that i was going to the pride in mcr, which immediately pivoted me around the identity of lesbian for her. . .)


both situations left me wonder what it was that these two women wanted to express in their talks about sleeping with/marrying women? and then it sort of dawned on me one day that lesbianism is considered progressive and 'chic', and so they were trying to let people know that they were not bigots.

the whole thing creeps me out. it reminds me of my housemate who would date women just to show that she's avant-garde. it really, really creeps me out. i know it happens everywhere, and wendelin had talk with me about this phenomenon being 'popular' in the literature and arts circles in taipei, but still. . . human beings are so readily empty and hollow, so pathetic. (i mean, why would anyone do things just to 'show' to others that they are not like this or that?!)

and prob. i could be just one of them, if i am not careful and reflexive enough.

?

went past a church in newcastle today and it said 'love good, hate evil'- since when is the church supposed to promote hatred alongside with love?

we live in the lack of love and don't know it.

for decades we live in the margins of the world, being used to negligence and forgetfulness. over the taiwan strait, we call you 'bandits' and you call us 'bandits'. we hate each other. deeply. you keep on declaring that you are going to rinse taiwan with blood, and we keep on buying new weapons from the states.


we learn how to threaten each other, being bold enough to make claims about what we will do in case this or that happens. we are getting more and more alike, unwittingly, because of this mutual hatred.

if they honestly tell us, how many communists have the nationalist killed? and how many families and relatives of the nationalists' got killed after nationalists' retreat to taiwan? was it really 4 million? was the death toll during the civil war really 11 million? when the nationalist and communist were in battles with each other for the ultimate power, how many people had paid the price?

as taiwan and china are busy striking deals to 'earn the rest of the world's money' together, have the two thought about the number of people who are simultaneously starving and dying in the _communist bandits' land_? what have they done to provide the basic living condition for people who keep on picking up the bills of the country's power contentions?

we live in the lack of love and curiously feel nothing about it.

ohhhhhhhhh.

in the middle of writing and suddenly just wanna procrastinate. dunno, just want a break. want to stop. and then my brain starts to think about the course reading and assignments that need to be done next week- gees.

so i got up, went to the kitchen, digged out my swedish ginger snaps and british thornton's dark chocolate bar and started to eat them. the former was from my first and only trip to ikea in leeds and the latter a gift from a friend. i didn't like ginger snaps so much when i was in sweden, and they were practically everywhere. now i get soppy and actually miss that which cannot be easily seen around me at this time of the year. which is a bit corny really. its not even like i celebrate christmas or anything. i guess i just wanna retain a feeling of home. so need to work on that redefining home for myself.

i eat slightly more these days after having started working on my thesis. *Sigh*. as chang shiao-hung confesses in her preface of _narcissistic women_, she considers herself an emotional eater- whenever she feels stressed in academic writing she goes to the fridge and find something to eat. i was so impressed with her honesty. and so whenever i do the same, i always think of her preface.

i get a sense that maybe my anxiety is not that related to my thesis, but really a matter of having too many things to mind in life. conference. the fact that i always present in the conferences i hold- like i don't have enough to do already. keeping an eye on not pestering the presenters and keynote speaker for abstracts and outline since there's still plenty of time and they all have their own lives to mind; try not to call the catering for repeated changes, not to send msgs to yi-han every now and then for this and that which randomly occurs to me. . . just finished talking to my mom in the early afternoon and the breaking news was not her final decision of the date of retirement, but my (second-time?) explanation to her that there's no men in my life and i don't necessarily want to know/meet any. and then after that, i chatted a little with _her_, feeling like a hypocrite. it's such a challenge to live with her now. i still like her and in a way feel very close to her and yet at the same time, so far away from her. i criticise her in my mind a lot, and feel really bad about this silent criticism towards her. i am a hypocrite. she's like me, big time, and yet we are also so majorly different. i can almost be as self-central and over-sensitive like her, but i just cannot bear people who are paranoid and not trusting. they bring about so much doubt and distrust in the air and it makes me feel uncomfortable. i like being easy-going and trusting. i need that sense of security to help me get going. never before have i realised how important general trust in people is. i guess i just learn to trust people around me. having travelled on one's own so much, you do start to realise that you're not so important and that you can just be relaxed about things.

