So maybe I am a selfish stone-hearted prat. But at least I'm not alone :D I think many Onlies face this -> read.

Besides, I think its okay to be different from what society expects you to be (nurturing caring, etc) .. and its important to be selfish and think about ourselves before anyone else. Well thats just the way I'm gonna be and if people expect me to be all cuddly and lovey-dovey, they've come to the wrong person. 

Read the post below (somewhere) if you feel a bit confused. Remember the in-your-face thing? Well, more (predicted) rantage on that here:

My room, as I said, is my sacred sanctuary. In fact, there is a 'joke' whenever I leave my room where my family are all oh you've left, wow we got to see her, etc. because I'm always cooped up in here (I LOVE IT). Well anyhow, as much as I love my room, my desk is incredibly small and unusable (but it fits in perfectly with my room's decor and thats whats important) and so whenever I work at home, I always sit on the dining table on the ground floor (my room's on the third floor). SO obviously as I predicted, this wouldn't be possible in light of the recent in-your-faceness. And so I decided to stay in my room, my door firmly shut, and try and work on this useless desk. Well not real real work, but work for my work / site management, etc. By real work I mean dissertation work, obviously.

Anyhow so I was doing that and going about my business, when my aunt decides she wants to stare at my face again. This is another in-your-faceness thing with frAsians (fresh Asians) btw. They have this staring thing to LOVE to do and aren't afraid to show it. In fact, they do it blatantly as if its the most normal thing in the world. My aunt's always like let me look at your beautiful face & then literally just stares at it. All this kind of creeps me out. We've already established that I can't deal with direct compliments, but this is awkward and uncomfortable to a whole different level. It also pisses me off when they behave and make it out as if I'm the most beautiful thing they've EVER seen (no exaggeration, this is how they behave) and yet they've sent me a string of the most butters old-looking boys anyone has EVER seen. Okay I'm being harsh but I'm shallow so sue me -_____-

ANYWAY. So my doors firmly locked, I'm sitting at my desk and I've thrown my clothes all over the bed. All in an attempt to get some peace and do some work. Aunt meekly knocks on the door and I meekly reply with a 'yes'. Not a 'come in', but a 'YES?', do note. Then so pops her head in and says "oh are you working?" which is obviously a rhetorical question because thats pretty obvious. I decide to answer anyway in the hopes that she'd get the hint, but the only thing to does is to proceed to come behind me and then lie on the bed (which I thought I could prevent with my disgusting clothes lying about but obviously not) and she's still here. She's quite overweight (one of the other things that got me freaked out and kick-started my diabetes-regime) despite doctors telling her sternly to lose weight after her many operations and now she's so gone over, she has difficulty breathing even when lying down and I swear its the most scariest (and kind of annoying when you're trying to work) sounds ever.

This is the most awkward time ever. I'm just sitting here typing away while she's lying behind me breathing away. And I know the nice thing to do would be to turn around except I've spoken to her for extended periods of time the last few days, there isn't really much to chat up so it would be repeated conversation, and I'm working? I know how my sentimental melodramatic family works so I know she's feeling offended but I really don't give a shit. I know my family so if I started giving a shit, I'd be in the dumps FOREVER.

And now I'm annoyed because not only has my private space been contaminated, I've also come to realise that I won't be able to come home and have solitary time for the next month :'( I really don't like going to the library, its just too intense and I love working at home .. but this is no longer an option :(

She's STILL here. Calling people on her phone, bitching and saying "oh yeah MJ is working hard, doesn't have time for us" (yes really) and then handing me the phone and forcing me to speak to my never-ending-story-spinning melodramatic family. FFS. My family stretch a 2 minute conversation to a 15 minute one with ease, ALL THE TIME. I'm not even exaggerating. And everyone is so LOUD. My uncle is a bit of a bitch and complains all the time. And its just all too much. Given my recent issues to mental stability and calm.

Imagine the time she's been here, just breathing away. FEEL THE AWKWARDNESS. I'm a slow writer when I'm being distracted by an awkward blob of loud breathing. So this post took me that long to write. JUST IMAGINE. I can't even get up to pray because she's just waiting for me to turn around before she can pounce on me. I hate being so loved / wanted.

Yes I'm being a bitch. But this is allowed.

