This Deadbeat Summer

Apologising here for this shall be a very, very, jumbled post. There are writings from several different times and I just think I'm going to make it easy for all and post one entry instead of like a million.

A month 28 days  NOW IT'S 21 DAYS 'til I touchdown at Heathrow, then a few more hours until I'm back in the slightly familiar, but less familiar territory of Leamington Spa.

Not going to lie, this summer is dragging on even longer than the last, which I thought was the longest thing ever. It had reached the point where I was forcing myself so hard just to do something and dragging myself around like some sad zombie. Lately, I've been waking up, going to work, coming back and just sleeping and watching films until I have to go out for the night. And if I don't have to go out for the night, I just continue doing nothing. Time-passing is a really boring activity.

A few notes and distinctions that I have made concerning this time last year:

August 20th was the date Portia left last year - no, I am not freakishly obsessive about her, it's just I checked the last blog entry, - whilst Lucinda, my summer visitor for 2k12, hasn't even arrived yet, and won't until the 24th. It'll be nice showing her around again and showing her this metropolitan hell hole I call home. Like Portia, I don't know how well she'll be equipped to the heat (I've lived here 17 years and struggle to not melt into a pathetic puddle on the sidewalk)

Last year, I was excited to leave to leave this behind and start 'afresh' as it were, on almost the other side of the world. I wanted to meet new people and see new places and live independently and I was determined to have a really, really good year.

As a result of that (a.k.a, I did,) now I want to go back to that. I've left behind the familiar places, the feeling of living independently - the amount of times I leave the house without saying anything just because I'm used to it is ridiculous - and the people.

It's now this really strange thing - my friends don't live a few doors down, or a short walk away from me. It's also a different group of friends - I love them just as much, but there are those moments when something striking reminds me of someone and I want to tell them or show them, and then remember they're not actually physically present with me, or even in close proximity.

I suppose it is really a case of I miss there when I'm here and here when I'm there.

Now, time to update on a few work tales. I've been working every day so I've got quite a few stories. Children are funny ones, aren't they? Chinese children even more so perhaps - some of these kids do lessons a few hours a day with ME; can't imagine what their other extracurriculars are. Anyway, here some some of the high/low lights:

I've had to sing the ABC's about three hundred million times because the youngest class of 2 year olds - who can barely speak chinese let alone english -  insist I join in every time they sing and they sing it a lot.

I have met the devil. He currently walks the earth in the form of a 4 year old girl who wears frilly dresses and pigtails. I may have kind of under my breath called her a bitch after she made one of the sweetest little boys cry.

I'm losing my voice from playing this stupid game called monster where I have to stomp around and roar at the kids and they think it's the most fun thing ever when it's really not.

Okay, NOW let's see what I've been up to on the front of socialising... apart from work, I'm barely doing much. I usually come home after work and just lie in bed watching a film because I'm so drained by the journey. I've never had to change 3 times on the underground before, urgh. #firstworldtransportproblems. I'm also broke at the moment so going out for meals and stuff just makes me feel bad about spending my parents' money so recently I've literally just been staying at home playing the ukulele at obnoxious hours.

Chris' belated BY 2 YEARS 18th birthday junk on Sunday. Brilliant, except it was 4 days ago and everyone is still burnt and peeling, (thank god for exfoliating) and I think i'm still TIRED from it. Spent the day on a boat in the ocean with drinks and loads of food and good company, even if half of them were hungover.

Went out as well last night from Mikayla & Nicole - from uni - and found basically my entire school in Skitz. Ladies night is free drinks so I stayed there and caught up with the year above, my year, and the year below which was weird. I basically knew the entire room. I hadn't really seen any of them so it was quite nice I suppose.

Finally, Lucinda gets here tomorrow (!!!) for 10 days. Should be fun. Her first time in Asia so it's gonna be such a crazy culture difference. So excited for her, and for me, for all the cute stuff I'm dragging her around and making her do. I should be getting paid for work as well so I'll finally have money. I'm already looking forward to spending it in the two weeks after Lucinda goes whilst I mope around waiting to leave. 

