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Thu | March 30, 2006

Powerful Friends

Nick, in a blazer that was slightly too big on him, met his friend Andria one day for dinner. Andria wore a shirt that was slightly too small.

"So I called Grace," he said. "That girl I told you about."

Andria raised her eyebrows. "And?"

"Well I called her three times. The first time her phone was off. It went straight to voicemail. That was about three weeks ago. Then I called her again, two weeks ago, and there was a busy signal. And last week, her phone was just dead."

"It was dead?"

"It was dead."

"Did you leave a message?"

"It was dead. It was just blank."

"I mean the first time."

"Yes."

"And you haven't left her a message since?"

"How could I? It was dead." Nick sat back in his chair and crumpled his napkin.

"Well then you haven't really called her three times," Andria offered, sipping her margarita. "You left one voicemail and the other times it was busy she wouldn't know that you had called."

"That's true," Nick said.

"It's weird that it was busy."

"Yeah."

"I've never heard of a cell phone with a busy signal."

"Yeah. It should go to voicemail."

With a glance Andria summoned the waiter. "You should call her," she said.

They split the bill.

The next night Nick visited his friend Dan Marrow, who had been accepted into Columbia law school. Dan had gotten a hold of the syllabi for some of his fall classes and was getting a head start. Nick sat on his couch and read the New York Times while Dan read at his desk.

"Perhaps you put too much pressure on her," he said. "You only saw her that one time. You hardly know her."

"She said she wanted to go to dinner. She said yes."

"Maybe she changed her mind. Or maybe she still wants to but she is just really, really, busy. I would say probably not. But you still have a shot."

"How?"

"People think things have to start a certain way when they don't. Try to see her again, in any capacity. Say, 'my friend and I are going to dinner next week and I was wondering if you'd like to come.'"

"That could work," said Nick.

Dan answered Nick's next question before he even thought of it. "I can be the friend," he said. "Or anyone will do, it doesn't matter."

"I'd like you to be there," Nick said. "You would turn things my way if you could."

"I'll certainly turn things your way. I know that I can."

Nick called, and left a message. It contained a summary of Dan's plan, which he now thought of as his own. She answered the next day, and the next week they went out— the three of them. They had a nice time. They found they had things in common. They had all had watched Seinfeld. There was that episode where Elaine finds new friends and they are new versions of Jerry and Kramer and George. "We already have a George," says Elaine, to George, on the street.

Dan, Grace, and Nick laughed.

Nick asked her out again, and this time they went alone. Once it began it unfolded like a storybook, unwound like toy. He felt that in a city of eight million people, he must be the happiest. He could see them getting married and living happily ever after. These are the phrases and ideas that circulated in his head.

They had sushi and sake and pet names. He called her cupcake. One night she fell asleep before he did and he watched her breathe, her neck stretched, her arms limp. Although he saw only shadows in the dark, he filled in her features from memory, with information he snatched from many furtive glances.

Nick was a good friend to neither Andria nor Dan. He was merely present. And then he was gone without a word-- and he had less value than the plant on the bathroom windowsill.

Six weeks later Dan finished his three hundredth page of reading and caught Nick on the phone. Nick talked about Grace. He could not stop; he blabbered. He exasperated Dan, who liked to do the talking.

"You've lost your head." Dan said. "Listen to yourself. You are twenty-two. You are talking about getting married. What are you talking about?"

"How many women have you been with?" he added a while later. "Live a little."

Three word sentences had power over Nick.

He had dinner with Andria for the first time in over two months. He didn't know how much time had passed, but she did. They had a nice dinner with so many laughs and it felt like just last week that they had talked. They said a little of everything.

When the bill came Nick mentioned that he paid for all the expenses with Grace.

"Oh how nice of you," said Andria. "You can afford that?"

Nick took in ideas like a dog eats anything that it smells before its nose.

Although they adored each other as much as ever, Nick and Grace began to fight. They hardly knew what they fought about. In three weeks, he was frantic.

