16: the man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.

london was mightily fun, it was good to see all the people after so long! :D it was pretty rushed though, since my disney plans fell through quite late and i decided to venture on a trip to london all by myself.

.. okay not all by myself, only getting there was by myself. when i got there, xuanmoo was there waiting for me. YAY. (:

let’s start with that fateful friday. (warning: text heavy because not all images are in yet… i’ll post them up soon! (: )

DAY 0 (Friday):

i woke up early to get to the bus station, but with my terrible bus luck, of course my bus had to reach the stop late, and i couldn’t catch the connecting bus. so i had to walk dunno how many streets just to get to the ithaca bus station. but i got there eventually. met patty… but she wasn’t on the same bus as me ): so i had to endure the 5 hour bus ride alone!

i got to nyc safely, and i decided i wasn’t paying for the $13 shuttle, so i went on the subway and the airtrain (which cost like $7, which isn’t too cheap either. its like paying S$11 to get on public transport to get you to the airport…) but okay lah. cheaper than the shuttle right. :P

i got to the airport, and the idiot at the counter kept typing nj instead of ng so he couldn’t find me on the list. i noticed it but i thought he might be doing smth else, so i ignored it. till his colleague came over, saw him typing nJ instead of G and he finally found me on the passenger list. and he had the guts to tell me a ticket was needed. he was like: “did you receive any other ticket other than this one?” me: “no?” him: -peers at my eticket, reads, frowns- “see here, it says, this is your eticket, no other ticket is nee…” me: “…”

yah. so i finally got into the airport, and i was freaking paranoid :P but i got thru and all and they didn’t check my DS2019 at ALL so i was quite paranoid, what if they didn’t let me in the second time man :X but okay im back in the US so i guess that means smth huh. :P

yah. anyway, i got into the airport waiting area and ate my first macs in the US. the macs version of mushroom swiss. bk has no mushroom swiss :P it was HUGE. :X haha. :P then i entered the gate lah. and it was a hassle okaeee. cause the flight got delayed. for an hour. and i was BORED STIFF. urghs. ): <

so finally i get on the plane, and i sit next to this pretty asian girl, who’s asian-american. but well, she was nice and friendly. we mostly slept. no inflight entertainment. funky indian food though. i flew air india btw :P cause it was cheap. heh.

AND I GOT TO LONDON. AFTER HOURS AND HOURS OF TRAVELLING!! (ithaca to nyc: 5-6 hours, nyc-london: 6-7 hours)

yays. and xuanyou was waiting for me ’cause the flight got delayed terribly so.

DAY 1 (Saturday):

apparently i was a really lucky girl. usually one would take the tube down to heathrow airport and it’d take like 45 min from the main city area. but turns out the tube to the airport was down that day, and the usually 14pound airport service was then the substitute :D :D :D for free. :D HEHH. so i got a comfy 15 min ride to the city. lols.

first day, lemme see what did we do.. we got there. and then went to chieh hwee’s place to put down my stuff. after a long walk that is, from the tube station to her place. londoners walk alot, as i soon found out :X chieh hwee was still sleeping! that girl ah. :X haha.

so after we put down stuff, we went out in search of micky’s fish and chips, for lunch. we walked rounds and rounds but never found it. but like after we gave up, it appeared. thankfully. xuanyou and i were starving. :P hahas. but london fish and chips.. suck. :P even with the salt and vinegar, the chips were bland.

then changed $, and then xuanyou brought me to find nurul and he went off, chieh hwee also went off sometime then (:

yays so i met nurul! we went to this palestinian trade fair thingy going on. and there were loads of beautifully hand-made stuff there. but i didn’t get anything cause everything was so pricey. it was like when i landed in the US again, except even worse. :P but fun to look at anyway. so pretty!!

then, nurul and i headed to erm, oxford street, i think. memory’s failing me. we went to hamleys! hamley’s this HUGE HUGE toystore (bigger than the toysrus in nyc, i’ve found out :P) and we stared at pretty toys (so nolstalgic) for AGES and AGES. :D funness. there was this really cool harry potter section with real wands and all. each wand is like 25 pounds. i was so tempted to get a wand cause i know its even more ex in sg. i’ve seen them at esplanade. but no, i didn’t get anything in the end.

