"Surreal", she said.

Yi Wen asked me once, "If you could describe this whole exchange in one word, what would it be?" I find such things ultimately self-defeating because it'll be like trying to stuff an entire Andromeda Galaxy into a little box the size of an ostrich's brain (which is smaller than its eye). But the first word that came to my mind was "surreal". Let's just forget for a moment that it's bloody cheesy, like something that comes out of a speech in a Star Trek convention.

"Beam me up, Scotty!"
"Surreal."

This whole thing has been like a beautiful dream, and I know someday I'll have to wake up, but right now I don't want to wake up from it. When I go back to Singapore I know I'll wonder if it had actually happened, because sometimes your mind can play tricks on you and your heart is about as unreliable as Arsene Lupin. It'll be like a parallel universe, if you had watched Leonardo DiCaprio's The Beach and are unfortunate enough to still remember it because it was a terrible waste of Hollywood resources that probably could have funded a dozen wonderful independent productions BUT I DIGRESSED.

I don't want to wake up from this. But I have to. Please don't ask me how I am when I'm back in Singapore because I'd probably feel like jumping down from the top of an HDB flat but I'll feel compelled to lie anyway.

Earth Day

You know the figure-ground theory? Well you pretend to take a background picture when you actually want to snap the outrageously dressed figure.

Spot the difference! It's like playing PhotoY2K.

A bunch of enlightened youths dancing like they were high on smelling each other's armpits.

Don't worry, little Eva, I'm not going to steal your lollipop. I'll just lick it and give it back to you. Okay, I'm not that much of a jerk.

Human version of Oscar the Grouch spotted at Peace Park

Most probably a student at Deva Dance School

I was secretly hoping that he'd hit himself on the head. Now that would have been funny.

The Mere Mortals playing bluegrass music. They dedicated their song to "the President of the US who thinks he's a cowboy but has probably never seen a horse before." I clapped for them even before they started playing.

This guy sang about Hepatitis and liver cancer. I kid you not. One of the lyrics was "There are 50 ways to lose your liver." Yeah, sure. The top way is to listen to some guy sing about livers on Earth Day.

This boy was being bullied...

...by this boy.

I was wondering if I should step in, but decided against it because I'd probably do more harm than good. Sometimes it's more embarrassing for the bullied when he has to be defended by a stranger. Kids need to learn to stand up for themselves. Sad but true.

Spring Fling part 1

The Katy Trail

I went on the Katy Trail with a bunch of people on Saturday afternoon. We split into two groups because some wanted to rent a bike and others wanted to just walk. I am a "down-to-earth" person, so no prize for guessing which camp I was in.

Dandelion field near Rocheport

(L-R) Girl from China, Becca, Girl from Vietnam, Rachel, Yi Wen (Sam was all the way behind so he didn't get to be in the picture). Becca and Yi Wen had this funny deer-in-the-headlight look.

Rachel, friend of nature

There are many benches along the trail. Presumably for silent contemplation of life.

Rachel said she had drunk the "spring water" once and asked me to try it. No thanks, I don't want to get typhoid.

There was this scary-looking door that looked like it led to another world. Like Narnia! Or maybe it held the lost treasures of the Aztec civilization! Actually I just wanted to take a picture of the door, but oh well.

I went inside only to be disappointed by a miserable looking puddle of water.

Dan and Seon-Ha

The bike camp was much faster than the walking camp (naturally) so when they decided to turn back we also had to turn back.

Wonder what would happen if someone set up a rival restaurant called Le Proletariat?

Moon the cross-breed husky

Pretty isn't she?

But this is by far my most favourite dog. Some say it's a he, some say it's a she. I'll stick to she because she has these she-vibes about her. Either that or I'm turning into one of those X-files monster-of-the-week who feels vibes all over the place.

We found her chained to the bench and the owner was no where in sight. Her name tag says "Dutch Helsing".

She looks like Groucho Marx here.

Then she climbed on top of the table and all the girls went ballistic.

I felt like my neck was going to break when she suddenly draped her entire body over my neck like it's a cloth hanger. I don't know what the hell she was thinking. It's not as if she was a half-pound chihuahua. I was flailing my arms around and shouting, "Doggie! Doggie! Come down! Come down!" Nobody came to my rescue because they were all laughing. Their loyalty is touching.

Ah well, but we're still friends. See, we shook hands.

I tried to teach her how to shake hands but I gave up after a while. But when I was about to leave she suddenly put her paw on my palm and refused to let it go for a few minutes. I love Doggie. I wish I could take her home. But on hindsight, after I came home my face was itching all over. I don't know if it's because of Doggie.

Never wear such a shirt when you meet new people because you'll forever be known as "Mr. Wonderful". Which might not be a bad thing for you, come to think of it.

(L-R) Chau (Vietnam), Brian (US), Sam (Singapore), me, Dan (US), Scott aka Mr. Wonderful (US), Yi Wen

Chau is doing her masters in journalism here. It took her 15 minutes to guess which country Yi Wen is from. I gave her a clue: a really really small country near Vietnam. She said, "Brunei? Japan? Myanmar? The Phillippines?"

Brian recently grew a beard because "I got lazy, but my friends said I looked not bad so I chose to keep it." I didn't tell him that he made me think of Roald Dahl's The Twit.

Sam Tham I am is one of the very few Singaporeans here and he has been really nice to Yi Wen and me. He's in the advertising industry, doing copywriting and some other stuff. Apparently we're dealing with a creative soul here.

Dan was in the navy and he said he once sailed past Singapore. He went to Bahrain, Kuwait, the Persian Gulf and was installed in Guam, an island in the North Pacific Ocean below Japan, for a few years.

