I just dropped a class.

*sigh* I had an 85 average in it... i.e. 97 to get an A? and it was a choice between getting a B or having only 3 classes this semster. To be fair the reason why I chose to drop it wasn't because of that. It was more because I just couldn't see myself getting the energy to work insanely for the final and it would have been work insanely because i haven't attended half the classes due to interviews.

I think I'm just so mentally and emotionally worn out that I can't do this anymore. This semester just needs to end.

But yeah. So this evening finds me feeling a little like I wasted all this time this semester putting in so much effort for this class for nothing, a little drained, a little diappointed in myself for what feels like taking the easy way out although it really isn't, and a lot schizophrenic :-p

It's also been drizzling continuously for the past several days.. which makes it very depressing and very tiring. I haven't been able to do much work just because I feel so tired. i need a vacation

sooo sooo tired.
finished the last of my interviews today.
I stayed at the ritz carlton last night and they upgraded me to a suite :-p that room was bigger than my apartment in Japan.

Other interesting points this week:
having a hundred dollar per person dinner (and no I did not pay).
I also got an invitation to the office christmas party... as you can tell the dinner and party are for the outstanding offer. They're really really nice.

sooo braindead.
*sigh* have a 15 page paper due monday but think I'm going to eat pizza, relax and sleep early instead.

It's Finally Thanksgiving

I have a paper that is due at 6pm today.. and what do i do instead? I blog. :-p Speaking of papers, I have 40 pages to write over thanksgiving break. That's an average of 10 pages a day and I haven't done much research on EITHER of those papers. Great.

On the good side, no interviews for a while. I'm actually done I think, I have one more to go and depending on the results of that one, I'll decide whether or not to sign my current offer. I'll be glad when it's all done. For any who are interested, my current offer is for an economic and law consulting firm located in Boston. If I do sign, my start date would be in september so I would have the summer off to do all the myraid things that needs to be done.

Actually whether or not, I sign this offer I think I'm going to be in Boston either way. My other interview would also place me in Boston, but the chances of getting that are slim. Let's just say it's the top consulting firm and they only hire one from my university every year shall we? :-p Low chances in did. Oh well, at least I made it to the final round and who knows? i might just get it.

But for now... there's my paper on the ideational and material factors behind East Asian Regionalism pre and post crisis to finish.

I HAVE A JOB OFFER!

it's with a company I actually like. I love the people and the work is interesting and it pays well!!!!

*GRIN* and I have a final round interview on friday and one the friday the week after thanksgiving for two pretty prestigious consulting companies.. for once things are looking up. Even if I flunk the rest of my interviews, at the very least I'll i have a job.

Recruiting update... here we go again.

Another update.
GS third rounds tomorrow in New York.
Axia first rounds in Boston friday.
Monitor first round - monday
Cornerstone 3rd round- tues

and I have no life :-p five page paper due this friday but realistically may be postponed till after the weekend. My prof. actually volunteered to give me the extension. *grin* He's nice.

In other news, I've been rejected by Bain. No big surprise since I screwed up the interviews by being a bundle of nerves. To balance it out though I made it to MK 3rd rounds!!! In boston in my first choice office!

I just really wish I could get this job cause if I did I could drop everything else. :-p But now that i'm interviewing for consulting in boston rather than banking in ny, actually I don't mind as much. (Probably not only because boston is closer and so less travel time, but also because I like consulting interviews more. I must be one of the only people who think cases are mostly fun.)

Red sox nation

This article is so hillarious I had to post it here. (original article found at http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2004/11/08/red_sox_nation_literally/)


Red Sox Nation, literally
By Peter Norton November 8, 2004

VOTING WILL get underway shortly in the New England states on whether to secede from the United States of America. The new country would be named Red Sox Nation and would comprise Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, and most of Connecticut.

Red Sox owner John Henry, who initiated the hastily organized referendum, said that he was not a sore loser. "This has nothing whatever to do with the defeat of yet another liberal Massachusetts politician with aspirations for national office. I'm just tired of living in such a bitterly divided country. My goal is to create a new nation where everyone can agree on something."

Polls show that 97.3 percent of people living within the borders of the proposed nation root for the Red Sox. Members of the New England Patriots football team and New England Revolution soccer team were quick to endorse the measure. Sales of bumper stickers, such as "Don't Blame Me, I'm From Red Sox Nation," have been brisk.

Senator John Kerry, a long-time Red Sox fan, said in a statement that he would vote for secession and would even vote to authorize the yet-to-be-elected president of the new nation to go to war if necessary. On the other hand, Kerry said that if there were a war, he would oppose it and vote to deny any funding whatsoever.

While Kerry has ruled out running for president of Red Sox Nation himself, numerous local politicians, sensing home field advantage, have formed exploratory committees, including Michael Dukakis, Howard Dean, Joe Leiberman, Niki Tsongas, Mitt Romney, William Weld, and half a dozen Kennedys. Political pundits, however, speculate that the top honor is most likely to go to a member of the Red Sox team.

"Having won the world championship, any one of them, even a utility infielder like Pokey Reese, would have an immediate advantage over the politicians," said one analyst. He noted one exception, though. Curt Schilling, who was once considered a front runner based on his status approaching that of a war hero wounded on the field of battle, may have hurt his chances by campaigning with US President George Bush before the referendum was even announced.

Newly reelected President Bush spoke out against secession. "I've always said I'm a uniter, not a divider. And by that I mean I'm a uniter. I unite things. You see, they don't call this great country the United States for nothin'. If you divide it, then it isn't united anymore, is it? It's as simple as that."

Privately, though, White House aides admit that the president would not be sorry to see the troublesome states leave the union; the United States could scarcely afford to redeploy troops from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to quell a local uprising.

Border disputes have already arisen. The southwest corner of Connecticut was excluded from the proposed nation, due to heavier concentrations of New York Yankees fans. However, plans for a security fence were leaked to the media and showed that officials intend to deviate from the originally proposed boundary in order to include several Red Sox enclaves deep within Connecticut Yankee territory.

Skirmishes have broken out in New Haven, near the proposed border, and an extremist Yankee website has posted a call for attacks on the "illegal Red Sox settlements."

One of the cornerstones of the draft constitution is the right of return. Red Sox fans living in exile anywhere in the United States, or even the world, would be guaranteed citizenship in the fledgling nation.

"I can hahdly wait," exclaimed one Red Sox fan, a Boston native currently residing in Manhattan, who refused to give his name citing security concerns. "During the World Series, I got up my courage to wear my Red Sox cap on the subway. It was the first time I felt safe wearing it in the last 10 yeahs. If this thing passes, I'd move back to Boston in a hahtbeat!"

Peter Norton lives in Acton.

I just spent a whole weekend doing nothing but work and sleep. *sigh*
i can't remember the last time I did anything for a break, just for fun. Sometimes it really seems like my life is just one hectic mess, living from day to day with no end in sight.

I am skipping my gres tomorrow. I paid the money but I really just can't afford the emotional and mental stress or the time.

"You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton: I never saved anything for the swim back." - Gattica. That of course, only works if you have that kind of burning will to live.

I have just about decided not to do my gres. I'm supposed to take it on Monday.... but i haven't had the time to touch my books, and I'm seriously running myself down so that I don't have the energy to do my homework much less do the gres. In any case, if i don't take it, it's money but money is replacable - the score would affect me for life.

Other than that- I have an interview in new york again wed, two interviews on thursday and then I leave for conneticut for dinner with Mck. Interviews with Mck the next day and then I return to providence, hopefully in time for my seminar.

the following week is gs's third rounds in New York again. I'm starting to memorize the amtrak schedules. As you can tell, I don't have much time to do work at all.

*sigh* I just really want one particular job offer so I can drop most of the rest.

Overwhelmed

I'm so damned tired and I still have boston tomorrow, a phone interview tomorrow night and new york on friday and I have my gres monday and i haven't done any work for it and I just want to scream. Also definitely forget the schoolwork I'm flunking all my classes this semester. well or at least Bs and nobody else understands cause everyone is like you should be grateful you're getting Bs instead of Cs or failing and a B is not the end of the world.

also am sick of travelling. don't want to go to new york on friday and next tues or wed. willing to go to boston because I actually *like* the company. honestly I just want to quit recruiting but I can't because I feel like I should apply to all these companies. *sigh*

I don't feel like a student anymore. I'm not learning anything. can't companies recruit during winter break??

yet more callbacks

So i totally screwed up my midterm this morning with not having enough time to finish it.... but my priorities are all screwed up because i got phone calls.

the first was from morgan stanley who I thought already rejected me but apparently the asia-pacific office wants me in their final round interviews so it's nyc again for me next wed. the second was McK !!!! *grin* they wanted to know my office preferences but I'm definitely coming back for second rounds with them... so it's like I get a second chance after I screwed up Bain. People have been telling me that it might not be as bad as I thought it was because apparently they may have designed it to make you feel that bad but ai...

So yeah, 3 interviews this week and so far GREs and two interviews next week. and when I say interview I really mean four interviews in one day kind of interviews so multilpy everything by four or five :-p

byebye classes! :-p

This is becoming a recruiting blog more than anything else.

Anyway received an email today and I'll be going down to final rounds in New York for Lehman on friday!