and then… we met up with zing (ala, jieying, not zing the exrg headprefect). and we made dinner. oh wait, before that we had YUMMY three pound belgian waffles with chocolate. but yumsss. it was the hard hard kind of waffle, i want waffles. :P yeah then nurul cooked and zing and i helped her. super good stuff. salmon and peppers. salmon was great. fannnntastic (:

and then zing and nurul were headed to watch a show at west end, so i met up with xuanyou again, who brought me on a walk around london. we saw the london chinatown, west end, big ben, thames, westminister abbey, london eye and lots of stuff. not in order of course, cause well, i can’t remember the order. but pretty pretty at night and my cam sucked so i didn’t take many photos :P

but we walked till super tired, so we decided to tube back to chieh hwee’s (: and we went to buy krispy kremes (!!!!!!! okay they have it here in the us too, only ithaca has none. none i’ve seen, and apparently i think, none in the city/town itself. i think next town, according to jm/the other guys). and i have krispy kreme luck. YAYS. cause we wanted to get a dozen original glazed. but they were sold out, so same price for a dozen ASSORTED glaze. how nice is that lah. sweet. krispy kremes rock btw. doughnut craving now.

then we headed to chieh’s and that concludes my first exciting day in london.

DAY 2 (Sunday):

Not very exciting. I spent most of the day in imperial college cause xuanyou and chieh hwee had rehearsals and couldn’t bring me around. and i was rather tired anw. i visited the national history museum in the day with nurul, who was going back edinburgh later. HUGE museum, pretty cool stuff, but i realise my museum stamina is pretty low. im not a huge museum person :X for a while, yes. but not for long.

so i went back to watch rehearsals. spent most of it sleeping, spent some of it getting to know people, and some of it hearing xuanyou rant about the tech pple at ic :P hahas. nothing too fun. koped their food also :X i feel bad.

at the perf though, i saw a TON of pple. this includes astee, who was alr there cause she’s IC singsoc, terence tay, way kaisiang (!), andre, vincent lam. i think i also saw michelle li (from rg), yunqin and some other pple i didn’t manage to say hi too. fuzzy memory. haha.

-okay this concludes part 1, will be back with more. getting bored of myself :P i’m excited. this means i can add a whole new category (: -

15: satire is what closes on Saturday night.

okay. my sat night plans just disappeared on me thanks to the bus that came early, while i still wasn’t there. sigh. and i was about to go off and watch sweeney todd too! at cornell, cheaply. but well, it’s still showing next saturday. tomorrow’s out cause i have no way of getting there and back to IC thanks to the fact that no bus comes to IC after 5.30 on sundays. woohoo.

but now, i can get around to blogging! (: pictures of boston will be added to the previous post, and london trip and nyc up next! check back soon~

this is my only free weekend for a while so i decided i shall get my lazy ass up to blog. (: yays.

/edit: i’m a bit bummed cause i can’t find my boston pics. i’ll search hard. but. sigh. i think i’ll just get sheryl to send me them again :P

14: ring ring.

i’ve changed my phone contact number in the u.s.: 1-607-339-3534. (:

13: time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

that quote’s given to me by xuanyou, i googled it, its apparently from groucho marx.

it already feels like the weekend is here. i never fail to feel relieved on wed nights, cause thursday classes are generally slacker, and i usually finish my work (if any is due on thursday) before that.

i’ve got like 7 journal entries to write by next week for my terrorism class though. :X

anyway, i’m gonna start on my assignment thats due on tuesday so i can go syracuse (1 hour up north) tmr happily! (:

wendy (this sg girl who is taking mba – i think – at ic) is driving up aso she asked me if i wanna go. (: there’s apparently a big mall there!

hehs. and it feels good to receive packages. i got a mail notification today, but was a bit lazy to trudge to the campus centre and back JUST for that (since it closes WAY before my night lesson) so im collecting it tmr. prob from the family. yays.

and it just feels good to know people miss you too. i tagged on erwin’s blog the other day cos i missed him (and his FANTASTIC drawing skills) immensely while drawing my rubbishy storyboard, and it was a nice, heartwarming reply (:  and i know my roomie misses me even though she insists OTHERWISE. :D

and erm. i’ll get around to the photos… someday. :P

12: the bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.

