flowermoonfish

2009-12-08T21:56:00.003Z

Converging

In exactly a week I'll be on the first of three planes that will take me back to Penang. Right now that mostly feels surreal; soon I'll be caught in a flurry of home and celebrations, tinged with jet lag, London dreams and next semester's anticipations.

Last night an old friend, whom I met in Malaysia and shared four years of Singapore boarding school with, arrived in London for a short visit. Today we had lunch with an RJ classmate who is now in Oxford, then my guest watched Mother Courage while I meandered through the National Gallery with a Williams friend who is at Oxford for the year. In the evening we met an MG classmate and shared Irish pub food and prayers.

It's nice to know that goodbyes aren't always final.

2009-12-06T19:09:00.006Z

Passing

I just got back from Brecht's Mother Courage at the National Theatre. I won't be indulging in any more stage performances in the remaining 1.5 weeks, but this was a magnificent conclusion. I'd never seen such stylised grime: beautiful. Fiona Shaw was arch and heartbreaking and shocking and familiar and generally inimitable; she almost makes me want to watch whichever Harry Potters it is that I've missed (Alan Rickman helps too). And Duke Special is now one of the few musicians whom I would fangirl if I were so inclined.

I took a bus home. It drove down Waterloo Bridge, then past the Aldwych theatres, and the Royal Courts of Justice, then Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese (where my cousin had treated me to a delightful lunch yesterday), St Paul's, the Museum of London and the Barbican, then down Goswell Road to Angel. And I just kept staring out the window because I knew how much I will miss this city and all her layers and textures, brickwork and facades, corners and squares. I love KL and Penang; Boston, Chicago and New York; Cape Town and Cambridge -- but I'm in love with London. If only she were cheap.

2009-12-05T00:08:00.002Z

Excerpts from "research"

I've forgotten so much econometrics. It's been way to long since I've done rigorously numerical anything.

Tempestuous! So that was the word that I was trying to think of those few times. Now why had it evaded me till this statistical table and random Canadian classical music stream? Oh dear we have attention span issues here.

A book called "Thinking Schools, Learning Nation"? Haha of course it would be Singapore. And there are like three chapters with the acronym TSLN in their titles. I probably should be trying not to snigger in the library.

Want food.

Yay food! And latte. And sitting inna park.

Aaah why is it so hard to find rigorous economic writing on education in Malaysia and Singapore in a library which has everything ranging from Lat comic books to ancient Raffles yearbooks? And what makes me think that I'll be able to write a thesis on mediums of instruction in Malaysia from rural Massachusetts aaah.

Man, the good articles make Malaysian education sound so bad...maybe I should be praying for us as I read.

Why can I never spell 'strenghten' correctly? And 'Chinses'??

"Effective island, effective schools"? Effective chapter titles??

Why on earth are Singaporean academics so fond of rhetorical questions? Did they not take General Paper for their 'A's?

Ah. So that's why the song is called A.D.I.D.A.S. Maybe I should turn shuffle off. o_O

Maybe I should just open Chrome and go email someone instead intermittently typing lame things into Notepad.

o_O

2009-12-01T16:51:00.004Z

T minus 3000 words + الامتحان

So I'm done with two of my three term papers, thank God! I have one more to go -- due next Friday -- and then an Arabic exam the day before I leave London. I'm often tempted to be all melancholy about how the end of the semester is a trade-off between satisfaction with schoolwork and satisfaction with friend-time, and this term city wanderings are in the equation too. I should just be more content. Really. o_O

Also, yesterday was the second Monday in a row that I agonised and then decided to skip my afternoon lecture to work on an essay, but later realised that I'd gotten a respectable amount of work done so attended the lecture anyway. I just seem to be a lot more productive on weekdays than weekends. Which makes complete sense because, as I always tell tired friends, that weekends are for catching up. But somehow I fancy that I am an exception to that rule.

Delusions notwithstanding, I do know that I need to get out at least once a day to maintain energy levels. On Saturday my diversion of choice was "This is not a subject for comedy", a stand-up on the the Israel-Palestine conflict by a 58-year-old, London-born Jew. He wasn't side-splittingly funny like Ahmed Ahmed (of Axis of Evil fame), but he was funny. And astute and rawand compelling, if italics aren't a sufficient description. His tightly written show was full of wonderful internal links and was as much a personal account of grappling with the conflict as anything.

And then on Sunday morning when I woke up I decided -- let's have done with all this unfocussedness (and fakely suffixeded words). I couldn't find an 8am service to begin the day with, so I walked down to the canal for the first time and just sat by the water and watched the birds and -- don't laugh -- sang. I'm really glad that my room this year is sound-proof enough to sing in too, but for the most part I've been too embarrassed to sing in my two Williams rooms. Which is sad because it's just so darn satisfying, singing songs to God (even if I space out halfway a lot of the time).

Later that afternoon at one of the points when I was feeling glum and blah (kudos points if you recognise this phrase) I looked out my window and saw a rainbow. Then in the evening I went for an Advent carol service and has dinner in a friend's flat. And all of those things were lovely, but I was still really slow this weekend.

Just as well that I've been planning to keep a Saturday-dinner-to-Sunday-dinner (or rather, Sunday newspaper meeting) sabbath next semester again. I'm still apprehensive about time management for next semester, though. A few weeks ago I chanced upon this email that I wrote to my family last May, one of the periods when I'd resolved not to blog. Here's an excerpt:

Things that weren't so good:
-My eyes -- lots of peeling, and a fair amount of pus too. At least the simple cream that I ordered online from some British company came, though, so I could liberally moisturize. I also hot towelled them a good number of times because of the pus.
- Sleep -- I probably averaged three hours a day, including naps?

Things that I got done:
- a 19-page paper (= 70% of my grade) for New Minority American Writing, the senior seminar that I inadvertently took
- final exam for intermediate macroecon
- being calm and taking naps while studying for intermediate macro, although I only managed to start studying around 11pm the night before the exam (as opposed to needing to take breaks to pray and sing and wrestle emotionally with trusting God, when I started studying for the previous exam for this class at midnight)
- good conversations with a number of people
- not involving myself in planning the two major Christian Fellowship events this week
- a Record article
- two problem sets (ie assignments)
- some other stuff

Things that came to fruition after a long time:
- final official First-Year Bible Study -- I'll miss them so much!
- the Williams Telos, our journal of Christian though, came out! It's pretty (at least I think so but I was in charge of layout). (And I shall be vain and bring a couple copies back.)
- dinner for WCF seniors
- Record banquet -- dinner at a nice restaurant, party (although I left early to sleep)

Yeah, sometimes I really scare myself. Really. But I'm praying that God'll help me listen to Him about resource allocation, and I'm really excited about the next two weeks/time at home/Urbana/winter study/spring semester! And I know He's in charge. :)

2009-11-28T13:46:00.003Z

I really shouldn't be so amused by essay research

But apparently when I am dopey then delinquents become elephants. The Qur'an does not, in fact, have a verse saying: "Fear God and listen to Him, verily God does not guide the elephant." (not Q4:111, from Tahir Mahmood's Law in the Qur'an--A Draft Code)

Under the heading "Publisher's Note" in Fazlur Rahman's Islam:

"In dating, Muslims naturally used their own era, dating from the Hijra or fight of the Prophet Muhammad to Medina in 622 AD, sometimes called Anno Hegirae."

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As much as I'm enjoying the readings and arguments for my essay, this morning when I woke up I was scared: the prospect of not having enough time to write a satisfying essay can be paralysing. But thank God that He animates people and drives out self-reinforcing fear with His perfect love.

