O-whata-week

i mentioned something about orientation week and jadedness, but it was hard not to have some of that energetic, youth-bursting atmosphere rub off on me. it helps that i couldnt go anywhere without having to go through the spread of carnival all around the campus. although, i must say that i have been asked my age in one week more than i have ever in any 3 years back home! crazy people...:






gay and lesbian club - a very important association in school. you get all sorts of networking opportunities!


oh my che guevara, the heady insignia of every self-respecting university










you know it's hectic stuff when the student union (oh yes, unions... hallelujah...) provide sofas al fresco (and al free of charge!)
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then last sunday we headed to the beach. perfect weather - 20 deg, with the white sands, beautiful (and scantily-clad) people, and the pacific ocean rolling out before you:














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and then an opening dinner at college, rounding up the first week of school:
























You grow up in a place where you are told your country is multi-racial. But of course it is. Yet you, and every one of you, acquiesce to having your ethnicity effaced, erased, and abstracted to an inaccurate, erroneous, vacuous, category. Not for a moment do you stop to ask, what does 'Other' mean? What about the many other others? What does ‘racial harmony’ mean in a place whose people are ignorant of their own and of another's histories and culture, whose anthem is a foreign language, and whose pledge is an empty emblem? What does it say of a people who do not care that their unity is a mirage?

Then you come another place discovering that perhaps you have been deceived; that there is no such thing as the labels you have been acculturated with – that there are only you, and me, and anyone else who walks on this same ground. And if you are fortunate, half the world might travel to a place your paths could cross easily, and you might pause for a moment, say a hello, and have a picture taken.

melbourne vs sydney

i'm settling in alright, school doesnt start till next week, and next week is orientation week, and that means i've got one more week off. actually, i don't really have lessons proper, all i need is to arrange for a consultation with my supervisor, discuss some initial research questions and directions, and then invade the library. ah but these can only be done after everyone else are done running around excitedly.

and it's hard to be excited about something i've done three times before. i'm about ten years older than the freshies, attending my fourth uni (i did graduate from the previous three, just in case you're wondering) in a fourth different city, and i'm as jaded and exhausted as any jaded and exhausted institution-hopper can be. but that doesnt mean i don't enjoy my time now, and that the coming few years would be a dread and a chore. for god knows how long,this, is what i've been waiting for man...

but ideally, i'd have loved to be able to go back to melbourne. and coming to sydney this time only made me miss it even more - a case of so-near-yet-so-far. sydney's ok, it's got great beaches, a beautiful harbour and a bridge and the opera house, and sydney university's just gorgeous. but it's not melbourne. sydney can't hold a candle to melbourne's arty, groovy, indie vibes, wine bars and first-rate cuisine, its laneway cafe culture, its european, bohemian, air. these are things that appeal to me, and are what make melbourne more than just an old flame. i do wish i were back.

maybe i'd grow to love sydney, who knows. but as they say, first loves are the most unforgettable. when i first came to melbourne, it was as much a non-event as stepping out of my room to go to the kitchen. and it was winter then, rain, cold and grey and all. and how unknowingly i was in the kitchen's thrall. but well, mr sydney, i'll let you know in four years' time.

i promised to put up the aussie pics when i visited last june, what better time (than never) to present the two age-old rivals - forever putting the other down, engaged in a permanent battle to outdo the other - to be the city of australia:

Melbourne :


CBD area. the countless times i got lost amidst its buildings even though they were few and the streets were laid out in a grid!


southbank and the yarra river. i think of that one gloomy winter day having coffee with s, the grey giant clouds threatening to bring the city along with it


degraves street, and one of my favourite cafes in the city. when it gets very crowded you have working professionals milling around with cigarette and latte on the one hand, and a mobile phone on the other; and the bohemian types sitting on wooden crates in tubetops, jackie'O sunglasses, and a breakfast at tiffany debonair


the university of melbourne (ahhh...) - old arts (left) and law quad (right). how many times i've sat on the benches in front of the clock tower and read


anthropology and geography school. a lecturer there once gave me a C grade for a term paper accusing me of being a PAP apparatchik. i have since repented and reformed.


inside the old quad. leaning against the cold sandstone pillar while clad in comfy woollies and pondering the profoundest existential questions of life is one of the profoundest satisfactions one can derive from studying at this institution - that is, provided you have a propensity to ponder profoundly

