Honest Lies – Page 50 – "Okay, so I'm the dragon. Big deal. You still get to be the hero."

Welcome! Honest Lies is the personal site of a 26 year old graduate electrical engineer living in the UK. Covering every day life, books and various other randomness. Read more about me and the site here.

Spending all my time

Todays entry will be a list because I am tired and do not feel well and therefore don’t want to think about how to link these random things together-

– About 3 weeks ago I noticed a speck of dirt on my leg. Thinking nothing of it I went to brush it off. Only to find that it was hard to the touch and embedded in my leg. Upon further inspection I realised it was a tick lodged in my leg. (Well, technically I didn’t know until afterwards when I googled it that it was a tick. I’ve never seen one before!) I panicked and tried to remove it myself, but in the end my sister had to pull it out. I think when I tried to remove it I must have squished it because a week ago the bite site became red and itchy. I was feeling fine but with Malaysia coming up so soon I went to the doctors anyway. One doctors appointment later, and a weeks worth of antibiotics that have made me feel ill, it has gotten worse and it turns out, I potentially have mild Lyme disease. D: What are the chances of that?! I now have two weeks of new, stronger antibiotics to take that will finish one day before I leave the country.

I really do not need this right now.

Also, it does not inspire confidence in me that the doctor I went to today sat for a good 5 minutes flicking through a medical manual, and then blatantly googled my symptoms in front of me. Thankfully, after googling myself I find she has given me the recommended medicine for the treatment of Lyme disease…

– I have now have two weeks to go before I leave the country. I did a test pack on Saturday and was made to realize just how little 20kgs+7kgs(main+hand luggage) is. I kept trying to pack everything and had to spend some time trying on my clothes, really thinking about whether it was comfortable enough, suitable for hot weather, versatile etc. I gave myself the rule that if something did not match with at least three of the basic items I am definitely taking (plain camisoles, t shirts, cardigans) then it had to go. I still have too much stuff though. Before I actually physically tried to pack I thought space would be the issue but my suitcase is half empty and I struggled to pack it properly because i simple did not have enough clothing items to add padding. Packing is very stressful when its a holiday. When its for 10 months it is even worse. I just want all my things with me! But I have no weight at all. Also, it is weird packing only summer clothes for a year. Although I am glad I don’t have to mess about trying to fit in sweaters or jackets.Ah, and I have almost finished my packing list. Which is another thing I can soon strike off the list! (there is still a fairly small amount of things being crossed off the list)

– I really need to meet up with my friend and discuss what she is packing so we can ~compare~. Which even if Iam feeling not so great should be OK. However it is also her 21st birthday party this weekend. Yeah, I know. I have to go because it is her 21st but I am wondering how on earth I will get through it. I am praying that my new antibiotics won’t make me feel as terrible as the current ones, although it seems they may make me feel similar or worse. I am also praying that the potential Lyme disease stays potential and symptoms apart from the red ring rash don’t suddenly appear. please, please just let it heal and heal soon.

– I still haven’t finished file sorting on my computer.

– I started to scan in my university notes. There is nothing quite so dull, even with a feeder scanner to make it easy. I also came to realize that I remember absolutely nothing from first year. I cannot C program anymore, I never got communications engineering and the little I did understand is now gone, and most likely I’ll struggle in practical labs too. (I always struggle in practical labs, but I seem to get worse as time goes by. :/) I came to the obvious and belated realisation that actually, I am not just moving abroad in two weeks, but starting second year in two weeks too. This is terrifying in itself, without the added complications of adjusting to a new climate and new place etc. I worked up the courage to look at the modules for next year which added to my fear. I cannot afford to fail this year but I really wonder how things will work out now. I had gotten into a comfortable routine at uni last year, but obviously I will not be able to replicate that. I struggled first year and second year can only be worse and I won’t have the support of my dad, and I’ll be coping with the change of moving, and in all honesty, I really am not looking forward to having to study again. Too much free time has made me very lazy :/

