blah. this has to be the most awful set of finals i've ever had. okay given that this is just the second set, i guess i can't say that. esp when math was so disastrous last quarter. ahh. i felt so awful i decided i would go eat more ice cream to make myself happier. haha. but it was sorbet so hopefully not so fattening eh.
so econ. there were things i knew i ought to have known but didn't know/wasn't sure of. and i don't really want to know what i got wrong at the moment. and then my ihum paper. so so disastrous. i could make excuses and say that i didn't like the prompts. but that would be what it is, an excuse. and 3 pgs! i don't know. i felt like i ended up describing a lot. and didn't really link stuff very well. and it was like sort of an hour late. just awful awful awful. pwr was late, ihum also late. and i was just telling sean on sunday that i didn't really think about handing in stuff late. this is so bad. normally when i'm late it's like maybe 15mins plus.
and this was supposed to be my slack quarter so if i don't do well it'll be even worse:| crap. and i realized last night that if i change my msn nickname my mom can see it too and she'll start asking me. anyway. the only thing that makes me slightly happier is lion king's be prepared! it's such a nice song. actually i just like the drumbeats that come in at 2:52. i think i like drumbeats in general, esp the african-jungle-watever other description type. interesting. i think after rj chorale/acappella/listening to mingze talk about it i'm more aware of harmonies and bass notes/rhythms/watever.
okay my roomie just got back from math 51 final and she was on the phone w her dad going "it was HORRIBLE.. some of the questions were okay but the rest, there was so much nonsense u couldn't even make any sense of the nonsense.. i literally just made up an answer.. i was like, jesus, help me." and she went on to describe how she (in her desperation) just manipulated her equation (multiplied it by 3) to get the equation she was supposed to have. rofl. i couldn't help laughing cos she sounded so hilarious. but i definitely feel her pain, last quarter's memories are more than enough. makes me feel a bit better about pwr anyhow, math was definitely worse than that.
sigh i'm so sad, i handed in my pwr paper 1.5 hrs late (part of that was, i maintain, cos he made us go for extra pwr class cos not everyone finished presenting last week and we didn't do the evaluations) and it wasn't very well done either. like i was writing and getting very desperate so the last few paragraphs were getting shorter and shorter. although i don't know what i should have done about it. i just took a really long time to get started on revising my paper cos i didn't know what to do about it. maybe that's just a convenient excuse though. i don't know what i spent my last week doing hm. i just hope he doesn't give me a b:(
and it also doesn't help that i'm rather zoned out cos of the 3-hr ihum final. i've never written so much nonsense in my life, although i think i seem to have said that before at some time or other hm. and i forgot a couple of things. i don't know if i should have just taken it on thursday like most other people are, but i probably wouldn't get to eat dinner cos econ's frm 3:30 to 6:30 and i'll probably need all the time, i think. i'm glad that's over though, hope it went alright.
i need to sleep. oh! but i shall post the picture of the event that sort of made my day yesterday haha. at five-ish i looked out of my window and was idly glancing around when lo and behold, i discerned a girl in one of the trees outside my dorm! hmm. haha. it was rather intriguing. i think i stood there in amazement for quite a while watching her and thinking to myself, what a rather curious occurrence. like alice and the white rabbit, you know? and then i decided it was picture worthy and got my camera from my drawer. unfortunately, by the time i took one photo and looked at it to see how it turned out, the girl was climbing down so i couldn't take another one. so here it is, the one and only photo of the most memorable event yesterday:
ooh. i really think i slacked off a lot this quarter. instead of doing my work i went for jammix! haha. and spent much more time there than i expected to. although that was partly cos i wasn't dancing the whole time. must maximize time hmm. anyway. irish polka kerry sets are fun fun fun! very energetic actually heh.. and to riverdance music! awesome.. and i met pearline there which was cool.. and wenzheng.. who has a 24hr final due tmr at 5 but he couldn't do the 1st 3 questions n decided he needed motivation. haha.
anyway happy feet! sooo cute. 