Scott was an English teacher in a small city in South Korea for a year. "Scott Teacher" was subjected to severe emotional trauma by the kids there. One burped right at his face, another kicked him really hard and punched a kid in the face. And this is my favourite: a kid who called himself "Bat" saw a picture of a naked woman in one of the art books and started climbing up a desk, taking off his clothes and screaming "Naked! Naked! Naked!" Poor Scott tried to grab him but he ran to a neighbour's backyard and peed there, then tore down the street fully naked. When the Korean teachers asked Scott what's wrong he was so shaken he could only mumble, "Bad Bat, Bad Bat, Bat was really bad."

Random thought #5: Why are people so obsessed with theories?

I was having lunch with a friend and we were discussing a particular situation, and the said friend pulled out a string of chimalogy academic terms to describe it.

I don't like it when people think they have to define every single thing on the planet. Worse, when they use jargons to create this seemingly elite bubble where trespassers will not only get shot, but shot again if they survive.

Why are people so obsessed with defining things? René Descartes said once, "I think, therefore I am." A lot of people mistake it to mean "I can be whatever I think I can be", as exhibited in NTU's advertising campaign a long time ago. Actually, it is more about existence. How do you know that you truly exist? It's like the Matrix or Marx's false consciousness: How do you know that you are not wired to some giant machine? Or that whatever that's on your mind is not there just because the power-that-be (Marx's bourgeoisie) want it to be there? According to Descartes, you know that you're for real because you think.

I think that people are obsessed with defining things because to them, without definition these things don't exist. You only see what you know. Nowadays many kids learn words first, only then the meaning. Say, the word "apple". They see the word first and then they match the object to it.

But words are essentially just carriers of something else (although they can be really pretty carriers). Something that exists for the purpose of sending a message to someone else and making the message understood. When you're so obsessed with definitions you fail to do what is the most important, which is to just sit back and experience.

Is it love? Or infatuation? Or adoration? Or hormonal imbalance? Or the after-effect of last night's beer?

Honestly does it really matter? It's not as if once you know what it really is you'll automatically understand it better. What you feel is what you feel. You don't have to try to match it with people's expectations of how that particular feeling should be like, just because these people had supposedly experienced it before. In fact, why would you want to feel exactly the same as do other people? The person you fell in love with must be unique (otherwise you'd have fallen in love with 100 people a day), and it is only right that the feeling will also be unique.

Unique doesn't mean entirely different. There may only be little, subtle differences, but they are still different anyway. Can you imagine that twins that come from the splitting from the same egg cell can be so different in terms of character? Or how no two leaves are exactly the same? I really don't like it when people say, "If everyone is unique, then nobody is unique anymore." Unique is unique is unique, you pseudo-Plato. Don't try to make things complicated, because they AREN'T.

Oh well. Enough for today.

Keep your rulers and drums to yourself

I was walking home from the Ellis Library this evening after I borrowed research materials for my History final essay when I noticed a grey-haired man sitting in the middle of the Speaker's Circle (not Speaker's Corner).

I pulled out my iPod earphones to hear what he was saying, and realized that he was PREACHING. Here I quote him verbatim: "Does any of the guys here feel like masturbating? Raise your hand. You should beat your hand with a ruler." As if that was not bad enough, there was a guy beating a drum nearby every time the preacher finished speaking. It's like in one of those kitschy stand-up comedy shows, where somebody hits the cymbal every time the comedian delivers the punch-line. For added impact, I presume.

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's those fire-and-brimstone preachers who scream at the top of their lungs that everybody is going to hell. Oh wait, this time it's ruler-and-drum preachers. It's so classic America. You go to a foreign country, kick down doors like Rambo or Conan the Barbarian and shout till your veins pop to the people inside that democracy will save their lives. You think people would actually throw everything aside and worship at the heels of Our Lady Democracy?

I have a friend from Laws who is a devout Christian and I respect her for not imposing her religious beliefs on others. She doesn't tell, she shows. In fact, she's so kind she's almost too kind to be true. It makes people think, if Christians are like that, maybe the religion is not that bad after all.

Soft power is defined by Political Science theorists as the ability of a country to make other countries follow it based on attraction to its culture or ideology or other less tangible factors. It has been largely agreed that America has for many years been long on hard power, but short on soft power. Which is dismal, if you look at how America managed to win the Cold War in the 1980s. America was able to defeat the Soviet Union through a policy of containment - basically a policy of restricting the influence of the Soviet Union through a variety of measures: proxy wars (as in the case of the Vietnam War, the Korean War and Afghanistan), economic aid, political patronage and soft power.

Granted, some of the measures were bad calls. American forces had supplied Mujahideen fighters with arms and in fact personally trained them in order to overthrow the Soviet-backed Afghan government, only to be attacked by these same people in their new incarnation as the Taliban years later. What's more, many Americans nowadays don't even know that America actually lost the Vietnam War. Maybe in part due to ignorance, another part a sense of cultural invincibility.

But anyway back to soft power. Just consider the worldwide popularity of Dallas, an American TV show, and the frenzy in Russia for Levis jeans after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Heck, if you had walked on Russian streets in your Levis then, high chance some Russians would have offered you money for it.

How did America manage to squander away its stock of soft power within 20 years? That's a question that Mr. Preacher can help to answer.

Set yourself on fire

The Blue Note

Me, Harum (Indonesia), Dea (Indonesia). Anyway Harum means "fragrant" in Bahasa Indonesia.

I met these two friends of mine by chance when I was in line for the Stars concert. They were really surprised that I went to the concert alone, but honestly I don't see anything wrong with that. Unless I know someone who is really a Stars fan, I'm not big on asking every single person I meet to go to the concert with me. I just don't like feeling compelled to check every other minute if the person is enjoying the concert, and feeling guilty if the person isn't.

