I haven't been able to get any writing done over the past few days, because I've been working on a rush translation job for a company. It only pays US$130, but that'll at least pay for about two boxes to be shipped back home. I'm almost finished, and once I'm done, I need to try to get a little further ahead in the chapters for SOOTB. Chapter 16 is taking forever to finish, and I don't know why, because I know exactly how I want it to go, but I can't seem to sit at the computer and type more than a few lines here and a few lines there. It's quite annoying, actually.

I was really moved by the comments left by Luc and Kitty in the thread on Connor's rape experience on the discussion forum. When I started out writing, I just wanted to write an interesting, entertaining story. I never realized that it would end up being something that would actually move people emotionally and cause such a reaction, nor did I really expect it to be such a "dark" story ... but I'm pleased with the result so far, and I would rather write stories that have a message, and not just the typical online gay fiction. I hope the second half of the story will garner as much interest as the first half.

I was notified yesterday that my oral exam for my M.A. will be on Friday afternoon, May 19th. So, in less than three weeks, I'll finally be finished! WOO-HOO! The exam itself shouldn't be too difficult, although I wouldn't mind having a bit of interesting debate with the exam committee. My own graduate advisor will probably give me the most trouble because she likes to argue. One of the other professors got her B.A. through Ph.D. at University of California, Berkeley. She's a really brilliant scholar, and one of the leaders of the gay rights movement in Taiwan (and the only one of the three committee members who speaks English).

As for moving stuff, I shipped off one more box yesterday, making a total of seven shipped so far. Hopefully I'll only have a few more boxes worth of stuff to send. Once that's done, I need to see how much of my furniture I can sell and then see about what to do with the rest of it ... and, of course, get as much writing done as possible. I always do my best writing in the morning when I wake up, but lately I've been spending that time in the live chat ... so I think I'm gonna stay away from the chatroom for a while until I've gotten caught up on my writing. I don't know how busy I'll be once I get back to the States, so I want to finish up SOOTB before I go back, and hopefully have the first few chapters of my next serial, tentatively titled "My Elusive Drug," before then as well. I also need to get some more work done on my Summer Anthology entry. Anyone who wants to chat with me can add my AIM: LittleBuddhaTW (how original, huh? hehe)

Anyway, I guess that's it for today ... about two more paragraphs left to translate on this stupid project and then I'll be done ...