Weekend Culture

It's gotten really cold here! It is literally freezing outside, and the weather reports show that it's started snowing all around New York City, even as close by as Philadelphia. We've apparently had some flurries here (mostly early-morning snowfall that melts before it reaches the ground), but I haven't actually seen any fallen (or, even better, falling) flakes yet. But the temperature's gotten low enough that I've taken to wearing my heavy coat all the time, with scarves and gloves and other knicknacks. If it gets any colder, or if I have to spend any length of time outside, then I'll need to start using my beanie too.

Thankfully, though, it hasn't been very humid. Cold rain is the most miserable thing I can imagine at this point in time. Rather, each day has been splendidly clear; or rather, whatever's left of the day, because the sun's only out from 7am to 5pm now, and even at noontime it feels like late afternoon. What gets you, though, is the wind chill, as the concrete canyons of Manhattan funnel the wind up and down the streets. Depending on the wind direction, some blocks will offer you complete protection from the wind, whereas all it takes is to cross the street to bring you right into the blast path. Each intersection must thus be approached carefully. And I find myself bracing mentally and physically before stepping out of buildings or subway stations, because you never know where a gust will come from and rob you of your built-up cocoon of warmth.

Anyway, before it becomes absolutely too cold to do anything outside, there have been several moments of surreality this week. One was when a drama troupe brought out a bright red casting couch and planted it under a tree that had just turned bright red from the cold, making for a remarkable colour combination, and the strange sight of a couch looking perfectly in place outdoors. Another was of a couple, all dressed up, eating a candlelit dinner in the dining hall, with a white tablecloth and silverware but the incongruous and brightly coloured dining hall dishes. It'll be kind of like guys in tuxedos tucking into canteen wanton mee at home. The thing is, though, that these apparently odd things don't seem so out of place here in New York. They chime with the flavour of the place.

*

This weekend, instead of going somewhere else, I decided to devote it to exploring New York instead. Like I said before, it has come to pass that although I've visited 5 states of the union, I haven't finished exploring the six blocks that comprise Columbia's tiny urban campus. Also, that means that while I've been having lots of fun outstate, I have really given a lot of things in New York a miss so far. So, as the weekend drew near, I looked forward to making some progress towards rectifying this oversight.

Yesterday, after a soothing couple of hours of chores (read: laundry and vacuuming - who would have thought that housework could be therapeutic?), went down with WL to join G in the NY Public Library for a couple of hours of studying. The Library is, of course, still as opulent and conducive to intellectual work as ever, and the others were, I think, also impressed with it - enough, I hope, that they will be willing to accompany me there the next time the urge hits. After 5pm, though, we made a quick hop over the the MoMA to join R and C, where we attended a free screening of Wall-E. It was a great film, and it was a pity that we couldn't catch it either in Singapore or here in NY, due to the unfortunate timing of the release dates and our flight dates. But yeah - Pixar and Disney really have hit upon a mother lode with their animation movies. Wall-E is great fun, and absolutely a delight to watch, both as a visual spectacle and as simply a feel-good story. Well, at any rate, I sure won't be able to look at an iPod in quite the same way ever again!

There was something else happening at the MoMA at the same time, though. There were great crowds in the main museum building, and when we entered the main lobby, all the walls on the upper atrium level were writhing with oversized projected videos of someone's face. We theorised that this was the overflow from the Van Gogh exhibit, but we didn't have time to stay to investigate, because the movie ended just in time for us to make a quick hop across the block to the New York City Centre theatre. There, we hooked up with J and YR, and the whole troop of us went to watch a reprisal of an old discontinued musical, On The Town. This, too, was great fun, with the plot set in 1944 New York, which meant that the performance was infused with jazz music and dance. The music loosened the limbs of all the dancers, and raised the voices of the singers magnificently, and I was left enthralled by the spectacle of a big-band musical, and wishing that more of the spirit of that age still existed around us. They definitely don't make musicals like they used to.

After that, we took a slow walk back to the 59th Street subway station, on the way passing by opulent 5th Ave and the apartments and hotels lining Central Park South. As winter deepens, New York is being gift-wrapped for the season. Fairy lights start to entwine the trees, glittering decorations festoon the buildings; one Cartier boutique was literally gift-wrapped, complete with ribbons and bow. And walking through the crowds that evening, everyone huddled in their coats, our breaths misting pleasantly in the air and our faces and ears burning urgently in the cold, it suddenly struck me that this was what I had been writing about, dreaming about, hoping for all this time: such a time of carefree walking down a street in the greatest city in the world, blending into the life there, and feeling as if you're participating in rather than only spectating at the life of the city.

And returning to Columbia, we stopped by a Chinese restaurant opposite the campus for supper, and I had a bowl of fishball and wanton kway teow. While it wasn't the nicest version I've ever had, it certainly was a big portion, and hot, and between the chopsticks, the noodles and the Singlish, the cold, monumental, kaleidoscopic city outside was thrown into even starker contrast. It takes something familiar to act as a yardstick so that you can see more clearly just how far you've come away from home. Such a day, such a night...it certainly cannot happen simply anywhere. We certainly aren't in Singapore anymore.

