Guess who's back, back again!

I am back. Or at least I think I am! I have been craving to blog for more than a month now. But being being and being lazy took alternating turns to get in the way :P During the day, I am at school working as hard as I can to get grading done, teach my kids and tutor them. Then at evening, even though I do have time most evenings, I tend to want to just sit on my couch and be lazy and watch TV. Opening my laptop seems like too much trouble! Maybe I need an iPad that I can keep on my coffee table so I can just pick it up each day and blog some ;) But then again, its probably not worth spending all that money just because I am too lazy to open my laptop, which is also on my coffee table most of the time! :P I guess laziness will just have to take a backseat if I want to blog and I really do miss blogging.

So.... lots has changed since I last blogged. I had my first girlfriend and we broke up 6 months after we started dating. Needless to say, being my first relationship (despite the short period), it broke my heart but I moved on. I dated again, had another girlfriend, broke up again. And now life is slowly finding equilibrium, for now. I still feel occassionally heart broken about the break up, but the relief of being single again overtakes the grief of a break up. Being in a relationship eats up too much of my time and emotions.

These past couple of weeks have been good. I have caught up with old friends I lost touch with, I found a 1500 piece puzzle that I have started working on. This puzzle would also constitute a part of the reason why I haven't blogged, its addictive!!! :D :D :D I think I will write a follow up post to how to solve a 1000 piece puzzle. I really enjoyed writing that post and am very proud of it! Did you know that if you google "how to solve a 100 piece puzzle" my blog page with that post is the first link to pop up? I feel special!!!

I also have big plans of starting a "Dear student" label on my blog. I have lost track of the number of times students say funny stuff in class that are very blogworthy.

I was contemplating starting a new blog page for myself and leave this one as a memory of my days in Singapore, because my writing and thinking style have definitely changed. But then I decided that I enjoy being machogirl too much to move away from this page. So here I am! This is me and there is nowhere else on earth I'd rather be! :P 

MG strikes again

I have been away from my blog for far too long... again! I have a sneaking suspicion that as time passes, this is going to happen more and more frequently. I don't really ever take the time to sit at a computer and type out a blog post. If I do sit at a computer to type something out, its the rare email that I send to my parents. But lately, I just don't seem to have had the patience to sit and write out anything.

A lot has happened though, over the past few months that I disappeared. In fact, the very night that I wrote my previous blog post was the biggest turning point of my life. That was the night that I had a long conversation over the phone with my parents about who I really am, well, I guess it was more of a monologue because they needed to hear what I had to say before they could respond. Anyways, that was the night that I was completely honest with them and told them that I am in fact gay. Go figure. I suppose I knew this all my life on some level but have always been in denial of the fact. But now its out in the open and almost everybody knows. My parents have been extremely cool and supportive about the whole situation and seem to have been a lot more courageous than I have been. I certainly do wish I had confided this stuff in them earlier, but hey, I needed some time to figure things out myself and come out of the closet on my own terms.

Since then, I have had a couple of heart breaks, like everybody does, except, for me, this was the first time ever in my entire life that I went on a date with somebody. Heart breaks and learning experiences aside, now things seem a lot more stable in my personal life. Facebook has made it especially easy for me to come out to everybody and now I am happy with my wonderful girlfriend (for whom I need to think up of a blog nickname).

Grad school has been a rollercoaster ride. There was the euphoria of publishing my first ever paper. I am the first author on it and I wrote the whole thing!!! So for most part, I guess things are going ok in lab. I am beginning to feel like I could really use a break though. Good thing memorial day weekend is just around the corner.

I've had some new friends come into my life. I am a member of PFLAG Dallas and love going to the meetings, even if I don't talk much. The meetings helped me with my initial struggle, just spending an evening with a bunch of people who understand the situation you are in can make all the difference in the world. I continue to go to the meetings because I hope to be able to help somebody else in much the same way as I was helped, through a show of support.

In short, the past few months have been one heck of a rollercoaster ride in every aspect, but its a ride I'm glad I took, because now I feel so much more comfortable walking in my own shoes and being true to myself and the people I love.

Here to yet another attempt at blogging! Lets see how long this one lasts.

