TWO

To all the people who check back for updates, friends, family and essentially, all who are interested in what I do with my life (yes, I am addressing this to all 4 of you out there):

I know I have not been updating, it sucks that I have to preface every entry with an apology for my infrequent posting, but we deal. I have 30495820 papers to write before I can jet home for winter but I am procrastinating on WordPress because I have watched every single video there is to be watched on Youtube and Hulu on a Thursday evening when my last DS Literature paper is due on Friday morning and yet I deal. Friends who email me lengthy narratives about their lives and received no response of comparable length/sincerity/concern, this DOES NOT mean I am beyond caring because your letters still put a smile on my face/light up my life/make my heart erupt into a million pretty petals of every imaginable pastel colour. I just … okay I have no excuses for not replying, but believe me when I say that when I am busy, I am busy. Therefore, in my downtime, it is a pardonable sin that I play hard to work off the cumulative stress from doing whatever serious work I have to do (notice I am being intentionally vague about how serious/busy I actually am) ERGO I usually do not have time to return your literary displays of affection.

Much has happened to me since I last posted. Most memorably, my first Thanksgiving in the US of A came and went, more on that later (by later, I really mean when I see you in person because if you think I am going to update this thing again in the next two weeks with all my overdue homework DUE in capital letters for emphasis and my finals breathing down my neck, you are, well, mistaken). And speaking of seeing you in person, I only took a breather from my paper to tell you that I will be home on the sunny island of Singapore amongst my favourite people/plates of Hokkien Mee/piles of durianrambutan&assortedtropicalfruit in EXACTLY

TWO

WEEKS. Which makes me beside myself with happiness, joy, ecstasy and overflowing love.

But before that, I have:

- 2x overdue 造句 (deadline: dead)

- 1x 作文

- 1x Chinese Presentation

- 1x DS Literature Paper

- 4x Finals

to overcome. So don’t blink, because I will be seeing you, you, you and you so very soon! Excite!

Where Do I Start?

Autumn.

Okay, so I know I promised to update my blog slightly more religiously than I have been doing, and this post is horribly overdue, but it’s hard to find time amidst crazy amounts of readings (still clearing my ds backlog, the horror!), socializing so that the world doesn’t forget you exist, making it down for rugby practices and games, skyping friends and family (more time-consuming than you think) and sleeping (which I totally don’t get enough of, more on that later). So to all the people who’ve sent me emails asking me how I am doing/telling me how you’re doing, I apologize. Please keep them coming! I may not show it, but I am truly, genuinely interested in what you are doing with your lives wherever you may be in the world at the moment.

Onto what I am doing in New Haven, I will talk generally about the big things.

Club Rugby

Okay, all of you can stop laughing now. Seriously, nobody whom I have broken the news to could keep a straight face. Last time I wrote here, I was a fresh reject-ee of the Yale Debate Association. So in my confusion and lack of direction or purpose, I took a gamble and decided to try out club sports at Yale. Club sports bridge the gap in intensity between intramural sports (your interhouse sports basically) and varsity sports, so the culture at club sports is generally more accepting and might I say less jock-clique-ish. It’s a bit of a full circle for me really, joining club rugby at Yale, harking back to my legendary Sec 1 days (all 30 of them) as an overweight boy on a field with a rugby ball.

The seniors and upperclassmen here are really nice, and that was my biggest fear before joining, that the other guys on the team will spit on my ineptitude and make my life a living hell for even thinking of going to practice in the first place. They have been nothing short of encouraging so I’m pretty glad I stuck around.

Funny story: Americans can’t play sports without gifting their teammates with nicknames. So they can’t simply say, “Pass the ball, Jonathan!” or “Get in the ruck, Jonathan!”; a nickname was in order. So for the first couple of days, I was “Jon Asian”, which was quite funny at first, but ceased to be amusing by the fifth minute of practice when I decided that being reminded of your ethnicity at every play was borderline racist. Quite thankfully though (or not), I have a new nickname now: “Wild Man”. I don’t know what this means (though a quick search on Wikipedia reveals that a Wild man is a mythological hairy relative of the orang utan armed with a club) because I have not been particularly wild around the ruggers (if anything, I have been living up to the meek Asian stereotype around these macho, muscle-bound types) but I must say it brings a smile to my face everytime they shout for “Wild man” to make a run. Little things like these make you feel like you belong, I guess.

Princeton.

Playing club rugby also means that I get to travel quite extensively all about the Ivies on weekends to play away games. So far, we’ve travelled to Princeton (won), Penn (won) and Dartmouth (loss – utterly raped) and tomorrow, I will be leaving New Haven at 6 in the morning for Rhode Island to play Brown in our last away match. Am keeping my fingers crossed for a quick glimpse of Hermione on campus.

