i do it for the thugs & the mother fuckin' gangstas

There ain't no therapy like retail therapy! Ayyyy!! Haha no but seriously. These necklaces were a super-score, and I'm feeling the Rachel Zoe aesthetic (devilishly skinny, unconcerned and a perfect monotone with a tendency for nasally extending vowel sounds.) $2 each from Dotti.

"The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same."

I woke up this morning feeling just as shit as I did before bed. Sure, I was rested and it wasn't 2am and I wasn't crying anymore. How much does that really matter when you've had one of those nights you've been dreading, where truths came out and more than one person cried and instead of epiphanies all you're left with is doubt seeping into everything. Doubt, and all the progress you think you've made is gone, and all there is, in the end, is a girl who fucks up everything.

I hope I'm not deluded in thinking that I may be alright for this exam, if I keep up the cramming. Then sixteen glorious days in which to study health microbiology (read: Staph, Toxoplasmosis, Giardia & the microbiota of the oral cavity, tres fascinating!!) and MAOR110 then GET BLAZED, pack my shit, move houses and GO HOME for five days before hitting up WELLINGTON, watch people get married, CELEBRATE TURNING 21, hang out with dee & photowhore the fuck out of Wellington (oh, this city, it holds fast in the chambers of my heart!) before going home again and working two jobs (transient stage) before settling back into Birkies & croissants and getting slight poisoning from the Link bus exhaust and selling shoooooooes & impulse shopping in my breaks.

I am meant to be writing essays for virology, full of protein names & virus mechanisms. The boys I study with find it enthralling, the girls, not so much. I ended up in an impromptu study group at the science library this weekend, which was fun/stressful/laced with donuts, KFC + lots of giggles.

I also figured out that the iTunes library on my laptop is just a copy of my Music folder and is therefore a waste 0f 5gb of space :/ And in an ill-thought out move I just deleted my iTunes library, changed my preferences & am re-adding all my music. I couldn't find a way around it! So there goes all my play counts, which I was strangely fond of. But yeah, in other news I found three copies of the Wicked OBC sitting on my laptop hard drive, so I guess the deleting was good in that way, highlighting all doubling/tripling up I do by accident when I DON'T DELETE SHIT OUT OF MY DOWNLOADS FOLDER ASAP GODDAMN.

Times like this I really miss MediaMonkey, which was a fucking demon at figuring out where I had two copies of a song and getting rid of it, whereas iTunes is like 'Aw, chill bitch, the more the merrier', completely missing the fact that I am particularly OCD about my pretty little music collection being uh, pretty, and streamlined. Also, the B-side for the Juno soundtrack is called 'Juno B Sides: The Almost Adopted Songs' which made me grin pretty wide, y'all.

Shaun and I are gonna go halves on an external hard drive, and I will finally be able to scrapbook my music, in a way, as well as stockpile TV shows. I'm pissed at his internet, the Pushing Daisies soundtrack had 1mb left and it disconnected, merde!

I went to the gym this morning and was reading a Cleo where they sent these chicks on exercise bootcamp to lose a ton of weight and then they loved themselves and all was well; all very aspirational, until I stopped skim-reading and caught that these girls were sent to the gym a minimum of four times a week. FOUR.TIMES.A.WEEK. Where in God's green Earth are you going to find the time to go to the gym AT LEAST four times a week for between 60-90 minutes at a stretch? Fucking ridic.

I'm procrastinating, but considering I spent twelve goddamn hours at the library battling goddamn virus replication and viroid replication and host defence evasion and all that shit, I think it's amazing I'm just procrastinating and not uh, en route to Mexico to buy a chihuahua and live in bliss drinking margaritas and organizing drug smugglers.

Oh, and Glee? I love you desperately, but stop trying to make Myspace happen. It's not gonna happen.

waist deep in thoughts of you

This is a good song, chums. What, you ask, has Char been up to today?

I woke up at eight, squirmed around in bed and read a trashy novel til quarter to, got dressed in the biggest tumble & rush and headed off to one of my favourite places in university - the science library. It has no pretensions towards being cutely retro or terrifyingly futuristic and the people who inhabit hold a place in the inner chambers of my heart because they speak to the geek who lives inside me. You don't come here to socialize, or because it's a pretty place to study or even because it's particularly comfortable; you come here because it's so easy to get inside your textbook and spend the day all cosied up with the inner workings of virus replication. And if you're really lucky, like me, you end up with three like-minded cronies and halve the work you have to do by sharing essay prep. Yep, in the course of the day, in twelve hours, I've managed to collect notes on six essays. SIX! And I still have that unopened Pocket Rocket staring at me from the tabletop. (Once upon a time, a long time ago, I was called Pocket Rocket and I was in love with two boys whose names both started with a J and I was fifteen and fearless.)