November's Challenge

I have a really horrible memory. So I can't really remember what the whole deal is, but I vaguely remember clueless telling me something about November being some kind of special thingy where you write one post a day or something to that effect. Wow, I just realized its been ages and ages and ages and ages since Clueless was last featured, no, not featured, even mentioned in my blog! Ah well, been out of Singapore for too long and both of us are following career paths that suit us best!

Anyhooo... back to the matter at hand. I have decided to attempt write a post a day. If not everyday, maybe at least once in two days or so. And meaningful posts, not just "so today, I did blah blah blah". Let's see how that goes.

Life has also become 10 times more hectic than before. I didn't even think that would be possible! But I guess in addition to course work, lab work et al, I have a new thing to worry about.... QUALIFYING EXAM!!!!!

So far all the seniors I know tell me that quals is just a hazing. But I am not so sure. Sitting on this side of quals is pretty scary. The good news is, I have a general area of interest that I want to think about. The bad news is that I don't know what are the right questions to ask and the right experiments to propose. *gulp* Am I screwed or am I screwed? Personally, I think I am screwed :P

Rediscovering me

Yesterday my father asked me a very interesting question.

"Why have you stopped blogging?"

Honestly, I don't have a satisfying explanation to that. I tried the most popular one I give when asked the question, which is that I don't like to blog about everyday routine stuff. I prefer to talk about the more interesting, funnier or more philosophical thoughts/events/etc. That is not a satisfactory reason. Simply because this logic directly contradicts the title of my blog (I put a lot of thought into the title!). If "life as I know it" right now is kinda routine, slightly boring, not perky or interesting, it shouldn't matter that my blog posts are also in shades of grey. After all its my blog. And blogging used to make me happy.

My blog became such an integral part of my during the course of my undergrad that when I don't blog, things just seem incomplete. And my very observant father spotted that! Let me conclude this kick start to Macho Girl with the rest of the conversation with dad.

Dad - Do you blog now a day?

Me - Nope

Dad - Read books?

Me - Nope

Dad - Play the violin?

Me - Nope

Dad - Do any sketching?

Me - Nope

Dad - Don't you have any hobbies at all?

Me  - Not at the moment

Dad - Don't forget that the MG we all know and love used to write lots of blog posts, have a voracious appetite for books, play the violin at concerts and do lots and lots of pencil sketching. That is a part of who you are and what you derive happiness out of. Don't lose it. Kick start yourself with your blog. Even a routine boring post will do. Then it will be only a matter of time before the old MG reappears :)

Thanks dad! Love you loads!

Change - The only thing constant

Dear Friend,

And the beat goes on... we've had joy, we've had fun, we've had seasons in the sun! And somehow, we have finally reached the day my blog reaches its 200th post :) remember when I started off, I didn't even know if I'd go past 50. I have written four times as much and it doesn't seem like its going to end anytime soon. Sure, this blog has had its periods of hyperactiveness, sometimes it goes into hibernation mode, but through thick and thin, this has been MY BLOG, my friend, my everything! This is where I come for guidance, somehow writing here makes my thoughts a lot clearer...

This blog has also been awesome for me to get into a bit of introspection. I know too much of it is bad for my health (:P), but this has been just the right amount. This blog has seen me grow out of my insecurities and become the person I am today. I started off as a fresh undergrad in Singapore, today I am a graduate student in USA! I have come a long way! This blog has heard me think out aloud about my career options and every other thing in my life. If anybody has the patience to read all my posts, I think its safe to assume that that person will know a great deal about me!

This blog also saw me finding an awesome friend in Singapore and making all the right choices (amidst all the mistakes) and today my blog knows how much I miss that special friend. I miss you a lot. I miss our gang and somehow wish I could turn back time and relive all our amazing moments.

More than anything, that's the main reason why this blog is awesome for me. All I need to do is take a trip down to the vault... and voila, I am there with you again! This is why I blog, my dear friend, so that several years down the line, I will be able to re-live every precious moment of my life.

And its all thanks to you that I have this wonderful treasure with me...

Here's to another 200 posts and more!

Love,
MG

Spice it up?

I noticed an ad from blogger which encourages its bloggers to "spice up" their blogs with cool gadgets. It certainly caught my attention and I found myself wondering how I could spice mine up. Then being the over-thinker that I am, I paused to ponder a bit :P

Why exactly would I want to spice up my blog with new gadgets? Isn't my blog simply a place where I come to write out my thoughts on the world around me? That's the main reason why I created this spot for myself in the first place. So why would i need cool, new gadgets to light things up? To make it more appealing to visitors? Hey, I know I am not a great writer!! And I don't need loads of visitors with a zillion comments! I blog for me! I don't need to deck this place up to attract people here!

