Thanksgiving.

I'm a little bit unfamiliar with the turkey tradition, since we don't celebrate Thanksgiving in Malaysia, but I know that being thankful is about as universal an emotion as love or anger.

I'm pretty exhausted today from writing three articles for YSK back-to-back, and even more exhausted from the huge pile of work still waiting to be done (including Dr Sony's engineering story, which I spent so many hours transcribing the interview for, and now have to read newspaper articles and write the actual story). And I really want to blog about my trip to Incheon and Melbourne, furniture-shopping with Carmen on Thursday, dim sum at Maria's on Friday, the crafts market "Art For Grabs" with An Nie on Saturday, but all of that will have to wait... because there's too much urgent work to be done. :(

And An, Alicia, Shang, Carmen, Mechell, Jen and Shaz have all got such fun days out in store with each of them - including games, food, museums, THE ZOO, and shopping - yet I'm 5 years old again, grounded inside the classroom when all my classmates have gone out to play. And the teacher said I can't go out until I've finished my homework :( Nooooo!

And it's all my fault for taking on so much work!

But beyond the griping and grumbling, I find myself intrigued by the overwhelming and positive response to my new YSK affiliate website, Pasar Night. I went through the pasarnight Gmail inbox just now, and I found e-mails thanking us for setting up such a website, and how much we are helping. And I feel this feeling that is almost alien, because I haven't felt it for so long, moved.

You know how people say, you get so deep into something that you can't see the wood for the trees? Pasar Night has reinvigorated in me why I do Your Shopping Kaki, why I mustn't start to detest the workload, why I must remember that as much criticism visitors can dish out, there are those that still visit the website because it helps someone, somewhere.

I guess I just hate being so behind on my work. Even if I finish my reviews, I still have over 700 e-mails to link blogshops up on the sidebar. And a whole list of advertisers I haven't replied, and I don't even dare to, because then I'd be owing more people more articles that I haven't written. It's all I can do to drag myself out of the house and see the world outside for a few hours a day, otherwise I'd be trapped at my desk banging on the keyboard to chase those blog posts I haven't written or news stories I haven't read/done.

So I drove to campus and had lunch with Jung Ai, Kinta and their new friend Sophie from China. They're doing summer school at the moment. Only about four vendors are open in the cafeteria, but luckily IndoZest was open :D Pity the nasi lemak stall wasn't.

After lunch, a couple of us went to chill out in Sunway Pyramid. :) Finally got to check out the Forever 21 sale - which is every bit as impressive as the posters seem to shout! :D Got my lace-up bustier mini-dress for only RM30, *squeal!* Down from RM109. Loving the year end sales.

Don't ask me why the picture is the other way around - it keeps rotating itself this way no matter how hard I try to straighten it! :P