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...)