pretty sure i'm having a premature quarter life crisis.
oy.
i really love target. i think it's all around cute, and just walking through a target store puts me in a better mood. yes, maybe that is slightly unhealthy, but hey, it is a better picker-upper than drugs, alcohol, and excercise (yes, excercise).
since realizing how little luggage i can bring with me to relocate to ohio for the next 2.5 months, i've held back from shopping in dallas. it hasn't been difficult, mainly because i tend to still convert the price tags into various asian currencies & become offended or feel an almost insuppressable urge to bargain when the idea of purchasing items even pops into my head.
today, however, i went to target buy something completely practical & non-hedonic (extra large staples for upholstry making, fyi, b/c you know, that's really interesting to share and everything...), but soon found myself with arms full of clothes, waiting in line for the fitting room. SIGH. one item after another (i pulled all these items off of the sale/clearance racks), i started thinking, "GEE! my jeans must have really SHRUNK from the dryer." [the fit of my jeans is how i decide if i've gained weight...and basically, none of them are currently fitting me after five months of buffet-eating] miraculously, however, every piece i picked up today fit loosely, even to the point when i double checked the tags & began thinking that maybe...all the southeast asian eats made me LOSE weight.
my joyous moment didn't last for long though...i came out of the dressing room to show off my new pieces to my mom, who frowned, looked at the tags again, and told me the cold, hard truth. ...i had picked up all sale pieces from the maternity section. SIGH.
i tend to fall asleep in movies quite a bit, and i fell asleep watching indecent proposal with my parents earlier this week (my mom is a huge fan of demi moore pre-ashton days. i guess she's not fully in the know of who ashton is. she just calls him "the younger guy with longer hair"), and i remember i woke just in time for this scene (after my parents had to fill me in on pretty much the entire movie)...
david (woody harrelson), the hubs who agreed to let his wife be with another man (the charismatic & handsome robert redford...) for a night for a million dollars (ah, movie circa '93 when that amt seemed much more & the US dollar was so much more attractive of a currency...), just a fill-in for those who haven't seen/may have also slept through the movie: I thought we were invincible. But now I know that the things that people in love do to each other, they remember. And if they stay together, it's not because they forget. It's because they forgive.
a quote like that, and an episode of HIMYM like this (probably my favorite of season 3 so far) trigger that bit of that hopeless romantic in me (which i think is a contradicting term in itself & another entry in itself).
well. good thing it doesn't take much to return to reality & remember that life goes on when the cameras stop rolling. alas :[ c'est la vie.
3 stops, 2 suitcases filled to the brim & on-the-border of overweight, 1 calendar day - and i am back in the us of a. it's actually been a full week since i've been back in texas. during this week, i've managed to unpack the suitcases that i struggled so long and tediously to stuff and zip, and i even found my way down to austin to see some missed-faces. the past two days, however, i have been embracing my typical home-habits.
every break, i tend to soak up a pinch too much enthusiasm from watching the food network excesisvely and end up actually aspiring to work the kitchen. today i purchased a variety of odd ingredients (can of black beans and nectar, both included in the cart of hodgepodge craving-satisfiers) to create some stellar concoction, whose recipe i envisioned myself penning down in a hippie-bound notebook with browned pages. unfortunately, the reality turn out was several-folds: `1) the brownies i attempted to bake from scratch and with all substituted ingredients (in a meager strive to be healthy sort of way) were awful, just purely awful. silver lining: my mom enjoyed them and has eaten half the pan. i worry for her taste buds, esp since i know she's not one of those "aw, honey, because you baked them, of course i'll eat them" type of mom who bothers to cushion my feelings. they really do taste like mexican food...mushed. i guess in the spirit of cinco de mayo...OLE. eat the brownies, mom, eat the brownies.
a few entries ago, i wrote a couple of absolute riveting [HA] paragraphs regarding my broken electronics. well, many $$$$ down later (sigh), i have replaced the broken with the new, including a blackberry. i am now an official crackberry head. however, having all of my life & its tech support sides synced has its down sides. for example, i used to be excited everytime i approached my computer to check my email. now, i know what emails i get instaneously. the brief excitement from before when i'd click on my gmail bookmark just is not there anymore. i guess the moments away from the internet made me realize how much i appreciate it; now that it's readily available, it's not too special anymore. it's true. i only want what i can't have.
