Zuckerfrei

Day Ninetythree

2008-10-30T22:02:00.009+11:00

All men are addicted to porn. Except Eugene who claims total indifference, but you know, who knows. And don't ask how we found ourselves amidst such a discussion because I'm not quite sure I want to remember.

Quite fair to say that most women are in various degrees of disapproval regarding their partner's pornography habits. I categorise my level of reproach as "moderate". It may have been "low" had I refrained from venturing far enough to comparatively study the importance of porn and, well, me.

For the sake of my self-worth I'm going to assume that I'm not the only female who finds herself more disposable in her partner's eyes than videos of bigger breasts or tighter vaginas. Although porn habits remain largely beyond my understanding, I'm not one to deprive a man of the luxury. However, understandably, I hope, losing to porn doesn't sit extremely well with me. My bad, though, right? Serves me right for succumbing to curiosity. But surely a man's self-esteem would shrink like a flaccid penis if his girlfriend would sooner sacrifice him than visuals of other, better-endowed boys?

I have a couple of friends in long-term relationships, who decided that it was easier to believe their boyfriends' promises to quit porn and push the issue to the back of their minds rather than ponder endlessly over whether such promises were kept. I have no doubt that every woman has seen and ignored the contents of C:\Documents and Settings\Guest\DRIVERS\SnD_User\system23\temp\Country Music and has trained themselves not to question what lies under that loose piece of floorboard. We'd rather not know, but we know. The epic battle of woman vs. porn has been fought. We battled bravely, but alas ... a small consolation prize finds itself in the form of reduced guilt when fantasising about bedding other men.

You might dismiss my little issue as "just a guy thing". Well, it is. And we won't take it away from you. We would just like to remind you that you're lucky man-fest features in Cosmopolitan rarely exert the same - and, if anything, quite the opposite - effect.

Day Ninetytwo

2008-10-29T22:50:00.004+11:00

They say that when you meet ten people, two won't like you, two will, and the rest won't care. With regards to the person about to be discussed, I'm one of the former.

She works for Corum Health Services. I found her among her colleagues in the dispensary when I arrived at work on Monday morning. She was a hefty woman with arms circumferencially equivalent to my thighs, and hair of a most unnatural tangerine. The chirpy, simpering qualities of her voice was juxtaposed with the testosterone-infused vocals of her colleagues.

Several chairs were moved into the dispensary to accommodate four extra arses and one hot-air balloon in a pencil skirt. Mirjana was furious about the mass invasion of her personal space.

I observed these people curiously. The men smiled back politely and the woman sneeringly looked me up and down, and it was then that I decided I did not like her.

A few hours later, our network remained non-existent and the Corum team remained idly lounging around displacing air. The woman was chatting about shopping. I was dispensing, but spared an ear.

"Every three weeks my girlfriend and I get together for our manicure and pedicure." She squeaked. "And once in awhile we'd go to Melbourne, bringing nothing except maybe an extra pair of jeans and a top, and then come back with a suitcase full of new clothes."

What's the point, I thought.

She then threw in "one sixteenth" into conversation, and John remarked that only a true geek would use fractions with denominators larger than three in smalltalk.

"Oh, well, you know, I'm geeky!" She gushed. "But I'm not all brains. I used to be a hairdresser, you know. How's that? I've got the best of both worlds."

Mirjana leaned over and muttered: "She's so full of herself."

For the past two days, she had been coming to the pharmacy alone to train Ismat on the new program for ordering and stock monitoring. Apart from being condescending, she had failed to answer most of Ismat's queries, because the answers were not given in the manual out of which she read. It reminded me very much of lecturers whose knowledge did not carry them outside the square, and when a question was directed at them that didn't quite fit within the learning objectives, they hastily changed the subject and in reply said something correct and completely irrelevant.

Of course, the unsmiling looks she directed at me made it marginally more difficult to hold back the cattiness.

Lunch-hour at Greenwood is more like lunch-30-minutes. We in the dispensary (i.e. me and Mirjana) don't have a break, and are usually found with a fork in one hand and a script in the other. Corum lady, on the other hand, took off at 12:00 pm for "a bite" and was still nowhere to be seen two hours later, leaving Ismat waiting at the training computer. I said she'll probably be back soon, probably just ravaging the last morsels of her spit roast.

It was closer to the truth than I expected.

At 2:30 pm I clocked off. Jez had been waiting for me at Greenwood but had toodled off to EB Games. I asked him to meet me back at the pharmacy. As I walked out of the shop, I encountered a couple of FUPAs doing what people usually do when they're horizontal and naked. My eyes were glued on them like a passer-by stares at a car accident.

I watched as the two of them ate each other's faces, and finally, with a glance so devastating, as if they would never exchange saliva again, they parted. In slow motion. Holding onto each other's hands until the combined lengths of their arms could not extend the distance between them.

The woman turned around and my jaw dropped. Corum woman walked back into our pharmacy, smirking to herself. So that's where she waddled off to. To have fat sex.

I doubled back into the dispensary and in whispers distorted by hysterical giggles told Mirjana what I had just saw. Top laugh!

And yet another riveting tale :)

Day Eightynine

2008-10-26T16:55:00.002+11:00

Sitting in UNSW computer lab. Craving sushi.

I grudgingly admit that UNSW comp-labs are awesome. I also grudgingly regret the outrageously early closing-hours adopted by USyd. Lastly and irrelevantly I grudgingly accept the reality that no sushi is going honour my digestive tract any time soon. Because as much good a study environment as this is (though at the moment the goodness wanes due to reasons I'll disclose soon), I'm in the middle of nowhere, as is the Maccas branch across the road in which I hold absolutely no interest.

One thing that I find unconditionally irritating is fobs that feel as if a quiet word is a wasted word. The girl sitting in the row before mine is begging for my fist through her face. Understandably she can't help her accent but she can help her volume and despite being told to shut up a short while ago by a row-mate of mine she maintains her vociferous bleats like the other 30 people in this room weren't here.

Long afternoon ahead.

Day Eightyseven

2008-10-24T23:30:00.004+11:00

I have the drug song stuck in my head.

I'm somewhat embarrassed not so much because I liked it, but because I was delighted to find that I knew the indications for nearly all drugs mentioned, and had they adopted a slightly slower pace perhaps I would have had time to ponder contraindications and adverse events too.

Day Eightythree

2008-10-20T21:27:00.002+11:00

Swoon!

I'm often thinking, if Jez and I have babies, I hope they inherit his grin and my eyes.

What if I could pick bits and pieces out of everyone I know and put them on my baby? Granted, the baby will probably turn out looking retarded because it'll be chock full of features that despite being attractive don't fit together. One can still dream.

So I'm thinking ... my eyes. Jenny's lashes. Abhi's nose. Jez's lips. Mylinh's skin. Sameer's teeth.

If you think this sounds odd, wait until I'm bored enough to compile the above into a mangled photo.

Day Eightythree

2008-10-20T16:26:00.007+11:00

HAPPY ONE-MONTH-TO-GO-UNTIL-1.5-YEARS JEZ BABY BEAR BEAR BUNNY BUGGY MOO MOO KITTEN <3

After painstakingly summarising 80-something-pages (or 1.3 MB of) obs-gyn lecture notes comprised of deliberately-baffling diagrams I was peeling my eyelids back to fight sleep.

However, after the very last page I've come to peace with it.

"WHAT DOES NOT WORK

Jumping up and down after sex
Standing on your head after sex
Using cling wrap
Taking an antibiotic pill after sex
Taking a shower or going for a swim after sex
Thinking that if you don't want it, it won't happen
Wishing/praying"

I can nearly understand the vague logic of jumping up and down, but by the same logic standing on your head would facilitate spermy journey?

Need elaboration on cling wrap. If they had added "and elastic band" I'd know exactly what they're talking about.

Taking an antibiotic pill after sex is funny, but probably only to the intelligent few privileged to the fact that bacteria are not what gets you pregnant. And antibiotics are in fact often responsible for the failure of oral contraceptives.

Showering is a good idea, especially when your sexual partner, like mine, suffers terrible body odour. But again, body odour does not impregnate.

I like the last two. Will try them out tonight.

Day Eightytwo

2008-10-19T21:18:00.003+11:00

Yoza says (9:12 PM):
Can you imagine if you died on a bus.
Yoza says (9:12 PM):
And someone tried to like hump your penis.
Yoza says (9:12 PM):
That would just be quite funny.
Annie says (9:16 PM):
But it wouldn't be hard
Yoza says (9:17 PM):
Rigor mortis? XD
Annie says (9:17 PM):
Oh god

Day Seventyeight

2008-10-15T10:00:00.003+11:00

I'm deleting emails from my hotmail inbox. I must have felt that 5 GB was synonymous with infinity, because despite the fact that about 2 out of 3000 emails were important enough to keep, I left the other 2998 lying idly around. Granted, 3000 took up only 5% total space, and took 2.5 years to accumulate. Nevertheless, at this rate by the time I'm 71 I would've run out of space.

A vast majority of them was due to group reply-alls, most of them consisting of an extra 2-3 words in addition to the original email.

The emails dated back to February '06. It was around the time my ex and I broke up, and the inbox retained what I think might be the very last email I received from him (I only think because there was no way I could go through the other hundred pages to make sure). He asked me to help him with a report for uni and I remember yelling at him later about always having to write reports and essays for him and why can't he spell satisfactorily enough to produce his own piece of work.

I also came across an email from Jez in April '07 with a song attached. I'm quite sure it's his guitarless version of Slide but couldn't verify because of dumb library computers. I saved it. There was another one that went something like "I'm going out now, but I cleaned my room and I attached the photo so you can see it". I deleted that one without thinking, then regretted not keeping it, then thought it was probably unlikely anyway that I'd go back and read it any time soon.

Day Seventyfive

2008-10-12T20:53:00.002+11:00

I have this pair of white pumps. I haven't worn them in awhile. They're not too high, but are fairly narrow and very pointy. So pointy that my feet look a great deal bigger than they actually are. I don't remember what made me, but I tried them on last night and they weren't as bad as I remembered. They made my legs look nice. And I'm kind of leg-conscious, so I'd probably be willing to wear Hello Kitty print shoes as long as they compliment my pins. Jez however didn't approve of the pointiness, probably secretly afraid they'll find themselves between his legs the next time he upsets me. Throw them out, he said. I mentally noted that far from throwing them out, I'll be wearing them again tomorrow. Then I walked down the stairs at the train station and nearly tripped over the long pointy front part of the shoe. I think I might retire them after all.

Riveting story, no?

Eugene is turning into a menace. I wouldn't say he was ever nice, but he used to be such a docile guy. Sleeping at the dispensary desk. Reading the Sun Herald. Dozing off at the computer. Resting on the couch. Slowly he has become grumpy and cranky and refers to me and my friends as "Generation X, always about me, me, me", despite the fact that he is only about a fifth of a generation ahead of us.

Today I put on Plastic Tree on Youtube to substitute for the radio which wasn't playing anything particularly interesting. I minimise the window thinking that the old man might complain about the androgyny and I was right.

"What is this shit. Who is this guy? Is that even a guy? That's not right. I'm turning it off."

Later, we stood outside the front door to get a glimpse of the good weather and I asked him what's up with the new mean streak. He said it was my influence.

"I hope I never bump into you out of work. That would be so wrong." He said.

"I don't think I'd want to see you outside of work either, it's like seeing an animal out of the zoo." I shot back.

He was greatly offended and swore that if we ever ran into each other on a day other than Sunday he'd pretend I didn't exist.

At 2:00 pm I was in the middle of vacuuming and he kicked me out.

I went to Jez's house after work to study, but didn't get to until 6:00 pm. Because see the thing is, we're always having sex, which is cool, but what's not cool is the sleeping that comes afterwards. I'm normally a little tired, but don't have a problem or difficulties in getting up and dressed, especially with motivators like completing my antiepileptic drug table and Coco Pops. Jez on the other hand is a rock. I could insert a pineapple into his rectum and he'd sleep through it. I knew he hated waking up three hours later to realise how much time has been lost, so this afternoon I try to nudge and push and slap him awake.

He pulls me next to him and doesn't even open his eyes.

"Spoon." He commands and I grudgingly oblige. "Sleep."

We wake up hours later and he blames me for lack of persistence. I forget what I was going to say next because we bought Sueño and there was some left and I was thinking "I want to take that with me to drink on the train" and I forgot and now I'm craving Sueño.

Day Seventythree

2008-10-10T11:04:00.003+11:00

So last night I was chatting to my friend, let's call him Muffy, and somehow sex came up. I was a bit horrified because Muffy was nowhere close enough a friend to be open about something this personal. But he was desperate, and decided to ask for my advice possibly because we have just about zero mutual friends with whom I could gossip about his embarrassing predicament, or because we nearly never meet in person and it was entirely possible for him to hide behind his computer for the rest of the friendship, however long that might be.

In a separate window I was talking to another friend who will be known from this point as Buffy. Buffy is quite sexual, and was happy to give pointers.

I was initially going to brush Muffy off in case my imagination starts imagining things I don't want imagined. But he begins by telling me that his situation is "embarrassing", and I was too curious to cut him off. Then he said that while his girlfriend has had other sexual partners before him, she, wait for it, had never orgasmed. I hurriedly type "OMG ME TOO" and hurriedly delete it and substitute with "oh serious?".

It's a scary statistic, but I've read in an old issue of Cosmo that 90% of Chinese women do not orgasm, ever. I'm hoping that this ridiculous figure is as false as it sounds, but unfortunately I'm quite sure that it's not, because I remember out of incredulity I re-read the passage five times and then cried. No, not really. I didn't cry. But I was scared, somewhat.

I assumed that Muffy's girlfriend is only unable to come during sex, but can probably climax orally or digitally (and Muffy has informed me that he looked up the definition of "digitally" and found it to mean "relating to the hand" and not electronics). I only assumed so because that was my own predicament about a year ago. And then through the conversation I figured out that she had never orgasmed. From anything. Poor girl.

I threw Muffy a series of tips I've accumulated from various magazines over the years that I've never really consciously tested myself. Just the standard importance of foreplay, breathing techniques, experimenting with positions, etc etc. Drone drone. Yada yada. Muffy has heard it all and tried it all and still failed and is becoming increasingly frustrated.

"She's ticklish everywhere." He said.

I thought of a few days ago, when Jez and I were petting his neighbour's cat. I picked her up by placing my hands under her front legs. Then for some reason or other we went inside and Jez decided to mimic the picking-upping with me. When I'm expectant or afraid or caught off guard of tickling, I'm unbearably ticklish. But that time when I was lifted into the air by the armpits I was fine, because as dumb as it sounds I told myself to relax and that it wasn't going to tickle. So it didn't.

I told Muffy all of this, and that his girlfriend should follow my example and tell herself it won't tickle and when you talk to her please don't mention me or my boyfriend or the cat because she will be FREAKED OUT.

He was still doubtful, and everything Buffy suggested turned out to have been tried and failed, too. Buffy ended up saying something useless like "all girls are different". I went offline in pretense of being disconnected and then realised I haven't used dial-up in 6 years.

I don't think it's going to work out. Muffy is worrying himself stupid over it and thought of giving up the relationship just to avoid further embarrassment. I exasperated myself in telling him that if his girlfriend doesn't have a problem with it, he should chill. I also said something dumb along the lines of "if she has never tasted chocolate, she won't crave for it". Despite the "yeah" and "mmhmm" and "okay" I have a feeling he was having none of it. A boy's ego is the biggest thing in the world.

In any case, he reminded me of the old-times Jez, except less persistent and more whiny. And much more worried over what me and that Cosmo article think is no biggie. I wonder what he might have done had his girlfriend lay on her back and mindlessly gazed at a poster of Edward Norton instead. I'm sorry :)

I was reading an article on Times Online about "can an affair save your relationship?". I had a mouthful of water and nearly spat it onto the keyboard. What what? Despite its conclusion that no, affairs cannot save relationships and in fact generally do exactly the opposite, it featured three kooky couples whose relationships were revived after fucking other people.

The first woman was Catholic and only 19 when she married and equally Catholic man who knew as little about sex as she did. As a result, their sex was "rushed, unsatisfactory and occasionally even painful". Unhappy, she started an affair with the delivery man, who being more skilled in the bedroom, taught her a trick or two that she passed onto her husband. With these new techniques, their sex life improved and eventually she stopped sleeping with the delivery man. Now she describes her marriage as "very happy".

I'm a firm believer that if you cheat on your partner under any circumstance, you're an unforgivable slut. So what this woman did doesn't sit well with me. What kind of Catholic are you anyway, first abstaining from sex until after marriage but then realising you haven't got a clue how to do it and find out through adultery? GG. Porn is educational. Possibly more educational than her delivery boy. She should have known. I used to be starfish and Jez used to be very instructional and sometimes I'd be thinking "what the fuck, this is odd" and then go online later to find a couple of pornstars doing the exact same thing and realise where he had gotten all those ideas from.

Back to the article, the second couple consists of a woman who "was never that interested in sex", and after having kids "seemed to go right off the idea". The man, sexually frustrated, slept with any women he could get on business trips and followed his personal motto of "find 'em, bed 'em, leave 'em". He loves his kids and his wife, and refers to sex as "like a bodily function, it doesn't mean much".

How stupid. Despite the fact that his wife is naturally celibate, she doesn't think sex unimportant and "like a bodily function", and was devastated when she found out about his affairs, which he treated like the glue that held his family together. Sex is a significant part of the relationship for him, but isn't for her, so they should decide whether they value the marriage enough to make sacrifices - him by giving up sex, and her by having sex. It might have been another story if she was okay with it. But she wasn't. And he shouldn't be buying a cake and eating the icing off the ones he didn't pay for. Me and my food analogies. I think it's time for lunch.

The husband of the third couple cheated on his wife with the mother of one of his children's friends. He cheated for no apparent reason. It was something of a wake-up call to the couple to examine their relationship issues and problems they've been hiding under happy happyn nuclear family.

