In Continuum.: October 2009

Donations, Part Two

Friday, October 16, 2009

Donations, Part Two

It is something that we probably all do on the streets. Or rather, there are a couple of things that we do when we are in the situation. Picture yourself walking down Orchard Road, minding your own business, and something catches your attention in your peripheral sight. A human figure with a circular object in his or her hands, and neither the object nor the gender can be made out just yet. You keep on walking because you don't want to seem abnormal or weird to anybody else to stop suddenly. Your brain is still trying to process who the unidentified person and the object is, and your natural reflexes is steering you away from it because you just want to be careful, you want to make sure. If it is someone who is trying to mug you, you want to be far enough to dash, right? Anyway, that person is now moving towards you, and you can see him or her through your peripheral vision. Oh no, you think to yourself. It is one of those students trying to ask me for a donation on the streets again, and you are not far enough from that person to divert your path. You try to engage in an emergency maneuver by turning on the balls of your feet, but it is too late now. The student is right in front of you, a can pushed into your face and asking for some donation. Notes would be great, but coins are heavier. This sucks, you think to yourself, but you can't help it. The vulture has its peak in your skin, and the only way for you to get away from it is to let it tear your skin off.

At least that was how I was when I was met with a student asking for donations on the streets. The students don't care, and I know because I was a student myself. They just want to get it over and done with, and most of the adults don't really care either. We are an apathetic society for the most part, and the idea of fishing out money to put into a can just doesn't appeal to us very much. At any rate, I used to be the kind of guy who'd put some loose change into those cans either to get rid of loose change in my pocket or to get rid of the student altogether. Then, of course, I learned to give exact changes and to smile while rejecting the students outright. I haven't been donating to students out on a mission in town for a long time, and I do not consider myself a charitable person at all. In times of crisis, of course, I do consider myself to be helpful. I've donated to victims of natural disasters before, not to mention how I emptied my wallet for the children of the orphanage in India. I'm not trying to boast, but I'm just saying that there are times when I am willing to give, you know. But money is just money, they are just plastics people use to trade with in our society. My mother always say that a problem that can be solved by money isn't a problem. Well, giving money to those that actually need it really isn't that big a problem, in truth.

So here's the thing, I surprised myself at how fast I agreed to donating my organs when my friend asked about it. The same friend who asked me to donate blood in the previous entry asked me to donate my organs just because it gives him even more extra credits. It is for a public relations course, and I really have no idea what this has to do with that. Anyhow, I earn myself a free lunch as promised by him, so why not fill up a form for it? Perhaps it is the idea of not giving something right on the spot, like how you would donate money right off the bat when asked for on the streets. It isn't something that you would lose straight away, and I guess that was the reason - at least in the back of my head - why I thought it'd be OK to donate my organs if something bad ever happens to me. Though, as a Singaporean citizen, you are automatically an organ donor, apparently. You can fill out a form to say that you don't want to be a donor, or else we are all donors, if you don't already know. So, it felt like donating my hair for a cause or something, because we are already chopping off our hair when it is too long anyway, you know? It felt right, but at the same time it felt strange when I received the application card where I had to pick which part of my body I want to be dug out when I die. That was a strange experience, I can tell you that.

Here's the thing, there are a list of things that you can donate even if you are a corpse. Well, preferably, they'd like you to be a fresh corpse, because your organs would still be dazed and confused about whether or not you are dead. That is the perfect time to dig them out and then transplant it into somebody else's body to keep that person alive. It all makes sense, and people need organ transplants on a daily basis. There are lists in every single hospital in the world, I'm sure, of patients waiting for organs to be donated. But, of course, people don't donate their organs everyday, and organ donors don't die out fast enough. There simply aren't enough organs to go around in this world, which is why the black market for organs thrives so well. Anyway, so you get a card that talks about the concept of donating your organs and everything. The name, the age, and all that kind of basic information gets filled out first. Underneath that, you have to pick from a list of organs that you'd like to donate when you are dead. "Donate" is just a nicer way of saying that they need your body parts for other living people, since you are on your death bed or dead. They have the option of donating everything (which is capitalized), or to donate your chosen organ from a list of organs with little check boxes next to each of them.

Here is a list of things in your body that you can donate: Heart, heart valves, lungs, liver, intestines, femoral and saphenous veins, tendons, bones, skin, pancreas, kidneys, eyes and corneas. Now, here's the thing. If I opt for the "everything" option, then everything will go when I die, assuming that they are all operating properly. You know, they will dig out everything that they need and then leave everything else behind. Kind of like how vultures would swoop down and eat whatever that they need and leave the bones behind when they are done. I can see it now, the doctors and the nurses wheeling my body away even before my family can say anything to me, just because they want my organs nice and fresh. Who wouldn't like a nice and fresh piece of organ in their body anyway, especially when they need it. I mean, who'd want to have a heart that has been dead for half a day? You want a heart that has stopped for merely ten minutes, which is why the doctors and the nurses swoop down really fast with their knives to cut you open. I didn't like the idea of that, and the image of doctors handling my organs in their gloved hands was really weird. I mean, just picture it for a moment, and it isn't something that you can run away from while filling up that form. You start to picture your bloody (literally) lungs in their hands, being rolled around like a jell-o, and then placed into some bag or a can of fluid to preserve it, or something. It was probably the strangest thought I had ever.

So I picked the organs that are not going to leave any visible damages to my body when I am in the coffin. You know, I don't want half of the skin on my arms to have been peeled off to save a burn victim somewhere, you know. I mean, that'd be pretty ghastly to witness, if I am a friend or a family member looking in. So I picked all the internal parts that'd not be too obvious after I have donated, naming anything but the bones, the skin, and the eyeballs. I am OK with donating my lungs and everything, though I have a feeling that they will be disqualified due to my long history with asthma. My pancreas and kidneys they might take, and my dead corpse might be fine with that. After all, you can't exactly see a pair of missing kidneys or a missing pancreas from the outside. Maybe a stitched up wound somewhere, but it definitely is better than a missing eyeball. And don't try to convince me that the technology now allows you to have very realistic looking glass eyeballs. Realistic isn't real - it's just realistic. I want my eyeballs to be real even if they are dead, thank you very much. I thought it to be a natural and logical choice, which is why I filled out everything else without much questions. After all, if I look decent in the coffin, then I really don't mind what they take away. Dead is dead, right?

You know what, if there is an organ that I am more than happy to donate, it'd probably be my brain. Nobody wants brains though, not even the brain dead patients want a brain. You'd think that if your brain is dead, you want another brain to substitute the brain that you have so that you can wake up from that nine year comatose of yours. It's like having a dying liver, you'd want a good liver to replace that as soon as possible, no? But nobody wants brains, they just want their own back. If they are indeed trapped inside their head, they'd probably want to tell everybody that they want their own brains back too. But it takes time for them to wake up, if they wake up at all, and it is sometimes difficult to do so. You can't just pluck this brain out and put in another brain that belonged to somebody else. The wiring work is just too complicated, not to mention the fact that it'd take too long to do so. People don't trust that who they are is in their soul and not in their brains anymore, which is why they get so jumpy about brain transplants. Really, no, the truth is that we have no souls, because we are just a composition of organs and other biological... stuff. I'd like my brain transplanted though, because in that way I'd live forever.

Under the portion of the application form, we have to fill up another section about whether or not to donate the organ(s) for transplantation, research, or both. Well, initially, I only wanted to get my organs up for transplantation purposes. I understand how research could benefit the medical community somehow. You know, tests today could very well lead to a medical breakthrough tomorrow. Who knows, maybe my pancreas could become the reason why pancreatic cancer can be cured in the future. The possibilities are limitless in a laboratory, but tell that to the mother of a lab rat, though. Tell her that her daughter and/or son is going to be injected with strange chemicals for the benefit of mankind, then see how she takes it. In truth, I didn't like that idea very much, and would much rather donate my organ for transplantation. It is the idea that after injecting your organs with a few syringes of chemicals, they are going to dispose of your organs or incinerate them in a random oven where they probably incinerated a bunch of other organs. There's nothing wrong with it of course, in fact that is probably the correct course of action if you ask me. But like any object that has been with you for a long enough time, you tend to have this sentimental thing going on with it. That is also a reason why I am terrified of the idea of amputation - isn't it scary to anybody else out there?

