My Curriculum Vitae

I know I have been completely worthless at writing posts and updating ever since the start of the summer holidays, and I also admit that the contents of my posts are getting less interesting. Fear not, for I shall attempt to resume the frequency and quality as soon as I get back from Canada and start University. I have quite a lot of things to deal with at the moment and to think about as well, not just regarding university, but also other personal issues that are unfortunately mind-consuming.

However, tomorrow I'm flying off to Canada! My sister went to Quebec, Canada for her work-training a few months ago, and she's staying there until the end of October. I'm flying to there tomorrow morning to visit her, see how her temporary home is, and to tour different places. I'm staying there for 10 days, and apparently we have a very stressy schedule. My sister sent me this preliminary schedule:

27th arrival: Quebec
28th: Head for Montreal
29th: Whole day in Montreal
30th: Morning leave for Ottawa
31st: After lunch leave for Quebec city
1st: Quebec city
2nd: Charlevoix (3 hours North of Quebec city), stay there overnight
3rd: Tadoussac and whale watching!
4th: Fly to Toronto and Toronto city tour
5th: Niagara falls
6th: More Toronto and fly back to Quebec
7th: Departure

Can you believe that I'm going to go whale-watching?? I'm a bit nervous about how it's going to be. Apparently, we're going to be on a boat watching whales, but erm, what if a whale swims underneath us and then decides to jump in the air, or spray water through its head hole?? Our boat is gonna be freaking screwed...! I will need to investigate further regarding the safety before boarding the boat.

I don't feel excited about the trip...yet. I should though! I know it will be really fun, especially with my sister (I will get utterly sick of her after 10 days of constant interaction though, hihi!). I think it's cause I'm thinking about other things, and just haven't really realised I'll be on a plane to Canada in less than 12 hours.

Anyway, I'm going off to bed soon. Byebye!



P.S. Maybe I should bring a French dictionary, eh?
P.P.S. What is typically Canadian (besides maple syrup, and anything that has maple syrup in it, cause it ain't yummy)?

A few days ago, I received my official welcome letter from the University of Liverpool! They also sent a bunch of other leaflets with information regarding student registration, accommodation, and events for new students. You know, that's when it suddenly occurred to me that I'm actually going to start school in about a month! I'm going to be sitting behind a desk and a lecturer is going to be talking in front of my eyes about the human body. I haven't been in an academic enviornment for nearly two years, and I didn't ever think I'd say this after graduating from high school, but I look forward to starting again (like when I was 6 years old)! I look forward to having other students around me, to socializing with them, to having homework(!!), and all the other crap associated with school.

I also feel nervous and intimidated by the thought of starting university though, which is, I am aware, not something I feel exclusively, as most people do feel like this prior to starting. I don't think all my worries and fears of not fitting in, or not getting along with my flatmates, or not being able to catch up with my course will come true and hit me in the face all at once. I think I will have some difficulty with each of these issues (and most probably additional issues, which I am trying to avoid thinking about), but that everything will be ok in the end.

I really hope that I will be able to manage time effectively. I have heard that the first year of the Liverpool medicine programme is as demanding as you make it to be, because it is a problem-based course. If you are ambitious, you will make it demanding, if you are a lazy ass, you will not work very much. I intend on making it demanding, and doing well in my first year. I also hope to be able to fit in volunteering and some other society activities. I want to join some really weird society and try something I've never done before, like the sumo wrestling society or something :P On top of that, I also need to squeeze in time for socializing with friends and hanging out with the BF.

Anyway, I really anticipate starting university. Many people say their university period was the best time of their lives, so I have high expectations of university life! Come on quicker, Septermber the 27th!

The entrance to my future faculty! I hope the bikes will still be there when I arrive, and I shall hunt down the owners then!

Yep, I chopped off my long ponytail on one of my very last days in China! I told the hairdresser to cut it short, and whatever style he thinks would suit me. He was really serious when he asked me whether I was 10000% SURE about cutting my tail, and I was like YEHA, just do it!



Staring at the photo above makes me miss being able to do different hairstyles to my hair (even though I only ever bothered with quick and messy ponytails...!).


I'm still not very used to the shortness yet. Sometimes I run my hand through my hair and it feels like there's a bunch of hair missing. I also keep on pouring too much shampoo every time I wash my hair!

Conclusion #1: I prefer long hair!
Conclusion #2: I like bangs.

Recently, my relationship with the BF has been rocky, and it's because of the distance and subsequent time zone between us. If there's one thing I've learned from this relationship, it is: long distance is really hard, so try to avoid it at all costs! I don't regret what I have with the BF, but I wish I had known from the beginning that it was not going to be an easy game.

The hardest part is of course not being able to be physically close to each other. The first few weeks after separation, it makes you feel really lonely to not have that person to hug, squeeze and cuddle, especially at night. I remember when my BF left for Hong Kong during the easter holiday and I was by myself in the flat. I felt so lonely and missed him so much, especially after dark, that I needed to have my arm around our stuffed monkey to mimick the feeling of cuddling my BF when I went to bed. I hated the quiet nights in the flat alone, I would long for morning to come, so that I would awake to a buzzling city, which would ease the loneliness.

