Ann Arbor at last!

No, I haven't switched this weblog off! It's terribly hard to sit down and write a decent post when there's no internet connection at home and I'm reluctant to pen my thoughts on a public computer in school.

At any rate, my phone line is finally up, I'm on AOL and awaiting faster connection (read: DSL) to begin some time next week.

Lin Kiat and I touched down in Detroit last last Tuesday. Chris and Amy (just three days after returning from Singapore themselves) met us at the new airport terminal with two goodie bags and one of their cars. They loaned us a Ford Focus so we could find our way back to Ann Arbor.

That we did. It was surreal to enter the town - in some ways, it was as if we'd never left, the past three years were just a pause, a comma. There were many things that remained unchanged (like our little favorite Korean restaurant on South U.) and a few that are different. Angell Hall and Mason Hall (where the English department and where most of the humanities classes take place) have been renovated, half of the bridge that I drove over each day during my undergrad years is being worked on (it's temporarily a one-way bridge now) and the front door to the building where I last stayed has been replaced (finally!).

It's been tiring, running around trying to set up home. I've got a phone line, I've got a desk and an HP computer, I've got toiletries (more importantly, I've got toilet paper! It was the first thing I purchased at Meijer, the wonderful 24-hr place that sells everything!), I've got a great bed (more on the bed later!) and I've got a car!

Beautiful car, my new love of my life (or second love, rather). Lin Kiat and I found it in Cleveland, Ohio, some three hours southeast of Ann Arbor. So it was the same routine that we followed when we got my first car, the SOLMATE, a Honda Del Sol, back in 1999. First, we drove down to Cleveland to see the car. A couple of days later, Lin Kiat and I took the Greyhound (a six-hour bus ride that took us to Lincoln Park, Detroit, Lincoln Park (again!), Wayne, Toledo and finally Cleveland) to pick the car up at the dealer's. We put some money down, did the paperwork, and then drove back to Ann Arbor (or rather, Lin Kiat did the driving).

The car is a 2001 VW Golf GLS 1.8 Turbo. It's white and has full options. This means that it has a moon roof, air-conditioning, CD changer, seat warmers...the works. Since I used to drive a Golf in Singapore, I am immediately at home in this new baby. Except that it's a left-hand-drive car. The shift knob is on my right, but my left hand tends to grope for a phantom shift knob where the driver's door actually is. I'll grow out of it.

Ann Arbor is lovely in mid-summer. The highest day temperature is only 28 degrees celsius and it's very cool at night. The sky is a lovely shade of blue and every cloud is a poem. The geese fly overhead in their trademark V-formations and litter the parks with their feces, but that's okay since I always watch where I step!

Posted by Monoceros at August 2, 2003 11:43 PM