jhameia | Entries tagged with grad school

So, I signed the TA contract, uploaded it, and waited for my student account balance to change... and it didn't. So it turns out, after asking around, that 6th year international students pay tuition AND non-resident tuition regardless of financial aid, and filing fee status is the only way to be exempt.

I emailed Grad Div about whether I'd have to re-petition to be on filing fee status should it come down to that, and also texted the prof about it. She called me, and we talked it over, and she seems keen to keep me as her TA. She's emailed the department chair, the dean of Grad Div, and some other admin people, and I guess going to look for a way to get my tuition waivered regardless because it's just not a well-known thing. I don't have a lot of hope for that but I'm holding out SOME optimism because I would love to TA for this class. But if it comes down to it, I can't justifying paying $10,000 to TA for a 10-week class, when I'm defending in Week 2. And that includes health insurance too, which was another solid reason to accept the TAship and get the fee waiver.

=/ Very unhappy with how this is shaking out. Fingers crossed that it works out.

After a week of radio silence, I sent my adviser an email, with a new email thread, asking about a new timeline and feedback on my diss and whether I can submit my diss for format review.

She got back to me and said she really liked my fourth chapter, that I basically delivered more than expected, and the dissertation's finally ready to be sent to the rest of my committee. So of course this meant I stayed up until 4am, checking footnotes and making sure everything looked okay so I could save it as a PDF for submission.

Today I went to campus specifically to shut down the office computer and send my diss along, asking if they could let me know whether there was feedback I'd need more than a month to address. Either way, I FINALLY submitted my diss for format review. ProQuest was an arcane thing which made me feel like I was being hoodwinked somehow. I could pay nothing and just let my diss be searchable on engine, or I could pay $95 and have my diss be distributed on more media and this latter option is called "Open Access"??? That's fucked up. And the whole thing about CC licenses, gah, IDK, in the end I went with no licenses, and no copyright purchase, because I just couldn't deal. I'm hoping I don't regret it and get to go back and change some things.

Anyway, format review!! It's one of the very latter stages of dissertating so.... I'm kind of shaken up about it.

I also meant to turn in my office key (and other keys) but Vonnie wasn't around, and I would rather give them to her directly and thank her for being so cool about letting me keep the office way past my time.

I saw Aviya in her office and chatted with her a while, and Soonyoung was doing her third written exam so I walked with her afterwards. Then I came across JJ and walked home with her too. I went to Starbucks to write some fanfic (delayed Strange Magic Week prompts) and spin some Pokestops.

After dinner, I armed myself with shoes and my Pokemon Go Plus, and did my evening thing. Every time there was a long stretch, I'd break into a short jog. At first, I did it up to a count of 20, then I was doing 30s, and 40. I can't really tell what a full second looks like, and didn't want to overdo it by running a full five minutes when I don't even know what that looks like.

It was good! I think I definitely pushed myself a little without burning myself to exhaustion. I stopped to check the pokegyms, but otherwise did not stop at all. Gosh it's so nice to be able to keep going with minimal stopping?? And STILL catch pokemon? I am digging it.

Gonna *try* to sleep earlier tonight.

There are still some citations that I can't seem to find page number for, and the footnotes are going to be messy until the final round because I cannot be arsed to fix it when I know I'm going to have to do it AGAIN after the next round of edits. I re-read the conclusion and it was not as rubbishy as I thought, so I fixed it up some more. I got through re-reading and editing the fourth chapter too, and hopefully it won't need to many edits. (Splitting it off to make it my next book project will probably be the thing, anyway.) Dr. ML says she'll get it back to me on Monday, so that's half a week I've got to take a break and do OTHER things besides my dissertation.

Then I went to campus and cleaned up my desk a bit, and pulled down my posters. I brought home some books, sorted some papers. There's a small thing of stationery I'll take to the big TA office. I should have my office cleared out by the weekend.

I've been eating sandwiches for lunch: sourdough bread, with spreadable ham and some cheese. It's been really nice! The grill is working great even though it's broken and I have to hold it together with an elastic headband. Still have some lasagna left, but the other night I had some shallow-fried fish, and that was nice.

I went for a walk tonight, and for a couple of stretches I jogged a bit. I didn't stretch beforehand, which I think may have made the jogs a bad idea. I'm trying to see if I can get this usual 5k walk down to 1 hour from the 1 and a half hours. It just takes so long! I did forget that jogging/running makes me sweat like my forehead is leaking all over my face and I should have worn a headband. Next time *shakes fist* IIRC I also used to run with a towel, too, especially when running in Malaysia. (I don't recall having to do that in Halifax.) I wasn't as winded for the brief spurts I did do, though, so that's something, I think.

