2025 journal
september
7.09.2025
another sunday come and almost gone. called home this morning to wish my dad a happy (australian) father's day. then went to the sunday markets and got a sausage roll. there's a produce stand that i usually find obnoxious bc the guy who runs it is the only one who like yells and properly hawks stuff ("10 dollars for strawberries" which is both loud and also like,,, not a good deal??? they are currently 2.50 at aldi so thanks but no. however, today was the first day that they had mangoes!! none of the proper supermarkets have any yet so i was very excited. 3 for $10, which again, not fantastic but i was so excited to get them. they are very green so i'll be holding on to them a while until they're ready (in my blue la maison inondée bowl, of course). i was going to get some flowers bc i was in a flowers mood with the weather being nice today, but the flower stand didn't really have any that i liked today, other than some really cool silver parrot tulips, but they were the most expensive there ($30... get a grip fr). was kinda bummed to not get any flowers but on the walk home, i went a different route than i came and found a bunch of young cherry blossom trees, one of which had lost a branch in all the wind lately, so i picked that up and brought it home with me. i cut the end at an angle to try and keep it alive a littleeee bit longer lol. i dug out an old dollarama votive candle that i had been using using to prop up my miffies on my shelf lol but it's the perfect size for it. oh yeah also!!! i finally got swooped, but not by a magpie! it was a noisy miner that clipped my head on my walk to the market. it came back around to have another go at me so i had to defend myself by waving my arms in an amused panic lol. i admit, it was kind of exciting being thwacked by a bird, but embarasing for this to happen along the main road with witnesses driving by...
let me indulge in taking whoever reads this on a strange trip down memory lane real quick. bear with me lol. i opened instagram today to see that my middle school friend group were on a besties trip in europe (currently portugal). kind of wild to see. let me go through this rq. friend b and i had been friends since we were infants. born in the same hospital and in the same playgroup. our younger siblings were born only 1 month apart as well so we kind of grew up together (different schools though). another member (o) was b's best friend in elementary school and so knew each other going into middle school. friend g and i met on the first day of middle school since we were the only 2 girls who selected to play the clarinet for band class. alphabetically, our last names came one after the other which meant that we were always grouped together as well. instant best friends to an intensity i had not experienced before lol. very much any "weird middle school girl friends" post you can think of, this was us. friend s didn't join our school until the 2nd week of classes starting and was put at my table in science class that first day she arrived. i was very grateful to have a buffer between 2 very annoying boys. i asked her if she would want to join me and the others at lunch, and thus the friend group was solidified after that day. alas!! after 7th grade, i moved states down from the pnw to the south. we had a group chat that was active for the first year or so and that slowly died out after another year after that. i would go back and stay with family friends every couple of years in the summers, but o was often with family in portugal when i visited, and s was doing the same in india. i did however, keep in very close contact with g, texting all hours of the day and facetiming every friday. we ended up in a sort of strange long distance relationship for just under 5 years that lasted through most of my time in university actually (very amicable breakup. it felt that it had just become platonic again over time, and that if that was the case, why not let it just be that). i haven't seen b, o, or s since 2019 when i was last up there, but it's been nice to see how the friend group has stuck together over 13 years now. still, i feel crazy for having a pang of jealousy seeing them all on their euro trip lol. i guess i sometimes wonder what my life would look like if i hadn't moved. i feel like i wouldn't have had the insane protracted mental crises that plagued me ages 13-22 (optimistically putting an end date to that lmao) but maybe that's a lie. still, having friends that i could actually talk to irl in grades 8-12 probably wouldn't have hurt.. that said, i wouldn't trade my undergrad experience for anything in the world, and i guess that only happened because of the person i was at age 18, which only happened through my life experiences (cope?).
