One week until uni + Daniel

To be honest, I'm sort of indifferent to the whole 'starting uni' thing. I mean, a few months ago I was so excited, and obviously nervous to start uni, though mainly excited. But the thing is, sure, I was excited to be finally studying what I enjoy, though the main reason I was so excited was that after all these months of staying at home, I would finally be able to have another hideaway, another place to escape to from all the family arguements and disputes, just the way school was for me for the past 6 years.

So I guess, in these past for days and  in an attempt to look at things more positively, I'll be looking forward to studying at university for two main reasons:

1. I will be able to improve of my skills doing what I love

2. I will be able to meet new people and hopefully, make some friends.

Sure, I know #2 is not going to be easy, and I've failed so many times before for so many different reasons, but this time I will try even harder to socialise and find those people who I just "click" with.

Another thing would be orientation day this Friday. And about the boy I like. Well, the boy I've liked ever since year 6, moreso. He'll be there, and last time I asked, he didn't know anyone doing his course/going to his uni, so hopefully I'll have the confidence to meet up with him, or even just find him there on the day? I don't know. Half of me wants to just take a leap and do something completely different to what I'd usually do, while the other half just wants me to wait a little longer, out of fear and insecurity. I mean honestly, who would like someone who's short, shy, not good-looking and overweight, when they can find someone of average-height, fun, pretty & normal-weight? I don't know. My insecurities always get the better of me.

But then I think about it more, and well back in yr 6, I was basically the same person, and we seemed to have connected in a friendship/childish 'i like you/you like me, but we don't want to admit it' sort of way, so that gives me a little confidence in meeting him.

I don't know, maybe I'm being too unrealistic here, in the sense that he might still feel the same way about me like I do about him 6 years ago (that is, if he did like me then), seeing as it's been so long and times have changed. They say you "can't repeat the past", and deep down I know that, but the innoncence and desperation of my mind makes me want to believe that you can. And to that saying, I'm subconciously replying with "can't repeat the past? of course you can", just like Jay Gatsby replied to Nick Carraway about repeating a past life with Daisy, after loving her for so many years and not seeing her again until now.

Sure, you can't repeat the past word for word, action for action. But who knows? Maybe we will be able to pick up where we left off, or even just start out fresh, from August 2009 where we first starting speaking to each other again- basically every other day when we're both online, by meeting up at uni and starting off from there.

I shouldn't be afraid, but I am.

I shouldn't be insecure, but I am.

I shouldn't be over-thinking things, but I am.

Does he even like me back? I don't know.

Honestly, this is one of those things which I just can't describe. At all. I mean sure, there's still those 'awkward silences' which you get whilst talking online, and the sense of annonymity and security behind the computer screen. But the thing is, if I'm already over the moon and head over heels whenever I speak to him online, who knows what will happen in real life? Will I get carried away and just end up scaring him? I don't know. I just- it just feels so right. Sure, I'm not even eighteen yet, never dated or anything, and I probably don't know the true meaning of it, but maybe, just maybe, I actually do love him? Maybe this is the sort of reasonable 'fairytale' that might come true? Who knows. All I know, is that he makes me feel happy, he makes me let my guard down, we can tell lame jokes to each other and talk about the most random things, yet just as long as we're talking, I'm happy. I could be going through the worst of times, yet once he signs in, I can talk to him about it, he'll listen, and he'll quite simply brighten up my day no matter what.

Maybe I am being completely unrealistic and fatasising about the impossible. But at least now I have some sort of goal for me. Some sort of drive to keep me going. Plus, I guess you really will never know unless you give it a shot.

White riot, I wanna riot, white riot..

a riot of my own !

So I haven't been updating in the past few days, which I guess is a positive, but also a negative at the same time. Positive: I've been busy with my life, and not living too much of a monotonous life. Negative: My mind's been completely blank, thought-wise, and I haven't seem to be able to get my thoughts out in the open. Whichever one it is, it doesn't matter, because I'm updating now and I've got a positive light shining through right now. Even if it is something very minor.

It's Saturday morning right now and I'm downstairs by myself, listening to The Clash on shuffle repeat, just like I was last night. Yesterday was my school's DUX assembly, followed by morning tea, but I didn't go. Why? Because school just brings back too many bad memories, too many memories of how 'non-existent' I was throughout those six-years. I mean, why should I go to a function which wouldn't even realise if I was there or not? Or why should I go to a function where my so called 'classmates' would see me and pretend as if they're happy to see me, despite the fact that they've hardly ever spoken to me in the past six years, or for some, not even looked towards me at a glance or let out a 'Hi' during those many long walks down the corridors in the early mornings and late afternoons.

