New Life

I'm in Potsdam, New York now. School has already begun and there would be more work to come. In Taiwan my major is English and Education but from this semester on, I'll go for politics and learn different things.

I meet a lot of nice people from various countries, including Finland, UK, Germany, Korea, China and Vietnam. People are really nice here. Professors are quite amiable. But the courses I take this semester are pretty demanding and challenging. I suppose I will dedicate more time to my textbooks instead of leisure reading.

It's very likely that I would not update my blog as often. I'm really sorry about this. By the way, I've uploaded some pics on my PICASA. You might want to check it out.

NYC August 2009

I Heart NYC

Short Break

I dreamed of forgetting to bring my plane ticket and woke up in a cold sweat. I'm half excited and half nervous about my coming journey to the US for a whole year. Above all, I'm getting sentimental. I'm already missing my family and dog.

These days I've been busy packing my luggage and organizing travel plans. Also I have an unexpected job at hand to translate a document into Chinese for a museum. It'll be published as a pamphlet in the end, I suppose. It's something about the European ideas and values centering on Czech's history. Lots of work to do.

I won't be able to update my blog for a while. But I still read mail, comments and blogs. Feel free to say anything. Hope to see you soon.

The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood

I've been keeping Atwood at bay as possible ever since a semester's time went into a research paper on her Handmaid's Tale. I was really bewildered and couldn't make sense of her story. Her novel is always rich in metaphors, images, symbols and allusions. At that time I read an array of commentaries, critiques and interviews to glean info about Atwood and therefore to decipher her works. To my amazement, there are so many messages and meanings embedded in her works. However, it's one thing to enjoy the moment of enlightenment from her stories, but altogether another to get through her literary labyrinth. The Edible Woman gives me the same impression.

Marian appears just like any other ordinary women, if not conservative compared to her radical roommate Ainsley, who is energetically blossoming with her femininity. Marian has a decent job at a consumer research company and she keeps her systematical life until she is engaged to Peter. From then on she finds herself recoiling at meat, eggs, vegetables and then everything. She could barely eat what used to be enjoyed wholeheartedly. She seems to lose herself and detach from the reality. Her only outlet is a graduate student, Duncan, whom she stumbles upon when doing her usual questionnaire for food. Later the two develop a quirky relationship.

In this novel, Atwood associates eating with the loss of a woman's identity. When Marian rejects a particular kind of food, her reaction in a way reflects what she is being treated. She is being "monopolized" and materialized when Peter inflicts his will on her. But Marian could not recognize this jerking sent from her subconsciousness and of course she does not realize her physical reaction against food is her rebellion against Peter, against the very idea of femininity.

When Marian goes to a salon to do her hair under Peter's request, she draws a parallel between a salon and a hospital, which indicates she does not desire feminine decorations.

She looked sideways down the assembly-line of women seated in identical mauve chairs under identical whirring mushroom-shaped machines. All that was visible was a row of strange creatures with legs of various shapes and hands that held magazines and heads that were metal domed. Inert; totally inert. Was this what she was being pushed towards, this compound of the simply vegetable and the simply mechanical? An electric mushroom.

At this stage she is beginning to aware of her position. The "assembly-line of women" indicates the fact that women are expected to live up to a standard image which she is about to question. She not only foresees the fate of women turning into a mushroom, but also has this feeling of materialization:

They treat your head like a cake: something to be carefully iced and ornamented.

Atwood really has her charming way of telling a story. I have this intuition that sooner or later Atwood will win herself the glory of Nobel Prize. But it bothers me a lot with the motif of feminism. So I wouldn't consume her stories anytime soon.

In fact this is my second time picking up this book from the shelves. I didn't make it to the end last time. I felt it was rejecting me. Perhaps it was not a good timing. (I have a theory that there is a right moment to read certain books. They will respond to me only when I'm mentally equipped)

The Edible Woman is not the kind of book that entertains readers. I know many people have hard time understanding her novels and some even consider them rubbish. The truth is even I feel mentally fatigued over her story. But I think it's a good thing to read something that challenges take-for-granted values and helps question and construct one's own identity.

