At no one's beck and call

My friends are very important to me but sometimes, they disappoint me. I'm fairly tolerant when it comes to friendships and I would never dream of judging them for what they've done or said but there is always one thing which gets me every time. I cannot stand it when people don't follow through with their promises. Whether it's a small thing like setting up a lunch appointment and not following through or something more significant like missing a ceremony, it is my belief that people should never promise to do things they don't mean to follow through with. Such actions illustrate a great amount of irresponsibility and insensitivity. Sad to say, I have a few friends like this and it's come to the point where I do not expect anything from them anymore. If they say that they'll call, I'll happily continue on with my schedule and if they do eventually call and I'm engaged, I guess you can say it's their loss. Even to me, that sounds like a harsh line to take but we've all got a limit. As it is, this is mine.

Omens and callings

I have had this vision of flying. Yesterday, in the midst of my mind wanderings, I thought about it - maybe too much. Stepping out of my 46th floor window with arms spread wide and simply giving myself to the care of the wind. It's strange how that image has stuck in mind, almost like a calling.

I spoke to T yesterday and he told me that we need to work on keeping in touch. Naturally, I agreed since it had been a while from our last conversation but of course, I blamed it all on him. After all, it can't really be my fault right? ;) I miss him. More than ever now that we've established his elusiveness. At first I thought that coming home will take away all my issues which arose when I was in the UK and to a certain extent, it did. Yet somehow, I seem to have lost all the ground gained in Cardiff; more specifically, the small group of friends I relied on for pick-me-ups on blue days. Sure, I have my friends here but it's not the same. We're not as close as we used to be: people change after all. The best example comes in the form of one of my oldest friends. I met up with her randomly yesterday only to find that we had nothing to talk about anymore. It was too bizarre. We were a lot closer three weeks ago and now... I'm not really sure what happened.

So lately, I've fallen back into my job hunting phase again. Although to be completely honest, it's not done whole-heartedly. I've been procrastinating and Goddess knows exactly how good I am at procrastinating. It's awful. I wish I could motivate myself but wow, it's tough. Everything else I jump at doing but when it comes to applications, I'm so slack. Forcing myself hasn't really helped either. I have filled in and emailed some but not enough. Need to find that button that hits the booster on this process. :P Easier said than done though.

For the moment, I'm stuck in the house. Typhoon Pabuk has just left our vicinity and in its wake, tropical rainstorms. Never pleasant in this humidity. Still it should not stop me from going to the temple which I am quite happy to do. After all, the need for me to go is strong and dismissing one such omen is bad news. My Gods and Goddesses are forgiving but this is just pure laziness. ;) Well, on that note, it's into that shower and out the door for me.

Restarting classes

Monday was the first time I'd been in class since I left Uni. As part of my career experimentation, I decided to try out the insurance industry. Prudential are trying to recruit me and they have been spending a lot of effort and time in explaining my career opportunites with them. After countless of meetings with one of their managers, they gave me the opportunity to take up classes with them as a training exercise. It all seemed like a brilliant idea until I found out that the classes are taught in chinese. As much as I consider myself to be fluent in the language, I have never attended formal classes in Cantonese and therefore my understanding of business terms and industry specific terms are minimal to say the least.

By Tuesday, I couldn't take it anymore and had to leave halfway through the day. I even contemplated about staying since I actually went back after the lunch break but I couldn't make myself do it.

So now it's Wednesday and I am still sitting at home while class started almost an hour ago. The strange thing was that while I woke up and did everything in time to leave the house, I felt an astonishing reluctance to do so. The group who are trying to recruit me just called to check if I was in class. I told them I had something to follow through and will be there later in the afternoon. In all honesty, I'm finding it very hard to concentrate in class. If it weren't for the textbook, I would never know what is truly going on. Even the presentation which the lecturer used as well as the lecture slides were all in Chinese. I'd never felt so out of my element. On one hand, I could vaguely understand what she was saying since she used examples to help the class along but on the otherhand, it was easy to mix up the examples for the different topics.

It's truly awful - my incompetence in Chinese. It's no big secret that China is the up and coming, even Westerners have been taking classes to do business in this region and here I am, a sitting duck in a city closest to China with absolutely minimal language skills. One thing is for sure - it needs to be sorted... fast.

The City of Manchester

The city of Manchester is a strange place. Once inside the city center, it gives you a sense of being in London but after walking a few blocks, you realize that it's no where near large enough to compare to the country's capital. Everywhere you look, there's someone exhaling a particularly large amount of smoke or flicking some ash onto the street. And yet there is some endearing factors about it. For one, it doesn't completely shut at 5pm. In fact, M&S are actually open daily until 8 in the evening with the exception of Sundays. Pretty good coming from somewhere like Cardiff. I can live with that. Moreover, there's a much greater variety of shops and restaurants here to choose from. There's even a Korean restaurant just round the corner from where I'm staying. How good is that?! Of course, it's no Myung Ga in Hong Kong but hey, it'll do until I can get home. We went there for the stone pot rice a few days back and it definitely satisfied a craving. :)

Unfortunately, aside from the food, shopping, nightlife and mundane activities such as going to the movies, this city doesn't really have much to offer its visitors. Sure you get the occasional museums like the Imperial War Museum and the city typical Modern Art Gallery but that aside, there's not much to do here. Gaz came up to visit me for a few days and man, was I hard pressed to find stuff for him to do. We spent most of the time chilling out more than anything exciting. Our most adventurous trip was to the Trafford Center although, it is a very nice mall if I'm totally honest.

Nonetheless, if you don't drink, don't shop, there's really not much to Manchester. I think he spent more time in our apartment watching stand-up comics. :P Poor thing... I did try though. I really did.

Cardiff-mania

I spent a week in Cardiff to get some space and to recollect myself again. It's been a while since I've been able to feel so connected. Living in Manchester is nice but it doesn't have that feeling of comfort, the one where you know you can just pick up a phone and call a few of your good friends out for a coffee or even a quick visit. It's the lack of such luxuries which makes me miss my uni life so much. How I envy my friends who are still in uni. Thing is that when I was in Cardiff, I had absolutely nothing to do during the day when everyone was at work or school but then come the night, there'd be a multitude of options for me to pick from. However, by then, I'd be totally exhausted from being up since 7 in the morning.

Tonight was different though. I met up with a friend who was doing an internship in this city. We were never the best of friends - we never had the opportunity since there wasn't enough time in Cardiff - but today was an amazing day. I had so much fun just catching up with her and generally getting my social groove back. She's been doing really well for herself as an intern in an architech firm and I'm very pleased to see that. We walked through the Christmas market and shared a nutella crepe as well. Talk about orgasmic! :) All in all, it was a good day out. I can't wait till we meet up again next time. I promised to cook so I better whip out that recipe book of mine to make something nice. ;)

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing.

Anais Nin