A Surreal Motive

#01 AMATEUR

2011-12-18T16:07:00.000+08:00

It's the start of an intense two weeks, disguised as a school break allow us more time to finish our projects and reports. I decided that I would give myself some time, at least on this weekend, so try out some things I've always wanted to do but couldn't find the time to. Year 2 is intense...I can foresee a more tiring 2012 when we move on to Year 3. Where we do not have a single holiday because they are all full 7/8-week clinical attachments. NO MORE HOLIDAYS :(

And so, over the weekend I made a virtual photobook:

Open publication - Free publishing

The title of this book is #01 AMATEUR. Basically, "#01" just represents this photobook being my first one...It's like "Volume 1" but more stylized. The use of "AMATEUR" is just to sum up the fact that I'm still very much an amateur photographer, and I still have loads of learning to do. Basically this is just a compilation of chosen photos from 2007-2011 that I've taken and really liked.

Of course, critiques and suggestions are welcome :) I believe I still have a lot to improve on!

An Informal Reflective Report! Right...

2011-11-04T23:52:00.000+08:00

It's the last day of clinicals, the end of 6 stressful weeks. And I am now nua-ing at home writing a blog post instead of having to prepare for cases the next day. For the past 6 weeks I have been starting work at 8am, and due to having to do documentation for patients I've seen and having to copy patient information to prepare for the next day (and plus I work damn freaking slow I think ><), we've been ending work at times like 7-8pm. So everyday when I reach home I just crash on the bed before waking up at unearthly hours to shower and start work. And then, there is this issue I have with waking up...I generally get up an hour later than I set my alarms ("alarms" with an "s") because I unconsciously press the snooze button tens of times -_- And then good luck to me because due to the frequent sleep interruptions with the snoozes I will still be half asleep while doing my work and I cannot finish preparing for my cases and then I try to do them on the train but then I end up falling asleep on the train and then I end up preparing for my cases at work GOSHDARNIT. So I generally don't sleep very well on weekdays and highly appreciate being able to sleep in and regain lost hours on weekends, and this is a reason for celebration actually. As I type this my eyelids are drooping but I swear to finish writing because this is a FRIDAY.

But on a serious note: This has been a really good experience regarding my personal growth. The department really made us feel welcome and at home, so me and Maureen are in a dilemma now: should we be feeling happy or sad? On one hand we are really elated because we don't have to headache over preparing for the next day's cases or having to mentally prepare ourselves for evaluations, but on the other hand the people in the department have been so nice, we're actually missing them. Ahhhhhhh. It's really nice to have people being concerned and telling you "dun so stressed la" periodically, inviting you to eat with them and telling you at the end of the day when you're working overtime, "still here ah??? go home la!" It greatly helped me and Maureen in building a nice relationship with them, at the start we were sort of cold because we didn't really know how to enter their circle lol.

My supervisor has decided that she had been too lenient on us. Actually I think that's not really a significant concern, because ultimately it is our own responsibility to make full use of opportunities for our learning and we shouldn't be needing her to chase after us for stuff. We should have been more proactive in exploring, thinking of ideas and clarifying questions and concerns, and so this really is our own fault more than anything. There was a very large concern regarding functional activities that I only voiced out on the 3rd last day (we actually thought it was awkward to ask about it, thinking back now I don't have the darndest idea why) but after clarifying I realised that not asking about it earlier was a HUGE mistake. We could see that she was really concerned about us, like not wanting us to be too stressed up, etc so I feel quite guilty that I did not live up to her expectations...It's like she tried to be nice but we took her for granted :( We may not have known each other very well but she tried to be there when we needed her...Like at the earlier part of the placement when I was still feeling like a lost sheep and really horrible, it really helped when she said to me, "You must be more confident! You can do it one!!!" So even though the placement has ended, I'm still having this immense feeling of guilt T_T

I thought it was quite funny how we interacted more informally with the other people in the department than our supervisor actually, because it's obvious that she's one of the more informal people there lol. But we kept finding it hard to overcome the supervisor-student barrier because it's like the feeling of having Big Brother watching and evaluating your every move -_- so in the end we only started interacting more informally with her in the last two weeks of the placement. And now that clinicals has ended the texts I sent her just now are more informal. Actually interestingly even the replies from her are more informal hmmm.

I also appreciated my supervising lecturer for taking the time to come so often to observe our performance and give us really good feedback, though there were some things which I wished she had said so earlier. At the final evaluation she told us that we were two of her most relaxed students, and we started off really slow. I would have preferred it if she had told us sooner, like during the midway evaluation or even during her first observation...I haven't had much contact with any of my other schoolmates since clinicals started, so I had no idea how everyone else was doing and I went through the entire placement thinking I was on the right track. And it was really of no help in saying that to us at the final evaluation because even though we woke up then, there was really nothing we could do to salvage all the time wasted for the past few weeks.

For the final evaluation my supervisor also noted that my memory isn't very good. I think it has always been this way but I didn't realise it was so obvious >< But oh well, I guess when you have a student that doesn't seem to remember much about a patient she saw that morning, has memory mix-ups of the day's patients, seems to miss out on things quite often for documentation and cannot really remember what she read and what you discussed the other day you probably will find something wrong with her memory too T_T I suspect it could be due to the interrupted sleep. Which makes me very sleepy at work (though I try my very best not to show it), and it's a really unbearable feeling because you need your bestest memory for the job and nothing is going in because of all the "Zzzzz" barriers...And this happens outside of placement too actually. Which is why I have problems studying because I can read and re-read and draw mind maps for a topic but nothing ever goes in permanently because I'm nodding off at the same time...

I couldn't have hoped for a better supervisor because she has been a really great example to learn from. I think I haven't always been very enthusiastic about my schoolwork, but when you're having patients in your hands, you start feeling great responsibility because their progress depends on you, and you will feel a compulsion to find out more so that you can help them to the best of your ability. Moreover, there is that feeling of satisfaction when you see a patient progressing...I have a patient who hasn't been showing much progress, but when she came in being able to make a loose fist (she couldn't even close her fingers previously), that little warmth I felt inside made me smile for the rest of the day.

Ultimately there were a lot of mistakes I made and realisations about myself, so now is the time to learn from them and work on my skills so that by the next time I go for clinicals, I can be a much better therapist than I am now. I think I learnt more about myself in this short 6 weeks than I ever did for the past 20 years. Honestly, the therapist I was in the last week was something I never thought I could achieve in the first week, but there's still a really long way to go...Like what our supervising lecturer said, we're not even halfway on the road to becoming our ideal self, so I'll have to make full use of every opportunity for the next 1.5 years to becoming my ideal therapist by the time I graduate. I always feel a much greater sense of responsibility towards others, but I think it's high time I start developing a greater sense of responsibility towards myself.

CHIONG AH~!!!

Y U NO REMEMBER?!

2011-10-16T12:21:00.000+08:00

This is so frustrating. Last night, I had a really awesome dream and I woke up halfway thinking, "OMG this plot is freaking good. I can totally imagine this in a book or movie" and I even made the effort to go through the entire dream once in my mind despite being dead tired...But by the time I woke up this morning, I forgot every single thing about the dream! EVERY SINGLE THING! :(

Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence

2011-10-15T23:11:00.000+08:00

If I can get through the next three weeks, it will make a lot of difference in how much I think I can achieve.

頑張れぞー！！

Christina!

2011-09-14T15:47:00.003+08:00

While googling for Steins;Gate images, I came across this marvelous PVC figurine of Makise Kurisu:

I cannot even begin to say how well-sculpted this is. There's even this illusion of the gears floating in midair. Lovely shit. Lovely price as well: 7800 ¥ (~S$123). Oh the hypnotizing eyes! Added to the wishlist page now, I hope to find a rich boyfriend who wouldn't hesitate to buy this for me (or to turn into an otaku and secretly stare at it in the dark corners of his room, where I will join in the staring very often).

Jellyman

2011-09-13T05:00:00.001+08:00

Why is the Steins;Gate anime so awesome?

Why is the Nixie Tube Divergence Meter so awesome? It can even double as a clock. I want one now. But the price is sky high. I can't even build my own because I can't even afford just the tubes.

I want a collar badge now. I will be recognised as Lab Member #009. There will be a letter "Y" after the "A".

I also wouldn't be surprised if demand for the IBM 5100 shot up thanks to Steins;Gate.

Or if worldwide enmity towards CERN increases because everyone starts thinking they are SERN and will contribute to worldwide dystopia by the year 2036.

But I do know that I need to sleep now, and so I will sleep.

rant.

2011-08-27T00:05:00.003+08:00

No matter how stupid you are, I trusted you to have that single shred of intelligence left regarding a matter of that magnitude. It's unbelievable how wrong I can be.

Conductor

2011-08-09T17:20:00.000+08:00

I take some time off my mugging to write this post.

In a semi-conscious state just before I woke up this morning, I had a dream of a little boy's depressing story. I don't really remember what it was about, all I remember was that it was like watching a movie. There was this portion which was really sad when all of a sudden, a painfully melancholic orchestral piece started to play as the little boy climbed and stood up on a stage, in front of the red stage curtains with the spotlights shining on him. This gave quite an indescribable feeling...When I "heard" it, I felt like I was completely drawn to it. And I knew that it couldn't have been just any orchestral piece playing nearby in reality, because I was able to direct the flow and musicality of the piece, somewhat like a composer conducting an orchestra playing his piece, and even adding and changing notes during the performance. I don't know how to put it, but it was like a song that came from within, something I was able to relate to so much that I didn't want it to end.

Occasionally, I have been able to control what happens in some of my dreams, like a director who changes the storyline to his or her whim. This is but one of them, and it certainly is the most memorable of my dreams so far. Unlike those previous dreams where I controlled the visual flow of things, I was able to control something auditory this time, and it was such an exhilarating experience because music is something very important to me.

Among other things...

2011-06-25T20:29:00.003+08:00

So, I've just ~~created a Tumblr theme~~ grabbed a Tumblr theme code from a website and made my own header and background images.

I'm actually quite proud of it...It's like I totally changed the look of the original theme and made it my own. Lol. And to add to my secretly bursting ego, I'd like to say that all the photos in the background image are taken by me :)))))))))))))))) Okay bye.

muse | view

2011-06-17T23:59:00.003+08:00

muse.

It might be interesting to ponder over how there is so much uproar over someone roasting a puppy alive, but hardly an eyelid batted when eating at a seafood restaurant boasting of fresh catch from the numerous tanks around. I'm not an industry insider, but they probably boil your chosen lobster alive.

view.

NOTE: This review contains spoilers.
(Also, I might sound a tad incoherent. Lol. But I am not a writer :/)

Yesterday, I managed to catch Kūki Ningyō (空気人形, Air Doll), a Japanese film directed by Koreeda Hirokazu.

Kūki Ningyō is an amazing masterpiece, telling the story of an inflatable sex doll that "gains a heart", therefore coming to life and goes on to explore the world. I haven't watched Koreeda's other films, but after this experience I think I'll be searching around for the rest. Expect nudity (Korean actress Bae Du-Na daringly bares it all here), some level of erotica (though it didn't really turn me on), many intellectual contemplations and a heartbreaking realisation at the end.

(If you do not yet know, inflatable sex dolls are life-sized sex toys that come with a washable rubber vagina. So men in possession of such dolls can essentially live out their sexual fantasies more realistically.)

As you might have guessed by now, this film is intended as a social commentary. The Japanese obsession with sex toys is one of the many themes explored in this film. Hideo, a lonely waiter, owns the sex doll which he names "Nozomi" after his former girlfriend. He bathes her, talks to her, has sex with her, and even takes her on walks to the park like a normal girlfriend. When Hideo finally realises halfway through the film that Nozomi had come alive, he laments that fact and talks about why he prefers sex dolls to real women, one of the reasons being the non-requirement of commitment.

When Nozomi first comes alive and goes on a journey of discovery, she moves with childlike innocence and wonder, albeit aware that her only purpose is to bring pleasure to humans. She goes to work at a video rental store, carefully balancing her "life" with Hideo's work schedule. There, she meets Junichi, her ever-tolerant and extremely nice co-worker, who teaches her about the world and whom she eventually falls in love with. Throughout this time, she meets a few other people, who are portrayed as short, side stories in the film. There is no depth of interaction with these people. This portrayal gives a surreal sense of fleeting encounters, which are what we often experience living in busy cities. Our bonds are non-existent, and here we resemble the air doll in being lonely and empty inside, going around searching for warmth and relationships. She even meets the doll maker, which could be a suggestion of God in human terms.

Junichi first discovers the truth of Nozomi being an air doll when Nozomi pricks her wrist at the store and deflates. He closes the hole with some tape, and then promptly proceeds to re-inflate her through the plug at her belly button. The inflation process is portrayed somewhat erotically, with Nozomi making sexually-suggestive movements as Junichi blows through the plug with his mouth. Nozomi and Junichi develop a relationship later. Junichi finds pleasure in continuously deflating and re-inflating her, but things certainly didn't work out when she tried to do the same, cutting and "re-inflating" him by kissing and blowing air through his mouth.

Nozomi reaches the "end" of her life emotionally broken, innocence betrayed. I have to commend Bae Du-Na's performance as the sex doll, you have to watch her to know what I mean.

Amusingly, it is amazing how there doesn't seem to be much of a shock when the people around her realise that she is a sex doll come alive. If it was me, I would have suspected a spiritual possession of some kind and totally freak out lol. Hideo even runs after her like a normal girlfriend. That said, I think that may have been intentional, but I'm not too sure at what it's trying to say at the moment. And while the erotic scenes may turn some people on, it certainly didn't work for me...I couldn't feel anything looking at a guy blowing through the air plug ><

Word:
The is a pretty lengthy one (around 2 hours), some parts may be a little draggy. Then again, I started off at 1.30am and I did not fall asleep. I was too busy thinking and trying to link Nozomi's encounters with my own real-life experiences. The film explicitly gives away its messages in the script at certain points of time, but I would have preferred interpreting these myself (it's a lot more fun). Overall, if there was an object equivalent giving intellectual pleasure instead of sexual pleasure, this film is it. It does what it means to, with flowing artistry and solid acting. My sloppy review here certainly doesn't do this film justice. WATCH IT.

Rating:
4.5/5

KEY:
1/5 - Watch if you've had too good a day and need something bad to balance your life
2/5 - Watch if you have nothing better to do
3/5 - Watch if you are prepared to take the risk that this may not be worth your time
4/5 - Watch this even if you have homework to do
5/5 - YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS YOU HAVE NO CHOICE

Hello, I'm not apathetic to politics. At least for now.

2011-05-07T02:55:00.003+08:00

Voting starts in 6 hours and 5 minutes. Quite excited, even though I'm not voting.

This election is the first time in my life that I'm actually interested in and keeping up with. I was as apathetic as always at first, but took a look after my mum mentioned "This year's election quite interesting, 82 out of 87 seats are contested" and I've not regretted it. I spend hours looking at election nonsense when I'm supposed to be doing work (so much for the last post). But at least it's time well-spent, and not on Facebook. Reading up on this has opened my eyes to some things I've never thought of. Like how poisonous mushrooms might grow on special trees.

I've particularly enjoyed reading mrbrown's blog this election.

Yes, those were from him lol.

There has been a lot of talk from the opposition about the issue of ministerial pay. Top ministers in Singapore can apparently get up to S$2-3m a year. Obama only gets just above US$400,000 a year? So far the PAP has yet to justify that amount or rebutt it. This then raises a lot of questions about whether our Ministers of Parliament (MPs) are here for the money or here for the people.

I've been pretty pro-opposition this election, because of how the PAP is behaving really arrogantly and just using fear-mongering tactics. "If you don't vote for us, you won't get (insert stuff like HDB upgrading, lift-upgrading, etc. here)", "If you vote for opposition, you will live to repent for the next 5 years!". This may have worked for the older generation, but come on, a lot of your voters belong to the younger generation, who are just buay song at this kind of comments. But at least there are some of them whom I can safely say are probably here for the people.

George Yeo (Aljunied GRC)
This guy is playing in pretty hot water this time. He's an old timer who's our Foreign Minister and has been serving Aljunied GRC as an MP for the past 23 years, and apparently he bothers to connect with the residents by going jogging with them and arranging sessions to meet up with youths and talk about issues. But it's the strongest team of people from the Worker's Party he's dealing with this time. It won't be easy, and the result is definitely unpredictable. Would the residents see his contributions as enough for him to stay, or will they try out the fresh new faces?
Denise Phua (Moulmein-Kallang GRC)
I'd seen her around when I was interning in Pathlight School. At least from what I can see, she devotes quite a lot of her time to the autism cause, partly because her son is autistic. As such I would think that she is at least compassionate and selfless in this regard. I hope this actually extends to her people. Well, at the very least, when we interacted with her, she put on no airs and spoke humbly and at our level when offering her ideas and opinions.
Heng Chee How (Whampoa SMC)
This is one guy I can confirm and double confirm that he thinks for his people. I'd personally worked with him along with some of my friends in 2008 for a community project in Whampoa, comprising of a food donation drive and finale concert for the low-income residents there. We never thought of the idea of actually working with the MP. Rather, it was him that approached us, expressing his interest to assist us in planning this project which would be of benefit to these people. While we went around distributing the donated food to these families, he actually bothered to tell us about the plight of these families and about the rental flats they stayed in. After the whole event, they invited us to dinner with them as their way of saying thank you. He was extremely down-to-earth and humble in his interactions with us and the families he met on his walkabout, and maybe even a little funny at times (not trying to joke, just the genuine natural cute side of our fellow human lol). All in all, very much like us normal Singaporeans. He may not be some high flyer like George Yeo but he is someone that I think the country should not lose.

I'm so staying up for the election results :DDDDDD

Start of a new day

2011-04-28T09:28:00.005+08:00

Leaving the house for school in...15 minutes? I haven't slept more than 5 hours in quite some time...My body's still having problems adjusting to the new semester lol. It's only the 2nd week of Year 2, but it's been hell more tiring than many days in Semester 2 of Year 1. I dunno whether it's because I've been making the effort to be a good student (revising work when I come home, trying to read up on the next lecture, etc.) which I haven't, of course, done since lower primary...I always find myself giving excuses for my lame results just to prevent my mum from nagging but I know that ultimately it's my own fault. And therefore now I'm trying out an experiment to see how far I can go if I actually work harder. So far it's not exactly showing results because my memory is (and has always been) goshdarn lousy, so this is currently not doing much for me except making it easier to follow lectures. Hmmm.

Anyway, my life seems emptier now that I've caught up with the Gintama and Beelzebub animes and finished Cowboy Bebop.

Gintama is just plain random funny ridiculous insane and what other adjectives you can think of for a LOL anime. It's so awesome because despite these craziness it's pretty clever and well-written. I tried reading the manga but for a genre like this, the anime works so much better. The first few episodes are quite boring, as with a lot of other animes, but once you get past them I think you'll just fall in love with Gintama and its faces. My favourite characters so far are Katsura+Elizabeth (these two have to go together, really) and Gintoki. And it's not just humour, there are serious fights too, just that these also tend to fall into randomness after a while.

