it seems i've fallen into a routine of taking long bubble baths every saturday evening. it's actually possible to read the papers in the bath without getting them wet.

i also discovered a second mysterious cut on my arm and this time it can't be the result of my leaving knives pointy side up in dishwashers then absentmindedly reaching into the back of the washer. what's up with these random cuts that appear out of nowhere?

it's been such an exhausting week.

sometimes i think, the life i love best of all would contain a little more solitude.

and also i've come so far, but still am mired in some fantastical idealisation that refuses to stay away.

wicked games is the song of the moment

i've flown ten thousand miles and still.

before i even leave for chile, i am dead dead dead set on ukraine for spring break.

because.

look. swallow's nest is a castle on the cliff, my dream house since years ago and i must see it

(i travel randomly obviously. i just decide on a whim where to go, and focus only on one thing to see...)

THIS WILL HAPPEN TOO! i will go to ukraine!

i just realised i lost my 65 dollar rebate from hp because in my haste and enthusiasm for recycling, I THREW AWAY THE BOX BEFORE I CUT OUT THE SERIAL LABEL.

argh! it's so idiotic and i'm so annoyed with myself. bleah.

santiago.vinadelmar.valparaiso. christmas eve to new year's.

just, happy. =) to be here. to be me.

(of course in a typically yx twist of fate, chile is where pablo neruda is from. imagine reading his poetry while drinking wine in a chilean vineyard... ^o^)

my linens used to be a very presentable white with a dash of happy orange. now they're pink and the blankie is baby blue, how unpresentable is that?

and i really miss my dining table. i only bought it to fill up the empty level 1 in my philly apartment, but then it grew to be such a memorable thing. the day i left philly, it was still there, no longer adorned with the deep red throw, globets and plates packed away, no wines, no flowers, no chocolates, just a table and now i think i should have just somehow carted it home to singapore because i loved that table.

and i think, i know it's so ungrateful for me to be here in boston and missing some place else but i miss it! it's ironic because just after i arrived in philly i travelled here and thought the harvard campus was the prettiest place ever and philly and penn had paled in comparison and then, then i had thought, i must be here, at harvard someday. but now i am, and i miss that grey grey city instead.

i don't know spanish sardines, she is a stranger to me, but i am curious and she spoke of the one great, the melancholic cause, the sonnet 17 (pablo neruda's i would think, not shakespeare's) and it reminded me of all that i proclaimed, and my ankle tells me, the silly superstitious me that believes in the leitmotifs of life's years that this is the year you will devour everything you said yx. in relish?

but even so? "what i loved, i mean, was that tree, tree of the moment, tree of my own sad mortal heart"

so.

in an effort to take care of my ankle like i promised, i went to buy some athletic tape today.

unfortunately, despite reading the directions over and over again, as well as search online for how to tape a sprained ankle, i still don't think i have it right. so i now have a roll of badly wrapped tape dangling off my ankle doing nothing whatsoever to help support it.

help!

without so much as a plan to, i received an email just this afternoon about the singaporean mit/harvard mid-autumn celebrations and without knowing who else is going, i went!

(i'm getting amazingly brave and gung-ho about such social things these days =P)

though there was one point when the sun was still high in the boston blue sky and i thought of another summer, another barbeque and i miss that, and everything about that time, that just seems... so irretrievably gone.

grey sole fillet with a dash of lemon & red and yellow bell peppers. baby carrots and cherry tomatoes. asparagus and white buttons sauteed in butter. fresh blueberries in vanilla yogurt.

i am glad i marginally enjoy cooking, otherwise i'll be eating out of cans and boxes and microwaves for my entire stay.

but i suppose at some point i should get either a rice cooker or learn how to boil rice in a pot, and start cooking some chinese soups. i'm quite happy with eating a lot of rabbit food so far but i'll probably miss the asian stuff soon. (how difficult can soups be anyway?)

after being chided by dan for sounding unnaturally happy (=P kidding!) i have decided to share my misery.

i feel really really sorry for my ankle. it's been so nice to me my whole life, giving me absolutely zero problems, and the one time it's hurt i decide to just ignore it completely. i've really been so mean to it, striding around in heels (though ironically it hurts less in heels) and choosing to walk when the bus option is now available.

i simply assumed that it takes time to heal (which it does) but i think i hardly made an effort to rest it. today i was wearing my new slippers to wholefoods and on the way back, my ankle really started to hurt. it's really strange because it's when i wear non-heeled shoes that it hurts. and upon closer examination, it is still swollen (or maybe it swelled on the way back) argh! it's so hard to tell because my ankle's so skinny that i think it looks normal so i need to look from left to right to discover that my ankle is supposed to be super bony but the right one is so roundy it must be swollen.

and then since it's that time of the month when i get to be emotional, i started thinking about how the way i treated my ankle is precisely the way i hate to be treated in life, as if i am unimportant and life goes on whether i am struggling or not. so now i feel really guilty, poor ankle.

so dear right ankle! i will take care of you and rest you!

