it is so strangely warm today. we have, once again, those blue skies that stretch for miles and miles with not a single cloud in sight. you don’t get to see that a lot back home. it makes me think of texas, for some reason, and i have never even been there in my entire life.

i’m sitting at the library, dreamily attempting to draw up my research schedule for the next three years or so. it’s hard enough to plan the week ahead – three years! how does one go about doing that? there are tinkling sounds in the air, as if someone had left a musical box open in the library. nobody seems bothered. nobody seems to have noticed. i cannot stop myself from looking up now and then; i am not quite disturbed by it, only curious. i take a stealthy sip of hot tea from my tumbler. you aren’t supposed to drink in the library, but it is simply another one of those rules made to be broken. an ambulance goes by. that distracts me. ambulances bring my mind to places it does not want to visit.

it has just hit me that my glass ring has yellow, blue, and white streaks across it; my tumbler has yellow, blue, and white flowers on it; i am wearing a yellow top with teal and white earrings. entirely unintentional, i swear. but aren’t blue and yellow the best color-friends ever?  sunshine and sky, warm and cool, bubbly joy and calm.

and i, am ever randomly yours. because i had a matcha old-fashioned donut earlier.

woke up to howling winds and cloudy skies today, no doubt harbinger of more rain to come. yet no typhoons have come our way so far, despite it being almost halfway into july. i do not quite know what to make of this – the summer that isn’t.

i finished the last of my battles for this semester last week, and since then, have lived in a fog of tv, anime, filing, and endless house(room)cleaning. i feel uneasy; schooldays are still a bit of a stranger to me, and i am more accustomed to the endlessness of work that is adult life. i had meant to commence work on the paper only next week, but in a fit of restlessness, began to compile my survey results last night. how surreal this all is.

and odd, that there is nothing to speak of, all of a sudden.

how beautiful bach’s music is. how grand it is to have found stroopwafel in tokyo, at long last. i really need to be getting a new container  of sorts for my burgenoning wardrobe, and an eyebrow trimming. i smell gas every time i open my fridge doors, and wonder if it will explode on me one fine day. i think i will give up cynical contemporary writing for a while and return to cynical austen and dickens. perhaps for a week.

you can’t count on anyone to give you hugs these days. you just have to do the best you can when you huddle among the sheets at night, arms wrapped around your own shivering heart.

it occurred to me that if i were to continue along this path, i may have to discontinue this blog or lose all my credibility as a researcher of sorts. unless i had no credibility to start with, of course. or be known among my students and peers as the emo loser. maybe the whiny bitch. i’m sure they would be able to come up with cleverer names than that.

standing at my window peering out at the rain, and trying to figure out where the enthusiastic ONE-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-s were coming from, i realized that the third floor of the building i was staring at was actually the school library, while the teachers’ office sat on the right-hand side of the same floor. one cardigan-clad m’am stood wistfully at the window. the thought crossed my mind that she might be watching me – parading proudly before my window in my pink underwear – watching her.  two floors above, is the room where the cheerleaders hop around chirpily every saturday morning.

cryptic conversations.

work, and flights, and… presents, indeed, i remember we talked about. jealousy (which he had to look up), moods, instability. night and day and whatever-falls-in-between.

and the ultimate luxury of one of those strawberry jam-filled donuts from the donut plant with a hot chocolate, on a rainy day.

codes, codes, codes.

i went to bed early with a raging headache last night and had a troubled, dream-full sleep, filled with strange characters past, present, and tv. i think i shall have to stop watching tv before bed. sleep is, after all, supposed to restore your faculties to working state again by morning, not rouse them to yet another level of agitation.

it is the day of showa today - or what was previously the birthday of the showa emperor – leading up to almost a full week of holidays next week, in one of the most anticipated breaks in japan. golden week starts today for some. thanks to the recession, some employees have been made to take as many as 16 days off. 16!

it doesn’t mean much to me, except for the happy fact that half of tokyo has left town, and i am free to enjoy the spring cheer without having to jostle with many inebriated people. work and study have to go on as usual; i do not foresee a real break for a long, long while, but for now, that does not quite matter.

it is enough to steal little moments of joy here and there – walking  down to shimokitazawa through those narrow little alleys, having coffee at that cozy cafe just around the corner while the mistress of the said cafe gives her tarot readings to worried housewives and curious young ladies, singing faure, watching the laundry swing lazily on my sad excuse for a balcony. there is enough joy. for now, that is.

i registered at monthlyinfo.com because i could never remember to keep track of my monthly comings and goings, so i woke up this morning to this kind reminder in my email - you have approximately 2 days until your next ovulation.

aaaaaaaaargh! i could not stop laughing.

