Performances

So, once again, it's time for what is becoming a weekly ritual. This week has gone quite splendidly, all things considered. Most of the time was taken up studying for my last midterm exam, but after it went by today, I feel much better, like having been given a reprieve. And this weekend will be long because of the election on Tuesday. Will be going over to Philadelphia again on Saturday, but will be back on Tuesday to do a sociology project that involves actually going into polling stations and observing interactions there. It's an unparalleled opportunity! Not only will we get access to an area of American society that hasn't really been studied sociologically before, but simply being even tangentially related to what in all likelihood will be a historic election is exciting enough in itself! To think that, a few months ago, I was using one of Barack Obama's speeches to teach an English class. Now, Obama's been on this campus, and I'll actually be involved in the election process that will decide his fate. It's mind-boggling to think how things have lined themselves up so nicely, how things have come to this.

Outside, the weather has taken a turn towards coldness. The leaves are finally starting to turn colour, and it has become quite an ordeal to walk through corridors, which funnel winds to supersonic speeds and produce a proportional windchill. The wind is generally confounding outside, really, as it flows through the streets nd avenues, now deflected this way, now diverted that way, so that as you walk through the city you can never tell the direction from which the wind will assault you next. And nighttime temperature are near freezing; it's snowed upstate already, as well as in New Jersey, and I'm told that any time now we can expect to see at least some sleet in New York City. The other day, idly looking out a window in a classroom, I thought I saw the first signs of snow, as a rain drizzle turned finer, and the water droplets started to flutter most suggestively in the wind. In the end, it turned out that it was not snow, but for a time I was seized by a certain measure of wonder, which reminded me of the first time I touched snow, in the Italian alps. all those years ago.

The last week has been dominated by two things, the elections and the preparations for Halloween. In terms of the former, TVs all over campus have been tuned to news channels more often, and every night brings excellently hilarious late-night comedy takes on the day's politics, from the Colbert Report to the Daily Show and, each week, Saturday Night Live. And today, on a random trip into the city to celebrate the end of a week of studying, I was on a bus passing through Times Square when I saw a forlorn little group of about a dozen Republicans holding "McCain-Palin" placards, surrounded by a platoon of police officers and having their pictures taken by throngs of tourists. Indeed, what's stood out about this election ever since I got here is not so much the candidates' positions on the issues, but the comedic elements that come out of their campaigns, from the gaffes of Sarah Palin to the little Republican demonstration in Times Square, which had the superficiality and futility of a gesture of resistance in the face of an implacable force.

And on the other hand, the campus dining halls have been festooned with skulls, pumpkins, ghostly shapes and cobwebs, to the extent that walking in for a meal is like entering some sort of fantastical funhouse. Even the desserts have been colour-coded to match the pumpkin heads and witch's hats. People in the hallways and the corridors speak of the costumes that they are preparing; some students even went to class over the last few days in costumes (I was in a lift with a Cheshire cat the other day). Not having experienced Halloween before, I find all this rather cute - especially in how the actual practices and traditions of Halloween so closely match what I had read in children's books. Who would have thought that people really did go door to door asking for tricks or treats?

*

Last Saturday, one of my friends from CUE asked me to join him for a play in nearby Riverside Church, which is a grand and ornate structure that has been converted from simply being a religious building to being a community centre. The performance of Brecht's Baal was put up by the masters programme in theatrical directing, much in the same way that the TSD programme in VJC puts up semesterly performances. Tickets were for $5, but with the power of our Columbia IDs we got in free, and it was a steal. Certainly, I would have been happy to pay them $5 for the show that they put up.

The plot of the play is somewhat convoluted. As far as I can make out, it is the depiction of the journey of one man into deeper levels of depravity and extremism as he explores the outer boundaries of human experience, quickly checking off the seven deadly sins as he careens from drunken parties to rapes, profanity, drugs and murder. There were some great lines, especially when Baal (the titular main character) is trying to shrug off the clinging loyalty of his pregnant lover. But the strength and power of the play came mostly from the masterful stageplay: the elaborate set, the ingenious scene changes, the splendid costumes, the integration of a live band and a trio of drag queens into the stagework, the use of a night-vision video camera. It was beyond question a technically competent play. And, coming at the end of a long day of studying (as usual), and right after an afternoon of incredible gusty stormbursts, it was even more poignant to watch, even if I didn't really get the meanings in the words.

On Sunday, I decided to go to Brooklyn College to attend a radio play performance by LA Theatreworks. Some of you may remember that I posted one of their radio plays on this blog before, after I'd heard it on the BBC World Service a few months back. This was the play about a psychic/con-man trying to defraud a client of her inheritance, raising the issue of how hard it is to tell between magical clairvoyance and powerful observation and deduction skills. I had been extremely taken by that radio play, and when I saw a performance by them advertised in the Columbia Arts newsletter, I knew I had to make the trip down there to watch it.

