some explanatory notes on the sunrise

yeah the painting was indeed redder than when i saw it. and because i took the picture in yellow light it looks redder tan the painting. so that was cascade effect i guess. haha. the real situation was that, before the sunrise there was a snow storm going on outside the train. i was on the train from ann arbor to boston, in the middle of december. the temperature is so ridiculously low, well, to someone who's never experienced real winter like me. the train was running and it had a slit on the window beside me through which the damn wind can sneak in. i was travelling alone. and have been on bus-train itinerary to boston for 12 hours, not knowing that it was going to last another 20 hours before my feet step on solid land again. yeah. so it had been snowing all night and i was in a near conscious state. suddenly the train reached this place where it was clear and i saw the sun rising. it was the warmest feeling i've ever gotten. have you ever felt this shiver when you feel the sun after you have been cold for a long time? that was precisely what i felt. that was the first sunrise i'd ever seen that was actually glorious. but no. it was loneliness, not beauty that i saw in the warm color. and maybe that feeling persisted so much that i intensified it with colours. that's all for now.

i'm a loser. i didn't even notice that it's already the fifth week of the quarter. time just got a new engine for faster flights.

yeah, and when i went to the lab the sweetest thing was said. i didn't have to stay cos there were no mice. so i came back. earliest of all time. i collected my parcel, which is ehrenreich's the hearts of men, reading for doc. well, better than nothing. then i did laundry, and cleaned my room with revolutionary force and speed. now my room is clearly divided into 3 parts. my rationality. desk and computer. book shelf. my feelings. drawer set, scores, paints and canvas, make-up mirror, accessaries and cds. and my bed. well. if only i could stay there longer. lol. and i just found a nice alternative to an easel. my score folder, which i just bought from my section leader for 17.55(!!) works ideally as an easel. a strap keeps it open at an angle of about 110 degrees. this is economical utility of space, as long as i don't drip too much paint onto the black folder. fantastic.

saw someone else's drawing of an eye, inspired to draw today too. wish i could improve faster.


my java teacher.


and my new imaginary friend. what shall i call her.. hmmm. yeah, she's got some attitude problem.

bought speakers. and found life much more fullfilling. haha. i just like the idea of music ringing around in my room. rising. rising. i like it. i tried my speakers with whitacre, and found the 10 buck stuff is not that bad. at least weren't shattered by the powerful overtone of BYU. the other day when i was having clam chowder in sierra summit i saw on news there were a few students from BYU dying of some mountain climbing thing. sigh. hope none of them are from the choir. what a fantastic choir they've got!

and i'm tired. really. the weekend was so long-awaited. i just want to sit here without doing anything. or maybe i should get up a do sth. maybe do a sketch or sth. maybe.

acrylic on canvas

went to the bookstore today. as i was looking at the sketch boards, someone else was checking on a wooden easel kit that is opened up from a box and can house almost all things you can think of when you go out on a landscape trip. well, the price was something like 80+ bucks. man. luckily i didn't go into art. such useless things cost a bomb! imagine i became an artists, right now i would probably dying to buy some materials so that i can produce a few works that people will buy. no wonder the commodification of art occurred. really necessary to prevent the artists from dying of hunger.

and after i paid i saw annina my classmate from my spanish conversation class in the first quarter in the line at the cashier. i remember her because after she told us that she was a computer artist i asked her if she used corel painter. (apart from the fact that she was swiss and spoke 4 languages.) she got very offended apparently, which almost alarmed me. and she made such a great effort in explaining how artists like her don't use corel as in use corel. she said she used whatever that it takes to do her art on computer. if she had to programme in some language she would learn it. guess what she meant was that she didn't rely on corel painter and she was trying to show me that the life of a computer artist was much more complicated than using corel painter. well. i didn't even mean what she thought i meant in the first place, i was just wondering if she happened to use corel as a tool. oh, well, maybe one of the tools, in her work. but i understand. somethings that are so dear to you, so important, that anything signs of misunderstanding in other people's opinion would've caused a huge violent reaction in you. that happens to me too, many times. well. everyone has this area that is more sensitive, more protected and thus more agressive in that sense. painting is her thing. that's why. and i understand that. and i'm moved by that.

