In New York, You Hit Cars.
Just got back from my trip to Washington DC and NYC. I loved Washington… New York, not so much. I think it’s partly because my uncle was with me, and the other is because I hate crowds.
Washington DC was GREAT. I walked and walked and walked, visited Ford’s Theatre (where Lincoln was assassinated) the Washington Monument (the greatest phallic symbol ever), the Holocaust Museum (spent 5 hours there!) among other beautiful, beautiful museums. All the museums were free, and it was absolutely fascinating. I thought I didn’t like museums, but apparently I do, especially when they have to do with WWII.
My uncle lives in DC, so he was working, and I roamed around on my own. I do like the freedom to do whatever I want whenever I want… I don’t have to get pestered by others asking me if I want to go somewhere else, whether I want to have lunch, whether I want to visit Chinatown (of all places).
I was very annoyed with his attachment to people of his own race. He kept dragging me to Chinatown (both in DC and NYC), and continuously pointed out things in shops that had an ‘oriental chinese’ flavour to it. He also felt the need to tell me that ‘oh, that restaurant sells American food’. Honestly, I can’t be bothered if it’s Chinese or Western food, as long as it tastes good. As the days went by, my annoyance increased tenfold. We were taking a bus from DC to NYC, but I had no idea that he chose the bus service located in Chinatown.
Because, y’know, when you see a guy in a singlet saying ‘I don’t give a fuck about her’ when alerted to his wife’s need to call her back right in front of a customer, you know this neighbourhood is seedy. I was very uncomfortable in DC’s Chinatown… because that was the first time I saw how bad their English was. Most of these Chinese people migrated from China and were forced to learn English, and they speak it very badly… and I didn’t like it at all. The China-style customs/habits also reared its ugly head - whatever negative memories I held during my trips to China I saw it here. Chinese people are impolite, they push, they don’t speak English, they are only interested in themselves and money.
NYC’s Chinatown was a thousand times worse. The pavements were narrow as hell, and it was so crowded. I asked for directions from someone, and she screamed at me in response: “If you’re not a customer, then can you stop annoying me?” I had a lot more negative encounters from Asians in NYC (one of them swearing in Cantonese when another customer was tardy in procuring his ticket). The buildings are run down and old; there are potholes on the roads, construction’s going on everywhere; smoke and dirt and people jabbering away in various dialects while they’re pushing against you to cross the road… it was not a fun experience in both Chinatowns, and if not for my uncle, I wouldn’t have been in the district in the first place.
In DC, the place was spacious. All the buildings were spaced out neatly, the museums were centered on a couple of major streets, so you could spend all your time on that street. I thought the tall buildings and congestion in NYC might remind me a little of Singapore, but I was wrong. There were so many people you just couldn’t move along the street at all. I hate crowds - I don’t know why, but everytime when I’m walking in a crowd, my mood goes bad. Maybe it’s transferrence from my father or something, but it’s an unconditioned response whenever I’m surrounded by a lot of people. Needless to say, whenever I stepped out of my hotel room, I would be in a very angry mood for the rest of the day. Accompanied with the fact my uncle keeps repeating ‘3 TIMES? MY GOD’ and ‘do you want to go to [insert place here]?’, my mood went sour rather quickly.
I mentioned before that I liked doing things on my own time, and how I want it to. So I got very angry whenever we had to make a decision to take the subway. When we arrived in NYC Chinatown, I wanted to take the R line, because it would put us just 2 streets away from our hotel in Times Square. My uncle wound up pushing me onto the number 6 train, which placed us 6 blocks away. The walk was NOT FUN, especially when you’re wearing a backpack that gets progressively heavier as you walk. This always became a problem whenever my uncle and I had to take the subway. He would want to walk 6 blocks to catch a train that (possibly) arrived more frequently, while I wanted to take the closest train possible and deposit us right on the street we were at, but waiting a little longer at the train station.
Not like the train station was very desirable to wait in, anyway. There was no air conditioning, and the trains were so loud one could burst an eardrum. Rats were prevalent, the ditches filled with muddy water - and once again - the platforms were narrow.
The people are also awful in NYC. Customer service is ‘point and grunt’, and occasionally a bit of biting sarcasm, which I didn’t quite enjoy. These people have functioned for so long in NYC they know everything inside and out, and I suppose sometimes they can’t put themselves in the tourists’ shoes, so they wind up rolling their eyes when a family of four walks up to them and asks where so-and-so is. I don’t like the people in NYC. I thought Singapore was bad, but in NYC, it’s like they’re going out of their way to make you feel miserable.
