*644 - modern art in nyc a month ago

Since Thanksgiving break has started and I'm leaving for Boston in 5 hours (at 6 am), I figured it was time to post some pictures of last break before they pass their expiry date: Fall break in NYC.

Museum of Modern Art pictures for now, courtesy of Earl's beautiful camera.

Artist outside MoMA.


John Cage's musical work.
(I'm particularly interested, solely because of his connections with Cunningham.)




I found the shadows more intriguing than the actual object.


One of my favourite exhibits: yarn and mirrors.
You can't really tell which is which.


I love "blank" canvasses.
(I'm actually not being sarcastic. I really do.)








My favourite exhibit.
She's so still but she's always dynamic, because of the reflections in her face.
(And spot me in the photo!)


My second favourite exhibit.
I choreographed a dance based on this.


Third favourite "exhibit", perhaps.

*643 - birthday at stella's

Inshi's birthday dinner from some time back. A quick meetup after our respective dance performances turned into a 5 hour dinner. There probably aren't many people I could talk to for 5 hours straight and not feel, at the least, mildly pained. Hehe.









These few days have been difficult. Today, I had Schwartz Concert tech rehearsals starting at 1 pm. Followed by Meredith's rehearsal till 6.45. Followed by Marketing group meeting. Followed by Pandora rehearsals from 9.45 - 11.30 pm.

I'm covered with bruises, but I've always liked dancer bruises. I'm also perpetually sore, but that feels good in a way. I'm also happy because I've never had the opportunity to direct a dance piece in such a professional way - working with real lighting designers and getting critiqued by real ex-company dancers. Everyone actually knows their stuff. It's great.

*642 - fabric studs!

Studs galore. Lovingly handmade. One of a kind.
Elisa and Evelyn

*641 - it's always about the weather

-10 degrees C??? NEGATIVE TEN?

That was the temperature of a regular wintry day last semester. It's not supposed to be so cold in November. It wasn't even properly snowing till after Thanksgiving last year!

Tonight, Inshi and I stood at the bus stop, freezing our asses off and doing pseudo tap dances to warm up, first missing then 9.45 bus because we thought it came at 9.48, and then waiting 20 minutes to catch the 10.45 bus instead of the 10.27 bus because the 10.27 bus didn't come at all. 20 minutes in -10 degrees is no joke. Brr.

*640 - would you change?

If you knew that you would die today,
If you saw the face of God and love,
Would you change?



Awesome photo taken by the awesome Tina ;)
"Change" - Pandora's guest performance at Fall Step! Much fun. And I think we looked great :)

*639 - at three in the morning

Confession: I would much sooner drool over pretty girls than hot guys.

Result: I now feel like a biological mistake. I wish I had better genes.

I'm so superficial nowadays. Shut up and go to sleep.

* 638 - online shopping

I've been pretty parsimonious (hee hee always wanted to use that word somewhere after memorizing it for SATS, even though it has a bit of a "stingy" connotation) in my spending this semester. I think. I could be kidding myself, though, by classifying everything I buy as "essential". Coat rack and pretty rug for my room? Well justified. Two new pairs of boots? Of course, it's winter. Cute dress? Definitely!

I'm particularly proud of the order I just submitted at Urban Outfitters. Saved >$100 thanks to the heavily discounted sales rack. Plus a panda combo (shower cap & toothbrush holder) for Val just because she's in love with pandas. Heehee.



Also discovered that they have fabric studs, much like those on Elisa & Evelyn, except that ours are prettier and don't cost US$12.

Sneak preview of new studs to be up on Elisa & Evelyn as soon as I get all the photos done:

*637 - winter

All it took was a couple of hours of snow showers today to cover the trees in a blanket of white.

I think the first snow accumulation means that you have to accept the fact that winter really is upon you.

I'm considerably less excited now. A year ago, I was dragging J outside to prance in the snow, inappropriately dressed in a miniskirt and my little red bubble jacket. Today, I took the bus instead of walking, refused to leave school till the snow stopped, bundled up, ducked my head, and charged home as quickly as I could.

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Mummy's email about Christmas trees cheered me up considerably, though :)

"Finally I found the trees. I think they're lovely ... They look very real and nice. We will get one on Sunday.

One more month and you will be flying home."

One more month and I will be flying home.

*636 - clouds

Little cloud-like sheep I drew specially for Jenny during a particularly unexciting Managerial Accounting class. I'm going to be producing a new bunch of cutesy earring studs soon, hopefully in time for Christmas! Stay tuned :)

(If anyone has any requests for designs on plastic earrings of any shape, email us at elisa.and.evelyn@gmail.com, and I'll see what I can do!)

