Hallo~

Saying hello in Dutch because I recently just came back from Amsterdam!~

Amsterdam was pretty good, it was a nice little holiday for me and the boyf since we've both been stressed out as fuck from work/study (or in my case, work AND study... fml). Was just nice to spend 5 days alone together in a different country, eating, exploring and sleeping. But somewhere deep inside, I felt guilty because losing out on 5 days revision is a very big deal as I have come to realise now. Oops.

Right now my discipline level is sky high, I can't afford to step out of this schedule I planned for myself that takes into account work and revision and things like New Years, Xmas etc. So far I've worked the hardest on xmas day because of worry, when I worry about things like exams, everything else doesn't matter, I work like 1000x harder than I plan to because I hate having sleepless nights worrying about not having enough time to revise. I don't really feel like I can complain to anyone either because it was my choice to go on holiday for 5 days. So far, things are going well, I've had to work around some unexpected last minute things like my parents inviting the boyfriend round for xmas eve dinner, therefore I couldn't revise that day, hence, I had to work 2x harder on xmas day than all other days. I've also got to work around NYE, new years and a friend's birthday too. Luckily, I've taken some weeks off work, finally putting those holiday hours to good use.

Work has been a pain in the ass too, I've been put in the dilemma of choosing between extra hours = more money but less time to study or working less hours = less money and more time to study. Of course I've chosen money because I've had to buy xmas presents, mum's birthday is around the corner and she wants huge presents this year for some reason... It just means I have to cram more study into less time... ugh, life.

Only 2 weeks to go until exam period is over though, I can't believe how quickly time has gone, in 2 weeks I'll have done my semester 1 exams and then I'll be onto the last part of education for good this time. I say this every time but seriously, I cannot take studying any longer!  

Progress is slow

Trying to complete 2 x 2500 word essays at the same time is painful, tiring and stressful.

I keep looking forward to next Sunday because I'll be flying to Amsterdam for 5 days! It's a shame I have a shitload of work to complete before that, I'm literally working up to the day before I leave :( I wish I didn't have work to go to so I could chill with my family before I leave. Working and studying is really tough as I have said before. Especially because it's Christmas season it was really difficult for me to get this break and not have to do overtime at work for a week. But what can I do? I need money for Christmas presents and for the holiday so if I don't work and have my weekends back to relax and do nothing, I get no money... The experience of having no money to spend is worse than going to work when I don't want to, in my opinion and experience. It's hard enough asking for holiday when you're a part timer but it's even harder working till 11pm for the busy season. I don't want to get home by midnight T___T.

I'm just waiting for next week to come so I can relax and do nothing for 5 days. No coursework to think about, no work to go to - just the guilt of being on holiday when I have 4 exams to revise for.

Shit.

Mind fart.

Literally. I'm just making an entry for the sake of making an entry.

I feel like superwoman right now because today I've done nothing but go lecture, do group work, come home, sleep, eat, play LoL, do as much of my essay as possible in just over an hour. I've actually managed to do almost half of my last essay in the space of an hour. I planned to do most of it today because Tuesdays are the days where I actually finish lectures at a decent time, but since I only had like 4 hours of sleep the night before, doing work straight away when I got home was no option. Today was a classic example of (do minimal) work, rest, play.

I've been ill for the past week which sucks because I turned 22 last Sunday with a bit of a cold. In fact, I still have a bit of a cold but it's not as bad as the week of my birthday. My manager gave me my birthday off but I had to call in sick the day before because I just couldn't bear being ill on my birthday. I've recovered to some extent but I still have a blocked nose at random times and a drippy one at other times.

So I've got 1 and a half weeks left of uni before I leave for Amsterdam for 5 days, a much needed break and then I have revision for the next 3 weeks, then exams for 4 days and then it starts all over again with semester 2. My Christmas and New Years is looking fabulousssss. I got my results for my first assignment today, I managed to get distinction somehow which is surprising. I was sure I was going to scrape a pass or something. It's good news.

Not sure what else to throw into this random entry so I'll just end it here. Need to start doing some Xmas online shopping. Bye bye monies :(

I have spare time.

OMG HOW RARE.

For the first time in over a month, I have a few hours (well, over a few hours) to do whatever I like before I need to sleep and get ready for a very intense next day. Today has been one of the days where I've actually kept to my personal schedule in going to lecture, coming home, eating lunch, taking a nap, hitting my personal target in getting coursework done and now I'm here, chilling like a penguin with nothing to do. It feels good, damn good.

So, I'm just taking some time to reflect on this month so far, I can't believe it's mid November soon, I remember the last time I blogged on here, I was all like "I can't believe it's November already". Today, I came to the realisation that I'll be turning 22 in less than a month. Ouch. I don't want to be 22 because like being 18, being 21 was awesome. I felt invincible, especially with graduation - you know that feeling of going onwards and upwards... Until I came back to education and decided to pursue a masters of course. But hopefully the same will apply once I graduate again, onwards and upwards into a career specialising in HR.

Submitting my first piece of coursework on Sunday was a relief, 1 down 3 to go in a sense. This is the first time I've submitted anything using the Turnitin system, I've always heard of it was never used for my undergrad. I find it quite cool that you can essentially see how much you've plagiarised in your essay before you submit a final piece haha. Once you submit something, within minutes it gives you a % of how much of the essay can be found online. Luckily everything that was highlighted as potential "plagiarism" was the whole of my references part. So now I'm onto my next essay which is a literature review and it's easy as pie because I must've done about 100 of these throughout the 3 years of my undergrad. Woo.

For the rest of tonight, I'm bringing out the snacks, tea and dramas that I've missed so much. Goodnight world.

When you don't sleep properly for a week, it kinda catches up.

And it hits hard. 

I've been having crap sleep all this week, mainly because of my boyfriend coming round at 8am and me sleeping at 5am meaning I've been getting, on average, 3 hours of sleep on the odd days. When it gets past 12, I get some suddenly burst of energy and wakefulness that the whole "sleeping early" idea just doesn't work. I would sleep when he comes round but since his sleeping pattern is reversed because of his shitty job (which I have been trying desperately to get him to quit) he stays awake bothering me for a few hours before he can finally fall asleep. Then when he falls asleep, it's time for me to do my assignments... hopefully tonight, I'll have the best sleep ever even though I need to be at 8am fo my stupid workshop tomorrow at uni :( 

I'm such a wonderful girlfriend sacrificing sleep to make my boyfriend breakfast when he gets home from work. 

Wow November already?

Can't believe how fast October flew by. For me, it was a month of lectures, workshops, dates and of course, starting coursework that is due soon. Which kinda explains why there's been such a huge gap between the last time I posted on here and this entry.

I think I've said enough about my early experiences at a new university as well as studying the all-so-intense masters course, so I won't ramble on about its difficulties. Recently, I've been feeling these 3 hour lectures more and more though, before, I didn't really mind them early on in the course but nowadays, I always find myself checking how many slides are left, checking my watch to see how long is left, doing other reading rather than paying attention to in-class discussions. Some lecturers just ramble on way too long, like my lecturer in today's class, he spent around 20 minutes talking about one slide. Sure enough, things are explained very well but to others (like myself), we just want to move on. The thing that annoyed most people was the lack of breaks, it was pretty much a solid 3 hour lecture without breaks and too much discussion.

