people keep bugging me to blog, and i suppose i should. i apologize for not replying emails but i hope people will read this and thus feel updated.

in the past week i've met all sorts of people. i went for a party which got shut down by the cops, drank good beer, tried smoking but only because i was sure i wouldn't pick it up after (and i'm not), been confided in about one night stands, gotten into a stranger's car and really done all sorts of stupid things either by circumstance or just plain bad luck.

but don't worry - i am okay. i guess you could say i'm being subjected to some sort of culture shock and that's pretty unexpected considering that i like to think of myself as a pretty open-minded person and maybe i am sheltered but i've read fairly widely and watched a lot of films and things and i like to think this would make me a more rounded person than most others i know from singapore. the other singaporeans don't seem to be in as much shock when i talk to them the few times that i actually run into them on campus - possibly because they kind of stick among themselves.

is it good shocking, bad shocking? well i guess i'm learning.

haven't really made any friends i think i can really depend on as yet (i thought i met someone but then things became very BIZARRE with that person and i will not write it here. let's just say it involves some sort of marijuana, or pot, or a substance akin to that type) but hopefully things will get better in that respect - it's only been two weeks and my floor is not very united unlike some of the other dorm floors but i'm kind of used to situations like that anyway.

i'm plan to get more involved in the theatre and film groups here though it's trying because the theatre group especially seems very competitive and i did not get an Assistant Director position i tried out for which is kind of sad but i won't dwell on it. there is a lot of work to be done if you want to direct something - which i do and i want to to A Language of Their Own partly because it's done by Chay Yew and mainly because i love that play but a lot of red tape goes into such proposals and i foresee college life being very stressful. the film club seems very active and i'll probably get more into that more than theatre this quarter because they seem to have a lot more opportunities for first-years.

i'm taking four classes, World Lit, Classics in Social and Political Thought, Reading a Staging/Staging a Reading and Math (mandatory). i took DUH math, or at least i thought it would be DUH because everyone else is taking Calculus (basically like A level math except probably easier because it IS america) but i realize that while the math course i took is for non-math majors, we're going to have to learn how to write Proofs. which could be interesting or could be really 'oh my god kill me now' depending on my attitude. but i mean i've always been interested and admired logical thinking and theories and how people could write proofs - i mean that's pure math - like A Beautiful Mind and Proof kind of math rather than finding logarithms, i just don't know if I PERSONALLY can handle math of that level. it's almost like the philosophy of math and i don't even know if i could handle the philosophy of theatre or something like that.

i'm learning that i really have to get back into school mode because my brain feels dead after a long nine months and i need to participate more actively in class. i feel really awful that i'm unable to contribute as much as i would have used to before ... so i have to seriously start reading all my readings very carefully tonight and over the weekend. i've got a whole stack of things to read and it varies from Morrisson to Plato's The Republic to Machiavelli so it really is pretty cool. I'm also really glad i got my drama class because it's usually pretty hard for first-years to get in due to lack of space but i guess i got lucky.

so okay that's kind of it and i'll try to blog more often. you know i hate blogging like this but i know that i have to tell you guys what's happening or else you feel alienated and i feel alienated from you and yes i still think of all you dear friends frequently and this is what i've been up to. i really will try to email some of you soon.

LOVE FROM MEL

+ posted by M @ 6:27 AM