Chris is gone, spirited away by a taxi at a time of night when sensible people should be asleep and not hurrying to the airport. His leaving brings about the advent of exam week, which, for me, is going to be far more relaxing than it historically has been. I'm well ahead of the game with my papers - in fact, my main preoccupation is going to be the vexing question of what to do with all my stuff. I honestly feel like putting everything out in the corridor and having a huge jumble sale.

On the university front, Dr. McCarthy is missing without a trace, and goodness knows what he's done with my recommendations. Minz continues to message me twice a day to get frantic about her personal statements. It's a wonder any of us get into graduate school at all. Or maybe we don't. The process seems to weed disorganized people out just by virtue of its very nature.

Movies:
Pulp Fiction
Reservoir Dogs

went to northgate mall with chris to search for a gift for rhythm and blue's "secret santa" party next week. looked at a stained glass triptych, a dancing hamster that sings "tequila", a desk clock, hello kitty slippers and tacky hallmark merchandise before settling on a lava lamp for $9.99 (just under the budget). pleasantly surprised to find such a bargain since i always thought that lava lamps cost at least 30 bucks. resisted temptation to buy a used video game costing $14.95. walked back to east campus in the freezing cold.

Metaphysics
I was talking about blogging with Chris on the bus back from Chapel Hill yesterday. I asked him if he still read this blog; he said that he used to but doesn't really follow it anymore. We then started wondering if there's anyone else out there in the world who keeps us with it. He thinks the odds are that at least one other person out there is reading this religiously; I decidedly do not. The only thing going for it is that I update it regularly, which is more than can be said of the Wasteland of dead blogs out there. On the other hand, it is obscure, makes plenty of references to things that would make no sense to anyone who doesn't know me, and is generally rather unentertaining. So...who's right? If you are reading this blog and do not know me personally, e-mail jzl@duke.edu and give me a shout. I won't think that you're extremely sad/stalking me, I promise. This is just to settle a debate.

Elsewhere, we had thanksgiving brunch in Han's apartment (with some chicken and lots of dessert) and thanksgiving dinner in House H (with lots of everything, including candied yams). So now, it's the whole post-prandial trytophan-induced soporific reverie of repleteness. Joy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

New look!

I mailed in my Johns Hopkins envelope today, which means that I'm done! Done, done, done!

Now all that remains is to wait for the rejection letters. Which I will receive days later than anyone else because they will be forwarded to Beaufort. What a suck.

Chris arrived safely a few hours ago. I showed him around a little bit and we got dinner with Gab and Waihay and watched some anime and now he's curled up asleep while I type manically away at a paper and my blog and some other miscellaneous writing.

The campus has quietened down considerably since yesterday, with people leaving for the Turkey Day Holidays. Exodus, with suitcases. I hate that. Cf. Parents' weekend.

Books:
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

Sick. Runny nose. Sore throat. Coughing up my lungs. Still, I insist on singing in our dorm concert. Ah well. One of the last times I get to sing with my group.

Chris comes tomorrow.

we didn't place in sojam, but it was totally worth going anyway. the other college groups weren't too much to speak of, but the professional show was amazing. andrew chiakin used a loop machine to do a one-man a cappella song, including vocal percussion. da vinci's notebook was hysterical. the amount of talent all these people have is awe-inspiring.

so, one weekend of gallivanting later, it's actually time to get down to some real work now. if my next few entries are short, it's because i'm doing some hardcore mugging.

Reason to hate Singapore #23987417

you know, it struck me, after reading a friend's blog, that i'm only going to be studying in durham for another 2.5 weeks. after that, singapore, then bermuda, then beaufort, then god knows where. should i be tearing up? i am strangely unmoved.

Despite having the clunkiest title for a movie this year, (thanks, Pat O'Brien) Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World actually does live up to its positive reviews. Best member of the cast: Paul Bettany for creating an incredibly sympathetic character out of the ship's doctor and Russell Crowe's main confidante. Kudos, all around, and my grudging hats off to a Russell Crowe movie that might once again beat out my Lord of the Rings in the Oscar race.

In other news, SoJam is tonight, and Speak of the Devil has somewhow wangled themsleves a full page article in The Chronicle detailing their elaborate preparation. Whatever, guys. It's called having fun. The whole festival is being held at a rather unfortunate time, because I really do have to get these papers of mine done before Thanksgiving (and Chris) descends. To hear Da Vinci's Notebook though? I'm willing to stay up long nights on subsequent days for that.

For the dead and injured in Istanbul:

there is a balm in gilead
to make the wounded whole
there is a balm in gilead
to heal the sin sick soul

~ african-american hymn, from jeremiah 46:11

Laid down three tracks in the recording studio last night till 12 before staggering to Verde's only to discover that they stop serving food at midnight. Proceeded, exhausted, to Torero's where there was partaking of fried peppers and ice cream and cheap wine that tasted first like cough syrup and then cleaning fluid as the night wore on. That was my second dinner: I had to get doggy bags and bail out of the first one because I was running late. This first one was in Bakus, the tapas bar I went to several months back. This time, though, my professor was paying (the one teaching the graduate seminar I'm in: she brought us all out as an end-of-term gesture), which made my early departure seem even more inappropriate.

