Not even halfway through this week of hell.

For this week, I've been put on closing shift every other day. I'd rather have 3 consecutive closing shifts rather than this to be honest. It will feel like I won't have a day off apart from those odd days in between. For once since I started working for H&M will I have a week where I don't have consecutive days off. I liked my consecutive days off T__T.

Anyway, today I did the hellish closing shift - I'm calling these particular closing shifts 'hellish' because for some unclear reason we are closing at 10pm rather than 9pm for these 2 weeks. I'm just assuming it's because it's the end of the summer season., maybe H&M are desperate to shift their stock or are desperate to make extra monies. Although it's only an extra 30 mins stay (we get to leave at 10:30pm), never have I experienced a slower 30 minutes pass by in my life. I was literally dying at the end, I had to go into the staff room to grab a drink of water before I fainted from exhaustion or something. But we powered through, there's this one really lively girl I work with and she's all like "LET'S DO THIS GUYS!" and I'm there with her like, "how can you have so much energy at 10pm?" I was so relieved when we were allowed to leave. Tomorrow I get to have a day of rest, I'm expected to be limping all over the place tomorrow, it always happens after I do an 8 hour shift at work. Too much standing/running/walking around involved in retail.

Another reason why I'm labelling this week the 'week of hell' is because my boyfriend is finally starting his new job! Woohoo. I'm so relieved he's no longer bumming around at home, playing LoL all day, eating at weird times (he has dinner at 3am...) and sleeping his life away. But that's the good side, the bad side is that he's working for the next 3 days which means we won't really get to speak much until the end of the week, and then when the end of the week arrives, I'll be jetting off to Barcelona with my family for 5 days. He's working 9-5 for the next 2 days and then getting a review on the 3rd day for his performance and they'll discuss his salary and stuff like that. Aww, I'm really proud of him to be honest, even though this job, he pretty much had it handed to him on a plate - his old manager recommended him to a company and they directly contacted him wanting to meet him and talk about his skills. Silly boy got all cocky saying that he was right to bum around a while longer because this opportunity was coming to him - TRYING TO JUSTIFY HIS LAZINESS. My boyfriend always does this, though it makes me laugh how much he tries to argue his way through, it's quite cute. I can't wait to see him all suited up looking smart for work though. This is probably the most I've ever spoke about Simon on my blog.

Roll on the rest of the week. In some ways, I'm excited to be leaving the country on Sunday. I miss spending quality time with my family, ever since my brother got busy with his PhD and I started working, it's been many years since we went on a real holiday together as a family.

Back to reality soon.

The final weeks of my summer are quickly approaching. I can't believe it's been like... what? 3 months since I finished my last exam at RHUL, a month since I graduated and now a few weeks before I start the next and final chapter of my education. To say the least, I'm excited to learn something new, 3 years studying psychology has taught me many things, but at the same time, I'm ready to learn something new. It's scary at the same time since my degree is from a scientific background, I might not have the same business foundations as the majority taking the course. But oh well, I'm sure I'll manage one way or another.

Reflecting on my summer, not a lot happened at the beginning. I quickly moved into the lazy mode right after exams ended, just because it was well-deserved. I mean, who wouldn't want to spend at least a good few weeks doing nothing but sleeping and eating when all you've been doing for the last 2 months is cramming for exams and stressing over how badly each exam could go? 

Getting to the point, I'm just grateful for everything I've achieved/people that have supported me this summer. Obviously, starting with my valuable 2:1 degree (pretty much my "passport" to future employment opportunities/further education). Landing a part-time job at the right time, giving me the opportunity to experience business before I study business and also to earn some extra pocket money so I can treat my family. My boyfriend for his support through exam time and all those times he's celebrated my success with me, always being there to hear out my good news. Finally, my parents for their support and encouragement in my future plans - without their financial input, I wouldn't be able to afford to pursue a masters in HRM, without their encouragement, I would still be dithering over what I want to do in the future. I'm just so glad that even though my interests and choices of paths in career have changed so many times in the space of 3 years, they still continue to support me rather than question me and make me doubtful of myself (which actually, I was scared of when I decided I wanted to do HRM...) 

