It's the bloody American Foxtrot

Joseph and I gave a club lesson on the American Foxtrot I. Holy, do not let it happen again.


I seriously feel I am out of shape after I got back to the States. My lovely abs are just gradually replaced by squishing fat. My business suit makes me so aware of this change.

Get up, go run, girl!

Everyone's back to the Bubble Island

One of my friends told me she felt she betrayed Bubble Island if she goes to the newly opened Momo Tea one block west. You know when you have customer loyalty like her case, a cup of bubble tea can be priced more than Starbucks Caramel Frappucino.

And the smelly team people are playing the Settlers in the Island after the open dance. Sweet.

Just complaints...

I am flying to NYC next Friday for a weekend with friend J, and it now seems to be a stupid decision.

J told me about his interviews in NYC and he said after we went back from the info session of Royal Bank of Scotland, "You should totally come with me! It's nice to know and talk to the people working in the financial industry. I have scheduled up with three people and we can meet them up. It will be fun." He emailed me the itinerary that night, and my increasing urge to find a job along with the inviting words motivated me to book the tickets of the same flight.

And then the next day I told him about my success of getting the ticket, and he said, in an awful shock, "Amy! I couldn't believe you take it so serious! Most of my interviews are official, and I am not sure if those people want to meet up for coffee." He told me to cancel the flight.

I think again I take people's words too serious-- or simply too credulous. But please, people, don't act like so inviting when you don't mean to! It does not hurt me that you don't invite me, and it is not okay when you use the pronoun 'we' and later you say that is a misinterpretation.
Fuck the time that I frantically spent on editing the resume till 4 o'clock for two nights in a row.

: (((((((((((((((((((

I am still going to NYC anyway because canceling cost 175 dollars out of the 239 dollar round flight. So recently I tried to find people to meet up in NYC to complete the trip, and also make few campus visiting for the law school. If I failed to meet anyone, then NY City Ballet Theater will be a good compensate anyway...


And I have been working and studying and dancing so much these few weeks, totally sleep deprivation. When I called home, my mom thought I am going on a love trip (she thought I am dating friend J), and my dad even questioned me if I worked hard enough. My dad does not believe connection is important for his daughter to find a job, and he refuses to wire me up with his friends who work in related industry. That was the moment I would really love to curse. And for Asian parents, your kids know the difference between friendship and relationship probably better than you, and they know who they are dealing with and what they are doing. There is friendship between two genders.

F that, I am going to spend the money I earned from the hours sitting in front of the laptop in the office at 7 pm on Friday evening.

So angry...

23 Sep 2009 Working now, Old but interesting news from NY Times

Hey guys just a quick post. This is ISR and I am reading old news from NY Times. There are many old but interesting, historically remarkable articles that draw my attention, even I am in a tight time constraint, with the EECS class in 30 minutes.

Newly Learned Useful Phrase Today:
"Wreak havoc"-- to cause a disaster

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/us/politics/27climate.html
HOUSE BACKS BILL, 219-212, TO CURB GLOBAL WARMING
It's about the Congress passed a heavier emission tax on the industry. It reveals the complexity of controlling emission in a developed country like U.S.A.. Furthermore, what is more interestingly is that, in the middle of the 1st page, it lists out the who opposes and backs the bill: it's surprising that the Board of Commerce is against and Dow Ind. and Ford back the tax bill!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/health/research/28cancer.html
Playing It Sage in Cancer Research
The truth kinda sucks. But no one wants to work without pay. I believe the flaws of existing research funding system are common in all research areas, and if you see the money that we have been devoting into the cancer researches, it is truly a lot and totally dwarfs the discoveries we have now.

One more thing that shocks me every time: the related topic labels of the 2 ongoing wars are such: Iraq War (2003-) and Afghan War (2001-)
Hey they are open-ended! And they have been 6 years and 8 years already... wow.

Okay, gotta bounce for class.

Practice today

Alex was good, and today I feel he is even amazingly better. His precision, control of muscle, and improvised choreography have a booming growth that I feel, he is gonna be someone. Even though on the dance floor he is not a performer, but he is promising... Fellows, he is only a team away from me, but I wonder how long it is gonna take me to be that good.

I notice that I have become really quite during practice at DTS. Gradually I lost the motivation to socialize, but simply want to grasp any second to practice more. I guess that is not a good thing because I distance myself away from others, and that will lead to frustration in the future. But I can't help it...! Time is too valuable, and things are too many : ( I need to relax I guess...

New words today from LA Times and NY Times; and Hustle-bustle across the campus

pha·lanx (fā'lăngks', făl'ăngks')
n., pl. pha·lanx·es or pha·lan·ges (fə-lăn'jēz, fā-).

1. A compact or close-knit body of people: “formed a solid phalanx in defense of the Constitution and Protestant religion” (G.M. Trevelyan).
2. A formation of infantry carrying overlapping shields and long spears, developed by Philip II of Macedon and used by Alexander the Great.
3. pl. phalanges. Anatomy. A bone of a finger or toe. Also called phalange.
4. See phalanstery (sense 1).

[Latin phalanx, phalang- , from Greek.]

=======================================================

My job as a research assistant is to read all the headline articles of LA Times and NY Times and summarize them into my excel files. Years and years, one thing noticeable is the increasing frustration and hatred of the public toward the wars, healthcare system and Obama's overhaul and banking system. I will delve into this more latter. Overall, the opportunistic mindset and selfishness of the banking industry is so common that seriously annoys me, and so do all the politics that frustrates the process of a good overhaul of the health care system . Also, lobbyists are not really lovely people from my perspective as a coverage summarizer because their involvement makes the same topics be brought up repeatedly days after days. Regarding to that, if you are interested, go watching "Thank You for Smoking." The famous quote from that movie is "If you can sell cigarettes, you can sell anything." Right, there's no right and wrong (sorry, Aristotle) in the contemporary capitalist world. If I find your argument is wrong, then I am right.

