Unfortunately now Monday morning, 12.54 a.m. What would you do if you woke up at 1 p.m. and only got to the library at 4 and had a million things to read on social constructivist international relations theory and had absolutely no more clean clothes left? Do everything in the library except work, including reading the Columbia Spectator for the first time, and then go for dinner at the Afghan Kebab House (102nd St and Broadway and incidentally very good -- even if anything with 'kebab' in it makes me think fondly of Ahmed's) and then come home resolving to work and go straight online to read West Wing recaps.

10.48 p.m.

1. I Not Stupid, dir. Jack Neo. Fantastic. I really enjoyed that. Especially the campness of it all. And nicely -- gently? -- satirical.

2. Dinner at Kenneth's. It occurred to me on the way back that all these years overseas I've always been friends with someone who can cook well. Really, eat-till-I'm-stuffed well.

3. 3.45 a.m. Back from raspberry beer that actually tasted of raspberries at the Belgian Bar somewhere on 8th St/St Mark's? Take the 1 line to the 8th St/NYU stop (Christopher St?) and walk further into the Village.

4. 5.52 a.m.You think, that perhaps if I not sleep for the next 24 hours, I will get half my work and all my laundry done?

very early saturday morning 1.18 a.m. After reading most of Elizabeth Peters' Naked Once More at a go. Desperately in need of work. Shopped-out. Lovely comic-book (graphic novel) shopping with Yisheng in the morning -- St Mark's comics; the shop person promised that they'd have Sandman tmrw but I don't really want to go back to Brooklyn for them, 10% off or not; and I got something Yisheng recommended, Kabuki which I haven't touched because don't want to lose soul to it until have done some token reading. And then lunch at Sophie's Cuban Cuisine on 96 Chambers Street with Yisheng and Addy and Mona and then dropped by lovely lovely little designer boutique somewhere on Reade Street and then wended slowly to Chinatown, dropping by shops and suchlike. And wonderful (am running out of adjectives) stationery shop called -- oh I forgot what. Somewhere nearish Broadway/Canal Street I think but could be sadly wrong. New York is such a shopping place. I am so broke.

Heard someone -- a girl -- give a pretty good evil MWAhahahaha laugh, followed by a HEHeheheh cackle on the way back from the subway station. And then heard her friend tell her, in all seriousness, that the mwahaha laugh was more of an evil man's laugh, directed at someone, whereas the witch's cackle, the heheheh, was more of a witch rubbing her hands and cackling while she gazed into her crystal ball. The pathology of evil laughs.


wishlist item two: a fit and functional body, so can wear pretty clothes.
wishlist item three: lots and lots of money to buy pretty clothes.
wishlist item four: creative talent to make pretty clothes if cannot afford to buy them (cf. wishlist item three).
wishlist item five: many many graphic novels and place to browse them in. Is that very socially dysfunctional?

1.46 a.m. I need to learn how to write reviews. Film reviews specifically but all art-ish reviews in general, really. But till then, for the record:

- Loves of a Blonde, dir. Milos Forman. Beautifully shot. Still camerawork like close-up shots. About a factory girl from the country. The movie starts with her telling her friend about some guy who's given her a ring, some guy who picked her up in the woods one day. A forest-ranger. Married. It's peacetime. Some army division comes to the town -- the manager of this enormous factory asked them to, to please his girls -- and three heavy-set army men pick up the girl, Ancula, and her friends. Or try to; the girls decide in the end not to leave with them. To the woods. Apparently the options are (a) tea-shops, (b) the woods/parks, (c) the girls' dorm. A really crammed squashed dorm. She gets distracted by the piano-player who persuades her to come up to his room by saying that he wouldn't touch her and then sleeps with her. A piano-player from Prague. Milo. She goes to Prague to look for him. I'm telling a very bald and boring story but it was shot in loving detail. The path of a wedding ring rolling across the floor. The look on someone's face, the way they drop their eyes, the way they pick up their cap. I think of photographs and camera stills because there was a still quality to the shots -- but also a kind of restlessness? The camera picking out details. People fidgeting. Oh god I'm so bad at this.

