Erratic

Time started: 23:29
Place: My room (Alawa)
Listening to: "Heart's a Mess" - Gotye
Mood: Depressed

It's been nearly a year since I've updated this blog. Over the last couple of years I've become more of an introvert that I just don't express my feelings any more. Not even in writing.

A lot has happened in the last 11 months.

Mum and I went on a trip to Bali and Lombok, Indonesia. We had an amazing time. The locals were amazing people and so was the scenery. It was amazing how the tribal villagers lived in such poverty yet they were the happiest people I've ever met. This leads on to the purpose of writing this entry...how ashamed I feel with myself...being so lucky...yet so unhappy...

In December, Levon came to visit me and he proposed to me during Christmas on Casuarina beach while watching a lightning storm. We are now engaged. It has made me extremely happy. We shared 6 wonderful weeks together. We went to Tasmania and had a great time. We knew more about each other and realised how happy we make each other, and how much we love each other. I also got offered a job at Darwin High as a music teacher which is what I am working as now.
I love my job. I love the school, and I love my colleagues and students. I feel like my life has more meaning and direction than it has ever been but why do I feel so depressed?

I have it so good. I have everything working for me in life and in love yet I feel like the worst person in existence. I feel so angry all the time. I am so angry at myself I take it out on other people...the people I love the most. This erratic behaviour is sucking me into the vicious cycle I started many years ago during high school and early years of university. They were the worst years of my life...

I'm not sure whether or not it is because my life is working out so fine, yet I don't feel like deserve any of it so I've resorted to hating myself to insanity...or I'm just insane. Can people just be insane? Is it a condition you are born with or does something happen along the way you are made that way? I don't know what it is but I want it to stop. I'm hurting the ones I love. I am trying to find solace in expressing my anger in writing and hopefully I will not so be erratic if I continue to do so...

Time finished: 23:39

It's Quiet in the Top End

Time started: 01:48
Place: Alawa (Living Room)
Listening to: Tank filter
Weather: Cool and crisp
Mood: Yearning

I just realised I haven't updated my blog since before my exam last year. It is a ridiculously long time.

So here's a quick update on what has been happening with my life:

I got a distinction for my exam. Overall I did a solid performance and the audience enjoyed it. Lucinda was proud of me. I'm happy.

I made a move back up to Darwin. Mark made the move with me. He decided it was time for a new chapter in his life and try his luck finding a job up there. Moving back in with mum for the first few months was a little difficult at first. It was a very stormy road for the both of us and Mark was a good buffer.
Within a couple of months, Mark found two jobs. One as a part-time sales assistant at Best & Less, and one as a part-time lab technician at CDU. Within the next month or two he should be getting a full time job at CDU for medical research.

I had my graduation ceremony in April. It was nice to see some of my friends again and look around my home of five years once more.

I've been busy with university. I completed my first semester of my Graduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning. Only one semester to go and I will become a registered teacher.

Living back in the top end has been nice. I enjoy the constant warm weather, the beaches, the sunshine, the easy, laid-back lifestyle. It is a good reminder of  how much I've missed home. I do miss my friends in Adelaide though. I miss the buzz of restaurants in the evenings, the coffee, and the festivals.

Nature up here is definitely better. I think it's the perfect balance of metropolitan life and the wilderness. Shan Shan made a visit up here. My friends and I took her to the Mindil Beach Markets, Litchfield National Park, and just bummed around, mostly. I also go to see Eliza for the first time in years. She was delighted to see Kylie expecting. Only 9 days until Kylie's son's due date! I am really excited to meet him.

I have been super clucky lately. I don't know why...maybe it's just the age I'm at. Most of the time I'm thinking about puppies more often than babies but now it's the other way around.

I bought two fish tanks and am now a proud owner of 17 fish and a snail. I've become a little bit crazy over them. I'm looking after them like a paranoid mother. Imagine what I would be like when I actually become a mother! All hell would break loose!

I miss Levon. I haven't spoken to him much at all this year. I am lucky to speak to him once or twice a week. What is scary is I'm starting to get used to his absence. I hate this feeling. I want to need him like I used to. There used to be so many things I was dying to tell him but these days life just kind of rolls by and I don't have that need any more...we don't say much to each other. We're not unhappy, but we don't talk much. It scares me that we will run out of things to say one day and realise how unhappy we are together. I don't want that to happen because I like to believe that he is the love of my life and we are destined to be together. I love him so much...

