Quarter Life

Wow it has been 3 years since this space has been updated. Do people even still blog these days?

So many things have changed since then.. I have already graduated from university, landed myself a job that I have stayed for almost 2 years and am in a completely different phase of my life now. 

I guess what prompted me to think about this space is that I find myself feeling a bit overwhelmed currently - which leads to me needing a space to word vomit and make sense of my feelings. That has always helped in the past after all. 

2020 has been an unique year thus far. While it seems like an exciting year before it happens, where everyone was counting down to a new decade with accompanying hopes and dreams to mark a new phase of life, it turned out completely different. 2020 sees major disruption of our daily lives after a worldwide pandemic hits us and it has been the worst that I guess most could have ever imagined. 

The pandemic has taught me many lessons amidst many (emotional) struggles that I had to go through and get accustomed to.

But, here I am, still feeling somewhat overwhelmed by these changes. I know I ought to count my blessings, in the fact that I have a comfortable roof above my head and a stable job at the moment. However, I can't help but to overthink sometimes and yearn for more. 

I guess being "quarantined" at home for 2 months does makes one a hella lot free with a lot of time to think and go south. And before I spiral any further, I suppose I should remind myself of the following lessons that I think i should learn from this episode:

1. Be independent - emotionally and physically

Being apart from my boyfriend this period has made me somewhat clingy towards him in the rare envelopes of time we get to spend together virtually. I started to be "possessive" over the spare time he have and demands that he spends it on me. I mean I had so much free time now that I find myself not knowing what to do, and more often than not, I channel the need to be occupied towards my boyfriend, whom I'm used to meeting almost everyday pre-pandemic. I soon learn that this was unhealthy. I'm over relying on him to make me happy and to make my day. I shouldn't have depended on anyone else other than myself to foremost, love myself and earn my own happiness.  Doing otherwise has only led to me having unrealistic expectations. As they say, learn to love yourself before loving others. 

2. To count your blessings

They say comparison is the thief of joy. I think this has been a huge challenge for me growing up, where I have been pretty competitive and often finding myself comparing with others all the time. This has affected my relationships, my own happiness and my self-confidence. This pandemic has led to lives being lost, jobs and livelihoods being impacted - and here I am, sometimes lamenting about the "could have beens" and being envious of others. It's a timely reminder that I should stop the comparing and instead be thankful for the things I have.

//

I was feeling pretty guilty for this spiral but the boyfriend has been patient with me, telling me that it's normal to be overwhelmed. After all, it's the first time in our lives that we have been thrown into this unique situation, and it's only normal that we are feeling this "culture shock". 

I guess here's to being more lenient on ourselves this period, and to a stronger and better us that will emerge after these trying times.

"Crystal, you need to tell yourself you are unique and special on your own. You don't need to care about anyone else's views or anything. You lead your own life. Unless they are much better, they don't have any rights to comment on your life and your past. Live for yourself. It's your life, Crystal, no matter what decisions you make. Life is too short and tiring to keep thinking about what people think. Cos when they don't matter, nothing is going to sound hurtful or disturbing to you. Plus those that really know you, they won't judge", said my bff whom I love fucking much.

Indeed, I only have myself to live for and account for. Why do I have to care about what others might or might not think of me. This is a reminder to myself to just live a little and stop caring so much about people who don't even matter. Let's be happy, x.

Today I found out about something that's of utter disturbance. I never once thought that I would be victim to someone that lack moral compass and any basic respect to female. At an age of 21 approaching 22, I guess this is really a phase where I truly start to see how ugly and evil the world and people truly can be for their self-interests. I'm pretty sure there will be countless more of such people to come and this is just an awakening. To you and your fucking lies, fuck you and I hope karma hits you hard. You missed someone who have been nothing but completely honest and open to you. Maybe its high time that I remind myself not to wear my heart on my sleeve anymore. How naive was I to expect that when you treat someone with sincerity and honesty, you will get back the same treatment. How naive was I to let my judgement be clouded from your compulsive lies. I don't think I have been so upset with someone in my life for the longest time. But whatever, what's done cannot be undone. It's an expensive lesson but I learnt well. I will no longer lose anymore rest, appetite, and tears for you further because you are simply not worth it.

Christmas and New Year

Realise I haven't been posting anything much about what I did or anything exactly uplifting for that matter so I thought it would be high time for an update on how I spent my recent weeks.

Went to KL with my mum and sister a week before Christmas! I flew back myself first because I had school and work, and the best buddy ever came to pick me up with my first Christmas gift of the year.