For those who are still keeping track... this week's schedule looks like this:

M- midterm in my hardest class
T- Goldman Interviews in New York
W- a break.... (i think.. so far try to do my homework)
Th- Cornerstone Interviews in Boston
F- Lehman Interviews in New York
WkEd- study like crazy
M- GREs

whoo hoo.. three second round interviews in one week. sounds like fun huh? Still waiting for McKinsey to get back to me about whether or not I got second rounds. Also waiting for Bain to formally reject me from the interview process or the less likely option- make me an offer. Oh and being that I just named two out of the three.. waiting for BCG to decide if they want to grant me a first interview. (BCG is slower to recruit this year compared to the other two)

Really really sick of recruiting at this point. Yes I know they're paying for my train tickets to New York but at this point it looks like 20 hours on the train in one week. Unless Lehman makes me fly... which would be even more stupid because that would actually land up taking longer.

Really just want a job offer so I can reject everybody else. :-p Also having a crisis of conscience or rather choice - do I really really want to work in investment banking??

Recruiting update

I think i completely blew my bain interviews yesterday from being too nervous. Definitely a big disappointment in myself because I could have done so much better... having interviews in a hotel room on couches definitely threw me off. My friends have been trying to make me feel better by saying that hey you made it to one of ten that's pretty amazing in itself but it's def. the case of so close and yet so far. Ah well.

Tuesday I'll be in New York interviewing for GS... they're paying for my train ticket, taxi fare and possibly food :-p. Wed or Thurs I'll be in Boston interviewing for cornerstone. (since it's my fault that i'm not on campus when they interview second rounds here... they don't have to pay for anything) and that's all the second rounds I have so far.

I'm turning down a first round for the first time because I will be in New York.. and the score right now? is something like 15 applications, 9 first rounds and 3 second rounds... of course a fair no. of those haven't got back to me yet so I think the total right now is somewhere around 5-6 rejections total. No offers yet.

I got my first second round!!!!

it's with GS whose interview was yesterday.... whee.... they do firmwide hiring so they're making me interview with the equity and financing group... my preferences were investment management and ficc.. so now i have to go read up on that stuff.

Of course I also have an interview in like a coupla hours i should really prepare for. and one tomorrow. and erm... more apps due on thursday.
but for now... whee...

*sigh*... so so far this week I've done one Pre-interview reception, one interview and handed in a five page paper. I also have a midterm tomorrow, another interview and another pre interview thing plus another interview on wed, and helping out at the sophomore concentration forum on wed. aaargh. and that's only half the week! Something tells me I should just drop ALL my classes.

blah.

I hate interviews

I always get all nervous and say the wrong things. AARGH.
So far I think I've screwed up all the interviews I've had, and two more this friday.

Grrrr...

my professor just died.

no honestly, I came home from maine (which was beautiful btw and I shall blog about it some other time but.. ) and I got an email saying he passed away on saturday of a heart attack. Now, they're trying to figure out what's going to happen to my course.

I was debating dropping the class in order to cope with my insane schedule so I guess I could drop the class but at the moment i definitely feel a bit strange. This is definitely not the kind of thing that you expect to happen to you. So yeah, a little in shock.

Exam in an hour

and I haven't done a thing for it yet.

In any case last night I came up with a score card. which at the moment reads 11 Resume submissions, 10 cover letters, 3 first round interviews, and 2 rejections. These are the scores of what I have already applied for and done. I swear applying for jobs is taking up more time than any of my classes.

*sigh* back to studying.

If you're wondering why I'm never around anymore.. let me just assure you that even if you live right across from me you would hardly see me.
my insane class load is definitely taking it's toll on sleep and everyting else. It seems getting 5hours of sleep a night is becoming the norm in addition to never getting enough of my work done to actually do anything fun.

I think part of the reason is that every weekday night I dress up in a suit and go to some info session on a particular company. And when I'm not in class or at a info session, I'm desperately trying to compose cover letters for job applications. Speaking of which i have 3 job inteviews on wednesday, which means 4 hours in the career center because I didn't want to run right from one intevew to the next considering that might not be too endearing. "Yes.. sorry i was five min late but I was inteviewing with your competitor." *grin* They are for investment banking.... seems like at the moment I'm going to go into either investment banking or consulting.

That is of course.. if they like me enough to call me back :-p. If they do I forsee seeing a lot of new york real soon :-p

Long absence

Yes I know I haven't been updating and it looks like my updating is going to be sparse until I get a little more time.

School's started and life's gotten busy... just this weekend, I've got reading for thesis, a 4 page paper worth 20 percent of my grade, 2 homework sets for a particuarly hard class, reading and preparing to lead discussion for a seminar and language homework- for a class i'm not even officially registered for.

I seem to have more work than I have number of hours in a day for. So until you see me again I'll be at my desk.

my room has finally reached some semblance of order and with that, the sense of urgency that usually occupies my life has unusally departed. Just for these few days there are no classes. Just for these few days, there is not much that I can do or should do.

two of my roommates are currently doing some serious moving in and unpacking. Being that I'm going to be here nine months, I've decided against investing that much physical and emotional energy into my room... so it's going to be nice, but definitely nothing like my housemates' rooms.

Seeing my housemates, I always wonder if I should be more involved with university life. Compared to them I do nothing but academics. Then again to me, what i do is more fun than what they do for fun. I wonder if the people who read my resume would see it that way.

my room is officially a mess.

There's stuff all over the floor and the desk, two huge cardboard boxes filled with random junk and a coupla empty boxes and shelves lying around. This is despite the fact that I probably own the least out of all my roommates.

I hate packing and moving in and out. Now you know why. You know, for someone who hates packing and living out of suit cases and unpacking, I do a lot of travelling.

Providence...

is where I finally am and and undergoing intensive days of mj training and advising. That actually is the shortened title for peer advisors for freshmen so no, i'm not turning into the more famous mj.

I am extremely jetlagged so what I've been doing is unpacking bit by bit when I'm not at peer advising - which is nearly never. It's pretty hot in providence too and cold only at night when the weather figures out I don't have a comforter or any blankets.

Yep. This is going to be an extremely short post because i haven't got back to the point of being able to think coherently yet.

Stuck in Dallas, Texas. in the middle of nowhere.
Missed my flight. whoo hoo. Here goes life :-p

I've been meaning to blog about the PM's national day rally message for sometime but I keep getting side tracked by work... you know the kind that you're technically paid to do :-p. Seriously, it's my last week here and so things have been pretty much rushed.. in fact, I'm supposed to be writing a couple of reports right now instead of posting...

This is a posting to say that this blog will be moving soon for a couple of reasons.. one of the more esoteric of which is to start afresh with new templates :-p

I'm nearing the end of my Japan stay and somehow getting more stressed. I guess it's the short time span I have to pack up my entire life and move yet again, and still the basic questions like bank account and money and things like that have not yet been settled. But until I get out of this state of mind I shall not blog. Irritable does not make for good blogging :-p

With laws like this....

Los Angeles bans Silly String with a fine of between $200-$1000

It seems we have company. In fact even more severe company - at least we can consume chewing gum even if we can't sell it. Makes me wonder why people still laugh at the ridiculousness of the chewing gum law if there are so many other examples around :-p

Addictions

Recently there's been an article published about addiction in rats. In which they prove that after prolonged exposure to drugs (by which they mean 3 months), 17 percent of rats get addicted to coccaine. (Apparently the percentage is 15 percent in humans.) Firstly, from all the fuss made about it, (especially by the agencies that schools would take us to in order to deter us from drugs), I would have thought that the percentage was more. In fact, I had the impression it was 90 percent or something.

Somewhere between, the first time that I realised that the sweet smell in the hallways of my dormitory was actually marijuana and now, I've gotten a lot more relaxed about other people around me using drugs. I don't approve of it and I certainly wouldn't take it myself - I like having control of my brain functions, thank you, but I'm definitely not going to jump up in shock or horror and run for the hills. However, I will have to admit that i was shocked at finding recreational drugs in deceptively small cute looking bottles selling at the local household discount store in Tokyo. Upon asking, I was told that these drugs are non-lethal and that's why they can be sold legally - i.e. you can't die from it so what's the harm? You take it, you feel happy for a while and that's it.

I'm still trying to sort out how I feel towards this concept. On the one hand, I've been brought up to believe that drugs are evil and should not be taken. But on the other, if you can invent something like "soma" - for those who have read brave new world- where it's non-addictive and it makes people happy for a while, is that still evil? One could argue that even if it is non-addictive, it's very easy for people to get sucked into believing that synthetically stimulated pleasure is real and all that's important and neglect their very "real" lives which of course brings us to the concept of why would synethetic happiness be any less real than real happiness. A more practical argument would be that economically nothing would get done and people would waste away living from one shot of soma to the next.

I have to admit that the concept of such a premade happiness from any drug still strikes me with revulsion because I would hate to lose control of my body that way- which is one reason I have never yet gotten drunk. But that could just be my socially instilled prejudices speaking.

Nicotine and Caffeine are also drugs and while I don't do the former, the latter is something most of us do. I got my first caffiene headache withdrawal syntoms yesterday from stopping for just one day after two weeks of coffee- which I would argue is far more addictive certainly than marijuana. And even if it doesn't give me direct brain-altering pleasure, it still affects my mood and concentration. Even if caffiene is far more affordable an addiction to maintian, isn't taking caffiene morally the same as taking some other kind of drug? The more feeling irrational side of my brain is screaming that there is some difference but the rational half is being hard put to come up with a reasonable defence of my logical loophole as to why some drugs are bad but others okay.