Anyway, I wasn't comfortable with the idea of donating my organs for research, but I did it anyway. The reason is because, well, my uncle did the very same thing. He didn't exactly apply for organ donation, in fact he is probably far from it right now. As some of you may know, my uncle was recently diagnosed with cancer. I've used Skype to catch up with him a couple of times, and I must say that the white hair and the shallow cheeks depressed me somehow. The doctors say that for a person that late in his stage of cancer, he was surprisingly healthy. He isn't experiencing much pain, if any pain at all really. According to my aunt, he's just tired most of the time, and he has lost a bit of weight like most cancer patients would. Even though the video feed was blurred and somewhat pixelated, I could tell that he was tired and his eyes were somehow swollen. Yet, his voice remained clear and strong, and I wouldn't have noticed a hint of his illness if I hadn't had a video conference with him at all. Through his voice, he still sounds like the uncle that I have grew up to know and love. Anyway, he has been given a chance to go for an experimental chemotherapy at a local hospital, a procedure that has never been tested on human beings before. My uncle happens to fit the bill for the most part, being an adult male in his sixties, and he has the perfect criteria to be a good candidate. So he jumped at the chance of going through with the treatment with nothing at all to lose.

I remember my aunt telling me about it over Skype, and she told me how they've finally given in to my advice. About a year ago, I strongly urged them to give western medicine a chance, and they should treat the cancer as early as possible instead of going for some traditional medicine like they wanted to. My uncle was stubborn about it though, and he has always been that way even in his healthier days. Anyway, at this stage of the illness, I suppose there are only so many things that you can do. The term "experimental medication" can make anybody nervous, but I guess it only makes sense, especially when you are dealing with a terminal disease. His logic is that if it works, it works. If it doesn't work, then he has contributed - in his small way - to the medical field. If he doesn't go ahead with this experimental procedure, he will die. So why not contribute to a little something before you go? It made sense to him, and it sure as hell makes a lot of sense to me. I would probably opt for the same thing when given the chance, though it would be a difficult decision to make. I mean, the dosage is supposed to be twice as strong, but it is supposed to be twice as effective and precise. I am not exactly sure about the details at this point, but I am just keeping my fingers crossed and trusting in the doctors at this point.

Recently, my parents flew back to Taiwan to help out with my aunt and uncle. The house that I have in Taiwan is right next to the hospital that my uncle is going to be admitted into, and he is going to stay there for three months straight. All the hospital bills will be paid by the research team, which is a good load off all of us I suppose. My parents have offered a room for my aunt to stay in for the duration of the procedure so that she'd not have to drive back and forth from her home. The dog has been particularly cooperative for some reason, growling less and making less noise throughout the day. I think the dog, like all of us, know that there are things that are not exactly appropriate. I wish that I can be there, but at the same time I know that I'd be terrified. Death, as much as I have come to terms with it to a degree, it still isn't something that I want to be so physically close to, you know. The thing about such terminal illnesses is that it gives you time to prepare, and it takes your loved ones away slowly. It is still going to suck, but at least it gives you time to be mentally prepared. It certainly beats the kind of death that comes unannounced, the kind that slaps you across the face when you least expect it. But still, death is death, I don't think anybody can adequately prepare for it. I just hope that my aunt will pull through, that's all.

That is also why I decided to donate my organs for research as well. I mean, I will be dead by then, so might as well right? Anyway, despite putting them up for donation, I do not wish that they will be getting them anytime soon. I want to go back to Singapore in one piece, all safe and sound, and that is a promise that I've made to a special someone. I do not intend to go back with a missing toe or anything, and I certainly wouldn't want that either. I hope that I'd be able to see my uncle again, at least not through a stupid computer monitor. By the time the procedure ends, I'd probably be done with my studies here in Buffalo already. That also means that by the time I am done with this, he should be done with his thing. Whether or not he comes out of this healthier or worse, I suppose no one can tell for sure at this point. At least in theory, the procedure is supposed to work, right? I mean, why'd it be an "experiment" when in theory, it doesn't work? At least somewhere, even if it is on paper, it is supposed to work. I am not going to pray for my uncle's wellness, because praying is not going to help anybody at all. I am just going to hope for the best and expect the worst, and know that even if death is the end result of it all, at least my uncle will be able to rest in absolute peace.

Donations, Part One

Friday, October 09, 2009

Donations, Part One

It used to be commonplace, but I guess the idea of donation has been diluted over the years, all thanks to the scandals in Singapore. If you weren't familiar with the donation culture in Singapore, you'd think that Singapore is a charitable country, with generous people everywhere who cares for the poor and the needy. A couple of years ago, if you were to turn on the television, it wouldn't be hard to spot local celebrities saying something supposedly touching and heart wrenching about a certain needy person who needs all our support, and then they'd recite a series of phone numbers for you to donate money to. That'd probably run for about a month before the actual charity event is nationally broadcasted on television, and that'd include celebrities performing death defying stunts on live television just to win the hearts and minds of the apathetic public. The stunts include everything from walking across a tight rope, being surrounded by a tub of ice, to do some stupid stunts upside down, or to play musical instruments with an unusual part of your body. No, not the penis - think lower. Anyway, nationally broadcasted charity events used to be really common in Singapore. It ranged from three to four time a year in the past, and that all ended when the scandals started to pop up from every which direction possible.

Then, people start to feel pissed off about the entire system as a whole. It's strange how it took a giant corporation's demise in order for us to realize that something was deeply wrong back then. I mean, with all the money spent paying the celebrities to perform (yes, they are paid) and not to mention the cars and the condominiums as the grand prize, you start to wonder why they couldn't just take those money spent on the celebrities and the prizes on helping the people that they were supposed to help in the first place. Something didn't make sense, and that occurred to me at a very young age. I wrote a paper about the subject of Singaporeans being apathetic towards charity once, and I received an A for that paper. I hated that course, and I hated the lecturer who taught for that course. Still, I suppose the 34-page monster of a paper earned me quite a bit of credits, and it all paid off in the end. Anyway, one of the points that I raised in the paper was how children in Singapore were cultivated, from a very young age, that donating to charities and helping the needy is a responsibility or an obligation, when it really shouldn't be that way at all. We almost felt as if we were forced to do a great many things in the past, and it certainly wasn't something that most of us were willing to do.

We probably invested half of our hearts in going around to collect donations in our neighborhoods, to help in the elderly homes, and to help clear the newspapers of the old people in a particular neighborhood. It was supposed to instill a sense of charity in the students, but I am sure it probably didn't make us feel any less unwilling than we already were. It was a chore, to be honest, and not to mention the way charity organizations used to bug the students to return the charity cards as soon as possible. I remember being pestered by a certain charity organization just because I was late in sending back the charity card, something which I had to pay right out of my pocket for. Charity isn't something that I regularly engage myself in, and yet there are times when I do help out whenever I can. We've been brought up to think that giving to charity is something that you have to do at school in order to get a certain amount of participation points, something you needed in order to graduate from high school. I'm sure a lot of us remember the CIP system and how we all had to complete at least twenty hours of community service before we could graduate. I hated doing charity work, and I hated the idea of donation altogether. I avoid students that hold little tin cans of money on the streets because, well, I got sick and tired of it all.

About a week or two ago, a friend of mine messaged me online and asked if I'd like to donate blood at the blood drive that is currently being held at school. He asked me not exactly because he was particularly interested in doing so, but because (for some reason) his public relations class used the blood drive as an extra credit assignment. He had to recruit as many people to donate their blood as possible, and I jumped at the opportunity for reasons unknown. I mean, like I mentioned, I haven't exactly been the most giving and selfless person that I know. There has been a dozen blood drives in all of the schools that I have ever been to, and I've never ever been interested in any of those. I remember debating with myself as to the reason why I never bothered, and the conclusion I came to was because I didn't want to save some guy who beats up his wife a lot, or some alcoholic who'd eventually turn out to be a serial killer or something. You never know, since you can never dictate whose blood goes to who. I convinced myself that that was the perfectly legitimate reason to not donate my blood back then. Besides, I felt that donating money was a whole lot easier than to have a giant needle embedded underneath your skin. Yet, since I've been through the whole blood donation process. I can safely say that being pricked by a needle is a lot less painful than fishing out your wallet.

