Reading over some of the older posts makes me think that I have changed during the trip. I'm not entirely sure, though, for it would require concrete actions to really bring about change in one's life. I don't really care to elaborate in any detail the nature of such changes; to be sure, some are seemingly profound, and such profundity deserves enough respect for me not to mangle it into a terrible, pretentious sermon, the likes of which this little blog has seen one too many times.

I wrote this on the day I landed, and thought it was definitely the result of a tired mind, but I suppose part of me wants to refuse I thought such things. I think the Morrison backlash is starting to begin! Anyway, this is what I wrote:

As I stared into the night sky today, I was reminded of the line "I'll tell you this / No eternal reward will forgive us for wasting the dawn", and, for a brief moment, felt like I understood what Morrison was saying when he said "Out here in the perimeter, there are no stars / Out here, we are stoned immaculate". Cities can be quite beautiful at night. No doubt some part of me wishes to construct some awkward poem detailing how this is so, but it has been suppressed by nausea and a complete loss of the knowledge of what day or time it is. You have to love jet-lag!

The wearying effects of jet-lag still prevail, although I've done virtually nothing to oppose these demons. After all, it has been a long time since I got up just before lunch!

During uni, 6 weeks seems like an excruciatingly long time. These past 6 weeks have been both long and short (another in my endless list of paradoxes). There are many memories to cherish, but still the (inevitable) feeling that I could really have done with yet more time away. Another inevitability from such trips is me pondering my future, and whether I shall return to my country of origin once my "education" is complete. But not everything is so simple now as it used to be; indeed, lots of my family are scattered all around the globe, and as such it seems the US hosts the greatest number of family members at the moment. The realization that perhaps those childhood days where we were all one big family and could see each other anytime have passed has left me deeply distressed in the past, but of late I've come to accept it with weary resignation, forever lamenting the complexities of the world. I suppose after a point, one has to learn to accept the realities, and strive towards any idealistic vision of the future through pragmatism (did that make sense?). Various topics came up during an evening discussion a few weeks ago, and my dearest aunt said that every place had its problems, and that it was upto onesself to decide which problems one wants to face. To paraphrase from a PJ Tracy book*, that just cut through all the wish-washy nonsense that was stagnating in my head and helped me come back to my normal self (yes, it's perhaps over-simplified, but that ain't the point!).

* I don't often read modern mass-market novels, certainly not thrillers, but this was a pleasant enough exception. I even ended up reading The Da Vinci Code, which was also utterly out of character for me (but again, a pleasant enough change of character).