so.. i'm done with my internship. it's so weird though, i felt a curious sense of loss (or of finality/of ending/sth?) as i walked out of the treasury towards funan [and conveniently forgot to go in and see if the person could replicate my key]. i guess it's been such a routine that i've just gotten used to going to work and all.. and it was weird to think that i'm done, i won't be coming back. and also cos i didn't really do proper goodbyes, being last minute clar, i was doing work right up till the last minute. but i think it's partly cos of the tea session with the deputy secretary (DS).
on a rather tangential note, the word 'deputy' just confuses me thoroughly. i kept wondering if the "deputy head" or the "head" was more important. i guess i just assumed the title with more words should be the more important one, which is wrong. oh well.
so yes, tea session. that must've been the most awkward tea session i've ever been to. not that i've been to many, but there were like 11 of us (including the DS, the HR manager and the corporate dvpt head) sitting around this table with dishes of chicken pie (with a fork! how in the world do you eat polar puff chicken pies with a fork??) and tea. oh wait, i forgot the most important part. sitting in SILENCE because it was so awkward. a relatively formal setting for something which didn't sound in the least formal. and then he started quizzing us, actually i think tianai and probably zhijia got the hardest qns. but maybe tts cos they've been here for 7-8 weeks.
anyhow. ohh sean's and shihua's bday party tonight.. haha i'm really so extra, dunno wat i was doing there when they were all grad students.. but they were nice la, talked to us (as in me n daryl) and everything. and it was good to see sean n wenzheng after soo long. can't believe i'm only seeing them one month after i've been back (and have one month left).
ah and meeting fiona n candice on thurs for lunch was fun too:) although i think maybe it was a bit weird at first.. but then i was so amused, cos they couldn't figure out where funan was and ended up at chijmes! at least lyd knows where funan is:p we had fun talking nonsense although at the last bit i needed to get back to office to do my work. fiona asked me a very interesting question: do americans look at us in the same way that we look at PRCs?
finally i get to sleep at any time i want and wake up anytime i want.. yeahhh the luxury:) but i need to figure out sunday! ahh. things never end.
i have rediscovered my ability to not-put-a-book-down. sort of, anyway. after i finally redeemed my times voucher from last year's college day haha. blink by malcolm gladwell is interesting. the only problem being that it resembles my psych introsem teacher's book quite a bit - i.e. a mix of self-help and psych research written in prose. which, depending on which way you look at it, may turn out to be quite cheesy because each example is, at its core, is an illustration of the same principle in a different situation. and the author's just drumming into you how important his/her point is. or, you can see it as being really true and taking something from it. i guess the former would be the more cynical viewpoint.
it's still kind of interesting though.. and reminded me of one of my goals. which is to take the improvising class at some point. and the book said something interesting about improvising, that each actor accepts anything (and everything) that his/her fellow actors throw out.. no matter how ridiculous it is. so one of the examples was that a doctor wants to amputate a patient's leg. and the patient can either say no (in which the act can't continue, cos options are limited) or the patient can say yes (in which the example went on with the patient saying "but that's the leg u amputated already!"). okay i'm not even sure if it makes sense out of context but it was quite funny..
and i met joanna today. she's so bubbly! reminds me of christine and vivian actually.. they're ridiculously lively. and somehow i managed to catch onto their enthusiasm and be more so while we were at our social events (while pledging). it really does matter, the pple i hang out with. so i need to find more cheerful pple and christians to hang out with.
sometimes i just feel so tired i don't want to talk to people. cos listening and nodding while listening to them gives me such a headache. i wonder if that's just a really rare thing which i notice cos its such a strong feeling at that time, or that it happens really quite often and i don't remember.
alright i must go figure out wat bday presents to buy..
so i can't remember why but i was thinking about how everything, every sort of organized group with a hierarchy is just a large scale version of any student group aka cca.. ah. i think i know why. cos today i was sitting in a meeting and the deputy secretary (DS) was pretty much the president.. and etc. and then my church too.. there're the leaders.. and then those who're involved in planning stuff but not in the leadership, and then the rest of us.
