Went to breakfast today, and there wasn't a single cloud in the entire expanse of the sky. It was perfect like a calendar picture. The sunlight has no heat here, though, and sometimes the air's so cold it could shatter. But since the heating in the dorms is perfect, that's not much of a problem.
_

^ Apparently wrote that so long ago I cannot even recall when. This week has been pretty rough. In light of that, guys, could you recommend me something funny? I'm not terribly concerned with what it is, movie or TV series or manga or book, as long as it's adequately time-consuming and makes you laugh. ♥
_

I'm beginning to understand why people seem to disappear when they go off to college. It's not necessarily that there's more work, although, because I'm in a quarter system, everything definitely goes at a faster pace. I spend less time on my own, though, inside my head. It's not that privacy can't be found if it's needed, but there are always people around and always other things that I could be doing. In general, I feel like the days pass so much faster here.

Still, I'm really sorry I haven't been commenting on entries lately. I definitely read them, and I'll try to be better about that.
_

Also: ( A few pictures of Lake Michigan )

I've been planning to post these links since forever.
_

I thought this post from Greater Than or Equal To was made of all sorts of awesome. First is a picture of a letter Winston Churchill wrote to his wife during WWI that was to be opened in the event of his death. The second memo is a speech written for Richard Nixon to read in the event that the Apollo 11 mission failed.

This sort of thing makes me think of alternate dimensions and parallel universes.

(Also, the blog mentioned at the beginning? Letters of Note? Go look at that too. This letter, written by Gandhi and never received by Hitler, is fascinating. Actually. The entire blog is fascinating. Mmmm coded letters.)
_

Another blog, Strange Maps, had an entry that showcased a literary map of San Francisco.
_

Speaking of San Francisco, how is it that I never knew about Paul Madonna until after I left the Bay Area? Such ironic fail. He draws these beautiful ink-wash comics of San Francisco's buildings with rather cryptic text. It's called All Over Coffee. It reads like snippets from a story, and it reminds me of A Softer World. Except prettier.

( Favorites are here. )
_

Also, this is apparently what Google thinks of me. Most of these have to do with engineering or technology or academia. I am amused.
_

How have your lives been, flist?

Have been gone so long I bet you guys don't even remember who I am anymore. >____>

College is a pretty place. Gothic architecture and thick ivy everywhere but my dorm, which is a modern-style, orange-brick rectangular block with bright yellow window frames. It's a nice place. Roommate and suitemates not terrible, but not the kind of people I'd associate with if I didn't live with them. I don't foresee any conflict though. Classes only just started because we're a quarter system and we start late and end late. Everything seems all right so far, difficulty-wise.

Sometimes it's still a tiny bit lonely. The biggest change has been suddenly not having anyone to whom I can say everything. Somehow I didn't realize before I came here that making new close friends takes a long time, and having once had them, that lack of depth of connection is now an absence in my life.

But that just takes time.

I jumped into Lake Michigan at dawn on the first day of classes with about half of my house. I had a conversation about predisposition for skin cancer, literary comics, and religion until 3 in the morning. There are so many opportunities and things I want to do that the biggest problem right now is keeping track of all of them. And there are some terribly brilliant, lovely people here.

All in all, I think I'm going to be fine.

I should sleep soon, so I'm not sleep-deprived already when I go to school, but if I don't post these now I may never post them, so here they are.

Huanglong (黄龙) means Yellow Dragon, and it's located fairly close to Jiuzhaigou. It is also famous for the color of its water (which has the same source? I am guessing).

( 7.9 - 7.10 )

I am never going to forget this place.

Tomorrow will be the last full day before leaving.

I think I'm getting steadily worse at returning from the dead, actually, because I've been back in America since 8/30, but I only just got around to updating. My promised second picspam about another pretty!water place in China will also have to be postponed because lolololol my Photobucket bandwidth has been exceeded. Lol hotlinking. Lol forums. Lol fandom.

So now I'm back. (Soon to be off again for college in Chicago's ghettos but let's put that thought off until another night pleaseandthankyou.)

