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.