Went to see my boyfriend's place after class, with that said, I don't think I mentioned anything about meeting his parents. I met his parents for the first time a few weeks ago and ever since then, his dad has always been wanting me to come round for dinner. The first time I met his mum as well, she gave me a brow threading session haha. His dad is so adorable, he speaks random Cantonese words to me and my boyfriend tells me he gets concerned that I don't eat enough during dinner. Typical Asian parents though right? On my boyfriend's birthday, I had a skin reaction to the lobster we had and today I saw my boyfriend's dad staring at me when I took my first bite of dinner and he was like "he's really concerned about you since you got a reaction last time" ahaha, his dad is too cute. I quite like his dad's cooking though, he can really make a nice family meal, he made Vietnamese curry today and it was really good, there was potatoes and chicken in it. There was one time he made pho as well, it had been a long time since I've had pho so it was a nice experience to have it again. I love how there's always something new to try when I go round to his for dinner =) my dad was all like "that's like your second home now isn't it?" aha damn right it is. It's been too long since we went out to eat though, I kinda miss it :(

Another aspect of my life other than my love life and uni is work. I've been permanently moved (yet again), to the home dept. At first I was kinda apprehensive about it because I wasn't a big fan of home because every single time we were expect to tidy the department on our own and it was just borderline possible most times and impossible at other times. But my manager assured me that there's going to be departmental changes and new staff will be joining the home dept to help out so closing won't be too bad. I just want to know when exactly these new starters are starting because at the moment, there's just this one girl who I've been with and for some reason, my hours are doubled the week after next =/ hopefully it's only for one week because I can't do 16 hours a week even if I was desperate for money. Got deadlines, man. Also, I'm on stocktake this Sunday so I start work when the shop closes and end work at 10pm *cries* stocktake will be so much fun, counting every individual piece of home-ware. Fun fun fun. Luckily the new girl is with me and we get along so it shouldn't be too bad. I'm taking pleasure in the fact that I won't have to deal with any customers that day. Retail is stressful but just think of the money, just think of the money. Also, I'm working xmas eve and boxing day, should be heaps of fun with heaps of rude customers - yay.

I've been back into watching K-dramas as well, I have a couple I want to watch after the current one I'm watching. I like watching dramas after they finish because at certain episodes later into the series, they like to leave a cliffhanger WITHOUT a preview of the next week's episode so you're just left there like "UGHHHHHH" so for me, I can never watch dramas whilst they're airing. Good thing and bad thing since each episode is one hour long, it eats up a lot into my procrastination time =/

So just to wrap this entry up, nothing exciting again going on in my life, probably won't be anything majorly exciting until I finish this degree and start job hunting. This week is full of essay writing and socialising because my parents are jetting off to Czech Republic for 4 days - gives me an excuse to do things slowly and see my friends without my mum being all on my case like "DON'T YOU HAVE AN ESSAY TO WRITE?" as soon as I step one foot out of the door. 4 days of peace - hurrah!

First piece of coursework finally started!

Hurrah.

I've been putting this off for about 5 days now. Everyday it was pretty much like, "ok today I have too much to do, so I'll start tomorrow..." and tomorrow became tomorrow which became tomorrow... Etc. But FINALLY, I've forced myself to make a start at least, despite having notes to do after lectures, dates to see people, work to go to, AND fitting in precious 'me' time... It's really no joke when people say juggling work, school and social life is difficult because it really is - especially when you're aiming to do well. I have a classmate who juggles all of that PLUS childcare for her 2 kids. Respect out there to all those studying and working mothers.

So my first piece of coursework is my economics based one. Not really one I would like to start my masters degree with =/, economics is so new to me, I've never touched on anything to do with economics before so it's a really grey area. I have to conduct some STEEPLE analysis on a supermarket of my choice. I chose Waitrose because I know everyone will do Tesco haha. Waitrose is more interesting in terms of environment, ethical and social factors anyway. So this is due 11th November, I have 3 other pieces of coursework due AND I need to consider what I'm doing for my project as well... Masters is really no joke. It's so tough already T___T.

Today I had a really crazy day, the rain made travelling to uni really stressful, my tube came like 10 minutes late and so I barely made it into class. Luckily I have a classmate who lives in the same area and I happened to bump into her on the platform. After the 1st 3-hour lecture, I had 30 mins to grab some lunch - which happened to be just some chips from McDonalds. Headed to my next 3 hour lecture which ended early, got back to Hounslow and bought some crisps from Tesco - I was starving at this point and it would take another 10-20 minutes to get home by bus so desperate measures had to be taken even if I was sacrificing my health for junk food. Got home finally and made myself some dinner, showered, ate, then sat down with some green tea and powered on with my coursework. So I pretty much had a non-stop day today. I slept ridiculously early yesterday so I guess I have heaps of energy right now after a 12 hour sleep. Only now am I satisfied with the amount of work done so I have a few hours of 'me' time which I'm really glad about.

TL;DR - Masters is hard and I'm failing at keeping to personal deadlines to start my coursework - I need more self-discipline or else I'll be in trouble!

I hate mornings.

I've accepted long ago that I am no way a morning person. I just have some sort of silly inability to sleep early or wake up early for that matter. Last night I only managed to get 4 hours sleep before having to drag my ass out of bed and get ready for my 10am lecture.

Getting ready when I'm half asleep has never really been a problem for me but for some reason everything just went badly this morning. I managed to burn my neck with my straighteners and because I was so tired, the pain didn't even sink in until I left the house an hour later. On that note, as my bus was approaching the stop, I realised I forgot my damn Oyster card meaning I had to go back and get it or else I'd end up having to pay an awful lot to travel for the day in cash fare. If any of you have ever visited London or live in London, you'll know that cash fare is like, the biggest rip off ever. As I got to my changeover stop, I find out that my connecting line is closed due to some fire alert which was being "investigated", I had to take the bus to uni from Piccadilly which took me 30 mins because London was so chock full of traffic in the morning. As a result, I was 20 mins late to lecture and had to do that embarrassing walk into lecture midway through the lecturer talking about market competition. At least 2 others arrived after me, I guess I wasn't the only one dependent on the bakerloo line to get to uni. To make matters worse, my lecturer caught me falling sleep LOL, she was like "ok let's move on before people start falling asleep" and then she looked at me and smiled. Oh dear.

I was so glad to get home later on in the day, I made myself some lunch and went straight to bed. Had the best nap until 8pm. Now it's 1am and I'm preparing the reading and materials for tomorrow's lecture. My horrid 2:30-9am day is tomorrow *cries*. Actually Friday is probably worse, I have a law workshop from 10-5 and then work straight after. Oh, this must be what it feels like to be a working student - no weekends and all other time is invested into studying because the weekend is for working.

My boyfriend treated me to my birthday present early yesterday, he bought me the iPad mini because my old netbook was becoming a brick to carry around. Especially when I have to lug it around with me when I see my boyfriend after uni. He's the bestest boyfriend ever, cares so much about my well being and making my life easy :D I was so happy afterwards.

So here I am being conflicted between doing work and playing on my new iPad. First world problems.

Low immune system. Bleh.

Ill for the 2nd time in the space of a month.

London has too much bacteria, pollution and diseases floating around. I feel like it's taking a toll on me. Was sick during induction week, recovered for a week and now I'm sick with the same thing again. Oh, I have 8 hours of work tomorrow as well. Cries.

At least despite being sick and wanting to just crawl into bed and lay there until my illness disappears, I've made it to all my lectures AND have kept on top of reading. I just finished updating my notes for this week's set of lectures woohoo. So Sunday is DEFINITELY my relax and do-nothing day. Last year it was read for one lecture every day, this year is read for two lectures a day... Since I have other commitments like keeping my relationship up which means seeing my boyfriend 2 evenings a week and working on the weekends. It's tough, no shit, but I feel much more productive doing things and getting things done rather than sitting at home and lazing around. I feel like since completing my undergrad, I only allow myself to relax and do nothing when everything else is truly completed to the best of my ability. Oh man, the routine of studying has become my way of life /facepalm.

Good news is I'll be going on my 3rd holiday of the year when I get Christmas break. Yay yay. But it also means I'll have to do a lot of overtime during Christmas break when I get back to make up for the difference. My £61 a week earnings isn't going to cover my holiday cost, though my lovely boyfriend said he's willing to pay for the hotel side of things but I don't really want to grow dependent on him that much yet. I'll work hard for my money hurhur. I just can't wait to get away with him because since I started working/education and since he's started working full time, we haven't had any relax time apart from the 4 hours we see each other on the 2 days during the week. When we think back to our first holiday to Barcelona we really miss it. We want to go on holiday once every 6 months haha. Not sure how realistic that is though. Relationship maintenance.

Other than that, things have been great. I'm looking forward to my boyfriend's birthday at the end of this month, he'll be turning 22, the big boy. I just can't wait to plan his birthday and stuff, I've started to save for things like cake and dinner ^___^, need to buy and decorate the card too and make the present I bought him presentable. This will be the first birthday I've celebrated with him, I'll be sure to make it the best birthday he's ever had muhahahaha. I'm too good of a girlfriend sometimes, but it makes up for all those times I bully him and make him obey me LOL.

