Hello all you lovely bloggers, long time no see! I hope you're all well and still as beautiful as ever, I have missed you all! Mwah! -Warning, this is a long entry today-

The Masters decision

Thanks for your support on the Masters. It was a big decision to make, and I almost burst a vein thinking about it, but I've made my mind up, and it's surprisingly simple. I'm going to defer for a year.

You guys are right of course, that, yes, I have a fear of failure, fear of the unknown, cold feet, etc., but since they offered me the post, apart from being happy that I was accepted, I haven't actually felt comfortable in knowing that I am doing the right thing. Maybe it is for the reasons above, maybe it's becauseI have doubts as to whether this is the right course for me, maybe it's because I'm not sure if I'll do so well in a course where my motivation is hating my current job. But like you all said, I'll regret it if I don't take this chance, and that's why I'm defering. Waking up every morning to go to work since making this decision, I do dread it, and think, 'God I should have just taken the Masters'. But mostly? Mostly, I'm kinda relieved. I think deep down, I'm just not ready to study again.

So I have a year. A year in which I can explore other options - perhaps find a different job which I enjoy, perhaps look into more suitable Masters courses, even do some evening classes in creative writing or journalism. But this will be my year. I will use it to explore dreams that I didn't think possible. And if in this year, I achieve nothing else, I'll go and do the Masters next year.

So I'm feeling happier and very optimistic right now. The world is my oyster and I can do whatever I set my heart on. Of course, I know it's not that simple, but indulge me :)

The weekend

Seema and I went to Langley Park on Saturday, for a picnic and walkies. We dropped in a nearby farm to pick our own veggies for dinner. The season is almost over and we picked some small sweetcorn, shrivelled cougettes and squidgy plums, before discovering that they had better specimens in their farm shop, lol. Still it was fun. I completely ruined my shoes but never mind. We got lost in the woods (very scary) and ended up walking much further than we bargained for. All good fun though, lots of giggles and gossip.

Saturday night, I came home to find some family friends visiting with their son. I used to have the biggest crush on him when I was in my early teens and I hoped he might still be quite cute. How wrong could I have been? He had long girly hair which he kept swishing and messing up, he was wearing an old man's baggy cardy, and my god, he should have gone to Specsavers. I had a good old giggle after he left, teehee..

Sunday

I got a call on sunday morning - my caller display read 'Seema' and I answered the phone in a silly accent, like we do sometimes. Mortified when it wasn't her.. Even worse, it was one of her colleagues, to say that she had been in a car accident and was being treated for head injuries at the hospital, and could I come down?

To say I was panicked would have been an understatement. I knew I had to get there as soon as possible, if only so that she wouldn't feel alone and unsupported, but at the same time, it was hard trying to calm myself so that I wouldn't end up killing myself by driving like a lunatic. I didn't have to worry though, because on the way there, I found myself trailing a learner motorcyclist, who would not go above 25 mph on a 60 mph road. Can you imagine my frustration?? Then, on eventually arriving, I waited 25 mins for the dim receptionist to locate the patient ("I'm sorry, I can't help you"), and by then, I was hopping with anxiety.

The poor thing looked like an extra in Casualty when I found her, bloody and bruised, swollen and in shock, even though she had already been 'cleaned up' by the nurses. I was scared to touch her, in case I hurt her even more.

It was nothing short of a miracle. She had been crossing a busy road and hadn't seen the car coming. It hit her in the hip, sent her flying through the air and she pretty much landed on her face. Miraculously, apart from scraping off most of the skin on the left side of her face, hands and legs, some bad bruising and the worst headache, she was fine. No fractures, no broken bones, nothing more serious than concussion and nothing that won't heal with time. Upon asking her why, on such an impact, her injuries weren't more serious, she shrugged and replied "I drink milk everyday".

So there you have it people - drink lots of milk and keep your bones healthy and strong! I think we should recommend eating lots of carrots too, so that you see cars coming when crossing the road (ain't that right S? :) I'm so thankful that she wasn't more badly hurt and thankful that it wasn't a lorry or a death-mobile 4x4 that hit her. I'd like to make an appeal and say - don't buy a 4x4! Not only are they THREE times more likely to kill if they hit someone (especially a child), but they are bad for the environment too.