When patriotism and nationalism just aren't the same.

In today's Straits Times there is an article about Japanese Teachers who refuse to stand or sing the Japanese national anthem. http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/story/0,4386,266606,00.html?

I've been watching this issue for sometime here in Tokyo, and for those who are too lazy to click on the link, basically the national anthem of Japan has imperialistic roots, and the Japanese teachers are protesting the nationalistic return to that era. This is against the backdrop of Koizumi's continued return visits to the war shrine of those killed in World War II which seems to signify a rise in general glorification of the circumstances that led to World War II. Under the circumstances, I can say I'm firmly on the teachers' sides.

I'm not just saying this because I came from one of the countries of the occupation. I think even without the militaristic tones of the situation, people should have the right to choose whether or not to sing the anthem. This isn't an act of disrespect such as burning the flag.

One of the things this drew to mind, was the fact that I've been standing and singing the national anthem for at least 12 years of my life most mornings but this custom doesn't exist anywhere in the States. Yet I can honestly say that the average American is every bit as patriotic if not more than the average Singaporean. Perhaps because what they're defending is something they believe in with all their heart. After September 11, even though you were looked at strangely, if you choose not to display the flag or sing the anthem they definitely don't punish you. And whether you're red or blue, despite all the different beliefs as to what you should do, everyone believes that what they are doing is simply best for the country.

But of course, even though Singaporeans sing the anthem every day, most of us have no deepset understanding of what it means as we sing it. I guess no matter how many times you sing an anthem, if you don't believe what it's about or barely understanding, it won't instill any deepset patriotism in you. America doesn't need any anthems to instill that patriotism because they tie directly into the beliefs of the people. In Japan's case, since everybody does speak the language the anthem is in, I wonder how effective instiling those values will be.

I've come to the conclusion that Singaporeans must be one of the biggest groups of conspiracy theorists as a whole. I mean honestly... we even beat Fox Mulder. And at least he is a rarity. The average person on the street in the US definitely doesn't think there are aliens out there and the government is hiding it. They may think the government is hiding lots of other things and they'll generally let you know it exactly what they think the government's hiding - usually within five minutes of meeting you. However, it's usually something fairly small and standard, like our favourite villian Bin Ladin, or the presence or lack thereof of nuclear weapons in Iraq.

Now the average Singaporean on the other hand, believes in a whole myriad of other things, ranging from - "the football match kanna kelong one!" to "that unit got 'white horse' that's why training so easy" to "actually there's only one person running the country the rest are all figureheads". Erm.. not to comment upon whether or not I actually believe in these theories of course. ;-p

But back to the topic- Singaporeans and conspiracy. I honestly think that proabably part of the reason is that where else are you going to get circumstances where conspiracy IS possible?

"Daddy, Daddy, why are your ears so big?"
"Why all the better to hear you with, my dear."
Case in point, Singapore is small enough that anything you say could potentially be overheard or tracked down. In fact, even better, everyone knows things through word-of-mouth. 1984 could have been based on Singapore with the number of times I've heard the phrase "sssh... big brother is watching."

"Daddy, Daddy, why are your hands so large?"
"Why all the better to hold you with, my dear."
Even better, the government is actually efficient. The keystone of conspiracy theory in Singapore is that it can be done. And who really believes that it won't be done if it can be done?. Case in point, rumours that the Gep is one huge experiment and like any good experiment it has a control group. Now whether or not that is true, the important point was that it could have been done and so the rumour stays alive generation after generation.

"Daddy, daddy, why are... *fill in your own blank here*?"
"All the better to *fill in your own blank here* you, of course."
Honestly, i think the biggest reason is this whole depndency thing that we have with the government. We'll like children really, we complain a lot about the controls that our parents set over us like things we can't say or do, laws, curfews etc. but whenever they don't do something we want them to do like when they reduce our pocket money through cpf cuts, we turn around and complian that they aren't doing their job. Of course the tendency to depend so much on the government also means that you're convinced of the absolute power the government has, leading rise to even more conspiracy theories.

And of course like any good paranoid conspiracy theorist, I'm going to end my post by adding a note that says: *this piece does not reflect the personal views of the author in anyway at all regarding either conspiracy theory, singapore or government. Therefore, anything she has said or not said in this piece cannot be held against her.

Before I forget.. Happy National Day :-p.

Despite my serious doubts concerning a lot of my country's policies and quirks, I'm still proud of all it's acheived.

I've been meaning to do a food entry for some time, mostly on all the delicious food I've had here in Tokyo so far, so since no one has yet assigned me anything else to do right now...

1. Was the delicious Katsu-Don I had at one of those ticket places which seem to serve mostly salarymen. At these places, you buy a meal ticket at the entrance and give it to the cook who usually serves your meal at a round bar counter so you can see it being prepared. For those who don't know what a Katsu-Don is.. it's a breaded piece of pork cutlet fried so that it's crispy and subsequentlyl served with an egg, vegetable and soysauce mixture on top of a bed of rice. Anyone who says that Japanese food only consists of sushi hasn't really lived in Japan that long. In fact, most of the diet of everyday life isn't raw at all.

2. Going on in the same vein about Katsu-Don's, I also had a pretty unique version of this dish at a different restaurant. This place was quiet and done up in dark rosewood colours. Even though it's located at one of the busiest crossings in Japan, if you come alone, you can sit at the counter overlooking the glass windows and watch the world go by below as you eat your meal. Anyway, the katsu at this place was served on a plate with steamed cabbage. Accompanying this dish was the standard dishes of pickled vegetables and a black clay pot filled with dashi, which is a soup made of stock. The way this particular dish was to be eaten was to pour this dashi onto a chopstick's grip full of rice and Katsu mixed with a little paste that tasted of green tea. Definitely something different.

3. At the same restaurant, on a different ocassion, I also had the pleasure of enjoying little beef and onion patties, which came with a small dish with a round egg yolk in which you dipped the patties in before eating with rice. The slightly sweet glaze of the patties blended with the egg yolk to create a rich taste that contrasted nicely against the rice.

4. of course being in Japan, I have to mention raw fish sometime, so here's what I had this saturday. At one of the sushi bars near my apartment, I ordered a Kani-ikura don. Steamed cold shredded crabmeat was served with raw salmon eggs. Japanese crab meat is sweet and good ikura has a taste that is hard to describe to anyone who hasn't had it before. To give you an idea, to me when I first tasted ikura I thought it had been marinated in alcohol when of course that sensation was simply it's natrual taste. This combination of crabmeat and ikura was served on a cold bed of sweet sushi rice, perfect for a hot summer's day.

yep. That's it for my food entry. BTW, as I'm here on a budget, the even more amazing thing is that all of this stuff costs between 6 to 10 dollars, which for Japan or even the United States is rather good, especially considering that no matter where you eat, your meal always comes with a steaming mug of tea. Even though I've been here a while, i only get to go out for food on weekends so that's all the good stuff I've had so far but I suspect I'll be really sad when I have to leave tokyo to go back to providence where the food is definitely nowhere near as good.

I was thinking about one of the quotes that stuck in my head from Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett.

The three witches of the story had just been trapped in a tower by the "good" Fairy Godmother. and one of them remarked that "I'd have killed us" to which another replied that that's because she was basically good.

"The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy."

Beware of those who are good? I don't know. I was just thinking of more like beware of those who think they are good... raising the crusades.. and far more recently, the iraq war as examples.

For the non-Christians out there, this is your cue to stop reading. Please don't get the wrong impression of religion from my thoughts. :-p

We all feel that we can do anything because we walk in path of the Lord, but what if the path we're walking is not really the one that God wants us to walk but only the one that we think He wants us to walk?

For me, I guess my answer is that I couldn't live with thinking of God as a stern, unforgiving and war-like God, so I'll take my chances with believing in my version of the gentler kindly God. So if I am wrong and God does think I'm damned for being but a lukewarm christian and not converting by the sword or even evangelizing then I'd deal with that because I don't think I could live with the sterner image of God as my personal God nor would I be able to live with myself as someone who held to those harsher beliefs - not and still hang on to my sanity that is :-p

Went on an "Outing" yesterday, that was arranged by my service apartment, I guess it was pretty interesting. *grin* At least I got to meet people. We went to a summer festival light up at an old japanese garden, they had shamisen performances and you could line up to participate in a tea ceremony- which I decided to pass on. (I wasn't sure my legs could survive sitting that way that long- I've tried it before and 15 min is my limit.) They also had a booth where you could write a haiku on the spot and they would write it for you on a long beautiful gold-rimed cardboard piece with a little painting below. Needless to say my first haiku in japanese probably sucks but I get a pretty board :-p

One of the highlights of the evening was defininitely trying to catch goldfish with a little paper wand. The game is something that Japanese kids play at Summer Festivals. There's a whole lot of goldfish in a tub and kids would buy little wands that are made of rice paper, so they break really fast if you're not skillful. Needless to say on my first attempt I caught no fish. *grin*. They're really nice and give you two fish if you don't catch any, but I decided they'd die soon because I wouldn't be here very long.. so I was being responsible. Actually erm, I didn't actually pay for my game. I was translating for one of the fellow service apartment stayers who was playing the game and the guy who was running the store was really nice and gave her a wand when her first one broke and gave me one just because... well actually he said "kirei na ojouchan dake no service" ... i.e... just because i'm pretty. The kids asked how come he doesn't do that for them and he told them to come back when they've grown up! That was definitely one of the highlights of my day. It's not everyday i get called pretty by a random guy without an ulterior motive. :-p

after that, I had dinner at TGIF with two of the guys who worked for the hotel (who were actually sorta cute) and a malaysian guy who just got into town. That was really interesting in a way, gave me an insight into how guys think, although I swear if the guys we know think like that, I'd turn gay. One of the Japanese guys and the Malaysian guy were talking about girls and the girls they were currently going after and their problems and all and they were being open and honest about how guys thought, and honestly hmmm.. I suspect maybe it's just japanese guys... but one of the things he told us was that in Tokyo, the rule is you sleep with the girl on the third date, but now I definitely understand why japanese girls are currently obsessed with korean men. It's proabably hoping the grass is greener on the other side.