In another three weeks, he lost her.

sketches | Posted by Lily at 01:04 PM

Tue | March 28, 2006

chinatown

I went to Chinatown this afternoon. I went randomly looking for Jing Fong because I missed meeting up with some people there on Sunday. I didn't look at a map and figured I would just wander around Chinatown, and maybe run into it, maybe not.

After about a half hour, during which I also looked for a cell phone lanyard and got grapes for a dollar a pound and two pints of strawberries for $1.25, I went into a dim sum place that had yellow cloth covered chairs. The bakery in front was crowded and the dim sum area in the back was empty except for a few friends of the workers. There was no one to admire the pretty cone tiered chandeliers on the ceiling. It was 2:44. A Cantonese woman quickly unloaded three dishes on me. Two were $3; one was $2.50. It would be a fast profit if they had any customers. I thought about how I wanted to buy my mom some tea but I didn't know where to get it.

The men at the next table seemed to be having a good enough time. Two were waiters and the other two were friends. Yet their existence was evidently miserable. That's the way with Asians. Stay pleasant, keep the good will flowing. I suppose it's okay to keep a good attitude but you can't let people walk all over you. I still don't know how to prevent it but at least I understand that's what I need to do.

After I walked out the side door of the restaurant and through an outdoor hall, I ran into Jing Fong.

On the way back I bought a lanyard for my cell phone-- a pave hello kitty face on a pink string. "Five dollars," he said. I probably could have bargained it down to four. I could have just said, "three." And then we would have agreed on four. But I didn't. I didn't want to win. I feel bad for the people who sit there all day and that is their existence. I gave the guy five singles. I happened to have a lot of singles, too, which is good for bargaining so you can make a quick exchange.

There were two dollars left in my wallet. I somehow spent eighty dollars on food in two and a half days. None of it was dining in a restaurant either. So dinner tonight is grapes, strawberries, and a cupcake.

journal | Posted by Lily at 07:25 PM

Sun | March 26, 2006

One Night

He said hi to me when I was standing on the balcony of Mason's apartment, sorry I came and waiting for the courage to leave. On another Saturday I would be at home, dozing on the couch, the pillow between my knees. I would sit up occasionally, lift my shirt up, and look at the fat above my waistband. And I would resolve to spend less time blubbering on the couch.

He brought me a beer, and I thought of my waist but made an easy exception. I considered the consumption before me, beer flowing into throats salty with chips, not a vegetable in sight. The girls stuck out their chests and stretched their torsos, always aware of which way their asses were aligned. Everyone was solitary... everyone looked happy while scanning the room.

In the kitchen there were pretzels and the sink was full of dishes. The black cat lept onto the counter and licked the mouth of the Stella Artois that had just left my hand.

"I'm going." I said. "Leave with me."

I looked to the side while I said it, so that I could not see his response. In the pile of black jackets on the bed I found the variation that was mine. I walked down a flight of stairs before I heard a sound. It was not him.

Outside I drifted towards the subway entrance. I measured the time it would take to walk sixteen blocks to Penn Station against the time that I had to get there against the laziness of wanting to take the subway against the need to save two dollars against the fact that the train would probably not come right away anyway against how comfortable my shoes were that day against the knowledge that if I walked I would think and move and comfort myself.

When he walks he bobs a little, as if he were on a carousel. That was the first real thing I noticed about him that night. It was a warm spell in January and a night that made me think of fireflies.

"Are you coming?" I called out.

Soon I watched him move not with reason but with instinct, the muscled shoulders and the hairy chest incongrous with the shaven face and glassy eyes, now closed.

Every minute I felt that he would call. I would hear that grainy voice, a textured paper wasted on phrases like "a bit of beauty in an ugly world." I would cringe again at his words while comforted by their sound, and shake my head at the squeeze bottle of hair gel in his bathroom.

