I was going to write a long post, reflecting on 2010, thinking about the future, and talking about my upcoming trip, but my brain is pretty fried, so I'll make this short and sweet.
1. Tomorrow I leave for Japan! Craaaaazy! It hasn't sunk in entirely, but I'm sure it will when I wake up at 3 am to head off to the airport!
2. Tomorrow is New Year's Eve! I'll be spending it on a plane, but I hope everyone else will be out partying! So...
3. HAPPY NEW YEAR! And I'll keep in touch when I have a free moment upon arrival :D
I woke up feeling irritated and cranky. I definitely slept enough... but I think that the stress from my upcoming voyage has made me very irritable.
So that being said, let's talk about something that makes me happy: photography!
I don't take nearly as many photos as I would like, but when I do make the time for picture-taking, I'm often happy with the results.
Yesterday I developed my second roll of film used in my Diana Mini camera, and I was really pleasantly surprised with the photos! I used Redscale Negative Film, which was pretty cool! When developing them, I also asked them to print 2 exposures per print, which I think they're supposed to do anyway, but didn't last time I developed them.
So without further ado, here are a couple of my favourite shots :)
If you look closely, you'll notice a couple of booboos. For one, there's a scratch common to every photo I developed from this roll, which means either I placed the film in wrong, or somehow the negatives got scratched when I was rewinding the film. (It totally got jammed when I was trying to rewind it before taking it out...) Another booboo is that all the photos seem to be backwards, which leads me to believe that maybe I did load the film in wrong... Oh well, these things sort of add to the photos' charm, so I'm not upset at all :)
Every roll I develop is a learning process. I still have 2 more redscale rolls and can't wait to load them into my camera and start snapping away again. I think I'll wait till I get to Tokyo, though! I really should be doing more relevant things with my time right now anyways.... (packing, whaat? >__>)
If you'd like to see other photos I've taken with this camera, I encourage you to check out my Flickr set. :)
Today I've gone through all kinds of negative emotions.
I officially started organizing things to pack. I went through a good portion of my clothes, placing them into three main piles: Yes, No, Maybe. So far the pile doesn't look too huge, but based on youtube videos my father found, neither does my potential dorm. I knew going into this that my place would be pretty small, but I guess I didn't realize that storing my clothes would become such an issue. Oh well. I'll make do with what I'll have, I guess. Worst case, I'll just store my socks in the extra space in my fridge :P
I've been doing a lot of productive procrastination as well, because I can't sit down in one place right now. For example, instead of packing and organizing, I finally found time to read a third of my KCP Handbook (which I received this summer....), wrote this newmovies page, started reviewing my kanji hardcore, and now I'm writing this.
I'm supposed to go to the mall tomorrow to do some last-minute shopping for the trip... but I haven't even made myself a list yet. Eff. Maybe I'll do it early tomorrow morning... knowing me and stress, I won't be able to sleep in later than 8 am anyway... >__>
I know I should feel excited about the upcoming adventure, but I just feel so blah today. I feel antsy and impatient. I feel ignored and unimportant. I feel selfish and guilty. I feel so needy. I feel so behind and so stressed. I have 4 days left and countless things to do. I just wanna roll up into a ball and wake up in my dorm on January 10th, because once I get to Tokyo, I'll just have more stressful things until the move-in.
But that's not possible. I guess I just have to try and stay as positive and motivated as possible these next few days. On the plus side, allow me to introduce you to my new travel buddies :)
I received an excellent piece of luggage from my aunt for Christmas, and I am quite excited to start putting things into it. I named her "Lucy Luggage" and her address tag is "Seymour Fish."
Part of it is most definitely paranoia. I was informed this morning that an ex-coworker has gastro, and was at work yesterday.... which means that everything that she would have touched was still potentially infected when I went in today. People think I overthink these things, which may be true, but living with a doctor makes you so much more aware of the presence of germs, so let's just say I'm thoroughly freaked out right now.
To make matters worse, my grandmother was for sure sick with either a really bad cold or the flu when I went to see her today. My grandmother comes from 'Old Country', so things like constant hand-washing and soap are not super important practices for her. And when she's preparing all the food to be eaten at Christmas Eve supper, it seems almost impossible to dodge infection.
All this to say, with less than a week until I leave the country, my sickness paranoia is on high-alert.
