About Chocolate Parfaits

Things I love so much that I would never give them up because of a guy

dredg, Death Cab for Cutie, mathematics, white shirts (both on men and myself), Converse shoes, my resume, spaghetti with tomato sauce, Jim Jarmusch, Milan Kundera, subtly erotic friendships, stay up too late, Chekhov, Ibsen, Horváth, Schnitzler, long bangs, murder as a fine art, Anna Karenina, Thomas Mann, theatre plays, going to the opera, traveling, breakfast, write e-mails, politics, hats, white flowers, manga, love-hate relationships, 36 Crazyfists, Deftones, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Verdi, fresh bread, red wine and cheese, Paris, Mondrian, Malevich, Hopper, Otto Dix, the exhibitions of the Centre Pompidou, red fruits, honey, milk, tea, cigarettes (although I don’t smoke), freedom, doing something crazy, sunrise, laziness, eat breakfast while being at the computer, the Enlightenment, greek mythology, atheism, Huo Zhe, Harold and Maude, M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder, Shortbus, spend six hours talking to a friend without doing anything else except drinking coffee, Loris.

Things I dislike so much that I would never come to like them even if it were for a man

V for Vendetta, La Règle du Jeu, Citizen Kane, touch a woman, Rossini, techno music, the smell of womanhood, my own shape, criticism, stay up late (sic), vegetables I don’t know, the taste of pumpkins, environmental pollution, bad papers, expensive hotels or restaurants, my forgetfulness, learn a language, software issues, Haydn, Bach, Wagner, the behavior of the Japanese government regarding WWII, wars, propaganda art, King Crimson, 80s music, the humidity of spring, jealousy, gardening, elitism, disinterest, complicated affairs, live with somebody I don’t consider family nor I have slept with, Resnais, Aronofsky, Eichendorff, Fontane, Montaigne, Rousseau (Jean-Jacques and Henri), Bochum, the suburbs of Atlanta or any other American city, live at the same place for more than two years.

Etc.

Husbands and Wives

She’s a great actress, but her voice just makes her into the exact opposite of Diane Keaton, whose “La-dee-dah” is the most important detail of her character.

I think it’s impressive that Woody Allen tends to use young girls as the most refined, interesting and mature characters. This was even more the case for Muriel Hemingway’s character in “Manhattan”, but in this movie we are also dealing with a very positive picture of a young woman. I’m impressed. Personally I actually preferred the “cocktail waitress” Sam who never did anyone harm in the whole story but just didn’t fit into the whole intelligentsia picture at all. To some degree, I understand how a certain degree of sophisticatedness is necessary in a relationship, but it just means that he shouldn’t take her to dinner parties that’s all.

All in all, this movie seems to suffer from the comparison with Woody Allen’s most brilliant love comedies which are “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan”. But then again, even “Deconstructing Harry” was much funnier than this movie is, because it showed a much more desperate Woody Allen who was even more of an asshole than he is in this movie. Here, he is of course attracted to that young girl but he’s not his usual Don Juan, and especially not as black as he usually is. Even more so, he criticizes himself more harshly than he even does in “Manhattan”.

While every single other relationship comedy by Woody Allen, I end up crushed and question my own relationships every single time. It is very noteable how my views on “Annie Hall” vs. “Manhattan” changed – while I used to like “Manhattan” much more when I saw it the first time, I have to admit that “Annie Hall” is even more sophisticated, funny and well acted. Today, I wouldn’t doubt that “Annie Hall” is Woody Allen’s all time masterpiece. The fact that my own relationship life has changed might play a role, but when I read “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, I feel exactly the same as 5 years ago, except that I don’t see myself nor any of my ‘lovers’ as remotely similar to the characters in the book anymore.

“Husbands and Wives” feels simplistic compared to Woody Allen’s other works, which is perhaps also because you don’t see the characters interact as much or not as deeply. Their dialogues feels less funny but also less meaningful to me, and I keep feeling like I have seen through Woody Allen. Now I am glad that Woody Allen has grown out of the stage where he makes talkative love comedies that aren’t actually all that funny. I think that his new style of handling love comedies is extremely well done with “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”. He needs more scene of men walking up to two women saying “I would like to make love with the two of you”. By the way, I can’t wait to see “Whatever Works”.

I got 31 points in the midterm, the professor gave 20 bonus points to everyone so that it says 31 + 20 = 51 on my exam. A few minutes later, he said: “If you got over 50, you’re in the A range.”

So this is the situation: You are watching a movie with someone of your preferred sex (hrr hrr) and this person starts with some random sexual activities. These are films I would definitely find unsuited for that, in cooperation with Pixi X3

• JSA
• Dogville
• Full Metal Jacket
• One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• 4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile
• La Haine
• Dancer in the Dark
• Festen
• Huo Zhe
• La Strada
• M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder
• Requiem for a Dream
• The Motorcycle Diaries

Anything I have forgotten? I’m sure there is lots…

Gorp says that he wants more of my life here on the other side of the ocean, so here we are with a little aspect of it: A tiny dorm room! Ahaha.

Actually the title of this posting is not entirely true, considering that I barely spent any money on these posters, which in return means that I didn’t really have the freedom to choose what posters I wanted. But, I happen to like my room much more now that it feels somewhat personalized.

