maybe, just maybe, let's forget everything else and learn something called discretion, shall we?

if that's too big a word for you, try "keeping your big fat mouth shut".
Posted at 7:40 AM

omgomgomg my legs hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt even my BUTT hurts

i don't think i can go for bollywood class tmr (stop laughing package of 3 classes and above=200crowns so i can go for all 6 classes including yes yes bollywood)

i am going to curl up and hug my legs and whimper i've never felt them so abused not even after stupid 12.1km-and-30-deg-incline runnus



but i enjoyed every minute anyway (except for the utter humiliation obviously). ok curling up and hugging now
Posted at 5:11 AM

what day is it
and in what month
this clock never seemed so alive
I can't keep up
and I can't back down
I've been losing so much time

all of the things that I want to say
just aren't coming out right
I'm tripping on words
you got my head spinning
I don't know where to go from here

cause it's you and me and all of the people
with nothing to do
nothing to prove
and it's you and me and all of the people
and I don't know why
I can't keep my eyes off of you

there's something about you now
I can't quite figure out
everything she does is beautiful
everything she does is right

you and me and all of the people
with nothing to do
nothing to lose
and it's you and me and all of the people
and I don't know why
I can't keep my eyes off of you

what day is it
and in what month
this clock never seemed so alive




5.11am sg time, 10.11pm swedish time:

today was the best day of my (swedish) life. :)))))
Posted at 12:14 AM

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=292855780649&ref=share
That one is courtesy of Ellen and is a must-watch. It was so painful but it ravaged and then resurrected my faith in humanity in a matter of minutes.

http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200911-omag-susan-klebold-columbine/
This is for anyone who has read Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin, and even for anyone else who has not. And if you've not, go and get the book!
_____________________________________________________________________________
Yossarian decided to change the subject. "Now you're changing the subject," he pointed out diplomatically. "I'll bet I can name two things to be miserable about for every one you can name to be thankful for."
"Be thankful you've got me," she insisted.
"I am, honey. But I'm also goddam good and miserable that I can't have Dori Duz again, too. Or the hundreds of other girls and women I'll see and want in my short lifetime and won't be able to go to bed with even once."
"Be thankful you're healthy."
"Be bitter you're not going to stay that way."
"Be glad you're even alive."
"Be furious you're going to die."
"Things could be much worse," she cried.
"They could be one hell of a lot better," he answered heatedly.
"You're naming only one thing," she protested. "You said you could name two."
"And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways," Yossarian continued, hurtling on over her objection. "There's nothing so mysterious about it. He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else he's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about-- a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation?What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatalogical mind of His when He robbed old people of their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?"
"Pain?" Lieutenant Schiesskopf's wife pounced on the word victoriously. "Pain is a useful symptom. Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers."
"And who created the dangers?" Yossarian demanded. He laughed caustically. "Oh, He was really being charitable when He gave us pain! Why couldn't He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of red-and-blue tubes right in the middle of each person's forehead. Any jukebox manufacturer worth his salt could have done that. Why couldn't He?"
"People would certainly look silly walking around with red neon tubes in the middle of their foreheads."
"They certainly look beautiful now writhing in agony or stupefied with morphine, don't they? What a colossal, immortal blunderer! When you consider the power and opportunity He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess he made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering."
-- Joseph Heller, Catch-22

But it takes just 20 seconds of walking down a windy leaf-strewn path to make me believe there's got to be something more. Something has to explain the ordinary miracles of trees knowing when to shed their leaves, knowing when to turn the world on fire. Something speaks in the smattering of chill droplets in the air upon my skin, like the firmament's own Braille pressed against my lips. Everything logical speaks of a God which cannot exist, but something in me believes-- oh, not in God God, but certainly in a higher power.

Today was my third or fourth visit to Uppsala's Domkyrka, but again I discovered things I never ever saw. Today I walked to the back of the cathedral (it's 118.7m long and 118.7m high, was previously gutted by fire, took 300 years to build) and found another chamber I'd never seen before:
Behind the cross-- the blue, starry-roofed chamber.

I wanted to take a proper picture of it immediately but there was a lady standing right in front of the chamber staring at it very intently and I didn't want to disturb, so I looked around instead. I saw a bunch of fliers in a holder on the wall and picked them up but they were all in Swedish; there was another holder directly opposite it so I walked over as quietly as I could, ducking my head apologetically to the woman as I passed in front of her because I was blocking her view. I picked one up-- these were in English, and said:
(sorry, picasa is screwing up on me and i can't rotate it!)

I started looking about for the sculpture-- was it in the chamber ahead? On one of the pillars adjoining the vaulting ceiling? I looked for about a minute or so-- fully a minute or so-- and was ready to give up and wondering irritably why the woman was still there because I couldn't take my picture unless she left-- and then--

I froze, and turned around very, very, very, very slowly.