Anyway, the perils of ordering the ticket by phone is that spelling, repeating and e-nun-ci-a-ting your name like you're speaking to a 3-year old still don't guarantee anything. When I was at the ticket booth, I found out that my ticket was reserved under the name of Evelyn Banubarca. My name is Eveline Danubrata. It took the ticket lady about 15 minutes to find it, why wasn't I surprised at all?

Me, Harum, Dea, Kelly (US), Becca (US)

Harum was joking that she looks like a waitress in her outfit (don't you just love her self-deprecating humour?). But no, nobody ordered beer from her. Anyway now I know how the French feel. When I was with Harum and Dea I just couldn't help speaking in Bahasa Indonesia, regretfully to the exclusion of Kelly and Becca. It's just that I haven't spoken the language for a long time and it feels like being reacquianted with an old friend.

The concert was supposed to start at 7 pm, but the opening act only came out at around 8. They played for about 45 minutes, and even then they said they were "15 minutes short." Uh, great. Maybe we can crack our toes for the next 15 minutes?

Wonder what would happen if I just pulled one of those cables. They were so tempting in their glorious techni-colours!

At this time we were all getting impatient and came up with all sorts of theories on why it was taking Stars so long:

Theory #1: Stars made a mistake and went to Colombia, the marijuana country, instead of Columbia in the state of Missouri. Plus they were literally seeing stars from the marijuana high.

Theory #2: Stars looked at the wrong calendar. Maybe they saw the Chinese lunar calendar instead of the normal Western calendar and mistook the date for 2010.

Theory #3: Stars were attacked by a gang of vicious squirrels in Jefferson City because the lead singer's face resembles an acorn. Those squirrels were likely to have migrated from New York City. Okay, I should give the Yankee squirrels a break.

Theory #4: Stars are blind. Sorry, Paris Hilton.

The drummer was getting married, maybe.

FINALLY STARS CAME OUT!!! That's Torquil Campbell, one of the two lead singers.

I went wild, head-banging the stage and pulling a Cloverfield till the people around me rushed out of the bar to puke. Okay, I was kidding. I merely jumped up and down like I just swallowed a pogo stick. And I screamed too.

Amy Millan, the other lead singer. I was really shocked when I saw her because she was much more overweight than in posters, album covers and music videos. The wonders of Photoshop. But I don't care, as long as she sounds the same. That's the thing about singers who sell their voice, not their bodies. Can you imagine if Beyonce or Rihanna were to gain 50 pounds?

This guitarist was really hyper. I was standing right in front of the stage and was nearly whacked in the head by his guitar. I had to do a Matrix to avoid it.

Torquil blowing the trumpet for Your Ex-Lover is Dead.

"Set yourself on fire!"

This guy, who turned out to be from one of my classes, really set himself on fire and went head-banging. The thing is that his hair is like a jungle and God knows what kind of organisms live in it. I was really worried that some lice will get transferred from his hair to mine because I was standing right next to him. Oh well.

Actually Torquil himself was also on fire. I saw a saliva projectile being launched from his mouth in a perfect arc right onto the crowd in front of him. All my synapses screamed "Eeew." I mean, I really like him, but I don't like him enough to actually ENJOY having my face sprayed with his saliva.

She just stuffed a bunch of roses into her shirt, LOL.

After they finished singing the crowd went wild and shouted for an encore. So they came back, and I was yelling for them to sing Calendar Girl. But what the hell, I was standing right in front of the stage and my voice was drowned by the rest of the crowd. I suspect Americans have a boombox built inside their throat.

I was giving up hope when suddenly Amy picked up the mike and started singing the first line of Calendar Girl. I nearly died screaming my head off. After the whole thing she threw a rose RIGHT AT ME and everyone just stared daggers at me. HA, take that, you dead ex-lovers! Okay, that was uncalled for.

It's like the Death Mark.

I got the biggest, reddest rose of the night. I'm happy.

Anyway I totally miscalculated when the concert was going to end. I expected it to end at around 10, so it would give me enough time to go home, do my readings and meet the 11:55 pm deadline for my Cross-cultural Journalism online quiz. But the concert ended at around 11 pm! I took off like Speedy Gonzales and brisk-walked all the way home (with the hip shake and all that jazz, yes), reaching at around 11:20. But thankfully the readings were uncharacteristically few that day. I finished the quiz on time, that was a big phew.

Bands I like

Stars

They are coming to Columbia on Monday! I'll be watching their concert at this bar called The Blue Note. Yay I can hardly wait!

Calendar Girl
Your Ex-lover is Dead
One More Night
Elevator Love Letter
Life Effect

The Perishers

How can you not like a band with such a pessimistic name? See, it's reverse psychology. Anyway, please ignore some of the videos.

Trouble Sleeping
Come Out of the Shade
Sway
Pills
My Heart

The Reindeer Section

This band is so not famous that I have supreme difficulty trying to locate their songs. Every time I type in their band name the search engine vomits out gems like Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.

Your Sweet Voice
You Are My Joy
Cartwheels
Where I Fall
I'll Be Here When You Wake
Strike Me Down

Bell X1

I love Paul Noonan's Orpheus-like voice. Anyway, trivia mania: Bell X1 was named after the first aircraft to exceed the speed of sound. And I love their video for Eve, the Apple of My Eye.