Being in two different time zones is also difficult. There are 6-8 hours between the BF and I (depending on London/Stockholm and Summer/Winter). I hate the fact that he is alseep half of my afternoon, and my entire evening, when I most want to talk to him. Every day we call each other, we have to take time zone into consideration. What time is it over there? Is he still sleeping? Is he busy having lunch? Is he busy in a meeting with his lawyer this afternoon? Etc.etc.

For me, I am extremely sick of keeping contact through the phone. There's a lot that remains unsaid because I don't want to say some important things through the phone. I especially despise the combination of time zone and phone contact. Many times when we call each other, we are unable to say more than "Hi, sorry, could you call a bit later, like when it's two o'clock for you, I'm busy right now."

All these factors strain you emotionally. When something happens between you two, it will ruin your mood, especially because you are unable to physically solve it with your partner. Today is one of those days for me.

Some people can adjust better than others to a long distance relationship. For instance, I cannot cope with it as well as my BF does. Some days, I think "Ok, this is it, I can't do this anymore." A few days ago, I really had enough, and I texted something similar to the BF after an incident, and it was quite selfish of me. He called me a few minutes later, and we worked things out in the end. But today, things didn't really turn out great, and that thought crossed my mind yet again. The longer I spend apart from him, the more frequent that thought goes through my mind, because of the increasing problems we run across.

I would advise anyone getting into a relationship that will involve some long distance periods to really think it through. It's not a game. And it really takes both parties to really want to continue.

P.S. I don't mean to sound like Dr Phil!

I feel disgusted. I just watched a show on TV about a woman whose ambition is to gain as much weight as she possibly can. Her ultimate goal in life is to break the record as the most heavy woman on earth at 1000 pounds, like 450ish kgs (during the time of filming of the show she was still quite some kgs short, I have no idea if she's reached that goal today). I just sat on the couch trying to grasp why a person would have such a goal as their ultimate ambition in life.

She has two children, a teenager and a baby. She broke the record as the most obese person to give birth to a baby (but that apparently doesn't satisfy her record-breaking desire...!). I felt really sorry for her children. She is so damn obese that she could hardly carry her baby. She couldn't bathe, dress, change nappies, or play with the baby either. If I were the baby, the only thing I would be grateful of her for would be the soft and warm belly fat to use as a bed! The mum also exploited her teenager, because she completely relied on him to do all the household work as well as take care of the baby.

She has a boyfriend of normal weight. He introduced himself as a "feeder" - i.e. he gets turned on by all the fat on her, and he gets turned on by over-feeding her and seeing her gain weight. He also takes these repulsing pornographic photos of her, which he calls "artistic". I can't imagine how a photo of someone's GIGANTIC freaking stomach fat dangling could be artistic or sexy. Apparently, this woman also has a lot of male fans all over the world, and she's even received lots of marriage proposals. Geez guys, what's fucking WRONG with you lot??

I don't know who I'm more repulsed at, the woman or her boyfried. He's exploiting her, and slowly killing her. Maybe he's brainwashed her and threatened her, and probably abuses her emotionally. So she's just emotionally weak? Urgh, I don't know, I just feel bad for her children. This whole thing is so retarded and twisted.

I am now back on Swedish soil, got back two days ago. The trip back to Sweden was pretty much a torture. The evening before the day of my flight, we had to catch a train from the small town we lived in to Beijing. The train trip took twelve hours, and we spent the entire night on the train, sleeping in bunk beds. After we got to Beijing we headed straight for the airport for our flight.

That doesn't sound much like a torture eh? However, I got diarrhea the day before leaving for the train trip. That was survivable as I was still at home with (essential) easy access to the toilet every fifteen minutes or so. The next day, the day of the train trip, the diarrhea stopped, and I felt a bit less sick. I thought I would be alright on the entire trip back to Sweden. Oh how very wrong I was.

That evening, after we got on the train, I climbed up onto my bunk bed and went to sleep. In the middle of the night I started feeling sick again, and felt like throwing up whenever my head was level with my stomach, so I had to elevate my head so I didn't throw up and disgust the people sleeping on the other bunk beds. After repeating the process of falling alseep and then waking up countless times due to nausea, at 5am I started getting diarrhea again. Having diarrhea on a train full of passengers was not an ideal situation. I'm very grateful about the fact that the worst part of my diarrhea occurred between 5 and 7am while most passengers were still sleeping, during which time I basically invaded the toilet on the train. The toilet on the train was not pleasant. It was one of those typical Chinese crouching toilets where there is a fotball sized hole on the floor which penetrates the floor of the train where people's urine and excrete go through the hole onto the railway tracks below. Those types of toilets are disgusting as there is definitely pee and occasionally poo surrounding the hole (people seem to generally be bad aimers). I had to spend 2 whole hours in one of those, which didn't help my nausea at all.

Finally we got off the train and headed for the airport. We had a million heavy bags, and my arm muscles struggled to carry them. At the airport, the diarrhea continued quite regularly even until I got onto the plane. I usually get plane sick, because I feel too enclosed and the smell of plane food really disgusts me. This combined with diarrhea made me feel pretty damn sick. Fortunately, the diarrhea stopped at about 5pm (12 hours!).

Wow, I just realised how detailed I described my trip back. Despite the horrible trip back, I had a great vacation in China, and I really don't want to be back in Sweden. I'm still jetlagged, and I'm reeeally sleepy at the moment, so I'll write more later. Just a few photos below: 1) Nanjing, 2) Hong Kong, 3) Traditional soy sauce production in a small town