My nightly sojourns

Last night I dreamt that I went to the theater and watched a movie. It was about a girl with a sort of mishapened face getting a portrait done by a renowned artist. I thought it was a good movie. The next day, I went home and sat down to watch the same exact movie with my parents. Everything starts out the same, but the next thing I knew, the girl in the movie is someone entirely different. I was so confused. This girl is cuter, prettier, better looking than the other girl. I went up to the director and asked what is going on. He shrugged and he said, well, technically, this movie isn't exactly finished. We're going to reshoot the same scenes, only with this other girl. Suddenly I was on the set, and they were setting up the scene as it were in the film, to be shot in the same way, only with a different person. They replaced a Middle-eastern looking girl with an Aryan, blond, blue-eyed girl.

Next I dreamt that I was in a college class, it's called Woodworking. the class was a motley crue of art, humanities and general banter. I drew something stupid on the paper to show the teacher, and she promptly returned four sheets, drawing the same exact thing in vastly superior ways. I was awed by her artistic skills, but I also thought, this is a fluff class. I should be taking something serious. She very imperiously demanded that I either take her class or walk away now, no wishy washiness. Like an obedient pup, I slunked down in my seat and did what I always like to do: observe my fellow penitentiaries. Somebody read a poem, another person made dumb jokes. I puzzled to myself on why the class is called woodworking? Wherein lies the wood? A mystery indeed.

Immersed as I was in these fascinating and mystifying dreams, it is no surprise that I fought with my alarms this morning with fierce defiance. First alarm goes off, my arm shot out like a rocket to shut it down. 15 minutes later, the second alarm goes off, and beep, I shut it off again. then I closed my blurry eyes and tried to swim happily in a sea of unconsciousness until somewhere at the back of my mind, the vision of sheepishly trooping into work 40 minutes late again rose up like a jackhammer and gripped my heart and shook it a few times and with a cry of dismay, I leapt out of bed trying to calculate the complex matrices of brushing my teeth, throwing on clothes, eating a decent breakfast and pack all my stuff all within 15 minutes before I have to leave.

To end the suspense for you all, I ended up getting to work....20 minutes late.

Thanksgiving 2006

Wow, now I know why I have such great potential to be a party-animal. It runs in my blood. The past few days at my house was really fun, actually, despite the fact that "quiet and calm" became extinct, abstract myths. For a short few days, I had a taste of what it feels like to live in a large extended family. For one thing, you don’t ever really feel lonely. There are too many people jabbering away at any given time that loneliness doesn’t stand a chance. For that matter, neither does sleep. Every night, we were up til 2 or 3 AM. Saturday night, I basically pulled an all-nighter and didn’t hit the sacks til 6. And I wasn’t alone either. My mom, who usually is a walking zombie when the clock hits 10 PM, was still up chatting happily away at 2:30 AM in the morning. I don’t know what was in that tea she had, but it’s powerful.

Then there was the food. Oh say can we eat, by the dawn’s early morning early noon early afternoon late night late late night. Eating, smacking our lips together, chomping, we were constantly feasting. Every meal was scrumptious, I felt the full burden of the Haves this weekend.

Of course this weekend was not without its toll. I raked leaves on Friday in preparation of our guests til my two arms quaked in protest. Later that evening, they burned with hell’s mighty fury, boy did they sting. I had to down some Tsingdao beer to dull the pain. Again, my biceps fail me.

I also learned (sort of) how to play Go. It’s pretty high level stuff. While I watched these two men play Go, one of them began psychological warfare 101. He said stuff like, “We don’t need to continue playing out this region. You’re a goner anyway, you’re not gonna outrun me here, I’ve got you completely surrounded, there’s no point in going on.” Etc etc. it’s funny. It’s even funnier the way he said it. He said it in a very smiley, affable manner, but he was also quite serious. So you know he wasn’t just trying to bully you into submission, he truly already believes the battle’s been won. The guy that played him lost all three matches, even when given an advantage at the beginning.

Hm…yeah, I had a good Thanksgiving break. Did you?

