Its all about the money, money

Hi everyone

Sorry for my long absence, Life has had its ups and downs for the past few months and I just lost all inspiration to write but now i am back and hopefully for good. :D

My boyfriend finally got his working visa sorted out ! Thank goodness, now we have moved onto our next application, for a house. It seems like our whole relationship revolves around our application projects lol. I don't know when we will ever be done with them all.

But tomorrow is the D-Day we have to pay the solicitor 2500 euro!!!! "Its all about the money money money" anyway at the moment we are heavily in debt. my boyfriend made a few stupid decisions. but we are handling it. I am still hunting for a job. So the search is most certaintly on.

I am 23 now. I had my birthday on the 2nd of April. and got a big mountain of clothes.

Dresses,

Shoes

Jeans

Demin jacket

So i was a happy camper :D all set for summer bring it on!

Wait for it

The only thing I seem to be doing is waiting, waiting for everything, waiting for our solicitor to get back to us about our application its been like at least 2 months since we heard anything. I keep joking hes sitting in his office getting fat. Then my boyfriend goes mad, saying i am making it worse, we should never of hired the solicitor in the first place that's just my opinion.

Another thing i am waiting for, well not really waiting for a such but I know its going to happen and it definitely will. I am going to finish college at the end of August and go out into the big bad world and hopefully find a job. I wish i could stay in college for another while... I'm only 22...

Although as of last night the job front has slightly improved, I saw a staff wanted sign in a Casina which is about 5 minutes away from our apartment, so i just dropped in my CV this morning so now I am sitting beside the phone waiting for word...

 
Another thing that I am not particularly waiting for, but i know its going to happen is some of my Chinese friends moving back to China, its inevitable.

The next thing i am waiting for is something i am actually waiting for and looking forward to. My friend came back from China about two weeks ago and told me they bought some gifts for me :) and I met them last week and when i arrived in the city centre they said Damn I forgot to bring your gift.... So I am still waiting to receive my gift lol.

Actually that's not the only gift I am waiting for, another friend from Malaysia came back to Ireland a couple of months ago and we met up and he was really excited to see me and lost my gift... then he told me he has other gifts at his house for me and he will give them to me next time... but the next time just hasn't come round yet..

My boyfriend bought me a new (well new to me) IMAC wow very very fancy! but i still haven't been able to use it to like access the internet yet because it needs some system repairs. Hes been saying hes going to fix it ever since he bought it... hopefully it will be worth the wait.

I am sure there's loads more things I am waiting for... but these are the ones that have come to mind now.

Que sera, sera

I'm back from my brief blog hiatus, I just had to take some time out mainly because we had to move house and it took us awhile to get the internet set back up. First things first we didn't end up moving in with my boyfriends friends. I think we made the right decision although our new place is quite small. Its essentially a studio apartment. Its rather basic and I'm surprised we were able to find a place for all of our 15 bags of stuff.

Yes 15 bags! My boyfriend couldn't believe it, before he used to be able to move with just 2 bags, he couldn't understand how I could possibly have increased it to 15. Its surprising what people accumulate over a year.  We brought clothes, laptops, shoes (obviously) and then I don't know what the hell all the other junk was!

Although I said I won't be going on holidays this year.... because I will be stuck in summer school... I have managed to squeeze a short break in! I will be going to Tuscany, Florence in Italy for 10 days with  my family! The funny thing about my dad picking Italy is that, My boyfriends sister lives in Italy. I have never met her before though, but my boyfriends hopeful that I may be able to meet up with her while I'm over there.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that my boyfriend was trying to find a new job and may have to move to another town... however he fortunately found another one close by so that didn't happen. but sadly there's rumors going around that the boss of the new restaurant has huge debts and could close at any minute. So he may have to go job hunting again. Just as we thought things were settling down.

Also we finally submitted our application, its all signed sealed and delivered and we have decided whatever will be will be. If its successful we will start planning and saving to go on a trip to China, If it is unsuccessful we will move to China. and apply again from there. My boyfriend is preparing for the worst and has been trying to force me to speak Chinese with him which is really difficult since I am still more or less at beginner level anyway Wow! big choices and decisions. 

However on Friday we realised there is another complication with the application, We have to submit more docmentation @.@ Including my passport which I am not very happy about, apparently they will send it back as soon as they have finished examining it. I am worried I won't get it back in time for my holiday The holidays already been paid for and we must submit these documents within 21 days. The solicitor told me that I should get it back after 7 days. But its not guaranteed. Hope for the best.

Procrastination time

The build up to Tuesday, the stress of having to finish projects nearly killed me, I know I left the finishing off to the last minute and that's what caused all the stress and anxiety, but once I finally submitted them I thought I would feel a huge sense of relief but instead I didn't, Frankly I felt a bit faint and like I wanted to throw up. This could of been because I drank two cans of red bull.

It was just an anti climax, maybe I felt I could of done better if I had more time.... I have a terrible problem with procrastinating these days. When time is almost running out for something I can't concentrate anymore I want to do anything but that.

the day before the project was due to be handed in, I went out to my local 2 euro shops searching for something, anything, I bought 2 packs of sour wine gums (2 for 2 euro) I love sour sweets so it was such a great bargain and find for me because sour sweets are almost impossible to find these days and Cherryade, I thought it would give me motivation.

