Summer09: On Air with Japan!

The one big issue I have with early morning flights is, well, the early morning check-ins at the airport. Waking up was a problem – I worked around it by not sleeping at all – and trying to get to the airport at that unearthly hour just wasn’t fun.

With Northwest flight 6 from Singapore to Tokyo-Narita being renumbered to NW20 about a year ago, the flight now leaves a good 20 minutes earlier than the previous 6 am. Goodness gracious me, reaching the airport at 3.30 a.m. is really not a joke.

So now you imagine, forcing yourself to wake up at three in the morning, getting yourself to the airport at 4 am, and going through the unique Northwest process of individual security interview before checking in, before finally hitting your 34 inch wide seat an hour later. And when you hit that chair, boy, you really want to sleep. Especially if you didn’t sleep a wink at all because you fear that you won’t be able to wake up in time for the flight.

So I was all grouchy when I was in my chair, grumpily giving mono-syllabic answers to my overenthusiastic mother who has already spent over 300 bucks on cosmetics even before she set foot outside our sunny island. All I wanted was to hit my chair, and doze off under the constant drone of the flight.

As I belted myself into the seat, making myself comfortable with the tiny weeny pillow amongst the hustle bustle of the flight crew, suddenly a voice rang out across the cabin. I looked up. The captain was speaking. No, not over the public address system, but a tall, paunchy American, marked by that pilot’s peak cap, standing right in the cabin, talking to us with that Southern accent of his. He provided an overview of the flight and the weather conditions, all with the energy and warmth that you thought you’d only see in advertisements. “We’ll be flying through some shower clouds, but we will maneuver around them. Don’t worry, I’ve been doing this for years, and I don’t like these clouds either,” obviously an attempt to ease concerns with the recent A330 incident.

So off we go. And I thought that was the end of the fanfare. No. The PA system came on, and someone was playing the harmonica. And singing. Ohmygoodnessitwasthecaptainsinging…!!! He made his pre-flight briefing – again – this time round as a song.

*harmonica plays*
“6 hours 41 minutes.”
*harmonica plays*
“Singapore to Narita”
*harmonica plays*
“Some clouds and shower”
*harmonica plays*
“Don’t worry about them”

Alright, I was so tickled, I didn’t catch the rest of the song. I heard applause from the back of the cabin, and you’ll be wondering if the front half was either not listening, or totally not thrilled. I was.

Seven hours was a comfortable duration for the flight. With breakfast served shortly after take-off, I used the remaining time for Slumdog Millionaire, and snoozed in between snippets of the show. Economy class seats were never meant for heavy sleeping, so naps were all that I could comfortably snag.

Touching down at Narita airport, clearing immigration was a breeze. Even with the additional questionnaire that we had to fill out for H1N1 screening, we were out of the restricted zone barely half hour after landing.

And that’s where the adventure begins. In the land where language is going to be a barrier, my first task for this leg of the race to Osaka was to change my JR exchange voucher for the actual pass. Alright, I have it better: at least I know where’s my destination, and I got my route all planned out.

With some shameless queries and abstract map reading skills, we found the office. Okay I lied. The office wasn’t that difficult to find. It was just a trip down the escalator. Filled out the form, and got my pass, but with a surprise.
“You want to start your pass tomorrow? The Narita Express not working today. Spoil. If you go Tokyo, have to take Keisei.” I was headed to Osaka, I said. “Okay, you take Keisei line to Nippori, then change to JR. Yamamote Line to Tokyo. Then you take Shinkansen to Osaka,” He explained, why drawing out on a scrap piece of paper for my reference. He whipped out two complementary tickets (I supposed they were), and we were shooed off in the direction of the Keisei line where the train was waiting.

The trains are nothing like MRT back home. A tad older and smaller, but the people who ride them seem freer. No food restrictions on board – a couple of Japanese ladies were chatting over cans of beer – and no marked out seats, so that the same row of ladies could squeeze together to offer a tired toddler a seat to nap in. The train strolled past vast plains, nucleated with pockets of houses, under the idyllic Japanese afternoon sun.

I figured on the complicated map where we should get off. But looking at the masses of people with luggage bag, logic beckoned that most of these people are headed to Tokyo, and they will hence get off where I am supposed to get off. True enough. An hour into the ride, when the train pulled into Nippori, nearly everyone got off.

