cher inconnu,

sciences po, arguably the top political science school in europe, is about to open another delocalised campus that focuses on franco-american relations in reims. photos of the new campus can be found on the blog of the school's director, here. this launching of a new delocalised campus has ignited furious debate over the priorities of the school - while the europe-asia campus in le havre is only 100 students strong and does not even possess its own campus, sciences po is directing funds to the opening of an entirely new campus that aspires to have 1800 students in a few years. to quote a remark of an indignant student, "as usual, the US triumphs over Asia".

as a 3 month old student of sciences po le havre, i have to admit that i have complained a lot about and criticised the school campus, facilities and quality of teaching (occasionally). but this town, this small school and this way of education has its charm in its own way, and watching her students fight for opportunities to be seen and heard, and to earn their rights as students of the school, has also given me an experience that a dreamy education in a beautiful school may never have.

but what struck me most was, i guess in a way it's for this spirit of openness and critique that is so hard to find in singapore that i flew 10,000km for. and at the end of this fight, sciences po le havre students will be all the more tougher.

i'm thinking of getting the canon ixus 95 is! budget pocket digital camera. :D
WHAT COLOUR SHOULD I GET?

it is 4:20am i'm crazy i should be sleeping i have a history paper in 5 hours, but, today has just been such a special day and though my brain isn't working very well i think God wants to remind me about something! i started it all out entirely discouraged and thinking that i couldn't possibly finish 200 plus pages of bentley & zigler in a night but here i am, having read all of my stuff (though not having retained any of it), and having talked to so many people i love from so many different places in life.

i think i understand now what people mean by young verve, young energy, young love. it's amazing seeing how young people find their way in life, though initially entirely clueless, with such persisting fervour, and just bursting at the seams wanting to give more. like ripe tomatoes. okay i'm not very coherent haha.

when you're far away, and physically removed from them, it sort of makes things clearer - and you can see them struggle and fight to find themselves in this flurry of well, things, and life in general. i guess i'm one of them too, trying to see more of the world myself.

sometimes late nights are a blessing. but i hope i'll be fit for my comparative history of europe and asia, antiquity to 1500s essay tmr. achaemenid seleucid parthian sasanid minoan mycenaean zarathustra confucius mani cornelius sulla. hope i spelt that all right!

three exposés (oral presentations) for french, law and history, and a french controle to look forward to next week! welcome to sciences po life. :)

in pictures it's pretty it looks like it's snow but beauty is visual not sensual. hail feels like really cold and really painful rain - i got caught in a smaller scale hail shower a few days ago and it really stung! but yesterday morning's was craaazy we were so hopeful they'd cancel our econs midterm because it'd have been crazy going out in that weather. can you imagine, dying on the way to school from hail injuries??? lu was studying in her room and when something started falling and pelting her windowpanes, people outside started screaming! 

there was so much hail/it fell in such big ice balls that it didn't melt when it hit the ground and the path to school was crunchy and laid with white minimelts. 

life is such an adventure! haha. 

... haha this was belted out in a reggae cover of "basket case", what a funny name. but i think it's true HAHA i do creep myself out sometimes. like, the amount of ice cream i can eat and the amount of time i can waste just doing nothing. :P which is a bad habit i must really kick, because at sciences po every single moment must be spent doing something: either partying your heart out (which i sort of avoid) or working your  guts out (which i cannot but succumb to, nyehh). 

the weather sucks it's either the cold drizzle set with complementary wind, or the thirty minute interval deal (thirty min of sun and thirty min of rain); when i look it's sunny so i open my windows, but once i turn my back it starts raining again and i have to shut myself in from the cold and the wet. there ought to be lots of rainbows here in le havre (on mon i saw an enormous arc that spanned the entire landscape, ending right at the église st-joseph) as it's always raining, even when it's sunny. an umbrella is ineffective because the wind just blows it inside out with a little huff. 

halloween was quite an experience, in singapore we never really did that dressing up thing haha. we watched the shining, which is creepy to the max (danny lloyd, the cute six-year old little boy in the film, grew up to be some scientist/professor... haha i wonder if any of my profs acted in a horror film before), and i lost my camera. :( 

today is a landmark day because it's the first day i'm using the washing machine! hahahahaha. i used to have more time to handwash my things, but not anymore...

THE NOVEMBER BLUES HAVE OFFICIALLY STARTED! and on cue, the rain started to pour on november the first. after living for nineteen years in sunny singapore i can now understand why guns n' roses wrote "november rain", not "november sun".

why, because on saturday there's the fresh fruit and veg marché where i can buy lots of nice, cheap things to eat :D and today, i spent my day at chez boudairon, my host family's!

i took a walk in the garden while my host mum was preparing lunch. with the coming of autumn the garden too, has changed - the flowers have begun to wither and lie down in their flowerbeds, the fruit has fallen from the trees and lie in abundance across the grass, and there are lots of mushrooms about - today i saw toadstools!!! there were hunters out this afternoon too, and i heard lots of gunshots, it was quite scary. 


learnt more cool facts about the boudairons: guess where they went for their last family holiday? THE NORTH POLE. the boy made a film out of their journey, of which the highlight was the polar bears, which they will show to me one day. :D (the video i mean, not the bear) the girl plays the classical and ELECTRIC guitar (she's 11!). 

i also met my "host aunt" (sister of my host dad), her husband and the lady that brought my host dad up today. my host aunt and uncle live in paris. they invited me to stay in their place anytime i visit paris, and promised me a tour of the city en moto :D a tour of paris on a harley davidson how cool is that!!

they also gave me a couple of walnuts, noix, picked from their garden, which i am to leave to dry, sécher, for three months before eating. tasted fresh walnuts today, they didn't taste as good. :/ they also have chestnuts in their garden, which reminded me of the roasted chestnuts we eat in singapore yum :D

brought them pineapple tarts and mooncake, which they had with tea, and bakkwa, which they had with champagne.

today was also the day daylight saving stopped, or started, i'm not sure, but essentially we're GMT +1 now, and 7 hours behind singapore. france changes every season, so it's almost like living in 4 different countries each turn of the year. isn't that amazing! 

i love weekends also because i get to sleep in, i get a whole day to do anything i want, and it's when people reply their mails and send their letters haha and i hear from people in singapore :D i have arranged my furniture for about the fifth time since i've been here haha. 

the only bad thing about the weekend is, it passes by so quickly, and another week begins.

( ...with french administration. )

also, my macbook has been named barney, after everyone's favourite how i met your mother character :D (litang's idea hahah) and my guitar's kuro, in tribute of liu lu's ex-rabbit hahah (kuro means black in japanese, and it's ex cos it died. the current one is white, alive and named yuki, which means snow... did i ever mention that the french love to eat rabbit?).

barney, kuro and i live happily together at 29 rue labedoyere! the next to be named will be my bike.