Making progress

I’m not sure why I’m posting this here, rather than in my private blog. Perhaps it’s because I feel obligated to keep a running record of my activities vis-a-vis grad school applications here — it is, after all, my “writing activities” blog. It’s the final push towards the end of my application process, and I oh-so-desperately hope that I get in!

So far I’ve submitted 5/7 applications (I turned in SFSU’s tonight) , and have two more to go before Tuesday (though actually, I plan to submit them on Monday; I don’t want a repeat of the UMich situation – even though in the end, they were merciful and allowed me to submit a paper application instead). Today was a rather productive day in terms of future-oriented stuff. I’m applying for a teaching fellowship position at Citizen Schools as an option in case I decide to hold off a year on the whole MFA thing (I have to admit, it’s a pretty exciting program, and not only do is there a high chance that I may not get into any grad school right away, inexperienced poet that I am, but even if I get into a program that I’m only “bleh” on, it might even be better to really take two years off, teach, intern and study education through Citizen Schools, and join a writing community in Boston so that I’ll have some time to grow as both a person and a writer before applying again). Today, I received word that I’m making progress in the application process – I had an enjoyable phone interview over Christmas break, and this afternoon, the C.S. Redwood City campus called me to schedule a time for the next part of the process: a campus visit and an in-person interview. Funnily enough, my visit to the Redwood City site will actually be the second time in a month that I’ll have set foot in the Sequoia district, since I’m going into Summit (one of the schools I’ve worked with for the past two years through my involvement as outreach director of SMUNC) the week before the interview to help the kids out with a committee simulation and procedural training session. My visits to Summit have generated some of my fondest Model UN-related memories at Stanford – I will really miss the kids next year.

But back to the day’s activities – I spent the morning completing my UMass Amherst teaching assistantship application and sent it out around 1 pm, after which I ate lunch and went to the mall to buy a present for my secret santa recipient (my “de facto” draw group friends and i did a gift exchange this year, instead of each girl having to buy presents for everyone else – a brilliant idea on A.’s part, if you ask me, because it’s so much nicer to be able to focus on buying one nice gift for a specific person than fretting about how to buy 6 gifts that will still be meaningful without being cheapo). While at the mall, I received the call from C.S. and settled on picking out a nice little Berlin moleskine for my German-crazy friend (she’s a linguistics major and just got into a very prestigious graduate translation program, and is in love with Berlin – she spent six months there last year and hopes to return during this spring and summer). After I returned from Bible study leaders’ meeting, the seven of us had a nice dinner in Manz Dining (per my request – the other option was Wilbur Dining and I am SO sick of Wilbur food…), discussed the progress of our various post-graduation plans (among us, we have 1 med school applicant, 1 PhD applicant, 1 m.a. applicant, 1 m.f.a. applicant, 1 language school applicant, and 2 future med school applications who are taking a year off after graduation to do research and apply to med school), and commiserated about the shortness of our remaining time together (at least four of the girls are graduating a quarter early). E., who is a habitual journaler, was super-pleased with the concept of her Berlin notebook (the idea is that one writes in one’s own favorite restaurants, culture hot spots, etc. to create a personalized tourbook), but even more so with its handy little included maps and conversion tables. D. gave me a set of magnetic poetry, which was absolutely the perfect gift and which I’m contemplating giving a little face time on this blog in the future in the form of weekly found-word poem segments – an idea I’ll tinker with later, when I’m finished this mess of applications. (It was a particularly thoughtful gift, as when I visited her this summer I was in a funky period of persistent writers’ block, and although she meant the magnetic poetry more as a cute, jokey-type gift, poetry exercises actually help me quite a lot when I’m in a creativity hole, so the set will be getting a lot of use in the future, I can predict).

After dinner, L. and I retired to E. and T.’s room to chat and work on my SFSU application, and when they went to bed, I hauled my butt out here, to the student union, where I finished and submitted the app. (It’s such a good feeling, having one more out of the way). Mmmmm. I will miss my college friends dearly when we all grow up and go away to live our various lives (which, frighteningly enough, is not too far in the future!)

