i was absolutely sure that i had read a poem once that started "remember me when i am gone away", and i had! not that it's at all appropriate now that i've seen it again, but it is rossetti. didn;t we do this for prac crit at some point?

Remember

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad

#17: meeting people who have an actual sense of humour

everyone

1 week left. i've been swanning around town with my mom's friend and her family (just in from the uk) while sweating and baking in the unbelievable heat. we did the tourist loop round chinatown, through orchard road and down to the bay, where we were finally done in by the weather (and for them, the jet lag). then su-lin called, and i thought she said she had bought me eight pounds of chocolate, but it turns out that wasn't the case.

***

in the museum in the raffles hotel, there is a newspaper clipping from the straits times (i think), circa 1910. it reads:

BOAR HUNT AT RAFFLES

No sportsman in Asia should miss paying a visit to Raffles, for he never knows what a rare bag may be picked up on the verandah of a morning before breakfast. Within the past few months we have had occasion to chronicle a tiger hunt under the billiard room and a lively python chase in and about the verandah. Yesterday morning there was an exciting wild boar hunt, including a separate conflict between the monumental Sikh jagah who stands at the doorway of the hotel and the extraordinary brute that sought to pass the portals. This jagah in question who is known to practically every globe trotter on earth as well as to residents in the Peninsula, hails from somwhere near Peshawar, and stands over six feet in his stockings. His girth is generous and he weighs about eighteen stone. Recently he came into a legacy from an appreciative guest of similar dimensions to his own. This legacy consisted of a full dress evening suit, whic, when worn in the morning in conjunction with an immense puggree, a sash and new lemon-colored boots, lent to the naturally imposing form of the jagah an additional air that was bizarre and picturesque. In this attire he met the wild hog.

The circumstantial details of the combat as purveyed by Mr. Chaytor and other officials of the hotel management who were eyewitnesses to the unusual spectacle, furnish mental pabulum which will rejoice the soul of every shikari, and every student of wild animal life when such life is considered under the contorted conditions which must obtain with wild animal life when combined with life in a first class modern hotel.

It seems that at about three minutes past nine o'clock yesterday morning Mr C. Chaytor was attending to routine duties on the verandah of the billiard room when he was amazed to hear the voice of the Sikh jagah uplifted in a great roar for help. On looking down at the spot whence the roar emanated Mr. Chaytor was still further amazed to see the jagah - dressed in his best suit of clothes - but wrestling despearately with a wild hog. The situation so far as Mr. Chaytor was concerned stood absolutely without precedent. Neither the tiger nor the python had wrestled wiht the jagah. Therefore he simply waited and watched. Presently, the jagah cast aside the hog and panted. Then still panting, he rooted up one of the stakes supporting a climbing orchid, couched the...

#16: A place for everything, and everything in its place.

i have been ruthless with my packing. but a handful of books are traveling with me:

1) seligman's abnormal psychology
2) the apa style manual
3) huettel's functional magnetic resonance imaging
4) my statistics book (granvetter)
5) the catcher in the rye
6) of mice and men
7) the bible (student edition)

and the mysterious flame of queen loana (umberto eco) which i will read on the plane. everything else is clothes, and shoes, and some dvds, and an external HDD, and my playstation, and the most important mementos including photographs, justin's glass swan and gershwin the weightlifting frog. i don't dare to weigh anything yet because i am mortally afraid that i will exceed my allotted 64 kg, and need to leave behind more stuff than i already have decided to. there will be tears if this happens. there already almost are tears.

Currently reading:
The City of Falling Angels - John Berendt

#15: Puppies

last night

-- had wine and leftover liquer chocolates and milo ice cream, laughing at the '98 gp bulletin, british stand-up comedy. various conversations started in hushed voices so as not to disturb su-lin's sisters which ended up being rowdy anyway as we rounded midnight. it was being 20-something, the muscle memory of what college was like, respite from Other People tinged with the dull anxiety of being labeled elitist by them, the unspoken longing for things to be this way always.

incidentally

this 40 things that make me happy business is an exercise i've set myself, and is not happening because i've gone sentimental/soft in the head.

#14: long bus rides at night

Currently reading:
A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian - Monica Lewycka

Victor Frankl:

Logotherapy, keeping in mind the essential transitoriness of human existence, is not pessimistic but rather activistic. To express this point figuratively we might say: The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadmess that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? "No, thank you," he will think, "Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy."

i was on the 153 on my way to church this evening when i espied su-lin sitting at a bus stop and muttering something to herself under her breath. this was most amusing, so i called her immediately to let her know this. where are you? she says (looking around, i imagine, for binoculars behind curtains), and then: i was singing to myself. anyway, i'm sorry if i startled you, my dear, but it was charming and will make me smile when i think about it on lonely winter nights.

