blog.marcwiesner.com

Santa Clara University’s 7th annual (from what I gathered from the program) Vietnamese Student Association cultural show was tonight. They performed a script written by an SCU student. It was marvelously funny with wushu, dancing, evil laughter, and a heartfelt goodbye. Very good show. From speaking with the president of the Asian-Pacific Islander Student Union (APSU), I learned that there are going to be a lot of cultural shows in the spring. Should be fun.

I’ve also discovered that I can put together an easy vegan dish that Mike and Cath enjoy. Oh..the good times will roll ^_^ .

Jeez it’s been far too long since I’ve posted.

Friday a couple of the ladies from Park and I went cycling down to Trader Joe’s for Kosher for pesach chicken (theirs) and soy-butter and bread (mine).

Saturday was the Miss Teen Chinatown pageant (go Pat!).

Don’t remember what happened Sunday but the highlight of Monday was me destroying half the muscles in my torso . Lisa and I have started working out together regularly. Very fun. We’re gonna get so good looking ^^ (now all I need is a gal to appreciate it ). There was also a speaker at San Jose State making a case against the Israeli State. Some of the Hillel people went to demonstrate (not a protest, they weren’t shouting ) and I went to take pictures

Heard back from the MultiCultural Center..the Jewish Student Union didn’t get approved. They didn’t say why..they want another meeting to explain why.

Tmw is the last day of Pesach which means tomorrow for dinner we’re going out so that Lisa can gorge on pizza. I didn’t realize till I cooked a couple of kosher for pesach meals all the though that has to go into them.

Two nights ago I made curry with yams, potato, broccoli, onion (maybe other stuff I’m forgetting). Last night Yuka root with spinach, onion, and garlic. Tonight yam curry again followed by a cabbage, onion, potato, veggie marrow, stir fry. Yums yums ^^

I finally broke down and replaced my cell phone. After being hit by the truck it started to turn off randomly. Then the other day I took a turn to quickly on my bike, slipped, and fell on it (along with my wrist and my knee…the phone took the worst of it) cracking the display. My new phone is a SLVR L6. It’ll work in China, is unlocked, and works in Chinese ^^

Hopefully this great weather will hold out and I’ll be organizing a hiking trip this weekend. We’ll see.

Did I have time to stop today? Yes…but precious little. Most relaxing moment of the day: sitting outside of a Marin cafe with some friends sipping an amazing espresso between bites of a wonderful sandwich of grilled zucchini and mushrooms on focaccia. Eyes closed, bay breeze, sun….oooh, baby was it sweet.

Awake at 6. Phone, shower, dress, breakfast, commute to SF, drive to the Marin Civic Center with Pres and Pat (meeting Pat’s friend Pat ^^ ). Saw the building, the architecture, some of Wright’s sketches, took a bunch of pictures. Then off to Sausalito for brunch. Coffee and sandwich *swoon*. Then a rush back to the caltrain station so I could hope to make the 2:07 train to Santa Clara so I could make my 3:40 class. Didn’t quite make it.

Long-man, mench that he is, drove me down home to Manchester. Cooled our heels a bit then I was off to class. Took a bit of a spill corning too quickly to make a bike parking space and landed on my cell phone. Still usable, but I cracked the display. Got the insurance though so it’s all good (assuming Cingular isn’t going to be a bitch about it).

After class I rode around for a little while. Took some pictures from the Arts and Science building for my Views from SCU series. At 8 the JSU was meeting with the Multi-Cultural Center (MCC) to discuss the JSU joining. Their big pothole is the JSU as a religious-minded club as opposed to a cultural organization. Between Katie’s list of cultural events and my rants on latkes I think we sold them (though we were grilled for about an hour). We’ll see.

After the presentation I went back to Katie’s place for her sader on this, the second night of pesach. Last night we had an amazing family dinner. Tonight, I learned how to make boiled potatoes, Russian style, from Katie’s Michael and Jason, bless his afro’ed heart, brought vegan wine to the sader. Some dinner, some wine, some bored games. Good way to unwind.

Now….I’m off to shower. Between the warm day, the cycling, an hour under the spotlight, Katie’s sauna of an apartment, and the ride home (part of it racing Jason’s car from my bike), I could REALLY use a shower.

My first week back at Santa Clara’s been nice and lax. My two upper division history classes haven’t had any reading for me to do yet and there’s only been one quiz in Chinese III. Wednesday morning some of us Manchester boys and Park Place girls got together and celebrated 01:02:03 04/05/06. Updated my resume and applied for a job at a local cycle shop.

It feels good to be riding around again. The week Mike was gone and I was driving his car to work I got too complacent. I picked up some replacement brake pads for my Magna bike but haven’t but them on yet. Thought it doesn’t have any suspension, I’ve been enjoying my lighter-weight Fuji the last few days. Today, Sack and I have plans to bike to Trader Joe’s for grocery shopping. The ride itself isn’t too bad but with the wind out there it’ll be a good work out.

