just back from a rather full day, although i think i did have a slight intention of getting a nap in the afternoon. anyhow. yay! i finally borrowed scores from music library. and was trying to play chopin's ballade and totally dying. this is why that is LRSM level i think. and boah asked if i wanted to go stanford shopping center with her so i did.. ended up spending the rest of the day out (and sleep deprived, sadly)
rhythms was pretty cool.. actually i wouldn't have gone, except for the fact that my roommate was performing and my dormmate too.. and talisman was singing (they should've sung more songs augh!) but then it turned out pretty good.. i really wasn't expecting to like indian dance/etc but i think i changed my mind. basmati raas n bhangra n hindi film dance were SO energetic. well not all of them, but still. quite amazing. something in common with yesterday's olympic finals. you can tell when someone's enjoying wat he/she's doing. for performance anyway.. they look really really happy.
and i wish they would stop going on and on about the "diversity in stanford" thing. i mean some things aren't meant to be said.. the more you talk about them the more obvious/forced and less natural it becomes. like, it's well and fine that it's so diverse around here but you don't have to keep calling attention to it. i feel like the fact that the show got sold out is a pretty good indication that diversity is appreciated. (of cos, there is the added incentive that westflo's tickets were heavily subsidized, but pple could've still chosen to not go).
decided i never post photos (besides those of sean's n joel's fridge) so here are some.
my roomie, emphasizing her height (i think she's like 30cm taller than me or sth)
monday's ski trip! yay~ as usual i'm the youngest. ok i guess it's not so "as usual", since all the american freshmen are one year younger than me. but well.
i decided i need to take more interesting photos. ohh! i must chase jackie for our roti prata cooking photos.
hmm. i really do think i'm going crazy. i just spent 4 hours sitting in my dorm lounge watching olympics women's figure skating (with some snowboarding and some freestyle skiing thrown in). and pple just started gathering until there were like 10+ pple sitting around. quite cool. maybe i say that cos i hardly go and hang around in the lounge hm.
anyway today was a gd day! somehow i couldn't sleep much, woke up at 7 and at 15min intervals thanks to my roommate's alarm. i guess i don't get so mad nowadays when i get woken up. more tolerance maybe? anyway the other day my ihum tf was saying freud's philosophy is basically that everything wrong with you can be blamed on ur parents. haha. so i think my original wrath at being woken up before it's time to do so comes from how my mom used to wake me up. although actually that isn't really "before it's time to wake up", i just didn't want to get up.
ok digressed. so, went for dance, and was rather lost at first cos they started club two-step on tues (which i didn't go for cos 1. i was finishing my ihum paper and 2. i figured i had enough fun on monday so better do my work 3. i was aching quite a bit). and i thought he'd spend quite some time reviewing steps and wat not, but that didn't happen. so i kinda figured it out along the way, thanks to the poor partners who had to suffer with my cluelessness. anyhow once i got the hang of it it was pretty fun! lalala. very relaxed and comfortable dance. one's partner makes such a difference sometimes.
so i was quite happy after that. didn't really want to go back to doing waltz, but oh well. for other pple to review for viennese ball tmr. then i had ihum, presented by two TFs. the first one was alright, the second one made more sense and was more organized. and then econ, where i got so bored and i wasn't listening properly. bit restless today also. oh i thought maybe it was the iced latte yesterday (first time i decided to try it i think, and i am never drinking coffee again). but i guess since i still don't want to sleep now although i really ought to, there has got to be something else.
uh. lunch w jackie. food wasn't great, they ran out of salmon grr. then voice class! ooh. was pretty satisfied today, i thought i heard some vibrato while i was singing my piece.. so that was pretty good. tcher was quite happy too (although sometimes i don't think she has v high standards since this is just a beginning class) and given that i actually don't actually practise the song, which i really should, but i know the tune and everything anyway. n she decided i could think about trying the cadenza at the end and i'm like . right. i don't really think i could do a high b flat. but we shall see. maybe if i sing properly i can. hehe.
didn't want to go for ihum section, but well. spent 1/2h watching lohengrin so that was more interesting than usual discussion.
was late to see my pwr teacher. i think he's really biased la, he keeps telling me my writing is v good and gave me an A for my rhetorical analysis which i don't even think i concluded properly -- he even wrote "why are the (last few) paragraphs so short?" (well i would think it's a bit obvious i ran out of time and couldn't finish properly right haha oops). -shrug- or maybe chuansheng's right, just high standards. anyhow i'm not complaining. so i was asking him if he got more sleep (esp since we had long weekend). and he said he went clubbing. and i'm like . right. so much for complaining u dont' get enough sleep. n he said when u're having fun it's different.. and he thinks SF clubs should open until at least 6am instead of 2am. -shakes head-
that was quite amusing. then i went for econ office hours. and was, at first, rather appalled that my TA walked in. cos the last time i tried going for his office hours i walked out after 15mins. but it all worked out and i finished my work. came back, had dinner, sat at the table listening to 2 of my dormmates and one of their friends (all black) discuss the black community in US/at stanford. interesting. i think these identity things only surface for minority races or something, like whites wouldn't be sitting around discussing wat other pple think of them or anyth.
