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.