Monday, February 28, 2011

Dizzy Rascal

So here I am awake at 4:24am again. Again like yesterday, the insomnia of today is traceable. It started off when I leaned under Christoph's arm to look at the condition of the Cream of Mushroom soup I was making. With a movement known to all klutzy people everywhere (for I am one of them too), he lowered his arm and his elbow crashed into the top of my skull. It hurt. After a while I started to get a headache and feel a bit dizzy when I was showering 10 minutes later. When I got out of the shower, I concluded the best thing to do was for me to just rest in bed, and leave preparations for my Mock Exam to tomorrow morning.

My hair was damp. I asked Christoph if he would help me dry my hair with the hairdryer. As I stared into the space of the white wall in front, blankly, I heard a horrible sound and a feeling of my hair being yanked out. My hair got sucked into the hairdryer. It wasn't even just a little bit of hair, it was quite a bit of hair. I snipped it off, probably adding layers my accident. I dried my hair mysef, then both of us went to sleep at about 8:30pm.

We woke around 10:30pm. It is 4:29am. Sleeping at messed up hours does not make for good sleeping patterns. Christoph's managed to go to sleep, thank goodness, but as always I am unable to. I don't even feel tired or sleepy, just rather stoned. For the past 1 hour I have put my mind to work by working on my Mock Exam notes, but now can't be bothered. After I finish this piece of bread, I will attempt to sleep again.

Karl V

After a night of sleeplessness, punctuated by the various wails from the sounds of the night, I awoke to a gloomy rainy London day. Just as I wanted to start studying for my mock exam around 1pm, I felt my brain fail on me. I could barely think, yet I was not sleepy. I was just tired.

Somehow, around 2:30pm, I felt my second wind coming. As I started to type away at my notes, I felt myself grow calmer as the panic started to recede (helps that I find Charles V such a fascinating character). Then, Modern Man by the Arcade Fire came on and I was filled with an immense sense of exhilaration that I am where I am, not necessarily living a perfect life, but in possession of all the things that one needs to live a life. I thought of Christoph, and I thought of us, and I felt refreshed.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Of Roommates and Flatmates

I have done and spent very little of today awake. I woke up around 12pm (surprise, considering I went to sleep only with the aid of melatonin around 4am), and then dozed off around 2pm to 4pm when I was reading in bed. I have just finally managed to force myself into doing something productive, which was cleaning the kitchen. This time, rather than clearing the ledge with the plant, knife blocks and wine bottles, I opted to clean the oven door instead.

It was very strange cleaning the oven door. As I cleaned it, I wondered how long it was since the last person cleaned it. As I recalled further, I remembered that when we moved in, out of cleaning the entire kitchen, Ching and I didn't clean the oven. But since then, various people have cleaned the kitchen other than me (probably about a combined 5 times from both Ching and Zoe since we decided to specialize in our duties). Then there was the time I apparently put a styrofoam base into the oven under a frozen pizza when I thought it was cardboard. The story then goes that Christoph saw it and cleaned it up before I saw it because he didn't want to make me upset. Did he, or any of my flatmates clean the poor oven then? I don't know.

What was interesting however was that I realise the oven door actually isn't tinted slightly brown/sepia-ey. The moment my sponge and yellow rubber gloves touched the door, the brown gunk promptly stucked EVERYWHERE. The yellow sponge turned brown in a split second. I do not exaggerate. It's like it was just sitting there, waiting to be touched to be removed. I didn't even have to scrub very hard. As I gingerly scrubbed away with my sponge, I noted the dominant smell of the oven was of chocolate cake. I made chocolate cake last term around Week 5, which would've been early November 2010. It smelt the same as my chocolate cake, which was too chocolatey for its own good and collapsed under its own sheer density. It came out more like the richest brownie I could've ever imagined.

