No Te Preocupes
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29 February Sunday
Thank goodness this week is over. History of Brazil midterm on Wednesday; Rotaract farewell dinner to organise on Thursday for the University of Western Ontario students who were here doing community service (a pretty annoying bunch, I've to say; probably bitchy and backstabbing people as well, given some of the things they apparently said to Michelle) - although at least we're scraping the trip we were planning to UWO over our spring break, so that's one less thing to worry about; getting the extremely mediocre results of my midterm back on Thursday and then having to think about possibly dropping the class so my GPA isn't affected (I'm still thinking); first draft of my Spanish paper (on Mexico's political future) due on Friday, which I was writing until 2:30 pm that day, having devoured an entire Rainbow Cafe cookie last night (never again! it's as big as my face and probably had a thousand calories) in the supposed aim of finishing my paper - that didn't work because all I did was work on my paper until I had finished my cookie and then went to bed; STF filming the whole of this evening, without a Glenton who never showed - we must have the world's flakiest actor in our cast.

And it's one more week to spring break, and then two weeks of (relative) freedom! Yay! I'm going to get a headstart on my papers (I say this with a straight face and the best of intentions), write my fantasy novel, play capoeira, work out at the gym, make money working at YUP, hang out with Bee-Seon and Paa Kwesi and assorted friends who will be around. It will be good and I will relax and not think about things that I think too much about right now.

So my plans of asking N out have been botched by what Bee-Seon told me. Which is probably good, because it will save me embarrassment and the pain of rejection, but that still kinda sucks. And S is just really upsetting me right now. I know I've no right to feel that way, but I have some kind of proprietorship over that part of our time together, those memories, and it feels like she's sullying them by doing this - and obviously, she doesn't care, because she keeps telling me about it. Well, I'm not going to listen anymore. I can't believe I lent her my La Oreja de Van Gogh CDs. Geez.


25 February Tuesday
Accomplishment of the night: Stealing a box of toilet paper rolls from the Trumbull basement and lugging them back to our suite. We've survived without toilet paper for the past two weeks. My suitemates are slobs.

Oh, and actually finishing my studying for the History of Brazil midterm by 11 pm, just as I planned. The review session with Ted and Mike went well, although I didn't get that much out of it because I was the most prepared of the three. Ah well, it's a good thing to be.

I've realised I'm such an evader of responsibilities. I deal with things by ignoring or avoiding them.


21 February Saturday
This must have been one of my worst weeks of the semester. First I fall sick, lose my voice and miss two classes of TKD. Then I take a horrendous midterm. And yesterday, I found out that I didn't get the Bates fellowship that I had actually put time, thought and effort into; not only that, I didn't even make it to the interview round. What the hell? I bet some shmuck who cobbled something together the night before is going to get it. I feel incredibly bitter about that right now, to the point where I don't even want to talk to people whom I knew applied for it as well, because I would feel terrible if I found out they had gotten the interview while I hadn't. I know, I have issues. And how did I find out that I had been unceremoniously rejected? I had to email the JE Master's Office, which administers the fellowship, since yesterday was the final day for applicants to be informed of interviews; and receive an email 15 minutes later that the interviews had already taken place and I would be getting a letter along with all the other applicants who hadn't been awarded interviews. Thanks a lot.

So I was already very upset yesterday evening, and went on to watch a range of very intense and depressing shows. First I watched Wit with Chris and Chad, which is about a woman who is proud and brilliant and utterly alone and dying of ovarian cancer - and I was thinking, god, that is so going to be me in 30 years - then I watched half of Thirteen, about dysfunctional teenagers and lots of middle school angst (and Evan Rachel Wood is so lovely in that movie), with the QMC, and to top it all off I went for the Cabaret with Ted and Melisa to catch Glengarry Glen Ross, about the vicious, utterly desperate and ultimately extremely fragile world of real-estate agents, masculinity and the American dream. Oof. After that I was walking home alone and suddenly felt achingly lonely ... you know how it is, on a cold dark night when you start wishing for anyone just to hold your hand. And I started thinking fondly about S again - who always has a knack for turning up when I'm at my lowest; who holds for me a kind of warmth and comfort, probably because of what we shared in Spain - and even kind of missing that again; but of course I knew that it wasn't really S, it was that mythical someone whom I have not found and feel like I will never find and am merely projecting.

