we fall in love with cities as we do with people. little did vanessa and i know that our first venture into our neighborhood in istanbul led us to the people who would make the fifth largest city (by metro area) in the world feel like home. we came and left, as all true loves do, but by the end of our stay in greece we were ready to come "home." we were welcomed by strangers and left with friends and bellies full of tea; we were solicited to wits' end. we adopted a kitten; we experienced attempts of manipulation to pay people to take care of said cat. we danced the night away in taksim; we had our asses grabbed twice on the walk there. we watched a community futbol match and piled into a van jammin to kanye's gold digger; we passively watched as new tourists fell prety to old tricks. we "improved" the turk gene pool; we were ignorantly singled out because of our apparent ethnicity. we laughed, cried, became frustrated and even bored with the city at times. but on this night, on a rooftop terrace of a hostel overlooking the bosphorus, straddled between two continents, forever a balance of opposing forces, i feel as full as the moon and am enchanted.

everytime i watch the short 53 second video i took of a street musician in thailand it sends shivers up my spine and often makes me cry, for no apparent reason. it's neither tears of joy nor sadness -- just a simple human expression stripped to its rawest and most primitive state. a lanky, young male clad in a white polo with a logo of a blue alien face wearing sunglasses, cargo shorts and sandals rocks back and forth playing an acoustic guitar, serenading vanessa and i a depressing ballad (silly fools, juicy, track 3), on a warm evening on the infamously risque walking street in pattaya. all around us, neon signs of scantily-clad women, clubs and bars compete for attention. behind him, two men sit chatting by a headless and handless mannequin wearing a half black, half red halter dress divided by a sparkly silver line. but the musician takes no notice of these distractions, because he is blind. next to him, his disinterested yet devoted friend sits on the ground, boredly tapping away at a wooden block to keep a beat, and to keep an eye on the donation pile. on a street renowned for alcohol, foreigners, transexuals, sex and prostitution, i heard the most beautiful impromptu rendition of a song. i wished that watching the video would transport me across the world, but rather, it makes me feel further from thailand than ever.

while driving the seven minutes it takes for me to get home from my best friend's house in freezing rain, i came to a realization. i decided a long time ago that i was going to take a year off after i graduate to avoid arbitrarily picking a master's degree and jumping blindly into grad school, but that decision has ironically led me to more arbitrary decisions. everything is plausible, but nothing feels right. i had wanted to study chinese for a semester and get a taste of living in taiwan. on the outside, i've convinced myself that perfecting my chinese is useful and a duty to my heritage. on the inside, however, i'm finally admitting to myself that i also just wanted to go back to some form of "school," b/c school is the safest place to retreat to from the harsh realities of settling in a profession and to buy my indecisive self more time. i also considered working in turkey, or somewhere near there in europe for the summer, since i'm going anyway. i found a few interesting opportunities, but again, career pertinence and arbitrariness taps me on the shoulder again. nothing inside me, at this current moment, can sway me in a definitive direction. and for someone who does so much introspection and self reflection, it's finally dawned on me that i actually don't know as much about myself as i thought i did. ask me about myself, and i have no problem telling you random facts, personality quirks and qualms, extensively detailed scenes from the past and present. but as for the big picture, i have as much clue as a child. again, this is why i love the movie amelie so much. she could tell you that she loved to crack creme brulee with a spoon, that she loved dipping her fingers into sacks of grain, and that she often pondered odd questions to herself. but ask her about her future aspirations and how she plans on seizing life and doing things for herself, and she would need an old and wise painter for backup to answer that. i'm the lost girl with the glass at the boating party whose look he couldn't capture. i don't know what i'm passionate about; i'm sitting and waiting for an epiphany i'm not certain will ever come. what i do know is that i don't enjoy forcibly carving out my place in this world -- i want to go where the world takes me. it's a dreamer's dream, but is it possible?

today i voted for the first time.

however, even though my chosen candidate won, i don't feel particularly happy that i contributed to making history in this country. i went home last night so i could vote this morning, but when i arrived at my polling location, the lines were so long that i couldn't wait and had to go to school. i ended up spending the entire day contemplating whether or not i should drive back home to try again after my classes were over. instead of feeling excited to participate in my first election, i became increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that my vote was based on nothing but a mere impression. i don't follow politics. so as an undecided and uninformed voter, the factors that led me to lean towards the winning candidate were both trivial and superficial. i've always considered myself more liberal than conservative. and the topic of the majority of politics talk i hear is always the rampant bashing of his opponent's vice presidential candidate's incompetence, so, why not vote for him?

but, is this wrong? based on standard ethics, just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. however, if only informed citizens could vote, voters would make up a small fraction of the population. although the act of voting is a right that naturally anyone would want to make use of, i don't feel proud for having voted today; rather, i'm disappointed in myself. i'm disappointed that i allowed myself to make such an important decision based on nothing. i'm not criticizing anyone in a similar situation as me who also voted today. i'm just saying that the new president won my vote today only because his opponent was easier to hate, and that should never happen again.

first day as a senior in college was anticlimactic w/ a tinge of irony. in my last year, i should've felt the most at home, strutting around campus comfortably and with ease, buying all my books at the cheapest prices and being happily reunited with my dbk crossword puzzles. and yet, my day ended up being punctuated with first experiences that made me feel like an outsider. i bought food from mckeldin with my own money instead of swiping my terp bucks for the first time. i had to pay a special visit to stamp to get one of the free planners they hand out in the dorms for the first time. i also walked from school to parkside for the first time, instead of lugging a huge bag of food from the diner back to my dorm after class. i spent a quiet evening in my apartment, eating fried rice and doing my first reading assignment, with the periodic beeping of people punching the code to get in as my only connection to the outside campus world. perhaps the transition to living outside the college park bubble has already begun. either way, it's good to be back, but saying goodbye will be easier than i thought. a toast to our last year!

being grown up isn't half as fun as growing up
these are the best days of our lives
the only thing that matters is just following your heart
and eventually you'll finally get it right