It's been a while since i last posted

because i've been busy wrapping things up. last night i had more beer than the whole semester combined. 8 bottles. not a lot, i know. but as a person who used to (prior to the summer in China) hate beer (the smell, the taste, the whole existence) to pieces that's pretty...ground-breaking. result? busting out a blog entry at 7:30 AM.

More later.

omg this is so funny i have to post for my memory's sake

me: omg i thought i was super tolerant

but now dont think so anymoreee

like one night, i had 3-4 barcardi breezer-type bottles

and i started to dance on the table within 40 mins

zsharpminor: HAHAHA

me: i guess its becos i didn't space it

omg i have a tendency to binge-drink lol

zsharpminor: omg i kinda got woozy off of plum wine last saturday cos i didn't really drink anything else with it

me: my friends and i drank 2 bottles of wine EACH when we were at a fondue restaurant in paris.

zsharpminor: omg that's amazin

me: and then we start to dance in the street

in monmartre

zsharpminor: hahaha that sounds so fun

me: and have les parisiens laugh at us

becos it was 9p

m

lol

zsharpminor: hahah

me: and according to my friends, i slid down the stairs LOL

zsharpminor: HAHA amazing

me: hard-ass wooden stairs

zsharpminor: the powrs of booze

me: steeep and narrow

Last chance to flaunt

I can't believe that I would be saying this, but now my undergrad career is almost done. For the past three days I have turned in three papers. And now I'm going to study for my last final exam of my university life, early 19th century art.

I still remember this same feeling that occurred to me my senior spring in high school. I don't recall the subject I was studying for anymore, but i vividly remember telling myself this. i think it's because the sheer end of something is more symbolically powerful than that something itself. but i just hope that one day in the future - maybe the last day of my grad school - i'll still recall this very day when I just sat down and prepared for this exam. just for the hell of it, perhaps.

I don't know how to feel about graduating. Of course, as with anything in my life, i want to move on and try new things. but these past four years has certainly been a hell of a ride. people ask me if i'm 'excited.' my only, and pretentious, reaction would be like why would you feel excited about something you have planned out since the beginning, something you know is sure to happen?

Of course i am sad, wishing i had a few more months so i would have done something differently. but because i am me, i know by the end of these imaginary extra months, i would still wish i could prolong it further. so i guess the best word that captures my feeling and action is stunned. i'm stunned at the swift passage of time, at how much i have learned and changed, and at the person I now am and the person that I've come to love.

I didn't realise until recently that college is more about how we learnings than the things we learn. and i'm glad that although now i'm not where i've wanted to be yet, at least i think now i know how to get be to where i want to be. it's all about will power.

Back to where i started. tonight and tomorrow will be my absolute last chance to flaunt as a liberal arts student. although i've lost all my ability to focus, i'll just try my best and pull this together one last time. because i know i will regret this. next month and maybe forever, i won't get to run around carrying this 19th-century art reader. yes i'm a pretty superficial and self-absorbed poser. but it gives me joy.

Another recent adventure... 10 minutes ago in fact.

Hi,

A sweet-tooth that i am, a meal without desserts to top everything off is never quite satisfying. So tonight, after I finished my home-cooked pasta with string beans and chicken franks (now that sounds very home-cooked), I dashed like a mofo right to, well, ABP in hopes of finding sugary buttery goodies. Too bad they don't make palmier cookies anymore, because that's by far my favourite ABP snack.

Fortunately, tonight ABP debuted Monkey Bread. I didn't even know it was a monkey bread. well, with my non-American/Western upbringing i had never heard of "monkey bread" before in my life. To be honest, I'm not particularly about this hazelnut monkey bread, because I think the bread is a little too dry and flaky. But the thickened caramel kind of does the trick nonetheless. So i decided to look this up on Wikipedia a moment ago and this is what i found:

"Monkey Bread, also called Hungarian coffee cake and bubbleloaf, is a sticky, gooey pastry served as a breakfast treat. Recipes for the towering bread first appeared in American women's magazines and community cookbooks in the 1950s. It is made with pieces of sweet yeast dough which are baked in a cake pan at high heat after first being individually covered in melted butter, cinnamon, sugar and chopped pecans. It is traditionally served hot so that the baked segments can be easily torn away with the fingers and eaten by hand."

ps: The picture below comes from www.nancy-kitchen.com,
which looks very different from what i just had.

Just so i remember the day

Food is always the highlight of the day, any day. yesterday, however, i started to feel that my self-indulgence was getting to me.

lunch: chinese food (sweet&sour chicken and spare ribs)

dinner: more chinese food
8PM: friend brings left-over pad thai from faculty club.

11PM: coffee-run to starbucks on Thayer St. one grande white-chocolate mocha whose calorie and sugar content is immeasurable. and much to my surprise (and joy), since they were closing at 12, they started to give away left-over bakeries. of course, i did not hesitate to take my favourite: the glorious succulent Apple Fritter:

Which totals to some 450 calories. yea i basically ate every 3 hours yesterday. and this morning i cooked an omelette using 4 eggs. somebody save me.

I'm typing to you from the Rockefeller Library at 1AM thursday night/friday morning. I'm working on a research paper for my project seminar on water and architecture. and mind you, when i say i'm "working on" a paper or anything for that matter, odds are i haven't started it. oh lordy, i just wish this paper could write itself and somehow culminate in a literary finesse worthy of the department's prize at the end of the term. ok, i'll shut up.

seriously though, the more i'm reading about it, the more amazed i am at singapore's urban design and water management. how in the whole wide world could a city, 700 km.sq., with almost no natural resources be so self-sustaining economically, physically, ecologically, and etc. well, they're more than self-sustaining. they're pretty prosperous.

ok, a little note-to-self so i'm aware that i have so much shit to take care of.

what needs to be done (by due dates)

• 12-15 pages on water and urban design in singapore (the progress of which is zero.)
• European history take-home (mad loooong and not started. plus i didn't go to any of the lectures after spring break.)
• 10 pages on "architectural sculpture of ancient greece and rome" What? (needs major editing. i'm an art history major not classics!)
  
• Final: 19th-century european painting (the prof has yet to post the exam study-guide.)

Ok, back to singapore.