The Orderly Life

Life the past two days have been rather good. My definition of the good life is when everything feels in order, and tha was the case on Monday, and yesterday. I like it when I feel in control of everything. 

So, yesterday was filled with work, and then gym/running, and then work and TV at night. Just like that, and it makes me feel calm! As if everything I need to do is at the tip of my fingers, ready to be done, without interference of messy things. 

Goodness, I sound psycho. Isn't anyone else like that? I just like to lead my life without interruptions. Except there are usually interruptions, haha. 

Like DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES. AHHHHHHH, I've lagged behind so much, and I just discovered you can watch it on www.videostic.com, and ever since, I can hear DH calling my name as I study. I've been watching two episodes a day! 

Oh, life is not THAT orderly. I've been really absentminded and careless lately, which leaves me feeling so frustrated at my own stupidity! Okay, maybe not stupidity, sheer careless-ity! On Wednesday night, I discovered that I keyed in some of my survey results wrongly into SPSS (our data analysis software), causing my teammate to redo the analysis again.

And then, yesterday, I lost my hostel key. I think I accidentaly threw it into the dustbin. And while panicking over it, I lost my cool slightly with a friend. =( It's horrible, the latter. I rarely lose my cool at people until they seriously get on my nerves... and my poor friend didn't really do anything much. =( This is a learning lesson- our circumstances shouldn't be imposed on others. 

Kind of ironic, since I told the same thing to a friend who lost his temper lately. Oh well, we keep learning I guess. 

I like playing with photoshop, especially when I should be doing everything else but playing with photoshop. I am a horrible friend who forgot to wish Linda Happy Birthday, despite actually remembering her birthday by heart. And I decided to make her a card, lol. I think it's quite nice (hope she thinks so too), though admittedly, it could have been much more perfect (i.e. pink wordscoloured nicely, resolution of each layer consistent) if I had 2 more hours to do it. 

Oh, and soon after that it was Ray's birthday, so I decided to make just one more...this one was quite different. Had a hard time figuring out how to best blend in the sunset picture. 

Anyway, I recently had a new revelation. Photoshop gives you all the tools to play around with pictures but do funky stuff, but its your creativity (and brains, haha) that is the key to figuring out how to use these in combination. I'm sure different people can achieve the same effects in different ways! I find it quite interesting. It's a problem solving process: 

1. Think of the problem (e.g. I need to make the colours of this picture nicer, and blend it with another picture)

2. Think of the tools you can use (e.g. curves, contrast, filter, smudge- this is so noob, haha, blur)

3. Think of how best to use them in combination, in the right order, to achieve the right effect. (This takes practice, and sometimes, a bit of thinking!)

4. For the hardcore photoshoppers: Ask yourself how you could have achieved the same effect in a faster way.

I'm sure really experienced people just know what to do, lol.