Maybe I'll ask someone if they want to go to the trampoline park.

So.

I was supposed to swim yesterday, except on Sunday night, I struggled to get to 200 pages and the conclusion was just so fucking hard, partly because I don't understand conclusions, and partly because the things I wanted to say in my conclusion sounded stupid. I did get to 200 pages, and then decided to spend a bit of time putting together the Works Cited list, which involved copy-pasting a LOT of very tiny footnotes, and it was highly annoying. But I kept thinking "well, just a little bit more!" and by the time I had collated it (minus some data, because I've not been consistent with using Zotero, and some of my books are left on campus), it was 6am.

So when I went to get a final drink of water, I exclaimed an expletive at how BRIGHT it was outside, and went to sleep, for about three hours. Woke up feeling crappy still, had more meltdown fits, then realized I had edits for my introduction and second chapter still untouched! So I had another crying fit and sat down and tried to work some more. Slept some more, then begged for help from a friend, and felt better. I wrote a couple of really workable paragraphs, and got through the rest of the introduction edits mostly okay.

Today I worked on Chapter 2 edits, with a nice 4-hour long break to go to lunch with Lindsay which also involved going to get some dessert, so I got some cake from the sugar-free bakery, covered with chocolate mousse.

I also went swimming! The SKY was gloriously CLOUDY and it was still warm out, and I thought, when am I ever going to get a chance to swim when it's warm and cloudy out like this again?? And it might rain! Even better! It started raining around my 8th lap, and I kept going to Lap 18. It was so great. First time that it was warmer in the pool than out. What an interesting experience. I hope it happens again.

Finally checked my email to send my adviser what I currently have only to see she's asked me to take a couple more days so I can stop feeling crummy about my conclusion. (Any advice on how to write dissertation conclusions will be muchly appreciated.) She also has this thing against ending sentences with prepositions. I don't really know why this is such a big deal, but I guess I should comb through the rest of the diss looking for such things.

I got zero writing done in the morning. I had such visions of waking up early to go to campus and working until afternoon. I even dug out my sandwich grill to bring a lunch to school.

Alas, I tossed and turned when I turned in at 12.30am with horrid depressive anxious thoughts, had a crying fit, and who knows what time I actually slept, but waking up at 6am was not happening. And then I was so tired I frittered the morning away.

I went to have lunch with YL, her last day here in the States for who knows how long. Had like, five mozza sticks. Afterwards, I went to Starbucks to work, and finished my fourth chapter, so yay. I twiddled with pagination and footnotes before going home. I'm at 188 pages, out of the targeted 200! So now, a 12-page conclusion, sigh.

I swam 18 laps today. Wasn't going to, but I was at 15, and then decided, what the heck, let's up it to 18. I think I still did it within the 40 minutes I was in the pool for. My arms and knees were a bit hurty but that might not be from the swimming. My arms have been hurting a lot lately because of the computer work.

Stuff came in the mail today: my graduation pin which I'd left in the rental gown (the clip part is busted); the SUNVAULT anthology (gave it to YL since she hadn't received her copy); and red lacy Bandalettes! I like 'em, they're super cute, even with shorts. I may need more short shorts just for an excuse to wear them, ha.

In my Forest app, I unlocked a new tree, the gingko tree, which is one of the more attractive trees in the app thus far. I've been using Forest a lot. I find I'm most productive away from the computer with social media. I'm going to handwrite some conclusion-esque things and see how that goes.

Got out late, got to the office at 11-ish, and Emily wasn't free to write, so I had to plod along myself, which was hard. But after lunch, I got started on a really good clip. Inserted some pictures into my current chapter, and wrote more words. I'm a little over halfway of my second section, which makes me happy, and I'm thinking I might add in one more example? Right now I have six texts: three visual, three literary, and I'd like to add in an example that combines both. I'll keep plugging along and see where I'm at by the end of the weekend.

I REALLY wanted to go to the Nerds of Color meetup in San Diego tomorrow, but I don't think I can make it =( I'd need a place to stay, and it only just occurred to me that I could take a Greyhound down, but the times just don't work. SIGH!

Anyway it is 1am and I need to go to bed, blurgh.

