Would I Come Out to My Family?

Many times I've been asked if I would ever come out to my family. My answer is always the same, "No." I don't think that I would, or could, ever come out to my family, particularly to Mum. The reason being is, because I could imagine how they would react, and it wouldn't be a good thing.

The main reason, however, is actually because I love Mum too dearly I could not bear the thought of hurting her in the cruelest way by telling her I'm a lesbian. She would be absolutely devastated if I ever told her that. My other reason is because she has been through a lot and sacrificed so many things in her part to raise her children. Now being a single parent, I can only imagine the burden she's carrying on her shoulders for the sake of the family.

I used to say that maybe I would wait until I could be financially independent. Now I am and have even taken the responsibility of helping Mum funding Vincent's tuition, yet I still can't make myself coming out to her. Maybe, one day I would make up my mind to come out. Or maybe never.

The most important thing about this is that I don't feel the urge to come out to my family. I'm feeling just fine not telling them my true self. More of it is because I believe that my true self is more than just my sexuality preference; it is my personality, perspective, it is the way I see life, my values, principles, and belief. 

I admit that being surrounded by people who know and accept my sexual preference feels really good. Yet, again, to me my sexual preference is the last thing that would come up in my head. I do think about it sometimes, contemplating the idea to come out. But I never act on it for it's just something that is less important to me to deal with because life is big and living a life is what is important. That being said, I'm too busy living my life and paying bills to be thinking too much about coming out.

So, would I ever come out to my family? Only time can tell.

Until next post.

The First Week of the Pre-training

So, I got through the first week of the pre-training and I haven't cracked a bone so far. It's a good sign, hey? Although, I have to admit it was extremely though at the start, I was sore all over my body for the whole week, I could barely get up in the morning. However, at the same time, I feel good and happier. Yes, it's a good kind of pain for me.

After completing the first week I now realise that my upper body is stronger than my lower body, therefore I use my upper body a lot more than my lower body. That's why I am focusing more on training my legs and lower back, while keeping my upper body trained as much as well.

Aside from the training, I am now completely changing my habits to healthier ones. For example, I wake up two hours earlier in the morning to do my high-intensity interval training (HIIT) on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On rest day, I do 35 minutes of walking/running or swimming. At the same time, I am also cutting off bad carbs and avoiding sweets, chocolates, deep fried food, and alcohol. In substitute, I now consume more vegetables accompanied by brown or quinoa rice. I also eat more fruits like berries, avocados and bananas. In the morning, I drink warm lemon water in an empty stomach and I have no digestion problem ever since. Bye bye constipation.

A few friends asked me why I suddenly change and do all this stuff. Well, I simply answered because I want a healthier body. I figure that if I'm going to live alone in my old days, I would like to at least stay healthy, body and mind. My decision is also supported by some good people around me. My manager, who is among them, has been quite a support and resourceful. She's been sending me all kinds of information regarding clean eating plan and healthy food recipes, and motivation. One of my friends was more than happy to do my groceries shopping and filled my cart with healthy food. I've also been stalking Aryuveda page on Facebook for health tips.

Starting today, it's my second week of the pre-training. I did my legs this morning and I could do more squats and lunges compared to the first week. Hopefully I don't get too sore tomorrow. I still have 15 weeks to go to complete the training and I am quite determined to keep going. This also reminds me to make an appointment with a chiropractor to get my body a proper check up, in order to prevent injuries since I am now doing a quite intense training. Not to mention that I injured myself a few times before and left it untreated.

This is a total change for me and it's not easy to tackle the old habits. But I'm quite hopeful and determined to keep going.

Until next post.

A New Plan, a New Goal

I have mentioned before about how flat my life is after graduation with nothing to achieve and how my days are filled merely with work. Sure, I do now have a free time to do whatever I like and not sitting on my desk, frantically typing on my laptop and struggling to finish an assignment (which oddly enough, I miss it so much now). And, as you know, I have also been catching up friends, acquaintances, and just people in general. Yet, knowing me, a few weeks of going out and meeting people exhaust my soul and therefore I would much prefer to go back to my natural habitat; solitude.

In my solitude I have been reading more books (am aiming to complete my Goodreads reading challenge), and watching TV shows. An awful lot of TV shows, I admit. (I currently just started watching Black Sails. What are you on?) Yet, again, it gives me nothing but pure entertainment to kill the time. Although this, I'm afraid, is me procrastinating. But it will be another piece of thought to write about next time as I don't want to deal with it for now.

