Commencement

Today was Columbia Commencement, and Ban Ki Moon gave the opening address. It was a pretty good speech, and completely unexpected because he called out climate change deniers and politicians that played on hatred in order to get votes (hello Trump!) I felt quite impressed, especially given that earlier I had commented that Ban Ki Moon had a rep for not actually saying anything substantial to a bunch of my classmates. Today was also overall a lot more fun compared to yesterday's TC Convocation, as it was a less solemn affair, although I saw comparatively less friends around. Overall, it feels funny to think that my Columbia experience has now ended, but at least it ended on a very meaningful and high note for me.

Begin, End, Begin

On the way to the United States, I visited Romania with my parents in Summer 2014. Romania was unexpectedly cold, and so I found myself in need of socks. This pair of socks, stripy purple and weirdly hitting just above the ankle, was one of those socks that I took from my Mum and obviously didn't return. Every time I see it, I am reminded of the fact that it's an article of clothing that belonged to my Mum (though of course I doubt she noticed it went missing), which makes it feel particularly significant to me. It makes me think of how I was and how I felt when I first acquired these socks (shucks, this really makes me think of Dobby), when I was about to start a new life in a new country and simultaneously afraid and excited by the things that lay ahead.

Today as I did my laundry and started to begin packing up my apartment, I couldn't help think that this would be one of the last times I would do such a thing in this place. For example, these socks: I don't think I'll be wearing these socks now as the weather gets warmer, which means I probably won't be washing them in this same laundromat when I do my laundry for one last time in a few weeks. Whenever and wherever I wash my socks next, it will be me in another yet-unknown place and in a different stage of my life. This is because I'll soon be moving out of my lovely place with Marina on Broadway Terrace, and moving into a place in Gramercy with Jonathan.

At the same time, my life as a Masters student will officially end next week with graduation, and a new phase of my life will begin. A physical uprooting mirroring an internal change in status. So now when I walk around my usual haunts of Washington Heights/Inwood, Norwood, Upper West Side and Morningside Heights, I cannot help but think that this could very well be the last time in my life that I would ever walk on a particular street. Mundane things have now become imbued with an odd and sentimental significance. But such is life and the human condition, that we arbitrarily romanticise the world around us as we attempt to make senses of things. 

Teaching

I have decided to return to teaching, but in a foreign land. I cannot help but feel extremely anxious at all the unknowns that lie ahead of me, fear that I won't be able to do a job as good as I would want to in a school culture that is foreign to me. I also think of the times I have walked away from a lesson and felt like a utter failure, or felt so exasperated. At the same time however I also feel optimistic and hopeful, because I remember all the good parts of teaching and the love I felt for my students. This decision to return to teaching feels strange because I over the past 2 years, I have undergone a whole tumult of emotions and changed mindsets about teaching as a career for myself, and worried personally about the future trajectory of my life.

At the end of the day however, I cannot deny that even though teaching might not feel like the number one best career I could and want to do (number one in Development Aid being out of my reach because of job conditions and timing), it is number two. Number two above many, many other things that one can realistically work at in this life, and perhaps that is good enough. Now, fingers crossed as I go through the whole job application process. 

Disconnection

I have spent the last few days of waking consciousness with thoughts interspersed with memorises of a recently deceased friend. Part of a problem why I feel it's so hard to grapple with my feelings towards this is because I haven't seen the guy in about 5 years, and that I am no longer part of that friends circle that we used to be in. If I haven't really seen someone in 5 years or even spoken to them in that long, am I even entitled to feel sad that they are gone? Yet when old memorises rise the surface as I do mundane things, it's startling to realise that oh gosh, he was there too, and I cannot help but feel weighed down.

If only life was easier on everyone.

Human Misery

There is a massive jam building up on the Southbound lane of Broadway, from 200th St onwards down, probably towards the GW Bridge. Earlier when I set out with my laundry, two firetrucks went by. Then, the traffic was still flowing. After putting in my laundry and going to Key Food, I came out to see a massive jam as far as the eye could see. I counted 6 Bx7s and 4 M100s stuck along the stretch from Key Food to the Dollar Tree.

I feel slightly bad for the people stuck in traffic now, but I am sure as hell glad that it's not me.

Acquisitive Behaviour

When I am stressed I buy things.

Now as I look at my bookshelf - exactly one day after I have submitted my thesis in final, hard copy form to the department office - I find myself amazed at the sheer number of books that fill its shelves. I don't think I've ever bought so many books within a single year of my life before. Amazon simply makes buying books far too easy, but leaves the problem of where to store them afterwards especially when one is done reading the book.

I need to find a place to give away the books I no longer want before I move.

26

I am 26. Or rather 26 + 1 week, because I neglected to post anything earlier. It is funny to think of myself as 26, because sometimes when I don't think about it, I still think I am 18 or something. Anyway I had the best birthday I've had in a long time last weekend. My lovely roommate Marina, and Jon helped organise a birthday dinner as a 3/4 surprise. 3/4 because they slowly told me about it, but not until it had been organised, and then not where it was until the day itself and who had been invited. Then Shirin brought Jerrine along and it was a proper 100% surprise. I haven't felt quite so special and pampered in a long time, and I guess I can't think of when I last felt that way.

In other news my tendonitis in my left foot has been giving me trouble since last weekend. It has prevented me from running, which I find aggravating because I've slowly been building up my stamina and hoping to do a 5k race in 30 mins sometime during the Summer.

I am also suffering from extreme procrastinitis on the second draft of my thesis. Fun stuff.

The Final Day of Writing

Today is the last day I have left to submit this draft to my lovely stand-in academic advisor, and I'm so tired that I no longer know what I can and can't do in academic writing. Nonetheless, I am also slightly past the point of caring what is kosher and what is not, and have put my faith into the idea that my advisor will hopefully catch whatever is not quite acceptable for academic work at her stage of checking:

A Song

The first draft is the hardest,

Baby I know,

The first draft is the hardest,

When it comes to being lucky she's cursed,

When it comes to finishing on time, she's worst.

Hello to postponing the first draft of my IP for 398398492 days, and finally being super mentally committed to finishing it by the end of this upcoming Sunday.

Sheryl Crow song link for the clueless

Haircuts and Dismay

Last week I went for a haircut across the street from TC. To my delight, my hairdresser turned out to be a Malaysian and told me that a PappaRich outlet had just opened in Flushing and she had loved it. However towards the end of my haircut I started worrying about my fringe, and thought maybe it didn't look very good. She then trimmed it a little bit more. This turned out to be a mistake, because later when I looked at my hair in the bathrooms in TC (not sure why I didn't notice it on the spot at the hair salon), I realised my fringe now looked really wonky. It was now quite short, with some parts at the farther end of my head shorter than the other bits. This annoys me incredibly especially since I have a conference to attend next week in Vancouver, where I'll be presenting a paper for the first time. Talk about nerve-wracking in itself, daft haircut that makes me look like and feel like a child not withstanding. 