On another note, I need to start cooking interesting food again. I've been having nice food when I eat out with friends -- yesterday was lunch at this cute French restaurant which, in the words of the cousin who treated me, "didn't have posh prices"; then after a talk with Jomo a bunch of us (roughly) ten Malaysians, two Singaporeans and one Brit) had dinner at an Indian place.

But I haven't been bothering to plan my marketing etc, so I've been eating boring stir-frys and other stop-gap meals that don't make me feel particularly happy. And during these last two weeks, amid work and and farewell conversations, I do want happy food. Marinated baked meat, here I come! :D

2009-11-26T00:35:00.004Z

Let's pretend I decided to update my Facebook status last week

hearts Tom Stoppard.

now owns a hairbrush after a three-year hiatus.

just ran into three different people whom she hadn't seen in a long time!

was really happy about the sun and breeze this afternoon.

loves being in the same city as cousins on both sides of the family.

needs to remember more often that Skype exists! Yay for traversing time zones. :)

realises that she's barely been wearning heels this term.

thinks Sainsbury's cookies > Waitrose cookies.

smells of frying onions.

is unnerved by how much she enjoys writing her public international law essay.

wishes she could be faster at writing her essay.

is slightly jealous that her siblings are all living and working in the same place. But she's an ungrateful brat. :(

!! Roman Tragedies at the Barbican = 6 hours of Dutch amazingness!!

finally reconciled herself to the idea of skipping a lecture to work on an essay for that class, then later realised her essay was going decently so she ran to lecture and was five minutes late.

!! Les Mis !!

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I typed the above into Notepad last week when I was in the throes of an essay and didn't want to properly blog or go on Facebook or anything. O compromises. :)

But now the essay's done, and of course I should be in bed, but I would be sad if I didn't journal about the two !!!! performances while they're still fresh. (So this'll be another long post for documentation rather than readability.)

It's been a good week for friends, by which I mean "for having friends keen on spending time with me" since I am selfish. But I got to see different cousins a bunch of times, skyped with my siblings plus several different groups of Williams people, attended a lovely Christian Union dinner/dialogue, had engaging dinner conversation with a Malaysian bunch here, spent three hours chatting to the boyfriend (whom I had just met) of a Williams friend (currently in Williamstown), and had two good friends (one from eons ago, one quite new) stay over with me from Mon-this afternoon. Yay people. Boo me for being silly and indulging in loneliness once they leave and I'm alone.

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Events log

Thursday afternoon: Went for a lunchtime concert at St Pancras Parish Church. I'd always wanted to go for one since the building's between hall and school, so my cousin and I caught the British Library and British Museum Singers performing excerpts from Mendelssohn. They were really good for an non-professional choir -- there was a duet I particularly liked, and the guy who sang Obadiah had a marvelous voice. After that we ventured into the church's Crypt Gallery, which was marvelous and just like what you'd expect an early-18th century crypt to be like, except that it was full of photos by two artists instead of bodies.

Sunday evening: So earlier in the term when I was stalking websites for student theatre deals, I got two free tickets (instead of 27.50 each) for Roman Tragedies at the Barbican. And then later on I realised it was six hours long. And in Dutch. And that my work was piling up, and that it would be hard to persuade someone to go with me.

But I did -- this very nice fresher from the CU who likes theatre said he'd take the other ticket. So I had no choice but to go. And !!!!

By which I mean, the first thing I noticed when I got into the theatre were the two huge percussion stations on either side of the stage, right at the front -- not the pit. And then I got confused because I looked up to the set and saw a lot of different tableaus of couches and platforms and TV screens, but since the furniture and platforms were all the same boxy grey, for a second I thought there was a huge mirror across the back of the stage (partly because I'd just just finished reading this dizzying superb Stoppard).

So the way it worked is that the actors staged different scenes on different parts of the stage, and a video feed of the speakers would show up on the screens with subtitles across it. The insane part was that the audience was also invited to sit on the couches on the stage. During the few-minute scene changes every 45 minutes or so, we could also use the internet, read the paper, or buy food or drinks from the tables set up at one side of the stage. The tables on the other side had the video control, hair and makeup stations -- they were prepping Cleopatra while Portia was soliloquizing in the centre. It was bizarre. It was brilliant.

So the deal was that either you could choose to sit in the audience and get a good generic view in the traditional proscenium arch fashion. Or you could sit onstage, and cluster around a TV with some people, trying to read subtitles while: craning your neck around to see whether you could get a view of Anthony's expressions and not just his back, or wishing that that plant or tall dude weren't blocking your view of the live action, or trying not to grin because the tribunes were sitting right next to you and you were probably showing up on screen too.

It was an flat-out stunning representation of modern media schizophrenia (whoa I actually spelled that right, or Blogger is spoilt) and the thrill and risk of picking your own vantage point and everything. In addition to very visible (and amazing!) percussionists and hair/make-up folk, they put one videographer at the front and at some points had her be annoying paparazzi(o? I don't know how to conjugate for the feminine); at another point she had to chase the repentant Enobarbus who ran out of the theatre complex to the road, where he fell to his knees in despair and began denouncing himself in Dutch in front of innocent pedestrians. And at every death they had the actor sprawl in the centre of the stage between two glass walls, and they projected huge images of the body on the screens: which jolted me the first time, because of the resemblance between Coriolanus' pose and Malaysiakini's image of Teoh Beng Hock.

And the acting! The acting. I've seen each of these plays at least once (Coriolanus: Shakespeare's Globe, London; Caesar: Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, and visiting company at Williams; A&C: RSC also; whyy am I so unnervingly lucky (and whiny) (gah)) and the magnificent interpretation and actors at the Barbican trumped all of those. Really. It didn't feel like six hours -- it could've gone on for six more and I'd still have been happy. And devastated and elated. Shakespeare <3.

NB: A few observations about Julius Caesar, since it's the one that I read a million times for S Paper way back when. So sometimes I just forgot about the subtitles and watched the actors.

1. The director spliced the Brutus/Portia and Caesar/Calphurnia confrontations as well as the war pow-wows of opposing sides, so they ran concurrently on stage and ahh were so good!

2. They didn't have a Lucius -- Brutus (and Portia, briefly) just said both his lines and his servant's alternately, in a wonderful Golum-like embodiment of Brutus the 'liberator' being a slave in his own head too. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

3. Cassius was played by a woman -- loved that so much (although I kept remembering the insinuations that my friends in RJ used to make about Brutus/Cassius hurhur)! Octavius was also a woman, young and reserved and with very pale blonde hair = this spectacular sense of power/weakness/distance/promise.

4. Anthony had a broken foot and was in sweatpants plus wheelchair/crutches throughout, which must have sucked for him but fit so amazingly with the diminishing runner/playboy idea.

Ahh there were more elements that I wanted to keep thinking about, but I've already forgotten, partly because of ...

Tuesday night: Les Mis!! For 20 quid apiece the five of us were in the second row from the back, but it was still glorious (and from our angle we could see all the "bodies" slinking offstage once they were hidden from most peoples' view). The songs were incredible, whether in terms of composition or delivery -- I was most blown away by Eponine, whose voice was so rich and whose presentation so compelling that I teared (ie became teary, not torn, but that too) (it was rare because I almost never cry for fiction/art, although the tear ducts can be randomly generous at other times, like during the Remembrance Sunday service in Cambridge while I was thinking about my US Marines cousin, deployed to God knows where).

I think that digression was partly because I know that anything I say about Les Mis has been said far better by tonnes of other people, but darn that was another digression. Yes. The revolving stage has got to be one of the most astute devices I've ever seen (although I confess I almost got dizzy at one point I am a wimp), both for set changes or showing the passage of time. Adored the lighting too (except for the slightly overdone spotlight when women died). And that cast covered such a range of registers, whether in pitch or emotion or humour or whatever, and did it so naturally.

