Shards of Memory

Oh look, I'm still alive. But this was just too blog-worthy to pass up.

I saw an ad at the bus stop today for a new TV show. Unfortunately, I couldn't really see what the show was about because it was almost completely covered by another poster, visibly labeled as "PUBLIC ADVISORY". It read as follows: "Since this show does not conform with our moral standards, viewers are discouraged from watching 'Californication'. From the Department of Appropriate Behaviour".

I have no idea if this is just a joke or part of the TV show's gimmick to attract more viewers, but I honestly doubt it. It's Singapore. Enough said. And it'd have to be a pretty elaborate prank, since I saw it in more than one bus stop. But still, even though I've been here for close to 4 years now, which means that I'm used to how repressed the people here are, I never would have expected something like a Department of Appropriate Behaviour. I can't even think of an analogy that does justice to the complete and utter control that Singapore has over the lives of its citizens. But you have to admit that it works pretty well.

As amusing as this is, it doesn't make me any more enthusiastic about living here.

I am annoyed. My thesis adviser will be away all week and will only be back next Monday, which means I might have no thesis work to do until then. My initial reaction of “yay, I won’t have to wake up early for the next few days” was quickly overshadowed by “what the hell am I doing here one week early then??” So even though having to wake up early (yes, 10 am is early) is not my idea of fun, I refuse to have my time wasted like this. As workaholic as it sounds, I actually emailed my prof and asked her to give me something to work on. Besides, I need to keep myself busy while I’m here or I’ll go insane.

I made a new friend today. Well, more of an acquaintance really. There was a guy at the bus stop who was having trouble figuring out the campus map so I gave him directions. We talked for a bit while I was waiting for my bus. He’s a postgraduate student from China who’s doing his PhD in civil engineering. Being the socially inept person that I am, I only realized halfway through the conversation that I didn’t know his name (well, he didn’t ask for mine either). We introduced ourselves and then he gave me his email address, even though I have absolutely no intention of emailing him. I hope he doesn’t really expect me to.

It’s really a good thing that we’re playing DotA later. I need to destress. And to think, I’ve only been here a day. I just want school to start already so I can forget everything else.

The past few weeks have been a bit hellish, but once again finals are over. Not without some mishaps, unfortunately. I never thought it'd get so blown out of proportion though. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, last Saturday I had my most difficult exam (on Protein Structure and Function). I wasn't particularly stressed about it (not because I was feeling confident or anything; it just takes a lot to stress me out), and I went to sleep on Friday night not expecting anything unusual to happen. Unfortunately, I had a hard time getting to sleep that night because, frankly, it was hot as hell and I was (and still am) too stingy to turn on the aircon. I apparently still managed to get some sleep, because I woke up feeling like the end of the world was coming. I couldn't breathe very well and I felt really tense, but I decided to ignore it and went to school thinking that it would pass. An hour before my exam, while I was eating lunch, I still felt like crap and I had to consciously stop myself from hyperventilating; I remembered enough of my Psych class to recognize it as something like an anxiety attack. Obviously, I needed to do something about it before my exam so I did the first thing that came to mind - I called my mom. I described what I was going through and she said it was an anxiety attack, but I told her that I wasn't stressed enough for that. Then she asked if I had gotten enough sleep and I said I hadn't because of the heat. Apparently, not getting enough sleep can sometimes cause a level of stress that can lead to anxiety attacks. So basically she just told me to take deep breaths, try to find a place with airconditioning, and meditate. I swear, my mom can be such a hippie sometimes. Anyway, I managed two out of those three things and felt reasonably better (although my breathing still wasn't normal yet) by the time my exam started. I thought I was in the clear when suddenly, an hour into the exam, I started to feel nauseated. As in I really thought I was going to throw up on my test paper. Fortunately (although I don't know how I did it) I managed to finish the exam. Which is funny, because apparently a lot of my classmates couldn't finish it (and the expression on their faces when they found out that I managed to finish even though I was sick made me feel a bit better).

So that hellish day eventually came to an end. At least I thought so. And then I emailed my dad today to let him know that my exams were done and to update him on various things such as the Bangkok trip Cassy and I have been planning. He replied pretty quickly, and I wouldn't have been surprised if he had scolded me about not emailing sooner or something. I certainly wasn't expecting him to say how relieved he was that my "ordeals" were over and that he'd heard from my sister that I'd "overstressed" myself and had "panic attacks". And then he scolded me for not telling him! It's funny (and annoying) how easily information can be mangled when it's transmitted secondhand. First of all, a panic attack is very different from an anxiety attack. A panic attack is what you see in movies, when a person suddenly collapses and curls up into a little ball and can't move and goes all hysterical. That's obviously not what happened to me. And that's the reason why I didn't bother to tell him - because it was nothing. I hadn't "overstressed" myself, nothing was wrong with me, so what's there to tell? Then I thought, maybe he's miffed at the fact that I called my mom instead of him. But if you take a moment to think about it, it was the logical thing to do. My mom is a psychiatrist. My dad is a brain surgeon. If I happen to have an anxiety attack, who would be able to help me the most? And if I understood his email correctly and he really can't tell the difference between a panic attack and an anxiety attack, it was a good thing I didn't call him. But still, my sister should know better; she's a Psych grad. And she should know how calm my mom was about it (she was telling me to meditate, for crying out loud), which means that it really wasn't a big deal. *sigh* My family is so weird.

