记忆是冰荒里干枯的尸骸。 惨白的落幕，我默默无言。这样的心房是宽广还是空荡? 萤火毕竟没有北极星的永恒。。。

"一百年后，没有你也没有我。"

for some unfathomable reason, i had two acute bouts of gastritis last night and this morning, still feeling slightly uncomfortable now but since i didn't call in sick for the interview job i'll just have to suck it up and head to school >.<

also some things were, unexpected. i'm in a daze.

i am amazed at myself.

the right thing, a little step at a time =P

the sky is always blue on sundays and it always gives me a little bubble of happiness threatening to demonstrate itself as a silly grin in the middle of the road.

but i am happy! because i realise that in some time, i will get to be MORE insufferable than i have ever been and i can be stern and exacting to my heart's content because i would have done exactly what i said i would do.

and though this is one of the harder things i've had to do, i know that it will also bring me loads and loads of fierce pride because i said i care, and i do, and it won't be just words this time.

the sheer audacity of my past arrogance! but also, this year is turning out to be perfect. perfect is not always flawless, but it's perfect.

winter broke.
'unreal city';
it is more than death that undoes us
these katabatic winds.

i realise that the key to a happy life is sufficient endorphins and melatonin.

lack of sleep and exercise made me so grumpy over the past few days eep! so no matter how busy i get, i need to get enough sleep and gym!

the tuesday/wednesday stretch by default will become the most efficient part of the week for me. it seems interesting things are always happening on tuesday evenings (free screenings of movie and the obama rally today) while assignments are always due on wednesdays. so i get another shot at a perfect wednesday!

on a different note, part of me wants to just hold back a little and not enjoy everything quite so much because the more i adore this life, the more i'll hate to leave it some months down the road. it's only october! and i'm already feeling the inevitable sense of loss when i pack up to leave next june (i can imagine the empty apartment, the boxes, the walks down a quiet harvard square with everyone else gone and how absolutely devastated i'll feel)

it always comes down to this...

i think mo's right about ed school people not having the clearest thinking sometimes. i think my point completely went over the heads of everyone today in class and it was a fantastic point. rather, it was a BASIC point. they weren't even talking about the same thing, and they were arguing and i didn't think they knew they weren't talking about the same thing. neither did anyone else because everyone just jumped into the whole invested sociological issue thing.

BUT! fix is always /f/ /i/ /k/ /s/! it's ALWAYS 4 sounds and not 3! when you talk about dictionaries not 'agreeing' it's do with the dialectal pronunciations. fast can be /a/ as in father or /a/ as in can but fast is always /f/ /a/ /s/ /t/ with 4 phonemes whatever the /a/ is!!! if you want to teach kids that an orthographic 'cr' is a consonant blend, and if it so happens the orthography is regular for once in english, that's your choice but there is no sound /kr/ it's always /k/ velar stop and /r/ glide! even with co-articulation they are still TWO SOUNDS.

and this may not be apparent but the least i expect of the TF of any masters class is to be able appreciate the point after it's made but no the TF (replacing the lecturer who's away for a conference today) completely ignored it because i think she didn't even understand my point (and it wasn't because i had an indian accent)

sigh. clear thinking people!

serendipitious long walks (courtesy of miscommunication about where 'between harvard and mit' is really located.) half an hour in the cold waiting for a late bus. 2 potlucks, and tour of 3 lounges. band aids on blisters scraped raw. failed meetings. first baseball game. discovery of the three pretty study lounges i never used (or even knew existed)

it's a very very happy week and the mit engineers are super adorable (re: forces and acceleration).

i'm inspired! the weather today is sooooo lovely, i realise that in contrast to the solitary dinners of philly, i should characterize my stay in boston by CHAMPAGNE BRUNCHES on sunday mornings =)

(so i need to do my groceries next saturday instead)

i love long walks =)

something about this week's grey's anatomy really struck me. so stay with me a bit, resolve.

sigh. counting down till the bad karma is exhausted.

it's a little bit harder than i thought.

i'm starting to think i should get a car from the number of times i head to mit in a week.

but also, today was another day of running from one thing to another and i met chomsky! (though i had no clue what he was talking about)

i'm just so very happy i'm afraid the bubbles will burst soon but whatever it is, i'll drink to this pretty flute of happiness right now.

failed but hilarious =P

the crazy perfectionist in me is starting to rear her head.

after feeling extremely accomplished in the morning, i missed the hbs session because my partner for the testing assignment was a little held up (the difference 10 minutes can make!) so the discussion ended past three. and since we were told to be absolutely on time at hbs so i decided i don't want to barge in and have dirty looks thrown at me.

