"perceiving life as a perpetual film."

as brown as a nut right now but i'm not nuts.

yeah it's 4am in the morning and i'm sitting on the black mattress next to mildred's bed... we're an awful duo when it comes to sleeping on time and waking up somewhere in the morning. it usually means breakfast/lunch is taken in the mid-afternoon. in any case, i'm typing on my laptop while mil's looking through the cards that she's been sent by people (and some of it's sent by me haha).. we're supposed to wake up early tomorrow morning (early meaning around 10am) to help her cousin terrance with wedding preparations - invitations and stuff, it's really fun! - and i fear mil's gonna be rather grumpy tomorrow haha, not having gotten her 8 hours of sleep. oh dear, she'll whack me with the pillow when she sees this. yup, we're having a ball of a time and although i really really had a wonderful time with normypoo (which rhymes with smithsonian zoo... i kept wandering away from him and he called me a ninja *winks* when i lost him in the elephant enclosure) in washington dc, it can't beat having a month-long sleepover with one of the best girlfriends a girl could ever have in the world! haha... when mil saw me she said "you look skinnier", and while i think it's because i'm so dark-skinned now and dark colors are slimming after all, it's definitely a timeless remark, one of the best things you could say to a girl when you meet her.

yeah so, tonight i had a really fantastic time. see, it's a rather long story. i took a bus train train bus plane plane rideS all the way from fairfax, vienna virginia to baltimore airport to chicago o'hare and finally to dallas fort worth... and on my last plane trip, me being a tad grumpy for want of reading material (save my journal which is generally filled with private woe) i got into conversation - actually i ALWAYS get into conversations with strangers throughout my entire year this year - with the lady sitting beside me, she was in the middle and i was at the aisle seat. turns out she's a grammy-nominated jazz singer, called karrin allyson, and we talked about literature and stuff ("don't you have a book to read?" - leading to an exchange of favorite books) and she invited me and the guy at the window to this restaurant in addison, texas to watch her perform on friday night, which is tonight, well, it's saturday morning already but you know what i mean. so she adds me + 3 guests to the guest list, and gives me an autographed cd sampler to listen to. cool.

well, tonight that guest list thing saved us 80 bucks, and it was a fantastic performance at sambuca, i'd almost forgotten how much a part of my life live music was. and then here it was, a full hour and a half of it, and i knew the singer personally! i'm trying to recreate the ambience and the whole experience here because i'd forgotten to bring my camera (i KNOW) and mil's camera ran out of battery - talk about murphy's law. well the prism of a candleholder cast a sunflower of light onto the whiteclad tablecloth, mildred and i ordered hot coffee drinks spiked with bailey's irish cream, godiva dark chocolate and kahlua, we had fried cheesecake with blueberries, the audience wasn't all that quiet but extremely appreciative. the bassist, drummer and double bassist were having fun, and karrin (pronounced KOR-Ryn) was so wonderfully versatile, i enjoyed every minute of it! i told mil how norman and jiwon would've loved the performance. she did blues and bebop, jazz in quite a few languages, and even a joni mitchell song. she told me she started out as a classical pianist, so i wasn't surprised to see her take on the piano and sing at the same time - sigh. i wish i could be like that when i grow up, haha, to sing for a living and be good at an instrument. oh well. i still have the rest of my life to live.

i told norman this while i was with him last week, when we were talking about how weird it seems that so much time has elapsed since we were at pennstate. and then i shared my philosophy, or theory rather, about when we're always plunged into a new environment with so many new sights and sounds bombarding our senses, when we have to adapt so quickly, we're living life intensely. even more so than when we're in a recognizable place with a comfortably monotonous routine. and because of this intensity, each second, each moment is elongated, is stretched, the particles suspended like so many popcorn pieces in the film big fish. and that's why it seems like a year since i left norman, two years since i left angie, three years since i've left jinny and four since i've left joe... well you get the gist. i just reread the card i wrote for mildred when i left PSU... i recounted when we washed up together and changed our contacts at the seoul incheon airport toilet together. how long it has been since then! but you know what, i wouldn't have changed a single part of the journey for anything. and i've had arguments since i've left singapore, tears, frustration, happiness, music, dance, good food and bad, and i'll take it all the same way if i had the chance to live it all again. if you were part of the journey, i appreciate your presence in it, because it wouldn't be the exact same shade if your unique color was missing.

and you know what? i explained to mil today, everytime you see a person within a new place, another layer of understanding, another jigsaw puzzle piece gets fit together within your perspective of that person. for example, the bubbly friendly woman i met on the plane just two days ago became a glitzy, glamorous, beautifully talented lady tonight on the stage who embraced me and mil with exclamations of 'baby doll!', and i've another dimension to the picture in my mind of her. i'm excited for when i return home and see us 6 singaporeans interacting within the NUS environment... sounds funny and cheesy i know, but seriously, it's going to be interesting. i've never met faizal sharon hanwei and mildred in school before, and it's going to be so much fun studying together (sharon i PROMISE i won't talk when we study together - haha just kidding) and playing together. okay good nights - good morning rather, it's 541am now! ohoh.