Can you smell it?
Spring is here, AT LAST!
What a difference a few days could make - from Siberian winter to Cancun tropical weather! (c.f. previous post)
These 3 days were nothing short of
beautiful. Not just the weather and blue sky, but also the lively campus. people all hanging outdoors playing
frisbee, chilling at outdoor patios of cafes, playing beer pong and
barbequeing outside their houses... It's hard not to smile each day i pass by Arts quad, Engine quad,
collegetown and college ave on my way home, because the cheerful atmosphere is too infectious.
Too bad
ellen missed this fantastic weather. She came on the day we started getting snow flurries, which was followed by snow storm, and left the day it became sunny and hot! what luck. and she missed our awesome
bbq dinner right outside our house, with cheeseburgers by
gj,
otak by
junch, and salad by
christina and i!
i will miss
ellen for her delicious food and desserts, random long chats on random stuff, and the
life she injected into the house during this period when it is sorely lacking the most.
So, instead of going down to NYC for the inaugural
Singapore Day yesterday, i decided to stay here to "catch up on my work", but by Sunday morning (now), the only worthy thing I have done is make some meaningful progress for
AguaClara. And the rest of the day and night was wasted on online shopping, on the premise that 1) i need a dress for grad night; 2) i need dresses for everyday wear because i only have 2; 3) i need to buy clothes for myself because the last time i did that was in london!
but still, $130 in one day on clothes (which I have not even touched and tried on) is, well, indulging and spoiling myself to the max. Then i will justify myself with yx's words "What's the point of you coming to US to study if you don't buy clothes here?" LOL.
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Sometimes, i will imagine how different all this will be if that tragedy had happened on my college instead.
It is unlike a terrorist attack where sufficient intelligence could have
pre-empted it; it is unlike say an airborne disaster where stringent
maintenance and vigilance of the pilot/space shuttle crew could have prevented it; it is unlike a fire where sounding the shrieking alarm could have immediately warned people of it and immediately evacuated them. Even his teachers noticing that his writings were weird could not have served as intelligence; even sending his for counselling was not good enough a precautionary measure; even having a separate murder incident 2 hrs before in the dorm could not have served as a 'fire alarm', simply because, face it, random murders by guns are conducted every day in this country, who can ever accurately imagine and predict that the next target by the killer is not additional 1 or 2 random beings, but 30 members of the school right on the school campus? and besides, in all enormous college campuses (including mine) as far as i know, other than the fire alarm, and emails, there is NO WAY any message can be
broadcast to the entire college immediately.
and it is this
unpredictable nature of such tragedies which is absolutely disturbing. there is equal chance of it happening in any other US campus, and I can almost imagine it happening in mine, seriously. and i dare say, even after it had happened to VT, if there is just one guy who decides to do the same thing in my college one fine day, there is nothing that could be done that could have lessen the tragedy.
this is, sadly, a consequence of just one of the social illnesses in this country. Look, i am not trying to be biased against US, but say, in singapore, "Your drove me into a corner" will most likely translate into leaping off the 12th storey of a flat instead. Tthe only solution here, allow me to say something which is completely useless, is to completely change the crux on which this society is built on, and in particularly, correcting the method of venting one's disatisfaction towards anything.
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11:01 PM
