``I am emotionally and electrically drained.''

I feel so drained. I feel like I need to curl up into a ball and just silently go to sleep, after downing a few shots of hard liquor.

I hate being referred to as a ``scholar''. I don't care who says it---fact is, I no longer see myself as a ``scholar''. He-who-shalt-not-be-named pointed out to me clearly that I did not fulfil the basic requirements of being a scholar, because I was ``intellectually lazy'' and that I didn't have the perseverance to bull-headedly push my way through the hard parts of the thought process. So to me, being called a ``scholar'' is taken as an insult, since I have to expend that effort to explain why I am not a scholar, assuming I give a damn in the first place. Inasmuch as I like not giving a damn, sometimes it's hard to dodge out due to point-blankness. Maybe my curtness will hint what I am really thinking about. If ever there is a push factor to leave the organisation after my bond is done, it would be that stigma associated with the word that I never seemed to have identified strongly with in the first place, because it is fucking hard to lead a normal life when one is surrounded by PhD holders.

Why can't people see me for who I am instead of who I was supposed to be?

Anyway, I'm drained, socially. Some kind of year-end function of the department at work; didn't feel right if I dodged out of it. So, I just showed up and made do with what I could. Whatever social capital I had left lying around was pretty much used up by the end of the afternoon, where I just didn't want to talk or even listen to anyone.

The things we do to appear normal...

It's funny to be in Singapore during the end-of-year. I was so used to spending new year's eve on my own in the winter that having to face it again this year in tropical Singapore just feels odd. Maybe I'll do what I should have done---go minimal and not give a damn. Just sleep regularly the night before and wake up on new year's itself feeling more or less like usual.

All these holiday things become more and more meaningless as one gets older. Until of course when one brings forth younglings---then the holidays take on a different kind of character where the focus is not on the self but on the said younglings.

I think I'm done here. Till the next update.