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Ever since Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake left an imprint on my mind I've been aching for more of her work. Knowing that her latest collection of short stories was coming out(2008), I had become a stalker, googling book reviews about her book and trying to get my hands on it. Clicks to check the availability of Unaccustomed Earth on my local book site are beyond counting. Not until the end of June did I get my copy, but I had several books to finish then so I set it aside, only to flirt with its pages from time to time and randomly savor a sentence or two. I know that sounds odd. But that's how I treat books and authors I really like.

Like several commas in a sentence, short stories are my short breaks from long stories read. I wouldn't finish short stories at a stretch. They are just not a real meal but only desserts. But while reading Unaccustomed Earth, that's not the case. I devour it from beginning to the end, deeply moved by its forlorn stories.

Lahiri's concern for Indian immigrants underpins these short stories. She commences the book with the quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne:

Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.

As I read on, I find that each story either echoes or challenges this quote, because not every character flourishes on foreign land. If anything, it’s a wishful thinking belonging to parents. Although most are well adapted to a new environment and establish their own career, but something within perishes when they no longer share a common ground with the previous or the next generation. Here’s an example from “Unaccustomed Earth:”

He couldn’t help thinking, on those occasions, how young they’d once been, how helpless in his nervous arms, needing him for their very survival, knowing no one else. He and his wife were there whole world. But eventually that need dissipated, dwindled to something amorphous, tenuous, something that threatened at times to snap. The loss was in store for Ruma, too; her children would become strangers, avoiding her. ...

He wanted to shield her from the deterioration that inevitably took place in the course of marriage, and from the conclusion he sometimes feared was true: that the entire enterprise of having a family, of putting children on this earth, as gratifying as it sometimes felt, was flawed from the start.

The book is less about the struggles to fit in than the discrepancy in a family. Thus, in spite of being an immigrant literature, this appeal makes it a good choice to readers worldwide.

But there’s still a dent in the wholeness of the novel. The narrators are primarily the second or third generation who do not really go through the painful adjustment. The sentiment of people that are first washed ashore are being depicted through latecomers’ perspective, which does not necessarily justify their speculation. Even though it’s bound to be biased whatever point of view is adopted, I’d like to see more passages dedicated to those who plow through the earth.

All in all, it had been a hearty reading time. I hope her next book can be as entertaining.

The Awakening by Kelley Armstrong

The Awakening is the second volume of Darkest Powers series. I was baited by the blurb and I had thought it would turn out to be an engaging supernatural story. The truth is, it is disappointing.

Chloe and some teens are genetically altered supernaturals held captive by Edison Group. She is determined to find out the dark secrets behind this organization's experiments. Not yet in control of her own power as a necromancer, Chloe embarks on prison break to meet up with her supernatural friends, Derek and Simon. Amid their escape, they are also in the dilemma to distinguish the traitor among them. Friendships are challenged and the road ahead is all the more rocky.

My skipping over The Summoning, the first volume, does not account for my lack of appreciation. The narrator Chloe has constant mental playback to the happenings in the first book. Therefore, it's not difficult to grasp the whole picture of the story. In fact, I got into the flow of the plot pretty soon and I kept expecting some real exciting confrontations and twists. But what I see is poorly planned events. When there is potential to develop to a climax, the author fails to grip the moment.

In addition, the characters are not so favorable. It irritates me when Chloe gets so timid and freaks herself out. She has this fixation with dramas and plays and movies to the extent that she keeps telling herself if this were a movie, what would have happened and blah blah blah is supposed to come forward, or what she is facing now is more Hollywood than Hollywood productions.

In a good drama, the protagonist never takes the straight line to the prize. She must set out, hit an obstacle, detour around it, hit another, take a longer detour, another obstacle, another detour... Only when she has built up the strength of character to deserve the prize dose she finally succeed.

My story was already fitting the time-honored pattern. ...

I am impatient with fictions that try to convince its readers that this is not fictional, that what is going on is in every way realistic. Perhaps, it does not try. It is just that Chloe is a former film student and it's natural for her to think that way. Still, the author could have meticulously put that.

You don't have to take my word for it. I read quite a bunch of positive reviews for this series. It's just that this one happens to be not my cup of tea. I'd like to hear what you think.

21st Century's Longest Solar Eclipse!!!

