West to Easter: East

New Haven
Eating microwaveable food on the edge of Yale's campus green talking about Singaporeans
Stephanie is one of those friends. How does she do it? Energy and intellect, warmth and open arms. I admit that when I re-contacted my friends on the East Coast, I was pensive of how they would... react to seeing me? As it turns out - exactly how I would have reacted to seeing them. Energy and intellect, warmth and open arms. ENFJs. Like we've not missed a day. I've always considered my time in RJ to be full of wasted chances with people. I was a little moody at times, a prick and loner at other times; inconsistent energy and judgmental. I wonder if it was because I failed to get into both the student's council and choir - I consider those invaluable lessons nonetheless.

But back to Steph Siow. It was so refreshing to be among peers again, I mean Singaporeans who talked about being Singaporean here, even about being Singaporean in Singapore - which is a huge issue by the way - it was just indescribable how much we connected. My ego also shamelessly fed by a re-awoken sense of Singaporean humor that I never truly got with the Singaporeans at Northwestern (which is what I wanted, to be sure). [Steph, and later Ash would comment how I was one of the funniest people they knew] So this is what the comfort zone feels like. The Singaporeans who never left home, yet were open to absorbing America into their bloodstream. Patriots who aren't tribal. The foolish young Singaporeans who think Singapore can be saved from cultural entropy, and that America can teach us something.

I often jokingly/arrogantly rant about how I was part of a special art program but was never 'as eccentric' as the rest, only to realize later I truly am just as crazy and ironic and whatever you can describe us in different ways. The same is true of being Rafflesian.

So Steph had just woken up when I got to her place, and told me to wait about 10 minutes unless I wanted to meet her without her teeth brushed. There is an instant connection in that kind of humour, trust me. Or maybe not, maybe it was just hearing each others' voices, not having changed much, again...

We caught up tremendously; she's attached, like all the other Rafflesians I'd meet on this trip, which I cannot lie made me re-examine my life a little haha; she's now full-blown christian, she's still capable as hell yet humbly curious. She sort of 'used' me to return her books and take her profile picture but I couldn't care less, because that just added to the feeling that there wasn't any fake distance between us. When you're as obsessed about 'adapting' and purposefully pushing for difference as me, you will have one too many identity crisis (and I mean this in the least dramatic way possible; just to stop this post from spiraling down the self-absorbed/pity/emotional post it is headed towards fast). The long and thoughtful and amusing conversations with Steph Siow in this less than urban campus setting known as Yale University brought me back from the be-wilderness that is Northwestern; business, consulting, financing and all. After diving in the pool for so long, discovering and being around the biodiversity, it was like coming out of the pool or the sea and sitting on the ledge of the pool or boat, with your old friend, just talking about the sea and the stars. Fuck that was so dramatic sometimes I wonder if I'm ironic or not.

Importantly, we connected over the typical Singaporeans who just studied and never got out of their comfort zone in the US, about where Singapore was headed, about our schools and cultures and American politics, etc. We diverged in what we were doing with our time mostly. She's on the church side, and I remain stubbornly lost in the center. Will I go for the full 180 next year?

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These posts have lost some energy, like all my posts frankly, as the days drag on by in Northwestern.

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On the way to New Haven, you have to pass the train station 'West Haven'; so in fact, new haven is... East... Haven.