pictorial

do you think the people who bought my used books off amazon enjoyed receiving their packages?

my friends in iceland

wow i can't imagine this being any worse

oldies but goodies

plane's-eye-view

it's impossible to properly capture how glorious flying into la at night is

princess of supernatural favour

the town my mom comes from is called nan (or south) fangao - 南方澳. there is also a bei (north) fangao. when all the people who lived in bei fangao were moved so that the area could be turned into a military base, the only thing that didn't move was the temple to Mazu, the goddess of the seas and protector of all sailors and fishermen. the people went to the temple and asked her, by using divination blocks, if she wanted to move to bei fangao. the divination blocks, or bwa bwei, are red, crescent-shaped wooden blocks that you throw on the ground. depending on how they land, your question will be answered with a yes or a no. she repeatedly said no, so the temple stayed. when we were looking for a new cook and caretaker for my grandpa's house in yilan, the woman who was interested in the position was taken to the local Mazu temple by a family friend and they used the divination blocks to ask Mazu if she approved of this woman working for our family. apparently the answer was yes.

we have two altars on the third floor of the house in nan fangao, where i spent most of this past week. the one on the left is dedicated to our ancestors and the one on the right is to the gods. i'm not particularly religious, but the questions i asked for new year's were:

(abbreviated)

to the gods: 

is bagel a good man? yes

is graduate school a good idea? no

i can't remember the last one

to the ancestors:

is bagel a good man? yes

is going to graduate school a good idea? no

do you watch over me? yes

three years

happy belated third birthday, bloggins! it was sometime this week, but i am too broken to check the date right now because i woke up sick today and have been feverish, nauseous, headached, and plagued by full-body pain and chills. i also think i need an epidural because my lower back hurts so much. i might have malaria - i killed a mosquito (the only insect i kill) this morning and it left a streak of blood on the pillow. webMD says,

Common symptoms of malaria

In the early stages, malaria symptoms are sometimes similar to those of many other infections caused by bacteria, viruses, or parasites. Symptoms may include:

• Fever.
• Chills.
• Headache.
• Sweats.
• Fatigue.
• Nausea and vomiting.

Other common symptoms of malaria

Other common symptoms of malaria include:

• Dry (nonproductive) cough.
• Muscle and/or back pain.
• Enlarged spleen.

maybe i have malaria. i'll let you know if any "life-threatening complications develop rapidly."

zodiac heads

mrs. tuckersman is a virgo who loves capricorns and i am a rabbit with a real thing for tigers

People still give birth to babies. There are a few nice parks.

Last night my good friend Fife texted me to ask if I wanted to go see the Ai Weiwei exhibition. I texted back "Sure" and, absentmindedly - "what is it." Ridiculous, because I know well enough who Ai Weiwei is and was very much moved the Newsweek coverage of his supporters folding money into paper airplanes and flying them into his yard to help fight his tax evasion charges. Very luckily, Fife and I were able to catch the "Ai Weiwei, Absent" exhibition on its second-to-last day in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum on my second-to-last day in Taiwan. I was very excited to see things Weiwei'd made. We saw the photographs he took in New York while studying at Parsons and the pieces Grapes, Surveillance Camera, Colored Vases, Chairs, Watermelon, and Forever Bicycles, among others. I saw his Circle of Animals sculpture, which will also be up at LACMA until February 12th, so I'll go visit them again at home. Read his essay The City: Beijing.

I think sentimental personalities skip generations. My ma is a spartan, practical woman who rarely exhibits extreme outward emotions. I cry all the time and have my grandfather's sticky-handed attachment to objects (two days ago he was showing us his seventy-year-old middle school report cards) in addition to a chronically weepy attachment to people. Prior to this week I hadn't seen Fife in well over a year. It was really joyous to see a familiar face from Shanghai again and saying goodbye at the subway station made me feel deeply troubled, end-of-the-world sick and panicked like all hell. This same feeling when: I discovered this week that I have a great-aunt who lives on Long Island. I resolved to meet her when I am in town next month, which led to a long talk from my ma about why that can't really happen, all of it boiling down to how gender inequality and fighting over money and property have rent both the maternal and paternal sides of my family apart and left us all on antagonistic, non-speaking terms.

taiwanese mealtime

whenever we eat sit down to a meal here at my grandpa's house in 南方澳, my mom is always to my left, picking the most disgusting things out of the dishes on the table and eating them. i don't mind the fish eyes and the chicken feet, though i told her that i'm sure the chicken's feet were not washed before he was cooked, but yesterday she pulled the chicken head out of the soup and was gnawing on it and sucking on its skull with its beak sticking out of her mouth and that was really just intolerable.  

