tonight’s my first all-nighter of the semester, spent in the library, in honor of the upcoming calculus midterm on thursday, and the 2 problem sets and 2 response papers due within the week. someone’s cell phone keeps going off in the reading room, and i am fairly annoyed because that person is not in the room to take his/her calls, so i have resorted to drowning out the ringtone with music. the problem is that i always get so absorbed into the instrumentals that i end up not doing any work. is that a pungi in Britney’s Slave 4 U?

waimin tweeted about eating honey on bread and it reminded me of how i never ate honey as a kid, and the only reference i had to it was that it was Winnie the Pooh’s favorite food. it looked so golden-sticky-inviting in the picture books, and i’d always imagined it to taste heavenly. it’s hard to explain what i imagined it to taste like, but the closest description i can get to is: a molten version of sticky date pudding. i think i was about 9 when i finally ventured to quietly place a jar of honey into the cart when my dad took us grocery shopping at Jusco. my dad noticed it — our grocery-buying doesn’t deviate very much from our usual wants — but didn’t say no. i was thrilled.

when i got home, i stuck a spoon in the jar, and as i combed through the viscous liquid, i almost felt like i was reaching a goal i’d always set out to achieve. then i put the spoon in my mouth, expecting a molten version of sticky date pudding, but all i got was … honey. plain, boring, excessively sweet and cloying honey. the neglected jar of honey then grew mould in the months to come.

a little under a year ago, i went to London and had real mince pies for the first time. i blogged about how disappointed i was that the pies were actually sweet and tasted like pineapple tarts, instead of the plump, soft and savoury minced meat pies i was expecting. how prolific the child’s imagination is when paired with the likes of Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Stevenson, J.M Barrie, C.S Lewis! and how disappointed we all become when we grow up and the world fails to meet the heights of our brilliance. :)

when i was 13, i became very addicted to honey sticks after the barrista at Coffee Bean Mid Valley gave me a free honey stick. that’s when i started liking honey — at first in small doses, and then later in sticky spoonfuls in my mouth during late fitful nights. some time soon, i would like to find a big, clay honey pot into which i can dip my paws to eat honey from, just like Winnie the Pooh.

as i was crumbling, he came to my rescue; swiftly, without signal or shadow, swooping down to envelop me in warm, familiar sounds and heart-filling explosions. you are here, i exhaled with the last breath that clawed its way out of my throat, please dont leave me again i could not bear it if you did. but as i grasped in cold panic, he became old teak wood splinters and fell to the ground in a faceless and soulless heap of dust, so quickly and painfully, at my fingertips. why would you do this to me. why would you show me glimpses and then — be back again, shooting out of the soil with tremendous speed and great strength, just as i’ve always known, providing canopy, scowling, gentle. i have no blood left for this fever; you have to either stay or go.

just found some pictures of myself that were taken during my first week of freshman year when i arrived here last year:

i feel so different.

the biggest lesson that i’ve learned thus far is that nothing in college is chill, no matter what anyone says. i was truly an idiot to believe otherwise.

1. today, i saw an old lady crossing the street looking frail but grumpy. that made me think of my grandma, whom i miss very much :( i loved those 11-year-old days when she would take me on a bus ride to Genting, and we’d eat hot pei dan porridge together in that tuck shop outside the theme park in and out of which people of all shapes and sizes would shuffle even at 4 in the morning. we’d eat, and then we’d go back to KL in a cab — sometimes a bus if we were feeling broke — and she’d let me fall asleep in her lap. then i’d go straight to school.

2. it’s been an absurdly chilly fall in New York. but some days we get lucky and it’s warm enough to sit out on the grass to catch the last strains of sun.

i have missed college. it’s good to be back :)

3. but calculus is KILLING ME already. why am i still doing it, why??? this math major stuff is hard.

4. in exactly two weeks, i will be … very old. usually i feel all kinds of excitement about my birthday, but i do believe this is the first birthday i’ve ever dreaded. i’ve never understood how some people feel sad or depressed on their birthdays because they’re getting older or felt that they havent accomplished much despite their age, but i guess now that i’m officially Becoming Old, i understand too. (don’t you just hate it when you’re on the receiving end of the acrid ‘I Told You So’?) what have i done with my life?? :( almost a quarter of it is over!

5. i just perused the nominees list for the Nuffnang Awards. they’re quality!! i was actually expecting to see a whole host of ‘celebrity’ bloggers nominated for Best Food or Travel or Most Influential blog (you know lah, these days every blogger is a food blogger / travel blogger / fashion blogger all rolled into one), but Nuffnang did an excellent job shortlisting the five finalists for each category. i’m sitting down now to trawl through the Best Hidden Gem nominations. i love hidden gems! :) am starting with A Singapore Taxi Driver’s Diary — his tagline is: ‘possibly the only taxi driver in the world with a PhD from Stanford’ :D i love it already! i do relish vocational stories.

6. i made bolognese sauce today to go with my pasta ^________^ i’ve missed my yummy bolognese sauce! no mushrooms though, so this tastes like the one Tall Brother eats. whenever i make pasta sauce at home, i always have to make two pots — one that follows the recipe, and another one entirely devoid of vegetables for Tall Brother.

7. joe came to visit this weekend! he came dispensing many frowns:

joe’s a philosophy major. i was telling him how my Great Books professor was moanin’ and groanin’ about not having enough time in our syllabus dedicated to Plato’s Republic, and joe reacted like this: “OF COURSE LAH. IT’S THE FUCKING REPUBLIC!!!”

8. i’m going to watch U2 in concert tomorrow :)))

red welts of semi-consciousness fleck my skin like gecko blinks, and i am bleakly wondering if i tripped or if i was dragged by the scruff of my contentment out of the shadow puppet cave, up the rabbit hole, past the second star to the right, and thrown here — here, corporeal, amidst these shiny puddles of flesh that grotesquely cogitate. i dont remember the struggle. i must not have put up a fight. if i think about it hard enough i will perhaps realize that everything was my fault. but do you know what it is to be like this? i have amassed a supply of spools out of which i unravel neatly collated information, conversation, cab fare, ladder knowhow, duvets and a tightly wound google calendar. i store them away like fish, mechanically, and then i stare out of the window as sharply clear 20/20 greens and greys pedal furiously by. suddenly i’m out. i’ve stepped out. and i will discover that i have learned absolutely nothing new about anything at all. i have been on page 93 since june, that june, from the courageous airplane into which i burst! — a spaghetti-like vector — but seemingly never disembarked. even montage 93, so crinkled and anchored down with all my heartbreak, the wrong names, such horror, can move and shift. i, however, have moved nowhere … and i’m so disappointed with myself because i let all these things happen. this new puberty, instead of propulsion and glitter, has all the sensation of being a fish out of water. a wallflower in the middle. a dragged out stutter in a sentence. i am vacant; there is now a big yawning bleeding gash in my soul and in that part of my brain where giggles once bubbled up from. did i outgrow my old world? maybe i’ll find it again here. the first step is to go out and buy a notebook and some pencils. then, expulsion.

and hopefully i will find myself back on the minute hand of the big ben.