My phone died overnight, having refused to charge without being babysat, so I decided, once it was charging merrily without my overnight but taking too long for my liking, that I would go to campus and do work without the phone. This turned out to be a very good thing indeed, because I wasn't tempted to watch it all the time. I've also logged out of most social media on my work computer, so that was nice too. Emily Jiang checked in with me around 11.30 for some writing, and that was nice too.

I still can't focus on the screen, it seems, so I switched to handwriting some paragraphs instead. This helped quite a bit. Except for some sentences here and there, I'm starting work on a new section, articulating the concept of minor literature in relation to multicultural steampunk.

I ate at the Getaway, taking laptop and writing book and pencil and eraser with me. Had a couple of slices of a pizza, packed the rest, got back to my office, and coughed up a couple more paragraphs. Then I went home.

Swam 16 laps today. Was gonna stick to 15, but thought I could push on just once more. I'm feeling, as

oracne calls it, the Glow of Virtue, which I promptly ruined by eating a sponge cake. I finished my remaining sausages, too. I haven't heard back about the results of my blood test from yesterday, but I assume I'll hear back by the end of the week, and if there's anything big, the doctor will call me (which is what he did last time). But I'm really crossing my fingers that my blood sugar levels have dropped.

I have been very good and did not text anybody today.

I submitted a poem. It's been a while since I wrote a poem I felt good about, so that's nice. It might be a bit too sentimental, IDK, I like its tweeness, but maybe it's too schmoopy? Oh well.

I'm gonna try to make it to campus tomorrow for some more writing by hand, and I think I will leave the phone home again so I don't get anxious around it. Until my mini-USB port replacement comes, I'll use it as little as possible so I don't keep freaking out over recharging it and possibly aggravating the problem even more.

Well, another hot unproductive day. I slept at 1am, but then woke up at 5am, which is pretty horrific. Was too sleepy to function, so I napped after lunch for like three hours.

I did write a poem, though. Not sure where to send it.

A new friend from WisCon was free at 6pm for a writing session, so we did a couple of rounds, which was great, I am two paragraphs up.

I'm re-reading Ruth Frankenberg's White Women, Race Matters which was a seminal work in whiteness studies back in '93, for a definition of whiteness. Out of curiousity, I googled her, and found this obituary of her. She died in 2007, aged 49, which seems a huge loss. I'm thinking to buy a copy of this book, because I think it'll be good for future reference.

Had a schmoopy conversation today. I am allowed schmoopy things.

At 9-ish, after HAUGHing at the weather, not wanting to go to campus because around lunch I'd have to leave the office to find food, I decided that I would go to Coco's, order a bacon and eggs flatbread, because I know I cannot finish it in one sitting, and just sit there for hours, feebly trying to finish it.

It took me 4 hours to get through the whole thing.

Against my better sense, I also ordered a slice of cheesecake pie. I did not manage to finish it, even after two more hours.

I should have ordered clam chowder instead, and maybe fries. Except I'm not sure the fries would have been any better.

I have ~1000 words for my fourth chapter, many of which was not even written today.

When I left, I left a huge-ass tip because I felt so bad for the wait staff because I was so anxious about my writing I avoided eye contact with them almost the whole time.

I DID want to swim today, and thought I would save it for sunset, because it was still going to be a heinous 33'c in the evening. But I wanted to catch a Pikachu wearing Ash's hat so I did my long walk instead. Maybe tomorrow when S. and I go to UCSD I'll hike down to Black's Beach and go for a swim in the ocean? Or maybe not, and go to the Geisel library and work instead (which I never did last year).

My smartphone is having issues charging itself. I'll plug it in, and it'll charge for some time, but then, arbitrarily, it'll decide to just.... not charge. Like the USB cord is in, it WAS charging, but at some point it just stops. It'll recognize when the USB has been unplugged when I pull it out, but otherwise I can't figure out what's going on with it. I wonder if it has to do with the weather, and it doesn't charge so well in intense temperatures. But my laptop is also taking forever to charge fully, despite these being perfectly decent (and new) wires. I'm not sure what's going on.

well.... commencement happened, I looked banging, I went #7 in line and stayed the rest of the THREE GODDAMN HOURS HOLY SCHNYKIES

Nalo was there to hood one of my friends, yay!

I hoped to get into the Eaton stacks to get pictures of myself in full regalia with my books in the stacks, but oh well. Some other time, maybe.