Running

Decided to go for a run today after feeling simultaneously lethargic, bored, and unmotivated, and managed to spend at least 15 minutes running (or jogging) at 5.7 mph. I feel better now, although I also now realise that there is a certain sort of ache in my tailbone area from sitting on my arse too often for too long, and that I can smell all sorts of weird things in the air because my sinuses have cleared/opened up.

Since the start of this academic year I've managed to run (mostly) at least once a week, if not twice, which I think has been quite helpful for my overall well-being. I've never regretted going for a run, although it does take a fair amount of time. For instance today it took me about 2 hours in total because of the time needed to travel to the campus gym and to visit M2M to buy a drink afterwards. During times where I'm stationed at Jon's place in the Bronx, it takes me at least 50 minutes to travel to campus, if not longer.

Still I suppose this is a luxury I enjoy as a person who is not yet working. Although my time is limited, its not as limited as the people who have to work 9-to-5 jobs. In fact since I've started working at my internship on Mondays and Wednesdays, I've found my ability to conduct daytime errands like visits to the Post Office severely limited, which is annoying. Can't say how I'll be able to do things when I get a full time job.

Waugh and Maugham

Over the past few weeks (2? 3?) I read Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh and Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham, one right after the other. By sheer coincidence, both books turned out to be semi-autobiographical and dealt with similar themes, though of course through vastly different ways. Vile Bodies was meant to be scathing and humorous, an absurd parody, while Of Human Bondage was meant to be more serious and an examination of sorts into the things someone does out of emotion. The effect reading those two books, one right on the heels of another, made me feel slightly strange because it transported me to turn of the century England, replete with things I've only seen in movies and words I've only seen in other books. It was, and is, a whole world away from the reality I live in. And I'm not too sure how I feel about that.

Firsts

Today, on the 15th of February, for the first time ever in my life, I sat down on a Ferrero Rocher and squished it flat. I was trying to wriggle new bed sheets out of its packaging, and must have knocked over the heart-shaped box they were resting in during my struggle with the sheets. When I finally wrestled the sheets out of the plastic cover, I sat down from my squatting position and immediately felt the weird sensation of having sat on something. When I moved and looked, I saw the saddest sight known to mankind: an ignominiously squished Ferrero Rocher.

I put the sheets into the washing hamper and then ate the Ferrero Rocher.

-----

Yesterday Jonathan and I went on a mini-adventure to visit Mitsuwa Supermarket in Edgewater, NJ, on what was apparently the coldest Valentine's Day in 100 years. It was a crazy idea and we were frozen to the bone, but exhilarated by the idea. We ended up walking from his place to the 1 train at 238th, because the buses didn't appear to be coming and standing still at the bus stop in -15 degree Celcius weather didn't seem a nice option, and then walking from the 181st stop to the George Washington Bus Terminal. After waiting about 30 minutes, we got onto a 188 NJ Transit bus which brought us directly to Mitsuwa.

At Mistuwa we had a really nice lunch of pork katsu curry and beef bbq, then wandered around some of the nearby shops like Kinokuniya (unfortunately it has nothing on the one back home in Ngee Ann Plaza) before going grocery shopping. Getting back was more of a pain though, because the 188 bus was running in 1 hr 30 min intervals, and so we ended up walking around Michael's for more than an hour, killing time and staying warm.

By the time we got back to the Bronx, I felt throughly exhausted.

We went to bed around 9:45pm last night, and aside from the hour I was awake with Jon in the morning as he got ready from work, I slept soundly until 12:30pm today. I haven't slept so much like the dead in a long time.

Cat Carcass

On Sunday Jon and I had a very domestic day. We took the Bx10 to Kingsbridge to eat in a diner, visit T.J. Maxx and Aldi. This was in contrast to the night before when we went to the lower east side to watch Anomalisa at Sunshine Cinema, and had a the length of a wooden bridge's worth of sushi and sashimi (it was the platter they used) at a place called Hana.

What stood out about that weekend though was the sight that greeted us when we walked out of his apartment to take the bus on Sunday. Sitting on the asphalt lay an erie sight: a stripped, still red, mammalian carcass. We stood right in front of it, gaping for a few moments while someone throwing away their trash eyed us across the street. What struck me as weirder than the fact that I'd never seen such fresh-looking skeletal remains so near to me before, was the fact that the person who was throwing the trash away seemed to be more curious about Jon and I looking at the remains more than the remains itself. As if it was completely normal to see such large skeletons hanging about the streets in the Bronx.

Well, what do we know.

It was really gross. We guessed it was probably a cat. It looked cat-sized. We speculated that the raccoons had probably stripped it. We wondered how long the carcass had lain there, perhaps it had been hidden under a vehicle.

When we came back from our jaunt in Kingsbridge, the carcass lay half covered under a jeep.

SPSS: 2005 - 2015

I decided to run SPSS on the descriptive statistics of my blog posts:

It appears for some reason that I tend to write the most in April, and the least in July, and the difference over ten and a half years equates to almost a hundred instances. The next month with the least number of posts in August, so maybe something should be said about how the Summer months promote laziness.

I'm not sure what other tricks I can do with SPSS. 

Value(s)

When I was younger, I used to tie ideas of my self-worth according to things like how I looked, how well I was liked by my peers, and how well I performed in tests and examinations. Now I realise I tie my self-worth to working, and feeling like I have a productive role in society. Which also explains why I've not been feeling too good lately, as I wait and wait for responses to the internship applications that I've sent in (and receive one or two rejections). I feel anchor-less, and the idea of working on my thesis, (which seemed like such a valuable piece of knowledge building for society at large!) no longer as captivating. I need to find my self-worth again.

News News

Was reading the news on my phone this morning after Jonathan left for work, and learnt of the disturbing news of the Mass Sexual Assaults in Cologne, which saddens me to no end. For starters, it's no stretch to imagine that this is part of the refugee migration crisis that dominated most of the news of 2015 (and the news seem to hint at such, alongside allegations that the major news outlets are trying to quash the story because it's un-PC), and secondly it's terrible to imagine such terrible things happening to women who should otherwise be able to feel safe outdoors. For me, learning about such news makes me feel like two things that I feel most passionately about are at odds with each other, and this troubles me to the depths of my being.