I'm not particularly inclined to musicals -- I find the pace jarring because of how the "crowding and leaping"* centres on songs rather than developments, and musicals are a genre given to spectacle rather than subtlety -- but last night I was entranced. Even with Marius' stricken-heart-at-first-sight resemblance to that terrible James Blunt "You're Beautiful" song, the gorgeously dense storyline reeled me right in. I loved how melodies would appear and disappear and reemerge with so much fresh dimension layered on each time. I loved the moments where different players interweave different songs. I loved the bleak hope.

And I don't know how to end this, since I can't convey even a shadow of how good Roman Tragedies and Les Mis were, but it is most definitely bedtime, so I will say thank You (and you, ie whichever weirdo who may actually be reading this :D) and good night.

*Ursula LeGuin's phrase, from Steering the Craft

2009-11-20T01:47:00.003Z

Dead language

aka Facebook does a Malaysian education system impression: nasty Malay transliterations and bad English grammar. :(

[First Google Translate tab was Arabic-->English; second Google Translate tab was English-->Arabic (took you by surprise, didn't that). (Talk like Yoda, why do I.) And I had Merriam-Webster open becase after all these years it suddenly occurred to me that maybe "benighted" wasn't a snarky comment about the peerage after all.]

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Since I'm already on the topic -- and since I'm in the middle of research for my public international law essay -- I think one thing that expedited my no-law-school decision was an immersion in how lawyers treat language. Scientific jargon flattens connotations (cleavage plane hurhur) (I must have said that on this blog before, but sounding like a fourteen-year-old boy is bad enough so I shall not self-stalk as well); legalese steamrollers words and then fights over the bones. Of course, cases animate the laws and some jurists are truly gorgeous writers, but still.

And today during Islamic law the Nigerian lecturer was talking about a scholar named Imber and I kept having PWNAGE GODLIKE ALL YOUR BASE et al running through my head while we learnt about the closing of the gate of ijtihad and the scope of fatwas. Which was actually not inappropriate since we were talking about inexorable divine law. :)

2009-11-15T20:17:00.002Z

Ramblings

It's probably not healthy to blog three days in a row, but there've just been so many thoughts that I want to remember. Also, I haven't had long face-to-face conversations since I got back from Sweden -- it's been kitchen chats with my flatmates, intense Skype calls planning for next semester and catching up with some relatives after church (funny how I reserve "family" for the nuclear one) (except Pa went into pastoring and not physics).

Apart from that I've done a lot of walking and picture-taking, which really has been the essence of "reading" week for me. I did get a satisfying amount of work done each of the two days I was in London -- not a substantial amount, but enough to keep discontentment at bay. And more studying will happen this evening.

Today's and yesterday's wanderings covered places that I was supposed to visit with various different people, but the stillness of solitary walks in cities has singular beauty. Also, when I'm with other people then I don't try to take nearly as many photos as I do otherwise, but that's neither a good or bad thing because shutterbug-ness, despite its aesthetic and preservative value, is incredibly self-indulgent.

But if I'd been with someone else as I set out to the Lord Mayor's Show fireworks yesterday, there is no way I'd have dared to wear the only dress that I have with me in London. It was a whim -- why not, you've only worn it at your cousin's wedding here -- and a very satisfying one. Not aesthetically, since I had my coat on all the time anyway, but I always forget how wonderfully comfy dresses can be, and how fun swishy skirts are.

I walked through unfamiliar gorgeous old streets in an exhilarating wind, then when I got to Victoria Embankment it turned out that my suspicions about said exhilarating wind were true: it was making conditions too dangerous for fireworks. But I was happy anyway, because it gave me an excuse to shamble through London after dark -- I adore walking at night but usually people get worried when I do it alone; central London at 5pm was too good to pass up.

So: across Waterloo Bridge, past the National Theatre, through some quaint shops that had some special sale but still were not forthcoming with presents for my family, and then to the majestic smokestack of the Tate Modern. And almost past the Tate, since it was almost 6pm, except that another whim sent me inside to check the closing time: 10pm, unlike the normal museum's 5!

I don't know -- I'm still ambivalent about contemporary art. Some of it I find stunning in different ways: some pieces are achingly beautiful, some pieces have no definable form yet shock me with how compelling they can be, some are stunning because of sheer scale or the controversies they distill, some chilling -- like this installation of four bronze mops with tall, tall handles pointing skyward, heads frozen in a perpetually frenetic swirl, titled "To an unknown god".

Then there is some contemporary art that is grotesque for the sake of being grotesque, a motivation that I have trouble appreciating. And then you also have drivel like this "piece" yesterday that was a mirror on a wall. Just a normal rectangular mirror hung at head height -- no interesting shapes, no distorted reflections -- simply a "daring" piece that upends the idea of "paintings being windows on the world". I wanted to snort and laugh at the same time, which never has good results, especially not in public.

But over all my recent museum visits I've been thinking about my encounters with art. Among a host of other things: I like complexity, I like quietness, I like rawness, I like light meeting darkness, I like colours that do interesting things, I like certain sorts of proportions and balances and not others -- the last being why a lot of modern art doesn't appeal to me, I think. I've also been contemplating the weirdness of how much access I've had to art, whether through glorious secondhand books as a kid, or free classical concerts on campus, or museums that I really shouldn't be able to afford to travel to. (I regard the last five words of that sentence with horrified fascination. o_O) I both resent and relish how bourgeois my aesthetic is becoming.

Moving on, I left the Tate after thoroughly enjoying it (which included, of course, mentally criticizing chunks of it) and decided that I might as well head to Tower Bridge to try to take pretty pictures of it. And so I did -- try, that is. I have no idea how the pictures turned out. But regardless, yay for Tower Bridge at night.

Today after church I'd planned to go to the Barbican to pick up tickets for a play that I'm seeing next week, so I made another might-as-well decision to trawl the East End markets for gifts for my family. And embarrassingly I didn't buy gifts for my family and did pick up a couple things for myself, but it was such a fun romp. I started at the Old Petticoat Lane market, which seems to be the London equivalent of the Factory Outlet Store, but in the guise of Petaling Street.

And then it was the Old Spitalfields Market, which was housed in a surprisingly new and large airy courtyard and which had a tonne of well-crafted (and out of price range) merchandise, including this wonderful foldable and convertible hat (cloche bowler fedora) which a East Malaysian guy tried to sell me for 25 quid. *sigh* and which I thought might be original designs till I saw a handful of them replicated somewhere in the fabulous tangle of Brick Lane markets, which were kindof like Bugis Village (Sg) meets Central Market (KL), but not really. There was a massive indoor market and some back lane markets and some wonderful antique and craft stalls tucked into the corner of a building and people just selling stuff along the road. One seller: "Come buy today before the officials come and confiscate my merchandise." Or something.

After that I took a nice slow dusk walk to the Barbican Centre, and I confess I got a bit nervous on some of the big deserted streets, but I got to the box office without any mishap, only to be told that I could only collect my tickets on the day itself. So that made two days of long walks precipitated by false events, but they were so worth it.

Since the Barbican was on Aldersgate Street, I tried to be a good Methodist and walked down the street trying to find a memorial plaque to John Wesley, but instead found myself unable to resist the Museum of London. Most of it is being renovated for the Olympics, but London up to 1600 is still a brilliant exhibit; I particularly enjoyed the model houses and cities, and there was this striking video of the Black Death which uses several voices and two different sets of images on adjacent screens simultaneously. Then I navigated the area's fantastic network of highwalks, ie almost-streets that are above ground level, till I got to the underground station, and finally took the tube home.

2009-11-14T09:41:00.002Z

Such stuff

So one of my last thoughts before falling asleep last night was, darn, I meant "disclaimer" and not "caveat" in that blog post. Ugh. During my A Level days in Singapore I'd learnt the perils of going to bed right after concentrated activity, but it's one of the many lessons that I often forget.