Anyway I digress. As I was cleaning the kitchen, I was thinking about the whole idea of flatmate-ing, and roommate-ing. One of my flatmates from this year was Zoe, my roommate from last year. You'd think living in such confined quarters together, that things would not differ from this year. They have. Now don't get me wrong, I actually really really care and like Zoe. But inevitably, as with all humans with their unique idiosyncrasies, people can and will grate on each other. An example is the issue of slamming doors. For some goddamned reason Zoe cannot close the front door silently. I suspect she even gets a kick out of slamming the door. On a scale of irritating behaviours, this is actually something like a 2/10. But depending on the time of the day, the mood I am in, that could rise on the scale very significantly. Then there are little stuff, like who throws out the trash (which I admit to being an extremely lousy flatmate for), suspicions that people are not doing their duties in turn. Another thing about girls is the hair accumulation in the shower, which I feel I remove very often. All these little irritants add up, and colour perceptions whether valid or not with each other.

Which brings me to my original point, regarding staying in the same flat with your close friends. It is not a good idea. On Weds when Jia and I met up for a lovely sushi dinner at Atariya, we spoke briefly about this. Little things that one finds endearing in a friend, might not necessarily translate to being a good flatmate. An example is about a house I know where a group of close friends stay. One of them is known for being self-interested. As friends, its something one can laugh about, since he does take the piss out of himself too. As a flatmate, it turns out he actually is self-interested. He takes and uses things without paying, never takes the initiative to purchase combined household items, and leaves messes in the kitchen without cleaning up. That translates into being a horrid flatmate. As for the group of them, their relationship is rather strained now. When looking for flatmates, its best to not look for how close you are them them sometimes, but rather how they are in their lifestyles, habits and behaviour. If you're a messy person, room only with messy people, etc. Little things like that can very much affect how much you enjoy being at home.

And the most important point: never move in with your boyfriend with other mutual friends. By this I mean for example, in a 3 person flat where you and your boyfriend have a room each. Don't be either party, the couple, or the third wheel. The couple will gang up on the other person if they work out, and it they don't work out the other person will invariably need to take sides. If you're in the couple that does break up, then you will be stuck with seeing the ex all the time. Either way at a given time, someone is miserable. Of course this does not affect all living arrangements, but it is a good rule of thumb. If you want to move in with your chosen partner, do it when its just the two of you, and not with a random other person. I've heard enough horror stories regarding this to look upon all such arrangements with a sense of dread.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Settler Aggression

This is ridiculous. I think I am less recovered from last week than I am ready to acknowledge. On the BBC website, I saw a picture of cricket fans stuffed into queues attempting to buy tickets for the cricket world cup. When I saw the picture, I instantly felt very sad because 1) they're passionate enough about something to suffer just to buy those tickets and 2) some of them might be disappointed because there aren't enough tickets available. 1) is because I haven't felt lively enough in ages, and that's what I was reminded of when I saw the queues, but 2) really strikes a chord because it's like I can almost feel the disappointment of not being able to get what you've really want, and worked so hard to achieve.

The last time a photograph had such an impact on my feelings, it was when I saw this picture from the Gaza Strip:


I will eat a banana, and then attempt to sleep again.

Coca Cola

I am yet again awake at a ghastly hour. Earlier, from about 8 to 10-ish, I feel deeply asleep. I had one of those deep sleeps which takes ages for the body to reawaken, yet you wake up more tired than before. It was one of those deep sleeps where you remember and (especially) have really strange dreams which feel very real, but are very strange. So instead of sleeping at a proper time, I am now awake at 3:26am typing away.

I had earlier lay in bed and attempted to sleep. While I lay there I thought of many things, too many things in fact. I started to feel distressed and panicky. Chief of these was the fact that I felt that I had lied to one of my government tutors about why I was missing for class today. Honestly, I had not done the work. I had seen the readings, but had missed the lecture the week before, and as a result I all saw was a bunch of incomprehensible statistics and probability formulas. But at the same time the reason I gave was valid. I did, and have been, running on about 5-6 hours sleep every night from Tuesday onward. Thursday, my day to sleep in was ruined when Camden Council decided to be maddeningly efficient for once and cut the damn grass at 8am in the morning. I was already starting to feel the effects on my body and my psyche yesterday evening, but had I have really wanted to go to the class, I could have pushed myself. I feel guilty because although my reason was valid, I knew I could've done better had I wanted to.