But but I don't think I'm really back yet, not in the oh-there's-no-place-like-home sense of the word because honestly? I miss it already.

(But to be doubly honest, it's most likely a combination of "I like that place a lot" and "damn it was nice to be on vacation and not have to think about anything" because had I, say, gone to boarding school for two months there, I doubt I would have so many ~happy, floaty~ feelings of nebulousness toward it. The grass is always greener on the other side blah blah blah we are all cows [happy cows! on the wilting hills! from California! which I am soon to leave!] moo.)

Sometimes I wonder if part of the reason I'm so fixated on China is because I always wonder how I would have been like if I hadn't left. Like in my head I'm trying to imagine some alternate dimension, had-my-parents-never-left-for-this-side-of-the-pacific me. (I've always liked the idea of a quantum mechanics style universe where everything that has ever had the potential of happening did, somewhere, sometime.)

But you know, after living there for two months, I'm pretty sure I don't have much of an idealized picture of it in my head. I know what China's like. I've walked in the streets. I've talked to students. I've watched CCTV. None of that has changed anything. Eventually you have to claim somewhere as home, and maybe it's my upbringing or my unconscious desire to be contrary or where I went to school, but I claim China. I claim it, all of it. The history, the culture, the language, the people, the lead paint, the melamine in milk powder, the food, the shoddy construction, the materialism, the corruption, the pandas, the non-democracy, the 2008 Olympics, the economic growth, the one-child policy, the cynicism, the academic pressure, the shame, the pride, the bad, the good. All of it.

Logic really doesn't get you far with this kind of thing. China is important to me because it's mine. That's really the crux of it.

So this post and the one after that are going to be the prettiest posts in this entire series. They're probably going to be prettiest entries I ever post even if I keep on writing in this journal until I'm 94, because fuck if I've ever been to anywhere more beautiful in my life.

So.

Jiuzhaigou (九寨沟) is a nature reserve located in northern Sichuan province. Its name means "Valley of Nine Villages" for the nine Tibetan villages located in the area. Of the nine, I think only three are open to the public. It's also an UNESCO World Heritage Site. The ponds are called haizi (海子), meaning "son of the sea," by the local people. They're the colors they are because of minerals in the water.

( 7.6 - 7.8 )

Some background information: Zhangjiajie (张家界) National Forest Park is in Hunan province (around southeastern China). It's a UNESCO World Natural Heritage site, and some parts of the TV serial of Journey to the West were shot there. (The latter point is apparently very important for tourist sites in China, because that version of Journey to the West is pretty much the definitive film one, and Journey to the West in general has been a huge part of Chinese culture for pretty much 400+ years give or take a few.)

( 6.29 - 7.5 )

I think I'm getting better at the fine art of returning from the dead.

Clearly it's not 8/31 yet, but I'm at Kunming with my grandparents and uncle and aunt right now with stable internet connection, so I thought I might as well get started with my China posts. This is going to be the first in something of a series of posts about my summer. They're most likely going to be tl;dr and more for my benefit than yours, but you could ignore the words and treat them as picspam if you want.

( 6.26 - 6.28 )

This was the boring part before we got to the actual places that we'd planned to visit. Because overall, this trip has been really awesome (and in some places, "really awesome" can't even begin to cover it), and I want you guys to see the prettiness too. ♥

A lot has happened within this past week.

01. I graduated high school.
02. Turned 18.
03. Saw a hypnotist show.
04. Went to a birthday party.
05. Saw Wicked.
06. Turned into a blob at a friend's house.
07. Went to the freezing San Francisco seaside.
08. Had a fake emo session at another friend's house.
09. Stayed up all night talking to people.

These four years have been damn amazing. I miss them all already.


H I A T U S

Will be in China.

[ 06.26.2009 - 08.31.2009 ]

Take care, everyone. ♥

Hey Tiffany.

Just wanted you to know that your present was so beautiful that it made me cry.

Honest. I'm not exaggerating at all.

Thank you. This is so inadequate, but thank you.

