University of Southern California

Got up at 11:30am, we literally had no other choice but to go to USC to kill the rest of the day. However, it turned out to be such a fun day in USC. I've been dreaming to visit this school for a long time, part of the reason is this is the school he wants to go to, of course, other than that, this is a school I personally like a lot, too. (Cross the finger, hopefully they will accept me...) 

The international students portion of USC is amazingly big, almost half of the students are from outside of the U.S. I saw that by myself--it was the commencement day of the 2010 class students. Coincidentally, we ran into all the graduates today. They had some light dinner, without any doubt, Fiona and I mooched some...It was so awkward since half of the students had Asian faces. Many from Taiwan, others from China or Korea. I thought there must be much pressure for students, like me, to study there, now that there were so many ABCs, no one would treat you with the tolerance for foreigners. 

I like the buildings in USC. They all have the same style and relevant colors. Even though LA has no style at all, USC as an old school has its own "schoolnality"--well, it's hard to conclude now, but it definitely does, at least from in terms of architectures. I love the quiet small gardens spattered here and there in the school. Good place for lovers. I can almost imagine the way they talk to each other. Who would get angry in such a place?

The building for communication school is the worst building in the whole school. But what can I say? This is me, always the unluckiest one. I may never had the chance to study in an old and beautiful hall. But the thing is if Gorge Lucas was graduated there, what does it matter the building is not good-looking?

The only thing is, several blocks away from USC, it's another world, which is packed with Mexicans and dirty gum on the ground. The world never loses its hierarchy.

Another LA

After six hours unconscious sleep on the plane, we finally arrived at LA, Mike's dream place, where all the beautiful romances happen. The weather was out of our expectation, for like one out of millions chance, it was cooler than Boston during the day. Fiona's friend picked us up and drove all the way to our hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. Frank Sinatra sings:" LA is my lady..." Now I"m wondering where he got that idea? LA is absolutely not a "lady", not even close. As a relatively new city, LA should be clean and modern in my mind, but on the contrary, LA is kinda dirty compared with Boston. The whole city is covered with thick gray mist. There are no green trees: almost all the trees are light colored. The buildings have no certain style, with the light colors that are similar to Miami, but the gray mist and the gray trees make LA dimmer than Miami. 

It is amazing that everyone says the same thing about LA: you can go nowhere without a car, downtown is the most dangerous place in LA, and there are a lot of Chinese people. We proved all of them in only one afternoon. It took us nearly one and a half hours to get to the hotel from LAX, and then another one and half hours to get to the restaurant from the hotel. I tried to find a Chinese restaurant on Hollywood Bl, failed. How can people order Chinese? Then I realized most people on the this avenue were visitors. But still, it's really inconvenient without even one Chinese restaurant nearby. The good part of this story is that, even though we had to drive more than a hour to get to the place, the restaurant was really good. It is ran by a Tianjin woman, and the food there was fantastic. For the first time in almost a year, I had roasted lamp and Baozi. There was even "Ge Da Soup". Oh I love this place for the good food. Checking out the menu, we thought it was nice that they didn't directly translate the meaning of the soup, or no one would want a bowl of "goose bump soup."

There are all kinds of people in downtown, making it dangerous. But we stayed in Hollywood district after dinner. It was really weird that there were so many sex toys stores on Hollywood Bl. With all the stars on the ground, this avenue should be the most fabulous place, but how come there are so many little sex toys shops, tattoo stores and palm reading rooms? I have no clue at all. The night came quickly, before I realized, we had to head back to the hotel.

Anyways, LA disappointed me a little bit today. It's like another LA from my mind. I hope it can get better tomorrow.

Drag show + Martha's Vineyard Island

Adam, you rock!

It was so awkward though. I think I'm touching his breast at this time. He must be the smileiest zombie in the world. The drag show was really good. I was surprised when it really came out, given the total failure of the previous rehearsal. I'm so gonna miss all of this.

Rachel, I'm so proud of you! lol. You are my best tutee! (even though I only have one...)

And of course this is the only time I see you with makeup, apart from the Halloween dressing up. I can't stand letting you escape from the camera this time!

El. I'm gonna miss you, too. We never really had a "conversation partner style" conversation. lol.

Early that day in Boston Commons. Met a cute dog.

The tower in Cape Cod/ Cape Cod chips. It reminds me of Faye's song: 他来我对自己说 我不害怕 我很爱他。 I'm not afraid, for I love him. However, as for me, where is him?

I'm so lucky for knowing you. I'd always thought you girls from Shanghai were like Janice, but I was wrong. I like you, or to some degree, I love you. Hey, stay in touch. OK?

Alice's wonderland. In Martha's Vineyard Island. I love Mr. Rabbit in the front table.

New York State of Mind

New York.


In New York, there's nothing you can't do. New York City used to be the sweet home in Friends, the romantic concrete jungle in Woody Allen's jokes, the fashion city, the dream place, and when I really went to NYC, it became this place I'd never experience enough. I love New York City, even though I'm not a New Yorker, not even an American citizen. I don't know why. I just feel this connection to the city. It's weird but beautiful.






Day one:


The first day in NYC was not pleasant at all. Three hours' bus trip made me dizzy and exhausted, but I was fairly excited to see the not-so-heavy snow in NYC-- I stayed in Boston, where there should be snowy in October based on its latitude, but I hadn't seen any snow until I went to NYC in December.That was disappointed. The first thing I saw after getting off the Chinatown bus was the big gate in Chinatown. I didn't go near it though, giving that I'd better find my friend's house first. Taking out the map and studying it, I realized I was still the old me, no sense of direction at all. When I was stuck into the map at the big crossing in Chinatown, a Chinese guy came to me and asked me what I was looking for. Thank God I'm a Chinese person, and thank God there are Chinese people everywhere. However sometimes I feel this might be part of the reason why it's so hard for Chinese people, especially students, to really mingle with American community. We have so many people all over the world that we don't really need to try to get involved in others' networks, but this is definitely not a good thing. The most direct consequence I've seen is that when Haiti had the big earthquake, everyone even those students in our small town college students at once reacted to it, donating and going there to rebuild schools or something. Whereas when I asked them about the earthquake in Wenchuan in 2008, almost no one had ever heard about it. The truth is we had a even severer earthquake and more devastate damage was caused, but because we could handle it ourselves, no one else cared about it. I don't mean that others have the responsibility to care about us, but the thing is we, as normal citizens and tax payers, should enjoy much better conditions than rescuing the poor children in the earthquake. It's like the Chinese government it hiding the fact from the outside world, and we have to eat the consequences quietly. Most of us don't even realize this. We pay tax, therefore the government should do things. That's their responsibility. That's what they should do before the earthquake. We can feel moved by them, but we can 't let this delude ourselves.

Anyways, I found my way finally, with the help of the Chinese guy. That night turned out to be the first day of the biggest snow storm in NYC that year, and I was lucky to find Xu's house before the real storm came. The timing was really bad. When I looked out through the window later that night, it was snowing brutally, reminding me of the film I saw a few weeks earlier, new Christmas Carol.

I feel like this article is really hard to define. It's not simply a journal, since I said so much about my view on some issues. Just in case, I'm writing this now, supposing no one will take a look at it.





















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