20/9a. Middletown Fun

Left NYC in a rush yesterday evening, and many many thanks to Hans for arranging for my pick-up at New Haven on such short notice. Anand, also from Singapore, came along with this girl called Maggie to pick me up from the train station. Apparently Anand got the car from yet another Singaporean, and made the half-hour ride to pick me up. And that car was said to be the self-driven taxi: it’s always on loan. Oh, and the nice Wesleyans bought me dinner as well, even though it’s in their (nicer than Elon’s) dining hall. How nice!

Hans came along after his rehearsal, boy I was so glad to see him. We went out for a little walk around the campus after Anand dropped us back at Hans’ place. Nothing much to see at night, since everything was well dark and it was really cold, with a slight hint of rain in the air. Cigarettes did the trick to keep us warm, and the acrid scent of tobacco just complemented my mood. Grabbed a falafel on the way back to Hans’ place, and the hot sauce was really biting.

We talked to the wee hours about stuffs, and fell asleep.

Morning saw us going to a diner’s by the main street of Middletown. It was freezing cold, no thanks to a drizzle. A cosy little container-like structure, the diner’s was just rebuilt last year after it was destroyed by a fire in 06. Hans had a eggs benedict, while I settled for scrambled ones. They gave us coffee and bread to begin with, and they serve the most fantastic pound cakes with choc bits and a little fruit stuffs in them. We asked for refills, being greedy and hungry kids.

We each ordered a pancakes on the side, naively thinking that it would be just a single pancake. Heck no, it was a full three pancakes. We stopped at two, not wanting to spoil our appetite for the main show. The entrees were worth every penny of the fifteen bucks I paid. One of my best meals ever for this break.

We then headed to the Wesleyan bookstore, and Hans rested his eyes on this set of philosophical books that was going on 20% discount, so he went crazy over them and got a stash of nine books. I settled for one, and got another film-related book. Time to start reading more books.

Hit the gym in the afternoon, and I tried running on a treadmill for the first time. Pretty exciting, if you ask me, except that seeing that distance meter jump so slowly can be pretty painful at times. I naively started running at a measly 3.5 mph, before doing some basic math and realize that it wasn’t going to work out to me a normal pace. I doubled that speed not long after.

Dinner at the Usdan Dining Hall followed, and their dining hall was actually pretty impressive. Better than the Colonnades, I swear. With not only entree and pasta and pizzas, they have kosher fare, vegetarian food and some veg-and-meat grill section, making it a pretty wide selection for everyone. The bummer today was that there was a high school visit by some 300 students, and they were totally crowding out the dining halls.

We went on the catch the dance seniors’ thesis performance. A program of nine performances choreographed by the final year students. Mostly experimental pieces, I was particularly taken in by the final piece where three dancers were playing around with these small buzzing balls. The balls had two metal ends, and if you touch them on both sides, it’ll buzz. If you and another person touches one end each, and both persons touch each other, the ball buzzes too! How interesting. And they were passing out balls to the audience, who were happily playing with them mid-performance. The music was a simple melodic composition, further focusing on the simplicity of the piece. Movements were deliberate and mostly reactional, serving excellent dramatization of the sexual tensions between the characters. The repeated use of the question, ‘Are you nervous?’, and the denials add on to this tension, creating a sparring of sorts between the characters, with roles rapidly changing amongst the trio.

It has been a fun day, actually. Enough to lift my spirits. I was so in need of such a holiday.

20/8b. Faces of Buddha

The sculpted face of Buddha in the Indian sculptures is different from those of the Chinese ones.

To different people, the same meaning speaks of different facades.

20/8c. The West End of St James.

Going to West End, the only pub left in Elon, made me realized how much I miss going to St James with friends.

Not going there alone to meet friends, but going with friends just to have a good time, dance half the night away, and supper the rest of the night away. =)

20/8b. Empty Spaces

“Don’t be afraid of empty spaces when designing an ad. It can be a powerful tool.”

