Ninjas STILL can't catch you if you're on fire

Again, it has been way too long since I last posted! So much for being good and sticking to one of my admittely many futile new year's resolutions. Super duper compressed update though, as it is midnight and I need to be up in less than 5 hours FUCKKKKK

WORK: BUSY! April was especially hellish re: events and GUESS WHAT LAST WEEK WE SIGNED UP FOR TWO MORE kjdhfkjhsdf sweet baby jeebus I am turning into an event planner now? Work continues to consume most of my active attention and I am starting to drop balls in the intricate juggling act that makes up my myriad and seemingly ever-growing responsibilities. The balls seem to be normal balls and and not explosive-rigged ones yet though, so there is that. Tomorrow one of our overseas distributors will be in the office and I will have to figure out a way to tell him why I haven't had the time to do the things for him he requested from me sighhhh.

LIFE: I am now 24! Totally and utterly in my mid-twenties now, which is still a very strange thing to get used to. I still feel like I need to embark on a vision quest or something to get the last badge of official young adulthood (and by that I mean a dude to bang or I guess ~SPEND MEANINGFUL TIME WITH~), but ehhh fuck that THERE IS NO TIME. My birthday fell on a Monday and ended up being a most excellent day at the office-- didn't really expect or want anything save for maybe some well-wishes from the colleagues but I got presents! The sales team gave me two amazing pairs of earrings, our intern gave me a donut-shaped cord holder, our designer gave me a futuristic coin purse and spa boss bought me CAAAAAAAAAKE! And I bought donuts for the office and then there was another farewell cake for the intern (her last day) and there was really too much food. Especially since I had tapas tapas TAPAS + wine and dinner with Dad, Sue and their friends afterwards, too. FOOD COMA.

FANGIRLING: Part of the reason why I have been bad at posting is because I bought myself a kindle fire and have actually just been using it to look at Facebook on a larger screen before bed and also uh READ ALL THE FIC. I am still super against typing on touch-screens, and I keep swiping something my accident that ERASES EVERYTHING I WROTE BEFORE kjshfdjhgajshfghg FUCK!!!! so uh, don't hold your breath expecting many mobile posts from me soon.

I DID watch The Avengers and Cabin in The Woods these past two weekends though, so I am ALL AFLUTTER WITH FEELS and great fannish love. Especially the Avengers-- I did not expect to come out of it having that many Natasha and Bruce feelings. They better be making a Black Widow movie and then it could tie in with the Winter Soldier and the Captain America movies and then back into the Avengers sequels AND THEN MY MIND WOULD BURST FROM THE AMAZING, THE END.

Also someone talk to me about Cabin and SPOILERSSS in the comments-- how great was it seeing those tropes subverted? I still crack up thinking about it days afterwards.

OOF this got longer than expected okay okay leaving noww---

...where does the freaking time go, ughhhhh. A lot has happened since I last posted, and that wasn't even a "real post". Don't really feel much up to a detailed recap so here are random bullet points.