Another lesson that I often forget is: saying "I'm not going to blog for [x amount of time] often makes me a liar. Ah well.

But last night I also dreamed that, for some reason, an institution revisited my A Level results and particular secondary school cocurricular activities which I hadn't thought about in eons, and decided to give me a scholarship for grad school. In my dream, the scholarship money was enough to cover fees and expenses for a grad school programme that I would really like to get into. I was happy.

It was somewhat unsettling because I rarely dream about things I'm yearning for, and I rarely feel intense emotion in a dream. Both anomalies had also manifested -- in a more extreme form --- in the dream at the end of my second blog post ever, which I still find acutely embarrassing but which, with the distance of four years (four years!), is more amusing than ever.

Along the lines of nostalgia/dreams/Singapore days/writing, I was recently reread a few of my posts to Phases, an email collective of writers, to whom at least one of the following adjectives could apply: young, Malaysian, Christian. I was active in it from maybe late 2001 till the time it died down around late 2005, and it was far more formative of my confidence about writing publicly than I realised at the time.

When I reread my posts I saw certain turns of phrase and diffident disclaimers that were annoyingly familiar, but what surprised me was how brash I was about posting and requesting C&C ("comments and criticism") at an age where I still got incredibly awkward in certain social situations.

This juncture offers excuse to indulge in whoamIwhathasmadememewhatwillIbeoneday silliness, but I still do want to work hard on Arabic today, so I will instead thank God sincerely for the ridiculous blessings He's given me along the way, and repost one of my Phases pieces about a dream, circa A Levels. I've taken out the names but otherwise left it unedited, so you grammar sheriffs out there can have fun looking for juvenile typos (there's at least one spelling mistake).

I leave the school compound and hurry next door. I don't quite know why I'm rushing, but I press forward anyway, backpack swinging. The long, low emporium houses restaurants, mostly. All the restaurants that I pass are sit-down establishments, so I ignore them. Allowance never goes far, does it?

[Friend A] materializes somewhere in ahead of me. I call her; she heads away; I give chase. There is a large menu displayed on an easel to my left. In my split second glance at it I inexplicably register the price of the fish and chips ($10.12). I wonder why but lose my train of thought when I reach a dead end. Shops surround me. [Friend A] is gone.

I turn around to leave. I cannot remember why I'm here.

When I get back to my room in the hostel I deposit my bag on the floor then go out through the back door. It opens to a common balcony that would be called circular but for a large hole at its centre. No railings either. I turn right and open the door to [Friend B]'s room. A few of my schoolmates are there, but no one seems particularly interested in talking to me. I return to my own room, my unwelcoming room.

Later I leave the hostel for some mundane event at a government building. The toilet there is a large freestanding structure with wooden ceiling beams and a floor of rough, earth-coloured tiles. I enter a stall and am impressed by its size and air circulation; the high roof must do wonders for that.

Outside the toilet I meet two of my friends. They avoid my eyes. I try to feign normality but soon succumb to my intense loneliness. Why, I beg, is everyone so ashamed of me?

They fidget, and exchange several rounds of pained looks. Then one of them proffers a book.

I open it. It is unique, two separate codices bound in one cover. The pages in front are long and narrow sheets of unbleached paper. I flip to the set of smaller glossy pages at the back. My friends try to disappear.

The pages are blue. I like blue. I begin reading the text of the first page: `On Tuesday, 21 October 2003, [flowermoonfish] commited a terrible sin. She…'

I cannot continue. My suddenly unfocussed eyes settle on the word `corrupted' for a moment then resume their vague wandering. Desperately I flip to the last page of the book. It is a drawing—a girl on top of a high, high green hill. A pack of wolves chase her; soon they will force her down, down the treacherous smooth steep slope. The girl's face is turned towards the moon, pleading; the moon is making the wolves mad. Somehow I am the wolves.

I bolt. Back to the toilet. It is vast, it is safe. I go back into the stall I had used earlier. I latch the door and lean against it, hyperventilating. Abruptly the peaceful tinny sounds that come from the discreet speaker in the corner are replaced by a newsreader. "The extent of the hurt that [flowermoonfish] has caused to an innocent life will never be forgotten. Among her crimes are…"

This time it is my ears that reject the information. The cool, professional voice becomes unintelligible. I turn away from the loudspeaker. There is a door in the side of the toilet. Through it I see a man in a janitor's uniform. He mocks me. I bow my head.

2009-11-13T23:45:00.003Z

(Preramble, then) mixed metaphors

Last night around midnight I got back from visiting a really good friend (and her good friend who is also now my friend) in Sweden, and the plan was that today I buckle down to serious work, since it's called reading week, after all.

But then after I woke up at 11 (as planned, I'd stayed up on Wednesday night to read Pratchett's Unseen Academicals, which my friend had borrowed from her other friend) (so worth it), I pottered around a bit, then cooked lunch, then went grocery shopping, then went back to buy a half-price bottle of mint chocolate Baileys which they hadn't let me do the first time without ID, then cooked, then replied emails and made some important phone calls, then gone through Gothenburg photos and put some up on Facebook, and it's now. I.e. the time when I always want myself to go to bed but always find myself still doing stuff. So I thought I might as well get some blogging out of the way and *really* focus tomorrow. Heh. Fingers be the crossing.

I've now been in four countries (Msia, Sg, England, Sweden) with this close friend of mine, which is possibly more than I've been in with anyone else apart from my immediate family (Msia, Sg, the US when Pa went back to seminary, and I am told that there was a trip to Thailand but that was when we lived in Alor Setar and I was an infant). It's still very strange to me that although I haven't yet been to East Malaysia because that would be an unjustifiable expense at home, I was brought up with an academic mobility that is giving me this oddly privileged other life abroad.

Gothenburg was wonderful. Roundtrip Ryanair tickets were GBP26 all in, which is probably what I spend on public transport each month here. Apart from the amazingness of seeing my friend again, it was really interesting to basically spend two days sight-seeing, not least because it isn't much of a tourist destination so I got to see snippets of normal life, especially student life. It was also probably my first time in a place where I didn't understand the dominant language, excepting airports. The art museum was also really cool -- I absolutely loved a lot of the late 19th century stuff in there (not so much the early 20th), and thought a fair amount about what makes me like a particular piece of art.

Oh dear. I sense that my syntax is getting tired and my thoughts unconnected. But I do want to get some other thoughts out so to make room for Arabic and public international law tomorrow.

So I've been wanting to note down a bunch of Biblical metaphors that I've been thinking about. Caveat: I draw links in here solely because they help me apprehend a tiny bit more of an infinite God, so some things here might seem spurious or worse. Do let me know.

1. Being an ambassador commissioned by the God who sends you into a territory over which He is sovereign

On one hand, you have diplomatic immunity from the law. On the other, you best fulfill your duty by honouring the sensibilities of those with whom you interact (unless those sensibilities are trumped by a higher purpose).

2. Christ is the head of the church, which is simultaneously His body and His wife

Which makes a whole lot of sense once you think about the two-becoming-one-flesh thing -- I don't know why I hadn't thought explicitly about this connection earlier. But then I recently read both Tolkein's translation of Pearl and Lewis' masterful retelling of the Psyche myth in Till We Have Faces, both of which discuss the incomprehensible beauty of being married to divinity. It almost sounds perverse, but then so does the idea of a deity dying for His minions.