I turned up at the Student Union at the supposed time on Tuesday morning, and my friend was there to take me into the corner of the building where they were having the blood drive. A few people were already inside on the folded chairs while we signed in, and the person at the counter handed out brochures for us to read before going for the health screening. He also gave us forms to fill up about our medical history, and I almost ticked the "yes" box when I read the part about whether I have had intercourse with another man. Anyway, it was a form full of diseases that I haven't even heard of before, and most of the boxes were ticked under the big bold "No", save for the one about whether or not I have been outside the United States in the past couple of years. Well, I came to the United States less than two months ago, so I guess it was an obvious yes for the both of us. Anyway, so we were ushered to the back of the room for a brief medical screening, and the nurse asked me about the countries that I have visited in the past three years, how long I have been in those places, where exactly in those places have I been to, and I had to have my blood tested first before going in.

I must say that that blood test with the snappy thing on the tip of my middle finger probably hurt more than the needle going into my blood veins, for some reason. She then started to squeeze my middle finger furiously just to get the blood out into this plastic tube, and I just watched my blood with curious fascination. I've never had a problem with blood for some reason, and I know of a person or two who'd faint at the sight of it. Anyway, she dripped my blood into this bottle of chemicals, and she OK-ed me for the blood donation swiftly after taking my blood pressure and my temperature. Apparently, in the United States, whether or not you choose to donate blood is a confidential matter. The last stage of the health screening involved me peeling off a barcode sticker to paste on the official form, indicating if I wanted to donate for real or not. This process was not meant to be seen by anybody, which was why the nurse turned her head away while I pasted the sticker. I am not exactly sure why I had to do that initially, and I was thoroughly confused when she handed me the stickers and turned her head away. I suppose it has got something to do with private matters of individuals, who knows.

Anyway, so I was all excited to jump into that chair and have the needle pushed through my skin and into my veins. That excitement was short-lived though, because the guy in front of me was back on the chair even after donating his blood, and his face was so pale that I swear I could see blood vessels from underneath the skin. He was munching on biscuits and sipping on a can of ginger ale just to regain his energy, and I started to wonder if this whole blood donation thing would take a toll on me just like this guy. I mean, he looked like he was about to die on that chair right there and then, and the male nurse next to me was nonchalantly taking put the needle while swiping my elbow with alcohol. The pale white guy then asked for a can of ginger ale and some chips, and there was a splitting moment when I thought I was going to pass out as well. My friend was right next to me, and he told me about the first time he donated blood in his school and how he passed out on the chair. Apparently, instead of squeezing the ball in your hand once ever four to five seconds or so, my friend squeezed it pretty much every second of his time on the chair. He passed out from losing too much blood and too fast, and I actually made it a point to religiously count how many seconds have gone by before giving the ball a tight squeeze.

So, the male nurse took out the needle and showed it to me, and that needle looked like a straw. I swear, that thing looked like it was just pulled out from a juice box and connected to the plastic tube that was hanging from a small metal hanger next to my chair. He wrapped the arm band of the blood pressure measuring device around my upper arm first, and then tapped my veins a few times before he inserted the tip of the needle into my skin. He told me to look away if I didn't want to see it, but I have this strange ability to tolerate blood and gore, for some reason. Anyway, I looked as he inserted the needle up and up and up, and then he carefully taped the end of the needle to my skin to prevent it from moving around. Blood then started to trickle through the tube and into the bag. One pint, the man said, and then he moved on to my friend to insert the needle into his arm. One pint of blood is exactly like one pint of beer that you'd order at a bar, and that is quite a lot of blood lost from my system, in my opinion. I mean, I have had some serious injuries in my life, but I don't think I have ever lost that much blood ever before. I asked him how much blood we have in our body, and how much we can lose until it becomes dangerous. Apparently, we have about eight to twelve pints of blood, and it only takes about four to take you into critical conditions. A quarter of the way to being critical, I felt somewhat insecure.

But, the donation process was pretty painless to be honest. I sat there throughout the donation process and read the brochure that was given to me. I asked for a can of Pepsi, and the man's assistant gave it to me without second questions. It was like being served drinks on a sandy beach, and I was some really important guest on a yacht party or something. But I wasn't on a yacht, and I wasn't on a beach. In fact, I wasn't even sipping on margaritas, but was draining blood from the little punctured hole in my elbow. I could feel my left arm turn numb after a while, and then later followed by my left leg. I'm not sure if it was caused by the blood donation at all, but I wasn't too worried anyway. Like a child who's just gotten his taste of soft drinks like I had, I was happy to give some blood away in exchange for free drinks and snacks. Every once in a while, I'd forget to squeeze on the ball that was in my palm, and I'd give it one or two tight squeezes. That action would cause the blood flow into the bag to become suddenly sped up, and it was actually kinda fun to watch. The male nurse came around to check up on the blood supply every once in a while, making sure that we were OK and that we weren't passing out or anything. I was the first to be done with the whole blood donation thing, and that was when I helped myself to a bag of Oreo cookies with some apple juice.

In the end, blood donation really isn't all that big a deal at all. So I lost the blood that took 56 days to form in my body, but I really couldn't feel much of the after effects at all. My sister is an avid fan of blood donation, my apparently she has really only donated her blood once because she has too little iron in her blood to donate more. Being underweight seems to be a problem with blood donation in Singapore, but not so much here in the United States apparently. It is funny now, in retrospect, to think that my blood is going to be something that I leave behind in this country, other than a great many things. However, a part of me still has this strange dilemma about the blood being used on the wrong people. How do you qualify people, though, since we never actually know of their contributions (or lack thereof) to the society in the future. At any rate, I will elaborate on that in part two, so stay tuned!

Niagara Falls

Monday, October 05, 2009

Niagara Falls

Lance Rintamaki has a small office up in Baldy's, a small little corner down a long hallway dedicated to himself and various other artifacts related to his life. There's a potted plant in the corner of his room, a carton of bottled water with the plastic wrapper torn open next to his desk. Books are stacked on top of one another on the tables and the floor, weighing down even on the shelf above our heads as we sat close to each other on the old beat up sofa. Most of the communication students were at his office that day after a meeting with the student advisor, and Lance invited us into his office to see how we were doing and getting used to things. He told us about what to do and see around the Buffalo and Niagara Falls area, and suggested us to head down to Letchworth State Park if we have the time, because it has been known to be the Grand Canyon of the East. Also on his must-see list is the Niagara Falls obviously, because he said that it'd be ridiculous to come all the way to Buffalo and not make a trip up there. Unfortunately for us, the tickets to go to Niagara Falls were sold out on the very first day of orientation, which means that we could only go for the second trip, if we even get the chance to. Lance told us that if things doesn't work out for us, he'd personally bring us all the way up there. Yeah, my lecturer is that cool, so suck it NUS students.

Niagara Falls has always been a somewhat mythical thing in my mind somehow. People always talk about how amazing that place is, and how many times it has appeared on the list of eight wonders of the world thing. The truth is, though, I cannot care less about that list anymore, considering how it changes from year to year, and there's actually board of people voting on whether or not a natural wonder or a man-made wonder actually makes the list for the year. That to me is completely ridiculous, which is why I'd rather come to my own conclusions as to whether or not Niagara Falls is amazing or not. I've already been to Taj Mahal, and I must say that it'd be difficult to beat that one, considering the sheer beauty of that place. Niagara Falls is in a different league altogether, and it sure was an exciting idea to head up to the border between the United States and Canada just to check it out. I remember seeing the falls for the first time on video when David Copperfield went over the edge and survived the fall, not to mention the sheer size of that thing mentioned in books and documentaries. I've never even considered it possible for me to visit that place, but now just seems to be the perfect time to do so. I mean, we are merely half an hour from one of the most amazing creation of mother nature, so why not make a trip up to check it out?

