You know that red Tartan shirt that I have? That's my lucky travelling shirt. It's one of two things I wear onto a plane (the other being my Duke t-shirt, to help things along at immigration). It seems to have worked so far. None of the planes I've been on have crashed.

Come Irony! Come Fate! To California we go!

Movies:
28 Days Later

Books:
The Road to Lichfield - Penelope Lively

Well, I don't have much to say. Went to the gardens with someone to read . Packed. Went to very long Mass. Fretted about SARS. Etc.

I had a couple of strange dreams about Singapore over the past week - one just last night.

The first one - and this was about five days ago - started with me being in Singapore and hearing the news that the island was flooding. I'm in some high-rise building or another, and I look out the window, and sure enough, the road outside is submerged and the water levels seem to be rising. What's more, the water is icy cold, so that if you try to stay in it for more than a few minutes, you'll die a frozen death like Leonardo DeCaprio in Titanic (don't ask me how I knew this). So I start to flee, and then by that miraculous mode of transportation that seems to exist in dreams, I'm near the Singapore River, and the whole place is sloshing in water, and I'm desperately trying to climb this tower or something to get away from it. I don't think I really felt scared, though. People I knew (I can't remember who they were now) were with me and were also trying to escape. Then smash cut, we're in some hotel, trying to book tickets for the night, convinced that we're going to be safe from the floods there. The hotel is really nice - plush carpets, expensive antiques, the works. I'm frantically trying to negotiate the payment with the receptionist. Finally, we get a room, and then the waters break into the building. We run up the stairs. For some reason, I'm convinced that this is the tallest structure in Singapore, and that we're bound to be safe if we keep climbing. Running. More running. And then I wake up.

Second dream. I'm back home, in a hospital. Jiahao is there, working, and I think that's the reason why I'm there. I'm looking at some huge posters of human anatomy and physiology. We're waiting for Choonping. When he arrives, he seems really surprised to see me, because apparently, I haven't told him that I was going to be home (which I haven't, btw). We head off and land up in (I think) the Victoria Theater, except that there's a McDonald's where the box office should be. There's an extended, and rather complicated segment, where we all buy cheeseburgers. We go into the theater, and the lights dim. All of a sudden, I freeze up with uncertainty. Something is not right. I don't remember taking my final exams for this semester. I think about it even harder, and then realize that I didn't pack away any of my stuff for storage either. Is all my stuff still in my room? Nor do I remember my plane ride home. I feel really baffled, and then there's this extremely bizarre moment where I start wondering if I'm in reality or a dream...and convince myself that what I'm experiencing is real. I swear...for one heartstopping moment, in my dream I'm positive that what's happening to me is real. It's very frightening Then I snap out of it. No way, I say. No way is this happening. I've got to wake up. Got to wake up.

And I wake up.

Clearly, detox is once more in order.

Stress. SARS is stressing me out. People are messaging me to talk about it. I had an hour long conversation today with Von, the harbinger of everlasting doom, which made me feel rather glum. Not that I've been the happiest person in Dixieland for a while now, but you know. Glummer. Whatever.

I'm not going to be musical director next year. I guess the group wanted different people in charge. The entire committee has changed. I suppose it's just as well...the position this year brought me a lot of stress and very little joy. I suspect it's Americans. They really are a different breed. It's amazing how culture can rip your lungs out and leave you gurgling and choking like a fish drying up on the shore.

I just read that last paragraph and realized how incoherent it is.

Went outside to find boxes. From the dumpster. Boxes are on sale for $4.99 a piece at the Duke store. It's a rip-off.

So much to pack and 5 days to do it in. At least I found really cheap storage this year which is a godsend because I'm broke. Seriously. If not for my job I'd be so, so out of money right now. There are just so many tiny, hidden, day-to-day expenses. I hate non-money. I hate it when credit card bills arrive and you're like: ohmygoddidireallyspendsomuchmoney and you did.

Food:
Leftovers

Music:
As - George Michael and Mary J. Blige. Felt like listening to it again. Few years old but still good.

From Cabaret:

What good is sitting alone
In your room?
Come hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret.
Put down the knitting,
The book and the broom.
Time for a holiday.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret.
Come taste the wine,
COme hear the band.
Come blow a horn,
Start celebrating;
Right this way,
Your table's waiting.

No use permitting
Some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away.
Come hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret!

I used to have a girlfriend
Known as Elsie,
With whom I shared
Four sordid rooms in Chelsea
She wasn't what you'd call
A blushing flower...
As a matter of fact
She rented by the hour.

