Posts filed under 'Photos'
my heart has been irreverently displaced by something very small. its tiny, pulsating force seemed so harmless in the beginning, but i can ascertain for now that my feelings have truly been hurt. isn’t it weird? i have no right to feel like this. i should be trying to finish all the work that i allowed to sit and curdle over the long thanksgiving weekend. but this is bringing back a lot of horrible sensations from 2003 that i can’t seem to fight away alone. i just want someone to make this better :(
pictures from boston, when joe and i went to visit dominic:
#1 dom’s very waspy suburban neighbourhood
#2 fall colors, all gone by now
#3 it has been my lifelong dream to climb onto a mailbox and take pictures
#4 but that picture didn’t come without a very ungraceful behind-the-scenes process
#5 success! after many, many tries where i trampled all over poor dom
#6 a slightly more graceful picture
#7 then joe decided to copy me. to add insult to injury, all he did was swing himself atop the mailbox T_____T
#8 mine now :)))))
#9 sunset spilling over the Charles River. i wish we’d had the time to walk along the river :( this photo was taken from inside a moving train
#10 dom took us to Quincy Market for dinner. it reminds me of some place in melbourne, just as bustling and with as many good smells
#11 joe and his lobster dinner. i dont think i’ve ever seen him so happy
#12 this picture happened because i squealed, “joe! let me take a picture of your mussels!!” -____-
#13 it’s a real place after all
#14 at the train station
#15 you know how sometimes you fall into these moments, and you feel like you must capture it in a photo… but as you are deliberating whether or not it would be polite to snap a picture, the people shift, and your moment is gone?
#16 for the first time i deliberated faster
#17 dinner with the very pretty xiao and her roommate ashley :)
#18 would you spend your dollar on mints or a tampon?
#19 our relative feet size
#20 i keenly apologize to all feminists in advance, but i was very drawn to the creative for this poster. at some point i announced, “she is all the marketing that harvard needs!”
#21 there is something about supermarkets that defeats their sterility
#22 i have never taken a newspaper from those stands. one day i must
#23 a house somewhere in the midst of the place where people go to get lost in boston
November 30th, 2009
i had a veritably brutal midterm yesterday . it was the kind where you stare at the question and vaguely understand what concept you’re supposed to apply, but don’t exactly know where to start or what you’re really supposed to show, and before you know it, given time is up and you’ve barely answered two thirds of the exam. when i left the exam room, i felt like i wanted to die. i studied so hard for this exam, and i was (somewhat) confident that i would be okay on it.
plus i had extra time to study for it. the midterm was supposed to be two days ago, i.e a full day before i actually took it, but on the morning of the exam in the midst of some last-minute cramming, i got the worst panic attack i’ve ever gotten. it came while i was doing a practice test, and i realized that i couldnt remember anything that i’d been studying. that truly frightened me, so i closed my eyes and randomly picked a question. i couldnt answer that one either, or the next five questions i randomly picked after that. so i tried to go over my notes, but nothing was sticking in my head. i felt like a sieve — a very confused, scared and jittery sieve. two days ago i’d gone to a doctor for muscle pains, and he took a look at me and asked when did i last sleep. i said not for about 32 hours, and he nagged me about it despite protests that i was going through midterms. he gave me some pills, and i made him promise me that these were non-drowsy pills. i asked all the nurses outside to verify that these pills wouldnt induce sleepiness, because i had to stay up all night to study. i swear i felt like a complete lunatic, being so obsessed about drowsy or non-drowsiness.
so on the morning of the exam, i panicked, and realized that i just could not take the exam. i cried for about two hours because i felt so disappointed with myself, partially for being so stupid and partially for being this affected by exams, grades and percentage points. i’ve never been like this before coming here for school, most definitely not in high school and definitely not when i arrived here in my first semester. i used to be all about colorful skirts, beads, good fiction, moscato and jazz, lazy afternoons, baking brownies and forcing people to eat them — now all i care about is getting a 4.0 GPA. i feel so grounded in this world that i can actually feel the discomfort in my blood, yet i keep telling myself that this is only temporary, and once i finish this assignment, i’ll chill out for a bit. but of course the exams, papers and assignments just dont stop coming.
