daisy notes

do we always have to choose...

2011-05-10T04:48:00.004-04:00

... between doing something we love doing, and doing something for something we love?

i really hate thinking about jobs because ideally i'd like to be in love with my job and still get paid well for it, but so far it's been a little tricky to find a positions that fits both categories. i'm aware that maybe the problem lies with me not knowing what i am interested in doing. if you haven't tried something, how do you know whether you will like/dislike it?

there is so much buzz over big companies and corporate careers; understandably so, but i wish some of us would stop equating corporate careers with happiness and career success. (sidenote: i HATE the word stability. it's the kind of word which shuts up the critic - who's going to argue against lack of conflict? - and it actually stops you thinking about what you really want. which, doesn't necessarily equate to instability, by the way.) it's not that i'm not open to these options (getting in is an entirely separate question); i just wish that we would stop deeming anything outside of this particular sphere as less intellectually stimulating or rewarding.

i used to think those who gave up their true interests for a banking/consulting career were "selling out", but now i realise that one has many priorities in life, and you're not selling out if you value the higher salary over doing interesting things in your day-to-day responsibilities. and then there are those who genuinely like their work because of its particular challenges. and then there's the prestige. nothing wrong with prestige.

i'm just not sure if i can be one of those who help make the rich, even richer. on a similar vein, i'm leaving academics because i don't know if i can help those who are already specialised in obscure studies become more specialised in even obscurer research! i feel bad enough that this year i have been isolated within my academics, without having contributed to the community around me. i realise that the more one gets into something, the more focused and narrowed our vision becomes. it's inevitable; and when we walk through the streets and see ordinary people struggle in their material lives, we think, well, that's them, or, i'll try to help out eventually, but for now, me, me me.

the UWC student within me is still there, and it yells with frustration when it reads about all the injustices of the world, about the Palestine/Israel conflict, about the poor and disabled in Singapore, about women anywhere, everywhere. but yelling inside isn't enough and i don't act on these feelings (apart from engaging in online arguments with the bigots out there). i'm reminded of a corny line from Batman Begins when Rachel (Katie Holmes) tells Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) that it's not who we are inside that matters, but what we do. she's totally right. these days people have become very good at talk, but no one is brave, selfless, or passionate enough to get out there and walk.

i wish that those working for the betterment of human lives were rewarded more monetarily, for they deserve it.

this post doesn't really have a point... it's just a string of contemplations that have surfaced in my mind over the past months. i'm not trying to come to any conclusions, make any decisions. i think i need a lot more time to see for myself what is out there and figure out where i'd want to be in the next year or so. i just wanted to write this now so that i have a record of my current feelings and thoughts. maybe i should even do what marshall does in How I Met Your Mother and write a letter to my future self.

end of post. back to dissertation.

“因為幸福沒有捷徑　只有經營 ”

2011-04-14T00:29:00.005-04:00

最近威伸介紹了這首歌給我聽：
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT6Y4d7cA2A&feature=related
歌詞很有意思，希望認識中文的朋友都會欣賞。

the song linked above is sung by Christine Fan. difficult to translate the lyrics in the blog title...literally, it's "because happiness has no shortcuts, only a business/enterprise". in other words, "there are no shortcuts to happiness, as it is a business/an enterprise to manage everyday".

anyway i usually don't warm to mandarin songs, but this belongs to the rare few which are not emo :P. its lyrics are interesting, even funny:
我願意　每天在你身邊甦醒
就連吵架也很過癮　不會冷冰

(I am willing, to wake and sleep beside you every day,
to the point that even fights become exhilarating (fun), not frosty/cold)

i think this resonates with me especially because people generally are tempted to resort to 'the cold shoulder' in arguments. and i have always hated being the recipient of this tactic, often deployed by friends out of selfish moodiness. so yes, friends. next time you are angry with me, please tell it to my face, haha! i have probably done the same with you and inadvertently hurt you (sorries...) but we're all adults now. there's no need to play games anymore.

anyway so i'm on vacation here in singapore! the city hasn't changed that much, save for the crazy malls and further development of the waterfront. high school and university friends are also pretty much the same, and this time around, most seem happier :), somehow more settled. a lot have proper jobs now, which is impressive. haha i feel like such a kid, still living on parental allowance, still tackling work, still living in a dorm... can't wait to get my first (salaried) pay-check!

singapore life is a comfortable life. although working hours can be long, and many work more than 5 days a week, life here is cushioned by city conveniences like a great transport and healthcare system, and a plethora of shops. the streets are safe and clean; the weather, generally predictable! if you have friends and family here, you are lucky; they are located at most an hour of commuting away. no natural disasters, no political insurgencies, low levels of crime. i know that i am generalising the life of the upper middle class, but even when it comes to the low and middle class, the government does provide a safety net. (unlike in the US where the poor, the uneducated, and the ethnic minorities are pretty much left to their own devices.) it's a small enough country where stability will always reign... ...

i wonder when or if i will settle more permanently here. a lot of my peers are returning to singapore to work, and i can imagine that they are happy here. i wonder if that would be the case for me. could i do without the city life? studying abroad in college is one thing, living abroad in a city without family and a close network of friends is another. i don't know. but what i know is this - ever since i went to Brown in 2006, i have found singapore a little stifling. hong kong is kind of the same; well, there is a greater variety of landscape over there, and i think its food is much better than Singapore's :P, but it's still the same old city bubble. and i'm not sure if i want to live in a bubble, although i am scared to venture beyond it. Brown was a bit of a bubble although i actively got off college hill in extracurricular things; Cambridge was certainly a bubble, Oxford, similarly so although a bigger one. i dunno. but i guess i will see what it's like to get out of the college bubble come summer, when Life Uncertainty hits and i have to find my own way...

a dream job

2011-02-27T05:00:00.008-05:00

i've never thought of myself as a business person, but lately i keep dreaming of owning my own tea shop or cafe. it would be lovely and sunlit, and serve homemade cakes, salads and afternoon tea sets. the menu might change daily depending on what was baked that morning/last night. the drinks would be fruity sodas, tea and coffee. people would get complimentary glasses of water without having to ask. the interiors would be delicately designed, and there would be a poetry wall for people to scribble poetry and to contribute to lines of a running poem in the making.

maybe the theme of the place would be books, but i don't know how marketable that is and how as at theme that translates into the food. maybe all the foods and drinks could be named after books and authors? you know, having some red-orangey drink called 'The Sun Also Rises', lemon cake as 'Oranges Aren't the Only Fruit' hahaha, a tea set called 'Sense and Sensibility', or a couples one called 'Romeo and Juliet', or the caesar salad being 'Julius Caesar' (lamee). but then not all of the names would be so eyeball-rolling worthy. some could just be named after famous writers - maybe biographically related to what those authors actually enjoyed. oh and i would sell books too, both new ones and second-hand books.

my maternal grandparents ran an eatery/cafe in HK in the 50s-70s, serving HK style breakfasts and teas (a lot of toast, noodles, bo-lo bao) and drinks and ice creams. they were able to earn a living from it because of the strategic location - it was by the harbour near a petrol station or some kind of construction site, so all the workers would go there for breaks, and my mom and my aunts/uncles used to run deliveries, and serve in the cafe. they lived right next to the shop, so it was convenient. but although this all sounds very nice, i understand that the food and beverage industry is ruthless, and their turnover high. but it seems like an interesting kind of life... especially if you keep it small enough so that you can interact with customers and try to develop good relations with them. the problem is then that you can't utilise large economies of scale to keep costs low. i guess the thing would be to make sure that i own that property so that overhead costs are minimalised. but that would first mean earning enough to have one's own house and own's own shopfront!

you know, just something to dream about, to remind me that one can really do anything...

done with michaelmas term!

2010-12-16T14:43:00.003-05:00

submitted my exam essay. 2 months of work: complete! it feels great relegating all the books to the floor. my desk is now (temporarily) cleared :). Christmas dinner last night was nice, and i'm looking forward to enjoying a quiet holiday here. i feel bad for my parents that i am not going back home this vacation for the whole 'empty nest' must be strange, even lonely at times. but to me, it feels right that i stay. of course having WS here means that i am happy to be here. but it's also about not having to travel and spend on flights, and about being near the library so that i can read and research over the holidays. Hilary term (January-March) is going to be worse.

the relief will never be as great as we had anticipated, but that's okay :).

some Romantic music by Chopin to share - this is what got me through the essay:

Chopin's Nocturne Opus 9, No. 2

Chopin's raindrops

the last stretch

2010-12-15T04:37:00.002-05:00

didn't sleep well last night, dreaming wildly and waking up every few hours. i awoke in the morning thinking, 'who what when how WHERE the hell am i?!' kind of like my jet-lagged feeling whenever i go back to singapore home/hk home/Brown dorm. i also have very little recollection as to what happened last night. that sounds scandalous. i assure you it had nothing to do with alcohol or craziness. i was just writing my essay on conrad. and now i must confront the reality that this has to be finished today! for submission tomorrow.

i have a black-tie Christmas dinner to attend at Wadham College tonight! must. finish.

i think everyone will be happier once i stop talking about Conrad. my fellow Conradians in seminar and i have had many laughs this term talking about our love/hate relationship with him, how we spend all our time with him, and that we need some time off and perhaps try out long distance...? it was certainly obsessive, as evidenced by our facebook activity. (how sad, i know. but also cool in a nerdy way...) i certainly spend more time reading every single letter, essay, short story, novella, and novel he's written than i do hanging out with friends. but i guess that's the way it should be in graduate school? not sure.

anyway, so i can't wait for my holidays to begin!!!

to motivate myself - here are the things to look forward to over the winter vacation:

- tonight's Christmas dinner

- physically submitting this to Exams Schools tomorrow and knowing i've got 25% of my exam DOWN

- fortune-telling party this Friday with staircase friends

- meeting up with An this weekend

- all the little errands i must run: posting cards, returning all the library books, etc.

- Christmas reunion in Cambridge

- London with Pembroke people :)

- food and sleep and books not written by Conrad

okay okay now back to mediated skepticism!

while waiting for dinner...

2010-12-03T11:45:00.003-05:00

i had my manuscripts transcription exam today. (it went okay. the handwriting - DH Lawrence's - was tough to read but i should be able to pass...)

this was for my Palaeography class, which is basically a handwriting reading/transcription exercise where we look at original manuscripts of authors and try to accurately and constructively represent what's on the physical page in a transcript. we try to reproduce what's on the page - everything from the words, scratch marks, page numbers - and represent the reader the author's process of revising the piece of work (so we also transcribe their omissions, additions, revisions, etc) and highlight any other editorial or interfering work that has been done on the manuscript by later readers and collectors of the manuscript. so for instance, one week for homework, i had the privilege of looking at a (photocopy) of a page from Tolkien's LotR, and had to transcribe the text and Tolkien's own sketch! in addition to footnotes and such, we're expected to also write a mini essay on the manuscript transcription... things we've noticed about the manuscript, idiosyncrasies of the author, paratextual elements, where it's from, who it's by... etc.

basically it's this kind of thing, if you want to have a go! http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography/tutorial/default.htm

apart from the exam, i've been really unproductive lately. i blame it on the weather because the cold keeps me in my room, huddled near the radiator which i recently borrowed from the college. (central heating is practically non-existent...) yes the cold makes us apathetic to everything really... even Christmas carols, fancy dinners (who wants to wear black tie in this weather?) , etc. how i will survive another english winter i don't know but i think it will involve a lot of food all the time and a lot of soups!! watercress and pork rib soup :)

on the whole it seems like everyone, around the world, is super busy. i wonder if this is just a trait of 'modern' life that everyone feels so incredibly busy all the time and neglects keeping in touch. (i forget, too of course, but i think i tend to send out a lot more messages to see how people are doing but replies are scarce!) but i guess keeping in touch doesn't necessarily equate to 'caring' about someone, to put it bluntly.

anyway, it is 5:25 and time to get dressed for dinner! have a good weekend friends~

a nice weekend

2010-11-28T14:30:00.003-05:00

yesterday i went down to London for the afternoon to see high school friends. Sh was on the train coming from edinburgh, and because of the "inclement weather" (read: FREEZING temperatures - it is SO COLD HERE), was unfortunately delayed a good 3 hours. so actually Kt and i went ahead with tea and glove-hunting (for me) in covent garden, then back to Kings Cross to finally meet the very delayed edinburgh train. it was great catching up with them; i've always kept in touch with Sh because of frequent Yale/Brown visits, but Kt i hadn't seen in at least a year and a half, so i had a lot to ask and tell her about over a cup of tea and a modest ham and cheese panini. :) oh and covent garden was very festive. there was a huge, towering reindeer bedecked in small white lights by the market square and all around you could hear the excited chatter of the christmas-shopping crowd. 'tis the holiday season! now if only britain could be less cold. (i'm sitting in my furry snowflake jumper, head hooded, and i'm still cold...! and usually i'm just in a tee shirt!)

2010-11-24T11:37:00.004-05:00

i never thought that the day would come when i would want to surrender to academics.

sometimes i wonder if i am just an impostor because i certainly feel like one here, sometimes. deep down i know that i could do it if i tried really really hard, but... maybe i don't want to? maybe i haven't found the reasons to justify that kind of effort. it is so hard to go from big fish in small pond to small fish in HUGE sea of towering, crashing black waves. since high school, i have slowly been carried off by currents from the pond to the lake to the sea, but it was always okay, i just kept on swimming and somehow managed to stay afloat. i told myself that i was still good even if i didn't have a 4.0 GPA, even if i did not write an honours thesis. i had the praise of all my English professors who expected great things and perhaps that just kept me going... the Idea. the idea that i was blessed with the unification of passion and ability. now i'm not so sure. this essay is driving me nuts... i know what it should be, but i can't quite get there. i don't know how long it will take me. (i only have 'til 15 December though.) but i know that if i don't do this properly, i will never be able to think of myself in the same way again...

some people are able to accept mediocrity, but i just can't accept that i cannot do this.

A Game of Hide and Seek - Elizabeth Taylor

2010-11-14T10:56:00.004-05:00

I want to start writing about books... since each week throws me two to four great novels of the twentieth century, might as well right? This will get me talking about stuff I'm reading in a 'fun', no pressure, non-literary way. (And I think it might be good for me to rediscover the joys of reading if I want to go into publishing...)

Ttoday I have been squirrelly trying to get through Elizabeth Taylor's A Game of Hide and Seek, which is a bit of a shame because her writing is to be savoured with a cup of tea. A Game of Hide and Seek is a deceptively simple book in terms of plot and themes; childhood friends Vesey and Harriet go through life, tiptoeing around their half-formed love, Harriet marries a boring but devoted husband a good deal older than her, the War happens, they are still in love. Harriet is a frustrating character in terms of her childlike passivity. I like her ideals of love and soulmates, but one wonders if she would ever have the courage to act upon her ideals. So okay you get a 'conventional' love story but Taylor writes with great subtlety and originality:

"Harriet tried to put on a polite and considerate look. She loved music, but could not allow herself to enjoy it among strangers. Sunk too far back in her too large chair she felt helpless, like a beetle turned on its back; and as if she could never rise again, nor find the right phrases of appreciation" (51)

I've often felt the same way about listening to music around other people.. it seems to be such an intensely private experience. when i know that someone is listening attentively beside me, i sort of don't know what to do with my hands and feet, whether or not to sit up in the chair. maybe others feel the same way too?

but the passage that really got me sitting upright, was one between Harriet and her good friend Kitty, who is advising Harriet on forgetting Vesey for the sake of her husband and family life.

