Cambodia

Writing about travel is always fraught with difficulties: listing sights seen and people visited without simply writing a mind-numbing catalogue of been-there-done-that; describing the charms, or lack thereof, of a foreign city without sounding like a all-hopped-up-on-backpacking Lonely Planet writer; summing up an entire neighborhood/city/region/country/what-have-you accurately and succinctly; conveying the mind-expanding, psyche-influencing, life-changing aspects of travel and pretending you know something about the place you traveled to without, in the process, sounding like a pretentious git. Though, seeing as how I started the previous sentence by using the phrase “fraught with difficulties,” I probably shouldn’t even worry about that last objective.

Lonely Planet told us that, to find transportation from Siem Reap’s airport into the town itself, we’d have to find the motorcycle stand and pay about a dollar. I assumed, conditioned by Indonesia, that this would be a casual affair, a group of otherwise-unemployed men with motorbikes milling around and competing for my attention and dollar. Not so in hypertouristed Siem Reap: there was a booth, and a sign, and a queue, a strictly regimented system designed, apparently, to get me and my backpack perched on the back of a motorbike, without a helmet, breaking the speed limit. This wasn’t just lawlessness: it was official lawlessness.

That wasn’t the end of our transportation joys. After Indonesia, packages balanced on motorbikes rarely surprise me, but I must admit that the sight of a full-grown hog strapped across the back did take me aback for a second, as did the sight of an oxcart competing with cars for space in the downtown streets of Phnom Penh, an illustration of the clash between tradition and modernity as neat as anything postcolonial literature has produced.

I was a tiny bit worried about how The Duke and I would like the Angkor temples; since I had just spent a year in Indonesia, and he had just spent three years in India, we were both feeling a tiny bit templed-out; generally, there’s only so many wall carvings of Shiva you can see before you getting the urge to do some Destroying of your own. Plus, it was the beginning of June, so you—or, at least I—could barely walk three steps without suddenly looking like I had gone for a swim, and one of my eyes was swollen shut, which is not exactly an ideal condition for viewing ruins.

But I shouldn’t have worried. The Duke and I spent two full days in the complex, being shuttled from temple to temple by motorbike, and still didn’t see one-third of what we could have. We loved what we saw, though: Angkor Thom, the erstwhile capital city whose walls cars and motorbikes must still pass through; Neak Pean, a temple in the middle of a lake; Bayon, where huge slightly-smiling stone faces watch tourists examine intricate wall carvings; Ta Prohm, the prototypical jungle-overgrown ancient temple, whose air of ruined majesty had me muttering, under my breath, “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”; and, of course, Angkor Wat itself, the temple which was, more than all the others, intricately structured, beautifully styled, and practically perfect in every way—except, of course, the way that had steps so steep I was forced to crawl. All in all, definitely worth the trip, no matter how many temples you’ve seen before.










And then it was on to Phnom Penh, on a rickety, smoke-belching bus, though green rice paddies and flat, flat land. The Duke and I bought and read books about the Khmer Rouge to prepare for the next phase of our trip, but nothing can really prepare you. We visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a high school turned prison/concentration camp turned museum, where we walked into cramped, tiny cells, past cruel torture devices, and through room after room of photographs of the 17,000 prisoners kept there in the four years of its operation. (You want to know how brutal the Khmer Rouge was? Four prisoners survived.) From there, we went to the infamous Killing Fields, which were, well, just what they sound like—a place for killing. Nothing I can write can really express the horror of such a place—the unexcavated human bones in the dirt, the central monument made of a pile of human skulls 17 stories tall, the sign posted on a tree informing us that babies were once beat against it, and all of this in a tranquil grove—and my eyes were and are filled with tears thinking about it—yet another time I couldn’t see properly in Cambodia—so we’ll move on.

And that moving on, indeed, is partially what Cambodia felt like: it’s a land of contrasts, traditional and modern, horrifying and awe-inspiring, and the speed at which one is forced to move from one to the other should give one whiplash. Phnom Penh, especially, feels like that—once “The Pearl of Asia,” it still retains a slight cosmopolitan European feel, the sort of place where one can stop into the Foreign Correspondents Club, order a lime rickey, and sit on the terrace overlooking the Mekong feeling like a character in a Graham Greene novel, and yet it’s also covered in a thick overlay of Southeast Asia—motorbikes everywhere, people squatted on the side of the road eating noodles, and a layer of dust and grime on the now-ramshackle Parisian-style buildings. And as the mind is catapulted from the roaring colonial 20s to the busy, noisy 21st century, one must pass through the dark ages of 1975-1979, in which Phnom Penh was totally evacuated--2-3 million people forced into work camps in the countryside--and roughly 2 out of every 7 Cambodians either died of malnutrition and overwork or were killed by the Khmer Rouge. I don’t know how a people can recover from such a tragedy, but Cambodians are doing it gracefully, with kind smiles on their faces. Life, I suppose, must go on.



And so it does. On our last day in Cambodia, while touring the Royal Palace, The Duke and I were approached by a group of Buddhist monks, dressed in the traditional orange robes. They hung around us for a moment or two, gathering up their nerve to speak with us, and when we smiled one of them broke the silence. “Excuse me,” he said, “can you help us?” And he held out a sheet of paper covered in statistics problems, his homework from the local university. And so we sat down with them, right there on the steps of the Silver Pagoda, puzzling over the difference between mean, mode, and median. When we were done, we bought them a Coca-Cola and got a blessing in return. And, as we rode the bus out Phnom Penh the next morning, The Duke and I were both thinking about Cambodia. How could we make sense of this place, of the simultaneous nobility and degradation of the human condition on view on every block, of the mind-boggling, sense-whirling contradictions? What could we think about it? What could we say about it? Had we seen Birth or Death?


I don’t know. And, after all this time, I still don’t know. And I’m certainly no expert, so how should I presume? But The Duke summed it up best: at the Vietnamese border, he turned to me and said, “Cambodia is a country you just want to hug.” On that point, at least, I couldn’t agree more.

Kuala Lumpur

Before beginning our epic Southeast Asia trek, The Duke and I passed through Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, to be precise). To anyone with a firm grasp on Southeast Asian geography, this may not make sense, as Kuala Lumpur is not significantly closer to Cambodia than Singapore is. To anyone with a firm grasp on Southeast Asian discount airlines, though, this detour is self-evident: Kuala Lumpur is the hub for Air Asia, home of the famed $30 international plane tickets. To me, at least, those plane tickets were worth the 7-or-so hour bus trip from downtown Singapore to downtown Kuala Lumpur. (Besides, KL gave me one last hurrah of speaking Indonesian, in a place where people didn't laugh at my American accent. They laughed at my Indonesian accent instead.)

So then, after supplementing our airplane-night’s-sleep on the bus, we had an evening to kill in KL. Though we didn’t find much to do—we mostly wandered around, looking at mosques, markets, and Malaysians—my overall impressions of the city were positive. As Steve has pointed out, it was refreshing to see a large city without the unemployed, chain-smoking squatters—quite literally—that grace Jakarta’s streets. The diversity was refreshing, with the population mixed between ethnic Malay, Chinese, and Indian, and even the street and shop signs were written in Malaysian, Chinese, Tamil, and English. Oh, and the food! The food! Malay food? Check. Chinese food? Check. Indian food? Check. Roti canai? Check. A full, and happy, stomach? Check plus.

What struck me most, though, was the architecture. I don’t typically notice the shape or design of a building, unless of course there’s a novel written on it or something, so this was very unusual for me. Yet something about the style of the city stood out to me: it was a tasteful and, more impressively still, natural blend of high-tech modern architecture with traditional Islamic elements. The shape of the Petronas Towers, is reminiscent of Islam’s eight-sided star. (Oh, and, in case you were wondering, they’re tall.) The train station is fully arched and minareted. (Credit to Steve for the picture, which is far better than any of mine.) And, best of all, Arabian nights-style domes and towers interrupt the city landscape. All this, too, without seeming contrived.