with my suitcases finally empty from singapore, i've begun the process of refilling them for the summer. out come the trinkets & summer dresses and in go slacks, sweaters, and button ups. this entire past year, starting last may, has been filled with packing and unpacking, one after another. through it all, i feel like my head, my heart, and my body are usualy all in dfferent places, one failing to catch up with the others. trying to be and feel fully here, wherever i am, is quite a challenge.
i'm still in singapore, i'm still in austin, and i'm supposed to be in cincinnati in less than a week. maybe everything will piece together by august.
the past few days i've been spending a large portion of my time packing. while i personally think i've become quite a snazzy weekend-trip packer, these large packing jobs are still beyond my skillz. probably the worst case of this was moving out of my dorm room freshman year. i had no exams yet managed to not finish packing the entire room until my parents had already showed up at my door. furthermore, i rode for 3.5 hrs back to dallas in the same position, without moving - with my still-inflated yoga ball pressing me against my seat since the entire car was packed full. how? i know not.
two years later, and unfortunately, the story has not changed much [with the exception that i did not pack my yoga ball to singapore, although it is still inflated and has remained so all the various times i've moved it since freshman yr]. attempting to fit a semester's worth of stuff [used not b/c of a lack of a better term, but really just for the fact that it generalizes & accurately reflects all that i'm stuffing in. pure stuff] into two suitcases was impossible. i added on an additional backpack [80 oz] and a duffle...everything is BARELY fitting. should check-in stop me tomorrow morning and question how a duffle+huge backpack = personal item+small carry on, i'll have to pray/wink/cry [in that precise order] myself onto the plane, hopefully with all my bags in tact.
so, while sweating bullets [in my non-aced, extremely humid singaporean dorm room], i slowly realized how much the small things add up - the small knicknacks here and there that i'll collect/keep/pick up for the keepsake; a bit of this to remind me of that trip, a little of that to represent so-and-so. overtime [a semester to be exact], the little things collect and become excess baggage [or rather the 5kg that won't stay within the designated luggage].
with one suitcase down, i formulated one of those "only b/c my mind is going crazy" metaphors. my daily pack-rat/keep-it-all habits extend beyond southeast asian trinkets; the habit leads to a pile of back-tracking memories [not the fond ones, but the ones that stay past their welcome & hinder present/future judgments due to pure sentimentality] that cause present&future stuttering. maybe i've always subconsciously made this connection; maybe that's why it feels so good to get rid of things sometimes. or to pass them on. i'm not sure exactly how much i got from these past few months, but i'm sure that i've figured some things about letting go of things; it's not the receiving that's the problem, it's the ridding process. regardless, these months are done, the page is mid-turn, and the hand flipping through is slightly more steady and sure. only slightly though.
on a less personal note...
my british lovey from singapore is in love with this song; when we are listening to this song on the plane during departure/landing, she will ignore the flight attendant who signals/yells/pulls to get us to pause the ipod; when others speak during this song, she thinks they're disrespecting the music; whenever we heard this song on the streets on bangkok [which was quite frequenly], we'd stop until it finished. anyway, basically, i've listened to this song QUITE a bit since my first week here. HOWEVER. i didn't pay much attn to the lyrics until recently...and um, let's look at them shall we:
My heart’s crippled by the vein
That I keep on closing
You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding
... graphic much? seems in the middle of this british idol's pop hit, she decided to insert an extra dose of emo-licious-lyrics. i think the imagery is disguised behind the catchy tune, but now i can't listen to the song without imagining McDreamy & open-heart surgery.
heading back to america in t-8 hours.
adios-la, singapura
local singaporeans love asking me what sports i play, or what sort of athletic activity i am involved with back home. i used to think it was just a generic greeting-esque question, like "do you have siblings" or "what's your favorite food" or "what is your take on clinton vs. obama's view on [america's pork consumption/any other topic]." something along those lines. i've learned, however, that all these inquiries do not stem from my impeccable graceful balance [ha] or agile moves [double ha], but rather because i'm broader, wider, bulkier & darker than the avg singaporean. SIGH. the wakeboarding & surfing instructors were both grossly disappointed when they judged me to have participated in regular, outdoor sports; instead, they found themselves with a clumsy student that can barely jump without spraining an ankle [hey, it's happened. don't judge]. oh well. c'est la vie.
