Shan. Domestic goddess, fitness expert.

Yawwwn. Am I allowed to yawn after not having left the house all day (and, um, waking up at noon)? Don't answer that.

The day hasn't been a total bust. For instance, as part of my eternal struggle to see my weight dip below 119 pounds and stay there (reminder that this is a 4'11'' I'm dealing with) , I subjected myself to a Jillian Michaels workout DVD. Not the pansy ~20 minute workout one I've done a couple times before (30 Day Shred) - not that there's anything pansyish about it; it's just short. And actually the "level 3" thoroughly kicked my ass the last time I tried it. As in, I stumbled away from the TV "gargling my heart" as Jillian puts it, workout unfinished.

imminent pain

At least today I was able to last through the 40 minute circuit workout, with only the occasional break to grab a swig water, or weep uncontrollably about my tattered limbs. Now, whether I am masochistic enough/desperate for a hawt bod enough to do the thing again, we'll just have to see. Even if I am, that day will probably not be tomorrow, since I get the feeling that I'm going to be sore for a while. Everywhere.

Would I recommend her DVDs? Well, yeah, if you're trying to find a workout DVD. Honestly at-home DVDs/workouts are kind of the bane of my existence but I don't have much of a choice right now. I'm not living at school at the moment, so I can't use the gym, and with all the snow on the ground I can't exactly go running either, unless I'm all about surfing that black ice and getting a concussion. I miss running a lot--it really is my exercise of choice--but at least I took advantage of the LA weather a bit and jogged in the California sun, past the palm trees (now if I had jogged right along the water at Venice Beach, I would have been one truly happy girl).

Really though, I'm just a Jillian Michaels fan. I don't watch The Biggest Loser terribly often, but I've caught some episodes of her show Losing It and approved. You really get to see her at work there, getting into people's heads therapist-style and shaking up families' ways of eating, moving, and thinking. Yes, weight loss shows are totally exploitative and prove the unsavory fact that we have a national obsession with watching the obese. Without a doubt there is plenty to critique about these shows, and yet there the inspirational and motivational are found there too. So, why not?

Anyway, Jillian Michaels builds her rep on being both a hardass and badass, even though she's tiny, so I can't help but love her for that. Also it only recently occurred to me that wait a minute she's probably a lesbian? So I did a little google search and apparently in an interview last year she casually let it be known that she's looking for a healthy relationship, be it with a man or woman. I think I love her even more for that, because if you think about other famous bisexual chicas you get, what? Megan Fox? Lindsay Lohan? Gag.

The other event of the day ... dun dun dun. I finally put to good use the, er, VeraBradleyapronIboughtcauseitwascuteandonsale. That's right, I do not cook things, but I did buy the apron as motivation. Say nay if you will, naysayers, but this method works for me, or at least it did when I bought myself a pair of running shoes that were on sale! Maybe step one to being the person you want to be is dressing the part.

Anyway the pasta dish I made was totally nonlethal and actually kind of tasty, according to my parents. I pat myself on the back for this and plan on cooking again soon. Muahaha.

LA stuff I did, part I

I am nocturnal. I don't like it, but it's not something that you can easily break out of when you have no obligations in life. No class, no work. Essentially I'm on winter break until ~March 25 when I leave for Japan. All things considered though, I don't feel that unproductive. I have been keeping myself busy in a few moderately impressive ways (more on that later). For that I give myself a pat on the back since more often than not, if facing an extended stay at home, I will spend days on end in a bath robe and ugg boots, sipping wine coolers and marathoning shows like Lie to Me, or 30 Rock. Don't judge me.

Anyway, I figure I should put my nocturnal energy to good satisfactory use and get some kind of LA post up in this business while I still have the tiniest desire to do so. Well, good thing I didn't take too many pictures?

Pretty sunset @ JFK just because... it's pretty

First time flying Virgin America (I think I've mostly taken US Airways), so it was good fun to find the cabin unnecessarily similar to the inside of a Tokyo nightclub. Especially traveling with my 81-year-old grandparents. I felt so hip.

If you are visiting LA you must visit the Griffith Observatory, overlooking da city. It is free and not disappointing, unlike visiting Hollywood only to realize that it is a friggin shady place, i.e. if Charlie Sheen were a location. This was taken on the walk to the observatory.

Thar's the place

oblig. Hollywood sign pic (this is the closest I've been to it)

(I took a bunch of pictures of the city. Unfortunately I am in a lot of them, thus ruining them.) That quaint little clearing of tall buildings is their downtown, oft used for filming "New York" scenes, since their downtown ordinarily passes for a (creepily devoid of people) NYC.

 
Good stuff, blah blah blah. Before I end this post, how about some things that I ATE (in this case I definitely disappointed myself by not taking more pictures).

