Hot Dog Day/Teddy Bear Day/Chrysanthemum Day (Japan)
2008-09-09 @ 11:43 p.m.

Went back with Thong this morning to see our teachers at RI and RJC. A common thread through most of their conversations with us was how we are so incredibly lucky, to be envied even, being young and headed overseas. I know they're right, but it doesn't feel real yet. It hasn't quite registered, I suppose, that in less than two weeks, home isn't going to be a cluttered room in Yishun. It's going to be a cluttered room in the UK, for the next three years anyway. Kind of blows your mind, doesn't it? Sat in the RJC canteen and read Alfian Sa'at's One Fierce Hour, which I stumbled upon in the library a couple of weeks ago. I think I prefer his second collection, A History Of Amnesia. Finished reading This Is Not A Book a couple of days ago, like finally! It made me feel intellectually lazy, but hey, you already knew that. Bumped into Aparna, Claudia, Kelly and Shirin while they were talking to Mr Rollason, who basically told me that Warwick's a nice university, but Coventry's a crummy city. Gives me an excuse to visit my London friends, I guess. Walking through the sprawling combined campus, I couldn't help but feel twinge of loss. Just the slightest. It was, after all, where I spent the better part of six years of my life. Yet I am wary, as always, of touching up the canvas of memory too much. I wish I had been in the habit of randomly snapping photographs then. Some of my friends don't understand why I enjoy taking random shots and posting all of them online. I suppose what I'm trying to capture, in my own way, are the moments that we don't pose for, the memories that fall through the cracks of remembering, as it were.

Went down to Kinokuniya after that, hoping to find a few more books from my reading list. I managed to get Kafka's Metamorphosis And Other Stories. The Penguin Deluxe edition! Did I mention that the last time I went to Kinokuniya, I also found Borges's Selected Non-fictions? Yeah, so my Penguin Deluxe collection of Borges is complete. Definitely on my list of books to lug over to the UK, luggage allowance be damned. Went to Starbucks to grab a frappucino, but it got so cold that I fled to Borders, where I bought Tom Perrotta's The Abstinence Teacher, because the paperback edition was finally out. I'm picky about editions, extremely so, which is why I'd prefer to order books off places like Amazon, where I can pick the edition at my own convenience instead of having my choice dictated to me by the bookstore. Took a while to find the Warwick people after I left Borders, but in the end, Keegan came down and I sort of met him while I was walking towards International Building anyway. We had the dinner buffet at Sushi Kikuzawa on the second floor. It was an interesting experience, that I must say, watching the sushi get made and served. It's quite hard to talk to people while you're all seated in a row though! After that, we wound up at Geláre in Far East Plaza for dessert. I had a waffle with brandied cherry ice-cream, neither of which I was very impressed with. Personally, I prefer Venezia to Geláre!