NTU is a joke
So I wound up tagging along to my dad’s tutorials today - one hour slots for three hours straight. Now I know why professors don’t like smaller classes - it gives them more work to do, they have to repeat more things. Even me, who was just sitting there got tired.
Met Hafizah on the last tutorial. She went “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE?!” and we shrieked together for a bit. Also, Mr Shiok Playwright Awesome Alfian Sa’at enrolled for my dad’s class too! I was half tempted to run up and get an autograph.
My daddy teaches awesome, and omg he’s actually genuinely funny in class. Not like his lame “What do you do in Bath? Take a bath hahahaha” jokes. Headed to the campus’s Sakae Sushi to have lunch, then I hung around his office and cleaned his computer out of viruses. The technicians kept saying he needed to reformat his computer to get rid of the viruses, but I just wiped it clean with 4 programs I use regularly on my own computer. Dunno what they’re paying these people for if they haven’t even heard of Ad-Aware.
Ohoh, and the way they name these buildings are so complicated. My dad told me a really hilarious story:
Dad’s colleague: Hey, let’s meet up for lunch. I’ll meet you at your office and we’ll head out.
Dad: Are you sure you don’t want to just meet at the Chinese Cultural Center instead? The names of these buildings are seriously complicated.
DC: Yeah, yeah, sure. I’m really good with directions, I’ll find it.
Dad: Okay, my office is at 3.2B409.
DC: … I’ll meet you at the Chinese Cultural Center.
Anyhoo, fun day. 
Oh hai, still alive
Wow, I’ve neglected writing for more than a month now. I suppose it’s been the lack of any reflection time, and I tell my sister almost everything I’m feeling, which pretty much led to having nothing much to write.
There hasn’t been anything really worth talking about - this blog has always been about myself, and there hasn’t been much reflection these days while staying here. I’ve mostly blown time away playing Warcraft, going out with the family (and a bit with friends) and just relaxing, I suppose.
I went to get my hair cut today, and I guess this is really the reason why I’m writing today. I have trichotillomania, and going to the hairdresser is a gut-wrenching experience. It’s always the same, and the conversation always goes like this:
1. My mom has to explain that I pull my hair so that’s why I have patches on my head,
2. The hairdresser doesn’t listen,
3. She then asks if these patches “occurred naturally or you did something to them” and I have to explain again that I pull my hair.
4. Hairdresser goes into shock, and asks one or more of the following questions: “how long have you done this?”, “doesn’t it hurt?” and the ever encompassing “why?”
5. I say I don’t know why, and hairdresser will launch into a speech on how I should stop pulling and I should find some other form of stress relief.
6. She then proceeds to sell my mother a bunch of expensive hair-care products on how to treat my scalp so the hair grows out faster.
This doesn’t really make me any more endeared to go to the hairdresser. It was only last year that I started going semi-regularly (which is at least once a year, I suppose), and before that my dad has always cut my hair because I was so ashamed to show my patches. I need to have my sister and mom tag along because I feel so insecure by myself there.
I feel increasingly frustrated that because of my shame, I don’t want to specify that I want a fringe, or I’d like it a bit shorter, or whatever. I feel stupid for telling the hairdresser what to do with my hair to make myself look pretty when my patches obviously show that’s never going to happen.
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On a happier note:
Singapore vs China ping pong finals today! SG GO!
Mom’s birthday on the 23rd! SEAFOOD BUFFET HERE I COME
Wall-e on the 28th! YAY!
I’m probably crashing NTU on Friday, to sit in my dad’s tutorials or lectures. CPC, ANY OTHER LECTURES YOU CAN RECOMMEND ME?
LKY: Official Grudgewanker
I’ve been reading through my old JC Singapore notes because my dad wants me to do a writeup for his book (or something like that) and he was lazy.
Lee Kuan Yew has some epic, epic, EPIC grudgewank going on.
1. He expels 13 guys from his party who then form the Barisan Socialis (who are communists pigs, REMEMBER THAT).
2. Barisan Socialis take nearly all of PAP’s grassroots support and resources because it was theirs to begin with.
3. PAP has to rebuild credibility from ground up.
4. LKY goes BERSERK
5. LKY launches Operation Cold Store, arrests communists.
6. LKY makes more arrests of communists.
7. LKY de-registers unions communistic in nature.
8. LKY revokes citizenship of communists sympathizers.
I’m sure people are going to cover it up and say COMMIES ARE EVIL AND WHAT HE DID WAS THE RIGHT THING, but WRONG WRONG WRONG. He entered an alliance with the communists before he booted them out, for Christ’s sake! People should be knowing more about it, not skimping through this!
Now I’m thinking he’s gone Republican just to overcompensate for his alliance with the communists 50 years ago.
Grudgewank: he has it.