Which brings me to yet another distressing thought: more essays and mock exams. It's not so much the act of preparing and doing it that worries me (surprising, even to me), I realised, but the fact that I have seemed to be consistently under-performing. Today, while having drinks with the usual people at 5pm on Fridays, they spoke briefly about essays. One said the lowest he'd ever gotten was 59. The other said he was used to scoring high 60s on his essays. I did not participate in that particular conversation but instead smiled, nodded, and laughed as appropriate. Just the thought that I have been getting nothing but 58/59 for all my essays this year was enough to diminish any joy I had within me for that moment. Worse still, it was not something I felt I could allow myself to admit to other people. It makes me feel like a failure.

Last time, something like that would not have affected me to this extent. I am used to under-performing. The report books of my past are littered with comments like "is a bright girl... I don't understand why she gets the grades she does". Unfortunately this seems to be a 14 year rut I seem to be unable to get out of. No matter how much I try, seeing teachers, seeing writers-in-residence, I never seem to be able to break the barrier. I have no idea what to do. And the fact that I don't know what to do, the fact that it scares me so much, makes me go into denial and attempt to push the thoughts out of my mind. This means however that whenever I am reminded, my mood takes in instant leap into a void. I had hoped things would've been different in University (although it could be a British style education that doesn't agree with me in general), but its really the same as when I did the IB/O Levels/PSLE.

I had originally hoped to post about the very tasty Vietnamese food I've been having of late in the Clerkenwell area with Christoph, but that will have to wait for tomorrow.

*Instead of drinking a pint today with the guys at 5pm, I drank a can of coke because alcohol would've put me to sleep instantly.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Tuesday, Week 7

Apparently there is no hot water at home again. I think I was the last person who had a hot shower this morning before I left for school. Wasn't my fault, I didn't break anything. In fact, someone (it might've been me, but the pettiness inside blames it on another flatmate) knocked off my shower gel and didn't move it back upright. The whole bathroom, much to my chagrin, now smells like Sanex Moisturising shower gel. I was upset to see what must've been 1/4 of the shower gel all over the sides of the bathtub, leaking out, when I got home to investigate the panicked texts of a flatmate (perhaps she was the one who tipped over my shower gel and didn't put it back upright!!!).

So anyway back to the investigation, after testing all the taps in the house I determined that the water pressure of all the cold water taps in the house was much much more lower than usual. Usually if you turn the cold water tap in the kitchen on the slightest bit, BOOM, your clothes are all wet from the intensity of the splatter of water. This has happened to me numerous times because the tap directions are a bit counter-intuitive. It did not happen this time. ALSO, after just going to the kitchen for my nutella sandwich, I have discovered to my chagrin that I am right, there is no more cold water coming out from the taps. It is a Camden Council problem after all, not of my dearly beloved landlord.

I suppose the perks of having freaked out so much last week is that I am oddly sanguine about this whole water business now. I've run out of energy to freak out. Well, that and perhaps because this is the second time in weeks that this has happened (I think it was Week 4 when the water stopped working).

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I originally wanted to blog about my day today, when I was eating a Wright's Bar sandwich (with salad, extra 25p) and was wandering around the East Building. I didn't want to disturb the calm of the History Common Room, and so went outside. There however, I was in a hallway surrounded by the doors of various professors and such of the History department. One door at the end of the hallway was open too, and I could hear talking from inside. Feeling a bit silly and awkward, I decided to move onto the staircase area. It was unusually cold because someone had left a window open (and today itself was a pretty chilly day) so after consuming one sandwich, I moved on to look for somewhere warmer.

My search for a warmer part of the building brought my downstairs, past rooms bearing more familiar names, and onto the link bridge of the East Building with the Clare Market Building where I found a warm radiator. I promptly propped myself against it, munching on my sandwich while hoping no one noticed me. This was because again, I was in a very weird and awkward position, eating a sandwich randomly outside offices. Of course as it always is with such situations when you hope you're not seen, two people walked by while I kind of shrank inwardly. Soon after I finished up my sandwich and scarpered back to the Common Room to continue my reading.

