11

Holy fucking shit. Today is the last day of the month. I predicted my exact reaction from my last blog post and then here I am... still the same. Still a serial procrastinator on the loose (sorry, Jose). But baby steps. I am taking baby steps to curb my bad habit since I still hold the hope of graduating first class. Anyway, November has been pretty good to me. My mid-semester trip was awesome, who knew Malaysia has so much to offer when all you've ever known of Malaysia was how it will never compare to places like  New York or Bali? What really shocked me was that there are actually Portuguese men here ??? 

Anyway so many things have been going on in my life lately that I feel like I barely have time to even breathe. As usual, I take 90% the bulk of the work in a 5 pax group assignment because no one is ever proactive. 

"What the fuck are you doing? Don't wait for me to tell you what to do! Please have some initiative! Okay, I just told you what to do. Why aren't you doing it? Fuck all of you"

As evident above, I just summed up my thought process whenever I deal with my group mates. I also have trust issues. They don't give a shit about the assignment or getting good grades but I do, so I have to do everything on my own, and in the end, I suffer. BUT GOOD NEWS. Pain is temporary, good grades are forever.

Okay it's time to go back to suffering. 

2 Spoopy 4 Me

I've wanted to make blogging a monthly affair for a while now, but I can never remember to do it, no matter how much I need to rant or how much free time I have on my hand with unlimited internet connection at home now. So everytime I do realise it, it's already the last day of the month and also the last hour. Therefore, this point proves that I am a natural born procrastinator. Because I remember a lot of things that I have to do at the 11th hour.

This month has passed by so fast, to the point where I feel like October just started literally two weeks ago. I remember thinking to myself that I've been back to uni for exactly a month on the 6th of October, but in a week it will be two months and I just cannot deal with that. Next thing I know, it's the 30th of November and I freak out again about time going by so fast. I have chronophobia and it's real. I've only had one homesick episode since I came back here, and it's all looking good again since I have my mid semester break next week. Yay. 

There are also some things that happened in this month, things I would not feel comfortable disclosing here. If I didn't tell you in person, then you don't need to know it from my blog. Honestly, it's final year from me and I know that I have to give it my all, so I try not to let these little things bother me so much. Because I learnt that nothing is more important than myself. Nothing is more important than me and my goal of becoming a strong independent black woman that don't need no man. 

Alor, quand je suis libre, je voudrais ecrivre mon poste en francais en avenir. Au revoir. 

Acne Be Gone

For the past few months, I have noticed that my skin became clearer and smoother and then a huge realisation hit me. I HAVE NO MORE ACNE! 

For someone that had been battling acne since she was 11, (yeh I had acne before I even got my period?) (11???? I was still a child) (I didn't even know they were called acne then) the feeling of finally having good skin is beyond amazing. I got my first 100 pimples when I was 11, or at least it felt like it because everyone else my age had flawless skin (some still do) while I had a greasy pepperoni pizza face. The ages between 11 and 22.5 were the worst years of my life because I had no self confidence and I was always angry because the acne just got worse and worse with no signs of clearing up. But the absolute worst acne stage I ever had was when I came back from Georgia in 2011. 

The drastic change in weather caused my entire face to revolt against me and I literally couldn't do anything except crying because it hurt my face and my self esteem so much. On top of my whole face erupting like 20 volcanoes at once I had a few huge cystic acne just chilling under my skin that wouldn't break out so I was actually constantly in pain. It didn't help that I was actually attending Sixth Form at a co-ed school, a complete 180 degree change in the environment that I am so used to that is an all-girls school. Boys are always staring at me wondering who the fuck bashed my face up. A few of my classmates asked me what happened to my face because my acne is so bad it constantly had puss in it. And on top of that to make matters worse my mom took me to a facial lady for her to pop all of my pimples out. And the aftermath of all those facial sessions was that my skin was infected and I had to take antibiotics to reduce the infection. Actually, words cannot do justice as to how horrible the condition of my face was at that time. My face was everyone's worst nightmare.

Actually, my mom did redeem herself after many bouts of me coming home from school crying and wailing because my face is in pain. The only good thing my mom ever did to my face was to take me to this dermatologist in KL. He saved my face and although there are still obvious scarring and enlarged pores on my face, I am very grateful. Seeing the condition of my face, the first thing my doctor did was to inject into my acne. I am not kidding. I repeat, he injected into the skin on my face. He injected this medication into all of my acne, and I think I took over 30 injections in my whole face the first time I was there. My skin got slightly better in addition to the medication he put me on and for once since I got back and had to forcibly enrol myself into Sixth Form, I wasn't crying when I got home. 

However, this journey wasn't an easy one. I had to visit my doctor monthly and it costed my parents a lot of money because the injection+medication+face regime was really expensive. A part of it was also my fault because once I saw results, I would slack off on my medication and skincare so I was constantly bouncing on being off and on the medication. But, as of my final round of medication in earlier this year, the acne production factory has finally ceased operation. I had only two or three little pimple resurface since May 2015. I hope I am not speaking too soon because as of this moment in my life, my face is finally 100% free from acne. And I am elated. After 11 long years of battling with acne, I have won.  

Fish are Friends not Food

I don't understand people who have a set of guidelines for people to behave in order to be their "friends". Ok for example, to qualify as my true friend, you need to be available to me when I call you at 3am after the death of my cat, you need to be able to speak in 5 ancient languages, and you need to be able to sacrifice your firstborn child to satan before s/he turns two. 

