alright. i decided i'm going to just accept whatever happens on saturday.. if i get cut i guess i just wasn't meant to be in a frat and it's God's way of telling me that. if i stay i'll have to be more outspoken and whatever.. am trying anyhow. so, we shall see.
i am so tired of waking up and feeling like i have so much akpsi stuff to do. well actually i didn't really feel like that today cos i just wasn't thinking about it too much, thankfully. and i just want to get enough sleep for once, which doesn't seem like it's going to happen anytime soon. at least not until after i finish pledging or get cut. haha.
it's kind of weird, apparently some of my bros don't like this active (girl) who used to be jesley's roommate. cos she says mean things sometimes. i dunno la. sometimes i wonder if i misinterpret things/am over-sensitive. and i really need to sleep. and i havent' done my psych reading for tmr. so so busy. i hope sunday's spring fun un sun thing goes well man.. need to pray hard.
and my IHUM paper grade was the suckiest i've had since fall quarter, which is amazing. i don't believe this paper was worse than the first one i wrote. i should've changed TF while i had the chance. but it's always easy to blame everyone/everything other than yrself. so i dunno. and i did feel more bo-chap about this paper. but still. and his comments were most unconstructive.
alright i guess i'm starting to sound/feel a little hateful so i had better go to bed. gnite. oh and i don't know what to do about my summer now, i guess it was pretty nicely planned out at first but now cos of the thailand thing.. dunno. augh.
as usual, this is not my ideal sleeping time. maybe i'm just not cut out for this man.. i feel like just saying that's my nature, i should just give up. but i can't. or should i? today's meeting was like mid-quarter evaluation. and i'm one of the weaker pledges. well given that 1/2 the pledge class is under that category i guess that's not that such a huge deal but it still is. and my problems are that 1. i don't talk enough (surprise surprise) 2. i don't initiate enough times/am not loud enough about them.
and then given that everyone just got evaluated, everyone's going to be rushing to do stuff and watever. how is that going to work? ahh.. i dunno. about individual and about the group. very confusing and very conflicting sometimes. reminds me of last quarter's ihum prof.. his favourite phrase : dialectical tension between X and Y. how true.
interestingly enough last night i was sort of like (for a little moment) observing myself from outside of myself. seeing bubbly people around chatting can induce me to put on that "skin" and imitate them. sort of. at least i think that's what i was doing during part of formal anyhow. but normally i'm lazy to do that. or am not inspired. wat kind of lousy excuse is that right..
i find that's something i've struggled with all my life though. my mom kept telling me that i must speak up & blah blah blah in primary sch so much so that i dreaded those progress reports cos they'd inevitably contain "quiet" and "passive", which ironically, still did come up just now. looks like some things never change. and then when i took mbti tests i'd be putting all the "correct" answers to convince myself i was extroverted. i suppose i did feel excited about meeting people in like sec 1 and all, but things changed.
don't know if i'm supposed to be trying to change myself (after all, that is what my parents are paying good money for) or if i should be figuring out that i'm not cut out for this and therefore should stop wasting my time.
anyway.. i guess i'll have to figure out wat to do quick cos midcourts is on saturday. apparently it's pretty hellish. and people get cut after that. so wish me luck.
i'm so tired of waking up and feeling like i have so much stuff to do. i.e. i wake up with a sinking feeling. actually i guess it was most acute today. and it usually wears off. but still. i also think this actually happens at some point every year (or quarter? or every term while still in spore). maybe it's just because of pledge stuff though, it's never ending. like dennis (my dormmate, also pledging) said, you think you've reached a milestone and you can relax, but no. something else comes up. i think this is why pure-school is simpler, you just learn ur stuff and do ur homework (and you normally still have time to slack).
right, i probably should be catching up on my lost sleep. but my mom just talked to me and told me about "ground-breaking news" at church. hehe. anyhow, now that I'm here, it all seems so silly and pointless. they're arguing about holy spirit doctrine and whether to persecute the guy who taught something contrary to the church's beliefs. i'm like, you allowed him to teach in the first place, wat is the problem? and anyway i think our church has more of a problem with other stuff rather than doctrines of the holy spirit. seriously. unless it was just me not totally assimilating into church.
