悲しくて,寂しくて,でもしょうがないね。何もできなくて,だからできる物のことが,必ず一生懸命ながんばりなさい。

This entry began life in Japanese, as a means of writing practice, but I decided I should be merciful and not post two entries in a row in a language that most of you won’t be able to understand. So 英語 it is:

As a die-hard believer in the idea that keeping as busy as possible is the best cure for feelings of negativity, whether they be frustration, depression, dejection or general ennui, I have finally got round to doing something I’ve wanted to do pretty much ever since moving to London… sign up for Japanese lessons. I rather regret procrastinating this for such a long time because had I got started when I first came, I would be well into it by now. I guess in a way I hadn’t much of a choice because my position was so unsettled until lately, visa-wise, emotionally, physically, just with being here and how long I was going to be here.

Not being a complete beginner, I had to take a placement test so that they could slot me into an appropriate level, and this started off pretty disastrously with me not understanding the first question put to me (“did you have trouble finding this place?”), which frazzled me out so much I couldn’t say a lot of extremely simple things after that. And to my horrification there was so much I had forgotten, grammar and vocabulary wise, that questions on the written test I was sure would’ve been a breeze in secondary school had me taking wild stabs in the dark. Like “What did you do [something] dinner last night?”. The “something” would clearly be “before”, or “after”, or “during”, but for the life of me I could not remember what it was, and wound up putting some random action down in hopes it would fit the situation regardless of which it actually was (“本を読みました”!). So many of the questions were like that. My knowledge of particles flew completely out the window. I kept drawing blanks with vocabulary which I knew I should have understood perfectly.

I managed about 60% on the lower intermediate placement test somehow, despite not understanding more than half of it, which amazingly enough was good enough for the co-ordinator to let me into that level (maybe the fact that all my mistakes were in particles and conjugation and I got all the open-ended questions right was impressive?? who knows). But it was a really humbling experience, because I know I would easily have had 100% on that test when I was 16, and I’m now desperately trying to recover all my lost Japanese knowledge before my first lesson. I foresee massive embarrassment ahead when I find myself unable to write something like 寝る, which is common enough so that it will probably pop up and complicated enough for me to forget it…

In other news, I am going home for a couple of weeks at the end of the year, which is a bright shining light at the end of what is currently a very dark tunnel. And I have a massively important interview on Friday on which a lot, a LOT, is riding; Steffy has given me a very thorough lecture about what clothes and makeup to wear and what I need to last-minutely buy tomorrow to supplement my currently woeful wardrobe, and I need to end abruptly and sleep early because as she says:

早睡早起
购物好
后天面试没烦恼

（そう、おやすみ）

parece todos los días me esfuerzo tanto a encontrar mi propio camino, pero a veces, no sé la razón por me estoy continuar a esforzarse, porque parece no puedo encontrar algo no importa lo mucho que me esfuerce. me pienso debe haber, todavía, una luz al final del túnel, pero ¿dónde está? ¿está aquí? ¿me estoy esperar demasiado para algo que está solo un sueño?

a veces no sé, ya no sé más, no sé qué me estoy tratando de hacer con mi tiempo y mi vida aquí, no sé porqué. estoy muy cansado, pero no quiero perder todas mi esperanza.

y tú, ¿qué piensas? de mí, de mi esfuerzo. ¿debo detenerme tratando? ¿debo importarme lo que piensas?

(¡mi español se ha convertido muy muy horrible, durante la mayor parte de dos horas pasado escribando este! y tuve que usar un diccionario con casi todas las palabras y frases, qué horror. pero estaba un poco terapéutico)

I have huge problems with emotional contagion. I can be in the most buoyant and lighthearted of spirits one moment, and the next come crashing down because someone I care a lot about seems down/is down, or I’ve just come into direct contact with someone who is. I’ve known for a really long time that this is something I have to learn to deal with because being so volatile and susceptible to influences beyond my control is really not fun, but it’s probably the aspect of myself I’ve been least able to change over the years that I know still needs changing.

