paradox

I have stopped treating time as time.

homecoming

I came back to Montreal last night, on another agonizingly long bus ride. I read and slept for the most of the way, but as soon as we got close enough to the city for me to recognize the highway exit, I turned off the reading light and just sat there, enjoying my return to a city that means to much to me.

It’s a strange mix of fear and love each time I come back, because Montreal holds so much history for me, somewhat painful at times. I think of Big D, I think of my insane parents, I think of the hardships of college applications and clandestine rendez-vous. Because the me coming back from New York, from Beijing, from France is never the same person as the me who left Montreal not so long ago. And it’s scary to try and figure out how this new person fits in with the old life I left behind.

I come back this semester as an insane student who took 10 classes without telling her parents, as the girlfriend of a bboy from Philly, as the ex of Big D, as the new NSOP coordinator for Columbia… I’m not sure who I was when I last left, but it was definitely someone in a different mindset.

blast from the past

Almost one year ago, my parents and I had a huge trans-continental fight where I basically had to promise not to see Big D ever again (which worked out well, since we had broken up anyhow). My mom had gone into my closet and found my box of Big-D things (letters, gifts, stupid trinkets I’ve saved from our dates), which prompted her to call my dad and me in Singapore and the rest is history. When I came back, I assumed that she had the box of items in her possession…. but she told me that she had thrown it all out. I was pretty much devastated…

So today, I was helping my mother find something in her closet and I stumbled on the box of Big D things! I mean, even she probably forgot that she had kept it in her closet all this time and lied to me. I totally freaked out. It was kinda weird… now I feel strange knowing that 2 years of my love life is sitting in her closet. I don’t particularly want to go get it back because 1) she’ll start wailing on me again about dating a white guy and 2) because I have no particular inclination to relive that period of my life through mementos.

raw talent

My friends on the Table Tennis team stole this for me:

… because I thought he was incredibly cute and was obsessing for a while. Later, upon closer inspection and after experiencing my friends’ disbelief & mockery, I’ve come to realize that isn’t that physically attractive. But rather… that it was his awesome, AWESOME table tennis skills that got me.

This is comforting in some ways, and really not that novel in others. Socially, women have always been attracted to men with talent,  or power (or both), while men seemed to go for the pure physical attributes of the other sex. It’s good to know that I’m perhaps not attracted only to people themselves (ie. Big D), but rather to the skills or talent that make them who they are (ie. physics, pilot, swimming)… It’s comforting to know that it’s looking more like I am only in love with the idea of him… and ideas are can be more easily replaced than people.

On the other hand, as a girl of modest looks and awesome talents (and modest, too!), I seem to be at a sexual disadvantage. No wonder I’m mostly single.

crime and punishment

I just walked out of a Lit Hum exam, feeling pretty good about myself. Until I saw the grade I got on my final paper.

It was an A.

In reality, I’m a pretty bad writer (as evidenced by these posts). I often can’t come up with groundbreaking ideas, and when I do, they end up jumbled on the page. This particular paper was written with the help of sparknotes, wikipedia, minimal sleep and the fact that I hadn’t read the entire book. And yet I got an A? Either my previous lit hum teacher completely missed my genius, or I was just damn good at a BSing my way out of this one.

Yesssssssssss. Thank you, IB diploma.

type

So maybe I’m looking for him again, same personality, same hobbies, same tastes, but just in an Asian body. THAT IS NOT TOO MUCH TO ASK. The problem is, finding someone just like him is only going to be second rate (compared to him) and would hardly help me in the moving on process….

Sometimes, though, I wonder. Do guys not-him like girls who are me? Maybe the only type of guys who have me as their type is… him.

i just can’t handle that shit

Big D’s brother-in-law just left his sister, and Big D’s going through this really hard time with it. It’s tough on me too, because I know that to him, they were almost the epitome of romance. They met in high school or something, and got married at 20, had a couple of cute kids… moved into a great house. I think he’s lost his faith in love, somewhat, since his parents and his sister are now essentially divorced. In a strange way, this makes me breathe a sigh of relief… we would have probably ended up dysfunctional too.

What I can’t handle, however, is the fact that I just can’t fucking get over him. It’s come to a point where I don’t even want to get back together… but.. yeah. He can not e-mail me or call me for an entire month, and I’d be perfectly fine and bam. One short e-mail is enough to begin the cycle again. I can’t help but read them (twice. and then once again.) and write him back because I have this incredible weakness.

I’ve thought about not ever getting over him. Fuck that shit.

EDIT: Turns out, he probably only e-mailed me because he had a hard time going through the whole divorce/separation thing… It gets to me every time when he e-mails me frequently and suddenly stops.

the laundry lottery

Doing laundry in John Jay is always a gamble. The laundry room itself is rather decrepit: a series of old Maytag washers and dryers line the wall while lonely socks and proliferating lint seems to always cover the floor. The table at the center of the room is usually laden with items that have already been cleaned and dried, but unfortunately, forgotten by the owner. They constantly tempt my kleptomaniac tendencies.

13 washers and 14 dryers : 458 freshmen

The ratio somehow doesn’t seem right (especially when 1/4 of the machines are constantly “out of order”). Complex algorithms are needed to figure out low-traffic times to be able to snag an empty washer of your own (you’d be surprised how many students get the urge to do laundry at 2 AM on a Tuesday). For those of us careful enough to plan laundry schedules (ie. me), there is the LaundryView, which displays the machines that are in use and the time remaining. Trust me, Saturday mornings are the best.

The Flex system frees students from carrying quarters around, but it will undoubtedly break down on a Friday evening, essentially knocking it out until Monday when the maintenance staff returns. If you’re lucky enough to find an empty machine, dump in your detergent and pay with your flex, the machine is then likely to be broken (A dryer that doesn’t spin! Why, I didn’t know they came out with those…) and you’ll have to go to the Hartley Hospitality Desk to get a refund (if you care enough about 1$). The ordeal is traumatizing enough for most that many John Jay residents have resorted to regularly use the Hartley laundry room, which boasts cleaner floors, a working sink, and friendly upperclassmen.

The part of the laundry adventure that makes it all worthwhile is the elevator ride back up to my floor. Each time I get on at basement level and bypass the main floor without stopping to speedily reach my floor, I know I’ve won the laundry lottery… this time.

situational objectivity

Apparently, in the USA, newspapers can endorse leadership candidates. Say what?!

What happened to objective, non-partisan, and un-biased reporting?

I’m moving back to Canada.