honestly, church back home is quite devoid of emotion. which i now believe makes a difference, to say the least. our worship is forever so solemn and wat not. i'm still not very comfortable with the idea of worship as being similar to a pop concert but worship doesn't have to be all hymns. i guess that's also a rather superficial complaint, since we're supposed to worship in spirit and in truth no matter the song. anyhow. yeah. i think i agree with my dad now, that they're getting bothered over tiny things when there're problems with the bigger things (i.e. seeking God).
although I think while I stayed in Singapore I would never have gone to other churches, I was too indoctrinated by my church that I was convinced that going to other churches was wrong. oh and apparently one of the sisters back home came to SF for holiday and went to the Airport Church of Christ (which is doctrinally closer to church back home, as compared to Campbell COC which is the one that me n sean go to [when sean's around]). and then the preacher told her to persuade me to go back to the airport one.. hah.
oh and my mom was complaining, it was mother's day and they held this meeting about the holy spirit thing right, and only men were allowed in the meeting (they stick very closely to the "women should not speak in church"-thing). honestly, that's just so silly. i guess i didn't feel so strongly about it when i was still at home. but after i've seen how equality plays out here, it's kind of different.
anyhow. on a separate note. i think daryl's right. one always needs time to reflect. i think i also partially understand why tapiwa wanted us to keep a journal of the pledge process. cos before starting he told me i'd find out a lot about myself. another guy depledged before formal. man, i really hope people don't get cut. and it's so annoying they keep saying you know who you are (in trouble) and we all start getting paranoid.
i guess i need to sleep now, will blog more tmr maybe
my roommate just told me that someone in sleep and dreams (famous class taught by dr william dement) last quarter told her that after three days of sleep deprivation, you're legally drunk. well then, i must be falling into that category cos i slept from 12 - 5am today, from 6 - 9:30am yesterday, and 5 - 9:30am the day before. although i still feel quite sane. i think. definitely need sanity for psych midterm later, can't afford another crappy grade.
so, i slept at 5am on tues night (more like wed morning) doing the fundraising card design. photoshop can be so annoying. actually, anything can.
6am on wed night doing video for formal tonight. honestly, you don't know how long it takes to edit videos until you actually do it. i was wondering why my pledge bro was taking so long with it, then when i actually got to doing it, i'm like. OH.
last night, i decided at midnight that i was too zoned out to be reading anything and went to bed. only to receive a call from one of my pledge bros at 2:12am asking me who was doing the editing, saying that the other pple who were supposed to do editing were doing psets/drunk(?!)/asleep. i was like.. u can't be serious. and half an hour later the supposedly-drunk guy was asking me if I knew how to contact the asleep-guy cos apparently he had the laptop and he wasn't answering his phone. right.. so wat do you expect me to do.. i wonder how sane any of us were, actually. guess i'll find out later.
also i spent 2 hours trying to transfer 6.25GB of iMovie from my mac to a laptop. I need to take some comp classes man.. augh. until my RCC came and saved me. cos I thought the laptop couldn't do filesharing or something. ah well. at least now I know. yay for steve, he's saved me so many times I don't know what to say~
aughh. i really shouldn't have scheduled THREE psych expts for today.. i must've been mad. the 2 hour one was so tiring.. i actually got quite a shock when i walked in and saw her fiddling around with so many wires/electrodes/sensors. and it took an awfully long time to set up everyth and then actually do the expt, which consisted of me watching silly video clips and regulating my amusement level, which in itself is also taxing. i mean, if you're watching things which aren't funny but you've to somehow find them funny.. man. and i thought i would be getting some amusement out of it.. i need to go watch "kids say the darndest things". ah. maybe i should d/l an episode to improve my mood. but after that i'll realize i'd have wasted time on that. aughhh. ooh i just found a website with silly quotes. yay:)
i really don't know what i spent my last week doing, given that i didn't have anything else much. the load of psych and ihum reading i have right now is amazing. i think i need like ten replicas of myself to be able to finish everything... and the worst of it is that when i'm stressed (and in my room), i eat. and then if i eat, i get fat. and then if i get fat, i get angry w myself. and so the cycle goes.. i should do something else instead of eat actually. like go play tennis and whack balls against the wall.. hm.
