Extracts
(From early emails, also to you)

When, after all, I was depressed
I'm a little under the weather because I can't like Virginia, the way Adam had no love for Omaha but got a song out of it anyway. It is very, very different when you're not here for a holiday. I can barely decide what to do with myself like the Japanese woman in one of my new schoolbooks whose last relative died and she couldn't bring herself to even look for a new place to stay because that would take too much energy. I try to tell myself that this is typical starting-new-school meltdown, but of course the stakes are higher because Daddy paid about a million dollars for my Dream and if I don't have the time of my life it would be a waste of everything, then...

I should tell you the major funny event that occurred - I was out-and-out hit on by this black, hiphopishly-dressed dude when I went down for breakfast this morning by myself (mum was still sleeping/trying to sleep due to her insomnia). I was walking back to the room with my tea when I passed him and he was doing the whole checking-out thing the Sims 1 folks do, with following conversation:
He: "You here with your boyfriend?"
Me: "No."
He: "You a student here?"
Me: "Yes, it's my first year. Are you?"
He: "No, I'm from New York, just visiting some folks here. Where're you from?"
Me: (slowly) "Singapore."
He: "Singapore?" (nods knowledgeably) "China?"
Me: "No."
He: "Korea?"
Me: "No. It's in Southeast Asia, next to Malaysia, but it's a country by itself."
He: (nods knowledgeably) "Ah see, ah see. You flew all the way from there to UVA?"
Me: "Yes."
He: "That's hot. What's your name?"
Me: "*Says name*" (because the whole thing was getting increasingly lame.)
He: "*Repeats name* We should hang out sometime." (Continues checking-out, now starts staring at my butt, which BORDERS ON FREAKY)
Me: *Weak grin and literally, scarpers with excuse*

It is night now and Bernice (my roommate) talks on the phone all the time which is ok because it is funny. From rapid-fire Spanish to her mum, to her friend Crystal and she says random comment like "I know I'm supposed to but I don't really feel like socializing with white folk." DING! Hit the nail on the head. She's the only first-year Hispanic on this floor and I'm the only Asian. We're getting along okay, which is cool. And I'm sorry if I use that word too much but that's the main one Americans understand.

Might as well add that while there are plenty of interesting-looking guys around here - because long curly locks, hiphop gear, pierced lips, T-shirts with messages that are actually funny, even preppy clothing and the UVA all-male choirs that keep popping up to sing the school song of sorts are an entirely new breed.

One of my Singapore seniors, Kai, picked some of us up at the IRC where I was visiting the other girls. So I'm waiting by the door to catch him while the other girls unloaded and he drives up in this little white car with an open moonroof and I run over to tell him to wait a bit, expecting him to roll down the window. But he hoists himself up out of the top, all act-cool like, and yet it works. I want to hit him for that because hello, it isn't fair. Chinese guys get away with so much here they'd be slaughtered for in S'pore, even something as basic as an ABC accent. Then he spent the whole time in the kitchen making Italian-style ice-cream for everyone.

Just letting you know that I've changed my schedule - decided to drop my Japanese class because it was causing me a lot of unnecessary stress, especially since I found out that I really don't need so many high-level classes. I'm doing Physics instead (PHYSICS! MY WORD!)

Kaeldra and Lyf... in Charlottesville

First of all, I apologise for the long, long long silence, and I feel stupider already, because I can't remember how I used to write.
This is not going to be mass recalling session because I don't want to, so all in all... I am so sorry that I have not emailed many of you, because I considered one of those mass emails you send to people like a greeting card, but have always found those crappy and impersonal; because I have different things to say to different people. Consider this my letter to all of you before I get off my high horse of packed schedule where I don't actually get many things done.
Before I forget. Apparently Dave Matthews Band played at the Amphitheatre of UVA today at 10am and I was still asleep due to late-nighter the day before. Damn, damn, and here's wishing it was a rumour.
Jason Mraz is definitely coming in October though, and I Must Go, because that would be one of the reasons for throwing myself into this pool in the first place.
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These have been the longest two weeks of my life, and the hardest.
Americans are androids. They raise hands to Make Points, party hard, are involved in an average of four organizations/activities each, and talk, talk, talk like they'd stop breathing if they didn't. Or maybe it's just UVA. This town is small, silent and quaint, because on exploration downtown today we found a soda fountain and a handful of second-hand bookshops. And I can't show you it all; one of my windows has a rusty lock in place that seeps black dust on your hands if you touch it - or if we drop the metaphor, my camera is suffering from mysterious I/O errors and won't let me transfer my photos onto the computer.
There aren't that many though. They don't show much. Aside from the fact, for example, that Clara, Jen and I went crazy with Harry Potter hats in a toy store downtown today. Or that Convocation was under the trees on a muggy day, and that clearly, I always fall slightly in love, and always with the wrong person, or the wrong thing.

