Theseus

And his name is Theseus.

The name of her thesis that is. My female owner has declared war, cold war, on Theseus since last week. She is still in the midst of regaining control.

In the same vein, she declared that she would be in an exclusive relationship with Theseus for the next three months. A “short but intense” relationship.

Hmmm… how confusing and inconsistent!

With no real deadline imposed by the school (usually in Oct actually), my female owner is finding hard to get her act together. She wants to complete the thesis as soon as possible. End Aug to be exact, so that there would be ample time for the markers to mark, for her to make changes etc and still be in time to graduate at the end of the year. This has important consequences on her other endeavours, which include national registration, application for permanent residence (she is NOT coming back to us???) and job application.

Oh well... Let me mope in my corner for a bit.

say

My female owner had been meeting up with Fated Guy at least once a week. These meetings most often than not take place in uni, if they both happen to be in uni at the same time. Hence, it is purely meals of convenience. Through these meals, she got to know him (and his psyche) better. I said before that at the first dinner they had, my female owner was struck by how similar their interests were. She soon found out he often said things that she herself would say. Some of these include (I’m sure her close friends would agree too)

“actually I am very shy” (when he goes around making friends with random people he meets at coffee shops)

“things could be worse, I mean, I could say that ‘even mozzies don’t like me’ ” (context: at camping, when my female owner commented that he was so lucky not to be bitten by mosquitoes)

“I was feeling emotional yesterday” (last lecture of his programme - same as how my female owner felt)

“I wanna go home!” (during the same period when my female owner had that exact tagline on MSN)

“I find it hard to approach people first, but if people make the first move, I am ok” (what can I say?)

Maybe there are a few more examples but I can’t recall them at this point in time. My female owner never really told him that he sounded like her but I find it disturbing to see a reflection of herself in someone else. One her is enough, I reckon.

boundaries

My female owner did a super random thing today. She called her brother to wish him a Happie Birthday. She must have shocked him out of his skin. The sound of shock was so audible, it probably could have cut my shell into two. And the more random thing she did – to give him her Twitter username.

Boundaries, boundaries! She needs to be mindful of them.

lighthouse

My female owner has been thinking a lot about her next steps lately. She still thinks that she will stay back in Australia for a while before returning to Singapore. While she is less enthusiastic about bible study, prayer meetings and sometimes Sunday sermons because of her current state of being (sianz and all that), my female owner still want to maintain her focus on God.

Today, she told God that she wants Him to be her Lighthouse. That whatever decisions she makes, it would be in the direction of the light that is emitting from the Lighthouse. Easier said than done, she knows, but everything starts with a decision and today, she has decided it will be God’s way.

war

My female owner has declared war on Thesis - a cold war that is. Wednesday is usually her “free” day where she gets uninterrupted time (in theory) to work on her thesis. However, for today, she scheduled in a brekkie with Therapist Fren and a lunch with Fated Guy in uni. She had some vague intention to “do some work” in uni in the afternoon before going home. What really happened was:

Brekkie with Therapist Fren
Lunch with Fated Guy
Tea with Therapist Fren and other Asians
City Market with Therapist Fren
Grocery shopping at Sunnybank
Flute at home
Dinner at home

Told you she is winning the cold war!

return

I mentioned before that my female owner had decided not to return to Singapore after she graduates. She told some people about her decision but then disappeared from MSN for a long time. Hence, no one could really contact her or discuss the decision with her. Anyway, one rare time over the weekend, my female owner made a cyber appearance as she wanted to talk to Special Fren about something.

Lo and behold, the conversation later steered towards my female owner’s options in Singapore, with her doctorate degree. Special Fren talked her through a possible route that was financially and professionally viable and attractive for my female owner. This was an option which he had previously broached to her on a number of occasions but my female owner had consistently rejected the suggestion for a variety of reasons.

For the first time ever, my female owner was deeply moved by his kind gesture and concern about her future. My female owner was greatly encouraged by the mere thought that someone, whom she greatly respect for his abilities, believes in her, wants her to return to contribute back to Singapore and is willing to work with her if she chooses to return.

fade

My female owner is still feeling blue! She can’t believe it. Is it called burnout? Her Onli Frens in Singapore and Brisbane had separately asked her today if she is ok. They also asked if anything happened. Not that she can identify any earth-shattering event. Maybe it was a slow fade. The sad thing my female owner realised is that, in such times, the people who reached out to her and supported her are everyone else but her church friends (except for Emo Sponge). It kinda screams out to her that despite all the times she spent with her church friends, at the end of the day, she feels more comfortable opening up to other friends, friends whom she has spent time one-on-one with, building an emotional and psychological intimacy. The nature of the church group setting makes it difficult for her to spend time with any one individual meaningfully. Hence, these non-church friends were the ones who could pick out her distress and subsequently, respond in comforting ways. Friends she probably should prioritise and spend more time with.

