It feels like bedtime

I'm so tired, again. Not because of work though, but because I stayed up til 6am talking (and studying). Gosh, that's like two surprises in one sentence. To make it easier to manage, we shall focus on the former:

"I stayed up til 6am"
Mg, I never stay up that late/early. I'm a 1130pm to bed girl and a 0900 wake up kinda person. The 1130 got ditched last night, but the 0900 stuck because of the need to study for exams which start tomorrow. I'm paying dearly for it. Getting out of bed was Herculean. I move like a stop-start black-and-white film. I feel black and white.

I don't think my scraped back, as-tight-as-it-gets pony-tail is there so much as to keep the hair out of my face while I tackle this massive subject list as it is to hold my eyelids open. I didn't bother to put my contacts in because I know my eyeballs would chew them right up. I also know I'm going to have to get my pedantic proof-reader to go over this a couple of times to get all the words straight.

And now the second part:
"talking"
It felt so good. I must sound like I'm desperately in need of social interaction. That wouldn't be far from it. In truth, I haven't talked to Weng much this week because of all the studying, and it was refreshing to talk to people whose first line isn't "So, you know, about that conceptual design..."

I finally met Amar. That deserves a line of itself. I mean he's the guy that really does seem to know 'everybody'. I don't know why it took so long - he's been over often enough, and everyone else seems to know him: Evan, Junlinn, Young, Hsiang, Tish, Aaron...the list goes on. He talks fast.

I got to know Jac better, even if it was because Darren was playing Chief Interrogator for most of the conversation. It was awesome - to sound like a complete geek. I don't know, when you read someone's blog that makes you think about things other than yourself, you just wanna meet that person. It's more interesting reading about someone you know know. I guess also because it was a wonderfully girly talk, and I miss that, and I don't ever want to talk about swing bridges again or how much torque goes on an axle, unless it's to do with my newest Maserati or something.

Currently listening to: Amar snoring. This guy is incredible - he doesn't ever stop making noise, and it's a peculiar assortment of snores as well, and I've listened to his alarm go off 7 times, every 20 minutes since 11am. That Nokia alarm has me so stressed out - that first beep is enough to have me right out of bed looking for a sledgehammer.

Later I gotta figure out how to print in my Mech Eng department. Two-point-three years on and I still don't know how to print from the computer lab printers. This ought to be good. I'm taking Weng with me to make sure I don't get run over on the way there and back.

Saturday morning, ten ay-em

The only thing keeping me going right now is the promise of two days off next week and the surprise that I have for Weng, all thanks to Chih Yang. It's going to be awesome. Unfortunately I also get a squeaky "What? What's going on? Where you taking me?!" in my ear all week. This'll be fun.

I levelled up too quickly and since everyone used my account as a test account, mostly Weng, they're totally kicking my ass in cyberspace, and I've had to start from zero +sob+. It's more fun playing against the small fry though.

We had plans to go to Warwick since we had a good long weekend but we're just so tired, we conceded it'd be more relaxing staying home, i.e. being antisocial. Sorry, being in a relationship means everything is automatically "we".

Can't wait to go home, seven weeks from today! A bit long to start the countdown, but that's how psyched I am.

Morons

There are times when I am completely awed by the quality of people in my course, by the initiative they show, the keeness to learn, their overall hardworking attitude that's almost on the brink of workaholicism. Then there are other times when I'm reminded that my course is, indeed, full of boys. The sterotyping may be unjust, but you hardly find girls sniggering or guffawing at their own jokes all the way through a lecture loud enough to be heard by everybody, especially the ones sitting right in front of them.

Teaching is never easy, and I really admire the lecturers who have so much passion in their work that they bring it into their teaching. I definitely do not admire the morons who sit there and snort "Rubbish" or "For fuck's sake" at every concept that the lecturer introduces with all the knowledge, purility, and arrogance behind their 20-odd years of life.

It's a waste that these imbeciles were allowed to sit in on this or any other lecture, or even given a place in a course that's completely over-admitted every year. I'm not surprised that they kept complaining they didn't know what the lecturer was talking about because they spent the whole damn lecture with their heads up their arses. I'm surprised they heard anything at all at which to poke fun at.

It's a poor reflection on them, on their school, on their culture, and on themselves, as pigs.

The Monkeys

That's the name of the alliance that currently houses Weng, Evan, and I. Attacks are flying back and forth between Weng's bro, Cheryl, and Bryan who seem to be having more fun attacking each other than anybody else.

Both of my esteemed siblings have attacked me in what I can only assume as having my best interests at heart. Cheryl took advantage of my fledgling status two days ago and won, but Bryan was a little slower and tried to foolishly match his miserable offense against mine. Ha!

Weng's sitting back and building up defense and offense points, and Evan has 5 miners, 20 guards, and wants to just sit back and let the money roll in. He didn't figure out that he has to build houses to increase the population or that it would take a million years to build up any kind of amount of money, thus, he had to take a loan from Weng.

