想把房間的木椅換成紅色沙發

首先, 恭喜各位即將要踏上新旅程的grad '10, 不管是離開大學的新鮮人或是從高中畢業的..的.. 的.. 孩子們, sherry gives you her best wishes.
可是有時候想想, 要長大了這件事是值得恭喜的嗎? 我到現在還不知道怎麼回答自己.

話說.. 去年從春天開始就熱到不行了, 去年的這個時候我還在陽台上睡午覺
但現在好冷...... 前幾天出去的時候說話還會吐煙
下午我躺在床上看書都覺得要蓋一床被子才行, 深怕感冒
可是又覺得六月開暖氣太遜了, 倒不如好好的享受這所剩不多的寒冷吧



今天晚上十點下課的時候, 我出了教室就像煙癮犯了一樣, 馬上抽出攜帶打給Anna. 年輕人嘛.... 我還是很長舌的. 直到走到公車上, 還在講一些很不正經的話題, 因為沒有什麼認識的人, 無須做出平常偽裝在外的甜美~ 溫柔~ 的樣子, 結果講了大概10分鐘, 轉頭到處看的時候居然發現坐在我後面的是我的教授..... 頓時表情僵硬, 然後假裝沒看到他. 好蠢啊, 平常我和Anna的話題就很詭異, 包括我把馬桶蓋坐裂, 我整人事蹟, 還有我一個人可以吃掉多少盤炒飯之類的. 偏偏我們又是用英文溝通. 虧我還在教授面前裝著乖寶寶的樣子, 似乎這形象全在這短短幾分鐘內摧毀了, 這感覺真不好


說說最近的新發現吧! 號稱 Sherry Wisdom
這幾天在讀Thomas Mann的"威尼斯之死" 內容大概就是一位邁入中年的藝術家在威尼斯度假時遇見了一位超~~~~~~~~美的男孩並且愛上了他. 冒著可能被疫病傳染的危險, 在威尼斯內不停的跟蹤他, 想念著他.
而這讓我想起了以前發生在我身上的故事 -- 我叫它 Sogo百貨之吻
某天我媽帶著4, 5歲的我去台北的Sogo百貨逛街 (也有可能是明耀百貨), 我們在一樓的某化妝品專櫃停了下來, 專櫃小姐開始向我媽推薦產品. 當我媽正認真看入玻璃櫃的瓶瓶罐罐時, 突然那位專櫃小姐親了我的臉頰!!!!!!!!!! 我媽頓時被嚇到! 張著大眼blink blink. 結果專櫃小姐很不好意思的說 "對不起, 但您女兒實在是太可愛了"

當我把這故事說給表姊聽的時候在隔壁房間"睡覺"的懶散的哥哥突然很不以為意的說 "哼! 那有什麼了不起! 我也被專櫃小姐親過啊!" 然後兄妹開始驕傲的搬出以前被大人親過, 甚至被咬過的不得了的經驗來比較, 最後為了make peace, 我們雙方握手言和的說 "但我們比沒有被專櫃小姐親過的老姊厲害".

I AM TAICHICAN

I am a liminal character.

I am a Taiwanese of Chinese descent who is born in a nation that is not approved to be one.

I am that particular Taiwanese or Chinese who lives in Canada and is a bearer of both Taiwanese and Canadian passports and continues to be stuck in between the two or three societies and cultures, whatever.

I am that particular Taiwanese or Canadian or Chinese who does not know the meaning nor what to tell others when they ask "Where are you from?" Or "What are you?"

I am that particular Taiwanese or Canadian or Chinese who asks "Who am I?" quite often.

Now let me summarise what happens to me all the time, and I will try to stay away from the politics, just the personal. But then again, the personal is the political - quite an awkward usage since I'm not a radical feminist, but it makes sense. Now they say that Canada is multicultural, which is somewhat true, and Canada is doing a good job sometimes. But that's only the government and their program. I don't blame anyone, but I simply get upset when someone - anyone, whether those of the 'host' society or not - asks me "so where are you from?" Now I know this is just a casual conversation appetizer but it irritates me that I have to think of the options:

I've been living in Canada for 12 years. I have officially been a Canadian for 9 years. But I don't know how to feel sometimes about home.