A few weeks ago, I was completely occupied with my Temporary Residence (TR) visa application, but that was it. I've submitted my application last month, uploaded all the required documents, and completed the IELTS test and medical examination. I am currently awaiting to be officially granted a TR. In the matter of this, I have plenty other things to do in order to get a Permanent Resindence (PR) visa. Getting the score of 8 on each band in the IELTS test, for example.

So far, I've been quite successful in getting a score of 8 in Reading and Listening part. In Speaking and Writing, unfortunately, I scored only 7 on each part. It resulted in overall score of 7, which is more than good enough for TR visa, but not competent enough for PR visa. Therefore, I have to do a lot of practices in order to achieve the required score. However, my friend, it feels more of a task or a chore to me and is definitely not, even in the slightest, the kind of achievement I am talking about.

Still in the terms of finding something to avhieve, I've been spending some time thinking about many different goals I could achieve that fits my budget and wouldn't scrap out my savings, which unsurprisingly turn out to be not so many options. The first thing that came to my mind was traveling. I was thinking of backpacking to the New Zealand. However, the word 'backpacking' doesn't make it any less cheaper apparently. Thanks to the obligations that happen to be the number one priority. But since I love to travel, in solitude of course, I will keep the plan on the list while saving money little by little. Thus, it makes to the long-term goal I would like to achieve and it's giving me another reason to get up in the morning and go to work.

In the meantime, I am still in search of an achievement, and it brings me to the plan I'm about to tell. I recently found out that I have lost weight. It was during the medical examination 3 weeks ago, I found out I've lost 4 kgs since the last time I weighted. That, and some people claimed that I have, indeed, lost some weight. No, I assure you, I am not on diet, and never was. This must be due to the series of event that stressed me out I lost my appetite. (One being my TR process.) I remember awhile back I couldn't even finish my normal portion of meal and ate only once a day. I was always exhausted by the end of the day and acquired sleepless nights, sometimes I had nightmares too. That's how badly stressed out I was -- am, considering the nightmares still remain.

Regardless the nightmares, I'm feeling quite jolly with the losing weight business. This is me taking whatever positive out of something that is completely negative, if you know what I mean. So, I would like to keep this going in a more healthy way. I've forgone through a plan of joining Virgin Active, the best fitness club and cheaper than Fitness First. Unfortunately, as I am also planning to start a phone plan because my iPhone 4s is technically a dinosaur and dying, I gave up joining any fitness club. I'm not being tight arse here but, considering (again) my obligations, I am absolutely tight in terms of budget. I graduated in accounting, of course I did the math already and knowing me, I'd like to be (or feel, actually) financially secured so when I say I'm tight, it means I just have to spare one third of my earnings apart from my savings as crazy money. (Oh, I know it's never fun talking about money with me.)

So, it then brings me to another plan with the help of an acquaintance, whom lately I've been close to. Well, she's my manager actually. She emailed my a pdf file of a cardio workout plan, which I believe she paid quite some money for. Being a swimmer, I've never liked doing cardio, to be honest. But I read somewhere that it is best to do a workout that we don't like. Because doing a workout that we like, in my case swimming, our body gets too comfortable with the activity therefore it is unlikely to achieve the best result of the plan. Hence, the cardio workout plan for me!

Speaking of the plan, it consists of 4 weeks of pre-training for beginners, meaning me, and 12 weeks of training. Each week contains 3 days of workout session, where each session has 2 different circuits of workout need to be done in certain time. I've also done a bit of research of clean eating. This will be quite a challenge because I don't cook. I mean, I suck at cooking. And most of the healthy food I know is tasteless. But I think I could alternate it with something else. For example, giving up on Doritos and Twisties on the weekend. No more chips.

Now, that's the short-term plan and goal, and what I want to achieve out of this is a healthy and fitter body, rather than just losing weight out of distressful mind. I'll start the pre-training next week on Monday. I am quite hopeful to get through this. I want to and am going to. I will surely update it here on how I'm going with the plan.

Until next post.

P.S. If you're interested on the workout plan, kindly drop me an email so I can send you the link to the workout plan. Clearly, I couldn't distribute the pdf file to another third party due to copyright reason.

