Starting Third Year

I’ve finally managed to find more than ten minutes to spend in the computer room – it’s been frustrating these past few days, with so many things I feel like writing about, and so little time to put stylus to screen/fingers to keyboard to record it all. If anyone (anyone?) has been checking in here every now and then to find very little has changed, I apologize and plead Real Life Syndrome. But don’t give up on me yet – I’ll probably be cured of that particular malady soon enough, if 3rd year law and my intellectual pride have anything to do with it. Sigh.

Sunday was surreal. I spent most of the day in a narcoleptic daze due to having had no sleep for the previous 24 hours after spending the night alone in the Athens airport. I’m not really at my socializing best when acutely sleep deprived. I tend to vocalize my inner monologue a lot more. My usually intricate self-censorship system breaks down. I get goofy, almost child-like. I make even filthier comments than usual, or comments that only mean anything in my inner world and are exceedingly strange in the one everyone else inhabits. I don’t think of any of this as necessarily bad – it is, after all, a glimpse of me that’s perhaps more genuine than what’s normally available, but I don’t think it’s my preferred introductory impression either. One thing I didn’t exhibit was grouchiness, partly due to Russ delivering CDs, speakers and box-hefting assistance in the afternoon, John calling at night and just being John, and the general joy I always feel on coming back to London and the lovely hall I live in.

Oh yes, the hall. It’s lovely. It’s the same place I lived in last year, except this year I actually have to take on some responsibility. I’m the choirmistress (stop laughing, everyone who knows me), and have to choose hymns for our weekly masses, coordinate musical accompaniment for mass and do whatever the hell (oops) I can with throwing together a choir. At this point I should probably say I don’t sing very well. I sing in tune, but my tone is far from dulcet, and the last time I was in a choir I was a very ill little Christmas caroller who lasted a few houses before getting sick on the floor of some unfortunate person’s condo. But back to the hall being lovely. My two nearest neighbours are rather nice chaps who also happen to be exceptionally easy on the eye. My room is massive, which is a pleasant change from last year. So far the people who have moved in are promising to be excellent company – Mark, previously introduced here as My Bitch, is a source of eternal amusement, and other people with unconventional senses of humour are already becoming apparent. I thought I’d be going to gigs alone this year, since Marten’s graduated, but there’s a guy in the hall studying composition who likes Pixies and Pavement and Beck, so perhaps I’ll have some company after all. Our housekeeper nun still goes through occasional bouts of Nazi-ness, but you can’t have everything.

Speaking of gigs, I want to go to these, or whichever of these I can manage:

  • Mark B & Blade, 11 Oct
  • Sparklehorse, 11-12 Oct
  • Roots Manuva, 12 Oct
  • Rollins Band, 16 Oct
  • eels, 25 Oct
  • Mercury Rev, 2 Nov

At university, the first week of term’s been reasonably typical, or rather, reasonably typical for me and my particular social patterns. Feelings of extreme blahness at seeing most of my coursemates in the law faculty, although of course there were some exceptions. Walking around Freshers’ Fayre and getting accosted by various friends at various society stalls (Lib Dems, LGB, Film, Thai etc.) reminded me that I’ve always found the societies environment at UCL far more socially appealing than that in the faculty. My own quick trawl of what was available got me a place on the drum’n’bass society mailing list and a couple of jazz society leaflets which I’ll get round to reading at some point, and hopefully get round to attending at some point after that. I spent most of the time standing at the debating stall promoting our first debate of the year (This House Believes That Penetration Is Not Enough). I admit it wasn’t particularly hard work persuading people to come to a debate about hardcore pornography with free wine available, but for some reason I was exhausted by the end of it all.

Late nights this week have been spent snuggled in bed with a book (a trip to the library yielded the new Seamus Heaney collection, Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, and W.S. Graham’s Collected Poems), listening to all the music I missed terribly over the summer while my CDs were in Russ’s attic and I was in Singapore, and generally feeling, just for a few precious (delusional) minutes, that all’s right with the world.

