Why is it that I have none of those "a year is coming to a close" feelings? Not to mention that I have no idea that 2008 is just around that corner.

I mean, I'm aware of each passing day of the week, just not of days with respect to the year.
Such a sad, sad sign of growing up; losing the simplest joy, even if it's just watching each day being crossed off the calendar.

All right. I figured that there isn't any use of me to make new year resolutions because other than the fact that it has never been a tradition of mine, there's a high possibility that I'll not adhere to them anyway, thanks to my high prowess of procrastination.

Heh, whatever.
*Waves hand distractedly*

I'll attempt to complete Aki Kitsune before 2008 ends. Hopefully.
Right, having one goal is more than enough for such a lazy person that I un-shamefully am.

On another note: my new LiveJournal site! Because the older one had a longer and therefore more tedious name to type.

. Arietis .
ariietis.livejournal.com

Labels: Aki Kitsune, Creations, Fictions

People would rather believe in fairy godmothers than think that you took charge of your own destiny.

- Jed Reston
Just Ella, by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Another book finished!
It's a simple, alternate universe story retelling of Cinderalla without the magic and with more defiance against pre-destination.
It kind of looks like a children's book, what with the hard-cover and larger-than-ant-length words. But it's a good read, and I like it. Well, not as much as I adore Angels and Demons (Dan Brown), but it's still rather nice.

Oh, and can the AMPTP people just give the Writers Guild of America what they want?
All thanks to the strike I've got no more interesting shows to watch. And I know that speaks for more people than just myself.
*Grumblegrumblegrumble...*

Labels: Book recs, TV shows

Hurry Xmas, by L'Arc~en~Ciel.
(Need I even point out how adorable HYDE is in that PV?)

Well, that's about as "Christmas-sy" as I'd ever get for this year.

Other things done:

1.
Gave my sister a Creative ZEN Stone Plus. 2GB.

2.
Played Cluedo with my mother and sister for the first hour and a half of Christmas.

3.
Had champagne. Raspberry flavoured.

And... That's about it.
Talk about a lack of festive cheer.

Labels: L'Arc

Remember, if Christmas isn't found in your heart, you won't find it under a tree.

- Charlotte Carpenter

A sad sign of reaching adulthood:
You find that Christmas is (alarmingly) quickly losing its appeal.
All the excitement and anticipation of finding presents in socks hanging over the far end of the bed is vanquished by the many mathematical logic that it's 100% impossible for Saint Nicholas and his team of flight-enhanced reindeers to come popping by every house on Earth at exactly the stroke of midnight of the same day.
Let us not forget the lack of chimneys in modern homes.

Not to mention everything becoming annoyingly commercialised.

Oh, and you'd know that you have a very grave problem when you don't realise it's Christmas Eve today until you saw the date while reading online comics (Yahoo comics).

コミックス『WILD ADAPTER』6巻
2008年2月25日発売

Finally! The next WA manga book will be out early next year!
But, considering how irritatingly inconsistent Chuang Yi translates, I could wait as short as one month (like I had this year, since my WA fanfiction was done before my birthday with minor spoilers for book5 and said book was published in Japan towards the end of February) or I might not even get it until May next year.

T-T

Labels: Manga, Minekura, Phrases, WA

TK.
Not TKSS, nor TKS. Those sound so plebian.
And TK is definitely NOT plebian.

Students are called TK students.
None of those crappy, pretentious "TKsian" nonsense.
It sounds so much classier, TK students.

And for the sake of those who haven't been keeping up with news and stuff, it's NOT called TK Tech (and even back then it was THE top technical secondary school).
Tk has, for your information, stopped being a technical school since 1993.
Please update your general knowledge or else all graduated TK students will gladly come after your blood.

This mildly pissed off rant is hereby brought to you by a very disgruntled ex-TK student who noticed that there are still fools out there who have too much of a narrowed mindset about neighbourhood schools.

Labels: TK

We are the intention and the act, the strength and the weakness, the light and the dark, the individual and the whole, the magic and the miracle. Not alone. Just not together. Never alone.

- Timekeepers, sequel to Waywalkers, both by Catherine Webb

Yes!
Three books down (finished Fragments, by Jeffry W. Johnston today during data collection at the FYP company) and... One more to go! Well, five, if I include the books that my sister borrowed, recommended by me.
And by recommendation I meant me reading through the blurbs at the back and on the front book jacket. If I am intrigued enough to want to read it and it's not too complex for a twelve-year-old, I let her read the blurb and see if she wants it.
It's about time she starts reading materials other than illustrated children's book.

I'm going to the Secondary School registration with my mother and sister because, well, she got accepted into TK and I wanted an excuse to go back there at least once this year, seeing that my friends and I missed that chance on Teachers' Day.

