being back home

makes me never want to leave! i'm going to make every single day count.

2000 words on De Quincey and orientalism

that's all which separates me from end-of-term celebrations, that is, guilt-free fun! i say guilt-free because "work ethic" really means something here. everyone apart from me seems to have insurmountable volumes of work. (no hyperbole!) with that sheer quantity of work, self discipline becomes paramount: if you told a Cam student at 5 in the afternoon that you hadn't done any work at all that day, he or she would most likely react with shock and sympathy, instead of (false) reassurances that you'll be fine, and that you'll get whatever you need done.

the hours you work are directly proportional to the esteem you receive from your peers, because academic diligence is not just a socially-programmed ideal, it is a virtue. here, that is.

okay well enough about my observations of Cam students; need to start writing. will write about all my other observations tomorrow! when i'm done!

it's that time of year again

i'm sitting at my desk eating pita bread with nutella (my evening snack), trying to write how i feel about Thanksgiving and not being at Brown. it's oddly comforting to hear about everyone's Thanksgiving plans: i feel that i too, am there with you as you board that plane, sink into that train seat, or settle down at home in front of your laptop. part of me wishes that i could participate in that retreat. i imagine feeling exhausted - it is that exhaustion, after all, which permits you a few days of brief holiday bliss before that whirlwind finals period that sees everyone seeking solace in sci-li-ing and freaking out over rushed Ratty dinners or hot sandwiches at Jos.

it's so easy to sentimentalise Brown. i could write an ode to Ratty breakfasts. and to the slopes and perpetual leafyness of Charlesfield street, those delightful cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing sold at the Blue Room. (go get one next week if you haven't tried them!!)

despite all this, i'm finally feeling settled and happy. it's so refreshing...i'm just so happy to be myself again - myself, but also a little changed, i would hope. a tiny bit wiser.

like a cheshire cat

so pleased with myself. she says that if i continue writing to these standards in the exams, i'll most definitely get a first class! no wayyy! before today i didn't even dare to imagine trying for a first, but i'm going to try now that i know it's in reach...

it's thursday 6 pm, which means weekend! curry night at Ish's place, and then i'll come back to pack for my weekend away in London visiting Jn!! (wow she'll be the first Brown person i've seen in awhile.) luckily, next week's workload is light given that we're doing Persuasion or otherwise i would've been very screwed in terms of work. sundays-wednesdays typically are my essay-crisis days.

hope this weekend is a good one!

what is a year, in a lifetime?

i choose to not run away
i choose to be brave
i choose to be happy with life as it is
i choose to take responsibility for my decisions
i choose to graduate with my friends
i choose to do this for my loved ones
i choose principles, over emotions
i choose a year of challenges, over a lifetime of regret
i choose to feel blessed with all that i have

//
my mom and LJ have collectively, miraculously, helped me to see things differently, so thank you...:)

//

Tristram Shandy essay due in 18 hours. "Writing, when properly managed...is but a different name for conversation." Discuss.
interesting topic, right?

week five

i keep writing resolutions but fail to adhere to them strictly. but anyway. today REALLY is the day when i will...
- sleep before 1 AM
- eat proper meals
- not waste time online
- read 150 pages of Tristram Shandy
- stop moping. and be happy. i've come this far already...and look, i'm still here.

yay for broken fevers and guacamole

yikes, i haven't done any reading since i handed in my last essay on thursday. it was the first time i missed a deadline - by 17 hours, too. surprisingly, my supervisor was very kind, reassuring me to not panic about these weekly essays because they're ultimately just exam practice. (not sure if the fact that 100% of my grade/credits is determined by three exams is very reassuring though... ...this system is even worse than the IB and GCSEs!)

anyway, things that i've done in weeks three and four:
1. joined an informal choir group
2. played ping pong, but was convinced that no one could ever replace Dn or PP as entertaining ping pong buddies :(
3. read
4. discovered a nice Chinese buffet place...okay i know "nice" and "Chinese buffet" are paradoxical but the food was decent! and it's a buffet!
5. saw a man shoplifting wine at Sainsbury's. um, why does this always happen to me?! i've witnessed so many shoplifting incidents, it's not even funny. once at Marks & Spencer in HK (although i didn't realize it at the time), once in Pacific Place when police were running after a crook and accidentally cornered the wrong guy, once in TaiKoo Shing i saw the thief and shopkeeper run out of Watsons, and in Singapore, i saw a woman steal a packet of bread at Bukit Panjang. yeah it sounds kinda ridiculous...
6. hosted formal hall at Pembroke! the main course was disappointing, but they had french onion soup and creme brulee to make up for it.
7. had a really bad fever on Saturday and was thus not able to host Kate properly this weekend...sigh.
8. finished decorating my study room with colourful scarves and photos.
9. realized how sheltered us American college students are. well at Brown, we take so many things for granted. at least i did. i have never missed the Ratty more. and the freedom to study multiple subjects.
10. got over some personal issues. i just keep reminding myself that Everything Comes to Pass, even things you didn't think possible to get over.

