Minus 2

… is what the temperature will be in two days’ time.

… is also my score for the weekend. though if i were my own judge it’d probably be -20000. i’ve been very, very bad. some things, like unfinished homework due tomorrow, can be easily fixed with some time and effort. and some other things, like tequila, can be expelled in the morning. some things, like disgusting calculus midterm scores, won’t go away but are ultimately irrelevant in the bigger scheme of things. but some other things however. just stick.

more Halloween pictures!:

#1 sizzling hot firefighter bananatan and i

#2 K who was a kinky schoolgirl. also one half of the blow-up dolls the next day

#3 i have no clue who this girl is… haha but she’s a funny drunk. she was dressed as a sailor that night too, and as i was walking past her she just threw her arms around me and said OMG IT’S YOUUUUU I LOVE YOUUU LET’S TAKE ANOTHER PICTURE COS WE’RE BOTH SAILORRRRS. haha we didnt take an earlier picture, but i obliged and took ‘another’ one with her anyway. only cos she’s cute. that’s the Pope behind her

#4 the sailor, the pirate, the firefighter and the flight attendant! all very smexy

#5 B, who kept getting his suspenders snapped. i think he was a construction worker…?

#6 look! mario, luigi, and even PRINCESS PEACH HAHAHA

#7 this is T, one of the Mile High Club attendants from this night. i think i saw her in like 4-5 different costumes at different parties during Halloween weekend, and even the weekend before Halloween! shit la i osowan multiple costumes now

#8 E, whom i think looks sooooo much like Claudia Schiffer. anyway.. you guys wont believe who she’s facebook friends with….

#9 azn love! E and Y, two of my floormates. they are super cute :D Y has stickers of Disney princesses on her door

#10 number of crossdressers spotted : 8. at least. but my favorite halloween cross-dresser will always be androo <3 pictures here-on are from the actual Halloween day, where a bunch of us went out to the parade!

#11 when i stepped out into the lobby, this guy in the mask just started running at me. hahaha it’s actually quite scary when you’re being faced head-on with such a mask. and the annoying thing about such masks is that the people wearing them NEVER want to take them off and reveal who they are. but this guy started talking and his thick Nigerian accent gave him away. haha. hello alexander. i see you.

#12 THIS was what i wanted my nuffnang wild live party costume to look like!!! but noooooo instead i went as a sissy ladybug :(

#13 batman and wife taking the subway!! Batpod’s in the shop eh

#14 a sloppy obama. i am unimpressed. number of Obamas spotted: 3

#15 BANANAS! though i’m not sure why they have moustaches?

#16 i was quite blown away by this costume. i really was! but then as we walked around the parade, lots of people were wearing the same wind-blown costume. so.. cheh. at least this guy could pose well.

#17 choi sun do!!

#18 hahahaha a hot dog eating a hot dog

#19 not exactly a halloween costume, but this dog was MASSIVE. it’s actually BIGGER than the girl it’s trying to pounce on O_O

#20 girl in the middle? totally hot. and i think the girl on the left has a prettier sailor costume than mine :( i totally saw the costume at Ricky’s (default NYC costume store) weeks before Halloween, but i figured because it’s available at Ricky’s lots of people were going to be wearing it. WRONG! this girl was the only one i saw with that costume. bah.

#21 hahaha batdog and cat face-off!

#22 little batman <3

#23 a homemade robot costume. so awesome!

#24 and a little mummy! i asked him, “hey little man, are you a mummy?” and he went, “nooooo im a monster!” and started scuffing his shoes on the ground. i think my heart kinda melted.

#25 number of jokers spotted : 58390854. but no Joker Nurses, and definitely none as cool as Jolene!

#26 french friesssss~

#27 GUYS THIS IS THE BEST HALLOWEEN COSTUME EVER. EVER. EVER. THIS IS A POPE!!!!

#28 WHO CAME WITH THE WHOLE FREAKIN’ CONFESSIONAL BOOTH!!!! hahahahahahahaha he even called himself Pope Fiction. see his real legs on the ground? he made that look like the legs of a nun who was lifting up the whole confessional booth. totally awesome!! he really was attracting so much attention. there was this crowd around him everywhere he went

#29 this is nicole kissing the pope hahaha

#30 nick and i groping the pope, though the photographer cut nick out. okay mom dad Martian if you’re reading this i didnt really grope him okay! that’s a fake pair of legs!

#31 the Beijing Olympics panda haha

#32 girl picture outside bananatan’s room!

