Teenage Woes

AMAGAD GUYS

WHAT KIND OF HAIR IS THIS HAHAH

I was uploading some photos from a buncha CDs containing old photos..... and omfg, I WAS SO UGLY PLEASE. Not that I didn't know how unattractive I looked then la... but looking at the photos now, wha fuck. Even though this is super thick-skinned of me, I JUST WANT TO SAY I BECAME SO MUCH MORE ATTRACTIVE HAHAHAH.

And man, even though i still get pimples, it's not as bad as when i was in JC.
OMG. I was so ugly in JC.
Like WTF happened to my eyes!!!!

old school selca yo. see my eyes...... omfggggg....

All ODAC's fault.... and my own for not protecting my skin. I had a lot of confidence issues when I was in JC because of my horrible skin. I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror and every time I went to the toilet, I'd always avert my eyes while washing up at the sink. It was horrible. I remember feeling so horrible that I hid my face even from W. I really felt ugly then. And I knew people were talking about my bad skin, like some times I overheard people saying it right in front of me.. wow, that hurt like a bitch. Once, my ODAC teacher said it to my face and I went right to the toilet to cry.

And the thing was, I was actually trying to make it better. I went for facials, did some peeling shit, I even decided to go to New York Skin solutions but backed out at the last minute because of the bad reviews online. I tried to do simple home facials with egg whites.. tried the aspirin scrub Michelle Phan recommended...  I was really desperate. Eventually I got my mum to take me to the dermatologist to get some oinments and creams and finally, it got slightly better. And wow, being a teenager with no resources or ways to help yourself despite all your efforts, that sucked. It also didn't help that my mum wasn't one too concerned with superficial things. In that aspect, i really could have used her help.. but all i got were comments instead of much more active assistance.. until I insisted on going to the doctor's.

Oh well, those dark days continued even when I went to uni... and UK.... but i think they are more or less over now....
My skin is obviously faaaarrrrrrrrr from perfect and I still get major breakouts. But it's way way way way way better than before and at least now I have the courage to look at myself in public toilets. You must be like 'then you must take better care of your skin mah!!' whalau, you think I never meh? when i have skin that is so sensitive and with a mind of its own, even with my best efforts it can still go cray cray.

All the horrible feelings are coming back to me now.... wow, I must have put all these bad thoughts in the back of my mind. Thinking about it now... man, it still stings.

Anyhow, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Younger Jiggy, it's been hard on you.

On the bright side, I WAS SO FUCKING SKINNY IN JC LEH WHALAU.

Thank god for braces as well.

Okay, i know my hairstyle now is still shit hahaha.
I guess I'll always be an awkward teen.

Hoarders

I don't know if I should say le Zhang fam are hoarders.... but man, I'm so frustrated with all the hidden junk. My auntie does such a good job of keeping our house tidy that you never would know how much shit we have. My mum wants to keep EVERYTHING. Whatever we want to throw out, she says she'll find a use for them... or should donate them to the needy... or it's such a waste, it's still functional..... and then what happens? It ends up where it is for another 5 years.

So now that I'm back and feel like I have more weight around the house (not my mass/weight ok hahaha), I've been slowly chucking stuff out. Those that can be recycled, are recycled, those that I'm not sure of just goes right into the bin. I'm so unsure about what can and cannot be recycled though since Singapore still isn't too invested in going green (which sucks considering how developed a nation we are). And electronics! The garang guni man doesn't even want our stuff man. He told me to call up those recycling companies that collect e-waste but I've been on their websites, and they seem to do more corporate collections than domestic. The only convenient collection point i've found still requires my mum to drive me there.... and she's already made it very clear that she's not gonna waste her precious weekend doing it. Boo. So i've just been leaving them near the rubbish point downstairs and I FEEL SO GUILTY DOING IT!! Because it seems like we're just off-loading our problem onto someone else =________=

Anyway, I'm hoping to get our home properly spring cleaned as soon as my internship ends :D Quite excited for that. Oh and I just took off the swivelly thing that my old monitor was on and disconnected all the old wires from my desktop.... everything does in the trash tomorrow.Now my table seems so spacious. Wowza.

To a better and cleaner tomorrow!