this week is going to be another week of rushed Pope and Swift readings, Guy Fawkes fun, and learning. plus Tn's 20th birthday is coming up! i really hope the package arrives safely. (i stupidly filled out the customs form honestly when i should've listed something that didn't sound like such a steal.)

missing all of you so much.

'life changes in an instant'

so says Joan Didion in "The Year of Magical Thinking".

i think of this quote to remind myself that life is always transient - that relationships and situations are dynamic, volatile, unpredictable. i'm only just beginning to realize this after a certain close friend has recently betrayed me. after analysing this for days, i've come to realize that the only way i can survive is to just forget about it. no person this deliberately cruel deserves my energy and emotions. i don't deserve to feel so unhappy and confused, wondering all the time what exactly happened to have made him think that i'm not worth being friends with.

i refuse to sink into depression. it is scary knowing that others have done so in the past, but i REFUSE to let one selfish, irrational, cruel person do this to me.

i'm sorry that i can't possibly contact everyone and explain exactly the situation. in time i'll be able to look back on this and not feel so miserable. but i ask that my friends just trust me, and be there for me - whether it is through emails or phone calls. i know there are worse things than losing a best friend.

i hope that everyone else is doing well though :). or if not well, then at least better than i am! i'll try to get in touch soon...in the meantime, i'm just going to try to move on from this incident and enjoy Cambridge. (which has actually become a fourth home).

returning to normality

the wonderful thing about having rough starts is that it means there's only one way to go! up!

i'm lazy so here is my second week achievements compressed in bullet points. in the past week, I....

1. opened a bank account and paid the Michaelmas term rent. this helped me clear away all that angst about whether or not to stay. I'M STAYING. for once, the little voice in my head, and the little voice in my heart, are in unison...
2. finally made friends. (awww)
3. drank a lot of Vitamin water and orange juice in hopes of psycho-somatically convincing myself that i am immune to all those freshers-flu germs.
4. learned a lot about eighteenth century moral philosophy. ahh SO looking forward to her comments on my 1600 word attempt at analysing sympathy. how i hate philosophy.
5. showed M around Cambridge, rather blindly, as my knowledge of Cambridge is limited to like four colleges, the river, the supermarket and shops. we had waffles for lunch which is amazing in itself. we also poked around small quaint shops selling cute things like 'knit a sheep' kits and pretty notebooks...i'm so going back there this weekend to do a bit of early Christmas shopping!
6. attended ZERO english lectures.
7. somehow managed to miss a bunch of meetings for activities that i had signed up to do. but i'm definitely doing informal choir, and might get involved in editing for science magazine. (that's right - no more literary fluffiness. and no more crap about not being able to edit pieces. *cough* issu....)
8. was convinced that Serendipity is totally underrated. by Serendipity herself :)
9. struggled a lot with religious faith and have realized that it's not for me. it's upsetting, but also weirdly empowering, too...
10. ate a lot of dark chocolate digestive biscuits to complement the not-so-great hall meals here...(they call it trough)

i have yet to find my routine here, but i'm getting there. firstly, got to tackle a mountain of errands this weekend. i put off EVERYTHING for essays, seriously, but the weird thing is i conversely put off essays for the most trivial of things like facebook stalking, PET bottle recyling, digestive biscuits, etc. sigh well it feels good to be concerned about the small things for a change...:) as opposed to huge, aching questions about my place here.

couldn't have done it without the love and encouraging words of a lot of eople however. it's pleasantly surprising how one can find inspiration in the most unlikely places. but yeah, sometimes i lie in bed and i just feel all this love from distant places awash over me and i think, "this has gotta make all of this worth it" and "what the heck did i do to deserve such a family and such friends?" sigh. i have so much learning and living to do.

life at cambridge: week one

the past seven days have gone by like a cross between a dream and a nightmare.