I'm feeling anxious about stuff at my flat again lately, but am determined to not worry about it.

halo halo halo

Tired. Strangely anxious. Eyeing up the V Pocket Rocket I scored from a promo girl on the walk from Shaun's to med library and trying to calm myself down. The two holes in the arm of my cardigan are making me feel better, funnily enough. I'm uh, not studying as much as I should be. Ruh roh.

I just feel like I haven't vented in ages. And i don't know whether it's stress of not, but I'm not vocalizing things. And I'm being really honest. Which probably isn't a bad thing but I don't internalize what I usually internalize, and vice versa.

I hang with the micro kids, I hang with Shaun. Pretty much. And I do feel guilty for not spending time with my flatmates but I don't think I should.

This cheers me up. Go on, give it a listen.

sit down, shut up and hear me

I'm here. I'm here and I can see the finish line.

I'm exhausted. I am working so hard, I have never worked this hard or wanted this so badly. And it terrifies me to say this out loud, say it at all, but here it is. I am so close, and I want this. I want it so much, and if I don't get it, I will try as hard as I can not to let it break me, but I'm not sure I could do it.

All along I've wanted not to want things, so when I didn't end up getting them I wouldn't feel like a failure. And now events are in motion. Applications have been filled in, signed off, panicked over and it seems, at twenty, I am finally about to prove myself; I've finally given in and given myself a chance.

And I am terrified, and I am so close, and I am desperate. Please, just let me get this.

stripy sweaters & sweet caroline

When I procrastinate during exam-time, I end up downloading a ton of music. I also end up paying heaps of attention to my hair, waiting for the pins & needles in one/both of my legs to go away (most frustrating thing ever) & oscillating between panic & this state of pure zen.

this is what I look like when I'm in the midst of doing everything listed above.

Yay for chunky peachy stone bracelets!! I've found I tend to buy cheap jewelry based on weight over design, weird huh? I also purchased a TON of bobby pins for $2.50. Confession: I've never really used bobby pins til this year. I've never been able to put them in my hair properly, and as a consequence, I never knew my wavy fringe had the option of not splaying out over my forehead when I didn't straighten the living daylights out of it. RIDICULOUS. But then my flatmate D was all 'Bitch, here, a bobby pin' & I was all, O. HAI.

Cool story, bro.

OH, and also, also, Shaun & I were like OH MEH Butterflies Hospice Shop, because it's one of those op shops that has cottoned on to the secondhand trend (read: hiked up prices to make a profit) and part of the excitement of op shops is the possibility of finding buried treasure and opshops that know their shit kind of take away from that feeling. But then when we went in today he found an awesome sweater, this striped Billabong one for $8, and usually I would never pay $8 for anything op-shoppy, but he looked so darn cute that I totes caved & let me tell you, it is in SUPERB condition. He found a Threadless tee a couple of weeks ago; this boy learns quick!

magic erasers & coconuts

No, I swear, the two are related. Things have been making me feel umpteen times better about getting through this lame exam period.

"I have grown fond of semicolons in recent years. The semicolon tells you that there is still some question about the preceding full sentence; something needs to be added; it reminds you sometimes of the Greek usage. It is almost always a greater pleasure to come across a semicolon than a period. The period tells you that that is that; if you didn't get all the meaning you wanted or expected, anyway you got all the writer intended to parcel out and now you have to move along. But with a semicolon there you get a pleasant little feeling of expectancy; there is more to come; to read on; it will get clearer." - Lewis Thomas

I have also become increasingly fond of tattoos & collecting tattoo ideas. A semi-colon, perhaps, or Kipling's line 'last, loneliest, loveliest' because I think it's the first line of poetry I fell in love with as a twelve year old reading Tessa; or maybe even just 'life must be lived' on my wrist, short, sweet, profound & reassuring. I like the idea of a beautiful permanent Post-It. I wouldn't ever get just an image because text, text is what I will always garner the most meaning from.

Anyway, the post title refers to two things that I've recently found that are awesomeballs.

1. Palmolive Coconut & Jojoba Body Wash - holy SHIT this stuff is fantastic, it smells AMAZING and you feel so clean clean clean and smell delectably coconutty & moisturized. Unforts they test on animals, so rebuying this will come with a super dollop of guilt.