The Queen

Frances is in town and we went to an Asian restaurant and had good food and good conversation. I really like talking with her because her mannerisms are very sweet. She has a habit (at least with females) to lightly put her hand on your arm when she wants to emphasize a certain point. It’s like a gestural punctuation mark. I think it’s amusing. Since I’m a bit more reserved and unless I have to, I usually prefer to touch people with a meter stick, I guess it’s also refreshing.

Last night we went to watch The Queen, starring Helen Mirren. Who would have thought that a cast of people who are 40+ would be so engaging to watch? In our youth obsessed culture, it’s important to see the gems in people who are not necessary brimming with youth and vitality, but nonetheless simmer with strength and depth. Helen Mirren, who is quite a beauty for her age, brings to the role the proper dignity and royal bearing that the character required.

The movie works because it was a restrained film, the tension runs subtly and builds up both externally to the character as well as internally within the character. You truly see how difficult it is to be a monarch, every small move you make, every decision you carry out has ramifications beyond your control. You are ruler of your subjects but you are also just as much, ruled by your subjects. There is a mixture of heavy resignation as well as graceful acquiescence in the queen, as she confronts and shoulders her burdens.

Dance Class

I started out chirpy enough, in my t-shirt and cotton shorts, my hair in a ponytail, ready to rock and roll. It was 7:30 PM and as usual, the room was filled with women of all ages, dressed to break sweat and serious about good health. There was a man in front of me dressed in tight spandex, cyclist outfit. He's probably late 50's or early 60's but very well toned. But I digress.

Then the music started playing and before I know it, I was swept along by the beat, lifting my legs, one two three, hop, skip, bounce, flapping my arms like a chicken. Not too long after, I feel the dwindling supply of ATP and my energy wanes. I think stamina is like this magical ark that stores energy in people. My ark is either really small or it's leaky, not efficient at storing energy. I got sooo tired!

One dance routine, we were supposed to do the whole riverdance thing, and we had to throw our arms up and down and to the sides, straight out, with our fingers splayed. You won't believe how much wind it took out of my sails, my friends, just to keep up with that grueling routine. I kid you not, I was throwing my skinny arms out and to the side repeatedly for all I was worth, but I was always a step behind the music and beat, and my horizontal arms were fastly becoming lopsided diagonals. At one point, I rolled up my short sleeves over my shoulder and glared at my puny biceps, and slapped it a couple of times to get it working. It was shirking its duties and bailing out on me right when I need it most.

And the whole time I was gasping and trying desperately to keep up the inhuman bounce and kick, I had visions of myself going to the gym every morning bright and early at 6 AM. Then reality quickly broke into my reveries. It's so typical! I always do this. I always bite off more than I can chew and start off with grandiose dreams of becoming the next rambo/rocky/jet li/mother theresa/tyra banks. So very sternly, I told myself to just focus on the here and now. And tomorrow, if God willing, I'll get up and go to the gym. But I won't make long term goals, I'll just focus on my tasks one day at a time.

Finally thankfully, the music ended and a slower paced melody filled the air. It was "recovery" time and we begin to sway slowly from side to side. I took that blessed moment to fill air into my floppy lungs. Aaah, the threatening blackness receded and I knew, all was well with me now.

Currently it's 11:30 Sunday night

and I have the song "Love me do" in my head.

The lyrics start like this:

Love, love me do
You know I love you
I'll always be true
So please love me do
Wo ho love me do

It's a very catchy song, and the Beatles' signature harmonica plays prominently in this song as it does in several of their works. I consider myself a newbie in Beatlemania, but I can see why people like them so much. I was just telling another person over IM today that most of the girls that were captured in the Beatles Anthology, all those crazed, bloodlusting fans, they truly acted out the painting "Scream" at those early Beatles concerts. Mass hysteria? You have no idea.