I don't know...I guess when I'm just talking to him through a computer screen, I'm not really talking to him. It's just virtual reality. Even though it's simulated by the real him, it's just not the same. I'm sure that in real life it would be much easier. Is it bad to feel scared about our relationship? I mean, if we're so in love with each other and we're right for each other, we shouldn't feel scared at all, right? I hate over-thinking things all the time.

I hope I can see him soon...it's been just about a year since we last saw each other...
Saying goodbye to him at the airport was extremely hard...I never want to say goodbye to him like that again but I know it will happen again.

I think I deserve an award for having the longest long-distance relationship possible with the least frequencies of seeing each other...man, I really hope we're right for each other...

Time finished: 02:05
Mood: A little depressed

Spring Cleaning

Time started: 02:17

Place: My room (Wattle Park)

Listening to: "End of the World (Xilent Remix)" - Alex Metric ft. Charli XCX

Weather: Cold and windy

Mood: Exhausted

Spring is my least favourite season for multiple reasons:

1. Pollen - The devilish cause of my frequent multiple sneezes, itchy eyes, runny nose, and fatigue.

2. Weather - Bipolar in nature, it is hard to predict whether it will be sunny, windy, rainy, hot, cold, or in between. My body's thermostat just cannot cope with the sudden, contrasting, and extreme changes.

3. Cleaning - I never understood why this is the season to clean but everyone seems to clean at epic proportions during this time of year. Perhaps everyone is too lazy or cold to clean during Winter and mess piles up. I know this was the reason for me, anyway.

Well it took me two days just to clean my room. I am at fault for procrastinating for the majority of two of the days though. 284 sneezes later, my room is finally clean and tidy! I still haven't cleaned the kitchen yet and I still have to do the dishes and laundry!

Over the past few years I have developed very bad habits of being messy. I am going to have to correct these habits before I move back home to live with mum in Darwin because she has severe OCD. I much prefer being in a clean and tidy environment anyway (as I guess it would be the same for anyone, really).

I really should stop making such mundane entries...it's just too bad there's nothing interesting happening in my life right now. The next month or so will surely have improvements for the Interesting Radar...

Time finished: 02:29

Lance Dossor Prize

Time started: 01:28

Place: My room (Wattle Park)

Listening to: "Ondine" from Gaspard de la Nuit - Ravel

Weather: Cold
Mood: Dazed

I participated in a piano competition for the first time in over 6 years today.
I probably played the best I've ever played in front of people for a really long time.

I think I surprised a lot of people because I'm mostly catastrophic and a shaking dog on the stage and for the first time ever I actually had a lot of fun playing on the piano in front of Lucinda! It has been a long time since I've felt this way on stage.

I didn't win of course, I didn't expect to win but I never cared about winning. Today I played the best I could and that is a win for me.

I hope for my recital I will be at least 10 times better than I was today :).

Time finished: 01:35

Light Switch

Time started 05:42

Listening to: String Quartet no. 1 "City Streets" - Chris Larkin

Weather: Stormy

Mood: Hurt

It's scary how some people can just forget about you or dismiss you as quickly as a flick of a switch. The word "friends" is so easily tossed around these days. Are people really friends or is it just convenient to be social?

Time finished: 05:44

Chocolate

Time started: 05:18

Place: My room (Wattle Park)
Weather: Cold but fine

Mood: Restless

There's always too much of a good thing...
I went to Cocolat with some friends tonight at about 10pm and probably had too much chocolate. Had iced mocha and Tiramisu.

Now I can't sleep.

Note to self for future reference: Never have chocolate past 9pm at night...

Time finished: 05:20

/fail.

Time started: 12:11

Place: My room (Wattle Park)

Weather: Fine

Mood: Lethargic

I've been sick and nauseous for a week. First time I've been sick with a cold or flu all year.

My phone has been "sick" for about a week too. Mum tried to call but she couldn't hear me at all from her end.
I've been having much difficulty receiving and sending text messages too. It's a pity...it's quite a good phone.