2. Chux Magic Erasers - WOAH. Not only did they take the weird marks off my laptop with EASE, Shaun's been having entirely too much fun for the last half hour cleaning all sorts of assorted marks off walls & his whiteboard. Jury's still out on whether Chux tests on animals, but for my clean freak bf's sake, I hope it's animal-free.

This has been a wholly unproductive day! Yurk.

I had an awful dream last night. We were all on holiday & I was in love with this guy who had a girlfriend & Shaun was away & it ended with me feeling emotionally ripped in two & like a cheating bastard. It was one of those dreams where I woke up absolutely saturated with the emotions of the dream, and it sucked. I was quite goddamn upset.

study jam

1. 3 - Britney Spears

2. Lessons Learned - Matt & Kim

3. Sweet Caroline - Mark Salling

4. It's My Life/Confessions - Glee

5. She's Got Me Dancing - Tommy Sparks

6. Push It - Salt 'n Pepa

7. Face Drop - Sean Kingston

8. Future Love - Kristina deBarge

9. Good Life - Kanye ft T-Pain

10. Evacuate The Dancefloor - Cascada

11. Happy - Leona Lewis

can you rise to the occasion? cuz I'm patiently waitin'..

whatever, I spent two days mulling over how I could appropriately express my hatred of peoples attitudes and then realized I'd save it for real life. Or something.

I watch sad videos and get all worked up about how people don't seem to care about things.

Actually, you know what's hilarious? & kind of ironic? How worked up people can get over such shit like how ~fat Jessica Simpson is & how ~lame pop music is and simultaneously not care about stuff like um, politics and human rights, and SHIT THAT MATTERS.

I'm so tired of people living in their own little bubble & flicking me really vague excuses about why they don't care about politics. Chances are, if I'm talking to you, you really are smart enough to find out JUST A LITTLE BIT about how your fucking COUNTRY works. & when I say politics I mean GAY RIGHTS, and what we're gonna do about HATE CRIMES, and what about the goddamned foreshore & seabeds?? Huh??

I need to move somewhere hot, let the heat seep into my bones, melt this ice, wear practically nothing, chew ice cubes, put Ella on repeat and just sit. And at night I would wear practically nothing, add eyeliner and go out dancing all night and chew ice cubes.

Fuck, it's ten thirty already? I was gonna do some viro before bed, but I had grossly underestimated the amount of stuff I've piled on this bed in the two weeks that I uh, haven't been sleeping in it. CUNT.

I say cunt a lot now. I've always liked the sound of it *ducks* & now I say it. With glorious abandon. To everybody. In lifts. Out loud when I shouldn't. In my outdoor voice, indoors.

I have missed this bed. Sneakily switched my electric blanket even though it is the best temperature, crisp enough to feel alive as you walk through the night, but warm enough so you're not hating life and feeling suicidal.

I'm also in the mood to find a nice navy & white striped tee.

truth

"And maybe, just maybe, her heart needed to be broken. Broken and shattered and stomped into pieces. Then she could finally look down at the pieces, study each one and spend some time getting to know the person she’d become. And when she finally had all the pieces back together again, a little crooked, a little jumbled but sealed firmly with love, she’d realize she was more beautiful than ever.Because this time she would love herself."

Fuck this lab report. No seriously. Fuck. This. Lab. Report. While you're at it, fuck my fantastic skill for procrastination coupled with my tendency to panic, and my susceptibility to my bad thoughts, and uh, my impending exams and my inherent tendency to stick my head in the sand and act like it'll all go away if I find that matching Havaiana at the Red Cross Shop. Which I didn't, because life is cruel. Sure, they were obnoxiously frosty pink, but they were nearly NEW, and my goddamn SIZE, and I've been wanting those stupid comfortable jandals for YEARS, shit goddamn.

Oh, and again, FUCK MY LAB REPORT. You wouldn't think I was this angsty if you saw me right now, which I hope you aren't, because I had a shower and am still topless because I hate that my hair soaks the shoulders and back of whatever I put on anyway. I'm listening to the twee soundtrack of that incredibly twee movie 500 Days of Summer which I'm sure everyone is going to ~love and not let me love in peace.