' "Those magazines in hairdressers," she went on, "Those letters readers write in about their problems. 'Is this love? Am I in love?' As if love were a special kind of fish one catches in one's net... sorting through a handful of weeds, wondering, 'Is this the right thing? Is this what I am after?' But how can you catch what is only a mood, or a reflection of yourself? Forbidden fruit would be just as boring as the other kind if we ate it all the time."

"Fruit! Fish! Reflections!" Harriet said restlessly, turning to face the fire, her hands on the chimney-piece.

"Then let us come to Vesey. Let us call everything by its proper name. I shall be very harsh, I warn you. I shall use words like 'infatuation'."

[...]

"What does 'infatuation' mean? Or any words like it? I loved him when I was a child, I know..."

"And the idea of him ever since. ... Our feelings about people change as we grow up: but if we are left with an idea instead of a person, perhaps that never changes. After every mistake Charles made, I expect you thought: 'Vesey wouldn't have done that.' But an idea can't ever make mistakes. He led a perfect life in your brain. When he turned up again, the climate was right for him, tempered by your imagination. But his climate isn't right for you." ' (176-177)

The ideas are nothing new, but I love the way she expresses them...

booku booku

2010-11-12T12:27:00.003-05:00

my malay is very limited :P. but similarly with french and japanese, one probably knows more than one realises. anyway, books! i came back with TEN books this afternoon. i wanted to get everything i needed before the weekend, so after doing some reference reading at the Bodleian (the best collection of libraries in the world, i think!), i proceeded to hunt down some 3 for 2 book deals at Blackwell's (i needed the Oxford World Classics editions of some books because apparently, Penguin is looked down upon in scholarly works...), and then went to the english faculty library to gather mostly Conrad stuff for the essay. i'm rather tired from just trudging around in the rain carrying what must be 1/10th of my body weight in paper and bindings. you will probably say, eat more sheila, and yes i will, i do eat more when i'm abroad. (probably because of the cold and all that energy that's zapped from studying.) i was VERY skinny over the summer but i've put back the weight i lost. just that it doesn't go where i want it to. i've always wanted to ask my cells what purpose does more fat on the face and butt serve. it just doesn't make biological sense! those places don't need more insulation or cushioning!

if people want to read a funny book, by the way, try John Cheever's Bullet Park, about American suburban life. it is the funniest thing i've read in a long time.

i've also settled my options for next term. pulled out of the Henry James class last minute to do late modernist poetry!! very excited. i have been doing novels all term and the thought of doing another term of James novels makes me feel faint. (my dissertation's going to be on him anyway.) i have really really missed poetry... and guess what? Geoffrey Hill is giving his inaugural lecture as Professor of Poetry at the end of this month. i can't believe i'm going to hear one of the greatest living poets speak.

i realize this entry sounds very erratically written. i will try to blog more coherently next time haha.

bridge to terabithia

2010-11-02T13:47:00.003-04:00

this is the kind of film worth watching: it's imaginative, it proposes moral imperatives and moral uncertainties at the same time. it shows us the uglier sides to human nature but also redeems it for us though not in a fairytale ending kind of way. the book i've been meaning to read since i was 11 years old, but i never got around to it. has anyone read the book? anyway it's been a few days since i saw bridge to terabithia with WS, but i can't get it out of my mind. it's one of those stories in which the characters continue living beyond the last page/last shot. very few books and movies portray characters that powerfully. either you get a comfortable resolution, or you get the ending has you wondering, "so what really happened?" but with such movies, what really happened doesn't mean that much to you personally, it's just an exercise in superficial intellect/processes of decoding. but with Bridge to Terabithia, you are left still feeling for and wondering about the characters... they exist as real people - the fact of which is both reassuring and terrifying.

watch the movie!! you can stream it from tudou :P. good quality too!

P.S. have a tissue box nearby, though. we both had to reach for it, which is always such an embarrassing moment in movie-watching.

some thoughts on guarded interests

2010-10-26T12:08:00.005-04:00

human nature is so contradictory. i was talking with a friend while waiting in hall for lunch, and he was asking me if i was going to stay on in oxford. i told him about my plans to go into publishing and how i wanted to work with the OUP. i eventually explained to him that there was a summer internship for it, at which he broke in and said, "ohh i would love to do that as well. i should apply for that."

i confess that my heart sank a little, especially given the fact that i had a similar conversation with another friend last week, to whom i emailed the OUP application details.

it looks like every single english student out there who does not feel that academia is right for them, wants to go into publishing. i have to say that i have never felt so territorial about something, which is a new feeling because i think myself exceptionally un-possessive and non-competitive hahaha. but now with the whole career thing looming in the horizon, and my own personal stake in wanting to stay in at Oxford and secure a temporary job here at least, i feel that i should perhaps want to be careful about telling everyone about this wonderful opportunity OUP offers. is that bad? yes. is it justified? hmm. not sure.

when i try to rationalize my selfish feelings and inclinations, the argument in my head descends into some kind of... "but i want it more" and "they don't even want to stay in oxford! they want to go home! why don't they let ME stay here when i want to...". but i realize that i can't attribute their interest as a kind of usurping of my plans. sigh. i don't know.

gosh i just realized that maybe this is what being kiasu is about. is it? maybe this is why people are always so damn guarded about their job and grad school applications, interviews, etc.

sigh but i REALLY WANT THIS INTERNSHIP. i don't want to lose it out to them (albeit very nice and intelligent friends, both of whom are doing a master's in English) because well, i would just feel bad about it. i would really like this internship so that i can have a higher chance of being employed with the publishing house. the petty side of me consoles myself with the fact that at least i've had publishing internship experience... ....

and i guess i will have to be competitive in some way and write one hell of an application this coming winter. i hate being this aggressive, but i see no other way around it.

i think i write this post also because i'm slightly annoyed that one of the girls in my seminar has asked to switch presentation weeks so she can talk about John Cheever, with whom she has "fallen in love with" and because of some illness (which i don't see as a legitimate excuse as she still has 2 weeks to prepare for her presentation!) there were 3 of us originally doing that week's presentations, and my two peers insisted that there was no way they could switch, which leaves me with no choice but to switch. this means my stress levels are shooting up because i'm presenting one week advance and no, i've not started the reading. and the reading is about VISUAL ARTS. this was the one week i said to myself, "no, i'm not doing this one" because i know nothing about visual arts. however, the one redeeming thing about this all is that perhaps i get to talk about Benjamin (who i kinda like and at least have read a bit of), and i see that one of the texts is To the Lighthouse. the problem with To the Lighthouse however is that it is so overdone so i don't want my talk to be cliche ridden. but hopefully the professor in charge of that week will be nice enough to meet with me so that we can go over my amateurish observations on modern fiction and visual art...

i swam across, i jumped across for you

2010-10-20T10:07:00.003-04:00

very in love with Jem's cover of 'Yellow' by Coldplay:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmYa2Sne2vQ

(listen to it without looking at all the images of flowers - i think they spoil the effect of the music and song!)

i was looking up interpretations of the lyrics. not sure how accurate they were, but they ranged from speculations that the yellow is representative of the lead singer's mother's illness... to yellow being a word that the songwriter started off with, all other ones being fillers for the rhyme and stanza.

anyway... need to rest, despite the gargantuan workload :S.

2010-10-18T04:41:00.003-04:00

the bright lights of academia are fading. i find it harder and harder to motivate myself - why for instance, should i spend hours attempting to process the word mush (and magic i suppose) of Ulysses when i hate high modernism? people are always talking about their research "interests" and whatnot, succinct strings of nouns (feminism, the victorian novel, crime fiction whatever) but i'm beginning to wonder how important all of this is actually. as people have half-jokingly asked me in the past, who cares?!

sometimes i sit in class and find the discussions as an exercise in ego-stroking, a competition in rhetoric. i'll be carrying a glass of white wine in hand and have to explain to professors what i'm working on, and make the academic small talk that is paramount in this world. i have a feeling that what i'm interested in IS somehow important, not only to literary scholars, but to any reader or person who has yet to read, but i don't know how to describe this to my peers and supervisors. and in that gap of in-articulation, there goes my faith that maybe this work will lead to somewhere.

i tell people that i am leaning towards pursuing other work and leave behind literature after this year. some are surprised, and assume that Oxford has made a bad impression on me, (or that i'm not cut out for this work). i don't think that's it though. it's just the gradual realisation that i need to develop in other ways. i would love to start work next year and learn to deal with people, strict deadlines, and contribute somehow to a world outside of myself. my mind is weak and i don't have a thick enough skin, so maybe working will toughen me up!

however i shall try to make the most out of this masters program - it might be the last year i get to wallow in books! but no more stressing over grades. seriously i need to grow out of that!

in between worlds

2010-10-11T14:47:00.003-04:00

my mind has been racing these past two weeks, from survival-mode to social-mode to settle-in-and-let's-get-down-to-work mode. freshers week is always a whirlwind of names, subjects, countries, colleges... it was fun, but i'm glad that Week 1 has begun so that i can start to develop some kind of routine. thankfully settling into Oxford hasn't been too hard; there is no culture shock this time around, and i'm lucky to have WS here.

i do wonder from time to time what College Hill must look like this autumn... i fantasize about the river Cam and pretty Pembroke, but before my mind wanders, drunken with nostalgia, i tug it back gently to what is here...

it has been hard concentrating on the now though. i'm not sure why my mind is so restless! it's as if it's trying to chase down every single doubt and analyse every single social encounter. and i keep finding myself in the same social situations where i am too shy to proactively reach out and say, hey, do you want to go for lunch together, or, even just, how are you? thankfully everyone around me seems more normal and quite friendly; i like how my cohort from the english 1900-present strand is already organising group outings to the theatre, pubs. tomorrow we have our first class... a little excited actually, to hear everyone's opinions on modernism.

but i'm most looking forward to my small Conrad seminars. the more i read of and by him, the more i worship this man who somehow wrote some of the greatest novels in the English language, which was his THIRD language - a language he first heard only at the age of 16. i love Henry James but Conrad is even more impressive in scope, both philosophical and imaginative. seriously if you liked Heart of Darkness, try to get a copy of Lord Jim, and then Nostromo.

oh and yesterday, i decided to reconnect with my roots by going to the HK postgraduate dinner. at Brown, i avoided the HK society because i felt that i wouldn't fit in with them. somehow i have the impression that Hong Kongers tend to be quite cosmopolitan, and i'm not sure if i get along with very worldly people. but the HK postgraduates here are very friendly and relatively down to earth. and thank you mom, for your uncompromising attitudes towards my linguistic education: "chinese must know how to speak chinese!" it's the one thing that makes me one of them... and i guess part of me desperately wants to belong somewhere. after countless "where are you from?" enquiries throughout this week, i do wish i could lay claim to one place, stake it out for my own. i usually just say HK given that i've spent the most time there (8 years) and was born there. but it is complicated... ... i was born in HK, hopped on a plane one month later and lived in Japan for 5 years, then HK for 8 years, then Singapore for 5 years, then the US for 2, england 1, US 1, back to england. i think most of my friends don't even know my background that clearly :P but there it is!

write it out and let it go

2010-09-19T13:10:00.006-04:00

i can deal with people insulting me, although i would still probably simmer and seethe for days, mulling over comebacks. what i can't deal with is people insulting loved ones. they say teochew chinese are fiercely loyal with big tempers... quite true :(. i thought i had gotten better with my temper with deep breathing and calm thinking whenever someone annoys me, but it's a whole different scenario when they are tossing around people i care about in conversation like they really know them.

anger is so self destructive, but i'm still in the emotion and i can't break out of it because i don't see why people are so superficial, so condescending and ill-minded. there are way too many sons and daughters of rich parents who think that just because they have won genetic lotteries, got good grades in good schools (as if it's that hard! pfft, intelligence and straight As are not virtues), have lots of friends and are generally well-liked, that they can put down other people whom they deem as being less competent and attractive. i can't stand this sense of superiority and entitlement.

university is supposed to be a leveling agent, but often the same old class lines and social spheres are reproduced, even highlighted there. what good is an 'enlightened' education when we still judge people not according to the stuff of their heart and mind, but to their material trappings?

i wish i could have been there to say something. but i guess idiots will be idiots; sooner or later in life they will realize that they have gotten it all wrong.

i am very happy otherwise; why let someone else undermine what i have just because they're.... crudely put, stupid? just that i can't get the image of my mind of people talking about me like i'm just a symbol for... whatever it is they esteem. i feel sick when i think of my friends as captive audiences, listening to that kind of crap and not knowing what to say. i hate to imagine what's going on in their minds; their watered down, ill-placed sense of pity for me. this whole rant is as much about wanting to defend someone as it is wanting to defend my values and pride. i am an individual. not the sum of "accomplishments"(whatever the heck that means...), where i come from, what i look like or whom i associate with. how dare people talk of me as if i am just some accessory to another person. i know what i deserve, and that is certainly not some rich fool like you.

thursday

2010-08-12T10:06:00.003-04:00

i am thinking about today and smiling to myself at how much fun it is to pursue the simple pleasures of a student. after breakfast i hopped onto bus/mrt out to jurong east to meet WS at the library. i love taking the east west line... it makes me feel like i'm going back to my old home. (those were the days of hour-long commutes out to town! but i miss living out in the west. breathing is easier when you're away from the city.) at the library, i read Lawrence, then laughed and debated over lunch. more librarying afterward but half the time i was sneaking glances at him poring over organic chemistry. 3:30 meant tea time, so it was off to the opposite food centre to sip sugarcane juice, then to IMM for the air-con and to just wander around, gossiping about friends (hee...). i came back home for dinner and am spending the evening listening to all my favourite songs and missing him for he is leaving tomorrow.

it was such a comfortable day :)

the heart of the matter

2010-08-06T10:41:00.009-04:00

(a book LJ mentioned recently, also a song by Don Henley and covered by india arie)
i have always thought that disillusionment was just some fancy cliche, and was never truly empathetic when people claimed that they were 'disillusioned' about something or the other. in my mind, the word itself exacerbated and sometimes even created that tension between two modes of thinking/feeling/being (usually described as naivete and maturity).

we will all grow up some day, and most of the time that doesn't happen suddenly and discretely like flying bars on some graph. okay what i mean is that the process of growing up is fluid and less stable than people often make it out to be. just because we 'get' one thing doesn't mean we automatically understand all things related to that one fact of life: some people make for fantastic friends but are poor daughters or sons. some are great at being in a relationship, but can't extend the same warmth to friends.

what scares me most is the fragility of love, the strongest, most steadfast of emotions. i understand that passion is tamed over time - that i accept as being inevitable. but love? my lack of experience makes me unable to imagine no longer loving someone given that there is no betrayal or hatred. i don't understand how one just wakes up one morning and thinks, well, the past few years have been great but i think i've had enough of this love. sure, physiologically we are bound to get bored and not just feel much after years of habituation (to the other's touch, smell, etc) but i still don't get how we are able to just walk away from relationships. but i guess a life without passion is an incomplete life...

the only times i have stopped loving someone is when they betrayed me. i hope i am lucky enough to never have to fall out love.

let me catch my breath

2010-05-25T13:54:00.004-04:00

give me freedom to do as i please, and i'm as happy as a clam. (by the way, why are clams happy? is it because they are not oysters?) JC and SR visited; it was great seeing them again, plus i end up re-falling in love with Brown when i show visitors around our pretty, friendly campus. also went up to Harvard for a day. what lingers in my memories are the Harvard libraries... spacious, quiet halls of sincere learning (cf the Sci Li) and their architecture creative.

