Eternal Sunshine of the Jude Yew Mind

So how do I begin describing my foray into the complex and labyrinthine universe otherwise known as my husband's psyche? How do I make sense of a cartography that is meandering one moment, and straightforward the next? When will I begin to understand what makes a man walk into a car dealership, negotiate what I think (and I know deep down he thinks so too) is a pree-tty good bargain for a 2004 Toyota Matrix, come within 50 ft of the bank to extend our car loan, and then decide to change his mind?...

Maybe I'll never know, and that's what going to make the next 50 years of our life so interesting... Anyways, that more or less describes our past 20 hours. It's been a roller-coaster ride of decisions, indecisions, re-decisions, and at the end of the day, as frustrating as it was, I think we made the right choice. Climbing back into our seafoam green Hyundai after leaving the bank with our money still intact was one of the most liberating experiences in a while. The excitement of a new car gave way to the relief that we didn't take on an added burden, and that was a definite indication to us that getting a new car wasn't going to be the best idea. We would have had to compromise on too many things, and we weren't unhappy enough with our present car to do that.

Besides, if we did buy the car today, what would my precious husband do with his free time on the Internet? He wouldn't be able to meticulously research car deals to conjure up amazing bargains that discombobulated the most smarmy of car salesmen, and we wouldn't want to deprive him of that dear joy now would we?...

Spring Break

So how much of a spring break are we on?
1) We woke up at 11.00 (which meant 12 hours of sleep for me since for some incomprehensible reason, I fell asleep before 11pm last night, right in the middle of Battlestar Galactica when Jude was trying to explain to me the evolution of the Cylons...);
2) Drove 45 minutes to Troy to look at a Toyota Matrix we were interested in getting;
3) Listened to NPR's hilarious Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me all along the way (they had Jeopardy's Ken Jennings on who by the way, knows EVERYTHING, including what to do when you wake up next to a naked woman with no recollection of who she is... and he's from Utah to boot!...);
4) Came within a hair's breath of being conned into trading in our 2004 Hyundai for $4700 (did they think we were a pair of math-impaired dimwitted Asian morons???);
5) Walked fruitlessly around Somerset Mall and reconciled ourselves to the depressing fact that we were probably the poorest people in the entire complex and about 10 years away from being able to afford anything from the shops there;
6) Decided to pitch lower and go to Loehmann's instead where they sell discounted branded goods;
7) Had even less retail luck at Loehmann's;
8) And are now sitting in Panera Bread doing what we do best, drinking coffee, eating in the middle of the day, reading our notes, and being poor.

Hidden wedding photos

Stumbled onto our friends Darrell and Esther's photo site/ portfolio. They were our wonderful wedding photographers and guess what? I find a couple of pictures I never knew we had taken!

I really do love our wedding photos...

A cake and a crumb

The house smells deliriously good right now- all lemony and buttery and springy (as in the season, not the adjective...). I baked today- lemon cake with bittersweet chocolate chunks. The weather's been bitterly, bitterly cold and I figured we both needed something sunny to perk us up (even though it is technically 3 days to spring break- woo-hoo!). So on all counts, definitely an occasion for something sunny and citrusy.

The cake came out of the oven with a lusciously warm golden hue that made me giddy with glee (yes, yes, food makes Serene Koh happy- beautiful food makes me even happier!) It was yumms but the chocolate chunks I added kinda sank to the bottom even though I coated them with flour (thanks to Barefoot Contessa- guess who's been watching The Food Network???).

Have to confess though that I take credit only for melting the butter, mixing everything together and for the addition of the chocolate. Sorry, I can maintain this Wonderwoman-Ubergeek-Domestic-Goddess-Extraordinaire illusion for only so long. Let's just say I don't know what I'll do if Trader Joe's ever closed down. Wait, I know- for one, I won't be able to continue pretending I can really bake...

Help rebuild a library

Just a call for help on behalf of the New Orleans Public Library. According to the New York Foundation for the Arts, the library is asking for any and all hardcover and paperback books for people of all ages in an effort to restock the shelves after Katrina.