And Beelzebub...Pretty much falls into the same genre as Gintama. I mean, how is a baby demon lord whose full name is Kaiser de Emperana Beelzebub IV who attaches himself to a delinquent in Japan's worst school considered normal. Just that Beelzebub is less random as it has a more defined plot, but still very funny :)

Now we come to Cowboy Bebop. Directed by Shinichiro Watanabe, this anime has been hailed as a legend in the anime world ever since it was broadcasted. I've been wanting to watch this since I saw Samurai Champloo, another work by the same director, but I kept putting it off and I kinda regret it now. But at least I finally watched it! This only lasts a short 26 episodes, how I wish there were more. It's mainly sci-fi, but there are those little emotional tangles that I cannot escape from. You have to watch it to feel the awesomeness :)

Okay, off to school...I'm gonna be late lol.

take a little time to look around you and appreciate what you have

2011-03-29T01:34:00.003+08:00

"
Looking through some of old photos I found while clearing my room, I was actually inspired to induldge in some form of self-expression - something I have not done in a really really long time.

Not really an "emo-pseudo" kind of person, so here's my blatant & shameless attempt to try and tap into the emo part of me:

The 2 most important people in my life. Without them, I wouldn't be where I am today. I love them.

That’s ME with my grandparents, A few years back! They are both in the autumn now. Soon, winter will come. Yesterday, I was the little boy above. Winter will come for me too some day.

My grandpa used to chase me down the many flights of stairs while playing tag with me in his younger days. Few months back, he fell while walking down just one flight of stairs.

Enjoy what you have while it’s here. Because no man has a lease on life.

- Maxx Koh Yeok Seng (29/03/2011) -

-----------------------------------------

The above post was written by my cousin on Facebook. Reading that, it made me think a lot about my grandparents and the rest of the people around me. I could feel the tears choking up. I'm not good at these stuff...I once woke up crying my eyes out when I dreamt of my mum's death.

I am fortunate to have the company of so many wonderful people. Some I may not have treasured, friendships that I did not bother to maintain, these I'm aware of and I have been trying not to make the same mistakes again. I shut my ears to my parents' nagging, but there will be someday when I will hope that I can hear them talk once more.

滞在強い、日本！

2011-03-14T03:02:00.002+08:00

I was watching a Channel News Asia broadcast today by a reporter in Sendai, the area which felt the most of the tsunami's wrath. He commented that he had covered many disasters, but he was surprised at the "stoic calmness" of the affected people in the area, working to clean up the mess left behind.

If anyone can get through these, it is the Japanese. Stay strong.

#prayforjapan

P.S. Depicted in the photo is "ema", wooden tablets on which wishes are written. This was taken at Meiji Shrine in Shibuya, Tokyo. The ema in the shrine are usually hung around the camphor tree in front of the main shrine building.

Praying, and praying hard.

2011-03-12T16:20:00.009+08:00

At around 12.30am yesterday (today, actually), I read the news online about the earthquake in Japan. The magnitude-8.9 quake originating from the northeastern coast of Japan caused massive damage in many parts, especially in Sendai where a tsunami, which waves were reported to be as high as 10 metres, devastated the area. More than 300 bodies had been found. Apparently, there had been prior warnings concerning the tsunami, but it came too quickly and many people could not escape in time. The extent of the damage was beyond what I could comprehend.

Fires raging in the city of Kesen'numa in Miyagi prefecture
Transport systems are down in Tokyo
More than 4 million households in Tokyo alone are left without electricity
Communications systems are not working

And this is just part of the trouble there.

Below: A video of the fires in Kensen'numa

Video footage of the happenings in a quiet neighbourhood:

When I went to Tokyo and Hakone in Japan with my school last September, there were many wonderful people who made my experiences extremely enjoyable and memorable. I had forgotten about most of them, until when I read about the quake. All of a sudden, I found myself wondering about the wellbeing of the receptionist at the inn who had happily spent some time teaching us Japanese, the students and teachers of Tsuda College whom we had interacted with in an exchange session, the three youths we had met and talked to on the train to Disneyland, the elderly couple on the way back who told us they had lived in Singapore, the women at the International Japanese Cultural Center who had taught us ikebana and how to wear yukatas, and so many others.

Also, Bernice is currently holidaying in Okinawa. Luckily, it lies southern of Japan, so I'd think the tremors there are not as serious.

On Facebook, I asked my friend in Japan (one of the Tsuda College students) about her safety. She told me that when the tremors occurred, she was on the 20th storey of a building. After being trapped there for 3 hours, she got out only to realise that the transport systems were down. Walking to the next bus stop was faster than taking a bus. In the end, she spent 6 hours travelling home on foot, exhausted. Her message read, "now I can sleep on my bed, and my room is warm. it is just usual and normal thing, but I feel so happy from bottom of my heart. because many people cannot get back home." When I read this, I literally got goosebumps and re-read the statement over and over again. This was so distant, but the fact that it happened to someone I know made it feel extremely close.

Living in Singapore, we are so complacent when it comes to disasters. Always with the idea of "this will never happen to me", we take mobilisations and drills for granted and curse and swear whenever we have to go through them, not once taking them seriously even though the threat of things like terrorist attacks are very real. Geographical knowledge and data tell us that "earthquakes and tusnamis can never happen in Singapore", but how much do we really know about nature? Even though we think so, is our knowledge really correct? What if a tsunami really strikes us in future? Singaporeans are what we call "grabbing the Buddha's leg at the last moment", we will never start to worry until these really happen, regret that we didn't prepare for the worst and then sit there and pray that someone would save us.

Did you know that little kids in Japan calmly put on their helmets and crawl under their desks in the event of an earthquake?

Black & White

2011-03-10T23:59:00.001+08:00

Hmmm. So it's been some 22 days since I last posted. While I've been having fun taking driving lessons and going out with people after the exams, I totally neglected you, dear blog.

Warning: This is going to be picture heavy. So, let's get our seatbelts on and GO!

24th February

LAST PAPER!

After some rejoicing and taking class photos to celebrate one year endured in the course...

I then went off to the NYP basketball court to watch Nadiah play basketball and take random photos:

(Don't be fooled, I absolutely CANNOT play basketball)

We also found a bird's nest in the basketball net:

But it was surprisingly robust...No matter how many times the ball hit the nest it just swayed. Not even a single twig fell. Respect.

And after I watched Nadiah play for a little while, we then moved off to MacRitchie Reservoir! It had been some number of years before I came, and the decision that day was quite impromptu. Nadiah tagged along because she "wants to explore unexplored places in Singapore" :)

Nadiah then displays her obsession for raindrops:

And I get infected with the raindrop bug later in my mum's car.

25th February

GLYC (minus the G) went out to eat, also to celebrate Y's birthday. Which is actually my birthday because I am Y. HAHAHA. We went to this dim sum place somewhere in Aljunied, the food there was pretty good, price wasn't exactly cheap but it was reasonable. I particularly liked this dish consisting of mini fried spring rolls with mango and banana filling.

And they also bought me a matcha cake from The Icing Room! True friends will buy matcha for you. And that was my first macarone :D

1st March

OT1003 goes to Marina Barrage! Haven't played with kites for a long time so the experience was really addictive.

Lesson 1

Formula for enjoyment:

KITES

FOOD and MUSIC

PEOPLE

PHOTOWARS

DONUTS

INSANITY

and of course a photo in the train :)

Since you're probably lost by now, that went:

ENJOYMENT = KITES + FOOD + MUSIC + PEOPLE + PHOTOWARS + DONUTS + INSANITY

8th March

Neko, Charkuay and Yuan Lin go for walk. In Arab Street, Haji Lane and Chinatown.

Charkuay (Chang Kuei actually we just like to make fun of her name hahaha) and Neko

Me and Charkuay

We walk...

...and reach Sultan Mosque!

And we continue walking.

Traditional toys!

These really bring back a lot of memories, kids these days just hold a Nintendo or a PSP in hand and these toys are totally forgotten. I bought one gasing and two mini gasings :) A gasing is a traditional Malay top.

And here is my loot for the day! The gasings plus one tin clockwork duck :)

9th March

Nothing much. Just that I went to collect the roll of Fujifilm Superia 400 film I sent for developing.

As you can see, while the Canon EOS 300 is a film SLR and is supposed to give proper images, it kinda became a lomo camera -_______- I seriously hope this is the film roll's fault. Not that I don't like lomo (actually I think the images here are quite nice) but I'd like the SLR to do what an SLR does T_T

Okay that was (and took) really long and here's another one of my signature abrupt ends.

So, God, where did you come from?

2011-02-16T17:44:00.010+08:00

This is just to follow up on the little religious argument I had a while back on Facebook:

(Click on the picture above to view the whole comment thread, not gonna post it here because it's a little too long..)

I just found this website which gave a pretty good argument for that, though it's abstract and all. Because this is, after all, religion. But take whatever you read with a little pinch of salt. I personally disagree with some text on the site, for example:

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY
Religion is Man's attempt at reaching God. Jesus is God's attempt at reaching Man.

That does not apply to all religions. For one, there is no God in Buddhism. Even if there is (by argument of different definitions), Buddhist concepts would mean that there is a God in every single one of us, including animals and spirits. Because, as long as you have a soul, you have a Buddha nature which makes you capable of being a Buddha through cultivation. Yeah and other religions of that sort I guess, like Taoism, etc.

For the most part, though, I do agree with the idea that religion is not meant to be easily comprehended by humans. Since the "higher-ranking" ones are supposed to have intelligence, wisdom, etc. at a different level from us, I have this theory that all ideas presented to us are at a level for humans to understand, and that there is a lot more to what we "know" about this world.

--------------------------

Oh, and I also created a new page above, with my Flickr and deviantART slideshows.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

2011-02-15T22:42:00.006+08:00

I am so bored now I feel like getting up pack my things and run away to rural Japan and stay in the mountains with the rest of the elderly.

(Please click to full view and appreciate my Photoshop skills. Original photo from National Geographic just in case there's some copyright thingy involved.)

Maybe when I can drive and have loads of cash for petrol I'll drive across the causeway across Malaysia across Thailand across Laos to Hanoi to visit Cooro's home.

How creative.

-------------------------------------

Anyway, 12 Feb (last Saturday) was a Day of Class Gatherings.

After leaving early from my Aikido lesson, I was supposed to meet Jeanette but she overslept and was late by an hour, so in the meantime I went to walk at Tampines Mall and got myself a new bracelet. No photos because I don't think something common bought for $6.90 deserves my effort for one. Ha.

Anyway, we met up with Pei Qi and Cooro at Bukit Gombak MRT and tried to take a cab in. Halfway through the taxi driver got lost and...threw me the street directory. Which is obviously useless in my hands. He then started asking us questions like "Is it a small road?" "This road is it?" which we also, obviously, couldn't answer. Because all of us in the cab live in Tampines, Simei and Bedok. Which is like, the other end of Singapore.

But anyway after giving Bernice a call for directions we ended up at............HER HOUSE! :D The buffet food was really good. From Eatz Catering.

Random photo time!

These are......the oranges I brought to bai nian. Haha.

Bernice and Pei Qi

Me, Cooro and Jeanette

Cheryl

Fauzy

Jeanette, Cooro and Charzheng

A lil' bit of Charzheng, Fauzy, Nadiah and Jeanette (model pose)

Fauzy with a...nice expression.

And the Guests-of-Honour: Fruit tarts, which unlike the rest of the food did not survive.

After we all left, I went over to Bugis to be the earliest for 4i dinner (Jeanette, as always, did not come along lol). After taking a walk around parts of Bugis Junction unknown to me, all of us finally arrived at the fountain and we jaywalked across a dangerous wide road to...Everyday Steamboat, or Tian Tian Huo Guo!

The food was pretty good, despite me not usually liking steamboat stuff. Gel and I spammed the black pepper fish like dunno wat so I think the $20/person we paid was quite worth it.

Gel, Yunjing and Huifen

Grace's bridal photo

Edwin and Ching Siang

Gel and yours truly!

Wei Liang a.k.a. Haebi (y'know, those dried shrimps)

And Ching Siang is perpetually uncaring of whatever antic Haebi does beside him.

Nice shot by Grace. It was a piece of chao tah chicken drumstick that no one bothered to eat.

We then walked over to Ritz, initially for Gel to collect the apple strudel she ordered. But then me, Haebi, Edwin and Grace ended up buying half a durian strudel each. (OMG THE SMELL OF DURIAN WAS HEAVENLY AND THE FLESH WAS BITTER WHICH IS AWESOME)

Huifen and Yunjing chillaxing outside the shop while waiting for us.

And so we all continued chillaxing outside the shop for some time, took some group photos (can't remember who they're with) and then headed home, stinking up the train in the meantime.

---------------------------------------------

Just in case you're wondering why the colour of the photos look so nice, it's not that I'm a master of photography. It's just that Canon has this awesome thing called Picture Styles and I got some good custom ones from here.

I DUN WANNA DO REPORT I DUN WANNA STUDY I DUN WANNA TAKE EXAMS T_T

Okay bye bye another wonderful abrupt end.

All the hot guys are...

2011-02-08T00:35:00.007+08:00

So, I just had this realisation that many of the hot manga/anime guys do something in common:

They all like to pose donning gloves! At least this is the case with Ed (Fullmetal Alchemist), Saitou (Hakuouki) and Roy (Fullmetal Alchemist). Haha.

By the way I wanted to post stuff about Hakuouki figurines but I don't have the time but they're already in this new Wishlist page I had to create but I think I'll end up not posting about them anyway and I need to continue my clinical diary which is not nice unlike the figurines which are SHUPARR NAISE okay bye.

P.S. Saitou-kun also likes to bite stuff, because besides the picture in the previous previous post in which he was biting on his haori I also saw another scan of him biting on cloth again. But I can't find it now so I'll post it another day. SO CUTE RIGHT SAITOU HE'S GOT A BABY SIDE :D

MANYMANYLOVES

2011-02-07T10:25:00.002+08:00

Aaahhhh this is so friggin' awesome!!! The art for Hakuouki is telling me I should go out and buy this book NAO!!! But Kinokuniya sells it for S$63.80 :( Please let money fall from the sky!!!

Oooh!

2011-02-06T19:17:00.005+08:00

Firstly, I have to repost something I saw on YS's Facebook:

Daughter: Hey Mom I'm going to my room with my boyfriend.
Mom: Ok don't do anything stupid !

*Gf and Bf go into room *

Daughter screams: Baby Baby Baby oooh!

*Mum runs into daughters room*

Mum: What are you doing ?!?!?!?!?!?
Daughter: Mum we're having sex. GET OUT !
Mum: Oh thank God I thought you were listening to Justin Bieber

LOL.

So, I finally completed my Ed vector (from Fullmetal Alchemist):

And I finished my Saito vector (from Hakuouki) after an intensive two days thanks to CNY:

Am too lazy to post links now, will do so when I'm have some time on my hands. But you know those regular sources of my works, like AnimePaper and deviantART. Though Saito-kun isn't up anywhere yet, except for Facebook -____-

Hakuouki is yet another nice show besides Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Maybe I'll also post a review for that, though I'm kinda lacking because I know nothing about Japanese history except that:

There was a period called the Meiji Restoration, or Meiji Jidai.
There were clans called Aizu and Satsuma.
There was a war called the Boshin War in which they fought in.

Well, at least my knowledge of Singapore history is better. LOL.

iconeriffic!

2011-02-05T03:06:00.002+08:00

Go to my info page (the "metzalx" tab above) now. I just spent my CNY free time making icons instead of doing my clinical diary. Wonderful.

But I think the icons really nice :D LOL.

Fullmetal Alcheddict

2011-01-25T20:30:00.006+08:00

I'm so going to re-watch Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood over and over again in the hols and read the manga ad infinitum!!! This is almost perfection. I can't watch any other anime anymore!!!

So, will post like my first ever review when that time comes too. Haha.

Meanwhile...

ranty panty.

2010-12-12T17:33:00.003+08:00

I have no idea why parents like to think that something unimportant to them is also unimportant to their child, when in fact it is very important to their child.

On a happier note, I am now a 4th kyu Kendoka. $40 grading fee is quite worth it eh, from no kyu to 4th. Congrats to those who got 3rd too :D

OSHO: Strange Consequences

2010-11-21T19:20:00.000+08:00

Oh anyway:

Start from around 1:20, when he starts talking about the F-word.

MAJOR OVERHAULL!!!

2010-11-21T01:18:00.003+08:00

Okay, if you've ever seen this blog before, you might not remember because it looks so different. Like, really different.

New blogskin, using the new Blogger Template Designer, which apparently does not work very well considering the fact that the blog logo at the top of the page just refuses to centralise itself no matter what I do. Also there's this irritating black rectangle in the background which I dunno how to get rid of either :(

I'd first like to say that this blog remains black-themed (and will probably always be) because there were quite a few posts that I edited font colors to suit the black background and I don't ever want to change them again because I'm goddamn lazy.

Tagboard has been removed, because I am now powered with Comments (my old blogskin didn't have that functionality) so there isn't really a need to remain a slave to Shoutmix anymore.

Info about myself and the music stuff have been organised into Pages, so that a certain someone doesn't "need to scroll down so long" to see my posts. Right, Peepee? ;P

Also, there's this Feed the Fishes thing at the side. All you need to do is click to drop food and watch the fishes fight over it. Which gets sadistically enjoyable after a while?

Have fun feeding the fishes, while I go to sleep and get ready for homework tomorrow T_T

EDIT: Just in case you're wondering, what really happened is that the old blog got transferred to asurrealmotive.blogspot.com. LOL.

Many many things~

2010-11-06T21:48:00.000+08:00

[Note: The first part of this post was actually written exactly ONE MONTH AGO but saved in my drafts. I'm not gonna bother editing it so welcome to the past -___-]

Okay, firstly, Japan will be covered in parts. Because I haven't finished sorting my photos (I'm like, only 5% done?) and I don't have time to blog everything at once -____-

Summary: Everything was fun but...Not enough shopping! Okay maybe that is to be expected, since this is a school trip :( I had so many things on my shopping list and I had almost given up when suddenly everything started showing up on the last day. A pleasant surprise indeed but given only 1 hour to find everything on my list, I obviously chionged like "no tomorrow" (ref. Yann Way LOL). And apparently I couldn't get everything on my shopping list, but the major items were cleared.

From left:
1) Evangelion EVA-01 Test Type launch pad Ver. Limited Model (Here/Here) [¥2800]
2) Evangelion EVA-02 Limited Model (Here) [¥1500]
3) flumpool's "What's flumpool!?" band score [¥2940]
4) BLEACH MASKED Official Character Book 2 [¥781]

Actually my intention was only the EVA-01 but seeing the EVA-02 at a freaking ¥1500 I couldn't resist. I also saw the band score for the whole "Sports" album from Tokyo Jihen but I gave it up for the flumpool one. Come to think of it I should have just gotten it too (because the drums are more complicated and fun though I'm only addicted to one song from the whole album). Now to ship it over from Japan I have to pay another ¥900 :( Because my hands are itching to play the drums for Noudouteki Sanpunkan. And lucky Ya Chen managed to obtain the September issue of the Animage magazine with Fullmetal Alchemist on the cover. Both me and Joe were running from one end of the airport to another in hopes of finding it but they only had the October issue. Damnit why do airport bookstores update so fast?!

And to those people whom I'm giving snacks to, please don't mind that I grabbed them from Japan's Daiso (yes, within the same hour). I can only hope that Singapore's Daiso doesn't have them :(

[06 Nov 2010]

Japan will officially start in the next post, which will be like dunno how long later because I'm gonna take dunno how long to finish sorting my photos.