i ended up going to my professor’s office in tears, and cried and begged him to let me take the exam tomorrow. he said yes, but made me promise that i would go for counseling. counseling — that’s really what it’s come to. so i took the exam a full day later. right before he gave me the exam, he told me that several people had already emailed him to ask if they could drop the course because they think they failed the exam, and that i shouldn’t worry if i find the exam difficult, because there will most likely be a huge curve in the grading. he was right- i did find the exam bloody difficult. i was so buzzed from caffeine and taurine that accessing information in the correct pockets of my brain was becoming hard. for a long 20 point question, one of the intermediate steps was to find the directional derivative, and i was stunned for a moment that i couldnt remember the step because it was a very easy method. it was like yesterday morning all over again. so i had to abandon the question and lose about 12 points. the security guard at my building saw how sad i was after the exam, so he gave me a short talk on how one day i’ll see that exams are just one small thing in our lifetimes. i couldnt really respond with more than a half-hearted smile.
i fell asleep for about 12 hours after that. i woke up and the first thing i thought about was the math exam. suddenly i could remember all the stuff i’d forgotten, and i realized that i knew how to answer every question that i’d left blank, including the directional derivative, and the continuity problems, and especially the epsilon delta limits. it was like… putting on contact lens. that wet and clear feeling. but omfg. despite that, i woke up and felt so good. so what if i flunked an exam? so what if i behaved like a complete lunatic in front of my professor? it’s just an exam. i’m pretty shit at math anyway. my best friend used to jokingly say that my utter inability to do math was not a bad thing, but a blessing, because all these smart math guys would want to help me with my homework, and that’s how i’m going to find my soulmate one day. :)
that’s what’s important. soulmates. best friends. the fluffy Michael Learns to Rock songs that i’m listening to right now. the Joshua Radin concert that i’m going to this week. the irony in the fact that i typed Radian instead of Radin just now. that my roommate Piglet will be coming back from her field trip in an hour, and we’re going to be having Chipotle for lunch together in our suite, and i’ll get to hear all her hilarious drunken stories from last night, and how someone peed in our bathtub during our suite party a few nights ago. right now i am so happy.
i’ve also just broken up with this guy that i’ve been seeing for awhile. yesterday we had a really long and angsty conversation about how we’ve been doing since we broke up. it’s a long and convoluted story, but i was just finding it hard to be happy. the point though, is that i’m on my way to being happier as i slowly peel away all of the rahula that i’ve inadvertently found myself so wrapped in. as i woke up this morning and quietly answered that 20 point question in my head (and then wrote that one-line post below), it occurred to me that all i had needed was just some sleep. if i had stuck to my guns and continued being the utterly lazy person that i am, i would have partied over the weekend, and all of the sleep from the hangovers would have helped me more in my exam than four straight days of forcing into my head stuff that i already was familiar with. but no… i just had to try and be hardworking, pretend that i’m someone i’m not, and end up screwing things up for myself :)
i’m not saying that it’s not good to be hardworking. it’s just that people exist in such different ways, and sometimes forcing a change is just so futile and possibly damaging. one of my high school classmates told me the other day how he thought i’d changed so much from the person who used to have a 40% attendance rate in school, and who would walk into class halfway into the school day, happily wearing pink scrunchies and a uniform skirt that was 4 inches shorter than what it should be. he also told me that he was talking to another of our classmates, and how she simply didnt believe that i’ve become so intense about my academics since i got here. i rolled my eyes, and said, yeah, she never has anything nice to say about me. but he shook his head and said — ‘no, right after that she said “but then su ann is the type of person who doesnt have to study hard to get good grades”‘.