I remember that chilly Sunday morning, and the sun provided little warmth on my exposed hands and cheeks. I had to make my way down to Flint Loop to take two chartered buses to the Niagara Falls, and they looked like the school buses you see in movies, those big yellow buses that took Forrest Gump's son to school. I was excited to be in one of those buses, and the guy from ISSS did a head count down the center aisle before we were good to go. Some of the girls looked dazed as they sat across the aisle from me, and apparently a long night of partying with no sleep has took a toll on their faces. Glitter could still be seen on Shenny's face, and Gaby was in a trance when the bus started moving. A bunch of people who were supposed to be on the bus with all of us weren't there because they were stuck out in some ranch an hour away or something. At any rate, the buses weren't going to wait for anyone, and we were off! I stayed up in the bus most of the time while most of the other passengers fell asleep. The Sunday morning sun was gentle on my skin as it streamed through the windows, and the bus sped down the highway and through the suburbs of the rest of Buffalo.

It wasn't long until the little towns pulled away into a small industrial town of sorts. The bus drove onto a big metal bridge that spanned the breadth of a mighty river below. The guy from the ISSS then explained to us what to do when we get there and what not to do, particularly the whole issue of our SEVIS database and how our names may not have been entered into the system yet. At that, if we do cross over to Canada (which is connected to the United States by the Rainbow Bridge), we'd probably not be able to come back. Anyway, I was too distracted to listen to him after that point for the most part, as I busied myself with the view outside the window. The driver gave us a little commentary on the things that were passing us by along the way, including the Niagara river that ran parallel to the road that we were traveling on. My geography background immediately kicked in as I saw the calm river quickly turn into rapids as we drove down alongside it, and there was a sign to warm boats of the point of no return. It looked pretty menacing, and I presume it'd probably be too late for anybody by the time they reach the sign to turn back anyway. So, the river turned into a great blanket of folded waves, piling on top of one another like hungry people outside of a shopping mall on Black Friday. The entire river was that way, from our side of the shores to the other, stretching out before our eyes as far as the eyes could reach. In the distance, a tower of smoke rose out from the horizon, and the driver explained that it wasn't really smoke, but the mist from the Niagara Falls. By this time, the geography student inside of me was geeking out.

The visitor center and the trees surrounding the park very cleverly concealed the falls from the outside. All we could hear as we got off the bus was the roaring of the waters from the other side of the park. We got our packaged tickets at the ticking booth and made our way down the stairs in the visitor's center and through a clearing. As we came through the door on the other side, the sound of the falls pounding on the rocks and the river below was already deafening. It was Joyce, Ting Ting and myself walking through the park that morning with squirrels scrambling down from trees and across the pavements on all sides. Then there it was, the river that we saw on the bus ride here, suddenly falling off the edge of the cliff and into a cloud of mist. A rainbow shot up from beneath and made a curve in the skies, bending back down like a ribbon of sorts. I stood by the railing that ran along the river and took a bunch of pictures there. There's always that moment of wordlessness that hits you whenever you are face to face something so wondrous like that. It was like the time when I came through the gates and witnessed the Taj Mahal for the very first time. Anybody who has ever been to that place would tell you that they were dumbfounded the first time they saw it in the morning sun. The same for me when I was right next to the Niagara Falls, there is always that sense of surrealism. It becomes difficult to comprehend that you are there, like most part of the first song at a concert. And then it kicks in halfway through the song, and you know that you are there. You are there.

Moving closer and down the walkway, you find yourself right next to where the river spills over the edge. You walk up all the way to the edge of things and you look over, and you see the giant body of water spilling over the sides and then plunging down into the river below. The rocks below would receive it with opened arms, and you start to wonder if the water would ever stop flowing at the Niagara Falls at all. But it just kept coming, thousands and millions of gallons of water, coming at the Falls, as if they were tiny soldiers trying to fight this great beast. A beast, yes, the Niagara Falls was a great beast instead. You cannot help but stand in awe of mother nature all over again and what it has to offer. People always credit God for such creations, when it really is mother nature doing all the job. Mother nature is really a concept anyway, the idea of how nature works in its own ways within an organized system of things, with the erosions and the currents all playing small parts in the creation of this amazing sight. The three of us made our way up onto the Observation Deck that rose up from the bottom of the cliff, and we watched the American Falls from a completely different point of view. From where we were, we could see a bird's eye view of the falls from a higher ground, the river that the falls fed, and Canada on the other side of the river. The Hard Rock Cafe sign glittered in the morning sun, and the hotels lined the edge of the cliff, like eager tourists all trying to find the best spot to see the wonders of nature.

We made our way down to the Maid of the Mist, or the boat ride with a fancy name. We were given blue ponchos to prevent us from getting drenched, and the line for the boat stretched all the way from the dock to the base of the observation tower. So we waited, we took pictures of ourselves looking like reporters in the middle of a hurricane, and pictures of the American Falls crashing down from fifty meters above us. The seagulls came and went, left their feces on the roof of the dock, and then it was time for us to board. The lot of us made our ways through the walkway and onto the boat. Most of the people there went straight for the upper deck, while I convinced my friends that going to the front of the boat would make more sense. That paid off as we were at the spearhead of pretty much everything that was about to happen. The boat went pass the American Falls where the rocks piled up at the bottom. We were right in front of it at this point, the mist pouring into the boat and all around us. I pulled the hood of my poncho down closer and tightened the plastic strings at the base of my neck. The boat rocked a little bit as it battled the waves below, and the voice over the speakers told us the tale of the boy that went over the falls and miraculously survived. I stuck my hand out and took pictures with my eyes closed mostly, and took my time for the rest of the journey to stare at the falls in utter awe.

The boat continued on, and we went pass Bridal Falls and towards the midst of the Horse Shoe Falls. On this end of the river, the waves are much stronger, and the boat rocked in every direction. I started to think about the possibility of a capsize, and also about which idiot next to me would try to grab hold onto me and push me into the freezing waters below. The mist engulfed us at this point, and we could no longer see the buildings on the Canadian side by now. We were sailing into a dreamworld of sorts, like the edge of a dream, diving into the unknown. It was a little scary, especially with the waters foaming up around the boat and the roaring of the waterfalls from all sides. Amidst all the action, there is always that thought in the back of your head when you are witnessing something amazing, something extraordinary. You start to think about all the people back home, your family and friends, your loved ones, and you start to think about how great it would be if you could share the experience in ways more than just photographs from far away. I wished dearly that Neptina was there with me, because I know the experience would be completely different on that rocking boat that morning, and we'd probably be frantically taking pictures of ourselves while the mist embraced and overwhelmed us. So I sang my favorite song by Pink Floyd under my breath, or at least just the chorus over and over again. I wish you were here, I wish you were here.

If any of you is keen on visiting the Niagara Falls, the Maid of the Mist ride and the Cave of the Winds are probably the only two things worth doing at the state park, because everything else hardly matters if you ask me. In between the Maid of the Mist and the Cave of the Winds, the three of us took some time off to grab lunch at a little cafe. The Cave of the Winds can only be reached via a trolly, like a tram that goes around the state park. While at the state park, I fed bread to hordes of hungry and desperate sparrows, and it was fun to see them coming closer and closer to the piece of bread in my palm. You know, to see who is the bravest bird out of them all, kinda thing. Anyway, Cave of the Winds is probably the best part about the whole visit to the Niagara Falls. What happens if that you take an elevator all the way down to the base of the cliffs, and you follow a trail that takes you all the way up to the bottom of the falls. There are these wooden staircases lodged into the rocks beneath the cliffs, and you pretty much follow the stairs up until you reach the falls itself. A random trivia here that I found out only after I got home: The staircases aren't secured to the rocks by any screws or any bolts. They are merely wedged between rocks, which means that the entire structure has to withstand not only the force of the waterfalls, but also the weight of all the visitors. If I had known this fact about the Cave of the Winds, I might have hesitated a little while climbing those stairs. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss indeed.

