On The Move…

I’m exactly half done with my classes.

My Hist 1856 paper has been graded, but I haven’t had a chance to look at it (too busy to pick it up yesterday and today after my A-12 final the history office was closed).  I’m pleased with the paper overall (even if it turns out to be bad) and will probably post it at some point.  Thesis-schmesis, pshaw!

SA10 was…  iffy.  Not confident that I did well enough to pull up my year-long grade.  A touch frustrating, but it’s my own fault, mostly.

HIS-STD A-12 (some abbreviation the college picked, huh?) went pretty well.  But then everyone will be in the same boat.  Intellectually I loved this class, but I was *sooo* stupid and dashed my own chances of a good grade with…  sigh, never mind, not worth talking about here.  My last paper (the one where I copped-out, gave up trying to engage the material and just regurgitated what they wanted) did well, as I expected.  It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty decent.  I pray I make it over the grade border…

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So what’s left?  A 20-25 page paper for Fr273, in French, that will essentially be (as Wojtek agrees), the equivalent of a six-hour, solo interpretive dance about globalization.  Arghhh.

An ES 6 final.  I’m still highly recommending this class to anyone who needs a Sci-B core.  Looks impressive but is the easiest class, *ever*.  and I’m _required_ to take this??  Hey, I’m not complaining.

BS55 final – this one actually worries me a little, because it’s cumulative and I essentially stopped going to lecture or paying attention at least for the final month of classes.  But only because it seemed fine to do so.  *positive thoughts*

Time to start stretching those interpretive dance muscles.  Vas-y!

*exhausted*

It’s now 5.25am, and I just sent off to my professor my completed draft for my final research paper for History 1856, Environmental History of East Asia.  It was 42 pages without a bibliography (which I will write after some sleep), and it’s a whole day ahead of the deadline, for which I am proud.  I’m sure I’ll read it again later and realize how not great all the parts I wrote after 2am are, but whatever.  For the moment, I am satisfied, and too tired to care much.

Later, I need to study for Ec10.  From scratch.  The exam is on Friday morning.  At 9.15am.  I’m not sure how I’m going to be awake and ready to take an exam at that time.

And it is still unclear whether I’ve gotten an extension for my French paper, or not.  *trepidation*

To bed.

Problem: I have done no real academic work in two days now.

Today I woke up (late, late, late) at 9.30am, having missed my breakfast appointment with Melissa (bad, bad, bad).  Then I pottered around briefly before going back to bed (I’m fighting off a cold or something).  I woke up just past noon, late (again!) for lunch with Naabia at the CES luncheon.  After which we went to pick up our ES6 midterms (ha!) from Pierce Hall, and then I walked over to Yenching to photocopy six pages of Totman (the one shred of work I did today, and it isn’t even really work).

After that I spent a couple hours taking EnviroCitizen pictures and making posters until about 5.30pm.  I then went to my favorite florists’ and the post office.  This brings us to about 6.30pm, and a quick dinner in the room before I have to leave to make the Abu Ghraib opening (so many Singaporeans!  Even more than in the photo!).

This show was a must see, since I knew half the principal players – Jeremiah and Ellen in the cast, Xin Wei, Curran, Calum, Wojtek, Maria in the crew.  The set was the best use of the Loeb Ex space I’ve seen yet.

Afterwards I do more EnviroCitizen work for REP, piddle around briefly in Xin Wei’s room, and then do more REP work, and now it’s 2.35am.  Eeek.  I’m going to bed.  With *no* work done.  Abysmal.  I pray the rest of reading period will be uber productive.  It *has* to be. 

And yet there’s more REP stuff to be done.  Oh well.

Tonight was the Quincy Q-Ball, ie the Spring Formal, held conveniently in the Quincy courtyard right outside my room.  I had a great time. 

Chrix took this snapshot of us under the tent of the Quincy Q-ball.  Happy times.

From left: Naabia, me, Chrix

I left my camera in Kieran’s room during the pre-game party, so I don’t have many pictures of the Quincy House formal, held in the Quincy courtyard.  It was a beautiful night, and it was lovely to see everyone dressed up and having a lovely time.  My date was the wonderful Naabia, who I’ll be living with this summer since we both got the same internship in London.  High point of the night (in terms of comedy) – seeing Master Kirshner dance enthusiastically with some Quincy-ite.

From left: me, Naabia, Ryan

And yes, we actually are in the midst of preparing for finals and stuff.

Last night we sang at Parkman House, the official residence of the Mayor of Boston (although he doesn’t actually live there), and today we sang at a penthouse apartment overlooking Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the Mayor of New York (ditto).  Fun times.  Who can complain about gourmet sandwiches and Veuve Clicquot?  Not me.

New York is such an amazing place to be young and well-connected.

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Today on the bus I finally got around to drawing up a plan of study for the next two weeks, and immediately realised how little time is left.  And so ended the mental vacation I’ve been on since Tuesday.