I think I'm a person who lives in the memories.
Good or bad, or even those I'd rather not remember but thanks to Murphy's Law, they'd resurface every once in a while just to spite me of ever creating them.
I like memories, those that make me smile stupidly before I realise it, or even those that make me blush and mentally berate myself for having been so embarrassing once.
Memories truly are the only few things that cannot be tainted by time, only becoming more revered and treasured, the way years temper and seal a wine so that it will taste that much better when you needed a reminder of it in the next decade.

I've begun to imagine, if there weren't so many people tomorrow, at the registration, that if it was just me and that building that had been my home and refuge for those four years that lasted too long and ended too fast...

I would stand at the Assembly Plaza, facing the flags and looking into the canteen from four different angles; the four classes I've been in as each year pushed us to the next. On the right I'd have an obscured view of the walkway leading to the sidegate. In the mornings there'll be latecomers running in, late mornings will show students mulling about after recess, and from the afternoons to evenings, people will leave in sparse groups. Opposite the flags, I'd see the Design and Technical Block and know exactly where the Choir notice board is; first on the right, next to the staircase, updated only in about- oh I don't know- at best two times a year. Facing the board and turning to my right and up, there'll be the rotunda, where THE music room is.

I'll climb the six flights of stairs up to the thrid floor, walk around the music room (because the first door is always locked at first), shake out of my shoes to put them at the entrance, walk in the semi-circle room, and lie down on the wooden floors. Light brown, a shade darker than wheat, I can still see it in my mind. I'd look up at the highest point in the ceiling- it's haunted, it's said. I'd imagine it'll concern the conductor more, seeing as he sits right under it while he teaches us songs. Or, pronunciation of songs, since we don't usually speak Latin when it's got nothing to do with choir.

Then I'd walk back downstairs and across the bridge/walkway that hangs below the belly of the music room to get to the school hall. The wooden floorings are more darkly-coloured there. I'd hear the squeaks of school shoes when P.E. is conducted there during rainy days. I'd hear how bored we sound during the necessary but still boring emergency fire drill lectures.

I'd leave then, using the corridor outside the staff rooms, past the second floor entrances to the auditorium and the heritage museum between those two entrances (and it sounded so... impressive; Heritage Museum. It's merely a nicely done plastic/fibre-glass wall of events dating back to when the school was first founded. All right, I won't deny that it is nice), turn left to the staircase when I reach a corridor on my right that will lead to classrooms E, F, G, H, down the stairs, turn left, walk straight to the end, first class on the left: Classroom 4D.

I won't bother looking for my name that I've writting on my desk prior to graduation. It wasn't there the last time I looked. I think I might still find KY's though. Smartarse wrote it on the underside of her desk. I'd find a seat closest to where mine used to be. Then I'd look at the whiteboard and I'd see the memories of leftover Geography notes, an orderly chaos overflowing the finite board. I'd see the after-image of the words written in blue, green, black, hardly red, because we've compained that it's difficult to read red words from a distance. "Oceanic plate... prevailing winds... monsoon... population density... Why the estate in CBD costs higher than... New Towns are..."

I'd hear our Chemistry teacher's not-funny-at-all jokes, our Maths teacher's "Are you all alright?" which sounded more like "Aw-lite?" I'd remember singing anime songs with KY under our breaths to pass the time when our Chinese teacher had once been annoyed enough to make the whole class stand at our seats. Not forgetting, of course, our History teacher's sarcastic and sadistic mental illustration to demonstrate the deathtoll in certain wars of the past. Oh, not saying that it wasn't entertaining; I'm very welcoming when it comes to sarcasm and fatalistic thoughts.

Reminiscing felt good.
In those moments that I remembered, there was a marginally larger lack of care for the world and the foolish things mankind was doing to it. Less care for the unforeseen future. More of the Here and Now. More madly self-inflated confidence about the universe that lay under our feet.
I guess there's a reason why you only get to be an adolescent once.
It's a drug; an addiction you don't want to lose when you come to understand how good it felt, and you only want it to go on and on and on and on...

You can escape from anything, if you know how to go about it.

- Sam Linnfer
Waywalkers, By Catherine Webb

Labels: Book recs, Phrases, TK

And I never should have browsed through the bookshelves with my sister (whom I've dragged along because her PSLE was over and she's having her holidays, which I think would be a waste of time if she spent 90% of it on Neopets) because, thanks to my book-loving nature, I ended up borrowing books that I am very sure I have no time for, what with Major Project, Distribution Centre Management tutorial homeworks (don't get me started on the mandatory quiz I did yesterday. Was cursing our tutor while attempting to complete it), and the need to continue writing Aki Kitsune.