i think once upon a time that was true. but then i got here, this wretched university, where everyone was top of their class, valedictorian of their high school, wants to take graduate or PhD level classes, is aiming for summer internships at the biggest and baddest firms — and no one ever stops to help. we were all so used to being the best and the most talented, but now that we’re here and everyone is just as good or even better, we get scared and start clawing our way hard to be ahead of the curve. it’s so exhausting. i liked it at first because it was challenging, but now i detest it because it’s changed me into someone i cant even recognize. it’s changed me into someone who went to see a doctor for muscle pains not because she couldnt sleep properly, or that she was worried about her health — but because it was affecting her ability to write fast for a time-constrained exam. i dont want to worry about where i am relative to everyone else. i dont want to feel suicidal after every exam. i dont want to have the answer key to problem sets, but refuse to copy it because i ‘want to learn things the right way’. i want to be lazy hazy and rainy. i want to flake off and borderline flunk out college. i want to major in something that has no ‘market value’. i wanna take advantage of this amazing city! and see everything! i wanna fly to london on a whim. i want to go to pittsburgh. there are so many things to do and so little time. do perfect scores in problem sets answer any real questions in life?
right now, i’m excited for Chipotle lunch! and the holy grail of all happiness, for me, at this point in time, is a Mac-compatible version of The Sims 3. :)))))))
from Nottingham, during a very popsicle, long flowy skirt, grocery shopping period of my life:
November 14th, 2009
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 :(
November 3rd, 2009
i’m back at school and on campus!
classes officially start tomorrow, i still have to get my schedule sorted out (please let me into that sociology class even though it’s full, pleeeease), i have yet to fully unpack and shop for necessities, or buy textbooks, AND it’s my roommate’s birthday today, so there’s going to be a party in our suite tonight. plus lunches and dinners with all the people i’ve missed, yay :) i was so caught up in the melancholy of leaving KL again (it was definitely harder the second time around) that i forgot to feel excited about going back to school.
i have a roommate this year, which is going to be interesting. i know it doesnt seem like it sometimes, but i’m so much of a private person, and have become more so over the past few years. for so many reasons, the one thing i felt i did right for my freshman year was getting a single room. its tougher for second year students to get a single room in the housing lottery, so this year i had to either- a) apply for a single and run the risk of failing to get one, and then randomly getting assigned to a roommate i didnt know, or b) pair up with someone i knew, and form a double room together.
my roommate’s really fun and cool, and she’s actually a LOT like me — the similarities are endless, but we have yet to find out about any startling differences; hopefully there will be none :P — so i had no qualms rooming with her. we agreed last year to room together for sophomore year, and randomly formed a group with three other senior guys to form a suite. so this year we get a fully-equipped kitchen, a bathroom and a living room! :D yay, no more fighting for the TV with 40 other people, or having to trundle down an entire corridor to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. and of course, time to whip out all the baking utensils :) SPACE CAKES!!!! PINKPAU’S FAMOUS CHOCOLATE BROWNIES!!!!
yoon (roomie) and i havent fully unpacked, so no photos of the room or the suite just yet. more another time.
but for now, pictures of my last night in KL, cos that’s the only night i remembered to take pictures of –
met up with andrew, emily, joe and zhiwei at the Apartment, which is exactly where i spent my last night in KL last year before i left for college. in fact, my Last Day Circuit was exactly the same as it was last year — no sleep, pack a little bit, go to see grandma in the morning, meet Stewie, KY and the Nuffies (doesnt Stewie and the Nuffies sound like a really cool rock band name) for lunch, panic shopping, meet friends at the Apartment, banana leaf rice dinner, hokkien mee late at night, pack frantically in the wee hours of the morning, bak kut teh breakfast, pack pack pack, leave for airport, forgetting at least two things. this year i forgot my US mailbox key and my pencil case :( asian stationery > american stationery.
banana leaf rice with Arthur at Nirwana! my last dinner. boss tambah benda ‘ni (fried bittergourd), nandri nandriiii!
