Taiwan, my homeland

Every now and then I get a stab of sharp nostalgia for my homeland, a place half constructed out of my own unfulfilled fantasies and half from real experiences. For instance when I listen to the radio station online Voice of Taipei, Mandarin voices accented in that distinctive Taiwanese way fill the air and flood my eardrums. Simultaneously, feelings of homesickness would wash over me. Homesickness? My home is here, what exactly am I yearning for?

I think this is my primordial memory. I was born there after all, and was listening to voices like that since from the womb. From the age of 0 to 5 too, that was my entire universe. Moving to America was not nearly as traumatic as it might have been for many other immigrant children precisely because I was still so young and also because I was always coccooned safely within my family. Nonetheless, I am beginning to suspect that this displacement was still fairly traumatic on some subconscious level.

It's also true of course that the grass is greener on the other side of the pasture. While I am here in the US, I experience the good and the bad. Whereas when I think of Taiwan, my lovely Taipei, all I can recall are such things like sumptious night market delicacies, beautiful gossamer bakeries, bright and inviting department stores filled to the brim with cute outfits, even the ever familiar and to me, near and dear to my heart, the hawkings of the local vendors.

Knowing all this however does not dampen my longing to visit and stay once again, in the country of my birth.

All by myself in the library

I have an urge to break out into a dirge and sing "All by myself" as I sit by my lonely self in the library in the dead of the night. Well friends, I guess I really asked for it though. I've been slacking on neuroscience and the exam is in 28 hours, so I am slogging through 2 weeks of medical school neuro material in 48 hours.

Actually on a brighter side, it's nice and quiet and bright and I can do almost anything I want in this big old room, that always seemed so tiny by day.

Yawn, I AM getting a little tired...but I am determined to stay here til 5:30 AM. That's when it's light out and it's "safe" to venture out again. Hehe, I know I'm being silly but I've already decided on staying and studying to this hour and so I shall.

Excuse me while I began my little operetta to myself...

I caved in to the dark side...

or i.e., I joined Facebook and hence, became one of the millions of people on this network all preening and putting their best and proudest selves forward, armed with their three million friends and ten billion messages. Gosh, within a day, I had 39"friends" and counting. I never felt so popular. But then reality sinks in. Of course, except for my close circle of good friends, the vast majority added me on their list just to increase their own body counts. I am not unaware of that incentive. But I shall not be cynical. In any case, I'll have a little romp and a go at FB for some time and when I get tired of it, I will treat it the way I did Friendster. Life can be as simple as a click of a button!

Today was an oddly productive day given the fact that I had only five hours of sleep the night before. I fortified myself with a good dose of MONSTER, that stuff probably took a few good years off my natural life span, but in the mean time, it gets the job done - and lemme tell you - keeping this borderline narcoleptic girl awake is truly no small thing! Getting her lazy ass to crack open the book? It's a miracle!!

Alright, enough rambling for one day. Toodaloo!

Stumbling on a motherlode!

It's probably not too surprising that as a blogger, I've also had both opportunity and interest in perusing other blogs. To my delight, there are so many really fantastic blogs out there! For instance, I've been reading every now and again, this blog by Scott H. Young and always thoroughly enjoyed being re-energized by his latest thought pieces on productivity.

Yet like an explorer who went out and only reached the tip of the iceberg, I had no idea the vastness of resources that lay at my fingertips simply by going into one of his hypertexts. Then, truly like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole and then going off on one adventure after another, I discovered author after author all detailing their wonderful insights to accessing a better life. So enthralled was I that I spent the last two hours hop-scotching from one author to another. What particularly amused me was how they are all linked to each other and would often leave comments and such on each other's blogs. While I would like nothing better than to join this "fellowship of the holy life hackers" I am as yet still a humble padawan and sideline observer. Still, when I was reading these fantastic and inspiring articles, so many thoughts were being whipped up in my head and the frenzy of possibilities absolutely flooded my brain. I feel as if I've had an evening of stimulating conversations not just with one person, but with multiple personalities and almost seamlessly at that.

In any case, it's difficult, I think, in my current state of heightened excitement, to really calmly and effectively reflect on everything that I've either learned today or been reminded of (and we need so many reminders in life, to gently nudge us to remember lessons that we've already learned in the past). And to be honest, I don't think I could do justice to any one author either by my attempts of recapitulations. You can just read them for yourself.

Here are a couple that I particularly enjoyed:

Schaefer's Blog

The Growing Life

These two started off a firecracker of a domino effect. And at 1:34 AM in the morning, I've probably bit off more than I could chew. But I know too that I've been battling a funk for some time now and today, tonight, I feel a glimmer of radiance that promises a sure way out. As always of course, these blogs can only show me the door, but I must be the one to walk through it.

God willing, I think I will do just that!