1.For the sake of getting out of the apartment, the cousin and I went to some mall, the Glendale Galleria. I perused zero shops, as I was feeling rather uninspired to try on dresses with my male cousin in tow, but the outing was a victory in that I got to try this Korean dish bibimbap for the first time. It makes me sad, but my experience with Korean food is shockingly, inexcusably limited.

Bibimbap jams everything that could be separated into one superdish of meat, vegetables, some pickled things? I think they were pickled, is that seaweed on the top there?--on top of a salad (health!), on top of white rice. And there was spicy sauce on the side. Look, I'm not really sure what I ate, and I'm not a food critic, but it was delicious. Nothing has ever felt so right.

2. Go to a Big Mama's and Papa's Pizzeria and order the 60 slice pie. I DARE YOU.

3. The Farmers Market by The Grove has this Brazilian barbecue (churrasco) place. Another learning experience, and what I learned was that I have never tasted meat so heavenly. I am now depressingly hungry, by the way.

for people who like staring dramatically out windows

Everyone knows that when your life feels so devoid of intrigue and romance and beauty, one of the best thing you can do is watch a good film. Especially a good period drama. The age we live in, unfortunately, is not one we equate with romance. What hope is there of locking eyes with a stranger in a crowded ballroom? Or writing to your lover off at sea? (okay, the latter scenario, ridden with sadness, is perhaps less appealing). I've complained a thousand times before about how unromantic modern dancing is (although I find "krumping" hilariously awesome, and mention it whenever I can. Also do not get me started on MC Hammer style dancing--Love.) So what we have... well, film, and books--our escape. And imagination.

But music too. Sometimes all you really need is a good movie soundtrack. Often heavy on the classical, the dramatic, the emotion-wrought, they're wonderful for getting introspective about your own life. Turn up the volume and let it sweep you away. As Jackie, longtime roommate, can attest to, I'm a big fan of staring out of windows dramatically. All the better, of course, if you're listening to heart-wrenching soundscapes, especially if it's on a train, watching the world around you speed by. (I heavily romanticize train travel and the age of steam, in general. Because when you are aboard a train, you almost aren't anywhere at all, but you're in a perpetual state of going somewhere. And you yourself don't control where the train goes--it's out of your hands--so you just sit there, turning over this thought and that, awaiting your arrival.)

Anyway, one listening recommendation I can make is from Ang Lee's 2007 film Lust, Caution, which I watched a number of months ago.  There is not only a great soundtrack but ESPIONAGE involved (everyone loves that) and it is based off a story by Eileen Chang. I read her short stories in "Love in a Fallen City" and just adored them, despite how truly pessimistic the woman is about love.

 (I love that during this time women were so astonishingly stylish in their body-hugging cheongsams and painted red lips, while men wore sharp Western suits. Of course, neither look is complete without cigarettes/cigars, glamorous and unhealthy).

Well, here--because wikipedia does such a good job of explaining the allure of Eileen Chang: "She is noted for writings that deal with the tensions between men and women in love, and are considered by some scholars to be among the best Chinese literature of the period. Chang's portrayal of life in 1940s Shanghai and occupied Hong Kong is remarkable in its focus on everyday life and the absence of the political subtext which characterized many other writers of the period."

I can't recommend her work enough. Although, because I am probably an eternal optimist at my core (people might not believe this about me. I do have pessimistic, cynical tendencies, I admit, but it's a shield of sorts), it is no wonder that my favorite story of hers is one that offers a "happy" ending for its characters. I should say, Eileen Chang's version of happy--dubious, transient, and unsettling happiness. Similarly, I love E.M. Forster's A Passage to India for an honors seminar I took freshman year ("Romantic Love, East and West") but I really love A Room with a View, which is considered his one non-pessimistic work. It's like I appreciate and understand the "let's face it, life is brutal and unkind" attitude, but when even the most hardened types can admit there's a flicker of hope and happiness sometimes, well... how can I resist? Talk to me about it again in 30 years, when perhaps life's gotten the better of me, and we'll see if I've changed my mind.

Oh goodness, there are a million digressions in this entry. I just get so excited about this sort of stuff. And I'm glad I can be excited about it, because it lets me know that I picked the right major. Even though I sort of picked "East Asian Studies" haphazardly, not really knowing what it would entail. And even if I'm not really sure what I'll do with this major, or German Studies, either.

So, sidenote #29382: I love something about British imperialism, whether in Hong Kong or, as with Forster's work, in India. Imperialism in general just intrigues me. I guess that explains my love for Out of Africa as well.

Without further ado, from the Lust, Caution soundtrack  by Alexandre Desplat (of course, if you're going to compose glorious soundtracks for films, you should be French).



