Chris is gone, spirited away by a taxi at a time of night when sensible people should be asleep and not hurrying to the airport. His leaving brings about the advent of exam week, which, for me, is going to be far more relaxing than it historically has been. I'm well ahead of the game with my papers - in fact, my main preoccupation is going to be the vexing question of what to do with all my stuff. I honestly feel like putting everything out in the corridor and having a huge jumble sale.

On the university front, Dr. McCarthy is missing without a trace, and goodness knows what he's done with my recommendations. Minz continues to message me twice a day to get frantic about her personal statements. It's a wonder any of us get into graduate school at all. Or maybe we don't. The process seems to weed disorganized people out just by virtue of its very nature.

Movies:
Pulp Fiction
Reservoir Dogs

went to northgate mall with chris to search for a gift for rhythm and blue's "secret santa" party next week. looked at a stained glass triptych, a dancing hamster that sings "tequila", a desk clock, hello kitty slippers and tacky hallmark merchandise before settling on a lava lamp for $9.99 (just under the budget). pleasantly surprised to find such a bargain since i always thought that lava lamps cost at least 30 bucks. resisted temptation to buy a used video game costing $14.95. walked back to east campus in the freezing cold.

Metaphysics
I was talking about blogging with Chris on the bus back from Chapel Hill yesterday. I asked him if he still read this blog; he said that he used to but doesn't really follow it anymore. We then started wondering if there's anyone else out there in the world who keeps us with it. He thinks the odds are that at least one other person out there is reading this religiously; I decidedly do not. The only thing going for it is that I update it regularly, which is more than can be said of the Wasteland of dead blogs out there. On the other hand, it is obscure, makes plenty of references to things that would make no sense to anyone who doesn't know me, and is generally rather unentertaining. So...who's right? If you are reading this blog and do not know me personally, e-mail jzl@duke.edu and give me a shout. I won't think that you're extremely sad/stalking me, I promise. This is just to settle a debate.

Elsewhere, we had thanksgiving brunch in Han's apartment (with some chicken and lots of dessert) and thanksgiving dinner in House H (with lots of everything, including candied yams). So now, it's the whole post-prandial trytophan-induced soporific reverie of repleteness. Joy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

New look!

I mailed in my Johns Hopkins envelope today, which means that I'm done! Done, done, done!

Now all that remains is to wait for the rejection letters. Which I will receive days later than anyone else because they will be forwarded to Beaufort. What a suck.

Chris arrived safely a few hours ago. I showed him around a little bit and we got dinner with Gab and Waihay and watched some anime and now he's curled up asleep while I type manically away at a paper and my blog and some other miscellaneous writing.

The campus has quietened down considerably since yesterday, with people leaving for the Turkey Day Holidays. Exodus, with suitcases. I hate that. Cf. Parents' weekend.

Books:
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

Sick. Runny nose. Sore throat. Coughing up my lungs. Still, I insist on singing in our dorm concert. Ah well. One of the last times I get to sing with my group.

Chris comes tomorrow.

we didn't place in sojam, but it was totally worth going anyway. the other college groups weren't too much to speak of, but the professional show was amazing. andrew chiakin used a loop machine to do a one-man a cappella song, including vocal percussion. da vinci's notebook was hysterical. the amount of talent all these people have is awe-inspiring.

so, one weekend of gallivanting later, it's actually time to get down to some real work now. if my next few entries are short, it's because i'm doing some hardcore mugging.

Reason to hate Singapore #23987417

you know, it struck me, after reading a friend's blog, that i'm only going to be studying in durham for another 2.5 weeks. after that, singapore, then bermuda, then beaufort, then god knows where. should i be tearing up? i am strangely unmoved.

Despite having the clunkiest title for a movie this year, (thanks, Pat O'Brien) Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World actually does live up to its positive reviews. Best member of the cast: Paul Bettany for creating an incredibly sympathetic character out of the ship's doctor and Russell Crowe's main confidante. Kudos, all around, and my grudging hats off to a Russell Crowe movie that might once again beat out my Lord of the Rings in the Oscar race.

In other news, SoJam is tonight, and Speak of the Devil has somewhow wangled themsleves a full page article in The Chronicle detailing their elaborate preparation. Whatever, guys. It's called having fun. The whole festival is being held at a rather unfortunate time, because I really do have to get these papers of mine done before Thanksgiving (and Chris) descends. To hear Da Vinci's Notebook though? I'm willing to stay up long nights on subsequent days for that.

For the dead and injured in Istanbul:

there is a balm in gilead
to make the wounded whole
there is a balm in gilead
to heal the sin sick soul

~ african-american hymn, from jeremiah 46:11

Laid down three tracks in the recording studio last night till 12 before staggering to Verde's only to discover that they stop serving food at midnight. Proceeded, exhausted, to Torero's where there was partaking of fried peppers and ice cream and cheap wine that tasted first like cough syrup and then cleaning fluid as the night wore on. That was my second dinner: I had to get doggy bags and bail out of the first one because I was running late. This first one was in Bakus, the tapas bar I went to several months back. This time, though, my professor was paying (the one teaching the graduate seminar I'm in: she brought us all out as an end-of-term gesture), which made my early departure seem even more inappropriate.