Except the thing is, when there are already problems, an affair is more likely to seal the divorce than make the couple go "oh, I guess it's time we work things out". The wake-up call concept is true, but is such overkill. I suppose if the only way to make his wife listen to him was to have his pickle tickled by someone else, then whatever. But some severe, well-directed threats should work for most, right? Like, "I'm confiscating your Hermès scarves".

Day Seventytwo

2008-10-09T15:40:00.003+11:00

In this month's Cosmopolitan, one article announces "We found DUDETOPIA!". On its side line it goes "Sex and the City: Where are the boys in the big smoke?" and lists one suburb in every major city with a high single-men-to-single-women ratio. First up: "Auburn, Sydney. Odds: 2.1 single men to 1 single woman".

Um ok, because Auburn's where all the eligible bachelors at.

Not that there are no decent men to be found in Auburn. Of course there are, but they probably weren't the contributors to the impressive ratio. No seriously though, what did Cosmo expect us to do? Surely not flock to Auburn right this minute?

This morning I left my stockings in Jez's sock drawer and warned him not to put them on when he gets home. I didn't know whether to laugh or be scared when I realised I didn't know whether or not I was joking. Later today I was reading Hamish's column in Cosmo and the guy has stumbled upon e-mancipate.net. A bit late. Mia Freedman found it months ago, and my feelings about it pretty much mirrors hers. Hamish, being Hamish, thought that he couldn't legitimately criticise the idea without having first experienced it. So he mail-orders some and "to my horror, I realise I've ordered 'full support opaque thigh-high stay up stockings', not one-piece pantyhose". I don't know which is worse. "Then it occurs to me it's the middle of the day and I'm standing in my bedroom stroking my stocking-clad legs".

There's a man from Kirribilli who buys a pair of satin stay-ups and red lipstick once a week. Eugene and I are sure they're not for a lady-friend. I'm still puzzled about the lipstick, but have alluded the frequency of stocking-purchase to the cruddy quality of Voodoo.

Anyway, the whole thing is mad. Just wear them at home in secret like man mentioned in above paragraph ~~and Jez~~. Please.

Day Sixtyseven

2008-10-04T19:06:00.002+10:00

I'm sick. It could be worse. Nothing really annoying like painfully sore throats or coughing or fever, but I feel like there isn't a single joule of energy left in me. Like seriously. Jelly. Spaghetti. If only I was that thin.

I do have this batshit crazy mix of hayfever and headache. My eyes have stopped watering now but the nose is going nuts secreting stuff and I feel like my neurons have turned into little firecrackers.

It's the damn air-con at work, set to bloody 16 degrees or at least that was what it felt like. It was twice as hot outside yesterday. I already felt hayfeverish in the morning and by the tenth hot-cold transition from walking back into the shop after being out running an errand I wanted to crumple up and eat my head.

Glenda messages me. She took my Kirribilli shift today because of my unfulfilled Canberra plans.
"You didn't tell me that all loops live in Kirribilli. Or was there a convention there?"

I tell her they're probably all from Greenway. Government housing. I ask her what happened.

"Nothing happened as such. I was just not expecting quite so many nutters, even from Greenway!"

I wonder who she encountered, the transvestite or the addict or the thief or the dealer or the man who comes in every hour to tell us the specials at Aldi.

Speaking of work, Sameer mentioned at Copa that he worked with a pharmacist named Sally, who happened to have been blonde, and a babe. He said she was Norwegian but I had never asked Sally where she was from so I didn't know. Other than "blonde and hot" and "a nice ass", he couldn't tell me much else.

I asked Sally yesterday whether she had worked with someone called Sameer at Rozelle. She said yes, and that he was a nice kid who always got told off. I opened my mouth to say "he thinks you're a babe" but instead said "he thinks you're really nice". Sameer later accused me of making him sound like a tool.

I wonder if Sally knows she's attractive. If she owns a mirror, she has to know. She has two 21-year-olds swooning over her. One of which might I add is dating another extremely hot 21-year-old. I suppose it's hard not to crush on her. She hides a cockroach under paper before stepping on it. When a customer commented that she looked tired she spent the next half hour behind the dispensary putting on make-up. She talks to herself when she does scripts. It's quite cute.

Jez came over this afternoon. I thought we'd study together but I felt too sick and wanted to take a nap instead. So he perched his laptop on my parents' bed and typed notes while I slept. I was tired but not sleepy so I feigned sleep and peeked at him from behind the pillow. He was copying his lecture notes straight from the slides, and stopped typing every now and then to stare at my breasts. I wanted to giggle but didn't. It wasn't until he shut off his laptop and joined me that I fell asleep and was then promptly woken by my mum's phone call.

I wish Jez hadn't taken away the two cans of soup he brought over. I'm deathly hungry and there's nothing to eat in the house and my parents won't be back for another 1.5 hours.

Day Sixtyfive

2008-10-02T15:26:00.001+10:00

I was reminded of one of Yoza's earlier blogs about pharmacowords.

Here's another one: pharmacognosy - the study of medicines derived from natural sources.

Day Sixtyone

2008-09-28T22:30:00.006+10:00

Haha, I wanted to see what my oldest post was, and found this:

"Jez is Gay

No, really. For the following reasons I can prove that my boyfriend has higher homosexual tendencies than the average man.

He once dreamt about being part of an all-male threesome
Last night he dreamt about Eugene and Jason, although he and Eugene have never met
He plucks "under"
He had a crush on his cute gay hairdresser
He often makes suggestive comments about his male friends, especially Felix
And how did I manage to forget the fact that he spent one particular night in the distant past making out with Yoza when I was right there

I'm not worried. I'm sexier than Felix. I'm hot. I'm spicy. I'm not your girl next door. I'm the girl on the next block in your hood, nigger.

Edit: As for Yoza. Well, I can't live up to that."

Now what with Ken and Clementdryhump, all of that looks kinda tame. But Ken is no longer competition because he prefers my nipples over Jez's. I know it bothers you deep deep inside.

I feel unpleasantly nostalgic reading back. I feel as if our relationship has been divided into two portions, and it always makes me uneasy thinking of that portion. The dividing line is whenever "Day One" started. When we broke up and were serious about it. When we spent many nights on the phone even when we said we wouldn't, chewing over why it didn't work why it can't work why it doesn't work now why it might work later why it could actually work now after all. When I thought fuck it I'm going to get a tattoo and slut it out and illegally distribute pseudoephedrine and now I'm glad I didn't. Stupid awful times.

It's funny how, with any given popular song, I'd start to like it when the radio tires of playing it and other people's ears have crusted over from listening to it. Like I Kissed A Girl and like Freestyler. And now I'm looping Mraz and Colby Caillat's Lucky after having ignored it for the past few months or however long it has been since Yoz sent it to me.

Today was the last Sunday I worked with Sally. Well maybe not the very last one ever, but Eugene is back next week and we'll be returning to our monotonous Mario Karting and endless gastronomical debates. I wonder whether he'll be interested in Cooking Mama or Drawn to Life (I had given up on the latter after having played the same stage about 5 times because the idiot game doesn't automatically save and I never seem to have enough battery to last me through it).

Not that working with Sally means actually having to do work. Unless Janet gets lazy and leaves me a shitfuckingcrapfuckingfuckfuckload of stock to be put away - and I use such vehement descriptors because last week it was literally a MOUNTAIN. It was as if they had accumulated a month's worth of deliveries and saved it for me. Me and my measly four hours which was far from enough to finish the job at hand.

Today, however, no mountain awaited my arrival. So we had the lunch discussion. I ordered som tum which I could really spend the rest of my life eating. Sally ordered massaman beef.

I've always wondered why Sally wasn't married or engaged or even dating. She's in her thirties, and is extremely pretty not just for her age, but for everyone else's ages too. She has to show ID at pubs. She's absolutely the nicest person I've ever worked with, and she's a pharmacist which in itself is enough reason to be loved right right right? Mirjana always said she was the reason Jim spends most of his Tuesdays at Kirribilli and dumps all of their unsold-and-near-expired stock in Greenwood.

We were talking about Jez this morning. Sally thought Jez was cute for bringing her a donut last week. I told her I wanted to go to the beach today but he was reluctant because he insisted his body was still a "work in progress". She thought that was cute too. I mentioned that his name was Jeremy. No surprises she thought that was cute. I told Jez all of this and he was grinning like the Cheshire cat.

Since we were talking about it anyway, I inquired about her love life. She told me about a guy she had known since primary school. They hadn't been close friends, but have been to the same parties and weddings and whatever throughout all these years. Recently he called her and asked her to dinner and drinks. She thought it was casual until he took her to The Boathouse on Blackwattle Bay, where an entrée would cost me two hours of work. Since their dinner, he had been calling and asking her to more dinners. She wasn't attracted to him, but didn't know how to communicate her disinterest. She sounded like she was glad to get it off her chest.

So you'd probably be all "why don't you just tell him you're not interested" but it's hard it's really really hard. There are no openings for this kind of thing. Especially when your rejectee is a friend. Although I've never really had that dilemma because no friend of mine had ever wanted to be anything more.

Being the optimist, I wore my swimmers under my clothes even though Jez and I had decided earlier that we were opting for Warhammer instead of beach. We ended up going to the beach anyway, which turned out to be a horrible idea because by the time we arrived the warm weather had completely vanished. We shivered for a few hours and left.

I still smell like salt and sand, which is sort of pleasant and sort of dirty at the same time.

Day Sixty

2008-09-27T22:14:00.003+10:00

I'm tired and I have blisters, but it was very worth it because the COMSOC ball was awesome. I've made the happy discovery that I like champagne. More importantly I can reap its central depressant benefits.

Pre-ball wasn't so awesome. I made an appointment at Planet to have my hair styled. I was sure of what I wanted down to the very last strand, and it was something like this. It turned out like this. Like a black poodle perched itself on my head. The hairdressers were very firm on what they believed looked best, and very determined to ignore my increasingly persistent protests. I ran to the nearest bathroom as soon as I was out of the salon and took out all 20 bobby pins securing poodle in place. In some sort of rage and mental debate over whether I had sufficient time and funds for Pierre Haddad I pulled the fringe loosely back and stabbed bobby pins in random places to hold my hair up. The result was surprisingly good, as it usually is when I don't know what I'm doing.

We arrived hours early and Jez was busy bustling around poking candles into candelabra and sprinkling rose petals over tables. I tried making myself helpful but it turned out I wasn't really of much use. So I followed Jez around and felt stupid for my lack of purpose. I decided to stroll around the harbour to kill time when I ran into Ken and jumped at the chance of fetching him the hair product Jez brought for him. I helped an elderly Chinese couple withdraw $800 from an ATM, and was a bit too happy to help when Jacinta needed make-up but didn't have any. A manicure and green tea frappucino later Jez noticed my pointed absence and sat with me at the table holding my hand comfortingly like I was a little kid and I felt even more stupid.

It was probably the champagne, but people were amazingly easy to talk to. Which was great, because my previous social pinnacle involving the boyfriend's friends was standing very still and politely smiling. Last night made a new record. I smacked Clement in the face (scriptedly). Except I slapped too hard and was quite intensely worried for awhile that he didn't like me anymore and I feel really childish for putting it this way but I don't see how else I could have put it and at my drunkest I insisted that I find him and apologise and I did and he said it was okay.

In fact Jez and I did a lot of things at our drunkest. Like dance, of which neither of us is really capable. Like Jez serenading me in front of everybody with Katrina except replacing "Katrina" with my name. Like having sex in the disabled toilet, after which I leaned against the door with my dress at my waist trying to put my underwear back on only to fall through it into the hallway because it wasn't locked. Jez didn't get enough and tried to dry-hump Clement five minutes later.

At the end of the night we just about died. So we went home instead of the afters. I left Jez's in the morning and we met up again in the afternoon to go to the gym. I thought we had postponed it about enough. I wanted to spend half an hour running, but as soon as I started to jog I was pwned hard by a stitch.

We had the rest of the evening to ourselves, and Jez had this absolutely brilliant plan of buying me Warhammer and going to a PC room. We made new characters, both dark witch elves, called Yoshi and Bowser. They were both pretty much naked and I felt a little bit lesbian. It was unbelievably fun, except in RvR (which Jez tells me is the same as PvP but what the fuck does "R" stand for) I became increasingly tired of respawning. Jez kept telling me I have to move around while fighting, but I. Just. Can't. Do. It.

Day Fiftyseven

2008-09-24T20:57:00.002+10:00

Make-up is good for a very limited number of things. I can think of only one, and that is to even out skin tone. And maybe to provide texture - like some make-up have a powdery matte finish and some dewy. Dewy make-up was completely wrong for me. I just looked sweaty.

I realised over time that make-up looks good only on perfect, smooth, hydrated skin. Bumps are visible under 99% of light angles regardless of presence of make-up. Dry skin flakes horribly under make-up, and I don't know which awful person used the name of a delicious dessert to describe the flaky clumpy stuff. If pores are too big, make-up emphasises them.

So then you have your primers and powders and mousses to try to overcome all of this but I'm never comfortable with piling too many consecutive things on my face. They make my pores sad.

Since I stopped wearing make-up a week ago, my skin has cleared up significantly. I've stopped wearing eyeliner too, which is a big big thing for me. A few days ago I didn't have time to apply it before seeing Jez. The way he told me my eyes were pretty without make-up kept my MAC Powerpoint at the bottom of my cosmetics bag.

Jez was sick today and stayed home. I came over in the morning and played Warhammer on his account. I left in the middle of the day for dispensing exam, for which I thought I was moderately prepared. Except there was one important thing I didn't check.

The formulation went like this:

Paracetamol - 400 mg
Compound tragacanth powder - QS
Red syrup - 1 mL
Concentrated hydroxybenzoate solution - 0.1 mL
Purified water - to 10 mL

The instruction was to make 70 mL of the suspension. The amount of tragacanth to be used was "QS", which meant we had to look it up in the manual and calculate it according to the volume of our suspension. I flipped through the manual and found "compound tragacanth powder: 2-3%". I panicked. Tragacanth was a suspending agent, which meant it was mixed with the paracetamol to help it with suspension in the vehicle. 2-3% of what then, the paracetamol alone or the whole thing? I wrote numbers and crossed them out, and wrote new ones and crossed those out too. Romano yelled out "half an hour to go" and I still hadn't weight out my tragacanth or figured out how much tragacanth to weigh out. And if you were wondering, weighing tragacanth was the second of my 16 steps.

Eventually I guessed that 2-3% of 70 mL would be the more logical answer. I peeked at Hatice's paper while pretending to fetch a fresh pair of gloves which were conveniently stored on the top of the bench directly above her workspace. Her calculations corresponded with mine. I started making my suspension at killer speed, sure that I was being sloppy but surprised when my suspension poured through the gauze, perfectly fluid and pink and leaving not a single trace of clump. Of course, even if I had made a Nobel-worthy suspension of paracetamol, I'd still fail if I forgot to tick the little box at the bottom of my dispensing record that said "check bottle for leaking".

Day Fiftyfive

2008-09-22T21:50:00.003+10:00

I walk with Jez to Starbucks. We buy a Venti green tea frappacino. We walk to the bus stop. We still debate over whether or not we should buy a new laptop tonight. We're fickle. Last night we said yes. This morning we said no. We bump into Felix and Jez blurts out a "maybe". Then we say yes again. Then we feel uneasy. I think it's a horrible idea and at the same time I think it's an excellent idea.

Jez gets on the bus. I forget about it temporarily and go to work. I entertain the thought of what would happen to Kirribilli and Greenwood if I suddenly quit. I suppose it's sort of flattering that I'm always needed in two places at once.

Renata's away today. Sally arranged for me to work at Kirribilli from 12:00 to 6:30. I call Mirjana to let her know I won't be in North Sydney. She panics and makes me call Sally to ask whether I could help her with scripts during lunch time and go down to Kirribilli in the afternoon. Sally says okay. I stay on the train and go to Greenwood.

Before I make it to the shop I bump into Eric, who as usual is delighted by this happy coincidence. He tells me he wants to buy a jacket and would like me to help him choose. I have 20 minutes to spare. Why not, I say. He looks so excited that I laugh. He sticks out his arm and I hold it. Bay Swiss guy passes by and turns his head around 180 degrees. I want to laugh again. This guy cranes his neck to stare at me every time I pass the deli, and whispers "looking good, Miss" whenever I'm within earshot, and I've never as much as looked at him. Now he's must be figuring out that I'm into tall, blond, brain-damaged Frenchmen.

Eric takes me to a men's clothing store on the second level, where he tries on three hideous blazers. One of them is an orangey sort of brown, which makes him look like a giant carrot. I recommend the one I detest the least with phony enthusiasm.

I arrive to find Mirjana swimming in used labels, repeat forms and unpacked stock. Everyone is irritable because it's Monday. Before I get much done I have to leave.

Kirribilli has a different atmosphere. Sally is either never stressed or very good at hiding it, and as a result we could have ten people lined up with their hands out demanding their pills and feel no pressure at all.

Serving Kirribilli customers is always amusing for me. They consist mainly of elderly regular customers who are on first-name basis with everyone in the store except me, who most of them have never met. Despite this, they often expect me to know their names anyway. Logic fail.

"Hi, I need my Tritace and Lipitor."

"Yes, and your name is?"

...

"I want Efexor, Xalatan and Avapro."

"Sorry, what was your last name?"

...

"I need my pills."

" ... Who ARE you?!?"

I don't think my future customers are going to love me the way Sally and Mirjana's customers love them. I'm terrible with names. I forget a name sooner than I hear it. Unless I'm happy (like, manic-state happy) I'm not big on small-talk (ha! Oh that was clever). And if you forget to mention you wanted a specific brand after I finish dispensing your medication in its default label, I will yell at you. And discreetly replace your tablets with sennoside.

In the afternoon I develop the mother of all cramps. I suspect my ovaries have sprouted thorns. I nibble on a bit of dark chocolate, and for once it doesn't help at all. I SMS Jez and ask him to bring me something hot and chocolatey. A couple of hours later he brings me hot chocolate. The clever boy. My eyes light up when I spot a Krispy Kreme bag in his other hand, but before I make a snatch for it he announces that it's for Sally. I'm surprised for a second, and then I fight against giggles. Poor Mirjana, Harsha, Ismat, Freda, Glenda and Ting, none of whom are pretty enough for Jez's Krispy Kremes.