(Tangent: I used to get really annoyed when I encountered people who thought Christians were puerile -- prudes maybe, but we're not naive.) (I also used to confuse the meanings of "puerile" and "prurient". o_O)

3. Christ is the light of the world = the radiance of God's glory

Human beings are incapable of looking at God in His full glory. It's like letting a diabetic kid loose in a sweetshop: we are incapable of processing that much goodness at once. One connection I've always liked is that the Light sustaining all things // plants (--> all earthly life) drawing energy from the sun. But during a talk at the CU weekend away I found myself thinking about how the constant, infinite God incarnated on earth by placing space-time limitations on Himself, thus enabling us to interact with Him in a conventionally human way. Similarly, the solar radiation that we get within our atmosphere is a diminished, exploitable form of light and heat from the untouchable, searing energy of the sun. One day we will be able to look steadily at his bright glory. Till then, we enjoy His radiance.

2009-11-10T01:17:00.001Z

Flying time

It's been three years since I took my A Levels. I was thinking about this because last week I had dinner with some RJ friends, and we had such a lovely time swapping updates about former schoolmates.

I was also reminded about that crazy flurry of exams because the psalm I'm reading this week is Psalm 27, which helped anchor me to an undulating peace during the prelims. (It's also sort of crazy that I've been reading a psalm a week for 150+27 weeks now. Man.)

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It's been three months since I last mentioned law school on this blog. Yes I was vain enough to check. And over the course of those three months I've become quite certain that God doesn't want me in law school after college. It's a blessing to be taking two law classes at SOAS -- like taking Comedy and Tragedy and modern physics during my freshman year at Williams -- and as fascinated as I am by their philosophical and historical dimensions, these classes have helped me realise that I don't have the patience that legal analysis demands.

Currently, the books I've checked out from the SOAS library comprise one Arabic grammar reference, two law books, three books on education and language, and five about economic development in Malaysia, Singapore and South Africa. We'll see.

I have to get that ego out of the way and trust that people better than me will fight those excruciatingly crucial legal battles at home. And I have to get that fear out of the way and trust that God has some purpose for the time I have invested and will invest in learning Arabic, even if it turns out to be just for conversation starters and sheer linguistic beauty rather than for intensely practical usage in sharia courts.

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It's been 1.5 months since I got to London: we're well into autumn now. I've actually been feeling cold over the last few days, even in my wool coat. Which is odd because last year in Williamstown at this temperature range (>5C, >40F) I was perfectly comfortable in a denim skirt sans tights, and I was going around in flip flips.

Time with good friends in Cambridge this weekend and a Skype call with a cousin last week made me realise that I miss being with people who know me well enough to insult me. Among all the vibrant people I've met in London, there are a few whom I joke with but hardly any who tease me -- most are too sweet or too distant. It's truly been a stellar time -- I'm just too ungrateful.

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It's been a week since I got a haircut at the Vidal Sassoon Advanced Academy. It's a spin on the student cut concept: I paid just 5 quid but the hairdresser wasn't a greenhorn, but someone who'd been cutting hair for years and was at the academy to learn "creative techniques". Which apparently sound like postmodern poetry: there is now controlled misdirection, concealed layers and disconnections on my head. The teacher really liked what the hairdresser was doing to my hair and kept calling it "brilliant, brilliant work". And although my haircut and me are distinct entities, having a "beautiful shape" is a pleasant compliment. According to the same teacher, there're supposed to be some squares and a triangle back there, but from my point of view I see a fringe and half a foot less of length, both of which are good changes that I'm still getting used to.

It's also been a few days since I decided that as much as I love my hooded black wool coat, it was boring. So eventually I cut up a spare (new) red-and-white-striped dish cloth and used dental floss to fasten it round half the buttons on my coat. No one's made any comments so far, but so long as no one approaches me in the street to say, "Pardon me, but why do you have a tea towel on your winter coat?" I will be content with my colourful buttons.

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It's a few hours till I set out for Sweden to visit a really good friend. I'm still weirded out by the combination of generous educational institution/weird economics of budget airlines/luck/grace that is making this possible. And I'm so, so excited.

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Events log

Turn of the month: Christian Union weekend away in Marlow. Didn't find any horror, just scores of rich conversations, lovely food, a wildly fun water gun fight, and lots of nostalgia for camp days of yore.

Thursday: Had a major "Whoa I'm in London!!" moment when I was walking from campus to Victoria and got help up outside Buckingham Palace along the way because they were changing the guard!! (Which I think totally warrants tacky punctuation.) Once at Victoria, I met up with a Williams friend who was visiting London, and we moseyed past Hyde Park to Knightsbridge, where we ate Cornish pasties from the Harrod's food halls (i.e. the only buy-able department) and later drifted through the V&A, talking about life and art and home ownership.

Later in the evening, I went to my aunt's house for the Bonfire Night (= Nov 5 = Guy Fawkes) gathering that a cousin had pulled together. Yay bonfire! And double yay talking to all four cousins and all three of their spouses! Uhh. By which I mean the cousin who is my age isn't married yet. But yes, it was such a great time and I felt so happy.

Friday: LPO concert with my cousin -- really really liked the tension in the Verdi, got slightly drowsy during the charmingly exuberant Tchaikovsky, and was completely taken with the tempestuous majestic Dvorak.

Weekend: Cambridge. Gorgeous old town, venerable halls of learning &c, wonderful friends, marvelous concert, amazing walks. Am thankful. :)

2009-10-29T00:05:00.002Z

Essay essay

As of yesterday, I've chosen the topics for the three term papers that I have to write (Arabic being the exception, which is a mercy since typing 200 words on Elias Khoury took me two hours). And the topics have been approved by course conveners, apart from this one prof who never seems to reply my emails, but whatever lah. :) Now I know where to focus my reading and I am happier.

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Events log

[which I am noting down more for my benefit than yours, since it's faster for me to type than to handwrite]

Thursday evening: Four years in Singapore taught me (among other things, of course) that if you can get GBP132 seats for 10 quid on student standby, you grab them. So a Polish postgrad and I went to the Royal Opera House for a double bill of L'Heure espagnole (Ravel) and Gianni Schicchi (Puccini). It was my first time seeing real opera on stage -- assuming deliciously bawdy comedies qualify as "real opera" -- and it was stupendous. Absurd premises and props, glorious voices, marvelous comic timing (, impressive subtitle machine). And, during the intermission, exciting life stories from my friend.

Friday evening: Met up with a former classmate whom I haven't seen since our PMR, and then followed her to Overseas Christian Fellowship -- where "overseas" basically means Singaporean and Malaysian, so I ran into two other former schoolmates from A-level days. It was unnervingly familiar and I experienced major which-country-am-I-in issues, but it's always cool to reunio ... ite with people after a while and see what they've been letting God do in their lives.

Saturday afternoon/evening: One of those days where I did insufficient research and had a blast with the nagging sense that it could have been better. To wit: went to the British Museum with my cousin. Found out that half the existing Parthenon carvings are five minutes from my uni campus (and felt like an idiot for not searching them out earlier)! And also that I seem to really like glassware. Saw a tonne of other beautiful arresting foreign old things in that wonderful building; thought very conflicted thoughts about what colonialism does to culture.

After munching our way through hot dogs in the museum steps, we deduced that both of us would far prefer an evening of good cheap music to an evening of homework. After some dithering on my part, my cousin remembered that there was student standby at the London Philharmonic that night, so we sped over there and paid our four pounds each and dropped in our seats moments before the conductor came out, with very little idea of what would ensue. It turned out to be the premier of Rautavaara's Incantations (my first percussion concerto and a fascinating feat of dexterity; liked the third movement a lot better than the first two) and Bruckner's Eighth Symphony (gorgeous but I neither expected nor had the stamina for a >1.5 hour piece).