Otherwise, enjoy the assembled EVAs below. I actually tried painting them with acrylic paint because I cannot afford the specialist paints. Somehow fine I guess but they come off super easily so it's kinda like a waste of effort -___- And they HAVEN'T got their decals on yet.

EVA-01 and EVA-02 standing proudly on the boxes from which they surfaced.

EVA-01 front profile.

EVA-02 back profile

EVA-01 close-up.

EVA-02 front profile. No back/close-up profile because I haven't finished painting it so there isn't really any point.

The HG EVAs with an old HG Gundam I did years ago. Considering that they're both HG (meaning they're both 1/144 scale), I can safely say that EVAs are larger than Gundams lol. And the EVAs are sexier :)

Size of the EVA-01 model compared to my half-done papercraft one (yes, fully crafted out of PAPER). I can already imagine the size of the papercraft one when it's finally completed. Thank goodness I printed it on A4 paper...If I had printed it on A3 paper it'd be twice the size, like, WOW.

MIA

2010-09-13T23:50:00.000+08:00

^Just a little something I took at the temporary Uncle Ringo in Tampines :) The little boy boy was so cute okay, he was shouting "I'M FIRST!!!" while waving to his parents.

From tomorrow till Saturday I will be disappearing from the face of Earth (but maybe not Face(of)book errr haha ok quite lame -__-) because I'll be having my Kendo training camp. I'll probably lose some weight (something I'm looking forward to, no doubt half-heartedly ><) but I probably won't be updating (which is something I always don't do anyway, even though I have a lot to do).

Yeah so till then :)

Major changes!!!

2010-09-07T16:37:00.000+08:00

If you do visit this lonely page in the world wide web from time to time, you would notice that it has undergone some pretty major (though not major, major) changes today.

Ancient ad-supported Cbox has been replaced with a more modern non-ad ShoutMix tagboard. Long-defunct Playlist.com playlists have also been given a new lease of life with MixPod. There is also a nice little graphical treat representing the Music of ASM section above.

And the only drawback is that you have to scroll down (just a little) further than usual to reach the blog posts. Not bad right. LOL.

...It's the post-exam mood. By the way my prediction in the previous post came true.

That aside, I actually made a series of logos before picking one for the above-mentioned graphical treat.
I did this primarily because ASM has been my imaginary band for a very long time and I thought they might need a new logo. But don't worry, though I sound like I've drifted away from reality, I'm still perfectly sane. If your eye is super discerning you would realise that the rounded corners are not consistent. But I'm too lazy to change them. Mwahahaha.

And sorry but I don't have much to write. There simply isn't anything worth mentioning when you've been stuck at home the whole day with a runny runny runny nose. And uh, things like "I just cut my hair" and "I just changed my glasses".

EPIC FAIL.

2010-09-04T00:37:00.000+08:00

I'M A TOTAL FAILURE AT STUDYING. I CANNOT CONCENTRATE AT ALL AND I'M FEELING SO AWKWARDLY RELAXED AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW LIKE WHY IN THE WORLD. HELLO YUANLIN YOU'RE LIKE SUPPOSED TO FEEL MORE STRESSED THAN THIS?!

It's like, I only really started taking in information from my notes one day before Psychology exam and one day before Anatomy exam which is like ultimate last-minute cram. And now for Physiology I wasted yesterday and I wasted today and I know I'm going to waste tomorrow and I have a family gathering on Sunday which means I'm going to waste Sunday too and I will cram on Monday before the exam.

I can predict my life. Congratulate me.

And anyway, I dunno if this is anti-climax but I totally love that depressed Tweety.

-----------------

Among other things I did yesterday, I made a wallpaper.

deviantART link here.

I'm too lazy to type anything new about it so I'm just gonna copy whatever I wrote as my dA description:

Yamapi (a.k.a. Yamashita Tomohisa) wallpaper! I found this scan online and really liked the atmosphere, so I did a bit of colour corrections and added a texture. Didn't take up a lot of time, this one is very easy to make compared to my previous wallpapers lol. Loads of icon space available on the left!

I never used to pay much attention to actors until this guy showed up. I couldn't help it, his coolness just emanated out of my computer screen. Go watch the Kurosagi drama/movie and you'll know why. His other dramas (and his songs too) also recommended.

Oh well, I'll be in Kurosagi mode for a while.

I mean it when I said his coolness emanated out of my screen. I was so affected I ended up watching his other dramas, in which he acts as funny characters (check out Nobuta wo Produce and Proposal Daisakusen) too. And touching ones (Byakkotai). And totally normal ones (Buzzer Beat). And I particularly liked this commercial he did for a brand of mints:

I'm sorry if it doesn't tickle you but it made me LOL for quite some time. If you don't understand anything, I think it would help to know that he was trying to ask for a ticket. I felt so sad for him...All he wanted was a ticket!

I don't know if I chose the right road in life. I feel happier and more motivated designing stuff than studying stuff like Anatomy. But then again, I tend to get stressed out with my interests when I'm forced to pursue them (rather than at my own pace) so maybe it's a good thing after all.

Oh well, whatever. On a separate note I must say Gel spots questions really well. Like really really well. Before Anatomy exam she was telling me she was thinking that bone tissue, elbow joint and either median or ulnar nerve would come out for essays and she was TOTALLY SPOT-ON. I think I shall ask her on Monday about Physiology too. She's a human Buddha's leg for last-minute crammers.

SCARY EGGS...

2010-09-03T01:58:00.000+08:00

Scene from an action movie

Yes, it's my photo this time :)

---------------------

Just a super duper short update, I was intending to make French toast for lunch this afternoon and look at what I found when I cracked the eggs:

BLOOD IN THE EGGS!!! I dunno if the chicken was like having cancer or something? O_o But I kinda freaked out so I threw the eggs away and cracked new ones.

Ok I'm going to sleep haha.

R.I.P. Satoshi Kon

2010-08-26T00:27:00.000+08:00

I thought I'd start writing my posts beginning with a picture each time. No special reason, other than the fact that I've been coming across a lot of pretty ones recently :)

Just now, I was randomly surfing pages when I came across news of Japanese director Satoshi Kon's passing. The man who directed critically-acclaimed movies like Paprika, Millenium Actress, Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers had passed away on the morning of August 24th due to pancreatic cancer, which had metastasised to his bone. He was 46.

"With feelings of gratitude for all that is good in this world, I put down my pen. Well, I'll be leaving now." - Those were his parting words. For some reason, I was drawn to them.

My first thought was that it was a pity. He was still working on his next film, and I was eagerly awaiting that because I thoroughly enjoyed his other films. And, he was only 46. He still had so many years ahead in which he could come up with more masterpieces which would ultimately stand on the same stage with other legendary films like My Neighbour Totoro and Akira.

But then, he was defeated by something like cancer. Something that originates from one single small, tiny cell that could kill even the strongest man alive.

I guess cancer means more to me than the ordinary man on the road. After all, my family seems to have a lot of encounters with cancer. My cousin, my paternal grandfather, my maternal grandmother, and even my mum. It may be genetic, said the doctor. So I, too, may be afflicted with cancer one day.

But what I'm glad about is the fact that when I think about this, the first thought that comes to my mind is not despair, but to cherish each day with the people around me. I guess this is one part about me that I really like (though sometimes I can't decide if I take things a little too easy).

You never know what is going to happen to your loved ones tomorrow, so treasure the time you have with them today.

P.S. Sorry if this sounds incoherent/fragmented/other complaints your GP teacher might have but I am in no mood to organise my thoughts now. I'M SO GONNA MISS SATOSHI KON!!! :(

Re:チャンネル

2010-08-19T12:46:00.000+08:00

OMG I FINALLY FINISHED THE ROMAJI FOR RE:CHANNEL.

If you haven't heard it, it's a really really really (and so on) nice song by a lesser-known Japanese band called FREENOTE:

After failing to find the lyrics for a very long time, I attempted on a big project: deciphering the Romaji from the Kanji alone. Which is quite ambitious considering that my Japanese level is super duper elementary (like maybe below kindergarten level in Japan). But I couldn't help it because this song is way too addictive and I could loop this for hours without getting bored.

And so if anyone gets addicted to this song and would like to sing it too:

Ajikenai heya tsumetai yuka
Mimoshinai Terebi o tsuketa
Yarakai Seetaa o kiteru no ni
Furuete Hiza o kakaeta

Takusan no uso o kasanete
Sono tabi kurikaeshi tsuini
Gomenne to arigatou o nakushite
Subete ni dachi mukae naku natte ta

Sore demo soba ni ite kureta kimo o
Nandomo miushinatta
Kimi ga nakitai toki wa
Yokoni isasete hoshii no ni

[Chorus]
Demo arigatou ja tsutawaranai
Gomen ja tsutawaranai
Dakara nandomo nandodemo
Ooki na koe de mata utau yo

Ii kagen ni shitena otsukare san
Tatta sore dake no Meeru
Mabataki mo deki zu ni mite ita
Mune ga Bara Bara ni naru yo

Kotoba o shiri sugite
Kimi to no kyori ha karenai
Mou zutto tsutawaranai
Doushite mo tsutaetai no ni

Kowakute kowakute takusan no mono o mi ni tsuketa
Kanji nai Furi o shite
Jibun o mamotteita itsumo

[Chorus]

Urusakuttemo
Ima kimi no kokoro ni
Todoketai yo
Kono koe o

And this is what I transcribed:

味気ない部屋冷たい床
見もしないテレビをつけた
やらかいセーターを着てるのに
震えてヒザを抱えた

たくさんの嘘を重ねて
その度繰り返しついに
ごめんねとありがとうをなくして
全てに立ち向かえなくなってた

それでも側にいてくれた君を
何度も見失った
君が泣きたい時は
横にいさせてほしいのに

※でもありがとうじゃ伝わらない
ごめんじゃ伝わらない
だから何度も何度でも
大きな声でまた歌うよ※

いい加減にしてなお疲れさん
たったそれだけのメール
まばたきも出来ずに見ていた
胸がバラバラになるよ

コトバを知りすぎて
君との距離はかれない
もうずっと伝わらない
どうしても伝えたいのに

怖くて怖くてたくさんのものを身につけた
感じないフリをして
自分を守っていたいつも

(※くり返し)

うるさくっても
今君の心に
届けたいよ
この声を

I have no idea how they came up with such an emotional song and the woman's voice is amazing. And now I really want to have this song translated BUT that is something I can never do. Not at this level, at least.

More FREENOTE:

so awesome...

A piece of random information

2010-08-12T12:52:00.000+08:00

From PhotoNotes.org: Flash Photography for Canon EOS Cameras Part 1:

-------------------------

Are my friends and family possessed by demonic powers? Their eyes are glowing an evil red!

This is the “redeye” effect; a common problem with the internal flash units built into cameras. It’s caused by the white light from the flash unit reflecting off the red blood vessels lining the interior of the eye. The light shines back into the camera, resulting in the famous red glow.

The easiest way to minimize the risk of redeye is to use an external flash unit rather than a built-in flash. The problem is fully explained in the redeye section of this document, as is the related problem of greeneye in cats and dogs.

If, however, your friends’ and family’s eyes glow an evil red in real life and not just in your flash photos of them then you should probably consider arranging an exorcism. Contact a tabloid first if you want to exploit the situation to your financial advantage.

___________________________________________________

From Not Always Right: Funny & Stupid Customer Quotes

-----------------------

(From a hospital in Perth, Australia)

Me: “How can I help you today?”

Patient: “Um. I think I have an STI.”

Me: “Okay. What symptoms do you have that makes you think that?”

Patient: “Well, I don’t really know. My computer told me to be here.”

Me: “Oh, did you do a self-analysis online?”

Patient: “No. I’m not sure. I’m here, I need to be here!”

Me: “Exactly what did your computer tell you?”

Patient: “Don’t judge me! Stop it! I need to be here!”

Me: “I can assure you that I am not judging you. Can you explain to me exactly what happened before you came here?”

Patient: “Well, I was looking at some porn last night online and this morning I turned my computer on and it told me I have a virus!”

Me: “Uh.”

Patient: “Stop judging me!”

____________________________________________________

LOL.

Me ish bad at titles.

2010-08-11T23:14:00.000+08:00

First of all, if you would spare some time to look at the left of this page, ie. the tagboard, you would realise that I have a stalker that goes by the certain (nick)name of PEEPEE. Whether she is in love with me I do not know, but I think she's more or less interested in me :D Well, Pee and Poo go well together I guess.

That aside, I am officially in a state of confusion.

Because of the NYP Japan trip (I am officially Photography I/C as of today), I decided to get a new lens and a Circular Polarizing Filter, more commonly abbreviated as CPL. And so I'm gonna get my hands on a Canon EF 50mm F1.8 MK II which sounds awesome (will take awesome pictures too) but is actually the cheapest Canon lens in the market and goes for $121, and popular feedback is that while it takes nice photos it feels like a toy because it's so light and has a plastic body compared to it's daddy (the previous generation) which actually has some metal parts and a nicer focusing ring and this is a bit random but I think this is such a long sentence but I'm not gonna bother with shortening it.

Coming to the CPLs, there are so many (goddamn) choices that I'm totally CONFUSED YO. The cheapest I see is like $25 and the most expensive I'm considering is $135. Of course each one has it's own pros and cons like not being coated, single-coated and multi-coated and whatever nonsense. And then there is the Hoya Pro1-D and the Kenko Pro1-D and I really dunno what the hell is the difference because Hoya and Kenko are actually under the same company BUT THEN I read that the Kenko somehow performs better than the Hoya?

SO CONFUSING ARRRRGH!!!

Again, that aside. I am happy. Because I'm one of the selected 40 to go on this year's Japan Trip! :D

NIHON NI IKIMASU!!! :D

Back for the moment

2010-07-16T11:40:00.000+08:00

I went the whole of June and half of July without a single post. Wonderful. In this period many things have happened, and because I didn't blog, I forgot like almost everything? Very wonderful.

Firstly, on the 27th of June, I had my first Aikido grading. I hereby announce that I am now a 6th Kyu Aikidoka, wearing a blue belt, and that my certificate is officially recognised by the World Aikido Headquarters in Japan. YAY. The last point is very important because it's like having the ABRSM certificate for Piano grades.

Also, Kendo has been good, I had reservations about joining at first but I'm not regretting it. The moves are hard to master and prove quite a challenge for me, but no one is born with Kendo genes and it'll probably take some time.

I think I've gotten a little bit more insane since being part of OT1003. I guess the insanity aura emanates and affects people. Yesterday when Pei Qi (the dua neh bu of OT1003) wanted to hug me, I pushed her away and said "Too big". One week ago I don't think I would have done that.

Anyway we had our Creativity exhibition yesterday :) I won't say too much about it, because this is one of those things which I will go "Lidat lor". The following stuff are just for your entertainment:

This is the poster I did in Adobe Illustrator for the exhibition, I practically used all the knowledge I learnt in the PL Design Studio (with the exception of kerning because I forgot how to do it). Cute right :)

And this is the music video for Station 1:

The NG SPECIAL:

OOH BONUS BONUS: The mindmap I doodled for Psychology project:

And this is yet another abrupt end. Mainly because I forgot everything else and also because I have to go -_____________-

One sunny day in the midst of climate change...

2010-05-27T17:41:00.000+08:00

The Facebook status of a friend's friend:

A lady came up to me on the street and pointed at my suede jacket. "You know a cow was murdered for that jacket?" she sneered. I replied in a psychotic tone, "I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too."

So far...

2010-05-15T00:49:00.000+08:00

Quoting the seniors: "A pre-requisite to join Occupational Therapy is insanity."

------------------

Life at NYP so far has been good. I'm blessed with a really nice class - helpful, bonded, insane and all, and lessons have been interesting so far (perhaps except a few certain modules). In fact, today was our Wear-Your-JC-Uniform Day. Though I went in PE shirt and berms.

Our Sociology teacher Trina has this streak of insanity in her too (which is damn freaking obvious, I think she acts more 19-year old than me, maybe I should be ashamed), our Mobility teacher Charmaine speaks damn fast (quoting Jeanette: "Wah she's like rapping."), our Anatomy teacher Dr Param is so cute and funny we have a special fan club created for him on Facebook, our Physiology teacher (not the lecturer) is Param's wife, we kinda couldn't catch her name properly -__-, our Psychology teacher Chin Chin has this distinct pronunciation for the word "feeling" (I can't describe it, ask me to pronounce for you sometime), and blah blah (my Japanese elective teacher Ishihara-sensei sounds like "bra bra" when she says this) for the rest of the modules (Occupational Therapy Theory & Process, Singapore Healthcare System), I'm too lazy to describe further.

So far the modules I find interesting (in terms of content) are Sociology, Psychology, Japanese and Anatomy. The rest are a bit dry and I think I need more time to get used to them.

Anyway, we studied about the Milgram experiment during Sociology. I think it's really interesting and therefore here is a video (you have to click on the link because embedding is disabled):

MILGRAM EXPERIMENT (DERREN BROWN)

Derren Brown has a few other videos that are worth checking out too, mostly linked with Sociology/Psychology.

I think I would have done better for GP if I had studied Sociology and Psychology before A levels.

Okay I'm tired I'm going to sleep.

one day with netto-chan...

2010-05-02T16:58:00.000+08:00

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
wah liew i cannot send you through msn

jeanette says:
why nt?
send via email la\

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
cuz "jeanette is using an older version of Windows Live Messenger"

jeanette says:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
cuase i not using my pc

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
:(
mah huan leh
i close my email liao
hahaha

jeanette says:
wo jiu shi ma huan
zen mo yang

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
chotto matte kudasai

jeanette says:
hahahaha
hai

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
baka netto-chan
hahahaha

jeanette says:
you then baka
please make ure you learn other words/phrasesto scold pple in jap
instead of using baka only
hahahahahah

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
konoyaro!!!

jeanette says:
wasssthat

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
SCOLD YOU LA
hahaha

jeanette says:
ya

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
i alr learn

jeanette says:
im asking for the meaning you idiot

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
you ASSHOLE

jeanette says:
haha

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
hahahaha

jeanette says:
WHUT
I KNOW ALSO OK
BAKAYARO
BUT I DONT RMB WHAT THT MEANS
HAHAHAHAH
BASTARD
?
SON OF A BITCH?
ASSHOLE?

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
wah lao you basically combine my baka and my konoyaro

jeanette says:
WHICH ONE?
HAHAHAHAHAH

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
HAHAHA

jeanette says:
EH I REALLY GOT HEAR BEFORE ONE HOR

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
i dun rmb exact meaning bt i think it's stronger version of baka
hahaha

jeanette says:
hahaha
WHO DOESNT NOT
SINCE BAKA IS STUPID
and it's so commonly used in shows

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
okay lets try a new one
AHO!

jeanette says:
wth is tht
acty fyi
i only know baka abnd bakayaro
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHAHA

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
same meaning of baka
see STILL TELL ME GO AND LEARN MORE

jeanette says:
NO

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
YOU SHOULD LEARN MORE CAN

jeanette says:
I STILL WIN

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
HAHAHA

jeanette says:
YKNOW WHY
I SCOLD A SENTENCE NOW
I CONFIRM WIN YOU

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
chey

jeanette says:
@#$%^&^%$#@!@#$%^&
i win!

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
i short and precise

jeanette says:
YKNOW WHY?