Presenting Mary (the Return), aka the woman whom I'd thought was staring so intently at the chamber:





I truly got shivers up and down my spine. It's not as ludicrous as it sounds, she really had presence. Like what nette said on fb, some churches/cathedrals just have a certain aura-- and this cathedral does, enough to make even a quasi-agnostic like me throw kroners and kroners and kroners away on lighting candles for others and sit in the pews and just... breathe.

I took 65 photos in all but I'm not going to upload them here. But it was a lovely middle-of-the-day respite after the morning's essay opposition, which started at 8 am and was especially ungodly for me because I slept at 3am and woke at 6 to try and finish the evaluation.

And presenting today's culinary creation-- an attempt at creating a veggie wrap (or a vegetarian Swedish version of a Turkish tunnsbrodrulle):

of course, wrapping failed and in a while everything exploded outwards.

not bad, though! :)

i have yet to make curry oatmeal with caramelised onions (the onions will take FULLY an hour to caramelise properly. I cannot even begin to imagine how I'll make pseudo-sundried tomatoes which will take 6 hours in a low oven). Argh. Maybe next week.

on a sidenote I dreamt that I got up in the middle of the night, unpacked my guzheng from my wardrobe, unfolded it and played it on an autumn night here in Uppsala. And there was something about having to find the right kind of wood for it as well. ???

Posted at 1:03 AM

I really, really, really hate my schedule for the second half of exchange. I have lessons just twice a week but they're spaced in such a way that I can only get away for three days at any one time. wtf? So now basically in trying to meet up with Collen my one way air ticket is 600SEK instead of 300SEK (on a sidenote, I hate Ryanair too. And Wizzair. and Easyjet.).

Oh I might as well go the whole hog and hate that I don't have a flying pony.
________________________________________________
You meet all sorts of people at work, and that is one reason why I REALLY enjoy working. But you also meet idiots like the one I had to work with today. The first time we worked together he basically stood around smsing instead of doing a single thing. Oh and he spent the whole day asking and asking and asking about how much money he would get and said he would never work again cos the pay was too lousy (i. the REAL workers-- like the cafe hosts and curators-- aren't even paid. ii. it's a student nation. what did you expect? you don't work here for the money?!). The most enthusiasm he showed was when it was lunchtime and he took heapfuls of food.

Today, he went one up and decided to deride SG's political scene as one of no consequence; to sneer at our population size; to pass completely unwarranted and ridiculous remarks like "wah ni kan na nu hai hao PANG AH! DA PANG ZI"-- seriously, fucker, just because she cannot understand Chinese doesn't mean you can shoot your ass-mouth off like that. And what was worse was that the girl in question wasn't even fat, just a bit fleshy, and incredibly incredibly nice to boot. When I snapped at himfor that he said "zhong guo ren jiang shi hua" wtf? if every person from China I met was like that I would nuclear bomb the country; he's such an insult to his people. Oh he complained about EVERYTHING-- the cafe host (I tuned him out and refused to speak to him so I don't know what he said), the food (it tastes horrible according to him but he took TONS of it home anyway), my way of lighting candles, how we ladled food out, how we were making vanilla sauce (he snatched the fork from me and commenced whacking upon which huge splatters of cream flew out. IDIOT. did he bother cleaning up? NO I HAD TO DO IT. BASTARD. BASTARDO. MERDE.).

At one point I found myself fingering a serrated breadknife rather speculatively.

And crapass stop grabbing my fingers every time you take a plate from me. CRAPASS. Even Anastacia-- and she is the most accommodating person I have ever met-- found him weird and said that he stood wayyy too close to her, doing NOTHING while she was rushing to finish her tasks. OH AND HE TOLD HER TO HER FACE THAT HE HATES HER MASCARA. huh????????????????????????????

Have I ever met a bigger manbitch? NO. I rolled my eyes VERY VERY VERY obviously when he said something about being interested in a Turkish girl he'd met because HEY YOU'D HAVE TO BE DEAF DUMB BLIND AND RETARDED to even reciprocate. Poor Turkish girl.

Rant over.
_________________________________________________________________
At this point the only thing tying me back to Singapore is dance. Really. If not for that I would be writing emails appealing for a year long exchange or to quit school and stay in Sweden and never go back. I'm not looking forward to going home (apart from dance dance dance), because the mere thought of having to be there-- or even having to travel with my parents in December omgwtfbbq-- is killing me. Yes, go ahead, regret sending your ungrateful bitch of a daughter on exchange. I don't care so long as you stop yelling at me about taking pot or smoking or whatever (all of which i'm NOT doing), or expect me to plan every single detail of your trips and then pop in with seven million other suggestions and "oh we should have gone to switzerland"s. GIVE ME A BREAK.

ok rant REALLY over.
__________________________________________________________________
Yesterday in lit class we were doing presentations on Shakespeare's Hamlet; we were each supposed to choose a scene from a movie version and sort of compare it with the text. We watched Williamson, Kline (?), and the Mel Gibson one, but nothing ever came close to Branagh's version.

