- From Tokien (June & July '06)

What great magazines we have at the student bookstore. I shall spend limited free time with Entertainment Weekly (rest-of-2006 movie roundup: Babel! Candy! Happy Feet! Volver! And Jude in no less than three films?) and Tokien (Bueno Aires-based Korean designer; Jena "the one who's going to grow up to do something surprising" Malone; skateboarding photography; Chris Ware cartoons; guide to Savannah; behind-the-scenes of Wassup Rockers).

The wise woman builds her house,

but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.

- Proverbs 14:1

I may have a permanent sunburn - that's how much this place boils. Thank God for my new roommate, Alice, who arrived with a power fan and fridge. And the cabbie who picked me up from the airport, a Sudanese dude named Noah, if he did get seasonably lost in the Law School area when all I wanted was to get to the IRC. We talked TOEFLs (he's going for his Masters at George Mason University), America's obsession with pre-marital sex, how gorgeous bi-racial kids are (his cousin married an Indonesian), post-war Sudan, how New Yorkers are the best tippers, and also compared cultural roots, while his phone rang continuously with his homies telling him to get on down to a barbecue they were having. "Call me if you need help - remember you have a brother here!" he declared, before speeding off to the party.

Clearest sign that I'm back -

Me: So why'd you choose to stay in the IRC?

Laid-back first-year: I don't know, man. I just love everybody!

Unpacking, running into random people, dinners, semester plans - once and again, the world is huge. But jetlag exhaustion is so much so that I am too tired to answer simple, friendly questions like "What is your favourite sandwich?" So many things. I am considering a publishing internship at Scholastic New York next summer - let's assume it's closer than I realise. And from here we work.