March Update
Nothing much to update about myself. In the past month, there were downs but countered with some ups. Started having Monday dinners with Cindy, an ever so agreeable person. Brina renamed our whatsapp group chat as "007" since there are 7 of us. That group has always been a supportive mini community, blessed and heartened to know there are dependable people in your life. Oh and "Angel and Mortal" is so much more fun when you get an interactive mortal. Appreciate those notes - full of contents and a pleasure to read. Actually one of the "big decisions" mentioned in the previous post was to go Bangkok with 2 cousins. But thanks to some organization which informed me just 2 weeks back that I have to go for a refresher course that will clash with the travel period, I have to forgo 2 air tickets and change 1 flight. I decided not to defer the refresher course because that will impinge upon my responsibilities in June. Should I give a pat on my shoulder for having that sense of commitment? I wonder if I jinxed myself by hinting at the "big decisions" and hoping they will turn out well, but heck, the trip is still on, just a change of travel companion to my friend and having wasted $170. Ok, that's lame. I shall now also reveal that I signed up for the National Vertical Marathon. I have no idea how taxing it could be but shall tackle it head on.
Meanwhile I have had mindblowing/dope discoveries on the media. Watched the astounding and exciting competition between team China and team Japan on "The Brain", a Chinese TV game show. They are superhuman contestants who possess unbelievable imagination, mental calculation power, or memory. And some other skills that I have missed. Read up about Vietnam, because I'm going to Hanoi as well. Woohoo. Instagram account will be alive again in May and July at least. Imagine an article titled "48 hours in Hanoi" and you go thinking about the conventional timeline presentation that focuses on dictating what to see, do, and eat. But what if, it started like this...
//The waiter was missing two fingers. The other two and his thumb were squeezed tightly around the throat of a bamboo snake, writhing and snapping and trying to relieve the waiter of one of his remaining digits.
With his other hand, he pulled a knife from his back pocket and made a delicate incision in the soft flesh of the snake's underbelly, into which he stuck his finger and ripped out its heart, plonking it into a small glass of rice wine in front of me. The wine blushed crimson.
He held the glass in front of my face. The heart was still pumping, sending little ripples through the liquid.
"Drink. Quickly," he said. "As guest, unlucky if you don't…"//
adapted from http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2012/feb/26/vietnam-hanoi-weekend-travel
Isn't that just wow?
And then there were parodies by students from medical schools. The first of such video I watched was suggested by YouTube. Thereafter I just continued clicking on other suggestions. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and obviously they aren't dull Jacks. And also related to American college students (sound like a news anchor), 21-year-old Otto Warmbier, a student currently majoring Economics, was convicted of subversion for stealing a propaganda banner in North Korea, and sentenced to 15 years hard labor. The writer is a Black woman in the United States, and she was drawing parallelism between a White not being easily pardoned in a foreign country and Blacks being marginalized in the US. The article ended powerfully with "The hopeless fear Warmbier is now experiencing is my daily reality living in a country where white men like him are willfully oblivious to my suffering even as they are complicit in maintaining the power structures which ensure their supremacy at my expense. He is now an outsider at the mercy of a government unfazed by his cries for help. I get it." Of course it drew backlash from people who criticized her for turning an American's arrest in North Korea to a racial issue. Unlike some other articles which report inaccuracies or hide the truth, I don't think she's overboard. Wait this is so unlike me, heading towards a direction I don't usually go. Anyway, it's good to read comments. It gives you different viewpoints and the comments can sometimes be more informative than the article itself.
adapted from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/la-sha/on-the-revocation-of-whit_b_9531122.html
Meanwhile I have had mindblowing/dope discoveries on the media. Watched the astounding and exciting competition between team China and team Japan on "The Brain", a Chinese TV game show. They are superhuman contestants who possess unbelievable imagination, mental calculation power, or memory. And some other skills that I have missed. Read up about Vietnam, because I'm going to Hanoi as well. Woohoo. Instagram account will be alive again in May and July at least. Imagine an article titled "48 hours in Hanoi" and you go thinking about the conventional timeline presentation that focuses on dictating what to see, do, and eat. But what if, it started like this...
//The waiter was missing two fingers. The other two and his thumb were squeezed tightly around the throat of a bamboo snake, writhing and snapping and trying to relieve the waiter of one of his remaining digits.
With his other hand, he pulled a knife from his back pocket and made a delicate incision in the soft flesh of the snake's underbelly, into which he stuck his finger and ripped out its heart, plonking it into a small glass of rice wine in front of me. The wine blushed crimson.
He held the glass in front of my face. The heart was still pumping, sending little ripples through the liquid.
"Drink. Quickly," he said. "As guest, unlucky if you don't…"//
adapted from http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2012/feb/26/vietnam-hanoi-weekend-travel
Isn't that just wow?
And then there were parodies by students from medical schools. The first of such video I watched was suggested by YouTube. Thereafter I just continued clicking on other suggestions. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and obviously they aren't dull Jacks. And also related to American college students (sound like a news anchor), 21-year-old Otto Warmbier, a student currently majoring Economics, was convicted of subversion for stealing a propaganda banner in North Korea, and sentenced to 15 years hard labor. The writer is a Black woman in the United States, and she was drawing parallelism between a White not being easily pardoned in a foreign country and Blacks being marginalized in the US. The article ended powerfully with "The hopeless fear Warmbier is now experiencing is my daily reality living in a country where white men like him are willfully oblivious to my suffering even as they are complicit in maintaining the power structures which ensure their supremacy at my expense. He is now an outsider at the mercy of a government unfazed by his cries for help. I get it." Of course it drew backlash from people who criticized her for turning an American's arrest in North Korea to a racial issue. Unlike some other articles which report inaccuracies or hide the truth, I don't think she's overboard. Wait this is so unlike me, heading towards a direction I don't usually go. Anyway, it's good to read comments. It gives you different viewpoints and the comments can sometimes be more informative than the article itself.
adapted from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/la-sha/on-the-revocation-of-whit_b_9531122.html
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