le mal du pays

Yesterday night I woke up at around 3am.  My sleep pattern has been the craps lately.  I would fall asleep early while watching tv and then wake up in the middle of the night.  I also have been sweating profusely in the night and waking up with my shirt soaked.  This is pretty abnormal for me, or at least abnormal in the past.  Then I spend the remaining hours trying to fall back asleep before my alarm sounds and I have to drag myself up to go to work.  I am not sure what's going on.  But the result is, I am pretty much a zombie throughout the day.  Listless, detached, agitated with the world.  Well maybe my bad sleep habit has nothing to do with my being any of those things, but it doesn't help.  

Well yesterday night, my trying to fall back asleep was interrupted by what turned out to be the biggest earthquake we had in the Bay Area since Loma Prieta in 1989.  It was a 6.0 near Napa.  More than anything, it felt long, as if it would go on forever.  That's the worst part of going through an earthquake.  Every fraction of a second feels like forever, and your mind and heart are racing.  You just keep thinking, are the jolts going to get more violent or subside?  Yesterday night, I immediately leaped out of bed and stood in my bedroom doorway.  I still have no idea if that's what I am supposed to do.  (Actually I just looked it up; it's not the right thing to do.)

The 6.0 quake looks to have caused pretty significant damages to buildings in Napa and sent 120 people to the hospital with mostly minor injuries.

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Yesterday was also the debut of Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor.  I was disappointed in the episode Deep Breath.  I was confused and actually bored.  It was partly due to my missing Matt Smith but more due to the writing.  I really didn't follow most of what was going on.  Sometimes that happens and I just go with the ride, but with Deep Breath, I was instead tuned out and became disinterested.  Even the appearance of Vastra, Jenny, and Strax (I love those three) didn't help.  As for Capaldi, I don't know - I will hold out judgment.  I love Matt Smith's Doctor because he was both an old man and a young child.  I love the quirkiness.  Capaldi will be completely different obviously.  But good different or bad different?

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I've been complaining about my iPhone battery life.  On Friday Apple finally did the right thing and acknowledged that it's a widespread problem and is offering a battery replacement program for phones bought during a particular timeframe.  I immediately made an appt at the Genius Bar (I hate that name), and handed over my phone for repair.  I should have my regular phone in about 10 days.  Right now I am using a loaner phone.

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So happy that Guardians Of The Galaxy is back up at number one this weekend.  It's a great movie.  


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Robin Williams aka Mork from Ork has committed suicide.  He apparently suffered from depression and was in the early stage of Parkinson's.  Life is full of demons, ain't it?  Incidents like this always remind me of John Irving's quote from Hotel New Hampshire:  "Keep passing the open windows." 

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Lauren Bacall also passed a few days after - of a stroke.  Interesting trivia - with her passing, all 16 of the icons name-checked in Madonna's Vogue have now died.

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I finished Haruki Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki And His Years Of Pilgrimage a few days ago.  I think it took me about six days, which is record time for me because I am an extremely slow reader.  (I really think I have ADD.)  It's a breezy read, unlike 1Q84 which took me close to a year to get through.  (1Q84 had its magical moments, but then it was looong.) There are a lot of things about Tsukuru that I could relate to - being abandoned abruptly by people whom you feel close to and need, those feelings of not knowing what you offer to other people.  My favorite part is probably the story told by Tsukuru's friend Haida, of his father and his encounter with a pianist with death tokens.  Central to Tsukuru's story is a classical piano composition by Franz Liszt - Le mal du pays.  Haida describes le mal du pays as "homesickness, or melancholy, or a groundless sadness called forth in a person's heart by a pastoral landscape."  I think I suffer from le mal du pays even when I am home.

hooked on a feeling

I want to declare my love for Guardians of the Galaxy.  It's just pure joy and weirdness - a comic book movie packed with a rocket-toting raccoon, a talking tree who repeatedly says "I am Groot," a giant brute who takes things too literally and has no use for metaphors, awesome mixtapes, Kirk AND Mitchum Huntzberger from Gilmore Girls, Amelia Pond, Uhura from Star Trek aka Neytiri from Avatar, and a Footloose reference.  It's the Marvel movie I wished Joss Whedon's Avengers was.  It's funny, action-packed, and yeah even touching at parts.  And who wouldn't love Chris Pratt after this?  He came to play with his charisma and charm on full throttle.  Star-Lord had me from his first scene, making like Indiana Jones and stealing a mystic orb but with dancing.  I think all superheroes should dance from now on.  Chris Pratt deserves all the success and the attention he's been getting.  I am so ready to see him onscreen again, whether it is GOTG 2 or Jurassic World.  Plus he has a pretty awesome wife in Anna Faris too.

Guardians of the Galaxy - it's my favorite of the summer.  All summer movies should make you this happy.  A

          

colorless tsukuru

This is a trailer for the upcoming release of Haruki Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. It's beautiful.



I preordered both the US version and the UK version. I got the UK version just for the sticker sheets. Marketing scheme gets me everytime.