It’s hard to practise that. It takes an awful load of confidence to do that, because there is far lesser things for people to criticise. The absence of matter itself may work against you already, simply by the virtue that emptiness need not be created; emptiness is not a thing in itself.

I come to realized that I like to write long body copies, because I want to paint with words. As if that is not enough, my graphics are usually cluttered enough. Beautiful, yes, but it belongs to the information overload category.

I need a paradigm shift.

20/8a. Pre-flight to New York City

Okay, that’s a lie. I’m not flying to NYC. In fact, I’m taking the good, old Greyhound bus to New York – a good 14 hours ride from Burlington.

I am half excited and half not-so-looking forward to the trip actually, wanting to see some of the sights that used to confined to my television set back home, like the Empire State Building, Wall Street, Statue of Liberty and especially ground zero. I remembered being at home watching the news on CNA when 9/11 happened, and I remembered being pretty shocked at the impact that this event had in the immediate days thereafter, not to mention the extensive newspaper and media coverage on it. It will certainly be another thing altogether to see where the tallest buildings once stood, although it should be a lot tidier by this time. The bad bit is the weather – it’s going to be like around 10 degrees. Brrrr. I hope i won’t die on the streets. =D

This week has been pretty mad, to say the least. It’s pre-spring break, so midterms are popping out everywhere like pimples on ZL’s face. (HAHAHAHAHHAHA.) After today I was practically a free man, with two more midterms that I can’t study for.

I was cramming way too hard for one of the modules that I scored a mediocre D for last exam, only to have the instructor coming in today to tell us: “This midterm is going to be so easy, I feel so ashamed of myself.” And it was 40 multiple choice questions, with only 1 open-ended question. The last exam was full of case studies and fill-in-the-blanks and short answers. Everyone was scared out of their wits for that exam. I’m glad that I could answer all the questions today. Ha!

It’s pretty fast, now that i’m into my 8th week here, and other exchange students all over the world have spent far more than that. Everyone seemed well married into where they are now, and of course, much as I wished I’m home, I would definitely miss this place when the time comes to pack and go. How can I forget such a picturesque place like here?

20/7a. Friends with interests.

Nations have no permanent friends and permanent enemies. Only permanent interests. – Lord Palmerston

As I was walking back in the rain, the quote found its way into my thoughts. Of course I didn’t remembered who said it, I just remembered coming across it during my GP days back in SR.

It may be true for nations, but I was wondering, to what extent is it true in personal relationships? Gut instincts (and bitterness) told me that it’s largely true in this dog-eat-dog world. I see self-interests in people around me: people who insists that people follow their plans, people who don’t compromise for others. I see self-interests in my actions too.

But as I reflect further, I cannot deny that there has been people who has vested both time, effort and love in me even though there’s nothing I might have given back. The love of God they received, they passed them on to me. Thank you, EH & Bo.

Field observation is a scary thing. When you open your eyes and sensitise yourself to notice the little actions that people do in their subconscious, you wonder what is going on in their minds. Under what circumstances do we call someone selfish, and how do we tell when they are just have a perception that everyone should be individualistic and independent? Like when someone clears only her own rubbish, even though others’ may be easily within reach, is it selfishness or just a perception of individualism? It’s complex, and very tempting to just cast that person to condemnation.

When two persons have different plans, and one gives in to the other because he or she is known not to give in to the other, how would you interpret that?

I got this from some 21-year-old guy’s blog:

“Friends are formed when people with similar interests meet each other. While it may be argued that friends are forged as a result of similar interests and thus when interests change, friends also change, this argument is flawed. Interest is not the only binding factor among friends; fate is another factor. People have feelings, unlike entities like nations and companies. A friendship formed from the bottom of the heart is usually hard to break. True friends are those who go through thick and thin with you and stand by your side when you are down, not those who only make use of you and leave you when you cannot serve their interests anymore. Interests may change, but friendships can still last. You do not become enemies with your friends just because he developed a liking for a particular sport which you do not like, do you? There are indeed permanent friends, albeit rare. The have been cases where people do not mind getting themselves into trouble or even sacrificing their own lives in order to save their friends in times of need. This goes to show that there are people who put their personal interests behind them when it comes to helping their friends.”