off to vietnam now. plan to do the entirity of vietnam, ho chi minh to hanoi in 3.5 days w/o flying. oof.
my friend christophe, as i like to call him, has urged me to write something since i hit submit on the previous entry. since then, i've thought of blurbs here and there, but no little blurb has grown into a full fleshed paragraph.
however, being as skilled as i am at picking just the right time for things...i am now writing. why? because i have two of my hardest finance tomorrow from 9am-3pm of course. rarely has there been a better time to write a blog entry. no doubt about it. consider this a hodgepodge of the happenings [or rather, the mental on-goings] as of late.
snaps to you, singapore/NUS...
for promoting the anti-plastic bags campaign! in addition to overwhelming the shops with "i'm not a plastic bag" bags, the school also charges for take-away bags now. 10cents/bag. even those odd ads that talk about turtles..and plastic..and choices..and...well, who knows what point they're trying to get at; regardless, snaps to you, singapore, for promoting the plastic-reduction campaign. and while paper recycling isn't wildly popular (or even slightly available in most cases), the school has set its printers to print double-sided on default. genius! esp. good for me b/c i always mess up when i try to print double-sided. [i mean, seriously, that tiny little indescript instructional image about which side is up is HARDLY instructional.] gg, singapura
also. i sincerely feel that i've met some of the brightest people here. really. singaporeans seem to combine a good mix of work ethics & discipline with lots of ingenuity. maybe it's bc asia really is growing & exploding & they're in the right place at the right time, but really, my classmates are so freaking bright. seeing that my classes here are graded on a bell curve & i have two of my hardest finals back to back tomorrow, their bursting intellects are not currently working in my favor...
along the lines of the whole changing dynamics of asian growth, i think the resumes the students here hold are quite impressive. i'm not talking about killer gpas, but one guy in my group has been running his own international, 30employees+ business since he was 21 [4 years now]. another girl works for the UN 7 does relief work in Africa, another girl works for Bloomberg, and another guy moved to the US for a year to run the marketing department for a start up in Pittsburg. of course, not only do they pwn me & then some on all sorts of US knowledge, they also seem to have a vast mental storage of asian & european insights that put me to shame. again, back to how all this intellect is currently working against me as my textbook sits in my backpack, which is still zipped.
this blurb has sufficiently been exhausted.
moving on.
mayhaps i will dump some semester wrapup thoughts my last four days here, post vietnam trip, but in the meantime, i have to say that the most refreshing thing about this land of merlions & hainanese chicken & egg pratas & queueing is how chill it has all been.
i remember being led around my dorm on move-in when someone pointed out the tv room as the chill-out room. i chuckled a little thinking it was the strangest title [confession: 'chill' always seemed like a geographic buzz word to me. along the lines of mad, wicked, hella, etcetcetc]. also ironic is that the temperature here never seems to fall below 85*F and your skin is never quite dry [nor your laundry]. and yes, i probably should include a significant factor in that i really did live for the past 4 months plane ticket/bus to plane ticket/bus with a few hours of lectures a week in between, hardly much to complain about. but yes, taking it all into account, singapore has been so chill, and hopefully, this will cast its lasting effect on me.
there is something so simply reassuring [despite being scientifically inaccurate, yes yes] about realizing that while being 13 hours ahead [of typical life, as i know it back home], the sun still comes out [tomorrow, techincally] and yes, there will be rain [in fact, at approximately 3pm everyday for approximately 30 minutes], but the sunshine will come back, and the day after, too. life keeps going, and we'll all float on all right.
</end word vomit>
since the beginning of my temp. relocation to asia, i've really picked up on a few new favorites [*this blog will, unfortunately, not be one of those blogs that will be shortly mentioned below where complete strangers will stumble upon it & consider it a gem; instead, it will probably [cast this effect on most other readers and] be an unsteady flow of thoughts that i hope to recall by skimming these lines a year from now. *end disclosure]:
- black coffee: sipped via straw, preferrably hot [often resulting in scorching the top of my mouth], when iced, i still prefer a little sugar. i was a caramel macchiato/frappachino addict for years until last fall, when the twin girls i tutored and i had a lesson at starbucks & i ordered a macchiato while they grabbed regular, black coffee. One of them looked at me blankly, and really without judgment but more out of mere, innocent disbelief, and asked, "wait, when you say you love starbucks, you don't actually drink their coffee?" that, and my dad always told me i'd be an adult the day i started appreciating black coffee. not sure about the adult part, but black coffee sure can be tasty.
