Buy Nothing Christmas

So today at church, my pastor gave a sermon on gift giving over Christmas. He pointed to the common problem of how to buy a present for someone who already has everything, or doesn't really need anything right now. The answer is so incredibly simple that we often dare not even consider it. Simply put, to the one who has everything, the best thing you could get him is nothing. Living within the zone of what alot of us like to consider "middle class", most of us already have more than we need, yet we constantly strive to accumulate more and more stuff. Perhaps it is time we started giving to those that really need it. So instead of exchanging gifts among friends and family who already have everything, why not spend that money on giving to the less fortunate? This saves you all the time and energy spent looking for stuff that neither party actually needs, and at the same time provides for people who actually are in genuine need. Of course this assumes that your friends and family don't measure your concern for them by the things you buy them in the first place...

Room With Obscured View

A snow storm is raging outside now. I just walked back from a meeting with my professor who assured me that if I die on the way home, she'll still give me a grade. It's nuts! There's thunder and lightning too! Never seen that before... dunno how I will make it to Bible study tonight.

Mmmmmochi!

Yesterday, I consumed mochi ice-cream for the first time. It was amazing. Kind've strange at first, but nonetheless amazing. Today a couple of friends and I went to a Japanese supermarket in search of mochi ice-cream in bulk. We ended up splitting a box (see picture) between us and saving 25 cents per mochi in the process (vis-a-vis buying individual pieces from the lady at the store yesterday). However, the bulk mochi was not that wonderful. I think it probably has to do with the temperature of the freezer at the supermarket. Anyhow, the point is: if you have never had mochi ice-cream, you don't know what you're missing!

Thanksgiving Brunch

The kind folks at Dudley House (my dining hall) set up this free Thanksgiving brunch for the poor folks who have nowhere to go (or cannot afford to go anywhere) over this break. I hope the turkey I ate will not be too sleep-inducing ... I'm supposed to achieve miracles over this break. Haha! :P

The Reform of Chinese Foreign Exchange Regime and Financial Stability in the Opening Process

I went for the above-mentioned talk yesterday, thinking that I should be a dutiful MAS employee and get informed about what's up in China. So battling through wind and rain, I got myself to William James Hall to listen to Mr. Li Dongrong, Deputy Administrator of State Administration of Foreign Exchange, PRC , speak on the topic. I guess I should hve figured out that the talk was gonna be in Chinese, but I thought "hey, i can handle this..." I guess not... I probably understood 20% of what he was saying even though he was using powerpoint slides as well. Even if I could read every word on the slide, I still couldn't figure out what was going on. That's depressing. I think I really should take up Business Chinese next year...

[in the picture, the guy on the right is Mr Li, while the guy on the left is the teaching assistant for one of my classes who so happens to live in my dorm]

I have succumbed...

Still have 15 days to regret and get my money back....

Paintball Photo

Anwar Ibrahim

Today, former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, came to Harvard to talk about modern Islam and its relation to democracy. The talk was filled with quite alot of politician-speak (well, he was a politician after all), but one interesting thing he pointed out was that the separation of religion and state in the Islamic context is often taken to be anti-Islam and hence is often met with much resistance.

Quotable quote: "In Malaysia, there is freedom of speech, but no freedom after speech."

Love Bites

Just got back from a day of paintballing and my right leg is about ready to buckle under me. The trip was organized by the Men's Group at my church (Highrock), but it was open to the whole congregation. The field here wasn't so cool as the last one in Chicago (which even had super funky amargeddon area -- think intro of Terminator), but as you can see, the competition was still pretty intense.

So it's clear I've been playing for the past 3 days now -- post-exam de-stress..haha! I shall start being productive once I'm done typing this.

Arnold Arboretum

Took a trip to this huge botanic gardens called the Arnold Arboretum to check out the fall foliage. The colors were nothing short of breathtaking... macham windows autumn leaves wallpaper. I've never seen anything quite like this in Chicago, so I guess it's cool that I got to see this in my final year here. Interesting fact: this huge property is owned by Harvard. That's just wild!

Quanhui and Diana: Double Happiness Birthday

Boston College

Today marked the end of my first exam here at Harvard. Don't think it went too well, especially since we were ridiculously pressed for time. Nonetheless, I headed down to Boston College in the afternoon to check out this supposedly gorgeous campus. Indeed the foliage was quite awesome and the campus feels more like you're in a school, as opposed to Harvard which kind of blends into Cambridge and is filled with tourists throughout the day. Incredibly, the only person we knew at BC so happened to be a tour guide for the school as well, so that was quite a coincidence :)

3.5 Hours Later...

First snow!

I was just informed, in the midst of following the adventures of Jack Bauer, that it's snowing, though it's nothing very heavy, as is apparent in the photo...

Best free makan ever!

Just returned from the most amazing reception I have attended here at Harvard. It was part of the open house for the Asia Center, which is apparently EXTREMELY well-funded. To give you an idea of how awesome the food was, there was food from all the East Asian countries -- China, Japan and Korea. There were sushi chefs on site, and for dessert, there were the ubiquitous chocolate dipped strawberries and lot's of nice cakes. AMAZING! Free flow drinks included beer and wine (too bad I didn't know how to take advantage :P)

Rain, rain, go away...