learned about a project yesterday that's looking into the behaviour of urban birds, specifically cockatoos. cockatoos are stamped with colours that last 2-4 months. they might have 1 stamp colour to group roost mates, or 3 to give them a unique identifier (for example, one with a blue spot, orange spot, and violet spot running down it's back would be IDd as BOV). i saw some of these stamped cockatoos last year outside a high school away from campus, but couldn't recall seeing any since. as luck would have it however, i saw one on my walk back from the markets today! i nabbed a photo and put it on the app and detailed what behaviours it was engaging in (where? on the ground. doing? eating. eating what? seeds B) ) i love being a #citizenscientist lol
peep my national geographic 1993 Russia and the Newly Independent Nations of the Former Soviet Union map. 1 canadian dollar in the basement of a secondhand store youppeee (please forgive the eyelash on my bedside table. i took this photo before i went to the library, where i now am as i write this. i will deal with it appropriately now that i see it when i get back. shame on me!)
august
27.08.2025
when i was finishing my undergrad, i felt completely unprepared for the world beyond school, and so here i am, back in school. i was worried that i would feel the same this time around and would find myself applying to do a phd, but lately i can't help but be grateful that soon i will be done and (assuming i don't get the archival position,) will never have to do this again. i can be in the real world doing real world thing like have a job and go back to renting an actual apartment and not be living on campus (god i miss living in a normal apartment away from school). maybe this is partly inspired by doing my australian taxes on monday lol. oh my god that shit is so much easier that the u.s. taxes. i'm not even joking when i say i may in the future renounce my american citizenship just to never have to deal with that again depending on what the country is looking like later down the line.
been feeling "homesick" a lot again lately. i only lived there 4 years but i feel like that's where i became human. i go through phases were some months my dreamscapes are just a parallel version of that city, where everything is familiar and locations are largely consistent across my dreams i've had over the years since leaving there. one of my old roommates is moving to the u.s. right about now for her phd, so i guess i won't be able to stay with her if i go back and visit, and my other roommate who i always stay with when i do go back is currently back in toronto and is pretty sure that she wants to move back there for a while, if not forever. sad! feels like i'm losing my ties there.
good god i have never felt so burnt out. i never want to be in school again. i cannot bring myself to care at all. get me out of here!!!!! i have been in school for 19 years now, studying the same thing for 6 of them. i want out. everything just feels fake.
but yeah anyways. i made a metric ton of japchae and it tastes really good and has been sustaining me all week. currently in the library basement drinking a monster (tea + lemonade flavour. no white ones...) where did the day go?!?!?!?!?!?
20.08.2025
hmm not a whole lot going on other than the constant drum of work to do. had a job interview that went semi-well, advanced to the next stage, so fingers crossed for that. it would be full-time and starting like,, next month which I'm still trying to figure out how I would do that and do school at the same time lol but I will cross that bridge when I get to it. I'm only in one actual class at the moment, which meets twice a week, but I'm not required to actually go to it. also I know the prof and would be able to just let her know of the situation. this is like,, my 3rd historical linguistics course and i just got a 100 on my most recent assignment, so i feel like i could figure it out... i would very much like to get my foot in the door for public sector work even if this is completely unrelated to lingusitics lol. i think it could be a useful starting point from which i could move around within the system.
however what i really want is this archiving position, where you work part-time with the local archival institution through 2026 while they pay you to get a degree in digital archival work with a guaranteed full-time position in 2027, but earliest i would hear back about that is mid-september, and i should know what's going on with this job by the end of august/beginning of sept. but like,,, so tempting... but also,, i neeeeed a job. moving off campus in december and gotta be able to pay stupid expensive rent auughghhghhhghhh. rent is so much more here compared to where i was in canada it's actually disgusting. and to live in a far shittier apartment and city too!!!!! what's the point!!!!!!!!!
been making dumplings and they are very good. turns out i can change a day-long affair into like a 2-hour affair by buying wonton wrappers instead of making the dough myself haha. sometimes,,, you do not have to choose the hard option.
it's still cold and grey out, but the buds are now visible on all the trees and so i gotta hold out hope that it will be warm again! spring is imminent. the wattle is already making my nose run and the magpies are staking out the best spots to nest on campus... going to watch "in the mood for love" for the first time this weekend with the linguistics society. exciting. i think i will go to aldi after i get my work done to get some coffee and eggs...
peace and love!
