Just performed...

Some drumming before the prospective students.

Americans are lucky here, once they got accepted, they could come stay in Dartmouth where the current students will lend the "floor" to them for the weekend.

Students will put up skits and performance show to impress them, so that they would come to Dartmouth. Before and After acceptance is a different story. Now Dartmouth is begging these prospies to come to this prestige institute.

Dartmouth is so crowded these few days that it feels more like a school now. Usually I barely see people talking with each other on the street or socializing on the big green field. One friend told me, " if you see friendly and smiley people, they are the prospies". Since when Dartmouth students are not smiley and friendly? Guess we are just so used to our specific friends that we forget how to smile to strangers.

My Rhetoric class today discussed about photo tampering ( basically editing photo into a way that makes different arguement). The first picture we saw was Brangelina. Apparent the beach picture of the couple is a fake, but people are still stunned by it. Then we look at how people crop picture to let it look different. A chaotic picture become heroic when the mess is cropped out and the struggling people became hero.

Most of all, we learned that "American Idol" is just a fulfillment of criticism and how audience react to the different types of people on stage. Their votes actually represent Americans values. This year American Idol sees the outstanding Adam who is a openly gay, a Christian, and a 17 year old with red hair. Who will America vote? After Obama, is American ready for gay as their American Idol?

Not to mentioned "British got Talent" Susan Boyle, a 47 year old, unemployed contestant, singing her lung outs and turned the crowed into tears. Is Success only connected to Youth and Beauty? Will you be shocked if she is a young, beautiful woman?

In this cynical world, "abnormal" people have to work extra hard to achieve their dream....

I keep....

tripping myself from the stairs...
my right knee is green now and I almost fell again 5 seconds ago.

Havard UWC reunion

A+ and drinking

I personally think that I manage my time well. But nothing can go any worse if you arrange time for a "Time Management" workshop.

So their tips for me:
Lay out your GOALS
and how you specifically can reach the goal
then arrange the action towards the goal into your timetable ( must be an overall weekly plan)

well, basically its law of attraction all over again. So think, act, receive.
am annoyed with ppl always saying, " You are Dartmouth students, I know you are all brilliant, Your goal must be achieving A+, so you have to study EVERYDAY" Oh god. PLLLEASE.

After sending more emails to some prospective international students and urge them to join our international community, I sat by a Cafe, trying to finish off my Spanish homework and readings for my SOCY class. Tough reading. Greg, the protagonist of the " Life on the Color Line" is a Black and White mix but looks totally white. He suffers all the time from questions like " why are you with the blacks" " you are at the wrong side of the line" and " go to the back row of the bus". His father is drunk more often than sober and the school just wouldn't give him the Honor award he deserves as the highest achiever in school. after having spent so much money on his suits and getting his father and grandmother to the ceremony, his name was never called. I felt his disappointment.

Meanwhile, guys and girls with shinny outfit strolled by me. They call those shinny colorful outfit " flare", no particular function why people dress that way, its just how it is to party here. Yes, wednesday nights are big here. People go to fraternities to "socialize" by drinking of course.
Fraternities are basically "brotherhood" houses where the "brothers" invite people to their basement and play 'Pong' (kinda like table tennis) game and socialize. Yes, that's how Dartmouth people networks towards their future career, and I am not even joking.

Even my Spanish class today superficially uses " Which fraternity is better?" for Comparative practice. I dislike this overemphasized frat culture. Why not admire things with a better sense of taste than the atmosphere of the dirty frat basement?

I miss the times in Bangkok- where going out means sitting in the bar, chatting with sophisticated people introduced by Father Joe(and get the whole night paid by the bar owner), or get together with ppl of the common aim of doing good work in Mercy Centre. Sometimes we the young volunteers go out and meet people from different background, sipping a glass of wine or two, telling life stories with occasionally dancing and drumming with the guitarist on stage.

Or Summer in Kuala Lumpur- hopping from restaurants to restaurants trying delicious seafood and French dessert, never lack of good company to talk about the world from our heart and soul.

Waking up from my "night" dreaming, I came back to the " Oh my gosh, Harrot ( name of one fraternaty) is full of hot atheletes, we should TOTALLY go there....." culture.