Celebrate World Turtle Day

Look! A day to celebrate us turtles!

Be kind to turtles! We are important to the world. Really.

Celebrate World Turtle Day The Humane Society of the United States

lost

My female owner says that she has lost interest in MSN. Hence, she hasn’t been visible for most part of the week. The only person who has managed to catch hold of her while she is invisible is Special Fren, who roughly knows when she is around. She attributes this loss of interest to her increased use of her Iphone. Oh wait, and the more important reason is that she wants to be distraction-free and be able to work on her thesis without multi-tasking. Hmmm… But there are still her Facebook and Whatapps, the main time-stealers.

My female owner also says that she has lost interest in social gatherings. Compared to the past, she has cut down on social events. Things like dinners on Sunday with her church friends, lunches with her uni friends, random social jios (e.g. playing pool and shopping) and even jogging appointments. There’s a part of her which is tired of interacting with people, a part of her which wants to be left alone and be more focused on her priorities and yet, a small but significant part of her which knows that she needs to be socially bonded, otherwise she would just waste away and become a recluse.

She has just become more picky (and pricky) these days, and trying to work out the balance. After all, this is her final lap and she needs to pull up her sock in order to finish as a winning champion and not a dying hero.

greek

My female owner had a strange night. Fated Guy asked her if she was free for dinner but she had made plans to check out the Greek Festival near the city. She invited him to join her friends and her, but not really expecting him to come since it was so random (I mean, she probably won’t agree to go if it was her). But he did join her in the end. In addition, she had another group of church friends who was at the Greek Festival and whom she really wanted to catch up with. However, the atmosphere was noisy, crowded and dark, making conversations difficult and people started to scatter. My female owner ended up spending most of her time with Fated Guy as she had invited him to come along and hence, felt responsible for him. Although she was happy to do that, she felt sorry that she was not being able to catch up with the other group of friends, and even for not being with the first group of friends.

Looks like you can’t really mix your friends together, not in such an open setting anyway. Despite this, my female owner said that she had great fun trying out different Greek foods and watching Greek dances. And the Greek beer came in handy too. A nice way to spend a Saturday night, she said.

crankiness

My female owner found out something new about herself. It’s nothing earth-shattering. She felt really grouchy and anti-social yesterday and couldn’t believe what was happening to her, especially since she is NOT hormonal now. She had a really bad day at placement, that’s for sure, with a marathon 2.5hr session with a weepy patient who kept going “yes-but” all the way. My female owner doesn’t want to talk about that patient now coz it still irks her whenever she thinks about it.

At night, she dragged herself to some church event (combining 5 bible study groups) so that was some big social exposure for her. Reaching there, she wanted to leave immediately. Simply put, she felt “off”. But she stayed because the reason she went was to support someone who was part of the organising team.

My female owner kept trying to trouble-shoot the emo-situation coz she couldn’t accept that she is dysthymic or depressive or have regressed to how she was in the past. Finally, she figured out that it was simply because she had not enough (and broken) sleep for the past two nights. Hence, she was functioning at half-tank and feeling the crankiness (and not the teariness that comes with being hormonal).

Such an easy explanation (hopefully!).

randomly

Has it ever happened to you before?

You are updating your status on FB and immediately, someone comments on your status. The timing is so close, you wonder if this comment is for the very newly updated status or the previously latest status. I hope I make sense.

Well, it happened to my female owner today and the friend who FB-ed her at the same time she randomly updated her status was surprise surprise, Fated Guy.

Such coincidence. But given the extensive amount of time she spends on FB, it is really no surprise that something like that would happen sooner or later.

special

My female owner still has the habit of giving her closer friends titles or names. And sometimes, an individual might end up with many many names. Seasonal, apparently.

Anyway, one of her ever constant friend is/was Functional Fren, who is currently named Special Fren. I need to note here that the feeling is not mutual, since he calls my female owner his BTW Fren (“I’m doing this thing for you because it’s by-the-way”).

You might remember that my female owner had a bimbo emo night in January when she went invisible because she was crying over something. Special Fren happened to send her a message and she replied and then he asked the all important question of “why are you on stealth?”

