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Downplaying: Humility or Cheating?

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A thought just occurred to me. I downplay my skills a lot. It’s not that I pretend I’m not good at something when otherwise, it’s just that it’s in my personality to not overestimate myself.

I think most of us call it humility, but I was thinking, is it really humility or am I just cheating myself? 

Cheating in a sense that in case I do fail at something, it would hurt less or not at all because I have deluded myself into thinking that I couldn’t do it in the first place. And if I succeed? The sense of accomplishment is just stronger–and astonishing–because once again, I have deluded myself into thinking that I couldn’t do it in the first place. 

So I guess it’s more on cheating than it is being humble. 

I downplay my emotions a lot too. Basically, I downplay everything to avoid disappointment because I have programmed myself to expect as little as I could from anything or anyone, even myself, so that in case things turn out very badly, I wouldn’t be in so much pain and disappointment because I had almost zero expectations. 

I guess this is how I get by and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. 

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Stressful Day At Work

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I had a quite stressful day at work. I guess some would probably scoff at this statement–presuming I have a rather lax job because I’m just a convenience store clerk. Convenience stores in Japan offer a lot of services though, guys, so it’s a bit different. 

One of these many services is that we offer postal services–meaning you can send your packages all throughout Japan 24/7 through convenience stores. Anyways, when the postal office worker stopped by to pick up the packages that we processed in the afternoon, it turns out only six packages were registered in our database despite the total count of the packages we had being eight. Oh, it was freakin’ troublesome, because these packages have a requested delivery time that we had to meet, so I had to input the details myself and rescan the packages and stuff and reprint another receipt claiming that I have handed over the packages to the postal office worker. 

Then when I finished my daily cash register report–I honestly don’t know how I would call that in English, but it’s レジ点検 in Japanese–we had an exact 600 yen loss. That is the amount of service charge for sending over the package which implies that the package was handed over to us but was not paid. Someone on the afternoon shift screwed up. Boohoo. 

But we all make mistakes. Forgiven. And I learned something too. So all is good. 

I Miss Photography

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Which is funny because when I actually had my DSLR, I was somewhat very crappy at it. I mean, just like everyone else in the world at the moment, photography just seemed cool to me which is why I think I got my DSLR to begin with, but somehow I actually really liked taking pictures. I still very much do. You can tell from my Instagram-whoring. ;) And fortunately, my iPhone 4S is equipped with quite a decent camera that helps fill the void as I earn money again to buy a new DSLR to replace my old one–which I had to sell because… yeah part of being an independent teenager living in Tokyo. I needed the money.

With the departure of my coworker unni–I am so going to miss her, not only was she the one who introduced me to this job, but she was also a fellow SNSD fan and working with her made my night shifts fun and it was just like hanging out with a friend–I have agreed to take on some of the shifts which she’ll be leaving behind, thus giving me 5 nights a week at my current convenience store job. With such developments, I think–and I’m so keeping my fingers crossed–I’ll be able to purchase a new camera by my 20th birthday this year! Doesn’t that make it more special?

I’m thinking of getting a D300s this time around. To be honest, I was considering of moving towards Canon, now that I’ve got the chance. (I was a Nikon user with my D5000.) But I am way too in love with Nikkor lenses to move to a Canon. I’m still not quite sure though with the D300s choice, since the lower level D7000–not only is it cheaper–seems to have a newer better sensor. Although, comparing the two bodies, the D7000 seems too boxy for my liking (which is funnily the same reason why I opted for a Nikon DSLR to begin with as opposed to getting a Canon.)

Pros of living in Tokyo is that it is fucking photography haven over here and the refurbished cameras are priced way cheaper than the original price of the products and yet the quality is almost comparable to its brand new versions.

Wish my luck, guys! Hopefully i get it. ^^

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Yet Another One Of My Daddy Rants

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I can’t lie on this one. Despite the fact that I’ve already cancelled out his existence in my future, he still affects my present. I still think about him and when I see kids, especially daughters, with their dads, I can’t help but think of him and feel a tad bit bitter because we were once really close. I was a daddy’s girl after all. 

When I visited home last January, I forgot how we ended up talking about that, but one of my little brothers told me, “It sucks not having a dad, y’know? There are some guy things I want to ask advice for but no one can answer it for me.” 