*

So yesterday was the longest outing I've had with the Columbia Singaporeans since coming here. It has taken all of four months for me to encounter what I had encountered in UPenn, Boston and UVa earlier. But I think this is really not a problem; the delay, after all, is partly because I haven't really been in NY much on the weekends to begin with. And it does make a difference that the Singaprean community here is smaller. It means that our little Singaporean group cannot sustain itself as a viable social group, and that everyone must be part of other social circles besides. And who's to say that such an arrangement is not optimal? I would venture to say that it's healthier to mix with more people, but to always have a core of friends that you can always rely on to fall back upon in times of need. And I hope that what I see forming now is in fact a situation like this.

Today was, in contrast, dominated by CUE people. Woke up early this morning to go with K to Union Square, where the weekly farmer's market has been turned into a weekly Christmas market. There were the usual food stalls and flower stalls, but beyond the familiar booths were new ones set up selling Christmas decorations and trinkets. I had not seen anything like it since the Marche Noel in Lyon seven years ago, and I had not expected to ever see anything like it again. And so, it was with especial delight that I discovered this warren of Christmas stalls, replete with fake snow and Christmas music. It definitely warrants another visit!

So anyway, K and I were walking through the market, with cups of hot apple cider in our hands to ward off the cold. There is a special sort of comtentment that you get when you drink something hot on a cold day. Your insides feel extremely pleasant with warmth, and one blows especially large clouds of misted breath that are somehow deeply satisfying. And as we walked down the aisles, she introduced me to the most wonderful sweet I've ever tasted: maple syrup candy. From what I can tell, it's hardened and dried maple syrup. It's as close to pure sweetness that I've ever come, and it comes in hard little blocks like ding1 dang1 tang2, with a powdery coating of extra maple syrup flakes. When you bite into it, it crumbles like a good cookie, with a fine consistency. And the sweetness - it explodes on your tongue. My first bite of it stopped me right in my tracks, so that I could better savour the flavour spreading throughout my mouth. It is definitely something that I recommend to everyone! If you ever come across it, buy some and try it. Then buy more. You won't regret it.

Came back to campus after a bit of shopping (K got more maple syrup in a cute log-cabin-shaped bottle, apparently a historical allusion to how maple syrup is traditionally made in log cabins, as well as some flowers for her aunt), and A dropped by for a bit of a chat. Showed her some photos and videos of Singapore (since she's from Trinidad, and I thought she'd appreciate the tropical scenery). Then took out lunch from the dining hall. Ran into T at the doors of Furnald, and had lunch in her room instead, because we don't meet up often enough, and it's been a long time since we've had the time to talk at length. So, as I tucked into passable lo mein (what a strange transliteration), we chatted about courses for the next semester, teacher-student relationships in the US, future job plans and writing for Lonely Planet.

After a bout of work in the afternoon that took up the rest of the daylight hours (I don't know - it feels wrong to squander sunset for homework, and if it were not so cold out, I think I'd spend every sunset at Riverside Park watching the sun go down slowly), J suddenly called to offer me a ticket to go watch an adaptation of The Canterbury Tales at nearby Riverside Theatre. The last time I'd gone with him to watch a play at Riverside, it was a staging of Brecht's Ball, and I'd thoroughly enjoyed the thought-provoking performance, so I quickly agreed. Hooked up with A again, as well as AW, and we all went to watch the play.

I have only read one page of Chaucer before, and I've certainly never seen any of his work staged before. Joel's mentioned The Canterbury Tales to me before, but I'd never really known what the play was about. Until I watched it tonight. It's basically a play about a group of misfit pilgrims, who tell each other stories to make their journey pass more easily. It is an intriguing premise, really; it reminds me of Tokyo Cancelled, which was a series of stories that a group of travellers stranded at an airport tell each other to pass the time till the next outbound flight. In Chaucer's play, the stories range from the moralistic to the salacious, from the religiously extremist to the downright vulgar. Each story was good fun, though, as aspects of the tale got amplified to absurd proportions in the retelling. What was especially intriguing was their use of props to reconfigure the set for each story. The pilgrims' carts turned into outhouses, tables, beds, trees, walls, prisons and anything else that was contingent to the stories. All it took was overturning the carts, setting them up on their ends, propping them against each other or joining them together. The audience's imagination, too, was pressed into service, just as the listeners of each tale in the pilgrimage would doubtlessly need to use their imaginations in the listening. The way that the travellers used whatever they could find on their own bodies or in their carts for props and scenery was also authentic, I think: on the road, you don't have the luxury of unlimited resources, and you draw on whatever's available and you make do as best you can.

At the end, a character playing Chaucer himself (ironically, it was a black girl - yet another example of the proud tradition of actor-character contradiction that started when Greek men played female parts in the days of Sophocles et al) broke the fourth wall to ask the audience: "Do we tell stories to ease our travels? Or do we travel for an occasion in which to tell stories?" It is an intriguing question. I would say that I do the latter more than the former. I would even go further to say that I travel to find stories to tell - some of which end up here. And as we move into winter (the first winter ever that I actually have to live through), I find, to my delight, that things are happening around me and to me that are actually worth retelling. That is the happy consequence of being in the right place at the right time.

