Fairy tales are more than true: not because
they tell us that dragons exist, but because
they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
- G. K. Chesterton
.Chii.
23rd March (same as Minekura Kazuya-sensei)
21. Dragon. Aries. Atheist. Cynic. Lamer. Perfectionist. Packrat. Ngee Ann Pri. School choir.
Tanjong Katong Sec. School choir. Temasek Poly. Logistics & Ops Mgmt. · · ·
The University of Newcastle (PSB Academy, Singapore campus). BA of Communication.
.Wishlist.
48 hours each day.
iPod nano 2nd gen skin and pouch.
Yayness! Exams are finally over! Oh Internet, how I love thee~ Oh manga, you're my one and only~
And to maximise the mediocre one week we have as a shadow of the two-months holiday we usually get- which this time we don't, thanks to the student internship that's starting in a week or so- I have already rented eleven manga books, rented three DVDs, and gotten my eye checked today right after my paper ended.
The degree of my left eye went up, in case anyone would like to know. And the guy at the manga shop remembered me! To think that I was so worried that he couldn't because it's been at least a year since I've last went there. He even remembered my name! Woohoo!
Anyway, I've also posted chapter 20 of Aki Kitsune! Yes, a new chapter, after so long. It isn't beta-ed though, because goodness knows what Phoenix is up to, shirking her beta-ing job. Here's another link to FictionPress.Com, by the way.
I think it's nice that I've got polytechnic friends who will sms me just to tell me to stop watching television! and to better start studying for tomorrow's paper!
Cute. I'm just a little touched. This proves that I can still find good friends in TP.
I hate it when during the study week prior to an examination, my writer-block dissipates magically and I get the urge to finish any incomplete chapters while torrents of usable phrases invade my mind and threatened to leave my memory if I didn't note them down right then.
I hate it when during the study week, I keep getting compulsive inspirations. Just two days ago, I felt like doing an artwork. And in the past hour, I had been unconsciously planning out two new blogskins. Not to mention that throughout the week, I had to stop myself from logging on to my LiveJournal to revamp my account.
I hate it when during that week, I will never fail to come across at least one new song that sounds so good and the lyrics so beautiful that I just had to have it in my laptop so that I can play it on loop until all my papers finish.
I hate it when during the week, I will come across a new profile on a site (deviantART, LiveJournal, etc) and I must see all entries made (if only to find and snag a new spiffy avatar) before my inner curious-and-obsessive artist and/or journalist deems it worthy enough to calm down.
I hate this week because I had finally come to terms with the fact that my attention span is getting shorter with each passing year. Perhaps it's getting accustomed to the last minute rush every six months in the mad-six-hour-cramming-session the day/night/early morning before the actual paper. Or maybe it's just me getting weary and burnt out by the routine-ness of it all, because goodness knows that regularity and routine are turnoffs for all Arians who thrive on the elements of surprise, spontaneity and excitement.
Routine and predictability? Big no-no. It can be something comforting in the small daily-life parts. Other than those? Pfft.
I suppose what I really hate is the truth that I don't have the drive to persevere for the sake of my studies and to attain a "miracle result", as what my secondary school friends had always termed my O' Level grades.
Thus deriving from the gist of it all:
I hate myself.
'Nuff said.
Oh and by the way, the back of my hands are going through some sort of long-overdue post-Sentosa shedding. I feel so serpentine.
Three cheers for my unbeatable skill of procrastination! For without it, I would have finished studying a whole subject by last night instead of completing chapter24 of Aki Kitsune! And that would be totally unforgivable, no? (Pardon me while I knock my head against the wall to punish myself for not putting more effort to bring myself to actually read my lecture notes instead of flipping through them as a cover whenever either of my parents walk pass my room. And to think that I'm nearing that double-decade mark of existence already!)
I have no idea why, but chapters 23 and 24 somehow made me go way over the 2000-word-per-chapter mark that I've set for myself.
Let's see...
Word Count Chapter23: 2878 Chapter24: 2814
Phoenix will kill me for making her beta long chapters. If she finishes her beta for chapters20-22 first, that is. Oh well, at least that distraction is out of the way and I can now concentrate on full-out mugging.
On another note, the TPmail that I stalked? It wasn't him. And like I ensured to YL and Julia, I'll just forget about it and not push my luck (so to speak) anymore because it always seemed to run out whenever something's got to do with him. Either he appears when there's too many people for me to talk to him for fear of embarrassment, or he doesn't show when I deliberately wait where he's supposed to show, or he does show up at the time where I knew he would but I've already given up the chance because I went to school earlier than usual to meet YL and Julia.
Guess I'll just continue ogling from a distance from now on.
In view of next week's semester main examination, I am now fighting against the impossible current that is my procrastination.
And impossible it is, indeed. I've spent my late morning and afternoon reading fanfictions and lazily rearranging loose sheets of notes, with one set of lecture notes in my lap but not conducively contributing in any way at all.
