The Chinese Garden is mostly finished; the plants are young and unimpressive, but the structures are beautiful.
Magnolia setting seed.
Oh hai. My boob feels nice.
On of many lovelies in the History of Science exhibit in the main library. Thank you security personnel for trusting me to take non-flash photos.
More magnolia.
See that little plaque there? I failed to read it.
You can walk into and around this installation.
Agave parryi, how I love thee.
A cycad – further testimony to my love of blue plants.
Jakob: You know I like to do when I save the world?
Me: What?
Jakob: Turn everything off.
I guess I thought the Lazy Susan was an American invention used in Asian restaurants to facilitate serving. They’re utterly common in Taiwan as well; the whole business of eating is quite different there.
You start with a tiny bowl that you fill with rice and then you come to the table and sit down. The Lazy Susan goes around and you take about three bites worth of whatever you’re wanting to eat. You lay that on top of your rice and go to town, then spin the Lazy Susan and have something else. At the table you see in the picture, 13 people sat on stools, shoulder to shoulder.
At first I was pretty horrified that we were all serving ourselves with the chopsticks that had just been in our mouths. That was before I found out that the wash water for dishes was completely cold and we were to use hand soap for all the bowls and chopsticks. And that was before someone came to the table one morning with a cold. Then, I was truly horrified. But I was hungry too, so I was over it soon enough. I tried to serve myself from the least savaged portions of each dish, but since we were essentially sharing chopsticks, I knew that wasn’t really helping.
No one drinks anything with meals, but the entrees are followed with soup, usually musk melon which is a little like loofa in warm broth. There’s a lot of lip smacking and slurping, and no one uses napkins either, so your companions at meals are quite greasy-faced.
Hunger moderates one’s reactions to any of these issues, and I really like the communal feeling of dining with a gang of people.
I wondered about portion control while I was there – you have no idea how much you’re eating after you portion yourself out some rice. You kind of just stop when you’re full. As it turns out, you eat quite a bit less than you would otherwise. I lost weight in Taiwan, despite the 30 gallons of water I was evidently retaining, and I did it without the benefit of an intestinal parasite or microbial revolt.*
One night we had a long discussion about the possible value of “immune challenges” where you challenge your resilience with all manner of germy insults hoping to strengthen it to future assaults. I think the theory has some merit. Maybe I can get a grant.
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* I’m sure that somewhere there are overweight Taiwanese people, but they are probably Americans because I didn’t see any of them on the island. It gave me pause: not one overweight person was spotted in the entire time I was there.
See that black and green region on this plate? Century egg. Why is it that color you ask? Well, because it’s rotten. Why is it on a plate instead of in the trash? Because it’s a delicacy. You will eat some, and you will like it.
And I did, and I did. It’s got an earthy flavor and creamy texture, and you only taste the “offness” of it a few seconds after you’ve swallowed it. I split it with 2 other people, and we pretty much ate it with great relish and exclamations of bravado. The tofu chaser next to it makes everything okay again. Follow with white fungus soup and a steamed pork bun. Yum!
I expected to have stomach distress of various kinds in Taiwan but it never happened. In fact, the relative richness of food back here in the states after being on a pretty clean diet for 2 weeks caused the most distress. The richest thing I ate was fried duck – served whole, of course, so we could make meaningful eye contact while I dined on his innards with a nice guava nectar.
A couple years ago, during a chemistry exam, one of my classmates started crying. I was about 1/2 way through the test when she started, and she continued for the duration. It was awful.
The test covered reaction speeds and each question was a group of reactions you had to manipulate to determine limiting factors and overall rates. There was some calculus and I was feeling pretty dire myself.
After the test, she stood in the hall wailing – really, full on wailing.
So yesterday’s final was gut wrenchingly difficult. Behind me, a student was quietly whimpering and I heard several gasps as test-takers turned pages and discovered the next hurdle. The test was worth 70 points, and four of the questions worth 10 points each. Ouch. There were diagrams to be made and graphs to create, long lists of cultural factors and possible causes for various symptoms. My hands shook and I had to talk to myself sternly several times.
I never had test fear in middle or high school, but that was because I didn’t care. Over the last few years, I’ve had paralyzing test fear a couple times and it feels like a wave. I’ll know it’s coming but feel helpless to do anything about it. It makes me forget simple things I know like the back of my hand. I’m aware now of when it’s happening to other people too, and I try to psychically encourage them before they come unglued like my poor chemistry friend.
For whatever reason, I’m always finished with tests either first, or within the first 2-3 people. This holds true when I know the material well and remain calm and focused, and it holds true when I am gripped with terror and my mind is blank. Pass or fail, I do it swiftly.
Nothing will make hoards of children descend upon you faster than picking up a lizard and talking to it.
I have attended the last class of my bachelor’s degree, and I’m two finals away from saying goodbye to being an undergrad. The superstitious part of me thinks it’s best to not make assumptions, but the finish line is in sight.
I’m poorer than when I started – community college in California was $10 a unit when I first enrolled, but the price has been steadily rising and $10 will get you 20 pages of color printing at the university. I’m better invested in reference materials – my bookshelves are groaning and warping with the weight of all I’ve learned. But, in the age of specialization, you could ask me a question about horticulture, and it’s 50-50 that I could answer it without consulting a reference. Though I certainly feel well-educated.
I’m a lot older than when I started. In my first term of college, I did a time-capsule postcard where I wrote down where I wanted to be in 10 years and the professor was going to mail them to us a decade later. I moved repeatedly after that year, but I remember what I wrote on my card: MBA, CPA, BMW.
…
I’m sorry, I had to get up off the floor after laughing hysterically.
Anyway, I’m 37 now and I don’t want to reenter the workforce overeducated and 40 years old….but, I’m going to. I’ve wanted to go to graduate school since the first time I heard what it was. I’m still materialistic I guess, just in a different way. Note that it’s cool to act like you’re going to graduate school even though you don’t really want to and you’re not that interested, so I guess I’m still unhip as well. I’m sort of excited about it, actually – grad school that is, not my continued failure at being cool.
The good news is that this is not a good time to be job hunting, and I won’t be. The bad news is that I’ll be an AARP member and paying off student loans. I measure the value of more things than I should by how fun they are, and school has been and is 5-digits worth of fun in my book. Thanks Sallie-Mae!
Now that’s what I call an Orb Weaver. This female was so enormous that when we released her later, she had trouble navigating and actually walking with that huge abdomen. We had found her in a large web built between two trees nearly 5 feet apart. She was as shy as a virgin bride and hunched every time we pet her through the bag. Petting spiders is a scientific procedure performed by trained arachnidologists and should definitely be tried at home. Pet the top part, not the fang part.
The site was also teeming with Argiope spiders with newly hatched young and they are some businesslike parents. We spent at least an hour watching one feed her wee spiderlings right over the top of our water cooler.
Confession: A couple weeks ago I talked to one of the other students I was traveling with in Taiwan and admitted I had sprayed the entire perimeter of my dorm room entrance with DEET on the day we arrived. For your information, spiders are unimpressed by DEET.
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