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
-___________-

jeanette says:
BECAUSE THEY CAN MEAN EVERYTHING
THEY CAN MEAN FUCK YOU
THEY CAN MEAN YOU BASTARD
YOU
BITCH
YOU ASSHOLE
WHATEVER
THEY REPRESENT ANYTHING EVERYTHING
AND ON SECOND THOUGHTS,

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
means they can also mean darling, dear and sweetie

jeanette says:
THAT MEANS THEY MEAN NOTHING TOOO
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAH

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
huh then mean nothing means you lose lor
HAHAHA

jeanette says:
hahahhahahhahahhahahahhah
this is so fun

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
YA LOR so fun scolding you
hahaha
eh anyway i send liao
is you havent seen yet

jeanette says:
as if i nv scold

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
*if
i scold more!!!

jeanette says:
i scolded more acty
i scold in english
the ALMOST international/universalk language
hahahahaha
or slightly less than almost?
hmmm
it hink slightly less than tht
hhahaha

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
huh?
i dun get you alr

jeanette says:
HAHAH
IT'S OK
IM TALKING RUBBISH

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
yeah i'm glad you know
mwahahaha

jeanette says:
whatever
wo kai xin jiu hao

yuanlin \\ 面白い。 says:
yah you can go and mindlessly kai xin i won't interrupt you
haha

jeanette says:
wl go die la

epicondylefemurdeltoidbicepstricepstuberosityfossaforamenbursaewhateverelse

2010-04-28T21:16:00.000+08:00

This is the epicondyle of your femur. Look at that, it's the deltoid tuberosity! And how about that? Certainly looks like the supra-spinal fossa. Ooohhh now that's a phalangal joint! Did you know it's a condyloid joint? Now I'm telling you, there is a bursae between your scapula and the head of your humerus. And that's a synovial ball-and-socket joint. You can feel your iliac crest! And can you show me an elbow flexion and extension? That's good, now let us look at the median sagittal cross-section. It looks really different from the coronal cross-section. Now can we try a transverse cross-section?

Anatomy anatomy anatomy. I won't die by suicide but by anatomy.

And I got the Japanese elective! Choosing of electives was yesterday. Me and Jeanette were sitting in front of the comp waiting for 7pm to arrive and even we were late. Imagine the number of people doing that in the e-plaza. Pei Qi was telling me that they were waiting there continuously refreshing the page. And they got the Malay elective.

1900: System open for choice of electives.
1901: No more vacancies for Basic Conversational Malay.
1902: No more vacancies for Japanese Language
Sequence of events afterwards: No more Basic Conversational Mandrin, no more French Language, no more Professional Image and Etiquette, no more Effective Study Skills (they say it's easy to score that's why), no more Appreciation of Drama and Film, no more Fundamentals in Web Design.
Current modules still available for selection: A Look at Medical Imaging, Managing Personal Finances.

I think it's very interesting to study how fast each elective runs out. Reflects the opinion of the Year 1 cohort for the whole School of Health Sciences. Apparently the Year 2 electives are hell boring so we have to take fun ones in Year 1. I can guarantee that the next one to be out will be Medical Imaging. Because first of all, imagine yourself enjoying Personal Finances. I bet you can't do it. And second, the lecturer for Personal Finances is one of my lecturers for a certain module, I can't say who that is. For one thing that lecturer is the most boring one we have. Gel told me that he has constantly been trying to tell jokes. But I don't get it. I caught a hint of a joke only once throughout his whole lecture.

Meanwhile, I haven't found anyone I know who's also in Jap. There were people in my class who wanted Jap but couldn't make it in time. Jeanette doesn't have a French partner too. So we're pretty much left without conversational partners.

The thing I like about language electives in NYP is that they try to make it relevant to your course. So there is a list of Japanese phrases for use in healthcare settings, though I must admit I will hardly, if ever, see a Japanese patient. Soon I will be able to say "Lift up your buttocks please!" in Japanese! :D

OSHIRI WO AGETE KUDASAI!!!

Abridged updates

2010-04-23T20:48:00.000+08:00

This post is absolutely belated. I know I always mention something along these lines but I think it will not end any time soon ><

Basically, many things have happened since the last post.

1) NYP Orientation
2) Last day at Pathlight
3) First week of school
4) New laptop!!! :D
5) Pathlight visit

So...here we go:

1) NYP Orientation

This was on the 14 of April and it was pretty boring. All the usual orientation games and whatnot. Therefore, I have nothing much to say. There is another orientation just for OT tomorrow and I hope it'll be good :(

2) Last day at Pathlight

A day filled with mixed emotions. It was the day that I saw the kids at their cutest so far and yet it was the day which would determine that I wouldn't be seeing them for a long time. Last carrom game, in which I was in my best form and Cherlene was in her most violent form. The number of times which her striker flew off the board (both hitting and not hitting her opposite and adjacent pals) was impossible to count.

3) First week of school

Boring lectures. Less boring labs. Really funny Sociology lecture.

I have to say that the Sociology lecturer is damn funny. She's so drama, she's almost acting out everything she talks about. And her jokes are meant to be naturally laughed at, unlike the Physiology lecturer's which are meant to be forcefully laughed at.

There was this word in our slides: bourgeoisie. The first question she asked us was "If you understand Hokkien, you would have heard of the phrase 'bo zhuar zi'. It means 'no money'. But in this case, the 'bourgeoisie' (pronounced perfectly) refers to the rich." If you don't understand the joke, "bourgeoisie" sounds like "bo zhuar zi" with French accent -______-

4) New laptop!!! :)

I just bought the Acer 4820TG from the NYP roadshow. Pretty cheap compared to market prices (I bought it for around $1701 inc. GST, retail is around $2198 and the introductory price for retail is $1998), and it even comes with a 3-year on-site warranty + 1-year warranty for the battery, since the school makes this compulsory.

I had been reading many forum posts that feedbacked that Acer is plagued with overheating problems. Mine is so far so good, since it has switchable graphics. This basically means that you can choose to use either the integrated graphics or the mid-end ATI 5650 graphics card. When using the integrated graphics, there is not much change in temperature. It only shoots up when you use the the ATI (such as for playing games).

Battery life is also good. I didn't time but popular feedback is 6 hours when using integrated graphics and 2 hours when using the ATI.

5) Pathlight visit

And so being the nice person that I am, I decided to pay Pathlight a visit to see how they were doing without me for a week. When I stepped into the Design Studio there had been a radical change in decoration. So they told me that the Design Studio looks better without me -______- I shouldn't have visited right >:(

Anyway since I was free they passed me some work to do, to which Cherlene kept laughing at me and calling it "saigang". Well they used to call us interns "slaves" so I guess I had to follow that even though I'm officially not an intern anymore -____-

And they are now encouraging me to come back every Friday. Yes, I know their motive. But still, so much for "the Design Studio looks better without you".

Till then.

Look at my future.

2010-03-27T02:17:00.000+08:00

:))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

東京事変!!!

2010-03-06T22:33:00.000+08:00

I won't say too much about my results...Basically I'm content because the grades are like what I've been usually getting. Overall an improvement though (GP and Math were surprising in a good way).

This is gonna be short...Basically there's this song I've been really hooked to. So much so I was even considering shipping the band score over from Japan. So let's give a round of applause to welcome TOKYO JIHEN (東京事変) with NOUDOUTEKI SANPUNKAN (能動的三分間)!!!

And all the instruments were played really well, so I'll post the better guitar, bass and drum covers I found.

---------------------------

GUITAR:

Awesome playing, although I know too little about guitar to give any constructive comments :( The wah-wah thing (is that what it's called?) really rocks. Awesome licks.

And, his mask is really funny.

---------------------------

BASS:

Well this one is not the best but it's the one in which the bass is clearest heard. Seiji Kameda's bass groove is darn good. DARN GOOD.

---------------------------

DRUMS:

As a drummer I must say, his beats are not wholly accurate but they are pretty good since he played by ear. I couldn't do it.

YAY. OWARI. JA NE.

With a little garnish on my baked pasta life resulting in a crappy title.

2010-02-02T01:20:00.000+08:00

Okay belated post. What more can I say. I promised myself I would journal this experience, but I just kept putting it off due to lack of time. Just in case you were wondering about the weird title of this post, it's because I was so enthusiastic about cooking my own lunch I made baked pasta on two consecutive days. I brought it to school in the morning hot and worried about the condensation, and then ate it cold at lunchtime -_-

If I were to summarise my time at Pathlight so far, I would say it's been awesome. Just the kind of job that gets me looking forward to it every morning when I wake up, because the kids in the classes I support are just too cute.

When I was attached to a Primary 2 class for 3 days during my first week, it left quite a deep impression on me because that class was considered low-functioning. It was a challenge to even communicate with them, because they're the sort that are so much in their own world, sometimes you feel somewhat non-existent (in fact, I don't think they even remember me now). Aside from two boys, that was what I generally felt with the rest of the class most of the time.

There was E, who was the cutest kid in class since he always had this super huge smile on his face while he asked his seemingly endless questions:

"When the video finish then it is an end?"
"Is it?"
"Is it?"

Apparently, he was one who required a fair amount of assurance.

And then there was R, who was also very cute but would demand your attention. He would say "Es-Q me! Es-Q me! (excuse me, excuse me)", and if you didn't reply, he would repeat again, in a higher pitch. Eventually when you go "Yes, R?", he would return to normal, with no reaction to you whatsoever.

And there was also KB, who was the hyperactive one. Wherever he went, he would run. You had to tell him to walk if you wanted him to. Yes, even when the homework tray was just around 1.5m from his seat. And he had a crush on this girl from another class, whom he would run to at dismissal every time, until his male PE teacher threatened to sit beside the girl if he wouldn't sit still. And when the dismissal bell rang, he would again run to her, grab her by the hand and drag her down to the bus bay.

No, that's not all. We have also AD, a really cute little Vietnamese kid who makes a "Beep beep" sound whenever he wants to go to the toilet (the first time I heard it, I thought he was trying to tell me he watches Road Runner or something -_-). Despite being somewhat non-responsive most of the time, he was able to demonstrate initiative when he went to get the mop without prompting to wipe up his water bottle spill in the hall, and even put it back in place after use. I was really surprised at that point of time.

And also W. Since he's oversensitive to sound (most autistic kids have one or more sensory dysfunctions), he covers his ears most of the time, so visuals were a must. Apparently he has trouble going to the toilet, and I heard from Jia Hui that one day he came back to class from the toilet with his pants down or something. Yes, a lot of the kids have trouble doing things that we do everyday, things that we take for granted.

And yes also FQ. This one is the most problematic of the lot in my opinion, but I couldn't escape his cuteness either. He likes trains, so when asked to trace the trail of the animals in his penmanship book, he would instead modify the trails to form train tracks and then draw trains running on them. So, as you have guessed, he never finished his penmanship once in class (at least when I was there).

Anyway, I'm now attached to the Design Studio, and I'm supporting duaroti's class doing Adobe Illustrator (haha her name is actually Dorothy but ever since I found out about her nickname it got very addictive typing that instead ^^). The most number of students in her class at any one time is 4, but even so it's still quite hard getting them to pay attention. D is fine (though not in his academic classes, I heard), but when it comes to H and SJ, things get challenging, because H is a daydreamer and SJ is...Well, sometimes I cannot really discern whether he's paying attention or not since he's not looking, but yet can do his work pretty well. Apparently he thoroughly enjoys the British Council's animated clip of "Jack & the Beanstalk" and a particular short segment of the Prince of Egypt from Youtube, and he never fails to watch them simultaneously on screen during Choice Time (a short work-time break whereby the kids are allowed to do what they want).

SJ's blu-tack dinosaur models are a must-see:

Like I've said on Facebook,

"SJ's blu-tack T-Rex. He's pretty amazing when he's making them. Give him a piece of blu-tack, watch him do some little hand movements, and there you have it - a dinosaur!!! And it comes complete with eyes, teeth, claws and even a tongue :)"

SJ had a meltdown once, one which I did not even realise was a meltdown until duaroti and Dawn told me. I'm too lazy to write a full description here though. Haha anti-climax *laughs sadistically*

C is really cute as well, she's the only girl that comes into the class. Gentle, demure and everything :) She likes to take off her shoes, to which duaroti will be like "Oh no, C, I can see your socks!!!" And then C will be like "Oops!!!" and quickly put on her shoes. Seriously seriously cute. And SJ has this habit of kicking this brick under the table out of place, and C will try her very best to push it back in place. If she's successful, she would go "Perfect!!!".

Welcome to the abrupt end of this journal. I'm off to sleep.

明けましておめでとうございます!

2010-01-02T15:17:00.000+08:00

Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu!!! Happy new year!!! Belated post I know but what the heck.

Anyway many things have happened since the last post, but I was either too busy or too lazy to blog. Sometimes I even wonder why I keep a blog, because many a time I can't find any motivation to post. (And I still owe an Inner Mongolia post -_-). And now I have so many things so blog about I have to divide this post into sections. Like, not paragraphs. Sections!

Warning: This is gonna be quite picture-heavy so I hope you're not still on dial-up hahaha.

------------------------------------------

[Part One: Temp job]

For around 2 weeks after the end of the 'A's (until the 23rd of December) I was working in a temporary packing job at my mum's office, with my sister, Gel and Netto-chan (haha Geraldine and Jeanette la, cool name for Jeanette right “ねっとちゃん~!” *stupid urges of randomness*).

Alright basically, for this job all we needed to do was archiving, ie. taking out stuff from their respective arch files and then tie them up like Christmas presents (absolutely appropriate at the time). Netto-chan refused to come on the last day, because of our traumatic experiences at the workplace (dead cockroaches, cockroach shit and cockroach eggs were more than traumatic for Netto-chan I guess) and other reasons. And so...Pictures!

Below: All the boxes we packed. Please note, I had to key in the names of all the arch files in an Excel worksheet (like I haven't gotten enough of worksheets in school lol okay nevermind).

And the last box number! "Overjoyed" was an understatement.

One of the causes of Netto-chan's trauma:

Cockroach shit, anyway.

And next, all the empty arch files (got two calefare in the first photo dun care about them okay hahaha). We still got pose one leh. I'll leave Gel's individual shots for her to blog.

(The above photo courtesy of Gel)

Me trying to climb an arch file tower. Not very successful I guess, but I tried. Look at the determination written all over my face. I WILL OVERCOME THE DARN ARCH FILES!!!

------------------------------------------

[Part Two: MV Doulos and a Marche dinner]

For those of you who know, the MV Doulos is a ship that was built in 1914, just two years after the Titanic. Which means as of 2009 it had been sailing for 95 years! It has been serving as a floating book fair for around 32 years (if I'm not wrong), but since there are some new regulations to be introduced this year the Doulos is set to be put out of service. Which means, Singapore was its last port. So to those of you who missed it, TOO BAD. Kufufufu (I sound so mean).

I went with my sister and Gel on our last day of work (yeah that's why Netto-chan was missing), and with Gen, LH and CY the following Saturday (because we went there for our Marche dinner). So you can see how enthusiastic I was.

Firstly, for those of you who have not tried Superdog (some new fast food chain), I'll give a "highly recommended" here. Their Grilled Fish Burger and Chicken Ripper are awesome. Haven't tried the rest. Might report after I have. We ate that for lunch at VivoCity on the first day.

And then we got lost.

I'd guess most of you have not seen this side of VivoCity:

After some time of finding our way around, we finally reached the Doulos!

("GBA" stands for "Good Books for All")

I think their steps are really cool as well. Rounded and everything. We had to use these to get up on the Doulos.

Anyway, we went for the Guided Tour (paid 10 bucks but got a $5 book fair voucher that I, of course, used. No, I wasn't gonna keep that as a souvenir or anything).

The above is just random. Lol.

A speed signalling meter (I dunno how else to call it) found in the Captain's room. I thought the "Dead Slow" was pretty funny. If I was the guy in the Engine Room I'll be bored to death.

Their laundry room. The big thing in the middle is their dryer. Our guide (Harmen) said that even he has no idea how old it is.

A dummy the crew uses for emergency drills. I think it looks pretty okay, except that the upside-down head is really freaky.

A little Christmas greeting on someone's cabin door.

The above two photos: An original menu from the time when the Doulos was a luxury cruise liner and a translated copy of it into English. I think you can tell which is which.

Trivia: According to our guide, your average Toyota car engine is around 2 litres. The Doulos' engine is around 1000 litres.

Their dining area.

Most, if not all of their tables in the dining area are adorned with photos of crew members. The above is an example of a "family table".

I don't really have much to say about the Marche dinner except that I wasn't particularly impressed with the food there. If I'm talking to you I would just say, "Um, lidat lor. Normal." But the Rosti was quite nice. I find the fact that we ordered a smoked salmon crepe amusing. Apparently me and Li Hui were waiting for the woman to finish cooking our crepe, and when she started to lift the crepe onto the plate we wanted to tell her, "Sorry miss I think you forgot to put in the salmon". But then she scooped the smoked salmon (analogous to medium-rare steak I guess?) onto the crepe and we had nothing else to say. Gen and I don't eat raw food. Cheng Yi didn't at first but then she "quite liked" the salmon. So Li Hui had most of them to herself to feast on.

------------------------------------------

[Part Three: 4I Chalet and a cycling expedition]

The 2D1N chalet was held from 27-28 Dec at Goldkist Beach Resort, East Coast Park. I know I sound like a commentator.

This was the first class chalet (might be the last) that I stayed over. Quite a learning experience.

I did some mahjong revision and learnt a new game called Molly that Ching Siang taught us. It's a really fun (and violent) game which makes it essential to use an old pack of cards. There was a plan to give Gel an appreciation gift for helping to plan most of the class events, which I think we kept secret quite well. A post-ceremony talk held with Gel a few days after the event revealed that she did not suspect a single thing. In fact, the furthest she went was "I was wondering why (during the barbecue) we were so busy outside then all of you hide inside no one want to come out and help" (something along that line).

Sweet. Good job, my fellow 4Ions!

The gift:
(Thanks to Jia Hui, Grace and Ching Siang for the hard work!)

For our overnight activities we continued with Molly, mahjong, and Chubby Bunny. Chubby Bunny is a game whereby you try to stuff as many marshmallows in your mouth, and with every marshmallow you have to say "Chubby Bunny". I didn't play because I was having a blocked nose and didn't want to die of suffocation. But seeing the rest of them was pure pleasure ^^

I think one of the best parts about the night was light-painting. Sparklers courtesy of Jean!

(Combined from 3 different photos)

Yun Tong's light-calligraphy of my Chinese surname. She had to write in reverse! Cool right. A calligrapher is a calligrapher, even in reverse. Okay I dunno what I'm saying.

For exclusive video footage (especially the Chubby Bunny matches), please visit Facebook (only available to you if you're a 4Ion or friends with a 4Ion, I think).

Here are links to the photos:
DHS4I07 Chalet 2009 [Part One]
DHS4I07 Chalet 2009 [Part Two]

After checking out on the second day, Gel and me attempted to cycle home. This was only possible thanks to Gel's mum, who was able to fetch our bikes for us (THANK YOU!!!). And the events that followed couldn't be more, well, eventful.

Gel's bike had been having a problem since the first day: the chain was loose. Thus she had to pedal more than me for a fixed distance. But we managed to get it fixed at a bike shop...The guy was damn cool. All he did was to turn the pedal at a fast speed. To think me and Grace spent much time trying to fix that the previous night, to no avail. Respect.

