today was surprisingly productive in that i got a lot of work done instead of wasting my afternoon watching Scrubs episodes or meticulously constructing 1/24 scale effigies of all the people that annoy me and then pretending to be King Kong.

i have three days left at The University.

tomorrow is the first day of my last week at The University.

so i’ve more or less finalized my trip for this summer. planning has gone through several stages during the past few months. in its most grandiose form, it included stops in Kuala Lumpur, Phnom Penh, Bangkok, Tokyo, Singapore, and Brunei, but i’ve since simplified it.

my original plan was to go alone. then it was with a friend. then it was with a friend and a complete stranger. then my family wanted to join me for a short while. now it’s just me again.

so here’s a final list of destinations: Hong Kong, Kaohsiung, Taipei, Dubai, Kabul.

that’s it? that’s it :)

after almost two years of sitting on my desk unused, i finally tested my Rolleicord.

all good :)

how many more flaming hoops do i have to jump through before i’m free of The University?

i recently watched Joyeux Noël, a film about Christmas Eve 1914 and the unofficial ceasefire between German, French, and Scottish troops on the front lines. if you haven’t seen it yet, i’d encourage you to give it a chance. it’s a heartwarming film. it truly is.

ivan: heath ledger is here, supposedly

ivan: but i don’t think batman is

Cankles: OOH!

Cankles: HEATH LEDGER!!! ooooh, what role does he play ?

ivan: the joker

Cankles: serious?

ivan: yeah

Cankles: boo..nofing

ivan: i think he can do criminally insane

Cankles: yeah, suppose so.. just.. he use to be my favorite star, until he started doing the scruffy look, then gay, and now a clown..sigh

na na na na na na na na BATMAN!

as some of you know, the new Batman film The Dark Knight is shooting in Chicago until Thursday (and then again for a while in June). i heard they were filming at the old post office on Canal and Van Buren so i went over to check it out today.

some movies go by a fake production name during filming to throw people off. The Dark Knight’s is, hilariously, Rory’s First Kiss. Bruthe ith thuch a thenthitive boy.

here you can very obviously see “GOTHAM NATIONAL BANK” in big block letters on the old post office’s façade. actually, i guess it’s more like “GOT HAM NATIONAL BANK.”

they’ve built an extension of the bank/post office out of wood and painted it to match the building. somebody yelled at me after i took this photo and told me to leave.

after i was asked to leave, i consulted my mental index of Chicago parking garages and remembered that there was one nearby that offered an exceptional view of the post office. i went there and set up shop, noticing some extras scattering onto the pavement below. so here’s an aerial view of the post office. the yellow school bus you see is parked by the extension from the last photograph. rumor has it that the bus will somehow be used by The Joker during his robbery.

that’s it for now. i’ll probably go back tomorrow for more.

oddly enough, i’m considerably more comfortable addressing crowds in Mandarin than in English despite using the latter much more often. i suppose i can attribute most of this to the numerous Chinese speech competitions that i entered as a child as well as growing up in a Chinese church.

on the other side of the seesaw, i’ve never had 100% confidence in my ability to speak English. having spent most of my elementary school years taking ESL (English as a Second Language) classes, most of my friends were struggling as much as i was. then came the year i graduated from ESL. and by “graduated” i mean “was accidentally placed into an accelerated English class by way of either a horrible mistake or a cruel joke.”

so there i was, fresh out of ESL and trapped in the advanced English course, a change that took me from basic pronunciation to relatively complex sentence structure virtually overnight. i was mortified.

amazingly, i somehow slogged my way through it all until i was placed into normal English classes in high school.

…and then dummy English classes in college.

every once in a good while, i find myself with liquid soap on my toothbrush.