zeekie: take two.

that of the dialogue I come up with, those that are great, I stole them without remembering.

when you know all the words to say, and all the ways you could say them in, but none of them would make a goddamned difference.

Take the survey and pass it on...

The Omnivore's Hundred (which originates at Very Good Taste)

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you've eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating

1. Venison (I know this as 'lu rou' at hawker centers, lol...)
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart (you can't really have lived in New York without having this)
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava (order this with alarming frequency...)
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut (had this in Berlin, home of the sauerkraut; see also: currywurst)
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat's milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth US$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald's Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine (I just had this in Montreal!)
60. Carob chips (this sounds super familiar, but I'm not sure...)
61. S'mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs' legs (I don't really trust a Singaporean who hasn't had both of these - frogs' legs and durian...)
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (Had beignets and funnel cakes in New Orleans)
68. Haggis (Just looked this up and it sounds disgusting, but I suppose I'd give it a try...)
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette (I think kway chap counts)
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill (eeeee! Like, raw???)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant (damnit. I thought "Babbo" was a three-starrer, but apparently it's only one. *sob*)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare (rabbit counts!)
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake (hahahaha, thank you, NS!)

Went with a friend to Mario Batali's "Babbo" today. Batali is one of the Iron Chefs on Iron Chef America, and generally recognized as one of the best Italian chefs in the world.

We got the traditional tasting menu, which is eight courses-long. Each course comes with a glass of wine, so I'm pretty much thisclose to being smashed now. But the food was fantastic; really strange combinations but all good.

...okay I'm going to go lie down now.

for a great summer. This has honestly been one of the best.

that the two things I am most interested in are: clothes and books.

Politics, television, et cetera, I try to keep abreast of - and am sometimes moved to passion by - but, as far as steady interest goes: clothes and books, books and clothes.

I packed up my Singaporean belongings today. My family has been considering a move early next year, so I decided to preempt any throwing out of my stuff in absentia. Minus my clothes, everything I considered of value was boxed.

In the end I had three boxes - and two were filled with books.

Like I told Lk, I wasn't sure how to feel about this. On one hand, one box seems a miserable showing for twenty-two years of living (I'm not counting the New York years). On the other hand, my friends and I have never been the type to give and give a lot.

Of course, I'm also missing the items that were sold, casualties of the period I was addicted to gambling and in massive debt. Cash Converters made a bundle off me in this time; I remember selling, variously, a DVD player, a pair of speakers from Mel, and a camera that was a group gift from my bunch of closest friends. That period - which stretches years - is a part of my life that's definitively over, but I didn't quite realize until today the losses I incurred.

I think in its aftermath I simply lost interest in items. Actually, to consider it, the five years post-secondary school was a long renunciation of things: things I gave to Calvin in junior college and to two crushes in the army, each gift only reminding me, in the end, of their horrible futility; things given to me that I kept only to convert later to bet slips; phantom things that I stopped considering because they were beyond my shrinking means.

A long period of poverty will do that to a person, I think: because I could no longer afford to buy gifts, I stopped attaching value to giving things altogether, store-bought ones because they were out of reach, and hand-made ones because they were proof I couldn't give otherwise.

And I think even after I got the scholarship - and stopped gambling - a variation of that thinking remained: I simply lost interest in things altogether. Sure, I still love me some presents, and my spending has never been more outrageous, but I don't feel much attachment to the physical fruit of my or others' money: I could live without just as easily, because I've already been there. Come to think of it, that probably explains my frequent losing of things post-SPH.

(This is not meant to offend those of you who have spent time and money on your gifts; as that classic line goes: it's not you, it's me.)

And so, considering my complicated history with things, perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised to find myself with only one box of them. Besides, I'd like to think I carry the things I lost and sold in my head (probably not true, but comforting nonetheless).

And in the time I've taken to write this, it has also occurred to me that the best presents given to me didn't involve any thing at all.

I can't box the memory of playing SNES with Mel and Lun, no more than I can box the memory of these past weeks spent playing Wii with Jm, Wh, Mel and Janus.

And all those coma-inducing nights of supper (and more)? Can't box any of them either.

