貓鎮的小公寓
Where Hui & Little Cat Dwell

Written by: Bernard Albrecht, Gillian Gilbert, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris
Performed by: New Order
Music Video: Yahoo! Music

Covered by: Frente!

I actually heard the covered version first and didn’t know about the original New Order version until I come to the States. Maybe ’cause Australia is a tad bit closer to Taiwan than the Great Britain?

Never knew exactly what the song is about, either. Frente! didn’t have the lyrics of just this song in the CD insert.

Now I know the song word by word, how do I feel about it?

I usually don’t copy and paste the lyrics, but somehow I feel I want to do it this time…

Every time I think of you
I get a shot right through into a bolt of blue
It’s no problem of mine but it’s a problem I find
Living a life that I can’t leave behind

There’s no sense in telling me
The wisdom of a fool won’t set you free
But that’s the way that it goes, and it’s what nobody knows
And every day my confusion grows

Every time I see you falling
I get down on my knees and pray
I’m waiting for that final moment
You’ll say the words that I can’t say

I feel fine and I feel good
I feel like I never should
Whenever I get this way, I just don’t know what to say
Why can’t we be ourselves like we were yesterday

I’m not sure what this could mean
I don’t think you’re what you seem
I do admit to myself that if I hurt someone else
Then we’d never see just what we’re meant to be

Every time I see you falling
I get down on my knees and pray
I’m waiting for that final moment
You’ll say the words that I can’t say

Bittersweet? How do one convey that feeling when singing a song?

一直不知道這首歌的歌詞, 也一直不知道原唱其實是一個英國團 New Order. 如果一開始聽到的是原唱可能就不會那麼喜歡這首歌了吧? 電子味太重了.

現在歌詞都了了.

覺得只有把歌詞都貼上來. 不太能簡短的解釋. (也或許是不想解釋的太清楚吧… you decide. :)

What are you looking at?

The title says, literally, “big small eye little cat”.

And no, I was not that lucky to get a shot of her blinking just one eye. She got sick again. This time, an eye problem.

Judging by the symptoms, the theory (according to my books in cat health, online information, and the vet) is that something got into her eye, right eye, to be exact, scratched the surface of the eye ball a little, and caused the discomfort. I did wash her eye a little on the day when it started using saline water, and she seems to get better after that.

Took her to the vet yesterday since she didn’t get well completely after 2 full days. The vet stained her right eye, and you can see a tiny round dot on the surface of her eye, like a little hole of some sort. We got the antibiotic eye ointment from the vet, and scheduled a re-check on Friday.

After applying the ointment for 1.5 days now, her eye seems to be worse! :|

She could almost keep her right eye opened all the time before we started applying the ointment; but now, it looks like this all evening…

ht said we should stop appying the ointment, go back to saline water, and then let the vet know about this on Friday. Or, he said, maybe she’s just sleepy.

Gaaah! Gaaah! Gaaah!

開始懷疑小貓是不是有 seperation anxiety. 好像常常我們出個遠門什麼的她毛病就來了.

這次是眼睛有問題. 目前看起來應該是有異物跑到眼睛裡刮傷了眼球表面. 醫生看了也是這麼說, 而且還開了眼藥膏防止感染.

可是眼藥膏點了一天半, 症狀卻變得更嚴重了. 去看醫生以前大部分的時間眼睛都睜開了七八成, 今天晚上卻又變成這個樣子了…

怎麼辦呢… 真的是醬的嘛? 禮拜五還要帶回去給醫生看, 明天真的不用再打電話問會不會有什麼不對勁嘛?

啊～～～ 啊～～～～～～ 啊～～～～～～～～～

My poor, poor kitty…

"new" dining room

I know I said that I will blog more about my Alaska trip. That didn’t happen *yet* ’cause I still have so much to do for my home. ~”~

Today, we sort of have the dining room set up; our first “real” dining sets, actually, as some of you might remember that we’ve been using the folding table and chairs for the past who-knows-how-many years…

Now if we can get rid of those boxes sitting in the living room… … …

Back from Alaska. Still feeling a bit dis-oriented after seeing the dark night for the first time in the last two weeks.