The day she died the neighbors
Came to snicker:
"Well, that's what comes
From too much pills and liquor."
But when I saw her laid out like a Queen,
She was the happiest... corpse...
I'd ever seen.

I think of Elsie to this very day.
I remember how she'd turn to me and say:
"What good is sitting alone
In your room?
Come hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret.

Put down the knitting,
The book and the broom.
Time for a holiday.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret."

And as for me,
I made my mind up, back in Chelsea,
When I go, I'm going like Elsie.

Start by admitting,
From cradle to tomb
Isn't that a long a stay.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Only a Cabarert, old chum
And I love a Cabaret.

too much coffee. see dilbert, 21 apr 2003: Dilbert

badness. in a mess and muddle of editing. i should write one paper at once, not two. or three.

read in the papers today that # tourists in s'pore has dropped by 61% since sars. that's a whole lot of tourists.

food:
crab

Confused and tired and sad. Spent an entire afternoon trying to write a paper and only got 6 pages of it done. Easter used to be fun once. Sigh. Sometimes it really does seem as if life is just day after day after day of doing things just because they have to be done, interacting with people only because they're there, breathing, eating, sleeping, living, dying. It's like there's a great big hole in my chest, and there's something missing there that will never ever be filled, and no matter how much I try, I can't find the thing that's just the right shape to plug that hole. What's even worse is that there are all these smaller holes: inadequacies, fears...wrongness, and like a leaky vessel, I feel everything pouring out of me and away like good wine gurgling down the drain. And no one else stops to say: look, I understand, it's OK that you're broken. No one gives half a damn. I'm like the ugly painting in the art exhibition that people stop at for 5 seconds, long enough to say: "God, that's an ugly painting." and then they walk by and out the door and into the sunshine and forget they ever saw it.

From Straits Times Online, the face our country presents to the world:

"Just look at what happened to tourism in Bali. After the Bali blast last October, tourists the world over would not even touch brochures with the island's name on the cover with a 10-foot pole."

Also:

"But consumers can smell a good deal when they see one."

Rather mortifying.

Music:
Life On Mars - David Bowie

Good Friday. Except for the "good" part.

Trying to decide whether or not to run for musical director next year. Had a mixed experience this semester. Hard to weigh pros and cons.

One presentation down.

OK. Detox is over. Time for the last week sprint. 28 pages to write, 3 presentations to give and a 12 hour recording session in the space of a week. Should be fun. Pray for me.

Into my 42nd hour of caffeine withdrawal. Decided to go into detox for a while as the semester winds down. Might buckle as deadline for big paper approaches, and will definitely need it for marathon 12-hour recording session this Saturday, but for now, I'm off it. Except for the Diet Coke I had at lunch, which doesn't really count.

As I said, the concert went well. We had some issues with our sound techinician, who definitely woke up on the wrong side of bed, but otherwise, all ran as planned. Getting that over with was HUGE. The whole gang ended up in (Cosmic) Cantina afterward, where we sat out in the freezing cold and champed on nachos and got mildly intoxicated on Bud Lites.

Had a nice, unstressful Palm Sunday that included lots of temple smoothing and an extended nap.

Which brings us to 9 more days of school, time enough to tap into the Tao, restore my equilibrium, Zen, whatever, and get into the right frame of mind for the summer. Boo-yah. Time to leave this place.

Back. Tired. Concert went well. Glad that stress is over. Need sleep. Night.

Concert in 3 hours. Trying to eat eggplant parmesan sub and memorize music and fold laundry and change and type this all at the same time.

Somewhat annoyed at being waitlisted for Marine Lab but have not had time to think about it. Too many other things to think about. Like eating. Bit my lip yesterday and have an ulcer the size of Texas. Hate that. Went to see student production of Cabaret (roommate playing piano). Very good. Very very good. Director got offered a job by some talent spotting whatnot right after the show. You should go rent the movie or something. It's a little XXX but there's a point to it all.

23 minutes to leaving. Messy. Don't know why I'm writing here. Going to need lots of water without dying of edema. Must balance metabolites. Gatorade? Stress. Will get coffee later. Only third cup of day, so I have an excuse, and it's our concert night and I need it. I really need it. Please write back soon about summer. I need the advice. Thank you. Will write later.

Good Goats?

