Direct from the motherland.

Being in a foreign country, away from all your friends, even if it's your motherland, teaches you things.

1) Never fail to appreciate the beauty of perfect grammar and spelling.  After two months of seeing store windows and signs boldly emblazoned with the words "jewellery", "butterscock" and "threding", you tend to go a little crazy and forget your own English.

2) Never underestimate the power of deodorant.  The lack thereof, especially when you're in a large crowd, really stinks.  Literally and figuratively.

3) Family is not a right, it's a privilege.  Same goes for friendship.  If it's a one-way street and the other person gives back nothing, or if the other person doesn't respect the commitment or the relationship, you don't need that other person.  Doesn't matter if you're related by blood.  If this is the case, then they CERTAINLY have no right to treat you that way.

4) At the risk of sounding like Dear Abby, relationships are all about communication.  If that's missing, it blows. 

Maybe if Dear Abby wrote like that, more people would read her column.

5) If you're earning in dollars, a lot of stuff is gloriously cheap here.  I got my eyebrows done for a grand total of 20 cents.  I think the expenses would catch up to you if you were living here permanently, but if you're just visiting, it's kind of nice.

6) When you're here, you start craving stuff that you take for granted there.  Three months of living without Taco Bell is awful.  I wouldn't wish it on anyone.  It's on my list of things to eat when I get back.

7) No matter how young you are and how much of life you still think you have left to live, the clock is ticking.  Entropy is slowly coming to get you.  You are degenerating as you read this.  And if you take your time for granted and stop listening to that clock, you're in trouble.  Because you will undoubtedly realize what you've been missing before you die, you will regret what you haven't done, and there won't be a damn thing you can do about it.

8) There is unquestionably such a thing as fate.  No matter how hard you try to avert things, if they're really meant to happen, they'll come back to you in the end.

9) The horror genre slowly degenerated after the 1940s.  Indian horror movies today are either extremely formulaic- girl gets possessed, family freaks out, religion vs. science- or they're straight-up adult movies.  Unattractive either way.

10) When you can't make your mom jokes or bakawk or say stupid things without attracting strange looks, you tend to really, really, REALLY miss your friends.  And when you can't see them for such a long time, every small thing starts to remind you of them.

~*Heat*~