(POST FROM MCCAGE)

i am trying to write this damn paper in the library and this girl is pining about how frightened she is at how fast the semester has gone, OHHH NOOOOO THREE EIGHTHS OF MY COLLEGE EXPERIENCE IS NOW GONE OMGZZZZ

last night i had multiple dreams in six hours of sleep, one was: i was on a family vacation and visiting a cemetary at the top of this mountain. the scenery was beautiful and peaceful, w/ lush green mountain tops all around and mist/fog flowing past them. i was taking photos and suddenly i saw this couple standing on these rocks and holding each other under a tree before they jumped off the rocks and plummeted to their deaths. it felt like my heart was plummeting with them and i gasped and turned to my sister and she had seen the same thing. it was very sudden and she said something about how that was inappropriate to do in a tourist spot haha KILLMEEENOWWW

LAST NITE'S DREAM

so i've been thinking a lot about sexual violence lately since my final paper for my literatures of globalization seminar is on coetzee's disgrace in which a woman is raped and last night i dreamt this huge fat white man with a foot fetish was trying to eat my feet/me. it was terrible because his weight was unbearable and he was trying to eat my feet. he was trying to eat my feet!

HERE TO GO

i finally got my application in for a student visa that needed to be rush delivered before that new biometrics system was implemented, i would've had to make an appointment to get my fingerprints recorded. in any case, it's in and hopefully it'll be official by the end of the week!

saw m.i.a. over the weekend, it was the last show of her u.s. tour and she danced noticeably less than in her nyc show. i was hoping to get her running move on camera this time b/c i chose not to the first show i saw (can't always experience life mediated), but she didn't do itt.

graffiti in northeast philly



M.I.A.



it's been a rough two days of nonstop writing, i'm so tired of the english language! or all languages for that matter. how about we all just telepathically communicate.

THANXGIVING

at an "uncle"'s place, we watched the dog show



ham and thousand yr old egg dish



the kids duke it out



i went back to queens for thanksgiving, got to leave early because seminar got pushed early and i decided to skip my chinese contemporary lit class. it's been a few days of good eating and sleep. as for the company (mostly family), it's pushed me to the brink of insanity. family comprises of three other members: the dad/eric loqing tse, dad's mom/grandma/lui yim ung, and the little sister/audrey. one would be hard-pressed to find a family as hopelessly neurotic as mine. i've also resolved to never take the chinatown bus again.

LAST STRAW/DROP

in the waking moments of this morning, i (day)dreamt that i gave a severe beat down to a girl in my seminar class after screaming "i'm from queens bitch." so i decided to take a break from swarthmore and ran off to philly for the day. the last drop is a coffeeshop that i've taken quite a liking to. unfortunately, i had the displeasure of overhearing someone use DIVINE to describe a restaurant. ew. but they played beirut so i suppose all's well and good.

can't wait for thxgiving break, this place is suffocating. i thought sleep might make things better, but its only led to disturbing revelations. i had a dream in which i was trying to shoot a family portrait with my family and our family friends, but they weren't physically present, their upper bodies were contained and only visible through these frames and they would either fall out of these frames so i couldn't see them anymore or slowly fade away. as i was trying to photograph them, i kept yelling at them to get back into the frames or come back, but they didn't. another dream involved a decrepit, multi-storied/leveled building in which i was searching for family members, but they would be in this semi-comatose state or too caught up in the revelry of the place (there were flashing lights, dancing?) to understand that the place was dangerous. i'd try to gather them together so we could leave but they would drift away. once i got them together, we were suddenly on this superlong escalator, and other people were on separate superlong escalators, elevating to such great heights that i got extremely disconcerted and kept thinking i had to figure things out or we'd be doomed. haHA how ominous!

GAIN A HOME

rode home



grandma soup



clock corner



backyard astroturf

THESE DAYS

i'm rubbing my eyes to blindness when i'm not watching hotel chevalier on itunes. talked to two bff's today! xing in italy and namsters at haavard. xing had gone to the vatican every day that he was in rome, now he wants to read the bible. nami confessed a general malaise over being at school that may be due to the waspiness of the student body. i miss them both dearly. the comfort i have with them is elusive with others.