#33 and the most adorable duck i have ever seen :)

Comments November 17th, 2008

The Halloween Guessing Game

first things first: i just heard that Bill Clinton is going to KL to speak. what!!! i have had a supercrush on Bill since forever, so i am understandably very upset that he chose to speak in my country JUST when i arrive at his.

secondly: there’s a rumor going around school that Blake Lively (Serena of Gossip Girl) is matriculating here at Columbia beginning next year. that is crazy, considering how the application deadline for the class of 2013 isnt even ovet yet, much less the decisions. but if the last few episodes of Gossip Girl are anything to go by, Serena van der Woodsen can charm her way into any Ivy even before she actually applies!

so i finally got around to sorting out my pics from halloween. there are so many of them!! here are some of my favorite pics, mostly because the costumes are (kinda) ambiguous, and i can as usual make the promise of a one buck prize to the first person who hits the right guess. guys, these one bucks really do exist, i swear. dont let cynicism rob you of your dollar!

1. a stranger on the train. this costume is actually pretty obvious when you see this dude in person, because he had all the gear with him… and wtf i guess it’s pretty obvious from the photo too since you can see the symbol on his clothes. bah.

2. this guy got his colors mixed up.. because he was more white than grey

3. aiya very easy if you all cannot guess this one i will smack you

4. this two come in a pair. i only recognized them because one of my friends dressed up as the guy in the left once. haha they were really happy that i knew their characters.. the girl on the right told me that everyone thought she was just a random tiger

5. this is nick the handsome <3 ahh his costume is amazing. if you can guess what he is i'll give you $1.50 !!!!

6. the ambiguous costume here is debbie’s, the girl in the middle. she says you have to stretch your imagination a little bit before you can get what she is. haha it’s so freaking out there. but here’s a hint anyway : those are pink hearts on her cheeks. not that her character has hearts on his/her cheeks… she just thought it was an appropriate symbol :P i cant stand it la she’s just too cute. and to add to her cuteness, she drew those hearts with pink highlighter HAHAHAHA. oh and sorry had to block out my front cos it was a bit indecent :P

7. okay, this one is a no-brainer. the hint is the badge she’s wearing; it says Mavericks. if you cant recognize her by face or by the Maverick term, then you probably wont know who she is! i thought i was going to see lots of people dressed up as her, but surprisingly i only saw three. i asked all three of them “are you dressed as _____?” but disappointingly not even one of them said “you betcha!”. geez. play the role, you guys!

8. HAHAHAHA I LOVE THIS COSTUME. it’s so awesome. the hint is me trying to eat him!

9. probably not guessable if you dont follow US politics. saw many variations of this character! all of them with the real name Joe!

10. BEST COSTUME EVER. if you can guess what they are, you are beyond godlike. the hint are the thingies that they have on their neck! cannot say what it is la, cos very obvious oredi like that

11. i was VERY impressed with this costume! i spotted him from my seat in the subway.. and all i saw of him at first were his metal claws.. and i thought ‘oh.. wolverine.. yawn’. but then he stepped into view!!! and i freaked out!!! and started pointing at him like a mad person. haha. he started posing for me! and i just had to take a picture. guess who!

i wish i had been more diligent that night with the picture-taking. there were definitely lots of very awesome costumes out there, many of which totally boggled the mind. like there was this guy who was walking around in a bright neon costume that actually glowed, complete with white glowing umbrella. to this day i still have no clue who he was dressed as.

and i cant wait to blog about my favorite costume of the night! it’s better than ANYTHING i have ever seen, and that includes a guy from my hall who went as a Metrocard (subway ticket - he made himself a sandwich board designed to look like the actual ticket) and a girl who went as a Facebook page :D haha stay tuned.

Comments November 12th, 2008

The Weekend in Point Form

things i did over the weekend:

- staffed for a mock Enron committee for a model UN conference. that took up most of the weekend but it was mucho fun! i was a Republican National Committee representative (gasp). then i was the MD of Corporate Restructuring for Bank of America. then i was a cop who arrested half the board. then i was the attorney for Ken Lay. i was also Hu Jintao for a bit, but most of the time i just sat around eating cookies in the crisis room.

- crashed an early halloween party with the glorious malaysian ID that alloweth underage scoundrels entrance into any party because it stateth not thy birthyear. said halloween party was a very good gauge of what halloween costumes NOT to buy! too many ladybugs, bumblebees and nurses…

- discovered the heavenly deliciousness of ‘Pan-fried Noodle’. essentially yee mee, which i already know and love, but whatever, chinese food in america is a whole new and different world. Pan Fried Noodle ftw! with shrimp!!

- witnessed an indian guy from Bombay saying “tiu lei tiu lei pokai pokai!”

