i spent the weekend in philly

and i had a blast.

a different perception

my roommate has just come back from india and in his conversations about the country, i am shocked by the callous anecdotes he tells and the skewed facts he has. but it's not him i think that bothers me but rather the perception that anything west of california is exotic, inhuman, 'cool.' i am amazed that after spending close to a month in india, he says that india has a third of the world's population. or how he tells of his train trips and the abundance of pick-pockets. or how he recounts a story about a blind man squatting by the roadside to eat and says it was 'cool.' it infuriates me to no end that this college promotes cross-cultural trips across the world but the only wisdom students glean is that Time magazine pictures don't lie. no sorrow about extreme poverty and destitution, about living with nothing and faced with hardships. no correlations made between rich super power nations and exploitation. no international fraternity formed with shared interests and justice intentionally pursued.
it's all so hard to write about. what do i know?

click click click sigh

the only thing worse than an empty inbox is an un-updated blog.

jan 24

ugh, being residence assistant is horrendous.
i bade farewell to ski roundtop today, the venue of many of my spectacular spills and my less fascinating skills. done with skiing for j-term. now all i have to do is continue skiing in february and i'll be able to impress everyone. ;)
i want to go to new york this weekend again. i don't know what it is but everytime i'm bored, i run to new york. during my entire semester in philadelphia, when new york was a $10 and 1-1/2 hour bus ride away, i never once ventured.

you shameless opportunist

this is preposterous.
and for that matter, so is the purpose driven life. and the entire left behind series.
please read responsibly.

a kindly greeting to me (and all other people living on my side of the building).

i'm freezing

rueing the day when i thought that i could make it through this winter with my stylish clothing. and the heating component in my room has never felt warm causing me to wonder if there is heat in this building at all.

the winter that masquerades as fall

the upshot of having warm weather at this time of the year is that i don't have to romp around college in my awful puffy winter clothes.

coffee

now that it's 1:30 and i'm wide awake, the coffee doesn't sound as enticing as before.

books

the downside to having my bookshelf facing my desk is the distraction i face everytime i'm trying to do serious work. just tonight, i was avidly engrossed in an episode of 'jack & bobby' but the shiny spines of recently purchased books peered at me from the shelves, daring me to read them. oh, temptation is so strong.

because weyling refuses to put pictures on her blog, i'll do her the favor. in true 'we-are-youthful-so-we-will-take-many-pictures-of-ourselves' style, we took this picture after having our very first snow fight.

surprised yet?

and now, for an encore, how about i post an update for three consecutive days. i quite like this january term thing - especially when i'm only enrolled in one activity class. i enjoy rolling out of bed at any time and dividing my time between work, watching tv, reading, blog surfing, cooking instant noodles, and filling out internship applications.
of late, i have come to see coffee in the way the old folks see it - as a dessert beverage after an enjoyable meal. no longer is coffee the substance i turn to when i'm trying to stay awake to finish an assignment or concentrate, it's the digestion supplement - my Eno.
of course i don't know why i'm telling you this.

app. status

giddy with excitement from having filled out two internship applications. inside, i am nervous - how to prepare? what to expect? will it work out?
i tricked myself into persevering tonight. first, i watched 'sky captain and the world of tomorrow' (fabulous), then i trooped to the mini mart and bought a box of luxurious milano cookies and ingredients for hot chocolate. i promised myself the cookies if i finished the goldman sachs application. a sentence into my cover letter, i caved and ripped the packaging open, savoring my first cookie. it was a marvellous cookie because i mustered enough resolve to finish the application and gorge on another cookie. then, i decided to complete another application. so i did.
mmmmm

an update

i stumble across campus like a forlorn lover, still enraptured by philadelphia and full of contempt for grantham. it's more the case of me being cross for having to sit in my room all day without a vehicle at my disposal; the grocery list keeps getting longer.
this j-term is funny - usually classes would have been cancelled around this period on account for it being snowy. this week however, i have had 3 classes cancelled because it's too warm/rainy - snow and water typically don't coexist. i shouldn't lie and say that it isn't a relief - after what happened at my first ski experience on monday, trust me, i could wait a little longer - and most of all, it gives me time to catch up on things i would much rather do, namely watch dvds and read ridonkulous fiction.
but back to the sticks of being i am in now - i walk around in outrageous clothing and this tao look on my face, trying to recreate urbana but coming off as pretentious (thin line, thin line). just this evening, craving human interaction from afar, i stride to the student union on the pretext of obtaining a dessert but really to pretend as if i could hop to a trendy cafe in moments of distraction. but it's not the same (woe).
at this point, the discerning reader is likely to be thinking "why on earth is he typing such a long post. he doesn't even have an exam soon." oh, but you are wrong. piles of internship applications i am sitting by, but none have i started on. summer 2005 - new york/washington d.c./los angeles/ san francisco/ london/ grantham?

p.s. i don't know how it started. okay i do. i began to tell querying friends about my return home and without giving much thought, i said 'most likely summer' and then telling them about internships and all the exciting things i had planned. after a few iterations, i began to believe it myself - that i was coming home for summer. i've actually started to look forward to it, not the 40 hour journey, but the food, friends, and the extremely cheap things to buy (by comparison of course). i've even been thinking of a trip to bali or phuket, but it would be in bad taste to visit the latter while the former is still too dangerous. and of course singapore. how i crave katong laksa even though i hardly took advantage of presby's proximity to this lala/santan haven.

paper cuts

having never suffered a paper cut, the two wounds i sport on my hands this week are a reminder of the life americana i now lead.

urges

suddenly swept by an impulse to travel and was desperately looking for cheap tickets to london for spring break. alas, tickets were upwards of 400 dollars and considering the credit card bills i racked up during christmas, i shouldn't even be thinking about it. but yet, i do. i want to see friends. i want my friends to show me what they see. i want to sophisticate and invigorate but money is a huge obstacle.
i'm back in grantham and despite what i tell most people, i do miss philadelphia. i miss my alter ego, my inconspicuous self. the city transforms a person and when a person says that he or she likes the city, what he/she really means is that s/he likes their own city essence .... notice how gender correct i am in this post?

memoirs of a roving reporter

while i was at resident assistant training (which deserves a separate post by itself), i remembered this funny episode while interviewing the head of the agape center for an article i was writing for the college newspaper.
as i was settling into my chair trying to purge all feelings of discomfort and awkwardness, i whisked out my voice recorder and pressed the red 'record' button. i felt the strange sensation of nothing. i put my ear to the tape but there was no sound. It was then that I realized that I had forgotten to load the batteries the previous night. By this time, the interviewee was rattling off and to avoid looking unprofessional, i put down the recorder as if nothing was wrong, pretending as if the recorder was working, while writing bits of the conversation. at the end of the interview, i had random words strung out in arbitrary order such as "mission trips - good - gives student exposure" which were hardly pulitzer prize winning profound statements. while i wrote the article, i filled in the blanks, e.g. Joe Doe said that "mission trips are good and gives students exposure to the world" which was nowhere close to what he had said. I am the next Jason Blair ;) .