But mine, after getting it back from Yuan Ming (who had borrowed it in the morning to cycle to school), had a tire puncture -_- And that happened at the area of ECP near Fort Road. The nearest bike shop that did tire changes, was at Area C. Look it up if you don't know the distance. Or you could try walking yourself. Additionally, push your bike along the same path with your bike basket and back seat (that metal thing) filled with stuff. You'll know how I felt. And oh, wear slippers.

Your bike should be like the red one in the following pic:

We cycled using the Siglap Park Connector (pretty obvious from the above photo). Basically, the route was nice, smooth and straight until Bedok, where there were many upslopes and downslopes. Stupid Bedok.

Rest stop!!! Totally required. This was at Bedok. I know we were near Li Hui's house :) The second pic is Satay-sao with her satay fan. Gel, actually.

Second rest stop. Still in Bedok. Now you know how tiring Bedok was. I realised Gel is always more exaggerating than me.

And so blah blah blah then we reached Tampines. Our reward was Aston's :)

My Hickory BBQ chicken!!! Seems like 4I barbecue wasn't enough lol. Gel ordered Teriyaki Chicken. Both of us felt the sauces were too sweet. I think the Katong outlet still cooks better. My chicken was much nicer the last time I tried it :(

------------------------------------------

[Part Four: Among other things...]

I've taken up an Aikido class with Gladine, and we're really enjoying it. Today was my third lesson, and Gladine's second. I must say Aikido is really hard to learn, because many of the movements require great precision, especially in body movement. In fact, compared with other martial arts, it takes a longer time to acquire a black belt in Aikido (Tae Kwon Do is around 4 years, Aikido is at least 6-7 years ). And I WILL get this black belt!

Also, I'll be starting my Youths For Autism internship with Pathlight School next week. So no more weekday outings. Don't miss me.

Another random post (I'm bad at titles T_T)

2009-12-07T14:41:00.000+08:00

Haha another random photo. I think I'll be posting random photos for some time.

Ja ne.

Yet another random title.

2009-12-06T19:21:00.000+08:00

Honestly I have nothing much to say about Grad Day yesterday except that the door gift is really cool (a DHS mug with the words "DONE MUGGING!" in bold) and that we had a 6C42 class lunch at the Suntec Pizza Hut. It was darn cheap I paid only two bucks...Because we still had leftover class fund which we used :)

Alright so here's the completed gifts for the teachers:

I only managed to pass to Mr Ong and Miss Tan PB...Mr Koh left before me and Gel could pass him our gifts (she made gingerbread men which were seriously not bad), so she'll be passing it to him for me at prom (which I'm not going). I hope by the time Mr Ong helps to pass to Mr Tiah and Miss P.A. Tan the cookies would still be edible ><

And of course, I've been playing around with my DSLR. It's a pity that I can't really go out and take photos because it's been raining ever so often, so I went around the house taking random things, like my old Lego set. Fortunately my sister played with it recently and hasn't kept it, so I saved on the effort of having to build my own scene :)

Red Lego girl and blue Lego guy:

Lego Sailor Monkey (imagine if he was part of the Sailormoon...Okay not funny ><):
Green Lego racer (this was my favourite because I thought his head bandage was damn cool):

Red Lego racer and green Lego racer:

Yay okay that's all for now I'm off to dinner.

OMG my life just changed.

2009-12-05T01:36:00.000+08:00

Okay. My exams are officially over.

YATTA!!!!!!!!!!!!

But in fact, at this moment I don't even know what to say. You're like, "WHAT? AFTER SUCH A LONG TIME AND YOU GOT NOTHING TO SAY???" yeah I'm really at a mental block here. It's like writing a GP essay...Up till now I still haven't gotten the hang of writing an introduction.

Hmmm. Let's see. Well I got my DSLR finally (OMG like FINALLY) and it's a Canon EOS 500D I bought at SITEX.

I haven't really got the chance to really utilize it yet, and I'm still trying to get used to not having the "permanent live view" I've always had in my good ol' Fuji and other compacts. But I did take some photos (of course right because that's the first thing anyone would do with a camera) so I will post for the sake of posting. Because I haven't really got any other stuff to post -_- yeah I know I still owe those from my Mongolia Trip last year but...No. Not now. I'm feeling lazy ><

Okay, first off, we have here a stray cat from my neighbourhood.

I took so many photos of this furry thing here but only two turned out relatively okay. It was really hard because obviously it wasn't at my eye level and I could only do trial-and-error shooting. Furthermore, IT WOULDN'T STOP MOVING LA DAMNIT and it was evening so shutter speed was relatively slow. Only these two shots turned out with the correct focusing :( Gary was right. The aperture in the kit lens is not big enough.

And next, something random because I just happened to put my camera out of the window.

And reflected the surroundings into the window pane. For some reason, the reflection keeps appearing clearer than the surroundings itself (I suppose it's because the autofocus was on the reflection). I would have liked both to be equally clear though.

Oh anyway, today was my maiden baking session :) I decided to bake cookies for the teachers for tomorrow's graduation day because I felt guilty for not giving them anything for the past two Teachers' Days :S

Li Hui came to lend me a hand but had to leave soon halfway because of unforeseen circumstances...Personally I found the whole situation quite amusing when it was over but I guess it was a nightmare for her when it was happening. Ask her for the story (or read her blog) but keep it from her mother XD

Cookies fresh out of the oven!

Cookies piled up like a mountain:

And I think they look really nice here:

(Do you hear them calling out "PLEAAAAAAAAAAAAAASE EAT ME!!!!!!"?) Okay nevermind haha.

Anyway, I decided to bake a large Happy Cookie with the leftover dough but I think it turned out quite bad >< Yes the eyes are screwed I know :(
[Please don't tell me you cannot make out the eyes okay my heart already aches enough]

Okay actually overall I think the effort was pretty successful considering this is the first time I'm using the oven for something other than potatoes, chicken and fish...Some credit has to go to Li Hui and Gel too for their help...I think without them I'd be totally lost.

I think I've been spending a little too much recently...Like new clothes new camera new books new this new that and also a new sports jacket from Uniqlo. Mummy I promise you I will work to earn back all the money spent okay T_T

Imagine studying at the Expo Coffee Bean (which is a really conducive place actually) and meeting loads of sales when you're there. Like MPH sale, John Little sale and especially SITEX (which I went back to everyday for various reasons).

I shall post my completed gift to the teachers when I'm done with them, because I haven't finished with the messages...Till then! (Which is like tomorrow haha I make it sound like I'll be disappearing for another couple of months -_-)

Yet another piece of random useless nonsense of no relation to my 'A' Levels.

2009-10-06T21:27:00.000+08:00

Okay. I swore this would be my last post before the 'A's. Just so I don't get distracted.

I'll keep things short. Basically, I made another Urahara wallpaper. I'm not gonna copy-and-paste the full description I had on AnimePaper and deviantART, but if you're feeling free enough you can visit the links and have a read. It's just useless info though, so only if you're feeling REALLY free.

Download/View full size: AnimePaper | deviantART (2560x1600px)

I also swore that this would be my last wallpaper before the 'A's. Just so I don't get distracted.

Random useless nonsense of no relation to my 'A' Levels.

2009-10-04T00:32:00.000+08:00

Well as you can probably see, I've changed my blogpic. I'm getting Urahara-san to flag me off for the 'A' Levels. I've spent the last few days (which were exam marking days) doing nothing but vectoring, walling, reading a book, and watching anime. With the exception of Chemistry tuition just now. The latest Urahara picture is edited from a wallpaper I made (link is somewhere below).

I feel quite accomplished at finishing my first vector, as well as successful use of Adobe Illustrator on my first time :) Stupid pen tool is darn confusing arrgh. I've uploaded everything to AnimePaper and deviantArt (so if you wish to use any of them ~my honour~ you can download the full resolution of 2650x1600px from those sites). Best from deviantArt because I'm still having problems uploading to AnimePaper.

http://metzalx.deviantart.com/art/BLEACH-Kurosaki-Ichigo-Vector-138958485

First vector. I spent more than a day on this one. I didn't even bother counting how many objects I had anymore. Probably a few hundreds, but nothing compared to professional vectors.

http://metzalx.deviantart.com/art/BLEACH-Kurosaki-Ichigo-139066105

Wallpaper I made after finishing the vector (obviously) because I became over-enthusiastic about it. Really really simple but people commented that the simplicity was the best part of it. So that's good :)

http://i34.tinypic.com/263d4jc.jpg for the version without the English name (just the Kanji).

[Resolution is 1600x1000px]

http://metzalx.deviantart.com/art/BLEACH-Urahara-Kisuke-139066974

And I couldn't leave my favourite character out of the whole walling business, especially when I was working on Bleach stuff. I can't remember where I got the vector from though. It's an awesome vector. I love the colouring.

http://i36.tinypic.com/2a9z2pf.jpg

The previous wallpaper with Urahara holding Benihime. Although this vector isn't as good.

I'm currently reading a book called "The Dream of Water" by Kyoko Mori...It's a pretty sad book to read (it's quite a tragic memoir) but gives a lot of general knowledge about Japan (although this wasn't my original intention - I didn't even know about it). Considering I only got it for 2 bucks at the library sale...Really, this is extremely worth it.

Oh and the 3rd Bleach movie [Fade To Black: I Call Your Name] with English subs is out. I've just finished watching it (IMO, pure Urahara awesomeness). The Chinese subs came out before the English one so I resorted to that first. But I gave up when I couldn't read them half the time, which is quite sad considering how many years I've studied Chinese. 10 years! Starting from primary school and not considering the last two years, since it wasn't part of the curriculum. Furthermore, I'm Chinese -_- You know something is wrong when you're ethnic Chinese, have "Chinese" on your IC, studied Chinese formally for 10 years, took 'O' Level Higher Chinese, and end up not being able to read Chinese. I don't know what to say T_T

I'll be honest about the fact that my precious 'O' Level Higher Chinese B3 grade was purely gained from memory work. I had to memorize model phrases for different topics, because I knew I could never come up with them myself in a thousand years. In fact, I used the exact same phrases for both the letter-writing and composition components -_- That was a nice grade jump for me because I had been getting C6 all along for my Chinese in the whole of secondary school. What can I say.

I swear to do an Urahara vector after the 'A' Levels. There's far too much awesomeness about him for me not to get my hands in.

Until then. Ja mata.

Kanye West VS Ulquiorra

2009-09-25T16:25:00.000+08:00

First post in a long time. No, my prelims are not over, but I thought I'd take a little break and post something random, since the weekend is here.

If you've seen the recent Kanye West VS Taylor Swift thing, and watch or read Bleach...

Click on the image above to see a bigger, clearer version :)
(Picture courtesy of kickorguard from the BleachAnime.org Forums)

In this horrible terrible incorrigible exams period, keeping up on the Kanye West issue is a really good way to de-stress.

Shhhhh.

2009-07-06T16:59:00.000+08:00

This is a post dedicated to Bleach. Because things are getting so exciting now I am compelled to write something about it.

The latest Bleach chapter is awesome. I've had my fair share of shocks and surprises in this one. It's probably outdated by the time you read this post though. I've been wanting to post for some time but was too lazy to ><

*****SPOILER (Don't read if you only watch the anime and haven't read the latest manga chapter****

The Vizards are here!!! Judging from the look on Aizen's face, either:

1) They will pose a BIG problem for him, or

2) He already knows they're coming (probably, he's the Know-It-All), or

3) All of the above. [I bet on this one.]

P.S. If anyone else has read the Bleach SOULs character book, you might have seen a page with some coloured drawings by Tite Kubo. On the lower right, there is what seems to be Tatsuki in a shinigami uniform, clutching what seems to be a fox which ends off in the sharp end of a blade. So I'm speculating that she'll end up being a shinigami later in the story, and her zanpakutou spirit is a fox.

And while others are speculating that Shinji will be the one to fight Aizen (since they have some bad blood between them), I'm thinking it possible that Urahara will be the one instead (since they also have some bad blood between them). I don't think Shinji is clever enough to fight off Aizen, although he will do some damage. Urahara, up till this point, seems to be the only brilliant tactician around, and the only one other than Aizen to be close to a Know-It-All.

And at the climax of the story both him and Aizen will pull out their hollow masks, for these reasons:

1) Obviously, Aizen-sama would already have obtained hollow powers.

2) Since Urahara was the one who created the hougyoku, and was also the only one (besides Aizen) to discover that the only way to gain more power is through hollowfication, it is highly possible that he would have hollowfied himself as well.

And since Urahara-san's so brilliant and cunning, Ichigo's hollowfication might have been planned by him all along, after he hollowfied himself using the same method (cutting off the chain link and allowing oneself to degenerate into a hollow). Same way Ichigo obtained bankai using the method Urahara used on himself.

Oh, and who knows, Isshin might regain his former level of power, and join the fight! After all, he was a captain-level shinigami, and I can't wait to see both his shikai and bankai. He was probably a captain even before the era in the Turn Back The Pendulum arc.

And Yoruichi ends up being Urahara's accomplice all along. Or even girlfriend (they go on a date in the credits of The Sealed Sword Frenzy OVA, if you haven't seen it). There's something going on between them both. I know it.

**************************

Ahhh speculation speculation. Anyway I heard from Cheng Yi that the anime's going on a filler arc next episode (DARN) and the manga might be taking a little break from the Vizards and pan back to Hueco Mundo instead. ANTI-CLIMAX T________T

Okay extra extra. I found this online. No prizes for guessing whose bankai that's spoofing:

Bye bye blog your owner has been eaten by exams

2009-06-17T01:32:00.000+08:00

As the title says...Yes, I drew that, and that is why that victim looks like me T_T

Once the Final Exams card is played, no one escapes, especially us students!

And so I have to follow that sign, and stop blogging!

I'm still up doing my NYAA report...Okay, I WAS doing. I have decided to give up for the moment and instead post my last post in a (long) while.

I was talking to Li Hui on MSN just now, and we were talking about how our batch of students always kena the "suay shit":
2003, we take PSLE = SARS (school stopped for 2 weeks)
2009, we take 'A' Levels = H1N1 (school MAY be delayed by a week)
2007, we NEVER take 'O' Levels = NOTHING.

And so...

Li Hui says:
- ok la, be optimistic.. if we score well, then mr sng can say despite h1n1, the batch has done well

yuanlin | 苑琳「あやりん」\\ In need of a katana. Please donate. says:
- LOL what if we never do well
- then got excuse to say H1N1 also right
- haha

Li Hui says:
- y u think negatively
- ignore the rain, look for the rainbow

yuanlin | 苑琳「あやりん」\\ In need of a katana. Please donate. says:
- O_o another quote!
- be honest with me...How many quotes do you steal a day?!
- haha jkjk
- if only there really was a rainbow

Li Hui says:
- quotes drop frm the sky right to my face

yuanlin | 苑琳「あやりん」\\ In need of a katana. Please donate. says:
- and the stupid pot of gold at the foot of a rainbow thing is a LIE damnit :( if not i would have gone to get that gold
- so sad

Li Hui says:
- HAHHAHA
- but u cant even reach the rainbow in the first place
- rainbow is just reflection of light
- HAHHA

yuanlin | 苑琳「あやりん」\\ In need of a katana. Please donate. says:
- ya lor, so although we see a rainbow but its not reachable
- quoters are LIARS.
- hahahahaha

Li Hui says:
- tts y each quote is built upon another.. to like reinforce tt quote tt u think is stupid..
- like "pain is temporary, quitting last forever"
- its telling u to keep on trying for tt pot of gold
- hahaha

yuanlin | 苑琳「あやりん」\\ In need of a katana. Please donate. says:
- that quote is trying to tell you not to quit is it
- imagine if you tell that to smokers

Li Hui says:
- HAHHAHA
- this one suits smokers
- hahaha

Yeah, you get it.

Anyway, could someone enlighten me on the following comic? It looks funny but I don't understand what it's trying to say. It's very painful because I don't like to miss out on funny things LOL.

Oh and a last-post bonus: There is this scribbling in my block's lift from a loan shark. I know it's a loan shark because it says:

SHAIK
#10-340
O$P$
(handphone number revealed here)

The only problem is, my block doesn't have any unit numbers ending in "340".
My dad: "This ah long also ceh meh (blind) one. How to be ah long lidat?!"

Okay bye bye. Farewell. Sayounara. See you again after my Common Tests/'A' Levels (depending on how much time I have). I shall attempt to sleep.

The Black Cat

2009-05-22T00:59:00.000+08:00

"不管黑猫白猫，捉到老鼠就是好猫"

For those of you who 1) cannot read Chinese, or 2) have given back to your teacher all your Chinese (yes, I do mean ALL), that says, "It does not matter if it is a white cat or a black cat; as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat."

That's a quote by Deng Xiaoping that PAT mentioned in our GP lesson today, in a discussion about Pragmatism. I think it's very interesting how that applies in the real world: As long as you achieve your goal, your means don't matter, even though they may be wrong and harmful to others in the process.

I didn't expect to see the black cat straight after GP, but I'm not going to mention exactly what happened because it could potentially get a lot of people into trouble. It's experiences like this that makes you question the kind of principles your friends (or even yourself) have. Do they stand by their principles and ideas of right and wrong even if it means disadvantages for them, do their principles shake and hang precariously from the edge of a cliff by following others when they see that everyone else is going against their morals, or do their principles crumble and fall once they see advantages for themselves? Or, do they even have principles in the first place?

I understand that this is very subjective. For one, I was talking to someone earlier who did not believe in the value of principles, who preferred to think that it is foolish to hang on to "principles" when they mean disadvantages for you. I'm sure a lot of people feel this way. What I was really pissed about was the abuse of the trust that had been placed in us. Just because there was no one watching does not mean that you take authority of the situation and do whatever you deem fit. I found it disconcerting that even the most responsible and trustworthy of my friends would break in the face of an advantage over others. It is extremely worrying, and even till now I have not managed to get over the shock I had.

I won't be pointing fingers, but if you are reading this and know who you are, good for you: At the very least you know your principles and have identified yourself as problematic, and maybe you should start reflecting and questioning yourself about your principles, morals and ideals. And for those who do not recognise yourselves in this category when you should be, I can only conclude that there is a lack of morals and respect towards that higher authority which had given you trust.

Anyway, just to end on a happier note: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CHENG YI!!!

Hello blog your owner is back.

2009-05-16T21:46:00.000+08:00

I see its been more than a month since my last post. So I've decided I shall not leave the month of May empty (and also responding to Wei Liang's call for me to blog, which I have conveniently ignored for the past month heh). I shall post something, even if its something random.

A few weeks ago I happened to chance across this letter from a debt collecting company to someone (don't ask me who). Apparently there was this handwritten line on the letter which said "Please don't avoid us. The money you owe will not evaporate."

It doesn't make sense because if I were the one owing money, all the money I owe you would have already evaporated, and that is why I have none left to pay you.

Okay that aside, I've come across a few interesting videos (my iPod is a godsend because I can subscribe to the "Best of YouTube" podcast), and I shall introduce some to you in a bid to fill up this space.

オオカミとブタ。Stop motion with wolf and pig. (This one's really fun to watch)

Validation (Imagine how compliments can change one's life!)

Extreme Sheep LED Art (This inspires me to be a shepherd when I grow up!)

Hope those made up for me being MIA haha. Because I'm probably going to be missing for much longer as Common Tests are coming up.

