I've been back since last Wednesday, and as usual it's taken a few days to readjust (or rather try to readjust) back to weather and the lifestyle back home. The weather rarely gets below 35 degree Celsius at home, and humidity is very high. Add to that the pollution exacerbated by smoke from Indonesian forest fires, and the result was my sinuses clogging up the moment I left the airport. As a friend once put it, I'm like a white person who happened to be born into a Malaysian Chinese family.

I have also applied for, and received, my US student visa within a couple of days of being back. The process was a lot quicker and easier than I initially thought. I had expected to have to show evidence of my links to Malaysia by showing bank statements and other documentation, and indeed while I was waiting my turn I did see several applicants being rejected on this basis. However, when it was my turn I was surprised that it took the lady at the counter only a couple of minutes to sort out my application, and I didn't get asked any questions either (I think the words 'Princeton' and 'full scholarship' was all they needed). Anyway, that's all sorted out now, although when I went to pick up my visa the next afternoon, there was a delay due to a protest outside the US embassy against the events in the Middle East (Malaysia does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, so they have to protest against the Americans by proxy).

I have a few friends whom are back (quite a few of my close friends are in fact abroad), and most of them are working, so for now I don't have much to do on my weekdays, although I'm planning to finish off the work on my first paper and start refreshing my memory on cosmology before I head off to start my PhD.

4 years in London, and it's always been more of a background to my university life than truly being a place. This was highlighted to me when a friend came to visit me a couple of weeks ago. I brought him to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, and I was gawking along with him because it was the first time I'd been there as well.

It was somewhat embarrassing to never have seen most of the tourist sites in London, but I guess it's just to be expected for people who actually live here. I have a friend living in Hackney in East London who didn't know where Trafalgar Square, a major landmark here, is. Even worse, less than a minute's walk down the road from where I live is the Freud Museum, where Sigmund Freud lived the last year of his life, and despite having lived here for 3 years I've never bothered going in until yesterday (and even then I didn't really see the exhibits because I was too cheap to pay the admission fee).

I will be able to rectify all these when my family comes over for my graduation and I'll have to show them around the city, but I will definitely miss being a Londoner. Getting around town on the Tube and the double-decker buses, walking through streets filled with a polyglot of people from every corner of the world, the over-the-top monuments and buildings, and of course the pigeons.

I'm certain that I will be in London again many times in the future, but it just won't be the same as well actually living here.

I'm finally flying home next Tuesday, and I will be spending a month back in KL for a month before coming back to London with my family for my graduation and a bit of travelling. After my graduation, I will send off my family as they return home, before I fly off to the US on my own.

In the past week, I've been finally getting round to actually preparing for my trip home, by thinking about the logistics of travelling to the airport as well as what to pack. The latter is somewhat complicated as I have to figure out what I want to bring home and what to leave here as part of my US-bound luggage.

These preparations have brought about a strange sort of melancholy in me. A friend thought I was stressed out from the packing, but that's not true as I'm leaving the brunt of it to the eve of my departure.

My schedule for the upcoming trips have been fixed months ago, but it wasn't till I actually started preparing for it that the feeling of being a wanderer emerged from somewhere deep in my consciousness. I've known for years that my ambition has probably uprooted me permanently from my homeland, that for the foreseeable future I still have no idea where this whirlwind will leave me. However, this usually gets buried under the routine of daily life, and there it stays until a reminder of my state of flux, like a major trip, rears its head.

This time, there is additional pathos, as I draw to a close my time as an undergraduate in UCL. I'm heading to Princeton in September, and while I have spent a summer in Baltimore before, actually living and doing my PhD in the US will be a different thing. Also, even though I know that I will be spending the next 4-5 years there, I really don't know where I'll end up after that.

The last time I had the same feeling, I was about to fly to London for the first time as a fresh undergraduate. Now, that chapter of my life is drawing to an end, and going back home will allow me to reflect on things, although I suspect that more questions would be raised than answered.

Apologies for the long hiatus since I've updated. There were quite a few reasons why I haven't found time to post (including laziness), but the main reasons were the World Cup, my music (I've been taking lessons for the past couple of months, so need to keep up with my practise) and exercise. Also, I've been spending some time thinking about the itinerary for my family's trip to Europe when they come over for my graduation in September, and booking the train/plane fares and hotels that they need, which took up quite a lot of my time bargain hunting.