Listening To: KARA - pandora
mood: sick

Soaring

My sister took me to Matlock Bath in Derbyshire on Thursday. It was something we’d been wanting to do for a while but there never seemed to be the right time. Currently we are both going mad with boredom being stuck at home all day, with all the things we need to do being the kind of dull things we don’t want to do, so a day out seemed a welcome respite. The drive to Matlock was long, we headed into the peak district, going along narrow, meandering, and steep country roads. When we got there it was around 11 and the day had become pleasantly warm. We were both keen to get going, albeit hungry. We followed everyone else to the cable car station and took the cable car up to Abraham Heights. We were in the cable car with a couple and their son and naturally their son was happily wondering out loud what would happen if we were to say, crash, or stall. I wasn’t scared though, just slightly queasy from the rocking movement. My sister was scared, which was slightly hilarious. Once we got to the top we jumped out the cable car (with more grace than we got in on my part- I walked into the door for going up, this time I managed to just stumble slightly) and allowed ourselves to be driven by hunger and immediately headed to the gift shop and cafe. We ate some surprisingly cheap and tasty fast food on the balcony overlooking the village of Matlock Bath. Then we headed to the playground where we decided we would totally go down the giant slides they had, our ages of 20 and 23 be damned. A little girl gave us a weird look and asked us if we were queuing and why yes, yes we were. I went first. I was nervous, a little scared, no longer having the bravery and fearlessness of a six year old. It turned out to be wicked fun. I laughed as I leapt off the end and laughed even harder when my sister came down, arms in the air and cheering. I laughed until I felt breathless, totally forgetting that I had gone down first for the purpose of filming my sisters go. It was exhilarating. Sadly, the second time down was anti climatic and boring. Turns out going down a giant slide when you are 20 is only thrilling the first time around.(Later we saw a middle aged man going down the slide and felt slightly reassured not to be the only adults indulging in reliving our youth, although this guy could likely have been forced by his children…)

After that we made our way through exhibitions before finally we joined the queue for the tour of the old mines there. The caves were cold and damp and the passages were narrow and low, so we had to bend over almost double as we inched our way along. The tour was filled with restless kids and the tour guide was aiming his tour at them, but the caves themselves were interesting. A little gloomy and claustrophobic though and I was not impressed when they turned out the lights (I clung to my sister and prayed for it to be over, whilst staring hard at the flickering candle light that seemed to float in the darkness in a way that was just as unsettling as the darkness itself) When they turned the uv lights on it was impressive though, as the walls around us shifted from pink, to red,to green, blue. Very eerie but cool. I was pretty glad to get out of there though. We went to the prospect tower next, and I took one look at the steps that were no more than a few inches thick, tall too, and said no. So instead I found myself sitting at the bottom, waiting for my sister to appear. She appeared as a waving hand over the wall and through pointing and shouted instructions and a lot of confused looks from passer bys who likely didn’t realise I was talking to my sister at the top of the tower, I managed to get in a position to see her and get a picture. After more shouted, confused attempts at conversation I waited for my sister to come down.

We bought slushies next, because it seems that we had decided the day would be dedicated to being 6 years old again. Our tongues turned purple and our hands froze as we walked through the woodland down to the next set of caves. We ended up sat on a bench finishing our slushies, talking about nothing until the next cave tour. The next tour was much as the first, but the caves were more spacious and less like the walls were pressing down around us. The guide was older and thankfully made none of the lame jokes as the previous. They unfortunately did the whole turn the lights off again and this time was even worse- they decided to stick up a figure of a miner and have him narrate a typical day work for a miner, with added sound and even theatrical smoke at the end. Interesting, but I was too busy staring at the hovering light of the candles again to really care. It dragged on and i was spooked enough to forget to duck in a narrow passageway, ending up hitting my head on the low ceiling. I can imagine people working down there, because they had to, but I find it slightly crazy that these caves became a tourist attraction when they were no longer useful as mines, with rich people paying to be hoisted down there in the dark, with only the light of a candle (so not really any light at all) and no guide. Dressed in their fine clothes, of course, just to complete the strangeness of it all.

We decided to avoid the cable car coming down, I was nauseous at the thought of it and my sister was still scared so instead we climbed down, ending up taking a little walk through Matlock bath village, admiring the beautiful, unique cottages there. We walked along the main street which reminded us both of somewhere like Blackpool, a typical quaint English tourist trap but this one without the seaside. There was mainly cafe after fast food place after eatery. We did make a stop in an amazing chocolate store, where we bought marshmallows dipped in Belgian chocolate, which we devoured at once. They tasted like sweetie pies, which are a south african chocolate which is not sold here. :( With nothing much else to do and feeling pretty tired we went back to the car and started the journey back. We nearly stopped at Matlock, but there didn’t seem much to do there, and then we nearly stopped at Bakewell, but again, nothing caught our interest and somehow we instead ended up at the tiny village of Over Haddon. Guided by some signs and my sisters shaky memory of going there years ago we walked along deserted country roads and found ourselves at a river where my sister had the grand idea of us taking our shoes off and taking a walk into the river. It was painfully cold, and the smooth looking river bed was actually pretty sharp and uneven once stood in it. We cursed whilst laughing at our own stupidity. Of course we endured enough to take a picture, with forced, pained smiles. We got our shoes back on and went for a little walk, following a path alongside a river of clear, pure blue water with several waterfalls. It was very quiet, with no one about, and it was growing cooler, but thankfully still warm and no rain. We stopped and took stupid selca, my sister smiling and me pulling weird faces to annoy her. of course time was getting on and we headed back the way we came, slowly, as the way down was fine, but going up hill was another.