Last post was a bit silly and short (even by my 6-liner standards). So this is a random post about whats happened / happening / about to happen / whatever RANDOM.

Okay so Ramadan is over firstly. I got incredibly upset over this :( despite cutting off social activity, I ended up being sucked into my photographic activity (I stupidly thought this wouldn't be social but it totally is). And so I couldn't attain spiritual purity or make a productive use of Ramadan and its blessings :( I totally blame myself, and a bit my family too. Usually we all come together and feel the spirituality but this year due to the timing, etc. my parents wouldn't really wake up for suhoor (we brought them food), it was a bit frenzied, before iftar they'd watch their stupid Indian serials, rush to make iftar, we'd eat and then everyone would groan around, they'd watch even more TV, pray and then sleep. Cycle repeated.

I really really REALLY hate Indian drama. InshAllah if I ever have a family / children, I'm going to block this shit and when old aunties come over they need to deal without their bullshit shows which all follow the same story line. Ugh, I could sit here and bitch about them forever but I think if you know anything about anything, you know how horrible these shows are. At least before it was just BS stereotypes and sexist gender-roling. Now on top of that, you have disgusting immodest behaviour. They show stupid shit like husbands sleeping with maids, uncle's marrying their nephew's ex girlfriends, the classic my-sister-loves-my-man-so-I'll-force-them-to-marry-and-sacrifice-self BS, etc, etc, etc. Ughhh. People shouldn't waste their time seeing this shit normally, let alone in Ramadan.

Anyhow. So unfortunately I flopped this Ramadan :( also came on my period on the last 10 days so super bummer. But inshAllah I hope I can start cleansing myself from NOW and then be ready for next Ramadan if I'm blessed to see one. I'm also gonna start up with small but consistent things like reading 5 ayats during Fajr / at Esha inshAllah :)

In other news, EID MUBARAK! This Eid was packed full of food and family. Mum's eldest brother & his family (who I can't usually stand) were over but I'd seen and hung out with them quite a few times during Ramadan so I got over my past-hate a bit. My dad's middle-sister came from Bangladesh on holiday and happened to come on Eid too so that was nice. On top of that, a family member (my third cousins son LOL but our family tree is messed up / ever ending so despite official relations, everyone on that branch are close together) is getting married to another family member (not on his side, but from my other side cousin's daughter in whichever tree branch) and so lots of family are coming over from all over the UK, America, Canada, Australia, Switzerland & Bangladesh :D house full!

Which brings me to my next point. I don't know if you know, but Asian families, extending beyond possibility into infinity, are kind of full on. Not my Western family as such because I suppose we're used to living in a certain way. But when my family come from Bangladesh, they get all up in your face, all touchy-feely-huggy-huggy-depleting-your-air-in-your-face. I know they do it out of love or whatever but shit man, do you really need to love so hard? LOL. Okay, maybe its an only child thing, maybe its just a mean crazy person thing. I don't know. But I'm REALLY impatient and kind of selfish about my things / space and need to be alone. I love socialising but I also need to be able to get away from it all, instead of having to do it ALL.THE.TIME. My room is that place, its kind of sacred and I rarely let people in / let alone letting them jam for extended periods of time. This is happening now. My tolerance threshold is normally a week but coupled with the in-your-faceness-affection, I've already reached this point 2 days later. I mean okay I feel a bit mean and bad, but seriously, this is how I am so I'm not going to apologise for being me. I think I have a plan for saving myself though ...

Next point - work / dissertation. WAIT! Before that, I must mention that I got my Masters results! Verdict is ... PASS :D these came out during Ramadan and I was so scared! I got quite sick and had BAD panic attacks right before the exams, was heavily drugged up, trying to study and learn more than I ever did my whole life, forgot things and didn't even complete my last answers. So I had reason to be scared. But ALHAMDULLILAH, and I'm not even trying to be humble, it was 100% all due to Allah and His Mercy on me for this miracle where I not only passed, but passed with really good marks in all my modules :D

So now the only thing left is my dissertation. Which I haven't even started but is due in a month. Ughhh. Well, I've done essays in 2 days so I'm hoping a month will be okay. Except I have weddings and families so I'm freaking out a bit. Plus, my university has a stupid rule about not seeing supervisor after a month after exams so no one will be seeing my drafts. And because everyone is freaking out, I'm scared I'm not freaking out enough and what if I mess up? :O Anyway, I'll get to work on that ASAP inshAllah. And think I'll go to the library because no way will I be able to do it at home. Pray for me! Need a miracle again!