I'm very sure there's a health discovery somewhere which proves that the probability of being diagnosed with cancer (or any kind of grossly-terminal illness) is directly proportioned to the length and amount of nagging a person engages in, and is also proportioned to the speed at which said person ages.
Dear mother, I am at a dilemma here. You see, while it is against the miniscule sliver of kindness that I still have within me to wish an agonisingly slow death by means of a deadly illness upon another living thing, I am also wishing just as strongly that someday (soon, I hope) you will just either become mute- or better yet- very much dead.
The Angel and Devil are arguing upon my shoulders as I blog and it will just be a matter of time before the latter wins, a victory out of many that it had already experienced in the nineteen years of residence in my conscience. Which, by the way, should explain any "voodoo" effects you might have felt ever since I learned to read and talk, thus curse.
Regarding my posting hiatus from Aki Kitsune, rest assured that I fully intend to finish this story.
Actually, as I speak (type, post, blog, whatever), I am in the LOM lab and using the 3-hour break in between my lessons (because there weren't any more Materials Management tutorials) to try and finish up chapter24. It's proving itself to be another one of those difficult-to-continue chapters.
Nevertheless! I shall persevere! As of now, I am at 1427 words.
Okay, my full-body ache didn't worsen today, although, neither did it lessen. The only irritating part was the skin on the balls of my shoulder where it got burnt the worse on Friday. Ugh, the pain. I intend to send out death threats when I return to school on Monday and just wait for the first victim who's stupid enough to test my patience and level of sunburnt-pain endurance.
Anyway, I'm sort of stuck at the 1200th plus words of Aki Kitsune chapter24 and am trying to finish the chapter up. 800 words had never seemed so impossible before.
One reason for my lagging writing speed would be the distraction. An example would be the weekly uploaded video for Lovely*Complex.
My shoulders are tingling in near unbearable pain, my currently-still-red nose hurts when touched, even the skin on my forehead is in pain and my whole body is aching quite irritably. Oh, and my neck hurts whenever I turn my head and when my hair brushes against it. Now I remember why I got so pissed with my hair the last time I had a sunburn.
As mentioned, I went to Sentosa today because there was some sort of belated celebration for YL's birthday. Had to wake up extra early and make a trip to her house first because I didn't have a change of shorts, so I ended up borrowing one of hers. Well, technically, I do have other shorts- my secondary school PE shorts. *Cue eye rolling*
Anyway, we met up with the rest of the people along the way and when we finally got to Sentosa, it was scorching hot. Like, literally, scorching hot. Only the middle strip of sand was the fine pearl-white sort. The rest was simply coarse sand. What was worse was that the coarse sand was hotter, so it was not only painful physically but the heat emanating from it was torture too.
YL wanted to do some tanning but everyone else was either putting on sunblock instead of suntanning lotion, or running off for some other games so I decided to accompany her and get rid of the tan lines on my arms that I got from wearing sleeved tee-shirts 24/7 once and for all. However, we faltered under the intensity of the summer sun, which was made even hotter by the fact that Singapore's only season was summer, so our official tanning session lasted less than twenty minutes. It was somewhat pathetic, seeing as other groups of people just never seem to do anything during their stay at the beach other than tanning while lazing around.
After being forced by the heat to give up, we retreated to the water where YL and another coursemate got smashed with flour as some sort of birthday celebration ritual. I was very tempted to do the same, but my impulse to do something evil was thwarted by the knowledge that if something were to happen to me later on, she would join in the torturing as a revenge.
I got fully drenched eventually, after everyone else had gotten in the water and my then decision to "heck it all!" with my lack of affinity with large bodies of water. Still, I got soaked once again during some games we had in the water.
There were lots of strange things to see today. Not including the few fish sighting we had. The guys tried to catch one but it got away. There was also this small school of tiny fish I saw when YL came back from washing flour off her body in the deeper parts of the water. What I meant was, there were other sightings. Let's see, loads of couples having a snog-fest in the water (ugh, I mean, imagine the sweat from every other people who got in the water. Not to mention salt, micro-organisms, fish droppings, urinal secretions from toddlers and the bacteria in the very saliva that they were swapping between each other. How appealing was that?) as if it was a "must do" at Sentosa beaches, and surfers who just lay on their surfboards and paddled with their hands out to the boundary of the enclosed area before paddling back.
Really, you'd think that Singaporeans are usually intelligent beings. *Points to previous paragraph*
Anyhoo, we got out of the water (with me actually wanting to stay under the sun so that I could dry my clothes while warming up from the seawater. I don't have appropriate swimwear, you see. Remember, fear of large bodies of water?) and after some lazing around, the rest of the group decided to sand-bury KT. And of course, we paid our respects to him.
Can you spot me?
There was much fooling around after that; just playing whatever that came to our minds. Frisbee, football (played with a volleyball), volleyball (which I did not get involved with, thanks to my pain-filled memory of volleyball lessons during secondary school PE), and more aimless floating about in the seemingly-clean seawater.
YL's and my shadows.
Some... Hut/shade thingies that were tucked away beyond the beach.
A revolving swing YL found.
