“As the oyster grows in size, its shell must also grow. The mantle is an organ that produces the oyster’s shell, using minerals from the oyster’s food. The material created by the mantle is called nacre. Nacre lines the inside of the shell.

The formation of a natural pearl begins when a foreign substance slips into the oyster between the mantle and the shell, which irritate s the mantle. It’s kind of like the oyster getting a splinter. The oyster’s natural reaction is to cover up that irritant to protect itself. The man tle covers the irritant with layers of the same nacre substance that is used to create the shell. This eventually forms a pearl.

So a pearl is a foreign substance covered with layers of nacre. Most pearls that we see in jewelry stores are nicely rounded objects, which are the most valuable ones. Not all pearls turn out so well. Some pearls form in an uneven shape — these are called baroque pearls. Pearls, as you’ve probably noticed, come in a variety of various colors, including white, black, gray, red, blue and green. Most pearls can be found all over the world, but black pearls are indigenous to the South Pacific.”

- http://animals.howstuffworks.com/marine-life/question630.htm

as i grow older, i increasingly begin to find myself losing the meaning and lessons of the books i read, art i see and movies i watch.  which is sad, because what is the point then?  it’s the same as if i never read or saw them in the first place.  though  i know that the lessons and impressions still linger in you as every little thing you encounter must irrevocably change you at least a smidgen somehow, i don’t know…sometimes when i say, “oh yeah!  i read/saw that,” i sometimes feel like i’m almost lying or something, because i’ll suddenly feel this slight panic at the thought of them maybe asking me anything about it and me having nothing to say.

so, in realizing all this, i will make more of a conscious effort to write at least one little blurb of things i watch/read/see. (also: this realization has also made me retroactively appreciate more my elementary and high school teachers’ pushing of book reports, art analysis essays and movie critiques.)

first off: the movie “phoebe in wonderland”.

it was a lazy saturday yesterday, and instead of doing things i needed to do, i decided instead to watch a movie by myself.  this one drew me in because of its fantastical nature – i feel like i need a little magic in my life, especially so since it was halloween.  the movie is about this bright young girl named phoebe (elle fanning) who, to escape the rule-obsessed world around her, retreats into a fantasy world populated with images and characters from “alice in wonderland”.  though it was a beautiful and enchanting movie of childhood imagination and magic, it also dealt with serious themes of parenting, growth and acceptance.  during the movie, it is revealed that phoebe might be developing some kind of mental disorder that makes her say and do things she knows she shouldn’t do.  this burden she carries isolates her from her carefree classmates and pushes her into numerous clashes with her teachers and school principal.  phoebe’s mother (felicity huffman) struggles in trying to support her daughter’s difficult nature, feeling like a failure as a mother in addition to as a writer, having given up her career to care for phoebe and her sister.  however, phoebe finds comfort and security in being part of the school production of “alice in wonderland”, finding a friend in the very perceptive drama teacher who tells her,

“at a certain part in your life, probably when too much of it has gone by, you will open your eyes and see yourself for who you are.  especially for everything that made you so different from all the awful normals.  and you will say to yourself, “but I am this person.” and in that statement, that correction, there will be a kind of love.”

excerpt from eat pray love by elizabeth gilbert:

“Imagine the universe is a great spinning engine,” he said.  “You want to stay near the core of the thing – right in the hub of the wheel – not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes places, where you can get frayed and crazy.  The hub of calmness – that’s your heart.  That’s where God lives within you.  So stop looking for answers in the world.  Just keep coming back to that center and you’ll always find peace.”

today i was frying up some bánh chưng (one of my favorite vietnamese foods, and a very traditional one) for breakfast, and it struck me how strange it was that it was highly probable that i could be having the same meal as farm children in rural vietnam.  and here i am, in my bright and shiny college apartment, unwrapping the banana leaves, heating it up in my bright and shiny frying pan.  and it’s the same thing!!  the same food!!

“Bánh chưng is a traditional Vietnamese rice cake which was consumed by warriors on the battlefields thousands of years ago owing to it being conveniently wrapped and preserved.”

why i think it’s necessary or appropriate to have a solo dance party to beyonce instead of studying for my unstudied-for, impending virology exam at 3:00 pm today is beyond me.

