T.G.I.F

I'm tired and feeling slightly demoralized. The pressure from the academic world is getting to me. It just keeps targeting on my insecurities and inadequacies; highlighting, and magnifying each one. Sigh.

My Mom came back home today. Thank you Lord for always ensuring her safety. She gave me that big teddy bear hug I've been needing for a long time and my stress just subsided. I think that's why I like staying at home. Being able to randomly hug her, or settling myself in between my parents in bed (as I've always done since I was a kid) and whining to them, disturbing my dad with my horrible singing and nonsense, having the most retarded and incomprehensible (to others) conversations with my weird brother, having family dinner where the sense in our conversation declines every 3 minutes, plopping down on the sofa and watching TFC. All these spell home, comfort and familiarity. And where everything is transient, family remains. These are the things that means (and will mean) most to me, not the things that I've been expending so much effort and time on now, like nominal exchange rate or theory of money neutrality. It's building relationship with friends that matter more that knowing whether an agent committed a breach of warranty of authority. But the reality is that, we take for granted what's important, and concentrate on the less important. It's scary how being in this competitive pressure cooker environment starts to distort my priorities and view of life.

I'm supposed to be studying right now according to the Highly Ambitious Plan. I'm obviously lagging behind by a significant number of chapters but my brain is too saturated at the moment to internalize any intellectual input. Plus, I've been feeling really edgy the whole day. I skipped breakfast and lunch and ran on a few sips of Red Bull. Yes, sips. That's how effective Red Bull is (on me anyway). I had Soya Milk too. Thank Goodness my Mom cooked delicious sinigang for dinner.

I want to read Natsuo Kirino's new book, Real World. It's a highly twisted story (all her stories are) and her novels leave you to wonder about the dark depths of the human mind. It's scary and provocative. There's blood and gore. Highly entertaining.

The song Womanizer has been on relentless playback in my mind; an earworm that refuses to go away. Seriously, I'll be reading my notes to its tune. Not good. I already have the attention span of a 5 year old so I do not need extra distractions!

I want to go shopping so badly! I want to buy dresses! Haha. But first I need to lose this unglamourous fat. The sad reality is that my Quantity of Stress is proportial to my Gain in Mass. I really need to start valuing my health more because I don't seem to be taking care of it properly. See, we always take the important things for granted.

After watching the documentary, Rulers of the World for Sociology on Tuesday, it became slap on the face evident that the world is screwed up. It was on Globalization - the now ubiquitous word which people can't seem to properly define and decide on whether it's good or bad. Despite the 'economic progress' that results, the lesser known side of increasing inequality in distribution of wealth also exists. I'm fortunately living on the side of the balance that has benefitted from globalization. But what about those left out to survive on a meagre 42 pence a day? Those slaving away in sweatshops? Those trafficked into prostitution? These are problems so large in scale, an individual can't help but feel powerless to do anything. What do I know of hunger (except my hunger pangs that are very much easily relieved?)? What do I know of real poverty? What do I know of the injustice that people face except from a third person perspective? I can merely sympathize but not empathize without looking self righteous or hypocritical. I come from a Third World Country. I've seen these conditions first hand. I know it's not fair. It's not fair that those who colonized us, plundered our resources, left our countries in a messy state (after they've used and abused it), which caused us to borrow money with high interest rate from Them to fix the Mess they've made. So now we're in a debt. A huge accumulating debt. Half the country's budget goes to paying the mere interest on these debts. And the other half stingily distributed to development purposes: education, health, housing. With so little budget on the important things, how can we rise up? If there was justice in the world, they'd (IMF, World Bank) should just cancel these debts that they were part of creating anyway.

Ok. I've ranted enough.
I need sleep.





'Cause I'm trying and trying to walk away
But I know this crush ain't goin' away-ay-ay-ay-ayy
Goin' away-ay-ay-ay-ayy





P.S.

Dear Cute Stranger On The Train Today,

Thanks for brightening up my weary day with your smile
And for making me smile back. :)