LONDON CALLING

i had decided to go to london instead of beijing after nami noticed how unhappy i was about going back to asia. strange that she had to point it out to me, suppose i've adjusted to seeing the future as already determined. since coming back to swat, i've increasingly felt this sense of resignation. hong kong was exciting, but not quite what i was looking for or expecting. the city really made me realize how existence is constructed by time and place, or just forces that you have no control over. which isn't to say meaning cannot be made of experiences and that there is no purpose to live. but. i'm definitely having trouble keeping myself going these days.

also ants have invaded our room and i keep feeling them on my arms and hands even though there aren't any there.

REmember

so i'm no longer in hong kong as one might think from the last entry. this week is my third at swarthmore and it's only begun to dawn on me (for the third time) that there are really only like three places to go. it sux. but anyways i'd been slowly and intermittently processing this summer in hong kong and after reading midnight's children in my literatures of globalization seminar, i thought i might do some remembering and finally publish this post.

top five fav. things to do in hk:
1. taking the tram across hk island while drinking sake
2. overlooking the beaches of stanley market
3. seeing the skyline from the peak
4. shopping at festival walk
5. eating condensed milk toast in mongkok

top five fav. things to do in ny:
1. eating ice cream outside the chinatown ice cream factory
2. picnicing in central park by the bethesda fountain
3. seeing the whale at the museum of natural history
4. going to shows
5. walking around the west village

between hk and swat, i had four days in nyc and got to spend time with chichi and xing and nami.

the whale!



the elevated acre!

MA-COW

Cultural Center/Museum of Art



St. Paul's Ruins



Sidestreet that takes me back to its colonial past



Almond cookies that I stufffed my face with



Portuguese restaurant filled with roosters



Protestant cemetary



The Wynn, the most elegant of all casinoes



Walter in the death trap of another casino

PANDA MADNESS AND OTHER CUTENESS

last tuesday, uncle took me to ocean park with frankie to see the pandas and jellyfish. clearly i was the excuse to fulfill their innermost childhood desires, pandas to ride on and zebras to cuddle on a bench with





meet one of the young'uns gifted to hk from china



THERE WERE PANDAS EVERYWHERE/EVERYTHING, PANDA ON THE COB, PANDA PANDA PANDA!

DAYS IN PIECEMEAL

last week on the metro, tried to get a shot of this man in his purple gigantic granny sunglasses and purple striped shirt but only got this partial with him sporting a frown



oddity in causeway bay after dinner in times square



andrea visited over the weekend! this was the reunification of china- hong kong, the mainland, and taiwan, together at last.



space age apparel! at lane crawford for their designers of tomorrow show

COUNTDOWN

27 days left in hong kong. i had been severely missing home, it's never felt so far away, but i think i've gotten used to solitary life. watched four films, days of being wild last and it put me in a mood. after leaving the archive at 7:00, i sat by the harbor till it got dark and then went to have dinner in the area. as of late, i've been eating alone more and more, usually sharing a table with a stranger. tonight, i sat across an older man who was reading the newspaper the entire time. when alone, it's nice to be left to one's thoughts, to let the mind wander, to realize the details you've been paying attention to, etcetc.

had a fun weekend, saturday was walter's birthday so we went to a french "restaurant" that took up half a floor of an old industrial building. uncle made reservations and they sent us a personalized menu beforehand. walter gave a long installment of his family's history during the dinner. we passed by this gas station/car wash when we walked back home



the next day uncle walked with me around the back streets of wan chai, which reminded me of san francisco b/c of the slanted and narrow streets. this shop was going out of business and had the strangest assortment of goods left over



shaded haven in an alley



we had lunch at a revolving restaurant on the 66th floor of the hopewell



watched a play in the afternoon, and then had dinner at a restaurant founded 140 yrs ago and known for its swiss sauce chicken. this one was built circa 1960s in tsim sha tsui



after dinner, we took a ferry back to hk island to see queen's pier before it gets relocated. there was a hunger strike going on earlier this week to protest/resist its removal. the place is mostly used by philipinos on sundays. one of them was dancing to thriller when we were there. the hunger strikers, tents, banners, photos, and flyers created quite a scene, made uncle and i wonder if we'd take up the cause, given different circumstances