- a floormate asked if Singapore was Malaysia’s capital!!!!!! YES. i knew this day would one day come. but my excitement was quickly dashed when another floormate piped up and said - and i quote this verbatim - “Singapore is an independent city-state that used to be part of Malaysia and then seceded in the 1960’s. Culturally, and to an extent, historically, it may as well be still part of Malaysia.” this is the same guy who writes the most excellent facebook notes on the 2008 presidential race. i am not kidding; that stuff is New York Times material. i am a little bit scared of this guy now. i think he’s way too smart.

- trawled around the upper west side at 4 in the morning looking for pancakes. ended up not finding any, but a McDonalds instead, which serves up a cheeseburger with ketchup that looks so sloppy and gross that you will first wrinkle your nose at it, but then you will later decide that it is actually pretty good after you take a bite or two. i trawled with Marc, a guy from a country so small, you cant even see it on the map. no, he’s not Singaporean. if you can guess which country he’s from, i’ll give you one buck! clue: it’s in Europe and is not Vatican City.

- woke up with a burning headache from caffeine overdose three days in a row. for two out of those three days, i had a red bull hangover that was so bad, i would spout rubbish when the situation required me to talk. an example: “su ann, what’s the dining hall serving for lunch?”, to which i answered after a 5-second pause, “Herodotus would not be pleased because there’s not enough meat”. i swear to god. i’m so lucky this only happened after i took my midterms. sigh. no more red bull or vietnamese coffee for me. midterms week is teh louseh. i dread finals week.

- speaking of midterms, it is 4 down and 1 more to go. i totally tanked for my Lit Hum midterm because (as usual) i spent too long on one essay and didnt have time for the other, but i think i kicked enough butt in the other two. Frontiers of Science allows for a cheat sheet during midterm, and i put together the most awesome cheat sheet ever!!!!!, if i may so myself :D i am crossing my fingers for an A.

- camwhored with two delectable Mile High Club attendants at a college party. to my surprise, one of them is a senior from college, who at first glance, is a super cute and super innocent looking girl. i was scandalized! i mean, she brings to our meetings cookies that she baked herself!! (she later reveals that she did this while she was sloshed in the wee hours of the morning):

- put myself on a bubble tea quota because i think my bubble tea consumption is reaching dangerous levels. at the rate i am going, i could die of starch poisoning. or malnutrition, seeing how i always forego spending money on meals just so i can spend that $2.95 on bubble tea. so now, i am on a strict thrice-a-week bubble tea allotment. no more than that. no more.

- slowly read through a whole bunch of application essays from this year’s applicants. lots are applying to columbia, which i think is good, and some of them have written excellent essays. i am very proud! :) but the other day, someone sent me her teacher recommendation letter and asked me how she can improve it, and i was extremely annoyed to find that her letter was practically a carbon copy of my own teacher recommendation. the only possible cause of this is that my teacher sent HER teacher the letter he wrote for me, because no one else has seen this letter except for me and him. i am annoyed because i tried telling her that, and she just dismissed it like it was no big deal (”oh haha i guess our teachers just know each other then”). wtf. i’m also annoyed that there are applicants who got hold of essay topics that successful Malaysian ivy league applicants wrote about, and have no qualms about copying these ideas. see, this is precisely the reason why i didnt want to write the Essay section of my guide. i am disappointed.

- i sloshed wine into my eye :( it still hurts.

- learned how to say ‘Zut alors!!!!’ in perfect intonation and accompanying facial expression. you also kinda have to hold your palm up vigorously. ZUT ALORS!!!! ZUT ALOOOORRRSS!

- got cool stuff in the mail :)

- discovered that Cookie Monster has no nose

- a funny sign in the pantry of a suite that i found while traipsing through some residence halls one cold night:

and then above the sink, there was the most hilarious sign scolding fellow suitemates for not clearing food from their plates when they put them in the sink. it’s so true okay… the sink in the pantry on my floor is the most disgusting sight ever. there are remnants of chow mein take-out in the sink drain, ambiguous gray stains all over the counter, used teabags and containers just lying around.. and microwaveable pasta sauce stalactite all over the microwave oven. ew. not that any of these things should stop you from applying to my wonderful college…

- and lastly, i have not been studying enough for econs midterm on monday. which is why i should get my butt offline now and into the library. byeeee, all!

p/s : severe lack of pictures because a) i keep forgetting to take my camera out with me and b) macbooks dont have inbuilt cardreaders, and it’s such a pain to keep turning on my barely-alive former laptop to transfer photos. bah :(