I wish I had had more time to explore, but based on the impressions of an evening, two thumbs up to Kuala Lumpur. I don't know if I'd call Malaysia Truly Asia, but I guess "Malaysia: Worth an Evening in Transit to Cambodia" isn't as catchy a tourism slogan.

Ceci n'est pas un post

Reading my cousin's blog has reminded me that I never got around to writing about my Southeast Asia trip at the beginning of June, besides, of course, from noting my eye infection and the crazy food I ate. Better late than never, I think, especially since long picture-filled posts about Southeast Asia will help me win my blog-off (Blogoff? Blog-off? I'm not sure, but now I'll show in Google searches for both!) against Guber. (We get .0175 points per word and 1.25 points per link or picture, plus an automatic 10 points for posting. This is all weighted and calculated in a shared online spreadsheet. And now anyone who knows anything about that side of the family is laughing their head off.)

Anyway, all this was to say, oops, sorry I didn't blog about this stuff back when it was relevant, but since I still want to show off my pictures, vacation slideshow, here we come!

Subterranean Grad School Blues

I spend my days feeling dumb
As the baby of the class.
I don't want to get glum,
But my classmates are kicking my ass.

Chorus:
Oh, I've got the 1st year of grad school blues,
I wish I could work 9-to-5.
I can't even drown my sorrows in booze
I don't know how I'll survive.

My schoolwork is syn-taxing
And I live hand-to-mouth;
I've got no time for relaxing
And my social life's headed south.

Chorus

So much work to do, Lordy,
I'm stressed out, cranky, and tired.
I know I'll be at this 'til forty
And when I'm done I'll never get hired!

Chorus

Ohhhh, grad school,
Why you gotta be so cruel?
Ohhhh, grad school,
Why was I such a fool?

In Rainbows

Slightly over four years ago, while I was in throes of a major Radiohead obsession, Margaret and I stood in line outside a record store in Boston, waiting for the midnight release of Hail to the Thief. Later that same summer, I saw Radiohead in concert twice, once in Boston and once in Salt Lake City; when my car broke down on the highway on the way to the Boston concert, I called a tow truck and then a cab, choosing to abandon my car at a gas station in Hopkinton for the evening rather than miss seeing Thom Yorke dance around the stage singing "rats and children follow me around." I have never regretted it.

Had last Wednesday been four years ago, I would have been nearly hyperventilating with excitement. Wednesday marked the release of the newest Radiohead album, In Rainbows, a welcome gift to fans who have waited four years, amidst rumors of the band breaking up, the album coming out in 2006, and the band changing their tune, again and again. And, as if that weren't exciting enough, the band only announced the album ten days before its release, and, and, and announced a new marketing strategy: the album would, at first, be distributed online, with customers paying whatever they wanted. Yes, that's right: whatever they wanted. On the official site, the "price" line was kept blank, with a small hyperlinked question mark next to it; when clicked, a small window popped up that said "It's Up To You." When clicked again, another small window popped up: "No, Really, It's Up To You."

My corners of the internet have been abuzz since then. Pitchfork, the usually staid bastion of indie hipper-than-thou superiority, announced the new album with the headline "NEW RADIOHEAD ALBUM AAAAAAAHHH!!!!" Before the album's release, economics blogs discussed the price discrimation model, Pitchfork gave a song-by-song breakdown of the history of the new album, several friends emailed me to chat about the news, and a Google blogsearch brought up roughly 14,000 hits for "In Rainbows" between October 1 and October 9. After the album's release, "how much did you pay" polls abounded, several friends geeked out about the music, and the internet hype machine went crazy.

At the moment of the album's release--and remember this was all done online, so I can pinpoint a moment; I got my download code at 11.50 PM on October 9--I was still awake, finishing--okay, fine, starting--some homework. When I saw the email come into my inbox, I forgot all about the structure of wh-word questions in English and got downloading. A few minutes later, I was listening to the new album and reading reviews of it online. These weren't professional reviews: all over the internet, people were live-blogging their first listen, or sometimes their second, telling us where and when they first listened: in the middle of the night, after waiting up for it; early in the morning, while getting ready for work; on their lunch break. When I learned the new album would be a download, I lamented, a little bit, for the loss of the zealous-fan camaraderie I experienced at that record store four years ago, but I realized, while trying to load a message board for a Radiohead fan site, that digital media don't destroy community, they create it. It just happens to be virtual, and far-flung. Listening to Thom Yorke wail "It is the 21st century," I reveled in the fact that, in this hyper-accelerated modern world, a band can build hype, release an album, and get reviewed by thousands of loyal/ardent/obsessive fans, all within the space of ten days and twenty minutes. Thank you, Al Gore.

Abler minds than mine have weighed in on the implications of the new marketing model--some say it marks a death knell for the record industry, others point out that just because Radiohead can get away with this doesn't mean it's the wave of the future; Radiohead, despite being, by some definitions, an indie band, consistently tops the charts, and even 2000's Kid A, which was widely (and illegally) leaked on the internet before its release, went to #1 in the U.S. on the week of its release, even though the band didn't release any singles. I will say, though, that whatever you think about the future of this model, it has succeeded for the present: as of today, the day after its release, Radiohead have sold 1.2 million copies of In Rainbows. Kid A, by comparison, sold 1.3 million copies in the first three years after its release. Now, that "sold" should probably have quotation marks on it, as many people were paying only the 90-cent transaction fee, but still, I'd say the band's probably doing pretty well, financially speaking--especially when you consider that they're taking most of the profits themselves, having cut out the record-company middlemen.

(Oh, and if you want to know, I paid about $7.)

I hesitate to turn this into a full-blown album review, partly because it usually takes me longer than a day to really make up my mind about an album, partly because, though my obsession has abated since four years ago, the very mention of the name Radiohead still makes me a bit dizzy, so you know I'll be biased, and partly because, well, there's only so many synonyms for "depressed" one can find in a thesaurus before one needs to take Prozac and a break. I'm not sure if I agree with the "best album yet" judgment--it's pretty hard to compete against what is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest albums of all time, and don't even get me started on Kid A--but, so far, I think it's the best album I've heard all year, and definitely better than Amnesiac or Hail to the Thief. (Not that I'm saying they're bad, Oxford forbid!) The album as a whole is muted and mournful, with Yorke's trademark voice used as an instrument every bit as much as the piano or drums or guitar. (Fans will be delighted to note that there are guitars in this album.) I can't name just a single highlight; "House of Cards" caught my attention right away, for its opening line "I don't want to be your friend/I just want to be your lover," because in most Radiohead songs romantic themes are usually suppressed, subverted and carefully covered in symbol and metaphor; I love the transformation of "Reckoner" into a quiet, drum-driven piece rather than its original incarnation as a crunchy guitar anthem, just like "Electioneering," only bad; I shrieked with excitement to realize that "Nude" was just "Big Ideas (Don't Get Any)," which has long been one of my favorite unreleased live tracks; and the understated "Videotape" easily rivals any of Radiohead's other piano ballads for beauty, as Thom, playing the piano and accompanied by stuttering percussion, croons "When I'm at the Pearly Gates/This will be on the videotape, the videotape." I'm trying not to gush, but I can't help myself: when I'm at the Pearly Gates, this will be on the soundtrack.

Hannah de Bergerac

While I'm reminiscing about incidents in Indonesia, I can finally tell this story. In the opening issue of the school's newsletter last year, which was sent out to all students, parents, and alumni on a quarterly basis, I was asked to write a short column introducing myself and my goals for the classroom, a simple "Hello From Miss Hannah." The teacher in charge of the newsletter wanted to include a picture of me, so we spent an afternoon taking portraits with her digital camera.