Oh well, I'll just keep it now as a spare. It still works really well as a modem.

I guess I now have an excuse to buy a new phone...which I did. So much for saving money this year...

I will soon be a new Crackberry owner.

I bought a Blackberry Bold 9780 unlocked and brand new on ebay for $260 including postage. This is the most I've ever spent on a phone and I sort of regret it because I'm not that rich. Pretty darn good considering Telstra's selling it for $750 and the rrp is like $999. I hope it's as good as the reviews have raved. I didn't want to join the bandwagon of having an iPhone 4. I like QWERTY keyboards anyway and this smartphone is designed to be a smartphone and not some well-marketed piece of crap. I've always been a Nokia user up til now but Nokia hasn't been making great phones lately. I'll give Blackberry a try. I've been messing with Levon's phone which is a Blackberry. I liked what I saw so far.

The review will come once I get it and use it :).

Time finished: 12:24

My American Adventure

Time started: 00:54

Place: My room, (Wattle Park)

Weather: Cold

Mood: Reminiscent

I came back from the United States a couple of weeks ago.

I was there for a month to visit Levon and meet his family. I had the time of my life.

His parents were so friendly to me. I felt like I was part of the family straight away!

Their home was beautiful. They lived on top of a hill at Pismo beach that overlooks both the mountains and the beach.

The time that Levon and I had was fun and very revealing with the fact that we are both definitely in love and compatible.

We had serious talks about how to progress our relationship. There's no doubt the next few years will be hard still being apart but we can see the end of the long distance relationship now. We're going to make it work.

USA is a pretty awesome country (but I've only been in California and Washington). However, Australia wins hands down for being a better country to live in.

I'll go through what I did in the States.

His parents took me to some of their favourite places to dine. My first impression on American food was they were overwhelmingly huge! Take away...or should I say "food to go" was a constant term used in post-dining out experiences.

Went skydiving with Levon and his mother. There's really nothing to be afraid of with Skydiving. It was the most amazing thing ever and the view was absolutely stunning! I'd definitely do it again and highly recommend it with EVERYONE!

Levon and I flew up to Washington to meet his extended family and friends. Washington is amazingly beautiful and green. I met his family up in Lacey and his friends in Olympia and Tumwater. I fell in love with his cousin, Daniel's Border Collie x Australian Shepherd named Mika. I spoke Cantonese to his aunt Maggie and his grandmother. It was a riveting experience. We watched a baseball game in Tacoma and went up the Space Needle and Pikes Markets in Seattle. It was a very inviting and laid back place. Besides the dismall weather, it was a wonderful place to be.

San Francisco is a colourful city in every sense of the word. It has colourful buildings, colourful culture, and the language they used was also colourful.

Yosemite Valley was more beautiful than I could imagine. We had an awesome tour guide named Karen who was genuinely very friendly and excited to be our tour guide. She knew what she was doing and she really wanted us to have a good time. It was nice meeting the other campers too. There were two Kiwis, a British family, and a fellow Australian. I took about 700 photos in the valley. The views were breath-taking. The hikes were hard but we did ourselves proud at the end (even though we were unable to walk without wincing in pain for a couple of days after).

Monterey & Carmel was probably beautiful if it wasn't for the appalling weather and tour guide. The tour guide loved the sound of his own voice and spoke of nothing of interest. He even described toilets...or should I say "restrooms".

We headed back to Pismo Beach just to relax from all the touring we did. I met a lot of his parents' friends for 4th of July and witnessed spectacular fireworks and the patriotism of American residents.

The last leg of my journey involved going back down to the LA area. We first went to Disneyland for 14 hours trying to do as much as we can. It was undoubtedly fun even though I didn't really have an interest to go in the first place. All the rides, shops, costumes were very finely done with an uncanny, exceptional attention to detail.

I met up with my friend Catherine who was an exchange student a couple of years ago. It was good to catch up with her. She showed me around Huntington Beach and the South Coast Shopping mall. We chatted and reminisced about Australia.

The last day involved seeing the Hollywood sign, walking the star walk down Hollywood Boulevard, and killing time in a bowling alley before my flight.

Levon and I held each other for an hour crying at the airport...

