elaine is getting married in a week and a half! she doesn't in the least seem frazzled though. i am a librarian. i'm super organised. heh. oh yeah, there's this bit i was reading in the science of discworld. if you haven't read any pratchett there's this orangutan who's the librarian of the wizards' library at unseen university. he used to be an ordinary wizard until a magical accident turned him into his present form and he liked it so much he didn't want to be turned back. in the introduction of the science of discworld, pratchett says: "we could, for example, have pointed out that darwin's theory of evolution explains how lower lifeforms can evolve into higher ones, which in turn makes it entirely reasonable that a human should evolve into an orangutan (while remaining a librarian, since there is no higher lifeform than a librarian.) haha! she wants me to tell her about a singaporean wedding, so i gave her the chinese tea ceremony bit. well i also told her about coming to the bride's house and all that lah. actually, chinese weddings are very money-minded, aren't they. she couldn't believe how much money changes hands during one. i mean you get an angpow just for opening the car door, for goodness sake. and all that haggling with the bride's girlfriends to be let in. and how every cup of tea comes to, what, $40? we don't think about it like that though, do we? it seems quite natural, just as we do during chinese new year, or getting birthday angpows. hah, can you imagine someone asking what we did for chinese new year, and we told them? "in my culture? let's see, well, on chinese new year, all the married people give the unmarried people money!" haha! we're a money culture!
as i was walking back to bryan hall i was thinking about being in the top year again, the sort of self-assurance that comes with it, being able to stride along confidently while the new students are bumbling. volunteering directions to nose-in-map students and parents a dozen times a day, meeting the same people again rather than for the first time. but also a feeling of unaccustomed and vague unreadiness, maybe some wonder there too, am i really fourth year now? all grown up and ready to set a good example to the lower years? feeling old and responsible? i think it's having three hostees and also there being three transfer students in my suite this year that makes me feel this especially, though the fact of being in the top form alone would make you feel this way. the sort of "it was only yesterday and now..." feeling. talking to prof v and the new students really makes me feel like that scene from malory towers. i wish i were here longer.
do you remember the bit in malory towers, at the beginning of the last book, when darrell was headgirl and taking the new girls to ms grayling? and feeling at once the confidence and the newness at being a top-former? that's sort of how i felt all yesterday. i went to bryan hall to wave at charles vandersee, who was my advisor when i was a first year. outside his office i found two new students waiting to see him for the first time, so i got talking to them. when they found out that i was fourth year and charles v's advisee once upon a time they wanted to know what he was like. he's interested in you and will ask you any amount of personal questions while taking copious amounts of notes in pencil (presumably for his little dossiers) which can make you very nervous. he's fun but is very demanding in that no matter how hard you make your schedule, he'll still say you can make it more challenging. he also always agrees to let you do whatever you pick, and wouldn't ever say, no it's not sensible, too much work. at that point he opened the door then and i bounced up and gave him a crushing hug, the von variety. no problem with 4.0 this semester? he tells the girl departing. everyone looks at him nervously. i accuse him of having said the same thing to me when i just got here. (it IS very unnerving you know. i wish he wouldn't) well, you didn't turn out too bad. i told him i'd come back at 2 and then go off to the corner to meet elaine banner for lunch. two things happened just as i was flipping open my phone to call her to see if i was waiting at the right place. a) elaine arrived, and b) a bird pooped on me. eeuw. elaine didn't blink though. i've got a 3 year old, bird poop is nothing. so she marches me to the bathroom and thrusts paper wet and dry at me. all in all, it was quite amusing. i wonder if all parents learn to do things like that. it occured to me that if i want children it's only so that i can force them to read books i like. and to give them cool chinese names. heh. i know what this is like. it's like that civilisations game we used to play! i didn't like invading people or forging diplomatic ties or extending my empire. i just enjoyed building cities so i can name them. usually after boys i liked. the one i liked best that week got the library. heehee. i read in starring sally j freedman as herself that it's good luck for a bird to poop on you but surely there are more hygienic ways of finding good luck than that.