I once experienced something similar to those reported mobs in Cologne while walking with my friends around the crowded square of Djemaa El-Fna in Marrakesh, Morocco. The square was really crowded, and I briefly got separated from my friend by a surge of people although I could still see them about a metre away. Suddenly I realised I was surrounded by a group of male Moroccan youths, and they started grabbing at my hair, pulling it and touching it. I was really shocked and didn't know how to react, and just as I was about to scream for one of my friends to help, the group dispersed and melted back into the heady sea of people. I later noticed that the bottom pocket of my backpack was unzipped, although whether this was done by the same group of boys remains unknown. Either way, I felt quite shaken by my experience, knowing that it could've been a lot worse. 

What felt immensely worrisome to me about this experience was that it flew in the face of ideas that people traditionally have when it comes to women's safety: be in a public area with lots of people around, be with friends, be vigilant, be conservatively dressed. I fulfilled all of this criteria and yet I was this assaulted (although thankfully not sexually). I still wonder to this day though, if I acted as some sort of practice for those boys. That they have now (some 4 years later) moved on to further targets and with more horrendous goals. 

That womens right's are now threatened in the Western world, that we can no longer ignore all the sexual assaults that happens in the other areas of the world. That we must at the same time walk a fine line between the universal human rights to a safe home and free practice of religion, while also fighting for the quashing of barbaric cultural practices (like FGM) that have been erroneously intertwined with religious ideas. That we must also fight against people who share similar views as us, but who choose to write off an entire culture or adherents of a religion.

Dear World, we have a formidable problem ahead of us. But it's one worth fighting for.

An Attempt At Summing Up 2015

Today is the second last day of the year and I should write something pithy to sum up the year, but feel little inspiration to do so. I swear I had a very tiny list somewhere on my computer about books that I found striking this year, but I can't find that list now. Not helped is that fact that when I think about things, I'm reading far less intensively this year compared to when I was younger (circa before I started working in 2012), so that list wouldn't be as extensive anyway.

This year I visited Mexico, Myanmar and San Francisco. I had visited Mexico before apparently as a child (a nip over some sort of Californian border), which I didn't know until I asked my parents about it, so I'm not sure if that quite counts as having been there before 2015. Either way, by visiting Mexico (twice!) I managed to achieve one of my new years resolutions from last year, haha. Myanmar was another sort-of-nice trip with my parents, scorching heat and food poisoning aside. Visiting the country right before the elections made the news filtering out of the country all the more visceral. It also makes Brunei the only other ASEAN country I have left to visit, though I heard that there's really not much to see there.

This year I also finished all my classes at Columbia, and possibly all academic classes for the rest of my life. When I graduated from LSE, I knew that I would definitely return to an academic setting for a Masters degree. This time however I'm not sure if I want to do a PhD, although my interests definitely lie in that realm, practicalities and my ability to become bored with lots of things easily very important things to consider. That and I really do enjoy working and feeling like I'm doing something concrete outside of myself and my mind.

This year I met Jonathan, explored the Bronx, and learned how to drive. I tried cooking belachan for the first time, driving my dormmates half mad with the smell. I attended my first conference in Washington D.C., lived (and still live) with a roommate from a completely different cultural background, and navigated the New York housing rental market. I had to deal with medium-scale (as opposed to small and large-scale) family discord for the first time ever, missed a flight and had to catch an 8 hour coach ride to Mexico D.F. + stay overnight in order to fly out, and learned how to use the MTA bus system.

It'll be interesting to see what 2016 brings.

A Week in Review

I realised today that this week marks the last week I have as a student attending classes in TC. As such, some sort of documentation is surely warranted, no matter how simple.

Sunday 13/12/15
Was Jonathan's birthday, so we spent it having lunch with his parents at The Buffet in Flushing. They very nicely came to pick us up from the Bronx, and we went to BJ's first because it was a little early. Then they dropped us back and Jonathan and I ended up watching documentaries before munching on spaghetti that his mum had made and frozen for supper.

Monday 14/12/15
Woke up with Jonathan at 5:30am for him to get ready for work, went back to sleep at 7am. Can't remember when I woke up again, but reached back to my place around 11am to find an excited Marina telling me that my new Moto X 2nd Gen phone had just been dropped off by the FedEx man. Spent the next few minutes trying to put the protective film on and accidentally turned on the Accessibility Assistant which drove me nuts while I was trying to set up the phone. Googled and realised that apparently turning it on accidentally was a very common problem, and lots of people had been frustrated by it. I think I also started colouring the adult colouring books I had bought.

For the rest of the afternoon, I practiced statistics problems in the dining room. Around 5:45pm, I left to go print things in school, grab a slice of cheese pizza, and prep for the class presentation I was doing with Sarah, my partner. The presentation - more like example teaching a class and leading a graduate discussion - was on Japan in WW2. Overall things went better than I expected, and I felt very happy afterwards.

After getting home and hanging out with Marina for a bit, I called my Mama.

Tuesday 15/12/15
Did laundry together with Marina at the laundromat, and followed her to Staples because she had to run errands. Succeeded in distracting myself sufficiently from the spectre of The Statistic Exam, because I figured there was little point to cramming or panicking hours before a mathematical exam. Coloured for a bit, then headed to class and bought a cup of hot breakfast tea.

Walked out of the statistics exam feeling very WTF, mainly because things felt kinda overwhelming. Then ran into Midah outside the Everett Lounge while I waited for Tom to appear. Went to Saiguette for dinner with Tom, and coincidentally met Garam, Kendra and Sheila there. Ordered the lemongrass pork bun cha, and felt supremely happy with the world. Walked back to 116th with Tom, and then caught the subway home.

Wednesday 16/12/15
Ran some postal related errands in the afternoon before taking the A train downtown to see my psych. Then somehow meandered my way back uptown, stopping at Old Navy to return a dress that I had bought on impulse, before meeting Hope Leichter at 5:30pm. I ended up leaving her room at 7:05pm after leaving for a bit to run to the library to print out multiple copies of a Certificate of Equivalency (where I ran into Chime, who calmed me down slightly) because we both stressed each other out about visa issues, with Mike coming in half way to join the stress fest.

Ended up running from Hope Leichter's room in Grace Dodge Hall to the main foyer of Zankel Hall where I knew Jonathan had been waiting for a bit. Then we walked through the main Columbia campus, because I wanted to show him the fairy light-strung trees, and headed to Thai Market. Thai Market was crowded as usual, and I kept eyeing all the Thai Iced Teas around me, but refrained cause I wanted to be able to sleep. We then headed back to the Bronx before going to bed around 10pm.