So, from left to right, we have:

• a Georgia Tech campus map
• a Megami poster from the series Phantom ~Requiem for a Dream~. In fact, I have never actually seen this series, but for some reason, I really like how this poster reminds me a lot of Ingrès nude women.
• a poster from the Atlanta opera, which had a delightfully boring mise en scène, and totally ridiculous singers (in my opinion). However, this particular poster = love
• another one from Megami, this time all the K-ON girls in ridiculous maid outfits, yay!
• finally, some poster I got from the College of Architecture at Georgia Tech. I kind of like the pattern a lot. In the following picture, you can actually discern it (and it looks much better in real!):

So, what type of poster is still totally missing here? (Despite my incredibly high spendings here, I am still being a total cheapskate about posters, I know -.-)

• 69 pages without appendix
• 86 pages including everything (title pages, empty pages, thanks and stuff)
• 42 figures
• 30 references
• 8 tables
• 10 people I am grateful to (actually there are 11 people in the document – there are two people on the list I mentioned out of politeness and one person who I have not mentioned because I think it would be awkward to for silly reasons)

Fyi, 1986 is the year I was born, everything else should be rather self-explicatory. Now isn’t that great?

In a list form, as always. (For those few not informed ones: I arrived in Atlanta two days ago and just survived my first shopping tour.)

Things I got at IKEA:
- NOT Floor Lamp (because I have no desk lamp, I randomly decided to get this 2-in-1 desk plus floor lamp! What a commoner I am, hohoho.)
- Light bulbs
- Set of chopping boards (what the heck was I thinking?)
- A large blanket (the most expensive item!)
- Duvet cover and pillow cases (but my product actually looks different while it has the same name, how weird)
- A 17 items tupperware set (it’s not like I need that many, but it was so tempting?) I should have gotten this manly bento set instead, but I didn’t see it.
- Spice jars (This is the luxury item of all the stuff I got. I am perfectly aware that the last thing I need in life are spice jars, but considering how often I use the thym/basil/oregano/rosemary set, perhaps daily even, it’s okay)
- DINERA müsli bowls, plates and this incredibly stylish bowls set
- and finally the product I have always wanted to have, the KRABB mirror XD

Things I still need to get:
- A lightbulb
- Water boiler
- Hair dryer
- A decent knife
- Sewing machine (lol)
- Bike

Other places I am going to leave a bunch of money at:
- Wal-Mart
- Target
- Home Depot

PS. Finally, I also had my armpits waxed today. Uh oh.

Happy new year, everyone! I hope you guys had a good start into the year, and thanks everyone who has voted in the poll! In fact, I am quite happy that the new design seems to be popular. ^^

It’s been awhile since I last watched a movie, isn’t it? Well, partially this is because my rabid anime consumation has kicked in again, and partially it is because I truly don’t have much time for movies anymore. This is quite sad indeed. Instead, I have been talking with my father about Anna Karenina recently, when he mentioned a list of 100 best quotes from literature made by some chinese person. The list really is interesting, especially since my favorite book “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” is on it.

Although my view really might be tilted due to the appearance of my favorite book, the list is also very interesting from the perspective of my “chinese-ness”. There is no chinese work in the list at all (probably intended like that), and it is quite a mirror of what chinese people consider the world’s masterpieces of literature. It is quite an amzing list with a lot of japanese, english, french, german and russian literature, but it also features some classics, some rather recent books and also covers some areas in the world that gets less attention (India, Latin America). Except for Horváth and Schnitzler (who ultimately only seem to matter for the german-speaking anyways), this list basically has everything I can currently think of if I had to make a canon of literature: Hemingway and Steinbeck, “Ulysses”, Goethe and Schiller, Homer and Platon, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Dostoyevsky, Maupassant, Camus and Sartre, Kafka, Dickens, Gogol, “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “La dame aux camélias”, “Madame Bovary” and “Le Rouge et le Noir”, “A Doll’s House” and “Lolita”…

And so, without further ado, here it is the list after the jump. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out some of the original titles and so it’s actually a list of 90 works. Also, I will bold the titles that I have read, or at least partially read.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is what happens when you put “random” into Google Image Search. I wish there was a nicer illustration of a random walk, but oh well.

Since I am sick, I decided to finish up my backlog of movies. Today, I must admit that I am not really sure why I am still blogging every single movie I watch, because there are some movies that I have seen but never blogged about for reasons I have completely forgotten by now. They include “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, “Juno”, “Two Days in Paris” and the “Decalogue”… and many more which weren’t as important to me. I am sure there also are some that I simply have forgotten to add to the index. Oh well.

Being sick is also not fun at all. Normally you’d expect a day off would mean that you can spend a lot of time on random things that you cannot usually do, but instead, I am sleeping through half of the day (from about 11pm yesterday to 10am today, and then another time from 3pm to 7pm), leaving me with about 5 hours of actual waking time before I started writing this posting. In these 5 hours, I barely did anything. I wrote one e-mail, one blog post (the one on “Three Colors: Blue” as seen below) and a bunch of comments on anime blogs. Oh, I also cooked some noodles and watched one episode of anime. At the end of the day, being sick means being extremely inefficient and easily getting distracted for me. Ugh. On days like these, I wish I were a better person.

PS. I want to make a pumpkin pie >< But other things are more important now…