Hmm.. they asked me if I'd rather marry a Chinese, Japanese or Korean and honestly my answer was none... at the moment I suspect none of them really appeal to me at all. They're all too MCP.

Its Friday afternoon and half my desk is gone. Correction: More than half my desk. Apparently it just so happens that some people are travelling, others are at meetings or long lunches or at the gym.

People here work the job rather than the hours. I guess that means that if they're going to put in 15 hour days then they're entitled to leave during the down time if they want. It's a pretty good work environment I guess- minus me of course, who is at the moment bored because I've finished my last asssignments. In fact, I'm on my fourth revision of my second project when I only really needed to do one. Mostly I'm doing it out of boredom and just to see how far I can push it.

What the 'it' in question is, is a model to throw out the best level of investment with the least over collatralization model if you key in the exchange rate, base level of investment wanted and the put price of the securitiy. Of course, me being the bored soul I am, added a whether you wanted the results to be accurate to the original slot in my second revision, a how accurate you want your results to be range slot in my third revision and now in my fourth, I'm automating the process so that the model guesses how accurate you want it to be based on the size of the figure you key in. I swear boredom is literally driving me up the wall. From math geek to computer programming tendencies... this must be some kind of alternate world and definitely alternate me.

5 more hours to go before I can legitimately leave the office.

I've been working on something I didn't understand for two whole days and today I finally realised the way they wanted me to look at it and it all came together.

What I've been trying to do, is to bootstrap a yield curve given only swap rates in order to price a bond. Of course, it doesn't help that while all the notes supplied tell you how to bootstrap a yield curve using swap rates, and how to then get the zero coupon rates and forward rates from the earlier processes (which by the way involve tons of steps all building on each other - God bless whoever invented excel), none of them tell me what pricing a bond has anything to do with anything! So for the last two days I've been playing with numbers (doing infinite amounts of changing formulas minutely to try and obtain some kindo f an answer, in between searching desperately online for some source that would brilliantly link the two together), not really getting anywere.

Sometime this afternoon, I finally realised that if a bond can be viewed as a series of fixed flows of payments, then the alternative you can do with the same amount of money would be to put it into floating rates. In which case, it's actually like a normal interest rate swap and thus can be priced as one, balancing the present values of both payments in order to arrive at the value of the swap (price of the bond).

My question is this: Why didn't anyone just point that out to me in the first place? Especially since it wasn't a concept or formula that i lacked but a point of view.

And for everybody else who doesn't live and breathe finance and econ as I do at this point of time, erm... essentially it's like when you first learn math or physics and the teachers tell you to memorise the formulas in order to get the answer but then you get your midterm and you actually have to somehow twist your formulaes in order to apply them to some foreign unheard of concept. (This is especially so if you've ever been in GEP and taken the midterms which I swear the teachers get a kick out of setting.)... except, I have no teacher only a bunch of formulas so no concept. I suppose I should be grateful for this agony so that this firmly etches itself onto my memory.

And yes, I'm probably some kind of math geek deep inside my arty farty outer shell. I can't imagine why else I can get such a kick out of having a series of equations click together presenting me with the answer to my complex question. I didn't even mind the lots of minor keying and tweaking that had to take place... put it down to delayed even greater gratification.

Erm... everyone from my old arts class, pretend you never heard me say that.

It's Sunday and as i write this, I am staring at the subway map hoping for inspiration to jump up and hit me as to where to explore today.

Yesterday, I was at Shibuya and Harajuku having walked from the first to the second with the sole purpose of going to the 100 yen shop, which for those not well-versed with the Japanese monetary system is about the equivalant of one dollar. (US). I was also tempted to stop at a Hello Kitty exhibition at a museum on the top floor of one of the department stores just for the value of saying I'd been to it and seeing people's shocked expressions back home but i decided it wasn't worth the 700 yen entry fee.

A note about 100-yen stores: If you've been to a dollar store in whatever country you're from, trust me, it's nothing like one in Japan. Think of the 1.99 store in Singapore, except maybe 10 times the size and with 100 times the variety of items. It's great. This time, I picked up mostly food. I'm a big fan of 100-yen stores because unlike the 1.99 store's premise that if you're going to spend anything as paltry as 1.99 on an item, you might be persuaded to buy tons of useless junk along the way, you actually get useful things in the 100-yen store.

Unfortunately now that all my "errands", which consisted visits to manga and 100-yen stores, have been completed, I find myself with no plans for the day. My brief foray into the insane world of Shibuya on a saturday has left me somewhat turned off crowds. Tokyo on a weekend is pretty much amazing, you'll never see so many people in one place. And then you'll wonder, if there are all these people here, and there are 20 other places which are probably as packed, where do all these people live when they're not here? No wonder, housing in tokyo is usually tiny and expensive.

I also got stopped about 6 times in Shibuya by people trying to convince me to: a)patronise their karaoke, b) buy something or other, c)ask for directions, d)conduct a survey. Now, I know I look Japanese but do I have this "please stop me" sign on my forehead. It's even funnier when I tell them I don't speak Japanese in japanese so that they'll go away.

And speaking of being randomly accosted, at about nine last night I decided to wander down to the main area of Roppongi, where I live, to get some food. The problem being Roppongi is the night life district of foreigners in Tokyo. When I got picked up by no less than 3 different people within the span of 30m of so, I decided that hanging around the area alone was not such a good idea on a Saturday night and went to the grocery store and then home :-p

Which brings me back to the first point, I'm home now and staring at the subway map wondering where to go. If I stay home, I'll feel like i'm wasting one of my few weekends in Tokyo, but if I go out i'll have to fight the crowds. *grin* People would probably kill to have this kind of decision to make.

Faced with the threat of overdose undermining the effectiveness of my usual source, I have officially taken up a new vice. As I sit here at my desk, polishing off the last drops of my bottle, I can see the pattern of the next few weeks stretching out before me.

Although, i knew the Japanese were rampent consumers of this good, i had before managed to resist my relapse into this habit through sheer force of will, despite having cumulatively spent close to half a year in Japan.

Alas, no longer. I am sad to report that my daily consumption dose has steadily been climbing upward since wednesday when I started work. I maintain however that although peer presure has definitely played a part in my descent, (everybody can be seen to drink much of this, esp late in the day), I take full responsibilty for my own downfall.

For the moment, the pattern and plan is to abstain on weekends, hopefully reducing the risk of rapid acclimitazation to the drug, letting the dose slowly increase throughout the week.

Unfortunately, I am sad to report that the odds are entirely against me. My mother is a known addict and at the peak of my addiction, (which occured when I was 14 - I was always a precocious kid), I was known to need 6 doses a day to avoid going into withdrawal.

And if by this point you haven't already figured it out. I'm talking about Coffee.

Spent the day wandering around roppongi. I like the shops on the street much better than the hills which is practically a city within a city, it's kinda like a mall cum residences kind of place. Found an english book sale too :-p Not bad for a start.

By the way my apartment is gorgeous. I know I've said this to everyone already but I really love it. Right at the heart of town, on the main road, it's got really good security. you can't even get in the main door to the complex without a key. Fully airconditioned, large, with cable. It's actually fairly large. I love this apartment. It also costs more than my salary. :-p. Guess this is a strictly one-off opportunity.

I am exhausted. I don't know why travelling in planes always does that to you. Leave you far more tired than you ought to be considering you haven't been moving much the entire time. Perhaps it's the stress of entering a new country or foreign one and having to find your way.

But yes, my apartment is gorgeous. Or at least it is to me. Considering I was expecting a tiny thing this is gorgeous, palatial by tokyo standards. *grin* I love it already. My very own personal space. You know, I could get used to this, even if living alone in tokyo is a little lonely, everyone's been really nice so far.

I think I'll go take a bath in the lovely tub... *smile* I loooooooove having an apartment. With AIRCONDITION. *grin* it was 34.5 degrees celcius when I arrived and that was in the evening... i hate to think what noon weather will be like.

Am at the airport now having forgotten:
1. my i-20
2. my contract
3. my sia mileage card.
 
Oh well, I will have the second faxed to my apartment in Japan and the other two hopefully gotten later.
Hee hee, oops. Apparently I'm not too good at remembering important things.
 
Since I'm severely sleep deprived I shall now board the plane and attempt to sleep until they ply me with food and/or entertainment. Something else I forgot, a book. I forgot I have an unread book in my room, the latest Magaret Atwood. Darned, I was looking forward to reading it too. I really have to remember details like that. Now I won't get to read it for another year.
 