Later-- weeks later-- I fell asleep and did not think of it.

sketches | Posted by Lily at 01:05 PM

Fri | March 24, 2006

At the Doctor's

Kara, a young girl of sixteen, was a member of the National Honor Society and the Key Club. On Valentine's Day they sent candy grams to their classmates. How this related to the mission of the club had been long forgotten, or not considered to begin with.

In the fall, she found herself at the doctor's office for a yearly physical. Though she imagined the doctor's to be a healthy place, the waiting room smelled like stale vomit. This doctor had graduated from Yale. That was all her mother told her. They filled out forms. They waited for twenty minutes. Then Kara went into a sterile examining room.

After another twenty minutes, the doctor appeared. She was tall, and very pale. Her bony frame was a wooden hanger for a lab coat. When she spoke, her voice sounded distant, thinned out as voices do when they sing out of range.

They said hello.

"How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

"Have you gotten your period?"

"Yes."

"When did you get it?"

"When I was twelve. No, when I had just turned thirteen," she said. She reflected on the day she woke up and realized the meaning of the dark stain she had noticed the night before. Her mother had seemed proud and satisfied.

The doctor did not ask for the story. She looked attentively at Kara but indifferently and impassively.

"Have you had sex?"

It was not an unexpected question but the girl did not enjoy saying that she had not. It seemed to be an admission of immaturity.

"I'm going to have a look at you," the doctor said.

Kara responded to the instructions and lay down on the paper. She found herself coaxed into an unfamilar position. At the touch of the doctor's gloved fingers, Kara lifted her head and glimpsed the doctor's scrutinizing face. She felt the air touch her skin.

The doctor straightened up and the girl sat up on the examining bench. She wondered whether this doctor had sex and could not imagine it. She looked at the doctor's face and thought how dull it looked. There was no color in her face at all; her lips were thin and her eyes, though large, seemed dead.

The doctor seemed to take on a patronizing tone. "I see you have a tan. Do you wear sunscreen?"

"Yes," said the girl.

"Do you wear it every day?"

"Yes."

"You would not have a tan if you wore it every day."

"Okay," Kara said. She suddenly felt she wanted the interview to be over quickly.

The doctor told her to wear a hat—not a baseball cap, but a wide-brimmed hat. Kara promised that she would. She thought to herself that she would not. She answered the remaining questions with the briefest responses possible.

Later Kara realized that she had been wounded—a surprise like suddenly looking at your hand and seeing a cut, though not knowing when or how it happened. She did not like the ghastly, patronizing doctor. She thought angrily that her skin was naturally that color and that she should not look at it with the disapproval that the doctor had looked at her. It was the doctor who was unnaturally pale.

sketches | Posted by Lily at 06:25 PM

Wed | March 22, 2006

The Office Romance

At work I sometimes go to visit Sara, the administrative assistant at the front desk. Nothing is at stake to talk to her— she neither reports to me nor is above me. The front desk is my favorite place, where I can talk without consequence, as well as get interoffice envelopes. And I enjoy the walk— not much of a distance, but it is something. I go every hour or two. Being on the way to the bathroom, the mailroom, the elevator bank, and the other wing, there are any number of reasons to pass by. It's nice to talk to someone who has simple duties, whose only concern is the next fashion trend and how to get a good manicure.

Sara has dark hair, cut short, but piled high on the top of her head, as if a dark creature sat there. That doesn't make her sound pretty. She is pretty. With her glowing face, she looks like a kid in an animal costume, the jumpsuit kind where the kid’s face is the only thing showing out of the fur.

Everyone has their own cubicle, and some do more work than others. I want to be one of those who do no work, and sit, all day, and think about the gym. But I am not; I work all day and my only respite is an occasional walk to look out the window of the kitchen. I do not think of lunch until 1 pm, and I get the first thing that comes to mind. Bill thinks about lunch from the moment he sits down in the morning until noon when he gets it. Lunch is his perfect accomplishment of the day.

I have never gotten lunch with Sara, although I suggested it once. It has been in the air ever since- captured in her graceful figure, with a curve in the small of her back which is fashionable now. Even her body is fashionable.