Eve, the Apple of My Eye
Just like Mr. Benn
Rocky Took a Lover
Bound to Boston Hill
Here She Comes

Death Cab for Cutie

I just found out that Death Cab are coming to The Blue Note on May 31! I'd be gone by then. *screams and kicks furnitures*

Marching Bands of Manhattan
Your Heart is an Empty Room
Tiny Vessels
What Sarah Said

I pretty much like the entire album. You can listen to all the songs FOR FREE on this website.

The Animal Trail

I have a huge backlog of New York City and Washington D.C. pictures that I haven't uploaded, but those would just have to wait. I went to a baseball game with the Currey family last week and a football game yesterday. For pictures of the games, just hop over to Yi Wen's blog.

Today I was getting ready to work on my Political Science summary for my test next week, but then I looked out of the window and thought, screw it, the sun is shining, the birds are singing and the flowers are dancing, so why would I want to hole myself up in a computer room with no proper ventilation and with a guy who had emptied an entire bottle of perfume on himself sitting next to me? Either I'll asphyxiate from the lack of oxygen or the perfume hitting my nose like tsunami waves powered by global warming.

So I went on the Tree Trail! Basically I went around campus taking pictures of trees, armed with my camera, my iPod and the Missouri Tree Trail Guide. But I got distracted by the animals I met along the way, so I'll make a separate post.

Say hi to Max the shih-tzu

Lexie the pomeranian

Dew the labrador retriever

Indigo. Can you believe she's 15 years old? She's an elegant old lady.

I was thinking, why is that earth moving?? Then I realized it was a bunny.

The camouflage is just incredible

Bunny hungry, bunny looks for food

I saw a bloody snake slithering on this pavement at Peace Park! I don't know if it's poisonous or not. I'm just glad I didn't step on it.

A dog with an identity crisis ("Who? Me? But I'm a cow!")

Lady is making friends with the tree

Don't be fooled by her seemingly docile demeanour. This crazy dog kept coming after me, I don't know why. I suspect she is a camera-whore.

See, see. Doggy version of Paris Hilton.

I love Columbian squirrels even more, after the nightmare of seeing starving black Yankee squirrels

"You talking about me? Huh? Huh?"

A baby squirrel!

This baby here is a really tough nut to crack. He ran round and round the tree and I looked like a fool chasing him round and round the tree with my camera. Then he climbed to this really high tree branch and ate his acorn. So I stood under the tree for 15 minutes and waited till he finished his acorn. But finally Baby came down! Sometimes you need to wait to get what you want.

That's birdie over there, if you can't see

I'm addicted to Post Secret: Funny, sad, inspiring all at once

Panic!

Two nights ago I had a bit of a panic attack. I woke up at 5 in the morning because I had diarrhoea (I don't know what I ate) and when I came back to my room I climbed to my bed and hit my pillow with my head and I was getting ready to sleep but then the thought suddenly struck me like a lightning bolt powered by some cosmic force: I only have one month left here!

Then suddenly I couldn't breathe for a moment and I thought of everything I'd experienced here and I even imagined how it'll be like to go to the airport. The worst is that Yi Wen won't be with me (she'll be going back two weeks later) to prevent me from slitting my wrist with my boarding pass at the waiting lounge or throwing myself into the path of an incoming Boeing 747.

I guess that's the thing about pushing something to the back of your head. It has a weird way of surfacing, out of the blue, at bloody 5 in the morning when you have lecture at 10. I was rolling around on my bed like prata being rolled and I couldn't sleep at all.

I managed to sleep around 8, but then I was woken up by my roomie at 9. She was moaning and writhing in pain, she said her abdomen hurt like hell and asked me to call the ambulance. So I rushed down to the Residence Desk and asked my friend there to call the ambulance. The paramedics came five minutes later and I was impressed that they managed to fit a bed into the lift. They strapped my roomie onto the bed and carried her to the ambulance, but they won't let me go into the back of the ambulance. So I walked to the hospital, which thankfully is pretty near to Laws Hall. Then I just waited with my roomie while the doctors did all the checks.

The doctors can't figure out what happened to her. The conjecture was that there was some gas in her abdomen. Which sounds like something out of the X-files, but whatever, the important thing is she's fine now.

Then I went to class, and after that I went to Shakespeare's Pizza with Yi Wen, Ivan, Megan, Melissa and Anais to belatedly celebrate Yi Wen's birthday. She's now 21! But she can't drink alcohol because she'll break into rashes. Which also sounds like something out of the X-files, but whatever, the important thing is she was drunk with laughter that night.

Ivan told me that he also had a panic attack last week and comforted himself with the thought of going back to glorious Serbian food. "We don't have this back in Serbia (while holding up a bottle of American Parmesan, which actually sounds like an oxymoron). We have BETTER cheese." He's been here for a year, so I guess it must have been worse for him. Megan, who is American, said, "Honey, I'll be so much worse! All my friends will be gone!"

I'm really going to miss life here. On a side note, did you know that the Pope has a papal plane and he just arrived in the US on that? The Air Pope One had landed.

Post Secret

Going, going, gone

Wah die man. Tomorrow I'll literally be history.

The Cold, Dreadful and Lousy Snowman

There was a snowman with two pebbles as his eyes
and a carrot as his nose
and a piece of rag as his scarf, giving him what little warmth he had ever known

The Snowman was lonely, but most of all,
he was scared for he knew that his time was near
Spring was coming, and the moment The Sun smiles
The Snowman would be no more
Only a puddle of water would be proof that he had ever existed
And even then the puddle of water would evaporate
Slowly, but surely.

One day The Snowman met The Bird
and The Bird sang to him a lullaby
"Oh, Mr. Snowman, a song for you!
To put a smile on your face!"

Then The Snowman answered,
"You idiot! Don't waste your voice on me!
Spring would be my death!"