Recording itself was a worse experience than in the past. Overdub Studios assigned us a new technician who clearly didn't know his stuff as well as the old guy, and it took us forever to get set up in between takes. We barely squeaked in everything we wanted to do in four hours, and ended up ruffled and in need of sustenance - both in solid and liquid form. Thus, Torero's.


And now, I sit in front of my computer waiting for inspiration to hit so I can finally be done with this last application. It has taken altogether too long for me to get it together, and all I want to do now is get a snack and then go to bed again, beautiful tornado-less weather outside notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, I claw my way laboriously through completely rewriting my statement of purpose for Johns Hopkins since it is the only non-clinical program I'm applying to. Boo.

I was listening again just now to the Raffles Concert Singers' recording of its debut (and only) concert and marveling at how collectively Singaporean the choir sounds. For instance, as a nation, we don't seem to have the concept that 's' at the end of some words is actually phonetically /z/. Thus: "He's got the whole world in his handsssssss". Very unprofessional. Also, in retrospect, the American way of pronouncing words like "pass" and "class" sounds so much more natural when singing than the very classical, Anglicised, /pahss/. Maybe it's just the song, or several intervening years of being surrounded by a different kind of speech, but it really does rankle now.

The only section that sounds markedly different from the others (and you can hear this in our first verse solo in "He's Got the Whole World", as well as in the Latvian song), is the tenor section. Jiahao, Jonathan, Chester and I provide pretty much all the volume for those bits, and with the exception of one singer (who shall remain unnamed), the rest of us all pronounce words...um...correctly. The difference in quality shows. Yeah, yeah, blowing my own trumpet and all that, but it's true. And that's another thing Mr. Toh has to work furiously on if he ever wants to assemble a world-class choir.

1 application to go. I'm so excited I could wet my pants.

Books:
Love - Toni Morrison

I just found about 5 more forms that I have to fill in for my study abroad next semester that I had no idea even existed. It's almost as if Duke admin purposely hides things from you in the hope that you'll screw up.

I have changed my mind again with my last 2 applications: I have decided to do Yale and JHU instead of MIT and JHU. I will just have to live with the fact that the research in Yale is not entirely related to mine and go for a slightly different angle in my personal statement. Their clinical program really is too delicious, and MIT is just a little too ridiculous for my taste, all things considered. I mean, come on, they call their buildings by number instead of name.

From Travels With Charley, on diaspora
The place of my origin had changed, and having gone away I had not changed with it. In my memory it stood as it once did and its outward appearance confused and angered me.

What I am about to tell must be the experience of many in this nation where so many wander and come back, I called on old and valued friends. I thought their hair had receded a little more than mine. The greetings were enthusiastic. The memories flooded up. Old crimes and old triumphs were brought out and dusted. And suddenly my attention wandered, and looking at my ancient friend, I saw that his wandered also. And it was true what I said to Johnny Garcia - I was the ghost. My town had grown and changed and my friend along with it. Now, returning, as changed to my friend as my town was to me, I distored his picture, muddied his memory. When I went away, I had died, and so became fixed and unchangeable. My return caused only confusion and uneasiness. Although they could not say it, my old friends wanted me fone so that I could take my proper place in the pattern of remembrance - and I wanted to go for the same reason. Tom Wolfe was right. You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.

in the interest of providing opportunities for socializing (as our job descriptions say that we should) my fellow members on the singapore student association committee and i had organized a trip to 'penang', the new franchised pseudo-south-east-asian restaurant in chapel hill. this happened today. 15 people came along, and for one of the few times in my time here at duke i felt that grotty sensation that comes when too many singaporeans are clumped together in a foreign land, like being on one of those chan brothers tours to europe with the big buses and the ample, nouveau-riche aunties fanning themselves with brochures and conversing loudly in teochew and buying baubles and trinkets from the gift shop for the nephews and nieces back home. our waitress sequestered us in a corner of the restaurant where we could do as little damage as possible and was quite rude, interrogating poor ailian about why she had reserved a table for 18 and only 15 people showed up (not her fault, some irresponsible people RSVPed and didn't make an appearance). i felt quite irrationally embarrassed by the whole affair, not on behalf of singaporeans, but just for the fact that race and culture are such a big deal here and that i still can't walk around with my asian friends on campus (or in the mall, or down franklin street) without being conscious of segregation and clique-mentality and other such sententious labels that americans quite unwittingly conjure up without even really considering why, or what they mean.

on the bright side, the food was really good.

Something cool. I solved it in 3 hours. Heh.

Math test

Our abnormal psychology lecture today (yesterday) was on schizoid personality disorder, where the disordered individual is more or less a recluse, participating only in solitary activity and experiencing little in the way of mood change, either positive or negative.

If someone with those symptoms feels no distress, can he really be called "disordered"? He's not causing anyone harm. He still contributes in a positive way to society (although limited in the type of job he could succeed in). No deficits in intelligence, industry or anything much else. What's the big deal with diagnosing someone like that? Doesn't the mental healthcare industry have anything better to do?