03.08.2025
uh oh the spiral! feeling highs and lows except the highs are brief moments of feeling okay and the lows are emotionally catastrophic lol. what differentiates this from other times in my life though is that i know that this is being brought on by external factors! i know that this is the result of stress that i could relieve if i just did. the. fucking. work. instead it happens in panicked spurts when i can't take the nausea anymore. it's so annoying. i know that i am smart! it is in fact one of the only things going for me lmao. i just want to be done with the data.... i like writing! i know i can write! please please god let me move on to the writing soon ;-; ;-; ;-;
watched darren aronofsky's "Pi" last night (well, some of it. C and I fell asleep around 40 minutes in. going to try and finish it tonight). rewatching this inspired C to make a comment that meant that he now gets added to the surprisingly long list of people in my life who have independently, and without malice, compared me to an alien on earth trying to figure the world out. to be honest, i thought that i had gotten normal these last few years. i've changed the things that i realised were making me "alien-like" but it turns out that there is more that i don't know about. i don't care if i come across that way (the people in my life have historically been very kind, caring, and fun, so if that's the kind of people i attract and get along with, then i am happy with the kind of person i am), but i guess it's just surprising to me that there is a part of myself that i can't see or identify that others can.
we went for a weekend beach trip last week. the main draw to this town was to see the aviation museum -- a tradeoff for the number of fish stores that i have and will continue to drag C to. i admit i was surprised by how much i enjoyed it. you can't just wander around the museum - you have to take a tour. it was meant to last about 1.5 hours, but ended up being closer to 3 lol. fish and chips on the beach, watching pirated slop movies, complaining about the family of plovers that had taken up shack in the empty plot next to us in the caravan park we were staying in (they actually functioned as very good watch-birds, shrieking if they saw a human being, which made me feel more relaxed about staying in some random town in a renovated shipping container plonked on the side of the main road lmao).
for those who have been on the edge of their seat about the mysterious bird in my last journal post, my brother's friend very helpfully identified it as a nonbreeding adult australasian grebe. the more you know!
going to meet up with the girl i accidently went on those dates with last year this wednesday lol. hopefully will hear the updates on whether or not she ended up seeing that guy in our class again... i am kind of invested in the story lol
been reading elif batuman's "either/or." i read "the idiot" back in 2022 and had a love/hate relationship with it, since selin the character was also a linguistics/russian literature student and i saw her as a version of me if i was 100x more annoying and also had every wrong take about linguistics ever. i needed the 3 year break to read the follow-up book i think. i am enjoying very much it. every time she brings up a linguistic theory/concept, i want to shake her, but the rest of it is great. i started it because i was complaining about "the idiot" and my friend who read both books said she couldnt believe i didnt like it, because selin reminded her so much of me. if this was anyone else who said that, i would chalk it up to them just seeing that we studied the same things, and so by the same force that makes business students Like That, they would see that ling/lit student would also be inescapably represented by selin. however, this friend has a portal to see me more clearly than i can see myself, so i decided to return to selin and wow ok yeah i get it now. many of her external actions are so diametrically opposed to anything i would do or even think of, but her thought processes regarding relationships (platonic or otherwise) and the world around us in general are so eerily familiar that it's like someone has been in my head. i had a similar feeling reading batuman's autobiographic work "the possessed" (an amazinggggg book) and also in kabi nagata's "my lesbian experience with loneliness".
