It's crazy how much I've missed this place without even realizing it - the library, the Regulator bookstore, familiar faces.

Books:
The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done - Sandra Newman

Durham, NC

So, here we are.

Our flight yesterday from Bermuda nearly didn't get off the ground because of the winds, a fitting send-off if there ever was one. Announcements over the crackly intercom gave us a blow-by-blow of the little-jet-plane-that-could's attempts to land on the runway in the midst of the storm, feeding the incipient panic and pandering to the American, ESPN-sponsored addiction to commentaries about everything. Even walking out to the plane across the tarmac was quite an exercise in not getting blown away. Thankfully, all was well in the end and the only other mishap was that Simon forgot that he was supposed to pick me up from the airport which meant I had to call him and wait for an extra half-hour.

Oh, and the flight attendant on the Philly-Durham leg really cracked me up:
"This is your seatbelt...I don't know why they make me explain this to you, does anyone honestly not know how to put on a seatbelt? Hands up anyone who doesn't. OK, good, next..."

"In the event of an emergency landing, lights in the rows will guide you to your nearest emergency exit. Of course, nothing ever happens on my watch, I personally guarantee it, and the only time you'll get to see those lights is if the pilot turns the key the wrong way and stalls the plane on the runway, I promise you. If the cabin should depressurize while we're upstairs, oxygen masks will fall from above you. Even if I don't tell you this, you will grab them, I promise you. You will grab them."

And on landing:

"We hope you've enjoyed your flight with U.S. Air. Have a good day, and enjoy the rest of your life. Or, if you don't enjoy the rest of your life, I hope you're at least making a lot of money."

Heh. I officially love U.S. Air. I even got my luggage.

Day 53

lori left yesterday at around 5 after our grades came out and anne hopped on an early plane this morning after staying up the entire night, leaving just 5 of us here on a very quiet and deserted station. was rowdy last night at the passin' wind though, where they had a small going-away party with a bottomless bowl of fruit punch and liberal R(s)OD(s)PFBSE and miranda randomly deciding to go for a swim at 3 in the morning and regretting it 15 seconds afterwards. and farewells to james and sam who have been eccentric, but truly wonderful instructors, and kelsey, who embodies the spirit of australia (which is drunkenness), and the cooks, who taught me that you can fry anything if you really put your mind to it, and nellie with her mufflers and scarves, and all the wildlife which i might miss but probably won't.

so, we fly, to reconvene in beaufort, north carolina in 10 days. i head to philadelphia where i have less than an hour to clear immigration and customs (not going to happen) and get to rdu and duke and 16 inches of snow.

good times. good times had by all.

Things I learned in Bermuda

* Cold is relative. "Tropical" sometimes is not.
* Never take for granted the importance of a permanent mailing address
* Smart, insipid people are everywhere. There are perhaps as many of them as dumb, insipid people, and the smart ones are worse because they talk more. Run for the hills.
* The Duke webserver is a pain in the a**.
* Stanford basketball needs to go to hell.
* Almost all of the world's coral reefs will be dead within the next 50 years.
* Or sooner, if the American public re-elects Dubya.
* The importance of pavements
* There is such a thing as "too much fried food".
* Cats bite. Hard.

Day 52

first water into wine, then loaves and fishes, and now everything fits into my suitcases with room to spare

Day 51

Looking at the weather forecast, it is currently snowing in Durham with a high of 37 F. Talk about out of the frying pan into the fire. Except sort of in reverse.

I've decided that I have a severe phobia of bad online writing, both on my part on the part of others. Like Chris, I cringe at aLtErNaTiNg CaPs. I don't understand blogs that report the mundane, and I have a constant fear that I'm reporting the mundane myself. There must be a name for my condition. They need to update the DSM for the information age.

by the way, once i finish this course:
i never want to see another spaghetti worm in my life
i never want to read another article about a spaghetti worm in my life
i never want to search for another article about a spaghetti worm in my life
i never want to hear anyone speak of spaghetti worms ever again
i am not interested in spaghetti worms even if they suddenly become a sentient species and take over our planet
i am not interested in spaghetti worms if they are on the cover of bridge magazine advertised as being the first non-human species to learn how to play the game
i am not interested in spaghetti worms even if i wake up one morning to find that i have become a spaghetti worm
i do not want to see or hear the words 'spaghetti' and 'worm' adjacent to each other in a sentence

spaghetti worms suck.

