Shit Storm

Hello guys, how is it going? How was your lebaran long weekend last week? Pretty good I hope. As usual, I don't have anything interesting to say, but it's been a shitty week, you would have known if you read my twitter feed, but there's only so much you can write in twitter, so I am writing a longer outpouring of emotion and thoughts here, though perhaps it's not the wisest thing to do.

So I've been reading The Martian by Andy Weir. Oshie said he stopped reading it because the writing wasn't so sophisticated. Well the parts where it's from the point of view of the stranded astronaut, Mark Watney, was pretty good but then it turns out there were chapters from the point of view of everyone else and yes those were not very captivating. This week I reached the part where the rocket that NASA built went kaboom in space because they did it in such a rush, without adequate testing and evaluation. Reading those made me think if it's a prophecy for me. I had a very rough week. One time in french class, in Manu's class, we're talking about our ways to cope with stress. I answered, je mange, I eat. This week I reached a new kind of stress level where I really didn't have any appetite to eat. I just lost it. I didn't feel like eating during lunch and I wasn't hungry during dinner. By the second day of me having to deal with the shit storm, I had to force myself to eat, especially since the night before I think I didn't sleep. I thought I needed to do my best to make sure I won't fall sick. It's all just so shitty. I prayed a lot and God did was nice to me that he helped make one thing that I really dread to be rather painless. It's still not clear blue sky right now. I'm still very worried. I find it very bad to think very badly of people, but right now I really lose trust on some people. Even worse and as much as I don't want to feel this way, I feel that some people may just have bad intention in them. It's very bad and mean to think this way, but that's where I am right now. I'm also thinking of how big is this shit storm really is, are there more people whom I cannot trust, who are not making things easy for me. Again I really don't want to think this way. It's better to think the best of everyone, but I just can't shake this off. Maybe what's happening to me it's a result of my bad karma or perhaps I need to experience this to accumulate some good karma ahead in the future, I don't know. Everyday I pray to God and I ask for calmness, mental fortitude, and kindness. He's the only one I got and indeed He's the only one who can help me. Well, so that's it peeps, that's the shit storm that's been surrounding me.

On other news, I haven't been to the movie because there aren't many good movies these days. I did go to watch Ant-Man last weekend. I didn't want to, really didn't want to watch another superhero movie with the emphasis on explosion and stuff, but there wasn't much choice. It turned out to be not so bad, it's not obnoxious and that alone makes it quite pleasant. I always like Paul Rudd, he and his crew in this movie are very likable and they make for a very charming likable movie. I've also been watching The Following every day. Season 1 was shown on local tv here, of course with a lot of censor, so now I'm catching up on season 2 on my own. It's perhaps very unwise and unhealthy for my stress level when I watch stories about psychopathic and sociopathic serial killers every day especially with the days I've been having, but I'm glad to report I haven't been tempted to get a knife and start stabbing people. There's a cult called Korban, I don't know where they chose this name from, but if it's from the Indonesian word, I would have liked it if they pronounced it correctly. They pronounced it in the westerner kinda way and it's just disappointing for me to hear. Though season 2 is rather messy, I do love watching Kevin Bacon a lot and also the Mike Weston character. On a lighter news and definitely much better for my stress level, I have been watching movies with Matthias Schoenaerts in them for 3 weekends in a row now. I watched A Little Chaos, Suite Française and Far from the Madding Crowd. Maybe next week I get to watch Rust and Bone. When I google his pictures, I don't think he's the most handsome man around, but in films there's just something about it, maybe it's the eyes. I just love watching him now, there's something very comforting :P

So that's about it peeps. I'm going home for the National Day long weekend. It's the big 50 birthday for Singapore this year and yet this is the year I decided to skip town. Well, I was here for the last 14 birthdays, so as much as this year would be bigger and more amazing, I just have no interest. I am looking forward to go home, to eat home cooked meal, to just be safe and away from everyone. As usual, I wish you guys glorious days ahead. Buonanotte!