Comments October 26th, 2008

This Is A Salty Popcorn Zone

despite the imminent dawn of 4 more midterms and the tragically slow elevator in my residence hall, college is still all kinds of awesome. i’m going into my third month here, and i’m still as thrilled by the novelty of the university and the city - and i suppose the new life in general - as i was when i first arrived. i remember thinking as i got out of the car on that crisp August day, that i would never be able to familiarize myself with the maze-like neighborhood that encompassed the campus. but now, two full months later, i feel local already. i know all the nearby restaurant names by heart. i’ve learned the price difference in stationery between the three different bookstores in the vicinity. i’m also a regular recipient of routine emotional abuse from the cashiers at Morton Williams. now those girls have some ‘tude. but i forgive them, because they are the last barrier between me and a nice hot plastic plate of microwaveable tikka masala.

you guys, you all have to come study here. or at least, come visit. i dont quite know how to convey my excitement of just being here, and how much i think so many of you would love it here at Columbia or in New York. for instance, we discussed memes in Frontiers of Science class today, and i couldnt help but think of Waffle who wrote us an angsty email once because we kept referring to online personality quizzes as ‘memes’ when it really meant something scientific. i see cute white guys and i wish Skyler were here to feast her eyes. and yesterday, i bought some Keebler peanut butter cookies because KY says they’re really good. and i know Wai Min would love latin dance classes every Tuesday night as much as i do.

i’ve found some kind of comfort here that i cannot explain. yet, it is a fast-paced kind of comfort, because there’s always something to do or something new to explore. all the museums, art galleries, neighborhoods, dog parks, bookstores, shopping avenues, chinatown, avant garde boutiques… how does one not feel overwhelmed by the sheer expanse of this place? how does one know where to go first? i suddenly feel like 4 years here isn’t enough. i fear that New York will evolve before i get to experience it fully. and that it will keep evolving, and i will never be able to ever say, i know New York.

in a more micro sense, i love my room. i love the people at college - my floormates, my classmates, the people from Model UN, ballroom classes, the DDR club (oh yes), italian cinema nights and the random ones who strike up a conversation while waiting in line for bubble tea. they are all so smart and knowledgeable that it’s thrillingly challenging, yet fun. and i love my bottom drawer where i stash all my food. i love the fact that if i need anything, i can just walk down to the 24-hour supermarket across the street. and i love the cheesesteak at JJ’s…

in many ways, i feel like someone who’s been reborn, learning to speak, walk and talk all over again. i’m delighting in all the new discoveries - the apprehension in the pit of my stomach as i load my clothes in the dryer, room raiding drunkenly at 4 in the morning, learning how to play ping pong and getting hit in the nose by the ball, crowding in front of the television to laugh at Sarah Palin, salty microwaveable popcorn on Gossip Girl Mondays. then there’s also the stress of assignments and classroom expectations; i wish someone had warned me there would be this much work in college. i have my burn-out moments, but i think i’ve come to relish the stress of working hard. it feels so good to see a perfect score on my assignments even though i spent sleepless nights working on them. plus everyone here doesnt sleep at night, so there’s always company in the long horrid hours of churning out a 2000-word paper on the day it’s due.

it’s 7 in the morning as i write this; i’ve been up all night cramming for my Literature Humanities midterm tomorrow. i feel good about it, which is inane because i only started studying yesterday and have been Sparksnoting my way through the semester so far. which is why i have to go back to studying now :) but i leave you with an exclusive photograph of an original Martian masterpiece. this is the front of a card he left for me:

i love my boyfriend very much, but for the sake of modern art, i hope he never decides to take his artistry to professional levels :\

Comments October 22nd, 2008

A Little Bit Of Home

the corners of my mouth are still a little bit greasy from the half-slice of bak kwa, or yuk kon as my family prefers to call it, that i generously allowed myself to have, a few minutes ago. the wonderful sweet meat is from a little shop that i stumbled upon while walking along Allen Street in Chinatown today. this is the first time i’ve seen bak kwa being sold in NYC, and i was so glad and relieved to have found the shop. i couldnt wait to sit down and open the packet to have some bak kwa! and now that i have, i am experiencing that sticky and double-chinned but satisfied feeling that i always get when i eat bak kwa. this city always gently holds out to me little slivers of home when i least expect it.

i had some very fascinating conversations with several fellow freshmen the other day. it was during an event for international students, and while talking to this Swiss guy who seemed to know a fair bit about Malaysia, a Polish guy joined us and shared that he was vacationing in Penang during the 2004 tsunami. so we all started talking about Malaysia, much to my delight. the Swiss guy seemed to have the impression that KL is a very ugly city because he was told that we have many highways and that the city is very pedestrian-unfriendly. undeniable on both counts, but i assured him that there are very, very few cities in the world that are more beautiful than KL to me. the Polish guy then chimed in and said that he found it very amusing that Malaysian girls seemed to hate getting tanned, because when he was at the beach in Penang, he noticed that a lot of Malaysian girls darted quickly under trees or were constantly in long-sleeved shirts despite the heat. i couldnt help but laugh because i immediately thought of Tze Ching. and Darren.. although he isnt exactly a Malaysian girl.