I pout all evening because Jez is going to play Warhammer and I'm not. To cheer me up he takes me to Prego. We eat a mediterranean mix plate made for ogres.

Day Fiftyone

2008-09-18T16:36:00.003+10:00

I wonder what the public reaction was when the inventor of suppositories introduced this new dosage form.

So I looked it up, and it turns out that suppositories have been prescribed since over 2000 years ago. However, medicinal use of suppositories gained popularity later in 1840. So what were they used for before 1840?!

I also found this lovely photo of a suppository mould. It's almost identical to the one we used yesterday, only the mould shape is slightly different.

I was watching the new Harold & Kumar movie and chatting to a friend. She sounded extremely sexually frustrated. I told her she needs to find a man. She said she has many of them hovering around, but none of them are likeable.

I've always been a bit puzzled by her all-men-are-shit perspective. Is she insane or are my standards frighteningly low? Or maybe it's just a matter of never finding an apple if you keep looking for them in a crate of oranges.

She said boys are sooks, because when she refused to see them regularly they'd say annoying things like "you never have time for me anymore" and "why are you being such a snob". And hanging up on her.

That's my pet peeve. Boys should leave the hanging up to tantrum-throwing girls. My ex used to hang up on me when we fought. It was the most irritating thing in the world, especially when he'd cry before slamming the phone. Then I'd have to call him back. If I didn't, I'd never hear the end of "this is what I mean when I say you don't love me". And the whole "you don't care" thing. God, that gets old.

So despite the fact that Jez has blown up my heart, ground it in a mortar with a metal spiked pestle, juiced it in a blender and then fed whatever was left to his neighbour's cat - at least he doesn't hang up on me. It's kind of cute. He seems to be physically incapable of hanging up without first announcing "I'm gonna go".

Although speaking of "you don't care", I'm reminded of a recent study session at Jez's house where for some reason I can't recall we were both silent and seething. I chucked all of my fireballing energy into my lecture manual while Jez sat in front of his computer blankly and repeatedly slapped his own face. I hadn't noticed, therefore didn't stop him. He was so mad.

Day Fortysix

2008-09-13T08:47:00.003+10:00

I have a headache. It feels like I've slept too much but I didn't. I slept horribly. I think my room was too warm, or my bed was too rigid. Every morning when I'm draggged up against my own will the bed feels like a fluffy pink cloud. On the only morning I'm allowed to sleep in it feels like a shitty old bed.

Good news is I feel a lot less stressed. Bad news is I don't know why. Sleep deprivation? Cortisol? Cortisol gives you tummy fat, you know.

Remember Shaun? I've met him once, for no longer than ten minutes. It's been a few months, and I regret bitterly for letting him have my number because despite the fact that I've expressed high disinterest, he calls me this morning. I silent it. Then he sends me an awfully stupid SMS.

"My eyes are dry, I've got some Bion Tears, do you know what they are?"

Well, you'd find out from the USyd library home page, where you click "Electronic Databases", and then "Pharmacy", and then "MIMS Online", then log in and type in the search field "Bion Tears", and scroll down to "Use" or "Pharmacology".

Or you could like, read the label on the bottle.

Or if that doesn't work, feel free to message a stranger.

Day Fortysix

2008-09-13T00:40:00.003+10:00

It's 12:40 am and I'm still struggling to finish the '06 paper.

I'm not sleepy. It has been an unusually warm day so I'm not shivering like I do every other night. I'm not hungry. In fact I'm so physically content that I might be subconsciously meditating. My brain, on the other hand, is trying to escape my head. For the past 6 hours I've been desperately trying to ignore the panicked little voice in my ear that screams HOW THE FUCK DO I REMEMBER ALL OF THIS, I'm taking a break now so it can get itself out of my system.

A drunk and very slurred Jez called about 20 minutes ago, telling me he'll be staying out for the night and sounding like a little boy. I suppose the fact that he was in the company of Ken would void anything he says in advance about going home early. I thought I took his plan seriously but amusingly, some deeper conscience called bullshit and I ended up back home with no recollection of making such a decision.

I've done everything within my power to procrastinate. I've eaten a whole tin of Extra mints. I've tried and failed to regain access into my NetBank account after realising I had changed and forgotten my password so I'll have to pay for road trip by cash. I've showered and exfoliated three times. I've read mamamia.com entries from the beginning of the month, comments included. I've blogged twice. I've trimmed my fingernails. I've stripped off all of my make-up, applied it again, and washed it off. I've ping-ponged fifty hundred Facebook messages to I-don't-know-who-he-is-but-he-doesn't-do-pharmacy-so-can't-increase-stress-levels. I've taken photos of my breasts.

I hate alcohol. But when I'm stressed out I crave being drunk. Except you can't get drunk without drinking alcohol. I bet there are other people like me. They should formulate some alternative dosage forms for us. Not parenteral. I'm scared of needles. Maybe a nasal spray or inhalation that totally rapes my blood-brain barrier.

Or some sort of reversible tastebud-inhibitor. Then they can fill my glass with industrial methylated spirit and tell me it's vodka. And I'll believe them. To my own demise.

Just please please kill me already. I've run out of things to say and I don't want to face my stupid hypothetical 36-year-old HIV-infected patient.

Day Fortyfive

2008-09-12T19:08:00.003+10:00

Silly Jez, who let me half-arsedly convince him out of work.

I think of studying at med library but decide I'd feel more comfortable at home. It's a stupid time to be catching the train, but the high risks of being trampled on or pushed off the platform don't dissipate until well past 7:00 pm. Who wants to wait that long.

I take my place on the platform next to a geeky sort of boy in business attire. The train arrives. I turn my head in its direction, catch a glimpse of geeky boy's face, and feel my jaw drop.

I haven't seen him for 5 or 6 years. He looks more or less the same. Taller, a little more mature. Acne cleared up. I see my look of shock reflected on his face. Then my very first ex recovers and says hello. I don't know what name he goes by these days, so I say "oh, hi". Then it's kind of awkward, before we launch into the standard conversation between two people who after several years know nothing about each other. I secretly hope that he still lives in Summer Hill, leaving me 7 more stops to be with my one and only Bowser's Castle.

Then it gets less awkward until he says "times goes by so quickly".

"I know, right?" I say. "I've been at uni for three years already."

"Oh, I meant high school too."

I grimace, and wonder whether he's also remembering one afternoon shortly after I broke up with him when Jenny, Jenny and I walked behind him to the station and yelled "Yak, Yek, Yik, Yok, Yuk!" to his back.

Silence. He probably is. I suddenly have an overwhelming urge to laugh.

Day Fortytwo

2008-09-08T15:37:00.002+10:00

I'm sitting in Badham library torn between reading Peach Blossom Pavilion (which after 200 something pages has become extremely sexy) and finishing my report. However Morgan is two computers on my right, chatting incessantly to a couple of guys she has just met. None of them are bothering to keep their voices down and every word is drilling into my head.

The girl on my left is packing her bags in an agitated sort of way. She even manages to deliberately make a racket out of saving her document on her USB. I turn and look at her.

"I can't concentrate here." She hisses when she catches me looking.

"I know, right? I can't study either."

She mumbles something like "I don't give a shit about this anymore" and storms out.

For Freda's sake I show up at work this morning. I spend most of my time putting away dispensary stock and the rest yawning loudly.

I'm neither a pharmacy assistant nor a pharmacist. I don't wear uniform and nobody trusts me. I dispense a girl's Diane-35 ED. Freda checks it, and I hand it out. The girl asks to speak to the pharmacist. I suppress my urge to tell her that I could probably help her with whatever she's about to ask, and fetch Freda instead.

"Um," says the girl, "it's my first time taking this. Where on the pack do I start? I have my period at the moment."

Freda hesitates, and then pulls the CMI from the packet to scrutinise the small print. The two of them pour over the handout to figure out how the pill should be commenced. I roll my eyes. I could have told her the answer in two seconds, and warned her that she was about to become a estrogen-fuelled fatty.

A short while later, an elderly woman approaches the dispensary. I greet her. She asks for the pharmacist. It's probably a poly-pharmacy related problem, I thought. Either that or something that requires knowledge of medical states, which I can't confidently say I possess. I call Freda over and am about to return to my pile of stock when I see the woman pull two extremely old boxes of pills from her handbag.

"Would you be able to dispose of these for me? They've past their expiry date and I don't need them."

I take the boxes from her, smile politely, and say: "You'll never tell from looking at me, but I'm very qualified in the art of throwing away trash." I walk to the sink and dump her meds into the biohazard bin.

I'm working in Kirribilli tomorrow. It sucks, because PPF is on Wednesday, and because Eugene and I didn't get much work done yesterday. Between deciding what to have for lunch, playing DS and much pinching of tummy fat on Eugene's behalf, there wasn't a lot of time for anything else.

There was a man who brought in a hand-written script. Another blank script was stuck to it. The doctor probably had really fat fingers. Eugene pried it off and handed it to me.

"Write me a script."

I obliged. Eugene Bae, I wrote. 5/7 Mario St, Yoshi Yoshi, 2053. I crossed out the doctor's name printed on the top left-hand corner and write my own. On the blank part of the script I write Reductil 15 mg, 2 mane for beer belly. 30 tablets. Repeats: none.

I'd pay to see Eugene's expression again. He was utterly horrified. Nevertheless it didn't stop him from polishing off every last morsel of his pad kee mao.

Serves him right, anyway. Just because I like him very much doesn't mean I can't identify him as an awful influence. They could perch a couple of snails in the dispensary on Sundays and the shop will probably be more tidy on Monday morning than it would be if it was left to me and Eugene.

For some reason I think of Sevil. I was an awful influence to her, too. I encouraged everything she shouldn't have been doing - spending all of her money on clothes (distasteful clothes, but that wasn't within my control), making fun of customers behind their backs, binging on cookies, having sex. When she confided that she was contemplating sex, she was 17 and half-dating a guy who insisted she shrink to a size 8 "for her health".

I wanted to tell her that it was ridiculous, but I would have just sounded condescending. Besides, I had sex when I was 16 and she knew it. I wondered whether that played a factor in her decision, if she thought having sex at 16 was normal, and virginity was too ripe one year later. I felt awkward. I told her to go for it if she was 100% sure, and that if she wasn't, it doesn't hurt to wait. A few days later she told me she had done it, and that it was awful. I told her the first time is always awful. Two months later she and her boyfriend broke up. She didn't think much of it and I didn't have the heart to tell her that when she's 20 years old she's going to kick herself.

Day Fortyone

2008-09-07T23:09:00.003+10:00

Today was so unremarkable that instead of blogging about it I'm going to make plans for tomorrow.

Might be fun to see if it turns out completely different. Maybe not. Whatever.

6:00 am: Wake up, turn off alarm, go back to sleep
6:30 am: Wake up, turn off alarm, go back to sleep
7:00 am: Wake up, turn off alarm, go back to sleep
7:30 am: Wake up, turn off alarm, go back to sleep
8:00 am: Wake up, turn off alarm, wake Jez
9:10 am: Catch train
10:00 am: Start work
2:00 pm: Finish work, buy strawberries
2:30 pm: Sit on bus, eat strawberries
3:00 pm: Sit in library, read book
3:30 pm: Start studying
6:00 pm: Leave library

I've just realised how meaningless my life truly is.

Day Thirtynine

2008-09-05T22:20:00.004+10:00

New crush. Amanda Seyfried. Starrs in Mamma Mia! and Mean Girls. Also appeared in one episode of House as the sick boy's girlfriend.

Favourite quote: "So if you're from Africa ... why are you white?"

Kinokuniya has a 3-day book sale. 20% off all books. 10% off all stationery but who cares because the stationery grossly overpriced anyway. I've just finished the last book from my previous literature shopping spree so after walking Jez to work I browse around for new reads. I end up holding Atonement, Grotesque, Change of Heart and Peach Blossom Pavilion. I don't want to buy all four so I stand around debating quietly to myself.

I've heard great things about Atonement from movie critics and awful things from real people. I put it back on the shelf. Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino is about two Japanese prostitutes with huge potential as young girls. Prestigious upbringing gone wrong. Change of Heart is another presumably heartbreaking typical Picoult, which sadly is my kind of book. I hold on to it. Peach Blossom Pavilion tells the story of a Chinese girl who is sold to a whore-house and becomes an influencial olden-day high-class prostitute. I decided to pick between Peach Blossom Pavilion and Grotesque. Chinese prostitutes or Japanese prostitutes? I'm Chinese, so I go with the former.

After reading such books, prostitution is looking dangerously glamorous.

I make it to the library two hours before my tute. I sit at the computers with Ray and share two packets of Fran over shamelessly photo-surfing Facebook. Then I make some progress on my forensics report which is immediately lost when I click "save", close the document, and realise that I've saved it in the temporary internet files folder which judging by the analness of uni computers destroy its contents every ten seconds. I'm angrily reading wwtdd.com when Sid appears on my other side and audibly drops his jaw at a photo of a near-naked Marissa Miller.

Sid takes out a plastic bag containing a little container of Dettol anti-bacterial gel and Bepanthen cream. He sticks his hand inside his jumper and rubs a liberal amount of each onto his chest. I look at him inquisitively and he shows me a rather large tattoo of his first name in Chinese. I also notice that the epically long nipple hairs are gone.

We open up a gallery of tattoos on Facebook and browse through them. We stumble across a wrist displaying a large ";".

"What's that?" I frown at it.

"A semicolon."

"Why would anyone get a tattoo of a semicolon?"

"Maybe he had colon cancer."

We decide, in the end, that tattoos and I are incompatible. I know it for a fact but I can't quite say why. Jenny says I'm too "cute". Derek says I'm too "white". Mylinh says I'm too "Barbie". Jez says I'm too "pretty". My guess is that a prerequisite of tattoos is possessing some level of outer maturity. I fail because whatever I do I look like a little girl. It's frightening. I'm going to be 50 one day looking like a school-girl with skin several decades too old. I just shivered.

Day Thirtyeight

2008-09-04T22:12:00.003+10:00

I finished reading The Time Traveler's Wife.

I've been quietly complaining throughout, forcing myself to persevere even when I was bored and threatening the book that it better give me a satisfactory ending for what it was putting me through.

I was plowing through it at during lunch on Tuesday when Harriet walked into the back room and saw the cover.

"Oh, you're reading that!" She said. "I've started on it."

"Do you like it?" I asked.

"I gave up after a hundred pages or so. I got bored."

"I'm bored too." But I keep reading for the sake of getting $26 worth of literature into me.

I was sitting in bed reading about the day Henry died. I think of Clare meeting him during one of his time travels when she was six. I think of their wedding. I think of Clare's miscarriages. I think of Alba, who Clare finally has after being knocked-up by Henry from the future. I think of the two of them sitting on the porch on NYE when he died. I think of Jez, and then I'm crying. What's the point of loving someone for all of your life if it only leads to them destroying you by leaving? Maybe that's why Jez is so adamant about dying before I do.

Day Thirtyeight

2008-09-04T17:09:00.004+10:00

I accidentaly spilt water all over the keyboard and my bookmark, which is actually the tag of my glomesh clutch I bought from Luxe.

Sometimes I'm scared of the future. It doesn't take long for something huge and life-changing to happen, and I don't know what will happen to me. Just because everything has been normal for the last 21 years doesn't mean it will stay that way. I think of accidents and finding out I'm actually adopted, and then realise that the latter is utterly absurd because I have my mum's smile and my dad's ankles.

What if I can't get pregnant when I'm ready to have a baby? Would I fight about it with my husband? Would I leave him or would he leave me or would we adopt or would we be childless? I'm unreasonably worried and I contemplate semi-seriously about mentioning this to my doctor the next time I see him or her.

I don't have to think about it yet. I want to see my eyes and his mouth and my mother's hands on my very own tiny little being, but I want a child like I want a cat. Just something I can cuddle and play with and leave to its own devices at home when I have more important things to do.

I wish someone I knew had a baby I could play with. A prn-baby.

I called Jez at 1:00 am last night, crying because Clare's mother in The Traveller's Wife had died. You might have guessed that just before I made this post I was reading about Clare's 6 miscarriages.

Day Thirtyeight

2008-09-04T16:32:00.001+10:00

Except for the quiet tapping of keyboards, it's dead quiet in the library.

I burp loudly.

I pretend it wasn't me.

Day Thirtyeight

2008-09-04T16:12:00.003+10:00

Last night I dreamt that it was Christmas.

I've never been much excited about Christmas, having never celebrated it during my first ten years of childhood. I didn't even know it was December the 25th. When I came to Australia and it was December the 25th someone told me "it's Christmas". I said "oh, okay".

I used to be giddy on New Year's Eve. Sometimes I still am, because everyone else is, much like the way I feel drunk among drunks, even if I hadn't drank any alcohol myself. A new year means awkwardly adjusting to using a new suffix when filling in the date field of forms. Means safety-net privileges are reset. Means an excuse to stay up and drink and go out.

Last NYE I was curled up with Jez on the couch. We watched the TV make a list of stuff that happened in '07 and count down the last 10 seconds. When it was 12:00 am we said "happy new year" to each other and went to sleep. It was nice, for a change, not to be stuck somewhere trying to find a way home through the entire population of Australia.

The year before that I spent NYE at Circular Quay, sitting on rock-hard ground for 6 hours and washing down $5 pies that were cold in the centre with $6-a-bottle Mount Franklins. I felt extremely ripped off by the small compensation (in the form of fireworks) of being constricted to 0.5 metres squared of space for a quarter of a day. People kiss through the countdown for the lame reason that they would have kissed through a new year. I got bored and opened my eyes to watch the first bit of fireworks.

I'd like to be somewhere very far away from the city this NYE.

Day Thirtyeight

2008-09-04T15:30:00.002+10:00

I wake up at 11:00 am and feel awful about sleeping in. There's no breakfast so I drink some water and sit in front of the computer in a stupor. Bao is also home so I decide to meet him when he goes to uni, so that I could write my report in the library without being distracted by whatever it is that distracts me at home.

