Quick updates. 

#1. My plan to fix this blasted blog HTML code appears to be naught. I shall simply use this disastrous layout until I find a better way to resolve this mess. 

#2. Finished reading The Hobbit. Not as magnificent as I thought it would be, given the way the prose is written, but nevertheless I'm excited to see the movie adaptations this December. I'm confused as to why Jackson would create a new female character for the next two movies who isn't even mentioned in the book, and why he would want Orlando Bloom to return despite NONE of the Fellowship, except Gandalf, being inside the Hobbit. 

#3. I'm left with less than a week to churn out a 10,000 word report. I won't even talk to you about its progress. I'm counting on last minute bursts of inspiration and luck to get me through. 

#4. Finally talked to my therapist after a month about some issues that are bothering me. She's given me homework, and her assignment is making me rethink some things in my life and what my future plans will be. 

#5. Got my visa to the US settled, along with the required health verifications. All I need to do now is to send the forms off to Buffalo and I'm left with tickets and worrying about finances.

#6. I made the mistake of watching Alien on television and am now having trouble clearing my mind whilst lying in bed, and I'm just dreading that I'll see a giant slimy alien hovering above me ready to strike my brains out. Or worse, set a facehugger one me. Oh God. I'm going to be sick.

#7. SIM-UB networking session last week to give the UB-bound SIM students a heads up about Buffalo. I knew nobody there and felt so awkward but we were put in groups and I got put with the group of Americans, which was a good thing because that way, I was able to get first hand information about Buffalo, such as safety and expenses. I always knew Americans were loud, but my god talking to so many of them at once overwhelmed the bejesus out of me because their voice carries. I felt like I was walking next to loudspeakers. 6 loudspeakers to be exact. But they're super friendly and chummy and I felt pretty at ease talking to them once we set down to eat dinner together. The other SIM girl with me barely spoke 5 sentences. 

#8. Going through a bout of relapses because doing shift work at the restaurant is messing with my eating patterns. Am attempting to fix it. Gah. 

#9. Continuing with The Fellowship of the Ring after abandoning it at the 5th chapter for The Hobbit. 

#10. Finally watched somme classic 90s movies: Ghost (1990), Far and Away (1992), Con Air (1997), Jurrasic park (1993), My Best Friend's Wedding (1997) and Face/Off (1997). So excellent. 

My room is so quiet and empty, it hurts. - Nina LaCour

"Hello Cameron"

"Hello hummingbird"

Best Nicholas Cage movie ending ever. 

Sad movie scene make me cry and go weak at the knees. For instance:

1. When it finally dawns on Rose that Jack is dead and she has to let him sink into the icy waters, 
2. When Bruce Willis makes his final video call to Liv Tyler in Armaggeddon and gives her his blessings and lets her marry Ben Affleck. 
3. When Josh Harnett took the bullets for Ben Affleck who then later has to watch his best friend die in Pearl Harbour. 
4. Anything in The Pianist (Adrien Brody rightfully deserved that Academy Award)
5. When Kate comes down the stairs and asks her dad if she looks pretty in My Sister's Keeper. 
6. When King Kong fell off the Empire State Building in King Kong (2005). 
7. When Joaquin Pheonix realizes that he'll never make it out the building and tells John Travolta to pull the other firefighters back, and Joaquin then tells John to tell his wife that he loves her in Ladder 49. 
8. When Will Smith had to put his dog down in I Am Legend. 
9. When Paul Walker returns to Antarctica to find his dogs, only to realize that while all of them had escaped, one of the dogs remained faithfully behind but had died due to the extreme cold weather and lack of food. I couldn't stop crying after that scene was over and hugged my baby for hours of end. 
10. When Marley died, both in the book and the movie. 
11. When Aragorn and the whole of Gondor bowed to the 4 Hobbits at Aragorn's coronation. 
12. When Gandalf fell from the Bridge of Khazad Dum. 