my order reached.

my order of Canteloube's Chants D'auvergne by Veronique Gens and 2 DVD's have reached. Along with them also came my new Genetics textbook. My fondness for Brody has become evident as i found myself very excited even receiving the textbook. but well, brody's a nice and funny prof. just not comfortable that he cut me out when i asked if i could go talk about genetics with him but i couldn't make it to his office hours. he said, you could make an appointment with me, but there are 400 kids you know. implying my stupidity in trying to waste his precious time in useless conversations, i guess. which i understand perfectly, just that i thought he could've been less blunt on the matter. hm.

anyways. chants d'auvergne was totally folky. frankly i didn't quite expect sth like this, after indulging myself in gens' melodie album nuit d'etoiles. well that was really fantastic faure/debussy/poulenc stuff. i guess it'll take a while before the chants "grow on" me. (quoting a guy who's fond of this phrase. eww. still reminds me of fungus. what's growing on you? fungus right?)

2 dvds. to live. cos it was banned in china, so i think, i'm not sure, i think i've never seen it in china. also bought farewell my concubine. well, i've read both books and saw the latter movie a few times. feels good to have a copy of each dvd at home but honestly the movies can never be compare to the original fiction. there's just something that only words can do. what do you think? and anyway the books are both way too long to be condensed into a movie. like to live, the story hang half-way through. maybe they wanted to cut down on the tragedy and show some warmth and hope in humanity. but that really wasn't the point of the original intent, i believe. i thought yu hua set out to see how big a man's capacity for hardship is. why, then, did the movie end when the family was still left with a lot of people. all of them were supposed to have died by the end of the story. well. yu hua's extreme. but i like the way he wrote it. and ba wang bie ji, it is still much better to see cheng die yi in my imagination. at least in that way he stayed impeccable. i'm not saying that zhang guo rong is not good at the role. well, he wasn't pretty enough. there was still this inevitably awkwardness in his acting in the operas in the movie. well. guess that couldn't have been helped and he was probably the closest you could find in the business. still. still.. the notion of imperfection bugs me. a lot.

and wonder why is the cutting and transition so unnatural in these movies. by right, since they were by zhang yimou and chen kaige, the making is supposed to be good. i don't know. weird transitions all over the place. in comparison, hero in terms of movie making is really much better than these earlier movies.

wonder too, how The Peony Pavillion is like then. maybe i should watch it too. anyone has watched it before?

One of the major reasons i started taking spanish was this song:

Hijo de la luna

Tonto el que no entienda.

Cuenta una leyenda
Que una hembra gitana
Conjuró a la luna
Hasta el amanecer.
Llorando pedía
Al llegar el día
Desposar un calé.


"Tendrás a tu hombre,
Piel morena,"
Desde el cielo
Habló la luna llena.
"Pero a cambio quiero
El hijo primero
Que le engendres a él.
Que quien su hijo inmola
Para no estar sola
Poco le iba a querer."


Estribillo:
Luna quieres ser madre
Y no encuentras querer
Que te haga mujer.
Dime, luna de plata,
Qué pretendes hacer
Con un niño de piel.
A-ha-ha, a-ha-ha,
Hijo de la luna.


De padre canela
Nació un niño
Blanco como el lomo
De un armiño,
Con los ojos grises
En vez de aceituna --
Niño albino de luna.
"¡Maldita su estampa!
Este hijo es de un payo
Y yo no me lo callo."


Estribillo

Gitano al creerse deshonrado,
Se fue a su mujer,
Cuchillo en mano.
"¿De quién es el hijo?
Me has engañado fijo."
Y de muerte la hirió.
Luego se hizo al monte
Con el niño en brazos
Y allí le abandonó.


Estribillo

Y en las noches
Que haya luna llena
Será porque el niño
Esté de buenas.
Y si el niño llora
Menguará la luna
Para hacerle una cuna.
Y si el niño llora
Menguará la luna
Para hacerle una cuna.


