Explosion

It's spring again. I know because my nose is blocked and my eyes are dry and itchy, I sneeze ALL THE TIME, and I generally feel like crap. The weather is gorgeous, the flowers are producing pollen like there's no tomorrow, and here I am, wanting to rip my eyes out to wash in a bowl of cool saline. And people wonder why I'm bitter and cynical.

xiao mei is off for break. clearly, the only bright spark in my life now is the roll of dark chocolate digestive biscuits sitting on my desk.


Just watched "Lust, Caution", the film directed by Ang Lee about the head of the Taiwanese secret service (Tony Leung) during the Japanese occupation, and a young student (Tang Wei) roped in by the resistance movement to become his mistress in order to spy on him and eventually help kill him. There's all this outrage about the film because it has some very graphic sex scenes. But after watching the show, I think that those scenes are actually necessary for plot development. Perhaps not quite as many? But at least some of them are needed. Because they demonstrate Tony Leung's dominating character, so that when Tang Wei tells her spy master to hurry up and kill Tony Leung because he is burrowing into her heart and soul, you see the empty look in her eyes, and you remember all the sex scenes, you just FEEL for this poor woman. And when the spy master simply leaves the room without ONE WORD of consolation or apology, both char and I were like "WTF!! What is WRONG with these men?"

*sigh*

Joanna was saying that women find it hard to divorce physical intimacy with emotional intimacy. Actually, I think it's probably true for most men too. Raul was telling me about his friend who was with this girl, but told Raul that it was 'just for the sex'--- but after 3 months he became all lovey-dovey and emotionally needy.


Haven't read much in a while. Am trying to take time off to write my thesis. So far, progress has been excruciatingly slow. No motivation. But today I met Nancy who defended in Dec and just turned in her thesis. And Serena has set her defense date for May.

WTF am I doing? I feel like I'm losing focus. It's hard to maintain focus because it's such a long process. I think: Ok, I need to do expt A, B and C. But expt A takes 1 month to set up (waiting for mice to breed), and 1 month to see results, and it's similar for expt B and C. so meanwhile I try to write, but I get distracted and depressed because it's taking so damn long.

I thought that maybe taiji will teach me to be calm. But I've done taiji for 3-4 yrs now and I don't think I'm any calmer than before.

Maybe Lena is right. We need to set up a thesis support group. I need someone to hold me accountable for my work. Define clear goals. 10 achievable steps to success.

1. Write chapter outlines. Decide roughly what figures and tables are needed where.

2. Plan out what other expts need to be done to fill in the blanks

3. Do the expts

4. Write chapter 2.

5. Write chapter 3.

6. Write chapter 4.

7. Write chapter 1 (intro)

8. Write last chapter.

9. Write abstract.

10. Proof read.

There! with these '10 Steps to Success', I CANNOT FAIL!!!

*mwuahahahahah*