I dress up because the Olay launch is tonight and it probably isn't a dressy occasion but I'm making it one. Then I watch Mean Girls while waiting for Bao.

Neither of us has eaten lunch. I'm not much interested in meals during daytime but Bao's hungry so we go to Habib's and have charcoal chicken. I realise I've forgotten both my wallet and keys. I assume I can eat half a chicken so we share a whole one, except after one quarter I can't walk.

We drive to uni and Bao's 10 minutes late for his tute. I go to the bank and beg for money. The girl behind the counter asks for my name, date of birth, address, amount of money in my account, most recent transactions and signature. I pass the test and cardlessly withdraw $50. I only need $5 for a train ticket but without my wallet who knows what emergencies might arise.

On the way to uni we're reminded that Marty still hasn't done his dare from half a year ago. We think of things he could do, mostly revolving around purchasing condoms at a pharmacy or supermarket. I use the smallest-sized condom but it still falls off, is it okay if I secure it with a rubber band? Is this suitable for anal penetration? Will faecal matter affect the integration of latex? I feel like my penis can't breathe in condoms, so I've poked some holes in it for air, it's still safe isn't it?

Or he could do that classic thing where he brings a packet of condoms to the counter. "How much?"

"$7.99."

"GG, can't afford." Two minutes later brings back a packet of rubber bands and cling wrap.

Pregnancy test and coat-hangers might be good too.

Day Thirtyseven

2008-09-03T19:20:00.003+10:00

Having slept at 3:00 am this morning I was out of this world upon waking. Between packing my bag and digging my labcoat out of the locker I passed Jez's house where I spent most of some 30 minutes watching the boy sexify his hair.

I'm 15 minutes late when I arrive at the pre-dispensing tute, but as per usual nothing happens during the first half-hour and unsurprisingly people are idly sitting around. I join Bao and Derek and nearly fall asleep.

Romano begins going through slides on the overview of today's schedules and questions us on methods and what not. By some quirky misfortune, he scans the room for someone to volunteer the answer and every single week I very unintentionally look up with impeccable timing to catch his eye and then he looks at me expectantly for an answer and I don't have one so I just stare back like a silent sheepish idiot.

I yawn as Gladys raises her hand and outlines her methods with overpowering enthusiasm.

By the time dispensing begins the consequences of going to bed in the ungodly hours of morning creeps back on me and then I'm completely out of it. I weigh out my salicylic acid haphazardly and it flies everywhere. I feel myself inhale some and it immediately stings my nostrils. A bit of it drifts into my eye and that stings too. Despite the fact that the salicylic acid looks as finely powdered as flour, we're told that it is in fact crystalline and must be ground in a mortar. I do so and it clings so tightly to the sides that it's impossible to remove. I scrape at it with my spatula, send more powder flying, and inhale it all.

A few minutes later I'm mixing last week's aqueous cream into the powders on a giant glass slab, my biceps seizing up with the effort. I wonder mindlessly whether compounding pharmacists are all tanks.

The last item of today's schedule is supposed to be tricky. Romano warned us earlier that it could initially resemble white vomit, but with perseverance the product will be a "very good-looking cream". I absently imagine how good-looking I might be had I been born a tub of cetomacrogol.

To my pleasant surprise it turns out smoothly in every sense of the word. And Romano was right. It's a pure-white, fluffy and incredibly consistent semisolid and I can't stop playing with it. Bao hovers around my bench, frantically stirring a hideous white mixture that has the texture of foundation in vegetable oil. He crawls to Romano for help and a few minutes later produces a cream as smooth as mine.

We print instruction labels off the computer from the Fred dispensing program. Everyone is supposed to type up their own label, save it, and print. Nobody bothers to delete their labels after they're done with it, and as a result there are dozens of them on file.

Bao prints labels for both of us, and tells me that he has been clicking on other people's saved labels and substituting our bench numbers for theirs to save him the trouble of starting from blank. The instruction for our product is apply to scalp at night for dandruff.

"I wonder if other people re-use our labels after we're done with them." I say.

"I don't see why they wouldn't."

"Let's change the instructions."

We sit at adjacent computers and edit labels that others have made and saved. We change the instructions for the salicylic acid cream.

Rub generously into scalp when Venus is aligned with the fifth moon of Jupiter, Bao writes.

Apply sparingly on inner nostrils before snorting coke, I write.

Insert into rectum when required before activity.

We print them and leave them on the printer. A few minutes later someone has removed them.

I'm hungry after dispensing. We go to the city and eat dinner, and on the train back home I fall asleep.

Day Thirtysix

2008-09-03T00:49:00.003+10:00

We're waiting for the train at Central and Jez asks me whether CH-OH-OH-OH actually exists. He pronounces it as it is - "ch-oh-oh-oh". I tell him that oxygen can't form enough bonds to make such a compound.

"What about 'ch-oh'?"

"That would be methanol." I say. Wait, no it's not. "Actually methanol has two more hydrogens on the carbon, which would make it 'chhh-oh'." I emphasise the H's with sort of a hacking sound.

"Chhh-oh." Jez imitates, and in the process spit all over my face.

The train comes and we sit upstairs. We race each other on rainbow road. Jez uses Bowser and bumps me into abyss. He laughs too loud and everyone stares.

We go home and curl up on his new sheets, which came in a pack that we wrongly assumed to contain a blanket-cover. As a result his highly homosexual rose-patterned blanket lies on top of an otherwise pleasantly chocolate mattress. We lie in bed for hours. Jez sleeps and I don't because I'm worried about life and his snoring is hilariously loud. It's snoring, snorting and grunting all in one. Eventually I coax him awake and tell him stories about Herbal Essences' cum-shot on my nose. I curl up with my head on his shoulder the way he likes, and it's extremely comfortable.

I'm staying up to make a decent start on my forensics report, which I'm fairly sure Andrew has not yet considered. Looks like I'll be playing brains in this collaboration.

It's been months and months, but Eddie was online tonight. We talk for a little while and realise exactly how long it has been when he assumes that I'm still working in Auburn. We ask each other about uni. He asks whether I'm still dating Jez. I skip the Epic Tale of Jeremy & Annie and say "yes". We talk about work. We laugh about IKEA customer service. It isn't awkward, but it's very strange. For years you think you know someone better than anybody else, and then BAM you're strangers. And then you try to talk to each other, pretending that you don't know where they hide their dirty magazines or the shape of the scar on their arse.

I hope I don't break up with Jez. That boy knows awful awful things about me.

Day Thirtyfive

2008-09-01T18:18:00.003+10:00

I sleepily writhe around in bed for a good 15 minutes before deciding that one morning's worth of sleep isn't worth losing my job.

Mirjana is horribly sick. Her temperature is 38 degrees and she continuously coughs a very wet and very hacking cough that makes my skin crawl. She sits at the desk for nearly the entire day with her face in her hands, emerging only to measure her temperature. I feel sorry that there's nobody else to work in her place. Freda is in Melbourne, Jim is sipping long island iced teas on a boat somewhere, and John is gone and won't tell us where he is.

I deal with irksome customers. Everybody seems to be on edge today. I find that we're out of my favourite facewash and there's a single drop left at home. I settle for L'Occitane cleansing jelly which lacks both the foam and the antiseptic properties of the lavender gel that I so totally like can't like live without like.

At 4:00 pm I finally crack and munch chocolate-coated coffee beans.

I bump into Victor and Andrew while waiting for my train. Too much eye contact has been made not to acknowledge each other, so we do, and then it's decidedly awkward. Apparently my alliance to Jenny doesn't sit well with Victor. I slither away as soon as I'm on the train, and he sends me a SMS when I'm home to apologise for being so cold. I tell him I understand, but I don't.

Day Thirtyfour

2008-09-01T01:00:00.003+10:00

I've been vague about the reason Shaun has been ringing me intermittently for the past few months. Honestly I thought it had stopped after the last call which took place several weeks ago, when I told him explicitly though politely (insert Jez's snide comment about my lack of backbone) that I wasn't interested in speaking with or meeting him. One would really think that he might be inclined to put someone who he has briefly met only once and has repeated refused his dinner offers out of his mind. But no.

I thought I could pass it off as a secret horrible consequence of recklessness that will have me consult an eight-ball of some sort every time I even think about doing anything at all. But I felt awful that Jez wasn't aware of this slip-up. So I told him that when I explained about Shaun, I skimmed over the bit where in my psychotic state over the previous day's break-up I practically threw my number at the first guy who dared to ask. At a devastatingly annoying price.

Jez was driving. I was idly wondering how jealous I might have been if the situation was reversed (insanely so) while feeling somewhat anxious about his reaction. He quietly said that he didn't blame me. I looked up to check whether I might have dozed off and sleep-walked into the car of someone understanding.

A lot of things have changed since our history-makingly messy break-up. This is just one of them. Others include arms that look like they've been plucked off someone else (because I would have never thought Jez capable of being composed of anything more substantial than matchsticks), increased enthusiasm for uni (translating into tonight's four cans of V) and looking at me through smitten kitten eyes. Massive improvements on his behalf in all aspects.

And Starbucks!

Maybe my own improvements are only apparent to him. Because I sure as hell can't identify any of them. Although I do remember admitting two days ago that he had every right to break up with me on his birthday last year, when for the past 12 months I've been stubbornly insisting that he was a stubborn jerk.

Baby steps.

Day Thirty-one

2008-08-28T22:08:00.002+10:00

It's 8:20 am and I'm sitting on the train, self-consciously covering as much thigh as possible with my bag to disguise the fact that underneath, I'm wearing pretty much nothing at all.

I get off the train at Lewisham and go to Jez's house. I switch on his computer and mumble something about preparing for my forensics speech, but he knows what I'm here for and I drop the pretense.

An hour later we leave for uni. We're both outrageously hungry and buy two pies from 7-Eleven. I take two bites out of mine (cheese, bacon and steak), read the nutritional content on the back of the packet (500 calories per serve) and throw it out.

I arrive at uni early and sit in the computer room of Badham library. I type up my part of the afternoon's speech and fail to shake off the feeling that something about our powerpoint presentation is very, very wrong. Andrew arrives and adds to the presentation several more slides. It still feels wrong. He comments that it was very pretty. I spent a few minutes last night changing the backgrounds of the slides to various mod colours inspired by the sushi plates at Umi, and the effect is asthetically brilliant. Pretty and lacking content. Just like my mother's description of me.

After finding nothing to add to the presentation, Andrew and I head off to the speech room.

The first group is Mari and Fady. They bring up a slide which describes a fictional patient whose case they, pretending to be forensic scientists, have taken over. Andrew and I look at each other, horrified. We didn't have a patient. We're not pretending to be forensic scientists. Our game plan involves pretty much just reading off the slides.

The second group. The third. My mind starts wandering. How many calories have I eaten today? What colour should I paint my nails? It's my auntie's birthday tomorrow. Should I buy Jez an iPod? Is it really impossible to time-travel? I haven't seen Abhi in awhile.

Soon enough, it's our turn and we're the last group. I try to smile but yawn instead. I look down at my notes and read from them. I think of Jez's Ebay-man speech and am envious that he could feel free to be witty. There's absolutely no humour in the pharmacokinetics of diphenhydramine. Not even Russell Peters could make a joke out of this.

I'm annoyed because my beautifully-coloured backgrounds are projected into flat, highlighter shades. How a deep, mossy green could translate into fluoro lime is beyond me. So much for brownie points for presentation.

To add insult to injury, Andrew is as professional as a wild gypsy. He calls N-diethyl groups "nitrogens", and describes mass spectra fragments as "the thing on the end", and "that bit that goes like that". Of course, it's unlikely that I would have done a better job. But you know. Come on.

Day Thirty

2008-08-27T10:45:00.002+10:00

Reminder to please please order a copy of APF as soon as humanly possible or pray to God that the next formula doesn't come from the 20th edition.

I'm in the library. Bumped into Doey earlier, who with my grudging consent snatched half a packet of my favourite Japanese chewy strawberries and left a compliment about my appearance, which coming from him is unlikely to be a compliment at all.

Day Twenty-nine

2008-08-26T23:05:00.002+10:00

Today was one of those mind-numbingly uneventful sort of days. And while frustrating on Mirjana's behalf, I found just a tiny speck of excellent entertainment from a woman with a prescription for ramipril.

For those of you who are unaware (i.e. you, querido), ramipril is the name of an antihypertensive drug. It goes under several brand names including Tritace, Ramace, GenRX Ramipril, etc. They're all interchangeable, because they're exactly the same strength of drug with the same pharmacokinetic properties, manufactured by different companies who package them in different coloured boxes and charge different prices.

GPs can write on the script either a brand name or the drug name. Unless "brand substitution not permitted" is ticked, the pharmacist or patient can feel free to pick their favourite.

In today's case, the customer was a posh middle-aged woman wearing a stiff uniform with "NSW Art Gallery" stitched across the pocket. She handed Mirjana a script for ramipril from the same doctor who pulled out a blank piece of paper during my consultation and drew me a detailed diagram of the female reproductive system. He has a quirk of prescribing in drug name only.

Mirjana pulled a box of Ramace off the shelf. The woman frowned at it and asked why she was given Ramace instead of ramipril. Patiently, Mirjana explained that ramipril was the drug name, while Ramace was the brand name, yada yada yada. The woman explained that she had never taken rampiril before, and wanted to make sure that she was getting the right drug. Mirjana explained about generic substitution, and how there are a number of drug companies that manufacture the same ramipril tablet, and that because the doctor hadn't specified which brand to dispense, she took liberty.

"Why did you pick that one and not one of the others?" The woman asked.

Mirjana stared. "Because it was the first one that I saw on the shelf."

Bad answer, I thought. Here was a pedantic and confused woman who can't get her head around the difference between brand and drug, and you give her the impression that you're subjecting her health to your own convenience.

"I don't understand why I can't have what the doctor prescribed me." The woman was saying.

Barely hiding her exasperation, Mirjana grabbed a marker and underlined the word "ramipril" on the Ramace box. I tuned out at this point to focus on my bowl of strawberries.

A few minutes later, Mirjana had me call the doctor to ask which brand he would like to recommend. We exchanged a look, fully aware that this was possibly the most ridiculous call we'd ever make to a GP, and that we were lucky he happened to be one of the better-mannered. He was out to lunch. The woman decided to go back to the medical centre herself.

After she left, Mirjana sat down (to lower her blood pressure, I suspect). I deleted the script and peeled the label off the box of Ramace 2.5 mg.

Half an hour later the woman returned with a new prescription. It read "Ramace 2.5 mg". I retrieved the box I had just put back onto the shelf and processed a script that was identical to the one I had just deleted. She left happily. I suppose that was all that mattered.

God, I took ages telling that story.

Day Twenty-eight

2008-08-25T22:26:00.002+10:00

I've just finished reading Chasing Harry Winston. I suspect it might be a result of more serious themes of The Kite Runner and My Sister's Keeper, but I thought it was absolutely shit. I might as well have been reading some random person's Livejournal.

In a nutshell, the book was about three friends:

Leigh: Has been dating most-perfect-guy-imaginable for a year. Has excellent job. Is unhappy with life.

Emmy: Has just been dumped by boyfriend of five years. Serial monogamist. Hugely depressed about break-up.

Adriana: Sexy Brazilian babe. Unemployed socialite and high-class slut living off her wealthy parents.

Leigh ends up editing a famous author and then sleeping with him. She breaks up with her boyfriend and ends up with said author. Emmy travels the world for her job and fucks any man she could get her hands on. One of them who she thought had rejected her seeks her out and expresses interest. Her ex shows up at her apartment the day before her thirtieth birthday and begs for her to come back, only to be kicked out. Adriana ends up in an open relationship with a famous director and writes columns for Marie Claire.

Riveting stuff.

Day Twenty-eight

2008-08-25T19:01:00.002+10:00

According to yesterday's Sun Herald, the body type that appeals most to men is an elongated torso and shorter legs. I was torn between laughing at the mental image of an orangutanesque woman this description generated and feeling self-conscious because I suspected I fell into this alleged but highly doubtfully desirable category.

If my mother was on cue she'd be yelling that I am perfectly proportioned, and that any scrunching of jeans around my ankles are a consequence of my petite stature and nothing else.

I'm not so optimistic.

Tomorrow is Jez's birthday, which means the agonising 6 days of being technically one year older are very nearly over. For some stupid reason I wanted to buy him a present. Stupid because we've already accepted the fact that we're just not present-giving people. And for good reason, because I went home empty-handed having failed to come up with anything plausible.

We browsed Myer this morning, passing the toys section in which a giant Lego masterpiece of the Eiffel tower stood. I took this idea into enough consideration to go back after work and check the price. No box of plastic is worth $395.

After that idea was out I was completely lost. Clothes? The boy is too picky. Books? I have $200 worth of new books sitting at home. Cologne? Worst idea ever. Underwear? Very much needed but hardly something I could pull out in front of his parents tomorrow night. I had a wild thought of buying him a jumbo box of Mrs. Field's cookies, except of course I'll be the one eating all of it.

Well, better to give nothing at all.

When I walked home from the station I caught a whiff of a deliciously familiar scent. It was the smell of walking to the sandwich place after gym for a mango shake. God that was good mango shake. I'd bite the top of my straw until it was flat, so that the liquid flowed through it slowly and I could savour it while I walked around Coles shopping for the chocolate that would soon enough cancel out all the calories I've just burnt.

ANTM Winner a Fatty

2008-08-23T21:46:00.003+10:00

So the winner of ANTM cycle 10 was Whitney. In the fashion industry she's a plus-size model. On the street she's probably thinner than most.

There's a store in Westfield called Big City Chic that stocks clothes for erm, fuller-figured girls. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is the purpose of its existence not to provide clothes for women whose physiques will not permit them to fit the standard size range? So why is the model on their posters a size 10? She might be sneered at in a Oxford St boutique, but she'll still be swallowed whole by a size 14 dress.

