nondescript in blue

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

I do late night blogging, not late night partying, and my roommate has left for someplace possibly more interesting than our minimalist room with its bare walls. I can hear the thump of a boom box somewhere, and just a while ago fashionably dressed girls knocked on my door looking for my roommate, but she had already left. We get on well enough, I suppose.

I'm spectacularly bad at names and faces. It's embarrassing.

Highly amusing (to me, at least) Klingon Fairy Tales, from McSweeney's:

"Goldilocks Dies With Honor at the Hands of the Three Bears"

"The Three Little Pigs Build an Improvised Explosive Device and Deal With That Damned Wolf Once and for All"

"Old Mother Hubbard, Lacking the Means to Support Herself With Honor, Sets Her Disruptor on Self-Destruct and Waits for the Inevitable"

"Mary Had a Little Lamb. It Was Delicious"

"Little Red Riding Hood Strays Into the Neutral Zone and Is Never Heard From Again, Although There Are Rumors ... Awful, Awful Rumors"

"The Hare Foolishly Lowers His Guard and Is Devastated by the Tortoise, Whose Prowess in Battle Attracts Many Desirable Mates"

Gosh, I miss fangirling with my sister. Small talk does get tedious, especially when you suspect the other party is feigning interest in what you are saying, and when they don't reciprocate as much as you would like.

I'm OK with varying my pitch and inflection and adjusting pronunciation of certain words to sound more American, but I'm reluctant to slur or add glottal stops. Or change my to-MAH-toes to to-MAY-toes. As long as i can be easily understood, is it really necessary to mimic the accent completely?

Going off to ponder course changes now.

words were spilled on Wednesday, August 31, 2005

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Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Have finally moved in, unpacked my belongings (which may seem like a lot when you are lugging it around, but are revealed to be frighteningly minimal out of the suitcase), and bid goodbye to my dad, who's leaving for home tomorrow morning.

I haven't got myself a mobile yet, because without a social security number and no credit history I have to put down a deposit of US$500 for a year just to get a subscription plan, and I don't have that much free cash to spare at the moment, most of my financial assets here being processed by BOA... and besides, I've only just moved in.

I've got a land line though: 401-867-5159. At the moment it's pretty useless 'cos I'm waiting for my roommate to arrive with a phone. What the hell, I prefer VoIP anyway. Speaking of which, I can be contacted on Skype (look for banscylla) and I'm now a regular MSN Messenger user.

Today's orientation programme was designed for international students. There were games in moderate amounts, useful discussion and sharing sessions, and I got to know some other international students. Naturally there was no escaping the Singaporeans - we were everywhere. Apparently the Singapore freshman intake this year is the second largest, after Canada, much to the dismay of those who chose Brown because they didn't want something like Cornell.

Lots of people seem to be from international schools and already sport funky American accents, not to mention hair and clothes that make me feel like running to my dorm room to commune with my laptop.

Er. Or maybe I'm just tired, and excessive small-talking has worsened the incipient sore throat I've been nursing these past few days. American exuberance doesn't come naturally to me, though I suppose I must develop at least some of it with time.

words were spilled on Tuesday, August 30, 2005

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Monday, August 29, 2005

brown290805 003
Originally uploaded by banscylla.

Took a cab with my dad to Brown this morning and spent half a day there, running around trying not to look lost, snapping pictures (I'm degenerating into a point-and-shooter - so much for proper photography), settling some preliminary stuff like getting my keys and student ID, registering at the office for foreign student affairs, clarifying where to pick up my linens tomorrow. Ate Chinese food (!) at a restaurant located near the campus, although it's hard to say where the campus ends and the rest of Providence begins, because it's an open concept and the buildings sort of spill all over the place, merging into residential estates and such. When the taxi took us to Keeney Quadrangle (a collection of residential halls including my own) I could hardly believe that we'd arrived - there wasn't any sign proclaiming that we were already on university grounds, and by all appearances it seemed as though we were in a picturesque residential area.

I'm too used to NUS and NTU - if there aren't any ugly concrete blocks, I don't see an institute of higher learning.

And - oh yeah - needless to say (doesn't stop me from saying it though):

NEW PHOTOS!

words were spilled on Monday, August 29, 2005

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Saturday, August 27, 2005

Transportation Security Administration
Notice of Baggage Inspection

'To protect you and your fellow passengers... required by law to inspect all checked baggage... Your bag was among those selected for physical inspection... If the TSA screener was unable to open your bag for inspection because it was locked, the screener may have been forced to break the locks on your bag. TSA sincerely regrets blahblahblah... however TSA is not liable for damage to your lock resulting from this necessary security precaution.'

