Hi blogspot & world wide web, it has been a while since I have last shared my random and incoherent thoughts with you. It's nearly 5 in the morning right now and a lot is on my mind, so where else to have a brain vomit than here? Lately, I've been having trouble sleeping. I have been lying in bed for 2-3 hours the past week just staring at the ceiling, thinking too much about things. Sometimes, I just need a break from reality.

Let's briefly mention 2012. A lot has happened in the past year that I have failed to document through words, but nevermind that, I have photos that will hopefully trigger memories and help me reminisce. Overall, it was a very productive yet challenging year for me, but I felt I learnt a lot from it. I started that year with a lot of plans, just trying to rearrange everything into my timetable like a Tetris game. I didn't really think about whether or not I would be able to manage it all, I just wanted to be active, which explains why I burnt out so quickly when starting my first placement of the year. I learnt a lot about myself, what I was capable of and how I was going to use my remaining year at uni. Going through last year's experiences has also taught me to appreciate all the people around me who have been really supportive and caring right to the end.

A quarter of the new year has already flown by and I feel like I've barely begun to do anything at all. Its been a rocky start to the year. I lost a job, I scraped my dad's car, I've been in more arguments than usual, and there are things I didn't think I would ever need to deal with that I now do. My mentality is not as strong as I thought and I often find myself questioning my abilities, my decisions and my actions. What happened to the me who was much more sure of herself? The person who was able to justify every decision she made. I've also started to question the genuinity of those around me and how people are usually never as they initially appear to be. Still, I always try to look on the brighter side of things and aim for speedy resolutions.

Looking at the bigger picture, these happenings are not a big deal and there are worst things in life. I should be grateful of the good things I have been blessed with. There's no point dwelling on things for too long or it'll just weigh you down.
This year, I really hope to work on my bad habits, my time management and get things organized study-wise. So far, I'm not doing too bad, but my drive is waning and I really need to have someone to push me and feed me with motivation.

Moving away from academica and personal dilemmas, lately I've been thinking of how we treat each other. This is not the case for everyone, but I have come to observe that sometimes, we are much more friendlier and polite to strangers and people we don't know too well. Why is that? Why is it that once you've become closer to someone, you start to use less manners, you forget to appreciate their efforts or maybe you choose not to, and you start taking them for granted? Maybe you're getting too comfortable and use to them, so you don't feel the need to put in as much effort anymore because you think they're going to be there for you regardless. Or maybe you're too busy worrying about other things in life, what you deem as trivial such as matters like these get pushed aside, which I think is the case for most people. Or maybe you just don't care as much as you use to in maintaining a friendship or relationship with this person. Maybe you got lazy.
It could be a combination of these or none of these. Whatever the reason, I just find it odd that it can be so hard and take so long to build a strong foundation with someone, yet so easy to go backwards and taint that. If we stopped to think about why people don't last together, it's because we stop caring. The point I am trying to make it is that it's the little things that sometimes matter the most. Do small things with love and it can really do a whole deal.

Stepping on a more positive note, here's hoping to a better rest of the year ahead. Less thinking, more doing, less worrying, more sleeping, less bludging, more studying, less silence, more talking, less crying, more laughter, less second guessing, more confidence, less hurt, more happiness.
It is 5am and it is time for me to sleep.
Good morning.

Labels: life, people, sleepy, university

Life has a way of reminding us that all the trivial things we constantly brood over really don't matter much in the end when you look at the bigger picture.

I can't sleep.

Labels: life

At uni today, our group of occupational therapy girls had a picnic. It rained during our break, so we booked the biggest 'study' room in the library and rearranged all the tables and chairs to make room for the picnic mat and food, with everyone to sit on. We were all just laughing, talking, sharing our thoughts on the mutual disdain we have for certain annoying lecturers, and passing food around, when one of our friends decided to tell us a bit more about her life and give us her testimony.