we always end up discovering little gems and comfy corners only when we are about to leave them. i wish i had gone up more to Hope street for meals, to India Point Park when i wanted to hear the lapping of water and to soak up the sun. but all these places perhaps are made special by their belated discovery. there's something about that element of luck, combined with the ensuing wistfulness, that makes these places even more charming - what might have been, but perhaps what might have been would have been less special.

i don't think much of graduation but that's because sentimental saps like me should generally not think too much. leaving Brown is not too difficult when one has left before, and believe me, i wouldn't be able to muster all those tears again. i feel sad for friends who will have to endure heartaches... ... part of me wishes that when the time comes, i could be there to tell you that you will grow to love another place - perhaps not equally, but differently, and in change there is hope i think.

life is looking rosy and bright at the moment, and part of me is just waiting nervously for... whatever it is to happen, but i know we all deserve to be happy. i fulfilled my oxford conditions and have a college offer from St. Catherine's or St. Catz, or simply, Catz. :) it's quite exciting though i was hoping for an older college, but after thinking about it, i realize that a modern college has so many benefits in terms of architecture and facilities, and no one at age 22 should really be living in medieval castles anyway :). it's funny but i've always felt an affinity for the name St. Catherine's... so this pairing feels right.

mother's day

2010-05-08T21:14:00.006-04:00

my mom
loving, selfless, sunny-hearted, sensible

- forever optimist
- epitome of sensibility and simplicity
- bread and coffee lover <3
- well, lover of sweet foods except chocolate and candy haha
- quiet strength
- a woman with a modern mind
- a longtime conservationist (she started bringing her own bags to supermarkets long before it was the thing to do)
- professionally, a former successful stock broker
- personally, my chauffeur in the japan days and UWC mornings, my algebra and chinese tutor, classmate in summer french classes, japan trip buddy, one of my best friends, a source of inspiration and strength for me every single day

a more recent photo!

sunday culinary fun

2010-05-02T23:19:00.008-04:00

i was determined as heck to get linguine carbonara right, and finally, today, i think i got it right! the key i realize is a) BUTTER and GARLIC which minimalist recipes leave out, b) making sure the raw egg, heavy cream and cheese is warmed well in the pot and c) cheese i like instead of just following some recipe's instructions, so pre-grated parmesan worked out fine. i added green peas into the pasta; it made for a colourful, pretty dish and the green looked so nice next to the pink of the bacon :D.

i also made a cold wakame and cucumber salad, and a japanese potato salad. the wakame and cucumber salad was very cooling and pleasant to eat alongside the carbonara, but the rice vinegar was slightly overpowering. nonetheless, i really like both these salads... one light and the other substantial - but both easy to make!

(clearly going through a better appetite phase. would you believe me if i told you that the chubbiness of my face varies week to week?)

i am never productive on weekends...

running after rainbows

2010-04-20T16:56:00.004-04:00

so much for work! i keep browsing this one wedding blog, Style Me Pretty, in between readings and homework. the photos are beautiful, and everything just looks so picture flower colour perfect. hopefully someday before my 28th birthday i can have a nice and simple wedding :). with lots of flowers. and small handmade gifts for the guests. and the gentle sun. and a bit of poetry. set to cheery music.

my dreams are simple; it's just my style. the 21st century woman is supposed to pursue exactly what she wants. i think i know what i want. but i guess i'm still young, who knows what i'll find along the way.

time to get serious...

2010-04-14T21:41:00.005-04:00

i apologise if this bores everyone else, but i try to write for myself mostly.

MWF
9ish am: good morning sheila! breakfast, news.
10 am: english/city politics reading
11 am: get dressed, errands, emails, snail mail
12 noon: study time and lunchtime!
2 pm: japanese class
3-5 pm: M. city politics studying W. english seminar F. is for fun
In between hours: Dinner, Skype, lolling about waiting for dinner to digest
9 pm-12 midnight: homework, shower, dessert
12.30: relax, sleep!

TTh
9ish am: awake! breakfast, news
10.30 am: city politics lecture
12 noon: japanese class
1 pm: lunch!
2.30 pm: T. groceries Th. library time for work
In between hours: Skype, cook dinner, dinner
9 pm-12 midnight: homework, shower, snack
12:30: relax, sleep~

senioritis has struck and for the past two weeks, i've been doing the bare minimum to stay afloat in classes. not good especially when ox is asking for first-class equivalent which is a GPA of 3.8 or above. i'm incredibly paranoid... what if city politics is a disaster and i get a C, in which case, i am in trouble. actually feeling really stressed about it even though i should be fine with a B for city politics... but still, the amount of work to be done for revision and the final paper is terrifying. this is crazy; i'm a senior, and for the first time in a long time i feel like the bad, naughty student who is falling behind everyone in class :(.

why is it that the older we get, the lazier we become? i don't understand. is it the the increasing amount of freedom and choice we have in terms of interesting things we could be doing with our time? are we more easily distracted in the year 2010 than in the year 2005? how the heck was i able to focus so well for the IB years and dutifully do coursework and exam revision AND volunteer work, volleyball, PAL, yearbook, literary magazine, SAT classes? it's not like i slept more or ate more in high school, so i am just confounded by questions pertaining to sheer energy: where did it come from and how could i replenish it so quickly.

(actually, i can kinda answer that question. in high school, we lived at home so we were fed and taken care of. whenever we were worn out, we always had family right there for support. oh and it was also a lot warmer in Asia so we consume less energy in homeostatic reactions)

stress... ... so that's why i implemented the above schedule a la Cambridge days. part of me secretly enjoys fooling everyone into thinking that i study hard, but after awhile that gets tiring so i should just get on with and do it. i can salvage the city politics grade if i put my heart into it. i just need to invoke the whole Easter Term attitude and WORK HARD. if last year i could study from the English Faculty Library's opening hours 'til its closing hours, and keep up that kind of studying for a month and then write my dissertation after exams, i can do (almost) anything. okay. i can do this. i know we're supposed to enjoy the remainder of our undergraduate life, but i have 2 free weeks in May, and then the whole summer to enjoy, so i must sacrifice a bit of time now.

maybe i should do the bandanna thing... hahaha.

lapses in judgment

2010-04-11T11:37:00.002-04:00

i feel guilty for last night's post. my life is so wonderful and i am incredibly lucky... i should never ever forget that. :)

seven is a good number // a self indulgent entry

2010-04-10T22:22:00.007-04:00

it's time to channel all my energy and heart into studies and life here at brown. since spring break, i've been floating around either out of happiness or confusion, and now it's time to descend back to earth. i feel a little sad tonight but i don't know why; maybe it's that feeling of stepping off that rainbow and realizing that on the ground there are so many small earthly anxieties and disappointments to deal with... trying to get over these. no person or event deserves to make me feel sad.

so aside from that classes are fine (except i got a B on city politics midterm, yikes). japanese and english are both sailing along smoothly; actually, i've been lulled into complacency because those two subjects are going well. my English professor was very kind, pulling me aside during seminar break to congratulate me and also to tell me about the opportunities in the seminar to work with poetry. this memory makes me smile because i was touched, and i find it a little funny that he would assume that one piece of work could be so self-defining. i guess english allows its students to imbue parts of themselves into the work, much like drama and literary arts. we eventually carve out our spheres of interest and attempt to become specialists.

this is all self-indulgent contemplation :), but i do have to seriously start thinking about my focus areas for graduate study. in the statement of purpose, i only listed novelists because prose is more in line (no pun intended, hahahaha!) with my potential dissertation topic. but i have always loved poetry. it's condensed hence a little easier :P, it allows you to walk away with memory-friendly lines inscribed in your heart, and one gets to talk about things like half-rhymes and chiasmas and rhythm. actually, it was a poem we read in grade 9 which made me love literature in the first place.... Thomas Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'. (Gray coincidentally also went to Pembroke College!)

some friends may have heard me say that i went into English over a boy (half true - oh he eventually went to Oxford to read English. he also turned out to be gay), but it was ultimately Gray's poem which pulled me in. after i received the news about Oxford, one of the first things i did after getting home from the mail room was to read through the poems which have inspired me throughout senior year: Donne's A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts and Stephen Edgar's The Secret Life of Books. please look these up when you have time. the last one is the most accessible, the second one only makes sense if you read up on Ovid's story of the fall of Icarus and look at the painting Breughal, and the first... well, let's just say that i have been kept sane by reading Donne's poem about once every two weeks. it's a poem which almost makes me happy that i am geographically far away from loved ones.

//
* an amusing moment: today i asked WS how much he missed me, and he indicated with his thumb and index finger a distance of about three centimeters. :( that little?, i asked. (i had expected him to fling out his arms and say THISS much). he smiled and said, did i tell you the scale? :) and then what could have been a romantic interlude quickly became a lesson in what nanometers are. they are apparently one thousandth of a micrometer which is one thousandth of a millimeter which is one thousandth of a meter. yay, so missing is a constant, and sometimes rather painfully so, but i guess hopefully one day it will go away.

22nd birthday!

2010-03-07T23:27:00.003-05:00

all right, so i didn't wake up with that fluttery, magical feeling in the stomach, but it was such a GORGEOUS DAY! ohhh why is it that spring descends upon the campus on march 7th every year? sigh :). it was just too good to be true.

i am so so so grateful to everyone who sent their well-wishes. feeling particularly loved this year :). Tn and Jn baked a carrot cake for me on friday, went out with housemates + Js for dinner on sat, suite lunch at federal hill today, and lazy afternon out on the fire escape. ahh the presents this year were all so beautiful, and many, very useful. and the cards! teared while reading some, cackled maniacally over others. i also love the abundance of flower themed - especially DAISY themed things... ;) ahh you guys know me so well. thank you! <3

must continue being healthy and happy!

neko

2010-03-01T10:58:00.007-05:00

cats get a bad rep. think the Siamese cats in Lady & The Tramp, the mice-chasing, spiteful Lucifer (of all names!) in Cinderella, and the whole black cat omen. *edit: the japanese even use the word 'neko' 猫 (cat) in their expression 'neko baba' 猫ばば which means embezzlement, pocketing, stealing!! oh the associations...

my mom has also conditioned me to dislike cats: we've always seen them as cunning, snobby, self-centered, and unsociable - but this is such a human-centric view. dogs on the other hand... well my Koaty loved my family and me so much... so loyal, overwhelmingly affectionate, energetic, intelligent.... well cats are intelligent too i guess but they express it as outwardly. then my mom and i have always joked amongst ourselves that if ever our house were on fire, dogs would probably bark and rouse us from our sleep and drag us by our shirttails to the nearest exit. cats, however, would probably miao quietly and then slink away whispering to themselves, "let's leave quietly". hahahaha.

anyway, to reverse such ill-feelings towards cats, i have been watching these japanese cat videos. they are surprisingly stress-relieving and i seriously think there must be heart/blood-pressure health related benefits to watching these feline cuties interact with each other.

neko no massaji:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgcGu1R2M-s&feature=related

neko cuddling and grooming another one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQTAqMVl1oU&feature=related

calming right? :)

long weekend love

2010-02-23T23:09:00.002-05:00

Providence was graced with beautiful, almost-spring like temperatures this weekend so naturally, i was very very happy throughout. i spent a lot of time by myself cooking, reading, writing, baking, walking around in the sun. it was DELIGHTFUL. even better than the sophomore year spring break i spent alone on campus. simple living! - college students just don't know how good they have it.

and now it's back to academics... rehearsed jp presentation for two hours today, crazy. i hope it goes well. my partner and i are doing a dialogue on euthanasia, of all things. (the other topics were cloning, the mysteries or meaning of life, genetic engineering, artificial insemination, surrogate mothers... lol) also, i just checked the calendar and realized that i have a big essay coming up this week. will try to work hard and enjoy it.

i half want to delete all those depressing entries below, but i think that deleting them would make all those feelings less worthy, less genuine. we should always affirm our feelings, and try not to feel guilty or ashamed of them even when they take us to far flung, irrational expanses of human thought and emotion. i guess it's enough for me to say that i've moved on, and i'm happy about it. this semester's going to be good :).

a long thursday entry, on many things

2010-02-18T18:03:00.005-05:00

i realized this afternoon that i've never received a rejection letter before, and i half wish that i could be roused to feel something - disappointment or frustration - towards UCLA, but i seemingly can't! this feeling of calm indifference is empowering but i wonder if it is speciously so.

i am also beginning to realize that if i'm so half-hearted about grad school, i don't really deserve a place. there are some things one does with heart. and then there are some things one does with half a heart, but more with brain and reflexes. if i have been going along, choosing grad school out of fear of having to navigate through the universe of choices otherwise, then i hope that someone will soon knock this telescope out of my hand so that i can broaden my imaginative scope and vision.

人地的幸福，我为佢地开心，但係我都同时有小小妒忌，自己在諗，點解我地要克服咁多，點解其他人可以咁容易一齊。可以安慰我的答案係：因为经过这个阶段係必须的，经过了之后我地会更加坚强。 because i feel worst when i compare myself to others. when other people constantly ask me about certain things... while they do not mean to make me feel bad, their questions and superficial reassurances are hard to swallow.

of course it's easy for you to say that it's going to be okay. (the "you" here by the way is not directed to anyone who reads this blog. i try not to do this in blogs but i am so bewildered by a recent friend's behaviour - hence this.)
you don't know half of what it is really like. and you know, at least when i try to reassure others, i try to be sensitive and imagine their fears before just saying things.
i certainly don't just contact people to find out some news, then withdraw contact after having satisfied that curiosity (and after having *lied* about why i was contacting you in the first place)!! i try to keep in touch with you, offer for you to visit, but you are not truly interested... you seem only interested when it involves both our boyfriends =_= which is just bizarre in itself.

sorry guys, rant over. i think too much crap has been building up over the past few weeks, so this blog is quickly becoming more morose/frustrated that i had ever intended it to be. but i am definitely feeling better today because a) i had steak for dinner with Ad, b) i am proud of myself for how i resolved a falling-out with a dear friend this week, c) i like my classes :). finally learning about american politics! i feel guilty for having neglected the study of america until now. oh and d) LJ bestowed me with a pillow this afternoon; i hope Ophelia will not be jealous now that i will replace her with a proper pillow.

going to be stronger

2010-02-04T22:30:00.002-05:00

it's ironic that the supposedly most relaxing of semesters has thus far been the most psychologically taxing (and it's only week 1). but i think i'm finding my way through the muddle with each day, and well, when one hits near rock bottom, the only way to go is up~

sidenote -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93jxkqG0gWc
the track 'Married Life' from Disney/Pixar's Up!

i am learning to deal with my fears, to face uncertainty with an open mind. there is no single path to stability, happiness or success. if our endeavors are not successful this time around, there will be other roads and doors; we just have to remind ourselves that with time, it will all make sense. i am not alone; but even in times when i feel most alone, i need to be able to tolerate and even take delight in that solitude.

thankfully certain people are also actively helping me. i am grateful to Rt for her long-distance calls this past week; i think i needed an old friend, someone who knows me like the back of her own hand and someone who also knows WS, to reassure me. i am forever grateful to WS for his strength, generosity of spirit and love, and emotional maturity. and i am grateful beyond words to my mom who can make me feel better about anything.

