Earthquake near Taiwan broke the internet

...cable under the Pacific, so internet access to U.S. websites was unavailable for a while. But it's back, yes!

I cussed in Chinese just now. When my rabbit 雪糕 Ice Cream kicked something over in my room, I turned my head and unconsciously said to it: 他妈的！ which is equivalent to: fuck! This makes me pleased -- what language you reflexically cuss in says a lot. In fact, I haven't blogged much lately cuz I've been experiencing/thinking about my life in Chinese, which makes it awkward to have to self-translate in order to blog.

I kept turning the idea of staying another half year over and over again in my head the last couple of days. I think I decided finally on not extending my time-off. I think... It'd be hard to pull off, due to a lot of logistics, but it's possible. It'd be a spontaneous decision, but I was really tempted. I have really good friends here... Moments that have been as sweet as it's gotten at school. Saturday night before Christmas, everybody went clubbing. Practically everyone I knew in Shanghai showed up at the same lesbian bar, and I had to run back and forth between groups, trying to socialize with everyone at once :) Besides being hella fun, I also felt such a sense of belonging; when you know enough people in the community to be running into acquaintances everywhere, while having really close friends as your base, it's precious, especially for me, who moves all the time and never gets settled into a place. And i love these people, who are interesting, passionate, pioneering, fun, and hot too.

In the afternoon, before going to the club, I went to Chi Heng Foundation's office, and listened to them answer the lala (lesbian) hotline calls. Then I sat in on their meeting afterwards, and got myself into a long-term commitment of collecting international queer news articles, and translating them into Chinese. This is a task that I can continue even after I leave; I guess I've sorta become a long-term volunteer for Chi Heng.

Christmas Eve I spent at Xiao Yu's place, along with Xiao Shu and Xiao Yan (a couple from Fudan) and others. It would've been an otherwise wonderful, festive dinner, eating w/ so many people w/ some tacky lights strung up around the living room. But the hotpot was really hot!! as in, spicy. The spices totally conqueored me, I was crying and blowing my nose and practically gave up eating.

Now half of us there were queer, the others were straight girls who didn't know, friends of one of the straight roommates. In the middle of eating, Xiao Shu mentioned that she saw 高娅媛 at a restaurant the other day (高娅媛, a singer who got famous through one of those competitions similar to American Idol, who is really obviously a dyke, a T, who's pretty hot too. see her blog http://blog.sina.com.cn/m/gaoyayuan ). A casual statement, us queer ones all knew what she was talking about. She bumped into this lesbian celebrity in public. Cool. Nothing else. But then, this other girl suddenly said, "oh, i hear that she's homosexual." Right then, the table fell silent. We didn't know what to say. The moment was hilarious. I could barely keep from bursting out laughing. Only Xiao Shu kept a straight face, and answered matter of factly:"yes, I hear she is too. I saw here there with three girls too." This whole time, the straight ones happened to be sitting togehter on one side of the table, and we were all sitting next to each other on the other side of the table, looking really obvious, to anyone who knows anything about it at all...