noodlebox #3: after all, a little intimacy is all we need

• ok.
• I know I did a lot of stupid things in the past few weeks, and I don't actually know how to put it in words. Somehow I allowed myself to do all those things cause I'm never the one who learns from words. And I'm pretty sure shit's gonna come back to bite my ass some time soon.
• These kinds of things can be poetic or pathetic, depends on how you want to view it. Just the whole relationship with an expiry date fascinates me. You have no responsibility towards others, can cut the whole second guessing and is-he-interested-in-me crap and get to the point. Well in some aspects you get the best slice of a relationship, and contrary to my imagination, those I've been with were not half bad. Poetry doesn't come from boredom, it comes from small talks and the fear of losing what you're having in front of you.
• How pathetic it is, I think is out of the question. It's the draft version of a relationship, you have to literally stop yourself from feeling anything, and the mere idea of that just disgusts me. It's the kind of instant noodle relationship that cooks fast, is found everywhere but doesn't have any nutrition whatsoever. You feel full, but the feeling itself makes you sick, and for a moment there you forget how a normally functioning relationship feels like.
• I haven't had to listen to Continuum for a while now, thinking I've been OK. But for me being bored is like a junkie without drugs, it itches your every molecule and you just grab any opportunity you could find to get out of the situation, no matter how unhealthy it is.
• I think the fact that I started working full-time in the university unconsciously makes me want to go against it. To be frank the job is not boring, but the whole concept of how a teacher should behave just bugs me. The more hectic the schedule is, the more I want to end up in a sloppy hotel room on a Saturday night with a traveler, tasting the sweetest and most intoxicating slice of a relationship.
• I think at the age of 22, almost 23, you're still allowed to make mistakes. A friend of mine once told me that this is the age of defining yourself, and no matter how you're definitely not alone in this. On days when I'm too unsure about myself like these rainy days of October, how I wish I could meet him again and just talk about how I struggle being 22, being so sure that I know everything there is to know about life while thinking how I don't know shit about anything.
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• What even is a relationship anyway?
• Right now, standing in front of a choice, I just realized how bruised I actually am, still finding myself a way to get out of it as a plan B. It's the whole summer thing all over again. I scream if I can't have a relationship, and when I have the opportunity to be in one, I back out cause I'm too scared of commitment.
• But well, it's been a bad few weeks. I don't like the mundane job, don't like my colleagues, don't like the fact that all those papers from the classes are piling up in a mess on my bed. I don't like having to meet so many people in a forced environment doing things both of us don't like. This is probably the most crappy definition of the teaching job ever.
• But well, I've been writing this post for something like half a year now. Better publish it just cause. 
• Until next time, world.

noodlebox #2: here comes burning season

• Now that I think about it, I'm really a seasonal person. After all these years of living the same story every summer and it never occurred to me that my mood may partly depend on the weather.
• Short update: this working at the university thing neither sounds cool nor gives me a break in any way. Because this is my blog, I'm gonna take advantage of it to whine like an unsatisfied intern. 
• My boss is weird , colleagues are nice but not quite my type. My work is basically the same, I'm just glad I don't have a lot of office work to do or else I'm really gonna cry on the internet like one of those girls who think they are all it.
• But it's kind of unfair to judge, cause it took me like almost 4 years to get used to my old job, and right at the moment when I started making progress, I switched to working here. And the thing about working in an environment with just young people is that sometimes people have this attitude that they've already achieved a lot at this age, and that they can be a snobby-ass piece of annoying shit and boss people around. 
• The one thing I'm most bugged when working here is actually not even all that, but the fact that nobody here is outrageous and crazy enough to pull me out of the bureaucratic and modest world of a teacher to release the energy every now and always. I guess those are the things you have to do on your own, but I guess I just don't like the job by default and am just looking for reasons to make it sound bad.
• I'm contradicting myself don't I?
• I kind of miss working with food though. I feel like without the old job I don't have any motivation to push myself to explore anymore. One of the biggest thing I've discovered after working there is maybe how such a seemingly small phenomenon can be so attractive in a cultural aspect. 
• OMGGGG I sound like one of those presentations I used to do.
• OK not anymore. I'll write when there's really something exciting happening.
• Until then.

noodlebox #2: how haven't i made it to #2 yet???