all of that stuff aside, this semester is going to be more relaxed in terms of classes. there is more to life than learning :P! am taking City Politics, an English seminar on Herman Melville, and Japanese. i like the variety: one HUGE lecture class taught by a brilliantly engaging professor, one small intimate sit-around-a-square-and-talk-about-melville for 2.5 hrs class, and the happy, familiar camaraderie of a language course :). <-- Tn rejoined jap - such courage after a 1.5 year 'hiatus'! it's been great having her there. it's our last undergraduate semester, so ganbarimasu~

ahhh... maybe it's easier to mope but whatever

2010-01-31T21:38:00.007-05:00

it's really weird to suddenly not be working towards anything. i admit that while not ambitious, i need to achieve things. this is why i often go mad during summers when not working or studying. (but then again, both summer internships in the past drove me nuts too). i also obsess over straight As, but interest and dare i say it, passion, always motivate my choice of classes. and once upon a time back in high school, i even worked out just for the sake of feeling a sense of achievement. gone are those days of total self discipline :P. (i was driven by a system of punishments - no ice cream and $50 deductions in allowance - and reward - ice cream lol).

but lately i don't have any goals. the future lies like a dizzying map of stars, so distant and incomprehensible in its cosmic laws and logic. i'm beginning to lose faith because it seems like i won't get what i want even though we have been working for the past 5 months trying to get it. such perseverance, industry, and moral strength then... ... nothing? why does it have to be this hard? and why do things always seem easier for others? to think about how many applications and essays i've critiqued for others... how many times i set aside my own work to edit another statement on math, biomedical engineering, medicine, environmental science, economics. i really try hard to help my dear friends get into their dream schools and companies. why am i failing now --

i need to learn patience and have faith that things eventually get better. (i know they do. i am just throwing tantrums.) i know i should savour this semester, but part of me just wants to hurry and spend time with you, wherever that may be, because no one inspires me to goodness and wisdom as much as you. compared to you, i'm selfish, immature, vulnerable, impatient, mean. i just want to be around such a person. i'm not in it just for the fun of love, nor for money, pride, or even the security of being in a relationship. you love me the way that i want to be loved, and that is such a rare and beautiful thing.

so what am i saying. well, i'm not really sure. i guess i need some direction. and i need these two weeks to be over and done with.

it's easier to be happy

2010-01-23T21:40:00.007-05:00

1. winter vacation has been excellent! i was in england over christmas and new year's. cambridge was graced with a lot of snow which made for very pretty countryside sights, especially along the coach ride out to oxford. first time i saw a frozen river! england was quite cold (in its characteristically wet, dreary way) hence our squirreling behaviours: stocking up on groceries for the whole week, hibernating and h/c-uddling in owstone croft, lots of culinary adventures with what we could pull out of the fridge. some failures, on my part, like the omelette that just wouldn't become an omelette. why are eggs so difficult? poaching, frying, omeletting them requires not only patience, meticulous attention, quick reflexes, but also courage... you need courage to flip over the eggy mixture. of course there were many successes too (roast duck!), mainly thanks to his culinary instincts and creativity.

2. at home, i have been spending lots of time with my very funny mom, making lots of japanese-themed food with her on afternoons. and behold! our okonomiyaki (japanese pancake). i love mayonnaise...

we also made a lot of jellies this week to go with red bean pastes, homemade tang yuan-like dumplings, and tinned peaches and pineapples yummy :).

sigh my mom is just hilarious. her imagination seems to exceed mine - well, i like to think that we're both very imaginative in a cartoony way but the other day she said that my light weight is good for the environment because it means i will not crush as many innocent flowers and grassy patches when i tread on the earth?! okay it's not as funny when i transcribe this into english.

3. APPLICATIONS ARE OVER!!! oh that feels good. not going to worry too much about the results (yet). i'm trying to keep my mind flexible; whatever happens, will happen, and i'll deal with it once it happens to me, instead of wasting my days fearing about uncertainties.

4. going out for chilli crab tonight with my parents!

5. i'm happy with my body. life becomes easier when we focus on the good stuff, and when we stop using negative language when talking about our own bodies. i know this is a sensitive topic for many, but i think it's worth emphasizing that in spite of all the imperfections you may see in the mirror, you probably have a thousand things to be thankful for... that lovely skin, those eyes, that hair, those legs, those knees, that perfect smile, those hands, that stomach, those ankles! and believe me the people worth knowing are those who will see you as that beautiful person.

and if you must know, i choose my friends based on their looks so if you're my friend, you are beautiful / handsome. (i'm serious about the latter.)

7. the spring semester starts on wednesday! my english professor has already assigned readings for the first meeting, which means i have to buy the books on wednesday morning (i arrive on tuesday night) and start reading right away for the 3 pm class.

so that's about it :). life is good~

a favourite, something i've always wanted to post!

2009-12-13T00:36:00.005-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mqYL1Bf8cs

i listen to this when i'm in need of inspiration, solace, and direction. it has a way of calming me down and taking me out of my own perspective. it doesn't promise cheer but it does clarify, or set into new relation, one's problems in relation to something else... which could be religious as Foreman believes or it could just be spiritual. melodically the song suggests wallowing, but if you listen carefully it encourages otherwise :).

actually during the harder months last year i listened to this every day for comfort. music has a way of understanding and saying without saying with words, what people cannot. sometimes this alienates us but i wonder how bad it can be to be temporarily alienated and have space to just sit quietly for a little while.

anyway i've been listening to this tonight just because it motivates me to work! get through this period! because this is all so, so, easy really. :) tomorrow's goals: jap revision, outline of paper, and 5 pages.

new bed! and other updates

2009-12-10T22:38:00.002-05:00

health and sanity: my new mattress arrived today! i was testing it out just now and almost fell asleep. it's a bit short lengthwise (now half wishing i had bought queen size), but oh well i should probably not spoil myself with too luxurious a bed at the tender age of 21. anyway i am really happy that from tonight onwards i can sleep safely without worrying about bites.

work: 2/5 university applications done. i'm reconsidering the whole phd thing, but will still apply earnestly :). finals are mostly papers... 30 more pages to go, and jap final+presentation.

thinking: about spring semester classes. i'm considering taking only 3, because this semester i definitely lapsed into selfishly and zealously hoarding my time. i've dropped all my volunteer and literary stuff, and have not exercised in goodness knows how long. i might take 4 but do a completely different 4th class... like jazz and american culture! looking up music courses just now which is a bit ironic because in high school, gcse music and flute used to stress me out a lot but lately i have begun to miss the therapy of music. (P.S. my cognitive science professor says that listening to classical music before taking exams improves your performance. somehow i believe in this hypothesis given that the structures underlying classical music provoke anticipation of certain harmonies and structures in your brain. so you know what to do: listen to that Chopin before your final!!)

fun: it awaits on the 21st december when all papers are done. i'm looking forward to seeing what an English Christmas is like. proper choral Christmas carols! bleak wintry days with steaming milk tea and biscuits. and then singapore! it'll be soo good to see my parents again. and swim in the sun. :)

heart: happy once again. i'm very grateful to friends who have a knack of expressing faith in me when i have lost faith in myself. i'm especially grateful to ws and my mom for putting up with my bouts of psychological and moral weakness... and whom bear the brunt of it. but no one should bear the brunt of anyone else's obtuseness. so i resolve to be better. last week was silly, particularly because i KNEW why i was feeling what i was feeling, and because i knew it was really nothing significant compared to past trials and lows. so yeah, resolve to be a good girl...

want to go home

2009-12-01T13:57:00.004-05:00

it's easy to be happy sometimes, but in this case, it's easier to be miserable. i want someone to solve my problems for me and i want to go home. i don't really care about anything at the moment. even graduate school applications are starting to seem less important; i've been thinking for awhile that maybe i'm not cut out for academic anyway. i just want to get better and to solve the bug problem because rest is my only consolation, therapy for physical and psychological fatigue.

i hate that you can't solve my problems, and i hate that i am angry with you.

i should have stayed in providence over thanksgiving to handle my work and applications and just rested. oh well it's so typical that we have to learn our lessons the hard way.

itchiness and the statement of purpose

2009-11-21T00:12:00.003-05:00

i have barely been able to think of anything else this week. my right arm is swelling to absurd sizes from the welts (which i hypothesize after extensive research to be from bed bites, so i am going to talk to the landlord tomorrow and hopefully call up the local pest control to exterminate those little buggers!!) and it feels sore all the time from all the swelling. the doctor is going to get back to me tomorrow with the blood test report and hopefully it will say that all is well, i am just suffering from an allergic reaction to bites. why am i so sensitive, in all ways?

apart from that, the SoP is proceeding slowly. i have decided to email my references incomplete versions that do not have the final paragraph about school-specific, why-i-want-to-go-to-X-university because for their purposes, they just want to see what i'm interested in. and why i want to do a PhD. why?!? i am not sure. last night was perhaps a slight crisis point as i realized that actually... maybe i don't really like research. i mean, i love reading and analysing stuff, but i have never been too fond of all those daily faculty visits. (by the way, did you know that you can borrow a maximum of 300 books from Brown libraries?! for a 3 month period!) like i'm not sure how i would feel to always be researching stuff and reading other people's works. but you know, i think being a professor would be kinda cool... i would love teaching a class and leading discussions and making interesting connections with modern culture, films, and art even.

anyway this is no time for self doubt. i just have to do it!!!

blah.

2009-11-11T00:32:00.013-05:00

i thought that these feelings of alientation from everyone else were because of graduate school applications. when people ask how i am, i'm torn between giving them a superficial answer, and confessing how overwhelming i find the academics + applications process. i sometimes try to avoid social situations where i have to talk about my life because there isn't much to say. (writing about it, on the other hand, frees me from social expectations about how conversations should go and flow.) but turn the conversation to your life, people, ideas, books, style, food, languages, and i will eagerly acquiesce :).

then suddenly i just thought of what mch asked about the impact of study abroad, and even though i strongly denied it that day, now that i think about it more carefully, i realize that she does have a point. maybe i have been repressing the idea that i changed a little. i was so anxious about coming back, so desperate to pick up the loose threads and just continue weaving away familiar, well worn patterns, that i didn't even reflect on how my emotional relationships with people might have changed. i tried to suppress all uneasy realizations that maybe things weren't completely the same.

but of course they are different. blinded by my wishful insistence that everything was to be the way they were in happy sophomore year, i smoothed out all incongruities and discontinuities. i blamed myself for withdrawing voluntarily. but it was not voluntary at all; in fact, this is normal: one year is a long time to be away - one had to, in that one year, turn to other sources of inspiration and solace. i also grew increasingly dependent on WS. i forget that last year i started easing my emotional dependency off family and friends, displacing it onto him. such is the nature of relationships, when best friend and boyfriend and guardian are united in one dear form.

i really miss everyone... and slow lunches, late night movie sessions, spontaneous visits. senior year is the year everyone is busy with their own things. it's the time when we silently struggle to cope with being a student and the thought of not being a student in the near future, but no one is brave enough to talk about what it really means and how much it scares them. if i could, if you would ask, i would tell you that sometimes i feel like i am just compromising. (life shouldn't be a compromise though! who would ever receive a precious gift, say, a beautiful vase with tiny rose buds etched into its glass, but then put a stock of weeds into it. hmm that is a poor analogy... but you get what i mean.)

this has gone on long enough, but i guess self centeredness is not a crime...

so this is love

2009-11-01T23:46:00.007-05:00

i was rushing through the 17th century today, but doing the metaphysical and cavalier poets was a real joy, i have to admit!

1. 'Air and Angels'

AIR AND ANGELS.

John Donne

TWICE or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name ;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be.
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too ;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught ;
Thy every hair for love to work upon
Is much too much ; some fitter must be sought ;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scattering bright, can love inhere ;
Then as an angel face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my love's sphere ;
Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air's and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be.

see also, a beautiful entry on the poem:
http://johncoleman.typepad.com/ex_nihilo/2006/09/a_virtue_caught.html

landscapes

2009-10-12T14:40:00.002-04:00

i took the train back up from new york city yesterday, and was spoiled with stunning window-seat views of new england in the fall.

the robust reds and pumpkin oranges are already emerging - the air looks crisper, the colours sharper. what is it about autumn that makes it so pleasing? surely not just the visual aesthetics. or is it something specific to the new england landscape? i've been trying to figure out what exactly i love so much about it, for the english landscape does not inspire such affection. the english landscape is barer - its beauty measured in the greenness of the grass, the regularity of the fields, the way in which mild sunlight falls and frames a quiet pastoral picture. the american landscape is varied, dramatically changing its colours with the seasons, presenting greater slopes and valleys, and glittering, deep blue lakes and sea coasts. english waters are never that striking; its colours and motions are muted.

where the american landscape is beautiful on a grand scale, the english landscape is beautiful only to those with eyes keen enough to discern variance, an unexpected lilac shrub in one corner, a soft bundle of sheep in another. where one sings, proclaiming its vastness and health, the other waits quietly for you to inscribe in its name a private ode, a few lines of sentiment.

as sentimental as i may be, i appreciate the new england landscape which takes me out of myself - it takes my hand and says, "look here! look at the atlantic coast, look at these forests and my riches!" whereas the english landscape prompts me to converse with myself - with my memories of sweet and of dark days. and so i guess even after comparing the two i still favour the new england landscape; it makes me want to stay in america for a few years more so that i can better get to know it, and explore it.

life is a beautiful thing

2009-10-05T22:24:00.002-04:00

i need to stop complaining.
sore throat? fever? minor ailments that will be done away with adequate rest, gallons of water, vitamins, optimism.
lots of homework and deadlines? that's what it means to be a student, silly. you'll be pining for them, the good ol' days of midterms and papers, in x years' time.
grad school applications and ridiculous standardized tests? hey at least you have the potential (financial and academic) to apply. it's a privilege, not something to whine about.
other stressful situations? that's life :)

so as usual in a sheila-like post, the moral of the story is to be happy. (ah, how original. but i never claimed that my blog was to be of interesting or even good writing.)

what's a few stressful weeks, in a lifetime? if one can get through tripos, one can get through ANYTHING!

what i need right now is a cup of hot milk tea. and a massage. but these are things best found in england, perhaps... ;)

an update before the semester whooshes over me

2009-09-23T15:17:00.004-04:00

for the most part i have slipped back quietly into life here and i am happy that the transition has been pretty seamless, drama-less. i love being near pembroke campus, with the Vdub, cvs, and restaurants all seconds away. the house is comfortable and home-like with its stripey cushions and skylight. i love all of my housemates and am growing increasingly fond of the boys. my room is nice - i think my things clash somewhat with the furniture that came with the room (black desk, bookcase and chest of drawers) but it's okay: we adapt and make do with what we have.

i have resolved to be frugal this year, which is why my 8 summer/autumn tops shall suffice. (my mom sent over 2 more so that means that i will not have to exhibit a day-of-the-week rotation of shirts :P) it is really time to start appreciating the value of things and this includes the value of money... so here's to no more new clothes until it is imperative to buy warmer winter things!

classes are interesting but not terribly exciting. i am being pragmatic this semester and finishing up concentration courses. so, two seminars - one on Ovid and the Metamorphoses, the other on Milton's shorter poems. advanced japanese. children's thinking with the cogsci department. i find that Brown students often try to wear their courses on their sleeve and are often secretly proud of how funky or interdisciplinary their courses are. i guess i'm sticking with my comfort zone this semester - hopefully i can do something braver in the spring :).

i guess senior year for me is characterized by a "i don't give a damn what other people think". i just want to do what is right for myself and for my loved ones, and be happy and enjoy the year. oh and get into grad school or find a job. (the GREs are nightmares. i cracked open the practice booklet for lit today and was horrified to find that they ask identification questions on characters, authors, dates, works. studying for it will be exponentially harder than for the SATs.)

anyway, life as a college student is just amazing :). even though i sometimes catch myself counting down to the holidays, i know deep down that i want to savour this year, slowly, with heart, mind and eyes wide open - well, maybe eyes closed, for the more tender moments.