This is what elitism springs from, the inability of some people to just love things quietly. Like, it is KILLING me right now that everyone is going nuts over that 'Tic Toc' song by Ke$ha when I have been loving it deeply, passionately, making AURAL LOVE TO IT, for MONTHS. I knew that song when it was called 'P. Diddy' and all anyone knew about Kesha was that she was a white girl that everyone got confused with the black one. Anyway, if you could follow that, you will understand that it is naturally annoying when something you have created this connection with starts getting every other idiot's smeared fingerprints over it. It's why I never share my sad songs, because I'm FUCKED, FUCKED I TELL YE, if some tool gets their hands on the songs that tug on my heart strings & press all my weepy buttons and puts it on that douche Drew Neemia's show, I WILL GO OUT THERE WITH AN UZI AND I WILL GET MY REVENGE. If you haven't figured out by now that I am a girl with her dad's inordinately volatile temper and her mother's inherent psychosis, you are ridiculously silly. And will also be first against the wall when the revolucion arrives, compadres, because I do not tolerate the silly and stupid. Anyway. If you find something glorious and good and heartwarming, share it only with those who will hold it as close and in as high regard as you do, otherwise you will end up sobbing over its carcass after everyone has trampled it with their huge feet of non-understanding.

Also, my obsession with paper dolls underwent a resurgence at about 1am a couple of weeks ago, and now I get regular emails, all in Japanese, from some paper doll site I apparently signed up to. I almost wish I could say I didn't remember doing it and palm it off on my alter-ego.

Today was a fuckatron of a day, friends. I woke up, sat around trying to work up the motivation to do this damned report, and got a text at 11am informing me that I was currently 20 minutes away from my last undergrad lecture (barring med, i know, i know) and spent the NEXT twenty minutes gapping to said lecture, to find out FIVE METRES FROM THE PLACE from my new bestie arthur that said lecture was over. Rage ensued, not in the least because I realized that I'd left my laptop charger at Shaun's and would have to go back for it, and my sweater dress was most emphatically meant to be a sweater with PANTS ATTACHED, and it was also too hot.

It perked up most decidedly when I scored a gorge Supre coat & a H&M dress for $12 all up. Pics soon.

comprehension.

And now, things are different. I don't play games any more, I can't. I am less manipulative, I talk more. I don't spend my time devising machinations and that soul-searing hurt I used to wear proudly is becoming a tinge. I remember that I don't always see things with perspective. I remember that everyone is fucked up, and glorious, and has secrets I will never know and mostly deserve my love and respect til they prove otherwise. I remember that everyone I meet is probably fighting a hard battle. I remember that there are some friendships that I have fucked up irrevocably and need to grow again from scratch. I know that I am quick to judge and vengeful and hold people to exacting standards. I know deep down I'm still hurting, wounds I'm tired of looking at, that I hope good sex and copious amounts of alcohol will heal one day. I know that I believe in a God, in some kind of benevolent force in the Universe that wishes only good things, I know that if things are always ok in the end, and if they're not good then it's not the end yet. I know that I get jealous of girls who travel, girls who will be doctors when that goal is fast disappearing off my horizon and I know I must remind myself of what I have, what I hold so dear. I have friends whose presence I cherish, and a family I have come to realize is beyond what I deserve. I have someone I love; 'when you know, you know' and I didn't want to date him almost because I knew that he was the end of my broken road. I lie in his bed or mine and most times I am amazed.

On the left - what I carry around all day.

On the right - the most excitement I had all day was getting my health notes bound. $3 thrills, baby, it's how we roll.

oh.

"Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend the rest of his life answering." - Nicole Krauss.

I'm so amping; we just had our MICR class reps meeting, and it was 2.5 hours long, no joke. We didn't even notice time flying by, and I actually got to voice the things I've been bitching about all year. It was scary bringing up the whole animal issue, but in the end, even though Alex seemed pretty unimpressed with me, but I'm glad I did. I think scientists tend to think that an ethics lecture and a cursory look at the mechanics of using animals is enough (like he did) but at the end of the day it's dangerous to gloss over the more complex aspects of the issue. Science has enough of a reputation for callousness and disregard for the sanctity of life, and to be completely honest, there is a lot more that our academic institutions can do to promote the message that life, lives are sacred. Losing sight of the big picture, however sappy & corny it might be, is never a good idea. I'm not religious, I'm barely spiritual and I don't think it's right to act like animals are disposable. Lives are important.

It was fabulous conversation too.

Heading back to the library soon, to launch back into studying, yay. I'm feeling much better about my academic future after that talk though. More optimistic. Solid.

mondays aka huffing from the bart bag

Mondays rule. I'm set up at the Link for another week chock-full of ridiculous amounts of study, but summer is a-coming and I have my new Wayfarer knock-offs perched on my head and mi amigos, life is bueno.