I wonder why the contagion happens though. Sometimes I think it’s because I’m upset that I can’t help the other party feel better and that despite my best efforts they remain sad, so I feel useless, and frustrated. But part of me knows it’s not the whole story. Part of me knows I’m not altruistic enough to care this much about whether I am able to cheer other people up when they feel down, mostly because my detached, practical side is cognizant of the fact that other people’s feelings are entirely theirs to deal with and I am really not all that powerful to start with, so I don’t need to worry so much. (Though Louis did point out to me back in second year that I am often egotistical enough to assume everything is my fault and take on tremendous amounts of useless guilt – mea culpa – case in point!)

If the motive behind the emotional contagion is selfish, however, I really don’t know what it could possibly be. Maybe it really is an ego thing and I just feel very annoyed with myself that I feel happy and am yet so unable to spread that happiness to others. Maybe I feel, rather stupidly, that I have no right to be happy when others are blue. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I can be very overcurious about wanting to get to the root of things (why? why do you feel sad? whyyy?) and try to mirror the emotion in order to understand.

According to Wiki, the official scholarly stance on this phenomenon (is it psychological or sociological?) proposes something similar r.e. the mirror effect: research claims that we tend to automatically mimic the emotional expressions of those around us, subconsciously. It’s like how if your cashier at Borders is really grouchy you get grouchy too, and if you get a smiley one you feel happier about the whole shopping experience. While this is more apparent in physical interaction, it happens through telecommunications as well. I can personally attest to emotional contagion being equally strong for me via emails/texts/Facebook/chat as it is in person. Sometimes it’s worse, because when the visual cues of body language are missing, I can lie awake at night tormenting myself with all kinds of interpretations of bare words not knowing what was meant.

At the root of all this is empathy – or perhaps it would be more accurate to put it the other way round, and say that emotional contagion is the root of empathy. Neurologist Jean Decety from the University of Chicago argues that empathy begins with the involuntary act of shared emotion, that primitive impulse to perceive and share what someone else is feeling. There’s nothing wrong with shared emotion as it is, but where the problem begins is when a person lacks, in Decety’s words, “the capacity to distinguish self from other” and starts experiencing the other person’s pain as if it were their own. The transferred distress incapacitates and cripples; only when you are able to separate yourself from the other party will you then be able to leverage the shared emotion into helpful empathy.

I’m not well-versed enough in the science behind emotional contagion to know whether or not this guy is right, but it does ring true, somewhat. I guess it would definitely give some sort of rational explanation (intuitively, it’s obvious) as to why it is that this hits strongest with people I am closest to/care the most for: because they’re the people with whom I share the most of my life. That said, I don’t know how to start to fix it for myself. When the emotive process is so instinctual that you aren’t even aware of what’s going on within you, how do you peel apart layers of being and awareness? Is this, in actuality, some crisis of selfhood? Do I need to start by figuring out who I am and what I feel so that I can separate that from who others are and what they feel? Has the mirror effect really taken such hold of me? Am I blowing this out of proportion? Is the solution much simpler and less philosophical? Am I asking too many questions? (Yes.)

I am really tired, and no closer to an answer, and will probably be sleepless pondering this.

so please be kind
if i’m a mess

Surefire antidote for a mild case of blueness: singing out loud and semi-dancing round the kitchen to the Hairspray soundtrack while mixing mascarpone, cream and Disaronno for tiramisu, and sneakily snacking on a couple of coffee-dipped sponge fingers along the way :)

i see all those party lights shining ahead
so someone invite me before i drop dead!

And the cherry on top: an xkcd book is being published!!! omgomg ♥

Because when it is slightly past midnight and I am insomniac from having slept nearly all day but I can’t concentrate on anything else for more than 5 seconds at a time – I like to pointlessly prettify my desktop.

Running: #! CrunchBang Linux, yay! And uberminimal Pidgin + Firefox (yes that is Firefox) ♥

Also, “Transatlanticism” is an awesome song. I am too lazy to upload it, but you can listen to it via YouTube.

Flu sounds so trivial, but when you have it full-blown it is the worst feeling ever. I spent the entirety of this morning and afternoon in bed (waking up briefly to have a bowl of soup for lunch, use up all my tissue and Lemsip, and then go back to bed). It was pretty surreal. I wonder where the day has gone, and I am suffering mild panic from having only done one (ONE) job application the whole week because I have been ill/lazy/unable to find a lot of jobs to apply for in the first place.

