December 31st, 2021

Here we are, last day of the year. I'm writing this two hours before midnight, this year I'm happily sitting in my warm room, in voice chat with my boyfriend. I was invited to celebrate new years with my friend in her town but even though I'd really want to, I'm feeling quite tired and I wanted to hang with my boyfriend for once as we didn't get a chance to play games uninterrupted for a while now. I usually work during weekends when he's free but my boss didn't need me this weekend so I used this to recharge a bit and turn back to my hermit life. I'm just happy I'm spending my new years safe, unlike last year when I spent it in a car, freezing, my head spinning from the earthquake the day before. My head didn't stop spinning for like 2 and a half days. If you ever went to sleep really drunk and then closed your eyes only to feel like the whole room was spinning - that was the exact feeling. My day was pretty much ideal. I woke up, played some Tera (yes I got back to it but this time I'm keeping it casual...), watched some shitty netflix original show with my bf, played some GTA online, watched Brazil which I've been meaning to watch properly for years now, we started playing It Takes Two which seems pretty fun so far and now I'm browsing some random stuff and writing this entry. Not to mention all the good food and my cat cuddling and playing with me, she's been extra loveable today. I hope 2022 follows this pattern.

As per usual, my mind blanks when I start writing so even though I was sure I had many things to say, now I have none. I've been working a lot lately. Christmas was nice, the highlight was present wrapping for my mom and sister, I really got into it this year. The only useful skill I learned from work was present wrapping actually, and it took me 3 years to master it. Up until now, I'd be too anxious to do it properly in front of customers. Literally hands sweaty, knees spaghetti every time. Idk why. And I did it daily. I can just feel their judging disappointing gaze as they stare at me while I clumsily try to grab the sellotape that keeps slipping and clumping in my sweaty hands. Just look at your phone while I do it, please! Then I misjudge the length of the paper and I have to shorten it, or even worse, get a new one because this one is too short. Oh my god my hands are getting sweaty from just thinking about it. My mind would also always blank and I'd forget how to make the wrapping ribbon curly with the scissors in front of people. Like I'd somehow pull it in the wrong direction, alone I could always do it just fine. But now, I can finally say, I can do it, lol. This sounds pathetic.

I noticed I haven't wrote about it here, but I started reading Harry Potter along with my sister. I'm on the 4th book now. I actually read HP as a child, way way back. I think I wasn't even 10. I think I got to book 5. Thing is, I don't remember anything. Movies that I can recite aside, nothing jogs my memory when I read the books, I truly forgot about everything I read back then. So this is like a new experience, and I basically feel so late to the party because of that. Like damn Cabbage, you never read Harry Potter?? Honestly the books are lovely and cute. The last 150 or so pages of the third book actually had me pretty hooked and I watched the movie at least 5 times throughout my life. I've also been reading Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami. I read the first part and now I started the second part. The first part actually had me teary eyed twice, it was because of the sisterly love during times of extreme poverty... Ah I'm getting sad just thinking about it. At some parts I felt like I was reading my own diary but I heard a lot of the tone was lost in translation so maybe that was an english only thing. Still, I found it amusing.

It's so foggy I won't be able to see the fireworks. Speaking of, I really started to dislike firecrackers. Whyyyy do people have to blow them up near buildings. It's so loud and obnoxious. Well anyway, happy new years!