Through bustling Nippori station, we hopped onto the JR Yamamote line, bringing us to Tokyo station. Tokyo station is huge. Nothing like Grand Central in NYC, this place was obviously built in the local style of confusion. It took me a while to get to the JR reservation office to get reserved seats on the Shinkansen (which I could have done without, but just to be safe), and I chose a ride half hour later so I could grab a bite, and comfortably locate my platform.

We settled for some sushi and coffee as lunch. Sushi was brilliant, and mom couldn’t stop talking about how the ‘pearl rice’ is so different from the fragrant rice we have at home, and contributes to the taste. I agree, but I was too tired to show my enthusiasm and humor her.

The platform weren’t too difficult to locate, although the signs were misleading, and resulted in having my mother lug her luggage up two flights of stairs. That was pretty good exercise, I must say.

The Japanese are very punctual people, I must say. Even as the cleaners are still working hard to spruce up the train up to ten minutes before departure, the doors promptly opened minutes before departure, and when everyone boarded, the train left right on the dot. Like clockwork, the train pulled into each of its destined stop at the given time.

The comfortable ride, with the spacious seat, had me slipping in and out of sleep during the three-hour ride to Osaka. As the sun sets, the surrounding stations fade into a field of darkness as well. As the train finally pulled into Shin-Osaka, two tired figures, with their trolley luggage, ambled out of the station in search of their hotel.

20/20b. Sunrise at Narita

I’m writing this from a hotel some 20 minutes from NRT, after volunteering my seat for an oversold flight last evening. I couldn’t imagine taking another 7-hour flight back home after a 18-hour journey. The break and the night at the hotel was pretty much welcomed, as well as a day flight on ANA setting at dusk on the sunny island.

20/20a. Last Stop.

Now that I’m back in Greensboro, this is my last stop in the US with less than 48 hours left to my flight back home.

I have learnt a lot in the past 20 weeks.

The three weeks of touring around the States was tiring, but amazingly enjoyable with Jessie and her family.

If the amount I blogged reflects how much I have to say about how I feel now, it is a complete reverse reflection of reality.

20/XXa. Sleepless in NYC.

Not exactly in Manhattan, but in Queens instead. Queens is one of the five boroughs that make up NYC, a good one hour away by public transport from Times Square.

It’s my final night in NYC. Did a rather ritualistic routine today: Liberty & Ellis Island, walked around Times Square, had the mandatory final night nice dinner at Olive Garden in the middle of Times Square, and bought last souvenirs.

All I hear now is the hum of the aircon, and my mom’s gentle breathing as she slips into dreamland. And I’m feeling all warm and ambivalent, don’t know if I should feel all happy that this holiday is ending too soon with DC as my next and final stop, or sad that I am leaving this four-month fantasy in a week’s time.

Reading about people returning to Singapore and resuming their social roles in the CS community makes me shudder. Not that the standoff has changed anything (not that it hasn’t), but it seem like such a chore to re-assimilate into the community all over again. I have grown to like breakfast by myself, post-dinner long-night internet surfings, and doing virtually everything by myself, enjoying the occasional company of one or just a few others. Doing all the loud, socialising thing just seem so… tiring.

I have forgotten this is which week I spent in the States, all I know is that I have only a week left. I could stay here forever.

20/15a. Dining Services: Overpaying or underconsuming?

Being an exchange student at Elon has been an exciting experience personally. The four months I spent at Elon has given me a glimpse of an American college life, which is vastly different from the Singaporean university system that I am so used to. Everything is markedly a new experience for me: living in a college town, subscribing to a meal plan system, small class sizes, fantastic facilities on campus, with almost nothing to complain about here.

From my personal interaction with Americans students here, I came to realize how fortunate I was to be an exchange student at a private college in the U.S. For one, my tuition for this semester is waived due to a reciprocal agreement between our schools. Most of my peers either have to hunt for scholarships, which are hard to come by, or simply take out hefty loans to foot the $24,000-a-year tuition fee. On top of that, there’s also room and board to take care of, adding another $6,000 to $8,000 to the heavy burden of a college education.