Driving in NYC is a nightmare. Traffic is awful on Broadway, and I noticed a couple of things.
1. When in doubt, horn.
Consider: A person standing in the middle of a street, unknowingly blocking a car’s path.
Driver: BEEEEEEEP.
2. When in doubt to respond, swear.
Consider:
Driver: BEEEEEEP.
Person: WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? THIS ISN’T FUCKING IRAQ! MORON!
3. When in doubt to respond to swearing, gesticulate.
Consider:
Person: FUCK YOU, I’M WALKING HERE!
Driver: (flips the bird, gestures wildly towards you, clearly indicating you’re an idiot).
4. When driving a vehicle and in doubt, hit the car in front of you.
Consider: A car in the middle of a right turn, and he’s a little slow about it.
Driver: (gestures, and attempts to overtake the car RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING TURN, bumping him in the process. I should mention this guy was a taxi driver.)
Because traffic’s so awful and drivers so crazy, they’ll run past red lights and wind up stopping in front of a pedestrian crossing. As people cross, you can feel the collective word forming in everyone’s head: idiot. Driver then has the audacity to horn at you when you cross in front of his car.
In New York, you hit cars, not the other way around.
Of course, the only saving grace in New York was Broadway. Beauty and the Beast was AMAZING. I loved every single minute of it. I taped Friday’s evening show and did audio boots for the Saturday matinee and evening shows. More detailed info under the cut.
Rowling’s writing (spoiler free)
Grabbed a copy of the carpet!book floating online. I never doubted the legitimacy of the online copy, simply because it has every single flaw of Rowling’s writing in there. It’s very, very noticeable, and the patterns between books are astounding.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again: I’ve always thought Rowling’s writing was rather weak, and HP7 sealed it for me. Don’t get me wrong; the world she has created and the multiple characters she’s introduced fascinates me, but ironically enough, her writing just doesn’t do justice to her creations.
Death scenes are her main weakness. I nickname those scenes ‘the attack of the ellipses’. Whenever Rowling wants to convey grief or sadness, she pulls out the ellipses in epic style. I find it an extremely weak attempt to convey emotion - she never could quite phrase the feelings of grief properly, so she resorts to punctuation. Sirius’s and Dumbledore’s deaths all have multiple ellipses, and personally, I never quite could gauge the emotion felt from those two deaths. Harry’s reaction during Dumbledore’s funeral was awkwardly phrased and very badly worded. In HP7, the ellipses increases proportionately to the number of deaths.
Repetition. Rowling seems to have a limited vocabulary at her arsenal. Whenever Voldemort is introduced, his voice is repeatedly described as ‘high and cold’. Immense anger is always described as ‘mutinous’, or ‘the attack of the capital letters’. Bellatrix always has ‘heavily lidded eyes’, and Harry’s scar either ‘burns’ or ’sears’ through his forehead. In HP7, the phrase ‘high and cold’ increases proportionately to the number of introductions Voldemort has.
Characterization. Right now, I have no idea what Harry’s character is supposed to be like. I’ve always felt that he was just an empty vessel plodding along a path the author wrote out for him. Harry has no defining character in books 1-4, in 5 he suddenly does a 180 and becomes the EMO!kid, and in 6 all trace of angst has disappeared, reverting back to being the character in 1-4. Ron’s character fluctuates wildly between immense jealousy and being a bully, and Hermione has no other stereotypical label besides ‘the cautious smart girl’. Voldemort himself - while I loved the backstory given to him in book 6 - is a one-dimensional, typical villain who wants to rule the world (or just London, whatever). His Death Eaters are mostly the same, just varying in degrees of insanity. I don’t want to go into the characterization of Lupin at all - I adored him in book 3, and then Rowling just wound up not knowing what to do with his character subsequently, and just functioned as a sad shell of someone burdened with the ZOMGWEREWOLF (dude, you’ve had this condition since you were a teenager, and now you’re bringing on the angst?).
It seems that Rowling writes one-dimensional type of characters fine, but for those who she attempts to create complexity (Snape’s allegiance and Narcissa’s love for Draco are the two things that come to mind) she does it very weakly. In book 6, I was completely convinced that Snape was on Dumbledore’s side, simply because the arguments Snape made were phrased so badly and held absolutely no water. We’ve never seen Narcissa care for Draco until 6, and with Rowling already establishing all Death Eaters are scum and have no soul in 4 and 5, this little introduction to ‘the other side’ of Narcissa comes too late.
