Faerie DivaBat On The Loose

1. We still do not know what internships we're getting.

2. I've been offered a special project but nothing's confirmed yet.

3. No one's applied to be technical interns. Poor Gaby.

4. We had a vocal teacher, Anna, come in to teach us the songs. Quite interesting. I had to go and volunteer to sing this super-strange alto-soprano harmony for one of the songs...urgh.

5. Quiche made by my host family is yummy. Quiche made by the Adams 12 facilty is not so yum. This is a shame, as usually their food is VERY yummy.

6. There was a burning smell in the room yesterday. No one could tell what it was.

7. We may have a new song, if Danni and the rest of us can figure out the lyrics.

8. If your name is Emily, Asha, Victor, Marzuki, or Patricia, and you know me well, check your postboxes.

9. Rob's out of the hospital...and then he went back in again. Tonsil trouble. Oh dear.

10. I made my profile page, and it looked crazy. However, it was the most decorated one of the lot so far, and it got a fair bit of attention.

11. The ballet/hip-hop dance is HARD AS HELL.

12. We had a photoshoot yesterday, with some of us in national costumes. It really looked like some sort of a Miss/MR Universe deal.

13. I went through about 3 or 4 costume changes yesterday.

14. Microphones can be really heavy if they're in a suitcase.

15. Neshat, Huning, and I were the Red Roses of the photoshoot because all our outfits had red roses on them.

16. Speaking of red - yesterday night most of us went to the Red Rocks Auditorium, a natural auditorium of sorts since it's made up of these huge red rock formations. We saw Savage Henry (quite good) and The Goonies (fun).

17. There were people at Red Rocks who obviously watched The Goonies and were cheering at certain points of the movie.

18. Tom and Melissa are together. Awww! They're not that obvious about it though, so when Tom told me about it I was quite surprised.

19. People like chanachur.

20. The gay couple, Andy and Rick, are holding their (what seems to be biannual) Pizza Party next Friday. Of course I will be bringing the chanachur.

21. We went up to the Hayman Fire Site today to set the equestarian trail. This involved placing rocks and planks, clearing grass, and collecting rocks. Ow.

22. I have claimed a mound of soil near the trail as Mount Tiara. There's even a giant Rosetta Stone-ish rock in it which is now mine.

23. The river is so PRETTY. I was brought there by the CUSP crew (semi-secretly, since everyone else was working) and it was quite a sight.

24. Udi's makes good lunches.

25. Someone had stuck a tiny US flag to one of the rocks formations near the river. This amused Ginger, my guide, greatly.

26. I was not used to manual labour, especially in high altitudes, and I had a hard time at first - at one point I accidentally dropped a plank Nina and I were holding because I was just too shaky.

27. Collecting rocks at the Rock Mountain (not the Rocky Mountains) was a bit better though.

28. We kept finding rocks for Stone Soup.

29. We're all rocked out.

30. Nina's found her calling - she lifts rocks (and people) from the ground. Whee!

31. Reuben is trying too hard to get an American accent. He's been going "absolutely" all day long.

32. ODV's a good band.

33. We saw a rainbow!

34. Tom went missing for a while and everyone in the staff was looking for him. I went in to search for him and found him running down the stairs. He didn't believe me at first when I told him everyone was looking for him.

35. While looking for Tom, a random person asked me if there was a UN Conference going on.

36. HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAURENCE!

37. Salisbury Steak and mashed cauliflowers - yum.

38. CONGRATS ZELKJA!

39. EDIT: Grr. Flickr will only show the last 200 uploaded photos, which means a lot of the earlier stuff will go missing very soon. The only way I can get them back is if a get a Pro Account - and I am NOT paying $24.99 for something online. Anyone know a good free photo hosting & display service that does not hold my photos hostage?

And yet again, this isn't everything, so feel free to ask questions.

Today was a bit of a tense day.

In the morning we had the Stereotypes activity, where mahjong papers with the names of the countries represented are put up, and people walk around writing their perceptions of the country.

