My Life Part 2

I guess the previous blog didn't come out quite the way I wanted it to. When I wrote it, I didn't mean to say that I am bored here. No. It's just that on weekdays, I am so tired after work that all I want to do when I get home is slump on my couch and not do anything. By 9.30 I already feel like sleeping.

It's nice to live on my own. I can do whatever I want however I want whenever I want. Life is much slower-paced now compared to my university days. Sure I work 40 hours a week, but when I come home I'm done. There's no exams to study for, no assignments to complete, no papers to write. I don't have a 21-credit course load, no 20-hour-a-week internship, and no actuarial exams in the next 3 months. Now I can truly see how crazy that was.

When I get home, I have time to take care of myself. I can take my own sweet time to cook healthier meals, exercise (we'll see how long I can keep up the exercise part), and pamper myself with a nice long shower every night. I don't have to multitask. I don't have to rush. I don't have to stay up late to do something I don't like.

Yeah, I would like to know more people here. But that will come. I'm not worried. So you don't have to worry for me.

My Life As It Is (more than you ever want to know)

The alarm rings.

I hit the snooze button. 5 minutes later I hit it again. And again. And again...

Half an hour later I get out of bed.

I turn on the microwave to cook rice for the day. No rice cooker yet.

Meanwhile I get ready for work.

I head over to the kitchen to make breakfast and pack my lunch.

I sneak in a crossword puzzle during breakfast but only have time to do half.

Within an hour, the door to my apartment closes. (And the elves come out to mend my shoes. No wait, wrong story.)

Work is about 2 blocks away and takes me 5-10 minutes to walk depending on how high my heels are.

After checking my mail and reading the news, it's work, lunch, then more work.

9 hours later, the door to my apartment opens.

I cook dinner and the next day's lunch.

I watch one episode of a Chinese drama while eating dinner.

After taking a nice long shower, I start ticking off the items on my to-do list. (There's a to-do list because EVERYTIME I try to list things mentally, I will forget one important thing. And not remember it until the next day.)

Every other day I exercise.

Once a week I call my mum.

I try to blog as often as I can.

I read the books I borrowed from the library.

Sometimes, I catch up with a friend.

The crossword puzzle left half blank in the morning gets filled in as much as possible.

Every other Wednesday I do laundry (which takes up a good chunk of time with the ironing).

If I have extra time, I study for FAP but that's not happening much.

I get ready for bed.

When I feel sleepy, I snuggle underneath my super-comfy comforter with my puppies and dream the night away.

The alarm rings.

Receptionist-wannabe

Quick, guess how many hours I spent talking on the phone this past Sunday!
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Ready?
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Answer: eight hours!

I’ve never been on the phone for sooooo long in my entire life. Can be receptionist liao. It wasn’t all spent talking to the same person lah. Spent some time catching up with 5 friends, mostly the people at Drake. Btw, I have all Drake students grouped under the heading Drakulaeans (root word: Dracula :P) on my MSN list. No ‘Bulldogs’ for me.

Every time I move to a new place, I kind of lose contact with my close friends at the old place. Well, it’s not unusual to be less in contact with them I guess. But I wish I can talk to them more often. Everyone is so busy though, busy working, busy studying, busy ‘pak-toh’-ing… and the 12-hour time difference is seriously not helping matters.

I’ve been talking to some Drakulaeans quite a bit the last few weeks. Was nice to know what’s going on at Drake. I miss having potlucks and desserts at KY’s place. I miss the ‘parties’ over at Ross during the weekends, actually I kinda miss Ross, that was the bestest room/apartment I’ve ever had in my 5 years of dorm life. But of course my apartment now is better lah. :P And I miss the MAHJONG!!! Oh, I met someone who says he is interested in learning mahjong, but I don’t know if he was serious or not though.

Gonna call a few more people this week, but I doubt I’ll do the eight-hour stint again. It was nice to catch up with people, but that was really a lot of talking for one day!

Color Scheme for chez moi

I lurrve having my own apartment. It’s exhilarating to get to decide what furniture to buy, where to put it, and what personal touches to add. All by myself! Of course so much freedom must come at a price, and at the rate I’m going, I think I’ll be paying a pretty hefty price. But ah well, as I always say, a happy apartment is a happy me.

The big news today is… I’ve finally picked a color scheme for my apartment!! I spent so long trying to choose, there’s so many colors out there and each one has its own advantages. I mean do I want blue because it’s soothing, or green because it has “great healing powers”, yellow to invoke cheerfulness or red for la passion intense. And then they all have their negatives too, blue suppresses appetite (which is important because I have a 3-in-1 room that’s the dining room, bedroom and living room), green is just not my color, yellow makes people irritable and too much red can create aggression. You see my dilemma?

But finally, finally, finally, I have decided it’s going to be… *drum rolls* … white, red and black! Yeah I know I said too much red makes people aggressive, but since I’m such a demure and gentle person by nature, it wouldn’t be much harm right? :P Just kidding lah. Stop rolling your eyes please. And to clear all questions, this has nothing to do with wanting to create passion okay? It’s just a nice striking color that goes well with white and black. :P

I’ve been reading quite a lot of articles on interior decorating. Budget interior decorating to be exact. It says that I should start decorating one area at a time. So I’m gonna tackle my living room first! Well, actually more like my living corner since almost everything is in the same room. (I live in a studio.) Current plan is to get a slipcover for my loveseat, it’s brown at the moment and in my dreams it should look more like deep red. Can’t decide whether I should go for a lighter shade (maybe beige) and use red for the throw pillows instead, or stick to a deep red loveseat and light-colored pillows. How how? Which one is better?