I chose Act III Scene 1, when he does his soliloquy on "to be or not to be", and then encounters Ophelia and talks to her. Sitting in class I nearly wept as I played the DVD for that scene. Branagh is incredible. He switched my entire perspective of Hamlet, and I really didn't know my view of him could be changed like that.
__________________________________________________________________
I successfully dodged my stalker HA. I am good!

And the BW girls apparently don't hate my warm-ups :)

Now the unappreciative beast of an ingrate shall go and rush her opposition for tomorrow's essay standoff. hell.

__________________________________________________________________
OH ONE MORE THING. I hate that my screwy lesson plans turned into screwy timing for prague so that I'm missing dance2xs prague's project element by TWO DAYS when the hostel I booked is RIGHT next to the venue. like on purpose. like omg slay me. like omg ok stop rant stop do work do work.
Posted at 12:34 AM

I fell in love with fall apples and a few hours ago ate my 15th apple in a week (exactly). There are six more sitting pretty in a bowl on my window sill, tawny and crimson with the blush of autumn upon them. They're not going to last very long :)



some pictures of the second snow (Wednesday) last week:




taking these shots made me rather alarmingly late for work (ok la, just 10 minutes but when it comes to Swedish punctuality ten is a whole lotta minutes) but how could I resist? it all melted away by the time we ended, although i saw it snow and rain a lot more while we were working.

Thursday I watched a modern dance piece with some of the BW girls. It was bizarre, and strange, and for the first thirty minutes I stared at three Swedish girls in black scuttling about on the floor in high heels and thought of choreography in my head instead. But the second half was definitely an improvement-- because it is currently 5.52am and I am in no shape to type up a new account you will have to make do with a rather lengthy and incoherent harangue I wrote earlier:

the second half definitely was a vast improvement, although 2 out of the three items were not much more engaging. what i liked best was the penultimate item; when it comes to contemporary pieces i think perhaps I only really truly connect with items that have a backstory to them. The way this item established it was truly thought-provoking; the soloist entered the stage and stood on a chair, with one high heel on and one on the floor. it looked almost as if she was about to hang herself. then, in company to the cadence of a stand up comedian's jokes and bouts of canned laughter, she began to move. the man's voice, low and confiding, made accomplices of the audience even as we watched his unwitting torture of the girl. "I knew this girl whom I couldn't forget whom I could have fallen very deep in love with" or something like that-- "She was a very strange girl; she liked to dance very fast to very slow music"; "she wrote me a beautiful letter. I read all the way to the bottom and crossed out the name at the bottom and wrote my own. I sent it back to her *cue canned laughter* I never heard from her again. I guess she didn't like what she wrote."

And each time he spoke the recorded laughter would play, and each line seemed to inflict even more pain on her. The chair became less of a perch for self-slaughter than a stage for mockery-- her self was exposed shred by shred. And as it went on the words started tumbling-- they cut the lines and spliced them, rocked the rhythm with more laughter. The cruelty of it all was that we laughed still at the man's words, but after a while I stopped-- it cut. You could feel it.

And when she danced with one shoe on and one shoe off you could see the yearning, the incompleteness-- the heels women wear for the men they love, the things they do to please them, the extents we go to, to make them love us-- or in the hopes that they will. I liked that piece a lot a lot :)

THAT'S how you use high heels, man. not walk them down the stage with your gloved hands -.-

abstraction for the sake of abstraction is neither artistic nor intellectual.

i've got three different accounts of my days going on at any one time and they're all piecemeal. I never know what I've written down anymore. In any case, a few pictures--



Friday I successfully defended my essay-- it wasn't as much of a nightmare as I thought it would be, and I think I put the Finnish girl who was my opponent through rather a lot of grief. In feedback she said I wrote with a very journalistic style; I guess some things just don't leave you, ever. I miss writing, even if I'm still pretty sure I could never live that kind of life. I'm not talking about the crazy nights or the pissy newsmakers or even the pornsite posting. I'm talking about having it spill over into your life, when you pick up the hotline call and find out that the body they found on the other end is a loved one, a friend-- someone you knew and cared for. I'm talking about having your soul picked bare, if you had to cover that story.