You can send your books to:

Rica A. Trigs, Public Relations
New Orleans Public Library
219 Loyola Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70112

Apparently if you tell the post office that they are for the library in New Orleans, they will give you a discounted postal rate.

At the same time, here are two organizations which are helping the NOPL by raising funds, so if you can't bear to part with your books, consider a small donation:

New Orleans Public Library Foundation Rebuilding Campaign

Friends of New Orleans Public Library's Restoration Fund

Dessert?

And you thought you knew good food photography. Here's a collection of photos of tiny human figurines atop edible items transformed into landscapes. They're all so whimsically composed, so sweet (the photos, not just the dessert)- a delectable show of good art, good taste, and good food!

Two of my favorites: A team of construction workers investigating a crack in a chocolate eclair:

[click for close-up]

Franciscan monks in prayful contemplation atop cream puff cathedrals:

Others to look out for:
- A team of astronauts on a crème brûlée crater;
- Workers cleaning up a frosting sugar spill around a meuille-feuille;
- A Lolita-esque scene of an older man lusting after a bikini-clad younger girl from across a bowl of toffee and ice-cream.

The Line

So how endearing is this? My dad brings my mum to watch Walk The Line (which he promptly informs me has just bombed in Singapore coz so few people have a frame of reference to country music, lest of all country music raging with fire and brimstone). He gives her a running commentary throughout the film about Cash's life (thanks in no small part- or so I would like to believe- to our Christmas present). She is duly moved. Cries. And now my dad's going to watch it again, this time without having to explain to the person sitting next to him why A Boy Named Sue actually has nothing to do with a girl.

I think it's so cool my parents still go on movie dates alone...

i carry your heart with me

[click for iTunes link]

So here's my Valentine's Day present for Jude- an iMix of songs which have in one way or another defined our relationship through the years. It's meant to capture a narrative arc of some sort so hopefully, like one of my favorite soundtracks- Mad About You, the songs will illuminate the story better than words can.

Like my best friend so eloquently says, even if you have no idea when, how or why R.E.M's "Be Mine" rocked our world, enjoy the songs as something hopefully more than your run-of-the-mill V-Day collection.

And Jude got me this unbelievably adorable Gary Baseman figurine. Baseman's the same guy behind "Teacher's Pet" and those wild illustrations for Cranium. It's called the All-seeing Fire Water Bunny armed with the Yin of Water and the Yang of Fire on each hand. Balance the World In the Palm of Your Hand so it says... It's so well-designed and thoughtfully crafted, and oh so cute! Definitely going on the mantle at my desk :)





i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

-e.e. cummings

And these are the students we used to teach ...

Thanks to some hardcore surfing by Serene, she managed to unearth these exemplars of student behavior in Catholic Junior College, the school we used to teach at. Just click on any one of the videos below and see characteristic behavior that we had to put up with for SIX painful and debilitating years!!! Now, I wonder what would happen if I sent the videos to the principal?... (evil laughter)

P.S. Check out the following comment left by one of the students who linked to these videos:
("Why do i get the feeling our principal is going to track us down very soon?") Oh, he has no idea...

Couch spuds

So let's see, we officially received cable access today at 10.38am and I do have to say that I exercised an inordinate and admirable amount of self-restriant by only watching 20 minutes of it while having lunch (do you know that the person who first brought Area 51 to the public's attention was a man named Bob Lazar? Thank you History Channel...)

But that was this afternoon.

The moment after we had dinner, the night went by in a complete blur. Jude and I sat through 2 hours of back-to-back The '70s Show (I love Hyde and Kitty, well, not together of course...), channel-surfed between The Parent Trap (with a pre-pubescent Lindsay Lohan- don't ask...) and Battlestar Gallactica (Jude almost lost his breath when it came on...), a spot of Comedy Central, about 30 minutes of Space Odyssey: 2001 (15 minutes of which was a gratuitous LSD-induced nightmare-scape that looked as if Stanley Kubrick decided to commit his s screensaver to film), and a little bit of Emeril where he made chocolate fettuccine. By midnight, you would have had to scrape us off our couch... I swear, we were like Cookie Monster let loose at a Pepperidge Farm convention. We are even convinced that ads on cable are better than on network channels... We who have been deprived are seldom lucid in our rationalizations.

