Reboot

Well, I'm back in the land down under. It's good to be home, even if I do miss China. I definitely don't miss the Great Firewall.

I'm with my parents at the moment. It's great, because I am Lady Muck, but 12 hours is a bit too long a commute. Thankfully I have found a flat in Sydney. It isn't my ideal flat, but it is a roof over my head, and that's the main thing. Now it is just arranging a mover, which I can't do until I know everything I'm taking down, which I can't do til my flatmate measures the room which will be my study.

I have the sneaking suspicions that Ikea will feature in the future.

I also told my parents about this blog. I feel that this may have been a mistake. Well, Mum, Dad, if you see me bitching on this blog, tough noogies.

My laptop is broken, and the new battery and power cord are on the way. Of course, this has added to my feeling that everything is happening at once. I hope things calm down once I'm back at Uni. And I've moved into the new flat properly.

Hoprefully, I'll soon rediscover coherence. I have lots of thinky thoughts just begging to made into blog posts.

But that's later.

Reading Comprehension

Today my 综合 teacher told me my reading was excellent. Which is good and all, except she sounded so surprised. I mean, yes thanks, I am not actually the class dunce. I misread one character: I said 住 (zhu) instead of 往 (wang). I’ve done worse, certainly, but I felt like she thought I was incompetent.

Just when I thought I was getting good at this shit.

In other news, I have a new hot water bottle. It is red and soft and fuzzy. They sell electric hot water bottles here, but I just… the thought of the combination of electricity and water seemed like a recipe for disaster, so no. Just no.

Friday's Photo

This was taken last Thursday, in Tiger Leaping Gorge.
I wanted to include one that I took on Friday morning, but alas, it seems to be on Mum's camera which is back in Australia.

On Friday morning, eating breakfast with this view, my Dad turns to me and says, "Where's the entrance to the Mountain Kingdom?"

And I say, "What?" thinking he's being serious.

Dad says, "Where do I go to knock on the secret door by moonlight so I can go into the under the mountain kingdom?" (and he calls me a geek).

I say, "Dad there is thing called fiction..."

Later on, when we were hiking, I looked at the mountains and saw what looked like a tiny cave mouth near the top of the gorge on the other side. (The photo on Mum's camera.)

"Look Dad," I said, "Moria."

"Let's go!" he replied.

Saturday Song

Life Effect by Stars

sorry for wasting your time
five long months on the telephone line
hours of asking if you were fine
and saying i was fine too

sorry but i’ve got to go
the birth was quick but the death is slow
there was so much i didn’t know
and so much i never knew about you

and so we disconnect, the room grows quiet around us
it’s called the life effect, will it always surround us?

who made you happy last night?
i don’t know his name, but christ can he fight
as i fell, he told me you had a light
i light that shone inside you

i found myself a decent man now
i love him because i can
the bravest that i’ve ever been
was when i ran away from you

and so we disconnect, the room grows quiet around us
it’s called the life effect, will it always surround us?
and so we disconnect, the room grows quiet around us
nothing left to protect, the end has finally found us

the day is almost over, it’s almost time for bed. so now you’ve finally lost me, rest your weary head....

Word of the Day

Susurration.

I like the way it sounds. I like sibilance of it; I've always had a week spot for 's' sounds. It's the sound of slow, comfortable conversation, of people who know each other too well to have to speak loudly. It's the sound of people sitting on the verandah with their shoulders touching, leaning on each other, into each other, drinking tea together, birdsong as the backdrop and the wind teasing the trees as they softly share secrets.

Word of the Day

Heuristic.

... yeah I was writing an essay.

Oh No November!

I've gone insane(r).

I signed up for NaNo. There's this novel I've been planning for YEARS, which I could never get to work, and I've finally said fuckit and decided to write it as the big, sprawling epic it wants to be, all about Gods and Demons and Angels and Fae and Mages, and a love story... I figure, I'll write it until the story is done. That was my block, I forgot it was a story first of all.

So I signed up for NaNo. I have a 5000+ word research project due in November (which involves talking to people. I AM NOT GOOD AT TALKING TO PEOPLE). And my mother and grandfather arrive in China on the 6th and in Kunming on the 12th. And if I want to submit stories to the UTS Anthology (and I do) I have to have them written. And this in ADDITION to the 16 hours of language class I have each week, which carries ungodly amounts of homework with it...

I may not survive.

Of course, typically of my family, my parents are bitching to me about my Grandpa not being organised, and my Grandpa has just emailed me asking if I can get my parents into gear, because it makes much more sense to talk to the 22 year old who is in another country than to pick up the phone and talk to each other, I don't even know.

Can it be December already?

Word of the Day

Collocate.

This was in my Chinese textbook as the translation for 搭配, and I thought it must be a typo. Nope, turns out it's an actual word. You learn something new every day.

Quote what I like

Historically, with whom do we fight the most frequently? It is our nearest neighbors or those closest to us in terms of religious or social ideology, even our family members. Christians, Jews and Muslims? Neighbouring clans in Africa, or gangs in New York? Husbands and wives? It often appears that it is not truly the "other" that we fear. It is the all-too familiar, yet different in ways that shock our sensibilities, that we rail against most loudly. Being understandable to us, we cannot easily consider them so foreign as to ignore.
- Sam Mitchell

Someone said it better

I wanted to write a post, but then I read this, and realised I wanted to post that instead.