Below are the 14 most recent journal entries recorded in lilorphansammy's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, February 21st, 2006
2:12 am	I Will Say It Once Here And I will say it many other times elsewhere. King Kong is a brilliant film. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 14th, 2006
12:38 am	Freedom Isn't Free Happy St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Speaking of love, I'm somewhat in love with a boy/businessperson/fashion model from Laos. Last year, I joined a website called OkCupid, which offers a variety of tests and personal ads which are fun for a period of perhaps 2 weeks. After those two weeks, I rarely checked my OkCupid emails, but after returning from Laos, I looked at them. To my surprise, I had an email from a student in Beijing. This is what it said: "sorry, can't agree some of your points. Well, China seems to be not as democratic as Taiwan, but don't you think you enjoy more freedom living in mainland? some kind of freedom you can never get from a so-called "democratic" society." I was curious. I responded this way. "I'm interested in what you think. I don't think there's much freedom at all in the mainland, especially freedom of speech and information, but I would very much like to know what kind of freedom can be found here that can never be gotten from a so-called "democratic" society." This is what he said today: "First of all, I have to admit that Chinese do enjoy little freedom of speech and information which you have in the democatic society. However, If you really start a living in mainland, you would noticed that, a large scales of companies were exempt from the taxes, I am telling the truth. Most of them could avoid paying such taxes and that's why we got so many millionaires in such a short period. It's just a secret known to all. Moreover, we don't have a social security number like you do in America, and that provide us a lot more freedom, such as we could open as many bank accounts as we like 'cause we don't need to sumbit our detail personal information whenever open one. That means the government can hardly trace the cash flows of every single accounts which provides more freedom to the illegal transations. So, I don't think Americans could emjoy such freedom as we do. From my point of view, Chinese sacrifice some to trade for other kinds of freedom which make them better-off although it's less moral. So what do you say?" I haven't said anything yet. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 18th, 2006
3:39 pm	Laos Vientiane-- I don't like white people. That was racist. I didn't mean it maybe. I'm going to go do a sauna massage now. (No monkey business). Love to all. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 27th, 2005
10:11 pm	Hahahaha Ms. Gann was wrong! I don't need math. I just need Microsoft Excel. Thank you Billy Gates and Jeffy Knezovich for casting light upon the darkness. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
10:09 pm	Boo Hoo Ms. Gann was right! I do need math!!!!!!! Grading is the most evil process in the world. Too many students. An odious Tourism and Business College that wants me to make the 3-minute final 70% of my students' grade. Per Jeff's suggestion, I decided to grade them on a more balanced scale that took more than 3 minutes of the semester into account. To do that, however, I must fudge the percentages on my official grade sheet. Wicked, wicked bosses. Transferring percentages was long lost by the time I transferred out of handsome Mr. Brady's calculus class. I will probably cry two or three times over the next three days to relieve the tension. Because I was violently ill from 3am-9pm on Christmas day, I didn't do any grading. The day before I didn't grade because I was busy eating and drinking things to make me violently ill. Grading, typing, crying. Grading, typing, crying. Some of my students might cry too after they see their grades. If they see their grades. Tomorrow morning, I must briefly teach. Then I must find Lisa and Chris and go the Laotian Consulate. What kind of life am I leading?!!!!!! (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 8th, 2005
1:39 am	Socialist Jokes 名畫要如詩句讀. 這個字不是我的, 是一張舊畫的. 上個上個星期我買了在昆明字畫店. 國民的時候做的. 太好看, 太 漂亮. 我明百他的字就要. 不好意思. 我要用漢字寫一點點. 是練習得不錯吧. 但是,我的漢字還太crappy. So we'll switch over to English now. I have two tutees. One is 15. His name is Gaitskell. He is a cute little thing with one of those adorably dreadful sparse mustaches that make a boy look permanently pubescent. He actually is pubescent, so I should give him a break. He studied in Beijing, speaks marvelous English, wears GQ-quality black clothing, and is far more articulate than most of my graduate students. My other tutee is 38. Her name is Leann. She was born in 1967, the second year of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. She's wealthy, has a 10 year-old son, and studied English in college 10 years ago, and wants a refresher so she can help her son with his studies and in case she and her husband decide to emigrate to Canada sometime soon. Leann told me a joke (if you can call it that) today. "There are four famous Chinese governments. One in Taiwan, one in Hong Kong, one in Singapore, and one in the mainland. "In Taiwan, there is freedom, there is democracy, but there is no rule of law. "In Hong Kong, there is freedom, there is rule of law, but there is no democracy. "In Singapore, there is rule of law, there