Meanwhile, this is something Li Hui showed me on Wednesday:

頑張って、皆！

The Perfect April Fool's Prank

2009-04-03T01:31:00.000+08:00

When I saw this and couldn't stop laughing, I decided I HAD to post this somehow:

This is the PERFECT April Fool's Prank. And the Japanese are absolutely ingenious.

The next one is for all Physics students to figure out all the required calculations. We non-Physics students have it easy: We just need to sit in front of the computer and be entertained.

The Ninja and the Samurai

2009-03-30T18:56:00.000+08:00

It seems like a wooden ninja sword is cheaper than a wooden katana (bokken), and while trying to find out the difference between them I came across this:

WHY NINJA SWORDS KICK SAMURAI SWORD ASS:

1. Ninja swords are shorter for quicker slashing and better closed-quarters fighting.

2. Samurai swords are housed in ornate scabbards worn on the belt. Ninja swords are worn on simple sheaths on the back.

3. Ninja swords are NEVER sold at the Swap Meet to people wearing button down Dragon Ball Z shirts, and carrying a plastic bag full of vintage Star Wars toys.

4. Ninja swords must draw blood every 20 days, or they will kill their owner in his sleep.

5. Ninja swords are forged in Hell Fire. Samurai swords are forged in regular fire.

6. Ninja swords are silent when they sever tendon and bone. Samurai swords make a “Swoosh” noise followed by a “Squish, crunch” noise.

7. Ninja swords are weightless. Samurai swords weigh as much as a big piece of metal connected to a leather handle with a couple of jewels and ornate dragons on them.

8. Ninja swords will take their own life and self-destruct if handled by anyone other then a ninja.

9. Ninja swords are shiny enough to deflect laser beams.

10. Ninja chicks look hot carrying a ninja sword. Samurai chicks look like Samurai dudes under all that armor. No thanks.

http://ninjustice.blogspot.com/2005/11/why-ninja-swords-kick-samurai-sword_09.html

-_- """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

On the other hand the bokkens look cheap enough for me to get one. The red oak one is only $21.00, and the white oak one $30.00!!! First thing after 'A's is to drop by Marina Square and grab the white oak. Sparring partner, anyone?

What I want for my next birthday:

2009-03-29T23:41:00.000+08:00

In conjunction with all the current katana madness:

BLEACH Ichigo Tensa Zangetsu FULL TANG Katana

The final form of Ichigo's Bankai, named Tensa Bankai (Chains Of Heaven-Slicing Moon), is considered completely out of the ordinary for any zanpakuto. Ichigo's final release appears to be a compression of his power, rather than a vast expansion as other final releases are. This hugely compressed power enables Ichigo to move at an incredible speed, surpassing flash steps, and gives him an agility and reflexes to match, while allowing him to use his strength to its limits. The Tensa Bankai consists of an ordinary katana with a black blade, a handguard in the shape of the manji, which is the kanji for "ban" (full), and a short broken chain dangling as the blade's tassel and replacing the cloth from its released form.

•Specifications:
A) Overall Length: 37 1/2"
B) Handle: 10 1/4 "
C) Blade: 27 1/4"
D) Handguard: Width: 2 3/4" Length: 3 3/4"
E) Sheath: Wood
F) Blade is made out of 440 Stainless steel and has a high gloss black liquid finish that gives it the black blade.
G) The guard is also made out of stainless steel and has the same black liquid finish on it.

http://www.weaponmasters.com/shopping/Bleach-Ichigo-Tensa-Zangetsu-FULL-TANG-Katana-p-17467.html

I WANT!!!

This one equally cool:

BLEACH Urahara Kisuke Benihime Zanpakuto GEN II

Overall Length: 32"
Blade Length: 25 1/2"
Blade: Two Tone Black And Silver
Blade Material: Stainless Steel
Handle: Black Cord Wrapped Red Tassel And Charm
Handle Material: Hardwood, Metal, And Brass

http://www.weaponmasters.com/shopping/Bleach-Urahara-Kisuke-Benihime-Zanpakuto-GEN-II-p-17473.html

My next birthday you all know what to buy for me *Hint hint* Dunno how to apply license let me know, I apply for you :)

I just finished inking the two artworks required for ACGFest (its happening on Monday to Wednesday!!! Please go support okay. Got anime music quiz so quick quick go up your knowledge for FREE Hershey's choco marshmallows!!!). I had to rush through the pieces because I still had Thinkquest stuff to do, but overall I'm quite satisfied with the results.

I'm really bad at perceiving shadows and clothing folds so there are major flaws in those portions. Other than that I think its okay. Hopefully. The Kanji in the second picture actually reads ki men busshin. It talks about having the face of a devil and the heart of a Buddha.

Inking is super fun; I shall start saving up now and go buy my own inking equipment after 'A' Levels. There are so many things to do after the exams!

Resume my drum lessons.
Buy own inking equipment.
Take up Iaido:
Only if I can find a teacher since there seems to be no Iaido dojos in Singapore. An alternative would be to apply for an Aussie visa and fly to Perth to visit my relatives, work there during the duration of my visa (3 months) and take up Iaido at a dojo there.
Take up ninja-do/ninjutsu:
If I have the time and the money (and an Iaido teacher) I will take this concurrently with Iaido. If I don't I will simply take ninjutsu alone. From what I know Tampines East CC offers lessons, and its just 10-15min walk from my house.
Japanese lessons!
I'm currently looking at Bunka Language School. Expensive but it seems effective. Planning to go with Yeti, but if there's anyone else interested you can join us!!!
Go out and work.
Go clubbing for the first time with Irene:
We've planned this since our birthdays this year - Go clubbing and order fruit juice! If you want to join us you can, because after all we are young and naive and should go in large groups to avoid being attacked or groped LOL.
Hopefully get into NUS. Because I want to join their kendo club.
Etc.

Anyone who wants to join me in my quest for further knowledge can come along :) Okay I shall stop dreaming and get back to my Thinkquest and homework.

Yuan Lin is your new 10th dan iaidoka...Right.

2009-03-29T14:31:00.000+08:00

I'm gonna take up martial arts after the A levels. And if there's anything that will improve my posture, grace, patience, concentration and spirit it's gonna be iaido.

And maybe I'll aim to do this:

That guy is not human... T_T

A piece of random randomness

2009-03-23T20:47:00.000+08:00

I am impressed with guardian.co.uk's efficient reply. I had emailed them regarding copyrighted content for use in our Thinkquest website and I got a reply within 12 minutes. WOW. They are so much more efficient than me, or even most people I know.

What baffles me is that while the email address I mailed to was under a lady named "Eve Thompson", the one who replied me was "Helen Wilson". So malu can, when I sent the email I addressed the receipient "Ms Thompson".

And I've been having really really weird dreams lately. I just had a whole slew of dreams yesterday morning. I think its stress.

The first one was a nightmare a la Incredible Tales-style. There was this little girl who climbed up a stool and peeped over a wooden door (those old-style kind where there is an empty space at the top). Then suddenly this ghost, who was her lookalike appeared beside her and took off all her clothes (I NEVER SEE ANYTHING OKAY because the door censored it) and managed to get her to stand ON TOP of the door (WOW). The sadistic ghost then stood on the girl's feet and they started bleeding due to the pressure. Then the little girl couldn't take it anymore and fell to her death. O_o

The second one was about a teacher who went around catching students who didn't have school bags that provided maximum comfort (OMG I AM TOO STRESSED). I only remember her picking up mine and saying "This bag very good, got a lot of cushion". Yay Deuter rawkzzzzz.

The third one was about the school organising a trip down to NUS for a service learning talk in our free periods between lessons. At one moment I was thinking why they did such a senseless thing and at another I was hoping to be able to grab a meal at Megabites before rushing back to school for lessons. Trivia: I dunno why but we were in PE attire.

The rest I cannot remember.

I wanna race you on an elephant!

2009-03-15T19:51:00.000+08:00

Since I don't have much time to blog, I thought I might as well touch on something random.

Last Sunday morning I had two weird dreams.

The first one was about Miss Tan PB writing a book. Inside were stuff like "I woke up at 4 A.M. today" (trivia: the font was Times New Roman). LOL I really dunno how to comment on that. Whether its possible or not I really don't know, but I think the truth would tend more to "impossible".

The second one was about perfectly normal, regular Singaporeans like you and me having an elephant race -_- """"""""""""""^{(and on and on)}. There was this shallow muddy stream and people were riding elephants and racing each other. The only comment I have on this is that I woke up laughing.

And I overslept.

Happy legal-beer-smoking-clubbing-M18 day!

2009-02-24T23:48:00.000+08:00

That special day was 4 days ago. Anyway.

I keep wanting to blog about my birthday, but I don't have the time. My FaceBook status says "Chia Yuan Lin literally has tests queuing up for her" and I guess that explains everything.

Till then! But just a small little update:
Li Hui, Gen and Cheng Yi got me that Urahara plushie! (points three posts down) And its super cute.

Short update before Cupid catches me (:

2009-02-14T01:26:00.000+08:00

Alright before I say anything I shall wish everyone out there a Happy Valentine's/Friendship Day!

Basically since 14th this year falls on a Saturday, school celebrations are on Friday. In fact, Friday the 13th. School had a nice carnival-like atmosphere today, but it just had to start off with me missing three 158 buses. Yeah one of those days where everyone ends up going to school later so you don't get to squeeze up the bus. It didn't help much when I found out my Maths test answers were different from everyone else's (at least those I asked) except Nicholas. Hi-five, man!

Zhang Lu, who was both my angel and mortal (interesting, happened to Gel too) gave me a container of Japanese nuts (Yippee!) and a box of cheese biscuits. I felt really guilty because I didn't have time to buy anything due to mugging for the test, and since I prepared almost the same things for both my angel and my mortal, she ended up with 2 cans of coke, 10 nougats, a Polo Mint-O-Fruit, an energy bar and a Tim-Tam. Wonderful.

Anyway, I went to meet my parents at Orchard after CCA, and went on a quest to find Li Hui's photo (for those of you who haven't seen it, search the Ion Orchard exit). I finally found it just when I was going home, and my mum was like "Li Hui prettier in real life leh". I agree. That's a good thing anyway. While walking around Orchard I went to Kinokuniya, and got lost.

LOST.

Kinokuniya's horribly big (the last time, which was the first time I went, Irene was with me so I had a guide) but it is chock full of awesome stuff. Especially all the Japanese manga. I was like, "OMIGOD, SUGOI DESU NE" (if that is even proper Japanese). My original plan was to search for my G-pen and maru-pen and whatever pen, but sadly, I couldn't afford them T_T...And so I decided to get this:

BLEACH SOULs: Official Character Book. I got the Japanese version, which means the inside looks like this:

KIREI DESU! They even had stickers inside!

After that I gave my mum a very good reason why she should encourage me to learn Japanese. "Since I like comics so much. I'm gonna buy comics in future. So in order to save money, I must buy the Japanese version (taking the example of the above book), which costs only $16.00, compared to $27.60 for the English version." Very convincing indeed. She just smiled and said nothing. I'm not sure if that would mean consent though.

My next buy was donuts from Donut House (awesome must try must try) and a pair of sneakers :D

And just another (random) thing: Did I mention that Cupid is like a mosquito? Food for thought.

Okay I shall go and sleep. I am currently seeing stars. Oyasumi nasai, minna!

Another pretty useless post

2009-02-02T01:17:00.000+08:00

After writing about my favourite Bleach character I decided it was time to introduce my favourite D.Gray-man character:

Marian Cross.

Yet another mysterious guy who seems to know more than he says. One might think that I've got a weakness for hat-wearing gentlemen but I assure you that's not the case. I don't feel anything special for cowboys.

Okay that was short ^^ I'm off to sleep.

A Pretty Useless Post

2009-01-31T02:15:00.000+08:00

Today I found out that Mrs Koh also watches D.Gray-man (Yippee!). She even commented that the D.Gray-man uniforms in Japan are really nice. NOW I'm tempted.

I'm slowly waning off D.Gray-man though, because the anime/manga is taking a break and nothing new seems to be coming up at the moment. On the other hand I'm hooked to Bleach O_o

I just can't stop loving Urahara Kisuke. He's probably one of the best characters I've ever come across. I like my characters with loads of mystery, and he fulfils that very well. Although he's usually quite goofy and has a (weird?) sense of humour, he knows a lot more than he actually says, and in battle, as little as he appears, he's a very good tactician and extremely cunning. Its really fun to watch as the series gradually unravels his history. Although the Turn Back The Pendulum arc of the series is not in the anime yet, I'm really looking forward to that. Its supposedly starting in episode 206; the anime is currently at 204. Whoo!

Kisuke is usually like that.

A cooler-looking side of him. The background can easily say "MYSTERY".

And Kisuke as Taichou (Captain) of the 12th Squad a long, long time ago (he's currently exiled). I prefer him with his hat on though. Adds a lot of personality.

And that was something extra I found while googling. Damn cute right.

And a pretty realistic cosplay I chanced upon.

First reaction when I saw this: WTF?!

Okay ja mata, watakushi wa nemui desu. I'm going to sleep.

改善企図 [かいぜんきと]: The Kaizen Project

2009-01-18T23:27:00.000+08:00

Its now 'A' Level year and I have decided to start かいぜんきと: The Kaizen Project. Basically かいぜん, or 改善 in Kanji, means "Improvement", and きと, or 企図 in Kanji, is just "Project". So in all, かいぜんきと is the Improvement Project (although I'm not sure if my word order is correct because Japanese has a different order from English). If I want to get 4 A's (totally...), this project is a MUST! Although I don't think I will live up to my own expectations.

My nose is super red now, as a result of peeling after getting very sunburnt on the first two days of the Senior High Orientation. Its unfortunate that I don't like putting on sunblock. My mum was like "Too bad it isn't Christmas, if not I can call you Rudolph". And then she started singing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. This is my first time peeling in my life; All other times I have gotten cao-tah but my skin would return back to its original state. And I so wanted to keep that zero-peeling record! :(

K10 (my OG this year) seems really nice. They remind me of 4I itself: Everyone loves everyone else, friendly and full of chemistry (LOL reminds me of TLC and his beloved 4Ions!). Although the only chance I had to join them was for the Pac-Monster Race (where I followed them throughout). I can see they've had a lot of fun at orientation though. Unfortunately I have never really been the sociable type, so I didn't really talk to them much. I must also thank Jin Wen and Li Mei for the soya bean drink! I shall upload orientation photos after Gary passes them to me, and I've got a lot to send to a lot of other people as well. Next week is a busy week!

I was just thinking about a particular time in 2001. My mum was asking me if I would like to migrate to Perth. I declined, probably because I was afraid of leaving a comfortable place and stepping into someplace unfamiliar. Thinking back, that would have been a good chance for me to find an education that suits me better (Singapore's system is too stressful) and improve my social skills (absolutely a must in a community where everyone greets everybody else on the road). However, if I had done that, I would not have met all the wonderful people around me today. The time I really got close to my primary school buddies (Abby, Yeti, Rambutan and Jess) was in primary 5. If I had left, I would have lost all of them. I wouldn't be able to get into Dunman High (probably the best thing in my life) and met all the Ions (3I'06 and 4I'07, filled with goodness and lifelong friends!) and of course all the teachers that have been giving us support (you da' best!). For everything that happens in life, you gain some, you lose some.

Talking about DHS, its amazing how many people I know that are alumni: My chinese tutor of 4 years (I have to give her a lot of credit for my 'O' Level B3) and both her daughters were from DHS, my current maths tutor was from DHS (Pasir Ris Secondary principal Ms Cheng was her classmate...She was from Chinese Orchestra so that might explain the might of their CO at the moment), and one of my cousins from my paternal side was from DHS (we're not close though, she's many years older). It certainly amuses me when one of the first questions everyone asks when they know I'm a Dunmanian is:

"Is Mr Kiw still there?"

I wasn't taught my Mr Kiw before, but although he was a strict disciplinarian (and a VERY strict one indeed) and often evaded very quickly by alert students, everyone still held high respect for him. He must be DHS's most famous icon: Who else had the chance to be Moses (he could part a sea of students alone), and not to mention the countless Mr Kiw jokes spreading around in good spirit during his era...Our Dunman Dolls should be done in his likeness!

Of course, Mr Kiw isn't the only teacher making an impact...Every one of them who has taught me since Sec 1 has left a lasting impression:

Mrs Kang (Sec 1 Eng): One of the first things I thought of when I saw her for the first time was "She's really thin". There was also the famous story by my PSL, who told us about the time when Mrs Kang went for a blood test. I won't mention this here; Look for me if you're interested.

Miss Tang (Sec 1/2 Geog): Famous for her "D'okay", "alright" and slow narration...This made it impossible not to fall asleep during her lessons. Nevertheless, she's still a good teacher who really knows her stuff. I remember feeling sleepy halfway through one of her lessons and decided to count her "D'okay"s and "alright"s. It was 50+ and that was only half the lesson!

Mrs Wong (Sec 2 Eng, Sec 1/2 Hist): One of the strictest teachers at first, but became much nicer as we knew her better. I still remember the volleyball incident on the last day of school of the Sec 2 year, because I was literally laughing my socks off (hahaha). I won't mention this as well, because it might be a bit embarassing for her (LOL). Bottomline is, we found out how short her fingers are.

Mdm Kong (Sec 1 Chi, Art): Although she retired at the end of 2004, she was another memorable teacher. One of her funniest moments was during art lesson: I can't remember what exactly happened, but if anybody from 1F'04 remembers the "没脸见人" quote, THAT's it.

Mr Tan TG (Sec 1 PE, Sec 1/2 CME): Another famous teacher, known for going around in his high soccer socks, photography and providing his many bonsai for the school (long running joke that the school is his bonsai nursery -_-). Up till now he still offers students food when he has them (he was going around the canteen offering you tiao during promos period last year). One of the nicest teachers ever. I think he still cannot pronounce Irene's name properly...He calls her "Aileen".

Ms Irene Wee (Sec 1 Lit): I don't really remember much about her now, but I do recall her as an absolutely no-nonsense teacher.

Mdm Tay KL (Sec 1/2 Maths): I was incredulous when she made me 5 minutes late for Lit lesson because she kept me overtime for recess telling me that it would be good for my brain if I ate an egg every morning (which she also told my mum when she called her). But I also know that she was expressing her concern and sincerity, though the incident may sound ridiculous. I used to dislike her (for reasons I cannot recall), but I still miss her sometimes hahaha.

Miss C. Tan (Sec 3 Bio for 1st sem): This is the one that is seriously young at heart, perhaps a bit too young, but that is one of the reasons we're able to communicate with her like a friend (even more so after the 2007 Yun Nan trip and the 2008 Inner Mongolia trip). I think her cheerfulness is impossible to rate, and so is her walking speed. When she walks we have to jog behind her (serious). People with shorter legs might have to run!