I stopped by in Melbourne before heading home to spend time with Rebecca and her family. It was good to see William all grown up. The last time I saw him (besides before going to the US) was about a year ago when he was just a few days old! It was so nice to spend time with the Colliers and just do fun things with them like baking, watching movies, playing Munchkin and going out to nice places for food.

I'm pretty sad to be back. Back to reality. Back to depressing Adelaide, and university.

If possible, I'd turn back time and re-live my month in the USA to be with Levon in a heartbeat...it sucks suddenly being alone and without him again...

I have the future to look forward to though, and now I just have pleasant memories and a couple of thousand photos. One thing is for certain...he is in my future and we love each other. I guess that's all that matters.

Time finished: 01:17

Mood: Content

The Truth Hurts

Time started: 23:08

Place: My dining room (Wattle Park, Adelaide)

Listening to: "Something About Us" - Daft Punk

Weather: Cold

Mood: Pondering

A discussion with an old friend of mine lead me to think about lies that people tell. He claims that knowing the truth is much better than not knowing and forever wondering but the look on his face has an interesting way of proving his point.

People take up their entire lives searching for the truth with a million questions:

- Does he/she feel the same way?

- Does this make me look fat?

- Am I really bad at doing this?

- Is there a God?

- What is my purpose in life?

- Is he/she the one?

- What do people really think of me?

- When/how will I die?

We ask these questions because we're searching for the truth...and often the truth is not something we want to hear, so why do we search for these answers if we're happier not knowing? What preparations can we actually make by knowing the truth?

I told a friend of mine a truth that I knew he did not want to hear yet he persisted on knowing and talked me into it saying it'll do him more good than harm, that I have to be cruel to be kind. So I did, which only lead to more unnerving questions. His face told me a story of nothing but hurt and regret as a response to my answer.

We've all been there before...searching for a truth, and disappointed with what we'd find. Are we really happier not knowing or being lied to? Do people really move on from a truth that pains them to the core? There are two kinds of people in these situations:

- People who build a bridge and get over it, or

- People who don't, walk through the rapid stream and plummet down the waterfall.

The truth hurts and it can either make you or break you. I'm finding myself more cynical with more painful truths. What's the point if there's nothing in it for you or others? So, ignorance is bliss or knowledge is power? How should one live their life? More questions...

I guess the best way is to think, with every crisis comes an opportunity.

However I'm yet to know what that opportunity is...

Time finished: 23:24

Dad

Time started: 02:42am

Place: My room (Wattle Park, Adelaide)

Weather: Cold

Mood: Melancholic

I just had a conversation with my uncle Fook Tow. I only got to know him a little in January/February during my trip in Malaysia. We had a long conversation about the importance of life, family, and my dad.

Bringing up the subject of my dad is always hard. I have so many mixed feelings towards him. There are parts of me who resent him for all the years of neglectful attitude towards me and the responsibilities and duties of being my father. There are parts of me where I'm embarrassed by him because he can never swallow his pride and he is a hard person to be around and deal with. But there's an even greater part of me that wants to reach out to him and provide him with the love and respect he has never received his entire life. I know that love and respect has to be earned, but no-one has ever given my dad a chance. It's no wonder he is such a bitter and defensive person. Growing up in a big family full of half-cast siblings of a different mother, being the only uneducated one out of him and his ten siblings, having severe dyslexia and never understanding why he can never progress, marrying a woman who's never loved him, and never get to see his only daughter who never really has much to say to him. He lives alone in a rented apartment in a village full of pensioners where he is surrounded by nothing but his collection of model cars. It never really dawned on me just how unhappy he really is.

I will never get to know the feeling of growing up with parents who love each other and have an unbroken marriage. I will never know the feeling of having a father who would teach me how to do things or point me in certain directions in life. I can ponder, wonder, and imagine all I like, but while I'm doing that, I have a father who is hurting more than anyone can see from the surface and probably needs his daughter's love more than anything in the world. I know I don't give him many chances or opportunities. I do try, but I know I don't try hard enough. If a little respect and love is all he needs to build him some self-esteem and happiness then I will provide him that because it's so much more simpler and so much more easier to forgive than remembering unhappy memories of the past and seeing the negatives.

I will give my dad a call tomorrow.

Time finished: 03:17