MOVING DAY



Here is the announcement that nobody has been expecting or dreading, but I'm going to make it anyway:

I'm retiring this xanga. I've been using this blog for over 5 years...! [Although I did delete the entries from the first few years.] My online thoughts will be moving over to Wordpress:
auradis.wordpress.com

I've been considering a move for a while now but didn't actually get around to it until I was stuck at a desk for 6 hours last week answering a phone that only rang 4 times. Looots of free time.

Why "auradis"? Well, I came up with it senior year for a French story that we had to make up. I mashed together my first name and the word "paradise" and lopped off the first and last letters. It sounds French, does it not?

I decided to use Wordpress because it seems to be a more mature...place? Publishing site? Also, the newspaper that I'm working for uses it for its blogs, so it's pretty legitimate. I decided against Blogspot because I although I already had one, I never used it. The style just didn't appeal to me. And I've never really liked Livejournal.
Wordpress' dashboard is more technical, and there just seem to be more successful blogs on it than Xanga. There are disadvantages as well, of course. Wordpress is anal about its templates and makes it very difficult to customize the appearance of one's blog. Even changing the font size and color is a hassle that I haven't figured out how to work yet.

I'll probably still hang out at xanga to read my subscriptions and such, but consider this my fond farewell.

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XOXO, GG



My friend CZ got me hooked on the show Gossip Girl. Since it came out last year, I've been determined not to watch it because it's based on the lives of high school students, and high school drama is one of my least favorite things. I am so over the petty immaturity of teenagers.

But we had a sleepover and watched the first 4 episodes [watching GG for free online is surprisingly difficult] and the fight was over: my willpower was not strong enough. It didn't help that because I read popular blogs and stuff, I already knew all the names of the characters and actors because it was simply impossible to avoid. I've blazed through all 28 of the previous episodes in exactly one week, all the while wondering what keeps drawing me back. There are a number of reasons.

First of all, GG is a pretty good show. The acting is wonderful, the plot is interesting, and there is a minimal amount of swearing and actual fornication, for which I am thankful. GG also boasts a terrific soundtrack, featuring relatively obscure songs that I love, like "Creator" by Santogold and "Three Wishes" by The Pierces. Although the characters are in high school, academia plays a negligible role and it is often easy to forget that they are supposed to be only seniors in high school. This is helped by the fact that all of the main actors are 21 or over, with the exception of Taylor Momsen, who is definitely scrawny enough to look her age.

CZ commented on how the characters are always so stylish; the fashion is indeed inspiring, but I prefer to look at people, and there certainly isn't a shortage of beautiful people on GG. The kids, the parents, the minions...the only face that annoys me is that of character Dan Humphrey, and that's because his mug resembles a skeleton as much as his sister's frame does. He's just...not...attractive.

There's also a certain amount of admiration. I will admit that I do wish I could be like the Upper East Siders, as in rich enough not to care about anything except whatever drama I've screwed myself over with. But most of all, I want to be like Blair Waldorf.
The thing I admire most about her is her confidence. She rarely cracks under pressure and is in control of the situation most of the time. She knows exactly what to do in a given situation to get what she wants and is capable of caustic insults. And she's not afraid of anyone. I wish I could be that sure of myself, especially since I am terribly non-confrontational. I also really enjoy actress Leighton Meester's facial expressions. Her glare, her pout, her smug smirk, her exasperated look, her doe eyes; her face conveys emotion very well, a talent that I appreciate.
Blair is not without her faults either. She is extremely insecure and thus struggles to control every aspect of her life. She desperately wants the approval she lacks from her mother, who seems to love every girl more than her own daughter. She feels [and rightly so] abandoned by her father and goes to rather extreme measures to try to bring him back home. I think that among all the characters on GG, Blair is the most flawed, which is why I like her the most.

And somehow, I manage to identify with the characters. Blair's issues at the beginning of season one, Serena and Dan struggling to work out their differences...I feel like I've been there. So I empathize. And it appeals to me all the more.

It's kind of shameful to admit to others that I'm slightly addicted to the show after abhorring it for so long, but I guess what's done is done. After all, it's not like there's anything else to watch these days with so many of my favorite shows playing reruns every week.

PS. I've been wondering: does Ed Westwick normally squint all the time, or is it just for the show?
PPS. I also think it's really interesting that not only do the characters on GG have elaborate names like Serena van der Woodsen and Nathaniel Archibald, the actors have some obscure names too, like Blake, Chace and Penn.