but it's making me feel awful because the day is incomplete! and i had really wanted to learn about strategic management. ARGH.

so upset.

while there's something glamorous (in a geeky sort of way) about sleeping past 2 and waking up at 6 to do work, the more sustainable strategy in the long run would be to just not nap and be more efficient about launching into work right off the bat instead of wasting time dilly-dallying. so, do your work NOW yx!

i'm super happy because this was a super productive day! not only did i manage to wake up early to gym/watch the videotaped lecture of the class i missed/settled various administrative things/get myself on two committees, i also managed to head to mit to watch a free movie and get ALL my readings done as well as the do up most of my presentation

but what really made me very very happy was the discovery that this week's readings for language and literacy is about phonological perception! and there's a paper by kuhl (a simpler one than the one i read for tomasina's class) so i really really finally feel back in my element reading about proper experiments with proper experimental procedures =)

just, happy.

rendition at mit on a weekday night.

i feel so grown up and independent =P

my life here is complete. i've found two committees to serve on =)

(i'm becoming so... different. i seriously get unsettled when my schedule is not chock-full of different commitments)

Go for it!
(but don't feel overwhelmed or frustrated if you don't get more than 10% of it. Go with a buddhist sense of detachment, no christian guilt.)

Mohanan

i love my professor. he is so funny. (leslie! any chance of you flying up to boston over the weekend to hear NOAM CHOMSKY speak?)

i am very happy and satisfied.

after being driven to tears by a complete dissatisfaction with what i'm doing over the weekend, i woke up this morning to this week's surprisingly interesting readings.

and then in class, the tf announced two seminars happening at mit this week. YAY! tomorrow's one is about a language without recursion (would be interesting if it's true since recursion is one of the language universals) and the one on friday is a WHOLE DAY of talks about syntax including a reflection by NOAM CHOMSKY.

^o^

happy happy happy!

as it turns out, i'm never given to too much despair.

i am very happy with my latest readings. even for the class i'm enjoying least. more of such please! i want proper empirical procedures and rigorous arguments!

i remember a conversation with joan early in the year where we were both slightly wary of the bad karma we were sure we accumulated with our previous relationships.

at one point, she suggested in jest that i should randomly get attached to some evil person who will treat me horribly and i should just be super nice until the relationship ends then i would have suffered enough to exhaust my bad karma and we were both laughing about it.

well, the point is, god is probably a little smarter than that and wouldn't allow me to navigate through the loopholes quite so easily.

so, i think it's here, and it's quite, um, unexpected. although i must say, it's all very well set up and elaborate and extremely apt in an ironic sort of way (see i always knew god had a great sense of humour)

it is very funny. and it is very sad. and i shall not think further of this because fine i'll just pay it back and then we're even no?

(even the amount of time matches! well done!)

distracting activity number 2 is blogging.

but anyway, check out what an unfriendly loner i was =P solitude and contemplation, even before the national park hehe.

i need to do better.

i've been hemming and hawing over this essay because i've been sleeping with reckless abandon (i'm highly amused by this phrase but even so!)

this is unacceptable. i'm not even distracted by some equally blameworthy but at least more exciting endeavours.

i blame it on the sleep debt i've accumulated over the trip (apparently the interest is compounded at a fairly rapid rate, happily, i've slept enough to cover the debt and more)

so work yx!

And draped in rain

of the last monsoon storm,

a beggar, ears pressed to that metal cry,

will keep waiting on a ghost-platform,

holding back his tears, waving every train

Good-bye and Good-bye.

~Agha Shahid Ali

i agree with kev's take.

just another demonstration of a tendency towards histronics yx.

apparently sleeping too much gives you nightmares. after taking a completely unnecessary 3 hour nap yesterday afternoon, i went to bed at HALF PAST NINE. the result is one of my infamous random nightmares.

