i just want you to know who i am.
written: 5:33 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 29, 2007

According to Kenneth though, the shorts look like the Mango one I wore out yesterday because they both have folded up cuffs, but I totally beg to differ. My Mango shorts is light beige. The Zara one is pure white. And it's shorter than the Mango one. Besides, I refuse to take criticism from a guy who bought the same jacket twice (okay it wasn't the exact same jacket, but a jacket that looked like one he already had) so whatever! I love my shorts. Happiness!

Anyway, yesterday was a super long day. I met Kenneth in the early afternoon with the intention of getting started on my paper while he reads Tuesdays with Morrie in a nice cosy coffee joint, but in the end, as is to be expected, we ended up talking more than reading. Lunch took quite long: he hated his food, there was too much food on my plate, and so we were both eating damn slowly. In the end there was quite a bit of leftover food. Then we headed to Pacific Coffee where we had to settle for some couches next to the toilet which did not gel with Kenneth's sense of aestheticism. Because he was meeting his friends for dinner at Vivo City later on, I suddenly remembered that my mom and I couldn't bear to leave Vivo's Corduroy Cafe despite the air-conditioning being too strong. I also liked the latte there and it treated its patrons to a rather, though not overwhelming, nice view of the sea.

Therefore, we ended up heading to Vivo which took some time, but thankfully I got to re-read my paper for the first time ever since getting it back and picked out some parts that obviously need more substance, while Kenneth read half of his book! How impressive.

Some time in between I decided to check my phone and discovered a missed call and a text message from Marcus asking me if I wanted to go Wala at 8 plus. My first thought was, "Wah lau, now then ask me. I'd already left my house ages ago and I'm wearing a random tank top and shorts with flats, and I'm carrying my term paper, foolscap and a textbook."

My next thought was, "On second thought, so what? It's not what you wear, but how you wear it." I discarded the instant reply that popped into my head, something along the lines of, "If you'd asked me earlier I would've worn something nicer. I can't go to Wala in shorts and flats." Instead I said, "Sounds good!"

That was how Kenneth ended up being late for his dinner because he made me eat dinner first before I went to Holland Village, on the pretext that he couldn't see me eating in some food centre by myself, as well as his assumption that I would drink and how it's not good to drink on an empty stomach. It was really nice of him to accompany me while I forced some food down my throat (I was damn full from the full-creamed ice latte) because he was quite late...but then again, he's always late, so I'm sure his friends weren't surprised.

I reached Holland Village/Wala (why the hell is it called Wala Wala anyway? What does it even mean?) at 8.30 and managed to text Marcus before my phone almost died. I had some German-sounding beer that I'd never heard of before in my life because Marcus said it was nice and it was one-for-one, though maybe that wasn't such a good idea. By 11-something when I was having the other one my stomach felt like it was going to explode and I got all paranoid over calories and fat and what my neighbour said about fat from alcohol being near-impossible to burn, and it didn't help that Marcus and Mark were talking about beer bellies before. In any case, I got quite woozy from the beer and I had a bloody headache when I got home, both of which weren't very pleasant.

All things considered, it was a pretty good night. Marcus is...just...I don't even know where to start. He made me laugh quite loudly a few times and I really don't think it was the beer. I am, however, of the sincere opinion that we ought to try seeing each other in daylight because, first, I think I look much better in daylight, and second, I can't keep drinking so much alcohol because it's super fattening. Unlike him I don't work out and I refuse to let him derail my plan of losing 2 kilograms by mid-semester.

Also, he's a self-professed nerd which I quite agree with and it's damn funny. We were listening to EIC play upstairs and suddenly out of nowhere I heard Marcus say to Mark, "Why is the table vibrating?" OMG OMG OMG. That's the engineer equivalent of me saying something like, "If you lean on the glass and it breaks and you fall off, I can help you sue the management." When he saw me looking at him all weird, he went on to say, "I wonder how the speaker light up along with the beats."

Don't we love occupational hazards?

I find it quite funny, too, that whenever I tell someone I've just met about my extraordinary diet - no meat except fish - his automatic assumption is that we have to eat fish. Five months ago when I'd just met Kenneth at Law Firm #2, when discussing where to go for lunch with this other intern he said, "We're eating fish, right?" Last night when I told Marcus about my diet he said, "If I ask you out, we have to eat fish right?"

We don't have to eat fish; I might have to eat fish, but you can totally get something else, and we totally don't have to go to a fish place. The good thing about eating fish is that it's almost served everywhere, which means that almost any eating place except the obviously un-Yelen friendly ones is good.