Anyway, I'm off to visit your blogs now, so keep safe and drink up your milk, like good girls and boys. See you soon xx

I went for an interview this morning for the Gerontology Masters, and I have a place! I should be ecstatic, but why am I not?

All of a sudden, I seem to be having doubts left, right and centre. What if this course doesn't really capture my interest? What if I struggle with social sciences (being a biomedical scientist)? What if I don't pass the course and fail and waste all that money, having left a secure job??

Straight after the interview, instead of being happy that I did well, I was just scared and depressed. I hate that I'm feeling like this - and I can't remember why I wanted to do this course in the first place. Hating work just isn't a good enough reason..

Any advice would sure be welcome right now.. I have to make up my mind by tomorrow because work want to know.. Please help.. :(

My granddad was a great man and he was loved by all who knew him. He touched the hearts of everyone he came across because he had a big, kind heart, an extremely generous nature and the best sense of humour.

He was a simple man who took pleasure in his family, friends and neighbours. He once served his country in the Hong Kong army. He didn’t achieve great wealth, material possession nor status, but he was a great man, simply because he treated everyone with respect and love, and he would have given his last penny and last ounce of strength to help someone in need.

Once, during the Battle of Hong Kong with Japan, despite having no energy left from having nothing to eat, he rescued a woman who had been beaten within an inch of her life and left in a ditch to die. If he had been caught helping her, he would have faced the same fate. She survived.

My best memory of him is riding high on his shoulders through the park where we would walk everyday. He could never pronounce my English name perfectly, and as a result, I had a pet name that only he called me. He was a keen gardener and loved all of nature’s offerings. When we went to stay with him, he would cook our favourites every night – he was the best cook. He would scare me and my sister with his false teeth, then laugh and laugh at us. He was quite deaf and needed a hearing aid, but rarely switched it on. This meant that he would often mis-hear what we said, with hilarious results. He was a silly, lovable man.

He helped and touched a great many people in his lifetime. You would have been blessed to know him.

He died in March 1998, and has been missed a great deal since. But on Saturday night, he came to visit me in a dream. I have dreamt about him before, but this felt different. The few seconds he was in my dream felt so real. He looked just as he had been when he was younger. He told me that I needed to look after and watch out for my grandma. My grandma is now almost completely blind, getting more and more cantankerous and hasn’t been well lately. I was crying in my sleep because I had missed him so much.

I’d like to believe it was real, but I know it was only a dream and not a divine channelling of instruction. But that hasn’t stopped me from trying to figure out what the dream meant. My gran is in Hong Kong, and I am here. Some of my aunties and uncles want to put her in a nursing home now that she needs 24-hour, around-the-clock care, but I know she doesn’t want to go. How can I protest against her 7 children, at least 5 of whom want to put her in a home? It’s not as if I can put up the money to continue paying for a live-in carer. It’s such a sad situation – it seems that either way, no one can win. My gran doesn’t want to come and live here with her children and grandchildren because she likes her home in Hong Kong, but a live-in carer is no longer sufficient for her level of disability. It’s terrible watching loved ones get old.

What can I do to fulfil my granddad's wishes?

Yesterday, my boss congratulated me on how well I have been dealing with this mystery illness that makes me too tired and achy to get into work sometimes. I was a bit bemused. Sometimes it feels like it is draining the life from me, but I am lucky that my employer is understanding enough to let me work from home when it gets too much.

Reading our lovely Diva's 'M.E. and Me' entry last week, I thought that she's the one we should congratulate for dealing so well with her M.E. It is a debilitating illness, and yet she remains upbeat and determined not to let it take over.

Although I try not to let it, it sometimes feels like it is ruling me. It's no fun at all when you get all excited making plans for the weekend, then realise that, actually, you won't have the energy to do it, and even if you did feel well enough, you'd be so tired that you'd be ill for the next week.

Although my symptoms are very similar to Diva's, the doctors say that all sorts of disorders express symptoms like these, and as slow as it might be to get a diagnosis, they have to work backwards at giving me a diagnosis, by process of elimination.

I can't tell you how sapping this thing is, but worse than having to live with it, is having people around me doubt that there's anything wrong with me.