Recently, the both of them were online but not talking. It was quite late already and my female owner decided to go invisible for whatever reason. Less than a minute later, Special Fren sent a message saying something like “I think you are still online”

How accurate and scary was that! How did he know? That was his first time leaving such a message on her MSN and he hit jackpot. That’s why Special mah… Know her so well…

prawns

My female owner once had a conversation with her Jogging Kakis when she went camping with them, on a topic that once stirred the hearts of Singaporean men and women. The topic (*drum roll*) was whether guys should shell prawns for their partners and if they don’t, is it a sign of ungentlemanliness? Needless to say, the topic generated a fair amount of heated debate and controversy. And of course, my female owner had witnessed how some guys might shell prawns for only one girl, the girl of interest, making the atmosphere awkward for everyone.

Anyway, by fluke, my female owner succeeded in getting someone to shell a prawn for her. She was having Korean BBQ with 4 other people and there were 3 huge prawns on the BBQ. One guy said he didn’t want it, so did my female owner (coz she was too lazy to dirty her hands for one prawn). So that works out to be one per remaining person. However, someone else asked her if she wanted to share a prawn with him, coz he didn’t want the whole prawn (my female owner thinks he just didn’t want her to go without a crustacean). And she gleefully asked, “you peel ah?”

An impromptu trap, which he sportingly obliged. She actually felt bad immediately for putting him in a spot. Obviously he scored once more in the department of gentlemanliness (he’s already a high scorer). Highly recommended to single gals!

compartmentalise

My female owner had a surprise visit from a friend today. He’s Second Onli Fren’s ex/not-ex boyfriend. Anyway, that’s besides the point. This friend is an avid angler and wanted to pass (heaps of) stingray to my female owner. His generosity extended to essential ingredients such as limes and onions. Yumz. I can predict sambal stingray to be coming out of her kitchen pretty soon.

Anyway, they had a short catch-up session and he asked the inevitable – “so what have you been up to?” And my female owner gave an unexciting account of her current state of being. And his response was “so your life now is work, placement and school?”

Such a neat summary of her unexciting, compartmentalised life.

intellectual

My female owner engaged fully in her catastrophising exercise today. This is how the story goes. She completed (again) the first study of her thesis (with the purpose of publication) and submitted it to her supervisor for comments. Her supervisor then forwarded the paper to another academic staff (a young but high-flying associate professor) to see if he wanted to be part of the authorship. This was possible because this high-flyer and her supervisor were co-sharers of the research grant.

And at last minute’s notice, my female owner found herself in a meeting with these two brainy people, one a clinical psychologist and the other a social psychologist. Experts in their own fields and right, each tried to assert his (valid) intellectual spin on the paper. My female owner got lost (and possible shot) in the cross-fire. You know, the saying “you don’t even know how you died”? Yah, that was how she felt. She couldn’t quite understand the essence of their bone of contention over choice of statistical analyses.

Bit by bit, she felt herself being more and more vulnerable. She felt that her bimbo-ness was going to be exposed sooner or later. Especially when high-flying professor said he wanted to meet her another time to go through the data more thoroughly. My female owner didn’t think she would be able to handle that level of intellectual scrutiny and debate. And of course, she has to rewrite the paper again.

Hence her catastrophising.

flippant

Did I tell you that my female owner decided that she would not be returning to Singapore after graduation? She confirmed her decision while she was jogging by herself one day recently. It was like an epiphany of sorts. Don’t ask me of what sorts. It sounds flippant to me coz she decided just like that! (Yes, we turtles ain’t happy about it. We, the gals, have a defective schema of abandonment, no thanks to our first owner. Anyway, that’s history.).

She’s probably still clueless about the specifics of her life but the general gist is that she doesn’t want to work in Singapore if working is going to be like how it was like for her. So that means exploring other options.

accounts

My female owner has problems asking for help. She rather suffer in silence than to ask for help. Could be pride, could be fear of rejection, could be a reluctance to impose on others. Could be all three mixed into one. She has gotten slightly better over the past year. At least now she feels more comfortable asking for lifts from people.

You may not believe this, but when my female owner was thinking of what programme to pursue in university, she did think of reading accountancy. She was quite a mathematical in her younger days, taking up normal maths and further maths, and enjoying the subjects. She loved numbers and certainty in her work. So anyway, her self-limiting thoughts came into play and she felt that she was “not good enough” to get in. So she didn’t apply for it.

Fast forward to 10 years later, the present now. My female owner struggles with keeping a proper balance sheet of expenses and income. For a few months now, she could not balance the figures and would end up with negative spending. Every month, she tries, but hits the brick wall each time. Perplexed, she shared this with Emo Sponge who is a high-flying accountant/ auditor/ assistant financial controller? and is also aware of her reluctance to receive help from people.

After suggesting some possible errors which were promptly shot down by my female owner, he finally said “u need a pro accountant to find out”. My female owner (refer to previous post) replied with “haha I NEED?”