oh sean n joel were so sweet. bought me the koala version of hello panda (which actually, at first, i was convinced wasn't as gd, but now am persuaded otherwise.) sigh wat will we do without them next year.. as it is they're hardly around at the same time anymore heh.. senioritis-ed seniors.. -shakes head-
on a saturday night, when i know i should be doing work but don't feel like it, this is what i end up doing. haha. am so confused. maybe not confused. more like my head is so full of things i wish i could be like dumbledore and use a pensieve. it would definitely make things easier, that's wat magic is for. haha.
still wondering if i fit into this pledge thing. everyone else seems to be so creative and etc and i'm just like ooh that sounds great, however did you come up with that. maybe i'm meant to learn though. hopefully. i also feel like i'm not doing enough, which means i'm going to be getting into trouble during midcourts. hmm. better go do some video-editing or something i guess. if i can get the films to begin with.
nowadays i'm so lazy to write a proper diary. get annoyed with my slow writing. isn't that sad.. ooh adium has nice backgrounds! i like adium:) hehe
heh. i was doing this career assessment tool kit just now as part of the pledge process. and there were these questions like "what would you go out and do if you knew you would not fail?" and i was writing things like "join cirque du soleil". haha. i really hope my hpac (i.e. the master of rituals, i/c of our pledge process) isn't going to look at my folder, i was writing the most fantastic things. oh.. and another page with "if you had 5 lives, what would you do with your time?" i'm still wondering why one would need 5 lives, but i only filled up two. one of which was "work (play) with dolphins" and another was "create movies of silly animals" (the animation sort). okay i guess those were the only two crazy pages, but well.
anyway, so one of the actives was telling us it's a little hard to be conservative and be in the frat cos they have this image they want to maintain, sort of. the cool yet competent image. and they aren't sure if they can see us in that position. cos a lot of us are conservative (or so says our pledge class president). i guess i should really get to know the rest better. anyway so formal's coming up and apparentlly we will have to dance. not something i particularly look forward to, given that i hate going to parties in the first place, as jackie can no doubt tell you. somehow i do see a difference btwn social dance n party dancing. and then apparently the formal ticket is like $40 - when i saw the email my eyes nearly bugged out of my head, i can assure you. so our MOR was ilke yeah, that gives you incentive to raise more funds. frankly, i don't even know what they're raising funds for, why would people want to pay for our pledge process? maybe that's what business is though. ponders. but i suppose if you provide people with valuable services they would pay for it. hmm.
so obviously now we're even more in need of funds, and this junior transfer suggested going to a casino and gambling to get the $$. i'm like !! i mean people did suggest going to do psych/GSB experiments to get more funds, which is definitely more legitimate. i guess they see it as a good and fun way of getting $$. cos a few of them are avid gamblers, sort of. man.. i really don't know. if i want to back out i should probably do so before paying pledge fees haha. but like i told ser, i thought i was over that when i resolved to start this. anyhow i'm glad i got to talk to ser. hehe you know somehow when we first met in sec 1 i never envisioned such a future. very interesting.
sigh.. where are people when i need to talk to them. feeling a little blue now. "just a shade of azure blue", so i remember reading from some book or other. but blue nonetheless. of course i definitely have stuff to do but i still don't feel like doing it. actually i spent last night slacking so i really should be doing my work now.. but well.
oh!! i got lilke 2 marks above the mean for my first psych midterm.. bah. got to buck up there. i don't even know how i managed to get so many questions wrong! man. evidently their mcqs were quite tricky. and i'd only barely started pledging then so i can't blame that:p hope econ was better.. augh. not that econ was terribly difficult either, just that i silly-ly didn't write something down which i ought to have known to do so.