Before I came, I was advised by seniors who have previously gone on American exchange programs about the relatively expensive room and board that we would have to pay for. Since the exchange program covered only the tuition fees, room and board were still our responsibility, and hence becoming a major consideration for our choice of program.

When I first got to Elon, we were told to purchase the 9-meal per week plan, which costs about $1,500 for the semester. Due to some hiccups by the bursar’s office, two friends and myself were billed and given the 5-meal plan instead. When we approached the bursar’s office to correct the mistake and top up for the difference, we were advised to keep the 5-meal plan. I made some brief calculations there and then, and decidedly kept the 5-meal plan instead, chiefly because the abundant meal dollars would feed my coffee addict.

A little bit of background on Elon’s dining services here. Elon’s dining services is largely taken care by Aramark, a national food and apparel service partner serving organizations across several sectors. A quick check on the internet revealed that Aramark operates campus dining for many colleges across the country, including University of West Georgia, University of California Irvine and East Stroudsburg University. At Elon, Aramark operates three dining halls and eight other food and beverages outlets. Meal plans and meal dollars can be used at all locations.

As the semester went on, I had on several occasions talked to some fellow exchange students about the meal plan system. Most of us didn’t have such a system at home, and thus we became critical of this system and did some math on the value of the meals. To our horror, we realized that the bulk of Elon students were paying more than what they were getting.

I have posted my research and calculations in Appendix A. Calculations were based on the door values of meals posted by Aramark at the dining halls ($5.58 for breakfast; $7.58 for lunch, dinner and weekend brunch), and the assumption that a student receives meals only for 32 weeks a year (14 in fall, 4 in winter and 14 in spring). A total value given by the meal plan counts and the meal dollars is made, including tax, to simulate the total cost that a student pay if he or she uses cash for all dining purposes on campus.

From the table, one can see that a student loses money as long as they purchase a meal plan. And in addition to that, the lower number of meals per week a student purchase, the more money they lose on the meal plan. For example, a student will only lose $44.38 on a 19-meal plan in a year, but if he so chooses a 9-meal plan, he or she loses over $1,200 in a year. The only exception to this trend is the 5-meal plan, where a student loses only $392, due to the high amount of meal dollars bundled with the plan.

In addition, meal combos are offered at retail locations such as the Octagon Café, Downstairs McEwen and Acorn Coffee Shop, which often works out to be far lesser than the $7.58 value posted for a meal plan count. Hence, if a student on a meal plan so chooses to use his or her meal plan at a retail location, it just translates to losing more money on the meal plan.

What baffled me when I was reading the FAQ section on the campus dining website was the cash equivalency scheme offered in lieu of meal plans. Each meal plan, valued at $7.58 (which is the price charged for cash payment at the dining hall locations), is worth only $2.50 in cash equivalency if the meal plan was used at retail locations on campus instead. The explanation given was that $7.58 paid for a dining hall meal consisted of two parts: a food cost of $2.50, and a labor cost of $5.08. Since students ‘save’ the dining halls of the food cost when they do not consume their meals at a dining hall, this $2.50 is refunded to them. However, the labor cost cannot be refunded as Aramark workers at the dining halls work as usual. It is also interesting to note that anyone who pays for the meal plan in cash, will have to pay for this labor cost as well, even though it has been paid in advance (at least in theory) by students who have purchased a meal plan at the beginning of the semester.

Let’s paint a possible scenario. Suppose 2,000 students were projected to dine at the dining halls on a given day, but only 1,700 turn up and swipe meal plans on it, Aramark loses food cost for 300 people, but still earns labor costs associated for serving 2,000 students. Fair enough since they have projected 2,000 diners based on previous data, and made ample labor and food preparations to cater to all.

However, what if an additional 300 off-campus diners come in and pay for their meals in cash? That means that Aramark stands to earn an additional 300 units of labor costs ($5.08 per person), when they effectively serve a grand total of only 2,000 people for that day, which is the initial projection.

In summary, it is all right for Aramark to collect more labor costs, but not less, even though the amount of work may work out to be the same.

