Mathematics

Every time I need to do mathematics as an adult I find myself amazed by just how not-bad my mathematics skills are, especially since I had spent the majority of my schooling life thinking I was bad at it. Mathematics was a subject I remember struggling with almost constantly in Primary and Secondary school, but especially after sitting for the GREs, tutoring in Math and now working on calculations for my statistics class, I find myself revising my estimation of my skills - maybe I was just really careless and not actually bad at all things numerical. Either that, or I am a clear success on the Singapore education system's part - shit at Math compared to my Singaporean peers, but pretty good at Math compared to the rest of the world. Who knows.

Fingers crossed that I don't lose this upbeat feeling about Math. 

5 Years

Last night on the 1 train back home, I realised that I have had my sports shoes (Brooks!) for over 5 years, and that it was high time I changed them. I remembered the approximate date because the pair of sports shoes I had before these broke after my first year in the UK, and I remembered asking my athletic roommate from Passfield Hall, Michelle, if I should get a new pair of shoes (stupid question, but I was being cheap).

So last night I finally ordered a new pair of sports shoes off the DSW website, a pair of grey saucony shoes. Very exciting stuff.

In other news, I managed to run for 15 minutes on the treadmill yesterday without collapsing. I then had a double chocolate chip frappe from Starbucks after, and promptly consumed back 2x the amount of calories I lost from the run. Seriously.

1 Month + 1 Day

I finally ran out of the conditioner in my travel size bottle. I had judiciously filled it up to the brim right before I left Singapore, and realised as I was trying to eke out the last globs of it in the shower that it had been precisely 1 month and a day since I had left. My immediate reaction was to feel fascinated and vaguely accomplished: I now knew how much Shampoo and Conditioner my travel bottles could accommodate, and vaguely how much Shampoo and Conditioner I used in general. Now writing this down however, I feel a little bit sad, a little bit homesick. Feels like I've left home for far much more longer than just a month. But then again, I was only home for about a month and a half, which isn't much time at all, an exact 14.2% of a year. Time spent that seems scarcely enough in the larger scheme of things.

I think this is the first time I've felt homesick since being in the US this time around.

Two Critical Things I Need To Remember

...about living in this new house.

#1 It's never as cool outside as one is led to think from just pottering around inside

#2 It's never as dark outside as one is led to think from just pottering around inside

I keep forgetting these two cardinal rules about my new place (hello ground floor flat facing a retaining wall), and find myself either over or under compensating for when I dress to go out, and find myself constantly amazed that the sun is still out at 4pm (it's not even Fall yet, mind) because its disappeared from my room after 1pm (not that it enters my room until 11:30am).

And that, is my chief complaint about this new place. There is no sun at all. And my weather evaluation skills have completely gone out of the window as a result. 

Nightmares

Last night/this morning, I had two different nightmares. I haven't had a nightmare in ages, and having two of them right after one another was not a pleasant experience at all. The first one was about me alternatively trying to confront and run away from someone I had briefly dated, and the other one was about me having to drop out of TC because I was being bullied. Two very different nightmares that both took place in the present time period, and left me feeling like they were very much real while I was dreaming (then again, I'm not sure if I've ever been aware that I was dreaming while in a dream). As a result I am quite tired now. Zzz.

Room Furnishings

From some queer reason, flats in NYC are usually rented without furniture. This meant that I had to buy some for the recent move, which entailed scouring craigslist for cheap second hand furniture, figuring out how to get the furniture to my new place and poring of the price differences of items on either Walmart or Target's website. Well, I just finished moving in properly a few days ago, and have just done all the calculations, and have spent a total of $365 on all of the furniture in my room (carpet + plastic storage drawers + bed side lamp all included). If I add in the total cost to move all the stuff over, it's an additional $173 (movers + taxi trips). GOSH. my head reels from thinking how much money has been flowing out of my pocket over the last few weeks. From the broker's fee ($2,736 in total!), to setting up the internet account, to buying appliances and texts for the upcoming school year, I feel like I must have spent more money within the past few month than I've ever had in my life, the crazy month I bought a bunch of branded handbags included.

My heart aches at the thought of all the money that has been spent.

Suburban Fears

Was sitting in the back of the car today on the way to H Mart in Edison with my Aunt and Uncle when it suddenly struck me, starkly and in not-uncertain terms, that the idea of living the lifestyle that they now live in their early 50s freaked me out. The quiet upper middle class suburbia, the judging of other people who were not-like-them, the living of culturally confused lifestyles (perhaps I am a little to harsh on this point - but Korean is 100% OK while Chinese is not?), and the rejection of all other points of view.

I look at the environment they inhabit here in contrast to my (new) environment in Inwood, and this place feels utterly stifling, strangling even, in contrast. I makes me feel anxious, and panicky, that holy crap! This life of theirs cannot be any further from what I want to achieve in life. Is it comfortable? Undoubtedly so. But is it one I desire? No, no, a million times no.

I've never been fond of cities because they always contain too many damn people, but I suppose having too many damn people is also one of the greatest intrinsic values of living in a city - you interact with people from all walks of life. Here I feel like I'm not in the real world, but one where rich white people live with their first world problems and feel the ability to shit on everyone else, and the idea of living in a place like this freaks me out to no end.