Food:
Lamb vindaloo

after five years of being pestered by von, i have finally relented. thus:

Books:
Travels With Charley - John Steinbeck

6 down, 2 to go.

5 universities down, 3 to go. Discovered today that I had put 37c stamps on all my envelopes when 60c ones were required. Bought the post office out of 23c stamps and went hunting for professors.

I didn't even know that 23c stamps existed.

Library research for independent study more or less done after much hard labor over past 2 nights.

Too much on plate.

I go to rehearsal.

This Be the Verse, by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Sunday. Church with Kevin Bong and Clarence, another ex-RJ kid, then a walk with Von and his hallmates (led by Mike Sullivan) through the arboretum in the freezing cold.

Kevin gave me a ride back to the airport. Arrived back Durham at about 9:30. Got back to Duke at 11 (ish). Immediately started doing work (over pizza) till the early hours of the morning.

To sum up: Harvard = fantastic. Very glad I went.

Dr. Pelphrey put my name on a poster of our study while I was gone, despite the fact that I didn't do any work on it. I think he's really trying to give me things to put on my applications, which is nice.

Stuff. Lots of stuff. Info package on Bermuda arrived, which means another influx of administration to worry about.

Sleepy.

Von brought me on the fast and furious food tour of Boston this afternoon, a whirlwind journey through the back streets of the North End in quest for the best pizza in Massachussetts and cannoli made-to-order. We meandered through Boston Common along the way and stopped for a brief chat with Mora from Von's host family over superlative caffe latte. All in all, a day well spent, although the sudden drop in temperature was something I did not quite expect to have to cope with.

I'm not sure why I hate to admit it, but in many, many ways this place is so much nicer than Duke. This is despite the cramped dorms, the strange housing situation, the elitist Harvard image and general preppiness. I feel more at home here. How do I explain it? I feel like I have fallen in with "my people". This really has no bearing on grad school application, since I know that the life of a PhD student is very different from that of an undergrad; what I think I'm trying to express is regret that I wasn't accepted here, independent of the irrational desire to be in a "brand-name" school (which Duke kind of is anyway). It's a ghost road that Von got to travel down separately from me (after my being in the same class as him from P4 to JC2), and one that I now have a glimpse of, right here in front of me, and yet not.

Books:
When the Emperor Was Divine - Julie Otsuka

MIT is as unusual as the stereotypes make it out to be - geeks who spend most of their waking lives buried in seeking solutions for esoteric problems. Minimal social interaction, maximum obfuscation -- calling buildings by number instead of name, pride in UNIX being the official OS on campus, I.M. Pei buildings that were brilliantly conceived in theory but structurally unsound in real life. It is similar to Duke in some ways. Aramark caters (yuk) and administrators are heavy-handed on controlling certain aspects of social life *coughalcoholcough*.

Kevin Bong, old classmate from 4I, took the time to show me around. He seems to be doing alright, though I guess that it's very much an issue of personality matching. I.e., if you want to learn something, if you want to make an erudite discovery (and be one of three people in the world to understand it), go to MIT

Or...back right now, seeing as I have internet access.

I very nearly overslept this morning after going to bed in the wee hours of last night. Was rescued by my roommate pottering around and yanking me into consciousness. Set the record for fastest time going from sound asleep to overdrive. Luckily, was not too late, and still managed to meet my ride (a friend) going to the airport. After all that, my flight here was delayed by an hour and a half, but you know what they say Delta stands for (Doesn't Ever Leave The Airport).

Navigated the subways and met Von at about 2 in the afternoon. He is thriving, as always. Grabbed a bite to eat and then went to have a chat with one of his tutor friends who graduated with a PhD in Sociology from LSE, and apparently is the second smartest person in Portugal (or something). Adjourned to Von's grubby little dorm room which is almost the messiest place I've been in this semester (see fall break for the messiest). Had (free) dinner in university cafeteria, discovering that it puts The Marketplace to shame.

Random elements of the day: mint and orange jelly, hypomania, a hip flask, alewife=fish?, nathaniel hawthorne, someone applying to the (duke) nicholas school of the environment, molecular systematics and a lot of people who hate the third matrix movie.

Going to Boston. Back on Sunday. See ya later, troopers.

I have 4 bio students now. And it is not fun. Even for $10 an hour.

Headline on Yahoo news:
Scientists say video games are addictive.

Um.

I checked the online status of my UPenn application today and two completely random recommenders had appeared together with the names of my professors. These two recommenders had big check marks next to their names alongside the word SUBMITTED. Curious. I did a Google search for these professors and found that they teach English.

Curiouser and curioser.

Anyway, I emailed the graduate admissions person-in-charge and she clarified that -- shock, horror and coincidence -- two people with my name are applying to UPenn grad school this year. What are the odds?

Read into that what you will.

Books:
Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett

10 things I hate about Halloween
1. Sponge Bob Square Pants
2. Bad horror movies (see below)
3. Traffic jams in UNC
4. Beeriness
5. A glut of cow costumes
6. It usually marks the start of plummeting temperatures
7. People who pretend that you're dressed up when you're not.
8. Pseudo-racist comments
9. Nun suits
10. No two people are not on fire.