I think my current philosophy, as evolved from those early days of bric-a-brac, is that things are ultimately only a means to an end. If they've been used properly, it doesn't matter if you lose (or sell) them, because the memories they'll have generated by then should be enough.

And anyway I'd like to think that, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I'll be judged by the things I've done and been, not by some box left in a corner of my room.

So one box really isn't all that bad. In fact, it's not bad at all.



...now go buy me a MacBook please.

Raising the bar
Jul 17th 2008
From The Economist print edition


A rare slip-up in court by Singapore's elder statesman, Lee Kuan Yew


MEMBERS of Singapore's government are notorious sticklers for legal exactitude. So it has been interesting to watch the reaction after the country's elder statesman, Lee Kuan Yew - a British-trained lawyer before he became a politician - gave inaccurate testimony in the trial of two opposition leaders.

In May Mr Lee testified in a hearing to decide damages against Chee Soon Juan, the leader of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), and his sister, Chee Siok Chin, for defaming the former prime minister and his son, Lee Hsien Loong, who is now prime minister himself. Mr Lee senior claimed that after the London-based International Bar Association (IBA) held its annual conference in Singapore last October, its president sent a letter to the Law Society of Singapore praising the country's justice system. It has since emerged that there was no such laudatory letter.

Mr Chee (who along with his sister was briefly jailed for contempt for accusing the judge in his case of bias) tried unsuccessfully to have the hearing reconvened in the light of Mr Lee's incorrect testimony. Mr Lee's counsel, Davinder Singh, wrote to the court on July 9th admitting that his client was wrong about the letter but noting that the IBA's president, Fernando Pombo, had praised Singapore's "outstanding judiciary" in a speech at the start of the conference. Mr Singh argues that what matters is that the IBA did praise Singaporean justice, not whether it did so in a speech or a letter. Mr Chee says there is a difference: the speech was made before the conference, where criticisms of the justice system were aired. Mr Lee was claiming, in effect, that the IBA was still impressed after this.

By coincidence, on July 9th the IBA's Human Rights Institute issued a report criticising the use of defamation suits by the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) to silence the opposition and the press, and expressing concerns about the independence and impartiality of Singapore's judges. The law ministry has rejected the IBA's report, pointing out that Singapore's legal system has won excellent ratings in other international surveys. Indeed, in cases not involving the country's leaders, there is no dispute about its quality. As for the IBA's worries about cases involving PAP figures, the law ministry claims that the IBA failed to substantiate its "grave" allegations with evidence, though its report does discuss several worrying cases.

America's State Department, which is in rather less danger of being sued by the PAP than are the opposition or newspapers, has expressed concern about judicial independence in political cases in Singapore. In its latest human-rights report, in March, the department noted that the PAP's consistent success in defamation suits against critics "led to a perception that the judiciary reflected the views of the ruling party in politically sensitive cases."

According to the Straits Times newspaper, Mr Lee on July 11th accused human-rights organisations of "a conspiracy to do us in". He said that they saw that Russia and China had been studying Singapore's success, and hence regarded it as a threat. Mr Lee and the government argue that doing things their way has made Singapore prosperous, orderly and corruption-free, and has earned international respect. The threat of defamation proceedings may make opposition politicians weigh their words more carefully than they do elsewhere. But Singaporean voters continue to buy the PAP's argument that such constraints are a price worth paying so far.

Some people REALLY need to stop talking. A conspiracy? Between Russia and China? Really? Because somehow I suspect China is less than concerned about Singapore, particularly in any economic way.

So. "White Teeth" and "White Fang"? Totally not the same book. Read the former, people! It's great. I'm only sorry I had them confused for so long.

I am officially the only sibling who doesn't have a university degree.

..in other words, wish my sister a happy graduation!

1) I'm about to start Act II of the script; my mode of working seems to be: scribble on a notepad in a cafe, and transcribe when I get home. I can't seem to write directly on the computer; something about the white screen makes my writing muscle seize up completely.

...I just realized this doesn't happen (a lot) when I'm in the newsroom. Bizarre.

2) The whole online LGBT video idea has to be shelved. It's a pity, because I found a user-created Wordpress template that fits my needs perfectly. But what with the YouTube crackdown, a lot of the videos have been disappearing, and I don't want to create a website where the links are likely to die.

