…
I can’t pack my entire life into a suitcase.
“Everywhere and Nowhere”
There’s this thing in Psychology called the “Approach-Avoidance conflict”, where you have two conflicting drives to any set goal. The approach drive is always stronger than the avoidance drive, but the avoidance drive winds up peaking as the goal comes nearer, and that’s called the “backing out point”.
For all my excitement of wanting to go back to Singapore, as the day draws closer, I feel less and less assured of it. My aunt flew off to California yesterday so that was the last time I would see her for the next three months. And I just feel… so incredibly sad. I didn’t want to say bye so prematurely, and she was the one who cared for my well being. I’m just so, so, so grateful to her and it just sucks that all I could do was give her a brief hug in the parking lot.
Yeah, yeah, it’s only three months, I’ll see her soon etc., but that doesn’t stop me from actually missing them. They’ve really become my family over here, and they’re the only people I actually know in this country, and… I dunno. It’s so confusing to say I’m going to miss my family here while I go home to my real family. And then it feels awful to compare my real family to anything really, like I don’t miss them enough to go home.
I guess it’s like having two homes you’ve emotionally invested yourself into, and you have to choose. I think I’m just making it overdramatic, but it’s just… I don’t even know how to explain it. I feel so awkward in this family, but I feel like they’ve welcomed me so well leaving them seems like saying “what you did was a huge waste of time”. I’ve actually lived in this dump of an apartment for a year and despite the events of Bigfoot and Psycho Couple, it really pains me to leave it.
Not to mention the practicalities of leaving my apartment empty for three months. I’m still paying the rent for the time I’m away (didn’t sublease it, something that I regret), I still have to deal with the problem of paying the electricity bills (no online/hold option) and emptying my mailbox (I have no friends whee) for the remainder of the time that I’m away.
And it’s the tiny things that make me feel alienated from American culture. Like how they don’t pay that much for their water bills so they do their laundry separately, or even the mechanics of starting a conversation, or how they congregate in the kitchen of all places to start talking about their life, or how a 3 day break means a trip to New York/Indiana/Michigan/wherever, while our 3 day break means staying at home making up for lost sleep. But now I’m afraid that when I go home, I’d have forgotten how Singapore even functions in the first place, and that’s going to make my insecurities even worse.
Not that it’s bad already, seeing as “a sense of belonging” has pretty much been dogging me ever since I got here, and it’s really heightening as my plane trip approaches. The words “culture” and “belonging” have been paraded around so much I only think those who experience it can truly understand what a culture shock is, or even understanding the “dislocation” of one’s identity. It’s not something tourists experience, and it irks me to no end when they come back proclaiming they know everything about [insert country of choice here] after living there for 2-3 months.
It feels like a double identity, and you’re a bit of both but never truly either one. I miss Singapore, but if I go home, I’ll miss it here. I guess that’s the reason why I don’t want to leave. Every time I feel like I’m leaving the life in Singapore behind it always comes back, and I don’t want to deal with gaining something but losing another every single time I have to go back to either place. That, and also just the general exhaustion of needing to travel… I want to stop moving from place to place, and I just want to settle down somewhere. I want my own house, but now the laughable problem is 1. I’m still wholly dependent on my parents, and 2. I don’t even know where I should continue to live the rest of my life.
It’s 4.10 am right now, and I have no bedsheets for my bed, because I washed them this afternoon. I’m wondering if it’s worth the, uh, effort to go put on some sheets and go to bed for only 5 hours. I’ve loaned my PS3 to Ken for the summer, so I’m currently WoWing my way through the night, my stomach’s really hungry, but I have nothing in the fridge… I have to go pay the rent at 10am, deposit some petty cash in the bank, grab a Subway on the way back… I have to pack, print out the flight receipt, and still have to deal with that electricity problem.
Oh God, I don’t want to leave.
World of Warcraft
I’ve been contemplating on getting (back) into World of Warcraft… the last couple of times I played it was 1. the 10 day trial, and then subsequently 2. on private servers, because I balked at the monthly subscription fee. Dear God, Blizzard must be making billions of dollars from the masses.
Turns out the private servers weren’t that great… every single one of them was bugged, and I couldn’t do any of the normal quests because of missing NPCs, or they were missing the quest bosses themselves. Everyone, apparently, was always going for Illidan and screaming on the chat channel why he didn’t respawn quickly enough.
