-I love my cat, love that he is furry and all black, un chat noir. He is the symbol of all that I love, independent, with particular tastes, friendly to everyone, a proud killer of the enemy, escapes from battles he can win, pursues those that he can, clean, but isn afraid to get dirty in the chase, sleeps only when bored, adapts easily to foreign environments  (as much as a cat can), affectionate and vigilant, isn shy to let you know when he annoyed, loves films by Godard. He is five years old and very much a kitten spirit and an old soul. I glad to have known him.

-discovered liberation from fear of death from reading Plato in the Crito. Hellenistics thought of philosophy as a means of liberation from fear, I encountered this early in one of Plato most straight forward dialogues. There is no fear of pain since pain is a bodily sensation, if the soul is eternal, then one will persist with all of one rationality, lose one identity, doesn that sound great? If there is no persistence of the soul, then one will be a vanishing nothing in which case, we wouldn know the difference. Early in my life I complained that Hell is a logical impossibility. In any case I owe much psychological gratitude to Plato and his students.

-great with food: the petit-bourgeois pig that I am, I am a lover of food, fetishizes consummation of things edible. Am in the school of regarding the culinary arts the least recognized of the range of artistic endeavors. Love to cook: I see vegetarianism in general as the least developed arena of sophistication and thus devote the most of my time with experiments in that domain. As such, I love grilling roots and frying leaves. Hates American cuisine, crowd pleasing travesties, and the narrow domains of salty cheesy and greasy. Eats cookies on occasion. Loves prolo street-side stalls in asia: pigs-blood, garlic sausage and fried fermented tofu <only in traditional Taiwanese manner ith cabbage pickles and chili pepper sauce>. Bread in France is one of the reasons for staying here. Main reason for eschewing vegetarianism: foie gras and large intestines ?la chinoise. Hopes to perfect: mint/shallot based salads, beef soup and vegan stew. With drink: though loves wine on occasion, only ever really worships Scotch.

-reading the ommunist manifesto?was one of the major formative experiences of my life. When I read nimal farm?just weeks earlier, I wondered why Orwell was so cruel not to write a text where the horse (don remember his name) survives and is rewarded for his efforts. In Marx I found the text I was looking for (not that the horse lives neither in that text but ?. incidentally the first hilosophy? text I read.

-my grandfather (fatherside) is an unrecognized leftist revolutionary at the turn of the century in China; anarchist by persuasion, was at odds with major political currents of his time. He later turned anti-maoist after the civil war, came into conflict with the Malaysian communist party [lived in Malaysia after exiled by KMT] who threatened his life. Very conservative in non-directly political senses (with respect to poetry and scholarship), died of pneumonia improperly diagnosed as tuberculosis due to long-term opium habit. Horrible father, left his children to support the family economically while romping on intellectual/political adventures.

-I learned a love of books from my  maternal grandfather. Humble man with a big ego till refers to himself as a ountry doctor? Still retains all the habits from his Japanese colonizers. Speaks Japanese as his most comfortable language, very very clean, loves films, but above all has a huge library. In his old age, he buys books that he already has copies of. I found the reissue of the entire collection of Thomas Hardy from Penguin just because it had a different cover. Once read an essay of mine and told me that it had no logic  at all, proceeded to hand me one of his. I agree, his made more sense.

-Had a pretty successful rock band experience in Highschool. lotted transgression? namesake a verse from the prophet Isaiah. Wrote poppy late-nineties alternative rock tunes, with catchy hooks and bluesy verses.played bass, accompanied by a guitarist that I still considere to be one of the greatest musicians I have ever played with. Recorded an ep and lp, the second of which we were quite satisfied with, still listen to it sometimes.

-Am in the process of mastering French. Not really going as well as I thought it would go given that I live in Paris. I still have plenty trouble sounding French, but what is worse, I still often have to look up the conjugation in the PRESENT TENSE of many verbs while I write, what kind of bullshit is that? Articles trip me up a lot, since they exist not in Chinese, and there are much more relaxed rules in English. Hope to attempt German next.