*635 - mirror mirror

I think it's funny how we occasionally leave post it's on the bathroom mirror that say things like "Is there finance class today?" or, like above, "Could you turn in my stats hw for me? (...) kinda want to sleep in."

*634 - eiko

Just the other day, I spent an entire dance class sulking in the corner, scrawling angrily in my journal about how I was uninspired and refused to show my piece (these mood swings are all deemed acceptable, or even normal, I feel, under the excuse of being an "artist").

But today! I am inspired again! By Eiko Otake, postmodern choreographer and performer. She danced in alternative environments, like in rivers or on sand. So, for my final project, I've decided to set my dance on the street along Collegetown, on the little island in the middle of the roundabout (next to the stop sign), with the audience watching from a window in one of the dance studios that overlooks Collegetown. It will be cold (just about 0 degrees at that time), it might be snowing, it will be dark, there will be cars going by and pedestrians in our way. Everyone and everything will be part of the dance, but they won't know it.

I'm excited.

Also, despite being reprimanded by Jim last week for showing him incomplete work (oops), it turns out that he chose my piece for the Fall Show after all, so I'll be showing my piece at Schwartz at the end of the semester. Cool beans. It's a study of chance and counterpoint. Chance: I choreographed my upper body separately from my lower body and put it together, resulting in a very lovely and bizarre kind of awkwardness. Counterpoint: between music and movement, and between movement and movement.

Also, I unearthed a new talent today: I can make modern art with my feet! I discovered this in the middle of composition class, when doodling in my journal with my right foot. Hahaha.



Also, I made mini-heart-shaped-lemon-oreo-cheesecakes the other day for a dinner party, which were gobbled up instantly and produced rave reviews. Very pleased. Also, I made raspberry creme brulee when Jasmin was over, which turned out surprisingly delish, and pretty cute-looking too.



Also, all my friends are crying over the amount of homework and projects and quizzes we have over the next few days, so I figure I should begin studying now instead of blogging. Hehe.

*623 - drained

I slept 9 hours last night, but I woke up more tired than ever. I don't know what's draining me, but it's doing a pretty good job.

Life has been funny lately. I'm messing up way more than usual. I think I'm burned out from life in general and I wish it could be easier to drop everything and go far, far away, just for a while. Away from expectations. Away from relations.

I'm tired of living up to expectations in every way. Expectations that come with being a Cornell student. Expectations that come with being a friend. Expectations of your friends. Expectations of what being a good girlfriend is. Expectations of your boyfriend. Being cool. Being attractive. Expectations dictate that you have to be happy, and if you're not, you have to do something about it. You have to be motivated. Have to have fun. Have direction.

And to make sense, your blog posts have to have some sort of conclusion or ending sentence.

*622 - halloween's over!

To prove that the last drunken entry was not all nonsense, here are two unspectacular photos out of the, um, 5 that I took that night.

1. Japanese outfit with disposable chopsticks in hair


2. Tired-looking smudgy panda

*620 - halloween

Halloween was/is mad fun. The weather decidedc to be nice for us, which is cool because it's been freezing for a week. i was a Japanese for half of the night, which was pretty lame because I probably looked like a Japanese dressing up as a Japanese? Not too cool. And then I was a PANDA;. but then my makeup sort of faded, and then I looked "tired with an awkward smudge on my nose". So i washed the panda gunk off my face and for the rest of the night I was just a very generic person dressed in black and white.

Now I'm crunching madly on frosties, but I am not even hungry because I've been pigging out all night. And we all know how many calories alcohol has, right. Um I dropped one frosty onto the ground, but just realised that I picked TWO up and ate them, and that's really really hilarious in my mind right now. Heehee!

I acftually have to wake up in about 4 hours for dance practice tomorrow morning. Come to think of it, that's not as bad as I thought. Right? We were going to have Pandora bonding time and watch a scary movie after practice too just to go along with the Halloween theme.

I actually have a lot on my mind. But I shall go to sleep now.

*620 - befuddled II

And now it's a sweltering 19 degrees out.

??

This is good news, though, because it's halloween today - hopefully it will be warm tonight. Fingers crossed!

*619 - befuddled

It snowed today.

Date: 29th October.

Huh?!