The film, by the way, is good although rather sexually graphic. But I can save my discussion of Ang Lee films for the future, haha.

post-California dreaming

Still terribly jet-lagged; keep waking up at ~2pm (not acceptable), although yesterday I woke up at 8, inexplicably. That aint right.

Just thought, for kicks, I should note some of the dreams I have, since more often than not I dream of really bizarre things. Quite often the dreams are mid-apocalypse or post-apocalyptic, filled with natural disasters, or, as is very often the case, zombies. I don't know what that says about me psychologically. So last night I had a really jam-packed dream. It was another post-apocalyptic type one, except Jon Hamm was in it (second time I can remember dreaming of Jon Hamm; I have been blessed). He also called his co-star, January Jones, "totally gay" and I think I attempted to flirt with him--I give dream Shan two thumbs up for having the nerve to do that, haha. (sidenote: I am still eagerly waiting for Matt Damon to show up in a dream. That is almost all I want from life.)

In another part of the dream my mom was, for whatever reason, totally high, and I had to babysit her. That was weird.

Weirder still, in another part of the dream I'm a sensitive short story-writing type (still apocalyptic world). I write my stories about love and life on loose leaf paper, and I'm dating some guy but somehow, I really do not know how, he ends up a girl, and I end up a guy. And I'm all "oh my God, is there something wrong with our love?" and he/she's all "I don't know, and I don't care" and we're happy. At least I think that's how it went.

That's some decent Asian drama fodder, that last bit; in fact, maybe it's already been done. But could you imagine it? You're in love with someone of the opposite gender and by some plot device that I can't yet come up with you switch genders. Do you still love each other? How does the dynamic change? I think we've all wondered what the opposite gender equivalents of ourselves would be like. Personally I know I would abuse the word "bro" and all its variants even more than I do now (sorry, I drink a lot of bros equis). So, I see a lot of potential for such a story to be both hilarious and awfully interesting. If I were the creative type I'd start penning a tale right now, haha.

Deep down in our souls I'm sure we don't have gender, but it's just so--abusing the word again--interesting because the facets of our personalities, our own intrinsic personalities, will manifest themselves differently, depending on whether we're born male or female, and depending on society around us--the kind of environment we grow up in. So If I were born a man would some at-present untapped part of me have been nurtured--would I have totally different aims than I do now? But that's something I can never know.

back in NJ, raving about my laptop

Picture aken at Venice Beach. I only half meant it --------->

So I am back in New Jersey, the astonishing reality being that I am actually glad to be back in New Jersey, after what was a minor hiccup in my return (flight cancellation thanks to the sweet winter stormage going on). My little psuedo vacation time/purgatory in LA had serious ups and downs, to be sure, and I'll get around to talking about that for my 2 loyal subscribers, ahahah.

I mean, mostly I'm glad to be back for two highly important reasons, the first being sleeping in actual bed, not a couch, sweet Jesus, and the second, because I am reunited with my dear sweet baby Toshi, i.e. my dearly missed, not-cleverly nicknamed Toshiba laptop. Like really, my baby. When I pulled it out of the box for the first time, there was a tender embrace, and a quiet understanding between us that we'd be traveling the world together.

Ordinarily I'm not gung-ho about new technological things. Because if something is perfectly functioning I just don't see a need to replace it, plus I am extremely picky about what I want. If I'm getting something new, it has to be perfect. I mean, I was the proud owner of an iPod mini years past the point of it being socially acceptable to still have a mini. And let's not get started on the cell phone I've had for the past two and a half years; it only rarely makes any noise and it is very apparent that a piece of it broke off and was lost forever (despite my genius method of taping it back on). So when I finally am psychologically prepared to buy new technological stuff I get really intense and focused about it, going to cnet.com for reviews first and foremost, and then finding peripheral sources.

I was pretty jazzed about finding Toshi. Its battery lasts something like 6 hours, plus it makes my previous laptop, which was already 14'', look like a behemoth. Toshi's screen is just a skosh smaller (13.3), but it's so much more slender and lightweight, at less than 3 pounds. Which is awesome, because I can just move it here and there, one-handed if I desire, effortlessly. So not only is Toshi kind of adorable, it's all sleek and black, which makes you take it seriously... refined but dangerous, like James Bond drinking a martini.

I sound insane right now but I like it. Anyway, I got Toshi a couple months ago, the interesting bit is that after a couple weeks there was a a hilarious but stupid incident involving salad dressing, and I had to send Toshi away to be fixed... aheh... But that's why I pay extra for insurance from Best Buy! To help prevent further damage to my child, I bought this Built laptop sleeve for $20 off of amazon. If there's one thing I love, it's bold, punchy bursts of color, like so.

This post has actually nothing to do with LA, does it.