Did I mention that we now have 95 channels?...

An Ann Arbor dinner

So like we don't already know that Zingerman's makes awesome sandwiches, that even though they are US$11.99 for basically some meat and cheese stuffed between two slices of bread, a sandwich at Zingerman's isn't really *just* some meat and cheese stuffed between two slices of bread... Jude and shared a large No. 13 ("Sherman's Sure Choice"- corned beef, switzerland swiss cheese, coleslaw & russian dressing on rye bread), a garlicky, mayo-ey, ooh-ey and ahh-ey potato salad, and a portion of beef and barley soup (which is more like a stew really).

We've been to Zingerman's before, but somehow, today was blog-worthy not so much because the food was particularly better than usual, but more because it was a really nice combination of good food and even better company. We were with a couple of friends and it was just an incredibly simple but comforting way to end the week. I can't think of a better way to unwind and refuge from the "mild-January-is-over-haha-gotcha!-now-it's-really-winter" cold than over carbohydrates, greasy meat, some kind of dairy, a token attempt at fibre, and most importantly, sugars, in the form of 6 oz. of gooey, sticky, lusciously sinful, deep dark chocolate gelato... and coffee of course. Oh, and we bought a loaf of chocolate chunk sourdough bread for breakfast tomorrow.

Sleeping in together, the promise of a snowy pretty morning, warm chocolate bread- the morning is so going to be just as wonderful as tonight. I can feel it already... :)

Harry and the Potters

No. 3 on PitchforkMedia's Top Five Live Shows of 2005:

Unless you frequent MuggleNet.com, you probably aren't aware that the greatest rock and roll tour of the year took place this past summer in public libraries across America. Two young brothers, dressed up like pop culture's most famous adolescent wizard, simultaneously spread the gospels of DIY synth-garage-punk and the Order of the Phoenix, causing squealing fits in hyperactive third graders, teenagers in homemade Grffyindor t-shirts, and their chaperones alike. The Decemberists wish they could lit-rock like this.
-Amy Phillips and Ryan Dombal for Pitchfork

And especially for Terri, a song just about Sirius Black, The Godfather.

Nominations

And so it begins. With Jon Stewart no less. Enough to make a girl contemplate cable.**

**Update: She did. [Dips head in guilt. Exeunt left. Slinking...]

Course evaluations

So I got my course evaluations back on the class I taught in the Fall. They were most affirming :) This is the first time I had the class all to myself, and not just as a teaching assistant, so it was a little scary to think that the evaluations were a reflection of my efforts alone, and I couldn't blame anyone if the numbers looked bad... But they aren't; in fact, out of a 5.00, I scored 4.98 on "Overall, the instructor was an excellent teacher.", 4.78 on "The instructor appeared to have a thorough knowledge of the subject.", and 4.82 on "The instructor seemed well prepared for each class." So that was nice :)

What I was more encouraged by though were not the comments about me so much as the ones about how the class had not only valued them as learners, but also prompted them to think differently about issues of equity and education. Consistently, there were high scores on items like "Students in this course were free to disagree and ask questions.", "I learned to value new viewpoints.", "I was stimulated to discuss related topics outside of class." and "I learned to think critically about difficult issues of diversity." What more can an instructor in multicultural education ask for? As a teacher, two things I've always found most gratifying- whether it's teaching 3 year olds, 17 year olds, or 22 year olds- is that 1) they grow as persons in an awareness of themselves and their abilities; and 2) they take from me a understanding of the subject area which they themselves have conceived on their own.

It's also always great to read the kind affirmations students give in their comments. This one's my favorite because it captures everything I had hoped to achieve with the class (and it also feeds the narcissistic self-validation that's always a small part of this whole teaching endeavor...):

This is honestly the best School of Ed class I've had (and now I'm done with the program). Serene was an excellent teacher- always prepared, always kind, always willing to help. Class discussion was really valuable and helped me engage in the topics and look at other viewpoints. When asked to say what I think, sometimes I can be narrow-minded but discussing with others helped me to see other perspectives and to value other viewpoints.

I've been tagged...

