In which I sound like a T-shirt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

English

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

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

(Thar she blows!)

Happy Malaysia Day

Laugh therapy, ironies and civilization

All those people who talk about how laughing curbs anxiety attacks should just join us at breakfast listen to Pa talking about how trimming his nose hair worked wonders on his sinuses. :)

My sister, on the other hand, sometimes gets a kick out of looking over at me when we're both working on our laptops, because for some reason when I'm typing at home then the collar of my tee often ends up between my teeth. Don't ask me how or why. I don't even chew on it or anything. Maybe it's a subconscious desire to make my dajie happy. :)

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After some experimenting, I've determined that my eyelids do have allergic reactions to both cocamidopropyl betaine and sodium cromoglycate. The former, a surfectant derived from coconuts, appears in all kinds of shampoos, shower gels and hand soaps. *sigh* (My lids also get angry at its more refined counterpart, cocamidopropyl hydroxysultaine.) The odd part is that I've always loved reading the ingredients on food packaging, but I've never had any food allergies. Urgh. Now I have to spend my life scrutinizing toiletry labels as well; fulfilment is mine.

The other compound, sodium cromoglycate, is the chelating agent in the eyedrops that I'd been using for my eye allergies.

*sigh*

Of course, I really shouldn't be complaining -- it's lovely to not have inflamed scaly bleeding peeling eyelids anymore. Tralala.

Also, last week I went to the optometrist for the first time in nearly three years. I'd been expecting my eyes to get a lot worse, partly because I've gotten a lot lazier about wearing my glasses unless I'm doing work, but mostly because my last three years of 'work' have mostly entailed squinting at a computer screen (getting a netbook might not have been the brightest idea, but I love my eee).

But weirdly enough, my right eye is no worse than it used to be, i.e. around -3.00 diopters. Even more perplexing is the fact that my left eye has improved from about -1.00 to less than a diopter. Not that I'm complaining, but I seem to be a singularly odd test subject. Not that there's anyone who isn't an anomaly in some respect. (Hopefully someone has less confusing grammar than I do though.)

The optometrist also told me that I should be wearing my glasses most of the time -- which I probably would've done more anyway because the new pair doesn't pinch my embarrassingly large head as much as all its predecessors have -- because if not I'm just depending on the better eye. One wonders if the more stereoscopic vision will do anything about the clumsiness, but one also knows that it isn't prudent to hold unrealistic hopes.

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One further wonders whether the distance over which people move water corresponds with their settlement's degree of development.

I.e.:

people going to the river for drinking water/laundry (if applicable)/ablutions

-->Roman aqueducts et al

-->[other technological developments that I am not schooled in]

-->Indah Water channelling rainwater from cachement areas to treatment plants to our taps at home. We transfer water some water from the tap to the bucket to the mop to the floor. Other water is moved from the tap to the filter to the kettle. When the kettle boils, yet other water goes from the vacuum flask to the ceramic jug, after the water that was originally in the ceramic jug has gone into the plastic bottle. Then the boiled water is tranferred from the kettle to the vacuum flask. Eventually it mostly ends up in cups or mugs, then us. Of course, sometimes its transit is accidentally terminated in a puddle on the floor. At which point we move the water from the floor to the mop to the bucket.

Scratch that -- I really hope that there isn't a relationship between how civlized a people group is and how much it shifts H20 around. o_O

It'd be fun to think about where the Big Guy would fit into a quack theory like that. But not so fun to think about little time will pass before I will regret some part of this post. Oh Archimedes screw.

[One of those posts when I have finished some sort of stint and ramble on and on]

Pictured above is the illustrated dictionary that inadvertently became symbolic of my summer: it is (a) a children's book which I (b) bought on the way back from work, and which I (c) really haven't used much beyond (d) taking a picture of it for this post.

I shall elaborate (ish) in reverse alphabetical order. Ish (ish ish, if you are Malaysian). (If you are not, you probably have no idea what the last parentheses mean. But I probably still like you, because you're reading my blog.)

