*yawns hugely* bleh. tired. got home at 4am last night, and mum woke me up this morning frightfully early. and school starts tomorrow! *groan* on the brighter side, last night was fun! *bounces around a little* and today hasn't been that bad so far either. *grin* though i don't have time for a nap before i have to go meet kane. *sigh* i'm sleeeeeeeeepy! *whine*

jumped at 11:15 PM

right, in an abrupt about turn, i hope they close school longer. heh. the amount we have to cover for the proteomics and LSSS tests is seriously freakin' me out here. *sniff* not to mention i've been unable to actually settle down and study properly. *sheepish look*

went over to my cousin's place yesterday, to get my pressies from her, (she just got back from Japan), and to catch up with the lot of them. missed 'em loads. *sniff* and mel managed to get pics of bryan and stephie onto my palm! haha. black and white, but still! *beam* took her hours too, so thanks dear. *hugs* gorged on strange choccies, apple and strawberry flavours and goodness knows what else, and chatted to steph about her uni plans. she's looking at princeton, harvard and yale, so that should give you some idea of her standard. heh. no doubt she'll get her 4 A's and 2 S papers, and hopefully from there it should follow what she's pretty much planned out. times like these i wonder whether or not i should've just followed normal expectations and gone to JC instead. *sigh* getting quite sick and tired of being treated like a second class citizen.

however, in slightly better news, i have a confirmed job starting june 1st back at my old company, so it's back to papercuts and filing for a while after the hols. was quite flattering how she immediately said she'd have a place for me. heh. if it gets me cash to get my arse to bali for a holiday, i'll endure. heh. not to mention the laptop i want to get. and the uni fees. *sigh*

ah well. back to refining the project report.

jumped at 9:43 PM

just got my violin out and after tuning it and brushing off the dust, readjusting the bridge etc, managed to practice a little. and it hasn't been as hard as i feared to get the feeling back for it. :) can't believe i left it alone for so long. i'm certainly not back to grade 8 standard just like that, and my sight reading needs a hell of a lot of work, but it's just indescribable to be playing it again. nothing like it. *bounces around happily* will try to get a new chinrest tomorrow, my old one is.. old. heh. surprised the strings haven't snapped either. yay. *bouncebouncebounce* alright. shall stop rambling. *sparkle* wheeeee!

jumped at 7:38 AM

*blink* ngee ann is closed til friday. i'm.. less than pleased i suppose, and i hope that the BS student will be okay. more selfishly, i hope they extend the deadline for our final report, or we're never going to get it done in time!

and surely they could have chosen a better day to inform us. lol. i told ZQ something akin to, "yah lah, yah lah.. fuck you lah.. don't bullshit me.." (*cough* excuse the singlish), and later had to call him to say sorry. *giggle* was only after 3 more people informed me and i checked my npmail before i quite believed it. *laugh* but seriously, april fool's day? bad day to decide to let loose news that you're closing school. though *sigh* they didn't really have much of a choice. dammit, i need to go to school! *grumble*

but yea. today was awful. not in any huge, ohmigodihatemylifeandeveryoneinit kind of way, but little insignificant things that just kept building and building up til i was well ready to bloody scream. and i couldn't really explain it to anyone really, because the things that were annoying me were the little, miniscule things that really shouldn't make too much of a difference. *sigh* but hopefully, tmr will be a better day. :) am feeling all calm and reflective and resolute at the moment, but i doubt it'll last. *sparkle*

jumped at 3:07 AM

feeling rather disgruntled today, am not entirely sure why. i have a suspicion, but surely even i can't be that shallow? *laugh* we'll see, hope it passes soon. :p

and, *grumble*, the neckline of my top today was NOT that low, dammit!

jumped at 1:57 AM

i've just finished reading pawn to queen, an excellent HP fic written by Riley, and it's raised a couple of important points to me, such as it did the last time i read it. however, with the stuff that has happened relatively recently, it's begun to have far more of a real impact on my life and the way i'm perceiving things that are occurring. most of you will know by now that my father passed away of pneumonia last november. this post is mostly to do with that, as are most of the angst-filled posts these days. if you're sick of this subject, please, by all means, move on. far be it for me to inflict unwanted depression on hapless readers.