is democracy, but there is no freedom. "In the mainland, there is no democracy, there is no freedom, and there is no rule of law. What we have is a billion people who all want to get rich." We had a very nice talk about independence and Taiwan. She reiterated what every mainland-raised Chinese acquaintance or friend has ever told me: that Taiwan is an inseperable part of China. But she continued in a much more interesting way than most of my students . . . others have told me that if Taiwan declared independence, it would be a massive security threat to China, that it would be insulting and intolerable to all Chinese people, that the Nationalists stole many of China's national treasures when they fled to the island and that the loss of them would be an act worthy of war. These assertions range from overemotional to truly bizarre. I don't quite understand how an "independent" Taiwan pointing missiles at China constitutes more of a security threat than the current "dependent" Taiwan pointing missiles at China. It seems a bit odd, too, that the idea of Taiwanese independence is "insulting and intolerable to all Chinese people" if the very Taiwanese people clamoring for independence are also, well . . . Chinese. And as for the stolen Chinese national treasures of the Guomindang--if they had been left in China, or if Taiwan had come under Communist rule in 1949--would the treasures have survived the destructive orgies of the Cultural Revolution? It seems that China forfeited most of it's cultural relics when the Red Guards began smashing up temples and burning copies of Confucius and Laozi. Not to mention the character simplification that turned 聽 into听 and 體 into 体. Saying "Whoops! We fucked up most of the national treasures in our care and mutilated our written language, so don't you dare declare independence! Come back to the motherland so you can be our cultural theme park!" seems like a somewhat dubious argument to me. Leann, however, said that she thought Taiwan should avoid independence, because, in fact, it was more Chinese than China. As an act of compassion, Taiwan should remain "The Republic of China" and let the mainland Han Chinese feel that their history and civilization is still preserved out there, somewhere, in what is nominally the same country. No segues. Joke #2: I got it from my roommate Chris, who got it from his summer Chinese tutor, Zhao Laoshi. It's supposed to be funnier in Chinese. "In the 1980s a railway is built. "At a certain point, there is a fork in the tracks, with two signs pointing opposite directions. "One arrow says 'Socialism'. "The other says 'Capitalism'. "The first train comes chugging down the line, driven by a dashing Ronald Reagan. "He sees the signs and says 'The American people want nothing to do with Godless, penniless socialism.' He pulls the switch, and the train chugs on toward capitalism. "Not long after, a second train comes chugging along, driven by a fiery Fidel Castro. "He sees the signs and unleashes a torrent of Cuban slang about capitalism being the road to moral decay, exploitation of the poor, and inequality. He pulls the switch the other way, and his train chugs on toward socialism. "A while later, a third train comes chugging down the tracks, driven by a crafty Deng Xiaoping. "He sees the signs and stops the train. Standing in the locomotive, he looks thoughtful for a moment. Then he climbs down from the train, walks to the signs, pulls them both out of the ground and switches them. "Then he climbs back into the locomotive, and chugs gloriously on toward socialism with a smile on his face . . ." Jeez it's late here. 晚安. Current Mood: Almost Comatose (Comment on this)
Monday, October 31st, 2005
4:41 pm	This is what I've been waiting for for years. Katharine Hepburn You scored 4% grit, 33% wit, 52% flair, and 14% class! You are the fabulously quirky and independent woman of character. You go your own way, follow your own drummer, take your own lead. You stand head and shoulders next to your partner, but you are perfectly willing and able to stand alone. Others might be more classically beautiful or conventionally woman-like, but you possess a more fundamental common sense and off-kilter charm, making interesting men fall at your feet. You can pick them up or leave them there as you see fit. You share the screen with the likes of Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant, thinking men who like strong women. Find out what kind of classic leading man you'd make by taking the Classic Leading Man Test. My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 0% on grit You scored higher than 68% on wit You scored higher than 84% on flair You scored higher than 8% on class Link: The Classic Dames Test written by gidgetgoes on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test Current Mood: Lazy (Comment on this)
3:47 am	1. Go here. 2. Pass it on. ( my answers ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