Domestically, I’ve got the kitchen at Manchester a tad more organized. I made a space for the rice cooker to sit on so we can start having steamed rice in the house (plus steamed buns, steamed veggies, etc) and with the glass bottles I’ve been recycling I’ve got a bottle for coconutmilk, a bottle full of fresh coffee grinds, a bottle of chopsticks, and on and on. Fun stuff ^_^

I’ve been having a ball with my new camera. I’m starting to wonder to myself if there isn’t a way I can integrate photojournalism into my career. I finally got around to meeting with Greg Corning, one of the associate deans of SCU’s College of Arts and Sciences. Unless I can shoehorn two upper division classes that relate to Asian I won’t be able to pull off the Asian Studies Minor. More disappointing, the chances of getting my course work in Chinese IV recognized is getting slimmer. I’ve got to petition the chair of the core curriculum committee and according to Prof. Corning just about all the petitions are rejected. Looks like I’ll be stuck in this Mandarin class full of underclassmen who argue with the teacher and complain about assignments DURING class and run by an instructor who’s only been at SCU for two quarters, including this one, who lets the students get away with far too much and who, instead of telling students to quite down, yells over them in a pitch that makes my left hear throb. Yeah…not too pleasant.

Three more months, three more months, three more months……

UG….yeah right….like I’m looking foreword to grad school that much.

Anyhow…my plans

Tonight it’s Sake Lab (been way too long since I’ve kicked it with Fi). Monday I start working for Rabbi Hecht in Sunnyvale. I’m going to try to find another avenue of employ, something regular that I can keep goin’ after the spring quarter starts. And then there’s the little side project that’s fallen into my lap. I’m not going into detail yet, but I’ll say it’s a certifiably Wiesner venture and it kept me in front of the computer just about all day yesterday and it’s one of the first things I started doing this morning and I think I’ll go ahead and call it something sinister like Project Underhand. Yeaaa….that’s alright ^_^ .

Now for breakfast and to contemplate returning these books (I stack up to my hip, no kidding!)

I’m done with finals..first thing I did was roll my shoulders, lean my head way back, and breath as a free man ^^

Only plans for tonight are to relax at home and…nope, that’s it..relax ^___^ 

Had a great moment walking into my last final. It was one of those "I love being able to do what I do and do it well" moments brought on by reflecting on the fact that I had two papers to hand in and two finals to take today and all the same met up with some of the gang in PA to celebrate Lisa’s 21st.

Oh yeah…super fun. 

Tomorrow I’ve got two finals (I had been confused on the dates for one of them) and both my Greece paper and thesis final draft due. Last night I didn’t sleep so much as I napped. I’ve still got much to do…can’t be healthy, mentally or physically. 

Is this really worth it?

Tomorrow. Let tomorrow end and let me forget what I could really have done without this quarter, esp so as to make more room for the things whose inscriptions I’d never want dulled in my mind.

I was sitting at a table at Garden City yesterday. A new dealer came to sit down and something seemed off about the way she was dealing. Backwards, I realized. She’d spread the flop backwards. Then I noticed the watch on her right hand and realized she was a fellow lefty.

I was playing this morning and the guy three seats to my right was an SCU alum. Finance major. I asked him how far he thought his degree was getting him. His replay was that it’s working about as well as a degree from San Jose State would.

Oh well.

Due dates:

Saturday - present senior thesis - 15 minutes plus Q&A

Monday - Final (HIST 12 Western Civ)

Wednesday - Two papers (my polished senior thesis and a 10-pager from Ancient Greece) and a Final (Ancient Greece)

Another week gone by. Friday….feel like I should be doing something to celebrate the end of the week. Mike’s off napping, Frank’s out, my other peeps seem to be incommunicado at the moment. I’d love to go out for a ripping bike ride but with the two hours I put in yesterday and the chance that I’ll be biking into Mountain View tomorrow to meet up with Preston discourages me from pushing myself tonight.

So I’ll blog until I can find better trouble to get in.

Something that I’ve been frustrated about for a while is the geographical division of the globe within Santa Clara’s History Department. The five area that one can study are Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, and Asia. The problem I have with this? Well…as it effects me, the Middle East is part of Asia. So I can take a class on the history of the middle east and it won’t count as part of Asia, but part of “Africa and the Middle East.” This smacks of thinly veiled religious gerrymandering to me; it would be far more accurate to call the five areas: the Protestant World, the Catholic World, the Southern Catholic World, the Islamic World, and the Buddhist World (I know..India is predominantly Hindu, but has got strong Buddhist influence and was its launching pad to the rest of Asia). This system of labeling would also solve the problem of Russia which, despite being mostly in Asia, is traditionally a Catholic country. And then…students like myself who see a class on Middle Eastern history nested between “Asian” history classes won’t naively think it will actually count as an Asian history course.