LOL

Day 50

it looks to end approximately as it began, in rain and longing and not knowing what comes next.

Day 49

Dragged kicking and screaming to Three Hills Shoals for our last diving trip (to make up for one of the ones we missed) - reason for massive protests being the presentation we have to do tomorrow and which most of us had not started on. Yuk.

I was having a chat with one of the few remaining Elderhostelites - she did her Masters in Duke in the summer of '39 and was enchanted to learn that we won the Maryland home game on Sunday by more than 20 points. She was also enchanted to learn that I'm a bridge fanatic, seeing as she runs a duplicate game herself back home. I fleetingly considered asking her if she was any good - although the answer to that question is usually precisely the opposite of the truth.

Anyway, they've all gone now, and the place is very quiet, and I sit in the Pink Room reciting silent incantations to myself, a biological catechism: asteroidea, holothuroidea, ophiuroidea, echinoidea...

Day 48

can i just say that i've been trying to download the sex and the city season finale all bloody day and that as of 9:41 p.m. it is only 77% done? i want my fast lan connection back, dammit. what are we paying all this good tuition money for?

Day 47

Things I will miss about Bermuda:
* the ocean view from my window
* free flow of coffee and tea 24/7
* Sopranos marathons with Geordie and Nathan (and free wine)
* all other free alcohol, regardless of source
* Kelsey and her endless stories (alcohol-related and otherwise)
* the Railway Trail
* long, free afternoons
* the secondhand bookshop in Hamilton. Oh hell, and the rest of Hamilton too.

Things I will not miss about Bermuda:
* having to haul my laptop downstairs to download torrents
* Bobby the cat, Peppermint the rabbit, and that damn smelly dog
* dying of cold
* 4-hour labs
* sack lunches - I don't even want to hear about ham sandwiches for the next 3 months
* missing Duke games (grr...)
* two words: Environmental. Policy.

Day 46

papers papers papers

Day 45

i couldn't very well leave bermuda without trying rockfish, but it was a bonus to have it paid for out of our activities fund. i was expecting something sort of swordfish-like, but it didn't come in steaks and was not as firm in texture. the fish was good, but the mashed potatoes that came with it were decidedly instant and the vegetables sad and overboiled. it was one of those things that had to be done though, and it certainly beat the hungarian goulash that was on offer in bbsr not to mention having to elbow ones way through 20 senior citizens just to get to the counter.

dream i had: where i walk into a restaurant in my army uniform and all the people i knew from 1 pdf are there even my MO and i'm obviously late or something because everyone has ordered their food already. it arrives, and everyone has ordered the same thing, which i gather is the house special - it's this huge crusty ball with stewed apples and cinnamon and caramelized sugar and some white creamy stuff mixed in and it's sort of smooth and flaky and sticky all at the same time although how i know that i'm not sure since i never actually taste any. anyway, i go to the counter to order my own food and i start walking past these seemingly endless glass displays with sausages and sandwich meats in them and somehow end up in what seems to be an emergency room or something because it's all chaos and dying people and nurses running around with drip stands. the place is vast - i don't even remembering seeing any walls - and the further i walk the more patients i see, most of them obviously in need of medical attention. i feel like i should be doing something, but i don't --

There was definitely more that I don't remember, but that particular bit stayed with me till morning. Just thought I'd share.

One of the (many) problems with Americans is they think too much about what they eat, which is why they have the worst cuisine in the world (and are proud of it). Take lamb, for instance. What's so terrible about eating lamb? "It's baby sheep." So? I can understand not eating something for religious reasons, or because the animal is endangered, but to abstain from something because of a concept? I don't know. Finicky eating is rapidly turning into one of my pet peeves. Don't like curry, don't like chutney, don't like 'strange' sauces, don't like tilapia - the list extends beyond the point of reason. "All I want is to go to Applebee's and have half-price appetizers." Smack. It seems criminal to hanker after something so culturally generic and ubiquitous, like Singaporeans who go overseas and then say they miss the Wheelock Place Borders. Am I being too judgmental? I think the amount of work we have due next week is making me excessively cranky.

