My dear friends, colleagues /cohorts, family and teachers / professors,
My sincerest apology for my perennial silence. I seem to have vanished after I got back from Solvang (in mid December). Indeed, a plethora of things have happened ever since my last report but due to my tight schedule, it is just almost impossible for me to really sit down and write you a detailed account of what has happened. In addition, the world seems to turn so drastically fast that shortly after I have something written, what is jotted down doesn’t seem to be relevant anymore. Well, I just don’t feel comfortable without writing anything seeing the semester having been half way through so I am trying to write something tonight. Should there be any updates, then I will write a separate message then.
1. My screenplay: In case some of you were not informed, I completed a movie script before I graduated from Boston College. I tried to have my work sold one way or another but my efforts didn’t seem to pay off. I later did earn a contract with a literary agency but my literary agent did a lousy job. I put the script business in the back burner as soon as I started my PhD because schoolwork could be so burdensome that what I had in mind was nothing but studying. Plus, most of my free time was actually spent on socializing, going out with my classmates, which was deemed utterly impossible back in my Boston College days. During the past Christmas, an intuition drew me to post a message on IMDB (Internet Movie Database) and around New Year, an executive producer responded to my message. She said she would like to take a look at my script. I e-mailed her my screenplay as requested. Few days later, the executive producer e-mailed me saying that she would like to talk to me on the phone. I murmured, “You don’t need to call me to tell me how bad my work is.” I gave her my phone number and a time to call me nonetheless. To my astonishment but also delight, the executive producer liked my work a lot. She said it brought tears to her eyes and called me script “story about labor of love”. She then sent me a detailed treatment of my script and I have been revising the screenplay under her supervision. She even encourages me to go into the film industry working as a director but I think I will stick with my schooling and creative writing on the side.
2. My possible part-time teaching job: Shortly before winter break, our Dean of School of Arts and Humanities passed down a flyer about a teaching job as I once told her that I’d like some teaching experiences as I attended Claremont. The nearby school University of La Verne was seeking a part-time instructor for its core requirement “Inter-cultural and Interracial Experiences and Relations” for the coming fall. I went to an interview on January 26th. The director was impressed by my experiences of working with people of different ethnic / socio-economic backgrounds and my ability to survive in the US as an international student. She basically would like to recruit me but it would also depend on my class schedule for the fall here at Claremont.
3. My classes at Claremont: In my last blog entry, I said I would take a film course. Eventually I dropped it because the professor was said to be a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde” kind of guy. I ended up taking Diaspora Studies and Fascist History, in addition to Introduction to Cultural Studies. I am glad that the course covers how Fascist Regime manipulated the media, something I have been very much interested in. What bothers me is the heavy reading load. Later I was told that it was just normal for historians to read A LOT, literally at least one book per week. (Luckily, I had been dissuaded from taking history as one of my concentrations.)
4. Faculty hire: After the amorphous status of the department in the past months, the department has become more of shape. Two candidates are welcomed aboard to join our department—Prof Kripps, a professor at University of Pittsburgh’s Communication Department and Dr. E. Oishi from Cal State LA Women Studies. In addition, our former chair who is on leave to be a visiting professor at Columbia will return in the fall. Plus, our current chair will be with us for another year. Our department will be a full house the coming fall.
5. Spring vacation: Claremont Colleges’ International Place arranged two trips the past spring break—a three-day trip to San Francisco and a one-day snow watching trip to Palm Spring. The former was quite an unforgettable experience. The climax of the trip was a tour on Alcatraz Island, where inmates with big names such as Al Capone, Machine Kelly as well as others spent their time before 1963. Each visitor took a tour with a walkman which told him or her stories behind major cell rooms. The staff did a great job re-creating the feeling back then with actual recordings of people there (inmates, guards) accompanied with heavy footsteps, shouting and door slamming as background. I felt drained completely after the tour. I couldn’t imagine myself spending 16~23 hours per day in a small room and that even a chore such as sweeping the floor was considered a privilege that needed to be earned. As soon as I finished the tour, I rushed out gusting for air and not willing to go back inside again. For the first time, I had a taste of what it was like to be deprived of freedom. I wanted to get back to Fisherman’s Wharf, where I boarded the ship to the island but the ship was yet to come. I couldn’t but gaze at Fisherman’s Wharf longingly. I was one in a big crowd dying to get back to the free world. Finally came the ship. People thronged the ship as if slaves who thought they were going to make a fortune in the New World shipped with an overloaded cargo. The island sold souvenirs, among them sets of prisoner uniforms. I love buying costumes as souvenirs; that is why I bought cowboy shirts and hat when I went up to Solvang. But I felt so bad that I just went past the uniform section. I bought a spoon though, which says on the upper part U.S.P.A.Z.. I have been it using since then.
Well, that’s all for now. I have long day with 6 hours straight of classes. I need to take a rest. I will talk to you later!!
Psycheboy's World 