i am Frustrated. today's been a slamming-door day.

i need to study but there are so many things to do. it's my brother's birthday and i was under the impression that lunch on sunday was actually a combined brother's-and-mom's birthday thing. but we're going out again tonight. i should be happy because we're going to The Melt which i like a lot and the food is great, but i got really irritated when my mom told me to be ready to leave at 730 because suddenly i have barely two hours left to study. and because of lunch on sunday with the family i didn't end up having lunch with my friend although actually it worked out better for her that way anyway because she'd just gotten back from bali sunday morning. and then i was like, maybe i should just meet her after prelims. but obviously she's going back to boston before then. so i'm meeting her on friday instead.

but i'm suddenly getting really irritated when my schedule gets thrown. and it's so irrational. not like i've really been productive or sticking to my study schedule or anything, because i haven't been and the guilt is tearing me to pieces. PRELIMS. omg. it's the prelims already and i feel like i'm still coasting along. it's the second-to-last big exams of my singapore education life and it feels like it means nothing at this point.

and i feel so mean for not really wanting to have dinner out on my brother's birthday.

and it doesn't help to be thinking about people who're going off to harvard/columbia/berkeley/penn/oxford etc. i'm desperately craving a vacation. ok i suppose harvard/columbia/oxford/etc are not equal to holiday, but i think what i'm craving is a change of location. i'm sick of the heat, the exams, the people. there are Reasons why going to university in singapore is among my worst nightmares. i am desperately in need of fresh air.

maybe i'm horribly wrong about wanting to be in a city for university. maybe my mom's right, maybe i should pick places that are semi-rural, places that are pretty, that smell pretty, that feel clean and fresh-air-y. maybe it shouldn't be columbia and nyu, maybe it should be... dartmouth and williams. two mothers of friends have come back from new york in the past week and informed me that columbia is a dirty, ugly place. and now i'm starting to regret going to england last june instead of letting my mom take me to new york etc to visit a few universities like L did.

such thoughts confuse me. every few days the list changes and i think there is reason to be satisfied with this list, this list is good, i have my bases covered, i will be happy, etc etc etc. and then i read something, i think something, i hear something, i dream something. and then there's all the doubt all over again. and then my mom tells me about so-and-so's son who's volunteered at a cancer hospital in chennai every year when he visits his grandparents. i go to india almost every year and i sleep, eat and shop. and then i read about AIDs awareness problems and i have lots of things to say and feel, but i haven't done anything. i tell people to seize the day but i haven't seized anything.

this is so stupid. i hate self-righteous, self-pitying blogs/LJs. i read a post this afternoon that really pissed me off with the "i am so wronged"-ness. stupid personal grievances. i thought to myself, "if i were angry with a friend/boyfriend/girlfriend/mother/father/sister/brother i wouldn't blog about it." self-respect and all that. it bugs me when people pour their wrath out on a poor little public blog, all self-pityingly. and here i am doing the same. throwing myself a nice little pity party.

does stress make everyone else as irrational as it's making me? this post has all the works of every single angsty blog/LJ post i've ever mocked in my life -- from the self-pitying rhetoric to the stupid regrets to the spoilt-bratty frustration. and even this self-deprecating acknowledgement of hypocrisy. it's strangely cathartic, though, isn't it?

you know i don't think it's healthy to bottle up feelings, but i really really respect people who don't take their anger out on people, who don't get angry easily in the first place, who are Emotionally Mature. who can handle themselves like adults. maybe because my parents and brother are extremely hot-tempered and get angry really easily and are really not good at shutting up about it and when they go around sulking and being angry i feel like the oldest, wisest person in the house. but then i treat my family very dismissively. today i told my father to go away when he came to ask me something while i was trying not to fall asleep over a stack of market structures notes. i have turned into a monster. and the only people i yell at are my mother and brother. i think i'm too timid to yell at anybody else because i know nobody else will take my shit. and kelly says it's because i'm a softie but i don't think that's really true. on the other hand, i don't get angry that easily, i don't think i get angry with my family irrationally, i certainly don't go around yelling at the maid for not giving me the dinner i want, and lately when i'm angry i just slam a door and shut myself inside a room until i'm done simmering. ew that sounds like i'm cooking myself.

other evidence of losing-mind-ness, albeit in a less unhappy fashion: my dad went out for coffee this afternoon with a venture capitalist. he came back and said the venture capitalist was the dad of RJ's previous council president, and said he couldn't remember the council president's name. i was all poised to say last year's council president's name when i suddenly forgot it! i could only remember that it started with a J, and the name was on the tip of my tongue but i couldn't get it off. and i kept thinking juyuan but i knew that was wrong -- i think that's the name of someone in our junior class actually. so eventually i gave up and went to check in the batchbook, and then i told my dad it was jia lun. which is entirely irrelevant and unnecessary because it's not like my dad really needed to know his name, but i get mighty disturbed when i'm trying to remember something and i can't.

my memory is appalling, particularly my memory for chinese names. i sent nasty an sms narrating the jia lun episode and confessed my fear that a few years down the road i won't remember the names of any of my classmates who have chinese names. there are already some people from rg whose names i can't recall. not classmates, thankfully, but other people whose names i used to know. i'm much more of a face person. which is why i make such extensive use of imdb -- every time i see a familiar face in a movie, which i can't connect to a name, i get really upset until i can figure it out. and unfortunately it's quite hard because often i recognise people in really tiny parts which don't really have names. like in monster-in-law, the guy who plays paul young on DH was in a tiny role as a jackass in a coffee shop. and it took me a few hours of mind-turning irritation before i figured out it was paul-young-guy.

ooh how i do love me a good rant. happy now! am off to eat bread and feta cheese and grow fat then shower and go for dinner and grow even fatter.