i felt lazy today and gave up my daily walk in favour of laundry, toilet-cleaning, and tv. i played around with my new phone a bit but soon tired of it. i am rather contrary by nature – before i got my hands on any of them, i missed my gadgets with a vengeance and felt that life had stopped. but now, with phone and tv lined up alongside my computer, i am not quite sure what to do with them, and am rather disturbed by the collection of wires linking tv to dvd recorder, computer to socket, phone to computer…

part of my unwillingness to get out of bed and begin being industrious may be attributed to the shock i received from the talk i had with my supervisor yesterday. he was sweet and reassuring, and told me over and over again that there is no way i would get rejected from the phd program. but that did not soften the impact of the tasks he laid out before me – to publish one paper by next february, to become a member of certain academic societies in japan to facilitate future academic activities, and to make contact with the professor whom he has asked to be my supervisor after his retirement if i failed to graduate in 3 years. i hadn’t quite seen that last one (his retirement) coming, so am still feeling a little… open-mouthed at the news. incidentally, my supposed new mentor-to-be is korean. what is it with me and koreans, really? and publishing a paper within this year…? i had thought this was to be my take-it-easy-and-get-used-to-life year, but i guess le prof had other plans.

i suppose panic will hit some time tomorrow or the day after. for now, i am content to remain as numb as i have been for the past one week. as long as the toilet is clean, life cannot be too bad.

i have a new year resolution. i am going to talk less and think more. sounds like a good idea, and not as impossible as something like… say… not putting things off till tomorrow. or quitting coffee.

my right shoulder aches, so, in my usual irrelevant manner, i shall leave you with some random words. i’m not pretending to be poetic. it’s like having a themeless christmas tree; these random words are simply random adornments for my random thoughts. but then again, if anyone could make a poem out of these words, i reckon it will be both weird and wonderful.

—–ethereal—–shadows—–pomegranate—–luscious—–banter—–

—–immortal—–centaur—–billowing—–facetious—–

—–lacklustre—–elf—–testimony—–impudent—–gallivant

i read intelligent blogs and talk to intelligent people, and i wonder.

sometimes, i say stupid things even when i know they are stupid. sometimes, i say obvious things even when i know they are obvious. sometimes, i say irrelevant things even when i know they are irrelevant. sometimes, i do it to break the ice. sometimes, i want to be funny. sometimes, i just don’t think.

is that so bad?

i just wondered.

i wonder if it annoys. i wonder if people think i am trying to be cute or be something i am not (clearly, i am aware that i am not cute. nor am i (duh!) something i am not.) i like randomness. the world is random. things happen randomly (and you’d better believe it). isn’t it just too much effort to even attempt to be logical amidst all that randomness?

disclaimer: this is not one of those reflective pieces that arose as a reaction to what people told me (or anyone else). i was just thinking aloud. randomly.

i resolved not to say a word about you on this blog, because i wanted to make a fresh start and a complete break away from you. but how is it possible when you are still such a major part of everything i am, and say, and feel…?

i miss you, and i hate that you screwed me up all wrong… and now i don’t know what to do with myself at all. i hate that i can’t blame you for all that… i hate that it’s taking my entire life to get over you. i hate it all, but most of all, i hate that you can be so oblivious to all of this… and to me.

i hate that you still have the power to make or break me.

…i blog.

it’s an old habit (so it dies not). procrastination back-fired on me this time, and i have too much work due yesterday. and since i cannot decide which to do first (either way, i see an early demise) i decided to blog. rant. vent. and hopefully, find the motivation to overcome the panic, and calmly but quickly finish up the work.

i am really coming to terms with the fact that i am just not meant to work.

i wasn’t supposed to whine like this on this blog. i’m supposed to be a serious, hoity-toity snob here, and leave my whining to the other space i have been whining (anonymously) at for years now. but i like the wordpress interface, and it really is too tiring trying to decide whether an entry is a whine or not. i guess i will move all my previous whines here some day, because i do have some sentimentality for all those entries that have seen me through years of pms and heartbreaks.

isn’t it funny how a word starts to look wrong after you have written (typed) it too many times? as a kid, i used to hate those exercises where you had to keep writing the same word over and over again. i remember  this particular one where we had to fill in the blanks with “must” or “must not”. it was most disturbing. by the fifth one or so, “must” looked like a spelling mistake and i couldn’t feel the word anymore.

i say that because i just typed “whine” one more time, and it really started looking wrong. even all the variations look wrong – “whining,” “whines,” “whined”… they look like “wine” gone wrong. is it just me?

right now, it is raining cats, dogs, and all other beasties. there is also a lone cleaner standing in the rain, using a hose to clean (?) the wet pavement.

why do i get to witness things like that?