Time to cut down

(Top down) Waiting for Frankfurt; Grimy cold steel; why pee in toilet./?

Switched over to American time. And now American spelling. Realized how crappy I might have sounded in my last blog entry, it wasn't really me. I shall change it once I have the time to.

Switched over to American time. And now American spelling. Realized how crappy I might have sounded in my last blog entry, it wasn't really me. I shall change it once I have the time to.

The days flew by really fast. I'm in Frankfurt now, going to board the plane to New York. I'm sitting beside this Indonesian woman who's traveling back home-which is now Quebec, Canada-with her young daughter, who speaks Spanish, French, English and Bahasa. It is crazy, especially when I can't even handle two languages, the one I'm worse at being my very own mother tongue. She is a nice woman, she offered me her unused serviettes because I was sniffing and sniffing for a big part of the flight. But I'm better now.

The woman next to me worked in the Government of Indonesia, doing transmigration. Remember Maryanne Chong in the days of olde? Where Geography meant two times textbooks, one blue and one green, one physical and one human. Transmigration was what we studied in Population, about how the government decided to pluck people from the city and stick them in newly-cleared forest land. Didn't find out much about the job though. She's retired, at her very young age (late thirties?). She says the income tax in Quebec is 50%, and to hire a babysitter while she works would cost much, implying the impossibility of a viable arrangement. She's lived in Manchester, other parts of Europe, and now in Canada. Doesn't seem to like Jakarta that much, even though she once worked for their 'gahmen'. But while I was initially disgruntled, I understood her sentiments later on when she mentioned how dangerous it was.

Through much-interrupted viewings of 'Sin City', 'The Interpreter' and 'Kingdom of Heaven', fitful bouts of sleep and readings of 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' (which is a fantastic story but I couldn't really concentrate on the plane, at least enough so to finish a chapter at a time-or worse still, paragraphs), I found out that Mrs. Indonesia last lived in Venezuela, and before that, Kashmir! Her husband builds dams for the harvest of energy, which is plausible enough a reason for one to be in Kashmir. She said that she flew around in Indian Army helicopters, because the dam was owned by the government. And for obvious reasons, you need some form of protection in Kashmir. Dam it!


Just got to New York. Had a bit of trouble bringing all my stuff over to Terminal 9. Actually, I didn't even know I was supposed to go to Terminal 9 haha. After traversing the Arrival Hall twice, I asked a counter staff-who looked extremely disgruntled and bored, but turned out to be quite helpful-where the hell I was supposed to go, and she asked me to take the sky-train to T9. She directed me to the elevators, which were both spoilt, so I ended up going all the way to the other end of T9. So in total, I traversed the Arrival Hall five or six times. On the way to the elevators that worked, I crossed the path of a Singaporean whom I overheard asking the same counter staff where to go for the connecting flight to Boston. Told him that the elevators he was heading to were not working, and he acknowledged-but continued walking in the same direction. See la, kiasu Singaporean, don't believe me.

So after traversing the hall many many times, taking the elevator up and down a couple of times because I didn't know which floor to get off at the T9 building and bumping into countless doors and corridors with my elongated guitar case, I got to check-in. Hurrah! Met Isabelle, who's going to Tufts. Haha she took the same flight as me and I didn't even know it. Also met my newfound Indonesian friend and her daughter, wished her a safe trip back to home in Quebec. Managed to bargain with this Kenyan-I think-check-in staff and got my grossly overweight bags checked-in for free. Why pee one, American Airlines/JFK zero.


Arrived at Amherst about two hours after I met Nasko at the airport. Turns out he isn't an Indian but a Bulgarian, because I thought his name sounded Indian! He was accompanied by a fellow senior, a chap from Vietnam who grew up in Paris-his name, Viet.

Today was pretty much a slow day, free and easy. Met many international students, not all of them freshmen too. There are still many more who will come so I guess I should make the effort to socialize a bit more and be less clingy with fellow asians. Had a slice of pizza at the International Students Association pizza mixer-the pizza had cheese and nachos on it, damn it! Pizza one, why pee's arteries zero.

Last day here

Amidst all the goodbye messages and fond farewells and the mandatory visits to relatives, packing has remained a perpetual headache. I laughed, very loud, at people who told me they were bringing 60 kilograms of luggages. Now it is time to laugh at myself, because one of my bags weighs 35 kg, and the other weighs 28 kg. You can do the math for me, even though I'm supposed to take a math diagnostic test so I can skip the modules on Calculus. And I haven't even counted the guitar I'm going to check in! xoBile!

I am growing older day by day, becoming the uncle some people have postulated me to be. Haha.







Last birthday in Singapore. For quite some time, at least :p

Dedicated to Zhuang and the lawyers

Just shopping for courses online when I saw this:

POSC-18

Social Organization of Law

Political Science

The Image of Law in Social and Political Thought. Law haunts the imagination of social and political thinkers. For some, law is a crucial tool for the radical reconstruction of society, an essential component of any utopian project. For others, law is by its very nature conservative, ever wedded to the status quo, a cumbersome and confusing apparatus made necessary by a world of imperfection. This course will attempt to make sense of the diverse and contradictory images of law which inform the work of social and political theorists. We will examine how images of law both lie at the center of, and are constituted by, concepts of personhood, community, legitimacy, and power. Readings include works by (or about) Thoreau, Hobbes, Blackstone, Marx, Freud, and such contemporary thinkers as Shklar, Unger, Hart, and Fish. Second semester. Professor Kearns.

I'm having a huge headache trying to choose which courses to take. To those who have witnessed how complex my reflections can become-yes, it's happening again. I love reflections, don't I? Just ask Ah Khoon. Oh but I'm not really complaining, I think the problem of choice is a good one to have, at least in this context!

The chronicles of why pee begin here

I leave for Amherst in two days time. I will post pictures of my travels across the world! Muahahahaha!