People in the fashion industry have a warped interpretation of physical size. Someone needs to show them what fat is. The man I couldn't push a trolley past in the supermarket because he took up three quarters of the isle. The woman who tried to sit beside me in a two-seater on the train and couldn't, even when I flattened myself against the wall so that another two of my friends could have shared my seat comfortably. Manuel Uribe Garza. Even without going to these extremes, the average girl in the Krispy Kreme queue is bigger than BCC girl or Whitney.

I can see this is going to turn into a fat-bashing. I'll stop. After eating God-knows-how-many squares of Cadbury crème brûlée today I'm joining the fatties soon.

I had an appointment with the dentist at 9:30 this morning. Partly due to trackwork and mostly due to sleeping in, I missed it. I was secretly happy to be excused from the saline rinse, the metal tools, the suction and not to mention the fluoride gel at the end. Whoever told me it tasted like strawberries had obviously never eaten one. Jez and I ended up booking our next appointments at the same time, so we suffer together. Sweet, yes?

With nothing to do in particular, we played Mariokart over croissant and coffee, and then visited Bat-dog at Pets Paradise. Bat-dog is a black labrador who has shiny fur and does nothing but sleep. The first time we saw him, he was slumped near the front of his cage, his eyes open in a sleepy slit. Jez put his hand under Bat-dog's chin. Bat-dog simply rested his weight on Jez's fist and continued to doze. A few minutes later he decided he was thirsty. He crawled over to his bowl, looked at it with sleepy eyes, and then very slowly and very deliberately stuck out his tongue and licked the side, all the while slumped all over the place. We couldn't stop laughing.

Oh and I forget why we named him Bat-dog. But yes, we're still naming pets that aren't ours. I remember listing a few of them many months ago. There are a few new additions:

Annie: This one I named after myself in a fit of narcissism. Annie is still a kitten. She's pure white, except for her tail, which is striped with caramel. She belongs to the house on my way to the station that is the home of several other cats that have been there for as long as I can remember.

Alice: A tiny cream-coloured pomeranian and one of the cutest puppies I've ever seen. She's still in Pets Paradise, last time we checked. Named by Jez after Alice Cullen.

Mocha (pronounced "mo-chah", not "mo-kah" like the coffee): Cross of shih-tzu and something else. Tiny. Black and brown. Hyperactive and has body shaped like a jellybean. Recently sold from Pets Paradise hopefully to someone tolerant of crazy dogs. Jez named him.

The past two nights have been spent celebrating our birthdays. Last night we ate at Prego's with Jez's parents, who for reasons beyond my understanding decided to give me the present of a $250 Myer gift card. I contemplated using it to buy Jez something for his birthday, but later decided that we'd use it on something worthwhile that both of us could use. At the moment I honestly can't think of anything that could satisfy these conditions.

I hate buying make-up. Mainly because quality make-up is expensive, and because they come in such measly little containers. Unfortunately I had a past of experimenting with rather horrible looks (i.e. blue liner, purple liner, purple lipstick, don't ask), and own a stack of cosmetics that I haven't yet thrown out only because of the price at which they came. I've now learnt to stick with the staples. MAC Powerpoint liner in duck. MAC SPF 30 concealer shade 31. Maxfactor Masterpiece mascara. I'm trying to wean off blush, but I'm just so goddamn pale without it.

Just when my make-up bag is at its lightest, some genius shows me a brow trick. I've managed to live with the fact that my eyebrows look like they came from two different faces, until the girl who waxed my eyebrows yesterday made them (gasp) identical. She used a little tub of brown powder that looked like, but she assured me wasn't, eyeshadow.

Later, I wandered around first-level Myer waiting for Jez to finish work. I stopped at the Benefit stand and was immediately spotted by the make-up consultant who gushed on and on about what an adorable little pixie I was. And what lovely eyebrows I had. It was the first time, in my entire life, that anyone paid me compliment on possibly the ugliest feature of my face, except for my nose, of course. I made myself a promise, right there an then, to start taking proper care of my brows. And to never let Jez fluff them up with his lips. Ever. Again.

The Benefit lady explained to me that the little compact contained a wax designed to flatten unruly eyebrows. I should have known that nothing in the world was going to tame my spiky spikes. I imagined Jez's face if he had witnessed her frustrated expression as she attempted, in futility, to make my brows lie flat.

Day Twenty-three

2008-08-20T21:51:00.005+10:00

I tried on a skirt today. It was from Forecast. I haven't set foot in Forecast for a couple of years because I've been busy paying hefty amounts of money for clothes I could have bought from lowlier places for one fifth of the price. Price-tags do curious things to me. I suspect it's purely psychological that out of a sale item and a non-sale item, I always pick the latter because it's more expensive. Then again, I have a funny knack of entering a store and walking straight to the priciest dress on the rack.

I suppose my shopping habits also factor in my taste, which is summed up in two words - cream, and pretty. There's one store that does cream and pretty excellently. The QVB Kaviar girl and I are almost friends now. She looks like Nicole, by the way. Fun fact.

I hardly ever shop anywhere else. I'm completely over Witchery save accessories. Sportsgirl has gone off on a hippie tangent that I find aesthetically annoying. Kookai seems to have retained the same stuff for the past 10 months. I haven't been to Cue since I stopped properly presenting myself at work. I can't afford what I like from Myer. I'm scared of further crippling my savings by going to DJ's. I train myself to avoid diverting my eyes from my objective (Cheap Monday jeans) when I'm at The Strand.

Sometimes I pop into random little boutiques. Sometimes I comb through every thread in SES. Most of the time I don't buy anything because of one of three reasons. One, it sky-rockets out of my price range. Two, it looks as cheap as it is. Three, it doesn't fit.

The Forecast skirt fell into the third category. It was very cute. Didn't reflect its measly price of $30. Except once I had it on, there was something very off. The shape was all wrong.

"It's a high waisted skirt, by the way." The shop assistant called from outside the cubicle, as if she had read my mind.

"Oh," I said. It was sitting on my hip.

So I guess I saved $30 today. By this logic I guess I also saved $50 by not taking the taxi home, $50 by not dining out at Wagamama, $170 for denying myself hair treatment, and $2 for ignoring the hobo on the side of the road. That adds up to $302! High five.

Today is my birthday. I don't really want to think about it because for the next six days, I'm 21 and Jez is 20. Yuk, I just typed that out loud.

Day Twenty

2008-08-17T08:47:00.000+10:00

My Jez is a drug.

He goes in eMIMS.

Day Fourteen

2008-08-11T19:24:00.002+10:00

It's annoying the way that something that's always there disappears the moment you decide that you need it.

What I need and can't, at the moment, seem to find, is a depressed person. On an average day I trip over myself trying to avoid script after script of Zoloft or Prozac or Efexor or Lexapro. Yet when I'm actively seeking a sad panda, they decide to scoot.

Even if I manage to find one, the task isn't easy. The tricky bit isn't to find just a patient dosed up on tricyclics or SSRIs, but to find one that's willing to talk about it. You'd probably be more at ease telling me why you have glaucoma than why you've become so miserable that you feel the need to modify your neurotransmitters.

Then there are questions involving treatment, which will inevitably involve adverse effects, which broaches another sensitive area - weight gain. Antidepressants will turn you into a fatty, which raises the complication that even if you're no longer brooding over whatever made you turn to them in the first place, you now have to worry about your colleagues rubbing your chubby belly for good luck.

So I braced myself for a series of rejections, only to spend six hours handing out Amoxil.

Day Twelve

2008-08-09T20:22:00.002+10:00

I'm not sure why, but lately I've been obsessing over clothes.

I have an outfit in mind. I haven't a clue where the idea came from, but it involves a dressy white halter and a canary yellow pencil skirt.

You say ew. I say hmm.

Day Twelve

2008-08-09T16:33:00.003+10:00

You have to listen to this. You have to.

I don't find it funny. I find it frightening.

Day Ten

2008-08-07T16:51:00.004+10:00

I wore my Wrangler tee today. People were surprised. But you never wear t-shirts! They said.

This afternoon I bought another one. I was strolling around Centrepoint with Jenny. The shirt was cheap, but the catch was that the only size left was 12. That's ok, Jenny said. You can wear it loose. Loose, I said. Really. It reminds me of a Sass & Bide top, she added. Well, when you put it that way ...

I bought it. It hangs off me like a poncho, but like, I'm wearing it like, loose. Like.

I usually avoid shopping at GP because their kooky labels are poor in quality and ridiculous in price. But hungry for more tees, I took a look around today and found a pair of Tsubi or Ksubi or whatever jeans for $150. High-fived myself.

It's no longer possible for me to caught within ten metres of Starbucks without a hot chocolate in my hand. This afternoon I bumped into my best friend from year 7, of all people. Only last week I bumped into my bestie from year 6. Ex-BFF fest.

Her name's Vivienne. She once made fun of me for eating a pastry that in her opinion looked like a penis. That's about all I remember of her.

She was at Starbucks today with her boyfriend. She looked different. Older. He was dark. Even darker than my boy. If that's even possible. We stood around awkwardly and I could nearly hear their brains ticking down the seconds until their coffee is served and they could leave.

Day Seven

2008-08-04T18:44:00.005+10:00

I have a girl on my MSN contact list.

She's a masters student who did her externship (or whatever the equivalent is in the masters course) at Alpha pharmacy.

Anyway, I don't talk to her. I never have. Yet I have her on my list.

You know when some people send you a message that goes "Hey! I just saw a photo of you on the internet! Is this you?" and post a link. Presumably when you click that link you computer dies.

Well, this girl sends me about ten of those messages a day.

I've been ignoring them for as long as I can remember, but today I decided to reply.

I said, Zara, you're a fucking virus.

Day Six

2008-08-03T18:35:00.005+10:00

Meow.

Day Six

2008-08-03T16:53:00.002+10:00

Dear Professor Chan,

I found the Andreasen apparatus part of today’s lecture a little difficult to understand. Could you please help me with a few questions?

1. I just wanted to confirm that the purpose of the apparatus is to measure particle size
2. What is the purpose of evaporating the samples after they’ve been collected?
3. Samples are drawn every 10 minutes. When do we stop taking samples?
4. How are the larger particles that have settled to the bottom measured?

Thank you!

Annie Dou

I missed the next PPF lecture because I called Jez in the morning.

Here's Kim Chan's reply.

I’ve addressed your questions in the lecture this morning, were you there?

Pwnd.

Day Five

2008-08-02T11:53:00.002+10:00

You know you've bought too many cream-coloured clothes when they take up more than a third of the width of your wardrobe. And that's not even including the two dresses your friend hasn't returned.

What can I say, they make me pretty.

I think that by the time I fell asleep, it was very legitimately morning.

I'm drooling all over my pillow when my phone starts to vibrate. I ignore it. Probably a SMS.

It keeps vibrating. I squint at the screen. Jez is calling me.

We talk. It's 8:00 am. He declares he wants to sleep some more. I can't agree more because I've probably slept for no more than fifteen minutes before he woke me up.

"Can I call you when I wake up?" I ask.

But I don't, because I keep sleeping. And my phone starts to vibrate again.

We talk again. We hint at each other that we want to see each other in person. Jez hints that he wants more than just to see. But neither of us are brave enough to make a decision.

He's sick again. I'm tired of telling him that he should recover completely before going to the gym. He's tired of hearing it. So he's going to the gym today.

I'm fighting every urge to take care of him. He didn't have dinner last night. I want to bring him lunch, I want to hug him, wrap my arms around him when he sleeps, make him hot chocolate. But I'm afraid, because our relationship is too delicate. We'll hug. He'll try to kiss me, expecting me to be responsible for stopping him. I won't be able to. So we'll kiss, we'll lie in bed and talk until he starts to edge his hands under my clothes. He'll think I'm responsible for stopping him. I won't.

And afterwards we'll play X-Men. And order self-designed pizza.

Someone stop me, please? I think I'm walking out of the house.

Day Four

2008-08-02T03:03:00.010+10:00

I realised that Jez had SMS'd me earlier and asked if I was still out. I wonder whether it was out of concern for my safety or something else.

Safety. A sober Derek drove four of us home. We left Croydon at 1:00 am. I stayed up because I was determined to blog. Breaking Dawn breakfast isn't tomorrow. It's Monday.

Something else. I drank less than the volume of liquid I'd be allowed to carry on an airplane. The type of recklessness that takes place in bars or clubs or vodka bottles is not the type I'm after.

I feel kind of silly. Well, who wouldn't at this time of day, fighting sleep only to record in writing two little pieces of the colossal puzzle of themselves they've put together.

I had a sudden realisation.

If you draw a line representing the duration of our relationship, and place a dot on each day we spent time together, there would be a scatter of dots around both ends, and a shitload of them in the middle.

Back when we used to keep a date journal, I paid attention to the lengths of the intervals between each entry. There were on average one entry per week. Two at the most. Gradually, the intervals shortened, until they didn't exist anymore.

During a couple of months, Jez and I saw each other seven days a week. I stayed over on Friday nights. Some saturdays. When I found out that I couldn't go to camp with my friends, I camped in his room for five days straight. Being inseparable doesn't necessarily mean being unseparated. Not that I was aware of it then.

This is all very embarrassing. Embarrassing because I had the nerve to go to such lengths to deceive both my parents and his. Embarrassing because I permitted myself to do things my conscience struggled against. Embarrassing because I might not be sinking in misery now if I had any self-control then.

It was reckless and irresponsible. When two people share the same home, it's natural for them to spend time together everyday. We were getting ahead of ourselves. We hadn't reached that stage, yet we wanted to live like we had. We forced everything else to accomodate what we wanted. We neglected our families, our friends and ourselves for each other. I should have forseen the consequences. I should have known that we had made a ticking bomb.

On many Friday nights I dreaded going home with Jez. I loved the satisfaction of knowing that we could be together til morning. I loved the warmth of his bed. I loved the warmth of him. But I knew that it was the wrong place to be. I never stopped myself because I craved Jez more than I wanted to be responsible.

I remember days when I'd sit blankly at home, wondering why I have so few close friends and realising that having spent all of my spare time with Jez, there was never room for anyone else. I never tried to change, because I thought it was a fair sacrifice.

At times when I felt miserable, I went to Jez. He made me forget everything else.

It was already too late when it finally hit us. We gave up sleepovers. We spared more time for our families. But there was no reversing a bomb that had already gone off. It was a brave attempt. An idealistic plan that failed abysmally.

It failed because we had already formed the habit of always having each other around. Breaking that habit did funny things to us. The relationship started to feel out of place. I became moody. Jez became elusive. More problems stemmed from this one, and they never stopped until we did.

I can only speculate, but I'm certain that I've pinpointed the beginning of our demise. It wasn't when we broke the habit. It was when we formed it.

I think back to the earlier months. They were blissful. I remember the time when I stuck post-its all over Jez's room, hiding them inside drawers and under book covers, laughing at him as he tried and failed to find them all. Every one of them read "I ❤ Jez". I remember when I was sick and he appeared like magic on my doorstep with Deathly Hallows and chicken soup. Later on, it became a sad memory when I realised that was possibly the only time he showed up at my house without being asked to. I remember going swimming with him, nervous because he had never seen me in a bikini despite the fact that he knew every part of my body. I remember when we had dinner and Umi and forgot to eat because we never ran out of things to say.

Memories are dangerous.

Day Five

2008-08-02T01:46:00.003+10:00

Like chicken.

Flavour arises not only from the marinade, but from time. Let's say your timing is perfect. You put the chicken in the oven. Will it come out burnt to a crisp? Will it turn out wrong for no apparent reason? And what if it comes out exactly as you wanted? You savour it, piece by piece, until there's nothing left. What then?

Like an expensive dress.

It's outside your budget by a mile. You save up for it. You buy it. You love it. You treasure it. But what if you show up at the store to realise that you were too late? What if it had been bought by someone else while you were scraping up the funds? Would you feel comforted, knowing that at least you've saved some cash?

I don't have answers to any of these questions.

I may look like somebody had just died, but failing to make an effort for somebody's 21st is just disrespectable. I picked out a cream (of course) dress. Black stockings. Black flats. Leather jacket.

I had an inspiration to shop for boots, and somehow found myself at Scooter in Greenwood Plaza. Of course I didn't buy anything. Full-priced items are never in a hurry to go anywhere. There was time to contemplate whether forking out $200 could really be justified. I have doubts.

It didn't surprise me that I ended up at the pharmacy. It has become a place of solace. Don't ask me how. I like to find John or Mirjana there, because I could feel free to be a child. I don't deserve it, I never asked for it, but they spoil me. All we ever talked about was me. How I was doing at uni. Where I bought my new shoes. Whether my boyfriend was still sick. I didn't tell them about Jez. I had had enough of the world revolving around my life.

Mirjana would never let me vacuum. When I wiped dust off the dispensary shelves she actually thanked me. She'd praise me after each script I process correctly, even though it's one of the lowest, most basic expectations of a pharmacist. She never let me pay her when we share lunch.

When I arrived, she had already left. I found John in the dispensary.

"Mirjana would have been disappointed she didn't see you." He said.

I pouted. "I miss Mirjana."

"She misses you too. She talks about you all the time."

"What does she say about me?"

John laughed at the sight of my expression. "She says good things. She really likes you. We all do. You're a good worker."

I snorted. Yeah, right. But I wasn't stupid enough to contradict my boss on that one.

I sat down on the carpet, next to the unkempt boxes of Famivir. It had been awhile since I tidied the dispensary. I felt guilt, like a little worm, wriggling in my stomach. They treat me far better than I deserve. I couldn't figure out why. They even ignore the mistakes on my time sheet when I end up working less hours than I filled out. Even when I insist on correcting it.

So despite the fact that I spent over two hours dispensing, I made it clear to John before I left that I was not to be paid.

He just smiled. "Riiiiight."

The Pharmacy Practice tute this afternoon consisted of nothing more than a follow-up of our second-year turbuhaler technique research project and orientation around tables of lollies. I picked absent-mindedly at a yellow gummy snake and didn't hear a word our tutor said.

I planned to go to Jenny's house, where someone will pick us up to go to Alan's together. She was still out when I left uni, so I went to Burwood to kill time.