3) I'm quite happy with the amount of reading I've done, even if some of the books have titles like "Sophie Pitt-Turnbull Discovers America". I think my favourite new discovery is Scott Westerfeld; I've read three books by him now, and they've all been fun. He's a bit like John Scalzi (and the two are friends, which doesn't surprise me), and I highly recommend "So Yesterday", which is a standalone novel.

I've started watching Liao Zhai (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio) on tudou.com. Why? Because I saw bits of an episode while having dinner and the male lead was like zomg cute.

Why yes, I can be that shallow.

On the bright side, I am (re)learning a fair bit of Mandarin. Now I just need to find a society that speaks Ancient Scholar Mandarin.

Edited to add: Oh, my god. I'M TURNING INTO MY MOTHER. I just watched the most crap-tastic movie because it stars the same guy from the Liao Zhai story. When I start buying DVDs because of the guy the transformation will be complete.

Picked up Milan Kundera's "Immortality" from the Seng Kang library, and this was in the blurb:

"This is one of those unclassifiable masterpieces that appear every twenty years or so."

It's the "every twenty years or so" part that completely trips me up. Where did this statistic come from? Is it an average? Is it not? Is there some clandestine publishers' agreement to put out an unclassifiable masterpiece every twenty years?

Questions, questions, questions...

Outline for script: check.

40 short films downloaded for eventual website: check.

Part I of getting my visa in order: check.

New bermudas: check.

Waaay too much shopping: check, check, check, check, check.

Now waiting to hear from NYU about who my mentees for the fall are, and working on a sooper sekret project.

If all goes according to plan, I should be back in New York by August 4th, NY time.

There I am, reading Scott Westerfeld's excellent sci-fi book "Extras", when:

Udzir nodded, smiling. "You are very good students, I see. Let me reward your cleverness: We will soon land on an island the Rusties called Singapore."

I believe this is the fifth modern sci-fi book I've read that name-checks Singapore as some mysterious alien homeland. Viva Singapura!

I'm not working at SPH for the summer, and I can't return to the U.S. until first week of August due to a visa snafu, so I'm effectively stranded in Singapore / Anywhere But U.S. for the next two months.

I can foresee myself going stir-crazy, so I've decided my plans for the summer will be:

1) To finish the story I'm working on.

2) To finish a script so I won't have to stress about it in the fall semester.

3) To build a website. I have specific ideas about pages, content, etc; I need to figure out how to actually build it.

4) Compile a database of names for use when I start working at SPH.


I don't think that's too much / little, but I guess we'll see.

Seriously. Why are these shows on Arts Central instead of Ch. 5:

Before Sunset tonight; Battlestar: Galactica on Tuesdays.

I went to see Prince Caspian today. I don't think it's a particularly memorable film (certainly not on the order of LotR), but I wasn't bored or annoyed, so that's a vast improvement over the first installment. Perhaps I wasn't either because Peter doesn't get as much screen-time this go-around; the character still annoys the hell out of me.

In any case, even if the movie had sucked, what happened after would have made it worth the price of admission. Once the credits started rolling, some guy got in front of the screen and started shouting over the end-credits orchestra. I thought at first that he was asking people to stay for a secret scene or something, but nope. Guess what he was doing.

Yep. Proselytizing.

Which, you know, way to go, I guess, and I suppose he must have thought he would have a sympathetic audience, it being C.S. Lewis and all that, but - New York. I'm just saying. Miiiight have picked a better state.

Question: Explain how XYZ's background as a Jesuit philosopher contributed to his views on science.

My Brain: WTF is a Jesuit?







*** Yes, I do know what a Jesuit is, NOW.

I really, really, really hate exams. I just don't understand the point of them: what do they test except speed of writing and ability to retain page numbers?

On a more personal level, I also hate them because I honestly have no clue whether I'm doing them right or not. Even when I ace questions it seems more fluke-y than actually earned, and that's only slightly better than not doing well.

Gah. Hate. Hate hate hate hate hate hate...

This is bad. I have two more exams (one less by this time tomorrow), and twenty pages of script to write, but I already feel like the semester has ended.