– s.

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Bento principles apply to Wilbur Dining, too!

Who knew? Wilbur Dining has some redemptive qualities to it. Or rather, their dinnerware does. The dessert plates nestle neatly on top of the cereal bowls, creating a nice partition so that my peaches don’t get my cornflakes soggy in my fridge before tomorrow morning.

This is going to be breakfast (in retrospect, I should probably eat more breakfasts that have protein in them, meaning I should’ve gotten some cottage cheese or soy milk…oh well; i’m not doing anything particularly active before lunch tomorrow). [edit: i actually went and got soy milk out of guilt.  blogging appears to be good for my health lol].

All stacked up for easy fridge storage:

Open to reveal the cornflakes beneath:

I met my Levinthal tutor today. He’s awesome, and I’m really excited to work with him. 🙂 In a bit, I’m off to a program meet-and-greet where the Levinthal students and the Stegner Fellows get to mingle and eat tasty food (one thing I will say about the English Dept; they always feed us well…), and after that, a Constitution writing meeting for the new Asian American Writers Workshop I started up last quarter. (Although, I don’t think anybody will show up at that meeting. It might just be me writing the group constitution. Oh, well). And then to work on more grad school stuff. A very satisfyingly writing-full day.

– s.

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2007 and 2008 Book lists

Listing the books I’ve read in the past 365 days has always been something that I like to do to start off the new year. Definitely better than making a list of resolutions I may or may not keep, if you ask me. Here’s a list of books I read in 2007 (including ones read for class, in no particular order except as I remember them off the top of my head), as well as a list of ones that I’d like to read in 2008 (including what I expect to read this quarter for classes; also in no particular order).

The 2007 Read List:

1. Barker, The Brontes (1/2 of it, at least)
2. A. Bronte, Agnes Grey
3. A. Bronte, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
4. C. Bronte, Jane Eyre (reread)
5. C. Bronte, The Professor
6. C. Bronte, Shirley
7. C. Bronte, Villette
8. E. Bronte, Wuthering Heights
9. A., C., and E. “Bell” (Bronte), Collected Poems
10. A. Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage
11. J. Bate, The Genius of Shakespeare
12. Shakespeare, Hamlet (reread)
13. Shakespeare, King John
14. Shakespeare, As You Like It
15. Shakespeare, The Tempest (reread)
16. Shakespeare, Henry IV part1 (reread)
17. Shakespeare, Henry IV part 2 (by mistake)
18. Shakespeare, Henry V
19. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
20. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
21. Shakespeare, Richard III (reread)
22. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (reread)
23. Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Drem (reread)
24. Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew
25. Shakespeare, Othello (reread)
26. Shakespeare, King Lear
27. Shakespeare, A Winter’s Tale
28. Shakespeare, A Comedy of Errors
29. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (partially reread twice)
30. N. Toyama, et. al, More than Serving Tea
31. A. Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens
32. L. Kipnis, The Female Thing
33. H. Mullen, Recyclopedia
34. V. Chang, Circle
35. A. Van Jordan, Macnolia
36. B.H. Fairchild, The Art of the Lathe
37. N. Sabra Meyer, The Anatomy Theater
38. N. Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables
39. T. Morrison, Beloved (reread)
40. M. Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior (reread)
41. C. Brockden Brown, Wieland
42. M. Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey
43. E. Gruwell, The Freedom Writers Diaries
44. C. Divakaruni, Arranged Marriage
45. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
46. W. Faulkner, Light in August (partial)
47. S.J. Hale, Northwood (for research)
48. S.J. Hale, Manners (for research)
49. R. and L.I. Wilder, A Little House Sampler (for research)
50. A. Romines, Constructing the Little House (for research)
51. R. Finley, The Lady of Godey’s (for research)
52. T. More, Utopia (reread)
53. B. Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (partial)
54. C. Marlowe, Tamburlaine
55. E. Spenser, The Faerie Queene (partial)
56. J.S. Wong, Fifth Chinese Daughter (reread)
57. The Politics of Life: G. Lim, Bitter Cane; V.H. Houston, Asa Ga Kimashita; W. Yamauchi, The Chairman’s Wife
58. B. Roley, American Son
59. J. Okada, No-No Boy
60. M. E. Galang, Her Wild American Self
61. J. Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies
62. Mong-Lan, Song of the Cicadas
63. P. Triplett, The Price of Light
64. M. Kim, Commons
65. S. Kwock Kim, Notes From the Divided Country
66. L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (reread for the umpteenth time!)
67. P. Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace?