It's crazy out there. Fortunes are won and lost in the space of hours, and I think the Weng brothers are the only ones who have this game properly figured out. They're sitting on pretty high stats for their level. Gotta rethink the strategy. Also waiting for Tish to get on the game.

Shocking!

1. "Liverpool eye Bellamy swoop"
2. Weng's brother making four times as much money as me in 1/16th of the time on Dark Throne.
   
3. A swinging footbridge that weighs 15 tonnes.
4. Someone actually wanting my course notes.

Exhausted

Dark Throne has ironically brought my brother and I closer, although so far it's purely in the sense that he actually answers when I message him online. He's currently trying to save his reputation on CS because Cheryl's dropped him down the list and he's five from the bottom while I bug him for Dark Throne tips. I've out-levelled him but I still don't really know how to play.

I don't know what it is about Mech Eng but it just leaves you too tired or plain lazy to socialise with people outside the course. This is inscribed on one of the benches:

"If you're sitting here you're probably studying Mech Eng. You work twice as hard as other students in other Unis, and your girlfriend's dumped you because you don't spend enough time with her. You work your ass off to end up in a boring job that pays nothing, and you hate life and you die a lonely death."

It didn't go exactly like that - I don't think I've done it any sort of justice, but you get the idea.

Dark Throne

It's come at such a bad time. My brother asked me to support his cause on the above MMOG and I got sucked straight into the swirling vortex of armies, villages, and money. That's why I haven't been blogging as obsessively as I used to and that's why I haven't done much other than stare longingly at the screen waiting for turn after turn to accumulate.

I get hopelessly addictied to turnbased games because they're the only ones I can handle. I've only played one other online game, to do with quests or something, but that shut down. While Dark Throne doesn't have the pretty graphics of that other game or any kind of aim other than to level up, attack, and get money to level up and attack to get money to level up to attack to get money...um, and so on, it's strangely hypnotic in its repetitiveness.

So anyway, please support my cause. My village of 25 men needs you! Click here.

P.S. If you want to sign up because the color scheme of the site is just screaming at you to join, register under my link okay? Thanks.

P.P.S. You have no idea how proud I am of myself for being able to link that word. I am no longer completely html illit!

Are you fat?

My mum called over the weekend - she rarely calls now that she has a new toy to play with, but the line of the conversation rarely changes.

Mum: How are you?
Me: I'm okay.
Mum: How's your weight?
Me: What do you mean "how's my weight"?
Mum: Are you fat?
Me: No I'm not fat!
Mum: How much do you weigh?
Me: I don't know, we don't have a weighing scale.
Mum: Are you fat?
Me: No Mum!

As you can probably tell the rest of the phone call was riddled with weight issues. What am I supposed to say to that? "No I'm not" just gets more "Are you sure you're not fat?", and "Yes" just gets a whole tirade of why aren't I exercising or why am I eating so much...

Then Weng gets the follow-through of our conversation in the form of a very worried "Weng, am I fat?" and I get an obliging "No, you're not".

And that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Of highlighters, girlfriends, and toilet paper

I have a love-hate relationship with highlighters. They're awesome because they're so colourful, and you can, well, highlight key concepts with it; but with great power comes great...control. What if everything's important? I tend to end up with a whole block of fluorescent pink text. The compulsive highlighter strikes again.

Then there's the issue of girlfriends. Why do guys want girlfriends? Does it increase their social standing or is it because of loneliness? Do most guys even need girlfriends, or is it the same as wanting a puppy for Christmas... They tend to look good on the arm, and it's kinda depressing going everywhere by yourself anyway. Do they ever realise the full responsibility that comes with having a girlfriend?

Girlfriends are for life, not just for social events.

Someone's been using up all the toilet paper again. Maybe one of us puts the end in the bowl and flushes for fun, to see the roll bounce crazly on its holder as it unravels. Or maybe they have an alterego that roams the rooftops of West London, toilet papering everything. I think we should conduct an experiment - we should each get a roll of toilet paper, check it at the end of the week and see who the culprit is. +lol+ It could be me. I'd be surprised if it were one of the guys...

Btw, Listerine is like unbelieveably painful.

Agony

Had dinner with Shiv and Hanwen last night, that was good fun. Starting to really like Waga now, just gotta know what to order really, and find a favorite. Walking past all the shops on high st, I had a terrible urge to buy everything. It all looks so pretty, especially under all those discount signs.

Came home to watch Team America. Perfectly over the top I think. If you're going to make a completely slapstick movie with and equally stupid soundtrack, this is it.

Inside, it's hurting... I have the worst mouth ulcer I can ever remember. It's a sinkhole in my cheek - I'm just waiting for it to come out the other side, then maybe I can put a stud in. I had to get Weng to put salt on it last night, and was reduced to a ball of pure pain. It felt like it was eating away the entire left side of my face, actually, I wish it was, then there would be no more ulcer and no more pain. My wisdom teeth are coming out too (they're taking their own sweet time), so it's just a riot of fun in there.

I'm having a cranky Sunday morning and I'm due for my salt and vitamins quite soon. Not taking any chances.

