Flying time

It's been three years since I took my A Levels. I was thinking about this because last week I had dinner with some RJ friends, and we had such a lovely time swapping updates about former schoolmates.

I was also reminded about that crazy flurry of exams because the psalm I'm reading this week is Psalm 27, which helped anchor me to an undulating peace during the prelims. (It's also sort of crazy that I've been reading a psalm a week for 150+27 weeks now. Man.)

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It's been three months since I last mentioned law school on this blog. Yes I was vain enough to check. And over the course of those three months I've become quite certain that God doesn't want me in law school after college. It's a blessing to be taking two law classes at SOAS -- like taking Comedy and Tragedy and modern physics during my freshman year at Williams -- and as fascinated as I am by their philosophical and historical dimensions, these classes have helped me realise that I don't have the patience that legal analysis demands.

Currently, the books I've checked out from the SOAS library comprise one Arabic grammar reference, two law books, three books on education and language, and five about economic development in Malaysia, Singapore and South Africa. We'll see.

I have to get that ego out of the way and trust that people better than me will fight those excruciatingly crucial legal battles at home. And I have to get that fear out of the way and trust that God has some purpose for the time I have invested and will invest in learning Arabic, even if it turns out to be just for conversation starters and sheer linguistic beauty rather than for intensely practical usage in sharia courts.

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It's been 1.5 months since I got to London: we're well into autumn now. I've actually been feeling cold over the last few days, even in my wool coat. Which is odd because last year in Williamstown at this temperature range (>5C, >40F) I was perfectly comfortable in a denim skirt sans tights, and I was going around in flip flips.

Time with good friends in Cambridge this weekend and a Skype call with a cousin last week made me realise that I miss being with people who know me well enough to insult me. Among all the vibrant people I've met in London, there are a few whom I joke with but hardly any who tease me -- most are too sweet or too distant. It's truly been a stellar time -- I'm just too ungrateful.

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It's been a week since I got a haircut at the Vidal Sassoon Advanced Academy. It's a spin on the student cut concept: I paid just 5 quid but the hairdresser wasn't a greenhorn, but someone who'd been cutting hair for years and was at the academy to learn "creative techniques". Which apparently sound like postmodern poetry: there is now controlled misdirection, concealed layers and disconnections on my head. The teacher really liked what the hairdresser was doing to my hair and kept calling it "brilliant, brilliant work". And although my haircut and me are distinct entities, having a "beautiful shape" is a pleasant compliment. According to the same teacher, there're supposed to be some squares and a triangle back there, but from my point of view I see a fringe and half a foot less of length, both of which are good changes that I'm still getting used to.

It's also been a few days since I decided that as much as I love my hooded black wool coat, it was boring. So eventually I cut up a spare (new) red-and-white-striped dish cloth and used dental floss to fasten it round half the buttons on my coat. No one's made any comments so far, but so long as no one approaches me in the street to say, "Pardon me, but why do you have a tea towel on your winter coat?" I will be content with my colourful buttons.

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It's a few hours till I set out for Sweden to visit a really good friend. I'm still weirded out by the combination of generous educational institution/weird economics of budget airlines/luck/grace that is making this possible. And I'm so, so excited.

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Events log

Turn of the month: Christian Union weekend away in Marlow. Didn't find any horror, just scores of rich conversations, lovely food, a wildly fun water gun fight, and lots of nostalgia for camp days of yore.

Thursday: Had a major "Whoa I'm in London!!" moment when I was walking from campus to Victoria and got help up outside Buckingham Palace along the way because they were changing the guard!! (Which I think totally warrants tacky punctuation.) Once at Victoria, I met up with a Williams friend who was visiting London, and we moseyed past Hyde Park to Knightsbridge, where we ate Cornish pasties from the Harrod's food halls (i.e. the only buy-able department) and later drifted through the V&A, talking about life and art and home ownership.

