葛莉絲 的世界

就在我出差回來的那個周末，中國新年前一個星期，刮了這場暴風雪。

數來數去，已不記得有多少年沒進電影院看電影了。最後一次好像是在台灣看的，至於看的是哪部? 仔細想想還真不記得! (快得老人癡呆症了)

其實 電影 我的少女時代有上電視宣傳，那時小燕之夜有看到他們的介紹，但我沒太在意，反正美國也看不到。 這事也就無疾而終了。

大年初一在紐約的我只不過是另一天的上班日子。

I attended Lukáš Vondrácek’s piano recital on Monday, November 22, 2010 at Weill Recital Hall within Carnegie Hall.  The recital was scheduled to start at eight pm; I bought my ticket at the box office a half hour before it started.  This is first time that I attended a recital alone and I was a little bit nervous.  But quickly my mood changed from nervous to excited when the ticket seller told me that my seat was in the front row.  When I found my seat and looked toward the stage, there was a black Steinway grand piano at center of stage. Unexpected, I realized that I had a best seat in the house. The piano was only about six feet away from me and I was able to see pianist’s fingers and facial expressions throughout the performance.

I attended the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance of Ma Vlast (My Homeland) by the composer Bedřich Smetana on Thursday, September 30, 2010 at Carnegie Hall.  My cousin and I were sitting all the way up in the balcony. When I looked down, there were no empty seats.  The musicians came out and sat on the stage. The concertmaster came out to tune the orchestra. After they were ready, everyone started to applaud when Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the conductor, made his entrance.  I was very excited since it has been a long time since I attended a classical music concert, and I had never seen a performance at Carnegie Hall.

The novel Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse follows the life of a man who goes on a spiritual journey that begins in his youth and ends in old age. Siddhartha grows up the son of a Brahmin, and he masters all the doctrine and rituals of his Hindu religion at a young age. Even though he practices Om so perfectly, he feels something is missing and not connecting. He leaves home to find true enlightenment – Nirvana – which he feels that the religious leaders of his village cannot teach him. He follows many teachers, including the Samanas, Gautama the Buddha and his lover Kamala, but he is no closer to what he seeks. In the moment of his greatest despair when he attempts to drown himself in the river, Siddhartha is reconnected with Om, but this time he fully comprehends the significance of the holy word. By the end of his long journey, Siddhartha realizes through listening to the river that no one could have ever truly taught him the wisdom of enlightenment; it had to come from within himself.

The two novels The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz and In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez intersect in a few interesting ways.  Both are stories about families from the Dominican Republic and how the experience of the “EI Jefe” regime impacted them and caused a loss of family wealth and status.  The major contrast is the difference in parenting that significantly influenced the outcome of their lives. Beli dropped out of school at a young age, didn’t know how to raise Lola because she never grew up with her parents, and therefore she didn’t know the right way to raise a child. The Mirabels raised their four daughters with family bonding of love and care, and provided them with good education so their lives turn out much more stable. 

In the old time I remember every family only had one phone in the whole house.  Every body had the same phone.  The phone was black with a handle sitting on the top; when you picked it up, it was very heavy and steady.  The front of the phone had a big circle with ten small circles around the edge; each circle was about the size of a penny just big enough to fit a finger tip in it.  Each small circle represented a number, from 0 to 9.  When we made a phone call, we would dial the number by putting our finger in each small hole. For example, if the number was 5, we would put a finger in circle 5 then dial it clock wise until it stopped turning and then release the dial to let it turn back to the normal position, then dial the next number. 

Have you ever experienced walking by a pretty girl with a perfect figure, but somehow her rear end just looks flat and you don’t know why? Well, if you had a profession like mine, then you would know the problem is the back yoke panel. When the back yoke panels of a pair of pants aren’t cut into a contour shape which is reasonable for the three dimensional human body, such a cut of pants will push all your skin to the side and flatten your butt. 

When I moved to US in Jr. High School, everything was so different: the language, the people, the culture and the food.  When I was in the school, most of time I was quiet, because I didn’t understand much English. When each class was over, everyone would rush out of the classroom to go to their next class.  At the end of day, everyone would again rush out of the school building to get on their school bus to go home.  When I got home from the school, I stayed in my bedroom most of time.  I lived in the suburb area of Pittsburgh; you couldn’t go anywhere without driving.  I didn’t have a driver’s license because I wasn’t sixteen yet.  One time my mom and I tried to walk to a nearby Seven-Eleven; it took us two and half hours to get there and come back home.  So, many months went by, my English did not improve, and I didn’t make any new friends.  My uncle decided to put me in his Baskin Robins Ice Cream store to work on the weekends.  He said that by waiting on the customers, I would be forced to talk to people in English and would therefore pick up English faster.  Soon I met my first American friend Maribeth Mulkerrin; the one who gave me the connection to the American culture and showed me all the fun she knew.  Our friendship proved that two persons from two different countries, with completely different cultural back grounds, could become best friends.  

原本重拾課本，申請到大學後，想要找一個簡單的學系好好念完它也就對我的上師有所交代了，反正他說隨便我念但一定要拿到四年大學文憑。上了學以後他又說我至少要念完碩士，嘿嘿! 上師很奸哦! 連哄帶騙就這樣被騙上路了。

我一直很排斥看鬼片，但是...

那天是開學的第一天，走進教室選了所謂的"公媽"位，也就是第一排教授的正前方坐了下來。

My mom loves to cook.  When she wants to learn to cook a new dish, she always starts a series of experiments.  She would cook the same dish over and over again until she got it just right.  Most of her experiments resulted in success on the second try.  However, there was one dish that she had to remake so many times that until today I still dread to eat or smell it.  It was the “bowl-shaped sticky rice pudding,” a very popular dish in Taiwan.

在英文書裡看到的, 和大家分享這一段話, 含意很深.....

昨天Jean和我去買午餐，她也需要順便幫另一位同事買便當。 當我們開始往公司走回去的時候，跟以往一樣，她又開始碎碎念。