In response to Dave Choi's tag request:

Four jobs I've had:

Sandwich maker at Long John Silver

Arts journalist

English Literature and Theatre teacher

Custodian at the School of Public Health

Four movies I can watch over and over:

Chungking Express

The Big Lebowski

Wings of Desire

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Three places I've lived:

Singapore

Perth, Australia

Ann Arbor, MI

Two TV shows I love:

Lost

My Name is Earl

Four places I've vacationed:

Montreal, Canada

Chang Rai, Thailand

Boston, MA

NYC

Four of my favorite dishes:

Curry chicken

Jap Chae (Korean fried noodles)

Tempeh

Any kind of noodle in soup

Four sites I visit daily:

New York Times

My bloglines site

Techbargains.com

CTools

Four places I'd rather be right now:

Coast of Western Australia

Anywhere interviewing Tori Amos

Somewhere in Latin America

Anywhere as long as I've graduated

Four bloggers I'm tagging:

Dave

Stan

Jonas

Jeff

年年有余, 步步高升*

So preparation for Chinese New Year (or whatever can be considered "preparation") began last week when we gave the house a good spring cleaning of sorts- nothing elaborate like decorating the place with pussy willows and red banners for luck of course (which I do miss a little...). Mercifully, the weather was nice & mild yesterday and so we managed to give Ocha a thorough wash. I think we haven't washed the car since November when the weather turned brutal for a month or so, so if I were Ocha, I would have been eternally grateful for the good bath :)

These cleaning rituals are symbolic of ridding oneself of the remnants of the old year in order to usher in the new year afresh, ready to receive the good luck and blessings with which it comes. Here's a website to check out all the traditional practices associated with the Lunar New Year. Some of them are a little silly (not washing your hair on New Year's Day??!!) but I also grew up with so many of them and there's always something to be said about preserving some element of one's cultural identity.

Lunar New Year's Eve is supposed to be the time when all the members of the family come together for a meal, and as I imagine my entire extended family feasting on my grandman's heartwarmingly satisfying 8-course dinner, Jude and I had a roast beef dinner of our own. I know, I know, more Thanksgiving than Chinese New Year, but hey, it's just the two of us- at least we didn't just call for pizza! Some of Jude's classmates did get together for a New Year potluck of sorts today though. Everyone brought a little something homecooked and it was nice. None of the symbolic yu sheng, fatt choy, or nian gao like home, but it was good fun just the same :)

So to everyone who celebrates the Lunar New Year, here's wishing you a joyous Year of the Dog blessed with great prosperity, happiness and longevity!

*May you enjoy a surplus in your fortunes every year, and rise in success with each new endeavor! (Traditional Lunar New Year greeting)

Of robots, dolls and monsters

Isn't this plush robot absolutely adorable? It's so whimsically delightful, complete with its own little girl inside controlling the one-eyed mechanical man with a red-knobbed lever. I want!! This is the artist's blog and it comes with lots of lovely art links. The doll also reminds me of Sheeta and her robot friend in Laputa. Here's a life-size model of it on top of the Ghibli Museum in Japan.

I love dolls made of fabirc- there's just something incredibly elemental and comforting about the feel of a cloth toy, even if they are monsters. Jude bought a couple of these darling critters called Uglydolls as Christmas presents last year. Aren't they just the cutest things? My favorite is Wage. He works in a supermarket.

Of course, not all dolls are created equal in Serene's eyes. I have a very real fear of model dolls- ok, I'm not sure what you call them, but you know the ones which are really stiff (they're either made of plastic, procelain, or even wood), dressed up in real-people clothing and look amazingly life-like? Some of them have eyes which blink too... Yikes, getting the heebie-geebies already. Don't ask me what the root of the phobia is; that's why it's called a phobia- it's irrational.

Case in point, Steven Soderbergh's new movie Bubble opens tomorrow. Now, apart from the media furor that's been created because of its simultaneous release on big screen, DVD, and cable, it's also a movie about dolls. Well, dollmakers specifically. And a murder. Perfect. Go watch the trailer (or even just look at the poster...), and you'd understand why this girl had her hands over her eyes throughout the 30-second trailer with her heart palpitating wildly, and why if I ever had to choose between being in a room full of snakes and a room full of those dolls (dismembered or otherwise), I'd take the reptiles any day...