By the way, this is the corridor of my dorm

Ezra Vogel

Today I attended a talk by Ezra Vogel on the rise of China. Vogel succeeded John Fairbank (the grand-daddy of East Asian Studies) to become the second Director (1972-1977) of Harvard's East Asian Research Center. The talk was not earth-shattering, but one interesting point he brought up was how he felt a duty to write books for non-specialists that could help to educate the public. He also commented on how he thinks historians and other people who study social sciences (sans economics) make good politicians because they have a more complex understanding of the world. Alas, what has my education come to?? haha!

24

Just finished the final episode of 24: Season 1. That was quite a trip. I must say that this guy's life really sucks. It's amazing how much trouble on guy can get into in one day! The more amazing thing is that he has another 3 more action-packed days to go! It's insane! The season started promisingly enough, but it kind've got a little tiresome towards the end, especially since his family seems to keep getting kidnapped (oops...) Nonetheless, it was quite an adventure. I once had dreams of setting up a 24hr 24 marathon. I think I shall think again. On the other hand, I do have the next 2 seasons...

Mao: The Unknown Story

Today I attended a talk entitled about "Human Rights in Mao's China". At the time I saw it, all I thought was "ok so this might pertain to the regulation of religion, so I guess I should check it out". Little did I know that the speakers were the authors of the new controversial book, Mao: The Untold Story, which I had incidentally just read about via an e-mail from one of my professors. How coincidental is that? The book basically makes the claim that Mao was a power-hungry tyrant of a breed worse than Hitler and Stalin. Anyhow, there was one guy in the audience who was pretty pissed off and during the Q&A he accused the authors of being very biased and the moderator of not facilitating any level of real discourse. I do agree that the moderator was not very inspiring, but I think it is hard to dismiss the book itself so easily. Maybe when I get through all my readings/midterms/papers I will find the time to read the book myself.

The authors, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (middle and left)

Iron Chef

On Thursday I chanced upon an Iron Chef competition that was in progress on the 2nd floor kitchen. A friend of mine from the dorm was the organizer and invited me to join, and that was the beginning of 1.5 hrs of chopping, peeling and washing. The competition was organized by the Graduate Students' Christian Fellowship that meets on Thursdays. I have yet to attend their meetings and was pleasantly surprised by the competition.

Anyhow, to cut a long story short, after we made a bunch of AWESOME samosas, chicken stir fry, crepes with fruit and a chicken soup with everything in it, the team I was apart of was declared victorious and we claimed the prize of a box of Hello Panda. Hurrah!

Room with a view (part 2)

And here's an update on the view...

Lunch on Friday

Every Friday I have a section meeting in the morning at Yenching which is pretty near to my dorm, and pretty far from th dining hall. So almost religiously, I pump myself with MSG laden Chinese food out of a truck that comes by everyday just outside my dorm. I anticipate this truck's popularity will increase as the weather gets colder...

Oh Woe is Me

So I was thinking of writing a thesis on the regulation of Christianity in China and its implications of the Chinese church contributing to civil society. A couple of weeks ago, I chanced upon a dissertation written on Protestantism in China. At the time, I thought, wow, this is awesome! Now, after getting a copy of the final draft, I realise that since this champion has already covered the topic rather exhaustively, I find myself in quite a fix...

Dick's Last Resort

Tonight I met up with some friends of my brother's (how small does this world get?) who were visiting from U Mich and U Penn. We ate at this place called Dick's Last Resort, which is the Boston equivalent of Chicago's Ed DeBevic's, where the novelty is that the staff are purposely rude to you. So apart from tying balloons to your hair and making you wear big paper hats, they throw straws at you and refuse to take your order.

Singaporean RSEA Lunch

From left to right: Mark Kwek (JC friend visiting from Penn), Tianyu, Elizabeth (the host of the lunch), Quanhui, Gabriel, me, Teo

Apart from Mark, this represents 6 out of the 7 Singaporeans in the RSEA program. The last person, Diana, was at a tea ceremony lesson.

Room with a view

So today is the first sunny/non-rainy day in quite some time now. But it's also ridiculously windy at this point. Anyhow, in my attempt to do time lapse photography, I've decided to take a photo of the view outside my window every so often. Here are the two photos thus far: one today and one last week... (no prizes for guessing which is which)

Katamari!

So we were supposed to go paintballing today but it has been raining for the past week, and today was no exception. This is quite frustrating coz we've been trying to go for some 3 weeks now :( So we ended up heading over to Daryl Lim's apartment to play Winning Eleven (my first attempt) and this crazy PS2 game called "Katamari Damacy". The objective of the game is basically to roll this sticky ball around and try to get as many things adhered to it as possible. Everything sticks to this ball, and I mean everything -- animals, cars, etc.

