itinerary/agenda

may 5th --> singapore to philly.
may 6th-7th --> recover from jet lag.
may 8th-10th --> hunt for housing. fight with landlords. meet with advisor, and probably be given reading list as long as a gibbon's arm.
may 11th --> philly to pittsburgh to WV.
may 12th-13th --> smile and talk to people who voted for bush. twice.
may 14th --> brother graduates. i go 'aw'. probability of vitamin c's pachelbel ripoff being played at least once: 94.7%
may 15th --> wv to singapore.

i will bring back krispy kreme donuts if su-lin has not had her fill.

to the brother

if by "the great singaporean writer" your professor was referring to the most well-known singaporean writer, then by virtue of the fact that everything is, unfortunately, relative, then yes, someone has to win, and that someone would probably be either catherine "i've never seen an '-ism' that i didn't like" lim or hwee hwee "hwee and ran all the way home" tan of mammon inc. [in]fam[e][y]. if he was asking whether there are any singaporean writers of actual merit, i would personally have been stymied and would have had to take the fifth, lest reader-response theorists descended upon me in belligerent droves claiming oppression and demanding their voice.

thursday: seah street deli with kc, m____ and his girlfriend, bertz (tm bertz, previously g____), and the chilipadi, in loving commemoration of the time we went instead to ma maison and had $20 hamburger. my love for ssd waxes and wanes, the waning part because they don't do hash browns, which very much detracts from its verisimilitude. i still miss waffle house.

afterwards: paulaner, where the drinks are diluted and the band sings u2 and cake. there was a lot of tension around the table. science does not grant one immunity from office politics. it doesn't help that our lab is set up so that the two teams within seldom get to mix -- we work out of two different rooms and get lunch at different times. prime for inciting guys to talk behind others' backs. at least the hating is pure, and mostly involves independent pairs of people, none of these chains of colleagues despising each other like in [the place i was working in before this one].

(time to get arrested)

i think it says something about mindef that they cannot create an eight word slogan without (a) misplacing a comma, (b) commiting gross catachresis, and (c) being completely incomprehensible. seriously, every time i see that advertisement on the NEL i want to set something on fire.

New Yorker article on Ivy League college admissions. And if you have no time to read the entire thing, you should at least see this quote from Jerome Karabel's book describing Yale admissions in the 50s:

The admissions committee viewed evidence of “manliness” with particular enthusiasm. One boy gained admission despite an academic prediction of 70 because “there was apparently something manly and distinctive about him that had won over both his alumni and staff interviewers.” Another candidate, admitted despite his schoolwork being “mediocre in comparison with many others,” was accepted over an applicant with a much better record and higher exam scores because, as Howe put it, “we just thought he was more of a guy.” So preoccupied was Yale with the appearance of its students that the form used by alumni interviewers actually had a physical characteristics checklist through 1965. Each year, Yale carefully measured the height of entering freshmen, noting with pride the proportion of the class at six feet or more.

and later in the article:

And the most important category? That mysterious index of “personal” qualities. According to Harvard’s own analysis, the personal rating was a better predictor of admission than the academic rating. Those with a rank of 4 or worse on the personal scale had, in the nineteen-sixties, a rejection rate of ninety-eight per cent. Those with a personal rating of 1 had a rejection rate of 2.5 per cent. When the Office of Civil Rights at the federal education department investigated Harvard in the nineteen-eighties, they found handwritten notes scribbled in the margins of various candidates’ files. “This young woman could be one of the brightest applicants in the pool but there are several references to shyness,” read one. Another comment reads, “Seems a tad frothy.” One application—and at this point you can almost hear it going to the bottom of the pile—was notated, “Short with big ears.”

Here am I yet, another twelvemonth spent,
One-third departed of the mortal span,
Carrying on the child into the man,
Nothing into reality. Sails rent,
And rudder broken,--reason impotent,--
Affections all unfixed; so forth I fare
On the mid seas unheedingly, so dare
To do and to be done by, well content.
So was it from the first, so is it yet;
Yea, the first kiss that by these lips was set
On any human lips, methinks was sin--
Sin, cowardice, and falsehood; for the will
Into a deed e'en then advanced, wherein
God, unidentified, was thought-of still.