The other couple of things which happened was my trip to Liverpool to visit my high school friend Cher Pheng ('Ah Pheng'), and his reciprocal visit to London in the past weekend. Since I have such a backlog of things to talk about, I'll start with the trip to Liverpool.

Liverpool is about 5 hours coach ride from London, but my trip didn't start off very auspiciously when the engine on the coach refused to start. By the time the coach started, we were close to 20 minutes behind schedule, and in addition there seemed to be shitloads of congestion on the highway right outside London. I'm generally a seasoned traveller, but one thing I absolutely hate is stop-and-go traffic, which makes me totally nauseated. When we finally got out to the open road, there were a couple of Polish women right behind me who didn't seem capable of shutting up, and they jabbered away for at least 3 hours nonstop at the expense of any sleep I could have gotten.

As we swung into Liverpool well over 1.5hrs late, I was greeted by the charming vista of boarded up houses with graffiti festooned over their walls. Ah Pheng was already there waiting for me, and he first brought me to his house to dump my stuff. The buildings along the way were generally seedy and depressing, and when we walked by a sex advice centre he commented on the number of schoolgirls he'd seen going in there. He also mentioned seeing an advert on a bus which said 'Discover the benefits of work!', aimed at the 40% of Liverpudlians (otherwise known as 'Scousers') who were living on welfare. As we turned the corner round to his house, we saw a guy scraping some powder of some sort to give a teenage girl, and Ah Pheng whispered 'Don't look!'. It also transpired that the estate he lives in is just next to the estate where Anthony Walker, a black teenager, was killed last year for having a white girl friend in a high profile murder case. I'm used to living in more salubrious surroundings, so this raised my eyebrows at the very least.

The next morning, we ran out of ideas of what to eat (he rarely eats out), so we ended up in a Chinese buffet, after which he brought me to the pierside at the River Mersey, where the famous Royal Liver building is:
















(Left to right: Royal Liver Building, Cunard Building, Port of Liverpool Building.)

Those were nice buildings, but we have better in London (I'm becoming a good snobbish Londoner). We then went to the Maritime Museum near Albert Docks, which detailed the history of Liverpool as a merchant port. Indeed, it was the drying up of merchant shipping in the post-war period that led to Liverpool becoming a bit of a shithole.

The other thing that Liverpool is famous for, of course, is the Beatles. I'm not a Beatles fan in particular, but I did visit the 'Beatles Story', which is a rather tacky exhibition which offers us the chance to buy random Beatles merchandise afterwards., although I limited my foray to the non-paying sections. I did however visit the Cavern Club, where the Beatles got their first gig:



Liverpool did have a couple of nice churches and cathedrals though. In particular, I thought Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral was a fairly magnificent neo-Gothic building. These picture don't quite do justice to its looming presence at the top of a hill overlooking Liverpool:







Another interesting one is the Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral, which looks like something out of Lord of the Rings:



Finally, there was St. Luke's church. This church was bombed out during the 2nd World War, but they never did scrape together the funds to repair it, which I somehow find allegorical of Liverpool as a whole.




These pretty much sums up the tourist attractions offered by Liverpool, but the World Cup didn't stop while I was there, so we did catch a few matches while I was there. In particular, we were relieved that England beat Ecuador in the quarter finals, not because we supported England, but because as foreigners we might have been beaten up if England lost.

Yes, Liverpool is a haven for the species of young Briton known as the 'chav', dressed up in hoodie and bling, and usually found with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. We spent an afternoon sitting at the pierside while a bunch of young chavs who appeared to be no older than 14 were getting piss-drunk in public, and desecrating a couple of war memorials to dead sailors that were there.

As you probably guessed by now, I wasn't overly impressed by Liverpool, but I mostly enjoyed getting together with and old friend and catching up with old times, and I guess it was a chance to see another side of England as well.

I try to practise guitar in the auditorium at Netherhall, with its fantastic acoustics which allow me to hear every nuance of my playing. Today evening, I went over to the auditorium intending to practise, only to find that there was someone already there, practising on the piano (Netherhall often invites musicians from outside to practise and give concerts at our auditorium).