To all those who I did see in Singapore: i had a great time and thanks for the memories
To those I didn't: Sorry I wasn't in Singapore so long this time but hope I'll see you next trip round.
 
First day of work tomorrow. Just thinking of it gives my stomach butterflies. I wish I was drop dead gorgeous or at least have better fitting suits. Maybe that would have given me slightly more confidence :-p.
 

Oooh. I got my apartment detail. I'm going to be living in Roppongi :-) That's like the equivalant of having a service apartment in Orchard Road. Which is what it is by the way... a service apartment. *grin* I get to walk to work. :-)
How many people can say that?
 

Another hung over, slept way too late last night and woke up too early this morning, day. Desipte me blogging 2 days ago that I am really old to be doing this I wound up doing it all over again.

To crown that all off, my mum woke me at 9 this morning, a phone call for my mum woke me again at 10 and a phone call for me woke me at 11. At which point I have decided not to bother trying to go back to sleep

But right, about that phone call for me. Apparently I'm flying on Monday or Tuesday to start work in Tokyo. Unfortunately the catch is that since I'm going in on a tourist visa, they can't pay me till my actual visa comes through and is converted which might be at the last week.. so I'm going to have to find a way to survive on tokyo with little or no money!

Hmmmm.... I forsee problems. :-p

I am definitely not as young as I used to be. I say this because it's 11am and i just got up from having been out till 4am in the morning. The distinct heavy groggy feeling you get from having had a strange amount of sleep and having stayed up too late is defintely making the world seem removed through a layer of film.

How did I use to stay up till 6-7am in the morning and not even feel the effects when I a woke 4-5 hours later? Even better, how did I use to go dancing till 3am AND stay out that late without feeling the effects. Probably the miricle of youth. And here I was thinking that I was going to be able to do this on a daily basis, working in the intense financial sector. I imagine this will get worse as I get older.

Recently I've become hooked on Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake novels. Basically, sex, blood and violence all wrapped up in a neat little package. Although I'd be the first to admit that i like sensual writing and thus the novels would hold a natural pull for me, I think what really attracts me to these novels is the heroine in the tale, Anita.

Supposedly a vampire hunter, she ends up sleeping with both a vampire and a werewolf and worrying about whether or not she is turning more into a monster than both of them. Strangely enough, it's not her humanity that attracts me to her but what makes her a "monster", the ability to kill because it is necessary to protect herself, people she cares about or for the "greater good". The lack of sleep loss after such a kill. Not letting anyone else do anything she wouldn't do herself, even if what is required is distasteful. In one instance, she tortures a baddie because it was necessary and she wouldn't make someone else do something she wasn't willing to do.

I guess it's the hard and fast ability to do what is necessary that attracts me so much to her. I once had a friend comment that she could see me ruling the world but none of my other friends and when pressed to ask why, she said it was because anyone else would be too nice to get the job done. To any of my old schoolmates who knew me before, I'm sure at this point they would be wondering what gives, since I was probably always one of the fluffiest and unclearminded of the lot. I know we don't see the changes that we ourselves go through but lately I've been wondering if it's not just that the persona I've built for myself in the US is different from the one in Singapore. Or maybe it's that you can't build personas for yourself and expect to disengage completely from them. So maybe in being more shielded and apart in the US, I've learnt to do that at all times.

If you had to kill 1000 people to save the world, would you do it? An extremely metaphysical question. A long time ago, I answered that I'd rather kill myself than kill someone else, but when it comes down to it if I had to kill someone in order that a 1000 people might be saved, that's a very different question. I might very well do it. And if I had to do it, I'm not sure I would be strong enough to do it by my own hand rather than simply ordering someone else to do it. I would like to be but... Some part of me would be scared that I would enjoy the killing, the power over someone else's life. Some part of me will be terrified that i'm killing some more innocence I used to have. You can't kill someone else or do anything against your morals without sacrificing at least a part of yourself really. But if we don't face up to our own monsters how can we make others do so?

Other recent readings that I'm still thinking about include The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but that is one book that needs to sit and germinate before i can write anything on it.

I'm confused.

I've just been informed through email that the intern visa would take 4 weeks to process. As it is I have seven weeks left of summer.. seven weeks left to do an internship and I don't see how a three week internship serves anyone's purpose. I was also given the impression that I would be able to do seven weeks.

*sigh*

Would I even still go to Japan? The case hangs on a balance.

So after a week or so of horrendous fast talking and staying up late to try and coordinate time zones I think I'm finally done with the paperwork... at least for the visa part. I haven't yet found an air ticket yet.... but that should be simple by comparison.

I think I'm going to take a well deserved break by going to play FF9 (For those in the know it's what I've been doing all week, which explains why I'm not blogging much)

I am extremely tempted at this point to sue the university.

For those who have not been following the long saga that is my life, I have to obtain a university support letter for the internship before I can get a visa to work in Japan. Of course after a week of equivocating, with me calling them every day, the univerisity has finally decided that they cannot sign the letter which has never happened before according to the company in japan.

So i figure 20 million to 50 million ought to be my due recompense for this. I mean, not only are they losing me an internship but the possibility of an extremely lucrative career in Trading or I-banking.

My evidence is there, I have various letters to the university saying that the wording of the letter can be changed, I have a letter stressing the importance of this letter.. and I figure I even have a precedence.. if you can call the guy who sued the postal service for 20 million because his acceptance letter never got to him costing him a college education a precedence.

I even have a punitive damages plea of extreme duress cost to me. After this amount of stress and upsetment, I'm sure my lifespan has been shortened by at least a year with all this worrying. Now all that's left is to find a good lawyer.

So anyone here know a good lawyer based in the USA?

Some 10 or 20 years later as I am lying on my therapist's couch, I can already see the shape of the conversation that would take place.

"So tell me how you can be both extremely conscious of your appearance and at the same time not care at all about your appearenace? Don't you feel that this is a contridiction?" My fictional therapist would ask as I sit on the couch day dreaming about the past 20 or so years and what I would have changed.

"Grow up with my mother." would be my short, to the point and pithy response.

:-p

Don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly complaining about my mother I mean after 22 years you'd think I'd get used to it. And I know all the usual arguements and justifications.. yes she grew up in a time when looks were frightfully important rather than intelligence and therefore priorities on appearance rather than on a career or anything else.

Instead, what this post is really about is this strange realization I've come to, that having people around you that somehow or other make you feel that you're not as pretty as everyone else (whether through outright telling you or just making you feel inadequate in that department)has a twin effect in opposite directions.

What do I mean by this? Well firstly there's the total rebellion effect. The well-no-matter-what-I-do-I-can't-be-pretty-anyway-so-why-should-I-bother-effect. That, of course, speaks for itself.

More surprising is that the opposite is also true. I admit that most of the time the first effect is predominant, I'm usually in jeans and a t-shirt. My mum complains I dress like a boy and when I'm on campus I pretty much don't bother to correct that impression. But occasionally I feel like dressing up. My housemates and I once compared this and I think I am the only one who actually doesn't much mind getting hit on by guys or getting stares from them as i walk down the street in a short skirt. I suspect part of this is that I grew up in an area so safe that I can't imagine any danger happening to me personally, but the other half is that for me that's kind of another kind of rebellion.. proving some imaginary part of my brain that repeats everything my mother says at me, wrong.

So on the one side, you get the no make up, not even colour-coordinated, randomly dressed me, and on the other, this elaborately crafted outfit usually involving some attention-grabbing colour and even more attention-grabbing lack of length of skirt complete with matching socks and makeup that is also me.

I suspect my therapist is going to have a field day.
But then, first she's going to have to contend with all the other (probably more severe)stuff... like how I am going to tell my mum that no, I don't want plastic surgery.

I received my contract and signed it. :-) I have to zap my passport and all those other things and send photos and all but I should be able to send that all out by today. The only problem being the letter from brown which might take longer. Hopefully I can pressure them to get that done faster.

I get paid weekly! That's a good thing because that means I would have the cash to get things done. If I didn't I wouldn't know what to do! :-p

I GOT THE JOB!!!!

Erm. yes I've been pretty quiet about that online. Suffice to say I will be flying back to tokyo within the next two weeks as soon as my visa is done and I'll have a seven to eight week internship in a huge huge bank with their credit trading division. Oh god.. seventy hour or more work weeks. lol. ME working them!!!

Yes so for everyone out there. I won't be home for long so erm.. have lunch with me before I disappear again. For the moment there are tons of little things to accomplish. Like photos for visas, suits, shoes. Things like that.

I'M HOME. and by home I of course mean Singapore. Although recently, and not so recently, I've had my doubts.

Kinda anti-climatic. Now that I'm home I don't really want to or feel like going out. I admit the weather has a great deal to do with that. In addition to the heat, there's the humidity that makes the air heavy and hard to breathe.

Temperature aside though, it seems each time I return there's less and less to do. I don't feel the same need to go out and reaqquaint myself with all the "happening" places down on the town any longer and each time I return it seems I get in touch with fewer friends. The evidence does not look good. I graduate next year and I have no idea where I'll be going after. It seems I don't have ties to maintain at any place almost... but aren't ties what makes us human? As much as we all don't want any responsibilty or don't want any ties to anything that will trap us, I think that those same traps are what keeps us alive. If you have no ties to anyone or anywhere, then what's the point of staying alive?

