ZOMFG.FML

So ever since I got the notice about my graduation date (6 weeks to go...6 WEEKS!!!) I've been going to the gym 4 times a week and trying to cut back on the crazy amount of food I consume.

Why? I know, I'm actually happy with the way that I am... the only thing is, I can't fit into my suit for graduation... and that means that I either buy a new one (can't afford) or wear something else. "Something else" is much too casual, much too old or much too fugly, and I will not have that at what may be my last graduation. SO EMBARRA!

Some gorgeous lady friends have offered their wardrobes, except they are amazonian beauties and I only speak lego.

So the solution was clear. At 9 weeks, after trying on the suit and having a tanty, I bought a women's health and hauled arse to the gym. Now, 4 days may not sound like anything crazy, but it actually is. Especially if you are fitness retarded like myself and on a deadline, and thus doing cardio and weights on the same day. For 4 days a week. FML.

I only promised 4 days since the brothertron does 5. I know, insane - it's clearly a family trait - and he's hardcore including protein shakes (ewwwwwwww) and all this other carbo slow release powder shake stuff which I forget what it's called. And I figured, if he can do five, I would be aiming high at 4. And the stakes are ever so high.

The good thing is that it's working! I have lost half a size, but the first 3 keggers are nothing. No-one even notices them because most of it is puffy weight anyway. So I have another 6 weeks (EEK!) to go from this:


...to this...


...or this...

pfft! I wish!

In other news, I am currently (when not looking like an idiot at the gym) watching loads of Gossip girl (can you tell? Look at Leighton's dress! I die!), Criminal minds (great for hot and muggy nights), Shaun the Sheep and cleaning my room.

You need to know this...

Song of the moment: Guy Sebastian feat. Jordin Sparks - Art of Love

I love you Shaun!

This cartoon makes me so happy I'm not so sure I should be openly admitting it...

But by the creator of Wallace and Gromit comes... "Shaun the Sheep"!!

This is Shaun. He's a sheep, who also happens to be awesome.
And these are the other sheep. You may or may not be able to tell, but Shaun is the wily one, which makes sense because he's the only one with hair.
This is Bitzer, the sheepdog.

Cheer up, guaranteed! :D

Navigating the tricky...

Doing all the little tricky things it takes to grow up, step by step, into an anxious and unsettling world.

Sylvia Plath

Okay, so the quote is actually written by a woman of questionable sanity and taste in men, but wrong she isn't. I always thought that as the years passed, I would be different, everyone else would be different… and suddenly we would all be grown-ups I suppose. But it isn’t really like that.

Whenever I got put on playground duty, I used to watch girls in the schoolyard. The things they would say to each other! I remember one occasion, when in the middle of teaching, I watched dumbstruck as a girl began dressing down another student with such aggression and hatred. Stefanie* was insisting that Mya* had been spreading gossip about Stefanie’s breakup. Mya didn’t have the wherewithal or the English to retaliate properly. Mya was a recent arrival in the country, and hadn’t had much formal schooling – she was a quiet girl, and Stephanie’s louder, more popular group had taken her under their wing. Stefanie was so angry about Mya’s apparent betrayal, but Mya began to try and explain that she honestly thought that Stefanie’s best friend already knew about it. In fact, Mya was responding to how Stefanie’s best friend was talking about Stephanie, as if she knew about the breakup. It was the perfect set up.

Stephanie’s awful bitching didn’t last long – all of a minute probably, until I collected my senses and stopped the tirade (hey, cut me a break, it was my first real teaching block). I used to writhe, wondering what I should say or how I could teach them to be wise, graceful, kind, gentle… all those things that are really important. Teenagers don’t care about being ladylike.

I remember watching the situation between Mya and Stephanie really disintegrate after that. Stephanie was civil, but things were different. I found out that they were family friends, so it was crucial that Stephanie kept up appearances. She was very good at it: fake sweetness in class, extending invitations to Mya that Stephanie knew that Mya couldn’t accept (on pain of an awful time) and general passive aggression.

Let me tell you about passive aggression amongst teenage girls. They are professional at it. It’s the jeering comment about what someone’s wearing. The manic laughing while glancing at Mya. It’s the invitation that isn’t extended. It’s the exclusion. It’s the way that things seem okay on the surface, but festering inside. It’s the quietly awful dying breath of kindness, honesty… love.