I was a bit annoyed because that meant I had to go elsewhere to practise, so I grudgingly picked up my guitar and equipment from where it was lying. The guy was playing Chopin's polonnaise from his Andante Spiniato and Grand Polonnaise, a piece which I'm familiar with (I love Chopin in general), and he was so involved and clearly enjoying his playing that he barely noticed my presence. He was playing very well, with excellent articulation and phrasing, although he played a couple of wrong notes here and there. However, I could tell that it was still a relatively new piece to him as he still had the music in front of him (if he had been playing it for some time he would have already had it memorised).

I wanted to hear him play, but it's generally impolite to sit in when someone's practising, so I went just outside the auditorium and propped the door open slightly to listen. The pianist was very clearly enjoying himself and I could hear the joy in his music, and I was drawn into it as well even though I was surreptitiously listening in from outside. I stood there for a good 10 minutes before he finished the Chopin and I finally left.

It was an interesting musical experience. I often find that I'm most receptive to music when it's unexpected, and this often comes from the many musicians who come to practise at Netherhall. In contrast, if I have to sit down to listen to a formal concert, I find my attention easily wavering.

Also, the pianist was playing ina joyful and carefree manner of someone thoroughly enjoying his music, which I rarely hear in concerts and recordings. The reason is simple: when one is playing for an audience or microphone, stage fright and the musician's own ego immediately becomes an obstacle. I feel it is when listening to someone playing in private, that one really gets to hear truly great music.

My summer so far can be summed up with 3 words: exercise, guitar and reading, and in roughly that order of priority. I've been scraping together enough discipline to exercise almost every day, either working out at the gym or going running. As far as running is concerned, I'm pretty pleased to be pushing myself past the 5km limit, and for the first time in a couple of years I can regularly run 7-8km without too much problems, although I'm aiming to improve this distance over the summer.

I'm also practising about 10 hours a week on my guitar, which is far more than I've done in at least half a year. In addition, I'm also going to start lessons next Tuesday with a teacher, again something I haven't had in ages. My old teacher, Carlos, doesn't seem to be in London very much now, so I've booked myself some lessons with Graham Devine, a guitarist whom I've heard before on a recording (which I enjoyed). I'm currently learning some new pieces I've wanted to work on for some time, and also polishing some pieces currently in my repertoire.

As for reading, I have about 2 books that are unfinished (one of them a Chinese 'wuxia' martial arts novel), and about 5 other books which are untouched so far, but at the moment I don't seem to be in the mood to do very much reading, but I'll have to go through them sooner or later.

Apart from these, I'm spending my time quite leisurely. Normally, I would consider it a waste of time (!) to hang around with my friends chatting or watching movies, but I guess I can afford to do that this summer, although I'm starting to feel a slight urge to get back to science and learning again.....

An interesting picture that I took while I was walking near my uni, at Tavistock Sq.
In the foreground is a statue of Mohandas K. Gandhi seated in a meditative position. In the centre of the picture, in the background, is the British Medical Society building. In the morning of 7 July 2005, a no. 30 bus blew up in front of the BMS building, killing 13 people.

Such irony that this act of senseless murder occured in front of a monument who achieved the great feat of using pacifism and non-violence to bring independence to his country.

Having finished exams and my degree, suddenly I have lost the focus of the past 4 years of my life. I no longer have to head to the library to study, nor do I have to worry about work to be handed in.

So far, my time has mostly been occupied with sleep, with the epitome being the time when I took a nap at 4.30pm and woke up at 8.30pm (I wanted to wake up at 5.30pm but set my alarm for 1530...d'oh!). Apart from that, I've met up with some friends over the weekend to catch up, and celebrated a friend's birthday.

Another thing I've been catching up with is my music...I've hardly touched my guitar in the past couple of months, and this summer I intend to bring my playing back up to its peak. I'll be hanging around in London until mid-July. The original plan was for me to work on a couple of research papers with my supervisors, but I've decided to forget that and just relax. I do want to learn some maths and physics on my own, but that has to be at my own leisure.

Of course, I'm really looking forward to the World Cup next month, and it helps that I can actually watch it during normal hours while I'm here, rather than having to stay up late at night as I would have to do if I were back home in KL.