                                          Arthur Hugh Clough

mirrormask

i wish that neil gaiman would either (a) start another series of graphic novels (no more stand-alones, please), or (b) concentrate on writing children's books, because he is, at present, wasting his considerable talent. coraline was encouraging -- didn't it make you think of margaret mahy/joan aiken? all the movie proved to me was that the man should stop futzing around with themes like "the tragedy of modern existence" and go back to actually telling stories.

book club - seriously

i think graham greene is a good compromise for everyone. jy: at least he's dead.

book club

ooh...can the first rule of book club be that you do not talk about book club? then we could read milton in somebody's basement with candles.

actually, could the second rule of book club be that we don't read milton?

duke party (ii)

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

                                       Edna St. Vincent Millay

duke party (i)

duke admissions held a welcoming party for incoming freshman yesterday. this was something the class of '04-'05 didn't have when it was on its way out, and while it's nice for p-frosh that such events have started happening, it's also one of the signs that our school is on its way to having a cornell-sized singaporean population. well, as my mom always says, at least i beat the crowds.

at least you only die once

got a very rude shock today when minz revealed the amount of income tax she has to pay to the u.s. government. i have always had the impression that deductions and being almost on the poverty line brought ones taxable income as a grad student down to a negligible amount, but apparently i was wrong. (either that or minz is the victim of a major swindle and needs to kill her tax advisor, like, now). how? already i've discovered that housing is going to cost me substantially more than i thought, and nowthis. go tax the billionaires more and leave us alone!

T.D.O.H.:

People returning from a journey carry the distances they have traveled with them like outspread wings - until they put the key in their front door. Then the wings fold up, and they are home again, as though in the center of an impassable steel ring on the horizon. The moment they close the door behind them, they can no longer imagine they have ever been away.

psalm 139

(this actually is the niv translation, so i must apologise for the misinformation given at dinner on thursday.)

O Lord, you have searched me and you know me
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from arar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.

You hem me in, behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.

Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make mt bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

How precious for me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I am awake, I am still with you.

If only you would slay the wicked, O God!
Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!
They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord
and abhor those who rise up against you?
I have nothing byt hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

happy easter!

-- and may your life be bunnies!

well, my reply to penn is winging its way across the ocean, and the die, as they say, has been cast. now for the thrilling adventures of Visa Application Part II: Electric Boogaloo.

Currently reading:
The Discovery of Heaven - Harry Mulisch (at long last - been meaning to get to this for forever)

stockholm syndrome

From Today, Friday, April 14th

Said undergraduate Lester Chiew, 24: "I don't think there will be any negative repercussion on me (sic.) if I vote against them [the PAP]. I live in Hougang. The only repercussion could be delayed funds for the upgrading of my estate, but I don't think I will get thrown in jail."

forgot to mention: received minz's aickman dispatch a couple of days ago. (thank you!) i'm done -- does anyone want to trade?

saturday

dinner with dukies - everyone from my batch except a- who excused herself because of a family thing. everyone's working for the government, everyone and their pet goat, and the conversation was all elections and the world bank meeting and oh i'm sorry i fell asleep.

i'm puzzled - am i supposed to care? does there come a point where you have no friends if you don't? you know, when it's just a couple of people at table, tactful direction of the conversation towards mutually acceptable topics is achievable, but five against one is not a very fair fight. and i've tried to care, i honestly have, but every time i open the newspapers to read the "election" "news" my eyes start pooling with blood and i can't see the words.

Currently reading:
Nobody Nowhere - Donna Williams

post-script:
on further reflection, i realise that it's not the subject of singaporean government in itself that bores me, it's the subject of singaporean government discussed by singaporeans from a singaporean perspective. also: the endless prattling on about people who are heads of this and whatnot department/minstry being posted in/posted out/promoted/publicly shamed etc. I DON'T CARE. I REALLY REALLY DON'T.

yesterday was the last day of the saturday neuropsych class, and all i could think about the entire three hours was how i'm going to sleep till noon next saturday.

i had intended to buy d-- y-- a copy of the horizontal instrument as a way of saying thank you - everyone else who audited the course had to pay for it - but was thwarted - it seems that the copy i bought from one of the expo book fairs was the last in the whole of singapore. i do think it is very appropriate for him - he specializes in treating dementia in its various forms - so i told him to hang in there while i ordered a copy from amazon. i hope he actually reads it when it arrives. i know that it's right up his street - but people are so resistant to reading even the skinniest of novels nowadays.

g.k. chesterton's dedication, in the man who was thursday, to edmund clerihew bentley:

A cloud was on the mind of men
And wailing went the weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul
When we were boys together.
Science announced nonentity
And art admired decay;
The world was old and ended:
But you and I were gay;
Round us in antic order
Crippled vices came -
Lust that had lost its laughter,
Fear that had lost its shame.
Like the white lock of Whistler,
That lit our aimless gloom,
Men showed their own white feather
As proudly as a plume.
Life was a fly that faded,
And death a drone that stung;
The world was very old indeed
When you and I were young.
They twisted even decent sin
To shapes not to be named:
Men were ashamed of honour;
But we were not ashamed.
Weak if we were and foolish,
Not thus we failed, not thus;
When that black Baal blocked the heavens
he had no hymns from us.
Children we were - our forts of sand
Were even as weak as we,
High as they went we piled them up
To break that bitter sea.
Fools as we were in motley
All jangling and absurd,
When all church bells were silent
Our cap and bells were heard.