Hehe love the planner! I have been using a planner for the longest time and this is probably the prettiest one I have ever had. There are so many inspirational quotes inside too. 

For January, the quote says:

"One day you will realise how much beauty you have inside of you ; how much capacity and light and strength, and one day you will realise how many people you could made a difference in the lives of if you stopped comparing your life with someone's else and really really truly embraced yourself & activated all you were made to be"

How apt. Love it!

Through the Christmas week, I managed to catch up and spend quality time with people I treasure. 

2 days before Christmas, went for dinner after lecture with my uni friends from the Social Psychology mod I'm taking! Went to this new place called 72o Bistro at Holland Village with them. Was just walking around and thinking of where to eat where their great service and promotions led us in. Food's decent and cheers for affordable drinks! 

Got to know more about them and shared many laughters. What a great night, cheers to BQ for treating us for the dinner this time round!

On Christmas Eve, went to town to meet my fav girls after work! Dinner was at Oriole Coffee + Bar.

Crystal had to leave early 'cos she had church service so Huishi and I went to shop and went for some light drinks! What a great night even though we did get a little bit emotional after the drinks hahaha. 

Love this girl so much.

What a precious gem, x.

And on Christmas day itself, went for lunch and some last min Christmas shopping (super last min indeed) and went to gu gu's house for a gathering!

hehe

With the pretty cousin.

Someone's eyebrows on fleek yo

Selfie with some of my cousins, gu gu and mummy!

Hehe didn't really took much photos that day but it was a really nice chill day enjoying food, drinks and having HTHT at the end of it.

On 26th Dec, headed to TS's house for a gathering with my JC clique! Love how we have a yearly tradition now to celebrate Christmas & CNY now hehe.

Made our own dinner that night and it was pretty memorable come to think of it now.

Hahaha since TS don't live at this house, the kitchen's lacking of some necessary cooking equipments and we really had to make use and improvise on what we have. It was pretty fun to cook together, even though it was really tiring. We spent almost an hour prepping the ingredients and an hour and a half cooking the dishes.

Dinner was of pan fried Salmon (supposed to baked it but the oven broke down, see what I was talking about improvising?), some marinated Chicken and cream based pasta! 

HS and I was in charge of the Salmon, ok, more like I was assistant to him 'cos he's obviously the better cook amongst us. I think he did a really good job cos that was my favourite dish! 

Pic with my cooking shifu

After dinner, we had a gift exchange! We used an online secret santa generator this year where we had a secret santa picked and also where we can list our wish lists. 

I was secret santa to TS and he had the funniest wish list I tell you. It included wishes like "handwritten list of 20 reasons why you love me" or like "do a ppap video of yourself and save it in a thumdrive and pass it to me as a gift (must be fun hor or else need to redo)" 

LOL this boy so demanding. But yea, I bought a customisable Starbucks tumblr in the end which included almost all of what he wanted haha.

Here's us posting with our gifts hehe

Thank you HS for the requested handwritten note! And also for getting me useful face products hehe

Fun shot, go!

Are we cool enough for you yet?

2kul4sku

Thank you TS mummy for the log cake!

Played some drinking games like "who is most likely to" and also had some HTHT with this bunch until the wee hours. Only had 4 hours of sleep before I had to rush to work. But well, these people are just worth investing time and effort to, x. Hehe

On 28th Dec, went for brunch with the best buddy ever! Brunch was at Lola's and headed to get some ice cream for takeaway. 

Fast forward to NYE! Met up with my fav girls again. Went to countdown at Prive @ Chijmes! Love the good service and fun loving crew. They provided us with party props and at 12am, they had like those spray cans etc to hype up the atmosphere too.

Since Prive closes at 1am, we thought we should head to CQ to club. But looks like that was a bad idea because all the clubs / bars there were so crowded. Queue was insane to get in to everywhere. Ended up eating supper at HDL instead haha. Well, at least we had good food to start off the new year!

Ending off this post with my fav photo of us from that night! Thanks for being a constant in my life for as long as I can remember. You girls are absolutely precious to me and cheers to more close knitted years ahead, x.

2016 in a glance

Will be spending my last day of 2016 at work today, after which, I will go hang out with my best friends for some drinks and countdown. Just a quick reflection on my year while in transit. I believe in reflections a lot 'cos what's experiences without any lessons right?

2016 for me was..... well, let's put a word to it after I'm done reflecting.

