Archive for December, 2006

Home for the holidays

Tuesday, December 26th, 2006

A belated Merry Christmas to everyone! And a happy new year too 🙂

It’s nice to be home, the interminable torrential rains notwithstanding. I have never before heard of flash floods in well-drained Singapore. Floods!! At least they haven’t threatened any lives or homes yet.

I’ve made my way very quickly through my crave-list of local food. In the mere three days since I’ve been home, I’ve feasted (in moderation!) on well over a dozen varieties of hawker fare. Yum yum yum.

I wish I felt more secure about the direction my thesis is heading in. And I wish I had more time to do research and ruminate. Oooh, I can feel little knots of anxiety and twinges of panic beginning at the very thought of thesis. *shudder* On the upside, I’ve read a bit and written a bit, so the time hasn’t been a complete wash, at any rate.

I had a bizarre little dream during an earlier nap, where for some inexplicable reason I was tranferring to Yale for my senior year. On the bus over from Harvard with all the other ex-Harvardians who were transferring, I was almost successful in rationalizing this choice, but once we arrived at Yale’s campus and I suddenly realized I would never be part of Harvard’s Class of 2007, I was filled with such violent grief that I woke up. Strange, no? And of course I spent about five minutes pondering the implications of that dream-experience, through the lens of the “identity-prescription” literature we’ve been covering in my cultural economics class. That class is now completely finished with, since I chose to take the final exam on the last day of classes before the break.

Holiday Party at the Fogg Museum (13 Dec 2006)

Thursday, December 14th, 2006
 


Holiday Party at the Fogg Museum (13 Dec 2006)
Originally uploaded by J Y.

It’s the holiday party season!

This was taken at the first “Student Friends of the Harvard Art Museums” event I’ve been to this year – the members holiday bash. Chocolate-covered strawberries, champagne, a jazz quartet…. tres, tres chic.

(I’m super happy about débuting a Charvet shirt and a Bergdorf bowtie 🙂 And also because of my beautiful date, of course!)

From left: Judith, me

My room is tidy again!

Saturday, December 2nd, 2006

Have had an exhausting and hectic couple of days.  Ever since last Friday when I started working almost non-stop on becoming GRE-competent, and then took the exam on Tuesday.  I’ll be taking it again this coming Wednesday.  At the same time, I had a bunch of pesky problem sets, weekly assignments, and other work that constantly needed to be worked on.  Throw in a bunch of time-sensitive commitments, errands, events and applications, then suddenly I’m constantly rushing about with precious little time for sleep, meals or recreation.

I’m so thankful it’s the weekend.  And that at least one of my applications is complete and submitted.

Time for bed.  Or recreation – episode 1 of the National Geographic series “Guns, Germs and Steel” based on the bestselling book by Jared Diamond 🙂