On this day

"2-nil!!" Gamecast screamed in my face 22 minutes after kick off.

It's so painful to watch, yet I'm drawn to the screen like a moth to fire. It's sick, and Weng's sitting there grinning his head off going "I can't believe this...". Well, neither can I.

Oh Liverpool...

I think Liverpool have a chance against Southampton today only because their form has been so much crappier than ours. I could be wrong. If they do win though, it would just continue to prove Tishen's theory that we lose whenever I watch, which would mean that I'd never ever be invited back to Weybridge on match day, and if I defected to another team, I wouldn't be invited back ever. +lol+

Supporting Liverpool is like being in a relationship that's living the past. They talk about their amazing era when they were winning everything, but hunny, it's a different team and a different time. The have the occasional inspired roll in the hay, like against West Brom, but mostly it's uninspired or they're 'unlucky' (dumb ref).

Liverpool's like a disappointing lover, if you would, that the other kids make fun of, yet you keep on carrying this tiny flame of hope that one day, they'll be back. Maybe today's the day, dare I hope?

"Celebrity decorating: what not to do"

British television must have got bored with normal people on reality t.v. shows, so they enlisted the help of celebrities. But in this country, celebrities are normal people, I mean they certainly outnumber them.

Miscellaneous

I think the thing about getting in touch with childhood friends that you haven't grown with is that once the "Omg, how are you?!" and "What've you been doing since?" talk is over, you suddenly hit a point where you have to decide whether they have a place in your life now.

Talking about old memories are great, you get to relive some of the most exciting bits in fast forward. Then you either cease to contact them for another decade or so and find them again after the aforementioned time or keep on talking to them, reintroducing them into your tightly knitted circle of family and friends. The latter usually doesn't happen. I guess memories are supposed to stay in the past.

Other wonderfully pointless thoughts include the smell in the Sherfield building. Brings me right back to the first day at IC, lining up all over the place to be registered in the course, with the bank, with the NHS. It still smells the same - like the Natural History Museum actually.

Oh and IPods. Everyone has them, but maybe it's just a really clever way of keeping track of hundreds and hundreds of consumers, like Big Brother gone global, and Apple's cashed into the governments' surveillance plans. Mwahaha. There's paranoia for you.

A lot of postgrads are pretty up themselves. Fine they're pursuing a PhD and all that, but they still sound like the big kids at school. I guess at any age you assume you know almost everything anyway, and then get older and look back and laugh uncontrollably at your own foolishness.

I gotta go draw stuff and do some homework.

Why today?!

Ugh, the internet's slower than a snail going backwards, and I'm getting more and more irritated with each time I have to hit the refresh button. If I have to measure a connection like this in seconds in this day and age, then it's way too slow.

I'm not sure if people actually come to this site to read what I've actually written, or check if there's been any further action on the 3-way slinging match on my tagboard, because I know I do, and now that I've taken the censor off at the request of 'Commander Sexy', things are bound to get interesting.

Disclaimer: I hold no responsibility for the bad words that may appear on the 'board. Little kids, please a) use them wisely, or b) not at all.

On other fronts, I'm hooked on PVP. I love working through their archive - they address everything that is so completely Asian, like StarWars and gaming. Mg, priceless stuff. It's how I keep myself occupied 3 hours a day. I love comics - lotsa pictures, not many words, goooodt.

Currently looking at 'The Mold Center' in a bid to remove that orange fungus that's growing next to the shower. It's quite gross....wow, there are so many mold-removal sites...Ahah! Spore scum prepare for chlorination!

Stooopid internet connection. Stooopid MSN connection. Pfft.

Morning glory

There's a thing about getting to Wednesday. You know you'll be out of school by 12pm with a whole afternoon ahead of you to waste as you see fit, and the weekend is just over the horizon, almost within touching distance. There's also Desperate Housewives at 10 o'clock tonight.

But getting to Wednesday also means that that deadline is getting nearer or those exams are just one and a half weeks away... where the hell is all the time going?

I admit that I'm boring and mellowed now, preferring 11.30 bedtimes to a night on the town, and I'm always working. Since the year started there hasn't really been any kind of weekend where I can kick back and not feel guilty about it. It's so obvious that everyone else has a vividly exciting lifestyle but where do they find the time to fit in all those tutorial sheets? Maybe they're running on 28 hour days in a parallel universe, there aren't enough hours in my day. Time management bites ass.

I'm back

You know I've been too busy when I don't even have the time to write.

Presentation is over, finally, and just like I predicted, I pretty much abandoned my carefully prepared prompt cards and legged it through the slides as fast as I could. My voice got steadily croakier as the nerves caught on until it became an inaudible squeak, so I had to stop to breathe. It turned out okay in the end.

I lost my contacts yesterday so Weng had to come and rescue me. Had the worst time walking into doors and travelling up and down in lifts because I couldn't see the number. It was like my worst nightmare - the building didn't want to let me out, or maybe it was because we had just finished a most tortuously long lab.