*sigh* off to take another shower to cool down.

While I was in tokyo i was lucky enough to see the Olympic Torch Relay pass through tokyo by chance... twice. The price of that was getting drenched by rain for an hour.. but as I don't seem to be falling sick yet.. I guess it was worth it.

So I'm still hanging in the middle of nowhere with this whole internship thing. They emailed saying they:ll make a decision soon but I'm already out of the US.

In addition to that, my housemates are seriously irritating the hell out of me. i know they are my best friends but honestly sometimes i just want to scream how the hell can all of you be so bloody immature at them. I still have to live with them next year. But honestly, I hate having to be the mature one and I simply don:t have the energy to yell at them so I usually end up keeping my mouth shut and just letting it be.

Sometimes, I hate my life.

walking on line fence when maybe either side would be the right one. wish i could just do that and choose.

The Hanged man: major acarna card. Suspension with an imperative. I need to find myself but somehow that's what I've been trying to do the rest of my life so far. Or maybe I need to let go and see where that goes. Sometimes, letting go is harder than trying to do something.
The Amethyst: Hopeless Romantic, searching for a soulmate, opens the third eye.

I got these readings a week ago and still they linger in my mind a little. Not bothering me but just something to think about. I decided to just put the readings here. Seems like lately, I've had a lot to think about in my life and I guess on some level, I'm not quite ready to reconcile all this yet.

So i'm unreachable and going to be unreachable at least another week :-p... Actually I'm staying at Anne's and am only online now because I'm using the computer lab..

Saw two plays this week which are actually rather good. I think I miss being part of a production. Feeling like a gear in a machine and making something, making something work that is more than just what we put into it and somehow greater than ourselves. Persistance of vision. That was a line in the play I just came home from tonight. I think once upon a time, before I became a rootless dreamless creature to be blown about by the winds of fortune, or in my case, the winds of whatever creates fortune, I had that kind of a vision. Once upon a time, i had that kind of a vision about everything. Whatever I believed, I believed with a passion.

I suppose it's better really... to Not have the persistance of vision, in any case it's more comfortable, more practical, and infinitely more profitable. Sometimes, I still wish i believed in something, religion, academics, poetry, theatre.. just something. anything really. I guess that's why I drew the hanged man the other day which is a whole other story for another day and a different post.

I am DONE with my finals... now to pack. Lady J just informed me that the storage company is coming tonight instead of tomorrow as I orginally thought... *sigh* Aaargh. Time to madly pack

I had such a horrible interview. I've forgotten basic math, which he quized me on. I forgot how to do probabilities and am still unsure if I got that problem right.. which I think my friend is right and I probably got it wrong. Also on basic algebra and things like that. On the phone, pauses seem extremely wrong, so I somehow felt like I had to answer something, anything. As a result i think I answered 4 wrong answers before the right one and things like that. *sigh*

The second interview wasn't quite that bad. The third one was in Japanese. I've forgotten all my keigo. :-p I think that was possibly one of the worse series of interviews I've done. I need to practice my interview skills more. Esp, phone interviews.

Ah well. That's life I guess. *sigh*

Started listening to Korean music and developed a liking for Fin.K.L. or maybe it was the other way round.. I can't help it. They're so cheery and bouncy and airy. :-p My excuse is it definitely brightens up my room.

OMG. I have an interview tomorrow.. a phone interview.. I'm panicking already. What do I say?? What do I do?? What can I say? What if he hates me? What if he thinks I'm not good enough. What if I fail my exam tomorrow morning?

Right. Need to get things in perspective. Need to not fail exam tomorrow. Can worry about interview AFTER I do my exam. Never mind that my heart is racing because this is something really really want. Actaully wait I'm so scared I won't get it.. but I'm so scared I will get it. This job is scary.

Waiting is the hardest thing. I hate waiting. Especially when it's something that could be really important to me.

It's the eye of the tornado. The slight breather before the store restarts again.
Done with: two exams, one fifteen page paper and it's 2 page translation into mandarin.
Still to go: two more exams, packing and moving stuff into my new apartment for next year.
You know i wish I could just hire somebody to do all the moving for me. I don't mind moving my stuff, but moving the furniture that we're buying for the new place could be hell...
Oh and things are conspiring to put a PS2 in my hands.. a graduating friend just made me an offer to sell us his tv and PS2 as a bundle... *grin* I'm already buying his bed... I've been instructed to find out price :-p

Nearly overslept for my exam this morning... Lady J. Called me at 8.50am to check on me cause she was already in the exam room. Good thing she did. I may have missed that exam. I was going to get up at 6am to study too. Ah well.. at least it wasn't a bad exam. I got away with my pitiful amount of studying.. Now for tomorrow's exam. I still have yet to do the final draft and chinese translation of my paper that's due tomorrow.. oops.

Hmmm... I think i like the old blogger layout better.
On brighter news, I'm finally done with the first draft of my paper. Now i just have to edit it, translate and summarise in Chinese, and study for my two exams. one on wed and one on thurs..... I will be glad when thurs is over.

Have stupid 15 page paper to do which is not getting done. I have a vague idea what I want to write about but no detailed outline and 15 pages just looms at me. I HATE papers. Give me a good old exam to study for anytime.. well actually I have four of those in addition to my paper so guess what I should be doing now instead of blogging?

On another note.. trying really hard to persuade my housemates that we really should get a ps2 instead of a dvd player next year for our apartment. I'm not sure if i want to succeed. This might be detrimental to my thesis...

Just had dinner at my professor's house with the food his wife cooked.. YUMMY. haven't had good chinese food in so long and she made enough to feed an army. It's kind of sad that I got to know my class as we were ending school though, since it's a senior seminar most of the class is graduating too.

It's Spring Weekend! In other words, it's time for everyone on campus to go party, get drunk and hook up.
Except of course, us people with an over-developed sense of responsibility who can't even imagine doing that :-p
Ah well... I would say they're young, but I don't think even at 17 or 18 (typical incoming age for a freshman) I was ever that young. Actually even at 14 I was never that young.
Or maybe I go backwards I become less responsible with age. Maybe when I'm 30 you'll find me drunk in a disco or a bar. :-p

The Yaoi Selector: Which Uke are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

yay tsuzuki... I love him.. I'm happy... for the uninitiated he's from Yami no Matsuei - a shoujo manga.

Road collapses along Nicoll Highway

have to admit when I first saw that on J's blog, I looked at my watch to check if it was April Fools. It's definitely way past, and I checked the ST. The second thing I thought of was terrorism. The article had an understated feel to it and I suspect that's how the government would portray it if it really was terrrorism.. which it probably isn't but no harm being paranoid.

Lol. I just realised that I should link to the draft bill at least so you guys know what I'm talking about.. .
so here...

papayagirl: About the draft bill, some thoughts :-p....

Wow. I'm studying China and democracy at the moment as a class... and one of the topics that came up was how China looked to Singapore in several ways. One was that a fraction of the pro democratic segment thought that china could reach democracy through first having a benevolent dictator (in our case LKY). Which i don't agree with but that could be left to another time to argue. The second was when Deng XiaoPing himself referred to Singapore as a model for China... i.e. retaining confucian values, and lack of personal freedoms while being economically successful and relatively free.

All I can say is I can definitely see those marks on the draft bill. J, the exclusions and exemptions for net public benefit or strong public interest definitely did jump out at me. Especially when I start wondering who determines the net public benefit or the strong public interest? Is the Government going to be regulating this bill? or an independent authority. Because if it is the government directly then i can definitely see that there might be problems with govenment-owned enterprises (the ones that are privately run and thus subject to that bill) claiming that it is doing net public interest when it isn't.

I think haivng article 12 raises the same problem because the exceptions too general and i can see too many loopholes in it. I suspect that the exceptions may be necessary for one or two special cases but if in general implemented are going to be huge loopholes. Maybe if they set a harder procedure for an exception to be granted... like exceptions only granted after analysis by independent body?

Although since gov. and stat bodies aren't included in the bill that's an even bigger problem with the stat boards.

I think what I'm really interested in seeing is how independent this competition commission is going to be, and how much under the government they are. As well as how incorruptible they are, especially since if you're dealing with monopolies and supernormal profits of any kind, there is going to be a huge amount of money involved. While I know singapore is generally relatively low in corruption, I'm also interested in the kind of pressure these people will be under because I suspect that if they aren't granted that much power, they will be walked all over, or powerful companies will call in favours with even more powerful people to get themselves exempted.

Or maybe I've just been in the US too long to think that this is how the world works and that Singapore is no different.
Interesting thought. :-p

It's hillarious. My grammar sucks. I know it, it's the worse part of my languages for every language... and yet...


You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!


How grammatically sound are you?
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I hate to see how everyone else writes if this is what my standard is.

