(This is for you. I hope you'll understand why I had to cry after I hung up last night with the most bittersweet tears of my life, and that you'll finally understand one of my poems, though I'll understand if you don't because I haven't written one for let's see, two years.)

Goodbye

For the first time in our lives,
I can feel the carpet-path splitting at
the seams, unfolding ribbons
into regions I cannot see.

I hear it but it does nothing
for my eyes.

You are disappearing into
Happiness.

And while this makes me
wrinkle-smoothen all the mysteries
In one fell swoop in
so
much
joy,

You will say something now
from familiar material,
and yet I won't understand.

"Go to Cuba at least once in your life," says history professor who is cute like Ed Harris, spreading his hands. It technically isn't illegal for Americans to enter Cuba, it's just illegal for Americans to spend money in Cuba (which would be the same thing, then, unless you never planned to leave).
I have run out of tops to wear, so this morning, in creative desperation, I wear two at once (because pink T-shirt over olive long-sleeved would become something new). Oh my goodness my eyes are going to roll out from the small font size. I planned to write two pages for my English paper due on Friday yesterday, and how much did I write? ONE PARAGRAPH. From the lab I can see two guys sitting on the steps in front of Minor Hall, serenely drinking coffee. They are just above a grassy slope students like to collapse onto, newspapers over their faces. I want to join them!
The pastor at Trinity Presbyterian pointed out how college is a very self-involved life, and I think he couldn't put it better because that's what we are, little individual pixels bumping and sliding across the screen, fitting into what feels right for your precious person. Everything you do - your laundry, schedule, alone time and people time. Which is what life would be like until you procreate, I suppose, but you can postpone family especially now, because you're away from that (not that you should, just that you can).
I attended two Mooncake festival celebrations this weekend which would be more a conglomeration of entire Asian UVA population and experienced reversely icy stab of cultural confusion, struggling with limited Chinese grammar and eating mooncake that had pineapple in it. But that would be of a more benign breed, because the Taiwanese folks surrounded the KTV setup and would not let anyone else near it, leading to full-blown concert-crowd waves by the evening's end. SSA honorary member Matt held up his calligraphy for translation and it made little sense to me as well - tai (sun) ma (horse) - until you read it backwards and hear his name. Then I went to see Sin City at the UVA theater with Helen and the IRC folks, for THREE DOLLARS (which still converts to about S$5), hahaha, which is small way of thumbing my nose at censorship board back home.
I made myself go for first salsa session last night, because once in the soft darkness outside the dorm you have to walk with a purpose, and it felt good to dance again. Now I know about 60% of girls in S'pore homogeneously signed up for salsa over the past year, but this is for free, and it's just about moving, forgetting and remembering.

"From Charlie Chan to [the] owner of a corner store, our understanding of Asians - all Asians - has been reduced to a series of simple images. They are inscrutable, hard-working, ambitious, intelligent but unintelligible people, and they make us uncomfortable."
- Rosina Lippi-Green, English with an Accent - Language, ideology and discrimination in the US. Required reading for an anthropology class ('Language and Cinema')

Something very weird happened to me yesterday. I was changing, and when I had taken my jeans off I looked down and realized that I had done so without unbuttoning or unzipping them. Have I lost that much weight? Or have I always been able to do that, but was never actually crazy enough to try?
Perhaps there's nothing crazy about that, but it felt that way for a while.
I am in the computer lab and it is nearly 1am but I am not the only one; my Taiwanese friend Kevin is nearby trying to do his Math Webwork, which is the worst online invention ever and serves to further the argument that the Internet is more of a hindrance than a help.
Displacement. I was in my room trying to remember if humor is spelt as humour at home or whether it is always without the u (like apparently behavior is never with the u and I thought it was for most of my life), and I couldn't ask Bernice or anyone on my floor for that matter because for them humor has always been humor and humour does not exist. Since there is no dictionary lying about the best solution would be to go downstairs to the lab and look up Dictionary.com, which is ridiculous, so! We never know the answer.
There have been some new faces in Hereford recently - students from Tulane University in New Orleans who have had to transfer because their school is currently inaccessible. They amaze me, you know, their toughness in gathering themselves up and just leaving, changing, because this will have to be part of their lives. One girl from Tulane I saw struggling up the stairs with her groceries, but so beautiful and in it wearing this gorgeous green sundress Han would have died for (seriously). There are so many things I want to capture here but haven't yet.
___________________________

Just returned from watching Voices of the Class, a skit based on our batch's college application essays. Or something. I did not understand about 1/6 about what was being said because of the accent (the Virginia accent is REALLY STRANGE, because it's all wispy and goes to pieces when at high speed) and the humo(u)r, but what I did get was excellent. In one sketch, an Indian international student goes through the Americanization process during customs, having to walk through a Machine every time she says something un-American, emerging each time with an additional little Stars-and-Stripes flag and modified opinion. New Delhi, India becomes Indiana and eventually New Jersey; final product is the scalp-scratching slacker who doesn't have a favourite president because hello, he doesn't vote! The officer shakes his hand: "Welcome to America."

Well, these Mon/Fri in-betweens are going to be races for time from now on, the quiet one-hour after PHYS 151 (in plain terms, JC-standard physics I desperately need help with) and before ENLT 255M (in plain terms, the compare-poems class that is so nice and Puay Miao-familiar). The computer lab in Bryan Hall is fast becoming familiar when you thought things never would be.
I tried to describe Bryan Hall but can't because I seem to have lost my vocabulary but with new computer arriving in about 2 weeks the photos should be able to appear. Not that there's a picture of Bryan Hall among them, but all the buildings here are red-brick similar, so well. Where I sit, I face this huge picture window, through which I can see the amphitheater which is exactly what an amphitheater sounds like it should be, hollowed-out grassy patch with rising stone benches.
People talk and worry about the Freshman Fifteen. A lot. I don't think I am putting my BMI above such perils when I say that I think I can avoid it. Reason being, how much did I exercise in S'pore? NOT AT ALL. Then, here is my Wednesday. Every morning I have to walk up and down four flights of steps and take long windy path through trees and pass upperclassman dorms to the Hereford bus-stop. I had class at 9 in Physics building which there is no exact bus-stop for which means having to stop at Cabell and doubling back. After class I returned to Cabell for ENLT class, after which I walked across to Newcomb for lunch, then back to Cabell for Math, after which I had ten minutes to run back to the Physics building for PHYS discussion. Then I went all the way back to dorm to pick up books for return I couldn't possibly carry around during classes because they were too many and heavy, carried them to Newcomb, ordered my new computer and returned some of the books. Then I walked to the Corner which is off-campus to return the books I bought from a second-hand store. After which, back to Newcomb and mugging/dinner before night class at 8pm at the Physics building again. Around 9 plus I could finally go home.
Racial Incidents are plaguing my school, and you can drop me a note if you want to see the emails that go into greater detail (won't put them here as many would think I'm not taking this at all seriously).