#13: something that always made me extremely unpopular in JC, i think -- finishing papers a day before they were due, and then feeling smug about it.

note though:
1) this did not happen often
2) i would invariably get 13/25 for them

denial

2 weeks more. i have confirmed my flight on the 30th. i'm not certain if i'll be allowed to carry hand luggage with me; it will be a major blow if i can't. my instincts for avoidance behaviour are kicking in full force, which means that instead of worrying about what i'm going to bring with me and what i'm going to leave behind, i have (1) finished the amos oz book, as well as shusako endo's silence (so much more intense than the power and the glory (2) watched requiem for a dream and i heart huckabees (bizarre) (3) gone (impulse) shopping, and (4) doubled my daily caffeine intake. not good.

#12: the smell of paper

thursday was my last day at work. now that i've gone through three jobs in two years, i can say with some confidence that the novelty of last days does not wear thin easily. quit your jobs! because scientists are stingy bastards compared to HR executives, or because the folks in [that place] just liked me better, or something, there were no lavish celebrations, just bak kut teh and well-wishes. i think the 'something' is that people in our lab feel that the tentacular influence of our boss over continents and ages means that no one truly leaves, that this is not so much 'farewell' as 'how soon will you be recalled?'. which is comforting if you think of ex-colleagues as useful connections, and horrifying if you consider the situation from any other angle. i am addicted to clean slates. as one gets older, one finds that they get less and less desirable, and harder and harder to obtain.

never-ending fun

it's 10:46 a.m. on national day

why aren't you wasted yet?

on ubin, we took a break at one of the various ramshackle kampung huts for drinks and respite from the heat. one of our number had admitted shamefully that he did not know how to ride a bicycle. on aggregate, sympathy won out over derision, but only by the slimmest of margins. so we walked, and were more tired than we needed to be, and the ice lemon tea was very much a necessity by late afternoon. we sat down next to the only other party in the shelter: three civil servants immersed in a very earnest discussion about educational policy and overseas scholarships, and once again it struck me: the administration here is the graveyard of shibboleths. occasionally, one of a family of mongrels would trot up to us and inquire in a doggy way whether we had any food. we did not.

the elderly drinks seller, who also happened to live in the place, soon decided to be chatty. he was awfully robust for someone who looked like he was pushing 70, and talk oh his health soon revealed the fact that apart from his day job, he also happened to be an apothecary of sorts, and for 22 years has been busily doling out cures for all kinds of maladies, including hypertension, malaria and cancer. we sieved through his herbs, and a. took some photographs, but my camera was messed up so i can't post them here. they were more weeds than herbs, really, nondescript, and a cactus. people come to me, the apothecary-of-sorts said (in chinese), telling me that they have intestinal cancer or leukemia and that the doctors say that they only have 3 months to live. i tell them to take these and they come back in 6, completely well. the weeds are brittle, and to be honest, look like they contain the medicinal properties of a twig. still, the man is charming and twinkly, and we ask lots of questions and buy another drink.

do you think? i asked a. as we were walking back to the jetty, that he tells that story to everyone who will give him an audience. almost certainly, he said, so back at home, i googled singapore ubin cure cancer and got at least several hits for blogs telling the same story (i'm not going to link to them; you can go yourself if you care). the internet really does take the numinousness out of everything. i bet that if you found an oracle in kathmandu who told you the meaning of life someone will already have blogged about it. some stories are cheapened with retelling. it's so much more romantic to believe that we had chanced upon someone who really had discovered a panacea, and that the secret belonged only to us; it's fun once in a while to just suspend disbelief and murder rationalism and live, momentarily, in a space where the impossible is not.

#11: When someone opens a gift you get them, and you can tell from that instantaneous look on their face that you have got them exactly the right thing.

i am watching the australian version of the mole. though lacking anderson cooper, it is almost as good as the original abc edition, one of the top contenders, i think, for a dead before its time award. it appeals to me mostly because of my soft spot for classic detective fiction/locked-room mysteries, plus it is a much purer game in terms of interpersonal dynamics than, say, survivor (which is probably rigged from start to finish). the greatest pity is that editing 21 days down to 8 hours does not even begin to capture the intricacies of suspicion and strategy that i'm sure must run frighteningly deep as the game progresses.

Currently reading:
Fima - Amos Oz
(by the bye, von, i went to read simmel's stranger after you mentioned it to me. it's marvelous.)

i am told that the media has announced that the national stadium will "literally go out in a blaze of glory" on august 9th. finally, something worth watching on national day.

#10: christmas carols

i do slightly regret saying that i prefer german to italian food, because i think it depends. if i were on death row, and had to pick between the two for one last meal, i would have to go with the sauerkraut and dumplings; however, if i had to pick a country to go on a gastronomic tour of, italy would of course win hands down. it's comfort/carbohydrates vs. freshness/subtlety, and i think i was in need of comfort when the question was asked (scones, jam and cream helped.)

comment

von emails me to say that my perception of gep-ers is warped, that there are numerous high-functioning, well-adjusted, useful people out there in the working world now, and that we are unfairly projecting our personal angst on people who have none. this may well be true, but because there is very little way for us to prove this empirically, i'm afraid the debate might have to rest there.

t.s. eliot:

"For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."