oops, the pictures still aren’t up. cos’ i’ve been drawing my storyboard all the way till half an hour before lecture started… :P and they might be up tonight, but depending on how quickly i redraw my ugly storyboard (which looks decent on page 1, but crap on other pages :X) and edit my script (and those are two diff mods. sighs)

but anyway, shannon made my day! haha. i was complaining a few weeks back that i didn’t have any cny goodies, and he (being my newfound lets-bitch-bout-life-here timezone buddy), sent me a tupperware of cny goodies! and three packets of korean noodles! (!!!!!) i was just regretting not buying the korean noodles the other day. yay to shannon. hahaha.

whee. THANKS SHANNON. the noodles were a pleasant surprise, and the goodies came (mostly) intact. postage looked ex though O.O

11: a Boston man is the east wind made flesh.

so much has happened and changed since the last blog post!

i haven’t had the time or motivation to blog properly cause i’ve been pretty caught up in all sorts of things.

the chinese new year dinner at cornell… was boring. zzz a bunch of people i didn’t know, and the few people i knew were busy catching up with other people. :P left early cause my ride – this sg girl at grad sch in IC – was leaving early. her cousin’s at cornell doing masters. he was from ntu mae. and he stayed in hall 9 blk 47. like O.O (if you don’t know, that’s my block back home)

i went boston last weekend with jianmin and sheryl. (thus the quote above, it’s by Thomas Gold Appleton. i don’t exactly know what it means.) it was quite a last min decision. stupidly left my memory stick in hall, so pictures’ll have to wait till jianmin and sheryl give them to me. it was quite fun lah, but i think there’s not THAT much to do in boston cept eat. on the first day, we 3 walked the freedom trail, it was nice seeing the stuff, but we were historically clueless – and boston’s a historical city. so it seemed like quite pointless. we were damn tired from all the walking though. :P then we had cny dinner at MIT :D cos wenxian (jianmin’s friend who sort of hosted us while we were there. and he is also the friend of many of my other friends :P) is the sing soc cochair there, so he invited us to the cny dinner. we had to pick sheryl’s friend though, so we missed the good food :P and we walked the same route there and back like 3 times. once to get there, once to pick sheryl’s friends up, and once to get back. :P (so that’s 4 times of the same hallway – although i distinctly remember 6. i can’t remember why 2 more times though).

i went to stay at layhoon’s place for the night! and it was a nice place :D

second day we had lunch at legals with wenxian and justin (sheryl’s friend). which was fantasically yummy. i ordered the same thing as jianmin and the whole table decided ours was definitely the best :D loads of good stuffs man. i was STUFFED full. so yummy!! then we toured MIT, and MIT has geek pranks. google MIT hacks for more :P

boston was fun cos of the company. when i go back during summer (no one i know will be around i think…), i’ll check the stuff out before i go so i know what the historical thingys mean. otherwise i think 2 days to explore boston was actually quite ok. we just didn’t have time for harvard – but harvard places are apparently hard/expensive to get into without harvard friends. kudos to jianmin who had to drive us all the way to boston and back (that’s 6 hours each way) cause his two driver friends backed out on him, and sheryl can’t drive. i didn’t have my license – otherwise i can drive in ny state :P oh and jianmin also got his first parking ticket – not for not paying parking fees, but for parking next to a hydrant no one saw :X

I have just returned from Boston. It is the only thing to do if you find yourself up there.
Fred Allen

then the last week was spent catching up on what i didn’t do over the fun weekend. bleah.

i went target on thursday to pick up stuff for my theatre design module, and i bought a small kettle! it’s so cute! will take pictures of it later. it’s too late now, i just wanna finish blogging :P and i also bought a whole ton of stuff that will probably make me happy for the next few weeks or so. had a hell of a problem carrying everything back. luckily the bus here (while long) stops everywhere so i hardly had to walk :P

on friday, i went for an indian buffet lunch with jianmin and dawn (who were nice enough to ask me along). jianmin got scared and paid for parking. LOLS :D the lunch was yummy. then cause dawn’s learning driving (and here you don’t have lessons, you learn from someone else who has a license :P), she drove us to wegman’s then walmart. i picked up packets of stuff i could make hot drinks with – green tea, english tea and cocoa – but i haven’t tried them yet.