When I was supposed to be reading for the exam yesterday, I ended up:

** watching nine YouTube episodes of a German soap opera;

** Image-Googling one of the actors in the German soap opera;

** discovering that the only picture big enough to serve as a desktop picture was on the actor's own website;

** discovering that the picture was un-saveable due to some weird format;

** going back to YouTube, whereupon this taught me how to snapshot anything on your computer screen;

** discovering that the dimensions of the picture would make it look funny on my desktop if I stretched it;

** wishing I had Photoshop;

** discovering a knock-off version called GIMP online (along with 19 other cool - and free - apps);

** GIMPing the hell out of the image so it would look nice on my desktop;

** patting myself on the back for what a good job I did transforming my desktop;

During all of which, no reading was accomplished. Altogether now, wah Wah WAH...

Finally got my speakers yesterday, so I once again have a fully functioning television. And the first thing I did after connecting all the wires was watch Maurice again.

It was not only as good as I remembered it, it was better. I honestly think I will love this movie forever.

Just finished the second season of "Weeds". Man, the show is fantastic. If you don't know, it's a half-hour comedy about a mom who has to start selling marijuana to support her family, after her husband drops dead of a heart attack. Smart, hilarious, and chock-ful of cliffhangers, I cannot recommend the show highly enough. Download it, watch it online, or whatever, just watch it.

So I didn't get into Clarion. I received the official rejection today, but I guessed as much a few days ago, because some people had posted online that they had been accepted, and if I had I would have been contacted then; it doesn't take that long to call 18 people.

I am disappointed, but I did do my best, so that just means I'm not good enough yet. At any rate I can begin to plan for the summer; my new goal is to sell a story before the end of the year.

LK is totally in puppy love-land.

Weilun got into Columbia for grad school.

...I don't know what's happening with other people, except that Jiemin is now 100 percent a Browncoat.

Update, please!

Nothing much has been happening. I'm still waiting to hear from Clarion; I've been so antsy I've been Google Blog Searching to see whether anyone else has heard, but as far as the blogosphere goes, our apps might as well have been sent to the ether.

One thing I did learn though, is that I am a massive idiot, because there's apparently a sister workshop called Clarion West that operates over the exact time frame, and the line up of instructors there is just as impressive, and so I completely missed out on that opportunity. Which sucks, but what are you going to do.

I really wish Clarion would call or email soon; I do desperately want to get in, but if I don't *touch wood* at least I can start planning for the summer.

So tonight, in my Advanced Fiction class, my story was up for critique. What really threw me off? Seeing a classmate read and make notes on her copy of my story fifteen minutes before class. Seriously, if you're going to insult me like that maybe you SHOULDN'T DO IT SITTING BESIDE ME.

Jesus.

I've been reading Ian McEwan's "On Chesil Beach" in fits and starts, and when I woke up this morning I took it up to finish the final stretch. Maybe it's because I have a hardcover copy, and removed the jacket when I bought it, or maybe it's because the final fifth of the book is so godawfully depressing in that lost opportunities-way, but somewhere along the line it was fixed in my mind that I was reading a Kazuo Ishiguro book. It was somewhat of a surprise to turn to the final appendix pages and read the initials "IM". Talk about cognitive dissonance.

I just got an e-mail from the Clarion people. So almost 200 submissions were received this year, and 18 will be selected, so I have about a one in ten shot of getting in. And they hope to announce the 18 by mid-March, so maybe I'll find out about it in Berlin.

Thank god spring break is coming. I think I need an extended break from computers, because I might be developing a physical reaction to them. Even as I type this my right shoulder blade is (again) shooting pain up and down the right side of my body.

...of course, maybe I'm just sleeping wrong, but since I wake up in different positions, and can't actually tell how I slept during the night, this is unverifiable.

One: I've submitted to Clarion. It's done. I can honestly say that I've done my best; if I don't get in I'll be disappointed, but at least I'll know I did everything I could.

Two: the money finally arrived, and it's A LOT more than I expected. Either the allowance has dramatically increased, or it's a mistake. No prizes for guessing which I'd rather it be. If it's the former, the extra money is going to go towards paying for Clarion (if I get in) and repaying my brother.

Fingers crossed.