Later in the evening, I went to my aunt's house for the Bonfire Night (= Nov 5 = Guy Fawkes) gathering that a cousin had pulled together. Yay bonfire! And double yay talking to all four cousins and all three of their spouses! Uhh. By which I mean the cousin who is my age isn't married yet. But yes, it was such a great time and I felt so happy.

Friday: LPO concert with my cousin -- really really liked the tension in the Verdi, got slightly drowsy during the charmingly exuberant Tchaikovsky, and was completely taken with the tempestuous majestic Dvorak.

Weekend: Cambridge. Gorgeous old town, venerable halls of learning &c, wonderful friends, marvelous concert, amazing walks. Am thankful. :)

Essay essay

As of yesterday, I've chosen the topics for the three term papers that I have to write (Arabic being the exception, which is a mercy since typing 200 words on Elias Khoury took me two hours). And the topics have been approved by course conveners, apart from this one prof who never seems to reply my emails, but whatever lah. :) Now I know where to focus my reading and I am happier.

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Events log

[which I am noting down more for my benefit than yours, since it's faster for me to type than to handwrite]

Thursday evening: Four years in Singapore taught me (among other things, of course) that if you can get GBP132 seats for 10 quid on student standby, you grab them. So a Polish postgrad and I went to the Royal Opera House for a double bill of L'Heure espagnole (Ravel) and Gianni Schicchi (Puccini). It was my first time seeing real opera on stage -- assuming deliciously bawdy comedies qualify as "real opera" -- and it was stupendous. Absurd premises and props, glorious voices, marvelous comic timing (, impressive subtitle machine). And, during the intermission, exciting life stories from my friend.

Friday evening: Met up with a former classmate whom I haven't seen since our PMR, and then followed her to Overseas Christian Fellowship -- where "overseas" basically means Singaporean and Malaysian, so I ran into two other former schoolmates from A-level days. It was unnervingly familiar and I experienced major which-country-am-I-in issues, but it's always cool to reunio ... ite with people after a while and see what they've been letting God do in their lives.

Saturday afternoon/evening: One of those days where I did insufficient research and had a blast with the nagging sense that it could have been better. To wit: went to the British Museum with my cousin. Found out that half the existing Parthenon carvings are five minutes from my uni campus (and felt like an idiot for not searching them out earlier)! And also that I seem to really like glassware. Saw a tonne of other beautiful arresting foreign old things in that wonderful building; thought very conflicted thoughts about what colonialism does to culture.

After munching our way through hot dogs in the museum steps, we deduced that both of us would far prefer an evening of good cheap music to an evening of homework. After some dithering on my part, my cousin remembered that there was student standby at the London Philharmonic that night, so we sped over there and paid our four pounds each and dropped in our seats moments before the conductor came out, with very little idea of what would ensue. It turned out to be the premier of Rautavaara's Incantations (my first percussion concerto and a fascinating feat of dexterity; liked the third movement a lot better than the first two) and Bruckner's Eighth Symphony (gorgeous but I neither expected nor had the stamina for a >1.5 hour piece).

Sunday morning: Together with my cousin I visited the Hillsongs church, in the same auditorium that hosts performances of We Will Rock You. At concert-services like this one it's always a struggle for me to focus on God when the lighting team is practicing their art and lead guitarist's solo is projected on a larger-than-life screen and the sermon poses no intellectual challenge (yeah, my ego grosses me out too). In settings like this -- where so much attention seems directed to styles of musical worship -- it's also an insuperable challenge for me to neither judge nor feel judged. But clearly they're a platform that shows God to throngs of people, and clearly I don't yet see things with His light.

Sunday afternoon/evening: Did most of the Jubilee Walkway with a SOAS friend. Embarrassingly we got lost at the beginning, attempting to traverse the very short distance between Trafalgar Square and Admiralty Arch. But yay London! And yay walking. Downside was that it was the first day that Daylight Savings started (/ended?) so it got dark super early and we decided to cut out walk short. But two bonuses: (a) outdoor secondhand book tables between the National Theatre and the River -- I caved in and bought Heller's Portrait of an artist, as an old man (really liking it so far) and a book that I've been wanting to give one of my friends; (b) after lots of uninspiring menu-gazing at Covent Garden, we found this affordable Turkish-ish restaurant that is apparently very well-reviewed and I had a wonderfully succulent lamb tagine (howsay).

