i’m one exam away from being done with my finals!!!!!! so i’m taking a break from the books and the stale smog of the library to celebrate. 3 exams and 3 final papers down, just one more exam to go. and then i’ll be done — done with freshman year, done with feeling completely helpless, done with feeling like i want to yank all my hair out in fistfuls. after a year here, i can sincerely say that i underestimated how tough college would be. by MILES. i guess till today i can’t quite believe how little slacking one is allowed to do here. i’m really looking forward to going home over the summer and just staring at the ceiling every day to recover from the trauma of the past academic year. i know it sounds like i’m exaggerating but i’m really not.

i crawled out of my room after a particularly brutal final today to see that one of my floormates had already packed all of her stuff into storage bins. then i felt sad. i felt sad that i hadn’t spoken to her properly in such a long time, and that now i only have less than 3 days to do so because she moves out on thursday. i felt sad that i’d spent my whole freshman year worrying worrying and worrying about how i absolutely must get a 4.0, and feeling guilty each time i took a weekend off or spent the afternoon sleeping in. sigh. surely this must not be what college is about. i’m doing it all wrong, aren’t i? people always say that they wish they could re-do their freshman year. me too.

things i took for granted this year:

1. new york city
i spent so much time exploring the city in my first semester, and i loved doing that so much, but then this semester i just stopped doing it completely. i only went downtown whenever i needed to get something done or buy something important. i haven’t even been to chinatown since i came back to the city after winter break, and i love chinatown. i used to feel so thrilled walking down the aisles of the small asian marts, marveling at the fact that i could get marmite, milo, vitagen, 100 plus, xo sauce, sugus and double decker prawn crackers here. i especially liked walking past someone on the streets of chinatown and unexpectedly hearing the malaysian/singaporean accent. all this inquisitiveness, i left behind a long time ago. now i hesitate at the thought of going downtown.

greenwich, near NYU

a fabric store in chinatown. i love fabric stores. i could spend all day just poking around and choosing fabric that i will never buy

2. extra curriculars
i had a lot of fun my first semester when i was running around trying out as many clubs and societies as i could. then i realized how much i’d been slacking and dropped every single one of my ECA’s this semester so i could focus on my grades again. college-bound kids reading this, i dont expect you to be as stupid as me, but if ever tempted to be, please dont ever do what i did. i feel like my second semester here has been so miserable because i just didnt have the time to do the things i loved and missed doing. when i come back next year, i’m pursuing them all again. i dont care if that means i take less subjects; i simply have to do something i love or i will go crazy.

DDR club!!! i thought i was good until i joined this club…… some of this guys are inSANEly good.

3. my floormates
everyone who comes to visit my floor tells me that it’s oddly staid and quiet, and i dont actually disagree. for some reason (actually i know why but cannot say wtf) our floor isnt as integrated as the others. the other day when our RA gave us the year-end speech, some of my floormates remarked that we’ve never had so many people in our floor lounge since the first week of college, when we had that first introductory floor meeting. and it’s true… that night i saw some floormates that i hadn’t seen all semester. i regret not saying hi even then, and not having made the initiative to barge into the lives of the quieter people on the floor. like i said, i only have three days left, and after this we’re all going our separate ways and are bound to drift apart over the next three years in college. it’s a sad thought. i regret taking so lightly the (few) open doors on the floor… next year when i move into EC i know that there are going to be even less doors open. i’m going to miss so much just being able to pad barefoot down into my floormates’ rooms and just sit around being emo, or crying, or whining about stupid homework, or shoving smelly malaysian sambal in their faces, and talking about red furry handcuffs… :)

hahaha this picture cracks me up every time i look at it

this is S, who covered himself in whipped cream just for the heck of it. and then started rolling around the floor and hugging everyone. i have the most delicious pictures of him in his tightie whities all smothered in cream…

4. schoolwork
okay this is so weird but i wish i’d enjoyed my schoolwork a lot more. believe it or not, when i was all bright-eyed and loving all the things i was learning in my first semester, my grades took a huge hit because i was being so flighty. when i sat down and started getting serious about things, i really hated everything i had to do, but my grades got so much better. it’s ironic and it sucks. i’ve had the opportunity to read so many great books for my lit courses over the year, but because i was conscious of the fact that i had to study those books, i just couldnt enjoy the texts as much as i did when i read them for leisure. and italian… i loved the language and got so much satisfaction from the learning, but i was so shocked when i got an A-. it’s the same with econ, which i love, and am actually good at. sigh. i dont even know what to say. even if i get all A’s this semester, i’m not going to be the happiest clam — it’s been the driest and most wearisome process of learning, ever.