Wow. I think that’s a record. I totally blame Oxford, with all those Shakespeare plays and Bronte books I had to read, heh.

The 2008 Want-To-Read List:

1. B. Englewood, The Poisonwood Bible
2. (don’t know the author), Eat, Live, Love
3. M. Hong Kingston, China Men
4. J. Steinbeck, East of Eden
5. V. Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
6. V. Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
7. L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea
8. O. Goldsmith, the Vicar of Wakefield
9. more works by T. Morrison
10. more works by Z.N. Hurston
11. A. Walker’s poetry
12. Shakespeare, Love’s Labor’s Lost (for class)
13. Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor (for class)
14. C. Churchill, Top Girls (for class)
15. Barnes, England, England (for class)
16. T. Stoppard, Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead (for class)
17. S. Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (for class)
18. Nashe, The Unfortunate Traveller (for class)
19. H. Pintor, Party Time (for class)
20. A. Bennett, The Uncommon Reader (for class)
21. L. Samantha Chang, Hunger (for class)
22. M. Alexander, Raw Silk (for class)
23. D. Strom,Grass Roof, Tin Roof(for class)
24. When the Emperor Was Divine (for class)
25. The Hyphenated American (for class)
26. The Fruit N. Food (for class)
27. When the Rainbow Goddess Wept (for class)
28. Skirt Full of Black (for class)
29. This Many Miles From Desire (for class)
30. Child of War (for class)
31. For Dust Thou Art (for class)
32. The Reluctant Fundamentalist (for class)

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Airplane Bento

Tomorrow I fly back to Stanford. I said my goodbyes to my friends tonight with a little late-night bowling at Playdrome (I won’t tell you my scores, they were embarrassing). It’s been WAY too short of a break. It’s kind of sad to realize that this one is really the last of its kind. When my friends and I return home in the future, it will be for much shorter periods of time, and with less frequency. It’s going to be much harder to keep in touch with them after college.

I really hate flying, even though I do it several times a year going back and forth between home from school. I hate lines, I hate going through security, I hate turbulence because I get motion sick, I hate how dirty you feel after stepping off the plane. Most of all, I hate the high cost of airport food. So, having read about airplane bentos on lunch in a box I decided to make myself one. At the very least, it’ll make me feel good about having something nice to eat on the flight (no $5 snack boxes full of crackers and cheese…).

Exhibit A: The box open

Clockwise from top L corner: Cilantro/mushroom rice (a leftover remix) with leftover chicken cutlet on top; leftover sweet potato slices in a double-layer of Christmas muffin cups; plum tomatoes for filler; carrots on the bottom with a Ferrero Rocher and a somewhat-stale strawberry marshmellow treat (fortunately marshmellows taste yummy stale, too!) Also, disposable chopsticks (can be tossed if security doesn’t like them, though how you’d hurt anyone with these things I have no idea), and an organic golden delicious apple.

Exhibit B: The box closed. (aka, all packed up and ready to go!)

This is only a cheapo plastic box recycled from those ready-to-go dishes they sell in Chinese grocery stores (it probably held chicken or duck at one point; my family likes those), but I like it because the chopsticks fit diagonally across it. The food layer is covered by a film of plastic wrap to protect the napkins and prevent spillage. I’ve double-secured it with a rubber band (not pictured), and the whole shebang will go in a plastic bag before being put in my backpack (don’t want to risk oil getting on my stuffed animals, who are riding inside too!) Further proof that bento does not have to be an expensive undertaking!