Click here

Hmm...okay, insights and thoughts from this weekend. Today I went to Church with Mum and Pops. Attended Sunday school class. Actually, I think the class I went to could rival any liberal arts course in colleges across America. It was basically a very rapid-fire Comparative Religion course, a whole semester's worth crammed into a 1 hour session. The teacher whipped the transparency off the projecter so fast, you barely had time to read the transparency before he pasted another one on. He talked really fast too. Even so, I learned some interesting facts about some current cults.

There's this cult that's truly a perverted form of Christianity. It was founded by a Korean and his wife. They assert that Eve had sex with Satan prior to being "married" to Adam and when she later on became Adam's wife, she passed on the "bad blood" to her husband. Then from then on, the children and children of this couple all have tainted blood running through their veins. The only way they can be cleansed of that blood is to have wild rampaging sex. Haha, I'm kidding. But they do dabble in sexual rituals and what not, in the name of cleansing the tainted blood. How utterly...TYPICAL...of power-hungry, sex-starved megalomaniacs. In Chinese, it's called "Tong Yi Jiao". Please don't be sucked into them. At the very least, you risk being laughed at like Tom Cruise and his space alien based Church of Scientology. At the very worst, you could be forced to engage in some truly disgusting behavior with an 80 year old Korean and his wife. You have been forewarned.

math-phobia

somewhere along the way i've developed a learning disability when it comes to math. i used to be good at math. i was the top of my class. but then for some reason, i got lazy, or i got scared, or both, and then i began to do terribly at some math tests in junior high. i began to think/believe that i was bad at math or that i was just dumb at math. in high school however, i once went to kumon for a while. it's a math supplemental class, it's a class most asian parents send their kids to, for fear that their asian kid will be the one bad apple in the crowd of asian math whizzes. actually i think i did well in the class, the teacher taught me some math and it wasn't too hard to understand. yet inspite of that, i still much preferred to spend my days in a book or watching a film, not cranking out math equations. thus, to this day (and yes, it's been going downhill since) my phobia of math has gotten even worse. in fact, i've regressed to the point where i can't even do simple arithmetics sometimes.

i just watched a bad movie. it's called Proof. even so, it's a movie that made me think, huh...math is a pretty interesting subject actually. The most brilliant minds in mathematics, what would that be like? There is something awe-inspiring in a math, in and of itself. it stands like a beacon of truth and light, it promises to reveal itself to only those who seeks. do you think math is a way or path to God, even?

anyway, after all this spilling of my guts, which was entirely unnecessary of course, but perhaps then again, so is my entire blog. i have something lighter to share. it's a puzzle. it goes like this.

There are three glasses on the table - 3, 5, and 8 oz. The first two are empty, the last contains 8 oz of water. By pouring water from one glass to another make at least one of them contain exactly 4 oz of water.

it's actually pretty easy. i solved it in like 3 minutes.

To pick a bone or two

Mother Theresa said once, "The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference." (something to that effect, I heard it first in Chinese and I'm translating it) Do you think that is true? If you are indifferent, you do not love. Makes sense to me.

If you were driving on the road and you see a car in front of you spin out of control and then land on the side bank,would you stop and see how the driver is? Would you try to help? The way I see it, there are only two course of action in this scenario. You stay or you walk. If you walk however there are usually at least tthree different reasons. One is, you don't really care, you think you won't be much help anyway, plus you have to get to work or you will be late, even if you are late everyday anyway. All manners of excuses can rise up to make you think you don't need to stop. A second reason could be that you were scared. You're scared to confront and face the situation. If the person is badly injured, it could be a gory affair, blood guts and nastiness. You don't want to get your hands dirty. Third possibility, if you've been raised in a psycho-paranoid household like I was and "bad people who want to do bad things to girls lurk everywhere" mentality was hammered into your impressionable brain at a young age, what if the driver of that vehicle harbored serious mental illness?

Btw, it didn't happen to me. It happened to someone I know, but that person essentially walked away. I wasn't so happy at first, but I admit I was a bit quick to judge too.

Yesterday and today

Last night I watched the Spanish movie "Talk to her" by Mr. Almodovar. He also made the movie "All about my mother" I believe. By now, I have a rough idea of his style of filmmaking. He is very much a man who appreciates the sensuality of women, particularly lush, full-bodied females. However, he has also casted females with a more angular cut.