#9: spending time with the very precious few people who actually do care about me.

ran into elwin c. (BONDED) at a Thing yesterday - elwin is one of those folks who keeps popping up at random moments in my life, and who i will no doubt bump into one day while bound north fleeing justice, or some such thing. he was, as always, solidly normal (digging through some old notes, i discovered that i once remarked, after finding out that he had gone through ocs, that i could "never imagine him leading [soldiers] into war, not because i believe him incapable of it, but because i could never see him as anything other than a person"). he is one of the few gep people to emerge from the programme personality unscathed, i would say -- or perhaps as some think there is an element of self-selection and the smattering of normal people -- elwin and yuexiang and andy, off the top of my head -- are the anomalies.

Currently reading:
The Frozen Deep - Wilkie Collins

the interns have left, which is as sure a sign as leaves turning that summer is dissolving into fall. we had a guest prof from wayne state U over this week to host some lectures and discussions for the aging group, so it was all commotion upstairs and relative quiet for our team. i shattered that quiet for myself midweek by discovering that i had used a formula in error when analysing the results for my experiment, and for a while it was recomputation and hair-tearing and e-mails to statisticians and the reviewers. this is when you get when you unleash ignorant people (i.e. myself) into academia.

and friday was the first of many goodbyes, to justin, over tequila shots, and game theory, and ruefulness that this country has such a death grip on the people it so purportedly loves. who was it who said that letting go was the key?

#7: the where in the world is carmen sandiego theme

#8: finishing a crossword, and getting it right.

the second half of the stimulus set is to be houses, hundreds and hundreds of houses, and all from singapore in case there are cultural differences in the way the asian brain perceives american architecture. i volunteered to do the driving, in part to get out of the office, in part because i had designs on motoring down to sunset way for durian ice cream (which i did). the daily scoop also had lychee martini on offer, but i wisely decided that nothing else either does, or should, interfere with the perfection that is frozen d24, and i was right. hk had bailey's, which was also excellent. i popped over next door in the hopes of buying a box of yam cake studded with tiny bits of lap cheong and topped with sliced chili padi and crispy fried shallots, but was foiled by a big sign on the door that said CLOSED ON MONDAYS. i will return.

we drove around sunset way, with S. popping out of the car every few meters on commando raids to snap photos of suitable facades, criteria for suitability including (a) no cars in the driveway, (b) no gates obstructing the view (c) no dogs (d) no humans (e) no vegetation etc. this was harder than it sounds. most houses in singapore have ridiculously short, virtually purposeless driveways, fronted by enormous obscuring gates. those we eliminated immediately. even at the places with long driveways, we had to get right up to the gate and take the photo between the bars in order to get a decent picture. also, despite us going around in the middle of a working day, more places than you can imagine violated (a) and (d); i.e. singaporeans have way. too. much. money.

down dunearn road, and into all the small side streets, where we got barked at by alsatians, schnauzers, a corgi, and 6.8 million golden retrievers. also a cantankerous pyjama-clad auntie who would not believe that we were with a research lab, even after being presented with identification, and who chased us halfway down the street threatening to call the police. a while later, we found ourselves making our way down yarwood avenue. you should take a walk there if you haven't -- it has lovely, palatial houses, and i would absolutely live in one of them (if they were in, say, roanoke). not so much because of the house -- small living areas i can abide -- but because having a yard to romp around in with dogs and family and friends should not be a luxury; everyone should have sprawling, open spaces where they can breathe, and read, and think, and live.


#6: Those days when I wake up and think: "Wow...I can do anything I want to do today." (Not that I even recall when last that happened).

one man's opinion

Minister of State for Education Lui Tuck Yew (on why S'porean "lit" should be included in the school syllabus):

"We can't deny the value and appeal of canonical texts. They're absolutely well-written, and generations of Singaporeans have grown up on those. But if you want to develop critical, analytical skills, you can't only be exposed to Wordsworth anad Shakespeare"

Discuss.


#5: Books and plays that are absolutely well-written.

at haagen dazs

(-- where the brother and i went last night after waiting in vain for a table at bakerzin. it's $4.50 for a single scoop and $6.70 for a double, prices i would pay for no flavour other than midnight cookies and cream, the only sin that justifies such extravagance.)

(this, btw, was a fairly extended discussion which i condense for clarity:)

me: so can i get a double scoop and have you split them into 2 extra cups?
counter guy: sure!
[cashier then proceeds to try and charge me for 2 single scoops]
me: no, i don't want two single scoops, i want a double scoop in 2 cups.
cashier: i'm afraid we can't do that
me: well can i just get a double scoop and pay for an extra cup then?
cashier: i have to ask my manager.
me: you can even have the wafer back.
cashier: i have to ask my manager.
me: this is not that hard. i want you to sell me a double scoop and an extra cup (subtext: which costs you 0.24 cents to make)
cashier: i have to ask my manager.
[manager arrives]
me: i want to get two scoops, in two cups, and be charged for a double scoop
manager: i'm sorry, we can't do that.
me: well, that's ok, because now i'm not going to get any scoops. goodbye.

i really don't understand why this is such a constant problem in this damn country -- i mean, i'm not much of a businessman, but let's think about this for a second.

