Class of 2008

My flight to Singapore was uneventful, or at least as uneventful as an eighteen hour flight can be. It was set to take off from San Francisco at 1am, so once I'd found my seat, I propped my head on my pillow and closed my eyes while waiting for the rest of the passengers to board. When I opened them what I thought was a few minutes later, I was disgruntled to see that people were still milling about in the aisles. "Can't they get organized?" I bristled to myself. "Sit down, buckle up, and let's go!"  A second later,  I saw that the flight attendants were wheeling the drink carts through the plane. "How odd," I mused. "They don't normally do that when you're still on the ground." Embarrassingly, it took me quite a while to realize that I'd actually been asleep for a good hour at least, that I had, in fact, slept entirely through the juddering take-off of a 747. Most likely with my glasses still on.

Arriving in Singapore, I was hot. Oh my god, was I hot: the air conditioner did nothing for me, the fan even less. I hadn't remembered it being this hot, sweat-behind-your-knees hot, and for a second I wondered if I could spend the entirety of my vacation soaking in an ice-filled bathtub sipping a Slurpee. But a day or two in I got used to it and now, writing this from the couch in a tank top, I'm flirting with the idea of turning the air conditioner down a notch or two before I catch some sort of air conditioner-related chill. I suppose we just adapt, even delicate San Francisco flowers like me who've become used to the mist and fog of a May morning, the ubiquitous hoodie stashed within reach just in case.

During my first full day in Singapore, you would have thought I was an extra in The Hills. This is what I did: I got up, went to the gym, and then went with my sister to get a manicure. We did a little shopping, sipped juice at a juice bar, then went back home and lay out in the sun for an hour.  Doesn't that sound like Lauren Conrad could have been by my side the entire time? Can't you just hear the MTV-sanctioned emo soundtrack in the background? I felt like I'd fallen through the pages of an Us Weekly.

In the evening, it was Luke and Susie's graduation ceremony, for which I had---just in time!---come down with a mysterious case of 24-hour pinkeye. Maybe I caught it on the plane, I don't know, but my right eye was bloodshot and oozing and my vision was blurred the entire night: I'm sure it made for some really awesome graduation photos. When I wasn't blinking like a madwoman and peering at everyone through one eye---"hi, I'm Luke and Susie's sister, nice to meet you, yes, I know, it does totally look like I've been in the bathroom smoking a bunch of weed!"---I was knocking back the eyedrops in an attempt to gain back my sight, or at least get rid of some of the bright scarlet ribbons threading their way through the white of my eyeball. And when I woke up the next morning? I was absolutely fine. It was like my eye had a finely-honed sense of comic timing. "And that's for experimenting with white eyeshadow in the 1990s!" it seemed to seethe. "I've been waiting for ages to get you back for that."

Graduation itself was marvelous, and was made even more marvelous by the fact that Luke and Susie attend an international school where the (more than three hundred) graduates hail from over fifty countries, giving the whole thing the air of a U.N. gathering. Changs walked across the stage with Nilssens and Kawamuras and O'Briens, and my awe for the emcee tripled immediately when she pronounced---faultlessly and with considerable aplomb---the name Monthienvichienchai. (Can you imagine? The filling out of forms? The never having enough boxes? The lack of space?)

With the ceremony over, we moved onto the important part of the night: the eating and drinking.

First things first, good sir: which way to the tiramisu?

Alongside the eating and drinking, there was also some dancing, and boy, about that dancing: how should I put this? It sure has changed since I was eighteen, I'll tell you that much.  I felt positively ancient bopping around to Livin' On A Prayer with Luke and Susie and a circle of lithe teens, like someone's embarrassing maiden aunt who insists upon showing how wacky and with-it she still is by cutting a rug with the young folk, but ends up doing the Charleston instead. "I'm not that old!" I wanted to shout at the bumping and grinding teenagers. "I'm only twenty eight! That's not that much older than you! In fact, I've only recently been allowed to rent a rental car by myself!"

(Incidentally, at the after party---which was only attended by graduates, mostly due to the fact that it STARTED AT MIDNIGHT, the kind of thing that blows my mind because, eh, going out at midnight? Really? I'm exhausted just typing that---all attendees had to show their ID. The drinking age in Singapore is 18, and one of my brother's friends was set to turn 18 the very next day, but since they'd arrived at the bar before midnight, he was still---at least according to his ID----seventeen. His cunning plan? He let people go ahead of him in the line until the clock had struck twelve, and then he marched right up to the entrance, ID in hand, legal at last. Seventeen years, eleven months, three hundred and sixty four days, twenty three hours, and fifty nine minutes?  No, you may not have a beer. Eighteen years and six seconds? Why yes, sir, bottle or draught?

I have a whole bunch of graduation photos I need to upload at some point, though I doubt any of them will be of much interest to anyone but my immediate family, so for now, I will just leave you with the scene I've been staring at for the last two days in a row, as I marinate in a cocktail of Coppertone and chlorine and read all the novels I've been meaning to read for the last six months:

And if that isn't enough to convince you of what a spectacular vacation I'm having so far, for dinner this evening my mother made macaroni and cheese with bacon. Did you hear that? CHEESE WITH BACON. Case closed, end of story, goodnight.