The Butt-Ends of My Days and Ways: Leisure

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10月29日

The New Yorker writes "Sister Ping"

A co-worker gave me a The New Yorker magazine last week and told me to read the article that writes about snakeheads in Chinatown, New York. The article was very captivating and like many fuzhounese, I can more or less relate to stories like that. The article focuses on a woman that was considered the motor of the sneakhead business, and she was known to every Fuzhounese, both in the U.S. and back in China, as "Sister Ping" (in fuzhou dialect as Yee Ping Jia). Not surprisingly, both of my parents know her, and when I translated "Sister Ping" into Fuzhou dialect did I realize that I have actually been a patron at her restaurant.

The arduous journey that many Fuzhou people took to come to the U.S. (mostly through illegal means) is audacious, but yet admirable. When I was a little girl back in China, I had overheard many stories such as the ones described in the article. Many people that my family knew, including even someone from our own family, had tried to go on a boat, over many months, to land on what they called the land that had gold all over the streets. The stories told many successful one, but also many sad ones. I remember the conversations usually went on with the word "Pa2 Shan1", in English, it means "climbing mountains." Of course, no one can arrive in the U.S. by climbing mountains, but apparently that was the word people used to describe the journey that those people took across many mountains (at night) from China to Burma and then to Thailand. Some people were then went on a boat that took them across South Asia, Africa, and eventually the Atlantic Ocean; some other people, the luckier ones (probably involved paying a higher fee to the snakehead), were sent on a plane, holding a fake passport in their hands, and arrived in New York. The boat ride usually went on for months, and those people would hide in the cargo compartment, relying on dry peanuts, a little rice, and purified salt water. Many died, and many were caught and deported. Amazingly, many that got sent back to China tried again and again, and many were also caught time after time after being spotted along the Hudson River in New York.

Now I no longer live in Chinatown and Sister Ping was sentenced to 30+ years in jail. However, the number of Fuzhou people never ceased growing. Is America truly a land that filled with gold? Only time will tell...

For anyone that's interested in reading the article, here is the link and it's free:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060424fa_fact6

Source: The New Yorker

10月24日

The 5 Things that I'm Currently in Love with...

1. Kapo the Monkey -- Specifically, I like the pink one with "concave down" eyes. I like to think that he's frozen in time, mid-prayer. God is good, and you ought to love someone who loves God, but also so adorable at the same time.

2. Dae Gujiri -- My favorite Korean dish. It's got clawfish, tofu, mushroom, clam, and onion. All cooked in a hot clay pot. It's healthy and tasty (no added oil or MSG). Thanks to the Koreans in Northern Virginia and their hard-working spirit, I can eat this dish whenever I crave it (the restaurant is open 24/7).

3. 美丽的神话 -- Great song, though the movie did not blow me away. For some reason I just don't think Jacky Chan is the ideal candidate for playing the role of a loving/caring general. The women in this movie are yet another story. The theme song, which I heard a couple of days after seeing the movie, has done a lot more for me than the movie. It was also my first time listening to 孙楠's voice (even though my friends claimed that he's always been very popular in China) and I think he's truly amazing. Of course, music in general is truly amazing ...to me much more so than motion picutres.

4. Hot Showers -- There is really no explanation necessary here. If you don't agree, then you're out of Rongling's league.

5. "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger -- Just started reading this book over the weekend and I'm only 20% through. It's a riveting book (so far) and it's my first time reading a book that talks about time-traveling (hmm...fascinating). I don't want to give out too much detail here, but suffice it so say it deserves to be placed on the Best Sellers List.

Last thought: It feels good to write about something you LOVE!

P.S. In the midst of writhing this entry, Bush has nominated Bernanke to take over Allan's career. So far it looks like Bernanke is a better nominee than Miers. I'm gonna miss Allan. He's a great man, and a powerful one too. Allan Greenspan is truly the "Maestro."

9月26日

A Good Laugh

This can seriously crack me up....especially on a Monday:

Quotes taken from the wonderful book "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon:

"5. I pulled the fork out of the dog and lifted him into my arms and hugged him. He was leaking blood from the fork-holes.

I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.