Y'know, in the past I would have at least tried to convince myself to get back to blogging... but I've completely fallen off the bandwagon, which is to say, I'm a lazy bitch. Anyhow, I've given myself the day off of work (hehe i blame monday blues and uhm, indigestion) and weirdly, did not sleep in. It's just ten past nine now and I think I should do my little space a bit of justice with some ramblings.

I have 3 more weeks left on my internship. It's been a very insightful journey and at the same time, has once again destroyed the romanticized view I had of this job. Other than getting to wear a spiffy white lab coat and feeling like an important agent with an access card-key to various labs, the job is surprisingly... technical. I know, I'm an idiot hahaha. Obviously it's going to be technical!! I just didn't expect so much sweeping and swabbing and strain on my eyes.That's not all I do okay! I've used several mechanical tools I never even knew existed and all the vocational training has made me realize how much of a hands-on person I am.

Back to the topic - not to say I'm not enjoying work, I honestly am. Every time I walk into a store, I feel very alive and captivated by all the artefacts and it's a pity hardly anyone knows about our huge collections. And looking at them, I do want to continue my long-established goal of safeguarding and conserving them. Just that work has been pretty slow for me, since I am still an intern, and having a not-very-expressive supervisor makes time go by so slowly... so much so that I've fallen asleep while working quite a few times, sneaked off to do mindless things and taken lunch breaks longer than i should. Yes, guilty as charged!

(The Mother just asked me if there isn't any other jobs I'm interested in. No doubt my chao geng antic today has made her think this isn't what I want to do....)
(I've always been chao geng. Not just on this job hehe. Not proud.)

Anyhow, I'm both looking forward and dreading embarking on an official job - perks: financial stability, a job i enjoy, getting to work with artefacts, getting to finally start on my career in the heritage industry.. boo: no more alone time (mega-sob), morning rush (ew), being a civil servant, alone time (worth mentioning again)..


Now I just need to get the job.

*

I actually have more to ramble on, but I shan't make this entry too wordy since I know how short my (and my few readers') attention span is. Toodles!

It's scary knowing that somehow, change has become the only thing that makes me feel alive.
Now i feel like a part of me is slowly slipping into the abyss.

Sometimes when I'm working, I wonder why i keep counting off the minutes till the end of the day. Don't I like what I'm doing? If i do... then shouldn't I just lose myself in it and not care about time? And then I wonder about the people around me. The auntie that comes in around 10am every morning to collect the trash from all the labs... what runs through her mind everyday? When I was having dinner at a fast food chain, I wondered what the auntie clearing the table was thinking. The auntie who gives out flyers everyday at Causeway Point while plugged into her earphones.. the elderly and handicapped selling tissue packets.. the people working at the weekly roadshows... all these people. So many of them.

Maybe for me, I measure how well I've lived my life by how much I've seen and learned. But if I hadn't been as privileged and lucky.. how will I judge how fulfilling my life is?

I need to be more grateful.
Be thankful.
Be kind.  

Moved On

A lot of times i still gripe and feel bitter.
But I know i've moved on, it's just some times it feels nice to vent.
I never forget even after forgiving.
That's bad for me.

Only problem is... I'm possessive.
I don't want my own friends to get hurt, that's why I say things like that.
My friends are mine. Mine to love, mine to protect.
You didn't love with sincerity... so you don't deserve to love them.
They are amazing people.

So this week marks a month since I've started my internship at the Heritage Conservation Center. It's been a really enriching experience and I'm looking forward to the next month and a half. Hopefully I'll get to work on other types of materials. But as of now, I can say that I'm basically a cleaner (for artefacts) lol. The good thing is that you'll always get different things to work on... but right now, I'm bored shitless vacuuming and checking the conditions of boxes and boxes of wayang kulit puppets.

I've probably looked at at least thirty puppets. The workmanship is amazing but i end up not remembering any puppet, except the one of the goat lol. Another thing I'm struggling with is identifying mould. When it's obvious, it's not a problem. But most of the time, I don't know how it looks like macroscopically and even under the microscope, I'm straining my eyes so much that.... I just scribble mould on my condition check list anyway (yes, lazy, irresponsible.).

Hopefully by the end of October, I'll have a job offer and then I can slowly gather experience in this little, yet discreetly, expensive industry. I've applied for positions in NMS, ACM, HCC and NAGA. Curator positions... I'm not that confident in since it seems like you have to really be into symbolism.... and I'm not lol. That's why conservation is good for me. See it as it is, treat it as it is.

