lunch with jy and yish: we conclude once again that we are all of us un-adventurous people who do not, and will never have the cojones to dump our current way of life and wander off to make a difference in war-torn nations.

*

june. three more months. not a jot of progress towards being ready for leaving. it's a double whammy, really, because we will be moving house in a few months, which means i need to make sure all my stuff is in order, not just the things i need to bring with me back to the states. and i am certain that the magnitude of that task is far greater that what i envisage when i glance around my room. stuff hides. wardrobes are larger on the inside than the outside, and god only knows how much time i will need to spend deciding which books are staying and which are coming with me.

*

and the penn administration is fretting me by steadfastly refusing to reply to my email. i've received so little information from them since my acceptance letter that i'm beginning to wonder if they sent that to me by accident. shouldn't i have my visa documents by now? have some sort of first-year syllabus or manual? anything? i feel very unwanted.

what makes you think that i'm ever going to answer that question? and if i had to answer, wouldn't i just choose the person i thought would more likely be offended if (s)he were less dear?

i have started a list of the myriad things that i need to accomplish before i leave in fall. a lot of the actual important stuff has gone on there, but what i need right now is a column for Things to Eat (don't be bored. it was inescapable). for a start:

* joo chiat tau kwa pau; the famous one at the corner
* as much island creamery as i can manage without excessive guilt
* ditto with spring rolls from teck kee (this is totally fs's fault for getting me addicted to them all those years ago)
* ghim moh raw fish porridge, and chwee kway.
* beer and chili dogs at charlie's in changi village. (i know this is a bit ridiculous but it's a nostalgia thing and i can get nasi lemak and goreng pisang while i'm there as well)
* kway chap at lau pa sat
* east coast road satay bee hoon, and satay, and milo dinosaurs
* chomp chomp, of course, for everything (this one can wait for minz)
* that brilliant dum chicken briyani in little india (i may have to ask the father to show it to me again, because i can't remember its name)
* bencoolen street prata
* cheesecake parfait in cafe rosso in holland v
* en, and the sake bar

(definitely tbc)

Currently reading:
Three Farmers On Their Way to a Dance - Richard Powers

From A Concise History of the Catholic Church, Thomas Bokenkotter:

In one of his pamphlets, Against Jovinian, Jerome got so carried away and dwelt on the disagreeable aspects of marriage in such crude and excessive terms that even his friends were embarrassed and felt it necessary to remonstrate with him. Jerome's response was characteristic:

In order to make my meaning quite clear, let me state that I should definitely like to see every man take a wife -- the kind of man, that is, who perhaps is frightened of the dark and just cannot quite manage to lie down in his bed all alone

thought

the coolness of having ones own place, no matter how humble, extends to having to pay the rent check, but only the very first time.

at nevezhda

[on how memorable our respective birthdays are, given that half of us had forgotten yen's]

su-lin: but my birthday is so easy to remember! 22-4-80. 2 + 2 + 4 is 8!
cp: (disparaging) but you can read significance into any set of numbers if you try hard enough. like those people who find 4, 1, 3 and pi in the same place and go shouting about the coincidence.
su-lin: well, yes, if my birthday were the 31st of april, pi, i would be have remarked on it as well.

tftd

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -- Howard Thurman

trans-pacific

1. no matter how you cut it or try to sugarcoat it, it's still 30 sickening hours door to door.

2. there was a guy sitting behind us who had never been on a plane before, ever, in his whole life, and was just bursting with childlike exuberance about going to another country and being served actual food while 30,000 feet above sea-level. it was nice for a while, and then it got tiring, and then i started looking for the emergency exit.

3. it got indifferent reviews, but i do like hoodwinked.

4. krispy kremes!

Currently reading:
The Poison Arrow Frog - Christopher Wilkins

various felicitations

Congratualations to The Brother, who is now apparently qualified to teach and solve differential equations at the same time while standing on his head, or something. And also: Happy Mother's Day. In the interest of not celebrating it at Super Buffet, you'll have to take a rain check on the dinner.

