flowermoonfish

2011-09-26T17:03:00.001-04:00

We gotta keep moving, moving on

Here goes: I've moved to this blog, and I think I might miss this one a lot when I want to be less edited, but I've found a mode that works well for me at the new site.

I suspect I'm in a nostalgic mood, because I'm feeling quite reluctant to post this terminal note. Still, unless the Blogger servers ever die/delete my archives here, I'll be back sporadically to get all sentimental about all the stuff I saw and learnt throughout the span of this blog.

To infinity, and beyond!

2011-06-12T12:57:00.000-04:00

Experiment

So I just started fiddling with a Wordpress, and I might not be blogging here for a while. Depending on how the other blog goes, I might come back here in a couple weeks, or I might fully transition to the other one -- but I won't migrate permanently without first saying so here. I have, after all, been at this blog for an embarrassingly long time.

The reasons for this new foray include that Wordpress seems like a fun platform to play with (and I don't want to let Google take over my internet life, even if I'd be very happy under their regime), and also that I've been pretending this blog is anonymous for way too long. There are other reasons, and of course there are also other options, but I have some time on my hands and thought it'd be worth the gamble(/bol).

So I'll be here for now, and if you end up there too I'd love to hear your thoughts, even if your personal taste is rendered suspect by the fact that you're reading this blog in the first place. Just kidding. <3

2011-06-10T01:12:00.000-04:00

Arriving

a friend from my freshman dorm, with said dorm in background

[written in KLIA, June 7] It's an odd thing -- moving from the euphoria of affirmations and exhortations, through the exuberant anguish of photographed farewells, and the frustration of last-minute packing and discarding, into an airport. Knowing that in a little more than a day you will walk out of another airport into another home.

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[also written in KLIA, June 7] It was an interesting inversion. Four years ago you were on the bus from the airport with her and her mother, then the second one arrived a few hours after you'd settled into the dorm, and you met him even later, probably at Bible study. This time, he left first, with his family, then you left the second one standing in the driveway -- exchanging reassurances in ritualistic humour; no, you don't look weird in leggings; no, you're definitely not fat -- and then the first one and her mother drove you to the airport in their rented car.

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[and now, after a brief bout of confusion about why you're using the second person, and then weary resignation because you'd sound batty either way, you continue] You have a love-hate relationship with the check-in counter -- it marks the point where you can have done with your unwieldy luggage after multiple modes of public transport, but it sometimes makes you pay for the privilege. And you know that today you'll have to pay, because you have all four years of stuff with you (barring 28 pounds of books and 20 pounds of winter wear that are hopefully on their way to London).

A terse officer, the only person manning the whole set of counters, tells you that both bags are a few pounds over 70, and that it'll cost you $100 each bag between 50 and 70 pounds. But the airline I'm ticketed with said it's $50 a bag? Well, she might have to collect their fees too, but the $100 is standard for any flight they operate.

Ah. Repacking gets both bags under 70 pounds -- barely -- while your friend offers to help you fight the charges (haha). Last year she'd helped you fight in JFK, and you accidentally (but sincerely) cried, and they waived the charge that you weren't supposed to pay anyway (it was the booking website's mistake). You don't know, you're a bit scared of the check-in staff. You sigh.

You take the bags back to the counter, and she raises her eyebrows at the duct tape that's failing to keep the hand-me-down suitcase intact. You blurt out -- part fluster, part strategy, all truth -- that you just finished four years of college on financial aid, and that your school is paying your ticket home.

She walks away to deal with other passengers, and comes back a while later. Just give her back the claim stubs she gave you just now, and she'll make new luggage tags, okay? You nod, uncertain. And then she tags your bags and gives you new claim stubs and nods you on your way without a word about fees.

You burble. Thanks so much, and this might sound weird, but is there anything she might like you to pray for her about. She says no. Well, you really, really appreciate all her help, it makes a huge difference, you hope God blesses her!

It was one of those gem-like moments -- exquisite and piercing -- where you receive and cannot at all repay and simmer in (metaphorically) speechless helpless gratitude. You can't very well write in a customer appreciation note thanking United that their staffperson lost the company a couple hundred dollars. You couldn't even thank her explicitly on the spot, because there were too many other customers at the counter. Her graciousness thoroughly, unexpectedly trumped your weak scheming.

Which, you remember, is what you talked about at the combined Good Friday service at your college chapel two years ago, which was structured around Christ's seven last words.

It’s hard to admit that I’m not always needed. It’s hard to admit that, after all these years, I still throw tantrums sometimes. It’s hard to admit that someone has paid my bill for me, and there’s absolutely nothing that I can do about it.

And I think that often it’s hard to admit these things because admitting them means that I have to look at myself, and see just how helpless I am, how inconsistent, how much I mess up the divine image that God has put in me -- how wrong. Because when I look at these things, I get very uneasy and feel a need to do something: to be better, to hide, to pretend, to make myself a perfect person.

But then if I look away from myself, and look towards Christ, He says: “It is finished.”

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But those aren't quite the words you're looking for at the moment. You're tired, and distracted -- yay Kindle! -- and you really want to pray and you're kindof praying but you're being lazy. And then you remember that it's Sunday, and you haven't yet read your psalm for the new week. And you find splendid thankful words at the opening of Psalm 105:

Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name;

make known among the nations what he has done.

Sing to him, sing praise to him;

tell of all his wonderful acts.

Glory in his holy name;

let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.

Look to the Lord and his strength;

seek his face always.

Remember the wonders he has done,

his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced,

O descendants of Abraham his servant,

O sons of Jacob, his chosen ones.

The rest of the long psalm charts milestones in Israel's early history, and you observe, with brief contrition, that it's usually easier for you to marvel at your insanely dense Williams heritage than your insanely dense Christian heritage (though you're all too good at the self-righteous anger against quoteunquote Christian political violence).

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Towards the end of your first flight -- it's just an hour-long connection on one of those dinky little planes that require a judicious arrangement of passengers if the flight isn't full -- you notice that the guy next to you has purple and yellow wristbands. Which isn't all too remarkable, since the yellow one is the ubiquitous "Live strong" band, but it also wouldn't be all too remarkable if he were actually wearing your school colours for a reason. The airport was only an hour from campus; one of your classmates, who will also be in England next year, is sitting with her father a few seats ahead, and there are two Sri Lankan master's students from the development economics program up and across the aisle.

So after the plane touches down you ask him, this might be a strange question (you're doing a lot of that today), but are you affiliated with Williams? And he says yes, he was attending commencement. Turns out he put on the purple-and-yellow bands at his graduation two years ago, and hasn't taken them of since. It also turns out that you both share a major, and that his political economy senior seminar project group had won that year's prize for the delivery of an essay -- essentially for talking -- that you'd just shared yesterday with your two Pakistani and one Peruvian groupmates. And taxiing up the runway you exchange names -- oh man, this is weird, but you might have interviewed him a while ago for one of the post-recession newspaper articles you wrote about the job market. He vaguely remembers; he has a good job but is interviewing for other positions now.

Once you get to your next gate, you call one of your old friends who graduated a year before. You'd already told him you'd call, but as you're waiting for the call to connect you remember that he was the one who'd co-written that story on the job market with you two years ago.

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And of course it wouldn't be an episode from your life if it didn't involve relearning a silly lesson you'd supposedly internalised after an earlier mishap. This time, it's wearing a new pair of shoes without breaking them in.

You indulge in amused recollections-- you hadn't broken them in because you'd been busy, and a lot of the potential breaking-in days had been rainy, but you'd still convinced yourself it was okay because they were one of your heavier pairs of shoes and would've been a pain to pack, and also because they were orthopedic, and orthopedic shoes shouldn't hurt your feet, right? (Which reminds you of the "caution hot" story. Sigh. Haha.) You'd ordered them shortly after the school orthopedist told you that you had a chronic sprain -- one of the ligaments in your ankle was permanently damaged -- because you were buying an ankle guard online and these popped up at more than 50 percent off and thus a very good price for leather loafers, orthopedic or not. (And you remembered being very intimidated by shoe prices in England, so you felt silly for the preemptive shoe purchase, and even sillier for signing up for old age prematurely.)

Anyway. You travel with chafed heels but very gently supported soles. Mmm.

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You get on your third of four flights, and the girl next to you gives you a look that, in your Malaysian primary school days, you might have described as onekind. Make that wankine. Moving on.

She says she met you last summer during her internship, and then the look makes sense. She'd been interning at the research institute you'd interned at two years ago, where your supervisor was a long-time member of her church, and you think -- although who knows what tricks your elderly memory might be playing -- that she'd heard about that institute because her parents knew your father through some other church connection. Thereisnospoon.

She's very friendly and engaging, and you have a good time catching up, before you both get back to your reading material.

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Which, for you, happens to be What Katy did. It's somewhat humourous -- the book too, but that's not what you meant -- so far on your Kindle you've read bits of Wittgenstein and Homer and Syed Hussein Alatas and GK Chesterton, but the first thing you end up ploughing through is one of the many books you loved with your siblings (and other animals, inside joke) ... more than fifteen years ago, ahaha. It's also humourous because when your family was flying to the U.S. for your dad to attend seminary ... fifteen years ago, one of your sisters -- who's always been an example to your socially -- picked her temporary U.S. name after the protagonist. (You'd picked a name that one of your good friends went by occasionally.)

You get to the end of What Katy did (although not really since there are four more books in the series; you've read two) and can't decide whether you are thrilled or mortified, because Katy's last words are an uncanny echo of what you'd wanted to say to a lot of people at the end of Williams:

"I haven't been brave. You can't think how badly I sometimes have behaved -- how cross and ungrateful I am, and how stupid and slow. Every day I see things which ought to be done, and I don't do them. It's too delightful to have you praise me -- but you mustn't. I don't deserve it."

And you're really not sure, because she sounds so darn simpering -- but then you also suspect that your singing voice is more maudlin than you'd like -- but you really do like her as a character. And you definitely don't deserve it. Oh well.

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Then you get off the last flight, and Pa and Ma are there, asking you if you want to stop for char koay teow and, at home, whether you want a regular towel or an extra big one. And you don't know what else to say.

2011-06-04T21:02:00.000-04:00

Emo graduation-related post #50 million

I was in one of the moods in which it felt very necessary to write, but then I can't quite remember what I'd wanted to write about. So now I am in one of those moods where I can't decide whether I'm sad or amusing. But not really, in the most cheerful sense. Really. Tired smiley face.

Graduation is tomorrow. Today was prize stuff and spiritual stuff, both of which were a lot more meaningful and loaded than the syntactic analogue of my hypothetical tired smiley face might suggest. A few things I want to remember that might hopefully make more sense than that last clause, even if they are far less significant than the awesome pioneering polar explorer lady who was our speaker today:

1. I read from 1 Corinthians at our service, and it was really interesting because a couple months ago when I was hoarse for the gospel choir concert, I could sing but I could hardly talk. Today I could talk but I could hardly sing. Humourous ailments like these are good reminders of my silliness/divine sufficiency.

2. I hadn't expected to feel so wistful about the absence of my family. Over the last couple months I'd gone through what is hopefully an appropriate series of emotional stages about this, from dismissive cheer to a couple days of sadness to calm cheer -- but then today walking out of three different ceremonies was walking out from affirmation among classmates to solitude. And wonderful friends intervened quickly, because I am spoilt like that and have a whole range of surrogate family here ranging from the most generalized abstracted sense to rare people with whom I interact like how I interact with my immediate family at home. But it was still a thing.

And just because I've never said it here but have been telling it to everyone who asked, for a month or so this has been my now-hackneyed but still true response to people who ask how I feel about the whole deal: there's so much I'll miss here, but I have so much to be excited about.

Play on.

2011-05-31T19:10:00.002-04:00

The dumdumdadedumdum

I've had a really bizarre day money-wise. (Also I need to stop blogging only about the weird things, and include the cheerful mundane things as well.) (Also, this will be one of those particularly long and rambly posts because I want to remember and be grateful.)

My day started with a phone call to the health centre about insurance: when I'd missed a step in March, campus security had called an ambulance for me, saying that insurance would cover it. The total bill for the ambulance + hospital + x-ray was terrifying, and insurance covered most of it. But the remaining charges, mostly a $200 co-pay for the ambulance, were still somewhat scary. And I'd gone back and forth for a really long time about whether I should just pay the charges, because financial aid had already been ridiculously generous to me, or whether I should ask for help, because my bank balance was not looking so hot. In the end I decided to call the health centre and clarify any possible misinformation. The director was very nice and suggested I call the hospital and ambulance service to see if they had any financial assistance.

What was really weird was that I got really teary on the phone. These are emotionally volatile days for sure -- tonnes of excitement and happy company, but also exhaustion and preemptive nostalgia -- but I hadn't been prepared to get so emotional about money. Because God's always provided more than enough, not least through Williams, and this last year I've finally been calm about the exorbitance that accompanies international travel, but evidently I'm still silly.

And then I met a friend for brunch. We both had delicious inexpensive cobb salad -- at the clubhouse of the plush local golf course.

Then a housemate helped me carry my two London boxes -- one of books and notes, one of winter wear -- to the post office, where I spent five minutes in distraught dithering about the $201 that it would cost to send the stuff to my aunt's place. Eventually I made myself afccept what I'd known all along, ie that it was cheaper to mail the stuff than to lug it on airplanes home --> Virginia --> London or to buy it again in England, even secondhand, so I mailed the boxes.

And I went home and called the hospital about their emergency room charge, and they said the assistance program probably didn't apply to foreign residents. But then I called the ambulance service, and was gingerly explaining things to the administrative person, when she stopped me. "We'll take care of the rest of the charges." "Wait. Really. Are you sure?" "Yup, we'll take care of it. No problem."

$200. It was all I could do to make sure I hung up first before actually bawling in relieved gratitude. I am way too good at building up overanalysed stress about situations that don't materialise.

And then my Kindle arrived. The only two gadgets I remember really really wanting over the last few years have been a DSLR -- which I decided was probably not a good idea -- and a Kindle -- which started to seem like a better and better idea given both the academic and travel patterns that circumscribe my life although I'm still squeamish about them. And so I gradually reconciled myself to the fact that really really wanting something could be a legitimate, rather than compromising, addition to the research utility and cost-effectiveness arguing in favor of purchase.

There had also been an extended deliberative sideshow that proceeded as follows. (a) If I am getting a Kindle out of book snobbery, it's definitely worth $25 to avoid the crass world of ads. (b) Oh darn I should get a case. (c) Hey look this case is super cool and pretty, especially because you can stand the Kindle up, just like how my bookstand has been super useful for working with texts for essays. (d) Oh darn the case is $25. Can I justify $25? Yes. No. Argh. (e) I'll swap transcending ads for a nice useful case.

Yeah, I'm silly. But the Kindle is a thing of beauty, and yay free books.

And yay friends. A bit after the Kindle came, two friends told me separately that they'd been planning to create a Kindle slush fund for me, to chip in to this purchase that I'd been verbally agonizing over for months. Whoops. But people are so kind. It's sort of ridiculous. And I am spoilt.

That's most of the money-related stuff that has happened today, so essentially I have a lot to be thankful for (and a Kindle) and hopefully will be less silly about resources in the future. Free as a bird of the air no?

But I seriously hope my next post will sound less barmy. Oh well. Haha.

2011-05-30T01:39:00.000-04:00

Interlude

In a week, I'll have graduated and left the country. Both are odd. Not least because I don't know how I feel about the fact that I've spent nearly a quarter of my life in this country -- if we're counting in years, probably a fifth of my life if we're talking weeks because of summers and study abroad. And also because I don't know when I'll live ever here again -- I'll be back briefly in September for a wedding, but I don't know if I'll be visiting anywhere else, and transoceanic travel for short-term visits seems extravagant, but at the same time I'm not used to how much I am used to travelling like that. And also because I don't know if I ever want to live here again -- not that it isn't a blast, but further school in the former coloniser makes more sense (especially if funding is forthcoming), and also that there's so much I could do at home --

but then there are so many people here whom I love.

I need to get better at emailing and Facebook and Skype and Gchat. O internets, ye that hath become such a strange part of my emotional life.

Aight back to the writing that I officially need to get done . :D

2011-05-28T14:07:00.001-04:00

Crazy times

stairs between squash courts and art museum (whoops)

Given the human condition, the title of this post is a rank exaggeration, but yes.

Today I slept in for the first time since ... spring break, probably. I think I needed it far more than I'd realised. I also think that I said here a long time ago that this semester I'd aim to go to bed earlier and wake up early, and I managed the latter without the former, haha but not. I also believe I said a while ago that this semester I'd also aim to stay awake in all my classes, and I think I did, though I have no idea how. Anyway.

I've been done with college work for about 7.5 days, most of which I spent at Christian camp, which was wonderful and challenging and refreshing. Graduation is in about ... 7.75 days, and I'm flying home that evening. I don't know whether I'm more weirded out by the prospect of ending the Williams chapter of my life, or of leaving the country.

Besides the physical exertion (which I'm all too accustomed to, hence two months without sleeping in), the emotional exertion of intense conversations and goodbyes has been exhausting, hence bouts of doing antisocial work (hurhur, although really I mean packing and praying and administrative stuff) in my room. And blogging. Because writing and documenting are more important to my functioning than I sometimes remember.

On Thursday, after saying goodbye to a number of very dear friends at the retreat and a number of newspaper friends in one of my former dorms, I was walking home in the breezy dusk and marveling at the lovely campus when I came across this:

immortality take it it's yours (logic is not)

I was not expecting to see the bleachers ready for Commencement events. So I did two things that made no sense: taking that picture, and lying on the grass in the middle of it all.

For the last month or so, every time someone asks me how I feel about graduating, I've said that there's so much I'll miss here, but I have so much to be excited about. Which makes me incredibly fortunate, on both counts. And which is still thoroughly true, even if it feels so odd.

On a very unrelated note, squirrels have always used the screen door between my room and our upper deck as an expressway to the roof. Today I had the inner door open because it's kindof hot and humid (I will be contending with real tropical weather in a few days haha I am a wimp), so this one squirrel wandered into my room a few times! I was tickled. Err. Figuratively.

collages are cool like children (obviously)

On another mostly unrelated note, this is a quite that I typed into a draft blog post while working on a paper on Aristotle and the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, whom I'd never heard of before my ancient political thought class, but who was a fascinating guy who had his beginnings in philosophy before he'd been freed from slavery.

On no occasion call yourself a philosopher, and do not speak much among the uninstructed about theorems (philosophical rules, precepts): but that which follows from them. ... For even sheep do not vomit up their grass to show the shepherds how much they have eaten; but when they have internally digested the pasture, they produce externally wool and milk. [Enchiridion, XLVI]

And they lived happily ever after.

2011-05-16T08:30:00.000-04:00

You know it's reading period

when your dream contained excerpts of the Algerian Revolution (or something) set to the not-rhythm of the postmodern music theatre piece that you're researching for another class. And when you're sounding pretentious on your blog instead of actually writing about the Algerian Revolution and the French football team.

O collge*, I will miss you. Really. <3

*how I spelled it in a headline that got printed my first semester on the newspaper board

2011-05-05T01:42:00.000-04:00

One of those

it's spring! with grass &c

The main point of this post is to say that I'll be updating my blog sporadically, if at all, till early June. There's just so much left to enjoy in the month I have left on campus. It's all such a tradeoff between goods -- I mean, good things, not like goods and services or whatever, but those too -- I be a graduatinging social science major yo -- that electronic communication is a bit less of a priority, whether the long personal emails that I take forever to reply (and, unusually, don't feel guilty about at the moment, although I do still feel wistful) or blogging.

Although of course there's the chance that I'll get all excited and feel a compulsion to document every single tradeoff and happy thing and sad thing in the last few days of my Williams life. I'm very good at proving my predictions about blogging frequency wrong, so I might as well stack the decks this time. Hmm. That's probably not the idiom I wanted.

Anyway, I'm also very good at deviating from the original intention of any blog post, so before I bow out, here's a smattering of stuff (with oodles of precision, of course).

1. The day after I whined here about slipping in the mud --> bruised knee, I tripped indoors (over chair legs in the science library atrium) --> scraped knee. The day after that, I tripped over chair legs in the student centre, but didn't fall! Although I did spill some hot soup on my arm that evening. And then the next day I lost my balance on a staircase, but somehow managed to trip/stagger upwards without falling, so everything was in the right direction. And so I concede that the weather probably isn't to blame haha.

2. Really gross sleep schedule last week probably was partly to blame, but the week was filled with so much emotional rest and general cheer that the lack of physical rest didn't matter very much (except to my knees). But the gospel choir concert and the Christian journal wrapped up so well, with lots of fun and truth.

3. And then I've overslept the past three mornings, but that was totally fine because I wasn't late for anything, and I was really grateful that my body was overriding my mind's general incompetence at gauging how much sleep I should be getting. Yay sleep.

4. Oh another amusing thing -- the morning of the concert I'd basically lost my voice from all the rehearsals -- I couldn't talk, but for whatever reason I could sing, so it worked out! Spent the weekend in a painfully hoarse whisper (er) (haha) (have yet to read it, actually), which was really amusing because it didn't hurt, so I'd forget that I couldn't talk and then end up making a weird high-pitched raspy sound and the friends I was trying to say hi to haha.

5. So many amazing conversations, I want to many more in these few weeks!

Err. Complete sentences whither? Way more that I'd like to transcribe for fake posterity, but I'm sleepy, So there. with <3

2011-04-27T02:16:00.000-04:00

Floored

When it's beautiful and snowy, I slip on the ice. And when it's beautiful and sunny, I slip in the mud. I wish Williamstown weather reciprocated my love. :(

Anyway. It's been flagrantly easy for me to be cheerful the last few days -- and cheerful in a calm way, not like ohyesworkyayandthatotherthingohdarnandthatonetooyesnodarnhaha. Many thanks to the Boss!

Brief happy super superficial observations (I wonder if this nullifies all efforts to avoid Facebook haha):

1. The layers in my hair are finally long enough to hold a French braid without any bobby pins, which is really convenient because that's a good way of getting hair out of the way for long work nights.

2. Over the last few days I discovered that the bike shorts that I used for gimrama in Form 2 (ohh man that means I've owned them for a decade o_O haha) and hardly worn since, as well as the RM5 skirt I got from Sungei Wang during my precollege newspaper internship, are really convenient things to wear under borderline too-short skirts/dresses, which is convenient because it's now warm enough to wear skirts, and dresses are so comfy.

Onwar to inflicting my clunky unedited syntax on my homework! :D

2011-04-25T04:13:00.007-04:00

Why I know I need Easter

The innumerable amazing moments in the last week included waking up an hour later than I'd meant to because my phone died hence alarm failed, so I got to my 8:30 class about fifteen minutes late, but it was amazing because I didn't feel the least bit anxious or guilty, not because I was successful at suppressing it, but because I just didn't. (Plus I felt really rested haha.)

The few not-so-amazing moments included brief but agonising tension between me and different people with whom I work closely and for whom care deeply, partly because I was indulging my tiredness.

I've been repaired so much; so often I crumble.

This is layout week for the Christian journal and tech week for gospel choir.

Time to work on my Aristotle/Epictetus paper, with joy.

love

2011-04-15T15:39:00.002-04:00

Lapses in deafness

Dupont Circle metro in DC during spring break; no particular pertinence

Last night at a prayer meeting I realised I was physically tired, and then that it made sense that I was tired, because I'd spent the day attending three classes, leading two meetings, tutoring someone in econ (a delicate barrel of laughs because I'd taken this class three years ago with a prof who spoke econ in a different accent from the current profs), studying and editing.

This stood in amusing contrast to Wednesday, which I'd spent enjoying my homework but feeling like I'd hardly gotten anything done.

I'm so glad it's not about getting things done.

Yay.

---------------------------------------------------

I'm also so glad that I came to Williams. Just about four years ago, I was on a holiday island junket for my newspaper internship. (No, it wasn't a regular thing -- I didn't get any other free holidays. :() Between staring at the sea's heady colours, getting shuttled to various publicity-seeking establishments, ooh-ing over the pictures on my writer-roommate's camera and failing to interact smoothly with a fascinating jaded reporter who found it diverting to flirt with me when I wasn't yet comfortable situating the verb "flirt" in any sort of proximity to myself (not that I am now) (haha) -- anyway, between all of that, I was mulling over college decisions.

I was also reading Isaiah 30. And, notwithstanding my not-so-secret waitlist hopes, every time I read Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it,” this annoying echo at the back of my mind would say, Williams is the way.

Which was massively frustrating, because I'd applied to Williams primarily because it was (then) need-blind for internationals, and I really really wanted to go to an urban school.

But I couldn't shake those words. And because I'm surest that God is speaking to me -- whatever that means -- when I cannot shirk the compulsion to do something that I really really don't want to do, I conceded. And the frustration fled. Knowing my silliness, I was probably frustrated that I wasn't frustrated, because there is some thrill in kicking and screaming your way into an unwanted unknown. Spoilt brat that I am, all I got was peace. Like really.