A week later, she came back to me and said that the printing quality of the newsletter wasn't good enough to include a photograph, and would I mind if they included a drawing instead? I said no, not at all, and the portraits taken earlier were duly dispatched to the school's drawing teacher, to be copied and included in the newsletter.

So this is how the school community, parents and all, were introduced to the foreigner in their midst:

Now, I know my nose isn't exactly small and dainty, but this? Really? Nobody else seemed to think this caricature should inspire doubt about the drawing abilities of the school's art teacher, so I can't help but think that's how they really saw me. With that in mind, it's no wonder that Indonesians were constantly commenting on my tall nose: I was practically Pinocchio, in their eyes. On the plus side, now paintings like this one of Commodore Perry make a lot more sense.

(PS: The typos in the newsletter are their fault, not mine. But that's okay; they're just following Rule #2.)

Hey Kids!

At one point last year, there was a minor scandal at SMA The School Where I Taught. A picture was floating around the gossip channels--and handphones--of Semarang, a picture of naked middle schoolers, rumored to be students at my school. I heard this rumor from three or four different people--including a student's mother, who lived in a town about two hours outside of Semarang--before the principal decided to put these reputation-damaging rumors to rest, once and for all.

So, during the lunch break, he marched into the teacher's room, sat down at the computer, and pulled up the picture. "Everyone come here," he said, "and look at this picture. Look closely. See if you recognize any of the students."

So all the teachers, male and female, gathered around the computer and scrutinized the lineup of naked middle school girls. "That one looks a little like So-and-So," said the history teacher, but the geography teacher disagreed: "No, she's too fat." The math teacher observed that the one in the middle looked a bit like a student he had seen around school, but a chorus of female teachers shot him down right away, claiming that her hair was longer, her breasts were bigger, and her face was different. After ten minutes or so observing the picture, all the teachers agreed that those were not, in facts, students at SMA The School Where I Taught, and promised they would help squelch the rumor whenever they could.

Putting aside the weirdness of this scene for a moment--and it was weird, trust me--the principal was justly worried about an incident like this; such pictures not only represent a tragic loss of innocence but also a grand liability in an adolescent's life. Those who are positively identified in photos, or even falsely accused of being in photos of this sort, like this girl*, are ostracized by their friends, punished by their families, and expelled by their schools.

Nonetheless, the number of Indonesian amateur porn videos and naked pictures is increasing; one site claims that 500 videos, mostly made on handphones, are in circulation, with about two new videos being made per day. While that's no billion-dollar adult entertainment industry**, it's also not a point of pride for the country with (probably) the world's largest Muslim population. Now while Indonesia's brand of Islam is fairly liberal, relative to, say, Saudi Arabia, it's still a conservative society, with, on the whole, conservative sexual mores. Basically, shemale beauty contests aside, it's no Thailand.

Luckily, then, there are new agencies*** stepping up to combat this moral decline, people dedicated to eradicating this evil, professionals who will use all the resources at their disposal to speak to the youth, to discourage this sort of behavior in language they will understand, to create a cultural meme that will reinforce the message--something memorable, something new, something along the lines of "Just Say No!" or "This Is Your Brain On Drugs" or "Not Even Once."

Or hey, wait, I've got it! What about "Youth of Indonesia...Don't Get Naked In Front of A Camera!" Perfect!

That'll teach those young whippersnappers, with their fancy handphones and video cameras. Memorable sloganeering is for the weak: there's nothing like a direct order, after all, to encourage youth compliance. Imagine all the social evils we could solve this way: all we need is an advertising campaign saying, "Hey Kids! Don't Do Drugs Or Drink Or Have Sex Or Disobey Your Elders In Any Way!" That'll teach 'em.



*Yes, I know this link isn't in English. I just wanted to cite my sources.
**I really don't want to know what sort of hits I'm going to get on my blog after this.
***This isn't in English either. I'm not sorry. Must it all be about you, English speakers?

Dancing in the Dark

This past Monday, I spent some quality time with my visiting teacher, who we'll call Q, for reasons that will remain obscure. Now, Q is not your typical nice little Mormon girl: she's a vegan, she sews her own very unique clothes, she laughs at my jokes about the Folsom Street Fair, and every Monday night, after FHE, she goes dancing at a goth/industrial club in San Francisco--a fact she mentioned over the pulpit in sacrament meeting. Plus, she didn't bat an eyelash when I said I wanted to come with her. In case you couldn't guess from all the above, I think she is the coolest. visiting teacher. ever.

While getting ready, I rifled through my closet, looking for black, and finally had to admit to myself that nothing in my grad-student wardrobe of button-up shirts, cardigans, jeans, and sneakers could even approximate a goth/industrial look. Besides, even if I could magically produce a corset or fishnets, what are the chances that a blue-eyed blonde who doesn't own black eyeliner, or indeed any makeup at all, could avoid looking like a total fool wearing them? Yeah. I thought so. So I went in the jeans, pink shirt, and white lacy undershirt I had been wearing to school that day. Yes, I wore pink to a place called Death Guild. I'm like that.

We showed up at the club a little too early to be cool--who starts dancing at 10 pm? Puh-leeze!--but that gave me plenty of time to explore the club, raid the pretzels at the bar, and get hit on by an 18-year-old. I may be a bitter, dried-up old maid in the Mormon world, but the San Francisco goth scene, apparently, I've still got it...at least, to college freshmen. I'm crediting the fact that I was the only person in the club wearing a color.

I was, to be honest, slightly apprehensive about the dancing part. I have a tiny confession to those who have ever seen me dance: I wasn't joking. I typically put on a goofy grin and pretend I'm being ironic, but my dancing style really is that combination of weird white-girl Bollywood and Elaine Benes--yes, with the thumbs. So, understandably, though I love to dance, I don't usually do so in public, unless it's really dark.

I was, therefore, surprised and pleased to realize that, at this goth club, I needn't worry about my basic inability to follow a rhythm, even with the lights on: no one else could either. Looking around the room, seeing from the man in tights jumping from side to side, to the overweight woman swaying to no discernible tune, to the girl in a corset and bustle kicking up her heels, to the shirtless man humping a wall (I didn't want the mental image either, trust me), I quickly lost all traces of self-consciousness about my dancing.

I had nowhere near the stamina of even the corseted girls, though, embarrassingly enough, and by around 1 AM, I was feeling that, since the Spirit had clearly gone to bed, I should too. (Knowing that my grandma sometimes reads this blog, I won't elaborate on that whole Spirit thing, but let's just say that around midnight, Q leaned over to me and whispered, in heavily accented tones, "De-bau-che-ry!") Q still had the energy to dance, and so, reluctant to drag her away from her favorite hobby, I simply wandered upstairs, found a couch, and fell asleep, with Nine Inch Nails blaring. When security woke me up half an hour later--"No sleeping here, missy! Move along!"--I was groggy and confused, and so simply moved to a different couch and fell asleep again, sitting up this time. I'm pretty sure the security guard, after waking me again, didn't believe my protests that "it's just way past my bedtime!" He was quite obviously relieved to see that Q would be driving me home.

On that drive home, I told Q that if she gave me a spiritual thought, we could count this for visiting teaching in October. She thought for a minute, and then said, "Judge not, that ye be not judged." Amen, Q. A lot about that club, and that lifestyle, leaves a nasty taste in my mouth, but what I really want to take away is this: I have never felt so free and unjudged on a dance floor, or indeed anywhere, in my life. I clearly and obviously didn't fit in, and yet nobody, the whole night, looked askance at my pink shirt, or my obviously un-goth appearance, or my dry-heave-set-to-music dancing. I can't express how fun and free that feeling was--a little slice of heaven, in a highly unexpected place. Thanks, Q. Let's go again sometime.

Sunday, Sunday, So Good To Me

I'm with Lynnette: I always love testimony meetings in which people stand up and tell stories, rather than those in which people simply recite a number of propositional statements about their beliefs: I know the Church is true. I know Jesus is the Son of God. I know Joseph Smith was a prophet. I know the latter is what we are encouraged to do, but those meetings often seem dry to me, lacking anything I couldn't get from, say, reading the Articles of Faith, or even the Nicene Creed.