Let the busy times commence.

My first week at University studying masters was quite insightful. First of all, I learnt that in masters, due to the classes being much smaller, more discussions take place and with that, more group work. Until recently, I've never really been big on speaking aloud, expressing my views and contributing to in-class discussions. I guess that's just how I've always been, even in secondary school, teachers used to have nothing negative to say apart from contribution to in-class discussions. But ever since I was made to do presentations and working in groups much more during my final year studying Psychology as well as entering the working world with my part-time job - I can really say hey, I actually have a voice. As well, I don't think I really wanted to talk much before because I was afraid of outside perspectives on myself - now I could really care less about what people think. But of course, studying masters, you rarely ever get those judgemental idiots that are quick to disrespect you and criticise your way of thinking. People are generally more objective, open minded and if they do have something against your views then it's always constructive and never just because they don't like you. I guess this is one aspect I like about studying masters - everyone is friendly and open to listening to your opinion. I really feel like after a year of these group chats every week, presentations and workshops - I'll really develop as an individual by the time I get my 2nd degree.

Generally, the lectures were great. I like all my lecturers which is a good sign. Not much to say on this part since the first week is always "introductory" lectures that just outline what is it you're actually studying. I have so much coursework though and exams in January T__T, this will be new to me since I've never actually had exams in January - only 8 exams in the summer for the past 3 years of my undergraduate =___= I guess it'll be interesting having to split revision time evenly across the year rather than cramming everything in a month before the exams. There's just so many dates and deadlines to remember because there's also workshops going on during November and I pretty much have one for every module I study which is a pain. 

Other than that, my job has been getting more and more enjoyable - maybe because I work less hours now. I don't know how people can handle full time retail. But I had a meeting with the store manager yesterday and she's keeping me as a permanent member of staff now! Awesome since I actually have some income coming in, I was trying to think of a backup plan in case my temporary contract doesn't get renewed but looks like I won't have to anymore. I feel very lucky to have such a lovely department manager, store manager and assistant store manager. People say working in retail is horrible but it's really who you work with that matters. I love kidswear despite the horrible customers and the annoying plastic hangers that barely fit the clothes so you look like you're trying to rip people's clothes up trying to get the hangers off in front of the customers at the cash desk, the mess people make trying to find the right size clothes. But I really love the people I work with so it's not all that bad. 

Roll on 2nd week of masters!

 

University & Life.

So how have I been recently? 

I've been fat, busy and poor. Pretty much sums up my previous week up till now. 

Had fast food THREE times last week - crazy fatness, my cholesterol levels must be through the roof right now. Don't mind me if I have a heart attack sometime soon. Had to have KFC twice just because it's right outside my uni and to be fair, I hadn't had it for a very long time. Had McDonalds as well sometime during that week and then Subway when I was at work this weekend. To make matters worse for my health, I had McDonalds today as well, only a happy meal but I was so hungry okay!? Tomorrow, I swear I'll grab a subway or something. At least subway has veggies right? NO MORE KFC FOR THE REST OF THE MONTH. I've also been snacking on random things this week like chocolate here and there, crisps now and then. 

As for being busy, I've been busy with enrolment and orientation/induction week at uni then I've been working at the weekend as well, manager called me and asked me if I could do 4 hrs overtime on the Saturday - I thought why not? I'm working on Saturday anyway, may as well extend it and earn some more monies. I only do these things for kidswear and not any other floor like downstairs. Turns out my old team leader from downstairs is now the new team leader on kidswear, I'm so glad it wasn't that other newbie woman, she's nice but like ground floor said - she panics WAY too much. My team leader now is just cool, calm and collected and lets us work at our own pace even though she gives us time limits. She's casual as well. I think the type of people I hate most are those that are too formal in a retail job, in retail I think as well as working and doing what you're supposed to do, it's good to have fun with your colleagues as well. So work was atrociously busy that weekend, I was so pooped by the end of Sunday and to think I had uni the next day was something I wanted to forget. 

First week of uni, I loved my first lecture. 2nd lecture I had today - I absolutely hated it. It was all economics and this lecturer we have, she uses lots of complex economic terms assuming that we all know what she is talking about. I haven't the slightest clue about economics, so I found it really difficult to do the task in the seminar afterwards, I think everyone in my little group had difficulty. It was awkward when we were asked about what we found, no one wanted to talk and so there was just this odd silence until the lecturer asked the whole class instead. Uh oh. But to be fair, she didn't make the objective of the seminar clear at all. She may as well have been speaking another language, even when we asked her for help, we still didn't understand. Tomorrow, I have 2 lectures back-to-back, so a horrible and rather long 6 hour day for me. Luckily, I don't start early so I don't need to wake up at the crack of dawn to get to lectures. But at least these 2 lectures are lectures that I'm looking forward to having the most, it's not economic related and much more hands-on in terms of HRM. Finally a lecture that isn't just history or economics. 

I'm poor right now because it's payday soon. I'm always poor near payday because I spend too much - simple as. Although I suspect next pay will be better since I've bombed my bank account by buying a monthly travel card therefore I don't need to top up my oyster every week anymore. Though, i've been spending a lot eating with the boyfriend recently =/ we've been indulging on sushi, Korean, Nandos, Japanese too much. Everytime I suggest we just have McDonalds just to be cheapos (TRUST ME TO SAY THIS), he's all like "NO MCDONALDS >:(" and I'm all like "T___T" I love how my boyfriend screws at me for having too much fast food, I used to be the one screwing at him for having McDonalds for dinner every night he was at work >:( Ahh, it's only been 1 day since we saw each other and I miss the guy. Seeing him on Thursday though, my day off from uni - classes scheduled for Thursday don't start till week 2. Can't wait :) 

So right now, I'm planning to stay up till around 8am because there's this tournament on that my boyfriend got me into watching and I reaaaally want to watch it even though I'll be a zombie tomorrow - yay for 4 hours sleep tonight! 

Hectic Sunday.

Another busy day at work.

Ever since sales kicked off, the shop floor looks like a bombsite after every 2 hours. I was so tired today my brain was running at about 10%, I made so many mistakes at the beginning of my shift - got confused with this guy's euros and coins that I accidentally overcharged him 5-10p without even realising or knowing what the exact amount was, typed in £500 received instead of £5 so I was shocked to see the change amount was something like £495. My brain was too slow to even try and work out how much the correct change was. Then these rude customers all came at once, some just looked unimpressed with the till queues and I overcharged this lady by accident and she was like "double check before you overcharge people" - er it was an accident, I'm sure you've made them in your life as well. What a bitch. Then there was this woman with a crazy kid running around causing havoc and his mum was unable to control him, my colleague got annoyed and said something and the mum got pissed off - I had to serve this angry mum as a result and it wasn't nice with her throwing bags at me and giving me dirty stares even though I did NOTHING to her. Then she demanded to see our manager - good, I'll let the manager deal with this bitch.

Closing time. I closed a section I've never done before and it took me pretty long, the table was trashed and I mean trashed. It looked as if someone had come and swept everything off the table and dumped it all back. There was shit dumped WITH THEIR HANGERS ON I mean like 10 of the same thing, I have a feeling someone (not a customer) did this, maybe a member of delivery or something - but oh well, I was left to sort the shit out. It took me forever to tidy that one damn table. Luckily someone helped me with the maternity section so it was about 95% tidy by the time I got to it. Went over to homeware to help out and it by 7pm it looked like it wasn't even done at all. Homeware was trashed, even more so than my table. All of us had to come help tidy it. It was fun with all of us there though, we all chatted and laughed whilst tidying and our manager is so relaxed even though she talks with an authoritative voice when she tells us to do things. I really like the kidswear team, I get along with everyone - we're more like a family sometimes than a team. To sum up my Sunday at work, I was pretty much on tills serving rude customers for the most part, then I was tidying the baby section with babies crying and screaming everywhere. Gosh, I hate it when a mum refuses to take her baby out even though he/she has been screaming and crying for 20 minutes - like, I understand it's hard but please do everyone a favour and do SOMETHING to shut your baby up.