December 21st, 2021

Funny story today. So it's my birthday and I brought some snacks to my workplace. After I was done with work my manager brought me a gift! Really sweet of her, and she was starting to wish me a happy birthday and give her wishes etc. Mid sentence our regional manager who was standing behind me cut her off. So rude. And then she went on to say: "Dear cabbage (what else do I call myself on here), I wish you a happy birthday and that you start doing makeup and applying skincare :)". First of all. What? Second of all. Everyone was stunned lol. Third of all, I have flawless skin and my skincare routine is great. Fourth of all. Makeup??????? Who fucking cares????? Half of the coworkers don't wear makeup. It's so rude??? In my whole life, I've never received such a comment. Funny thing is I DO wear makeup sometimes, just never at work. I don't feel like it's necessary, because I look proper enough and what's the point of wearing makeup while stocking shelves lol... Plus I'll never do something a man isn't required to do to look presentable. I'm just wacky like that. But what kind of a person do you have to be to a) say that to someone you barely spoke to ever therefore you don't know their reasons for not wearing makeup (maybe im allergic??? super religious???) b) say that to someone as a WISH on their BIRTHDAY??????? I'm just stunned, in like, a funny way. I still can't stop laughing at her sheer madness. AND she also interrupted my manager in probably one of the most heartfelt moments we would have shared in my miserable time working here, so that's the part that makes me really angry. I told her my skincare routine is fine and that I do not like makeup and I just left it at that. With a little thank you added at the end. Like... I'm 24. I may be a child in her eyes but jesus. Anyway when I exited the warehouse my manager gave me a hug, said she hopes I'll like the gift and that she also hopes that the regional managers statement went through one ear and exited the other. I said it did but I lied. I'll remember this for my whole life as the most ridiculous statement someone ever directed at me. I know being told to wear makeup is still something women experience in the year of our lord 2021 but it's just - the whole setting - the whole vibe, it was not the TIME and PLACE at all! I just. Lmao. Also I got a scarf from my manager, a really nice one too. I was actually looking to buy a scarf recently so this is perfect. This regional manager is well known to be an insensitive out of touch dumbass so I really am not taking this to heart but this will be a story I'll have to tell everyone I know. It's too good. I wish I could have replied with something snarkier, but I'm not the wittiest person so my reply was good enough... lol.

Earlier in the week I met up with my good friend and we exchanged birthday presents. I got her RHCP's Californication as she mentioned she's missing it in her collection of cds heh. She got me a cute canvas pouch.. bag.. with strings? How do you call this in english idk. Anyway it has cats on it. She knows me well. We also had some great mulled wine and talked and talked. I love seeing her. We also went to pick up my ebook reader and I loooove it. I put a ton of books on it. Also some manga. I've got calibre now and koreader on the thing. Listened to my online friends advice lmao. Anyway it's really nice, it doesn't strain my eyes, I can read 20+ pages without feeling like falling asleep. It's great! Book enjoyer saga incoming.

I feel like there's more things I wanted to write, but todays events just made me forget about it all. Man, what a funny day.

December 12th, 2021

Some weird news this week. One of my cousins has cancer, well, by now he's cancer free and he started receiving preventative chemo so it kills the chances of ever having it again. We're on very cold terms with him because my sister had a pretty bad fight with him a while back. Basically he was always quite a superficial snob and one day this attitude jumped out specifically in regards to my sister and her not choosing to go to uni. Well anyway, I still feel bad for him and my sister was even more shocked to hear the news than I was. Unsuprising, considering they used to be like a pair of twins and best friends. I hope everything works out fine for him, health wise.

Now I feel bad for wanting to write about happy things but oh well, I got a great birthday gift from my boyfriend. An e-reader! I wanted to buy one for a loooong time and since he got his first salary recently, he was finally able to buy all the tech he wanted to for a long time too. I got a Kobo Clara HD, recommendation from an online friend. I'm an eternal piratefag so a Kindle didn't sound like a good idea. I'm picking it up in the store on Wednesday, honestly I should've just paid for shipping but I wanted to go to the store to also check if they have any decent covers/cases for it while I'm at it and I'm using any excuse to go out at this point. Now I have to think of a birthday gift for him, I was thinking of a laptop bag or something weeby and cringy because why not. Unlike him, I can't really afford anything more expensive at the moment lol. Luckily, we're both the type of people that don't stress around presents too much.
My sister and I got each other sailor moon cups for christmas, and she also got me hardcover Tomie (besides the cat comedy manga I actually never read Ito's stuff and idk why so this is a good time to start) for my birthday, but all this gift giving will occur on christmas simply because we want to wrap the presents. I also got her a black pearly necklace from this vintage thrift shop we were in, she really wanted it so I hope she likes it. She got me something extra I don't know about too. And my mom bought her 4th part of Harry Potter, as she started collecting the books recently. I don't know what my mom will get me, and me and sis have to figure out what to buy for mom. Honestly this is the first time I really got into this gift buying thing, usually I'm pretty whatever about it. We're not really spending huge amounts of money, but it's so fun to try and get everyone something nice.