It looks like my biggest fan's back on the tag board, and being the darling that s/he is has left some more awe-inspiring literature. For someone who's telling me that my new year's resolution should include being a better person, I have yet to see an example. How typical.

I'll be back in a bit.

P.S. Tish, I like your pictures!

Winding down another weekend

There's the promise of steamboat and the hope of finally getting my technical presentation out of the way. Don't read too much into 'technical' though, because the most complicated word in my presentation is 'alternative' - wow, whaddya know, that's part of the title, "Alternative fuels".

I'm working on prompt cards that I know I'll never use out of complete mind-numbing panic, and ten hours of carefully prepared knowledge will dissolve into nothingness on Tuesday morning. Otherwise things are looking peachy. I've gotta study for progress tests at some point in the next two weeks, while attempt another lab report and two design projects. The anticipation is killing me.

Threw a crankiness-inspired fit today and washed the toilet. Not my toilet either, but it helped. Also cleaned the kitchen, and then took a nap, and was feeling all the better for it afterwards about four hours on.

Have you ever been to Sainsbury's and waited for it to open? They rush past the security guard in that straight-legged pigeon walk that people use in a hurry, and make a grab for a basket taking out three other shoppers in the process. Other more enterprising patrons charge through the crush of bodies with shopping trolleys and handbags. I'm never going early again.

Frustration

I know what my mum goes through.

I love animals

Baloo and Yogi look like giraffes, they're just getting lankier and stronger each time we visit Tish that they're harder to pry away from the dinner table and they can reach further too. Still the same as ever though, rowdy and itching to play.

Also caught a glimpse of a fox during the match (I don't wanna talk about it) and it was a surprisingly faded brownish-orange colour with a black and white tipped tail rather than a deep red. Pretty cool, although that means that a closer eye has to be kept on Tish's puppies whenever they want to go out.

Poor Weng has about a million things on his plate project-wise, and exams are just around the corner, so he's getting stressed out. It'll be nice to have him around for most of the week though, then I can make sure he eats properly (although it'll most likely be the other way around).

Not all that much going on at the moment, just working, as usual. Another Saturday night at home in front of the computer.

Mavs vs. Spurs; Liverpool vs. Man Utd

Why basketball is better than football:

1. They score more
2. They don't tear around the field screaming when they've scored, they just get on with it
3. They do amazing gravity-defying things
4. They don't look like goofballs when they run
5. They don't roll around on the floor looking for sympathy when they get elbowed
   
6. It's a visually cooler, fast-paced game every time
7. They play better music at the game
8. The referee never gets blamed by the losing team

It's almost time to watch football.

In the countryside

I got two words for you. Banana. Smoothie.
Yeah baby! It's going to be chocolate. banana. smoothie. at about 10.30ish, so wait for it.

Fluffed up my management test - was grasping for words all over the place. I haven't had enough practice sounding blah or talking business. Weng was testing me earlier and all these wonderfully business-y words were coming off the top of his head. I would've been impressed if I was stressing about remembering all the theories and floundering to keep all the vocabulary from falling out of my ears.

Tish and Weng are making fun of the way I write, and Weng is 'regrettably affiliated', I quote, with this blog. So they're making me feel bad for being antisocial by playing Texas Hold 'em without me!

I just finished crying my eyes out over Bruce Almighty. I'm so emotional, but that movie is just class.

Oh, and just in case Adrian makes it here, I'd like to welcome him back on the web and to the wonderful world of MSN. We've missed you hunny. Having a good time in Glasgow?

The end is in sight

My sister had a nose bleed during her stats paper. I find that extrememly funny - Little Miss 'Nvmlah, can do' was obviously more stressed than she let on.

I have a mangement exam today and I'm definitely worried, and I really want to go back to bed. The pasta last night was good, a welcome change from everday's chicken.

I absolutely cannot wait for the match tomorrow. It's the highlight of my weekend; I suppose that's not hard when compared to a promise of plenty of work.

I really should be off, wouldn't want to miss any of my fantastically riveting two hour Mechanics tutorial...

It's chaos, I tell you

I always need a quiet moment to sit and organize my thoughts. They jostle for attention, like a carp pond at feeding time and all you see are brief silver and gold flashes on the boiling surface. Today's melange goes something like this:

Pringles doesn't help against the 'expanding waistline'. It's so hard to lose weight with my body type - you need to lose a lot just to see a small change, and the first things to shrink are always the breasts +sigh+

Weng's coming up today! I'm so excited! The feeling never gets old and it's harder to see him leave each time.

My sister and mum are still mad at each other. I'm kinda glad I'm here, selfishly of course, because things get very tense when those two hotheads aren't talking...I wish I could fix it though, but unless I use Dad as a go-between, I can't do much.

I'm getting more attached to my Media Player. Never used to be able to stand having music playing in the background when I was working. It kinda makes you want to get up and dance or sing along. Now it makes me feel better.

Itching to play piano or even violin - geez, I hope my strings haven't gone by the time I get back...or that I can still remember how to even play. I miss my piano.