:) eKa @ 8:32:00 PM • 0 comments

Toute La Lumière Que Nous Ne Pouvons Voir

Hello peeps. How is it going? I haven't been writing since there's nothing remotely interesting happened in my life. Not that there are interesting things to share now that I am writing, but again practice in writing is important for me. So here are some things that happened.

□ The title of this post is the french title of the book All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr which I finished readind this week. I don't think I told you guys that I was reading this. Chose this because I was confused on what to read next after Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and since this won this year Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, I thought let's keep the streak going. I've been reading Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winners since 2013 and I think I love this the most. It took a while to get used to the book. It tells the story of a blind French girl and a German boy during WWII. The chapters alternate between their beginning in 1934 to when they finally met in 1944. They go back and forth, starting from the last few days before the boy and the girl met in 1944 to their beginning in 1934 and then the earlier chapters catch up to the 1944 event. Each chapter contains short pages again alternately telling the story of the girl and the boy. I really think I have some sort of OCD slightly higher than normal people, that the first time this structure was disturbed by introducing the point of view of other people, I was quite annoyed. It took some time to get used to it. I always get nervous when stories are not told in a linear straightforward manner, so at the beginning I wasn't quite sure about this, but I do have to admire the construction of this book. It makes me think of David Mitchell whose books I have only read 2 (Cloud Atlas, number9dream). In those books too, I admire how he structured the chapters and books. So anyways, I love All the Light We Cannot See, that is until something bad happened towards the end. It so happened that I read that before I went to sleep and it made me pretty pissed that I was thinking, damn, if I could I would really just stop reading here and then. I guess it's pretty childish to want everything to have a happy ending. In reality, tragedy strikes. It's just a book, but for me it was really upsetting. My brain get so absorbed in every book I read that very often I feel perhaps way too much for the characters. There were many moments I get so touched with an event in the books that I had shed a tear, like in this one too. Another thing I found very silly of me was that at the cover of the book, it's written that it's about a French girl and a German boy and with the book being structured telling the story from their points of view, it's like it's set in my brain that they're soulmate, gonna fall in love, etc. Now that I think about it, even if things have gone well for them, it's not necessarily true that they're gonna fall in love and live happily ever after, maybe they're just destined to be good friends. One interesting thing about this book is the fact that when we think about the NAZI time, we never think about the Germans being the ones we should sympathize with. This is the first book I read in which I gain insight about how awful it was for ordinary Germans too. The German boy had a younger sister who at a really young age was already questioning the NAZI ideology and the boy was drafted because like every other boy, he eventually would have too. The sister was raped by some Russians coming to Germany when the NAZI was defeated, so there were moments too in the war where ordinary Germans suffered, people who may have disagreed with what's going on but didn't have a choice in the matter. It might be easy to say they always had a choice, but when the choice to do the right thing pretty much cost them their life, well it's not so easy to judge. The story ends in present days, at the year 2014. There was a chapter in 1974 when the German boy's sister went to France and she was quite concerned about how people would receive her being that she's a German. The scars of the war stay and linger forever for these survivors. It's a really good book, do read it peeps. Of all the Pulitzer winner books that I have read so far, I have to say that their details are pretty amazing, perhaps this is one key of winning the prize.

□ I am now reading The Martian by Andy Weir. I hope I can finish it before the movie comes out. It's kinda interesting reading this book because this is like the first science fiction book I read and it's very interesting. The main character is an astronaut getting stranded in Mars. In the movie, Matt Damon will be playing him. From the trailer that I watched, he looked so dire, but from what I read so far in the book, the main character seemed to be quite positive despite of the many issues he's facing. I think I wouldn't fare as great as him or be able to snap out of the depression as fast as him. I guess that's why one important training in becoming an astronaut is the mental preparation.

