Making Connetions

Today I went to couchsurfing weekly Pub meeting trying to meet locals and travelers. As usual, there were a mixed of couchsurfers from mostly Montreal, but they were nice people. I met a writer and basically I told her I cannot write.

It is not too easy to meet people in Montreal though, and for rootless people I guess we have to learn to make friends "fast" since we move around. I think by now I have a formula of how to seek and pinpoint my "friends". Still, it takes times and effort, and sometimes I am just so tired of making more connections like these. However, I should never give up!

Another thing to point out is: It is DAMN HARD to ask girls for a date in Montreal. I am sorry I am not hot but I am not ugly.

Anyway, it takes times to adapt to a new place, and as my friend said, sometimes I am fighting with local culture too so. I will take it easy.

Unmotivated and sad

I miss L. I want to move to Germany. They will offer me subsidized German classes, which I'd rather take instead of writing or revising PhD statements. Sequestering myself in random places to read has begun to take its toll and I feel disconnected with the community here (not sure I have ever been 100% connected?). My immediate colleagues and friends have been supportive by letting me sit in their office(s) and work instead of having to spend hours in libraries and cafes. This helps a bit, although it doesn't make me want to write my statements any faster. Why bother when I still have no funding?

Maybe I should have followed the recommendation of the aptitude test I took in tenth grade and studied to be an interpreter/translator.

Sigh.


P.S. On a brighter note, I bought my colleague and his wife some stuff on Amazon for the baby that's arriving on Wednesday-ish. It's from their registry so hopefully they'll like it. What did people do before registries could be put on the internet--seriously?

April showers bring May flowers?

It's been raining on my parade all month.

1. Apparently, when applying for funding from a U.S. government agency to travel abroad, being a rootless third culture kid screws you. Why? They (seems to be both the U.S. and China) want people to have a unique study abroad experience and share "culture" (whatever the hell that means). They don't want people who have traveled a lot and are likely to instead tell them how much b.s. it is to "share culture" (again, what the hell does that mean).

So, I wasn't entirely denied the money---I was named an "alternate". Based on the anonymous forum (and spreadsheet someone started in GoogleDocs) for aforementioned grant, the people receiving this grant have never spent much time abroad. In fact, most of them are just SO EXCITED! to be OMG LIVING IN CHINA FOR A YEAR!!!

Nevermind that I have thus far paid every @!@@#& trip and year abroad out of my own pocket because my PhD program requires me to be nearly fluent in Chinese before getting to this point in the first place. Argh.

2. I won't be taking my PhD qualifying exams until September. This has its benefits, but it also has its drawbacks. Namely that while I'll have the whole summer to prepare, I will likely have to spend most of this summer unfunded. Of course, given that the economy is crap, our university seems to be imploding, and the library caught on fire spreading soot all over the fourth floor -- the books I need for QE prep -- I'm OK with eating the cost. Besides, I'll be with L in Germany all summer, then come back for the exam in September and then return to Germany. At that point (although hopefully much earlier) the rest of the funding agencies will have gotten back to me or not, and I'll be deciding whether or not it's worth trying to go to China before another season of proposal writing. If I don't get funding for China for next year, I'm not going. I'll keep applying, but I refuse to fund my own dissertation research. I already ate the cost for this PhD program once (Taiwan) and I'm not doing it again.

Noncoupable and Yen Ching Re-united!!

It was surreal and awesome that I finally re-united with noncoupable after two years, and noncoupable's wedding is the sweetest I have ever been to.

It is funny that my good friends are everywhere, and since a lot of my friends are rootless, we move everywhere too. So I think next time I will meet noncoupable in Europe! What I love about us is that we are not afraid of moving, and we go with the flow. However, recently, Yenching finally felt a little old first time in his life. Yesterday was my 29th birthday, and people around me are either getting married or having kids. I seems to "float" always. I really need to start to fulfill my dream soon!

Wonderful Weekends and Weddings

L is in town (*happy dance*) and last weekend and we (L and noncoupable) got married! Perfect weather: about 68F, sunny and blue skies on the beach. And to top it all off, Yen Ching flew in from Montreal to celebrate! There's nothing more awesome than when we re-unite. I think rootless people like ourselves have the distinct advantage that when we meet up, even if it had been almost two years (June 2008) since we last did any in-person (non-Skype, non-chat, non-phone) hanging out, it was just like old times. :D

Of course, the setting of Central Coast California is much nicer than the rainy and humid Taipei where we last met up...



Official title of this photo: noncoupable and Yen Ching re-unite! (photo taken on the UCSC campus)

Let's not wait another two years for our next reunion...