And to top it off, I gained a pound this week.

With that said, today was a pretty good day. Brunch with Paa Kwesi and Chris; capoeira (I played with Natasha in the joda for the first time! she was definitely holding back; she didn't kick my face off) and the gym; going over the STF scenes we're filming tomorrow with Suzanne; studying in Koffee Too? with Kappkema (I bet I spelt his name wrong), whom I bumped into there - my fate at Yale seems to be intrinsically linked with Ghanians; going to the VISA dinner with Bee-Seon, for which Jason was the head chef; embarking on a dessert hunt afterwards with a very patient and understanding Bee-Seon, which ended with ice-cream from the Chapel Sweet Shoppe (two flavours: hazelnut truffle latte, and vanilla with chocolate chips and peanut butter swirl); watching Little Tales of Misogyny, an original play based on a book of Patricia Highsmith's short stories, with Jason and Bee-Seon (I kept worrying if it was too raunchy for Bee-Seon, but apparently two and a half years at Yale have toughened her up); indulging in my usual neurotic conversation with Marissa back in the suite, about exercise and weight and Claire's cake; and now I'm here, with a huge pile of laundry on my bed (which I had told myself I would fold an hour ago), while the Yale fencing team is in the common room (thanks to Erica) watching what I think is Pirates of the Caribbean.

Oh, I had the most awesome dessert last night at the Cabaret. After finding out about the Bates, I just knew that I would have to drown my sorrows in food, and so I was looking forward to the Cabaret because they usually have good desserts. They didn't let me down - I had chocolate pecan upside-down cake, which I asked the kitchen to warm up for me, with vanilla ice-cream which had caramel swirls, crumbled Oreo cookie and M&Ms. I coasted on a fat-and-sugar high for the hour and a half (before the aforementioned walk home). Ted and Melisa were both extremely envious. Now we'll all have to go back to the Cabaret next week to have that dessert.


19 February Thursday
I had a sucky Evolutionary Biology midterm today. I've realised that I can't memorise for the sake of memorising - I will remember facts and figures if I need to use them to prove some kind of analytical point, but if you tell me that I need to memorise tons of stuff for no other reason than to memorise them, well, I'm just bad at that. This makes me think of what Xiuhui said about why she likes philosophy - it's the one subject with no memorising involved; it's all theory. For instance. There was a question in the midterm that asked us to list all the eras and periods of the geological time scale, complete with time frames. That's something you can pluck right out of any encyclopedia or textbook! Why the hell is such a question on a Yale University intermediate level biology exam?? It has nothing to do with analysis or understanding - it has no added value whatsoever - it's merely senseless regurgitation. Of course I didn't know half the eras/periods or any of the time periods.

I think my battle with sickness is over, but I've learnt my lesson (for now, anyway). Bundle up and get enough sleep! I decided not to go for TKD yesterday after all, just in case - I had taken a nap and woke up feeling a little under the weather. But, because I couldn't bear the thought of three whole days without exercise (!!), I trudged to the gym this morning, before my 11:30 am midterm, and had a good arms workout. I have put on a pound since Sunday! Horrors! Of course, now I'm sitting here eating ranger cookies (I tell you, this Recipes from Home thing that the dining hall has going on will be my downfall) after having had a generous chunk of plum cake (so good!), so I'll probably put on another pound by tomorrow.

Filming has started for STF - we did the Corrine-Ness living room scenes last Sunday; the solo Andrew scenes earlier tonight; and will be doing the Helen-Josh living room scenes this Sunday. It's going well so far, even if our elaborate Marissa-as-costumes-and-makeup-person plan kind of fell apart, after she failed to show up on Sunday and we failed to tell her that we were filming on Thursday.


17 February Tuesday
I am sick! I hate being sick! It's really my own fault, though (when is it ever not?), because I was in denial about the weather on Sunday. The temperature had been so nice (nice these days referring to above-freezing) all throughout Saturday that I couldn't believe it would drop again on Sunday. I went out hatless, with my hair wet, in my leather jacket - my hair froze, my leather jacket proved ridiculously thin, and by the time I got home again at around 10 pm that night I was well on my way to losing my voice. (I also checked the weather and it was -10 degrees celsius. Good god.) Of course the next day I woke up croaking, which sucked because I couldn't really contribute to the creative writing seminar discussion without sounding like I was about to keel over and die. I also couldn't go for TKD - I half-convinced myself that I could, but Jason and Erica (varsity athlete, fencing captain, hence a credible source) disabused me of that notion. Instead I sat in my room and spent two hours on three paragraphs of my fantasy novel.