1) I'm Canadian: What irritates me about using this answer is that (Pal, I know you're asking me this is very likely because I have brown hair and eyes, because of the features, you assume that I am FROM somewhere else when I spent more than half of my lifetime here). But fine, immigrants are common in Canada, I shouldn't make it into such a big deal. So I say "I'm Canadian" since I'm in Canada anyway and I have a Canadian passport, if I'm in Taiwan, duh, I'll say I'm Taiwanese. And 90% of the time they would protest "Nonono, I mean, really, WHERE are you from?" So in this case, I'll have to go into option two.

2) I say Taiwanese: Sometimes to make matters simpler I just say I'm Taiwanese, but then again, I have ran into problems as such. For example, upon hearing "Taiwanese", that person would say, "oh, what? Isn't that just China?" I get really uneasy because I have no idea how to explain such complicated politics. "Yes.... some people believe that it is China..but I'm from Taiwan" "Exactly, why don't you just say you're Chinese then? Aren't they the same thing?" It has nothing to do with my political orientation, but still, what's wrong to say that I'm Taiwanese when I'm born in Taiwan and that is what it says on one of my passports regardless of the politics?

3) Chinese - Usually I don't say I'm Chinese unless people assume that I'm Chinese, then I'd just go with it, "yeah, Chinese.." Because that's how you make them shut up. It's again, not the politics, but simply because I don't think I can fully identify myself as a Chinese, I've never been to China, I don't know how to write simplified Chinese, I just don't think I'm that Chinese.

Sometimes I'm proud of such complications, and the fact that I have two passports. But I get so fed up when I have to identify myself as "I AM BORN IN TAIWAN AND IMMIGRATED TO CANADA AND NOW AM A DUAL CITIZEN OF BOTH CANADA AND TAIWAN, OF WHICH THE LATTER IS ALSO KNOWN AS THE REPUBLIC OF CHINA BUT IS NOT REALLY A CHINA THOUGH SOME CALL IT THE SAME CHINA BUT NOT EVERYONE AGREES."

The girl who played with fire [on books] - tempting indeed

Recently I realised that I am, possibly, cursed by books.

We all feel that way sometimes, we have to study for tests, and we have to read about boring things, which is a pain. But this time, the curse went further for me.

So these days, I have to do some research for my class, and I paid a lovely visit to Koernor and Irving. I came out with a huge stack of them. It was so heavy that I had a back pain, this is curse #1.

Now I borrowed this one published in 1942, so it's quite ancient, and thus it smells ancient. And ancient books smells bad. I was flipping through it page by page as I read, and I simply could not avoid the terrible stench of rotten wood squirming out from the book. But there were 200 pages or so, I couldn't stop right away. I tried all sorts of methods. First I placed my nose against my detergent-smelling sleeves, no use, the smell penetrates through it!!! Then I breathe with my mouth, but a part of the smell goes through my nose still. Then I held a muffin under my nose, the mixture smelled worse. By the time I gave up, I became so disgusted by the smell that I was nauseated that I really felt like puking. So I ended up resting on bed for half an hour, which happened to be the best remedy.

This morning - well, this afternoon - I was awoken by the phone rings. When I woke up, the ring's melody told me that unless I pick it up within 10 seconds, or the call will be cut off. So I jumped out of my bed and attemped to "leap" over to the phone as fast as I could until I triped over the huge pile of books that I borrowed. Even worse, I landed on my forefront on the ground, and some how, the hit was transferred to my hips, now my already-big bottom is swelled while I have two red carpet-marks on my knees.

Oh - and great. I just got an e-mail from ubc saying that they're going to charge me $8 dollars for my overdue books from last term.

