a favourite, something i've always wanted to post!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mqYL1Bf8cs

i listen to this when i'm in need of inspiration, solace, and direction. it has a way of calming me down and taking me out of my own perspective. it doesn't promise cheer but it does clarify, or set into new relation, one's problems in relation to something else... which could be religious as Foreman believes or it could just be spiritual. melodically the song suggests wallowing, but if you listen carefully it encourages otherwise :).

actually during the harder months last year i listened to this every day for comfort. music has a way of understanding and saying without saying with words, what people cannot. sometimes this alienates us but i wonder how bad it can be to be temporarily alienated and have space to just sit quietly for a little while.

anyway i've been listening to this tonight just because it motivates me to work! get through this period! because this is all so, so, easy really. :) tomorrow's goals: jap revision, outline of paper, and 5 pages.

new bed! and other updates

health and sanity: my new mattress arrived today! i was testing it out just now and almost fell asleep. it's a bit short lengthwise (now half wishing i had bought queen size), but oh well i should probably not spoil myself with too luxurious a bed at the tender age of 21. anyway i am really happy that from tonight onwards i can sleep safely without worrying about bites.

work: 2/5 university applications done. i'm reconsidering the whole phd thing, but will still apply earnestly :). finals are mostly papers... 30 more pages to go, and jap final+presentation.

thinking: about spring semester classes. i'm considering taking only 3, because this semester i definitely lapsed into selfishly and zealously hoarding my time. i've dropped all my volunteer and literary stuff, and have not exercised in goodness knows how long. i might take 4 but do a completely different 4th class... like jazz and american culture! looking up music courses just now which is a bit ironic because in high school, gcse music and flute used to stress me out a lot but lately i have begun to miss the therapy of music. (P.S. my cognitive science professor says that listening to classical music before taking exams improves your performance. somehow i believe in this hypothesis given that the structures underlying classical music provoke anticipation of certain harmonies and structures in your brain. so you know what to do: listen to that Chopin before your final!!)

fun: it awaits on the 21st december when all papers are done. i'm looking forward to seeing what an English Christmas is like. proper choral Christmas carols! bleak wintry days with steaming milk tea and biscuits. and then singapore! it'll be soo good to see my parents again. and swim in the sun. :)

heart: happy once again. i'm very grateful to friends who have a knack of expressing faith in me when i have lost faith in myself. i'm especially grateful to ws and my mom for putting up with my bouts of psychological and moral weakness... and whom bear the brunt of it. but no one should bear the brunt of anyone else's obtuseness. so i resolve to be better. last week was silly, particularly because i KNEW why i was feeling what i was feeling, and because i knew it was really nothing significant compared to past trials and lows. so yeah, resolve to be a good girl...

want to go home

it's easy to be happy sometimes, but in this case, it's easier to be miserable. i want someone to solve my problems for me and i want to go home. i don't really care about anything at the moment. even graduate school applications are starting to seem less important; i've been thinking for awhile that maybe i'm not cut out for academic anyway. i just want to get better and to solve the bug problem because rest is my only consolation, therapy for physical and psychological fatigue.

i hate that you can't solve my problems, and i hate that i am angry with you.

i should have stayed in providence over thanksgiving to handle my work and applications and just rested. oh well it's so typical that we have to learn our lessons the hard way.

itchiness and the statement of purpose

i have barely been able to think of anything else this week. my right arm is swelling to absurd sizes from the welts (which i hypothesize after extensive research to be from bed bites, so i am going to talk to the landlord tomorrow and hopefully call up the local pest control to exterminate those little buggers!!) and it feels sore all the time from all the swelling. the doctor is going to get back to me tomorrow with the blood test report and hopefully it will say that all is well, i am just suffering from an allergic reaction to bites. why am i so sensitive, in all ways?

apart from that, the SoP is proceeding slowly. i have decided to email my references incomplete versions that do not have the final paragraph about school-specific, why-i-want-to-go-to-X-university because for their purposes, they just want to see what i'm interested in. and why i want to do a PhD. why?!? i am not sure. last night was perhaps a slight crisis point as i realized that actually... maybe i don't really like research. i mean, i love reading and analysing stuff, but i have never been too fond of all those daily faculty visits. (by the way, did you know that you can borrow a maximum of 300 books from Brown libraries?! for a 3 month period!) like i'm not sure how i would feel to always be researching stuff and reading other people's works. but you know, i think being a professor would be kinda cool... i would love teaching a class and leading discussions and making interesting connections with modern culture, films, and art even.

anyway this is no time for self doubt. i just have to do it!!!

blah.

i thought that these feelings of alientation from everyone else were because of graduate school applications. when people ask how i am, i'm torn between giving them a superficial answer, and confessing how overwhelming i find the academics + applications process. i sometimes try to avoid social situations where i have to talk about my life because there isn't much to say. (writing about it, on the other hand, frees me from social expectations about how conversations should go and flow.) but turn the conversation to your life, people, ideas, books, style, food, languages, and i will eagerly acquiesce :).

then suddenly i just thought of what mch asked about the impact of study abroad, and even though i strongly denied it that day, now that i think about it more carefully, i realize that she does have a point. maybe i have been repressing the idea that i changed a little. i was so anxious about coming back, so desperate to pick up the loose threads and just continue weaving away familiar, well worn patterns, that i didn't even reflect on how my emotional relationships with people might have changed. i tried to suppress all uneasy realizations that maybe things weren't completely the same.

but of course they are different. blinded by my wishful insistence that everything was to be the way they were in happy sophomore year, i smoothed out all incongruities and discontinuities. i blamed myself for withdrawing voluntarily. but it was not voluntary at all; in fact, this is normal: one year is a long time to be away - one had to, in that one year, turn to other sources of inspiration and solace. i also grew increasingly dependent on WS. i forget that last year i started easing my emotional dependency off family and friends, displacing it onto him. such is the nature of relationships, when best friend and boyfriend and guardian are united in one dear form.

i really miss everyone... and slow lunches, late night movie sessions, spontaneous visits. senior year is the year everyone is busy with their own things. it's the time when we silently struggle to cope with being a student and the thought of not being a student in the near future, but no one is brave enough to talk about what it really means and how much it scares them. if i could, if you would ask, i would tell you that sometimes i feel like i am just compromising. (life shouldn't be a compromise though! who would ever receive a precious gift, say, a beautiful vase with tiny rose buds etched into its glass, but then put a stock of weeds into it. hmm that is a poor analogy... but you get what i mean.)

this has gone on long enough, but i guess self centeredness is not a crime...