Brooklyn College is at the end of the No. 2 subway line, and between Manhattan and the College, the train passes through a large swath of predominantly black neighbourhoods. It is really clear when you enter Brooklyn, because suddenly all the non-blacks get off the train, and I was left as the only non-black in my carriage. It also just so happened that I was reading a book for my sociology class on racial dynamics, and it was somewhat strange to be reading about anti-black discrimination and ghetto formation when all around me were the very people the book was referring to. I was half afraid that someone would glance over at my book and then be offended, but I was even more uncomfortable with the thought that the unbelievable racism being described in the book was actually a reality - the results of which are the people who were riding with me in the subway.

Anyway, when I got to the College, I was in for a stroke of luck, because the show was not sold out, and the box office was pushing tickets at a 33% discount. However, just as I was about to buy the ticket, a teacher from NYU walked into the box office and offered to sell some spare subsidised tickets she had for 50% of the price. It was an offer that was too good to be turned down, so I quickly purchased one of her tickets, and saved myself 50% of the price. It's the second time something like this has happened to me, and I'm beginning to think that rushing for last-minute tickets for non-Broadway performances is an eminently doable thing, with a high chance for a profitable outcome.

LA Theatreworks was putting up a double bill, recreating Orson Welles' infamous broadcast of War of the Worlds and performing a kitschy melodrama, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. It was an interesting mix of stageplay and radio play, with the actors wearing costumes and acting out a limited range of actions, while at the same time being always stuck to their onstage microphones and producing their own sound effects. It was a treat to watch them, as well as to simply close one's eyes and listen to the performance and enjoy the sensation of images being created by sound in one's mind. The two plays also produced an interesting contrast, as the actors reproduced some measure of the terror of Welles' original broadcast (which had been so frightening and realistic that it had sent listeners into a panic), while The Lost World was unabashedly kitschy, complete with damsels in distress, caricatured heroes and villains, and many, many instances of Deux ex machina. All in all, though, it was great fun for a Sunday afternoon. And on top of it, I got to see another part of New York too.

*

And tomorrow, will pop down to Greenwich Village to watch yet another performance. The great Halloween parade takes place tomorrow at sundown, and it is reputed to be filled with ingenious costumes and irrepressible characters. It's something that is on the scale of Christmas, but is apparently perenially underrated. Will go down to have a peek, to get a feel of what holidays in New York are like. And even after tomorrow, there is still the long weekend ahead. After the last two weeks of intense working, seeing all this time ahead of me is a very welcome relief!

Brighton Beach

Thursday is fast becoming my favourite day of the week, because it is the one school day on which I can go off campus right after classes. It's also the last day of classes for each week, and so there is a special pleasure to finishing the last lesson of the week, and straightaway scooting off into the subway station. I still feel like I don't get off campus nearly enough, what with prodigious amounts of reading and the studying for the various exams this week eating up all my time. Thursdays, then, represent the one day in the week when I feel I am entitled to spend a few hours simply riding the subway, walking around and enjoying the afternoon and evening.

*

But before I get into today's little sojourn, just a note about last Saturday, which was my only totally free day of last week. Took the chance to go to the NYPL again, laden with books to study, with the intention of taking long walks around lunchtime and after completing the day's work quota. For lunch, walked a few blocks westward to grab a couple of hotdogs and a banana drink from Gray's Papaya, which serves two frankfurters topped with sauerkraut and a drink in their Recession Special. This simple meal actually tastes remarkably good and wholesome, and Anthony Bourdain swears by the food in this place, so what's not to like? And the store itself too is a sort of social barometer: it attracts all sorts of people, from the homeless to tourists to people working around Midtown. And the price of the Recession Special, too, is portentious: you know the economy is going downhill when the price for this special offer goes up.

After a second bout of studying, took a longer walk to 39th Street and 9th Avenue. That placed me in the midst of Hell's Kitchen, formerly the red light district of Manhattan. It has been considerably cleaned up, and whatever seediness that still lingers there is used to add a certain edgy flair to the weekend flea market that occupies a junction in that area. And this was a real flea market, with racks of used coats, antiques, bric-a-brac and artwork. When I walked into it, it was like walking into a fairytale, because it so closely fit my idealised vision of what a flea market should look like.