after dinner, we went to Bangsar Village II to get the car. while at the parking lot, we saw one of those buggies that they use to ferry people from the exits to the parking lots, UNATTENDED!!!!! so i really wanted to drive it!!! Arthur took pictures of me hijacking the buggy, haha –
i didnt know how to turn the buggy on, and Arthur was very worried that i would eventually figure it out, because i kept flooring the accelerator while trying to operate the buggy. apparently i’m not supposed to do that, and i’m supposed to step on it slowly, and “build it up into a crescendo, like sex”, IN ARTHUR’S WORDS.
but before i could figure out how to operate the buggy (they hide the switch under the seat, so smart), the parking lot attendant came back! oh no! :O
when i saw the attendant, i started laughing really hard. then he started laughing too, and instead of kicking me off the buggy, he taught me how to use it!! see, this is why i love Bangsar Village. their staff are always so kind and cool, and there’s none of this no photos policy rubbish. remember this? timtam and i ran around the Bangsar Village supermarket taking stupid photographs and posing with all the different products, and the staff just smiled at us as they walked past. when the manager came over to see what was going on, he even posed for a picture with me!
away i go!
i think i drove the buggy for, like, 20 centimeters before i dissolved into giggles once again and was rendered incapable of driving. so arthur hopped on and the attendant drove us —
whee! :D haha cheap entertainment. i highly recommend it.
i love you arthur! you’re my favorite person in the world :)
found two pictures of my second last night in KL, together with albert and nazrul, who are also two of my favorite people in the world –
that’s me and nazrul doing the bollywood thing with our scarves.
i miss everyone already!
September 8th, 2009
it’s been a crazy week so full of sinful food, favorite people, events, deadlines, titillating conversations, shock, joy and fun. where to start?
last friday was the last day of my internship. after all of this time — two weeks in london catching up on sleep, another one month doing too much stressful writing for other people, and another two months of a stretching internship — i have exactly two more weeks back home. summer’s finally beginning for me.
this internship taught me so much, both about two different industries and about myself. i’m so much more aware of things, needs, wants, necessities, and (corporate) culture — which i wasn’t expecting to learn very much about. my crisis is still not resolved though; i still don’t know what i want to major in or practice professionally. but i’m really going to miss my colleagues, who are all such wonderful people to work with:
this is BossGoat, whom i report to, who is both a great cook and a great teacher. sometimes he ignores me but that’s okay :( cos he’s a nice boss. the first time i met him i thought he was the most serious and unsmiling person i’d ever seen, but i’ve come to learn that he’s got very contagious laughter. his shirt says: “S&M — belt in your mouth, knot in your hand!”
a really funny picture of BossRabbit, who’s Eng Han’s boss and an all-around cool guy. be careful if you get placed in an internship under him, ok? he’s going to work you till you faint and get hospitalized :P that’s how Eng Han got his new nickname Ng Peng San hahaha
and this is Eng Han doing “between slides pushups” at work -_- cannot tahan him sometimes.
this is Yu Jeen sulking after he got laughed at by all of us for asking if Melaka is cold in the morning, and BossRabbit bluntly answered, “yeah sometimes it snows”. awwwwww
receiving a prize from Y.A.B Datuk Seri BossLion at our team barbeque :D
BossGoat’s very good chimichurri that can be eaten with almost anything
and BossRabbit’s legendary mash!
i actually wrote down a couple of things i wanted to blog about in this post along with the end of my internship, but i forgot where i put that list. it doesnt matter though. i’m really happy today, because i’m back in hong kong. first meal, curbside siew mai and har gao, and a gargantuan bowl of noodles and all kinds of meaty curios in a hearty MSG-laden broth:
mmmm. it’s so good to be back. :) yesterday i went back to the ferry. and hui lau shan. and yung kee. soho, hollywood road, lan kwai fong… all the places where i left shreds of myself. they have, unfortunately, been swept away by the edges of typhoons since the last time i was here.
August 24th, 2009
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