My parents are annoying but what else is new. But now they have heard from professors in my department how awesome I am, so yay.

We are going to Joshua Tree and Sequoia National Forest (I think) (some of part that range) and then to Santa Cruz and then to San Francisco.

I have worn makeup twice in three days and my face feels very tired >_>

Gonna bring my computer with me on the off chance that I can keep working on the diss while I'm on the road. Wishes and dreams and stuff.

Gotta decide if I wanna take the 10pm Bolt Bus or an 11pm Greyhound. I guess in the long run it doesn't matter? Gonna go with the cheaper option.

What the hell has been going on lately? Feels like every other friend I've encountered online and off has been struck by depression, all at once. I've been hella depressed too, and it's a fucking miracle to be able to write just a measly 400 words a fucking day. I can't get out of bed earlier than 10am, I get to campus around noon, and I stay until maybe 6pm, come home, eat, and then I have no idea what happens to my brain.

I've taken to sleep aid pills, which IDK, I don't think I've had this problem with the liquid version? I'll go back to the liquid version and see if that's any different. But really, shit like ZZZquil is meant for occasional use, not regular use. Blargh. And then there's the fact that I can sleep 8 hours and still wake up feeling under-rested and like hot garbage. I'm going to the fucking doctor. It's time for my yearly physical anyway. I just feel terrified because I've been devouring so much shitty food I'm pretty sure I'm pre-diabetic
by now =(

I thought I finished editing my first chapter, but now that I think about it, after having sent it off, it's not really done and needs a concluding paragraph that pulls the argument together. Argh. I'm gonna try to look it over again tomorrow and see what I can do. They said the editing stage was easier, it was the first draft that was the hardest, but I think that's a god damn fucking lie!

I'm trying to walk more too, for Pokemon Go, but ugh, IDK, IDK.

In an effort to manage my attention, I have:

- logged out of Facebook and Tumblr on my working laptop
- deleted Facebook and Twitter from my cellphone

So the only way I can get to Facebook and Tumblr is from my main computer. I can't handle scrolling FB on my phone because everything is out of order so I don't have a sense of when I stop, especially with non-stop scrolling.

But I'm still stuck on Strange Magic so I should probably also log out of Youtube on my work laptop too.

In general trying to manage my temptations have not actually worked in keeping me working, because something else always comes up.

Today I had to see a friend off to the hospital after spending hours helping her manage her developing anxiety disorder, so.... here's hoping this is one more thing off my chest. (Yes it distracted me but I think not helping her would not have been good for me either.)

Still, a bit a day! Just a bit a day. I can do this.

Busy busy week!

- Sunday: last minute went with a friend to the Anza-Borrego Desert to check out the superbloom there. I had suggested leaving at 6, getting there at 8, returning at 10, before the highway traffic set in. But it's too early for him, so we moved it back 2 hours. What happened was we left at 8, got there at 10.30, got back on the road around 12.30, and got home around 4 or so. There was a LONG time spent on a SINGLE road that was jammed up.

- Monday spent working on a cover letter. YL is having a difficult time so been doing a lot of emotional labour there.

- Tuesday I led a couple of events for the Grad Day of Action. Turns out "Courtyard outside the Physics Hall" gets read as "meet in the Physics Hall" *rolls eyes* So only one person showed up for the lunch in the courtyard, and another one for the hike into the Gardens. But the Gardens are beautiful right now, so I can't complain. Hung out the rest of the time with other grads in the Grad Lounge.

- Wednesday, had a very brief SSFAC meeting! And then did the SFRG, and went out to dinner with Lindsay and Eun-Joo. My Clarion classmate, Alan, got in around 10pm :D

- Thursday, Alan visited! We wandered the campus first thing in the morning, then I left him in the Creative Writing department. He came by mid-afternoon, so we went to the Eaton Collection to check out some stuff, like an artbook of Flatland, the original edition of Ted Chiang's STORIES OF YOUR LIFE, the original hardcover of Ellen Kushner's SWORDSPOINT.

We had dinner at Tio's, and at night, I found I had to walk back to campus so I could get the file for the final exam I'm giving students.

Right now, I'm staring at a giant pile of final essays to grade, feeling super thankful I made them go through a gamut of three workshops (much of this pile = previous drafts that I made them attach). They're feeling pretty good about this final essay, confident about the final exam, and I'm going to miss a bunch of them.

