post-grad update one

Since my last post, I've graduated from college, started working in a public high school, and now spend my Saturday nights in bed listening to Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! podcasts on the speakers once used to blast dance music. Somehow, just months after graduating, I seem to have left behind all semblance of a young life. No more parties, no late nights out, no spontaneous midnight trips to 24 hour diners.

Part of it is the fact that I now live at home in Houston, a half hour drive from most friends and most things worth doing in the city. Part of it is the fact that I'm no longer living with roommates. Part of it is the simple fact that I'm no longer a college student living in a college town.

However, a significant part is due to my job. Working in a public school is very isolating, especially for a young person. I share a workspace with one other person 3 decades my senior, I spend my time with students all day rather than peers, and I work within the maddening bureaucracy of the public education system. Every day I see the young faces of broken homes, illegal immigration, and poverty, who were never shown the liberating power of education. Every day I confront unacceptably low achievement levels throughout the district. I watch seniors read at a 5th grade level and struggle with multiplication tables and I constantly wonder how we got our kids here. Somehow there's never an answer, not within the school, not within the district, not even within education policy.

Public education is not the fun, glamorous work environment most people seek upon graduating. There's no built-in social structure of co-workers and friends. I'm in bed by 11 each night in order to wake up at 6 and be a responsible adult and role model for the children whose lives I affect every day. I watch the lives of friends who are grad students, freelance writers, consultants, managers at up-and-coming companies in big cities and I am constantly struck my how much a job can shape your everyday life. Maybe next year I'll be a student again or living in a new city or starting a different job. But for now I have to keep reminding myself that I am only 22 years old, that I can still fill my life with youthful pursuits, and that I can still have an exciting future.

hello breakfast.

Nothing like cinnamon toast, fresh coffee, and honey crisps to start off a new autumn day.

The Suburbs (2010)

This past weekend I packed up my summer apartment and headed home to the suburbs of Houston. Following a busy summer spent in Austin and an entire semester before that spent in Copenhagen, I found myself immediately resenting the suffocating uniformity and ennui of life in the suburbs while also enjoying the comforting sense of familiarity found in my childhood bed and memories of idle summers as a kid growing up in a suburban landscape.

While summer in Austin was acquainted with an adult version of me - waking up at 7 every morning, dressing up for work, drinking cup after cup of coffee to stay alert in the midst of monotony - being back in the suburbs has found me reliving the joys of childhood summers: evening bike rides around the neighborhood, reading novels for pleasure, sleeping until noon every day. However, this enjoyment of doing nothing has come with a newfound guilt characteristic of adulthood - a harsh, unsettling sense that I have outgrown this place. I will no longer be welcome here as a child anymore - after this year, I am to be a fully grown adult with my own sense of purpose and my own career, my own living, my own future. This suburban life will remain here, but I will never return the same.

And with that, coming home to the suburbs has ignited a sort of nostalgia, not only for childhood in suburbia, but a nostalgia for being in the right place, being right where you are supposed to be. As a kid, the suburb was the place for me. I brought home good grades, I shot hoops in the driveway after dinner, I caught frogs with neighbors after dusk. I was right where I was supposed to be. As we get older, we come into a stark adult world marked by terrifying uncertainty. Even the traditional structures - an assured job, a steady marriage, a cohesive family - no longer hold the coveted sense of certainty that we want and need as we get older. In the midst of this precarious grown-up world where neither happiness nor success is secure, we find comfort in a past world where everything seemed to be in its right place.

Arcade Fire: The Suburbs (2010)

Somewhere out there, the same dreamy nostalgia for the lost days of suburban life hit Win Butler, who also happened to grow up in the suburbs of Houston. The result is a collection of memories cemented in Arcade Fire's third album, The Suburbs.

While Funeral captured the imaginative hope of a precocious child and Neon Bible showcased the rebellious spirit of young adulthood, The Suburbs reveals the resignation and longing found in maturity, painting subdued memories of a lost past from the perspective of one who's lived it all once before.