Total randomness of the day: I was in the supermarket just now and I saw a bucket of water for cleaning the floor. What caught my attention was the fact that it was a kosher bucket of water. I kid you not.

(The joys of camera phones)

Sometimes, when I feel that no one cares about me, the only solution to this is to go out and care about someone else, whether it's a friend I haven't heard from in some time, or a homeless person I'm helping to deliver food to. I'm not sure where I heard this, but when there's no love in your life, just go out and create love, and there will be love (obviously this is 'love' in the general sense, not the romantic sense) .

Sounds cliched, but it works.

Anyway I just had what is hopefully my last paper exam I'll ever take today. It feels slightly strange to not have to try and force myself to hit the books all the time anymore.

It's possible that I have mentioned this before, but the residence I'm staying in, Netherhall House, is actually run by Opus Dei. Yes, THE Opus Dei which are the bad guys in The Da Vinci Code (I haven't actually read the book myself). For those of you who have been living under a rock, they are a conservative Catholic organisation which has a tradition of being highly secretive, has been lambasted as a cult by their critics.

In the run-up to the release of the movie at the end of this week, there has been huge media coverage of the organisation. In part, it is a public relations coup by the OD upper echelons to use the publicity from the book to promote itself. For example, their website has had their visitor count increased over a hundred-fold since the book came out. I wouldn't say much more about OD as whole, since there's much more material out there (books, websites etc), although it runs the full spectrum in terms of veracity.

As far as my own experience is concerned, I knew that Netherhall was run by OD when I first came to take a look, but I didn't really know anything about the organisation. The first hint of weirdness was that there was a bunch of old single men living in an adjoining building who seemed to be doing something religious all the time, whether it was mass or prayer meetings. The other hint was the fact that even for a male student residence, there were some strange rules regarding women. We have to leave our rooms at 10.30 am so that the 'cleaning staff' can clean the living areas. What makes this strange is that there is TOTAL isolation between us and the cleaning staff, to the extent that there is an elaborate system of doors to ensure that there is absolutely no contact.

In general though, the OD members here are nice people, although they have pretty conservative views on social issues. No one has tried to convert me, although I have known people who were converted while living here as students, so it's probably just the fact that they knew I'm too much of a hard-core atheist to start with.

Back to the Da Vinci Code, the publicity that OD is getting is really astounding. We've had at least 2 camera crews over here filming the place in the past week (one of them from New Zealand!), and there have been articles in all the major newspapers about OD in the past week. A couple of the students here have been interviewed, although I doubt the OD people will want the likes of me to be interviewed in an article about OD!

In any case I'd rather wait for my own moment of fame instead of trying to get 15 seconds of it off someone else...

4 papers down, one to go. Just had my particle physics paper this morning, and my final paper will be on next Thursday, so a bit of time to prepare.

So far the exams have really been going well. I must done only about 50% of the preparation I did in previous years, but so far the papers I've done seemed pretty easy, especially since my last-minute preparation has consisted mostly of playing PS2 the night before my exams.

At least 3 of the papers 'feel' like 90+% papers, which should be sufficient to ensure that I finish top in class.

Mission accomplished I guess, although I want to ensure I do well in my last paper as well.

In the past couple of weeks, there has been some drama in my student residence (Netherhall), concerning this guy whom we'll call 'B'.

B in the same department and same year as I am (he does physics, but we only share a couple of classes), and he's been slightly antisocial and weird since I first known him, but his behaviour has been deteriorating in recent weeks. B has shown signs of jealousy of me in the past, e.g. by telling people that I get good grades only because I take easy courses, and I haven't been very compromising with him either whenever he tries to show off by babbling random pseudo-physics nonsense to try and impress people.

But recently he has been become increasingly weirder...since I'm not on good terms with him, I have had little direct contact with him. I've heard from many different people about his antics, but here are a few choice ones:

1. The first sign of his decline was a couple of weeks ago, when he told a friend of mine during dinner that 'Princeton is shit'. It's one thing to be jealous of me getting to study there, but he has to be near the edge to make such a ludicrous statement.