In terms of work, our server messed up and site was down for ages. This has happened too many times so I had to sit and research and look into a few other systems and that took a while to do. Finally settled on a system and had to build the site back up from scratch - that was a long, frustrating task. I'm a perfectionist. And I still have two sections left to fill! Ughhhh. These sections have loads of sub-sections, each a page long. And after I'm done, I have to relaunch everything, do some more social-media-management & then look into press-release-firms, write up our press release and then submit that to coincide with the launch.

So as you can see, I'm swamped! Also, I'm already pre-diabetic and when running around trying to work (I get ADD's hyper-focus when working with sites), I didn't sleep for over 2 days and then felt severely messed up. Thought I was going into a diabetic-coma haha. Anyway so freaked out about having diabetes (not my usual hypochondria, but a sensible assessment of my symptoms) and think maybe I still have it (might check using my uncle's blood-glucose tester) so had to sort out my life and start on the diabetic-diet & exercise regime. Which is tiring too.

Ah speaking of diabetes, I don't normally have a sweet tooth (I never had) but now all I can think about are sweets. Like my birthday cake. In fact, I think I'm going to wrap this up and go get some. Its a fresh-cream cake so it won't last long! And yes, I had my birthday recently. Normally when its August, I start counting down the days. But this time, it creeped up on me when people were like hey its your birthday and I was like oh shit you're right! I'm getting old man. This is my last year of ripe-Asian-age. All downhill from here ... so I've decided I'm going to be this age for the upcoming years & tell people this is how old I am!

So whats the significance of ripe-Asian-age? Apparently after this year I'll be slowing expiring till no one will want to marry me at the ancient age of 28. I mean thats REALLY pushing it. At 29 onwards, there is practically no chance of it happening. And at 30? Game over. Ughhhh. You can imagine how everyone around me is trying to rush me into an angry tic. I've decided not to even THINK about getting married for a year. I got rushed into it earlier by everyone around me and it totally messed me up. How the hell am I supposed to think about marriage when I have no experience whatsoever and have the brain of a prepub-boy?! I'm totally not ready and I need to live my life man. Also need people to shut up about foreign boys (Canada) because I'm not leaving London. I don't care if people make me feel like I'm being a demanding twit. Me having girl-parts does not diminish my value and I deserve to be demanding! Pfft. If people force me to meet idiots (which WILL inevitably happen), I will be my most un-charming bitchy self. GAME ON.

Also, one of my best friends who I love and whose entire family loves me because I charmed the shit out of their dhotis .. yeah anyhow so she has a hot brother. I mentioned this to her a few times cos I'm prat and enjoy uncomfortable situations. Her dad loves me and asked me if I would marry the son. LOL YES GET IN (he's half Japanese!!!). But .. my mum is a snob and this guy is undereducated. LE SIGH. So there goes my plans of marrying a Muslim Japanese/Korea/Latino unless they come with PhDs (or Masters at least). At this rate, I'm going to be doing books. Yes, what you think that means, probably.

And to end it, I'm going to Taiwan on the 10th of September!!! For a wedding and one I'm super excited about .. but this also means I don't have a lot of time to do my dissertation. So for now, time dedicated to dissertation / work / diabetes-control & wedding planning! Since I'm more active on Flickr now, I met some AMAZING photogs and one lives in Taiwan so we've planned some photo-sessions and so I also need to up my photo skills!

And thats it. Congrats if you've read all of that :D and sorry I've been MIA! I've skimmed through some recent posts but I really don't want to leave a half-thought comment so I promise I will come back to you guys soon inshAllah! Till then keep living, keep writing & keep praying!

Muchos lurve!

xoxo

PS - thank you to the lovely people who've sent me mail :D

PPS - HAPPY AUGUST! The best month EVAAAR! Enjoy the last month before end of 'summer' :) x

PPPS - I suspect I'll be coming back occasionally to rant. Asian family + Asian weddings + girls who are melodramatic prats = rantage.

1. Its August!
2. Which means July is over!
3. Which means Ramadan is over too :(
4. Which means EID MUBARAK!
5. And also, I'm OLDer!