Oh and I’m checking out posters too! I want to hang a sweet romantic-ish one above my bed. Found one I really like, but don’t know whether I should get it or not. It has 2 white cuddly teddy bears holding a velvet red heart together. Costs a lot to frame it up though and I don’t know if it will look good laminated. Here’s the poster, I think it looks very cute, and it fits my white, red and black scheme too! So should I frame, mount or just laminate it?

This is so fun! I think I'll be so obsessed about decorating that I won't talk about anything else for the next few blogs. Hehe.

My 2nd week in Louisville

Arrrgh!!!! I did a stupid thing this evening coming back from work. Why did I do it? I hope it doesn’t come back to bite me. Why couldn’t I just say No? Why? Why? Why? DANG IT! EeeeeeeeeeeeSshhhhhhhHHhh!!!! GggggggggggggrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRrrrrrrr!!!!!

Ok now that I’ve got it out of my system… moving on to the happier stuff…

My first official weekend in Louisville was quite nice (last weekend doesn’t count because I had to spend 2 whole days setting up my apartment). I went to a Vietnamese grocery store on Saturday. There are quite a lot of Asian grocery stores here, apparently one of them sells Malaysian stuff too! :D But I don’t know how to get there and I don’t have a car, so… don’t know when I’ll go to that store. But at least now I know where to get Chinese stuff though, not stuck with eating lettuce, cabbage and broccoli only. Phew! Oh btw, I’m becoming a vegetarian again after a 3-year hiatus heehee. Lacto-ovo vegetarian to be exact. Meaning I’ll eat eggs and drink milk. But I’ll eat seafood about once a week lah, Mummy’s orders. I had lobster pasta on Sunday. :D

Sunday I went on a tour of Louisville, too. I had an unofficial ‘tour guide’. Hehe. It was more fun than I expected. Went to Bardstown Road, which has those tiny mom-and-pop shops on both sides of the road. Quite unique stuff. Then after that we went to Mall St. Matthews. I tell you, it was so difficult to walk inside loh. Every single shop was on sale!! And the mall had all the shops I like too!! I think I have internal injuries now. My heart was fighting with my head the whole time I was there. Let’s go shopping! No, save money! You need that nice bag! No, you won’t use it! Luckily, my credit card came out unswiped.

Then, after that we went to the Waterfront Park right next to the Ohio River. I’m still waiting for the photos though. I’ll write about this next time so that I can post the photos together.

Last Friday/Saturday (I don’t remember when liao) was the Mid-Autumn Festival. (Digressing a bit here: why is it called the Midautumn festival ah? It’s not the middle of Autumn also. I think Autumn starts around September 26, so if it’s true, that means we have only one month plus worth’s of Autumn only!!! Which is so not true.) My colleague gave me a mooncake. Soooooooooo nice. Her friend brought it over from Chicago, so it’s not the cheapo yucky kind of mooncake. It is quite delicious loh, shuang1 huang2 (double eggyolk) some more. Yum yum. Still have half left. I don’t have that much appetite nowadays.

Louisville is pretty nice. I’ve only been here 2 weeks so I can’t say I know the place well yet. But so far I like it a lot. The people here are very friendly (I feel so unfriendly compared to them sometimes, cause I don’t know what to say). Of course there are some very weird people too. Some are nice but weird. Some are just plain weird. And it seems like there are quite a lot of events going on during the weekends too. I’m hoping some band I like will come here to hold a concert. I know Matchbox 20 came last year and Nickelback came here 2 years ago. So am hoping. But I doubt Wang Lee Hom will come here loh. *sigh*

Oh and you know what I found out. According to a report by some online journal whose name and link I completely forgot liao, Louisville is the NUMBER ONE place for families to relocate! Ok lah, I know it says for families. But then if it’s good for families, it shouldn’t be that bad for young adults guaaaaaaaa. At least should be safe right? And families doesn’t mean ‘with small kids’ only right? Should include those with young adult children right right?

Also, according to another report by another online journal whose name and link I also completely forgot liao, Nashville is the NUMBER ONE place for relocating singles!! Hmm… Atlanta, Austin, New York and Houston are in the top 5 too. Am thinking about going to Atlanta October next year when I come back from Canada. But it’s such a pain to keep moving some place where I don’t know anyone. Maybe I’ll just come back to Louisville. I like the city. We’ll see what happens next year.

Okay, going to start on my FAP modules now. Haven’t been studying since I took the exam in May. 5-month break! I haven’t had such a long break since that 9-month holiday right before I came to the States. Ah, I miss my holiday.

Even Shorter Update

Hmm.. haven't been updating in a LONG while. Quite a few things happened since my 2nd day at work. Hehe. Will add a new post tomorrow. I promise! ;)

Short Update

It's my 2nd day at work! Hmm, quite a lot of things happened since I last wrote, but I haven't got time now to write. Don't wanna use 'company resources' for 'excessive personal use', though how they quantify excessive is beyond me. Still waiting for the broadband company to set up my internet this Saturday. Then I can log on to MSN Messenger!! Hmm, haven't gone this long without signing in before.

Anyway, will write more when I get internet access in my apartment. Off to the library to get some movies and maybe a couple of books. I just watched Pride and Prejudice again last night. Yes, I know I just watched it only, but it's very nice mah. And I didn't have anything else to watch besides Aladdin. Haha, guess who sent me that? Should have kept World Without Thieves and deleted Aladdin. Higher repeat value. Darn. So now I want to read the book again. I think I've read it a few times but can't really remember the story liao. Sense and Sensibility I totally cannot recall. Maybe I'll get both. Hope they will give me a library card!