The best thing that happened to me today was a cute little Chinese kid waving to me after his mum and brother left after paying. He came back to the desk and waved at me before running off to join his mum. I was like awwwwwwwwh HE'S TOO CUTE. He had that typical mushroom-bowl-Asian haircut too. So cute.

Other than that, I'm completely exhausted right now, filled with greasy chicken wings and rice that I had for dinner. I'll need a couple cups of green tea to emulsify that fat before sleeping. Going to grab myself some fruit, green tea and a slice of pandan cake when I watch Breaking Bad to end my night nicely.

Already feeling somewhat stressed out.

It's only the 3rd day into my induction week and I'm already feeling stressed for some odd reason.

It might have just been because the weather was complete shite and travelling is rather stressful in itself. I still haven't quite gotten used to the whole having to leave a whole hour before class so I can actually get there on time from home. Sigh. I'm also still figuring out how to do things as well as submit all the paperwork for elective modules.

Today's induction was 3 hours long and in that time I pretty much managed to get everything important handed in such as my elective module choices. This was pretty stressful in itself, because I couldn't find the right person to hand it into at the end of the session, so I just handed it into someone that could hand it to the right person for me. I needed to hand it in asap so I can make sure I get my module choices - I think I'd hate to have to study something in my secondary choices...

Also, for some reason, I now have to write 1000 words about MYSELF based on some personality questionnaire to hand in on Friday as well as a presentation to do. Term hasn't even officially started and there's already a mini essay and a presentation to do... I can already tell this year is going to be most definitely all work and no play.

A very tiring Sunday.

Today was especially tiring for a sunday. Normally, I work on Sundays and they're usually not too bad because Sundays are usually quiet in H&M with the mornings being generally chillaxing, maybe a busy period lasting for about 1-2 hours but nothing extreme. I thought today would be like any other Sunday but OH HOW WRONG WAS I. 

When I got to work, straight away I was put onto helping set up kidswear sale... Sorry what? Kidswear SALE? I didn't hear about no sale. Turns out this is some MEGA sale, I saw tons on clothes scattered around on the floor by visuals who were arranging the shop floor to set up sale rails. I didn't even have to touch delivery today, straight away I was putting hangers onto 100 pieces of clothing all over the floor, my poor knees T__T. Then I was putting stickers onto all the sale items with everyone else, I can't believe all that took 2 hours to do. 

By the end of the busy unexpected sale day, we had 2 rails and Mount Everest in the fitting room. I have no idea how so many dumpings accumulated so easily. The people in kidswear tomorrow are going to have a really lovely Monday morning clearing 3 rails worth of dumps. Oops. 

2nd week of orientations at uni tomorrow. I can't wait till lectures actually start, I feel really disorientated going into uni and not actually learning anything yet but rather hearing about things I've been doing for the past 3 years like academic referencing, plagiarism, how to write an essay etc etc. So I've decided to give those "talks" a miss because I'm assuming they're aimed at international students who have no idea how to write essays in the UK. But still, trust the important course-related talks to be held in the morning =____=. Luckily 10:30am is the earliest one I have, which is tomorrow, the rest I have are held in the afternoon which means more sleep for me. Woohoo. I'm dreading Wednesday though, because I have work straight after uni... I'll be waking up early for my talks at 11am then finishing at 5pm, then travelling to work straight away and finishing at 10pm - a glimpse of what working whilst studying is going to feel like. Goodbye life. 

A more positive aspect of my upcoming week is that I'll have been with my boyfriend for 7 months on Wednesday (the day I have that horrible day of uni and then work *cries*). It feels like a long time. Then on Friday I'll be having a double date with a friend I haven't seen in a long time and her boyfriend. This is technically my last week of being able to go out during the day - after this week, it'll be all work and very little play (or no play at all, depends on how antisocial I'm feeling by then). 

New university, new course, new beginnings.

Just now, I found myself re-arranging and sorting out my bookmarks on Chrome, deleting all remnants of RHUL links I used to use on a daily basis throughout my course - I must say it made me miss RHUL just a little. I'll be replacing those links with Westminster uni links soon enough. Like the title says - new university, new course and a new beginning. 

I enrolled at Westminster today, I'm glad the campus was simple enough to locate, being situated right next to Baker Street station and all. The building itself is very simple to move around in, of course, for a second I forgot that London university campuses aren't very "campus-like", they're more like clusters of buildings dotted around different parts of the city. The finance office was very easy to find which was a relief as I wanted to get the fees part of enrolment over and done with before actually enrolling. I realised I had turned up for some pointless talks, such as the introduction to the university and its history - not particularly relevant to my course. Also, some annoying girls were chatting behind me which made the talk slightly unbearable to sit through. 

I spent half of the lunch break sorting out fees at the finance office so I didn't get to do anything apart from find KFC, McDonalds, Subway and Starbucks - they're all I need right? I only managed to buy a green tea from Starbucks before having to head back to the building in time for the first course-relevant talk of the day. 

This was where I met my fellow course-mates who I would be spending the next year around. The majority are girls (yet again, in a course full of girls) and are international. They're all lovely people, I felt like the baby of the class being a freshly graduated 21 year old whilst most are either married with children, been working abroad for a couple of years or started off in another field and wanted to get into HR suddenly. I met only 2 home students, one of them was from another part of the UK and the other was from London like me! Woohoo, a fellow Londoner - I felt less lonely. I only got to properly talk to him during enrolment though. I like that my class is fairly small, we're taught alongside international HRM students which is cool since our modules overlap somewhat. Enrolment was easy peasy since I was a home student, so the queue was tiny compared to the huge line of international students. I managed to enrol and get my photo taken for my ID card in 30 minutes which was great - not so great because it meant I was ridiculously early for my date with the boyfriend. 

I wasted a lot of that spare time in Costa reading through the elective module choices, we have to pick 4 optional modules to study on top of the core modules. I'm pretty much picking all the organisational psychology related modules because that's where I can fully utilise my psychology degree - luckily there are 2 in each block that I could choose. I just need to be early with submitting these choices in case the spaces get snapped up quickly. 

So far, I'm really liking the university, the course is really suited to me as well. I remember being worried that the majority of students would have a business/management related first degree so compared to them, I will have very limited knowledge in anything business/management related. But these modules are pretty much the organisational psychology course I did in third year, but expanded and in much more depth. So right now, I don't feel so worried about not being able to catch up - playing to your strengths is a very good thing to do. 

I'm looking forward to when I get my full timetable after I make my course choices. I'll need to plan working at H&M around it as well. I just hope I can cope with work and studying as well as social life =/

Mexican food, catch ups, crap weather & the start of a new chapter.

It's been a year since I've seen my main girls, I can't believe it's been so long since we've all been free and been able to meet up for dinner. We ate at Chiquitos, Mexican food - the food was okay, stingy amount of chips, bad tasting salad but at least the wrap I ordered was pretty decent. Not really worth the £10 though for the amount they served. Had a really nice catch up with my girls, it's time like this that will be really rare from now on since people are heading back to uni. But at least we managed to get one evening together chatting about life and about our futures. I found it quite exciting talking about the future with them - although not many people I know like to think about what lies ahead, I really want to. Maybe I'm just turning into a career/life driven woman but I'm really excited for what lies ahead in the future. I feel like I have much planned out and I can't wait to start working and working towards my goals.

I should be asleep right now because I have my enrolment/orientation at Westminster tomorrow morning. I need to find out where is this Westminster Business School is first haha. I'm really unprepared in terms of where the building is, I'm on prepared on the paperwork part. I'm excited to see how small my class is - I'll be looking around thinking these rich people around me who can afford £10k+ to study this course. I'm pretty much assuming most will be international, maybe some will be rich middle class people or maybe some might even be mature students looking to go into HR. All I'm worried about is payment of fees and stuff, this information isn't even as clear cut as it should be online so I'm hoping I can find the right person to talk to about these things. I know tomorrow will be a long day for me because I'll spend most of my time searching for buildings and departments =____=. I'll hate getting used to new environments - if only I studied at RHUL still, things would be much more straight forward. But then again, new course, new environment - not all so bad.