when i feel safe and strong, i look out of my attic windows and smile at the chapel spires, the immaculate green, the cloisters of Old Court, thinking to myself - if anything, i should feel blessed that i can study at a place so steeped with history and culture. Pembroke College is extremely pretty: our courtyards lack the regal, imposing feel of Trinity and St. John; they're more of the comfortable, garden tea-party kind. also, i'm amazed that some of the great poets studied at Pembroke - Thomas Gray, Ted Hughes, Spenser - and i guess i shouldn't take that history for granted.

there are so many quirky traditions here, all of which i've just accepted/half-embraced. no walking on greens. early dinners unless you go to formal hall. a heck of a lot of alcohol during formal meals (you get a different one to accompany each course, so champagne with the appetiser, red with the main, and port with the dessert and coffee). lots of port in old fashioned decanters (and i thought those things were only found in the His Dark Materials books!!). the whole town of cambridge shutting down at 7 pm. not having to go to lectures or class. gowns over your fancy clothes in hall. standing up in hall when the fellows enter to dine at the High Table. (there is a lot of hierarchy here...like we have a senior butler, Salvino, who is our sort of ally and gestures to let us know when to stand and sit and take leave, and then all these other waiters/waitresses in hall that follow his orders...) i actually live right above the Hall, which is a little weird but very convenient.

so i guess that's the dream part of it...the beauty of cambridge, the constant tea drinking and biscuit nibbling. the meeting of people exponentially smarter than you. it's very humbling. :) i'm quite freaked out about my Practical Criticism supervision with some of the 2nd years this afternoon. they all look so put together with their hard-cover diaries, dissertation papers, pens and english-y coats...sigh well we shall see what happens.

and the nightmare bit? well, the intense loneliness, the lack of friends (except for Ritz, who's been a total star in looking out for me), the sense of not fitting in anywhere, the lack of structured time. i'll try not to fall into some self-fulfilling prophecy...i have been trying hard to meet a lot of people and establish at least a list of contacts. i guess the people here are quite different, and navigating the asian groups is even trickier.

coming here has made me value friendship, family, company, sun, hot food, nice showers even more. especially friends!! i've always known that i had the most amazing of friends, but i now feel even more fortunate when i reflect on my relatively easy transition into Brown. a lot of things are due to pure serendipity, as everyone has been saying to me. i guess i'm praying for some sort of magical encounter here - in the shape of a friend, a phone call, a conversation.

i know i owe it to myself and to a lot of other people to persist. at the moment, it's just difficult for me to be truly optimistic...i find myself walking around sometimes crying on the inside because i'm so consumed by uncertainty and loneliness. but i guess if anything, this was a much-needed crash course in true independence. and i'll try to focus on staying happy and healthy...haha nowadays, a conversation with a stranger at the dinner table is a lifeline, a sunny day, a miracle!

my flaws

- i get defensive easily
- i have problems with authority <-- this is surprisingly true. wow. that explains why i disliked my TA's. and also why i flare up whenever my parents criticize me. and also why i get really annoyed with professors who don't know what they're talking about.
- i'm too sensitive

just one of those 10 AM realisations...:(

happy happy happy

1. tonight i'm going to finally start reading Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence! i confess to not having read a novel in TWO MONTHS. i am surprised that i have still retained command over the English Language. at the same time, i'm wondering what kind of English concentrator i must be to be able to ignore books for the better part of a summer holiday. that is like going through a bitter winter without ever once drinking hot chocolate.

2. totally over last week's mopey phase and realize in hindsight that it was partly hormonal. my apologies for being a little pessimistic lately! i am now genuinely happy about study abroad, and excited about going off to England...i.e. land of sandwiches, scones, H&M and Topshop, afternoon tea, mild winters (thank youuu), history, antiquated and highly idiosyncratic traditions, and Colin Firth. sighh i just wish term would hurry up and start already!!