- L'oro di Napoli. dir. Vittorio de Seca. Who is of course very very good. And a compelling actor. Four stories set in Naples. Gets darker and darker; the first two are funny, the third full of a kind of black pathos but still funny, and the last quite dark and slightly bizarre. And kinda tragic. Sophia Loren is beautiful, Toto is a genius. OK no more but it has to be seen. Italian neo-realist cinema. Incidentally also the director of The Bicycle Thief and Umberto Dee (I misspell, but that's the phonetic spelling of the title).

argh.

wishlist item one: functional and functioning brain.

9 something p.m. My computer clock is faster than the Blogger clock. Which is all kinda surreal cos it means that I'm writing these things after they've been published. Anyhow. Someone living on the floor below is practising on his -- sax? I'm bad at music and musical instruments and stuff. Which is fortunate because he's not terribly good but the music is mellow and kinda fills the night, or at least the hollow shaft-like thing that my window looks out on. My neighbour's alarm clock is going off at 15-minute intervals. Not so euphonious a night sound.



almost 11 pm now. I'm back from borrowing out all the (four) Elizabeth Peters books in the Butler stacks. The stacks are scary when they go dark. Not quite as scary as the rolling ones in Oxford, but nonetheless. And then briefly read bits of one book on the Low steps -- there's something about wide steps that invites sitting and reading, isn't there? -- and then tore self away to return here before my eyes fell out of their sockets. But I love being on campus at night. There are always groups of people playing frisbee or football, and others sitting around on steps/benches/fountain rims just chatting softly. The night makes people mellow. I'd rather talk to someone at night; people tend to be more relaxed, more willing to open up. There's a guy outside wandering around the curb -- not a homeless guy I mean; I think this one is waiting for something/someone? -- and singing softly 'She's got a ticket to ri-i-ide'. Either he's waiting for someone or he belongs to the 'Access-a-Ride' van parked nearby, which makes the song incredibly corny. Night sounds.

almost 1 p.m. I'm late for class (again).

The Ten Desiderata for Love (circa. late imperial China)

One: Spend money lavishly.
Two: Take infinite pains.
Three: Use sweet words and honeyed phrases.
Four: Be tender and solicitous.
Five: Court her with longing looks.
Six: Display your battle prowress.
Seven: Be discreet as one deaf and dumb.
Eight: Select a friend to aid your enterprise.
Nine: Don fresh clothes.
Ten: Be affable and good-humoured.

taken from McLaren transl., The Chinese Femme Fatale 1994

11.55 a.m. i.e. a time when I really shouldn't be in my room eating cornflakes with orange juice (separately) and listening to illegally-downloaded music.

room inventory:
- cups with tea dregs caramelizing in them: 1
- posters etc. decorating walls in tasteful manner: 0
- t-shirts, jeans etc. piled on back of chair/bed: 8?
- cornflake crumbs on floor: ask the cockroaches
- knives badly in need of washing: 1
- papers, stolen library slips, tea bags etc. randomly strewn across room: innumerable
- of which, copies of the onion: 2
- classes i have completed the reading for: 0

wheee

3.15 a.m. New York. (I have yet to grow tired of writing New York.) Set this up again to record what little I have seen of New York -- and because I have a lot of work to do and have no intention of doing it. So here it is. And here I am.

110th and Amsterdam.

Shang yue. The sky faintly orange with lamplight
and tonight the moon bright enough to compete,
big like a streetlamp. A car horns when we stop
in the middle of the road to look. First official day
of autumn, and we’re explaining – inventing –
the origins of the mid-autumn festival to Tomoko.
– Is it like the Korean moon festival – a kind of
Korean thanksgiving? – No. Maybe. We’ve forgotten
all our traditions except the food. (Laughter.) Later,
out of the kitchen window, with crumbly greasy
days-old Chinatown mooncakes and green tea
with a panda on the box from West Side supermarket,
we’ll look for and not find the moon.

New York, 23 Sept 2002