Deus ex machina. It is satisfying to have everything linked together at the end in a single hour in Dumbledore’s office, but I always found it odd why everything had to finish at the end of the school year (May? June?). One would think people would just be leaving Hogwarts whenever that month rolls around the corner, and come back later.
Rowling’s conception of the plot makes her writing tolerable. It’s always a similar pattern - there are multiple elements to unlock a ‘prize’, and Harry, through the course of the year, must figure it out. It’s the step-by-step plot that slowly unravels that keeps readers hooked (at least for me), but in HP7… there are no more books following this, and I can’t help but feel disappointed and simultaneously breathing a sigh of relief that the series is over.
I shall run away from the crazy HP supporters now.
There I go, down the slope
Now I hate Chris.
I don’t know why my psychological makeup always leads me to this, and even attempting to rationalize why something as simple as this can wind up into complete and utter hatred doesn’t change the unconscious. So I’m just going to rant incoherently and unreasonably about the shit that pissed me off today, because I have finals in two days, and for some inexplicable reason I’m being burdened with the emotional baggage that I predicted earlier and letting off steam might help somewhat.
Don’t smoke in the fucking morning.
When I GRUNT in response, that should be an indicator of how lousy I feel this morning. Because finding out I got a B on my second midterm which screws up my chances of getting an overall A pisses me off.
STOP TALKING TO ME. SHUT THE FUCK UP.
‘I had a really nice time talking to you yesterday.’ We were talking during a LAB PROJECT, WALKING TOWARDS THE LAKE WHERE WE WERE SUPPOSED TO COLLECT SPECIMENS. How the fuck does that lead into ‘nice time talking to you’?
‘You look like you’re about to go insane.’ BECAUSE, APPARENTLY, YOU SEEM CLUELESS TO MY GRUNTING AND I DON’T FEEL LIKE TALKING, OKAY? On a less crazed note, I was infuriated at this comment. I don’t know why. My first instinct was ‘quick judge of character’, second instinct ‘fuck your generalizations’, and third… just !@$!@($@!(*#(#&(@#$
GO AWAY. PLEASE.
This was a very, very fast degeneration… faster than Azrul, definitely. At least I pinpointed characteristics in Azrul which I abhorred, but in this case, it’s just… completely irrational hatred, and for the life of me, I cannot explain why. Point of no return, and I’m one screwed up petty little girl.
I’m just going to have to email him and cut it off ASAP. I don’t want to look or talk to him ever again.
“I like you.”
Y’know, for all my directness, I’m just awful when it comes to professing attraction or turning down someone. Call it a lack of experience, but I wind up saying things that my heart (and mind) tells me not to. I also wind up behaving in the oddest patterns whenever shit blows itself out of the water.
I wound up saying a soft ‘no’ to Chris today. I would’ve said ‘NO, I’M NOT INTERESTED’, but apparently the coward in me just can’t. I made a bunch of excuses up - I have no time after the finals, I’m flying to Washington right after that and then going back to Singapore for 3 weeks, but hey, if you want to get together after that, I’d be happy to - and then hopefully by then he’d have forgotten about it, and I won’t have to talk to him again.
Keyword: hopefully. Chances are he’s going to email me again, and I’ll have to wind up turning him down outright. That’s my pattern, I feel. Despite the fact that I always want things to get done RIGHT NOW, I always procrastinate whenever I have to do something that I don’t want to (in this case, turning him down and hurting his feelings).
I don’t know why I don’t want to step out of my comfort zone and just go have a friendly lunch with him. Everytime when someone professes an interest in me, I wind up analyzing every negative aspect of the person’s character, and therefore attempting to justify why I don’t like him. This winds up becoming so much of what I define him to be it turns into a grudge. Case in point: Azrul. Maaaybe Jonathan… but he was such a long time ago.
This is one of my faults. I cannot go back to being ‘friends’ when someone says he wants to pursue a romantic relationship with me and I don’t feel the same way. That is what I’m afraid of… and I suppose that is why I don’t want to jeopardize even the most superficial friendship. The emotional baggage of the aftermath is a waste of my mental resources. This ‘going out’ with him may wind up turning into something that I don’t want it to be, and I’m just afraid of that risk.
