Two nights ago I had my last honey-wheat bagel. My mom brought a whole bunch with her when she came to visit me a month ago. I froze them and have been slowly eating my stockpile. Now no more bagels unless I can talk Keith into bringing me some when he comes. It was a bittersweet moment.

In other news...

Happy Chinese New Year to everyone! I'm off on a trip around Taiwan for the next week. I'll be back on Saturday. I'll try to post some pictures this time. Unfortunately the ones from my family trip are just too big. I can't get them up on my site.

Our landlady and her handyman just came by to do some painting in my room. The wall in my room has started bulging in and flaking off in a couple spots. This doesn't actually bug me that much but when we told the landlady about it she wanted to fix it up. I have my doubts about how much the new paint will change things. The handyman by himself will come by after Chinese New Year to put another layer on. Unfortunately the peeling is being caused by the damp outside so perhaps this is the first of many visits. I can see it now. Every other week he'll be by to put more paint on the same spots. A parade of paint buckets and brushes passes before me. Many nights sleeping in paint fumes (I have the window open right now to try to keep that from happening).

I should have just kept this quirk of my room's to myself.

I just read an article in the New Yorker that's gotten me all fired up and pissed off. Its about the creator and producer of the television show 24. Personally, I watched about half of the first season of 24 on video. My mum's boss was taping the show and she brought home the tape for us to watch it. Either I lost interest or went back to college or something and never finished it. Then when I worked for CTV and could rent videos for free I started watching it again and made it several episodes past where I had stopped but still didn't finish it. It's essentially a stupid show (I'm not saying this to be mean - stupid is my category for all shows that lack "artistic" merit.) The dialogue is silly, the plots are silly, it doesn't break any new ground. It's just a thriller. It's certainly an entertaining thriller and maybe I would have at least finished the first season if I was watching in television time. Watching it all at once, the adrenaline just dies down. Without adrenaline, basic thrillers quickly seem sort of pointless.

But enough of my history with the show. The article is about the producer's political affiliations and how they affect the show. 24 shows a lot of torture scenes. Frequently the torturers are the "good" guys and the show has this often-used plot device where unless the bad guy talks in THE NEXT FIVE MINUTES New York City will be destroyed by a nuclear weapon or the population of Los Angles will be decimated by a bioweapon. Secondary characters in the show make softhearted pleas for humane treatment or due process. The more practical patriots shoot the suspect in the leg or pretend to kill his son in another room. This always results in a confession which is always true. (I'm summing up from what the article said here. Since I don't watch the show I haven't seen enough to make this sort of generalization.)

This kind of stupidity makes me crazy! Alright, I know it's a television show so I shouldn't take it seriously. And I wouldn't if it weren't for some of the information that the New Yorker collected for this article. Apparently, real-life interrogators are worried about the effect the show is having on people's perception of what they do. The dean of West Point and three professional military and FBI interrogators went out to have a meeting with the show's people to suggest they show some of what real interrogators do or at least have an episode where torturing a terrorist results in a false confession that blows up in the good guys' faces.

I'm not expressing this very well because I'm trying to be fair-minded and rational instead of just writing an emotional rant. Honestly I'm just so angry after reading how the people who are responsible for 24 react to all this. What they show on their show is fantasy not reality. Almost universally, people who interrogate suspects have said that torture does not work as an interrogation technique. It makes suspects less willing to talk. It hugely increases the chances that any confession they do get will be false. At the most, interrogators get information they already had. It dehumanizes the interrogators, making them more open to other abuses and psychological damage. Last but not least, it hurts our standing internationally and makes it easier for other groups to justify torturing our people. Fair enough, it's television. It doesn't have to show reality. But the man behind all of this seems to feel that it is reality in a way and that people responding to it like it's real is a good thing.

24 seems to be this endless series of choices. The patriotic but hard main character must choose between committing an illegal and immoral act or risk running out of time on saving the world. These are presented as the only choices. He always chooses to torture and they way things are manipulated, it's always the right choice. But torture is the wrong choice. How did we get to this place where it could ever be presented as the right one?

Finally, finally the first meeting of the Susan&Ali book club will take place today! It only took us four months to get this off the ground...

I watched horror movies with friends from work for about four hours last night. So much fun! I haven't been to a friend's house for a movie "party" in forever. Never enough time at Cornell I guess. We did not get to finish Silent Hill which was disappointing because it looks really good but I think I'll be able to borrow it from Miss j. Also I think I've managed to recreate Campbell's chicken noodle soup twice now so feeling pretty pleased about that. It's my go-to meal when I'm sick with a cold and I've really been missing it here. But I managed to make it for myself last night and then made it Miss c at her house yesterday. I really want to learn about Taiwanese cooking though. I've looked through cookbooks here a bit and they just don't seem to be the way to go. I don't have enough knowledge yet to be able to follow the recipes faithfully. Most of my friends here don't cook at all. Restaurant food here can be so cheap that it's easier to just pick up some sort of take-out all the time.

Alright enough with the meandering. I need to go or I will be late for book club!

I have nothing exciting to report because I am sick again today! I swear this cold is never going to leave. This is the third time I am missing out on going hiking because of it. I've wanted to go back to Yangminshan since I was up there with my parents three weeks ago. But every day off I've had since then I've been busy or SICK!

So instead of going hiking I've been reading about hiking. Mostly about Appalachian Trail hiking which is something I'd like to do with Keith someday. I was a little taking aback in my reading to suddenly realize that to thru-hike the whole trail you have to be on it for longer than I have been in Taiwan so far. It takes about six months. I will have been here four months on next Tuesday. But still I think I could do it if I have Keith besides me. He doesn't like to give up.

Although not really my news, Keith had an interview today for a job in Philly. He's got another interview coming up and a strong possibility of another one. This job sounded the least interesting of the three but it is in Philly which is the big draw for him and me. I feel a little bad though. He sounds like he's going to go for whatever job takes him closest to where I'll be regardless of how the work interests him. I should discourage this right? You spend so much time at work you have to pick a job that you want to take. On the other hand, I'd much prefer to not have to choose between him and UPENN for grad school. Dilemmas...