And over these four years I've been granted so many absurd affirmations -- whether things I'd secretly or not-so-secretly hoped for, or stuff I didn't know I wanted till it was a vital part of how I see myself. Many of my friendships fall into the second category, as does research. And then in between the former hopes/fresh surprises there's a wealth of other whatnot that I have finally conquered my squeamishness about but still fail to come up with an encapsulating noun for, e.g. speaking in class and being able to afford restaurant meals.

Sometimes I want to wonder who I would be if I hadn't been almost-cudgeled into matriculating at a school that was more urban or less endowed or bigger or smaller or less writing- and research-oriented or less personal in faculty advising -- or whatever, really. I suppose Aslan would say that was part of someone else's story. And as long as I'm listening, I won't run out of things to be thankful for.

2011-04-13T16:29:00.000-04:00

On time not topic

Stuff on last Monday's hastily scribbled list of humourous things to blog about:

- typesetting
- shampoo arrival, cap switch
- hard-boiled eggs
- snow
- pictures - Playboy, gym
- surgical mask

And although it's expedient for most of those to remain a list (and possibly become a challenging test of my memory in a few years), it's probably seemly for me to explain the second-to-last: at work the other day I was again assigned to clear out old pictures in the college communications office archives, and I found a nicely composed picture of a professor sitting in the faculty club in front of an imposing-looking bookshelf reading said periodical = both hilarious and really strange, and darn I need to stop committing such offences against punctuation and syntax.

Fabulous weekend off-campus: my first real college field trip (Guggenheim! finally; Neuie Gallerie; the City Opera for three monodramas, so now I've seen bawdy comic opera in London and fascinating modern opera in NYC but nothing really classical) followed by my third Malaysia Forum, and brief reunions with some old friends.

Something I've been trying to remember in my moments -- and I'm so thankful that recently these have been moments rather than sustained bouts -- of frustration about how slowly I read and write, is that such frustration is contemptibly ungrateful given absurd amounts of evidence of divine sufficiency in both academics and rest.

Like so. It's nice that one doesn't always have to make sense. Or grammar. Forward march! You are the best.

2011-04-04T09:43:00.001-04:00

Somehow I find this very funny

even though it came up in a decidedly unfunny context, ie a series of essays about the civil war in Libya that I'm reading for one of my classes (i.e. the reason I shouldn't be blogging now).

But I looked up "viz." on m-w because I've always wondered what it's short for and, among other things, Webster dutifully informed me that "videlicit" rhymes with "drum majorette."

On another note, I want to want the frontier of my knowledge about conflict in the ME to extend right up to the division between stuff I can understand but am currently ignorant of because of laziness and/or resource constraints, and stuff for which it's only proper humility to acknowledge ignorance because the universal set for these conflicts encapsulates so much that is intricate and personal and lacerating.

Nastaghfirullah.

On yet another note, I like people. This morning, I especially like cheerful friends who tell smiley stories and academic folk who don't really know me but bother to tell me stuff. Yay.

2011-04-03T17:02:00.000-04:00

light gives heat

the Green River, today

I was reading The unbearable lightness of being before bed last night, and right before I woke up this morning I was dreaming about repressed designers who worked in a steel mill and never really wanted to be at office parties and were really stressed about when to go to sleep because they had a lot of work to do. The designers and steel mill and office parties were all Kundera's. (I hope.) The stress about scheduling was not.

For most of spring break I'd been fairly content about how I'd been using my time; the masses of course reading that I'd intended to do was largely undone, but that was fine since I was doing a lot of other things that I had to get done. And I was taking a delightful break from my 7am alarm.

I think my sense of pace inhabits a sliding scale with
soo much work okay the way to get the most out of your time is to plan everything carefully and make sure you get everything done according to plan, okay? okay?
on one end of the spectrum and
you are called to be still, to immerse yourself in the immediate, to revel and to trust
on the other.

Going into spring break I'd been closer to the compulsive pole, hence ridiculous to-do list; and most of spring break I'd drifted around the other end, hence, city jaunts and lots of sleep and contentment with slow work; but then thinking about the reality of leaving Williamstown in two months (sharpened by the the purchase of a plane ticket home for the evening of commencement) slid me closer to the silly end again. So silly that, even though I'm on my weekly homework-sabbath now, I almost canceled on a museum date with one of my friends.

Parenthetically, the college art museum is one of the many resources that I'll miss keenly -- I'm still weirded out by the breadth and richness of the collection and, especially after this year's thorough reinstallation, the curatorial sensitivity. One thing that I really loved this time was a placard discussing the messy ethics behind the acquisition of these two amazing 800BC Assyrian reliefs that were procured for the college by a missionary alum. o_O

Anyway. I know indubitably that the best way to do these last two months is brief judicious contemplation of both the bucket list and consulting the Boss sorts, followed by living unqualified by enumeration or worry. Wow, no idea why I decided to sound so pretentious there. Basically I need to steer clear of the panic path, and stick to the reckless appreciation path instead.

Of course, the other problem is that I fail to recall which path this blog post was meant to be on. Hmm.

The other thing I remember wanting to note down (verbs/word = 1/3 ugh) was a snippet from my bible study passage for today. Eight (!!!) (not panic, don't worry, just amazement) years ago, when I first left home for Singapore, one of the other Malaysian girls, who has become one of my closest friends, told me that one of our older mutual friends had offered her Daniel & co's exile/training in Babylon to our Singapore education. (If you parsed that sentence on the first read, you win a hypothetical prize, and I will desist from parentheses.)

Four years later, when I wrestling with the idea of trying for Singapore government scholarships that offered generous funding for U.S. or U.K. university education but required awardees to assume permanent residency in Singapore, I held back because of a certainty that, for me, those scholarships were the king's table, sumptuous and prestigious but not best.

Not that I think the Singaporean government is an evil taint on humanity or anything, ahaha, but God had something different in mind. So it's sort of neat that, after another four-year interval, the bible study material that I started working through at the beginning of my freshman year has brought me back to Daniel. Just like we've finally come back to the topic sentence from two paragraphs ago. So:

Finally these men said, “We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God.” [Daniel 6:5]

(See, those were square brackets.) (Ah darn.)

My initial thought was how cool it would be if that verse could be applied to my lifestyle, with the appropriate pro/noun modifications, of course. But as much as people generally seem to consider me a nice person or whatever, there are fifty million different charges that could be brought against me, and far more that I could bring against myself, e.g. exaggerating with little respect for numbers. Often I'm not even sure if I'd want a statement like that to be made about me -- I'm still a bit squeamish about putting hardcore Christian-y things up on this blog or Facebook -- I'm not sure if I dare to claim Christ as my defining identification. But I'm utterly sure that nothing else could be best.

And I'm unsure if that's how I want to end this blog post, but I'm pretty sure that there are worse ways.

2011-03-31T02:00:00.002-04:00

Nightcap

There are so many extravagances in the fact that family members in two other countries let me bother them through Skype/cell/email/Gchat throughout an hour of trying to use one of their credit cards to buy a plane ticket that my college will later reimburse me for.

Spring break is whizzing past, taking less than half of my to-do/study/email/call list with it. I continue to be grateful that grace covers my lapses in gratitude, and sense. Yay.

2011-03-29T09:37:00.006-04:00

Catching up!

Aight so I'm alive and happy and very ambulatory although my foot still hurts a bit. I also have no recollection of why I took that picture -- I was probably excited about the shadows and textures -- although I'm pretty sure it was in the Atlantic Ave area of Brooklyn, and I just realised that makes two blog consecutive blog posts fronted by foot pictures. Err.

The week after my last post was a very satisfying one -- although it was midterms week, compounded silly foot and thesis defense/printing. Because it was midterms week (although here it's really more like midterms two months), a couple people cancelled meal dates on me, which of course was totally understandable. Not least because I later cancelled breakfast and lunch dates planned for the last day of classes before spring break, which turned out to be humourously prescient because that morning I got three hours' more sleep than I'd meant to, giving me uncomfortably little time to finish a midterm essay due that afternoon. But I finished in time -- feeling very rested -- and then walked out into the most gloriously sunny warm weather we'd had all year.

I also talked publicly three times over midterms week. "Publicly" of course not implying a massive audience or anything, just the possibility of embarrassing yourself in front of people you've never met. But things went well enough for me to tell myself that that probably didn't happen:

-- On Monday I defended my thesis: twenty minutes of presentation followed by forty of grilling, thank God all the questions were substantive and I could answer them. On my right foot I had the strap-on cast/shoe thing that the hospital had given me, and on my left I had a high heel, which comfortably took the weight off the other foot. I was really happy that some very busy friends made the time to hear me ramble. Less importantly, I was also happy about the good food-to-person ratio, although I didn't manage a Pi Day theme. Ah well.

-- On Wednesday I read an assortment of passages from Lamentations at a multifaith prayer service for Japan. Walking up to the chapel before the service it occurred to me that I was tracing in reverse the steps that precipitated the crutches, exactly a week before, almost to the minute. I have so much more to be thankful for and to pray about than I do.

-- On Thursday I spoke at and led a discussion about (heh) prayer and whether omniscience/omnipotence makes it redundant/pointless. When I was trying to find a bit about God's omni-timeness, and Google delivered both the right passage and ridiculousness, because I didn't see the punctuation at first.

Although "the first and the last U.S.ian king" wouldn't be entirely inaccurate.

Backtracking a little, the resting-foot-over-weekend plan worked well. The first two days after I fell, I bumbled around on crutches, but by Friday afternoon I wimped out. I spent the next 24 hours on my bed, elevating my foot and working on my thesis defense/sleeping at the appropriate times, missing three meetings and a party in the process, and making a couple trips downstairs to feed myself. By Saturday evening most of the swelling had gone down and I could hobble quite competently.

And then spring break started, and it all went to pot. Not really, and not at first, but yes. (One reason I like writing is that I usually bother to edit out things like that last sentence, the likes of which my friends endure in conversation all the time.)

But anyway -- spring break began with a lovely friend giving me a ride down to Maryland. We'd met during orientation freshman year in the line for the financial aid textbook library, and we've been close despite infrequent meals since. Spent the night staying with her awesome family, and then the next day I headed into DC and caught up with my brother-in-law's fabulous sister.

And then it was the political economy major trip, which is a really fun but super exhausting field trip in which we scuttled around DC interviewing people who knew far more about our capstone policy projects than we were pretending to. Amusingly enough, I happened to be wearing red the day I met with a House majority staffer, and blue when I talked to a Senate majority staffer. Also got to meet up with a few old friends, mostly Williams folk, and stayed an extra night in DC with one of the wonderful newspaper alums.

On to NYC for a long weekend, freeloading with another wonderful newspaper alum, who showed me around Brooklyn and introduced me to a lot of delicious food and demonstrated impeccable Netflix taste. It was a gorgeously meandering few days, and a splendid counterpoint to both the oh-no-we're-going-to-be-late-ahh-this-suit-jacket-feels-weird in DC as well as my earlier Manhattan jaunts. And despite the intentional low-key-ness, I did meet up and marvel about life with a couple of old friends.

And now I'm back on campus for the last few days of spring break, in the hopes that they will involve a lot of foot resting and summer planning and class reading and administrative clearing and prayer, because these last two months of college will be epic and I want to be ready.

2011-03-11T19:11:00.005-05:00

Lessons

[about 24 hours after the fall]

[be glad I didn't take the grosser angle kaythanksbye]

[I'm really okay, though! Nothing's fractured, and it's recovering quickly.]

1. Shorts and tights are a bad idea. Even though they're really comfy, you should trust the instincts that are telling you it probably looks really weird, although of course the real reason you mustn't wear them is you never know when you're going to miss a step in the dark and then it'll be humourous in the ambulance when they want to look at your swollen/bruised/sprained/somethinged foot.

2. If you decide against fasting for Lent, you might find penance at the bottom of the chapel stairs on your way out of the Ash Wednesday service.

3. Like a maniac shooting flaming arrows of death is one who deceives their neighborand says, "I was only joking!" [Of course, it was possibly a decade ago that my sister showed me Proverbs 26:18-19, but evidently I am a slow learner.]

4. It's harder to fall down on crutches than you might expect, even with snow/sleet/rain on the ground, which is good because you've probably fallen down already.

5. It's every bit as tiring to be on crutches as you might expect. Or, if you've mostly seen super athletic schoolmates on crutches, even more tiring.

6. Although, if you're on crutches, people are really nice to you. Which sometimes makes it feel even more ah this isn't such a big deal maybe I should just hobble. Which in turn makes it feel ouch.

7. Aversion to push-ups + difficulty in letting right arm know what left arm is doing = crutching deficiency. If this surprises you, you haven't met me.

8. A gorgeous little hilly campus feels a bit less gorgeous and little if you're using crutches.

9. Even if you're 24, you might derive undue pleasure from whining on your blog.

10. One advantage of not living in a dorm is that it's okay to go up the stairs on your rear end.

11. It's more efficient for me to make powerpoint slides before writing out a script. Because I think too many many lots things are interesting.

[So the plan is spend as much time off foot through the weekend, so maybe I will be able to hobble by my thesis defense on Monday (although pity marks may be useful haha), or at least so I will be fixed by spring break. The plan looks viable, inshaallah!]

2011-03-09T01:54:00.004-05:00

Feeling odd and old but variously happy (quotes approximate)

"Are you excited about our meal date? I've been bragging about it to the other girls."

"I was talking to someone about how there are only like seven of your posters the whole student centre, but they're all in the perfect strategic places."

------------------------

In more legitimate news, here is something that makes me feel odd and young and variously happy:

"I know that you can do all things;

no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?'

Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me to know.

"You said, 'Listen now, and I will speak;

I will question you,

and you shall answer me.'

My ears had heard of you

but now my eyes have seen you.

Therefore I despise myself

and repent in dust and ashes." [Job 42:2-6]

Today is Ash Wednesday -- so here is holiness that makes me feel uncomfortable in both real and silly ways, and there is hope that I will master the dizzying balance of despising the myself-that-is-not-me while reveling in ineffable illumination.

------------------------

... and evidently I am getting distracted by somewhat effable humour, because I just remembered the best line ever from my bible study this morning, a line which also happens to be an amusing compliment:

"Your neck is like an ivory tower." [Song of Songs 7:4a]

One wonders what is being implied about the life of the beloved's mind, at least under today's current metaphors. But (very evidently) a surer way of minimising amusing compliments with possibly insulting insinuations about the life of my mind is to wonder about stuff that has less silly rhyminess and more real words. I hereby re-Lent.

2011-03-06T17:16:00.003-05:00

Some twos

[And little sense, although you probably weren't expecting any. But lots of drifting cheer, at least! Don't know why I've been blogging so much, premature nostalgia? Maybe I should go back to journalling. Argelfraster.]

Things that I briefly considered stopping to save time, but only briefly because they would cost me money and I really enjoy them

1. Working at the communications office, about six hours a week. I have the best bosses. And I get to stalk random speakers and wacky archival photos.

2. Cooking, maybe three to five hours a week? Although of course I could just start eating instant stuff all the time, but that would be gross. Or I could fast a meal for Lent, but on such motivations that would be gross in another sense. Ahaha.

Things loosely related to imminent graduation

1. Recently my meal schedule has been filled about a week in advance. Which is strange. And indicates a lot of things to be thankful for, but is still strange (and makes me sound strange when I'm scheduling meals with new people, but there is nothing new under the sun eh).

2. I haven't had a haircut since late July, but I don't really feel like paying for one in Williamstown, and I have far fewer split ends than I would've expected, so I may try to hold out till I end up wherever I end up for the summer.

Things not really connected to much, though hopefully at least to my head

1. I rarely crave food from home, but just now when I was cooking I was really disappointed that we didn't have oyster sauce or thick soy sauce. Oh well.

2. My thesis defense has been scheduled for pi day! Hopefully it won't be irrational. Or lame.

2011-03-04T05:49:00.002-05:00

Win

For the whole semester so far, I've been waking up consistently at 7am (by which of course I mean somewhere between 7:10am and 7:20am) every day except Sunday. And I've been really enjoying it. Yay! And oh wow I just realized that I haven't fallen asleep in class this semester. Even more sincere yay!

But the last two days have been unusual. Yesterday I didn't wake up to my alarm and had half a second of blind ahhhwhydidImissclassss panic until I realised that it was actually 6:48. So I was happy that I seem to really be taking to this new schedule, notwithstanding the fact that I'm still not the best at making the appropriate adjustments to my bedtime.

And then today I got up just after 4 to take the 4:30am shift at 24-hour prayer. On my way out I grabbed just my cell phone and my student ID card, thinking well, for once I'll be a normal Williams student, because all four years I've carried my wallet around as well, which is rarely necessary in the quaintness here.

When I got there, I was vaguely amused that we were using the third incarnation of a prayer guidelines sheet that I'd cobbled together a couple years ago for our first 24-hour prayer in recent student (i.e. goldfishlike) memory.

And then I have a very meaningful time praying under the soaring ceiling of our chapel, get my fleece on, and on my way out it hits me: arghhh this year I'm not a normal Williams student because I can't just use my card to swipe into my dorm room.

No key. :(

I walk home anyway, and spend a bunch of minutes knocking on the door and and shaking the handle and leaving missed calls on the cell phone of my one housemate who is in town today, and who will evidently be the last to know in the event of some grievous danger to life and limb and humanity. Then I crawled over the mounds of snow on our side deck, tried the two side doors --which are always locked in principle but only mostly locked in reality -- and found that today is like most of reality. Then I spent a while tossing chunks of frozen snow at said housemate's second floor window, being pleasantly surprised at my aim and vaguely amused (and some other emotions) at his failure to show signs of life.

And then I decided I'd commited enough banditry and walked to the smaller student centre (which, incidentally, used to be the chapel). Thus, in the absence of schoolbooks that I was planning to read, I'm here. A brief nap might be in order soon.

--------------------------------

One of the many many (lots) things I'd wanted to make a note of (and it still baffles me that, however slowly I get to these potential blog posts, they normally come into existence quicker than my many many overdue nonadministrative email replies).

I was not supposed to end that sentence there. Oh right!

I'd wanted to write about work on Tuesday, i.e my three-hour shift at the communications office. I normally write press releases and such, but that day I was first sent out on a mail/newspapers/maps run, which I was all too happy to do because it was the most radiant sunny. Notwithstanding mounds of snow, I decided to head down the street without my coat, which turned out to be a better idea than I'd expected. Yay light.

Then I was assigned to go through our photo files ("files" in the Manila folders with printed things in them) to pull out anything from before 1987 (i.e. everything older than me, which was weird and fun) to send to the college archives.

I was thinking about, variously: how neat it is to look at old pictures; how gorgeous this school can be; how long people's associations with this institution can be (some photographers had covered decades of college events and "campus scenes," i.e. the most wonderfully stilted category ever that I could not distinguish from the folder labelled "campus views"); how odd it is to think that so many people have done so many different things wearing so many different periods of clothing styles in so many really expensive buildings that I am so familiar; ohnohelpdon'tletthenegativesfalloutontothecarpet; and how bizarre it is that I've gained so many fluencies in provinces that had always seemed like the domain of people who lived in the pages of The best of LIFE or deep academic-y monographs.

Here's to a brilliant three months. (And to my housemate being awake when I walk home in a few minutes.)

2011-02-28T23:55:00.003-05:00

Happy surprises

I often tell people that I hope they have happy surprises -- and I was just thinking that I would do well to better appreciate the happy surprises in my own life. Not just the ones that spark awed overflowing laughter -- like the perfect delicate snowflakes on a morning walk last week (camera/skills could be better, of course) -- but also -- especially? -- the ones that emerge in the middle of a torrent of work.

Like finding Twinings Rooibos on sale during an overdue uninspired grocery run. (I would so love to go back to Cape Town.) (I am spoilt.) (As is the silly lazy syntax/punctuation in this post.)

Whoa, I just realized it's March!

Aight back to homework. :D

2011-02-27T03:08:00.003-05:00

[the sort of emo silliness you'd expect at this hour]

Just got back from the dance that marks a hundred days to graduation. Happily exhausted, having danced all out with several different groups of wonderful friends who more than compensated for the boring music -- but scared.

Scared because I'm pretty sure I've said, hey, we really should get a meal, to more people on campus than I have meals left. It's an insane privilege to know so many people in this gorgeous dysfunctional community, and it's scary how much my ego and my emotional schedule have gotten accustomed to it.

Scared because of the long queue for the dance. Shouting isn't a problem -- and is frequently humourous, especially when people have had a bunch to drink -- but cutting shoving pulling lying. Scared because of the discourtesy in these highly gifted people. Scared because of how unsurprising it was. Scared because of how much I let myself judge them.

Scared because it seemed like a couple of my friends thought I'd be okay with grinding. Their assumptions/my dancing? Would rather not think about either; both are both a smaller deal and a bigger deal than I think they are. In any case, my only body-to-body contact this evening was in that absurd line (thank God the winter meant no one was gross and sweaty) getting into the student centre.

Scared because of how much it hurts when people very close to me are insensitive. Because I should be better than that, I know they love me, where is my patience graciousness generosity why am I indulging my irritability. And even more so, because I know I hurt deeply the people around me with my insensitivity selfishness recklessness preoccupation with myself. Scared because He still trusts us to be social creatures despite endemic failures.

And somewhat perplexed that I was compelled to write this, when really I am calm and content despite thinking that I am scared, and when I should be in bed because I am singing with the gospel choir at a church in a bunch of hours and I've been hoarse basically since October, with the last few days being one of the nastier phases (incidentally my sole drink tonight was a hard lemonade six hours ago that was hardly boozy but did a lot of good to my throat).

I am silly. Good night really on many levels.

2011-02-23T08:09:00.006-05:00

Oy vey

1. It turns out that the burnt not-welt on my arm is actually a flat blister. And of course I only discovered this when it broke. :( So today I have gauze on it, and foresee nontrivial difficulty in remembering not to mess up the gauze while scrunching up my cardigan sleeves as I will inevitably do.

2. The combination of my ancient political thought class and my surfing for summer options when I should have just gone to bed lat night meant that one of my first bleary thoughts this morning was, well obviously The Republic was broken up into books because of publishing technology, but he probably wasn't submitting to think tanks way back then.

2011-02-22T12:01:00.003-05:00

try it for size

There's something to be said for small towns, as restless as they can make me, and despite the fact that a lot of what I'm wanting to remember here is not a direct corollary of levels of urbanisation:

heading into the charming monopolistic grocery store to get a day-old half-price sandwich (grilled tomato spinach two cheese on farm bread) and having abbreviated familiar conversations with almost everyone in it (fellow retired newspaper person is working the sandwich grill, the chaplain is buying a sandwich, three different sophomore guys from three different countries wander in) and then walking out into the radiant chilly day and watching two people thirty metres ahead of you sprint to class two minutes late

In other news, a couple days ago I was silly while getting my honey-mustard-lemon-garlic boneless pork ribs and roasted carrots out of the oven, and now I have a 1.5-inch fascinatingly hued thing on my forearm that would be a welt if it weren't so flat, and which doesn't really hurt but feels interestingly raw even though the skin isn't broken.

And I have no idea why I felt like relating that. :D

2011-02-20T00:15:00.004-05:00

Reframing

This is possibly the eighth semester of college that I've started with the expectation that I will accomplish more work and more rest than is reasonable.

I spent the first full week of school sticking to a wake-up-at 7am/in-bed-by-1am-ish/gym-three-times-a-week plan. Then in the second week of school rolled around, and all of a sudden this past Wednesday I was up till 3am trying to finish some reading for one of the three classes I had the next morning. And I couldn't finish, so I got up at 6:30 -- and still didn't finish before class. And I only made it to the gym once -- one day I got to the locker room then had to retrace my steps home because I'd forgotten both my cellphone and my computer, another day I just didn't want to bother.

Recalibration was in order. What emerged from some long-delayed listening to God was that my compulsiveness had made me too good at asking, regularly throughout the day, what should I be doing now? Which is a highly functional question, but not nearly as rigorous as what I'll be trying to remember to ask now: God, what do you want me to do now? Not that I'll expect a clear compulsion in answer -- not least because individual agency is key element of the divine image in us -- but I do think it will give a more productive slant to whatever smaller, more manageable questions and priorities that I may try to build my day around. (Sort of like how it's really important to start with a forceful question when you're trying to do quantitative analyses of developing countries, even if your dataset won't answer the overarching question directly. But not really. Fuzzy thoughts are empirical evidence that I should be in bed. Maybe.)

There are five million other pertinent and impertinent things that I really have been wanting to blog about, but here are two things that I will be reintroducing to my life this semester: narrative fiction and long walks. Narrative fiction because I finally acknowledged that I should fix how much I really really miss literature, and that one factor underlying my failure to get through more than 1/3 of Anderson's Imagined communities last semester is that, after exerting oneself on densely fascinating nonfic for class, the choice between noncompulsory densely fascinating nonfic and going to bed right away isn't really a choice. And long random walks (I will go on really really missing math and science for a while yet) because a productive but boring half hour on the elliptical isn't really worth the logistical/locker-room-time cost, and because these are my last few months in this gorgeous pocket of the world that I spent so much of my A Levels life reading about in Robert Frost.