As much as I don't feel like a college student, my fridge says otherwise:

Chocolates; a gift from god knows when

Alcohol, in many different varieties; left over from housewarming last September

Pasta sticks; haven't been touched in ages

Orange juice, orange juice from concentrate, Mug root beer, milk; just about the only things I buy regularly

Kelloggs Frosted Flakes; just about the only other thing I buy regularly

Jam and peanut butter and butter (but without bread, sigh); some have been here since before I moved in

and pretzels; which is taking me forever to finish.

Notice the lack of vegetables, meat, or, you know, any kind of actual food?

(You have to take the title literally, and ignore its traditional usage.)

I haven't updated much because nothing very exciting has happened.

I'm done with the two stories I'll be submitting to Clarion; except for minor changes here and there - mainly because I never stop obsessing - I don't expect to do much more with them. I'm really just waiting for my copy of Storyteller to arrive; it's a textbook of sorts about what happens at Clarion, so I figure I should read that before submitting my application.

I'm also working on another story now for the Advanced Fiction class; coincidentally enough, the latest edition of Out had a small blurb about the magazine's inaugural short fiction issue, to be published in June, and it's accepting short fiction and excerpts from novels in progress, so I will probably submit to that as well. The 'coincidental' part is that the piece I'm working features two gay men, so it fits into the competition's criteria perfectly.

More on this piece: oddly enough, I started writing it thinking it's a short piece, especially since I was writing it primarily for class, which has a limit of 14 pages. I don't like writing excerpts, mainly because I think it's hard to critique part of a novel, but I do think this one has the potential to be a novelette, novella, or even novel. It's nearing two thousand words already, and I'm only at the beginning. My plan is to not think about it, and just finish this part of the story. Hopefully it'll be self-contained enough that it'll bypass all my hang-ups about excerpts, both for class and for the competition.

Other than writing, which basically is taking over my life now, there's not much else going on. My classes, on the whole, have been much better than those in previous semesters: Science Fiction is great, I like the script I'm writing for Screenwriting, and even The History of Science in Society is interesting (although it must be said that this is mostly the professor's doing. The only thing is his name is Appuhn, which cracks me up thinking about "The Simpsons" every. single. time.).

Oh, oh. I almost forgot. I bought a copy of "Secret of Mana" today. I got a friend an FC Twin recently; it's a machine that's basically an amalgamation of the NES and SNES; and I've been going on and on about "SoM", but today I finally found a copy cheap enough to buy. Good memories. The store I went to had "Breath of Fire", "Lufia" (and "Lufia II"), and all the other old standbys as well, which made me very nostalgic.

Now all that needs to happen is that THE GODDAMN MONEY FROM SPH NEEDS TO ARRIVE. I really don't know what's going on back there.

Heartbreaking more than a decade ago; still heartbreaking more than a decade later.

It starts with a sinking feeling that slowly hardens into conviction. And then you look at the mass of words, and wonder what you were thinking. As your heart breaks a little, you put the manuscript aside, and you grieve and fume for a little while before you start anew.

Time: 4.45 a.m.

I am four words short of a first draft, but the short story is for all intents and purposes done. I just need to find out what the parts of a coffee-making machine are called, and whether 'motor functions' is what I mean.

I'm fairly happy with the draft, especially since it's not really a first draft. More like third draft on this story, considering the back editing I kept doing, and seventh or eighth draft since I started writing about coma patients and weird neural developments.

There's still work to be done, but - I think I can savor this moment for five minutes.

And so he did the dishes, swept the floor, got his mail, fired off the remaining pieces of correspondence, made plans with some people, and, lo, it was all good.

I'm suffering from it.

Work 10 hours, go for a midnight movie after, and what happens to me? I oversleep the next day for a nine a.m. wake-up alarm. I am clearly an Old Man.

Also: Cloverfield is good. It is not, however, a redefinition of film. Get a grip, people.

That, and this? "It's not a movie; it's an experience"? Has got to go down as one of most annoyance-inducing things I never want to see in a film review.

I went to see a play yesterday, and J. J. Abrams's latest movie today. There aren't many similarities between the two, but there is a striking one: both use rambling openings to motivate the rest of their respective stories.

The difference between the two openings, though, is that the one in The Sea Farer vastly overstays its welcome.