In the film last night, there was a small section where a film within a film played, and within that film, what seemed to me to be the typical heterosexual male's ultimate fantasy was played out. A very small man, no bigger than one's hand perhaps, was in bed with his girlfriend, a regular sized female. She soon fell asleep and the little man, using all his might, managed to pull off her nightgown and expose her sleeping form, in the nude. Then because he was the size of thumbelina, he frolicked over her naked body, literally enjoying the curves of her body as landscape. Hills, valleys, you can imagine his fun. I would venture to say that, this director has managed to very eloquently symbolize what man (or maybe humans in general) ultimately may be seeking for, in the purest, freudian sense. Furthermore, without venturing too deep into human psychological mumbo jumbo, the film very precisely portrayed female sensuality and sexuality. One scene in the film reminded me of the Bernini sculpture where Hades captured the poor Persephone and dragged her screaming and kicking into his underworld kingdom. His five fingers, hard and brutal, contrasts nicely with the soft, inviting flesh of her inner thigh. It was this particular part that came to my mind during the film. Although I enjoyed the poetic treatment that Almodovar gives to human sexuality, I was not too impressed with the actual plot or storyline. However, perhaps this film bears repeated watching because it's not a plot-driven movie by any means.

Today, this morning, I got up and the first thing I did to perk myself up was to turn on the TV and watch some Chinese programming. My parents got these Chinese satellite programs, so that I can watch Chinese news and programs anytime I want. I watched a show depicting the cultural life and arts within China and around the world. A few posts earlier I said that images have a very strong effect on me, perhaps more so than music. But imagine the combinatory effects of images and motion and music all together. How my neurons danced this morning, my droogies! The show was only 30 minutes long and showed 15-30 second snippets of life around the globe. One minute I'm watching a fashion show in Beijing, the designer used red silk as his motif to create elaborate works of art and these beautiful woman strutted down the runway dressed in pure red glory. Lovely to behold. Then the program took me to New York City where a can sculpture competition was held and I was completely blown away at the creativity of these people, who managed to create, solely out of commercial canned foods, enormous and geometrically stunning configurations. I saw dragons, apples, faucets, a wedding couple. This did jingle my artistic sensibilities somewhat and made me long to try it myself. Another thing I saw was an auction where Andy Warhol's pictures of Mao and Marilyn Monroe sold for ridiculous amounts of money. This brings to mind a radio programming I listened to today that said that the top 20% richest people of the world collectively owns 90X more wealth than the poorest 20% of the world. Isn't that mind-boggling? And with that thought, I shall sign off now and began my work day.

today i realize life is not so meaningless after all

Once upon a time, there was a family of three. The father had recently died and the new widow had one daughter and one son. The daughter was 12, the son was 10. Within the year, the widow remarried with a construction worker who had four sons of his own. The new stepfather was kind to the two children and insisted that the two children receive an education alongside his own children, although times were tough and the family was not wealthy. He especially insisted that the girl gets an education as well, and for this, the girl was eternally grateful.
Three months after the marriage, the construction worker fell three stories at the site of construction. He broke his spine and was paralyzed from the neck down.
Understandably, the new wife felt terribly bad for him, but even more sorry for herself. She felt that she couldn’t possibly be destined for such a terrible, luckless life. One husband dead, the second husband an invalid. Not long after, she made plans to take her two children and leave her husband. The daughter pleaded with her mother to stay and take care of the stepfather, because she felt that her mother shouldn’t be so selfish. Her mother refused to listen and kept replying that it was for their own good. In the end, the mother left anyway, but the girl refused to leave with her and decided to stay to take care of her stepfather.
The four sons were all in school, either in high school or college. The girl told her stepfather that she would stop schooling to take care of him. However, she insisted that her stepbrothers continue their schooling,
This twelve year old girl tried to earn her keep by selling blood. She even lied about her age to appear older, so that she would be eligible. For four years, she took care of her stepfather’s daily needs and sold blood on the side to make more money.
One day, at the age of 16, she had just come back from another session of bloodletting and she was weak and disoriented. As she was walking down the street, a small bus that came by and side-swiped her by accident. She died on the spot.