too bad it only comes out in november. the trailer sounds quite funny.. i think its the spanish accented english. sounds like it's imitated. which is always amusing. man i feel so movie-deprived here. definitely as compared to back home, when any weekend/weekday afternoon or night or watever one can just hop on a bus and go down to orchard/wherever to catch a show.
oh and yesterday (i was about to say thursday, but realized today is (was) friday) when i came back from office hours, i saw my dormmates out in the grassy patch whacking pinatas! look! haha.
so garish. and i didn't expect them to be four-legged (supposedly) donkeys. cos normally the ones i've seen in books or something are turtles or something or other. and chuan sheng was doing finger painting today! haha. reminds me of kindergarten. i think so anyway. ahh. i wish i were a kid again. so fun.
much as my roommate really annoys me sometimes (with regard to sleep, or lack of it) i'm still really glad we are roommates. heh. she's definitely taught me a lot of things. black culture is so different. and they're so expressive. musically anyway. and just her in general. she's so funny she can get so distracted sometimes, and my dormmate was like "other pple gesture when they talk, tomi sings". haha. or something like that.
oh! which reminds me, we had our own IHUM section on thurs cos our TF is in puerto rico or sth.. funky stuff. anyway so one of my section mates was wondering if she should listen to our IHUM professor's lecture on itunes.. yeah they record it cos he talks so fast, so its for pple who either don't go for lecture [a large majority of pple, whom i doubt bother listening but i mite be wrong] or go for lecture but can't write down everyth he says fast enough. and we were like, no, we don't think so. and another section mate was saying, "can you imagine? friend "what're you listening to (on your ipod)?" you "professor berman's lectures!"" this was all said complete with the section mate pretending to groove to the "music" and pretending to look cool. rofl. and we were grumbling about this prof's penchant for creating words that nobody has ever heard of. it was so funny.
500th post! -celebration-
haha. just happened to notice my counter. anyway it's really interesting to read back entries of blogs (although thankfully i haven't been doing that lately, it'll mean that i'm really procrastinating). like darryl said. the process of growing up huh.
anyway. i decided to get my ihum file out and look for literary terms (there're gonna be 25 of them on the final! !!! i only came up with 5 on tuesday!) but i guess it includes things like german-specific terms or watever. anyway. so the first lecture, my lecture notes read as such "Russell Berman. blah blah blah. talking about picture. sigh. the amount of crap he just spouted is phenomenal" (he was waxing lyrical on this painting by Caspar David Friedrich; the picture is used as the symbol for our IHUM)
oh.. sunday was so funny. sean's pri sch classmate kenneth was here.. so he and jon phua came to church with us on sunday.. and while deciding where to go to for lunch sean decided that jon should decide where to go cos he doesn't eat off campus that often. but jon didn't really say anything so sean (ever the opportunist) jumped in and suggested korean house! man, you could see his face light up immediately. rofl. so funny.
oh and my favourite quote from sunday lunch:
me : when're you leaving? (for their self-declared 2 week spring break)
sean : saturday
kenneth : really? me too!
sean has a =look= on his face. words fail to describe it. (kenneth is leaving this sat, sean next sat). he claims that every sunday someone says something that inspires the look. (the someone usually being daryl; but i said daryl is a different case la haha) anyway it was hilarious
uh. okay. anyway. and tonight at chi alpha kenneth was saying i'm so slack! (what basis he has for that i also dunno, just cos i was early to help set up lights, hmph) and then when i decided it was time to go back he was like "good! go and study!"
well i suppose i am slack but grr. i think the sense of urgency this quarter is less cos it's two papers and two finals. hm. i was telling joel that i'm not feeling stressed, which is not necessarily a good thing cos it just means i am going to procrastinate (which i'm achieving quite well at present, i feel)
oh! my writing center appointment.. somehow they mixed up the appointment schedule cos i ended up talking to a tutor i'd talked to before (i try to try someone new just to see how effective/not pple are). but it was cool cos she's really nice and encouraging. i think one of my problems is that i tend to be guarded about strongly expressing my views. like i always try to temper it. maybe that's the libra thing. balance. but well balance can be achieved even if i feel strongly about something. and she really focuses on thesis statements, tying paragraphs back to it and etc.