- taste of beer: okay, my intake of alcohol since being 21 still varies between barely to none, but the taste of beer has really grown on me. #1 pick: corona extra, #2: heineken; actually, edit: #1 pick: water, #2: corona; #3: heineken.
- wes anderson movies: i tend to fall asleep in most movies [esp those that begin after 10pm...or really any time of the day now that i think about it], but after watching darjeeling limited & the royal tenenbaums in singapore, i've decided to expand my love for the films into support for the director as a whole.
- reading blogs: gone are the days when i check xanga subscriptions, but i have found a new addiction to good blogs. http://lexxy-pie.livejournal.com/ hiya (1/2) is my favorite entry. i feel slightly voyeuristic at times from reading so many blogs...esp since they are all from people i have never met. oy :-[
- vegetarian food: asia does mock meat well! & tofu, my most dreaded enemy since childhood (t'was up there with bittermelon & eggplant), is probably one of my favorites of all time now. i will surely miss all the ways singaporeans eat tofu when i'm back home, one of my favorites being yong tau foo
- folksy music: i've previously only been able to categorize my taste in music as "easy listening," unfortunately, this gets lumped together, or at least mentally in my mind, as 'adult contemporary,' which raises a great deal of undesirable associations/schemas in my head. with a little help and enlightenment from my singaporean/cornellian soulmate stephanie, however, i've realized that in the end, i just like folksy music. upon recommendation: here's a brett dennon song i listen to quite a bit.
- papaya: i've hated papaya [and most tropical fruits] with a previously comparable tenacity as my hatred for beer, tofu, and black coffee, but like all of those listed, i've grown to love it in singapore. maybe because the papapyas here are 1. prepared, 2. cheap, 3. sweet like brown sugar, and 4. readily available, as are most fruits. i don't even know how to sustain this love for papaya when i'm home. i don't even know how to pick a good papapya, what's an appropriate price for it at the market, or how to preserve it. must get my papaya learn on upon return.
- the color red: i don't know why i never appreciated this color more. for some reason, it used to seem so plain, so...primary, and so basic, but really, red is the about as exciting as a color can get. really. what doesn't look good in red? minus teeth, i'd have to say nothing.
alrighty. trip wrap-up entry is a-coming. i miss singapore/being abroad/the familiar faces already.
during one of several group meetings today, one of my group members rhetorically asked (after we showed him the website), "Is wikipedia the Bible?"
of course, we laughed it off initially, then very seriously, my other group member turned to him and replied, "well, it's right...pretty much...ALL THE TIME."
later i got to thinking about my great love for wikipedia. it's one of my bookmarked buttons on my IE dashboard. i use wiki as a verb very liberally and as a part of everyday speech. i read the wikiHOW section on my iGoogle homepage countless times last summer at work (i even read about how to throw a middle school, themed, slumber party. yes, i wasted a good 45 seconds of my life). currently, i read wikiTravel before i ever commit to buying a lonely planet book, and of course, INVESTOpedia saves my life everyday in finance class. all this love taken into account, i'd say it's never a question of whether or not i'd access wikipedia on a daily basis, but rather, how frequently i access wikipedia on a daily basis.
then the latter part of the question was rather sad. yes, i wholehearted believe that the Bible is the living word of God. i don't question the legitimacy of its words. still, though, reading the Bible for me is an odd practice. first of all, it's a practice i skip out on all too often. i think i love prayer a lot more than the Bible, and i've been trying to increase the latter for quite some time now. secondly, reading the Bible is either like a beach read or Shakespeare to me - i can skim it easily and in my mind, it seems like fairy tale after fairy tale, OR, i can attempt to chew on it and pause and ponder upon it and give it time to sit and soak in slowly. again, i'm still trying to increase the latter. regardless of what i try, however, i realized the very sad statistic that i certainly do frequent wikipedia more often than my Bible.
have search engines and online resources become the new bible
since day two of my arrival in singapore land, i've noticed a pattern in my everyday living. no, it is not just daily sweat baths due to humidity nor the constant carrying of an umbrella in anticipation of the 3pm showers. it is the trend that my material goods, especially the pricey ones, are all degenerating, dying, and dead.
let's see the list, shall we.