i think i sound incoherent. but i shall try to make some sense. so when i was in choir comm, i realized how the committee members are definitely most engaged and it's always a problem to try and get the rest of the members to be as engaged. and how that plays out in church too, and now in the ministry when the larger problem is the people ie the rest of spore. so it's like just a larger and larger scale. which reminded me of (blimey! my computer screen just went back to the normal colour, hallelujah. okay i shouldn't use words like that in vain.) okay which reminded me of some econ thing i learnt last quarter. to do with sub-game perfect nash equilibrium. and it doesn't even relate that much.. ah nevermind.. too hard to illustrate here.
i'm glad my sneezing fit has subsided. that was kind of painful. time for bed.
i don't know how to curry favour with my now-supervisor (since mine has left to go on holiday augh) when he doesn't even seem like he wants to talk to me! bleah. and the other guy i work with is pretty much as new as i am (okay he's been there for a couple of months, but still) even though he's so much easier to talk to cos he just graduated. okay maybe that doesn't necessarily go together but you know, less of an age diff i guess.
oh today morning's phone conversation was hilarious though, thanks to jh n james for giving me a fun start to the day. first they were scolding me for being late. then they were instigating me to pon work and go for leng's talk and workshop at SMU. anyway, it was still rather amusing. unfortunately when i got to work a lot of things started going wrong.. sigh.
1. I reached the lift at 9:10am. and then the lift doors opened and out walked my boss and the other guy i work with
2. I got into office and you could hear a pin drop. Why? Cos I forgot that there was this event thingy today which started off with breakfast at 8:30 and a talk-thingy in the auditorium at 9:00. so, of course, i was rather late.
at least after that wasn't so bad. until i fell into my half-asleep state on the bus and got off on the wrong bus stop and decided to walk home (2 bus stops). when i decide to do things like that i should make sure i'm in running gear man.. oh well. got home in one piece at least.
so i'm finally getting down to typing out the SEALNet stuff, since jh has accused me of being unreliable (in getting work done on time). and it's such a curious feeling. like reliving those two weeks. sometimes i still question my own motivations. did i really feel that there was meaning in doing the stuff that we did or did i just take it as a holiday with new friends to be made? hm.
anyway, stanford talk at rj today.. was kind of disappointing somehow. i guess cos i remember the fun yale (ervin yeo! ahaha) talk and generally how q&a was pretty fun.. we didn't leave that much time for questions and then no one was really asking at first either so.. dunno la. and i didn't get to see mr chan! grumbles. i shall have to msg him sometime and figure out when to go back and say hello. although it's such a long walk, i'm not even sure it's worth it. haha.
on another note i think i would want to go back to rg.. at least that's the building i studied in. the building does make a difference. like you walk around and think about stuff that you did there. i think one of my "biggest" wishes is to see the inside of the RG staffroom though, i was just thinking about it and i know i always regarded it with great reverence, wondering wat lay behind.
sigh, i don't think i'm being a very good intern. really. the days when i left early to do talks (i.e. today for rj and last wed for vj) i may as well have NOT gone to work, spent the mornings doing up the presentation.. and then if not i'll get super bored and i'll msn a lot. so so bad. esp cos i have just a month, which is good cos its not too long, but i should really not slack so much. but my reasoning is also that there's a limit to how much i can read/think about with regard to prisons and rehab. sigh.
wow i didn't realize experiences was so tiring. after like 10 mins of talking i realized wat a long day it was going to be. but i'm so thankful that the sophomores came.. if not we'd be seriously overworked i think. or actually i guess just less pple get to ask questions or something.. hm.
my goodness.. i'm so last minute it's terrible.. wat kind of president am i being.. augh. rj presentation is driving me nuts. looks like i won't be doing work at work tomorrow again.. augh.
i had the weirdest dream last night. and i am also quite sure that i've had a similar dream before. i.e. having to catch a flight to SF (i.e. go back to stanford) and having not packed in advance. maybe it's a phobia of packing now, after that crazy night before coming home for summer.
anyway.. so i think i was thinking about it before i fell asleep and realized that i conveniently forget the times when i felt unutterably lonely during the year (i.e. missing my girl friends). and then i was wondering why that happened there but not here, even though i don't see my friends all the time although i'm in spore too. so i decided that it's cos here i can still randomly msg pple and they'll reply. or something like that. maybe i need more better friends at stanford hm.
