MwithCrazyBirds

Sophia, Sophia, I’m burning, I’m burning.
It’s a fire, it’s a fire, I cannot put out,
Sophia, Sophia, I’m learning that some things,
I can’t go without and one of those is him.

And now I walk these streets like a stranger in my home town,
Learn the language, form the words when I speak,
But he changed me, I’m his ghost since he came around,
And now I count the hours and the days in the weeks.

Passion and silence,
Every word, every time, a measure,
It’s the science of the soul,
And his books, they breathe a reason and now I want to know…

Sophia, Sophia, I’m burning, I’m burning,
It’s a fire, it’s a fire, I cannot put out,
Sophia, Sophia, I’m learning that some things,
I can’t go without and one of those is him.

You, with your new born eyes,
Have you ever loved a man like I love him?
Do you hurt but still feel alive, like never before?
Oh, Sophia, Sophia.

Sophia, Sophia, I’m burning, I’m burning,
It’s a fire, it’s a fire, I cannot put out,
Sophia, Sophia, I’m learning that some things,
I can’t go without and one of those is him.

I start to have some crush on you,
Put out the fire before it’s too late.

Pressures! This comes from another part of our life, or it might be better to call it irritating. My life is brilliant, my love is pure, I met a geek of that I’m sure… Yep everything is so fine except for that one little spot, and it really ruined my sunny bright mood! Really want to release a bit over here but find it not so appropriate, so I’d better keep it to myself really. Though let me scream a little bit, WHAT THE HELL!!!

We went to the CSSA mid autumn party tonight and frankly it was not very impressive. Foods are well prepared and performances are fully rehearsed, but there was no highlights. Our Forsyth buddy Xiaoyu sang beautifully but the microphone was awful, the talk show was great but the performer forgot his scripts for a while. Anyway we had a good time tonight if not being so picky. And next time we could possibly think of a few shows by the members in our big house, cos everyone is talented, really.

Still left with 4 assignments for next week, and loads to read, hopefully I can finish as much as possible by tomorrow evening so that I can get a fresh start on Monday. The vice president debate is soon going to be held on Wash U campus, not really into politics but it certainly will be some uncommon experience to witness such a big event. Peace.

It is mid autumn festival today, it doesn’t mean too much for me to be honest. Gathering with family on the day is just not my family tradition. Parents are on holiday, probably in Qinghai at this moment, and I’m thousands of miles away from them. Never mind, I’m pretty used to it. And luckily I’ve got a bunch of very nice housemates and they really drives away my loneliness, if there’s any. It’s just so great to have them.

Our job hunting process has already begun, several career fairs were hold on campus, some with regular titles and some with fancy names but in essence they are the same thing. Pressures from the recession can be easily detected, firms hire much less people, they don’t provide much offer to international students, which is a very serious issue for me. I want to stay and have my own career, within nobody’s but my control. I guess these on campus recruiments can only give some very general guidance and I really need to count on myself to get myself a job.

I still need to work on my driver’s license and hopefully I’ll get it done by the end of the month. There’re loads of stuff I need to deal with, probably will not update my blog as frequent as I had wished, but I’ll try to post an entry if there’s anything I want to share.

Ok, so the fall semester is a few days away and everything seems well on track. Class schedule is really intense, take Financial Accounting for instance, and that’s the one I’ve been doing over a few days, there are 6 sessions in total, between these 6 days of classes we have two quizzes, one group assignment and one final exam. You can probably imagine how busy we are, and Matt, one of our MSF fellas next doow, describes our life style is just the same with that of an i-banker. That’s a bit exaggerated but it somehow reflets how heavy our workload is. Go to bed at 2am, wake up at 5am, take a quick nap in the afternoon if really run out of energy, never had a healthier life before, and yet it is only the beginning… Bless us.

Had our formal MSF orientation last week and met most of our fellow coursemates, nice. It’s a well mixture of people from different background but yellow is the absolute dominance, I suppose that’s true for most grad schools as Asian people just don’t feel happy on a bachelor degree. There are 40 MSF students in total, which is good. Small class size makes it easier to communicate and more enjoyable, I hate to sit in a classroom together with hundreds of people and I did have this sort of experience which is totally awful. I truly miss the tiny classes I had in Farringtons, the people there and my days with them, it’s one of my best memories. Anyhow I look forward to working and learning with these people, the words are from the bottom of my heart rather than from one of those preformatted personal statements, I really do.

I got my first car in my life a couple of days ago, unfortunately it has to stay silence in our garage as it is not registered, and more importantly, I don’t have a driver’s license yet… Try to work these things out at the soonest possible and hopefully I can get most of them done before the fall term starts.

Alright, it takes me long enough to drop down these lines and I’d better go back to work. C ya.