Day 44

The strong winds have returned with a vengenance, though that didn't stop us heading out to Walsingham Pond to collect specimens. Phyla of the week: Bryozoans, Hemichordata and Chordata (minus subclass vertebrata, of course). Hurricane Fabian decimated a lot of the pond wildlife last year and not a whole lot of it had returned. On top of that, the water was colder than anything I've been in in my life - and all for a science I don't even particularly care about. Sigh.

Day 43

Take the Death Test

Day 42

eating cheesecake in the afternoon i think of justin and the raspberry new york cheesecake in our favorite dessert place which is his favorite cheesecake because it's not heavy but is also real and not that frozen rubbishy stuff, not to mention that it's flavorful as opposed to cloyingly sweet and has genuine rapsberries on top not the ones that come out of packets - anyway, i think that it would be nice to be eating cheesecake - real cheesecake - with him, or maybe the grand marnier souffle with vanilla bean sauce which is top notch as well and a pot of darjeeling tea and talking about life and bridge and whatever. i don't know why i have this sudden crushing need for familiarity but it is now manifesting itself frequently during the day and apropos of the oddest things - snatches of music, snippets of conversation. i went online today in the afternoon, bored, and sussed out a bunch of random singaporean's blogs and read them from start to finish just for the sheer hell of immersing myself in the familiar. one of them belonged to an rjc kid who had just finished bmt and had been posted to smm - recapitulating my own steps through ns - and i felt oddly connected to this stranger even through the gulf of cyberspace and five years. memories are odd: they cheat and lie, they entice you to walk into the tripwires of sentimentality, they are temptresses away from the here and now. but i couldn't help myself, and i went back to my room and listened to blur and jewel and looked at photographs and got weepy at stupid things and then felt vindicated and dumb at the same time.

over dinner (manicotti), the girls staged a coup d'etat and took over the remote control so that they could watch trading spaces on tlc which just made everything so much worse. i hate trading spaces, and even the combined veto power of james wood and tom and nathan was useless against the tyranny of females. and so i'm here, being stupid and spilling my guts online and i bet you someone in singapore is reading this and saying what a stupid shit he is to be overseas in bermuda and complaining like that. except that i'm not complaining really, just venting, and this is just a phase that will pass, i know, it's just weird because as i said yesterday i never feel this way in duke only here.

Day 41

More new people, this time an invasion of geriatrics participating in the "Elderhostel" program, where they get to see foreign countries on the cheap. Because of them, we've been evicted from the dining room during mealtimes and are forced to eat from plastic trays on our laps, sitting around the TV and watching the History Channel . It's annoying. My personal theory is that youth is the time best spent traveling the world cheaply, and that senior citizens' vacations should be spent in lavish surroundings, sequestered in cruise ships or casinos or 5-star hotels where they don't get in the way of Other People. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but when I'm 65 all I'll want to do in the way of holidays is put my feet up and sip champagne from those cute little flutes and eat fancy hors d'ouevres and play bridge by the pool. Gadding about and staying in hostels? Not so much.

I'm beginning to realize more and more how bereft of good company and conversation I am here. Back home there are my Humans friends and even in Duke I know that I can walk down the hall or across the quad or meet someone in Starbucks when I need to share something, but all the talk here has been insipid as cardboard. I've exhausted the excuse that I'm "having fun" (which I am) - I can now feel, quite acutely, that something is missing.

It might just be that there are no guys around. Monday movie was Terminator 3, not a film that I was dying to see, but what else is there to do in the evenings...anyway, Miranda complained that Chris Gerbing (movie person) shows nothing but 'guy movies', and all the girls (except Kelsey, who is way cool, btw) boycotted the film to go and watch The Goonies - which by the way I refuse to see ever again unless I've had at least 5 drinks ahead of time, preferably tequila. It is kind of true (last week was the Farreley Brothers' Kingpin) - it also highlights the fact that there are no Duke kids who I can hang out with to do 'guy' things. Damn gender roles. I guess there are the British lads (who have now run off with my Sopranos DVDs), but they're not always around and it's not quite the same as having people your age and I guess what I'm saying is that I would give an arm and a leg to have Choonping or Jiahao or even Kevin Tjan here so that I stop feeling like my eyes are going to fall out of their sockets every time someone opens their mouth.