I also have seaweed, a three dollar Threadless tee that Shaun is proudly wearing to study tonight, and three A- grades from this morning. Whoop! Can I get a hell-yes?

long haired girls know better sex positions

Yuck, this lab report is so monotonous; I'm super excited though because I came up with an angle all on my lonesome.

Shaun & I went out last night, hit up two 21sts and managed to be home by 11:30 for spice-laden chips and episodes of Summer Heights High before bed. Nanas of the world unite! Ah well, there's the barbecue & the micro shout to look forward to, and 'til then I am cranking up the V dosage as well as eating whatever I damn well please as long as I get full. It's delicious I tell ye, delicious! Probably ridiculously unhealthy, but it's been a long time since I've REALLY cared about what I ate. Self-denial is so passe.

haters to the left, this woman is straight up amazeballs.

oh the unexpected

C'est tres jolie, non?

This is 1/2 of my spoils from 'Free Friday' (created at 2pm on Friday, natch) where I dragged Shaun on the rounds of George St in the hunt of RayBan knock-offs.

For a social person, I am notorious (in my head) for inflicting last minute cancellations because I'm a teensy bit of a people-phobe. For all my optimism, I consistently find myself expecting the worst from people & social situations. Which is why I was flip-flopping so hard about going to lovely A's birthday dinner tonight. I had a fantastic excuse in the form of this bitchin' stomach ache that refused to fuck off & let me be, goddamn. But I reluctantly RSVP'd because I really can't miss any more social things without being written off as a bitch-ass brown hermit, a label which I don't particularly care for (too strong a hint of burlap, knowwhatimean?).

And as I'm almost always reminded when I do show up (read: get shoved out of the car by Shaun) that I'm an idiot. Because I'm friends with people for a reason. Oh, and restaurant food is triply as good because you don't have to a) cook it or b) do the dishes. I have good food-laced chats.

crass consumerism

What I'm buying myself this summer:

- dock shoes

- navy & white striped tee

- navy summer dress

- Rachel Zoe's Guide to Style

- black wayfarer knockoffs

- new gold sandals

- full size blinc mascara

- decent black eyeliner

- gold rimmed aviators

- gold eyeshadow

- aqua nail polish

- a subscription to Bitch

- a leather jacket

zoebots, robots!

It's official; Char-Land is in intense study mode, and it feels good. SO good, I swear. There's something innately purifying having a strict, streamlined mind for a month or so.

Lectures, Library, Eat, Shower, Sleep, Wake Up.

I think what soothes me the most is that during this month, I have direction. And all those thoughts, doubts, fears about how uncertain, how shaky my foundations are, disappear and there is blissful silence.

belonging.

Belonging's a tricky thing in this immigrant age, where the world awaits at almost any airport (sans Dunedin Airport, which is the proud purveyor of international flights... to Australia). Wanna pack up and go, leave the bombs behind, sure, got any skills?

I'm a first generation New Zealander, and lemme tell ya, being an immigrant is weird. Your parents are forever berating you for assimilating, general society is pushing you to assimilate or be shunned, and then there are the goddamned cultural groups.

Cultural groups, found at almost every large educational facility up and down this country, where immigrant kids go to uh, rediscover/reaffirm their cultural links through international food fairs and innumerable cultural nights. Hi, welcome to my hell.

In my opinion, cultural groups inevitably become this icky microcosm amplifying the negative aspects of all societies. Gossiping, back-stabbing & neverending popularity contests hide beneath the lipstick'd, be-costumed surface of cultural groups, and it's enough work battling with that, never mind dancing in front of 300 strangers in a flimsy approximation of a ~traditional dancing costume.