2. My Spanish friend Pedro was once on the Underground with his girlfriend when B happened to be on the same train and spotted them. He went over to them and sat next to them without saying anything, and he was staring at them for the entire journey. When Pedro said 'Hi B', he didn't respond. Later that day, when Pedro came into our library downstairs, B was there. B saw him and started chanting under his breath 'Fucking Spanish, fucking Spanish, fucking Spanish...'

3. B is half-German, and last week he started telling my Nigerian friend, Chema, about how blacks were inferior and Aryans are the superior race. Chema was surprised and retorted that as a 'mongrel' race B would have been one of the first to be sent to the concentration camps. Naturally, this didn't sit too well with B and he stormed off.

4. Amer is one of my best friends here, and we've both been familiar with B's antics for some time. A couple of days ago Amer was chatting with another friend, Reuven, about girls when B came along and sat near them. Amer felt uncomfortable and left shortly afterwards, after which B started asking Reuven detailed questions about the girls from the prior conversation which obviosly irritated Reuven. Suddenly B changed tack and asked Reuven: 'What has Amer been saying about me behind my back?' (B has never spoken to Reuven before this). Reuven was shocked and said (truthfully) that they never talk about B He refused to believed this and kept insisting, and Reuven just said they don't talk about him. B then said 'You're lying' and walked away.

All this happened within 2 weeks ago. I suspect that he is cracking under the pressure of exam pressure and his deep jealousy of me, but he's really started to act completely weird. To make things more interesting, someone spotted him walking around at night carrying a knife. Maybe he was just going to cut some food, but at night....?

Some days ago, he moved out of Netherhall. Apparently he told the director that some of us were bullying him (including the chaplain !), and he was afraid that someone might try to rape him!

I don't know where he is living now, but he seems like he's losing it (assuming he hasn't lost it already). Many of us have tried to help him, but when he doesn't want to accept our efforts, there's nothing more we can do.

There are 'friends' who only ever contact me when they need something from me. Whenever I get a phone call or text message from these people, it's usually when they need something, whether to borrow my notes, asking for my help with homework or to ask for advice.

Don't get me wrong, I would always help people if I can, even if the person asking isn't on good terms with me. But it'll be nice if I get some sort of acknowledgement apart from a perfunctory 'Thanks', even if it's just an occasional text or e-mail saying hi.

As it is, I start to feel like I'm being used.

Mostly studying for my finals these days, which begin next Friday. Nothing much to talk about on that front apart from the fact that I am indeed making progress on my revision, although not as intense as in past years.

I actually managed to get some music squeezed into my schedule before my bedtimes, whereas in previous years my Easter break has been a time of musical abstinence. The interesting thing I find about music is that it makes the greatest impact when it's special. Playing for the first time in a month feels a lot more special than practising for the 6th time in a week (although playing merely once a month is hardly a recipe for advancement).

Hopefully during summer I won't be too distracted by the World Cup etc., and put in some time for disciplined practice on my guitar. I can feel the next breakthrough in my playing ability approaching, and a burst of intensive work should bring that about.

I've come to realise that the ego is the greatest obstacle to music-making.

At the most practical level, the existence of ego translates to stage-fright: when I realise that I'm going to be playing in front of an audience, there is the egoistic fear of making mistakes in front other people, or not playing at my best and causing people to think badly of me. Because of this, I start to focus too much on getting the right notes rather than on the overall musical and emotional content of the piece. The funny thing is that this often backfires: the more I think about what are the notes I have to play, the more likely I am to suffer a memory lapse. Even if no mistakes occur, the resulting performance would be mechanical and lifeless.

My best music is always produced when I'm playing on my own, without any feelings of self-consciousness or nervousness. Somehow, this just frees me to play the best music I ever make.

I love playing music for other people, but somehow this I get the feeling that my audience will never enjoy my music as much as I enjoy my own playing when I'm alone.

I've just about managed to get settled down into the schedule of cramming for my finals, which begin on the 28th of April and will be over by the 17th of May.

I had drawn up a comprehensive schedule for my revision before I visited the US a fortnight ago, but it was only several days after my return that I managed to shake off my jetlag and excitement (from the visit and the prospect of studying in Princeton) to hit the books. In previous years, I have hit the books the moment Easter Break started, so this time I'm about 10 days behind compared with back then.