One may counter this idealistic calculation by posing an opposite scenario of ‘bad days’ when the turn-out at the dining halls severely fall short of the projected figures. Since Aramark states that the food cost is only worth $2.50, it still doesn’t validate charging cash-paying customers three times this food cost to make up for wastage made by students who fail to turn up to consume meal plans. Labor costs shouldn’t be a consideration at this point in time, since it has already been paid for at the beginning of the semester when all students purchase their meal plans. Furthermore, students who consume food at other campus retail outlets would have to pay full value of their food purchased – food and labor – meaning that labor cost is actually paid twice over when they choose to use a meal plan at a retail outlet instead.

Speaking of wastage, I wonder what does Aramark do with the surplus food they have at the dining halls each day. With the dining halls closing at 8 p.m. each evening, there have been a few instances that my friends and I visit the Colonnades dining hall at 7 p.m. or slightly later, and have our dinner till closing time. Even at 8 p.m. when no new customers are allowed to come in, there are still trays of entrée that are more than half full. And this only what is visible to the patrons, we do not know what else is left behind the oven and refrigerator doors. And at the end of the day, what happens to all the excess food? I have no idea.

It can only be deduced that the surplus of food in the dining halls is a result of poor planning and projection by Aramark. Projections and data analyses are part of any food & beverage to minimize wastage, which translate to cutting costs. Aramark is not new to Elon – it signed it first contract with Elon in 1960 – and thus it should have a bulk of historical data to use for projection. Moreover, Elon have had its events calendar made known to Aramark so that necessary adjustments in the amount of rations could be made.

So what should Aramark do about this? First and foremost Aramark, or Elon, should give an explanation for the inflated price of the meal plans, when it is clear that they cost more than what they really are. The purpose of students purchasing meal plans is to enable students to save money by purchasing meals on campus in bulk at the beginning of the semester, and not end up paying more for meals. Even if there are additional costs that students should bear, they are not made accessible and easily explainable to students as well. As customers of the campus dining services, students have a right to know what exactly are they paying for, and hiding behind the façade of a lump sum that students (or their parents) pay blindly each semester just shows irresponsibility of a corporation, which should be accountable to their paying customers.

While it is arguable that the door value of the dining hall meals are far lower as compared to some other colleges around the country, it still does not qualify the inflated charge of the meal plans. What Aramark should do is to reconcile the costs of the meal plans paid by cash-paying customers at the door and the actual cost borne by the students under the meal plan system.

Aramark should also consider removing the $2.50 cash equivalency of the meal plans. The sole purpose I see in the $2.50 equivalency is that I have found many students with a surplus of meal plan counts left over at the last few weeks of the semester. So as to exploit and make full use of what they have paid for, they resort to expediting meal plans by using them as a $2.50 credit to purchase items which they may not necessarily need, since they will not be able to obtain a refund for unused meal plans.

While the combos offered at the various retail outlets are good alternatives to the dining hall options, the cash equivalency offers little or no purpose in complimenting the scheme. Students are allotted meal dollars bundled with their meal plans, for use at campus retail values. Also, students may make use of the debit account on their Phoenix Card to make purchases if they have depleted their meal dollars, saving them the tax they have to pay on a cash payment. Unlike some other colleges, there is no minimum deposit required for the Phoenix Cash account on their Phoenix Card. University of California Irvine places a minimum of $25 deposit on its campus dining debit account, and UNC Chapel Hill places that minimum at $50, just to name a few. So if a student wants to buy a $1.49 coffee without paying that extra 10 cents in tax, they can simply top up $1.49 on their Phoenix Cash account and use that to buy a coffee at Acorn.

As you can see, the cash equivalency offered by the meal plans is a weak alternative to the other arms of the scheme. The only plausible reason for the offer of the cash equivalency is due to the excessive amount of meal plan counts students have left at the end of the semester, and they desperately try to use up the meal plans by splurging on things they may not necessarily need.

There is another part of the meal plan scheme that is questionable, that is the rollover concept from term to term within a year. The existing policy allows a student to keep his remaining meal plan counts if he chooses to upgrade his meal plan from term to term. However, if he or she downgrades his plan, the remaining meal plan counts will be erased. This policy is totally counter-intuitive. If a student have had surplus of meal plans in the previous term, would he need to upgrade his meal plan? No. Instead, he may even want to downgrade his meal plan, and make use of his remaining meal plan counts as well (after all, he paid for them). In short, if a student has chosen a higher-than-necessary meal plan at the beginning of the school year, either downgrading or staying on the same plan will both be to their disadvantage.