This means that I should try to get myself a boyfriend before I decide to stop eating fish because it would making my diet almost impossible to accommodate without coercing the other party into eating (sometimes pretty gross) vegetarian food. Since I don't like imposing on people, or feeling like I'm imposing on people, that would mean that I'd need to find a vegetarian guy - and looking for a guy, or chancing upon a guy, who is appropriate and whom I am attracted to is already bloody difficult in itself. Chancing upon a vegetarian guy? I might as well become a nun. That would be rather hopeless, I would think. At least if I get a boyfriend now, he'd feel like an asshole for the rest of his life if he eventually dumps me for turning completely vegetarian. Because, really, who the hell does that? Only assholes, of course.

So to conclude, Wala was fun despite me nearly falling asleep at the table we finally got after, like, an hour, due to the excessive amount of alcohol in my beer. I couldn't finish it and I poured the rest into Marcus' glass hahaha. He gave me a 'what the fuck?' look and I just grinned widely at him.

Sometimes, I really, really enjoy being female.

On another note, I have noticed with some alarm that I have absolutely no principles. Mag first pointed it out to me over the phone two nights ago and I laughingly concurred, but I didn't really think that it was a big deal. We were talking about smokers and possibly going out with one, and I made it quite clear that, once again, I was willing to overlook the fact if the good outweighed the bad. She reminded me of this entry in which I apparently said that smoking was a deal breaker, and promptly asked me, "Where are your principles?"

I replied, "I have no principles!"

And it's true. There is really no point in me trying to suss out the condition precedents that a guy has to fulfill before I could analyse whether or not I'm attracted to him, because sometimes the attraction happens even before I know anything about the guy. And when it subsequently comes to light that he smokes, I'm all, "Oh, but that's quite all right. I've already dated two smokers; what's dating another one?" There are also times in which I know the guy is a smoker, and yet I don't do anything to stop myself from being sufficiently attracted to the said guy, sufficiently attracted to want to see him more than once.

Two possible explanations: I am either really tolerant of other people's nonsense habits, or I am just really, really, really retarded, and a complete glutton for punishment. Or maybe it's a simple case of I Have No Principles. I am quite convinced that I should stop proclaiming all these grand principles and convictions, such as I Would Not Date a Smoker Ever Again, or I Would Never Go Out With a Christian/Catholic/etc, because quite evidently, every case depends on its own facts, and the ratio of the older cases should be confined to their own facts. There is really no broad principle to be applied; I am but a weakling, and I can't help it if I have weaknesses for guys that, inter alia, look a certain way, who are built (physically) a certain way, who talk a certain way, who can relate to me and to whom I can relate in a certain way.

What finally drove out all questions about my utter lack of principles from my mind was when I was in 7-11 buying mineral water to stave off the on-going dehydration and I glanced outside, just to see Marcus with a cigarette in his hand, looking rather hot.

I don't know what's wrong with me, and I don't know whether to laugh, to cry, or to sigh in resignation and defeat and be completely unsurprised.

Well, to console myself, at least he said that it was his first cigarette of the day. Though I wonder what he'd care what I think about the whole smoking thing after I ranted, at some considerable length, about smokers and dating a smoker and how I can't stand my hair reeking of cigarette smoke.

On another note, because my mind/imagination is always ten million steps ahead of reality, I've been thinking that I might not be the easiest girl in the world to handle. For starters, being a complete grammar Nazi (though less uptight about it now than before) means that I'd notice your grammar mistakes. But not only that: I'd remember your grammar mistakes. Even worse: I'd remember your grammar mistakes, and when I'm considering whether or not to break up with you, I'd recall these grammar mistakes and add them to the "to break up" column. Surely that is not normal? Everything is capable of being all fine and dandy when things are just beginning to happen. You're all caught up in the adrenaline rush, such that things that you know will bug you get a free pass, simply because the instant gratification rocks your socks off. Is that irresponsible? To avoid the obvious conclusion, you tell yourself that you're just giving it a shot, that you wouldn't know unless you try - but the truth is, there are some things that you just know, even without trying. And so your Nelsonian blindness truly amounts to dishonesty, and you'd be responsible once more for hurting someone - but this time round, you have more blood on your hands than ever because you knew you'd end up hurting someone, and yet you chose to pursue your own Instant Gratification instead of exercising some self-control, logic and rationality and saying, quite unequivocally, that "this just won't work".

Additionally, my increasing cynicism towards relationship matters means that I am taking such things less and less seriously. This means that I am unlikely to be in it for the long haul, that I am seeing the now and no further than that. So if someone invests his heart in me, chances are, I would break it, because I am unable to do the same. If my heart is not in it, I would get out of it as soon as I get bored - and I get bored pretty easily. There would be nothing for me to want to salvage, because I didn't go into it wanting it to last forever and ever in the first place. And if I do meet someone who makes me feel like I want to be with him forever and ever, I'd probably run as fast as I can in the opposite direction - because I don't want to feel that way ever again.