And here's a little something more cheery to brighten the evening before bed. 

Could there be anything else more exciting than the release of this trailer? No, there isn't. This trailer completely got my mojo up, but its just weird to see a female character come into the movie after watching 4 Peter Jackson movies that are so heavily laced with testosterone. 

Still, I think it'll be good. I can't wait to see the scenes where the dwarves come tumbling in barrels in the water, ever since watching the production videos of The Hobbit online. 

I'd blog more but I had a long day today. Worked full shift from 12pm to 11pm and being Sunday and being Father's Day, it was so crowded and just kept us all busy. My feet ache. Another long day tomorrow and Tuesday. URECA report due in 2 weeks and I haven't finished it yet. I'be been ordered to do last minute data collection.  Did I mention my feet ache. Gah. 

OOH Glee's on. Its episode 7, Dynamic Duets and Kitty and Marley are singing Holding Out of a Hero! They're both so good together. Okay. Watch them sing. Then sleep. 

My feet ache. Shit. Why won't TP call me back? I'm going to harass somebody tomorrow, I swear I'm not in the mood to play waiting games. Its approaching July. 

Its not even the weekend, but I'm already mentally exhausted from all that's been going on this past 4 days. 2 days of night shifts waiting tables from 6pm to 11pm that leaves me with aching feet and a sore back, as well as strained eyes from staring at the screen while I play endlessly with the random data from my dataset for URECA, feelings of frustration and impatience at how URECA doesn't seem to be ending but taking its own sweet time busking under the sun and testing me. 

I've stayed over at Lakeside the past few nights due to the need to commute to school and to my shift work at restaurant and I think I'm slowly slowly starting to get used to living alone, which has been a bit of a difficulty because of my eating problems. I'm still in recovery but I can say that I'm making some progress. I was on the train earlier this evening and happened to look down at my arm and saw the many long thin horizontal scars a slight shade darker than my skin tone and I was brought back to that god awful moment when I made those 10 odd cuts on my arm and thinking that I was just going to get ready to die. I'm not sure if you know understand this, but seeing evidence of you depressive, self-cutting state and thinking of how far you've come from that moment is actually quite emotional. Now that I'm able to process the situation in a more rational and calm mind, I really have to marvel at how depressed I was to actually have cut myself every week and thinking about death everyday. Then I ask myself "oh my god, I really did cut myself til I bled and left many scars on my arm, and was depressed to point of even staring at the bottle of bleach?!" 

I know. I'm carefree and spirited on the outside with opinions as firm as a bulldozer. I'm passionate about women's issues and fight for them. How strange is it that the person on the inside is so different from the one on the outside - are they really the same person? This idea brings me back to my summer acting classes in UCLA when I played Matilde, the Portuguese maid with a wondrous sense of humor who always makes everyone laugh, but deep down inside, bears heartbreaking secrets that leaves her depressed and anxious, and longing for love and acceptance. 

I guess we all have our own skeletons in our closet that we need to keep, because ironically, they're the things that keep us from breaking and falling apart. 

Anyhow, its good to be back home, even though I've been away from only a few days. I miss the spaciousness of my home (i'm sorry but the apartment in Lakeside is....small. I need to walk around my house!), easy access to food(this is for recovery's sake), my elliptical machine, my bed and most importantly, my baby Bobby. Some schmuck wrote a column in the paper last week about how he abhors people who speak to their pets in babytalk (guilty), such as calling their pets their baby or their children and says doing so trivializes parenting. I mean, hello, what the fuck does he know?! Are you telling me that animals don't deserve to be loved and cared for and pampered the same way parents treat babies? What so wrong about pet owners wanting their pets to feel loved and cared for? This guy is ker-razy, that's all I'm saying. 

So yes. Its been a long mentally tiring week. Shall go into details another time. I'm just so exhausted. I can barely even find the strength to get up, walk to the washroom to rinse off my face mask because all I want to do right now is lie on my bed and sleep next to my baby. My to-do list shall be 
consulted again tomorrow afternoon. Meanwhile. I bid the world adieu. 

