For the second night in a row, I'm spending the evening in my room after hanging out briefly with the flatmates in the living room. Alone again. They did invite me out, but I am genuinely tired and would probably pass out after the first couple of drinks.

I can't remember who it was whom said there was a difference between being alone and feeling alone. (Or something like that.) Being an anti-social (and very shy) only kid, I didn't mind being alone most of the time, with a good book or an iPod to keep me company. But now that I'm in an environment where I really should enjoy the benefits of socialising and company, I often become the wallflower. Not even that. The flower painted on the wall. At the same time, I get antsy about turning up to events alone and usually try and find someone to go with me.

Which leads to an additional question: Have I spent so much time (we're talking from the age I learned to talk to about mid-puberty when I started going out without the parents) learning how to interact with those older than I am (we're talking about 10+ years) that I never fully worked out how to interact with those of my own age?

I'll work that out later. In the meantime, I'll continue to sit here and be serenaded by the dulcet tones of Brian Stokes Mitchell.

Curse you, Cassandra

I most likely have bastardised Greek mythology with the title, but I was looking back at blog posts I'd made over the summer. In particular, my last post of the summer referred to the last week of the internship and how crazy it was because of all the stuff that was going on. I finished with a wishful statement that band would be more drama-free.

Yeah fucking right.

Hello 2010, hello land of the sheep

First post of 2010, woo!

I will be taking off for Scotland later this week, and personally, I cannot wait. Bar the freezing cold. I've somehow managed to pack winter clothes along with a suit (other work clothes to follow by mail) and other necessities to prevent me from freezing/starving/dying from lack of hygiene in a total of 1 suitcase and a carry-on. One bloody suitcase. With a weight limit. But hey, whatever. At least even by April it'll still be too cold to switch over to warm-weather clothing.

At the same time, I'm a little sad I'll miss out on the spring games/gigs and seeing the class of '10 people before they graduate.

If the Trojans in Edinburgh blog gets set up and begins to function, this one might not be updated as regularly.

Words, words, words

I have utterly failed in my attempts to keep a regular record of my thoughts. Despite setting up this blog, buying Moleskine notebooks at sale price, and even getting my hands on this really pretty daily planner with a cover design by SCAD, they all contain tragically blank spaces between the start of this semester and now.

Here's my New Year's resolution: Keep a daily record while in Scotland. Maybe a change of scenery will induce me to start writing again.

Hello autumn

Cool air, warm sun, wearing trainers regularly instead of flip flops, turning off the air conditioner, frequent searches for hot drinks.

Hello October.

Duality and anarchy

While this internship was definitely, chaotic, it sure as hell wasn't boring. Administration is probably wishing for boredom right now though.

I happened to choose the summer when they were moving the entire Ships History department from one building to another, so the place is pretty much chaos because the movers have to be supervised for security reasons and there's a lot of paperwork involved. Add personnel issues and a weekend flooding and the place gets a little stressed, to put it mildly.

This last week, however, you could definitely smell it in the air. It began with the whispered conversations, then a sudden axing that apparently should have happened a lot earlier and was met with a fair amount of happy dancing.
I really don't know how much I should say about this, but now the issue seems to be the muddling of military and admin hierarchies; slightly reminiscent of band at times?

I love the people, I really do. I'm going to miss them loads. But when you can feel annoyance radiating like a furnace off the person sitting across from you at the staff meeting and the rest emitting varying degrees of tiredness/frustration/exasperation, it's like some weird tension soup is being diffused into the atmosphere.

I just really hope, most likely with a great deal of naivety, that band season doesn't end up like this.

Coast hopping

So I'm in the 2nd to last week of this internship and while I can't wait to get back to LA, move in, see everyone again, get all my stuff unpacked and get ready for band camp (woo?/!), I'm gonna miss the time in DC. It wasn't one of those self-discovery journeys that inspire Oscar-winning films, but it gave me the chance to do things I wouldn't normally do elsewhere. Like get up at the crack of dawn to go to Gettysburg. Or camp out at 5pm to watch 9pm fireworks while being serenaded by the US Army band. Other things:

I still can't answer where exactly I come from (up to 3 different answers now), my hair is now a strange shade of brown/burgundy/orange, and I think my accent has taken on tones of the Mason-Dixon states as well as picking up certain military/nautical terms. I survived 2 months without murdering (or getting murdered by) the Notre Dame tuba or the UCLA alum officer. (Should I have? Most likely yes. But I'd rather not get in trouble with the US Navy, thank you very much.) I avoided getting questioned by the NCIS over classification issues. On a whim, I took the 6 hour Amtrak up to Providence, bruised my arse and killed my lower back on an hour of polo, watched a polo game, stayed up till 5 to go and have breakfast at a diner, and loved every moment because I did it with a friend. LA transportation seems even crappier than before after the lovely DC metro (minus the Red line crash). Shellbacking makes frat initiations seem like a welcome tea party. It's way easier to travel on the East coast than I realised. Thanks to the good ol' grid layout of DC, I visited most of the Smithsonian museums in a week by walking. There are people whom I would never have hung out with had we not ended up in the same internship, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to miss them. And while the reference letter is nice, I'm just glad I got to work with the people in the archives and hope I will see at least some of them again after all this.

Not a bad summer, by all accounts.