-work still enjoyable, semi-quiet lulls interspersed with STRESS STRESS I AM ANNOYED BY THE DESIGNER TEAM THEY VEX ME AUGHHHH STRESS
-house dry now, water's been gone for 2-3 weeks and Dad and Sue have been speedy in getting everything in somewhat fighting shape again. Tentative moving back date sometime in Jan, though of course the entire ground level is gutted and will be empty for a while. We even had new ceilings put in, hopefully the mold won't return. Might be pretty hardy, since the house was under 2-3m of water for 2 straight months.
-Ma's one year anniversary came and went without me breaking down into a useless gibbering heap too badly-- Dad was thoughtful enough to take me out to dinner that night so that I got back to the hotel room late and tired, and the next day I went and made merit with my aunt and uncle and spent some time at their house, where I got to see my grandma and the cat. Khun Yai still skinny, cat still FAT lol. Ex-stepdad didn't post anything about the date on FB, but he "liked" my status about it. WOW.
-speaking of moods, I have been up and down and all around these past few weeks but it's in times like these when friends and your remaining family can be so wonderful and lovely. I would go into more whine and cheese about how I seem to have gotten more anxious about a worrying amount of things when I have the time to think about them but I can't be bothered at the moment, hah!
-christmas eve was spent at a friend's party with my int'l school people. On paper it sounded like a kids party (but with tequila and baileys) but in reality it was awesome. Christmas day was spent making my other friend feed me (muslim friend & hotel kid brat unite in not really seeing this holiday as a family thing lol), watching the Swedish Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and being introduced to the amazing world of REVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENGE. Awesome. Eps 1-4 down, now gimme moaaar.
-in Europe I always thought I was too Thai to really fit in there. Now at work I realize that I am not broadly Thai enough to really fit in w/ my colleagues-- though this is different when I'm with my international school friends, who are themselves either Thai or half-halfs. Specialized identity it is then! Also then I will just own the fact that people don't expect me to own the sometimes unnecessary nuanced conversations in the office lol and here I thought I was passive-aggressive by European standards. This isn't to say that I am not enjoying my office and colleagues though, this is just something I've been trying to articulate to myself.
-SO MANY PEOPLE IN BANGKOK UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH CROWDS WHYY.
-should probably look into mirroring to DW soon but this is something I will ignore until I have constant net at home again. I miss comment subject lines though! UGH

...anyone have any decent end of year memes to pass around? I haven't had the time to really look.

...it looks like I've been neglecting LJ for a good long while now eh? Fuck, time flies. Have been posting on FB and Twitter as usual, and if any of you haven't added me on either yet just PM me your info and I'll add you there becauuuuse it doesn't look like I'll be having constant LJ access anytime soon.

Why? Looking at my last LJ post on Oct 12, I was mentioning the floods and how we'd probably be okay. WELL it turns out I was wrong,as the water came for us too on Oct 15, Saturday early-fucking-morning. You really don't appreciate how fucking fast the water can come in until it's just been 5 frantic hours since the first signs appeared on the street in front of your house at 6AM and now you suddenly have to move up to the first floor because the entire ground floor is already full up with water. So much for our expectations of "if we're flooded it'll be up to our knees, max."

Water topped out at over 3 meters and we ended up "stranded" at the house for the weekend, no electricity (cut since 6AM) and no plumbing-- Dad, Sue, K.Yai, the maid, our dog and myself. We had managed to move up all the water & food we'd had in the kitchen up, the portable gas stove too, so it was okay in that regard, tho you really underestimate how much water you need to do the simplest of things and how quick 5 people and 1 dog burn through it. Also, how fast you miss the magic of flushing toilets. We had a large vase and a supply of plastic bags and well, dot dot dot.

K.Yai, the maid and I were evac'd out Sunday evening, Dad & Sue stayed until Tuesday because of the dog. Ace is now at Sue's sister's place, we locked everything up, took whatever valuables we could move and have been staying in town ever since. The cars we thankfully had the foresight to park on higher ground in front of the mooban, and when the water flooded us Sue ventured out on one of the boats that were passing by our house to go outside and park the cars on a nearby flyover bridge. That took 5 hours, mind you, for all that she wasn't even a kilometer out of the mooban. Dad and Sue managed to go back to the house the week after we evac'd out, got some more stuff. That took 9 hours roundtrip, due to our province being basically underwater and them having to do an epic detour. The week after that even those roads were impassible.

Now, they recently managed to go and get the cars down from the bridge and they're now parked in town, but even now, when the "water has gone down", we're still talking about our house being under 2 meters ++ of water and trip back of 6 hours. Normally it takes an hour and a half to get from our house to town. All the trees in the garden are dead, and the water is stagnant and rotting. Of course, it's not nearly as putrid as some places in Bangkok (where the water headed right after it wreaked havoc through our province) and heyy, still haven't been broken in.