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My blog. Ugh. Over the last few months I've been posting here more regularly than I did during the school year. Which is odd because I've been cutting down on other online time wasters, with surprising success. This last semester I'd already gotten better at not checking my email 20(ish) times a day; this summer I realised that since I rarely use Gchat, I might as well minimise the chat box so that I stop getting distracted by people's changing statuses. And yes, I also realise that every part of that sentence brands me a loser. It's the whole love-hate relationship with the internet, y'know?

Although with Facebook, it's really more like a struggle for domination. Ugh. I try my hardest not to use it as a stalking tool (unless newspaper duty calls), because I really want to keep it to a platform for direct interaction with individuals with whom I have spoken face-to-face. (You can keep your IRLs, thankyouverymuch.) Not for things that I say to a portion of cyberspace in the hope that a portion of that portion will find me interesting/witty/otherwise worthy enough deign some kind of response, which said portion can also view, rinse and repeat.

Because I already don't have a life. :(

And because this blog is enough narcissistic pseudo-communication for me. Ugh.

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On the arguably less narcissistic front, I also partook in pseudo-communication with the cassette player in an attempt to learn Chinese. I drove my brother insane by talking along with the pinyin and campy recordings about aunties who wanted to buy vegetables and get off the bus at Red River Valley Road. But by the time I'd worked through the first book, the first lovely entourage of cousins descended on my house and (probably to my brother's relief) the Mandarin project was marginalised. It never picked up momentum again.

The Hokkien project never really took off either, partly because Ma kept forgetting to speak it to me and partly because I've been too gutless to speak it publicly. Weirdly enough, I've been speaking a decent amount of Malay. I didn't make too much headway with the Jawi primary school workbook that I bought, although Penang has a surprising number of Jawi signboards which I shiok sendiri have been eyeballing.

And yes, my English-Malay-Arabic-Jawi script-Chinese (in order of my fluency) topical illustrated children's dictionary has been largely untouched. I have been using my English-Arabic parallel Bible, but I read it in English approximately 85 percent of the time (and get confused by the page directions approximately 20 percent of the time).

So I haven't:

• really done too much language-wise. I haven't even read all that much this summer.
  
• exercised very much either, unless you count the half-hour walk back from work most weekdays.
• taken nearly as much time to study the Bible as I'd have liked to.
  
• been cooking. A couple hours ago Ma just said, "Eh, you still haven't cut your chicken lah." My excuses: (a) I get back from work after 6pm and parents often have meetings around 8pm, (b) both my mom and my oldest sister cook a lot and (c) I'm intimidated. It's silly. I know.
  

However, I've:

• eaten masses of good Penang food woot.
• done a fair amount of emailing. I'm also growing to accept the fact that I can't keep in touch with everyone all the time (not least because I demonise instant messengers and Facebook eh).
• been better at praying for my friends and about where my life is going.
  
• spent a lot of time with my family. I got to see some paternal cousins during my KL-Singapore trip, hung out with my maternal relatives over the month leading up to my granddad's birthday bash, and have been with my immediate family throughout. Family time entails watching more TV than I do at school (i.e. none). Which makes sense -- although we're a hardcore reading family, it's much easier to share a story when you're all watching the same movie than when you're all submerged in different books. This annoys me, both because I believe books are superior and because I do enjoy the movie sessions.
  

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I've also finished an internship at a local think tank, which I enjoyed considerably more than the movie sessions. The people there were both very interesting and very nice (and deserve far better words than the two most generic adjectives in this language, but I'm getting sleepy) and I really really like research.

Not that I didn't like it previously, but it turns out that all those things I told my classmates last semester -- about how all these endless econ readings would be really interesting (there I go again) if I could read them at my own pace, and preferably while there was still light outside, without crazy deadlines breathing down my neck -- are true.

And it turned out that I really really should have done a run-through before my final presentation, because I'd estimated that I had 20 minutes of material but ended up speaking for an hour straight, despite axing a whole lot of content along the way. I was mortified and fascinated.

