I don't blush from shyness, from awkward topics, from coyness, from unexpected advances, nothing. The only thing that has ever made me blush is a word of check from a manager and teacher. How my cheeks are burning! And just because someone kindly showed me how to make my excel spreadsheet better. It's actually painful. Oh my burning skin and oh the violent shame

All of the world, all of a life could not be supported without the backbone of goodness.

When famous people die, all I feel is a curiosity.

And when the opinions fall from the sky each unique like a snowflake, I stand under their drifts and think: I never knew you at all

God. Talk about being thrown in the deep end. I feel completely bewildered. There is so much stuff to churn through and so much is expected of me. Really need to bring the A-game. As of now all I can demonstrate is my willingness to learn and responsibility. I have had no 'eureka' moments, no great aptitude demonstrated. But I've got grit. I'm going to fight. Oh god. To think I may look back on this post in 3-4 months' time and cringe

Liopleurodon

I could write about scenes from Singapore, about the dried flowers on the pavement being stirred up into a vortex about me, about the crowds of pleasantly Singaporean people, of singlets, shorts and flipflops. Or I could seeth at me and how selfishly I work these days. I've honed my manipulating myself into an art. I know exactly how I react. I feel as if I could cultivate reactions, trim the ones I don't like and grow the ones I do. Something of spontaneity is lost. I was telling someone about this and they said, "Ah, you're growing up." But it's not as if I do it for the better, just for the better for me. At forty I may be a beautifully balanced personality but I'd be cold as a fish.

Or I could be overreacting. Spontaneous things are usually combustions, explosions, collapses. Negative sudden and irreversible things. And what's so wrong with being cold blooded. I rather admire some of the extinct cold blooded marine creatures

Ha, if only. I'll continue to be me for a whole lot longer. At any rate, it's going to take me all the way till forty to be a lovely 'little' liopleurodon. Looking forward to it, arrrrrr. I lovvvvvvvvvvvve lios. I admit it. I just wanted to compare me to one. I want to be one. Ah time, space and biology.

Dear Diary

At a period of low self confidence it's good to get one's grades. I know there's no correlation between these and success at work. However, I'm always scared that I'm completely stupid. And I've been a little overwhelmed by the smarts and the tough as nails attitude at work. Everyone exudes a quiet competence. It's not bravado or smugness. I am going to have to really step up my game here to stay put. I think I could but I'm not certain. And I'm really scared the infrastructure isn't in me. So confidence from any source is welcome.

And it's a relationship isn't it? I love central banks, Bloggy, and so it's a real pleasure to know that central banks has loved me back. Mmmwah. Here's looking at you, kid.

Singapore has been good to me otherwise. I feel more grounded, less volatile and more sensible than I usually do in Chicago. I was out last night and it was good to be in Suntec, hanging out with the old crowd. I have a lot of people to meet yet, and I shall, I shall. While the jet lag slowly recedes. Do you know what i find I never noticed about Singapore before? The smell of humidity in the evening. It's a sweet fragrance of earth and leaves that rises as the sun sets and the temperature begins to fall. I noticed it with surprise on Tuesday and I've noticed it every evening since. It's partly like the smell after rain and it's galvanising, the smell of life, water, soil and makes me fairly dizzy with the joy of being alive.

On a side note, I used to think that this dizzy ditsy feeling that gets triggered unexpectedly every now and then was just youth but I'm glad to see it's not receding. If I live to seventy, I think I could wake up and feel intoxicated with the pleasure of being.

Day two. I had a good day yesterday but I was so tired. I dont think I was at my best and I'm worried. Today I need to be really on my toes and feel it. I don't think I really felt it yesterday. I have a habit of being overwhelmed easily. I don't understand why I have all these self image and confidence issues. Surely, you'd think, I'm really full of myself :p Maybe I don't believe it.

I find out my staffing today. I am excited. Only, I think my worse self is holding me back. That worse self who is lazy, sleepy, irresponsible and flesh-pot loving. Begone worse self!

Jetlag and other pitfalls of moving base

Am jetlagged. Enough said, except that this time I'm coping better than in december last.

I'm having a few 'Frodo back in the shire' moments. 'how do you pick up the threads of an old life?"

I'm wondering what my classmates are up to, how my other friends are doing? And I'm wondering if they're wondering the same about me.

But the water was blue today and the sun enough to turn my usual T.V. camera settings to overexposed. I felt glad to be back and to see everything and be with everyone. It felt like coming home.