Translation:

Son of the moon

Foolish is he who doesn't understand.


A legend tells of a gipsy woman
Who pleaded with the moon until dawn.
Weeping she begged
At the break of dawn
To marry a gipsy man.


"You'll have your man, tawny skin,"
Said the full moon from the sky.
"But in return I want the first child
That you have with him.
Because she who sacrifices her child
So that she is not alone,
Isn't likely to love it very much."


Chorus:
Moon, you want to be mother,
But you cannot find a love
Who makes you a woman.
Tell me, silver moon,
What you intend to do
With a child of flesh.
A-ha-ha, a-ha-ha,
Son of the moon.


From a cinnamon-skinned father
A son was born,
White as the back of an ermine,
With grey eyes instead of olive --
Moon's albino child.
"Damn his appearance!
This is not a gipsy man's son
And I will not put up with that."


Chorus

Believing to be dishonoured,
The gipsy went to his wife,
A knife in his hand.
"Whose son is this?
You've certainly fooled me!"
And he wounded her mortally.
Then he went to the woodlands
With the child in his arms
And left it behind there.


Chorus

And the nights the moon is full
It is because the child
Is in a good mood.
And if the child cries,
The moon wanes
To make it a cradle.
And if the child cries,
The moon wanes
To make it a cradle.

brody said he was in Tatum's lab when he defined one gene one protein, and he was telling us how cool Tatum was blah blah blah. he said he uses his Nobel medal as a paper weight on his coffee table at home. yeah. quite cool. brody has this thing for labelling important genetic theories "Genetic Principle #**" so when he told Tatum that he considered "one gene one protein“ the ”GP #5 " Tatum replied"hmm, i think i enjoy my Nobel a lot more." and when he told Yanofsky he considered his principle of colinearity "GP #6" Yanofsky said "how much is that??!" haha.

i guess one of the good things bout taking classes from big shots is that you get to hear loads of anecdotes about other big shots. which can be very interesting.

AP&M and Muir Biology

Warm and sunny day today :). When i woke up from a late morning nap, on the Sun God Lawn right in front of the two great grey buildings of UCSD, i saw a lone raven gliding down the buildings. huge was he who had feathers dark as the night. and he glid down the building, cutting the vertical lines that run from the top to the bottom of the grey giant M2B, disturbing the neat linear arrangement of the design. Maybe i shouldn't call that disturbing, because it really brought something close to liveliness to the lines, the long and hard lines. in a pretty curve, he came down, with the tip of his wing almost brushing against the grey concrete, which seemed to be brightened up by the fluid movement, as if a playful child trying to draw the attention of a serious old man. surprisingly, such a brief and geometric encounter moved me greatly.

and that brought me to appreciating the two buildings for quite a while. looking at it, tracing the straight lines and the many faces with my eyes, i thought for the first time, hmmm, they actually look very nice. the long and continuous strips that flow smoothly down M2B in pure grey colour reminds me a little of the greek pillars, only this building is even simpler than that. the geometrical arrangement of the rectangles on AP&M, each enclosing a little window in it, is better than anything else in telling us about the clean and elegant beauty of mathematics. the honest colour of concrete gives the buildings a plain look but a somehow sophisticated character. there the two buildings sit, in an intervention of modernity and classicism, somewhere between vibrancy and authority.

this is really cute. think it's some folk song in occitan, from the province of Auvergne.

Malurous qu'o uno fenno


Malurous qu'o uno fenno,
Malurous qué n'o cat!
Qué n'o cat n'en bou uno,
Qué n'o uno n'en bou pas!
Tradèra, ladèri dèrèro
ladèra, ladèri dèra.

Urouzo lo fenno
Qu'o l'omé qué li cau!
Urouz' inquèro maito
O quèlo qué n'o cat!
Tradèra, ladèri dèrèro
ladèra, ladèri dèra.

Translation:
Unfortunate he who has a wife,
Unfortunate he who does not!
He who has not wants one,
He who has one does not
Tradèra, ladèri dèrèro
ladèra, ladèri dèra.

