strangely reconnected

I finally have internet at home again, after not having it for… well, I suppose it’s been nearly two months in total, since I only had it for one solid week while in York since coming back to this country in mid-September. It’s a really weird feeling. I’ve grown so adept at entertaining myself without internet, and have come so much to treasure this post-work evening period of me-time where I’m gloriously solitary and unaccountable to anyone, that being online again is just… really weird. I can’t say I’m not thrilled (I was counting down, even), but it is a strangely unexpected and sudden lifestyle shift. There’s something to be said for spending my evenings curled up in bed with library books and tea, after all.

I have so much to say about life in London so far that I wouldn’t be surprised if I had to break it into two posts - but work always leaves me exhausted and it will have to come this weekend instead. ♥

one hand clapping

There are some times when everything goes so horribly wrong that you can’t even cry because you’re too stressed to. BT - as I had rather foreseen, given their unspeakable inefficiency and disregard for customer service - stood me up today after I’d taken a day off work to stay home and wait for their engineer to finally set my phone line up. This is after I’d very patiently waited around for two whole weeks since moving to London. Without any foreseeable date when my phone line can finally be set up, I remain stranded indefinitely sans internet at home. Without a phone line to call BT on, I have to ring them on my mobile, and rage silently as I wait on the end of their inevitably, impossibly long hold queue.

The York city council is after my landlady to pay council tax for last year, from which I should be exempt on account of my being a student, except they claim I have to fork out for the period of time when I straddled undergrad and postgrad and was very, very briefly not techically a student. She’s naturally panicking about receiving letters threatening court action, and it falls on me to deal with it. Except that the council refuse to speak to me any further, for confidentiality purposes, as the account is in my landlady’s name! And I can’t talk to my uni welfare adviser over the phone because they don’t dispense advice that way. So I have to email her and await a reply. Did I mention my lack of internet or phone line at home? Or that the sum in question is somewhere in the region of £300, which is by no means an expense I can easily afford?

I’ve been yelling on the phone a lot this afternoon, for various reasons, and none of the above are anywhere nearer to being properly sorted out. On top of that I’ve cut two days of work so far, within a week of starting, because I had to wait at home for boxes to arrive on Friday and today I blew it all waiting for BT. I know I have perfectly good reasons for skipping out on work but I don’t like doing it; I feel lazy, I feel ashamed. I haven’t spoken to my family in eons, I haven’t spoken to so, so many people. Most of the time I feel fine. When I don’t, though, I really, really don’t.

I know this will all pass and I won’t even remember this turmoil, many months later. For now, though, this is one of those times, and I’m gritting my teeth as best as I can through the profound frustration and disconnectedness. Days like this when I can’t cry no matter how much it’s welling up inside me, I want to go out, buy a massively expensive tub of Haagen Dazs, and eat it all - but it’s been raining and hailing all day and the weather is at odds with my ice cream therapy. So it has to be hot chocolate, and I guess I should be grateful after all that I still have hot chocolate in my cupboard to turn to in a pinch. Some things, unlike others, don’t fail you.

brixton oval

I am sitting in Brixton library with 3 minutes left before the library closes to use their free internet and no time no time no time to write everything I want to - but in a tiny nutshell, my first week in London has been rife with ups and downs, my first day of work was slow but enjoyable, and I have been so amazingly and unstintingly supported by friends and family who have called, texted, emailed, walled, come down to London for me; ♥ particularly to Wee Zi and Kevin, and thank you, thank you all so much!

out of the shire

the reactions of others (notable exception pepper), when i tell them i am in fact incredibly nervous about moving to london, are so unequivocally “why???” that i really start to wonder if the problem is with me. it is an exciting city, it is vibrant, the job is interesting - i have everything to gain and nothing to lose, it seems; and yet i am nervous as hell, and when i say this i am almost without exception greeted with blank incomprehension bordering on disbelief.

i don’t want to be whiny and all “nobody understands meeeeee” because that’s ridiculous and childish and i know it. but is it really honestly so strange to be this nervous about something, even if it’s a path i chose and forged out for myself? of course i wouldn’t be nervous, were i moving back to singapore to take a comfortable paid job there, but this is a whole different ballpark and yes i am terrified. i can’t explain it, i know i’ve nothing to fear, and yet - i fear.

i can feel myself all on edge and irritable and frustrated, mostly with myself for being like that; i am so, so tense right now i could snap. and it is probably all my fault - as everyone keeps telling me, i’m just overthinking it all and it will be fine once i get there. but for now, for now, on this last night in york, let me be afraid without feeling bad for it.

please stay for a while

Hey where did we go,
Days when the rains came
Down in the hollow,
Playin’ a new game,
Laughing and a running hey, hey
Skipping and a jumping
In the misty morning fog with
Our hearts a thumpin’ and you
My brown eyed girl,
You my brown eyed girl.