which leads me to my next point. i think i'm falling into the trap that i've tried so hard to avoid. i've always made it a point to mean what i say, instead of just saying something that sounds nice and accepted and blah.. but then when people keep asking me "how's stanford?" it's so easy to just smile and say it's fun, it's great, ... the formulaic answer that i trot out whenever the same question comes. but then again it's also kinda ridiculous to go into great detail about how some parts are good and some aren't. or maybe that's called making conversation. i don't know. i guess i'm just too lazy to say so much.
but it also tells me that i haven't really thought properly about my year. i am really glad for the month before i go back. work really leaves you with no time to do anything. at least if u go to school (i.e. college) u can arrange ur classe so u have free days or days which start at 11 or something. but man, i'm almost halfway thru my internship.. need to stop slacking. but there is a limit as to how much one can read at once.
so, i think today marks the first time for a lot of things. the first time i'm early for work (imagine that! that is seriously amazing, especially given the time i got back home last night). the first time i spent SO much time slacking at work (okay it's just the 2nd week but still). the first time i came home for dinner (also in two weeks). sigh i miss my 20inch screen.
anyway. yeah. while on the bus home i was a very hungry and angry pig. 15mins to wait for a stupid bus! 171 is the bane of my life. and then like 1h journey to get home cos its peak hour and etc! unbelievably torturous sitting in a slow-moving, crowded bus while getting rather hungry. at least i did have a seat though, if not i'd be in an even worse mood.
but then today was one of the very rare times my mom cooked. and she cooked stuff i like so i guess it was sort of worth it. oh and it was so funny, i wearily (due to the lack of food and a very long and boring day at work) plodded up the stairs to the carpark and then saw this car trying to park. and then i decided it looked like our car (my brother was driving today, thus the necessity for us all to take the bus back) so i stood and watched. hehe. that silly pig.
this is what we spent 1 hour doing last friday after lunch.. 
guys at the back (left to right): weiye (Imperial), beng kheng (nus), eng kheng (nus), samrat (upenn), anand (LSE)
girls: shamantha (nus), jiunwen (jh's sis! going northwestern for phd), xinying (Imperial), tianai (coming to stanford for masters!), liyuan (nus), me, zhijia (LSE)
right actually now i can't remember if they're all from LSE or just from UK.. oops. [ah, I realized that weiye n xinying are frm Imperial:] but yeah, i'm the youngest. leetle clarissa. all of them are either going on to 3rd/4th year. and why everyone thinks i look like a lost puppy is a mystery to me. but then if i can gain sympathy with that i guess it's not necessarily a bad thing either huh? hah.
yay i finally have my jacket.. and i think it looks good! i wonder wat jason has been up to in thailand.. my partner in crime. haha. yf n jh were really nice about taking 171 home w me yesterday! heh. poor yf took like twice the normal time to get home i think. n jh had to change bus. actually it was quite funny, so he had to get off at the stop before 6th ave and it was pretty dark and he was like i'm scared (or something to that effect) and yf said he didn't have the looks or the body (i think, and in chinese), no need to worry. haha how comforting. the two of them are hilarious la.. pair of clowns. interesting how i wouldn't have gotten to know them as well otherwise.
they decided to buy me this ice cream called a panda smiley at black canyon coffee at platinum shopping center. on the condition that i take a photo with it. and here it is:
yay! i went shopping today. and found some quite nice things. so i'm happy:)
i was, however, very very late in meeting poor lijia. apparently we woke up at the same time though haha. i think i probably woke up when she msged me, but i'm not so sure cos i don't clearly remember hearing my phone's msg tone. but anyway. she bought something frm zara while waiting for me so i guess that makes up for it, kind of:)
and nydc jazz brownie is SO good.. man. and i should really stop eating so much dessert all the time.. but it's so tempting. i also need to go to max brenners before going back to school heh.
now, to watch pirates. hmm. maybe i should drag someone to watch it with me on tues night or something.. -ponders-
oh and yesterday i was reading over some of my old autograph thingies.. i can't remember wat i was like! i'm quite sure i'm not the same though. descriptions include cheerful, smiley, patient (this, i suspect, only bcos of serene), nice to everyone (ditto).
