On ice


Today I walked on a lake. With four other Malaysian girls that I just met:

I was walking to Madison's Lake Mendota when I heard a girl in a tudung call, "Eh, sini!" to another girl in a tudung. I did an ungainly about turn and an equally ungainly, "Kak dari Malaysia ya?" They told me that they were sophomores at UW, and they were meeting some friends to take pictures at the lake.

I didn't expect it to be frozen over -- hence the "whoa this is cool!" photo above, which contains the other two girls (although at that point I was assuming they were random Americans).

Getting to speak Malay + lake trekking + friendly people = happy me.

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Another improbable Malaysian moment: we spent Christmas in a suburb of Milwaukee, and one thing we did over those few days was watch the LotR trilogy, in extended edition glory. At one point the DVD player acted up and we ended up on the subtitle menu:

[Commercial break: I am inordinately bothered by the profusion of colons in the last few lines, so of course I have to irk myself even more by repeating said offense. Ugh. Moving on.]

English subtitles
Bahasa subtitles
Chinese subtitles
Thai subtitles

Which was as bewildering to me as it was to our hosts, who said it was a store-bought original. Is our piracy so convincing that some manufacturers somehow mistook a buatan Malaysia ciplak for a legitimate master copy? Or are copyright laws and market forces just really bizarre?

Tolkein + reminders of home + amusing theories = happy me

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Me + happiness + holiday = a lousy excuse for math which shall terminate here

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I've wanted to celebrate a midnight mass ever since this Christmas in Ipoh when we'd talked about going but decided against three services in less than 24 hours. So I got to attend my first midnight mass last week.

And it was beautiful. Not just because of what my friends called "the Milwaukee Catholic all-star lineup," not just because the Cathedral of St John is stunning, not just because I finally got to drink in Handel's Messiah live for 45 minutes before the service*, and not even because of Christmas warmfuzziness** -- but the intricately reverent liturgy won me.

I wish I could call more Protestant services beautiful too.

Sitting between the sister and boyfriend of my sister's boyfriend, in front of that arresting crucifix, I had another one of those, oh no, God, why me? moments. Why do I get to be here? Where do You want me to go from here? What if I don't figure it out in time?

And then, to drastically change the mood that I suppose I was attempting, we went back to the house and I headed to sleep, only to be woken by the abrupt opening off the bedroom door. But nothing came in.

Then my sister and I simultaneously remembered that (a) her cat was in our room, (b) her boyfriend's family's Norwegian Forest cat was big enough to reach doorhandles, and (c) the cats were engaged in a turf war. My sister chose to be partisan and barricaded the door with a backpack.

*Yeah, yeah, I know this sounds like a very protracted transubstantiated Communion. In my defense, it was a Catholic service, and I would definitely deem it communion.

**It was the bleak midwinter.

Selamat Hari Natal! (mengikut waktu di Malaysia)


On an un-funny level, though, it's a good reminder. Which is ironic because I picked up these cards at a sale in a retail chain on a vacuous window shopping jaunt a couple days ago.

(And I almost sent one to a Catholic friend, but decided to not to offend any hypothetical stern grandaunts.)

Yesterday evening my sister and I went for a carol sing in Madison's gorgeous Overture Hall, which has a majestic organ, and in a few hours we'll be at a Christmas Eve service in the town where we're spending the next few days.

Can't believe how fast time is passing. Man.

Happy birthday, Jesus!

:)

Me = plant?

Not that I'm vegetating over winter break, although I have little evidence to disprove that.

Anyway. I was thinking more about how dependent I am on natural light. Towards the end of the semester I had a lot more trouble waking up and got sleepy earlier in the day, and while I thought it was just me reaching my limits, there's a good chance 4:19 p.m. sunsets (according to our trusty weather.com) played in too. Bleargh.

Consider today: although I only got up at 9 -- that's a.m., thank you very much -- I started yawning once the clock hit 5 and haven't really stopped since. It's also bad on days when I'm indoors from, say, 1 p.m. to 6 p.m., and emerge thinking it's bedtime because it's pitch black outside.

I wish I could love the climate here unreservedly, and for the most part I'm quite taken with it, but the lack of light is a transgression I have trouble forgiving.

[Maybe I should have called this post "me = God?" instead, but I know my place. Usually.]

[At this point, I could launch into a spiel about how light, the body and marriage are my favourite Biblical metaphors, but I shall spare you. Also, I may know enough to prose on about each, but I don't know enough to be sure it's correct prose.]

Yesterday was the second time I saw church cancelled because of the weather. Almost exactly a year ago (I'd say 53 weeks if I had to hazard a guess), my church in Williamstown closed because of a snowstorm. It was wildly beautiful -- I had to go out anyway, and remember wading through a foot of fresh powder merrily.

Yesterday was just wild: the two feet or so of snow had fallen the few days before, but the -15F cold larcerated. I walked a couple blocks and my feet wept, wool socks and (ugly) warm boots notwithstanding.

Today warmed up, though -- fluctuating around 0F, or -10F if you count windchill -- and tomorrow should get even warmer.

Heh. I guess it wasn't just the names of town that came to New England across the Atlantic; we talk about the weather all the time too.

I will, however, be getting an abundance of sunlight for the two weeks in January that I spend in South Africa as part of Winter Study. I'll still need to write a ten-pager and do a presentation, and we do spend time with academics and politicians, and I'm thrilled about visiting another post-British-colonial developing democracy with ethnic differentiation and exciting opposition to the majority political alignment -- but when you look at the itinerary, the things that stand out are beach-front cottages, safari, wine-tasting tour, Table Mountain, craft market, national park.

