nobody looks good in this picture

i have massive legs i know thx

jamie's birthday dinner at ikoi. we managed to get 12 people and reserve a private room, with those long tables that have holes in the floor so you can dangle your feet. japanese cuisine is my favourite and i wharfed down one too many sashimis i think. rive gauche cake to finish it off! i love rive gauche chocolate cake, it tastes like heaven. so expensive though. i brought my sister because i'm nice like that haha.


so yesterday i went for both my lectures and they were both interesting. for chinese politics, my lecturer is a highly animated man who jovially laughs at himself even when the room is silent. i like him. "my office and deng xiaoping's office... last time... 10 minute walk" he says, speaking of how he used to be at the chinese academy of social science, an important institution during china's economic reform back in the 1970's and 80's. also, he explained how 'qin' (as in qin shi huang) was originally 'chin' and that if you read some of the more archaic scholarly texts on china, they referred to the qin dynasty as 'chin'. he explained that that is where the name 'china' comes from, but also he exasperatedly yelled, 'BUT I DON'T KNOW WHO PUT THE 'A' THERE!!!' i like him a lot.

my politics and the visual class was simply an introduction, but already i saw a lot of things that are sure to be intriguing to study. we are going to cover topics such as symbols, gestures, clothing, maps, flags, cartoons, posters, television, film, the Internet and how all of this relates to politics. i'm looking forward to the comics lesson: x-men and captain america! i already knew this, that stan lee created the x-men during the time of civil war, where racism was rife throughout america, and so the mutants came to be the representation of 'outsiders' i.e. african americans, hispanics, etc. as for captain america, i didn't know this, it was originally made especially for american soldiers on the front line of war at the time, in order to instill more patriotism and loyalty to the country.

already possess a massive stack of readings. in the afternoon gus and i pored over his business law homework. this is good, i learn some things when i get to see what work he's doing. i feel better about school this semester than the last.