the email to stella made me remember certain things that were important to me again.

i will never let go of this. i will pay everything it costs to feel this.

trip down memory lanes reminds me of a long-standing ambition to achieve a (as) VS-like (as possible) body.

will this be the year then, yx? =P

what i love, what i love so sweepingly about this life, is the way a perfect moment slips up upon you unannounced. that you can go weeks, months, years without a moment that catches your breath and then on the last day of summer, glimpses of red foliage outside your window against a blue blue sky and suddenly your heart races, my heart races and i am here in a moment that i never knew to look for.

i have been so happy here, in a city i've looked to, but i know at the edge of my mind was the littlest nagging doubt because trips into the city, the blue waters of the river and the cobblestone streets notwithstanding, i hadn't had a moment like that november day walk to penn's landing.

then it happens in a quiet burst, a suffused ebullience, on this lazy saturday afternoon reading in my bed with my pink sheets and blue baby blanket, colours i have never loved but they glow in the shafts of sunlight and the strains of melody over the headphones brings tears to my eyes and i am happy, happier, happiest, in this little life of mine. so little, so mine, so lovingly mine.

and i am in tears because i know no other way of expressing the perfection of this tiny moment in the infinite stretch of time...

i have finally figured out what causes the terrible cramps i used to (and sometimes still, and right now) have.

it's NOT EATING ENOUGH.

i am not on a diet and i'm trying to eat well but sometimes i get so caught up in random things i neglect to eat until meal time is over and this happens especially for lunches.

yesterday i came home to a couple of new packages (printer, paper and sephora) and i realised my cupboard's really getting quite filled with cardboard (from previous deliveries and the ikea stuff i bought as well). so in the spirit of saving the earth, i decided to actually read the recycling sheet that came with the apartment instead of just chucking everything down the chute. (i love the recycling sheet here, it's so informative and i think it's how recycling should be done, wholeheartedly!) it turns out that cardboard have to be cut into sizes of less than 3 by 3 feet etc so i was busy sorting the sizes, flattening the boxes and then making two very unglamourous and clumsy looking trips to the recycling drop off downstairs (if i were lazy the chute is just down the hallway) with the unwieldy cardboards and by the time i was done, it was close to 4 and i haven't even started cooking so i totally missed lunch.

not so healthy yx.

anyway, i also realised i'm getting so good at making pasta, it's almost meditative to do it.

as i was walking home today, after dark for once (don't worry! the streets are SUPER SAFE here) i realised something quite horrific. you can actually see into the apartments which have their blinds down but not turned up.

eep!

and i used to walk around in, well... skimpy stuff (i'm in the apartment alone after all!) with the blinds down but not turned out! goodness! hopefully NO ONE looks up when they walk past the streets.

from now on i'm going to TURN UP THE BLINDS!

(is that the right phrase? turn up/turn down the blinds?)

out of the blue i just got an email from sony imagestation telling me they're shutting down. so out of curiousity i went to sign in and found a few albums i forgot i uploaded, the same pictures that were lost with my old hard disk.

how things have changed, so... (i still own the t-shirt and skirt and sometimes i think i grow most attached to inanimate objects)

most other things, feel so distant now that i am here, the skies are so often so blue and the bubbles refuse to settle.

who knew, who knows?

some of you are still some of my dearest friends even if i don't show it well.



what changes, and what remains.

sunshine for at least another week! =)

it's decadently enjoyable.

getting into the fall season (and fall has always been my season of efficiency)

i secretly enjoy cooking.

(and thinking about grocery lists, ingredients and recipes...)

i'm signing up for too many random things. filtering out too much of the difficulties of the world babe?

as it turns out, the comcast lady came... not five minutes ago which means past eleven at night.

i was already asleep and was terrfied the fiddling at my door was indicative of either 1) a drunk neighbour who mistook my door for his/hers (which didn't make much sense on a tuesday evening) or 2) some person who's trying to force his/her way into my room which quite terrified me until it struck me that people here could be mad enough to WORK until eleven.

so i woke up and opened the door to a very friendly and smiley lady who told me, a promise's a promise! (she told me she'll get my cable done by today when i called in the morning)so she handed me a cable and said she's set it up (how??? i wasn't even given a box) and i just plugged my tv in and most amazingly all the channels are in yay! =)

so fall season here i come! =)

where is comcast? they were supposed to come between 5-8! i'm getting so annoyed, i want it set up before the fall season starts!

my account's up! (and seriously, i love citibank. it costs only 10SGD for the transfer, it can be done online and the funds come across instantaneously!)

so i've subscribed to new york times and the first paper will arrive on the 22nd! so exciting. it means i get to wake up to gym, tea and papers (how boring my life must sound... =P)

and i must say i love gaining the hours and hours in the morning from waking early. there's something very satisfying about having done a couple of things even before class starts =)

in another boring update of yx's self-proclaimed exemplarily healthy lifestyle, here's dinner with grilled salmon (too salty though! but hopefully it makes up for the iodide that apparently lacing in sea salts), cherry tomatoes, mushrooms and crackers and cheese. need some greens though, perhaps will get a capsicum next time.

