NGOs and research thinktanks don't hire fresh grads and there are no entry-level positions; you need at least a masters and/or several years of work experience for any job. I realized that after trawling through hundreds of job listings everyday. My mentor (who's the legal director of an extremely reputable human rights organization) just confirmed that and advised me to settle for internships (I can't take on an unpaid job if I want to work legally in the US after graduation) or administrative assistant work (ugh) to be able to work in a NGO.

International relations graduate schools strongly recommend several years of work experience and don't like accepting students straight out of undergrad (unless they are extremely exceptional and have lots of work experience previously).

So here I am, graduating in May, with an undergraduate degree in International Relations, and suddenly, in limbo.

Not to brag or anything (since this only excites people overly preoccupied with crimes against humanity and war crimes, i.e. me), but I was at this Security Council Session yesterday. And immediately after I was at a conference by Luis Moreno Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (here from The Hague!), who filed an indictment against President Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan, and he did a shout-out to the organization I'm working for and praised their work (which had us interns scrambling to reconstruct the exact quote for archives and listserv purposes). And LMO is apparently coming over to the office later, after he's done briefing the ambassadors and Security Council in the UN!

Okay I just realized alot of people don't know where I am or what I'm doing for the summer, so here it is. I got back from Europe early May and was bumming around Brown and went to LA for a week. I started my summer internship in NYC last week, doing exactly what I want to do in life - Responsibility to Protect advocacy. I love the internship, my supervisor is wonderful and everybody else is nice, and my obsessive preoccupation with crimes against humanity is seen as a good thing here. I'm also taking ballroom classes every weekday (after work) and Sunday and it's been fantastic. I'll be interning here for 9 weeks, then I'm flying on the night of my last day of work (a Friday) and arriving in Singapore just in time to start my second internship the very next day (on Monday) at the Mi/nis/try of F/or/eig/n A/ff/air/s/. I am evidently way too cowardly to blog about it considering I had to censor that alot. I'll be working there for a month. Hopefully squeeze a short trip back to Taiwan before I return to Brown for my fall semester which starts early September.

Today, I was on the way to the tram stop, when a Swiss man walked by me with his dog. And he felt the need to swerve over into my path and shout "Sayonara" and "Moshi Moshi" at me. Yes, in that order. He was either being extremely poetic or being a racist asshole. This has happened so much in Europe, and the most when I was in Paris, I've lost count of such encounters. People love playing the which Asian are you? game over here. They try "Konichiwa" and "Ni Hao" and keep on trying when you don't respond. I usually glare, ignore, or say Salut/Bonjour. For how Switzerland and France are supposed to be civilized societies. They are probably the most racist countries that I have been in. I'm not saying that I don't get random Konichiwas thrown at me in the US, I do, but it's not as prevalent as in Europe. It's not even like Asians are that uncommon here, but they remain so ignorant and backwards in their reaction to Asian sightings. What exactly are they trying to prove, astound me with their amazing linguistic capabilities? Because what if I was to respond in Chinese, would they able to hold a conversation with me in Chinese? I speak French/English better than they speak Chinese/Japanese anyway. And besides, who says goodbye and then hello? Evidently that person had no idea what the hell "Sayonara" or "Moshi Moshi" even means, he just felt the need to toss some Asian words at an Asian person, whatever the hell that achieves. There somehow seemed a need to vocalize the fact that they recognized, from my skin color and features, that I was Asian, and since to them, there is only one type of Asian and one type of Asian language, hell yeah, by logical extension, they're going to shout random words! And this only extends to Asians, and East Asians in particular, cos we're oh so recognizable and look all the same (or there's only one type of them). Nobody goes up to a Caucasian and tries to shout random salutations at them in French/German/English/Russian/Dutch/Swedish etc, and nobody goes up to a Jew to start shouting in Hebrew. Idiocy knows no bounds.

I'm in Grenoble right now, and it's quite a lovely French city, with beautiful people and gorgeous old architecture. Getting around using my disastrous French has not been that bad, actually, but also because I've been relying on good ol' Shanta and her more fluent French.

We've been traversing about town since we got here yesterday. Dinner at a lovely French/American family's place and then pubbing and clubbing with them afterwards. Today we went to Ikea (to get stuff for Shanta's apartment) and we went grocery shopping, and Shanta is whipping up dinner for us as I blog.

I've heard from my homestay family, though I wish I heard from them 3 days earlier, when I was deciding on the gifts to bring to them. My homestay family consists of a mother and her 22 year old son, I'm not sure how that would work out but we'll see. The gifts I bought from them are slightly not that appropriate: a Vanda Miss Joaquim seedling (that will bloom!) and souveniry pens that say Singapore (they've both travelled to Singapore last year and must have seen better souvenirs, oh well)

The headache and fatigue is getting in the way, I'll blog more when I can.