Ah well in any case it's not as though Singapore's newspapers are that dramatic or-- after a while-- have that wide a reach or scope. No offence intended. Anyway the poor Finnish girl told me later that she had to check a dictionary for every other word and even got her half-American boyfriend to translate. Whoops. :S

Sunday's reggae class was replaced by an AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME teacher. if I though Carmel was good this girl is in-freaking-sane, even though she taught in Swedish (and probably thought I was an idiot because she kept talking to me and I just gazed back helplessly at her). Thank god for this one girl in my class who helped to translate her more important instructions, like "she just asked us to dance opposite each other, so you have to go to the back" etc. After class I ran up to her and asked her if she taught anywhere else. Her reply? "I used to teach here and everywhere else, but I'm going to LA for like five months so I won't be here for the spring semester." god damn :(

that's her, in the adidas outfit. the other is some OTHER swedish girl in my class. my pic with her is terrible and blur :( Her name is Karen. I think if i ever do have kids I will name a daughter Karen, because 3 out of 4 Karens I know are crazy dancers and if names have any power at all......... (I'm going to end up like Maureen's mum in Centerstage, I know it. Hey watching the movie I felt like slapping Maureen for throwing it all away anyway).

And this lovely thing is on my knee after sunday's reggae. It keeps getting better bigger, I could barely dance at practice just now.

Speaking of practice I think the BW girls now hate me, especially after I made them do 10 jackknives to round up warm-up. But it was only ten. sheesh.

the weekend was a very social one and I spent all of Monday recovering from it. But I don't feel like typing more now and in any case I've got to go and watch soozey's SSS again finish tracy's email ARGH read my hamlet notes.

And because I ought to remember a bit about what else is going on outside my little Swedish haven-- I'm glad Dad's back safe and sound in Singapore, he smsed me and said that for five days in Padang he had nothing to eat but combat rations. Also, something else-- quite outdated, but still-- Obama's Nobel win may have been decidedly a tad unwarranted, but all the vitriol is even more undeserved-- especially from his own countrymen. For chrissake people this is your president. Feel a little pride, will you? And it's not as if Nobel prizes haven't been awarded to people who haven't actually done anything material, if you wanted to put it that way. Aung San Suu Kyi is still under house arrest and the junta is still in power; and didn't someone get one for his efforts in dealing with apartheid even before it ever ended? I'm not knocking their efforts, they ARE valiant-- but at times the accolade can be awarded as much for an idea, an inspiration, a symbol as it is awarded for an actual achievement.

Having said that I did not like Obama's acceptance speech. I thought he played the family card rather too hard-- digression is the soul of wit, but his words rang too false for my liking-- and in any case I think he should have rejected it. Aung San Suu Kyi and incomplete efforts are all very well, but how do you reconcile ordering something like 50000 more troops in Afghanistan with accepting a Nobel peace prize? Even if the end result is peace, there's too much uncertainty in the interim and too much violence in the process that cannot be justified until you can fully calculate what the end result is (yes, in a situation like this, I think I may almost be persuaded that the end justifies the means. Perhaps.). All I can hope is that he will show that he deserves it, and for all the hating to STOP.

Ok it is 6.34am I am starving I think it should be safe to go make breakfast in a little bit :)

And sometimes, I tell them, I like to put my head back, like this, and let the rain fall in my mouth. It tastes just like wine. Have you ever tried it?
Posted at 11:08 AM

i dreamt i was a salem witch



next time my alarm rings and i remember my dreams i'm going to get up and write them down
Posted at 2:25 PM

can you meet me halfway
right at the borderline
that's where i'm gonna wait
for you

warning! monster entry!

I took a chance and decided a bit of frostiness was endurable for the chance to sit outside on this glorious autumn afternoon. It's cold-- today's lowest temperature is forecast at a nippy -1degC-- -1! we're only at the start of autumn!-- and my fingers are already protesting in pain, but this is worth it.

(this kind of reminds me of that poet's 19-year-old lover who would sit out in the cold composing sonnets to stars; he caught a chill and died of pneumonia)

Oh but I wish you could only see what I see-- slate-gray clouds thick and furious in the distant skies, shot through with indifferent light; tall trees noble against the sky, variegated green-and-yellow-and-russet; fallen leaves of gold, swirling in little flurries upon beds of downy grass already tinged with silver, as if anticipating winter's first snow.

I see racks of bicycles against autumnal bushes; cars lined in parallels, their metallic sheens somehow congruous with all this sylvan finery. I close my eyes--or just look down, to the blonde wood of the bench where I'm sitting and typing!-- and I hear a forest symphony, a hushedrushed whisper and rustle of sweeping winds in branches and leaves. It sounds like sighs, like waves, like seas. It sounds like magic. And now I look up and I see lightwinged sparrows in swoops against the sky, dipping to kiss the tops of trees and suspended in the updrafts of the cold winds.