If you've ever ran through a really heavy rain before, you'd know how much it hurts when the rain hits your face. That is exactly how it was like for this particular trail up to the bottom of the falls. As you move closer and closer, the mist starts to get thicker and the water starts to hit you like rubber bullets. I was wearing a t-shirt underneath the dual-layer of ponchos (one from Maid of the Mist and one from Cave of the Winds), and I was still feeling the pain whenever a sudden wave of water came down on us. There are various platforms along the way whereby you could go up all the way to the edge, and that is exactly what the lot of us did. We enlisted the help of an old couple of take a picture for us while we were there, and the waterfall beat mercilessly into our backs as the old man took his time with the picture. The water was ice cold, and I remember tasting it with my tongue as it dripped from the top of my hood. We could hardly hear each other over the pounding of the waves, and it wasn't long until we realized that taking pictures weren't an option anymore. For the most part, I kept my camera safely in my pocket while I braved the crashing waters all around me. It was an awesome experience that day, to be this close to the might of mother nature, to be surrounded by the elements - it was awesome!

As I was saying, if you are going to visit the Niagara Falls, spend more time at the above to mentioned attractions. Everything else like the Science Center or the Aquarium, just give those a skip - they aren't really worth it. Anyway, I must say that the Niagara Falls experience was truly worth the entire trip, though that is not to say that the "adventures" that happened afterwards weren't either. It was my first taste of a foreign country outside of school, and it was definitely a whole lot of fun. Hopefully, I'd be able to head up to Canada again this weekend to go to the Niagara Falls from Canada's side of things. Anyway, for now, I highly recommend visiting it for anybody who decides to drop by Buffalo. For those that are coming in December, I'm not sure if it's stay open through spring because of all the snow and ice. But try to make it anyway, because it is the most awesome experience you are going to have with nature - ever.

Parties!

Sunday, October 04, 2009

Parties!

Having been to the United States only once in my life when I was eight years old, a lot of things that I know about this place since then has been from television shows, movies, books, newspapers - the media. I was eight years old back then when I first got through the customs at the airport, stepping out into the unfamiliar Californian sunset and meeting a close family friend for the very first time. I believe that was the first time my family went out on a vacation somewhere, and I remember every itsy-bitsy detail of that trip. Everything from my stay in Los Angeles, Disneyland, the San Diego Seaworld, the trip up to Seattle and then eventually ending in Vancouver, Canada. I remember a great many details from that trip, but I don't suppose the eyes of an eight year old could have seen the real side of this country. As the years wore on and I became older, one of the great many sides of the United States was the idea of parties that they love to throw. It started with Hollywood movies I suppose, and their frequent depiction of high school or college students throwing elaborate and wild parties at their homes, sometimes for no apparent reasons at all. It almost always ends up in a great big mess, with torn sofas and spilled drinks, with vomit everywhere and a drunkard asleep on a rubber float in the middle of a swimming pool. Such were the images that I brought along with me to Buffalo, the parties and the drinks and everything else that are suppose to come along for the ride.

I've never been one for parties, if you don't know me enough already. The exclamation mark in the title of this entry almost makes it sound as if I enjoy them. Well, to a certain degree, that may be true, to be perfectly honest. With the right crowd of friends, with the right atmosphere and the right occasion, a party of sorts can be enjoyable and fun even if it is coming from me. I am not usually a fan of parties, or clubbing, or any kind of social activities that involve big groups of people that I don't know very well, huddling and shoving each other in the dark to loud music that I don't enjoy very much. There are a great many things about clubbing which I do not necessarily understand, and there are a great many things about my distaste for clubbing that clubbers do not necessarily understand either. It isn't something wrong, I feel, it's just something I do not always want to engage myself in. With that said, I've always thought that house parties are in a completely different league altogether. You don't get that a lot in Singapore, and the reason is probably because of the fact that there are clubs that aren't too far away from where we all live. Besides, any kind of noise after ten o'clock in the evening could invite policemen knocking on your front door, something which you do not want.

So, I am the kind of person to prefer a simple gathering of friends, coming together and just hanging out. It doesn't make sense for me to try to beat the speakers in a club when trying to ask my friend how his life has been, or try to raise my voice louder than I should when trying to answer the same question. From my not-so-extensive experience at clubs, the thing that I've realized the most is that I hate straining my voice, and the club is pretty much where that happens a lot, at least for me. Before coming over to the United States, the image of house parties has always been that of soft lights, good music in the background, and a bunch of friends sitting around in a circle and drinking while talking about their lives with cushions in their arms. That has been the perfect image in my head, and I suppose I'd jump for any opportunities to do that when it arises. However, things are not quite the same as I have pictured all along ever since I got here. Parties aren't exactly what I have in mind, and they are somewhat different from what I've been used to, or comfortable with for the most part. To be honest, I think the movies highly exaggerates what happens in a college party, because not all college parties are like that. Still, it can't rise out of nothing, and you can see why the depiction are so rampant in films we see nowadays.

Before my trip over here, my girlfriend told me not to do a great many things. She told me not to take drugs, not to have sex, not to pick up smoking, and most of all - not to drink. For the most part, they are demands that aren't exactly difficult to meet, since I am not particularly adventurous when it comes to putting foreign objects into my mouth; I don't imagine American girls to be particularly attracted to a scrawny Asian guy; I haven't been a fan of neither smoking nor drinking before I came here. Drinking runs in the genes, I suspect, because my father and his brothers are great drinkers. I have the ability to hold my liquor, but that isn't a limit that I want to test with shot glasses any time soon. I'd rather keep the occasions when I have to drink alcohol to the bare minimum, and I'd much rather remain sober and to tell stories about my friends' embarrassing experiences by daylight. I intend to hold true to those promises and not do those things while I am here, and I have been sticking dutifully to them, save for that one time when I had a steak with alcohol in it. People always say that when you are in a country like that, you don't go out and look for drugs - drugs come and look for you. In my head, I pictured bags of marijuana growing legs and then knocking at my bedroom window with a match in their hands, asking me to burn their heads off. Well, that has never happened before, but I realized how easy it is to obtain drugs if I truly want to look for it. Hell, my friend's room mate has a bong in her living room.

It is easy to get those things in this place, you know. Drugs, sex, smoke and drinks, those are integral parts of a great many college around here, and not even the cold weather can stop people from doing them. Alcohol has been the most prevalent form of those things that has surrounded me in my stay here, with my room mates being party animals for the most part, with every weekend being their playground of sorts. Ever since I got here a little over a month ago, almost every weekend has been party nights, sometimes on two consecutive days too. I've been invited to these parties, but I've always declined their invitations for a great many reasons - legitimate ones at that. I've had to attend a football game early in the morning this one time, and to head off to New York City on the other. They've offered me drinks, but I've always told them that I am allergic to alcohol. In a way, having seen my father get drunk so many times over the years, I am mentally allergic to those drinks, and would much rather stick to my orange juice, thank you very much. Anyway, most of the time when they have parties in my apartment, I'd be in my bedroom and minding my own business. My in-ear headphones have been really helpful because of how well they block sound out, and I even wear them to sleep even when I am not listening to any music. After all, there has been occasions when parties would last all the way till the next morning.

This is usually how a party starts in my apartment. Two of my room mates have been knowing each other for a very long time, and they have common friends between the both of them. So what happens is that you'd see them shuffling around the kitchen trying to organize the furniture, putting on more clothes than they normally would around the house, and then you see cartons of beer being brought out from the back of their cars. Then the door bells start to go off one by one, and you hear them going over to the answering machine on the wall and asking for the password. I never really caught the password before, but it isn't something that makes a lot of sense anyway. So the friends would start to pour in, and then you will hear the music being played really loudly in the living room, with the dial pushed all the way up and the floors would then start to vibrate. If it is crazy enough, the table in my room would start to vibrate as well. They have this giant stereo system installed in the living room, and the same playlist goes over and over again whenever their friends are over. They have everything from Smash Mouth, to the Bloodhound Gang, to the latest hip-hop or rap songs that don't make any sense at all. You know, the one about them being on a boat, or the other one about hotels, motels, and holiday inns. Yeah, you know what I mean.

