Reminiscent Writing

[elyse]

I just finished reminiscing the past :P While endlessly browsing, I bumped into the files of my old websites and decided to read the contents of my personal site (that used to be at the late ikkoku.net) and found interesting writing about the facts of my life. I will share it here, but please keep in mind that this was written about 7 years ago. I was no more than 20 at that time (I was still a junior studying MS&IS at Penn State). Just an ordinary college student next-door ^^

PS: I added links on some words below. You know, the wiki :D

FACTS

If you'd like to know more about me and my habits, this is the place. In this section, I talk about some in-depth facts of my life. Not many people know this, not even my friends. Hope you have a better idea of who I am.

my sleeping habit

I'm both a vampire and a garfield at the same time ^^ I can sleep very late and wake up anytime I want. I've been an all-nighter for one-third of my life, sleeping at daylights and staying alert at night times. As far as I realize, I can wake up for as much as 40 hours without sleeping. But on the other hand, I can sleep for as much as 15 hours straight =P Just like Garfield, I love sleeping, too! And I don't have any difficulty at all to sleep very long. It will be a rare case if I ever sleep like a normal person, which is 8-10 hours long. It still happens, once in a while. I find it very convenient at times to be able to sleep and stay alert anytime I want, no matter how long I want it to be ^^

There's a background to that, of course. My mom told me that I've been a vampire since I was a baby. Whenever I slept, I always woke up at around 2 am, demanding attention from everyone (asking for milk, or simply for the sake of playing with myself ^^;), therefore waking my mom or my grandma up to take care of me. I stayed alert until around 5 am, and then went to sleep again... And that happened almost every night ^^;; So it has more or less been a habit that I can't get rid of until now.. Oh well.. ^^;

laziness and procrastination

My favorite motto: "Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now." That is a truly beautiful motto for me ^^;; Those who know me good enough will say the two words simply describe me... hehehe... I'm a well-known procrastinator and am very lazy. I do most things at the very last second ("minute" doesn't apply for me ^^). If I ever do something in advance, that must be something I really love, such as designing webpages, which doesn't do good at all to my school. Although I enjoy procrastination, I have a big responsibility. I'm almost always able to finish homeworks, assignments, and studying for exams at the due date and time. So my life is always full of stress & frustration over due dates ^^;;

my college life

I'm not ambitious at all as far as college is concerned. I dislike going to school, having the pressure to study things I don't like and be graded based on my study performance. Don't get me wrong though.. I love studying, but I like to do it on my own spare time. I just don't really like the idea of grades. Most of the time, grading system doesn't represent how smart people really are. So sometimes I've just had enough of college, since a degree is one way or another just an excuse to get a good job, and in many cases, to be more respected in the society. In the last case, I really don't care. Again, a degree doesn't represent how smart people really are. One shouldn't feel inferior because one doesn't have or couldn't finish a degree for whatever the reason might be. I believe people learn by experience, not by the degree itself. There are many cases where people actually don't deserve a degree, but they get it by many possible ways, legal or illegal. Degree system does have advantages and disadvantages. And so is life. The bottom line is, just be yourself. Don't push yourself too hard if you can't.

Another sad thing is, I pick the wrong major. I'm enrolled in the College of Business in my university, mostly because of pressure and not knowing what I really like first hand. With all my doubts of whether to continue my business requirements or transfer to another college, I ended up having to choose a major in the end of my second year. Since it had been 2 years already, I thought it would've been a waste to start over, so I chose a major that I hate the least of all business majors. Isn't it pitiful to actually pick a major that you hate the least instead of something that you like the most?

Well, at least I partly like what I'm learning, since I learn a lot of computer stuff. It's the business part that I don't really like to deal with. A lot of people have told me MS&IS is currently in high demand, meaning I'm guaranteed to get a good job with a good salary. However, I don't get excited and I'm having trouble convincing my mind to study harder. I'm now a junior and I need to graduate by next year, so I have to push myself to perform better on my courses. I guess I'll just do as best as I can, with some procrastination and laziness here and there ^^;; Well, we all enjoy our lives in our own unique way, don't we? ^^

food food food

Food is one of my crazy idea of enjoying life. My house is always called a 'restaurant'; there's food everywhere as far as your eyes can see. I love fine food, and I can eat a lot. And I mean, a lot ^^ I'm probably one of those lucky (or not so lucky?) people who can't get fat no matter how much I eat. My metabolism rate is extremely high, which is actually not always a good thing. Because of the high rate, it digests food all the time, so I have to make sure my stomach has enough food flowing in. Obviously, I can't eat all the time.. That's the reason why I've been having this permanent stomach ache called gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) since I was about 9 years old. It's explained below on the disease part. The funny part is, it's more of an obligation to eat a lot and properly, especially with all the diseases I have (explained below). I don't know whether I should be happy or sad ^^ The bottom line is, I would sacrifice anything for a great food!