Away

And so, over the weekend, I took off again, this time to Charlottesville, Virginia, on a trip to visit YS before she leaves at the end of her academic exchange. I hadn't realised how far south Virginia was when I bought the bus tickets, but it turns out that a nine-hour bus trip can really get you places. I'm told that Virginia is actually considered by some to be part of the South (meaning Confederate territory - the South in Southern Comfort and Southern Hospitality), and certainly, as the bus wended its way through the country highways and across the smooth, long Interstates, we got so far off the grid that people were burning wood for light in farmhouses and shacks, and for the first time since getting here, my phone had no reception.

At the end of the long bus rides, I found a small, quiet town tucked into rolling foothills, with roads lined with copious amounts of greenery and the buildings and roads adapting to the lay of the land. Here, civilisation treads lightly on the ground, laying on the landscape like a soft blanket rather than crushing, digging and tunnelling the landscape into submission (I am romanticising, of course, by comparing Charlottesville with Manhattan). The air was noticeably fresher, edged with a certain sharpness that seems to be distinctive to mountains. And everywhere, the overarching impression is one of space: roads and sidewalks shared with only a few other scattered pedestrians, enormous rooms comfortably occupied by a few quiet users, and the wide-open skies meant for eyes to roam over and savour slowly.

Speaking of space, YS shares an enormous apartment in Charlottesville with three other housemates. They have their own bathroom, a fully-equipped and sleek kitchen, a 40" LCDTV, a small porch and three full-sized bedrooms. YS's own room seems to have been the master bedroom once upon a time; or at least, it's as big as the master bedrooms I see in HDB flats. After the rather limited possibilities of my Furnald room at Columbia, having so much private space was incredibly relaxing. It's a beautiful way to live; certainly, I would have been content to simply spend a day lazing around in that apartment. As it was, though, being able to come back to it at the end of the days, to potter around the kitchen using the high-tech appliances in my first attempts to make breakfast since time immemorial, and stepping out onto the porch to sample the crisp morning air were all deeply therapeutic, cleansing even.

The pace of life there is noticeably different. People walk around more slowly; there isn't that all-pervading sense of urgency, that need to always be doing something even when one doesn't have anything to do. People do stop and chat, and go out of their way to meet people. And it's really true that everyone seems to know everyone else: for such a sparsely populated area, it's amazing how many acquaintances YS ran into simply by walking down the streets. But that's not to say that its smallness results in there being nothing to do. The first hour I was there, we found a delightful little Greek restaurant for dinner. Then, walking through the Corner, UVa's little pub and bistro strip, we were attracted by music to go up a narrow flight of steps to a cramped and smoky jazz bar, where students were jamming into the night. The next day, YS brought me to a quirky tour about the really intriguing and idiosyncratic history of UVa (and of Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the institution and of other things like the United States of America). I sat in on a dress rehearsal of a performance of The Nutcracker that she had helped to choreograph. Then, we went for dinner at the apartment of one of YS's friends, and it turned into a home-cooked meal with a dozen Singaporeans chipping into the festivities. And on Sunday, we popped into a wine bar and sampled the local Virginia vintage over brunch. Certainly, then, there is no dearth of things to do, and the demands on one's time are well within reason, leaving you with the sense of being pleasantly occupied but not overly stressed.

One big thing that struck me about the weekend was how easily new connections were made, and how old ones were reprised. The vast majority of my time was, of course, spent with YS, and it is still heartbreakingly easy to talk to this old travelmate; the words and actions seem to find a natural progression of their own accord. But there was a highly unlikely turn of events: as we browsed UVa's bookstore, YS bumped into a friend, who turned out to be SN, my old senior from RJGuitar. I had been her understudy for taking over the role of secretary in the ensemble, and we hadn't kept in contact since her batch graduated. How is it, then, that we would randomly end up in the same town three years later, and that I would just happen to walk past her aisle as she was repacking books onto their shelves?

And afterwards, we ran into C, YS's senior in UVa, who then proceeded to quickly invite us over for dinner at his place. And so it was that we made it to C's apartment on Saturday evening, and I tried my hand at food preparation again (with no trivial amount of trepidation), and then this whole group of friends also turned up, bearing rice and herbal soup. We had a great dinner of rice, soup, curry and stir-fried vegetables, which far and away is the best Singaporean food I've eaten so far in the States. And had a long talk with SN, who had also come to the gathering, and easily bridged the three years that had come between us. Also, made the acquaintance of the other Singaporeans, Jakartans and Malaysians, and found out that a group of them is planning to visit New York over Thanksgiving (and so the foundation is set for a very busy Thanksgiving indeed).