I also think I'm just super tense. I feel the same kind of tenseness that I did for the first month or so of this semester. As much as I've been trying to convince myself that those constant feelings of sickness and nerves had to do with the stress of planning this now-upcoming Japan trip, I know deep down that that was not the major cause of my morning illnesses.
People talk about love as if it's some sort of wonderful experience, but I'm not so sure about that. I think that it must be, providing the object of one's affection is capable of returning these feelings. Love + Love = More Love. I guess that's the sort of equation that make up most working relationships. But when love is one-sided, it's a lot more tragic an experience. Maybe 'tragic' isn't the right word... 'traumatic' then? Love + No Love = Frustration, Sadness, Disappointment, and all other kinds of unfortunate emotions. Loving someone makes me feel physically sick. I can't sleep. I wake up feeling like I'm going to vomit. I get nervous. I get tense. My body does not know how to react with the message that my brain is giving it.
The sickness sort of subsided after the official rejection something like two months ago, but somehow it seems to be coming back and I don't know what to do. It isn't full-fledged, but in times like right now, when I'm stressed about other things, all I think about is him, and I wonder if these feelings will ever go away. I guess I just really wanted to see him before I left, and I'm starting to realize that that won't be a possibility, and my mind and body have gone into panic mode. To keep myself from breaking down in front of a class full of people, I pretty much ran out of class as fast I as I could that last day, which obviously meant no time for goodbyes. Then he didn't show to my going-away party, so there went that opportunity too.
I don't know why seeing him before I leave is so important to me. I guess I'm just weird like that. And if he ever finds this blog, he'll probably think I'm a grade-A creeper and there would go our friendship too. I don't know why I'm writing this in the first place. Maybe it's because it's Christmas. Maybe it's because I'm leaving. And maybe it's because I'm scared of losing something I never had.
The year has flown by faster than any other before, and Christmas is upon us once again. I can't say I really had the chance to appreciate all the wonderful things that come with Christmas this year, but one thing's for sure: I am so grateful for all the great people who have been a part of my life this year!
So to all of you reading this, and to those who don't even know this blog exists, thank you for being there for me all year, through all my various ups and downs and I wish you nothing but the best this Christmas!
Yesterday I had my going away party, and I must say, it was quite successful! Lots of people showed up, and I really had a great time! I was really touched by all the people who came out to see me! :) I'm so thankful to have so many nice people in my life! ♥
Beforehand, Akané and I went for supper in Chinatown, which was lots of fun because she's such a fun and nice person to hang out with :) I should have taken some photos of the place we went to, it was really nice! Too bad I had worn such a tight dress... couldn't eat too much lol (and the portions were huuuge for someone like me!)
For the party itself, we went to the St-Sulpice bar on St-Denis, which is a really cool place, because it has different themed rooms. We went to the library, cause we're cool like that XD It's actually the exact same place I had my birthday party. I decided to not drink very much because I had already been drunk once this week, and I really didn't feel like being hungover today. I also didn't want to risk getting sick at the party, and then have to leave before some people showed up. I don't at all regret my decision: I don't need to be drunk to have fun ^^
I guess my only real regret of the night is that I didn't take enough photos. I have so few photos of all of my wonderful friends. I used to take a lot of photos, but as time went on, I realized that when you spend too much time behind the lens, you spend less time in the moment and end up missing out. And because yesterday was the last time I was going to be seeing a lot of people for a long time, I wanted to talk to people as much as possible ^^
I was really surprised that I didn't cry at all last night. I guess it just doesn't seem real yet. As much as some things are sinking in, the fact that I won't be seeing all these wonderful people until many months from now just seems so incomprehensible that I can't seem to grasp that. I guess that's a good thing in a way, it made the night less sad.
To conclude: I love you all and thanks for everything yesterday! Hugs and kisses and more hugs to everyone ♥
In other news, I'm completely in love with the wonderful nail polish that Akané bought me!! It's so pretty! And the bottle is pretty too! And it smells like roses~~!
The photo doesn't really do the colour justice. It's a little more pink than in the photo, and sorta sparkly and just wonderful! And now a photo of the the most awesome bottle:
For one, I did a 10-day work marathon. It's not the longest work marathon I've ever done, but because I'm moving away in 11 days, I have so much to do, my stress level was pretty much through the roof. More questions keep appearing, which means more phone calls to make, more visits to the bank, and more confusion.