• Summer's halfway done, and I've already gotten myself into yet another mess with guys. Not that it's any surprise to all of you, because I always get stuck in such things, in one way or another.
• So, I'm gonna list the pros and cons, but mostly cons, just to try to control myself for once in my life. Me not having an emotional breakdown and inaudibly crying in my bed any night is already an improvement than other summers. So here goes:

1. He has a girlfriend. And it looks like they're not gonna break up any time soon. If ever they do, he's too nice a guy to even talk about it with anybody else. But he's that type, the type who would not break up with the girl no matter what happens. He plays by the rules, and respects it, and is also a kid.

2. Remember why you broke up with your ex? Nicer guys with larger dicks appeared in your life, and you needed to make room for the dick. Your ex was also a kid, like this one that you're having a crush on. You can't talk to him about stuff that's happening in your life, and thank goodness there's still something relevant for you to talk about now, but sooner or later, it's gonna turn into this soggy mess of him not helping you understand yourself, and you're drained from energy to even bother listening to his stories.

3. You haven't gotten in deep. It's still safe to back down. I know it's not easy, it's never easy when you accidentally like someone who's forbidden, but still, you still have a chance to back down in one piece.

4. He's probably only interested in you cause you're a cool teacher, not a cool person with head-turning stories. Without your teacher status, you don't mean a single thing. Don't get your hopes up, he's a kid, and you can do better than that.

• So, guidelines: only talk to him, but refrain from talking to him as much as possible; try not to get your hopes up every time he does something cute; find another one.
• Short words for myself after liking this kid. You can do better, keep that in mind Sam.

noodlebox #1: things that i need to get off my chest before i explode

OK new year new start, even for such a rusty corner like this blog. I've been encountering things that are not exactly pleasant lately, and goodness do I crave for that trip we've booked last month. Working is never easy, but there are times when you feel like you can breathe in bigger heap of air than others.

• My working enthusiasm has dropped down like an avalanche in the past 2 weeks. I can't remember a time when I was so eager to sit down a work on a proper graphic. Trust me, although that time comes rather rarely in my working pattern, it does come, and used to come on quite rapidly before I started the new project.
• So the thing is that we've just launched a new series, in which we basically (try to) make recipes of classic street food dishes. Sounds easy. NOT. Problems start jumping along the way, either with my boss being the most vague person ever, or with the new collaborator-turned-editor that was hired 3 weeks ago, who has been so far, sadly, inadequate. My boss kind of refuses to let people into her head and actually figure out what her ideas are, and the boy is too naive and didn't have the guts to ask further, or research about the damn thing that he's about to make. 
• Result of that wonderful teamwork is me, trying to get everyone to work, trying my hardest not to piss my boss off, writing long-ass emails filled with scolding words that even I would be ashamed to read again, always being in the mood of explaining and, basically, talking back to my boss each and every damn time she's not happy with any detail in the articles.
• It's a lot of work to get this thing into system, if at all. It would be wonderful if I could get a fucking raise or something, cause I can feel the neurons in my brain being washed off every time my boss gets kinky or the collaborator acts useless.
• Idk I just wanna get it out there. My Facebook is filled with friends who just quit their jobs, who do 1-month backpack trips around the country, who are married and like to rub their happiness into people's faces. Am I missing on some kind of youth lifestyle or something?

• There are a couple things that act as my Achilles heel. Which basically means, if you bring it up the wrong way, I swear I'll fight you to death with it. I'm also a headstrong, so every time people mess up on conversing, I just sit there with the thought, dumbass communicates like a retarded, why hasn't natural selection eliminated you yet. 
• And racism is one of them. The time I spent in Germany was eye-opening for me, not because they have Straßenbahnen, which was mega-awesome by the way, but because it was the first time I felt so conscious about where I come from. I acknowledged racism with a much closer take than before, because where I live is not exactly the most cosmopolitan environment. 
• A friend of mine, to whom I like to talk sometimes, got racist last night. Needless to say I was beyond angry. The very friend who stood by and saw me in a racist situation months ago and decided not to do anything in my defense.
• Racism is just something people do that I deeply do not understand why they have to do that. I'm just disappointed. The kind of disappointment where you just can't compensate.
• I don't like to lose friends. I've lost so many already just for being myself, and things like that really makes me question my self-esteem and my morals as a person. So the ones that are able to put up with me are the ones to keep. Especially since I haven't had many contacts left after Germany, and as much as I hate communicating through comments and Whatsapp messages, I still push myself to do it just for the sake of it. So when I got mad to the point where I thought I couldn't go to sleep anymore, I thought, is this it?
• Maybe I'm just being unreasonable, but for now I'm just so fed up with it that I need some time to digest this.