The prices must be cheap for antiques, but they are still beyond the reach of a cash-strapped student, so it was with a heavy heart that I forewent a battered typewriter and a working gramophone. There were also tin signs for sale, the kind that you find hanging in diner-themed fast-food restaurants advertising 5-cent Cokes and 25-cent hamburgers. When I get my next stipend, I will consider buying half a dozen of those for my room's walls. All the same, though the next step is clearly to actually try to carry out a transaction rather than just browsing, it was an enjoyable hour spent pottering around old things and the lively characters who were trying to hawk them. And after that, like a bonus, I found the Midtown skyline towards the East totally lit up by the rays of the setting sun. The sight made me feel as if I'd really stumbled upon something secret and wonderful, something that few people know about and can have the privilege of experiencing.

*

So, the days passed and two exams were taken. Enough said about that. And at three o'clock, the moment classes ended, I left campus rightaway, not stopping to dump my books in the room. You really feel the confinement, when you spend more than a few days in the same place. It's like being in camp; you look forward to the next day when you can book out and leave. And setting off at a brisk walk out of the campus gates felt especially sweet today, for the sun was shining, the weather was brilliant, I was still on top of things workwise, and I had passed through two exams earlier in the week.

I felt like going somewhere far away this time, somewhere far from the hustle and bustle of Manhattan. Descending into the subway system, I took a line that I'd never been on before, to go to Coney Island and Brighton Beach, holding in mind that I'd better get out there and have a look at the Atlantic coastline of Brooklyn before it got too cold to venture out like that. And so it was that I changed trains at Times Square and hopped on a Q to Brooklyn.

Some of the trains on this line are much newer, and compared to the rickety 1 trains, they are positively space-age, with LED stop indicators and LCD screens. And one additional treat is that this line crosses the East River not through a tunnel but by crossing the Washington Bridge, the one just North of the Brooklyn Bridge. So, after humming and clanking its way through the tunnels of Manhattan, the train suddenly took a turning and burst out into the daylight, and there was a wonderful view of the Financial District beyond the Brooklyn Bridge, with the waters of the East River sparkling in the afternoon sun. The train made its way slowly across the bridge, and in the meantime, gazing at the skyline, tracing the ferries wending their way below, and glimpsing the Statue herself far out in the bay, I was so caught up in the view that I couldn't bring myself to look away, even to grab my camera. Anyway, I'm sure it won't be the last time I cross the Washington Bridge in a subway train, and the next time, I'll be prepared.

In Brooklyn, the train runs underground through the downtown district, all the way to Prospect Park, and then the tracks run at grade, before they finally become elevated near the coastline. Along the way, therefore, there was a lot to see: ranch-style houses set on tiny lots abutting the tracks, cinderblock rowhouses and school buildings, streets that are charming in their anonymity (Avenues A through U). And then, the train finally arrived at Brighton Beach. Spent some time exploring the neighbourhood around the station, known as Little Odessa. And it really looks the part, with Russian signs, pedestrians conversing in Russian and the Russian word for vodka displayed prominently in shop windows. Even the fashion of the people on the street is different, with people wearing heavy coats and the fur-lined hats with floppy ears that you see in the movies, so that you feel like they just parachuted in from the freezing wastes of Siberia. Set against this frigid exterior are cafes and restaurants filled with raucous Russians intent over steaming food and drinks, though on this occasion I didn't feel confident (or rich) enough to step in and try to find out what it's like.

Brighton Beach itself is a splendid stretch of sand, somewhat narrower than the Gold Coast beaches in Australia, but pristine and expansive by Singaporean standards. And there is a boardwalk that runs between the residential developments of Brighton Beach and the sands themselves. From this boardwalk, you have an unobstructed view of the beach and the great Atlantic beyond, and it's a great place to simply sit and bask in the sun, while watching various Russians wandering up and down the walk. There was one family with several young children playing in a playground set that had been placed rather oddly in the middle of the beach (it reminded me of Bergman, somehow - it must be due to the incongruous feeling I got from seeing this playground set against the great expanse of the beach that makes for an absurd sandbox). And then there were a couple of girls sitting on the rails of the boardwalk nearby, no more than ten or eleven in age, debating between themselves in American English whether I (I was sitting nearby) was a lady or a man, while their grandmother admonished them gently in Russian. After that episode, I resolved to get a haircut.

The other thing about Brighton Beach is nearby Coney Island, the renowned theme park, home of such ageless wonders as the Cyclone rollercoaster (my guidebook tells me that it's the most imitated coaster in the world) and the Wonder Wheel, which used to be the largest ferris wheel in the world. Now that summer is over, though, the park is closed, and there was a certain pathos in looking at the shuttered stalls, the fenced-up grounds and the great and silent rides. There is a special kind of poignancy in an empty and closed-down fairground, isn't there? Nearby, a lot had been turned into a parking lot for about a hundred bright yellow schoolbuses, and in a hardcourt next to the theme park, two teams of local boys were in football training, running and dribbling and shooting to the staccato commands yelled by their Russian coaches.

