Went out to visit my mother and left my computer on to download the new FFXIV patch only to come back to it having crashed 5 minutes after I left and nothing had been downloaded. On the bus home, there were two kids on the seats next to me singing "We can go gyatt for gyatt", which is for those who don't know, the "brainrot" version of popular song 'BAND4BAND'. If you are confused, rejoice! For you are better off not knowing. Nevertheless, I thought it was hilarious and tried very hard to hold my laughter in. The innocence of humanity is not yet lost on this next generation, I thought, brainrot as it may be, I grew up on youtube poops, machinimas and impact font memes, I'm afraid this stone will stay in its glass house.

While I was at the hospital, I decided to draw in my notebook to pass the time. I'm pretty impressed at what I managed to conjure up, art is something I've always wanted to get into but never had the patience or time to really try and learn, same can be said about many hobbies I've started and given up, but maybe this summer, I'll at least give it a go.

It's been incredibly hot these past few days in London, I can handle 30-35°s in Vietnam with the help of air conditioning but 25° C in London is killer. These thick brick walls aren't made for this and as each year goes past, the days will keep getting hotter and that heat will stay for longer. Its quite the dilemma though, I hate getting sticky and sweaty, and the excruciating heat when I wake up in the morning will just ruin my day, but a clear sky with a bright sun is something that will always make me happy no matter what, and the heat makes me want to go outside and be active. If only it were 3-5°s colder and cool at night, then it would be perfect.

Today I went into campus for the first time in probably months to meet the professor who's in charge of overseeing my third year research project. The meeting itself went fine, nothing really happened but as he continued to speak more and more, his monotone words only helped to blossom the small flower bud that has been growing in my mind this past year. I no longer enjoy this degree, the studying, the exams, the essays, the lot of it. Each day that passes when I'm in university my mind deteriorates and a deeper wallowing whirls in the pit of my stomach. Midway through the meeting, the professor even remarked that my grades were relatively high which makes this feeling all the more painful. Biology was a subject I always liked but never really loved. The same could be said for about most of the subjects I was good at, I always liked them, never loved them. And the subjects I was bad at? Well, I hated them. My favourite subject was whatever I got the best grades at, somehow school sucked all the fun out of things.

I chose my degree because it was what I was best at. Stupid, I know, but I couldn't imagine a life where I didn't go university, my brothers had went, everyone else I knew was going and, to be honest when my application into those top universities got accepted, I was over the moon. Of course, reaching those grades required to enter was a different question, the fall was as great as the rise. Biology was my best chance at university. I enjoyed the practical aspects and I liked learning about animals and plants and so I tried to convince myself I loved biology. Perhaps I believed it for a bit but, always, at the back of my mind, I knew my heart wasn't in it. And now here we are.

I smiled as I left my professor's office and I felt like screaming as I left the building. The sun beaming on the back of my head, I decided to walk to a bookshop I've been to a few times before which was about 40 minutes from campus. It was a necessary walk, the sun was out, the skies were blue, it was hot, too hot for London, but it distracted me.

I took this picture of a bridge covered with graffiti and a train passing by, "Palestine" on top of the underpass, I'm not a photographer and I don't really understand things like composition and all that kinda stuff but I just thought it looked cool. While at the bookstore I bought Franz Kafka's "The Castle" and Kurt Vonnegut's "Bluebeard". On the way home, I stopped by a sports store and got myself a football after my old one popped and I put off buying a new one for a few months now. The rest of the day was business as usual I guess except now I feel like my future is even more out of balance and hazy.

Spent this whole day playing games, finally got the Yokai Watch mount, a few days before the big maintenance for Dawntrail, 250+ fates throughout this whole event, yeesh. I think I'm good for fates for a while now.

I also got some good progress in Chrono Trigger, what a fantastic game. So many small things about this game that makes you really feel like such love and care went into it, of course Toriyama's brilliant character design helps too, I think Frog might be one of my favourite characters ever and I love the Nu. Weird goofy creatures like the Nu and Namazu and the frog looking albinaurics from Elden Ring just do something to my brain.