*618 - the stump

In rehearsal, Meredith and I discovered a position (which only I can do) that makes me look like a really scary amputee with no arms and stumps for legs. We call it The Stump. It was so real that we couldn't stop screaming. Hahaha. Here it is:



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I can't tell if I'm all beat up because of dance or otherwise. Yesterday, I discovered 2 big bruises on each of my arms (the flabby tricep part) and a couple on my legs. I wonder how that happened. I like to think of them as dancer bruises, though.

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I'm malingering (except I don't even pretend to be ill) more and more as the semester goes by, which always seems to be the trend. I should have learned from last semester when 1073952190 credits worth of unattended classes all ganged up on me at the end of the semester.

I should be in Stats now. Meh. Hypothesis testing isn't that difficult, from what I remember. Right?

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It just sort of dawned onto me that I was spilling all my deep, dark secrets to I & D the other night, and I do that every time, because I get particularly verbose when I'm tipsy. Not that it really matters, but now they know a lot more about me than the average person. Ho ho.

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My first ever attempt to sketch a real-looking portrait, instead of the usual cartoons I'm only capable of. Drawn on my church bulletin, with me casting sideways glances to the lady across the aisle. I think she noticed.



She actually looks quite like this.

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Texas Chain Saw Massacre was ridiculous. We were hiding behind pillows and blankets watching it, until everyone fell asleep (???) at 5 am, whereupon only M and I were awake wondering why we were so obediently watching it when we really didn't have to, so we stopped and will never know what happened in the end.

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I'm so sore. I think I need to give my body a rest.

My room is in such a mess, and I haven't done laundry in 3 weeks. That's kinda gross.

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This is what they call stream of consciousness.

*617 - baghistifaz parties and creme brulee

What a decadent weekend. I don't think I've done the "party till 5 am and wake up at 9 am for 2 consecutive busy days with no naps" thing before. Awesome fun but way tiring and, like Nuf warns, comes with increased chances of liver cirrhosis.

I've sent drunken texts before but yesterday's really takes the cake: "Haggy baghistifaz". I actually meant that to be a cheery "Happy birthday!" instead of the sinister, no-punctuation caveman garble it turned out to be. Hahaha.

And somewhere in between too many shots, some of us thought it would be hilarious to make creme brulee because we found ramekins and a blowtorch. So we did, and they turned out pretty decent. I would have been proud of them even if we had made them sober. Yum.

(And thank God for good guy friends who were watching my back yesterday.)

In other news, Makanmania was so much fun (the laksa was phenomenal) and I haven't done any work since Friday.

*616 - why is it so cold?

It's mid-October, and it's not supposed to be so cold!!!

Wednesday: A chance of snow showers, mixing with rain after 10am. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 44. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible.

Snow, in October? You've gotta be kidding. High of 44 in the day?? That's not even 7 degrees C. What kind of high is that?

I guess it's not snowing for real yet. It's probably the sort of light snow that turns into soggy mist before it hits the ground. I will be optimistic and celebrate the fact that it's generally above 0 degrees for most part of the days. (Not the nights, though.)

It started snowing for real last year around mid November. The night Sergio left. It was like the sky was crying up a snow storm for me. I remember trudging back home through the whiteness the next morning, wearing Josh's sweats (imagine: ang moh wrestler 3 times my size) because I had worn a silly skirt just the day before. Wondering whether the sky was really crying with me, or whether it was mocking me by being so bitterly, prettily white. Haha. It's so easy to look back at your emo past and laugh now that the heartbreak's healed over.

Anyway.

A couple more pictures of fall leaves, before it's winter and it becomes unfashionable. Snapped discretely without even looking at what I was taking, because there were too many people around and it felt swaku to be snapping away.





Aren't red leaves so much more exciting than yellow leaves?

*615 - midnight cuppa

I really thank God for Inshi and our spur of the moment, late night sessions. She's one of the few who really understand.

We had smoky lapsang souchong tea from thick porcelain mugs and good conversation about all things important and unimportant.





2 Inshi's and 1 Evelyn


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Ex's are interesting. Especially the kind that lasted for 4 years. You once knew every single thing about them - every detail of their past and present, every emotion, every dream, every unspoken thought. They've seen you at your happiest, at your lowest, at your sweetest, at your bitchiest. You grew together. Their life was yours and yours was theirs.

So it's interesting, now, how it's part familiar and it's part a surprise. How do you reformat the relationship between once-lovers when you have so much shared history you know you won't ever be able to erase? Being friends with someone who knows you so well but doesn't know you at all - I don't really know what to think.