In response to Singaporeans maxxing out class limits... I wonder if it's because somewhere along the way we actually accumulated a love of learning.. or rather never lost it in the first place. One of the few things I like about the Singapore system is that, it's actually okay for you to be good at school work rather than social poison. Of course the problems come in when you realise that all singaporeans care about is schoolwork. but possibly the first is what made us the way we are... wanting to learn too much :-p

btw, the last of my midterms is finally over.. .beyond this it's just papers and finals.. whoo hoo

the world has not stopped spinning since yesterday morning. Well not spinning exactly but it won't stay still... it's kinda rocking... If i can just keep myself moving i can function almost normally.. but if i sit still at all it hits me. I haven't felt like this since the months after I blacked out from donating blood. I am beginning to think that it's more than just lack of sleep because I have gotten sleep and I have drunk lots of water and I've eaten. If I still feel this way come Monday, I'm going to health services.. but meanwhile there is the whole weekend.

whoo hoo.. linear algebra here I come... one year from now :-p I simply don't have space next semester... and eek I also have to take the GREs in september
Guess what I'm doing over summer? :-p

Am beginning to enjoy the fact that econ is very much applied math. Also figured out I need to take Linear Algebra sometime soon if I want to even consider Grad school

Drugged with tea, lack of sleep and chocolate. All in all not a bad combination, except for the weird sensation of the world not staying in one place. I'm not sure why it's spinning. I can't figure out if it's the lack of nutrients/food, or the lack of sleep or some weird combination of all of the above...

response to E.E.: Actually about cars I thought it was the other way round, In singapore and in the Japan, because of government policies, people change their cars after 10 years. Here, most people I know definitely drive cars that are more than 10 years old, some more than 20 years old.

Schools started again. Took my LAP class today alone because the other two volunteers are jewish and it's passover. *sigh* I guess as lessons go it wasn't that bad. The kids in this program are definitely much harder to handle than the kids in Japan though.

I hate reinstalling everything and figuring out what documents i've lost and whether it's worth it to pay 80 bucks to save them. DAMN.

hey guys my computer crashed... again. second time in three years. I want to scream. so I won't be around for a while.

jon's leaving tomorrow morn. *sigh* oh well. it was a good visit :-p

two midterms today. I think I'm just passing time till spring break gets here

Jon's here for a visit :-p yay.

L.N. : lol I'm not saying a crush is love but more like they're sorta related. kinda like if I can't even get a random crush on anyone I suspect love is an impossibilty :-p

S.S: I don't get crushes anymore. lol not that I ever really did in the first place. But it's kind of sad. I must have grown so cynical that I can't even fall in love at first sight anymore. There's always this train at the back saying, he's probably a jerk.. and stuff like that :-p

I turn 22 today. *sigh* It's also snowing crazily outside so I won't be able to do anything on my birthday except stay home :-(. On the bright side, my exam's over and I got cake and presents :-p

Current music: Should I stay by Dreamz FM

I've recently discovered dreamz fm who after I did some research on them online are a Singaporean band. hmm. :-p I fell in love with their music after listening to this song. Other current music? Blue Water by Zard. I've been listening to a lot of Zard lately.

Today in Japanese class, we discussed a newspaper article that was reporting on the replacing all the alcohol vending machines in Japan with card operated ones within five years so that minors can't get hold of alcohol. The article was printed at least 8 years ago. Last i looked, coin operated beer machines were still all over in Japan. That I think, says it all about how serioiusly Japan takes underage drinking. :-p

Seriously speaking, I don't think underage drinking is such a problem compared to smoking in Japan. Almost everyone in Japan smokes. Seriously. I think the smoker to non-smoker rate must be at least 70 percent. It's kinda scary walking around in a crowd and hoping no one accidentally brushes against you holding a cigarette. Last semester when I was in Kyoto, they started an ad series to try and curb smoking esp. among youngsters but I don't think they're focusing on the health issues enough. Most people in Japan, esp. the youngsters, don't start smoking knowing what they're doing to their lungs.

Back to Alcohol though, it's actually interesting why the US has such a problem with underage drinking even though they have the strictest laws regarding drink - you can't drink till you're over 21. I suspect two reasons. One is that families in the US seldom drink. I mean most of us have drank sips of wine back home on special occasions or things like that and so we grow used to the idea of alcohol. It's not taboo or forbidden. Whereas in America, maybe underage drinking is such a big problem precisely because it's seen as a mark of rebellion, doing something that is forbidden. Someone else in class mentioned that because most europeans drink at home, by the time they're old enough to get alcohol, they know their own limits and thus problems such as alcohol poisoning and drunk driving don't arise. I wonder.
It would be nice to walk around in college without some random drunk guys spoiling my night :-p

I'll have to admit I'm starting to get unfaithful thoughts towards my blog... the reason? LJ has pictures. lol. yeah I go for the frills. But my blog is going to be 3 years old in october so it's been around pretty long. I guess I'm having loyaty issues. Stick with my faithful buddy or go for the pretty frills... decisions decisions. ;-p

I'm finally done with my paper. Not as good as I would have liked it to be but I realised somewhere halfway in that i had written on the wrong topic and needed to change it. *sigh* long story. I mean why on earth do chinese name their movements �����˶�and �����˶���They're so easily mistaken for each other.

I still have a ton of stuff due either tonight or tomorrow. But just a quick comment i guess.
On God:
I think everyone knows my views on god by now. I believe in God I just don't really believe in the church. I agree about the huge disparity between the old and new testament Gods, and I also think it's strange that at the same time there is a disparity, and the church admits it, there is also this idea that God is eternal and unchanging. Definitely a logical paradox. I would go to bible school to learn more and figure out more and work out all my problems and answers but even in church they keep telling me, you should have faith, or it's just because, or it's his big plan. and things like that. I suspect I'd get kicked out of bible college for asking questions.

I think that was where my huge disparity with the church began, because for them asking questions was a sign of disbelief or of doubt and for me it was a sign of faith of intelligence. I'd rather try and understand everything and work out all my problems with it than rely on blind faith because I've seen where that path leads.

SS, I think most of us are like that btw, finding your own church? maybe the reason why we don't have our own church is because our beliefs don't require us to have one. We believe in God but we don't believe in many of the stringent rules on behavior, we don't believe in running out to convert everybody on sight, why else do we need a church? For support on beliefs and for a community? We have that. Our friends are that who are, for the most part mostly like us with similar beliefs :-p Something to think about anyway.

Okay you guys are not going to get much of entries from me at least until i'm done with this stupid paper sometime tomorrow night. It's a paper on the May 4th movement in China and it's impact on China. (esp. in terms of the democracy wall) and the catch? it's in Chinese. *sigh* btw. I'm definitely the "really messed up in the head" type :-p)

Have an econ and the law exam tomorrow. concepts not enering my head to be understood/memorised. Actually I know the exam is going to be fairly easy which means everyone is going to do well which means I actually have to understand every single concept. that sucks. :-p I'm used to getting away with not knowing stuff. darned. oh well back to Kaldor and the edgeworth box.

There is NO WATER. That's really irritating. it's the second time this semester already. I can hear the work vans outside my window which means that a pipe prob. burst in the street again. AAARGH. it's really irritating.

I know this is going to strat turning into a food listing but I made fish with a sauce/topping of spinach and feta cheese :-p I like being creative with the materials at hand. Whether or not I cook tomorrow though depends on whether the water is actually back.

Haven't been blogging much lately but I'm really exhausted.
Good things today:
1. I cooked. Made Japanese curry which people who had it said was really good :-). Although I def. admit that it didn't take much effort on my part. I mean it's not like i have to measure the spices i need to put in or anything. Also have mashed potatoes from that I'm going to make into croquettes someday soon, in addition to enough curry to last for quite a while. That was in the afternoon. I was going to make dessert tonight by frying honey in wonton skins but then I got too exhausted.
2. I had my first community service session today. No wonder I was tired. the kids are a handful.
Bad things today:
1. I HAVEN'T TOUCHED MY BOOKS FOR ECON AND THE LAW EXAM YET. yeah that was a bit of early panicking lol. For the most part i find my subconcious dictates my pace of studying where my conscious mind panics. That's the scary part. Somewhere in the back of my head I know that I can get by without studying till like the morning of the exam or the night before and therefore that's the way I work. my conscious mind tells me that i should study so I sit there with the book or paper or whatever but literally stare at it and get no work done till the night before the exam. I need to brainwash my subconcious so I work harder. The problem is that my subconcious is right 90 percent of the time. I don't need to study. But what about the other 10 percent???

In resp. to LN's post:
I def. agree about the same individual having both the grace of heaven and the cruelty of hell - i mean that's probably the definition of the human-being for me. But somehow expecting nothing seems to me a little sad sometimes, kind of like I feel there should be certain things we should be able to expect from people... like basic human courtesy or decency... which I know often disappoints but somehow not expecting these things is a little too like giving up entirely on the human condition. I don't know. I haven't entirely resolved this issue either.

Today is happy. well mostly because i did well in my labor econ midterm afterall and screwed up the curve for the class.. as my friends so happily accuse me of doing :-p. (It's rare enough for me to top a class that I'm still happy about it) but also because I get free good indian food for dinner as part of being a tutor. It's actually a study break for brown tutoring. I like this whole perks idea. esp. when it's free food. food makes me happy.

On other news, am trying to persuade Fire that she should date this cetain freshman who emailed her out of the blue and asked her out for tea. isn't actually as exciting as it seems becasue we don't exactly know the freshman's intentions but she sounds welll-balanced and cool and I think my ex-roommate deserves someone well-balanced and cool. lol.

Received an email from aeryise about a posting on a mutual friend's blog that basically talked about being torn between faith in mankind and cynicalism about the depths to which humans can go. I guess in response to aeryise's question about how one can live in that state. I think you really grow to survive with that mindset.