What's in a face?

How hilarious!... Stumbled on this face recognition application where you upload a picture online and they'll match it with a celebrity's. This is what I got with this shot of us:

I tried other pictures and got an insane variety of results ranging from Bill Gates and Steven Soderbergh for Jude, to Aung San Su Kyi and Jerry Seinfeld (???) for me. Go figure...

Epiphany II (albeit with a mini-crisis...)

So I had another academic/ professional epiphany today- it's seems to be an annual affair, these sudden crystallizations of clarity... Anyways, as part of our professional seminar today, we had a video conference with American Institutes of Research, a research organization which does a lot of work on education and other related fields. It was basically the professor showing us what other options there are after graduation apart from tenure-track professorships. I've never really been inclined to teach at a collegiate level anyway- it just seems a little remote from what I really want to do. And the presenters at AIR made the prospect of being a research analyst/ scientist very alluring. It's not that I want to now go work for them (although they did seem to appreciate very much the research skills with which our school has prepared us- they hire many Michigan alums because our research methodology department is apparently very well regarded, which also happens to be what my Masters was in, Educational Policy and Research Methodology, so that's a good start I suppose.) But more importantly, their presentation got me very excited about the kinds of opportunities there are out there for me to do I want to do- in a nutshell, help kids.

And this is where the crisis comes in. I'll be done with my coursework by the end of the calendar year, which means I'm going to have to start thinking about my dissertation topic. I told myself I have to figure this out by the end of this semester and today's talk has just stressed me out so much in this regard. Do I want to do a historical analysis of early childhood education/ development because my advisor's an education historian and I love him dearly and want to keep him on my committee, or do I do a methods-based analysis of more contemporary issues which may necessitate that I switch advisors and involve tons of number crunching? What's my topic going to be then? What's my conceptual model going to look like? Can I figure this all out by April? How long is it going to take? What kind of job can I get after that? Here? In Singapore? Anywhere??? See what I mean by crisis??!!

I was so bothered I thoroughly burnt myself out at the gym. Hard. We're talking 600 calories/hr hard. Think I was going to fall off the elliptical if that's actually possible. I should have run outside today actually, it wasn't that cold and the brisk air might have done me some good- what could be more cathartic than running in 38F weather? I just realized that when I get stressed, I exercise and cook (remember my big pot of chicken-mushroom pasta episode?), which is why tomorrow, I'm baking more cranberry cookies and making a big pot of curry for dinner. Thank god I don't veg out and gouge myself under stress, I don't think my body would ever forgive me.

I'm sorry if this post has been dreadfully self-absorbed- I just needed to see my thoughts in words, articulate it somehow before I can plan what to do next. I'd better figure this out soon- a girl can only run so fast and bake a finite number of cookies...

Cranberry Hootycreeks

Our friends have been most wonderful in telling us that the Christmas present we gave them turned out really scrummy so I figured I should try it out on my own (how embarassing is it when people thank you for a gift you haven't the slightest clue about and which could have been an absolute disaster...). So thankfully, the semester is starting off well (read: only two classes and research this term- my entire physiological system thanks me...) so I took some time off reading today and decided to bake. And also anything to take my mind of the depressing winter weather. Oh my, we're talking gooood cookies man... I'm sure I didn't cream the butter and eggs correctly (without a hand-mixer, I had to whisk them up by hand which meant the result wasn't exactly "fluffy"- tell me this is THE unforgivable deadly baking sin, Wendy) but who cares, the cookies turned out great!

I couldn't resist popping three into my mouth minutes after they came out of the oven (what have I been saying about Serene Koh's lack of self-control?). Y-U-M-M-Y!! I actually enjoyed the sweet creaminess of the white chocolate which was nicely balanced by the slightly tart cranberries- and this is coming from a person who categorically does not eat white chocolate (excuse me, but that's like saying decaffeinated coffee is acceptable...) We ran out of white sugar so I had to use Splenda instead but trust me, no harm done whatsoever.

Hmm... I could get used to this baking thing...