But that's besides the point! I had all kinds of fun social interactions this week! I went out for desserts with Akané on Wednesday, Cora with MF, Francis and James on Friday, and cookies with Allison and my work party yesterday. It was so nice seeing everyone this week, because these are all people I barely ever see, so it was nice to have somewhat intimate hangouts one last time ^^.
Today was my last day at work. It was really emotionally hard. I mean, I was expecting that, but still. I cried so much and in front of so many people. I was teary-eyed and voice-crackly with customers too... Between the hangover headache I woke up with, the fact that I'm on my period, the lack of sleep I've been getting, and the amount I cried today, I had such a huge headache and actually left work a bit early.
It's definitely weird to be leaving, because I've worked at this job for four and a half years, and my co-workers are pretty much family. But because of this, I know that we'll all see each other in the future. I'm so happy that I had the opportunity to work at such a great place with such great people! We have a breakfast on Friday morning, which for sure means more tears, but oh well. Such is life, I guess ^^; Gotta be thankful for small miracles, like waterproof make-up ^^
Tomorrow is my going-away party! I hope I won't cry too much ^^;
It's funny how different people see the same things. For one, something can be completely fantastic. For another, that same thing can be a horrible piece of shit. I guess that's what makes people so interesting.... if everyone always agreed on things, life would be boring. At the same time.... how can someone possibly dislike something I value so highly?
One girl on my fb friends has posted a couple of times now on how much she disliked 500 Days of Summer, which is actually one of my favourite movies. It's funny cause her and I seem to have a lot of other similar tastes (not that I know her all that well, but still...) and I just find the whole ordeal quite curious. What about the movie could be so offensive as to cause such an angry reaction towards it?
Because I don't have an answer to my own question, let me just talk about why I do like it.
1. I love the Smiths: This trailer pretty much had me at "Hello," or in this case, "The Smiths." As I've mentioned before, The Smiths are one of my favourite bands, and the song at the beginning of the trailer happens to be one of my favourite Smiths songs. So the first time I saw this trailer, I knew from the very beginning that I'd love the movie.
2. Thank you for Regina: It's the reason I became a big Regina Spektor fan too! "Us" and "Hero" are both wonderful songs and fit the movie quite perfectly. All the music does, actually, which is always a plus.
3. It's about a break-up: You find this out in the trailer, so there's no spoiler there. As the narrator-guy says "This is a story of boy meets girl, but you should know up-front, this is not a love story." I love my chick-flicks, but I love that this is not one of them.
4. Genre, what genre? I have no idea what sort of genre it is. It's not a chick-flick. It's not a comedy. It's not a drama. It's not really an art film. It's all of them, and none of them simultaneously. It's wonderful and doesn't fit into a box. Love.
5. Zooey Deschanel: 'Nuff said.
6. Costumes: I absolutely love the way that the characters are dressed in this film (well Tom and Summer, at least)!
7. Linearity is Overrated: This scenes in this film are not shown in chronological order. It jumps back and forth a lot. It juxtaposes between lovey-dovey past and shitty present. It's just brilliantly done.
8. It's real: I doubt it's an actual true story, but at the same time, it's the true story of any past relationship. The more you look at it from afar, the more you understand things that may not have worked out, and the more you appreciate the parts of it that were good and happy. It's not one of those magical movies where everything turns out in the favour of the hero. There isn't a bad guy. It's just normal people living normal lives, for better or for worse.
Maybe it's that last part that rubs people the wrong way. When you go see a film, you want to see something that is predictable, that you can anticipate the ending, and that doesn't cause any sort of inner conflict. But this isn't one of those movies. It hits home in a big way for anyone who's ever been in a failed relationship, and I guess a lot of people aren't ready to deal with that sort of thing when sitting down for 2 hours to be entertained.
This is just the way I see it. But then again, what do I know about tastes and normalcy? All I eat is bland, tasteless food... and others would prefer a world of tastes and textures... My tastes and textures just come in a different variety, I guess ^^
Lately I've been feeling sorta odd. My stomach always feels unwell, so I don't really eat, which in turn causes headaches and other shitty feelings. I also pull muscles like it's nobody's business, which is all kinds of painful. I sort of hope it's just all stress-related, because I don't have the time to get sick right now. I've got less than 20 days left in the country, and so many things still to do. And when some of these 20 days are holidays, it makes getting actual important stuff done a little harder.