Back. You Could Say, Home.

Obviously there are multitudes of things to do – get my room (lovely and big) in order, re-enrolment minutiae at UCL, reunion romps with old friends, conscious efforts to make new ones, get a lot of my hair cut off, that damned jurisprudence essay, start organizing the debating tournament I have to throw together soonish, start figuring out how to train a choir and play music at mass, and somewhere in all this I’ll squeeze in writing up my travel journal and putting it online.

Last Hours In Athens

Killing time in the cybercafe before dinner and the airport in a few hours – it’s been a slow, leisurely day. Acropolis in the morning, my last souvlaki lunch in Monastiraki, shopping in Ermou, stocking up on reading material for my long night at the airport (Heart of Darkness, and I’m still looking for the latest Economist), lazing in a cafe, and now here, feeling the last dregs of this holiday ebb away, faintly worried about the jurisprudence essay I was supposed to have written this summer, and still feeling excruciatingly out of touch with recent world events. But Ken does do an amazing job of reading my mind with regard to moral high grounds being pretty bloody empty, “bloody” used deliberately.

Greece: Athens, A Blip

Back in Athens, my base till I leave early on Sunday morning. Yan Yan leaves tonight for California. I’ll probably go to Delphi tomorrow, and finally get myself to the Acropolis on Saturday. It should all go well.

Hey, maybe I’ll ask the Oracle who sent me that Crushlink email…

Greece: Santorini, A Blip

I’m in Santorini, Greece, now. I feel guilty in this hedonism, given the anguish that others are suffering elsewhere. When you’re on holiday and cut off from world news, accepting the reality of tragedies like this recent one is even harder.

I still don’t even know if Billy, Yish, Michelle and all my friends in uni at Columbia are all right.

Secrets From Turkey

Phew. It’s been an amazing nine days in Turkey, which I’ve been documenting faithfully in my beat-up travel notebook and will type up and put up here some time after I get back, but for now I’ve popped in to say that significant changes to our travel plans have taken place – Yanbin’s grandmother has passed away in Singapore, and he’s had to fly home for the funeral. Yan Yan and I are continuing to Greece. Yan Yan flies back to the States two days before Yanbin and I were originally due to fly back to the UK, so now I’m going to spend the last two days in Greece on my own.

Note: NO ONE READING THIS WHO KNOWS ME TELLS MY MOTHER (or anyone else in my family, obviously), please. (Ken, I especially mean you, if you’re still in Singapore and happen to run into my family in the lifts or whatever) She can’t worry about it if she doesn’t know.

I’m excited. The Athens Symphony Orchestra is playing The Planets and Adagio For Strings in the theatre of Epidavrus on the 21st. Originally I’d thought I wouldn’t be able to go because I wasn’t sure how interested everyone else would be but now it looks like I might manage it.

That’s it for now – typing on Turkish keyboards is a bit of a pain. I’ll try again in Greece, which will have to make a hell of an effort to match up to fantastic Turkey.

Off To Ruins

Something I forgot to say yesterday and have popped into the computer room complete with backpack to write: I’m going backpacking in Greece and Turkey from today till the 23rd, so updates will be strenuously attempted but perhaps not always possible. Email will be checked every few days if I can, so travel tips , good wishes and assorted randomness (“Increasing Sexual-Potency-Frequency” spammers, this does not mean you) are always welcome.

Hello, London. It’s wonderful to be back.

I haven’t managed to get to a computer since I flew in early on Saturday morning, but have been recording snippets of clarity (or not) on my Handspring, which has also been a darling in facilitating my Making Of Lists and resultant (surprising) efficiency these few days.

So. Here be randomness, made marginally less random by chronological arrangement.