So briefly summing up what she said, she started off by describing the type of person she was before she really committed to her religion. She was raised up as a Christian, though she never thought much about it and Sunday church were for her, her weekly chance to visit the chocolate store next door to the church and snack up. It all changed when she was forced to go on a bible (I think it was) camp during year 9. She hated it at first, but through their inspirational discussions and readings from sections of the bible, it got her thinking about what she was living for. She realised that she couldn't live only for herself anymore, for many reasons, including that she believes it won't guarantee her a life after death in heaven, and she now lives for God.

I really appreciate her sharing with us something that is so personal and meaningful to her. It's a great feeling to be able to find something that you strongly believe in and value so much - something that helps you define who you truly are.

Honestly speaking though, this has gotten me further away from God and from any belief that I had previously held in Christian values. I do believe there is a God up there, whether it's Jesus or Buddha, I don't know.

However, I don't think it's a sin if you don't worship and live for God. What's wrong with living for yourself and the people you love instead? Ultimately at the end of the day, you can only physically rely on yourself if you want things done. If there's still other options, you can't just sit there and wait for something to happen, for some sign telling you what to do. Also, how can surrendering yourself to Jesus and living for God guarantee you a place in heaven? What happens to people in other cultures who have another belief system? Do they, along with the people who don't live for God and don't surrender their life to Jesus, go to hell?

For the Christian readers of my blog, I'm not prompting discussion or debate, I just needed to write this out somewhere.

I'll stop for today. I'm tired and I have plenty of assignments to do and so little time.
Thanks for reading :) Goodnight yo.

Labels: life, religion

Okay, so this post turned out way longer than expected. And when I say long, I mean LONG. So you have been warned. So if you have some spare time or you're trying to procrastinate, but can't find anything to do, and you're feeling stalkerish or curious about whats been going on in my life, then enjoy reading this nonsensical rambling of gibberish.

Everyone is going to eventually hurt you in the end, whether it be some stupid, vengeful clown at a circus who 'accidentally' whacked you with his balloon pumper for not buying any of his animal balloons or the chef who cooked up your beef pho at Pho 76 in Green Valley yesterday and gave you food poisoning. I know that Bob Marley says you just have to find the ones worth suffering for, and the ones worth suffering for are usually the people you love. But sometimes suffering is just inevitable.

Take my food poisoning example, for example. The chef indirectly hurts you, but he isn't worth suffering for, right? Doesn't mean that you won't suffer though. You get abdominal pain, you lose your appetite, you sweat like crazy. You go to sleep early so that you won't feel the pain, but you keep waking up every 2 hours wanting to vomit and yet nothing comes out. Your stomach area keeps hurting and you're just so tired from being interrupted in your sleep.

Then at 4am in the morning, you wake up from the pain and feel like you need to vomit, like every other time. This time, it actually happens and next thing you know, you're leaning over the toilet bowl spewing your guts out. You see slimy, disgusting, mongulated forms of the meat and noodles you ate from pho the day before and at this point, you're thinking 'Fuck you, Mr. Chef-man-who-made-my-pho-and-gave-me-bad-meat'.

You finally get some good hours of sleep, only to wake up early for uni. You head to the bathroom, then everything starts spinning, and your head starts throbbing. You sit down on the floor, your mum asks you whats wrong, but you can barely hear her words. Everything looks blurry and your mum sounds like she's talking from afar. You're just about to lapse into unconsciousness, but then your mum starts to gently shake you and gives you water. But you're already deemed unfit to go to uni that day, especially since its 6 intense hours of tutorials and lectures non-stop. So now you have a lot of catching up to do, since it was your most important uni day of the week and waking up early was pointless. And now you're stinking like that green asian healing oil thing. All this suffering just because of a case of bad, bacterial-infected meat.

Moral of the story is that you cannot trust that some people will not hurt you, even if they have always been trusting and reliable. It's the people who you care about most who will disappoint you the most. Nah, the actual take home message from this story is that pho is dangerous.