Basically, another reason why I chose not to attend is that I just know there will be a lot of:

SGHS Girl: 'Hi Gwen! How are you?

Me: 'I'm alright'

SGHS Girl: 'That's good. How did you go in the HSC? What did you get?'

Me: 'I did okay, I got 96.7, what about you?'

SGHS Girl: 'Oh, that's really good! I got 98+. What are you planning on doing at uni?'

Me: 'Um, Photography at UTS'

SGHS Girl: 'Photography? Wow, that's really creative! etc. etc. etc.'

Which pretty much means that there'll be a whole lot of 'acting to care' personalities, which I honestly can't cope with right now.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everyone at my school is like that, because there definitely is a select few who are genuine about their conversations.

Which leads me to the main intention of my writing this blog entry. I hadn't been listening to The Clash since probably just before the HSC, and last night I just had an urge to listen to them again after so many months. You're probably wondering why The Clash relates to school, right? Well, it's because in Yr 11, we had to do an essay on a personality of our own choosing for Modern History, and how they impacted society. Well, I chose The Clash's Joe Strummer and my teacher happened to be a big fan of The Clash, so he was 'really excited to see what [I] would come up with' as he told my mum during a parent/teacher interview night. And pretty much from then on, he'd relate everything I did or what we did in class to The Clash or how 'I like the hard hitting [music]' rather than something soft and delicate. I mean sure, he was generalising my taste in music to just one genre, but hey, how often do you hear of teachers liking great music and actually expressing it in class? Hell, I even had a conversation with him about what the real meaning of punk rock is, so that was interesting, considering it was infront of the rest of the class.

I guess what I'm trying to say here, is that in my so-called 'quest' to see things positively, or at least accept why certain things happen, my six years of high-school wasn't such a big waste, even if it was for something as little as finding common ground with my history teacher through music.

I never realised how much I actually really enjoy The Clash, so I can say that last night was it. It was my breakthrough, music-wise. I mean sure, I may not have all their albums, but it's a 'I don't have all their albums yet' And relating this back to my Yr 11 history essay, 'Because of what has happened to me, I can strongly state that Joe Strummer has made a major contribution towards my  life, and has impacted me greatly.'

I have so much more thoughts to get out, but I'll leave that for another day. Right now, I'm just re-visiting the past, positively.

Scrabble, Every Word Counts !

Nothing too interesting today.

So yesterday I mentioned that I pulled an all nighter. Well, because my sister was telling me to sleep, and because I was completely out of it, I decided to end it and went to bed at 1am, so that's 38hrs of internet madness. Ie. no sleep. Anyways, it ended with me waking up at almost 1pm this morning. Well technically, it was yesterday morning since it's 12:50am now, but that doesn't matter.

But enough about that.

Like I said, I didn't do much, but I played Scrabble with my sister today. We used a newly bought set, brought from Malaysia. It's not really new though, it's the original scrabble version, only the board has to be joined together with 2 rectangular puzzle shaped pieces made out of cardboard, and the tiles are like the ones in Up Words, so sort of block-ish, so you can stack them and make, wait for it, SCRABBLE TOWERS! :D Oh, and the scrabble bag is made of mauve-coloured felt. Yeah, awesome stuff. We actually thought it was a really bad game, considering we hadn't played for months, only to end it with a total of 600+pts.

Anyways, there's not much else to say, except for the fact that I honestly think Scrabble is one of the best board games ever created, and I want to collect every type possible, and right now I've got 3. So.. I've definitely got a long way to go.

Mine: 

Wishlist:

And this is pretty much my dream keyboard :)

Goodnight !

Baby, I'm addicted, I'm out of control..

but you're the drug that keeps me from dying.

Well, today's been pretty good actually. I pulled an all nighter, deciding that I would watch the entire rage for once in my life, only to search up the program online and find out that I hardly liked/knew any of the songs. By that time though, it was already around 4.30, so I thought I may as well stay up to watch the sun rise. But since it was pouring heavy rain during the night, I went out back and all I saw was very faint rays of sunlight behind all those dark, grey clouds. Damn. Oh well, I'm not too upset about it.

On the plus side though, I watched Video Hits from 8.30 through to noon for their "top singles of the noughties", which was such a great nostalgic moment. The best video played has got to be Enrique Iglesias' "Hero". Though I have to admit, I prefer the Spanish version "Heroe" a lot more. A lot more. My sister woke up at half past noon, so we watched the few videos I taped, and afterwards we ended up having a mini Enrique music fest. It was from his 2008 Greatest Hits album, with the videos:

• Bailamos
• Rhythm Divine
• Hero
• Escape
• Love To See You Cry
• Addicted
• Do You Know?
• Tired Of Being Sorry
• Can You Hear Me?
• Tired Of Being Sorry (Live) 
• Be With You (Live)

Love love love love loved every minute of it. Though yet again, I have to say that the Spanish version of 'Hero', 'Escape', 'Addicted' and 'Do You Know?' is far better than their English counterparts.