Throughout the album, there is a sense of longing for the purity and certainty once found in suburban life, a nostalgic remembrance fueled by a bleak adult world marked by disillusionment and desperation. However, at the same time, they know fully well that this elusive dream of idyllic suburbia is marred by reality - the stifling conformity, the repressive boredom, the mask of certainty worn by uniformly pleasant houses, each hiding a family on the verge of collapse - in effect, the very neighborhoods that the kids escaped from in Funeral. Thus, in the midst of an imperfect world, Arcade Fire retreat to the comfort of shared human experience, evoking the same nostalgia within us for a world that never existed, strengthening the universal thread that connects us all and carries us through this life.

The sense of nostalgia spreads throughout the musical sound of the album as well, drawing on influences from the past moreso than in their previous albums. The songs manage to pay homage to earlier artists in a way that goes beyond mimicry to truly create a new musical experience built on sounds of the past. Instead of merely evoking the vocals and synthpop of Blondie, 'Sprawl II' transports you through a hazy dream to a 1979 bedroom where a newly released 'Heart of Glass' plays on a record player, flooding you with wistful reminiscence for a lost time.

And in this way, Arcade Fire manages to continue doing what they do so well: encapsulating poignant truths of the human condition in powerful songs unrivaled by other bands today.

The Suburbs is out in stores this week; Malory Lee is in the suburbs of Houston until August 22.

One Day (2009)

I picked up the novel One Day on a whim while waiting for a train in Germany last month. Having finished it now, I am so glad I decided to buy it. It's been a long time since I've connected to a fictional story in such a way (also a while since I've finished a book for leisure, I suppose). I read a large part of the book immediately after purchasing it, devoting every train ride while traveling to the story of Em and Dex. I was nearly finished by the end of my travels in Russia, but I stored it away as school got busy again, having almost lost interest as it seemed to have reached a pleasantly stagnant conclusion. It rested on my bookshelf until today, when perhaps out of a desperate attempt to avoid my daunting assignments, I decided to see how the story officially ended. After finishing, I'm convinced the critics who acclaimed it simply as a great romantic comedy must have also thought they had reached the end when I did and failed to finish the novel. The last few chapters of the book, in fact, offer the most poignant, affecting, human portrayals of life and love only alluded to in earlier parts of the story. Three hours after finishing, I still feel the weight of the story on me, a sense of loss coming over me upon the characters' departure from my life.

Between his characters Dexter and Emma, David Nicholls paints a universal story of human longing, nostalgia for a lost past, and, above all, the constant uncertainty of life, love, and happiness. At times unbearably sad, at times remarkably hopeful, Nicholls brilliantly captures the experience of loss as well as the power of human resilience and finding beauty within tragedy.

Some readers claimed that the novel failed because the characters were unlikeable, which I found astounding. Em and Dex emerge vividly from Nicholls' striking talent for crafting genuine characters, so real and flawed and human in every way that you're drawn in almost immediately. We may like people because of their good qualities, but we love our closest friends and family in spite of their deepest faults. Are fictional characters any different? We come to know Em and Dex in an intimate way, sensing their vulnerabilities, disappointed at their failures but ultimately rooting for their success. They irritate from time to time when we first meet them, but after 20 years (or 435 pages) spent together, it is impossible not to love and feel for them as if they were our own friends.

Apart from the brilliant characterization and subtle depiction of human emotion, the story portrays the profound trajectory life can take over 20 years. I currently stand just at the outset of the story, connecting with the post-graduation anxiety of facing the real world, with both Dexter's hedonistic desire to explore the world and Emma's insecurities that prevent her from success and happiness. The beauty of Nicholls' narrative lies in this fact that people in all different stages of their lives will connect to the story in different ways. It's a story I'll be able to return to throughout my life, a companion to the triumphs and losses along the way.

baby went to amsterdam, she put a little money into travelin'.

The remnants of Queensday the morning after

Wednesday 28 April 2010

My friend Claire and I left in the evening for Amsterdam on our respective forms of transportation - a mere one hour flight for her, 15 hour overnight train (without bed) for me. Despite the horribly uncomfortable seats clearly not built for sleeping or sitting for long periods of time, I would still choose to travel by train. There's something about seeing the land change as you pass - about enjoying the green expanses of the German countryside and the endless fields of bright yellow, almost fluorescent flowers, about opening the windows to fresh air - that is irreplacable, no matter how much faster a plane will get you to your destination.