I gave Stephanie the talk. I did this with the head teacher. I tried to explain that what she was doing was very wrong, and she knew it. When she asked that favourite teenaged question “What did I do?” I replied by telling her that she knew exactly what she was doing. I told her it was called bullying. I told her that she didn’t have to be friends with everyone. I told her that sometimes people do things without meaning to, they make mistakes. Everyone does. But I also told her the way that she was handling it was also a mistake. I asked her to imagine that she was reading the story of Stephanie and Mya, and asked her who was more Cinderella and who was more like the evil stepsisters. It was at this point she lost her belligerence. Nothing like a good ol’ fashioned fairytale to bring home the point.

And things don’t change as we get older. Our surfaces just get better. We get better at convincing ourselves that our behaviour is ok. It’s always better to be Stephanie than Mya, so we take control of the situation; we take control of our social lives and do what we have to do to take control of social awkwardness, our discomfort. The idea that what the other person did was wrong and I was completely correct takes hold. That I suffered, that they hurt me, that I’m going to pretend everything is fine when it isn’t and then remove them from our lives.

We become adults, and a lot of the time, that’s what we do to each other. We don’t really forgive and move on, we exclude, ignore, reject. And we chocolate coat it with our politeness, sometimes even our friendliness. But it’s so violent and awful when that happens. Why do you think that describing someone as “genuine” and “down to earth” is such a rare occasion? Because no-one is ever fooled by anyone’s false friendship.

Stephanie and Mya eventually returned to complete normalcy after some time. Apparently, another seeming betrayal by another party brought them together. Ah, the resilience of youth. I guess they’re young, their memories are shorter.

I was remembering Stephanie and Mya in my sleeplessness last night, and I thought of the ways that I hadn’t grown up, the situations where I was still behaving and more importantly, feeling like the Stephanie. How I justified my actions by making myself believe that I was still hurt by someone’s mistake, how I had failed to realise that Mya’s mistake would only continue to hurt me if I let it.

So through God’s grace and in light of his mercy I’m asking Him to help me. 2010 is a new year, I am 26 years old – more than 10 years older than Stephanie and Mya! It’s really time I took this “growing up” thing a little more consciously. It is such an excuse when we play the victim card… Jesus was victim to a cross, victim to our sins, but I don’t think anyone ever read about him bitching in the bible. I want to try and be more… graceful and more resilient too. To show restraint and gentleness when I am Stephanie, and to be understanding and strong when I am Mya.

See? Jesus really is always the answer.

*Names have been changed.


Song of the moment: Casting Crowns - Who am I

Reading once more...

It seems to be interesting how the busier I got, the more I read. When I had all the time in the world, I had little or no inclination to read anything, but now, with the sporadic availability of work, the upcoming trip to Melbourne and preparation for an internship (which is finally happening, 12 months on! Hurrah!) I seem to be reading everything in sight.

A few of the latest titles:
Nice easy read, a possible teaching item.

An interesting perspective (and I thought a rather objective one at that, objective in the sense that all antagonistic opinions were represented in the book, but the author also chose to make clear her own opinions) on the man who is all at once admired and a bit loathed.

A little bit distressing! I didn't know what to make of it actually... o_O

Caving

I know. I said it would never happen. 100 acorns later...

I've jumped on the bandwagon so late, I'm being dragged through the trails, I know. I actually needed to be talked through the process. I had to be taught how use it. I am not a luddite, my Korean is slow, not bad, but it was just that much easier to get someone to show me than to feel it out for myself.

If you think facebook is a pain to navigate, you obviously haven't tried the bastard that is Cyworld*. The front page of their website is postively seizure-inducing, there are that many flashing gifs and images. The simplest things are counterintuitive. Everything costs money - or 'acorns'.

Let me explain 'acorns' further. (On a sidenote, why are they called acorns anyway? Acorns? Why? Why!?!) You pay money to buy acorns to do anything on the site. You'll pay acorns to change the blasted colour on your menus (IF you want to change the colour on your menus. Goodness knows why anyone needs to pay money to change the colours on their menus anyway, but some people feel the burning urge to do so). You pay this money, these acorns, and then the only option is renting! You RENT these Colours! RENT! Your menus will change back to standard colour after your time is up. Last I checked, colours were free domain to anyone with eyes and the ability to know what a colour was. Actually, you probably don't even need eyes to have a right to colour.