the novelty of people knowing about Malaysia’s petroleum industry and Anwar Ibrahim has worn off a little bit, but i got very excited when i spotted from across the room, a guy wearing a shirt with a Malaysian flag on his sleeve. he was in the middle of a very heated discussion, and i was fidgeting for about 5 minutes wondering if i should just interrupt and ask him why he was wearing that shirt.

i eventually did, and he told me he was in KL last year for a Model UN conference at ISKL. i got even more excited and squealed that i lived really near there. “oh my god, you live in Ampang?” he asked, equally excited, and i was extremely impressed that he pronounced it correctly (äm-päng, not ām-pāng). he went on to say that he thought the best thing about Malaysia was the mamak stalls, also pronounced with the correct ‘a’, and that he loved tosai with dahl. amazing. he knew and could remember so much about KL even though he was only there for 4 days and was at a conference most of the time. it kinda mitigated the slightly depressing conversation with Swiss Guy who heard KL is ugly and the one with Polish Guy who said his first observation of Malaysians was that they nonchalantly threw trash everywhere.

after all these weeks of talking mostly about politics when the topic of Malaysia comes up within my new friends, it felt strangely - but i guess not unexpectedly - good to talk about something trivial like mamak stalls. apparently the one that Model UN Guy went to all the time was in Taman Sri Ukay, because he lived there with his host family. to hear a foreigner say ‘Taman Sri Ukay’ in perfect intonation is an experience everyone should have. i felt proud, a glowing feeling that lasted a couple of hours, that Malaysia was so interesting to this one person that it could captivate his fancy this much.

spotted in an asian mart, next to some cans of 100 plus and milo

i also love hanging out with the singaporeans here because they ALL (except this guy called Chang) still have their accents and can switch back to it within a split second. lah leh mah meh wah sibeh ex. i loooove the fact that after a full day of straining to speak in an American accent and practicing Italian speech for my classes, i can meet up with the singaporeans and let my tongue loose (in a purely linguistic sense of the phrase), and we can compare notes on the little Americanisms that we’ve observed over the course of the day. like.. how everyone here holds doors open for the person behind them and how everyone in your vicinity says ‘bless you!’ when you sneeze.

but of course, there are no proxies that are better than the real thing. in my first week here, i was introduced to a whole bunch of Malaysians (of course, by means of Chen Chow, because EVERYBODY knows Chen Chow…) working here in NYC. i’m really glad to have met them because they are so much fun to hang out with, and they remind me a lot of my friends back home.

i met up with some of the Malaysians over a buka puasa ramadhan bazaar at the Malaysian UN Consulate sometime last week, and the array of food drove all of us crazy. it was so good to see onde-onde, satay, asam laksa, karipap, cucur udang, bubur durian, nasi dagang, nasi lemak, popiah and RAMLI BURGER all under one roof, cooked by the wives of malaysian ambassadors and delegates working here in NYC. it was also nice to speak malay again, ‘berapa kak?’, ‘pedas tak?’ ‘ni buat apa?’. even though i didnt know any of those ambassadors or their wives, it was so easy to strike up conversation in Malay and talk freely like friends. if there is any reason for our government to insist on children learning 11 years of Bahasa Malaysia, this is it. the ability to speak malay is an access to unity that i have sadly taken for granted all of my life.

us girls very excited to see sugar cane and lychee drinks at the bazaar

i was also really amused while listening to the young children talk. they all had flawless american accents when speaking amongst themselves, but they almost always reverted to colloquial malay when speaking to their parents. the kids were the ones manning the Ramli burger stall by the way, and i must say they make a very mean burger ayam special tambah sos cili!

Carol is staying over with me right now, because tomorrow we’re going with the singaporeans to Woodbury Commons for a full day of fabulous shopping. i’m really glad to have her here with me :) next week Suet is coming to stay and that will be much fun too. Carol will join us, and then we will have a night of Malaysian dinner and a lot of good ol’ gossiping and catching up.

i feel thankful for these little slivers of home (though sometimes they feel larger than life) that i am serendipitously finding in little nooks and crannies of New York, but sometimes bared out in the open for me to just reach out and grab at. whether in loud or subtle ways, my transition from home to away is eased by these things, and i find that every day that i spend here in this new city, i love it more and more.

Comments September 27th, 2008