Wednesday evening: Benjamin Bagby's Beowulf at the British Library! Concession tickets for GBP7.50. I don't know recall I know about Bagby -- possibly my good friend who'd read Beowulf and consequently told me lots of interesting things about the Merovingian et al on the way out of the cinema after we watched Matrix Reloaded together -- but I was really really excited before and not at all disappointed after (notwithstanding the considerably less classy subtitle projector haha). His incredibly sonorous voice and mobile features traversed such a range of registers and characters, accompanied by this cool reconstructed 7th century six-string harp (which kept making me think of one of the Chinese orchestra instruments that I can never remember the name of). And of course it was fun listening out for understandable Anglo-Saxon snippets (the syntactical ordering seems really different); everyone chuckled at something that sounded like "beer drunken". After that I had a bunch of Malaysians and a Singaporean, ranging from a relative to a completely new acquaintance, over at my place for food and talk.

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Side note: might anyone know the name of this cartoon character in an animated short which ends with him saying, "Consume, conform, OBEY"? One of my friends showed it in class back in MG Singapore, and over the years it's bothered me a handful of times that I only remember him as Mr [something or other].

Oh wait nevermind! I just googled and his name is Mr. Snaffleburger. I now feel very satisfied (if slightly peeved that I let myself fall prey to search engines again). :)

Loser :)

I lost my wallet today: I'd detoured into a charity shop en route to buying groceries when I realised that it was gone. A security guard later told me that the area is known for pickpockets.

Still, it was sort of surprising since I'm pretty careful with my stuff. What was equally surprising was my lack of reaction. I didn't get annoyed/disappointed at myself. I didn't even get flustered. It was actually pretty funny: for once I had a negative answer for the donation drive guy who asked me for spare change and subsequently gave me directions to the police station. We had a good laugh when I retraced my steps past him a second time.

And then I went to make a police report, and this made it better:

The man ahead of me in the police station queue was grubby and staggered. Then his turn and he told the officer how that he'd been sexually assaulted by a man at his friend's house, and I felt horrible for judging his midday stutter. I want to remember to pray for him.

So yes, I lost my wallet and had a fair amount of cash in it, and it'll cost me far more to replace my cards and keys than I like to think about in ringgit, but that's just money. Not that money isn't important or hard to come by, but it's not something inherently valuable like happiness or bodily safety or even time.

Which is a hint to myself to go start homework. Right now.

(Also, I checked with the box office and I can still collect November Les Mis tickets for myself and four friends even without the card that I'd used to pay for them. Phew.)

but words make good picture frames

especially when the pictures are as un-fetching as these: this is a warts-and-all post; the illustrated London-is-gorgeous post will come later on. :)

After years/months/weeks of faithful service, my three plastic hair clips broke over the same week. Just like that. So now I am left with hairties, bobby pins, this long metal clip that I've had since JC and which once set off a metal detector, and ambivalence about my hair.

In London it's mostly been either completely loose or completely bunned up (with the dangerous metal clip). A couple times I tried braiding it, which was always a reliable way to get it out of the ... way, but for some reason I wasn't happy with that. But London isn't as humid as Malaysia so I don't generally feel unhappy with my hair, although sometimes I do forget that it's relatively long.

While the last two paragraphs may have been of absolutely no consequence, you are now going to find out more about my skin than most of you'd ever want to know (I hope) because some of you may find it helpful (again, I hope). I say this because it is thanks to info on blogs that my arms now look better than pictured above.