Let's talk about it later.

And I have been rushing from places to places for a whole day long. Monday. Wheew, Monday.
======================================================
Gadget

gadg·et (găj'ĭt)
n.

A small specialized mechanical or electronic device; a contrivance.

[Origin unknown.]

==========================================================

In fact, something fun is going on in my life today. No kidding, on Monday of Ann Arbor, rainy Michigan. I met this Singaporean-Canadian girl Sha in a newly open tea house Mo Mo Tea on South University, and I found out that she was on the team before, dancing in newcomer and bronze levels. I told her to come back, embracing the humidity and warmth (swelteringly hotness) of the DTS. "I should," said she. And from her I heard of some stories of the unknown graduated team people from Michigan and UIUC.

Again, resume back to work, I am reading an article about the legacy of Apartheid in South Africa frustrates the education resources for the African-heritage students. To me that doing this work makes me realize a few things:

1) if you want to be an optimistic person (or on purpose you want to look on the bright side of the life through the dusty urban skies), don't work in the journalist industry;

2) journalists are not all pessimistic; they are just more realistic, and effectively keeping their sarcasm as the last connection to humour/warmth of world/anything positive in life that you come up with a phrase. This lukewarm joking attitude toward things help them win a recognition of urban-Yappy-styled wittiness in any social occasions, especially when drinking martini in a bar;

3) justice should be done, and we can all dedicate something to this goal, but fuckers are always here and there around us;

4) things makes sense when they don't make sense. It doesn't sound logical? I think you got it.

And 5) what really makes life brighter are the small delight of life, and of course the people close to you; so waste your time on the good things and people as much as possible.

So I say, dude, let's go to Cafe Jappon and have a pear tart.

=======================================================

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/us/politics/21watch.html

The photos are somehow amusing.

=======================================================

churn (chûrn)
n.

A vessel or device in which cream or milk is agitated to separate the oily globules from the caseous and serous parts, used to make butter.

v., churned, churn·ing, churns. v.tr.

1. 1. To agitate or stir (milk or cream) in order to make butter.
   2. To make by the agitation of milk or cream: churn butter.
2. To shake or agitate vigorously: wind churning up the piles of leaves. See synonyms at agitate.
3. To buy and sell (a client's securities) frequently, especially in order to generate commissions.

v.intr.

1. To make butter by operating a device that agitates cream or milk.
2. To move with or produce great agitation: waves churning in the storm; so angry it made my stomach churn.

phrasal verb:

churn out

1. To produce in an abundant and automatic manner: churns out four novels a year.

[Middle English chirne, from Old English cyrn, cyrin.]

churner

churn'er n.

B-Lesson, Spin Turn in Quickstep and Voltafogo in Samba

I was pretty homesick in the first few days after getting back to the States-- missing the convenience, chillness and constrain-free of life, family, and especially the friends in my dance studio and the lessons. I felt more comfortable with the harsh training and analytical breakdown of moves in my lessons; the preference probably has something to do with my serious personality and anxiety of becoming a good dancer who start dancing almost after puberty.

However, dance here becomes more and more like a side dish now: the reality of finding a job and handing out good scores for the law school strikes me too much. "Take easy, and learn more from the private lessons after going back to Taipei." I told myself. I think I have found a more comfortable way for me to learn to dance.

Anyway, besides those seemingly negative ideas, good things dawned and greeted me. Luckily, Joseph asked me for partnership after we danced some standard casually before the welcome event in the league. I have enjoyed the partnership with Joseph a lot so far: we are both pretty chilled about dancing for this semester, and he is graduating this winter, so we hold an unspoken consensus to have a good time but not to stress out.

We also luckily passed the tryout and found our names, followed by a letter "P" for provisional, under the B-team category. But this did not excite me as I expected; Mom was under a surgery at the exact same time of the tryout, and that distracted my from worrying anything about tryout. The result was good, but deep inside I know my fatal weakness and somehow can sense the missing part in my partner's dance, which is good to realize.

The welcome greeting from Steve and Susan in the very beginning of the class rang a bell: they considered it as a watershed of dance level. And from now on, what is looked for is not to dance "normally" but to level up and bring out the aesthetics of dancing. I was pretty calm for the standard lesson, but I got nervous in the Latin lesson. I know I am weak at Latin, and after dancing almost by myself for a year, I am also weak at decoding the leader's lead and partner connection. To be fair, connection still, fundamentally, has to do with the quality of individuals' basic steps. Nevertheless, since neither of Joseph and I am good at basic, Latin is a big challenge.

The foot pressure of the outside foot in Voltafogo was repeatedly addressed during the class, and I wondered besides a smaller step, what muscles and other body movement created a good foot pressure. It was not discussed, but I will find out anyway. There is my criticism to my own dance: I saw myself still had a lot of problems in the upper body and lower body coordination, centralizing the energy in the center torso, and channeling the foot pressure to the upper body. Besides that, my dance was not grounded; it was very floating and not precise. All those root in poor basics. As for Joseph, that's his job to find out, and so far I don't think I have any authority to comment. Plus, I might say things that is not correct.

The last words that my Taiwanese teachers left me is very useful: "It's a partner dance, so think of how you can make the other better. Be considerate."

So after this many serious words, even I feel they are serious, I laugh at myself that even after two years abroad, that very hardcore Chinese solemnity never changes.