040302, 1805hr, central time.

stanford was ok, could have been better. i wish there were more non-stanford/berkeley scholars there, so i don't feel like this huge intruder in their regular california party or something. sheesh. i wish i had more time to spend there, quite a few people offered to bring me around campus, and even up to san fran. *hi to ed!* but i didn't have enough time. on saturday night, a bunch of them were going swing dancing at a club in san fran, and they asked me along, but i had to politely decline because my left eye was myteriously hurting so badly i would very much rather retreat to my room to gorge my eye out. i had $100 per night, on psc's tab, so i stayed at travelodge. no, i couldn't afford anything better than that, lodging there is crazily expensive. it's not that bad, except the couple in the next room was fighting. friday night, someone got pushed into the wall or something, the picture hanging in my room fell and the glass shattered. freaking scary. i was quite angry, cos i was already sleeping and got woken up with a fright. but, no one answered the phone at the front desk, and at least i wasn't stupid enough to go over on my own. i can just imagine a little news flash the next day - singapore scholar tries to get rowdy neighbours to quiet up, but got quietened herself by a shot in the head. emotionally distraught woman claims she thought scholar was ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend.

anyhow, by the next morning i was all cranky and pissy, cos after i got woken up, i couldn't sleep anymore. i got so paranoid i would wake up every other hour. well, at least i didn't oversleep for the seminar though. the seminar itself was ok, pretty predictable in that we ended up talking a lot about SAP schools, about the tudung issue, and about whether malays in singapore are marginalized. the most exciting part was when i sat next to the ambassador during lunch and got some good conversation going with him and the rest of the table. socially otherwise, eg during the unnecessary 1.5 hour break between the end of the seminar and dinner, i didn't really feel too comfortable there, like i said, i feel like some huge intruder to the california party. brings back memories of horrible adolescent social anxiety.

the flight back to campus was horrendous, as all flights are. right now though, i'm forcing myself to get into the school in illinois mood. first of all, it's so freaking cold right now. this morning, wind chill is -4F, which comes to about -25C. great. later i'm going to the airport to pick up two of my scholarship officers, who i believe didn't bring winter clothings. god bless them. maybe i can loan them my scarves and hats and stuff like that. who would expect march to be so darn cold anyway? i hate having ears so frozen they ache. and nose bleeds because it's too cold. and hands shaking so badly i take 20 precious seconds more to open the house door. i simply hate being so cold. especially after experiencing the relative warmth of california. bleah.

school sucks, because my results for the exam i fell asleep studying for turned out to be quite screwed up compared to the rest of the class, which is quite irritating cos it's such an easy class i could have aced it if i didn't fall asleep studying. i missed my circuit analysis class on friday, and now the homework is due and i have no freaking idea how to do it, i'm officially stuck on the first question, out of a total of 7 questions. and that's supposed to be the easiest question, so i'm hyper demoralized. and i have a media and politics midterm tomorrow which i've not started studying for. i've not even finished all my readings for that too, so i'm so majorly screwed right now.

in other words, i'm hyper stressed up right now - the weekend break to california didn't bring me much pleasure, it didn't give me the break i thought i would enjoy, it made me hate the illinois weather more than ever, and it made me fall further behind in my circuits class. i wish i didn't have to bring all these negative unconstructive rants to the journal, except i'm stuck on question 1 of that horrible homework and will burst into tears and start screaming at that crap piece of question paper soon if i don't relieve some of that tension somewhere else.

it's not very helpful though. i'm very very very very high strung right now. grrrrrrrrrrr.