It. Is. Over.

Now what? What comes after the elation of being beyond this major hurdle that has dominated many a waking (and dreaming) thought? Freedom seems so precious when one has newly regained it that I almost do not feel like committing to any of the projects that I had intended to undertake after my exams. On the other hand not doing something seems... so much like a waste of precious time.

The time after exams should be spent doing something you have deprived yourself of for a very long time. Read. Chill out with friends. Spend the whole night out. Surf and blog endlessly. As for the more serious projects: A serious book to be read, a serious essay to be written, a serious major overhaul of my room to be done, a complex cooking project, ah, not yet. Not just yet. Not while the memory of the exams and the preparations are still fresh in my mind. Not when I cannot remember the last time I let time pass without holding onto every second of it and fretting over each passing moment.

Goodbye Walter Woon. Goodbye Tan Sook Yee. It is with some relief, some regret and some (heaven forbid) nostalgia I put away the texts and the notes, for the time being, relegating them to a section under my bed reserved for such relics of a bygone age. What comes next? What comes next? What is to be done with this holidays and the next term?

For a moment I could not remember what it was that I planned to read after the exams. I think a trip to the library is in order. This afternoon. Maybe I should also go and 泡 Kinokuniya one of these days. But I have only a few days before we all leave for Malaysia. That will be another story. This makes the next few days doubly precious. The days never have such a flavour as the first few days after the exams end. It makes you want to do something really special with it. Something meaningful. Something that makes you happy, makes you think that the time before the exams are all worth it. Just before the exams, you did not want to waste a single moment. Just after the exams you do not want to waste a single moment too, but for an entirely, far more delighful reason. The new air is sweeter (except for that time in the afternoon when they pumped the sewers), new day is mellower, and Munchie Monkey cafe carries a near festive atmosphere. I realise what this means: The holidays have begun.

Near frenzy

In slightly more than 12 hours from now, it will be over. IT WILL BE OVER. It will be over. It will be over.... and I don't know if I should:

1) Bite my nails and fret
2) Squeeze my eyes shut and freak out
3) Pace my room in circles muttering to myself
4) Stick my head out of the window and scream
5) Try to do all of the above at once

Dinner tonight

Was porridge, spiced up with sesame oil and some canned black pepper tuna. I was a little worried that the black pepper would not go with the sesame oil, Western and Eastern flavours clashing and all that, but it turned out fine, the hot porridge heating the tuna chunks to a decent temperature.

On this point, I might as well note that when people cook their own food they seem to enjoy discussing their culinary endeavours, never mind that other people might think that their meals are weird/ boring/ positively 'not-designed-for-human-consumption' unpalatable/ certainly 'are-you-sure-you-can-survive-on-that' misguided. Take my brother for instance who microwaves (or used to microwave) quad-decker cheese-and-garlic-spread bacon and egg deluxe sandwiches for dinner, or any combination of bread, egg, butter, honey, bacon or garlic spread and will happily take snapshots of all his creations and show them off like a proud papa would display baby photos. I guess it is the same principle. I mean, it is nothing if you microwave a tub of instant noodles, but if you put something together out of basic raw materials now thats something to blow your horn about. It's fun being (somewhat) creative, especially where food is concerned and even more fun talking about it.

Looks like I am a nuisance

The kitchen would have been an ideal place for studying if it was not a kitchen. Roomy, cool, breezy, with the table at just the right height and an abundance of chairs for one to rest ones feet, my only regret is that they designated it a kitchen which by definition is a place in which people prepare and eat their meals, and the table at which I study is the place which they require to eat at.

Usually I get up and return to my room when I see this particular clustermate bustling around preparing for a meal, as she and her boyfriend use the table to eat and if I am there then they have to bring their food back to their room. However at times this is not so easily done, such as when I have someone over to study, so they again have to make do with the cramped confines of the room instead of the large kitchen table. Sharing is not really an option as the table is partially covered with utensils, which rather reduces available surface.

One afternoon, I noticed that the boyfriend was sitting at the kitchen table, studying. That was not quite the usual sight as I was probably the only one in my cluster who studied at the kitchen. Two hours later, he was still sitting at the table, studying. Then they had dinner, a large spread that covered the entire available surface of the tabletop. Then the boyfriend and my clustermate vanished into her room, not to be seen for the rest of the night.

Were they pre-empting the possibility that I might monopolize the table again? In fact I had just been studying at the table that morning, and a friend had come over to bake in the afternoon (the friend baked, not me. I helped out by being the food tester). They probably thought that they should leave nothing to chance. (I might have studied at the kitchen again that afternoon if the table was available, but I probably would have let them have it if they were having dinner). Also, I wouldn't have minded if they had approached me directly with a request that I vacate the table at their dinnertime. But I suppose conservative Asians prefer a more subtle and non-confrontational method. It still kinda tickles me that they should go to such lengths just to secure a place to have dinner. Maybe I am a bit of a nuisance after all.

