Days are longer than you think

I realised how long a day is. The entries on Monday felt kind of foreign to me, but that's just two days ago.

I realised how fast my mood swings in a day. Sleeping became a problem yesterday because I was just thinking of S and I felt empty inside - I wished I understood myself and my brain better. It's ironic - my only lesson yesterday was about neurons and our brains and it's just breathtaking how little we know about the thing that forms part of everyone of us. It feels surreal that I wrote so many entries yesterday, and each and every one had a different emotion in it.

But S, yes. Were it not for good safety videos (props to AirNZ as usual, the last two Qantas ones and even American Airlines acknowledging customers have choices), I would probably have cried myself to sleep. I don't understand why he triggers such an effect in me. I'm ashamed.

Anyway, well - things will get better. It will.

Nonetheless today was pretty rad! Although I was bummed by the fact the finance office was closed yesterday, it was quite good to see the two ladies who I felt would have become good classmates of mine were it not for the fact I left. I honestly thought I let them down yesterday, but that's over. I submitted the withdrawal form today and suddenly walking through the school felt infinitesimally better.

To be honest I was worrying what was taking my passport so darn long - since today is day sixteen, and they pledged to have it done in fifteen else they'll email an explanation. No emails of explanation was forthcoming. Nonetheless the email finally came to beckon me to collect my orphaned passport. Yet it's honestly a bit irritating given the fact I've to rush down tomorrow, rather than being at the right place and the right time to collect like today was. It doesn't help that Friday's a public/bank holiday. Grrr.

I was surprisingly efficient today as well - got my exit permit done as well after worrying for eons about inefficiencies in the system - so that's rad. I managed to shear off three of the most important things/worries in one day. I expected that day to be yesterday - maybe it was just a telling sign I really ought to take a chill pill and let things take its natural course than force my way through.

It's still a bit hard to believe I'm fifteen days away from Bristol. That's two weeks and a day. I've spent two weeks in a row doing nothing before, yet my days now are getting longer and more hectic. I love it. It puts my mind off silly thoughts about loneliness, but hey, I'll be better.

M

Frustrating inefficiency

Second post of the day (I probs should temper my writing, but hell nah since it's such a lovely pastime and no one judges!)

I honestly had lingering doubts about going to Bristol since you know, it's no LSE/UCL and I was thinking whether I was mental for giving up two local schools ranked 11 and 15 in the world. And then I was in the library (this local university's library, mind you) just minding my own business and learning my neurons, and at the table in front of me laid a textbook that someone left behind.

And what's so surreal is that it's in the field I wanted/will be studying in. And on a closer look - boom - I recognised the name of the author - and it's one of the profs who teaches at Bristol in my course of study. And then I went to look at the unit outline for that module and I was surprised it was a core textbook (and written with another of the Bristol lecturers), alongside another textbook co-written by the former Finnish Prime Minister.

te deum! ex-PM Alexander Stubb. DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THAT CHIN-DESK. he runs marathons and triathlons - faster than Tony Abbott, and probably much fitter than all of us :(

I know I'm going off-tangent here, but I do hope I will look like ex-PM Stubb at his age. He's 49, and he looks great, sans the wrinkles. Probably possible if I'm not lazy. Like I mean - this is supposedly how us Asians are supposed to age:

It's probably utterly possible.

Anyway back to topic: So, I was wondering: why study here about that subject when you can learn it from the horses' mouth? On my supposedly last day in this local university it's honestly a clear signal that I should go.

That's about the only good thing that happened for the day however. Hmm. Everything that could go wrong went wrong after that I felt.

1. I was told by the poor dude dealing with my medical review in the army couldn't find a reschedule date before I leave for the UK - so I'll probably have to do it in December. It's such a pity since I wanted to wrap up loose ends but nahhhhh. Anyway it's one more excuse to hop back to Singapore for a little while and a little refuge from the cold so that's cool with me!
2. You know about that withdrawal form? They needed me to pay the finance guys a visit for obvious reasons (ie not hiding gold bars/stealing money/owing fees they would rather use to come out with another department named after an acronym) and they're only open during lunchtime on three working days. What the flying flute. Think about that - the finance office of a university opens to the public only three working days for three hours. So, I gotta go down tomorrow to get that done. To hell with them, they deserve their crap ranking. HMMPH.
3. My passport isn't ready for collection, and I've hearing zilch from the visa guys although they promised that it will be done within fifteen working days. Today, my friends, is DAY FIFTEEN. It's darn frustrating to not have your passport in a country of a few hundred square kilometres - I'm utterly annoyed. TF did warn me before that UKVI is inefficient as hell, but he changed it to 'UK is inefficient'. I didn't expect this level of inefficiency, though! Should have know better - there must be some truth if that's coming from a Brits' mouth.
4. I collected my chest x-ray report and they were like 'oh noes' we don't have film. Which is annoying but fine since they have a CD copy of the x-ray and gave it to me, but I got into a big altercation with my mother (which honestly is losing her cognitive sense at times) saying that I should be printing the CD copy on A4 paper. It hurts for me to explain since she just refuses to get it. UGH. Went home and told my sister about the entire hullabaloo, and she was like 'who the eff prints x-rays on A4 white paper?'. Damn. Sometimes I hate my sister's guts but sometimes she's such a godsend.

