quotations

Maya Angelou - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

"One Christmas we received gifts from our mother and father, who lived separately in a heaven called California, where we were told they could have all the oranges they could eat. And the sun shone all the time." (p 42)

"Bailey and Mother encouraged me to take dance, and he privately told me that the exercise would make my legs big and widen my hips. I needed no greater inducement." (p 184)

"I wanted to be a woman, but that seemed to me to be a world to which I was to be eternally refused entrance. What I needed was a boyfriend. A boyfriend would clarify my position to the world and, even more important, to myself. A boyfriend's acceptance of me would guide me into that strange and exotic land of frills and femininity." (p 238)

word

right & wrong

i got an email from i-to-i (the org i did my teaching in china trip thing wit) about how thailand is desperate for english teachers. it's for an 11 month contract starting august. .. i want to go. .. i have this problem. i like to run away from things instead of confronting them head on. right now i feel like going to thailand. or really, anywhere but here. i'm tired of immature relationships and trying to keep the peace. cause really, where's my peice?

human relations are hard. today i was in a bank and there was this child. quite young. could walk but not really talk. anyway, it kept looking at me (i've heard that even children spend more time focusing on good looking things than regular or ugly things. haha). but i just wasn't in the mood to humor it. so i ignored it and kept reading. it drooled on the table. disgusting. but my book was really good. sometimes i think it would fun to just buck all conventions. do exactly as i please.

there was a studyon polite cities mentioned in the chinese edition of the current reader's digest. they went to the most populated city of many counties and did stuff, i dunno. anyway. ny is #1. bombay is #40, last. asian countries did not fair well in relation to western counties. this 'study' pisses me off. wat makes you think that you're right in your standards of politeness? in the article, they complained that in asian counties people just crowd up against you. cause asians don't care much about personal space. but westerners value their personal space and don't like it when strangers get too close. but in japan, people don't directly say no. they think that's rude. they might not like your idea but they won't tell you flat out that they think it's a bad one. and really, isn't that sorta more polite than the american sense of 'just say no'? talk about ethnocentricy...

update

so my back is better. yay! it was stupid tho. after i came back from practice that day i told my dad about my back pain and how i couldn't row and i wasn't going out wit the girls cause i thought i should rest. a few hours later my dad reminds me that i should wash his car. ...uh, yeah. anyway. i was gonna wash it today but my mom took it out, so i washed hers and mine instead. i'll do his romrow.

my job search is not doing so well. bah. altho harry called me tonight and asked if i could go over a couple times a week and help out his brother, felix. of course i said yes! problem is tho, his brother has a bit of a hearing problem (he has to wear a hearing aid), which in itself isn't a problem, except that i don't think he can hear my voice very well. i think my register is too high or something. i used to call his house, to speak to harry, and felix would pick up and end up hanging up on me because he thought there was no one on the line, even tho the whole time i saying hello and can i talk to your brother and stuff. yeah. so hopefully we'll find a way around this. i'll try to speak in a lower tone and maybe this will do something? also, maybe you can help me a bit. his mom wants him to practice speaking (cause he's shy and doesn't make many friends). so i was thinking i'd go to the library and pick up play scripts for kids and we can do that out loud. not, like, act. but read. play parts. i think that'll be more exciting than just talking you kno? but if you have any suggestions on wat to do, please comment. :) thanks!

infiniti

i had heard about this on kroq too, but ting sent me this link as well: one red paperclip. it's about a guy who traded a paperclip for some stuff and traded that for some stuff and eventually traded for a house. pretty amazing huh?

rip off

holy shit ticketmaster is expensive! so i ordered four tickets at $27.50 each. and the final price was $158.25. so a whopping $48.25 was tagged on in fees and stuff. ...wtf? that's more than one whole other ticket! jesus.... oh, btw, i bought tickets for lion king on jan 6th of next year. but seriously. wtf? and you kno they have like a monopoly on online ticket sales. so basically, unless i were to drive up to hollywood (and i'm not even sure they sell them at their box office this far in advance), i'm forced to buy thru ticketmaster. wtf? jesus... for that daphne loves derby concert thank god reepal was able to get to pomona to buy those tickets for way cheaper. =\ grr...