babbling. . .

all i want to say is just that i hate distrust.

paris/gender is burning

spent an afternoon watching this documentary 'paris is burning'. liked some parts and didn't like some parts (->useless statement)

i guess personally i always get a bit nervous whenever watching transgender/sexual performances as a celebratory act- not that i don't enjoy watching them, but rather because in this culture here i can be easily defined as a 'normal homo' in the sense that i don't look 'visually-informing'- basically, i look like a femme/bisexual/heterosexual. while i am doing the most i can to resist this imposed point of view having an influence/being materialised on me, i am ambivalent. the best example is that i got asked 'are you gay?' in the club night when women approached me. this question interpellated my own ambivalence: i don't belong here; my gayness does not get to be read, and yes and no- i want while i don't want to feel taht sense of belonging.

anyway. after the film i checked out _feminist film theory_ to read butler's critique and bang! haven't been feeling like this for such a long time! so wonderful- and it's not exactly a feeling of being challenged, but rather an exhilarating joy of being *alive*.

miraculous. feeling alive is miraculous.

though, this puts more pressure, in a way, on me because i now so fucking wanna write the third part well- if not to perfection (still possible if you're like *really* situated).

. . .

i should have updated my blog, replied to people's msgs and put on links to the online community of 'diasporic chinese women', but i just keep on coming back here for expressing myself (since chialin's gone) without doing all the above things. for the time being this seems a blissful, pressure-free haven to me. well, not that my blog is in any way a pressure, but it is after all more public and cannot be as relaxing, whimsical and not making sense as this one. and i have to admit, language choice does make a difference to me. (though i get paranoid and wonder if all the things i said about her will be found out in the end- in whcih case, i really should have made the complains in traditional chinese characters)

have to hand things in on the 23rd and then 26th will be the day. argh, if i continue to feel so tired and sleepy around this time of the day, i cannot possibly pull it thru. not to mention all the other niggling. . . (ex. i got the wrong light bulb for my ikea lamp *sigh* how would i know there are two different kinds?

which reminds me, i met adrian in costcutter when getting a light bulb. my hello to him was somehow in mandarin, despite his coming from hong kong, and never before (well, only once) had we chatted in mandarin- he doesn't speak mandarin but cantonese and i can only sing cantonese songs without knowing at all how to speak it. we've only talked in english to each other.

but for some reason i reacted in mandarin the moment he greeted me and it brought in a strange atmosphere. later i found out that in hong kong, speaking mandarin is considered 'of a lower class' becasue you get loads of chinese workers pouring into hong kong, taking away the labourers' jobs, and they seem 'naive and backward'. so tensions between cantonese and mandarin get entangled with the job market as well as ideas of modernity. although my mandarin is of 'taiwanese accent', adrian's hearing of mandarin is probably too poor to tell the difference. i thought the moment of my speaking mandarin as a response to his greeting was so fascinatingly charged with challenges to him and me. i don't know much about hong kong and yet my little knowledge of the language politics in hk simply revealed a lot of intricate relationships among the chinese, hk and tw people.

guess what

she just came in my room this morn, starting first with some practicals and then quickly switching to what her semi-bf has been reacting to her former affairs with some other guy in May after their (first?) breakup last year.

she just went on and on and i felt like a counsellor sitting there, listening. she said she was upset. and then she added 'not with you, but with x'. so i keep on thinking, 'what is this?'

so, she needs me. probably because i am about the only person she knows who is willing to listen and actually understands what she's saying. i want to give her that privilege of being listened to while i can, but cannot do it without being wondering- so what are we now? some hypocrites pretending to be 'friends' when she decides she needs my ears? (and for that matter, my brain and english comprehension skills as well) there are things we haven't settled between us, so are we going to keep on ignoring them and be 'friends' who share feelings? i was trying to avoid her as much as i could in the house, and now with this 'please listen to me' gesture, i don't know what to do.

and yet i let her do it. she left my room murmuring that she needs to go to the gym, havent been there for days, and it will clear her head etc., after thanking me for listening. i replied 'no problem'. though i get so many questions having said that phrase.