Anyway, I’ve been playing Warcraft III to get myself in the mood (and still wondering if I really should splurge on 6 months’ worth of playtime), and my computer decided to overheat and die on itself in the middle of the game. Twice. I’ve been thinking it’s a dust problem, so I’ll probably dismantle the thing and give it a good wipe-down, but I have no screwdriver. I don’t want to dismantle the thing until absolutely necessary, which means waiting for the 2GB RAM I ordered from Dell the other day. I can kill two birds with one stone then.
ANYWAY, back to WoW. My main beef with it is… well, it’s a MMORPG, and I’ll be bound to encounter idiots, or make myself look like an idiot. I absolutely love the world Blizzard created - in Warcraft III, there were no bad guys, because the game made you sympathize with every single one of them, even the guy who became the main antagonist in the end. If I had friends who were into WoW I’d definitely jump at the chance, but seeing as I have no friends in the first place (at the very most, I can count the number of friends I have with one hand), the idea is kinda moot, really. And WoW is all about player interaction and cooperation, which I pretty much epic!FAIL at in real life.
EXAMS ARE OVER WHEE 5 MORE DAYS TO SINGAPORE!
Brain brain brain brain
I don’t know if I can call this burnout, but there must be a damn name to this.
I’ve been pretty exhausted from this quarter, and I can probably chalk it up to any number of excuses. The teachers suck; the courses weren’t that interesting; I’m just tired. I literally cannot concentrate at all. It took me an hour to finish 12 pages of stuff that I was skimming though, because I kept getting distracted doing other things. Even writing this very post I keep running off to do other things. This, if I can recall correctly, was something that happened during the Fall Quarter, and God knows how badly I did that quarter.
It’s the exact same weird pattern. I’ll suddenly get interested in things that have laid dormant for some time, I’ll start picking things up that I should be leaving after the examinations, I’ll be cleaning up the house, and I’ll be sleeping a lot. I’ll constantly think about the things that I’ll be able to do after the exams, and it’s really debilitating for my concentration, honestly, because I’m using up all my resources fantasizing, not studying. It’s like my brain’s switched to “relaxed” mode without my permission.
I keep telling myself it’s literally the final stretch, and tripping at the finish line is NOT a good thing, but apparently my brain seems to have already assumed I have finished. It’s a very annoying thing.
Maybe it was the 3 research papers I crammed in the final week, and my brain’s worn out (or at least it assumed the worst was behind us, or that the effort it exerted was similar to the final exams, so it assumed was time to relax or something).
I want to give my brain a name. I shall name her June, in commemoration of today, where she is officially recognized as the functioning entity of my existence.
That time of the month
OH GOD THE PAIN THE PAIN THE PAIN OW OW OW FUCK SHIT OH MY GOD
ETA: Okay, I’m in so much pain right now it’s not even funny. I haven’t had cramps this bad since I was… I can’t even remember right now.
Danrom, part zwei
Another reason why I really, really, really need a vacation: I’m falling ill. I haven’t been sick in 3 years, and that last illness was during the A’ Levels. There’s finals week to go, so… yeah.
Anyway, my Behavioural Neuroscience final exam was today, and I feel a bit annoyed by the whole thing because it ended earlier than my other classes (I STILL HATE YOU, PHILOSOPHY). That was my favourite class, and I mean, the professor was absolutely brilliant. I’d honestly take his class again because he’s just that damn good. Meanwhile, Philosophy is the very last exam of the quarter, and GOOD GOD, I HATE YOU.
Wait, let me translate this into PL.
UD: Everything
Hxy: x hates y
Lx: x is the last exam of the quarter
Px: x is a person
e: Elaine
p: Philosophy 250 course
(?e)(?p)(Pe & Lp) ? Hep
I have a headache, and I’m taking today off from studying. I’ve been compiling my music in Excel for some chillaxin’, AND HERE ARE MY RESULTS THUS FAR:
I’m sure nearly everything labeled Tokyo Disneyland was by Jac. xD Also, Jac, YOU’RE SO MEAN TO GIVE ME 64KBPS MP3S!!! D:
Lastly, a couple of fun facts. FFX-2’s Paine is voiced by Gwendoline Yeo. Turns out she’s the niece of Singapore’s Minister of Foreign Affairs George Yeo (if Wikipedia is to be believed). I have lots of TL;DR thoughts on this, not least about the elitist structure of Singapore and how all our ministers seem to be educated abroad, but whatever.
Number 2: James Arnold Taylor, who voices Tidus in FFX, voiced Jack Sparrow and Timon in KHII. I wanted to LOL so hard. JACK SPARROW IS TIMON O SHIT