3:16 am	Happy Halloween, or, How My Life of Leisure Is Evil and Must Be Punished: A Novella in Installments PART ONE: PROLEGOMENA AND CHAPTER THE FIRST CAST OF CHARACTERS: THE HOUSEMATES: Jeff: A lovable, sociable, and occasionally caustic man with glasses and a beard that make him look like a real professor. 23. Teaching for 2nd year at 雲南大學. Chris: A real pal. 22 years old. Relaxed, smart, athletic and generally all-around caring. If the world had more people like him there would be fewer knife fights. Teaching 1st year at 雲大. Andrew: A gentleman of leisure, leading the spoiled, useless, life he's always dreaded. 21 years old. "Teaching" 1st year at 雲大. Although he is being payed for twelve hours of teaching per week, he has only been assigned 6-8 hours of class, depending on the week. He also tutors on weekends for very rich people and makes a stinking heap of money for doing almost no work. Xiao Xiong: A small, hairy, smelly, Lhasa Apso, who has become an indispensable fixture of our lives. He still has his testicles. Less than one year old. OTHER CHARACTERS: The Maid: A college student in her early 20s. The Carleton Grad: He, like most chipper, earnest, young people in the city, is helping to solve a worldwide health crisis. Sort of a cross between Shirley Temple and Mother Theresa. PROLEGOMENA--PARTY HEADQUARTERS: Halloween is a our first big 外國人 holiday. So big, in fact, that Jeff decided we should put together two separate parties in two days. CHAPTER THE FIRST--I HAVE BECOME WHAT I'VE ALWAYS HATED I was told one should enjoy college because compared to what follows, there is a real lack of responsibility. For many people, I can believe this is true. But somehow I have gone down the opposite road here in China. I spend 8-10 hours a day sleeping, usually until 11 or noon. I wake up, read the New York Times and eat toast and jam, or granola and milk, or leftover flan. Later, I go out and buy things like clothes, or street food, or Buddhist wall hangings. Maybe I get my shoes shined by one of the toothless old men who are also selling jars of honey, or go get a massage at "Linna: Blind, English-Speaking Masseur". Maybe then I come home, check the New York Times for new headlines, and take the dog out so he can poop and almost get killed by the big Akita dog down the street. If it's a Saturday, I can say hello to our maid, who might be doing our dishes, or scrubbing the floors in every room of the house, or cleaning our windows, or sweeping the floor of my room, or ironing Chris's shirts, or dusting the television. Since we're all liberals, we pay her 8 kuai an hour instead of the going rate: 5. Then I eat take-out vegetarian noodles for lunch, while I watch a good hour or three of any number of American comedy shows on DVD. Then, if I'm lucky, I go to dinner with Chris and Jeff, or my Chinese friend Tony; or I eat more take-out and study Chinese characters. Eventually I rearrange and trim the 4 dozen flowers that are inevitably sitting around the house, and change their water. Then I surf the internet and check the New York Times for new headlines. Rove wasn't indicted. Oh well. I would've gotten too much vindictive pleasure out of seeing him crash and burn. Eventually, I get in bed with a shawl over my shoulders and read a couple entries from Teachings of the Song Dynasty Chan masters. Then I turn off my plastic Guanyin devotional lotus lights, crawl under the covers, and shiver. I don't masturbate because it's too cold. Once, in a popular foreigner cafe called the Prague, I was trying to decipher the Chinese sounds of "Veggie Hamburger" from the menu, when a group of Ivy-League graduates I'd met the night before came to pay their bill. One, a Carleton student asked me how I was doing. I told him I felt useless. He told me that he and the Harvard students were spending their time helping AIDS patients and drug addicts, and that there was plenty to do in Yunnan for a person with the right motivation. I hated him then. But not quite as much as I was hating myself. TO BE CONTINUED! Current Mood: Too cold to feel. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, October 28th, 2005
12:37 am	What I Did Today Instead of Grading Papers Again In addition to going for a walk with Tony, I also took this second silly test. You are a Social Liberal (85% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (8% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test I didn't think I was that liberal really, but now I am proud of it and will tell all my friends. Current Mood: Farted (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 26th, 2005
11:00 pm	What I Did Today Instead of Grading Papers The Gentleman Deliberate Gentle Love Master (DGLMm) Steady & mature. You are The Gentleman. For anyone looking for an even-keeled, considerate lover, you're their man. You're sophisticated. You know what you want both in a relationship and outside of it. You have a substantial romantic side, and you're experienced enough sexually to handle yourself in that arena, too. Your future relationships will be long-lasting; you're classic "marrying material," a prize in the eyes of many. It's possible that behind it all, you're a bit of a male slut. Your best friends know that in relationships you're fundamentally sex-driven. You're a safe, reliable guy, who does get laid. In a lot of ways, you're like a well-worn, comfortable pair of socks. Did you ever jack off into one of those? All the time. Your exact opposite: The Last Man on Earth Random Brutal Sex Dreamer Your ideal mate is NOT a nut-job. He is giving and loving, like you, but also experienced. Avoid the The False Messiah at all fucking costs. CONSIDER: The Gentleman, someone just like you. Link: The 32-Type Dating Test by OkCupid - Free Online Dating. My profile name: <a href='http://www.okcupid.com Current Mood: Aimless (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 18th, 2005
