she drank the air like wine as though it held some anodyne: lunch at Dobbs, Anaise's apartment, the Recreation Centre

i skipped ice skating at Jefferson City yesterday because i had a pulsating headache thanks to the brain freeze. which is probably a good thing because a girl broke her arm at the ice rink and, who knows, it could have been me, considering that i skate with the grace of a hippo. in any case, i'd better take care of my health because school's starting on Tuesday.

anyway i slept and slept yesterday like a hibernating rabbit, partly because i'd also lost my cell phone and when i'm depressed i go to sleep. man, i feel like Hansel and Gretel - only i dont drop bread crumbs, i drop freaking cell phones. darn it, i'll have to find someone to hitch me a ride to Wal-Mart to get a new phone. bye bye, money, my heart aches when i think of you flying away from me.

oh well, the good thing is that i woke up this morning with my headache gone. so i'll count my blessings and, uh, sleep away my troubles.

"ooh...how i wish i could gallop into the warm sunset!"

lunch at Dobbs. i like this woman. anybody who makes good omelettes deserves my respect.

Lindsey introduced this French girl at Laws to the French girls at Lathrope. French conference at Dobbs, yes.

Janos from Hungary. he's disgusting. but you should see how cute he looked when he opened his waffles and saw red jellies inside. "Like magic!" he said.

Eunice the Waffle Woman

"In China if you don't try to make big money, you'll make no money!"

Anaise (France), Kim (South Korea), Yan Ho (i think that's what he's called) (China) and I had a talk about the so-called quality of life. Anaise said what makes her happy is travelling and talking to people. money is important but it's not the biggest thing in her life so she doesn't mind earning about 1,000 euros a month (the minimum wage in France is 700 euros).

but Yan Ho disagreed. his belief is that if you're an average worker, you should strive to be a millionaire, and if you're a millionaire, you should strive to be a billionaire.

honestly, isn't that endless? you can work your butt off till you're a gazillionaire or whatever, but you can bring none of your riches when you're dead. and do you really want to have a tombstone inscribed with "Here lies someone who made gazillions when he was alive"? i mean, let's be practical, money is important, but i don't want it to define me as a person. it's just not the way it should be.

we also talked about democracy. is it really the best system? the common argument is that democracy allows the marketplace of ideas to operate, where gradually the so-called best idea will emerge - like in a competitive market, the price will get lowered and lowered till it remains stable. and according to Amartya Sen, there has never been extreme poverty in a democratic country.

but i personally believe that democracy is only truly meaningful when market practices are fair. i mean, press concentration exists in almost every country. when only a few companies like Time-Warner and Viacom control nearly everything we watch on television, can we really say that democracy exists? isn't it scary how one Rupert Murdoch can shape the mindset of millions of people in the world? controlling people's livelihood through market mechanisms is one thing, controlling how people think is another thing. that's the power of the media.