5. handsomenick, mandapandatan and jacqueline
nick and amanda are the two other malaysian undergrads here, and jacqueline is in the general studies school. we all actually barely see each other, and i keep reminding myself to call them out for dinner sometime, but it never happens because i’m a terrible person like that. i only met jacqueline when i first got here, and even though we took econ and did ballroom for a semester together, we STILL HAVENT GONE TO HAVE DINNER EVEN ONCE. JACQUELINE IF YOU ARE READING THIS IT IS TIME FOR US TO FINALLY HANG OUT. /agitated. haih. okay let me tell you something cute about mandapandatan — she likes to eat but every time she eats she’ll complain that she’s fat, which she’s not, and she’ll start eating carrot sticks. and one time she was complaining about how her grades were so bad la, this la that la, she’s going to get kicked out of her scholarship program la; then when someone asked her, “oh did you get a B or something?”, she shifted uncomfortably and said “no la… not that bad la..” WTF. and everyone should meet handsomenick and see how handsome he is. he looks like a skinny chinese version of Paris. as in Paris of Troy.

mandapandatan and her carrot sticks

6. the scholars program
i’m in it but i dont do anything about it. i dont even hang out with the other scholars or take up the internship opportunities that are offered. idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot.

7. college events
ann coulter came to our school last week and i didnt go because i procrastinated on getting tickets and then they were sold out :( same thing happens for lots of other speaker events… i keep thinking that i’ll have time to go get tickets but that’s never true. ahh college has been a time of many missed opportunities. so many things happen here that sometimes it gets a little overwhelming.

J dressed as a robot during one of those college event nights. hahaha, j j j j j j.

this is O Night at the library — where the school marching band barges into the library’s main reading room at the stroke of midnight on the night before the first finals, and starts playing loud music just to disturb people. they stand on tables and crack some jokes as well. hilarity. last night was Primal Scream night, where the students go outside and screammmmmmm away their exams frustrations on the Sunday of finals week. Primal Scream night is also Pillow Fight night.

8. the ninja poster in my floormate’s room
each time i see it, i laugh. i shoulda invaded his room a lot more just for the free laughs. and the free chocolate — he has this humongous stash of chocolate in his room cos his mom is afraid he’s going to starve. his stash is bigger than any girls’ stash. srsly.

9. things i get in the mail
earlier in the school year, i started a blog category to document all the cool and random stuff that people send me in the mail, but because i blog so rarely now, there’s this huge backlog of What I Got In The Mail that i never did blog about. i have a whole drawer full of cards from such wonderful people that i always meant to blog about but just didn’t; and worse, i have a whole stack of cards that i bought to send back out to these people but didn’t either. i’m sorry :( do you guys hate me :( please dont think i’m ungrateful… i really do appreciate the time you guys took to write me a card. it always cheers me up so when i get a postcard or a letter in the mail. okay i swear i’m going to sit down and send out all those cards when i finish my finals on thursday.

10. being in the northeast
since being here, i’ve only ever visited two other schools — penn and yale, and that’s not even to meet any of my friends. kehrol goes down to princeton like every other week or something, and i keep telling myself i’ll join her one of these weekends… but many weekends have passed and now summer is already here. wtf. why am i like this. why am i so lazy. OMG it’s just occurred to me that i’ve never even been to swarthmore to see andrew. good effin’ … and next year he’s not even going to be here anymore!!! okay now i’m panicking. i think next year i’m going to make it a point to spend some time at schools other than my own. sigh. will you guys welcome me with open arms =(

11. the singaporeans
there are so many of them here!!! i really enjoy talking to them, because all (well, most) of them still have their singaporean accent, and i can lah, mah, and whatlahyou with them unabashedly. it’s greeeeeat. they make me miss home a little less.

P, R and R. they are all super adorable :)

C and his lousily-made popiah. he’s a real cool guy — one of those who’s graduating after just 3 years (instead of 4). i’m really jealous because he got a job offer at HK and he’s going to live there for an indefinite period of time :( hong kong…..

12. campus
it seems to me that all i ever do is run through campus cos i’m late. i barely ever stop to soak in anything. see these pictures that i took? i hurriedly took them and then ran straight for class. this has to change. the few afternoons i spent out on the grass tanning and reading this spring were probably the only times i’d stopped to properly spend some time being one with my college.

13. my room
here is the picture that i promised 50000 centuries ago. i meant to go around my room taking pictures of things and blogging about the stories behind each thing… but … i just didnt. okay i’m beginning to see a running theme here. ANYWAY, this is my room. right now it smells like bananas and there are papers all over the floor from studying for my finals.

14. love

:)

P/S: can someone explain to me how i can maintain the picture quality (esp the saturation) when i export pictures out of iPhoto? everytime i export pictures they turn out so drab… yet i still need the picture size to be less than 50kb :|