Jia Lin’s Weblog

Hitting the road

See you next weekend.

memo

I’m certainly bitching too much recently. But there are things I must put down here, so I will not make the same mistake in the future, so as the people who happen to read this blog.

# asking about landlord’s reputation before moving in. Taperecording every telephone conversation with the landlord if he not trustful.

# asking for written statement for every oral deal you made, including selling your used items, piano, fixing cars, getting permission from police office…
our piano store change their mind four days before we move, and only willing to pay $800 instead of promised $1000 to buy back our piano.

# never tell these people you are moving far away, so they know you can not come back to sue them and take advantage of you.

# Start everything earlier, we would not hadve lost money in moving quote (lose $300 because early quote expired), fixing cars, getting better AAA service (the “plus membership” from which you can have free tow for 100 miles, will not take effective until ten days)

#Sell everything (we spend $1000 on movoing service just because we don’t want to get rid of bed, computer chair and TV, not a good deal)

#don’t shop before you really settle down

#

rising fame

Four monthes ago, I had to flilp to third page of Google index to find my blog page when I typed my name (Jia Lin or Lin Jia is such a common Chinese name). Now, My blog is ranked No. one when inputing either “Jia Lin” or “Lin Jia“. What does it mean? I beat all people share the same name wtih me? I am “Jia Lin” number one?! Or, I’m the most famous “Jia Lin” in the world (if “Jia Lin” is a type of species) ? Sounds exciting. Fame is such an interesting thing, by all means. Googlel makes me one. I guess I’m more vain than I thought.

What’s the name of the law..?

…to describe eveything going wrong all at the same time?

� The car collapse when we will have 3000-mile road trip to go in one week. Engine or suspension, to fix or not to fix? Neither of them cost less $600. Can only afford one.

� Long-planed pilgrim to Lucile Ball�s hometown-Jamestown (the last place I want to go before leave East Coast) only finds a few pieces of her costume (not even the famous outlook) in the museum.

� Notebook is attacked by Blaster worm, and shut down automatically every 5 minutes. And it comes back after I thought I kill it.

� Being told we have to pay and build an 8*9 square feet bulkhead wall and move furniture up and down to and from a 4-feet-tall trailer (with no ramp) all by ourselves, after we sign $1000 contract and paid $75 deposit with Help-u move.

� Air conditioner is shut down in the afternoon of 87 degree due to electricity outage.

� Constant migraine for two days and a party of 40 is on the corner.

� Self-screener of Adult ADD found ” your symptoms may be consistent with Adult ADD”, and that explains the following:

� Researcher�s block: Only have fewer than 20 pages of writing when proposal defense is due, and the adviser comments �that was the way you were going�

Can’t I at least have a blessing of “Happy birthday” today?

lightening strike? I don’t believe it.

They say the blackout is caused by lightening in Niagara power plant. I’m in Niagara county. I swear it was as sunny as never before when my air conditioner, computer and refrigirator were suddenly gone dead. The call-in program in NPR tonight received several calls from niagra fall area, and people said the worst weather there today is that “the sun’s blazed”.

The DHS should give some better explanation.

What is Jazz dance?

Jazz dance is interesting. There is this international jazz dance world congress hold in UB last week. We watched one of the 4 shows on Friday. A performance of top dancing companies nationwide, it is really amazing. I used to equalize jazz dance to tap dance, or it is, in my mind, no more than something like �Fosse�. But the variety of dance numbers presented at that night makes me realize it is actually embracing any type of modern dance, anything but classical. And all music but classical: Pop, new age, jazz (of course), Samba, African drums, Peking Opera all sound fine with the modern choreography. The distinction between male and female are faded in this kind of dance, men should be as soft and flexible as women, and women should not be less strong and dominant than men. And that�s the essential of modernism. In classical ballet, woman is the lightless object that is heaved and tossed exquisitely by muscular man. I don�t see much of this lifting in this jazz dancing. Male and female dance in the exact same movements most of time, and I did not realize the presence of male dancers for quite a while. It is pleasant to see the women of modern dance are generally tall and curvy, opposed to those skinny and frail ballerinas in my memory (I don�t see much ballet in my adulthood) .

The subjects are quite fascinating. The first number by 5 pairs of men and women seemed depicting night dating rituals in metropolis. The second is a solo tap dance and monologue of a man in military suit. He occasionally cursing war and politics in brief words while he pose from a long tip-tap; the third number was my favorite. Eight girls dress like a burning phoenix, bouncing and gamboling at mysterious drumbeat. The way they skipped was so swift and lightsome, shoot from one side of stage to the other, like flying birds. Ephemeral birds. Then there was this number called �moon over the great wall�. Against all my imagination, it was presenting various forms of animals� night life. Five girls in dark dress rolling and twisting themselves violently on the floor to mimic insect�s or reptile, and then creep like wolf or cats, and finally they can stand on their foot and seemed they evolve into mankind. I guess “evolution in the moonlight” will be a better fit. Final number was called �rain�, and consisted of three Jewel�s songs about raining. Maybe it was because the group is from Utah, the choreography was elegant, balance but conventional. However, it has its moment: at the end, artificial rain poring down on the stage, and the dancers get all wet and stomping crazily, so went the audience. Clapping, screaming and stomping together. When we walk out of the theater, it was really raining cats and dogs.

sense of leaving

I did not have sense of leaving until this week, when we started to meet friends and say goodbye this week.

Wow, we are going to LA! It is sooo far away, 3000 miles! We can’t meet friends very often from now on, though we don’t meet each other for several months while we are in the same city. But it is 3000 miles away now!

We had a lunch with Marc, Mary and Ruth (Marc’s manager in China) at Ponderosa yesterday. Today, Leila took us to a very lovely restraurant where California cuisine is served. Apart from as expensive as those fancy restaurants in California, the restaurant even has a name of California city called “Sonoma”. Also I notice they have something I’ve never seen in any of other Buffalo restaurants-valet parking. That is quite California to me. I met Pijun in the department today and could not help asking her and Zhijie for another dinner-even we just did it two weeks ago. Le will again sleep over for this weekend. She is the only one with whom I can do the girlish thing, like gossiping, window shopping and cooking stuff.

Bin and I will host a get-together-before-goodbye party on next Sunday (8/17) at Mayer’s park, where we had our wedding ceremony two years ago. Everyone who reads my blog is welcome to come at 4:30pm- if you can make it (sorry I can’t offord tickets from Colon or Sydney yet). We don’t have many close friends left in Buffalo now- we have stayed here so long (since spring 1999 when Bin came first) and we’ve seen so many friends come and go. Every parting left us wonder when we would be seen off. And finally it is time.

Gazette: Birth of Dr. Zhang

Bin Zhang passed his defense 30 minutes ago in conference room of CEDAR, University at Buffalo. His presentation “Pattern matching and retrieval with binary features” lasts 90 minutes with 88 slides (his committee had to remind him twice to watch out the time), but everyone seemed very interested in his work. Totally 19 people (including me, the cameraman) attended his defense, even the director of CSE graduate school showed up (which is very rare case) at the last few minutes. Senior research scientists in CEDAR endorsed Bin’s presentation as the best Doctoral defense in years.

In past 18 years, Bin had been at school for 4 completed degrees. He enjoyed his time at schools and labs, and now he is moving towards the highest degree-postdoctoral in UCLA, if it can be considered as an educational degree.

Editorial: I’m so proud of him.