We continued on home but ended up stopping again in Buxton to eat, where we found a lovely Italian place with an even lovelier happy hour deal on which meant delicious food for cheap prices- and a free garlic bread! We were hopelessly under dressed in our slacks and loose t-shirts, complete with walking boots and me, my backpack. But hey, whatever. The garlic bread was slightly too garlicy, and the carbonara wasn’t the best I’ve had, and unfortunatly very messy. But I broke my diet of reduced diary to eat it, so it was heavenly. We got back on the road, were my sister enjoyed driving along the twisty, hilly roads (now downhill, so not as laborious as going uphill to get there) after months of motorway driving every day, whilst I stared out the window and tried to take pictures of the passing scenery (and failed, mostly).

it was a ridiculously fun day of laughter and being slightly crazy and immature because why not.I realized that I am really going to miss my sister when I am away in Malaysia. I can say and do things around/to my sister that I could not anyone else. We play fight and insult each other and laugh over lame jokes together. I can call my sister “bitch” as an affectionate pet name, tell her to fuck off and mean something more like I love you, but god you exasperate me, ramble on about tmi things, be totally unfeminine around her with the things we do and say and just, be myself completely because in the end we’ve spent our whole lives together. We’ve seen each other at our best and at our worst and at our most annoying and horrible and we’ve stuck together through it all. I know my sister as I know the back of my own hand. Being around her is as natural as breathing. I hope my sister will be able to visit me in Malaysia, or we can meet up in another part of Asia. :/ Of course I’ll miss my parents too. My mother is currently driving me crazy,and ruined my lovely day with my sister by fighting with me when I got back, but I know that once she’s not around I’ll want more than anything to see her. I guess that’s family though. When they’re around you can’t wait to get rid of them but when they’re not there you miss them. :/

Listening To: Kang Eun Il - Soaring
mood: OK

“We are all going forward. None of us are going back”

Well, all letters have come through now. I actually did get a single en-suite room, which resulted in me letting out a rather embarrassing shriek of joy when I found out. My father thought I had won the lottery or something equally epic. No, I just somehow ended up with what I wanted and never expected to get. I was surprised and slightly ecstatic to end up with my first choice of room. Even luckier, I am right next door to my close friend, who is also going to study abroad this year at the same university. With the letters also came the next wave of paperwork and I filled out what I hope is the last of the forms today. The hotel has also been booked, as well as the flights from Singapore to Malaysia.

I am not sure I have mentioned this before but my friend and I are taking a small trip to Singapore before heading onto Malaysia. We booked the flights to Singapore a while ago to ensure we get out to Asia, as there are many flights from Singapore to Malaysia, whereas the flights to Singapore were starting to book out and therefore increase in price. This makes me sound really organized but it was originally my friends idea. I am grateful for her of thinking of this, as it turned out to be a fantastic idea. We’ve got the flights we want, the hotel room we want, and will be spending 4 nights in Singapore to get some travelling done early, and at the same time adjust to Asia as tourists first. It all fell into place with surprising ease, which was a relief. I am greatly looking forward to passing out in a hotel room after the long flight, instead of having to deal with checking into campus. I am also growing very excited about visiting Singapore. I have been flicking through the single guidebook I own and writing itineraries in my head. I am actually rather excited to travel again. Although, I am praying that my friend and I don’t end up arguing, or annoying each other somehow during the 17 hours of travelling and the 5 days spent together thereafter. I hope it ends up being fun.

Apart from that, I am still spending my time trying to prepare. I am feeling better about packing in one aspect- books. I grew to dislike reading on my smartphone, as the screen was just too small to read for long periods of time comfortably, and it eats up battery life. I came to realise I should use my netbook for my reading, therefore I installed calibre and kindle for the desktop. With these on my little netbook I can safely say I feel a bit more confident about leaving my books behind and relying on ebooks for the next year. In the end during term time I don’t tend to read that much so if I could just have a few books on hand it would be fine. The only real drawback is how expensive ebooks are and how limited they are in some way. A lot of the books I want to read are quite old and don’t have digital formats, so I have been carefully reading reviews to find some books to load up for the year and almost every time I find a book I wish to read, the price is something I just cannot afford. I am watching the sales very carefully. I’m sure I’ll find something in the end.

I am still not making much progress with anything else. I did rewrite my to do list and made it more attractive…which is procrastination at its finest right. :/

But with everything booked and paperwork filled I think I can start to feel more optimistic. If I just steadily do a little bit each day it should be OK.