This works both ways. I’m afraid of telling someone that I like him, because I can’t go back after that. I’ll avoid him, I’ll die of embarrassment, and it’ll turn into yet another long-term grudge based on the most mundane reasons possible.
The potential that ‘I like you’ may turn into something more than friendship frightens me… Haha, which may be partially the reason I have no guy friends (the other theory is gender stereotypes, but I don’t want to get into that. I’ll get my feminist rage on). I suppose I’ve unconsciously embraced the “love at first sight” cliche, and I’m utterly convinced a reciprocation of feelings will not happen for me - because I seem to be attracted to men that are attracted to the complete opposite of my personality - and my instincts would not allow me to marry or procreate.
So, yes. I will stay single forever, and happily so… at least until the day of my death, when I realize I’m completely alone and no one will put flowers on my grave.
I’m sorry, but what?
You are… 2% unique (blame, for example, your interest in kof soundtrack) and 11% herdlike (partly because you, like everyone else, enjoy psychology). When it comes to friends you are normal. In terms of the way you relate to people, you are wary of trusting strangers. Your writing style (based on a recent public entry) is absurdly obscure.
Your overall weirdness is: 99
(The average level of weirdness is: 28.
You are weirder than 98% of other LJers.)
A Conversation
Ahhh Julia. I love my sister.
I just got back sweating after an hour of walking around campus and taking pictures of OSU for my dad. So there we were, merrily chatting away about how Daddy’s going to be so excited at looking at the pictures, and then Julia talked about how she booked her dental appointment and it wasn’t reflected in the dentist’s appointment schedule, then I got an email.
[11:41:46 AM] Elaine says: OH MY FREAKING GOD
[11:41:55 AM] Elaine says: one of my lab partners just asked me out
[11:41:56 AM] Julia says: ?
[11:42:00 AM] Julia says: REALLY
[11:42:02 AM] Julia says: WHICH ONE
[11:42:02 AM] Elaine says: Elaine,This is going to sound kind of strange and completely out of the blue but I have meant to ask you if you would like to have a cup of coffee or perhaps lunch or something with me. I guess thats the problem with being shy or whatever, makes it difficult to ask awkward questions. You just seem like a nice girl so I figured I would ask. If that sounds interesting to you feel free to either return me an e-mail through here or you can call me if you like, or you can just talk to me in class next week. Sorry for asking you this way, I hope you understand.
Thanks - Chris
[11:42:05 AM] Julia says: DUMBCUTE?!
[11:42:09 AM] Elaine says: NO NOT DUMB CUTE
[11:42:13 AM] Julia says: DAMN
[11:42:14 AM] Elaine says: THE OTHER ONE THAT SHOWED UP
[11:42:18 AM] Julia says: WHO”S THIS?!
[11:42:21 AM] Julia says: WHO’S THIS?!
[11:42:23 AM] Elaine says: LOL
[11:42:24 AM] Julia says: WHO’S THIS?!
[11:42:28 AM] Julia says: WHO”S CHRIS?!
[11:42:37 AM] Elaine says: HE’S THE GUY THAT SHOWED UP FOR THE PROJECT MEETING
[11:42:45 AM] Julia says: IS HE CUTE
[11:42:46 AM] Elaine says: NO
[11:42:50 AM] Elaine says: ;____;
[11:42:50 AM] Julia says: DAMN
[11:42:55 AM] Julia says: LOL
[11:42:56 AM] Elaine says: WHAT SHOULD I SAY
[11:43:00 AM] Julia says: SO EXCITING!!!!!!!!!!!
[11:43:01 AM] Julia says: lol
[11:43:05 AM] Elaine says: LOLOLOLOL
[11:43:09 AM] Julia says: if u’re interested in him say yes la
[11:43:10 AM] Julia says: lol
[11:43:11 AM] Julia says: aiyoh
[11:43:14 AM] Elaine says: OMG i’m laughing out so hard right now
Then we moved on to talking on webcam.
… Yeah. All I just wanted was to highlight Julia’s ‘SO EXCITING’ bit. I was laughing so hard at that. And Julia now gets her own fucking tag!
‘Dumbcute’ was a nickname for the other guy in my lab session. He has the most gorgeous eyes, and so innocently naive, but he was just… dumb. There’s one more girl that forms our group of 4, and I’ve come to label her as ’slow-godcrazy-girl’. Because she’s… slow, and she likes God a leeeeetle too much.