In case anyone's wondering, I'm not really annoyed at my family for overreacting. I just needed something to rant about, and given that nothing ever happens in this excitement-forsaken place (I think Singapore exceeded its excitement quota when they let that terrorist escape), this was all I could come up with. Oh well, only two more days until our Bangkok trip. At least that's something to look forward to (I hope).

My mom emailed me this Youtube video so, since I have nothing to do anyway, I might as well just spread it around.

I don't know how authentic this is, and the guy could very well just be making everything up. But I don't see a reason why he would. If this is real, I wonder what the government is doing about it.

Why are all the anime I'm watching so damn depressing?? Granted, they're still great shows and all, but now I'm depressed for no good reason :( Oh well, at least I'll have something to watch when I'm actually down in the dumps. If you're curious, the anime I'm talking about are Gundam 00 and Shounen Onmyouji (I suppose you could count Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle: Tokyo Revelations to the list, but I read the manga ages ago so I didn't get depressed  much this time around).  Dammit, I feel awful -_- I need something completely angst-free to lighten myself up. So... I'm going to go play Pokemon now.

I know, this was a complete and utter waste of your time. I did tell you to ignore it.

I suddenly found myself with some unexpected free time, so here's a little something for you bored people out there.

1. Pick 15 of your favourite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search or other search functions.
IN ADDITION: Bonus points if you can name the character who said the line!

Due to bullying encouragement from zen_jase05, here's this meme thing that I wasn't planning to post. For the record, I didn't cheat even though I REALLY wanted to.

Survey from half_elven17. It's fun to reminisce, even on things that really sucked at the time they happened, because now I just find them funny.

Finally, after being stuck at home (mostly) for 2 weeks, I got to visit UP yesterday and today. _chimoms  and I went early yesterday and I got to hang out with people I haven't seen in a while, like alvintang , zen_jase05 , and Gino. While Momz was at her Optics workshop, I met up with Patag and Din at Eng'g, where the various eng'g orgs were competing in mattress stuffing. As usual, IE Club won that and became overall champion for the 19th (?) time. After that, we walked around the oval and had the first ever (although incomplete) W.H.O.R.E.S. studio pic taken at one of the kiosks. Then, we just sat around in Quezon Hall and watched the Lantern Parade and the fireworks display. I would have been tempted to watch Miss Eng'g, but I didn't know any of the contestants. Besides, my feet were killing me and I was dead tired from walking around UP all day.

Nina planned for all of us W.H.O.R.E.S. (with the exception of Cassy, who was off "teaching education" in Montalban, Rizal aka "the gubat place") to have brunch at Chocolate Kiss today, so we had a sort-of reunion. Eya had just come back from Korea, and of course Cassy and I have been in Singapore for the past few months, and the UP Manila people rarely get to visit Diliman, so it was great to see everyone together. After stuffing ourselves, we walked to Bio (we saw PauPau on the way), where the Bio Christmas party was being held, and watched Carlos Cuaño sing (I don't know the title of the song, although I think it's pretty famous). We also saw melatariel  and finally got to meet the famous Scott, the first Bio major in a long time (if not in the entire history of UP) to have a flat 1.0 average. After some time, Patag, Eya, and Me-an went home while the rest of us decided to wait for Cielo to arrive. We walked to the sunken garden and just sat there for a while. The weather was very nice today, so hanging out at the sunken garden was actually pretty comfortable. As it turned out, Cielo was very busy with her research so eventually all of us except Nina just went home.

Pictures can be found on my Multiply :P Cassy, don't worry, I'll try to plan a party thing at my house so you can still see the Possie :D

My exams are over! And to commemorate my new-found freedom, I have a new layout - yet another exceptional piece of work by gawariel_design. I'm currently at Munchie Monkey (for all you non-NUS people, this is an on-campus restaurant) with Cassy, who has a review session at 2 pm. So the two of us are just killing time while eating chocolate cake (Cassy's treat). Oh, and I'll be going home this Thursday already. Yay.

Obviously, I have nothing to write about. I've exhausted most of the anime I've been watching, and the ones that are left are being subbed sporadically. Even the new chapters of the manga I'm reading have gone AWOL. I recently reformatted my computer so it's noticeably faster now, but I'm not interested in doing anything with it. Oh, the irony.

Anyway, I think Cassy's about to leave. Maybe I'll blog again when I get home.

EDIT: My Christmas wishlist is ready, if anyone's interested. It won't show up on your friends page because it's dated out of order. Less f-list spammage that way :P