Apologies for the negativeness- this nausea is getting to me. And I'm pretty sure I contradicted myself at the end of the story and changed the original point I was trying to make, but whatever. Nausea's fault.

While I was suffering through this, all I could think of was the day that I found out I made it to Hurlstone. It was one week into year 11, on a Monday and I had noodles for lunch. I felt really queesy on the way home and I remember coming home to my dad, smiling so widely at me that I thought his teeth were about to fall off. He then says "I have some news to tell you" right before I ran to the bathroom to throw up. Within moments, my brother ran to the other bathroom to throw up, so we concluded it was definity the noodles we brought from home to have for lunch that gave us the food poisoning. I then ask my dad what the good news was, then he tells me that he'll tell me later when I'm feeling better.

I immediately think that I got into Hurlstone because there was absoloutely no other reason why my dad would be so happy about me and know that it would make me distraughted that he had to tell me when I was in a better mood. I raided the area where our letters are kept and didn't find anything. Eventually, my dad told me that they called and told me to come in for the interview the next day and to sign out of my current school. That was a horrible day for me, mainly because I was feeling sick added to the fact that I never wanted to go to Hurlstone before and had to try out because of my parents.

Looking back now, I have no regrets (not like I had a choice anyway lol). It seemed like such a big deal at the time, but when you put it simply, I just moved schools. The atmosphere was lovely and it turned out to be a pretty good change of environment for me (even the cow poo smell that hits you when you enter the gates...loljk). What I was mainly worried about at the time was that I was going to lose the friendships I had from Macfields and that I would miss that school too much. Some friendships were lost and I did miss Macfields heaps, but I'm also glad that a lot were retained and it just goes to show you which friendships ended up being more important to you. Not that I'm saying the ones I lost weren't worth keeping. (Then what are you trying to say, Belinda?) But anyway, I guess you gotta sacrifice some things when there's a change in your life.

I met people at Hurlstone, some who have become my closest friends now, so I genuinely have to say that for me, the change was for the better. I kept old friends, plus I made more. And I didn't realise how sloppy and corny-like this post has turned out to be until now. Ahem..

Moving on, update on the daily happenings of my boring life. My uni timetable this semester is pretty good: 4 days a week with fridays off. Not as good as last semester, but my subjects are actually more relevant and practical now.

For anatomy pracs, we get to work with cadavers (dead human body parts and limbs) and although they reek of chemical odour for being preserved in some preserving liquid thing for so long, its way better than the pH testing pracs I had last semester in bio. I'm pretty desensitised to the cadevers cos its just muscle and bone bundled up together (the skin has worn off), but the fingernails and toenails still gross me out. They're long and yellow and zomg. I can't describe them; you'd have to see them to get what I mean.

Some of my other subjects aren't that pointless anymore as well. In one of my tutorials, we're learning how to make all these types of equipment, like hand/arm splints and orthotics. It may sound boring, but it's actually pretty fun. Lots of sketching, cutting, carving, molding, liquidfying. Reminds me of year 10 art.

Speaking of art, I haven't done anything artsy in a very long time, ever since I dropped art mid year 12. I promised myself that I would complete my half-completed major work by the end of this year. That's looking kind of bleak at the moment. I had also planned to get my Ps by the end of this year too. Hopefully, that will work out because not being able to drive is placing so many restrictions on me.

Anywho, I think I shall end it here before I bore you with more random thoughts. Kudos to those who made it this far. If you didn't get this far, then you wouldn't be reading this and you just saved yourselves a lot of time and I completely understand..... and go screw yourselves for disregarding my heartfelt ramble. I'm kidding.

Whew, that was long. I'm off to get me some food, if you can call congee real food.
Have a good night, guys!