Whatever happened
To Tuesday and so slow
Going down the old mine
With a transistor radio
Standing in the sunlight laughing,
Hiding behind a rainbow’s wall,
Slipping and sliding
All along the water fall, with you
My brown eyed girl,
You my brown eyed girl.

Do you remember when we used to sing,
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da

So hard to find my way,
Now that I’m all on my own.
I saw you just the other day,
My how you have grown,
Cast my memory back there, Lord
Sometime I’m overcome thinking ’bout
Making love in the green grass
Behind the stadium with you
My brown eyed girl
You my brown eyed girl

- Van Morrison, “Brown-Eyed Girl”

I had a whole long draft typed up, about everything I am feeling this last weekend before leaving York, with all my stuff in boxes and bags once again, but somehow it never reached a stage where I felt it could be published. All the words just seemed so useless; no matter how much I wrote and rewrote whole sentences, paragraphs, I simply couldn’t - still can’t - really, really put across how I feel. So much has happened so quickly over the past two weeks.

And then “Brown-Eyed Girl” came on the radio and I thought, this is it. This is how I feel.

Do you remember when we used to sing
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da.

Do you remember? I hope I never forget.

looking up?

Got a 4-month internship offer today from a youth musical theatre company in London. It’s unpaid (lunch+travel expenses only), but the work sounds very exciting and I can see myself getting really into it if I take it up.

There are a million and one things to think about right now. I’m still waiting on the results of another job interview, and there’s one more scheduled for next week (though that, I can do alongside the London internship I think); I have to think of where to stay, how to move all my stuff down, when to move, how much I can afford to pay for rent. I’m not quite on my last legs financially, but I’m getting there. It’s a whole other world of stress.

But I am grateful for little things, for Nic and Jake who are so kindly letting me stay at theirs, for Steffy who furnished me a whole plethora of makeup tips before my interviews last week, for En Qi who has been unstintingly and generously helping me search for a room in London, for my dad who talked me through interview preparations, for Louis who told me it was okay to keep trying for what I want even if I hit some snags along the way, for Wee Zi who’s always believed in me and kept me company via phone calls, and - for this job offer, which I thought would never come!

One thing, one thing at a time…

thorns

Life in point form:

• Still internetless at home (nearly 3 weeks and counting)

• Still jobless
• Still missing my family incredibly
• Exhausted from job applications and interviews
• Know I owe emails but am too tired/internetless to send them sorry to Wanyun and Wey Ren specifically, I love you both!
• Still visa-less
• Still, foolishly, stupidly, optimistic
• despite erratically flagging spirits

the bad beginning

…it would be so easy for me to lose heart and throw in the towel now. but i can’t, i can’t, i can’t, not now, not when i’m already halfway down the road, there’s no turning back - i have to keep on it, i have to keep going on. on with my rapidly draining bank account, on with my grasping straws of hope, on with my flimsy backup plans and cluelessness.

is it really so bad, not knowing what’s going to happen to you? part of me is scared out of my wits, and part of me is - well - excited. it’s the first time in my entire life i’m not following a plan that’s been set out for me. it’s the first time i’m choosing the hard, hard path. so i can’t tell you for certain where i’m going to be in a month’s, a fortnight’s time, so i haven’t anything concrete beyond getting through the next 24 hours… and is it really so bad?

i don’t know what to think. i’m just really small, right now, and the world seems very big.

end of the road

19,791 words, 61 pages and about 5 months after all this started… I dropped two copies of my dissertation off at my department yesterday. And I’m done. Done and dusted. Done. Done. This is beyond surreal. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who supported me along the way - i am right out of words at the moment, and my brain and energies are spent, but - thank you! ♥

Overwhelmed…

Overwhelmed…

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