By far the biggest attraction, though, was the sunset. Like I said, the boardwalk offers unobstructed views of the Atlantic, and by walking from Little Odessa to Coney Island, I was able to pass enough time to watch the sun setting into the sea. And what a stunning sunset it was, the goldburst creating the most striking silhouettes. It was a great feeling, somehow, to be out in the open, under a clear cloudless sky and on the very brink between afternoon and evening. And as the colours shifted to gold, I increasingly found myself drawn again and again to my camera, as the colours and the light and the shadows interacted to form scenes that positively demanded to be recorded.

I am a sucker for sunsets. But I think part of the appeal also has to do with the openness of the sky and the sea. After a week spent in classrooms, dining hall and dorm room, just being in a wide open space was deeply refreshing. Places like the Washington Bridge Park from two weeks ago, the Hell's Kitchen Flea Market and Brighton Beach are just right antidote for the claustrophobia that creeps up on me after a week of school. And it is a real relief to find that New York itself can actually provide such relief. New York is, after all, so much more than just Manhattan, and even as I am getting to know that small island better and better, there is still the challenge of appreciating the real range of opportunities being offered by the city as a whole.

Taking

And so, life rolls on. It has been a busy week, with the scramble of work that has by now become the norm. However, it is time to call it a night, to call it a week, even. Next week brings examinations, more reading and another essay. However, next week is still some days away. And now, at the end of today, this is the time, I think, to take a breather and write for myself. Whether or not I can actually spare the time, this is the thing to be done.

And now that I look back at the week, I think that it has been very good, actually. After a couple of months here, I think I am beginning to learn what to expect, and how to behave appropriately. I am beginning to get a sense of what is important and what is not, and I am more able to tailor my responses to what I encounter, rather than having the innocence of the newcomer that forces you to accept and absorb everything. Yes, it does constitute the closing of my mind to some things; but then, I am able to open my mind further in other aspects. And I realise that even here, the principles that I learned earlier still hold. The principles are sound, and it is something very reassuring to realise.

Anyway, I am on the brink of finishing the script for NOMADS. It has been a rather trying process, but now that the back of the beast has been broken, and we're nearing the point where I will be taking a back seat and letting the actors and director orchestrate the last stages of the production, I find that I can look back with a measure of amusement. The process has taken on the romantic and nostalgic tinge of hindsight. And I find myself coming out of the process with a better idea of what I can write, and how I can write about it. That much, at least, is a gain that cannot be denied.

*

The other big thing that happened over the weekend was that suddenly New York was flooded with students from Cornell and UPenn, because it was their fall break and they all decided to visit the big city. The Singaporean society in Columbia is really tiny, as I've already remarked upon, and suddenly to be among dozens of Singaporeans was rather disconcerting. It got to the point where we were bumping into Singaporeans on the streets in Midtown. Over the last two months, I had grown to treat the streets of New York as essentially anonymous spaces; whereas the Columbia campus is so small that you can expect to run into someone you know the moment you step out into a corridor or walkway, the grids of New York offer refuge from surprise socialisation. So, it was really strange suddenly to see these streets populated with familiar faces.

I think, though, that if you put too many Singaporeans together in a context like this, it becomes exceedingly unhealthy. There is a certain edge in a big group of Singaporeans in a foreign place that immediately strikes me as uncomfortable; it is like you suddenly become highly self-conscious, and you are trying to prove yourself to be worldly and engaged. Suddenly, you need to demonstrate that you are enjoying yourself immensely, to the point when your life and position become enviable by others. This is of course not to say that all Singaporeans are naturally insecure in a foreign environment; however, it seems to be the case that it takes only a few insecure people to set the tone and spark off this sort of status competition, and in a big group, one is simply more likely to encounter one or two of this kind of character.

Anyway, why do we cleave towards the familiar so much? I find that, even though I resolve to expose myself to as many new experiences as possible, I am myself drawn to familiar things - routines, friends, settings. I am perfectly aware that this means that I am missing out on things that I don't even have any conception of, and that I am nurturing a sneaking suspicion that I am shortchanging myself, and yet, the familiar carries such a seductive quality to it. Thus, even though a big Singaporean group is predictably cumbersome, I still want to seek them out, just to see what they are like even if for nothing else. I wonder what it will take to break away from that tendency.

