It's seven pm on sunday and I'm at work. I'm not really working- just happened to be in school to help an ex-classmate out with an econ experiment. And now am kinda waiting for Nate to get back so we can have dinner, although I really have half a mind to go home. Not out of spite or anything, but just cos I want to be home with my cat and play my violin or watch tv or something.
But I know when I'm home I'd wish I was with Nate having dinner. We don't spend enough time togehter- at least that's what I feel, but I'm too chicken and too shy to make a note of it and say something. I'm passive aggressive. Dating these days is like constantly having to make two appointments a week with your dentist. Ok, maybe not the dentist, but you know what I mean. Everyone has schedules. I have a schedule, he has a schedule, my cat has a schedule. He has to squeeze me in, I have to squeeze him in.
And I recently read about how couples stay together especially for the holidays, just coz... everyone wants to be loved during this season... at least til February. God, I hope that's not us. I'm uber paranoid these days. Since Eddie. But am trying not to give into the craziness of it all. I mean, what's the worst that could happen? I can still go out with those random people who email me on friendster.
Not.
See what I mean about being paranoid?
Ithink singlehood is as much cultivated as couplehood is. You know how some people depend on their spouses or significant other so much so that you wonder where their own selves begin? Well, I think single people cultivate that dependency on singlehood just as much. It's not safe to be in a relationship. What if it falls apart? So you have all these things that keep you going and being without them is as tragic as not being with your s.o. I'd rather be with my cat, I'd rather go out with my girlfriends, I'd rather learn the violin and spend hours practicing it, than show up at a singles bar/ party and have to make small talk. I'd give up this lifestyle in a day, but I can't. I'm addicted to it. There's just such strangeness to this.

My problem with the LSAT isn't so much that it's difficult, it's that I'm bloody falling asleep doing it. If you ask me, the LSAT is just a whole load of poorly written passages, double negative questions and answers that take way too long to read.
I'm currently in my Singaporean mode of studying- one exam per day. Nothing like test banks. My brain processes this way- since 7th or 8th grade, or what we call secondary school in Singapore. It's four years of preparation for this one GIGANTO exam that you take at 10th grade- equivalent to a high school exit exam here- you know the thing that Bush wants to propose, only way fricking harder. We had and still have these things called the Ten-Year Series. It's ten years worth of the British O' level exam (which is the 10th grade exam we take) and considering the fact that each exam takes about 6 hours to complete and there are 2 papers (i.e.: major sections) per subject, that's a HUGE test bank.
Anyway, so Singaporean study mode = 1-2 exams per day. I'd do maybe the first 2-3 exams open book and then the rest of it closed book, evaluate my wrong answers at the end of each day and then plod along until the day of the exam, which becomes a piece of cake after having spent about 4 years doing the Ten Year series.
So hopefully the same will hold true of the LSAT. I don't intend to put any more effort into it than I am already. Certainly am not paying good money to take the Kap*lan course. Nothing wrong with that course just that I don't want to spend thousands of dollars trying to improve my scores when I can do the same job with no money at all.

Between the bad election night and the pouring rain, there hasn't been much to tell. I've been working to get a grant, finishing all other surveys and in between that studying for LSAT, or wait, make that attempt to study for LSAT.
Can't remember if I blogged this but I started violin lessons at the beginning of October. I've been quite motivated to practice my violin and I haven't quite had so much fun practicing an instrument. I remember the torture of piano lessons when I was a child- practicing, playing and trying to pass the Royal School of Music exams. Theory and practice, theory and practice. That's all I remember of it, and the dread I felt everytime I went near the piano. I acquired the music skills, reading music etc, but never the music appreciation. This time around however, with the music skills (or whatever little I have remaining), I'm learning the music. My violin teacher is a Russian lady who used to play with the SF symphony. I can't imagine that I can say this, but I really really like her and our lessons together. Last weekend we played for an hour together. What a joy and contrast to piano lessons that were just sheer torture. For the last month or so, I've been practicing everyday for half and hour and for an hour on weekends. To hear a minuet or waltz come together after a week, is satisfaction beyond description.
I'm practicing a song for Advent, which I hope to play with Nate in church. He's part of the inspiration for this. Well sorta. I've watched him play the piano and time and time again I wished I could go home and play a song. I'm more and more convinced that this is my insturment and not the piano. It speaks to me, even though I'm sure it's shrieked more than a few times to my neighbors. In many ways also, it's such a relief to play and practice, because it uses a completely different part of my brain. I've been studying and crunching numbers and memorizing textbook material for years. And it's just such a relief to give that part a break and make use of another hemisphere.
I hope things are going well with everyone this November. This year, has been kinda crazy and there's a lot to give thanks for this Thanksgiving.

I think I would have been more comfortable if people had voted Bush into office because they were concerned about terrorism... that might have some inkling of logic in it; but to vote for him based on moral values??!!

I figured I should start the month well and blog. I haven't posted in a while. You know how when it rains it pours... well it's a frickin thunderstorm here!!
My folks and I were supposed to go to vegas together in october. The plan was for them to gamble and for me to attend this conference. That didn't quite happen. I went to the conference, without my parents. My mother collapsed the day she was supposed to fly to San Francisco. What happened the week after was the discovery of a tumor in her colon and surgery and a week of waiting to see if the tumor was malignant and if she would need chemotherapy. The doctors told us that the likelihood of it was high since the tumor was so large.
It was a huge sigh of relief to hear that the tests came back negative. My mother still needed to recover from surgery but she would otherwise be fine. Living so far away from Singapore I was rendered somewhat helpless and was trying to figure out how to finangle a way back home in the middle of crunch time at work. My mother was totally depressed during that week. I'm the sort of person who believes that anything can happen as long as you believe you can. And hearing her so despondent, wondering what she'd done to deserve this, I was speechless. I told her to hang on and to hold on to hope. My mother, who is stubborn as hell refused to believe otherwise.
In all this craziness though, and after hearing the good news, my mother did realize a few things- how much we all love her and how little work really means. My mother's work ethic is unbelievable. She is the person you would call at 2am and she would be ok with it, even if it wasn't an emergency. We always told her to take it easy and that life would still go on and that someone else would have to shoulder the burden some day. I guess she never believed it until this past week. She's letting go of work and realizing that her time could be better spent with family and friends. Previously she never understood why my brother and I didn't take work as seriously as she did. She now does.