June 2012
21 posts
Uniformity
Uniformity and conformity - two things I dislike. Put them together with a job that requires you to stand all day for 10 hours… and you get a potent concoction of “Kill Your Creativity and Your Leg Muscles (Guaranteed)”.
Remind me how much I’m getting paid for this again?
And then there were books
Love of my life, forever and ever.
I’ve been handling books for the past four days straight, packing and repacking, organising and reorganising them. Customers don’t bother with keeping things neat; not to mention little kids who take and throw stuff everywhere. Also, it doesn’t help that I have a neat streak (mildly OCD, I think) and so I’m just flitting about to and fro the English books department, making sure everything is in order all the time.
My beloved books have given me blisters on my fingers. :(
But… all’s well. They’re books after all. <3
“You do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up, you gild it or blacken it, censor it, tinker with it … fictionalise it, in a word, and put it away on a shelf – your book, your romanced autobiography. We are all in flight from the real reality. That is a basic definition of Homo sapiens.”
—John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (via distantheartbeats)
All the little things
1. I am in dire need of a library. They can’t sit around in boxes and luggage bags any longer. They need a proper home - a bookshelf, at the very least.
2. Visa has been approved and arrived by courier this week. Did I already mention this previously? I’ve been so uptight about registering and getting all the important documents ready that when they’re finally done, I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off me. Now I’m starting to look forward to my exchange programme in Buffalo, NY, a lot more. At the same time, I’m starting to miss everything here even before I’ve left. What a home-lover I am. I’m definitely going to miss eating Asian cuisine and perhaps even miss the tropical heat here because I’m going in the fall/winter semester. One of the most important things on my To-Do List is scouting for a cafe and library there. I hope there are good ones near UB.
3. Been catching up on reading. Lots and lots and lots of it. The library cafe at Ang Mo Kio certainly is the perfect place to sit back, have a cheesecake (or brownie), a drink and a book to read. I’ve been visiting the cafe for the past two weeks and am feeling so pleased with myself over it. Hehe.
4. It’s a lazy Sunday today. The heat is blazing down on Singapore again (no surprise there) and I’m sitting in the cool shade of the dining area at home, feeling my lids close. I’m tempted to take an afternoon nap but I won’t. I don’t like afternoon naps.
Time to go. Reading calls.
All that's left...
Is the visa interview and if I can get it without any hiccups, it’s off to Buffalo. I’ll definitely be taking lots of photographs. Singapore’s tropic, humid weather never changes. Well, the only variation we get is hot, hotter, hottest. Flight’s on the 16th of August, transiting at Paris and New York first. Gosh, this all seems so surreal. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping I’ll live and come back in one piece, changed for the better.