and it was SO awkward talking to my IHUM TF just now. i guess partly cos i also hadn't really thought of what to write about. but really, TFs are supposed to be nice and encouraging and stimulate thought and he was just like, i don't see what's the relation there and i'm like i don't know either?! it was just a thought? bleah. and then i was thinking about writing about one of last quarter's texts (cos they repeated it this quarter) and he's like "don't you want to move on? try something new?" (or something to that effect) i like that text, wat's ur problem? ok i shouldn't be so mean. but he is kind of awkward/weird sometimes somehow
now they're talking about grievances against us. i wonder what midcourts is going to be like. hope i stay strong. this sounds so ridiculous, like it's such a huge ordeal when it obviously isn't like a huge life crisis or anything. but still. and then we had dinner/S@S meeting, in which i didn't even realize i was supposed to have a vision and goals and stuff. wow. and everyone was late. i guess it was dinner after all so it's not such a big deal, and i've been late the past two times so i also shouldn't be complaining. anyhow, i wonder, how to plan something such that people come?
so many things which would be good for me (i think) i always feel averse to doing. such as homework. haha. i just need to talk to my girlfriends now but none of them are around:( non-stanford, non-akpsi people. maybe i miss them cos i haven't had much time to talk to them lately. hm. and pam's never online. grumbles. alright i should stop moping around and do some work. haha wat a depressing post.
ohh sailing yesterday was quite hilarious.. i wanted to go back to the dock halfway cos the boat kept tipping all over the place and i was like oh noo! we're gonna capsize! nooooo! i didn't bring a towel today! haha. it was really quite freaky. when turning, and the sails are no longer countering the wind pressure and our weight is too little... quite a bit of water got into the boat. haha. so much so that i was like nooo i want to go back onto land. haha. our instructor's really nice/amusing though.
this pledging thing is driving me nuts. not only do i have to spend time doing silly things (well in my opinion anyway) by silly deadlines, i also have to constantly send emails apologizing for things i've done/not done. as usual, anotther ranting post. i also need to figure out how to do a self intro concisely and effectively/socialize. sometimes it's so awkward meeting actives, i don't know what to talk about. maybe it's just me though. remember, says mr psych lecturer, correlation does not necessarily mean causation! and we're not supposed to tell other people about wat's happening, which i guess makes sense to preserve the secrecy and wat not. but of course that makes it all the harder. unless i go whine to my fellow pledges, who're probably as stressed (or even more so) than i am. it's interesting how two of us are like contacting the same people, doing the same stuff. i wonder.
and all this should probably go into my journal. and i really must study for econ.
i think i must be in a really bad mood. so so annoyed. my roommate really annoys me sometimes, and the thing is that it doesn't happen only with her.. but it's so easy to just push everyth onto her i guess. ahhh. driving me nuts. maybe it was the psych expts too. i really should've done more work during the weekend.. now i'm dying again.
so, occasionally, i get annoyed the way my roommate's forever on the phone. that's number one. and she talks inside most of the time. and she calls her family SO often. like. grow up and get a life. okay i'm really being mean but at this point in time i need to get my frustration out. and whining at her mom that "my chem advisor is asleep! i'm so mad" (or something to that effect). her chem advisor being a sophomore who's majoring in chem engine who lives down the hall. i guess she doesn't really mean these things but honestly.. i'm probably being the self-centred one right now though sigh. when i think about it.
i realized i have like 40pgs of ihum to read by tmr, my psych outline expt thingy to do by tmr, a lot of pledge stuff to do also by tmr, econ midterm coming up, definitely don't feel very prepared. and to top it off, yf and sufen and shineik invited me over to a grp chat and ladida! sas committee has to plan something! and the actives were telling us, we've hardly started the pledge projects.. i'm like.. okay.. yay..
alright i feel a bit better. need to manage my time better.. okay i'm repeating myself. but i guess that time schedule thing is good. i can't remember wat i've been doing w my time:(
wow my last post was like a week ago. goes to show. when i'm busy i have no time to blog. or maybe i was just lazy, come to think of it. was trying to clear out my mailbox cos i'm convinced thunderbird (and webmail) slows down when i have more mail. anyhow. brief summary of how frats work:
1. they have rush events, where you go and find out about the frat and see if you like it/the pple/...
2. if you attend enough events/the pple u've met like u (i dunno wat other criteria there are), you get invited to a rush interview.