I haven't blogged in a while cos I've been too busy with school, and then with bumming. But just in case people wonder where I am now, I'm back in Singapore. But I've been relatively quiet about my return because I enjoy waking up just in time for lunch and spending the rest of the day reading in bed and eating chocolates (See's Candies). The air conditioning and my new silk sheets are quite comfortable. I tried to venture out once, to return to Orchard Road and take a stab at that good ol shopping addiction, but it did not work. The crowds got to me and I ended up seeking refuge in Citigold's lounge in Paragon, reading one of my Twilight books till it was time to go home for dinner. The only times I've been out was to eat and grocery shop with my family, hangout at Lisa's house (two streets down) and to take the oath at the ICA building (so that I'm officially a Singaporean citizen). It's nice being an anti-social bookworm sometimes.

So I've become quite a Twilight fangirl. I watched the movie in Providence and then thrice again illegally online. And upon my return I borrowed all 4 volumes from Lisa and finished all 4 books, each tome upwards of 500 pages (the new trend in supernatural children book I gather), in 2 days. And then I went online to Stephenie Meyers' website and read all the other chapters that didn't make the final cut for the books. I'm not quite ashamed of my taste in books, Harry Potter and the Twilight series are fun to read, so there.

The rest of the books I've been reading are not particularly literary either, but I enjoy fluff once in a while. And I have the occasional good book (Jack Kerouac, Dave Eggers, etc) among my rubbishy novels and travel books. The travel books are relevant pre-trip research, at least. It's all very pre-emptive I think, I'm quite aware that for the next semester, I'll be reading tons of heavy and depressing text (my research project is on genocide and crimes against humanity), so I'm kinda filling up on light reading while I can.

I know I'm terrible at telling people where I am. People always think I still have lots of time in Singapore when I'm back in Providence, and people get surprised that I'm in Singapore because they think I'm still in Providence. The rest of the time till May is going to be quite hectic and confusing, so here's my schedule:

now to Jan 15: Singapore
Jan 15 to Jan 21: Lyon and Grenoble, France
Jan 21 to Jan 23: Lyon and Annecy, France
Jan 24 to Feb 10: Geneva, Switzerland
Feb 11 to Feb 13: Bern, Switzerland
Feb 14 to Feb 21: Geneva, Switzerland
Feb 22 to Mar 1 : Brussels, Belgium and Paris, France
Mar 2 to Apr 18: Geneva, Switzerland
Apr 19 to May 4: Pula and Zagreb, Croatia
May 5 to end of May: Providence, RI
Summer of 2009 is still unknown, but probably (and hopefully) NYC or Washington DC

I know Taiwan is conspicuously missing from my schedule. My mom decided I've gone back too frequently this year and decided to only book herself and my brother on next week's flight. I am still sulking.

I am particularly averse to certain words and I cringe when people use them in writing - "heartily", as in, "she said heartily" and "hearty" as in "we had a hearty meal" and "burly" as in "two burly men approached us". Words like these appeared in every single primary 4 (or 6) model composition books that ever existed. They remind me of a time when everyone had poor and clichéd vocabulary and for some strange reason it makes me very uncomfortable.

Wow I spent so much money on my card that the bank had to suspend my card because they were so alarmed by my spending habits that they suspected some irregular activity, i.e. someone stole my card and was spreeing with it. The bank had to verify my last few transactions and some personal information with me before they would unsuspend my card. This is probably an indication that I'm spending way more than a normal human being should and it would be good to stop :( I am such a money waster and I'm going to be wasting so much more next semester and I can't do anything about it. Living in Geneva and France is going to be so expensive and my study abroad program costs even more than my Brown tuition, if that's even possible. ARGH

In French, the word for eggs is masculine, but the word for omelet is feminine. Also, the word for vegetables is masculine but the word for cut up raw vegetables is feminine. I don't understand the arbitrary nature, and I hate memorizing the gender of objects when they make no sense :( All these angst for a French midterm tomorrow.

I finally unpacked my third and last suitcase today. Nope, you haven't got the timing wrong, school has started for 6 weeks now. I just didn't have enough space in my room and closet to unpack the last suitcase. A pictorial explanation will help me seem like less of a lazy bum (I hope). I seriously had some storage and organizational issues

Here is my mini skirt drawer. It only holds skirts that end above the knees. The drawers below this one holds my jeans + undies that should not be photographed. And the drawer below the jeans drawer holds my bags, pajamas and sock collection.



