the perils of

    Yes I'm back on the blogosphere! Yay!     Last week I took my dad's suggestion to go on a solo trip. I instantly knew where I wanted to go: Baguio. I thought it the perfect destination for me because I'd already been acquainted with the place from two previous trips. And I was also craving that crisp, piney Baguio air.       In the days leading up to the trip, I stressed myself out so much with planning the itinerary, to the point of checking the hourly weather reports in Baguio and planning my activities around that. I became so anxious about the itinerary that I lost sight of the main point of the trip, which was to practice being on my own. I had to keep reminding myself that the goal wasn't to visit all the tourist attractions, but to learn more about myself, which meant really listening to myself and going wherever I wanted and doing whatever I felt like.      So I scrapped the itinerary I had spent days researching ...

      I feel like I'm a little too old to be writing essays on "How I Spent My Christmas Vacation," but what the heck. This is 2016. Adult coloring books and hoverboards are real things grownups can own.      Anyway. What I've been up to for the past couple of weeks, aside from mindlessly scrolling through Facebook: Tried my hand at programming a choose-your-own story game using the Episode app. I found it to be really user-friendly! You can easily program your characters' behaviors, dialogue, and appearance. For my program, I chose to do an updated version of Splanchnic (too lazy to think up a brand-new story). Got too lazy to program the second episode though, so for now the game is stuck at the point before Elmer gets to the Spleen Department.  Filling in the Secret Garden coloring book that Mai-mai got me for Christmas. At first it's pretty therapeutic, since all you really have to do is just scratch a colored pen in between some lines...

Judging by my Facebook and Instagram news feeds, #LaBoracay season seems to be coming to a close. The parties have ended, the beaches are emptying, bikinis are being tossed in the laundry, and social media is filling up with pictures of nearly naked boys and girls in their swimsuits. Yes yes, everyone is happy. Except me. Because I hate summer. Okay I don't hate summer. I like summer. But I really hate what summer does to people. To women, especially. Look. Summer is supposed to be a time for freedom. For the time being, you're free from lectures, homework, quizzes, tests. No more thesis. No more thesis adviser. You're free. You've got the time to go head out to the beach with your friends and chill out, and nobody has the right to waggle a finger at you and say, Hey, you crazy kid, you should be in school! Nope. Because there is no more school. Because it is summer. Rejoice, men and women of the world! Only, not really. Because when I'm scrolling through...

Our agenda for this day: Universal Studios! Typically, the way to get to Universal is in a cable car that goes from Singapore to Sentosa Island. But that would've cost around 30 dollahs per person, and we were on a budget. So we took the cheaper alternative, the monorail. I think it was a 6-dollah trip, and that already included the return trip!   The view from the train. You can see the cable cars, they look like tiny little dots. Hah. Those suckers paid twenty six bucks to see the same view that we did!  The monorail stops first at Resarth World and then goes on to two more stops. You have to alight here to get to Universal Studios. Anyway! Everything looked sweet and yummy... ...Including me. Nyehehehe. (But that, my dear children, is considered cannibalism, and is frowned upon by most societies.) When you get to Universal, the first thing you do is take a picture with the famed Universal Studios globe.  But of course you have to wait...