hello!

in new york now, almost missed my flight cos i fell asleep in the waiting lounge, but thankfully the flight was delayed.

crashing estelle's place.

will tell you all about my starbucks experiences later. trying to conserve my battery and do my bloody hist paper that my prof's making us hand in IN THE MIDDLE OF SPRING BREAK. grrrrr.

had a good time at the hilton, now having a good time at hotel estelle. heh.

later!

heh. i hope i didn't put any pressure on you shup. was trying to avoid it.
but you made me very happy.

sadly the kind of movies i've been watching is highly dubious. and someone complained about my professor to the chancellor and he was v pissed off. lectured to us about scholarly creeds and made sarcastic disclaimers before showing us a drag queen pageant. i love my ear stud-bearing, tattoo-adorned, tight pants and leather jacket-clothed, fantastically groomed bodied professor. so much spunk.

aiyoh. have you guys ever felt that the closer you get to someone the worse you treat that person? i'm spiralling into contradictory defiance for the sake of it, cos somehow i recoil from closeness at the start. if the relationship survives past my barely-concealed super-irrational meanness then it's set for life. but this time, feels like it's getting out of hand and i don't want it to. this doesn't apply to you all in the past i think. i hope not at least. maybe i'm just getting nastier. i told that friend that i'm not an innately nice person but i try damn hard to be one. losing steam maybe. argh...er did any of you ever think that i was mean to you at a certain stage? in the spirit of confucian moral humility i will kowtow to you if so and pledge to make up for it.

econ survey: if you had the choice of receiving money now or this time next yr which would you choose?

going to be busy this week, spending 3 days at the hilton hotel in sf for a conference! then off to nyc. so shup, decide and tell me! then i can fantasise what we'll do together if you come over to the west coast next sem and visit and set it in stone on this blog. and fuzzy, yay. can email me the dates that you said you'll be at the orphanage? then i can apply for the same time period too. thanks. and jo! heh you must treat me to drinks if you're treating my brother. cannot discriminate against the older chim, small chim must give way to older chim. can't wait for our session of getting wasted with him and you. my roommate wants to compete with me in a vodka-shot contest. wah. hope i don't die.

k. love you all.

lse prides itself on being all radical and left-wing and politically active, but chim's classes in berkeley sound way more radical!!! haha way to go. i would love to be in these shocking-as-hell, innocence-losing, earth-shattering lessons. isn't that the best part of education? having said that i think i am being more usefully educated by the films im watching here.. and so here are my favouritest ever:

1. crash: it just won an oscar for best picture!! i'm so glad cos this movie is really good. abt discrimination. ppl here discriminate and are discriminated against... no one is 'good' or 'bad', everyone is just human. for me there was stunned disbelief, there was overwhelming sympathy, there was great sadness. and the unbelieveable soundtrack!!

2. fight club: edward norton who is a freaking good actor and the delicious brad pitt. the 'twist' may be well anticipated in advance but still i like the acting and the style and the gory violence.

3. godfather: classic lah!! watch al pacino absolutely shine. it's a slow start but ultimately the mafia is damn cool la.

4. pulp fiction: travolta and samuel l jackson are fantastic and quentin tarentino's direction is just too cool. very entertaining.

5. trainspotting: ewan mcrgregor and a bunch of junkies on the way to self destruction. iconic film for our times.

6. american history X: surprisingly good. but then again, edward norton is in this too. skinheads in american suburbia.

damn good stuff lah!! seriously. must watch boys dont cry, road to perdition, the green mile, the rest of godfather soon. good movies seriously kick ass. worth every minute of your time!!

love out!

asshole

so i thought i was in for the usual porny-cum-activisty video clips for my lesbian/gay etc class when my professor turned on the projector.

this middle aged guy pops up sitting in his kitchen, full of bitter rage about the news that he's contracted aids, and his feeling of victimisation by people in society, esp the right wing politicians and their instruments of terror, because he's gay, and according to them, "deserved it". he then says he gave up on preparing his "piece" for this homemade video-like clip, and takes out a gun from the cabinet. he waves it around, says he gave up cos he's been persecuted for his asshole, literally, and to show it literally, he pulls down his pants, turns around, pulls open his butt crack, repeats that he's lived and will die through his asshole, then sticks the gun in there and shoots himself. blood spurts out, his body falls to the ground, and a background voice starts chanting assholeassholesomethingsomething. the video ends with the bloodied body on the ground.

only then does the professor tell us that it's an underground ART performance, not a real dead body.

he follows up with a real life (this time) video journal that this gay couple made to document their relationship and the eventual death of one of them through aids. it's hard-hitting while heart-rendering, aimed at showing that they're human, deviant only because we say so, they love and grieve at loss too. after capturing the (long) moment of death and the ghostly blank stare of the corpse, there's a dance by the couple from earlier times, part of the black humor of their situation.

man, at that point, what with the nausea from the first clip and the gritty reality of suffering in the second, we were just crying, even some of the guys i think.

this was supposed to be my slack class for the semester, not an emotional grinder. it should give me breathing room, not make me feel like i'm choking from the cold sunlight.

now how do i translate this mere affectation of feeling into something coherent that can shed light on the issues brought up?

heh just a taste of classes over here for you guys.

here's the happier voice:

i think i'm getting pretty fit with all the running i do. no more huffing and puffing when i'm late to class. i stride in with more dignity now.

multi-chatting with my ex students makes me crack up. they're adorable and growing up so quickly. i feel old! and it's jarring to be bombarded with "ms chim" when i can be kid-like and irrational. and sketchy about homework.

despite the occasional overwhelming fatigue, life's pretty good.

so it's goodbye mexico, hello new york!
will be seeing estelle and em, hopefully popping down to cornell too if the 4 hr bus ride isn't too expensive.
how about you uk people join me too =) ? mar 26 to apr 2 spring break. i want it to come NOW. feeling so burnt out from never ending work and other commitments. it got so stifling that i was tempted to hop on the greyhound last saturday to somewhere, anywhere. but ended up on a 3 hour journey to get a bright pink bike. terribly anticlimactic. the evil of caprice drove me on. i'm quite shocked at how impulsive and deviant i felt. i think i'm just tired from everything. stupid resolution to try and be more engaged with life and whatever. the more engaged the more worn out.

now i've a blindingly pink bike that goes rather slowly so i'm damn tired now from pedalling continuosly to keep up with my friend on our trip to the bay today. i'm the most dangerous cyclist on the roads. damn slow, damn spectacular crashes into parked cars when bloody cars come up beside me and pressure me to the extreme side of the road, damn violent in starting up the bike.

what a horrible update. i'll be back with a happier voice tomorrow.