(I went to Catholic mass this morning before church, so it was on my mind.)

Really, what sets our testimony meetings apart from a recitation of doctrine is the opportunity to glimpse the human who believes those doctrines, the stories that human tells about those doctrines, and the way those doctrines affect the life and mind of that human. I love hearing personal testimonies, even the kooky ones that I laugh about later.

All this means that today was the sort of testimony meeting that I love. The relatively new convert sitting behind me whispered to the guy next to him, "What should I say?" and then ascended to the pulpit to tell us of his pre-conversion days of wine, women, and song; my visiting teachee, after slamming the Boston-area wards she had just visited, told us that "hurry up" was the worst thing you could possibly say to a person; and a quirky mid-thirties Tongan (I think) fellow apologized for not making it to church the past few weeks--there were some rock concerts he just had to go to--rambled for a few minutes about who knows what, and told us that without reading the Book of Mormon, you can't be a Mormon.

Fun as it might be to mock this last one, and I suspect many people were, especially given that last month he stood up and bore an equally eccentric testimony, these glimpses into his life and personality increased, for me, the value of the statements he made, those doctrinal pronouncements we are supposed to limit ourselves to. I could see that he wasn't just reciting, that he honestly meant them, and it was, for lack of a better word, touching.

Add all that to the fact that Catholic mass was pleasant, Lynnette taught Sunday school, and I persuaded my visiting teacher to skip the last hour of church and come with me to the "How Berkeley Can You Be?" parade (counting it, of course, as her visiting teaching for September), and I'd say that I had a pretty good Sunday.

A Roommateimony

I came home from an exhausting Wednesday a few weeks ago, and, while talking to Roommate about something or another, turned on a Talking Heads song. Suddenly, we were dancing around the apartment singing along, at the top of our lungs, to "fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better," and then experimenting with the best lighting to get only a silhouette of a dancing figure visible through the curtains between the living room and kitchen that are my fourth wall. (For the record: no lights in the living room, overhead lights in the kitchen.) The pictures we took didn't nearly do it justice, so you'll just have to trust me when I say that it was like an iPod commercial in my apartment.

My roommate has gone out of town, which means that for the next week I have our apartment to myself, leaving me free to play music loudly, dance around the apartment, and...well, actually, not that much will change. It blows my mind that I fell into a situation with a roommate as cool as mine, one who can not only dance to the Talking Heads with me, but then retreat quietly into her bedroom when we're done, as I retreat into mine--one who, basically, is smart and funny and kind and all that, but also, like me, an introvert. I'll miss her this week: silhouette dancing isn't nearly as fun with just one.

Good Will Toward Goodwill

I decided this morning that my room lacked something important. Well, something important besides a fourth wall, or a door: a chair. I have a chair at my computer desk, so there's a place to write, and I have my bed, so there's a place to sleep. Missing, though, is a place to read, which means that I've done the vast majority of my reading over past few weeks while walking to and from school. While that's all well and good, sometimes I like to read without having to worry about oncoming traffic. I needed a chair.

So I headed over to my local Goodwill, which is roughly a block away from me, and which I love: they're huge, well-stocked, and willing to bargain. (A few weeks ago, completely on accident, I bargained a pair of shoes down to $5.99 from $8.99; while that did save money, I do, believe it or not, have a few shards of dignity left, so I won't be repeating the experience.)

It only took me a few minutes in the store to find the perfect comfy chair, reasonably priced at $7.99. It took me a few minutes longer to try picking up the chair, realize it was too heavy, try pulling the chair, realize I couldn't grip it right, try pushing the chair, and realize that, without wheels, it wouldn't glide so smoothly on the sidewalk outside. Luckily for me, an aging black man in an employee vest walked past me just as I was standing next to the now-out-of-place armchair, considering how to get it home. He asked if I needed help, and, hearing my predicament, offered to lend me one of the store's dollies--"but only if you promise to bring it back," he said. I swore up and down that I would, and thus we had a deal.

He got the chair onto the dolly for me, and then I pushed it up to the register, practicing for my walk home. As I did, he walked behind me, announcing, loudly, "Look, everyone! She's pushing it herself! Isn't she just adorable?" Apparently there's something to be said for that helplessness thing after all--if, that is, you want men the age of your grandfather treating you like their granddaughter.

After I paid for the chair and started pushing it out, another employee came rushing after me to help me. It seemed like she was going to push the dolly the entire block back to my apartment, so I assured her I was fine on my own and that I would bring the dolly back.

"Scout's honor?" she asked. "Er, Girl Scout's honor?" I hesitated at that, and she began to laugh. "You were never a Girl Scout, were you? I'm taking that dolly back!"

"I was a Brownie!" I said. "And I swear I didn't leave for honor-related reasons! Cross my heart and hope to die!"

Laughing again, she let me go, and I pushed the dolly and chair up the hill to my apartment, singing as I walked, and walked, and walked. When, ten minutes later, I returned to Goodwill, dolly in tow, the store employee looked up from the register and grinned. "Hey everyone," she said, "check it out! It's Brownie girl! With the dolly! Looks like even Girl Scout dropouts can have honor."

So now I have a chair on my balcony (the only place it fits), and a nickname at Goodwill. What--besides, of course, a girlfriend with bows in her hair--could be better than that?

My Weekly Have-Done List

I've been rather silent in the blogosphere the last week or so, not because I haven't spent every waking hour of my day at or close to my computer--I have--but because so many of those hours were filled with transcribing Sundanese, waxing verbose on syntax assignments--as specifically instructed by one of my professors, who told us that verbosity was the secret to grad school; can you imagine how happy I was to hear that?--reading Indonesian literature, beating Alea at online Scrabble, and conspicuously not replying to emails.

During the few times I've stepped away from my computer in the past week, though, I have:

• stepped on, and cracked, my iPod. I should have learned two things from this--iPods purchased for $30 in Cambodia definitely aren't real and don't charge things on the floor-- but, since I already knew the first and am ignoring the second, I guess the masking tape holding my iPod together is a constant reminder of, well, nothing.
  
• spent Friday night huddled up in a movie theater chair, futilely trying to cover my eyes and my ears at the same time, to avoid the movie on screen, Resident Evil: Extinction. While I ordinarily wouldn't stand in line to see a movie based on a video game--oh, sorry, the third movie based on this particular video game--in the complex system of social rules in my head, I am obligated, as the new and mostly friendless girl in town, to accept any invitation I receive, especially when they come from people who have to move a bow and arrow from their backseat before there's room for me. Not even my girl-crush on Milla Jovovich could redeem the movie, but the fun company could and did redeem the evening.
  
• realized, as a direct result of the aforementioned movie, that when disaster strikes, I will be the first to die. My survival instinct, I'm pretty sure, is nowhere near as strong as my curse-God-and-die instinct.
  
• enjoyed the jokes of my fellow first-years; when I heard one of them, today, try to transcribe a sneeze ("Was that a nasal ejective?") instead of just saying "Gesundheit," I knew I had found heaven.
  
• added to the piles of books in my room, making it a grand total of 47 books I have checked out from the university's library and will probably never read, seeing as how I can only finish off a book every two days or so during my daily walks to and from school.
  
• gone grocery shopping, an experience which never fails to make me self-righteous about my poverty; lugging two weeks' worth of on-sale cans of green beans and tomato soup home in a backpack makes me want to stop into the upscale grocery store I pass on my way home and say to all those tax-hiking, goverment-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, Hollywood-loving left-wing freak shows in there, "you may be buying locally-made organic cookies, but I am walking home. Who loves the environment now, you old hippie?" (I could ride the bus, but, really, the grocery store is only a mile away, and both the exercise and the suffering are good for me.)
  