□ Last weekend I had quite a medical scare. Something was wrong with me internally. It has happened before but last weekend it was 100 times worse. I was seriously freaking out and that included freaking out about having to go to a doctor and accept the diagnosis which in my mind would involve some major treatment. I got all sad because I was alone and I really wanted someone to accompany me to the doctor, but I had no one. One of the reason I also hesitated about seeing the doctor is because the nearest doctor to me now is a guy and I was feeling uncomfortable in telling him what's going on and dreaded having to be inspected by him, especially if the inspection was anything like I had before, but then on Sunday evening I was getting a headache which is actually not unusual and I was feeling worse. Either I got freaked out to the point that I became logical or I just got logical on my own, I decided I should just go see Dr. Edmund and get medicated as soon as possible. Delaying the visit to the doctor, any doctor, could mean really bad things for me. Dr. Edmund is this very soft spoken doctor. Confession: my first instinct with soft spoken people is not that of trust and delight. I think it has something to do with how it's not in my gene. If I see my family, we're just more of the loud fast talking people, so soft spoken people make me impatient. This time around though, the visit to Dr. Edmund, I think I start to like him a bit. When I first had to go to him, he just made me miss my old doctor. My old doctor was this older lady who can be very strict and will be telling you off like a mother would. Dr. Edmund was so different, once he offered me sleeping pills to help me sleep when I told him I always couldn't sleep well. When I told this to my old doctor, she told me to stop being stressed out and just relax myself. I declined Dr. Edmund's offer for the sleeping pills by the way, because I wasn't ready to rely on drugs yet. So anyway last Sunday after talking to him, I asked him if he was going to give me a certain drug which I got when this last happened to me. I didn't want that drug because it made me uncomfortable. He asked if I was sure and in the end agreed with my request. I couldn't imagine this happening with my old doctor, she would hear none of it. Dr. Edmund is nice that way. So I got my drugs and this week, it's been a very worrying week. I was thinking it's like one big lie, on the outside I look fine, but on the inside internally something is very wrong in my body and the drugs did seem to help but there's something else not happening and I began to wonder if me rejecting the drug and having to take higher dosage on the other drug cause me some harm to my body. Every day this week I was hoping for something good and when it didn't happen, I became more worried. Today finally it seems that things are doing well. I still have to finish my medication and watch myself so that I don't somehow trigger the illness back. It was seriously really really scary last weekend, really scary. By the way, Dr. Edmund offered me the sick letter and it's twice now that I rejected his offer. I wish I didn't have to but I just had things to do, the timing is just not right. When I think about this, my mind goes back to the time the word "detached" was used on me and I get really upset all over again :(

□ On a nicer news, I just want to say that I love some of the aunties that sell my food. They're in different places, selling different things. They know me because I am so predictable and they are nice. They're happy when they see me or tell me they haven't seen me in a long time when I haven't been around. This week one auntie in the Korean place gave my order ahead of the queue because she knows that's what I always order and today the soup auntie gave me a discount just because I asked for less rice. I'm okay about paying the full price, but she just wanted to be nice to me. I also sometime get discount when I get my Saturday lunch (if I'm not eating out) and I'm served by this particular auntie. She always has a big smile for me when she sees me, just seems to be glad that I come again and if she's handling the cashier, she gives me some discount and that always makes me smile :) So when I sometime always complain (sometime and always there, what a contradiction) about things in Singapore, well there are these people who do make me feel good about people in Singapore :P

□ Japanese class tomorrow *sigh* I feel like I'm struggling. I'm so at a disadvantage compared to the other classmates because they speak and write Chinese and I don't and pretty much I'm lacking all the Kanji knowledge that I should be having by now. I guess I haven't been trying. By trying I mean studying it every day. Seriously come on, doing that would mean using the time I use to relax and watch stuff (yes, pretty much using up my lazy time). One time I got so demoralized that the thought came if I should just quit. I don't want to quit just because things are difficult, but I'm not having the slightest bit of fun here and it's just so much work just to keep up with the homework. Knowing me, I would just continue on even though I feel so unhappy and so burdened. As once written before, things would just be less painful for me if I can just quit, but damn it I just don't.

Well that's about it peeps. As said earlier, there's nothing interesting here. Hope your days are gloriously wonderful!

:) eKa @ 10:59:00 PM • 0 comments

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