I feel like a big, fat fraud.  What the hell am I doing in URECA? URECA is for smart, intelligent people who are whizzes in data analysis. I am having so much friction' trouble analyzing my data and tweaking the syntax and doing stupid shit. I'm supposed to be doing a moderation analysis - a statistical method that Ringo has never taught us before and now I'm supposed to do a crash course on moderation analysis and Googling exactly how I am supposed to be doing it and understanding the results in a matter of minutes. 

Yes I know that Google is an information channel, but it seems incapable of teaching me advanced statistics because the sites I've been to are using such weird, foreign, alien terms that I do not understand. Covariates, hierarchical regression, log regression, stepwise analysis.   

Wait, what?! 

And to top it off, Ringo has once again humiliated me. I can't bear to go into details but he is officially number 1 on my shit list. 

And to make me even more stressed, RA work application for TP takes 2-3 weeks to process. God, just hire me already! Forget the bureaucratic systems! If my professor took me on instantly and had me help out with her manuscripts straight away, why can TP not do it?

I'm too annoyed to do anything right now. 

Bloody Ringo. You're a bright little ray of sunshine are you not? I hate you. You're a dick. I'm sorry I need to rant because I'm too frustrated, and yes, maybe I don't know you well enough to make that judgment call, but you're a dick. According to Marion St Clair in Bride Wars, a wedding marks the first day of our lives and so all us unmarried people are in fact dead. So if we're all unmarried, and Ringo is unmarried (at least he should be unmarried), then Ringo, you my friend, will die dead because you will never impress a woman with your snarky, higher-than-thou attitude, no matter which Ivy League university you've gone to or how many bloody PhDs' you've gotten.  

I am looking at my blog's wallpaper with distaste and just thinking to myself what I could have possibly been thinking when I selected the particular design. I must have been nuts. I'm trying to change it, but HTML manipulation stresses me out. 

So as usual, my birthday wasn't all that cracked up to be. I spent the morning in Clarke Quay undergoing what was perhaps the most ridiculous and redundant F&B training ever. It was mainly the duties of a server, ground rules, how to hold a tray, how to serve food to a customer - basically, things that I already know from my work at Bakerzin. The trainer was pretty amusing with his explanations and anecdotes, but like I mentioned, I know it all already. We were forced to go through this ridiculous test in which we had to hold a tray of glasses filled with marbles and walk on a zig-zag line to test our ability to hold the tray, then serve it to the "guests" in the way that he thought us. I was extremely bemused. 

All in all, the plus side was that I met new people and engaged in social banter. I think my favorite part of any day is when I get to talk and interact with new people and exchanging stories about our own lives. On the down side, it was a waste of 4 hours. And to think the agent made me feel guilty about questioning the utter absurdity of a 4 hour training program. I kept telling her via texting (because she blatantly refused to call me back) that we don't need 4 hours to learn how to collect plates and serve drinks when we can learn in while on the job. And she replied with a snappy retort "Its not just about learning. Its about proper professional communication and skills". And I mellowed a little and thought that maybe I was being too harsh on her. 

Never did the trainer teach us about talking to customers. Sheesh. He ended pretty late at 230pm instead of the promised 2pm and I had to postpone my meeting my my professor to 4pm instead of 3pm while I had to rush back to Lakeside to grab my stuff and took a cab from Lakeside to Wee Kim Wee, arriving jus in the nick of time at 3.50pm for a mere 15 minute meeting in which I learned that I'd have to do data analysis all over again because my initial analysis methods weren't sophisticated enough for a program like URECA. Bummer. 

Then it was rushing home to change to meet Shu for dinner at this snazzy place called Mezzo Bistro Bar and had a wonderful time catching up with her and eating mashed-potato-like salmon and shared some pork sausages with baby potatoes and a Shirley Temple, a cocktail which I learned was made of ginger ale and grenadine syrup with a sunken cherry to complete, named after one of the most well known famous child stars in Hollywood, Miss Shirley Temple. 