Sunday morning: Together with my cousin I visited the Hillsongs church, in the same auditorium that hosts performances of We Will Rock You. At concert-services like this one it's always a struggle for me to focus on God when the lighting team is practicing their art and lead guitarist's solo is projected on a larger-than-life screen and the sermon poses no intellectual challenge (yeah, my ego grosses me out too). In settings like this -- where so much attention seems directed to styles of musical worship -- it's also an insuperable challenge for me to neither judge nor feel judged. But clearly they're a platform that shows God to throngs of people, and clearly I don't yet see things with His light.

Sunday afternoon/evening: Did most of the Jubilee Walkway with a SOAS friend. Embarrassingly we got lost at the beginning, attempting to traverse the very short distance between Trafalgar Square and Admiralty Arch. But yay London! And yay walking. Downside was that it was the first day that Daylight Savings started (/ended?) so it got dark super early and we decided to cut out walk short. But two bonuses: (a) outdoor secondhand book tables between the National Theatre and the River -- I caved in and bought Heller's Portrait of an artist, as an old man (really liking it so far) and a book that I've been wanting to give one of my friends; (b) after lots of uninspiring menu-gazing at Covent Garden, we found this affordable Turkish-ish restaurant that is apparently very well-reviewed and I had a wonderfully succulent lamb tagine (howsay).

Wednesday evening: Benjamin Bagby's Beowulf at the British Library! Concession tickets for GBP7.50. I don't know recall I know about Bagby -- possibly my good friend who'd read Beowulf and consequently told me lots of interesting things about the Merovingian et al on the way out of the cinema after we watched Matrix Reloaded together -- but I was really really excited before and not at all disappointed after (notwithstanding the considerably less classy subtitle projector haha). His incredibly sonorous voice and mobile features traversed such a range of registers and characters, accompanied by this cool reconstructed 7th century six-string harp (which kept making me think of one of the Chinese orchestra instruments that I can never remember the name of). And of course it was fun listening out for understandable Anglo-Saxon snippets (the syntactical ordering seems really different); everyone chuckled at something that sounded like "beer drunken". After that I had a bunch of Malaysians and a Singaporean, ranging from a relative to a completely new acquaintance, over at my place for food and talk.

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Side note: might anyone know the name of this cartoon character in an animated short which ends with him saying, "Consume, conform, OBEY"? One of my friends showed it in class back in MG Singapore, and over the years it's bothered me a handful of times that I only remember him as Mr [something or other].

Oh wait nevermind! I just googled and his name is Mr. Snaffleburger. I now feel very satisfied (if slightly peeved that I let myself fall prey to search engines again). :)

2009-10-20T21:48:00.003+01:00

Loser :)

I lost my wallet today: I'd detoured into a charity shop en route to buying groceries when I realised that it was gone. A security guard later told me that the area is known for pickpockets.

Still, it was sort of surprising since I'm pretty careful with my stuff. What was equally surprising was my lack of reaction. I didn't get annoyed/disappointed at myself. I didn't even get flustered. It was actually pretty funny: for once I had a negative answer for the donation drive guy who asked me for spare change and subsequently gave me directions to the police station. We had a good laugh when I retraced my steps past him a second time.

And then I went to make a police report, and this made it better:

The man ahead of me in the police station queue was grubby and staggered. Then his turn and he told the officer how that he'd been sexually assaulted by a man at his friend's house, and I felt horrible for judging his midday stutter. I want to remember to pray for him.

So yes, I lost my wallet and had a fair amount of cash in it, and it'll cost me far more to replace my cards and keys than I like to think about in ringgit, but that's just money. Not that money isn't important or hard to come by, but it's not something inherently valuable like happiness or bodily safety or even time.

Which is a hint to myself to go start homework. Right now.

(Also, I checked with the box office and I can still collect November Les Mis tickets for myself and four friends even without the card that I'd used to pay for them. Phew.)

2009-10-18T20:54:00.002+01:00

but words make good picture frames

especially when the pictures are as un-fetching as these: this is a warts-and-all post; the illustrated London-is-gorgeous post will come later on. :)

After years/months/weeks of faithful service, my three plastic hair clips broke over the same week. Just like that. So now I am left with hairties, bobby pins, this long metal clip that I've had since JC and which once set off a metal detector, and ambivalence about my hair.

In London it's mostly been either completely loose or completely bunned up (with the dangerous metal clip). A couple times I tried braiding it, which was always a reliable way to get it out of the ... way, but for some reason I wasn't happy with that. But London isn't as humid as Malaysia so I don't generally feel unhappy with my hair, although sometimes I do forget that it's relatively long.

While the last two paragraphs may have been of absolutely no consequence, you are now going to find out more about my skin than most of you'd ever want to know (I hope) because some of you may find it helpful (again, I hope). I say this because it is thanks to info on blogs that my arms now look better than pictured above.

So after I finally figured out my eyelid dermatitis (although it seems like 90 percent of hand soaps and bath gels contain cocamidopropyl betaine, which means that I have to spend a lot of time reading ingredients) and after isotretinoin cleared up a lot of my acne, my arms developed lots of little dry bumps. And then some of those bumps became larger lumps, which turned red.

Google suggested that the bumps were keratosis pilaris, i.e. excess keratin in hair follicles, and I figure the redness was KP conflated with skin allergies or something. Google also told me that (a) there is no uniformly effective treatment for KP, (b) severe KP is sometimes helped by isotretinion, which makes sense because it flared up just after I'd just stopped my oral acne treatment, and (c) topical retinoids like adapalene sometimes help KP.

Luckily, I had some adapalene (Differin) on hand which I'd been instructed to use for acne, and it did help smoothen the lumps somewhat. But the picture above is from my cousin's wedding,which was a good-ish day for my arms after approximately three weeks of adapalene application.

So I resorted to Google again, and this time found some sites recommending Eucerin's Intensive Urea Treatment Lotion. And yes, urea sounds gross (science types: I did take O Level Bio and know urea is excreted in sweat etc etc, but you have to concede that it's not a savoury name) and I can't believe I shelled out 13 quid for a toiletry item -- but it worked. In less than a week my arms looked normal, unless you were bored or creepy enough to really stare at them. And they're continuing to improve. So yay urea! Ummm. Yes. Oh my friend says this Eucerin lotion worked on her sister's eczema too.

This photo is from the one time I indulged in the vanity of taking pictures of food that I cook. And then I decided that the picture wasn't as appetising as the food and forsook that documentary exercise. But yah upwards of 500 people on allrecipes.com put a 5-star rating on this honey baked chicken recipe (honey, mustard, curry powder, butter), so I decided to try it. Or, at least, to try a version of it where I use the same ingredients but anyhow whack with proportions, since I don't own measuring implements and can't be bothered. And I was happy. Yay food.

The other day I realised that I have mostly been cooking ang moh food and mostly eating Asian food when I go out. o_O

The reason I've been eating mostly Asian food out is that I've mostly been eating out with Malaysians. Socially, coming to London has been more like visiting KL than going to Williamstown; there are so many people here whom I haven't seen for years or who are friends-of-friends.

But beyond that, London is just crawling with Malaysians. In the States whenever I hear a Malaysian/Singaporean accent I want to accost the speaker and get to know them, just because it's such a rarity. Here I hear home accents virtually every time I cut through this shopping centre near campus. The jeans in the picture from a Relief for Romania charity shop here; they were one of three pairs of Applemints jeans there. Applemints is a Malaysian (or at least some cheena) brand that my secondary school friends used to like. It's uncanny.

The internationalisation is even more pronounced at SOAS, given the nature of its academics. But in this case it's really cool. In my Arabic class, for example, the only language that you see in everyone's notebooks is Arabic; I jot down explanations in English, the guy next to me writes down synonyms in German, there's a European girl who writes her notes in Urdu since she knows that better than Arabic, and so on.