*

But anyway, the weekend was grand because many friends were in New York for the holiday. Picked up Joel on Saturday morning in Chinatown, and then spent the day wandering around Chinatown, a block party outside Columbia, Midtown, Greenwich and Union Square. We spent a good three hours near Union Square, browsing a used-CD shop and the Strand bookstore (18 miles of books! What a bookhunt it was - practically every shelf had some sort of treasure on it). It was really sheer bliss to throw all of one's concerns and work into the air, and to simply walk the streets. And walking these streets with Joel, sinking back into the easy banter that can lead us from Aeschylus to dinky little plastic footstools, from dim sum to the American election, and everything in between, was simply great. What else can I say? I was glad to see him, and to bring him around a bit.

On Sunday, went down to Chinatown to pick up a whole group of UPenn people, most of which I had met on my previous trip down to Philly. Then, spent the whole day bringing them around, from Chinatown to Times Square (where the girls singlehandedly boosted the American economy by indulging themselves at the Hersheys and M&M's stores) and then to 5th and 6th Avenue. There, by sheer chance, we bumped into a parade and a colossal street fair, both of which closed the two avenues for a good thirty or forty blocks south of Central Park.

It was apparently a Latin American to-do, with samba music, Carnivalesque costumes and a kaleidoscope of flags. On 6th Ave, floats carrying TV stars, singers, bands and dancers rolled past - and I think one of the cars carried the ambassador of Argentina, with that country's Miss World nominee in the next car. On 5th, stalls selling Greek, French, Thai and Dominican food tesselated themselves at every junction, while the stretches in between were filled with all manner of stalls. Whereas the street fair got repetitive after a couple of blocks, the pulse of the music from the parade and the crowd of people out on this stunningly sunny day gave everything a festive air nonetheless. And all this, of course, was taking place in the midst of the the towers of Midtown, a stunning setting for a huge party.

Later, I found out that this was part of the Columbus Day celebrations. But at that point in time, I had not known that something was going on on 5th and 6th Avenues. I had actually intended to bring them to the NYPL via these avenues so that they could take a look at the ridiculous pricetags, and we ran into this event out of sheer luck. In Singapore, to run into a single street performer is a thing of delight; elsewhere, I would be happy with chancing upon a flea market (like in Penang, or the spontaneously appearing night food market in Kota Kinabalu). However, in New York, and on the very day that these people came to visit, we had the luck to stumble upon a colossal celebration stretching through the spine of Manhattan. What can I say? Things simply happen here.

After that, we finally ended up at the NYPL, and then from there we went to Grand Central, took the subway down to the Financial District and visited the Century21 discount store, which is right next to the WTC site. After that, I had to pop back to school to attend a NOMADS meeting, but Joel took the UPenn people to the Staten Island Ferry, and they took a ride just as the sun was setting. Apparently, there were incredible sights to be seen from that trip. And then, after that, it was back to Times Square, dinner on 9th Avenue, then back to Chinatown to send some of the UPenn people onto the bus back to Philly.

It was great to be able to spend this weekend showing them around New York, to finally put my trusty guidebook and the experience of two months in this city to its best use so far. And as luck would have it, the weather and the city itself was all too happy to cooperate to throw surprises and delights into our path. It was a great chance to see the city on one of the last days of summer; and certainly, if these people had not come down to New York on Sunday, I would have totally missed the Columbus Day event. As it turned out, though, it was one magic day, and I'm glad that there were people to share it with.

*

Oh - one more thing. I spent the weekend redecorating the room, rearranging the furniture and the posters a bit, and I created a little sitting area, so now I can actually have people in my room and not have them sit on the floor. Anyway, part of that sitting area is a great upholstered dining chair that I picked up on the street in Midtown on Saturday when I was walking around with Joel. Apparently, someone had just thrown it out, and it was just sitting on the sidewalk. It looked perfectly good, freshly dumped, so I decided to take it. And so, for the evening of Saturday, I was walking around Midtown with this chair tucked under one arm, eventually taking it to NYU and Rockefeller Centre, where we met up with some of the Cornell Singaporeans, who predictably though it was ridiculous to take a chair off a sidewalk. And maybe it is. But now, I have a nice chair in my room, courtesy of New York City and its overly-rich denizens in Midtown, and it was well worth the investment of time and effort to carry it back.

It was also a great sociological experiment. Things are such in New York that no one found it strange that I was carrying a chair along the sidewalks, and even when I took it into the subway, people were happy to accommodate the extra bulk. It did attract several comments on the subway, though, especially when I sat in it right next to one of the normal, un-upholstered subway seats, but they were mostly made out of amusement. No one begrudged me my new chair. Of course, if you tried the same thing in Singapore, you'd probably attract a lot of unwanted attention from the MRT staff or the police before you got it back home. In Singapore, I would not even try a stunt like this. But, luckily, this isn't Singapore, and you must make the most of the opportunities that you find in front of you.