At the end of the day, the primary purpose of college dining services is ultimately to provide affordable and healthy dining options to college students. While the self-funding nature of private colleges may be a valid consideration for the high costs at the end of the day, the onus is still on them to find the balance between being a socially responsible education institute and a profit-driven private business. College education costs have been a major consideration for many American families for years, and tens of thousands of college students graduate each year with debts of up to $100,000 to their name even before they earn their first paycheck as a graduate. Ultimately, private colleges should hold themselves to the core mission of education – to make it available to as many people as possible. And to do so, the most fundamental step is to always keep focus on the mission and to watch the cost to keep away unnecessary burdens for the students.

Appendix A: (click to enlarge)

20/14c. Last Class

Today marks the last class that I attended at Elon. 14 weeks of school, countless lessons and an entire semester worth of experience in my pocket. In retrospect, I think this would actually be my best semester in all my college life, academically and experientially. For once I have tidied up my portfolio, and realized how much I have amassed over the past three years, both in NS and in college. The semester here at Elon also added significantly to that file of works, and I’m pretty thankful for it.

The classes have been, to say the least, wonderful. I enjoy the small class sizes, and being an exchange students I admit sometimes I get unwarranted attention. Media Law has given me a crash course on the legislative mechanism of US, and in turn, led me to reflect upon the system in Singapore as well. The research I did on NPPA led me to both marvel at the shrewdness of our leaders, as well as disappointment in the tightened noose over foreign media in Singapore. Copywriting didn’t teach me much in terms of head knowledge, but the rigourous coursework and excellent reviews by the instructor has pushed me to be more efficient, and to demand a higher quality of work from myself. Editing and Design has sensitised me greatly to the mechanics of the English language, correcting my grammar once and for all, something that I neglected since time immemorial. The design module within has also allowed me unleash the creativity juices in me for newspaper layouts (something which I always wanted to do), and also landed me a chance to help out in the layout section of the campus newspaper in the past three weeks. My parting gift for The Pendulum was the Sports back-cover, which I worked on for three hours last night. Working for them, albeit for such a short period, was one of the highlights of my stay here at Elon.

I griped about the lack of amenities here at Elon, and being a college town, it is pretty much dead and lifeless. Weekends were horrible. Without a car, I’m pretty much stuck on campus, with the library and the coffee shop as my only solace in making the most horrible 48 hours of my life pass as quickly as possible. I actually adored homework, so that time will miraculously tick faster, and the library was actually a desirable place to me in. The bonus in that was that I could bring in food and drinks, so I spent many a days inside reading magazines (they’ve got a pretty good selection from Times to Popular Photography to People) and newspapers while having a cup of Starbucks and breadsticks.

The odd weekend I’d go over to my mom. Not that I am actually dying to get there all the time, but getting out of campus and getting a little break away from my horrible room is actually therapeutic for me. Also, it also means decent home-cooked meals for me, which adds on to the lure of making the half-hour trips and shameless begging for rides to get over.

I still gripe about the lack of facilities and amenities and access off-campus from Elon. Compared to some other colleges, Elon’s in a pretty bad location, and I resent that. And there’s only so many favours you can get from your American friends, especially when fuel prices are rocketing through the roof.

Nevertheless Elon is probably still one of the most beautiful campus I’ve seen. The pretty front lawn where I sunbathed, the little yard in front of McEwen where I used to have my lunches of Tyson chicken strips on, the magnificent Belk Library, the new Colonnades dining hall, Moseley Center and many many more. There’s just too many things on campus that’s so pleasing to the eye, and it never fails to brighten up my day on a good and sunny day.

I am definitely going to miss this place, one month, one year or even three years down the road. Of course even if i have the chance to return to Elon for a visit, the experience would be different. It’s one thing to be here as a student, and that’s because of the people. Being a minority here, an international one to boot, is really an experience that everyone should take. The international community here is actually pretty marvellous, it forced me to open up my ears and eyes, and to be more culturally aware and accepting of those who doesn’t boast English as their native language. Just today as I was talking to some fellow exchange students, I was amazed at how fluent their English has become. There was even a tinge of American accent, which affirmed the assimilation process that they underwent during our stint over here at Elon. For one, I think that the acquirement of an accent essentially signifies a willingness to be culturally relevant. Not that we lose our native accent (even if we speak the language as a native speaker), but being communicators it pays to be relevant and adaptable in cultures and environments that are foreign to us.