Luckily that is not the only culture available here.

Peace.

"Writing is like Kissing"

3 courses I am taking for this term :

Spanish 2

Rhetoric of Power and Subversion

Multiracial Identity

What I am doing this term :

World Percussion Music Ensemble

START- Student Teaching in Art

Research Assistant- Anthropology
-program development around Tibet and the Himalayas, with a specific focus on Yunnan.

America Reading- founded under Bill Clinton Administration where Undergraduates student Read for School Kids
_____________________________________________________________

It is impossible to describe my daily life if you do not know the above information. ESSENTIAL. Everything is related to those above. After attending an Academic Skills Session where the advisor scared me that PEOPLE FORGET COMPLETELY WHAT THEY ABSORB AFTER 3 DAYS WITHOUT REVISE, I decided to keep up with my life, for I longed to write a biography just like Obama did with his " Dreams of my father".

I thought I was going to wake up early today to secure my campus housing in the summer. Guess my brain know that is not as urgent as my slumber. My brain tends to know how to procrastinate. I am pleased with it. Whenever I decide to tune my alarm to 8 am even if my class starts at 11 am, I wake up just in time ( 10 am today) to have breakfast, read through my class material before 11 am. So even if I am technically late for whatever my plans are for the day, I still end up completing my tasks. GOOD JOB, BRAIN!

The night before, I have imported the Audio CD of " Dreams of my father" into my IPOD Touch. Ipod touch is my best friend. It never fails me. I could do so much with it: Games, Timetable, Emails, Music, and now listen to Obama read his own book. Having his voice right next to my ear is a magical moment. His rhythmic description about his childhood just made me forget that I am alone in the cafeteria ( most of the time I would have start searching for familliar faces to sit with). Eating my Omlet with ham, spinach and mushroom ( i have given up cheese) , I learnt that when Obama moved to Indonesia with his mom together with Lolo, his stepfather, he was culturely shock about things that I am very familiar in my childhood: Beggars on the streets, seeing someone cutting a chicken alive, leeches, boys fighting , learning Indonesian(Malayish), learning to be strong, and Orang Utans. Instantly, I connected with him.

Why do I do this? "Dreams of my Father" is actually my textbook for my "Multiracial identity" class. Our class studies the identity crisis faced by people born in multiracial blackground and perhaps associate it with multicultural. I was raised up monocultural. However, as I move forward towards the world, I see things in multicultural perspective. I am no longer belong to only one ethnic. Interesting enough, I only learnt recently that the term " ethnic " means cultural group, and not race. One's etnicity can change but one's racial identity do not change. Due to the fact that I am both racially chinese and ethnicly one too, I never consider cases such as people's whose ethnically different than his or her race.

After breakfast, I went to my Spanish Class. I was accepted to go to Barcelona and Mexico for Dartmouth's Language Study Abroad (LSA) program. It is hard to choose between the two and for a long time, I remained confuse. But after some debating and discussion with family and friends, I decided to settle for Mexico and participate in a Korean Exchange Program in September. Therefore, I must take this Spanish Class. My professora makes class dynamic. We did "Comparative and Superlative" today where we compare the wealth and beauty of Hollywood stars. Superficial but we learnt. Most Americans in the class said: " Tom Cruise is more crazy than .....( another star)". ( As usual, I am the only international in the class)

Due to this Spanish class, I missed my signing up session to monitor in the Music Department ( Door guarding where you unlock doors for students to practice, boring but good pay). World Economic Crisis makes me extra nervous about my on-campus job. I already lost 2 jobs this term because of department budget cuts. Therefore, yesterday I have been to interview with different professors and emailing prospective job supervisor. Luckily, or Dramatically, the sign up sheet that was full has only 6 days a week ( how could this happen?!) . So I noticed and told my supervisor," Where's Saturday?" and I ended up having a 4 hours slot on Saturday for door guarding.( just my luck)

Then, more luck came in. My friend from China, Yuxiang, have a ticket to a Dance performance tonight but he could not attend. He gave me the ticket for free and I thanked him forever ( It was the best ballet/contemporary dance I have seen so far). After that I went to Collis, the student centre for some emailing before class. I declined another job offer because I got a job for the Research Assistant ( refer above)! I will be collaborating with professors from in and out of Dartmouth to held events on the topics of Tibet and China. A job that is both experience enhancing and educational. Meanwhile, two students were flirting right infront of me. They thought I couldn't hear them since I have my headphones on, but one was telling the other , " 你知道我很喜欢你吗” GOOSEBUMPS.