不得不爱

2009-09-14T19:56:00.001-04:00

希望自己可以認識點樣獨立。。。

providence, rhode island

2009-09-08T11:02:00.003-04:00

i'm here!
jetlagged, and too lazy to get started on cleaning and decorating my new room.

i feel really apprehensive about this new semester but i hope that being mad-busy will keep me sane and happy. the occasional pangs of home/love-sickness will hopefully fade with time. as with last year, i just have to stop comparing the two universities and just focus on what i am blessed with right here.

on classes... i'm disappointed that japanese and latin conflict. and that english and the introduction to education class do, too. :( so i might end up taking english, italian, japanese and a course on children's thinking. this whole liberal arts approach is quite refreshing, but i will miss prac crit, one-on-one supervisions, and the english bunch a lot.

up at 4 am

2009-08-27T16:23:00.002-04:00

as much as i like the sound of rain against glass, i really would like it to stop about now because i can't fall back asleep. i need sleep seeing that yesterday i had a bit of a fever and aching muscles (the flu?), and i can't afford to fall sick, not now! actually come to think of it, there is no time to be ill this year.

i've also been kept up by thoughts about everything. you know how one thing leads to another and before you know it, your mind has decided to review every thought and memory and worry it has produced in the past x days. summer is always the time of thinking, and to be honest, i am getting quite tired of my own thoughts and of having to present them in ways that make for easy listening for others. because you'd probably need a comfortable armchair, several mugs of coffee and many hours in a day to listen to all that my very confused mind is thinking.

it is probably time to start reading again, for reading takes us out of self-centredness and into shared thought. as usual i am too lazy to ever read seriously over the summer holidays - actually i am just too lazy about everything in general :P. hopefully i'll make up for this back in college... just thinking about the things-to-do in the fall semester scares me a bit.

okay well i guess i should try to go to sleep again. suddenly i recall the corinne bailey rae song - it makes me miss sophomore year when life was so much simpler. i remember singing trouble sleeping a lot in the suite even though i never had trouble sleeping (i'd hit the pillow sleeping most nights from fatigue) nor was i in love (though i desperately wanted to be). and now perhaps both are true but i don't think they are related; no, i have been having trouble sleeping because of the uncomfortable bed mattress and new room...

three weeks to Brown

2009-08-14T22:05:00.002-04:00

internship ended yesterday, but as usual my excitement and relief is somewhat lost in the sobering awareness of time going by faster and faster. to be honest i'm not really sure what i learned while working for this publishing company - learning is often latent. but while hunting for errant single quotation marks in a novel manuscript one day, i realized that publishing probably isn't the career for me. it's a natural avenue for english majors but i would like to think that there is more to me than editing, writing, sales.

but if not publishing, then what? my parents are not entirely happy with the idea of me becoming a teacher, unless i pursue a phd and teach at university. the scary thing is i've been thinking about doing that but i wonder if such a decision would be cowardly: i'd be sticking to what i'm comfortable with. sigh asian parents are particularly preoccupied with professional and highly 'specialized' jobs; ultimately, it's a question of income and status. they just want me to be happy and comfortably settled, but surely one can be happy even if one is not a doctor, lawyer, professor, engineer, banker?

a small part of me aches in regret though, when i think about how much easier this would all be if i had just chosen to study law or medicine. such hypothetical speculations are unproductive, not to mention unhealthy, but they underline the self doubt and worrying over careers that a lot of liberal arts students experience. (especially Brown students?) my problem is that i also lack ambition: i am not particularly drawn to power, money (but increasingly so), status, nor have i ever dreamed of becoming very professional at something. i am motivated more by pride, love, love for learning. hmm maybe pride is tied with status though..

summertime is always a time for thinking.
as if we didn't do enough of that during the academic year! which is starting REALLY SOON. yeah i don't even know how i feel about that anymore. it's like half a cup of excitement, one cup of happiness, one cup of nervousness, and a teaspoon of complete freaking-out-ness haha.

by the way, i'm returning to Singapore earlier. i will be back tomorrow evening! and restored to my laptop and bed and new room (i stay in River Valley now). and books. summer 2009 reading list: the golden notebook, a room in paris, the secret agent. oh and if i can recommend one book for people to read... George Eliot's Middlemarch. Eliot is too often overshadowed by Virginia Woolf in the minds of modern readers!

time to start packing. oh i will be sad to leave HK... my stay this summer was particularly fun and full of good food. plus my cantonese has never been better since that has been my main language this summer, to the point where my mom starts finding it strange when i speak in english! i'm quite proud of that :).

わがままじゃないでしょう

2009-06-27T13:13:00.002-04:00

この前に明るい日がいっぱいがあるのを言ってくれて。。。

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOGh-muDZSk&feature=related

“未来の前にすくむ心が
いつか名前を思い出す
叫びたいほどいとおしいのは
ひとつのいのち
帰りつく場所
わたしの指に消えない夏の日。”

sometimes we surprise and sometimes we disappoint

2009-06-22T13:22:00.003-04:00

first is always your best

2009-06-17T06:35:00.002-04:00

Queens' May Ball was magical*!
and i survived until 6 AM... ...probably the latest i've been up, ever.
it was an insanely extravagant party, as all Cambridge May Balls are. four course dinner (the sea bass and duck were scrumptious!) followed by free flow alcohol and snacks throughout the night. live performances (jazz, oh yeah), DANCING, silent disco, bumper car ride hahaha okay that was rather exhilarating at 3 AM in the morning on college grounds!,
oh and fireworks by the river...

too much fun. and i get to do it all over again at Pembroke May Ball tonight but i will probably be half asleep by midnight. Pembroke's theme is Moonlight Masquerade. intriguing!

sorry about the chopping writing. i am rather exhuasted and will have to jump into the shower soon because we get kicked out of Pembroke in the afternoon so they can finish setting up.

i will post photos soon!

what's this, i'm freeee, you say?! :)

2009-06-06T04:03:00.005-04:00

i woke up as usual at 8:30 AM even after having fallen into bed five hours ago. it is the first morning in goodness knows how long (er, two solid months?) that i wake knowing there is not ONE OUNCE of reading, writing or studying that awaits my attention today. nor will there be for the next four months.

i am done with Cambridge academics!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (i survived!!!)

note, the number of exclamation marks cannot fully capture my happiness and relief. even though exams did not go ideally, at least the dissertation went well :). "Henry James's Metaphors of Fixedness and Mobility in The Ambassadors", a mind-blowingly fascinating topic, if i may say so myself.

so what now? :) it is 9 AM on a saturday morning and the possibilities are endless..!

oh no! but oh well

2009-05-27T08:45:00.002-04:00

i completely misread the Tennyson poem for yesterday's paper. i totally made up some Christian allusion which isn't actually used! Pilate, not Pilot! yikes. so i wrote stuff on resurrection which i don't think Tennyson was even thinking of! sigh i hope they award marks for creativity...

"i'm hopelessly flawed"

2009-05-24T20:34:00.010-04:00

i really admire those people who have the courage to surrender themselves to their hearts: to doing and saying exactly what they want to.

i guess i'm not as brave as i thought i am. i have so much learning to do.

two weeks 'til paper 6

2009-05-10T16:07:00.005-04:00

and can i answer a single section B past paper question?
no!!!

how is this possible? i stare at the TWELVE past paper questions on Function of Criticism, and none of them seem do-able. (i've been doing readings, believe me) yes, i realize that answering Tripos questions often requires a bit of creativity, but how am i supposed to answer for instance,

"Are universities likely to be good or bad places for the functioning of criticism?"
or "What is the function of the adjective in the phrase "literary criticism"?"
or worse yet,

" 'The replacement of a hermeneutic by a semiotic model, of interpretation by decoding, would represent, in view of the baffling historical instability of textual meanings, a considerable progress. Much of the hesitation associated with "reading' could thus be dispelled.' Discuss."

what the WHAT?!?!

easter (exam) term

2009-04-26T13:09:00.002-04:00

four weeks. i really am running out of excuses to procrastinate. England has been doing its best to win me over and out of the library, showing off its unbelievably sunny weather, perfect blue skies, and summer flowers. it is very persuasive. between tea outside in the Pembroke gardens and thesis work, who in the right mind would pick thesis, huh, HUH?!

atarashii (新しい) daily schedule
9 am. good morning (おはいよう！）, breakfast
10 am - 12 noon exam revision
12:30 ish. lunch
2:30-6 pm. errands, exam revision and thesis work
6:30/7 pm. dinner
9 pm. exam revision - 2 hrs
1 am sleep　（お休み！）

the problem with college is that you get so sucked into the daily things that you forget about the big picture. sigh. but unfortunately i think i will have to focus on the small things (haha, that tiny thing cam calls the Tripos) for the next month or so, until 4:30 PM 2ND JUNE, 2009!!! (provided that my mini thesis is done)

就職とか

2009-03-27T06:53:00.008-04:00

またホンコンの学校にメイルを連絡するつもり。。。お返事をもらうといい。それに、出版社にもアルバイトを求めよう。夏休みにどこにいるかまだ分からないのはめんどくさい。。。友達と計画がまだできないので。就職の以外に、大学院の申し込みのリサーチをしなくていけなきゃ。さあ。。。残る大学生の楽な生活はだんだん少なくなっているんですよ。

でも家に帰ってから、何もしたくない感じがしている。　＝＿＝

back to Brown

2009-03-13T04:58:00.002-04:00

i am flying back to Brown today. slightly dreading the journey part, but that temporary liminal period is actually really important in helping you dislocate yourself from one place, feel that sense of alienation and homesickness, and take delight in settling into your destination.

in truth, i can't rouse myself to feel as much as i thought i would. the relief is never as great as you anticipate! and having waited for this day since May 17th, 2008, well, the exhilaration has faded by now; that passionate clinging to Brown has weathered to a steady, calm attachment.

but of course i'm very happy about going back for a bit and catching up with all those non-study-abroaders! it really has been awhile :), though i guess it's not like i don't talk with the special ones every week anyway hahaha.

hope you all are well!! fingers crossed for warm weather, Providence.

birthday love

2009-03-08T15:24:00.002-04:00

i am falling terribly in love with Cambridge. Lent term has just been...well, lets just say i didn't have a single unhappy day. (i had many unhappy essaying hours though) and this weekend was wonderful. on friday evening, i had a potluck birthday dinner, and then saturday was spent partly with Rz but mostly with WS.

just for the record i have to list what we had for the potluck! it was quite amazing, food and company-wise. we had for starters - baked feta-cheese pastry (Rz), bruschetta with tomato and olive dip (Rc); mains - Japanese omelette/pizza with prawns, bacon (me), Thai green curry with chicken and rice (Ish and Rb), chicken and potato stew (Rn); dessert - tiramisu cheecake (Rn), and profiteroles (WS). (wow a lot of R-names!) anyway, it was the best birthday feast i've had. forgot to take photos until i cut the cake - stupid stitch. but i'll post them on facebook or up here sometime soon.

well, i now know why Michaelmas term had to be so bad. to pave way for a fresh start to 2009, to the undeserved happiness that i find myself bestowed with. one more week of end-of-term celebrations and meetings (oh, and portfolio completion but my supervisor says it's at least a high 2.1 standard so i'm happy!), and then Brown :). ahhhh how will i cope with all this happiness.

promise to self

2009-03-02T17:17:00.007-05:00

i am going to finish writing this damn essay before i sleep. preferably before 2 am. :( never again will i be this complacent about my work. one thing i've realized is that just because i tend to do okay with academics doesn't mean that i have the right to slack off and hand essays in late. i've overstepped one of my new years resolutions about being kind to myself...i'm TOO kind to myself; i delude myself into thinking that all will be fine, when quite frankly, this esssay on aggression in To the Lighthouse and Jacob's Room is quite crappy at the moment.

need to pull through these next days so that i can have fun this weekend (Lovely Choir Recital on Sunday!) and then next week: Portfolio Deadline, Cn's visit (!!!), and formal-ing :). oh back to Brown on the Friday 13th March. yikes. i can't believe i'm going back next weekend; it's just crept up on me like a quiet beetle lol.

okay. will start writing now.

//

the Cambridge sky is turning a cobalt blue. i've never seen the sunrise here before; i'm wondering if i should hang around and watch it come up behind all the old colleges and clock tower, or if should try to finish up my essay quickly and sleep.

february already

2009-02-09T08:41:00.006-05:00

my brother turned 19 over the weekend, which is a subtle reminder to self that only one month separates me from my 21st birthday. nooooo. once it happens, i don't know what i'll do. i've spent the past eight years hoping that Peter Pan would find me and take me to that mermaid lagoon. i don't like the thought of growing up because there won't be excuses for foolishess to fall back on. imitating cartoon characters? juvenile. extravagant spending on books and holidays? irresponsibile. commit a crime? won't be tried in court as a minor anymore! <-- this actually scares me. like what if i accidentally drop a bottle of moisturiser out the window and hurt someone? manslaughter charges would be that much harsher.

umm but apart from that, life is splendid. this is going to sound stupid, but i just really love being young. we have everything before us, and nothing to hold us back (yet).

a day of unproductivity

2009-01-14T15:27:00.004-05:00

why is it so hard getting back into academics after holidays? i've descended to a new low with reading up celebrity gossip online +_+ - i don't even know why i'm bothering to announce something like that here. well, this just goes to show that self discipline is truly a muscle. and to extend that metaphor, yes, mine has atrophied to a clump of measly nerves.

all i want to do is sleep...and start again tomorrow. but i already did that this morning, and it didn't work. what now. i suspect that this sleepiness is psychosomatic, and probably intensified by jetlag. ugh. okay. will write introduction before i sleep.