Oh, and one day I'm going to write a book entitled: 'A Salt and Empty Earth', just because.

A running joke in the Bermuda Army Regiment is that they should have special uniforms when training for urban warfare that are pink on one side and yellow on the other so that they can camouflage themselves against the buildings here. It rather amuses me that Bermuda has an Armed Forces at all, though I suppose that they get called in after hurricanes and whatnot to clean up the mess.

Day 40

Last 2 weeks. This coming one is the last week of classes, and we have exams and final presentations starting on the 23rd.

I have neglected to mention this, but it would be remiss of me not to note that the weather has been really good this past week, and continues to get sunnier by the day.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Day 39

after shopping at the dockyard i sit down in this outdoor pavillion to have lunch and feed the pigeons and i see this sign in bold black letters hanging on a grille:

NO ALCOHOL IS TO BE CONSUMED

which i thought was really very funny, as if declaring a universal prohibition, an old grizzled man waving a puny fist in the sky decrying all inebriation that was, is, and is yet to be.

Curry features a lot on the menu here, something most of the girls don't really care for. Among themselves, they were trying to puzzle out why it should make such regular appearances. Trying to be helpful, I said that with all the Britishers here it's not really surprising, what with curry practically being their national food and all, upon which Miranda does her condescending frowny thing and tries to inform me that curry originates from India. Well, thank you for that bit of gastronomic trivia - I really wouldn't have known otherwise. Of course, all subsequent attempts to clarify the situation just make things ever more confusing, so I give up stormily, resigned to the fact that such miscommunications are the story of my life. No matter where I go. I've sort of come to the point where I'm sure the fault lies with me but really don't care - people just need to grow eyes and ears and common sense so that we can have conversations without me wanting to bang my head against a table every 5 minutes.

Day 38

the cable went out last night, leaving us staring in dismay at 76 channels of black and white snow just before the one with phoebe's wedding. no howls of anguish could persuade the satellite dish to pick up the lost signal, leaving lori and miranda to go upstairs and sulk and he rest of us to continue with my sopranos dvds, on which half of the bio station is now hooked. i go to download friends, and possibly survivor as well. at first i thought that the technicians would descend upon me for using up their bandwidth with bit torrent, but after 2 weeks the axe has not yet fallen, so i take it i'm in the clear. in any case, this episode of friends is too important. it's phoebe's wedding! to paul rudd! 5 episodes left!

Accepted by the University of Minnesota. Now the tough part begins.

Miranda, despite suffering numerous bruises every time she goes out to play soccer with James Marquez and the rest of the boys, still insists on these regular bouts of masochism. I'm not impressed. No one is; neither are we threatened by James' Wood's insistence that he'll take 10 points off our final test if we don't play.

Books:
The Shadow of The Sun - A.S. Byatt

Day 37

Phylum of the week is Mollusca. Excursion of the week was a pre-dawn jaunt to the rocky coast near Spittal Pond to survey for chitons, limpets, sea snails, and whatever else we could find. Our survey area was treacherous to say the least - jagged rocks, slippery surfaces, and the tide washing in and out as we clung to our equipment and tried not to suffer any twisted ankles or necks. Even if it had been nice, it was too early in the morning to appreciate any natural beauty - I think all of us would much rather have been appreciating warm blankets and pleasant dreams.

Riding to a movie just now, it came to my attention that I had not been in a car for 5 weeks prior to that, quite possibly a record for me. The movie was Big Fish - adaptation of the book I read back in December. With Ewan McGregor, Alison Lohman, Steve Buscemi, Danny Devito, Albert Finney, Jessica Lange and Helena Bonham Carter in the cast (and with Tim Burton at the helm), there was no way they were going wrong. Nevertheless, it was a very good translation of a story that did not look like it would survive the adaptation to film. Read it, see it.

Feel free to comment on anything!