Option #1: Sell the customer what he wants at the same fucking inflated price you would have originally, minus the cost of a paper cup, or
Option #2: Make no money at all.

now, i know what i would choose, but who knows, maybe there's some top secret sales strategy they teach you in nus business school that the rest of us just don't know about.

From The Sea, John Banville:

'You live in the past,' she said.

I was about to give a sharp reply, but paused. She was right, after all. Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, the will butting its blunt head against the world's wall, suchlike, but when I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given over to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit it, for cosiness. This is a surprising, not to say a shocking, realisation. Before, I saw myself as something of a buccaneer, facing all-comers with a cutlass in my teeth, but now I am compelled to acknowledge that this was a delusion. To be concealed, protected, guarded, that is all I have ever truly wanted, to burrow down into a place of womby warmth and cower there, hidden from the sky's indifferent gaze and the harsh air's damagings. That is why the past is such a retreat for me, I go there eagerly, rubbing my hands and shaking off the cold present and the colder future. And yet, what existence, really, does it have, the past? After all, it is only what the present was, once, the present that is gone, no more than that. And yet.

#4: Unexpected twists in conversations that lead one somewhere new, to the bizarre, or things hitherto unconsidered.

From The Sea, John Banville

She stood in the middle of the floor in her coat and scarf, hands on her hips, casting about her with a vexed expression. She was still handsome then, high of cheekbone, her skin translucent, paper-fine. I always admired in particular her Attic profile, the nose a line of carven ivory falling sheer from the brow.

'Do you know what it is?' she said with bitter vehemence. 'It's inappropriate, that's what it is.'

I looked aside quickly for fear my eyes would give me away; one's eyes are always those of someone else, the mad and desperate dwarf crouched within. I knew what she meant. This was not supposed to have befallen her. It was not supposed to have befallen us, we were not that kind of people. Misfortunes, illness, untimely death, these things happen to good folk, the humble ones, the salt of the earth, not to Anna, not to me. In the midst of the imperial progress that was our life together a grinning losel had stepped out of the cheering crowd and sketching a parody of a bow had handed my tragic queen the warrant of impeachment.

She put on a kettle of water to boil and fished in a pocket of her coat and brought out her spectacles and put them on, looping the string behind her neck. She began to weep, absent-mindedly, it might be, making no sound. I moved clumsily to embrace her but she drew back sharply.

'For heaven's sake don't fuss!' she snapped. 'I'm only dying, after all.'

The kettle came to the boil and switched itself off and the seething water inside it settled down grumpily. I marvelled, not for the first time, at the cruel complacency of ordinary things. But no, not cruel, not complacent, only indifferent, as how could they be otherwise? Henceforth I would have to address things as they are, not as I might imagine them, for this was a new version of reality. I took up the teapot and the tea, making them rattle - my hands were shaking - but she said no, she had changed her mind, it was brandy she wanted, brandy, and a cigarette, she who did not smike, and rarely drank. She gave me the dull glare of a defiant child, standing there by the table in her coat. Her tears had stopped. She took of her glasses and dropped them to hang below her throat on their string and rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands. I found the brandy bottle and tremblingly poured a measure into a tumbler, the bottle-neck and the rim of the glass chattering against each other like teeth. There were no cigarettes in the house, where was I to get cigarettes? She said it was no matter, she did not really want to smoke. The steel kettle shone, a slow furl of steam at its spout, vaguely suggestive of genie and lamp. Oh, grant me a wish, just the one.

'Take off your coat, at least,' I said.

But why at least? What a business it is, the human discourse.

I gave her the glass of brandy and she stood holding it but did not drunk Light from the window behind me shone on the lenses of her spectacles where they hung at her collar bone, giving the eerie effect of another, miniature she standing close in front of her under her chin with eyes cast down. Abruptly she went slack and sat down heavily, extending her arms before her along the table in a strange, desperate-seeming gesture, as if in supplication to some unseen other seated opposite her in judgment. The tumbler in her hand knocked on the wood and splashed out half its contents. Helplessly, I contemplated her. For a giddy second the notion seized me that I would never again be able to think of another word to say to her, that we would go on like this, in agonised inarticulacy, to the end. I bent and kissed the pale patch on the crown of her head the size of a sixpence where the dark hair whorled. She turned to face up to me briefly with a black look.

'You smell of hospitals,' she said. 'That should be me.'

I took the tumbler from her hand and put it to my lips and drank at a draught what remained of the scorching brandy. I realised what the feeling was that had been besetting me since I had stepped that morning into the glassy glare of Mr Todd's consulting rooms. It was embarrassment. Anna felt it as well, I was sure of it. Embarrassment, yes, a panic-stricken sense of not knowing what to say, where to look, how to behave, and something else, too, that was not quite anger but a sort of surly annoyance, a surly resentment at the predicament in which we grimly found ourselves. It was as if a secret had been imparted to us so dirty, so nasty, that we could hardly bear to remain in one another's company yet were unable to break free, each knowing the foul thing that the other knew and bound together by that very knowledge. From this day forward all would be dissembling. There would be no other way to live with death.