Then why do I have the desire to check out the gadgets in the first place?

You should have seen my room in our previous house. We shifted out of there 7 years ago. I had a huge room. And each of the four walls had something on it... something I made. There was one whole wall dedicated to disney cartoon characters... I called it "The Walt Disney Wall". And what I had done was I had drawn and coloured several disney characters in various attires and poses, like skating, swimming, playing hopscotch, chasing butterflies etc etc. And I had made an intricate connection between all of them, making the wall like one big story. I had cut out roads, bushes, ponds, pebbles, sand boxes, sand castles etc etc out of paper and coloured them. Then I stuck them between my disney characters to give them some continuity. I loved the whole concept. The opposite wall had a huge periodic table of elements. And all around it, I had drawn and coloured various characters from spiderman! I had drawn spidey in a climbing pose and stuck him on the wall so that it looked like he was climbing up the wall to reach the poster of a football player that I had stuck close to the ceiling. In another pose, I had drawn, coloured and cut out spidey and stuck him on the wall so that it looked like he was swinging on his web that was dangling from Kajol's earring! (yes, I have a poster of Kajol, there's nothing to smirk at!). Then of course, there was Venom who looked like he was perched comfortably right on top of my periodic table. Daredevil was also featured and it looked like he was trying to reach out and cpature The Vulture! Marvel Comics galore on one wall of my room! Another storyline to look at! Other than those, there were two mercedes benz posters, a dennis the menace poster and loads of signs on my room door warning people to keep out! I put in a lot of effort to decorate my room with such love and care.

But why?

Most certainly not to make it more appealing to visitors! :P That's the last thing a teenager wants! People in the room... The signs on my door spoke out loud and clear that access was restricted.I did what I did not only because I love to draw and paint, but also because decorating my room like that transformed the room into my "home within home", my own personal temple, you could say. It was a place that was specifically mine, that was personalized, which defined me and most importantly, where I loved spending time.

But that was back in school. Life has changed since then and now I no longer have one constant room that I can call my own. My ambition to pursue science at any cost has taken me away from home, given me many different rooms in the hostel and now again, it is taking me to a new place to start over fresh again.

My life is now defined by changes. And in this ever changing life, I guess my blog has become my new "room".

No wonder I am drawn to decorate it and personalize it. It makes me feel at home, even when I am away from home :)

And the beat goes on

Note: I know that getting to the 100th post in a blog is not a big deal for many. But for me, its the biggest deal in the world coz I started out thinking my blog would vanish in a matter of months. It has instead grown to be one of my greatest friends. My very own space to be me! So allow me to do a crazy jig and type out an incredibly long post to celebrate this occasion! *does a weird red Indian war dance* Now for post proper

Dear Friend,

This is it! I made it! My 100th post is finally here! Looking back I realise its been an incredible journey. Yeah sure, I haven't really blogged much in 2 years. But every post that came out meant a lot to me. A great deal of thought goes into every post. No wonder it took so long eh?

How about a trip down the memory lane? :) This post is for you and for once, I shall type on and on without worrying about the length of the post. Anyway, you love to read long letters, don't you?! :P :P :P *ducks as Bata shoes come flying*

To be honest, I wasn't sure about blogging. I didn't even know what it really meant. Until you showed me your blog! Remember the time when we didn't have laptops and the computer centre was everything! Thats where you showed me your blog page. Pity, we didn't even get seats to sit on while browsing. The place was so crowded that we had to take a terminal which required the user to stand! I read a few posts of yours there. Then you asked me to give blogging a try! I was tempted to! But I wasn't sure. After some thought, my blog was born and I decided to call myself "Macho Girl". Seemed appropriate then considering you are the one who gave me that nickname and you are the one who pushed... erm... inspired me to start blogging! :P :P *ducks as more shoes come flying* And so I started, very unsure about what to write. Now that I had officially started, I didnt know what to write about next and settled for something that meant a lot to me. 2 posts in 3 days! But now I was REALLY stuck. I mean, I felt exactly the same way you did when you started blogging! Gimme a proper topic and I could write pages on it! But blogging required me to think of my own topic! There's simply too many to choose from! But then, after our little adventure, I realised that blogging can extend to stuff I wanna just record! You know, like wonderful memories! Things flowed a bit easier after that. But still not good enough. I was still at loss sometimes!