Listening To: Nishino Kana - Esperanza
mood: hyper

Dilly Dally Down

This summer (and lets use that term loosely, as it is cold and rainy) is proving to be very boring. The sort of boring that leads to the feeling that any small action is just far too much effort aka extreme laziness, listlessness and I cannot think of another “l” word to make it a solid trio. I am never going to be able to return to the usual routine at this rate. I have already forgotten what morning looks like. I could and should be spending my time more productively. I could read, or study Japanese, or go over the topics from my first year at university to prepare for second year! So many things and I just can’t bring myself to care. There is also the matter of moving abroad. I’m torn between wanting this summer to go quicker, so I can stop being so flippin bored, and wanting it to slow down already because currently I am moving abroad in one month and 10 days.

Yes, I am counting down. Of course I would when the time between now and then is becoming increasingly shorter and yet I have not crossed a single thing off my “to do list.” When I started this list at the beginning of the month it had two items, but as I gradually added more items on as they came to me the list grew and is now nearly 20 items long. And it seems that as the list grows, my reluctance to deal with it does too.

I have

– been spending hours sorting files on my computer to prepare for making backups. However it is taking longer than I’d like and I am far from done. I am in phase three of owning a computer– behold, the dinosaur. Seven years of endless crap that hasn’t ever been sorted before because I haven’t every needed to. Which is an excuse to cover up the fact I am terrible at throwing things out in real life and it seems I have problems letting go of meaningless digital crap too. I am likely to become one of those people you see on TV, crushed under the weight of every single thing they have ever owned, their bodies only found days later after extensive searches. I like to attach meaning to things, like to think that there may be a day when I’ll need them again, and what if I cannot find them? What do you do with your digital files- how do you decide what to keep and delete? I’m hoping I’ll become annoyed enough to just press shift+delete on it all and deal with the horror of what I have done afterwards. Likely I will get over it pretty quickly once real life starts off and I forget all about it because it really isn’t that important.

(Why? Why when I know this can I still not press “delete”?)

– started a packing list. I attempted to make categories, and to list every little item big and small. But it got too much and so I stopped and now don’t like to look at it. Cutting down all my belongings to a mere 20kg of stuff is proving even more difficult than I thought, and I never imagined it to be an easy task. I am not looking forward to leaving behind most of my clothes, skincare, makeup, and books. Pretty much everything, really. I know I can buy things over there but I don’t know when I’ll be able to go shopping, and how my money situation will be, and it makes me sad to think about all the money already spent on these things just to have them sitting unused for a year (in the case of skincare and makeup, possibly expiring)

That is about all I have done. Pathetic, isn’t it? I have things to organise with banking and I need to decide what baggage to take. And there’s more. Meanwhile, I am still slightly terrified and more than a little nervous. My thoughts constantly cycle back round to all my little worries about the whole thing. What will I eat over there? What are the supermarkets like? How will I cope with the weather? Will I need to use chopsticks at any point? (I can’t D:) How will I cope with all the insects? (Cockroaches and mosquitoes D: D: D: ) There is much to worry about, because it’s another unfortunate part of my personality to get worked up over small things.

University is also being slow releasing information which is annoying. I still haven’t received a certain important letter from them, and they haven’t said anything about accommodation. This is at the top of my current worries and I’m especially pissed that we’ve not heard anything. I need to stop getting my hopes up about an en-suite and instead start fretting about what to do when the bathroom is all the way down the corridor (this year the bathroom was right next door so it was perfectly OK to step across in a towel. I don’t think wondering down a corridor so poorly dressed is a good idea. Not to mention I had a sink in my room to do my facial skin care at night which I won’t have there so where will I do there? AHH) Also, the prices vary for all the accommodation types and I need to start budgeting (ah, another thing for the list. gdi)

So, yes. Very worried about lots of little things right now. I am spending my days file sorting (and lets use that term loosely as it mostly me discovering new love for things long forgotten about and finding reasons to keep them) interspersed with watching dramas. It’s really not enough distraction.

Listening To: After School - Dilly Dally
mood: Bored

Re-watched Noriko goes to Seoul as I wanted something light hearted to pass the time with. The story of this drama isn’t that original but the characters are endearing, and the relationships that form between them are precious. I love that it is not a romance story, but a story about family, friendship and personal growth. The way that Noriko and Min hae’s relationship develops so naturally, from strangers to something like family is really sweet, and it’s touching how they both support and encourage each other, and find confidence in themselves and the things they wish to achieve from that support. There are many co incidences and such that would only exist in a drama, and it definitely exists in the world of fiction where every problem can be fixed, if only you try hard enough. But I like that. It’s a heart warming drama with a good message that I could happily watch a third time even.

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