I had been hugging the dog for 4 minutes when I heard screaming. I looked up and saw Mrs Shears running towards me from the patio. She was wearing pyjamas and a housecoat. Her toenails were painted bright pink and she had no shoes on.

She was shouting, "What in fuck's name have you done to my dog?"

I do not like people shouting at me. It makes me scared that they are going to hit me or touch me and I do not know what is going to happen.

"Let go of the dog," she shouted. "Let go of the fucking dog for Christ's sake."

I put the dog down on the lawn and moved back 2 metres.

She bent down. I thought she was going to pick the dog up herself, but she didn't. Perhaps she noticed how much blood there was and didn't want to get dirty. Instead, she started screaming again.

I put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes and rolled forward till I was hunched up with my forehead pressed onto the grass. The grass was wet and cold. It was nice."

Another one (Brilliant!!!):

"11. Then the police arrived. I like the police. They have uniforms and numbers and you know what they are meant to be doing. There was a policewoman and a policeman. The policewoman had a little hole in her tights on her left ankle and a red scratch in the middle of the hole. The policeman had a big orange leaf stuck to the bottom of his shoe which was poking out from one side.

The policewoman put her arms round Mrs Shears and led her back towards the house.

I lifted my head off the grass.

The policeman squatted down beside me and said, "Would you like to tell me what's going on here, young man?".

I sat up and said "The dog is dead."

"I'd got that far," he said.

I said, "I think someone killed the dog."

‘How old are you?' he asked.

I replied, "I am 15 years and 3 months and 2 days."

"And what, precisely, were you doing in the garden?" he asked.
"I was holding the dog,' I replied.

‘And why were you holding the dog?" he asked.

This was a difficult question. It was something I wanted to do. I like dogs. It made me sad to see that the dog was dead.

I like policemen, too, and I wanted to answer the question properly, but the policeman did not give me enough time to work out the correct answer.

"Why were you holding the dog?" he asked again.

"I like dogs," I said.

"Did you kill the dog?" he asked.

I said, "I did not kill the dog."

"Is this your fork?" he asked.

I said, "No."

"You seem very upset about this," he said.

He was asking too many questions and he was asking them too quickly. They were stacking up in my head like loaves in the factory where Uncle Terry works. The factory is a bakery and he operates the slicing machines. And sometimes the slicer is not working fast enough but the bread keeps coming and there is a blockage. I sometimes think of my mind as a machine, but not always as a bread-slicing machine. It makes it easier to explain to other people what is going on inside it.
The policeman said, ‘I am going to ask you once again…'

I rolled back onto the lawn and pressed my forehead to the ground again and made the noise that Father calls groaning. I make this noise when there is too much information coming into my head from the outside world. It is like when you are upset and you hold the radio against your ear and you tune it halfway between two stations so that all you get is white noise and then you turn the volume right up so that this is all you can hear and then you know you are safe because you cannot hear anything else.

The policeman took hold of my arm and lifted me onto my feet.

I didn't like him touching me like this.

And this is when I hit him."

About Prime Numbers:

"19. Chapters in books are usually given the cardinal numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on. But I have decided to give my chapters prime numbers 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 and so on because I like prime numbers.

This is how you work out what prime numbers are.

First, you write down all the positive whole numbers in the world.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 910
11121314151617181920
21222324252627282930
31323334353637383940
414243444546474849etc.

Then you take away all the numbers that are multiples of 2. Then you take away all the numbers that are multiples of 3. Then you take away all the numbers that are multiples of 4 and 5 and 6 and 7 and so on. The numbers that are left are the prime numbers.

2357
11131719
2329
3137
414347etc.

The rule for working out prime numbers is really simple, but no one has ever worked out a simple formula for telling you whether a very big number is a prime number or what the next one will be. If a number is really, really big, it can take a computer years to work out whether it is a prime number.
Prime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America they are classed as Military Material and if you find one over 100 digits long you have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,000. But it would not be a very good way of making a living.

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them."

This is THE best book I read last year (that's why it didn't make it to my reading list). Everyone should read it. I hope one of my friends from college can write a book that's funnier and better!!! (You know who you are! *Wink*)