Thursday 17/12/15
Woke up with Jonathan around 5:30am. Went back to sleep at 7am. Did not want to get up when my phone alarm rang around 9am. Somehow got up and half got ready to head back to North Manhattan, because I had to go home and prep for another internship interview. Was a rainy and drippy day. This time I felt so chilled out about the interview that I almost forgot to re-read the cover letter I had sent the organisation, oops. Left an hour and a half early to make the trek down to the Dumbo on the A and F trains respectively, and ended up walking around the area in the rain because I didn't want to appear at the office too early. When I got there, I realised that I was supposed to wait at a common lobby for all the businesses in the building anyway, and could've gone there to wait straight without getting so damp. Earlier on the subway ride I had mused about the weird evolution of my feelings towards interviews, and I wondered if my Mum had undergone a similar experience with her recent spate of interviews. The first one is incredibly nerve wracking, because one is so out of practice, but with every additional one the nerves get calmer and calmer.

Anyway, the common lobby smelt extremely funky and not-very-nice. Kind of reminded me of the kitty litter smell that Jonathan's lobby had when a cat had taken residence by some radiators under the staircase. Read a little from the book of Stevie Smith's poetry that I had brought along for the train ride while I waited for my interviewer to appear. The interview seemed pleasant enough, and the interviewer even brought me along upstairs to meet another member of the staff (is that a good sign?) and asked me to submit a 2 paragraph writing sample.

On the way back uptown from Brooklyn, I stopped by Trader Joe's to pick up some bread and avocados, along with other nonsense that caught my eye (I swear I've been going to Trader Joe's for 3 weeks in a row or something). I then walked to Barnes and Noble on 82nd street because I had been looking for a 2016 monthly planner and had yet to find a satisfactory one. I ended up getting a simple light green one for about $10, after tax.

I reached home, sorted things out, and then jumped on the subway again to head to Jonathan's place. I took the Bx1 as usual from 231st, and shortly after sitting down with my things noticed a young afro-latino boy of around 5 playing with a Captain America action figure, pretending he was flying around and all (but Captain American doesn't fly!). His mum was standing a distance away, and looked real tired trying to get his younger sister to sit down, and spanked her on her bum when she kept squirming. Meaning the boy was kneeling on the sideways facing seats, looking out the window and making his figurine fly.

Somewhere during the middle of the ride however, the bus suddenly jerked and I saw the boy fall back (almost in slow motion, especially since I was seat on the chairs facing him), and an almighty THUNK was heard as the back of his head hit the hard armrests of the chairs. The kid sort of got up a little bit, was visibly stunned, and then started crying. I looked at the mother in dismay, and MAN, she looked really pissed at the little boy. She said "I told you to sit down!", while trying to get her two other kids to stay put, while the little boy just stood in the middle of the bus aisle and continued to cry.

Unsure of what to do in the situation I grabbed the kid, lest he fall down again, and started soothing him. I thought the moment the bus ride got a little smoother, he'd return to his mother. Instead he decided to stay with me, as I tried to support him and prevent him from falling over again with my legs and arms, and as I said "Shh, shh, it's okay". I started to feel kind of awkward because he decided he didn't want to run back to his mum, while my mind raced with thoughts like "Shit, how do you say 'Go back to Mummy' in Spanish?!". Instead I just pointed at his mum and said "¿Madre?", hoping it was some sort of jab at effective communication, but instead he just nodded and said "Si". Thanks 3 months of Spanish lessons.

When they got off around Sedgewick Ave, the mum said "Thanks Miss!" to me. I started thinking about how crazy stressful dealing with 3 young children on public transport must be, and how I really really would not want to be in that situation, but that I definitely had the luxury of making that choice.

Friday 18/12/15
Same wake up at 5:30am, go back to sleep at 7am. Except this time I woke up at 5am with a nightmare that invisible aliens (I know, I know!) had been grabbing me, leaving serious bruising all over my arms, and I screamed myself awake (although Jonathan said it sounded more like a yelp). Never did that before. Decided I wasn't going to take melatonin anymore, and that I was going to be extra judicious with kicking the comforters off.

Headed back to North Manhattan around noon because I had forgotten to bring my medication, and ended up bumming around, cleaning up a little and packing for a trip to NJ over the Christmas period. Then I headed back to the Bronx, to work on the writing sample for the interview I had done the previous day. When Jonathan came home, I was still working on the writing sample, but managed to finish it by about 5:40pm, giving me adequate time to get ready for the dinner we were going to have with his brother and sister-in-law.

The restaurant, Enzo's was located in the Bronx Little Italy area, and was really nice. While we were eating the bread, a group of carollers dressed up in 1800s style dress came in, and they were really good. When they came to our table either Jonathan's brother or sister-in-law requested the 'Happy Birthday' song, and they sang it for us in English, with the leader of the carollers singing a second version in Spanish.

After dinner they dropped us home, and somewhere between then and bedtime, I ended up manually transferring numbers from my old phone to my new phone.

Saturday 19/12/15
Jonathan up at 5:30am for work as usual. I ate a bunch of Apple Jacks while he had breakfast. I went back to sleep after he left and I had faffed around on the internet. I ended up getting up pretty late because I felt so reluctant to get out of bed. I did a quick wash up, finished watching an episode of Criminal Minds that I had started a few days ago, and headed out to go to the Columbia gym. Today was actually cold, and so I hid behind the glass panel at the Bx1 bus shelter. The guy standing sort of next to me, but outside the bound of the bus shelter actually had his cap blown off his head. Just as the Bx1 was about to pull up, I saw him run behind the shelter after his cap, picking it up and giving me a smile when he saw that I was watching him.

At the 231st station I witnessed a fight between the dad of an afro-latino teenager and a white guy. The kid had been swinging his baseball bat around near the exit door, fooling around and almost hitting people, and the white guy got angry after the kid kept doing it. He started shouting really loudly, the kid stopped and grinned back, and then the kid's dad appeared asking what the problem was. Basically the white guy was super angry and kind of overboard, but then the dad joined in and started yelling back. I was watching this and thinking about all the racial overtones. Then I noticed a guy next to me flinging little red peppers and corn kernels from the salad he was eating all over the subway platform and wished the two guys would join in and yell at salad flinging guy instead. The dad and his son got onto my subway carriage, and the dad started talking to some random latino bystanders, and I got the impression from little bits of Spanish conversation that the dad seemed to be concerned about police or something. The song also banged his baseball bat on the floor of the carriage a few times, which really annoyed me because hadn't this little fucker stirred up enough grief for the day?