I know. No one’s going to warn my future boyfriends to not hurt his princess. 

Mommy once told me that one of the reasons why she’s holding unto my dad back then was because one day I was going to meet an asshole like my dad and I’m going to need my dad to protect me from that asshole. I think though… I already met that asshole and he was my own dad. 

Don’t Troll Your Customers, Marg

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One of the things that makes my convenience store job fun is because of being a foreigner, I somehow get interviewed a lot by customers and have this great rapport with them.

The other day I had this family as customers and as I said, “745円でございます。(It’s 745 yen.) While his dad was paying, this kid was like, “えー？1万円！ (Eh? 1,000 yen!)” And my coworker who was right beside me responded, “ううん、10万円だよ！ (No, it’s 10,000 yen!)“. So I crossed my arms and looked at the kid and said, “払ってください！(Please pay up!)”

The little kid looked so cute and confused at how he was going to pay us 10,000 yen. LMFAO

I wonder what we would have done though, had he cried. :|

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So Close And Yet So Far Away

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Do you guys have people in your life that despite of how close you two seem to be, that person always seem so far away?

It doesn’t have to be a romantic relationship but rather just a simple friendship with someone.

You look at this person and despite of the bond that you have with him or her, it seems that he or she is still far beyond your level. Actually, it seems that the closer you two get, the more you can see the distance between you and that person.

The closer you two get the more you see how great this person is that you yourself can’t seem to compare.

I have a friend like that. Sometimes I don’t like talking to him because talking to him, getting to know more about him, seems to remind me of how incomparable I am to him. I don’t love him nor am I in love with him, but it’s more of the fact that I admire him and I like our friendship, but he just reminds me of how much I lack as a person.

So it makes me wonder whether that’s a good thing? It’s a friendship that makes your heart ache from time to time and reminds you of what you lack. Yet somehow you can also look at it in a way that because this person is showing you what you lack as a person, you get inspired to strive for a better version of yourself.

Isn’t that part of what friendship is all about? Encouraging each other to be better versions of yourselves.

One Of The Things You Learn In Life

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One of the things that you learn in life is that you can get real and show the world who you really are or you can carefully package yourself for the public in order to be someone who you think they will respect, but people will still judge you. Either way, people will find a way to criticize you–to dig deep into you, grasp your core and shake it. 

It’s just always up to you to be convinced by these people that what you are right now isn’t enough–to permit them to define who you are. Your life is a journey to defining yourself and not for someone else to do it for you. 

Often times though, I try to pretend to be someone shallow and happy-go-lucky because at least for a second I pretend to forget things and that’s how I manage to function through my crazy life. Experience has told me that people bash the person I hide myself with because she’s shallow, and easy, and does not give a fuck. But I opted for this way because they’re bashing her not me. And I know, that someone out there sees me and not her most of the time. That’s a comforting thought. 

Back By Popular Demand

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/hair flip/

You guys love me too much. Just kidding. But yeah, I’ve received more than one comments on my Formspring asking whether I’d be blogging again and I figured I should get back to the habit rather than just spamming my Twitter followers and annoying the hell out of them. Although that sounds quite enticing, /grin.

I’m pretty sure those who follow my blog follows my Twitter too anyways, so I probably don’t need to do that ‘what’s up with Marg’ update thingo. Anyways, I don’t really have a lot to say lately… /awkward/… help me out here, please? Suggest some blog topics at my Formspring.

Anyways, super excited for my new iPhone, a possible iPad purchase, and my SNSD’s upcoming comeback.

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My Commitment Issues Has Nothing To Do With You

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I know my commitment issues can pretty much get me into all kinds of shit with people. But I never let it stop me from helping people get through their own relationship problems. Despite of my hesitance in partaking in relationships and committing myself to a person, it has never gotten into the way of me giving advices to my friends regarding hooking up. I’m not the kind of person who talked people out of things I didn’t believe in.

One time, I had a friend who was really in love with my best friend. Me and my best friend are always 100% honest with each other, and at that time, she really told me how much she despised him. He came to me for advise on how to win her over, which I can’t help him much at since she really truly despised him, and mentioning just his name to her would earn me a “fuck you” from my dearest best friend.

