hello everyone; apologies for the lack of updates! ive been very busy, which i know isnt an excuse :) im quite hapy; ive done my research for one and 3/4 of the essays that are due in week7, and have a clever dick idea for the one due in week 8. which i intend to do over reading week, hopefully. i've settled in nicely here- bumming around and cooking well [ZOMG chern and i amaze each other every day, didnt know that you could permute foods in so many ways! we've stocked her kitchen for a seige, and basically the larder is so full that when you open the door you ahve to be careful or things will fall on your head!! we go on crazy experimenting stretches; for eg a while back we were adding balsamic to everything; this week we've been adding thyme to everything... and we even ambitiously bought a PUMPKIN HOORAY! so far we've eaten like half. hur hur hur good luck us. i actually had no idea pumpkins and potatoes were so hard to chop! cherns parents are up this week- and they brought us a CLEAVER MWA HA HA HA HA. the knives we'd bough from argos are wimpy. theyre floppy. if you smash garlic with them you ahve to hit REALLY hard, and then he knife bends and the garlic is like, maybe marginally dented is all. haha. /gush]
daylight saving time kicked in last sunday; so now we're eight hours behind singapore. the sun sets earlier and its getting colder here. the trees are turning; though no su-ann, we dont have nice big piles of leaves to jump into.. the warwick maintenence crew blow them away with leaf blowers. hahaha. it was quite funny like yesterday we had a history lecture and some guy was blowing leaves VERY LOUDLY outside the accr; and then we couldnt hear the lecturer. so the lecturer went and opened the door and framed in the doorway was this poor hapless guy appily blowing leaves and the lecturer like, looked at him for a while, and then tapped his shoulder to like erm inform him that the leaf blower was too noisy. and then everyone like appluaded. weird student life. im finding crawling out of bed hard to get to 9am lect!!!! how we have fallen. to hink that i ahve six years of waking up at 6am ahead!!!!! nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!! hopefully [and i think he is] nigel is better at hauling me out of bed than i am.
am rather happily brain dead cos ive just had a good dinner, and actually ploughed through FIVE BOOKS TODAY WOOHOO! i mean if you think about it, i read maybe 3 chapters per book. so if you think about it, ive read liek 1.1 books in the span of a morning! chern and i then went to do exploring around the campus before i happily went late for my mmw sem, which i totally smoked through. heh. i did a pres on ezra pound a few days back and basically spent half of it explaining the ideograms [basically chinese words] he wrote into his poetry and happily wrote random chinese characters on the board and explained how they linked to the reality depicted by basically distorting the words into pictures. and explainign pian pang and stuff like that. which though was technically smoking and showing off after the standard pres on his philosophy and such, but also v interesting cos like the class asked v interesting questions and also it was fun to doodle in pink chalk! squee! pink chalk!
i know it probably sounds a bit hypocritical/ xenophobic to say this, but ive been thinking about the idea of our 'otherness' as asians quite a lot, residing in an european culture. at first it was amusing/insulting to have people go 'oh you speak such good english!' and 'Singapore.. thats in China right?" but yeah-- there is a v compelling interest. one of my modules is called 'travelling Eurasia' and talks about the interconnectedness of Asia and Europe from antiquity; one of the key concepts therein being Orientalism as described by Edward Said. The idea of monolithic 'Us' and 'Them' cultural or political entities does indeed build a barrier towards thought, and facilitates the development of cliche and stereotype and of course, novelty. [if you remember the new imperialism quite about the french empire and the belly dance] its quite interesting to stand back for a moment and watch how others percieve me and how i impose "oriental values" onto myself, consciously or unconsciously [the latter which is detectable in retrospect] in my daily life. its not something i judge people on, just an interesting intellectualization. and no i am not a hermit with no friends. haha
im looking forward to tomorrow! which is a free day! Organising my timetable was hell but yes!! i have FRIDAYS OFF! chern's parents are coming on friday evening and we're all going to have dinner :) and on sat im gonna take myself, my readings and formal wear off to cambridge where i get to spend the entire week with Nigel-- sightseeing and attending everybody's formals and er i was gonna say shopping but im broke so errrr. cooking. AND AND AND AND SITTING IN THE FITZWILLIAM ALL DAY AAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA dyou know my senior mok lent me the gallery guides for THE NATIONAL GALLERY AND THE UFFIZI ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG SWOONS AND DIES. i wan to go camp out in london soon. so exciting!!!!!! i prob wont be saying the same thing tomorrow when im off the moratorium and back up to my neck in books. hahaha
mellie contemplated 5:10 AM
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