Still Anna sat erect there at the table, fcacing away from me, her arms extended and hands lying inert with palms upturned as if for something to be dropped into them.

'Well?' she said without turning. 'What now?'

#3: Being useful, in ways big and small

because i don't often say how much i love toad

We spotted the ocean at the head of the trail
Where are we going, so far away?
And somebody told me that this is the place
Where everything's better, and everything's safe

Walk on the ocean
Step on the stones
Flesh becomes water
Wood becomes bone

And half an hour later we packed up our things
We said we'd send letters and all of those little things
And they knew we were lying but they smiled just the same
It seemed they'd already forgotten we'd came

Walk on the ocean
Step on the stones
Flesh becomes water
Wood becomes bone

Now we're back at the homestead
Where the air makes you choke
And the people don't know you
And trust is a joke
We don't even have pictures
Just memories to hold
That grow sweeter each season
As we slowly grow old

40 things that make me happy
#2: Being mentally 18.
Real jobs are overrated.

as we grow older, it becomes more and more apparent that our generation is not going to evolve into a facsimile of the last, that i am not going to become my father. this may seem a trivial statement, but when i was in school i always assumed that a switch turned on when you reached a certain age that made one act like an "adult" -- it's obvious now that there is no inflexion point, that our generation is capable of stretching in different ways, but never of holding dear the same things that our parents did. this is either distressing or an incredible relief depending on how you think about it. distressing because the goals of our parents - particularly growing up in the 60s and 70s - were attainable, whereas ours are either nebulous or ephemeral or both; a relief because we have nothing to live up to: by having a mutable benchmark for success, we also excuse every one of our failures.

i suppose this is nothing new for, say, americans - they've had generation gap issues arising from dramatically time-compressed changes in inter-generational opportunities for decades - but it is new for us, and i don't think that we cope as well with the disparity. maybe it's to do with having the whole confucian values story force-fed down our throats from young, but the people with whom i've discussed this seem far more fixated on the distress than the relief. on some level, they wish they did have the same desires as their parents, and balk at how easily realised these are. those not in the upper class are glad to be their father's second chance.

we are afraid to own up to our differences to ourselves, and yet we still carry the obvious and indelible marks of having grown up in a different world. i peruse the blogs of friends and acquaintances, some pushing 30, some married, and they cheerfully admit to playing WoW while pondering why their existence seems so dull and dreary. they're still waiting for the switch to flick on, while in the mean time the goalposts have moved, and the world is waiting for them to realise that.

Currently reading:
The Sea - John Banville

40 things that make me happy
#1: Coffee
Especially that very first taste in the morning, the sip that tells you that the night is over, and that makes the day possible.

racism

[over hummus and shawarma last night]
the brother: shouldn't it be "lightly row, lightly row, all the way from mexico"?

we are parking ourselves in the sgh lobby next week to take face shots of volunteers -- one face shot = one candy bar. it's not saving the whales or the amazonian rainforests, but drop by on wednesday if you're free and want to contribute to science.

the paper went in for peer review this afternoon. this made me much happier than i thought it would, not just because it's done (for the time being anyway), but because i feel that at last i've accomplished something in life that's not just getting an A on an exam -- this feels somehow real. it's ironic, i guess, that this satisfaction has been granted to me through academia, which many people would sniff at as being the most unreal pursuit in life, and once again i find myself taking stock to make sure that the feeling does not arise simply because i cannot successfully do anything else. those who can't do, teach; those who can't teach, do research. if you can't wrest the swings and see-saws away from the rich and handsome people, make your own playground. and in a sense, it's all my own personal playground from here on in, isn't it, all internal measures of success, quiet victories won where no one else can even tell triumph from defeat?

yet another DSA, this one an acquaintance from the army, re-appeared in my life this week (incidentally reaffirming my belief that stanford is, indeed, camazotz). his undergraduate thesis, which is being published in a peer-reviewed journal, involved exciting electron spins uwith laser beams, flipping them to a high-energy state, and measuring their subsequent relaxation time. this is apparently of vital interest to the computer industry -- controlling the spin/anti-spin configurations of electrons is the basis of building quantum computers (because there are only two possible energy states, these can function as the binary operators upon which all computer systems run. well, almost binary because the bits in a quantum computer can hold a superposition of the two states, which is the nifty part, but also another story for another day). IBM has already created a prototype of this -- a soup of 7 carbon-based atoms which has successfully factorised the number 15. a computer significantly larger than this (perhaps created using semi-conductor technology) would essentially be able to zip through online security systems decrypting previously-unhackable passwords in a matter of minutes and completely changing the landscape of information security as we know it. lovely. unfortunately, DSA the second will play no part in this revolution, because, like most capable singaporeans, he is BONDED, and will be shuffling papers in a small cubicle overlooking marina bay for the foreseeable future. this story is becoming all too familiar.

the conclusion, after extended consideration

nothing rhymes with purple

From Wiki, on Penn:

Penn's motto is based on a line from Horace’s Third Ode, quid leges sine moribus vanae proficiunt? ("of what avail empty laws without [good] mores?") From 1756 to 1898, the motto read Sine Moribus Vanae. When a wag pointed out that the motto could be translated as "Loose women without morals," the university quickly changed the motto to literae sine moribus vanae ("Letters without morals are useless"). In 1932, all elements of the seal were revised, and as part of the redesign it was decided that the new motto "mutilated" Horace, and it was changed to its present wording, Leges Sine Moribus Vanae ("Laws without morals [are] useless")

i dragged the usual suspects (minus addy) to a nearby nonya place for lunch yesterday, to the tunes of the typical complaints. (cp: why don't we ever meet at junction 8 for lunch? me: you mean aside from the fact that there's no actual food there?) the restaurant is new, which meant it did not have jy's mom's stamp of approval, but we took our chances anyway. over-ordered, but only a little -- ayam buah keluak (strange...darker and more viscous than the traditional variety, but they were v. generous with the nuts), otak (good bite), fried nonya zhang, terung goreng (texture just right -- the skin is always tricky), babi pongteh and sweet potato leaves. and, a little unnecessarily, i felt, dessert after: pulot hitam and a weird banana-gula melaka thing which even su-lin wouldn't eat. it was a little pricey ($14), but we did order a lot, and they have cheaper set meals that i may go back for at some point.

Currently reading:
The Assualt - Harry Mulisch

of course island creamery has bandung ice cream, and it is v. good, though i must say that i do still prefer the version that walls used to make many years ago.

i really need to locate a church that says mass the pre vatican II way if not in latin, then at least using the gorgeous english translation on that page. i've mentioned some of my favourite lines, but look at how they used to read:

Into their [the saints'] company we implore You to admit us, not weighing our merits, but freely granting us pardon.

Let not the partaking of Thy Body, Lord Jesus Christ, which I, though unworthy, presume to receive, turn to my judgment and condemnation; but through Thy loving kindness, may it be to me a safeguard and a remedy for soul and body, Who with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, forever and ever. Amen.

May Thy Body, Lord, which I have eaten, and Thy Blood which I have drunk, cleave to my very soul, and grant that no trace of sin be found in me, whom these pure and holy mysteries have renewed: Thou, Who livest and reignest, world without end. Amen.

and everything else. this is too good for me, i would die in ecstasy in church if words like that had to come out of my mouth, and yet i must find it.

mostly for the brother (you lucky sod)

was co-opted to take part in today's saf day parade, which meant (a) going spelunking to retrieve my number four from deep storage and (b) triggering ptsd-esque flashbacks of those 2.333 apocalyptic years. the ceremony consisted of, (in approximate chronological order), bullshit, propoganda, and the most atonal rendition of majulah singapura ever. it did, however, remind me that i had a bunch of passages about, or associated with, the military and my time in NS that i've wanted to share with everyone for a while, so here they are:

this one's from catch-22. You can see immediately why I liked it:

“Clevinger was a troublemaker and a wise guy. Lieutenant Scheisskopf knew that Clevinger might cause even more trouble if he wasn’t watched. Yesterday it was the cadet officers; tomorrow it might be the world. Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskopf had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times. Such men were dangerous, and even the new cadet officers whom Clevinger had helped into office were eager to give damning testimony against him. The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with.”

east of eden, steinbeck

“ You’ll go in soon now – you’ve come to the age”

“I don’t want to,” said Adam quickly.

“You’ll go in soon,” his father went on, not hearing. “And I want to tell you so you won’t be surprised. They’ll first strip off your clothes, but they’ll go deeper than that. They’ll shuck off any little dignity you have – you’ll lose what you think of as your decent right to live and to be let alone to live. They’ll make you live and eat and sleep and shit close to other men. And when they dress you up again you’ll not be able to tell yourself from the others. You can’t even wear a scrap or pin a note on your breast to say, “This is me – separate from the rest.”

“I don’t want to do it,” said Adam.

“After a while,” said Cyrus, “you’ll think no thought the others do not think. You’ll know no word the others can’t say. And you’ll do things because the others do them. You’ll feel the danger in any difference whatever – a danger to the whole crowd of like-thinking, like-acting men.”

“What if I don’t?” Adam demanded.