3. if you're successful in the rush interview, you get a bid to pledge. you can choose to accept the bid/not
4. if you accept, pledging begins.
you're not in the frat yet, as all the active members (aka actives) emphasized, but you're going to learn about yourself/your pledge brothers/the frat in the process. and they can cut you/you can depledge during that pledging process. so, i'm pledging. apparently the crazy work hasn't started, i guess it died down for a bit since we just went for pledge retreat. i'm still walking around in mortal fear that i see actives i don't recognize and don't greet and i'll get into trouble. anyhow, am not supposed to talk about pledge process.
why i am taking psych 1 is such a mystery to me. the lectures are actually interesting, something that is lacking in most of the other classes i've done. but the reading is oh so painful. i mean, like, 35pgs of reading (txtbk!!) for each lecture is more than i can take.. seriously. augh.
and i stilll need to bother about driving. i think i need to set out better schedules for myself or i'll never get stuff done.. guess my hpac (who happens to be the frat's master of rituals i.e. person in charge of being strict with pledges) 's request for the weekly schedule thing is good.
oh but i met two actives today, it was pretty cool to find out about them/other people doing crazy things.. they're definitely people i wouldn't have met had it not been for this whole pledging thing.
humm. so here i am, wondering how i'm going to finish doing my work by tuesday.. i guess i'll just work like crazy tomorrow.. hope tonight's pledge event doesn't take too long. i envision myself freezing already actually. haha. anyway, pple probably thinks i'm nuts but i rushed for akpsi (business co-ed frat) and the first pledge event is tonight. i wonder if i just constructed a very idealistic image of it (as i am wont to do). as i realised after dayoung was like are you sure? it's gonna take a lot of time! so now, i'm conflicted (as usual). seems to be the human condition. of course i might be just sounding grandiose for the sake of it.
anyway, interesting story of the day: on the way back from church (which started late for once! haha. cos we had a combined easter service.) i was talking to sean about things like miracles/speaking in tongues/... and then suddenly the car started making weird noises and the check engine light came on. pulled over, sean got out to check. dunno wat's wrong, called AAA. then called wenzheng to bring me back to campus first. sat around while the rain came down.
wenzheng had a flying class at 1! and flying a cessna 172. apparently cessna is a famous brand of aircraft like boeing and stuff, so my mom says. anyway i decided to tag along (and do my work tmr, hopefully that works;p) and it was sooo cool. somewhat like a rollercoaster, although apparently that was because of the not-so-good weather today. so while we were going thru those bumps i was wondering how he could think of having lunch before flying, but since that doesn't happen very often.. i guess i was just "lucky". haha. anyway yeah.. could see stanford from the plane! hoover tower is the most distinctive structure since it's the tallest. haha. and the bay looks rather dirty from that height but wenzheng claims that if you go higher it looks bluer -- this coming from a B.S. in physics, find it hard to believe:p
his instructor was cool too.. french guy. i think i may be improving at identifying french-english accents! hahaha. anyhow. it was so funny though, at the end of the class i was thanking him for having me along and he was like no problem! as long as wz's okay with it.. cos u noe, some pple have big egos, they don't like other pple to see their learning progress.. and then started listing: oh, u must get enough sleep, food, be emotionally at peace (sth to that effect anyway) and etc in order to fly the plane properly.. i was laughing cos i thought he didn't get enough sleep (he says he did, 4 to 12 - i guess that's pretty good) and he definitely didn't have lunch.
anyway yay, i'll get to go for another flight when the weather's good! whee~
ah. and tonight's pledge event. now i understand why baoyi said the things she did. definitely interesting though, it's, as chuansheng said, like army. regimented. to cultivate discipline for the (in this case) business world. i have to call my hpac "mr mabaye". can you imagine.. i'm just glad i don't live on the same floor as him like my poor dormmate who's pledging too
blah. now i'm feeling so conflicted. everything. i guess i need to pray about it.
anyway, just finished like a 1hr conversation with my mom. poor ears are hurting from the headphones. and i need to sleep. i think my full-day-for-tues-wed-thurs schedule may not be such a great idea.. am out of my room for like 12 hours. i guess that's good and bad, i eat less snacks. haha.