Being at Elon wasn’t all highs and no lows. In fact, it was pretty trying when I first got here, and being overwhelmed by language. Not being an avid listener, the accents that the locals possessed became a key issue for me. I had problems understand most of them – it’s better now, but i’m still having trouble with some – and ended up tuning off. And when I speak, sometimes they don’t understand what I’m talking about. It’s the same language, just different expressions and pronunciations brought about a gap that I had problems bridging. Slowly, I find myself trying ways and means to adapt: using an accent familiar to them, adopting certain greeting styles and phrases, speaking slower and even resorting to speaking less.

Coming to Elon has made me painfully aware of my Asian identity and taught me to embrace my identity as a Chinese, an Asian, a Singaporean. I enjoy my friendly banters in Singlish with WS and the Mandarin chats over dinner with Joy. I even enjoy the few conversations I have with my mom whenever I go over to her place. In fact, at times they have become my solace for a reminiscence of home whenever I feel overwhelmed by the foreignness of this land. I was momentarily happy that day in NYC when ZL and I met up with ZL’s teacher. It was familiar sight and sounds to me, albeit it seemed like being in an invisible Singaporean bubble that floated throughout NYC that day.

I learnt to appreciate Chinese, and come to realize that there are some things that are still better left expressed in Chinese. And I appreciate the kind of education background where language is concerned: that I am sufficiently fluent in both English and Chinese to appreciate it’s strengths and nuances, and respect it as mutually exclusive languages.

My stay here at Elon will be something that I will never regret. Much as there are individual incidents that will lead me to conclude this Phoenix experience as a ‘regrettable’ one, but as a big picture, there’s much more to give thanks for than to regret. It may be a chance that I have paid for with money (for my room and board and other expenses), but it’s certainly an experience that money cannot buy if I have missed it right from the beginning. This Elon experience has taught me the art of adopting the right perspective, and that in all circumstances there’s always opposing viewpoints, but God has intended everything the way it is for this life. I give thanks for the IV fellowship as well, even though I have been with them for less than six weeks for now, and today marked the last Primetime that I spent with them. There has been some amazing sessions I had with them, and again through a foreigner’s perspective, I saw how the same God manifest himself the same way through a culturally different group. The style of expression may be different, but the love it exudes definitely remains the same. The kind of hope they possess, the love for fellowship and for God can be seen through the nature of those people, and it is something that I come to understand and appreciate as well.

I will be going home in 31 days, and I am looking forward to it. And when I finally get home, it is going to be an all new experience again for me. What holds for me? I don’t know, but I do know who holds it.

20/14b. Final Week.

After tonight, I will begin on my final week in Elon.

The weekend has been mundane, there were many things going on in and around campus, but I had work to do, and the lack of available transport is a bitch.

I caught the dance concert ‘Reflections’ put up by the dance majors. My first full-concert at Elon, I was pretty impressed by it. Vastly different from the dance thesis concert I caught at Wesleyan, this was choreographed by full-time choreographers, all either dancing full time or teaching full time somewhere on this continent.

‘A Teacher’s Inner Child’ was a poetry-dance piece, where the teacher figure related the innermost thoughts of a teacher in the form of poetry, juxtaposed by childlike movements from the schoolchildren. One particular line that caught me was:

“Students depend on teachers for grades, but what do teachers depend on students for? The community of interdependence can only exist when teachers find a reason for dependence on students that is as real as grades are to students.”

Ok, i don’t think i quoted it verbatim, but that’s as much as i could remember.

Well I never thought of it that way. I mean, as a student and as a noob teacher (for a short while), I have always looked to teaching as a one-way process: Someone teach, others listen. The satisfaction that teachers receive will be when the students graduate, and move on in life, learning lessons beyond the textbook – in short, everything intangible. Is there hope that teachers can actually achieve something, learn something, from the students that are as tangible and important as grades are to student? Do students actually hold something for their teachers? Perhaps they do.