The Bird, appalled, flew away
She said to herself, "What a cold Snowman!
He's as cold as cold can be!"

One day The Snowman met The Rabbit
and The Rabbit offered to take the Snowman's hand for a round of Bunny Waltz
"Why, Mr. Snowman, why do you look so gloomy?
Spring is coming! Let us dance and make merry!"

Then The Snowman answered,
"You fool! There's nothing to make merry about!
Spring would be my death!"

The Rabbit, frightened, hopped away
He said to himself, "What a dreadful snowman!
If he wants to remain obese from lack of exercise, that's fine by me!"

One day The Snowman met The Squirrel
and The Squirrel offered him her acorn
"Here, Mr. Snowman, something to cheer you up!
You look like you'd just swallowed a barrel of pH 1 lemons!"

Then The Snowman answered,
"You retard! Why should I be grinning like I have a lockjaw?
Spring would be my death!"

The Squirrel, offended, scurried away
He said to himself, "What a lousy snowman!
Fine, now I have an extra acorn to myself anyway!"

The Snowman felt cold and dreadful and lousy
And before he knew it
Spring did come
The birds started singing to welcome their Dear Sun
and the rabbits started hopping like a pogo stick
and the squirrels started climbing up and down the trees till they went dizzy
So happy were they that Spring had come

But The Snowman had melted into a puddle of water
Never knowing the joy of listening to a song, dancing without a care in the world and tasting a fresh acorn
And soon the puddle of water evaporated, with no trace of The Snowman

-E.

Note: It's been a while since I'd written a fable. Someday I'd want to write a children's book that can also be enjoyed by adults or adult-wannabes. Kind of like Antoine de Saint Exupery's The Little Prince. But of course I want my writing to be mine, not some glorified plagiarism of my favourite writer. Let's just see 10 years down the road.

Somebody save me from myself

I'm currently mugging for my History test on Monday in the Computer Room and this guy has been laughing non-stop for the last 20 minutes while watching some YouTube video. And it's the high-pitched, nasal, throaty, asphyxiated, bullfrog-stuck-in-the-throat kind of laughter. Which translates to very, VERY irritating. I'm tempted to throw my keyboard at him. Come to think of it, the mouse, the hard disk, the screen too. Basically the entire desktop.

Hopefully he'll laugh to death and let me study in peace.

Day 4: UN Headquarters in New York, Rockefeller Centre & Empire State Building

The UN Headquarters in New York

One really long stretch of flags. The UN has 192 members, but I wasn't that obsessed to count the number of flags.

Can anybody tell me which country's flag is in the middle?

The Knotted Gun, a gift from Italy

Sphere within Sphere, a gift from Luxembourg

This is why I'm not a fan of modern art. You have to guess what the artist is trying to say, and sometimes it's really hard to do so without context. Most of the time I want to look at art pieces to relax my mind, not to squeeze my brain even further till it dries up like kropok.

Will there ever be peace?

According to the Bible, a so-called Messiah will come and bring peace to the world, while in actual fact he's the one who's going to destroy humanity. According to Joseph Schumpeter, there will be peace when all countries in the world become democratic. According to Machiavelli, there will never be peace because Man's innate desire is to conquer. According to Immanuel Kant, there will be a separate peace among democratic countries, where democratic countries will co-exist peacefully, but are at the same time more prone to attacking non-democratic countries. According to beauty queens, "world peace" will reign when Prada's new collection is out.

The following cartoons are my personal favourite

The winning cartoon, drawn by a Romanian

I'm going to guess the message the artist is trying to convey here. With every tank you send to a country in your so-called "Good vs Evil War", an entire family will be hurt, displaced, made destitute.

The press can be used as a weapon

The world's history is a bloody one

I don't know who this man is but he looks like Saddam Hussein. Whoever he is, to quote Joseph Heller in Catch-22, "Man without spirit is garbage."

Add the world and violence together and you get nothing

The last four Secretary-Generals of the UN: (L-R) Javier Perez de Cuellar (Peru), Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Egypt), Kofi Annan (Ghana), Ban Ki-moon (South Korea)

Macedonian protesters outside the headquarters

The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is trying to be a member of the EU, but Greece pulled out a veto because Greece has this territory called Macedonia and it demands that the Republic of Macedonia changes it name. Which I think is really funny (not in the ha ha ha funny way), because it's like a man demanding that another guy change his name from Michael to something else because the man's son is already called Michael and he doesn't want other people to mistake the other guy for his son.

The banners read:

"Release Tibetan political prisoners now"

"Images China doesn't want the world to see"

"Allow media into Tibet"

This was built on oil money. Rockefeller was one of the world's largest philantropists and he had funded a lot of researchers, foundations and universities. The modern-day version of Rockefeller would be Bill and Melinda Gates. Maybe Warren Buffet too, because he gave US 1 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and gave it to the mortals. As punishment, Zeus made vultures eat Prometheus' ever-regenerating liver every single day. It's kind of similar to this guy in Journey to the West who gets stabbed in his chest by flying swords every seven days.

Chrysler Building

The owners of the building, Daimler-Chrysler, were competing with the owners of the Empire State Building to build the tallest building in the world. Tough luck, right now nobody cares about the Chrysler Building. Anyway Daimer-Chrysler is the manufacturer of Mercedes Benz cars.

Really really strong wind on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building. If Paris Hilton were there she'd be blown away. Anyway it's been called the Empty State Building because, well, it's empty except for the 86th and 102nd floors, which are for tourists.

Me and The Girl with the Red Coat

The spire where King Kong was attacked by the evil helicopters

The observation deck

When I was standing there I felt like I was at the Tower of Babel. There were literally people from all over the world around me, speaking dozens of different languages.