Even at SOAS, though, a lot of people form miniature ethnic enclaves. Which is of course natural. But I think what bothers me about de facto groupings by race is that descent is something that you cannot choose. Social patterns that revolve around political leanings or study habits or career choices or drinking patterns or whatever at least involve an element of self-selection. Which is not at all to imply that such selection is a matter of genuine choice -- I'm just saying that sometimes I'm frustrated that some of the impressions (good/bad immaterial) people have of me are based on things that I have no possibility of changing. Which basically means that I am a silly coward. But I'm not too worried as long as the happy thoughts outnumber the silly/cowardly thoughts. :)

This photo is from the open-top bus tour that the uni's student union organized during Freshers Week. During the tour I actually did accost someone because I heard his Malaysian accent. But anywho.

London has a good 24-hour bus system that I'd been too lazy to check out up to a week ago, since I prefer walking and trains. But it was really good that I decided to figure out some bus routes this week, because there were a couple nights when I was out late with friends and needed to get back alone, and because today the trains I could take to east London for church were all out of service.

On the way back from church one of the buses was really packed. When I first got on I was facing a middle-aged, religious-garbed man, who kept swinging his pelvis against me. I turned sideways, then shifted my large bag to the other shoulder so it was between us (probably elbowing a couple people in the process), but he still kept swaying. I didn't look him in the face because I didn't want to acknowledge him, but maybe also because I didn't dare.

Then when I got the chance I moved down the aisle, which placed me next to the seat of this guy who was picking a fight with the person standing in from of him, and who fixed a smile in my direction till I looked up and nodded to him. And then I immediately looked away. I was also still avoiding the gaze of the first man.

Finally I got a seat, which was fine till the last few minutes of the ride when the seat next to me was vacated and that first man walked over and sat down. He didn't do anything except pressing his arm into mine quite insistently after a while, but I had already frozen. I could not believe that I was neither saying nor doing anything definite. I may be self-conscious but I'm not shy. And I've walked through cities alone far later than is prudent and strategically fended off smarmy guys on the dance floor.

On the bus I was half wondering if maybe he hadn't been intentionally touching me -- maybe he was just moving in time to the bus? And I'd been reading my Bible during the ride and was also half wondering how I could say something that conveyed an utter lack of respect but still retained love. But I didn't say anything. Not even, excuse me. I always remember being on a bus after guitar club in Form 3 and hearing a girl assert to the lout next to her, "Jangan sentuh saya!" But I didn't say anything.

After getting off the bus I walked into Superdrug to buy cough syrup (my throat's been off for the last few weeks) (and to make sure that he wasn't following me) and then I got a Krispy Kreme for the walk back, and I felt okay. But it's still scary how passive I was. And it's disgusting that one player in that tableau was the small part of me that still marvels how some people find me attractive enough to be worth any effort. And it's horrifying to consider the millions upon millions who have experience unimaginably worse than my minor public transport melodrama.

Sometimes I'm not sure where the line between trivializing and inflating is. But I'm so thankful that I can be sure of the One who is merciful. And I hope so much that you perceive the sincerity of that last sentence.

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Events log

Tuesday night: Watched Beckett's Endgame (by Complicite and the Duchess) with a Malaysian friend. Superb acting; the director was a brilliant Clov. It was harrowing and hilarious with a spontaneity that could not escape its own dreadful pattern; within a room that had high brick walls and two grubby windows the quartet (trinity) of characters interacted with a violence that I inflict only on my own thoughts. I laughed, knowing full well that Beckett was laughing at me. GBP20 for a concession ticket; actually worth it.

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If you've endured the bulk of this post: here is something a bit more aesthetic. :)

2009-10-13T15:59:00.002+01:00

Turning makes the world go round

I have issues with simplicity. There are always so many things I want to do and think about in this tortuous world, and sometimes I get flustered or agitated or exhausted because of this.

I get especially bothered when it comes to communication, because regardless of how much time I spend writing emails or wall posts there are always so many more people whom I care about but whom I cannot correspond with right now because there are articles to read or meals to cook or sleep to be had or desks to tidy or distractions to indulge in. And there are always so many more people whom I care about but who slip my mind in the fray. When I do remember them, I feel even worse.

All of which is really silly because I know that I never need to do more than I can. I also know that the only way to really know what I should be doing is to pray -- or at least to slow down enough to make choices with both my scarce resources and my infinite God in mind, rather than barreling on to the next in the jumble of things that just has to be done immediately.

But there is this really idiotic, overanalytic part of me that likes complications. It arrogates to equality with the genuine thought that I attempt to harness during complex classes and conversations, but really it's pathetic.

It's funny: discipline is a simple thing, but simplicity is so difficult. Like calculus, it's one of those elegant habits that I tend to forget after long breaks away from routine.

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Events log

Sunday morning: Sung eucharist at St. Paul's. Cathedral and singing and sermon were all stunning. Like God's implausible grace, it was free.

2009-10-10T23:23:00.001+01:00

Piecemeal

It seems that I always want to do everything at once: there're just so many things that I would like to/feel I should do.

Which has proven to be a relatively weighty matter when I'm at Williams, where I let obligations and conversations expand and encroach on sleep. I honestly don't know whether to add academics and health to the victim list, because God has been preposterously graceful. I so need to get better at listening to Him about where to delineate time territories, though.

At SOAS so far the stakes have been relatively lower since I'm not committed to extracurriculars, but too often I have found myself in the kitchen trying to boil something in a pot and wash a dish and eat a fruit and read something all at once. It actually kindof works. I shall be careful with the pages of my books, though.

I also need to remember to defrost meat ahead of time. There was this kilo of ground beef in particular -- I'd think about defrosting it right before I fell asleep, and then completely forget the next day till two hours before I wanted to cook. It eventually became red pasta sauce, shepherd's pie, meatballs, and olive oil/celery/onion/garlic/basil pasta sauce, so it wasn't a complete failure.

(This olive oil sauce happened because I couldn't fit any more meatballs on the tray and was impatient, so I smushed them and threw other stuff in.)

(Also, if you put cheese in meatballs and try to bake them, they might each develop little moats of cheese in the oven. For you to know and me to find out.)

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Events log

Tuesday night: Watched The Woman In Black with my cousin. It was sort of an impulse thing -- I've always wanted to buy standby tickets from the legendary Leicester Square booth, and this was the cheapest show that I'd been told was really good. And it was! though it's not a genre that I'd normally watch. The older man did some masterful character switching, and I usually like play-within-a-play deals.Worth the GBP15 that I paid, but don't think it was worth GBP15*(RM/GBP)5.4. And yay for cousins who teman me. :)

Wednesday night: Went for the first night of the Royal Ballet Company's Mayerling with a fellow study-abroad-er. It was superb -- all those people moving in devastatingly beautiful ways that the human body wasn't quite built to move in, the sumptuous costumes, the themes and variations in the movements and music (Liszt!), loaded narration sans words, the crazy intricate logistics of it all. And our amphitheatre tickets were only GBP1 each because a very nice rich lady sponsored the first night for "invited guests", which included random students on the standby mailing list. :)

Thursday night: Reluctantly attended a freshers party since I'd already paid for a ticket (man, I keep talking about money) and wanted to catch up with the friend that I went with. But I ended up enjoying myself an absurd amount. It was possibly the first dance party/clubbing thing where I didn't feel bored at some point. o_O They played a really alternative spread of music that I'd never tune into but which was a blast for dancing.

Tangent: it is annoying that one of the few things that is cheaper here than at home is alcohol. And no, I just had one Malibu/Coke that night, so my enjoyment had nothing to do with intoxication. Even if I were so inclined, I'm too much of a cheapskate* to (a) pay for booze that doesn't taste good, and (b) pay for enough nice-tasting booze to get buzzed.

*At first I typed "I'm too cheap" then realised that it was all too appropriate for the context.