It seems to me that when one is abroad, one cherishes commonality with other people so much more. In a strange place, and among strangers, any sign of shared history or viewpoints is seized firmly as an anchor against the whims of newness. So it is that distances that would have seemed too tedious or troublesome to bridge at home in Singapore become trivial in the States, and commonalities that would have seemed insignificant at home become central. One's perspective is necessarily realigned with one's changing environment. Thus a kinsman almost invariably becomes more amiable when encountered abroad. And often, this is not because the kinsman somehow becomes nicer in a strange situation (though this does happen to), but it is because one's own prejudices against that kinsman become untenable, absurd even, in the new situation. Being in a new environment thus serves to liberate one's preferences from one's prejudices, so one can more fully explore the possibilities of interpersonal connection that had always existed, but that one had not allowed oneself to consider as viable.

Also, it seems to me that chance plays such an inordinately large role in my life now. Consider the chance encounter that produced the reunion between I and SN. Consider also the random encounter with C on the streets of UVa that produced the dinner invitation. Consider, then, the parking garage we just happened to pass on Saturday evening, that we climbed to witness a breathtakingly spectacular goldburst as the setting sun stained the wide open sky. And then, there is the random acquaintance I made on the bus trip back from Charlottesville to Washington, who turned out to be a member of staff on Capitol Hill, and who, over the 3-hour bus ride, proceeded to engage me in an absorbing conversation about her law-school plans, Capitol-Hill careers, insider politics, religion, family and race. And last but not least, there is my finding YM, my old classmate from RJ whom I had not talked to for years, in her basement apartment in DC. She had just happened to have hosted a pre-Thanksgiving party, and had lots of food left over, so I was the dumbfounded recepient of incredible hospitality, even as we reminisced about our old class and marvelled at the places that everyone had gotten to over the years.

And it strikes me very deeply, that I am at the receiving end of so much good fortune - too much, even - so much that it makes me feel terribly uncomfortable, as if I had received an undeserved windfall through a clerical bank error, and I was liable to be found out at any moment. But even as I suspect that there has been some mistake in the heavens somewhere, I cannot help being so totally taken by the people and happenings that I encounter, completely at random, over here in the States. There are certainly deeper, structural sociological forces at work here to make some happenings more likely for me. But I experience it as luck, as the unpredictable outcomes of unfathomable processes working impersonally. And I find that luck brings me into so many incredible situations. It just befuddles me, how things can work out by themselves so nicely.

And so, the weekend turned out to be a great holiday. I had originally had some reservations, Charlottesville being so far removed from Manhattan, and there being so many enticing free things happening in Manhattan over the weekend. But it turns out that the principle still holds true: that if one can choose between going elsewhere and taking the risk of a new experience, or to stay where one is and take advantage of a certain but less surprising experience, then one should always try to choose the former. And as I look back now at the weekend, I find that I really cannot ask for more. I cannot think how it could have been any better. And the fact that such things can happen almost entirely by accident - well, what can I say?

*

As for my old flightmate - she will be returning to ANU next semester, but not before trotting the globe a bit more by dropping by Japan and Singapore over the winter. I have to say, though, that she is an inspiration, a vision of how my own time here in the States should look like. Now, she has so much more experience than me, and I find that I want to - I have to - catch up. And to be able to see a real person who has made it work is reassuring as well as motivating.

Also, her departure is saddening. It is saddening to me that she will be on the other side of the globe next semester, even though technically her being in Australia and her being 3 states away in Virginia are experientially very similar (in that in neither case can I call her up on short notice for a coffee somewhere). My life here necessarily is characterised by the formation and nurturing of new relationships and interactions, the making of new friends and the reconstitution of a new social network. But a significant part of my current experience is also concerned with revisiting old relationships, with resuming. A part of my current experience is thus caught up in the reprisal of old relationships, of enacting the experience of sharing time abroad, an experience that had been delayed two years by NS. So it is that meeting up with people like Joel, YS, Jes and other familiar faces from the old era still holds an especial significance for me. And now, all too soon, this old flightmate will be flying away to another corner of the world again.

It is, of course, in the nature of things to be constantly in flux. But the understanding of that fact doesn't stop me from regretting the passing of a good thing. But what can we do? We lay the foundations as soundly as we can, and then we trust the foundations of the past to hold firm in the storms of the present, so that they remain standing and ready for some reunion in the future. And I believe that there will be reunions in the future (after all, from this weekend, it is clear that reunions can even happen randomly). People come and people go. But the hope is that, as people go, they will one day come back.

Long Walks

NOMADS performed the play over the weekend to two sellout performances and two late-night audiences. I wouldn't go so far as to try to venture a guess as to whether the reception was to critical acclaim or simply critical, but no matter the outcome, the process is over, and I find that I am much relieved now.

The final days of rehearsal and each performance was rather gruelling, certainly for the actors and our director as they rushed to perfect the stagecraft, but also for me, because every performance was heart-stopping to watch; or rather, the audiences' reaction to every performance was a drama in itself for me. You can't fool the audience with pretty stagecraft when your play's message is defective, and the overarching theme in the responses from my friends who came to watch it was that they enjoyed the moments of stageplay and the wordplay, but they didn't get the point of the play. Depending on your viewpoint, that last issue could be a fatal flaw, and I for one happen to think that theatrics are cheap, and that the real skill comes from making those theatrics transmit a message. There is, as I always say, no question over the technical skill of all these people - and certainly, working with them has been enlightening and humbling - but if a play has no message, the audience feels like it's been cheated, and rightfully so. And ultimately, the lack of a message is the fault of the writer, and I take it as a big failing that I wasn't skilful enough in this respect to write in a message to the script to match the theatrics.