Flu Bug

Yum. Am quite satisfied with tonight's dinner, by my own hand, of course. Stewed beans and peas with chestnuts and pumpkin added later, all flavoured with miso (you know, that salty japanese bean paste). Had the beans first with with miso sauce, then later added some soup to the remaining miso -- made for a delicately flavoured soup. So healthy. I eat so healthily. Why then, am I down with a cold now? Can it be because I slept at 2 for the past 2 nights, the first night because I was finishing up a caselist for the next day's exam and the next night because I was finishing up 'The Paper Chase' -- a novel on life in law school? (I swear that I had borrowed that book after exams yesterday fully intending to read only after the exams are over -- but the preface was so interesting!) Anyway, it was good. I felt very inspired last night to blog something about it but, as I said, it was nearing 2am when I finished, and I decided that I had better do something sensible after shockingly indulging myself for 3 hours and go straight to bed.

This morning however I woke with a sniffle, which did not clear up by itself but progressed to a full blown runny nose. The hot, hot shower I had just now helped clear my poor blocked sinuses and infused a core of warmth into me such that I hadn't felt for a whole day (Brr! Chilly weather). That was good. And then I had dinner. Need I say more?

Interesting Interlude

I was buying stuff at Georgie's Mart today and at the checkout counter a young Indian female cashier was relating her marital woes to her colleague:

"Before I got married I was the youngest in the house. I had four older sisters and they did all the housework... I just knew how to eat only!" She said with a grin.

"Now, from the youngest to the eldest.." I wondered what she meant by that when she continued, "My second sister-in-law... much easier than me... when she sits down nobody says anything!"

"But the eldest son's wife... when I sit down it will be 'Molly!...Molly!...'" She totaled up my purchases and shrugged comically. I couldn't help grinning at her. So her husband was the eldest son of the family and she was the eldest daughter-in-law.

I wanted to tell her, and indeed it was on the tip of my tongue to dispense this helpful bit of advice -- that she should get herself pregnant and then she can sit down all day and nobody would say anything. She would be waited on hand and foot and if she wanted to get up and do any chores she would most probably be shooed back onto a chair and footstool. An instataneous cure for all her woes. I'm sure she would have found it most helpful.

Treading the fine line at the edge of reason

I'm getting grouchily tired but I refuse to sleep because there is just a little bit left of this chapter to make notes on and that little bit is stubbornly refusing to diminish itself. So I am surfing other blogs at random including some of my daily reads just to make myself feel better about returning to note-making.

I have resolved to look for Lois Mc-Master Bujold's books after the exams. They came highly recommended by one of my favourite bloggers. And the library stocks them. This is good.

My brother has become too enamoured with microwaved food recently. This is not good. At the back of my mind is this idea that microwaving denatures food and ruins all the nutrients in it. Today, I did a Google search with 'microwaved food' and 'health' and pulled out all the horror stories on the potential cancer-causing, immune system- busting, hormone-zapping, next-to-radiocative properties of microwaved foods. I emailed them to my brother, who has just recently taken to caling himself 'Master of the Microwave' or 'Master of the Wave' for short. I am also thinking whether I would be doing my microwaved-food-every-other-meal cluster mates a big favour by sabotaging the cluster microwave with a cunningly placed metal spoon. But this behaviour smacks too much of fanaticism, and I am still a moderate, in many ways. I am only half serious about the sabotaging. Half.

I should sleep.

Kitchen matters

I still think I like studying in my kitchen best, as it is airy and cool, the table is a good height, and there is an abundance of chairs for me to drape my legs in a manner most comfortable to me. It would have been an absolute pie of a study area were it not for the fact that it is, after all, a kitchen, which by definition is a place where people cook and eat their meals. There are some time periods when the kitchen is especially busy when people come in to prepare simple meals and then I either ignore them or I retire to my room. A change of environment might reduce boredom anyway...

You wouldn't believe the amount of people that are surviving off instant noodles at this period for one of their meals at least. I have seen packets of duck noodles, udon noodles, curry laksa noodles prepared into admittedly fragrant albeit very unhealthy meals (if you can call that a meal, on which point I still have my reservations). I still think that the udon noodles smell the best. I wonder what spices go into the seasoning? (Yeah I should be studying, I know, and actually I am, but fragrances have this tendency of coyly intruding on your consciousness, somehow)

From my vantage point behind the kitchen table I have the privilege of nosing into everyone's culinary business (oh, so that big basket of utensils belongs to her) (To a girl who was preparing to toast some ham: "Hey sorry, if you don't mind could you unplug the microwave instead of the airpot when you plug in the toaster? Or there won't be hot water available when someone else needs some.") (A helpful suggestion to another girl who was unplugging the airpot to refill it: "Hi, you know, we keep a bottle in the cabinet there, and you could just fill up the bottle and pour it into the airpot instead of unplugging the whole thing. Would be much easier, I think.") And yes, I do still get some studying done. There are periods of relative quiet, when I have the solitude of the kitchen all to myself.

