February 15, 2009

1. So I am now the holder of a TEFL [Teaching English as a Foreign Language] certificate.

2. The pants the tailor is making me are coming along just fine. I am threatening to become a clothes horse in the very near future.

3. The tempature dropped 20 degrees from yesterday. It's 19 outside with snow coming tonight or tomorrow. I haven't seen snow in years. I need to buy gloves.

4. I am wondering why no one pointed me towards Jonathan Culler's work (especially Structuralist Poetics) back when I was getting heavily into the Tel Quel group. Luckily, the Foreign Language Bookstore on Wang Fujin had a couple of his works & they were having a 20% off sale so I got that and some Derrida. I also got some Checkov short stories because Checkov and cold winter seem to go together.

5. Sha got me invited to the press pre-reception at the Ullens Centre today for Qiu Zhijie (pictured). The character 不 (bu) written across his face in this older piece means "no" or "not", making this a fairly existential self-portrait, thus going against the grain of the then (1994) comtemporary Chinese art scene's fascination with the individual.

6. Still haven't run into Cui Jian but I have my eyes out for him.