The Loss of Wisdom

Ouch... I already am stupider to beginning feel.

Teo Heng's Birthday

Just got back from a meal at Penang, the closest thing to a Singaporean restaurant here in Boston. So now I have Hainanese chicken rice, Cha Kway Teow, beef rendang, pineapple rice, and some other assorted goodies digesting in my tummy. The occasion was Teo Heng's Birthday/end of exams for us folks in the faculty of arts and sciences. One interesting thing about the people present this evening is that all of them spoke Chinese. Yes, all the non-Asian folk in the picture, as well as a bunch of girls from France who turned up later. And it wasn't Chinese with a funny accent. It was really decent sounding Chinese. Plus many of them were doing research in Chinese literature. This really puts me to shame man :P

Fold a Shirt in 4 Seconds

Check out this amazing technique of shirt folding! Too bad I already did my laundry yesterday...

Blast From the Past

California Weekend

After 3 years of good intentions, I have finally made the pilgrimage to Stanford, my #1 choice for undergrad. I flew over on Friday and only just got back today to begin studying for my one and only final exam of the semester. Over these past couple of days, I managed to meet a whole bunch of people, many of whom I haven't seen in ages! Many thanks go out to Zhongjie, Michael and Tammy who were kind enough to provide me with shelter and good company during my time at Stanford and Berkeley.

U of C+ at the infamous In-and-Out: Zhihui, Dolly, Yujuan, Ling Ling, James and Alex

Delta Wing-mates: Zhongjie, Zhouquan and Eugene

My two OCS roommates: Zhongjie and Weihuang

Weight Loss for Dummies

A couple of days back I watched The Machinist, which reaffirmed my admiration of its star, Christian Bale. The movie is basically about this guy who hasn't slept for a year and has recently been receiving cryptic notes that start to really mess with his head. In terms of genre, it's pretty much a cross between Momento and The Game, both of which are superb films. Anyhow, a key element of the film is that the main character is ridiculously thin. Considering that we're talking about a guy who would play Batman only a year later, his massive weight loss and subsequent recovery is nothing short of amazing!

For those of you who are interested, I would recommend some of his other films like American Psycho and Equilibrium, both of which have not been terribly popular at the blockbuster, but nonetheless have a charm of their own. This guy really specializes as playing characters who are somewhat psychotic, and hence I was really glad that he was casted for the most recent Batman Begins since the part suits him to a tee.

2.5 Weeks of Bliss

What is known here as the "Winter Break" has come and gone and right now it's back to work for us poor folks who have exams and paper deadlines after the holidays. :( I have spent the past 2 days trying to squeeze blood out of stones writing about China-ASEAN relations and still have some 10 pages to go. Well, I guess all good things must come to an end...

The past two and a half weeks have been pretty amazing not just because I had a legitimate excuse not to care of school work, but more importantly because my girlfriend, Adriel, flew over from Singapore to keep me company over these cold winter days. Ok, it wasn't all that cold, especially since we went to Puerto Rico for a week with the dynamic duo, Gabriel and Zhimin.

We managed to take in both the city life in Old San Juan, where we had a lovely apartment with a partial view of the sea, as well as the more laid back pace on the island of Vieques, where we managed to swim with a bunch of glowing plankton in Mosquito Bay. Despite the frigid water, the experience was truly amazing! It was literally like bathing in the stars. (btw, although there has been increasing light pollution in the area, the night sky there is still pretty sweet!)

After getting back to Boston, we took a couple of days resting before taking a day trip to New York. Being the second trip for the two of us, we check out 'alternative' attractions like the Earthroom and the Forbes Magazine Galleries, both of which were rather interesting in their own way. I also made a second failed pilgrimage to the ridiculously crowded Serendipity cafe, which kindly informed me that the wait was gonna be a short 5 hours. More waiting was in store for us at MoMA which was offering free entry since it was Friday. The line was seriously shocking. We just kept walking like there was no end till we found ourselves on the other side of the building.

Upon returning from New York, I copied the photos from my camera into the computer and then proceeded to delete them from the memory card. Little did I know that the copying process was truncated so I lost more than 1/2 of all the shots I took there. For any of you dumbos like me, there is hope. After spending an afternoon looking for free programs to revive the lost memories, I found Zero-Assumption Recovery, which did the job very nicely.


New Year's Eve was spent with Quanhui and Anthony at this Italian/Peruvian restaurant called Taranta. The service was pretty bad, but probably coz we were the youngest people in the entire restaurant.

So I guess that's the general idea of what's been going on for the past few weeks. Now it's back to writing papers and doing readings. I know I should be happy right now since everyone who is working seems to miss their academic years... alas 生在福中不知福

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...