tonight's nightmare had me shuffling through a super-packed lecture hall feeling completely curious as to why it was so full. i remember even seeing a glimpse of ex2's face at some point and thinking, did he come all the way to harvard for a lecture? then i realised in the dream the speaker was someone very famous (and in this dream i made a note to myself, yx when you wake up, check chomsky and e.o. wilson's speaking schedule). so then the lecture ended and i was a volunteer collecting cardboard signs for recycling at which point i noticed a booth with some animation and some singaporean minister(? don't recognize the face but seemed like someone important) who was commenting on how successful the venture to produce a kung-fu drama serial between mediacorp and harvard business school is (so random!) then i glimpsed some leaflet which said 'michael porter's 7 signs of successful cultural transmission' (???) at which point it dawned on me he must be the famous professor everyone's squeezing into the lecture hall to hear. so i continued holding out a brown cardboard thingy to collect everyone's namecards. there was a point when someone attempted to throw a rolled up sheet of waxed paper which some other volunteer told me to reject but i already took it so i held it in my hand while looking for a bin. then as i walked part the end of the aisle, this woman suddenly collapsed and a nurse rushed out of nowhere to attend to her. which was curious but fine until another woman i passed in another aisle collapsed too. and then (quite hilariously in retrospect) some dramatic music started playing in the background and i hurriedly threw the waxed paper away and everyone rushed to the basin to wash their hands (it felt like some SARS thing) and covered their months at which point i looked over and saw the collapsed women begin to move and realised it was some RESIDENT EVIL type virus. so, i woke up with a start feeling very frightened.

goodness! i haven't had such a nonsensical nightmare for ages.

now i need to decide if i want to go back to sleep or do some work until i'm sleepy again.

i feel like i betrayed my true calling. i miss linguistics. i hate that i'm so busy but i don't feel like i'm learning anything i want to learn. i want to do some syntax/semantics/phonology. i want to formulate theories and set up experiments and do some rigorous arguments instead of some fluffy undefined rubbish.

and part of me is so annoyed because i already knew this was the devil's bargain. i know what i want in life and academia won't cut it but i wish i had the courage and the purity of purpose to just say eff it all, i want to spend my days and nights thinking about semantics, and cognitive constructs and continue to develop my feature space theory i started to sketch for the honours thesis.

and then there are some dues which i have yet to pay which i think is about to hit me hard and really really i just want to say eff it all but i can't, really. and i have no doubt regardless of all these i'll be fine and happy because that's what i do these days, fine and happy.

fine and happy yx!

yx says: i think i'm like meredith. seriously. dark and twisty.
dan says: i already knew that.

>.<

was discussing our experience at harvard during little zechy's birthday party and i think while i am learning things here, it's not what i think i would be learning. i feel like i'm absorbing more of my classmates' experiences in the classroom than really stretching my mind.

i really wish i had taken the semantics course now. at least that would have been unfamiliar and challenging.

i also wish i had a mentor here like mo.

after i sent this picture to my parents, they said in unison over skype 'wow you look so pretty!' (trust me, it sounded as strange coming from them as it is with my typing it now =P) and i was so amused because apparently, this is how blind parental love can be. i look all puffy-eyed and unkempt hair and pale and exhausted with zero make-up and not to mention completely dwarfed again. i responded with how happy i was to hear them say that seeing that i was haphazardly dressed with no make-up on. to that, they commented that people look as they feel, and they know that i am happy now which would make me pretty anywhere anytime and it was so surprising, and so heartwarming.

at some point, my dad said he thought of a new way to respond to general questions like 'what are you doing now?' he would say, 'i'm enjoying my blessings'

so am i. so am i. =)

i’ve missed this. white sprays of rain broken and suspended in the air, in a moment; glints of orange street lamps on the black grills on the pavement; hurried click of heels on the dark wet concrete; hair drenched, plastered to cheek. i look in the faces of the passerbys. she tucks her hair into her hood as she slips by me. his blue umbrella bends funnily in one corner. and it’s us and we, so many in such a large world, so small. and while I turn to watch fallen leaves sweep around the black boots of a stranger, who sees me? this is why we are real, this is why we are here. sleeves brush; and even so quickly, so briefly, we are all here in one moment.

and she sings, from scratch, begin again. but this time, i as ‘i’, and not as ‘we’...

this is the first picture taken on the trip and demonstrates the first ingenious use of our vehicles (and other random objects) as tripods for taking group pictures. ^.^

will write the travel log once i figure out the days/themes/pictures to include.

(forgot to add that it's also the debut of yx the dwarf. i look completely dwarfed in all the standing group pictures!!!)

with all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
be cheerful.
strive to be happy.

~desiderata, max erhmann

i have never been very much at ease with, and in the world. i need to make the effort to step out of my own self-exile at times because i know i would lose even the tangential relation otherwise.

but i feel off-kilter without the large amount of solitude. i don't know how to be around people. i don't know how to relate. and these days i don't even think i try.

i'm just not happy with the way many things are. i'm not happy with cynicism. i'm not happy with the conditional everything. i'm not happy with the so many if you do x, then i will do y. it annoys me. it distresses me that there are no transcendental promises. i refuse to believe it, although all evidence points to it.

i turn away from many simple joys for the obscure abstractions, intangible meanings.

and i think i am happy, although i know in my heart of hearts, that the only thing i've ever become superlative at, is the art of self-deception.