Time to check in online and then hit the sack for a couple hours (we’re leaving at 5 am!!).

– s.

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At-Home Bentos

When I was in elementary school, my mother used to pack hot lunches for my brother and me in little baby “bento” thermos sets that we bought on a trip to Asia. Each set had a little tiered thermos, matching-colored chopsticks in a case, and a coordinating gingham drawstring bag to hold it all. My set was pink; my brother’s was red. My American friends all brought igloo mini-coolers or brown bags, but none of them had a cute lunch set that kept lunch piping hot until it was time to eat. Last summer, I dove back into the world of bento again when I discovered through one of my favorite craft sites that bento is starting to become a bit of a craze in the craft-oriented-blog community, especially on the West Coast. This time, there are all sorts of fun and cute accessories that are available for organizing one’s lunch, keeping foods separate, and controlling portion size. What a great idea, I thought! I loved the idea of keeping food neatly separated in one’s lunch (I’m the kind of OCD person who hates it when the different dishes on her dinner plate mix and “contaminate” one another, and brown bag lunches where everything was squished together in sandwich bags had lost their appeal around the time I graduated high school). I was already bringing my lunch to work each day in a set of stacking tupperware containers, so when I found that there were far less-clumsy nesting containers and affordable garnish tools available, I went to the Japanese discount store Daiso and bought myself a set for $3 ($1.50 for the two-tier box, $1.50 for the band). Since then my collection has expanded to include cookie cutters, molds for shaping hard-boiled eggs into cars and fish, and a little plastic press that will pack rice into bear, star, or heart-shaped pats called “onigiri” that can easily be made ahead of time en masse, frozen, and defrosted a few at a time when needed.

Because I eat at a dining hall during the school year, I haven’t had the chance to do much bento-making since late September (with the exception of the few times I brought a bagel sandwich along with me to meetings — I have this round container that exactly fits one medium sized bagel). So when I got home, I was itching to try it out on my parents, who bring food to work with them almost every day. Much to my disappointment, neither of them wanted a nicely packed lunch even though I offered several times to make lunches for them. (Something I don’t understand at all: my dad apparently prefers putting a bunch of random leftover and an apple in sandwich bags and stuffing them in his briefcase, and my mom doesn’t even really eat food at work. I was horrified to discover that she has this freezer bag full of a mishmash of half-eaten snacks — chocolate, airplane pretzels, cookies that she keeps in the bag she brings to work, along with a cup of extra-strong tea. Her only concession to meal-type food is prepackaged yogurt).

Today, though, I was sneaky and managed to send my mom to work with a snack bento, because she was running late and asked me to make her some tea. Since she was upstairs and not watching what I was doing, I took the opportunity to pack her not just a cup of tea, but an assortment of (heathier) snacks, too. When she came down, she was in too much of a rush to refuse what I put in her hands. Success!

Here it is in all its glory:

(Clockwise from upper left: DanActive yogurt drink, Chinese tea cake, herbs and garlic water crackers, clementine; napkin under the crackers. It’s packed in a knockoff lock-n-lock type container).

I also got a little into the spirit with my own lunch. Since I was eating in front of a computer I didn’t feel the need to pack it into a lidded container, but I did use a clean, recycled frozen food tray to make me feel as if I was eating it on the go!

(Left Half: “American” fried rice

with pear hearts. Right half: carrot matchsticks and pear slices. If I were packing this to take somewhere, I would’ve put the rice and fruit/veggies in separate tiers or containers to prevent the tastes from mixing. Since I was eating it right away, it was okay. Funny story about this bento: my brother came over and wanted to know why my lunch was “so organized.” I told him it was more fun that way and he sort of walked away shaking his head. Good thing he didn’t see me putting heart garnishes on the rice!)