Things I'm thankful for this year:

Multiple travel opportunities!

- Thailand trip which was my first ever overseas trip I went without my family. It's also the first holiday that I paid using my own hard earned money so that's a personal accomplishment for me. From this trip, I also learnt more about my own temperament and personality.

- Langkawi with my JC friends which really bonded us together more

- Australia trip which really opened my eyes to a different culture and made me realize how much more I can do to grow out of my comfort zone.

- KL trip with my family this month which I really spent quality time with. Thankful to mum who insisted that I go along in face of me being an emotional crying mess earlier this month.

Academically, I'm thankful that I did pretty decent for my first finals in university, which was actually much more better than I had expected. Of course, this wouldn't have been possible with the support of study buddies and loved ones who saw me through.

In the scope of career, I'm thankful that I grew more and learnt more, both in technical skills and interpersonal relationships. I was also given more learning opportunities and tasks that I'm more than eager to grab for.

In the aspect of family, I'm thankful that we grew stronger and closer despite adversities. I'm really glad that our family structure is one that we can just talk and sort out through mismatched opinions. And towards my mum, I'm especially thankful for having such a great mum whom I can tell almost everything to. She was there for me through my emotional wreck moments and any other times, really.

In the aspect of friends, I'm glad that this year, I made more friends / acquaintances and at the same time, grew closer with friends that I treasure. My good friends were there through my ups and downs (you know who you are). Especially thankful to Huishi who stuck with me throughout everything. She was the first one I went to and cried to during my downs. She's the one I would turn to these days to tell almost everything to. She's really the one with the rare same frequency and thoughts that I have, which I cannot be more than grateful for.

Relationship wise, well. This is a sensitive topic to talk about but I'm no longer together with M. I have decided not to delete any posts with him here because after all, this space is one where I express the rawest of feelings I'm willing to online. And I would say, he was a great part of my life that I would hate to erase. He taught me a lot about love and more importantly about myself. I suppose he will always hold a significant place in my heart for life because after all, he's someone that I really loved with all my heart and shared so many firsts with. Shouldn't dwell on it further because I would want to respect his privacy too. But for now,we have decided to go separate ways and I wish him happiness and all the best in whatever he pursue, from the bottom of my heart. All in all, this year, I'm thankful for the life lessons that I learnt from this relationship and for the realizations I made about myself from the experiences we shared.

These are some main broad aspects that I can think about for now.

Moving forward, this is the tough part (I will set more along the way), here are some main broad lessons / goals that I would love to accomplish:

- Learning to love myself more. I have been saying this for ages, but I really shouldn't discount myself and believe in myself more. I hope I learn to really put my interests and well-being first and find validity within/from myself.

- Focus on what's priority in life. I guess there are really some things / people in life that's worth investing and some that are not.

- Learn to say "no" more often

- Be more embracing of negative incidents. Last night, I made a realization about myself. I was so eager to blanket the unhappiness and move on with life that at the end of the day, I felt more strained and drained from all the distractions I threw myself into. I guess it is after all, okay to allow myself to be in pain and wallow in despair for awhile longer. I'm human after all.

- Be more discerning and less trusting

- Do more reading and researching to enhance myself as a person intellectually

With that, the word I would put to this year would be enriching. I, after all, learnt so much lessons and grew so much as a person, be it from the good or bad experiences.

On this note, have a great year ahead guys! I sincerely wish y'all, the best, in whatever you choose to pursue or embark on in the new year, x.

These few days, I met up with different groups of people for catch up. Many a times, we ended up having heart to heart talk for some reason.  All these conversations made me felt a bit overwhelmed and emotionally drained I don't know why. I feel overwhelmed by things I learnt about myself and my deepest thoughts that I might not have realised myself, coupled with several life lessons. I think overwhelmed would be the right word because now I feel so confused about everything I used to believe in. I feel like throughout the past month, I start to see things differently and what I used to believe in starts to shatter. Perhaps this is all part and parcel of growing up. I mean, change is the only constant after all I suppose. Not sure if these changes in mindset is for good or bad. Time will tell and heal I hope.

"你还是住在我的回忆里 不出来
让我们微笑离开 让故事留下来
放手后 爱依然在
雪融了 就应该花开
缘若尽了 就不该再重来

你依旧住在我的回忆里 不出来
我离开将你的手交给 下个最爱
纠缠与固执等待 反而是另一种伤害
彼此紧握的手松开 去拥抱更多未来"