But it's over. It is strange, this time round; this first brush with American theatre (though, of course, NOMADS is an experimental process and hardly representative) wasn't as invigorating as I'd expected. Of course, the same tensions were present before performance; there is a specific sort of stress, for example, that permeates a stage during a technical run or during the last rehearsal, that has no analogue in the real world. But the end of this process bring not so much a sense of accomplishment but a sense of relief. I guess it's because of the defects in the script and the insurmountable fact of the unfavourable audience reaction (in the sense that they didn't get it). But it's strange, because back in CHS, even when we put up a poor performance (and God knows that we did), there was still a sense of camaraderie and a sense of sharing in the experience, even if that experience was one of failure. We had a good crew back then - not nearly as technically proficient as NOMADS, but essentially professional and tight-knit. That was a good drama troupe, and I guess that the togetherness is worth something in and of itself, and in a framework like that, audience reception is secondary to group dynamics.

Mmm...but it is also true that to compare this nostalgic image of CHS EDrama with NOMADS is clearly self-serving and fallacious. Things are just different here - different circumstances, different conditions. And the thing about coming all the way here is that my presence here demands my complete commitment to using the circumstances that I find here, rather than pining for circumstances of times past.

*

Anyway, the other, bigger thing that happened over the weekend was that YS came up from Virginia to visit. She arrived in a big way, too: because of a bad train connection in DC, she ended up arriving in Chinatown at about 4am. This was the first opportunity for me to take the subway in the early hours of the day, in the time period between the closing of the nightlife and the starting of rush hour. The trains were still quite full, butjust as the character of the passengers fluctuates through time during the day, the passengers of the subway at this hour were a surreal mix of homeless people and beautiful young things trying to extend the nightlife. So you have unkempt people sprawled across the seats trying to sleep as best they can on the rocking train, and people looking spiffy in leather jackets and high heels, draped over each other and raising their voices over the clangs and screeches of the train. It was the most surreal scene I've seen since coming here.

So anyway, I picked YS up from a deserted Chinatown, walked her down Canal Street till we got back to the 1 line, and brought her uptown back to Columbia safely (though I still think that people grossly overestimate the danger level in NY). The next day, we went on a whirlwind tour - basically I tried to squeeze in all my favourite spots over these months of solitary sojourns into the city streets. So we ended up going to the Hell's Kitchen flea market, Bryant Park behind the NYPL, the Staten Island Ferry and Brooklyn Bridge. I would have brought her to Brighton Beach as well, but we were unfortunately running a little late, and it's clear that anyone who comes to New York must, above all, take the Staten Island Ferry and cross the Brooklyn Bridge.

Bryant Park recently opened its winter-time skating rink, and though the prices are ridiculously steep, there is definitely something to be said for being able to skate in the open air, beneath the soaring towers of Midtown Manhattan, with the solid Classical mass of the NYPL and the trees of Bryant Park in the foreground. I had forgotten how fun it is to skate, since it has been three years since the last time I put i the effort to find a patch of skatable ice in tropical Singapore. And it was ridiculously fun, despite the drizzle, to skate round the rink, and to rediscover how to accelerate and to turn (though I still don't know how to stop other than essentially ramming the side walls). After a while, when you get familiar with the ice again, you start to look around, and you see all these other revelers around, some stumbling and some soaring across the ice. And then you see the wider surroundings, the park and the buildings and the overcast sky, and it's magical.

Unfortunately, due to the drizzle and the accompanying heavy fog, the Staten Island Ferry and the Brooklyn Bridge were not as spectacular as they could have been. But even when it's shrouded in fog, the skyline of Manhattan is majestic, and there are still no better ways to see it than from the Hudson and from Brooklyn. But even if the scenery had been fully blotted out by the fog, I still would have made these trips, because it's just nice to have company for such journeys. They are best shared. And YS continues to be as sporting as ever. This old travelmate; walking the streets of Manhattan with her was like a natural continuation of all our previous walks exploring strange and new places, from Taipei to Bangkok to Boston. To travel together again was a real treat - the easy conversation, the spur-of-the-moment decisions to branch off on a whim, the shared moments.

And so it was that it was with great reluctance that I brought her back to Chinatown on Sunday so she could catch her bus back to DC and then to Charlottesville. It just so happened that the sun came out brilliantly on Sunday; whereas the previous day had been overcast, Sunday was a perfect bluesky day. But we had to spend most of our time underground in the subway going to Chinatown, which was a real pity.

But it was a fitting end, I think, because when we entered the 110st station to catch the train, we bumped into this magnificent two-man jazz band, playing soothing and skilful numbers, stretching the notes out like how yearning can stretch a moment out. Listening to the music, I was once again struck by the fact that now, this old friend was here to share the moment. And that made the moment somehow more real, as if in the sharing we can better confirm that it actually happened, and was not simply a figment of the imagination.

