an update before the semester whooshes over me

for the most part i have slipped back quietly into life here and i am happy that the transition has been pretty seamless, drama-less. i love being near pembroke campus, with the Vdub, cvs, and restaurants all seconds away. the house is comfortable and home-like with its stripey cushions and skylight. i love all of my housemates and am growing increasingly fond of the boys. my room is nice - i think my things clash somewhat with the furniture that came with the room (black desk, bookcase and chest of drawers) but it's okay: we adapt and make do with what we have.

i have resolved to be frugal this year, which is why my 8 summer/autumn tops shall suffice. (my mom sent over 2 more so that means that i will not have to exhibit a day-of-the-week rotation of shirts :P) it is really time to start appreciating the value of things and this includes the value of money... so here's to no more new clothes until it is imperative to buy warmer winter things!

classes are interesting but not terribly exciting. i am being pragmatic this semester and finishing up concentration courses. so, two seminars - one on Ovid and the Metamorphoses, the other on Milton's shorter poems. advanced japanese. children's thinking with the cogsci department. i find that Brown students often try to wear their courses on their sleeve and are often secretly proud of how funky or interdisciplinary their courses are. i guess i'm sticking with my comfort zone this semester - hopefully i can do something braver in the spring :).

i guess senior year for me is characterized by a "i don't give a damn what other people think". i just want to do what is right for myself and for my loved ones, and be happy and enjoy the year. oh and get into grad school or find a job. (the GREs are nightmares. i cracked open the practice booklet for lit today and was horrified to find that they ask identification questions on characters, authors, dates, works. studying for it will be exponentially harder than for the SATs.)

anyway, life as a college student is just amazing :). even though i sometimes catch myself counting down to the holidays, i know deep down that i want to savour this year, slowly, with heart, mind and eyes wide open - well, maybe eyes closed, for the more tender moments.

不得不爱

希望自己可以認識點樣獨立。。。

providence, rhode island

i'm here!
jetlagged, and too lazy to get started on cleaning and decorating my new room.

i feel really apprehensive about this new semester but i hope that being mad-busy will keep me sane and happy. the occasional pangs of home/love-sickness will hopefully fade with time. as with last year, i just have to stop comparing the two universities and just focus on what i am blessed with right here.

on classes... i'm disappointed that japanese and latin conflict. and that english and the introduction to education class do, too. :( so i might end up taking english, italian, japanese and a course on children's thinking. this whole liberal arts approach is quite refreshing, but i will miss prac crit, one-on-one supervisions, and the english bunch a lot.

up at 4 am

as much as i like the sound of rain against glass, i really would like it to stop about now because i can't fall back asleep. i need sleep seeing that yesterday i had a bit of a fever and aching muscles (the flu?), and i can't afford to fall sick, not now! actually come to think of it, there is no time to be ill this year.

i've also been kept up by thoughts about everything. you know how one thing leads to another and before you know it, your mind has decided to review every thought and memory and worry it has produced in the past x days. summer is always the time of thinking, and to be honest, i am getting quite tired of my own thoughts and of having to present them in ways that make for easy listening for others. because you'd probably need a comfortable armchair, several mugs of coffee and many hours in a day to listen to all that my very confused mind is thinking.

it is probably time to start reading again, for reading takes us out of self-centredness and into shared thought. as usual i am too lazy to ever read seriously over the summer holidays - actually i am just too lazy about everything in general :P. hopefully i'll make up for this back in college... just thinking about the things-to-do in the fall semester scares me a bit.

okay well i guess i should try to go to sleep again. suddenly i recall the corinne bailey rae song - it makes me miss sophomore year when life was so much simpler. i remember singing trouble sleeping a lot in the suite even though i never had trouble sleeping (i'd hit the pillow sleeping most nights from fatigue) nor was i in love (though i desperately wanted to be). and now perhaps both are true but i don't think they are related; no, i have been having trouble sleeping because of the uncomfortable bed mattress and new room...

three weeks to Brown

internship ended yesterday, but as usual my excitement and relief is somewhat lost in the sobering awareness of time going by faster and faster. to be honest i'm not really sure what i learned while working for this publishing company - learning is often latent. but while hunting for errant single quotation marks in a novel manuscript one day, i realized that publishing probably isn't the career for me. it's a natural avenue for english majors but i would like to think that there is more to me than editing, writing, sales.

but if not publishing, then what? my parents are not entirely happy with the idea of me becoming a teacher, unless i pursue a phd and teach at university. the scary thing is i've been thinking about doing that but i wonder if such a decision would be cowardly: i'd be sticking to what i'm comfortable with. sigh asian parents are particularly preoccupied with professional and highly 'specialized' jobs; ultimately, it's a question of income and status. they just want me to be happy and comfortably settled, but surely one can be happy even if one is not a doctor, lawyer, professor, engineer, banker?

a small part of me aches in regret though, when i think about how much easier this would all be if i had just chosen to study law or medicine. such hypothetical speculations are unproductive, not to mention unhealthy, but they underline the self doubt and worrying over careers that a lot of liberal arts students experience. (especially Brown students?) my problem is that i also lack ambition: i am not particularly drawn to power, money (but increasingly so), status, nor have i ever dreamed of becoming very professional at something. i am motivated more by pride, love, love for learning. hmm maybe pride is tied with status though..

summertime is always a time for thinking.
as if we didn't do enough of that during the academic year! which is starting REALLY SOON. yeah i don't even know how i feel about that anymore. it's like half a cup of excitement, one cup of happiness, one cup of nervousness, and a teaspoon of complete freaking-out-ness haha.

by the way, i'm returning to Singapore earlier. i will be back tomorrow evening! and restored to my laptop and bed and new room (i stay in River Valley now). and books. summer 2009 reading list: the golden notebook, a room in paris, the secret agent. oh and if i can recommend one book for people to read... George Eliot's Middlemarch. Eliot is too often overshadowed by Virginia Woolf in the minds of modern readers!

time to start packing. oh i will be sad to leave HK... my stay this summer was particularly fun and full of good food. plus my cantonese has never been better since that has been my main language this summer, to the point where my mom starts finding it strange when i speak in english! i'm quite proud of that :).