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I'd always thought that when I went abroad (i.e. abroad-abroad; oh dear sudden mental image of the wonderful Zits strip where Jeremy thinks his brother is going to spend the year as "a broad") -- where was I. Yes, I'd always thought I'd join the CF and some sort of dance group.

SOAS is too alternative/left/cool to have ballroom or Latin, but the inter-university union does and I'm sort of torn about whether or not to take beginner classes. Because it'd be fun, but I would probably be awkward coward, and for GBP4 or 5 I might was well watch other people (e.g. the Royal Ballet Society) dance instead of myself. See how lah.

I've gone for a few Christian Union things, though, and I really appreciate the tone of the group so will definitely keep going. Also, sparked by an intense conversation with a CU girl, I put up a poster in my hall downstairs about a Sunday night dorm prayer group. I was also feeling awkward/cowardly about putting my name on it and I have no idea if anyone will turn up tomorrow, so if you're a praying person I would be grateful for your prayers. (Wooo infinite regress.)

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It occurs to me that I haven't mentioned one of the things that I'm most excited about this semester, i.e. classes. So yes, I am in The Economic Development of Southeast Asia, Islamic Law, Public International Law and Arabic. I am also told that I'm in nerdland. But if you're (a) one of my friends and (b) reading a blog, you're probably not in a place to judge. :)

2009-10-05T23:19:00.001+01:00

All you need

On Friday after a two-hour Arabic placement exam -- which was not the kindest re-introduction to school, but I'm thankful for how I did -- an old Williams friend and a new SOAS friend and I caught one of the last performances of As You Like It at the Globe. It was a lovely sunny day and our GBP5 groundling tickets got us right by the stage for the charmingly nuanced production.

On Saturday I watched my cousin get married The ceremony was beautiful and it was such a calm (though wistful) joy to watch him and his exquisite bride smile at each other. The service started at 2pm and the party went on till 10pm so by the time cleanup was over we were pretty tired, but I just felt so honoured to be both part of the family and in London at the right time.

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It seems like I have a very binary attention span: either I really really concentrate or I swap between things constantly. Case in point: I typed half a sentence of the preceding section then moved down to write this. Also: when I'm having a face-to-face conversation and get a text I often start replying the SMS then continue talking and forget to finish the text, which really doesn't help on either front.

Right now I have readings that I should do and stuff that I should write but don't really have to do anything urgently right now -- the last couple weeks have been more like a vacation than most of my summer, but no complaints whatsoever -- so I've been starting emails then beginning Facebook messages then writing another sentence of an email before trying to get Malaysian news sites to load again. Which is a huge waste of time. And I should be praying more about how I use the remaining 90 percent or so of my term in London.

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It's interesting that I forgot to mention in my last post that the only genuine antidote I've found to silly social insecurities is praying about how to love the people I meet rather than fretting about what they will think of me (and what I will think of them -- I hate how I sometimes judge people). Which the book 1 John totally anticipated: fear flees from perfect love much quicker than it does from reminders that I Am A Friendly Person. It's silly/frustrating/tragic how much I focus on myself.

It's equally silly/frustrating/tragic how I worry about people's reactions when a post on this blog goes all Christian midway. But since I can only blog authoritatively (ish) about myself, hopefully things are spicier when I remember to bring in my relationship with someone else, i.e. God. :)

2009-09-30T15:24:00.000+01:00

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.

2009-09-22T03:43:00.003+01:00

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!)

2009-09-16T06:27:00.002+01:00

Happy Malaysia Day

2009-09-14T05:33:00.002+01:00

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.

2009-09-10T18:52:00.000+01:00

[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.

2009-09-01T18:06:00.002+01:00

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.

2009-08-31T17:12:00.003+01:00

Merdeka

When Malaysia turned 52, one of my sisters, two old friends, three new acquaintences and I were at a mamak stall drinking Milo ais, eating French fries and watching the Everton-Wigan game on a screen propped precariously by the drain. (Neocolonialism hurhur.) They told us that "orang mau tengok bola," so I didn't get my countdown. After the game we walked back to the hotel, and sister and I joined another bunch of fellow convention-goers; we prayed for the country then had several rounds of Uno and Snap.

I don't know where this country is going, but it's good to know that someone does.

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I just got back from a camp in KL. Why I'm blogging instead of replying emails or attending to Facebook or reading or going to bed is beyond me. Or not -- narcissism is, sadly, within both the scope of my conduct and the bounds of plausibility. But during my bus ride home I thought of the admissions essay I'd written for college, and about how it's been just about two years since I first got to Williamstown. So here be essay-which-I-hoped-might-impress-scary-college-people-in-December-'06. o_O

Highways

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.

I have spent an unwonted amount of time on Malaysia’s North-South Highway. I remember sitting in the back seat of our old station wagon with my three siblings, inventing stories, reciting Bible verses or Cantonese poetry (neither of which we really understood), playing my father’s game of making sums out of number plates, admiring sleek sports cars, or dozing on each other’s shoulders. Then there were the moments when I would silently revel in the landscape around us, whether it was tree-blanketed hills, urban lights, or a star-dusted sky.

We made frequent trips up and down the country to visit our relatives and run errands. There were also the poignant, cramped drives every time we moved to a new parish. The car would be filled to capacity with last-minute packing and perhaps our sedated pet dogs; we would share a contemplative fatigue. One vivid recollection is being fetched from the airport after two years of living in Oak Park, Illinois; the highway seemed more familiar than the van I was in and my suddenly-grown cousins.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,

For the last four years most of my highway sojourns have been solitary, taking a bus home from Singapore for the holidays. After hauling my luggage through customs it was always a relief to sink into a padded seat, trying to shake off the surreal ‘I was in Phys Ed two hours ago, and now I’m in a different world’ feeling I always got.

Usually I would read, either a book that I had neglected throughout a busy semester, or perhaps a Literature text or Chemistry notes. Surprisingly often the loneliness that accompanies independence would be salved by a chance meeting with a friend on the bus. Two things didn’t change, however: the view the highway afforded of the land I love, and the bliss of reaching my destination after hours of travel.

Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.

The six of us still take car journeys together, with the adult-sized children squeezed in the back seat uncomfortably. As this requires the convergence of six schedules and an air ticket for my sister, these trips are far less frequent. And while the general atmosphere in the car remains the same--apart from the reduced airspace--our conversations now cover my grandparents’ health, malapropisms overheard in Singapore and Wisconsin, the physics of gas stations as well as the merits of studying philosophy and break dancing.

Another difference is that my two elder siblings now take their turns at the wheel. I’ll be learning how to drive soon; the prospect of mobility is exciting.

And whither then? I cannot say.
--from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring

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Pa's ordering a car next week -- I think it'll be our first actually new car. First we had an old station wagon, then in Oak Park we first borrowed a car and later bought a small one with bad heating for USD800 from a family leaving the U.S., and when we got back to Malaysia we first borrowed a car and later bought it from the family friends who'd lent it to us. Is interesting, this trajectory.

I still can't drive. :(

2009-08-24T16:48:00.001+01:00

Tick tick ticking away

Today the think tank that I'm interning at hosted an all-day event at a hotel. The only other event on our floor was a "recruitment drive" (read: battery of exams -- we're talking Singapore) for the school area I did my 'O' Levels. I moseyed over to the school event a bunch of times (during breaks lar) but didn't get to talk to the teacher whom I know but who probably doesn't remember me. I did get to chat with a handful of kids and parents, though, and almost freaked out mid-sentence when mental calculations told me that I'd taken said exams seven years ago.

And I don't really know what to add to this, except that I'm sitting at home with family and dog and cat and A Portrait of the Artist and contentment.

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Yes lah, I'd counted correctly. I'm not that old, thank God. Hurhur.