08 August 2011
Updates have been seldom on this blog, but all for good reason. I was spending more time with the boyfriend before he had to leave for vet school.
I just feel a loss for words right now. Instead, tears and pangs of sadness are my familiarities. My attempt at productivity today was found in unpacking, doing laundry, and cleaning my room. Cleaning the room made me even more upset. It's weird to know that he won't be around to throw his socks around anymore, or any of those little things he did that gave me minor frustrations after cleaning. It's sad, but I got teary and sad yesterday evening when we were brushing our teeth after dinner when I thought of how we won't be able to brush together anymore. He just laughed at me, with his toothbrush still in his mouth, and tried to hug me while I was still brushing and crying :[
I need to get used to how things were before everything. It's just a lot harder than it should be right now. And I feel bad because things will be much more difficult for him because he's in a new place by himself. I don't want to be so upset around him when we do get to talk, so.. must try harder :[
05 June 2011
My life as of late. I'm sparing the photos which chronicle my failed attempts to study during finals week (of tea, water, burnt pizzas, snacks, etc). With less than a week left until my commencement ceremony, I will savor this carefree feeling a little longer. I'll just focus on studying and sleeping until Tuesday! :]
08 May 2011
In accordance to the annual strawberry cheesecake tradition for my mother on her birthday, I decided to attempt mini-cheesecakes for Mother's Day. I figured a homemade gift would be more thoughtful and that it would go along nicely with flowers. This was my second cheesecake attempt, with the first being the large New York style cheesecake I made for my boyfriend upon his return from Japan. It didn't crack, thank goodness. Still, I was nervous for these cakes. I want to impress my mother and the family.
With twelve total in the batch, I portioned the ingredients to half of everything in the recipe found online (the same one I used the first time). This batch was baked for 20 minutes. The comments from various sites and blogs were very helpful. I added a bit of cinnamon into the graham cracker crust. It is recommended that vanilla waffers be used as the crust of mini-cheesecakes because it has a better texture. I may try that next time, and I'm tempted to make cheesecakes with Oreos, too :]
Butter the tin before pouring in the batter and crust. This helps with the cracks. Always remember a water bath to keep the cake moist. And this tip is to be suuper safe with the cracked cakes: use a warmed/buttered knife to separate the cake from the sides of the tin. The buttered sides should already help, but just in case the batter sticks to the sides, it may cause the cake to separate and crack while cooling.
01 May 2011
I live with walls around me and I feel exposed without them. Opened doors bring me discomfort. I like my bubble, with the windows open for air. The application to this preference to my personality is hardly profound. I'm defensive, I'm stubborn, and I'm skeptical about too many things. I do not trust. So, is it really difficult to grasp why I'm so upset over a small lie?
28 April 2011
...remember to get rid of the evidence. Seriously.
15 April 2011
I went to bed last night with my lecture podcast still playing. Dr. Bautista had expressed his disclaimer for the class for students to take the facts and gather their own conclusions on the drugs, and had moved on to differentiating between drug use and drug abuse. The cough and allergy medicine had started to kick in around 1:30 AM. I figured I might as well make an attempt to study a bit more while I was falling asleep. A collective of ideas for my paper topic were still swarming in my head.
I love their songs. And I especially love their lyrics. After battling through the complexity of literary characters from the mentioned stories and trying to conversate with them about drug use in French, I felt an odd sense of relief. For a moment, I felt like I was back in high school years, listening to the songs on my MP3 player while laying in bed. I felt at peace. Undisturbed. I was back at home, with my mom most likely preparing food and my dad reading a book, or watching PBS. I felt secure again. I felt safe. I couldn't wait to eat dinner with my family.
The pangs from realizing the feeling was all nostalgia brought me back to the present. I fell asleep again to thoughts of my classes. More verbs, more symbolism and imagery to refine into a paper argument, and more about drugs to learn.
It's a difficult thing to do, beyond what is familiar and secure. My temporary moment of relief was nice. I liked it. But I don't think I should get caught up in it again for a long time.
14 April 2011
I just finished the Awakening for my ENL seminar class. This is the second time I have read the novel, with the first time being the summer of my junior year for AP Lit. The same impressions from the first reading remain with me, although I did find myself more intrigued the second time around.
Okay, so the story is about this discontented woman from Kentucky who lives among the Creoles in New Orleans. She's not very fond of her husband, she's not really a mother-woman, and she comes to the realization that she has desires, etc. She falls for this gentleman while on vacation with her family. Because he's such a gentleman, he runs off to Mexico to resist his desire. She's devastated (uhm, she's married??). She attempts to attain a sense of freedom from her social expectations and her mother-woman/wife duties to work on her art. She asserts her freedom when her husband goes to New York for business. And after a while, she eventually has a relationship with a really shady guy (everyyone knows it!), all-the-while thinking about the one who ran to Mexico. She's the unconventional woman of the time.
I dislike her. She's annoyingly selfish. A few of the characters call her actions childish because she never gives time to reflect on her choices. She's impulsive. I'm all for empowering women's choice and being selfish for one's own desires, I really do. I hate being confined.
What Edna represents repulses me because she gives so little thought to her actions. She's walking around like a drama queen. Oh, and the fact that she comes to the realization that there is more to the world around her, at age 26, baffles the hell outta me.
I sympathize with her cause and her confusion through all her troubles. I get that she's unhappy. I understand that she wants to be her own woman. I know she just wants true love. But the fact that she drowns herself at the end of the novel after her long-awaited awakening makes me think that her whole journey was insignificant and pointless.
If she can't live with the choices she's made, then she's weak. Mademoiselle Reisz was right. Only birds with strong wings have the courage to make self-sacrificing choices. Edna Pontellier deludes herself with the idea and causes her own demise. She just dies -__-
Dumbest female character to grace the pages of literature. Although, I retract my statement for a moment to say this: Edna Pontellier is the dumbest female character to grace the pages of early 19th century literature. For modern novels, the protagonist from Memoirs of a Geisha is pretty damn stupid.
She would have been heroic if she didn't off herself -____-