[One of those posts when I have finished some sort of stint and ramble on and on]

Pictured above is the illustrated dictionary that inadvertently became symbolic of my summer: it is (a) a children's book which I (b) bought on the way back from work, and which I (c) really haven't used much beyond (d) taking a picture of it for this post.

I shall elaborate (ish) in reverse alphabetical order. Ish (ish ish, if you are Malaysian). (If you are not, you probably have no idea what the last parentheses mean. But I probably still like you, because you're reading my blog.)

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My blog. Ugh. Over the last few months I've been posting here more regularly than I did during the school year. Which is odd because I've been cutting down on other online time wasters, with surprising success. This last semester I'd already gotten better at not checking my email 20(ish) times a day; this summer I realised that since I rarely use Gchat, I might as well minimise the chat box so that I stop getting distracted by people's changing statuses. And yes, I also realise that every part of that sentence brands me a loser. It's the whole love-hate relationship with the internet, y'know?

Although with Facebook, it's really more like a struggle for domination. Ugh. I try my hardest not to use it as a stalking tool (unless newspaper duty calls), because I really want to keep it to a platform for direct interaction with individuals with whom I have spoken face-to-face. (You can keep your IRLs, thankyouverymuch.) Not for things that I say to a portion of cyberspace in the hope that a portion of that portion will find me interesting/witty/otherwise worthy enough deign some kind of response, which said portion can also view, rinse and repeat.

Because I already don't have a life. :(

And because this blog is enough narcissistic pseudo-communication for me. Ugh.

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On the arguably less narcissistic front, I also partook in pseudo-communication with the cassette player in an attempt to learn Chinese. I drove my brother insane by talking along with the pinyin and campy recordings about aunties who wanted to buy vegetables and get off the bus at Red River Valley Road. But by the time I'd worked through the first book, the first lovely entourage of cousins descended on my house and (probably to my brother's relief) the Mandarin project was marginalised. It never picked up momentum again.

The Hokkien project never really took off either, partly because Ma kept forgetting to speak it to me and partly because I've been too gutless to speak it publicly. Weirdly enough, I've been speaking a decent amount of Malay. I didn't make too much headway with the Jawi primary school workbook that I bought, although Penang has a surprising number of Jawi signboards which I shiok sendiri have been eyeballing.

And yes, my English-Malay-Arabic-Jawi script-Chinese (in order of my fluency) topical illustrated children's dictionary has been largely untouched. I have been using my English-Arabic parallel Bible, but I read it in English approximately 85 percent of the time (and get confused by the page directions approximately 20 percent of the time).

So I haven't:

• really done too much language-wise. I haven't even read all that much this summer.
  
• exercised very much either, unless you count the half-hour walk back from work most weekdays.
• taken nearly as much time to study the Bible as I'd have liked to.
  
• been cooking. A couple hours ago Ma just said, "Eh, you still haven't cut your chicken lah." My excuses: (a) I get back from work after 6pm and parents often have meetings around 8pm, (b) both my mom and my oldest sister cook a lot and (c) I'm intimidated. It's silly. I know.
  

However, I've:

• eaten masses of good Penang food woot.
• done a fair amount of emailing. I'm also growing to accept the fact that I can't keep in touch with everyone all the time (not least because I demonise instant messengers and Facebook eh).
• been better at praying for my friends and about where my life is going.
  
• spent a lot of time with my family. I got to see some paternal cousins during my KL-Singapore trip, hung out with my maternal relatives over the month leading up to my granddad's birthday bash, and have been with my immediate family throughout. Family time entails watching more TV than I do at school (i.e. none). Which makes sense -- although we're a hardcore reading family, it's much easier to share a story when you're all watching the same movie than when you're all submerged in different books. This annoys me, both because I believe books are superior and because I do enjoy the movie sessions.
  

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I've also finished an internship at a local think tank, which I enjoyed considerably more than the movie sessions. The people there were both very interesting and very nice (and deserve far better words than the two most generic adjectives in this language, but I'm getting sleepy) and I really really like research.

Not that I didn't like it previously, but it turns out that all those things I told my classmates last semester -- about how all these endless econ readings would be really interesting (there I go again) if I could read them at my own pace, and preferably while there was still light outside, without crazy deadlines breathing down my neck -- are true.

And it turned out that I really really should have done a run-through before my final presentation, because I'd estimated that I had 20 minutes of material but ended up speaking for an hour straight, despite axing a whole lot of content along the way. I was mortified and fascinated.

So yes, although I know I'm not meant to be a professor, I do want to spend my life doing research in some capacity. But not in a social science research institute either. I don't think I could slave over my 11th paper of the year with the knowledge that there was a 1:10 chance that it might be read by someone who could actually change anything, and a 1:2 chance that this influential reader would spend more time arguing about the provenance of my data than the efficacy of my recommendations. I admire those who constantly work to expand the knowledge base, but I think I'd start feeling restless, or selfish. Or both.

Ugh.

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One thing that has made me feel restless and selfish over the last couple months was living as my parents' child. I don't mean either being their child, since I'm really proud that they're my parents, or living with them per se, since they're excellent company. It's just that after 6.5 years of living away from home, I'm not used being told when I'm having dinner rather than agreeing with a friend to meet at such and such a time. It's not that I particularly mind doing anything that they've asked me to do -- it would be hard for me to call my parents unreasonable, even if I wanted to -- but the dependence rankles.

Of course, the mobility thing aggravated the whole situation. I'm accustomed to walking or getting convenient public transport to wherever I want to go, but this summer I've often had wait for rides. Which is not to say that I don't appreciate all the people who've given me rides, but ugh.

There was this one day when I had to wait at a relative's house for an hour or so before my parents came to fetch us for dinner. My grandaunts and granduncle were dozing. I somehow didn't have a book on me, and had finished flipping through the only one (o_O) in the living room. It was a particularly warm day. I nearly went insane, and had to go on a walk around the neighbourhood so I would at least think and pray without fidgeting constantly.

I got crabby yesterday too, and just really really wanted to walk to town alone and meander through the streets for a bit, since I no longer had to wait for the workday to end and didn't want to have to wait for some errand with my sister and justgotsoincrediblyimpatient. And then my mood lost its steam.

Thankfully, my kiddy resentment of chores has also lost some steam. I admit that I've been on the slothful side during the last few recovering-from-internship days, but in general I appreciate the process of housework. In part because my parents already have so much junk to do around the house/church, and in part because it's a satisfying change from sitting in front of a computer/book/periodical at work and relaxing in front of a computer/book/periodical at home.

It does scare me, though, how much time the business of maintaining a household takes -- all that cleaning and cooking and laundering and repairing and bill paying -- because I really would like to get more sleep and hang out with more friends and read more books than I have this summer, and it was just an internship. It also scares me how much time many people at work spend thinking about how they'd rather not be at work, and/or going on Facebook.

I'm also scared that I sound like a smug brat.

But I'm really really thankful that for at least the next two years my job will still be learning. Hopefully I will also be listening carefully about what I should be doing and researching and attempting to speak after the two years are over.