At the gym I managed to run at 5.7mph for 26 and a half minutes. I even selected one of those funny video runs on the screens, which shows you a video of actual running routes, making it seem like you're actually running in some other part of the earth. I felt very pleased with my accomplishment. Then I headed to get my eyebrows done, and walked past TC where the thought about not having to actually go to campus several times a week anymore popped into my headed. After I got my eyebrows done, I wandered into some stores in Harlem while I fought the urge to have some fried chicken.

On the way back to Mosholu Parkway, I saw a churro seller on the platform at 161st, and bought some churros. When I reached back to Mosholu, I caved in and went to Popeyes, where I had a weird exchange with the Pakistani/Bangladeshi cashier, because I seemed to misunderstand everything he was saying. Then I came back and had two pieces of the chicken while watching another episode of Criminal Minds and drinking a small 90 calorie can of coke. I'm pretty sure that undid all of the running I had done (400 calories worth, according to the treadmill), but OH WELL.

I'm now really bloated from all the oily food I've had.

Hummus Farmer

I was just zoning out while munching on hummus and pretzel chips when a question suddenly popped into my mind (mainly because I was hyper-aware that I hadn't yet consumed a substantial amount of fruit and veg today): "Is hummus a vegetable?"

And the answer is no: hummus is not a vegetable because it consists of protein more than anything else. Boo.

-----

Will be leaving for another internship interview in a bit, this time in the Dumbo area in Brooklyn. Quite a trek. But then again, one needs all the experience that one can get. 

Workspace 2015

Was going over my stats work this afternoon in the living area when I got up to answer the door (it was the UPS man). When I returned, I realised that my work space had been laid out kind of nicely, and that this could well be the last time I ever prepare for an examination or test again.

While one might be tempted to wax lyrical about such an aspect of one's life ending, never to repeated again, I realise I don't care enough for the whole idea of examinations to be nostalgic. So there.

The Weather

It's mid-Dec here in NYC, and the weather is worryingly warm. It has barely dropped below freezing, whereas from the end of October last year the weather dropped near to freezing. This feels very unnatural, and hence unpleasant, and one really wonders if this is what they have meant definitively all along by "climate change". 

Last night I was talking to Rufus while in the Morton William's Supermarket across from the main Columbia campus about how it was crazily unlikely that there'd be a white Christmas this year, or if it would even snow at all this year (the PA system was playing I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas), when a nearby store worker said "Thank God! I hope not!" Although I know what she meant, the idea of it not snowing at all sent shivers of fear down my spine - surely all of this erratic weather is not a good thing.

Internship Season

It's internship seasons and I've sent out 6 different applications. I went for an interview tomorrow, and looks like I have 2 more scheduled with two different other organisations. What kind of bugs me though is how all the emails have spelt my name with a -y instead of an -ie. GAH.

Immunisations

As of today (although I need to go back for additional booster shots), I am immunised against:

1) Tetanus, diphtheria and petrussis
2) Typhoid
3) Hepatitis A
4) Chicken pox (they need to check my blood work just to be sure though)
5) Cervical cancer
6) Meningitis
7) Measles, mumps and rubella
8) Polio
9) Hepatitis B
10) Influenza

I've also been jabbed 4 times within an hour today with the various vaccines and blood drawing(s), which must surely be some sort of record in my life. Fun stuff.

In other news I've also finally gone and cut my hair, because I have an interview for an internship tomorrow and I don't want to look unkempt. My hair now feels very strangely short, and to my chagrin I feel like I look more younger to boot. Ho boy.

20 minutes

For the first time in a really long while, I've managed to run for 20 minutes at a go without stopping.

I also intended to clean the bathroom tonight, but needless to say I'm way too exhausted to do that now. Zzzzz.

Cooking Time

I like cooking. I'm not quite sure if I love it, but I'm sure that I at least like it enough to look forward to the times when I'm mentally committed towards planning, buying groceries and cooking a meal. The best bit of course is at the end when the meal is ready to eat, but the time taken to consume it is so much less than any of the other individual components involved in the entire process. Anyway if I find a new recipe I'm keen on, I am usually far more excited to cook than when I've made something that I know is tried and tested. I also feel way more excited about cooking if I know I can eat the end products together with someone, and see their reactions (although I always brace myself for a negative one, especially because I have the bad habit of not actually tasting my food as I am cooking).

Recently however I was wondering what I was doing with all my time. I have the same amount of time as I had last year (24 hours in a day, 7 days a week), but seemed to have 'no time' to work on my IP/thesis even though I'm taking half the number of credits that I took for the Fall and Spring semesters in the previous academic year. I was thinking about this and realised it's probably because I now spend at least an hour everyday travelling back and forth between school and home, and that every time I cook a meal, I spent at the very least an hour and a half, not including the time taken for grocery shopping (upwards of at least 45 mins!). Laundry too takes me longer because there are no machines in my building, at least 2 hours if you include the time it takes for me to fold everything on the tables in the laundromat (which I realised are a great height for folding things on without having to stoop over). Even seen Shirin in the midtown/LES area takes me at least 15 minutes longer than before because of additional travelling time on the subway. In essence a lot of things take more time this year compared to last year, although in sum I am more happier overall to be living in my own place and feeling like I am accountable for things.

So anyway this is my excuse for why I have not completed my IP/thesis yet. Eek.

Mice

It's 12:04am in the morning, and I can hear a weird light tapping sound from the corner of one of the walls in my room. There are apparently mice in my flat, according to Marina my roommate, and  last night I actually saw one myself. Unfortunately by then I had thrown away two of the glue traps that Kerry, my apartment superintendent, had laid in our kitchen, because I had stepped on them.

I stepped on the first glue trap first thing in the morning yesterday, when I got up to make my tea. When I sat down on the ground to remove it from my slipper, part of my zip-up hoodie became attached to the glue trap too. When I managed to rip it off me, the glue trap became weirdly warped in shape, so I threw it away.

I stepped on the second glue trap after I had finished doing my laundry in the morning (also yesterday), and was preparing my lunch. This time was far worse however, because I had been wandering around the house in a pair of socks. My socks got really really stuck to the glue, and even when I managed to yank them off, a gummy residue remained on them. I then tried to remove the gummy residue with nail polish remover, which kind of worked, but also made the remnants of the gluey residue stick to my hands. In frustration, I threw the glue trap away.

So last night, when I was out in the living room talking to Rufus who is visiting from KL, and saw a mouse dart down out little corridor and under our fridge, I groaned because we now clearly had a mouse and 1 superintendent-laid trap left. Oh well.