Anyhow, after our afternoon of PS2 delights, I did manage to play soccer at MIT with a couple of guys, none of whom were from MIT (oh the irony of it all!) But the highlight of the day was meeting up with my elusive Primary School classmate, Mark Liew, who is studying astronomy at Wesleyan College right now.

Hairspray

Just returned from a performance of "Hairspray", a broadway musical that is making a 2 week stop here in Boston. We managed to get the student rush tickets meaning that we sat in rather pricey seats while paying only $25 (which was cheaper than the 'discount' tickets that were being offered at school). It's a pretty awesome musical and the first 'cultural performance' that I've attended here in which I didn't have to fight off sleep at some point. I think I should watch concerts and operas more sparingly.

The Arrival

Hurrah! The boxes made it! Ok, one is still MIA, but hey, blanket!

Other things I saw today...

Oktoberfest

So today Harvard Square celebrated Oktoberfest by blocking off a whole bunch of roads and setting up tons of food and handicraft stalls, along with several stages with musical performances. The weather was really good today too! Apparently it's going to get somewhat warmer over the next couple of days...hurrah!

Disappointment...

Well, it turns out that I will have to shiver for another couple of days (hopefully not weeks...)

MAS comes to Cambridge

After a rather interesting talk on memory politics between China and Japan, I headed down to the Harvard Career Forum to meet up with the folks from MAS who have come over to the US to recruit foreign talent. There I also met a former school-mate Benny Wijanto from RI who was promoting his company, APT, just next door! That was quite a blast from the past man!

After that, I headed over to Tufts University to experience the expert hair-cutting skills of Elizabeth, a fellow Singaporean also in the RSEA program. Considering that I also witnessed a girl trust her to dramatically change her hair style, I must say that her hairdressing skills are rather incredible. The interesting thing is that her salon of choice is the stairwell in one of the dorms.

My boxes from Chicago have finally arrived (or at least I hope they have). I apparently have a package waiting in the mail room. I hope it's not the Anti-virus software that I bought instead... :P Hopefully I won't have to shiver my way through the night any longer! haha!

$10 Concert

Just got back from a mega-cheap $10 Yo-Yo Ma Concert at the Sanders Theatre on campus. It was part of the Silk Road Project, which is a series of university and museum residencies and workshops held in North America, Europe, Central Asia, China and Japan.

The highlights from the concert included this "live painting" guy from Armenia who drew a whole bunch of pictures on the spot to some tunes from Azerbaijan. His skill was simply mind-boggling, although the music was rather sleep-inducing since all the lights were dimmed for the video projection of his work. The other highlight was the closing piece called "Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur" that was played by the Silk Road Ensemble, a bunch of Harvard kids, and this group of 3 guys from Iran (who played the santur, ney and kamancheh). Unbelievable!

(Yo-Yo Ma's the guy on the extreme left)

Free Stuff

This past couple of days have been characterized by free events here on campus. On Friday there was this enormous Harvard State Fair with a live country band, a mechanical bull, one of those throw-a-ball-and-dunk-the-guy machines, and one of those use-a-hammer-to-cause-this-metal-thing-to-hit-the-bell machines. The scale was incredible! Lots and lots of free food like hotdogs, sloppy joes, candy floss, etc... For those in Chicago, think Summer Breeze x 100. Actually, in terms of stuff you can do, I think summer breeze is cooler coz of all the bouncy castles and stuff, but there just seem to be alot more people here.

Apart from that, this afternoon we had a free BBQ with the GSAS (grad sch of arts and sciences) and I just returned from a free outdoor screening of Pirates of the Carribean. As I type, Batman is Begin-ning. Again, put into perspective, Chicago also has the same kind've stuff, just somehow the scale seems different. I don't think it's better or worse, just a different feel to it.

Down by the river

So I've reached the end of shopping week having finally chosen my classes after much deliberation. It's not surprising though that majority of the classes have at least a Singaporean (or in the case of Chinese Foreign Policy, 7) in them -- a function of the absence of interesting/relevant east asian classes offered this year :P

Anyhow, a bunch of us went down to the Charles River today for an afternoon of canoeing/kayaking. The weather was awesome and so was the scenery. Can't imagine doing anything like this in the polluted waters of Lake Michigan.

On the lack of morals

So this is the end of Day 3 (well, kind've) Today I discovered (to my horror and embarassment) that Moral Perspectives was a no-go since he wasn't letting graduates into the class. Apparently there is a similar graduate version of the class being offered this semester too. The only problem is that it clashes with Chinese Foreign Policy so I'm left stuck with a severe deficiency of interesting classes to choose from. Somehow everyone must have discovered that I was coming this year and decided not to teach their interesting classes :P

Anyhow, today I also had my first meal at Dudley House, which shall be my dining hall for the next 9 months. The food was pretty decent, largely because lunch works on some kind of 'point' system (you get 10 points to buy stuff with). I heard dinner is significantly worse since it belongs to the all-you-can-eat genre. I shall find out the truth in a couple hours...

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today (well actually somewhat late now due to time difference) is my Mom's birthday though it was pre-emptively celebrated quite some time ago :) Regardless, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!