Work tomorrow. What's the feeling where you're excited, anticipatory, worried, all at once?

Forever

Everytime the concept of eternity comes up, I find it too large too big to understand. So everytime I have a 'forever' moment or a 'never' moment in my life I'm scared.

A feeling of 'I will never be here again'

A thought that something has forever changed

That I will never feel the same way about a person

That there is no going back

I don't mean to say I'm thinking all those things right now, but I feel threshold-y. And thresholds are kind of 'forever' moments. If only I knew why I'm feeling like this. Must be less susceptible

also, I get fake-profound when I'm up all night packing

I feel emotionally shattered as I pack. I don't understand. I'm trembling as I fold my clothes. I want to curl up in a ball and stay on my sofa and watch the sun roll over the sky but I dont have the luxury of time. It's all moving too fast for me. Exams get over, I pack up my whole existence here almost, give my room over to a stranger, fly across the world and take up employment with a challenging company. I dont have time to say goodbyes and suddenly people seem dear to me. If I feel this way now how will I feel next year?

I know this will pass. I know I'll feel better when I see Singapore, when I see Rajesh and the others there but I can't imagine it now from this side of the fence. I know I will be happy rather than feel it. But the last time I felt this way, was when I was leaving Singapore. It was worse then of course, but it's the same kind of pain. And it's suddenly come upon me now. yesterday's moodiness has nothing to do with this kind of heartbreak. I'm too old to feel so intensely. Parting is NOT sweet sorrow.

Poisonous little bottles

I don't take tea or coffee. I barely take sugar to control the highs. Everything thats supposed to hit you, hits me just the little harder.

but what does someone like me do when they need to stay the course and not get jittery. I introduce to you, the 5 hour energy drink. Supposedly gives you energy and keeps you from crashing afterwards. I agree with the no crash bit. But it's rocket fuel. It's tiiiiiiny. And I can't even take half a dose to get zinged. Its medicinal. I must take it carefull considering all factors (time of day, fullness of stomach, exercise, last hour of sleep and so on)

Zinging in the raiiiiin

Finally

I was late to gmail. The good 'Ipshita' mail addresses were gone. I was late to hotmail. I barely got any mail address and it was very vague. But I got facebook. Mwahaa

http://www.facebook.com/ipshita

Irrational as I am, that cheers me up immensely

Insecurity never rains but it pours

The second you let a chink in your armour, it cracks. I felt so under-average today in every aspect of being a person. And I can tell these days when it's just a mood swing like now. What an odd feeling it is to know that you're being irrational and being completely unable to change anything about it. Just ride it out I suppose. Maybe in the next 25 years I'll learn not only how to detect it but to turn it off too.

Once I leave

Weather forecast from monday onwards: 70s, beautiful, clear, stable

Sometimes I'm just a little girl. I haven't progressed that much since fifteen. I am sad and mopey today and nothing in the world but common sense will cheer me up. I look for common sense, but I can't find any. Why is it so hard to be okay all the time?

Futurama is Back

I am doing a little whoopdeedoo dance right now. And I quote

""Futurama" will awaken from suspended animation, much like its lead character, after strong DVD sales and ratings for reruns convinced 20th Century Fox Television and Comedy Central to resurrect the long-canceled cartoon series."

I can't study. I just can't. I am too restless and anticipatory of the internship.

Yet I must. Central Banks, you kill me.

Idyll

U's sis, bro-in-law and the nephew are now my idea of the perfect family. I love their house, their perfect rapport, and the feeling of quiet contentment which lay upon it all. Soul food

Beware anecdotes

Turns out Kekule's 'snakes with tails in mouth' anecdote could have been just a joke in a speech he made or something he just made up. Sigh. Illusions shattered.

Someone draw me a pi-cloud, quick!

Edit: Again after more thought why should it be a bad thing that this illusion is shattered. Poor Kekule worked half his life to figure it out. It is insulting to all his work to suggest that the answer should pop out in a dream. He probably meticulously thought it out and researched it. He deserves more credit that it didn't come to him in a dream.

Funny

Moments of fear come in very strange packages. I was just reading about a woman bewailing the fact that they don't sell her favourite perfume any more. A cold chill ran down my spine. What if they stop selling my favourite perfume? I ran to my bottle. It was half gone and I had only bought it in September.

I see some stockpiling ahead.

June?

41 F? Are you crazy? I have a complaint with the Weather God in charge of Chicago. You're off your mind!!!!!

Sehnsucht

"In speaking of this desire for our own faroff country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."