I cannot imagine a more peaceful sight; my words fail me.

My fingers are hurting too much to type. I'm going to have to continue this inside.

Oh, but how loathe am I to leave this...!
____________________________________________________________________________
13th october, tuesday:

Well that was yesterday. After that I went indoors and, happily oatmealed-and-warmified (and unhappily chilled again, with frozen strawberries in iced milk and a window flung wide open), proceeded to spend the rest of the day and night in a mental and physical declension. I mean, sure, I read a bit of Troilus and Cressida for fun, but all the wordplay was lost on me. Then I started watching Vampire Diaries. Oh, stuff it, it's better than True Blood, and I was entitled after my crazy weekend of essay writing that was by turns desultory and desperate; at one point espresso didn't prevent me from falling asleep and waking 4 hours before the paper was due. In any case I handed it up with 35 seconds to go but was wasted for the rest of the day; Vamp Diaries was the perfect restorative. Damon is insane-- "Girls can't resist me... my charm, my good looks, my unflinching ability to listen to Taylor Swift..." Damon >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Stefan kthxbye.

see what i mean?

I have so much to write I don't even know where to begin. It's been a while since I wrote properly, and my updates never make it to publication-- they're all sitting in drafts, incomplete. I've let so much slip away; reading others' blogs I know I'm going to look back on this and regret all that I've forgotten, because the human memory is really like a sieve. Nothing gold can stay.

Perhaps I'll start with today: It snowed, so I went for a run. Congratulations to you if you followed that line of reasoning, because I didn't; I only know that had it NOT snowed, I might not have pushed myself out of my room to go. Collen is right, it's next to impossible to breathe properly in the cold air, but I loved it-- I couldn't figure out how I had stayed away from running for so long.

My first experience of snow was a tad... underwhelming. I'd peered out my window all the previous night on the offchance that the weather forecast's "chance of snow" might materialise; all I saw was rain. I woke to lots of sunshine and a very, very, very, very light drizzle... wait a sec. That wasn't rain, it was snow. SNOW.

And that was it.

But running was another affair altogether. It was bitterly, painfully, bitingly cold, but for the first few minutes I couldn't stop laughing every time I breathed out and saw my own breath coalesce into white clouds in the air. I got completely and totally lost, of course, but I found a humongous graveyard about 8 times the size of the one I had to hike through in the middle of the night (there sure are a lot of dead people in Sweden); in fact they were digging a grave just as I was there I veered off in another direction. I ran through forests and alongside highways and to Flogsta and ICA Maxi and froze throughout the whole of it and when I came back and removed my gloves my fingernails were a very pretty delicate shade of lavender. But I'd do it again, and then some.
___________________________________________________________________________
September 24th:

Today as I walked back from class at Engelska Parken I noticed the way the trees lining my avenue have been dusted over with a smattering of russet. The lush glorious greens I knew only a month ago are giving way, slowly but surely, to richer hues of tender reds and dusky purples, of burning umber and sunshine gold-- as though, having basked in summer's rays all season long, they've trapped light within their layers and sun within their stems.

Even the yellow roses by the roadside have taken on a pinkish hue. Autumn's claret abounds.

Everything's changing and I don't/still feel the same.

I've settled in quite nicely, I think, even if I still do feel the gaping lack of dance quite acutely. It's kind of bizarre-- I feel like I have more on my to-do list on exchange than I ever did back home: my readings never end, and I've yet to go for a single class where I actually knew more than 60% of everything that was going on. Law is the usual "I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing-here" scenario; thank goodness that my seminar group is really quite hardworking, especially this German guy who's incredibly smart and nice and funny. Every class has just served to reinforce how much I don't know compared to everyone here. But it's good-- I've at least got it reinforced in my head that Singapore operates on a common law system and strict liability offences are distinguished by the lack of a requirement for mens rea.

Literature however is wonderful. I've never enjoyed my classes more (except maybe in secondary school-- Twelfth Night!); my class has 5 people including me, but so far there hasn't been full attendance at a single session yet (we usually number 3). I really have to do a lot of reading to catch up with the rest, they've all got backgrounds like Historic Criticism and Latin {LATIN?!?!} and Classical Studies and all that. The teacher-- Anna-- seems to be quite mystified by me: I think she can't understand why the hell I'm majoring in law instead of literature. Truth be told? I've wondered that so many times myself. But we can't always have what we love, can we.