So after I finally figured out my eyelid dermatitis (although it seems like 90 percent of hand soaps and bath gels contain cocamidopropyl betaine, which means that I have to spend a lot of time reading ingredients) and after isotretinoin cleared up a lot of my acne, my arms developed lots of little dry bumps. And then some of those bumps became larger lumps, which turned red.

Google suggested that the bumps were keratosis pilaris, i.e. excess keratin in hair follicles, and I figure the redness was KP conflated with skin allergies or something. Google also told me that (a) there is no uniformly effective treatment for KP, (b) severe KP is sometimes helped by isotretinion, which makes sense because it flared up just after I'd just stopped my oral acne treatment, and (c) topical retinoids like adapalene sometimes help KP.

Luckily, I had some adapalene (Differin) on hand which I'd been instructed to use for acne, and it did help smoothen the lumps somewhat. But the picture above is from my cousin's wedding,which was a good-ish day for my arms after approximately three weeks of adapalene application.

So I resorted to Google again, and this time found some sites recommending Eucerin's Intensive Urea Treatment Lotion. And yes, urea sounds gross (science types: I did take O Level Bio and know urea is excreted in sweat etc etc, but you have to concede that it's not a savoury name) and I can't believe I shelled out 13 quid for a toiletry item -- but it worked. In less than a week my arms looked normal, unless you were bored or creepy enough to really stare at them. And they're continuing to improve. So yay urea! Ummm. Yes. Oh my friend says this Eucerin lotion worked on her sister's eczema too.

This photo is from the one time I indulged in the vanity of taking pictures of food that I cook. And then I decided that the picture wasn't as appetising as the food and forsook that documentary exercise. But yah upwards of 500 people on allrecipes.com put a 5-star rating on this honey baked chicken recipe (honey, mustard, curry powder, butter), so I decided to try it. Or, at least, to try a version of it where I use the same ingredients but anyhow whack with proportions, since I don't own measuring implements and can't be bothered. And I was happy. Yay food.

The other day I realised that I have mostly been cooking ang moh food and mostly eating Asian food when I go out. o_O

The reason I've been eating mostly Asian food out is that I've mostly been eating out with Malaysians. Socially, coming to London has been more like visiting KL than going to Williamstown; there are so many people here whom I haven't seen for years or who are friends-of-friends.

But beyond that, London is just crawling with Malaysians. In the States whenever I hear a Malaysian/Singaporean accent I want to accost the speaker and get to know them, just because it's such a rarity. Here I hear home accents virtually every time I cut through this shopping centre near campus. The jeans in the picture from a Relief for Romania charity shop here; they were one of three pairs of Applemints jeans there. Applemints is a Malaysian (or at least some cheena) brand that my secondary school friends used to like. It's uncanny.

The internationalisation is even more pronounced at SOAS, given the nature of its academics. But in this case it's really cool. In my Arabic class, for example, the only language that you see in everyone's notebooks is Arabic; I jot down explanations in English, the guy next to me writes down synonyms in German, there's a European girl who writes her notes in Urdu since she knows that better than Arabic, and so on.

Even at SOAS, though, a lot of people form miniature ethnic enclaves. Which is of course natural. But I think what bothers me about de facto groupings by race is that descent is something that you cannot choose. Social patterns that revolve around political leanings or study habits or career choices or drinking patterns or whatever at least involve an element of self-selection. Which is not at all to imply that such selection is a matter of genuine choice -- I'm just saying that sometimes I'm frustrated that some of the impressions (good/bad immaterial) people have of me are based on things that I have no possibility of changing. Which basically means that I am a silly coward. But I'm not too worried as long as the happy thoughts outnumber the silly/cowardly thoughts. :)

This photo is from the open-top bus tour that the uni's student union organized during Freshers Week. During the tour I actually did accost someone because I heard his Malaysian accent. But anywho.

London has a good 24-hour bus system that I'd been too lazy to check out up to a week ago, since I prefer walking and trains. But it was really good that I decided to figure out some bus routes this week, because there were a couple nights when I was out late with friends and needed to get back alone, and because today the trains I could take to east London for church were all out of service.

