funny dreams

about a surprise birthday that the usual suspects threw for me at my old church, and one i ran away from, managing to hide behind an SUV before they found me. the funny thing was, how could i plan a surprise birthday for myself in my head? i mean, a distinct trail of clues tipped me off. and i was genuinely surprised! how is that possible? and then something else that was also pretty portentous - i remember some frantic game-show paced grocery shopping and wagon-racing up the hills of seoul. of course nothing makes sense. i'm on this sine/cosine wave of determination to go one way, then another, then another...

last night was kind of like...my realization that i may be really 'over' having a certain kind of friend. also, that i am so tongue-tied around certain people, still, after almost four years. i have this incredibly stupid tendency to think of things only as they represent extremes. and when i say things i mean people. and...something about yesterday made me a little bit sad. i don't know whether it was the beautiful people, or the wise people, or the weird people. but some sense that everything is coming to an end and that before everything else, we are all so young. which makes us all beautiful and wise and weird...

ch ch chaaanges

while in ny last friday, i suffered from 1) the aftermath of tandoor the night before and 2) the realization that ny is not actually a bad place to end up after college. "oh well," i reasoned, "doesn't really matter cause i'm not getting this job!" i met anand at century 21, walked around brooklyn in my terrible shoes, and stood/sat in the aisle on the delayed amtrak train going back to philly. so now, as it turns out, somehow they're giving me an offer and now i have to choose between:

citigroup public finance/ny/lots of friends/lots of money/lots of prestige/nice ppl
zs associates/princeton/0 friends/decent money/decent prestige/awesome, goofy ppl
fulbright eta/korea/0 friends/enough to live on/personal fulfillment/NEW ppl

and these are just the SHORT term attributes [oh marketing. were that i could subject myself to a conjoint analysis. what would i end up with?] clearly i'm at a pathetic personal crossroads; i think it's crazy b/c my brother is making his college choices now too and clearly, i am in no position to give him any sage counsel. when was i ever?

no small consolation, this!!! the result of a splurge at liberty place yesterday...