alright. really really should sleep. -shakes head-. i think i'll take a nap tmr. or a few naps. haha.
ohh.. this weekend is parents' weekend. it's kinda cool seeing my dormmates' parents come in.. kinda wish my parents could come too. i think they would want to too. weather's been improving
ah. finally i have some time to slack. i'm sure there're somemore things i need to do (ie econ problem set) but i think that's about it yay! haha. i ended up slightly late for library workshop for pwr today cos i was finishing my paper. and i think my draft research proposal was really nonsensical but heck.. luckily i know enough about singlish to be able to crap my way through pretty fast. ahaha. and i also ended up crashing into someone while on my mad rush to green library. oops. but seriously, it's not my fault he was going so slowly. maybe i'm just making excuses. but anyway.
just came back from meeting psc officers. that was such a weird experience, one of the pple is a psc scholar who graduated frm uni in 2001. and i was trying to imagine other psc pple in his place, telling pple abt psc scholarship and etc, and i just couldn't. anyway i think i asked some slightly awkward questions. they were kind of sheepish when i asked how they got our emails, and asked if they should apologize. come to think of it, this is kind of like zuo4 zei2 xin1 xu1 right.. i mean if you got it in a proper way you wouldn't be feeling like you ought to apologize. ah. that's a gd point. haha. self-declared.
and i don't think i made a very good impression by telling them it wasn't fair to not back-pay and still have a bond of 6 years. haha. oops. but seriously, it's kind of a principle. even though he said it isn't like finaid, nothing to do with proportion, more about how 6 years is optimal to assess the ministry/let them assess you. or something like that. i suppose it depends how you look at it.
anyhow come to think of it, it's just interesting to think of friends/classmates as working in their respective fields. like the medicine people will end up doctors and etc.
anyway. monday! haha that was so awesome, definitely don't regret going. although at one point or other i was contemplating staying and just going for crossing the line at night. according to kiat they asked very personal questions abt race/religion/... but i think there weren't that many pple frm my dorm who went so just as well:p if it hadn't been up to expectations i'd just have been sad/annoyed.
and it really reminded me of gilroy trip; leaving at unearthly hours (4am, okay 4:15 since wenzheng overslept haha) before the sun rises and coming back after the sun sets (reached around 11:10pm). gilroy was like 5am to 8pm. but that's nearer and that's shopping. so quite different.
kirkwood was pretty different from squaw.. i guess since squaw was the site of winter olympics dunno how long ago, their stuff is sort of more centralized; there's a huge carpark in front of the resort. but the runs are so nice and huge. i guess it was less crowded cos it's a monday. and they have awesome college deals, it was that much cheaper.
and i was the only freshman (and probably the most inexperienced and therefore the slowest) so everyone had to wait for me. but they were so nice about it. sean was like my instructor for toe turns, which i'm still quite lousy at actually, but nvm. i bet it's the phobia of very bruised knees from the first time i snowboarded. haha. n when i got stuck on flat ground sean n wenzheng offered to pull me along haha. oh and i also realized how unfit i am (not that i was very fit to begin with la), after a couple of runs i was quite tired liao. yay for lunch:p
and weirdly enough i wasn't very hungry the entire day. maybe the granola bars are that good. haha. anyway by the time it was 4:30 and all the lifts had closed, i unclipped the snowboard and could hardly hobble downhill haha. sad case man. oh and i don't like their step-in snowboard, so difficult to step! anyway. i think every part of me which could ache was aching. as a rule i don't really mind aching, but when it's on this sort of scale it's not very fun. oh well.. am glad i got to go with them:)
i need LOADS of sleep tonight. not that i've been that sleep deprived since i made sure i got at least 7 hours the past two nights. but still. chionging papers and all. am so glad it's done. oh i had an extra french class just now cos there's no class nxt friday, ended up talking to her for an hour instead of 1/2hr. i think my brain stopped thinking in french after a while cos i just kept forgetting all the french words and she had to think instead of me:p to help translate. it's really interesting how sometimes i can just sort of "slip" into the french mode and speak more fluently than normal. unfortunately those times don't happen as often as i'd like them to.
shall watch figure skating finals tmr! at least, i think they're tmr hm. shall go and read the article chuansheng found on loving your job. i definitely need to read that. haha.
oh!! yesterday my RA decided to look for my house on google maps. and i actually found it! after quite some time though, haha. oops. anyway then he labelled it as "Where Clarissa lives (Baby Dinosaur Land)" grr. i was so indignant that i was the only one with weird labels (the others were like "maggie's house" "amparo's house".
ow. am feeling rather battered. just back from snowboarding! that was so fun.. albeit my super-aches now. actually sometimes i like aches cos it means i've been using muscles but well, if it's overdone, definitely not a good thing. i wonder how i'm going to get out of bed tmr. maybe like daryl after his two days at heavenly; "i had to roll out of bed". rofl. just that the bed height isn't very good for rolling. anyway. IHUM!! aahh. will talk abt today later.