On the way back from church one of the buses was really packed. When I first got on I was facing a middle-aged, religious-garbed man, who kept swinging his pelvis against me. I turned sideways, then shifted my large bag to the other shoulder so it was between us (probably elbowing a couple people in the process), but he still kept swaying. I didn't look him in the face because I didn't want to acknowledge him, but maybe also because I didn't dare.

Then when I got the chance I moved down the aisle, which placed me next to the seat of this guy who was picking a fight with the person standing in from of him, and who fixed a smile in my direction till I looked up and nodded to him. And then I immediately looked away. I was also still avoiding the gaze of the first man.

Finally I got a seat, which was fine till the last few minutes of the ride when the seat next to me was vacated and that first man walked over and sat down. He didn't do anything except pressing his arm into mine quite insistently after a while, but I had already frozen. I could not believe that I was neither saying nor doing anything definite. I may be self-conscious but I'm not shy. And I've walked through cities alone far later than is prudent and strategically fended off smarmy guys on the dance floor.

On the bus I was half wondering if maybe he hadn't been intentionally touching me -- maybe he was just moving in time to the bus? And I'd been reading my Bible during the ride and was also half wondering how I could say something that conveyed an utter lack of respect but still retained love. But I didn't say anything. Not even, excuse me. I always remember being on a bus after guitar club in Form 3 and hearing a girl assert to the lout next to her, "Jangan sentuh saya!" But I didn't say anything.

After getting off the bus I walked into Superdrug to buy cough syrup (my throat's been off for the last few weeks) (and to make sure that he wasn't following me) and then I got a Krispy Kreme for the walk back, and I felt okay. But it's still scary how passive I was. And it's disgusting that one player in that tableau was the small part of me that still marvels how some people find me attractive enough to be worth any effort. And it's horrifying to consider the millions upon millions who have experience unimaginably worse than my minor public transport melodrama.

Sometimes I'm not sure where the line between trivializing and inflating is. But I'm so thankful that I can be sure of the One who is merciful. And I hope so much that you perceive the sincerity of that last sentence.

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Events log

Tuesday night: Watched Beckett's Endgame (by Complicite and the Duchess) with a Malaysian friend. Superb acting; the director was a brilliant Clov. It was harrowing and hilarious with a spontaneity that could not escape its own dreadful pattern; within a room that had high brick walls and two grubby windows the quartet (trinity) of characters interacted with a violence that I inflict only on my own thoughts. I laughed, knowing full well that Beckett was laughing at me. GBP20 for a concession ticket; actually worth it.

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If you've endured the bulk of this post: here is something a bit more aesthetic. :)

Turning makes the world go round

I have issues with simplicity. There are always so many things I want to do and think about in this tortuous world, and sometimes I get flustered or agitated or exhausted because of this.

I get especially bothered when it comes to communication, because regardless of how much time I spend writing emails or wall posts there are always so many more people whom I care about but whom I cannot correspond with right now because there are articles to read or meals to cook or sleep to be had or desks to tidy or distractions to indulge in. And there are always so many more people whom I care about but who slip my mind in the fray. When I do remember them, I feel even worse.

All of which is really silly because I know that I never need to do more than I can. I also know that the only way to really know what I should be doing is to pray -- or at least to slow down enough to make choices with both my scarce resources and my infinite God in mind, rather than barreling on to the next in the jumble of things that just has to be done immediately.

But there is this really idiotic, overanalytic part of me that likes complications. It arrogates to equality with the genuine thought that I attempt to harness during complex classes and conversations, but really it's pathetic.

It's funny: discipline is a simple thing, but simplicity is so difficult. Like calculus, it's one of those elegant habits that I tend to forget after long breaks away from routine.

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Events log

Sunday morning: Sung eucharist at St. Paul's. Cathedral and singing and sermon were all stunning. Like God's implausible grace, it was free.

Piecemeal

It seems that I always want to do everything at once: there're just so many things that I would like to/feel I should do.