Can you believe this story? A coworker recounted this story during lunch today. I almost got teary-eyed. A 12 year old girl who understands the true value of love. It truly puts me to shame. I don’t think I did the girl justice in the way I recounted the story. However, I didn’t want to get all mawkish and sentimental. If however this story is true, I can only say, her life may have been short, but it was truly well lived.

Ecclesiastical Emilie

I feel like I'm Solomon, I feel like throwing my hands in the air and wailing, "Meaningless! Meaningless! All is meaningless under the sun!" How come no one seems to ever fall into these existential gripes like I do?

I think it's just because my allergies blocked off proper flow of oxygen to my brain and now I'm half delusional. When I was young, I used to sleep with my head under my cover. I still remember when my mom found out about it, she gave me such a look of dismay and worry. I think she has feared ever since that her daughter has been permanently brain damaged.

Maybe my existential gripe is related once again to my dramatic encounter with the three Chinese Christians of yesterday. They were so enthusiastic, so fervent, so full of urgency, I thought for a second that somehow I wasn't converted enough, and they were trying to reconvert me again. I on the other hand, I couldn't quite manage to dredge up sufficient enthusiasm for this subject. Which subject? Yes, the subject of finding Christian hubby. Is it truly that that important? I think I just want a sexy lover, preferably from a foreign country. Of course, to be faithful to my inner solomon, that too will ultimately prove to be meaningless. Damn, woman, you are hard to please!!

In other news, today's weather absolutely frickin stinks! My nose loudly protested having to be subjected to such harsh conditions that it promptly shut down all facilities but very spitefully turned on the faucets. I was the dirty snotty little kid in the first grade, with a perpetual tissue wiping at the nose all day long. I felt miserable and I'm sure everyone who saw me felt equally miserable.

I think I should go to bed early today and repeat Scarlet O'Hara's mantra to myself over and over and over, "Tomorrow will be a better day." Under the covers, of course.

outgunned

I just spent the last hour sitting meekly in front of three very earnest, very VERY outspoken and talkative Chinese Christians. One of them happened to be my mom. The other two were a couple, a vivacious auntie and her husband.

The three of them took turns exhorting me to pray for my future marriage partner and did nothing short of attempting to HAMMER into my thick skull how important it is that I find a Christian hubby for future marital bliss. The auntie spoke at a machine gun rate, shooting out words as fast as my ear canals can process them.

I did a lot of nodding and smiling, like a bona fide emily bobbo head.

Here's the thing: I don't even actually disagree with them per se. It's not like I'm deliberately being perverse and saying, well, I'm just gonna get hitched to some unsaved heathen to spite my mother. No...I wouldn't play games like that with my own marriage. My brainwaves may not always be operating at some super alpha level, but they have not yet flatlined either. On the other hand, I'm not exactly sure what they want me to do. It's not like I have any potential prospects at this point in my life. My mom is making me feel like a rebel, but talk about a rebel without a cause, or more aptly, a rebel that is a figment of her imagination.

In other words, sure, I'd like to settle down with good loving guy one day, get married and have my 2.5 kids and all that jazz, but all in good time. I don't think that time has come for me yet. I don't understand what she's making me feel bad about. My mom has gotten it into her head somehow that I'm this rebellious, stubborn mule of a girl. But exactly what am I rebelling against? My own happiness or her PERCEIVED and imagined possible future unhappiness in my life?

My mother, thou doth worrieth too much. But I still love you, of course.

two emily thumbs up

I watched a most absurd movie last night but it made me laugh pretty hard at some moments. As I’m naturally stringent about doling out cheap laughs, I think anything that actually succeeds in amusing or making me laugh, invariably impresses even myself.