what the fuck

just as i started to actually feel sad about what had turned out between us, she immediately proved that i was completely wrong about this sadness. just as i got reminded 'but we were so close' and that 'she was such a wonderful friend', she again showed me how 'evil' she was. i mean, so i got it wrong when i thought that pack of bran flakes on the counter was mine and i am sorry to have mistaken it. but you don't have to pretend you don't care and then say, 'maybe you've eaten it and you forgot, and you thought that you didn't eat it and so you took mine'-- what the fuck is that?! (there's one already open in my cupboard and she's like: did you forget that you've got one already?)

she treated it as if i did it on purpose, as if i meant to take away her bran flakes to irritate her. i can't believe how stupid one can be when one loses the ability to trust others. and it's totally bush- 'if you're not my friend you are my enemy' type of thing. totally stupid. and there i was, thinking that there was friendliness and connection coming back in the air between us. i am so wrong.

a miraculous moment (contiuation of sort of an update)

i was a bit nervous waiting to be seen by the same counsellor again. i tried to distract myself reading an interview with beautiful monica bellucci in a magazine and couldn't help but put it down after a few paragraphs, realising, 'so after all, i do feel nervous about this'.

and then i heard her voice. i didnt know that i'd remember her voice. getting more and more nervous.

she asked me to come thru. it was a very short sentence; didn't even have time to check if she had a friendly smile on her face.

i went into the room and sat down on the empty chair; the other one's got some papers on it. she started by asking me how i felt getting back here.

that was a good question.

the moment i entered the room and sat down, i felt incredibly vulnerable and sad. i felt wronged.

i replied that i felt like crying and soon after i did cry. i didn't at all anticipate that i would. i thought it would be about her explaining things that happened last time; in other words, 'straightening' them towards her favour.

but it was nothing like that. it was a miraculous moment where i actually opened up and simply became tearful- felt all my high demands and heavy burdens on myself were being seen and understood- i could just then be myself, without responsibility and obligations, without being ultra-intelligent, helpful, altruist or anything else. i was my tears.

visual essay and trick or treat

spent a day home happily and quietly online and this is the first time after a long, long while of perpectually biking to uni for internet connection.

my housemate went on a one-day trip to london for visa application and so the usual internet-router-goes-to-her-since-i've-got-my-own-office-on-campus-and-she-doesn't deal stircken in early september temporarily stop taking effects for roughly ten hours.

it's just been blissful with a mug of tea, my dear laptop and haraway's 'situated knowledge'.

in between the reading haraway and doing my viusal essay in relation to the article, some people rang the doorbell and banged on the door. as i was seriously wondering who it is, i heard 'trick or treat' while opening the door cautiously. oh gees. my first reaction was 'this is not the states, why does it always have to be the american way'? i thought british people didn't celebrate halloween: my british housemate always says she just doesn't get halloween.

'uh, uh. no candies. sorry.' i looked at them and wondered if they would assume i didn't speak english.
'would you like some tricks then?' asked a boy-monster.
'maybe not.' i grinned and closed the door after their deep sighs. (in response to the boy's questions, i seriously thought to myself: uh, excuse me, but i think i am just taller and stronger than you are. -_-;)

yeah i am quite cold and indifferent to this once-a-year children's community acitivity. i opened the door three times having pretty much the same conversations.

. . . but honestly i did get a bit scared when a couple of boys with ugly monster masks appeared outside of the door speechless. without the shout of 'trick or treat', i was momentarily left confused why i would see such an image. i mean, who would expect to see horrid non-human faces in front of you having just finished a sentence like 'gender is a field of structured and structuring difference'?

buses take you nowhere

It was the club night of YLAF last night. and it was, for me, quite a night of walking.