i still love grocery shopping and it's fun to come up with schedules (fish on sundays and mondays because they don't keep as well as beef and poultry) and decide on fruit of the week (it's plums this week) and debate over to buy that one carrot and one capsicum because i don't want to waste food.

so! i really hope this lasts and i won't descend into peanut-butter cups, instant noodles (i refused to bring any from singapore because i know i'll just end up being lazy and depending on them and they are so unhealthy) and frozen foods sloth.

but really, i love the life, the lifestyle i'm growing into. really really really happy about how everything turned out... ^o^

it's an amazingly productive day. i finalized the add/drop, got the letter from jssib and brought it down to citibank, called comcast and did my laundry!

the t comes up after kendall and goes across the bridge. the waters were glistening today, reminding me why i always think of boston as the blue city. (philadelphia is gray, singapore is green ,dunedin is red)

i have an amazing lifestyle here. i wake up at HALF PAST SIX to go to the gym, so that by eight i'm done with gym, breakfast, readings, emails, and even having time to do the dishes. i like the way year started, with mass and lots of exercise and healthy eating. let's hope this lasts!

(i was looking at my posts when i was at penn and goodness, my blog is so much more boring in comparison now. =P)

still waiting for my u.s. bank account to be done up so i can subscribe to new york times, order some things from sephora, get my printer from hp, and write the cheques for rent. (jssib please hurry up with my letter of introduction!)

i've gone from being most admiring of harvard (from days of old), to being most joyful at getting accepted, to now feeling that even mention the h-word is crass.

so in a most inexplicable manner, i am now trying to figure out how i can avoid mentioning that i ever was at h. not only must i not mention the school name, i must give anyone asking NO CHANCE at all of ever pinpointing the school i was at. maybe like debbie mentioned in the st forum some time ago, i shall now refer to the school as 'some school in boston'

i have no idea why i feel this way. maybe it's just that upon thinking, i think it's really no big deal being here at all. there are plenty of other good schools, and plenty of much better programs and departments at other schools which are not as well-known in the mainstream simply because they are not h (which is silly and unfair)

to a discerning crowd, i have no inclination to mention the school because they would know it's no big deal at all. to a non-discerning crowd, i feel they will react with either a disbelief that could turn out quite insulting, or with some level of admiration which would make me acutely embarassed.

so no more h.a.r.v.a.r.d. i am now studying at 'just some school in boston' =P

the blue skies and warm weather won't last but i hope this bubbly happiness would =)

on a different note, mrs teo just sent me an email which i thought was really sweet. but what really struck me was, why is she answering emails at 1 a.m. on a sunday night? it made me slightly worried about what working life entails.

statistics or semantics?

tangerines. bubble bath. we miss, so much. but we have so much too.

loving the life here. looking forward to classes. and. overall glad that i'm exactly where i want to be. =)

i don't like whites/desserts. but i had a pinot grigio because what else? i (through an indirect way of extending my bond) paid 30k for tuition =P (the bar was closed by the time i returned for a beer. sigh >.<)

back to my linguistics roots. this is what i will probably be struggling with this fall.

check out the line about the open bar.

no wonder we're paying almost ten times the tuition here than nus.

only half the books i need this semester. harvard, harvard! stumbling on happiness, can't.help.it.

required texts came up to a total of 560 (usd mind you!) so far. i don't recall spending on much on texts ever. one particular book costs as much as a couch.

and yet, i fell prey to another book with its cherry and white cover...

everything looks pretty under the glow of lamplight. i really should learn to be happy where i am, even as i miss where i have been.

i have an urge to just buy a dining table and plonk it in the middle of the room, against all good sense of interior decoration and fengshui. i don't need a dining table, i don't want a dining table, but i miss having a dining table i can throw a red tablecloth over (it was a throw rug i adpated for the purpose). of everything in my old apartment, the dining table comes close to meaning the most.

i will never have those dinners again.

can't wait to start school! schedule's up but will probably need to be added to with the two possible jobs in the works.

books cost 211 bucks and and i'm still lacking 5 of them. gardner's course prescribed 8 books. i'm tempted to say the instructors went a bit mad but i'm looking for excuses to buy more books anyway =P

i calculated the cost of getting a printer vs printing in school. printer = 70, 2000 sheets of paper = 20 therefore cost per page = 4.5 cents. printing in school is 5 cents. added to the convenience of printing at home, i think it's overall more worthwhile to get a printer! i can still unload it at the end for say 20 bucks. unfortunately, i can't get anything done while my US bank account's still frozen while awaiting the letter of introduction from harvard. grrr.

life in sunshine, the blue skies. red brick walls, towers of st paul's. i love 208, my new home.

i think i am addicted to the harvard coop. each time i step in there i find another 10 books i want to get. philip was saying consulting doesn't pay enough because he still has to think each time he has a meal. well, i don't want to think each time i want to buy a book either.

i want a library.

and here we go again...