but yeah, i had a mini-discussion with my mom about the things that were bothering me, which was good. and about church, which i don't think i would have had (such a conversation) had i stayed in spore. i know for a fact that i wouldn't be visiting new churches; i had this super fixed mindset that it is an awful thing to go to other non-biblical churches. so i've definitely learnt a lot spiritually. praise God for that!
and then i was considering dropping my genome introsem cos the first class w the prof yesterday (he was off at a conference last week) was oh SO boring. man. it also doesn't help that i'd have had 1h50 worth of econ 51 (which always makes me feel stupid/zombified) before that. so i was thinking of doing human behavioral bio (biosci150) cos 1. it fulfills the same GER 2. if i can't take too many outside-my-major courses it would make more sense to do biosci150 cos he's reputedly such a great lecturer. BUT i wouldn't be able to go for his wed class cos of sailing (which was pretty cool today, the teacher's hilarious, just that i feel like all the other pple there are grad students)
i am so tired now. and i just realized it's almost 2. this is awful. okay i think i'm just exacerbating the situation. shall sleep.
it's been a slack week.. i'm glad i settled my classes faster than last quarter. i guess i learn from these things, which is good. anyway i was so tempted to go snowboarding today (subsidized rental!) and i don't think i'll get to go any other time. but then i decided i couldn't square with myself if i went snowboarding instead of going to church. so i went w ruixiong n daryl n jon to church.. it was good though, and it was such a coincidence that i went when pastor paul came back from his sabbatical.. that was cool. his message is really powerful. i mean, i was quite sleepy (yup, my fault, should've gone to bed earlier), but his humour and everything woke me up. made me wonder if I should stay in campbell (haha sean is going to have something to say about this i bet). while i like their music, i'm not very comfortable with that as a worship style.
i also decided that God had a message for me in today's sermon and glen's prayer on wed. that there're things that I can't do on my own. even though while writing my spring break journal i recognised that i didn't like relying on people too much and everything.. i guess it took their telling me as well, to realise that i need help. it's so easy to forget God when one's busy. humans have this ability to not think about unpleasant things/forget them pretty fast. at first i thought it might be just me but on second thoughts, i think everyone does it. anyway, hopefully i get to talk to glen and sort out some stuff. i need to thank ser though, without her i wouldn't have realised many things.
anyway, my mom just called and wow, apparently my dad wanted me to graduate in 3 years with a masters and a bachelors! that is not even possible.. some problems never go away. my mom thinks 4 years is better cos that gives me one more year to play (instead of starting work).. am thankful for that. but then she said my dad wants me to finish (cos i'm spending his $$). and where do i want to work? should i go and apply for a psc scholarship? ladida.. more examples of things i prefer not to think about.
maybe that's why i like music/dance/artforms so much. you listen/move/look at it, you enjoy it for what it is, you're happy. pure and simple. but, like algernon in oscar wilde's importance of being earnest said, truth is rarely pure and never simple. disregarding my attempts being literary, it's so nice to lose myself in my favourite songs and forget about everything. at least, i still felt the same joy when listening to the drumbeat in "be prepared" by lion king.
this has been a really weird post but after taking all the time to type it i'm just going to publish it anyway.
quote of the day.. was feeling bored and asked daryl to entertain me.. then i decided to ask him about what happens during psych 1 section (he took it in fall quarter)
Daryl:
Psych Section?
Well, you get to play around with a brain.
And Spinal Cord.
Section zhuo bo.
then he decided to give more details after i informed him that "playing around with a brain, spinal cord and zhuo bo-ing" sounded hilarious:
Well, one of the sections you get to attach the brain back onto the spinal cord using just a couple of synapses. Then they bring you out to the Main Quad, and form a line with your section mates, you hold the spinal cord on one end with the brain attached on the other end, and start swinging,then the TA will give the signal, and you release, and see how far you can fling the brain across the Quad
hope everyone laughs as much as I did.. really classic
man i haven't even really started econ51 and already i'm sort of regretting taking it. the prof is really crazy (and in my opinion, spoonfeeding us). to ensure that we do our readings, he assigns us questions to complete before class. to make sure we go for class (and listen, and review) we have mini-essays due after class. beginning to wonder if i made the correct decision after all! and dayoung won't be taking it with me somemore:|
i think i need to sleep. shall finish this another time haha. really need to finish my spring break journal too hm
ah. i'm holding off thinking about classes cos as usual, it's driving me nuts. actually it's not so bad this quarter cos i know last quarter i spent the entire week getting a headache (and no sleep) so this quarter i've learnt from that. haha. but still, have to make a choice. hope God helps me to make the correct decision.