“Yes,” said Cyrus, “sometimes that happens. Once in a while there is a man who won’t do what is demanded of him, and do you know what happens? The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of this difference. They’ll beat your spirit and your nerves, your body and your mind, with iron rods until the dangerous difference goes out of you. And if you can’t finally give in, they’ll vomit you up and leave you stinking outside – neither part of themselves nor yet free. It’s better to fall in with them. They only do it to protect themselves. A thing so triumphantly illogical, so beautifully senseless as an army can’t allow a question to weaken it. Within itself, if you do not hold it up to other things for comparison and derision, you find slowly, surely, a reason and a logic and a kind of dreadful beauty. A man who cannot accept it is not a worse man always, and sometimes is a better man. Pay good heed to me for I have thought long about it. Some men there are who go down the dismal wrack of soldiering, surrender themselves, and become faceless. But these had not much face to start with. And maybe you’re like that. But there are others who go down, submerge in the common slough, and then rise more themselves than they were, because - because they have lost a littleness of vanity and have gained all the gold of the company and the regiment. If you can go down so low, you will be able to rise higher than you can conceive, and you will know a holy joy, a companionship almost like that of a heavenly company of angels. Then you will know the quality of men even if they are inarticulate. But until you have gone way down you can never know this.”

isaiah 2:4

Insofar as men are sinful, the threat of war hangs over them, and hang over them it will until the return of Christ. But insofar as men vanquish sin by a union of love, they will vanquish violence as well and make these words come true: “They shall turn their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into sickles. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.”

and finally, my mom sent me this passage from the sacred romance (curtis and eldredge) some time in 2000 (I think). it was exactly what i needed (thanks mom!):

“Life, said Woody Allen, is divided between the horrible and the miserable. A cynical assessment, perhaps, but if we're honest we'll have to admit our journey is hardly along the primrose path. Pretending that life is easier or more blessed than it really is hinders our ability to walk with God and share him with others. Faith is not the same thing as denial. Blessings come, to be sure. But they tend to be infrequent, unpredictable, and transient. In the day-to-day pattern of things, our journey is shaped more often by dragons and nits - crises that shake us to the core and persistent troubles that threaten to nag us to death. Dragons and nits: Are they tragic events and random inconveniences, or are they part of the plot through which God redeems our heart in very personal ways?”

i vaguely remembered reading somewhere that von had started blogging again, but it was only today that i investigated the rumours and found them to be true. this is excellent -- not just because i now have a way to waste an entire afternoon, but also because it gives me ammunition to use to persuade other people who have left the blogosphere to return. (jy: you're the first -- the threat of incarceration is no excuse.)

submission of my manuscript has been set back a few days because the boss decided at the last minute he wanted to send it to journal x instead of y -- this necessitated reformatting the abstract and figures, renumbering the references so that they appear in chronological as opposed to alphabetical order, as well as correcting a bunch of other fiddly miscellaneous details (why do journal editors want to know the highest degree conferred on the various authors of submitted papers? shouldn't they be judging the paper on its own merits, as opposed to introducing an unnecessary element of bias? i'm sure it's not because they grant leniency points to lowly educated people such as myself.)

i think i have reached the stage where i'm just heartily sick of this paper. in college i never had the patience to revise my work more than a couple of times, and now that i have to do it i find that i lack the discipline to comb through the manuscript weeding out tiny details that i've missed. i hope this doesn't mean that i'm not of the temperament to do research, because this would be quite a bad time to discover that.

i apologize for the infrequent updates -- i have been out of sorts and short of time. my head is fuzzy and i've been saying weird things at random times -- all signs, i think, that my brain senses a big change coming and is putting itself into a cocoon to brace for impact.

***

i probably didn't think about this the last time because i wasn't the person paying for anything, but applying for a U.S. visa is expensive. ouch.

***

to cp, i reassert: the moral high ground has nothing to do with it.

***

we have a visitor from MGH giving a training course downstairs for a week - which means the sleep team has been relegated upstairs into the tundra-like frigidity of the morphometry room. this is actually not as bad as it sounds - we are, at least, out of sight of our boss, which means i get to put my visa documents together in peace. (kc: if you are reading this i trust you won't tell ;) )

Currently reading:
The Wild Geese - Ogai Mori

more bsg

title theme:
"OM bhur bhuvah svah tat savitur varenyam bhargo devasya dhimahi dhiyo yo nah pracodayat" (from a Hindu mantra, translated as: "May we attain that excellent glory of Savitri the Goddess / so May she stimulate our prayers.")

from Wiki

almost all the stuff that penn sends me is tailored for undergraduates. which is fair i suppose -- it doesn't make sense to make separate brochures when all the relevant information is in the undergraduate material -- the problem is that all the extras are indulgences and fun activities and nuggets of tlc. the message to grad students obviously being: now you are grown, time to put away childish things, get your ass into gear and do something useful for us, etc.

i have fallen madly in love with the battlestar galactica soundtrack, which now plays on itunes nonstop while i'm at work to shut out the voices of people i don't want to listen to. celtic and gaelic music has a special place in my heart, and pan pipes have been one of my favourite instruments since the days of pastime (with good company), which means that wander my friends (the lee-adama theme), is of course the track i like the most:

(original Gaelic)

Siulaigi a chairde, siulaidh liom
Mar cheo an tsleibhe uaine ag
imeacht go deo
D’ainneoin ar dtuirse leanfam an tsli
Thar chnoic is thar ghleannta
go deireadh na scrib’.

(English Translation)

Wander my friends, wander with me
Like the mist on the green mountain, moving eternally
Despite our weariness,
we’ll follow the road
Over hills and valleys
to the end of the journey

by the way

the new flavour is nutella, and it's amazing.