I used to tease her about how she’s going to eventually fall for him, because that’s who she is. She falls for the people she receives a lot of love from. It’s not a bad thing; I just want her to accept that about herself, because it’s a good thing. She’s not like me who gets exceptionally mean to people who give me love and affection. And I gotta say, that’s pretty damn nice of her. That way she wouldn’t have to deal with the guilt of not being able to return the feelings given to her.

He was a friend, nonetheless, despite of what we have on our histories. If you guys know me, you know I’m a very honest person and I’d put everything on the line just in order to be honest. He’s a friend so I wanted to give him an honest advice that will keep him from getting hurt. I told him straight up that it may seem impossible with her since I can’t even talk about him with her without getting cussed at.

And you know what the good friend responded?

He told me to stop letting my commitment phobia get into the way of me having hope for other people. The guy assumed that I was being negative about the outcome of his pursuit of her because of my own personal commitment issues. He even mentioned how I ran away as soon as I get the feeling that someone likes me, which wasn’t far from the truth, but at that moment it was totally unnecessary to be brought up.

We’re okay right now, but sometimes I can’t erase the feeling that he truly can be an asshole from time to time.

Oh, to top things off, my best friend did end up with him. So somehow, I bet he feels like the shit he said about me is true.

Excuse me, but no. My commitment issues never had anything to do with you and your girlfriend.

I’m not mad at you, but really that was so horrible, I still want to punch you a bit every time I remember you saying that. It was totally asshole-ish. Yeah, sorry best. =/

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I’m Pretty Positive I Just Broke Two Laws Tonight

Posted by Margaux in Blog - (2 Comments)

It was a pretty slow day today, to be honest. First off, due to my solo drinking spree last night, I woke up too late for school today. I was 1 hour late. It’s not that horrible since first period is Kanji lesson—Kanji that I already know by the way. Anyways, there’s this Chinese classmate who hangs out with me sometimes to practice his English with me. So I decided I wouldn’t mind the company today and invited him to help him with his English.

So we hung out at McDonalds, cause I needed to eat while he studied on the side and I was there whenever he needed some questions to be answered or like get some help with proper pronunciation. Oppa (our Korean friend) and I call him samchon because of his old guy feel and the fact that he can’t seem to get with the program everytime the three of us are together.

Teaching samchon can get pretty frustrating, so I was texting oppa on the side too. Then samchon said he needed to go home already at 7:00 pm, and I was like, “What? But it’s still early.” But oh well, he’s pretty much a samchon so he had to go. I went with him to Shinjuku station, since we’re both going to ride Keio anyways, except on different lines. So I texted oppa, “Ah, I’m so bored, but I don’t wanna go home yet cause it’s too early. Samchon went home already.” But I rode the train already and there’s no signal in that Keio line, so I only received oppa’s reply when I arrived in Meidaimae. He said, “I’m bored too. Say, should we hang out then?”

So we decided to meet up at Shinjuku. Yep, I took the train back. So mendoukusai. There, oppa wanted to go to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office, but it was closed already when we got there. So we walked a bit around Shinjuku trying to find the way back to the train station and somehow we decided to have drinks in Shinokubo—where all the Koreans in Japan probably live. Oppa was worried drinking in a bar would get too pricey, so we settled for buying beer at the convenience store and hitting a nearby park to drink there.

First law of the night that I broke was underage drinking. I’m Filipino, it’s pretty legal to drink at 18, that’s why I can drink. Tsch, not like it ever stopped me before to be honest. But in Japan, their legal age is at 20. Like I said, never stopped me before.

Second, you can’t drink alcohol in Japanese parks (when I say park, as in playground parks, with swings and all that.) So I was like, “Oppa, are you sure we can drink here?” And he’s like, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” And I just laughed and went, “Meh, we can just pull out the ‘I’m a foreigner. I don’t understand Japanese. I didn’t know.’ card when the police catches us anyways.”

So we hung out there by the swings and drank beer and talked about all kinds of shit. It was fun. Oppa and samchon are coming over to my dorm this Saturday and oppa and I are gonna force samchon to drink mak-sa (makgeolli + cider). Oppa’s gonna cook too. Yep. ^^

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