People from around here seems to love rap a lot, and that genre of music seems to be a big thing here. Rap is everywhere, and I daresay that the only song that hasn't been somehow remixed into rap is the national anthem here. Everything is rap here, and even the country music is rap. OK, maybe the country music is still country music, but I will not be surprised if someone adds a little bluegrass to rap in due time. Hell, even Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega has been turned into a backing track of some rap song I heard a couple of weeks ago. That goes to show how popular it is over here, and everybody loves it. The thumping bass would penetrate every wall and every floor, and every window around the house. It is not possible to operate properly with the music turned up that loud, and even harder when the patrons of the party and jumping up and down to the music, and then laughing hysterically every once in a while. I steal glances at the living room whenever I make a trip down to the bathroom, and they are usually scenes you don't want to last the whole night. Beer pong is something that they love to play, and my room mates actually keep a score sheet of it on the fridge. It usually just involves them throwing a ping-pong ball into cups filled with beer, and that is the only game that I have ever seen them play - ever.

On a particularly hectic night, I was in my room and getting ready for bed because I had an early football game to attend at the stadium, my room mates were partying with a bunch of their friends, and with the same old playlist turned up louder than supposed to all through the night. I think they stopped at about three in the morning, and I remember everything from the beginning of the night till that point to be somewhat dreadful, to be honest. I experienced the party through everything that I could hear through the walls, and it sounded like a crazy party to me. At one point, one of my room mates was asking somebody else to fuck the couch, and then there was a dreadful scraping sound of something hard against my wall from the other side. They then started to sing about them being on a boat, and then there were a lot of running around and even more jumping around. I remember coming out of the bedroom and going to the bathroom for a shower at one point in time, and everybody has pretty much lost their minds by then. I didn't really look at the mess that they created because I know that the thought of clearing it up would be Hell, at the very least. Of course, I wasn't in charge of clearing anything up, because I am not their slave or anything. It's just the thought of my apartment, or at least a quarter of it is mine, being thrashed up by a group of drunkards just because they wanted to have some fun.

When they left, I went out of my bedroom to survey the damage, and here is what I saw. The first thing I saw was the shoe in the hallway - just one. Then there was the table that they used to play beer pong on, but the cups were not all on the table at this point in time. I saw yellow liquid spilled all over the table and dripping from the edge of the table, and for some reason I thought that it was urine or something, which I'd not be particularly surprised. Crushed beer cans were thrown everywhere on the sofa, the kitchen counter, on the floors, and the entire room smelled like vaporized beer. It wasn't a pretty sight, and I had to make my way carefully through the wreckage before I could take a sip of my orange juice from the fridge. Don't get me wrong, I think my room mates are really nice people. They are just into a kind of party that I am not particularly excited about, if you know what I mean. I am all for chill-out sessions and everything, but don't expect me to go wild in front of people that I don't know very well. I suppose when it comes to "making friends", this isn't necessarily what I had in mind in the first place. There isn't a lot that I can fault my room mates with, because as much as they mess the apartment up, the almost always return it back to the original state. They take a while, but they do it, you know? Ask Joel about his room mate and the used socks, that is a hilarious story.

The last party that happened was the night when I had to leave for New York City. Yes, they were playing the same songs and the same game in the living room, only it was somebody's birthday party and they were all prepared to get drunk and high. When asked if they remembered anything from the previous night, none of them remembered anything. I'm not sure if it is still fun to throw a party like that when you can't remember having fun at all. Perhaps the fun is in the forgetting, who knows. Anyway, so I saw a little bit of that party, and it was about nine o'clock at night when it was already out of control. I had to take an overnight bus ride all the way to New York City, and I wanted to clean up a little before the trip. Just as I was about to enter the bathroom, I noticed that the toilet cover, instead of it being on the toilet itself, was on the sink instead. Confused, I looked over the edge of the toilet and realized that someone has managed to clog it up with used toilet paper and shit. Yes, somebody used my bathroom and managed to clog it up with his or her shit, causing everything to overflow. I told my room mate about it before I had to go, and I told him that somebody has better fix the toilet before I come back. It was indeed fixed, and I am just glad that I managed to escape that night.

That was Friday night, and by Tuesday morning, there were three bags of empty beer cans blocking the front door to my house. Apparently, there was yet another party over the weekend, and I was fortunate enough to miss that one completely. I knew there was a party from the smell that lingered in the air, and I was glad that I got the morning to myself for the most part as the other two room mates locked themselves in their bedrooms, knocked out cold. I am generally OK with their parties, since they do not mess up my bedroom or anything. Besides, I am not exactly the kind of person you'd find in bed at twelve midnight. I sleep usually when their party moves on to someone else's house at around three in the morning, and my in-ear headphones have been doing that job wonderfully for the most part. It's just the thought of my neighbors downstairs, and how they must have reacted to my room mates' jumping and screaming and music. I'm not sure if there has ever been a complaint against my apartment, but I don't suppose that is going to stop anybody from partying their heads off here either. Anyway, I have recently gotten my hands on a form that allows me to break my apartment's lease earlier than the contract. On the form, there is a column whereby I could put the name of a person I know who is going to take over my apartment if he wishes to. I thought about Naz at first, since he is the only guy I know who is coming over to UB. But then again, considering the parties and how he detests clubbing, I don't think I hate him or anybody else as much to put them through what I have gone through. That part of the form is still blank.

Weather

Saturday, October 03, 2009

Weather

It rained today, a weather that is not supposed to be surprising in this part of the world. I remember making a comment about the weatherman who'd come up in the middle of at the end of news reports to give an update on the weather. Having lived in the warmer parts of the planet for the better part of my life, the job of the weatherman as always been one of the easiest that I know of. That is probably the reason why most of the weather reports in Singapore has been done by computer graphics these days - technology taking over human beings in its purest form in the news studio. Anyway, watching a weather report in Singapore is kind of like watching a game of soccer between Brazil and Singapore - you pretty much know the result. Every single day of the year is the same as the one before, with temperatures generally ranging between 25 and 32 degrees celsius, though there are occasions whereby it'd dip a degrees below or above that range. But for the most part, we have three kinds of weather system to take note off, something that isn't exactly rocket science. It is either sunny, cloudy, or rainy in Singapore, and it isn't difficult to predict any of those on your own either. A weather report is almost like the obligatory black character in an American comedy sitcom. You know, you have to have a member of the cast from a different race, or else you'd be called a "racist". Similarly, it is as if you don't have a weather report in your news, you are a gay news agency or something.

There is no point watching the weather report in Singapore because every day is the same, day in and day out. Every once in a while you get a particularly heavy rain that lasts for an unnaturally long time, or a thunder storm that sweeps across the island for half an hour. Heavy rain sometimes cause mini landslides in certain parts of the island, not to mention the occasional tree that gets uprooted somewhere. But relatively speaking, if you compare the weather reports of Singapore to a great many countries around the world, you'd find that its existence is pretty redundant for the most part. If you are leaving your home on a sunny day, all you have to do is to arm yourself with an umbrella and you are all set. If you are really afraid that your wardrobe will be drenched by the rain, maybe you could toss in a poncho or a raincoat, and that should be more than enough. In terms of weather, Singapore doesn't provide a lot of excitement, which in some ways could be a great thing to many people out there. I mean, if you want to get away from the blistering cold up North, Singapore would probably be a great destination for you because, well, it is blistering hot all year round for the most part. I, for one, am not a person who likes the warm weather very much. There are two things about me that I've discovered over the course of this trip that I haven't noticed before: I adjust to jet lags surprisingly well, and that I love the cold more than I thought I do.

In Taiwan, things get a little more interesting at times. You still get the sunny, the cloudy and the rainy most of the time, but at least we get a semblance of winter up there. No longer do you have to walk down the streets under the blazing hot sun while listening to Christmas carols coming from a street side store. In Taiwan, at least the air is chilly and the wind blows right into your bones. You have weathers like that, and there are times in winter when you could drive up into the mountains to see the snow, because it does snow in mountainous areas in Taiwan if you are patient enough to brave the traffic all the way up, not to mention the journey down. It is predictable weather in Taiwan most of the time, save for an abnormal situation that arises every once in a while. Typhoons come spinning into the coastline a couple of times a year, and Taiwan only recently survived the relentless power of mother nature a few months back. When the typhoon comes along, the weather stations kick into overdrive, and it is the sole source of information that people rely on for the most part, because they are supposed to be the most accurate. For that couple of times, the hopes of the people dangle by a thread that hangs onto the weather channels, and they actually serve a very real purpose in times like that.