That black building is hideous. Like somebody had planted a burnt joss stick smack in the middle of Manhattan.

Day 4: Museum of Natural History

In front of the Museum of Natural History

Giant replica of a barosaurus, a plant-eating dinosaur

That's actually Mama Dinosaur, raising her front legs to protect her baby from an advancing aggressor.

Allosaurus, the aggressor aka the Evil Baby-snatching Dinosaur. The allosaurus is related to the T-rex.

The Baby Dinosaur, crouching behind his mother. The ending is up to us: Did Mama Dinosaur succeed in crushing the Evil Dinosaur or did the Evil Dinosaur succeed in killing Mama and Baby Dinosaurs? Damn, someone should make a movie out of this.

Curiously over-grown schoolkids

The Animal Collection by Faberge. Faberge is very famous for its Imperial Eggs designed for Russian Tsars, all the way since the 18th century. One of those eggs can cost more than a million bucks now.

Black Star sapphire

Sapphires are part of the Big Four of Gems, the other three being rubies, emeralds and diamonds.

I had to elbow my way through a crowd of girls and women oohing and aahing over the precious stones collection. I hope those stones are water-proof, what with the drooling spectators.

Ammonite, fossil of a marine animal. This thing is huge.

Stibnite or antimony sulfide. I was almost expecting a metallic alien to crawl out of it.

Giant sequoia. The tree trunk is more than 5,000 years old.

The Aztec Sun Stone

Aztec temple

This reminds me of Tin Tin Prisoner of the Sun, where Tin Tin, Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus were tied to poles, about to be sacrificed to the Sun God. But there was a solar eclipse and they were saved. I love Tin Tin. I've read every Tin Tin book.

The Japanese life cycle

Okimono, a very intricate Japanese carving

Wooden block print

One of my favourite Japanese artists is Hiroshige, who lived in the 17th century. He made wooden block prints of "the floating world", a world where people are like leaves floating on a river, living in the moment and not caring about what would happen tomorrow. I have a poster of Hiroshige's work. Can't wait to frame it and hang it on my wall back in Singapore.

Wooden blocks bearing the design. They are painted and then pressed onto paper.

Really fierce-looking Proboscis Monkey. Maybe someone stole his nuts or his girlfriend.

Actually a proboscis is an elongated part of an animal's head, such as that pokey thing mosquitoes use to suck our blood. So Proboscis Monkey was named as such because of its huge nose. Kind of reminds me of Rastapopoulus, Tin Tin's arch-nemesis, or Jackie Chan.

Replica of Japanese birds living in their habitat

King Kong! Where's the girl who keeps screaming her head off in the movie?

I can't remember the name of these animals. Dang.

And I can't remember the name of these people. Double dang. But I think they were from Africa.

Giant planetarium

Give me back my Pluto, you bo liao astronomers!

This is why when someone says "Your face is like the moon" you should slap him

Yi Wen's weight plus her camera and her lenses. I didn't dare to step on the scale.

Day 3: Wall Street, Washington Square Park & Greenwich Village

Ivana heaving himself with monumental efforts onto the Golden Bull at Wall Street, while Aurelia and I supportively laughed at him. (Photo taken by Yi Wen)

The funny thing was that the French girls thought we were referring to the Golden Bowl. When I saw the bull I exclaimed, "Ah! There it is!" and Melissa looked up at the sky and said, "Where?? Where??" So I guess to them it was a Flying Golden Bowl.

Anyway the Golden Bull is actually called the Charging Bull. It symbolizes prosperity.

Me and the Big Red Friendly Giant (taken by Yi Wen)

I think he was some sort of a patrol guard. He's from Austria, if I'm not wrong. I remember mistaking him as a German. Anyway it was like hugging a polar bear, all warm and snuggly.

Washington Square Park (picture taken from the Internet because my camera battery had gone flat)

New York's version of Arc de Triomphe in France

Gay Street at Greenwich Village (it's for real!)

Yi Wen and I saw two gay men coming out from their apartment and entering a pub nearby.

Singapore is NOT part of Thailand, you moron

I think some (my friends would say most) Americans are really dumb. Today I was at the dining hall and this guy was standing behind me in the queue for stir-fried food. I ordered tofu.

Dumb Guy: "Hahaha."
Me: "Is there something wrong with eating tofu?"
Dumb Guy: "Are you from China or something?"
Me: "No. I'm from Singapore."
Dumb Guy: "Is Singapore part of Thailand?"
Me: "OH YEAH. Singapore is the CAPITAL of Thailand."

(I made the last sentence up. I just said, "No. Singapore is NOT part of Thailand." while battling the urge to puke even before I eat my first spoonful of dinner.)

Honestly, I'm used to people thinking that Singapore is part of China, but this is raising the Dumb-o-Meter. Some of you might think, "Oh, Eveline, give this guy a break. Singapore is a tiny red dot on the map after all."

But this guy is a COLLEGE student and he doesn't even know that Singapore and Thailand are two separate countries. Is his brain made of tofu or what? If I were his mother I would slap him upside down and make him work as a pizza boy for the rest of his life to repay every single cent that I've wasted on his education.

How do you show that you're an educated person? After all you don't hang your report books or school diplomas round your neck all the time.

You show it through the way you talk and the way you carry yourself. My idea of education is not just the 5.0 GPA kind of thing. You can be a brilliant student in your field, like nanotechnology or rocket science or whatever, and then you come out of your lab/bunker and meet people and come up with gems like "Singapore is part of Thailand." Guess what people would think about you.