Labels: friends, life, sick, university

I simply love Wong Fu Production's productions. They can range from being so funny to so meaningful and symbolic. Their approach in making this video from an unusual perspective is amazing.
Director Wesley Chan's (from WFP) notes are here, if you're bothered to do a bit of reading :)
(I don't know how to make the vid smaller lol)

Labels: life, movie

A much delayed post that I was suppose to put up 2 weeks ago.

Brother: Belindaaaa, why do you have to go to uni during half of my holidays? *makes a sad face*
Me: are you only complaining cos you have to do all the chores now?
Brother: yes.

Chello guys, uni mid-sem break is over.
What have I been doing? Nothing. It's all just a blur, which can only mean one thing- I wasted my week procrastinating yet again, when I should've at least attempted to open up a text book, let alone catch up with uni notes. Laaame

Well, one noted thing that wasn't a waste was the picnic on Friday with Hurlstone homies, going to the movies with Jo to see Alice in wonderland :D, and having dinner at MC's ...which I thought were the most productive things I've done ever since uni started, meaning I'm still on holiday mode eventhough the holidays were almost 2 months ago.

And speaking of uni, contrary to the popular belief, I actually quite like my course.
A couple of years ago, one of my closest friends sent me an email called "Instructions for life", and I remember reading "Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck." At the time, I thought this statement was quite ridiculous and contradictory. I mean, why would it be lucky if you didn't get something you wanted?
But now, I get it. I think this statement suits well with my current situation. (hopefully)
At this rate, I don't think I'll be considering (attempting) transferring into pharmacy next year at all.

That being said, it doesn't mean that I like uni. See, what I like about my course is actually just what I'm going to be doing when I graduate- the studying part of it is however, a major turn off. But I've always disliked studying in general anyways haha.

What I thought would have been good about uni is that it's a fresh change of environment, though it hasn't been particularly like that for me. I still feel like I'm entering a high school when I go into my campus, because it's so tiny. I somehow still manage to arrive late for my lectures though lol :P At least I wouldn't get bored during my long-winded 3-4 hour breaks, because I could always just walk right across the street and visit the cemetery. /sarcasm intended. Which reminds me, last week when it was really foggy in the morning, the cemetery was like a cut out scene from a thriller movie. It looked sooo spooky.

Something that has been somewhat positive about uni though, is the prospect of meeting new people. I don't know about you guys, but I usually feel excited yet daunted by the idea of making friends. I'm always afraid of rejection or that people will judge me based on first impressions. It sucks how prejudiced the world has become.

When you eventually do meet people who you can occasionally talk to, you get pulled into this feeling of accomplishment and kind of forget that there's going to be things you don't like about them, for me anyway. I almost think that they're perfect and that there won't be any conflicts in the friendship; and I almost always fall into this trap. I kind of temporarily put a blind eye to the annoying traits I see in the beginning, because it's not hard to brush off. After a while, when I become more attached to them, I start to see more good qualities about them and then the qualities I don't like and tried to ignore snap in.

And this is where the conflict begins. Recently, I realised that's where I'm at, with the people I've met at uni. I get annoyed, but I don't say anything, and it just continues. Maybe they're in the same position as well, I mean, obviously I have annoying traits too.

Labels: friends, life, people, university

HAI GUISE.
It's been a while since my last post and soooo soo much has happened since then. HSC was done and dusted a while ago, thank God. Formal night was pretty awesome, with lots of camera-whoring, dancing and aching around my toes and ankles from the heels I was wearing. Everyone looked so beautiful and dashing that night too.

Labels: life, new year's eve

Labels: friends, life

The world is so full of distracting things, particularly when you need to do something important. Nope, I'm not talking about studying. Pfftt screw study. (I'm gonna regret saying this tomorrow =p) I've come to realise that I'm always asserting the responsibility of doing something, on someone else.

Labels: life

I've been feeling quite down lately. I dont know.. it's one of those periods where im feeling less confident about myself and everything feels depressing. A couple of crap things have recently happened that made me feel really shit about myself and frustrated that i couldn't/can't do much, making me feel really useless.