I’m going to finish reading “The River Runs Black” tonight, and maybe try to get through “Beyond Great Walls” as well.  Or perhaps I should either work on planning my French essay or go to bed early and wake up early?  Hmmn.

(Just got a call from Jay inviting me to a party at Jorian’s.  I hate that I’m choosing to stay in.  Bleah.)

Almost without my noticing, classes are over for the semester.  Amazing.  It’s been a good semester.

I’m actually really excited, which is surprising.  Excited about picking classes for next semester, excited for the summer internship in London, excited about the possibilities for next year.

It’s a good feeling.

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Thank you Flora for the lovely postcard that arrived today.  *hugs*

And apparently Terence recently pulled his *first* college all-nighter.  Amazing.

Yesterday was Saturday-on-a-Tuesday for me.  After turning in my final short paper for HSA-12 (dear God please let this one be well-received) and taking my ES 6 exam (unexpectedly long),  *edits out details about regular Jason-related procedural irregularities/excitement* I felt like I basically had nothing to do for the near future.  Which of course is nonsense if I consider the two response papers, pile of reading, two final papers (20-25 pages, and one of them has to be in French!), two lab reports (requiring statistics, yuck) and four final exams I have to get through before the end of the semester.

But in any case, I felt like I could take a break.  So I wrote a Crimson story on the planned celebrations for Boston’s 375th birthday (four months of street fairs, cultural performances and special events), and went to a panel discussion at the KSG about a controversial paper entitled “The Death of Environmentalism” (email me if you want a copy) that pitted the authors of the paper against two environmentalist bigwigs and a professor of environmental politics (who was very impressive – I think I’ll try and take her class next Fall).  That was pretty fascinating.

Last night and today were more of the same.  I went in to the Crimson to get that story edited, got tickets to various performances this weekend, dropped by Jill’s office for a chat, gave a very intimate admissions tour (with a French prospective student – so many French people around lately!), and attended the very fancy pre-departure ice-cream social/briefing at the Center for European Studies.

I really need to start getting some work done…  like doing the Hist 1856 readings.

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This weekend I’m planning on seeing Brahms’ Requiem on Friday evening, the Bach Society’s 50th anniversary concert on Saturday (I’ve always wanted to see this), and “L’Echange” a French play by Paul Claudel, on Sunday afternoon.  Saturday is also Arts First weekend, so the Dins will be performing a number of times and I’ll try and catch Vox Jazz (they’re amazing!) too.

It’s the night of the Winter Formal, and I have another two hours before I go, probably.  So let’s try this out (courtesy of Jol):

Step 1: Get your playlist together, put it on random, and play!
Step 2: Pick your favorite lines from the first 25 songs that play!
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song the lines come from!
Step 4: Cross out the songs when someone guesses correctly!

My taste in music is both quite eclectic and pretty pedestrian, so this should mostly be a shoo-in for people 🙂  I also suspect that many of these lines are going to contain the song titles, haha.  They’re all popular English songs I know most of the words to, and no acapella tracks.  It’s actually surprising how many non-English, instrumental or acappella tracks I had to skip over.  Here we go!

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve listened to my playlist in such a random fashion, ever since I started using real rhapsody.

As I type this, I’m eating a Kit Kat Chunky with a serious defect – it doesn’t have any wafer in it at all.  For some reason I got a solid chunk of milk chocolate.  And this isn’t the first Chunky I’ve bought and eaten here in RSA, so this is definitely a mistake.  Strange.

Another random piece of trivia:

While people in Singapore and the US might be used to meeting people with names like Joy, Faith and perhaps even Patience, people here have names like Justice, Goodness and Kindness.  And their Zulu names are literally the same words for things like ‘thank you’ (Siyabonga or Ngyiabonga), ‘success’ (Nompumelelo) and ‘the nation’ (Sizwe).

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Another inspiring story, and this one has nothing to do with me.

In the nearby township of Gamalakhe where several PM employees live (Joyce, Mabusi, Tomfooti etc.), residents had become increasingly fed up and vocal about the poor service, relatively high prices and almost random fare-hikes of the taxis over the past year (remember that ‘taxi’ in this case refers to fixed-price minivans that offer crucial transportation in the absence of publicly-funded transport).  After several failed attempts to get the owners of the various private taxi associations to negotiate with the community – the owners simply ignored the invitations – the frustrated residents actually banded together and held a general strike against the taxis, refusing to take the taxis (and sacrificing a day’s work in the process).  Going further than that, the community organisers arranged for private transport companies to provide buses to permanently replace the taxis at a far lower price and considerably increased comfort.  The next morning, hundreds of people waited patiently at the bus stops, singing triumphantly and dancing defiantly at the passing, empty taxis.  Score one for the people.

I think it’s always nice to hear about communities of people who collectively work to claim their right to be part of the running of the services they depend on, and realise their power in numbers, in terms of purchasing power but also moral authority.

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Last random thing for the moment:

My vote for least effective, yet commonly-used phrase in English currently goes to: “Now don’t take this the wrong way, but…” 

Does anyone here know of a time when saying this actually worked?