Here's our packing list (note the order):

·Sunscreen, hat or cap, sunglasses
·Swimming costume and beach towel
·Summer clothes, but also warm jacket for the evenings
·Comfortable shoes
·Backpack (if needed)
·Notebook and stationery for teaching sessions
·All necessary personal medication, toiletries
·All chargers and adapters for cell phones, cameras, hair dryers etc.

Chlorophyll, here I come. But first, ten more days of delicious hibernation.

Finally, sort of

1. My exam week ended on Sunday -- yes, I did finish that philosophy paper -- and I've since been luxuriating in the "what day is it again?" languor that everyone deserves after a sprint. In that spirit, I'm going to number all the divergent rambles in this post instead of attempting to connect them/fabricate distractingly lame fillers between them.

2. Because of said timeless stupor, I assumed I was wrong when I called my sister after my last exam and she said she'd pick me up from the Madison airport on Monday night. After a flurry of freaking out -- I thought my flights were on Tuesday and had bought an airport shuttle ticket accordingly -- we both checked the e-ticket and realized that I was right after all.

3. I've routinely been in error about the time zone, though. I know Madison is an hour different from Williamstown, but when I'm dopey, i.e. pretty much all the time I've been here, I contrive to forget whether it's an hour faster or slower. I conceded and changed my watched after a day or so, but refuse to change my laptop clock because it should be such an obvious thing. Apparently I'm giving myself more credit than I deserve.

4. Another thing I don't fully grasp is how God got me through this semester. Considering my sporadic moments of despair -- especially the times after the library closed but before Arabic homework started -- it just doesn't make sense that I handed all my assignments in on time and was genuinely sad when all those hours of editing and layout came to an end.

I'm not proud of how I diverted time away from many friendships, both on campus and online, but my relationships in my dorm suite, the newspaper and the Christian Fellowship got so much stronger. I'm thankful -- although, as always, not anywhere near as thankful as I would like to be.

5. This semester has been such a multifaceted privilege, but it's not one that I would like to repeat. Not least because sleep featured so little in my schedule but so much in my psychological agenda. I started to understand Shakespeare's obsession with sweet sleep; I clung to passages where the psalmist waits like a watchman for our ever wakeful God who grants sleep to those he loves; I was chastened when Paul wrote about not whining despite sleepless nights.

Next semester, I'll be clocking far fewer hours in the newspaper office but want to get involved in a bunch of other things, so some friends have vowed to yell at me if I don't get more rest. You're welcome to join them.

6. On another note, they were playing The Twelve Days of Christmas at our textbook library the other day, and I had to think for a minute before I remembered that it was "a partridge in a pear tree" because I had "a boiled potato topped with dill weed" from the VeggieTales song The Eight Polish Christmas Foods filtering through my head.

7. I searched for that song on YouTube and got this video, an awfully side-splitting illustration of why I only go on that site when someone shows me a specific link, like this one courtesy of my co-news editor when we were up late in the office writing essays a few weeks ago. Both tracks were looping on my pathetically gauche mental soundtrack today.

8. What's also pathetic is how allergic I am to cats, apparently. We've always had dogs and cats, but in true tropical fashion they lived outdoors. I've never had issues with them or anyone else's pets, though, and got my first inkling of a problem when I overnighted at my cousin's place en route to college this year.

I may not know where this originated, but I do know that within minutes of entering my sister's apartment, where the wireless ID is 3girls4cats, both my eyes and an inch-wide border of skin around each were blazing red. By the next morning the arsenal of allergy eye drops (four times a day, 365 days a year), eczema cream and Claritin (or, rather, Wal-itin -- ridiculous US pharmaceuticals woots), had kicked in, and my eyes now feel and look as normal as they ever do, thank God. Ish.

9. The joys of playing with little furry animals do compensate for the discomfort. They're so adorable and cuddly and demanding and transparent. (Not literally lah, although a see-through cat would be awesome too.) Today I lounged around in sleeping bag (silly idiomatic English doesn't transfer well) a good deal longer because a cat was nestled by my knees, in contrast to yesterday, when I got out of bed because a cat was stepping on my head.

10. Another cat/head/humour/annoyance matter: I recently learnt that if you live with cats during woolly winter gear season, you need a lint roller. I painfully learnt that when you're using a lint roller, it's advisable to get your own hair out of the way first.

Finals week,

or "Why I probably shouldn't be blogging now."

I'm dreaming

Well, not really, but we're in the midst of a magnificent snowfall, and I just wanted to share, by which I possibly mean gloat.

I'm not gloating about the fact that it's finals week, though. I feel decent about that, but will definitely have to bury my head in my books till next Sunday. Am hoping that said interment will not become planting my sleepy face in said books.

To legitimate this rather scanty post, I hereby offer a possible explanation of why I am what some of my friends here call a creeper and what some of my friends at home call a stalker (not ivy, although someone did want to call me Rose once), apart from the facts that I like talking and it's useful for the newspaper.

So: I'm supposed to do what Jesus does, right? And didn't He say that He knows us by name, and, I quote, "[S]urely I am with you always"?

This is the point where I should probably apologize to God, logic and good taste. Good thing at least the first of the three has a sense of humour.