Feel free to call me a bitter reject, though. I never fitted in with the culturally friendly crowd at my all girls high school, not in the least because I couldn't dance for shit, my mother wasn't interested in cooking to factory scale or sewing costumes and uh, I was really bad at making friends with other Sri Lankan girls. You rarely saw my family at temple when it wasn't an Open Day, and my parents weren't really keen on most other Lankan families. Of course that made hanging out with Lankans even more appealing as a vehicle for my teenage angst, ignoring one teeny tiny problem. I have no fucking idea how to get on with Sri Lankan girls. I swear to you, they are a strange and obnoxious species, and woe betide you if you aren't party to the Secret Sri Lankan Girl Handbook they keep tucked in between the piles of textbooks and parent-friendly extracurricular reading. And my God, in high school and even out of it, just generally, sometimes it's goddamn good to be around a group of people who get you just by virtue of where you were born and where you live now. Who understand parents that won't let them go out on the weekends, who understand having to fight to go to a school ball, who eat with their hands and you don't need to explain that intrinsic shit to, because it's them, it's their life too. It's such a fucking relief, but then you realize you're trading off the individuality, the freedom that you get other places. The freedom to drink, and to go out, and not be judged, and not have your parents judged for it. The freedom to dress as you please, and swear like a sailor, and eat what you like, and say what you like, and learn what you like, befriend who you like, believe what you like. So you leave, and instantly all these judgements fall on your head, you're suddenly too good to be what you were born, and there is no other feeling that can compare to when you feel like you're not allowed to be who you are and have your heritage at the same time.

So high school was kind of shit in the 'hang with your countrymen' respect, but I figured, hey that's high school. Everyone has that one thing about high school that turned out to be shit. Little did I know that at university, they have the same shit. Plus alcohol, minus parental supervision. So now you have cultural nights where the same obnoxious chicks from high school end up getting wasted (because they have no idea of how to handle their alcohol, they're too busy judging you when you drink), and food fairs where you ask for a delicious cabbage-based dish and get um, hacked strips of uncooked cabbage, and this pervading unfriendliness if you don't fit with the group in general. Aw yay!

Oh, did I forget to mention that if you don't fit in with this shit masquerading as connecting with your culture, you get written off as an Oreo who doesn't care about their culture?

Look. Being Sri-Lankan, to me, has nothing, abso-fucking-lutely NOTHING, to do with being a member of some cultural group. Having pride in my culture and my roots goes so far beyond that, for me, that it's kind of laughable to be defined by such narrow, convoluted definitions. Feel free to celebrate your culture in any way you choose, just don't feel free to judge me on my reaction to your mode of expression. You're wasting your time, because I don't need your approval to validate my choice.

style & consumerism

pic from here.

Want list!

My want list revolves around the aesthetic I'm feeling this summer: cut-offs, baggy tanks & chunky-ass jewelry, all purchased with the money I'm gonna make this summer, seeing as I have uh, $4.41 to last me two more days. Responsible fiscally? Moi?

It's kind of annoying, since 2009 HAS been the year of the responsible Char. I've barely bought anything off TradeMe, didn't replace my lost MAC lip-glass; all my money gets blown on caffeine, food & the occasional Frankie/Cosmo, for Christs sake. I'm just about to call my mum to ask her for money to top up my phone, but this week I'm gonna track my expenses like a motherfucker. Also, this 4.41 is on a non-drinking week. Can you imagine what it would be like if I drank every weekend?

october horoscope

Work will be on your mind as you begin October. You'll be busy finishing a major project at the full moon phase, October 4, plus or minus four days. You'll see a strong team effort around you, so you will make your deadline, plus or minus four days of this date. Keep your health up to par, as you'll be using a great deal of your energy.

A wonderful feature of October is that Saturn, the planet of lessons learned and of facing and accepting new responsibilities, will exit your eleventh house of friendship, fun, and events. Over the past two years that Saturn has occupied this house, you may have been concerned about a friend and perhaps helped him or her through a personal crisis. Or, you may have taken on a leadership position in a club or charity, for the eleventh house rules groups and also humanitarian events. Once Saturn moves on, you will find your social life becomes lighter and happier.

Saturn will briefly move back into this house when it retrogrades from April 7 to July 21, 2010. Those fourteen weeks will fly by, and moreover, you will have seen just how vibrant life can be. That will change you in a very deep and abiding way. Your outlook and your love life will improve, too, as the eleventh house of friendship, parties, and other fun events is linked to your fifth house of true love. Wow, this surely is the moment you have awaited! Just remember that Saturn will move on October 29, and it will take a little while to feel the difference, but feel it you will!

This is all very curious because meanwhile, in another part of your chart, on October 16, Mars, the planet of energy and purpose, will be gearing up to add nearly eight months of razzle-dazzle to your career. Just as Saturn is due to haul out of your eleventh house, allowing your private life to blossom, Mars will be busy seeing to it that you finally get career rewards for hard work you've put in. You will have to pay attention to your career after October 16 - you will get the kind of opportunities that you used to only dream about, but you will have a better balance in your life between your private and public life.