(via sms, re: Island Creamery)
me: every time i come here there's a new flavour
su-lin: stop gloating
me: su-lin, you can walk here from your house
su-lin: i could, but 33 doughnuts would be jealous

welcome home :)

nowhere to hide

i have discovered, to my immense horror, that

(a) in penn, students are asked to evaluate their TAs
(b) these ratings go up, not just in printed form, but on a website,
(c) with comments, and
(d) students are encouraged to select their classes based on these.

i don't think my ego can handle being crushed so badly.

food list (cont'd)

- margaret drive guo tie and suan la tang (of course)
- circular road lor mee
- haig road market oyster omelette
- maxwell market for the egg custard douhua thing (don't know what it's called) and superlative zha yu pian mi fen

england vs. paraguay with dukegabe and one of his friends, a Distinguished Stanford Alumnus. i've concluded that everyone who graduates from stanford shares a part of the same consciousness, so that at least a portion of all their actions is governed by the Mother Brain, or something. this particular DSA won some favour by having heard of bandura and zimbardo, and their work, unlike one other current student (who shall remain unnamed) who couldn't even point me to the psychology department.

as you know, the match was dull, and by the second half we found ourselves whipping out the rulers -- aka talking about our lives to date (it's so hard to disentangle the two things nowadays, isn't it? i need to meet more people who don't collect prizes like panini stickers. either that or we need a standardised way of scoring these things. +10 points for a psc scholarship, +2 points for graduating from rjc, +6 points for being under-14 windsurfing champion, +457 points for saving a village in a small african nation from the clutches of tyranny, etc. then we can paste the scores on our foreheads save simply barrels of time. how beauteous mankind is!) i know this all reeks of cynicism and jealousy, but that's exactly what this is not -- what i'm trying to say is that in our circle, all this generic stuff gets in the way of getting to actually know people. i hate all this mental adding-up of points, and even if neither person is doing it, there's always the secret fear that the other person is. you are not what you do!

anyway, this is why, privacy issues aside, DSA was DSA -- because he was, ironically, nearly indistinguishable in 2 hours from every other DSA i've ever met.

a letter arrived for me in the mail today from mindef: i've been posted to with all the attendant responsibilities of ict and mob manning and what have you. this is, of course, a cause for mourning, except...hang on a minute...oh yeah, SEEYA SUCKERS, YOU'RE TWO YEARS TOO LATE!!! MWAHAHAHAHAHAH -- [gets escorted away by men in uniform]

i have been fussing over the figures in my paper for the better part of a week now - and this is after spending simply ages just getting everything in alignment and making sure the fonts aren't wonky and cursing microsoft powerpoint for being so bloody awful when it comes to rendering straight lines. i know that there comes a point where you just have to say that enough is enough and throw yourself at the mercy of the peer review process, but there is no doubt now that i'm trying to delay the inevitable moment. editing is a form of escapism - as long as you're still judging it yourself, other people have no right to judge you, because, well, i just hadn't caught that mistake yet. but time is running short, and this simply has to go out within the next week -- so i will work on it today, and maybe through the weekend, and then call it quits. and then someone will have to pick up my bullet-riddled body after people with phds and tenure have looked it through and informed me of what an absolutely stupid twit i am and how could i have even thought.

wasn't it only yesterday that i died?

for the overseas types who may not have seen this yet: the ad that's causing all the fuss. you know, considering the media restrictions we have in this country, nus really should not be allowed to masturbate on my television.

in tomorrow's news: a rain of frogs, and the rivers turn to blood.

1001 posts!

hmm.

other notes

in another notebook:

11/11/2000

Hosp. attachment
-> civ. to hops., then change. No boots!
-> report 5 minutes b4 time to A+E dept
-> Bring lunch

(c. Feb 2001)

Visiting hours: 12-2, 5-7
P-cases: no forks!
Pts. going out for lunch
-> only with parents, collect IC

(c. March 2001)

[a sketch of Maslow's hierarchy of needs]

i said a long time ago that i wasn't going to post about europe, and there was a very good reason for that, but i do want to say this one thing. i was clearing out some of my stuff just now, and i found the notebook i was keeping at the time, (sidebar: yen, i notice you did the same in cambodia -- i saw those pages unintentionally while i was doing the accounts. did not read anything, i swear), and on the 5th of June, 2004, in Beauvais airport, i had this to say:

...Feeling bloated and v. thirsty despite earlier rehydration efforts. $ talk - beware what set heart on. Airport - sketch. Waiting room = tent. Boarding soon

i wish i remembered that conversation more clearly.

i have transferred a chunk of money into my american bank account -- the psychological equivalent at present of making it vanish, since i have no online banking (yet), or printed statements. three months rent i have to pay in advance, and the cost of having documents fed-exed to me from penn (duke paid for all of that; what's up with ivy league?) all the little pricks are quickly adding up to a lot of hurt.

From Black Swan Green, David Mitchell

"It'll be all right," Julia's gentleness makes it worse, "in the end, Jace."
"It doesn't feel very all right."
"That's because it's not the end."

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

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.