This is the extra garment rack that I had to buy to hold all of my winter coats + sweaters because my closet was too small.



Thought you might like my pink boots at the bottom of my garment rack :)
The one on the left are my winter boots, and the one on the right are my rain boots



Here is the tiny walk in closet I have for this semester



It seems big but only because it's really tall, my suitcase and laundry basket have ample room to stand on the shelf above



My heels, sneakers and heeled boots collection!



Where are the flats you may ask? Hanging on the door



But my favourite pair of boots right now are these: my new riding boots! Riding was so much easier with them on.
It has its own special position outside the closet, against the wall. Also partly because I don't want my other stuff smelling like horses.



So you see, I couldn't have unpacked until I got the garment rack, which took a while to get cos I had to buy it from the mall and assemble it on my own. Then, I had to buy more hangers, and then I had to rearrange everything till they fit. I have no idea what I'm going to do with all these clothes when I need to leave Brown. My closets at home are full of clothes too :(

So guess which crazy fangirl paid an indecent amount of money to see Daniel Radcliffe on Broadway. I'll be a mere 6 rows away from a nekkid Harry Potter.



In other Harry Potter stars related news: Emma Watson was spotted on Brown campus last night and today morning, after visiting the Harvard early in the day on Tuesday.

Here's why she's visiting, I quote from The Telegraph:
The actress, who was first cast as Hermione Granger at the age of nine and was educated at Headington School in Oxford, is currently on a gap year before starting university either in this country or the United States.

"There are excellent universities over there and I'm applying at the moment," she said. "If I stay in this country I will read English Literature, and if I go to America I would do a Liberal Arts programme."

full story here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/3054534/Harry-Potter-actress-Emma-Watson-puts-acting-career-on-hold.html

If Hermione attends Brown, Brown would almost be like Hogwarts. Um okay, I'm going to shut up now.

We were discussing Montaigne's "On Affectionate Relationships" and Plato's "Symposium" in English class today, when my professor started using the term BFF to talk about friendships discussed in the two text. Then, when we were talking about dividing the soul, someone got excited and started talking about hocruxes from Harry Potter. I really like my classes this semester. I finally got into the creative non-fiction writing class I have been trying to get in since last semester. This semester's French teacher seems really nice and bubbly. Advanced modern dance will keep me sane.

I had a dinner date with Taylor which I ended up extending to my entire suite and the suite across, plus Ben. We went grocery shopping before dinner and I went crazy with my shopping, it is extremely rare that we get a car to go grocery shopping so I ended up stocking up for war. We were packed into Taylor's lovely apartment and made vegetable curry, mac and cheese and brownies. We walked back from her place slightly before 11pm, and on the journey back, there were hordes of freshmen: all dolled up and wandering around looking for a party. That was what we used to do on a Friday night. Now we get excited over grocery shopping and cooking dinner on Friday nights. In addition, we mock the freshmen for being eager beavers, behaving like lost sheep, and asking stupid questions. I feel so old as a junior.

Okay enough of whiny, angsty posts. This shall be a happy one filled with sunshine and rainbows. Unicorns and fairies if you please.

Reasons to be happy about my wisdom teeth extraction
1. I have lost weight from not being able to eat
2. I get to read books (such a luxury, no sarcasm, i promise) while being cooped up at home
3. I get to wake up whenever I like. Which also means I get to sleep whenever I like (yay for sleeping at 7am)
4. I get to watch endless Youtube videos without feeling guilty that I'm depriving myself of sleep
5. My parents are super nice to me when I'm sick + I get to spend time with them
6. I'm getting this done and over with and i won't get wisdom teeth related headache anymore
7. My eyes get to rest from my daily wear of contact lens cos I wear specs while at home
8. A little breather from working the entire summer
9. Because I am awake at odd hours of the night, I have started to write random prose again.
10. I get to choose whether I want to go to work tomorrow. If I don't, it's fine, my MC covers it. No guilt. If I do, I'm such a heroine, braving it all to go to work.

I was well on my way to becoming an excellent mime artist but I regained my speech abilities, 4 days after the surgery. Now that I am able to use my tongue, mouth, jaw, whatever muscle needed to articulate words, I feel the need to express myself, through typing of course. Because right now, I want to shout, which far exceeds the capabilities of my mouth. So imagine me shouting, "LIES!", in real life. So much for recovering 2-3 days after surgery. Utter lies. Do not believe the first thirty or so websites Google produces when you search in your quest to be enlightened about wisdom teeth surgery and its recovery. As a matter of fact, do not trust your friends, colleagues,dentists, nurses, parents either.