3. all you need is love, really.

~~~

i really should post the homestay photos on here sometime...

ホームステイー

homestay in Ina-shi was MAGICAL.
東京に戻りたくなかったほど楽しかったんだ.

my family planned a perfect three days for me. we made temaki sushi for dinner, went to the Ina-shi summer festival, explored an Edo-era town, went to a beautiful otera complete with glow-in-the-dark moss and the traditional three gates, had really good soba and katsudon, relaxed at an onsen, took Benny-chan for 7 am walks...sigh. we had so many great conversations as we sat down to piping hot green tea, and as we navigated the Minami-alps by car, windows down and hair dancing.

Shima-san and Kotarou-san were....just wonderful. i've talked to other friends in the program and yep, my homestay parents and grandparents really knew how to teach japanese and let me practice it. they carried around a notebook a pen EVERYWHERE so that whenever i didn't understand something, they would explain it and then write the kanji/hiragana. occasionally they drew things, which elicited a lot of giggles. they were also ridiculously nice. no stuffiness about them. i cried after saying bye when we got onto the bus, but only after Kotarou-san stopped waving as we turned the corner...as Rz says, perhaps i'm crybaby :), but i'd rather be the type of person who feels deeply - the entire spectrum of emotions - than one who merely oscillates in the middle.

and now we're back in Tokyo, to regular classes. i'm being a total bum and only taking two workshops this summer after dropping a tricky Japanese Novels class, thus i'm only in class 5 hours a day. the work is starting to pile on though; for one, i've never had to memorize vocabulary like this before. and there are a few long term projects/presentations to tackle...which is little scary cuz we only have two and half weeks left!

anyway....i WILL post photos soon.

in Tokyo now!

tadaima!!
that's what the japanese say when they return home (and in reply, the family says, "okaeri"). well i'm not home, but i'm going for my weekend homestay in Ina-shi tomorrow! excited, but i think i'm more nervous about the Japanese conversations and basically just fitting in with the family. unfortunately there are no kids, only a young couple and their dog, which i find a slightly strange configuration for a homestay family.

so i disappeared for a long while because i was in Hong Kong with my primitive dial-up internet, and then in Kamogawa, where we had limited access to internet in the seminar house. we got quite close to everyone else because there was literally only a convenience store, a beach, and some mountains, and a small mall to venture off to outside the seminar house. we also had a strict schedule of meals and ofuro (the communal baths) times. breakfast was at 7:30 am, lunch at 12 noon, and dinner at 6. if you came late by 15 minutes you wouldn't be served any food. apart from that...in our free time we played badminton/tennis/table tennis, cards, and oh crikey, Mafia.

anyway, i'm in Tokyo now at the main Waseda University campus. so far i haven't explored that much but i plan to go out a lot more often next week after the homestay...to shop at Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku and go see Akihabara and Asakusa (and hopefully go to Disneyland? :) ). going out in Japan requires a lot of self discipline cuz everything looks so pretty and kawaii (or yummy, if it's food). and of course there's the izakayas, which are cheaper than those in Hong Kong, and karaoke! <-- the prices aren't bad, but too bad i'm not very good at singing. a lot of the other girls in the program are really impressive though - one of them even sings opera.

okay well i will post photos some other time! gotta start packing and getting ready for homestay (i.e. review all the kimarimonku, or set phrases, and wrap my gifts.)

when all else fails

i have now taken to exercise when i get all crabby and antsy (ohhh two animal-y adjectives. that was accidental!) everyone knows me as the person who doesn't work out, and this is partly true because:
a) i'm REALLY lazy and
b) compared to everybody else, my athletic commitments (which are nonexistent in college) are pathetic.
oh...and why is it that most of my friends are either absurdly talented in dance or sport, or are the type that go running 3 miles no problem?

so it has been a lot more sweat and sun for me these few weeks. i don't know why it has taken me so long to realize the benefits of working out. i've always known that endorphins can be addictive and sweating, cathartic (haha, as propounded by tn almost everyday at brown), but i guess i always had things like food and friends to make me feel better :P. food i have plenty of here in singapore, but friends...ah friends...

nowadays when i miss people i resort to running to the gym or tennis courts or pool to work out until i cheer up. summer just doesn't feel quite the same when most people are working, travelling, or not coming back for the holiday. or if they live on different continents. blasted americans.

anyway, i shall not dwell on the clouds. there are upsides to this weird coping mechanism. i have rediscovered the joy of tennis. and i feel good about getting back on the treadmill...ah wait, there is no "back" for i have always avoided the darn thing. :D well not anymore!

rephrase

it's funny how tweaking words here and there makes everything less scary. i feel a lot better about it all. :) i guess i just need to just blurt all the yucky, somewhat latent feelings from time to time to confirm my decisions. (and have others reassure me) weak. as st's male alter-ego would bellow.

totally screwed for take-home english final because of incredibly long 7 hour conversation with kp. but...instead of complaining i will persevere, and join the "done"-minions soon enough...

:(

i am dreading saturday and wondering how the hell i'm going to leave this place. all the vague, far flung ideals about academics and challenges and new challenges are just rhetoric... ...easy to say but hard to believe in. rt has always cautioned pursuit of ideals that are of the past; i really hope i haven't done that in this instance because the losses are just looming higher and higher with each day of happiness and love.

it's so unhealthy to anticipate bad stuff, but i can't help it. i don't want to go home just yet...i want one more year of brown so badly but i've made my decision and just keep hoping that i'll be somehow surprised, and rewarded for this leap in faith, but it just...sucks. there's no other word to describe it. why why why. watashi no sei dake.

lowly, i say

i can't focus anymore. i'm slacking off in all classes (what reading period?! still have english seminar next tuesday), i mix up the two study abroad meetings and miss the important Britain-specific one, i'm sleeping at terrible hours, my comp lit essay is a joke, my grades are falling (goodbye cambridge-worthy gpa...hey maybe they'll reject me over the summer) and i have the sad piano theme of densha-otoko stuck in my head.

yesterday i said goodbye to keiko-san. she's moving back to japan with her husband. i feel terrible; it was probably the first time i said goodbye (for good) to someone that i do want to see again. there were things to be said, formalities - but i wanted to say so much more than my limited japanese skills could allow. and now i still want to write more about it, but how does one recapture those conversations, the language of which i don't even remember?