Oh, and I've also gone to institute, watched Casablanca on the big screen for the third time, gone to a barbecue with Indonesians, helped build a sukkah in the backyard of one of my professors, watched Shakespeare in the park, cooked dinner for four, gone to the temple, done my laundry for only the second time since I moved in a month and a half ago, and of course, faithfully studied for and attended my classes, which have quickly and without warning nearly doubled in number and time, because of various seminars plus colloquia plus invited speakers plus working groups plus study groups plus, I don't know, linguistics yoga groups or something. (I wouldn't put it past this place.)

Things are good, and if I could only add "went to bed on the same day I woke up" to the list, I might venture to say, with Tony the Tiger, that they're grrrrrrreat!

Stake Conference

a svithe

We had stake conference today, which, surprisingly enough, I attended, and was rewarded for doing so by not only hearing what was essentially a barbershop quintet, but also seeing my old Arabic professor (who still lives in Utah) and Carol Lynn Pearson and thmazing and Lady Steed and their ridiculously cute kids. I also heard interesting stats about the local temple, stories about working with homeless people, and what it means to "look like a Mormon." (Don't get me started.)

Really, though, what I learned, besides that I have a cool stake, was this: serve others. Be kind to others. Love others. Nothing else, not today not any day, really matters as much.

Books, Books Everywhere

Last night I decided that, as a reward for surviving three whole weeks of school, I could quickly stop by the used bookstore that's on my walk home, and maybe even buy something. Fifteen minutes max, I told myself, and remember that you don't have much shelf space.

I should have remembered that I have no self-control when it comes to used books. One hour later, I started walking home again, laden with five paperbacks that had struck me as interesting, among two books of essays, one about the Mormon woman experience, and one by Camille Paglia. The salesgirl looked at me a bit strangely as she scanned them, and I don't blame her.

Last year I had tons of spare time, but nothing to read; this year, living within a mile of 18 bookstores and 32 libraries, my to-read shelf runneth over but my spare time is limited. Still, though, I can't complain, not when I wake up to the floor of my bedroom looking like this:

My room is clean now, with all those books neatly stacked on my shelves, but I almost regret that. Books make me happy, and books strewn about the room make me even happier--that and only that, makes a place feel like home. I can say, then, that this place finally feels like it's mine, something I never accomplished in my nine months in a homestay in Semarang, albeit for a good reason. (That place wasn't mine, after all.)

Now if only I could find the time to read all those books!

The International Poetic Alphabet (IPA)

a new, more creative phonetics transcription system

****

/i:k/
[a tea kettle's whistle
and hiss.
it stops
explodes
lets off steam]

/ɑɢʌ/
[pride sticks in my throat
half-swallowed]

/ʔʌ/
[a quick uh-oh of surprise
or pain]

/ɑɽʌ/
[some days
i am bent
flexed
backwards]

/ɑɬʌ/
[the wind outside brushes against
bare branches]

/əʀʌ/
[a storm builds--
heavy dark
far--
and thunder rolls]

/dɑ/
[what the thunder says]

****

Maybe I'm the only one who finds this concept funny. Whatever its other failings, though, this sort of IPA would make my phonetics assignments way more interesting.

Fun With Phonetics

We're working on narrow transcription of English in my phonetics class this week, so I spent most of my weekend sitting at my computer listening to sound files of various American English dialects. By my iTunes's count, I have listened to the sentence "she had your dark suit in greasy wash water all year" precisely 1,023 times in the last two days. (My "Top 25 Most Played" playlist is now no longer entirely Okkervil River.) That, of course, is not counting all the times I listened to the sound files in programs like Praat or WaveSurfer, or all the times I listened to them on my classmate's computer, or all the times I simply listened to snippets, focusing closely on "had your," "had your," "had your."

I think I'm losing it. As I tried to listen in church today, my mind ran a constant loop of
wɑʃ wɑɾə˞
wɑʃ wɑɾə˞
wɑʃ wɑɾə˞
wɑʃ wɑɾə˞
wɑʃ wɑɾə˞
WASH WATER

and so of course I listened in sacrament meeting even less than usual, because while the speaker was telling us what she learned from her nephew's baptism, I was thinking, did Speaker 8 really articulate the "r" in water? And was there some rhotaciziation in "wash" for Speaker 3? And why on earth would someone put any kind of suit, dark or light, in greasy wash water for an entire year?

And now it's nearly 2 am and I'm still thinking, exploded or unexploded? Stressed or unstressed? The answer, at this time of night, is clearly "stressed," and, in a few minutes, "exploded." I think it's time for bed.

A Homemade Joke

(some of you have heard this before; I apologize)

Q: What do you call a pair of 19 year old boys who surf the internet at night looking to convert people?

A: Nocturnal e-missionaries.

Okkervil River

Way back in March 2005, I went to see The Decemberists in Salt Lake City, with an opening act called Okkervil River. Since opening bands are generally hit-or-miss, and since I had never heard of them, I showed up late, catching only about three or four songs at the end of their set. They were decent enough, but didn't really catch my ear on the first, live, listen. A few months later, though, I heard a song of theirs on internet radio, downloaded a few more, and soon was in the throes of a buy-all-their-albums, listen-to-them-daily, tell-all-my-friends obsession that hasn't yet abated. I've been kicking myself, these past two years, that I missed the chance to really listen to them live.

Well, no longer. In support of their new album, The Stage Names, they played a show in San Francisco last night. I've had my tickets for over a month, the 5th was marked on my calendar with tons of exclamation points, and the thought of the concert was the only thing keeping me alive during my seven hours in a row of grad classes. (Have I mentioned that I have the world's worst class schedule?)

I left for the concert a little later than I wanted, mostly because I burned the Campbell's tomato soup I was going to have for dinner, and was forced to throw together a different sort of instant meal at the last minute, and I just barely missed the train I should have gotten on, forcing me to wait another fifteen minutes for the next one. I didn't want to miss the opening act this time, because, hey, you never know how you'll feel about them in a year's time, so when I got off the train in San Francisco's Castro District, I was feeling hurried, and decided to run the ten blocks from the train station to the club. I took off my favorite pair of flimsy sandals, which are comfortable but hard to run in, and sprinted uphill past a quick cross-section of San Francisco society: gay and lesbian couples, then gentrified yuppie types, then clumps of hipster 20-somethings waiting outside the club. No one turned to look twice at the girl running down the street, alone, at nine o'clock at night, sandals in hand, purse bouncing with every step. This is a big city, after all, whose motto should be "San Francisco: We've Seen Weirder."

I'm sore today, both from the uphill run and from the fact that I spent the entire hour and a half of the concert standing on tiptoe, but, let me tell you, it was worth it. They began with my current favorite track from the new album, "Plus Ones," which I love for its numerical wordplay, and it only got better from there, as they went through a setlist that included a generous amount from older albums (including, to my great delight, "Black," "It Ends With a Fall," and "Okkervil River Song"), as well as the highlights from the new album, like "Unless It's Kicks," which Will Sheff, the lead singer, declared was the band's new anthem, with its focus on "some midlevel band" which has "been driving too long," and "John Allyn Smith Sails," whose transition into the Beach Boys's "Sloop John B" was like a descent into a dirge, given the way words like "I feel so broke up" are woven into a song about failure and suicide. And, of course, they played their latest single, "Our Life Is Not a Movie Or Maybe," prefaced by an amusing story about how, for their appearance on Conan O'Brien on the same night as Jeff Goldblum, they rewrote some of the lyrics of the song to reference movies like Independence Day and Jurassic Park. They were told they couldn't play them for Conan, apparently, so they played them for us. Throughout the night, I had my fingers crossed for some of my other favorites, like maybe "The President's Dead" or "The War Criminal Rises and Speaks," and was slightly disappointed not to hear them, but the last song changed that: hearing "Westfall" live, and having the concert finish with the entire crowd singing "evil don't look like anything" along with the band, was quite enough bliss for one night.