Then I came across a link in your blog. I visited that blog on a particularly lazy evening when I was absolutely jobless and read loads of posts from there. Thats when things started flowing for me completely. It hit me all of a sudden that my blog is what I had been looking for all these years! You see, I am the type who likes to document some of her thoughts. At first I thought I'd maintain a diary, but soon realised that "dear diary" was not my thing. Besides, thoughts in a diary will not be read by many. Only very few. But a blog on the other hand is read by so many! Even strangers! Of course, that means I need to be careful about what I write. But I didn't mind. It was just the place I was looking for to write down my thoughts, share my memories and experiences. THAT was when my blog was truly born!

A slight glitch though. My parents didn't know I was blogging. I wanted them to know! But I was worried if they'd think blogging was just a waste of time. Anyways, one evening I decided to take the risk and tell them about it. And guess what? I am so damn happy I told them. You know, I talk to them online and chat and all every single day, but sometimes the minor details of your day just skip your mind. Reading my blog, they not only got to know the life I live here, they also got to know more about my friends! It was a wonderful way of keeping them in the loop!

Anyhow, I don't even need to go on about the rest of the history. My blog and my writing style evolved over the past 2 years. My thoughts have evolved with the help of this space. In a way, I have become a different person because of this blog! ;) ;) ;) Anyways, so far its been a trip down the memory lane for me, in that I have written about all the things that went through my mind when I started blogging. Now, its a trip down the memory lane in terms of blog posts. So let me conclude the letter here and get down to business! I compiled a list of my favourite posts. It brought back wonderful memories when i did that. I hope you enjoy it :)

Love,
MG

THE LIST!

1. Soleil's torture! :P :P :P (my goodness, name has evolved from Oreo cream to anita beaver to ann@ to soleil!)

2. Art of drawing graphs (still not mastered! Not excel! Not paper!)

3. Multiple personality (clueless said that was the point where she realised just how deadly i was! I could turn anything into a blog post :P :P :P)

4. Puzzling! (possibly the all time favourite of clueless. My personal favourite comes later on, but I really really really enjoyed writing this post. It was damn fun)

5. Flavours (more than the post, its the memory thats one of my personal favourites! :D)

6. Baking (cooking disaster! With a happy ending :P)

7. Laundry woes (a record of the torture an undergrad faces in hostel! Hopefully things will be better in the new hostel that I am moving into)

8. My dreams (I actually didn't think this was a very good post and was pretty embarrassed by it because I thought I didn't express myself properly. It was a very "dil se" post. Later on I realised that quite a few liked it. Clueless thought it was well written. So yay! I rock! :D)

9. Lunacy unlimited (I STILL cannot believe that we actually sent such messages around!!! My goodness! I love reading this post!)

10. Macbeth and detergent (So much for me trying to do some "serious" analysis of bloody hands! Oh yeah, this reminds me, my tutor for that module actually thought the line "Out! Damned spot!" would make a brilliant line for a detergent company to put in their adverts :P Fun tutor!)

11. Heights of pointlessness (Ah! now THIS is one of my all time favourites. Pretty ironic that the most pointless post of my blog should turn out to be my favourite. I guess its the pointlessness of it all that attracts me. And the pictures :P)

12. Solitaire (Clueless thinks I am good at analogies!!!! :D :D Maybe I should consider teaching as my career. My favourite teachers are those who are capable of using good analogies!)

13. Short story writing! (I was mainly amazed at the response I got for this post! Maybe I should try writing short stories ;) I'd probably fail miserably considering I love to blabber. Maybe long stories :P)

14. Happy birthday Singapore! (ah! what a wonderful evening that was!)

15. Forwarding the message (And no, Brad hasn't asked me out yet. Tom Cruise advised me to wait a while so I'll follow my best friend's advice)

16. Dear Teacher (I don't think I need to say anything here)

17. Weirdometer!

18. Risk Management (I still can't help but to smile when I think about it!)

19. Learning to drive (sorta marks my transition into adulthood. I dunno, i guess I'm just happy I can drive now and this is a reminder of how it happened!)