Of course, this has kind of thrown a wrench in my usual life plans, but I was again lucky enough to get enough of the important things out and work has been a nice distraction. You do get bored of the few outfits you have tho and I confess to going shopping for new clothes for the sole reason that I couldn't be fucked to handwash my laundry as often as I should. This also means that my normal plans for my STBB and XMBB had to be utterly revamped and I've been working on legit pencil & paper drawings, I feel so old school. I don't have a laptop at the moment, as the hotel room I'm staying at charges for the wifi and I can't be bothered to pay for that and the photoshop laptop that is probably on its last legs is acting up anyways, so they're both stored at Dad & Sue's temp apartment. Will be sneakily attempting to use the communal scanner at the office and of course my office desktop to whip up a post for my STBB regardless though, posting date TUESDAYYYYYY AHHHH.

Which is why I thought I'd make a practice LJ post again and also give a little update. I HOPE YOU'RE ALL DOING FINE, MY DARLINGS <33 Maybe at some point I'll post pictures, but lol let's just say that I don't think we'll be able to live at the house for another 2-3 months at least and also the way our government has been handling this mostly makes me feel all the rageful feeeeeeelings. SIGHHHH.

My first week of being back on the job since the 9th of December last year is behind me now and I have got to say that barring getting to see my ladies (and dude, can't forget M, our lone XY chromosome-holder in the group) again, IT WAS A LOAD OF STEAMING SHIT. I thought it was all in my head at first, that I wasn't used to the workload any more, the way the calls seemed to pile up but I counted along and we are back to the level of having a call come in every minute for about 95% of the work day. I am still lucky that most of these aren't the negative yelling-and-insulting-your-intelligence ones, but it is only a matter of time. In the interest of keeping my sanity up, I have implemented the usual coping-strategies without shame again, fuck my statistics: delaying the moment of picking up the phone, spending a bit of the post-call processing time eating snacks and uh, sometimes just hanging up on the callers for accounts that piss me off. These little rebellions are still a drop in the ocean though, since deep in my heart I normally like to follow rules and normally feel very guilty about these things.

We also have a new girl R, who I am still formulating my opinion about, but the current forecast seems to be rough since she pings all my dirty-hippy-backpacker prejudices and that just makes me automatically affect a more disdainful and stuck-up version of who I normally am. I KNOW BACKPACKERS ARE MOSTLY VERY NICE PEOPLE but man the ones that I have talked to that keep yammering about how their way is the only ~true way to experience the REAL Asia just keep getting my hackles up. Also perhaps we are too jaded but I. told me that R also has some pretty naive expectations about her working life here and ahahahaha we'll see. We kind of have an unofficial bet going for how long she's gonna last.

BUT NOW FOR MORE ~*FANDOM-Y NEWS*~:

yuletart reveals went up a few days ago and I can now say that I was behind the following The Hunger Games paper dolls! I remain pretty pleased with how it turned out, and again, many thanks to laliandra and laulan for being my usual art betas! Am not at my own computer at the moment, but I'll put up an actual post soon with the HQ versions as I did make them to actually be playable (well somewhat. At the very least, they're supposed to be nearly A4-sized!). My gift art this year was the following SMOKING HOT CAROLINE from The Vampire Diaries (season 2 spoilers!) by the lovely dualbunny, who was also my own recipient lol. BASICALLY I WAS VERY PLEASED BY THIS YEAR'S YULETART and it remains one of my favorite yearly art fests ♥

Here are also some awesome vids that I have been linked to and have been obsessively rewatching:

Cupid's Chokehold by nel_ani. Hawaii Five-0 Steve/Danny goodness, AHHHH ♥. I need to download this onto my laptop so I can watch it every day for that shot of pure happiness, ahh. Such clever use of the clips to the lyrics, too-- I just keep alternating between cracking up and sighing contently.
Runs in the Family by kaiyote. Supernatural and a total MOOD SHIFT from the previous vid. Fantastic song choice and look at the fucked-up angels and again, excellent use of clips and sharp, rapid cutting. I particularly adore the editing of the "fill me up" (all the sex and in between it all, Cas gorging himself on food) and "knock me up" (ANGELS WILL MESS YOU UP) parts. Also, it reminds me that Misha Collins is fantastic at all those different weary/hopeless/dead tired Castiel!faces.
Sex and Reruns by greensilver. Community and mucho thanks for Lalface for reccing this to me. I cannot say enough that Community is one of the best shows ever and every one should watch it. How can it be so consistently hilarious and touching, creative and zany and still above all retain such a lovely heart? I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT IT and this vid just reinforces my convictions ♥ ♥.
Folding Chair by sisabet. Another Community vid, this time focusing on Annie. Lovely song and OH ANNIE, YOU ARE SO AMAZING AND HILARIOUS AND ADORABLE <33. I had the biggest smile after I finished watching this. And Allison Brie is hot, it has to be said.

...I continue to have a tenuous grasp on time management and juggling my responsibilities. Though in my defense I was quite sick from the time of my last posting- that week was basically a wash. Monday sick leave, Tuesday work where started to kind of already feel shitty then, but I dragged myself to work on Wednesday because I was stubborn and wanted to finish a translation. Ended up leaving after less than three hours and spent the rest of the day rolling around my apartment and feeling sorry for myself. Ma did drop by to give me home-made (!) chicken soup and lime + honey to make soothing juice, though. Thursday I called in sick again and went to the hospital for a check-up to find out what was up with my body trying to make life hell for me-- since apparently coughing like it was going out of style and having a fucked voice wasn't bad enough (not like I actually need to use my voice for my job or anything), well! My body decided early that week that it wasn't going to accept most of what I tried to introduce as food to it. In retrospect, probably about 85% of my feeling like crap at work, especially as I was back on Friday again, was due to MY INTENSE FEELINGS OF HUNGER. The end diagnosis ended up being ~acute bronchitis with a side helping of gastro-intestinal fuckery~. But I did finally get around to finding out my blood-group after 22 years of life: I AM A+! Something which was somehow intensely amusing to me. BRB looking at those blood-group personality test thingies now.

I was really nervous about this sickness not being over and done with before my BKK trip that was from last Friday until this Tuesday (especially the food thing, because damn if that would've screwed everything beautiful about BKK time!), but PRAISE THE DEITIES it was all okay. I still maintain the fact that our office is a giant teeming petri-dish for bacteria and this company is absolutely horrible if you want to leave work early if you feel like shit or are actualfax sick. SO MUCH HASSLE INVOLVED, IT IS NO WONDER I WASN'T SICK BEFORE. This was actually my first legit sickness in about 3 years, iirc.

I still feel the vestiges of a cough lurking in my throat right now-- it has reached that insanely irritating stage where you feel like you constantly need to clear your throat every 20 seconds, and you just know that every one around you is secretly hating you because you sound disgusting and you feel disgusting and ughhhhhh.

ALSO THERE ARE ANTS IN MY ROOM AGAIN. WHAT ARE THEY DOING THERE FML AND FUCK THIS STUPID APARTMENT.

Moaaar posts to come (BKK recap! TEH DRAMAZ AT WORK! etc!), I just had to at least get this off my chest lol.

And because I would do anything for dearest Carmen, it would be awesome if you all could just click this link and vote for bifi!

Or at least the willpower to not go down the same road of "well I do have pressing things to do in the 2-3 hours I have after coming home from work past midnight BUT WAIT LET ME READ 20K OF FIC FIRST YES" every damn night. OH WELL, AT LEAST IT IS THE WEEKEND NOW. I survived a week of midnight shift without having to drink a single coffee! I even had a whole day without having to take calls today! Got to attempt and fail to translate 43 not quite jam-packed but very unevenly written and melodramatic Powerpoint presentation slides from German to English in 8 hours instead, and it is extra unpaid work that I will gladly take. Anything to keep me from having to talk to the idiotic callers that are somehow an extra special flavor of thick when it is a Friday.