The less time there is left before my birthday, the harder it is not to think about it. I've already confessed to Mylinh and Jenny that I may not be in the mood to celebrate. They understood. Nevertheless I wasn't going to get away with it without at least a formal dinner with the girls. Rather depressingly, I strolled around ground floor and browsed for a dress. A LBD caught my eye. I scavenged for a 6 and retreated to the dressing room. It was a bit of a disaster. The top half hung loosely around my waist, and the hem flared out unsuspectingly, like a mini satin umbrella.

"I'll think about it." I told the sales assistant.

"Don't think too long," she said, "they're selling fast."

"Well then I definitely won't be buying it." You don't sell an item of clothing by telling the potential buyer that everyone else is already wearing it. You just don't.

I ended up another Jodi Picoult.

No boots. No dress. A book. Am I still me?

We arrive at Alan's reasonably early. Everyone seems determined to puke by the end of the night. I decide to drink to forget. However, by the time the first diluted Midori shot makes its way down my throat I realise that alcohol and I may never be friends again. I let myself catch the contagious drunken atmosphere instead. It wasn't long before I was desperate to leave.

Time was the right move for me and Jez. It has only been a couple of days, but I'm already beginning to figure things out. I feel like starting a new post.

Day Four

2008-08-01T10:00:00.002+10:00

My friend said she had never heard of another couple finding breaking-up so hard.

Well, you know the way it works. If something doesn't happen to anyone else and it's bad, it's bound to happen to me.

Like when I went to the doctors on Wednesday night and he actually resorted to Google because he had never had another patient with my condition. His pointer paused at the Wikipedia entry but I think he was too embarrassed.

It's okay, I said. I trust Wiki.

Day Four

2008-08-01T08:51:00.008+10:00

Doubt thou that the stars are fire;
Doubt though that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt that I love. - Shakespeare, Hamlet

I woke up horrified by the sight of my hair, made many hundred times worse by the fact that I now have a giant mirror in my room to confirm it.

After some grooming, however, it synchronised quite well with my pale skin. But despite the fact that it brought out my eyes, I'm beginning to regret the decision. High-maintenance isn't something I could easily afford. Financial burden aside, I haven't the mental capacity.

I have voices in my head that talk to me. There's my favourite one that quietly points out every fatty in the Krispy Kreme queue and makes me run as quickly as my legs could carry me in the opposite direction. There's the one that instructs me, however unsuccessfully, to study. There's one that tells me my top clashes with my skirt.

The one that has supernatural perception of boys told me that high-maintenance has never been so necessary. I've been wearing the same outfit who knows how many days in a row and my hair has been stuck as a bun on top of my head for so long that I forgot I had any. Until my stupid trip to the hairdresser's yesterday.

It's probably right. Looking one's best is nearly a prerequisite to being single (there I said it, I hope you're happy). Besides, even in the absence of any potential Edward Cullens there's always the off chance I'd bump into Jez. And if by good fortune he had remembered me being beautiful, that would probably go out the window the minute his eyes fall on my unkempt self.

Nevertheless it doesn't change the fact that I haven't the mental capacity. Being forced to look after my hair is already pushing it. And the fact that Phil and Alan's 21st tonight pushes me so far off the edge that I seriously considered not showing up. I haven't been eating. I'm skinny. My skin looks more tired than Mirjana does at the end of the day. I have a permanent look of misery plastered on my face. A pretty dress isn't going to fix any of that.

Jez had said some things to me last night. Mostly revolving around demanding that I stop talking to him and that he doesn't like me. I've already met my quota of psychological distress for the year. Nothing anyone says or does could make me feel any worse. As a result I found Jez's remarks nothing but irksome.

At night I lay in bed, fuming. There I was, tucking my hands under my arms to stop myself from calling him to demand an elaboration. There I was giving him exactly what he wanted. It didn't sit well with me, and despite the fact that I was uncontrollably sleepy, I reached for my phone in a spurt of recklessness and decided to ring him until he either answers or switches his mobile off. I justified my actions. Every damage has already been done. Everything has been lost. There was nothing left to be taken away from me.

The call was short. I had no idea what I wanted to say to him because I banked on him refusing to answer the phone. So I made something up. I have to tell you something, I said, knowing that I wouldn't have to think of what, because he'd never let me say it. I was right. Send me an email, he said, and hung up.

Oh and he said that he hated me.

I couldn't stay awake long enough to properly contemplate it. In the morning, I woke up feeling as though the anger had been brewing while I was unconscious. Nobody hates me, least of all the boy to whom I was once everything. And if he claims otherwise, I wanted to know why.

So in spite of myself, I called.

"What do you want."

We stumbled around with hostilities on his behalf morning-mumbles on mine. Eventually he told me what I had called to find out.

"I hate you," he said. "I've hated you for awhile. You're boring. You're immature. I dreaded seeing you. I dragged it on because I felt sorry for you. I hurt you because it was fun. I wanted to see you do all those immature things you do."

And even though it didn't make any sense at all, I believed him, at the same time marvelling his acting. Nobody could say "I love you" to someone they didn't love with such conviction. I wanted to yell at him to go to take up acting and slam the phone into the wall, but instead I pointed out that either he's lying now or he was lying ten minutes ago when he said he didn't want to hurt me.

He told me I can go figure out which one it is.

"It's not a puzzle," I said, "It isn't about what I want or don't want to hear, and it isn't about what would hurt me less or hurt me more. It's just the truth. Tell me the truth."

He paused. "Do you really want to know the truth?"

"Are you going to tell me the truth?"

"Do you want the truth?"

"Yes."

Okay, I thought. He's going to tell me he doesn't hate me, but that he doesn't have any other feelings for me either. He's going to tell me he has moved on. He's going to tell me he's interested in someone else. He's going to tell me he's gay with Craig. Sometimes the word "truth" sounds far more threatening than it has the right to, and every microsecond that passed before he spoke again my mind fabricated a hundred more horrifying possibilities. My certainty wavered. I wondered if I really wanted to know, after all.

His voice was suddenly quiet. "I love you. I love every part of you."

And then I started crying.

Letting something go to see if it comes back. This isn't really like that, is it.

More like, marinating the chicken before it bakes.

Day Three

2008-07-31T22:59:00.004+10:00

Whether Jez doesn't want any contact with me because he can't contain his feelings every time we talk or because he hasn't any more feelings for me I'll never know.

He might not realise it, but he has switched between the two stories so often that I've wondered whether they're both false, and that the true reason was something else entirely.

I was never a mystery. I don't want to be with Jez because I'm not a sadist, but all my feelings, my stupid, stubborn feelings for him remain exactly as they've always been. Except there's a little bit of hate, but that's only to be expected, isn't it?

I've read stories about people who have had one love they never managed to forget, and I can't think of anything more frightening than falling into this category because of Jez. Nevertheless I know that I'm young, and that there is probably a good chance I'll remember all of this some years (or months, I hope) into the future with a smile and not a hint of stabbing pain in my chest.

I've been in love before. At first glance it's obvious to me that I've never loved anyone like I loved Jez. But imagine breaking your arm. The pain is excruciating and you spend months wearing a cast, partially disabled and deprived of all of the two-armed activities you've taken for granted. Then once the cast is taken off and you're on a beach playing volleyball, someone asks you how painful it was to break a limb. You say, "it wasn't that bad", because you've already forgotten.

I rack my brains, but just like the distant memory of a broken arm, simply remembering the pain doesn't compare to actually feeling it. I can feel my love for Jez. I have only a memory of my love for Eddie. There were no parameters for comparison.

My friend had reminded me that Jez himself proved how easy, how spontaneous and how unexpected meeting someone could be. It's never where you look, and it's never what you'd expect. Right now I don't harbour the thought any longer than it takes to write this paragraph. Right now it doesn't matter to me.

It's funny that I miss Jez for such different reasons than I had before. For unexplained-but-most-likely-hormonal reasons, the last break-up left me craving sex. I missed every minute we spent in his bed, it drove me absolutely crazy. After the previous break-ups, I craved the little physical things. Cuddles. Kisses. Grinning at each other like a couple of silly idiots.

Right now, it hurts the most that I can't crawl into bed and call him to tell him about the trivial little things that happened during my day. I can't tell him about the most recent stupid thing I've done and make him laugh. We can't discuss NDS games. We can't make jokes at each other's expense. We can't talk ourselves sleepy about absolutely nothing at all.

I miss my friend.

Day Three

2008-07-31T20:07:00.003+10:00

"In the beginning, there was nothing at all but the moon and the sun. And the moon wanted to come out during the day, but there was something so much brighter that seemed to fill up all those hours. The moon grew hungry, thinner and thinner, until she was just a slice of herself, and her tips were as sharp as a knife. By accident, because that is the way most things happen, she poked a hole in the night and out spilled a million stars, like a fountain of tears.

Horrified, the moon tried to swallow them up. And sometimes this worked, because she got fatter and rounder. But mostly it didn't, because there were just so many. The stars kept coming, until they made the sky so bright that the sun got jealous. He invited the stars to his side of the world, where it was always bright. What he didn't tell them, though, was that in the daytime, they'd never be seen. So the stupid ones leaped from the sky to the ground, and they froze under the weight of their own foolishness.

The moon did her best. She carved each of these blocks of sorrow into a man or a woman. She spent the rest of her time watching out so that her other stars wouldn't fall. She spent the rest of her time holding on to whatever scraps she had left."

Two nights ago he mused that somehow I don't stop breaking his heart. Jez, what do you know about broken hearts?

At night I'd wait for my parents to retire into their bedroom to watch TV. Like I have a schedule for what time I could cry.

I have only so much time before I fall asleep, only to wake up next morning to the disappointment that I didn't quietly die during the night.

Day Three

2008-07-31T15:24:00.003+10:00

I'm walking around the house in an old tee.

It's been a long time, and I'm not sure whether this is going to end in regret.

I walked by the hairdresser, paused, and asked whether I could browse through their hair art magazines.

When the girl's scissors snipped off the first strand, it was too late to turn back.

I'm afraid of change. I like to buy sushi from the same place. I wear an old pair of ballet flats on the brink of falling apart. I can't bring myself to buy a bag that isn't tan, or a dress that isn't cream. I haven't taken off my ring.

But sometimes life changes whether you like it or not, and when it does, you could either struggle to keep everything the way you've always liked it, or you could let the current take you somewhere new.

When my friend and her boyfriend ended their long-term relationship, she got a tattoo.

I got a haircut.

And as if that wasn't anti-climax enough, it was a fringe. A subtle, sweeping fringe. When I got out of the hairdresser's chair there were about ten strands of hair on the floor. To somebody else, I could have walked into the salon, flipped through their magazines, threw my $20 onto the counter and left looking exactly I had before I went in.

I may have a tattoo one day, but as I always said - baby steps.

Day Three

2008-07-31T07:49:00.002+10:00

Amidst all this doom and gloom is the dim acknowledgement that my 21st birthday is slowly creeping up.

I try to push it out of my mind. My birthday is just less than a month away. I don't know how long it's going to be before I speak to Jez again but somehow I doubt it will be soon enough for him to wish me a happy birthday.

Jez's birthday is six days after mine. We made plans, changed plans, made them again, and gave them up. In the end he said he'd like to be with his family on his birthday. I was already starting to pout when he laughed and told me that "family" included me.

And now, we're trying not to speak to each other. It's so hard for us to be friends without succumbing to something more.

Somewhere up there, a greater being must be sitting on a cloud with a bowl of popcorn, laughing at the way two people try to untangle themselves from each other's lives.

Day Two

2008-07-30T22:13:00.001+10:00

At the end of the day, I'm sure of one thing - that every cell of my body is craving him.

Day Two

2008-07-30T21:12:00.006+10:00

It takes talent to describe this in words. Talent I may not have.

But I'll try.

I love Jez. So much that it can't be explained. So much that I can't breathe. So much that I would bet anything in the world that if I died right this moment and forensics cut open my chest, they wouldn't find a heart. My heart is with Jez. On the bottom of his shoe. Inside his trash.

I know that I can't be with him. Sometimes I thought I was a bit of a masochist for staying with someone who hurt me the way he did. Being with Jez was like drowning. Struggling towards the surface, gasping for air before being pulled deeper into the water. I think of all the nights I spent awake, all the hours I spent crying, and realise that I spent far more time being miserable than happy. I know I deserve more.

Yet I never left, because I knew that without him, I would be exactly as I am now. Bleeding. In pieces. I didn't stay with Jez because I wanted to be happy. I stayed with Jez because I was afraid to shatter. Jez would have broken me, piece by piece. I wanted to stay a little more whole for a little longer.

Martin said in a fit of cliché that the rain is always followed by the rainbow.

How many times must it rain, before the rainbow loses its worth?

Martin said in a fit of cliché that time will heal my wounds.

And what good would time do if I bled to death first?

Day Two

2008-07-30T20:46:00.003+10:00

It was Bao's idea to eat as soon as we were out of the dispensary lab. I agreed because he looked so hungry that I worried I'd be eaten if we didn't get to a restaurant quickly enough.

It was my idea to go to Menya. One place that couldn't remind me of Jez.

The newly-reunited Mylinh and Derek joined us. All three pairs of eyes were on me. I wasn't sure whether I could talk about it - not because I wasn't comfortable confiding in them, but because I didn't know what to say.

From the random words that tumbled out of my mouth and the look on my face, they had the general gist of it.

Possibly due to their own recent issues, Mylinh and Derek had a lot of advice to give. I had never seem them to serious.

"It's all about compromise." Derek said.

Derek had compromised by allowing Mylinh to stay in touch with all of her male friends. The reason they broke up was his attempt at banning her from speaking to any boys at all.

I sighed.

Jez's compromise to me was to try to grow up my way - by staying together. My compromise to him was letting us go because my way crashed and burned.

This was the only solution, and once I explained it to them, they understood.

Derek bought a drink from Easy Way after dinner. Bao and I stood around while it was being made.

"Aren't you getting a drink?" He asked.

"No, it's too cold." I didn't want to remember the last time I felt warm.

"Cold-hearted." He teased.

How many times can a heart be broken before it turns cold?

"Ice-box." I said.

Day Two

2008-07-30T19:58:00.002+10:00

While the Pharmacy Practice lecture was running, I was walking through the ticket barriers at Redfern station.

It was impossible to maintain my composure this time around. It was cold. I wrapped my arms around myself. I stopped outside the café that had closed down. I had no incentive to go to uni. No incentive to go back home. No incentive to do anything or be anything. I would have wanted nothing more than to simply fade away, right then and there.

I've always been afraid of death. Yet now I wish it would come and find me.

I wish my parents didn't love me. I wish I wasn't my grandmother's favourite grandchild. I wish my friends didn't care about me.

So that when I die, nobody would hurt.

I let dangerous thoughts take over my mind, imagining but never considering. Don't make threats you can't carry out, I'd always say.

I concentrated as hard as I could in PPF, hanging onto Hak-Kim Chan's every word.

I liked this afternoon's dispensing lab. There was so much to do that very little time was spared for idle thought. I was momentarily distracted by a conversation with Bao at the end of the practical about Romano Fois.

"I should tell him he looks like Edward Norton." Bao said, as we walked past the bench behind which Romano was marking off names of students in his group.

"Go!" I urged him. Romano had a right to know.

"I'm too embarrassed. Why don't you do it?"

"He'll think I'm flirting with him."

"What if I do it and he thinks I'm flirting with him?"

"You're a guy. That's far less likely."

"I think I should get to know him better first."

"How's that possible? You're not in his group."

We let the idea go for a brief moment, before I mentioned that Edward Norton was gay.

"Well then," said Bao, "what if he knew that Edward Norton was gay, and when I tell him he looks like Edward Norton, it'll be the equivalent of saying 'Sir, you look gay'?"

I rolled my eyes at him. "What if Romano Fois is gay too?"

"Then he'll definitely think I'm flirting with him, especially by telling him he looks like Edward Norton, who's gay."

I roll my eyes again.

"It's a lose-lose situation." Bao said.

Day Two

2008-07-30T09:35:00.003+10:00

A fresh wave of loss washed over me as I opened my eyes. I curled up in the corner and fought the urge to cry, or even move, because I didn't trust myself to stay away from the phone.

I knew that if I didn't push my feelings away- even for a little while - they were going to break me. The reason I couldn't make that decision, the reason Jez had once again made it for me, for both of us, is that I'm broken either way. How do I justify ripping a heart in two to make it beat stronger? I can't, because it's not beating anymore.

I allowed myself to skip the first lecture. It was Pharmacy Practice, and having read through the lecture notes twice I've concluded that apart from information on assessments which can be accessed from webCT anyway, there was nothing else of value.

Mylinh called at some stage, her voice full of concern. I choked back a sob and hung up. I don't want her to care, I don't want anyone to care.

I drifted back to sleep, dreaming dreams I shouldn't have been dreaming.

Tell me I'm a dream. Tell me I don't exist.

Day One

2008-07-29T23:54:00.004+10:00

"It was a crippling thing, this sensation that a huge hole had been punched through my chest, excising my most vital organs and leaving ragged, unhealed gashes around the edges that continued to throb and bleed despite the passage of time. Rationally, I knew my lungs must still be intact, yet I gasped for air and my head spun like my efforts yielded me nothing. My heart must have been beating, too, but I couldn't hear the sound of my pulse in my ears; my hands felt blue with cold. I curled inward, hugging my ribs to hold myself together. I scrambled for my numbness, my denial, but it evaded me.

And yet, I found I could survive. I was alert, I felt the pain—the aching loss that radiated out from my chest, sending wracking waves of hurt through my limbs and head—but it was manageable. I could live through it. It didn't feel like the pain had weakened over time, rather that I'd grown strong enough to bear it."

There was really no other way I could have put it.

Holding myself together, because I have motive and hope.

And at the end of this, even if my hope stabs me in the heart, at least it would have made me strong enough to bear the pain.

Day Thirty-one

2008-07-29T18:22:00.005+10:00

I didn't really want to work today, but you know, sick people need me.

A physiotherapist wanted a box of Voltaren Rapid 25, which he has recommended to a patient with achy knees. He asked me whether the patient's medications are likely to interact with Voltaren, and handed me a piece of paper on which "Avapro, Diaformin, Lovan" was written.