She is always taken up by some task, such as organizing her pen jar or typing who knows what— IM'ing, sometimes. She always seems to be busy. The job fits her well-- her personality and her intelligence. I envy people who have something that actually makes sense.

On Monday I happened to be hanging about her desk. We were talking about her new fragrance, a vanilla musk custom blend that she got from a boutique. It smelled like cake. I was looking at her sweater-- she always wore new clothes- that day, a yellow sweater with a tinge of lime green. It had a flowered lining. I was wearing an old blue sweater with permanent wrinkles bent into the sleeves. The dirt never quite gets off the insides of the wrinkles. Her phone rang and I left and went to the bathroom. When I came back she had just gotten off.

"Who was that?" I asked.

She didn’t answer. Perhaps I didn’t wait long enough—I never wait for people to answer. I don’t want to push them. so I said, "How was the weekend?"

"It was good," she said. "How was yours?"

"Ok," I said.

"What did you do?"

"I laid in bed and slept and dozed." And I had-- I had looked at the wall for two days and then come back.

She laughed at me.

I returned to my desk, and started to pick at the dead skin on my lips with my teeth.

sketches | Posted by Lily at 11:15 AM

Mon | March 20, 2006

In the Laundry Room

It's 5 am and the young girl goes down to the laundry room. She forgot her clothes down there last night in her hurry to get out on Saturday night. She hopes they're still there.

She gets to the basement and there's a woman there, dressed in rags.

"What's the matter?" the woman asks.

"I'm looking for my clothes... that I left here last night."

"Last night. That's a long time to leave your clothes."

She doesn't answer. She opens every dryer even though it's possible to tell from the outside that they're empty. One of them has a sweatshirt but it's not hers.

"What do they look like?"

"They're just... they're my clothes."

"What about that pile over there?" the woman says, gesturing at a table in the corner, next to the trash.

The girl doubts they would be all the way over there but she goes and soon recognizes her terry cloth sweatshirt.

"They are mine. This is so obnoxious," she says, as she looks in the trash and sees that some of the clothes have fallen, or been tossed, into the can. "Who would do this?"

The woman moves away, shifts, and straightens her hands, like she is soothing her fingers or putting on rings. She has no rings; she is dressed in faded black clothes that are more lint than fabric.

"Whatever," says the girl.

"I didn't take them," the woman says defensively. "I have a way of acting guilty of things I'm not even accountable for."

The girl doesn't respond. She is folding her clothes on the table.

sketches | Posted by Lily at 01:01 PM

Thu | March 16, 2006

jeudi

It's an okay day I guess. I was at home yesterday so I had plenty of time to recharge. I feel like I should bill them for my recharging time.

The train was late again this morning. But I got to see my dad, which I like. His Hoboken train is fifteen minutes before mine. As I walked up the stairs to the platform and got to the top and saw my dad-- that is the best way to start the day. The train was late on Tuesday too. An hour late. Due to "mechanical difficulties." I never know what that means. Sometimes I imagine it means someone has stepped in front of the train, because I saw a movie at a film festival once that said that that happens in Japan in the morning.

I rode on the Hoboken train with my dad on Tuesday and then took the Path into the city. It sort of balanced out the hour late thing a little.

a list of my Recent Problems with Transportation:

Saturday, March 11:
Hoboken PATH had some weekend switchups, where you had to take the WTC or 33rd St. train if you wanted to go to Hoboken from Grove Street. I went to Pavonia/ Newport and back to Grove Street amd waited 15-20 minutes at each place and didn't make the 10:05 from Hoboken by a long shot. Then, NJ transit had problems going into Summit. Mechanical difficulties, probably. And again after leaving Summit. In short, I got home at close to 1 pm, instead of 11 am. I left J's house in Jersey City at 9:30 and spent three and a half hours in transit.

Tuesday:
hour late. took Hoboken train in. sat with Dad.