And as we made our way southwards through the warren of tunnels beneath Manhattan, the trip was like a countdown until we ran out of numbered streets and went off-grid into Chinatown. And then, a few minutes of wandering (too short!) brought us to the bus stop where YS's bus was already waiting, with a cheerful Chinese lady ushering passengers onboard. At that point, then, amidst the bustle of Chinatown and the piercing bluesky morning light, something struck me as deeply poignant. Here, then, was a realisation of a crystalline truth: I did not want this weekend to end yet. I did not want her to go. It had simply been too good to see this familiar face again, to have the company of my old travelmate again, and this time exploring the greatest city on Earth. It simply does not get any better than this.

At any rate, time and buses wait for no man, and all too soon she was off again to DC. As I watched her climb the steps onto the bus, though, I didn't really feel all that sad. It wasn't sadness, exactly, but rather the first pinings of nostalgia. It wasn't sadness, because it's not like this isn't going to happen again. Other people will come visit, old friends like Joel and C and I and maybe even G and Jes, if my persuasive skills are good enough to get them to cross a continent or an ocean. And as for myself, I will be going down to Virginia over this weekend, once again taking a long sojourn along the smooth and easy highways of this wide-skied land. At this point, I don't really need to get out of Manhattan again, considering than only 2 weeks ago I was in Philadelphia. But a new place is a new place, and its newness is enticing in itself. And of course, YS is in Virginia.

Yes, We Will

We live in incredible times.

Outside, the streets are exploding with euphoria as people stream out into the crisp night after seeing CNN's projection that the victory in this election will go to Barack Obama. Cars honk their horns in joyous rhythms, pedestrians trawl the streets with endless cheers and whoops. The security guard to my dorm couldn't help sharing her enthusiasm. Now and then, choruses of "Yes, we can" erupt across the campus. In nearby Harlem, a midnight party is in full swing, and its cries and calls echo across Manhattan - indeed, across the whole Union.

I was involved in the electio-day poll site survey today, and K and I made our way into Brooklyn to observe our poll site. The people there, the staff as well as the voters, were in high spirits, happily working together to facilitate the voting process, happy and eager to cast their votes. Everyone we talked to reflected their satisfaction with the process, and a few also remarked on the good spirits that everyone was in on this election day. It is such that people feel part of something bigger. Especially first-time voters - they exhibited an especial earnestness.

(Outside, somewhere on campus, cheers of "Obama, Obama" echo out into the night...)

We spoke for a while with the poll site manager, and he shared about how he keeps volunteering to do election work, because it is so worthwhile to help people to exercise their right to vote. He spoke of residents in the neighbourhood who would recognise him on the streets after election day, and thank him for a good election experience. He reminisced about helping first-time voters, explaining the vote-casting process and seeing them overcome their initial fears and uncertainties and emerge from the polling booth awash in new empowerment. And this year, especially, it was all the more important to put in the effort to help everyone to vote.

(A cheer goes up right in front of my building...)

After that, we made our way down to Times Square. It was already full of people, becauce ABC and CNN had each claimed an end of the Square and set up live broadcasts of programmes following the election results. We joined the CNN broadcast, joining the great crowd of people in front of that great screen, and, through CNN's periodic pans of crowds at Times Square, in Grant Park (Chicago), LA, and even Kenya, we joined a great globe-girdling network of supporters and watchers. And as polls closed in each state and results came in, and as Obama's tally of electoral college votes rose inexorably, the crowd's excitement grew palpably more intense.

(Some people start singing somewhere, the words washed out by the distance, with only the tune carrying on the wind...)

And then, when the polls closed on the West Coast, CNN made their historic announcement. And the crowd went wild.

This is the moment, then, that "Yes, we can" became "Yes, we did", when hopes raised at the end of last year came to fruition, when a promise made when Obama became the Democratic nominee was reaffirmed by popular support. And for myself, this was the culmination of a process that started a year ago, when Obama first appeared on CNN, BBC and TIME Magazine and started to fascinate me, and then passed through my teaching stint in CHS, when Barack Obama repeatedly appeared in chats (and a speech of his appeared as one of my lessons' material). And then it passed by the ServiceNation debate this year on 9/11, and then came up again through the last few frenetic days of campaigning (especially in Philadelphia), late-night comedy's commentaries on the political process, and finally, today's poll site survey. The chance to see this phenomenon growing, gathering steam, and finally coming to fruition here - in person - is unparalleled. It is unbelievable.

And to see all these people on the streets so caught up in euphoria - I have never seen anything quite like it, this utter abandon in joy, without a hint of ironic self-consciousness. People are simply happy, and want to share that happiness with others. The people standing in Times Square watching the live feed shared a sort of camaraderie in the commonality of their location; people were politer, more accommodating, more indulging of one another. And I remember especially standing at a junction in Times Square when the live feed cut to a picture of a black man crying in a church somewhere. I asked K, "Is that Jeremiah Wright?" A nearby man interjected, "No, that's Jesse Jackson. He ran for President too a few years back." And as this man watched Jesse Jackson weeping on the screen, his own face was also glowing with happiness. Happiness and pride, pride at having been part of this incredible event.

