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.