Fingers crossed!

Day 1 - 3

Day 1

The whole traveling bit was exhausting and took up so much time that by the time we finally got to Bucharest, I was exhausted. After that it was a 3 - 4 hour drive to our final destination. We got in around 8/9pm local time, shoveled some food down, had a pint at the local village pub/convenience store and then hit the sack. Minus the exhaustion, it was cool knowing that we 'visited' three countries in a day (Frankurt -> Bucharest -> Ruse). I think i might attempt to travel into Frankfurt central when we return. Hopefully 5 hours would be enough.

Day 2

Got up at 8am. Breakfast was bread with ham, salami and cheese. Think it's the Bulgarian way here... but I'm honestly not too much of a fan. I miss my eggs and cereal. And FRUIT!! Can't help comparing with Spain.. our Spanish mama is such a good cook and always whipped up huge portions of Spanish delicacies and every meal was buffet style. There was a lot of fruit and vegetables as well. We would even have fruit bowls in the living room for us to snack on throughout the day. And biscuits and snacks in the cupboards. Man, that's something i miss.

Our Bulgarian mama is really sweet though! And also a good cook, but i just wish we had more vegetables and fruit. Can't believe she's actually doing our laundry and making our beds =____= I'm super grateful but i would really prefer if she didn't since she already has so much to do in addition to cooking our meals and cleaning the house. Really lovely lady though :) Wish my gran was like that.

Anyway, back on to day 2. It was about 20-30mins ride to Cherven and we got an introduction to the site. Really amazing and huge medieval town with lots of churches and a really cool fortress/castle bit. I know zilch about the medieval period (other than the Black Death..) and most people in our group specialize in this period so I'm just listening most of the time. Met the chief archaeologist, Stoyan, who's been working on the site since 1975. After that we went back to the house for lunch and Nikolai basically abandoned us (haha ok kidding) and we spent the afternoon lounging around the house.

Oh did i mention we have a paddling pool?! I'm like WTFFFFF. Seriously, are we on holiday or on a dig? We even have the privilege of having two people share one room! Back in Pintia, we had 14 people in a room with bunk beds. I really like it though :( Was very cosy and everyone got really close in that cramped room. I really miss Pintia :( Really can't help comparing even though this is just the beginning and I'm sure it'll get even better with time... but Pintia set the standard so high and everyone from the program is so amazing!

Day 3

So today was our first official work day. Got up bright and early and we got the 8am public bus to the town of Cherven. Had to walk the remaining distance to the site and climbed up multiple flights of stairs to the peak.... I'm gonna get toned thigh (HOPEFULLY HAHA) by the end of 4 weeks.

First thing on the list was clearing out the area we were gonna work on. Surprisingly, the day before, Stoyan said he hasn't even decided where we were gonna excavate. And today we were told we were gonna work on the same area that the team from last year worked on.. which was covered with overgrowth =_____= Y U NO TAKE GOOD CARE OF THE AREA?! Just covering the whole area with a sheet would help. So much unnecessary trouble.

Yup, so our first day was spent hacking and sweeping up huge piles of weed, grass, twigs, branches, bugs.... whatever. There's a lot of unstratified ceramic in the whole area and lots of bone as well. Everyone was diligently collecting bits and bobs but i think Stoyan has no intention of keeping any of them but was patronizing us lol. We worked till 11am and had a tea break... which was really long actually. (I miss the containers of sandwiches and fruit that Spanish mama would send to us for tea break!) Tea break was a packet of chocolate crossiant (Pintia, you pampered us so much!).

Worked for another 1 hour =____= AND WE HAD LUNCH! Yes, our working hours are weirdly short. Lunch lasted 1 freaking hour and then we worked for another hour and Stoyan sent us home. The public bus wasn't coming till 4:15PM and we ended up sitting around for 1.5 hours which could have been better spent. I understand that every region has their own work ethics but i wasn't expecting it to be so relaxed. Sure, when you are working it is hard work... but clocking less than 5 hours on site?! So slack!

Hopefully we'll get to do some digging tomorrow. The site is brimming with history and I'm looking forward to see what else is hidden beneath the ground :D

Right now, we are just chilling in the garden (plus feeding the local mosquitos). Loving the weather so far! Shall update again soon :)