The Night Life

Its been a very interesting welcome week. Been hanging out with the housemates going for dinner and stuff. Have been talking alot more with my roommates these few days about all kinds of stuff, politics, cultures, cuss words, girls so its pretty cool hanging around those guys at least. Its weird cos we started talking about girls when we were walking along the whole row of sorority houses, and all along the street, outside every house, there were a few girls who were made to wait outside to look after everyone's bags/purses/valuables! They were so exclusive! And it was cold outside, yet these girls had to look after everyone else's stuff, as the sorority made their picks of who gets to join the sorority inside the comfort of the house. I think that just plain sucks, y join one anyway, but perhaps the benefits of being in one far outweigh any costs I guess.

Went to watch the Ornette Coleman Quintet at Royce Hall on Wednesday evening. Royce Hall is this beautiful performance theater at UCLA akin to the UCC of NUS? UCLA's live events calander is staggering to say the least, so many world-class artistes performing right here live in school. There weren't any student tix left, but someone told me about this thing called "student rush", where they would release student tix bout 10-15 mins b4 the concert or play started if there were still tickets available. And so that was how I got my $17 tix to watch a legend play! He was a legend in every sense of the word, hahaha, yeh he was old and good. Amazing. Free Jazz is not really something that beginners warm up to at first, and it could sound a little jarring in the beginning I must admit. But it was tight, and after a few songs you caught on the theme, and the way they put different stuff together and presented it just blew me away.

Thursday night I headed out to the bar near school, O'Haras, with a couple of people who were above the legal age drinking limit of 21. Had myself a beer and just a few shots, nothing too dramatic, but enough to feel a warm buzz. It was a bar, but it was loud. When we got there it was still quiet with ppl just having their beers, but, an hour later, it just started piling up with people and the music started getting louder, and it became a Zouk like place. And it was a small place with no dancing space, so people were just crowding the bar and shaking their booty, and urgh, up to that point a pretty enjoyable time became not so enjoyable. But I had my beer, and it was all good, so we left to head back to the dorms.

School has started though, and I don't foresee myself hanging out enjoying myself as much as I would like. It all looks pretty intense because I'm taking 2 classes more than the average workload of students here, so that I have credits to transfer back to NUS. Good thing is, the classes up to this point are really interesting, and not really too diffcult. The bad thing? Textbooks, readers, reference materials are sooooo expensive. NUS and the IVLE and lecturers posting readings online or just cheap course packs and inexpensive textbooks, I MISS YOU! I don't think I'll drown in work actually, because I still have alot of free time, just that I have started using this free time to actually start studying, or making notes from the textbooks I have borrowed out from the library to save myself some money. I'm sure I should be studying like this back home instead of slacking till who knows when! HAHAHAHA.

Its all pretty intense, and I hope I settle into a good rhythm soon. And in a flash, 10 wks will past, and I'll be back home.