To paraphrase a certain pointy-eared first officer, I believe it's time for a colourful metaphor... 'cos THEY BROKE MY LOCK AND RIFLED THROUGH MY BELONGINGS! Sure it's they were just doing their jobs and all but it's bloody irritating, when a carefully chosen combination with immensely satisfying symbolic value goes to waste because some immigration officer BROKE THE BLOODY LOCK. Not to mention all that immaculate packing desecrated. Geez. ~~Thankfully, they didn't seem to find anything wrong with my -ahem- DVDs.~~

A number of air travel phobias actually were realised on my Singapore-Tokyo-Minneapolis-Providence long distance haul. At Changi, after a pleasant last chat with friends and family, we went to the departure area and saw, to my horror, that the gate was closing. Cue panicky rush to gate only to discover the ominous sign was having us on.

Then at Tokyo Narita there was barely any time for airport sightseeing. (All those cute ATMs and dispensing machines that are so Japanese, and the Chinese announcements were easier on the ears than the ones in China. At least the Japanese actually had a human reading them out.) But the worst came at Minneapolis, our port of entry into the US. The trans-Pacific flight I was on had been delayed at Narita, and arrived late at Minneapolis, leaving us hardly any time to make the connecting flight to Providence. Add to this already stressful situation the notorious US Customs and Border Protection process, me momentarily forgetting where I put my I-20, food and money to declare, an overcrowded arrival hall and a horrendously packed baggage carousel, latelatelate baggage, a departure gate on the other side of the unexpectedly vast airport, a Final Boarding Call when we weren't even halfway there yet, and finally, my lousy stamina... it was right out of one of my pre-departure airport nightmares.

And finally, when we got to Providence, our baggage completely failed to turn up. My father was ready to flip. I took a more philosophical approach. After all, since I am in the habit of prophesying air travel doom, perhaps it was only fitting that it should happen to me.

Happily though, Northwest tracked them down and delivered our bags to the hotel later that night. No harm done, except to my /grrrrr/ lock.

Taxi fares here are exorbitant. On the relatively short trip from airport to hotel I was watching the meter climb with horrified fascination. It starts at US$2.50 and goes up with sadistic alacrity. The final tab was around US$30. It was more expensive than dinner at an American beef-and-potatoes restaurant. But everyone here gets around that problem by owning a car, probably. My Singaporean public transport conditioning rebels against the idea of the absolute necessity of car ownership.

And then there are the motorcycles I've never seen outside of road trip movies like Easy Rider, complete with ribbons and who-knows-what. Used cars selling for a few thousand bucks. Reassuringly rusty metal overhead bridges (I'm never going on one of those unless it's absolutely necessary). The Stars-and-Stripes proudly flown atop flag poles all over the place, in sizes larger than your run-of-the-mill national flag. Tap water that smells of chlorine. Zero provision for pedestrians on suburban roads ('cos, I fancy, everyone owns a car, maybe one of those monster pick-ups or SUVs), although drivers do make way for them in a way that's radically different from, oh, China? Though I must say that I miss China's cost of living.

Here in the US, the wallet is stretched even thinner by the accursed culture of generous tipping. I had to remind my dad to let the restaurant keep the change. It would be too Singaporean to insist upon having the 95c back now, wouldn't it?

I should be sleeping by now, but blogging is more important. :) Besides, in the morning I'd have the perfect excuse to sample America's caffeine beverage of choice: coffee. The fouler the better.

[edit] I've got a Flickr album! See it over there, in that bunch of mostly useless and uninteresting links on the right? Yes, that's it. I shan't say anymore lest I become too obvious. :)

words were spilled on Saturday, August 27, 2005

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Thursday, August 25, 2005

Take-off is mere hours away. I'm doing last-minute tying-up-of-loose-ends packing at a leisurely pace, and I don't intend to sleep.

To my friends who are seeing me off at the airport, undeterred by the ungodly pre-dawn timing, despite having lessons later in the morning: thank you, thank you, thank you. I promise to be online more often so we can catch up regularly. I shall miss all of you - terribly.

To my family: will miss you lots. Especially my darling sis, whom I love madly. Be good, 'k, and be nice to your tutor. And I'll see about the Adidas shoes. :D

words were spilled on Thursday, August 25, 2005

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Sunday, August 14, 2005

A conversation I had with WT led me to wonder how traceable this blog really is. Hey, it's a valid concern. Just read this article, on how blogs can be used against job applicants: Bloggers Need Not Apply. Ditto for future employers of the variety I am more personally familiar with.