I don't even think of it as heartbreak anymore. I used to be extremely idealistic, i think you all start that way when you are a kid. That's why in the model United Nations conferences that we used to organise for the secondary school kids, countries always reached peaceful solutions within the span of an hour. In the real world, China would never fall over apologising for aiming nuclear missiles at Taiwan. World Peace would not be proposed and reached as a treaty in the span of a day. Things just don't work that way, because we're all too old and cynical about it. Too scared that everyone is going to try and take the bigger piece in order to actually try to increase the pie.

But back to the point, I'm older and I guess wiser now, at least in the ways of the world and still trying to find the balance between faith that men do good things and the overwelming evidence that men do some pretty awful things too. The sad part is that the good things usually come as individual acts and the awful things as events on a world scale.

How do you live with heartbreak when the object of heartbreak isn't a person but an idea?
Well, maybe the answer is the same as how you live with normal heartbreak. You scream and cry about it for a while, you get mad at the world for a while.. and then you realise that u being mad at the world or the guy or the idea doesn't do anything to change it. After a while, the pain dulls, and then you learn to live with it. Every once in while, I still want to scream about the injustice of the world, or something awful that i read in the newspapers (the sad part is that that often comes in the letters or opinions pages than in the actual articles), but for the most part, it's there but i can live with it.
The way I see it, there's no point in being cynical because that just perpetuates it. If I hate mankind and I think mankind is going to do awful things to me, I'm more likely to do awful things or even just not to do nice things because i don't think they'd be appreciate it or because I'd get hurt doing it. Just because most christians (I'm sorry to say) are concerned with judging others doesn't mean that there aren't any who are truly selfless and love their neighbours.

In the end I think, it was the quote from one song that kind of caught me and held me there.

"And I hear them saying you'll never change things,
that no matter what you do it's still the same things.
But it's not the world that I'm changing.
I do this so, this world will know
that it will not change me."

Extremely idealistic perhaps, and I'd be the first to admit that I don't always live up to it.. but it would be so nice if I could.

On New York:

I'm back from a short (extremely short) trip to new york to see Gypsy, a broadway musical. In actuality the reason was to drop off Lady J's old car and pick up her new one. But the trip was worth it just to see the musical although I can't say I'd be doing that again anytime soon. It's a pretty long drive down for a show.

Driving through the streets of New York somehow reminded me of being in Tokyo. Being in a big city. I decided a long time back that I was meant to be a city girl. I love exploring cities, turning up strange and cool places and simply wandering around, getting lost and getting found again. However, I'm not sure that New York would ever be that city. Although I mostly only saw it by car, and granted it was the winter time, I don't think New York would ever be somewhere that I would like to live.

Maybe I've been spoilt by Tokyo. I wanted NY to be vibrant, cool, and happening. I wanted it to have people walking on the streets that looked happy to be there. I wanted it to be a city without the business side i guess, but all I managed to see was the boring "normal" life that people with money could live. Give me harajuku anytime :-p

Then again, I was there with Lady J's dad and step mom. I suppose it would be drastically different if i went to college there. Or simply just went to stay with friends.

response to Lucid. N:

lol, i think sylfien would answer your questions better but as he's rarely online I volunteer to answer any questions as best as I can :-p

Okay a couple of responses to e.e.:

On reading for pleasure: hon, as much as we like to pretend otherwise, most people in college don't have time to read for pleasure. you're lucky that you read fast enough to be able to enjoy the privilege. In any case, for classes in humanities imagine having to read a book a week for each class and then wonder where in the world people find time or brain power to read outside that and still process the new ideas. As a science major, at least phillosphy and history and all are pretty different but to a hummanities major, there are enough new ideas in the material on the reading list.

On Government: lol, you're more a conspiracy theorist than I am. Or maybe you've more faith in the government's abilities and power. To me, you can't do anything everywhere, there are always elements you can't control where people are concerend. I don't belive in real life vetinaris. I'm not sure what I believe as regards that issue. :-p

la la la... on liang teh high.. which has lasted since 6am this morn?? yeah the caffiene or whatever it is they put in that thing is amazing.. ladilah... I'm hyper.. still. and it's LAAAATE at night. maybe I'll go take a shower and it'll relax me. Wow. i need a shot of this thing EVERYDAY.

Okay okay so I'm writing an entry already. I have a midterm in Labor econ tomorrow and of course it took me till last night staring at my notebook in my bed just before turning in the towel to sleep before I realized that the reason why I wasn't getting those particular quesitons is that i had transcribed the solution from my notebook wrongly. Sheesh. These things get me everytime, and I don't know why I'm always more productive when I'm supposed to be in bed sleeping. *lol*

Anyway responses to people:

Luc. N: Good luck in the job search. I can't believe I have to do that in a year and I'll probably in the same boat. I hate it that people around me are getting internship offers and job offers left right center and i'm just sitting here and going.. yeah.. I'm not that good. :-p

Enf. E: I never regret talking to you :-p lol. no seriously. It was nice. Every once in a while I need reminding that I do have friends elsewhere. For some reason I'm way closer to you and D than I'll ever be to my friends here in providence. Maybe it's the value system or simply the fact that we've had more time to get used to each other and accept each other for what we are.
Oh btw, did you know that asian christians have the same reputation as people from the bible belt.. kinda. lol I just tell people my parents are asian christian and they TOTALLY understand. I think Asians tend to take value systems to an extreme, or maybe they're just so used to having a code to act on which is why they are in general more extremeist in religion or something.

S.S: ganbatte nee. watashimo nan ka kono syu kan wa totemo muzukashi desu kedo ganbare.

S.M: hey sweets. I've come to realise how healthy the american way of doing these things are :-p Or at least compared to singaporeans. Maybe it's all very romantic and all but I think singaporeans tend to put a lot of emphasis on relationships being like your one true love and leading up to marriage. And I'm not just saying that because I'm not affected because I swear I wouldn't have such high standards otherwise (why oh why won't I just go get a random guy) So it's all well and good if it works out. *smile at a certain long-standing couple* but if it doesn't it tends to want to screw up and twist your life because it makes it that much harder to get over because each relationship was so important in the first place. Maybe it would be better if we were all just taking everything as it comes. relationships day by day without expecting anything more so that if it happens it happens and if it doesn't work out, it doesnt' screw up our lives for years to come :-p
lol. and if you've watched battle royale, the couple survive not killing anyone, being extremely lucky, and being protected by another guy who of course since he killed people, dies. (this is the movie world, the innocent survive). In the real world this would never be the case.... a.k.a. if you put me on a dessert island and told me I had to kill other people, I prob. wouldn't be the last one standing :-p

It's Valentine's Day!!! whoo hoo. not that I'm doing anything special with anybody or something. lol. In fact, the only thing cool I'm doing is work and we all know how cool that is :-p. The only way this has affected me so far is the fact that I can't use my kitchen because there is a couple in the kitchen and they are taking up the whole kitchen :-(.
Oh well, I guess dinner today is going to be incredibly late.

"RUN!"
-#15 Nanahara Shuya


Which Battle Royale Character are You?
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yeah.. so my only response is at least I get to survive in a movie kind of world. In the real world, I am SO dead.

two more servings of stew left! :-p they are kind of frozen because the tiny freezer compartment on my tiny fridge works so well that anything you put below or beside it gets frozen too. lol. I have to use up the chicken I bought soon though so it might be fried rice today :-p

Wednesdays are my language days. I have japanese for an hour and then 2 and a half hours of chinese. Or rather Chinese democracy and trying to translate everything into english. My notes for that class are a mess of english and chinese. All in all I think I didn't come out so bad. I can understand and speak chinese mostly and am fluent in english. That's more than I can say for most that come out of the bilingual education idea. Maybe people aren't meant to be bilingual becuase depsite everyone having to have done both languages how many of us can truly say we are fluent in both?

Just made stew.. with enough leftovers to feed me for four more meals. *grin* not bad for 8 bucks or so huh? I guess that is the cheapest way to eat really, just cook. the problem is that now i have to eat stew for 5 meals.. hmm.. maybe I could start doing the whole creative thing like the 100 dollar a month girl on tv in japan and make stew into different things.. I wonder if stew would change taste if I added curry powder to it. lol.

on a sadder note it's going to be a five hundred dollar deposit to get a phone.. like seriously!
*sigh*

I went to a gay bar for the first time yesterday.
Did that get your attention yet?
Actually it wasn't really a gay bar, it was a club and it was called Pulse. It's kinda like a disco. It was also ladies night which meant tons of interesting sights around. lol.
I mean where else do you get to see so many girls making out with each other on the dance floor?
A guy's dream huh? Well, I came to the conclusion that even if I were a guy, not really.
i mean I think if I were gay or bi, I'd go for a girl who was strong and outgoing, but still girly. Maybe I'm just looking for someone who is a little like myself but also all the things I'm not but I wish I could be. I wouldn't want a girl who reminded me of a guy though. even though technically speaking I'm straight so I mean I would want a guy. hmm... weird.
Anyway, that's one of the conclusions I reached last night. I'm straight. lol. Not that I was uncomfortable at the club or anything. It was fun to get out and dance again, especially with a big group of friends, and the music was nice and all but I kinda realised that I wasn't attracted to any female in the club :-p none of the males either but as they were all gay I wouldn't have gotten them anyway.
*grin*