Fortunate the woman
Who has the man she wants!
More fortunate is she
Who has not
Tradèra, ladèri dèrèro
ladèra, ladèri dèra!

主题：日本人 我等着你 (转贴 目前流传最快的一首抗议诗)

日本人 我等着你！


你第一次到我这里，
那时我叫大唐，
威震世界我强盛无比。
你赤着双脚、
衣衫褴褛。
诚惶诚恐你走进我的光辉大殿里。

我记得我叫秦的时候曾让徐福，
带领三千童男童女，
远渡东海，
扎根到你那里。
因此我认定：
有我的血液流到你的血管里。
对于你的潦倒，
我没有嫌弃。
我给了你锦衣朝服，
我盛唐全部礼仪、
和那双你穿到现在的木屐。
你千恩万谢，
满口“哈依、哈依”。
你藏不住那贪婪的目光，
我告诫自己--
这是一个人面兽心的家伙，就象在图上：
它的形状象一只可恶的虫蚁。
仁至义尽我送你回去，
还教给你我盛世的全部礼仪。
你走之后我轻声自语：
“它还会回来”--
我等着你。


当我叫明的时候我等到了你。
你手拿倭刀，
穿着我教你做的唐衣。
你说你并不得已，
因为后面有驱赶你的丰臣秀吉。
杀人放火你奸淫掠虏，
戚家儿郎把你赶下海去。
用东海水我洗着伤口，
贼心不死的禽兽--
我等着你！


日月如梭我身染重疾，
东方的巨人渐渐不能自己。
围攻撕咬我的兽群中，
我又看见了你：
强盗火拼你咬走了俄国熊罴，
独占我北方要地。
贪心不足你膨胀的恶欲。
终于到了“九.一八”那是一九三一，
血肉从我身上分离，
于是有了伪满供你驱骑。
欲壑难平你得寸进尺，
疯狂的野兽你竞妄想把世界归己。
一九三七的七月七，
我的胸膛上你印上了铁蹄。
作威作福你那么得意，
心在淌血我把仇恨铭记。
多行不义你必自毙，
自作自受--
蘑菇云中你看见了自己的广岛和长崎。
夹着尾巴你滚了回去，
还有那面沾满血腥的膏药旗。


跟在霸强后面，
你又觉得有势可倚。
偷机取巧你开始发迹，
一夜之间你觉得富得无人可比。
不改的本性让你又暗藏杀人的利器，
打着自卫的幌子想把世人蒙弊。
为富不仁你开始觉得自己家里挤，
又妄想到我的岛上来“钓鱼”！
伤疤犹在你就忘了痛，
参拜亡灵的政客们啊，
在靖国神社你们是否看见了东条英机？
往日的屈辱我怎能忘记？
昨天的病夫现在已有了强壮的身躯！
睁大眼睛我看你要向何处去？
还想再来吗？
--世世代代我等着你！


狼生的孩子仍然要吃肉，
魔鬼释缚后还会害人。
鬼魂在庙宇里在受膜拜，
人人都知道你贼心不死。
多少年来我受了你多少凌辱和欺骗，
强霸面前你又有狗仗人势，
又见到膏药旗在我的家里？！
我知道，你早晚还会回来，
如同饿狼常来觅食。
子弹上膛的猎枪手中拿紧吧，
我世世代代等着你！
-----我等着你！！

APOLOGY?

I have seriously never heard anything more ridiculous than THIS:
Japan's Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura has lodged a protest and asked for an apology from the Chinese government for the anti-Japan demonstrations in Beijing on Saturday that broke windows at the Japanese Embassy and a Japanese restaurant.
--Machimura lodges protest and demands apology from China over anti-Japan demonstrations (NHK News online. Apr. 10 2005)

Since when did the japanese know anything about APOLOGY??? try compare smashing the windows of the embassy and some irrelavent restaurant to smashing a country. oh, GIVE ME A BREAK.

talking about jap brands.

donno who will be reading this but i don't care. looks difficult to do without all these jap brands that seeps through every corner of our life, but don't mind trying.