There also the psychological effect of being aware that the results of this exam wouldn't be crucial to my future, since I already have the place at Princeton; however I should make sure that I finish top in my class (which is a rather important bit in anyone's CV), but on the other hand I don't have to push as hard as in years gone by.

Conversely, a couple of the courses I'm taking this year have turned out to be very interesting and fascinating (see one of my past posts on my other blog), so I want to make sure I understand the subtleties of these subjects if for no other reason than my own curiosity.

Perhaps these two effects will cancel out and I'll end up doing not very differently from my earlier years.

OK...the pics from my campus-scouting trip:

The single-carriage 'Dinky' train from Princeton Junction to the Princeton campus:



A couple of shots of 'downtown' Princeton.





The Nassau Hall, oldest building in Princeton (and one-time capital of the US!).




Peyton Hall, the astrophysics department building.




Some random shots of the Princeton campus:












And now Harvard:

Harvard Square:




The entrance to the promised land: gate to the main Harvard campus...



A couple of shots of Harvard Yard





The Widener Library



The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the largest concentration of PhDs in the world...over 300 under one roof!


Some shots of downtown Boston:

Boston Common, with the Massachusetts State House in the background


Boston Common, looking towards downtown



Boston Town Hall (I think)


Quincy market, with lots of seafood (yum!)


View of downtown


Boston seafront


Boston North End, the Italian quarter.


The Charles River and a beautiful day...


Paul Revere Mall


Beacon Hill

Purely for the record....

And it's official that UC Santa Cruz has rejected me!

From Princeton, I took the train to NY Penn Station where I caught a train to Boston (I'm rather proud to state that I spent all of 15 minutes above ground in NYC, to buy a mobile phone charger). The train journey was very nice because we were travelling through the New England countryside around sunset, and the scenery was like something out of a landscape painting.

By the time I got to Boston it was in the night, so I didn't go over to the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) at Harvard until the next morning. Whereas the astrophysics department in Princeton was enclosed in a fairly small building, the CfA in Harvard is huge. It's a 4-storey building holding over 300 PhD researchers (apparently the largest concentration of PhDs in the world!), although a lot of them work for the Smithsonian Observatory which isn't officially part of Harvard.

Just like at Princeton, it was arranged for me to meet up with some of the professors. There were not that many professors at Harvard who were doing cosmology, and I got to talk to 4 of them. The rest of the professors I talked to were in X-ray astrophysics, which I considered rather strange since I specifically stated in my application that I was interested in cosmology for my PhD even though the bulk of my prior research was in X-ray work.

The cosmology profs at Harvard were doing some interesting work, but I felt that they were less enthusiastic about me than Princeton, and some of the current grad students there told me that some of them were difficult to work with. Speaking of the grad students, I managed to speak to quite a few of them, and they were asked to bring me out for lunch and dinner, and to show me around town. They bought me my meals, which the department would later reimburse them for (in fact the department would pay for the students as well, which made them quite happy to come).

Boston is very close to Harvard, less than 10 minutes away by subway. It is a pretty nice and pleasant city, not too big, and I was fortunate enough to come just at the beginning of spring where the weather was nice and sunny. Most of the tourist attractions seem to stem for the historical significance of the city during the Revolutionary Wars, which wasn't as interesting for me as it would be for American visitors, but I did enjoy having decent seafood for my meals.

In the end, however, I decided to choose Princeton. In pure academic reputation, both Harvard and Princeton were probably just about equal, but I preferred the small size of the Princeton department which meant I would be able to know everyone there, whereas I would just get lost in Harvard CfA. Also, in Princeton I would be close to their world-class physics department as well as the Institute of Advanced Studies, Einstein's old stomping ground, which would enrich my education.

Apparently there were 5 students this year who were admission into both Princeton and Harvard, and 4 of them have decided to go to Harvard. I must be say that I found my trip to Harvard/Boston particularly enjoyable, and I enjoyed the company of their students. The Princeton students were nice as well, but I didn't get to hang out with them much apart from one dinner. Indeed, if I was looking for a place where I would have fun and enjoy life, I would probably have chosen Harvard assuming they're equal in academic factors.

A ridiculously important decision in my life, but at least I got to take a look personally before I made my choice. Check back in a few days to see the pics from my trip.