Which has proven to be a relatively weighty matter when I'm at Williams, where I let obligations and conversations expand and encroach on sleep. I honestly don't know whether to add academics and health to the victim list, because God has been preposterously graceful. I so need to get better at listening to Him about where to delineate time territories, though.

At SOAS so far the stakes have been relatively lower since I'm not committed to extracurriculars, but too often I have found myself in the kitchen trying to boil something in a pot and wash a dish and eat a fruit and read something all at once. It actually kindof works. I shall be careful with the pages of my books, though.

I also need to remember to defrost meat ahead of time. There was this kilo of ground beef in particular -- I'd think about defrosting it right before I fell asleep, and then completely forget the next day till two hours before I wanted to cook. It eventually became red pasta sauce, shepherd's pie, meatballs, and olive oil/celery/onion/garlic/basil pasta sauce, so it wasn't a complete failure.

(This olive oil sauce happened because I couldn't fit any more meatballs on the tray and was impatient, so I smushed them and threw other stuff in.)

(Also, if you put cheese in meatballs and try to bake them, they might each develop little moats of cheese in the oven. For you to know and me to find out.)

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Events log

Tuesday night: Watched The Woman In Black with my cousin. It was sort of an impulse thing -- I've always wanted to buy standby tickets from the legendary Leicester Square booth, and this was the cheapest show that I'd been told was really good. And it was! though it's not a genre that I'd normally watch. The older man did some masterful character switching, and I usually like play-within-a-play deals.Worth the GBP15 that I paid, but don't think it was worth GBP15*(RM/GBP)5.4. And yay for cousins who teman me. :)

Wednesday night: Went for the first night of the Royal Ballet Company's Mayerling with a fellow study-abroad-er. It was superb -- all those people moving in devastatingly beautiful ways that the human body wasn't quite built to move in, the sumptuous costumes, the themes and variations in the movements and music (Liszt!), loaded narration sans words, the crazy intricate logistics of it all. And our amphitheatre tickets were only GBP1 each because a very nice rich lady sponsored the first night for "invited guests", which included random students on the standby mailing list. :)

Thursday night: Reluctantly attended a freshers party since I'd already paid for a ticket (man, I keep talking about money) and wanted to catch up with the friend that I went with. But I ended up enjoying myself an absurd amount. It was possibly the first dance party/clubbing thing where I didn't feel bored at some point. o_O They played a really alternative spread of music that I'd never tune into but which was a blast for dancing.

Tangent: it is annoying that one of the few things that is cheaper here than at home is alcohol. And no, I just had one Malibu/Coke that night, so my enjoyment had nothing to do with intoxication. Even if I were so inclined, I'm too much of a cheapskate* to (a) pay for booze that doesn't taste good, and (b) pay for enough nice-tasting booze to get buzzed.

*At first I typed "I'm too cheap" then realised that it was all too appropriate for the context.

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I'd always thought that when I went abroad (i.e. abroad-abroad; oh dear sudden mental image of the wonderful Zits strip where Jeremy thinks his brother is going to spend the year as "a broad") -- where was I. Yes, I'd always thought I'd join the CF and some sort of dance group.

SOAS is too alternative/left/cool to have ballroom or Latin, but the inter-university union does and I'm sort of torn about whether or not to take beginner classes. Because it'd be fun, but I would probably be awkward coward, and for GBP4 or 5 I might was well watch other people (e.g. the Royal Ballet Society) dance instead of myself. See how lah.

I've gone for a few Christian Union things, though, and I really appreciate the tone of the group so will definitely keep going. Also, sparked by an intense conversation with a CU girl, I put up a poster in my hall downstairs about a Sunday night dorm prayer group. I was also feeling awkward/cowardly about putting my name on it and I have no idea if anyone will turn up tomorrow, so if you're a praying person I would be grateful for your prayers. (Wooo infinite regress.)

