Boston

Enjoying my last moments in Hilton (Where Rich People Stay) and its free lobby Internet, beyond this point it will be roughing it out with hostels and couches and homelessness! Big fluffy pillows (all four of you) and bouncy bed, I will miss you all. I have not managed to get accommodation in San Fran yet, it seems that CSers are really busy in the summer and my one-CS-request-at-a-time policy really is not efficient enough to get me someone that will host. May have to send multiple requests this time. The reason why I'm not doing multiple requests is because when I tried it in Bangalore, I actually got 3 people agreeing to host and I had to turn down 2... and it felt kinda bad.

O good people of Bangalore, bless you and your couches and Tejas and Vineet and Alysha.

But desperate times call for desperate measures I guess. Things will turn out well and I shall stop stressing about it. There are more important things to stress about like the imminent presentation that I have to do in a topic that I have no idea about. I am resenting this presentation because it deprived me of a chance to go to a hippie festival that some CSers were going to this weekend =( And it's not even my presentation, I'm doing it as a favour for a friend. Good karma, good karma.

Boston CSers! I established contact with this guy Tony before my trip, so we met up and had a couple of drinks with his friend Kate, on Thursday. Being rather socially inept when sober, I was rather quiet for the first tenth of the evening until they plied me with sufficient beer for me to crack my first joke (about Tony playing the tambourine with Led Zeppelin) (hey it rhymes!) and things just took off from there.

And yes it was the first tenth of the evening, because the evening lasted till late wee hours of the morning 9am the next day. We went from the bar to Kate's boyfriend Brian's restaurant, where we met up with another two equally crazy guys Andrew and Ian, had some more beer and this amazing pizza-like thing that had cheese and peach on it, from Brian's kitchen. Yummm. And they are such funny people! By this point I was laughing so much that my cheeks hurt. I haven't laughed this hard in ages. At 2am when they needed to close and we were literally asked to leave, we decided to go to another place to drink Andrew's bottles of wine stashed in his backpack. (Don't ask.)

This other place I shall keep enshrouded in mystery because it is potentially incriminatory. It is very cool, has an elevator to the roof and a secret bar in the basement, that's all you need to know. Played the piano and looked at the birds in the cage and tried to get the in-house jukebox to work and played foosball and looked at Malaysia on the globe and went to the rooftop to look at Boston at night and fixed cocktails in the secret bar and woke up completely hungover in a huge luxurious bed the second morning.

When I left the place with the warm Bostonian morning sunshine in my face, I was momentarily disoriented. It was a surreal night.

Yesterday I didn't do much but try to recover from the hangover and comfort my roommate who apparently had spent the night yelling at her husband on the phone when I was out getting pissed. Oh yes I have a roommate in Hilton (Where Rich People Stay) because being the broke grad student that I am I can only afford half the luxury, even when I am reimbursed. She's very sweet, another grad student that I got connected with through the conference roommate matching system.

When I managed to drag myself out of bed at about 6pm, I took a walk to Washington Street where Kate told me had some kind of art gallery night, but I couldn't find it so I ended up walking to Chinatown to look at all the Chinese people. I would put up some pictures that I took en route but my camera's not with me right now. I think I have to go now for the presentation. Urgh.

Oh and my poster session went okay. Not many people were interested in the research because it was about Malaysia, and a prof walking by told me that he had no idea where Malaysia was. Sigh. Gotta run!

Meltdown sikit

OK We're finally in July. I'm finally in the battle zone that I've been looking at afar from June, speculating about the craziness but never actually registering that with every passing day, the dates come closer. I am at the point where I finally see, that I am going to be the person carrying out my haphazardly engineered back-to-back schedule for the following three months - and it is not going to be pretty.

Right now you're looking at a deer staring into the headlights of an oncoming truck named Self-Inflicted Stress.