Mrs Koh SL: Went with us to Yun Nan and Inner Mongolia. I think CSC teachers (both she and Miss C.Tan) are all really really happy and cheerful. Sometimes I'm unable to comprehend that level. Its amazing. We're also able to speak to her like a friend. She's also in charge of ACG. These few days I have been bumping into her a lot. Most of the time she spots me first and will call out "Yuan Lin! 你看，我们真有缘分！"

Miss Tan PB (now Mdm Tan, although I'm really not used to calling her that, so I still say Miss. Sec 3 Bio for 2nd sem, Sec 4 Bio, and also Bio this year): Really friendly and I would say quite motherly too :) She really makes an effort to communicate with her students, be it during or after lessons, so she's like a friend too. And a really really good teacher. On 2007's Teachers' Day, me and LH gave her a card with pictures of our mischief during Bio prac. Basically we had been drawing/carving faces on our specimens (fruits, veges, flower petals and whatnot) and whipping our phones out to take photos when her back was facing us. I'm looking forward to Bio lessons this year! Although drawing on specimens would probably not be feasible now. Dunno how to draw on, what, 0.1 mol sucrose solution.

Miss Pear (Sec 3 Geog for 2nd sem, Sec 4 Geog): 3I used to dislike her a lot because she was really really strict at first, but things took a BIG turn around when we all warmed up to each other. By Sec 4 she was never able to successfully scold us anymore; Whenever she tried she would end up laughing halfway. We're such big fans that someone (no mentioning who) even made an animated GIF of her dancing like Elvis Presley. Basically that was inspired by two photos of her, one with her arm down and the other with her hand in the air. She was also in charge of our class together with TLC for Year 4 Level Camp '07, and my teacher I/C for the Service In Nature elective.

Mr Tan LC (Or TLC a.k.a. Tender Loving Care. Sec 3/4 Chem): This is the man who changed 3I with his "Lower Your 'I'" lecture. I think without him, 4I would never be what it was. Also a great form teacher and chem teacher, truly concerned for his students as well. We've heard that he had left the school as he was in bad health or something, and something else I was told but cannot say, but nothing is confirmed. I pray that he would be able to make it through anything that has been his obstacle.

Mrs Ivy Lim (Year 5 Bio): She left us this year as she's on a year's maternity leave after giving birth last Nov. We all want to see her baby! She knows her stuff but sometimes her teaching is impaired by her English, which is decent but not so good. Nevertheless, another great teacher.

Mr Ong PY (Year 5 Maths): Civics tutor! Overall impression is that he is very "law-by-law", but also very nice. When we were staying late in school to study for promos last year, he came to give us a box of biscuits! Marks & Spencer one okay. ;D

Mr Tiah JK (Year 5 Chem): Looks like a student, and speaks a lot of Hokkien (which apparently doesn't tally with his appearance). Its a confusing matter when it comes to whether we look forward to his lessons or not, because his mood swings are very sudden.

Mr Tang YS (Sec 4 PE, Year 5 PE for a term): Can whistle with his thumb and index finger in his mouth. When we asked him 2 years ago how he managed to do that, he replied "I eat whistles for breakfast". -_- And we SO wanted to give him a pack of whistles for Teachers' Day that year, just that we didn't know where to buy one.

Anyway, as you can see at the start of the post, I have implemented my BLOCKHEAD^TM Expression of the Day series! I don't think I will have much time to complete the whole series, but today's is a start. Trivia: My first BLOCKHEAD was called "Yuan Lin", and that was during promos period last year. ;) And I'm really good at linking events. I linked orientation to all my teachers. -_-

I watch too much Bleach.

2009-01-10T17:38:00.000+08:00

You know you've been watching too much Bleach when you dream of yourself as one of the characters.

That is exactly what happened to me.

Yesterday night I dreamt that I saw two comrades fighting some big monster (which was probably inspired by the Hollows of the anime) and quickly rushed over to help. The transition was super cool. Let me illustrate:

If you do not understand, I shall now use the above diagram to explain:

(1) to (2) = A cape suddenly appears, together with a really cool black line on my face, a really cool black earring and a really cool cape.
(2) to (3) = I use the cape to cover myself.
(3) to (4) = When I reveal myself, I am now complete with full fighting gear. I cannot remember how my clothes looked like (hence the very lame drawing of them) but I do remember being equipped with my new sword. As can be seen, there is an illustration of my new sword. (NB: Zangetsu is Ichigo's sword. Ichigo is the orange-haired protagonist of Bleach.)

LOL. I dunno what happened next, because I had to wake up.

Gel had a very interesting dream too. I will not say what it is, but its really really funny.

Anyway, I found this on the net:

When I saw that, I HAD to laugh. Cheng Yi will probably understand what I mean. I don't know anyone else who watches Bleach.

And also allow me to show you what I've been doing when I get fed-up with homework:

That's my new cartoon character Blockhead and a series of its emotions. Its not finished yet, so what you have up there is a preview. When I have the time I'm gonna add a "BLOCKHEAD^TM Emotion of the Day" to each of my blog posts. Yay.

Part 2 of Perth will probably come at a much later time :( And so will Mongol.

ユアンリン » On my command, let there be light!

2008-12-13T16:20:00.000+08:00

This is awesome. Now that I see the Orion, I see it EVERYWHERE. But I doubt that will happen in Singapore, considering all those lights. Did I mention that an aerial view of Singapore can enter a Christmas Light-Up competition? And the control tower at night is a bonus. It even shimmers like real Christmas lights.

I don't have the time to blog more about Perth at the moment, but I do have time for some randomness. I saw the next one on Zhou's blog. No I don't really know her, but her blog is really fun to read. Not to mention the awesome artwork and photos.

Put your MP3 player/music library on shuffle, and write down the first line of the first twenty songs. Post the poem that results. The first line of the twenty-first is the title.

Every Once In A While

What if I wanted to break
Can't pretend that you're nothing special
It starts with one thing, I don't know why
Careful, when you open

If you don't realise that what you ever had is going up in smoke
Thought that I was going crazy
I'm through with standing in line
There's a calm surrender

I look around me, but all I seem to see
Don't wanna be an American idiot
Taking back, overdone, free and safely
Hello there, the angel from my nightmare

For the first time alone in our hidden [Translated from "Zum ersten mal alleine in unserem versteck"]
This is the clock upon the wall
Rise inside, free your mind
Emancipated

Just a few seconds away
Even through the darkest days
It is now officially a big rock show
I think we have an emergency

To remove what was lost pride [Translated from "失ったもの埋めようとして　外してしまったプライド"]
Did we lose ourselves again?
I've got another confession to make
Just a castaway

I did an extra five lines, because I was having quite some fun...Translations were done by Google, so they may not be accurate. One thing about my playlist is having too many instrumental songs and foreign songs. I had to skip one or two, like Japanese band lynch.'s "sleepy flow" and jazz band Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood's "Little Walter Rides Again".

Also, I just got my roll of film processed at Gel's shop yesterday. Taking photos with an old film SLR on an aged roll just isn't the same. Results were pretty interesting. Some photos came out looking sepia, while some were overexposed and some came with white streaks. I shall upload two of the nicer-looking ones when I have the time.

Oh, and I've decided to start a photoblog as well. Basically that blog will have a lot of random photos taken by me that I think are nice. Welcome to Ackzodez! Inspired by the word "Exodus", which again is another result of pure randomness.

Perth!!! [Part 1]

2008-11-29T14:52:00.001+08:00

I've decided to blog a bit since I have Internet connection at the moment... (Which reminds me, I have yet to blog about Inner Mongolia -_- and I still owe Cheng Yi the photos...)

It's supposedly summer here, but its a little confusing because while there is Daylight Saving Time, I think its not officially summer yet. But the weather here is erratic. Its somewhat like Inner Mongolia's, with the sun being strong and the wind being cold. We didn't expect it to be like this and we only brought like one thin jacket each, so we're not getting enough protection from the cold. And the air here is so dry, while it helps my sinus, it destroyed my face. Its as rough as sand now. Don't touch my face when I get back, it might scratch you! Okay that was exaggerated a bit. It's not that bad, my aunt gave us a tube of face cream. Even the people living here agree that this year's weather is strange, it snowed in another part of Australia. Reminds me of the time when I went to Brisbane in 2006, it was summer and snowing in Sydney. The same thing's happening now, though I'm not sure exactly which part of Australia.

Day One

On the way to the Buddhist Lodge (or the Mission, as I would call it) from the airport...I shot this while the car was moving. I like the way the wires cross each other.

This is the place where I'm staying. It's wonderfully spacious inside, and they have an electronic drumset ;D I have two aunts staying in Perth and one of them is a Buddhist nun. The other one (who gave us the face cream) was staying in Brisbane when I went there in 2006, and she migrated to Perth quite recently.

Nightscape of Perth City. I can't remember where I took this (not that I actually knew the name either). I rested my camera on a ledge and set the shutter for 4 seconds (that's the maximum my camera can go) and cropped the photo afterward.

I found this view just right outside the Mission. It's a small patch of sand which can really look like a desert if you take it from certain angles, and it also has a whole lot of houseflies (just as Gel mentioned).

Random photo of some leaves outside the Mission...I like the way the sunlight brought out the green colour of the leaves, but at the same time the sunlight itself is a bit too distracting. Seems like we can't have the best of both worlds huh.

Took a second shot and I realised two days later I caught a housefly as well. Unfortunately its a bit overexposed.

View of Perth City at night from King's Park. The horizon is a bit crooked because I didn't have a tripod with me and, well, the ledge was crooked... T_T

Day Two

Stayed at the Mission and did some chores...

Day Three

If they changed the numbers to "666", no one would dare to visit.

Visited Fremantle Markets (Since 1897!!!)...

A lone snail I saw outside the markets...It was crawling about on a ledge.

Another snail photo. Can you see those almost-transparent parts of the antennae (if I got that term right)?

We stopped over at Fremantle Port for a while and I was positioning my camera in a way that I would catch the seagull when it flew forward. Little did I know it's mummy was gonna fly in from the other side and feed it some fish! I got a shock and pressed the shutter at the same time...Blessing in disguise.

One seagull looked straight at me when I was taking the photo. I think it looks darn cute.

The same seagull opening its mouth to squack. That is, if seagulls actually squack. Lol.

I managed to capture this beautiful blue colour just once. Ahhh I love the blue.

Day Four

One of the many beautiful flowers outside the Mission.

Another beautiful flower. Maybe I need to increase my vocabulary. I keep using "beautiful".

These "purple trees" are gonna be out of season soon...Give them a few more days and they'll all turn green. I'm not sure what these trees are called, maybe someone could enlighten me?

Australia has many animals, especially birds, that cannot be found in Singapore. These remind me of eagrets, but I'm not sure what they are.

Another interesting bird. I assume it's a kingfisher. My sister said it was very "handsome".

Day Five

Dayscape from King's Park. Different part from the night view on Day One.

One of the plants there...My dad was like, "We should grow one of these. It makes a good broom." My mum, however, decided it would be more useful as a toilet brush.

Taken for the fun of it!

I loved the subtle clouds and the bare branches were an added bonus!

A small bird's nest...

Day Six

Took public transport down to City West and walked around Perth City before going to find my aunt at her house...There are many lorikeets living in her park.

I think it keeps all it's loot in this hole, because it frequents the hole quite often.

One of the flowers there, and it came with a bonus bee.

I dunno what this bird is, but it was super cute, hopping round and round the park.

Day Seven

Spent the day at the mission doing chores, and went out in the evening to snap some shots...The colour of the sky was lovely, but my camera wasn't good enough to capture it.

The same view taken from another angle.

Day Eight

Alright, brace yourself - This one's big.

We drove down to York, which is Western Australia's oldest township.

"Located just 97 km east of Perth on the Great Eastern Highway, the township of York, established in 1831, was the first inland European settlement in Western Australia. While still remaining distinct from other towns in the region, York is yet another fine example of colonial architecture and renowned for its heritage prescient.

Visitors to York can enjoy lovingly preserved buildings and sites providing charm and character to the town. There are no fewer than five magnificent churches and many other fine buildings like the Town Hall which houses the tourist information centre, The Old York Hospital, Residency Museum and Old Gaol & Courthouse are all well worth a visit.

Straddling the Avon River, York is bordered by outstanding natural beauty. Walking or riding are popular pursuits here and there are numerous tracks and trails that wind in and around the town. Wildflowers and birdlife compliment the open gardens and there’s a wide range of experiences on offer including food and wine festivals, country racing, local produce and plenty of arts & crafts." --- http://www.experienceperth.com/en/Country/Avon+Valley/York/default.htm

The view from the lookout.

The other side of the lookout...Near the bottom-right of the photo, you can see some small white blocks...They're actually tombstones. In other words, that area is a cemetery.

That's me! I dunno why but it reminds me of The Lion King. Maybe its the rock.

Randomness.

Another piece of randomness. I like the angle, but not the extreme highlights, although it does bring out the colour of the grass quite well.

Time to pay some tribute for the wonderful view!

That's the lookout.

The Town Hall of York. The architecture in the town was really nice.

Properties for sale. If I had the cash I wouldn't mind buying one.

Fake spider courtesy of one of the kids who came with us.

I assume this to be the Avon River. You can also see three Mandarin ducks swimming in the water.

The sky had a pink-purple hue at the time, but unfortunately my camera couldn't really capture that.

I took this with the Mission's Canon EOS 300D.

An attempt to capture as many stars as possible using the 300D when we went to stargaze. I set the shutter to 30 seconds (that's the max) but I can't remember what the ISO was. Either 800 or 1600 I think. Someone was asking someone else if she could see the Southern Cross. I was amazed. I never even heard of that.

Another picture of the stars...You might have to squint. There's this pattern you can spot in the two pictures...Look out for something which looks like this:

That's actually the constellation of Orion, or "Orion the Hunter". I've labeled the names of the stars as well. If you look closer at the previous two photographs, you might be able to notice that some stars have a reddish glow (hint: one of them is Betelgeuse) while most have a bluish glow. I don't know the reason for this yet, but I'm guessing its the temperature.

"Orion has been recognized as a distinctive group of stars for thousands of years. The Chaldeans of Mesopotamia knew it as Tammuz; the Syrians called it Al Jabbar, the Giant. To the ancient Egyptians, it was Sahu, the soul of Osiris. It was the Greeks who gave the constellation its present name, commemorating a mythical giant and great hunter"
--- "Astronomy: A Definitive Guide" by Robert Burnham, Alan Dyer and Jeff Kanipe

According to a constellation map from Wikipedia, Orion looks somewhat like this:

Can you see it?

Alright that was long. I shall continue blogging another time, when I have more photos. We'll be driving down to Albany next Monday and will probably be there for one week, so while I will have totally zero internet access, you can expect lots of landscape photos when I get back.

And did I mention that SLRs are darn cheap here? I found this store called The Good Guys, which is having a sale and selling the Canon EOS 1000D for $948, and it comes with 2 lenses. If you consider the fact that the Singapore Dollar is almost on par with the Australian Dollar now, its a steal. Too bad my mum isn't convinced... T_T

P.S. From this day onwards, Yuan Lin will be making an effort to use labels in her posts so as to enable faster searching and better organisation. Yay.

Disappearing

2008-11-19T01:48:00.000+08:00

I just changed my blog picture...The manga is from a D.Gray-man comic, but you can't really see it anyway. It's just for display purposes. And the Japanese words are supposedly my Japanese name. That is, if I actually got them correct.

I had this dream some nights ago where I went out with Li Hui, Cheng Yi and Gen, which actually did happen one day where we went out for lunch at Just Acia. But in the dream, the location was changed to someplace near Changi, supposedly, at least from my knowledge in the dream. It was this really old and crowded food court. Apparently we were walking and I got temporarily separated due to the crowd, and for some reason I suddenly had this feeling where I wanted to be alone, so I decided to separate myself from them permanently and went out to take a walk. Amazingly I managed to walk to this church (again, supposedly), and was greeted with this beautiful sight. There were pillars that reminded me of those old Greek temples, and they appeared warm against the sunset, surrounded by this orange hue, and I wasn't the only one there. More people were setting up D-SLRs just to take that sight. I almost kicked myself for not having my camera with me and had to resort to taking pictures with my K810i.

The stupidest thing I did was to check my phone for pictures when I woke up. -_-

Anyway, I will be disappearing for 3 weeks as I'll be overseas. And I probably won't get a chance to blog or even find Internet connection.

Oh man.

Ah randomness.

2008-11-16T23:46:00.000+08:00

I've been watching a lot of D.Gray-man lately. Thanks to Sherlyn, my life has meaning once more. It's so entertaining and addictive...They manage to combine humour and seriousness even in the life-or-death situations, and they do it so well, they're masters at their craft. Its hard not to like every human character in the anime, because even the Noah (the superior humans who are the villians of the series) are so human that they poke fun at each other, just like family.

Anyway, Grace just showed me this video:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

It's super funny, but will be more effective at making you laugh if you've seen the Matrix Trilogy.

One random night.

2008-11-06T23:15:00.000+08:00

©MetzalX» Zuan Zin. says:
meanwhile i also go chong liang

grace says:
hahah

grace says:
we chong tgt okayxx

grace says:
HAHAHA

©MetzalX» Zuan Zin. says:
O_o yeah why not

©MetzalX» Zuan Zin. says:
LET'S GO!!!

grace says:
*disappears in floo powder*

©MetzalX» Zuan Zin. says:
*disappears in flu powder*

grace says:
HACHEW.

©MetzalX» Zuan Zin. says:
what does floo do

©MetzalX» Zuan Zin. says:
damn.

grace says:
transports

©MetzalX» Zuan Zin. says:
ooh i know i saw that in harry potter

©MetzalX» Zuan Zin. says:
but i dunno any magic words

©MetzalX» Zuan Zin. says:
i will AVADA KEDEVRA you if you don't disappear now

grace says:
i will uh, wingardiumleviosa you

grace says:
then you cant reach me nyaaah

grace says:
okokok

©MetzalX» Zuan Zin. says:
er, once i avada kedevra you, you can't wingardium leviosa me anymore mwahahaha

©MetzalX» Zuan Zin. says:
okay i disapparate now

©MetzalX» Zuan Zin. says:
*poof*

:(

2008-11-06T17:53:00.000+08:00

I DUN WANT GO FOR XPERIENCE ALREADY T_T T_T T_T
Felicia will be heartbroken when she hears the reason why.

And I finished watching all 26 episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Until I find some way to get my hands on End Of Evangelion, there is no meaning in my life anymore.

A bunch of updates

2008-11-05T19:35:00.000+08:00

Okay basically, newest updates first.

PW ORAL PRESENTATION IS OVER I AM SO RELIEVED I CAN'T BE MORE HAPPY TODAY I WAS ABSOLUTELY...

I dunno either.

Pauline Ann Tan was our moderator and she told us after the presentation that we had a train chasing after us. Well, Gel corrected her and told her it was a tiger but that's not the point. =( I think I kind of died for my Q&A but then Miss Devi always says I should be more confident, so I guess I did okay? Assessors were Jason Ng and Alicia Ng and they were super friendly, so that was a great help. They just kept on smiling and nodding, but while Alicia Ng DID stop sometime, Jason Ng looked like he had this permanent smile plastered on his face and had a spring for his neck, so he kind of looked like a very happy bobblehead, or Noddy as Wei Cheng put it. Interesting. But turns out Jason Ng is the 笑里藏刀 one...The questions he asked were chim... T_T

Okay, forget about OP. PW sucks big time and its gonna be over! Anyway we came across this new game called Hotel 626, thanks to Nicholas. I heard he played it at around 10pm and couldn't sleep the whole night LOL. Me, Gel and Jean were playing it in the classroom and we used the speakers, so the audio was like Surround Sound. Wow. Smart of us. Projector was screwed so we couldn't show the rest of the people in the class what was on the screen, so they were all giving us weird looks when Gel and Jean screamed continuously (not that I was so bored and unscared by the game, but I'm not the screamy sort). Amanda chose the right time to hop by - When the scary woman in the toilet chose to show her face. Felicia peeked sometime but I don't think she got it. When we tried to show Sherlyn a second time, she took her tie and covered her mouth -_- which at this point of recalling that, I cannot understand why I did not laugh then. I am laughing now.