yayyy phew yf just saved me from having to do the jc talk on stanford presentation from scratch.. anyway need to sleep soon. heh it was so weird, at 11 plus i was thinking hm maybe i should sleep now, gotta wake up at 7:30 tmr. and then i realized i'm home and i don't have to:p
so today rachel made my day.. we were having dinner at novena square (which i was, sadly, late for cos i was reading memoirs of a geisha at kino at liang court) and then after that were walking around. there were so many annoying california fitness promoters and they kept shoving flyers at us and asking if we wanted to join.
after the 3rd one, rachel told me "i'm fat and i'm happy!" and it sounded so funny.. so i was like really, you should tell them that. 2 more tried to flyer us (including this older lady who had already tried TWICE before.. man). after which we almost reached the escalator and this younger lady tried to talk to us and rachel really said "i'm fat and i'm happy!" and i started laughing cos i didn't expect her to do it.. so rachel turned towards me after saying it and i glanced at the promoter and she was SO stunned.. just stood there with the flyer in her hand and gaping after us. hahahaha. i haven't laughed that hard in a while.
after that rachel was still like, it's not that i didn't dare, i just didn't want to be mean. while i was still laughing away. i don't think it's mean though, i just think it's funny.. hopefully someone agrees with me. but anyway, yeah i have crazy times with rachel.. the only reason i would miss interning at the learning lab is when i annoy her in the library. should go back to those blog entries hm.
and i was also thinking about how to be a good intern at work today. besides the fact that i'm chronically late. i need new clothes too. but anyway, uh. yah! i feel like a hermit. and then my supervisor's leaving soon to go to MINDEF. and the bigger boss doesn't really know about my project, i think. so ridiculous.
i'm quite sure i had something to blog about. at any rate i think i felt that way at work but i hardly think blogging at work is a good idea. surprisingly i do draw the line at that. haha. even though my msn is on all the time ahaha. anyway.. aughh i'm soo tired. and sometimes i don't think i'm doing a very good job of being a leader. i guess i need to remember what ser said about it being what i define it to be..
and it's the same feeling in the morning when i really don't want to get up and go to work. such a sinking depressing feeling. even though i do tell myself to (quote someone) "psyche up" and do justice to myself and my background. sometimes it's hard though. i mean i can try and be happy/bubbly and things but if people just look at me like i'm being dumb then i do feel dumb.
but there're good things, i'm glad there're quite a few fellow interns so we can hang out together (i.e. slack together) and chat and all. kinda sad that a few of them are leaving pretty soon. i'm also glad i only have 4 weeks, i really don't like being cooped up in an office. four walls, stuffy aircon, huge lack of windows (and a view), it's so quiet and sleep inducing. ... okay i have a lot of complaints.
ahh. back from first day of work and class outing. really didn't turn out the way i expected.. i didn't know there were only 2 other interns besides me (but there're already 11 at MOF) and we were sitting in awkward silence while waiting for the HR person to come. it was kinda weird cos the 2 of them knew each other (and i was a bit late, thanks to my unwillingness to get up:p) and i just popped out from nowhere.
but on a slightly related note, i think that's partly why i hit it off with jackie, when we met at int'l orientation i was kinda sian of doing the -smile- "hi! i'm clarissa, i'm from singapore" routine and i said something to that effect to her and she was like YEAH.. it's nice when pple respond. maybe that's wat yf meant when he said it takes two to talk crap and it's hard to do that with his colleagues. dunno la. maybe i'm just being oversensitive. it happens.
um. anyway. oh.. so the morning was so slack cos they were setting up our computers (which are SO slow, man.. get macs! haa). and it took super long. oh i have my own MOF email add, very cool:) but then in the afternoon i had a information overload. 1.5hrs briefing on the "MOF Mission, Vision and Way". and i was asking all the questions too. whether they were intelligent or not is another thing. haha. and since there were only 3 of us we couldn't exactly fall asleep.. and after that i had a 1hr briefing by my supervisors.. woah. headache man.
class outing also turned out to be very unlike wat I thought it would be.. it wasn't the normal crowd anyway. but i must admit i'm kind of guilty of not inviting people half the time.. poor chim as the class chair (a loong time ago) ended up being blamed actually. but hey, i did all the organizing.