Today started off pretty badly. By 8:30 am I was already fuming. I guess it was a mixture of disappointment, confusion and bullshit-intolerance, but it really got me upset. I guess I just get hurt way too easily and have confidence in the wrong people. Thank God I had so much shit to do, so I didn't actually dwell on the situation for too long (though I did lose a good hour of productivity, but, hey, could have been worse, I suppose). My day seemed to get worse as I got to the bank, only to find out that a pipe had burst or something, and they were closed for the day to clean up. Of all the days for crap to go down, it had to happen on the one day I had put aside for getting tons of shit done. I'm on day 5 of 10 straight work days, so I had to get everything done by 4 pm, which of course seemed impossible at this point.
"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry" is one of the best things that high school English class taught me. I guess that's why I don't like to make too many plans... if you leave things open-ended there is less to go wrong, less disappointment to be had.
After my crappy morning I pretty much reached the it-can't-get-much-worse stage, and things started getting better. And so did my mood. Work was actually fun and training the new girl (or should I say 'woman'? she's 12 years older than me) was a lot better than I thought it would be! And even missing my bus was positive: I ran into the girl who works at Inglot who's super nice and we got to talk for 10 minutes on the bus :)
So in the end, the few random pluses in my day ended up negating the shitty morning I had had. Proof that I'm not a completely negative person.
About a year and a half ago, I discovered that I had a rather crappy problem known as Vaginismus. Now not to bore you with all the knitty-gritty details, here's vaginismus (or as those who have it amicably call it, 'vag') in a nutshell:
Vag is pretty much a girly form of ED. Long story short, my vagina is like a high security prison: nothing is let in. It senses outside danger and is all "imma keep this place as closed as shit" and pretty much puts up a sort of wall of defence (almost literally too). The fun thing is that it's partially physical, and partially psychological, which makes it al kinds of fun to try to treat. What's great is that it's fully curable. What's less great is that it takes a really fucking long time to get over it, and if you have the motivation and drive like I do (which is to say, not very much), it could take years to get over it. Yaaaay, complications!
So, that's all great and dandy, Pinky, but why are you telling us this?
Well, boys and girls, I don't actually know why I am. Maybe it's because I don't really keep secrets from people and so there's no point in hiding this from the big bad world of the interwebs and such. Or maybe because I need to organize my thoughts about the subject, and how better to do it than with a bunch of strangers on the world wide web?
I guess what's become problematic is that over the last few months, I've been in a sort of denial state about the whole thing. For one, it's a self-diagnosed problem, so in the back of my mind I can't help but wonder if I've made all this shit up. But this is one of those rare things that seems pretty common to self-diagnose because a lot of doctors don't seem to know what the hell this is, cause it's sort of rare and seen more in psychology classes than medical ones. But I mean, in my defence, my self-diagnosis can't be all wrong. I've mentioned it to doctors who haven't told me that I was wrong. And I have other sorts of fun vaginal problems too! Yaay a package deal of vaginal fail~! Fun for the whole family!
In my denial, my busy schedule, and the fact that I pass out at 9 pm, I've pretty much stopped treating it too. And I don't plan on bringing my treatment kit with me to Japan either. So pretty much whatever small progress I've made up till now will be nullified over the next nine months, which means forget the idea of any sort of relationship while I'm abroad. Guys seem to think of sex as something of utmost importance, and because of my situation, it's honestly at the bottom of my list of what I need in a relationship.
For a long time I've sort of thought of myself as defective because of this. When something you've bought is defective, you bring it back to the store, they replace it for you, and once they get credited for said item, they throw it out in the trash. That's the harsh reality of defective things: they pretty much all get thrown out. And that's pretty much how my last relationship ended too. I find out I have this problem, and a week or so later, I get dumped. I got thrown out into the big garbage known as "let's just be friends." So obviously relationships (and guys and their shallowness) have left a bad taste in my mouth.
I guess this is why I love the manga Chobits so much. I loved it the first time I read it, many, many years ago, before the knowledge of my problem. When I reread it last year for a paper of mine, I fell in love with it all over again. I guess in my own twisted mind, half of the reason I've stopped treating it is because I want to find a Hideki-type guy, who will love me despite whatever imperfections and disabilities I may have. Because if you can't love me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best, right? Because curing myself would make it easy on them, right? But I can't help but thinking this is just another level of some sort of sadomasochistic denial. Clearly I like the idea of not only hurting a potential love interest because of my shortcomings, but I also want to get hurt when they are unable to deal with my problems.
