DOA

I watched DOA when I got home from work this morning. Boy, what a fun movie it was. It's so much fun I think I'll watch it again.

This might be the most fun kung-fu flick I've watched in a good long while.

That Holly Valance is really hot stuff. Of course every guy with eyes would know that already. Still, very hot stuff.

The other girls were really hot too. And the fight scenes were brilliant which is the usual thing to expect from a Corey Yuen movie.

I hope people make more movies like this.

Quiet Holiday Soon

I received mail from an old friend just now. It's always nice to hear from old friends. She is doing well and our other friends are ok as well. Always nice to hear that.

A few days ago, I bought a Sonic the Hedgehog DVD. I'm glad to report that it works. I've been looking for a working Sonic emulator for ages. It's got all the Sonic games too. Lots of fun.

I also tried to play Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion recently. It's nice and all, but it's in 1st person and I get motion sickness from it so I can't play it for long without stopping. The game is huge though so it should occupy me for a while. Hopefully, I get used to it and the motion sickness goes away.

I could try playing it in 3rd person view, but I can't get used to it. Which is a shame because the graphics are awesome.

I'm back at work this week and it's graveyard shift again. I don't look forward to it at all. At least the Gawai holidays are coming and I'm off work as I usually am every year.

Strangely enough, I'm not really looking forward to it as much as I used to. There's potential for parties and other fun things, but I feel like skipping all of that this year. I'll probably just visit 2 maybe 3 people and spend the rest of the time hanging out with friends as usual.

We're supposed to go and watch Pirates 3 this week. This one I'm looking forward to.

I'm hoping for a quiet holiday with a small group of friends. There won't be any drunken hijinks this year...

Cheap RAM

I went out this afternoon to get some RAM for my dad's painfully slow Vista running notebook. The original plan was to buy 512Mb and hope that it won't cost too much.

I find out that 1Gb of notebook DDR2 RAM is a mere RM125!

So now the notebook has 1.5Gb of RAM and runs Vista quite nicely, even on batteries.

The lesson here is not to buy RAM from Dell. Buy it from a shop instead. It's literally half price.

I'm in the process of moving over some of my D&D stuff over to the notebook. My dad doesn't use it much so I might as well use it for something. At least it's not sitting in a cupboard anymore.

And it's not painfully slow anymore. That's a nice thing.

May

It's Monday morning, I'm at the office and feeling kinda sleepy. The coffee hasn't kicked in yet.

On Saturday, I slept in. I must've slept 12 hours. Not because I was ill or anything like that. Because I wanted to.

It was great. I haven't done that in so long. Being lazy on a weekend does have its perks. It's good for the mind I wager. Plus, no fear of headaches. If I tried this last month, I would get one for sure.

I watched Night at the Museum. It was pretty cool. Light hearted fun. Quite enjoyable.

Also enjoyable was Chelsea winning the FA Cup. Very good, satisfying result.

May will end soon and June is always something to look forward to. Gawai will be upon us again. Most of my friends will be free. Lots of fun to be had.

Behold, it's the middle of the year already. That was fast wasn't it? It's been a very good year for me. A very important year for me personally. A year of pretty big change.

So how has your year been?

Replacement Day

I'm at work today. I'm not supposed to be at work but here I am anyway. The guy who was supposed to be here had a case of pink eye.

I'm slightly bored. It was a good day though. Later, I might go out but the parents are using the car. I'm not sure what to do yet.

Anyway, I've made a decision of some sort.

I've decided to stop writing about "newsworthy" stuff. Like current issues. And politics. And stuff like that. This blog is about me mostly and that is what I will be writing about mostly. I may write about "news" stuff, but only how it relates to me and how I feel about it. No more detailed stuff.

I've decided to do this because it's very tiring to write about "news" stuff (and arguing about it afterwards). This blog is a sanctuary and it's not a place I want to have arguments in.

So that's decided already.

On the whole, I'm feeling quite good. The meds are really helping and I'm really feeling a difference. A lot of things have changed. Especially the things I think about and feel.

A lot of the negativity has gone. A lot of the darkness has gone. I think about the past a lot less now. I don't feel as haunted as before. And yet at the same time, I worry that I might turn into one of those annoying embassador from happy town types. That would be very bad.