Losses of teaching this class:
- Sank in a LOT of energy talking to students that took away from writing my dissertation
- Felt woefully under-prepped most of the time to teach some of the more theoretical texts, like there were problems I feel I should have anticipated #impostersyndrome
- Still can't save some students. A student emailed me at 1am, 6 hours before the essay was due, being apologetic for not coming to workshop and asking to hand in his essay on Saturday. SATURRDAY? I assigned this essay A MONTH AGO to give you ample time to prep, PLUS had three workshops for each stage of writing! Maybe if you weren't gallivanting off to LA two hours away half the quarter you'd be doing better work. I understand some folks gotta hustle, but come on.
- I thought I was a morning person, but apparently teaching at 7am is way too morning for me.

Wins in teaching this class:
- Watching the Engineering students glow as they talked about going through Special Collection archives and handling papers directly about the founding of their college
- Freshman student going from strength to strength with each essay, and being able to teach her directly some database tricks
- One of my students may have scored an internship with a professor to help with linguistics research (his major) as a result of the final essay project.

Not bad for a class I was recommended for simply because I was out of a job.

Today I did manage to get up at 5.30am with Alarmy... it's am alarm app which forces you to do a thing in order for you to turn it off. Options include doing math problems. I chose an option where I would have to get up, turn on the light, stumble to my closet, and take a picture of my organizer. And since I'm there, aaaand that's where the underwear is, I might as well keep on going and get dressed.

I have not managed to stay awake despite this exercise, of course. This morning I got as far as washing up and getting dressed, doing some exercise (sets of 10, squats, push-ups from the knee, crunches, Russian crunches; it hurt), getting breakfast and morning drink, while checking the Internet, and afterwards, around 7am, I went back to bed and got up around 8.30. Well... baby steps, I guess. Tomorrow I'll see a friend for the first time in almost five years, so once I have done morning libations, I'll hie to the nearby Starbucks, do some reading, and refill my Pokemon bag, until he gets to Riverside. I also need to get books for the class I'm teaching this quarter?

Which brings me to the productive things I have done in the new year: I have drafted a syllabus that actually looks rather good (I think). It has some holes in it, because I don't actually know what the text I'm supposed to teach is. We're supposed to get a list of books and pick one, and the St. Martin's Guide to Writing, and we get to choose exercises from that book. The essays escalate from 2 - 3 pages to a 6 pager, although I wonder if the final project might be too much (I'm teaching them how to do an annotated bibliography, and I would like at least three items in the Works Cited page).

The class is Intermediate Composition. It is part of a remedial freshman series to equip students with the writing skills needed at university level. The first course, they're apparently still learning how to put sentences together into paragraphs. The third course is critical thinking. This leaves the second course as a bridge between the two, where the students move from personal writing to more public writing "for multicultural contexts" which is kind of a meaningless description. I do know they have to write at least four essays, so I'm teaching them, basically, how to write about media, and how to read and edit. And cite. You can never teach kids how to cite too early. I'm pondering a library visit, but... the class is at 7am. I'm pretty sure the library only opens at 8am.

(The class at 7am is because the Chancellor has decided to aggressively expand the university and up enrollment without considering whether we have the actual capacity for it. We don't. That's why there are now 7am classes. I have a MWF schedule, which I don't mind, but all at 7am. I am not sure why I volunteered to teach at heinous o'clock.)

I'm wondering if I need to email the professor who's supposed to oversee us... apparently we get very little supervision, but IDK.

Today, rather than faff over my syllabus, I decided to submit some stuff. I was originally only going to do one, but in the end I've sent out four submissions.

Sometime this week, while I have brainspace, I'm going to get Interfolio and my Vitae account into order.

- I join the ranks of WisCon Chronicle editors who have to chase down submissions! If you want to submit to the WisCon Chronicles but needed more time, let me know! Or if you have an interesting post or essay you wrote a long time ago that you think would work for the theme (Trials by Whiteness) then feel free to forward that to me, too. I'm hoping to have essays, poetry, fiction about conditional whiteness, the change in atmosphere at WisCon, and the use of the safer spaces (of which we now have THREE!!!).

- I submitted two job apps, and just heard back from one... they want more materials. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. I'm also working on another job application for another creative writing position. I am a lot less qualified for that one, but it's in Oregon!

- I'm writing a postdoc app right now and it's due today and I have no idea what I'm doing but oh well.