Thursday (today):
twenty minutes late.

March 4 (Saturday): was going to Hoboken and the train went forward three stops, sat for twenty minutes, then back two stops, at 10 mph, to Summit. Arrived at Hoboken over an hour late.

I feel like I should bill them for all this time too. Actually I'm not that annoyed at all with any of it. I'm mostly annoyed at my life in general, the whole unemployable thing, mostly, so that takes up all my energy. The train, I have gotten used to, more or less. It is upsetting while you're stuck on it and you call everyone you know and hopefully they commiserate with you a little. Then you just have to let it go.

journal | Posted by Lily at 01:13 PM

Tue | March 14, 2006

wi-fi

I set up a wireless router and got internet for my laptop yesterday. A few years ago my mom got a router, which I attempted to set up, failed, called customer service, got frustrated, and quit. This time I felt frustrated even at the thought of picking up the phone and having to go through it all again. I remembered that I literally couldn't understand what the person, an Indian dude, was saying. And I am relatively good, and fairly patient, with that sort of thing.

I waited until after lunch when I would have food coma and be too sedated to have the energy to be angry if the person was frustrating. Also, I went to Johnny Rockets with Henry. That put me in a good and stable mood. It happened to come together. So even though I waited about half an hour to get through and then was on the phone with the person for about an hour, I wasn't very frustrated. It's all about managing expectations, too, because I was ready for it to take that long. And maybe they got better at speaking English and I got better at understanding Indian-accented English.

The only thing I am uncertain about is that I deleted my Bryant Park setup, despite my apprehensions, when he told me to delete everything under preferred networks. But I am hardly ever in Bryant Park with my laptop anyway and it would only take a few minutes to set it up again. Also the connection isn't very fast when I was on invisible cube, last night, so there is something to figure out there.

When my mom got home with her laptop I set her up too. I don't even know how I knew. I just looked at some of the same things that I had opened up on mine. View wireless network connections, etc. and then just typing in the WEP key and clicking connect. And uninstalling the software for their wireless card because both our laptops came with cards. In retrospect none if it was that difficult; I don't know why it took that long.

Web/Tech | Posted by Lily at 12:14 PM

Mon | March 13, 2006

dinner time

It's seven o'clock in my house and that's dinner time. When I was a kid, dinner was called supper-- by my classmates. I called it supper at school and dinner at home. It was one of many discrepancies that made me doubt my understanding of the most basic things... and with good reason because dinner at my house didn't mean the same thing as it did for others. For them it was special "family time" and they said grace and were scolded if they said "rub a dub dub thanks for the grub." Sometimes they went out to dinner at restaurants and sometimes they "had people over" for dinner. Or supper rather.

My dad tells few stories. But he does tell the story of how when he was a kid he used to stake out the kitchen so he could get to the table as soon the food hit the plate. Once he ate all the fish that was supposed to be for the whole family.

"I like fish," is the moral of that story.

Actually all my parents' dinner stories are about not having enough food. My dad says his mom would put out a plate of peanuts and the kids would grab them like hungry hungry hippos. And they'd put the peanuts in their pockets and eat them one at a time. My mom claims she hardly ate anything for years because she didn't get at it fast enough and no one noticed.

Dinner tonight is takeout, leftover from Saturday. It's greasy. I stand by the counter, what we call the island. I am sure I sit down for a few minutes at the table but I don't even remember. There are four seats at the table but one of them always has papers and mail in front of it so no one sits there. There are four people in our house right now-- Mom, Dad, me and Henry-- but because of the table situation we never sit all four at a time at the table. An informal rotation system is in place. I have finished my dinner and gotten up by the time Henry comes downstairs. I stand around just to hang out and watch him microwave a frozen pizza.

When it's ready he tosses the paper plate with his pizza on the table. A couple of sausage toppings bounce off and land on the floor. He doesn't notice.

"Hey!" I say. "Henry!"

"What?"

"I saw two of your toppings bounce off your pizza onto the floor!"