- my laptop. the good o' dell inspiron 700m i've had since pre-college has served me well throughout the past few years. i've spilt water on it, attempted to blowdry the damage via ruby's overheated hair dryer, melted off the keyboard, and begged dell's customer service to repair the poor thing. i've shoved in various bags, purses, crevices around the room, left it to burn in my backseat in the Texas sun, and even gotten some sand under the keys while attempting to be productive on the beach. alas, the little thing is fighting for its last few solid breaths as each day, there will be some sort of seizure-esque flashing of the screen to solid colors, scrambling of color pixels, or the best one - a complete automatic restart.
i considered making a mac-switch [esp. since stephanie and i had the same laptop before, and it's only a good idea to continue the tech twin trend, right?], but i think i'll end up with a thinkpad [preferrbly x61] when i'm back on US soil. hopefully, this little guy will make it through the summer, and hopefully, lenovo will acknowledge struggling college students in america & offer some sort of back-to-school deal that probably won't be a hefty discount, but one that i would go after anyway.
- my ipod. i never watched felicity [where she strolls down an east coast street with the theme song playing, and you can practically see the emo wheels turning in her head] but being one of those people who often imagine a soundtrack to his/her life, something does feel missing when i'm walking down a street alone or sitting by the window on a long bus ride without a song of the moment coming through those white ear pieces. i've also had my ipod since pre-college & it's had its fair shares of bangs and bruises. many times i've received the little picture asking me to take it to the mac doctors, but each time, i've simply refused & believed ferventy in the vitality of my piece of white&metallic. this semester, however, my itunes kept on asking me to restore settings to default and detecting a corrupt ipod :[ i guess it's time for goodbye. ..and a new hello. which version is still yet tbd.
- my phone. born sometime between high school and college, this black samsung has fought a good fight. it's bounced back from cement, concrete, brick, tile, grass, and carpet, regardless of how often or high i've accidentally let it loose. i noticed, however, when i was stuck in the san fran airport for 10 hrs due to a delayed fight, pre-singapore, that when i text, the address book is only able to load half the A names, and if i do ever dare tor desire to send a msg to anyone whose name begins with any other letter of the alphabet, i'd better commit their number to memory. that, and the screen also enjoys freezing every two hours or so. i'm looking forward to its replacement though - blackberry curve ftw.
- my sunglasses. i've bought countless pairs of cheap aviators from ny's chinatown, malaysia's chinatown, singapore's chinatown, etcetc, you get the point, but they all break. the lens falls out, a leg will break, a screw will get loose, i'll realize that the $5 pair of plastic & bendy metal is all too bendy, etcetc. the reasons are numerous and plentiful and i've still yet to learn my lesson to stop buying these cheap sunglasses which don't really fit my face in the first place. through all these temporary bad purchase decisions, i've always loved housing the knowledge that when they all fail, i still my trust pair of burberry sunglasses from 2005. they've gone through a whole lot with me, and just yesterday morning, as I stuffed them in my bag, i had a silent moment of gladness and appreciation of its classic endurance and dependability. little did i know. little did i foresee that after a few hours of biking on pualu ubin (jungle-island off of singapore), the left screw of the sunglasses would give out, and off comes left leg :[ farewell, beloved sunglasses.
- the ricoh. the ricoh was a needless & extravagant purchase. my previous camera [a canon sd, one which everyone & their mamas had] was functioning fine, i had just bought a dslr, but no, i was just greedy. so i spend a good amt on this ricoh, and little did i know that after taking it to the beach, leaving it in the sand, and accidentally falling asleep for a good half hr, the lens would be damaged. whodathunkit? not i. now it's costing me about 2/3 of the price to repair it back in good o' america.
well, this post has been needlessly extensive and detailed.
a more riveting capture of my life in the days to come...