I think recently, I've learned a trick to be better about going to events, social outings and all that kinda stuff, the trick is: don't think. If I think too much beforehand about something, say I feel nervous about going into a room full of people or perhaps I've set a date to meetup with friends, I might think too much and make excuses in my mind why I don't want to go or feel like I shouldn't go.

I've realised, If I just don't think about it until the very last second, then there really is nothing that I can do and at that point I might as well just roll with it. Something I often forget is that, most other people too, more people than you might think, aren't these pariahs of sociability and often can be just as, or even more so, nervous as you. For me, when I realise that, I feel more at ease.

Recently I've been neglecting my own physical journal, especially since I bought a new leather cover, I've hardly written in it. The problem is, I think a lot more quicker than I can write and I find myself lagging behind and even forgetting what I was thinking by the time my pen reaches the paper.

Been spending a lot of time at the hospital visiting my mother, I've probably spent more time in the hospital these past few days, than throughout my whole life. I haven't been to my GP for a check-up in what's likely over a decade which is bad, I know but... never mind, it's just bad. I'm just the type of person to not go out if I feel it inconveniences me. I've been trying to change that and this year alone I've gone out quite a lot, but there's still a lot for me to do. I want to be the type of person that just goes out for walks, goes to parks or the forest and relaxes. What's funny is that when I do go out for a rare walk, I end up loving it a lot and yet I never do it again.

Decided to move the last post to the journal page cause I feel like I've definitely lost sight of this page, it's supposed to have far less thought and way less revising and yet I find myself thinking of a concept and then constantly thinking about my prose and yadda yadda...

Lets put this back on path. Today wasn't the best day. My mother went into the hospital. She was nursing a pretty bad headache for these past few days and eventually the pain got so bad, she had to be carted off into an ambulance and headed to the hospital. They CT scanned her, found an intracranial haemorrhage, sent her off to another hospital to scan her again, and then finally operated on her. She's doing fine now, she's conscious, talking normally, the best outcome you could have (aside from it not happening in the first place) but it was pretty startling. Its one of those things about aging they don't tell you about, they'll talk about your knees aching, your back hurting, the wrinkles, but they won't tell you about the people you grew up with, the people that raised you, getting older and weaker and then eventually passing. I guess that, you'll have to experience on your own.

Aside from all of that, the rest of the day was business as usual. Excited for Dragon Quest I, II and III which was announced on the Nintendo Direct. I still have got to finish Chrono Trigger which I'm taking an abysmal amount of time on and then get to Dragon Quest XI before III finally releases. Too many games and not enough time... Still stuck on shadowbringer MSQ, still only at Liurnia, I've given up trying to rush things now cause I'll only get burnt out, I'll take things at my own pace. My incredibly, INCREDIBLY slow pace.

I've got a cold. I can usually tell when a cold is coming because before any other symptoms appear, I start to get a sore throat. I don't really know why, it wasn't always like this but I guess now it is.

I hate being sick but at the same time, its nice to be able to laze around like I usually do and not feel guilt about doing nothing because, after all, I'm sick. It's somewhat nostalgic. The sense of pressure permeating my daily existence disappears momentarily and I can just excuse my self to be lazy instead of the usual being lazy and feeling miserable about it.

I just realised, in writing it feels like I'm pretty hard on myself, but actually I don't think about these things at all really. Only when I'm writing do I put some genuine introspection into my day to day. The thing is though, I don't really think I'm all that lazy. It's just that I set out these specific goals that I wanted to do throughout this summer and so far, I've done nothing. Summer hasn't even started yet but its been nearly two months since my final exam and I still haven't even applied to a job let alone go to an interview. I thought that summer break would be the rest I needed after a pretty tough semester grade-wise, but it seems my brain won't let me rest anytime soon.

So as it turns out, it may not be normal to experience immense joint pain in the arms and knees after drinking. That night where I laid in bed for four hours desperately trying to sleep before finally succumbing to exhaustion reminded me a lot of when I did my first edible, only without the fun floating, and the spinning under the blankets but all of the nausea and dehydration.