I'm grateful for small blessings-- my parents have stopped demanding that we skype everyday, for one; all that's left of whatever ailment afflicted me the very weekend my parents flew off is a temperamental cough that only acts up particularly nastily at imes (like today). Now that was kind of scary-- I was sneezing and coughing up blood (okay, traces of, it wasn't that bad), burning with fever on random days and stuck with a throat so sore I teared up every time I swallowed. Both Ning and Ni got quite worried for me; Ning in particular was convinced I'd pass out in my room one day and no one would know since I refused to tell my parents. Which, in hindsight, was the right choice-- they heard me cough two days ago over skype and fretted themselves half to death over my ill health. Imagine how they'd have reacted if they knew the worst of it.

It's kind of lonely here in Sweden, in the sense that I'm not really close to anyone. I kind of like it that way-- I don't understand how people have so much time to go for corridor parties and clubs, and the freedom is refreshing-- but I do wonder what I'm missing sometimes. And on nights like Wednesday night, walking home under an unimaginably crisply cold and clear star-spangled sky, I really wished I could have the random one with me. She's the one in love with Europe-- with its airs, its temperaments, its people, its foods. I think I could do with a good dose of her daring and her madness and her unstudied spontaneity.

So what else have I been up to? I've been working at a cafe (for the experience, and to pay off my dance course fees-- I'm going to register for another one if I can); I've signed up for work at a bar/club, but there's no news on that yet; and I've joined a dance group which I shall call BW for short-- they're passable at times and absolutely abysmal at others, but the people are friendly and I am desperate for any form of dance I can get at all. Last practice Klara asked me to do something I'd jokingly (or rather, in utter despair) declared to my sister I WOULD do-- the response to which my sister said would be "They'll either kick you out or never let you leave."

In short, I am content, if not madly ecstatic and in a frenzy of fun every clubhopping night. I am enjoying myself, due in no small part to the fact that I finally stopped trying to keep up with the Joneses (or the Jonssons, in this case) and feeling like I ought to be partying my head off and drinking like a fish. I simply had to ask myself what I really wanted to get out of this exchange.

I don't want a thousand smoky too-bright-flash pics; I sure as heck don't want even bigger eyebags from insane partying. I don't mind making more friends, but I don't feel like the parties help a lot-- you just make acquaintances, and I feel like I actually have more meaningful conversations with the people throwing pebbles at my window (I mean it. Really. I think they're just grateful when I get up and unlock the doors and let them in out of the cold).

Maybe what I really wanted when I went on exchange was, simply, the change. In one of my conversations with woonhowe ages and ages ago, he said something along the lines of "once you hit 18 your character/nature is pretty much fixed. Nothing much changes after that unless something really big happens". It wasn't something I wanted to hear then and even now it rankles a bit-- we are creatures of habit and inertia, but I like change. Change for the better, that is. Am I happy with the person I am now? No. Am I willing to stay this way for the rest of my life? Hell, no.

And so life trundles on. I started this post-- oh, ages ago, I've been adding to it gradually. It is now Friday night as I type this, having just finished a rather satisfying dinner and an unsatisfying book, read reclined in an armchair with a fleece blanket thrown over myself, windows open to the cold night air and the night's medley of random strains of guitar playing, Coldplay, and the sound of tyres on gravel. I finished MoV yesterday-- I suspect I am the only person I know who gets shivers up and down her spine when reading the words "In sooth, I know not why I am so sad". Today I decided that I'm reading too little and headed for the library, so I have a satisfying stack of books to read-- trashy and not-so-trashy; Charlaine Harris is a strange bedfellow for the RSC Complete Works of Shakespeare, but well. I've paid my rent, topped up my bus card, set out my to-do list for tomorrow, and am slowly coming to grips with my essay topic (argh due in 2 weeks argh).
_________________________________________________________________________
October 13th, again:

So there-- change. I think I've become so much happier and content with what's been going on here in my little corner of Sweden because I finally sorted and worked out what exactly I want from exchange. Like Michelle (Ong) said, people call it the experience of a lifetime, super fun, eye-opening, yadayadayada... but after a while it blurs together, does it not? Three million and one photo albums later the only difference that exists anymore is in your head... and your heart.

Your mind.

Your soul.

And that is what I'm hoping to take back from this. Sweden is giving me independence, freedom-- an inspiration to be who I want to be. It's a tabula rasa for me, as I am for it-- we may mutually inscribe our words, tattoo our thoughts, upon the other. I don't know how different I am going to end up becoming, or if I will change at all-- but I am hoping this is going to make me stronger, more confident-- more willing to be who I am instead of who another person wants me to be. That's something I've never been able to stand about myself; even if I don't like you I'll end up trying to make myself into someone you'll like. It was like that with kate, wednesday guy, mr teeth-- throw up any of the code names the creatures have dubbed random people over the years and it'll probably fit the scenario. What gives, man? What gives?

