Last entry for this semester! It's been a restful one in general, so thank God for that.

I gave up the ghost and got about 3 hours of sleep in the end. My usual pre-flight adrenaline is keeping me up right now, though. Finally finished the mammoth task of organizing all my stuff a few minutes ago, with the exception of bedsheets and pillowcases tumbledrying downstairs.

So now it's lunch and the lucky red shirt, then RDU, LaGuardia, Amsterdam and home. Thanks for reading, and happy holidays! I'll be back on January 7th.

~J.A.L.

Well, I'm trying this whole "not sleeping in order to counter jet lag" thing.

I bet you the bank that it doesn't work.

Ah yes, that old primary school feeling of exams being over. Philo. of bio exam was OK, a few curve balls but otherwise a fairly reasonable paper. Finished it by 11 and went out to the mall to spend my Waldenbooks voucher. Decided (partly because of a recommendation from Minz) to get Haruki Murakami's After the Quake. He's written a bunch of other books which I shall peruse if this one is good. Just being at the mall infected me with a rabid case of consumerism, and in the spirit of this, here's my Christmas List (2003);

1) DVDs...any are good, but my top 5 right now are
(a) Pirates of the Caribbean
(b) Pulp Fiction
(c) Forrest Gump
(d) The Lion King
(e) The West Wing Season 1 Boxed Set.

2) Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando for the PS2

3) Sandman:Endless Nights by Neil Gaiman

4) an IPod

5) Tooth whitener (that actually works)

6) A nice pair of black dress pants

7) 20 GB of extra memory for my hard drive

8) A 256 MB memory card for my Palm Pilot.

9) A tie with a design on it that's not
(a) violently purple or
(b) covered with cartoons

10) Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men

Any generous soul willing to provide any of these items should e-mail me ASAP to get a shipping address.

Spent half the afternoon in the Regulator reading Daniel Wallace's Big Fish over cups of coffee. This was the first time in forever that I've got to read a book cover to cover in one sitting, and it made me very happy indeed. The book caught my eye because of the trailer I saw for the movie based on it. Ewan McGregor! Anyway, the trailer was rather incomprehensible until I read the thing and realized that it was a series of vignettes narrated by a son mythologizing his father. The story and structure are quite original, and Wallace sets up the contrast between adulation and reality well - it's not overly maudlin, and the humor is just right, not over the top. I approve.

Anyway, enough jabbering. I need to get packed.

I'm going to oversleep my exam tomorrow. I can feel it in my bones.

Just sent my m-bag in to the post office...didn't seem that heavy at first but everything weighs a blasted ton when you have to haul it halfway across campus. Sort of almost prepared for my exam tomorrow, though I seem to have lost most of my metacognitive skill when it comes to these things, so for all you know I'm headed for a C+.

Oh, and my LAST RHYTHM AND BLUE REHEARSAL EVER was yesterday...kind of sad. I'll miss that group tons...dunno how I would have survived freshman year without it. Sigh. Nostalgia.

For people who liked Carnivale, fill in this survey to tell HBO that you loved it. For those who have never heard of the show...WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?? You just missed out on one of the best. Series. Ever.

Heh.

Oh, and the packing foam is gone.

Over lunch at Elmo's, Han invited me to spend a week with him in Kuching, Sarawak, in his little bucolic abode. It will be fun, he says. We'll go trekking and have the blood sucked out of us by leeches and make tiramisu and go and eat laksa and generally be indolent and unproductive. It sounds tempting, but some of the other Singaporeans are going which is rather a disincentive. Besides, I'm going to be communing with nature for the next 4 months following break, so I figure I'd better get my bi-annual dose of Metropolitan life while I can.

Very sleepy through most of today because of staying late at Jeremy's Christmas party last night. Betsy loved the lava lamp, and Simon gave me a voucher for Waldenbooks. He originally bought me Neil Gaiman's Good Omens, which I read way back in Sec 4, and had to return it after craftily eliciting that information from me in an IM conversation on Tuesday. I told him that the gift was perfect, and that it's kind of difficult to shop for books for me because I do tend to have read them (especially if it's something I'll obviously like). Other presents included: oatmeal raisin cookies and beer, an (intentionally) bad DVD ("The Punisher"), earrings, a Playboy bartending book, Jose Cuerva tequila, body lotion, shot glasses and a Curious George mug.

Anyway, aforesaid sleepiness led to rather low productivity in terms of studying and packing, although it's kind of OK because there isn't a whole lot of studying left to do. As a matter of fact, I'm feeling kind of guilty because everyone else is piled nose high in textbooks while I'm prancing the halls making fun of them. Bad me.

and no one knows
(tiddly pom)
how cold my toes
(tiddly pom)
how cold my toes
(tiddly pom)
are growing

~ a. a. milne

I really don't need 50 e-mails a day telling me to buy Vicodin, thank you very much.

And, on an entirely unrelated note, shout-out to the first responder to my Nov 27th request.

Last day of classes. Last day of bio tutoring. Returned access card for BIAC. Bittersweet. Weather very dreary and bitingly cold.

Finally confirmed that Dr. McCarthy's done his work and submitted my things.

There are a lot of little white bits of packing foam in my room that have blown all over the place. Only vaguely festive thing around at the moment.

Threw away an accumulation of 2.5 years of junk today with a mixture of nostalgia and despair. The human propensity to hoard things is simply amazing. I have no idea how I'm going to make it in terms of packing space, and if I go overweight on my suitcases again I'm going to cry. Last summer that happened to me, and I stood there unpacking in the airport lobby, stuffing things into plastic bags to bring on as carry-on items while everyone looked on thinking who's this crazy Asian buffoon who doesn't even know how to pack a suitcase.

Many abortive attempts at "Carol of the Bells" later, I'm convinced that the song was just not meant to be sung.

Found this while clearing out freshman year stuff:

"My Lord God
I have no idea where I am going
I do not see the road ahead of me
I cannot know for certain
where it will end
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that
I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.

And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything
apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this
you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear,
for you are ever with me,
and you will never
leave me to face my perils alone."

Thomas Merton

yes when you start jumping around in the halls you have decidedly had Too Much Caffeine

Physically went to Dr. McCarthy's office to see what's going on with my recommendations. Out of town. His secretary says that they are on his to-do list, meaning that they might or might not be to-done. On top of that, Dr. Buhusi just emailed me to say that the Harvard online recommendation thing has not been sent to him, despite the fact that I sent it out twice. I could cry. It's like my undergrad applications all over again. Why can't life ever be simple?

Free coffee week is wreaking havoc with my nerves as usual, despite the fact that I have nothing in particular to be stressed about. Little things are bugging me. Justin sent an Amazon.com order to me without asking if I would transport it for him...as if I don't have enough stuff to carry back over winter break already. Devils' Duplicates is bereft of boxes for me to use as shipping containers for books. There seems to be rheumatic pain or something in my right instep.