Day 36

sitting in the riker room, lulled by the interminable policy lecture, i begin to think about food that i miss. for a number of days now, i've been hankering after zhu2 chao3, or else those silly stalls that call their ware "scissors curry rice", and imagining what i would order if i were going for lunch at one of those - hainanese porkchop, sambal brinjal, kang kong, fried eggs with their insides so runny one wonders if they have been cooked at all. rice is one of the worst things to miss; whenever i get rice in the states it's never quite the same, and one is left with the annoyance of having something a shade off verisimilitude, like an itch you just can't get at no matter where you scratch. i know the exact stall i want to go to. it's the one that i used to eat at on the days when mike had his violoin lessons, and when i had to wait at jurong east, after school, for the rest of the family to arrive. wait, with book and homemade barley and steaming food, happy as a child, sated.

Day 35

Can I just say that Finding Nemo is a whole new experience when viewed in the company of marine biologists?

Nothing from Illinois! Not a peep!

Day 34

I seriously don't understand the logic of airline websites charging US$3000 for one-way economy class tickets from Europe to Asia. Who's going to buy them at those prices? Even a cursory look at the morbidly expensive tickets on Travelocity will tell you that you're being suckered. Does anyone actually think that it costs that much to fly? Seriously now.

Was somewhat disappointed with the epilogue of A Fine Balance - Maneck's suicide was entirely unnecessary, I think, and quite unsatisfying, especially the way it was written. Oh well. Next.

Books:
House of Sand and Fog - Andre Dubus III

I get downstairs at 8:45 today to discover to my horror that it's pouring with rain. Never mind, I think, I'll brave it, but a quarter of the way down the driveway I realize that I'm going to be a lot wetter than I can tolerate for one hour of church. Back inside, I attempt to beg, borrow or steal an umbrella, but between George the cook, Kelsey and the six girls all we can come up with is a slightly torn trash bag, by which time I have missed the bus. Curses. I really hope God gives out marks for effort.

Day 33

Quite honestly, I know that alcohol figures a lot in these Bermuda entries, but that's only because there's nothing else very interesting to write about.

Mamie brought us out to meet her friend Cosser, Duke alum', class of 2003, and ex-Brownie/Stoner/Brownstonian. The evening was slightly ruined by being with people we knew, because it meant that random men didn't approach us to buy drinks for the girls, which in turn meant that we had to pay for our own drinks, which in turn meant there were fewer of them than was desirable.

Day 32

James has a new 23-year old intern named Kelsey - she hails from Perth, Australia and is here for 6 months tagging squid. Her decision to come was based on nothing more than wanting to postpone entrance into Real Life, so in that sense I completely empathize with her.

Our first substantial conversation took place this morning after she had stumbled downstairs in her bedrobe in search of sustenance, still completely drunk from the previous night's Bacchanalia. The high points:

* cell biology sucks
* "Fountains of Joy" in Thailand are deadly, as is the weather
* if you ever want to succumb to seasonal affective disorder, live in Melbourne
* Malaysian roommates are the worst
* everyone, yes, everyone, should watch the Discovery Channel

I have decided, for the first Friday evening since getting here, to just stay at BBSR, chill for a while, maybe get a couple of beers at the wind, finish Rohinton Mistry, and have a good night's sleep. After the stress of last week, that's all I need. Just thinking about it makes me very pleased.

Lab today involves 2 huge lobsters - pulling off maxilla, mandibula, maxillipeds and trying hard to reproduce them, unmutilated, as drawings in our book. More fun is the aftermath where we haul out a gargantuan grill, sizable enough to BBQ dinner for most of the island's population, and proceed to cook the crustaceans with plenty of butter and garlic and tender loving care. It is delicious. We polish it off quickly and with much smacking of lips.

Day 31

Duke graduation speaker 2004 is Madeleine Albright! Read about it here

So, it seems that I'm going to Johns Hopkins from 4th-6th March, all expenses paid. Sweet.

Day 30

There's really no nicer feeling than being dry and warm after two futile hours of trying to collect shrimp.

The phone interview with Dr. Heller (UIUC) went about a million times better than my conversation with Angus McDonald, supporting the theory that practice does indeed make perfect. Or near enough. She says that I should hear of their final decision by next week.

6:45: On board Henry V Stommel, ocean churning behind us, moon obscured by clouds. We're towing for plankton with a net that looks like a giant condom; it trails behind the boat causing us to tip and yaw despite the relative calm. Copepods and decapods are lifted, hapless, from their peaceful pelagic life and brought back for us to kill with soda water and scrutinise under the microscope. Miranda sings a version of "Lean On Me" that I fear will raise the dead. Lori launches into:

This land is your land
This land is my land
From California
To the New York Island

Kelly: I don't know that
Miranda: And you call yourself American? What ever happpened to elementary school music class?
Kelly: I must have skipped that day.
Miranda: In grade school?