Mending a Broken Friendship

About a year ago, I had fall out with my one and only best friend, Quinn, resulting in she flew back to the United States without me seeing her off. We then did not talk for quite a while and I thought it was what is best for us, not talking to each other as per what she wanted. Although, she did message me on my birthday but the wound was unhealed and the hurt still was craved inside, therefore I didn't reply her. And so I didn't message her on her birthday.

A few months later, in December, she sent me an email, apologising for what happened between us as well as congratulating me on graduating. Again, my feelings were still bruised, and probably also my ego was hurt, I did not reply her. At the same time, I also needed some time to think about what I want to say, and I took quite a while apparently that on last Saturday she Facebook messaged me. And again, I did not reply just yet.

Until this afternoon, I woke up from my nap and thinking that I would want to work this friendship out. So I grabbed my phone and replied her message. What I said, though, wasn't exactly what I originally wanted to say should I had replied her email. Rather, I told her that I have put what had happened behind us and am willing to reconnect and mend the broken friendship.

It took me quite a while indeed to overcome the agonize until I realised that friendship is an important thing for me, especially the friendship I had with her. But most importantly the reason is, because I miss my best friend. I was told that it is hard to find the "best friend" and that is true, from my experience at least.

So we talked a bit and agreed that we do still have to sit and talk and sort things out of what had gone wrong between us. I have to admit that it was a little awkward now that it has been too long. But we also agreed to take one step at a time to fix the relationship. And honestly, I'm relieved that she, too, is willing to keep the friendship.

After this long I feel like a ten thousand kilos burden is lifted up from my shoulders. True enough, ever since I received her email I have been trying to avoid dealing with the problem and it has been haunting me, nurturing an anxiety inside me. I'm really putting a great hope for us to be able to work this out and go back to the way we used to before. It may take some time, but time is indeed what we need.

Until next post.

Life After Graduation

Admittedly, life after graduation is just plain boring. In terms of day-to-day activity, it's like playing a broken record repeatedly; wake up-go to work-get home-sleep-wake up-go to work-get home-sleep. You see, I work 5 days a week, 8 to 10 hours a day. I get Sundays and Mondays off, for now, which I use to catch up with friends (on Sundays) and to have some alone time (on Mondays). But other than that, there's nothing much to do.

Therefore I've come to realise that I personally need to constantly find something to achieve, or at least something to get up to in the morning other than just work and obligations. Some people I know, they decide to go back to uni and study another degree. For me, that is completely out of the equation as I can't afford another study. Not for the moment, at least.

Nevertheless, I have been using my days off to relax and do things I didn't get to do when I was in uni and juggling with two or three jobs. On the last weekend, for example, I went for an after work drink with my friends on Saturday, relaxing after a long day of labour work. We went to a Korean restaurant, Dare1, somewhere in Little Lonsdale, and ordered some food and soju. Heaps of soju. We played a drinking game and I, unintentionally, kept losing, so I was indeed intoxicated, resulting in a friend coming to pick me up and take me home. But I wasn't wasted surely. The next day I realised I lost my wallet in there. But God bless the staff, they found it and keep it for me to pick up tomorrow. I checked my saving account and my money is still there, though I have the cards cancelled when I couldn't find it at home and before I called the restaurant. My faith in human is restored.

Last Sunday was also a fun day. For the first time since I came here, I went to St Kilda Festival with some friends. It's a festival held annualy by the local council, Port Melbourne Council if I'm not mistaken, in supporting live music in Melbourne. There were a lot of street food stands, games, music and dance stages, and many other things, including heaps of people. Although I was feeling anxious and dizzy, a common thing that happens to me whenever I'm in a crowded place, I had fun nonetheless.

We played bumper cars, watched the free beach concert and played in the beach. The weather was nice, although a bit cool in the afternoon. In the evening we had dinner at a Japanese restaurant in the city and had a good conversation and laugh, making our the table was the most noisy and annoying table, which I feel bad about now. At the end of the day, I got home exhausted but feeling happy.

For the next weekend my friend and I are planning to travel to the countryside to have a little escape from the hustle and bustle of the city life. We're planning to go to Shepparton. I have never been there so I don't know what should I expect to find in there. Guess I'll see it for myself and it's the next story to be told.

By the way, this is my 300th post. Yay!

Until next post.