Chili is one thing I can't live without. For me, food isn't complete without chili. I eat chili like you eat a pizza... *um, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit* ^^ My favorite food is anything with seafood and meat. Although I'm kind of a meat eater, I don't eat meat in a big size such as steak. I also don't like raw food such as sushi. Vegetables and fruits are among the rarely consumed ^^ Well one can say I don't eat healthy food, but hey, as long as it doesn't hurt me, I will continue eating what I consider as great food!

Looking at a regional perspective, the most delicious food is of course Indonesian food, since it's my native country. There is a wide variety of Indonesian food, ranging from east to west, around 13,677 islands *if I'm not mistaken* I believe each island has its own traditional food, some even have two or more types of traditional food, depending on regions. What I like best is, most Indonesian food use a large amount of chili!! hehehe...

Snack is also one of my hobbies, even considered a habit. I have a wide variety of snacks in my apartment, ranging from Japanese Pocky, Swiss Toblerone chocolate, Indonesian Garuda peanuts, to Taiwanese jelly. I also love very small anchovy, or sardines. Speaking about chocolate, I'm specially attracted to alcohol-filled chocolates, especially vodka-filled. It tastes so delicious and crispy in my mouth. Wahhh.. I can't stop talking about food! Better stop my rambling... ^^

annoying diseases

An introductory info: I was born not-so-healthy. I came into and went out of hospitals quite frequently as an infant, mostly because of diarrhea and other forgotten illnesses. I never pity myself or make an excuse of my unhealthiness since I'm much healthier now, but I have to realize the fact that I'm not as healthy as other people. My immune system isn't very good, thus limiting me on my activity, especially sports. So all of my life, I have been surrounded by diseases, some of which are permanent ones. Two of them are closely related to food. I'll try to describe as clear as I could.The first one is mentioned above, which is gastroesophageal reflux. The main cause is my extremely high metabolism rate, and also my not-so-proper eating cycle when I was very young (although I believe it's proper enough for most people.. blame it on my amusingly high metabolism rate). I easily get hungry in a much shorter time span compared to most other people. Therefore, the stomach produces acid reflux because there's nothing to digest. The pain is different for different people. In my case, I feel like there's a knife inside my stomach, cutting anything when I move. Therefore I can't move at all, but there's a painful thumping instead. It was horrible when I was younger, it hurts so much I can't do anything. But it's not that bad now, plus it rarely occurs anymore, only some one or two incidents and the pain is much less than before. It seems that after one bad thing there comes another.

I start having a migraine (on the right side) whenever I'm hungry! It's been occuring since last year. Of course when one starts having migraine, one would try to sleep, but I can't sleep. It doesn't matter whether I open or close my eyes, as long as I don't try to eat, my head is whirling and thumping. After the painful obligation of having to eat no matter how painful my stomach was, now I'm obliged to eat no matter how spinning my head is. I feel like I'm forced to eat even though I do love to eat -_-

Another yet-to-become-permanent type of illness is sinusitis. I didn't realize that I have sinusitis until I went to the USA, about 3 years ago, most probably because of the cold weather. I recall before I came to the USA, I can't really breath in a room full of AC (like department stores), so I have no choice other than to start mouth breathing.. which I believe isn't good at all. Starting 3 years ago, I know sinusitis would slowly become permanent in my life. It does result to some annoying circumstances, such as I can't breath when I cry, leaving me gasping for air. Also, my nose is blocked when I'm talking while lying on the bed. The good thing is, I've trained my mouth-breathing, so that if there's any inevitable bad smells, I can shut my nose and ignore the smell completely. Again, I don't know whether I should be grateful or not ^^;

Okay that's it. I'm bored already and I don't want to give the impression that I'm such a weakling. They're not major diseases anyway... [fin]

Yep, that's it. I'm actually contemplating whether I should relive my personal site or don't even bother.. I don't know, I'm confused. But chances are slim.. Because if I want to relive my personal website, then I have to do everything almost from the scratch. You know, the layout design, the coding, the contents (to match my age now :P), basically everything. I'm just too lazy to do it all over again... Maybe I'll do something like this once in a while (posting entries or contents from the past), or maybe I'll put them in my profile page.. somewhere. I don't know, we'll see.