My dear fellow compatriots, wherever you are, please boycott the following brands, and other unlisted Japanese brands. It's the least we can do.

日货、 日系产品列表
产品类别	日本产品品牌或者品牌	推荐替代品牌
数码照相机和数码摄像机	富士、柯尼卡、索尼、JVC、松下、东芝、奥林巴斯。（这些公司均出资支持日本右翼修改教科书，否认南京大屠杀和侵华史实。）	中国联想、韩国三星、美国柯达
汽车	本田、丰田、铃木、日产、三菱。（这些公司是日本重工业的支柱，也是日本主要武器装备制造商,他们壮大就是日本军事工业的壮大。） 品 牌大致如下：丰田_TOYOTA、威驰_Vios、风度_Cefiro、本田_HONDA、尼桑_Nissan、途乐_Patrol、马自达 _Mazda、日产_Nissan、佳奔_Urvan、三菱_MITSUBISHI、蓝鸟_Nissan、阳光_Sunny、十五铃_ISUZU、宏达 _HONDA、奇骏_X-trail、铃木_SUZUKI、凌治_Harrier、碧莲_Civilian	低档品牌：福莱尔、吉利 中档品牌：红旗、大众、现代、别克赛欧、菲亚特、斯科达等 高档品牌：中华、奔驰、宝马、奥迪等
电器	JVC、松下、东芝、卡西欧等	长虹、TCL、春兰、厦新等
日本料理	吉野家（连锁快餐）、味千拉面等。日本人的食品中看不中吃，不说也罢。	如果您真的爱吃生鱼，韩国的也不错。
计算机类	日本计算机类产品在品牌上不占优势。以上的推荐产品里也许有日本生产的零部件，但是请记住，抵制一分是一分。东芝、NEC、SONY等品牌当然是我们抵制的对象！	联想、方正、IBM、DELL等
软件类	假如你想使用日本人的软件，满街的盗版，你又何必给日本人送钱？——这并不代表我们支持盗版	日货最好的替代品是中国人的尊严和对后代的责任感
手机类	松下、索爱、NEC、京瓷	夏新、波导、TCL、康佳、联想
家用电器及办工器材等	索 尼SONY、佳能CANON、JVCTDK、松下_Panasonic、卡西欧_CASIO、建伍_KENWOOD、爱华_aiwa、精工_SIEKO、 尼康_NIKON、日立_HITACHI、兄弟_Brother、先锋_Pioneer、东芝_TOSHIBA、八重洲_YAESU、阿尔派 _ALPINENEC、百乐NTT、美能达_Minolta、斑马_ZEBRAKDDI、奥林巴斯_Olympus、蜻蜓 _DragonflyDoCoMo、夏普_SHARP、富士通_FUJITSUTUKA、爱普生_EPSON、美上美_MITSUMIJ-PHONE、理 光_Ricoh、京瓷_Kyocera、柯尼卡_KONIKA、三洋_Sanyo	替代产品很多很多！
化妆品及日常洗化等	资生堂_SHISEIDO、DHCMILD、花王_KAO、狮王_LION、诗芬_sifone、碧柔_Biore、多芬_Dove、乐而雅_Laurier、高丝_KOSE、naturgo	替代产品很多很多！
烟酒及食品等	柔和七星、明治食品、四洲食品、麒麟啤酒、午后红茶LUCIDO、朝日啤酒、BOSS咖啡、日清食品、日本酒、雪印食品、Suntory茶、味千拉面	本土品牌有很多很多！
服装等	美津浓_MIZUNO、爱斯克斯、日高_NIKKO、华高青山洋服（服饰）	中国是世界第一服装大国！
百货	伊藤洋华堂_Ito、Yokado_成都、华堂_Ito、Yokado_北京	中国是百货业强国之一！
其他	立邦油漆、TOTO卫浴、富士胶卷、FUJIFILM、松本电工、爱眼眼镜、精工眼镜、横滨轮胎、第一生命（制药）、武田药品、太田胃药、森永化工、OKI（针打）、 野尻（眼镜）、 伊都锦、 优衣库、 八仟代、AKAI、 内野（家纺）
恳请转发转贴,广泛传播此文,以自己的实际行动抗日!!!!!