I've become so used to being by myself in my life. I've never had a long-term relationship, and the boyfriends I have had were few and far between. And treating this problem is a constant reminder that there is a problem. I've finally started feeling good about myself again, after months of self-hate and major self-consciousness because of this crappy condition. Is it so wrong of me to just ignore the whole thing and just let fate run its course?
With my visa and plane tickets in hand, and the vague knowledge of where I'll be spending my next nine months, it has started to become very clear to me that I'm actually leaving Montreal. As much as I'm very excited for my next adventure, saying goodbye to things and people I love is obviously a difficult thing to do.
I guess most people don't do well with goodbyes, but I'm especially horrible. I feel the need to cry at everything, and the inability to cry in front of people, which makes for a horrible combination. To give you an idea of how silly I can be, during my last driving lesson with this super awesome driving instructor I was super quiet and kept getting choked up when talking to him, only to return home and bawl for a good hour about the idea of never seeing him again. And this was a man whose family name I didn't even know. So obviously this next month of my life will be very hard because of this.
Today was my last day at McGill. It was kind of a weird feeling. I've pretty much hated McGill since day one. It isn't a bad school at all, but McGill brings about a whole new kind of bitter that I didn't know I had within me. McGill is overrun with rich non-Montrealers. I would always be jealous of how easy they seemed to have things: Not only were their parents paying for them to live and study far away from home, but they were paying for them to have so many freedoms that I was not allowed. And I really hated that. Perhaps that's why I became friends with so few people in university, because of my inability to adapt and my overabundant jealousy.
But I did make friends. And I did become, if not friend with, than admirers of, certain profs in my department. Because my department, no matter how shitty and decrepit its building is, is full of pretty cool people.
So, today, I presented my two Japanese teachers with gifts of gratitude for allowing me to take part in their classes, despite the fact that I pay no tuition, and they would be volunteering their time for the few things I submitted to them for correction. I was so worried about the quality of the message in the cards... Despite studying Japanese for years, my speaking and writing abilities are so very poor, and I was so worried that it would look like they had wasted so much time on me. But they both seemed so surprised and happy to receive my gifts, that I feel it went okay in the end. One of the teachers even sent me a thank-you e-mail, that obviously made me cry.
Because all I've been doing today is fighting back tears. I pretty much ran out of my last class today after giving my teacher her gift to avoid crying in class. For similar reasons, I didn't actually give a proper goodbye to a certain someone in my class either... rather just waved from the door as I made my escape. I fought back tears from McGill metro to Côte-Vertu... which is a pretty long journey for those of you unfamiliar with the Montreal metro system.
And all this over a school I never liked, and people who I barely knew. How the hell am I going to survive saying goodbye to my work, my friends, and my family?
Has it really been a whole week since I last posted? What a bad blog mother I am! >_<;;
So here is my last week in a nutshell:
1. Consular Affairs
I went to the Consulate last Wednesday, and it went surprisingly well. I was very pleased. The whole thing went so well that today I picked up my student visa. That's right, boys and girls, I am the proud owner of a Japanese Student Visa. I'm super happy! Though, between my passport photo, my certificate of eligibility, and my visa, there are now three ugly photos of me in my passport… Although the hair colour and style is different in every photo, the shocked expression I sport is identical in all of them. Oh ID photos and your inability to flatter people… But yaaay visaaaa~! :D
2. Lomography Fun
I developed my first roll of film from my Diana Mini~! At first I was pretty disappointed with their quality, but the more I look at them, the happier I am!
Here are a few of my faves from the roll/excuse me while I pimp my flickr account...
I've started a new roll of film. This one is a redscale negative roll... I might be adventurous and get them printed at Wal-Mart... It was pretty expensive to develop them last time... and the whole point of these photos is to look crappy, right? So what better place for crap quality than Wal-Mart.... riiight?
3. Rain?
I usually hate rain, but every now and then, I have a day where I really like the rain. Today was one of those days. It was kinda nice to come home using my cute colourful umbrella! Though, I must admit, I'm a little disappointed that the snow disappeared so quickly. I don't particularly like winter (or snow), but December snow is always pretty-looking! Oh well, I'm sure that snow and cold is just around the corner, so I shouldn't complain :P