i just watched the MIT (and other colleges) ABSK Christian Fellowship (aka Songfest, I believe) for last year! i.e. my brother was in it. haha. seng passed the dvd to chuansheng to bring back for me:) anyhow it was so entertaining.. but then I ended up missing my bro n all of them. sigh. always mixed feelings. and the Christian messages were good.. I also finally got down to reading some pamphlet about "does human suffering disprove the existence of a benevolent God?" which I koped from airport coc but hadn't made time to read. it kind of complements the sunday class series by nick last quarter at campbell coc. realized I should really have more discipline.
and chuansheng brought over the snacks tt ser passed to him yay! haha. and somehow i think i ended up talking to him for like 2hours. really interesting. it was mostly about my class-choosing woes. and how my mom was just talking to me and asking me why i didn't plan properly, why i didn't talk to seniors about double majors and coterms, ... cos i told her it was nigh impossible to graduate in 3 years with a double degree. and was trying to pacify her saying that i'll talk to sean after he comes back. but then cs alerted me to the fact that math n philo have fewer units than econ n psych. sigh.
sometimes it isn't easier not being on a scholarship. i don't know. there're just things which make me very depressed when i think about them. when i know it is my fault that they're this way, really, but it's easier to let them be and not think about them. goes for everything mildly disturbing really: (not in order of importance) work-wise, personality-wise, religion-wise, ... for me anyway.
alright it's 1:42am, i don't know why i've been depriving myself of sleep unnecessarily. at least i'm seeing my advisor tmr, can figure out some stuff.. although i can already see him agape with horror at the thought of two bachelors in three years (which is scarcely possible, really). oh yeah and my mom was like, of cos it's different for americans, they're not paying for sch.. which is true too i guess. cos i was telling her tt sporeans are known for being crazy and doing max 20 units all the time. and she's like, u noe how much each class costs! ... which reminds me of why i'm here in the first place, i was supposed to change, but i don't really think that's happening.
anyhow. yeah. so i need to go fix an appointment at CDC, and i also think i need to go find a counselor for my welfare. rofl. since they're paid (or maybe volunteer?) to listen to people's problems. haha. actually i think i wanted to do that fall quarter but i conveniently pushed it aside. we shall see.
i felt that i had to blog about my afternoon/evening. i went to tea with my RA (resident assistant, she's the 2nd floor one i.e. in charge of the 2nd floor pple, sort of) and her sis and her mom. so this happens cos i'm super bored (and there's no food on campus today, pretty much) and yesterday i asked her if she was doing anything fun today (she lives in palo alto) after calling up wenqi n emily n finding that they were both busy. and when she first told me going to tea i thought it was just, you know, an afternoon meal or something of that sort.
and then she gives me this website today, www.lisastea.com, and it's like a fairytale straight out of a storybook! okay possibly not fairytale but storybook, at least. i looked at the website and my jaw dropped. really sounds like something out of enid blyton. a step further, even. anyhow, i wanted to take pics but it didn't seem very right somehow so here're pics from the website.
the first pic i saw when i went to the website
i solemnly promise that this is exactly what the place looks like when you enter
another angle of the entrance (i.e. from inside); the place where i sat was behind the wall with the black shelves on the right
exactly where i sat! the decor on the walls was kind of different, but still.
it was rather enchanting, esp when this woman and a little girl (i'm not sure if she was her daughter/ward/wat) came in and sat behind us.. you know its like when u're a little girl and u play at having tea parties and stuff.. this little girl was having her dream realized on the spot. i had this queer feeling when i saw the girl (who was dressed in the same patterned material as her doll) envious maybe? i dunno. more like wow, she's living her dream. whereas, for me it's like more than a decade after imagining this stuff then i get to see the real thing. not that i imagined tea parties that often, and not exactly in this style, but i certainly read about some of them.