I guess it's fair that there's a time like this every once in a while. And eventually I'll bounce back or move on to some other state of mind. It's all about where you decide to say "eventually" actually. I haven't been able to have good sleeps lately, and it affects my mood I think. I really need to check out all of those pillow mists that people have been talking so much about.

Sorry that my long-time-no-write post is filled with all of these negative things. If you're reading this, I hope you have a better sleep than I do lately. Stay hydrated humans.

2015

• Is it that time again when people do that sort of throwback to what they did the entire year? I don't remember doing it the last years here, but since this year has been one hell of a year, I guess it's fair that I write things down.
• Crazy how time flies huh? In some ways it feels like 2 weeks ago when I got back home from Germany, still doesn't feel like home, like if I knock on the wall, Victor will knock back from his room and I'll climb over the window and we'll drink really cold tea and talk about girls and video games. But it feels like 3 years since I last saw my grandpa. It's just how my mind works I guess.
• As I said, one hell of a year. I managed to score a trip to Thailand for a conference, which is probably one of the proudest things I've ever achieved. I somehow managed to get a visa for Germany, now looking back at it I honestly don't know how driven I was in those sunny days of March to get that pretty little sticker visa on my passport. I managed to fly 17 hours alone to Germany, which a luggage that's larger than life, somehow got down to the Bielefeld station after a very nervous 3-hour train journey. I somehow managed to carry that damn luggage up to my little room in Unistrasse, frowned upon the fact that the kitchen was a complete mess, opened my completely empty section in the kitchen and thought, goodness I will never be able to memorize all of this thing.
• But then I did. I know how to get to Penny, how to get to Jahnplatz, to the Rathaus to extend my visa. I survived a 6-hour train delay due to one of the biggest thunderstorm Germany is to witness. I made friends, actual friends to hang out with at lunchtime in mensa, and oh, I figured out how mensa works, and goodness is it magical. I started talking with Jason about stationery in mensa, snuck in Victor's room to watch Game of Thrones, somehow even had the guts to ask Cornelius to help me correct the grammar mistakes to my presentation. I somehow managed to survive 2 presentations, which is minute comparing to those who study there and the amount of presentations that I had to do at home, but still. I managed to figure out how not to get lost inside that giant library, and that my section is at gate D, always gate D. I somehow managed to memorize the way to Morgenbreede on that morning, when I was loathed by everyone and only had Ivan to be friends with. I still remember bringing a cup of hot cocoa to his place, only to have him comment, you have a weird way of making cocoa. 
• And then there's the drunk song, the controversial sleepover, the walk in the park with Victor ended with that random kiss in front of the giant tree monster in pitch dark. Then there were the times when I traveled alone, the days where we ate so much Haribo our tongue turned blue, the day Gabriele got so drunk he screamed nonsense to passers by while pouring beer on the street. I met that couple in Belgium and made them this really really false spring rolls, but they were so nice they complimented them anyways. Then there's the epic incredible legendary trip to Dortmund consisting of 11 people with 10 nationalities. I went to Amsterdam with possibly the worst companion, then I went to Paris with the best one, playing that guessing game while waiting hopelessly to get into Le Catacombs. I saw the Eiffel Tower while sitting on a tram, with street musicians playing in the background. I had to literally pinch myself to believe that I was there.
• I could write til tomorrow, cause like I said, one hell of a year. Moments like this make me really wish I have that full memory capacity thing, where I remember everything and not let anything get away. 
• But then there's the incident, there's the thing with my grandpa, there's regret. There's blaming myself for not being there, for being drained of emotions so fast and so heartlessly. There's nights of crying and asking myself 'why did I do this', 'why didn't I do this'. There's the poem that I keep with me everywhere I go but wouldn't bear to read. There's the flight back home, the disappointment, the desperate hope that I will make it out of here some day. There's not always happy moments.
• But what the hell, I'm gonna end the year with some more traveling, wrapping the year of 2015 in between flights, which is kind of my dream to be honest.
• I think last year I wrote something like, may 2015 be a kick-ass awesome year. And it was. Well, I'm pretty sure 2016 won't be as exciting, and I have to admit, it's hard to top such a year, but I'm willing to believe Sinatra, the best is yet to come. Make the most out of life, it's all I have for now.
• Have a good night folks. Wherever you are. 