Also, I finally found an amazing shampoo. I've been struggling with greasy hair and face since... middle school like 13 years ago. More than half of my life I've been washing my hair every second day if I wanted to keep it clean. So when the pandemic started I decided to get into hair and skincare a bit and fix the oiliness problems I had since puberty. Face wise, I figured it out pretty quickly, a simple cleanser + moisturizer + spf routine worked wonders, before that I just washed my face with water like 10 times a day which completely destroyed my skin. Fun fact, the reason why I did that is because when I was 10 I read in a teen magazine Mary Kate (or was it Ashley?) Olsen washed her face with water all the time. It's the only advice I got from a magazine, ever, and it made me into a greaseball. However, having a greasy super elastic face/skin seems to be a genetic thing because my uncle is similar lol. Sounds weird but he always complains about struggling with oily skin. Well anyway, I managed to fix it sort of, my face isn't as oily as it used to be which is great. My oily hair remained, so I tried the "training" method while in quarantine, basically I forcefully didn't wash it for 3-4 days but it was unbearable. And it didn't work, all it did was make me feel extremely dirty. So I found a sulfate/silicone free (the newest gimmick? maybe) shampoo and it did a decent job because I no longer had to wash my bangs every day, but I still had to wash my hair every other day. And then... FINALLY... I found the best one yet... It uses a milder sulfate and it's a bit more expensive but I have an extra day of not having to wash my hair! I want to do scalp deep cleaning with vinegar as well and see if it helps. I'm so sick of my oily hair. I've noticed though that whenever I visited my bf my hair/face took longer to get greasy even though his country is more humid? And I sweat a lot more there because it's much hotter. I always thought it was the humidity of my town that made me so oily but now I'm not so sure anymore. My quest for reducing oiliness will continue, but it's nice to have made progress.

December 6th, 2021

Kind of a boring week, although I'm falling behind with my obligations. My work as a teacher assistant is fun, but I'm still not getting paid for it, which I was fully prepared for considering how my university works. I heard about lecturers not getting paid!! here so me being a lowly TA, there's not much to expect. I was prepared for this to be a volunteering job (or one that will pay me much later) that will serve only to buff up my weak cv heh. Anyway that aside, there is one thing that bothers me. The teacher kind of delegated a lot of responsibility on me which I would be fine with in normal circumstances but we have a blind student and I have to transcribe a lot of code from picture based presentations and I also have to make up tasks for her to do because obviously how is a blind student supposed to do css lol... I just think I'm not equipped for this so I'm a bit late with helping her and now I'm dragging it out. Other than her though, I enjoy helping students a lot. I feel like this group is a bit less computer savvy than the one I was in last year, but it just makes things more interesting for me.

Now it's time to vent about my other job. I simply have to write this down in case I ever start to think "hey, working in a drug store was not that bad at all actually!". Picture this: It is Saturday. On Friday you had a delivery. When you get a delivery your whole warehouse is FILLED to the brim, it looks messy. All of your merchandise roller containers (or whatever you call them in english) are super stocked with items on top of each other because there's nowhere to put them. They look like this, but of course, messy.

So anyway, these rollers are messy and usually the day after the delivery arrives you manage to make them look half decent, but they'll still be overfilled no matter what, due to the amount of merchandise you still have in the warehouse. On Wednesday you hear you're going to have an inspection. So by Wednesday you need to make those rollers look neat. However, there's a lot of time until then, and a lot of these products on the roller right now will get sold. To add to that, on Tuesday you're getting another delivery. Which means the warehouse will be totally filled, and the rollers will be messy again. Most of the merchandise that arrived on Friday will have been sold or just circulated out of the rollers and onto the shelves by this point. You're told by your panicking coworker that you need to make them look neat RIGHT NOW on Saturday even though whoever will be working on Tuesday will have to do the same amount of work to tidy up the rollers anyway. You do it because it's a good time waster and you don't have to bother with doing deep cleaning even though that would be more efficient at the moment.
I didn't bother complaining because nothing ever came of it but it still frustrates me because things like this happen all the time. For a place that's so obsessed with being 100% efficient, never allowing you to sit down and take a rest, you always have to be doing SOMETHING, the workers sure don't put a lot of thought into things. They just spend time breaking their (and my lol) backs doing unecessary things that contribute to nothing. We could be sitting in the kitchen and chatting for a bit instead of organizing these rollers that would just naturally empty out anyway! What's the point? The sun will set and rise again, and nobody would notice that the rollers were messy on Saturday because they would be emptier by Sunday and filled again by Tuesday. Who fucking cares! Seriously. Why aren't we dusting off the dirty carts? Why aren't we cleaning under the shelves? Oh because that's planned for Sunday of course, so a magical imaginary barrier is preventing us from doing that on Saturday! That means that today we have to spend time doing something that will amount to nothing! Can you tell I'm frustrated?