Also, there's the prospect of the impending HSC adding to the stress. T_T
I'm not going emo, its just a bad time for me.

Edit// After talking to a friend, I'm feeling a bit better now :) All good.

Labels: life

Happy Burpday Kimbro xD

It's kinda funny what time does to people.
It can make you feel productive or it can leave you feeling disappointed because you didn't use your time wisely.
It can cause change, or no change at all.
It can make you alter your perceptions about something, or do nothing to them.
It can cause you to increasingly miss someone or to gradually forget someone.

You forgot that we use to be really close friends and now you talk to me like I'm some stranger you just met out on the streets.
Jackass.
-
World's Greatest Shave was on Friday! and today I got to see the results of it.
I still owe money to:
davis
adrian
milner
I think thats it, except I dont think I'm gonna sponsor for ms milner anymore since she didnt shave her hair off, and had a free hair cut instead.

I need to try and finish all my study notes by the end of this week! xD
ty Tu for your WONDERFUL *cough* paint drawings :)
`
-

Labels: friends, life

Labels: life, movie

My parents have been hassling me to clean out my closet and throw out all the clothes I dont wear anymore. I basically don't even wear half the things in my closet, unless I come across it flying out my closet as I open it, seeing as my closet is literally a swamp fest of clothes shoved in together. Most of the clothes in there are old and I can't wear them anymore cos I've grown out of them and they're too small for me =( But I still keep them.

Labels: clothes, life

Sometimes I involuntarily feel really vulnerable. I'm sure there's a moment like this for many people. Even though it lasts for a split of a second, it still makes you feel like you don't have control of yourself and your emotions. I've become weak during this year. I get upset easily, I lose my temper easily, I zone out all the time now, I can't focus, I get paranoid and worry about little insignificant things, I get annoyed at people really easily, I'm really indecisive about things now - all these negative aspects are not making me become any better as a person.

Labels: family, friends, life, school

I was walking home from the Tway bus stop this afternoon and there was a family walking on the walkway in front of me. There were two guys leading in front, probably the father and grandfather or something, and the mother and daughter walking behind them. The girl looked about 12 years old, and she was carrying a back pack.

So anyways, they probably all knew I was walking behind them, because my shadow was casted like 2 meters in front of me on the pavement. Well, the girl turned around as soon as she saw my shadow, looked at me, then turned back. She then took off her bag and gave it to her mum to carry. Her mum tried to carry it onto her shoulders, but the straps were too small, so she carried it with one of her hands. With her other hand, she tried to hold her daughter's hand, but the girl yanked her hand away as soon as the mother touched it. The mother said something in their language to the daughter and tried again, but the girl kept on edging her hands away.

When we walked further down the road, the mother stopped to tie her shoelaces, and the daughter walked further ahead, stopped, then put her hand on her hip as if she were impatient and signalling her mother to hurry up. When the mother caught up with the family, she said something to her daughter in their language and held the bag out to the daughter, and the daughter pushed the bag back and replied 'YOU carry it'. Then, the mother attempted to hold her daughter's hand again, yet she was rejected again.

Watching all this, I found the girl to be really disrespectful to her mother and taking her mother's love and care for granted. Also, because of a stranger (thats me lols) present, she seemed like she didn't want to embarrass herself by responding to her mother's expression of love.

It's funny kinda, because that girl reminds me of myself. It reminds me of myself when I was around her age. I use to think it was embarrassing to show affection to your parents in public, not realizing it is actually one of the greatest gifts you can give to your parents, especially to your mother. It's weird how long it usually takes for people to realize that small gestures like these can mean so much to their family. It also shows how much people take their parents for granted.

Even now, I unconsciously take my parents for granted and I don't appreciate them to the extent they deserve. I don't think my appreciation will ever make up for all the things my parents have done for me out of unconditioned love.

Labels: family, life, school