The “American” fried rice was really a leftover remix. It’s not really fried rice in the sense of the Chinese dish since it has no eggs and uses American ingredients, but since I did make it with leftovers and I pan fried it to make it a little crispy, I’m calling it “fried rice” anyway. For the mix-ins, you could probably use some pine nuts, cubed chicken, or sausage coins to make it really yummy, but we had some cooked ground pork hanging out in our fridge, so I used that because I wanted to help get rid of it.

Mushroom and Pesto “Fried Rice”

4 medium oyster mushrooms
1 small shallot
1.5 cups leftover white rice
0.5 cup mix-ins (see above for suggestions)
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp basil pesto
1 large-ish pat of butter (not too much or it’ll be greasy!)
salt and pepper to taste.

1) Chop oyster mushrooms and shallot finely.
2) Heat skillet over medium flame. Add oil, pesto, butter.
3) When butter is melted, add shallots and mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper. Sautee until shallots are almost cooked
4) Add in any meat-based mix-ins and let sizzle for a few minutes.
5) Add in leftover rice. Use a spatula to combine ingredients in the pan and to break up any large clumps of rice. Stir the mixture constantly (you don’t want it to burn!). If extra crispiness is desired , let it sit for a few minutes before turning off the flame. Taste and season with salt and pepper as needed.

– s.

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Making Things

Whew – It’s been a while since I last posted.  I’ve been busy scrambling to meet merciless deadlines for grad school. (Literally so; because of a lag in my connection I managed to submit one electronic application 1 minute after the deadline and the system locked me out, so now I am trying to get the administration to let me turn it in, but it doesn’t seem like they want to do anything about it.  Ouch.)

Needless to say, I’ve been doing a moderate amount of crafting in the last week.  When I do a lot of work I also always find myself experiencing a huge urge to make stuff.  Particularly when I am writing (or, more often, procrastinating on pieces I ought to be writing), I like to keep my fingers occupied.  It helps me to relax.  As one former roommate of mine puts it, “crafting serves as hysterical stress displacement.”

I’m into several different kinds of arts and crafts, including drawing, some papercraft, wirework jewelry making, embroidery, some simple origami (I have trouble figuring out the more complicated directions), and knitting (I’m also kind of a beginner – I haven’t even yet mastered knitting in the round). 

I have a confession to make, though: I am a chronic non-finisher of craft projects.  Both my dorm room and my bedroom at home are cluttered with what some knitters like to call “UFO’s” (unfinished objects).  I have a short attention span.  I like to finish projects in one short sitting.  Otherwise I get bored of them. If a project takes longer than a few hours to complete, I find myself setting it aside indefinitely.  Invariably, they collect dust for months at a time until I decide, for example, that it really will not do to have that lace scarf still on my needles after almost a year, because I want the needles to start another project.  Then maybe I’ll pick it up for a little bit again.  Sometimes it gets finished, sometimes not.  It’s rather embarrassing that I don’t have the attention span to finish large projects.  I can’t imagine how people can knit whole sweaters, when after 20 rows of repeating a scarf pattern I get immeasurably bored.  I do best with mini-projects — tiny drawings, small freehand embroidery projects, origami, mini-notebooks, bookmarks, bracelets, earrings, magnets, and necklaces without a lot of links.  It’s a good thing I don’t do this for a living.

At any rate, I thought I’d share a sampling of the projects I’ve gotten into during the last week and a half. Like most crafters, I like to give my projects names.

First up, “Grace.” (So-named because I worked on it while reading Philip Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace?). A bracelet.  Silver toggles, base metal links, glass beads.  I also made a pair of matching earrings, but I don’t have a picture of those.

Secondly, a WIP (work-in-progress).  We’ll call it the “Mystery Cross-Stitch” for now, since it’s eventually destined to be part of a larger gift.  What you see in the picture is the pattern being stitched onto waste canvas.  I have about one and a half colors left and then I have to do the outlines. I’m a litte worried this project will end up being too big for me to finish.  Let’s hope posting updates on it will inspire me into working on it with some regularity.  The last thing I want to end up with is another UFO.

Enjoy!

– s.

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