Right now I guess I'm at the stage of finalising my summer, trying to get back into the mindset of having a routine everyday once I begin masters. I don't quite know what to expect because it's a new course for me, a new university, a new routine of travelling and learning where buildings are. I'm excited to finally experience studying inside central London even though it will undoubtedly blow a big hole in my bank account (darn TFL and their sky-rocketing travel prices -___-), but who knows where this course will take me? I'm just most excited about the opportunities HRM will open up for me!

Emotionally Tiring.

When you're tired of trying the same thing over and over again with someone.
When you're sick of the empty promises that are made to you.
When someone breaks your trust so many times that you can no longer trust them.
When you stay awake for hours worrying about someone.
When you always have to prepare for the worst to happen.
When you can't stop thinking about the possibilities.
When you can think of nothing but negative thoughts.
When you always put their happiness before your own.
When your heart has broken 100 times but you still try.
When you try your hardest to hide the sadness away but everyone can see it.
When your heart sinks as you hear what you don't want to hear.
When the person you care about most never listens to the words you say.
When the person you care about most never bothers to remember things you tell them.

Me right now.

Bad day ended up better than expected.

My day started off badly for a couple of reasons.

Wanted to wake up early to fix my sleeping a little but I kept snoozing my alarm so I ended up waking up at 1pm... again. Better than the time I woke up at 5pm though. The day seems so pointless when I wake up really late. Also, because I have nothing to do until Uni starts, I'm sitting around at home eating lunch when I wake up then heading back to bed if I'm really tired =/ I wanted to sleep early tonight so I could wake up comfortably and handle a 9 hour shift at work.

Was supposed to see the boyfriend today but he had other plans so things didn't work out. I'm still sad and have been for 2 days since he's crap at communication when he's "busy", but I'll get over it I guess. I don't really care anymore tbh, he's done it too many times. Doesn't take any time at all to send a quick text to see how my day was or how I'm doing from time to time you know. Maybe I'm just being too demanding but yeah... Those are my expectations.

But, the day got better because of another couple of reasons.

I perfected my carbonara! On Monday I made carbonara for me and my boyfriend and it was the 2nd time I'd tried to. Both times, I found that the sauce kept scrambling within seconds of me adding it to the pasta. So it looked a bit of a mess by the time I was serving it =( After reading some tips about how to make the (supposedly) perfect carbonara, I finally got it to suit my tastes. I realised that I like carbonara without all the garlic and shallots rubbish in it, the taste of those is way too strong for my liking =/ so I left those out today. Also, I poured the sauce over the pasta before I turned the hob on. It looks like using residual heat is better than pouring sauce onto heated pasta - duh! I thought the problem was me using whole eggs rather than yolks for a while. Looks like it can work both ways. Woohoo, I think I'll get it right everytime I make it after I make it a few more times.

Mum probably saw how sad I looked today because my day started off rubbish so she took me to Richmond for a riverside walk with Dad. I was kinda lazy and reluctant but it was better than not doing anything at all. Hanging out with my Mum and Dad wasn't so bad anyway, too bad we ate lunch already at home or else it would've be perfect with some fish and chips at the end.

Ended up taking a nap when I got home, I felt really sick after taking a nap though, I had that yucky seawater smell up my nose for a few hours which made me feel really nauseous. I felt better after dinner though and even better after a hot shower so it wasn't all that bad.

I can't wait to get back to work tomorrow, too many things on my mind that I don't want to think about right now. I just want to bury myself in work until the end of the day, go home, sleep, rinse and repeat.

Finally back on Mac OS.

After months of using nothing but Windows 7 on my Macbook I've finally gone back to using Mac OS. I guess I missed having everything, because my Windows 7 was partitioned to about 1/6th of my hard drive there wasn't much I could actually transfer over to Windows - plus, what's the point of transferring anything from Mac OS when they'll just be on the same laptop? Also, Windows 7 did run a LOT smoother than Mac OS, just because Windows is more compatible with i7, or so I was told. But startup is a lot faster as well as a range of other things.

The only things that really did get to me was not having Microsoft Word when I needed it, such as to do my personal statements for masters application... I had to keep switching back and forth, also, I was using Wordpad so sometimes my CV would look all messed up because I originally wrote it on Word. Sigh, why can't they just make all Wordpad/Word documents compatible with each other?

The main reason for me using Windows though is probably League of Legends. LoL on Mac looks really weird... Plus the fact that it's a "beta" client doesn't sound very reliable. But oh well, it's playable for now at least. Boyfriend fixed all my hotkeys and stuff in game when he was round yesterday, that was another reason I couldn't be bothered to play on Mac because I had all my custom hotkeys and stuff on Windows.