I've reached the conclusion that nothing is forever, and that there is no such thing as "one true love", or "the one", or even a "right" person. There is only the one who is here, right now, the convenient one, the person who is not wrong. Love is a deceiving emotion that blinds you to reason and logic, and I've realised that there is too much at stake to let love, or what you think is love, run amok and drag everything else in your life down with it. Epic Love exists only on TV and it is wholly untenable in real life. Nobody has the patience, the energy, or the spirit to go through pain and suffering with his "one true love", which is why his "one true love" eventually leaves him. It's just the way it is. It doesn't make me sad; it doesn't make me anything, perhaps simply more informed, more aware.

Does this make me emotionally unavailable, though? I don't know. Maybe it does. Maybe I'm in JC again, wanting to have some fun without the emotional commitment, maybe I'm in secondary school, staying with a guy because the physical action is, like, totally awesome. Does that mean I haven't grown? Or does that mean that I've seen my childish, idealistic notions of love for what they really are, and now I know better?

My point is, how can anyone possibly want to date a girl who thinks like me? And I swear, the kind of guys that don't mind dating me are exactly the kind of guys that I won't ever go near. (This sounds like one of my grand proclamations, but I promise it is not.) Call me cynical, but I would seriously question a guy's intention if he still wants to date me after I've told him everything I've written about my anal grammar Nazism and my general rejection of the conventional idea of love. The way I see it, I wouldn't sic myself on my worst enemy. And I think that aptly sums everything up.

Anyway, whatever. My love life is still rock solidly ho-hum and nothing's happening so say so much for what right? I think so too.

I made my mom spend $188 on two pairs of Levi's jeans and I am quite happy. Haha!

I finally found someone who spends more than me, and that person shall not be named so as to protect his/her privacy.

Kenneth said that I'm obsessed with shopping. To quote him, I reject that. That is so untrue. It is perfectly normal to go weak-kneed when walking through the first level of Vivo and seeing sale signs everywhere, then having your heart break and your spirit die when you remember that you have about two hundred useless dollars in your pathetic bank account. It is not a sign of obsession, and neither is my checking out two Zara stores to find my white shorts, and neither is the fact that I couldn't get my white shorts out of my mind. I am normal. There is absolutely nothing wrong with me. I am not obsessed with shopping.

I realised that there are about ten trillion ideas in my stupid paper, 99% of which are sketchy and not well-developed all thanks to the bloody word limit. This means that I have more work than I'd originally thought. I know nothing about human rights. I know nothing about anything.

I hope I get all my modules, but I have a feeling I won't because I got all my modules in Semester 1 so it stands to some warped reason that I won't get all my modules in Semester 2. Applying Murphy's Law, I won't get my absolute absolute first choice (Intelligence Law) and would probably get that Infocomms thing which I bumped up from my reserves when I discovered that Globalisation or something was blocked off to Year 3s. I was quite surprised because I can't imagine why anyone but me would want to do Globalisation. I also couldn't imagine why anyone would want to do Intelligence Law because it sounds like a rather useless module which means that it's totally meant for me, but from what I've heard so far many people have signed up which means that I won't get it, which means that Semester 2 is utterly destroyed.

How tragic.

Of the many nonsense we floated about yesterday, one of them was my newfound love for the word 'tragic'. Kenneth observed that I'm beginning to say 'tragic' now, which is a step up from 'sad'. (He observed my too-frequent use of the word 'sad' a few days after we met. Hahaha.) He was like, "What's after tragic?"

This is the progression that I came up with:

Sad -> Tragic -> Devastating -> Catastrophic -> Apocalyptic (this was a bit of a tongue twister) -> Armageddon-y or Armageddon-ish.

At Armageddon, Kenneth said, "What's after Armageddon?"

He realised what he'd just asked and he went, "Oh, right." Then he added, "We're all dead."

This is an example of the kind of nonsense we say to each other. Sometimes I wonder why we never seem to run out of things to say, especially since I think he and I are fundamentally different. But yet, we never seem to run out of things to say anyway. I think it's quite amazing. He just amuses me muchly lah.

Also, on Christmas I officially became an aunt. Gosh, I feel old. My baby nephew is super cute though, and I'm never one to gush over babies. Ahh! Tiny little thing with his heart-shaped face and cute squinty eyes. Awww.

before sunrise // before sunset

Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010