I honestly think 'Addicted' has beaten 'Hero' as my favourite Enrique song which has been made into a music video. It is amazing, and everyone should watch/listen to it. Especially the Spanish version!

Anyways, this journal's title is taken from the chorus of 'Addicted', which, yes, I'm absolutely addicted to. Also, my sister told me a while ago that 'Iglesias' in english meant 'Churches', which honestly just makes me like Enrique even more. And the boy' that I like's last name just happens to be 'Churches', so that's just a double plus for me.

Daniel Iglesias. Daniel Churches. He is possibly the sweetest boy ever. He's not afraid to express how he feels about problems, he listens, and hey, he's got great music taste. [: And to think we never talked/noticed each other in primary school until Year 6. So many memories, I could go on forever. But what I love the most was when his friend said "Hey, you guys like each other, don't you?" one day during class, and obviously, we immediately spat back a "No way!" at the same time. I should have found him again earlier on, but I finally had the guts to add him on Facebook (how Gen Y of me) in August last year, and all things amazing just started from there. I have no idea if he likes me, or if he even knows that I like him, but in September he asked me to his Yr 12 school formal, so that must mean something, right? Even if it's just a 'as a friend' gesture, it's still something. And know I'll just always feels like a proper idiot for turning him down, especially since I replied with a "Um, I don't really do formals.." ugh, how stupid could I have been??! Anyways. It's in the past, I'll leave it there. We've kept in touch all through the holidays, even when I was overseas, which just makes my feelings grow even more. He's going to UTS this March too, so I'm really hoping we'll be able to meet up sometime, even if it's just for an hour or so. But since I always let my insecurities get the best of me, I'm reluctant to meet up with him, even if we get the chance, because he hasn't seen me for six years, and I'm not exactly in the best of shape, or decent looking.. I don't know.

Wow, all this soppy stuff is getting me a bit weird, so I'm going to stop.

On a completely different topic, these are quite possibly one of the coolest looking pair of converse chuck taylors I've ever seen. Not to mention it's The Clash. I can't believe I was so stupid as to look for them in Malaysia first, hoping to buy it for less over there, because Malaysia has all the old stock and since we're living in a little village, I can't expect much. So we went back to Singapore, but only had 2 days before our flight back to Australia, and being forgetful, I completely forgot about buying those shoes and therefore I couldn't get them while I was there. Ah well. I hope my mum can find them in Singapore before she flies back here, which is in about 20 days. Ahh, The Clash. Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Topper Headon, Terry Chimes and every other contributor to the amazing 70s band. Who doesn't love The good 'ol Clash?

A New Chapter

So I have decided to create a blogger, which marks the beginning of my online journal life.

Sure, MySpace and Facebook are all well and good, but I don't really have much privacy or anonymity over there, and the thought of people who I know well in real life being able to lurk my profile and see what I'm writing and thinking about to other people is just too much stress for me to handle.

And that's where this online journal kicks in. I need a place where I can let myself go and not be afraid of judgement, not be afraid of rejection, and not be afraid of being yelled at or made fun of. Being able to have a place for me, and only me. To start off the new year with a new life, with a new perspective. Yes, it does seem late to be saying a 'new year', though I have only recently come back home from a long holiday during my break, and I've been thinking about creating an online journal for months, years even, and at this point in time, it just feels "right".

Basically, what I'm hoping to accomplish in the next couple of days is to let my true thoughts, questions and feelings come out. I want to be able to get things out in the open and to lift that rotten old burden off my back which I've been carrying around literally for years. And occasionally, the odd, completely unrelated post here and there.

I want to start out fresh. I want to stop thinking negatively and start thinking positively. I want to be able to feel happiness. To not feel alone. I need to learn to love myself, no matter how difficult it is, or how hard it will get.

My personal quote for the past two or so years has been:

"Looking at the dark side of things/life isn't being pessimistic. It's being realistic."

What I am hoping to do is to change that quote which I have been living by, or more importantly, see it in a different light and approach it with the attitude of "Life is hard, but I can get through it." rather than denying my negativity by arming myself with a mask that says "I'm a realist", because I know that I have a lot more things to learn, and a lot more to understand and accept as reality.

If anyone does happen to read this, feel free to comment, so I know if anyone is here or not.
 
Well, this is it.

Let's see where this online journal takes me..