"Where?" He gets a bounty and looks for it like he's about to catch a bug. Calmly, as always. Henry is very chill. Sometimes I jump out from around corners and scare him-- just to make sure his reflexes are still okay.

He only finds one sausage piece. "The other day Dad did the same thing," I say. "He went over and took the toothpick shaker, and did this--"

I scuttle to the island and shake the toothpick shaker over my upturned left hand but don't look at what I'm doing. I look at the ceiling like I'm gaping at Superman.

"And two toothpicks fall onto the floor! And I wait a minute and he doesn't notice! And I'm like, 'Dad! You dropped two toothpicks!' And he says 'No, I didn't.' And I go to point it out to him on the floor, but he steps on them with his slipper. And he won't move his foot! When I got him to move his foot he said, 'No, that's not mine.'"

I walk back to the table and stand at the corner between Mom and Henry. "You're just like Dad! You've got to watch what you're doing!" I say.

"Na summa how shao," says Mom, because I am laughing and gasping for breath.

"Remember when Mom left for Taiwan, and the place was infested with ants in a week?"

"It's because he cut the orange on the table and left the juice there," Henry says.

"Dad is so inconsistent! He leaves the juice all over the table but if you sit on the couch and put your feet up, he gets all upset! He won't stop talking about it until you put your feet on the floor!"

My brother finishes his pizza and goes to the pantry to look for something else. It's the habit at my house to go to the pantry several times an hour and stare at what's inside. I go over and punch him in the arm.

I'm wearing a navy Bruce Lee t-shirt. "Hey," I say, pointing to the kernel-shaped drawing of Bruce's head screened onto my chest-- "do you know who Bruce Lee is?"

"Yeah."

"A karate champion."

"He wasn't a karate champion, he was an actor," he says.

"Whatever. He was awesome. He was like murdered or something."

"No he was like 90% muscle. He tried to make the perfect body for kung fu."

"Yeah he was awesome," I say. I think of that movie where he takes off his shirt and he looks like a plastic action figure.

"No that's why he died," he says.

"He died of too much muscle?" My brain has shut down and is now running on empty.

"He experimented with his body too much."

"No, muscle is good. He was murdered!"

Henry doesn't say anything. He only talks for a few seconds at a time.

"Yeah too much of anything is bad," I say. "Like those Koreans who died of too much video games!"

"Ai-right deel no deel!" I hear Dad say from the family room.

I am miserable but every once in awhile I forget.

memoir | Posted by Lily at 08:13 PM

Sun | March 12, 2006

the place on the floor

There is a place on the floor in my room where I played one day with my sister and our my little ponies and barbies. We were making up what was happening and giving them dialogue. It wasn't the first time we played there, nor was it the first time children mixed toy genres and made an impossible story with ponies and barbies. But we got to a plot point where it wasn't clear to my sister what would happen next. My sister, being older, usually led the play, and told me what we would do. "Having a birthday party" was a common subject. That day-- I don't remember the situation exactly-- she got to a point when we were playing and she didn't know what would happen next. And I told her. I talked for a few seconds... which was unusual for me. "And then?" she asked. And I came up with something more. This second addition, I remember, referenced and built on what had happened in a My Little Pony cartoon we had seen that morning.

Our mom called and it was time to stop playing. We went and did something else, but it was as if something had moved in my mind, shifted and settled like a snake sheds its skin. Or had cracked and fallen off like the dark layer around a peanut.

My sister had been just following me. I had gotten someone to accept my rationalization and explanation of things-- something I didn't know I could do. Yet when I did, it seemed like I always could have done it.

Now my desk-- a different one-- is near that spot near the closet. When I sit at my desk my feet are right next to it. A wire basket covered with blue linen, a container for my bags, occupies the place. Every once in awhile I walk to the other side of my desk, move the bin aside with my foot, and stare at that spot.

I wonder that I ever fit on that shiny bit of hardwood floor, and conjure up again, like an actor, the feeling of my mind breaking out of that space.

