Tag: life

  • It’s Another Year Of…

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    sundialgirl
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    I actually wanted to write an end-of-the-year post around December 2021, but it was winter break and I was regularly raging against the snow (very pretty for the first ten minutes, and then ongoing misery for the next three months) and the world continues to fall apart at the seams, and so my brain simply…

  • FAQs Asked to the New Grad Student Who Moved Halfway Across the World

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    sundialgirl
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    After being in Pittsburgh for a couple of weeks, I’ve noticed that every day feels like a press conference: you will always be answering questions. Sometimes, the questions are coming from a place of care and concern. Other times, the questions are there because the other person really doesn’t know what to say. Having been…

  • A Difficult Year

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    sundialgirl
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    (+) I’d like to think every generation has their own struggles, their own history-defining moment where, collectively, a particular memory is generated and imprinted upon those who survived through that event, only to be forgotten, then misremembered, and then forgotten again. I always though 9/11 was that defining moment for my generation. It turns out…

  • Lockdown, Week 2

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    sundialgirl
    in

    Hours Bleed Into Days I wake up at noon, or just after one o’clock in the afternoon. Husband has already made lunch (usually leftovers from the previous night’s dinner). We do chores – washing the dishes, cleaning the floor, doing the laundry. We don’t have a washing machine, so we decided to just cycle five…

  • Lockdown, Week 1

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    sundialgirl
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    We went to the office. I had a meeting. We heard about a possibility that there were cases on the rise, chatter on social media. Might be a quarantine. We decided to stock up on some basic grocery items at the nearby mall. The queues were already long, but it was okay. We didn’t want…

  • 2009 vs. 2019

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    sundialgirl
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    I didn’t plan these photos, but it seems apt to pull a 2009 photo from when I was living in Singapore, and a 2019 photo from when I visited Singapore earlier this year for a conference. I was 25 years old when the first photo was taken, and obviously after ten years, I think I…

  • Semester in Review: Sem 2, AY 2018-2019

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    sundialgirl
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    Oh boy. This semester kicked my ass so hard. I knew, historically, that the second semester is usually much harder than the first, simply because there was less time to rest between the first and second semesters. On top of that, I also knew that I would have to prepare for a number of things:…

  • On Imposter Syndrome

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    sundialgirl
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    (Image from https://themighty.com/2017/05/what-panic-attacks-feel-like/) When I was a young (warthog) writer – roughly around high school age, when I first started taking this writing thing seriously – my teacher/mentor figure told me that writers don’t really call themselves “writers”; other people bestow that title on them, like a queen bestowing titles on their subjects. To claim that…

  • Life + Writing Updates, March 2018

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    sundialgirl
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    OH BOY. It seems that I haven’t updated this space in months. That’s insane. We’re in the middle of the semester, which means that the insanity is coming in April (staying true to its “cruelest month” nickname; thanks TS Eliot) what with final requirements for students, thesis defense panels, and final submissions for everything. The term…