20. Rap on the head (I realised I was one of those teenagers but not as bad!)

Thats the top 20 list!!!!

And this is my 100th post!!! Did I mention this is my 100th post? Coz its my 100th post!!! :D :D :D :D

My blog means a lot to me maybe because I have never expressed myself so freely. All my thoughts and opinions come pouring out here and its been wonderful. For those who have been waiting (read "bugging") for me to update (that means clueless and confused soul :P), the reason I have postponed publishing this post so long is because I wanted this to be a little present to you all. To all my friends who have been coming down to my blog so regularly even though I write crap at times and who have always encouraged me to go, this post is dedicated to you. A very very special dedication to Clueless. If you hadn't asked me to try blogging, I would have never ventured here. And now that I am here, I couldn't be happier :) Thanks for everything!

To all my friends, HAPPY FRIENDSHIP'S DAY!!!! This is my present to you (and it didn't cost a penny!!! I'm so smart!!! :P :P And cheap ;))

As for the blog, the title explains it all

The beat goes on..........

Macho or Girl???

You Are a Tomboy

You're having too much fun to bother with nail polish and crazy diets. Guys are instead impressed by how much you know and do!

How Girlie Are You?

Yesterday evening, after class, clueless, ann@, cookie monster and me... the four of us were pretty jobless. They had all trooped up to my room to help me stick a poster that I had bought at a bazaar. My laptop was turned on for some music. Don't ask me how, because I don't remember, but somehow we ended up at the Blogthings page and we started taking those tests to amuse ourselves. Once the "how girlie are you" test was spotted, I was made to have a go at it. And you saw the results for yourselves!!!! I am a tomboy!!!!

But I could not help but to wonder.. is that what my blog tells people? That the person writing all these posts is Macho Girl? Or does it tell people that this so called "macho girl" is just another softie? I know that some of these blogthings results can be weird and whacky and is not necessarily the person I am. The results just reminded me about the first time I was called "macho girl" by clueless. Here are the comments that I had got on a post I had written long time back.

Puttas said:
darling darling darling...and so much like me...these are the things that i see in ur blogs...macho girl... u r a sofite.. probably not that macho after all eh? u r awesome nice(say it like gani does!) basically u r priceless and no amount of words are enough to describe you... u r a lovable girl and believe me i will dress u up and put full make up to make u look the softie u really are!

Clueless said:
quite an interesting post... its true that each blog reflects the blogger's personality...even if they try and keep it hidden, to some extent. Its quite nice going abt reading other blogs, cuz it gives u so many different perspectives on life itself...

and..as puttas said above, ur blog tells me that ur not really as 'macho' as u might seem to be, and that ur a really sensitive person. of course, this might be cuz i know u personally...:P

Macho or Girl? Perhaps I am Macho on the outside and Softie on the inside!

This is just another test that I had taken on who my inner rock child is!!! WAKE ME UP INSIDE!!!! :D

You Are Amy Lee!

Gothy, expressive, woman-in-pain Who looks damn good in a corset "When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears"

Who's Your Inner Rock Chick?

Do you know me?

I just spent God knows how long going through various blogs. I picked random people and went through their posts. I realised something then. Every post seems to say something about the person! It was almost like taking a little peek into a really small aspect of their life! When i started blogging, i did it just for me to share some incredible experiences, or really hilarious ones. I never realised that there maybe someone out there reading every post of mine quietly and actually getting to know one side of Macho Girl...
It is not exactly a scary thought in anyway. At least not to me. But this session reading other posts was fun and enlightening.
I have not blogged much. I just started a few months back. But even with my so far incredibly low number of posts, i can't help but wonder...
Do my posts say anything about me to you? Do you know me???

The usual topic of a first time blogger!!!

I had read about blogging in the papers long time back. That was the first time I ever heard about it. I didn't give it much of thought then. I just dismissed it as something unnecessary. But then, National University of Singapore happened in my life and all of a sudden, i found the need to share my thoughts and feelings about university life and hostel life so badly. I met a friend here who has a blog and after reading her entries, I decided that creating a blog was the best thing for me to do.
So this is a tentative start to my life as a blogger, thanks to my new friend here in NUS!!!!