i contemplated writing a lengthy recap to make up for the month-long hiatus i'd subjected this blog to. but since it's close to 1am, my writing faculties have evidently gone home for the day and i'm finding it increasingly difficult to string two coherent sentences together without turning back and erasing entire paragraphs. so i'll just stick to dot-points for tonight ;)
- i'm back in melbourne - have been for almost two weeks now. leaving kl was the closest thing to hell i've experienced in my lifetime. i cried when i reached central (which is literally 10 minutes after leaving my house)... cried some more when i boarded the plane... intermittently (and i by that i mean throughout) during the 8 hour flight... and consecutively for the last week. it seems going back home for as long as i did severed the attachment i'd made with melbourne over the last few years. my apartment no longer felt like home and i was still riding on the generic 'holiday-feeling' you get when you visit a foreign country. even my school lost all vestiges of familiarity, as i found myself horrifically seeing the benefits of packing up and moving back home for good. these last couple of weeks have genuinely schooled me on the true meaning of home sickness... a plague that in its briefness reminds us of what's truly important in life - but in severity make you hover slightly north of invalid status. i spent days curled up on my sofa because the house felt too strange from the bedroom i'd spent the last 3 years decorating (since it's about the only space in the apartment i have creative control over ;p). i slept whenever i could and occupied my waking hours staring blankly at the ceiling. the tv stayed on, though for the life of me i couldn't recall what was showing. i'm a graduated psychology major... but i didn't need my degree to tell me something was seriously messed up.
- thankfully the worst has passed and i'm back in my room again ^^ it took me 2 weeks to get over being homesick this time, the longest i've suffered in quite a while. i threw myself into prepping for gamsat and getting the house reorganised - which helped distract me and lessen the depression somewhat. max came home today too... which will definitely mark some improvements in my mood ;)
- i'm still sticking to the eating plan. it's alot harder to do now that i'm alone, since my age-old habit of skipping meals threatens to rear its head everytime i run out of groceries or merely oversleep in the mornings. mom's gotten me to swear that i'll go shopping on a weekly basis just to make sure i'm not skimping on food for convenience. i'm 6kgs down and only a kilo away from the 10% i promised my doctor in january ;)
- school hasn't started though i've attended the enrolment days and locked in my research preferences. eventhough the projects we undertake this year in no way confine us to a major for specialisation, i wanted to sign up for a topic that kept me within the clinical environments that i was comfortable with. ironically enough, most of the subjects that were listed where based on disorders that i have personal experience with! that means one of two things for me: that either those disorders are becoming increasingly prevalent within our asian society... or that i basically know alot of very sick people ^^. my first choice is a research project by dr. mark stokes on mirror neurons in the brain and autism. eventhough i'd probably be more confident in the project relating to OCD and depression, i liked the idea of working on this particular project because it stays true to my love for neuro and potentially shedding light on a disorder that affects 1 in 160 babies - and yet very little is known about it still.
- the gamsat is 2 weeks away. objectively i know i'm not prepared for it... and thinking about my lack of preparedness sends me into a frenzy most days. this exam literally determines the rest of my life and the fact that i still have the time to type up my blog at this hour when my chemistry text book lays open next to me is an astounding fact all on its own. haha! but i'm determined to stay calm and kick ass in the papers as best i can ;)
and with max now having reclaimed her sleeping position on my shoulder, i take it as my cue to turn off the laptop, get a little more studying done and get to bed ^^ melbourne has always been the place where dreams come true for me. it's the place where i spend 8 months a year fighting for future i want, at the cost of leaving all that i love and care about 6000kms away. even on days when it feels that all is unjust in the world and the only solace i can hope to obtain lies with me calling it quits and heading home... i know that melbourne is where i need to be for now ;)
