~ the road is life ~

page of quotes again
Friday, December 20, 2002
08:33 p.m.

http://www.angelfire.com/extreme/marieofroumania/quotations.html

elaine's house of lurve
Monday, October 21, 2002
12:29 p.m.

firstly: i'm sorry for the lack of activities of seismic-proportions on ANY of my websites. main reason: my dismal lack of internet access in an otherwise paradisical home. so i can only have snatches of net time in between classes and the like.

for the first time in my life, i'm having a room of my own. it's a purple-walled (probably more lavender... but i'm really hopeless abt all the subtle hues of royalty and sexual deprivation), long, narrow room. to be honest, i was the teeniest bit dismayed at it, especially at the colour, at first. but since then i've totally gotten into the whole groove and everyone thinks it's really funky and very 'me' anyway. so.. *shrugs*.

living out has been really lovely. i love having a room of my own. i love having a house of my own. lovingly (and cheaply) furnished and decorated. we have the prettiest toilet with a wooden (but cracked and soon-to-be-replaced) toilet seat. each of rooms is a different colour. our hallway is a warm pink, my room is an aloof purple, the living-room-converted-into-a-double-room is bright yellow. and we have a gorgeous, roomy kitchen with space for a dining table, now fully equipped with pots, pans, cutlery, toaster, sandwich maker and a microwave! the best thing is, everything except for the toaster was free... kindly donated by family and friends of 2 of my housemates.

our house is pretty much on the way of becoming a fully-furnished, full-fledged, lived-in home soon. the microwave and sandwich maker only came in yesterday, as did the ikea stools (in bright orange and yellow... picked out by me obviously). and next week, uncle john will be visiting, and he's giving us a new toilet seat! :) things are trickling in.. but after the toilet seat, number 4 will truly be done.

on the whole i feel really happy. pretty much bursting with pride and love for my little piece of london. and also very very thankful that all seems to be going well for me at last. my three housemates are xinmin, carol and mai... and it's really fun, 4 swinging single (it's practically literal as well, since we're all single and joined swing dance! *grins*) girls living under the same roof. it's fun being able to nick stuff off each other... coats, jackets, scarves, hair accesories and make-up. and giving each other comments when dressing up, watching vcds together, having 'love consultations' (for lack of a better phrase!)...

but of course it's not all peaches and cream... as in every household, there are things about who messes up the kitchen, who's being irresponsible and all that. not that anything has been said yet. but right now i'm beginning to get fed-up by the fact that it is always only xinmin and i who ever take out the trash, and how i seem to be perpetually washing up, and clearing away the mess left behind by others. it's not a major thing in a way... it's definitely not a case of deadly enmity and all that... just one of those small, niggling, irritants which will dog the daily life of any group of people sharing a place. occasionally it gets up to my neck, then i have to breathe and tell myself to forget it. after all, undoutbedly, i am probably careless at other times as well, which others are tolerating. but on occasions, i tell myself that i'm going to give up on the house and let it go to seed, as long as my little domain remains entirely within my control.

it seems crazy, to anyone who knows how messy i am. and our 'golden toilet bowl' in hua zhong. or how one day i unearthed a piece of paper which had something *growing* on it... but i've been really obsessed with neatness and cleanliness in the house. when i'm bored, i wipe the tables and countertops or clean the sink, or organise the fridge. i guess... it's just something different now... having a realm of your own. it's not merely a room which was assigned to you by indifferent, higher powers. this is a *home* lovingly chosen by xinmin and carol as it happened... but by proxy... by me as well.

it's really freaky though, i was appalled by how domesticated and house-wife-y i've become. especially in the first few days of moving in, i was so perfectly content bustling around cleaning stuff, putting things away, imagining what to get for the house and my room, and what would go where, and procuring the items, i seriously felt that if someone was to give me a house to manage, I would be perfectly happy not to work and just to stay at home and take care of my little realm. i could spend all day fiddling around, decorating the household, cleaning stuff, and rearranging the cutlery. and me... a feminist who refuses to cook for men!!!! my lord... what a total turnaround and severe regression!

madness
Thursday, October 10, 2002
04:20 p.m.

back in london. for slightly over a week. it's just been one mad rush since i got back. between housing and school. deciding on my subjects and activities and everything else in between, it's just been absolutely crazy. i think i'm between halfway going insane, and happy that 'real life' has started again. although right now 'real life' seems pretty darn surreal. summer seems to have changed everything. the world is more than lse now. and yet this year, being my second year, lse is more with me than anything else. bleah. life is good. but it's the first week, and i'm already feeling stressed out. not good.

crew life
Tuesday, September 10, 2002
04:41 p.m.

been on the crew for one week and it's been really fun. feel like we volunteers are more like glorified construction workers than anything else, what with the hard hats, pick-maddocks, highlines and what nots.

i try to convince myself that i'm doing an environmental, forest conservation type thing, like i've always wanted to do. in a way, this last week's project is kinda like that, since we built rock water bars and check dams to reduce/prevent erosion on the appalachian trail. but we have to cut down trees to set up the highline to carry the rocks for the water bars and check dams uphill. and when digging trenches, we have to chop off roots which are in our way with the loppers. and we have to fell trees for the wood water bars we put in on another site as well. every time that happens, my heart breaks. but i tell myself: 'this is called constructive destruction'. is there really such a thing?? or am i just trying to console myself?

i've learnt lots of things. among other things, how weak i really am. rocks which i can barely budge, men can lift (with varyinf degrees of effort). while it takes me 40 minutes to strip a log, men, or a skilled/stronger woman would only take half the time.

on the other hand, i'm the youngest volunteer, and the only asian.

crashing cornell
Monday, September 2, 2002
02:30 p.m.

this will be a somewhat crappy entry cos i'm not in the mood.

right now i'm in cornell, ithaca. been crashing a couple of lectures. today i went for a total of 4 lectures. intro to philosophy, money & credit, financial economics and intermediate macroeconomics. my favorite was 'financial economics'. it was really fun and informative.

meanwhile, i've also gotten my bike!! :)