More aphony. Do you remember whe-en...we used to sing: sha la la la la la la la la la di da. I try not to go deaf. We talk about whether Jesus would disapprove of people getting drunk on Easter Sunday. We draw arthropods for 2 hours in the lab.

JHU says that

"I'll have our grad program administrator, Joan Krach, contact you directly to make the travel arrangements. Most students come on Thursday evening and leave on Saturday."

if March 5th is OK with me. Does that sound to you like they're paying for my flight?

Day 29

of course, a mere 3 hours after i post about having no news i get 2 emails, one from johns hopkins, the other from illinois, both requesting interviews. are interviews really a good thing? obviously that means i'm on some kind of shortlist but how short is that list? despite reassuring myself 20 times a day that none of this really matters, that applying to grad school was just a fling, a stab in the dark, that acceptance rates start from 10% and work their way downwards, when it comes to it i still find myself palpitating at the thought of having to speak to professors. strangers. i'm a mass of contradictions. i go to get tea.

"...a fine balance between hope and misery..." Indeed. I'm enjoying that book more than I really should.

Grad school? No news.

To regular readers: I'm considering a couple of measures to make this blog more public; address any complaints about waning exclusivity to me pronto before the dirty deed is done.

Day 28

Although I have not by any stretch of the imagination been cured of my inveterate coffee-drinking habits, the rather repulsive and acidic instant mix they serve here has certainly diverted me to other sources of caffeine. I've settled down to study with tea on several occasions now, and am slowly developing a nostalgia for those silly tea parties I had when I was younger with the Scotch eggs and jam tartlets and whatnot. No Scotch eggs here, though, only PBJ sandwiches pilfered from the kitchen in between meals, and definitely not as much appetite while reading about parastic Trematodes that grow up to 20 meters long in a human gut.

While on the topic of invertebrates, can I just say that I'm sick and tired of hearing people whine about how much memorization there is in this course? I know that I'm guilty of it myself at times (cf. Jan 23rd), but honestly, what are you going to do about it? It's a taxonomy class. Americans, IMHO, have been spoiled silly by this whole 21st century learning nonsense. Now no one wants to take tests anymore, everyone's all about understanding concepts rather than remembering facts. All well and good, I suppose, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet - a good memory is well correlated with other measures of intelligence in any case. It's not even as if they're being asked to take the 'O' or 'A' levels. Now that was hardcore memorization. 2 years worth of lessons for one exam, and 10 subjects to boot - pure insanity. There would be rebellion here at the very mention of the idea. Nowadays, you ask Americans to commit a few scientific names to memory and they're off crying to their mothers. Pete's sake. Grow up already. It's called education.

Day 27

From lowbrow to highbrow

- I did a commando-operation download of the Survivor All-Stars Premiere this afternoon because I couldn't wait to get back to Duke to watch it. I've abstained from Survivor for several seasons now, but getting to see some of the season 1 and 2 folks again is definitely a big incentive for following this one.

- And then watched (for the first time) The Mission (Robert deNiro, Jeremy Irons). It was very skilfully filmed and not so bogged down with details as the book. Thus, the story was more sparse, but the overall effect more powerful. I don't seem to recall the book ending the way the movie did, but perhaps my memory is faulty. Can anyone confirm that?

Selamat Hari Raya, to those for whom it's important!

Day 26

I realized a couple of days ago that Shaun's acceptance to Caltech was probably not abnormally early. A more detailed look at the websites of schools I've applied to say that they call accepted students for tours during the last weekend of February or the first one fo March. Which means, well, you know.

Anyway, while I've been online fretting about this, everyone else has gone to watch the Superbowl, which I can honestly say I don't give 2 hoots about. Even as an excuse to get drunk (which I can't afford tonight anyhow). I'm not sure how that particular cultural phenomenon osmosed over the 650 miles of Atlantic Ocean between us and the land of Dubya, but every sports bar in town is lowering beer prices and running Superbowl Squares tonight, the Passin' Wind included. What. Ever.