- I'm strangely stymied for this last chapter. There's a lot I want to say! But what order and how to best make my argument coherent? Argh!

- My department doesn't have enough TAships to offer me one, so I'm out of a job for next quarter. Put myself into the interdisciplinary and University Writing Program pools, and we'll see what happens.

- The new movie based on Ted Chiang's novella, ARRIVAL, is playing tonight at UC San Diego. I have, of course, idiotically double-booked myself. Oh well. I'm still going but I'll have to do some legwork for the other event I organized tonight. Bah!

- Finished my third chapter last night! I've checked out a buncha books today on postcolonial writing today to write my fourth chapter, which will be a whirlwind tour of POC steampunk stuff to demonstrate that steampunk doesn't have to be destined for Eurocentrism. Hopefully I can blow through this chapter in a week before Clarion starts.

- I signed a contract for a sale to Interfictions Online today! This makes it my third pro sale, which means I am now a SFWA-qualified writer *_*

- Sent off two of the three Con or Bust items I donated today! (Psst Kate)

- The more I think about it, the less keen I am on staying in academia. When I next go home to Malaysia, I'm going to look into my mother's apartments on Jalan Ampang (one of which is technically in my name, so technically it is mine) as potential places to live. The problem is, of course, my mother's pharmacy is right downstairs so it could be a source of potential horrible-ness. But I could take all the keys and pretend to not be home! Maybe. I'll talk it over with my father and we'll see how it goes.

(Why, oh why, didn't my parents invest in more commercial property. I could use it right about now...)

- Tomorrow I get to introduce Qiouyi to Yilun!!! We're going to the Hsi Lai temple in Hacienda Heights, and then to a nearby hot pot place :D :D :D It's gonna be gr8.

- Hoping to go to Two Trees sometime this weekend, or next week. Before Brian heads to Albuquerque, maybe. Hmmm....

Monday:
- First day of school. I hung out after lecture for the GSA Executive Council meeting at 7pm.
- My Co-TA this quarter is a serious dude from the History department. A nice change from the previous co-TAs who have generally been way too chill or too anxious.
- I saw Dr. Anthonia Kalu in her office and sat down to chat. Made small talk, told her some good news, and she said I did look a lot happier than last quarter after being rejected for the Sawyer.

Tuesday:
- UGH so I did not realize that when I signed up for Recruitment Day I had also double-booked myself to get out to Long Beach City College for a panel on MOTHERSHIP.
- Went to get a student from the nearby hotel, and hung out generally for breakfast and lunch.
- Around 3pm, Eric and Maurisa and I headed to Long Beach. I brought my Hamilton CDs because Eric still hadn't heard Act 2, and Maurisa and I sang all the way there.
- The panel was good, but Anil Menon couldn't make it, which saddened me. But I got to hang out for a bit, and later we went to a bar in Long Beach downtown which was originally a bank, so it maintained the Art Deco-era style. Very nice. Decent food.
- (Then I asked if we could visit the Vault where they have a speakeasy, complete with password and stuff. Also very cool.)

- Today I came home after lecture and passed right the fuck out. I intend to avoid campus tomorrow, will go to the bank and sort out my credit card issues. Then I'll read a book the rest of the day for my diss.

So, I had a pretty productive weekend! Maybe. Sort of.

Thursday:
Karen Lord, Tobias Buckell, and Karin Lowachee came to UCR! They came to Nalo's seminar, and then went to the library. There was a late afternoon panel, and I hung out afterwards with Nalo, Toby and Karen. Karen gently pointed out that my suggestion of Gina Torres and Laurence Fishburne to play the main protagonists of The Best Of All Possible Worlds didn't work, and she had mentally cast Angel Coulby as Delarua already, which I was cool with. We talked about reviewers, and she was also annoyed at the John Clute review from a while back--which, incidentally, was also the same review article in which he missed the point of my SP3: Revolution essay.

(Karen is so cool, sob sob.)

Friday:

OK, not actually as productive as it could have been. I was really underslept for some reason, so I went home early and napped. I don't really remember what I did, which is quickly becoming a theme of my life for days that are unmarked by an appointment.

Saturday:

I tried to do some writing! I did a little bit. I also went to listen to the bell tower recital, and Ma Yan came to join me! She's a visiting scholar, working with Dr. Kalu. I'd never had the opportunity to just hang out with her before this, so it was really nice that she came out. After belltower recitals, it's unlocked for visitors, so we went up. Afterwards, we walked to the Botanic Gardens, since she'd never seen them before, and then went to dinner.

