random thoughts

I just read an article in a dated issue of the New Yorker by David Sedaris about his struggle to learn the French language. To overcome his difficulty to communicate, he simply started agreeing to whatever people said to him. "D'accord" (O.K.) was his response to everything, which mistakenly led to him sitting in his cotton briefs in a hospital waiting room surrounded by other (fully-clothed) patients. Something was apparently lost in translation. I was laughing out loud at this article.

Then I read a story about Clinton and also cracked up over something he said. En route from Berlin to Cape Town on a private jet, after talking and playing cards until 4 a.m., he informed the writer of the article: "We're going to have a *great* time in Africa." Another classic comment was when he arrived at the stadium in Berlin for the World Cup Final: "I'm totally psyched for this!" Clinton sounds like a swell guy to hang out with!

I saw Michel Gondry's latest film "The Science of Sleep." It's an interesting concept, the blurry line between reality and dreams. Sometimes the experiences I have feel like a dream, and sometimes the dreams I have feel so normal that they could be real. It's like the Chuang Tzu story about when he dreamt of being a butterfly, but when he woke up he didn't know if he was really a butterfly dreaming about being a man. Sometimes I feel like I would just like to stay in my dream and never wake up. But for example, when I dreamt that I received a $700 parking ticket, I was really glad to wake up.