Last week was really crazy, moving into our duplex on Forsyth, starting classes on Introductory Accounting, getting furnitures etc etc. Never stoped… Had to set alarms on 5am on some mornings but kept falling back to sleep again and again… Anyway I attended each and every class, and arrived real early in the mornings, being very focused and as active as I can in the classes. I feel like a good student again. Amen.

There’re still so much things that I want to talk about, like a brief trip to downtown St. Louis, just found out St. Louis is the second most dangerous city in the States, WashU stories etc etc. But my eyes are refusing to do so, they want to close.. So, let go.

This is my third day in St. Louis, er.. it’s the fourth if the night I arrived counts as well. Over the past two days I’ve been busy, though not that busy as I expected, my efficiency has not been great as I always feel light-headed probably because of the jet lag, well 13 hours of jet lag is not that easy to recover right? It’s already improving, I woke up at 5 this morning, it was 2am on the past two days. So things are getting better.

I’ve took a walk around the campus, it is beautiful. Though I’m not into architecture but I like the buildings, not like those random mixture in Bath, here the buildings are diversified in shapes but uniform in styles, it looks real great under bright sunshine with all those spacious lawns. Somehow directions and signs are not well prepared, if you are not familiar with the campus you are definitely going to get loss without a campus map.

Met up with our program director Gary and advisor Laura today, great to see that they’re really nice people, who do not always give you the strict and talk-faster-as-I-don’t-have-much-time-for-you look, they are very willing to chat with you and indeed we did have a nice chat, getting to know each other better, and they share some very useful inside info of the program with me. I am really appreciated, having such nice people really is a good sign of a smooth-going academic year isn’t it? Well I don’t mean that my depressed years at Bath were due to any faculties or staffs there, they’re all great people. It was just my problem.

Went for apartment hunting for a couple of days, should be determined in a day or two, will put up photos as someone requested for a thoudsand times… The next problem is furnitures, I am really shocked that most of the apartments are without furnitures, any previous tenants would sell or take away their furnitures, why on earth is this happening? Would it not be great to have a whole set of furnitures in the apartment and to charge each tenant a little bit more? The costs could soon be covered by renting to a few rounds of tenants. But now we just have to rent an empty apartment with no beds to sleep in, no desks for courseworks, no chairs/sofas to sit on etc. etc… Nonsense. And yet there’s no IKEA in St. Louis, meaning no stylish but cheap furnitures Well here’s America, I’m here, I have to stand it. Gosh I miss 47 Devonshire Buildings, my landlord changed my single bed to a new double bed just because I unintentionally meantioned it in a casual chat; and I miss 210 Coronation Avenue, the nice lady painted the wall to my desired colour for me and bought me a new sets of beddings as a welcome gift. Ironically enough you do not realise how good they are until you no longer have them. How pathetic.

Er… if the above paragraphs have made you think I have issues with the American life then you are totally wrong. I like it. Here life is vivid, even a small neighborhood restaurant feels pretty different with one in England, different in a good way.

And yeah there’s a funny story with the immigration officer at the airport that I want to share, it’s really funny. When I arrived Minneapolis, my first stop in the States, I have to be approved to get in by the immigration office and have my bags checked at the custom. When it was my turn to speak to an officer, I passed him my forms and documents and he scanned through them and started questioning me, here’s our conversion, a little bit blurry in my mind but it’s about the same meaning.
IO: So you are ready for college?
M:Er.. I am a graduate student, sir.
IO (astonished): Graduate! Oh! Then how many years left for your Phd study?
M:…I’m doing a Masters degree. It’s gonna start in a week and it lasts for a year.
IO:How long have you been in America?
M:I’ve never been here before…
IO (astonished again and flicking over my passport): Ah, yeah, you’ve never been here before. Ok, welcome to America. Have a nice day.
M:Thanks. You too.

Anymore questions would only make me speechless and make me relate him to Po in Kungfu Panda, or Homer Simpsons by Xyer’s saying. Has he really sanned thourgh my forms or was he just seemingly seeing them but actually daydreaming? The details were so obvious to see from the forms and he didn’t even know it was my first time here after seeing my passport… Remind me of when I entered the immigration office at Heathrow, they were so serious and  carefully read every piece of information on the passport and forms. A big contrast betweern the American and British immigration officers huh, yet the latter allegedly have the highest security level in the world. HAHAHA! But to have conversation with such people is very funny indeed, in any miniute your face will go to 囧. LOL.

Oh, one more thing to let you know, my current room number is 314-933-2840. Feel free to call if you want to.

Gotta head for the bed, cya.

Having isolated myself from the blog world for more than 6 months, here I am ~

Let’s crack a bottle of champagne and please do look forward to my posts. Cheers!