And hope does not disappoint us. (More levity and substance to follow.)

2011-02-09T10:41:00.004-05:00

Religion and comfort (separately), it seems

1. For whatever reason, Malaysia isn't fertile land for heterodox doctrine in established religions. Was thinking about this mostly w.r.t. Islam, e.g. reactions to Ayah Pin and even Wahabbis contra the growth of loosely defined Islamic movements among Euroamerican ethnic minorities, but I'm pretty sure it applies at least to Christianity as well. (I wish I knew more about comparative religion globally.) Of course, this is all superimposed on (not-so-back)ground of spiritism and animism. But it's still really interesting.

2. Leggings and tights are ridiculously comfortable (although, of course, only palatable when worn with a really long top). And no poorer than jeans for insulation, especially if you layer a pair over another. A couple days before my thesis was due I was in tights/a dress/oversized men's sweater, which was amazing warm waistband-free ease. Today I'm in leggings and the largest of my three secondhand button-front men's shirts, belted to avoid pyjama-ness with umm haha what is actually the strap of a clutch that I bought years ago for probably less than five Sing dollars in Toa Payoh, because I don't really own belts. Oh dear, I'm mildly horrified that I'm detailing outfits on this blog. Senior spring must really be messing with my head. A;lkfjh.

3. One reason why I love Williams is that I'm more comfortable,-- in a strictly logistical sense --here than any other place I've lived in. By logistical comfort (which probably doesn't mean anything) I mean that (a) I have my own space (this year I'm loving my large room and library carrel) and (b) I'm fully mobile. When I'm home with the parents in Penang I have an abundance of space at home, and although walking/public transport can get me to plenty of malls and such, that doesn't do much for my non-commercial/gastronomical/social interests. When I visit KL and Sg or U.S., I'm plenty mobile on public transport (although it can be gross and tiring), but my quest to vanquish houseguest awkwardness is ongoing.

As is my quest to be less silly and not get distracted when I'm attempting to do homework. Awkward giggle, but not.

2011-02-05T22:52:00.003-05:00

thinking about things

Which I'm pretty sure is a line from some poem I had to read for lit in secondary school, but I can't remember which one it was. Or whether it was good.

And that paragraph was roughly as irrelevant and obtuse as a thought I had this afternoon when I came across the phrase "semicolonial rule" in a reading for class: ";;;;;;;; ownage".

But to justify the first word in the title of this post, I suppose I should move on. After first noting that, although I've always been a big fan of the AP style guide's principle of removing hyphens whenever it won't compromise clarity (or under a few other specific conditions), a hyphen in that phrase would have given me one fewer thing to be distracted about.

;;;

One thing that's been on my mind is the fact that I'm unintentionally, gradually disengaging from some aspects of Williams. I fall somewhere in the comfortable middle of the raring-to-go/premature-separation-anxiety spectrum, but there's been a distinct, if inadvertent, distancing in some sphere. E.g. moving from crazy newspaper responsibilities to lighter newspaper responsibilities to newspaper retirement has translated into a natural decrease in how much I know about current campus issues. (A few months ago I realised that it was weird that it was weird that I hadn't ever had a conversation with the current dean, who's already seven months into her term.)

This past week, though, I was thinking about seniory disengagement in the context of an annual event here, where classes are cancelled and the day is full of talks and discussions and stuff about community norms. Back in freshman year, I'd been a very close observer (both out of personal inclination and newspaper necessity) of the bias incident and late-night meetings and rally and bureaucracy that led to the creation of this event. In sophomore and junior years, my favourite parts of the event had been forums in which different Williams people shared different stories from their lives. This year, I went for the opening panel, the town hall meeting ... and two film screenings. It was really interesting to see how much my interest had shifted from the campus to broader (not inherently better) matters.

And then this sabbath evening, instead of trekking over to the performing arts centre for a festival of various student art forms, I headed to our small arthouse cinema and watched The King's Speech solo. And was so, so impressed. Yay for movies that are about acting (in multiple ways).

Another recent train of thought related to transitioning: I feel like I've been granted the privilege of enjoying a disproportionate number of activities. I mean enjoyment in the sense that I derive lots of satisfaction from these activities, independent of how frequently and how well I do them. A partial list in arbitrary order: guitaring cooking singing drawing housecleaning organizing photographing (and, to some extent, drawing). I was probably thinking about this in conjunction with my classes. When I was talking with one of my thesis advisors about grad school I told her that I really hope moving towards poli sci doesn't eliminate numbers from my life. Not that the basic econometrics in my thesis is the sort of math that makes me happiest -- I think regressions are really cool and I love their rigor, but I miss the fascinating glorious agonizing patterns and contortions of the non-applied math stuff that I used to be dilettantish about. This semester I'm finally taking political theory again, though, and I'm super excited.

Umm. I had a point somewhere. Oh haystack. Oh right! I remember thinking it was unfair that it was so easy for me to really really like mathy and sciencey things, and literary things, but also social sciencey things. (And not fake words, though I have thus far offered little evidence to prove it.)

Final thought: I've had so many semesters in which there was a fundamental incompatibility between what I was sure God wanted me to do and what sleep I knew the human body demands. And I stayed sane amid the insanity of overriding the latter because of a certainty in the former. But this semester I don't have any such certainty that I should be pushing myself physically, and given this murkiness I'll try to comply with the health demands by default instead. I sincerely hope that I'll be able to unskew any twists that may have developed in my notion of diligence throughout those trippy years. For the first three days of the semester I allotted six hours a night for sleep but still got drowsy over some of my readings, so I plan to experiment with more sleep next week. It's always interesting/scary/exciting that often the clearest revelation we have of God's infinite will is its poor image in our individual agency. And it's always unsurprising that I don't trust Him -- nor, in parallel, myself -- enough. Good thing He likes forgiving silly people.

;

2011-02-04T11:39:00.002-05:00

Amusing failures on a gorgeous morning

1. Cell phone dies twenty minutes after I leave the house.

2. Advisor points out typo in first sentence of thesis.

3. Lock on gym locker is oddly intractable, placing shoes and exercise out of reach.

4. Blogging impulse overwhelms, less than five hours after waking up.

But it's such a wonderful sunny day with lots of happy people, myself included. So yay.

2011-02-01T12:02:00.006-05:00

Stuff that I want to do in my last semester of college

now that I've submitted my thesis and retired from the newspaper. This'll be a list of daily habits that I aspire to (terrible syntax woo; I remember once reading a letter somewhere that said "I am an aspired writer"). The "[random number] of things to do before I die, err, graduate" list will go up on Facebook at some point.

And the picture has no relation to anything, except that it was taken at the conference centre where I spent my first two post-thesis days, and could be taken as a fair hint of the emo-ness/inanity/irrelevance that is to follow. Ole. By which I mean "Olay," but not.

I would like to:

1. Read.

Since the school year started in September, the only non-school reading I've gotten through is the first 60 pages of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities. Which is really sad. What is also sad*, on multiple levels, is that many of the books I want to read now are things that I referred to for my thesis but didn't have the time to read in full. I also have been meaning to read Chesterton and St Augustine** and Brother Lawrence for ... possibly a decade. And I really, really miss literature.

While I was working on my thesis, I had a handful of moments of real, though really silly, terror that I'd never have enough time to read all I need to read in order to get a comprehensive framework of dates and names in Malaysian/Western canonical/global politics/education/art/nationalism/theology/philosophy in my head. Bleargh.

I also had moments where I couldn't get work done because I was just so angry about some of the biases and selfishness I was reading about. In my classes we read equally contemptible political statements all the time, but for when it's Malaysian policy it feels personal.

And then there was one day when it came out that I'd been suppressing anger against my housemates about a random household task. I was thoroughly disappointed in myself because they're amazing and because suppression is a really dumb way of dealing with annoyance/anger. I've always known that I react very badly to expressions of anger, and that I'd never be able to date someone without knowing what they're like when they're angry, so it was really nasty to see such selfish anger in myself. But when it came out I finally forgave them internally, and they all forgave my ugly rage, and I eventually forgave myself, and now it's all good! Apart from the fact that "forgave" is such a bizarre-looking word, and that I am tangents away from the intent of this post.

*Yet another sad thing: the first two things I did on my computer after turning in my thesis were (a) surfing the course catalog in a fruitless search for classes that I might want to audit in the spring, and (b) organizing the non-thesis-related papers that I'd downloaded to my desktop over the last month. I'm gearing up to get back into personal email replies; it makes me genuinely sad how easily I neglect these.

**We're reading City of God for my class on ancient political thought!

2. Not fall asleep in class.

Which is a bit of a tall order since I've consistently dozed off in class since the A Levels, with the exception of last spring, ie the insane semester when I had more on my schedule than ever and minimal caffeine in my system but somehow did all my readings and stayed awake in nearly all my classes because God is evidently strange about health needs. But I'm hoping for a semester in which I don't have to question whether I'm abusing God's grace to stay awake.

3. Pray for my class more.

Before we all leave this place.

4. Bake my breakfast.

Or something. I grew up on peanut butter etc sandwiches for breakfast, but the last few years they've just felt really dry. Then midway through last semester I decided that, as much as I liked cereal for breakfast, the milk wasn't worth it (whether price-wise, or the bother of hauling a large bottle along with a tonne of other groceries on the supermarket shuttle, or the fridge space). So I moved to instant oatmeal instead, but sometimes it just takes me forever to eat a bowl of that. And I really like flaky pastry for breakfast, and the day-old baked goods at the supermarket are a pretty good deal, but are also difficult to transport. So I'm going to try making some fruit/cheese/nutella concoctions on crescent rolls, and we'll see how that goes.

5. Write.

This is another "we'll see where this goes" sort of thing. Fingers crossed it'll go in better directions than the following snippets, which I typed into my Gmail to placate restlessness at various points in the thesising, and which I'm posting unedited, except for tiny updates in square brackets.

----------------------------------

Today I heard about deaths: Salmaan Tasseer, the Punjab govenor assassinated for protesting the blasphemy law; those who slain in the attempt to kill congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords; and, as I was taking a break from an account of the history of Bahasa Melayu, the natural passing of a phenomenal Orang Asli pastor, activist and translator whom I first met as a toddler.

Tomorrow I celebrate my birthday.

It's a funny world. May I grow to be more grateful.

[The next morning, after I hung up on my parents' birthday call, I read an email from the college president saying that a dynamic young faculty member had passed away unexpectedly.]

--------------------------

Pretty things:

all this snow!

Rhapsody in Blue

--------------------------

Today I learnt that I can wear kiddy XL T-shirts comfortably. And I found this out because I happened to look at the tag of this T-shirt that my sister sent me from Singapore (after wearing it a few times, whoops). It's cute enough for me to love it despite the bad grammar: "I'm not short/I'm fun size." Coincidentally, my housemate has a tee that does slightly better: "I'm not short/I'm fun sized." Poor unloved hyphen.

--------------------------

Mahathir the prophet in A new deal for Asia (Pelanduk, 1999, p.10)

Uncontrolled greed may once again wipe out years of toil and sweat and hard effort. The lesson the world must learn from the Asian crisis is that we all share a common fate, and that there must now be a willingness to challenge some of the most fundamental tenets of global capitalism. The question is whether the world's leading economic powers will realise this and take action before their own markets start to tumble and fall. Must the Dow Jones crash with all the pain and anger this entails before the world will wake up? Let us hope not. Let us hope that we, endowed as we are with human intelligence, can act in concert to prevent further anguish and impoverishment.

--------------------------

Ungku Aziz in an interview with Utusan (July 19, 2009)

Bagaimana pelajar yang menggunakan bahasa simbol dalam Matematik boleh pandai bahasa Inggeris? Kita lihat orang Cina mahir dalam Matematik, ini kerana dalam penggunaan bahasa dan tulisan mereka banyak simbol daripada huruf.

Sigh.

--------------------------

The next time someone compliments me on one of my secondhand men's sweaters, I should say, "Thank you, it's my fiance's/husband's," and watch them freak out.

[Status update: still haven't remembered to do that]

--------------------------

The more I work on my thesis, the more I get convinced of my argument. The more I get convinced of my argument, the more obvious it seems, and the less worth arguing about. I should be doing theory instead. o_O

-------------------------

Passive-aggressive grad schools:

The University uses plagiarism detection systems to assist academic staff in helping you to learn to avoid plagiarism in your work; and in helping to detect plagiarism in assessed work submitted by you.

--------------------------

So I was walking down a long empty hallway in the science building, balancing my ID card and my cell phone and a tupperware of soup that my housemate brought me and a plastic spoon pilfered from the physics common room all on top of my thermos full of fresh Earl Grey, and wearing an oversized men's button down from the thrift store and gym shorts and leggings and furry bedroom slippers, heading to the classroom that I'd staked out for my second-to-last night of thesis work, and I thought -- I'll miss this place.

2011-01-06T00:21:00.002-05:00

Alive!

And very happy. Just thesising. Back in February, inshaallah. Much love.

P.S. In case you were wondering -- so much to be thankful for from 2010, so much to be excited about in 2011. More later. (Probably more than anyone ever needs to know, knowing my sad blogging tendencies.) Yay.

2010-12-28T13:31:00.002-05:00

O thesis

I have three Google docs, all of which were only used once, titled as follows:

--Thesis miscellaneous

--Thesis dataset to-do

--Thesis miscellany

Also, I really should have ordered a USB number pad before this week of crazy data entry. Oh well. I will survive aslongasIknowhowtolove &c.

Another sad thing (although really most of my life is not sad now): I'm listening to BBC Arabic as I key in numbers, and they're talking about Malaysia, and the combined lack of attention + practice means that I have no idea what they just said about home. :(

Arr.

Arr. Arr. We are the pirates who don't do anything.

Oh dear what are all these spreadsheets doing to my brain. But yay for happy thoughts of Veggie Tales. And for BBC Arabic playing stuff from the Nutcracker, for some reason that I also wasn't paying attention to. Life tastes good. :)

2010-12-27T22:46:00.003-05:00

Uggs, and other stories of Christmas

Fun fact: I've spent every Christmas either with my family or with a borrowed family in a U.S. suburb. When I was in Singapore then being home for Christmas wasn't tough because the school year followed the calendar year, and also because the Johore straits <<>

Throughout college I've only spent one Christmas at home, which was borrowed time in itself (and that "only" is an insufferably greedy one) -- I'd just finished the term at SOAS, and dajie's wedding in Penang was a very legit excuse to take a very roundabout route back to Williams.

Freshman year I spent Christmas with the family of a Williams friend in a suburb of Boston; Christmas eve dinner was with this close friend's family's close friends.

Sophomore year I spent Christmas with the family of my dajie's then-boyfriend in a suburb of Milwaukee; Christmas eve dinner was with his extended family.

This year I spent Christmas with my mom's sister's family in a suburb of LA; Christmas eve dinner was with the family of my aunt's boyfriend.

And I've enjoyed each Christmas so much -- despite how much I fret prior to being a house guest, and despite the fact that I never give the nativity as much mind as it deserves during these festivities.

And still the Boss give such good gifts, e.g. borrowed relatives. The borrowed relatives also give good gifts: my friend's parents gave me a Barnes & Noble gift card that of course was super useful, my now-brother-in-law's parents gave me lovely gloves that I wore every cold day for two winters until I lost one, and my aunt's boyfriend's sister gave me a gorgeous red journal emblazoned with that stolid Brit "Keep calm and carry on" thing. I like presents more than I would like to. But :)

--------------------------------

I've passed through Boston a number of times over these few years, and consequently have attended parts of various church services in this city. (And yes the "consequently" also applies to "parts of," because "passing through" means that I need to rush of and catch vehicles, and also I have way too many quotation marks in this post.) But anyhow:

--most of an Italian-language service in the North End, at the oldest Roman Catholic parish in the U.S.

--the middle of an outdoor jazz service at the Old South Church

--part of a Sunday service at Park Street Church

--the entirety of a service at CCFC in Cambridge; I was supposed to leave halfway to meet my ride back to campus, but then it turned out that my ride was at the same service

And then yesterday I went to the Old North Church, one of the landmarks along the Freedom Trail. My plane had gotten in from LA an hour late, so I arrived for the 9am service 15 minutes late, at which point the celebrant was halfway through his sermon. Another 15 minutes on, we'd finished the prayers and communion and were out the door -- all four of us (celebrant, elder, another congregant, and me). I was fascinated and perturbed and decided to continue the meditative silence by reading Matthew over hot chocolate in the aromatic glow of Mike's Pastry. (Yum.)

And then I almost attended part of a Cantonese service at the Cathedral Church of St Paul next to the Commons, but chickened out. Ah well.

--------------------------------

[And now for one of the weird shorthand bits that are more for personal journalling than public comprehension.]

Walk out of Mike's. Cannoli for housemate and vacation housemates in bag, along with purse and duffel that goes clunk but somehow got through at a carry-on. Love love the vibrant stillness of Sunday morning in old city with fresh snow. Loafers not so happy (only other footwear is flipflops and peep-toe wedges) but oh well.

Follow Freedom Trail to Faneuil Hall, stopping for eggs ben at a pub en route. Mosey around market area [top pic]. Procure leather flats for $10 at Urban Outfitters (convenient since other $10 leather flats from same store at Thanksgiving freshman year are dying). Sit down in food court and use free wifi to scope out other nearby churches.

Leave market area. Snow heavier but still captivating. Find other church. Wimp out of Cantonese service. To Commons to ask info booth for lunch recommendations. Have lunch at recommended deli next door to Cantonese service. T to South Station for afternoon bus to Williamstown.

South Station = zoo. All buses cancelled. Talk to ticket counter person. Call friends to troubleshoot. To Amtrak. Wait in line. Pittsfield train already left. Tomorrow's tickets sold out. Back to bus side. Counter person uncertain if buses running the next day. More phoning. Friend confirms that Amtrak online is also sold out tomorrow. Text from Boston friend --> bus to her apartment.

Apartment is lovely. As is friend, same as 1.5 years ago when last saw her. Catching up talk. Hot tea. Hot water. Ritz crackers. Compulsively check Amtrak site and miraculously get ticket for tomorrow. Turn on Gchat for first time in >month to talk to other friend. Still snowing. Hot dumplings. Hot soup. More talk.

Chariots of Fire = many sniggers + many more yays. Miscellaneous emailing. More talk. Skype with Msian friend. Still snowing. Bed. Marvel at home getting snow-stranded became a joy.

Wake up. Still snowing [bottom pic]. Intercity buses still not running. Amtrak reservation still secure. Breakfast (flaky sesame bun with added pork floss, yay areas with Asian markets). More talk. Packing (cannoli and all).

Survive walk to bus stop thanks to third?hand Uggs that friend had received from husband's (also a friend) sister but never worn out. (Very very grateful but will probably never wear Uggs out again unless circumstances similarly extenuating.) Bus to South Station. Print ticket. Heave sigh of relief that train is still listed on departure board. Lunch = half sandwich + half soup + Matthew 20.

On train! Train pulls out of Boston! Whoa! Alternate between Matthew and Spolsky's Language policy (first of three thesis books in luggage, having failed to learn about vacation productivity despite eight years of studying away) and dozing off. Get window seat for Springfield - Pittsfield stretch: entranced by floes on rivers, hundreds of parallel tree shadows on fresh flat snow, birches bending left to right across the line of straighter darker trees (a Robert Frost fragment from the A Levels), cascades of ice down craggy slopes.

In Pittsfield. Berkshire local buses still running! Wait for hour with Spolsky. Hungry. Eat cannoli (the one bought for self). Mmm. On bus. Alternate between observing gorgeous Berkshireness and praying and dozing off. Eventually in North Adams. Wait for next bus. Sing quietly next to bus stop while waiting (can't decide if want or don't want other people to hear, either way silly).

On Williamstown bus. Walk home on street because sidewalk invisible. Wade through two feet of snow on doorstep (thank you hideous comfy boots). Home (one kind thereof) (presently, a very satisfying one).

2010-12-19T22:20:00.006-05:00

7/8

leave exam room

collect transcript

scan transcript in library

walk back from library with books newspaper articles lan cable computer screen

home hug friend call friend

wash three days of tupperware

catch-up dinner with friend at new Vietnamese place

home laundry tidy books clear backpack vacuum scrub shower unclog sink fold five days' tops change sheets

open camera package

relax

-----------------------------------

Btw that wasn't a miserable attempt at poetry, by which I mean it wasn't an attempt at anything but recording, not that it wasn't miserable. I was just fascinated by how I let stuff pile up over the last few days, and also by how much I enjoy cleaning things when I have the time to. And what follows immediately will also be super not eloquent. But yes --

(a) I'm done with finals! There were some points where I let myself get silly and stressed, and some other points where God made it very clear that I was pushing myself to stay awake longer than was necessary (occasionally with humourous results), but it all worked out well, and I'm thankful. As inclined as I am to measuring time in fractions, I haven't really dwelt on the implications of having only a semester left in my college career, nor on being officially retired from the newspaper. On the whole, though, it's all been way more satisfying than I deserve.

(b) I did buy a new camera, so I have a working shutter now! I finally decided that I didn't need/want the money time brain vanity investment of a DSLR just yet -- I have no aspirations of being a Photographer, I just like documenting pretty things -- and then for some reason* I was on Amazon and saw this really good deal, and liked what I saw when I googled for reviews, and so I committed. And then the box sat in my room throughout finals week, and I just opened it, and now I have a camera with a shutter that opens all the way. Yay! It's still somewhat strange to me that I take camera ownership for granted now. Sigh. And to let myself explore a bit more, even sans cool DSLR optical things, I got one of these (also in a random Amazon sale), and I'm really excited. But O for a viewfinder.

*I'm pretty sure I was looking for a Christmas present for someone, or something. Sigh. I've hardly been shopping online -- or anywhere but the grocery store -- this year, but I succumbed a couple times during finals week. I genuinely needed the toiletries, but I didn't have any particularly urgent need of them at 1am in the library, so I am officially shamefaced. Ah well.

-----------------------------------

So I've finished my first real art class ever! I'll miss it a lot, but I don't anticipate doing much drawing in the near future -- I've never doodled, and I don't have the visual imagination that lets you draw from pictures in your head. We shall see.

And no, that's a Picasa collage, not a wall. And yes, I know Picasa is a sad little programme, but I don't want to run anything more complicated on my netbook. No, I did not see fit to include any of the of the nudd (I think that's a Nanny Ogg-ism? or not) figures. And yes, I was horribly squeamish about doing a self-portrait and am still somewhat squeamish about this section of this post, but this art class has intruded on this blog so much that I might as well put some of its products here. Yes, one of them is my final self-portrait, and yes, I've only ever put two pictures of myself on this blog on a date that shall remain buried in history, but this one was more a conceptual drawing and is a really poor likeness, which is why I'm okay with sticking it here. (What's extra sad is that I failed to replicate my face even though I was drawing from a photo) (And yes, it's also really sad how much time I can spend being all self-reflexive.)

Our final portraits also had writing and performance components. The performance part, in which I read most of the written part (everything except for the italicized bit, which I found in one of our crit readings after my art history professor told me I needed a "motivational frame"), was the first time I sang solo in front of people. The written part is below, sans all the citations. Some of the texts are things that I've studied; some are phrases that have stuck with me over the years, some are snippets that happened to be floating around when I was working on it. You are my friends if you recognize any of the quotes. But I lie. You are probably my friend regardless, assuming of course that I've actually met you, since I still have don't know whether or not you read this unless you already told me so. But enough of this sort of rambling.

-----------------------------------

“And if there is agency, it is to be found, paradoxically, in the possibilities opened up in and by that constrained appropriation of the regulatory law, by the materialization of that law, the compulsory appropriation and identification with those normative demands. The forming, crafting, bearing, circulation, signification of that sexed body will not be a set of actions performed in compliance with the law; on the contrary, they will be a set of actions mobilized by the law, the citational accumulation and dissimulation of the law that produces material effects, the lived necessity of those effects as well as the lived contestation of that necessity.”

“I don’t want to bother you much with what happened to me personally.”

“… the private is … the absolutely precious, inalienable site where my image is free (free to abolish itself).”

“Read what I wrote last night. Vague words for a vague emotion.”

“We’d rather fly and leave for the moon

Than say the right words too soon.”

“Is all of this born out of my desire to learn, my urge to get at the root of the problem, my need to unpack the answer to that question to dodge complete explanation? No. More often than not, it’s to prove myself to my peers.”

“A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man’s self-respect and inherent human dignity.”

“Pretend you have a bar just below your chin and stick your neck out with your face slightly tilted downward. You’ll look poised and avoid the dreaded double chin.”

“A man walked into a bar and said ouch.”

“‘That’s where we live, Gershon,’ his father said. ‘Yes, it’s a beautiful world. But you must learn to make smart choices or it will hurt you.’”