Singapore, observations
1. MY CUP SIZE IS A FUCKING E. I AM NOT A FUCKING E!!! WTFASLDAKJAK
2. Is there a reason for the sudden influx of angmohs in Singapore? Tourist season or something?
3. I am still on World of Warcraft, current level 43! IF ANYONE PLAYS WOW (which I think none of you do, gah I’m still 10 years old) PLEASE TELL ME SO WE CAN PLAY TOGETHER.
4. People whom I talk on Meebo: Meebo doesn’t work on my router, for some reason, and I’ve uninstalled MSN and refuse to plug it back, so sorry!
5. I tried playing MGS4 for all of 4 minutes, and (I think it was just the controller because it was whacked) I couldn’t get the hang of it. I like how they called Snake “Old Snake” now though. Ahaha.
6. I watched “Don’t Mess with the Zohan” today. Please, please, please, save yourself the misery and don’t watch it. I thought Adam Sandler was above these things!
Singapore
I’M BACK, BITCHES!
“Everywhere and Nowhere”
There’s this thing in Psychology called the “Approach-Avoidance conflict”, where you have two conflicting drives to any set goal. The approach drive is always stronger than the avoidance drive, but the avoidance drive winds up peaking as the goal comes nearer, and that’s called the “backing out point”.
For all my excitement of wanting to go back to Singapore, as the day draws closer, I feel less and less assured of it. My aunt flew off to California yesterday so that was the last time I would see her for the next three months. And I just feel… so incredibly sad. I didn’t want to say bye so prematurely, and she was the one who cared for my well being. I’m just so, so, so grateful to her and it just sucks that all I could do was give her a brief hug in the parking lot.
Yeah, yeah, it’s only three months, I’ll see her soon etc., but that doesn’t stop me from actually missing them. They’ve really become my family over here, and they’re the only people I actually know in this country, and… I dunno. It’s so confusing to say I’m going to miss my family here while I go home to my real family. And then it feels awful to compare my real family to anything really, like I don’t miss them enough to go home.
I guess it’s like having two homes you’ve emotionally invested yourself into, and you have to choose. I think I’m just making it overdramatic, but it’s just… I don’t even know how to explain it. I feel so awkward in this family, but I feel like they’ve welcomed me so well leaving them seems like saying “what you did was a huge waste of time”. I’ve actually lived in this dump of an apartment for a year and despite the events of Bigfoot and Psycho Couple, it really pains me to leave it.
Not to mention the practicalities of leaving my apartment empty for three months. I’m still paying the rent for the time I’m away (didn’t sublease it, something that I regret), I still have to deal with the problem of paying the electricity bills (no online/hold option) and emptying my mailbox (I have no friends whee) for the remainder of the time that I’m away.
And it’s the tiny things that make me feel alienated from American culture. Like how they don’t pay that much for their water bills so they do their laundry separately, or even the mechanics of starting a conversation, or how they congregate in the kitchen of all places to start talking about their life, or how a 3 day break means a trip to New York/Indiana/Michigan/wherever, while our 3 day break means staying at home making up for lost sleep. But now I’m afraid that when I go home, I’d have forgotten how Singapore even functions in the first place, and that’s going to make my insecurities even worse.
Not that it’s bad already, seeing as “a sense of belonging” has pretty much been dogging me ever since I got here, and it’s really heightening as my plane trip approaches. The words “culture” and “belonging” have been paraded around so much I only think those who experience it can truly understand what a culture shock is, or even understanding the “dislocation” of one’s identity. It’s not something tourists experience, and it irks me to no end when they come back proclaiming they know everything about [insert country of choice here] after living there for 2-3 months.
It feels like a double identity, and you’re a bit of both but never truly either one. I miss Singapore, but if I go home, I’ll miss it here. I guess that’s the reason why I don’t want to leave. Every time I feel like I’m leaving the life in Singapore behind it always comes back, and I don’t want to deal with gaining something but losing another every single time I have to go back to either place. That, and also just the general exhaustion of needing to travel… I want to stop moving from place to place, and I just want to settle down somewhere. I want my own house, but now the laughable problem is 1. I’m still wholly dependent on my parents, and 2. I don’t even know where I should continue to live the rest of my life.
It’s 4.10 am right now, and I have no bedsheets for my bed, because I washed them this afternoon. I’m wondering if it’s worth the, uh, effort to go put on some sheets and go to bed for only 5 hours. I’ve loaned my PS3 to Ken for the summer, so I’m currently WoWing my way through the night, my stomach’s really hungry, but I have nothing in the fridge… I have to go pay the rent at 10am, deposit some petty cash in the bank, grab a Subway on the way back… I have to pack, print out the flight receipt, and still have to deal with that electricity problem.
Oh God, I don’t want to leave.