I miss my dog too actually, she's obese, the vet said. 0.7kg overweight - it doesn't sound much, but she's only supposed to weigh about 6kg. Small fat dog - can't jump up on the sofa or on the bed anymore.

I'm cooking a kinda bacon cream fettuccine thing for dinner, courtesy of Rudy. Something Italian for a change. I hope it goes okay.

As of this morning, my Minesweeper record's 207:98 (losses:wins). In my defence though, I must've put away like sixty losses playing Weng before I found out how to play, and another forty as I was getting better. Weng exploits crappy minesweeper players, right Joel?

My lecturer had a baby girl so the afternoon's off. There's a management exam tomorrow, exams in two weeks, and two other deadlines that fall on the last day of papers. I think I have a solid mechanic lab tomorrow, which means another lab report. Oral presentation on Tuesday means I have to absolutely get my stuff together this weekend.

I think I'll have lunch now.

Mummy

Mothers can really get on your case. My sister texted me to complain - she never calls or texts unless she's really angry or it's super urgent, so I was quite worried when her text came through at 2am. So basically she had a good gripe. It was all I could do to sit there and not laugh; I went through the exact same phase at the same time.

Our mum tends to leave us a lot of chores and then comes home from an afternoon out with her friends to criticize. Then she'll nag us into studying, and then she'll scold us for going out with our friends despite the fact we've been home every afternoon covering for her for the past three weeks or something.

I don't think she's suffering from an evil-stepmother syndrome or anything, I think she nags and scolds because she's feeling more and more left out of our lives. From tutor to cheerleader and now to ATM/driver - her role's been reduced somewhat, in a way, and since she's faced with letting another daughter go off to Uni very soon, she gets even more foul-tempered. I wish I could explain that to Cheryl, but it makes me sound so up my own ass.

Besides, her household cum anger management training really does help when you're living out on your own. Just gotta take it for now.

A rare night: 8 1 2005

Managing management

+hur hur+ It's hard to study when there are random comments and conversations running from margin to margin on the lectures notes whenever I made Weng come with me on threat of skipping the class. Weng can't draw chickens.

Ole!

We got Morientes! Woot!
I can't wait for the match this Saturday!
Tish! We're crashing Friday night! (but we absolutely HAVE to go back Saturday - no tricks)

Only Wednesday. Bugger.

Ewan Harney emailed me back. I decided to contact him last night to say hi and stuff. He's changed so much. I remember him from primary as the one who was always ill, the poor thing suffered from a racking bout of whooping cough, and I also remember him as the very first guy I knew who could cross-stitch, and it was a beautiful Alsatian as well. Funny how things like that stick in your head. He's at Sheffield now, second year bio I think, and on a student committee of sorts - I wouldn't've expected anything less. It's wonderful getting in touch again.

Otherwise I've spent most of the morning zoned out. I tried to design a swing bridge based on a stupid design specification, while everyone else got to do carpark barriers - at least they bloody well exist. Tom was MIA for once, and Greg and Akhari tried their hand at making some pump parts. There's currently about five projects running simultaneously, with at least another being added by Friday. They told me year 2 was shit, and they were right, but now they're telling me year 3 is also shit, just of a different sort. Is there no light at the end of the tunnel?

We've come a long way

Piasau School. I spent a good seven years of my life there, in that white, wooden building. I remember the teachers and the lessons, and the way we'd mess around at break time, the concerts, the games.

You could've marked the passing of each year with each new trend that swept the playground. Stuck-in-the-mud and tag became girls-catch-boys or boys-catch-girls by about primary 3, as we started noticing boys.

There were secret clubs and bestfriend alliances all over the place. Then Primary 5 came and it was with much haughtiness of the sort you find in little girls that we gave up running around til our lungs threatened to burst and lined up next to the tennis court fence every lunch time to weave friendship bands instead.

New children were welcomed like puppies, we'd gather around them and question them until we grew bored, deciding on the spot if we wanted to their bestfriend or not. We'd tell stories of poisonous snakes living in the sandy, stilted gloom underneath the school, gossip about who likes who, and tease each other mercilessly.

I met Sarah, Stephanie, Sophie, and Jackie two years ago in Perth. That was magical. I couldn't believe how much we've all grown up, but Michele Wilson was missing from that - I haven't been able to get a hold of her since.

I also think about Leigh Bennett, my surrogate best buddy after Jackie left, and I wonder what he's doing. I'd never have admitted that he's my best friend at the time, we spent a lot of time making life hell for each other. Or what happened to Jamie Taylor, the one all the girls fancied (probably because he was blond and arty), or Ben Ramsden, or Duncan Macallister. So many names, so many faces. I wonder where they are now.

Waking up is hard to do

courtesy of King Features Comics

Routine

I love our secret letter game; we play it every time Weng leaves for Southampton. It started out as a spontaneous expression of affection, but now it's evolved into something much more.

