On The Move…

I’m back!  🙂  I’ve had a fantastic Thanksgiving in New Hampshire with Peter Lee and his wonderful family and friends – thanks for the hospitality!  I could rave on and on about the lovely house, the great company, the breathtaking scenery and good weather, the serene nights and days of congenial conversation, James Bond films, cluedo, scrabble, Gran Turismo 3 and Eye Toy, sightseeing in the area, the scrumptious food (home-baked bread, waffles and apple pie!  sausage stuffing!  turkey!!  ham!!!)…  but you’ll just have to take my word for it 😉  Or just look at the photos.  Also, if you have the patience to download it, there’s a brief video of the Thanksgiving dinner spread here (14.2Mb).

The place:

Taken the morning after I first arrived – what a glorious day that was, weather-wise.

The Hitching Post Village Inn in Ossipee, New Hampshire (27 Nov 2003)

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Taken in the warm covered porch on the east side of the house.  Through the window is the dining room.

The covered porch (27 Nov 2003)

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The whole house relies on traditional wood-stoves and fireplaces for heat.  Very charming 🙂

Lighting a fire (27 Nov 2003)

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The people:

Hans actually worked with Sony over the past summer to help develop console games like the uber-cool "Eye Toy", the first social, physically-active video game.  Here, Hans, Christina and Krister are playing a ‘dish spinning’ game.

Hans, Christina and Krister playing Eye Toy (27 Nov 2003)

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Peter’s cousin Brendan with his two-year old son Jamus.

Father & son (28 Nov 2003)

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Isn’t Peter’s nephew Jamus adorable?  He was recovering from a bad viral infection so he wasn’t feeling terribly frisky.  Here, Dad (Brendan) and Grandma are trying to get him to play with them, but Jamus just wanted to sleep.  Aww.

Baby Jamus, Dad & Grandma (28 Nov 2003)

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And here I am, sitting at breakfast on the covered porch.

Sitting on the covered porch (27 Nov 2003)

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The food:

I helped to make these apple pies 🙂 
Freshly baked bread and pies (27 Nov 2003)

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I was taken by the effect of the light streaming through the kitchen window at breakfast on Thanksgiving morning – the whole house is filled with moments and spaces like this.

Jason Jong at breakfast (27 Nov 2003)

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“Thanksgiving Dinner (27 Nov 2003)”

And finally, a picture I took an hour before leaving Ossipee, NH.  Good times, great memories:

On the front steps of the Hitching Post Village Inn in Ossipee, New Hampshire, run by Peter Lee’s parents.  It was snowing a little just before this picture was taken – very pretty 🙂

Top left to right – Peter’s father, older brother Hans, Peter’s mother (Linda), and Christina
Middle: Peter’s suitemate Krister and Peter
Bottom: Peter’s uncle, Catherine, Jason Jong, cousin Richard and me.

Thanksgiving at the Hitching Post Village Inn (29 Nov 2003)

 

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So now I have a bit of time – I’m in Peter’s room in Pennypacker waiting for his parents to arrive…  together with a whole bunch of Peter’s friends and his roommate Nana, we’re all driving up to the B&B his parents bought in New Hampshire to “fix up”.  It should be a pretty fun Thanksgiving *fingers crossed*

The campus is amost completely deserted since nearly everyone has gone home to their friends and families to eat turkey… random thought: I have so much work due right after Thanksgiving, and so little time to get caught up with chemistry and math.

There’s an abundance of Singaporeans in town now…  Shi Ming and Xinwei have a full dozen of their friends, classmates and acquaintances (hailing from Georgetown, Coumbia, Yale,  Dartmouth etc,) over for the break.  Plus, a couple of current J1s I know through debate, Sheila and Crystal, are visiting as pre-prospective students…  It’s been fun seeing them again, and it’s been great meeting their mothers as well.

Sheila, Crystal, Me & Shi Ming, and behind us are Crystal and Sheila’s mothers.  Taken before a sumptuous meal at the Legal Sea Food at the Charles Hotel.  Legal Sea Food – Sheila Crystal Shiming et al 26 Nov 2003“>

Here we are at the posh Legal Sea Food restaurant at the swanky Charles Hotel.  The mothers were kind enough to pay for the very sumptuous meal, as well as another one at John Harvard’s the night before.  From left to right – Sheila, Crystal, myself and Shi Ming, behind are Mrs Ann Pakir and Mrs Liew, the doting mothers.

It’s feels pretty good to be done with all but one of my written midterms for the calendar year.  So what if the chem exam on Monday was a letdown and Tuesday was one of the low points of the semester?  Math on Wednesday and applied math today seemed to have gone pretty well (which sort of worries me since I don’t have a good track record of predicting my own exam performance).

In other news, this week is Harvard-Yale weekend!  “The Game 2003” is away this year, so the campus is already semi-deserted with most people having left for New Haven this afternoon.  And myself?  It looks like I’m not going…  because I have to stay for my first crew race tomorrow morning 🙂  It’s the ‘Foot of the Charles’, and I’ll be coxing a freshman eight.  I pray all goes well…  (and I have to be up by 6.30am – a wakeup time I’d nearly forgotten existed.)

Next week will be Thanksgiving, then there will be just two weeks till Winter Recess and Christmas – and my first semester as a college freshman will practically be over.

 

Just a quickie update:

Christmas Plans: It seems likely that I’ll be flying home on SQ24 on 15 Dec (Mon), arriving at Changi at about 7am on 17 Dec (Wed).  I will then be flying to Bangkok with my family on vacation that afternoon at 1pm.  I’ll probably be in Singapore from 22 Dec – 3 Jan, when I’ll be returning back to campus to study for the final exams in mid Jan 04.

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Next week is going to be a rough one.  I have three, count em’, midterms – Chem 15 on Monday (for which I have little hope of doing well), Math 21a on Wednesday and Applied Math 21a on Friday (for which I *must* study).  Hence I envision not posting anything for a while.

In the meantime, it’s Veterans’ Day today, which means I get a chance to work on the two math problem sets due tomorrow (one down, one to go), as well as that expos essay draft due tonight at midnight (I’m going to start on that right now).

Till next time!