so anyway, i don't know if it was my lack of social skills, but it was rather awkward meeting my RA's mom n sis. right maybe i'll continue this tmr cos i feel like i'm somehow preventing my roommate from falling asleep or sth, she keeps making so much noise. (and yes! she got back at 3pm today yay not so lonely anymore, but weirdly enough when she's around i end up doing my own stuff.) to be continued
alright. daylight saving hours are on. back to my lack of social skills. so when i got there, i shook hands with her sister (she didn't seem very predisposed to do so but since she's younger than me i introduced myself anyway) and then her mom just said "i'm tammie" and didn't seem particularly welcoming or anything. but there, why'm i complaining, she gave me a treat! that was really nice of her heh especially when considering how expensive (in my opinion anyway) the tea was. it was just the first impression which was so odd. i suppose it was some sort of a first-meeting-awkwardness.
so, the only other time i had tea poured into my cup with a strainer and everything was when i had my princeton interview at shangri-la hotel back in spore. luckily it wasn't so foreign yesterday haha. and the teapot had a tea cosy! so quaint. yeah, quaint is the word (that actually came to me last night just before i fell asleep). and then our food (tea sandwiches and things of that sort) came, in this many-storeyed-wooden thingy. don't even know what it's called, i'm sure it has a name though.
i ordered a "duchess' delight" which is apparently afternoon tea in england. it was very yummy! actually it's just normal egg salad & cucumber sandwiches. and a spinach quiche (it was originally broccoli cheese and potato pot pie, which sounds better, but i guess they ran out or sth) and a devonshire scone. i know i always wondered what a scone was after reading storybooks when i was a kid, and i always imagined something that looked like a bigger version of a fortune cookie. dunno. just the sound of the word i guess.
oh. and dessert! yay. had a brown sugar berry pie. i love desserts! but oh so fat. anyhow. oh!! there were these purple-sugar-coated violet petals in a little basket. SO cute. but my RA's sister said it made her tea taste weird the last time she tried. so when you put these sugar-covered petals in the tea, the sugar dissolves off (with vigorous stirring) and you're left with a violet petal! super cool. haha.
now to finish my spring break journal. sigh. i used to be more assiduous in bringing a book while on holiday and writing every night but now i think typing is faster and less tiring. haha. oh well.
i forgot to add some of daryl's quotes:
yesterday, when i told him i was watching triple x to cheer myself up:
Daryl Yap says:? (9:28:42 PM)
What movie?
clar:] says:? (9:35:35 PM)
wat! oh. xXx
Daryl Yap says:? (9:48:00 PM)
Sounds kinky.
Daryl Yap says:? (9:48:08 PM)
You're underaged.
Today:
clar:] says:? (10:35:29 AM)
wah how come u got so much time to come online one ah
Daryl Yap says:? (10:44:24 AM)
Cuz I'm on holiday.
Daryl Yap says:? (10:44:29 AM)
Isn't it?
clar:] says:? (10:45:52 AM)
haha.. u not on holiday also online anyways..
Daryl Yap says:? (10:47:36 AM)
Online is way of life. You don't stop eating when you're on holiday. Similarly, you don't stop chatting just cuz you're on holiday either.
Daryl Yap says:? (10:48:14 AM)
The logic is irrational. But the analogy is perfect.
and then every time he talks to me it happens to be meal time so i'm like i hafta go find food! so he scolded me for eating so much. haha.
a couple more quotes, (not from daryl)
driving back from SF on wed night, serene says "the speed limit is 55" and laughs. cos guoming's going at 70. so he says "plus minus 10miles/h. and then got human error somemore" (not exact words cos i forgot, but well)
and later he's telling us about his memorable 110miles/h drive. on 280 when there weren't any cars.
guoming "that was my top speed not average speed.. i don't go around bends at 110!"
jianlong "yeah, at 120 right"
will post these first