On A Boat

Update concerns the weekend's night junk party. For my international readers, (lol) a junk party is when you hire out a several story boat and drive far out to sea where the water is less shitty and polluted. You can jump off the top (i.e. shove each other off) and there's usually loads of food and alcohol of course and you may hire a speedboat and wakeboard and banana boat and enjoy fun sea activities as such.

Because the climate was still being a complete asshole, Esme & Megan hired out the junk for the night time instead and we drove round the harbour against the pretty lit up skyline and consumed both cake and for some, copious amounts of alcohol. I am pleased to inform that I was not the first to fall over.

 

oh YEAH we went to the beach on Friday aka Esme's real birthday. ~afterthought~

I reckon my pretty skyline photos would have turned out a lot nice if I had been sober with a tripod & stabilizer instead of tipsily stumbling around on a swaying boat. (Okay, I half stole that line from Joe, here's your credit.)

Cooler box 1/4 of our alcohol stash, which we managed to deplete. No one was actually really drunk - or at least, drunk enough to fall off the boat - so that was really impressive actually. High five for our group.

Paisano's does really big pizzas jesus, even between all of us we couldn't finish them and I was full after oNE SLICE like some kind of huge disappointment.

Lale. I won't really try to explain the inside joke of Lale because no one will just ever get it and it ends up being me, Esme & Lian just laughing ridiculously so there you have it.

Beautiful skyline ruined (or enhanced?!) by the best diva face I have ever seen on almost anyone, let alone Genie. "uh, you fucking what?"

Lazorzzz.

Me with mah main girl who also bought me fairylights. I need to just marry her already. We half drunkenly star gazed and argued about whether a star/satellite was a star or a satellite. We did manage to identify all the planes though, wow us.

Penelope was the best birthday gift one could wish for. Esme wished for a pony. She got a pink unicorn. Penelope also makes clopping and whinnying sounds, just sayin'

Burday gurlz.

Most amazing cake HAND MADE by Megan. She bigged this one up to me on Friday and it did not disappoint at all.

Drunk slut passed out in the corner already.

Arrived back on the pier and got a call asking if I could cover in work so I agreed and headed home "to get an early night," but of course I didn't and stayed up 'til 5 making the most amazing to do list with boyfriend for when i'm back in england. (Sept 14th yeeeeah!)

Meanwhile, Lucinda has officially booked her flight for here in SEVENTEEN DAYS or maybe sixteen, I don't know, too lazy to count, and Lucas has booked his for December. So many of my favourites coming to visit! 

I will end this relatively short update by saying that whilst new guitar shopping (white or baby blue???) I've spotted the most adorable instrument on Earth. A pink ukulele with a smiley face painted on it. I'm buying it next time I'm there.

Don't Take Me Tongue Tied

*Blog should be read listening to The Shins' Australia. Aka my favourite song and the song that should be on everyone's Soundtrack Of Their Summer.

(I) Nights Out - I've been stuck back here in the homeland for two weeks now. Time continues, as ever, to evade any explanation as instead of speeding up when i'm doing loads, it appears to be going slower than ever. The affect of this is that I'm really quite drained because I feel like i'm simultaneously doing everything and nothing at once. This is really getting quite meta here.