“And make up your mind about what bloody race you belong to.”

“’Banana,’ my father said. ‘Yellow outside, white inside.’”

“This Chinese boy has sort of rejected the native stuff … and turns out very competent imitations of imitations.”

“But I love this country ... I feel that it needs me. This is absurd, because ... a drunken Tamil is prepared to knife me, the Chinese in the town would like to spit at me, some day a Malay boy will run amok and try to tear me apart. But it doesn’t matter. I want to live here; I want to be wanted.”

“I feel like a Zwischenmensch. A word I’m coining. Remember it. A between-person. I don’t belong anywhere.”

“It’s more interesting to think about fragments, which imply a certain antilogical, antilinear approach also common to many women’s work. I like fragments, networks, everything about everything.”

“Ain’t I a woman?”

“I'm not a girl, not yet a woman.”

“I’m afraid of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera

Backstreet Boys and ’N Sync, I don’t know what to think.”

“She is so familiar, I can only tell whether or not she is pretty or happy or smart by comparing her to the other women.”

“She was slim ... humanoid, with long waves of black hair, a full mouth, an odd little knob of a nose and ridiculously brown eyes ... she looked vaguely Arabic.”

“The … spots are still there, dotting my nose and checks like speckles on an egg, though my mother says I look none so bad when I am not squinting or sulking.”

“Out, damned spot! out, I say!”

“… she was not a pretty girl.”

“She struck me as beautiful—I mean she had a beautiful expression.”

“… youths with foolish and cheery countenances.”

“She wore no makeup. The sun shone on her face. ‘You sound very happy,’ he said.”

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

“I don’t know. But if you’ve ever wondered why I can’t seem to keep my shoes on for longer than a minute ... here is an explanation:

... even the most comfortable shoes

Are worse than going barefoot.

Like blossoming flowers with air to breathe

Your feet were made to be totally free.”

“I run in the path of your commands for you have set my heart free.”

“She’s got it all worked out I’m afraid

And your time is arranged

And it’s strange but you’re feeling fine.”

“For I have had too much

Of apple-picking: I am overtired

Of the great harvest I myself desired.”

“Ill-weaved ambition, how much thou art shrunk!”

“But what I think I’d really love is to get out by myself

On a little tiny island in the middle of the ocean

With just me and a book and a cellular phone

And a personal computer in case something came up.”

“Don’t touch me! Don’t question me! Don’t speak to me! Stay with me!” “Did I ever leave you?”

“I will be still, and know you are God.”

“If I was not so weak

If I was not so cold

If I was not so scared of being broken

Growing old

I would be, I would be.”

“I am, therefore I think. Therefore.”

“Here and gone. That’s what it is to be human, I think—to be both someone and no one at once, to hold a particular identity in the world (our names, our place of origins, our family and affectional ties) and to feel that solid set of ties also capable of dissolution, slipping away, as we become moments of attention.”

“Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my own race.”

“It is going to be a beautiful day.”

“For a performance to work, then, means that a reading is no longer possible, or that a reading, an interpretation, appears to be a kind of transparent seeing, where what appears and what it means coincide. On the contrary, when what appears and how it is "read" diverge, the artifice of the performance can be read as artifice; the ideal splits off from its appropriation. But the impossibility of reading means that the artifice works, the approximation of realness appears to be achieved, the body performing and the ideal performed appear indistinguishable.”

2010-12-15T23:13:00.002-05:00

How to tell it's finals week

You cart your work home from the library because you forgot that the library has extra late hours, and then you try to unlock your door with your carrel locker key.

You accumulate a selection of cutlery in your backpack, from having tea and soup at odd hours/locations.

You wear either sweatpants or an oversized secondhand men's sweater every day. (Yay for blanket proxies.)

You write an unseemly amount of short blog posts, because that seems like a more efficient evil than Facebook. Err.

----------------------------

Also, a year ago I flew out of London. Like time. :D

2010-12-13T09:52:00.003-05:00

Daysed

Sunday morning, 8:50ish am

Wait a minute, this is later than I'd wanted to get up. I remember planning to start the work week in the library early. And whoa how did I not get any data done for my thesis last night? What was I doing all of Sunday evening ... ahhh nevermind.

Monday morning, 8:30ish am

Yay I'm nice and early, I have plenty of time to read my Bible before church ... ahhh nevermind.

Also, on Friday afternoon I noticed it was the 10th, and briefly got excited about how it was 10/10/10, and then two hours later I realised that it was December. In my defense (I can never remember which is which spelling for that word), I may have been confused by the fact that Msian (Brit) dates put the day first, but of course that'd have yielded 10/12/10. Nevermind. :D

------------------------------

What I do to my computer when I get to my carrel to work on my thesis

1. Take netbook out of sleeve.

2. Take battery out of netbook.

3. Take headphones out of headphone pouch in sleeve (remember not to plug them in yet because the computer has to be on for it to register).

4. Take charger out of backpack. Plug charger into netbook and wall.

5. Turn on netbook.

6. Plug in monitor for extended desktop.

7. Turn on monitor.

8. Take carrel locker key out of wallet out of backpack. Open locker.

9. Take lan cable out of locker (because trying to use a netbook's wireless connection to access a group Stata licence and the code saved to your network share simultaneously is just silly) (among other things in this sentence). Plug cable into netbook and wall.

10. Take mouse out of sleeve out of locker. Unfold mouse, take out USB connector and plug into netbook.

11. Type in password and calibrate monitor and plug in headphones and all that. And map your network share.

12. Try very hard not to get distracted by email and various other internet possibilities (P(fail) ≈ .5).

But I think I will like this week, in sha Allah. Yay!

2010-12-07T16:07:00.002-05:00

Last week of senior fall :D

Also, last night at cell group I said: "We really should do something for people at some point."

But everyone knew what I meant in context. Really one. (Yay for Manglish sans context.)

And I got the paper done on time. And God has kept me so calm throughout all the work and lovely et ceteras that I think I am perhaps starting to qualify for eccentricity (although a friend asserts that you can only be eccentric if you're unaware of said property in yourself) (// humility?) (haha)

On another note, we have a pleasant amount of lovely soft snow now. And yesterday the cold got to oh-wow-my-ears-are-throbbing, but it's really pretty. And I'm also trying to figure out whether it's normal for your feet to get really tired when you're walking up an incline in stiff-bottomed snow boots. But of course there are far more compelling questions in my life right now, like mmm dinner.

2010-12-04T19:32:00.005-05:00

Realisations of varying degrees of recentness

1. My camera is dying a slow death. It's a 2.5-year-old Lumix point-and-shoot that has been dropped a couple times, and for about a month now the shutter won't open all the way when I turn it on, so I always have to poke at it unless I feel like having blacked-out corners in my pictures. Am trying not to entertain fancies about buying a new camera till after I graduate -- not least because that'll plunge me into the can-I-justify-a-DSLR debate that I have been skirting. Vanity sigh.

2. A very good source of music for my homework hours is a mixo f Brahms and Jars of Clay on Pandora. I generally get super distracted listening to unfamiliar non-Christian songs that have words, which is sad because (a) there are a few classic/alt rock radio streams that I really like, and (b) this could suggest underlying traits on equally gross poles of the piety spectrum. Another peculiar thing I like is Canadian radio streams: CBC has a nice classical channel, and RCI has a Arabic programs that are standard enough and slow enough for me to half understand them sometimes. N'am.

3. I enjoy drawing facial portraits far more than bodies. The proportions of full-figure drawings still elude me. While this doesn't make any sense, it does line up with the fact that I'm bad at noticing weight change and rarely check out particular limbs -- which is often convenient but sometimes annoying because it totally erodes my credibility when I try to affirm friends who are feeling fat. Sigh.

4. On a slightly related note: one way to feel good about your body is having both a mirror that distorts images to make them look wider and a normal mirror, and then looking first in the wide one then the normal one. I inadvertently discovered this sad satisfaction because the mirror left behind in my room is wide, and for a while I was really perplexed about why I always liked what I was wearing better when I was in my housemate's room. o_O

5. I often gesture with my hands when I speak. You'd think I'd have been aware of this. At least I'd thought I'd have been aware of this. Ah well. :)

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Recurring realizations

1. I'll only be in this rich -- in so many senses of the word -- college for another six months. My most recent wave of whoa-what-is-this-place-how-will-I-fit-into-its-heritage hit me yesterday during the annual Service of Lessons and Carols. I was looking at (a) the dean of the college was doing a scripture reading, and musing about the fact that I haven't spoken with her before -- not that I'm a delinquent or schmoozer or whatever, it just used to be part of my newspaper life, and (b) the names of students of ages past who died in various battles around the world -- not that I have even remote aspirations of glorious military death.

2. I still can't get over how much mobility I've been given and can't stop being weirded out by the possibilities. Was watching Inside Job with a friend (for newspaper reasons) and recognised so much that I'd seen firsthand -- not the high-dollar corruption (well not really) (awkward titter), but the New York corners and DC facades and London buildings and Singapore skylines. I just really really hope that being spoilt doesn't end up spoiling me. :(

3. It's Advent!

2010-12-01T22:33:00.001-05:00

joy/anticipation

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. [James 1:17]

Alhamdulillah.

2010-11-28T16:41:00.002-05:00

In which I kindof reaffirm loops and bigrams o_O

Unexpected hilarious moment: I just realised that what I meant two blog posts ago was "an absurdly warm neck," not "an absurdly long neck." Currently I possess neither. Ah the perils of blogging when you're dopey.

There were other things that I'd meant to blog about, and I'll probably get to them eventually, but for now I'm just trying to clear out of some of the things that have been flitting through my mind recently, and then hunker down for three weeks of hardcore schoolwork. Hopefully using more disciplined sentences than that last one.

Reasons I didn't blog much over Thanksgiving break:

(a) it's really short

(b) I started working on the written part of the final project for my art class -- the more time I spend on it the more fun I have and the nuttier I think I am

(c) there are a tonne of other things that I could've done, including writing to people/working on not feeling bad about not writing to people

What I did over Thanksgiving break:

(a) we had people over for dinner, although I abdicated from planning; pleasantly, the housemate who cooks the least took it upon himself to organize the whole shebang

(b) I got some work done

(c) not set my alarm clock -- which resulted in my getting up circa 11:30am Wed-Sat, because I kept having good work moods/conversations at night and went to bed 3ish every day (the road to hell) -- but it's all good!

Tuesday night was fascinating: classes had ended, we'd sent the journal to the printer the previous evening, and two of my housemates were chilling in my room while we waited for our last housemate to get home. I decided to take a nap. And I woke up two hours later, only to be told that everyone had been home for a while, and that they'd tried to wake me up (generally foolproof method: say my name) but I'd been totally unresponsive. Which was somewhat unnerving, because I'm not usually a heavy sleeper. Eventually we all convened for talk and Amarula (the under-21 refrained) anyway, and I got some work done and went to bed late and commenced my waking-at-11:30 series.

Weird thought throughout: last semester, this was every week for me. Not the sad grammar or liquer or whatever, but writing and editing and working on layout for hours and hours. Very different publications, of course, not least because the journal only runs once a semester. But the fact that I survived last semester -- and did not ever enter dead sleep -- still stands out to me as an example of baffling grace.

Parenthetical note: this is one of the posts for which I actively hope that I will reread it in the near future and think, thank God my writing has improved so much since then. Hopefully in the near future. Ha. Ha.

Since I am already engaged in judging myself (and no doubt anyone reading this would be likewise engaged), another random weird thought: it's been a year since my hair was cut to shoulder length in London, and sometimes I forget that my hair is long again. Maybe because my fringe is still annoyingly droopy length when really I just want it to go away. We'll see if I ever muster the energy to get a haircut that requires maintenance again. Ha. Ha.

Okay, this is getting sad. Or loopy. Or both. Yay? On to dinner and then the library. Hi ho.

2010-11-26T00:08:00.002-05:00

Refraction

How he loves us

easing our fingers from the edge

his gentle strength

drives frailty

through his life

to rend the dark

2010-11-21T03:28:00.003-05:00

Yay life &c

[random view from the deck outside my room]

Life since the last time I posted has been super packed but pleasantly balanced = no need for amusingly distraught posts. Last Sunday I took time to have a long conversation with one of the many people who mean a tonne to me but whom I often neglect to communicate properly with. Of course, in this case the person was God, so "conversation" meant me whining/singing/reading the Bible/periodically dozing off, but I heard lots of true things. And those true things helped minimise both the frequency of my moments of ... compression and, when they showed up anyway, their duration.

There've been a bunch of things that I want to write about, and those'll have to wait till Thanksgiving break. But for now, random thought: because I got sick this year I had to wear actual winter clothing far earlier than I normally would've. And I found out that sometimes it can be nice to have an absurdly long neck. But sometimes it's just absurd.

As is the fact that I am blogging at this time, so ma'salaama. :D

2010-11-13T00:17:00.002-05:00

24 hours (wilt not let me go)

At my library carrel after the prayer meeting. Stressed. Data sets are kicking my butt -- do not understand why they have to change both the variable names and the questions every year. Or, really, why I am trying to code in a language that I learnt superficially two years ago and have not used since. Proportion of omitted and repeated variables doesn't make sense. Code is failing. Reading lots of documentation that I don't really understand on commands that are probably irrelevant. First time in a long time that I read Psalm 73 wholeheartedly.

I slide into my second epiphany of the night, just in time to email my econ advisor (telling her that I won't have the log files to her this week) before the library closes. First time I leave the library without seeing any other students.

On the cold walk home realise that I've been praying with and for a lot of people and for and at a lot of meetings, but not hiding away to listen to God alone.

At home, curl up on corner of friend's bed and talk to her for a while. Shower. Try to change the time slot of my senior portrait sitting -- the next morning, my skin is complaining -- but the internet dies at that point and I don't want to get out of bed. Spend some time praying in the dark, for myself family friends. At peace.

Wake up to alarm a few hours later, physically rested but mentally exhausted. Had had a searching dream -- again, the first one in a while (have yet to have a falling dream or a fleeing dream) -- my inability to tease out a route home on the insane undocumented public transport system in indeterminate city had rendered both frustration and disorientation unbearable. Throat aches. Probably do need a lot more alone prayer.

Morning's Bible study includes: "But now be strong, Zerubbabel," declares the Lord. "Be strong, Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land," declares the Lord, "and work. For I am with you," declares the Lord Almighty. "This is what I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt. And my Spirit remains among you. Do not fear."

Thank you, Haggai. And Zerubbabel & co. And thank You.

Exquisitely sunny day.

Senior portrait sitting. Amid photographer's ridiculous hilarious patter he mentions that they Photoshop the pictures, which makes outlook for this generation sad but vanity happy.

Thesis meeting. Reading papers for senior seminar over lunch. Senior seminar -- said something about class distinctions that I know made many people uncomfortable (and that made me for the nth time slightly upset about this squishy academic stereotype that I don't want to fit into) but that could not in good conscience be neglected. Worse is that I said it right after, and in opposition to, a comment from a friend whom I dearly respect but am not too close to. Good that later in the class I got to throw out something in agreement with something he said.

Work -- three hours of campus job.

To the chapel. I see one of my lovely former-Bible-study kids leaving the prayer room holding trash bags. I walk in, and the room is better arranged than it's been the whole year. Yay her. Sing. Curl up and pray. Wake up a bit less than an hour later, in time to run home and change and grab together costume for newspaper murder mystery party (of course they'd assigned me the grandma).

Dinner with a frosh leadership thing. Yay food. And friends. And energetically sincere freshman.

Murder mystery party. Love being the wino grandma (love the wine and pita chips and hummus and grapes too). Love these crazy generous friends. Short game of Kings with the gang after.

Home. A lot of nevers are happening in my room. Strawberry container from last night and oatmeal bowl from this morning still sitting on dresser. Clothes from the last two days still draped on (deck) chair (draped with comforter to pretend it's an indoor chair). Ceiling light that died several nights (early mornings) ago still silent. Grad school research proposal still unwritten.

But so happy, and happier because of the improbability of it all.

2010-11-10T11:19:00.001-05:00

Experiment

I'm going to try moving away from the blogging-every-sabbath model, at least temporarily. Because my practice of the sabbath has been broadening from a no-homework mode to a simplifying-the-task-list mode, and I don't want blogging to become another thing to check off the list -- as much for its own sake as for my Sabbath. Arguably, this year I gained a new Sunday task -- cooking -- but that's very much a pleasure.

Not that blogging isn't a pleasure -- but the last few weeks the way the sabbath rest/weekly blogging has coincided is that I start a post at some point during my sabbath, spend the rest of Sunday afternoon (ie till the 5pm newspaper meeting) doing other slowing-down things, and then feel compelled to finish the post on Sunday night when I'm jumping back into work in my library carrel.

Which isn't ideal because on many Sunday evenings* this year I've let my balance slip and I devolve into an oh-noes-work-sleep-aah state -- hence sounding miserable and feeling more oh-noes-work-sleep-aah because I should be doing homework instead of blogging at that point. Last Sunday was a case in point: I was huddled at my carrel with the hood of my sweatshirt over my head because I just wanted all sorts of comfort.

I know, I'm a wimp. o_O

[*This in itself is interesting; all previous semesters because I was more heavily involved in the newspaper, I generally wilted on Wednesday evening, the first day of the newspaper week. Last spring I dealt with this by watching the film for my comp lit class every Wednesday instead of trying to do more active homework.]

I'm attempting to switch up this blogging thing partly because it's the part of the semester when I really need to ... err, creatively assess how I allocate my time, i.e. there are about four more weeks of class and two more months before I turn my thesis in (and a little less than two weeks before we send our journal of Christian thought to the printer). I actually haven't gone to the gym in a couple weeks -- feeling tired/getting sick coincided with one of my housemates giving an optimistically inflated estimate of how many miles we walk each day because we're living off campus -- and I've started taking occasional naps again, of the head-down-for-ten-minutes power variety. It's also the point in the semester that I'm glad I consciously chose to park all my thesis materials in the library, because its 2:30am closing makes a good upper limit.

And yet the gift of not-rushing has lingered, apart from those times (eg Sunday night sigh) when I freak out and wave flustered hands around and let go of it. Poor metaphors. Yay life.

2010-11-07T20:21:00.003-05:00

Present

I hardly did any homework last week. But I'm confident that I didn't waste any time. Lame but nontrivial evidence: last night, after my sabbath began, I looked at my RSS feed for the first time all week. Being sick and giving myself a bit more sleep (and using up more than a pound of honey on hot drinks) was a part of it, interviews and applications for next year were also a part, as were extra time with friends and the two campus publications that I'm committed to.

Strange: learning stark lessons about the value of this academic gift by being placed in situations where it is clear that neither the gift nor my exercise of it have any inherent worth. Trying to trust that, even though I only got to spend a couple hours on thesis the whole week, it will be good.

Strange: not feeling busy, despite all signs that I am exceedingly so. The gift of having the beautiful cliches in Matthew 6 feel true for once, in defiance of task-orientedness and task list. (This liberation both decreases the frequency of the moments of terror and sharpens their sting; see below.)

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It was homecoming weekend -- and, as always, such a joy to be reminded that space/time gaps need not translate into emotional ones. And such a pang to be reminded of the gravity of choosing to spend my life half a world away from these annual intergenerational reunions, from all these radiant people who allow me to love them.

-----------------------------------

Sometimes it's scary to be in a place where my emotions seem more rational than my mind.

The visceral panic says: You're sick. You're tired. Your aching throat and blighted skin have been demanding rest but you don't listen very well. You have so much homework to complete. And all those things for your activities. And all those people whom you always mean to write to. Hours just don't spread that far. Perhaps you should stop bothering.

My thoughts struggle to assert: He will give me more than enough.

Often, it's poetry -- the psalms and the prophets -- that builds a bridge of gratitude.

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(Foolishly layered concern: I don't laugh on my blog anywhere near as much as I do in my head and in person. This is not one of the seasons where I'm preoccupied with virtual self-presentation, but I don't know who reads this -- and while I relish this pretended anonymity I flinch from the thought of anyone worrying about me because I've lost many of the cheery emoticons but retained the silly emo sentences. much love)

2010-10-31T12:43:00.005-04:00

Corak-carik

Some of my course research papers so far:

Democratizing education in South Africa: back to basic principles
Raising means-tested funding in higher education in South Africa
Determinants of primary school attendance in Hebei and Liaoning
Growing pains: the role of education in Malaysia's and Singapore's economic development
Artifacts on artifacts: textual representations of education in Beirut and Cairo
Talking the talk: improving the economic outcomes of Lower English Proficiency workers
Education, ethnic diversity, and growth

And then, of course, there's that thesis thing.

I noticed the extent of this inclination only last week. (I blame it on all that self-reflexive literature.)

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In one of my meal conversations this week I was telling a science person that stepping into social science sometimes worries me because of its capacity for self-indulgence -- what with this excess of independently formulated definitions and frameworks and coloned titles (which I am significantly less taken with than I was up to last semester).

I just hope that my motivations will continue to be what I think they are.

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I was telling one of my housemates how I wished more people in the Christian Fellowship would call me out (this is U.S.ian slang for "reprimand") (this is the second year in which I'm the oldest people in the group). Then I asked him what he would normally want to call me out for, and he said: slowing down and talking less in groups.

It's crazy how far I've come in both of those. And it's crazy how far I still have to go. But what's craziest is how patient the Boss is.

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In repentance and rest is your salvation,

in quietness and trust is your strength,

but you would have none of it. [Isa 30:15b]

----------------------------------

Over the weekend I was more sick than I've ever been during the semester at Williams. Which means not very sick at all -- bracketing, of course, peeling bleeding oozing eyelids &c -- but my throat got infected in addition to the frequent hoarseness, and a few times my head was bleary and stuff ached.

Oddly enough, I was quite happy for most of the weekend, and was very grateful that when I needed to function I could (eg while leading the CF large group Bible study/discussion this week). I was also very grateful that the inexorable demand for rest made me set aside homework on Friday evening = twice my average amount of sleep (not going to disclose that kaythanksbye). It also gave me a very nice nap this Sunday afternoon = part of the reason I'm finishing this blog post at my library carrel as a mid-homework diversion rather than a sabbath activity. And ooh it also gave me an excuse to buy honey, which I've wanted to use on baked chicken for a while.

Perhaps interesting fact: I am not one of those people who have alluring hoarse voices when they get sick. It seems I sounded young and airheaded = very different from how I normally sound kaythanksbye.

Also, I am apparently as good at behaving as if I am not-sick as I am at behaving as though I am not-sleep-deprived -- ie far better than average, perhaps to my detriment, and with occasional flat failures.

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On Thursday, as my throat began its threatening overtures, I watched this stunning dance company with my art class.

Parenthetically, I'll register both my pleasure that this peripheral course is encroaching so much on life (and blog umm), as well as my squeamishness about said academic self-indulgence. But the dance company.

The dance company melded absurdly high levels of technique, atmosphere and fourth-wall-destruction with an innovation that floored me. During the post-show talkback, someone in the audience pushed the director about his process: you say 80 percent of the choreography is collaborative but there is such a distinct style throughout so surely your hand is heavier than that?

Director and dancers looked at each other. Then one dancer said: He directs each of us to fully realize each movement in whatever way our individual bodies and minds intend to. I think what you're seeing is the consonance of full realization.

With such power in their movements, they tread lightly on the earth.

2010-10-24T23:43:00.002-04:00

Pace: a sampler

Thursday

snooze

studio

lunch/clearing emails/catching up

professor's office hours

class

meeting

dinner/housemate talk

panel where brilliant black female scholar-artists say profound things and poke fun at the brilliant white male scholars with whom they are sharing the stage

inadvertent nap during brilliant panel

library/schoolwork

call from parents

library

prayer meeting

library

home/schoolwork

bed

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Saturday night

The first senior class formal of the year. I went with my housemate, and in a toga top belonging to another housemate, a RM5 skirt from Sungei Wang years ago, heels from two summers ago, gorgeous thrift store wool coat. It was a great party. It would have been a better party with a different deejay and without the person who spilled beer on my ear and hair, but even after both of those I still relished the people and the dancing (and the interlude of walking a drunk friend back to his dorm with another friend, the air was lovely and the company pleasant). We'd all individually decided that it had better be a good party because we'd each paid $15 for it and because seniors deserved better. And it was so.

--------------------------------

But this year, the beautiful slow moments are like punctuation, not oases. For the first time since I left home for school, the headlong rush has yielded some momentum. I'm thankful.

2010-10-16T23:01:00.008-04:00

-conscious

"I've been thinking about you all night -- I think the world of your mind, but what will you do if you're ever in a room full of people challenging your ideas?"

That was my studio art professor before class on Thursday. The previous day, during the art history section of class, we'd all written essays in the mode of Barthes's Camera Lucida. I was one of four people to present. Two uncharacteristic things: first, I'd volunteered to read; second, I hadn't read loud enough for all of the 30 or so people in the room to hear me.

