Dear X,

I don’t owe you anything. No apology, no explanation, nothing. I have nothing to say to you and, more importantly, no desire to talk to you anymore. You’re no longer worth it.

You are the one that drove the wedge between us, you are the one that chose a guy over our friendship, and you are the one that made me realize I have nothing to gain and everything to lose by remaining your friend.

You called the shots. You made the decisions. And now you can deal with the consequences.

I’m out.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

These are five questions Clem asked me to answer a very, very long time ago. Even though these replies are late, I figure it’s better late than never, right?

• If you could live anywhere for the rest of your life, where would it be?
  Without a doubt, Hong Kong. It is my absolute favorite place in the world, and the one place I feel 100% comfortable in calling home. I’ve moved around a lot and spent a fair portion of my life growing up overseas, but Hong Kong is where I was born and it’s where home is for me.
• When you were younger, what did you want to be?
  What didn’t I want to be is probably the easier question! When it comes to career aspirations, it’s very much a “you name it, I’ve wanted to be it” type deal. I think the ones I stuck with for the longest was a translator/interpreter and a writer.
• What’s the last nice thing that happened to you?
  A lot of nice things have happened to me recently, which is a huge change from the run of bad experiences I had last month. I think the one that stands out the most is just knowing that I mean a lot to someone special. Ever since there’s been some drama in my circle of friends, it’s nice to know that there’s still someone that values me in their life.
• What was your worst subject in high school?
  Without a doubt, math. I’ve always been a good student, but math was always the class that very nearly killed me. It was always the class that threatened to lower my GPA and was the one I agonized over for hours. It was also the only class I ever needed a tutor for!
• How often do you check your email?
  I check it obsessive compulsively! I use the Gmail Notifier plugin for Firefox, so whenever I get a new email I get a notification and check my inbox immediately. I also have an iPhone, so I have constant access to my email 24/7. Maintaining a constant connection with your email inbox is not always a good thing, though…

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I took an unplanned (but necessary) hiatus from my blog for the month of September. There were a variety of reasons behind my “disappearance”¹ but the point is, things have hopefully settled down enough for me to be able to focus on blogging regularly again.

But for those who are curious, here are some of the things I’ve been busy with in the last month or so I was away:

• Became the Assistant Web Editor of my school’s literary magazine
  I applied to join staff for my school’s literary magazine for the first time this year². Not only did I apply for staff, but I decided to bite the bullet and apply for an editorial position as well. I wound up landing the position of the Assistant Web Editor and am now in charge of all the web stuff for the magazine! I love my position, and the rest of the staff and editorial board of the magazine are absolutely fantastic and I’m so glad I get to work with such an amazing bunch of people.
• Re-evaluated what type of people I want to be important to me
  They say you can never truly know someone… and while I always believed that, I didn’t realize just how powerful that statement can be until something happens to you and you realize that everything you once believed in someone turned out to be false. That made for an exciting time in my life, let me tell you. But I’ve accepted it and moved on, and hopefully all of that is now in the past.
• Was interviewed for a position at one of my favorite museums
  One of my favorite museums in the DC area is running this internship/volunteer-type program, and on a whim, I sent in an application and landed an interview. I think the interview went really well and I should be training for the position sometime later this month. I’m not sure where I’ll find the time for this job, but I’m really excited as not only will I gain fantastic experience but I just love the museum itself!
• Had tons of extra shifts at work
  Every semester, my office³ holds an on-campus job and internship fair for employers to come recruit students/for students to network with future employers. My office wanted to maximize publicity about the fair, so my coworkers and I were sent to promote the fair and be part of the outreach team to my school’s student body. I had a lot of fun talking up the fair with my peers as I passed out brochures and promoted the event, and my bank account definitely appreciated the extra hours!
• Had a childhood friend visit me for a weekend
  One of my childhood friends recently moved to a city near my school, so she came and visited me one weekend. It was great to see her and to spend time with her. We had so much to catch up on and it was just really nice to get a break from everything in my school life to spend a weekend showing her around the city and talking about everything we could possibly talk about.

1. I’m not sure if disappearance is the right word – yes, I wasn’t blogging, but I was still around on LiveJournal and Twitter. [↩]
2. I had wanted to apply last year, but I had a conflict with when the weekly meeting was. [↩]
3. I work in a career advising office on campus. [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I always err on the side of caution when the subject of meeting online friends in real life comes up. This is not because I distrust my online friends/don’t want to meet them if the opportunity came up, but simply because one can never be too careful in this day and age, especially when there are always stories on the news about “Myspace murderers” or “Facebook stalkers” and the like.

I think the internet is a great tool that can help one find new friends, if used appropriately. Obviously I’m not going to agree to meet up with a random Facebook person from Nigeria who specializes in photographing models and helping kickstart their career. But I wouldn’t say no to meeting someone from say, TFL or VegOpt, as I’ve known the people there for years and many of the members at both communities have become my good friends. I’d even go as far to say that in some respects, I am closer to a few of my online friends than some of my offline ones!

I have met up with Melody, Skyped with Alice, and will hopefully be meeting Rebekah early next month. These are all girls whom I love dearly and had a great time when hanging out with them in person and I love sharing online haunts with them. However, that’s because we were friends and then we met up; we didn’t arrange to meet in person to become friends. I think that, along with common sense and good judgment, is where a lot of the difference lies between the friendships I have with my online friends versus people who scour the internet to find a friend.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

As I prepare to move into my college dorm to begin my sophomore year of college, I’ve been thinking a lot about how different things are now than they were even a year before. Not just the things around me, but also about how I’ve changed as a person, too. I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting in the last couple of days about the things that did and didn’t happen in the past year, and I’ve also turned my attentions to what I want to achieve this upcoming academic year.

A year from now, academically speaking, I’d like to have made Dean’s List for both semesters of my sophomore year¹, have completed a summer language immersion program either for French or Mandarin Chinese, secured an internship for the school year, and have confirmed, or at least refined, any upcoming plans for a semester of studying abroad².

In terms of my social and romantic life, I’d like to have the same group of friends I have now as I love them all, but I’d also like to expand my circle of friends more and meet new people more often. I’m not really the type of girl to have hundreds of okay friends; I like to have several very close friends that I know I can count on in any time of need. I am open the idea to being in a relationship with someone but I’ve never been the type of girl to go looking for a guy – most of the time, the guy finds me, with varying results. Plus, I’m not good at relationships so it’s never made sense for me to go looking for something that will inevitably end in disaster and heartbreak.

I have a good feeling about this upcoming academic year. I have a lot of good things lined up and hey, there might be even better surprises in store for me!

Question of the Week: Where do you see yourself (or where would you like to see yourself) in a year’s time?

1. I made Dean’s List both semesters freshman year. [↩]
2. I’m looking at studying abroad sometime my junior year. [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.