“i need to make my bones.”

summer has been nice and relaxing, though i do have this uncomfortable, impending sense of doom that i am going to brazil unprepared and am going to return to chaos once i get back to phoenix/tucson…

i read in my sister’s cosmopolitan (uk edition) that if you write down three things that make you happy every day for a week, it will make you happier for the three following weeks.  though the mathematics behind this happiness formula is dubious, i’m sure the results are pleasant and therefore, here i go!

1.  eating pho twice in one day!

one steaming, delicious (albeit a tad greasy) bowl at pho-licious, a pretty solid pho vietnamese restaurant in glendale (75th avenue & cactus road).  even my extremely picky dad approved!  i ordered the pho tai ($6.99), my dad ordered the pho with all the other fixings and my sister ordered a pretty tasty chicken hot & sour soup.  i had been there once before and had ordered the sup mung cua, which was also very tasty.  it was delicious!  the other bowl i just made right now from the stuff my mom had set up for me, so i just had to boil the broth, throw in some beef slices and pour it over warmed noodles!  delicious!

2.  shopping!

my sister and i ran over to arrowhead mall and checked out the ridiculously overwhelming and huge forever21 store where, after much browsing, i settled on a rose-patterned top and a purple v-neck dress.  then we jetted on over to target where i bought a pair of inexpensive sunglasses for brazil so i don’t bring & inevitably break or lose my burberry or dior ones.  it’s actually the same pair (tan-and-brown-striped, over-sized, square-shaped) that i had for spring break drunkenness, but i had sat on and broken them shortly after the cruise.    but yay, they’re back!

3.  anticipation of reading my book and watching “jogo de cena” now!

this summer, i am going to brazil.  my trip is broken up into two parts:

1.  fortaleza, the state capital of ceará, located in northeastern brazil (arrival – june 19, 2009):
i am going to be taking classes in 400-level advanced portuguese classes (eek) at universidade federal do ceará!
i am staying at a hotel for a couple of days for orientation before being picked up by our host families!
i will be there for four weeks!
there will be side trips on the weekends to nearby points of interest!
and that is literally all i know about that.

2.  são paulo & rio de janeiro (arrival – august 19, 2009)
ryan is meeting me at the são paulo airport!  we’re staying for four nights before taking a bus to rio, where we will spend seven nights!  then we’re heading back to são paulo for a night or two before leaving for home!  i am so frickin’ excited!  i was nervous for a while because i really wanted to travel after the program ended and to actually see more of brazil, but i didn’t have a travel buddy and was hesitant about booking the tickets – people’s comments of “oh, i’m sure you’ll meet someone there” did little to calm my nerves.  but then i asked ryan (after 1.5 weeks of trying to figure out a way that wouldn’t sound at all like, “hey, have a spare $1,000?”) and he said yes!  i put off buying my plane tickets to brazil for weeks, so he actually ended up buying his tickets first!  more trip details to come!

i’m back home!  which means many things, including a return to last chance!  and my slightly-guilt-ridden-but-honestly-who-cares-because-it’s-90%-off purchases..

bcbgmaxazria pleated ruffle dress: retail $218, paid $29.97
steve madden boogle taupe sandals: retail $59.95, paid $29.97

star ling montelena sandals: retail $89.95, paid: $18.99

citizens of humanity eva jean: retail $163, paid: $29.97

fun!  i also bought two other pairs of shoes…ahhh…but fun!!  :/

all the characters that i remember from last summer were there, including the members of the two bored-housewife cliques.  newly introduced to me this past shopping trip was stalking asian girl.  stalking asian girl is the same size as me, and must’ve thought that since i am also asian we are of some sort of sisterkind.  she verbally tackled me while i was in the dressing room (vulnerable setting!), telling me about how she had overslept and how she was late and how sad she was that she had missed all the good stuff.  she then procceded to “covertly” follow me around the store seeing if i’d put anything i’d gotten back, not-so-gently prodding me every once in a while, “hey, are you going to buy that?” or “can i try on the ones you don’t fit?”  sooo awkward!

there was also a man in a white t-shirt, shorts and sandals who walked around browsing things with a cigar in his mouth.

crazy!

yesterday in my o-chem lecture, my professor went off on a tangent about this floating, toxic accumulation of garbage in the middle of the pacific ocean that’s twice the size of texas.  then he talked about plastic and how it’s not biodegradable but rather photo-degradable, which means it breaks down and down but still exists as little tiny pieces of plastic that inevitably leech into the ocean water, making its way into fish and our water systems and inevitably everything we eat.  yumm!

garbage island: a documentary