you broke it! this unendurable bond

for you are both man and scoundrel. do you now feel the advantageous dread of (not pain, but)

l     o         s                    s?

while walking through campus today, i saw a little kid pummeling down the walkway on his plastic tricycle, tilted forward like a colorful torpedo!, as his dad strolled alongside. i wanted to quickly bend and take a picture, yet it felt disrespectful of the moment, so i just walked and watched. when we all shored upon the stone steps outside the library — me, the dad, the kid and his tricycle — the boy got off his vehicle so that his dad could carry it down the steps. but he also held on to one handlebar as he tottered down the steps, while his dad held on to the other handle, and they both lifted the proud tricycle down the steps ceremoniously and carefully.

i really liked that. for 11 years, i went to a school where little kindergarten children were driven up to the gates in big, glossy cars driven either by uniformed chauffeurs or curly haired, clackety-heeled young mothers who would gather around in a perfumed gossipy gaggle after they’d walked their children to the classrooms. these same children had their bags carried up to the classroom for them either by accompanying maids, or said pin-neat perfection mothers. during recess, their maids would bring them lunch in tiffin carriers, and often feed them, as they grumpily ate, fidgety and itching to join their friends at the quad. of course, not many students at our school were like this — i think the tendency falls more towards the younger generations of our institution — but nevertheless there were some older kids that displayed teenage versions of such behavior too. mostly they came in the form of self-entitled kids who would say things like, “you think my parents never pay school fees ah?”

money is a good thing to have, but it’s a better thing to have when you can bring up your children to still be kind and gracious in the midst of such abundant blessings and opportunities. i recently discovered that the grandson of singapore and hong kong’s largest property developers goes to school here, but he’s one of the humblest and nicest people i’ve ever met. my boss from a previous internship came from a very affluent family, but the heritage was never apparent; quite the opposite in fact. i used to find it so amusing when i went with him for meetings at clients’ offices, and he’d get very excited when he saw that there was free parking in the building. omg su ann! free parking! YES! likewise, there were the little kids in my school who quickly learned to be embarrassed of their wealth, and would hurriedly grab their schoolbags and run into the school building after saying thanks to their drivers.

i’ve been missing my grandmother a lot lately. i had a truly awful night last night and all i wanted to do was curl up in bed and talk to my grandmother in (broken) cantonese. when i was younger and did that all the time (i was a crybaby… actually i still am), she would make me marmite soup and pat me to sleep. when i woke up, there would be barley boiling on the stove in that little pot that always looked like it was going to fall apart. when you make barley, you need to use ping tong (rock sugar), she would say. so there was always a packet of rock sugar in the pantry, which i liked to steal from. the little tablets of sugar were like sweets! and i used to do the same with the rice from the rice cooker — open the steamy thing and steal bits of rice with my fingers. once, my grandmother was having dinner with my aunts, and she loudly exclaimed, “hah! i think we have a mouse in the kitchen that’s been stealing food (”tau yeh sik”), because there are always little holes in my freshly cooked rice! one day i’m going to catch this mouse and punish it!” i remember feeling very indignant -_____- catch me! you will never!

i wonder what my grandmother is doing now. it’s about 7 A.M back at home which must mean she’s just about to get up.

my grandmother has never been the kind of grandmother to bring me food at school, or walk me up to my school gates, mostly because my parents never encouraged that sort of behavior. i remember once i had an issue at school over something fairly bureaucratic, and i wanted my mother to do something about it. at my school, Parents Complaining is a big event, always spoken of in somber tones, and it’s the trump card of any student’s affair with the administration. but my mom would have no such thing. if i recall correctly, she told me to grow up and handle things on my own if i really wanted the problem solved. tough love. but the right kind.

family’s such a strange thing sometimes, but it’s always just there, orbiting around everything else that happens. my roommate has consistent screeching fights with her mother over the phone, and each time she does, i’m always glad that my parents and i dont have a stretched relationship. we barely fight, and my parents are reaching that mango-ey stage where they’re trying to act cute all the time. despite the excessive freedom that they’ve given us, and it’s excessive enough to let any child go wayward, i think all three of us turned out pretty okay. pretty darn good, in fact, if you disregard the occasional lack of concern for authority :) we each know what we want and how to get it, but we dont forget what’s important.

we’re moving in December! i only have two weeks off during winter break, because we only get three weeks this year and i’m spending one of those in Honduras (very excited about this). i’m debating if i should go home for the house-warming. what’s a house-warming without me there!!! but i’m afraid going home for two weeks isn’t worth the airfare, and that i should probably spend the two weeks somewhere closer to NYC. like, New Jersey or something. WTF. but i miss home :( and my family.

here are some pictures of children, fun and fall leaves. i’ve been through many so months of fall leaves but i still get so thrilled by the colors, the crunch, and their carefree flitting.