Still, I don't think I have really experienced a real typhoon, at least not when I was in Taiwan. I remember there was a time when I visited my grandmother when the front drive was flooded with water. My cousins and I then took out our toys and played with the water that gathered at the front door. In retrospect, it was quite an unhygienic thing to do, but then we were boys back then, and we were meant to be sweaty and dirty for the most part. Anyway, such a weather condition was a rarity, and the weather has been pretty predictable for the most part, no matter how much my parents would try to disagree. You see, as parents, you tend to over-protect your children at times, especially in their younger years. When I was in my younger years, my mother would pile clothes onto me as if I am some kind of clothing rack, and I remember those days when I would be in four layers of clothes despite the fact that it is just sixteen degrees out. That, in context, was pretty damn cold for my tiny little body, and my mother knew that. Winter in Taiwan, compared to winter in Buffalo, was probably just the appetizer. In fact, people over here probably call that their summer, because it really doesn't compare. It isn't actually winter in Buffalo just yet, since it is still in the season of autumn here in Buffalo. But you can start to feel the chills already, with the trees dying and the flowers withering. This is the beginning of winter, this is what autumn is like. I cannot wait for it to come, and yet I am somewhat terrified.

All of a sudden, the weather report has been propelled to a great level of importance in my life, at least on the dashboard of my Macbook. It is a widget that I check about ten to fifteen times a day, simply because of how everything changes. The temperature that you see today is probably not going to be the temperature that you see yesterday. If they predict a sunny day on Wednesday, it is probably not going to be a sunny day by the time Wednesday rolls around the corner. Sunlight is a fragile thing here in Buffalo, because you don't get that a lot, at least not anymore. It was the case when I moved from Singapore to Buffalo, when the hint of summer could still be found in the bushes and the trees. It was a time when the warmth was just about to leave, and I caught its tail right as it was about to leave the room. This is autumn though, this dreadful and rainy days is what autumn seems to be all about now. If not for the rain, the skies are usually covered in a depressing shade of gray, and clouds would loom close to the grounds than they normally would. I use the words "depressing" and "dreadful", but that doesn't necessarily mean that I feel that way. I love this dull and somewhat morbid weather around here, with everything dying around me. They say that the fall is the best time to be in Buffalo, because you get to see a little bit of everything. I believe that saying very much, and it seems to hold true so far, for the most part.

When I arrived in Buffalo, it was a rainy day. Rain isn't common in Buffalo, and it started out like a tease in the very beginning. It would rain for about ten minutes, and it'd come and go without you even realizing it. It tends to start raining heavily all of a sudden, and it'd vanish just as soon as it arrived. In between these sudden and short pangs of rain, the weather here has been punctuated with mostly sunny days, or chilly days with moderate amount of winds. Comfortable is the word to describe the weather that I have been experiencing for the most part, as it is possible to grab a book and an iPod and sit in the middle of a big green field without feeling too hot or cold. I've sat in the middle of the grassy field right next to the Center for the Arts a dozen times, and I must say that the act of sitting in the middle of a field and reading a book makes you feel like a real college student. I mean, that isn't the kind of thing that we do in Singapore, because you don't get a lot of big green fields around the school campus at all. We have a forest across the road, but then it isn't the kind of pretty forest you want to go to. It is a tropical rainforest, and that equates to swamps, heat, and mosquitoes. Besides, most of the big green fields in Singapore are either going to be turned into a residential area, a business district, or it has been already turned into a soccer field.

At that point in time, it was possible to head out of the house with a t-shirt and jeans, no problem. When the winds blew, all we had to do was to put on a hoodie or a sweater and we were good to go. Even in Toronto, the weather was fair for the most part, comfortable to walk in the streets, and there isn't a need to wipe sweat off your forehead once every fifteen seconds. My theory of loving the colder weather has always been this: If you are cold in a cold country, all you need to do is to pile on clothes and you'd be fine. If you are hot in a hot country, you can strip naked and walk down the street and still feel incredibly hot. There is a way to battle the cold, but there isn't a way to battle the hot unless you enlist technology. Although air-conditioned jackets are not exactly science fiction in our day and time, nobody really wants to carry such things around on our shoulders. Besides, most of the designs are pretty damn ugly, and they all look like space suits from Star Trek if you ask me. It is easier to keep warm, and besides the fashions involved in colder countries are just freakin' awesome. I know that half the clothes I bought here are probably not applicable in the warm weather back home. But screw it, autumn/winter fashion is simply mind blowing. One word: layering.

It isn't very cold just yet, but it is soon about to. Over the weekend, I spent my time in New York City - which is my favorite city in the world now - and something happened to the weather system back home. It rained in New York City as well, kinda like a tropical monsoon that'd come in the morning and leave by afternoon. At any rate, it wasn't the funnest thing to have to carry your shopping bags in the rain in New York City, but we survived it anyway. More on that when I attempt to blog about my trip to New York City. These days, though, if you check out the weather reports, everything is either rainy or just somewhat cloudy. Clear days don't seem to exist anymore, and you see either the sun with a bit of cloud, or the sun with a bit of rain. Everything in between is rain, rain, rain, and rain. In fact, the raining part of the weather got so bad over the last weekend while I was in New York City, that parts of this place got flooded. People received weather warnings here, and there were reports on hails in certain parts of this city. Over at Sweet Home Road, people reported a hail storm back there, and I am just glad that I wasn't caught in the middle of one of those. The thing about the cold is that it is fine when it is just cold and nothing else. When you add rain and/or wind to the mix, you want to stay at home and not get out.

Still, this is probably just the foreplay of winter, since it isn't officially here yet. I have done my preparations, of course, and they involve thick clothing and a trusty water bag, in the event when I do need it. Even these days, I leave the house with a set of gloves to keep me warm, not to mention three layers of clothes on my body. A t-shirt, a sweater and a jacket with scarf is pretty much all that I need these days when the temperature dips below ten. It is still extremely comfortable for the most part when the wind remains calm, and I am still enjoying myself. Right now, at twelve midnight, my windows are actually opened because the room feels really stuffy. The scary thing about the winter is that you don't really know if the stuff that you bought are going to be enough until winter comes. You know, like the thick down feather jacket that I bought prior to this trip. I have no idea if that is going to work when the temperatures dip below zero, and it certainly isn't going to help for the fact that I paid more than two hundred dollars on that thing. The same applies for the scarves, the gloves, the shoes, the socks, and everything else that I have bought to keep me warm. Only time will tell, and that is a phrase that I hate with a passion. I want to know now, so that I can buy more and feel good about the days to come.

I remember the morning when the lot of us prepared to travel up to Toronto. We traveled there via Greyhound, and more about that trip in the coming entries I suppose. That morning was a particularly cold one, and I remember waking up at six in the morning with condensation on my window. Six degrees outside and dropping, and that was the morning when I piled on so much clothes that I must have looked like I gained ten pounds. I took pictures of Lake LaSalle, the lake that is right next to the place that I live. You could see mist coming off the surface of the lake because it was just that cold, and condensation formed every time we breathed out through our mouths. It was fun on my part, jumping up and down to keep my body temperature high in the blistering morning cold, and I was especially frozen because of the fact that I forgot to bring my gloves out that morning. I've learned my lessons, and now they stick with me wherever I go. Anyway, there is a sort of excitement lingering in the air, I suppose, when it comes to winter. The first snow is going to be somewhat exciting, and I imagine myself jetting off in a plane when I eventually get sick of the color white. The snow is probably going to be fascinating for about week, and then it is going to suck for a long time. Before then, though, I must say that I hate the rain, and I say this to mother nature: either start snowing or stop raining right now, thanks.