Maybe it's because I don't like who I am, anyway. At one practice I got quite irritated because one girl kept stopping in the middle of the choreography to stand, hands on hips, looking out of sorts. Then as we were going through the choreography again there was a loud thud, and I looked around to see her flat on the ground. My first thought was "oh my god come ON quit with the drama". The truth? She'd REALLY fainted; she has low blood sugar. All the turns and floorwork had made her dizzy, which was why she kept stopping in the midst of the choreography. And me-- what the hell kind of way to react was that?

Yes, for all those and more, so much more-- change.

So what's new? Mms. I've submitted a dearoldlove (which actually got published), worked a bit, tried to dance more, not replied emails (whooops), gained TONS of weight, had plans for scaling Kinabalu in January scrapped (sigh), had a taste of what it was like to be stalked (don't ask), spent time over skype whacking spoons at my sister (eh she started it), had a bunch of inebriated (and hence purblinded) guys trying to pick me up with the words "sexy mama", went to Behnaz' place for fika and Mitzi's for a crayfish party complete with "assembled" cake and dirty japanese... oh wait okay now THAT is something worth elaborating. Apart from Erik's immensely good assembled cake and getting to see what a crayfish looked like, I was also offered the opportunity to watch "the most expensive porn flick ever made" and learnt far more information about the porn industry than anyone could possibly want to know. We also baked two chocolate cakes for dessert that started to burn because Mitzi dear set the oven at 300degC instead of 180, watched Vampire Diaries, Flashforward (so so so good), and er watched as Erik and Rhoda read out choice selections from Mitzi's dirty Japanese book. Really, the title of the book is Dirty Japanese. I kid you not.
mmm chocolate cake!
Dirty Japanese-ing


Oh oh oh-- I rearranged my room, and now my bed is right by the window so I fall asleep to the stars in the night sky and wake with sunlight upon my eyelids. And I retreat there when I have a really good book to read in the daytime, or when I need to study AWAY from the internet-- it was there that I headed with my laptop over the weekend; my LAN cable is too short to stretch all the way across the room. Unfortunately, because it is on my bed, I ended up dozing off even with espresso in my veins on Monday morning and woke at 6.30am with a half-done essay. But those last hours were the most productive of all my efforts.

Forgive the camwhoring it's the only way I could truly convey how wonderful it is to read Oscar Wilde by the window. Even Salman Rushdie. Even the Report of the Democratic Audit of Sweden 1999.

And, before I go:


sculpture just outside Stadsbiblioteket

same structure seen through my sunglasses. perspective is always important :) (i call them my autumnal glasses, now-- they gave me a glimpse of autumn even before the leaves changed)

getting lost on the way to Flogsta. How oh how could I not want to get lost if I am afforded sights like these?


letters written "a la P.S. I Love You style", only-- and I quote-- "not that I'm dead like Gerry". I cried like an idiot when I found them in my suitcase, and I still haven't figured out how my sister managed to stuff them in when I couldn't even get the stupid zip to close.

______________________________________________________________________
As I type this #ruleofrelationships is trending on Twitter. Boy do I have the ultimate one (although maybe it's pre-relationship, but still)-- "He's just not that into you". Totally saves everyone a world of grief.

And frankly I deserve to be shot. I'm looking at my electives timetable for Sem 2 and the first thought that leapt to my mind when I looked at the timetable was "hmms ok which ones leave my days free for dance?"

-______________________________- part-time student full-time wannabe dancer. But in any case, okay confirmed not taking family law (crap i'd better hope year 4 has a good slot for that).
Posted at 7:59 PM

so much for exiling myself from internet to finish my stupid essay.


Eisen if I fail this essay I'm going to blame you! But it's okay I'll forgive you once you flash that arm of yours.

And to think I thought I was over the whole chain-smoking-and/or-tattooed-bad-boy thing. I'll NEVER get over it, I swear :(

Andddd I checked prices in Uppsala for navel-piercing (not for tattoos though I don't like the look of the parlour here)-- it's 550SEK! Which is exorbitant compared to Stege's 75SGD in Singapore. Ah, HELL :(

AH it looks GOOD. hot damn. How to do essay like this!

eisen got tattoos today says (12:48 AM):
if you said that raises my hotness factor by N, then fuck the valedictorianship
Posted at 12:42 AM

note to self: stop being lazy, and put on the usual two-layers-of-socks-and-uppers-then-boots before going out. SERIOUSLY.

It's 2 deg out there. still no sight of draconids, but in a sky peppered full of living lights, I guess the draconids would have been icing on the cake. Oh well.

Alright-- 8 page essay due Monday, NOT EVEN A CLUE WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT. I'm going to bury myself in academia this whole weekend and venture out only for dance. Cya on Monday, 4.30pm your time!

not content with being, we will strive to become
Posted at 2:50 AM

I was freaked enough trying to find my way to Döbelnsgatan at sevenish pm. I leave to your imagination the state of my nerves when I had to make my way back, alone, 3 hours later.