dragon year

happy chinese new year

 last night i beat the pants off of everyone in mahjong

ma's ma's ma, Hu Jiayu

today i learned that my great grandmother's name was 胡嘉鱼: Beautiful-Fish Hu

taiwantrotting

real magic night out on foot in shida, snus'in and boozin.

globetrotter

i have this impression of myself that i enjoy travel. however, whenever i actually do travel, i spend most of the beginning miserable and suffering through severe home sickness and various separation anxieties

shark lagoon nights

hell yes this is happening. it's going to be the new first fridays.

mercury's winged feet

peace be with you. i proceed

presents

some of my wonderful birthday presents

surprise from me to me

baby baby baby

b(ab)y the way, it's no longer a niecenephew, it's a niece.
see? i always get my way.

what day of the week is it again

more money

i just found some chinese RMB from shanghai in 2007 in a fake burberry wallet that i bought and never used. according to my badmath calculations, it's appreciated by about $15 in the time that i've forgotten about it, making baby monies behind my back. i guess i'll throw it in the ziploc with the rest of my chinachinese money, where it might compost before i remember that it's there again.

strangers

this morning there was a man panhandling on venice boulevard with a cardboard sign that said FOOD. i rolled down my window and he came over. i offered him the orange that i had planned on having for breakfast - he looked at it and walked away.
it ended up being a really good orange. and i composted the peel.

this afternoon in front of jamba a young man gave me the compliment, "Nice jammies." i said thank you instead of telling him that these are my day clothes, not pajamas.

birthday eve

on birthday eve last week i drank wine with my ma until we were silly

wet week ahead

jesus. i'm suddenly glad i impulse bought these

despite living in la

more from my mystery files

me and my cousin. she just got married this past summer

i recently went to a yoga class where i was stationed next to a girl with two double-jointed elbows. it was like watching a bird with broken wings trying to fly

mlk day

i just lit my hair on fire by leaning in to smell something cooking on the stovetop. my hair dipped into the flame and became a wildfire racing to my face.

ice ice baby

mostly not sick anymore, so finally had my decadent birthday ice at a taiwanese cafe. it was green tea and looked like pencil shavings but was fluffy like creamed snow with red bean and mochi. 

atrocious baby

on this occasion of birthday week, i would like to take the opportunity to remind the world about what a truly atrocious baby i was. please excuse the dog hair all over these scans

like a rodent about to bite

it really is birthday week

i woke up and a sleigh bells los angeles date was just announced this morning

i am so into alexis krauss

have a heart

so i took some decongestant medicine for sick people this morning and i was high as a kite for the majority of the day. the feeling was like would-be floating if not for an imp sitting on my chest heavy, and carbonated blood flowing through my body.

so here's my first-world problem: sleigh bells is performing in brooklyn the week AFTER i will be in new york. wah wah waaah

really want

i promise i'd wear them

birthday week

i think i'm sick again, which is one of a few things which have really sucked about this nascent birthday week. my nose is all stuffed and sneezing and when i sit still i feel like my head is floating away. however, here is photographic evidence of one of the wonderful things about birthday week. other things include having a reunion with my piggy yesterday after a year of separation, and plans to eat some really shamefully decadent shaved ice tonight even though sick people shouldn't have such things.

beautiful birthday week flowers from bagel

2012, only eight days in and already totally what the fuck

grades

braided spaghetti bread

pretty sure i've never wanted anything so bad. recipe here

sweet story

"The writing is on the wall" is also sometimes expressed as "the handwriting is on the wall" or as "mene mene." The first of those variations is an obvious synonym but what does "mene mene" mean? This is a shortening of "mene mene tekel upharsin," which is of Aramaic origin. If your Aramaic isn't that strong you can get some guidance from the Bible, Daniel 5, in the story of Belshazzar's feast. To cut a long Old Testament story short, Belshazzar was indulging in a drunken revelry and debasing sacred temple vessels by using them as wine goblets when a disembodied hand wrote "mene mene tekel upharsin" on the palace wall.

On the face of it, and using a literal translation, this appeared meaningless. The expression seemed to mean "two minas, a shekel and two parts" or alternatively "numbered, weighed, divided." None of this meant much to Belshazzar, who decided that he needed further interpretation and sent for the Jewish exile Daniel. It then became clear that the phrase was an elaborate wordplay, relying on the fact that each word can denote a different coin, and the third word can be interpreted as "Persia." Daniel's interpretation, as recorded in the first easily understood English version of the Bible, the King James Version, 1611, was:

And this the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This the interpretation of the thing:
MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.
TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.
PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.

The point of the moral tale was that Belshazzar couldn't see the warning that was apparent to others because he was engrossed with his sinning ways.

nye 11

last night we took our daily vitamins with tequila