Why is your friendship so exclusive? Would you even comply with such demands if you came across an acquaintance that has prerequisites like this? 

To me, you cannot put a price tag on friendship. Just because a friend is unavailable to you during the worst times of your life, it doesn't make them a bad friend. Everyone has their own lives to live and their world does not revolve around you alone. Why should you expect your friends to constantly be at your beck and call? Ask yourself, then, do you really need a friend or a maid?

People who constantly talk about how their friends don't really know them - did you allow your friends to penetrate through your barriers? Ultimately it is you who will call the shots on whom you want to count as friends. I hate people who constantly whine about how so-and-so are not true friends because s/he didn't do this/ that for me. Friendship doesn't work that way. They don't owe you anything, and their favors are out of goodwill, not obligation.

As we get older, good friends are harder to come by. I still remember the days when I was 5 - when anyone uttered "I don't want to friend you already" I would be quick to respond "don't want friend then don't friend lah". I had plenty of friends and making new friends at that age was really easy so friends like that were disposable. Now that I am 22, making new friends is nearly an impossible task for me so this explains why I only have like 3 person I can count as friends in uni. Could you imagine, if I put potential friends through my construct of "true friendship" tests, how many friends would I have?

Right. 

The Seventh Month

Death. Silent as can be. 

The human body is very resilient, yet fragile at the same time. One person in history survived a 160ft fall. Don't know how much 160ft is? Imagine falling from the 16th floor of a building and not die, that is how much impact a human body can withstand. Physically, that is. However, it is not the big things that kill you easily. It is the small things. Small evil things like bacterias that cause fatal infections. 

I just got the news about this friend whom passed away earlier. I knew her back in Form 1 and the most outstanding impression she gave me about herself is that I literally have never seen her get angry. She's a forever smiling type of girl, forever cheerful, forever full of life - until she was robbed of her future. I don't really know the exact circumstances surrounding her death but it is definitely very sudden, pretty much like the guy in my previous two posts. But why her? She's young and has the whole world ahead of her. Not even 22 yet. Not even close to being 22. There are still so many places she has yet to explore. There are still so many friends she has yet to make. There are still so many memories she has yet to create. So many. 

Death is sudden. Death comes without warning. Death is swift. Death does not discriminate. 

Rest in peace, young lady. I'm sure your bright smile from heaven illuminates everyone here on earth. You will be dearly missed. 

Stellar GPA? So What?

This post is dedicated to everyone who can't accept failures who's fretting about being dethroned from your 3.9 GPA - so what? It's not the end of the world. So what if your GPA this time is lower than what you expected? In fact, you were fine with your lower-than-3.9 GPA previously so why must going back to the status quo be such a huge earth-shattering devastation? 

I remember being very shocked and sad at the fact that my GPA dropped so much from my near-perfection GPA of 3.91. But for the coming semesters, I performed better and I used my fall as a yardstick to gauge how much I've improved since then. And it made me feel so much better because I learnt that life isn't gonna be a smooth string of 3.9s. Well, as long as I'm still doing relatively well for my studies, the numbers don't matter. A 3.67 GPA can still guarantee all A's, albeit them being A-'s. THEY'RE STILL A'S. MY GPA fell so much and I didn't die (although I wanted to when I first got my results) so this too, shall pass. Your good semesters will pass, and so will your bad semesters. 

All that matters is that you've done your best. That's what I keep telling myself - I've done my best.

The Sixth Month

I received a message from my sister late last night informing me of the death of my cousin's grandaunt. If you have been keeping up with my blog, in my other entry titled "The Fifth Month", I mentioned about the death of both my cousin's grandparents. I am not close to this grandaunt at all but I do see her sometimes when I go over to my aunt's place - a little backstory: this grandaunt is my cousin's grandma's sister, and she was unmarried so she lived with my cousin's grandparents. So, there were the grandparents, the parents, and one grandaunt living under the same roof. 

The grandmother died after the second wave of stroke that hit her, and the grandfather was a clumsy old man with one fake eye. He fell, causing his death. Both their deaths were tragic - in the sense that they did not die the ideal way - peacefully in their sleep. And this grandaunt suffered the same fate too. 

Apparently, last night, she complained of phlegm in her throat so my aunt drove her to the clinic. On the way there in the car, she asked for a tissue and when my aunt pulled a tissue and turned around to give it to her, she was gone. How is her death so sudden? I don't really know the circumstances surrounding it but it is really shocking that one moment she is asking for a tissue and literally another moment later she is slumped lifeless in the back seat.

I am still in shock over this whole incident - because she seemed like a relatively healthy person in her late 60s/ early 70s with the usual problems that old people usually suffer from. I don't understand. 

Just like how I know of this lady back in GA who was touring around Europe last week when suddenly her boyfriend, who has been complaining of severe headaches, was diagnosed with brain tumour. The surgery to remove the tumour went well, however he was in life support about 4 days before passing away. This whole incident happened so quickly, in the span of one week. Would he still be alive had he ignored the crippling pain and not gone to the doctor for the operation? His girlfriend did not make it back in time from Europe for the final goodbye. She arrived 5 hours after he passed.  

The death of people has always disturbed me. It is inevitable, and if I have known you even for a short while, your absence leaves a void in my heart. I hate the idea that things are not going to be the same again. I hate the fact that every time I go over to my aunt's place, she will no longer be sitting in the living room watching Hong Kong dramas. I wonder how many unfinished TV series endings that you are dying to know. 

Rest in peace.