Also, it just dawned on me now that there's only a month left until I have to start education again just after graduating a month earlier. Why does time always go so fast? Before I know it, I'll have finished masters and I'll have to go into work *sob*

I don't want to work, yet.

Retail.

Yes, I knew I'd write one of these bitching-about-retail posts eventually.

It makes me sad that there are so many nasty customers upstairs where I work. There was one that wanted to refund something they bought 6 months ago, when refused, she got verbally aggressive towards our manager claiming that the receipt didn't say when clearly it did. I have no idea how she could still argue that she was in the right. I'm glad I wasn't the one that had to deal with her. Today, there was an instance where a customer asked me what I could do about this dirty toy she had picked up and (I assume) she wanted to buy. So I told her we can't give her a discount for it because it's not a manufacturing fault and she was like "yeah, but it's dirty", so I told her that if she buys it and the dirt doesn't come off when she tries to clean it, she can bring it back for a refund. After that she got angry at ME, claiming that I was telling her to buy a dirty toy for her baby. In my head I was like "THEN DON'T BUY IT" but obviously working in retail you have to be fake and so all I could do was apologise. I wasn't even telling her to buy it, I was just telling her our policies LOL. Calm yourself woman.

Then later on in the day, I came out of the stockroom to serve a customer and I hear a woman asking her if she's ok and the woman at the till looked so confused saying "yeah? I'm paying..." then the woman that asked her the question started referring to her as "some stupid woman" when she was talking to her friend. It was just awkward because I felt bad for the woman I was serving since I'm sure she didn't do anything rude to the other woman to deserve it. She looked really sad and confused and I didn't really know what to say. I wanted to be all like "just ignore it, we get customers like that a lot here" but it doesn't really sound appropriate does it?

I was only working 4 hours today. So much shit happens during a day working at retail.

Past month.

So this past month, I've been busy working and applying for masters really. From the last entry I made, I probably mentioned how much I was hating retail. Right now, I've gotten to the I-don't-mind phase, only because I've gotten used to it and the people are actually really nice there (aside from a few). JUST when I started getting used to working on ground floor ladieswear, they moved me to kidswear =____= at first I was a bit meh about it because come on, I just get used to wear (oops! I mean 'where' - the effects of working in retail, I've already been brainwashed) everything is and now you're throwing me into a new area? At least my floor manager is lovely in kidswear, she always offers to help out if I'm finding things difficult or if the situation is bad when we're closing. I remember on ground floor I was too scared to ask for help because they might call me slow or criticise me unfairly LOL. I've come to accept that retail is retail, I wasn't expecting it to be some laid back easy job anyway but as for a first job, it's adequate. It was just the management I was exposed to was really poor when I started, I was glad at least some co-workers agreed with me on that part. But no, kidswear is lovely, there's just a lack of staff on kidswear so you tend to get angry customers staring at you when you're alone at the till.

Aside from work, my life's been pretty good, I've been given an unconditional offer to study MA in Human Resource Management in Westminster University which is awesome. It's a shame the fees aren't as awesome. I also applied to Kingston University, but the thing is, I'll be in a dilemma over which to choose. I love the course at Westminster but the location of Kingston is more ideal, I would save money on travel since I could get a bus to Kingston. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it of course. 

Things on the relationship side have been okay on the most part. I tend not to talk about my relationship on here just because I like to keep my feelings about these things private. They could be better but they're alright for now, there are some days where I still feel disappointed, let down etc. But you know, at the end of the day, all I can do is wait and hope that things will change. It's almost been 6 months but when I think about it 6 months is still pretty new so maybe I'm just being impatient for perfection. I have the right to though don't I? It's hard to trust someone who has broken your trust so many times already in 6 months. 

Since I've had acceptance into university for the upcoming year, I pretty much have nothing to do LOL. I said this to my boyfriend yesterday that my days from now until September are meaningless because I already know what I'll be doing at the end of summer - studying. Because of that, I've pretty much screwed up my sleeping pattern big time this week. Take today for instance, I woke up at 7pm... I've been staying up to play League of Legends with my boyfriend which is so bad. Since he's nocturnal like me, we're a really bad pair :( I have work tomorrow at 10am as well. I have no idea how I'm supposed to sleep. In fact I should be sleeping right now.