To make my day more exciting, I'm seeing the boyfriend tomorrow as well. I've had so many concerns ever since he started his new job working 11pm-7am =/ I still have my concerns but I guess I'll never know if this arrangement will work out until a month or two in. I'll really miss being able to see him whenever I want to which was the case in the summer. Looking back, summer felt really short. But then again, being in a relationship, you have to learn how to adapt with these situations. We can't always be living like bums, seeing each other whenever we want to, can we?

Great, now I have things on my mind and I'm in the middle of the last episode of Breaking Bad season 3. MINIMAL SLEEP FOR ME TONIGHT!

Back from Barcelona.

Finally back at my home sweet home, took a shower, ate some dinner and tucked into my own bed with my laptop catching up on things I've missed.

I feel a little under the weather at the moment. I was so glad to come back for a number of reasons, even though the weather was great everyday during my visit, there really is no place like home. Right now, I feel a little sick, I had carsickness earlier due to Dad's crazy driving, he rarely drives at night so he was blaming his bad driving on that. I think he was just tired and hungry to be honest. That carsickness feeling is still in me despite having eaten and washed myself - I still feel a little sick, no fever though.

So how was my holiday? I have very mixed opinions about this holiday, a number of bad things happened that really outweighed the good things about the city itself and my experience of being in Barcelona for a second time. Firstly, my brother got pickpocketed in Las Ramblas on the second day of our stay, this was really distressing and a major negative aspect of the holiday which really affected my opinion of Barcelona as a city. Unfortunately he lost 100 Euros, 2 bank cards and the wallet his girlfriend had bought for him but on the upside he didn't lose anything else that would have been in the wallet since he emptied everything beforehand. Since that day, we all went out worried about our stuff, keeping a watchful eye on our surroundings and just being plain paranoid about safeguarding our belongings in crowded areas (which was in most cases since we were quite obviously tourists visiting crowded tourist-y areas which is usually swarming with pickpocketers). It just dampened the holiday as a whole as when you go on holiday you expect the experience to be enjoyable, relaxing and free from danger - except we all felt the opposite, the holiday was not as enjoyable as it could've been because of the crime in the area, we always felt vulnerable because we stuck out a lot from people that actually lived in Barcelona.

Secondly, almost everything was goddamn expensive, almost everything was more expensive than in London, even McDonald's was £2 more expensive. Although we were willing to pay because when you go on holiday you don't want to be watching what you spend since that's not enjoyable. But £70 for lunch? £90 for dinner? Way too expensive... It really made me miss London. Also, in a lot of tourist destinations, they don't put prices on their menus outside the restaurants and just charge you any number out of the blue after you order. Everytime I ate at any one of these type of restaurants I felt like I was being scammed.

With both things combined, it really feels like some people in Barcelona are desperate for your money. It makes me pity them somewhat, in places where the economy isn't good, they tend to make money using underhanded ways such as the whole menu-pricing thing, pickpocketing, working in groups to steal your belongings. It's really shocking. My brother saw a WAITRESS hand over 7 smart phones to a one of those people that ride around in those bikes with the seats behind them - what does it say about the waitress? She's been pickpocketing customers? It's sickening to see something like this happen whilst you're on holiday. You lose all trust in the people and it makes you just want to leave the country because you feel unsafe.

I guess some upsides of the holiday was the weather itself, we had glorious sunshine and endless heatwaves for all 5 days we were there. I was really sick of it by day 5 though, walking around a park when the sun was at its highest point is really bad. Also, the seafood in Barcelona is delicious, pricey but delicious. The place we stayed at was nice, the apartment was cosy, the beds were a bit rubbish and the service wasn't great because it's not a hotel. But overall, I think I'm glad to be back more than sad to leave. I think 3 days is enough in Barcelona - I never really want to go there again because of all the crime, maybe another part of Spain where crime is less but definitely not going to Barcelona again for a long time.

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. 

First weekend of employment.

I want to quit already. 

Only kidding, although I don't particularly like it, in the sense that I can see why people complain about working in retail. My second day already and I really don't want to do this everyday LOL. I'm so happy my shifts are generous with only one day where I have to be in early and the next day where I can be in later. 

Only 6 more hours left until I can go home. It sucks working on a Sunday :( I'm missing the Wimbledon final as well and Aunt Flo has come knocking on my door on the hottest day so far. Double weep. 

Things are... better.

Still not completely fine yet, but on the way to being fine.

I learnt many things yesterday.

• Some things are worth fighting for even though it might seem like they're not at the time.
• Awkward silences are the hardest thing to overcome.
• Sometimes being vulnerable and open about your feelings is the best option.
• Having faith in someone who has hurt you is a big step forward, but is also the first step to recovery.
• Believing in someone who has broken your trust before is a brave thing to do.
• Crying in public is not as embarrassing as it seems when you're wrapped up in your emotions.
• Sunshine can improve your mood for a while.
• Being lied to is hard to get over.
• Silence is hard to break when nobody knows where to begin.
• Staring at the sun is bad for your eyes even if you're wearing sunglasses.
• Sunglasses are the best for when your eyes are red and puffy from crying or when you don't want people to know that you're crying.
• Sometimes wandering around alone is best for when you want to reorganise your thoughts.
• Calling rather than waiting is better when you're unsure. 
• Pinching yourself to stop yourself crying is not a good thing to do.
• Being hugged by the person you thought that stopped caring is the most comforting feeling ever. 

Sometimes when you overthink situations you tend to get carried away by your train of thought and it's not always the best. Although I had my presumptions about yesterday, I was mostly right about the things I presumed about but in the end, any problem can be overcome in a relationship if both are willing to. Being overcome by emotion is easy - anyone can flip out in anger or break down in sadness but having the courage to talk about things and reveal emotions, feelings and thoughts is the way to take things forward. There's nothing wrong with honesty, as long as you're honest with other people, you can be honest with yourself. 

Compromises can be the best solution, an agreement to conditions by both. As long as these promises are kept to, things can move forward back to the way they were. If not then things fall apart again. But in order for compromises to work, you have to have faith, trust and belief in each other... 

Although I don't feel strong enough to have complete faith and trust because I'm scared of being hurt again, I want to try for once and believe that I can have faith... Maybe if I show that I do have faith and belief, things will start to change. If I never have faith, things will never move forward and I won't be happy again. So, really, both of us must change in order for things to get better. 

Putting your feelings on the line can be like a double-edged sword.

When you tell someone exactly how you feel about them, you become vulnerable and exposed. But if you don't, how will they ever know?

I thought what I had was happiness, but happiness can always change within a matter of days, weeks, months. Things that happen are out of your control, decisions that other people make that affect you and your life. You feel like everything you said had been thrown back in your face and everything is a lie. You find that you think about the same thing everyday, you experience the same sadness everyday wondering where all your happiness had gone. I feel exactly like this now.

I rarely ever come out about my feelings and sad things in a blog, I'd rather keep my entries happy so I can look back and read and laugh about things a few years down the line. But right now, maybe talking about things like this will help put my heart at ease a bit more. When you tend to like someone so much that it hurts but you find that you can't do anything about the hurt because your hurt means their happiness. When the person you care about doesn't try, when the person you care about doesn't make the effort to make you happy, when the person you care about doesn't consider your feelings - these things cut deep. It hurts a lot when the person that is supposed to make you feel like the happiest person on Earth ends up making you feel like the lowest priority in their life - all because of one thing, one choice that they made in life.

Life used to be so perfect until recently when one person managed to upset me for days, I really started to think that I meant a lot to that person - after months of not believing, I started to believe. But after this week, I'm second thinking everything. I think the hardest thing to accept is that I'm never important to this person, I'm the last thing they think about when they wake up, the last thing they think about when they go to bed. How things have changed so much is their fault, I just can't find blame in myself because everything happened because of his choices. I don't see how I fit into their day anymore, I might still be theirs in name but do they treat me like they should?

So what do I do from here? I only have 2 choices - make them choose or leave. I'm that close.

This stress is unreal.

I'm dying of lack of sleep, over-fried brain, some out-of-nowhere motivation to revise when I should be resting. I'm pretty much on zombie mode right now because of exams. 

So I had my 5th exam today and surprisingly what I thought would be a disaster actually turned out pretty well. Considering I revised less than half of the content, two questions actually came up that I could answer! I was celebrating before I even started the first question. Although they were strangely worded questions, I feel like I managed to answer the question properly to some extent. I made sure to include all the keywords from the questions into my answer so that also helps. Well, it was not like I had the choice to do any other questions was there? 