I seriously hate books now.

卡夫卡or木村

近期我的生活充滿兩件事
1. 德國近代文學
2. 日劇
非常豪不相干的兩個topic.

因為在學校拿了副修的德國文學, 所以開始讀很多卡夫卡還有尼采. 之前拿歐洲文學時就讀過一次卡夫卡的 "變形記", 所以這次是第二次讀. 卡夫卡作品果然不能只看一遍, 我一直以為這小說是他自己亂寫出來給朋友笑笑的, 但沒想到我越看越覺得這故事真的很詭異. 雖然是短短一篇, 可是卡夫卡1914年寫這篇時, 實實在在的把20世紀非常受歡迎的現代主義和存在主義用最不直接的方式寫出來了, 明明是第二次看, 可是越看越想哭, 越覺得可怕, 越覺得世界怎麼可以被人類玩成這個樣子! 也不知道他是不是瞎猜還是真的很聰明, "變形記" 似乎像是本預言書, 記載了許多那世紀將會發生的事情, 其中包括納粹大屠殺. 難道這些真的都被卡夫卡預料到了嗎! 怪可怕的. 越讀他的作品, 越覺得卡夫卡這個人很有個性, 給人的感覺有點像文學界的莫札特, 當然也沒那麼悲慘...
尼采的更不用說了, 看他的"道德普系學"之後才覺得這人沒瘋掉才怪.


當然, 除了學習和工作之外也有很多日劇! 像這次春季日劇蠻精采的! 不光是收視率, 劇本也很吸引我!! 光是這季就有 "我家的歷史" 打頭陣, 已經看了兩遍啦, 現在正在追上戶的 "絕對零度", 阿部的 "新參者", 松雪的 "Mother", 還有那幫年輕人的 "無法坦承相見". 一直以為我絕對會守木村的月9, 沒想到, 看了第一集馬上就知道我絕對會放棄這部.... 不知道媒體在high什麼, 說什麼木村新劇首播收視率冠軍, 可喜可賀, 林志玲表現令人讚賞, 功不可沒什麼的. 月之戀人第一集的確是收視冠軍 (木村嘛!), 但同時卻是木村主演日劇的首播最低收視... 網友就指出, 木村平常收視都是比競爭者+5~6%, 但這次卻只比阿部高1%, 嘖嘖, 不像平常的木村. 但是看了第一集, 發現這種收視率的確很有說服力, 因為以卡司, 上海外景, 等等, 這劇真的沒有很吸引我, 套句有名的"劍心"說的, 是很符合22%的收視率. 以成本算, 這根本就是慘敗嘛. 木村最近太讓我失望了..!! 原本之前很期待的Mr. Brain也是, 越來越不經典了, 拜託這位先生慎選劇本行嗎?! 角色真的蠻失敗的, 難道要走韓劇路線嗎?! eeeek. 木村, 北川, 和林小姐..受不了呀. 唯一有月9大牌風範的的就是篠原涼子啦, 我想就算追下去, 也是會為了他.

Will I learn this time..

Today, something horrifying happened. And I thought I would record this story just to remind myself the danger of expired food.

Now I don't know about other people, but I have this habit of keeping all sorts of food in my fridge or even outside of my fridge. And I have several good reasons for doing this. One, I don't believe in expiry dates. I think a food can be edible regardless of the numbers written on there, that's just to scare people. Besides, they still look perfectly fine, why throw them away? Two, if a food is bad, then I would have to throw it into the garbage can, taking up its space, hence more frequent times for me to take out the garbage. Three, throwing it into the garbage would mean smelly garbage as the organics decompose, I'd rather keep it in the fridge, at least the food won't smell as bad.