It usually involves writing a mushy note and hiding it in the other person's possessions for them to discover later after they've left. It takes a lot of skill because some secret letters have proven too difficult to find, so you have to strike a balance between keeping them entertained and making them wholly annoyed. Timing's always key as well. And finding the time to write the note in the first place is always challenging. Knowing us, we've turned it into a gently competitive game - straining our brains to think of original ways to say 'I love you' while looking for clever hiding places so that they'll discover it at the right moment.

So while I was sad to see him leave this morning, I was thrilled to find a new note tucked away in my jeans' pocket. It's the little things that count.

I'm so glad to be home after what has to be the most disturbingly pointless lab ever. I started out knowing nothing and came out knowing bits and pieces that I don't really understand, would never be able to explain, and will never know how to apply. An honest endeavor to finish the lab on our own turned into a kind of staggered copying chain with people gathering various parts of answers from other groups to take back to their own desk and piece together.

Monday's done.

Bad breakups

Someone once told me that getting over someone you really really love takes at least half the time you were going out with them. I was like, whatever, my indifference fueled by a refusal to believe that I'd be depressed or angry about it for that long.

Unfortunately it was true. It takes you that long to get over it simply because people just keep reminding you. For the first few months as news of your break up filters through the system, it's nothing but "Oh my gosh, but you guys were like so good together..." or the inane, but always necessary question "Are you okay?" Usually a case of grin and bear it with the completely insincere or end up crying your eyes out with the first person you call after you get your heart broken.

And then over the course of the next year, you'll have the random "Oh I heard you guys broke up! I didn't even know you were together. How're you doing?" from people who've been living on the otherside of the world or aren't on the grapevine. I think the most irritating comments have to be "I thought he wasn't good for you anyway" or "Did you know he's going out with so-and-so now?" which is a really sick way of telling you that your ex is blissfully happy while you're still crying into your pillow over him.

People can be so inconsiderate.

A Richmond weekend

After a last minute invitation to join Tish and Evan out in zone 4 was quickly snatched up, Weng and I enjoyed our first dinner out in a week before getting on the District line to Richmond. On the way there, we switched carriage because the busker on board was particularly rowdy, and then spent most of the journey discussing whether the guy was holding his girlfriend's handbag or his own.

Walked out to Evan's house in the freezing wind to be greeted by an exhausted looking Andrea who's bus to So'ton had got severely delayed. We all went to bed quite early, but Weng had to go and poke the cow by banging on Evan and Tish's door before legging it down the stairs elephant-style back to our room. This quickly resulted in an undercover (i.e. wearing the duvet over their heads) ambush by the aggravated duo wielding a pillow a piece. There was a lot of giggling and random forays back and forth after that, so it took a while for me to finally calm down and sleep.

Evan didn't seem to be suffering any kind of jetlag. He even got up to escort Andrea back to Heathrow to catch her bus, and we found him industrially chopping mushrooms, garlic, and chicken in the kitchen at 1030.

An interesting breakfast of pizza and omelette followed, washed down with flat Coke. Wonderful stuff first thing in the morning. One of the pizzas, some kind of beef and onion combination, seemed to dissolve on contact with saliva, and there were two omelettes, one was a peri-peri omelette, and the other, omelette au noir created by Tish with excessive use of dark soya sauce.

Shopping was interesting. Weng dutifully followed me in and out of racks and racks of flouncy, frilly blouses and skirts, while Evan and Tish ducked into all sorts of gadget shops and the men's section. It was nice being out.

Cosmo crap

I recently picked up a Cosmopolitan for want of better things to read and was reminded of the psychological risk you're at everytime you open up one of these things.

I'm fairly low-maintenance. I don't have a make up kit with 36 brushes, hell, I don't have much of a make up kit. I've been trying to expand my wardrobe, but it seems like I'm stuck wearing the same thing every day. I don't even have a proper hair brush, just some tiny kiddy thing I picked up 3 years ago at a supermarket in Hawaii. Therefore, according to Cosmo, I'm probably barely female.

Cosmo tells girls, 'We're confident, sassy, career orientated, emotionally empowered, beautiful, successful women.' Wonderful, don't we just want to be them? Cosmo women can juggle a high-flying career, spend hours and most of their disposable income on making themselves look more beautiful, and handle men. The very men who come across as always making mistakes, never calling back, in fear of commitment, and selfish in bed, so why do we even need them?

I think it's terrible. Boyfriends don't always do such a bad job. The ones that are immature and abusive are obviously single for those very reasons, or they don't call back all those single women because those women are also obviously single for probably similar reasons.

There are also about five different types of agony aunts: psychologist, health expert, sex expert, fashion guru, and psychiatrist. They tell you what to wear, what to think, how to act, and that's it okay if you can't orgasm. Trends aren't created on the catwalk, trends fly out of these glossy, 130-odd pages of advertising.

What I think is also quite insulting is the way everything is numbered. Almost all the articles are split into 'easy to handle' passages headed with things like 'uninvited guest #1', 'No. 3, He's an emotional drain', or 'mind-mapper #1'. We can't seem to handle anything past 10.

