Very long vacation

Not much has been going on for the past week. I have been sitting around studying for oral exams and drinking a lot of tea (to the point where I ran out of caffeinated tea), going to bed at 2 am and waking up at 10. We had a New Year's Eve party that left us with far more beer than we knew what to do with, so we had to invite everyone back the next day to drink it all. Ben Krefetz was in town last week and it was good getting an update on Massachusetts politics. Apparently there is an effort underway to put a ban on same-sex marriages in the state to the voters in 2008; oddly enough, this only requires 25% of votes in two successive state legislatures to approve putting this on the ballot. Disgraceful.

Mom and Dad came up to Berkeley on Saturday. Mom brought me a wonderfully comfy blanket that she knitted. They both watched a video I am featured in, Les insectes du fenua, made by my friend Jérôme at the Gump Station on Mo'orea. The video was made for the Heiva des sciences, a science festival that went on last October in French Polynesia, to highlight the importance of insects to human society and the entomological research going on at the Gump Station. Most of the video talks about mosquitoes, and a successful effort to control the glassy-winged sharpshooter (a bug), and a massive effort to sequence the COI gene from every organism on the island, but I feature briefly to talk (in French) about Glochidion trees and their Epicephala moths, and the beneficial and vital role that insects play in natural ecosystems. I've toyed with putting the my segment on YouTube.

A bunch of us went to see Curse of the Golden Flower last night. It was a visually stunning movie, but not as satisfying as a lot of similar recent movies by Zhang Yimou. I couldn't help but wonder if there was some political message we were supposed to get out of the movie (as in Hero), or if it was supposed to be pure entertainment. Obviously, the depiction of the Imperial Palace in Chang'an is exaggerated in all respects, but I couldn't help but compare it to the Imperial Palace in Kyōto, and try to imagine how Tang dynasty China must have dwarfed the imaginations of the Japanese envoys, Buddhist priests, and scholars who traveled there over a thousand years ago.

I took a long walk today to Tuk Tuk Thai and Asian Market, a large Southeast Asian supermarket on University that opened about a year and a half ago. Unfortunately, it looks like it's on the verge of going out of business, which is a shame because they sell a lot of really great stuff there that you can't get elsewhere. There were a few tiny Thai stores on University when it moved in, and I expected the tiny stores would be driven out of business, but I guess maybe the big one isn't going to last either.

Must reacquire a normal sleep schedule...My goal is to go to bed tonight before 1 am...