I had a very sleepless night yesterday, when I woke up, I felt worse than the day where I only had 3 hours of sleep and a day out with my boyfriend straight after. Either I woke up whilst I was in deep sleep or I actually didn't get much sleep at all. I remember tossing and turning for a good hour before I actually dozed off and then I remember waking up sometime around 5-6am and then managing to get back to sleep. Disrupted sleep sucks. I can never get used to sleeping at 1-2am and waking up early. 

Anyway, the point is that driving back home after my exam was hellish. Not to mention, some golf tournament had me stuck in traffic near my uni for a good 20 minutes. 

Last exam in 5 days! The only positive thing in life at the moment.

I need to stop staying up till 5am every day.

Although I've proven to myself that I can go and sit an exam with 3 hours of sleep it's not ideal for me. This is a result of not having any 9am lectures for the whole of my third year - it's turned me into a lazy shit at most. How can psychology have lectures set at times like 4pm-6pm but the exams are mostly 9am?

Another reason why I've been up at such nocturnal times is my boyfriend. He's completely screwed up his sleeping pattern derp. So we have phone calls at 3am, ending around 5am. I don't think either of us can fix our sleeping patterns, it's just not possible unless we have 9-5 jobs. On another note, he really made me smile yesterday, he told me he left me a note from 3 months ago when he first came round to my house LOL. Obviously, I didn't find it so I was searching around for it and eventually found it crumpled up in the corner of my bookcase squashed by my huge folder. Ahh he's so adorable.

So I'm supposed to be revising right now but I've become so lazy because freedom is almost here. Instead, I'm sat waiting around for my deliveries. I bought quite a lot of clothes to last me for the summer (providing there is a summer this year), I bought a cardboard box (yes, a cardboard box) so I can ship my books away for money - I'm getting £60 for most of my textbooks. It sounds like a lot but it really isn't considering all of my books were bought for around £300 =/ I'm getting like 1/5 of the money back... sigh. But oh well, they won't do any good sitting on my bookshelf and will just end up in the attic a few years later. Finally saying goodbye to psychology!

On the positive side, I've been losing weight - the pill didn't really affect my weight, actually, it made me lose weight. I'm back on the patch now which didn't do much to my weight but I really feel like it makes me retain weight easier, so I might need to be careful. It's not worth staying on the pill for big breasts and weight loss in exchange for depression and paranoia.

Mum and Dad are going to Edinburgh on Sunday for a 3 day holiday. I hope they don't get lost, we've taught Mum how to use Google maps on her phone like 100 times already. Somehow she's still under the impression that she can't use Google maps on holiday even though she's in England. She thinks she can only use Google maps in London LOL. My parents and technology really don't go well together, yet they both have an iPhone each. Doh.

Time to revise...

2 more weeks.

Well, less than that actually.

Less than 2 weeks until I get my freedom back.

Less than 2 weeks until can say goodbye to psychology - these 3 years of study has taught me more about myself than I could ever have thought. I remember choosing psychology because I didn't have a strong interest in anything else at the time. It was pretty much choose a degree for the sake of being a graduate by the next three years. The first year was horrible because I wasn't sure if I actually wanted to do this, I didn't make the effort in revision and ended up with a bad grade by the end. Second year was when I started developing an interest for the things I was learning. At that time, I had learnt a lot about myself and somehow, the interest in speech and language sciences became my interest by the end. Now third year, I found reality, had time to think about my future, found my future, and now working towards my future.

I don't regret taking psychology at all, but if I could turn back time, I do wish I took something that could get me a degree-related job, personally. For me, it was more like I went with my interests rather than think about what could benefit me the most. Ideally, we all want to graduate and use our knowledge in that subject in our future jobs. The lack of jobs in the scientific field is actually striking - the majority of people I know that study science at degree level either go on to study PhD or end up getting a job completely unrelated to their field. But like I said, I don't regret taking psychology, it hasn't led me into a dead end, in fact, it's made me a better person. I finally understand myself compared to the me 2 years ago who was unsure of many things, unconfident in myself, a complete worry-wart. The only downside is me trying to analyse the behaviour of everyone around me - damn psychology influence. Not saying people have a hard time finding a job doing psychology though, it's all about transferrable skills rather than the degree you study. True enough, some jobs want you have a degree in something specific, but those jobs are highly specialised ones. No one said someone that studies psychology can't go on to work in an office.

So it's quite sad to be leaving Royal Holloway, July 19th will be my last time at Royal Holloway when I graduate. I'll be saying bye bye to the castle, bye bye to the Wolfson building, bye bye to Bedford library which is always overpacked. I wouldn't say I had much of a student life living at home for 2 years and only being out there in the countryside for my first year. But during the first year, I met many awesome people who I still remain friends with and hopefully will always be a part of my life even after we go separate ways. It's always hard to keep contact with friends when you part ways but if they really matter in your life, you'll make the effort to keep them in your life, and they would do the same if you mattered to them equally as much.

With that said, roll on the last 2 exams. I CAN'T WAIT TO BE OFFICIALLY A GRADUATE.

Microgynon 30.

DO NOT TAKE THIS PILL.

After doing some extensive research on this pill, I've come to the conclusion that many women experience the same side effects that are less well documented in the leaflet and are actually side effects that are more damaging to everyday life than the ones that are listed.

Microgynon 30 is a contraceptive pill, like all contraceptive pills, they contain a fair amount of estrogen and progesterone (female hormones) to prevent ovulation every month, hence, preventing pregnancy. Side effects listed are things like weight changes, skin irritations, bloatedness, nausea, headaches, breast tenderness etc etc. Depression is sometimes listed but they really fail to highlight how damaging the depression can be.

Different women respond differently to medications but from a personal experience, microgynon made my life hell for 3 weeks. Within the 2nd week, I started to feel depressed, anxious and paranoid, the only thing distracting me from these feelings was exams. Nothing changed about my concentration but when nightfall came especially, I became a different person, I would doubt everyone and everything. My relationship became a little strained when it was comfortable before, I started doubting my boyfriend, questioning him for my own reassurance. I barely spoke to my parents, but they didn't suspect a thing because of exams, they thought I was working hard when in reality I was hiding away with my own depression and paranoia in my room. Things gradually got worse on my 3rd week, the pack was finishing anyway so I thought maybe symptoms might improve the longer I took the pill. I was wrong. I was inconsolable by the 3rd week, luckily I had done most of my revision the week before hence I didn't have a tonne of stress from exams but my relationship was stressing me out, I was only stressing myself out to be honest. I was paranoid, I had doubts about my feelings for my boyfriend, I felt like it hurt to be with him because of all these doubts I had. I cried about 3 times a day, I found myself crying to sleep every night during the week, I cried until I was too tired to cry anymore. I would wake up the next day, have some lunch then proceed to get back into bed, curl up and cry some more. My life was awful, a complete mess.

The pack ended on Thursday so after not taking a pill on Friday, I started to feel a little better. I took it upon myself to research about this pill and what led me into such bizzarre behaviour. I read about what different women had to say about microgynon 30 and I found pretty much the same responses in terms of depressive symptoms and paranoia. It was nothing like I'd ever experienced before - some reports even say that some women when assessed, had symptoms of clinical depression. I even heard that some women were turned away by their GP when they raised their concerns about feeling depressed, some even saying that it was "nothing to be worried about" and that these were all "normal" side effects associated with this type of pill. If my GP told me the same, I would demand to be switched onto a different brand at least, not turned away saying that it is normal.

So yeah, these are my experiences with Microgynon 30. Definitely not a contraceptive pill I would recommend or take again. If I were on this pill for longer, my life would be so different. The only benefits of this pill is that it cleared up my skin marginally and my breasts got bigger *shrugs* - definitely not benefits that I would put myself through that again for.

Most stressful time of my life.

Almost halfway through my exams, my exams are going well but I can't say the same about life. 

Whether it's these pills I'm taking or not, I'm experiencing some episodes of extreme stress, sometimes depression, withdrawal from the world. The only upside is that I can concentrate on my exams but I have a feeling doing nothing day in day out apart from waking up to revision is depressing me in many ways.

