161101, 0840hr, illinois time.

yes, i have sinned. upon prompting by li [see, i mention you again!] i realise i've not updated in quite a few days. i mean, it's not that i didn't notice, but i chose to shove it to the back of my mind, in view of other high priority activities such as work and sleep.

not like i did much work either, i think i have absolutely zero self-discipline, why the hell am i doing two GIS courses? I projected doing 4 assignments this week, a week with surprise surprise, no exams and little homework. how many did i end up completing? zilch. i mean, i'm almost done for one, but still! one. argh. *cindy covers face in shame*

i'm sleeping a lot though. this probably sounds really scandalous, but i've been bunking over in alvin's room the past few days, out of both habit and necessity. out of habit, i study in his room, and therefore knock out in his room. the necessity part comes in when my landlord decides to paint the bathroom in the basement and the smell of paint inevitably seeps into my room and stays there. so see, i had to sleep in alvin's room. the repercussion of such an arrangement is not a sex life, unfortunately, i know what all you people are thinking [cindy in the same room as her boyfriend? god, let's hope the bed is still intact.] however, it did make me adopt more regular sleeping hours, cos alvin the man himself has relatively regular sleeping hours. sigh. thus the lack of work done. thus the lack of journal updates. [half of my entries are written at the wee hours in the morning out of melancholic/crazy inspiration.]

anyway, i'm sorry. it almost appears as though alvin's disapproval of my journal decreased the frequency of my entries, but that's not true. it's not his disapproval that did it, it was his bed.

over the past couple of days, got my midterm results back. i'm pretty happy with most of them. my international relations professor is very happy with my results apparently - i went in her office yesterday to collect my exam paper, because i didn't want to go to class today to go through a discussion of the paper - i knew i did well, cos i found the paper quite easy. but my prof was hilarious, she took my paper out, started shaking really excitedly, and kept on saying, "oh, i'm so proud of you. so happy! ooh, so happy!" or something like that. whereas me, i really just wanted to get my paper, like "come on and give it to me already!" hahaha.. thank god i'm doing well for this class. the satisfaction i get from this compensates the esteem bashing results for my communications class. anyway, i also talked to my professor about doing an independent topic project with her next semester, she says she'd love to [and i do believe that's not a figure of speech. haha. talk about ego.] so anyway i'm really glad. i like my prof, she's very adorable.

wednesday was deepavali, my friends and i went out for dinner at the local indian restaurant. i borrowed priya's punjabi suit for the occassion and man, it's so much trouble! first, couldn't decide where to place the scarf - on my shoulders? around my neck? across my neck? not wear it at all? then, had to change my socks, cos the pants stop right at my ankles, apparently my light blue socks didn't go with the dark blue pattern on the suit. finally, i stumbled clumsily around, fiddling endlessly with the scarf on my shoulders the whole night. man, the suit takes some getting used to. eek. priya's really nice though, she offered to bring me shopping next summer so i can buy my own punjabi suit, or sari. hehe...don't ask me why i like all these ethnic suits that don't exactly look very flattering on me. heh.

after dinner, a few of us proceeded to a local jazz bar O2 to hang and chill. not too bad, i like the place. it's spacious, has nice comfortable furniture, good live jazz and a largely quiet mature crowd. i only had a beer, but ended up just a little bit tipsy. tipsy enough to come home and knock out at 11pm. without updating my journal. heh.

i do have to hurry up and go complete my assignment now though, i am leaving for mt rushmore this afternoon. next week is my long-awaited thanksgiving break. it's crazy, we're driving 18 hours to get there, snap a picture or two of the 4 presidents' heads, try finding other exciting things to do or other things to snap pictures of for a day or two, then drive 18 hours back. haha. i've not had such a long road trip before, i'm pretty excited. though i'm not as excited about having 9 other people on the same trip [2 cars], about have so many of the other singaporeans from uiuc also going there on their own separate trips, about having to deal with tonnes of work upon my return, about having to leave this journal and disappointing faithful readers. if they've not already given up on me during my absence the past days, that is. *hangs head in shame, but peeks hopefully*

so anyway, i will be gone for a few days. at least now i have a legitimate reason to not update. but i shall be back on wednesday to further report on my first real road trip and on how it feels to not touch a computer for 5 days. god, i hope i don't start foaming at the mouth or shaking violently. i love the internet too much. eek. *take deep breath* i will be back...check back next week!