When I’m not playing rugby, I’m generally procrastinating and mucking about the room, as I am today. It is too cold out, I don’t feel like doing anything this week because it’s supposed to be a recess week for me since this is the first time in five weeks that I don’t have a DS paper due despite my constant self-assurances that I will take this week to catch up on my readings. So far? Epic fail.

I wished more Singaporeans visited. Last weekend, Nicole came down from New York to say hi, which was nice. It’s always nice to have Singaporeans around, listening to that familiar accent, talking about the familiar things familiar people used to do back home.

Okay, I think I will return to Plato. It is a Friday night, parties abound, but I sit in my room with a book in my lap. I wished we never had to grow up.

FML

The World's Most Desolate Railway Station

Allow me to recount, if you may, how I spent the afternoon of the 15th of September 2009. In very brief terms, because I have precious little time and too many pages of incomprehensible Homeric text to devour, I basically took the wrong bus to practice today. So instead of ending up at the IM fields, I found myself half an hour later in Derby, Connecticut, a place 10 miles east of New Haven a.k.a. sketchy place in the middle of nowhere. So hiking to a nearby gas station, the nice people there cautioned me against taking the taxi because cab drivers that part of town were, apparently, immoral penny-pinchers who will bring you on a joyride of greater New England, ringing up an insane cab fare before delivering you safely to your destination. Thinking I could save myself a bit of money, I heeded the gas station owner’s advice, called a cab and took a $10 taxi ride to “Derby Train Station” where apparently the bus will take me to Union Bus Station in Downtown New Haven for $1.25.

Big mistake. I found out shortly after arriving at Derby Train Station that it was no ordinary train station. It is so old, desolate and rundown that trains rarely passage through there anymore. I was virtually in the middle of nowhere. With Annie Le on my mind, I sat by the kerb and rang up people (thank you Wanky and Linda for picking up!!!!). I finally drummed up enough courage to enter the roadside diner populated with Hells’ Angels lookalikes in leather vests and bandannas to ask for directions. Someone threw me a map with a voluminous listing of all the bus services in Connecticut which I could not understand (I was brought up to comprehend Singapore’s comparatively simplistic bus routes after all) and someone kindly offered me the number of a taxi company. I tried the Yale Mini-bus and was told that Derby was too far out for them to come pick me up and that the Dean would have to be informed if I insisted on them coming out. By then, I felt like I was truly living out an absurdist play, albeit an infinitely more nerve-wracking, and potentially life-endangering one. So I decided that if $30 could ensure I get back onto Old Campus in one piece, I’d pay in a heartbeat. Which I did.

Moral of the story: God must hate me.

Where the f*** am I?

Exciting Tuesday afternoons FTW.

Settling In

Trumbull Library; Timestamp: 0013 hrs, September 11th 2009

Okay so I’m not doing this blog justice anymore with my infrequent posts but I promise to squeeze in time for one post a week at least! It’s just difficult when you have to juggle insane work schedules (see above) with the pressures of settling in. I’m beginning to find my way around, figure how people here tick, catch up on my readings, but not a day goes by when I wished I was studying in a uniform back home with PEOPLE I KNOW AND <3 LOVE AROUND ME! This longing for home is both painful and intensely weepy so I hope it fades with time.

I submitted my first Directed Studies paper on Friday. I don’t know what to make of it, since the last vaguely academic thing I wrote was the ‘A’ Level H3 Economics paper I did end November 2008 (OCS reflections hardly count) but it’s a milestone in and of itself! Sadly though, sleepless Thursday nights rushing DS papers will become a large part of my life I foresee.

In other news, I was rejected from the Yale debate team, which was immensely disappointing. Like coming here and shedding important identities you cling on to back home (i.e. scholar/Rafflesian/ubiquitous boy? haha) is not disorientating enough, having to see myself lose the ability to identify with a group of people I practically dedicated my entire secondary school career to just left me quite helpless frankly. I guess it’s a good revelation of sorts? I figure it’s not entirely healthy to want to uproot your personae and identities back home and transplant them here. I guess I will venture to create a few new identities of my own during my time here. Have been toying with the idea of playing club sports for Yale. Let’s see how that turns out shall we?

I miss miss miss the Singaporean accent, Singaporean food, Singaporean everything. It’s strange sometimes how my post-college life is set firmly in stone, yet my college career is so hazy, so unknown, so spontaneous, so fluid and malleable. It’s discomforting, but at the same time, I think the most meaningful things in life are invariably uncomfortable.

Like how fat lady in micro shorts crucified my foot last night at Toad’s (it wasn’t meaningful, but it was certainly very uncomfortable). Reminder to self: no more senseless wandering on weekends!

So I really should be doing my readings…

We're So Awesome.

