Thoughts

Coo kees
This week two separate friends have given me cookies. How lovely and random. And Margaret‘s are from Marks and Spencer in London! 🙂 They have the coolest name:

[photo lost, but they were called Extremely Chocolatey Biscuits]

They are, in fact, quite chocolatey.

Followers
I have a new phrase, thanks to Amanda, who described herself and fellow grad students as “following Prof. X around like ducklings.” I imagine a line of grad students on a string, like those little toy ducks that trail after you going wakwakwakwakwak when you pull the string.

Collecting photos reminds me of high school
Mineisha suddenly asked about the photos from last December’s Nutcracker, so I borrowed the computer from Marshall to show her the one I posted online. She printed that one out, then wanted to know if I had any others I could show her, so I pulled up the one of me in fourth grade. She printed that one too, which I didn’t expect. She says she’ll put it on her wall. I wonder. Another boy noticed what we were doing, and wanted a photo too. Of me, as a one-year-old. At that point the computer froze, so he didn’t get his photo, which was all right with me. It just seemed unnecessarily complicated to be giving a picture of me as a baby to a small boy whose name I don’t even know, to take home and possibly show other kids or his parents. He’s a nice kid, though. He probably just thought the color printer was cool. If the computer hadn’t frozen, I was going to give him the one of Tybalt.

Doh.
I have now eaten all the Extremely Chocolatey biscuits.

Writing history
Henry Yu’s Thinking Orientals is so so much more interesting and nuanced that Said’s Orientalism–which is fortunate, because I have to read it and write a review of it by tomorrow. Yu writes like I would like to: he’s a serious historian, but clearly very meditative and philosophical about his subject, open about the autobiographical nature of all research, and very conscious of the importance of the individual experience. So many scholars forget to take into account the innumerable people and feelings and details which make up the vast prismatic wonderful thing we call reality. There are so many truths–my mommy’s opinion differs from mine on this–that it seems to me completely ridiculous to even pretend that there is one story and that we have the authority to tell it. If one is conscientious about all this, it’s very difficult to write any kind of consistent, coherent paper or book, so I’m even more impressed by what Prof Yu has done.

Hurt
A certain friend’s boyfriend (perhaps now ex-boyfriend) is a poo, but I’m glad I was there when she needed someone to talk to. Dear girls, don’t blame yourselves when relationships don’t work out. Sometimes people just want different things or have different values, and it’s not anyone’s fault. If you tried your best, no one can ask any more. Just learn from every experience, and know when it’s time to move on.

And now it’s time for me to stop writing here and get back to Thinking Orientalism. A pleasant evening to you all.

[This post was imported on 4/10/14 from my old blog at satsumabug.livejournal.com.]