~~~~~~
i just got back from en's room. kp, tn and i visited cuz he broke his leg yesterday. since he's returning home for surgery tomorrow, we said our warm goodbyes. there was a moment of panic surging through me when i thought that if he was leaving for the summer, and i was going to be away for junior year, then it'd be our last meeting. then i remembered that we are both sophomores, so there's still senior year.

but then kp looked at me and i realized that the panic was yet to come, and now everything has just collapsed into itself.

for me to treasure

didn't do any work this weekend! that will come and haunt me this week when i am locked away in the tower of the sci li at odd hours.

but it was worth it...went to the vdub at 9 am friday morning for waffles, ice cream, and omelette :) so good! took a few photos on the way of the batcave members. also had brunch with lx and lj at the blue elephant. we also shopped there hahahaha why am i not surprised. i ended up getting a nice beaded necklace for my mom, which i'm really excited about because it does look pretty good! lj - i retract my statement. then there was the BUM picnic...more delights like cheese and crackers and rotisserie chicken and strawberries.

i'm too lazy to do captions (it's also 1:30 AM so i should sleep while i can, seeing that this week = no sleep, a lot of protein shakes to keep me alive and pumped with vitamins and protein, and sci-li ness), so here we go! i just chose some of the better/more interesting ones.

bliss!

sun and books and loved ones and food and cool, soft bedsheets are all i need in life to feel happy.

but to feel REALLY happy, i need the opposite: dreary days plashed with gray and slush, tedious readings and work assignments, cruel deadlines, bad ratty food, and mercilessly cold rooms.

in short, i am trying to make every single day count. when i wake up, i rejoice that i am given another day to explore what's out there and also what's within myself - my strengths, idiosyncracies, virtues and weaknesses.

there are only 4 more weeks left (i fly on saturday may 17th back to singapore, arriving just in time on the 19th for mom's birthday!), and even though there will be final exams and essays and shipping/packing/storing to do, it'll be GOOD. we will enjoy slow breakfasts, movies, batcave gossip sessions, good books, day trips (hopefully to block island), spring clothes, cherry blossoms and daffodils.

p.s. the title of the post reminds me that i'm still on my quest to find a reliable lip balm that will work as well as Bliss's. mom passed her used Bliss lip balm to me 1.5 years ago, and i'm still using it everyday. it makes for a great primer for other lip balm/gloss. unfortunately Bliss has stopped producing the product. if anyone has recommendations - let me know!
p.p.s. ax, st and i went to the 80s party yesterday - spandex/leggings/headband/golden fun! the band (the Rock), was surprisingly good...they sounded like the real deal for the covers. too bad not many people showed up though.
p.p.p.s. yesterday i had a decent conversation with a stranger out on the grad center lawn about cantonese - more specifically, the linguistic problems of representing spoken cantonese and its relation to standard written chinese. spontaneous fun. also, he had blue eyes and an earnest, passionate air that reminded me of someone from a long time ago.

spring what? and the little mermaid

spring weekend! feels like it's been the weekend for awhile because everyone kinda starts kicking back thursday afternoon... ...sighh i wish this little window of sunniness and imagined freedom would just hold open for a little longer.

i haven't done the typical spring weekend-y thing of concert-going and beer-drinking and whatever else people do, but it has been a wonderful saturday nonetheless. the weather!!! SUN. skirts and dresses. ice tea. bare skin. once the flowers start blooming, Providence will be perfect.