today my pwr teacher supplied lunch for us. falafels, pitas, some sort of vegetable (not lettuce/spinach, i forgot wat it's called) and some other stuff. he told us "my friend jennifer is giving her class pizza and coke, be thankful that you've something healthy" (i think i actually prefer coke and pizza. it probably would have been less trouble for him too. but oh well.)
for french we were watching this classic movie.. it's so hilarious. and it's so french. or anyway i think it's only the french who're capable of such crazy things, which shows up in most of their movies. i mean i guess it's kind of slapstick, but either i'm biased or somehow it's just not as bad as how some american movies can get. it's called the adventures of rabbi jacob! the lead actor is really talented at making crazy faces/animal noises. good study break, sort of. my french teacher said it's like a family favourite, pple sit around and watch it on sunday afternoons. anyway this bigoted guy called pivert somehow embroils himself in this plot involving assassins and an arab rebel leader (called slimane, who's infatuated with redheads) and they get into all sorts of adventures, culminating in them impersonating two famous rabbis (and pivert hates jews somemore). augh the story is too long to tell and i better do my work. kenneth is nagging me using sean's msn somemore. -shakes head-
back from laserquest! haha that was quite fun:) although it was quite a workout, something I didn't expect. and the packs were rather heavy. wished we could have more games, i'm rather lousy at shooting pple/hiding as for now. i bet all those guys perfected their skills through playing computer games.
anyway i've been feeling so lackadaisical about doing work this weekend. i really haven't accomplished much. i think i spent most of my time sleeping. it was so weird cos i woke up at 5pm today (fell asleep at 3 or so) and i was like wait. i think i was supposed to do something in the course of the afternoon. but actually i didn't. oh well. so disoriented. i wonder why hm. interesting.
and so i feel out of sorts again. i think it's cos i feel like i have a lot of stuff to figure out and therefore i'm even less motivated to even start. i have to think about spring break, about spring courses (actually i think this should come before the break hm), what i'm gonna do during the summer and then my work due for this quarter. come to think of it i think my priorities are all mixed up (seeing from the order my list is in). man. why do we have to plan for anyth? i hate planning! let me rephrase that. day to day planning is fine, but long term isn't. that's going to get me into trouble one day though augh.
alright, am not in a terribly good mood evidently. but as for classes, when i see how other pple have to do homework during spring break (HAHA) i'm very thankful for quarter systems:) (and we get to take more classes)
man. i need good food. just now i was craving yesterday's oasis burgers. they were really good though.. aahh. maybe i'm experiencing snack withdrawal symptom haha. cos i have all my snacks but i'm determined not too eat so many (esp since i have an ulcer, grr)
yay! i decided i had to blog before my happy mood runs away. let's see.. for the first time this quarter, i slept at 3am. very bad idea. but anyway, i wanted to finish reading ihum (not that it did much good since i didn't say much during section hm)
anyway, had to force my poor sleepy self out of bed.. yay for dance! haha. cha cha is fun but mambo is more fun! although sometimes i have some misgivings about latin dances hm. ihum wasn't exactly very fun but i didn't fall asleep! and i didn't fall asleep during econ either! although that was like a repetition of econ 1 about monopoly, dunno why i was copying stuff down in the end. darn after doing econ pset not so happy liao.
we ended early so i got to go back for lunch! yippee. and ate a cream puff and brownie (oh dear. fat!) and then voice class.. i think i still sound a bit weird, maybe i need to practise. haha. notice there's no "more" cos i haven't been doing so, oops.
and ihum section.. was normal. my tf makes very crazy comments. we were talking about society in effi briest. and there was this thing about how going on a vacation requires a lot of procedures, esp if u're middle-class. and he was like "never go on a cruise! you'll be on a ship with 50 other people who're just like you! may as well jump off the ship". rofl. and he was remarking on how his prompts never get chosen for papers. haha he's quite cool la. just that our sections aren't exactly the most interesting things. okay maybe i'm just biased cos he gave me good marks for my ihum paper! the one due the day after snowboarding! oohh. really praise God:) although i have to admit that wasn't the first thing that came to mind, something i have to work on there. anyway, yeah, it kinda justifies my going snowboarding, so i was telling chuansheng. yippee~
came back from econ office hours and it was raining:( and i had no raincoat:( oh well. time to peer review PWR papers!
