Hello 2009!

Another year has come.

Awesome.

I don't know if I mean that or if I'm being sarcastic. Well, another year's another 365 1/4 days to make my life, myself, into something. And I truly am thankful that I'm still alive, that I'm given the chance to last this long.

It's just that things will happen this year that'll change my life.

They scare the heck outta me.

Of course, the first big thing is graduating. I'd officially be unemployed in three months. I've been a student since I was 3 years old. What will I do now?

The second thing I'm anticipating/dreading is my month-and-a-half in Taiwan. No offense to the country and its inhabitants or whoever loves it, but I have never dreamed of going to Taiwan (not even in the brief months of my F4 fever). It's to take care of my dad while he gets therapy there. I'm not complaining about that. I think it'd be a valuable experience for me to live away from home and do virtually everything myself. I have to do laundry, clean the house, iron maybe, go but food... I'd be okay with cooking, but please, don't expect me to go to a wet market (palengke) over there. I don't even do that here. Supermarket, always. And I'd have a hell of a time bargaining in Mandarin. Ah, the language. I've studied it for almost 15 years; you'd think I'd be uber fluent by now. But no. I think my knowledge of that language has depleted in the course of my spending 4 years without it in my face, 24/7 as it used to. I'd also have to speak with my aunt (whom we're going to live with) in Mandarin and/or Fukkien because she can't speak (nor understand, I think) Tagalog or English. And then I'd have to go entertain myself while my dad is in the therapy place. My aunt tells me there's a mall near the house we're gonna stay in, and I could spend two whole days and not see all of it. That excited me. But this could be a potential letdown. Will I be given shopping money?

Wait, would I have to get a job there?!

Argh. Dad. Why couldn't you have chosen an English-speaking country to have therapy in? I could do so much more there. First of all, I could understand perfectly what everybody would say and not have to mentally translate everything all the time. Sigh. This will be a huge test of my skills.

Third thing that will happen this year is.... ah, well. You know.

I don't wanna think about that yet.

Anyway, there are a couple of days left in this vacation, and the last of them I really really have to spend studying. I wanted to start today, but I'm feeling like shit because of this scratchy sensation at the back of my throat. I can't get it out. I don't know if it's only phlegm or if I'm having tonsillitis again. Doesn't matter. All I wanna do is stay in my comfy bed and read/watch TV all day.

Speaking of reading, I have electronically encoded my READ BOOKS list the other day, but not completely. I got the R.L. Stine part and stopped. I couldn't decide if I'm gonna place it there in the READ list or just settle for the highlighted/not highlighted arrangement in my R.L. Stine list. Whatever. I'll see to that when I get another break. Which will probably already be in March.

I mentioned previously that I was reading two books, Nightmares and Dreamscapes my Stephen King (which I found out yesterday was actually turned into a tv show! Well, a mini-series) and World War Z by Max Brooks (an e-book actually). I have not finished both of them. Instead, I have added more books to my current reading list. Days ago we went to Alabang Town Center (have not been to this place in ages, maybe two years already) and while waiting for my dad, I found a mini booksale type of thing at the center and found books by authors I've wanted to try out. The best I found was Red Dragon and Hannibal by Thomas Harris. Can't wait to start these. But I have this urge to wait until I find Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal Rising, you know, to complete the series, before starting. I have that little OC-ish tendency. But hey, I found e-books of them so... yeah. The other one is Dean Koontz's Dark Rivers of the Heart. Based on my mini research, he's one of the top horror authors out there. There were a lot of Dean Koontz books in that sale. I wanted to grab them all but that would've burned a huge hole in my wallet so I settled for one, just a taste, if you will. Then the other one is Ransom by Danielle Steel. I don't normally read romance novels although in the past I have read a couple. They were okay, an easy read, just to keep me occupied for a couple of hours. Since Steel is a renowned romance novelist, why not give her a try, right? And her books had this common template for the cover, you know, a gold strip about an inch thick at the top and then whatever color the rest of the bottom. They looked so... uniform, so conducive to collecting. :) Heehee.

So right now, what I'm reading all at the same time are as follows:
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
World War Z (I've transferred this into my iPod's Notes section, had to split up the whole text into 170 4kb files because iPod can't handle showing anything bigger. Took me about four hours to do so. Ugh.)
Dark Rivers of the Heart
Ransom
Until Forever (e-book by Johanna Lindsey)

So... that's a whole lot. I'm not even including The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks which I started a week ago, I think. But I put it down after the first page because I decided to read it when I really need a tear-jerker. Oh, and did I mention I managed to acquire truckloads of e-books (if they were solid copies of books, they'd be truckloads. Heehee.)? And now I'm having this mad compulsion to go through as many of them as I can before school starts again because by then I'd have no life whatsoever until graduation. That's why I'm reading Until Forever now (the title makes me cringe). It's also a romance novel but I find it a bit funny. It's about this cursed sword that, when a woman enclosed the hilt in her hand, if she rightfully owns the sword, would summon its really hot Viking owner, Thorn, the brother of Thor. Hahahhahaha. I swear, that story is so ridiculous... Why do I read these things. Lol. I don't know. I have another OC-ish thing: I need to know what happens next. Always. When I start to read something, I have to know what happens next even if the story sucks. That's what got me through the last three books of the Twilight series. But hey, it's not so bad. The compulsion, I mean. Applies to tv shows too, although they're harder to complete. I have yet to know what happened in the past season/s of Lost, Desperate Housewives, House, Smallville, How I Met Your Mother...

Okay, I'm going to finish reading as many books as I can now, even with this headache. :)