yeen teck tells me he's flying back to singapore (just for 5 days!) to interview scholarship officers for his senior thesis on the scholarship system in singapore. i'm absolutely flabbergasted but oh well. if huntsman will sponsor his trip he might as well go and enjoy home food and bring some of his barang home. i think i may be able to put him in touch with an uncle who is in charge of gic scholarships, and maybe he can swing over to my place and bring some edibles back for me, heh. i have to figure out whether i want to buy my train ticket today. my impulse is to go, although a terror is overtaking me and i know i really really haven't got time to be running off somewhere else. i'm freaking out because i know i'm not trying to write a thesis, i'm trying to write several books. and nohrnberg warns that i'm digging more and more foundations around the property and not putting any walls up and the rainy season will be upon us, and i know a small house well-made in 4 weeks is better than a palatial structure that doesn't happen for three years, but i can't throw away that lovely blueprint of my ideal palace in my head. i wish i'd done something sensible and normal like picked one author or one text or period to write on. no, it had to be some massive universal topic, and the universe isn't going to let a brainless git like me wrestle it into 60 pages. i should stay and grindstone it but then from past experience staying here will just mean i'll wake up late everyday and bum around reading frivolous books and not being very efficient, and it really is my last chance to go up to new york while people i know are still there, and if i'm going to waste the time i might as well be up there doing something interesting than in here stoning. grar. listening to john zorn, whose name i keep conflating as jorn. which is the name of the prince in the white deer. and i just found a magnificent riddling book i don't know if i have time to read it all and include it at this rate i am going to have 50 pages of works consulted and 3 pages of continuous prose. damn.