Throughout my time at college I've had a really silly relationship with speaking in class. In some classes I'm almost as loud as I am at meetings and mealtimes, but in many it's a struggle to raise my hand and enter the fray. Sort of like how dancing and smiling for pictures used to be a struggle. And precisely how trying to speak Chinese or play the guitar or sing in front of people remains a huge struggle.

There's this girl in our Christian Fellowship whose grace and faith I deeply admire. She never prays aloud.

I still have so much to learn about this business of loving myself and the people around me.

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One thought after reading John Berger's Ways of Seeing for class: Perhaps one reason why it's so natural and pleasurable for me to walk into art museums or classical concerts, even though my critical vocabulary for both is minimal, is because I grew up comfortable in a faith that placed beauty and rarity amid our grime.

This evening, a friend and I went for a concert featuring this incredibly gifted ensemble of musicians on Japanese instruments. Their gorgeous fusion pieces animated me as Western music often does, but Asian music never has.

I'd like to take a music class before I graduate, I think. I'd also love to learn the flute at some point.

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Three-way conversation, our house, Friday

"Hey, wake up. I'm done with the fellowship application and I'm going to bed, my computer's all yours."

"What time is it?"

"4.51 a.m."

"You're crazy. And could you maybe get me up in an hour?"

"I've been up since a bit after three, and I might try to go back to sleep in a bit."

Note: I'm posting this conversation because it's humourous and unusual. Just saying!

2010-10-10T15:52:00.001-04:00

Sabbath

2010-10-09T22:36:00.003-04:00

Non-normal distribution

Monday: I woke up wearing lilac fleece pants, a purple tee, a dark purple long-sleeved tee and a red sweatshirt. It seems the cold erodes both body heat and good taste. :( And then I went to class wearing skinny jeans, with a wrap skirt as my top under a cropped sweater that had been my housemate's cardigan until she shrunk it in the wash.

Tuesday: We had some really messy assignments for studio (our second "drawing as performance" session), and while washing my hands in the art building I was congratulating myself on not getting any charcoal on my face -- although my toes were a mess. When I got home, I spent a few minutes scrubbing my feet. Then I sat down to do some reading and realized that my forearms had black streaks too: back to the sink. And I sat down again and noticed more charcoal on my elbows. And five minutes after I had finally cleaned off all the charcoal, I drew a pen streak across my palm.

Wednesday: It was raining. And chilly. So I opted for my faithful red leather ballet flats instead of flip flops. Faithful or not, my flats were not fans of the rain, and spent the afternoon diligently leeching red dye all over my soles.

Thursday: My art TA told me that I was making a really pretty drawing that unfortunately did not resemble the proportions of our model. She kindly did some remedial proportion work with me. We ended the studio with a free drawing session; the picture I drew then was indistinguishable from the warm-up sketches for which we had been told to intentionally exaggerate proportions.

Friday: Every October, my school christens a random Friday as Mountain Day: classes are cancelled and several hundred of us hike a few miles up a mountain and enjoy cider and doughtnuts and performances. What makes it extra special is that no one knows which Friday will be Mountain Day until the morning of. On Thursday night,

(a) I went for a newspaper soiree, during which one of the girls confirmed reliably that the next day was Mountain Day,

(b) I was feeling sad because I would had to leave campus for a Ravi Zacharias (!!) event in New Haven before the hikes started,

(c) I had not yet made the slides for the poli ec senior seminar presentation that I would have to give if it were not Mountain Day.

So I went to bed without doing the slides and set my alarm for 6am: no Mountain Day announcement email. I dozed a bit till 6:15: still no email. Then I woke up again at 6:45, saw the email and promptly went back to sleep. Later in the day, the drive to New Haven passed through plenty of hills draped in rich fall colours. I'm planning to hike tomorrow.

2010-10-03T13:23:00.001-04:00

bright fluctuating images

I don't know how I survived last spring. Actually I lie: I survived through a combination of grace and insanity. And last Sunday evening really tested that trust that I learnt last semester. After a richly restful sabbath, I eventually got to my library carrel. And then several hours later I'm writing sections of my newspaper article for the third time, because my computer is going crazy and won't let me save so I only manage to copy snippets of the story into an email.

It worked out, though, and I forced myself to take enough breathing/prayer breaks to stay functionally calm. But that didn't quite silence the thoughts about the essay that I'd wanted to finish that night, or about the likelihood of my thesis being eaten electronically.

Still, that's the worst it's been this first month back, and I'm thankful. I'm not exactly in the airy castle of independent time and endless research, but I have a satisfying structure going. Sunday through Thursday evenings after dinner/meetings I'm in the library in sweats.

But on the mornings and on Saturday I've been working at home, and giving myself the time to be human -- my conscience is clear about interspersing work and things that aren't work but are (arguably) necessary: cooking, cleaning, working on my personal statement, and doing occasional fiddly things like tweezing my eyebrows.

Umm ah. Moving along. I've really been enjoying the margin of error in cooking; getting into a grocery shopping pattern has been tougher because this area isn't the most navigable sans car. I may have to rethink my once-every-two-weeks grocery blitzes; three or four kinds each of meat, fruit and veg, plus various starches, were not the funnest things to lug from the shuttle van stop to my house. Especially when I happened to drop this massive pack of toilet paper right when my college president (whom I've interviewed multiple times) was cycling past.

Because I don't have to rush everywhere (e.g. now I probably average two hours of meetings a day as opposed to ... a lot more than that), time seems to be passing slower than it did last semester. Which is not unwelcome, especially since there's this interesting thing floating in the background, i.e. the fact that I'll only be a Williams student for eight more months. (Tangent: on Friday I was filling out this form and said to the receptionist, "I can't believe it's already the end of September!" She: "It's October.")

It's also nice that time is taking its ... time because my mostly nonexistent thesis is due at the end of January. But it's coming along, partly because both my advisors have been pushing me to just churn words out, even if it means glossing over the cites for now. This is probably a good strategy, especially given that my natural inclination would be to read everything (i.e. 30-odd books + lots of articles + news articles + blogs &c) and then start writing circa December. We'll see how the datasets go. One is a fraction of a massive convoluted dataset in the public domain; the other currently exists as hundreds of digicam images that I took of handwritten spreadsheets. Gsdlfkj. Perhaps I was a masochist in a past life. Or just a really big nerd.

Speaking of both my advisors -- this semester I'm seeing eight professors a week. I have two poli ec seminars, both of which are co-taught by a political scientist and an economist. Ditto for my thesis. And then my fourth class is a 100-level art class team taught by an art historian and a studio art prof. And I really like all eight of them, i.e. I am a happy nerd.

The only downside is that contemplating eight sets of exacting standards is not always the most relaxing thing, which makes me all the more committed to my goal of being as free -- liberated -- as I can this year. Shoving off my own standards will probably be the toughest recurring battle. (And I'm vaguely glad that blogs are monologue-ish, because here I could easily end up in arguments with friends about self-defeating agency or something. Lalala I've got the power. And ego issues, evidently.)

Two other things about this past month: first, I've been a lot more passive about catching up with people than I typically am, whether people on or off campus. Which is another one of those, but wait, I already feel like I do a tonne of emailing and have meal dates almost all the time. But I'm being silly. Second, I think about a year ago I started having dreams with short bursts of sound in them, sometimes musical and sometimes dissonant. And recently my dreams have had incongruous disembodied snatches of dialogue.

I don't know where I'm going with all of this. But as for myself, I think I'm going to take a nap (although ah there are so many emails that I want to reply!). It's still my sabbath for a couple more hours, so we'll see. By which I mean "I'll." And in sha Allah my computer won't decide to be cranky again this evening.

2010-09-26T01:53:00.002-04:00

Before a fall

After our Christian Fellowship large group meeting yesterday I realised that I haven't been fighting pride actively, at least since I got back to campus. Which really is a problem -- not that my ego has been especially inflated, but I've allowed a terrible volume of vaguely inflated thoughts to flit through my mind unchecked.

It's so irrational that the Master of the Universe still loves me enough to bother teaching me. Insha Allah I will learn.

--------------------------------

Although this afternoon my conscience was clear about how proud I felt of Williams. It was the fall convocation for our senior class, as well as the induction of our new president. All the speeches were insightful and a lot were funny, and there was the right degree of pomp and circumstance and farce throughout. There was also some pomp and a difference shade of circumstance and plenty of farce at the induction gala (ie packed dance party in the student centre) just now, and I enjoyed that plenty too. This Father gives good gifts.

--------------------------------

Finally, a few points of strategy:

1. If you have a bit of orzo and a lot of tomato soup, it's better to spoon soup onto the orzo than to dump the orzo in the soup. So you can make sure you get all the starch you need even if you don't have enough time to finish all the soup.

2. If you would like to pilfer a box full of campus publications to use as a foot rest at your library carrel, turn 90 degrees to your left and pilfer the empty box that no longer contains said publications instead. Preferably before your friends suggest you do so (unless you like making people laugh).

3. If you are trying to fit a tupperware, pashmina, Bible, wall-sized map and assorted personal items into a small shoulder bag, stop. And remove the pashmina or something.

4. If you have several random thoughts that you want to make somewhat public but you're being lazy, pretend you're making a list on your blog.

2010-09-19T16:21:00.004-04:00

It's interesting how natural some things can feel

e.g.,

1. Being at Williams again. And being a senior.

2. Feeling competitive in the gym.

I am profoundly ashamed to admit that I caught myself thinking: "You may be going like an energizer bunny, but I bet the resistance on your elliptical is way lower than mine!" One of the many reasons that the gym ≠ site of my finer moments.

3. Bringing myself into my academics.

I'm almost scared that I'm evolving into a hotheaded developing country woman with a deep postcolonial chips on her social sciencey shoulders. Eg for class the other day, I wrote a clinically theoretical response paper on The Wealth of Nations, and then the one thing I say in class is a compact rant about implicit double standards surrounding empire. But whatever lah -- presumably we should know a lot about the things we study, and I know myself pretty well. Right? (Err. I wonder if my choice of thesis topic is driven by narcissism?)

4. Life drawing classes for the art course that I'm taking.

It actually doesn't feel weird. Which is weird.

5. Taking a weekly sabbath.

Yesterday evening I had dinner with my housemates, then stood in line for late theatre tickets with two friends, then watched The Real Inspector Hound (heart Stoppard; have wanted to watch this since I read it last fall), then played Taboo over pizza with some girl friends, then sat around in the common room of some other friends and caught up with a girl whom I haven't talked to since an English class freshman year, then went home and lay on my housemate's bed while we had one of those nostalgic meandering reflective conversations that probably should be more embarrassing and less humourous than they turn out to be. So yay.

6. Benefiting from a disproportionate amount of access.

Hullo, it's your hypocritical neighbourhood developing country woman. But really -- a couple weeks ago the art museum just off the edge of campus had an incredible show on Degas's influence on Picasso. And then last week for class at that museum we got to see these gorgeous centuries-old drawings that really should have been behind glass rather than a foot away from my peeling nose. And then today I went to the art museum that's actually on campus, and looked at lots of stunning photos exploring African American beauty, and then lots of stunning photos of physicsy phenomena. Also, at CF on Friday I was wondering whether I would be a less moral person if I didn't have the inclination and the training to be thoroughly swept away by scriptural imagery.

7. Eating the same entree four meals in a row.

Because I'd rather cook nice-ish things every couple days than cook boring things every day.

8. Writing in my books.

This goes against all the Values that I Grew Up With, but over the summer I bought a bunch of books for my thesis, and Williams now has this thing where financial aid students get their books for free, and with this volume of wordage* it's become so natural to put in those vertical lines in the margins at important bits because as fun as these readings can be, I really really don't want to have to do them all over again. I sometimes even write brief notes in the margins (or, in the case of Adam Smith's description of academia, little smiley faces), oh my! Yesterday on my grocery run I bought some cheap post-it flags to use in the thesis books that I borrowed from the library, to prevent my wantonness from, uhh, wantonly wan ... ting to scribble in these too.

*I typed this in in facetiously and apparently "wordage" is actually a word, which means words. I think we have serious issues here.

9. Having a carrel in the library.

Which currently contains: food and tea in the locker, a large computer screen that I borrowed because I really really wouldn't want to do data entry on my netbook screen, a couple decorative etceteras, and more than thirty books that I haven't read. Yet. So I now move on to post-sabbath. :D

2010-09-12T13:23:00.002-04:00

Addendum

and so I sat in the dark
on my air mattress
trying to pray
at the end of the night
with the clock ticking
and the movie swirling in my head
and drunk people flirting outside

2010-09-11T23:19:00.002-04:00

beginning of the end of the

It's crazy that it's already that part of the year again where I know I'll be blogging just once a week, on my sabbath, because it would be poor stewardship to indulge more than that.

But I've been taking it slow so far. I've significantly scaled back my newspaper and CF responsibilities, and I've decided against joining at least four different committees/organizations that I had wanted to join earlier. I am in charge of our journal of Christian discourse now, but printing once a semester is very different from once a week.

I've also been on campus for more than a week, and I haven't scheduled a single meal date yet. (Of course, I've told at least thirty people that we really have to catch up soon, but oh well.)

It looks like I might finally get those long blocks of time to sit down and do work. We'll see if I succeed in maintaining attention span.

It also looks like I can do a high volume of work in my room this year (desk facing, but not directly against, a window seems to work well). We'll see how (kiasu) library carrel registration goes on Monday.

And it looks like I actually might get a healthy amount of sleep, insha Allah. And I'm actually not being facetious.

------------------------------------

Also, is it sad that I ate my lunch (shepherd's pie) in the kitchen while preparing my dinner (honey/dijon mustard/garlic/onion/oregano/lemon/paprika chicken)?

-----------------------------------

A few superficial observations to get out of the way so I can get on with my nerdy semester already (I don't know why I even bother trying to fool myself):

Over the couple weeks I spent in Charlottesville, I bought a super discounted pair of jeans and a super super discounted dress, which may or may not end up being a bridesmaid dress. The dress is a "petite," and the jeans a "short." So while I'm glad that they fit really well, I'm also kindof not.

Now I understand that my skin is both greasy and dehydrated. What I don't quite understand is how to address that. So far lots of oil-free moisturizer and facial blotters seem to help. :D But I really haven't been in any one environment long enough to figure out what it is that makes me break out.

I think I've figured out how ethnicity affects whether or not I find someone attractive: it doesn't. But when I'm in majority non-Asian places I'm more likely to notice any Asians in my vicinity -- regardless of gender and age range, but not excluding attractive guys in my peer-ish group. Interestingly enough, this is the first instance in which I can't truthfully oppose this terribly broad category called Asian; I guess I've been conditioned to identify with this particular synthetic minority. None of this at all applies in Malaysia, since I never feel like a minority there.

At least till the end of this academic year, I'm going to grow out my fringe and keep my hair long. Some days I really liked the cut I got in London, and it was kindof fun having a fringe again, but shorter hair is just too variable and I don't want to wander into the hair product mire just yet.

I am amused/vaguely embarrassed by which para here is the longest.

2010-09-04T23:44:00.003-04:00

One's own :)

2010-08-31T11:17:00.000-04:00

Faith enough to wrap up

[backdated]

The three books I finished this week were all sci fi. I haven't read sci fi in forever, and really enjoyed it. In order, they were:

Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game:

Captivating (although I could say snobby things about the writing, but really that's like saying snobby things about Christopher Nolan's bloopers). Excelled at many of the things that I enjoyed about the later Artemis Fowls -- humour being one exception, but still yay.

CS Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet:

From the first page I was pretty sure it'd be hard for me to dislike anything (a) written by CS Lewis and (b) that describes its protagonist as "dressed with that particular kind of shabbiness which marks a member of the intelligentsia on a holiday". It didn't disappoint.

Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead:

More sophisticated than Ender's Game, but somehow more transparent -- both in terms of message and plot. But I was a fan. And this one had humour.

One continuity between the three was the idea that fear can make the alien seem incomprehensible and grotesque and savage -- when in truth we disbelieve their nobility because we disbelieve our own. And as insipid as old idealised narratives can get (this might be why I usually get most excited about visual art from the 19th century onwards), sometimes I get really frustrated at how some modern media assumes that audiences will respond better to watered-down characters. This irked me in some of the LoTR movies and (was one of several reasons that) made me really angry during the Narnia adaptations. Aragorn was too wimpy, Gimli too silly, the Pevensie children too petty. So yay for stories, flawed or not, that remind us that we are meant to be better than we think we are.

-----------------------------------

I had spent a few days insisting to one of my hosts that I didn't want to borrow Speaker for the Dead. And last night, after I had finished packing and turned off my computer because I wanted a break from the personal statement and emails and distractions, and after I had prayed a bit and told myself that the prudent thing to do would be to pray some more and then go to bed, I picked up Speaker for the Dead and read. And kept reading. And eventually finished.

I woke up a couple of minutes before my alarm, charmed by the sunlight and stilled by the realisation that I was actually going back to Williams -- returning for the final leg of that brilliant bizarre trip. (And then I really started to pray some more and wasn't sure if I wanted to stay in bed.)

And now I'm waiting in yet another airport, my disproportionate alertness a too-clear reminder of how optional sleep can be during college. I'm excited about senior year; I've been excited about this work and community for many months now, and this excitement holds more certainty than the anticipation of any other phase since I first left for Singapore seven years ago. And as much as time has gained wings since I left home, this is the right season. And I know that the beginning of the semester will be a bit of a jolt, but this time I know how it will feel.

But part of me insists it's surreal that this summer of living out of my luggage is over. I am doubting this certainty that I have been given. I've dearly missed the Williams branch of my support network, but part of me is loath to relinquish this itinerant solitude because independence -- self-sufficiency -- just sounds better. I still have yet to master thankful trust.

And it's unnerving how much I've changed, and how little*, since the first time I landed in Albany perhaps fifty flights ago.

*eg I still can sound annoyingly sententious

2010-08-30T11:47:00.000-04:00

Demi negara yang tercinta

2010-08-25T22:46:00.002-04:00

Things that made me happy today

random breakfast talk with super cool friend

brunch with lovely economist whom I haven't seen in two years

thinking about the other people I've gotten to catch up with this week

managing to squeeze my duffel into the lockers at the test centre

doing so much better than I deserved on what I kept calling "my SATs" by mistake (although still apprehensive about the writing score; was so silly about pacing) (still grappling with humble dignity)

lying on the grass reading Micah

sun

shadows

an elegant African-American lady sitting on a majestic Neoclassical fountain and reading a graphic novel

a beautiful one-year-old on the train

puppy

first pair of actually good winter boots arriving in the mail (I don't know what I was doing to myself the other three years)

squeaky guinea pigs

fluffing with friend over pictures of her in various potential wedding gowns (and merrily bashing the frothy dresses)

spicy tofu soup from Jersey (thanks friends)

2010-08-23T01:52:00.001-04:00

Old stuff

I'm officially not a teenager anymore. Of course I've officially not been a teen for a few years, but I was trying to use "officially" the way a teenager would, i.e. incorrectly. Awkward chuckle.

By which I mean, a few days ago I attended a rap concert at my friend's church, and really really enjoyed the guy's sound (rapper + deejay + violinist) -- but only understood about 5 percent of the words. While sitting down practically the whole time. And as I bobbed sedately to the beat, I realised that I haven't gone to a dance party since ... February.

Not that I understand a higher percentage of the concerts that I normally go to, i.e. classical.

Ah darn. It's official. :(

The milling crowd of hyper self-conscious hormones at the concert, though, was so uncannily reminiscent of concerts that I'd attended a hemisphere and a decade (whoa) away. Earlier this summer I'd been laughing with a good friend about how we'd thought we could escape silly teenaged girlhood because we were enlightened and nerdy.

And now we think we can escape silly teenaged girlhood because we're enlightened and nerdy and not actually teenagers anymore. And so we put up random photos of laptops and spectacles that are meant to make us look all intellectual even if it's a little netbook with decals that were meant to go on our future wall but ended up on the computer because we were bored while packing. And it seems we develop a Gollum complex.

Hullo tangled web, I be weaving you kay thanks bye.

---------------------------------

One thing I do remember (I'm not quite at the Alzheimer's stage yet thankyouverymuch) (oh look I'm being so polite in this post) (and totally failing at this let's-change-tone thing) as central to adolescence was this desperate longing to be extraordinary -- to stand out by being really beautiful &c.

It took me a while to grasp that value is not hierarchical, that it's normal to be beautiful. Not because of any beauty inherent in normalcy, but because each individual composing the normal is created beautiful.

I still struggle to slow down enough to apprehend the beauty in the people around me, and in myself. And sometimes we don't want to get caught.

---------------------------------

This is yet another of those I-want-to-say/edit-more-but-can't-be-bothered-and-am-overdue-for-bed moments, so final thoughts:

1. I attended three services today, that were all gorgeous for very different reasons. And I got to attend them with friends, one of whom gave a splendid testimony during the service (although I might be biased because it contained a Williams shoutout).

2. Given that we call it a "service," it might be appropriate to consider multiple definitions of "attending."

3. I like the textured non-Mall DC better than the shiny area that's like a theme park for geeks and/or patriots and a playground for money and/or politicians.

4. I still really like long quiet walks in the city after dark. Today's lasted for about an hour. I probably should just have hopped on the metro. but there was such a pleasant breeze.

2010-08-18T18:33:00.003-04:00

Fracture

How we wound ourselves

gripping freedom by the blade

our clumsy fear

jabs the hilt

into the bruises

of those we would love

-------------------------------------

I'm not entirely sure where that came from, but it might as well go here. (The photo is from Raptor Watch 2007 in Port Dickson, when I was interning at a newspaper.)

A more representative excerpt from my day would be:

This morning my bowl of oatmeal slipped from my hand and broke in half. I hotfooted it to the bathroom to wash the cereal off my shins. When I came back downstairs, the floor was clean. The puppy was happy. I was happy. My GRE book was slightly damp and cinnamony. God is good.

2010-08-14T21:06:00.002-04:00

This grad school application thing

From an FAQ sheet:

I have emailed the Board of Graduate Studies but they are not answering.

They will, you might need to re-email them. Whilst the Faculty deals with hundreds applications, the Board of Graduate Studies will deal with thousands of applications.

I have a question about fees, who should I email?

The Board of Graduate Studies. The Faculty cannot answer questions about fees.

2010-08-09T00:48:00.006-04:00

Merantau

KL-Taipei, Wednesday

You cast him an enchanting smile above

his immigration form: "Alien dad."

A few more years would tell you just how much

the nation you just left desires to fall

in blind love with your alien/Asian shine.

We cry inside, just never lose your joy.

------------------------------------------

Los Angeles, Thursday

I should stop going on and on about how I should be more thankful, but really: a lovely loud Italian dinner after playing Monkey in the pool with my cousins and an American football after an appropriately suspenseful and senseless movie after In n Out burger for lunch.

------------------------------------------

LA-Chicago, Friday

They assigned me a seat next to the two loudest men on the plane. Navy men. Nice enough, but nice means little. One asked about my book and then said that he had learnt about 1950s British counterinsurgency tactics in Malaysia. Was that supposed to make like them more than I had when they were behind me in the queue proclaiming how hard it was to refrain from perving on painted high school girls and guffawing over the Asianness of one's girlfriend?

"Lucky you," a middle-aged lady had said with sympathetic rolled eyes as she walked past our row. Lucky me, they passed out before takeoff.

------------------------------------------

Madison, Saturday

2010-07-31T10:22:00.003-04:00

"more accurate boring machines"

Full quote: "But miners had to struggle with water, and hence they worked on developing better pumps, leading to more accurate boring machines and other tools, which eventually helped to develop steam- and modern waterpower." [Joel Mokyer, "Understanding Technological Progress."]

I.e., now that my agonizing about post-college and my summer research are basically over -- although I still need to actually contact people andgetaroundtoGREstudyingsigh for the former and transcribe four more interviews and pick up a book for the latter -- I've been having a lovely stagnant time at home with my parents.

I'm not accustomed to living with two people who are far, far busier than I am, and who indulge me as much as these do. I'm really not used to being manja-ed like this -- but then they're not used to having kids at home anymore, and they're also not used to having just one kid at home when there are kids at home. So yay.

But my sister and cousin are getting here tomorrow morning and will be interrupting my monopoly. :D Even more yay for catching up with more family, though! And less yay for the fact that this lazing seems to be killing articulation -- probably the not setting an alarm clock rather than the masses of reading. Case in points.

And then on Wednesday it'll be off to the US again, with my parents this time. And it'll be a good month with good people in several good towns, probably with less sleep, but hopefully with as much reading and more conversations. (This summer has been: yay lots of people in KL! --> crazy people-filled day in Singapore --> oh noes I'm a lonely traveller whine whine --> talking with parents and God about life and Life. Of course there have been a number of long conversations with sundry lovely people along the way, but I am not nearly so much of a Scrooge as to deny myself the joy of essentializing.)