A few searches on technorati.com turned up nothing of consequence. I'm not linked to many people so that minimises exposure. I have, essentially, 3 separate aliases, from the official to the casual to the weird pseudonym. The only relevant hit my birth cert name (sshhh... no blabbing it here :) Googles up is a (very ugly) shot of me in an IBO training session. The more commonly known alias is also, fortunately, too common to be much use. The exotic soubriquet is the most reliable handle on my online identity (the one-and-only on Google, the last time I checked), but is fortunately obscure, and should be getting more so now that I've got a new Gmail address.

There are always ways and means, of course, and this thing is still a public blog (and I intend to keep it that way), albeit not a search-friendly one. So, if you've gotten this far, you're probably all right. If not, do be assured that this blogger is one paranoid, mostly inoffensive individual with a healthy sense of self-preservation and a total lack of revolutionary fervour.

...at least, none that she will own up to. Hah.

Online paranoia extends to passwords, of course. No password is ever the same, practically none are dictionary words in any language whatsoever, and they can change on a whim. I love thinking up new passwords that are completely foreign yet deeply personal on the level that no one other than myself can fathom.

I shall stop before a prospective employer comes across this and decides that my seeming infatuation with secrecy suggests a duplicitous personality. Or something.

words were spilled on Sunday, August 14, 2005

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Friday, August 12, 2005

2 more weeks and inexorably counting down. So far, I've skipped 2 parties, missed most of the social gatherings organised by my fellow A*STAR scholars, and I still haven't set foot in a club or a discotheque. I sent an email to my US roommate as soon as I got her name and she hasn't replied. Nightmares about my upcoming university life have been plaguing me insufferably. So - I'm feeling dismally asocial again.

In my case, such feelings usually come coupled with the desire to revisit neglected hobbies, dust off old fandoms, or watch DVDs till the brain overloads. Preferably all 3 at once. And so it happened that yesterday, while I was working on a watercolour painting as a teacher's day gift for my civics tutor (part of a class effort - I had wonderful people for classmates in JC), I had the inspiration to dig out the pieces that had accumulated at glacial pace over the years I've dabbled, on and off, in dilettante art. Various botanical sketches, pen drawings, a (failed) oil pastel experiment, some embarrassingly incompetent watercolours, a perspective study of a HDB common corridor done in Chinese black ink. The latest was a pencil sketch I did one humid afternoon in Sichuan (trapped at a Leshan teahouse with a devout tour guide who, oblivious to the glazed expressions around her, kept up a steady and long-winded lecture about Buddhism):

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

When I'm bored and away from the pleasures of my computer, I doodle, scribble rants about nothing in particular, or make lists in an attempt to organise my life better. But with a mere 2 weeks left, I really ought to be doing something less... aimless, I think.

words were spilled on Friday, August 12, 2005

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Tuesday, August 02, 2005

I have found that my conversational skills are sadly lacking. I need to master the skill of listening intently, nodding politely, murmuring assent at appropriate junctures, encouraging the speaker to continue talking so that I won't have to. Other than that, I probably need to start working on the whole listening-with-great-apparent-enthusiasm (complete with vigorous and excessive head-bobbing and loud noises of hearty agreement) act. But most importantly, I need to learn when to say what and not fall prey to ill-timed witticisms that others don't find at all funny, or ill-considered comments and questions that are at best tactless, or at worst, offensive. Faux pas crop up every single time I find myself in a social situation, it seems. It's downright embarrassing. One wonders how on earth I'm going to adapt to intimidatingly unfamiliar social environs in less than one month's time if I'm going to put both feet in my mouth every time I open it.

My gadget collection is nearly complete: a Toshiba Tecra M3 laptop (with 1GB RAM, 60GB HDD, 3 years' international warranty but no bloody DVD multi-write - looks like I'll have to buy a separate external drive), Canon Powershot A520 (the DSLR is going to have to wait...but I can be patient when I want to) with a 512MB SD card, iRiver H10 MP3 player with 5GB storage, two 80GB 2.5" portable hard disks, webcam, Creative TravelSound speakers (courtesy of friends :), Audiotechnica ATH-EM7s, 512MB thumbdrive, assorted cables, plug adapters, rechargeable batteries and a GP Powerbank RapidCharge... I'm hoping that everything stays intact or I'm going to rue the limited local warranties on most of my gadgetry.

I'm currently in the process of breaking in my new laptop... or should it be the other way round? There's always something more to learn about optimising one's computing experience, even at the end user level, where improvements tend to be of a rather frivolous nature. For example, I have learnt how to circumvent copy-protection technology on music CDs to make perfectly legal single copies of legally owned CDs for personal use only. And I finally got my computer to play all those DVDs it refused to play before, due to some unfathomable compatibility issue which has now been miraculously resolved. With decent hardware, the right software/shareware, and the Internet as your helpful guide, you can do almost anything.

words were spilled on Tuesday, August 02, 2005

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