Monday, January 31, 2011

everything is more than it seems

I've had a busy, busy weekend, thus my lack of updating! I have been out and about most of the days away from my computer and the internet until late at night, when I am too busy to update anyway. C is here visiting, so we've been having a lot of fun together. I took her out and around for food and shopping, we met up with B on Friday night to explore Chinatown, and then we did concerts Saturday and Sunday nights, where we met up with all sorts of people, from S to A to G and their assorted friends. Good times were had, and that's a phenomenal understatement. Some things can't quite be put into words.

It was hard to get back into the swing of school today, but I had my 9am class and then met with my professor afterwards for coffee so I could pick his brain or something. He's a really interesting guy. Extremely intelligent and proud of his accomplishments - he's good and he knows it and he knows you know it too, so he sort of expects acknowledgment. It's not as matter-of-fact, the way he talks about it, but it's not aggravating either. I'm not sure how he pulls it off.

In any case, while we were chatting, the topic turned to being Asian in the U.S. and being Asian in Singapore and, inevitably, racism. Then he comes out with this, dry:

"I was in New York last month, and I was at Saks Fifth Avenue shopping. The sales clerk - I couldn't tell if it was racism or just plain rudeness. (It's hard to tell in New York.)"

I snickered because, okay, fair enough. We had a really interesting conversation about free speech, though, and when it gets out of hand, and all sorts of other interesting things. Maybe I will go into academia. Researching and writing about these things seems much more interesting than practicing law itself because, well, you know me: I am the type to over-think and over-analyze, but am less active on the "doing" things side. I could push myself to change that, but academia also seems like a comfortable niche to cultivate that preexisting compunction. We'll see.

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