People meet and be friends because no one starts out being enemies. You don’t go up and tell someone, “Hey, I’m shannon, and I’m not glad to meet you.” It’s just not logical. They explore the possibilities of friendships, through conversations and establishing common grounds.

I don’t think that friends stop being your friends when you no longer serve their interests; instead, you just remain dormant friends and everyone just moves on and find friends who are more interesting. Notice how cordial you become with ‘old friends’ whom you haven’t meet in eons, like those you meet in your secondary school or primary school gatherings? That’s friendship being reduced to social relations again.

It brings back memories of 101 about the portion about friends on the road vs. friends of the heart, and a conversation I had with layming in my car some months ago about best friends in CS. It seems that my views have been reaffirmed.

People are just complex creatures, methinks. I’m a fool to think that I can understand them all.

20/6c. Facebook Anthem

I don’t usually post youtube videos, but I find this damn crappy.

click here.

20/6b. Night After Night

For the past month, I’ve been doing practically the same thing every night: staring into my laptop and wondering what to do tonight. Do I chat people up, or surf blogs, or read something more mundane like news-sites or just link-hop all around?

It’s been pretty boring up here, I confess. And there’s only so much you can do with the international students. We have watched a couple of movies, partied a couple of times, ate a few dinners outside school and that’s about it. The weekends are beginning to bear no difference from the weekdays; in fact, I seem to like the weekdays better because time pass so much faster.

On the flip side, it’s not all bad and no good. For one, my skin cleared up, expectedly. If there’s one thing I give thanks for this dry weather for, it’s for its effect on my skin. No eczema working up beneath my joints, its one big problem away for me.

The way time passes so idly here also gives me a kind of peace that sometimes bore me to tears. Like, how often do you find time back home to do stuffs, to read books, play your games, and to blog endlessly without a care for time? The only time I ever checked my watches, is when I make appointment with friends for meals, or to check if i’m late for classes. Speaking of which, I’m rarely late for classes too. Walking is so much more predictable than that darned 179 or NTU shuttle buses. With all this time on my hand, I guess I’m doing more things at my leisure, such as spending more time really talking to people that I probably won’t have much time for back home, and also to think through several things that I have been putting off for months.

Well, I’m kind of glad that I’m going New York in two week’s time. Anything to get out of this place for a while, and I guess a breather in the city will be good for me. Much as I love seeing trees and waterfalls most times, I never thought of myself as a country person anyway.

20/6a. SIA Ad Campaign

Here’s another set of ads I had to do for my copywriting class. Enjoy.

20/5c. Frustrated

Two very frustrating things happened to me this week. The weather’s warming up but my luck doesn’t seem to be looking too well in this.

My camera broke over the weekend. I think I either sat on it accidentally, or hit it against something while it was in my pocket. The LCD screen cracked, and although it still can take pictures, but it’s not much use when I can’t see anything since there isn’t a viewfinder. When i realized the screen cracked, the verbal warning that the Sim Lim Sq uncle told me 2.5 years ago came into my mind: “This one ah, no viewfinder, means if your LCD spoil, you can’t see anything even though it still can take photos.”

Sians no. 1.

Next. I was working on the program booklet for consort’s upcoming concert end of this month. I only have a copy on my thumbdrive, and I thought I only copied it to a desktop. And when I wanted to switch terminals to work on, I conveniently permanently deleted the entire folder off the desktop, and when I loaded my thumbdrive on the other computer, realization hit me of what I just did.

Bombed.

I spent 2 hours trying to recover the files, to no avail.

Thank God, I still have an image of it which I can use to replicate it. Probably will take me a couple of hours.

Argh. What a tiresome week.