2:23 am	The Best Things in Samsara and NIrvana. Hu Jintao Probably Doesn't Fit in That Category. In lieu of seeking knowledge and spiritual progress, I now spend my time buying things. Hand embroidered tapestries, two for Y140. Sichuan spicy noodles in a plastic bag from the street vendors for 2. Wall scrolls for 135, 135, and 50. Full-body massages for 20. Almost-real Diesel jeans for 90. Bootleg DVDs for 6. A good gin and tonic during happy hour for 5. Puer tea that's been buried underground for 6 years for 45. Somewhere Hu Jintao is grinning like a happy little elf and offering incense to Deng Xiaoping. I offer incense to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the 10 directions. Buddham Saranam Gaccami Dhammam Saranam Gaccami Sangham Saranam Gaccami Namo Tasso Bhagavato Arahato Sammo Sambhuddasa Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hung Om Tare Tutare Ture Svaha Om Mani Padme Hum Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha Most extraordinary. I should write and chant more. I am thinking about the rest of my life a little. I can't go to grad school and I don't want to return to the US next year. I do want to learn better Chinese. I will teach for another year I guess-in Kunming? Beautiful, relaxed, and far from the central government and therefore a bit looser? But still vile from a human happiness perspective it sometimes seems. So many people who are taught not ever to think critically. Maybe Taibei? An open democracy where the people speak Chinese? And use those unsimplified characters I so love. And where they pay so well for English teachers and the Buddhists aren't controlled and oppressed by the state? Oh it's late, late, late. I should use this writing doohickey more. I'm getting rusty. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 13th, 2005
5:25 pm	Promises, Guilt, and Urine Most understanding he was, and full of great comfort. Luo Hong patted my knee continually and assured me that "it is not your fault" in a way that said it is entirely. And it is my fault, partially, but only enough to tear myself up with guilt for a day or two then get on with it. I lose one of the three writing classes to which I looked forward, and continue with the utterly confusing oral English class in which there is no book, no direction, and a great disparity of ability between the students: some with fantastic English, and some with practically none at all. But this comes of not noticing that they gave me two classes at the same time, in very different places. And this comes of not being able to divide myself like an asexual amoeba. I promised to tell you about Little Bear this time. It's quite simple. Little Bear is a dog with the English name Maurice and the Chinese name Xiao Xiong which means Diminutive Bear-Like Creature. Xiao Xiong enjoys pooping, peeing, and barfing on the floor of our apartment, and humping Jeff's foot and my leg (Xiao Xiong is to be spayed next payday, apparently). The zit tea seems much less shocking to me after a few weeks in China. Perhaps two weeks ago, whenever I last wrote, I tried to find the bird and flower market where Jeff had taken us a week before so I could make some expensive, unecessary purchases. I couldn't find it, and instead wandered into another open market surrounding one of the two Wal-Marts of Kunming. I walked into a little tea shop and asked about some Puer tea. The middle-aged woman promptly sat me down and began pouring out endless samples of puer, green, and other Yunnan teas, all the while talking to me in Kunminghua, the local dialect which doesn't sound very much like Mandarin. She kept me for a good hour and a half, pouring endless cups of tea, telling me it would cure my zits (17? 18? 19? 29?) until I excused myself to go meet an imaginary student. Instead I ran as fast as I could to the nearest pay toilet and kept peeing for a good full minute. But what is time? I have to pee now, but the bathroom in this cafe is out of order. They just brought me my Veggie Hamburger (sooooo good!). I still have emails to write and lesson plans to draw up. I'll hold it in until I'm in absolute pain and my bladder is in a tight little ball, shaken up by the steamrollers and jackhammers that rumble right outside the door. Perhaps I too will have kidney problems in my old age. Or like the Chinese children under the age of five, perhaps I could run out to the street and pee on the gravel and red Yunnan dirt. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 28th, 2005
8:12 am	Little Bear and the Zit Tea I'm dreadfully excited to be in this expat cafe under my apartment listening to the Beegees sing about "Tragedy" in those irresistible falsettos. No really, I am. Every chorus makes me happier and happier: "TRAGEDY! When the feeling's gone and you can't go on it's TRAGEDY! when the (something) cries and your heart just (something) it's TRAGEDY!" But really, it's oddly assuaging my mild and easy homesickness. I thought I was going to tell a couple of stories about little bear and the zit tea, but they'll have to wait until tomorrow because the computer I'm using and I are both out of batteries for the evening. Hooray if this works! Oh my god. An ENORMOUS cockroach just crawled across the floor in broad daylight. Wait, scratch that--TWO ENORMOUS cockroaches. Probably displaced by the new sewage trench that runs down my street. Or drawn in by the Beegees. And I thought the mosquitoes were bad . . . (3 Comments |Comment on this)