5 posts tagged “singapore”
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
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.
an internal debate
FOR: i'm in singapore, traveling around southeast asia for five months. i probably should document this.
AGAINST: regardless of geography, i still feel pretty bland most times.
FOR: i have awful, very atypical non-neat-asian-female handwriting. my journals are usually chicken scratch that i can barely read with eyes squinted [more so than the usual asian width].
AGAINST: do i really need another reason to further myself towards carpal tunnel, worsened eyesight, and lessened sleep due to internet activities?
FOR: why the heck not.
that last argument was quite winning, wasn't it.
as aforementioned, here is an update on what i look like right now. i'm in asia...so...slightly more asian-fied....
i'm bahhk. [the unnecessarily added h sound really makes it more dramatic, i'd like to think.]
regardless of my mood, i somehow manage to cry during every sitting of these two shows/movies:
+ the last episode of sex&thecity
+ my sassy girl
it never fails.
and i don't know why. i didn't cry in the pursuit of happyness OR the passion of the christ - both of which i feel slightly guilty for, but i can't figure it out. obviously, the following two debunk my theory of having a heart of stone, so why can't i cry at all the expected tearjerkers?
here are the answers to some FAQ's I've encountered in the fast few days:
A:
+ Yes, I went to Boston [thursday - sunday].
+ It was for a field trip [for my major, not a class] with 24 people. Really. This is my first field trip since the 7th grade. I spent all of my middle school years looking forward to the 8th grade field trip to Medieval Times, but when I was in the 7th grade, our middle school's 8th graders went and stole something from there, causing them to forever ban our middle school from taking field trips there. Thus, I haven't been on a field trip in a REALLY long time, and I still hold a grudge for not having ever been to Medieval Times.
+ It was really, really cold. We walked around the Harvard Business School campus in -15 degree weather at 8am. but thank God HBS is brilliant enough to build underground tunnels. I love tunnels!
+ We visited two companies, but they all fed us really well and gave nice gifts. I'm not complaining.
+ I had very yummy clam chowder at the original Cheers bar.
+ Yes, I did see Jason. We spent a day together of him following me around H&M, me taking very embarrassing & touristy pictures in public, eating dimsum [at a restaurant that shows up in the background for a scene in the departed!], touring bc [while i ate frozen yogurt],
+ No, mom, I didn't find anyone to date/marry.
+ and yes, it was so much fun.
here's an attempt to photodump. more are on flickr.