Then I went to the bookshop to browse, and found a new book that I desperately want, but I resisted the temptation because I knew if I bought that I wouldn't do an ounce of college work til I had finished reading it.  So once my exams are finished I am going to treat myself to it.

Rosie Mckinsley- Gypsy Girl

Then I came home tried to finish off my project and ended up doing the hoovering 

Then having a shower 

and then sitting down trying to work on the project.

Then my boyfriend came home and I talked to him for ages and just couldn't find the get up and go to finish off my project. Then the next morning I had to get up early to finish them both off because I knew time was almost up and I had absolutely no choice. 

So today I should of started preparing for my exams. I have one exam on the 3rd of May and one on the 7th of May. also I have a presentation on in June for my summer school, its about Japanese and Korean trade unions, employment systems, the state.

I decided to research that instead of study. I don't know why, probably because its more interesting than knuckling down and trying to understand International financial Management which I feel is a lost cause and Global competitive strategies is appealing but I just couldn't get myself started.

I just feel like I am having a mental block, maybe I am distracted, or worried, our application submition date is looming on us, we literally only have one more thing to get and were good to go. (even the one more thing we have to do, i don't want to do, I have to ask the neighbour to sign a letter for us and lately I have had mixed feelings about them, there hot and cold) once we submit the application, we face a 3 month wait and then hey presto we never have to think about it ever again. If it all goes well of course.

I also learned something else this week, I really hate being the stay at home person in a relationship. I don't think I will ever be able to be a full time stay at home mom. 

Up until recently my boyfriend has only been working part time. I used to go to college in the morning and find him waiting for me at night when I got home. I got used to that routine and now hes working full time again and now I am the one saying good bye to him in the morning and waiting for him to come home in the evening.  I never realized how hard it was on him. when he sometimes said don't go I will miss you I always brushed it off, he was just being needy.

It sucks. I know its only temporarily until my summer school begins and then I will be in college 9-5 everyday. 

Another dilemma has occurred my ex boyfriend has asked to study with me in my new college, because its closer to his home than our old college and I didn't have the heart to say no.  Now I am not sure if I want to study with him and I don't like waiting for a text from him saying hey lets go and study together today. 

I don't know what to do. I feel like a burst balloon.

Back to Business

Today I had a sudden reawakening, the midterm break is well and truly over and the next 4 weeks are going to be like hell for me, So many assignments are due all at once. Oh my god what kind of insane scheduling system do they use at my college?

Despite the fact that all Masters students, at least under my major International Business, all study only 3 subjects per semester (Although we have a heck of alot of assignments for each subject.) Which does seem relatively lenient compared to my undergraduate degree where I had to study 6 subjects per semester. 

 

But in my undergraduate degree the lecturers were very careful to schedule different due weeks for different subjects so we never or rarely had to submit 2 assignments in one week. Which had its up's and down's

 

Ups being, We never felt overly pressurised because we only had one thing to focus on per week.

 

Downs being everyone felt this was the colleges way of suggesting that things should be done at the last minute and thus everything was always put on the long finger. Everyone always used to say "ah we have plenty of time we don't need to think about it yet" and it became the norm that students would start a project at the beginning of the week it was due. Which meant on a due date, everyone was in a last minute frenxzy. But for the rest of the time they were totally relaxed and totally lazy

 

On the other hand having all assignments due on the same dates or at least weeks, makes everyone feel pressurized all the time and makes me at least feel like there is not enough time in the day to get everything done. I'm not superwoman! but nor is anyone else. Anyway I have noticed in my current college UCD there is no or barely any last minute frenzy's. Just 24/7 frenzies. .

For instance this semester I have 3 subjects :

1. Global Competitive strategies, we have

• 4 presentations worth 10% 1 2 3 4
• 12, 1 page case study analysises 1 due each week worth 10% 1-8 9 10 11 12
• 1 group project 30 pages. worth 30%
• Exam worth 50% 

2. Project management

• 2 individual reports
• 1 group report
• 1 presentation

 3. International Financial Management

• 2 group reports
• 1 exam

The greens and yellows show the overlap and orange shows the completed ones. So basically in the next 4 weeks I have to complete more or less all of the above and then I will have the exams at the end of April, I haven't taken an exam in almost a year. So I'm not looking forward to them especially not the International Financial Management exam.

I would like to say these are the only projects I have going on but I would be lying, I also have my boyfriend's visa application project (also here) on my shoulders, which I haven't talked about here for ages, because frankly there have been no updates at all up until Friday. My boyfriend's boss finally gave him his P60 which means we can cross one more thing off the list. Hurray!

Now we only have 4 things left to do

• Letter from employer working since….. paying taxes
• Letter from Irish friend
• Utility Bills
• Joint Bank Account statement (3 months)

Fingers crossed we will have the application submitted by the end of April. My boyfriend has promised that once our application has been submited we will go to church once a week to make sure gods on our side.