And then after that I'll be a senior. (Tangent: maybe it's a good thing I'm learning Arabic; because the preponderance of "و"s ("and"s) to connect sentences may prove to be a good cover-up for my rambling woot.) (O for a language that loves parentheses!) (O to have excuses for all my stylistic deficiencies.) There are so many things that make me excited about the next academic year, among them the fact that I'll be renting a house off-campus with three very close friends. This summer has taught me that there's a lot to be said for being able to spread your stuff out over more than one room of your residence. E.g., "Can someone please call my phone again?"

On another note, I've recovered my neutral accent! By which I mean that-which-is-more-understandable-than-any-degree-of-Manglish-but-less-distant-than-American. I'm foolishly proud of myself. For my first two summers back from college any time I spoke to someone who looked vaguely caucasian I had to fight the impulse to switch into the dialect I speak at school, i.e. quasi-American. The battle was usually humourous and/or distressing.

But this summer I've only spoken American over Skype (to a Thai girl in Bangkok, a Chinese girl who was born in New Zealand but naturalized in Missouri, and a Japanese girl in Osaka). And I did spend time with redblooded Americans -- a Fulbright English TA who brought me around the rural school he'd been posted to, as well as a few missionaries who were part of a group that did street-walking -- I mean we all walked on ... streets and chatted with homeless people and told them about a free meals programme -- although the missionaries were from Mississippi so maybe their accents wouldn't have automatically triggered the code-switching anyway hurhur -- and, attention span issues aside, it seems that when I'm in Malaysia I can speak neutral even to Americans. Whether I can speak coherent ... ly remains to be seen.

2010-07-24T04:45:00.002-04:00

Restatement

[baju kurung from Jusco/Punjabi suit from Kamdar/long skirt from jual murah]

It's been a year since I first acknowledged on this blog that I'm considering a life in Malaysian politics.

A lot has happened in that year.

I wrote a paper after finishing an internship at a state-funded research institute.

I started telling people that I want to be involved in policy, ideally education policy.

I studied abroad-abroad in London, where I indulged an infatuation with a culture and realized a love for research libraries.

Back at Williams, I had a preposterously productive semester and was schooled in new dimensions of trust.

For seven weeks of this summer, I discovered more of my country by travelling and talking to former strangers.

Midway through my travels, I attended a two-day course organized by a policy think tank. I heard as many God-truths there as I have at any explicitly Christian retreat. That weekend, I interacted in rusty Malay with people whom I respect so much that I would give a lot to count some of them my predecessors and others my peers.

A lot has happened. But not enough to convince me that I should write off electoral politics as a possible path.

Soon it'll be my final year of college. I am grappling equally with the reality that I will have another nine months of reading little more than course material and pre-press campus media, as well as the reality that I will only have another nine months with the extraordinary individuals in this collegiate idyll. In sha Allah I will also be writing my thesis on a Malaysian education policy and corresponding with one of my closest friends in BM (it will be novel to send her emails that are embarrassing by virtue of grammar rather than content).

And I'll be applying to grad school in political science. I'm bookmarking economics for the time being, because presently the stories I most want to learn and retell about Malaysia aren't statistical -- though I'm hoping these narratives might exercise those years of literature and Arabic.

For now, I'm looking only at master's degrees in the U.K. As much as I intend to get a PhD, I'm neither officially nor mentally qualified for the British model of doctoral work, and I'm not emotionally prepared to commit five years to a U.S. programme. By the time I graduate, I will have spent slightly less than a quarter of my life in the U.S. and roughly one-sixth in Singapore. Although England is also not-Malaysia, it offers a fresh educational lens and an encrusted postcolonial one; both fascinate me.

It's entirely possible that I won't end up as lucky with free money as I have for the last seven years. If so, I'll come home and work for a while, probably in research or journalism. After I leave Williams I want to spend time reading about intellectual and political traditions and Malaysia, and conversing and writing -- and whether that takes place in a university, at work or after hours is fine by me. Given the opportunity, I'd also like to learn Chinese and driving and teaching. And maybe after a year or two in Malaysia I'll be ready to write the sort of dissertation that I know I want to write. Then maybe I'll apply to U.S. grad schools, where teaching assistantships make funding somewhat more predictable.

Or maybe not. But if the Boss who writes blank cheques wants me holding a PhD or an elected office, He will oversee the mechanics. I can only hope that I will slow down enough to fit myself into His plan.

2010-07-19T11:36:00.003-04:00

Tonight's theme: (futile) apologies

To the environment at large: I have been/will be on 31 flights in less than 365 days.

Sept 23, 2009: Penang - KL - Abu Dhabi - London (Etihad)

Nov 10, 2009: London - Gothenberg (Ryanair)

Nov 12, 2009: Gothenberg - London (Ryanair)

Dec 15, 2009: London - Dubai - KL - Penang (Emirates)

Dec 26, 2009: Penang - Singapore - Chicago - St Loius (SilkAir, United)

Jan 1, 2010: St Louis - DC - Albany (United)

May 29, 2010: New York - London - Singapore - Kuala Lumpur (Virgin Atlantic, Singapore)

June 18, 2010: KL - KK (Air Asia)

June 25, 2010: KK - Kuching (Air Asia)

July 2, 2010: Kuching - KL (Air Asia)

July 3, 2010: KL - Kota Bharu (Air Asia)

Aug 4, 2010: Penang - KL - KK - Taipei - LA (Malaysia, China)

Aug 6, 2010: LA - Chicago - Madison (United)

Aug 9, 2010: Madison - Chicago - DC - Charlottesville (United)

Sept 1, 2010: Charlottesville - DC - Albany (United)

I could've foregone KL-KB and taken the bus. And I didn't need to book Madison-Charlottesville and Charlottesville-Albany tickets, but I wimped out at the thought of spending more than a day on Amtrak and/or Greyhound with a year's worth of luggage. Besides, I had miles.

Ugh.

This is one kind of privilege guilt that I never want to get comfortable with.

------------------------------

To God: for productivity's sake, I will try to limit myself to one subject's worth of tabs open in Chrome at once. Because when I have an email, a wall post and a FB message open at once I just end up dithering about which to reply first.

Maybe I should go back to using ancient tab-lessIE. Joke joke (I vaguely remember someone telling me about their friends of some nationality who would always say this when they were kidding). But I'm serious about the one-subject limit thing. Although knowing my brain it will make "subject" a malleable term.

... through negligence, through weakness, through my own deliberate fault ...

Sigh.

------------------------------

To the girl who almost sold me a top today: I really did like the tee; it would have been awesome to own a garment with an Escher print on it. Your flattery was pretty effective, and your gradual price reduction even more so. By the time you'd halved the price I knew you really wanted to make a sale -- and as someone who also doesn't have too much disposable income I genuinely wanted to help you. But I've been trying to remind myself that I already have far more clothes than I need, and once your colleague started to block my path out of the shop I just had to leave. I didn't know how to make it sound like I was sincerely sorry that I wasn't supporting you, but I was, and I am. I hope you made many sales and had many happy moments after that.

------------------------------

To myself, I guess: if I didn't find my past selves so amusing then I would have far less to be embarrassed about. But I've taken to re-reading bits of my blog during long holidays -- sort of like how I used to flip through old journals -- and earlier today (pre-one-subject-for-tabs rule) I found this ... err, this from back in the day when I was still a teenager (instead of the sage that I am now, of course) and when I wasn't yet pretending that this blog is anonymous.

On the romance side, in case anyone was wondering, there isn't really a romance side at the moment. I'm still in the there-are-random-cute-guys-but-no-fixation stage, which is a really good stage to be at for the insane hectic period called junior college. Hopefully it won't last too long after the A Levels lah. =)

And now you know why I started pretending this blog is anonymous. Joke joke. Astaghfirullah.

2010-07-16T13:38:00.002-04:00

No/mad

I can no longer in good conscience nod along with those cool people who talk about how much they prefer going on holiday alone rather than with friends. Because I don't. I probably used to think I would because:

(a) Of necessity, I am very used to travelling alone.

(b) I've had some really brilliant times wandering through unfamiliar cities alone, and

(c) I've hardly had chances to wander through unfamiliar cities with other people for whom said city is also unfamiliar (i.e. being brought around some place doesn't count).

But two instances of (c) from last fall stand out: exploring the V&A and Harrods with a Williams friend, and covering part of the Jubilee Walkway with a SOAS friend. So the current product of my overanalysis suggests that the ideal situation is going on excursions with someone whose sense of what is fascinating/pretty/amusing and mine are similar enough that we don't drive each other batty, but different enough for us to enjoy more than we otherwise would.

Also, I'm not that good at the having-every-meal-alone-for-days-on-end thing. I should have been more disciplined about it; I always remember my sister saying that one of her friends enjoys eating alone because it reminds her to depend on God. But I was being a wimpy sloth and normally just ended up having a lot of trouble because lots of books aren't too easy to read with just one hand.

[Which reminds me of that old joke: do you stir your coffee with your right hand or your left?]

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and a couple of pictures from yesterday

Yesterday was also the day that I finally cut up a whole chicken, under Ma's guidance. We'd been talking about it for several summers but somehow never got around to it. I've handled raw chicken plenty of times before, but the weight of the whole dead bird as I held it under the kitchen tap, head and all, made me think for the second time that day about possibly going vegetarian for Lent again.

Destruction may be a form of creation, but what are we leaving behind?

[Maybe I need a happy hour drink, to start speaking a different dialect of pretentious.]

Standing on the porch of a fraying pre-war shophouse, looking directly upwards. Besides the beams there were at least two chairs between me and the sky. I suppose a fire?

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and one of those awkwardly self-referential posts that I seem to favour when I really should be doing other things (e.g. sleeping, or finally unpacking)

I know I'm good with words. At this point I also know it's silly to replace that first "know" with "guess," however much my notions of modesty may want me to.

"Good," of course, in a general sense, neither absolute (i.e. constant) nor relative (to anyone). An example of a slip-up: in Kota Bharu two people told me that I spoke BM like orang Melayu Sabah. Darn delayed telecast code switching.

Although it does appear that I still can chat, interview and, haltingly, debate in Malay. Which suggests a number of imperatives: work hard at BM, suck it up and stop being a coward about attempting Mandarin/Hokkien/Canto, thank God.

I should immerse myself in vivid lyrical texts, not just the sort of stuff I have to read for school/newspaper, nor the sort of book from which my favourite line is, "Come eat. Come drink. Make jolly time." (Sometimes I wonder if I should try to narrow the scope of art that I enjoy, but I figure this large-scale liking (of lots of creative works, I mean) gives me more jolly time.)

More silliness. I am eons away from being able to claim that I write for a cause -- say, my country. But instead of remembering that I write for The Cause, I mostly end up writing for myself. Which becomes the wrong image altogether.

I'm sorry.

2010-07-12T11:21:00.004-04:00

This painful freshness

-- of new certainty

mingling with old fears

that pin dark shadows

to your eyes because

you have seen how far

you fall short --

but growth and glory

await in the light.

[written yesterday inna head onna bus; not representative of current state of mind as I stalk grad schools while watching Bujang Lapok]

2010-07-08T09:44:00.003-04:00

Vaguely cultural things that have amused me over the last several hours

1. It's good that things are lost in translation and others aren't. Eg, it wouldn't be pretty if the literal translations of wayang kulit and mau tengok bola got English-language connotations.

2. I wonder if the LoTR costume people got inspiration from old Cantonese warrior serials (at least, the long-hair-and-flowing-robes sort that my grandfather likes to watch).

3. The newly reopened Popular Bookstore in Komtar has The Wealth of Nations shelved under fiction. Grin on so many levels. (Not that I've actually read it.)

4. "Concupiscence" means lust. I'd thought it meant fat throughout all however many pages of The Malayan Trilogy -- like corpulent? Oh wait concubine. Ah.

2010-07-07T14:02:00.003-04:00

Off

I'm home. Kindof -- on Friday I'm heading off for a three-day course thing, and then I'll be doing at least a week of research once I get back again. But right now I feel slow and satisfied enough to be done with [this particular set of] silly blog post titles.

Another reason why it's only kindof home: I haven't really lived lived here, Pa and Ma got transferred back to Penang halfway through freshman year. But this the third summer that I've come back to this house, and that's enough for me. Also, it's nice to be in a place where I can safely assume that everything (apart from church furniture) belongs to someone in my immediate family. At least, so I dearly hoped when I noticed just now that the bath puff was producing a whole lot of suds for to the amount of soap I'd applied.

Half an hour ago:

me: I want to watch the match but I don't know if I should lah. But aiya it's only once every four years right.

Ma: Yah, the next time you watch this you'll be 27. Who knows, you might even be a mother by then! I was a mommy when I was 27.

... Meep. Love you too, Ma.

2010-07-06T01:52:00.004-04:00

On reading

And so it happened that I read "Prufrock" for the first time in the children's area of the library in Bandaraya Islam.

-------------------------

I am jealous of the good people of Kota Bharu. More than the residents of any other Malaysian town that I've spent time in, they can claim to live in a reading city.

One of the first things I noticed about the town centre was that it's full of newsstands. Hardly any English-language periodicals, of course, which was a useful observation for my language and education policy research, but plenty of BM newspapers and magazines.

And then I saw the bookshops. Of all dimensions, usually scattered with customers, and on most large streets and many smaller ones. Subject matter was limited and secondhand shops nonexistent, but mass book-ownership in Malaysia hasn't been around for nearly long enough to evolve that kind of depth. Again, English-language volumes were rare, and usually sat in yellowing plastic waiting for the odd backpacker. At a bookshop I accidentally stumbled upon -- I'd seen it earlier, and my airplane/bus seatmate told me that it had branches all over Kelantan, but it had eluded my stranger's navigation -- I found several shelves of popular English novels and interior design guides, but bought a cheap school edition of Sulalatus Salatin, which a friend had asked me to look for but which I now wanted for myself.

I spent a few minutes later that evening brooding over the larger effects of hardly having read any non-course texts recently, apart from the Book. Not to negate the dense shades of Cairene and Beiruti literature that I spent 1/4 of last semester's class hours on. But loose translations and aesthetic gaps anchored their phrases to the page; only the soaring ideology floated in my thoughts. Not to discount the richness of Biblical poetry, which even the blunt NIV translation couldn't tame (I also brooded over the larger effects of hardly having memorised any scripture in the last few years). But this want of variegated image and rhythm is leaving me with chlorotic writing -- not that that matters, since this writing has no idea where it should aspire to, and currently comprises class essays, school newspaper articles and my blog (which is, really, an overflow sluice).

In a bid to use my last day in KB somewhat constructively, this morning I walked to the public library after having nasi lemak (amazing sambal) for brunch. The fact that the library was central enough for me to walk to it was already unusual; Malaysia's town planners seem preoccupied with inaccessible libraries. Also unexpectedly, they welcome walk-ins. You only have to register at the friendly counter if you want to borrow.

And then, incongruously enough, next to the colourful children's section on the ground floor, I saw the Lincoln Corner -- six large shelves of US-printed books, shipped over from KL under the auspices of an American foundation. I'll have to look into the origins of that later on, as well as the fact that Fulbright ETAs in Malaysia are only sent to Terengganu, but it was a bizarre delight to see Wintersmith and Civil War history and SAT prep and Bill Bryson (with a few carefully inserted texts on Islam in the Americas) in the middle of Kota Bharu.

The rest of the library doesn't disappoint either. Both the BM and English adult fiction sections are decent enough for me to want to spend weeks in this library. The nonfic may not be huge but is substantial; there can't be too many other places where a book about citra wanita dalam sastera Melayu reposes on the same shelf as a book about Oscar Wilde. Overall, its lending collection is probably around the same size as that of the Williamstown Public Library, which makes it very very good for a Malaysian one. I didn't find anything in either poli sci or education about mediums of instruction in Malaysia, but was almost glad because there were so many other books that I was feeling greedy about.

And people actually use this library, it has a quietly energetic air. (I'm sure the free wifi helps. Case in point but not.) The serious, gender-segregated seating on the adult floor did make me slightly uncomfortable, so I grabbed a poetry anthology and headed downstairs to the carpeted unsegregated Lincoln Corner (heh) and the colourful, also unsegregated, cushy seats of the children's area. Near me, three girls in primary school uniform are chatting over their homework, accompanied by can drinks. Three little boys roughhouse, shushing each other occasionally.

After all my doubts about finding enough to do alone in KB, I'm almost reluctant to be leaving tomorrow. But the research grant is calling me away from bookland to another kind of productivity.

-------------------------

An academic very recently told me that Kelantan is routinely one of the highest-performing states in national exams. He also said that the most consistent predictor of student achievement in TIMSS, an international dataset that I hope to play with in my thesis, is the number of books in the home. I wonder.

2010-07-02T06:30:00.002-04:00

On tour

At the encouragement of some Kuchingites, I took yesterday off (or more off, I am still not very good with this Choose Your Own Schedule thing) and went to the Sarawak Cultural Village. On the shuttle (cita-cita: angkasawan) over, I got a bit woozy and inadvertently swapped The Malayan Trilogy for eavesdropping.

"This is a very well-kept Asian city."

"Yes, it's very clean."

"It must be the British influence."

"We've been to India, Chiang Mai, Kuala Lumpur, Cambodia ..."

"So you've done Asia then. You want somewhere different next."

And I decided that I was glad to be from a culture that tends to sound bumpkin ignorant rather than imperial ignorant.

--------------------------------

Despite its awful name, the Cultural Village was very well-kept. It totally trounced its counterpart in the KL area (whatever it's was called, went years ago), not least because the houses in the KL village were filled with garish mannequins engaged in Typical Household Activities. The SCV had actual human beings, who were actually engaged in traditional cooking and crafts -- which were sold on the spot for more tourist revenue.

And then I went for the cultural show. While we were waiting, they put on what I suppose was the Cultural equivalent of a trailer: one of those Malaysia Truly Asia tourism videos. If I were a swearing person, this would be the bit where I say, "And I felt so proud of my ****** country." (Although the AP style guide recommends hypehens, probably because they're less disruptive than asterisks.) Because the Malaysia in the video was truly stunning. Next thought: do we really have to keep so much of our best for tourists with money.

The live show itself blew me away. During the ngajat lesung, where an Iban man danced while gripping a 20kg mortar in his teeth (with beautiful native girls swaying in the background of course), I couldn't stop wondering why they hadn't shown us recordings of all of this back in Form 2 when we were trying to memorise which tribe did which dance where on the tiny monochrome map. And I would have gotten upset about the hierarchical world economy that privileges tourists who have the money Do Asia (as well as whiny lucky undergrads who have enough grant money to justify RM60 entrance fees), except that it was all too pretty. And everyone was smiling.

--------------------------------

After I finished wandering through the lovely (purpose-built) high-ceilinged organic-material buildings, I walked over to Damai Beach and sat in the shade and finished The Malayan Trilogy. Which was another bizarre exercise in cross-cultural art and, somehow, hypocrisy.

The trilogy centres on a British education officer, Victor Crabbe, in the years leading up to Merdeka. Burgess deftly navigated crazy gorgeous Malaya and odd sad proud humanity; it was one of those books that makes fun of making fun of prejudices (and Heart of Darkness). But as fluent as Burgess was in Malay and Malayan culture, and as deep as his love for Tanah Melayu may have been, and as much as I liked Crabbe and the story, parts of it really bothered me. It seems I haven't absorbed quite enough budaya kuning (whether angmoh or Cheena) to innoculate me against wincing when non-Malaysians urbanely articulate the stereotypes that I hardly dare acknowledge to myself.

2010-06-28T11:48:00.005-04:00

I'm typing this on the banks the Kuching river, waiting for the sun to set. (Cue melodrama?) I've been out here since it was late enough for the breeze to counterbalance the sun. I could have been transcribing interviews in a coffee shop somewhere, but I've been having a good talk with God instead.

Not that I ever hear an audible reply -- which would creep me out to no end -- but I've had lots of meaningful prayer time near bodies of water. Maybe it's latent animism or something, but He did once call himself water, so there. And yes, I realise that taking this one literally would also mean that I have conversations with, inter alia, loaves of bread, random Greek letters and bottles of wine. (I bet some of my friends have that last one covered.)

NB: One of my classmates once said she thinks it's cheating to take pretty pictures of pretty things. And I shiok sendiri-ly agree.

On shades

A long time ago an optometrist instructed me to wear sunglasses because my eyes are really dry, but I've only been wearing them regularly the last year or so. I still squirm at the idea of this accoutrement that makes it acceptable -- sophisticated -- for me to avoid acknowledging anyone I choose to ignore. But I acknowledge the occasional utility in that.

Like on Saturday, when I was exploring town in my big (only) shades and my blue (also only) sundress. It seems that I look foreign enough to be verbal public domain but not so foreign (ie not white*) that boys a decade younger than me are intimidated about cat-calling when I pass by their posses. E.g. "Hello Miss ... Hello ... Miss, where are you going? ... Hello, are you going to jahanam?"

I hope not. Although I'd be quite happy if this tension between wanting to be special and wanting to be ... long would go to jahanam. So much for Identitee Issuez being confied to the age when you think it's cute to spell that way.

On companionship

I can't believe I'm wimping out after 1.5 weeks, but I really, really miss substantive real-time interactions. That don't necessarily involve large bodies of water.

Interviews and brief conversations -- whether for transactions or in the B&B (which feels vaguely reminiscent of freshman year, in that I am sharing common room and bathroom with people who party far more than I do) -- are one thing, but I have been spoilt on ready-made residential communities my whole life. Whether the quirky wholeness of my family, or like-minded friends in boarding school, or this dizzily rich college that is shaping me more than I would like to admit. Me = brat with notions about how close I want to live to my church community and how I'd like to end each day with a deeppersonalconversation.

No wonder people hop into relationships out of sheer loneliness -- I can see how trading default solitude for default company might feel like a good deal, even if said company is mismanaged.

It doesn't help that my room doesn't have windows. Sans natural light it's really, really hard to wake up in the morning, whatever that looks like anyway. (Also, I seem to be having a bit of trouble falling asleep, i.e. I'm no longer ending every day with massive sleep debt, so I don't pass out instantly. Which is sort of novel.)

That all said, I'm having a very productive time -- and I'm still sane enough to be very amused by my feeble psychology. Just never put me in solitary confinement kthanksbye.

Later: I talked to my parents on the phone, and then had a very old friend and I spent half an hour whining to each other on Skype. So yay.

On discipline

For me the opposite of discipline isn't outright laziness: rather, compulsiveness. Which is possibly worse because it gives the illusion of Getting Stuff Done, when what would be more fruitful is pausing to consider what stuff should get done first.

Pause.

Probably a few emails then sleep.

2010-06-25T02:09:00.003-04:00

On stuff

Spending a week in a posh but very empty apartment was an interesting exercise in simplicity. (Of course, it would have been a much more interesting exercise in simplicity if I hadn't had broadband, but like that lah.) The apartment's owner very kindly set me up with a vanload of stuff -- mattress, chair, hangers, pot, sponge, mop, toilet paper, tea -- but that still meant:

-- no tables or shelves, so I spread my stuff out on the floor

-- no fridge or knife or kitchen hood, so I made lots of noodles and soup and eggs and consumed far less oil than I normally do

-- nothing to sit on (sitting on a wooden dining table chair sans table felt silly, so I put my computer and towel on it), so my butt and feet were on the same level whenever I wans't standing

-- no floor mat, so my wet feet made smudges across the bedroom floor

&c. Bleh. So much for not being materialistic.

Another kind of austerity this past week was spending far more time alone than I ever have. I did have some really cool conversations, but I had a lot of solitary walks and there were a couple days where I stayed in and transcribed interviews and surfed grad school programmes online and slowly tackled the email backlog and hardly had any real-time interactions.

[Hence blogging with more concern for quantity -- ie airing unspoken thoughts -- than quality. o_O Poor you.]

Yesterday, my last full day in KK, I almost walked out to the jetty and took a ferry to the nearby islands. How often am I in Sabah anyway? But the thought that won was: how often do I get to spend time in real solitude, without stuff and people to distract me? So I stayed in again, and kept the computer off, and rested and read and prayed and contemplated, and don't regret it one bit. But I do regret how appalling my discipline has been this past month. As is often the case, I've been letting the flexible schedule and sporadic accountability translate into spiritual and mental sloth, and I really don't want to be wasting the rest of my summer. So help me God.

(Also, going to the beach and swimming is super annoying when you don't have people with you to watch your stuff.)

-------------------------------

On coincidences

[written on Saturday evening]

I'm staying in an apartment that my uncle's friend has been trying to rent out; the first tenant plans to move in just a few days after I leave. Also, this friend of my uncle attends a church pastored by someone my father has known for a very long time.

This afternoon I interviewed someone who teaches in a rural school. I got in touch with him through a friend's boyfriend, but it turned out that this teacher was once a helper at a Scripture Union camp that I attended, and that we have mutual friends. His school is in the interior, he happened to be in the city because he'd flown back from a holiday into KK yesterday.

