wow. a week since my last post. i've been most remiss.

chinese new year was a giant ball of suck, and i don't want to talk about it so don't ask. i will let you know that my boss invited us over to his place -- but only to make a separate point. he lives in one of those condos overlooking ri/rjc, which meant that for the first time in my life i got an aerial view of the campus. what immediately struck me was how everything i disliked about the new school when i first walked through it became irrelevant when looking at it from afar. the sterility and stern colours and general unpleasantness give way when you can see the shape of things. more than the sum of its parts, etc. typical raffles i would say, always about how things look from the outside. the boss pointed out that you can tell what the school's priorities are from how the place is laid out - with the track and tennis courts near the dusty roads and the classrooms tucked away round back (some of us i think probably can't imagine it any other way.)

it also transpires that no one in the lab knew i was a rafflesian, which shows you that all those days really are gone. to think that once upon a time that was how our lives were defined. time passes - but it's things like that that alert you to the fact, that scare you suddenly into the insidious present.