The one and only redeeming feature about it is that it keeps me connected to people who fervently prefer it to facebook. I have a close friend who is overseas at the moment, and if it wasn't for her regular updates and her page (or 'hompy' - don't ask) I would throw the in towel on the stupid thing already.

Statistically speaking, a whopping 90% of Koreans in their twenties have a Cyworld homepage, and overall, 25% of Koreans own one. Crazy stuff. And if even a tenth of the users paid to change the colours of the menus... well, you get the kind of revenue we're talking about. There must have been a significant percentage of second-generation-ers who wanted in as well, because there is a foreigner account set up procedure (which is all in Korean, interestingly enough).

I live to regret the brilliant decision that was setting this up, but I have been told to give it more of a chance. So it continues. I'm not even going to bother posting the link, I'd be held liable for the fit you would have upon loading the front page.

*Cyworld, the original Korean networking site, not to be confused with it's tamer, but largely similar American offshoot.

The Mind-Body Connection

So, i think I'm finally starting to recover from the stupid bug that's had me for the last couple of months. I've been so sick, firstly with a throat thing, and then it morphed into a cold after 5 courses of antibiotics. It seems to be all good now. Crisis over. Two months later.

It did get me thinking about the connection between our physical and mental wellbeing - how tightly they are knit together, how truly "wonderfully and fearfully made" we would appear to be. When one has all of the sloppy unhappiness that comes with a physical ailment, after a while, we begin to see manifestations of this illness in the person's mental wellbeing. Sometimes it doesn't even take that long. Certainly, the example of myself was that after 4 weeks, i found myself hitting the bounds of my usual positive attitude.

I was in peak fitness and happiness when this stupid viro-infecty-cough thing hit me. I was working out pretty hard, eating really well and so forth. And a month later, I'm still fighting it off. So what happens? My hope that the next course of antibiotics will do the trick, slowly begins to be questioned. Doubt in western medicine creeps in. I fear that this is something lethal and scary, and my doctor has no idea. I google my symptoms. It's strep throat. I'll develop Necrotising fasciitis. It's cancer. I'll never sing again. I won't be able to teach...

Which is all absolutely ridiculous. I mean, honestly. Necrotising fasciitis? Of all the hypochondriac thoughts to begin having.

And then i became moody. I wanted to withdraw. I began having uncharitable thoughts about everything. I began to despair in my future. I stopped looking for work. I stopped caring about other people. You get the picture.

But the point I wanted to make was this: it took a month of a cold (not hives, or organ failure or, i don't know, hospitalisation?) to break me into a nervous googling wreck. A month. Goodness knows where this would have lead if it went for longer than 2 months.

Just when I think I can do it all on my own, that everything i have is all my own work... a month long advent into a sore throat and I get my come uppance.

Take care of yourselves... it's cold season.

Song of the Moment: Beyonce - Halo

White Day arrives...

White Day gift!

Tasty :D ... a ChupaChup would have sufficed... but chocolate is my real weakness...

Photies~

So I'm trying to take advantage of the fact that i have a half decent point and shoot camera (which actually belongs to the parentals, but it's mine now.... ;D) and have tried to keep it on hand to take a few pictures every now and again. It's nice to have them, even though it's annoying at the time sometimes. So recently...

My subsistence for the past few weeks. I've been paying for all this fast food on the scales.

We've had a few farewells these past few weeks... Church has had a lot of these for the past few years. The influx of working holiday-ers means that there is another sad goodbye upon expiry of said visa. Cue photo, teary prayers and hugs.

Posers. Pre-aforementioned teary song and prayer.

Australia is just awesome. I know i say this often, but i can guarantee you, i don't verbalise it half as often as i feel it. I took this whilst driving to Canberra few weeks previous, and words can't describe how perfect this day was. The sky was so pretty, the roads were clear and there was sunshine everywhere.

With friends at Bungalow 8 a few nights ago... It was good fun, devoid of alcohol for myself, but awesome nonetheless.

Song of the moment: Travis - Love will come through

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