They make everything seem so easy: 'Last minute party outfits', 'Jeans to flatter every body', 'Get happy', 'Love your job', '5 minute celebrity fixes', and it's '4 Steps to fantastic skin'. Oh, and in case you were wondering how to run your year, there's 'Lifestrology 2005 - what's in store for you (and him)'.

If only it were really like that, I'd be happy with a working 5 step plan to my first million or something (think practical).

3am

I'm exhausted. I need to sleep but everytime I lie down I'm wide awake. So it's three o'clock on a Saturday morning, I'm working, the nocturnal twins Darren and FM are watching a movie, and I've got a couple of bruises as a result of my rapidly failing coordination.

Why can't I sleep? I tried keeping Weng awake with incessant chatter but I ran out of things to say, so he sang twinkle twinkle in his more-asleep-than-awake state that went sometimes along the lines of

"Twinkle twinkle little starrrnnngh....
How I wonder where you arreeennngh...
Up above the sky so high, why can I still see your eyes...
...This isn't working... "

I felt really bad, so I let him sleep. Topic of the morning: sinusoidal base excitation. Are you feelin' me? Along with a game of Worms - Darren taught FM to play, it largely involved a Team Alpha massacre, and me sitting out most of the game very early on.

Listening to JXL vs. Elvis. I love this song, it never gets old. The gale-force winds outside are the stuff nightmares are made of. Now listening to The wonderful thing about Tiggers...there's line that goes "their tops are made of rubber" - it would have me in fits if I had the energy to laugh. I'm so tired dammit.

S.W.A.L.K

This is what I found on my laptop this morning...

So I wrote one back and left it on his laptop, more instructional than sweet...

Click to enlarge if you can't read the thesis.
He so kindly rolled over to usher me out of bed this morning before promptly falling asleep again.

Darts

That's all that seems to be on t.v. nowadays, so we've started watching it and appreciating the true skill. It's actually really good. Maybe not gutwrenching action like basketball, but it's still good.

It's going to be a working weekend otherwise. I'll try anyway.

This is the way we surf the net

I have a morning internet routine:

1. Ebay (if I'm selling anything)
2. Gmail (all that space and redirecting everything to gmail has meant I'm not getting through my backlog of unread emails)
3. Hotmail (to clear out the junk)
4. Yahoo! Mail (to see if my sister felt like abusing anyone last night)
5. Statcounter (because I'm obsessive about hits)
6. Ruyen.blogspot.com (to see if anyone's left anything interesting to say, a hope which is often disappointed. It's stupid really, my most frequent tagger is, haha, anti-ash.)
7. Soccernet (This used to be right at the top, but since Madrid are dragging their heels over Morientes, I've gotten bored)
8. A whole bunch of blogs (because I'm kaypo)

I run on auto in the mornings and have found that flicking through the above sites can be accomplished in 11 minutes while drinking tea, packing my school bag, and eating a Krispy Kreme (when I can get my hands on one). Krispy Kremes are amazing, I think because they're so sugarcoated, they preserve themselves almost. Nothing that sweet can be good for you.

This morning though, something different's happened, my sister is actually being nice...
cheryl: nick's talkin to u btw, he's pretending to be me
ash: is he? hahaha, i'd believe that actually. not one mention of "dumbass", "fatass", "cow" or "you suck" in the whole convo. weirdness.
cheryl: haha...no lah...kidding. im feeling wierd
ash: i see, the word is 'nice'. I know it's an unfamiliar concept for you.
cheryl: nick her
ash: nick her?
cheryl: told u..im feeling wierd. haha

after which point we get the old Cheryl back and she says "fat cow". I had to hope.

Closing in 2hrs 48mins

I'm about to sell my very first ever item on ebay and it's so exciting, ironically however, the highest bidder is Fong May. I've got six watchers and very little time left, and at 16.00 pounds, FM is about to become the new owner of a pair of, haha, shoes. Like she doesn't already have enough, but it's not really like that, she was nice enough to bid in an attempt to push the price ever so slightly. You know how it is, get an inch, ask for mile. Still waiting...

Laziness is contagious

I win! Came from behind twice to steal victory from right under Weng's nose. He's chickened out and gone to play Rome...

Now that I'm done gloating, I'll talk about my day. A day which confirms my theory that I go to college just to pick up deadlines which are then taken home and panicked over; and yet another day that's seen us ditch Covent Garden a.k.a. January sale massacre plans to laze around at home under the pretense of work.

I did some handwriting analysis thing yesterday and it was creepily accurate (I'm a sucker for personality quizzes), or maybe they're just clever, like the horoscopes - twelve paragraphs of astrological gunk that apparently relates to six billion individuals: "Today you shall meet someone." Then again, maybe we're not as individual as we think, that there are infact only twelve types of people, and that's why governments can keep us under their thumbs like sheep! Sheep I tell you!

Okay, still quite hyper from beating Weng. The game's only worth playing if you like crap talking, and I talk a lot.

