blueberry pancakes are yummy.

Father's day!! I made blueberry pancakes and my brother's gf brought chinese dim sum!!!

oh, i also made a poster. hehe

and my mom bought me ginormous grapefruit.

the end. (the rest of my pictures are all of chris and you guys are probably not that interested in his face)

just a note

i haven't taken any pictures even though i should have... because i have suspended myself from my camera before i end up with 200 photo albums on facebook. alice... did you make that map of the world/food?!

an early valediction.

First off, happy birthday Hann! Hope you've partaken of something yummy that looks like this (which I'd gladly attempt to make in secret while "taking Latin dancing classes"):


Anyway, I promise I'm not always up this early, although I've paradoxically been getting a lot less sleep at home than at school (but no all-nighters yet =P). At school, I felt like sleeping all the time; here, I never feel like sleeping. There's too much fun stuff to explore, and no psets or exams to worry about. Oh man, la vida loca indeed. The reason I'm conscious at this hour, though, is that my cousin and her kid JonJon (Jonathan) had a 6am flight today. Since she's pretty much my favorite relative, and he's definitely the cutest child I've ever seen, I'm already missing them lots.

It's weird-- you guys know I'm not as easy with kids as say, Jackie and Liz, but JonJon's been a welcome anomaly. Even when he was a baby, it wasn't hard to tease him or get him to laugh; this time around, he was always running to my brother ("Dinny!") or me ("Aa-shu!") for entertainment. The kid's a natural showman: usually, he'd end up amusing us at least as much as we amused him. He's two-and-a-half now, speaking a hodgepodge of Mandarin, Taiwanese, and English and often breaking out into spontaneous dancing or singing. My cousin taught him to imitate different emotions (e.g. angry, sleepy, scared) and animal sounds as well, and he's a very very good actor. For some reason, he likes pink a lot (Jackie you've got a follower!) and kept asking to try on pink dresses and skirts at clothes stores. Perhaps it's because his four-year-old girl cousin made him pretend to be her bridesmaid and watch too many princess movies in Taiwan. Man, I wish I'd gotten videos or something because I can't even start capturing his hilarious performances in words... He's also fiendishly smart and knows how to read people-- he'll plead for help from bystanders if his mom is trying to punish him, and he often complains that "Mommy 打, Mommy 捏" when she's not there (she doesn't, really) and denies doing so when she asks. He'd spout "oh man oh man" and try to hide in the closet when his mom got super-angry. Ah, clever kid =P.

In any case, he's basically been a big part of my past three weeks at home (has it been that long already?!) and probably helped me establish a normal routine for working/playing. Mornings were for rapid and semi-focused studying, until the point when JonJon woke up to 吃包包. Then, my cousin'd tell me stories about how JonJon had nightmares about geckos and "bad men" coming from the ceiling. The early afternoon was frolicking-with-JonJon time, a.k.a walking around Barnes and Noble or Walmart/Target or TJ Maxx/Marshall's for a few hours. After JonJon's mid-afternoon nap, we'd all head to the park, where JonJon had fun sliding and swinging and my brother and I ran around playing tennis, frisbee, or ping-pong. Cooking for dinner commenced at sundown, when the playground grew too dark, and my cousin supportingly sampled my concoctions. We had fish every night for a while because JonJon doesn't really eat beef or pork yet. He had this especially funny habit of chirping "好吃嗎?" numerous times at my brother, and for some reason, he would randomly scream "走開啊!" (go away!) at my mom. The night then concluded with my friend Anthony coming over for extended board gaming -- Settlers of Catan, Speed Scrabble, GrabScrab, Trivial Pursuit, chess -- preluded by extreme romping with JonJon ("tickle Ninny!", "飛高高", "玩犀牛"). I think Anthony turned out to be one of JonJon's favorite people; JonJon'd always yell "Annie, Annie, Annie!" when he came, and scamper to perch in Anthony's lap. Come midnight, JonJon'd retreat to bed with a "goo-nigh!" to everyone, and roughly two hours later, I'd collapse in my bed to read until I passed out. Rinse, repeat.

But now for some pictures =).

And voici, the results of my sketchy kitchen experiments (I left Chinese/Taiwanese dishes to my mom, who's way better at making 'em than I am):


Oh my goodness I am confuddled by html!

rambly.

yo all,

went to osaka this past weekend - twas amazing and I owe you all food photos, haha... this weekend will be a buddhist temple atop koya-san, center for shingon buddhism in japan =) can't wait to go vegetarian for a weekend! the japanese may be big on fish but they could do with some more vegetables... anyway I'm letting this post? letter? run disjointed and free since I need to get back to lab, but two totally unrelated things first (I hope)

(1) I'm old!

(2) what happened to the futon in the end?

Hey ladies!!!

i've been internetless for a while, but am back and kickin`!!! moved into the YMCA yesterday... fell asleep in work today... yada yada. hope tomorrow is better.

christopher came over to my house yesterday for some flushing yumminess and ZHONG ZI celebrations (some random chinese holiday) my mom stuffed him with so much food both in flushing and in my home!!! ive never seen chris so incapacitated by food... yup yup! lots of steak. i took care of the broccoli. we also watched JUNO on pay per view.

everyone in my program is trying to starve themselves this summer since we are dining hall-less and nyc is expensive. good thing my mommy is delivering me some tofu tomorrow night!!! unless i go out to eat with chris or something...

KUNG FU PANDA!!!

photoblog!

hey guys,

hope you're all doing well in your neck of the woods. i just got back to canaday from commencement...it's so misty-cold! update on that, and maybe a few stories i've been meaning to tell you, later. for now, here's something i'm really proud of: i finally started a photoblog at http://technicolorgreen.wordpress.com. it's been a great way to meet cambridge and to celebrate life :). i took about 250 pictures this morning, so some will be up later, but i hope you guys like the blog. tell me what you think!

now off to see jk rowling! i love you all.

mwrohn

dude, guys,
it's 3:01 am and i'm too lazy to get off the web and go to sleep. urrgh. my laptop is burning up my leg, as i'm too lazy to move my leg argh. i have SO MANY stories for you...but two points for today:

--i had a sushi party by the charles river. we should do that next year--raid cafe sushi for take-out and then hightail it to the rivah banks.

--i forgot what the second point is. oh yes, i have no clean clothes, but the clothes donated to habitat have been pretty sweet, so i've worn random dresses for four days running. yay for free loot.

mo' lata. hann's gonna cream those scrabblers in japan, i just know it.

first real day in kobe!

hey lovely roomies,

here's a rundown of some interesting stuff that's happened today:

(1) I've signed up for a Scrabble tournament on June 22 in Kobe! =) It's an "International" language tourney, which means I get to play in English, woohoo. *is very excited, even though will probably lose miserably*

(2) I've also gotten a gym membership at the local YMCA (dun dun dun... this is for you, Jaxie =P). Something tells me this may be a mistake, but this is what happens when I end up hanging out all the time with an athlete, who's already planned to run every morning and goes to the gym for like an hour and a half every night. I admire his stamina, really o.O

(3) my japanese cell phone managed to mysteriously die on me over the course of one weekend. mrp.

(4) my lab consists of two frenchmen, a russian, a swede (whom I'm working with)... and four japanese researchers. the swede incidentally has lived in hong kong for a while, and speaks better cantonese than I do.

in short, I am living la vida amazinga. keep me posted on how things are going!