The reason for this literary enthusiasm is that my workshopped piece was very well-received by the class, and especially by Professor Crowley (such a nice man). People really liked it and expressed interest in wanting to find out what would happen next. Of course the issue of originality came up - just how different is this from every single other damn fantasy story? Maybe, even, part of why it worked well was because it had all the requisite sword-and-sorcery elements - as Professor Crowley put it, "a young heroine with a mysterious (no doubt high) birth, with powers she doesn't understand, and a mysterious stranger who knows more than he should, and a touchy mentor, and a journey announced at the end of Chapter One, is hardly unusual, so you are going to have to come through with some wondrous stuff if you continue with this". What hasn't been written about ten thousand times before??


15 February Sunday
I have a funny story to tell - that is not about me! Here goes:

On Friday night (note: one day before V-day), Marissa IMed me - Amy wants to find a boyfriend. By tomorrow. And I replied, saying that I would recommend she go for the Stoplight Party (red: attached/off limits; yellow: single/proceed with caution; green: desperate/wants to hook up) except that all the guys there would probably be gay.

Three minutes later Amy IMed me - I'm wearing green. Lots and lots of green! Then Marissa IMed with - Amy wants to go buy a green dress tomorrow. So I asked Marissa - Did you tell her it's being held by the Co-op [Yale's LGBT group]? She replied - No. I just said it's at La Casa. And I was like - What if she gets really drunk and ends up hooking up with a girl? So we started telling each other to tell Amy; and finally we settled on telling her that appearing too desperate would be a turn-off and she should play it cool - that is, wear yellow. (She wore green anyway.)

So this is how my Valentine's Day went. I met up with Jason and Bee-Seon to sample the tiramisu that they had spent the afternoon making (very good! very unhealthy!); watched Triplets of Belleville with Jason, a poignant and humorous French cartoon with hardly any dialogue; called home and told Mummy about the conclusions I had come to about my life as a result of my WW, which she approved off (the conclusions, not the weekend); ate sushi at Miso with Jason, joined later by Bee-Seon and Adam; went to the aforementioned Stoplight Party with Erica, Amy and Jason, which proved to be rather anti-climatic because there weren't a lot of people there - I played some capoeira with Chris and danced with Jason and said hi to various people. I reached home at around 1:30 am and ate grapes and read One Hundred Years of Solitude (fitting, perhaps?) and then went to bed. Conclusion: overall, an enjoyable if uneventful night.

This is my first V-day in a while, actually, sans bitterness. I feel like I've actually reached a good place in my life right now, thanks to those aforementioned (that's the word of the night, it seems) life-conclusions. Ever since the past summer, I've been chasing after an ideal that I very naively mapped upon every person I met in turn - I would fall, scrape my knees, get up and run right on to the next one. Now, after having garnered a certain amount of (mostly painful - although not entirely so, and for that I'm grateful) experience, I can finally take things as they come and appreciate what I do have.

No idea how long this Zen attitude will last for, though. Watch this space.


13 February Friday
I feel somewhat disillusioned after my talk on Monday with Professor Crowley about the prospects of making a living writing science-fiction/fantasy, although of course I always knew what the odds were. Still, I had always thought that if one was a good enough writer, one would triumph - and therefore what I had to do was make myself the best writer. What he told me, and what sounds pretty logical, is that in the SF/fantasy genre, the reader base generally does not care as much about actual literary quality as about action, suspense and the general equivalent of Hollywood-movie-type flashy stunts. Which means that writers striving to be genuinely good, in a literary and not just in a popular sense, actually suffer because they cannot churn out the book or so a year that is needed (given how badly they are paid) to survive on writing alone.

With that said, I have just said this entire day - at least nine hours!! - working on my submission to this very same fantasy-writing class, so I guess I obviously have not learnt a lesson. This submission is the start (the first one and a half chapters) of a true-blue sword-and-sorcery fantasy novel, and I am hoping that future workshop sessions will give me the impetus to actually complete it.