(dis)association

2009-01-12T11:38:00.005-05:00

yesterday i looked out the window and saw a boy wearing only a brown sweatshirt in the freezing weather, lugging all his duffel bags into the porter's lodge. i thought nothing of it at first, and it was only after he disappeared through the Plodge's tiny doors that i realized it was a Brown sweatshirt.

i've now lost that special status as being the only Brown student at Cambridge; there are at least six others here for the spring semester. it was the most bizarre experience, meeting them last night. many of them actually recognized me from class/Keeney/the career development center, and me, them. just imagine. about fifteen Americans suddenly descending upon Cambridge...and there i was, gushing about Ratty food and the merits of pass/fail. hearing them complain about the separate hot and cold faucets, and the readings expected of them before term officially starts was like hearing echoes of myself from last October awash over me. it was quite a disorientating experience.

but they're under a separate program specially for international exchange students. although a lot of them are studying English, they have different supervisors and aren't integrated with the Pembroke englishers. i confess to feeling a bit left out of it all, but i'm happy with being treated as a real Cambridge student who gets to live and take classes with the 2nd years. (but these spring semester guys have their own special tours and dinners organized by the international programmes office!) part of me wonders what it would've been like to be part of them...a whole pack of ivy-leaguers exploring town and collectively coming to grips with Cambridge's idiosyncracies.

it would have been nice to be held by the hand and told where to go and what to do - to be seen as a "study abroad" student (read - slightly clueless, very jetlagged). but i have the nicest Pembroke advisors and friends so i can't complain!

anyway i write this to affirm my difference :). i don't think i'll be seeing much of them since they're all in this exchange student bubble. i just had to write about this encounter of the familiar, in a place that was once so unfamiliar but is slowly becoming comfy. i know i dreaded coming back and was so stressed about the academics, but now that i'm back, things don't seem so bad at all.

hello, Lent Term

2009-01-10T11:20:00.005-05:00

we're all forever arriving and departing, but that's a luxury we forget to acknowledge everytime we reluctantly board that long-haul flight. i've been back in Cambridge for almost a day. i expected to feel quite low upon coming back to English weather and an empty room, but so far, i feel quite content. decorations and photos up, lots of snacks, organized my clothes (brr it's quite cold in Cambridge though temperature-wise, nothing like Providence!), and i bought a radio/ipod dock station thingy. i love it :). i realized the last week of Michaelmas term that one of the reasons i felt so lonely in my room was because there was never any sound (after living with a roommate, then suitemates, i've gotten used to constant companionship), which is why i resorted to writing my last essay while listening to Edward Said's lectures on youtube. now...behold glorious sound! the radio sounds really warms the room.

anyway, winter break was wonderful. every day was spent with the family (yes, every single day even though i met up with dear friends during the daytime) - i don't think i've appreciated them more! i tried to organize fun family things so we had a Wii golf/tennis tournament, played tennis for reals the day we got back to singapore, had movie nights, and i went to see Ponyo with my brother and mom. hmm and hong kong was FANTASTIC because of the food (yong kee's siu mei!!), visiting relatives from Toronto, and the glorious 18-20 degree, sunny 'winter' weather. on Christmas day i took bus 6 to Stanley, and it felt like returning home. going down Repulse Bay Road was the usual rockety double-decker ride - lots of perilous curves alongside the cliff next to South China Sea - all of which i've memorized after spending a good 8 years going up and down that road to school. i say all this to assert that feeling that resides partly in the heart, but partly construed by the mind, telling me that hong kong is still home. phew :). come august though, we will have resided in singapore for 8 years, matching our time in hong kong. quite scary, especially since my dad intially told us that singapore was only a 3 year stint.

well, back to Cambridge. i've gotten very good at repressing all thoughts of academics, but now it's time to confront Literary Criticism and my Portfolio straight in the eye, no flinching allowed. hope you all are well! and those who are studying abroad, safe travels and happy settling-in!

being back home

2008-12-08T22:47:00.002-05:00

makes me never want to leave! i'm going to make every single day count.

2000 words on De Quincey and orientalism

2008-12-02T17:21:00.006-05:00

that's all which separates me from end-of-term celebrations, that is, guilt-free fun! i say guilt-free because "work ethic" really means something here. everyone apart from me seems to have insurmountable volumes of work. (no hyperbole!) with that sheer quantity of work, self discipline becomes paramount: if you told a Cam student at 5 in the afternoon that you hadn't done any work at all that day, he or she would most likely react with shock and sympathy, instead of (false) reassurances that you'll be fine, and that you'll get whatever you need done.

the hours you work are directly proportional to the esteem you receive from your peers, because academic diligence is not just a socially-programmed ideal, it is a virtue. here, that is.

okay well enough about my observations of Cam students; need to start writing. will write about all my other observations tomorrow! when i'm done!

it's that time of year again

2008-11-25T16:27:00.004-05:00

i'm sitting at my desk eating pita bread with nutella (my evening snack), trying to write how i feel about Thanksgiving and not being at Brown. it's oddly comforting to hear about everyone's Thanksgiving plans: i feel that i too, am there with you as you board that plane, sink into that train seat, or settle down at home in front of your laptop. part of me wishes that i could participate in that retreat. i imagine feeling exhausted - it is that exhaustion, after all, which permits you a few days of brief holiday bliss before that whirlwind finals period that sees everyone seeking solace in sci-li-ing and freaking out over rushed Ratty dinners or hot sandwiches at Jos.

it's so easy to sentimentalise Brown. i could write an ode to Ratty breakfasts. and to the slopes and perpetual leafyness of Charlesfield street, those delightful cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing sold at the Blue Room. (go get one next week if you haven't tried them!!)

despite all this, i'm finally feeling settled and happy. it's so refreshing...i'm just so happy to be myself again - myself, but also a little changed, i would hope. a tiny bit wiser.

like a cheshire cat

2008-11-20T12:49:00.002-05:00

so pleased with myself. she says that if i continue writing to these standards in the exams, i'll most definitely get a first class! no wayyy! before today i didn't even dare to imagine trying for a first, but i'm going to try now that i know it's in reach...

it's thursday 6 pm, which means weekend! curry night at Ish's place, and then i'll come back to pack for my weekend away in London visiting Jn!! (wow she'll be the first Brown person i've seen in awhile.) luckily, next week's workload is light given that we're doing Persuasion or otherwise i would've been very screwed in terms of work. sundays-wednesdays typically are my essay-crisis days.

hope this weekend is a good one!

what is a year, in a lifetime?

2008-11-11T07:35:00.003-05:00

i choose to not run away
i choose to be brave
i choose to be happy with life as it is
i choose to take responsibility for my decisions
i choose to graduate with my friends
i choose to do this for my loved ones
i choose principles, over emotions
i choose a year of challenges, over a lifetime of regret
i choose to feel blessed with all that i have

//
my mom and LJ have collectively, miraculously, helped me to see things differently, so thank you...:)

//

Tristram Shandy essay due in 18 hours. "Writing, when properly managed...is but a different name for conversation." Discuss.
interesting topic, right?

week five

2008-11-07T08:00:00.003-05:00

i keep writing resolutions but fail to adhere to them strictly. but anyway. today REALLY is the day when i will...
- sleep before 1 AM
- eat proper meals
- not waste time online
- read 150 pages of Tristram Shandy
- stop moping. and be happy. i've come this far already...and look, i'm still here.

yay for broken fevers and guacamole

2008-11-02T12:29:00.003-05:00

yikes, i haven't done any reading since i handed in my last essay on thursday. it was the first time i missed a deadline - by 17 hours, too. surprisingly, my supervisor was very kind, reassuring me to not panic about these weekly essays because they're ultimately just exam practice. (not sure if the fact that 100% of my grade/credits is determined by three exams is very reassuring though... ...this system is even worse than the IB and GCSEs!)

anyway, things that i've done in weeks three and four:
1. joined an informal choir group
2. played ping pong, but was convinced that no one could ever replace Dn or PP as entertaining ping pong buddies :(
3. read
4. discovered a nice Chinese buffet place...okay i know "nice" and "Chinese buffet" are paradoxical but the food was decent! and it's a buffet!
5. saw a man shoplifting wine at Sainsbury's. um, why does this always happen to me?! i've witnessed so many shoplifting incidents, it's not even funny. once at Marks & Spencer in HK (although i didn't realize it at the time), once in Pacific Place when police were running after a crook and accidentally cornered the wrong guy, once in TaiKoo Shing i saw the thief and shopkeeper run out of Watsons, and in Singapore, i saw a woman steal a packet of bread at Bukit Panjang. yeah it sounds kinda ridiculous...
6. hosted formal hall at Pembroke! the main course was disappointing, but they had french onion soup and creme brulee to make up for it.
7. had a really bad fever on Saturday and was thus not able to host Kate properly this weekend...sigh.
8. finished decorating my study room with colourful scarves and photos.
9. realized how sheltered us American college students are. well at Brown, we take so many things for granted. at least i did. i have never missed the Ratty more. and the freedom to study multiple subjects.
10. got over some personal issues. i just keep reminding myself that Everything Comes to Pass, even things you didn't think possible to get over.

this week is going to be another week of rushed Pope and Swift readings, Guy Fawkes fun, and learning. plus Tn's 20th birthday is coming up! i really hope the package arrives safely. (i stupidly filled out the customs form honestly when i should've listed something that didn't sound like such a steal.)

missing all of you so much.

'life changes in an instant'

2008-10-28T10:31:00.005-04:00

so says Joan Didion in "The Year of Magical Thinking".

i think of this quote to remind myself that life is always transient - that relationships and situations are dynamic, volatile, unpredictable. i'm only just beginning to realize this after a certain close friend has recently betrayed me. after analysing this for days, i've come to realize that the only way i can survive is to just forget about it. no person this deliberately cruel deserves my energy and emotions. i don't deserve to feel so unhappy and confused, wondering all the time what exactly happened to have made him think that i'm not worth being friends with.

i refuse to sink into depression. it is scary knowing that others have done so in the past, but i REFUSE to let one selfish, irrational, cruel person do this to me.

i'm sorry that i can't possibly contact everyone and explain exactly the situation. in time i'll be able to look back on this and not feel so miserable. but i ask that my friends just trust me, and be there for me - whether it is through emails or phone calls. i know there are worse things than losing a best friend.

i hope that everyone else is doing well though :). or if not well, then at least better than i am! i'll try to get in touch soon...in the meantime, i'm just going to try to move on from this incident and enjoy Cambridge. (which has actually become a fourth home).

returning to normality

2008-10-22T18:01:00.006-04:00

the wonderful thing about having rough starts is that it means there's only one way to go! up!

i'm lazy so here is my second week achievements compressed in bullet points. in the past week, I....

1. opened a bank account and paid the Michaelmas term rent. this helped me clear away all that angst about whether or not to stay. I'M STAYING. for once, the little voice in my head, and the little voice in my heart, are in unison...
2. finally made friends. (awww)
3. drank a lot of Vitamin water and orange juice in hopes of psycho-somatically convincing myself that i am immune to all those freshers-flu germs.
4. learned a lot about eighteenth century moral philosophy. ahh SO looking forward to her comments on my 1600 word attempt at analysing sympathy. how i hate philosophy.
5. showed M around Cambridge, rather blindly, as my knowledge of Cambridge is limited to like four colleges, the river, the supermarket and shops. we had waffles for lunch which is amazing in itself. we also poked around small quaint shops selling cute things like 'knit a sheep' kits and pretty notebooks...i'm so going back there this weekend to do a bit of early Christmas shopping!
6. attended ZERO english lectures.
7. somehow managed to miss a bunch of meetings for activities that i had signed up to do. but i'm definitely doing informal choir, and might get involved in editing for science magazine. (that's right - no more literary fluffiness. and no more crap about not being able to edit pieces. *cough* issu....)
8. was convinced that Serendipity is totally underrated. by Serendipity herself :)
9. struggled a lot with religious faith and have realized that it's not for me. it's upsetting, but also weirdly empowering, too...
10. ate a lot of dark chocolate digestive biscuits to complement the not-so-great hall meals here...(they call it trough)

i have yet to find my routine here, but i'm getting there. firstly, got to tackle a mountain of errands this weekend. i put off EVERYTHING for essays, seriously, but the weird thing is i conversely put off essays for the most trivial of things like facebook stalking, PET bottle recyling, digestive biscuits, etc. sigh well it feels good to be concerned about the small things for a change...:) as opposed to huge, aching questions about my place here.

couldn't have done it without the love and encouraging words of a lot of eople however. it's pleasantly surprising how one can find inspiration in the most unlikely places. but yeah, sometimes i lie in bed and i just feel all this love from distant places awash over me and i think, "this has gotta make all of this worth it" and "what the heck did i do to deserve such a family and such friends?" sigh. i have so much learning and living to do.

life at cambridge: week one

2008-10-13T06:16:00.003-04:00

the past seven days have gone by like a cross between a dream and a nightmare.

when i feel safe and strong, i look out of my attic windows and smile at the chapel spires, the immaculate green, the cloisters of Old Court, thinking to myself - if anything, i should feel blessed that i can study at a place so steeped with history and culture. Pembroke College is extremely pretty: our courtyards lack the regal, imposing feel of Trinity and St. John; they're more of the comfortable, garden tea-party kind. also, i'm amazed that some of the great poets studied at Pembroke - Thomas Gray, Ted Hughes, Spenser - and i guess i shouldn't take that history for granted.

there are so many quirky traditions here, all of which i've just accepted/half-embraced. no walking on greens. early dinners unless you go to formal hall. a heck of a lot of alcohol during formal meals (you get a different one to accompany each course, so champagne with the appetiser, red with the main, and port with the dessert and coffee). lots of port in old fashioned decanters (and i thought those things were only found in the His Dark Materials books!!). the whole town of cambridge shutting down at 7 pm. not having to go to lectures or class. gowns over your fancy clothes in hall. standing up in hall when the fellows enter to dine at the High Table. (there is a lot of hierarchy here...like we have a senior butler, Salvino, who is our sort of ally and gestures to let us know when to stand and sit and take leave, and then all these other waiters/waitresses in hall that follow his orders...) i actually live right above the Hall, which is a little weird but very convenient.

so i guess that's the dream part of it...the beauty of cambridge, the constant tea drinking and biscuit nibbling. the meeting of people exponentially smarter than you. it's very humbling. :) i'm quite freaked out about my Practical Criticism supervision with some of the 2nd years this afternoon. they all look so put together with their hard-cover diaries, dissertation papers, pens and english-y coats...sigh well we shall see what happens.

and the nightmare bit? well, the intense loneliness, the lack of friends (except for Ritz, who's been a total star in looking out for me), the sense of not fitting in anywhere, the lack of structured time. i'll try not to fall into some self-fulfilling prophecy...i have been trying hard to meet a lot of people and establish at least a list of contacts. i guess the people here are quite different, and navigating the asian groups is even trickier.

coming here has made me value friendship, family, company, sun, hot food, nice showers even more. especially friends!! i've always known that i had the most amazing of friends, but i now feel even more fortunate when i reflect on my relatively easy transition into Brown. a lot of things are due to pure serendipity, as everyone has been saying to me. i guess i'm praying for some sort of magical encounter here - in the shape of a friend, a phone call, a conversation.

i know i owe it to myself and to a lot of other people to persist. at the moment, it's just difficult for me to be truly optimistic...i find myself walking around sometimes crying on the inside because i'm so consumed by uncertainty and loneliness. but i guess if anything, this was a much-needed crash course in true independence. and i'll try to focus on staying happy and healthy...haha nowadays, a conversation with a stranger at the dinner table is a lifeline, a sunny day, a miracle!

my flaws

2008-09-24T23:14:00.003-04:00

- i get defensive easily
- i have problems with authority <-- this is surprisingly true. wow. that explains why i disliked my TA's. and also why i flare up whenever my parents criticize me. and also why i get really annoyed with professors who don't know what they're talking about.
- i'm too sensitive

just one of those 10 AM realisations...:(

happy happy happy

2008-09-08T06:24:00.003-04:00

1. tonight i'm going to finally start reading Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence! i confess to not having read a novel in TWO MONTHS. i am surprised that i have still retained command over the English Language. at the same time, i'm wondering what kind of English concentrator i must be to be able to ignore books for the better part of a summer holiday. that is like going through a bitter winter without ever once drinking hot chocolate.

2. totally over last week's mopey phase and realize in hindsight that it was partly hormonal. my apologies for being a little pessimistic lately! i am now genuinely happy about study abroad, and excited about going off to England...i.e. land of sandwiches, scones, H&M and Topshop, afternoon tea, mild winters (thank youuu), history, antiquated and highly idiosyncratic traditions, and Colin Firth. sighh i just wish term would hurry up and start already!!