It was a rare low point for me today… I like to think I’m pretty upbeat, and I don’t often get despairing sorry-for-myself feelings of being a failure and wanting to throw in the towel, but today they briefly hit. I don’t really know why. It was probably a combination of having been idle almost the whole week, feeling physically dreadful, and not having much to look forward to jobwise.

In the spirit of thankfulness, however (inspired by Steffy’s blog), yesterday I had a very enjoyable dinner at Tokyo Diner with the unlikeliest bunch of old acquaintances :) and I’m looking forward to next week – long, long overdue night out with ex-colleagues Hannah and Vanessa, some front of house volunteering, meeting up with Eunice, dinner with Charmain, and Oxford over the weekend! Excited.

And now, carbonara recipe time!

I wanted to post this anyway because it was so fantastic, but I’m glad there is popular demand for it. As a bit of background: authentic Italian carbonara does not contain cream. I’m not even sure if it contains egg whites. I suspect it doesn’t, and it’s only meant to be cooked with egg yolk – which is why I avoided it for such a long time (I don’t like separating eggs, I always end up throwing out the unused half cos I don’t know what to do with it). But the other day I came across this recipe which didn’t involve separating eggs, and I tried it out immediately.

As I never measure anything, these proportions are taken from the link above:

600 grams spaghetti or bucatini
120 grams guanciale or pancetta — diced or cut into strips
1 clove garlic
2 medium eggs (very fresh)
100 grams mixed Parmesan and pecorino Romano (or all pecorino) – grated
olive oil
salt and pepper

1. Boil your pasta till al dente. Drain. Save some of the pasta water.
2. While the pasta is boiling, beat eggs in a bowl with a pinch of salt and some cheese.
3. Peel your garlic clove and fry it with the guanciale or pancetta in a pan till the meat is on the verge of becoming crispy. You don’t have to add oil to the pan if there is enough fat on your meat. I never do.
4. Add the drained pasta to the pan and toss with the guanciale/pancetta.
5. Lower heat to minimum. Add the egg mixture and toss well. Be VERY careful not to let the egg set or cook because you will have scrambled egg with pasta if you do so. If it looks too dry, thin it with pasta water.
6. Remove from heat and add the rest of the cheese plus salt and black pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

Some notes

My proportions were all out of whack, but essentially they were: 2 servings of pasta, 205g pancetta (which was too much, but that was the amount my pack contained and I didn’t want to have like 2 tablespoonfuls of pancetta sitting in my fridge), 3 medium eggs, and a lot of cheese. I like cheese.

I didn’t have pecorino Romano, so I only used Parmesan. I think it makes a difference, so the next time I will try it with both cheeses. Also I had run out of garlic, so I skipped that. It turned out fine, though I adore garlic and I’m sure it would’ve been better with.

For extra droolsome flavour, turn down the heat before you add the pasta to the pan, and throw in a generous splash of white wine while your guanciale/pancetta is still sizzling. Let this reduce till you get a delicious syrupy winey liquid, then add the pasta. I didn’t do this in this recipe because I had no wine in the house (sob), and it is probably grossly inauthentic anyway, but I usually do it when I make carbonara and the wine imparts a terrific kick. I’m not enough of a gastronome to properly put it into words, so all i can say is it tastes really good.

This recipe does not reheat well. Obvious on hindsight, but I’m not the brightest bulb in the box, so I reheated it the next day and wound up with exactly what you’re not supposed to (scrambled egg pasta).

The bottom line… carbonara typically feels too heavy and sickening after a while because of the addition of cream (an American adulteration). The egg way produces a much lighter, more palatable dish. And it was really the best carbonara I’ve ever had, ever. I tend to serially order carbonara at Italian restaurants because it is by far my favourite pasta, and I’ve had a lot of carbonara, but I feel like I can’t have it with cream any more after trying this.

Let me know how you get on with it if you try it out!

I realised I didn’t say anything about the choice of song inspiration for this layout. I love Scissor Sisters, in case it isn’t obvious by now, but I can basically guarantee that even if you hate everything else the Sisters have done, you will like “Land of a Thousand Words”… at least a little. It’s not like their other songs. It’s slow, thoughtful, moving, gentle and stirring, without losing the edge that makes the Sisters’ music so addictive.