ladida. i seriously think i'm too slack this quarter for my own good, am going to have a terrible time next quarter, with ihum psych1 cs106a and (undecided) and maybe golf. hm. and it's time for rushing too. hope i survive hm. i think i'm actually glad for the quarter system, i already get bored of my classes halfway thru the quarter, wonder how i'd cope with a 14 week semester haha.
i guess God did plan it for me. or maybe i'm appreciating what i have. like. the weather. if i'd ended up on east coast i think i'd be really quite miserable. unless i get to go snowboarding more often haha but that also costs $$. and then the quarter vs semester system. oh well. it's good anyhow. and zhihui was telling me the other day when i was talking to her about rg, that chicago is more like bi4 men2 zao4 che1 while here pple go out and do things.. so i should take advantage of that. hopefully something works out later on cos i don't feel like i'm doing anything much right now hm. although i probably should start.
ooh. i just spent like 45mins sitting in my dormmate's room talking to her. i should do that more often. but it was so funny cos it felt like i was in a psychologist's chair (and she is a psych major). so interesting. i didn't know she went to german school in DC. anyway.
ohh i got killed for assassins just now, ahaha. i sort of had the idea that either ryan or devin would be after me before long but i couldn't be bothered to bring my gun along when i went to get water. so well. oh. assassins = game played in the dorm with water guns. you get assigned a target, whom you're supposed to kill within 24 hours. kill the target by squirting a water gun at him/her. targets can't get killed in their own room/in the toilets/in the servery. uh. and dormmates can't see you shooting ur target. i think that was about it. oh after 24 hrs u're in danger of termination by the staff (they come after you with buckets of water/super soakers and take you out of the game). i was in danger of termination on friday and today. hehe. but i don't think the staff really cared cos they wanted pple to stay in the game. and half the pple were killed already.
one day my PHE sent us this video of kittens in this mini world.. and so i dropped over by her room and she showed me the website and we were just squealing at the screen together.
cute pic!:) i now have this guinea pig on my wall.. ahaha. so cute and fat and furry. cuteoverload.com
ah i just remembered something else. daryl bought $14 worth of pocky from ranch99 today. and we got vip cards for savings purposes in future. anyway, the looks on sean's n joel's faces were priceless when they saw the amount of pocky daryl had in his hands. so hilarious. but again daryl never fails to amaze when he buys stuff from ranch99. and i was rather upset they didn't have the big hello pandas! not that i really wanted it but i think my roomie could've done with it, she has a LOT of work to do this week. oh well. we got to eat mochi courtesy of our two fav housemates. i think the guy who invented that is up there with the guy who invented beds (and pillows and bolsters) now i feel like eating tangyuan. boo.
i love the quote on sharon's blog. okay, ex-blog? haha.
dance
as though no one is watching you,
love
as though you have never
been hurt before,
sing
as though no one can hear you,
live
as though heaven is on earth.
actually i think i've seen it before. also in amy's room.
anyway. i just remembered something my dormmate and my roommate were discussing the other day. that i'm only mean (i.e. insulting) to pple i like. which is, really, when you think about it, rather odd. anyway i guess it's true. sadly or otherwise. and then they started to wonder if i'm only nice to pple i don't like. hmmm. i think if i don't know you very well i would. i mean, one doesn't go round diaoing ppl they hardly know right. actually i don't think i'm that weird after all, i'm quite sure most people do that.
ooh! it seems like jackie read my blog cos she sent me roti prata pics last night yay:) totally made my (rainy and miserable) day. i must really go and find out what happened to our instant noodle pics hm. 
man i think the photos i take are better than those jackie takes. haha. anyway.
the grad students are really crazy la last night one of them sent an email asking if anyone wanted to go skiing this weekend (and there's one planned for next weekend!) i was telling my roomie and she decided that it wasn't fair tt grad students are so free. haha.