Mum says I should buy truly-S'porean gifts in preparation for future friends, but I fail to see what use or pleasure they would have in batik tablecloths or merlion magnets, so I'll wait till December, and then I'll know.
I can't remember what happened in the past week because I've already packed my organizer and hence my memory, but I blow kisses to my GE pals, including newfound Damien Rice/Lost buddy Cheek, who bawled about the lost Buffy season in the middle of HMV; 1c girls fresh from NUS entrance, the story of a boy with a hat like a tea cosy (which has too many Harry Potter/Amelie allusions for comfort) and the dress-down mutiny; and Yi Qian and her onion loaf.
And because I am currently so happy, I present something I have never done before: a collage of a few moments!

Please also note not I cannot make collages. At all.
I have to pack this laptop now. I will see you.

find your inner PIE @ stvlive.com

(Because I'm hungry.)

"Went to the beach for the day and wrote as much as I could about this incredible experience and where my life seemed to be taking me, etc. I fell asleep, and when I woke up the papers were blowing down the beach and into the water. I sat up and watched until I couldn't see one piece of paper left. I drove home and felt happy."
- Dominic Monaghan

I think I a write a majority of entries with a some forced airiness, like a character in a book who doesn't actually realise he/she is a character in the process of being created/recorded. And so he/she ambles on, holding up their palms as blinders to the editing and stretching that goes on behind the POV. So in order to DTBDDTBY (not me; Anne C. LeMieux), how do I stop it?

Dad: "I am getting old."
Sis: "You are NOT. You just think you are."

Why is it so so difficult to get eight people in the same place at the same time? It will be impossible to organize tour group to visit Yu-Hsin at this rate. I do not know why I am suddenly hungry to see a Taiwan campus although it is clear enough that I want to see everything that I haven't yet.
I have been eating a lot of lavish dinners lately (like when my dad actually agreed to eat at Swensens, and I didn't share the banana crumble with my mum and sis because I wanted to eat something All By Myself, in this case a huge brownie with sea of whipped cream), as I am now in second-last week, with most of the girls being back in school and enjoying pomp and ceremony and opening parades, etc. I remember telling Han the day before her SMU camp, "If you can't have fun, have as much fun as you can," and us cackling over our watery wit, but in all honesty, Fun is an overused term. I use it enough for three people.
You know something? I really hate to Lead. I can do all the business-like shit, but I do not have the brain of a charm commander who wields gelly magic. That's why I am not happy when people spring it out of nowhere.
We miss Weiwei in times like these, because she was always gave, and so few noticed just how much.
Has it already been a week since 1c gathering when Sean, as Angsty!Funny as ever, clambered up the stairs while I carried his crutches? I think so. I don't know why I just wanted to sit in my room and make everyone come up, while they perched, bird-like, in a row on my bed. And how we can never have a class dinner that does not involve something from Cold Storage.
Oh Mel... I understand the Beautiful Idea now. It sucks to be practical, practical, because this wasn't what happened in the movies, did it ever? Our room has had a facelift, and the Mystic River poster is over my bed, although it has already become non-sticky though not sinisterly over my face in the middle of the night as predicted, so I can no longer have faith in blu-tac due to its consistently poor performance.
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You can amass a wealth of knowledge at the hairdresser, reading CLEO, Female and Vogue about fashion editors with cancer and a rocker who hits his head against the wall to emphasize a verbal point, while William tries to artily fluff locks and the young, efficient staff slide you tea in tin cups.
Because Rilke wrote, "Love the questions themselves, as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language",
and Bono noted – "It is impossible to meet God with sunglasses on",
and Pete Doherty cried: "They left me on the side of the road with a plastic bag and all kinds of bitterness."
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