Speaking about your career, your best phase will come in the spring, from March 10 to June 7, but you should see some exciting news later this month and in November, too. The part of the chart that Mars will highlight is your house of honors, awards, achievement, and fame - quite a lofty part of the chart. Your name will be in lights in your industry for months, from now until June 7, 2010. Wow!

Lastly, once Saturn enters your twelfth house, you will have a chance to live a healthier life in every sense. This is the house of self-undoing, the area of the chart that reflects self-destructive behavior. Sometimes we simply don't believe there will be consequences. Saturn will look to see if there are any areas you need to work on, and he will help you. If there is a habit that is bad for you, Saturn will show you how to kick it and give you the means and reasons to do so. If you have only dated unavailable types, you will end that proclivity - first seeing why you do - so that you can find true romantic happiness you deserve.

Think of Saturn as an expert you hire to come in to clean out the closets of your mind. Saturn will help you reorganize them by showing you what should remain and what should go. You are about to start a whole new cycle in late 2012 and it will be Saturn's job to make sure you begin it in the best possible way, on the right foot.

reclaiming the internet, char style

My new BFF is Rex, the inflatable T-Rex Amanda won at quiz night and gifted to me.

I started blogging at blogger for the wrong reasons. & I'm kind of ashamed of having missed the point entirely. Because what am I if not the loudest champion of honesty & individuality and maintaining integrity? Fuck, that's why I started my love affair with blogs, because you never stop finding awesome things, new things. And the awesome Lindsay Markel, in her podcast, said something that really pushed me into keeping up my blog, into resurrecting this one; that you need to put out into this world what you need from it. I read so many blogs because I got sick of reading the same recycled cliches in magazines, and on the Internet there are so many witty, intelligent, scathingly sarcastic voices writing on a multitude of things that resonate with me, and teach me new things, and if there's one thing you need to know about me is that I am insanely in love with the idea of learning for the rest of my life. Oh, and I lead a weird schizophrenic existence in which I am a geek, a sloth, an insanely productive science student and a hip-hop freak prone to bouts of alcoholism, personalities all usually routinely expressed in the course of a week.

It feels like the fog is lifting. A couple of weeks ago I had a really triggering talk with someone, and a triggering session with an impulsively-booked counsellor right after that, and I felt like shit. But then I was sobbing to Shaunus and he was just like 'Um, but it's over, done with'. Which I think is a point worth mentioning. Look, shit fucks people up. I was fucked over, and that fucked me up. I had massive rage issues (I told aforementioned counselor I wanted to burn my ex with an oven, yikes) & sometimes, still, I have intense fits of self-hate where I cannot understand what I let people do to me. Well, people = one person, but at the end of the day what it comes down to is that I let the parts of me that I like best be subdued because their expression would have meant losing someone I truly thought I loved and wanted in my life.

Um, and then I had some kind of aneurysm, and when I came to I was the recipient of frequent abusive texts from my now ex-boyfriend; a quick browse through them told me that I'd unceremoniously, quietly dumped his ass in the middle of another rant about how I was bringing down all his attempts to be a good Muslim. When the numbness had worn off, I felt relieved. RELIEVED. The best feeling in the world after a break-up is relief, lemme tell ya. It was fucking excellent.

I was sad, yeah, because I'd lost my best friend, my ONLY goddamn friend on account of my extreme relationship-induced hermitry, but at the same time, it was kinda nice to eat bacon and buy bikinis and uh, wear mini-skirts. And t-shirts. And try and recover my friendships with boys. And rediscover who I was, and get to grow again. And throw out that godawful floor-length white skirt I'd received as a 'decent' present. (Actually, it's now part of my mum's temple skirt collection which I ransack when I need to feel godly). It was nice to have my brother and sister 100% supportive, it was nice to just be me again. It had been a while.

If I read my diary from after the break-up, it's kind of nice to see my self-tough-love approach popping up every so often. My room was right above the pool table in the common room last year, and there's a vent that would kindly let me hear my ex while I was trying to sleep at night. Ridiculously poetic, right? It would've been mega-helpful to his reconciliation attempts if I'd been um, even vaguely inclined to take him back. But yeah, on the sad nights, when I was so lonely and so sad and so fucking mad at myself for letting myself be put in that position, I'd force myself to remember, slightly horrified, that I could always, within five seconds, remember a time where I had the boyfriend and had been 10 times more miserable.