There was only once when I faced a kind of dilemma on whether or not to say anything. I have this one clustermate 'Lantern Girl', so nicknamed for the array of lanterns hanging in her room to whom I have never spoken a word to nor exchanged a direct glance or smile (I've tried smiling, but she just doesn't get it) since the first day I moved into this cluster. Weird huh? But she never looks in my direction as we pass each other and well, I have just kind of let things slide... Well, Lantern Girl came in to cook noodles, and emptied the airpot of all its hot water. Then she left it there, while she busied herself with her noodles. Does she think the airpot fills itself magically? I deliberated whether or not to say anything. The one consideration was if it would be somewhat inappropriate that the first thing I ever said to her directly was "Can you please fill the airpot after you have emptied it?" Somehow, it just doesn't seem quite right.

She moved in and out of the kitchen and at one point I really felt as if I was going to say something. But I told myself: Wait awhile and see if she does it after she finishes. She didn't. Stupid, inconsiderate girl. Don't mind me. I'm just irked that anyone could be so... so... Never mind.

I filled the airpot myself and resolved that if I ever caught her doing that again I would come right out and say it and maybe bring up this incident as well. So thinking, I put that incident away.

P/S: You might have noticed that the word airpot comes up very frequently in this blog. As a matter of fact, it is almost the next best thing to a lifeline for some of us. A modern form of the kitchen hearth of the old days.

Let not the demons of my mind linger

I think of how close I am to the exams and I feel a kind of paralyzing fear creep over me. I suddenly feel inadequate and not a bit up to the challenge of facing the big scary exam all by myself. I think that I have not done sufficient study and that there is not enough time for me to do so anymore. At times like this I feel most like procrastinating and postponing all thoughts of the exams because I think that I cannot take the feeling of inadequacy anymore. If I did not pull out this phobia to look at it squarely in the eye today, it would be subtly influencing me from the sidelines, making me put off the stuff that I should be studying, making opt for stress-releasing play instead of productive work, making me less effective at studying whenever I try to apply myself to the business.

Begone, debilitating sentiment! Leave me in peace. Let me work quietly towards my goals, never mind that they seem unachievable at this moment. Let me trust in myself and my abilities, and believe that I can handle what I have a responsibility to handle. There is no room on my shoulder for you, insidious spirit. Come hope, come peace, come joy and be my companions in this time of need.

Feeling Incomplete

I am blinking crossly at the screen from behind the lenses of my not-so-accurate standby glasses. With them, I can at least make out the words on the screen or on a page, but I won't want to look too closely... because I can't. The guy at the spectacle shop says that he will take untill about 12.30 to get my glsees fixed, so I have to endure a little bit more before I finally regain my usual pair of specs. Hopefully the replacement lens does not vary too much from the original so I don't have to do much adjusting. Oh, and i haven't said what exactly is wrong with the original lens: It's flaking coating in a very bad way, and when I stare at the computer screen dimmer patches come between me and the screen in a most inconvenient manner. For the past hour I have been sleeping, which is the best specless activity I can think of at the moment. But there is only so much sleep one can take, so after being grouchily evicted from dreamland I turned to my computer to fill up the remaining hour.

The guy just called. Hurrah. I'm off to get my spectacles. Ta

Just another blog on the US Presidential Election

I was indulging in the luxury of wading in my own thoughts at the close of the previous day and the start of the next. It is high time I slept and I just thought that I would look in on the updates of the US presidential election on the CNN website.

The first thing that struck me is the caption 'BUSH WINS' accompanied by a picture of the reelected president himself sitting smugly in an armchair. Two hours earlier the report was still on the inconclusive polls, with projections and forecasts cited left and right in lieu of actual reports. The latest report contained all the self-congratulatory and condescending comments made by the Republicans (Bush) against the Democrats (Kerry), as they can afford to gloat now that the prize has been secured.

Now Bush can avoid the ignominy of going down in history as the first wartime president to be ousted from office, and can break free of the shadow of his father's failed bid for re-election. But now that the election is over, it is time for Bush to pick up the pieces of an America that he and Kerry had divided in their bid for the top post. So much for all that drama, now the real work begins.