Along with this, the stress is affecting my relationship as well. Because it's early, it's also very fragile. I realised I've become needy because of exam time. I'm depending on nobody but him and it's not a good thing, for us both. For people that have known me a long time, I don't like depending on other people too much. So for this to happen, it's stressful. It's affecting my daily life. It's a problem that will resolve itself with time though so I think at this moment, I just need to concentrate on exams and hopefully after, things will be different. 

Sometimes, I'm a paranoid mess as well. Ugh.

DISSERTATION COMPLETE!

After many hours of procrastination and many days of the "I'll do it later" excuse, my dissertation is complete! Although not quite ready for submission yet, it's finally at the proof-read/referencing stage which pretty much means it's complete to me as proof reading and referencing are two things that don't require much brain action... For me anyway.

And a plus, it's above the minimum word limit, I was really worried I'd run out of content to talk about but a lot of thought and blabber can really get you somewhere. Overall, I thought writing this dissertation was fairly easy because it's a topic of interest to myself and because I work at snail pace averaging about 500 words a day for about a month.

With that said, I'm sick of bilingualism and executive function now. I never want to hear those words EVER again.

Can I go back to bed now?

HELLO EARTHLINGS.

It's been a long while since I updated so let's see what I've been up to in the past month or so...

I officially finished university about 2 days after my last entry (March 18th), last lecture and everything so I celebrated the end of a fabulous era with my uni pals over some food, drinks and jenga. It was a good night with one of my friends getting pretty drunk on tequila and proceeding to shout "bus wanker" at people from my car as I was shipping people back to campus and to the station. Oh good times.

Of course, I didn't start revising straight away, I'm afraid I wasn't that eager and wanted to at least enjoy a week or 2 of Easter break before I actually started anything. Actually I only spent one week and bit enjoying myself because I came to the conclusion that my dissertation wasn't going to complete itself over the course of the break so I had to do that first and foremost before I jetted off to Barcelona. So pretty much, I spent 5 solid days writing up 4000 words of my dissertation which was such an achievement for me because I work like a snail when it comes to big pieces of coursework. So in theory, I only have about 2000-3000 words left of it to write over the next 3 weeks. Woop.

As I may or may not have mentioned, I went to Barcelona for 5 days with my friend, her boyfriend and my boyfriend. I did feel a tiny bit bad about leaving revision behind to enjoy myself for 5 days but I did subject myself to work as soon as I finished university so... I DESERVED IT. Barcelona wasn't as pleasant as it might sound, the weather was... bearable, nothing amazing though, I didn't come back tanned, I didn't come back looking sun kissed, in fact, I came back glad to be out of the cold, rainy weather that hit Barcelona during our 5 day stay. Blub. I had fun nonetheless, 5 days is probably not enough to see everything in Barcelona for anyone planning to go. I guess you could say we saw most of the interesting sights though. Although I had a great time, I'm pretty broke now, experiencing broke times after the holiday. I'm actually broke until the end of this month, luckily interest was paid to my ISA so I have free monies, yay!

After the holiday I put my head down for revision straight away. It's going well at the moment, after the first day I realised how unrealistic it was for me to plan to study 3 lectures a day (pfffffffft) so I'm now doing a comfortable 1 lecture a day everyday. It doesn't sound like much but at university level 3rd year, it really does take between 4-6 hours to revise ONE lecture. No joke. I'm just so grateful that my exams are really spaced out, giving me time to revise everything slowly and comfortably, even though it means I finish exam period later than some other people.

The weather has been quite pleasant since I got back (besides the stupid April showers that have been coming and going over the past few days), I like these random bursts of sunshine. I can't wait till summer where I will be freeeeeee and graduated. I WILL FINALLY BE A GRADUATE, GUYS!

Next stop - Postgraduate. The studying never ends, does it?

Why I am still awake?

I HAVE NO IDEA. It's 4:33am and I woke up at 8am and 11am today.

I was pretty sure I'd sleep at 3am or before today because I had close to no sleep last night. Whenever my boyfriend is round I never get any sleep because he's so fat he takes up 3/4 of my single bed </3. Naw, I'm kidding. I can just never sleep soundly when I'm not alone haha. It's just the way things work for me.

So my spacebar arrived today, woop de woop, which means right now I am typing with a brand new macbook spacebar. I'm keeping my macbook away from my bed now because things have a tendency to fall from the shelves/cupboards above my bed =/

I'm so clumsy these days. I managed to smash my brother's graduation photo today in the living room when I was listening for messages on the answer phone. The frame literally smashed into 1000 pieces with wood bits everywhere, I think I just stood there for like 5 minutes before actually deciding what to do. Surprisingly, the glass didn't smash.

I've had a lazy day today, well actually not really lazy because I cleaned the whole bathroom which took me 3 hours. But no work was done, I only managed to write 2 sentences for the strengths and limitations part of my discussion before calling it a night hah.

Okay I really will sleep now. I have no idea why I have this stupid tendency to force myself to stay awake all the time. It's so bad. So so bad.

What do you do when you run out of green tea?

Since my parents' absence I haven't managed to locate any green tea for 2 main reasons - I rarely ever go out to Chinatown these days (they probably sell green tea for extortionate prices anyway) and I can't be bothered to drive out to Wing Yip/Loon Fung to buy some.

I finally run out when my parents are back in 5 days which I mega annoying. I've substituted green tea for oolong tea right now which is... okay but not really my preferred choice.

If you regularly visit my blog you'll find that this is where my "inconsistent blogging" comes into play. I haven't blogged for a good 2 weeks now mainly because of essays and the project write up. Which is partly true, another reason is because of my "social life" haha. I put that in quotation marks because sometimes I do have a social life, sometimes I don't.

Right now, I'm pretty chilled about work because I'm ahead for the project, I estimate that my discussion should be completed by tomorrow, if not Sunday latest. I should really be doing work on my dissertation but since I haven't received my first draft back from my supervisor, I'm most likely using that as an excuse for stalling such an important piece of work. As you can probably tell, the past 2 weeks of non-blogging have been focused on submitting essays and getting this darn project completed, or close to completion anyway.

I had a pretty crap day today overall, I managed to wake up at 3pm for some dumb reason. I even slept at 3am the night before which is actually really early for my standards, I've been having nocturnal 5am bedtimes for the past 6 weeks my parents have been away for. So as a result, I missed my lecture (which isn't that big of a deal as I planned to skip this one anyway because of it's boring-ness). To make things worse, I managed to drop my TV remote on my MacBook - mini heart attack when that happened because I know the aluminium unibody dents SO easily... Looked closer and saw no damage done, phew. Then when I got to typing, one close inspection at my spacebar and I noticed I've cracked it. Darn it. I wasn't that fussed over it though because I know keys can be replaced, the unibody cannot be replaced. So I went to buy a spacebar off eBay and hopefully it'll arrive tomorrow or Saturday so I can replace this cracked thing. Sigh.

The only good thing that has happened to me is getting my result for my Neuropsychology essay. I somehow managed to get 68 which is very surprising considering I didn't understand the question at all, I got into a new relationship at that time (=no motivation), I had my project first draft due on the same day and another essay due the week after. So me getting anything above a 50 is very surprising. Life works in mysterious ways. I'm overjoyed but at the same time, dreading next week's results because I know for sure the language essay was just as badly written as the Neuropsychology one. I can't have 2 strokes of luck in the same month can I?

To end my crap day I found out some bad news which has made me sad for the rest of the night. I don't want to talk about it here though, it's not major but still, it's killed my vibe.

Let's talk about something happier.

I'm going to Barcelona in 3 weeks. A really spontaneous planned trip, I'm going with my boyfriend, Jen and her boyfriend. My boyfriend booked a week off work so getting to spend a few days together is nice since I rarely even see him these days because he's a workaholic.

So yup, something I'm looking forward to soon. I just want March to end already.

slkdfjslkdnvdls.

I'm happy at the moment because a miracle happened and because of a moment's worth of concentration, I've managed to almost finish my last ever essay. Not only that but my special man is coming to see me on Thursday. I didn't expect to see him again until Sunday because of his hectic job hours =/ so it was a surprise and I became stupidly happy =] he's forever surprising me with his spontaneity. 

