This past holiday season.

Two Saturdays ago, I had the last party I'm going to have in a while. Great turnout, we were almost twenty people, and this considering I've only been in Toronto less than four months, two months of which I spent as an academic recluse.

Tonight, I came back from work, walked all the way home only to find I left my keys in my drawer back at the office. I was secretly happy that I managed to do that to myself, because that meant extra time walking in an unseasonably warm night, the kinda gorgeous night that Toronto in January never sees.

I went home, ate a yoghurt, put on a hoodie and tried my roommate's 5km city route run. You start roughly around University, taking your time through Queen's Park, make a right on Bloor past a lot of the fancy shops there and then you double back home.

I ate two turkey swiss bagels, a clementine, plus the the white bean tabbouleh salad I made yesterday for the house. Took a shower and surfed the web, fantasizing about my vacation coming up in a few months. Tonight was calm compared yesterday, which was a little busy since I had a shit ton of errands. But yesterday was nothing compared to....mid December to mid January.

I don't know how many nights I spent drinking and partying and dancing and all sorts of other crazy shit but I do know I did it to a point I started to build my own reputation as a party animal. People started making comments that ran along the lines of, "You look like you go out a lot..." My friend (the other party animal) stayed with me for two of those weeks so every day I would go to work then spend the night out partying only to stumble drunk into bed and then go to work the next day trying hard to not act like a zombie. I don't know how many nights in a row I perpetuated that lifestyle (hell, to the point I didn't even have time to wash my hair) before things got a little....outta hand, let's just say.

Ok maybe it sounds kinda bad. But it actually isn't! I mean, I have no regrets. Shit happens for a reason. Of the good things that have come out of this, I can say that my boss parties with me (and he parties hard). I can also say that I'm part of the 'drinking club' at work, and that the Korean 'badass' at work is finally starting to warm up to me (yes!), and the rest of the guys at work respect me even though they're kinda misogynistic to the rest of the women (which I'm looking to change). But only because I happen to know my shit and I pull my weight.

The other night I tried to sleep my fever away but I kept getting woken up by calls and texts, which is great because people in Toronto actually like me enough to converse with me. Boys especially like to converse with me, but they aren't the priority. My schedule for the week fills up fast (Thurs-Fri-Sat is already looking like the trifecta of alcohol-induced merriment), and work has blown up in my face recently, and is only going to get worse, which is awesome because I do enjoy being challenged in my job. Just this afternoon, I had 239487 things to do, 9874 emails to respond to, and I was thinking about how much I loved it, basking in the stress!

On the topic of crazyness, I'm also part of a group of 5 organizing an event mid-Feb for 60-80 odd people. Exicting! It's all kinda hush-hush at the mo, but there's so much to do! Catering, sound system, decorations, entertainment! It thrills me that I managed to land myself this gig since I only just met them a month ago.

Yesterday I discovered I had a tiny sum of stocks stowed away somewhere online that I had forgotten about, to which I sold this morning and made a modest killing. Looks like the iPad for my parents might happen after all. Heck, even India in October looks like a possibility now. Yes! My vacation! I'm going to see Angkor Wat this spring! It's going to be another dream come true. Also going to do some scuba diving off the coast of east Malaysia! I'm just itching to go already.

I guess I wanted take a moment to be grateful for everything that has come to me, to sit down and detail every single aspect of contentment in my life, because nothing is forever, and every bubble has to burst sometime. But for now, I can say that I'm finally happy.

Sorry for the lack of poetry in my prose, but an early morning meeting beckons me to sleep soon.