Wheeling, WV

I have a schema for small-town American culled from movies and television that activates whenever I come to places like this. You know it: think Fargo, or Stephen King. And...it's unfair, in the way that overgeneralization is always unfair, but it's also powerful: powerful because the stereotype is everything i most hate and fear -- bigotry, parochialism, ignorance. And by association, I don't feel 100% comfortable here*, for no rational reason apart from not being able to see the place in the particular: one town is Every Town. On the surface, it is -- the one-road deal, not quite one traffic light, but not too far off. Kroger's the most impressive building on the street. A clinic run by an Arab M.D. - with a four-foot American flag hanging in the window, and a smaller one above his nameplate on the door.

And the corollary to my discomfort is, I suppose, that I admire people -- foreigners -- who can assimilate into such communities, who can see the particular, because in my experience it's hard enough to deal with Americans' preconceptions of you. Start to destination: tough; meeting halfway: sometimes well-nigh impossible. The specific example of which is -- hats off to the brother for doing that. I certainly couldn't have.

* And not just here: cf. Saluda, SC, and Nowheresville, VA, the name of the town which I no longer even recall.

From TWoP:

"Meanwhile, Charmaine is the Rush PM because, as she puts it, she knows "a little bit about salons," and "the three guys" on her team don't. I don't know if she's ever met the guys on her team, but...that is disingenuous at best. The only reason Tarek would miss a trip to the salon would be if it cut into his busy preening schedule, and Michael...I don't even want to think about what kind of regimens Michael puts his body through. Even Lee takes care of himself. I think, given the overall tone of this episode, that it was a three-way masculinity détente where none of them could admit they'd ever been to a salon, or had their hair cut, or even heard of haircuts, or even that hair existed, because that would make them gay, so it was up to Charmaine to jump on the big gay grenade and admit that hair salons do exist."

incidentally

one of the huge advantages of living in philly is that if need be you can walk everywhere -- 20 minutes from campus and you're downtown. this would not have been the case in madison, wisconsin.

Currently reading:
The Road to Mars - Eric Idle

i have an apartment for the fall, a place that i suspect americans would call 'cute', that being the default euphemism for anything not obviously horrid yet too hard to describe. it's a studio in a quiet neighborhood three blocks west of where the frat houses are (a sufficient buffer, i hope). the first few apartments that we viewed were more suited for undergraduate living -- and those who have been to college in the states will know what i mean. the mother, however, was quite unprepared for the squalor, and quite mortified that human beings could live under such conditions. it's a cultural thing. there's a magic window somewhere in the transition from undergraduate to graduate life where students suddenly discover that possessions don't have to be kept in piles on the floor, and that vacuum cleaners, well, exist. most students, anyway.

discussion

me: so what shall we get [the brother] for his graduation?
mom: how about something that will be useful for him in NS?
me: like...a broken leg?

Philadelphia, PA

1. Baklava ice cream. How did no one think of it before?

2. It is different in the north-east. People are curt. Counter servers don't call you 'hon'. I don't care (yet), but this could take some getting used to.

3. We are staying in the top-floor, 2-bedroom suite of the Cornerstone B&B, a charming renovated brownstone with wine-and-cheese sessions on the patio, complimentary creme de menthe at night, teddy bears on the shelves and a fake elk skin rug on the master bed duvet. It is almost perfect, except that the Drexel chapter of AEPi is a block down the road. Fortunately, we missed Cinco de Mayo by a day.

3.1 Oh, and they don't have HBO, which means I'll miss The Sopranos

4. American budget hotels have free wi-fi now. It's incredible.

5. The mother and I went to see the Liberty Bell -- it's kind of ironic that to get into the building you have to go through metal detectors and be shouted at by the security guys for not taking your belt off. Kind of puts a dent in the whole, you know, freedom thing.

5.1. (Yes, I know the arguments, but I'm not a GP teacher)

requests

three requests for gifts from america: freedom (cp, jy) and a hard rock cafe t-shirt (m___ y___). i'm afraid i can only meet one of those.

back on the 18th.

remember what i said about richard powers' subject matter? now look at this: cognitive neurology!

On the Paten

On the paten with the Host
I offer up my lowly heart
All my life, my deeds, my thoughts
Thine shall be as mine Thou art

In the chalice let me be
A drop of water mingled there
Lost O Jesus in Thy Love
Thy great sacrifice I share

All today and ev'ry day
O Jesus let me live in thee
So that I no longer live
But that thou may'st live through me