Insomnia
It’s 5.07 am, and I’m not able to sleep at all. I only had 5 hours of sleep last night, and it surprises even me that I don’t feel tired. I hope this isn’t permanent.
Just a bunch of other quotes I remembered from NYC.
1. Woman queues up with her children to buy some Beauty and the Beast merchandise in the theatre. The line is excruciatingly long, and with the crowd, it’s hard to differentiate the queue from the crowd. This woman in front of me had a stick up her ass.
Woman to another woman: The queue STARTS. BACK. THERE, OKAY, SO BE A CIVILIZED PERSON AND DO WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING.
Another woman: Whatever. I’m just standing around, I’m not queuing.
Me: (HA, EPIC FAIL.)
2. On the last public performance, the orchestra continued to play music as the audience filtered out, some guy whips out his camcorder and films the orchestra pit.
Flute guy in orchestra pit: THAT’S ILLEGAL! What you’re doing, IT’S ILLEGAL! IT’S NOT ALLOWED! just so you know.
Collective mind: It’s the last show, who gives a fuck what you think?
… I know there’s more, but I can’t remember. Oh well.
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.
I completely forgot.
Last Friday or so I got my results back. I wasn’t surprised, but at the same time I was. Got all A’s, including Latin, which I moaned over and over how much it was a bitch to study for. Psychology’s Stereotype and Prejudice course was expected, since they graded on a curve, and without the moderation I got a C, but the mean was a D-. The lecturer bumped up the mean grade to a B-, so I wound up getting an A.
In all honesty, I am really an average student, and perhaps that was the reason that shocked me that I got all A’s. I haven’t gotten straight A’s since I was seven fucking years old. I might have studied a little harder during the first few weeks here, because I didn’t have anything else to do, and the only thing you can turn to when thrown into a completely new environment is your purpose. I came here to study, and study I shall.
I’m moving to my new apartment next Wednesday, and I can’t say I’m really looking forward to it. I’m quite sure after a fashion I’ll call it home for the next year or so… in the meantime I have to figure out how to get from my apartment to the main campus (the dumb me will always walk it for the first 3 weeks or so, and then realize there’s actually a direct bus). I’m not looking forward to paying my own bills (I don’t know why) and dammit, I need a car, but I simply cannot afford one. Maybe after I get a scholarship or into the honors program or something that might free cash up. Of course, by that time I probably would’ve graduated from university and returned to Singapore… in which the car is going to be another colossal waste of money.
On a more lonely note, I still haven’t made any friends here, and I don’t think I will anytime soon. Ken was telling me how much my father enjoyed OSU, and I recalled he was the president of some club or other, not to mention he hooked up with my mom while they were queuing to sign up for campus housing of all things (according to my mother, and I take it with a grain of salt). And it got me thinking:
1. I am not my father, which in all likelihood would lead to
2. I will not enjoy it here.
I’ve increasingly gained some admiration for Singlish (spoken, not written) because where else in the world can you find English spoken this way? It’s like our own secret code, especially when you delve completely into words that doesn’t remotely sound like English anymore: ‘alamak, why he English so jialat wan.’
But I still love British accents, so whatever. I wanna go live in London. It’s small, it’s accessible, the houses look gorgeous. Prices are crazy inflated (I remember taking a photo of a box of fresh fruit that would cost me 6 Singapore dollars) but I think it’s the most wonderful place anyone can live in. Grass is greener on the other side and all that.
I recall crying on the plane trip back to Singapore because I didn’t want to leave London. Of course, that was during the EMO!era, so I probably cried at everything. Hm… I can’t remember if it was after that trip that I was close to killing myself. I remember it was around Troy… so I was 17… aha! Screencap’s awful, and I suppose it’s going to stay that way forever, but there you go. May 11 I left for London and I came back on the 19th. Troy was released 14th May. I suppose it was that Sunday I lay in bed for 18 hours crying my eyes out. I mean, where else can you find a country that you’ve fallen so much in love with that when you return you want to kill yourself?
I have come to learn that living and touring are two completely separate things, and with my wishy-washy nature, I’ll eventually become disenchanted with London as with so many other things in my life. Regardless, I intend to live there to become disenchanted, if I do get the opportunity.
Just an amusing (although tragic) story while I was in Hong Kong.
I was flipping through the channels on the television in the hotel, and wonder of wonders - they have channels from countries all over the world. There was a German channel, a Spain one, France, China, USA, Italy… It was really fun surfing through all those and just listening to the languages they speak. And Germans, apparantly, can speak English Really, Really Well. Or maybe it’s just the newscasters.
So there I was flipping, and I caught hold of the Japanese channel. I was trying to buck up my proficiency in the language, so I let the channel run, while they broadcasted the latest news. Then I remarked to my sister: “The Japanese channel sucks. Always show such boring news.”
And then, as if right on cue, they broadcasted a Japanese schoolboy who burnt his house over his test grades, killing his family.
Oops.
Bintan!
Spent the weekend at Bintan… I got a tan.
During the A levels, for some reason, my skin turned really translucent and green. Looked like a freaking monster. So yay yay for tan.
Got a full body massage for the first time. Bruised up all over, and the process was creepy.
Dad was extremely pissed that the massage costed 50 Sing each… he was complaining how he got better massages in Singapore with half the price… while I’m here bruised up ;__;
Played at the beach… haven’t done that in a long time. Built a sandcastle of Sauron’s fortress (or whatever it is), and placed his eye on top of the tower. Sis and I threw sandballs in different directions to indicate the Shire and Gondor.
Then we demolished Sauron’s sandcastle with sandballs. Fun fun =D
Food wasn’t fantastic… had the unfortunate accident to order lamb. I had forgotten I didn’t like lamb. Sis’s chicken tasted wonky, Dad’s steak wasn’t medium, and according to Mom, her salmon wasn’t fresh. Only thing nice was the mashed potatoes and 9049384 different types of bread.
Second night we had black pepper crab, kangkong and tofu. Black pepper crab was small, but the crab was smothered in black pepper. Fantastic. Kangkong was a tad hot. Tofu was bleah.
Elaine and Vik called me numerous times while I was away. I didn’t bring my phone to Bintan because I thought it wasn’t necessary. I haven’t had any messages in 3 weeks. Then suddenly overnight I became popular.
Tried to absorb a bit of Japanese on the Japanese channel. They talk too fast.
And there was an elephant show! Got to have an elephant step over me. Got to ride one too. Sis says she got a butt massage… but I was just in pain. They shit while they walk. And elephants truly love bananas.