Temptation

Temptation

Before the beginning of this very long journey, a person told me to be wary of the temptations that may present themselves along the way. That person was referring to women at that point in time, telling me to be loyal and to stick to my girlfriend despite the many temptation of love and lust along the way. I have succumb to temptation, but not exactly the kind of temptation she was referring to back then. It is the temptation of writing, the square that I move my pieces back to almost every time. There are moments of realization that you cannot keep it going for a long time, a switch in paces and a change of gear in life, and you find that you want to give something a break, just to see how it sits with you. I've been without writing for a little over a month now, and things have been relatively bearable for the most part. I must admit that amidst the school, amidst the traveling and amidst the living, you tend to get lost within the ebbs and the flow of things. Writing suddenly takes a step back, and it can be a liberating feeling to be honest. There is a thin line between passion and obligation, and I cannot deny that there were times when I felt like writing became somewhat of an obligation of sorts. It isn't because I had to meet some kind of deadline or anything, because there were none other than the ones that I set for myself. One entry a day, one entry a day, one entry a day. That was the law, or rule, that I've been trying to abide to for some time now. Though, as you might have already noticed if you've stuck around for a long enough time, there are moments within the lifespan of this blog when I stopped writing before. So this, my comeback, shouldn't come as a surprise at all.

There are times in a journey, any kind of journey, when you don't feel like you want to document at all. There are some travelers who love to document every inch of their journey with whatever instruments that they can. Some rely on their cameras to do the job, taking pictures of everything from sunsets to ducks, from breakfast to toenails, from hungover friends to skyscrapers. If one is to try hard enough, I'd not be surprised if he or she manages to form some kind of 3D environment with all the pictures taken of this place. Similarly, I used to have a need or want to document every inch of my life in words, to find a little something in everything to write about. I wanted to remember, and I wanted to express it at the end of the day with words and punctuations, with paragraphs and essays dedicated to a certain memory. That is all good for a while, until you realize that the need to document your life sometimes overwhelms the part about living the life. It's like going to a rock concert with a camera, and you feel like you want to take as many pictures as possible, because it is supposed to be "a night to remember" or something like that. Some people believe in that, which is why they are shutter-happy, and they go on a picture-taking rampage at concerts. But at the end of the day, they go home and they feel like they haven't enjoyed the concert as much as they could have because they were busy taking pictures of it and forgot what it was supposed to be about. The band, the atmosphere, the music. It shouldn't be about the 3x5s, it never should be.

The same goes with writing, I suppose, the way that you are subconsciously trying to remember every single detail. I noticed that while I was in New York City over the weekend, and realized that I wouldn't have enjoyed the trip as much if I was constantly trying to remember and document everything for the sake of doing so. I wanted to experience New York City like a tourist, or a human being, and not some kind of journalist out there to do a job. It's not that blogging about it would ruined the experience or anything, but I suppose in a way it made everything feel somewhat routine. I wanted it to settle in for a while, like that period of time that I got between coming to Buffalo and starting school. I wanted to get comfortable with a certain memory or experience first before writing about it in full. I don't suppose any form of quality work could be derived from regurgitating half digested thoughts, if you know what I mean. It'd taste almost like a cup of coffee made this morning in a rush because you were running late for work. You know, that stale taste in the cup that makes it less of a coffee and more of a cup of hot water. Don't you just hate that? Anyway, the same goes with the act of documenting memories I suppose. It is different with photography, because photography is instantaneous, and you don't have to allow the memory to set in. It involves capturing a single moment with the lens, and the only limit to how much you can take is the capacity of your memory card or the battery life. And as for writing, there is a buffer period, and if you write anything within that time, you know that the end result is going to be a big mess.

I don't suppose anything is good at high dosage, no matter how you see it. You cannot expect to listen to a Beatles album on repeat everyday and expect it to sound good by day twelve. It doesn't work that way, and the same goes with writing. I don't feel like there is a lack of things to write in my life so far, because there has been plenty. It is the idea of diminishing returns, like the taste of a chocolate bar in your mouth. The first bite is great because you were craving for it, and then the second bite is even tastier. By the sixth bite, you get into this motion and you realize that the sixth bite isn't exactly as gratifying as the first, though they are pretty much the same for the most part. Writing works the same way, and it is like this living breathing animal for the most part. It is dynamic, and it shifts around without bounds or leashes at all. You cannot cage this animal in a place for a long time, because like us human, it becomes tired and agitated with its surroundings. You cannot constantly feed it with the same food, because it wants to be able to choose what it wants to eat, when it wants to eat, and how it wants to eat. Writing is the animal that does not sleep, and it lingers in the back of your head like a prowling lion. Yet, it remains in the dark sometimes, in the shade of a tree on a bright sunny day or in the shadows of the grass in the night. It doesn't appear until it wants to, and you cannot possibly expect it to appear whenever you drive by as a tourist in a safari. It's like going out on a whale watching tour, and you shouldn't expect to see whales out in the sea every time it moves out. Sometimes, the whale just wants to sink to the bottom of the ocean.

So, the temptation of writing came back to me, as you can see. I am pleasantly surprised that I still have it in me, I suppose. This must be how an old-time boxer feels like at the age of sixty when he realizes that he still packs a punch. There was a time when returning to writing makes myself feel old and rusty sometimes, somewhat like a bag of nails. It takes a while for you to get back on track, to feel that momentum build up all over again. It takes some time, sometimes, unlike now. I suppose you cannot get rid of something that is inherent in you, you know, something that you are born with. I feel like I have the gift to translate my thoughts into words pretty easily, and there isn't an inertia in trying to do so for the most part. That is also why when it comes to essay questions at school, I usually don't have a problem with them, save for the aching in my fingertips by the end of it all. Writing is second nature to me, like a siamese twin who wasn't there (I actually typed "sesame twin" at first). It is something that is in me, and I know the italicized "in" back there conjured up the imagine of an alien life form in my body, didn't it? Anyway, I cannot deny what is inside of me, which is why I have succumbed to the temptations of writing all over again. It feels good to see my fingers dance over the keyboards again, not to mention the way words magically appear in front of the cursor.

I suppose tonight, since I am in the mood, I shall try to catch up on a great many things that has come to pass, and see if I can catch up with myself in terms of writing. This is going to be a strange habit to be falling back into again, but I suppose it is better than pouring smoke into your lungs, any day. This isn't the first time that I have stopped blogging, I realized. Over the past couple of years, ever since 2003 to be exact, I have stopped blogging periodically for a handful of times. I've stopped for a week, to a month, to an entire year before, and I suppose those breaks only served to gather my thoughts properly. I don't feel like I want to oblige myself in blogging this time. No deadlines, no minimum quantities, no rules. I want to blog whenever I want to blog, or when I feel like there is something to blog about. I don't want my blog to end up like some kind of news agency when they have to come up with materials to report on, or like filler songs in an album. You know, news about a dog with three legs, some story about a small town baking the biggest cheesecake in the world, filler stories to fill up spaces in a newspaper when the news are coming in slow. I don't want entries on this blog to end up like that, the same way we skip filler songs in an album because they are just not nearly as good as the title tracks.

New directions, I remain unsure of that idea. People always say that with a new start, comes a new face. You are supposed to approach something from a different perspective and everything. But people also say that you shouldn't try to fix something that isn't broken, and it's not like I left blogging with a bad taste in my mouth anyway. I ended it with a song that has been lingering on the front pages for the longest of times, and I do assume that this little break in blogging has drawn away many readers that has stuck with me from the very start, especially for the fact that I usually do it unannounced. I've always grappled with the dilemma, between writing for myself and writing for an audience. In a way, we are all trying to find balance between the two, and it is a constant struggle sometimes. As much as people want to believe that they are keeping a blog for themselves, there are times when you want to let the world in, you know? Anyway, I don't suppose there will be a radical change in new directions, and this blog is still going to be the way that it is - long, dreary, and very "me". This blog is still going to retain its length and breadth, and things will be, in no ways, discounted in any way. I suppose that will be where I am the most comfortable, with writing and with myself, between writing for people and writing for myself. After all, why can't the two be of the best marriage?

In Continuum.

Donations, Part Two

Donations, Part One

Niagara Falls

Parties!

Weather

Temptation

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