I'm going to be graduating high school in a week, and I am still feeling nothing. There is no sense of a proper ending. It doesn't even feel like summer; it was June 10th yesterday, and it actually rained. (For all of 5 minutes, yes, granted, but it's June, and there is not supposed to be rain in California in June.) There's just been a lot of projects and a lot of wasting time in class, and I feel like I'm not prepared at all for everything to stop. It's like dying. You need time to write the will, settle affairs, box everything away neatly, cry at all the happy moments and laugh at all the embarrassing ones. Yes, that's a ridiculous comparison because LOLOLOL dying =/= graduating fricking high school, but the general idea is the same. I am not feeling any closure. I don't want the full force of the immensity of the change to hit me when I'm all the way in Kunming this summer, because no doubt the distance will only make it worse.

(Exhibit 218 in how quickly and far my levels of sentimentality can rise in a relatively short amount of time given the right circumstances.)

Holy fricking shit I'm going to be 18 in a week. I'm not so much nervous as queasy. I feel 14. OTL
___

[Edit]: Prom was last Saturday. It was lovely and very fun, and we had a sleepover afterward.

( Have two pictures. )

Yvonne showed me this t-shirt design at Threadless the other day, and I practically had a heart attack over it. It's so amazing. I have never liked any t-shirt as much as this one. Am going to buy it when it eventually goes on sale. Apparently everyone who saw it was reminded of me. My tastes are either very distinctive or very limited. >___>

( I feel like I should make this into a banner or something. )
_

Saw Star Trek two days ago. It was a fun movie, and pretty enough that I want to make icons of it. Funny thing - I didn't realize that the actor who plays Spock is the same one who plays Sylar in Heroes until the next day. >____> That, I suppose, explains the mass murderer vibes I kept on feeling in the scenes before he joined Starfleet.
_

Have now moved on to using my laptop. My computer has been disassembled. Milestone! (It's so shiny aiefj;afie the screen is so shiny and luminous and if my icons start looking worse after this it's probably because my computer screen automatically makes everything look pretty expect not really but you get the picture.)
_

Went to San Francisco on a field trip yesterday. ( Here are a few pictures. )

Also, a few late Ashland pictures ( are here. )
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I thought about it the other day, and I realized that the only reason pandas are still alive right now is because they look so adorable even when full grown. If they didn't have their huge head-to-body ratios, soft, squishy cuddliness, slightly clumsy movements, and complete lack of threatening mannerisms, none of them would still be here. Honestly, the animals are terrible at surviving. They mainly eat only one kind of food, and it's a low-energy, high-cellulose, really slow-growing kind at that. They don't move very quickly or have very good defenses. And they suck at reproducing. In terms of evolutionary traits for survival, the only thing they did right was make themselves look so cute and huggable that the mere sight of them elicits feelings of protectiveness and love in humans.

...

... Yeah. I... don't know where that came from either. >______>

All the strange wonders that befell me:

Friday | Got asked to Senior Ball. (Huhhh? And yayyyy? And oh damn shit I need to get a dress fuck)
Sunday | Had a Lord of the Rings marathon with the extended editions of the movies. (AESIFJ;ASEFIJS;AEF LOTR OH LOVE OF MY LIFE I'D FORGOTTEN HOW MUCH I ADORED YOU. THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN AEIFJS;AIESAJF;SEFJESAF;JS;AFJS JIESAFJ;ASFIJEJS;AEFI ♥♥♥♥♥) It seemed to have converted Yvonne into wanting to read the books. Success!
Monday - Wednesday | Went to Ashland, Oregon to watch two plays for an AP English field trip. Day one involved a bus ride, being a mob, slowly becoming not a mob, giggling like mad and acting sugar high, and getting stared/laughed at by strangers. Day two involved two plays (Macbeth and The Music Man), a nature hike, and a pretty cool gift shop. Day three involved a bus ride home, Mean Girls, Batman Begins, and part of Ocean's Twelve. And then Chinese Checkers with a lot of cheating and sabotage and shrieking.

Life's been pretty good.
_

Shiny things:

一 ：welovetypography
I adore typography design, and it makes me sad that I can't do it very well at all, but looking at these makes me happy, so I guess it balances out.



