Now It's Christmas!

Merry Xmas, everyone!

or, HAPPY HOLIDAYS

eat lotsa cake and exercise tons afterwards

'cos no one wants to get FAT

before NEW YEAR

:)

I'm spending this Christmas with my family

in my hometown for the first time

in YEARS.

It feels a little surreal still

to sit down and have dinner

among familiar faces and loved ones

I hope yours is wonderful and joyous

as well

xoxo,

mars.

now it's a myriad things invading my mind

a friend emailed me a list of tips to stay healthy and each of them is accompanied

by a cute picture of a kid om-nom-nom-ing.

While filling in forms for US visa application on behalf of my dad, my sis and I discovered something crazy on his birth cert. He was born out of wedlock! which explains the lack of my grandfather's name on it. We burst out laughing after our minds finally processed this fact. Mine was doing the whole nine yards of denying it for a full couple of minutes - frantically speed-reading the birth cert several times for something that would indicate otherwise.

For twenty over years, I never suspected a thing. This is discovery of the day for me..NO, of the YEAR. It's not an understatement at all. Other than this funny find, I didn't do much for the rest of the day. In fact, I spent it taking a freaking long nap (after waking up really late too) and waking up briefly only to stop the rumbling of my stomach before letting my muscles continue to atrophy once again. But nap hours are a bitch. My head refused to let me fall deep into slumber again no matter how hard I tried (sleeping is my favorite activity, or lack of it) so here I am, blogging nonsense while cleaning out my iTunes. Fine-tuning playlists is serious business. You'd know if you have more than 20GB of music stored on a computer and have tried to compress it into a smaller, higher-quality package before. This is taking me hours and I'm nowhere close to done! One wonders what's the iTunes of a music aficionado is like if the average person's like mine.

Anyway, I bought a local girl magazine a few days ago out of sheer boredom and as expected from a fashion/ent mag targeted at teenagers, the articles are peppered with English phrases here and there. It's great that a publication is doing its part to help influence the young to learn/speak more English but it's certainly not doing its best judging by the jarring misspelling , grammar errors and overuse of slang. Never mind the slang if it's used correctly but most of the time, it isn't. The impressionable ones are learning wrong sentence structures et cetera et cetera and it will continue on this way if nothing is done.

I think it's fine to make mistakes when one is learning a language earnestly but how do you differentiate the ones who are trying to learn it earnestly from the ones who are just trying too hard to come off as cool (and unfortunately, FAILED)? There isn't any one standard way that comes off the top of my heard right away right now but I usually gauge this by the formality of the sentences. It's best to write proper sentences in said language of interest before trying to rattle off slang that you don't even have a full grasp on. It just looks stupid.

And read. Read a lot to really improve your fluency.

I'm seriously considering writing a letter to said publication regarding their consistent mistakes in every single new issue. What is the editor doing???????? Miss P. Moran, please buck up! Maybe I should apply to be a part-time proofreader there. Clearly relying on their interns' half-assed English is not helping them scale new heights in terms of quality. I'm assuming it's the interns who are doing the magic peppering on the articles since they are schooled in institutions that teach English extensively (to my knowledge of the education field in this city).

Let's not touch on the copyright infringement problem for using unauthorized images of celebrities on their covers...YET.

now it's Nothing Lasts Forever

It is so easy to see
Dysfunction between you and me
We must free up these tired souls
Before the sadness kills us both

I tried and tried to let you know
I love you but I'm letting go
It may not last but I don't know
Just don't know

If you don't know
Then you can't care
And you show up
But you're not there
But I'm waiting
And you want to
Still afraid that I will desert you

Everyday
With every worthless word we get more far away
The distance between us makes it so hard to stay
But nothing lasts forever, but be honest babe
It hurts but it may be the only way

A bed that's warm with memories
Can heal us temporarily
The misbehaving only makes
The ditch between us so damn deep

Built a wall around my heart
I'll never let it fall apart
But strangely I wish secretly
It would fall down while I'm asleep

If you don't know
Then you can't care
And you show up
But you're not there
But I'm waiting
And you want to
Still afraid that I will desert you, babe

Everyday
With every worthless word we get more far away
The distance between us makes it so hard to stay
But nothing lasts forever, but be honest babe
It hurts but it may be the only way

Though we have not hit the ground
It doesn't mean we're not still falling,
Oh I want so bad to pick you up
But you're still too reluctant to accept my help
What a shame, I hope you find somewhere to place the blame
But until then the fact remains

Everyday
With every worthless word we get more far away
The distance between us makes you so hard to stay
Nothing lasts forever, but be honest babe
It hurts but it may be the only way

Everyday
With every worthless word we get more far away
The distance between us makes it so hard to stay
But nothing lasts forever, but be honest babe
It hurts but it may be the only way

This is my favorite song at the moment. 
I'm going to memorize it and sing it out loud at karaoke!! 
I can't stop playing it in my head already.

now it's impromptu therapy?!?

Having a great friend who listens to whatever you say, no matter how skewed the issue is, is so comforting. My greatest confidante just gave me a 'therapy session' that's supposed to cost me $200/hour and our conversation lasted 3 hours before said friend had to go to dinner. Being a longtime complaint-container of mine for free, it goes without saying that the quoted price is simply a joke to make me laugh.

I don't pay for any therapy because I never boil over to need one. Besides, I'm the one who's called The Psychologist by others. The psychologist who can't solve her own problems. Classic. I don't even have a degree in that field but very few continued to trek on their chosen path in college anyway. I'm fine.

Nevertheless, The Confidante made me feel much better and the 3 hours passed by so fast...much too fast! But Confidante promised to be back online and available 30 minutes later. Even if it falls through, at least I know that I'm lucky enough to have someone like that as my friend. Few can say the same about friendships they have.

Another friend (G) and I have been discussing the difference between friends in this city and friends in a neighboring country X. Friend G agreed that friends from country X are no good for keeps (getting hip like that) and that they are just good enough as , say, shopping companions and for other less serious commitments. The difference is brought about by the different lifestyle we lead on this side of the earth. It's hard to explain and harder still to change their opinions of us because surrounding influence over the years of our lives simply cannot be undone. The Confidante, who's from country Y, also agreed that people from country X are not worth getting involved with (on average) except for a select few because those select few don't have the personality traits that's typical of people who grew up in country X. This really just means that all three of us and many others we've spoken to, think that people from country X are shitty.

The above confusing paragraph has no point to prove anything at all except to express that we, non-X people, think that X population is generally shitty. I mean, Y, Z, In and G can't ALL be wrong, right?

Anyway, you who are reading this (hello!), what do you think of karma? Do you believe in it? Do you think it's only fair that cheaters get cheaters as well? I look forward to any answer to this and I'll be posting these questions in my future posts as well.

My 'therapist' should be back any moment now.

Have a great week ahead, lovelies!

Here's a fabulous picture (not mine) of Tae Min for all to enjoy

bisou,

Psychologist.

now it's joyeux anniversaire

les crabes et la voiture.

Oh, she would.

in fact, I shouldn't have expected anything less than that.

fool is me.

time for sweet revenge.

bonne nuit, mars.

a brand new year for you ahead.

happy birthday

xoxo