I used to hate birthdays because when I as younger, I'd see how other people my age got friends who threw them lovely parties, or surprised them with cakes and goodies and gave them gorgeous presents and I get all depressed because my birthdays always consisted of a birthday dinner at a fancy cafe with my parents, and birthday money or book vouchers. (not that I complained about those!) Sure there were a couple of years in which I had a nice surprise. On my 16th birthday, my best friend planned a day's worth of activities for me with 4 other good friends whom we always talked to in class, where we went to the beach at Sentosa, followed by dinner at Harbourfront. God. That was 6 years ago. Then on my 18th or 19th birthday, LC took me to Pizza Hut for what I thought was going to be a simple lunch between the both of us and it turned out she brought a fabulous group of friends to celebrate my birthday complete with a cake and watching The Prince of Persia for the 2nd time with Shu. 

And yeah that's it, really. Just those 2 fabulous years. 

So of course I'll get all jealous of my friends because it makes me think that I'm less likable/popular than them if people actually made so much effort for them to celebrate their birthday. Then I talking to S last night and she reminded me how incredibly blessed I am to be alive on my birthday and with friends who actually remembered my birthday to wish me a happy birthday. 

So yes, I may not be as lucky as other people and receive a 37 birthday presents like Dudley Durseley, but I'm glad to have people wish me a happy birthday (the very first person to wish me a happy birthday was a complete and total stranger - a person from a recruitment agency who called me last week wanted to hire me for a permanent marketing position: your birthday is coming up, so happy birthday!)  to receive birthday money from my parents (which has gone straight to my NYC/exchange fund), a birthday video taken by my Auntie Christine and Uncle Time of my Grandma struggling with aphasia because of her Alzheimer's saying happy birthday, and to have been able to share an intimate beautiful dinner with a fabulous friend. 

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"Good morning my sunshine! I love today because its a special day! Happy birthday my dearie! I wish for your good health and happiness always!" - LC

"EH SMELLY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAH" - MK

"Happy birthday, girl! May all the buses come quickly to all the bus stops you're at, may there never ben hot sun shining in your face when you're outdoors, and may you always be sassy and spunky cool!" - SY

"WADDUP. How are you spending your special day today?" -JS

"Happpppppppppy birthday babe! I'm overseas now so heh will make up for you a lil later? Take care and have a great day and we'll celebrate soon when I'm backkk!" - AK
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Mood: Resurrected sense of gratefulness :)

I've had such a hormonally emotional week, mainly in terms of crying over sad and horrible scenes in movies and books. For instance. 

1. I cried when the author of this book I borrowed, Life Beyond your Eating Disorder described her mental and emotional turmoil during her first few relapses whilst in recovery. But I suppose this is because this is something I can actually relate to, both physically and mentally because I completely understand the emotional baggage relapse actually brings. 

2. I cried when Carrie and Aidan broke up for the first time after Charlotte's wedding to Trey at the end of Season 3 when she finally told him that she slept with Mr Big when he was away. I'm just beginning to realize what a whiny pathetic clingy bitchhead Mr Big is. Carrie, I don't know what I want. Carrie, please I can't deal with this alone. Carrie, please I don't know what to do. Carrie, please I need to talk to you - I'm downstairs. Carrie, please don't leave me I can't do this alone. God. Aidan's not my ideal guy (note: he has long hair and no ripped abs) but he's so incredibly chummy and friendly and hey, any man who can tame Carrie Bradshaw is good enough for me. 

3. I cried when I read about the review of the Abba museum in Stockholm while reading the papers today. 

4. I cried when I watched Severus Snape sputter his final words to Harry whilst watching The Deathy Hallows Part 2. 

5. I cried when I watched a Mother's Day video.

And all this happened within the past 3 days. Something has got to give.