Talking Cure

Freud has this theory called the Talking Cure. The very basic gist of it is that talking about your thoughts, and in a way fictionalizing it, helps atone for the things in your life.

I will put his theory into practice and blog.

I think I have the winter blues, or more specifically, I think I might just have the Monday blues. Monday's are always very long for me, and frankly, it sucks. Let's analyze:

This morning, like every single morning of this semester so far, I told myself to take up at 8. After hitting the snooze button about ten times, I finally got up at 9:30. The fact that I've already failed at something, even before getting out of bed, set the tone for the day.

Because I didn't wake up at 8, several things happened:

1) I wasn't able to take my 365 picture for today

2) I didn't eat anything, and when I don't eat before class my notes look like this:

Freud talked about the talking cure .. and something ... id, ego and ..?? Penis envy.

3) I had to rush out the door because I was late for class

After class and lunch, I had to go to the Eaton Center to exchange this hard cover laptop shell my sister got for me. All you PC lovers might not know this, or you might, but the Apple store has this thing called the "Genius Bar," which is just a fancy name for "check out counter." It's just like how Starbucks has tall, grande and venti. It drives me nuts, I refuse to conform to their lingo. Whenever I go to Starbucks I just say "Gimme a medium yo'." (This is an exaggeration, I don't always add a yo' at the end. Ok, I never add a yo', except in my head.)

So I'm waiting in line with the correct hardcover shell size for my laptop when this girl from the Genius Bar approaches me, I told her I just needed to exchange the sizes, and asked if they had one in purple instead of the red one I was holding.

She then leads me over the shelf where they had the hard cover case and picks a blue one. I asked for purple, but I guess blue is a closer shade to purple than red. I didn't say anything because I didn't see the colour purple with the brand she was holding.

There were several brands, and the one I had wanted to exchange with was a different brand than what she suggested. I didn't say anything to her because 1) I thought she knew what she was doing and 2) before checking out she went over to her manager and double checked.

Anyway, I went to class that night (after running into Hannah at Timmies, completely unplanned and completely random). I told my friend, Emily, about the hard cover case. She and I have the same laptop, so she was a bit apprehensive when I told her I got a hard cover case, since she has been looking for one as well and wasn't able to find one.

So I took the hard cover case out and tried it on for size to show her that she can still easily find one at the Apple store WHEN LO' AND BEHOLD, it's the wrong size.

Thanks, genius' at the Genius Bar.

Now I have to go back and exchange this thing again.

My night class was super boring, I dozed off a couple of times. We're covering "Our Mutual Friend" by Charles Dickens. Apparently, Dickens thought of himself a genius, which I guess he is, but 836 pages of genius is more than I can stand.

On my way home, I missed the 105 bus by one minute. By this time, I was expecting it. I was like, "Today's been pretty crappy already, this is like the perfect cherry on top."

I was in a pretty sour mood when I got home. Matt was looking for his glasses, so we got in an argument about it. (I think I just wanted to argue with someone.)

In retrospect, today wasn't really that bad. Maybe it was just the cold and slush and having to wear socks that put me in an extra crappy mood. (I hate wearing socks.)

Also, today Tabitha bought chestnuts that were roasted with shells. She was mad because no one in their right minds roasts chestnuts with shells. (I'm mentioning this because I asked Tabitha what I should blog about today and she told me the story of how she bought chestnuts that were roasted with shells.)

Hmm, maybe Freud was right about this whole talking cure thing ... I do feel infinitely better now. I think you guys will have to endure more talking cures from me until winter is over.

---Edit ---

Tabi in case I forget to tell you this: Ariel says chestnuts are roasted with shells in Taiwan and probably everywhere in Asia.

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Obsessions

Yesterday, while I was cleaning the floors, I heard Aaron break dancing. His room is the family room (he shares half of it with the rabbit) so he has a lot of space up there to do his thing. I spied on him from the top of the stairs for a bit before ridiculing him.

I only ridiculed him because I felt like it was my duty to do so as his older sister, just like he ridicules me for some of the things I do. I never actually realized until yesterday that he was doing something other than playing video games all day and idolizing Matt's ... huge muscles (not sure what else to call this insanity). I've always known that he was interested in break dancing, because he use to bring home wooden boards to practice on (this was when we had carpet), I just thought this phase died out. And Aaron's actually not that bad, he just needs to practice a lot more.

This just got me thinking of how insanely, and weirdly, passionate my family is. Ok maybe not passionate. It's just that, everyone here has their own thing that they are obsessed over.

Annabelle is obsessed with her studies. She literally locks herself up in her room all weekend long STUDYING. You know how sometimes people 'study,' but actually, they're watching video's on the internet? This girl does not get distracted. Her idea of a distraction is napping for half an hour.