A while ago, I swore off beer after I found I was allergic to it and after that I soured off alcohol in its entirety. At least until university where it seems that you almost cannot escape it. Well... you can but, it had been a while and it probably would be fine right? Right! It tasted good, the buzz was nice, I was okay! I didn't have too much, I knew my limits, my face seemed to swell red, but with time it went down and all was fine. After that, I had a few more times, it wasn't my drink of choice and I definitely wouldn't drink it at home, but when I'm out with my friends I wouldn't mind a drink or two.

Taking us to yesterday where I drank a bottle of soju expecting it to be like all the other times I drank. I didn't expect the headache, the pounding on my temples, desperate to hide it, trying to be social, and I most definitely didn't expect was just how tired it'd make me. It felt like a near herculean task to keep my eyes open let alone listen to what anyone else was saying.

Being as tired as I was, you'd expect a good nights sleep right, drop straight into bed, cover myself under the blanket and drift off into the dream world. Laying in bed, it felt like I had just ran a marathon, my joints cried out for help and my lower legs and feet felt impossibly cold and numb. I laid there for four hours, periodically opening my eyes in frustration. But unlike all the other times, it wasn't as if I couldn't sleep, but as if sleep did not exist.

Needless to say, I think today I'll take it easy, maybe play some Chrono Trigger, which I still need to beat, and work on my website.

I would like to dedicate today's post to my immune system. Thank you for being so hostile against alcohol and making it so that every time I drink, I get a deathly headache and a severe compulsion to sleep.

Funnily enough, my cognitive functions seem to be reasonably intact, although my motor functions take a hit, my mind, despite the desperate attempts to keep my headache from spiralling, seem to work as usual. I write this now, only some few minutes after getting home from a night out with my friends, still seemingly drunk, my saliva viscous and slimy but my mouth bone dry with a thirst that no water could possibly hope to quench, the slight residue of vaseline on my lips in a desperate attempt to hide my dehydration, I see now more than ever that alcohol and I, still do not get along.

My Fujifilm FinePix Z1 came in today, second-hand off eBay. I've never been one for photography, no more than a passing picture on my phone of a cool bug or animal, a nice looking tree or rock, or a beautiful landscape or sunset. Though recently, I've been starting to think more about the pictures I take, not just the subject of the picture, but the composition as a whole.

About a week ago, my friend had talked about how he was thinking of buying a small digicam when he goes to Japan in a few weeks and I, inspired, impulsively bought a camera a few days after. Something about having a physical camera that you can hold in your hands, its sole purpose to capture photos, evokes a different feeling to merely taking a photo on your phone. A phone is great for capturing reality, but a camera is able to capture beauty in a way that the newest phones with the most high definition lens cannot. I feel like the mundanities of life have stifled creativity and passion for the simpler things.

I haven't yet gotten the USB cable to put photos onto my PC, but when I have, I hope to start putting my little pictures here, hopefully I can configure and position them properly. To be honest my website layout runs on hopes and dreams, I'm still not entirely sure what all I'm doing, but I'm having fun. There's a lot I want to do, and hopefully over the summer I can get better at html and css and all that. I really want to learn java script too but that's a whole beast in and of itself.

For a while now, I've been struck by a desire to have an output where I can write whatever I want, in a way that's different to the journal. I'm grateful if anyone does read it, but the main purpose of the journal I suppose is to force myself to write about my thoughts and feelings in a way that I really have to interact with what I'm thinking and more than just another fleeting moment in my brain, taking the time to think about what I'm writing and what I intend to say.

I guess the purpose of this page is to be more "authentic". I was really hesitating to make this page because I wasn't sure how much of my life I really wanted to talk about, I don't like oversharing and to be quite honest, even knowing that people have visited this website and at the very least quickly scanned through things I write scares me somewhat.

It wracked my brain for a while, but then I realised, I'm not really that kind of person anymore. Going outside, hanging with friends, meeting new people, I've changed alot this past year alone, let alone since I started university and I need to remove this fear that once haunted my past and step forward into the present.

As much as I can, this is my life. Hello and welcome!