Bridges

It has been a rather good week so far! Have been clearing work at a good pace, and passed up my last essay of the week on Wednesday, meaning that I could take something of a break today, which explains why I am here writing now rather than reading something for class. Also, have managed to squeeze in some more writing for the NOMADS script. It's nearing completion: one more scene to write, and then that's it, and I can deliver a product to the drama troupe (although it's unlikely that this will be the end of the editing phase). The biggest problem by far is trying to make the storyline cohere. At the moment the play is still very much three character studies clumped together into 30 minutes, and the plotline is really just there for decoration. And on Monday, one of the producers asked what the play was about, and why the audience needed to see it. Good questions: unfortunately as things have worked out, I don't know if we can find an answer before the performance date.

At any rate, with this approach to playwriting, this is the big challenge for the playwriter: to somehow find a way to combine the character profiles into a compelling story, to tease meaning out of an arbitrary combination of factors. It's a rather postmodernist approach, and I don't think the audience will be particularly impressed if we do actually end up giving them the disjointed sequence of scenes that is the current play. In its current form, I don't believe the script is worth staging; or, if it is staged, I don't think it is worth watching.

*

Speaking of watching, in Astronomy lab this week, we finally got to do some actual observations, pointing our telescopes at the Moon. It's my first time with a telescope of any appreciable power, and it's amazing to see the amount of detail and resolution in the eyepiece. Even though we're observing in New York, where the atmosphere is less than clean of both light and particulate pollution, the telescope just cut through all that distance and air to bring the ridges, craters and seas of the Moon into sharp focus. It really is an epiphanic moment; suddenly, an alien world is within grasp of your intellect. And there is also a moment of clarity, when one's previous idealised notions of the Moon (since it functions more as a symbol that stands for something else rather than an object in itself) are transmuted by one's observations of the real thing.

Of course, beyond the Moon, there was also a stunning view of the city by night. The observatory is situated on the roof of the tallest building on campus, and from there, the surrounding neighbourhoods of Morningside and Harlem glitter in the night. In the picture above, you can just see Midtown in the distance, and the big bright building is Butler Library on Columbia's campus. The picture was taken in the telescope dome, so the dark shapes are the dome and the telescope itself, and the Moon is also easily spotted.

*

Beyond watching the skies, Wednesday also brought a chance to watch a Broadway musical. Last month, as I had written before, Columbia's Arts Initiative Programme suddenly made available free tickets to watch Wicked, and they were quickly snapped up. Went with C to watch this show, which was my first Broadway experience - and it left me hungering for more.

Broadway shows seem to occupy a unique place in the popular psyche, able to pull at heartstrings and delight even the most cynical audience members. The closest thing that I can find from previous experience to compare this with is Bollywood, with its large-scale musical pieces and intervening dramatic scenes. And just like in Bollywood, Wicked was extremely effective at invoking emotions, balancing humour with sadness, righteousness with indignation, and finishing off with an ending that is deeply feel-good (this is not to say that it's a shallow ending - though my pro-tragedy tastes prompted me to prefer a darker, more poignant finish - and yet, we must remember that Broadway attracts crowds by being entertaining, and a sad ending spells a failed musical). And needless to say, all the props, costumes and makeup were opulent, and the choreography and stageplay were professional beyond anything I think I can achieve.

And most satisfyingly, the story itself too is rather complex, so it's not child's play to watch Wicked. As you already know, the musical is based on the story of The Wizard of Oz, except that it complicates things, not only blurring the lines between good and evil, truth and falsehood, love and hatred, intelligence and stupidity, but going so far as to erase them altogether. What results is an entrancing mix of characters and plot trajectories that seem disparate but actually ultimately link together into a great web of reciprocal influences and causality. Thus small details from early on in the play come back to become the key to understanding the happenings at the end of the play. Thus, seemingly innocuous happenings shape the outcome of the plot decisively. One of the best examples is how a normal girl gets to become green, with a pointy hat, a cloak and a broom; the Wicked Witch of the West is not presented to us as a finished product, but we are allowed to see how she is shaped and formed, and that awareness negates the possibility of glib generalisations and stereotyping.

And of course, simply being out on the town is a nice feeling. After the show, wandering down to Times Square from the Broadway theatres with C, I felt like I had been part of something larger, something special. As I said before, things happen here in New York: you can feel it, you know it, and most important of all, you can be part of it.

*

And since today's a bit of a lull for me, I took the chance to get away from school and decided to explore the Brooklyn riverside. I'd previously gone there with CUE when we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, but this time round I had much more time to spend there, and there was daylight. It's just nice, of course, to wander the streets of New York in and of itself: taking the subway somewhere else, listening to the rails singing metallic, and then finding yourself in a new place where your status of stranger is simultaneously your greatest vulnerability and your greatest asset.