Anyway we couldn't really understand what we were supposed to do, so we kind of skipped most stuff. But I have since gone through the game again when I got home, and thus will give you a small description of it.

Hotel 626
Hotel 626 (http://www.hotel626.com) is a game where you play the role of a man trying to escape from a haunted hotel, and you play first-person. They even make the effort to limit the time you can play to between 6pm-6am, but you can cheat by changing your computer clock. You can even choose to connect your webcam and microphone to your comp for use in this game, but you'll get through fine if you don't. Just that the webcam and mic give that added interaction. Below are spoilers, so don't look if you want maximum thrills and scares (which would be further enhanced if you DO choose to play at midnight).

BEWARE: SPOILERS AHEAD.
They are supposed to help you with the game in case you can't go pass anything, but I don't recommend this as it proves you're scared. XD

START
You wake up in the middle of the night, supposedly from a nightmare? The time is 2.01am. For some reason, you feel scared, and thus you quickly put on your shirt and run out of the room.

ONE IS NOT LIKE THE OTHERS.
You run down a corridor. What you have to do here is to find a door that is not like the others. It's sort of grey in colour, while the rest of the doors are your typical hotel-door brown. The door will be somewhere near this dark matter, at the right side. Click on it. If you fail to get through the door in time, it'll eat you up.

SHE LIVES IN DARKNESS. SHOW HER THE LIGHT.
You are in this leaky bathroom with a digicam in your hand. What you're supposed to do is snap the face of this weird female ghost while she runs around looking like she's scared of you instead. You only have 9 shots to do this. If you fail, you'll hear her screams and see her horrible face (I would suggest tuning down your headphones or speakers at this point to prevent damage to your hearing or to your sound system). If you succeed, well, you'll still hear her screams and see her horrible face.

JUST IN TIME.
You are running down a flight of stairs. This is similar to the first game - You're also supposed to find a door and click on it before the dark matter eats you. This one is a bit challenging, because the door is harder to click on than the first one, but still works the same way. You'll see it just next to the man-eating dark matter, on the right side. Yes, in this game, you're gonna be JUST IN TIME.

SING ME A LULLABY.
Here, you'll see this weird baby, which defies the convention of babies being cute. If you had connected a mic to your comp, you'll have to sing a lullaby for her at the correct volume. If you did not, you'll have to spin a music box at the correct volume. In either case, keep the volume within the white area. If it hits the red area for too long a time, you'll never go near a baby again.
After coaxing her back to sleep, you now have to learn how to keep your balance and walk silently at the same time to avoid waking her up. To do this, you'll have to keep the while circle in the centre of the gauge. Anytime it hits the red area for a certain amount of time...Same thing happens as in the previous scenario.

HELPLESS?
Okay, anyway, no matter what you do, the best thing that can happen to you is that you avoid seeing the baby's face. You'll still get abducted and dragged down the hallway after you open the door, and along the way you can derive some entertainment from this little girl skipping at the door of one room and some guy/girl standing like some idiot at another door.

HE KNOWS THE WAY.
You'll need your speakers for this one. Listen to what the madman (I think he died from anorexia) is saying, but take note, there'll be voices at 2 volumes: One is the louder one, which is the madman trying to distract you by making weird incomprehensible noises, and one is the softer one which will list 3 items. What you'll have to do here is to listen out for these 3 items, and count the number of red-tinted portions on each items. Just count, don't add them up!

For your convenience, I have gladly counted them for you, if you were too lazy:
Horse - 3
Spider - 8
Hands - 9
Candles - 4
Tree - 4

These numbers will be the 3-number code you'll need to enter to open the door (Enter them in sequence of the items read). If you don't do this within 4 tries, the anorexic man will have a chance to get out of his mummy cast, turn off the lights and I-dunno-do-what to you.

FIND YOURSELF A WAY OUT.
If you have a webcam here, you have a picture of you taken at this point. You will then have to look for a picture of yourself at this point and click on it to get out. If you don't have a webcam, simply look for a picture of the hallway. If you don't get it in time, the anorexic man (I think) will get you.

ANSWER AND YOU'LL HAVE THE ANSWERS.
Here you'll have to listen to instructions from this man. He'll tell you to trust him, and you should, unless you want to get eaten up by the dark matter again. As you run along the hallway, he'll tell you to turn left or right.

YOUR CHECK-OUT TIME IS NOW.
I'll leave you to find out what happens here. You don't need to play this part, just watch.

END
You see a photo of yourself, along with many others. I spent some time observing the photos, you'll never know what you can find out just by looking at these photos, be it the number of people with their hands over their mouths (mostly females), or even guys who play half-naked -_-...There was this guy who showed the whole world his chest hair.

*******************************************************************

THE QUEST
If you loved Hotel 626, you might want to check out The Quest (Enter from http://www.doritos.com/), especially if you love solving puzzles. This one is definitely for people with a high IQ. And being the cheat that I am, who usually plays first-person shooters or Grand Theft Auto on God Mode, I went around the Internet looking for solutions because my brain is not over-developed yet.

Yes, in case you haven't realized, both Hotel 626 and The Quest are sponsored by Doritos. Although it baffles me why people would still want to open a pack of Doritos after playing Hotel 626. Perhaps Doritos are remotely comforting?

******************************************************************

OBAMA WINS!!!
Another happy event to add to my list. I was rooting for him all along. He seems more ready for change than McCain is.

******************************************************************

OTHER TRIVIAL UPDATES
Other updates include the fact that Sherlyn, Wei Cheng and Gel taught me mahjong and now it's my new love (they're still laughing at the fact that I told them I would only play for 30min and in the end I played for 3 hours). And it's super irritating when you look for mahjong handphone games and realise that 90% of them are tile-matching games, which are, in other words, BORING.

NGE

2008-11-01T14:29:00.000+08:00

Since the promos are over, I'm getting into Neon Genesis Evangelion (NGE) once again to finish watching what I haven't. Over the past few days I've been looking up on NGE on Wikipedia, and discovering things like abiogenesis, primordial soup, and Dirac sea. If you haven't watched it, you should. Curiosity will bring you new knowledge. If you haven't seen it all that I'm talking about here will be nonsense to you...

In NGE, the enemies of mankind are called Angels, and the future of mankind lies in the Evas, which are "the mechas piloted by the children chosen by Nerv", a defence organisation. Wikipedia defines the Angels as "beings which attack Tokyo-3 over the course of the story". Just as the protagonist Shinji asks, "Angels are messengers of God. They are supposed to be good. Why are our enemies called Angels?" He also comments that the LCL, which is the liquid used to fill the entry plug, smells like blood. This LCL actually borrows from the Primordial Soup Theory.

Haldane and Oparin: The Primordial Soup Theory
No new notable research or theory on the subject appeared until 1924, when Aleksandr Ivanovich Oparin reasoned that atmospheric oxygen prevented the synthesis of the organic molecules that are the necessary building blocks for the evolution of life. In his The Origin of Life, Oparin argued that a "primeval soup" of organic molecules could be created in an oxygen-less atmosphere through the action of sunlight. These would combine in ever-more complex fashions until they formed coacervate droplets. These droplets would "grow" by fusion with other droplets, and "reproduce" through fission into daughter droplets, and so have a primitive metabolism in which those factors which promote "cell integrity" survive, those that do not become extinct. Many modern theories of the origin of life still take Oparin's ideas as a starting point. Around the same time J. B. S. Haldane also suggested that the earth's pre-biotic oceans – very different from their modern counterparts – would have formed a "hot dilute soup" in which organic compounds, the building blocks of life, could have formed. This idea was called biopoiesis or biopoesis, the process of living matter evolving from self-replicating but nonliving molecules.

LCL
LCL is a yellow-tinted, translucent liquid used to mentally link a pilot with the Evangelion and supply oxygen directly to the lungs when breathed, similar to liquid breathing. Its properties can be altered when it is electrically charged; this includes turning the liquid colorless. It may also help in protecting a pilot from mental attacks and physical shocks. LCL may also be compared to the amniotic fluid in the mother's womb; many of the mother references that the main character has in the story take place in LCL. Shinji mentions that the cockpit smells of blood when filled with LCL; this is because LCL is the blood of Lilith, the captured second Angel held in Terminal Dogma. Briefly visible are several tubes coming out of the back of Lilith's head marked "LCL 1" and "LCL 2" etc; also, a lake of LCL is beneath Lilith. The "dossier" sections of the manga claim that LCL stands for Link Connect Liquid, but this definition was denied in the Red Cross Book.

In The End of Evangelion, it is shown that all humans are composed of LCL, and only given form as separate entities by their own individual AT Fields. Hence, when an individual's AT Field collapses, the body formed by said AT Field dissolves back into LCL.

In case you were wondering why children are selected to pilot the Evas instead of adults, I attribute it to the fact that children would be valued for their innocence and obedience, while adults, if given too much power, could instead use it for their own good. And this is what Gendo Ikari, Shinji's father with whom he has a strained relationship, is guilty of. While taking charge of the Human Instrumentality Project, his ultimate aim is to become one again with his dead wife, Yui Ikari. Yui had died in a test experiment whereby she volunteered herself, and it seems that she did this deliberately to "ensure a 'bright future' for Shinji and the rest of humanity, seeing to it personally that Seele's scenario is never entirely fulfilled".

Seele (German: soul, pronounced [ˈ zeːlə]) are Nerv and Gehirn's secret backers, who wish to implement the Human Instrumentality Project, and arguably the "true villains" of the series. It consists of at least twelve prominent people; five of them form the Instrumentality Committee, which directly oversees Nerv's progress, officially in the name of the UN. Its members are referred to as the "Old Men."
Seele is a secret organization, the real puppetmasters behind the United Nations. Its origins are shrouded in mystery; they would claim to have existed since ancient times, functioning as an Illuminati-like power cabal over most of the world's governments. This cannot be verified, but they have been operating since at least soon after World War II, when they acquired the secret sections of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The secret Dead Sea Scrolls predicted the arrival of the Angels and of Third Impact, and Seele began striving to develop means to defeat the Angels so that a human-centered Instrumentality process would proceed. Having decided that humanity as a whole had reached an evolutionary dead end, Seele seeks to bring about Instrumentality and unite all humans into one hyper-being, the next stage of existence.

The "unite all humans" part actually sort of happens at the end: The Third Impact.

Third Impact
Third Impact is the final event predicted in Seele's Dead Sea Scrolls; achieving the correct Third Impact is the ultimate objective of their efforts.

Third Impact is triggered by the union of Adam and Lilith, with the result being the creation of a supreme being that would succeed all existing life on Earth. The goal of Seele and Nerv is to prevent any of the Angels from instigating Third Impact so that humankind may do so instead, thus fulfilling the goal of the Human Instrumentality Project. For a human Third Impact, the Angels must be defeated, as they guard the Tree of Life. With the death of Kaworu, all Angels are dead, and the Tree of Life is accessible. (Again, this is a speculation from an unofficial guide and should be treated as one of the explanations or speculations.)

Third Impact occurs in both the television series and in The End of Evangelion; while the series only offers a few glimpses of Third Impact, focusing on the Complementation of Shinji Ikari, End offers a fuller and perhaps different account.

Before Third Impact Nerv and Seele turn on each other, and Gendo Ikari attempts to carry out his Third Impact, uniting Rei with Lilith, and his own self already possessing Adam. But after Gendo merges Adam with Rei, she rejects him. Instead of being reunited with Yui Ikari and gaining the godlike powers Gendo had been planning and seeking for so long, all humanity begins reverting to the egg of Lilith from which it came. The combination of Lilith (possessor of the Tree of Knowledge) & Adam (possessor of the Tree of Life) - in the guises of Rei Ayanami and Kaworu Nagisa - neutralizes the AT Fields of all human beings on Earth and absorbs their souls into her/himself. Shinji meanwhile has been placed at the head of the Kabbalah's Tree of Life, composed of himself in Unit-01 and 9 Mass-production Evas crucified with Lances of Longinus (each crucified Evangelion forming one of the Sefirot). Control of the power is placed in the hands of Shinji as the sacrifice and initiator of Third Impact. With the unification of Angels and Humans, god-like power is unlocked: "The Fruit of Life borne by the Angels, and the Fruit of Knowledge borne by human beings. Eva-01 has acquired both of these gifts, and so has become something to rival the power of God."^[25]

However, Shinji Ikari makes the fateful decision to reject Instrumentality, thus ending Third Impact, and returning humankind to Earth in the form of the Sea of LCL. It is implied that all individuals with a strong sense of themselves and who choose to do so will, in time, be able to resurrect themselves.

The AT Fields are what separates one being from another (the Angels have an AT Field so strong that it is nearly impossible for anything to penetrate, except the Evas). It might be interesting to note that the AT Fields of humans are their individuality. Adam is the first Angel, and also, of course, the first human being in the Bible. And "Lilith" itself has many depictions, most commonly as a demon. The one in Wikipedia under NGE's Lilith reads "Lilith is named for the first woman God created in Jewish mythology, who left the Garden of Eden after she refused to be subservient to Adam." One of the ones that would fit the story in Evangelion would be that of Lilith being Adam's first wife.

Adam and Lilith
The first medieval source to depict Adam and Lilith in full was the Midrash Abkier (ca. 10th century), which was followed by the Zohar and Kabbalistic writings. Adam is said to be a perfect saint until he recognizes either his sin or Cain's homicide that is the cause of bringing death into the world. He then separates from holy Eve, sleeps alone, and fasts for 130 years. During this time Lilith, also known as Pizna or Naamah, desired his beauty and came to him against his will. They bore him many demons and spirits called "the plagues of humankind". The added explanation was that it was through Adam's own sin that Lilith overcame him against his will.

Older sources do not state clearly that after Lilith's Red Sea sojourn, she returned to Adam and begat children from him. In the Zohar, however, Lilith is said to have succeeded in begetting offspring from Adam during their short-lived connubium. Lilith leaves Adam in Eden, as she is not a suitable helpmate for him. She returns, later, to force herself upon him. However, before doing so she attaches herself to Cain and bears him numerous spirits and demons.

Another widely taught version of this is that the Hebrew cosmogony originally told a story of Yahweh creating Adam to marry a local Goddess-associated figure named Lilith. Lilith was a follower of the Great Mother Goddess, Inanna- later known as both Ishtar and Asherah. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh was said to have destroyed a tree that was in a sacred grove dedicated to the Goddess Ishtar/Inanna/Asherah. Lilith ran into the wilderness in despair. She then is depicted in the Talmud and Kabbalah as first wife to Yahwehs's first creation of man, Adam. In time, as stated in the Old testament, the Hebrew followers continued to worship "false idols", like Asherah, as being as powerful as Yahweh. Jeremiah speaks of his (and Yahweh's) displeasure at this behavior to the Hebrew people about the worship of the Goddess in the Old Testament. Lilith is banished from Adam and Yahweh's presence when she is discovered to be a "demon" and Eve becomes Adam's wife. Lilith then took the form of the serpent in her jealous rage at being displaced as Adam's wife. Lilith as serpent then proceeds to trick Eve into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge and in this way is responsible for the downfall of all of mankind. It is worthwhile to note here that in religions pre-dating Judaism, the serpent was known to be associated with wisdom and re-birth (with the shedding of its skin).

Another depiction:

Astrological Lilith
See also Lilith (hypothetical moon).

In modern Western astrology, "Dark Moon" Lilith. It is not an actual phase of the moon, but is a blank focus of the ellipse described by the moon's orbit (the other focus occupied by the Earth). Dark Moon Lilith is often employed in astrological chart readings. "The Dark Moon describes our relationship to the absolute, to sacrifice as such, and shows how we let go.”

The moon's hypothetical apogee point (the point at which it is furthest in its orbit from the Earth), is known as "Black Moon" Lilith. It is said to signify instinctive and emotional intelligence in astrological charts.

In NGE, Lilith is depicted as "a white, legless giant, whose face is covered with a mask displaying the Seven Eyes of God. Numerous human-like legs protrude from its legless stumps. The Angel is crucified on a giant cross in Terminal Dogma, the deepest level of Nerv headquarters. Lilith's torso constantly leaks LCL from an unseen wound, forming a lake of LCL at the base of its cross which is tapped to fill the Evas' entry plugs."

This is Lilith as portrayed in the anime...The thing sticking out of it's chest is the Lance of Longinus, which was originally associated with Adam, causing the Second Impact.

Something extra I found from Google...Here you can see the "Seven Eyes of God", and the human-like legs are clearer too. I want to own that, it would make a nice dinner plate.

It is also interesting to note the presence of a Pribnow Box in NGE. While us Biology students would refer to it as TATAAT, the section of DNA in prokaryotes, in NGE the Pribnow Box "is a section of Nerv HQ where the three simulation bodies are kept. It is surrounded by thick 'protein walls' which are later penetrated by the Angel Iruel".

Okay enough of NGE. No one probably knows what I'm trying to say anyway.

A host of blogworthy stuff

2008-10-25T14:01:00.000+08:00

I haven't blogged for ages. I guess that's quite evident. I haven't blogged about Mongolia, promos, Singapore Biennale, and who knows what. I remember having many things to blog about, but yet I can't remember any. Also, I feel draggy and long-winded today, for some reason.

See anything wrong with that picture? If you've seen through it and are fascinated, go view the "Hair Salon" installation at the Singapore Biennale (South Beach Development). The artworks this year are awesome, I HAVE to go back again.

Anyway, I just came back from Happy Lodge. Been doing CIP there since April for NYAA (which is in a terrible state because I haven't updated it for damn long). Today's session was the most interesting one I've had so far - even if it was just a conversation with two old ladies.

We went into this room as we needed to fill up our pail with water, and there were two old ladies sitting there. A third one was sleeping. While filling up, one of them asked to read my palm.

"You don't anyhow spend money."
"!!! Yes!"
"You will live long."
=D
"You got boyfriend?"
"(LOL!) No lah, dun have!!!"

Her English wasn't very good, took me some time to understand her. The other old lady was like "She's very good, a lot of things are true". Then she asked to read Gel's palm, so I quickly turned around and was like "She can read palms!" I shall not reveal Gel's fate, but she was also like "You got boyfriend?"

Then they started talking t0 us about not having boyfriends early, and how the "palm reader" has only one son, whose wife doesn't like him seeing her. I was like already like half-cursing the daughter-in-law. Hey, don't you know this basic fact that your husband wouldn't be here if not for his mother? And that old lady took a Cambridge paper before, either O' Levels or A' Levels. Damn cool, in her time I don't think many people could have sat for those. She's also a Buddhist, the other one is Christian. She was talking about all her 5 children being good to her. They were also telling us how daughters were better than sons because they were more filial...The "palm reader" then lamented that she was supposed to have another son but she had a miscarriage at 4 months, and that she could not get a daughter.

There was more, but I can't remember. The elderly are very nice to talk to, you learn loads of stuff from their experience.

And the manager of the home said she saw me and Gel while driving past Ghim Moh one day. What a coincidence.

I shall disappear into PW land.