Last weekend was also our very first new office office-party, and in retrospect that most exciting thing that happened was ........wait, I can't even think of anything besides the fact that a bunch of people seem to had gotten some mild stomach flu from the food, which isn't even exciting and more along the lines of depressing. We had "unlimited beer" though, which led to one of my colleagues (NB) coming up with the following charming statement about me to someone's plus one, said with the sincere belief of the blasted to their eyeballs wasted:
"Isn't her accent amazing?? It's just so American! *makes mock "American" noises to illustrate her point* And I sound so British instead, and sometimes when I hear her talk to clients in English I think that she is just so good BUT OH IT'S JUST SO DREADFUL-SOUNDING BECAUSE IT'S AMERICAN ENGLISH" ...yeah, idek what to say to that.

A lot of things have been happening and I have been remiss in blogging about them, so this weekend I will try to catch up!

Now for randomosity! Some links of Bangkok-related awesome that I have been clicking through during work:
Still-Life in Moving Vehicles ...ever want to see just how amazing Thai cabs can look like? Well then this is the blog for you <3

5 Movies That Offer Eyeopening Views of Bangkok ...some movies that I definitely have to check out. And speaking of Thai movies, I am very vexed that I will probably not get to see Insee Daeng/Red Eagle before it is out of theaters :// IF ONLY I COULD SKIP WORK TO GO SEE MOVIES INSTEAD NEXT WEEK, GODDAMN.

Paolo Bacigalupi's "Windup-Girl" ...waiting for my order to come in from Asia Books and super excited to read this already~~

AND BECAUSE I CAN, this vid somehow makes me really happy:

...Even after numerous repeat viewings I still have not managed to get any more of the lyrics into my brain than what is in the chorus, but the video just never fails to make me smile. Her hair actually looks really cute in that style! And she just looks so happy and is working the hell outta her outfits AND THERE IS SWINGING INTO THE SKY AND TRIUMPHANT FISTS AND THE SUN SHINING ON YOU AND BALLOONS AND JUMPING AROUND WITH FIREWORKS EXPLODING and ssdjkfhjfd <33 How can I not be charmed?? Can't wait to actually boogie to this in a club somewhere, this better be on heavy rotation on MTV Thailand soon!

♥ ♥ ♥ SCHLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND ♥ ♥ ♥

oh my god this game. I was at the edge of my seat FOR MOST OF IT and the jungs were so fantastic! I fully admit that that second goal of the Brits should've been counted and it would've been wonky if the end score would've been 2: THEORETICALLY 2

BUT

IT WASN'T AND IT WAS 4: 1 THEORETICALLY 2 and KLOSE SCORED AND POLDI SCORED AS DID MUELLER TWICE

and Oezil was quick like lightning and totally adorable

and NEUER.

HOT DAMN, SON. He was fine and IS FINE and I am kind of totally maybe nurturing a sudden wee crush ahem strapping young tallish blond man QUELLE SURPRISE SELF, QUELLE SURPRISE. /has a type

AND WHAT IS POSSIBLY THE BEST PART OF THIS WHOLE GAME? There is a very high likelihood that most of Germany will be so hungover tomorrow that hardly anybody will call. I mean, the likelihood of 95% of our staff being hungover like hell is also super high, but yeah. Or at the very least we'll have happy callers :Db

brb prepping my outfit for tomorrow fuck yeah what should I wear with my Mannschaftstrikot~~~ ♥


PS also I heard from someone on my FB that there was a ~PSYCHIC OCTOPUS that predicted a Germany win. WELL CLEARLY THE OCTOPUS IS ALWAYS RIGHT.