yogurt cup #112

• on and off and on and off again
• I haven't been feeling very fine, no surprise, why else would i write anyways? Or it's probably just that I've napped for too long and now I'm a little disorientated and tired. That sounds more likely.
• Some days it feels nice, like today. Today made me wanna actually pick it up and like make something out of it, some other days I just regret it the moment he steps into my room.
• I'm killing myself and I know it. It's probably the period speaking as well, as I'm experiencing severe mood swings and listening to the weirdest music right now.
• I haven't graduated. And some of my friends have, naturally, and they're having a ceremony today at the university, with capes and diplomas and shit. I'm not too big a fan of capes, but I'm a huge fan of ending my miserable years at the university and being able to apply for scholarships to go somewhere.
• Today at my office there's also this big ass party celebrating the website's birthday. I don't feel it, and normally I'd just go because of the food, cause they usually have fancy parties at Korean barbecue restaurants and who would turn down a free barbecue set? But this year I guess the budget's tight and people's gotten creative, so instead of fancy barbecue, there's the plastic chair bar and getting drunk all night. Which, as you might have noticed, I'm not a big fan of.
• So, after the longer than usual siesta, I'm upset because I'm left out at both of the places I'm working in. And I hate being left out, probably more than anything.
• Don't get me wrong and assume I'm a straight-edge or something. I love getting drunk. But with the right set of people, who will do crazy reckless shit when they're out of control. My group of friends in Germany has set the bar pretty high on that one. So when I got back, I was riding my motorbike through these bars and discos around the city, trying to see if it gets me excited again and if I could find a way to find any escapism to the mundane circle in this vast city, did I realize it doesn't make any sense if you're with the wrong people.
• I love Camellia, I do, cause frankly who would I hang out with if not her? But she's the depressed type, the type that would stay at home for 8 days straight wearing one set of clothes, although washing her hair 17 times per day, eating 5 boxes of cream puff ordered online and binge-watching a series of Chinese emo-series. She's not the going to the bar getting drunk kissing strangers letting them touch your boobs kind of girl. I've seen her in those kinds of environment, and that was kind of defining, in terms of 'ok how about we get outta here and find some food'. I miss getting crazy, and seeing people get reaaaaaaaaaaally racist when they're drunk. I once met this guy, who I'm pretty sure has a fetish for Asian girls, as he approached me in that weird way after he was flinging it with another Asian 5 minutes before. It's kind of fascinating to see how weird people can act when it comes to race, one of the things that make me glad to stay here is that I'm not constantly worried that I'm being judged.
• I'm just trying to act like an adult in all of this stuff, which is fucking difficult when you just really wanna rage quit and live in poverty while people look at you with sorry eyes. It's fine that my boss finds Camellia's work more credible than mine, and basically asks her to run the damn column alongside with me. But it's probably me, it's probably cause I have bad work attitude, cause I'm irresponsible and shut down my phone sometimes, cause I don't have that girly 'sense' that's needed for this job. There's probably a million people who can do the job better than I do, I just got lucky for a moment.
• Last week I was fully motivated, thinking I could handle this, I'm doing well, I got this. This week with the period comes a lot of mood swings. Why do girls have to suffer from this? Is this why sexism exists?
• So anyways, here are a few acceptable shots from my recently developed film roll. It's my first, so there's a lot to fix, but this is more fun than it proposed.