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I hope Camden Council fixes the water soon.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

A Recount

Looking back at the comments written on previous posts by kind commenters, I feel guilty. Unfortunately it's guilt for feeling something that I felt, and therefore not quite something that I can change. I don't know. I am slowly feeling better. The weather outside is very gloomy today.

8th Feb, Tuesday, I went to the National Portrait Gallery with Shu Wen to see the Taylor Wessing portrait prize.

12th Feb, Saturday, I celebrated Dexter's birthday with some other friends at Tiny Robot. The food was good, but strange. We went back to Jon's and watch the remainder of Shaun of the Dead (which I had previously seen with Ianthe, Steph and Jiahui during Summer last year).

15th to the 16th, Tuesday to Wednesday, I skipped school and hid at home to lie low.

17th Feb, Thursday, I went shopping. I walked from school to Covent Garden, then to Leicester Square, cutting through Soho to reach Oxford Circus. It was a nice, sunny day.

18th Feb, Friday, I went for the Talking With Nazis talk by Laurence Rees, then I went to Kam Fung to eat dinner with Christoph.

Today, I'll be watching True Grit with Christoph at the Barbican, followed by dinner afterwards. I received the Calvin and Hobbes comic book I bought the other day on Amazon. I might go for a run. I ought to clean the kitchen. I am resolved not to do any studying today.

Que Sera Sera

Last night I attended an LSE Literary Fest talk by Laurence Rees (there seem to be various versions with regards to the exact spelling of his name) called Talking with Nazis. He was an ex-BBC producer of historial documentaries around the WW2 era (why the hell does that sound like such an awesome job, and why aren't there more like that to go around?) and did one of the first documentaries about Germany and the Nazis. As a companion to the talk he gave, which was on the nature of interviews and interviewees, we watched some clips of interviews conducted with old SS guards and a woman who denounced her neighbour. For the optimists, it's not a sob fest of the interviewees crying their regret, and for the pessimists it wasn't a straightforward denial (they did agree to be interviewed after all). Instead it was insightful listening and watching to their responses. It was just simple, plain, matter-of-fact recounting. I did it, but I won't tell you whether I have regrets. It was part compartmentalisation and part self-denial. It was an excellent, refreshing talk.

That wasn't really why I wanted to post about last night's talk, though I seem to have accorded it a nice paragraph without really setting out to do so. I went home and googled Laurence Rees, and it turned out he wrote one of the core texts that I used for my extended essay in IB. The fact that I had actually handled his work, read his words and seen his person (albeit retroactive realising) made me excited (retroactively), so I spent a solid few minutes bugging the hell out of a Philip Pullman-reading Christoph. That was exciting.

In other news, my digestive system seems to have gone completely haywire. Last night before I went to bed, I ate a pile of pasta and went to sleep straight away. 4 hours later I wake up, bloated and hungry and unable to sleep as a consequence. I spend the next 30 minutes eating all sorts of random things, toast, biscuits, slices of ham before I am full enough to go to sleep. I wake up 5 hours later, still tired, and now completely bloated. My stomach feels so sick, and its been like this for the past few days.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Week 6

After talking to some friends today, I realised that a lot of people have been burnt out from school too. However, their burn out manifests in less destructive ways, as my skin surely attests to.

Perhaps next week will be better.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

I haven't wished this in a long time

but I wish I was dead now.

I am very tired of living, and attempting to live.

Monday, February 07, 2011

Pesce

Week 5 is finally here, and by extension A Week of Hell right after a week of Preparing for Hell. I am very tired.

Today I finally stumbled upon a good recipe which is fairly chinoise enough for my palate. White fish, cod in my case, marinated in a soy sauce-chopped garlic-brown sugar-sesame sauce mix. Tastes almost like the soon hook my grandma would always order in restaurants back home.

Thank God for valium and Yes Minister.