Recording itself was a worse experience than in the past. Overdub Studios assigned us a new technician who clearly didn't know his stuff as well as the old guy, and it took us forever to get set up in between takes. We barely squeaked in everything we wanted to do in four hours, and ended up ruffled and in need of sustenance - both in solid and liquid form. Thus, Torero's.


And now, I sit in front of my computer waiting for inspiration to hit so I can finally be done with this last application. It has taken altogether too long for me to get it together, and all I want to do now is get a snack and then go to bed again, beautiful tornado-less weather outside notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, I claw my way laboriously through completely rewriting my statement of purpose for Johns Hopkins since it is the only non-clinical program I'm applying to. Boo.

I was listening again just now to the Raffles Concert Singers' recording of its debut (and only) concert and marveling at how collectively Singaporean the choir sounds. For instance, as a nation, we don't seem to have the concept that 's' at the end of some words is actually phonetically /z/. Thus: "He's got the whole world in his handsssssss". Very unprofessional. Also, in retrospect, the American way of pronouncing words like "pass" and "class" sounds so much more natural when singing than the very classical, Anglicised, /pahss/. Maybe it's just the song, or several intervening years of being surrounded by a different kind of speech, but it really does rankle now.

The only section that sounds markedly different from the others (and you can hear this in our first verse solo in "He's Got the Whole World", as well as in the Latvian song), is the tenor section. Jiahao, Jonathan, Chester and I provide pretty much all the volume for those bits, and with the exception of one singer (who shall remain unnamed), the rest of us all pronounce words...um...correctly. The difference in quality shows. Yeah, yeah, blowing my own trumpet and all that, but it's true. And that's another thing Mr. Toh has to work furiously on if he ever wants to assemble a world-class choir.

1 application to go. I'm so excited I could wet my pants.

Books:
Love - Toni Morrison

I just found about 5 more forms that I have to fill in for my study abroad next semester that I had no idea even existed. It's almost as if Duke admin purposely hides things from you in the hope that you'll screw up.

I have changed my mind again with my last 2 applications: I have decided to do Yale and JHU instead of MIT and JHU. I will just have to live with the fact that the research in Yale is not entirely related to mine and go for a slightly different angle in my personal statement. Their clinical program really is too delicious, and MIT is just a little too ridiculous for my taste, all things considered. I mean, come on, they call their buildings by number instead of name.

From Travels With Charley, on diaspora
The place of my origin had changed, and having gone away I had not changed with it. In my memory it stood as it once did and its outward appearance confused and angered me.

What I am about to tell must be the experience of many in this nation where so many wander and come back, I called on old and valued friends. I thought their hair had receded a little more than mine. The greetings were enthusiastic. The memories flooded up. Old crimes and old triumphs were brought out and dusted. And suddenly my attention wandered, and looking at my ancient friend, I saw that his wandered also. And it was true what I said to Johnny Garcia - I was the ghost. My town had grown and changed and my friend along with it. Now, returning, as changed to my friend as my town was to me, I distored his picture, muddied his memory. When I went away, I had died, and so became fixed and unchangeable. My return caused only confusion and uneasiness. Although they could not say it, my old friends wanted me fone so that I could take my proper place in the pattern of remembrance - and I wanted to go for the same reason. Tom Wolfe was right. You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.

in the interest of providing opportunities for socializing (as our job descriptions say that we should) my fellow members on the singapore student association committee and i had organized a trip to 'penang', the new franchised pseudo-south-east-asian restaurant in chapel hill. this happened today. 15 people came along, and for one of the few times in my time here at duke i felt that grotty sensation that comes when too many singaporeans are clumped together in a foreign land, like being on one of those chan brothers tours to europe with the big buses and the ample, nouveau-riche aunties fanning themselves with brochures and conversing loudly in teochew and buying baubles and trinkets from the gift shop for the nephews and nieces back home. our waitress sequestered us in a corner of the restaurant where we could do as little damage as possible and was quite rude, interrogating poor ailian about why she had reserved a table for 18 and only 15 people showed up (not her fault, some irresponsible people RSVPed and didn't make an appearance). i felt quite irrationally embarrassed by the whole affair, not on behalf of singaporeans, but just for the fact that race and culture are such a big deal here and that i still can't walk around with my asian friends on campus (or in the mall, or down franklin street) without being conscious of segregation and clique-mentality and other such sententious labels that americans quite unwittingly conjure up without even really considering why, or what they mean.

on the bright side, the food was really good.

Something cool. I solved it in 3 hours. Heh.

Math test

Our abnormal psychology lecture today (yesterday) was on schizoid personality disorder, where the disordered individual is more or less a recluse, participating only in solitary activity and experiencing little in the way of mood change, either positive or negative.

If someone with those symptoms feels no distress, can he really be called "disordered"? He's not causing anyone harm. He still contributes in a positive way to society (although limited in the type of job he could succeed in). No deficits in intelligence, industry or anything much else. What's the big deal with diagnosing someone like that? Doesn't the mental healthcare industry have anything better to do?

Food:
Lamb vindaloo

after five years of being pestered by von, i have finally relented. thus:

Books:
Travels With Charley - John Steinbeck

6 down, 2 to go.