December 1st, 2021

My site had its first birthday 2 days ago! Crazy. Honestly I don't feel like a year passed since I made it. I feel like a year passed since the beginning of the pandemic lol. Well, I hope I'll keep this up for a very long time. This is the first time I followed through with having a diary, even if it's not super consistent. It's much simpler in digital form.

The new layout is here... I always feel like my layouts are super bare and I want to add more cute pics but then I never do. The tradition will likely continue. I can't fully commit to anything, and that's just who I am. Also the back-button is creepy because I actually planned to put it on a different page I have in works but... I kind of like it here. And I don't really like winter so it's not winter themed in the slightest >:). I can't say I don't enjoy Christmas decorations out in the city but personally I'm not into decorating for holidays/halloween etc.

I started watching a show loved by millenials all around the globe... The Office. Honestly I never felt a strong desire to watch it, and if it weren't for my sisters Netflix account, I don't think I ever would. Unlike her I'm a torrent enjoyer so I can always watch what I want, but netflix has its use sometimes I guess. That use is basically just being 2 clicks away from a show you never thought you'd watch but you're lazy. Honestly the show is not bad at all but I have to admit it got kind of weird after season 3-ish. If you're like me and you haven't watched the office yet and you happen to care for sitcom spoilers don't read this entry btw... Anyway, the shows theme feels like it's slowly morphing into something more romance centric and for my whole life I really hated that in sitcoms. At some point all the friends in the group have to date each other, experience some kind of love triangle relationship drama, the kids have to grow up and have love interests etc. I know it's a normal part of life and all but I'm always a little bit bored by it in sitcoms. In The Office it's especially weird because it seems they butchered certain characters for the sake of comedy and romance hijinks. I know I shouldn't think too hard about a comedy show but still! It bothers me a bit. For example Jan, her character is just all over the place. She goes from bitchy boss lady with an icy heart that fell in love with a goofy subordinate whom she's ashamed of, to psycho housewife into your typical housewife things that does insanely stupid shit to get Michael back but then also doesn't, but then also she does but like not really. Huh??? We go from that episode where she says she'll support him because he did the same for her and then two episodes later they break up in an extremely dumb way if you take into consideration what happened just two episodes ago or so. Why does Michael get to stay kind of consistent but she doesn't? It's also interesting how she's the one that gets much more humiliated when losing her job but Michael kind of just gets by lol. Another one is Angela, the cuck saga just didn't make sense. She should be a character that isn't hard to fuck up, yet they did her dirty imo... She's super honest, religious, bitchy and likes cats. Simple. But then she also cheats Andy with Dwight... It just doesn't make sense considering her moral compass seems really in place in all other situations. Idk if it's supposed to be a gotcha moment like "haha dumb frigid christian bitches can be hypocrites too!!!!!" but usually religious hypocrites are not really like that idk... She's not overly preachy or anything which is why I found her to be a hilarious and fun character until then. For Dwight it makes more sense that he'd do that because he's really into the survival of the fittest bullshit but then also he likes to play by the rules but also not. So it makes sense. I wrote this 3 days ago so now that I watched a few more episodes it seems Angela is turning into a type of person that doesn't care about human relationships and cares more about her cats than humans but eh idk. I smell some flanderisation coming, I hope I'm not wrong but it's kind of a staple for longer running shows. Outside of that I think the show is pretty entertaining, I did notice a drop in like joke quality after season 3 (I swear I heard somewhere that it gets less good after season 3 and my sister confirmed it, but idk where tbh). Although one thing I like about the show now is that Jim and Pam are together, not because I'm happy for them but because both of them were so annoying before they got together. The flirting was unbearable to watch lol.