Sydney:


the harbour bridge at sunset. i always wondered what's so fascinating about those gigantic steel structures while being fascinated by it


the famed opera house. likewise, i can never understand people's obsession with this clutter of faded, dated, aging seashells. i suppose architectural effects can be rather gestalt-ish.


st. mary's cathedral. when i took this picture there was a rainbow pouring through the fan of waters


the university of new south wales: john niland scientia building, where graduation ceremonies are held. when i visited as a tourist, who'd have thought i'd return eight months later as a student. life's endless surprises huh


its modern-ish buildings cant compare with sydney uni's (or unimelb's), but some pretty good research gets done here, they have a few rhodes scholars and nobel laureates already.


the business faculty, otherwise known as the asian money spinner. my word of advice to anyone wishing to experience a true university education is - never enrol in a business degree (unless you wanna do economics). hey i'm speaking from experience


the library, also one of the ugliest buildings in sydney. but they do have beautiful books inside, so it's all forgiven
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that's all the pictures for now, there're too many to put up and i don't wanna go figure out how to go the collage thing all over again (thanks, Apple). i'll try to keep you guys updated on what i'm doing as much as i can, and as you probably can tell, i seem much happier already - i am. i need to be re-acquainted with communal living. the art of making small talks and joining in activities i've not much interest in etc etc. i really just wanna be left alone to read my book. my next door neighbour, an architecture student, is also like that - i think we're just made for each other.

while i'm still rambling about universities, i'll put up the picture of the uni i'd most loooooooove to attend. when i drove through new england last october, i visited a few of the ivy leagues - just to stroll through their green lawns and hallowed halls - yale, brown, harvard, upenn, columbia, and none could match this sentient rush of vertigo this uni invoked - the prestigious, the secluded, the aristocratic, the elegantbeautifulravishingfantabulouslydazzlinglychokestoppinglyheartbreakinglygorrrrrgeousohhhhmyyyygorrrrrgeooooooussssssssss....


..... ahhhhhhhhhhhh.... dartmouth college

i wrote on my last night in singapore

i wrote on my last night in singapore - something i hadnt done for some time - wondering why i was talking as if i were never returning. i hope so; the past three-odd lay-about months have been slow, agonising, frustrating, it's a miracle i survived the ordeal. where do i even begin penning the things in my mind then? i wished i would just go, start a new life, and never look back. but who knows? eternity in an hour, william blake once said. there i sat by my desk, in that room that'd grown familiar over the last four years, and gazed out of my window with an armload of thouthgs. despite the metal grilles and wooden slats blocking the view, despite the rows of north korean-ish, utilitarian-brutish rows of flats, despite the never-ending whirr of expressway traffic that never ceased to irritate, i'd surprisingly managed to complete quite a bit of work proper the years i sat there. and i wondered, as i looked out into the empty night, if that was it - the night i'd been waiting for. but what, actually, is the day i've been waiting for? is today my new beginning - or yet one another - or tomorrow, when i'd be at a different land, writing in another place, looking out to a different view, outside and below, a different traffic?

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.-- four quartets, t.s. eliot
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and i'm very touched by the students who turned up at the airport, and of course, i'm grateful to friends and family, without whom. i'll share some pics:


in the cab, on the way to the airport. these cranes'd be gone the next time i pass by. is this all singapore is about - building and demolishing, and still building? i want to love this country, but what can i love, if the present is forever vanishing?


there's samuel on my right, who put in quite an effort to organise the airport excursion


tis' aixin - despite being a cute little girl, she can wail like a siren. it's a compliment of course :)


the sec 3s. to think that when i first walked into their classes they were little sec 1 kids.


the 3p3 boys (once a 3, always a 3 la)


plus the 3p girls


dragonboy #1 - he practises his dragonboat by standing on his classroom desk and clapping out a rhythm to english poetry


dragonboy #2 - he absolutely detests people who litter in class (because he detests picking up those litter even more)


dragonboy #3 - he's the sole inventor of the Darken Your Skin for Whiter-looking Teeth dental regime


dragonboy #4 - if you ever lend him a dvd, make sure to activate the loansharks. otherwise, he's one of the most lovable kids around :)


this one robo-boy - he's the first student to ever tell me in my face during a lesson, "wah lao so boring sia..." of course, it was the screening of the movie Dead Poets Society


bertybert - an old old school friend


pingping - otherwise known as the Guardian of My Books, Fellow Wintersonian, and Eternal Fayenatic


mr fadz - this guy would burn a planet to help a friend in need, what more can i say?