The film in question is I heart Huckabees. As I look back now, I don’t really understand the title. It’ s just random and gimmicky and designed to be a bit offbeat. Other than that, it doesn’t seem to have any special pertinence in the film. Anyone who has seen the film and can offer a more cogent interpretation of the title is welcome to correct me on this.

The movie is about a pair of oddball husband and wife detectives, detectives who are out to solve cases of existential crises, not the usual murder-she-wrote variety. Dustin Hoffman with a Beatles mop for hair did a hilarious turn as the husband of the team, paired with his wonderfully sublime wife, played by Lily Tomlin. As “detective”, she walks around in a 1940’s prim business suit, complete with high heels, doffed with cotton white gloves to fish through garbage cans and spy on people. It’s a comedy deliberately going out on a ledge.

I thought Mark Wahlberg, as the fireman, obsessed with how uncaring the world is about the usage of petroleum was great. He was full of anger, but also childish petulance. He was paired with a wimpy poet and activist Markovsky and eventually tried to sway him to another philosophy about life, into a philosophy of the more nihilistic variety.

So this movie is about people obsessed with finding out what the meaning of life is. The film ultimately doesn’t really tell you, per se, what the meaning of life is, but it does strongly imply what it believes life NOT to be. For instance, Jude Law, sexy and sleazy as ever, plays a charming, slick and ambitious sales executive who ends up having his world turned upside down. His girlfriend plays a pretty girl who suddenly loses all confidence in an identity built on looks and tries to uglify herself.

I heart huckabees is a film about lost people who need to find themselves. It’s also about lost people who don’t even know they are lost. It’s also about loopy people who on the one hand, indulges in their wildest imaginations about what life is all about, and on the other hand, need to reconcile their place in the objective, “harsh” reality of life. Maybe I see my own loopiness reflected in the film, and that’s why it resonated so strongly with me. All I can say is: I heart I heart Huckabees!

Op Ed etc.

Yesterday was a ringing victory for the munchkins, long oppressed by the wicked troll of elephant land. All through the land, a cry of triumph collectively soared from all the munchkins as they pump their little fists in the air and sent the elephant troll packing. Eh, sorry, a wave of nostalgia for the Wizard of Oz suddenly washed over me. However, the overwhelming victory of the Dems in this year’s election and the sweeping changes that are brought to the political landscape are dramatic enough to inspire such swooping metaphors.

I truly hope that this brings about some positive change to America. As a citizen of this country, I hate the thought that this country is spinning around in circles, sinking deeper and deeper in a quicksand of its own making. Or rather, it very enthusiastically and militantly jumped into the quicksand muck, thinking to “save” some poor schmucks already trapped at the bottom of the hole, not realizing that it might eventually sink under the weight of its own misguided ambitions.

We, the people, the munchkins standing by, holding on to the nation with our pathetic little hands, might soon be brought to our knees with exhaustion from holding up the enormous burden of a country, mired in debt and hatred from middle east countries and generally poor management of country affairs.

Yesterday, like a sinking boat, the elephant pirate booted one of its top shipmates into the water to preserve buoyancy in these rocky times. Poor Rumsfeld, into the mud you go. But seriously, what good have you done for this country? What good have you done for the public? What good have you done for Iraq? These are not easy questions and I don’t anticipate easy answers. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between and time will tell whether or not any good will come out of these militant executions. So far, the prognosis for good results – grim.

Okay….enough political mumbo jumbo. I should stick to the more prosaic commentary of daily life. A friend and I are currently discussing taking a trip somewhere. Wherever we end up going, I’m sure we will have a fabulous time. Can’t wait!!