Alaska is such an amazing place! Have so much to tell! I’ll start organizing our thoughts and photos in the next few weeks. :)

阿拉斯加真的是一個很不同的地方. 我想每個人這輩子都該去體驗看看. (坐豪華遊輪去不算喔~)

我會慢慢的把這次旅遊的心情跟照片整理出來, 敬請期待~ ;)

ps. 我真的很認真的執行休假不上網喔… 所以回來 check e-mail 才發現, 入選時報推薦優格了~ 耶~~~ ^_^

zzz… zzzz……

We finally let LC come out to the living room now that it doesn’t smell like a paint shop, and she doesn’t seem to mind the new color. ;)

Turned out that when I don’t have to work, I actually have so much to do and have no time to blog… hum… intriguing…

When I started painting the 2nd wall in my living room yesterday afternoon, my hands and arms were already sore. I was staring at the wall, thinking if the new color’s too yellow, realizing my condo is actully not as small as I thought it is, and suddenly, a thought flashed thru: 貓鎮的黃色小公寓.

My mom always like to say I live in 貓鎮 ever since she knew Los Gatos is a town, not a city. (why is that?) 貓 = cat = gato, 鎮 = town.

Why not make it my Chinese blog title, then… :)

昨天下午粉刷客廳. 連一半的牆都還沒漆好呢, 卻已經累的半死了. 累到盯著牆發呆, 心理卻又一直擔心著, 新挑的顏色看起來好像有點黃過頭了… ~”~

忽然一個標語像跑馬燈似的從腦中閃過: 貓鎮的黃色小公寓

家在 Los Gatos, 是西班牙文複數的 “貓” 的意思. 是因為當初拓荒者剛剛來到這裡時看到很多山貓吧. 不知道為什麼 Los Gatos 的行政單位是 “town”, 而不是一般的 city. 媽媽自從知道了這些事情以後, 就老愛說我住在貓鎮.

那… 就拿來當 blog 的中文名稱吧… 之前還沒特別想過要有中文名呢. 這個靈感閃過的時機對我來說也是滿有紀念意義的, 畢竟也搬進來快兩年了, 現在終於每個空間都漆成我喜歡的顏色了. :) (其實就三個顏色啦…)

Maybe it’s a sign… ;)

Am gonna try to blog in both English and Chinese.

I mean, I will try to translate English entries to Chinese from now on, and both will be talking about the same thing.

Why? ’cause… hum… haven’t really figured it out yet so can’t explain it very well. Maybe after doing it for awhile I will be clearer why I should or should not do this.

…and this entry doesn’t count. ;)

My special to-do list for June:

• Paint and decorate my living room.
• Travel to Alaska.
• Get more plants for my deck.
• Re-vamp my blog.
• Go to the gym whenever I want to.
• Skate, and not have to worry about the crowds on the trail.

Yeah, uh-huh… surreal…

雖然是出賣靈魂五年得到的結果… ~”~
昨天想了半天 sabbatical 的中文到底是什麼… 字典上的解釋真的不太 make sense. Wikipedia 的解釋比較好一些些:

A sabbatical year is a prolonged hiatus, typically one year, in the career of an otherwise successful individual taken in order to fulfill some dream, e.g. writing a book or travelling extensively. Some universities and other institutional employers of scientists, physicians, and/or academics offer a paid sabbatical as an employee benefit.

當.頭.棒.喝.

At least, I will do a little traveling… *sheepishly*

We made a spontaneous decision that we’re going to Alaska during my sabbatical after catching this show on PBS.

What we didn’t know at that time is that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is not very easy to get to, and you’re pretty much on your own once you’re there.

It took me awhile to gather the energy to do the trip planning, since I had completely no idea what one should do when visiting Alaska. After 3-day’s intensive work, I’ve finally come up with an acceptable itinerary (and realize that one will never have enough time to travel in Alaska) and conclude that the most useful tools for (casual) Alaska travel planning are:

• Frommer’s Alaska 2005
• google
• my phone

I’ve gotten so many tips from local people when making various reservations that I almost want to run my entire itinerary by them just to make sure that everything’s right. It’s actually really nice talking to people on the phone. I think I don’t quite remember how that feels since I’m almost always talking to people or arranging everything online these days.

Guess this is a good start. :)

Now should I pick a half-day glacier walk, or a full-day one… *thinking*