then we went to the mall, and i went target again. dawn wanted a standing lamp. i wanted the $5 pillow i saw the day before but couldn’t carry back cos’ no car. :P i ended up getting a slightly more expensive pillow that was much higher so i won’t need to stack pillows up. and it IS comfy and nice. i feel happy getting it. it is a good investment lah. i’m glad i paid a bit more. was going to get 2 pillow cases for $5 so i can use the other pillow when i read or something but i decided on green sheets that were $10 instead. then i have an extra pillow case and pretty sheets! so now i have pink and green sheets, both of which i probably intend to bring home and use in hall cos plain sheets are so pretty lah. and the green’s super sweet. will post up pictures of my room tmr!

today was fairly antisocial. i think excluding thankyous and excusemes at the dining hall, i said only like 1 line to a proper person today. i hung around in my room and my roommate’s home for the weekend. thank goodness for online chatmates :D

oh and the white glue here is fantastic. i can paste like edges of cardboard to another surface. i haven’t tried in singapore – but i don’t think the white glue i had there was that good. i remember having other incidents where my white glue didn’t work. i’ll post up a picture of the funky white glue (or rather, what it can do) tmr too. i am, to say the least, impressed.

okay photos tomorrow. it’s late now!! going to sleep (:

10: if the heart is true, it doesn’t matter much if an ear drops off.

that’s erm, a bit morbid sounding – but apparently that’s what a bear teaches you. haha. yay my roomie’s parents bought me a teddy bear for v-day! so sweet! and the teddy’s cute. (:

he’s supposed to appear the right way up, but i don’t know why he isn’t. but i’ve set it so he’s appearing the right way up. i think it my be may cache. oh yayyies, he’s the right way up!

:P shannon, weishan and ziliang have reached the US too! its quite exciting, having them reach here, and bitch about them with life here – which is supposed to be exciting, but isn’t really, not yet. not till we all settle down! i guess. haha i’m settling i’m settling and i have nice friends here – made a new friend in cinema prod I and she’s nice. and my roommate’s nice. (: and cinema prod’s fun, its like making films on film which is beyond funky and the bolex camera’s cute. and unchunky. i wonder how the camera that dropped at home went though.
going to open a bank account tomorrow – hopefully everything goes well – cos i only have the photocopies with me right now…

have got an international students meeting at 7 later – which i almost forgot about, and a cornell singaporean students CNY dinner on saturday! haha i’m quite excited, can hear all the lahs and yahs and what not (:

things are definitely looking up!

9: the worst thing about being broke is watching the world go b(u)y

not that i’m broke. haha.

went with heidi to lunch today. we had chinese food at this asian noodle restaurant place – though neither of us had noodles anyway. good ol’ rice. i’m still full from lunch, cause the serving portion was just huge. i had grilled chicken with peanut sauce – which was a bit too sweet, but sort of reminiscent from home anyway.  and it came with rice that was in a pyramid kinda shape. heh. really cool. she had a ginger sauce with chicken thing, which was not too bad either.

no pictures cos’ i was in a rush, and i forgot to bring my cam. although, i found out that the bus stops right outside my hall, so i won’t ever need to be in a rush again.

the buses here are sorta strange, and cool in a way. there are exact stops on the route map, but most buses stop more stops than that. and those you have to figure out yourself.

went with heidi to the pyramid mall (now ithaca mall, i think) and we walked around target and ac moore’s. ac moore’s is this big big big artsy shop that is like spotlight, only bigger – i can spend days in it alone i think, if only it didn’t smell so strange. i got two pretty notepads for $1 though. yays.  then we went to target. target’s cool. :D hahaha i think i’ll never head to walmart or k-mart already. the mall is quite nice and it has basically the same stuff. things i got from target:

• table lamp
• the bulb for the table lamp
• 2 really cute files
• a basket
• nasal spray
• a bowl
• and some other things i needed

yayness, everything above for $24, which i thought was reasonable – i mean, i did buy a table lamp. ahaha. my bulb’s freaking bright though. had to put it higher up.

yay. shopping is so fun lahh. (: and target has some nice pretty stuff. woohoo. there’s old navy in the mall too. i shall go explore another time – i was too lazy to carry everything around after target. :P

8: war becomes perpetual when it becomes a rationale for peace

i love love love this module i’m taking. i was thinking of dropping it at first, but after i went for the class, i’m so dropping hollywood and american film if i get my writing class.

