Finals 1 of 2

The first of my two final year final papers today. Confident? Of course not. Exam anxiety persists. But am I excited? You betcha! I've been getting all impatient and antsy just waiting for exams to be over. To feel like I can see a pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel...just makes you want to run faster...okay then again, not. Today is the less worrying of the two papers. But after today, expect to hear less of me as I'll be the one attacking the huge pile of equations, papers and questions to prepare for the somewhat scarier paper next week.

Desperate? Or am I just being a snob?

A friend who's been single for awhile after she broke up with her long distance boyfriend whom she'd met because he'd been a friend of a friend, is now sort of seeing a new friend of a friend who's also not living in the same city as us. By sort of I mean I don't know if the two of them have even met in person. I think they'd only even met online because she'd just pretty much turned their common friend's Facebook friend list and photo albums into her personal classifieds section.

Anyways, now she's planning a vacation and he's invited. No, make that the dates and everything were pretty much planned with his and her convenience on highest priority. And if I wanted to go on the trip, too, it would involve a lot of rushing on my part. Which I didn't want. I want to go on a vacation to relax, not stress myself out. Anyways, nobody was particularly bothered about my not going until another girlfriend pulled out. And now they're trying to convince me to go on the trip, which as it turns out has been reduced to the girl, the guy she's after/with/I-don't-know-what-they're-doing, and their two common friends. Can anyone else see the words awkward and uncomfortable hiding behind that line? It's not really all that bad because I've been to school with all four of them at some point or other. But still...I get the feeling I'm being asked to reconsider not going just so she has a roommate to keep up any pretenses that erm...to pretend that um...oh hell you know.

Am I just being a relationship snob or is she seeming a tad desperate?

Mostly Meatless...and other things I've been up to

I read this article the other day about this movement for going meatless on Mondays for health and environmental reasons. This sounded like something I wouldn't mind trying to do...not so much for the same reasons, though. I just sometimes feel a little sick when I think about eating meat.

Thankfully it's study week. I finally have time, and am at home, to make my own lunch - a nice meatless lunch with very little oil. Oily food is yet another thing that I sometimes just need a break from. Yay. I should do this again next Monday.

Then there was the weekend. I think I had a pretty good sort of first attempt at scrapbooking, if I may say so myself. Gina's birthday was during the weekend and I made her this cute little scrapbook. And finally got to use the cute little gift envelopes I bought from Daiso.

A few of us took her out for dinner on Saturday night at Lolipot, this Shabu Shabu place near Queensbay. It was pretty nice, though my only complaint would be that we didn't get the round table. Instead we had to be split up into two booths. But that wasn't the shop's fault. Sometimes, you just can't trust others to do anything right...like make dinner reservations. But it was prety good. A tip for anyone going there, though: sit under one of the air conditioning vents. I saw this guy who was sitting in the middle area, far far away from any air conditioning vents...and he was seriously sweating!

Procrastinator? Not!

That's two applications done in one day. And it's not even lunchtime yet. Of course that just makes up for my slacking yesterday. But I'm making pretty decent headway with my list of companies to apply to. The best part was I found a job to apply for that might make me a planet-saving person after all! Yay!

One thing I've found that I have a hard time with in application forms: ranking your language abilities. I know exactly in which order the languages I speak would rank. But if your choices are only excellent, good, elementary and not applicable...By comparison, yes my English is excellent as opposed to my Mandarin. But is it actually excellent? No. But on a scale of excellent good and elementary, isn't excellent = good, and good = mediocre, and elementary = poor? Is it possible for me to be only mediocre at my first language? Wouldn't that imply poor communication skills?

This is where those close to me would tell me I'm starting to think too much.

Letting Go

I will learn to let it go. I just had a huge fight with an ignorant ass who likes to correct the shit out of everyone but finds it inconceivable that there may be something wrong with him, too. One who faults the speaker when he's the only one of all the people listening who misunderstands, and yet cannot accept that he doesn't always come across right either. One who yells at people to shut up and listen to him and let him finish his long-winded version of everything he says, but when people need to express themselves, they must allocate unlimited breaks for him to refute everything they've just said, even if it's just the speaker's opinions and feelings, which everyone is entitled to. How do you argue with one whose purpose in life is to do everything in spite of you? Well, I've had enough of it. Which of course pains me. Morality dictates that one should be accepting of others and carry out your obligations despite the receiver's ungratefulness or just plain obnoxiousness.

But after this fight, I felt the tightness in the left side of my back, the slight discomfort in my left arm. I think this is where I draw the line. No way I'll allow anybody to shorten my life, or reduce the quality of my life. I will not let an obnoxious ass slowly kill me.

This is it. This is the point where I say I couldn't give a shit anymore. He can do and say whatever he likes. It's his problem, his own karma. Fuck it.

Cocktail reception

I ask a question that I think makes me sound intelligent and inquisitive then proceed to listen to the answer. Sip. Yum...this wine is delicious. Gulp. "Mmm hmm yup absolutely. Yes I have a degree in Chemistry." Sip. It's getting stuffy here...I should have chosen a different table. Sip. "Yes, that's interesting," I say when I see him looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to comment on something he's just said about planning my career.

It's a bit of a relief when he walks away to go talk at some other student. My friends and I have a couple of bites of food...and then the next manager comes. She's nice and friendly, and after briefly asking SY and I about our interests, she proceeds to tell us about what her division does. I try not to flinch at the thought of spending my days figuring out how to kill mosquitoes, cockroaches and lizards while the lady from finance who's joined us tells us about the time she couldn't figure out why she had to approve money for buying lizards. Eww. We ask a question or two..and dam it's getting hot; another big gulp of the lovely chilled wine. And then as I try to pretend to care about what she's talking about, things start to go a little dark. I think I might faint. Have I really been drinking all that much? I excuse myself and head for the bathroom. The moment I step inside the air-conditioned hall from the patio, I feel a lot better. Once I get into the bathroom, I lock the door and sit down for a bit. Never have I been so happy to just not talk. And apparently I'm not as narcissistic as I thought...talking about myself over and over again does get tiresome.

The bunch of us weren't really crazy about the jobs we were being offered. In fact I think we were all pretty fuzzy about what exactly we were being offered. I wasn't there to ace an interview. I was there to hang out with my friends with some free food and good wine on a Saturday night. But that wasn't happening. These people were serious about talking to us. By the end of the evening, I'd been asked countless times what I study, where my interests lie, where I see myself in the future...I'd been given more advice than I could or even cared to process in one evening.

What I learnt? Work-related cocktail parties and schmoozing aren't as fun as they seem on TV. What else did I learn? Perhaps I shouldn't become an event planner or PR person if it means every party is work.