Today was the first day of lessons. For the few people who are actually interested in what I’m doing, I am taking four classes Fall Semester: Directed Studies and a Chinese class to fulfill my language requirement. It’s been a promising first day as far as first days of school go; the Chinese class was small in size and proved to be a welcome refresher of the language for me while DS truly lived up to its name of being an intense course. For someone used to having a tutor’s questions be met with silence during Junior College tutorials, the intensely vociferous discussions that took place at my seminar today was quite a culture shock. Maybe it’s because I haven’t done my readings. Which is a timely reminder that I am only on page 10 of my 23480394 paged history book. Whoever said law students were the only ones with endless readings and assignments?

I miss Singapore, I do. I miss the feeling of being in utter control of everything, anything.

New Beginnings

Good morning starshine, the Earth says hello!

To mark this new chapter of my life, I have dusted off the cobwebs on my WordPress account in a bid to chronicle the going-ons in the coming years. This journal shall serve both recollective and communicative functions; a blog which will aid me in providing some semblance of coherence to my college experience in a foreign land while reaching out at the same time in a “What’s On This Week”-esque fashion to the people back home.

I hope I will find the stamina to update this blog regularly with equal parts photos and musings. I want to stay connected to the friends and family I care about, and I believe this will be the most effective platform available to me while I am halfway across the world from the sunny shores of Singapore. The journey ahead is fraught with unknown excitements and unspoken challenges, and I will be sure to capture on this blog every milestone along the way for posterity. But for now, unpacking beckons.

This Side Up

Definitely a departure from the world of pretty themes, skins and layouts, but I guess what WordPress can offer me is a clean, professional and uncluttered blogging format, something which neither Blogger (simple but insanely unstable) nor Livejournal (too huh-inducing) provided. Anyhoo, now that I’m here, I’ll just have to get down to familiarizing myself with this little beauty I guess.

First impressions: the absence of the complete autonomy to customize my theme howsoever I choose (i.e. link colour etc.) is quite a pain in the ass.

Guardian Unlimited reported on the execution of “Tookie” Williams earlier today. I, personally, cannot understand why anyone would defend a mob boss charged with murder. Even if he did write children’s books on death row.

Snoop Dogg recited a poem entitled Until We Meet Again, in which he referred to the execution. “It’s nine-fifteen on twelve-thirteen and another black king will be taken from the scene,” he said.

A stanza that read: “I don’t believe Stan did it,” drew wild applause from the car park outside the church where more mourners – including some gang members wearing blue, the colour associated with the Crips – were watching the service on large television screens.

Williams was executed for the shotgun murders of 26-year-old convenience store clerk Albert Owens and motel owners Yen-I Yang, 76, and Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and their 43-year-old daughter Yu-Chin Yang Lin in 1979.

Now even rapstars are flocking to his defence. I’m thinking, even if he hadn’t murdered them motel owners, isn’t being a mob boss, leader of a syndicate which specializes in organized crime, ground enough to convict him of something? The courts in the Land of the Free probably operate in a vastly different manner from ours.

The NKF saga and its auxiliary issues (what with peanuts and extravagant bathroom fittings) have been discussed to death. But, never underestimate the watercooler-talk-potential of old news. KPMG recently released its investigation findings on the misdeeds of Durai and his minions, choosing to unearth the proverbial hatchet and effectively eclipsing more important local and international news headlines (i.e. Saddam’s trial and Steve Chia’s exit from local politics thanks to motor accident anyone?) in the hearts of the everyday Singaporean. What I really think though is that NKF wouldn’t have been where it is today with Durai and that he deserves every ounce of credit for managing to milk Singaporeans dry in the name of a worthy cause.

Yet, I must admit the report does unearth very interesting nuggets of information. But what piqued my interest even more so that the results of the report was the process by which KPMG and the auditors got around to piecing it together.

THE floor was emptied of all shredder machines. Security guards were posted outside the door and bags were routinely checked.

Even the trash did not escape scrutiny: Rubbish bins were checked through just to make sure nothing important was dumped.

This was just the seventh floor of the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) building in Kim Keat Road. But it held all the sensitive accounting and financial documents.

Sliding doors and keyholes were sealed with stickers every night – each individually signed and dated. No staff could enter until the auditors broke the seals each morning.

That was just one floor.

Up on the 12th floor, where the NKF boardroom had been turned into the auditors’ de facto command centre, seals swathed the doors and experts swept the rooms for bugging devices.

Sounds very James Bond, no?

Maybe I’ll get down to reading the KPMG report after settling the Sec 1 Camp Booklet. Hiringa’s on fire and I am sincerely wishing that the camp will turn out fine and dandy!

First post and such a respectable length! I am pleased. Does this mean I’ll start posting entries here diligently? I dunno also. Shopping at The Concourse (luxuriating in the comapny of Zhiyang no less) has left me brain-numbed and zombified. The bed looks supremely comfortable.

Auyong, out!