This evening I met up with some friends whom I knew through the U.S. students network. They had just run a workshop on applying to college in the U.S. After dinner I got a ride back from the mother of a KK boy who had been in RI when I was in RJ; we recognized each other from the dining hall.

-------------------------------

On freedom

[written on Tuesday morning]

It goes further than making me flippant about official letters and vapid scholarship: the chokehold on information both terrifies and infuriates me. It may be naive to get upset about something so entrenched and abstract, but when the alternatives are washing my hands of research and writing in this country or sneaking around through the network, I'd rather spend a long, long time being naive.

It's not that the alternatives are dreary, either. I've had moments of humorously dire sadness about leaving the US, where I've found all kinds of space for myself*. As for the other option -- over the last 3.5 weeks, I've gotten hold of a good amount of information, some of it sensitive, most of it through some kind of connection. But it isn't just my cowardice that pricks me; my integrity/self-righteousness hates the idea that it isn't halal for an undergrad to stumble about and learn things about a policy she finds really interesting in a country that she loves.

I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that for grad school research I'll only be able to pick at most two of these three: (a) current (b) policy related to race/language/religion/culture (c) here. Because primary data on (b) is just too hard to come by when you're junior enough to be stepped on.

I think I'm overdue for a hug. :(

*I'm being modern and cheesy here. I'm not talking about the "America's size is its salvation"** sense.

**i.e. it has a disproportionate amount of resources to trash. Quote from some foreign-born-naturalised-U.S.ian National Geographic photographer. Don't know which issue, because I just remember my oldest sister reading the quote to me eons ago.

-------------------------------

On interviews

Transcribing interviews can be a huge pain. Of course, for this project I'm only taking notes and making rough selective transcriptions -- not least because everyone insists on being anonymous -- so this is far less painful than listening to my quasi-American accent at 0.6 speed when I need to to take down every word my college president said.

One of the irksome things, though, is having my pushiness shoved in my face. I do think I've gotten better at listening in conversations, but when the other person isn't forthcoming I border on manipulative. There also seems to be a direct relationship between how noisy it is in the background and how pushy I get. Which of course makes for delectable listening.

Another interesting thing: it seems to be as much the questions you ask as how long you can get them to keep talking to you. Which makes the transcribing even more tedious, but oh well I really need to stop whining.

-------------------------------

On ailments

I persist in being adept at getting multiple benign ailments. Of course I shouldn't complain since it's been a long time since I've gotten anything genuinely debilitating, but sometimes I think I'd really rather take the one-shot debilitating than prolonged dribbling. Over this week in KK I had:

-- cranky nose

-- cold sore on my nose because of frequent tissue to combat sniffles

-- a bad throat, triggered by MSG and decided to stick around

-- mild diarrhea (there has to be a better way to spell that word)

-- weird eyes, as usual when I'm travelling

-- a slight ear infection -- or something, my left ear hurts oddly when pressure is applied; good thing I don't usually have cause to apply pressure to my ears

-- [acne, of course]

And a bad case of whining, it seems. Sorry. :( I'll try harder.

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On free food

Friday lunch: local kopitiam with the lady whose apartment I stayed in

Saturday dinner: Filipino ikan bakar with the friends who were in town to give a workshop, courtesy of workshop budget

Sunday lunch: hotel buffet, with the lady who took me to church

Tuesday dinner: Japanese, with the family of an academic I'd interviewed that morning; he wanted me to talk to his kids about studying overseas

[Yay I be conquering petulant child syndrome]

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On unbelief

Conversation a few weeks ago.

Me: I think it'd be really cool to write poetry. But how do people write poetry that doesn't sound silly?

Friend: I think you really have to believe in it.

Ah well.

2010-06-22T05:41:00.005-04:00

On screen

I watched The Karate Kid today, because yesterday I hibernated (transcribing interviews and such), and this morning was extraordinarily stressful. Thoughts:

1. I have major issues with shaky cameras on big screens. Which is odd, because I have a pretty strong stomach and also because I have no issue with this on TVs or computer screens. But even with a bit of camera movement in this show I got nauseous and burped a lot (I swallow air as a nervous reflex or something gross like that). History doesn't look too good either: I nearly died during District 9 last year, City of God in an RJ lecture theatre made me keel over, and all my family members can tell you about the time we went to watch Twister and my nine-year-old self was so miserable that I didn't realise I'd dropped my glasses on the cinema floor. My dad went back to retrieve them the next day. I really really hope this doesn't mean that I am consigned to watch slow pretty movies, because as cool as some slow pretty movies can be, a lot are depressing and a lot more are ditzy (ie very depressing).

2. I have a new all-time favourite subtitle fumble! "Telaga ..." for "Well ..." has officially been pipped by *drumroll*

"Baju sejuk merah jambu" for "Pinky swear".

Yay language. :D

3. As fun as The Karate Kid was, and as impressed as I was with the kid, and as much as I've always liked Jackie Chan (yes I know you're judging), this sentence is getting really nasty. But the premise of the story -- maladjusted American kid imports sass from the US of A to straitlaced Asia and eventually bests the locals at their game and proves that he's worthy of the girl -- really bothers me. Of course, cute kids made this storyline far more palatable here than it was in Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift (or whatever it was called, it only had cool cars going for it), but the east-west cultural hierarchy really chafed, especially because of how subconscious it was. Again, this is not to discount the lovely Family Values and cool mentorship thing that this movie portrayed, but seriously we seem very confused about when to bash budaya kuning*. Dear kettle, you are black. Love, pot.

*Literally "yellow culture," metaphorically the debauched west. Why we call it "yellow" is beyond me. Just like how I don't understand why the Haystack Movement dudes supposedly prayed for "dark Asia" or something like that.

2010-06-20T08:33:00.004-04:00

On John 2:1-11, or Jesus and lots of booze

Preface: One thing I'd planned for this summer was a lot of reflection and and prayer in my lonely evenings. But then I started my travelling with KL, and cities where I know people have a way of getting me preoccupied. Given that I've moved on from KL or Singapore, and that this is my third night of staying solo, I'm really overdue for intensive God time. But when I'm alone with internet then I usually get diverted by unreplied emails and Facebook whatnot and unconfirmed plans.

So apparently this evening I decided to compromise by writing a blog post about this Bible passage that we studied at Urbana. When we were discussing this passage the conference, for some reason it triggered all those years of close reading in lit class and my obsession with patterns and images (seriously I recently realised that I always want to take pictures of graffiti and flags) (sooo relevant of course), and I found myself attempting and failing to articulate this inverted/pyramidal/symmetric structure that I saw in the passage. Six months later, I'm setting down my thoughts about it in the hope that the process of writing/flood of agreement from the blog readers of dubious existence will either (a) confirm that I am not crazy or (b) let me move on to other thoughts the next time I read the passage.

Final soooo relevant thought: during our A Levels days, we used to argue with our teachers about the value of trying to read things into the passage. What if that wasn't what the author meant? [insert some anecdote eg the one about some journalist asking William Golding about the colour of a horse in one of his books; too lazy to google the reference] Isn't that being disrespectful to their work? [= Why do we have to bother?] But right now I'm at a point in life where I've accepted my tendency to overanalyse, and where I happily accept anything that can help me trust this nebulous gracious Parent more, even if it's something mediated by my pattern insanity.

---------------------------------

On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, "They have no more wine."

"Dear woman, why do you involve me?" Jesus replied, "My time has not yet come."

His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."

Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the jars with water"; so they filled them to the brim.

Then he told them, "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet."

They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, "Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now."

This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.

And now I try to fold the passage in half and peer at the overlap, beginning with the edges:

Who what when where ++

On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.

This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.

Third day/miracle --> faith/wedding/revelation of glory imagery are inextricable in the Christian imagination. Criss-crossing here intended?

Echoes:

-- The parable of the wedding banquet (Matthew 22:1-11): "For many are invited, but few are chosen."

-- Wives and husbands (Ephesians 5:22-33): "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word"

Conversation about wine and time

When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, "They have no more wine."

"Dear woman, why do you involve me?" Jesus replied, "My time has not yet come."

His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."

Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, "Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now."

The two interactions here are set up with someone calling a bridegroom aside to point out an abnormality. In both cases, the initiator holds power in the immediate context (mother instructing son, party planner), though the bridegroom has the deeper authority.

Wine is central in both Jewish weddings (clearly I'm not an expert but I've heard people speak on this and here goes) and the Eucharist, symbolising union and purification and blood and death and life. In both cases here, the miraculous wine anticipates conjugal satisfaction.

I've always struggled with the strangeness of God's sense of time. Part of this stems from my inherent gancheongness, and part from the fact that I am crawling along a line drawn on paper while this Dude sees the whole sheet at once (C.S. Lewis illustration, googling fail). Because of this, divine timing can be counterintuitive. At Urbana Oscar Muriu gave a stunning exposition of how we should emulate Jesus' amazing oddity was (see video or notes).

Tangentially, I've always thought the familiar tenderness in the Mary-Jesus conversation is pretty cute.

Vessels (?)

Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew.

Umm. The best parallel I can see here is that you have fluid in oblivious vessels. In the first case, the jars are inanimate (duh) instruments for a ritual that symbolizes cleansing and reconciliation with God (treasures in jars of clay?). In the second, the master of the banquet is a clueless facilitator at a celebration that affirms newness and uhh connection.

Boss speaks

Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the jars with water";

Then he told them, "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet."

Self-explanatory? = I am losing steam (which some of people dear to me would call a miracle in itself o_O). But here's part of 1 John that talks about Jesus and water and blood. Frankly, though, as much as I love 1 John, parts of it can get a bit trippy.

Where it all converges!

so they filled them to the brim.

When we were doing this manuscript study at Urbana, I remember being flummoxed by where these overlaps fit together -- and then someone in the large group talked about how cool it was that the miracle hinged on a few servants who trusted this random weird dude('s mother) and who humbly did their duty to the utmost although they had no idea where this was all going. Which made so much sense!

Of course, maybe they were just hoping that the more wine they helped make, the more of the (6*approx 25) gallons they'd have for themselves. But I'm massively hypocritical every time I judge people for ulterior motives, and I can only aspire to this above-and-beyond obedience. In sha Allah.

---------------------------------

Epilogue: It's now high time for me to turn off my computer -- must resist urge to check other Gmail -- and read and journal and talk to God a bit. Yar. Till we next meet.

2010-06-19T10:58:00.002-04:00

On Singapore

32 hours. Six meetups with friends (MG RJ Williams SOAS church ex-roommate). Two hours talking to an academic. Time with siblings and other relatives. (No handphone in a country that has done away with most of its public pay phones.) On the whole, rewarding surreality.

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On summer travel/research fellowships

Sometimes I think I'm crazy. I know Ma does too. The fellowships office and my department don't seem to. We shall see.

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On one style of (Malaysian) (scholarly) writing

"One limitation of the study is that the study deals with primary data to identify and critically analyse the variety of issues regarding language policy raised during the last 40 years. The researcher does not have the luxury of resources, time, and funding within the scope of this study to utilise all materials in existence. In performing the study, therefore, there has to be a measure of discretionary selection based on a set of rational criteria to ensure non-arbitrariness."

Sigh.

2010-06-16T07:55:00.007-04:00

[Wrote this while waiting for some interviews at UM yesterday. Am now on the bus to Singapore, using Pa's wireless dongle that I appropriated for travelling.]

On shoulders

Some days this past week I’ve been carrying a backpack, which I haven’t done regularly since my A Levels. But I just got tired of lugging around absurdly heavy handbags/purses (although really they’re one-shoulder bags) -- research papers were particularly unfun in that sense. As was toting my laptop and files and books around KL for research. So I decided to invest in a backpack for solo summer travel, as well as for thesis/living off campus next year.

The days I’ve used a backpack, though, I’m reminded of why I stopped using them. Rather than stuffing my hand into my bag and scrounging around a bit and dragging out my wallet/handphone, I have to swing the backpack off one shoulder, undo a zip that will inevitably catch because the one-shoulder thing puts it at an odd angle, scrounge around a bit, zip up the bag, overcome the annoying odd angle, and swing the bag back on the other shoulder. Rinse and repeat to keep said wallet/handphone a few minutes later. (I am not a fan of lumpy pockets. Handphone in the pocket is fine; wallet always feels like it’s going to fall out.)

Also, I suspect that the backpack makes my posture a little funny. And of course I’d be dissembling if I neglected to mention that I think my other bags are prettier. O silliness.

Anywho, one solution for this summer research deal appears to be carrying a small silly handbag for wallet/handphone/planner/recorder (the digital voice sort, not the kind they made me play in standard 3 music class), as well as a backpack for laptop/files/books/umbrella/water/(junk). The only problems are, of course, that the small silly bag always slides of my shoulders since the backpack had laid prior claim, and that the combination just looks silly. Oh well. At least on campus this won’t be an issue because I can just cram my student ID and cell phone into a pocket Live and let lump.

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On identification

Evidently I’ve been out of the Malaysian system long enough to forget how important official letters are here. It had occurred to me a few times at school that I should probably ask one of my research advisors for a letter certifying that I’m a student at Williams conducting “research” under their purview, etc etc, but it wasn’t so compelling a thought that it trumped the packing and newspapering flurry.

Within 24 hours of my landing in KL, someone whom I was trying to exploit for information asked me for an official letter. Sigh. I’ve been trying to fake my way through with a fellowship award letter from my department that I brought back with me for unknown reasons. Sigh.

When I went to the UM library last week (unplanned, I’d been on their campus to interview someone), I almost got charged for a visitor pass because I didn’t have my student ID with me. (It was reposing in my U.S. wallet, not the Malaysia one.) But they let me get away with using my Malaysian IC -- and the grant letter from my department.

(No, I didn’t need to cry this time. :D)

Also, I accidentally lied this morning when I was walking in the UM gate. I was preoccupied with hoping that they wouldn’t stop me and make me register, when a guard asked, “Pelajar?” and I said, “Ah,” and kept walking, before my conscience had time to decide whether or not that was technically a lie. Because I actually am a student, just not a student of UM -- apparently my verbal filter occasionally finds it convenient to pretend it doesn’t understand implications. But conscience is not particularly scarred, because they definitely didn’t stop me the other time when I took a cab in. And they don’t seem to stop buses either. But it’s vaguely amusing that my sense of “oh noo my research isn’t worthy they will kick me off” goes into fight-or-flight just at the thought of writing my name down in log that no one really reads anyway.

Another pseudo-confession: last year I got into a government office building in Penang by leaving my Mileage Plus card as a collateral. (I’d needed to proffer my IC at the election commission upstairs, and didn’t have a license or anything.) I knew those frequent flier miles would come in handy for something.

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On cities

As much as I love cities, and as much as I worry that I am becoming a social-climbing ditz, my notions of how much I should have to pay for stuff in Malaysia appears rooted in the smallish towns that I grew up in. Which is a bit of a problem when the volume of restaurants/coffee places/bars that come with a design concept/air-cond/shiny furniture/general aura of yuppiness has mushroomed in tandem with my friends’ and cousins’ spending power. Which leads to all manner of internal conflict when I (a) really really want to catch up with them, (b) am travelling on a USD grant from my school and (c) have very clear memories of the days when getting RM7/week for pocket money was a drastic gain in economic mobility. Of course, (a) and (b) normally thrash (c). O Starbucks.

Kiamsiapness aside, sometimes it really does bother me that spending time with friends in cities is tied to cost. Having to travel for a nontrivial amount of time/petrol/bus fare to have quality conversations that will often take place in one of said restaurants/coffee places/bars is jarringly different from walking five minutes from the student centre or library to a friend’s room or dining hall. I think whenever I do have my own place in a city I’ll make it a point to drag people over to my house for dinner parties. Or something. We shall see.

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On books

I dislike reading packets. Especially when it’s photocopies of books so each spread of the reading packet actually has four book pages, and the spine is the wrong way, and it’s uncomfortable to read whether I’m at a desk or trying to curl up (which of course I shouldn’t be doing when I need to do reading for class, but if you’re squandering time on this blog you’re probably not in a position to judge).

I really, really like books. Not just for their narratives or facts (or moonshine) or cover design or typography, but the fact that they have tangible weight. Because involving my hands in what my mind is trying to do (context-specific kay please thanks) really helps me concentrate. Which also why I prefer reading journal articles in pdf while fiddling with the cursor, rather than in stolid reading packets. And apart from their holdability and page flippability, books have a tonne of advantage over reading packets because they also have texture (abilility).

(Analogously, in many respects comp lit readings > econ journal articles because of texture. Again, I digress. But case in point, because I’m not nearly this flaky when I’m journaling in longhand, which I’ve been doing every night this trip. I think.)

One huge pleasure of my time in KL has been buying books. I’ve justifiably bought some books that will be very useful for my thesis next year (again, USD grant money wooo) (privilege guilt sigh), and somewhat less justifiably bought a couple novels. Which is a bit of a deviation because I’ve historically been sold on secondhand books, but I guess the city is getting to me. 0_O

So right now I’m back in the happy muddle of being in the middle of several books at once: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship, i.e. the only non-school book that I succeeded in half-reading during the semester; a Malaysian Chinese politician’s writings on the policy that I’m studying; and Anthony Burgess’ The Malayan Trilogy, which I’ve wanted to read every since I wikied Clockwork Orange to prove to an American that the title was inspired by the same root as orang utan, and which I can pretend isn’t entirely irrelevant to my project since the central character is a British officer type who teaches at a Malayan school in the 1950s. Is strange and fascinating, this account of my history. o_O

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On tangents

This handphone (ie the old GSM mobile that I use when I’m not in the US) has officially swallowed SMSs in three cities (Penang London KL). But for some reason it only eats texts that come from my girl cousins.

On a medical services banner: “Leech Miracle 1 Malaysia.” Indeed.

After lunch my journo friend let me exploit her Starbucks discount so I’d have a quiet place to read in the mall while waiting for my bus. When it was time to go, I was packing my new book (budget outlet) and my faux-brocade daily planner (post-new year markdown) into my Tommy Hilfiger bag (USD15 on eBay), when I felt another wave of the question that used to hit me on U.S. highways: why have I been plunged into all this privilege?

2010-06-07T12:43:00.005-04:00

On skin

My face still doesn't understand oil distribution any better than capitalism does: I have a reflective forehead in Massachusetts winters and a peeling nose in Kuala Lumpur humidity.

Also, my face and neck insist on being slightly different colours, so in some photos I look like one of those people who wears too much foundation.

And I see the violence inflicted on my complexion by last semester's sleep schedule. And I shudder to think what it might have done to me internally.

But somehow in between being an awkward intern last summer and a meandering student last fall and a sister-of-the-bride last winter, I began last spring very comfortable in my skin. They said it showed. I was/am thankful, but as always not as thankful as I could/should be.

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On a strain of stereotypes that irks me

I love the culture of the country that most recently colonised us.

I started developing what I suppose some might call a Personal Style after I Went Overseas (although really this happened because thrift stores exist in New/England, and I don't do the makeup/hair product thing).

I looked up from my book on the train this morning and saw a beautiful male backpacker smiling at me. I was flattered.

(I want to stop wanting to be special in ways that don't matter.)

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On Sunday, June 6

I attended a dynamic new church and caught up with two dear friends and met their dynamic new baby and bought my first baju kurung and got back early and started to make a dent in by email backlog.

Crazy things happened in Malaysia. Which makes it no different from any other day.

A very good friend turned 23.

Many of my friends commenced their post-college lives, in the hockey rink because it was raining.

One of my classmates was killed in an accident abroad. I got the email when I woke up this morning. I don't -- didn't -- know him personally. And I don't know how I would know to do anything other than pray for peace.

2010-06-01T11:46:00.004-04:00

On trains

In between leaving Williams and getting to my uncle’s house in KL, I sat on:

-- an Amtrak from Albany to NYC; myself, my former first-year Bible study kid, and his current first-year Bible study kid had all passed out in our respective seats
-- a subway from Penn Station to somewhere near Jamaica, whereupon we found out that the station we needed to go to was inaccessible due to construction
-- an AirTrain to JFK, after taking the free shuttle bus from the errant subway station
-- the Tube, from Heathrow to Boston Manor (no manor there, but a good sunny morning walk)
-- the Skytrain at Changi airport
-- the Aerotrain at KLIA

Example of national idiosyncrasies in language: a sign in a Heathrow lift [US speak: elevator :D] that read, “Subway [US speak: tunnel?] to Terminals and Underground [US speak: subway].”

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On heightened frustration

[mostly written circa Saturday]

I cried today, at the airport. It was the first leg of my Singapore Airlines journey to KL. The check-in attendant at Virgin Atlantic, which was operating my first flight, had told me that my Expedia booking had been made on separate tickets so I needed to pay $60 to check my second bag, and would later need to retrieve my luggage and clear customs at Heathrow before rechecking under SQ. (Another problem that came up at Heathrow was that breaking up my long itinerary resulted in only a 25kg luggage allowance from London to Singapore, instead of a two 23kg bags. But the Heathrow attendant was nice.)

The unsmiling attendant at Virgin surprised me, because when I’d booked the itinerary I’d made sure I’d be able to check two bags all the way through -- which the Singapore Airlines ticketing counter at JFK confirmed a few minutes my conversation at Virgin. So my friend and I made our way back to the Virgin counter, where the supervisor exactly what his colleague had told me a few minutes earlier.

I didn’t so much induce myself to cry as not bother to restrain the tears. I was tired -- I had barely slept (Friday was finishing the newspaper issue then barbeque with CF friends then Kings with newspaper friends then random gas store food run with some friends then general hanging out then good catch-up conversation with graduating friend then packing then writing notecards then bed) and I had been dragging my bags around in various modes of transport for more than eight hours. And I just wanted to be done with it.

The friend who was seeing me off had plenty of experience with wrangling concessions out of diverse airlines. I, on the other hand, have paid through the teeth (being a student from a developing country ain’t always fun) and never made a customer service complaint. Despite how much I inadvertently whinge to my friends for catharsis, I hate making a public fuss. I was already upset at how much I had let myself get miffed by the attendant’s unfriendliness.

So I cried.

And it worked. The super eventually said that he could let my second bag through without charging me, and I got my boarding pass from the still unsmiling attendant.

And I felt really bad at first. But really triumphant. And then on both my JFK-LHR flight and my LHR-SIN flight my seatmates moved (as far as I know no personal fault of mine was involved) so I lucked out and got three seats in a row. And lots and lots of sleep. So the only real blight about the rest of my long flights, apart from being on long flights, was mild annoyance at how good Singapore is at making planes and airports pleasant and free of glaring corruption (but really really expensive, O efficiency wage/institutionalized corruption).

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On similarities and differences

(mostly written circa Sunday)

Williams is not like the church I attend in Williamstown. At Williams, the most visible effects of the recession are less free money and less free food. Which is not to discount the deeper and more difficult structural impacts, but at church the financial crisis means that people lose their jobs, can’t sell their houses, forego health insurance, and miss their siblings weddings because they can’t afford plane tickets from New England to the Southeast.

Williams is like an airplane. At least, in this very restricted comparison that I am fakely attempting to construct. You are pushed into very close proximity with people whom you know little about. You all have various forms of baggage. Sometimes that baggage ends up costing you a lot. Because it’s such a concentrated experience, you really all just want to wear sweatpants all the time, but in your first year or two you might be too chary of judgement to indulge. You all have that mobility only because you have some kind of privilege that gives you access to the resources needed.

I still really struggle with the awareness that, in many settings, there is a high chance that I will be perceived as a rich kid. Like now, when I’m typing into a netbook in the airport of one of the most expensive cities in the world.

One question that always plagues me is what accent I speak in when I’m reading aloud to myself. But as soon as I try to figure out what accent it is, Heisenberg uncertainty kicks in. Singing is different: the melodies and rhythms constrain me to stop worrying about the accent. Like just now when I was in a completely empty carriage on the tube between Terminal 4 and Terminals 123 and decided to play church a bit.

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On patterns and narratives

[mostly written circa Monday]

Mostly irrelevant preamble: I've also come to realize -- in part through a psych study that a friend conducted -- that I tend to see things in patterns and images, not narratives. Which is funny, because I still love immersing myself in storybooks as much as I did when I was a kid (who read books with tacky rhymes like that). I recognized a few years back that I just don't have the kind of imagination that can write fiction, but now this preoccupation with motifs in the mess also coheres with the fact that I'm drawn to amateur photography (like the 50 million other digicam owner in the world, of course). (And yes, the minimal manual dexterity prerequisite might be part of my preference for photography too. We shall see how my art studio class goes next fall. o_O)

On the flight from New York to London, I watched my first full movie of the year (excluding film screenings for classes). I had planned to just sleep, but then I saw in the entertainment guide that Invictus dealt with rebuilding Nelson Mandela’s South Africa through the Springboks, i.e. the national rugby team. Since that Winter Study trip to Cape Town last year, this country and its story have fascinated me. I have this crazy dream of briefly working at Al-Jazeera’s office in Johannesburg while researching how education in South Africa navigates its eleven official languages.