My face is still bruised and swollen. Imagine my cheeks as the widest width of my head, it is horrifying and painful. 4 days after the surgery, I am still bleeding, what happened to it stopping in the first few hours? Wrought with anxiety, I return to my nice smiley dentist, who tells me that it is completely normal. I don't see how bleeding for 4 days from my mouth is normal, but okay, if you say so, you're the expert.

I desperately want to get back to work. Surprisingly, I actually really like my job and considering that it's ending pretty soon, I'll like to spend more time at the office. I also have the HPAIR conference to attend, exactly one week after my surgery. That leaves me with 3 days for: the bruises on my face to disappear, the swelling on my cheeks to subside, my wound to stop bleeding. I honestly need to be able to talk for extended periods of times, HPAIR is a networking event as much as it is an academic conference. I am disappointed to announce, but I have already been sucked into the ugly realities of life, and realize the importance of networking, despite discomfort with the theory as well as practice. I need to be able to introduce myself to many people again and again, laugh and smile at the right moments. And that means that my face needs to look un-disfigured and I need to be able to articulate sentences without experiencing pain. Does my mouth care? No. It shall take it's own bloody (bad pun fully intended) time to recover as it pleases.

I've already skipped many days of work (yes I have a one week MC but that's not the point). I've skipped an AH Blue class gathering (for the second time in a row). I've skipped my last Friday ballet class (I never skip ballet class). And it looks like I'll be skipping Sunday's ballet class too (which I like alot more). Aside from feeling miserable and sore about skipping ballet, I want to say thank you and bye to my ballet teacher, since I won't be taking classes with her for a very long time (and she even remembered my goodbyes from the last summer that I told her I was going back to America) .

So right now, I'm up at 3.32am, hindering my recovery process with the lack of sleep, I'm sure. Googling like crazy on topics such as: When is it okay to exercise after wisdom teeth surgery? When is it okay to consume alcohol after wisdom teeth surgery (important, HPAIR is apparently turns into a mass clubbing session every night) Is it normal to be still bleeding 4 days after wisdom teeth surgery? How do I know if I have dry socket? How many days after wisdom teeth surgery am I safe from dry socket? I am scaring myself with online horror stories of people never recovering from wisdom teeth surgery, and by never I just means 2 weeks. And all kinds of horrible complications seems to arise for these people on the Internet who have been through wisdom teeth surgery, such as paralysis of various parts of the mouth and death.

Does the tooth fairy only give out money? Or can you pray to her for speedy wisdom teeth recovery? It seems awfully heartless of her to abandon us once we lose all out baby teeth. Stick it out with us for our final rites of passage in teeth development at least!

I had a fire extinguisher and a fire mask delivered to me at work today. I ordered a set last week after being scared shitless by the fire safety talk my workplace had. I'm pretty sure he's just a very convincing salesman, with many photos of burnt victims and sad stories of people dying in flames and smoke, but you definitely need a fire extinguisher in your home, that's what he says, and so I bought it.

After work I went to the dentist. I experienced some pain from my wisdom teeth while I was at Brown and had this nagging suspicion that despite all the effort with my braces, there still wasn't enough space for my wisdom teeth to grow out. The x-ray confirmed this very sad fact. The horrible thing is that I have exactly one week before I leave for KL for my HP/AI/R conference, and after I return from my HPA/IR conference I have 4 days before I fly back to Brown. And that leaves me with tomorrow as the only day to get my wisdom teeth surgery done since the usual down time is one week. Fantastic. The rest of my summer just got ruined. I'll have 1 week MC, and then another few days leave for the conference, then I'll come back for 3 days of work, and then fly off to go back to Brown. This isn't exactly a good last impression at my workplace. I'm terrified of the pain. The nurses at the dentist's place were very kind to tell me that the 4 extractions I experienced the last time was nothing compared to the pain of wisdom teeth surgery.

Today, I met the Singapore people who were going to the H/PA/IR conference. There was someone who though it was ridiculous to expect China to do something about Darfur. When I explained to them that China was funding the Sudanese government's ordered genocide, as well as supplying arms to the junjaweed, they looked at me as if I was a crazed conspiracy theorist. I sat there and listened to many strange ideas and narrow thoughts about the current state of international politics. One even thought that the Taiwan-China relations have currently reached the ultimate height of political tensions.