Obama has surely done something special here. He has unleashed a great wave of hope in this country, made people aware of the gap between where they stand and where they can be, and galvanised them to bridge that gap. And he has unleashed this wave across all sorts of categorical barriers, so that people share the same hope regardless of race, gender, age, class. Just looking at the faces of the crowd at Times Square, one is struck immediately by its sheer diversity - and the sheer harmony it contained. Not since 9/11 has there been such a groundswell of collective will. People believe in the vision that Obama has offered as a prospective future; more importantly, they believe that they can - and must - achieve that vision. Here, then, on this night in November, there is a keen sense that the whole country stands upon the brink of a historic change, a change in direction that is fuelled by an inclusive consensus. On this night, then, "Yes, we can" becomes "Yes, we will".

And as for me - I stand here, in awe at finding myself amidst all this. I struggle to take all of this in, and to grasp how a series of ridiculously fortuitous accidents has put me in this time and place, where things happen. And I look at these things happening, and I find myself looking forward, towards what the future may hold, towards what will happen next.

Having Time

I haven't had so much time to write in such a long time. Accompanying Joel as he studies for next week, I have suddenly found myself with very little work left over among the work that I brought along with me to Philly. And so it is that now, we're in his room, and there's soft jazz playing and every available light burning. The day, begun so softly with a late awakening at 12pm, is drawing to an equally soft end.

There is a real feeling of being at ease here. Partly, it's because I'm on schedule and I have time left over (also because, due to daylight savings time, we've magically gained an hour over the night of Nov 1, so we literally have more time). But it's also because of all the familiar faces here, of the people I met the last time I was here, and who are so unselfconsciously warm and welcoming. So it is, then, that I can walk around in Philly and UPenn feeling really safe: the safety of being in a place only temporarily and thus not needing so much to live with the consequences of your choices, and also the safety of being among so many familiar people. It is an interesting mix, a simultaneous feeling of being secure as a stranger and of being secure amidst people I know.

One thing that strikes me is how, here, people seem to move in fewer social circles. It seems to be the case, from the short times that I've spent here, that one can eat meals, study, go out and have long conversations with the same group of people. This is different from in Columbia, where it is much more the case that the people you eat lunch with will not know the people you eat dinner with. That way, you get to meet more people, and you're obliged to maintain more connections with more social circles, but there really is something to be said for a small social circle, in which you can take your time and develop deeper relationships. Of course, that is only one side of the equation, since having more people to make friends with will count for nothing if one does not put in the effort to make friends, and I do see that there is my main problem: my aversion to meeting new people by going out on a limb and approaching them randomly. But as far as personal preference goes, I would like to have a small and solid social circle, surrounded by a more diffuse network of acquaintances. In Columbia, the latter is much more in evidence, whereas in UPenn I can immerse myself in the former. The trick, I guess, is to find some way to unify the two geographically in the same place.

Yesterday night, after dinner and studying, went out with Joel and the rest of the gang to a club where the Singaporean and HK associations had organised a party. Despite it being Nov 1, everyone had apparently intended to dress up, so in an effort to keep with the spirit of things at the last minute, I pirated an idea from last night's Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and went as a recession. Anyway, it was the usual set-up: social mingling at the front of house, loading up on alcohol at the bar, and then heading to the back where a dance-floor was active. Clubbing is still not my thing, even after travelling halfway across the globe. I'm told that to enjoy it, you need to be tipsy enough to lose control and your inhibitions; I fear, though, that past experience has shown that I would only reach that state by being completely drunk, and when I'm completely drunk, I'm useless as a social being. But I have to say that as far as drinking and dancing goes, this was the best clubbing I've been to so far.

Randomly bumped into LL, out of sheer randomness. LL was one of the participants in the original Frexprog, and we hadn't talked to each other since coming back from Lyon, which was six year ago. How is it, then, that after coming to the other side of the world, I would happen to be in Philly and attend the same party that she happened to be at? It's a ridiculous alignment of the stars - fate - whatever. But it doesn't show that it's a small world, so much as showing that wherever we go in the world, our social circles tend to follow along. So we get the impression that we know everybody, while in actual fact we only know a few people and we just keep running into them wherever we go.

After that, Joel and I braved the biting cold of night and went out for supper at the Philly Diner with T and Ir, and over a cheesemelt sandwich and a stack of quesadillas we marked the occasion of the end of Daylight Saving by turning all our timepieces back an hour. And it was an easy conversation into the night, with the usual commiserations about how tough it is to be a student, how expensive it is to live in the States, and so on. The topics were not new at all, but then again, the topics were not the main point of the gathering. It was just nice to be out so late at night, amidst the hubbub of a 24-hour diner, with people I know and having an easy, flowing conversation. And for the first time in too long, I felt like I didn't need to be anywhere else; there was nowhere else to go, and there was time to simply enjoy being here, now.