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NO NEED FOR SPEED



I went skiing with my family on Christmas day. We were one of literally 100 families from our church at the ski resort; it was a total Asian invasion there as well as the hotel. I wasn't sure about going but I knew I had to because I didn't want to stay home by myself on Christmas. Boyfriend is out of town so I couldn't even hang out with his family...

The more I thought about it, the more the whole trip seemed like a social obligation; everybody and their mom was going [literally], and since I usually enjoy trying new things, I figured that I might as well give this a try. Indeed, I was surprised when my mom called this trip a “vacation”. I didn’t understand it then, and after I had actually gone skiing, I still don’t understand the appeal. Skiing consists of nothing that I like. Here is my list:

Why is it that people enjoy strapping planks of wood and fiberglass to their feet, donning goggles/gloves/snowpants/hats/scarves/earmuffs/boots/sweaters/coats, waiting in line to be taken up a slope, sliding down and then repeating the process? It’s so monotonous and repetitive and inconvenient and it bored me. Aren’t vacations supposed to be relaxing and not masochistic?

Skiing is like paying to take a beating. Cracked had a list of "Worst Vacations People Actually Pay For" and I think that skiing belongs on a list like that. I was absolutely shocked to find out that a ski lift pass can cost as much as $50 at regular price. WHAT?! That would be like me literally handing over $6 every time I went up the mountain. I would really rather save that money for something a little less…torturous.

I wasn’t actually bad at skiing. I didn’t think I would be [although Boyfriend certainly assumed differently], and after pondering it, I've come up with a hypothesis: it's because I am immensely afraid of falling. My fear of heights is more of a fear of falling from a great altitude than the actual elevation itself. Thus, since my body isn’t used to hitting the ground, it does everything within its power to prevent a fall, and so my tense form stays upright and balanced.

The only couple of times I went down were not from actual falling but because I was going too fast and I couldn’t mentally handle it anymore. So I sat down and slid to a stop. Skis are hard to stand back up in! I was stuck at the edge of a ditch the first time and couldn’t stand up otherwise I would have slid right into the ditch, and I couldn’t get my ski off so I just sat there cursing my fate until a nice older man [who was obviously pro at skiing] came and helped me up. And then I sat down again 50 feet away haha because the slope was too steep and I couldn’t control my speed. Thankfully the second time down that hill was much better. Obviously, the thrill that other people experience while skiing is completely lost on me.

Even though I didn’t get injured, I still didn’t really enjoy the experience. What really deterred me was the freezing numbness of my fingers and toes. I think that if I could ski down the side of a sand dune in a bikini, then I would enjoy the sport a lot more. Otherwise, I’m never going to really like skiing.

On the way back from the ski trip, we stopped in Madison for dinner. My dad had wanted to eat at a Chinese buffet but none of the other families wanted to join us, choosing instead to eat at McDonald’s or simply driving straight home. Like my father, I was not in the mood for fast food. My mom told me to look up some dinner options since the buffet my dad found was apparently too “cheap”. I understood, and found a list of the “5 Best Buffets of Madison”, in which were two Chinese buffets. I picked the closer one and found the directions and was all excited after seeing the other good reviews online.

However, when we actually got to the buffet, it was completely deserted. As in, the only person inside was the server. This was really unexpected, since it was only 7PM. My mom and I went inside to survey the food selection, and it was as if a ghost crowd had come and left already – the majority of the pans only had a little bit of food left in them. Too sketchy, we decided, and headed towards the buffet that my dad had originally wanted to visit, which was conveniently just down the street.

Astonishingly, this buffet was in an even worse situation – not only was it also totally empty, it was smaller and dark inside. Not a very welcoming scene. Unsettled, we decided to try the Old Country Buffet that we had passed earlier. We were all pretty puzzled as to why the two restaurants would be utterly vacant at a perfectly normal eating hour on a Friday night. “Maybe the people in Madison are racist,” I postulated, “ and they don’t like eating Chinese food.” “Yeah,” said my brother, “when we walk into Old Country Buffet, they’ll start shooting at us.” “I hadn’t even thought about that,” I replied with a grimace. Luckily for us, Old Country was bustling with unarmed customers and we finally got to eat. I’d really like to know what was up with the first two establishments. Looks like a job for Encyclopedia Brown…

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