Then, it wass time for my MULTIRACIAL CLASS . Let me call it SOCY class. I mistaken a floor, so I have to ran back down a level ( embarrassing only for myself , nobody notice). Things learnt from today's class : African American are extremely sensitive with the word " Nigger". I thought it was an African thing and that if people are open-minded, it didn't matter to say it. I WAS WRONG. Throughout the class, nobody say the whole word. They just said, "The N world..blabla..." I was so curious why and I say, " Me and my African friends joke about it all the time , " and then 3 people immediately blast back to me, "Are they black?"" are they Black Americans?"" Its important, especially Blacks from the south" " My parents hate this word". Wowwowowow! See, that's how interesting is my class, we step on each other tail to examine this sensitive topics. Apparently, certain schools even forbit the use the N word in the first day of school just to avoid futher fighting. Everybody remembers back in 1950s, people still hang Black men on the trees ( they call this "lynching") when they looked at White girls. This memory is still fresh and not erasable yet. That's why multiracial kids sometimes admire their parents courage to be together despite all the critisism. Our class needs to write essay to talk about our own racial experience and that's when our professor said, " Writing is just like Kissing : everybody thought they are good kissers, but they can never know. Depending who you kiss, somebody thinks you kiss well and some don't. As long as you express yourself and are grammatically correct, I am fine with that!" What a quote to share!

I took a nap before going to my Spanish Drill Session. Basically is a 50 minutes time for students to DRILL in all the new Spanish words into their head by repeating out loud. We do look dumb but it really helps!

PEAK of the day happens after Spanish Class. I watched the best performance BY Paul Taylor Dance Company. He has been in the Dance world for over 60 years! he is the founder of the Taylor dance company and still direct after retiring as a performer in 1975. I could never predict such creative modern movements come from the tall old man standing on stage.

There are many hidden messages in the dance:

Dancers are actors, their expression in their dance kept me engage in Taylors "conversation" to the audience and help me understand his message.

Moments that I enjoyed most : A swan princess who was not able to fly -- we have seen beautiful dancers as the elegant swan princess, but who have thought off a swan princess with flappy wings that move so fast but still fail to fly. The dancer was on point the whole time, moving quickly around the same spot, "flapping" her arms. I could feel her tideous effort and misery trying to live up to her "status". Hearing the laughter around the auditorium, I think Taylor is trying to say, " Can't we fail at times? " and " It's equally impressive for a dancer to perform success AND failure of something, in this case the Swan princess".

Then, we have a gender switch in the skit of the Spaniard bull fighter. The bulls are 3 nervous men and on stage, they kept running away from the female Spaniard bull-fighter;

Couple dancing in a french (suppose to be romantic)outfit, but they never manage to stay in sync and constantly fighting and try to knock each other on the floor ( who says couples have to show they are in love with each other when dancing?)

Then there's a women trying to be sexy and seductive but again, failed miserably. Everytime she try to take off her gloves and bit her lips, her gloves wouldn't come off! hahaha.

Its like mime, all presented without words, just classical music, nothing has changed in the staging, costumes or music, except the dance movements and actors' expression.

The last dance that take my breath away : many dancers dressed in different colours running around the stage, They ran hard ( just like ppl work hard in life ) , and they ran rotating around a person ( significes time) , and they ran in all directions ( confusion and future) , and then they always find someone , they either jump onto the hugs of the men or cling onto each other and do more running ( there's always that special one that supports and care nearby ), though sometimes they dont' notice , they are doing the same time, sometimes they don't. ( you just have to search for people with common interest and "dance"together in life) , Sometimes its the same movement but happen in different time , ( we either adjust our pace to follow or wait for each other, we live in groups, not alone)

Basically they are JUST RUNNING. But from their runs, I discover all the life principles.

I am not alone in search for knowledge. My fate is waiting, there's someone waiting, there's someone helping and guiding me, there's always someone.