Apparently, she couldn't jump high enough to reach it. I succeeded though =)
On our way back to the group.
I originally had a photograph of KT wearing that sarong from chest down. But he tricked me into letting him look through my other photos and instead deleted that precious blackmail material! So I've just snapped as many photos of him with that sarong (YL's, by the way) as I could in an attempt at revenge.
YL's heart-shaped bruise. Must have gotten it from playing volleyball.
I had to leave early though, thanks to my father's random suggestion about having dinner at this Muslim restaurant. I'm still hungry now though. Must be all the energy I've exerted today. Better go find something to eat soon.
Thanks to those few hours under the sun and my diligence at having my sleeves rolled up, the tan line below the ball of my shoulders is gone!
Take that, stupid sleeve-tan-line!
Well, I wouldn't know for sure if it's gone. Have to wait for the whole redness-of-the-skin to fade first. The onslaught of itchiness would come first though, seeing that I'm those "turn red but not darken when tanned" sorts, which would prelude some major skin shedding. The skin at my shoulder is already starting to hurt whenever I push the sleeves up. Oooh... This cannot be good. I hate the consequences of getting a sunburn. And I've already started to ache all over from today's activities. It's a good thing that I have the whole weekend to recuperate. It's strange though, that effects are showing this fast, as compared to what I've experienced before. Already the redness is beginning to settle into a glazed-bronze just mere hours from leaving Sentosa.
Hoohum.
Don't you just love it when the sky is such a clear infinite shade of blue?
Those little specks there are my friends from my diploma. That blue tent isn't ours, though.
I've even changed my username on Hotmail just so he can't track my name- provided it is him, in the first place.
No thanks to him. Darn you, and the psychotically fangirlish side of my brain that had somehow managed to overtake the rest of my grey matter half an hour ago.
On a less nefarious notes, I'm forgoing the fireworks tonight so that I will be able to make it to Sentosa to belatedly celebrate YL's birthday with the rest of our Polytechnic friends.
And yes, Pauline, I wouldn't know if I didn't go, but I don't want a repeat of the sudden inspiration of stupidity I had when I was seventeen. I want my second try to at least go in the right direction; to at least feel right, because we are all aware that not everything in life will be right and dandy and perfect.
He was on my bus when I went home after lessons and I had freaked YL out quite successfully with my excessive fangirlish squees and crazy twinkling eyes.
I had already planned what to say to him after getting off the bus one stop before I usually do (it's almost the same walking distance home anyway) and I even had the courage to go up and start talking to him this time!
Damn my stupid flaw in the planning.
I should have waited to alight the bus last so I can catch up with him from behind instead of trying to walk as slowly as I could in front of him to let him match up to my pace. Even now, I can still hear our footsteps shuffling against the ground!
ARGH!!!!! *FaceDesk*
Darn. I am so stupid. Everytime we managed to be in close proximity, the chance to speak just seemed to vanish. Without fail.
Never mind. At least I have an idea of where he lives. And it isn't far from my place either. To think that we've been so near all these years!
Should have asked him eight years ago about where he stayed.
Amazingly enough, my Internet connection worked fine today and allowed me to load the episode in one go; no refreshes, no scampering to my parents' room to connect directly to the modem just so I can watch the episode that I've been anticipating since the anime started.
No hidden links this time. I'll be kind for a change.
I feel a little accomplished. Chapter24 of Aki Kitsune is half-complete and I've also written a 561-worded scene for Atarashii no Kisetsu last night (or more precisely, around 2am) that was started in my mind months ago by a short phrase that contained the words "brutality" and "repulsive", if my memory served me right. Don't worry, it's not an outrightly dark-fiction, although the two words above sounded rather alarming. The only dark aspect of anything I could bring myself to write was solely on the emotional-feeling side rather than the obvious act of it.
You see, I do have a sliver of innocent goodness under the shadow that is my sadistical perversity.
Just finished watching the first episode of the lastest (fifth) season of CSI:Miami. Well, one of the few reasons why I watch the Miami spinoff is because of the eye-candy. More specifically, Jonathan Togo, who acted as Ryan Wolfe (wonder why the producers gave him such an amusing name).
Gah! He's just too adorable. And he's getting hotter as the series progress.
Anyway, I've been prowling sites for info and *whispers* slash fanfictions of Eric/Ryan (because the television screen is this close to smouldering when the two characters appear on screen together) *ends whisper* but sadly, there wasn't much.
Someone, please! Write a really good SmartAngstyUSTfilled(eventually fulfilled)- Eric/Ryan slash fanfiction, won't you? When it comes to fanfictions, I'm better at reading them than writing them. It's difficult to imagine characters who already have preset personalities and backstories, as compared to coming up with original stories and characters. *Sigh* I need my dose of good slash fanfictions. Withdrawal symptoms are nasty.
But still, I found a video of Jonathan Togo and Brendan Fehr, who acted as the laboratory technician Dan Cooper in CSI:Miami, visiting the set of another TV show, Degrassi (I have no idea what show that was; I just watched the video for the sake of Togo).