looking like some HK celebrity just arrived


ah, there he is... the latest photo scandal


the 8-hour flight flew by like nothing. my most pleasant ever (qantas is a greater way to fly!). this otherwise innocuous signboard appeared in front of my eyes like a dream


my room for now, i'm trying to do it up a bit so that soon it'd start emitting my very unique smell. and i think it's ominous to have bookshelves in the room already.
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up to the point before i saw everyone at the airport, i had looked forward to sydney, to waving goodbye to all that's in singapore, and just be by myself, a stranger in a strange world. then i wasnt sure anymore - it'd be hard not to complete this trip without getting that phd. in a way, coming to see me off was conferring an expectation on me. and should i do graduate at the end of it all, i have very very much to thank my family, friends. and these students too, who gave me almost two magical years. some feelings are beyond words, indescribable, like strange, new, destinations - and these kids had brought me there. i may be in another life and time now, but i don't think i'd left that enchanted place, and perhaps, i never shall.
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you kiddos: we'll all work hard, and we'll do fabulous, and we'll all graduate.

remember carpe diem :)

and then there're my books

and then there're my books. i've been reading since i was a kid, cultivated by the regular trips to the library with my mum, who would also never refuse to buy me a book i wanted. book shopping was a weekly event till sometime in my late teens, when magazines and hanging out in malls interested me far more than words and stories, and i stopped reading. but even then, those reading days were a big blur - i could read, and i read, but i never knew how to read until i discovered winterson, who through her exuberant prose, taught that language was more than words strung together to convey meaning - it was also about style, lineage, rhythm, effect, beauty, and above all, poetry. to paraphrase blake: she taught me /to see the world in a grain of word/ and heaven in a wild letter/. and through her novels, i learnt how to appreciate serious literature, and the shelves after shelves of fiction in the bookshops were strangers and daunting no more. through her i could go on to read and appreciate the great, the canonical, the sublime.

and to think this was a mere three years ago. when i returned from melbourne i brought back with me my one stack of books packed into a courier box with much space leftover. how much i've accumulated the last few years; that one stack of books grew and started threatening to topple, and was soon shifted into a new shelf. i still remember thinking, on the way to ikea, if i really needed to buy a bookshelf (that money could go to buying at least six books!). but i think i was buying books at a rate of twenty, even thirty a month (those 30%, 40% borders coupons aren't helping), and not long after a bigger bookshelf had to come, and then an even bigger one. when there was no more space for yet another bookshelf the books had to be double-shelved, and they were bursting off the planks.

unlike walter benjamin, who wrote a lovely, touching, essay on unpacking his crates of beloved books, and installing an exquisite library in his new home, i've had to pack up my beloveds the last few weeks. preceding this was two months of agonising over what books to bring with me to sydney. so for the past forty days or so i was swinging between bringing all and bringing none, and bringing some-of-what in between. brutality works, really. singpost charges me $90 per 20kg, and that meant i could only afford to send down what i need (academic books), and what i really need (some literary tomes; ok, very few). the rest have gone, all eight boxes along with the three bookshelves, to a dear friend's house; they went this evening, and jp and i spent the next few hours unpacking and shelving the books in his room. it was surreal, seeing my familiar loves, a few more than a thousand of them, standing nonchalant in a foreign room, as if they were angry with me. my room now looks, feels, and is, bare. in a way it seems to have lost its soul. this is one reason i find book-less houses a horrifying and depressing affair - is it all about the newest home theatre system and slimmest laptop computer? what does it say about the person who thinks so? i think not much.

i shan't see my books for the next four years, but i know they're in good hands, that they would be read and appreciated, homage adequately paid; and i take comfort in these, as well as the thought that in a way, i'd be reading them vicariously, over oceans and timezones. and four years is a long time for another personal library to not be erected down under, what more with its more established literary culture and rows of small independent bookshops (who genuinely care about books). but this time, at the end of it, they'd be coming home, and we'd all reunite, and live happily ever and ever after.