however. dissembling aside, i suppose i have some explaining to do for my behaviour these past few months, particularly to my longsuffering best friends, cath and jane. i admit, i have closed off from you two, pushed you aside in some ways, and for that i do apologize. however, i don't think i'm going to be able to reverse that particular trend of behaviour, for reasons that i suppose i'm about to state. when my dad died, i suppose that my world was seriously thrown off kilter, like i've been set adrift, floating rather aimlessly far away from any of my usual safe harbours. besides the usual pain of the loss of a immediate family member, there was also guilt in abundance. i'd been placing my everyday life above keeping in contact with him, he died november 17th, and the last i'd spoken to him was on the 31st of october, largely because that was his birthday. and i can't remember the last time i'd spoken to him before that. it had gotten to the point that he'd answer the phone with a 'Hello, stranger!' everytime i called, and those calls were few and far between. i can excuse it with several things i suppose, it's hard to keep in contact with someone who lives so far away and who plays such a miniscule part in your everyday life, but he was my father, and i should've tried! he never ever was reproachful, never insisted that i call him more often, he knew how busy i was, he knew all that was going on in my life, or as much as i could fit into our half hour phone calls. he didn't even really complain when i kept having to push back my trip to australia, first because of my attachment, and then due to the project work that i had to do. i missed him, i missed him terribly, but i could never seem to find the time to just call him for a little while to talk to him. i was always too busy, too tired, too stressed, what have you. and the guilt from that is amazing.

also, i don't think any of you can possibly imagine how hard this was. it's one thing to lose a father, yet another to lose one that you have not seen in 1 1/2 years, mostly due to your own reasons rather than anything else. or rather, i could blame it on circumstances, but that doesn't help either. i hate my project now, not only because it's such a pain and one of the biggest causes of strain in my life at the moment, but also because it took the last time that i could've spent with him away from me. i was going to go in november, i'd promised him that i would. but no, we had to be doing labwork at that time, because otherwise however would we have found the time to complete it before our final report was due? there were so many what if's the night he died, what if i hadn't had the project to do, i would've been there, perhaps i could have convinced him to visit the doctor before septicaemia set in, before it got so bad that he couldn't breathe, couldn't move from his bed to call anyone, and just lay there suffering. at the least, i would've been able to say goodbye. do you have any idea how hard it is to know that he died alone? with none of us there, well, neither my brother nor i, i doubt he'd have cared to see my mother there. he died alone. and i didn't get to speak to him once, or to say goodbye. at the funeral, the two of us placed roses on his coffin before it was cremated. someone had suggested that it might help us to at least say goodbye to him. in a way it did, i can fixate on that moment very easily when i think back to those awful days, but it can't possibly substitute for having been there to say goodbye. to let him know that we all loved him more than we could possibly say, even though we didn't have much of a normal family life, and perhaps he felt he hadn't been there for us quite as much as he could be, he was the perfect father in my eyes. but he died before i could tell him all that. and since i'm not religious, i don't even have the scant comfort of the false belief that one day i'll be able to tell him so, or that he knows it, in some supernatural way or some such bullshite. and the guilt from that is overwhelming as well. i should have tried harder. called more often. found a way, any way, to have gotten there earlier, flew there earlier, made the nurse let me speak to him, though he was too ill to even speak. should have asked her to place the receiver next to her ear so i could tell him i loved him. to at least let him know that he wasn't alone. my dad wasn't christian either, and without that belief that you're going to a better place, death is going to be scary when you're staring it in the face. there would have been so many things that he wished he could've had done, or felt he should have. and one thing all his friends told us when we were up there, was how much he loved us, and how brandon and i were close to the only things he had been living for. and how did i repay that? by constant inattention, by placing other, ordinary, everyday, unimportant things above my keeping in contact with him. words cannot describe how difficult these few months have been for me. not to mention that i haven't been given any time to even breathe, let alone grieve properly. it's suppressed, endlessly suppressed, only spilling out at the most ridiculous of times and forcing me to stare up at the ceiling and blink hurriedly, trying to force the tears back before they become a flood. many, many nights spent crying alone in my room, trying to come to terms with it. crying all night til my nose is red and sore and i run completely out of any emotional energy, get curled up in a total malaise and fall into some form of a sleep, only to wake up looking like something the cat dragged in, red eyed, swollen and completely drained. and having to drag myself to school and pretend that i actually care about what i'm doing, when it means less and less to me as the days pass.

and, back to a point that seems to have been stated ages ago, that's why i've distanced myself from all of my closer friends. i realise that, especially both of my best friends, you do need me sometimes, for the emotional support that as your best friend i should be providing you with. you both are going through tremendously difficult times, and i know that, and i wish i could provide that to you, but to be honest, in the state that i'm in, there is no way i'm able to support anyone. all my energies are focused on just getting through every day one day at a time, to not breaking down completely, and to trying to keep myself being someone that i feel i can live with. the endless, endless performance that i put on everyday in school takes a tremendous amount of energy, as does trying to keep myself at least somewhat stable. i don't have the TIME to break down now, nor, let's be honest, the inclination. this is probably sounding tremendously pretentious, after all, there are people out there in situations that are far worse than mine, but i'm just stating mine as i see it. i love you two, really i do, we've shared some wonderful times, as well as some not so wonderful, and we've been through so much together, and i hope you can forgive me for in some way deserting you both, arguably when you need me the most. then again, both of you, especially you cath, are strong people, and you can make it through this. i suppose i just needed to tell you guys why on earth this has been happening, to explain myself to a certain extent. i'm so very sorry. i just need some time to figure out what's important to me, to find out what i really want to do with my life and what to do in order to develop myself as a person, while not taking into account the views of my friends, my enemies or society's sometimes rather restrictive dictates. to live, to some extent, for myself. and if that didn't sound pretentious, i have no idea what will. heh.