Preferred form of transportation

Thursday 29 April 2010

9:23 AM

Woke up groggily to find that the train has been stalled....for the last 6 hours. Engine broken. Apparently someone commit suicide on the tracks in the middle of the night while everyone was asleep. Definitely did a number on the locomotives. Now everyone is out of their compartments, having conversations with fellow travelers from other countries, the windows are open for some fresh morning air, and someone is strumming languidly on a ukelele. If it weren't for the grim circumstances and the fact that I'm losing a whole precious day of travel and leaving Claire alone in Amsterdam, I'd almost enjoy this.


14:00

After a couple hours back on track, just when we thought we could finally make it to Amsterdam, the train has stalled once again. This time we've all gotten off the train, resting on the platform in the warm afternoon sun and balmy breeze. The weather truly feels like summer right now, wherever we are.

Later that day...

Six hours after I was supposed to arrive in Amsterdam, I finally made it to Centraal Station around 4 in the afternoon, exhausted from a rather sleepless train ride, and starved, having not eaten anything since 6 o'clock the previous evening. I met up with Claire and we rode to Haarlem, where we are staying for the next two nights, to drop off our bags at our hostel. In the evening we explored a bit of Amsterdam, mainly the many eateries so considerately open for late night munchies. Total food consumed tonight: huge plate of Chinese noodles, Belgian waffle, various cakes, and a "Lion" McFlurry (in response to my original order for a KitKat McFlurry, the clerk said 'why have a kat when you can have a lion?' Wise words, for the Lion McFlurry exceeded anything a KitKat McFlurry could have dreamed of being). Note to self for rest of the trip: eat less, spend less money.

Friday 30 April 2010: Queensday


Queensday in....Haarlem!

We woke up today with the intention of eating an early breakfast at the hostel, exploring Haarlem all morning, and being on a train to Amsterdam by noon. Instead, we skipped breakfast, went back to bed and slept til noon.

Well-rested and finally ready for Queensday, we headed into the center of Haarlem, where we were met with huge crowds of youths and families alike all decked out in orange and already drunk (probably from last night's Queensnight celebrations). The train station was mad chaos. Turns out no trains were going to Amsterdam today and crowds of young people were already mobbing the buses to the city. We decided to let the locals celebrate their holiday in Amsterdam and ended up spending Queensday in Haarlem, which I actually appreciated because it was the perfect balance of party celebrations and small town charm. And while Amsterdam was ridden with tourists, Haarlem retained a local atmosphere.

We stopped first for a delightful brunch at a quaint little French cafe on the corner. I had an omelette the size of my face that probably contained a month's supply of cholesterol. It was wholly satisfying, and the coffee was wonderful too. After our cosy rendezvous with France, we returned to the streets of Haarlem to join the Queensday celebration, pausing at a grocery store to arm ourselves with Heinekens. The streets were packed with people (I can only imagine what Amsterdam was like). In addition to being a huge outdoor party, the streets also functioned as a big flea market (I managed to find a lovely ring for just 50 cents) as well as a public children's talent show (still confused about that one). All in all, Queensday was plenty of fun, though the celebrations ended early (after all, they'd been partying since the previous night).


Balancing act

Saturday 1 May 2010

I have so many fingers! (still only 10)
These hands aren't mine. (they were)
A steak would be great in two years. (probably)
They're speaking English! (they were)
They're speaking Danish! (they weren't)
Everyone's speaking Danish! (no one was speaking Danish)
Seth Rogen! (wasn't there)
Did I say that out loud? (yes, I did)
Am I speaking? (yes, I was)
Where's Keanu Reeves? (in The Matrix)
Was that real? (no one knows)

Sunday 2 May 2010

8:17 AM



Beautiful morning. Claire left for the airport already and I have about 2 hours before my long train journey back to Copenhagen. I'm currently sitting by the canal, taking in the beautiful scenery (which somehow has not been the focus on this trip) and enjoying the brisk morning breeze. It's refreshing to explore the city while the streets are mostly empty and everyone is still sleeping off the effects of Queensday weekend. It's a much needed detox: peace, quiet, fresh air, lack of excessive stimuli, getting away from people and being alone in a lovely city - one of my favorite parts of traveling. Once in a while a Heineken can drifts by in the canal or a whiff of urine passes through the air, but for the most part it seems like the party's officially over. Amsterdam, you mad, mad city. You have certainly taken your toll on me.