I have also gotten the ideas for a couple of other stories, as well as an idea for an arc of stories, partly inspired by how half the people who workshopped In Memory Of, my first piece which was a self-contained story, thought that it was/should be part of a longer work. Funnily enough, where I used to run into terrible problems thinking up titles for pieces, now I have titles without the actual stories! The title for the collection of stories, once I get round to writing them, is The Preposterous Dreams of Androids. The title for an independent story, which was inspired by a one-paragraph article I read in Thursday's New York Times about a man convicted of manslaughter for causing his high school classmate to hit his head and go into a ten-year coma, is Visiting Vernon. Now I just have to work on the actual content of these empty vessels.


11 Februrary Wednesday
I suspect I might be falling sick - touch wood! I've been waking up with a bit of a sore throat for the past couple of days, and it's bothering me right now as I type this (hardly soothed by the slices of Claire's chocolate raspberry and carrot cake that I brought back from Caf� Slifka, which I jogged to with Jason, who was being so nice to a bratty and entirely undeserving me). I'll get seven and a half hours of sleep and hopefully tomorrow all will be well.

I'm so annoyed by the History of Brazil map quiz that we had in section today. I did study for it - last night, this morning and a little more this afternoon - and still I messed up a number of state names, in part thanks to the differences in the two maps that we were supposed to study from. I can only hope my TA is sympathetic - I talked to her about the map mix-up after section. I'm one of the foremost participants in class, so hopefully that will count for something.


10 February Tuesday
I'm actually very glad that M got a buzzcut (which apparently Ari and Chris executed on Saturday). It makes it so much easier for me! As Jolene said, It always turns on the hair. And as Chad said, Whew, you're ugly now.

I was supposed to meet A on Monday, but she never showed. It was damn annoying, because I had cancelled dinner with Jason and foregone my nap (hey, naps are very important to me, especially when I have TKD that night) and missed Evolutionary Biology section (although I probably wouldn't have gone anyway). Because I'm a total advocate of using food to make oneself feel better, I marched into Claire's and had soup (white bean and sweet potato) and bread, then bought a slice of pear pound cake to bring home.

Yesterday, in the middle of fantasy-writing class, I suddenly went into a panic about this summer. It's my last summer as a Yale student, and I feel an almost desperate need to make the most of it. My dream, of course, would be an internship in London; followed by independent research in London; followed by anything (within reason), as long as it was in London. But I've yet to hear back from British Bulldogs or the Bates Fellowship - the latter especially is making me nervous, since I submitted my application a full two weeks ago. So I returned to my room, having walked back from the gym with Jason talking about summer internships, and applied to three positions each in the Bulldogs in the Bluegrass and Bulldogs on the Cuyahoga programmes. I've heard these are supposed to be relatively easy to get, so I'm hoping they'll serve as my back-up.

Over Ashley's ice-cream earlier tonight (Nutter Butter with waffle cone pieces - enjoyable (of course, it's Ashley's!) but not a favourite flavour), I told Jason about my plan to marry Konrad to gain US citizenship (which I have yet to run by him, come to think about it), which was inspired by M telling me about how her ex-girlfriend married an El Salvadorean to bring him into the country and has not gotten round to filing a divorce yet. He was surprisingly aghast and disapproving. So I explained to him that people get married for all sorts of stupid reasons anyway (example: Britney Spears), and he explained to me his conception of the sanctity of marriage, and we basically agreed to disagree. Although as we were walking back to the library to continue our study session I expounded on all the annoyances of non-citizenship, especially in post-911 America, and made him feel so guilty that he agreed to "tie the knot" if I couldn't find anyone willing to marry me. We then talked about how we would have to invite all the Herald people, who would then produce their incriminating pictures from last semester's Herald retreat to prove that this marriage was a fraud.


8 February Sunday
I feel like I can't really be friends with M anymore. On Friday evening, when we were all in Justin's room watching Paris is Burning (documentary on Harlem drag queens), I felt really weird being around her. As I've told assorted people, it's because now she knows; and I know that she knows; and I know about L (of all people!) - and the end-result is that I feel as if anything I say or do to her will be interpreted in a certain way. By us both, maybe. It's ironic, but now I feel even more self-conscious around her than I did before. I didn't talk to her at all that Friday; nor did she make any attempt to talk to me. Did she use to? I'm not sure.