At the beginning, I got lost for one and a half hours in the middle of nowhere due to getting off the bus at the wrong stop. Having to start walking to the racecourse- where the event is mostly based, I launched on my 'it-'s-quite-a-walk' tour, according to the woman who gave me the directions, from one end of the town to the other. Practically seeing nobody around for one hour, I texted my supervisor for some directions. But no reply. Luckily, before I gave up my drifting about and started to find ways hitting back, a couple of women came out from a farm-like place nearby along with a big dog. I followed them immediately, worrying they would think that I were a stalker in long black coat, hesitating about asking for directions (it seemed a desolate area and so it was likely, I felt, that I ended up somewhere very far away from the racecourse- which would make my looking for the racecourse a completely random action as if it were an excuse to get close to them- OK, this is a very winding way of thinking, but it did then occur to me right away). Turned out that they'd camped behind the racecourse in order for joining in the lesbian festival and I was very near the very destination (!) I was trying to get to for the past one and a half hours. so I walked with them for a few minutes, thanking them before we parted.

At the end of this night, however, I was again left wandering on the street alone in the foggy early morning. The bus that the organisers hired for the late-night participants only took people to the neighbouring area of the place we wanted to go. So, for 'Fulford', the driver dropped us at the beginning of that road, which meant that to return to my bed required half-an-hour walking time down in a street with nobody around at 3AM. This broke the record of my late-night walking alone last time, roughly from 1AM to 2 AM, from linköping central station (railway station) to rydsvägen, where i lived at the time, in May 2004 Sweden.

I am so gonna be either a brave person fearing no late-night walks by myself, or the next person to be raped and severely traumatised in this town. To be frank, i am not intimidated by late-night walks in taiwan and other places i've so far been to. I can do it anytime when I have to. While i am glad that i feel ok (not deprived of the right to solitary walks at night on the road), i am also aware that this is after all not a good idea in general because people still think those who are raped after midnight have to be responsible for the rape themselves.

At any rate, both times the buses ended up taking me to nothing but solitary trudging in the dark. So buses take you nowhere- at least last night. This may be regarded as a way of thinking about how much public transportation really helps for women passengers and where it stops helping them.

In between the two roams in the dark, I had an boringly interesting night. Among the students who signed up for voluntary help for YLAF as a whole, I was the only one who was willing to stay last night for work instead for the drinking/dancing fun. And in a way that predetermined my night with heaps of drunk women and alcohol- I sort of had to be not part of the jolly crowd.

Wearing the earphone and carrying around a radio, I helped people with the elevator, checking if anybody smoke in the non-smoking area, answering questions with standardised sentences such as 'the cloakroom is on the third floor', 'the bathrooms are behind this door' etc. It also reminded me of the year in sweden where I'd go to pubs and bars with friends almost every other week where the regular 'people checking people out' sort of thing took place all the time, and the way we'd joked about it: 'human-meat market'.

Several women came to talk to me about completely nonsense and I guess aside from the fact that I was easily spotted in the backdrop against loads of white women, 'the most unattainable is also the most desirable'- the fact I was obviously 'working' probably added some extra charm to my low-profile outlook.

There was one very straightforward. And I guess I sort of wasted her time talking nonsense with me as I declined her suggestion to go to her hotel room with her (I was very tired; got up at 7AM yesterday to begin with).

That was something new to me. Nobody has ever asked that- I've always been perhaps too demure for that question. So I guess I shall remember this thing about YLAF 2005. . . (and, the other way of thinking about this incident will be: does horniness translate cross-culturally? XD)

Another woman who also came to me for chats said that _saving face_ is a good movie and she insisted that I must go see it- she said that I looked like Joan Chen in this one. I'm not sure if it was because 'you "chinese" all look alike' or what. But I guess I will try to look for this movie and have a look some time later since it got good review on imdb (so it was not complete nonsense after all).

YLAF will be successfully finished today and I am helping no more. For the past three days I've been bored and tired because of this job, despite many interesting observations and new experiences it has brought to me. This is not to negate this event, but simply recognise that a lot of these things are after all to do with culture, languages, personal connections etc. my position in between the margins and borders (here, in taiwan, and perhaps anywhere else for the matter)will no longer allow me to find anything 'simply', or 'innocently', fun and pleasant. as i was saying to my sipervisor last week, it's been all very clear with deliberation, awareness, choice and contemplation in leading my simple life day in day out, no matter where i am.