because it is simply so great! it’s Cultural Production on the War on Terror. and it’s fantastically interesting. i love such modules – and they are so rare! – cause it’s relevant and very very thought-provoking. it’s what i loved about history in jc, and what i always hoped to sort of do, but well, i never got to do. we touched on it in cs102 and i wished we had more of those.

we watched “War Made Easy” in class, and it is a great film!

there was a lot of good quotes, good statements made. but there was one that struck home nearing the end of the film. it was a clip from sometime back during the vietnam war, and it was a statement senator wayne morse – one of the two senators that opposed the gulf of tonkin war – made. it was a debate about american foreign policy, and who holds the right to decide american foreign policy.

Lisagor: “Senator, the Constitution gives to the president of the United States the sole responsibility for the conduct of foreign policy,” Lisagor said.

Morse: “Couldn’t be more wrong, you couldn’t make a more unsound legal statement than the one you have just made. This is the promulgation of an old fallacy that foreign policy belongs to the president of the United States. That’s nonsense.”

Lisagor: “Then to whom does it belong then, senator?”

Morse: “It belongs to the American People. The Constitution has made it very, very clear…”

Lisagor: “Then where does the president fit in? On the responsibility scale?”

Morse: “What I’m saying is that under our Constitution all the president is the administrator of the people’s foreign policy. Those are his prerogatives and I’m pleading the American people be given the facts….”

Lisagor: “You know, senator, the American people cannot formulate and execute foreign policy…”

Morse: “Why do you say that? You’re a man of little faith in democracy if you make that kind of statement… I have complete faith in the ability of the American people to follow the facts if you’ll give them. My charge against my government is that we’re not giving the people the facts. “

or something to that effect, i googled it and came up with several different versions.

anyway, i think it’s very applicable today, not only in the US, but also Singapore today. there’s always the debate about how singaporeans are babysat by our government, and how we aren’t mature nor intelligent enough to make these decisions. but if you think about it, does more education or political training give the right to decide anything regarding the people’s lives? in the end, the prime minister, government or anyone, in a democracy, is simply the administrator of the people’s wishes, and deciding anything for them, claiming that the people are immature, just simply comes off as a little condescending to me.

that was just a little, unorganised, on the spot rant. not very well-thought out but just felt like mentioning it because of the class. it was a very, very inspiring film. and i love the class! YAY.

on a slightly more depressing note, i think i’ll only clear about 16 AUs (hopefully not LESS than that) for this whole semester. which means a lot of work the next few semesters cos i’ll have 59 to clear by year 4. and 20 go to FYP and internship. which leaves 39 more over yr 3 and yr 4. which really, isn’t too good because i want a comparatively slack year 4. but okay lah. i guess. since i’m like peering at the curriculum structure, i’m supposed to have like, 66 AUs to clear – i’m ahead thanks to my year 1 intersem – where i managed to clear a good 7 AUs. maybe, if it doesn’t clash, i can take more production workshops and clear another 2 or 4 AUs. otherwise i’ll just work hard in the first sem next year, take about 20+ AUs (we’re supposed to take a whopping 22 AUs as recommended by the curriculum structure -_-”)  and then maybe i’ll have a slack year 4 still..

7: forgiving one’s relations

edit: by the way, this blog doesn’t mean the other blog doesn’t get updated. this is just for all my exchange-related stuff. :P

title comes from an oscar wilde quote about being able to forgive anyone after a good dinner, even their own relations. he’s funny.

dining hall food isn’t as bad as i expected it to be (thank goodness, i paid like USD$2500 for a whole sem.) it’s practically like having a buffet every meal. there’s food that looks good and is bad, and there’s good food (: had pizza, a bit of macaroni (and it’s yummy, despite my dislike for pasta that isn’t noodle-y), an absolutely tasteless brownie, a yummy cookie and yummy yummy peaches.

which was, a lot. haha i’m feeling all happy and full. i shall visit the campus center dining hall more. cos’ i think the food’s nicer than the terraces’ dining hall. but then again, i’ve only been to both once each. shall not pass judgement so early. but the campus dining centre is loads nearer to where i am anyway, and and and…

my roomie’s back! and she’s very nice! phewwww. (: (:

okaeee. time to socialise :D