Embarrassingly nothing came to mind. For extra caution I double-checked with eMIMS. Two interactions: diclofenac with irbesartan, and diclofenac with fluoxetine. Both with good documentation and high severity. Somebody has been away from uni for too long!

Prompted by eMIMS, I explained to the physiotherapist that NSAIDs may cause water retention, leading to an increase in blood pressure and are therefore contraindicated with antihypertensives. In addition, fluoxetine increases the risks of GI bleeding associated with NSAIDs.

I recommended topical diclofenac instead since the site of inflammation is the knee - deep penetration isn't required. The physiotherapist was impressed. I high-fived myself.

A few hours later I cancelled out my brainy moment by attempting to make hydrogen peroxide ear drops and spilling the liquid all over my hands, the bench, and unfortunately, the script. In my defence, the thick neck of the poison bottle was definitely not designed for pouring, and our shop was completely devoid of micropipettes.

Freda seems to be a magnet for technology troubles. The printer, for one, jams repeat forms only when she's around. I have absolutely no idea why. LOTS has crashed on her more times over the past week than it has on Mirjana in the past 9 months. This could be related to the fact that when the mouse pointer turns into a hourglass for a second too long she'd click around the screen like mad.

I feel awful for Freda for the stress she's under in filling Mirjana's efficient shoes, not to mention being constantly scolded by Harsha for mostly things out of her control. I questioned her sanity a few months ago when she decided to give up being a pharmacist in favour of cleaning shelves and sorting stock. Now I completely understand her decision. There have been too many changes in pharmacy since her time (namely the introduction of the computer) and she's not adapting. On a typical day at least 90% of the scripts are processed by me - the 10% she dispenses would arise from when I'm in the toilet.

Don't get me wrong. Freda's completely capable of getting work done, just not nearly fast enough to meet the demands of cranky suits on lunchbreaks, and not to puff my own pastry or anything but my speed is possibly the only reason John's still keeping me. Or he could still be waiting for that massage.

Jim on the other hand is now extremely pleased after personally witnessing me convince three consecutive customers into generics.

Ismat is back at work, though her dissatisfaction with her job is becoming more apparent as she plans to come with me to uni on Thursday for an information lecture on pharmacy at USyd. I called about fifty people for her, requesting information on prerequisites and admission. One of these people was Narelle Da Costa, who saved my arse at the beginning of the year by helping me pre-enrol several weeks past the due date. I wanted to thank her, but she probably wouldn't have remembered me.

Glenda is stuck in a permanently foul mood, having been unsuccessful at finding a satisfactory apartment after being instructed to move out of her current unit in three weeks. I've spent hours browsing real estate sites for her, only to come up with the same two listings time and time again because her locations were strictly restricted to Homebush. Exasperated, I shouted at her to be a little more open-minded or face sleeping under newspapers in Central park. Though in fact it wasn't her, but her policeman son who was deadset on being within 5 minutes driving distance from work, church and girlfriend. I told her to smack him.

I've tried not to be overenthusiastic about uni. Going overboard during the first week has always led to completely burning out by the second. That being said I feel somewhat inadequate with absolutely nothing to study. Reading through yesterday's introductory dispensing lectures for the second time would be pushing it. PPF lectures are full of blanks that can only be filled during class. I've already completed pre-work for next week's dispensing lab. I don't have the textbooks to study medchem.

There's only PP left. Our first topic is going to be neurology and what choice do I have than to read the neurology volume of TG. I could play Final Fantasy but that particular activity is strictly restricted to bedtime. Partly because it puts me to sleep. In a good way.

Now excuse me while I jump into the shower and thaw my toes :(

Day Thirty

2008-07-28T19:02:00.002+10:00

"Hundreds were evacuated at Sydney University this morning after a bottle of acid with the 'potential to be explosive' was found.

NSW Fire Brigades hazardous materials specialists assessed the risk after a bottle containing perchloric acid was found 'fuming' in the pharmacy building on Friday." - SMH

Read the rest here.

I didn't have dispensing this afternoon therefore didn't stick around to be kicked out of the lab, but how interestings.

I had only the two-hour dispensing lecture this morning, and won the struggle against sleep. Not much to gloat about since it's only the first day, but we'll see.

Work was somehow duller than usual, with the exception of another row between Harsha and Freda. If it wasn't for the fact that Freida's cousin had passed away this morning and I cringed on her behalf for having to put up with Harsha's yelling, I would have been grateful for the entertainment.

The phone has been ringing continuously since before I arrived, most of the callers being Freda's family and friends either sending their condolances or needing comfort. Freda looked constantly on the verge of tears, and I felt completely helpless and frustrated with myself for not knowing what to say or do. When I came to work sobbing two days after breaking up with Jez, she hugged me and made me tea and made it all feel so natural. I put my arm around her awkwardly. As expected, the gesture made her eyes more teary, and I looked away.

A little after midday Harsha was found arguing with a customer at the cosmetics stands. The story was that the woman had bought two discounted giftpacks of Dr. LeWinn's skincare products in April, and wanted to return one of them because she claimed to have experienced skin reactions. The problem was that she had already used up half of the contents, and that April was several months ago.

Harsha was naturally adamant on refusing refund. The woman was rude enough to point the finger at everyone she could, blaming Glenda for "forcing" her to buy the products, which was obviously ridiculous since none of us ever remember Glenda holding a knife over the woman's throat instructing her to sign her EFTPOS receipt.

The argument dragged on for some time before the woman demanded to speak to the manager. John was busy fixing Kirribilli's dysfunctional computers and the only available staff that outranked Harsha was Freda, who in my opinion doesn't really outrank her at all. Harsha was all for kicking the woman out of the store, but since she looked like she'd rather eat mascara than leave, Freda took on a different strategy. She took back the products and receipts without giving a refund, and assured the woman she'll call the Dr. LeWinn's rep as quality issues is their responsibility. After confirming that we'll call her as soon as we could, the woman left.

In my honest opinion Freda handled the situation quite well, but my opinion (or anyone else's) doesn't mean a bean when Harsha makes up her mind that Freda went about it completely wrong. I stood awkwardly on the side as the two of them bickered, finally running off to stand behind the front register with Glenda, who like me, agrees with Freda and who like me, knows that it was completely futile to try to convince Harsha of that fact.

The atmosphere became frosty after that. In addition to the bloody abysmal weather there wasn't much incentive to stay. On a sudden impulse to read up on steroid hormones I announced that I was leaving at 5:00.

I fell deeply asleep on the train and dreamt of Jez. He wore a disgusting red flannel shirt. We were somewhere sunny. He closed his eyes and leaned over to kiss me. I kept my eyes open. His nose almost touched mine when I jerked awake. It was Lidcombe, and I realised with a stab of annoyance that I had forgotten to bring keys, and that it was much too early for either of my parents to be anywhere near home.

Once I stepped off the train the cold started to eat me. I decided to seek refuge in the deli while my parents made their way home, but it was closed. There were two options - sit at the station and freeze, or walk home. I walked as fast as I could, knowing that there was no point because once I reach a stop in front of my house, the cold will start to eat me again. The wind picked up as I turned a corner, and I could feel neither my feet inside my ballet flats nor my ears which thanks to my stupid choice of hairstyle were overexposed. There was a car parked smack across the middle of the footpath. I visualised what I wanted to do to it and acknowledged an additional downfall of forgetting my keys. My teeth started chattering. I coughed. A dog somewhere barked in return.

I stood on the front porch with my DS. Cid blasted someone with a flameball and I wished I was on the receiving end of it.

Day Twenty-nine

2008-07-27T18:52:00.002+10:00

I'm not really a masochist, but when I'm not in the middle of some mind-engaging activity I sit and think about pain.

Sometimes I force it upon myself in some bizaare attempt at contrast. This happens when everything's marshmallow and chocolate but I'm moping around like a sadmonkey. And it never really works.

Other times it creeps into my mind and makes me uneasy. I'm not sure if it's a good idea to be thinking too deep into any psychological quirks because my head is a dark little place I should never venture into alone, but I never listen to my own advice anyway.

Jez knows I get mini panic-attacks at often random times and for little reason. Death haunts me. Ever since I was a little kid I've been terrified of the notion that everyone will die at the end of their life. My mum has convinced me, when I was ten years old, that they'll soon invent immortality pills. Now there's something more dangerous than believing in the tooth fairy.

I sometimes wonder, half amused and half anxious, whether I'll end up in a padded cell one day when these irrational fears get out of hand. Apart from acceptance (working on it!) there are no other solutions. I don't mean to offend but religious faith to me is pretty much on the same level as Santa Claus and Easter Bunny, and the idea of chomping on antipsychotics makes me feel weak.

Other times I think of Jez. Or myself. I can't even tell us apart anymore. I'm happy now, but memories of the worst of it are still picking on me. It's hard to say whether, if it happens again, I'll be less hurt because I'm already numb, or I'll be more hurt realising how much pain and effort had gone to waste. Stronger or more fragile? Who the hell knows.

If I'm so afraid of death, what does it say about someone if I would die for them?

Day Twenty-nine

2008-07-27T17:40:00.003+10:00

My phone rang as soon as I stepped into work.

Shaun is a friend of a friend who I have met once. Apart from matching name to face he has absolutely no idea who I am, yet this hasn't stopped him from periodically calling me over the past four weeks. I always said I was busy, and when he asked whether I could call back when I wasn't I told him I was likely to be busy for a very long time.

When it comes to signals, boys aren't perceptive at all.

I picked up. "I'm at work."

"On a Sunday?"

"Yes."

"What time do you finish?"

"Three."

"Me too."

"I'll meet you after work."

"I'm going to the city."

"Oh okay, do you know where Hyde Park is?"

Ha ha. Do I know where Hyde Park is. Last time I was there I fed my heart to the possums.

"Yeah, but I'm going stationery shopping at Town Hall."

"Do you know where Woolworths is?"

"Yes, but I'm just buying a few things and then going home."

"I'll meet you outside Woolworths?"

When it comes to signals, boys aren't perceptive at all.

Eugene sat around playing Mariokart and I sat around nibbling on a lunch I had no reason to buy. It was roasted duck salad. One third duck, one third iceberg lettuce, one third onions. Negligible amount of basil. I picked at the basil since I hated everything else.

Work dragged on. I was partially amused to realise that my shop-alliance has gradually shifted from Kirribilli to Greenwood. Several hundred posts ago I was bitterly whining about Harsha, and now I'm trying to cook her curry cabbage.

I decided to shop for my uni things at Myer, mostly because I had no idea where else there was to go. I walked past Woolies without stopping. Shaun will just have to take the hint.

I paused at the Newsagent to buy a notebook and pens. Before I made it any further I remembered Kinokuniya was above me somewhere. I spent the rest of the afternoon there, picking up a highlighter, an A4 holeless binder, a notebook for no other reason than it being pink and pretty, and a Miffy pencil case that was, like everything else, painfully expensive.

Before checking out I browsed the literature section. I had just finished Eclipse this morning and was itching for something else to read. Breaking Dawn was still more than a week away, and a book diet consisting only of Stephenie Meyer was probably unhealthy anyway.

In the end I lugged to the cashier The Traveller's Wife, My Sister's Keeper, a discounted copy of Vanity Fair and Chasing Harry Winston because I really, really couldn't help myself. I sacrificed my heap of unnecessary stationery for the books. Yes, even the Miffy pencil case.

I asked the sales assistant in passing whether Breaking Dawn will be available on August the 4th, and found out that pre-ordered copies will be available on August the 2nd, where a complimentary breakfast will be held celebrating the new release. The catch was that the breakfast was only available with a pre-order of the hard-back. The bigger catch was that it's going to take place at 6:00 am. I pre-ordered my book and signed up for the breakfast, making a mental note to convince my boy to come, because only Jez and Meyer combined could drag me out of bed at 5:00 in the morning.

Day Twenty-five

2008-07-23T19:21:00.003+10:00

I guess anyone stupid enough to wear a tiny skirt in the middle of winter deserves to freeze.

But I really like my skirt.

I summoned every ounce of wakefulness within me this morning to get up early and ensure that Jez gets a taste of my curry cabbage. I honestly didn't think it was that great, but if I didn't pass the burden onto someone else I'll be stuck eating it tonight.

So for the first time in forever I was early for work and it wasn't an accident.

Freida is still driving me nuts. And the fact that she's driving me nuts is driving me more nuts because none of her nutty quirks are intentional. I've decided not to let it bother me, because it's really my problem and she already has Harsha biting her head off for every crumb of pastry she drops on the kitchen counter.

On Wednesdays I have pharmacy practice training, because one of the mundane roles of the pharmacist is to decipher the mind-boggling scrawls on handwritten scripts that suggest either doctors dictate prescriptions to poorly-trained chimps or write scripts with the pen between their toes.

My training simply involves reading off John's increasingly messy Blackmores list. Sometimes it doesn't even look like English. Today's had a hint of Arabic.

Day Twenty-one

2008-07-19T20:48:00.002+10:00

Pharmacy politics.

The usual Saturday cast includes Mirjana starring as the pharmacist and Ismat as the assistant. Due to the former being on holiday and the latter still in very poor health, the two of them have been substituted by Freda and Harsha.

Unfortunately those two aren't nearly as chummy as the rest of us, so John made me mediator. I didn't do much mediating, as even those two joined forces against the pilgrims.

Honestly, I tried to be pleasant about WYD. I really did. The atmosphere's great; hearing train-babble of twenty different languages is refreshing; the smiles and laughter are contagious; the spontaneous and vociferous chanting causes only minor headaches; the pushing and shoving by these stupid fucking kids at least didn't result in anyone slipping off the platform ...

I couldn't lie to myself anymore. I felt a bit ashamed of myself, but whatever I say or do, being annoyed is beyond my control. I read mX last night and someone argued that being annoyed at pilgrims who push and shove people on the trains was irrational because it happens even when they're not here. Yeah, except being pushed and shoved by about twenty times as many people than usual kind of gets on my nerves.

Granted, most of them are very pleasant. Nevertheless the sheer number of them have caused enough difficulty walking from point A to point B. Point A being about two metres from point B. I laughed at myself the other day after running across the upper concourse of the train station to avoid being blocked off by a huge group of them about to stomp across my path. It bore too much resemblance to crossing a busy street with no traffic lights.

Today, however, pushed my patience over the limit. Red Mango is two stores down from the pharmacy. To buy coffee I trudged through a current of them heading in exactly the opposite direction. Nobody slowed or allowed me any room. At one point I stood pressed up against the wall to wait for the stampede to pass. Harsha wanted her coffee as hot as possible, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that by the time I made it back to work it was lukewarm.

Apart from that there were the bizaare requests from people who probably had no idea what a pharmacy was.

"Do you have any fog horns?"

"Can I buy a radio from here?"

"I'm looking for a whistle."

I was hugely relieved when the plaza was empty again. We picked up all the stock that they knocked over. There were two cans of deodrant that a couple of boys sprayed all over themselves without buying. I capped them and tried to make them look new.

The Red Mango boy is trying to talk to me now that he knows my name. I don't think smiling and saying hello when I pass the patisserie on my way to work screams "I want you bad", do you? Well Red Mango boy thinks it is. It's now a little embarrassing because whenever the Red Mango girls see me waiting for coffee they'd very conspicuously call him over. I'd very conspicuously grab my mocha and walk away as fast as my legs could carry me.

Under John's mundane orders I attempted to clean our doors. These sliding doors are stored completely out of sight when we're open, so I didn't really see the point of having them squeaky clean, unless John was looking to impress the night security guard, or trick thieves into walking into them.

After all of that I was exhausted. I spent 30 very enjoyable minutes with Jez and then 120 mind-boggling boring minutes with my parents and a friend's family at that one Chinese restaurant we just can't seem to escape.

On the way home I updated them about Jez. They were surprisingly understanding.

Day Sixteen

2008-07-14T21:31:00.003+10:00

His gold eyes grew very soft. "You said you loved me."

"You knew that already," I reminded him, ducking my head.

"It was nice to hear, just the same."

I hid my face against his shoulder.

"I love you," I whispered.

"You are my life now," he answered simply.

I think I just melted.

Day Sixteen

2008-07-14T19:53:00.002+10:00

I hurried out of the house not a second too soon to catch my train, only to realise that it was Monday and the money I had withdrawn to buy this week's train ticket had been spent on wedges last night.

I was late for work, but it was a quiet morning and I wasn't missed. The young man from Red Mango who's crushing on me served me a big cup of mocha for $1.20.

Nothing remarkable happened today, except for painstakingly preparing a Webster pack from a trillion blurry faxed scripts for a man who incredulously has compliance troubles even when his daily doses are pre-packaged for him in little blisters. There was some major confusion concerning his Diaformin, which came under three sets of different instructions - 80 mg once a day from the original script; 30 mg once a day from the repeat; and 30 mg twice a day from the faxed Webster schedule.

I also handed out about 4 packs of Postinor. After the last girl walked away I opened my mouth to have a whinge about how irresponsible it was for girls to have unprotected sex and then eat the morning after pill like candy, then closed it.

I didn't have lunch. At the moment everything fails to tempt me, except perhaps Hurricanes ribs and Bangkok Boardwalk rice paper rolls. Neither were available.

In the afternoon Eric brought us a big bowl of chocolate mousse. It was even better than last time, though the most we could manage was about a tablespoonful each. It was too rich.

Some time during morning John complained of a sore neck.

Are you any good at massages? He asked.

I'm okay. I said. I have massaged a total of three people, and each of them told me I was good at it purely out of love. So really, I have no idea whether I made them feel good or left them half-crippled.

So anyway, John asked me for a massage. I wasn't comfortable touching him, and it was hard to shake off the memories of the the last few massages I gave which all ended in sex. I asked him why his neck hurt. He said old age. I said I couldn't help him then.

And then it felt awkward for the rest of the day.

I never know what to say when people give me compliments. Men usually do it with their eyes so I can at least pretend to not notice. Women are more vocal. This afternoon a woman came in with a script, took one look at me, and launched into how gorgeous I was. She said I looked like a china doll. John has also been calling me that lately, and I suspect I might be extra pasty without make-up. Mirjana joined in and I ran off into the dispensary to take as long as I could fetching the woman's box of Karvea.