But today's exploration of the Brooklyn riverside was even more rewarding than just being a nice walk. The area is really beautiful! The architecture is more interesting and varied than in Morningside, and the whole district has been done up rather nicely. Urban renewal, gentrification, or whatever else you want to call it, has done a good job sprucing up the place. But at the same time, the area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges remains a place for cultural ferment, chock full of art galleries, indie cinemas and little performance spaces stuffed into old industrial buildings.

And when you're tired of walking around these delightful and handsome streets, simply head to the river. The Brooklyn Bridge Park has absolutely stunning views of Manhattan and the Bridge itself; further up, on an escarpment, the Fruit Street Sitting Area give a less touristified vantage point right next to a high-class residential neighbourhood. The former has now displaced the NYPL as my favourite place in New York, and I spent a couple of hours there on the grass watching the sun go down. And it also helped that today was an unseasonably warm day, warm enough to wear summer clothes in; and the bluesky day ultimately produced a sunset that was beautiful enough to stop anyone in their tracks. Watching the goldburst turn to red, and watching the water and the glass on the buildings reflecting the splendour, suddenly you realise that it is a good thing to be alive. The ludicrous beauty of the view is just what one needs to make living worth it.

City of Red Brick

This week was relatively uneventful, but ended with a short jump to Boston to attend the Singapore Seminar, a gathering of Singaporeans in the States organised by the PSC. The organisation of the seminar itself struck me as rather cynical: the new PSC chairman unabashedly acknowledged that the purpose of the seminar was to maintain scholars' emotional attachment to Singapore. On the one hand, the fact that they think we need to have our emotional attachment maintained wrongs us by assuming that our resolve or morality were so weak that we cannot do this ourselves. On the other hand, the fact that this is an issue at all reveals such fragile levels of commitment among the young people who have been chosen to be the next generation of mandarinate leaders in the civil service. Neither notion is flattering

Also, predictably, the seminar itself was more show than substance. Predictably, when you put 140 officials and scholars together in a conference room, everyone is somehow compelled to take things more seriously than they warrant. So there was a striking amount of posturing and self-congratulation - as if we needed any more reassurance that our (future) bosses are important and influential people, and that the calling that we have chosen will be nothing if not demanding. The usual range of platitudes were recited (we need a more politically engaged population, we can't rely on the government to do everything etc etc), with no progress on how one should go about bringing them to fruition. Generally, then, it was the usual situation of an official event pretending to be more important than it really is.

Fortunately, for most of the people at the SingSem, the objective of attendance, far from being the lukewarm discussions, was the chance to meet old friends and acquaintances again. Once again, I am struck by the rather limited circle that we've been moving around in ever since secondary school. Many faces were familiar, if not outright friendly. But all the same, it was good to be with old friends again, among them YS, Joel and Jes. And more generally, it was a good time to compare notes and trade tips about collegiate life, especially from the people who've already been studying in the States for several years.

And when you put so many Singaporeans together, suddenly it becomes feasible to maintain a national clique. The use of Singlish, the clipped tones of conversation, the familiar hand signals and the use of common symbols to invoke nostalgia for home (nasi lemak, chicken rice, chili crab) suddenly all become acceptable, as the group is large enough to impose its mannerisms on the ambient social situation on the streets. Several groups of Singaporeans first met up for dinner on Friday at a local Chinese restaurant (lobster, fried crab, mushrooms and caixin, caixin and oyster sauce, fish head soup, Hainanese chicken), and then we trawled the streets of Cambridge, Boston for other itinerant groups, so that the Singaporean gathering expanded over time.

It also helped that we had a local contact, in the form of SJ, an old secondary-school classmate from the PRC, who had gotten into Harvard, and who had happened to get into contact with me (after years of having fallen out of contact) just days before we were scheduled to arrive in Boston. With his help, our group wended our way through the quaint streets of Cambridge, past Harvard's handsome brick buildings to end up finally at the banks of the Charles River. Then we went to his suite to hang out for a while.

Although it was night-time, it was clear that Harvard's facilities and environment far outstrip what Columbia can offer. The rooms are ridiculously spacious (to the point of making all the Columbia students' hearts break with jealousy), the buildings themselves exude stylishness and solidity in their architecture, and the streets and lawns are neat and well-kept. And today, we continued the self-demoralisation by visiting a dorm in MIT too, which belonged to C, who I have not talked to in years either.

