my life in bullet-points.

not sure how it's happened that I turned so abruptly into a non-blogging blogger, but since I have a large pile of sestinas and sonnets to grade this is not really the time to change that. what follows is a brief summary of the recent past, to be filled in (hopefully) with more detail and complete sentences at some post-end-of-semester point.

• Have decided to go to Berkeley next year (and, if all goes according to plan, the year after, and the year after that, and the year after that...). Looking forward to: good Mexican food, the presence of Sarah P. Stone, farmer's markets, being able to go running without feeling like I'm going to die, having a decent kitchen, being near a city with an opera company and excellent museums, a whole lot of learnin'. Not looking forward to: stress, giving up my salary for a grad studend stipend, not being able to take public transportation to China.
• Spent last weekend in Guangzhou. Highlights: dim sum in a restaurant with seating for 1600; amazingly delicious fried eggplant; speaking Chinese; walking along the Pearl River at night; the "free stroller for rent" shops around the White Swan Hotel (catering, presumably, to strollerless gweilos who have just adopted Chinese babies)
• Renewed my acquaintance with my bihu (house-gecko). The night I arrived back from the States, where I spent a week visiting Berkeley and UChicago, I jumped in the shower only to have said bihu climb out from behind the shampoo and onto the faucet. He was afraid of me, I was afraid of him slipping off the (wet) faucet and falling onto my feet, but I couldn't turn off the water since he was on the faucet. The impasse lasted about five minutes before he managed to jump off the faucet and run out of the bathroom, probably to the cabinet where he seems to reside. I'm still not a huge bihu fan, but it's strange to think back to my arrival in Hong Kong and how completely freaked out I was by the occasional sight of a lizard or two running across my ceiling.
• My first set of "lasts" in Hong Kong: last English Table, last Toastmasters meeting. Will give my last lecture on Saturday. Though I'm looking forward to having more time to read and travel and learn to read fantizi and go to Jackie Chan Boxercize and take photos, etc., I will be slightly sad to see this semester end; I've had an exceptional group of students in my creative writing class , and I'll miss them and miss teaching poetry, something I'm unlikely to do again.
• Starting Cantonese classes tonight. Afraid it will do disastrous things to my putonghua, but am looking forward, oddly, to experiencing once again the frustration of being forced into total inarticulateness, and the exaggerated feelings of accomplishment that come from learning to overcome that, albeit in extremely basic ways.
• Have recently had another bout of the indescribably painful Throat Thing that I got in Chiang Mai last year. However, antibiotics are an amazing thing. So is codeine.
• Saw a lovely film from the Philippines as part of the HKIFF, The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros. See it if you have the chance.
• Reading: Sour Sweet, Heart of Darkness. Just finished Richard Russo's book of short stories, The Whore's Child, which was absolutely terrible--a big disappointment after his novels. In general, though, not really reading, which is the biggest disappointment of all.