Today, the teaser trailer of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was released, the announcement of the sale of Tales of the Beadle the Bard was made. Sure, there is still hype going on, but there is no denying that an era has ended. It ended on the day of the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Never will there be lines worldwide for midnight (or 7am) releases. The fun of debating theories, speculating and hypothesizing during the many months/years in between each book's release is now only a lovely memory. We pounced on every single clue we had - searching for additional meanings revealed through translations (was the B in R.A.B for Black? Was Blase Zabini male or female?), through the imagined multiple meanings in her descriptions (Hermione often described to be like a cat, whats the significance? What did Dumbledore's glimmer of triumph mean?), picking up on her vague clues and feeling oh so pleased (Aberforth and the goats). Each J K Rowling interview was taken apart and analyzed to death. We were part of the lucky bunch which grew up with the books, and other readers to come will never enjoy this special, precious privilege. We read the books before Daniel Radcliffe was the face of Harry Potter. Before Draco Malfoy was hot, because of Tom Felton, and then of course, Draco Malfoy got ugly again. The anticipation that got us all quivery and torn between racing through the book or slowly enjoying each page made up half the fun. We were given a decent amount of time in between each books to mourn for the deaths.

When (If) I get kids, hopefully, the Harry Potter phenomenon would have died down by then. Details of the plot will no longer be common knowledge except to those who have read the books. I will not allow them to watch the movie first, or visit the Harry Potter theme park in Florida (opening in 2009!). They will read each book, in order. The books will be rationed. Not with years in between, but perhaps weeks or a month, so they have time to digest and ponder about the books, and hopefully come up with some decent theories and predictions.They will have no prior knowledge. They will read all 7 books without additional information of Dumbledore's sexual orientation, they will pick their favourite character not based on the looks of the movie actors. They will make independent decisions on whether Snape was guilty/evil.  And I swear I'll slap anybody who goes around screaming "Dumbledore dies!" around my kids. I'll home school my children and ban them from the Internet if I have to.

That being said, I'm also very jealous Harvard got J K Rowling to make the commencement speech for them this year. How do I go about petitioning to get Brown to get her to come for the 2010 graduation?

Wendy texted me a short quote yesterday, and asked me if it sounded familiar. So I suppose I wrote it. But it read like a cheesy Hallmark rhyme, or it could have been something I wrote in her autograph book during secondary school, during my salad days. I could't recall where on earth that short stanza came from, so I ignored the text message. I continued my crazy giggle fest with Victoria and Kelvin, we were having an awesome dinner. On my way home, I finally remembered where that quote was from. It was the last stanza of one of my poems. She must have found the book it was published in. Even I conveniently lost all my free copies of that incriminating book. How on earth did she managed to get a copy and still have it? I texted her frantically, imploring her to burn it. I suppose this is part of maturing, getting embarrassed by cringe-worthy writings of the past - blog entries, poetry, prose, random ramblings. It would be tragic if I thought my writings from years back were still decent. I bet I will look back on these blog entries and cringe one day too, but here I am, recklessly leaving a paper trail behind. 

Someone living on my street bought himself a black Lamborghini last week. I can't decide which emotion I'm feeling more - jealousy (I want one too) or annoyance (because he likes roaring down the street late at night and in the wee hours of the morning). I guess that's the whole point of buying a Lamborghini, being flashy and obnoxious. Why are Harleys and Lamborghinis exception to the rule that silent engines are good engines? The only time when a Lamborghini is subtle is when you're Batman and your usual mode of transport is the Batmobile I suppose. I watched The Dark Knight tonight with Huan Ting. Very coincidentally, my ballet teacher, Zhou Lin and the guy she is dating sat next to us. He's also a ballet dancer at SDT who once relief taught her class and poked me very painfully in the belly button to remind me to keep my tummy in. It was slightly awkward to say hi to them, but gushing about her performance at Ballet Under the Stars which I attended on Friday helped make things less awkward. The best moment of sitting next to them was when the danseur (term for male ballerina since ballerino doesn't work) violently expressed contempt and outrage at the hot but unballetic bodies of the actresses who were supposed to be ballerinas of the Russian ballet company in the movie.

Ballet under the Stars (my favourite one so far) to follow


picnic spread I brought


wendy, me and emily


ballet under the stars wrist tags


bumped into jin there!

when I was in Taiwan, harassing my granny (she secretly loved it)


I also went to Darshini's birthday bash last weekend. But it was a ridiculously extravagant affair and so I don't have photos of it because I'll have to get it from her next time since the crazy girl suddenly decided to be very atas and had a personal photographer and videographer (does this word exist?) following her around during the entire banquet/dance party. She looked awfully pretty in her sari though, and her singing performance was quite amazing.