There's so many thoughts in my head, all not related to each other, some research, some travel, some homelessness, a fair bit of homelessness actually, and all the hell that is spawned from these sources. OK to put it in perspective:

July
7/7
Leave Singapore for KL after putting my whole room into boxes. Which is something that I should do from right now.
8/7 - 11/7
In KL. Running errands (India visa, ISIC card, shopping for formal wear, somehow fix my hair), multiple gatherings (Asa, LL, XiaoCi, my NZ Aunt).
12/7
Return to Singapore with my World's Greatest Parents and move everything to Jia Ling's place.
13/7 - 17/7
Some graduate forum. Whole-day affairs. I'm presenting a paper. Which means that I need to prepare for my paper as well.
17/7 - 25/7
India. Haven't got CSers for Bangalore yet. I am nervous. Also I think India's going to be really intense, and at this point it looks intimidating. Thanks to my mum who was collecting horror stories in attempt to dissuade me from going. We'll be covering Bangalore, Mysore, Chennai and Pondicherry.
27/7 - 31/7
Some course for graduate students. Also whole-day affairs. Right after India. Have to adjust my mind straight after I come back.

August
1/8 - 3/8
Prep for US
4/8
Flight to Boston. Reach Boston at 10:30pm.
5/8 - 8/8
Conference. Presenting paper on the 6th. Need to prepare some kind of poster session. Have no idea how it's going to be like.
9/8 - 13/8
Bus to New York from Boston. Bunk at Kingston's, meet up with XC and Jian Hui. Probably the only relaxed part of my trip to the US.
13/8 - 20/8
Research week at San Francisco where I try to talk to people. I haven't planned it yet. My theoretical framework, my interview questions, my EVERYTHING. Kill me now please.
21/8 - 30/8
Camping Part 1 - Going with the Green Tortoise for its Canyons of the West trip, covering Las Vegas, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon NP, Arches NP, Monument Valley, Lake Powell, Grand Canyon NP.

September
1/9 - 7/9
Camping Part 2 - Burning Man. Also going with Green Tortoise. Intense desert camping, but at least I'll have someone to take care of my food and water and transport. Highlight of my trip. And I am still bloody scared.
9/9
Arrive in Singapore. Back. Finally. Start to look for a new room. Move house from Jia Ling's, as soon as possible. This will take me at least 2 weeks. At least. But can't mooch off Jia Ling's hospitality too much.

OK Siao onot. Two months, four countries. (And check all that KL-Singapore-India-Singapore action.) The panic has kicked in, and according to past experience, action will kick in soon after, but I'm at that paralyzed stage where I need extra push from panic to get away from the inertia, and then the two months will fly by. The details of the plans still have to be executed, and I have to come up with some extensive to-do list, extensive packing list, extensive people-to-bother list.

I like lists. I now have a list of lists. This should be heaven for me. AAAARrrrggggh the truck's gonna hit me!!!!

Adrenaline rush, danger danger danger. Then after moving have to get my confirmation report ready, as my goal is to complete it by the end of this year. October, November, December. 2009 will then be gone, we'll be one decade into the 2000's, and climate change effects are going to happen even more frequently, and we're all going to die!!!!!!!

Shhhhh. Everything's going to be ok. Shhhhhh.

Kristy will rue the day...

... she told me Tiger Airways had a promotion: $1 INSANE All In Fare!!!

I went berserk. I swear I was unconscious for a bit and when I came to I had:
Nov12-13 Return air tickets to/from Penang
Feb25-March2 Return air tickets to/from KL
March13-March20 Return air tickets to/from Kuching (going with Jia Ling)

And it cost me.... *drumrollllllll*

*still drumming*

wait for it, wait for it....

SGD36 (RM87.41) for ALL SIX FLIGHTS!!! To put this slightly into perspective, my taxi ride from Woodlands back home yesterday cost me SGD18. So if I were to take a taxi back, from my home, to Woodlands, just for the heck of it, I would actually have spent the equal amount on the six flights which total distance is approximately 3081kms. I honestly wouldn't mind forfeiting any of the tickets.

I am a little guilty about all the carbon emissions that I'm going to cause, but still, they're so cheap T_T and I was barely conscious, I swear!