SWELTERING

saturday morning started with the south china morning post, featured a photo of parkour (urban sport that has its players race from point a to point b, can involve jumping off buildings and climbing of walls) and an article on mean youngsters



afternoon, frankie and uncle took me to mid-levels and hong kong university where we found the safest female toilet.





old apartment, there aren't many of these! proper conservation is a rare occurrence, as conservation in hong kong is understood to be demolishing the old site and building a new "old" version.



sunday, auntie alisa and fam took me to stanley, which is towards the south on hk island. there were markets and beaches and restaurants with tables that spilled onto the street. had a mediterranean feel that was quite pleasant!

HALF DONE

this summer feels like the longest one i've ever had! research on hk's new wave cinema hasn't been going too well b/c so many key films are missing from the archive's collection. i've gotten over my frustrations with the place though. the archive is in eastern hk, just two subway stops from my uncle's place. the area is sai wan ho, which reminds me of tribeca because of its many restaurants, park, and mix of community members. sometimes i come here to eat lunch!



last saturday, uncle and i went to a talk on contemporary hong kong art called handover/talkover. there have been a plethora of such events dealing with the issue b/c it's the tenth year anniversary of hk's return to china. you hear/see/breathe it everywhere, but it's not considered as unsettling a crisis as it used to be. anyway, it's not uncommon to hear that hk is a cultural desert, which i couldn't really understand because there are so many people in hk! hk isn't a cultural desert, but it's no cultural oasis. below is the cattle depot artist village where the talk was held. they also had a show up, but it had pieces we saw last week at the cuhk show!



then sunday i went to high tea with frankie at the mandarin oriental before a show he was going to see at the cultural center. on the top are "sandwiches" that were wrapped with thin slices of cucumber, salmon, etc. we had scones too, i miss eating scones.



i've started taking mandarin/putonghua classes this week. the night before my first class last monday, i had a dream that i was being forced to play piano again. there's a 10 year old in the class, as well as a woman in her late thirties. the class is interesting because the pronunciation is not only taught with pinyin, but with chinese characters that have the corresponding tones. got a haircut after the first class, went to a place called myth in causeway bay. my hair is now short in the back but longer in the front so it slants at the sides. it's nice b/c the view from the back is so different from the front.

last night i took the tram from eastern hk to the western district. when it got dark, i took it again from the western district to causeway bay. the trams have open windows and run on tracks through the heart of hk island. taking the tram at night is probably one of my most favorite things to do. it's fun to see the street lights and people in double-decker buses/restaurants/inside spaces, they often seem encapsulated

WEEK'S END

boy dressed in blue plaid, stripes, and shoes!



saturday, uncle and i went to chinese university to see the grad student art show



we parted ways, and i went to a punk/hardcore show of cu bands in the industrial area of wong tai sin. not my genre of choice, but it was fun anyways. there was respectful moshing, terrible acoustic punk, and a screamo band that had the lead playing an erhu! around 8 bands played, i didn't stay for all of it





today, i met up w/ frankie in kowloon and saw parts of his hood. he showed me old government housing that was being restored for historical preservation and some other buildings. architecture, or just use of space, in hk is really intriguing- still more explorations to come!

REUNIFICATION

this year marks the 10th year anniversary of hong kong's turnover from britain to hong kong, there were festivities and shopping opportunities planned for the day, but we opted for the protest and seafood dinner on lamma island instead.





then the boat took us to the harbor to see fireworks, made me feel like i was in some war movie