Another thing that really stood out this time in Philly was the food. On arrival yesterday, I had my first Philly Cheesesteak from a roadside vendor downtown, and then last night we went to an authentic Vietnamese place for a marvellous bowl of pho. Today's lunch was at the wonderful Hill dining hall, which was serving roast chicken, roasted potatoes and divine pancakes which went so well with maple syrup and a sprinkling of blueberries. And just now, popped out to a Thai restaurant, where we had a spicy green chicken curry - the hottest thing by far that I've eaten since coming here. The proliferation of good food here made it feel like we were back in Singapore again.

Anyway, tomorrow still stretches out ahead, virtually unfilled. The UPenn people have classes, so I expect I'll take the chance to walk aroubd University City myself, and maybe try to find a barber that's cheaper than NY's offerings. And then, there'll be a smooth bus ride back to Manhattan, and then Tuesday's election day sociology project, and then two more days of lessons before the weekend is here again. I find that I have time again, and it's a good situation to be in.

En Route

Yesterday started comparatively early, with breakfast with RH, who was flying back to Tennessee for the fall break. Walked down to 108th street to grab a couple of great bagels with a most divine blueberry cream cheese. I realised that I hadn't been out of campus so early before, beyond that run that G and I did at the beginning of the term. After the work really started to come in in earnest, even my morning hops to the roadside kiosks for a bagel have been sacrificed in the name of more reading time. Mornings in Morningside Heights is something that I haven't had a chance to really experience, and it was good to be out and walking on the quiet streets, enjoying the bluesky morning and the emptiness. The city seems to give itself to you more wholeheartedly in the mornings; there are fewer people to share it with, and you can enjoy it at your leisure. Like in so many other cities, mornings are a more personal time: mornings belong more to the individual.

Anyway, in the evenings, went down with YR, Re, WL and JK to Greenwich Village to watch the world-renowned Halloween Parade. Needless to say, the entire stretch of the parade's route along 6th Avenue was packed with people. We ended up at the junction of 6th and Waverly Place, perched atop a stack of unused police barriers. It turned out to be a really good spot for viewing, because our elevated position put us above the heads of most of the crowd, and the police didn't bother us (while they did get people who had more precarious perches atop traffic lights and fire hydrants to get down). Next to us was a jolly old man out with his daughter to watch the parade (and every time an amusingly clad participant trooped by, he would give a rich laugh). All around us were other groups of friends milling around and pressing forward. Jokers (many, many Jokers - it seems like The Dark Knight made a big impact this year), Tellytubbies, Storm Troopers, firewomen and Indian chiefs walked by regularly, and for a time, there was a particularly elaborate Mad Hatter behind us, with whom we were quick to grab a photo.

The parade itself was marvelous, starting off in a big way with a procession of mounted police officers, followed by enormous and fluttery puppets, three-storey skeletons, block-long articulated dragons and swooping undead birds mounted at the end of sticks. And then, a spectacular treat came when at least a hundred zombies marched down the street led by a Michael Jackson lookalike. They stopped in the middle of the avenue, and then the music cued in, and they burst into the dance of the walking dead from "Thriller", to the uproarious approval of the crowd.

There were also many floats shuddering under the weight of the revelers dancing upon them, and many Obamas and McCains (and a particularly realistic Sarah Palin, accompanied by a walking Russia and Alaska, and a Joe the Plumber). Some of the ingenious jokes included a security camera, a lady disguised a a photo strip (the kind that you get out of a photo booth), another lady wearing a placard showing a dropping GDP graph, and several subprime lenders waving bloodied notes. It was great fun to just sit up there on our perch picking out the various costumes, and trying to figure out what the joke was.

It occurs to me, too, that something like the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade can never happen in Singapore. Where in our little island will we find so many people willing to invest hundreds of dollars into a costume that will earn them a few hours of fame, and then will become unwearable for a year at least (while other costumes are certainly one-hit wonders)? It was incredible to see so much spontaneous gameliness and ingenuity; and, after a couple of months of endless work that had totally circumscribed our ability to go out together as a big group like this, it was good to be out with this gang, and to feel like a part, however small, of all this pageantry and enjoyment.

*

And now, I make my way back to the City of Glass Towers. Such are the wonders of modern technology that this bus is equipped with free wifi, and suddenly I find myself with another two hours in which I can write and clear my correspondence. It is an intriguing experience; as I have been writing, the Manhattan skyline has slipped past outside the bus windows, the scenery has changed from urban to country, and the smooth long highways have soared through forests turning golden, red and yellow in preparation for winter. At this point, New York looked much nicer from a distance, especially with the morning sun glinting off the towers and the Atlantic shimmering in the distance. The Statue of Liberty, silhouetted by the water, looked like a promise: "you have arrived."

I have gone down this road before. The toll gates, the small towns that we are passing through right now, are all familiar from two months ago. And later in the afternoon, will hook up with Joel again. He had said something two weeks ago, when the UPenn people had come down to New York for their fall break: who would have thought that we would be seeing each other so often despite having come halfway across the globe? In fact, we are meeting more often now than we did when we were in different JCs on the same small island. It's an interesting outcome, this. But I am glad that this friendship, and quite a few friendships besides, still involves regular meetings. It would be very different to live here without these familiar faces from the past era.