Je vis avec a Bath et il est plus belle mais… je ne suis pas heureux. Il est presque déjà été mais il pleut tous le jours. J’ai bien fait pour mes examens de français quand même!

The weather has been pretty much bad for the whole of April. Strong winds, rain, howling winds, more rain, it never ends. There are a few days hours of sun before the grey skies take over again. It’s gloomy.  And there’s a BBQ tomorrow and the weather forecast? Rain. Like my matron always said, “Welcome to England!”

I’ve just gone through all the assessments for French and I got a C+ overall, all of which I was not that mentally prepared to do any assessment. I did do a bit of preparation for my speaking assessment… a night before. I didn’t have time.

I’m actually procrastinating at the moment. My brain is frying up already because I’ve been awake and I’ve been working since 9am yesterday morning. And my work still isn’t done. No, it’s not last minute, I actually picked up the work left behind by others’ because this is a group coursework.

I really want to do well. 80% average on every module is do-able. I’m sure I can easily score for Maths. Maybe even get a 90% for that. I’ll just need to practice a lot though. Systems engineering will require me to memorize and waffle a lot. I might need to do a lot of memorizing and understanding for Programming. And learning the whole of Systems Architecture on my own. Work load is piling up. Mental stress is piling up. Emotional breakdowns are more frequent. This is bloody ridiculous.

I miss the sun. I miss home. Two and a half more months. I can do this. I just need time, and time is something I don’t have.

I love patterns. I love piecing puzzles together. I play Tetris Battle everyday, and once I run out of ‘energy’, I play Tetris on emacs. Of course, since I play Tetris so much, it’s a given that I suffer from the Tetris effect. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s a lovely way to de-stress. It doesn’t cost me much, unlike what drinking, eating out, and other things.

But then again I could better spend my time on more useful things like studying, completing my coursework, or finish up the design I’ve made for this site / for my personal web space on the university network.

Now lately I’ve been more motivated to study, which is an amazing thing, because I’ve been so demotivated for the first half of the academic year. I want to get a 1:1, but unless I’ve got 80% for all my upcoming modules, chances of that happening are really slim.

So anyways, I was talking to a few friends of mine and how things were like in their family. I just realized how different my mindset is from theirs, just based on what their mothers say to them.

The girls started going on about rich guys in our year and that they’d be OK to have the guy touch them. I said that it was weird, and to me it was definitely wrong. Another guy who was present at the time said, “I’m so sorry but my view on you ___ girls has changed drastically. I didn’t know you girls were that cheap.”

I know it excluded me, because he mentioned the social group name that I never belonged to. Well anyways, I wonder whether my traditional values are solely based on what I’ve been told, what I’ve grown up with, the people who influence me. I know I occasionally act like a Miss Goody-Goody Two Shoes, but if I can I wouldn’t.

My friend said her mom said something along the lines of, “If a rich old perverted man likes you, let him shower you with whatever he wants to. It’s OK to receive affection. Just don’t do anything you’d regret.”

On the other hand my mom said to me before, “Focus on studying. Don’t let any guy touch you.” (This resulted in my ridiculous fear of boys, shaking hands was once a difficult task, and to date hugging is still an awkward social interaction for me.)

Most people regard me as independent. I am actually far from it – I panic at the smallest problems. I guess not everyone understands who or what I really am, including myself.

I know that this post isn’t that coherent, but it sums up how messed up my mind feels now

Initially my hair was like this. A seriously overgrown fringe which can be straightened to a sexy side wave, but then again it was also effort and my fringe would randomly split in the center at the worst time.

So last night I was happily at my friend’s place and I brought my straightener, comb, sectioning clips and scissors because I was supposed to help her cut her hair. But at that point I already wanted my own fringe, and I wanted to cut it in the presence of someone else so that I was less likely to mess up. I took an hour and a bit to finish it all. And the next day to sort out bits and pieces. And the end result? I like it.

Oh, and so does everyone else. I’ve received numerous compliments so far and this has boosted my fluctuating ego. To be honest, a straight fringe is a dramatic take on my overgrown A-Line hair, and I honestly think I look more confident walking around uni now because my hair no longer covers my face, as if I’ve something to hide.

Also, I’m so happy that Instagr.am is finally out for Android. I’ve been using it so frequently since I installed it because I love the filters!

I was not happy, however, when I cut my hair and my friends decided it was going to be fun to hack into my laptop and make it such that they can control it remotely. I didn’t realize until my Firefox kept crashing and voila. Yours truly dropped the bomb and stormed out.

But everything was okay again when we hung out today They still refused to tell me what they did, but at least I disabled remote connections now. So hopefully, just hopefully, they’ve left it alone. For good.