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It occurs to me that I haven't mentioned one of the things that I'm most excited about this semester, i.e. classes. So yes, I am in The Economic Development of Southeast Asia, Islamic Law, Public International Law and Arabic. I am also told that I'm in nerdland. But if you're (a) one of my friends and (b) reading a blog, you're probably not in a place to judge. :)

All you need

On Friday after a two-hour Arabic placement exam -- which was not the kindest re-introduction to school, but I'm thankful for how I did -- an old Williams friend and a new SOAS friend and I caught one of the last performances of As You Like It at the Globe. It was a lovely sunny day and our GBP5 groundling tickets got us right by the stage for the charmingly nuanced production.

On Saturday I watched my cousin get married The ceremony was beautiful and it was such a calm (though wistful) joy to watch him and his exquisite bride smile at each other. The service started at 2pm and the party went on till 10pm so by the time cleanup was over we were pretty tired, but I just felt so honoured to be both part of the family and in London at the right time.

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It seems like I have a very binary attention span: either I really really concentrate or I swap between things constantly. Case in point: I typed half a sentence of the preceding section then moved down to write this. Also: when I'm having a face-to-face conversation and get a text I often start replying the SMS then continue talking and forget to finish the text, which really doesn't help on either front.

Right now I have readings that I should do and stuff that I should write but don't really have to do anything urgently right now -- the last couple weeks have been more like a vacation than most of my summer, but no complaints whatsoever -- so I've been starting emails then beginning Facebook messages then writing another sentence of an email before trying to get Malaysian news sites to load again. Which is a huge waste of time. And I should be praying more about how I use the remaining 90 percent or so of my term in London.

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It's interesting that I forgot to mention in my last post that the only genuine antidote I've found to silly social insecurities is praying about how to love the people I meet rather than fretting about what they will think of me (and what I will think of them -- I hate how I sometimes judge people). Which the book 1 John totally anticipated: fear flees from perfect love much quicker than it does from reminders that I Am A Friendly Person. It's silly/frustrating/tragic how much I focus on myself.

It's equally silly/frustrating/tragic how I worry about people's reactions when a post on this blog goes all Christian midway. But since I can only blog authoritatively (ish) about myself, hopefully things are spicier when I remember to bring in my relationship with someone else, i.e. God. :)

In which I sound like a T-shirt

because I heart London. I really do. And I'm super excited about the semester! Lectures only start next week, but as of today I've gotten verbal approval for the two courses that I hope to count towards my major (i.e. political economy). And then I was sitting on the grass in the square next to campus and a pigeon saw fit to relieve itself on the reading list for The Economic Development of Southeast Asia. o_O But yay nonetheless!

There have been a lot of things that I wanted to blog about but didn't because I've been doing other junk on my computer (emails, a bit of Facebook, lots of looking at maps, orientation schedule, class timetables, booking GBP8 Ryanair tickets to visit a friend in Sweden, etc). And I am determined to go to bed before midnight today, so I shall just say what comes to mind before I get embarrassed about being long-winded.

1. Being in London is still sort of surreal. I was trying to figure out why it always takes a while for it to sink in when I go to a new place, and I think it might be because I always expect myself to feel different when I travel, but I don't, but it makes sense that I don't since it's just my location that changes and not my brain/soul/temperament/essence/[other pretentious term]. But since I always feel like I should feel different but never do (jet lag excepted), I don't know why I still always have the same expectations. I must not be a dog, Pavlov (in the "therefore I conclude" and not the imperative form of must) (grammaretical terminolology ownage).

2. If you tried to parse Point 1, I'm sorry. If you succeeded in parsing Point 1, I don't know if I should declare you my best friend for life or Try To Help you.

3. My knees sort of hurt. I must be getting old. I've also been doing an average of three hours of walking every day, which I think is lovely. It's a good thing my joints can't think because then we'd have fights. And the four hours plus of clubbing yesterday didn't help -- there was a freshers party and I hadn't gone out in London yet (it's interesting how many different concepts claim the phrase "going out"), and I met someone whom I wanted to chat with so I said I'd walk there with her. It was a really mainstream club; I spent about 2/3 of the time dancing and 3/4 of the time wondering why I'd bothered going. It's sad that part of me (again, joints not included) wants to be among people who are desperately trying to look like they are having a good time.