july
11.07.2025
got my grades back and by some miracle, i've still got that 7.0 gpa hell yeahhhh. that said, i feel that my academic life is in shambles lol as someone who can do things only in short bursts of deadline-induced panic, doing a thesis was a horrible horrible idea. you mean i just have to work consistently for a 9 months with minimal check-ins for the first 6 months? scary..... girl you know you don't do shit without the threat of death looming over u. i have not spent more than 2 days on an assignment for 3 semesters now. what made u think u could do this ;-;
feel like i've been on an emotional rollercoaster hhhhhh been going on lots of night walks to let steam off. found a bench the other night and utilised my notes app for something other than a meaningless reminder/list and tried to make a list of all the things that were making me feel awfullllllllll !!!!!!!! uncreatively titled "must not kms, kmsing is the self killer". i am hanging on :))))) i feel sick with nerves all the time.
other than school, i guess things are going well. i just have to keep that in mind. but school is kind of everything, and other things in life continuing to go well sort of hinges on school going well. been applying to jobs, relationship is good (4 months earlier in july yay), started running and i remember now why i used to enjoy it even though it's legit been like like 8 years since i last ran lmao. weird that p.e. was like always my favourite class but then as soon as i didn't have to take it after 9th grade i just never ran again. some nice trails by me and i saw 2 australasian darters, a bunch of gang gang cockatoos and rainbow lorikeets, and 2 birds swimming today that i've never seen before and cant find in my bird ID app... also a rakali!
C is coming back in town tomorrow so yay. going to be a nice date night with a bar and going to the movies. so weird how fast i got used to not sleeping alone hahhh it's over for me.
i don't use this journal as much as i used to, but my irl paper one has gotten more use than ever this year haha that's how you know life is weird. if you think that i should be worried about my digital footprint with what i post on this page, you ain't seen nothing
may
25.05.2025
i don't really have much to say tbh. it's just been a minute since i've updated on here and thought i should pop back on lol. hmm last week of classes was this last week, so it's finals time now. high key a bit bit of an academic flop semester for me oopsies. rip to my perfect 7.0 gpa. at least i've got some padding for the inevitable tanking of it... gotta try and claw my way back to something acceptable with my final papers i guess. might try to meet with the prof for the class i've especially struggled with (qualitative research methods... it just doesnt make sense to me...). supervisor says i'm on track for my thesis, so yay. just gotta fr fr lock in with the stats part of it over the break.
talked to this girl from classes i havent seen in a few weeks. she was telling me about this date she went on with this guy from our shared class and she mentioned how it was the first time since she had been on a date with anyone since the ones she and i went on and i was like ???? what dates??? turns out those 3 hangouts were dates and i am blind. oopsies lol. i feel bad bc my "review" i left on my site for the movie we went out and watched together i'm pretty sure was "well that's two hours of my life i'll never get back." i feel a bit bad but it simply would not have worked out.
what else? got my flu shot so yay. haven't been outside much lately. going to try to go to the sunday markets tomorrow/today morning. been making couscous bowls rather than rice bowls lately. good stuff. couscous+roasted sweet potato+cucumber+spinach+balsamic dressing. yum. extra good if i can steal some kind of protein from Guy
. however, i am missing my rice bowls, despite eating them pretty much every dinner for 3 months straight. rice+roast broccoli and sweet potato+green onion+cucumber+tinned salmon+kewpie+lao gan ma. do it.
april
21/22.04.2025
it's like 11pm on the 21st but i will be up a little while longer so i'm counting this as both days. regarding last entry's fling, i think we are in a relationship now. ok confession time. around when i was 10 i realised that i was only into girls and not guys. i didn't know what a lesbian was at the time (i somehow understood that guys could be gay but despite my mother's best attempts at being an enthusiastic ally circa 2011, the concept still escaped me. sorry, ellen D.) and i think rather wisely thought "huh weird. sounds like a problem for older me to figure out," which i did and left it at that until like, 2023. while there was no particular person that sparked this question, i still started wondering if i could potentially be attracted to guys. decided to do nothing about it, because this is me we are talking about, but decided that if the opportunity arose (without dating apps lol i simply refuse to try them out), i would see what that was all about and then let the evidence speak for itself. and yeah well that happened around the start of the semester. started talking to this guy during the move-in period, and then around the start of the semester we went out for real and have been seeing each other frequently since then and have kinda discussed what we are lol. i don't have much more to say on the topic, but i am very happy. i feel like a lot more things about myself are clicking into place. it's nice to not be questioning myself or my identity or what i want anymore now that I have confirmation that yes, i like and want this. so consider this my second coming out in life - this time as bi. lesbians, thanks for the great 12ish years, and much love to y'all lol. also if my brother is reading this, keep your mouth zipped <==}- i'll get around to telling mum soon...