i felt so much more liberated with them though. at least i can be myself and not have to work my poor brain so hard thinking about policies and blah.. i mean i definitely appreciate that the briefings today gave me a glimpse into government that i would never get without this internship. but it's also tiring that i somehow or other have to be this motivated driven intern and etc. yeah, i'm just lazy. reminds me of lou.. too lazy to chew but still want to enjoy good food.
anyway, interestingly enough i think now i'm more able to appreciate opportunities. like, before, i'd have just been like augh, this is so boring, i don't like this, blah. but now even though it may not be the most interesting/inspiring thing to me, i still realize there's value. i was thinking about it and i decided that my attitude changed because of pledging. when i had to do so many things that were foreign to me (e.g. socializing on an extended scale, selling stuff for fundraising, ...) and possibly SEALNet, when we had to reflect on stuff every day.
alright. need to sleep. you'll probably see me online during the day, haha.
just back from blading! okay not really just. but anyway. weather was so nice.. it's wonderful to feel the wind/sea breeze/... i think that's why i like snowboarding so much too.. the thrill of the wind rushing past! and sailing. okay i think i just like to go fast. drifting eh? too fast too furious: tokyo drift. it's not like it was such a great movie but it's just funny to talk about it with sealnet people. the context matters.
but man, i set my alarm for 8 and when it went off i was like noooo.. haha. totally spoilt by college. remember the good old days when we had to get to school by 7ish? that's so unthinkable now. but when work starts it'll be back to that i believe.. and then i was so zoned out.. it's time for a nap! hehe i love sleeping.
suddenly I don't feel a need to reflect on freshman year anymore. But maybe I should anyway.. It's always good to reflect. It's kind of weird to lead two lives, sort of. One in Stanford, one in Singapore. And then while at SEALNet I was just thinking if I hadn't gone to Stanford I wouldn't have such an experience. But again I had my share of travel experiences with French Immersion and choir Italy trip.
Anyway. reflections will have to wait again, I'm having a very entertaining 4 way conversation with 3 of my RG classmates. I wish Chris was coming back. grumbles. As much as I want to believe I can, I think it's going to be harder and harder to keep in touch.. What if I don't come back next summer? augh.
so.. I'm back from 2 weeks in Thailand! I think Kevin will be very glad to hear that I got a lot more out of it than I ever expected. And definitely what he said about it being about the people you work with is very true.. Sharing their enthusiasm and liking them. Although sometimes I suspect I was more focused on having fun than about the community service hmm.. I guess it's all about balance
And I have no idea why all the Singaporeans decided I'm the quintessential little sister, but so I am and I now have 3 more big bros:) who all take turns bullying me. -sigh- YF's logic is "only I can bully you" (but no one else can). but anyway, I'm really glad we stayed on for a while after we finished SEALNet stuff cos it was so much more relaxed and all.
Staying at different people's places was also lots of fun.. We moved from an apartment to a house to a mansion! Although really, the logistical problems in Bangkok are phenomenal. Having a car doesn't help cos traffic is so bad half the time.. We took more time to get from soi 5 to soi 11 (which is like a 5 minute walk) than from Bangkok to Saraburi (which is pretty pretty far away)
But now it's so weird to be in my own house! Actually as it was, after JH n YF n Jason left it started getting rather depressing. Everyone's left! so quiet. ohhh yeah and Jason pestering Suki to do drifting and donuts (too fast too furious: tokyo drift!) it was pretty crazy for a bit though, all the guys were yelling at suki to do some crazy driving on the way back to her house. ooh and I'm so glad Suki likes dessert so much, we got to go nice places.
um. okay. derailed train of thought.. I guess after this morning's lack of sleep I'm not very coherent anymore. so time for bed!
i never knew packing was so difficult. at first i thought it was going to be fun, you know, fitting things into boxes and i like being neat (sometimes, yeah, i know the state of my room doesn't show that). until it was like 5am and i'm like oh dear, i really won't get to sleep tonight.
so thurs night i slept a grand total of 1/2h frm 5:30 - 6:00am (or so) and got up and took a shower and ploughed on packing. alright i don't even know if that makes sense, but well. sooo tired. still had to move my boxes down 3 floors. thankfully chuansheng helped me move my 30.3kg luggage down if not i would've collapse out of physical exhaustion. heh. and it was so hot! augh.