Just a thing that I can’t comprehend in dance. Circles seem to be a popular shape in choreography for some unknown reason. Almost every single piece (out of the eight that evening) had some point in time where you see a circle (or two) forming, and you see the dancers either closing in and expanding the circle, or dance around the circle. By the fifth or sixth piece that happened, I was like trying to stifle my giggles, because it looked remotely like some ritualistic dance of some tribe somewhere. But okay, in the end I reasoned with myself, “give it to them la.” It’s probably as common as the typical G-Em-C-D chord progression that songwriters use.

I have Pendulum to layout tomorrow, a radio and tv ad script to write up tomorrow. Pray that I’ll live. =)

20/14a. Bitter

Truth be told, I am still bitter about what has ensued.

20/13c. Home, Sweetly Waiting

I think the best thing about being in CS is meeting people. Basically, you get all sorts of people, ranging from the sentimentalist to the idealist and down right to the pragmatist. It’s probably too narrow to fit each person solely into a stereotype, as 101 has taught us, but basically they serve as a good gauge and a starting point for knowing how to deal with a person.

Let’s take exchange for example. Basically, there are some people who can’t wait to go home, and there are people who’d rather wait than to go home. Wait, wait, don’t jump to conclusions. It’s a matter of perceptions and priorities again. For some they like the serenity of the new environment that they have been pushed into, and for some, the comfort of home is just so irresistible. Comfort not only entailing one’s house, but the whole home country that we’ve been so familiar and grew to love and take comfort in.

So basically, I’m like one of those, chilling out at a local Toast Box (thank God for Toast Box), needing my daily dose of kopi-o, immersing myself in the hollow papers and watching people carry out meetings, sharing canards with one another, and whining about tired feets. The occasional stroll around town aimlessly and dropping by my favourite riverside jaunt every now makes me happy too. Kayaking in that kallang drain, seriously, which country can match the convenience of taking a public bus to go kayaking? Basically, I just enjoy my island life on the sunny dot, complete with the security, convenience and cosiness, even if it means that some other things (like the hand-leading politics and some pathetic souls herded like sheep) are way too screwed up in their own rights.

Don’t get me wrong. I love this place at Elon, but being detached altogether and having to restart the entire social ecology process all over again is just too painful to bear. I’m way past the age of meeting a horde of new people, especially when they are significantly different on all counts. The readjustment of social standings – race, language, nationality – made me painfully aware of my surroundings, when I actually prefer to live in blissful ignorance in the safety of my own country. I am not advocating a life of ignorance and self-centered thinking, because being aware of such differences puts one in a global perspective, and realizing that our world doesn’t end at the Woodlands Checkpoint nor Changi Airport. This, is one thing that i’m thankful for being in Singapore. The classic joke of how many (or how few) Americans can actually pin US on a world map.

With all that has been said, basically, I can’t wait to get home, back to my kopi-o at Toast Box, my steamboat with Jason and the rest, my mj and banters with Samuel and gang, and at the end of the day, the intricate design of the Singaporean neighbourhood that I’ve grown up in and acquaint myself so dearly with. I’m counting down!

(P.S. Some time ago, I was rapped for using the word ‘basically’ way too often. =))

20/13b. 23 49 more days.

Pretty slow day today, mom’s friend Judith came over to bring us out for a Vietnamese lunch and a movie afternoon at Four Seasons. She had one of her chinese CDs on the car, so this song just somehow got stuck with me for the rest of the day.

王力宏－落叶归根

举头望无尽灰云
那季节叫做寂寞
背包塞满了家用
路就这样开始走
日不见太阳的暖
夜不见月光的蓝
不得不选择寒冷的开始
留下只拥有遗憾

命运的安排
遵守自然的逻辑
谁都无法揭谜底
喔～

远离家乡不甚唏嘘
幻化成秋夜
而我却像落叶归根
坠在你心间
几分忧郁几分孤单
都心甘情愿
我的爱像落叶归根
家唯独在你身边

Lots of things just run through my mind again. I know that it’s no use thinking through them, since a broken favourite pencil cannot be replaced with any other for sentimental reasons. Sometimes, it’s just the sentimentalism in us that wants to look back at the pieces and cry, even though our minds tell us to move on and we seem to be moving on.