I tell myself that if I did it once, when I was seven, I can do it again.

memoir | Posted by Lily at 10:31 PM

Fri | March 10, 2006

the move

Today I am moving two spots over. Apparently I was supposed to move one spot over but this other person didn't want her spot and she switched with me. I found this out only this morning, after weeks or at least days of hearing about the move. I think I actually prefer the spot that I am going to have. So everyone is happy. I have often thought, actually, that there must be a way to make everyone happy as far as seating goes, and whom we sit next to, so as to maximize everyone's contentedness-- or at least minimize irritation.

It remains to be seen whether this new spot is "good" or not.

journal | Posted by Lily at 12:39 PM

Wed | March 08, 2006

the state of things

I appear to have lost my ipod shuffle usb adapter. It might be in a drawer at home. But the last place I saw it was at this desk, on Friday.

After trying to print pages 4-6 of my document on three different printers, I gave up, lest there be rampant evidence of my subpar writing all over the floor.

I have finally completed the Washington Post Company Code of Business Conduct and Statement of Ethical Principles, one of three online courses I am supposed to complete before the end of March.

Much of the day was spent stressing because I did not redo my story which is due this Sunday for class, and calculating how much time I would need, and not actually doing anything that gets me any closer to finishing. I know it's counterproductive but I find it difficult to stop.

journal | Posted by Lily at 06:00 PM

Mon | March 06, 2006

oscars

OSCAR.com - 78th Annual Academy Awards

OMG, I forgot to watch the Oscars. Brokeback Mountain didn't win... I never did see Walk the Line.

Livres, films, TV | Posted by Lily at 07:58 PM

Sun | March 05, 2006

yellow fever

Here is a short film (see it on the continuation of this post, or at google video) by Philip Wang, who is a student, probably an undergraduate, at UCSD film school.

The film explores the question, "Why don't Asian guys get any?"

Its exact words are more like, "Why there are many Asian girl + white guy couples, but few Asian guy + white girl couples?" It's more or less the same question. That is, the explanation to one question will provide the answer to the other.

It's not an awesome film, and it doesn’t offer a very thorough explanation. But it isn't horribly horribly wrong. The central idea ventured is correct: it's a confidence question. The asian guy in this film is waaay cuter than the white guy. He probably gets fewer girls. He probably doesn’t even make the gambit. This also true of intellectuals. Their gambits are really weak (otherwise known as subtle).

I had meant to write out a thorough explanation to the question, but now I don’t feel like it. This post falls far short, but I figure, better something than nothing. I will say that it’s one thing to point to confidence as the reason, but another to understand why Asians are like that. Culturally, Asians are taught to be deferential and self-effacing. To ask them to act otherwise is to ask them to go against their instincts, so to speak. So of course it’s more difficult for Asians.

Livres, films, TV | Posted by Lily at 07:32 PM

Fri | March 03, 2006

Mr. Elliott

In the story Choristers, a man rehearses and rehearses his choir and then this other guy doesn't even care. In In the Graveyard, an actor remembers someone he hated. He says you remember your enemies best.

After reading these stories I thought of Mr. Elliott, my former music teacher, for the first time in a long while. He was memorable because he was always angry. It gave me a sense of his personality. I don't remember much, or don't think I understood much, of any of the other teachers. I didn't understand Mr. Elliott either, beyond understanding that he was angry. Then one year, I think it was eighth grade, he suddenly wasn't ever angry anymore. He was suddenly pleasant all the time. And then we went to high school and didn't really see him anymore.

I wonder if others disliked him. I wasn't in the habit of questioning or evaluating teachers back then so it never occurred to me to dislike him. Though then again, I did have teachers I disliked, in high school, so maybe it did occur to me. I think I didn't dislike Mr. Elliott because he never yelled at me. He yelled at the brass section in the back for talking. Like, at the top of his voice.

| Posted by Lily at 12:16 PM