I have lost track of the number of times that I have been told I need to get more fresh air or more exercise, that I need to drink more water or stop being such a hypochondriac. But the worst one? Rolling their eyes and saying ‘Stop looking for attention’. You may not be able to physically see my symptoms, but they are very real indeed. It’s very upsetting that people I love don’t understand.

Sometimes I’m so frustrated that I wish I could transfer my pain onto them for just a few minutes, so that they can feel exactly what I feel all day, every day. How well would they deal with the constant tired, aching, weak muscles, bouts of exhaustion, muscle twitching, recurrent sore throat and illness, joint pains, insomnia, hair loss, skin irritation (shall I go on..?)? If my boss can understand, why can’t they?'

'This' is not me. I wish that I could wake up tomorrow and feel normal - just like I used to a year ago. Some days I just want to cry…

I had a very strange dream last night. I dreamt that I went to visit Olivia, who was having a big party in her mansion in Texas (?!). Jiali was there too - she was living in the attic, and studying nearby, and she showed me around her room. It was dark and a bit scary. I went downstairs and I was eating a huge pudding basin full of hummous (..?) which I thought was a dessert, until someone pointed out that it wasn't, and that I was hogging it.

Weird huh?? Liv was taller than I thought :) Jiali sounded exactly as she does in her vLogs. Lol.

I have been rather preoccupied with the whole Masters thing lately, and haven't had much time to visit you guys, but I'll be round soon, I promise.

Oh, and is it just me, or does Freddie Mercury look an awful lot like Ali G's Borat??

Be good!

Just fulfilling my 'tag' obligation for Olivia - Mine is a soft leather Kathy van Zeeland bag that I picked up a few weeks ago as a treat for myself. The things I never travel without- Oyster, purse and phone are obvious, but you can also see that I never go anywhere without make-up and mirror, tissues, my little Rio MP3 player, my diary, and a whole heap of painkillers and meds! I'm a useful person to have around if you have aches and pains/sore throat/a make-up emergency/a sudden desire to listen to some R'n'B/soul :)

There's usually lots of old receipts and random bits and pieces rattling around in there too. I found a lighter, and I don't even smoke! There was also a smooth pebble that I must have picked up in Brighton, a prettily packaged wet-wipe from a restaurant, some ear rings I took off last week, a hairband, and the usual bits of fluff. I could never be one of those girls who has one of those teeny-weeny bags..

I always wonder how men do it, carry around nothing but a wallet and a phone.

In other stories, I managed to submit my two references by Friday. My uni personal tutor did it in about half an hour, so I have to wonder how good it was. I've done all I can now, so fingers crossed. I'm so anxious that it feels like someone tied a knot in my tummy.

Has everyone met my newly adopted hamster? His name is Biscuit, and he lives at the bottom of my sidebar :) Yes, he's a virtual pet, but he is rather cute. If you click on him, he will run on the wheel for you. He's very curious and follows the mouse intently. You can feed him by clicking on 'more'. Hope you all had a good weekend!

If it weren't stressful enough trying to get through the week trying to do a crappy job, applying for an MSc makes it 10 times as bad. I submitted my application in late August, and I know that's late, when the course starts in September, but they could have made it clearer that I need two references by the end of the week! Where the hell will I get those from at such short notice?? I just wrote to my old uni tutors, but who's to say they aren't on holiday, or busy, or will even reply? I am so stressed out right now, that I might have a coronary any second. Especially since my bloody hotmail account kept dying and I had to start my ultra long letter from scratch three times! ARGH! All this, when I'm not even sure if I can afford to take up studying again.

I really really want to though. I have spent the last year getting more and more miserable in this job, and the only thing that has gotten me excited is thinking that I might be able to go back to uni. Its only recently that I have admitted to myself how much I want this. I might cry if this doesn't happen now..

Does anyone have a spare £4500 lying around? And two fantastic references about how great I am?

I am feeling a bit better, but I just can't be bothered... You know?

Nothing of interest to report.
Ngh..

I thought it was Wednesday today, but it's not. *disappointed*

I am rubbish, I know.

Sorry.

Oh wait - did you know the world's tallest woman is Chinese..?!

not been feeling very well at all. I leave you with this:Not just me..?