Done

Disheartened
Dejected
Disillusioned
Deflated
Dumb
Denial
Disenchanted
Demoralized
Disaster

But I'm on the up and up, I swear.

Julie's 21st

The party that my secondary school friends have been talking about for months has finally came and left. It was really fun to karaoke with Julie's mom and aunts because the songs they sang were my favorite kind to sing: oldies.

And they had moves, too! I bet they went to the discotheque a lot when they were younger.

Afterwards I kind of just wanted to chill out at the hotel room, pig out on ice cream and talk about boys, but Julie was the birthday girl and she wanted to club. So we walked to Clarke Quay and the best thing happened: this dude outside Attica told us it was free entry.

My empty wallet cried in ecstasy and relief.

So we went in, and the music for once was legitimately good. After a while we went upstairs and the music was even better. Nothing gets me higher than good beats.

The night ended with the requisite McDonald's breakfast at 5:30am and the rest ot the morning was spent regaling stories of what had happened in the club to Sophia and Anzhu, who'd stayed in the hotel room to do homework, the poor things.

What cracks me up is that out of all the different races of guys in the club, the one that I ended up dancing with was Malay. HOW APT, UNIVERSE.

I don't know what to say that will make you happy. It's like you guys always want so much from me and I'm a bad friend if I don't automatically put in the effort without being told.

Fine, I'll admit it. I'm a bad friend, and a horrible human being.

That doesn't excuse me from my behavior.

I just need you to know that it takes both sides to create friction. It's not always just my fault. I just don't want us to be fighting over each other's tone and intended meanings so I apologize on my part. Then it just seems like you take my apologies and chalk it up to yet another Cheryl screw-up for your scorecard.

I know it's just me feeling like a sub-par person that's making me think this way. You're just doing what a friend does by telling me my shortcomings and helping me to be a better person.

But I have a lot of shortcomings. So much that it seems like every day I'm fighting my inner demons and the external ones that say stupid things and make ill-judged assumptions. It's getting too much for me to take. Hence some days I need a reprieve from you because you get mean at times and my ego is much too bruised by myself to handle criticism from you. Even if it's deserved.

No one can make me feel inferior unless I let them. But sometimes I let the whole world because self-pity is a guilty pleasure.

Double standards

I realized quite a while ago that I am selective about secondhand cigarette smoke. If the person is a friend of mine, I'll be fine with any amount of smoke. But if it's a stranger or someone I detest, it feels as if I'm suffocating under the high risk of lung cancer.

So one should be assured of my affections when I mill around taking in one's secondhand smoke.

That is all.

Cheers to the freakin' weekend

Some weekends I just lie in bed until my mom threatens to physically break all the bones in my face; other weekends I pack my schedule so tightly that I hardly have time to process all the events in my mind afterwards.

But I guess that's what the five days of work life are for.

On Friday night I spent hours at Sentosa's Palawan beach with my adorable classmates (a.k.a. Ohana) and it was multitudes of awesome. Mervis, our unspoken guardian, made so much deliciousness that I had to constantly stop myself whenever my hand reached for more food because my tummy wanted to explode.

Sidenote: If you don't know what ohana means then please do us both a favor and watch Lilo & Stitch; it is simultaneously fun and full of depth.

The dozens of lightsticks made the whole atmosphere even more dreamy than the soft breeze, dark night, and lazy waves already did. I never realized how much I liked being at beaches until then. But it's still the company that makes the beach the magical place that it is.

Saturday night was one of the craziest nights I've had this year because it actually involved me voluntarily paying to scare the shit out of myself. Spooktacular at Sentosa's Fort Siloso was spooky indeed. But the old friends and new friends that were with me made the excessive swearing all worthwhile (me: 0, swear jar: $50).

A word of advice to those who are truly afraid of the ghouls in fake haunted houses:

Just focus on not falling down. That will take up most of your concentration in the dark passages where your only solace is the person whose arm you're almost breaking from your tight grip. Just look at the floor the entire time. At least, that's what I did for the Shutter trail.

It was almost deserted save for one or two ghouls jumping out at us. The other trails had hordes of staff decked in ghastly gear so once I reminded myself that they are human, I wasn't as terrified as I'd thought I'd be. But the Shutter was so scarce of actual humans that my overactive imagination started thinking there were real ghosts lurking behind every curtain and corner. I have to admit, I almost cried at one point because it was so freaking dark I couldn't even see my own hands.

After we exited the Shutter trail, I was sooo relieved that I yelled, "We're alive!!!!!!!!!" to everyone that was queuing for it. My friend Julie and I started hugging each other dramatically, much to their amusement. Then Chaba, the thing from the movie Coming Soon, stared at us and I said to her, "Oh my gosh, after Shutter, I appreciate you so much now," and she just nodded slowly.

It was incessantly fun, but never again.

Here's my opinion, even though you didn't ask for it

It's not about looks. No matter how superficial a person is, it all boils down to character. So if you aren't confident with yourself and the way you look, do something about it. I don't mean just the physical aspects like going on a diet or exercising; I mean in terms of your self-perception. Don't put yourself down and then blame others for not picking you up.

If you don't think you're good enough, how the hell do you expect others to perceive you're good enough? It doesn't matter if we believe you are or not; if you don't believe it yourself, then what is the farking point? You're always gonna be thinking that you're inferior and feel insecure, then blame it on the other party when he/she doesn't make you feel better about yourself. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent, as Eleanor Roosevelt once said.

It's easy to head down a spiralling funk of low self-esteem and self-pity but trust me, all it does is make you feel useless and unappreciated. You owe it to yourself to be confident. Throw that self-doubt away because no one will ever put their hand in yours if you think it isn't fit to be held.

There's No Pleasing Everyone

Believe me, I've tried. And it almost-always-never works.