At no point in the night, though, did I even feel a trace of disappointment with the performance itself. The cast of instruments was varied--guitars and drums and piano, of course, but also a mandolin and an accordion and a trumpet and maracas and a tambourine--and all six band members were full of energy, especially Will Sheff, who got more and more casual as the night went on, shedding first his suit jacket, then his tie, then his crisp white button-up in favor the T-shirt underneath, as he jumped around on stage, his always-emotional voice nearly a histrionic wail as he sang lines like "wish I could remember why it mattered to me/It doesn't matter to me anymore." With that sort of on-stage enthusiasm, I believed him when, later, he claimed, in song, "I'm doing what I really like and getting paid for it."

Given my love for this band, I'm glad to hear that from them, and I hope they will continue doing what they really like for years and years, as long as, of course, that implies they'll continue putting out hyperliterary albums as good as Black Sheep Boy and The Stage Names and giving concerts as good as the one last night. Laugh at me all you want--my friend Emily certainly did--but I had a giant grin on my face all through the concert, and the high still hasn't left me today. Will Sheff may sing that he "[doesn't] know what notes you want to hear played" and "can't think what lines you'd like me to sing or say," but I say, don't worry, Will, you're doing just fine--you've got great reviews, an upcoming international tour, and the undying love of this particular fan. Sing whatever you want, and I'll be listening.

I Live Here

As I was walking to school this morning, a middle-aged woman stopped me to ask something in a quiet mumble.

"I'm sorry?" I said, not understanding.

"Did you see the hair of that guy in front of you?" she repeated.

"Um, no," I replied, still a bit confused, squinting at the Asian guy about fifteen feet ahead of me.

"It's all shaved on the sides," she told me, "and long in back."

"Oh," I said, "that's nice." Awkward pause.

"But he's Asian, so he's an asshole," she said, almost conversationally. "They're all assholes. But you know that--you live here!"

I didn't know that, actually, but I decided it wasn't best to argue, not there, not on the street, and, besides, I was late for a meeting with a very kind Asian who had agreed to help me with a class project. I eased the social awkwardness by giggling nervously and walking away slowly, with the woman shouting at my back, three or four more times:

"They're all assholes! You know that--you live here!"

I love this town.

Ambiguity in San Francisco

I walked past this sign in The Castro last night:


And I wondered--are they using "gay" as an adjective or as a noun? That is, do they mean "we'll clean in a gay way" or "we'll clean your gays"? I'm almost tempted to call and ask.

And Nothing But the Truth

This morning I got to campus earlier than usual, given that I have no classes on Tuesdays or Thursdays, so I could discuss my syntax homework with some other students from my class. I spent an hour and a half debating possible analyses of English possessives, and was on a bit of a syntax high by the time I left, wanting to climb a rooftop and shout to the world, "<Specifier>, {Modifier}, (Complement), Head!"

Instead I just walked to the library, enjoying the early-autumn breeze and sunlight before descending three floors to my own personal library carrel, which is hidden in a corner no one passes, and thus shelters me from having to see another person all day long. I came to grad school partially to get a library carrel, having seen and coveted the grad students carrels in Harvard's Widener Library when I was in high school, and the fact that I can check books out and leave them there thrills me every time I think about it.

And now I'm awake, slightly past midnight, dressed in my standard paper-writing outfit, a sarong, tank top, and head scarf, eating trail mix and writing up the solution to my syntax homework, which has reached six pages thus far and will probably stretch all the way to the maximum ten. I get to use words like "constituent" and "lexical frame" a lot, and every so often I have to jump up and ask my roommate whether she thinks whether, in a phrase like "that story about the dog of his," the story or the dog belong to him. (Anyone? Bueller?)

I rarely tell the truth on my blog, as self-satire and sarcasm are funnier, but here it is: I am happy. I count pennies and walk everywhere and spend entire days in the library and entire nights at my computer, and can imagine no better life. Sometimes I grin to myself, when I hear the subway rattling under me when I walk to school, or when the class bell rings as I sit outside reading Old Malay epics. I always knew I was born near grad school and during grad school, and now I know I can add one more preposition: I was born for grad school.

Adventures in Hiking

Yosemite National Park is, as it turns out, in California. That came as a surprise to me, since I had always confused Yosemite and Yellowstone (look, they both start with Y, they’re both in the west, and they both have bears; how can an East Coaster be expected to keep track of the difference?) and therefore assumed that Yosemite was also in Idaho. (We won’t even talk about how disappointed I was to learn, a year ago, that Yellowstone is only barely in Idaho.)

I learned this because my (extremely athletic) ward had planned an overnight hiking and camping trip at Yosemite, which also explains why I found myself, late Friday night, or, to be more accurate, early Saturday morning, after classes and informal syntax gatherings, after a rushed packing job and dinner, and after a trip on BART and four hours in a car, sleeping in a tent, trying not to roll downhill onto the three girls crammed next to me. I mostly succeeded.

Early Saturday morning, around four, the ward activities coordinator walked around the campsite, shining his flashlight into tents and singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” for which I’m sure he will get bonus points in heaven, depending of course on how God feels about the U.S. flag. I know I will get bonus points for not strangling him.

We were at the trailhead by six, loaded down with water, and, in my case, everything a girl could need hiking, from moleskin for blisters to a whistle to a deck of cards. (My hyper-responsible uncle packed for me. Though, um, not entirely.) We set off in a group, about forty of us, determined to make it to the top of Half Dome.

My quest for Half Dome went wrong about three miles in. I was somewhere in the middle of the pack, hiking together with this guy from the ward, keeping a safe distance from the dating couple ahead of us, but when the four of us came to a fork in the path, we couldn’t see the others up ahead, and couldn’t see Half Dome listed on any of the signs, and so, entirely on accident, chose the path less traveled by.

(I would like to state here, for the record, that I did not choose our path. That’s right: I got lost and it wasn’t my fault. I’m still excited about that.)

By the time we figured out we had taken a wrong turn, we had climbed a mile of steep switchbacks, and had probably fallen behind the last people in our group, so we decided to continue on our new hike. Another few miles along the path, we ran into a pair of girls hiking the same trail from the opposite direction, who were tired and blistered, and resting from their with heavy backpacks, and convinced them to turn around and join us. (I like to think my deck of cards was a draw for them, but, come to think of it, it was probably the moleskin for their blisters.)

But our path less traveled by made all the difference. Sure, the new hike was eight miles uphill, but so was Half Dome, and the new hike didn’t require hiking those eight miles down to the group’s designated meeting spot, just hitchhiking down, which is a lot easier. (Advice to females: ask around while waiting in line for the bathroom.) And sure, there was no shade on our new hike, and sure, I exhausted myself by volunteering to carry another backpack, but at least I didn’t have to pull myself up a bare rock face with cables. (Plus, hey, bonus points in heaven.) And I may have missed out on bonding with the whole ward, but This Guy and The Couple were very pleasant, even funny, and so were our new hiking friends, once we agreed to disagree about whether Mormons are Christian. I don't think I've ever enjoyed getting lost so much. And in the end, the view from Glacier Point, with the sun shining on Half Dome across the valley, was worth any number of sleepless nights, national anthems, wrong turns, heavy backpacks, heat, and evangelical Christians, all of which is a very convoluted way to reach my real point: I'm glad Yosemite is in California.

The Return of the Native (Speaker)

Now I know that everyone feels inadequate at the start of graduate school--or so everyone has claimed--but in my case it's true. Of the eight new students to my department this fall (not counting the two visiting scholars), six have done graduate work in linguistics before (one of them even to the point that she had a finished and approved dissertation proposal, apparently), and six have taken classes in the department before. I'm the only one that doesn't fall in either category.

This leads to many conversations which I can't participate in, conversations that start either with, "when I was writing my master's thesis on phonology," or with "when I was taking a class last year with Professor X*." I do a lot of listening.