ES: “Yup u need! Not want”
FO: “Okay u win. I NEED help”
ES: “Yay!! U finally conceded. Ok la.. help u out”

And help he did. At 2330hr on a Friday night when people’s brains are usually in a shut-down or party mode, he rectified her accounts and solved the mystery of her negative spending.

Wasn’t too bad to admit that she needs help.. and to receive it, right?

need... want...

My female owner recently got into a thought-provoking discussion with her housemates and Emo Sponge during a house dinner, over a conversation she had with her ex.

Ex: “Sometimes, I feel that you don’t need me, coz you can do everything yourself”
FO: “You are right, I don’t need you. But I want you. That’s why I chose to be with you.”

My female owner wanted to pick Emo Sponge’s brain on how a male would typically react to something that goes along that line of “I don’t need you but I want you”. My female owner, in all honesty, meant it to be a compliment. But she later figured that it was probably quite ego-bruising for a guy to be told point-blank that he is not needed. Needless to say, that sharing stimulated a lot of laughter and spins-off of “I don’t need XXX but I want XXX”.

stubborn

I-Fren recently commented that my female owner is stubborn. My female owner disagreed with his comment coz she saw herself as being wishy-washy nature, indecisive and passive. It didn’t help that I-Fren refused to elaborate on his comment.

Anyway, did I tell you that she had an emo night last Thursday? She felt as she was at breaking point and almost started wallowing in self-pity but managed to catch herself in time (by the way, my female owner finally worked it out that it's defintely hormonal). Nonetheless, she wrote something in Mandarin on Facebook and because of that, Emo Sponge came along, asked some questions and started chatting with her on Iphone.

Inevitably, he started to zoom in on an issue that I-Fren had previously raised. My female owner told Emo Sponge quite quickly not to waste his breath on her, coz other people had spoken to her about the same issue and it would be unlikely that he would reap a different result from the rest.

And Emo Sponge finally said – stubborn. Maybe they are right after all?

Elanda Point

My female owner just came back from her 4th camping trip of her recent life. This time, she went to Elanda Point at Sunshine Coast with Fated Guy and his landlord (plus family – wife and two daughters aged 10 and 13). Not surprising, she found the experience different and refreshing.

Random photos of their pets: Elvis, the Bird of Paradise and Dizmo, young-at-heart dog (I think my female owner misses us!)

A little information of their camping site
My female owner thought this was cute

For one, camping with an almost local family (they are New Zealanders) gave her insight into the familial culture of a western family. The way the members interacted with one another, the space (psychological and emotional included) given to these kids to explore their world, the kinds of activities that the family did together, all helped her to understand why Aussies turn out so different from Asians.

A small perk was that she didn’t have to think about food or logistical preparation. The family was kind enough to feed her from coffee all the way to main meals and snacks. Fated Guy provided logistical support, as all she had was a sleeping bag and some clothes (which was not even enough). Like Doraemon, he pulled out stuff she needed, stuff like a 2-person tent for her sole use , a jacket (coz she was cold, as usual), a long-sleeve shirt for canoeing, torchlight, etc, and even his quilt to act as a camping mattress for her (she thought it was a real camping mattress and only found out that it was his quilt after sleeping on it for a night, how oblivious!).

This is 5-star camping! Two wings for sleeping, with a pantry set-up inside and a patio
In contrast, the humble Asian-style of camping

Activities were markedly different from her previous camping trips (no nice crystal-clear ocean or sun-tanning). Situated in a National Park and near a few lakes, the main activities were canoeing (or rowing, since they ended up with boats) and hiking. Good fun, she said. Except that she couldn’t really row properly and hence, must have stressed Fated Guy big time with her inaptness… and they actually capsized once. Entirely her fault she said, coz she was sitting at the back and hence, responsible for navigating the boat.

See how different from the sea a lake looks

Her Alice-in-Wonderland backyard, with mysteries lying beneath the woods

Enroute the hike
Some long-surviving artifact of the past

She also came very close to nature – a family of ducks (mama duck leading a pack of 9ducklings followed by papa duck quite far behind), kangaroos in her backyard, kookaburras, eagles, mynahs, guanas and yes, troops of mozzies that attacked her face relentlessly (my female owner was convinced that they were drawn to this "exotic" Asian meal).

Mama duck leading her ducklings for their morning exercise. They were scurrying through the grass. My female owner saw them swimming in the lake the day before. They woke up at 6am, just to see this

Happily, she saw her first shooting star on Saturday night. However, because it happened so fast and she was just turning her head when she saw it, my female owner started to doubt if it was real. And on Sunday night, FG and her spotted a shooting star together, confirming that she was not hallucinating the night before. Her best takeaway, she says, as she has been wanting to see a shooting star for years.