So yes, although I know I'm not meant to be a professor, I do want to spend my life doing research in some capacity. But not in a social science research institute either. I don't think I could slave over my 11th paper of the year with the knowledge that there was a 1:10 chance that it might be read by someone who could actually change anything, and a 1:2 chance that this influential reader would spend more time arguing about the provenance of my data than the efficacy of my recommendations. I admire those who constantly work to expand the knowledge base, but I think I'd start feeling restless, or selfish. Or both.

Ugh.

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One thing that has made me feel restless and selfish over the last couple months was living as my parents' child. I don't mean either being their child, since I'm really proud that they're my parents, or living with them per se, since they're excellent company. It's just that after 6.5 years of living away from home, I'm not used being told when I'm having dinner rather than agreeing with a friend to meet at such and such a time. It's not that I particularly mind doing anything that they've asked me to do -- it would be hard for me to call my parents unreasonable, even if I wanted to -- but the dependence rankles.

Of course, the mobility thing aggravated the whole situation. I'm accustomed to walking or getting convenient public transport to wherever I want to go, but this summer I've often had wait for rides. Which is not to say that I don't appreciate all the people who've given me rides, but ugh.

There was this one day when I had to wait at a relative's house for an hour or so before my parents came to fetch us for dinner. My grandaunts and granduncle were dozing. I somehow didn't have a book on me, and had finished flipping through the only one (o_O) in the living room. It was a particularly warm day. I nearly went insane, and had to go on a walk around the neighbourhood so I would at least think and pray without fidgeting constantly.

I got crabby yesterday too, and just really really wanted to walk to town alone and meander through the streets for a bit, since I no longer had to wait for the workday to end and didn't want to have to wait for some errand with my sister and justgotsoincrediblyimpatient. And then my mood lost its steam.

Thankfully, my kiddy resentment of chores has also lost some steam. I admit that I've been on the slothful side during the last few recovering-from-internship days, but in general I appreciate the process of housework. In part because my parents already have so much junk to do around the house/church, and in part because it's a satisfying change from sitting in front of a computer/book/periodical at work and relaxing in front of a computer/book/periodical at home.

It does scare me, though, how much time the business of maintaining a household takes -- all that cleaning and cooking and laundering and repairing and bill paying -- because I really would like to get more sleep and hang out with more friends and read more books than I have this summer, and it was just an internship. It also scares me how much time many people at work spend thinking about how they'd rather not be at work, and/or going on Facebook.

I'm also scared that I sound like a smug brat.

But I'm really really thankful that for at least the next two years my job will still be learning. Hopefully I will also be listening carefully about what I should be doing and researching and attempting to speak after the two years are over.

5/6* of the family goes mamaking**

*1/6 is in Singapore -- I miss her -- and another 1/6 is heading south tomorrow.

**A note for non-Malaysians: "mamaking" ≠ a second-person street joke about maternal parent ≠ matriarchy. Rather, "mamak" = collloquial term for Indian Muslims = any one of many wonderful roti/naan/dhosai/rice/curry/tandoori stalls run by members of said people group; "-ing" = suffix that is useful when you want to pretend that you are making a gerund.

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"What soup did you get? Sup kambing or what?"
"Of course she got kambing lah. She likes lamb what."
"Goat. Goat."
"Aah? Oh right ... eh my friend just pointed out to me earlier this year that sup kambing is mutton soup and not lamb. But I keep forgetting."
"Aiya but of course it's not lamb. Who says 'sup biri-biri'?"
"..." / *lol* / "Hah what did he say?" / "What is 'biri-biri'?"
"I think lamb soup should be 'sup domba'. Because people call Jesus 'Domba Allah'."
"Wait, I thought 'domba' means 'shepherd'?"
"..."
"Well, the soup's good."

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I looked it up, and according to mykamus.my I worship the Fat-tailed Sheep of God. I also adore literal translations woot.