* * *

When most of your packing is incomplete and you’re on a flight in three hours, the most important thing you need to be doing is probably not arranging and re-arranging tacky metal letters on a tacky leather strap to see what words you can make, but this is, of course, what I found myself doing on Friday evening. My sister bought me a bag when she went to China recently. It was in almost all respects a very nice bag, except for the fact that on its front, shiny metal letters strung on a leather strap screamed MOSCHINO. After unpicking the strap and removing M,I, C and H thinking they might come in useful some time, I was left with O, S, N and O, which I fiddled around with a bit before settling on SNOO, which somehow appealed to me. Enigmatic. Fun to yell.

* * *

The in-flight entertainment on the plane wasn’t particularly promising this time – nothing I particularly wanted to watch except for stuff I’d already seen, but I couldn’t resist Coming To America, which I know in such frightening detail that it was a real effort restraining myself from joining in at “Freeze, you diseased rhinoceros pizzle!” The audio track to Moulin Rouge got inexplicably mixed up with the audio track to A Knight’s Tale, so after watching people doing the can-can to We Will Rock You for a few minutes (strangely appropriate, actually) I decided, and I maintain, only after all this, to switch to Bridget Jones’ Diary, for the nth time. With my Handspring, foldable keyboard and a dry martini on the table in front of me, and Colin Firth a foot away on the screen, I almost forgot I was flying economy class.

* * *

(written in absolute joy on Saturday morning)

I’m in my hall, sitting next to the window in my room, and despite having just gotten off a thirteen-hour flight with very little sleep and hauling my gargantuan suitcase across London and up three flights of stairs (with help from Justin, who thankfully responded to my unsubtle hints about men being strong and him being a Real Man), right now I feel like I want to sweep all of London up in my arms and kiss everyone hello.

The airbus from Heathrow was almost empty, which you’d expect at 6.34 am, and I sat on the top deck right in front, not caring that the sun was shining into my eyes because the vapour trails in the sky were worth risking blindness for.

(note to self, though: readjust paranoia from rock-bottom Singapore level to reasonably high London level. When probably-well-meaning guy helps you lug your suitcase onto the bus and remarks that it’s very heavy, replying “Well, it’s got my entire life in it!” is perhaps not the best of responses, given the slim but ever-present possibility that probably-well-meaning guy might turn out to be fucking-arsehole-thief guy.)

I got into the hall and my room, freshened up a bit and decided that morning mass would be a good thing to do. Finding out I was the only congregant put me on tenterhooks for a while (what if I suddenly forget the Hail Mary? what if I don’t stand up and sit down when I’m supposed to when I can’t just follow what everyone else is doing?) but everything went well, and I managed to make the minor liturgical re-adjustments from Singapore to London (“sins” -> “trespasses”, “do not bring us to the test” -> “lead us not into temptation”, which I vastly prefer) without any major mishaps.

After mass there were familiar faces at breakfast, familiar Saturday papers reminding me how London is teeming with things to do, familiar toast-burning toaster…and through all this I was feeling like I couldn’t stop smiling, that there was nothing I didn’t feel like doing, no one I wouldn’t be happy to see, that everything, at least right now, is as good as it gets.

Sucking Marrow

Trying to suck the marrow out of my last week at home for the next ten months or so means that entries lately have been sparse, sometimes petulantly idiosyncratic, or catalogues of events that are unlikely to be interesting to anyone but me. But give me a little time, and your patience. Knowing some entries here have been less than perfect doesn’t mean I wish them unmade. They’re parts, albeit itty-bitty, of the mulch that is this blog, and my head.

Summer Days Before Departure

Days in this week before departure (I return to London on Friday night), and how I’m spending them. Actually pretty boring for anyone who isn’t me, but I’m documenting it here just because.