I've gone out a few times - of course, my tolerance seems to just get lower and lower, (or maybe it's that plus the mixture of initial giddiness at being home and lasting giddiness of being in the company of a group of my favourite people,) resulting in unintentional wasted nights. Okay, it was three really, but god damn it. $10 vod and $10 jaeger were both bad ideas to be fair. Some high - (low) - lights:

• Esme (only sober one,) getting a zillion drinks of water at the bar for us drunkards. When the barmaid eventually refused to give any more, all it apparently took was a wasted Selina draping herself over Esme like some kind of wastegash ghoul before the barmaid hurriedly passed over bigger glasses.
• Me and Liz having a really detailed discussion with a guy we don't know all too well about contraception on the sidewalk outside carnies whilst I'm pretty sure a  few businessmen were listening in on our valuable opinions.
• Me having to one-up boyf of course. After he sent me a few (adorable) drunk messages, I just had to go and send not only a few non-cute texts but also decided to call him at three in the morning.
• Having the biggest slice of pizza ever and not quite knowing how to each it and being actually completely flummoxed.
• Marky popping out of nowhere every seeming two seconds with a new jaeger shot in hand. Every time I saw the test-tube filled with what now is comparable to THE WORST IDEA EVER, my drunken "YAY FREE ALCOHOL" completely stamped on my conscience who was quietly begging me to just go home.

There was also the girls' casual dinner which descended into free cocktails courtesy of Lan Kwai Fong ladies' night and the Long Island Ice Tea which I thought I could handle, and the second $10 vod night I just wasn't even going to go to but did anyway. Tough life, eh.

 

With dearest Lian and Jess fest, both of whom I have missed very much. Asian flush is just working it loud and proud right now in the photo.

  

Awh. We always do this - none of us keep in touch superbly well with each other but whenever we meet up again every few months, it's just instant story exchanging and catching up and it's not awkward and nice. And then we usually all just get fairly drunk.

 The next two are from Ali's birthday, where we went to the Beijing Club and somehow had access to unlimited 6L bottles of Moet Imperial champagne. Nice and expensive as it was, it still gave me a headache a few hours later. (Which I, of course, moaned loads about.)

 

  

(II) - Work & Uni. I've started working as of right now today. I will keep it brief because I know it's not really all that interesting. Teaching kids english. Thus far, I have witnessed a 3 year old girl and a 5 year old boy fight to the death over a blue felt tip, and had 2 girls 'cook' a baby doll in the 'oven' whilst giggling all the time. Well, at least I'm getting some income.

Uni housing is all sorted - I haven't talked about it here because despite rambling on at significant length about myself every entry, I still tend to skip out a lot of details. Basically I'm really excited, and I've also gone completely nuts in the planning of super idealistic events that I'm determined to get perfect. Because I'm a total Americaphile, we're celebrating thanksgiving in our household - and everyone WILL be fucking thankful - as well as holidays from various other cultures. No, it is not a blanket excuse to get drunk as much as possible.

(III) - Really long rambling bit of text you should probably skip unless you're super bored. Basically, right now I've got my lungs miserably fighting off the ridiculous wafts of pollution. The levels are off the charts and my already shitty lungs and struggling even more, especially as I'm now used to much cleaner air. It's ridiculously stuffy and hot and humid and busy and really - the most accurate word to describe this is that I just feel like I'm constantly suffocating outside.

It's just - two weeks? Seriously?! It feels like it's been an age. I've had the most tumultuous term with none of its lows being really too low, and the highs being amazing. Even nights just sitting on my bed with Kathryn and Lucinda making plansplansplans(!) for future adventures that will never actually happen, or bitching with Jordan when I just don't feel like working are being missed. 

Regardless, next year will still be good. I'll have fellow film geek Sophie with me so when I'm not busy coming up with elaborate schemes and re-re-re-re-decorating, week can geek out over lego batman or the latest superhero film to come out (Which is gonna be Man of Steel actually.)

I'm so excited for next year's modules already, which may make me sound like such a loser, but dammit, I love my course. Planning to storm through as many films as I can - and considering my set-up allows me to watch one one computer and internet away on the other, this is a lot - and spend the rest of the time working. Also planning to do more artsy stuff, although right now I'm at such a stuck for any form of motivation.

Plans are junk parties and just general going out and fairylight shopping and I'm making my sister watch Spiderman with me because no one else will. God, my life is so boring.