( More favorites from the first 10 pages )

二 ：Book Cover Designs
I guess I just like pretty design in general. But this website really is awesome.



( More favorites )

三 ：Shadow Project
Photographer's explanation:

Do you ever wonder if your shadow is playing tricks on you behind your back? I mean, it could be, right? It's always walking behind you so you never know what's going on back there! The past couple of weeks I've been tracing Matty and I onto large rolls of black paper. I then cut them out into fun shadow people, and taped them onto the walls and sidewalks all around Brooklyn. I then waited for people to walk by and took a picture at the exact moment they matched up with their silly shadow.

( The pictures )

四 ：( Why A Man Cannot Have Wings )

1. Oh, Mother. THE THINGS I DO FOR YOU.

OTL

2. Well, I guess that finally ran its course. Thankfully, since I was beginning to feel like such a nutcase.

3. From ontd_political: Paper Magazine (I would guess it's some sort of political magazine) apparently "invited 15 of the best visual communicators to refine our country's image." (And by "our country," they mean America.)

How they explain it:

Right now America is like a company teetering on bankruptcy -- we have lost so much credibility and brand currency over the past eight years. And so we invited some of the best visual communicators we know (from ad gurus to artists) to create original advertising concepts that could redefine our country's image. Welcome to U.S.A. 2.0.

Some of them were very good. Some of them made me raise my eyebrows and think, "'15 of the best visual communicators?' Really? Really?" Some of them were just batshit crazy. (Full gallery here.)



This one is pretty cool. I like how they kept the relative size of the states accurate. It's a vertebral column, and you know how you need all your vertebrae for your spine to support you.

( Though... why a spine exactly? )

[Edit]: Because Yvonne was apparently traumatized, a WARNING: The last poster contains quite a bit of brain-scarring and holy-living-fuck-my-eyes-they-bleed, so click at your own risk. >____>

♥

So thanks to the friending meme, I'd like to welcome captainrosie, grass_angel, heron_advocate, katsumeragi, long_scarves, main_titles, mtranc3, and teialiel! (Hee, alphabetization.) I hope we can all get to know each other better, hopefully in a way that involves a lot of crack and awesome. XD

And to start off, have a meme:

Comment here with a list of 10 things that make you happy.

( My list: )

I TAG YOU. YES, YOU. ALL OF YOU. ♥

GUESS WHO'S DONE WITH AP TESTS FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE.

\:D/ \:D/ \:D/

DAMN RIGHT LIFE IS AWESOME.

/patheticness

Also, welcome halclouds and oceansex! ♥♥♥ Hope we get to know each other better now that my hiatus is over ahaha. >___>

To make that easier, here, meme time: Ask me any question you want about anything you want, whether it's about politics, fandom, socks, etc., etc. In return, I'll ask you a question, and we'll see how long we can keep the thread going. :Db Anyone can do this. ♥

HIATUS
Because:
1. Ahahahaha productivity what productivity?
2. SO. EFFING. SCREWED.
3. Job? Where to find?
4. This stuff can't possibly be good for my IQ.
5. OH HAI WORLD DIDN'T SEE YOU THERE.
&etc.

>___>

Easter is a strange and foreign concept to me, but it did bring some of the most awesome dioramas I have ever seen. Observe:

( And it's much better to just look at them, because I've always found eating peeps to be pretty gross. )

From the Washington Post's Peeps Show III
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I have a very strange relationship with music. I don't understand it at all. (Talk to me about music theory, and my brain will cease to operate within five seconds of your bringing the topic up.) And yet I'm extremely picky about what I like. I can listen to a collection of 300 songs and not like more than two. I have no idea if they're technically good or bad; all I know is whether or not they sound pretty to me.

But then again, I don't listen to much music anyway.
_

Virginia Woolf's writing is so perfect I don't even know how it's possible.

Awesome stuff:

. Am now officially on track to becoming part of UChicago's class of 2013. ♥♥♥
. Am also now in possession of a driver's license.


Not so awesome stuff:

. About Bleach 353: ( Fuck an extremely large duck. )