Starlight Suicide

The village idiot has no idea that he's the village idiot
But who am I to tell him so?
Who needs happy when you're crazy

If you close your eyes long enough,
you won't see the starlight suicide

It's dripping bit by bit
into a bottomless pit
somewhere within your gut

If you close your eyes long enough,
you won't see the starlight suicide

Tie your heart into a knot
and bite your lips,
swallow your tongue if you may

Kick yourself in the head
Laugh like it's never going to end
Like it doesn't have to end

Carve your name over and over on the sand
And the wave will come and wash it away, over and over
Leave no trace of yourself,
someone will come and make it gone

But if you close your eyes long enough
You won't have to see the starlight suicide

Let's jump someday
into the Milky Way
I'll always know you,
and maybe, just maybe
you'll be at the end of Dandelion Street

-E.

Andrew Lloyd Webber is the new Beethoven

I'm quite surprised that many Americans don't know Time to Say Goodbye by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman. Whenever I play it in the lounge downstairs they'd ask me what it is, and when I tell them it's Time to Say Goodbye they'll go, "Huh? Never heard that before." And when they say that I feel like grabbing them in the head and shaking them till their brains rattle like maracas and screaming: "It's a classic!!! How can you not have heard it before???"

Just now I went down to the lounge to play the piano again, and I asked a bunch of people who were studying there whether they would mind me playing.

American guy: "Can you play Linkin Park?"
Me: "Uh, sorry, all the scores I have are classical."
American guy: "Oh, you play classical? So can you play....

.... (I was standing there waiting)

.... (Still waiting)

.... (Still. Waiting.)

"Andrew Lloyd Webber?"

I really didn't know what to say.

Oops I did it again

Sofija defied my expectations by starring in her own music video (with guest stars Ivan and Pedrag) during Battle of the Bands at the Memorial Union :

Oops I Dropped the Bomb Again

Basically, she sang Britney Spears' Oops I Did It Again with exploding nuclear bombs in the background. Oh, and costumes were provided by the Event Staff. She wasn't that crazy to carry a red devil cape wherever she goes.

And last night Aurelia and Anni had the honour of being fought over by two American dudes at a bar. I wasn't actually at the bar, but to cut the long story short, this guy, probably drunk with his brains bombed out, wouldn't stop bugging them so they told a male acquaintance about it. The said acquaintance confronted the drunk dude, and heated words were exchanged, and BOOM, the next thing everyone knew the two guys were rolling on the floor and wrestling each other like it was WWF. The funny thing was that when it happened Aurelia turned to Anni and asked: "Uh, are they fighting over us?"

In the end some people broke the guys apart and the poor acquaintance said he lost his cell phone in the melee. Shows that it doesn't pay to be a hero. Well, at least Aurelia and Anni can go back to their home countries and tell their friends that two American dudes had fought for their French and Finnish honour respectively. And then maybe they can sell the movie rights.

If you can't see me I'm standing in the shadow of a massive snowball

This is really bad. My workload is snowballing into a near avalanche, and last night I didn't do any work because I was staying in a hotel courtesy of my girl-guides leader friend who was helping out at this girl-guides event at Stone Creek Inn. I mean, between doing a History paper and staying in a really nice hotel for free, it's hardly a contest right?

I was also quite bogged down by the whole NTU hall application thing. At least now it's resolved. Am applying for Hall 16 again next semester. Now it's the problem with the Visa application for Germany and Belgium, which has to be done at the German Embassy in Singapore. My teacher-in-charge said all the documents are ready to go except for this letter from the European Union. I'm still waiting for it. And I need to get it done soon before I go back to Singapore on May 20. And it's really hard coordinating with my brother back in Singapore because of the different time zones and also because I FREAKING LOST MY CELL PHONE.

I can't believe I'm still procrastinating. Okay, off to lunch. Then a shower. Then it's mugging time.

Day 3: Statue of Liberty, City Hall & Ground Zero

I wanted to touch the pigeons but before I could do it Cecile screamed: "NOOO!!! IT'S DIRTY DIRTY DIRTY DIRTY DIRTYYY!!!" (I quote verbatim). It's good that I don't have a heart problem (yet) because otherwise I would have died from heart attack.

New York's squirrels look like a cross between a sewer rat and a bat. Just compare them to Columbian squirrels. I think the squirrels kind of reflect the people and the city. New York squirrels are vicious-looking, black because of the pollution and unafraid of people. Blackie here kept darting into my path because I was feeding him small chunks of apples. Columbian squirrels, on the other hand, are generally more well-fed, cuter and are more squirrel-like in behaviour. Whatever that means.

It's just that New Yorkers are generally stressed people. They walk like their butts are on fire, they scream and honk like the word "patience" doesn't exist in their vocabulary, they have no qualms in airing their dirty laundry on 5th Avenue like everyone within a five metre radius is DYING to know about their life stories.

The other day in the subway this guy was chasing his girlfriend/wife/someone who owes him money but he got stopped at the ticket gate because his card had no more value. And when he realized that the line at the ticket machine was darned long (because WE, being tourists, were trying to figure out how to use the machine), he screamed FUCK FUCK FUCK and other choice profanities, which I, happily, had forgotten. I told Anais about him on the train:

Anais: "Well, if it's meant to be it's meant to be. Maybe they'll meet someday."

Me: "You're such a hopeless romantic."

Anais: "I'm French!"

You got to love the French, no?

The night before, I discovered that my money was stolen from my room in the hostel when I was out for the entire day. Don't want to talk about it. But it kind of changed my perception of people in general. From now on I think I have to be more cautious, not because I think everyone is a bloody crook, but because everyone has the capacity to be a bloody crook. Even a good person can fall into temptations at times.

I don't hate the person who stole my money. I can't ask someone to get a freaking conscience. But there's such a thing as karma, what goes round comes round, retribution or whatever it is.