Not that I would've known what to do if the mouse really got stuck to a trap anyway. I still have memories of the mouse and screamed itself mute when I got stuck to the carpet from an old, overturned glue trap, outside my 3rd year London apartment on Marchmont Street. Urgh.

cincuenta y dos

Today my dad turns 52. He loves to remind me of the fact that when I was born in March 1990, he was just 26 years old (my parents married when he was 25 in June 1989), and that I need to "get a move on" if I want to match/parallel his record, especially now that my cousin is getting married next year in April right before she turns 26. Although I know he says all of this in a tongue-in-cheek way, wtf.

Of course using that weird logic of his, if I had maintained the status quo by turning my mother into a grandmother (as per my paternal grandmother) at age 50, I should've already had a child 4 years ago. Also if I follow my own mother as an example, I just need to get married before I turn 28 to "beat" her. Better still if I follow Uncle KL's example which is somewhere in the 30s.

I'm not actually sure what the point of this all is, the setting up of nonsensical and totally arbitrary age benchmarks. But I guess it gives people the comforting illusion that all of life proceeds in the same one path sort of a way (which it most certainly does not!) and that one needs to hit benchmark A to get to B, then to C and D, and so on so forth.  

Anyway I'm the first one in both my immediate paternal and maternal families to get a Masters degree, so there, I've gone and wrecked the idea of similar benchmarks. 

Español Clase

Singapur es un pais muy pequeno y ciudad estado. Esta en sudeste Asia y en el ecuador. La poblacion aproximado es 5,4 milliones y la clima todo el ano es muy humedo y caluroso . La lengua oficial es malayo, tamil, ingles, chino mandarin, pero hay muchos dialectos. La flora oficial es la orquidea, se llama "Vanda Miss Joaquim". La bandera colors es roja y blanca. La moneda es Singapur dolares. 

Memory

On a rainy Thursday last week I headed to the Union Square area to have dinner with Shirin. On the way to meet her, I decided to kill some time by hanging out at Strand bookstore, nevermind the fact that I don't actually need any more books and should be spending more time reading stuff for my thesis instead. I ended up buying 3 books for about $24, and then went to meet Shirin at Otto's. The next day I met Jonathan to watch a movie and spend the weekend together, and when he asked me what books I had purchased the previous day, I realised I couldn't remember anything. I couldn't even describe the covers or titles, and only remembered them as novels on the slim side of the spectrum because they weren't very heavy, which I found quite frustrating because I used to pride myself on having a really good memory. Instead I am left with what feels like white fluffy cotton balls as brain matter, trying to grasp at things I know I have forgotten, and memories that have lost their vivid emotional resonance.

-----

For the record, these are the 3 books I purchased:
1) There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories by Ludmilla Petrushevkaya
2) So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
3) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? by Henry Farrell

Grape Tomatoes

Today while trying to move my overloaded shopping basket from the top of the Trader Joe's checkout line, I dropped a box of grape tomatoes and a sack of baby potatoes. To my immense mortification, the plastic grape tomato box fell open, sending the little grape tomatoes running helter-skelter. I'm not sure how to describe what happened next, but it involved a woman with her family pretending to be shocked and going "oh you threw tomatoes at me!", a Trader Joe's staff appearing out of nowhere and trying to collect all the tomatoes, and me sheepishly trying to lug the basket over to my cashier. Later, the same Trader Joe's staff member that picked up all my spilled tomatoes appeared and offered to get me a new box of grape tomatoes, which I gratefully accepted.

The pasta I intend to make with those grape tomatoes better be delicious.

*I should add that this all happened during Rush Hour, around 5:20pm when Trader Joe's was probably one of the most crowded spots in the entirety of Manhattan, save the train/subway stations.

Hand-washing Clothes

I forgot just how insanely tiring and strenuous the act of hand-washing clothes is, until just about 45 minutes ago when I decided to finally start hand-washing the three handmade traditional blouses I had bought from both Romania and Mexico. The Romanian blouse felt impossibly delicate, and was quite expensive, while the Mexican blouses were so vibrantly coloured that I knew the colours would definitely run if I threw them into the washing machine with my other clothes (and I like my white coloured clothes a lot, thank you very much). So now I sit in front of my computer, taking a break, with one blouse still sitting in my bathroom sink soaking in water. My shoulders ache a little because I hardly use any upper body strength in my day-to-day life (oops), and I cannot help but marvel how every Saturday morning at home in Singapore I used to always see the family maids (namely Felicidad and Merlina) sitting on tiny stools and hand-washing the delicate laundry items without much rest. Kudos to them and their upper body strength.

-----

On Sunday I went to church for the first time since June. I went mainly because every Sunday I feel the slightest twinge of guilt at how lazy I am (a staggering 0.05/100 on my guilt scale!), and the fact that this week I felt two very important things had occurred that I needed to give thanks to God for. One was the fact that I had managed to come back to NYC safely after the massive shitstorm that leaving Oaxaca/Mexico City was, and the other was that I seem to have met someone that at long last (at least for now, because goodness knows how this statement will probably later come back to bite me back on the ass, HARD) I can imagine spending the rest of my life with. And of course even thinking of a statement like that stresses me out, because I know the consequences of being hurt oh-too-well, and even thinking of anything of that sort makes my heart clench in abject fear. All I can do of course is cross my fingers and put my faith in God, that at least someone out there knows WTF is going to happen to me in the future.   

Oaxaca #2: Dias de los Muertos

I spent the last week in Oaxaca, Mexico, for Dias de los Muertos. It's the 2nd time I've been in Mexico, and the 4th time I've travelled alone, and it's been the most disastrous trip I've ever been on in my life. I feel tired thinking about the 4 shitty things that happened, and maybe will write about them when I feel less exhausted. Chang Hong is also visiting me now, so that's taking up some of my time. We're going see the Rockefeller Centre's Top of the Rock in a bit.

Instead, I shall post a selection of photos of my trip, with a terrible commentary:

 Kids collecting money along Calle Macedonia Alcala

Tiniest (and cutest) Coke bottle I've ever seen, 200ml. Several tourists asked me about it after they saw me carry it around. 

Festive Volkswagon van 

Mendoza-Mendoza, the carpet weaver/seller at Mercado de Artesanias. Ended up buying a less intricate version of that carpet.

Creature being driven around, presumably later to participate in a parade. 

One such parade, down Calle Macedonia Alcala 

Niche wall along the Pantheon General 

The next bunch are images from Images from Xoxocotlan and Pantheon Cemetery:

 

Favourite grave of all - completely non-traditional 

Sights like this made me feel a little sad, and completely intrusive. Took a photo like a creep nonetheless.