Not all unhelped we held the fort,
Our tiny flags unfurled;
Some giants laboured in that cloud
To lift it from the world.
I find again the book we found,
I feel the hour that flings
Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok
Some cry of cleaner things;
And the Green Carnation withered,
As in forest fires that pass,
Roared in the wind of all the world
Ten million leaves of grass;
Or sane and sweet and sudden as
A bird sings in the rain -
Truth out of Tusitala spoke
And pleasure out of pain.
Yes, cool and clear and sudden as
A bird sings in the grey,
Dunedin to Samoa spoke,
And darkness unto day.
But we were young, we lived to see
God break their bitter charms,
God and the good Republic
Come riding back in arms:
We have seen the city of Mansoul,
Even as it rocked, relieved -
Blessed are they who did not see,
But, being blind, believed.

This is a tale of those old fears,
Even of those emptied hells,
And none but you shall understand
The true thing that it tells -
Of what colossal gods of shame
Could cow men and yet crash
Of what huge devils hid the stars
Yet fell at a pistol flash
The doubts that were so plain to chase,
So dreadful to withstand -
Oh, who shall understand but you;
Yes, who shall understand?
The doubts that drove us through the night
As we two talked amain
And day had broken on the streets
Ere it broke on the brain.
Between us, by the peace of God,
Such truth can now be told:
Yes, there is strength in striking root,
And good in growing old.
We have found common things at last,
And marriage and a creed,
And I may safely write it now,
And you may safely read.

News on the Duke lacrosse team rape allegations, and President Brodhead's response

for my own edification more than anyone else's, and only because the subject of taboo in cambodia was brought up

Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due,
Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely'I love you,'and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie:
Divorce mee,'untie, or breake that knot againe;
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.
  
                                                    John Donne

re; you are not what you do

von:
if you're not what you do, what else is there to be? i think about this all the time, as i'm sure you must have too. work takes up so much of life that there isn't much room for anything else; if you're not doing work that is self-identifying, then things tend to get pretty damn dismal i think. got nothing to do with the powers that be.

grar.

---

me:
you just are what you...are. i know that's not a very good answer, -- but if i thought it through i'd probably come up with something about abstractions and essences and transcendence, and it would sound very zen, and it wouldn't help you very much either.

and it does involve tptb. making meaningless employment seem meaningful is one of the main aims of government. they're just more subtle about it nowadays.

---

von:
that's a terrible answer. it is non-descriptive in the worst way. this is the kind of thing that gives false hope. you know, in the way myth does.


he's right, and i will make a better go of it as soon as i'm not drowning in work. (though i cannot guarantee that thinking about it for a couple of hours will allow me to write a better answer than the one i threw off in 30 seconds).

speaking of akvavit,, being foiled not once but twice has only hardened my resolve to actually eat at the place. (corollary: i now know that when we finally do get to sit down at the restaurant the food will be several shades beyond inedible). nevertheless, i am stubborn and perverse, and anyone who wishes to join me in self-destruction may let me know after their (purported) opening on the 24th.

Currently reading:
Black Swan Green - David Mitchell

first of all, i'm not taking sides.

this is how i feel about things:

(i) it's so obvious that it's almost trite, but you are not what you do. the powers-that-be will try and tell you otherwise, but please don't sell yourself that short, even if you don't have a religion.

(ii) "becoming everything you can be" is a bullshit, pie-in-the-sky notion that's been drilled into us through a combination of our education and mutual reinforcement. particularly when we apply this to The Choice (capitalised because of what it's become for us). i've said this. if you have found your oasis of happiness, and you can live wth yourself (as su-lin says she has), for goodness sake, sit down and drink. there is only one variable in the equation.

(iii) confession: i do feel in some ways apart from the teachers and the other civil servants, even though i've been here with them through the entirety of their careers so far. and i'm not blaming anyone for anything -- for instance, i understand why you would want to talk about work when we get together, because that's how it is: personalizing, consolidation, etc. i remember booking out from ns and meeting (guy) friends and having nothing to do around the dinner table except tell endless stories about field camps and platoon sergeants -- and i'm sure that bmt sucked 10,000 times worse than anything people are going through now (apologies if i'm wrong). but su-lin has cp, and jy and yen and addy can commiserate about -- well, whatever, i don't really know what they commiserate about because it's all acronyms and abbreviations -- but i don't have that. and in that way, i do understand where minz's sentiments are coming from, particularly when you add physical distance into the mix, and i can't say that i might not feel the same way a year from now.

(iv) and though i've never said this explicitly, i would like to be connected to the people who are most important to me in that way. (also, unlike what anybody may think i haven't "betrayed" myself, reason being in (i), above). just because i'm doing something different doesn't mean i have any less need to want to talk about it. but since deisderata and reality will never meet - i have no illusions about that - there's no point in either smacking my head against the brick wall or bitching about it in vain. being at peace with that notion has helped, and i guess i need that tranquility now more than ever.