annoyance and a bit of mystery.

after getting the mmr shot, i felt a little sicky and ended up napping for 3 hours and waking up to an enormous amount of reading and feeling just generally annoyed with myself because the house is messy, i have no food and there's so much just generally undone.

on a different, someone's been trying to call me from the sheraton hotel in boston and i am completely clueless as to who it could be. last night i assumed it was just a wrong number since i can't imagine which person i know could be staying there now but since she/he called again this afternoon (and i missed the call again) it seemed like something purposeful. hmmmm.

this is my second favorite picture because it's so hilarious. i look like a ghost haunting the woods. and it's super funny after my constant worry about meeting ghosts/mutant serial killers/axe-murderers in the woods that i look like so ghostly myself.

favorite picture of the trip.

(if rah was there i can only imagine how long we'll linger at each place taking numerous shots with, tense your calf! twist your head a little, angle your lesgs differently hahaha)

the plan was to do my homework while my hair is drying. but after finding myself sputtering awake in the bathtub because i fell asleep during the soak (to rid the smell of smoke) i think i should sleep NOW.

very exhausted but really really enjoyed the trip. more later.

i have been going on and on and on about this. but i miss 708R south washingston square, philadelphia pa 19106!

and it's october.

october is about quiet dinners in perfect solitude but i don't even have a dining table here.

i don't even drink wine anymore.

i missed gym today because! of all silly and ridiculous reasons for staying up late last night, i was DANCING.

after downloading the 'o' album from cirque du soleil, i was so taken with the music that i started dancing (or more accurately prancing idiotically since i have zero dance training) around my living area. this i did for half an hour before my ankle started hurting again at which point i wrapped my ankle feeling quite professional, and continued my crazy jumping and swirling and half-baked pirouetting for another half an hour until i'm breathless and flushed and also up at ONE a.m.

madness! and i have an assignment due today which i am currently supposed to be slaving at but obviously i have huge problems with prioritizing.

sometimes i think i'm hilarious in a completely insane way.

happy happy me is really really off to santiago!

(and that is something to look forward to seeing that i'll have assignments every single week from now till then >.<)

i made shepherd's pie! it's definitely not as yum as the ones my brothers made (no mozzarella and tomato paste) but all the same when i took the dish out of the oven with the thick oven mitts i honestly felt a lump in my throat because who would have thought? i made shepherd's pie. amidst the mountain of readings, and the many errands i have to run, i made a yummy dish i love, and in my heart of hearts i still can't believe i am happy. for everyone who feels puzzled by my neverending declarations of 'i'm so happy' (yes that's you dan =P), i am more, i am most puzzled.

and i think mostly, i am glad to finally shake free of that weightless feeling. i have been entirely blessed my entire life and i always got what i wanted so easily, i was always half-guilty and half-afraid of losing everything to the same chance that gave them to me.

and re: that one thing, it's still the same. i trust god, and i trust myself.
^.^

how not to make decisions: do not chop them up into pieces that are too small to seem consequential then realise that what you've really done is to snowball everything (and get swept away in the process)

how not to be distracted: do not dream.

how not to come across as insane: do not dream and assume dreams are portents (at least not without some semblance of philosopical argument)

i was so indignant in the the dream, i can remember the feeling long after i woke. i was the one who gave no one else a chance, i was saying. then you reminded me of a string of strange things i did and i woke up realising even in the light of day, i remain bereft of explanations.

still this is unfair. this is where, exactly where the old world should tilt on its axis, where the fleeting moments float away and i build the future on something more tangible.

even so, the regardless-es follow me around with relentless disregard.

i confess i wasn't exactly telling the truth when i said it was random. but then again, how do you locate the first cause among the whimsical, the fanciful and the reckless? everything might as well be random.

and if, subconscious of mine, you're trying to tell me something, don't do it with such dreams. they're dangerous.

at this point when i'm struggling through the stacks of readings while looking at my impossibly packed schedule for tomorrow (my official day starts at 9 and ends at 5 with ZERO breaks in between. this means to have enough time to get to the gym and read the papers comfortably i need to wake up at 6 and i don't expect to finish the things i need to complete until at least 12 tonight and that is if i really slave at them) i need to remind myself that i chose this! my life is only going to get busier with the business study group coming up, as well as the possibility that my random name submission might actually result in an SGA position. but as i have been constantly reminding myself, if i can't do this, then i won't be able to do any of the number of things i want to so, so either i reevaluate my goals in life, or i just suck it up and do it!

and i have been incredibly blessed with the things i got to do, life is perfect right down to every stressful busy moment so yx! work, NOW!