 Mariachi Band

It's hard to illustrate just how crazy packed and festive the cemeteries were, with families gathered around graves drinking and dancing, while tourists totted DSLRs around and tripped over graves. Was offered several shots of mezcal, beer and a dance by a whole bunch of locals who were partying by the graves of their loved ones. My concession was that I always asked for permission to take photos first.

Altars and decorations in the San Pablo Cultural Centre

 Widest tree in the world in Tule

Kids dancing at Hierve el Agua

 Zocalo, Oaxaca

 Another pretty altar in a library

La Soledad Church

Overall I have no regrets that I went, but the 4 crappy things that happened to me on this particular trip will stay with me for some time. I'm not going to leave the USA for a while now! Happy staying put here in my little flat and conventional existence.

Return Policies

Spent almost 2 hours 'trapped' in the F21 store at Herald Square today because I found out that F21 only allows in-store exchanges for items returned after 30 days. Usually I shop online only at Gap and was used to their generous return policies, so finding out that that F21's was 30 days was a nasty surprise. So I ended up walking around the store twice over, buying things that I otherwise would not have purchased, like skirts. The mean number of times I wear a skirt in a month is approximately 1, and 0 when it's winter time. So essentially unpractical stuff I liked. I would much rather have money back, but I guess I have something nice to wear for dates/cousin's engagement party. Oh well. My fault really, but still an annoyance.

Had dinner with Shirin at the K-Town food court after that. I ordered the Bulgogi from the K Barbecue shop, and it was really good. Strangely didn't feel that hungry though, but between the two of us we managed to finish almost everything, leaving only the rice. Then we wandered around Manhattan Mall briefly because it was raining outside.

Tomorrow I leave for Oaxaca. I'm feeling kinda nervous, the way I always do before I go anywhere, especially when I travel by myself. I worry that I'll forget something critical, or oversleep, or something to that effect. Still I can't wait to head to the main market next to the zocalo and have some Mexican chorizo with those corn tortillas. Mmm.

Mexico Trip #2

Am headed to Oaxaca again for the Dias de los Muertos celebration this weekend. Will be leaving on Thursday and will arrive back on Tuesday, spending both days pretty much just travelling. I'm feeling quite excited - of all festivals in the world, this is the one I have always wanted to attend the most - but also quite unsettled because this trip is smack right in the middle of my school term. Then again, it wasn't like I didn't know this when I booked the trip, though dealing with the reality is of course something altogether different.

Haven't managed to work on my thesis at all for the past three weeks because I've been reckoning with being sick and then the mid-terms. Also realised yesterday when I submitted my mid-term paper for one of my classes that it was the last class paper I would ever write for my Masters Degree, which is a pity since I know it was definitely not my best effort :/ Still, I needed to finish the paper on time, and had no idea what the teacher wanted. Fingers crossed for when he grades it over the weekend.

Recently, someone new has entered my life (as of just last week Thursday!). I'm not quite sure what to think of things. I am happy, but also very scared and tired of negative human interactions and relationships, where people say things easily but don't mean them (and so I learn to be suspicious, to take everything with massive heaping ladlefuls of salt). And then how life comes in and adds more trouble to everything, and then everything becomes terrible.

The last time I was in Oaxaca in May, I remember being very upset with the last guy I dated. Funny that his initials are BS, because looking back that's how that relationship felt. I went into the church in the zocalo in Oaxaca and sat in the pews to cry and pray, because I realised then that things were inauthentic and wished it wasn't so (though I stubbornly continued to wrestle with my intuition for the next month).

This male is different, but I am still scared. I feel like I cannot trust myself because I don't know whether it is my intuition speaking, or my hopefulness (which is a useless, useless piece of emotion, especially when it comes to relationships), whether things are actually grounded in reality or a figment of my wishes. And so I tell myself not to trust anything, to be prepared to walk away at any time, because while I know myself and how I feel, I cannot claim to know the other person and how they really feel. But still I hope, I cross my fingers, and I pray.

Strawberry and Rhubarb Jam

Many years ago when I was in Nepal I fell in love with 3 different types of food there: the tomato flavoured potato chips, the dal bhat and the mixed fruit jam. To this day because of that jam, I think of Nepali breakfasts (or at least those they serve to tourists) as being the best in the world (even though I got the worst bout of food poisoning there and have since not eaten anything remotely Nepali).

On Thursday I was wandering down Broadway, along the Thursday Farmer's Market outside the main Columbia campus, and decided to stop and sample some of the homemade jams (Beth's, I think). When I tried their Strawberry and Rhubarb jam, all the taste memories came back to me and I realised this was exactly how the mysterious Mixed Fruit jam of Nepal tasted!

So of course I bought a bottle. And had the jam with toast and butter.

Now back to my mid-term paper reviewing Cambodian textbooks.

Influenza

Thought I was down with the cold for much of this week when I suddenly started getting feverish just over 24 hours ago, ugh. Turns out it's the flu, which I now will not confuse with the cold anymore (BECAUSE IT SUCKS THAT MUCH MORE!). In the past 24 hours I have been repeatedly dizzy, felt like a radiator, felt bored, and felt like collapsing into a uncomfortable heap somewhere. No fun at all. I've had to cancel my weekend plans as a result, because I can't wander too far away from the safety of home. Damned flu.

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.

Failure #3

Just heard back from the Broker, and we didn't get the flat.

Instead of studying, like I had intended to do, I ended up watching SVU instead. Felt too disappointed to concentrate on anything serious. Then I went out to buy junk food for dinner from a little fry-up place around the corner, and walked up Broadway till 153rd before turning back. Just as I almost reached back to 148th, I saw a dead and squished mouse right outside Dunkin Donuts. My insides gave a little jump when I suddenly saw the mouse just lying there on the pavement, and swerved a little to avoid stepping on it.

My insides kind of feel a little like that crushed dead mouse.

Hamilton Heights

Have spent the last few days back in NYC feeling incredibly stressed out about housing. To date Marina and I have had 2 failed applications. Now we have 1 pending in Washington Heights. Really, really hope it works out.

The second time I heard about our failed application (also for a place in Washington Heights),  I was out with Sindhu, who was visiting NYC, and I felt almost exactly like I had just been dumped. Urgh.

In the meanwhile, I have been crashing with Marina in her place in Hamilton Heights, in the living room. It was so hot when I first came, and I felt so ill, so I ended up buying an AC, which helped infinitely.