Then Matt is obsessed and passionate about body building. I refuse to look at the pictures he takes of himself on fb, because he flaunts it around the house already, but I've heard quite a bit of people talking about it (mostly guys). I'm actually surprised that he's into body building, because he use to be so scrawny and obsessed with World of Warcraft. He drinks protein shakes twice a day and hits the gym every midnight, usually after he comes home from work.

And my mom is obsessed with baking. Our house is filled of baked goods all the time, we have a shelf filled with cook books. She use to take baking classes in the Philippines and here at George Brown. The kind of things she bakes are fancy, decorative cakes and cupcakes and cookies, and she use to play around with marzipan and fondant all the time. Today, she made this New Year's JEWISH Honey Cake. I don't even know why we have a Jewish cook book. (We have several actually, one is all kosher.)

I'm not sure what I'm obsessed about, I think I just go through phases of obsession, which are all pretty much related to each other, like blogging/reading/Harry Potter/writing/tea drinking/part time doodling. (I'm nearing the end of my sketchbook.) Oh, and mopping the floors, one thing you guys probably don't know is that I'm obsessed with clean floors. THE FLOOR MUST BE CLEAN AT ALL TIMES. It drives me nuts then people walk around the house with their shoes on.

And that is all. My dad's the only one who's not obsessed with anything.

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Here are some failed pictures:

Snowman hug fail.

Peeled orange. This was too boring. Will redo one day with a more interesting background.

Banana muffin, this picture was too boring.

This picture looks awkward.

This is the Jewish Honey Cake:

And for those interested, this is the recipe:

And this is a picture of a broccoli. This was too weird so I didn't put it up on fb.

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Et tu, Brute?

K kids, I told Tabs I wouldn't blog about this but I can't sleep until I get it off my chest.

Today (or rather, yesterday since it's past 12 am) I got a hate comment from a friend who, from time to time, will leave hate comments. I've never said anything to her in return, does that make me too passive and an easy target? The reason I don't say anything to her is because of something that happened in the past, but this time, maybe I should.

I don't mind if I'm the only who will see the hate comment, but since at least two other people saw it this time (stupid fb sent an email to everyone else who commented on the picture) I think I should.

I also knew that I would get unwanted comments with these pictures.

Yesterday, I also had to deal with another friend who I've stopped talking to for a while. I finally had a text out with her (yeah, you read that right, a 'text out.' It's when you confront someone via text because you're too chicken to talk to them in real life) and told her to stop bugging everyone else about the problem she has with me. If it's just between the two of us, then that's fine, but once other people get involved I have to draw the line.

Then I also had that incident with Ting.

Actually, I also had another minor incident with someone else where we stopped keeping in contact and I asked something of her ....

GAHH-

Seriously, what is wrong with me? I'm becoming a serial friend dropper. I thought fb was suppose to help me keep in touch with all these people. (Fail fb fail!)

I don't drop everyone. I think the problem with me is that once a friendship has reached a certain point where it becomes nothing but negative I make the unconscious decision to cease all communication. Never at one point do I ever suddenly say: "Gee, today I think I'll stop being friends with so and so."

Maybe this is another form of running away from my problems? I wonder what Freud would say about this ....

-----Edit-----

You know what I just realized?!?

I'm always fine and dandy when I'm surrounded by a lot of people. Like today, even though it was really long, I was fine since I had people all around me.

It's only when you're alone in your room, blogging at midnight, and reflecting on your thoughts that all these negative thoughts start to surround you. And I'm not the only one this happens to.

Prime example: Brutus, from Julius Caesar. When he was plotting to kill Caesar it was in his room late at night. Before this, he had thought of Caesar as a good friend.

COINCIDENCE!?

Et tu, Brute?

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Learning Curve

Hello, hello world. Today is the first day of this semester, and I really wasn't looking forward to it because I pretty much figured that I failed everything from last semester. I went to class and my professor gave me back my essay, surprisingly, I got a B on it. Although this counts as an Asian fail, I won't look at it like that. I personally believe that U of T marks harder than other schools on purpose. (You guys can disagree if you want.) My sister, who's a borderline genius, got a C in chemistry from last semester.

And if Annabelle got a C, that means everyone probably failed that class. My sister took the PCAT's this past summer and she had a 90 something score, for her to get a C in chemistry must mean that professor hates kids.

So we'll see how I did on my other exam when I go to class tonight. Damn ... not looking forward to it.

Recently I took this picture:

This is another version:

And this is how I took the shot. Ghetto huh? I used my mom's laptop to prop the paper up and then turned on all the lamps in the living room and opened the window so I'd have as much light as possible.