Friday: lunch with friends from debating past at the Taman Serasi hawker centre, which meant that there was shade, and defiant breeziness, and views of mostly green through the gaps in the roofing (and this is always a good thing when the mostly green in question is trees), and satay and chicken rice and soursop juice, and Yuping haranguing Fengyuan (“Non-threatening! That’s what all you guys ultimately want, a girl who’s non-threatening!”), and terrible jokes (“A termite walks into a bar and asks, ‘Is the bartender here?'” – Jolene. “Girl runs into a police station and says ‘I’ve been graped! I’ve been graped!’ Policeman says, ‘Don’t you mean raped?’ ‘No, there were a bunch of them.'” – Yuping. “Girl runs into a police station and says ‘I’ve been reaped! I’ve been reaped!’ Policeman says, ‘Don’t you mean raped?’ ‘No, he used a scythe.'” – Me) and a discussion stemming from Dworkin’s writings on abortion, and all this continued into the gazebo next to the lake in the Botanic Gardens where there was cramming on bench and perching on railings, a fleeing couple and a fleeting swan, and Yuping and otherMichelle and I all agreed that we own way too many strappy tops.

Later, me and Yuping in absolute geekness in front of the big screen at Lido, infra-red-frenzied handhelds and bubble tea on the table, Yuping playing newly-beamed Dope Wars, getting the stares that any conversation about the game gets in public (“Okay, so what’s a good price for heroin?”…”I personally don’t bother with Ecstasy, it’s small potatoes”…”YES!!! COCAINE BUST!!”), and eventually I went home for dinner with family and Return Of The Jedi with Mum.

Saturday: lunch with Kevin, who I hadn’t seen for two and a half years, poetry reading at Kinokuniya by folks from the2ndrule, girlie shopping with Edlyn who blew me away with her knowledge of slingbacks (Note to self: slingbacks=shoes, silverbacks=gorillas, don’t get mixed up) and Italian straps and other fashionista jargon, and home in good time for dinner with family again, which I was glad about, because I do rather love them.

Sunday: a day of relaxed excess. Mass celebrated by an Irish priest whose severe mumbling didn’t prevent my usual reaction of “I have no idea what you’re saying, but damn, it sounds wonderful” to the accent, shopping with wonderful mum who bought me THREE pairs of shoes and lots of other miscellany, and then I decided to cook dinner for everyone (tricolore fusilli with chicken fillet pieces, peppers, onions and sweetcorn in tomatoey-olivey sauce, stir-fried cabbage with freshly ground black pepper and bacon bits), then White Teeth until The Phantom Menace and Bejeweled addiction (damn you, Yuping) till bedtime.

Monday: Lazy comfortable afternoon with Pei Ee, buying each other birthday presents, dinner with Terry at scattered places, a day of long meandering conversations and conversational ranges from ephemeral to weighty, rainy day with skies that reminded me of London but rain that was unmistakably tropical in its intensity and MUAHAHAHAness.

Tuesday: Limbo snoozing for most of the morning, lunch with Luke and Ida, which involved much maligning of Luke’s badminton coach dress sense and hyena laugh, ridiculing of Ida’s rebranding herself as vestal virgin, and some very expensive bubble tea. Dinner with Jacinta and Poonam at the East Coast beach, although in the midst of girlie catching up we never got round to actually going to the beach. We headed home at eleven – it was time for Gilmore Girls.

Wednesday: Futile afternoon trudging on pre-departure errands, dinner with Rafflesian girlfriends Jiawen, May and Gwen at the distinctly untrendy but truly lovely Chomp Chomp hawker centre at Serangoon, barbecued stingray, sambal sotong (loosely translated to chillied squid, but trust me, a lot is lost in translation. Slurp.), chai dao kuey (carrot cake, but not the sort the Western world is used to, this one’s oily and fried and wonderful.) and satay (strips of flame-cooked meat), under stars that were hard to see because of the lights of the estate, getai (cheesy Chinese singing) and auctioneering (both events which take place in housing estates during the Hungry Ghosts Festival, which is nowish) blaring from nearby, but in the midst of all this sensory overload a feeling of happy contentment, dessert in the distinctly trendier Big Apple Cafe where May made pompoms out of shredded serviettes and Jiawen did strange things with the window blinds and Gwen and I sat there and laughed.