this is something that i'm afraid is going to take a long while to work through, partly because i haven't had time lately to even think, what with school being the way it is, and also that it's hard to force myself to think about things and to evaluate what i value. emotionally draining, which leaves me nothing but a shell for a while that is not conducive to leading a normal life. which adds to the stress of trying to pretend that everything's normal, that i'm 'doing ok, no really' because well, people don't really want to hear anything else, and i don't want them to hear anything else either. i'll work through this on my own. i suppose, in some way, this whole saga has resulted in my having a sight more self confidence, as those who knew me before and after might attest to. to some extent, it furthered the maturation process that begun during my attachment. i feel that if i can make it through this at least relatively heart whole, then nothing else should really faze me to any kind of extent. and that's true really, i've begun seeing some things as being far too unimportant to get bothered about, and i couldn't care less about what most people think about me, which is most certainly not like how it used to be. if you want to be a terminally insecure person, try going in to st margarets halfway and being completely different from most of them. a lot of my classmates were masters of emotional manipulation, and they managed to implant a lot of the insecurities that plagued me for years. if i could get my claws into some of them now... but that's another story. so it has helped. doesn't make it easier, but i am the stronger for it, but also more impatient. i snap more. wish people would just get things instead of me having to explain and explain and explain til i can't be arsed to anymore, and then have them ask me again. i'm not nice. and i no longer pretend to be most of the time. the thing is, i like myself this way. i'm much more self reliant, though perhaps more prone to introspection, self confident, and though i'm impatient, i don't really see that as a drawback. i mean, if the people you surround yourself with aren't of your wavelength, you're only going to suffer in the end. god knows i've been through that enough, from trying to fit in as a 1st and 2nd year in the predominantly chinese speaking BIO cohort. i don't do that anymore. and i'm proud of it. and of myself. and i guess that's healthy, or at least a step along the road to recovery.

i am healing. time does that after all, as i've told people a few times. 'this too, shall pass.' not easily no, nor without work and heartache, but it will pass. and i'll be able to remember my dad for all the good things, not just the sight of him laying in the coffin, his familiar features so very still, looking so peaceful but just oh so damn far away. or listening to the hymn being played at the funeral and thinking of how he'd have snorted at the thought since he was so very non-christian, even anti really. of placing that white rose that i'd picked for myself on his coffin, patting it and saying goodbye. of the prayer of commital, of the endless, endless nights where i'd lie next to my mum and just cry silently to myself. it will all pass, and the memories will become less immediate. that's what i keep telling myself anyway.

this was all rather random, and no doubt as soon as i press the publish button i'll think of a million other things that i should've added. but it's been a tough post to write, and trying to cry quietly so that my mother doesn't wake up and start questioning me is itself a difficulty of monumental proportions. not to mention i have to wake up functioning mentally tomorrow so i can complete the introduction to our final report. for all the bravery, sometimes it really feels like you can't take anymore and you're going to crack. but then, things can always get worse, and they do. then you figure out that you actually can take some more. and i'm just going to have to hope that this continues to be the case.

jumped at 10:12 AM

just cut my nails. i feel... naked. *sniffle*

makes it much easier to type though. heh. will attempt to play my violin sometime tomorrow if we manage to finish the damn report.

don't know what i'm typing in the report anymore, all my sentences don't make sense! am also going through the scientific papers, highlighting information about cagA with purple, vacA with blue, iceA in green and general Helicobacter information in yellow. am going colour blind too. *sparkle* tired. sleeeeeepy. sick too! had a scare, thought i had SARS, had cough and muscle ache, but no fever, thank goodness. still! sick is bad. *sniff*

trying to think of what to wear to the D&D. helps. takes my mind off the stupid report. *grumble*

currently playing : music of the night - phantom of the opera

jumped at 5:52 AM

just got back from dance class, was fun! *beam* haha. and now it's back to the damn project report again. gah. haven't gotten through very many of the new journals i got from NUS the other day, so a long night awaits. yippee. *groan*

jumped at 3:15 AM