anyhow, there were 5 of us on the same flight, which was cool:) me n cs n jesley (whose luggage was 12kg + 44kg! crazy..) n jiunhaur n dexian. we didn't sit together but hanging out b4 boarding and during stopover was fun..
it's such a weird feeling to come home and find that it's been six months. everything is sort of the same, yet sort of not the same. don't know how to say also. but anyway i haven't been doing anything other than sleeping (haha) since i'm going off to thailand on wed. hope the trip will be good!
disorientating to sleep so much.
came back on sunday at about 1:45am.
slept frm 3:45 to 8:45am. went for church. amazingly i wasn't that zoned out, maybe i'm used to functioning with severe lack of sleep heh. then lunch, came back,
slept from 3:30 to 11:30pm. ate dinner (rofl, i know)
went back to sleep again frm 2:00am to 6:30am. got up, ate bfast, hijacked my bro's monitor, keyboard and mouse so i could use my mac mini.
decided i was tired n went back to bed (10:15am - 5:45pm)
and i think i'm going back to bed soon. that's like 25 hrs!
i like my bed too much. it's lower and bigger than my dorm bed anyhow.. haha. but i miss my huge screen and my keyboard and my mouse. crazy right. it's always good to be home though:)
it's so funny though, when i went to church i was in the akpsi-let's-meet-pple mode and then i decided it'd be weird if i started asking the adults how their jobs were going. but again maybe not -shrug- anyhow they had camp meeting so i didn't see that many people.
it's also somewhat tiring repeating myself - touched down at 1am, leaving on wed for thailand, (watever i'm doing at thailand), going back 4th sept for soco, ... but i'm also sort of used to it after having to introduce myself to like 50 pple in the past 3 months.
and i still need to think about my freshman year. maybe when i come back or something. haha. the american school year thing is kind of disorientating too.. "see you next year" (i.e. in sept of the same year). just so weird.
it's 5:30am and I'm still not done packing.. I really underestimated the amount of stuff I have. or the amount of space that my things take up, anyway. or maybe it's just because i'm using small boxes and there're like 6 of them:| Kevin passing me the headphones to carry back is really God's providence, cos I definitely wouldn't have had enough boxes otherwise.
today was so crazy. i finally started packing properly on wed night (after i finished my introsem paper at like 11:30pm:|) and then slept at 3, got up at 10. went to lunch at google! courtesy of seng.. it was so cool!!! i think while apple was sleek and everything, google is just cool. heh. they had huge whiteboards with mindmappy sort of things.. kitchenettes within 100 feet of each other (!!! ridiculous.. and with so much food).. sort-of-playhouse-looking offices.. a bunch of smileyface balloons at every intern's desk.. and then stuff that seng was telling me about: a treadmill-swimming pool (actually a wave pool but you swim against it or something like that), a waterfall-decoration thing created by one of the employees, ...
i totally forgot i'd read about google's interesting company culture. but their office is so funky.. i don't think any office in spore is like that. such a pity. it doesn't even seem like an office! heh. well okay it does, it has the normal tables and stuff.. but other than that! ooh. i was telling seng i was tempted to do CS instead and go work at google too. ahaha. but anyway. again, i'm just looking at it from an outsider's point of view.. work politics is another thing. if there is such a thing there? hehe.
alright i really should get back to packing.. can't believe it's been a year. i think i've said that at least 3 times. and i've never slept past like 3am until coming to college. -shakes head-
man. one final in a day is more than enough for me.. i just finished two almost back to back (thankfully not, i don't know how kiat survived his 3-finals-in-a-day) finals and i'm so drained. still have another one tomorrow morning which i haven't finished studying for. sigh my roommate is packing and watching a movie at the same time.. i'm going to have to ask her to stop when i finish typing this. or maybe i should just go down and read since i don't particularly need to be at my computer/in my room. hm.
anyway. the IHUM TFs were so nice though, I'll miss them, sort of. so when i arrived at my TF's office to take my exam earlier so I could, quote him, get some rest before econ, he wasn't around! bah. luckily I recognized one of the other TFs (hosek) and she gave me the exam and everything. she was kinda strict about us not being rude and packing up in the last few minutes of lecture, but she was really nice about giving me a room and desk to work at, the exam and paper and things.