Not many people wrote stuff about Malaysia and Bangladesh - both papers had some "talk fast and loud" comments, which I suspect has more to do with me than anything else. And no, Mahatma Ghandi is NOT Bangladeshi. I was surprised that people thought Malaysia had good governance, after hearing the complaints in the country about the government, and someone wrote "Kjak Rtak", whose meaning I haven't the slightest idea of. Huh. Generally, though, people weren't too surprised at the reaction - they've heard it all before.

What was tense was the discussion at the end of the day about the Capitol visit and guest speaker the day before. Katie had talked about the offensive language the guest speaker was using (e.g. referring to prostitutes as "recycled women") and Marcelle replied that basically we give meaning to words, we should try to understand what their intentions were and whether or not they meant to offend. Katie was upset (she thought she was being lectured - she kinda had a point) and Noelle and Brandi were crying too because Marcelle had mentioned how "nigger" was inoffensive in Brazil but "black" was, and that touched a nerve. It led to a discussion on ethnocentrism (basing things on your own culture) vs. ethnorelativism (basing things on the other culture), and how we should be more conscious of potential triggers.

I personally thought that while everyone had a point, there was still a level of ethnocentrism int he comments. "This is bad because it's bad in my culture therefore it should be bad in yours". It's a definite learning curve and I think all of us will have to learn how to relate to each other without needing to push their buttons. I wonder how they'd survive in a culture which would be offended at their notion of being offended - "You think our culture is WRONG? You think you're BETTER than me?!" - that'd be something.

Thankfully the day wasn't all that stressful. We had our first major Whisk Prep - we were taught the chorus of one of the songs, and also the moves to a few dances. One of them was really complicated - you really need to get the rhythm down right. The other was simpler, but it all depended on your partner and group and if they mess up, you mess up too. There was so much thigh-clapping that my thighs are now bruised...red spots everywhere.

I've handed in my Internship application, and tomorrow there's going to be auditions for singing, dancing, and public speaking (and photography though I'm not too interested in pursuing that fulltime). Let's see how that goes.

Also - I made fried rice for my host family today! It was a bit different; garlic paste, Bombay onions, brown basmati rice, baby carrots, no oyster sauce. I thought it was a bit off, but they loved it, so hey.

Does anyone have any remedies for bruises?

I've had some sleep (ok, 4 hours) and it's about 8:25 in the morning here. Everyone's gone off for their own work so I'm home alone.

Here's the second chunk:

On The Flight

I was seated in the first Economy Class row - originally 26C, right opposite where the flight attendants sit. However, there was another guy that came in and had my seat too. (He shall henceforth be known as Double-Seated Guy, or DS Guy for short.) The flight attendents checked out passes, and it turns out my seat got swapped - so now I was at 26A, right behind the exit.

Quite an interesting spot, that.

The first leg of the flight was to Taipei - 4 hours flight, pretty much like flying to Dhaka. (Incidentally, I encountered a couple from Bangladesh on the flight - will elaborate on this later.) In our row:

Me, checking out the view while contemplating using the exit shelf as a temporary table. Well, not really. But I took out the inseat table as soon as I can and started writing in my journal - I needed something to do.

Middle Guy 1, who spent the whole flight watching movies (Beauty Shop, and something else with Jimmy Fallon). Incidentally, Malaysian Airlines are airing Sepet this month, but only to routes in Australia, UK, and Africa. Sigh.

DS Guy, who is quite the cutie spent quite some time looking out the exit window, admiring the view. We chatted for a while. He also spent a lot of time studying the GMAT - turns out he's starting on a Masters degree soon. Whoa. He's also travelled around the world - Peru, Brazil, Thailand, all sorts of places.

The leading flight attendant for this leg was a lady named Precious - heavy blue eyeshadow, seemingly British until she launches into her very Malaysian-Indian accent. Like Asha when she's making a point. She could have been either very hilarious or very patronizing...but we didn't interact long enough to find out.

We had a "light snack" (more like something that makes up for lunch) - chicken, fish, or curry. I took the fish; eh, it was OK. It tasted like it was swimming in oyster sauce - not bad doe me, as I eat oyster sauce on occasion. mmm umami.

Then we had the best after-meals snack ever - ICE CREAM! Crunch - vanilla icecream with a crunchy chocolate centre and cover. I turn into a little kid when given icecream...come on, who doesn't?