Thing is, it's times like these that really strike home how isolated one is on exchange. There is nobody to save you when you screw up, nobody who'll haul ass and come pick you up when it's too late to catch a bus or train back; hell, there's not even a bus you can take back home, never mind the time. I've never appreciated Singapore more-- Singapore, where running alone at one plus am felt reasonably safe and was par for the course for me. Here, walking back at 11pm, I was scared enough that I could have cried.

I know it's damn unsafe to hitch-hike and even when I was stranded out in Flog.sta at 2am last week I didn't for a moment consider accepting some guy's proffered ride (I think he was drunk anyway; and yes, Tracy/Ni, if you're reading this, that was the "sexy mama" night). But tonight, if someone had stopped to offer a lift, I think I might have accepted-- I was that freaked out. It's just extremely dark and cold and there is NOBODY on the roads at ALL and oh my gosh Sweden can't you install a few more street lights you certainly tax your citizens enough for that. Having to walk through the cemetery to get back to my place did NOT help-- what is peaceful by the light of day is horribly sinister in pitch darkness. I was pathetically grateful everytime I even saw some random person cycling past, for some reason.

I don't even know why I'm typing this. I'm just super super super glad to be back in my room without having been murdered or encountering a ghost or being mauled by spoons. Stupid spoon murderer video :@

Oh and I didn't see any shooting stars. So much for Draconids in the northern hemisphere. Also, I walked so much today after getting lost not once but three times that I somehow managed to cut my toe on my own toenail. fail. fail. fail. bloody hurts (literally). (Michelle-- you can tell mummy and daddy that I walked far enough that I caught sight of Ikea. like 200m away. FAIL.)

as evidence also that Sweden is ruining me (quite apart from the fact that I now think a 6sgd cinnamon roll is a bargain), this is where we had our seminar group meeting on Tuesday:

Starbucks just isn't going to cut it for me anymore. :|
Posted at 5:21 AM

the only time i feel alive anymore.

but i'm a terminal patient, you get what i mean? i could have broken down and screamed my head off in class today because i'm losing it. i can feel it. carmel said for those who really want to improve-- as opposed to those who just want to have fun-- we've got to really control our lines and be sure where our energy is going. then she flicked a glance at me.

as it was i could hardly breathe after class-- i'm that out of shape. the last time i ran was 2 weeks ago, and even then i came back without ever having regained feeling in my fingers or legs (legs, mind you, not toes).

i'm chasing butterflies in the time of winter.

my left hip is still out of joint (pun intended). my right elbow is outta whack after today's waacking workshop (lousy entendre also intended). the headaches that keep hitting me have been diagnosed by my sister the would-be-quack-doctor as "cluster headaches" and apparently are the worst medical pain known to man.

but it's my heart that hurts most and worst of all.




i'm not going to be despondent. i'm going to take wei-an's words to heart and try, try try. what can we do but try, really? so keep the videos coming, people, they're my lifeline.
________________________________________________________________

in other news, my dad reached indo safely but apparently had nothing to eat but an apple the first night. very reminiscent of khao lak in '04, but at least then he brought granola bars. but of course, no one can expect anything more in such conditions.

also my sister tells me his team has found survivors. i hope they find more.

Oph. 'Tis brief, my lord.
Ham. As woman's love.
Woman's love? Really? Hamlet, think harder.
Posted at 1:10 AM

dad called an hour or so ago from the plane just before it was about to take off. i've been stupidly fretting myself sleepless and sick with unfounded worry ever since. i wanted to tell him to be careful and not go clambering into ruins but it's useless, isn't it, he won't be happy unless he's doing that and in any case that's one of the reasons why we look up to him and respect him (come on, surely it wasn't for the incessant nagging hurhur). whatever my mum says i simply cannot picture him sitting back and ordering his men around without getting involved in the same work as well.

please please please keep him safe and please let there not be any more quakes or aftershocks.

and if i don't get to sleep soon i'm pretty sure i'll end up chopping more than a half a fingernail off at work tomorrow morning.
Posted at 7:11 AM

came back from work and ban ki moon lecture feeling extremely tired and sick wondering whether to go for poetry slam tonight talks to sis to confirm if i should book klm tickets for end of year and i am told that DAD IS BEING SENT TO INDONESIA ON A SEARCH AND RESCUE MISSION. HE FLIES FROM ABU DHABI TONIGHT.

oh my god. ok i need to just sit and let my throbbing head rest for a while.

in any case-- good luck dad! :D :| :)
Posted at 11:48 PM