march
23.03.2025
mannn what's even happening. too insanely busy to do anything and yet also seemingly not getting anything done. constantly antsy and nauseous. had a while there i was walking like 10-20 kilometers a day to try and stay sane. now back to my regular 5k. probably had like 5 meals over the last 3 weeks that werent yogurt, oats, or grapes. had a bizarro fling thing that i low-key think is over now but huh that was interesting. #celibacy era temporarily over yippee. probably not going to be as active on here as i used to on account of this fucking thesis that i am currently very much regretting. the only way out is through!!! unless...? no. the only way out is through *thumbs up*
wish i was feeling more normal!!! just got to put in the work hhh
ok next morning update: fling not over lmao. let's see how this goes.
january
28.01.2025
yayay back in my favourite city with my friends woohoo! missed it here so much it's crazy waah. so much walking around in the cold it's been great. weird walking past my old apartments. been eating the foods i've missed so much hhhhh such good cafes. your sandwich experience will always be inferior to mine until you have had the poulet panko from ***** ****. sorry. finally went to the club and it was all i wanted it to be haha. had a great time ice skating, got an amazing shirt from a thrift store (speedo shirt from 1995) and also a really cool long, structured black skirt. i don't think i've worn a skirt since probably kindergarten and i usually hate the very idea of them, but this one spoke to me... it seems to be from a german brand and i was desperately trying to use the scraps of internet my phone could latch on to at the vintage place to look up EU to US sizing and was amazed to find that it was my exact size. i need to fix up one button, but other than that it fits well. i might try and take it in a little bit some time in the future, but it is still v good for now!
by some miracle, my time here coincided with a showing of The Fall (2006) at a theater i've been wanting to go to for years! it was so amazing to finally see it on the big screen and in its beautiful 4K glory. I also noticed a tiny scene was added to the restored version (like 10 seconds long) that isn't in the version i've watched a few times online. my friend last minute bought a ticket too and she loveddd it. she says its a top 10 film and we talked about it the whole walk back to her apartment. we started chatting with the other last person to leave the theater (we watched untill the end of the credits) about just how amazing it is. I was worried about "the mortifying ideal of being known" with her seeing my favourite movie, but i guess it all worked out, so yay!
went out yesterday to get groceries for our Lunar New Year dinner tonight (it's a day early but alas people are beholden to the school/work schedule and it worked better). going to make stir fried rice cakes. i like to make it other times of the year but i usually have it w/ eggplant and mushrooms, but this time it's just bok choy, scallions, mushrooms, and bean sprouts. on the way back, i waded through the deep snow to get to a picnic table in the middle of the park and listed to a Jeff Buckley album. truly a perfect experience. the sun starting to go down, lightly snowing, wind whipping up little snow devils (idk if that's what you would call them. dust devils but with the loose powdered snow on the ground), and watching the cross on the mountain.
being back here has kind of solidified that i don't know if i can live somewhere long-term that doesnt get snow. also just like,, i miss living in an actual big and cool city. i need to live in australia for at least one more year, both to finish my degree and also so that if i have kids and my partner isn't australian, i will be able to pass my citizenship on to them, but like,,, i feel like maybe i should be thinking about living in canada longterm. rough it out in alberta or saskatchewan for a few years to earn my little resident points or whatever and then move east... i just need to learn french for realzies. sad!
2024 pt.1 archive (pre site update)
2023 archive
2022 archive