But yesterday I found my niche in the class. I was sitting around, listening to the German girl and the Italian guy talk about, I don't know, something complicated.

"So, you see," he said, "when people are treated with this type of therapy, there's less chance of a...how do you say...a going back?"

I leaned in. "Relapse," I said.

"Right!" he said, and continued with the conversation.

A few minutes later, the German girl was saying something. "So blah blah blah what's that called...the person being treated...?"

"Patient," I said.

"Thanks!" she said, and they were off again.

So I'm good for something: I'm a native speaker. I may not have a master's degree already, and I may not quite understand what, exactly, the Korean guy wrote his thesis on, but I can respond with complete confidence when, in phonetics class, he leans over to ask me what "big toe" means. Hey, I'll take what I can get.





*I bet you didn't know he's a linguist!

Terms of Address

I just went to see a movie with a guy from my ward here, a very nice, very tall Jamaican-descent Berkeleyite with some pretty rocking dreadlocks.

The usher taking our ticket smiled at my friend. "Wassup, brother?" he said. "The theater is #1, off to your left. Enjoy the show, man!"

Then he looked me up and down, pausing slightly, and said, "Good afternoon, ma'am."

I don't even know what to think.

Ubicada

Today was orientation day at Unnamed U, both the campus-wide "We welcome all 3,000 of our new grad students and want to make them get to know each other RIGHT NOW!!!!" and the much smaller, much saner department orientation, which was essentially the same thing, only with "3,000" replaced by "9, only 7 of whom are actually in attendance."

I had a very pleasant morning, if such a thing can be said, at the campus-wide orientation; in some ways, i.e. the part where we offered one factoid about ourselves for each M&M we ate, it smacked of freshman orientation at the Lord's Undergraduate Institution, or at least I suspect it did, given that on that day so many years ago I lasted through precisely thirty minutes of get-to-know-you games before I snuck off to the library to read Georgette Heyer novels.

In other ways, though, it was probably a good preparation for grad school in all its many glories: I had to sit through fifteen minutes worth of information that took two hours to present. I learned lots of new stuff: this year, Indian foreign students outnumbered Chinese foreign students for the first time. The incoming class has students from 49 states, all of them except Nebraska. I live next door to where Jack Kerouac used to live. (Literally. He was at ***3 and I'm at ***5.) Oh, and I met some interesting people, from a bearded white guy with an Indian accent, to a hyper-friendly electrical engineering fourth year who comes to new student orientation just for the buzz of meeting new people. And, of course, I suffered through the obligatory Northern California indoctrination: "If we can solve it in California, we can solve it for the world." Right. Maybe Unnamed U needs a new slogan: "Let there be misplaced idealism." Or maybe "A voice of one crying sustainable living in the wilderness." Or maybe just "Truth."

(Ha, ha.)

Most of all, though, the orientation, especially my department orientation, left me overwhelmed and, frankly, terrified. You can only take so many hours of grad students telling you their life as a first year was Study Hell before you start to feel nervous, with that sneaking, sinking sense of oh, wait, I'm going to be stressed out. And, just in case I wasn't worried enough, I'm the youngest and least experienced of my entering class, which consists mostly of foreign students (4/9), students who have already finished a master's degree (at least 3/9; I'm not sure about some of the others), and students who have spent years working; I'm the only one who's not a California resident, and one of the only ones who hasn't spent time at Berkeley before; the only Mormon, clearly, in a place where, when that comes up, people say, "yes, but you're not a practicing Mormon, right?"; and one of only two girls. Oh, and the one is a German girl who looks like a supermodel, and who is very nice to boot. And here I thought I could at least match the looks of the average Ph.D. student. Curse you, Germany! Quit ruining the average for the rest of us!

And, of course, I feel like everyone is vastly more prepared--or, at least, able to project that impression--and as I left the building, after getting a residency lecture from the graduate secretary, who was sure to emphasize that I should save EVERYTHING, every receipt and every piece of mail and every, I don't know, package of ramen, I was already practicing my deep breathing, thinking, what on earth have I gotten myself into? And so I rushed home, stopping only to buy massive amounts of sugary items, changed into a Hello Kitty nightgown, and curled up in bed with my favorite Georgette Heyer novel. (Yes, I'm the youngest of my cohort; what of it?) I think I'll stay here until school starts. It's much easier to be orientated when there's only a book to face.

A Recipe

for bikini salad

Start with a base of braccoli
Add two cans
Add some itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka dots
If you still need more ingredients, raid the panty for anything you can find there.

And voila! Choose your own dressing, or don't dress it at all; with bikini salad, you can't go thong!

This Is Not My Beautiful House!

Finding an apartment in Provo was never a big deal: I seemed to stumble into housing situations, or, more accurately, I seemed to rely on others to choose housing situations for me, and since I rarely notice things like low ceilings, ugly carpets, and broken dryers, and since I lived in the library anyway, that system worked, I thought, quite well. I still think fondly, and not without amusement, on January 2005, when I returned to Provo from Egypt and started classes with no winter clothes, no school supplies or textbooks, and no apartment. One afternoon after phonetics class, I called three apartments, walked two blocks to one of them, signed a lease, and moved in. That was that.

I should have known that the Berkeley housing market was not like the Provo one when the secretary of my new department sent around an email to all incoming graduate students warning us that “the biggest worry and nuisance facing you is probably housing.” This over, say, registering for classes, choosing an advisor, or financing a higher degree in a useless subject.

I, personally, would worry most about that whole where-is-my-next-meal-coming-from issue, but where-will-that-meal-be-cooked was also a pressing concern for me in my first weeks here, so I spent, as I’ve mentioned, entire days refreshing the Craigslist rentals page. I scrolled through what seemed like hundreds of ads for tiny, dark bedrooms in tiny, dark apartments, for which I would have to pay…well, a lot of money.

I was clearly not the only one willing to pay what seemed like the GDP of a small nation just for a 8’x8’ room; I very rarely got replies to my emails or phone calls, despite being, as far as I can tell, an ideal tenant. (I don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs. I’m quiet. I’m responsible. I can wash a dish. I’m a grad student, an advantage in a town crawling with undergrads. I even have a scholarship, so I can afford to rent a room, though not an apartment.) Yet I count, now, 29 unanswered emails in my inbox, and my cell phone bill shows 15 or so unreturned calls. Thanks, housing market. You can sure make a girl feel good.

I investigated nearly every response I got. After nearly two weeks of emailing, calling, and visiting, though, my roommate options were still slim: an awkward guy who, after showing me the apartment, asked if he could keep my number and call me sometime; an old Jewish lady who wasn’t sure if she could live with a Mormon; and a lovely lesbian couple renting out their guest room to make money for a baby.

Needless to say, I decided to keep looking. The lesbians, who seemed like the best option, lived farther from campus than I’d like, and I suspected I’d always feel slightly out of place in their charming Crate and Barrel-furnished home. The old lady was conspicuously lonely, and the awkward guy—well, I don’t really have to explain that one.

In the end, though, I found an apartment that is, basically, exactly what I was looking for. It’s three blocks to campus and downtown and four blocks to church. It’s surrounded by thrift stores and Indian sari shops, kitty-corner from an Indonesian restaurant, and has sixteen(!) bookstores within a mile of it. The rent is cheap, for Berkeley, which means I’m only paying twice what I did in Provo, instead of three or four times. I’ve only got one roommate, a very funny, very nice late-twenties Staples employee, and we get along swimmingly, at least so far.

But yes, there is a catch: it’s a one-bedroom apartment. And I have a roommate. Though I’ve sworn I’m not going to share a room again until I get married—and, depending on how loud a future husband snores, maybe not even then—and so I have done the logical thing. I have moved into the living room.

