I grew up in a missionary family with the church of Christ in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. I love taking people through the Bible. My beloved books posts are a partial life story. You can also check out my favorite movies, music, quotes, and some of my favorite poetry and humor.
There are so many things I wanted to write (and re-write) for this blog before I opened it but that is neverending. For the sake of my relatives I miss so much, two years of tinkering is long enough.
Let's just say I treat the posts on my site more like pages -- if I can think of a better way to write something I will change it.
I don't yet have Chinese versions of my articles but some of the links on my pages are bilingual, so if you see little squares instead of Chinese, it's not a virus, it's just that your computer doesn't have East Asian languages installed.
I like ...
blue twilights when it feels like you're walking in a fishbowl of blue
glowy wet gold sunsets when you get pink twilight at the same time
the smell of libraries
silver pelting rain cocooning me at home
crusty salty buttery cornbread
cold seedless grapes in summer
hamburgers that have been left out to "sour" before cooking
Bliss is ...
- being thirsty and devouring 4 red mangoes
- coming back from the market tired and thirsty and gulping down two glasses of fresh coconut juice - the perfect liquid light sweetness when water doesn't taste good
- sinking my mouth into a pungent durian - the lindburger of fruit, but it's as sweet as ice cream, as creamy as ice cream and stronger tasting than ice cream
a hot shower after swimming, if I had a waterproof laptop I would probably work and sleep in the shower all winter
Stretching out on my own hard bed, a 1-inch pallet on tile, falling asleep to the hypnotic ring of crickets and frogs - I totally understand now hearing stories of travelling Asians who sleep on the carpet instead of the motel bed, and why returned POWs sleep on the floor. The hardness is like a built-in muscle massage, and if you're lucky your tailbone will pop.
wanting to die of happiness walking for five hours on the moors of Skye
Weird Things You Didn't Know About Me
I was once stung by a bee at the base of the ball of my foot and it felt really good. A pulsating VROOM ... VROOM massaging the core of my foot for a few hours, I was very sorry when it faded. (Wasps are not the same.)
If I'm not careful, almost every time I go to the library I get ravenously unbearably hungry, sometimes even when I've eaten before going. It's a Pavlovian reaction to the smell of books that started when my mom went back to the States for a visit in the spring of 2009 and I took my little sister to the library everyday. Just knowing that I was responsible for getting us supper and I could choose whatever I wanted, started that raw feeling in my stomach.
I can't watch a first-time movie and eat at the same time, because I can't look at my food and the screen at the same time. Eating is so absorbing and a movie so entrancing, I can't bear to do both simultaneously; it's an insult to food which tastes so wonderful I can't hear the movie dialogue over the explosion of flavors in my mouth. I scrounge more than I cook anyway, so when somebody actually cooks me a meal I want to do it justice. If I'm starving, I'll eat half a bowl and finish my supper after the movie.
I wear my clothes to bed. My legs go jittery without an exoskeleton of jeans. Growing up, I used to feel wobbly kneed and sapped of energy wearing a drafty skirt on Sundays until my mom told me it was just because my nerve endings were conditioned to feel comfortable in pants from wearing them all the time. She said that somebody used to skirts would find jeans confining. So realizing it was all in my head, I was finally able to wear more of the beautiful skirts I love. However, since I've never learned to wear skirts on a bike (my daily transportation), and I like to start my day beautifully dressed to the nines (and not wearing something I'll have to change when I go out), I'm back to jeans, though I try to find the most fairy-tale minidress to wear over them.
I can zip through the crush of motorcycles going to market on my bike if I slightly unfocus my eyes and space out, suddenly all the trajectories pop out at me and I know where my bike needs to be without thinking about it. If I lock on to any one thing and purposely try to analyse the situation, my brain slows waay doowwn like the centipede who can't move a step after he's asked which foot he lifts up first. Please do not try this yourself and send me news of a crash resulting from this paragraph.
I saw each of the LOTR movies 5 times each in the movie theater, each time with different groups of friends. (However, they are the ONLY movies I have been to see in the past 20 years - except for Prince of Egypt twice and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe once.)
I would live in a tent before I would become a mortgage-slave. If I die from an intruder, I die. Take out a mortgage and for the next 20 years I'm stuck at a nine-to-five job to pay for something I've already lost interest in. What is the point of a house if you can't have a life? You can have the three car garage. Give me my own private leisure time any day.
Besides, most houses are depressingly glorified caves. The only good house is one with the walls knocked out, and replaced with glass. Usually, the view outside is many times better than anything you could put on the wall. I crave grass and sky because I grew up in a city of cement and tile, and catching a view of pine trees from a bus would set my heart pounding for Georgia.
Size doesn't matter. With me clutter expands to fill floorspace, so I'll take a tiny footprint as long as it's all window. Then I would skip the nine-to-five job and write in the grass all day. See the decor section of my other blog Ozmatique.
If they ask, I tell children the truth about Santa Claus. It is with great forbearance that I refrain from telling them before they ask. My dad refused to lie to us about Santa Claus, he said, because then how could we believe him about God? That's what happened to this poor guy (outside link).