What I'm really trying to say is that my self-hate, mostly, stems from the knowledge that I let my intellect enter a stable vegetative state for 2.5 years, and let the tiny Stepford part of my brain run roughshod over my friendships, my life in general. The sadness comes from um, stuff that I don't like talking about on the internet in total gory detail, but suffice to say it sucked, and I had one friend I could talk to about it and she was a whole other island away, and I am so fucking proud that I rebuilt myself from the mess that it had made of me. It still fells me at the most inopportune times, however, and that, when coupled with a bout of the self-hate, kind of makes my suicidal thoughts stronger than background noise. Which happened a couple of weeks ago, and I'm just starting to bounce back, and um, remember the things that make me want to keep living.

people that make me feel good about myself. amazing conversations. being productive. typing fast. bleaching shoes. cleaning. doing laundry. singing. new episodes of glee & house. cover songs. mashups. brilliant hiphop. music videos. skinny jeans from marie. summer heights high. old textbooks. scientific journal articles. green glass bottles. jars. tiny shells.

quelqu'un ma dit que tu m'aimais encore

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When I got my first laptop back in 2007, I dumped a lot of music on it from my friend Jean's iPod while he was giving me some M.I.A. I then added a shit-ton of my ex's music on, and went about downloading new music, getting recommendations from friends and raiding hard-drives, on and on, and ended up in this really horrible place where my iTunes was overrun with music I hadn't listened to but I 'should', you know? Like, all of Jean's Yeah Yeah Yeahs & his extensive collection of Bjork... Stuff I figured I should keep around to expand my musical horizons, become more well-rounded, since I live in eternal fear of becoming a snobby elitist and all. I was also becoming one of those tools that had one song by one artist.. times a million.

I think with the advents of iPods, music players with such gigantic capacities, people began collecting music as proof of how hardxcore their mp3 player is, like a weird 'my disk capacity is bigger than your disk capacity' brag-fest. My darling little brother is super proud of his 20 something gigs of music, and since I know he listens to practically all of it, I ain't judging, but if people are anything like me, their '0 plays' songs on iTunes take a hell-lot of scrolling to get past. & it's all songs that you're never going to listen to and appreciate, you know?

So yeah, I sat around dreaming of a blank iTunes, to which I would slowly add songs I truly loved listening to. & I got my dream when Shaun redid my old Compaq and it ran super-fast. I had to take all my music off and I got a little crazy pruning things (aforementioned bro got a little concerned with how many artists ended up in the Recycle Bin and was sweetly reassuring me that he had everything I had deleted in case I ended up regretting it) and it was so sweet to plonk only the songs I loved back on.

The music system I have now has evolved slowly over my years of owning a laptop, and works really well for me. I download and gather a lot of music from different music blogs, communities, Shaun's hard-drive (heh) so it's firstly organized by month. Before I play a downloaded tune I make sure it's in a folder, and add songs to my iTunes through the folder. New iTunes is also fantabulous because it's eliminated that stupid stupid nauseatingly frustratingly annoying tendency to add the same song twice to one library. And after a song/album's been added, it gets thoroughly aurally assessed, because my default iTunes playlist is 'Recently Added'. Songs that never end up growing on me are deleted, and the songs I do end up liking for real-real I never forget, because I've almost-certainly listened to them more than once.

I've also taken to going through roughly once a month and flicking my display setting to show the songs with the least play counts, and giving them a listen. They're usually sentimental songs, but there are some that slipped past me the first time and boom! Deletion.

It's wicked, I have to say that my music collection, just thinking about it makes me all warm and contented. It's so pruned and perfected and fiddled over.

music & books.

I love reading at night & I love listening to music as I fall asleep. I read everything. I like knowing things. I like having opinions, I like arguing, I like romance novels, bracelets, reading entire books in the book-store, gulping them down. I like fingerfuls of fries & the gherkins & chopped onions are my favourite part of McDonalds burgers. I like feeling independent, I like running my fingers over my scars and reminding myself that I am still here. There are no days where I forget my mistakes entirely, try as I might to only look forward.

Sometimes I like to stare at my boyfriend's face til I'm sure that all I'll see when I close my eyes are the contours of his cheekbones. I take the ease with which we fit together as we sleep as a good omen, I find more safety in that than a thousand assurances.

Sometimes I forget where I stop and he starts. Sometimes this terrifies me. Actually, most times this terrifies me. I remember another boy who took this part of me, this trust in him, this feeling of safety, and uh, hit me over the head with it.

But then I look at this boy, and he smiles, and it still hits me just as hard. I am still terrified of being hurt; but this boy took my heart while my back was turned, doing up the locks, and I was laid bare without realizing, my treacherous heart revealing things as fast as my head could take them back.