It also has one of the loveliest, greatest music videos I’ve ever seen, second in my book to “She’s My Man” (always #1! directed by the late, great, lamented Nagi Noda). It’s a parody of old Bond film introductions, and it’s incredibly slick and stylish.

For some reason YouTube won’t let me access both these videos now while it did in the past. Country filters are annoying…

New layout! Yay! (Look at it, if you are using Google Reader or somesuch!)

Wow, only redesigning (and Blogathon. and essays, now a thing of the past) can keep me up till… 2:24am? and still leave me unaware of the time. Although now that I realise how late it is my eyelids suddenly feel very heavy.

I’m really, really happy with this layout because with it, I’ve finally managed to implement a lot of things that I’ve been wanting to for ages, but just never got round to doing. Most of the nifty changes are under the hood and you probably won’t notice them, but trust me, they made me a very excitable little puppy. Things I’m particularly proud of are:

• COMMENT THREADING. Which was a pain. Actually, to be specific, the comment threading itself wasn’t a pain (though it was very finicky work)… but the new PHP function that Wordpress 2.7+ uses to output comments is a huge pain! There’s almost no documentation for it because it’s so new, it’s completely inflexible, and hellishly difficult to customise. I can’t figure out how to style author comments differently. It ought to be very easy, but it isn’t.

• Comment notifications – i.e., if I (or anyone) replies to your comment, you get an email – should be enabled. I say should be because I’ve installed a plugin for that purpose but I haven’t tested it. I suspect I will run into glitches because I’ve never had one of these plugins work for me before. This one has a good track record though.
• The sidebar is now fully widget-ised! For the first time ever! Where it used to be fully hand-coded. This is an upgrade that means a LOT to me (and surely other Wordpress users will grasp its monumental significance) but almost nothing to almost everyone else I bet :P It’s much, much easier to maintain and update now though. I went a little widget-happy, as you might be able to see. It could have been worse.
• Little bits of CSS that I think make the placement of items very much more aesthetically pleasing. It’s not much, but it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. I’m really happy with the styling of the post titles and dates. I mocked it up in Photoshop and then decided there was no way I would ever be able to style it that way, but CSS is more flexible than I realised!
• The colour scheme ♥ A while ago, a desperate urge to do something with grey-white-purple came over me. It didn’t go away. For months.

By the way, if anyone still has no idea how to get an avatar to show up when you comment, you can do so at Gravatar which is very handy and allows you to use that avatar on a whole bunch of other websites as well.

The flower brush in the header graphic is a Photoshop default. Bet you didn’t know that.

Other highlights of my day include this conversation with my brother, the purchase of a very charming blue dress I’ve had my eye on for ages and ages (on Steffy’s advice – thanks!), snapping up two cropped jackets on sale from New Look, finally getting a bunch of errands done, excellent afternoon weather, and most of all feeling better :) (though a tickly cough which is turning chesty still stubbornly persists)

I’ve consciously taken the four days of Easter holiday off from job applications and the like – so it does feel to me like I’m going back to work tomorrow, though I’m technically going to be lounging around at home same as always. It’s been a really good break. And I’m hopeful, starting anew, when I wake in the morning.

z| zhi |z ::: and i asked the guest bboys
z| zhi |z ::: what they thought about bboying as a living
z| zhi |z ::: they said not only do i need to be a good bboy, i also need to know the business to bboy for a living
z| zhi |z ::: advertise myself
z| zhi |z ::: and work twice as hard
z| zhi |z ::: but im up for it man
tuesday’s child: yeeeah
tuesday’s child: that’s the spirit
tuesday’s child: : D
tuesday’s child: i’m not giving up finding a job in the arts too even though i am broke and i could make money if i go home and be a teacher
tuesday’s child: heh
z| zhi |z ::: yeahhhhhhhh !!!!!!!
z| zhi |z ::: its like when you bboy
z| zhi |z ::: commit to your moves and dont be lazy whenever and wherever
tuesday’s child: yeah : )
tuesday’s child: you can’t do this halfheartedly
tuesday’s child: if you want to be pro you have to commit to it… and you can’t say “if this doesn’t work out i’m going to do something else instead”
tuesday’s child: cos it has to work out!!

…my brother is inspiring. Never what you do, it’s how you do it.

waiting impatiently for my brownies to cool :D