Moving on, I actually referred to being sheeplike on one of my applications. I don't know what the consequences will be, and like mixing shots and shots of liquor (or so I've heard), it seemed a good idea at the time, and therefore not such a good idea now.

I've been eating Mingles all afternoon. Mingles is the answer to almost all my wishes concerning mixed chocolates. I'm extremely partial to specific flavours in mixed chocolates, like strawberry, dark chocolate truffles, mint and chocolate, the alcoholic ones, and so on, which generally means that whenever you get a mixed box of chocolate, I'll gravitate towards the above flavours and secretly leech them from the general area of the other crappy flavours. (Tish knows how good I am at this.)

Given how chocolate makers like stuffing their boxes full of the crap flavours that no one eats in the end, I've always wished they'd put out a flavour-specific product. Now that Mingles is nothing but different looking kinds of chocolate with mint, I'm wishing that they'd put out a box of the brown-wrapped ones only.

So this is what posting on sugar is like.

In the name of love

I was talking to someone earlier today who commented that guys always lay their cards on the table whenever they're interested in someone, and girls play poker. They tease, they hint, they fool around with innuendos, double entendres, and triple equivocations. I don't think so, we say exactly what we mean, and it's not our fault if you can't understand what we're trying to say - English is a tricky language.

But I don't deny the thrill of the chase. Secondary school was all about boys, crushes, how many Valentines it was rumored you'd receive... I think guys are suckers, but that's what makes them so loveable. He also concluded that guys' egos >> girls' brains, thus causing them to see what they want to believe. They think they're suave and all that, and we think they're cute dorks, like puppies, but only dorkier.

(THAT SHOULD'VE BEEN A GOAL TO SPURS, THE REF IS BLIND!)

First day of school

I'm so tired, and two weeks of not a lot of work has let my brain go completely blegh, so much so that I took one and a half hours to do half a question of math.

Good to see everyone again though.

Otherwise, been tackling internship applications again. Starting to copy and paste and rereading questions until everything seems to mean the same thing and nothing I've written flows nicely, sounds sincere, or makes sense. I don't wanna grow up.

Last day of the holidays

Oh my goodness. It's taken me the better part of six hours to fill in one internship application form. A good exercise in bullshitting though, I mean I don't know the first thing about investment banking other than that you get to mess around with other people's money and tell them where to stick it, and I had to answer all sorts of questions like "Why have you chosen this field?" and "Why do you think you can bring to the company?"; AND I don't think I'm even eligible because I'm not in my penultimate year. It's all a shot in the dark.

Other than that, some progress on the design project; at least I know what a swing bridge does now, although I don't see how we can come up with a design specification on something I've never ever seen in practice. Can't find an existing example to copy, I mean be inspired by. Google's useless. Swing bridges are a thing of the past, get a teleportation unit.

Stop the madness!

Oh the emotion, the passion, the frustration, the sheer relief! I've played Worms all day, and now I feel like throwing up, completely unfit for such extreme gaming, especially of this calibre. I was not designed to undergo such optomological strain, and am paying the heavy heavy price.

I've been sitting here so long that the woven straw seat has tattooed its pattern quite firmly into my ass, and I think I can feel the start of carpal tunnel syndrome in my right hand. My eyeballs want to bury themselves in the corners of my brain to escape the onslaught, and I have little pink wriggly things holding shotguns firmly etched into my retinas.

My ultra-efficient group leader is going to kill me come Wednesday. I've made no progress on a group project I know nothing about. What a start to the year!

Me me me

I've never ever slept so late for so many consecutive days in my whole life. All that I can remember about this holiday was that I don't think I ever got up before ten. We were often up late enough to hear the birds chirping and then would rise groggily to a 1230 washed out-looking wintery sun and in time for lunch. My bodyclock's completely messed. I'm going to struggle on Tuesday.

New Year's was good. Saw the fireworks outside the window, really beautiful. FM's back too, so everything's settling back into our usual routines, mostly revolving around gaming. The game of the month: Worms World Party. I need to finish my assignments +argh+.

Resolution #1

I remember a time, not too long ago actually, when it was horribly impressive to be able to finish two or more plates of duckrice in one sitting. If you couldn't finish one comfortably, you were rewarded with a chorus of "so weeak!". But now that we're all nursing one-packs and flabby guts, things have done a complete turn-around.

Guys tend to obsess about their weight and their sagging gut louder and more publicly than girls. While we might whine to our other halves about how much we've gained, you won't catch us feeling up that spare tyre in company or demonstrating how far past your belt that new band of fat can stretch. But then again, I think guys are also more likely to actually do something about it, and most guys I know actually have. They look amazing, which is why I'm going to be more proactive this year. Whine less, work more. Mg.

2005: A year of hope

There are a lot of promises being made for this year. The 'save Africa' drive, rebuilding South Asia, those kinda things. It's refreshing to see people promise to help other people instead of bomb them to pieces. It's a positive start, a new year, a new beginning, so 'Happy New Year' to everybody, and may 2005 be a year of hope and happiness for you.