We stopped over in Taipei around 8 pm for about an hour. Already I was being bombarded with text messages from Maxis and FarEasTone (Taipei's telco provider) - apparently I can get free weather reports, and now's the time to activate GPRS on my phone. There was an Internet section, but you needed your own computer, and it wasn't clear on how exactly you were expected to pay for it. The only store worth visiting - the bookstore, of course - was closed; however, they did have a rather intriguing store that was connected to their Museum of History.

We all hung around the departure lounge for a while. Security checks were normal - I did set off the metal detector, and the guard thought I still had my cellphone with me, but I showed him the phone on the Xray carousel and he let me through.

There is a Daniel Bedingfield lookalike on our flight.

The next leg - Taipei to LA, 11 hours or so. It seemed faster than before; last time, it took about 24 hours. Or at least it felt that way. Still, 11 hours straight on an airplane can get boring.

We had a new Middle Guy (2), who brought along a book titled "50 Facts That Should Change The World". He too spent the flight watching movies. He was also sniffly; and now, thanks to him, I have a blocked nose too. Bah.

I spent most of the flight reading my downloaded materials on my PDA. I couldn't spend long hours on it though; my eyes started to hurt. I did spend some time playing trivia games (since when was a question on Little Women considered "Science"?!) - DS Guy wanted to play multiplayer with me, but it wasn't working.

Another leading stewadress, Lee Ling, complimented me on my rainbow toe socks. YAY SOXES.

We had fish again for dinner! Not our choices this time; they ran out of choices. The fish was mediocre, not even umami. I'll be darned if we have to take fish again for brunch.

The immigration papers were a bit confusing, mainly because there wasn't enough space for all my pertinent information. And I wasn't sure how to value the host family gifts I brought over (you have to provide the value of anything you're bringing over to the US that's staying there - gifts included). I eventuallyw wrote that they were all worth about US$40, but even that seemed a bit much.

Sleeping was an experience in and of itself. I didn't have a lot of legroom, and there was that exit shelf in the way. After trying to twist into various positions, I eventually tried putting my feet up on the shelf. Whee, slippery - and whee, I'm too short. But what to do? I had to fall asleep somehow.

The skies made very interesting patterns. There was bluer-than-blue sky below, then light blue and white slies on top, split in the middle by a brilliant orange sunset. (DS Guy alerted me to it) It was like nature's idea of a straight line...perhaps not completely straight mathematically, but perfect. LAter on, as the sky got darker and we went towards night, there was this lone star...small little jewel on a velvet blue sky.

Taiwan at night looks like an electric lung. The island is shaped like one...there were dust-red capillaries of its lifeblood, traffic and people...its cells, the skyscrapers and buildings, lighted up with activity.

The clouds look like swans.

We were reaching Los Angeles, and there was something curious about the cloud system there. Apparently, due to the water being cold but the land being hot (LA is a desert city), clouds don't cover the land. This creates an interesting effect when viewed from an airplane - it looks like there are lands that come up to sky level. Like another world.

LA by plane is an experience in itself. There are sprawling deserts and mountains...one wonders how they travel back and forth amongst all that dust and sand. There were also squares and rectangles of grass, desert, concrete...and nothing else. Just squares and rectangles of space. SO MUCH SPACE.

There were also interesting seeing the patterns of the buildings - huge sprawling mansions and multi-level buildings, constrasted by blocks and rows and small little houses. One of them belonging to my uncle; another, to my future host family.

There was quite a buildup at the washrooms just before we landed. We almost formed a Bathroom Brigade right there and then. One of the stewards was in charge of cleaning out the sinks; it must be a sight, walking out of the washroom door only to be confronted by a guy in a suit and plastic gloves.

Brunch was spinach omelettes with tomatoes, chicken, and hash browns. Much better.

The descent looked like we were going to land on the highway. Illusions are interesting in the air.

The flight felt very freeing...I was alone, I had to fend for myself, but it was alright. I didn't need anyone, I wasn't homesick, I wasn't worried. I didn't have to depend on anyone to get by.

Everything was fine.