Montparnasse

since i'm in the french mood.

Montparnasse
 
Guillaume Apollinaire (Wilhelm Kostrowicki) (1880-1918)


Ô porte de l'hôtel
Avec deux plantes vertes
Vertes qui jamais
Ne porteront de fleurs
Où sont mes fruits?
Où me planté-je?
Ô porte de l'hôtel
Un ange est devant toi
Distribuant des prospectus
On n'a jamais si bien défendu la vertu
Donnez-moi pour toujours une chambre à la semaine
Ange barbu vous êtes en réalité
Un poéte lyrique d'Allemagne
Qui voulez connaître Paris
Vous connaissez de son pavé
Ces raies sur lesquelles il ne faut pas que l'on marche
Et vous rêvez
D'aller passer votre Dimanche à Garches
Il fait un peu lourd et vos cheveux sont longs
Ô bon petit poète un peu bête et trop blond
Vos yeux ressemblent tant à ces deux grands ballons
Qui s'en vont dans l'air pur
À l'aventure.

Poulenc set a song on this poem, among others. so beautiful, the poem. and so beautiful, the music. wait till i have more time to type the translation.

accidents

i walked out of my room wearing a red top, white trousers and blue shoes. but realised that i looked like the american flag. so went back to change to a red pair of canvas shoes. and ended up looking like a singapore flag.

prokofiev is amazing. man. the russians are amazing.

on Bleu

Bleu is typical of the french films i know of. tastefully done. plot is secondary here. visually, it's a feast. fragmented(just like this thread). the camera moves in the manner of the most observant eyes with the most sensitive heart. maybe it's avant-gardish, but the abstractness and dissectedness in the scene do remind me of the modern art works, be it cubism or what. colours. colours are always central to the french films. such a powerful thing to heighten emotions. the shimmery, almost heart-breaking blue colour that floods in the movie seeps into you with that suppressed sorrow and suffocates you. and the music. weaves in and out of the plot so perfectly in tune with the image, and they resonate. everything is so contained. so muted. so restricted. yet there is clearly this wild desire for the heroine to break free from it. a desire to come out of it, like a fire trying desperately to burn through something and emerge. and the antagony is painfully delicious. in every detail.

how clever does a man need to be to know how exactly to combine all these elements together to create a uniformed outcome that stirs us? how much has he to feel in the first place? what kind of man is he? i wonder.

what a night

it's a wonderful life turned out to be a wonderful film. rekindles my desire to do good deeds again. the other film that gave me the same feeling was amelie. how diff the two films are. talking about films, watched bleu again on sunday, and am extremely glad that i made up my mind to buy the dvd. so good. hmmmm~~. it is a work of art. Juliette Binoche looked so much more intelligent and sophisticated in the film than in the interview that comes in the dvd. well, that's the magic that Krzysztof Kieslowski does. what more to say? he's a real genius. blanc has a nice neat plot, even though i didn't think it was particularly worth keeping. and i've yet to watch rouge.

after doing unix homework for 2 hrs, my brain, still not accustomed to vowels, started to read j's poems on her blog. and i couldn't understand. but they were beautiful. so once again felt sorry for my own potential in letters. with the very atonal shostakovich playing, my brain was suprisingly at rest. (yes, and so it'll be until i open some mouse' brain tomorrow. i'd rather not think about it now. but it pops into my mind so i have to think about it. even the zebrafish are more adorable.) ok. things start to get really random at 0104am. so i guess maybe it's time to sleep. haven't been surfing all my friends' blog for a long while. sorry.

stats of the day

time talked to mom on phone: 3 hrs

mice terminated: 5
intact gangalia harvested: 24
ripped gangalia: 6

money spent on hair styling tools: 29.98

cds bought: 8
all russian
price: $82.65

dvd bought: 1
price $10.76
french

no. of meals had: 1