4. It's really weird being in a place where I don't know anyone again. I lie -- I just had dinner with a Malaysian cousin and had lunch with two old RI Boarding friends when I moved from my aunt's to central London on Saturday, and I've gotten to know a bunch of people here, but you know what I mean lah. It's annoying to encounter orientation week insecurities again, especially now that post-orientation life at Williams has decisively disproved such insecurities. But the first evening after I moved into hall I was really tired from all the lugging and waiting and walking and I started thinking that maybe I'd just spend the term being isolated and exploring London and studying on my own and emailing other friends when I got lonely and such. That plan has kindof failed, though. :)

5. Although I almost felt like isolating myself again when I browsed the SEAsian collection in the SOAS library yesterday. It's ridiculously wonderful -- the books I saw include: a volume on betel nut chewing traditions in Southeast Asia, a five-inch thick Malay-English dictionary from colonial days, a Malay novel that I'd always looked at in my secondary school library but never actually read, and a book of Penang recipes, which I borrowed. I also checked out a book on the 1997 financial crisis (which happened way before I was remotely interested in economics so I'm am still hazy on the details but not for much longer!) and a collection of papers on language planning in SEAsia (possible prep for possible thesis). But yes, basically I felt I would be completely fulfilled if I just buried myself in the library for the term.

6. But then I remembered London. And then over the next few hours I met a Scottish fresher girl, a bunch of Japanese undergrads and postgrads, a Singaporean doing her second bachelors, a handful American exchange students, an Iraqi-Canadian, a Malaysian doing a masters in linguistics after his bachelors in engineering and his Filipina colleague, a Polish research student who also wants to exploit student discounts for theatre. And some other people. So the isolation plan failed again.

7. I have no recollection of what the fresher whom I walked to campus with this morning looks like. He was walking downstairs at the same time I was, so I asked him if he was walking to school and we talked the whole of the 20-minute journey and I can't remember his face. At least I did remember to also tell him that I'm really bad with faces. Bleh preemptive whatevers.

8. So far I have spoken American to everyone except my London cousins and the handful of Malaysians and Singaporeans that I've met. It started on the flights over -- talked for about three hours with the guy on my Abu Dhabi-London flight; he was very patient with questions like, "So how do Brits pronounce 'Sir Gawain'?" (I was reading it; he didn't know). At first I was peeved that my code switch default in the west is American, because it would be wonderful to acquire a quasi-British accent, but it just takes too much concentration to try to speak British. If I had more than 2.5 months here I'd definitely give it a go, but for now it's probably better for me to think about what I'm saying rather than how I'm pronouncing it (not least because history has shown that my mouth often works faster than my brain). And we shall see what transpires.

9. Setting up a kitchen requires so much shopping. It's sort of gross. But in a way grocery shopping is pleasant because I actually buy things from supermarkets, unlike 97 percent of other shops. The first few days were frustrating because I was trying to procure cheap pots and dishes. To wit: on Sunday I was walking back after church and buying a cheap wok in Chinatown and thought I would crown my satisfaction with tea. Then I remembered that I didn't own any mugs. The next day I bought a pot and some crockery from Oxfam and finally went to buy stuff to cook, but then I didn't have a knife and the small shops were closed and Sainsbury's only had big expensive knives, so I resorted to pasta with bottled sauce and just a lot of ground beef and frozen peas and carrots thrown in. But I shall make real food tomorrow.

10. I am now officially embarrassed and shall stop here.

English

So I wanted to put "London ho!" as my Facebook status, but then decided not to confuse my less nerdy and more upright friends.

I'm flying off today, and I'm so excited and nervous and thankful and everything. :)

(Thar she blows!)

Happy Malaysia Day