Today we did laundry together at the laundromat. Then we walked around the neighbourhood, up to 155th and St. Nicholas Place, and saw a lot of nice old houses around Sugar Hill. Above is the James Bailey House, which we saw on our walk. Marina and I even chatted to the guy who lives there.

Fingers crossed ever-so-tight that this housing thing works out well, and soon.

Myanmar and Food Poisoning

Went for a pretty much whirlwind trip of Myanmar with my parents over the last week. We visited Yangon, Lake Inle, Mandalay and Bagan, hitting most of the major tourist spots. I also managed to get food poisoning (not the worst case I've had, but still not fun at all) from Mandalay onwards, and sort of hurt my old injured right ankle again because of the Burmese penchant for making people take their shoes off to walk/climb around holy sites (in my case, walking up Mandalay Hill). I can't think of another trip [actually I can: Nepal] where I felt so tired at the end of it, and so glad to reach home to Singapore. How sad. Still, the front end of the trip was very pleasant and enjoyable, and even the end bits were pretty even though I felt ill and permanently nauseous.

In the mean time, I am left with just 4 precious days in Singapore before I return to the clusterfuck of stress and problems that await me in NYC, like finding a new place and really, really, working for my future. Tonight I'm having a sleepover with Tiff and ZW, tomorrow brunch with Daryl, CW and Jia, and finally dinner with the TLL people. The remainder of my days will be spent meeting up Cassey, one of my roommates from my hostel of Oaxaca, who is here for a few days for work, and with family.

Have started packing properly for my departure with a slightly heavy heart. Slightly heavy only because it doesn't quite make me want to burst into tears at the thought of leaving again, but makes me feel uncomfortable and restless nonetheless. I'm utterly terrible at leaving anything, but leaving a place that is so strongly my comfort zone, where I need to worry too much about anything (thereby forever being a useless child I suppose), fills me with an irrational panic that oh no! I'll have no one to rely on but myself. Silly really when one considers that this departure will mark the start of my 5th year abroad. Still, I cannot help my uncomfortable and jittery heart.

Meet Ups

Since I've gotten back to Singapore, I've met up/hung out with someone almost every day. Even people who I haven't really thought about have asked me for meet ups, which is a really nice change from my pretty solitary life in NYC. Yesterday however, I somehow managed to hang out with Ted Kin and Gen Huong the whole afternoon, from 12pm to 6pm, of which 5 and a half hours were completely spent talking over caffeinated drinks. At the end of that, I felt completely and utterly exhausted, and realised that even though I had often hung out with people, it was usually spent doing things together rather than outright non-stop chatting. Phwoah.

Tomorrow I'm headed to Myanmar for a week with my parents. We intend to visit Yangon, Bangan and Inle Lake. Given that Myanmar is now currently requesting for humanitarian aid because of severe flooding, I have seriously doubts as to the feasibility of this trip. Still, the tickets have been booked, and I guess worst come to worst we can fly back early. Fingers crossed that things aren't as bad as my pessimistic mind imagines.

After returning from Myanmar, I'll have a few days left in Singapore before I need to return to NYC. Kind of dreading it, mainly because my life back home has been so unstressful, so comforting, and filled with so many loved ones. I foresee feeling sad and panicky again, just before I depart.

Sampling Frame

Out of all the sciences, my most favourite was Biology. Couldn't wrap my head around Chemistry or Physics for the life of me, but Biology brought me a strange sort of joy. Unlike the other two sciences, Biology allowed me to understand and make sense of the things around me that could be easily seen and discerned, and to look at my various body parts and think about them mechanically, like parts of a machine (or in my case, a very badly functioning one). I've been thinking about Biology again recently however because of a very silly reason: sampling frames.

Context: I'm taking Mixed Methods for research now over Summer, and I'm surprised by how much I'm enjoying it.

In my Summer A class now we've been doing a fair amount of work on different types of research methods (surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc.), and for the past week have been focusing on surveys. I can't say I thought very much about surveys before, but since encountering the material I realised I had learnt a bit about surveys before - from Biology class. There was a page or two on conducting population surveys of plants, and I remember reading about the different types of methodology one could use to count the flora (and maybe very small fauna?). One method however I remembered vividly, because of the image I had in my mind every time I read it: the random sampling frame. For some reason, I envisioned a scientist grasping a literal white coloured frame and tossing it around at random, and that image always amused me. Now donkey years later (maybe 10?), every time the term "sampling frame" is mentioned in class, I cannot help but smile and imagine someone throwing a frame around. 

It's funny what one remembers from school. 

In other news, I feel quite incoherent today. Today has been the 3rd time I've been to Columbia Health in the past 2 weeks. I'm very tired of being sick, would like to know what's wrong with me, and would like to get better. Thanks.

Unholy Mess

Half cause I'm just starting to move out and half because I'm still feeling sick and all over the place, my room has now evolved into an unholy mess. I feel great unease when I cast my eyes around, but I have no idea what to do. I could clean it up, but everything is within easy grabbing length. I could work towards reducing the amount of crap I have (an ever present theme in my life whenever I have to move), but the crap gives me some sort of comfort. I don't know. I don't feel very relaxed.

On the upside, I have decided to make teochew porridge with the canned fried black bean fish for lunch. I am really looking forward to it. Thinking about it makes me feel comforted.

Taking Ill

I don't think I've ever been so sick away from home before, and feeling so miserable to boot. I have not been able to sleep properly for the past 3 nights because I keep waking up feeling like I'm being choked and coughing like crazy. I saw the doctor on Friday, and he gave me a whole range of medicines for asthma, but somehow the symptoms don't seem to be getting any better. Meanwhile I've been taking almost any sort of medicine that seems like it'll help my symptoms, to the extent that I'm probably overdoing it.

I feel terrible.

Food Pictures

I seldom take pictures of my food unless they're unusual and memorable, but since I've been clearing my phone to free up space, I thought I'd post the pictures here.

The tastiest (and classiest) vegetarian appetiser that ever existed, as spreads for pita. Had this in Washington DC with Garam when we were there for the CIES conference in April.

Nicaraguan tamale which I bought from the world culture fair in the Zocalo in Mexico City. Was extremely large, incredibly filling, and very tasty.

Mole poblano enchiladas in Puebla. Would not eat again. Not a fan of mole.

Entomatadas con pollo in a small market stall in Oaxaca.  Loved it. Ordered it without knowing what entomatadas were, and because everyone in the stall couldn't speak English, they gave me a small taste on a plate for my approval first. Ended up talking in pidgin English and Spanish to all the patrons at the stall, trying to explain to them what Singapore was like. Was one of the must fun meals I've had.