3. all you need is love, really.

~~~

i really should post the homestay photos on here sometime...

ホームステイー

2008-08-04T05:02:00.007-04:00

homestay in Ina-shi was MAGICAL.
東京に戻りたくなかったほど楽しかったんだ.

my family planned a perfect three days for me. we made temaki sushi for dinner, went to the Ina-shi summer festival, explored an Edo-era town, went to a beautiful otera complete with glow-in-the-dark moss and the traditional three gates, had really good soba and katsudon, relaxed at an onsen, took Benny-chan for 7 am walks...sigh. we had so many great conversations as we sat down to piping hot green tea, and as we navigated the Minami-alps by car, windows down and hair dancing.

Shima-san and Kotarou-san were....just wonderful. i've talked to other friends in the program and yep, my homestay parents and grandparents really knew how to teach japanese and let me practice it. they carried around a notebook a pen EVERYWHERE so that whenever i didn't understand something, they would explain it and then write the kanji/hiragana. occasionally they drew things, which elicited a lot of giggles. they were also ridiculously nice. no stuffiness about them. i cried after saying bye when we got onto the bus, but only after Kotarou-san stopped waving as we turned the corner...as Rz says, perhaps i'm crybaby :), but i'd rather be the type of person who feels deeply - the entire spectrum of emotions - than one who merely oscillates in the middle.

and now we're back in Tokyo, to regular classes. i'm being a total bum and only taking two workshops this summer after dropping a tricky Japanese Novels class, thus i'm only in class 5 hours a day. the work is starting to pile on though; for one, i've never had to memorize vocabulary like this before. and there are a few long term projects/presentations to tackle...which is little scary cuz we only have two and half weeks left!

anyway....i WILL post photos soon.

in Tokyo now!

2008-07-31T08:40:00.004-04:00

tadaima!!
that's what the japanese say when they return home (and in reply, the family says, "okaeri"). well i'm not home, but i'm going for my weekend homestay in Ina-shi tomorrow! excited, but i think i'm more nervous about the Japanese conversations and basically just fitting in with the family. unfortunately there are no kids, only a young couple and their dog, which i find a slightly strange configuration for a homestay family.

so i disappeared for a long while because i was in Hong Kong with my primitive dial-up internet, and then in Kamogawa, where we had limited access to internet in the seminar house. we got quite close to everyone else because there was literally only a convenience store, a beach, and some mountains, and a small mall to venture off to outside the seminar house. we also had a strict schedule of meals and ofuro (the communal baths) times. breakfast was at 7:30 am, lunch at 12 noon, and dinner at 6. if you came late by 15 minutes you wouldn't be served any food. apart from that...in our free time we played badminton/tennis/table tennis, cards, and oh crikey, Mafia.

anyway, i'm in Tokyo now at the main Waseda University campus. so far i haven't explored that much but i plan to go out a lot more often next week after the homestay...to shop at Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku and go see Akihabara and Asakusa (and hopefully go to Disneyland? :) ). going out in Japan requires a lot of self discipline cuz everything looks so pretty and kawaii (or yummy, if it's food). and of course there's the izakayas, which are cheaper than those in Hong Kong, and karaoke! <-- the prices aren't bad, but too bad i'm not very good at singing. a lot of the other girls in the program are really impressive though - one of them even sings opera.

okay well i will post photos some other time! gotta start packing and getting ready for homestay (i.e. review all the kimarimonku, or set phrases, and wrap my gifts.)

when all else fails

2008-06-10T09:53:00.002-04:00

i have now taken to exercise when i get all crabby and antsy (ohhh two animal-y adjectives. that was accidental!) everyone knows me as the person who doesn't work out, and this is partly true because:
a) i'm REALLY lazy and
b) compared to everybody else, my athletic commitments (which are nonexistent in college) are pathetic.
oh...and why is it that most of my friends are either absurdly talented in dance or sport, or are the type that go running 3 miles no problem?

so it has been a lot more sweat and sun for me these few weeks. i don't know why it has taken me so long to realize the benefits of working out. i've always known that endorphins can be addictive and sweating, cathartic (haha, as propounded by tn almost everyday at brown), but i guess i always had things like food and friends to make me feel better :P. food i have plenty of here in singapore, but friends...ah friends...

nowadays when i miss people i resort to running to the gym or tennis courts or pool to work out until i cheer up. summer just doesn't feel quite the same when most people are working, travelling, or not coming back for the holiday. or if they live on different continents. blasted americans.

anyway, i shall not dwell on the clouds. there are upsides to this weird coping mechanism. i have rediscovered the joy of tennis. and i feel good about getting back on the treadmill...ah wait, there is no "back" for i have always avoided the darn thing. :D well not anymore!

rephrase

2008-05-14T00:40:00.003-04:00

it's funny how tweaking words here and there makes everything less scary. i feel a lot better about it all. :) i guess i just need to just blurt all the yucky, somewhat latent feelings from time to time to confirm my decisions. (and have others reassure me) weak. as st's male alter-ego would bellow.

totally screwed for take-home english final because of incredibly long 7 hour conversation with kp. but...instead of complaining i will persevere, and join the "done"-minions soon enough...

:(

2008-05-12T22:41:00.004-04:00

i am dreading saturday and wondering how the hell i'm going to leave this place. all the vague, far flung ideals about academics and challenges and new challenges are just rhetoric... ...easy to say but hard to believe in. rt has always cautioned pursuit of ideals that are of the past; i really hope i haven't done that in this instance because the losses are just looming higher and higher with each day of happiness and love.

it's so unhealthy to anticipate bad stuff, but i can't help it. i don't want to go home just yet...i want one more year of brown so badly but i've made my decision and just keep hoping that i'll be somehow surprised, and rewarded for this leap in faith, but it just...sucks. there's no other word to describe it. why why why. watashi no sei dake.

lowly, i say

2008-04-30T19:57:00.006-04:00

i can't focus anymore. i'm slacking off in all classes (what reading period?! still have english seminar next tuesday), i mix up the two study abroad meetings and miss the important Britain-specific one, i'm sleeping at terrible hours, my comp lit essay is a joke, my grades are falling (goodbye cambridge-worthy gpa...hey maybe they'll reject me over the summer) and i have the sad piano theme of densha-otoko stuck in my head.

yesterday i said goodbye to keiko-san. she's moving back to japan with her husband. i feel terrible; it was probably the first time i said goodbye (for good) to someone that i do want to see again. there were things to be said, formalities - but i wanted to say so much more than my limited japanese skills could allow. and now i still want to write more about it, but how does one recapture those conversations, the language of which i don't even remember?

~~~~~~
i just got back from en's room. kp, tn and i visited cuz he broke his leg yesterday. since he's returning home for surgery tomorrow, we said our warm goodbyes. there was a moment of panic surging through me when i thought that if he was leaving for the summer, and i was going to be away for junior year, then it'd be our last meeting. then i remembered that we are both sophomores, so there's still senior year.

but then kp looked at me and i realized that the panic was yet to come, and now everything has just collapsed into itself.

for me to treasure

2008-04-28T00:31:00.014-04:00

didn't do any work this weekend! that will come and haunt me this week when i am locked away in the tower of the sci li at odd hours.

but it was worth it...went to the vdub at 9 am friday morning for waffles, ice cream, and omelette :) so good! took a few photos on the way of the batcave members. also had brunch with lx and lj at the blue elephant. we also shopped there hahahaha why am i not surprised. i ended up getting a nice beaded necklace for my mom, which i'm really excited about because it does look pretty good! lj - i retract my statement. then there was the BUM picnic...more delights like cheese and crackers and rotisserie chicken and strawberries.

i'm too lazy to do captions (it's also 1:30 AM so i should sleep while i can, seeing that this week = no sleep, a lot of protein shakes to keep me alive and pumped with vitamins and protein, and sci-li ness), so here we go! i just chose some of the better/more interesting ones.

bliss!

2008-04-20T19:26:00.003-04:00

sun and books and loved ones and food and cool, soft bedsheets are all i need in life to feel happy.

but to feel REALLY happy, i need the opposite: dreary days plashed with gray and slush, tedious readings and work assignments, cruel deadlines, bad ratty food, and mercilessly cold rooms.

in short, i am trying to make every single day count. when i wake up, i rejoice that i am given another day to explore what's out there and also what's within myself - my strengths, idiosyncracies, virtues and weaknesses.

there are only 4 more weeks left (i fly on saturday may 17th back to singapore, arriving just in time on the 19th for mom's birthday!), and even though there will be final exams and essays and shipping/packing/storing to do, it'll be GOOD. we will enjoy slow breakfasts, movies, batcave gossip sessions, good books, day trips (hopefully to block island), spring clothes, cherry blossoms and daffodils.

p.s. the title of the post reminds me that i'm still on my quest to find a reliable lip balm that will work as well as Bliss's. mom passed her used Bliss lip balm to me 1.5 years ago, and i'm still using it everyday. it makes for a great primer for other lip balm/gloss. unfortunately Bliss has stopped producing the product. if anyone has recommendations - let me know!
p.p.s. ax, st and i went to the 80s party yesterday - spandex/leggings/headband/golden fun! the band (the Rock), was surprisingly good...they sounded like the real deal for the covers. too bad not many people showed up though.
p.p.p.s. yesterday i had a decent conversation with a stranger out on the grad center lawn about cantonese - more specifically, the linguistic problems of representing spoken cantonese and its relation to standard written chinese. spontaneous fun. also, he had blue eyes and an earnest, passionate air that reminded me of someone from a long time ago.

spring what? and the little mermaid

2008-04-12T22:41:00.004-04:00

spring weekend! feels like it's been the weekend for awhile because everyone kinda starts kicking back thursday afternoon... ...sighh i wish this little window of sunniness and imagined freedom would just hold open for a little longer.

i haven't done the typical spring weekend-y thing of concert-going and beer-drinking and whatever else people do, but it has been a wonderful saturday nonetheless. the weather!!! SUN. skirts and dresses. ice tea. bare skin. once the flowers start blooming, Providence will be perfect.

we watched The Little Mermaid after st's bday dinner. i've decided that The Little Mermaid is the most visually stunning of the classical disney canon. the willows in the kiss-the-girl scene, the castle, the underwater 'seascape' - even of Ursula's skeletal lair - were so beautiful and all of us were gushing throughout - kp included, or should i say, especially kp.

watching Disney movies is always such a nolstagic experience. i'm not sure how to describe it, but the process of rewatching a movie is always a doubled experience. you feel your 8 year old initial reactions and feelings wash over you, but simultaneously perceive what's going in the movie with older eyes. like when King Tritons destroys the statue of Eric - my feeling changes when i watch it now cuz there is something unsettling about her idolation of him. oh and i love the scene when she signs her name on the golden parchment that seals the deal with Ursula. and when King Triton sacrifices his crown for her - i'm such a sentimentalist....!

by the way, i'm screwed for this week; don't know if can make it out alive. i keep wanting to give up, to just let the grades slide but how does one surrender such a thing that is, to bluntly put it, part of one's affirmation of self worth. maybe that's overly harsh, but my mind keeps warping back to that one conversation about how maybe i should try to let these small things go. (it's sooo hard though)

wronged

2008-04-02T15:01:00.003-04:00

i wish i didn't have to wait two whole days to argue in defense of my history midterm essays. but perhaps it is a good thing cuz right now my anger could overcome all sensibility.

the injustice of it all!!!!! i have concluded that many TA's make for unfair graders, as evidenced by those who oversee my comparative literature and history sections. i have had multiple points taken off for a supposed grammar 'mistake' that is actually not a mistake, but rather a convention stipulated by the MLA and Strunk/White's The Elements of Style (the ultimate authority on grammar). and now for two pratically flawless history essays, i am penalized for going over the "page limit" when there was no terminology ("max" "limit" or "x to y") written on the exam of ANY such limit.

i feel so terrible because i'm conflicted between feeling angry at the injustice of receving A minuses when the TA clearly comments that the essays are excellent analyses. (i can't help thinking he's just trying to find something wrong with my essay because throughout both papers there are only ticks and praise)

so just because i chose to not play around with margins, spacing and font out of consideration for the reader's eyes, just because i just happen to be perhaps a little more perceptive and recognize the need to write cohesive arguments... ...for that i am penalized. and um, my essays were SO concise; i would totally challenge my TA to write better ones.

so help me come friday. i will seriously appeal to the professor if i don't get As.

moments of distraction - birthdays and study abroad

2008-03-31T23:37:00.004-04:00

i just bought st's birthday prezzies (a belt and beaded necklace to match her spring clothes). excited about her birthday because tn and i have planned a kind of a treasure/clue hunt that involves her going around to friends and having to tell them each something they don't know about her in order to retrieve clues (coded into pictures). these clues shall lead to a somewhat anti-climax of a dinner proposal. lol. but we thought the process would be more fun for her. i love birthdays!

people around me have been feeling blue..
so let me repeat my little inspiration mantra,
let go of anxieties, sing loudly, breathe deeply, laugh freely and love!!

i'm so distracted...by a multitude of things. went on the cambridge site to read the alternative prospectus on Pembroke College and it sounds too good to be true. i really lucked out. but the hesitation and self-doubt come in waves now and then; it's a very internalised thought process that is never fully articulated, perhaps in fear of the realisations that it may potentially precipitate.

but i could write, and think, about this forever.

back! after a massive account retrieval session

2008-03-26T23:58:00.004-04:00

it took awhile for me to figure out which account i had used, and now i'm back because the daisy layout is too pretty to just leave behind. plus it heralds spring!

staying for spring break actually hasn't been lonely at all. as mom said, if you know that this isn't a permanent situation, you appreciate the peace and joys of living alone. providence has been nice - sunny everyday so far!

and now for a little recap on what i've been up to...
- ketchup reading: Morisson's Beloved and Conrad's Lord Jim
- cooking dinners
- spending nearly $180 on clothes (many many things since everything is on sale now), which i'm surprisingly very happy about. usually i end up feeling guilty and low after buying lots of stuff cuz it's kind of like a degradation in moral capital for me. hmmm i always buy my clothes in bundles - half my autumn/winter stuff was bought freshman year thanksgiving with kd. good times! and now all my spring/summer shall date from this little spree with st. also good times!
- homework and transcription work
- chatting to my brother and mom every 12 hours muahaha

such are the joys of holidays!! 好幸福。

trying my best to take this all in slowly and make everyday count...

can't seem to write today

2007-12-01T22:53:00.001-05:00

friendships are like plants
study abroad applications stink
have a busy week of oral presentations ahead of me
happy that beets and eggs are now a staple at the ratty salad bar
like playing doubles in table tennis, but i'm better at singles
so many things i wish i could say
oh and i really like corinne bailey rae's 'trouble sleeping' after ling played it for me on her ipod
sorry i have nothing meaningful to say

four weeks left

2007-11-27T13:48:00.000-05:00

bermuda was beautiful! my memory card is with lx, but i'm sure the photos are cropping up like mad on the facebook news feed anyway. well it was a different kind of Thanksgiving... last year's was a lot more traditional what with turkey dinner and staying with kd's wonderful aunt and uncle. this year's was fun-in-the-sun, sightseeing on a little subtropical island, a lot of tv movies hahaha - all which turned out to be my favourites!, and just absurd silliness haha. in a variety of ways. needless to say, no work was done over the holiday but i feel so refreshed after it that i don't mind the four weeks ahead.

our second english papers were handed back and contrary to expectation, i won't have to write a final paper! the more of english i do, the more i realize that it is one thing i can perfect and show off. ahhh it feels good knowing that i'm done with one course already :) yet having said that, time is rushing by so quickly...i'm scared everything will just keep ending and ending and before we know it, we will miss these days that are now.

whoa!