(On a side note, it is clear from just walking through the environs of these colleges that these are special places, and that the people in them are brilliant beyond decency. Walking past a group of MIT or Harvard students is like running a gauntlet - I swear, you can feel the buzz of intelligence and genius in the air, and you feel somewhat like a trespasser. Also, there is a certain exclusivity and insularity in the campuses. The streets run through the campus, but many plots are surrounded by security fencing and thus only provide visual enjoyment to the random passerby)

Anyway, besides making ourselves resolve to transfer to Harvard and MIT, or at least to do summer courses there, we also took some time out to visit the city itself. We arrived in Chinatown on the aptly named Chinatown Bus, and had a glimpse of downtown before we went into the little streets of Chinatown itself to look for a nice place to eat. The Chinatown is not very big, and is mixed with a Little Saigon. However, we found a supermarket in Boston's Chinatown that is superior to its New York cousins in one crucial respect: it stocks durians. They are strange, misshapen, unstinky durians from California, but still, they have green, spiked shells. I could hardly believe my eyes when I found them.

Yesterday night, after checking into the hotel, we took a long walk from near MIT to Harvard, passing a street lined with bars and college-age revelers out to welcome the weekend, a small plaza in which a garage band was playing, Harvard's endearingly handsome dorm buildings, and the Charles River, spanned by elegant bridges dramatically lit up at night, and lined by a long strip of grass and historic buildings strikingly highlighted by spotlighting. And then today, we went down to MIT, looked at some of its impressive array of modern buildings (quite the opposite from Harvard's style - and I am told that one of the MIT buildings was even designed by I.M. Pei), then went back to the Charles River, where we took some really stunning photos of the Boston skyline, and then made our way to Massachusetts Avenue via Fenway.

And I have to say that Boston really is a gorgeous place, a place more in keeping with Singaporean tastes (if I may be so bold as to assume that such a thing exists and that Singaporeans generally subscribe to it). The streets are wide and clean, the subways are modern and fully functional, and many of the downtown buildings are less than 30 years old, giving rise to exciting cityscapes. The river district is especially seductive, with the wide river flowing, royal-blue, through the centre of town, lined by tree-lined banks and brick or glass-sided office towers rising gently in the background. For me, it sets a standard f0r what a city can do to exist integrally with its river. And all throughout the city are old, quaint buildings which are either Victorian or turretted apartment blocks built out of a deep-red brick. The effect is to create dignified streetscapes with dramatic contrasts of colour: the walls and the foliage. The beauty of Boston (combined with the splendid weather) took my breath away more than once.

As for the people, they are clearly more helpful than the average New Yorker, though they do fall short of the kind of generosity I saw in Philadelphia. An exception must, however, be made for students, who are liable to behave somewhat erratically. Also, I do feel somehow that racial awareness is more acute in Boston than in either Philadelphia or New York. People actually do complain in your face if they see a whole group of ethnic Chinese walking along; of course, it could only be that we were making too much noise or taking too much space, but I think there is no ignoring a certain condescension or criticism in their once-over glances. Nevertheless, encounters with members of the public are generally civil and polite; the streets feel safer there if you're a traveler with no knowledge of local norms.

All the same, beyond the stunning city and the enviable schools, the real attraction was really the chance to interact with old friends again. SJ and C are people with whom I haven't talked in years, and I got the chance to visit them in their schools in Boston over the weekend. Also, there were nice moments when Jes, Joel and I were poking holes in the arguments presented at the SingSem, and trying (not very hard, though) to stifle our giggles at some absurdities we uncovered. And YS was guiding us around Boston, so it was like old times again, travelling with my old flightmate and exploring a place. There was even a river scene, which reminded me of the times previously when we had also sought out foreign rivers, and other times beside other rivers with other people.

*

It occurs to me that this trip up to Boston really is a sort of escapism on my part: an attempt to escape the stresses and routines of Columbia life, or to revisit some parts of the past. There really was a desire to just go somewhere - anywhere - else. So the delight at those moments in Boston were somewhat tempered by the thought of having to return to New York so quickly - New York, with its crumbling sidewalks, construction work at virtually every corner, its fantastically complex and unpredictably operating subways. And while New York is a monumental, awesome city, Boston is more livable, more humane in some ways too. Boston feels real, whereas there are places in New York that are so ingrained on popular culture and public conceptions that to be in the actual places strikes me as surreal.

And yet, when it actually came time to go, there was no real regret. After all, Columbia may be inferior in almost every aspect to the Boston colleges, but it has something that no other college has - New York City. And when, on the bus, the constellation that is the Manhattan night scene suddenly appears out of the darkness, and you see the complex interplay of lights in the night, suddenly you realise that this is New York City that you're going to, and nowhere else is quite like it. In Boston, things may be nicer, but here in New York, things happen. And you're right in the thick of it.