In the end I just ignore it, and stand there smiling like an idiot. What else can you do.

Day Fifteen

2008-07-13T20:43:00.000+10:00

Facebook continues to haunt me :(

Day Fifteen

2008-07-13T20:30:00.000+10:00

Kungfu Panda!

I'd elaborate on a lot of things, but nobody is interested other than the person who already knows it all.

Day Fourteen

2008-07-12T20:39:00.000+10:00

"When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end."

Day Fourteen

2008-07-12T19:49:00.003+10:00

After a lengthy mental debate I decided to go to Jez's house.

We planned to hang out and play the PS2 games we've bought and never touched.

Except Jez's parents had guests over. Lots and lots and lots of guests. I ended up chatting to the girl to whom he refers as his "crazy Catholic cousin". She was friendly and really, really chatty. I think I might have exceeded my voice quota for the whole week. 'Cause see, I'm still sick, and stuff.

At one point, Jez's cousin asks us how long we've been together. I look at Jez. He looks at me. He says "a year and a bit". I step on his foot.

When she turned around to make tea he licked Bearded Papa custard off my lip.

Day Thirteen

2008-07-11T22:27:00.002+10:00

As it happens today is Freida's birthday. She didn't disclose her age but rumour has it that she's about 60 years old.

I would have guessed 50, but people always appear younger to me than they actually are.

John, for example, asked me how old I thought he was with an air of fishing for a compliment. Glenda was within earshot and told me to say 40. John looked flattered. I said I was honestly going to guess 37. John said he's going to start paying me Sunday rates everyday.

In the end he wouldn't tell us his age, but I'm guessing it's hella higher than 37.

I took Jez to Hurricane's for dinner tonight. There was a 45 minute wait so we walked down to the harbour and snuggled by the water. We returned just on time.

We ordered full-rack pork ribs to share and garlic mushrooms. Jez had a beer and I had a Toblerone cocktail. After my third rib I couldn't take another bite, so Jez polished off the rest. I watched him eat. It was the cutest thing. I nibbled off all the sauce that was smeared across his face.

Day Twelve

2008-07-10T19:11:00.002+10:00

So here's what you do when you have a sore throat.

Gargle Betadine.

Don't buy anything from Blackmores.

Drink as much water as you can even if it nearly kills you to swallow.

Eat.

For severe pain take some S3 analgesics and fall asleep.

Savvy?

Savvy.

Day Twelve

2008-07-10T11:04:00.004+10:00

I'm a coward.

When I presented with a sore throat, Mirjana and Janet recommended Betadine gargle. It's basically iodine-based antiseptic. If you can't imagine how bad it must taste I'll just tell you that it's baaaaaaad.

Nevertheless I bought a bottle and gargled regularly in the bathroom. What I expelled looked worse than Jez's day-old vomit on hurricanes night.

It worked, but probably due to overworking myself while sick, my throat worsened and it stopped exerting its effect.

Mirjana then recommended Blackmores olive leaf extract. She was hesitant because natural remedies work just as badly for one person as it works well for the next. And knowing me, it wouldn't work. Not even pseudoephedrine works for me. I must be made entirely of efflux transporters.

Not surprisingly it had no effect whatsoever, tasted worse than Betadine, and as an added insult it had to be drunk instead of gargled, making the ordeal a number of times harder to swallow. Ha ha, swallow.

Nevertheless I took my doses like a good little girl, and made horrifying faces that scared little old ladies away.

Now that I'm home I haven't touched either. I'm scared. There's no pressure from anyone around me to drink that shit. But I know I must. Soon. Later. Tomorrow.

I dug through my mum's medicine drawer and found mostly sinus medication. There was a packet of Dolased, but with only 10 mg of codeine I'm not sure how much good that will do, especially when being Chinese means I have a 10% chance of posessing dysfunctional CYP2D10 enzymes.

Day Eleven

2008-07-09T23:22:00.002+10:00

This is what I get out of watching House.

Firstly, I'm pro-abortion. Mainly because bringing and raising a child into the world unwillingly and purely out of obligation doesn't do him or her justice, and partly because people can squibble over trimesters all they want but the clear line that marks the beginning of life is birth. By definition someone who isn't yet born isn't yet alive.

Secondly, I'm not sure whether I want to be remembered when I die. I'm too young to be remembered for anything. I just added that in because an old homeless man died in agony because he didn't want to be "just another patient".

Yeah.

Day Eleven

2008-07-09T23:05:00.000+10:00

Chlorpromazine can treat chronic hiccups.

Day Eleven

2008-07-09T22:24:00.002+10:00

Bilateral electroconvulsive therapy is indicated for depression unresponsive to other treatments. It makes you forget.

Yves Saint Laurent himself has undergone ECT. God knows what for.

Is there anything you'd like to forget?

Day Eleven

2008-07-09T19:21:00.002+10:00

"Go up his rear and get a smear! Which reminds me, I kinda feel like a bagel." - House

Day Eleven

2008-07-09T17:19:00.003+10:00

Pharmacy politics again.

A mini-meeting had already taken place since Freida's arrival. She's wonderful and I love working with her, but on more than several occasions she has made other staff want to eat their own heads.

Yesterday a young girl approached the dispensary asking for Digesic tablets. She didn't have a script, and we didn't have her details on file.

Usually no pharmacy would give a patient prescription medication without a script. The only exception is when a regular customer is desperately needing a dose of their regular medicine, in which case we'd process the script as an owing and trust that they'll bring the real one in within a week.

In yesterday's case, we didn't know the girl's medication history. We've never seen her before. Who knows if it's safe for her to take Digesic, and who knows if she'd come back or disappear off the face of the earth.

The girl asked Freida whether she could have a box of Digesic. She said she could call her doctor who would give us the dosage instructions. Freida spoke to the doctor and took down both his and the girl's details. We gave her the medication.

Mirjana was furious. On the piece of paper Freida gave us were the girl's name, address and mobile phone number, along with the doctor's name and mobile phone number. No landline. No address. No prescriber number. For all we know he could have been a pastry chef.

Everything else could have been completely made-up, and it probably was because she never came back.

Mirjana was still fuming over this incident when Freida self-prescribed a couple of Normisons and took them home this afternoon.

I have a feeling another Freida-based meeting is looming in the very near future.

In other news I'm being bullied into finally producing that portrait of John.

Not that I haven't tried. It's just that John's head keeps turning out like a hard-boiled egg, and I'm not in the mood to be fired.

I'm out of excuses. All this time I've been blaming the absence of finished-portrait on not remembering what he looks like once I leave work. Today he made me take a photo of his face. I now have a picture of my boss in my phone. Creepy.

Day Eleven

2008-07-09T08:17:00.003+10:00

A few pieces of news.

A couple of months ago I was in the bathroom, naked, about to jump into the shower. I stepped onto the scale and it read 53 kg.

I kept this disgusting piece of information to myself and have abstained from daily weigh-ins since.

Until today.

Recently I've been hearing a lot of comments about my lack of weight. I wondered whether my 53 kg days were finally behind me.

I had my coat on. I weighed 45 kg.

I haven't been 45 kg since before I met Jez.

I didn't have breasts before I met Jez, either.

Thanks and no thanks?

Day Ten

2008-07-08T19:17:00.002+10:00

Been working. Nothing exciting. Nothing new.

Day Eight

2008-07-06T12:06:00.003+10:00

You must must must watch this.

COOOOOOOKIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!

Day Eight

2008-07-06T11:18:00.001+10:00

I wanted to show off my dress, okayyyyy?

Day Seven

2008-07-05T22:19:00.000+10:00

I did a cover for this song from The Myth OST :D

Which I guess will take the whole night to upload.

Day Seven

2008-07-05T17:06:00.004+10:00

Okay guys. Today is the day I'm going to look into the mirror and say to myself, I've got something going on.

It has been 34 hours since I last used make-up and styled my hair. 42 hours since I last showered. I've been in the same dress, same coat, same shoes and same coat of mascara since yesterday morning.

Yet I still looked sex enough to be asked out. Like I'd say yes, but I walked away with a crapload more confidence. Win win.

Other than that nothing interesting has happened, except for the fact that the friend of my admirer came in with a bad rash resulting from chest-shaving; and I spent a good hour or so helping a lady with grotesquely deformed feet try on the same two pairs of shoes over and over and over again.

Last night was tiring. We spent a few hours at Ryan's for drinks and pizza, where I saw Ally and Lily for the first time since Eddie and I broke up. It was geek-fest. They brought in from work Maxolon and omeprazole to take before drinking to avoid throwing up later. I was like what the fuck.

Most thought I was Mike's girlfriend. Jenny joined us awhile later and we sat around chatting to the girls.

We did end up going to St James, although lining up took so long that we nearly gave up. It wasn't much fun after standing outside for over an hour in the cold, in stilettos. I couldn't drink much because my stomach could no longer accomodate volumes exceeding that you're allowed to take onto a plane, and I was exhausted. It was a bit of a blur, really. I remember bumping into Ray from my PP tute, out of all people. At some stage Bao and I accepted some Maxolon from Mike and Derrian. Bao called it moclobemide, and Mike who was already goneskies still somehow managed to correct him. It's metoclopramide you fucking dumbshit. Then Bao and I spent awhile figuring out what moclobemide was. It's a MAO-A inhibitor.

God that was messy.

Day Five

2008-07-03T14:49:00.001+10:00

Here is the hardly anticipated To Zanarkand.

Day Five

2008-07-03T13:19:00.002+10:00

Uploading piano covers. Here's one. To Zanarkand is still uploading.

Was on MSN talking to Marty not long ago, who sent me, wait for it ... sheet music for 600 A.D. from Chrono Trigger.

Amongst about a hundred other game songs I've never heard of.

600 A.D.!

I thought it would take me years to learn, but it isn't actually as hard as it sounds on audio.

I have a date with my grandparents today. It's going to be hard dragging myself away from the piano.

Day Four

2008-07-02T15:41:00.003+10:00

A man stared at me for 30 minutes straight on the train this morning. I tried staring back to shame him into looking away but keeping a straight face was too challenging. In the end someone blocked his view with their SMH but to my amazement he hobbled and shifted around until his right eye appeared in the gap between the edge of the paper and the adjacent passenger's shoulder. Impressive effort.

Work was easy peasy Japaneesy today and my shift was short. The only challenge was deciphering John's list of Blackmores stock. John is both a doctor and a pharmacist, so he both produces and interprets abysmally messy handwriting. It's like having his very own language.

Today I came across an item on the list that vaguely resembled "mother hen". It turned out to be "hair, skin and nails".

I felt okay today, but John still seemed to think I was mimimumu. My words not his. After checking my wrists he declared I still had sad puppydoggy eyes. He and Mirjana then started discussing whether they should buy me something.

We should give her a gift voucher, said Mirjana. She likes bags, said John. Let's buy her a designer bag. I was standing there listening, half amused and half afraid that they might be serious.

No, I'm fine, don't buy me anything, I opened my mouth to say. Except somehow the words got lost along the way and "how about a Macbook Air" came out.

Day Four

2008-07-01T22:29:00.001+10:00

Jez and I had a talk after work. It was nice.

Day Three

2008-06-30T19:21:00.001+10:00

Listen <3

Day Three

2008-06-30T17:39:00.003+10:00

It was mind-numbingly quiet today at work. I like to keep busy so I don't have time to think. Today I had plenty of it.

I felt like a queen, surrounded by colleagues ceaselessly offering me chocolate that I didn't want to eat.

John noticed my poopyfacedness.

What's wrong sniffles, he asks. I say nothing and look at him, poopyfaced. He cracks up laughing and tells me I look like one of those miserable-looking little toy puppies with the wobble-heads that you put in the back of your car. I pout. He laughs more.

I know! He says. How about you take my Macbook Air home tonight. I tell him that would have been an excellent idea about a week ago when Jez was still in the picture, creaming over the prospect of spending the night with it.

He then hands me a box of Zoloft with a serious face. Take three. He says. I can't keep a straight face.

The thought has actually occured to me. Not three tablets, but just the thought of antidepressants. That being said it was a very semi-demi-serious thought, if that. I know the mechanism of action of those things. I don't want them potentially up- or down-regulating my catecholamine receptors, thankyouverymuch. This I have to take like a man. A sexy man. With boobies.

Back to antidepressants though. Everyone seems to be on them. I asked Eugene whether it was as simple as walking into a doctor's office and saying "look, I'm feeling kinda sad, so gimme a tablet". He said it was and I'm not surprised. There are too many doctors who prescribe anyone anything and call a cough asthma.

For a good part of the day I couldn't stop being reminded of Jez.

Train goes past Lewisham in the morning. Mirjana sent me off to buy lunch from the pasta shop that sells the risotto that Jez liked that I once brought back for dinner. The whole plaza was reminiscent of us walking through it, me chirping away at "this is where I buy my shoes, this is where I buy my sushi, this is where I buy my lingerie. Giggle giggle". The fruit shop full of things we said we'll try one day. The harbour bridge we never climbed.

There are so many things I want to do. And in all honesty I don't want to do them with anyone else, because it was never their plan. It was ours.

I've never felt so wrong doing something right.

Day Three

2008-06-30T08:37:00.003+10:00

Pick a star on the dark horizon
And follow the light

You'll come back
When it's over
No need to say goodbye

Day Three

2008-06-30T08:29:00.002+10:00

We went to see Prince Caspian last night. The movie was too long for my liking, especially when I haven't seen the first Narnia movie. Prince Caspian was somewhat pleasant to look at, so I guess $12 well spent.

It was Mylinh, Derek, Jenny, Bao, Marty, and me. More appropriately put, Mylinh and Derek, Jenny and Bao, Marty, and me. Jenny spent most of the movie sleeping under Bao's jacket, and I spent most of the movie poking Marty and asking him who Ice Queen and the lion were.

By the time we were home it was past midnight. After some brief bickering with Jez over I don't even know what to call it, over talking, I guess, I went to bed. It was cute. It was like talking to an angry little boy.

Day Two

2008-06-29T18:26:00.002+10:00

Everybody else thought we were perfect, too.

Stop making me sad guys. Please.

ryuhou says (6:50 PM):
to be honest
ryuhou says (6:50 PM):
im sure thigns will work out
ryuhou says (6:50 PM):
i duno
ryuhou says (6:50 PM):
last time i saw u
ryuhou says (6:51 PM):
you jsut light up
ryuhou says (6:51 PM):
when u talk to him
annie says (6:51 PM):
last time was last time mike
ryuhou says (6:51 PM):
still
ryuhou says (6:51 PM):
its like
ryuhou says (6:51 PM):
ive never seen any1
ryuhou says (6:51 PM):
like that
ryuhou says (6:51 PM):
im sure u guys got soemthing special going on

Day Two

2008-06-29T17:37:00.002+10:00

Freida filled in for Eugene today. I thought Eugene had finally had enough of my shit and decided it was his turn to bail out just to spite me, but it turns out it was his birthday. I know this because we had scrawled our own names in black marker all over 29th of June and 20th of August on the pharmacy calendar.

I called to wish him a happy birthday and to inform him that I was right in predicting I'll be single by this weekend.

I cried all morning. Freida made me many cups of tea and customers offered me much sympathy on what they assumed was hayfever.

As a result I didn't end up tidying the store like Janet had instructed me to before she left. I bought lunch and threw it away without eating it.

Despite the above insanities I was still loving the novelty of my newly crammed exam knowledge. Freida has an aversion for scripts so it was up to me to save the day.

An elderly lady came into the pharmacy with a thick wad of repeats for a million medications. She flipped through them and was under the impression that sertraline, atenolol and ranitidine (which she referred to as "rafen") were generics of each other. She was also categorising her medication by the time of the day during which she takes them, which I suppose would be fine if she didn't have herself convinced that if two medications are both taken in the morning, they must be the same.

I recommended she visit her doctor to eliminate the drugs she won't need to avoid confusion, and typed up for her a list of her current medications, their uses, and their substituted generics.

Another woman called to ask whether she can take Digesic and paracetamol concomitantly. I calculated for her the amount of paracetamol she's allowed after her dose of Digesic, but found out later that she was developing allergies to the dextropropoxyphene and suggested she stick to paracetamol first and see her doctor for an alternative.

By the end of the day, I felt like I've done my job (despite the fact that the shelves were still dirty and I hadn't bothered to vacuum a lot of places).

Freida decided to give me a lift to the city since there were no trains between Wynyard and the northern line. I would have much rather waited a whole hour for the bus and then have it break down on the harbour bridge because Freida dropped me off at ... Hyde Park.

Day One

2008-06-28T16:32:00.002+10:00

This is possibly the end of Day One.

I sat down with my parents after dinner. We talked about a lot. My faults. His. Ours.

I hadn't told them a thing yet.

My dad speculates - he doesn't love you anymore. He must have ruled out vice-versa because I looked completely miserable.

No, I say. He loves me. I love him. We want to be together. We just can't ... stand each other.

I had already told my mum about the ring. She had already berated me for my carelessness. So we fill in the gaps for dad.

He took it differently, and told me that Jez wanted the ring back because it had cost him a lot of money, and because he wanted to be able to give it to his next girlfriend. I said that was one thing I would bet my life on that Jez wouldn't do.

Besides, he has to fork out $600 to have it fixed (or ... remade) first.

So he was upset because you lost it, because that means you didn't care? My dad asked. I nodded. And then you bought a new one trying to make up for it? I nodded. Jez's dad had laughed when he found out that I had done so. My dad didn't laugh. He just looked confused.

How can he make you feel bad enough to buy a new ring? He said. You screwed up and lost the old one, but now that it's lost, what else can you do? If you're upset about it he should be comforting you, not the other way around. He should understand. You didn't do it on purpose.

I didn't say anything. It wasn't as simple as that, and it wasn't just about the ring. He went on.

If your mother lost her wedding ring I wouldn't be angry. I'll tell her not to worry, and then buy her a new one.

My mum smiles at him. I smile too, vaguely aware that I'm admiring two people who I've always been sure have never been in love.