2007-11-16T22:26:00.000-05:00

i was reading this month's issue of Vogue featuring jennifer connelly, and just found out that she's married to paul bettany!!

these things always make me happy...knowing that two people i admire albeit rather superficially love one another. i wonder if they met while filming A Beautiful Mind? oh i really feel like watching that now. but i have that blasted english paper to write sigh. and now i guess i should actually start writing it but i feel so bloated after dinner at tokyo and chocolate ice cream cake from coldstone (we were celebrating kara's birthday early). need to cut back on the sweets...

being a bad student

2007-10-23T21:13:00.000-04:00

so many screw-ups in time management. poorly written essay. choosing to not pass up physics problem set due tomorrow. missed issues meeting. not preparing thoroughly for class. all these tell-tale signs of my increasing complacency and irresponsibility.

it really has to end!! what really did it for me was the english paper, which i turned in 5 minutes before the deadline. it's not even about the grade i think...just seems inherently wrong to choose to not do well when one can.

i feel ashamed for being so unlike myself. i would take nerdy, need-to-go-work-and-perfect-everything sheila over complacently-free sheila anyday. let this entry be a reminder to myself everytime i decide to waste time and come online...

sheafs

2007-10-20T17:56:00.000-04:00

went to the rock this afternoon for the first time in what feels like forever to work on an english paper. along the way, i noticed the onset of autumn colours - plum reds and leafy yellows, reminiscent of my first semester here at brown. upper keeney quad was especially pretty, with its stone-cobbled walks cast aglow with leaf. why is it that these quiet scenes are always observed in tumultuous times of paper-writing -

i'm stuck on a paper. it's frustrating when you do comparative essays and the topic fits perfectly with one novel, but is a bit of a stretch for the other. i'm really pushing it with Jane Eyre and gossip/reputation/rumour...so i've decided to go with Persuasion and Bleak House. such different novels, but that's not the problem...the problem is they together make up more than 1,100 pages. but i should not be complaining; this class was my choice and the stuff we read is amazing so enough said.

being indecisive

2007-10-15T16:21:00.000-04:00

stinks. trying to decide whether to study abroad for a year or just spring semester isn't something you can just sleep on, hoping your subconscious will somehow (ir)rationally make your decision for you.

i have just spent an hour going weighing pros and cons. it's coming to the point where i'm peeved with myself for being so nitpicky.

essentially, if i don't apply for full-year oxbridge, i will probably not get accepted by pembroke college in cambridge for spring semester (unless they happen to have a place AND i happen to be the best english candidate at brown which is unlikely). in that case i will go to university of york. york is nice, but i confess that even its quaint shops and friendly, well-structured visting student program can't compete with oxbridge. plus it's so far away from london and cambridge! knowing ritz she wouldn't tear herself away from economics essays for a 5 hour train ride up to visit me.

teeeeeth

2007-10-04T16:51:00.000-04:00

got wisdom teeth on left side extracted. the drugs are starting to wear off; pain settling in :(. it's like braces, though the pain is a lot more acute and accompanied by bleeding icks.

typing with right hand cuz right needed to support ice pack. the nurse said i probably will want to take tomorrow off... ...i am starting to see why she would say that.

suite life

2007-09-28T20:24:00.000-04:00

i finally got around to taking photos of my room! it's not fully decorated but i hope these still convey some of its understated charm...

left: my pink cushiony spot for doing those 12-2 am reading // right: my bed plus bday gift from lx and lj from march

oops bad pic. where i study/facebook/send those incredibly long emails...

left: tn, ax, st, and dv who collectively make the suite a warm fuzzy place to live in :). ax and st are unofficially my physics tutors now. seriously who needs professors or TAs when you have PLME suitemates (that means brown students who are already accepted into brown medical school). i was so grateful to them on tuesday night/wednesday morning for helping me get through those blasted questions.

oh and there's also Sir Duckly Ducklington of Duckshire the Third, Esquire in the photo. can you spot him?!

anyway crazy week finally over. :) it was good. i even enjoy working at the career development center cuz we get to meet so many amazing students. spent an hour today with a mature undergraduate student (she was forty...but looked 25, which was unbelievable!) critiquing her resume. it was just... well i guess i feel so humbled when i talk to these people and hear/read about their life experiences. she spent twenty years around the world, being self employed, and even did humanitarian work in Haiti in the 80s. it was silly trying to put all that on her resume (we didn't).

no piece of paper will ever be able to capture a person's true talents and courage.

i really like the word courage these days...

me and who

2007-09-16T01:26:00.000-04:00

i really don't want to end up a scrawny old spinster with the cats and fumbly knitting. i don't even like cats.

maybe it's just me and my romantic illusions...but how is it that the protagonists in books always end up with someone, however plain or flawed they may be? 'it just happens', but how does it all really happen...that moment when you just click and something is stirring and you feel all floaty and champagne-bubbly like.

there are no real answers...just felt like wondering through writing.

sophomore!

2007-09-08T12:10:00.000-04:00

couldn't have asked for a better first week back: minimal jetlag and homework, interesting classes (especially 'the victorian novel' - steeped in novel reading, including dickens' Bleak House), beautiful summery weather, fun suitemates, and all the wonderful brownies. when i first stepped into newark airport i confess to feeling a bit sickened by all the americanism that was at once familiar yet instictively foreign. but college campus life is so different...! it is nice knowing you belong.

courses i'm taking this fall semester
* Intermediate Japanese
* Basic Physics - yeah i know what you're going to say; my answer is i actually enjoy physics and chemistry more than biology (or at least i did, back in the GCSE years). i also shopped Intro to Calculus Part II but the professors were horrible at teaching. what is with the math department anyway? is it that hard to find qualified individuals who are enthusiastic about their subject, can smile, and know how to explain integration lucidly? sheeesh.
* The Victorian Novel
* Chinese - still wondering whether to take Academic or the lower level course, Advanced II. i shopped both and am confused. i feel as if the lower level one would be an easy A; the Academic would be one of those work- hard-or-fail courses (for my level anyway). and i don't do the failing thing.

so that's about it for classes...i'm a little apprehensive about taking three languages, but a lot of people do that, so it can't be that hard. will post photos of my room some other time! i haven't finished decorating though the turquoise/blue rug lx recommended does wonders to the colour scheme, or as dv said, ties the whole room together :D.

blah

2007-08-29T00:19:00.000-04:00

what i hate about life is that no matter how much you hold onto a certain world, it will inevitably shift due to some thing and thereafter take on different shades of meaning and feeling. maybe that's supposed to render us more resourceful, strong beings. events are viewed through their effects..the lessons and realisations. but all this only comes after slugging your way through that in between period when what was before and what is now is so different - and i still don't know what i really think. nor does anyone it seems. it's just a whole bunch of awful silence and attempts to string together thoughts that are only half forming.

down with sheila-like sensibility

2007-08-25T06:24:00.000-04:00

it's strange finding myself with this blog, wondering what i should write. conversations with ritz about public blogs crop up perennially - this time i decided to just do it, even though we've always agreed that blogs are complex things. for one, i hate the idea of being judged by what or how i write (might as well 'fess up now: i'm a crappy writer when it comes to anything other than english essays, lacking the eloquence of my counterparts). and the idea of conveying private thoughts in an incredibly public medium freaks me out a little. but if i don't have the guts to post entries read only by friends and acquaintances, then i might as well forget about pursuing a career in publishing or teaching.

i say this as disclaimer to what i'm about to do now, and that is, talk about something i've wanted to discuss with others but was unable to for fear of boring them. it concerns an obsession with mine which most people don't understand. not the obesssion part; the sheila-actually-obsesses-over-things? part.

...Christian Bale! recently rewatched Little Women for the nth time, and all the wonderful scenes have just been replaying in my mind these past few days. truth...Little Women was one of my favourite books as a 10-year old; i used to address all my diary entries with 'Dear Beth' because Beth is the sweetest and gentlest of the March sisters. :)

so for the fun of it, here's a list of Bale movies i've seen and want to see. you will be surprised at some of the titles...and have probably watched him in quite a few without realizing it!

checked off
- 'Empire of the Sun': he was only 13 when he took on the starring role as an English boy separated from his parents in Shanghai, the day the Japanese invaded (1937? ahh my chinese history is rusty.) bale's performance was so amazing a movie academy created a whole new award for him - best juvenile performance.

- 'Pocahontas': yes the disney movie! ahh bet you didn't know that he voiced Thomas' character (the guy who gets arrowed by the native americans by the river)

- 'The New World': those who can appreciate or at least tolerate slow, achingly beautiful scenes with zero dialogue should watch this...it's a modern re-enactment of the Pocahontas story. coincidentally, it also stars Colin Farrell who i used to obsess over 4 years ago hahaha

- 'Little Women': :)

- 'Equilibrium': a cult video classic amongst some guys, it is apparently often shoplifted from video rental places cuz there were limited copies produced! having said that, i hated this movie. it was like a really bad version of the Matrix with a lot of guns, solemn guys in black suits and pseudo religion/science vs morality stuff.

- 'The Prestige': Bale was good, but i liked the other magician-flick 'The Illusionist' with Edward Norton more

- 'Howl's Moving Castle': you HAVE to see this animation movie by Ghibli Studio if you haven't already! same director as Totoro, Spirited Away, etc.

- 'Batman Begins': one of my favourites :) but i still like the older Michael Keaton batman movies

to-be-checked-off
- 'The Portrait of A Lady': couldn't believe he was in this movie!! those who knew me well during the IB years probably remember me carrying around this book by Henry James (THE master of novel-writing...you must read 'The Turn of the Screw' or 'Washington Square'). it was cuz i wrote my extended essay on this book! it's just too bad there isn't a rental copy in Singapore :(

- 'Harsh Times': Bale plays some deranged American soldier who returns from the Gulf War. the trailer was... .... intense stuff.

- 'The Dark Knight': batman sequel! summer 2008

- '3:10 to Yuma': the title refers to a train bound for Yuma. Christian Bale is a ranch owner who volunteers to hold, then escort an outlaw (Russel Crowe) to his hearing in Yuma. okay so i've never even seen a Western, but the whole Bale/Crowe conflict in the story seems pretty intriguing. see the trailer at: http://www.310toyumathefilm.com/ it releases on sep 7th - so soon!!

sorry...i've bombarded you all long enough :D. i'll try posting something less self indulged next time. if this has piqued your interest in the actor, then yay i'm glad :)

summer 2007: hong kong and japan segments!

2007-08-13T06:44:00.000-04:00

interning at DBS
a humbling experience :). having to go in there knowing nothing about finance...do a crappy chinese translation of my powerpoint presentation...mess up pitchbook binding (the pages fell out half an hour before a big meeting between our corporate banking team and the client)...oh and one moment i'll never forget - accidentally disconnecting THE boss who was on long-distance call from the singapore hq. muakaka! (in hindsight the stitchy side of me can appreciate this, but at the time it was a tad bit humiliating.) these things really made realize how getting As in school kinda means nothing in the corporate arena.

then there was the research+ powerpoints + elf-ish duties of rushing stuff for my co-workers who, poor things, had tens of conference calls daily and many pending presentations all at once.

but i can't stray too far from the typical internship story and say it wasn't worth it. the team was genuinely nice (and so smart in a down-to-earth way) and i made some friends :D. and even a pathetic number-cruncher like me finally figured out how to handle corporate financials. although i admit that many mornings i was glum about work, it's just something i had to try out. if anything, it's kinda like an immunity card for times when my dad plays the whole you-should-consider-a-respectable-career-like-banking hint.

hello hokkaido!
onto happier memories! so after 6 weeks of work (made bearable mostly by getting to see a bunch of hk visitors: risa, cinnie, lanxiu and childhood japan friends larry and fred) i was rewarded with a lovely time in japan. some snapshots of our little adventures on the southern coast of hokkaido...

day 1: driving from the airpot in Chitose to our ryokan (traditional inn with tatami rooms and onsen - hot public baths) for the night. as you can see, stitch earnestly served as our navigation assistant while my brother and i just took photos.

left: mom happy about dinner
right: and with good reason - here was our menu (we were served everything on it! though many were tiny sculptures of pickled vegetables and seafood)

day 2: Muroran
breakfast! and then more driving along the scenic coast. i like the lighthouse picture with the sea of japan.

the rest of the day was spent driving southwards along Hokkaido's coast down to Hakodate. along the way, we raided some supermarkets for japanese snacks, which proved immensely popular for the car rides :D

day 3 and 4: Hakodate
Hakodate was one of those treaty ports opened by the americans in 1854. port implies sea which implies....seafood!

early morning excursion to the seafood market - lots of kani (crab) and ika (squid).

eating grilled crab at a market vendor // michael and me at the pier

the star-shaped park in Hakodate, complete with a quaint moat and viewing tower! and us up on the tower

Afternoon, Dusk and Evening Views from Mt. Hakodate
going up the cable car ropeway at 5:30. then the afternoon view at 5:45ish? not that many people there yet...6:15 the lights slowly flicker on! and night view at 7:15

left: the open sea during sunset

our Hakodate visit coincided with their annual street dance festival, which was fun to witness. i regret not taking pictures of the hordes of people dancing behind the parade trucks and buses (though i do have a video of a flock of people jumping up and down and dancing to the organisers "IKKA, IKKA, IKKA, IKKA!!!" i think it means dance...not quite sure but i should really know this huh. help, risa?

days 5, 6, 7: Sapporo and Otaru

so the rest of the trip was spent in Sapporo. we did a little sightseeing at the old government building, Sapporo TV tower, some parks but generally our stay consisted of a lot of eating (tonkatsu - fried pork cutlets served with rice, soup and shredded cabbage, japanese hamburger steaks, udon, ramen, sashimi, more crab, yakitori YUMM) and shopping.

me and my wonderful parents and brother...:) a lot of our late evenings in the hotel were spent doing Sudoku challenges, puzzle challenges and card games hahaha. we're a very competitive lot. (or at least within the family setting)

left: parents and the sapporo tv tower (nothing special i think, but it's a nice pic)

below: another dinner revolving around crab...hairy crab, long-legged crab, err plain crab. and me standing in front of a hot foot-bath site where people get to soak their weary feet

Otaru - another coastal town famous for glass warehouses and the small canel you see in the below pic. a very touristy place though. the vanilla yoghurt ice-cream there was amazing though.

naturally i have to leave you with a glimpse of stitch! okay prior to this japan trip, i considered myself to be a pretty hard-core stitch lover. but the Japanese seem even more smitten with stitch - he is everywhere! in every marketable form too! i went to small town supermarkets and he was there grinning like the hawaiian imp that he is, on 100 yen cups, chopsticks, fans, cushions, hair accessories (little stitch heads clasped to hair bands), towels, bags, stationery and this was just in the suburban areas of southern hokkaido. in the city, stitch is visibly popular than mickey mouse or any other disney character. so i'm not crazy after all teehee.

and now home in singapore again. technically i wasn't away for that long, but it felt like it. (can't imagine having to stay at Brown for most of the summer...!) it's strange cuz even in hk i sometimes feel very out of place despite having lived there for 8 years. can't quite pinpoint the reasons for this; perhaps it's just the constant rush of city and working life and all the fuss on appearances which gets to me sometimes. singapore really is, as one of my coworkers and friends commented, more casual. this isn't a moral statement; singapore is just a little more laid back and i guess this is good for comfyness-loving people like me.