oh! i just remembered sth. so i went to airport church of christ on sunday (near SFO). since sean was happily off in vegas. ahem. anyway. then i realized the importance of hospitality. so at home i'm the one who's been in the church since forever, and i'm wondering why visitors would want random pple to go up and say hi to them. but then when i come here and i'm the visitor, i see why. esp since i ended up hanging around for potluck lunch (yum). the weirdest thing was that the couple who fetched me here.. the wife didn't talk to me at all. actually nobody talked during the ride there. maybe cos they were all listening to the gospel recording, but still. i talked to the guy cos he came down on saturday to figure out where to fetch me from. but that's all.
and God really provided, before class started i was thinking about how i was going to do my work (this couple stays in SF the entire day on sunday!) until 6 and then i remembered joel would be fetching daryl from the airport! my saviour.. haha. yeah. it was such a coincidence cos i did call joel on saturday to tell him i'd have to spend the day there and he mentioned he was going to pick daryl up and somehow it didn't make a connection there. but on sunday morning it did. interesting huh.
then joel was saying that he actually has a lot of work to do, contrary to what i may think. but they must give us hope. i'm like wat hope?? so he said bible says faith, hope and love right. love cannot give so give hope lor. rofl. that was singularly one of the most hilarious things i've heard. man. what are we going to do without them next year.. and now ruixiong's going off to princeton too. very tragic.
oh! yessterday kiat didn't wanna go back to frosoco for dinner in case it rained again. so he came over and got dexian to eat dinner too and i met ruixiong in the dining hall and got him to come over too! mini-sporean gathering haha. quite cool. and it was so uncanny cos wenkai was here to visit jennifer. another sort of even more mini-sporean gathering.
today i had one of the most useless pwr classes ever. we sat around reading boothe prize essays and analyzing how their intro/conclusion worked. i'm like okay, i guess it might be helpful, but we have better things to do like writing that 12-15pg draft which is due on monday! at least he let us off early so for once i got to eat lunch. haha. and i was so annoyed on monday, he gave us back the contextual analysis and had quite a number of problems with my paper, most of which were present in the draft, which he didn't think to tell me about earlier! seriously, if you're going to make us hand up drafts, i would appreciate it if you gave us constructive feedback. instead of "oh, it's fine" "you write very well" and etc. and for the first two papers he only gave A-'s A's and A+'s, so that does explain a lot.
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.
just got back from talking to zhihui about rgs.. she's doing some project on good schools and decided to focus on RG! so rg pple reading this i'm probably gonna ask you guys to help fill up this questionnaire thingy haha. anyway. it was a rather strange journey. back to 4 - 8 years ago. and when she asked me what was my most hated lesson.. i was like ok i need to list my classes to remember.. so while listing.. i came to "math" under lower sec and sharon lee popped up in my mind. strangely enough I can't remember what exactly it was that made her hate us/us hate her. need to go home and read my diary again if i didn't throw it away hm. although i guess some things are best forgotten anyway.
and i realized i'd forgotten so much. it's all become a huge jumble, i can't differentiate between what happened in rg/rj, ... or like what camps we had for class/cca/psl/sec1/... rather melancholic to think that i'll probably forget even more as i get older. in fact i think before coming i already had a sense of that. how you meet pple in different stages of your life but you move on and so do they and sometimes you never meet again.
wow okay i'm like pushing myself deeper into "the abyss of my mind" (frm ihum section yesterday). but it's such a gloomy day anyhow. i was utterly miserable cycling to wilbur in the rain and then wang ning and the rest of the guys decided i needed more and waved today's stanford daily at me. 5.75% hike in tuition fees for nxt year, yay! well done.. i better suck up to those two pple coming on wed, like wang ning suggested. blah.
i hate cold rainy days. and i want to eat something now but i can't cos we're going out for dinner at cheesecake factory. ahh. i also need a thesis statement for ihum. boo. feeling very lethargic. not that i'm rarely otherwise. hah. haven't been sleeping properly lately, i dunno why. like i'll wake up at weird times and readjust my comforter. or i can't fall asleep. boohoo.