I looked at my other friends pictures on flickr and I don't feel like I'm a very good photographer. I always set my pictures up, but they do it on a whim and know how to play with the camera functions and lighting. I'm pretty amateur compared to them, especially with Mary, my twin at work. She always experiments with filters.

Ok jealous rant over. Hopefully, by the end of this 365 thing I'll have learned something.

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Friendship Dropper

Last week, I went to dinner at Pickle Barrel with Kirsten, Keisha, Ting, Annabelle, and Tabitha. I usually don't see Kirsten, Keisha and Ting very often because we don't really make time for each other except once or twice a year (often during the holiday season.) During dinner we decided to go to Sister Shirley's house next week to pay her a visit since we haven't seen her in a while and she took care of us in high school.

So today, Annabelle, Keisha, Ting and I went to visit her at her house. (Kirsten had to go to the library and study.) She made us a lot of food. We spent the afternoon sitting around the basement drinking tea and talking by the fireplace.

At one point, I was texting Tabitha a lot and they asked me who I was texting.

I said: "Tabitha"

Annabelle says "Yeah they're like best friends now."

So you guys ever have those moments where you say something that you absolutely regret and then spend the next few hours agonizing over? I had a moment like that then. I said, "Yeah Tabitha is my new Ting."

WHY DID I SAY THAT!

Ting says, "Thats nice." And then rolls her eyes. "I don't care."

Then I try and cover this up by saying, "Well it's like, you know how in high school you and I were really close ... and now I'm close with Tabitha."

I could tell that Ting really didn't care since she had her own life now, but for me to say that was pretty inconsiderate.

Truth is, it takes two to keep any relationship alive, and I feel like I just let my friendships with Kirsten, Keisha and Ting drop, and now I don't really know how to revive it again.

GAHHHH, I hope Ting doesn't think I'm some crazy friend dropper who jumps from one person to the next depending on who's handy. I mean, now that she's back in Toronto for her co-op term I've been meaning to try and talk to her some more.

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Midnight Baking

Gak ... can't sleep and I have work early tomorrow also.

I have nothing interesting to say because I haven't done anything interesting.

Instead, here are some pictures:

(Been taking tons of photo's lately, I've decided to upload my flickr account and do the 365 at the same time. It's like hitting two birds with one stone, so even though the 365 thing is suppose to be casual everyday stuff, I will sometimes do things that are not so casual.)

Annabelle wanted to make cookies for LH so we started making them. I decided to draw smiles on the eggs so their smile would crack up when you cracked them open.

Three happy, innocent little eggs

Final product:

Jelly filled peanut butter cookies, kind of like peak freams (did I spell that right?)

The picture in the book is a lie. The cookies turned out looking a lot different, maybe it was because I made the holes a bit too big.

After it was baked:

(I don't like this picture, it looks like some cheesy, crappy 90's headshot. I didn't even bother retouching the photo.)

Next we made Easy Rocky Road, and by easy they mean easy.

You just basically dump everything in a mixing bowl and let it freeze over night. Afterwards you cut it up into squares and serve.

And voila, all done. Even though we did a lot of baking and picture taking, I'm surprisingly still very awake. Will be a sleepy zombie at work tomorrow.

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A small piece of the puzzle

Sigh.

I just finished talking to Tabitha on the phone, our conversation was exactly 2 hours and 39 minutes long. Afterwards I just thought, "Man, you really can't know anyone for sure."

There are so many different sides and dimensions to a person, that it's impossible to truly know someone for who they are unless you both mutually agree to put everything on the table. I feel like that's how I am with Tabitha, but there are still some things I don't tell her.

Sometimes I just feel like all I ever do is scatter tiny puzzle pieces of myself here and there. Some in my sketch book, some in my diary, some here in my blog, some with the conversations I have with people, some with my stories - and I just want someone to pick up all these pieces of the puzzle and put them all together in a way where each piece would be carefully examined before they try to fit it in with the other piece.

Lately, all I ever want is to be alone. Is that bad? I hate going on facebook to see what people are doing, I don't want to know that their lives are going on without me. I don't even like sleeping anymore because I end up thinking too much. Before I made sure that I would always be with someone everyday of the winter break - now it's just, whatever.

Dear readers, I think I'm broken. There are only ever two reasons why I would have sudden bouts of lethargic-ness: 1) Whenever I'm in a relationship and it has taken a sour turn 2) Whenever my classes are dragging me down.

Neither has happened to me, and I don't know why I suddenly have an urge for someone to put together my puzzle. Maybe it's just time for classes to start again so my mind can start working again - or maybe I'm entering a new phase that I've yet to figure out.

Well, whatever this is, I hope it won't get in the way.

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Here are some of the out takes of 1.365