In other flight-related news, this morning I also booked a ticket from Singapore to Boston, flying United Airlines, under a student price of USD790 which according to some is a pretty decent price. This will be reimbursed but I'm celebrating in the name of frugality and auntie-ness!

I've just realized - amidst all the excitement, I've forgotten to buy me and Asa's return tickets from India XD but I'm maxxed out on Tiger Airways. I will keep away from it for today at least. It's bloody evil I tell you.

Damn have to return to work, been doing nothing but book tickets this morning T_T

*update*
Just found RM24 in my jeans pocket. Have no idea how it got there. Today is such a good day. =D

Super disoriented.

This week I'm only spending two nights on my KL bed - Sunday night in Northam Hotel, Penang; Monday night at home; Tuesday and Wednesday night on KTM; tonight at home; Friday and Saturday night in the wild camping =)

*hugs self*

I know I have lots to do but right now I'm so disoriented from getting back to KL 6am this morning that I've resorted to... watching police-themed HK dramas, which probably does not help any. I've got stuff to blog about and they're all swimming in my head, no thanks to the thick HK drama plot and adrenaline-inducing action scenes (damn them).

Emails to reply, emails to reply. I watched Sell Out! last week and I thought it was commendable and I wanted to blog about it - but that slipped away before I could and suddenly I was in Penang. In Penang I watched a documentary in the hotel about planets and the universe and was really intrigued - wanted to blog about that, and also the fact that I hadn't been in a decent hotel for so long and hadn't seen Melissa Sim for so long and the Penang orgasmic foooooooood but then I was rumbling along the train tracks from KL to Singapore.

Intermittently I also wanted to blog about these nasty bug bites that I've got on my ankles and my calves, I don't know what bit me but the bites are itchy, swollen and manifest in angry red five-cent spots of busted capillaries. In moments of commuting idleness I wondered if I could put a leech on the bite and somehow neutralize it. I'm still wondering.

In Singapore I ran about running errands, saw my co-supervisor and practically binned my grant application draft (demolition, ground zero, deep breath and here we go again). Oh yeah how could I forget?

I AM GOING TO BOSTON IN AUGUST =D

When I first got the news I wanted to tell someone who could understand the importance of this to me. Picked up my phone and realized that there was no one. At the end I broke the news to a couple of my colleagues and got the same level of congratulations that I would give to a random colleague who just got accepted for an overseas conference. Sigh.

Oh yeah - sometime last week I also got the news that my homosexuality and films paper got accepted into another conference held in New Delhi, but I'm going to be stuck in Singapore for another forum at the same period of time so no New Delhi for me. I haven't even bought the ticket to India yet, the trip with Asa, it's been such a busy period of time that I keep putting it off, and that is keeping my parents on tenterhooks because they're trying their best to dissuade me from going in light of the swine flu situation. I don't know yet.

To chronicle my current turmoil of activity, firstly I have a deadline to meet and that's on 24th May and since I'd be busy dodging leeches (or actively seeking them out muahahaha) then somewhere in Ulu Terong, Perak, the deadline will be rolled forward to... tomorrow. Holy macaroni. Ground zero grant application and rewrite of another paper for a graduate forum in July, both deadlines on June 15. First year report deadline July 3rd. Amidst all the deadlines I have to plan for my trip to Boston which I am planning to stretch way longer than 3 days. For research-related crazy schemes of course.

Visa, tickets, couchsurfing... blah. somehow not in a crazy scheme mood.

While travelling this time around, from Singapore to KL and from KL to Penang - snippets of the travelling I did last year kept resurfacing. Camp fire in Cameron Highlands with Val (who subsequently got diarrhoea hahaha); the Jelapang Toll with the impossibly clean toilet when me and Asa went hitchhiking; the beautiful views of the northern forests and mountain range while road tripping with YKent and GuangHong; running for the bus while meeting Robert in Malacca. I love this country man. And I miss all my friends.

Suddenly emo. Woi camping trip tomorrow! Going Boston in August! 12noon already. I think I should go take a nap.