i am so nonplussed. i just went for my pwr conference with my teacher and expected to get scolded for
1. lousy texts: we were supposed to choose 2 main texts to analyze and 5 supporting texts, and these 5 texts I kind of found like the day before the draft was due, and all from the internet (which he expressly talked about in class on wed, saying that he would have to talk to some of us cos some pple used solely internet texts, in which my guilty conscience immediately decided I was going to be in trouble
2. sloppy work: i did the rhetorical analysis part in chunks first cos i had no idea what a contextual analysis involving rhetorical analysis was supposed to be. so on wednesday night i had 3 pages worth of that. and was still searching for the other 5 texts, I might add. even though I had a vague idea of what to use. so thursday night I spent doing.. and friday.. at intervals chuansheng would be asking whether i'd finished yet and of cos not.. and i was so aghast when one of my peer review grpmates sent us her draft at like 11am on friday. (the deadline was 5pm) and at 5 i was just at my last paragraph. man. that was so nightmarish.
and then the first thing he says is "yr paper is so gd i have nothing to say". and i'm like. erps. "i don't believe that" and he laughed and said ok let's look at your texts (ie the biblio). so i was like, ooh, first scolding (although actually he's not very gd at scolding in real life, which is gd i guess). but apparently he thought they were alright so -shrug-
so we get to my paper. and he's like, really, I don't have much to say about it, you write very well (or something to that effect). and i'm like i didn't think it was a very gd draft and he asks why. in which i inform him of my total (almost anyway) cluelessness of what a contextual analysis is supposed to be. and he laughs his head off and after having finished laughing, asks if i read his outline on the assignment. grr. of cos i did but it's not my fault if even though the outline is helpful, it still doesn't tell me what a contextual analysis does! anyway... i don't know why everyone laughs at things i say. my roomie (and other dormmates) are often very amused at me. i suppose ignorance is bliss.
oh.. here's another picture of sean's and joel's fridge. (since sean asked me if it was going to make it onto the blog). but i told him even pictures of very filled fridges (i came back from ihum section to marvel at the prodigious amount that the two of them eat) get boring. so. time to await more exciting pics!
and i need to get back to my french presentation on "la fete de la musique". it's a really cool topic though. and i think God planned it so i really wouldn't die this week.. if i had contextual analysis due tmr i'll be dead. not that i'm glad my pwr tcher was sick but well.. anyhow this weekend I have to work hard!
i think i had a far slacker weekend than it should have been. question mark there though. yesterday i skipped melody, figured i could use the extra couple of hours. but then i ended up going to sean's n joel's hse for dinner.. it was so interesting watching joel cook. and it was quite hilarious cos i took so long to do things tt joel decided he'd better do them if not we'd never get any dinner. reminds me of my zoo days. anyhow i did the dishes (so many plates/saucepans/pots! guess why? so much food!!) and they decided tt upped my cool quotient (although i'm sure suaning them didn't help haha)
anyway the amount of food totally reminded me of french immersion. start with soup/appetizer, main course, cheese, dessert, ... ... and my host family was wondering why i didn't eat much. good old days, when cheukka swept cookie crumbs under her bed and decided they didn't exist anymore since they were out of sight. and i actually agree with her about old hands now! but i don't think either she/kai-lyn/yun lei will be reading this sigh. dry hands look old! eek.
and then i had screw ur roommate at night.. kind of a pity tt the original guy my roommate set me up with couldn't make it. he's taking the pwr that i wanted! and it would've been interesting. but anyway it was still fun~ i haven't bowled in ages.. and the ball just got heavier and heavier throughout the night haha. disco bowling. dim lights and disco ball. and the music was so terrible.. off-pitch pple yelling into the mics.. man. i thought i'd end up deaf. and with a sore throat cos i had to shout to be heard over the music. apparently no one else has that problem, probably cos they're all so loud to begin with anyway. it's true!
so when i came back i immediately set about downing a gallon of water. which ended up in me visiting the bathroom at 5am or sth. wat to do. and i still sounded a little weird in the morning. but oh well. oh! my cool story of the night: first throw (or watever u call it), 9 pins down. left 1. and while i was going to do my 2nd shot, atiqah called. so i was like talking to her while bowling and somehow, very miraculously, the last pin fell! ahahaha. should've videoed it.