To be honest, that's not likely to happen. Too much has happened and I'm not going to forget even as I feel better and better as a whole.

I haven't told anyone else yet apart from my immediate boss at the office. He was quite shocked as can be expected but he didn't give me a hard time. He's pretty cool actually.

Certain other things haven't changed.

I remember one time I wrote a post about changing your personality and where to draw the line between fixing your flaws and changing so completely as to have a new "fake" self. I have a better idea of where that line is now.

Me post meds and me pre meds is the same guy, only not depressed. Only a little more positive. That's the ultimate aim anyway.

It's been nearly a month since I started treatment and so far so good.

I hope it stays that way when I get off the meds.

Have a nice weekend.

Crap Jobs

To be gainfully employed is a good thing. Usually. Even when your job is boring. Or kinda dangerous. Or not very glamorous.

Well, apparently in the past having a job can be a rather tricky business. And some jobs are just appalling.

Here's a link to the some of the worst jobs in history.

Enjoy.

Overdue Entry

Jerome passed me a DVD full of SNES ROMS on Friday night. I've got so many little games now. Literally hundreds of them.

It's great. Very entertaining.

Talking about entertainment, yesterday I watched Just Follow Law. A good movie. Very funny, although I imagine you need to be either Singaporean or Malaysian to fully appreciate the unique local flavour.

I also finally watched Dead Man's Chest. It was everything I expected it to be. Didn't let me down. Really looking forward to watch At World's End. Should be a cracker for sure.

Haven't watched Spidey 3 yet. Probably next week.

All in all I had a decent enough week.

Yesterday was also the day for my follow up appointment with the Doc. Talked for awhile, discussed a few pharmaceutical matters. It was a good, informative session. The Doc is a really nice guy, very soft spoken and not at all intimidating like some doctors I've gone to previously.

I don't enjoy going to a clinic/hospital at all, but the Doc is helping with that.

Treatment is still ongoing at least another month. So far so good, things are improving over time. We'll see in a month.

Yesterday, I was reading some of my older entries. Many have a little too much drama in them. So much drama, it made me cringe.

It was one of those rare times I wanted to pull them all down and pretend I never wrote them. But this morning, I thought better of that. Cringe or no cringe, those entries are part of who I am. I suppose I have to live with it along with the consequences.

But unlike before I have something to look forward to now. This is not the time for regrets. The future may hold good things yet and perhaps all will be worth it at the end of the road.

So Far So Good

I regularly have the most painful, intense headaches. You know the type where it's just in one small area of the head and it feels like a parasite is trying to bore its way out of my skull with a malfunctioning power tool.

I also have immense hang overs. If I drink any more than 4 cans of beer or the equivalent amount of liquor, rest assured the next day I will be afflicted by a hangover so intense I'm affectively disabled the whole day.

Then I started taking anti-depressants.

I noticed a big difference on Sunday morning. I had quite a lot to drink while we at Will's house the previous night. I went home and went to sleep. I fully expected my usual banging hangover.

I did get a hangover. But it was just a slight one. Which is odd.

Then it occurred to me that I've not experienced my regular migraine attacks in the last week. Even when I slept in, which is what used to trigger it. Even during warm nights and hot days when I sleep after coming home from night shift. Heat plus oversleeping equals huge migraine attack. Usually.

I wonder if my medication has anything to do with this. I understand that SSRI type drugs affect your brain chemistry. Perhaps chemical imbalance caused those headaches, or maybe made me more prone to them?

I'm going to report this to my doc this Saturday and see what he says.

There is another known SSRI side effect that I'm noticing. I understand that SSRI inhibits the amount of REM sleep that I get. Loss of REM sleep equals no dreams.

I've had no dreams at all for a week now. It's a rather weird feeling.

The drug is working out ok so far. Things are getting better and getting "easier". Luckily for me, the side effects are very minimal so I can keep it up however long it takes until the doc tells me to stop.

I really hope it works out in the long term and I really hope the changes will be permanent.

I have more questions to ask the doc. The answers will be interesting, I'm sure.

A Nice Weekend

I had a nice weekend.

Yesterday, we went up to Singgai to visit Will. It was fun. It rained earlier in the day but happily it stopped by the time we got there. There is a stream not far away. We spent most of the late afternoon there.

In the evening, we just sat around drinking beer and playing UNO. It was fun.