Other than QMC on Friday, this weekend was nothing like last weekend. I basically worked on my screenplay and actually managed to finish it! We had our cast-and-crew meeting at 8:30 pm tonight; I finished the script at 6:20, Spellchecked it, printed it out in the Connecticut Hall computer cluster with Suzanne, and brought it over to York Copy to get it photocopied and bound. Whew. Looks like the only way I can actually work is under pressure, huh? That also meant, though, that I did no work at all this weekend (again!); and only started reading the short stories for my fantasy writing class at 11 pm tonight (after having discussed more STF stuff with Suzanne and gone to visit Charlin's apartment as a possible film location - we think it'll do well for Corrine's living room). Well, I think it was worth it - I'm definitely happy that I have a full draft out. It makes me feel accomplished. My next writing project will be working on my fantasy novel, the first chunk of which I want to workshop in class next Monday.

Finally, I went back to capoeira on Saturday, after two months of absence! Fabiano seemed happy to see me, which made me feel good - that's what I like about capoeira, everyone there is so warm and friendly, even though they hardly know you. My legs ached like hell after that, though ... I could hardly climb up (to watch Erica fence the Brown team and win!) and down (to the fitness centre to lift weights and work abs) the stairs. And then today I went for one and a half hours of TKD. Intense stuff! I have to say I love the pain of exercise, though.


5 February Thursday
So I'm not sure how my study session with R went. The only thing I know is that I did get work done. Oh, and I tragically displayed my ignorance when she said that she was from Mexico City and I said, Oh, is that in New Mexico? What the hell was I thinking?! Of course Mexico City is in Mexico! Dammit - and I get mad when people think Singapore is in China; not to mention that I spent half of last semester talking about revolutionary change in Mexico. I have, anyway, actually decided to take Bee-Seon's advice for once (as opposed to last Friday, when I sneaked back into the Women's Center after telling her I would go to bed).

I think that's the only noteworthy thing for today. Oh, and I ate a ton of carrots and yams at dinner tonight - actually, that was all I ate. The yams were so good ... they were naturally sweet, but they had been spiced and roasted, so there was that interplay of sweet and savoury tastes. Mmm. I also had a chunk of butter almond cake which I brought back to the suite. This "home-made desserts" idea that the dining hall has are going to be the death of me! Alright then - I vow now that I will not eat any dining hall dessert. I must, after all, be selective in my caloric intake.


4 February Wednesday
Everytime I read people's online journals (tonight, I went through Fiona/Shiyao's, Xiuhui's, Bingying's, Dianne's, Jolene's and Dom's - instead of writing my 400-word Spanish essay on why Hugo Chavez is both a relic of the past and a precursor of the future for Latin America) I get the itch to start mine up again. Which is why I'm sitting here now, having just consumed a juicy tangerine, at 1:17 am writing this. We'll see how long it lasts.

The film - it finally has a title, Stranger Than Family - is actually proceeding very well. Suzanne and I held auditions from Thursday to Sunday and managed to amass a great cast! We then roped Katie in as producer and Marissa as score composer/make-up and costumes person. We're holding our first meeting on Sunday night ... which does mean I've to finish the script before then.

I've already dissected every detail of my "crazy weekend" with too many people (at last count: Paa Kwesi, Jen, Marissa, Chad, Bee-Seon, Alvin, Charlin - I love talking about myself, don't I?) so suffice it to say that I don't think it'll be happening again anytime soon. It's not what I'm looking for, and apparently I don't even get anything out of it, so ... I'll just go back to being the boring and antisocial person I really am.

And I have to talk about my new diet plan: I ate dessert almost every day last week, and managed to lose two pounds! Why didn't I figure this out before? Ashley's ice-cream apparently has magical weight-loss properties. Either that or I've been under too much emotional stress.

I'm not sure how I feel about meeting R tomorrow. Whatever the case, though, we did set up that appointment, so I'll trot over to Book Trader tomorrow for a couple of hours of reading and conversation. Vamos a ver. It would be nice to be pleasantly surprised for once (no, that's not true ... what happened with S on Sunday was definitely pleasantly surprising).