on the first night of the halloween weekend, my roommate Piglet (she picked this pseudonym on her own!!), one of our suitemates Monkey, and i all got into a big fight. i had honestly wanted to just stay in with some soup and catch up on Grey’s Anatomy and post-midterms sleep, but the big buttery blocks of tension in the air thwarted that plan. so i half-heartedly dressed up in my costume and met some friends at the same bar we were at for halloween last year, basically The Bar of our university. it’s where we all had our first freshman year party, used our fake I.D for the first time, had / will have our 21st birthday celebration, spend every Halloween … i guess one could say it’s an institution. just remember not to eat there during the day, when it sunlights as an Italian restaurant.

it was a good, long night filled with many laughs. i didnt drink as much as i did last year, but everything else was exactly the same, except we were all a year older. it felt just like yesterday that i was prancing around The Bar in my very short sailor costume and Martian was being quite grumpy about it. i remember seeing all the same faces a year ago, and what they were wearing at the time. it’s amusing to know that even after a year later, their drunken greetings dont change as they wrap their arms around me to say hi. they say all the same things, in the same fashion and lazy lull.

this time last year, it was colder, and i loved school so much more than i love it now. i was so bright-eyed and excited about the novelty and the abundance of everything. now everything has the sanitized bleakness of industrial-sized something. it’s been a long story, which perhaps warrants a whole new post of it’s own. dont worry, i’m happy — it’s just that i constantly struggle to reconcile two polar parts of myself that seem to grow apart in distance more and more each day. apparently, it happens to all of us.

as i was leaving The Bar, i dropped by a 24-hour pizza place to get some food for myself and Piglet. i knew she’d be hungry, and that she was ready to kiss and makeup after our big stupid fight, so i got us some soup and three slices of pizza that we could have while watching a korean drama (Autumn Tale, or Autumn in my Heart, to be exact). i was having some trouble balancing all that food in my hands as i was walking back to the suite, so i sat down. i chose to sit down on that stone bench in front of Furnald, right at that very moment, to arrange the paper plates of food, and on a whim, i chose to take a bite out of one particular slice of pizza — the ziti one, that was basically pasta-on-pizza.

that was how he stopped to say hi. “this is a really funny sight, a yellow duck sitting on a bench eating pizza.” that smile. that stunning smile. “it looks good, by the way. where’d you get it?” and that’s how i offered him some pizza, and we started talking — about pizza, about restaurants near campus, about hong kong, about how singapore and malaysia split in 1963 and the different versions of that story (he knew the real version, which was impressive), about universities built on lakes, about the selfishness of people from our school (or at least just the undergraduate student body, which i am in, and which he is not in), about selling out (which he did, which i am on my way to, it seems), about politics, about religion, and life. before i knew it, we’d finished all the pizza and an hour had gone by. it was really cold that night, and i wasnt dressed in very much, but i wanted to keep talking. i jokingly said to him that men are so simple: you offer them some free food and they sit with you to talk about nothing at all (or plenty) for an hour. he laughed, but walked me back home.

pictures from halloween weekend!:

#1 i walked into The Bar and saw this guy, and i thought he was dressed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan (it was dark; i couldnt see the yellow of his outfit!!). i thought he was trying to be ironic, so i found it really funny and laughed. he didnt understand why, and finally he explained to me that he was really dressed as a Brown Mustard bottle. hmph. that’s just so in your face -_- the irony would’ve been funnier.

#2 yes, i was dressed as a duck! i thought i may as well, since everyone thinks i remind them of a duck (?!) and i love ducks anyway. this is me with julie.

#3 julian and david, who both dressed as CEOs, haha. they came in with a bevy of office ho’s too!

#5 stephanie and julie. so pretty <3

#6 these girls were next to our table, being completely rowdy. we started talking, and i complimented one of them and said she was really hot. she replied with, “well yes but no one’s been hitting on me tonight!”

#7 Posh Spice. i asked her if that was her little gucci dress, and she said – “huh?” clearly not a true Spice Girls fan…

#8 it’s ALI G!!!!

#9 and then people started wearing my hat. this is alex

#10 and bikram. yes, like the yoga

#11 A, who is so boobilicious <3 sorry, the more unique names are gonna be truncated as always... i'm being googled way more than usual lately by people from school, so i'm getting a little nervous. locked my twitter as well, but feel free to request permission. i add everyone.

#12 isnt she totally adorable

#13 us with BRUNO!!!

#14 with the pi delta psi guys + singaporean girls

#15 he was a condom -_- i didnt understand, even when he started charging at my groin headfirst. i thought he was a trash bag…

#16 and this is the bartender from The Bar!!! he came dressed as a barmaid :D :D

#17 and he posed for this picture so willingly. it was his idea, even. GLEE!

#18 A and i. she came as a flapper

#19 his name is actually Gabriel

#20 the mighty morphin’ power rangers!!! when the green ranger was still around. taken during the pi delta psi halloween party, which was so packed i got my foot stepped on twice and burned by a cigarette as many times.

the second night of halloween was spent at the above frat party, where i didnt take anymore pictures, because i was (miraculously — given the sardine can conditions) wrapped in conversation. the third night of the halloween weekend was spent in … Boston! pictures to come soon. for now, i have to study for my huge macroeconomics midterm that’s happening in exactly 24 hours :(