Astrology craze is contagious. First comes the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 and now it's all about the solar eclipse. Despite the fact that I had two years having fun in an astrology club during high school, I have no inclination beyond ET and UFO. Besides, I have no professional equipment to observe the scene. Anyway, I got up early this morning and this once-in-a-lifetime solar eclipse was everywhere in the news. Then there was this reporter showing how easy and convenient it is to watch this moment at home.

So I followed her tips and dug out this obsolete floppy disk imation 3.5 and tore apart from it a round black stuff (I don't know its proper name). It was 9:00 and the total solar eclipse would be around 9:40 in Taiwan. I got plenty of time to equip myself with camera and wake up my sister to go outside with me.

And down below is what I bring in preparation for this solar eclipse. It's super easy and handy.


I couldn't get a clear shot without the help of the floppy disk. The view through this black object was nice. I tried to cover it over my lens. And I documented this moment! Yahoo! Note that I use "document" to sound skillful, as if it was astrophotography that I was doing. :D

Of course my shots would not be as good as those with scientific tools. But for those who miss this festive event, mine is enough to give you a glimpse of it.


Fortunately, there were only strips of cloud up in the air. They did not block the sun so I could have better pictures of it.

↑You can see in this picture the differences between my amateur-assembled camera and the professional tool. There are layers of sunlight and it gets blurred on the edge.

At my latitude this is the best I could get. I could not see a total solar eclipse, only a crescent like one's fingernail.

I had a great time after all.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

After this engrossing novel, I'm now a diehard Anne Tyler fan. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is beautifully written and its organic development draws me into the flow of the character's emotions and change. I can easily relate to those ambivalent characters.

Abandoned by her husband, Pearl Tull is left baffled and poignant with three children: Cody, a trouble-maker with a wayward mind, can never outgrow Pearl's biased indulgence in his brother Ezra and holds forever grudges against him; Ezra, however clumsy he appears, is determined to open his restaurant where he hopes his family can reunite but only to find that the family always fail to finish dinner to the end; and bright and energetic Jenny, who goes through her unsuccessful marriages with ease, knows well that she is not keen for heartfelt relations and wonder if there's this inheritance in family and generations that one can never escape.

The characters are dynamic and distinct partly in that the point of view shifts from chapter to chapter, which allows their personalities fully fledge. Also, from each perspective, the other characters' images are thus built. I enjoy books that are designed in this way. That is to say, I enjoy Anne Tyler's novels, which are mostly laid out like this. To ask me to take side with one of the characters is cruel.

Cody is mean to Ezra. But he loves him no less than he dislikes him. I think he is the most pathetic one, blinded by jealousy, pursuing whatever helps to prove himself. Even though he establishes himself, he upsets those who care for him. Perhaps he even secretly enjoys wrecking the family in pieces.

He absolutely insisted on winning any game he played. And he did win too--by sheer fierceness, by caring the most. (Also, he'd been known to cheat.) Sometimes, he would eat more peanuts, get his corn shucked the fastest, or finish page of the comics first.

He is the character that makes me sigh, always wanting to win more attention and affection. Don't we all look like him in some way? But later it points out that "anything you can have is something it turns out you don't want." So true.

And there's this adoring Ezra. Of course he would be the apple of any parent's eye. But I feel sorry for him being so withdrawn and giving up so easily. The only thing he will not let go is his restaurant. He's eternally homesick, I believe. He feels at home rarely.

"I'm worried I don't know how to get it touch with people," Ezra said.

"I'm worried if I come too close, they'll say I'm overstepping. They'll say I'm pushy, or...emotional, you know. But if I back off, they might think I don't care. I really, honestly believe I missed some rules that everyone else takes for granted; I must have been absent from school that day. There's this narrow little dividing line I somehow never located."

So Ezra is somewhat dislocated everywhere he goes. He is evasive, refraining from showing any sway from uneasiness, which makes it difficult for people to understand him.

Oh, there's so much to talk about in this book. It is really fit for group discussion. I enjoy Homesick Restaurant so much. In fact, I've heard some complaint about Anne Tyler weaving her story way too detailed and it seems trivial. But to be pretty frank, it's exactly the details where I linger most. Love it.