I took a ferry to see the Statue of Liberty. The queue for the ferry to the island itself was too long, so I took the ferry that just went around the island.

This was the closest I could take.

Anyway, some trivia mania: The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France to the US in 1886 to commemorate the 100th year anniversary of the US. It was designed by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi and Gustave Eiffel, the architect of the Eiffel Tower.

Ahoy, mates.

City Hall

Ground Zero and reconstruction efforts

Can you imagine that two 110-story towers used to be standing there? When I was there I was struck by how ordinary the day must have been before the planes crashed into the towers.

There were all sorts of people walking around me:

Those dressed in casual attire, those in formal wear, perhaps on their way to Wall Street.

Those chit-chatting while walking, those with the highly efficient steps like they are on a mission.

The young, the old, men, women, some children.

It was a perfectly ordinary day.

Give me my popcorn!

This is darned funny.

Day 2: Chinatown, Little Italy & Brooklyn Bridge

The Chinatown here is not really authentic Chinatown, I think. But there were the ubiquitous Chinese traders aggressively touting their goods. Ivana and Anais said they didn't want to buy anything there because most (if not all) the goods are fake. I think some Europeans are more conscious about respecting Intellectual Property.

Little Italy. By the way, I really hate that errant fur

Most people dine al fresco, possibly as a free outdoors advertisement for the restaurant

We ate gelati at one of the cafes

Brooklyn Bridge

Chasing cars

Ivana is a witty guy. I think it's harder to be witty than to be funny because you have to be both funny and intelligent at the same time. I don't know why he reminds me of my cousin back in Indonesia who is now married and has a really cute baby called Tiffany. Keeping my fingers crossed for you, Megan.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead

But you're better than normal! You're abnormal!

I'm supposed to be doing my History stuff right now but I think I'm going cross-eyed from all that reading, so I shall relax my eyes a bit. By staring at the computer screen. And typing nonsense.

I'm left with about 6 weeks here. The thought doesn't really suck every iota of happiness out of my soul like a Dementor (not yet anyway), but it is quite an unpleasant thought. When I came back from New York to Columbia, my first thought was, ah...back to normal life. And it kind of struck me then, since when has Columbia become a "normal" life to me?

Whenever I mention to my fellow exchange friends here that the time is near, they always say, I don't want to think about it. Which is kind of weird, because I'm the one whose life philosophy is que sera sera. And when some genius like Einstein said that "I never think of the future. It comes soon enough," you got to take his word for it, right?

But, I don't know, just because some impending thing is bad for you doesn't mean that you shouldn't think about it. I know it might be way too early for me to make a reflection, but since when is making a reflection too early or too late anyway?

I've met so many people here, some good, some bad. The thing I find about people is that everyone has a specific shape, and they leave a specific imprint on you. Some leave a deeper imprint, like about the size of a crater, somewhere in your stupid little heart, and when it's time to leave you wonder if it'll ever go away.

But I guess that if that person actually means anything to you, you wouldn't want it to ever go away. It'll be some kind of a proof that you and someone had collided like two satellites that just happened to be on the same orbit someday.

When it's time to say goodbye it'll be hard, it'll be weird, it'll be anything but normal. I might go back to Singapore and be depressed for a few months, I might feel like throwing myself under the MRT, I might feel like buying a bunch of durians and poking myself to death, but life goes on.

That's the sad thing, I guess. No matter what people would find a way to move on. When you go through day by day without something sooner or later you'll get used to being without that something, and then being without that something will become "normal" to you. Time has this amazing capacity of making you forget that you have a crater in your heart, because then you'll be too busy being busy.

But haven't you had this experience of meeting someone after such a long time, and when you both start talking it's like goodbye had never been said? I guess it's like connecting again, and it's so easy because after all that person already has that specific shape and the imprint is still there in your heart.

So yeah, when it's time, it's time.

Day 2: Central Park & Easter Parade at 5th Avenue

On the second day, we had a new addition: Mr. Ivan Nislic aka Videocam Man.

"She's using me!", he said when Yi Wen handed him her videocam because she was already loaded with her gorgonzilla camera.

I wonder if travelling with 8 girls would give him some emotional damage. After a few days he's officially called Ivana.

At Central Park

Yi Wen looks like a ninja turtle from behind

Is it just me or has my face turned into a ball?

Belvedere Castle

Some fellow tourists posing as Romeo and Juliet

That's not a giant slug. That's a seal.

The Eskimo had landed

I had no idea how Cecile can stand it in the hot sun. Anyway there was a family drama unfolding right in the middle of Central Park. This father was shouting at his sulking son, and the conversation went something like this:

Father: "WHY CAN'T YOU STOP COMPLAINING, THERE'S NO SNOW THERE'S NO SNOW?? WHY CAN'T YOU SEE THAT THE SUN IS SHINING BEAUTIFULLY??

Son: Sulk sulk sulk (I can't make out what he was saying)

Father: "I REPEAT!! LOOK AT THE SUN!! IT'S SHINING!! (and he jabbed his finger at the sun)

I not-so-smartly muttered "What a great American family" while walking away, but thank God the father didn't hear me. Otherwise he might have made me look at the sun too.

Wolverine's baby

The picture doesn't capture the smelly horse crap on the road

Some performers near the 5th Avenue

The building does trump the other buildings in height

The entire stretch of 5th Avenue was closed for the Easter Parade

Spotted: Two shits had run away from the toilet bowl, fallen into a tub of paint and roamed 5th Avenue on the heads of two unsuspecting men.

Another dog-loving New Yorker. The dog looks like a stuffed toy, but it's for real.