i have managed to turn my entire sleep cycle upside down by not really getting any of it for the past 2 weeks now, and then attempting to make up for it by turning every waking hour into a sleeping one this weekend. it is now 11pm, and i don’t quite see myself getting back in that bed for a while.

this cannot be good for me, i know. i feel that familiar burning sensation in my throat again, which can only mean that the acid is back with a vengeance. but this is my life – this is how i work, and i suppose in some ways, i rather enjoy pushing myself and keeping myself all tied up this way. i cannot quite live the kind of life that my stomach dictates… cannot even cut out the coffee and tea completely, much as i try (coffee-holics anonymous…?). i won’t whine about it because i entirely deserve this; i know i do. i am only curious about how far i can push it. since chronic gastritis had been my diagnosis, can there be any point in attempting to change anything…?

despite the rain, i have been enjoying the weather when i do manage to get out. indoors, the infamous japanese stuffiness has been at work, as always. i need to wax lyrical about this. the central air-conditioning has been off for a month or so now (understandably), but there are no windows in most places and simply, no air. some forward-thinking stores have even got the radiator on – the radiator, if you please!! at 22 degrees…? they really have the strangest ideas. at school, i have made it a habit to arrive at class an hour early just so i can open the windows and air the rooms. the worst of it comes during choir practices. many of the studios are basement, windowless rooms; even when they come with windows, we are never allowed to keep them open during the session because of the noise from outside (or the noise we are creating inside? i am never quite sure which). half the time, i feel as if i must turn white and expire after pieces that require long, sustained breathing. nobody else seems to be quite as disturbed, and they manage to keep on all their numerous layers of clothes with impressive cool, while i, in a single t-shirt, cannot stop fanning myself vigorously with the score at every possible moment. this thing about living with bad air – somebody enlighten me please? it is one particular japanese phenomena that i have never quite grasped in all my years here.

my three boxes of cold-weather clothes have arrived, and are parked unceremoniously at the doorstep now. i am quite in despair – my room resembles a storage warehouse, and i cannot find any way of unpacking those boxes without displacing something else. this closet-room is a delicate eco-system, and i am afraid i have much taxed its limits. i could rent one of those trailer storage units outside, or live out of boxes for the next one year or so. i could also bust my budget and move out of the dormitory. none of the options are really enticing. i could, also, park some clothes in the fridge and the bathroom – now that’s an idea.

i have much more to go on about (like how i bought a beginners’ embroidery kit and am thinking of learning to crotchet as well. exciting moments in the life of a single woman.) but there is much pressing work to be done as i am building a little go-to-hungary nest egg. translations are coming in like wildfire again, and i have to catch them without quite burning myself. but the call of europe is strong, so… i just keep going.

woke up past one with some strange feelings in my chest and could not quite figure out what was wrong. it was only when i sat up and started burping that i realised it must have been heartburn. the pain migrated to a more familiar place once i got out of bed and became gastric pains; that was it – so much for that one night of triumphant sleep. i have been rather religious about not eating before bedtime… perhaps it is time to say goodbye to coffee for good.

it was just as well that i had woken up, i suppose, because it started raining and i had forgotten to take in the laundry. the weather is being really weird still – hot and muggy at times, cold and muggy at times, warm and windy at times, cool and dry at times. i have never known a spring quite like this.

my friendly korean neighbor is chain-smoking despite it being past two in the morning; i am so well-trained i can decipher the click of her lighter and lean over to close my windows before the smoke flies in. i am going shopping for an iron tomorrow, because, i reckon, if she can get away with smoking in her room, i can get away with ironing and then some more.

i really do not like being awake at such times in the night, when all i can do is hug my blanket and wish i were somewhere very far away indeed.

…for everything else, but great for whining. it’s whine-fest monday!

i am tired, and sad that i don’t even feel like i have the right to be saying that. i’m entering week 2 of the lull, and starting to feel absolutely uncomfortable. i need work soon. money is one thing, of course, but there is a far stronger cry – i simply need to feel gainfully employed, and of some use to the world. i hate feeling forgotten and somehow, left behind in the whole scheme of things. it is such a lonely feeling. and furthermore… hell, i’m bored.

i am also tired from hounding Agency From Hell for the fees due to me. being a debt collector is exhausting, to say the least. i am beginning to understand why s always seemed so jaded and tired. it can’t be good for you – asking people for money over and over again, then listening to their sorry excuses over and over again. besides, it’s christmas season. they should really have a little more sense than that. how am i going to fuel the economy with outrageous christmas shopping if i don’t get paid?

and then there is the health. always the health. my gastric pains have returned again after a year long sabbathical. i know not why. perhaps my body is as bored as my mind. but why should it be when it has been wheezing for close to a year now? surely wheezing is as interesting an ailment as gastritis. in any case, the combined effect of the two has effectively stopped me from doing anything more exhausting than running for the bus (believe me, even that can make me wheeze for half an hour). the rain makes me wheeze, the air-conditioning makes me wheeze, dust makes me wheeze, late nights make me wheeze… frustration has given way to amusement; i refuse to go to any more doctors or imbibe any more antibiotics, so i have opted for resignation.

and resigned i am, too, about scholarship results that are slow in coming, stupid agents, motorcyclists bent on scaring the very cells out of me when i drive, jeans that are too tight, dad saying “parrot importer” when he really means “parallel importer”, and whiny government-hating singaporeans. i should probably elaborate on the last lest i come across as an extremely hypocritical, i-studied-abroad, singaporean-bashing singaporean. i have many thoughts on the singaporean need to complain, but have neither the physical nor mental strength to go into that today. suffice it to say, for now, that i am rather well aware that that particular gene is alive and well in me (hello… whine-fest monday, remember?), so at least some of those thoughts do not involve mentally maiming my fellow countrymen.

i leave you, my dear non-existent reader, with something from a german movie i watched last night (with the enticing title rabbit without ears). there is a scene where ludo, the typical skirt-chasing handsome lead who falls for the not-so-beautiful nice-girl, laments about how he does not enter into relationships because he has yet to find the woman who has it all together and does not look to him to make her happy. the gospel, according to ludo, is that one has to find happiness on one’s own, and that it is selfish to expect someone to make one happy. i… don’t… know… but… i (rather grudgingly) think he’s right. oh, hang the men with all the answers.