This habit of mine did not aggravate until a couple years ago, when I started to live by myself, and with my brother sometimes.... obviously we share the same perspective in terms of food keeping. In fact I think it runs in the family, at least among the siblings. In 2008, our fridge broke while I was out of the country. The most my brother could do was to move all the things out to the balcony. It wasn't until three weeks after I came back did I decide to clean them out, I couldn't stand the smell anymore.... And also, I remember my mum complaining that she spent two hours cleaning out my sister's fridge in London, while finding old matters that she mailed to her a year ago. Anyway, fridge cleaning became a common ritual when my parents visit their children, whether in Vancouver, or in London. Too bad they have little time to visit my brother in Victoria. Oh I believe his fridge is much more interesting than mine.

Jack never liked the way I keep my food. He says I will get food poisoning one day. Same with Anna, though I don't think she's better than me, she did throw out my bananas once because she couldn't stand the way they became so black and "baggy".

Now I will really get into the story. This morning when I got up, actually afternoon to be honest, I felt like eating hash brown. I don't know about other people, but when I want to eat something, I seriously want to eat that thing. So I started preparing for hash brown. Making hash browns is simple, all you need is basically a potato. I looked into my good o' fridge, and there it was! Two big brown potatoes! I happily took them out and examined them, as I did with all my other food products that comes from the fridge (I know I hate to "refuse" to eat my food, but sometimes, as long as you're rational, you really must throw them out, for example, my chocolate cake which turned into something that resembled a green tea chocolate brownie after a couple weeks). Anyway, I realised that there were funny little green tissues sticking out from the potatoes. They were hard and spiky, they just didn't look right on a potato. I contemplated with whether or not to eat it, but decided the hell with it. I thought, as long as I chop them off, it will all be normal, and that's what I did.

While I was frying the grated potato, I realised that the colour is weird. Normally they turn into golden and crunchy bits, but this time they are grey and gooey. But I didn't think too much, I ate it with ketchup and pleasure. It tasted pretty good actually, though kind of like chewing gums, the texture made it delicious, I was just about to type on my facebook status: "Oh my gosh! I just made the best hash brown ever!"

Everything was fine until after I got to work. While I was arranging the tea boxes I began to feel this weird nausea. Then it was okay for a moment.... THEN A TERRIBLE STOMACH ACHE... then okay again.... THEN A FEELING OF "SERIOUSLY, I NEED A TOILET RIGHT AWAY". I ran out of the store while my boss was giving me instructions and raced towards the washroom. Usually the washroom is empty, because we only share it with the staffs from Blue Ruby, but this time SOMEONE JUST HAD TO BE INSIDE! I walked back and forth, trying to ease my pain, and I thought maybe I should just go to the backstreet and finish my business there. Thank goodness she came out soon enough, I ended up staying in there for twenty minutes.... never have I loved a toilet so much. I went back to the store, thinking that everything was alright now, did cash for a while, UNTIL THE THING HIT AGAIN. I was in so much pain that as soon as I stuffed the change into the customer's palm, I ran to the washroom again,... this time, I stayed in there for another twenty minutes. That was finally the end.

I thought I would share this little story with Anna An, she has to know too, since she is just like me. She listened to my story attentively, and she finally said, "you know Sherry, I understand how you feel, and I know too that you shouldn't eat potatoes with things growing out of it". I curiously asked, "how did you know that?"

"Ohhhhh~ Because I ate them before too".

咪咪果然是我的好貓

剛才走到廚房去到水的時候, 神智不清的居然把肩膀櫃子的那個尖尖的角狠狠的撞了一下!

痛到我覺得這根本就是滿清十大酷刑似的折磨, 右手抓著左肩不放, 馬上跑回床上不停的打滾和怒吼

這時咪咪跑來床邊, 眼睛瞪的大大的, 隨即跳上來到我旁邊, 看了躺在床上的我一下, 在看我的肩膀, 結果!!! 他居然坐下來, 用它的頭拱我的左手臂, 讓主人我太感動了! 我的貓怎麼會這麼懂事呢! 還會幫主人咻咻~ 果然是我教出來的貓!