Talking about fun, I downloaded a bunch of Nintendo emulators recently together with something like 180 games. It's brilliant especially the SNES emulator and the Nintendo ROMs. It's such a coincidence that I also recently bought a gamepad to play FIFA07 with. Those emulators and ancient games will make sure the gamepad is going to be well used.

Because I have so many games to wade through, I only discovered that I had Super Mario All-Stars this morning. It's a remake of all the original Mario games. I'm playing the remake of Super Mario Brothers. Maybe this time around I'll actually finish the game!

I also have Contra 3. And Super Bomberman. And Streetfighter Z! Ahh the joys of revisiting the distant past...

I really like the SNES emulator. I remember thinking how awesome would it be to own an SNES when it first came out. And now I have it. Unfortunately, I don't know many SNES games. I bet that'll change soon.

There is a torrent file somewhere out there that contains 1.7Gb worth of various Nintendo ROMs. I'm seriously thinking about downloading it.

So yeah, I have a lot of stuff to play around with. It's awesome.

Oh yes one final thing that is completely off topic.

While we were at Will's house, some of the household was watching Inul Daratista videos. I found it strangely... compelling. I remember reading some news a while back about some of her "provocative" choreography.

After watching the videos, I can understand how it would bother some people. There are Inul videos on YouTube. Watch them and see what I'm talking about.

Hehe.

A Quiet Place Inside

Usually, working at night tends to cause a rather unhappy reaction with me. I usually feel worse at night in the office when I am alone. Too much time alone with no body around for distraction tends to bring out the worse kind of negative thinking. It's when my brain digs up its worse memories and chew on them.

It's been 4 days since I began taking the meds. On the 1st day, it didn't seem like much. I was glad that I was finally doing something about being depressed, but I didn't feel anything different. Apart from the slight nausea.

This is normal from what I can gather. According to the doc, it takes 4-6 weeks for the meds to fully establish itself.

So on the 1st day, everything was pretty much as it was. But lately...

It's kind of hard to explain. For lack of a better way to describe it, I would say that things are "quieter". Quieter in the sense that in my head and in my emotions, there is only me. I only hear myself these days. I no longer hear whatever it was that used to be there, the thing that reminds me of my failings, my mistakes and regrets. That thing that fills me with overwhelming guilt and the overpowering sense of despair, is just a whisper now. No longer a roar. It's just on the fringes now, no longer being taken seriously.

I'm not sure if I'm saying this right.

It's a strange place to be in. I no longer feel as bad about myself or the things that I do. I no longer feel as if life has passed me by. Day by day, I can feel those toxic emotions slowly fade further and further away as the drugs work inside my head.

It's the weirdest sensation.

Actually, the thoughts are still there. But now, I see them forming in my head and as soon as I do, I knock them out of the park. Easily. In minutes. It's easier to do that now. No more excessive struggling. Like I said, the evil voices are just whispers now. Now in my head, I hear me and only me.

It's hard to explain.

Gee, I sound like a crazy person don't I? Maybe I am not all there. Maybe I wasn't all there in the first place. Maybe after I finish my treatment I will finally have all my tools in the box so to speak. I fervently hope so.

This week is night work week and even more interesting, the factory is shut down for a few days due to the holidays. There is literally no one here. There are only half a dozen people here at night this last 2 days. Normally there will be at least 500 people on the floor. It's deathly quiet right now.

I can only imagine how bad this week would've been if I wasn't on anti-depressants.

I do have some questions though.

What is actually making me feel so much better? Is it the meds or is it what they call the "placebo effect" i.e just the IDEA of me taking meds as opposed to the meds themselves?

It's only been 4 days and already I feel distinctly different. How am I going to feel when the meds fully kick in in a month's time? I'm curious. I suppose I'll find out when it happens.

Finally, what will happen when I finish my course of meds? Will I be able to prevent a relapse without the drugs? Will the change be permanent? Will I be able to live normally and not get sucked back in? Will it remain quiet inside?

I guess I'll find out when I get there and at least now I know I have options and means to help myself if necessary.

Like I was saying before, it's a very important time in my life and I can safely say that as far as this blog is concerned, some of the next few entries in the next few months will be the most important entries I will ever write.

I hope that far in the future I can look back, reread these entries and recall how I made my escape from Hell.

Have a nice week.