‘Tis the season . . .

What Your Halloween Habits Say About You

You are an outgoing person who’s a bit of a showoff. It’s likely that you dress up for Halloween every year. Sneaky and devious, people should really watch out for you. You are usually underestimated and forgotten. Your inner child is open minded, playful, and adventurous. You truly fear the dark side of humanity. You are a true misanthrope. You’re prone to be quite emotional and over dramatic. Deep down, you enjoy being scared out of your mind… even if you don’t admit it. You are a traditionalist with most aspects of your life. You like your Halloween costume to be basic, well made, and conventional enough to wear another year.

What’s Your Halloween Personality?

So, it’s been awhile . . .

since I’ve posted. Basically, I am either reading, thinking about reading, or worrying about all the reading I still have to do. In the in between times, I do my Chinese homework and worry about the fact that I will never, ever be fluent. But, of course, that’s not true. I can already wander around China sans tour guide, sans destination written on a piece of paper, sans information, and get around just fine. It’s the fact, maybe, that a bunch of 20-somethings are kicking my ass that has me upset. They don’t know anything about real life yet, but they do know how to speak Chinese. It’s either that their parents speak it, so they’ve heard it from infants, or their brains are still spongy and springy and able to soak up information that they don’t even need or know they are imbibing. Ah, youth. How I begin to miss it already.

In other news, we’re going to the Cal game today and are ranked nationally at #2. Except for one small thing – we’ve so far been playing crappy teams and barely beating them. As result, we’ve gotten cocky. The star players have been strutting all over campus for weeks (well, there was that one guy hobbling on crutches off the bus, but that’s another story), the students have been gabbing loudly into their cellphones, bragging to friends at other schools. In my opinion, that will probably all change soon. Hopefully not today, on homecoming day, but someday and soon. I predict an impending defeat. When MacArthur was planning his ’surprise’ final push past the 35th parallel line, where he lost thousands of soldiers in battle (and didn’t win, just in case your history is fuzzy), Mao reportedly said in response to the news: “Fine! An arrogant enemy is easier to defeat!” Sorry, Cal fans, but history repeats itself.

I’m a bit like this team, I guess. Coming into Berkeley, I was undefeated. I had done everything I ever wanted to do in this world and then some, I had never gotten lower than a B on a test (ever), and I had never felt confused in a class (not even physics). But, then, just when I had gotten into the top program and had gotten cocky, Chinese class was waiting for me. And, like MacArthur, I was foolish enough to think that if I pushed hard enough, I would get the results I wanted. Not exactly. The Chinese language has to be approached with care, slowly and diligently, and it will be humbling years before I can claim that I have ‘mastered’ anything. I’m just hoping to be able to have a conversation that goes beyond the basics someday.