anyhow. and yes today is a momentous day because we managed to get to church before the first song! i think we've done it once before but i can't remember when. but anyway. landmark occasion.
sadly i had to rush back for IHUM mozart performance (for that 1% extra credit) so no lunch. i so wanted jap food! oh well. next week. :)
ohhh yes i finally closed my suitcase. but that horrible dormmate insists that i still look like i just have to pop a toothbrush in and then i'm ready to go, just grab the suitcase and leave. i contend that it's under the bed, nobody's going to see that.
i feel so cheated about my pwr peer review letters. first of all it's so silly cos none of us really know what a contextual analysis is supposed to be like, so how to critique other pple's work?? and then while i'm struggling to fit my letters into one page, my grp members have just like 3/4 page (and without changing the margins) i am very bitter. like here i am spending time analysing your work and you're not being very helpful with mine. but again since we're all not sure how it's supposed to be like it's also kind of hard to suggest stuff.. ah watever.
must mug econ
thursday night:
hmm. i am rather amused. my roomie has just informed me that last night when one of our dormmates came running to our room and yelling about something or other i sat up and glared at her like i was going to kill her. quote her "i was really scared of you" (or something to that effect). hmm. and i don't remember doing that actually. just goes to show how incensed i can be when unfairly awoken. ahaha. or maybe my subconscious taking over since i'm not overtly emotional in real life. even though i must admit there were times when my roomie's alarm clock would go off multiple times (and for at least 3mins each time) and i felt like screaming at her.
i'm so thankful for lovely singaporean upperclassmen. last quarter when i blogged about how awful i was feeling shineik'd talk to me about it.. yesterday i realized how unprepared i was for the next week (and for tmr; 6-8 page pwr paper of which i had 1 paragraph written and no idea how to go about writing the rest of it) and was rather despondent so sean was trying to cheer me up. and then i was telling ruixiong about how my econ 50 prof is new so we don't have practice midterms (okay we have one from last year but that's it) and he offered to lend me his notes and when i came back from a very long day (8:45 to 6) i found a whole stack of notes under my door and before realizing it was his notes i was wondering why someone dumped so much stuff there. hehe. and tonight [friday night] sean and joel were out and got krispy kreme for us. well even though i didn't get to eat cos i didn't pick up my phone cos i was in mixed co (acappella) concert it was still really nice of them:) wow my sentences seem to be really long today, must be the last-minute chionging of a 6 page paper.
and anyway i had ihum section reunion dinner so that equals good food and gelato! although i still think venezia gelato is better.. -shrugs- maybe cos that's the first gelato i ate. hm. yeah. and theirs isn't so creamy.. maybe i'm just deceived by their 99% non fat or watever the sign is haha.
now i need to decide on what to present on with regard to french culture. and decide if i should go for the mozart concert on sunday and get 1% extra credit for ihum or go for lunch. haha. i can already hear it "are you a true sporean or not?" (which is what jackie asked me when we were still eating at 8 and bon bon ball swing class started: dance or food? heh) but actually sporeans are also kiasu wat.. besides being great food lovers. bah.
right. since i've slacked since 5:30 till now (10:30) i should go something productive.
i'm bored and i don't feel like doing my work. even though i know jolly well i ought to be doing my work now so i don't die next week. ahh. and if i manage to finish fast i might even be able to go snowboarding (if they do go). ahh! sigh. i figured yesterday was cos i was pretty much trying to do work from 2.30pm to 12.30. or something like that. haha. trying is the word though.
and if i sit at my desk i'm just tempted to eat. and eat. and eat. :(
today's dance was fun though, sth to do with viennese ball or something.
okay well i didn't finish that yesterday so. i am SO pissed off at cingular. the past however many times i've called them to ask sth about my bill, it was just fine. and today, this guy decides that oh, since i don't have an ssn, i need a password before they can access my account and answer my questions. i.e., i'm supposed to go down to a cingular store and get one. how stupid is that? and they've been taxing me for some spastic thing which i don't even know; the last time i asked, the guy was like, oh, it's govt taxes, we don't know anything about it. maybe i just shouldn't bother so much and just pay it. freaking annoying though.