Oh and lessons! I think I kind of screwed up the neuron bits and I feel really bad for that - but hey it wasn't easy and the professor said it herself when she taught us post-activity. It was incredibly interesting though! For example - do you know that apparently there are nasal erectile tissues? No?

Good luck looking into his/her nose, trying to tell whether he/she/it/they have the hots for ya ;)

Also I was checking out this dude across the room because he had such lovely ideal-size pecs and deltoids I'd want to have on myself. Mhmm. (lel what were you thinking?) It's a long drawn process to train that, but if I get there, dayum. I'd be stoked. But first, patience! I still have my gut to work on, and whilst it's not much of it left, I should concentrate on that indeed. I wonder if there's any secret in having no fat on the side yet still being really huggable. Things to research on.

I'll end this here, but do not fret: I WILL BE BACK.

(mwahaha I love being so random and just plain silly - I hope people love me for that too!)

I DON'T CAAAARE

Uhmm okay!

I honestly think I've been too damn stoic in my entries! Like I should really chill the fuck out and have fun with this!

Don't mind me if I go crazy bwahaha. I love going crazy - I should channel my inner craziness here! My family probably has had enough of me going silly heh. :D

Anyway, last day of the local university and then I'll get my withdrawal form in; and hope for the best UKVI gives me back my damn passport soon!

Y U NO COME BACK FASTERRRR!

Anyway yesterday night was rad - really spent hours talking to MH and completely forgot I needed to read about neurons and teach my group about it for this last lesson (hurhur - maybe I'm not as conscientious as I believe myself to be). Waking up in the morn was weirdly fresh (after four hours of sleep?) and the first thing I thought of was Adventure Time's Lumpy Space Prince singing I DON'T CAAAAARE:

Like yeah THAT, the first thing in the morn! I think I've really gone to the stage I'm giving no fucks about things that don't matter like acquaintances (a la L's style) and about how people view me. MH asked me if I was afraid of S - I told him no, but things will probs be awks as hell if I were to bump into him in the UK.

Today's gonna be a good day. My braces are off but I've got my retainers now - and they're so lovely! It's not totally wired like the traditional retainers of the day (which is the best for keeping teeth straight), nor the Invisalign-ish type (transparent and aesthetic), but it has a transparent wire across it so it has the best of both worlds!

One more class and one withdrawal form next. Sixteen more days to go - sixteen before my next chapter in life!

Weird intelligence

I've named this post after a thing SW (a close but older mutual friend of mine and MH) said just literally minutes ago about a trait that binds us three, so apologies if it doesn't make sense with the rest of this post (that was largely written before SW said that).

Anyway, tomorrow's going to be my last day at the local university, and then I'm going to head straight off after class to submit my withdrawal form.

I know I'm taking a huge risk given that my UK visa isn't approved yet (I'm hoping I get the email within the next two days), but I don't think I can stay there any longer regardless. I've only been there for a week (discounting the fact I did a module there in the summer) but I've gotten incredibly tired of the people and the place - there's no life in it, and while it prides itself for the massive amount of extracurricular activities it has and its links with industry; it just feels goddarn corporate.

Hell no. I had a lesson last Wednesday where the professor asked everyone of us to tell the class about one interesting thing that happened over the summer break and 90 percent of it is just about "oh I went on a trip to South Korea, and they're so different, they're so chill, unlike Singapore". Hell, there wasn't even much variation with regards to the country (it's either goddamn South Korea or Japan half of the time).

And I just talked about going to this other summer school in the other university (there's a lot of foreigners in that one, since it's not held by that university but by the international association in the field of study), and talking to this Kazakh lady in which Kazakh happens only to be her fourth language - then going on to explain why was that the case and the wider implication of using the Russian language versus Kazakh in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, and how the problem came about.

I felt what I said was pretty meh, but what I got from the class (I was sitting at the back) was people looking in awe. Like what the hell? I kinda felt like if I remained in this school I'll probably regress and not learn anything new.