Busy Cafe has been bought over my Pho Vinam, which makes me sad! The crispy panfried noodle recipe for Pho Vinam is WAY SALTIER and almost inedible. I HATE complaining about something like that, but the waiter caught my cringing face so I kinda fessed up. I got a slice of cake? Sigh. I'll really miss Busy Cafe... I guess it's really time to move on from Riverside!

Today!

Was super productive! Tempest and I wrote for most of the afternoon, then Marianne came to join us! I think I got about 2000 words done today! But now I'm stuck at the second part of the chapter, trying to articulate the form of Eurocentrism that basically says, "so this thing which is super white is getting kind of boring! let's shake it up a bit" while completely ignoring WHY it was super white in the first place. I'm going to try researching around tomorrow and see what happens. If not, Mariam has a seminar on Tuesday--she's running for Vice Chancellor of Diversity and Equity Excellents (Yolanda is stepping down)--and I'll try got grab her afterwards to ask her.

Anyway, other news!

- I have been voluntold by the inestimable Nisi that I will be chairing the jury for the Carl Brandon Society Parallax and Kindred Awards, seasons 2012 & 2013! What does this mean I'm sure I do not know but I will figure it out, I'm sure. But there are a lot of books to judge, and the more the merrier, so if you want to join the jury, please sign up asap!

- The Sea Is Ours is now available in Southeast Asia!! The publisher and distributor, Gerak Budaya, is a favourite of mine; they publish a lot of local academic material, and distribute a ton of great leftist material. They're also a source for local socialist books, and a Malaysian socialist newspaper! So I"m really proud about this!

- I miscalculated and turns out I shan't be missing the first Friday of the new quarter after all! I can go to ICFA and AnomalyCon guilt-free! Now to figure out whether I can get to UC Berkeley for a SEAS conference, Diana's Wedding, and WisCon, similarly guilt-free.

- I had a writing session with Tempest this morning! I got another buncha words done, describing my primary texts for the chapter. Still feeling woefully un-outlined, though.

- Couldn't concentrate for most of the rest of the day.

- Went to the International Center discussion group tonight. Got free pizza. Yay.

- My chard seeds are sprouting! Hopefully they will actually take this time and I can plant them somewhere.

- Dr. Maier is apparently chairing my CSEAS panel, aaaaa! I really must start putting together that trip. I wonder if Dr. Lam is heading up by plane or train... I'm doing some mental calculating right now and I'm worried that one of the midterms for the class I'll TA for will fall on that very weekend, so I'll have to email the organizers of the CSEAS conference to see if I can come in on the Saturday only. OR figure something out with my co-TA, get back on Sunday and grade like a demon then.

It has been a remarkably sociable weekend for me!

Friday I went to Dr. Maier's talk on translation, at least the first half, and in the evening, I went to his house! For a SEATRiP get-together! It was fun. Nice house. Got to have extended chats with various people.

Saturday I mucked about, writing my fic prompt, and went to Javi and Maurisa's place to watch ALLIGATOR PEOPLE which is about as terrible as it sounds, but not too bad. I wrote the beginnings of what looks to be a kids' book, about a little girl in a new housing estate who discovers that mutated migrant workers live in the sewers beneath. I have no idea how this will go; I haven't read any kids' books in years so I'll check some out of the library and have a look-see.

Then Eric and I headed into LA for the Radio Imagination Launch, which was also an Octavia Butler commemoration event! I met Moya Bailey, the other founder of the oEB Legacy Network, aaaaaa!! There was an Earthseed ritual, AAAAAAAAA! It was super neat. I got to meet someone who's been a long-time lurker fan of my blog, AAAAAAAAAAAA!

Today Emily Jiang came into Riverside, wheeeee! I went to campus to work with Mary for a couple of hours, and then practically spent the rest of the day with Emily. We went to the Botanic Gardens, then hunted for grapefruit and yaaaayyy.

And I even got to do a 30 minute writing sesh with Tempest! I got started on my second chapter, which I'm pretty pleased about. I have a lot of secondary sources I want to incorporate into my roadmap before I get into the business of really writing the thing, but I'm pretty hopeful about it.

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Reaching Out

The rest of the world is always there

mini-crisis time

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manuscript in!

meltdowns and stuff

15 to 18

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I feel I don't catch a break, somehow

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January 2025

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