just read val's blog. she always sounds so happy it's really amazing.. maybe cos i only blog when i'm not particularly happy haha. come to think of it it's probably true that when i'm happy i won't be blogging. oh well.
under sean's persuasion i ended up in glen's house watching the 2nd and 3rd quarters of superbowl. it was certainly interesting though, given i'd only watched the big game since i've gotten here. it's really different watching top teams play. at least there's more action. and more skill. haha. and lisa fetched me back! oh and joel fetched me there! yay for them.. oh lunch at korean house was quite hilarious, with various stories of microwaving/cooking attempts.
my mom has a tendency to remind me of things i'd rather not think about. so i'm supposed to come here and become a totally different person. how possible is that anyway? maybe i'm supposed to develop two identities or something. although she's right, one doesn't spend $300 k to come here and do the same stuff one could do back at home. it's so easy to slip back into old ways though. in every aspect.
oh a few more amusing things: one of the spore-stanford exchange students who went to church today thought i was sean's sister cos "i look so young". rofl. i don't think sean was very flattered. but i told him he's almost my bro's age anyway. haha. even though that wasn't the point.
last night my mom called and my bro talked to me for a bit. told me "papa has two new pets, he's busy playing with them now".
me, mystified, "what pets?"
bro "two crabs"
clar is rather amused. normally my dad likes buying electronic gadgets of sorts so i thought it was some other new toy but i suppose that couldn't be a pet. though for a moment my mind conjured up an image of tortoises or something, i dunno why.
me "how's he playing with them?"
bro/mom in the background "he puts some water (in the bucket) and prods them so they move"
rofl. and they're gonna eat them tonight.
reminds me of my dormmate telling me how my roomie held a hello panda, exclaimed "so cute!" and happily popped it into her mouth.
just back from church (and lunch at korean house) today. haha we arrived at the 6th song, sadly. woke up at 7:30 originally but i decided a couple more minutes in my nice warm bed would be good, but it ended up half an hour. and coincidentally enough sean just woke up too. oh well. so much for our resolve to get there for the first song. haha.
friday was a really nice day. i actually decided to carry out my intention of exercising (well, sort of anyway) and go visit the athletic center(s). the buildings look really nice. maybe i'll go climb the rockwall next week heh. and i visited the barn! cos it was such a nice sunny day. it's pretty far away.. past frosoco and the tennis courts. but it's really pretty. and i haven't seen horses in so long. saw jane there but unfortunately she'd finished riding for the day. oh well. another time!
saturday. i don't think i got that much work done. was trying to nap but wasn't particularly successful hmm. anyway, jackie insisted that i go over to her place and cook roti prata (surprise surprise) and rice and lap cheong (not that i like this very much but well). before that we went to get cheesecake (yum!!!) and were trying to find eggs so she could have her omelette and me my half-boiled egg but they only sold it in dozens so too bad. no way am i going to cook multiple times over the next week. ahaha. our cooking adventure was really interesting/fun though. the crazy light in the kitchennette kept going off so while we were frying the prata it'd suddenly get dark and we had to jump around to get the light to switch on again.. but the prata was really good. only thing: no sugar/curry (sigh).
rice also turned out pretty well, considering that i haven't steamed rice in more than like 4 years since our last home econs class in rg. ahaha. nor have i hung out in the kitchen to watch my mom cook (actually come to think of it she doesn't cook very often anyway).
bon bon ball was interesting. very crowded though. and i wish we learnt more dances/steps. but well, it's only been four weeks, guess it won't do to be too demanding. i want to learn so many things i'll despair of ever graduating if i take all the classes here. heh. all the languages and the instruments and the dances. okay i just realized they're all artsy.
man i think daryl's right. i may have to skip dinner. ah but i know i won't.. i shall just have to make sure i eat less. these buffet things.. i must develop more self control. of course, it doesn't help that i have an open pack of m&m's on my table and i keep popping some into my mouth.