we watched The Little Mermaid after st's bday dinner. i've decided that The Little Mermaid is the most visually stunning of the classical disney canon. the willows in the kiss-the-girl scene, the castle, the underwater 'seascape' - even of Ursula's skeletal lair - were so beautiful and all of us were gushing throughout - kp included, or should i say, especially kp.

watching Disney movies is always such a nolstagic experience. i'm not sure how to describe it, but the process of rewatching a movie is always a doubled experience. you feel your 8 year old initial reactions and feelings wash over you, but simultaneously perceive what's going in the movie with older eyes. like when King Tritons destroys the statue of Eric - my feeling changes when i watch it now cuz there is something unsettling about her idolation of him. oh and i love the scene when she signs her name on the golden parchment that seals the deal with Ursula. and when King Triton sacrifices his crown for her - i'm such a sentimentalist....!

by the way, i'm screwed for this week; don't know if can make it out alive. i keep wanting to give up, to just let the grades slide but how does one surrender such a thing that is, to bluntly put it, part of one's affirmation of self worth. maybe that's overly harsh, but my mind keeps warping back to that one conversation about how maybe i should try to let these small things go. (it's sooo hard though)

wronged

i wish i didn't have to wait two whole days to argue in defense of my history midterm essays. but perhaps it is a good thing cuz right now my anger could overcome all sensibility.

the injustice of it all!!!!! i have concluded that many TA's make for unfair graders, as evidenced by those who oversee my comparative literature and history sections. i have had multiple points taken off for a supposed grammar 'mistake' that is actually not a mistake, but rather a convention stipulated by the MLA and Strunk/White's The Elements of Style (the ultimate authority on grammar). and now for two pratically flawless history essays, i am penalized for going over the "page limit" when there was no terminology ("max" "limit" or "x to y") written on the exam of ANY such limit.

i feel so terrible because i'm conflicted between feeling angry at the injustice of receving A minuses when the TA clearly comments that the essays are excellent analyses. (i can't help thinking he's just trying to find something wrong with my essay because throughout both papers there are only ticks and praise)

so just because i chose to not play around with margins, spacing and font out of consideration for the reader's eyes, just because i just happen to be perhaps a little more perceptive and recognize the need to write cohesive arguments... ...for that i am penalized. and um, my essays were SO concise; i would totally challenge my TA to write better ones.

so help me come friday. i will seriously appeal to the professor if i don't get As.

moments of distraction - birthdays and study abroad

i just bought st's birthday prezzies (a belt and beaded necklace to match her spring clothes). excited about her birthday because tn and i have planned a kind of a treasure/clue hunt that involves her going around to friends and having to tell them each something they don't know about her in order to retrieve clues (coded into pictures). these clues shall lead to a somewhat anti-climax of a dinner proposal. lol. but we thought the process would be more fun for her. i love birthdays!

people around me have been feeling blue..
so let me repeat my little inspiration mantra,
let go of anxieties, sing loudly, breathe deeply, laugh freely and love!!

i'm so distracted...by a multitude of things. went on the cambridge site to read the alternative prospectus on Pembroke College and it sounds too good to be true. i really lucked out. but the hesitation and self-doubt come in waves now and then; it's a very internalised thought process that is never fully articulated, perhaps in fear of the realisations that it may potentially precipitate.

but i could write, and think, about this forever.

back! after a massive account retrieval session

it took awhile for me to figure out which account i had used, and now i'm back because the daisy layout is too pretty to just leave behind. plus it heralds spring!

staying for spring break actually hasn't been lonely at all. as mom said, if you know that this isn't a permanent situation, you appreciate the peace and joys of living alone. providence has been nice - sunny everyday so far!

and now for a little recap on what i've been up to...
- ketchup reading: Morisson's Beloved and Conrad's Lord Jim
- cooking dinners
- spending nearly $180 on clothes (many many things since everything is on sale now), which i'm surprisingly very happy about. usually i end up feeling guilty and low after buying lots of stuff cuz it's kind of like a degradation in moral capital for me. hmmm i always buy my clothes in bundles - half my autumn/winter stuff was bought freshman year thanksgiving with kd. good times! and now all my spring/summer shall date from this little spree with st. also good times!
- homework and transcription work
- chatting to my brother and mom every 12 hours muahaha


such are the joys of holidays!! 好幸福。

trying my best to take this all in slowly and make everyday count...