I've noticed that my preference in books kept changing, over the years.
It used to be those... simple stories like Sweet Valley, The Babysitters Club... You know, those books that girls read before and/or while reaching the point where they decide that they feel more matured than their physical age tend to say.
Then there's the mystery stories, science fictions (like Animorphs, because I like animals too. And there's more action there than SV and BSC), when I was still vehemently firm in the standing that novels are b-o-r-i-n-g and long-winded.
After that came the period where my reading materials consisted of only mangas. Ah... Rurouni Kenshin is still a classic, as far as I'm concerned.

Out of nowhere, back in 2004, just because I was bored, I borrowed Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, which is such a cool book that I've ignored my "'Novel' is the noun for 'Boring'" assumption, and all I've read after that were the fantasy, sci-fi, mysteries sort.
And because the alternative is romance novels, which, in my mind are dreadfully predictable: girls meets guy, guy is rude, girl hates guy, they keep bumping into each other, starts to secretly like each other, cue strange misunderstandings, sort-of-heartbreaks, cue confessions, happy ending. I don't even need to read to know the ending.
I guess that's the beauty of it; everyone being promised of a happily ever after. And the happy endings are the only part I like in romance novels.
All right, I admit, I'm a sucker for happy endings in any story.

And now, thanks to all the fanfiction I've read, I realised that I'm more likely to be interested in stories involving vampires, werewolves, devils and Satan (or maybe Lucifer sounds more classy) and perhaps a little bit of pirates.
I think I see a common factor here: blood, possession, sarcasm, fights, sinful seduction of sorts...
Really, am I the only person who thinks that any part where a character has a vampire stuck to the neck via pointy fangs is hot?

How I Met Your Mother, season 3, Episode 11

Labels: Book recs, HIMYM, TV shows

It's such an irritating feeling of weakness and dependency, which is frustrating when people (by "people", I mean "mothers") keep telling you to drink disgusting herbal drinks when all you want is just having them fawning over you.

Dependency at these times are just so... I don't know, stupid.
Hate having the need to want to depend on someone.
Makes me feel so stupidly incompetent.

That's How You Know, from Disney's Enchanted.
Lyrics here.

Really adorable movie. Or maybe it's just that I'm biased towards Disney movies.

And hey, it's always been me, me, me, ME.
I know that sounded conceited but it does make me feel oddly stranded, not having the same command of power that I used to have.
(I swear, this is as stuck-up as I'll ever get. Rest assured that this is a one time occurrance.)
You see, that's the one complication that comes from wanting to hide achievements so that you won't attract too much (frustrating) attention, yet wanting others to notice what you're good at without being too self-important about it.

It was strange, angsting while I was supposed to be focusing that attention elsewhere.

Oh, and life threw yet another torture at me.
This morning, I was about to switch on and off the main switch to our modem by reaching behind the metal-framed computer desk in my parents' room, when I moved too fast and crammed the little finger on my right hand into said metal frame.

The finger crunched at the knuckles, beyond its normal moving range, against the frame and it hurts like bloody-hell-I-was-cursing-non-stop-for-10-seconds sort of pain.

Now the pain in the finger is being a menace.

It hurts when I write because I'm right-handed, and when writing, the injured finger has to be folded beneath the rest of the fingers and pressed between them and the paper.
Then, naturally, it hurts when I flex my fingers.
The damn thing even aches when I'm not doing anything with it.

And- oh no. Oh no.
Is it just me, or does that finger look just a bit more crooked than it's twin?!
*Horrified, shifty eyes*

And I would gladly dive back to my stories, if not for real life.
Behold, the paradox of real life forcing you to create a self-made reality, then proceeding to throw so many things at you that there's no time for anything else.

All right, time to head back to boring old real life.
Why not just shoot me and get all these over with?
Ugh...

Although there are still things to do, especially for the Major Project that my Final Year Project group is doing on YL and Julia's attachment company, as long as we stay on schedule, hopefully it won't be as rushed as the damned SIP report.
And now that the more urgent deadlines are met, I can have some moments of rest before we resume work on the project on Monday.
Whew!

Heroes, season 2, episode 11a, 11b
(Broadcasting has been put on hold due to the Writers Guild of America strike)

Labels: Heroes season2, TV shows

Played with Julia's new handphone this afternoon, Sony Ericsson W580i.
She has the mobile Sims2 game on her handphone and I was fiddling around with it when I've accidentally made her Sim gay.

Uh... Strangely, just making two Sims talk is sufficient to make them "fall in love", no matter the gender (which, I think reflects reality, contrary to what the bigots have to say about this subject).
Well, my inner slasher was squeeing fangirlishly, while the rest of me was still in disbelieve over it.
Further playing with the game, I've somehow gotten the two Sims married.

Inner slasher: Woohoo~ *jumps for joy*

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