Leave a Message at the Sound of the Click
The past few days haven't been exactly the best of my life; it's taken me about three days to get over a miniature panic and depressive phase, no thanks to the University (which started it off really). It's not the nicest thing in the world to receive an email that tells you that your application to remain in the hostel has been rejected, and especially when you know you can't argue with that statement because even you can rationalise about why you should be rejected anyway... In any case, yes, it looks as if I won't be living in Fifth Hun for 60 days after all: quite a bit less really. After all, I can't waltz back into the hostel around the 2nd of August when I was supposed to hand in the keys to an empty room on the 15th July (that, according to Herr Robson, is the correct date to surrender the ownership of the room).
Which now leads to me frantically Googling and asking various people if they've managed to stay in the hostel and wondering how come they managed to do it when I couldn't and other fruitless questions. I've had a couple of bad nights already about it, leading to some rather odd dreams--I dreamt last night that I had the ability to make things come alive for three hours and had a very lively dream-conversation with my pillow--and a little bit of gnawing nervousness about it. It's no light matter to move in or out of anywhere for me: I simply accumulate too much stuff in any one place to make moving a comfortable or easy process. I should break that habit, but... oh well. The best I can do now is damage control, i.e. ask people if I can put stuff in their rooms, look for rooms to rent or bum in, and most importantly pray. Although I've no idea what I should be praying for here really: to get a room, and more specifically "my" room, would be the ideal situation, but that would be almost too nonsensical even for me... still, He is God, and if He intends on me staying outside the University for this semester (or more), He probably has a purpose. I just wish He'd do this sort of thing after plenty of warning.
My brother has come up with an idea to locate a company that prints T-shirts, and then have them make some customised shirts. I think it's a great idea... the only question really is whether that company exists. As far as I know, companies that print T-shirts with customised designs tend to do so only in bulk--and one or two copies of several designs hardly counts as "bulk", no matter what size shirts we wear. Ah well, I'll worry about that when, or if, we actually find that company. Otherwise I'll just have some really interesting designs to modify and make into wallpapers or something. Besides, it's rather tough to come up with witticisms that seem remotely original when you're actually trying to get at them; it's the same problem I have when trying to be "creative" on the spot. It just doesn't come by itself, it's gotta be a side effect. Troublesome.
At any rate... so now I've got a lot of stuff in the air, and not a single one of 'em is under my direct control. Even the room hunting, since Herr Robson's helping me do it for a bit, isn't quite in my hands. In fact I doubt I'll be able to do anything about it from outside Singapore, which means I'm going to have to book a return flight a lot earlier than 19th July if I'm to have enough time for room hunting and moving out before the 15th July... It's very worrying, but what's one to do when hostels are so... undersupplied? I've never had any illusions about why the most-applauded statement at the Welcome Address was the University's ambition to have enough hostel rooms to fulfil demand; also, equally, no illusions about how realistic that ambition might actually be.
Call me pessimistic, but I sometimes feel like a lump that sticks out while being processed by the smooth-ish tubes of bureaucracy: forms and paperwork and various bits of red tape to clamber around never fit well with me. I've never liked what I'll call The Established Regulations; even in primary school, I greatly disliked going near the teachers. It's been one of the greater shocks of my life to find that my lecturers have blogs and swim and take their little babies for walkies in the evening; but I digress. Even now, I suppose, bureaucracy has a sort of allergic reaction to me, and so it has hiccups whenever I remind it of my existence; the latest one being that the hostel has decided on me being ineligible for staying in, despite the abundance of other people with less hostel-points (it's a complicated system) than I, who haven't received regretful letters. The one before this one was when a hospital's computer completely erased my existence from it, despite me having got tubes of blood in it for testing. I had to get witnesses to prove that the blood belonged to me and that they had seen it being submitted for testing.
In any case... well, what happens next, will happen next. I'm just going along for now. Like this afternoon, when I went along with my mom to a Women's Meeting for lunch and wound up listening to them discuss maids, hairstyles, recipes, and (their only real common point) the kids in school. At least now I know some salad dressings should only be made with white wine vinegar.
Which now leads to me frantically Googling and asking various people if they've managed to stay in the hostel and wondering how come they managed to do it when I couldn't and other fruitless questions. I've had a couple of bad nights already about it, leading to some rather odd dreams--I dreamt last night that I had the ability to make things come alive for three hours and had a very lively dream-conversation with my pillow--and a little bit of gnawing nervousness about it. It's no light matter to move in or out of anywhere for me: I simply accumulate too much stuff in any one place to make moving a comfortable or easy process. I should break that habit, but... oh well. The best I can do now is damage control, i.e. ask people if I can put stuff in their rooms, look for rooms to rent or bum in, and most importantly pray. Although I've no idea what I should be praying for here really: to get a room, and more specifically "my" room, would be the ideal situation, but that would be almost too nonsensical even for me... still, He is God, and if He intends on me staying outside the University for this semester (or more), He probably has a purpose. I just wish He'd do this sort of thing after plenty of warning.
My brother has come up with an idea to locate a company that prints T-shirts, and then have them make some customised shirts. I think it's a great idea... the only question really is whether that company exists. As far as I know, companies that print T-shirts with customised designs tend to do so only in bulk--and one or two copies of several designs hardly counts as "bulk", no matter what size shirts we wear. Ah well, I'll worry about that when, or if, we actually find that company. Otherwise I'll just have some really interesting designs to modify and make into wallpapers or something. Besides, it's rather tough to come up with witticisms that seem remotely original when you're actually trying to get at them; it's the same problem I have when trying to be "creative" on the spot. It just doesn't come by itself, it's gotta be a side effect. Troublesome.
At any rate... so now I've got a lot of stuff in the air, and not a single one of 'em is under my direct control. Even the room hunting, since Herr Robson's helping me do it for a bit, isn't quite in my hands. In fact I doubt I'll be able to do anything about it from outside Singapore, which means I'm going to have to book a return flight a lot earlier than 19th July if I'm to have enough time for room hunting and moving out before the 15th July... It's very worrying, but what's one to do when hostels are so... undersupplied? I've never had any illusions about why the most-applauded statement at the Welcome Address was the University's ambition to have enough hostel rooms to fulfil demand; also, equally, no illusions about how realistic that ambition might actually be.
Call me pessimistic, but I sometimes feel like a lump that sticks out while being processed by the smooth-ish tubes of bureaucracy: forms and paperwork and various bits of red tape to clamber around never fit well with me. I've never liked what I'll call The Established Regulations; even in primary school, I greatly disliked going near the teachers. It's been one of the greater shocks of my life to find that my lecturers have blogs and swim and take their little babies for walkies in the evening; but I digress. Even now, I suppose, bureaucracy has a sort of allergic reaction to me, and so it has hiccups whenever I remind it of my existence; the latest one being that the hostel has decided on me being ineligible for staying in, despite the abundance of other people with less hostel-points (it's a complicated system) than I, who haven't received regretful letters. The one before this one was when a hospital's computer completely erased my existence from it, despite me having got tubes of blood in it for testing. I had to get witnesses to prove that the blood belonged to me and that they had seen it being submitted for testing.
In any case... well, what happens next, will happen next. I'm just going along for now. Like this afternoon, when I went along with my mom to a Women's Meeting for lunch and wound up listening to them discuss maids, hairstyles, recipes, and (their only real common point) the kids in school. At least now I know some salad dressings should only be made with white wine vinegar.
Comments