So actually, I'm mainly happy because my workload is going down, after this last essay is submitted on Thursday, I'll have my dissertation draft which is only 1600 words and then my final project to finish which is about 2000 more words and then I'm doneeeee. Until exams. GOODBYE ROYAL HOLLOWAY. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel... I"m going to have such an awesome summer. Going HK, graduation, coming up with a research proposal for masters (not that it'll be fun but at least it's something to do, ONE thing to do, rather than 1000 things I don't want to do...), spending lots of time with my man, lazing around in the sun. Ah, can I just graduate already? 

The only depressing thing about right now is that my work is going very slowly and painfully, it's always the last essay that takes the most time because I'm at my limit with the amount of work I've had recently. As well as juggling a new relationship, making sure I do enough work before I go out has been especially hard, although I've just about managed it. I think this is the first essay I've been cutting it close on. I remember I used have plenty of time during the week to tweak my essay and reference but tomorrow will be a full day of finishing the essay, proofreading, tweaking and referencing *cries* but at least I'll have Thursday to look forward to where I can just chillax with my man without having to think about when the next essay deadline is. 

During this week I haven't spoken to Mum or Dad much. I found out the other day that Mum got a fever in HK and I was worried for a bit. Dad texted me at 5am about it when I was about to head to bed so I was kind of like "=____=" and couldn't sleep because I kept wondering if Mum was okay. Today, Mum called me when I was having lunch and she said she's fine now which is good... But Dad is ill with a fever now. Good lord... What are my parents like? I swear at least one of them becomes ill at some point when they go abroad. My Mum was saying how the weather in HK is hot in the afternoon and cold at night so they're not used to the sharp temperature changes. Sigh. They fly off to Taiwan in a couple of days, I hope they'll be okay. I can't believe there's only 2 and a half weeks until they come back. I miss them but at the same time, when they come back, life will be a little more chaotic! 

CURRENT GOAL = FINISH THIS STUPID ESSAY. 

3rd week of parentlessness.

Blah. I miss my parents. 

I think this might be an effect of listening to slow music and attempting to do this essay.

But I actually miss my parents, they were away for 3 weeks last time and I didn't miss them this much. There's another 3 weeks to go until they come back and I actually really want to see them. Even though my Mum annoys the heck out of me, even though my Dad never stops asking questions, even though I can hear their conversations from outside the house because they talk so loud... I miss them. 

For some reason I'm feeling really sad at the moment because I miss them. This essay is driving me insane as well because even though it's the last ever one I have to do, I don't feel motivated to do it, I don't know what the heck phonological awareness is I don't know what the link to reading skills is, I don't know where to begin, I don't want to do any reading, I don't want to search for literature... I've been searching for literature and writing about it for the past week solid and I'm kinda just sick of it now. Plus I have that dissertation draft to do and hand in sometime within the next couple of weeks. Derp. 

Life.

Deadlines doing my head in amongst other things.

So as it stands I have so much work due in I just don't even know which piece to work on everyday. As you might know, I like to have things planned out - this applies to aspects in life as well as my workload. I'm almost like okay Monday I'll do this, Tuesday I'll do that etc etc. But now it's like a whole giant mess with WHERE DO I BEGIN? I've been lazy these past couple of days, went out celebrating on Saturday for CNY, didn't get home until Sunday morning because of getting lost and wandering around London for 3 hours. Spent Sunday being cosy, warm and a lazy shit in bed with another lazy shit next to me <3. I must say though, I really enjoyed my CNY for multiple reasons.

I failed at pretending I didn't go out as well. I promised Mum I'd Skype her on the Sunday at 1pm but my brother ended up Skyping her first as I took almost an eternity to get ready and then I realised I just had to leave my make up on and go on Skype. First thing Mum asks is "so where did you go last night?" DOH. Spent the rest of Sunday sleeping and then preparing CNY dinner with my brother when I woke up at 7pm LOL. Oh deary.

Spent Monday in uni trying to get the analysis part of my project done. Turns out our results are NON-SIGNIFICANT ASLKDJFJSDKFNSDF. I guess this is probably every psychologist's worst nightmare huh? Non-sig = less chance of publication = WASTE OF TIME. I might be wrong because I'm not a psychologist, just a psychology student but... man, all that time coding videos... NON-SIGNIFICANT???? But anyway, you just have to work with what you have I guess. So in trying to make sense of these results, took another 2-3 hours. I had to stop by Tesco on the way home and do the weekly grocery shop. Most of the stuff on the list wasn't even for me, my brother had added a whole ton of ingredients to cook ONE THING for dinner. He's lucky we didn't exceed our budget. I got home and literally fell asleep again, I think Saturday night was catching up to me so I took a 2 hour nap and then well... you know, once you have a nap and wake up to a warm cosy house, the first thing you'd want to do is eat and last thing you wanna do is work. Hence no work was done on Monday (apart from opening and closing the document about 5 times...)

So now it's Tuesday, I was up at 9am despite sleeping at 5am because I got too emotional for my own good and almost ended up saying things I shouldn't say to a certain someone. I SHOULD NEVER SHOW MY WEAKNESS, RAWR. I fell in and out of sleep until 2pm and then I finally got up and started to do some work. About 2 hours into doing work and I've managed to do a miserable 400 words. I really should stop looking at the word count because working according to your word count makes life 100000000x harder and progress is much slower. Go away word count.

I haven't been able to work recently because of too many complicated thoughts in my head. Why do you do this to me?

Life Update.

I know this is like, a week late but, my parents are gone.

I miss them.

Mum gave me an especially long hug at the airport when I drove them there, I couldn't walk in with them because I was in drop off (so I didn't have to pay for the short stay car park). I'm not really one to be close to my Mum with hugs and all that so it felt weird. I guess you could call me weird for feeling weird hugging my Mum but yeah, my parents aren't really the affectionate type, well, Mum isn't anyway. My Dad would shower me with kisses if he could but it's damn embarrassing at my age. We got to Skype for the first couple of days they were there, I love how my parents do really miss us but they don't show it. It's a cultural thing, Chinese people aren't really the emotional type of people. Deep down I know they miss us though. A few days later in the weekend when my brother was home, we Skyped and they looked so happy to see us, my Dad looked fatter which obviously I pointed out, he looked really happy though. They both did. I'm glad they're both enjoying their time out there, there's no one more deserving to have time to relax than my wonderful parents. If I had the money to, I would send them everywhere around the world because that's how much they deserve it.

So in other news, I got rejected from City University. I was a tiny bit gutted but I wasn't depressed about it (even when they felt the need to send me TWO rejection emails, one at 10am and one at 5pm, like what the hell? One not enough?) It just means that my plans will change a little now, plan B was to do an MRes at UCL in Speech, Language and Cognition as you might have heard me go on about before. I went to their website and had a look at the procedure and I need to submit a research proposal by the deadline (August) so I think I'll spend the summer going over what I want to research into. There's actually multiple areas of speech that interest me, on the developmental side, I'm really interested in evidence based therapy - this is also a reason why I would want to reconsider becoming a speech and language therapist - there's so much research around the effectiveness of therapy and interventions and you know, a lot of the time, they don't even work. I don't know if I could get into a career administering therapy that doesn't work or doesn't have scientific evidence to support its effectiveness - it just all seems like a giant con doesn't it? It's all very controversial. It's the same as saying medicine works but does it really work? Are your painkillers actually doing something to your body or is it just psychological effects? Blah.

I'm also getting interested in the neuroscience behind speech and language from my module this term. If you know me, I hate anything neuro/biologically based because I'm a big fail at biology and in neuroscience there are just too many components to study. Though for language, it's interesting to see which parts of the brain are responsible for certain functions related to language. But yeah, I'll have to teach myself a lot about the brain before I could come up with a research proposal for this. But at the moment a research proposal regarding evidence based therapy seems really nice and interesting to do.

So yup, at the moment, my plan is to finish all pieces of coursework, get my arse sat down for revision over Easter and get my dissertation written up within a month. Graduate, go to HK to see my relatives, spend my summer free as a bird and then come up with a research proposal before August.

Life isn't so bad after all.