C.S. Lewis' take on salvation (in The Final Battle):

"The creatures came rushing on, their eyes grew brighter and brighter and they drew nearer and nearer to the standing Stars. But as they came right up to Aslan one or other of two things happened to each of them. They all looked straight in his face. I don't think they had any choice about that. And when some looked, the expression of their faces changed terribly - it was fear and hatred: except that, on the faces of the Talking Beasts, the fear and hatred lasted only for a fraction of a second. You could see that they suddenly ceased to be Talking Beasts. They were just ordinary animals. And all the creatures who looked at Aslan in that way swerved to their right, his left, and disappeared into the huge black shadow, which (as you have heard) streamed away to the left of the doorway. The children never saw them again. I don't know what became of them. But the others looked in the face of Aslan and loved him, though some of them were very frightened at the same time. And all these came in at the Door, in on Aslan's right."

So despite the fact that the Linns cite Lewis in their argument, I don't think he would have agreed with them. Lewis is neither a universalist, nor a pluralist. He really thought that people would go to Hell, and I think I believe so too. I believe that people can look straight into the face of God and still cling bitterly onto the rottenness of this life. And those people will go to Hell. End of story.

I was tempted to say just put up here that "this blog is on official hiatus until Apr 25th" but decided not to. I hate information blackouts as much as the next person.

Shocking language? Where?

Finished my pharmacology final. Yay, no more pharmacology!

There's nothing to say any more that isn't trite or depressing or repetitive. Isn't this what all blogs slip into after a while, despite all ones lofty intentions? It's a good thing I didn't have any lofty intentions. Now I have an excuse for slipping into the netherland of one sentence paragraphs and meaningless sound bytes.

Language just doesn't do it. I could write ten words or ten thousand and no one would be any closer to realizing what it's like to be me. Writing is like a puppet show. It's our attempt to manipulate life through the medium of words. The problem with this? Puppet shows are entertaining, but what do they tell you about the puppeteer?

I feel so silly writing here. Maybe I should just end this and go back to the e-mails. The only thing going for this blog is that somehow I'm more disciplined writing in here than I am writing e-mail. Plus, I hate e-mail. I must get 60 e-mails a day. It's an ever-growing headache.

I have more things to say. I wanted to talk about a discussion that's going on across the singapore@duke mailing list. I wanted to talk about SARS again, but I can't be bothered now. Some other time.

Daylight savings time has robbed me of another hour of precious sleep. I tried staying off the caffeine on Saturday but got a terrible headache so that's not going to work. Two cups a day doesn't put you over the top as a "heavy" drinker so that's what I'll shoot for until the semester ends. To sleep, and by a sleep to say we end the heartaches and the thousand natural shocks that human flesh is heir to.

A rumor is going around that there's a SARS case in Duke hospital, but there's no official news yet.

Official count for extra time to be spent on Rhythm and Blue: rehearsals: 5 hours, tabling: 4 hours, miscellaneous preparation: x hours, where x is large, concert: most of Saturday. Kill me now.

Bloody SARS. Looks like no one's going to be able to go home this summer at the rate we're going. Also, even if I do end up back in S'pore, I certainly don't fancy working in SGH. Dr. Ben Chua, who's a Singaporean doctor here, is keeping us up to date on the latest news in the medical community, and the latest news, apparently, is not to go anywhere within a thousand miles of Asia till 2 weeks after the last case has been reported. Bad news all around.

Food:
Veggie burgers

Music:
Brown-eyed girl x 100000000000 from one of my neighbors at 2 in the morning.

We recorded one more track for our CD, bumping our total up to 9, which is, coincidentally, the number of hours of sleep I've had in the past 2 days.

No word about the scholarship yet.

Really need to rest. Spring concert is coming up next week Saturday, which = a larger expenditure of time than I really care for at this stage of the semester. Will sleep. Soon.

Duke Women are in the Final Four!

My group is conducting a survey on whip-its (nitrous oxide) for our pharmacology class. Guess what percentage of Duke students responding to the survey have used it (n=200). Closest guess gets a prize. The drug culture here is pretty fascinating, if you really study it. Duke seems so pristine on the surface, and yet underneath it practically crawls with all this interesting, devilish stuff. Locked doors, whispered conversations, sex in the stacks. God bless America.

Marine Lab scholarship news should be out soon. Fingers crossed. Actually, I figure it's a win-win situation for me, because if I don't get the scholarship I just get a longer holiday. I'm not going to quarrel with that.

I was taping Six Feet Under (season 3) for you people, and all was going well until I brilliantly taped an episode of The West Wing over Episode 1 and part of Episode 2. Thunk. I shall try and download them instead.

Music:
Anything by the Brown Derbies. They rock my world.