WOO-HOO! I finally finished the rough draft of my Ph.D. research proposal, and have sent it on to my thesis editor. Now everything (including the last few chapters of my thesis) are in her hands, so now I just have to sit back and wait for her to send me the corrections. I still have to start doing some reading to prepare for the written exam, but that only counts for about 30% of the score for the entrance exam. The other 70% or so is based on your oral exam (discussing your M.A. thesis, research plan, etc. -- all in Chinese, of course). At least I don't have to do any more damn writing! **breathes deep sigh of relief**

I still have a lot of other crap to get together, though, like applications, letters of recommendations, transcripts, four passport-sized photographs, etc. The whole registration and application process is extremely complicated. They should just let you into the program based on being able to jump through all of those hoops. Even if I do get accepted, though (which I'm not too sure about, since I don't really have the same "drive" I had before), I will still consider moving back to the States and going into some other kind of work where I can still make use of my Chinese skills (and NO, I don't plan on working in a Chinese restaurant! ). I've been isolating myself too much here over the past few months, mostly because of trying to get my thesis done, and am really worn out. I'm thinking I need a change ... or at least a long vacation. Any suggestions about how to make my life a little more meaningful? *sigh*

Hopefully now I can spend some more time doing what I really like -- namely, writing. I'm currently working on Ch. 12 of "Someday Out Of the Blue," and I just finished making the corrections on the first edit of Ch. 7 from Kitty, so everything's on schedule for the next update. Ch. 7 is the longest chapter so far, so I think that should please everyone. I just hope any future stories will get as good of a response as my first one.

Also, I'm now officially hosted at GayAuthors in the "Shared Member Hosting" section, so if you get the chance, go check out my page:

http://members.gayauthors.org/littlebuddhatw/index.html