In lieu of that, I watched this movie on the plane. It was nuanced and well-paced with compelling, apart from a few moments where Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon slip into American accents, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were lots of things that were mentioned but not treated conclusively, which wasn’t entirely satisfying but did convey a bit of the painful complexities of that era. And as keenly as I felt those complexities, I found myself jealous that Malaysia has never had any iconic national triumph to rally around.

Because I had to clear customs with my luggage anyway, I waffled around a lot and then finally took the tube out a few stops from Heathrow because (a) I was restless and (b) I had a bit of money left on my Oyster card from last fall. As soon as I boarded the train, I suspected that the other two people in it were Malaysian. When one of them asked the other, “Eh betuk ke, Cockfosters?” I decided to stick my nose in.

They told me that they were in town to represent Malaysia in a squash tournament, which explained their massive racquet bags. I decided not to ask their names -- I’d already exhibited an unseemly amount of weird. But one of them was Malay and the other Chinese.*

Mostly irrelevant postscript: I also spent some flight time reading my psalm for the week, Psalm 56. Apart from being the psalm that one of my sisters wants to put on a T-shirt (at least its first line), Psalm 56 reminded me not to fear and praised the God who keeps feet from stumbling [see previous post].

*I just googled them and they’re very the atas. And I am even more embarrassed.

2010-05-28T09:21:00.002-04:00

On balance

It's very natural for me to ice-skate and to carry my dining hall tray on the palm of my left hand. But yesterday morning I missed a step at the expense of my left foot, and today I missed two steps at the expense of my right ankle. And I just dropped bits of my breakfast on the counter.

My schedule seems similar: I fit in an odd combination of stuff while stumbling over a lot of the basics.

I'm also still trying to grasp the divine imperative to love this man whom I don't even want to acknowledge as my prime minister.

2010-05-28T00:45:00.002-04:00

A good weak

I had assumed that after the semester ended I'd have more time to blog and such. But apart from last Saturday, when I packed and pottered and talked and generally reveled in the novelty of being less busy than other people, I really haven't been less busy than other people this week. This is the first night that I've had the option of blogging at a time when I wasn't so woozy that I opted for sleep instead.

And it doesn't look like I'll be getting significantly less busy -- am leaving for Msia on Saturday! -- it doesn't look likely that I'll get to write one of the massive self-indulgent end-of-season posts (ugh hyphens) that I'm partial to. Which was initially annoying because there really are a lot of random thoughts that I'd like to connect in a post. But as far as the summer and writing go, I've decided that:

(a) I want to start journalling in longhand again this summer. It's been more than a year since I've done that, since it'd gotten to the point of being oddly compulsive. But I'll be travelling alone for a lot of this summer, and in my solitary evenings apart from being nerdy with research and GRE prep I do want to write. Probably addressing a lot of it to God, perhaps dipping my feet into poetry again.

(b) I'll put up lots of vignettes on this blog -- a couple paras at a time about these sundry things I've been mulling over, rather than trying to write an opus. Which is a good thing, because this blog is a most motley candidate for an opus anyway.

But right now, I think it's bedtime.

2010-05-21T22:16:00.004-04:00

Few words

There have been so many things that I have wanted write about over the course of this absurd beautiful week -- absurd beautiful semester. But for now I shall content myself with saying that after I submitted my last essay this morning, I went for a walk that involved some errands, some reading, some singing, some conversations, some photography, and a lot more joy than I deserve.

2010-05-16T19:06:00.003-04:00

P(success) --> 0; P(success|grace) --> 1

I can't believe it's over. All twelve issues, those days of constantly editing articles and making layout calls, of working in the office till after midnight every Monday and Tuesday, of fielding hundreds of newspaper-related emails at the expense of personal ones. The crazy schedule is now ... well, a crazy schedule that I have control over: there isn't a paper to put out or classes to attend, but it's finals week and I have two research papers and and an Arabic exam to go. I also do have a handful of meetings this week, but that's very different from having a handful of meetings each day.

I'm not nearly done with my role as editor-in-chief, since we still have to extricate ourselves from this financial tangle we inherited. But the relentless rewarding weekly cycle is on hold. Of course, that also means that the indecent volume of laughs, lessons and commiseration are on hold as well. I realize more and more than I will never be able to give my eleven editors as much gratitude as I owe them.

It's been a trip, this semester of representing an institution that feels like a resistance movement but is perceived as the establishment. The newspaper of a small prosperous intellectual community is among the rare venues where talking in ideals is not incompatible with a high-quality product. Other distinctive experiences: embracing both the massive fact-checking gaffes and the uncomfortable thrill of knowing that decision-makers read all of your 800-word editorials; navigating negotiations that have been made unnecessarily political and later smiling at the other party in the dining hall, interviewing an administrator then running into him at the liquor store when you're procuring booze for the newspaper banquet.

Despite all that, I've spent more time with the friend I live with than in any previous semester. I've finished virtually all my homework on time; I've done every reading and contributed to every class discussion (except the scary 70-person math class that no one is expected to speak in). I've only dozed off in a couple of classes -- which is more than I can say for any semester since my O Levels. I've prayed with more people and have been to the gym more than at any other point in college. I've hardly been drinking coffee, although I do have Earl Grey in the dining halls when various meal companions don't mind waiting for me. I have lived through the absurdity of being unable to reconcile the list of my obligations with the number of hours available each day, but then watching everything fit.

It doesn't make any sense. But God can make whatever He likes, and this semester it seems He's wrought ridiculous riches for me. I'm still learning how to be thankful.

On the schedule for this week: uninterrupted blocks of studying, conversations that begin to grapple with the possibility of never meeting again, giving my body the rest that it is rightfully demanding. The week after that: producing the annual Commencement issue of the paper, plus fun consequential powwows with other editors. After that: travelling for summer research. Then my sister's wedding reception, then senior year. Notwithstanding sporadic moments of despair, it's been a while since I've had trouble getting excited about the near future -- I sometimes feel bad for being so lucky. Or, as squeamish as I am about applying this term to myself, so blessed.

Although the GRE prep book that I'd ordered online did arrive the day after we published our last issue. o_O

2010-05-08T22:08:00.002-04:00

Slice / life

On Wednesday I was rushing to make a powerpoint for a meeting, when I pressed something and the orientation of my screen decided to be silly. But it all worked out, meeting and powerpoint and silliness.

And it was a truly good week (and there were many many good friends and a very very good God).

And now it's my sabbath: catching up emails summer prep FB rest. And next week -- the last week of classes and my last week over the newspaper -- will also be good.

But it will be even better if I go to bed sooner, which is why this post has a trivial photo (chosen by default as the others this week were all for powerpoint/CF) and little substance. But it does't have to matter to matter.

2010-05-01T23:23:00.003-04:00

Variations on themes

They're also all secondhand, gradually accumulated and regularly used (the massive one on the right is my daily bag for school). I am not exactly the most exciting person.

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Ten weeks and 8.5*11*2.5 inches of reading for my econ tutorial. Final research paper to go. And yes I did read all of that. Again, I am not the most exciting person.

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I am, however, venturing away from my typical course selections next fall. Normally -- outside of my major (political economy) and Arabic -- I fill up my four classes with either readingy things (lit philosophy lit etc) or numbery things (physic stats math). But senior year will start will three really dense poli ec classes that involve a lot of reading and numbers and writing, so I thought I'd try taking Acting 1. But didn't fit into my schedule. Then I thought I'd take a music class, but that didn't work out either. So I'll be striking out into the great unknown with an art studio class -- about ways of representing bodies. I think. Therefore I am excited.

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[active vs passive participles :D]

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I didn't have any crazy (deadlines) this week, which meant that it was okay to go to bed if it was late, and wake up early to resume work the next morning instead of getting all woozy in front of econ reading packets &c. And I really did enjoy doing that, but it was scary because it depended on me (a) gauging how time I needed for sleep (heh) contra how much time I needed for work, and (b) waking up to early alarms. Monday and Tuesday were nice because my visiting friend made sure I rolled out of bed when my clock went berserk at the appointed time. I miss her.

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There are some people whom I sometimes seek out when I suspect they're on the verge of cracking. And there are some people whom I sometimes seek out when I suspect I'm on the verge of cracking. (Not disjoint sets.) There are also some people who sometimes seek me out when they suspect they're on the verge of cracking. But there is rarely anyone who seeks me out when they suspect I'm on the verge of cracking. (Not at all pertinent to today.) This is a function of the sort of emotional independence that I inhabit, by both inclination and volition. But sometimes I would like that to be different, because I am often greedy.

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On a note that is more representative of my week, a few days ago the stream of grim emails from administrators about our newspaper's finances was interrupted by an incredibly heartening email from an administrator about our newspaper's finance. I'm thankful -- still nervous, but so grateful.

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Also, a while back I inadvertently had lunch with three Katys, all of whom had different actual first names.

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The concerts I attended this week all had spectacular string instruments. On Thursday I watched an Arab music group (justified by the fact that it was culture credit for Arabic class) and was especially taken with the oud and qanun. On Friday after CF large group I caught 2/3 of the county symphony orchestra's concert; one of the pieces was a Tchaikovsky (the really cool parts aren't in this link) fronted by a brilliantly technical freshman cellist who deserved every set of feet in his standing ovation. Then today I started my sabbath with dinner with a good friend, followed by her psych study on eastern/western aesthetics (I said that I "strongly identify" with both my country's culture and that of the west), then a concert by this folk rock musician from the south whose band and prominence may have waned but whose artistry with guitar and lyrics is still stunning. I'm spoilt.

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View from my window, late February.

View from my window, late April. I can't believe spring is actually here!

2010-04-25T14:31:00.004-04:00

Hit and miss

It's that season where tradeoffs become stark: spending time with a graduating senior means postponing homework, attending one friend's concert means skipping another's, extracurricular involvement means forgoing sleep. But this week I got pretty lucky in the draw.

It didn't look like that at the beginning: on Sunday evening after my newspaper meeting, I had a film screening for class. And then I had to write an econ paper and prep for an Arabic presentation, both of which were due on Monday. I spent the night missing the days when sleep wasn't optional -- but the night was punctuated by assorted conversations and prayers, and the moments of despair/sloth kept their distance.

And then it was newspaper days, and a remarkably normal -- as opposed to frenzied -- second half of the week.

The extra amazingness started on Friday evening. The Christian Fellowship and the Secular Community cohosted (with generous funding) a talk/discussion between an atheist mathematician from here and a Christian physicist from MIT. The back-and-forth was, for the most part, substantive and animated. And the 300-seater auditorium was packed. On a Friday evening. In a rural college town with roughly 1600 students on campus. And I was in the sort of trippy excitement that finds it really really hard not to expect too much.

Saturday started with two phone interviews with alums (O amateur journalism), followed by brunch at a diner with a very close newspaper friend (O amateur journalism). And then it was homework. I'd finished most of what I needed for Sunday/Monday and was lying on the sunny lawn on the verge of getting ahead on my reading, when a very very close friend who had been abroad arrived on campus for a weekend visit. It was the first time I'd seen her in a year, and we had a sequence of unbelieving giddy hugs right there between the road and the library.

And then her mom drove us over to my room, and we lounged around and talked and laughed, and then our other friend got back to the dorm and she cooked curried pasta and we ate and walked and talked and watched the step team's spectacular performance and ate and dropped by a party and walked and talked and lounged and talked and munched snacks she'd brought back from England. And then we talked sleepily, because we were all camped out in my room. And I was so happy.

And I missed other close friends and cooking and London and random theatre and previous late-night conversations.

Then today a few of us went to a service in the next town over, where we watched one of my Bible study kids preach his first sermon (videotaped for his parents) -- and it was a really good sermon too. The vicar was an alum who had preached his first sermon in that same church when he was a student in the 70s. We sat on pews that had originally been from our campus, in the room where we have large group meetings every week now. And "we" included an adorable terrier belonging to an alum from the class of 1945. And it was good.

And I missed traditional liturgy and playing guitar and Malaysia.

And I shall spend this week trying to avoid superfluous conjunctions, haste and greed.

2010-04-18T13:52:00.005-04:00

Mellow drama

I cried three times this week.

It was exhaustion, really. Monday and Tuesday were the regular combination of class and editing, and although I spend about a full day's worth of each week in the newspaper office, and although sources, events, writers and ads often deviate from our aesthetic dreams, we still have enough agency to produce a good paper. Usually.

But Wednesday after class I had my Arabic certificate exam, which its own ball of stress. I emerged from the exam and met up with my floormate, who had just taken a stressful math midterm, and we went back to my room and wilted onto my bed. And I cried. And we talked, and went to dinner. Then I went to the chapel and sang my lungs out in its expanse and went for my meetings that evening with an improbable peace.

Instead of being the sole weekday afternoon that accommodates homework, this Thursday became a trail of meetings as soon as I had finished lunch with my floormate and one of my future thesis advisors. The trail traipsed through my afternoon and engulfed my dinner and, by the time it ended with a 10pm prayer group, I got teary while updating a friend about my day. But then another friend sat me down in a random stairwell and let me cry and laugh, and she prayed for me. And it was good, and I went off to get homework done.

Then on Friday after classes I cancelled my shift at work because more meetings. Towards the end of the second one I had to keep my voice from shaking as I tried to convince yet another nice college official that he wanted to make room in his budget for the newspaper. On my way to meeting no. 3 I passed a church -- stopped in, cried again, prayed again, read some Bible. And then I had very satisfying conversations in the next cluster of meetings.

It occurred to me several times this week that it would be very nice to own a Blackberry -- not because I want email to stalk me more than it already does, but because I couldn't fit everything in to my daily planner, and I have too many to-do list in too many places. It's not that I don't enjoy it. I do, thoroughly, but thoroughly it's draining. It's also unnervingly natural: and at least for the duration that I spend in their offices, people at least pretend that my case is convincing and my witticisms amusing. The reason this unnerves me is that I can see all too well how this crazy trippy sequence of meetings could go on most of my life (although, of course, I wouldn't have to do classes as well).

One byproduct of this is that I sometimes catch myself thinking of grad school as an idyll where I'll be able to get lots of nerdy stuff done during the day, and also read (so far this year I've read half a non-school book) and cook and write and volunteer for the socioeconomically unfortunate and venture into random performing arts -- and get a normal person's sleep.

I really shouldn't be putting the terrible weight of these expectations on the next phase of my life, as much because grad school is an unknown variable, as because it could skew my appreciation of the exhilarating year or so of college that remains. That all said, one of my meetings on Thursday was, unusually, about my own life: my former econometrics professor and I talked through my grad school prospects, and he was telling me about his sabbatical research plans when I realized I was late for my next meeting and hurried down the stairs feeling encouraged and excited.

Right now, though, I want to be excited about the last month of my junior year. It will be insane. It will probably involve some tears, masses of work, and not as much sleep as I would like. But it will be phenomenal.

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Sometimes I want to be lazy and selfish and irresponsible, even though I know full well that I would be miserable doing that. But since Friday afternoon I've had good unwinding moments: after my last meeting on Friday I went to the gym, then had dinner with two spectacular underclassmen before heading to our CF large group meeting, which I left early to attend a concert choir performance. I went for the concert with a friend who had hardly slept the night before -- I dozed during parts of the Beethoven (Meeresstille und gluckliche Fahrt); she was nodding throughout the Brahms (Ein deutsches requiem). But I thought it was sublime, as did the packed chapel, which gave a bigger ovation than I've ever seen at any student concert here (although they did have two professional soloists). And then we joined some other friends for pizza and got into an extended discussion about next year's classes.

On Saturday I woke up early and spent the day trying to be content about the very slow pace at which I was doing my econ readings (interrupted by one of the coolest baptisms that I've been privileged to attend, as well as lunch with two lovely seniors). But the work day ended on a gratifying note because I got through the problem set for my scary math class very quickly. And then we had a small reunion of the Bible study group that I co-led last year, and then went to a newspaper people party. At the party it was decided that if I drew the "hot seat" card I could give it to whomever I chose since I wouldn't have interesting answers for the kinds of questions that people ask at Saturday night parties. I didn't get that card, but I had so much fun. And then I had a random heart-to-heart with one of the girls on my way back.

After I got back I did the one nonwork thing that I regret: I spent more than an hour poking around various websites for a new blog template. I'd been using my previous one forever, and as much as I like the banner (an edited photo of a paper cutting that I did for a file cover back in A Levels days) I'd never been taken with the blandness down the rest of the page.

And because the my conscience's feeling-sheepish mechanism eventually kicked in, we have this brick wall here (with odd white boxes here and there that I can't get rid of because I don't dare to play with the HTML). This current template is a function of limited time, enjoyment of black-and-white photography, and a love for the texture of brick facades. (Oh London.) The wall is not a metaphor for my emotional condition or a political declaration. Although if you're one of the people who needs everything to have significance, you could think of it as a representation of the fortitude that I need from God in order to make all the little bits of work this week fit together in an orderly and efficient manner. And then it will all look pretty and maybe someone will take a picture of it. And I will be fulfilled in life.

2010-04-10T20:31:00.003-04:00

Batu batu (but not really)

Am fully immersed back in the crazy wonderful schedule. I can't believe it's already been a week since spring break. But I lagi can't believe that there're only five weeks of classes left. And five issues of the paper.

A cousin was in a car accident a few days ago; he's been discharged but can't remember how it happened. It's been more than a year and a half since one of my other cousins disappeared while on a hike, and a year or so since another cousin got mugged and had to have microsurgery to a finger.

One of my friends from school in Singapore just posted some pictures of her adorable newborn son on Facebook. And I also just found out that a Msian friend, also my age, got married today. I remember talking with some Williams folk about warm fuzzy jealously when our friend proposed to his wife-minus-two-months in front of us. Am thankful that, out of all the clocks in my life, the biological one hasn't decided to be demanding just yet.

I spent most of today at a workshop about post-college fellowships. Over the next six months I anticipate struggling to balance careful planning with not building airy castles. And of course I know the way to do that is to work really hard and pray really hard, but degrees of knowing ... are not the same? As what I meant to say. I see the light. Kindof. But not.

[No, I'm fine; you really don't have to worry about me.]

[I also don't know who that was addressed to.]

[Okay, you can start worrying now.]

[Yay decreasing lengths!]

[Interlude over.]

[Maybe.]

Next year's course catalog is out = annoyingly alluring diversion from homework. Considering that during the A Levels our distraction of choice was fluffing about prom dresses, I appear to have made progress.

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Which is ironic, because I was going to write about to write about notions of beauty and egotism and insecurity, but seeing as I'm feeling too tired/lazy to bother editing what I typed in above this, I'm probably too tired/lazy to write a post that has the potential to get really weird. So yay. I don't know what for (certainly not the sentences of impeccable taste that have been constructed by me here around), but I'm happy. Yay.

2010-04-05T00:48:00.003-04:00

NYC

So this is going to be one of those blog posts that lets me justify to myself why I am blogging before I reply non-urgent emails: i.e. emphasis here is on speed and noting down things I want to remember about the spectacular end-of-spring-break NYC jaunt rather than being vaguely interesting/clever/coherent and all those other things that I occasionally aspire to be. :D

Wednesday: Peter Pan to NYC in the morning. Boo for $50 ticket and two extra hours to go through every town in Western Mass seriously. But yay for gallivanting around metropolis. Not least because (apart from a bunch of long walks, two diner trips, babysitting at pastor's and evening at CF advisor's, and two supermarket runs) I have basically spent the last three months in the same square mile. o_O Get to Port Authority and lepak with Williams friends who are heading back to campus then head to Columbia for first time! Dinner and subsequent chilling with wonderful alum friend's friends, very fun bunch.

Thursday: Brunch is Nutella+strawberry+banana crepe at alum friend's favourite pancake place -- super good but ahh have forgotten what it feels like to pay for every meal. o_O Then the Met! Yay the Met! Preceded by stroll through Central Park -- stunning weather yo -- and requisite random run-in with Williams person. Bleh alliteration. But yay the Met! And then fun walking through city and seeing random buskers and going in shops again (oh Williams) but not buying anything (oh me). And then dinner at Dallas Barbecue (insane insane massive place with lots of wonderful food but not much interest in my arteries and haha Asians were super unrepresented there) with alum friend and classmate and other amazing alum friends! And then reading of Dante's Inferno at St John the Divine. Went into the cavernous nave at 10:30pm about halfway, and it ended circa midnight with this amazing delicious creepy long organ piece. And yay have finally encountered the Inferno although was totally spacing out/"trying to pray" a lot.

Friday: To Princeton! To visit another lovely alum friend and the lovely classmate who is staying with her. Really the best weather ever. And gorgeous little town, totally walkable. Sigh. Except o course overweening preppiness. To consignment store because I left Williams before hearing about the need for formal baju at MF, then to lunch (Indian buffet takeaway) then ice-cream during the walk home then Good Friday mass (although Catholic classmate said it was super not satisfactory) then back to NYC for the start of MF! Wonderful old people and really cool new people and a lot of mutual acquaintance things going on. And haha so postmodern student movement: began with a very the self-reflexive discussion on what MF is and does and believes in (answer is what we all individually are and do and believe in), although it was genuinely interesting and of lasting value. So yay! Promising start. Post-event involves mass migration to Chinese place across the street; chat with cool people but don't order. Back to alum friend's place, out with her and her friends again for a couple hours (some have pizza, then to jazz place but jazz is already over since it's after 1am, so walk back to someone's place) but then I bail to get sleep and she says it's not a good idea for me to go back alone so she has to bail too. Feel bad sigh. But need sleep. Good thing I have long embraced my squareness.

Saturday: MF starts in the morning, other assorted conversations with very cool people. I like. Impressive panel of personal accounts from some organizers, ie more very cool people. Then excellent solid talk by Jomo, growth and NEP/NEM &c. Whoa this is the third country I've heard him speak in over several months: at Khazanah event in Penang, then SOAS, then here. Aah globalization you weird be out. I bail on afternoon discussions to mosey south for TS Eliot's The Cocktail Party (The Actors Company Theatre at Theatre Row (Beckett Theatre), Times Square). Ahh so intelligent and fun and funny and yay amazing acting! And of course yay student tickets. Sigh I miss London. Also note to self it's not called the tube here; must endeavour to stop confusing people haha. A bit of wandering around that area after that -- such drastic socioec shifts between the streets man -- run into random vintage market and am gratified to feel little desire to buy anything yay I be not consumed by consumerism haha. Then back to change to fake formal clothes, and Msian dinner! Sore throat that I woke up with is not happy about rendang but sore throat is overruled by taste buds and general excitement. Catch up with, among other people, MGS Ipoh friend whom haven't seen since PMR! Then two panels streamed from KL; what I heard was for the most part very interesting and valuable although there was a lot that I didn't hear because call quality was kindof sad and lots of people zoned out. Haha kindof like a lot of people's connection with home in general -- although we all collectively laughed when the surat khabar lama man could be heard over the connection -- and I guess that really shouldn't be a haha matter but I can't be bothered to backspace wooo. But anyway overall panels very meaningful. And finally got to talk properly with this one girl. And after panels then stuck around for a while, more random very fun interesting conversations. Then back for sleep.

Sunday: Woke up at 6:22am ahh oh no late for sunrise service hopefully MF friend who was supposed to go won't mind too much! Rush and catch bus and get there (exchanging confused sleepy SMSes throughout) and sit down on the rocks at the Hernshead in Central Park circa 7:15am but service hasn't started yet yay! Halfway through worship get text from friend saying she ended up at a gospel service at 125th haha. Anyway Central Park service is really cool; really appreciate the song selection and raw honest message from John 11 (talk of death and resurrection makes me think of Jien -- God have mercy) (and he's talking about other questions in the passage but am drawn to "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" as always Lord please help my unbelief) and some people brought their dogs and it was the first time I had to clamber over rocks carefully to get Holy Communion. Thank You for letting me remember your resurrection in such an amazing way. Then some walking around Central Park -- love being in a place where new life of spring coincides with Easter. Then bus back north; a mass of absurdly well-dressed French school kids gets on one stop after me. Walk through Morningside Park to get to Columbia -- so cool! all the stairs and cliffs in it -- and then breakfast-ish with the inadvertently gospel service friend. Then more breakfast-ish and more meta-ish discussions at MF, but both were really good and really am glad that got to be there. Then helped a friend clean up and deal with leftover food (= sedekah to random Columbia students) and then she waited for me to pack up and say bye to alum friend, then super squished subway ride to 34th. We have lunch and conversation at cheap Chinese place; am super thankful that we finally got to have an extended conversation and it came at a good time. Then school shuttle bus back to campus, sat next to lovely frosh and at first we also had a really good conversation then I napped.

Bleh maybe I should just go back to daily personal journalling already. But then typing is so much faster. And I suspect Blogger's archives are less likely to die and obliterate this dithering than my netbook. Anywho time to nurse said sore throat so tomorrow I can actually get to emails after class and meetings rather than being confined weakly to bed. Sigh it would be convenient to believe in touching wood. Ahh okay that doesn't sound very correct. And of course yes I can/should pray. Sorry God. :D And thank You!