Nap session

This morning I had to attend a seminar at work. The overly conscientious and enthusiastic speaker had prepared a long presentation. I started out bright-eyed and bushytailed, a happily fed attentive listener. I probably lasted about 10 minutes in that erect posture. Then my posture began a downward inverse logarithmic decline, slumping lower and lower with each growing minute. The familiar signs of the alluring promise of sleep beckoned. The brightly colored presentation with its dazzling colored proteins began to sway and blur and melt into a potpourri of colors. The droning of the speaker became white noise that sashayed in the background and hummed in my ears, dimming away. My eyelids got heavier and heavier…

Okay, I think I’m feeling a bit too poetic today. The truth is, I started nodding off very ungracefully. My head very conspicuously falling down and then jerking back up abruptly, much to my embarrassment. Over the course of that tortuous hour, I must have tried every possibly permutation of positioning myself comfortably in a hard plastic chair so as to continue my snooze more cozily. The result was that I settled into a fitful nap, in the netherland between wakefulness and being zonked out. I had attempted valiantly to follow the speaker’s experiment for about 10 minutes or so and then I completely gave myself up to my lazier self. I woke up in time to hear the speaker thank all the lab members of his group in a very heartfelt manner, since apparently he’s leaving soon. Oh well…so much for endoplasmic reticulum associated degradation.

Attic Cat

I'm watching a Korean drama right now, about two people thrown together under the same roof by fate. Watching the drama makes me envious, actually. How I wish I can live with the man I love under the same roof. I like living with my family for the most part, but I feel like a kid too, like some 16 year old teenager. It seems fun to live with another person your own age, to interact with peers and to do couples stuff.

It's funny how a soap opera can make even the most mundane things look so fun. I see the girl in the kitchen, making dinner to share with her "roommate" and it actually looks like fun. Then I would think that one day, when I'm living with someone, I would do the same thing and enjoy it too. In reality, I am not so inclined to be bustling around the kitchen all day long, waiting on some guy hand and foot. But the drama makes the idea appealing.

As a kid back in 4th grade, I remember how I looked upon a picture book of a girl sitting in a plane, on her way to somewhere. The picture book showed the plane from a birds eye view, all the seats, all the people, all the activity and excitement bustling in the air. I felt so envious at that moment, and wished to be in a plane that very moment, experiencing what was in the picture before my eyes. I think my imagination runs wild and makes everything seem so rosy and interesting and appealing. It's the same with other visuals too. I remember flipping through a picture dictionary and seeing pictures of vegetables and fruits and suddenly have a very strong desire to consume apples, oranges and tomatoes. I suppose a visually titillating image can work wonders on the human motivation and desire.

So it is with this soap opera too. This girl's life, with all its trials and tribulations, seem vastly infinitely more interesting than mine at this moment. All I want to do is live in an attic apartment somewhere with a good looking Korean stud and live out their petty dramas on a daily basis.

Who knows you best?

Do you know yourself best? Or when you do a little self-analysis, do you spritz on some fragrant lies, some rose-colored lenses, some self-congratulatory pats on the back and soothe, placate, stroke your ego a bit too much? What about other people? Do they know you best? Supposedly they are more objective, no? Not as inclined to see you for more or less than who you are. Or is that not true as well? I think sometimes others carry their own emotional baggages and knowingly or unknowingly judge others under those biases.

I often think with a slight cringe, will someone come along at the end of my life and sum me up in a few cutting sentences or two? Would that person, that omniscient God like critic, the "author" of my life, will that person be able to diminish and reduce me into a character, a neat and tidy package, a category, a type? I'd LIKE to think I'm this interesting, multi-faceted, well rounded and hard to place, hard to pin down type of freewheelin' and dealin' personality. Perhaps that is so far from the truth as what the world perceives me to be, that it's a complete and utter joke? And the truth is that I'm just this mousy sullen and lazy girl who wants life to be handed to her on a silver platter without having to expend the extra energy to acheive lasting glory?

Life is a zero sum game. How come it has taken me such a long time to figure that out? But I digress. I am also on a quest for truth (I want to know if truth is truly relative or absolute, this is a big mystery to me right now, I'll be honest)
In my own life, I can think of half a dozen scenarios where telling the truth per se is not the way to go, no sir. But that's not all I meant. I don't really care about the more petty issue of "telling the truth or telling a lie". That is not my moral burden at this point. What interests me a bit more is, what is the truth about how life is supposed to be lived after all....in other words, are you there God? It's me, Emily.