caberat night of YLAF

dyke marolyn is like the sexiest high femme character i've ever experienced. her vocal is terribly sexy. god i love this femme woman.

al start is really awesome too. i bought her cd's, got personalised discount and asked for her autography. cool stuff. her songs are so lovely and pretty.

but again i am just so not part of the whole lesbian ecology/politics. and probably because of cultural difference, language barrier and other stuff as such, i look perpectually dumbstruck and wordless- though i do try to talk as much as i can! btw, the steward coodinator says that she's known someone from 'green island' (one of the teeny-weeny islands of taiwan). how refreshing. i don't think i've met anybody from gree island in the past 21.5 years in taiwan.

sort of an update

. . . so i deleted my last entry about those little dramas that have taken (been taking?) place in our house for some time now, not quite because i got paranoid and want to hide things- at least i really hope not- but because i figured that i am now in a better position to account th,em in a more 'understandable' fashion, wanting to redo it step by step- and you know, we are all reconstructing narratives anyway, each one giving out something less and more at the same time.

starting from what has very recently happened- it's yet again about the long-lost comments of my subjection to 'overanalyses' in life. i know perfectly well that i am considered an analytical sort of person and so i identify myself as somebody who 'thinks and analyses a lot'. i see it as necessary though people normally don't. and frankly, it doesn't take a lot of time and energy; ie, it's _not_ exhausting to me. but people keep on thinking it 'a thing that you should do without' and reject such a personality of mine, constantly imposing ideas that are more 'socially common' to make me feel my analyses in life are inadequate and basically, strange and unnecessary, whenever i insist on 'doing such a thing to myself'.

so such kind of comments came back to me again last week. some counsellor said to me i overcomplicated things with my analyses, and that it was exhausting to listen to me. i was immediately offended. i tried hard not to be, and yet it still offended me a great deal. i decided to flee from the session coming up this week by cancelling it three hours after the first counselling session. for the first time, i realised that counselling can be and does become some terrible thing, disturbing and unsafe just like the 'normal life'. (ps. i went for counselling to talk baout my housemate, in hopes of finding some ideas and ways to deal with my housemate as well as the changes/hurt she's done to me.


I talked to my supervisor the next day and unwittingly started to pour out the thing this counselling person has doen to me. It was nice and warm as she actually managed to push me further, and we never before talked about things as such (though i was obviously emotional and everything, i am really glad that she was not intimidated and decided to be 'soft' with me). She asked me why i felt so intimidated when she implied that my friend might be right- that i was behaving strangely and needed some'professional' help. My supervisor said that although she's got her own ghosts, she would not have felt intimidated in that situation with somebody who barely knows her.

And she's got a point. I certainly need to figure that out.



(to be contiuned)

an excerpt from 'introduction: criticism as autobiography' in white woman speaks with forked tongue

p.5

thinking is not the management of thought, as alas it is too often taken to mean these days (ie, in the eighties and perhaps nowadays as well). thinking means putting everything on the line, taking risks, writerly risks, finding out what the actual odds are, not sheltering behind a pretend and in any case fallacious and transparent objectivity. only when it actually thinks is criticism ever a form of writing. only then is it a total commitment to language, the way a good joiner who makes a table will choose the best food he or she can get, attempt to serve the wood well, use his or her skill to best effect, invest everything, body and knowledge, into what the old Compagnons used to call a masterpiece(which cold also be a mistresspiece).

talk

lots of power exercise keeps on filling up my simple life. sometimes the best you can do is really participate in this game and be as aware as you can be of everything that's been going on.

netherlands

for some reason, among the many countries that i've been to, there is no netherlands. and it seems quite likely that i will go next year. i am of course not unhappy about it; just quite worried about money to the point of being very undecisive.

restart

nobody knows me here. supposedly.

writing in english provides me something that writing in taditional chinese seems not able to do- which is why i am back in here in this language.

i deleted the last blog that i had because it bored me. no guarantee that i won't feel the same about this one, but at least it's another new start.

maybe i will find the cynical me back again. there was a kind of force and anger in that me when i reread what i wrote in that persona.

(i think it was sars which put a (temporary?) stop to the cynicism because i couldn't afford to be bitter about the world at that time.)