Practically the entire first of the two acts is given over to establishing the background of the characters. It's necessary to know that the two brothers in the play share an uneasy relationship. It's necessary to know that brother A's wife has left him for another man. There are many other things that are necessary to know. But the way The Sea Farer pushes out these bits of information is to have long talks between the characters, talks that have nothing to do with the central engine of the play, which is the arrival of a Satan figure that will bring these tensions to a boil.

It's obvious by now that I did not particularly like The Sea Farer. I thought it could have been done a lot more efficiently, especially since the exposition was so painfully long. Two-thirds into the first act I was already annoyed by the aimless repartee, which was at times clever but at no times 'angled' in any particular direction. The problem with something like that is that it could potentially go on forever: it stinks of the playwright needing to get this and that information out, and so the progression of the story feels inorganic; by the time the actual story starts what follows seems almost divorced from what came before.

It would be like if I info-dumped about the chronological history of a couple for 100 pages, and then started the next and last 100 pages with one of them dying, and the consequences of that death. Wouldn't it be more streamlined to locate the history within the aftermath of the death? That was the question I had the entire time I was watching The Sea Farer: wouldn't it be more polished if the Devil came in at the beginning? It would certainly have made the play more cohesive.

And then, of course, today I saw J. J. Abrams's Cloverfield, which had the exact same problem. Except in the movie it was excused by two reasons: whereas in The Sea Farer the arrival of the Devil was predicated on certain things that happened in the characters' pasts, the introduction of the monsters in Cloverfield was in no way connected to anything in the characters' pasts. This means that it's more formally appropriate to the story being told to have the monsters appear from nowhere - because they really do appear from nowhere.

The second and more important reason, however, is that the frigging opening is short.

I think these two comparisons have given me some useful tips:

1) When your opening has nothing to do with your main story, and is primarily a way to shove in some backstory, it's probably best to keep it short. Clever writing will only buy you so much time.

2) It's probably best not to use a disconnected opening to begin with. But then again this could be my personal preference; for a story to be a cohesive, inevitable whole.

The novel has completely stalled, while short story A is, at last count this evening, at an even 2,600 words.

In other news, I was rejected by one literary agency; I'm not sure why, but the facts that I overslept, and turned up late and shivering and stuttering to the interview, may have something to do with it. I'm in the running, however, for another internship, one which is a damned sight better than the one now out of my reach. I don't want to jinx it, so details when I get / don't get it, and let's hope I don't do anything silly this time.

I'm a little intimidated by how sleek Leopard is. Seriously. Nothing looks the same; everything has taken on this new sheen. It's very impressive. Some days I even think that I'm using a new laptop.

The past few days have been a whirlwind of moving. I'm typing this in my third living space in two weeks. First I was crashing at a friend's basement in Brooklyn; then it was the living room of another friend's apartment in Chinatown; now I'm in the office of a third friend, located in the East Village just opposite where my main school building is. All this moving has really taught me what is essential to me: my laptop and a working Internet connection. And that's really about it.

In other news, I've stopped writing the application for the fellowship. It's not happening, I don't think. I've been trying to write my way into the story for some time now, and I think at this point I just need to give it some time and distance. That being said, I've made headway in the first of two short stories I'll need for the Clarion workshop, so this holiday has not been completely unproductive.

What else, what else...

Not much else to add, really. I'm moving back to my apartment tomorrow, which is good. And hopefully as the days pass more and more people will start coming back, and I'll be able to meet up with some people before school starts up again.

I don't know why, but it seems I have designated the go-to guy for people with relationship problems. This mystifies me, seeing as I

a) Have never had a boyfriend (nor a girlfriend, for that matter), and
b) Haven't even really dated.

So how I'm supposed to be qualified to give advice I'm not really sure. I'm going to assume at this point that people just like telling me their problems because I'm a good listener (hey, you over there, stop snickering!).

Seriously, though: if you're one of these people, thank you for trusting me enough. And I hope it works out for you and your boy/girlfriend / crush / [insert object of affection here].

Myself, I'm just seeing what's out there, heh.

So the 2007 awardee for the David T. K. Wong Fellowship - the same fellowship I will be applying to by the end of the month - is a Singaporean.

Good for her and Singapore and all that, but - fuck. I'm probably being paranoid, but I hope this doesn't affect my chances in any way.