so i started reading the stuff and everything.. and i thought i was in her office, until my TF from last quarter (crowder) came in and was like hello! so i turned around and was like !! haha. took me a little bit more than a split second to recognize him. but it was cool, he said "how's it going?" and i said okay.. and he said he was going to work in there for a bit. and i said sure, maybe he'll give me inspiration haha:p he wasn't in the office much, which was kinda good cos i get distracted pretty easily.
after that, my this quarter TF popped his head in and i was like hi. n he offered to get me a blue book (and crowder did too) but hosek gave me foolscap already so i said it's okay.. but they were really nice about everyth:) aw.
alright, better study psych. desperately need to pull my grade up. it's so interesting how psych incorporates IHUM stuff (evil in Eichmann in Jerusalem) and econ stuff (prisoner's dilemma).
now I understand why my brother said it's important for my social life to revolve around a church fellowship group more. I was just feeling (as usual) disheartened and weary and wondering how I'm going to get through finals. and whined at cs for a bit. haha that poor guy, I think I whine at him a lot. but anyway he was like god will give you strength. and then I realized, as usual, I'd forgotten Him. it's always so easy to forget. but so comforting when people (e.g. sean) say they'll pray for you and things like that.
which suddenly made me think of how darryl n daryl are both so involved in their church groups. slightly uncanny resemblance there. although they're really very different characters heh. but anyway, yeah. if you stick with christians your spiritual life will be much enriched. and then that day that email came from church at home about marrying in christ. heh. interesting timing there too.
a while ago i suddenly thought about home and really wanted to be back. how peculiar. reading my psych textbook day in day out is getting to my head, methinks. it's also very person-centered, which may or may not be a good thing. people behave differently in different social situations. so acute.
on wednesday/thursday I thought I had a lot of time. now I'm wondering if I can prepare adequately:| I guess I'll have to rely on BS-ing skills for IHUM. which evidently, I'm still not very good at. save for the occasional burst of brilliance. heh. Let's hope it manifests itself on Tues afternoon.
and so, there's just a week left. and it'll be the end of freshman year. next year will be a different dorm, a different roommate (i hope we have less problems with sleep schedules and etc), a different atmosphere (no IHUM!! ahaha), a different batch of Singaporeans coming in. seniors & masters students will be back in Singapore, working for whoever it is they're bonded to. can't imagine not having them around. but i've said that already.
i wonder who'll pledge next fall. that'll be interesting. and i can't decide if i should go abroad next spring. which means i would have to turn down the peer mentoring thing. which i don't really mind, but i feel kinda bad about cos i did talk to my advisor about it and stuff. or should i go abroad on some other program which hopefully costs less? ahh. i think jackie would wanna go to paris too, which would be fun..
on wed during chi alpha glen gave the seniors a book on how to fit in back at home. wat a curious concept. if u've left home for too long u go back and it's all different. kinda sad in a way. but everything's sad in a way. alright i've just worked myself into a melancholic mood
oh!! kaiping told me about rj chorale's performance at czech music festival.. that was so awesome. pamugun. the bird whistles and stuff.. i wish my comp had let me watch the video:( this is when i'd say stupid mac, grr.
i'm in such a confused state of mind and i don't even know why. must be end-of-the-year blues or something heh.
so, it's been a year. actually not really a year, like.. 8 months. yeah it is shorter than a school year in singapore. i had to stop and count. cos it seems like everything went by so quickly. isn't it always the case. actually i think i'm going to do my end-of-freshman-year reflections later. have more pressing concerns.
i think i spent at least 4 hours not doing any studying yesterday! alright i think i sound deranged at this point. but because my finals are bunched up i need to prepare earlier but it's so easy to slack! augh.
how mildly disturbing. i'm so unmotivated:| and yet i know if i don't get my stuff done i'll crash and burn on tues/wed! aahh. :( at least i managed to stop myself from overeating during lunch today. haha i sound like i have a serious problem.
last night my roommate was like "let's watch a movie!" and i'm like -ponder-. uhhhh.... -ponder somemore-.. okayyy. haha. it was fun. i was telling her my theory about actors/actresses (good looks are necessary) and she was like roomie, the truth comes out. but we agreed that it is how the movie industry works. even though there are people who aren't that good looking.
hyperhyperhyper.