I really, really hope that the UK would be different, but at the same time L and my mother (who happened to study in the UK before) told me not to get my hopes up and expect things to be worse. L has been complaining about how the Masters students in her university aren't really that bright - which is kind of a worry for me because I wanted to go there for my Masters (sigh). I'm honestly not used to this after the kind of company I had in pre-university, but there's nothing I can change. I'm starting to regret not being closer to a lot more people in pre-u, but I didn't like many of them. I found many were either airheads that were only focused on memorising, else they were the kind who networked and backstabbed to get further in life. I'm quite glad my class was nothing of the sort (bar a select one or two), and I'm really extremely grateful that I got to know L and MH - and that we'll all be in the UK at the same time! :P


A few other things (to hell to the point form, so I do apologise if it seems a bit disjointed):

I've been actively looking at people's Instagram posts on explore and I'm starting to be really glad not to be one of those dudes doing law. It has been in my radar for the longest of time, until I switched it up and chose to do something closer to my heart which isn't far away from law. I knew I didn't want to practice as a lawyer even if I wanted to do law, and I'd be dumb to put myself in all the competition if that's the case. While some do really well (like a number of my acquaintances doing internships in NYC), some don't. And those are the ones who didn't get into Oxbridge/the three London schools/Bristol/Warwick/Durham but things further down - like Exeter or Sheffield. I do worry about how they are going to get a job - especially if they're heading back to Singapore to work - when there's a glut of lawyers in the job market anyway. I think many people get blinded by the bling of the law career when it's just utterly crap when you're not one of those performing well/in the top schools, and that there wasn't anyone who knew better to stop them before they fall into the rabbit-hole. In that aspect I'm glad that I've decided to steer away from that, but I know I need to be wary as well. I'm not in the London schools nor Oxbridge, and I'm not doing a professional degree, so I have to be careful about the tightrope I'm walking.

Swiss withdrew their Avros out of service just a few days ago. I'm a little bit annoyed despite being quite sure this will happen sooner or later, but that means I can't catch one of the Swiss Avro birds when in the UK, pfft. A British friend of mine's gonna catch one on Cityjet from Newcastle, but he's planned it on (of all days) day two of my university term, and Newcastle's a bitch to get up from the south, so I can't catch it with him. Ah well.

My mother's being a lot less belligerent in the way that I think she realised how hurtful it is to throw the financial blackmail card on me. I know she had personal experience dealing with that in her youth, but nonetheless I don't think it gives you the right to do it to other people. This was the thing I actually prepared an entry about but decided to hold it off, and I think this paragraph suffices in lieu of that. To be honest, it's a big relief, and that's great because I can spend more time actually gearing myself up in university and thinking what to do next after this.

My weight's stagnating, but I believe it's just a temporary thing before I head over to the UK, since I've been indulging a little bit more on things and I can't keep off sugar for an extended period of time (I don't think you realise how insidious they are if you don't cook yourself). It's quite hilarious that my younger sister (she's athletic as hell) and my mother has been complaining about how they feel fat for eating, but they're still eating the same things. Especially my mother - I've been telling her to lay off the sugar to no avail. She'll be in the UK for a period of time with me before my school term starts, and I'm hoping to wean her off sugar before I dump her (and her luggage full of new clothes) on her flight back to Singapore. Ten days can do wonders if you're disciplined enough.

It's been three months since I've catalogued all the things I wanted to do with my life and their associated files/documents in this Dropbox folder of mine and it's a wonder how much progress I've made. Despite so, I'm still a long way off. But hey, I've started, and it's only gonna get better. I hope I can look back in another three months' time and offer myself another pat on the back, and hopefully get one of those projects done and closed.

I guess that's it for today!

Making decisions

I have been so free that I can wake up and have no idea which day of the week it is. To that extent I've been trying to mitigate that by doing stuff with my life (and time), but I've invariably been failing. Remember about learning LaTeX? I gave that up halfway after I took too long to get the code to work properly (for example getting the dependencies in! trying to get another font to just work!), and then weighed the pro and cons of learning LaTeX versus using Word/LibreOffice and it didn't match up. At least now I can say that I can type a bit of math equations with LaTeX - which is the only bit that really matters - and how word processors work and the difference between acronyms like WYSIWYG and WYSIWYM (essentially, what you see is what you get/mean). Despite so I've managed to pick up Markdown in no time, so that's good because hey at least I've managed to learn something! Whether or not it's all useful is very much up for debate, though.

The local universities have started or are about to start their school term. It suddenly dawned upon me that I haven't submitted my withdrawal form for my placing at one of the local universities, after receiving an email from the professor asking the class to make preparations for lessons next week.

Next week? Next week?! I'm not ready yet.

UKVI hasn't gotten back on my visa application yet, and while it seems like eons ago that I paid a visit to the visa application centre it's only been seven damn working days. That means I'm still less-than-halfway to getting a decision. I've planned to submit my withdrawal only when I've gotten a definitive answer, but now I'm stuck in this dilemma where I would either have to spend time attending lessons next week and even the week after, or withdraw prematurely without a backup plan.

Decisions, decisions.