That’s right—I’m paying all that money for three walls, not four. I can’t use the door-hanging mirror I inherited from a cousin because I don’t have a door. And my roommate now, instead of knocking, can just stand in the kitchen and say, “Hello?” because I can hear her. I have, in essence, 75% of a room.

My fourth "wall." Yes, that's me in the corner taking the picture.

It’s not so bad, though. Turns out, that's plenty, if I've got bookstores around. And now, after a week of daily trips to Ikea for furniture and floor-to-ceiling curtains, and after a few days of unpacking, I am finally, officially, moved in. And it doesn’t look so bad. I've got a bed, a desk, a couple of bookcases, and curtains pretending to be a wall. Oh, and because the rent is so low, I've got money for my next meal, which will probably be Indonesian food. What more could a poor grad student want?

Possible Subtitles for DHL's Advertising Slogan "Go All The Way"

(see the ad)

• We'll still respect you upon delivery
• Prove your love for international shipping
  
• If you don't use us, someone else will
• It's not normal to wait for a package
  
• Don't you want to see what door-to-door service is like?
  
• C'mon, everybody's doing it!

A Summer To-Do List

register for classes
tidy room
research work
go running
buy bookcase
reply to emails
edit friend's personal statement
return library books
unpack boxes in bedroom
officially accept scholarship
rejoice greatly

Spoilers Ahead!

While writing a much-overdue letter to Melyngoch, I had to think of something to cover the backs of 14 photocopied pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and therefore justify the inclusion of those pages in the envelope. I decided to be a bad friend, and completely evil person--because, hey, that's always fun--and give away the ending. Or, rather, "give away" the "ending." The result proves that I have far too much time, and far too little artistic talent, on my hands.

They're not real spoilers.

Rowling was out of new ideas for Book 7. Please note the death curse.

Haven't you ever noticed that "James Potter is an anagram for "Darth Vader"?


"Yipee ki-yay, mother-lacker" is my new gmail status.


That crossed-out drawing was supposed to be a fist. Oops.


Filler Filler Filler Filler Black-and-White Filler


"Planet of the Capes"! I am so funny.


At least I used bright colors. Thank you, Crayola.


I think that snake does look fat in that color.


If Tolkien wrote the series and Peter Jackson directed the movie.


The death curse is "Oedipus Complexus."


Note the label on the wand case.


I'm surprised I haven't already been struck down for this one.

My, What Strange Teeth You Have

Twenty-three may not be a groundbreaking age in most people's terms--I could already legally threaten my life and health in almost any way I wanted--but it means a lot to me. Twenty-three marks six years since seventeen, and, therefore, disproves my dentist's prophecy that I would lose all my teeth within five years.

This dentist was neither the first nor the last to foretell the doom of my teeth. Once, a dental hygienist simply refused to believe that I was biting down. When I informed her, through clenched teeth, that I was, her eyes widened slightly and she said, in a voice halfway between nervousness and disbelief, “I think the dentist should see this.” When the dentist saw this, he simply burst out laughing, and called for an audience. With the entire office staff gathered around me, he declared to my mother, loudly and with wide gestures that almost knocked over the receptionist, “Mrs. [P], your daughter’s bite would make a rabbi go cross-eyed!”

Maybe if you look at my teeth cross-eyed, they'd look normal; with 20-20 vision, they're certainly not. Dental schools should hire me as a case study; I have a malocclusion that is simultaneously Class I, II, and III, and no one knows why. At various times in the past three years, while trying to explain my teeth’s post-orthodontia game of musical chairs, dentists have told me that I am a mouth-breather, a tongue-thruster, and that I swallow like an infant. Plus, I have a square face with no chin, and excess vertical height, although whether the surgeon meant in my face or just in general was ambiguous. Fixing the problem is as hard as diagnosing it: the four or five oral surgeons I've visited have each had a different suggestion (braces, surgery, braces and surgery) and a different prediction of success (guaranteed, doubtful, 50%). I once watched a jaw surgeon—a licensed professional, mind you--spend twenty minutes trying to figure out how my teeth work. He had plastic molds, and he moved them up and down, left and right, the look of perplexity on his face growing every minute. At last, he looked up, deeply serious, and simply shook his head at me, making soft, “tsk, tsk” tongue clicks. He looked so disappointed that I felt guilty, as if it were my fault.

It's not my fault, though: I wore braces for three years in middle school, including an agonizing two weeks during which my jaw was rubber-banded shut, and I wore my retainer every single night for another four, until, finally, a dentist told me to just throw it away, already. I am mildly, slightly, okay, fine, totally and utterly obsessed with my teeth. I brush and floss and rinse with mouthwash at least daily. I see a dentist regularly. And, most obsessive of all, since that day six years ago, I count down the time until all my teeth fall out. I wake up every morning and run my tongue over my teeth, checking for loose or absent ones (currently: all present, three loose) and verifying their current position (currently: contact between 9 and 24, 14 and 19; not bad--but weren't 3 and 30 touching yesterday?). Yes, most people got over that in fifth grade. Other people have stress dreams in which their teeth move and crumble; this is my stress reality. Nearly everyone close to me has, at some point, received a stressed-out, weepy late-night phone call about how embarrassed I'd be to get dentures in college.

But now, with my last birthday, it's been more than five years, and I have still all my teeth, down even to my stubborn baby molar. Their underlying form may be crooked, but they look straight, and, what's more, they work perfectly fine. (I mean, I rarely chew on my right side, because the teeth don't make contact, but, really, that's not so bad. I don't really like to chew food anyway.) Plus, I've relaxed somewhat about the possibility of losing them. If they go, they go, and at least I won't have to suffer through thirty seconds of Listerine every morning. And besides, though I dreaded dentures in college, "dentures in grad school" would be a great title for my autobiography.

Another Year Older

Just before my 16th birthday, my family moved to Belmont, MA. On my actual birthday, we closed on our new house, and so I spent my sweet sixteen supervising a moving crew while my parents took my younger brother to the hospital, where they were told he would need open-heart surgery. I knew no one in the Boston area then, and so the only person apart from my immediate family who wished me a happy birthday was a burly and surly moving guy, who grunted “happy birthday” and then told me that being sixteen sucked. At least he said happy birthday.

Just before my 20th birthday, my family moved to India. Though they had been in Utah with me for much of the summer, they needed to close on their new house on my birthday, and so left the States a mere four or five days before my birthday. On my actual birthday, I sat through four hours of Arabic class, and probably did as many crossword puzzles to stave off boredom. I probably spent the rest of the playing dominoes, where I'm sure my friends wished me a happy birthday.

Just before my 21st birthday, my family, who, again, had been in Utah with me most of the summer, left for India again. On my actual birthday, I sat through class, work, a meeting with a professor, and a long line at the DMV, where I chirpily informed everyone around me that I was turning 21, in the hopes that they’d tell me happy birthday.

Just before my 22nd birthday, I arrived in Indonesia, jet-lagged, confused, and alone. On my actual birthday, I sat through eight hours of TESOL training, wondering why those in education theory don’t wake up every morning, look in the mirror, and ask, “When did all the intelligent parts of you die?” Having been there only two days, I knew nobody, and so spent the evening running on the treadmill and reading Virginia Woolf, though not at the same time. Because I was twelve hours ahead, I didn't hear from anyone until the next day, but at least I got lots of birthday greetings then. Better late than never, right?

Today is my 23rd birthday. Just before my birthday, a few days ago, my family moved to Belmont, MA. On my actual birthday, they are closing on their new house. (History repeats itself.) I have just moved to California, and I know nobody here. (By now, that’s practically tradition.) I have no solid plans; I’ll maybe do something fun in San Francisco, maybe get myself a library card, maybe move into a new apartment, and maybe spend the day lying on the couch with a book. All of those options sound pleasant, and all of them sound far better than intensive Arabic, the DMV, or TESOL training. Now all I need for the day to be complete is people saying happy birthday to me. (Hint, hint.)

Happy birthday to me!