C is for

UMNO

2009-04-04T01:07:00.003+08:00

stands for We're Mostly Corrupt Liars Who're Willing To Put A Murderer In Charge Of 27+ Million People.

It's shortened to United Malays National Organisation for PR reasons, obviously.

They should still fire their PR people, because their name clearly indicates that the other 40% or so of the country are 2nd class citizens, really. Oh wait, they can't do that, because their PR person is probably their cousin's wife's third brother. Plus, you know, ketuanan Melayu.

If the rest of us 'Baliked Cina' as is sometimes spouted, I seriously wonder how long the country will last. Will the thin red line of hardworking, honest, non-theistic Malays be able to hold back the unstoppable horde of lazy narrow-minded Quran-thumpers? I think not. That, and the only people who know how to make a halfway decent fried rice will have gone.

I'm Chinese. The first words out of my mouth about China are 'Possibly Worst Country On Earth.' Loyalty is not based on your ethnicity. If I was given a button that said 'Cause Entire Chinese Govt to Have Heart Attacks' I'd get a dictionary and start calling some morgues. I can say entirely without fear, cause guess what? YOU CAN'T GET BLOGSPOT IN CHINA.

Honestly, I think the only reason we don't have stricter internet laws in this country is that the people who want the laws put in couldn't find their way around a router farm with two hands and a map.

You know what else they can't find without two hands and a map? Their goddamn testicles.

Seriously. Grow a pair. Maybe you can ask Teresa Kok if you can borrow hers.

Lrn2Democracy kkthx.

Tomorrow we swear in a murderer.

2009-04-02T16:53:00.000+08:00

Mode: Succint.

Hrm

2009-03-26T18:00:00.003+08:00

It's really not been that long.

Well, consider this an update, of sorts. The theater show I'm helping to put together, Stage Therapy, is running. World of Warcraft doesn't. My social life sort of runs. Obama is President (BIG deal).

Watchmen was great. Furniture joins Mia Palencia as my favorite local band. I'm entering the MPH-Alliance short story contest, with a story I have yet to edit.

Why I don't update this more I don't know. It always slips to the back of my mind because of all the other stuff I'm doing.

Ah well.

Wait, what am I doing. I've got loads of crap to do. I'm writing, in no particular order, a novel, a resume, two full length plays, a short story or three, an article, some tagline ideas, and I want to add a blog on top of all that? Is he mad?

It could be the irkedness I feel that this blog is not on the top of the google search lists for my name, or perhaps it's an exercise in self discipline.

Either way I, as usual, have put my foot in it.

Project Mirabilis.

2008-12-02T20:49:00.001+08:00

The Electric Minds Project is a theater group founded on the principles of promoting original Malaysian writing, providing an entry-level platform for artists and performers, and putting out rollicking good shows. Created by idealists with ideas, EMP is focused on making theater accessible to anyone who wants in. Our activities include script-reading session LiveShocks, our improv performance troupe Scared Scriptless, and various acting workshops. EMP’s maiden production, Stage Therapy, is due in Q1 2009.

The above paragraph will consume my life, in some form or another, for at least the first half of 2009.

I'm excited as heck.

All Hail The Mothership

2008-11-30T17:57:00.002+08:00

Today I *gasp* cleaned.

The single and slobful among you shall gasp alongside me. Vacuuming is unto domestication just as telephones are unto bills.

To my defense it was not my fault. I was bade to, nay, commanded by the Mothership. Her HypnoGaze removed any last shred of free will and like a good little automaton I shuffled around the house, sucking up dirt grime and spare coins.

If any of you tell my mother I will freakin' KILL YOU.

Anyway. LiveShocks! The laid-back script reading party Number 12 is being held at a super-sekrit undisclosed location somewhere in SS25. From this nebulous den of nefarious evilness we plan to unleash a torrent of thespianism that shall overcome the banks of the lowest common denominator, and then, THE WORLD.

Or we shall just have a good time.

With pizza.

Nomnomnomnom

After ages

2008-11-28T03:44:00.002+08:00

...and ages and ages.

If you scroll down a bit I say it's just like riding a bike. Hopefully I stay on for longer this time.

But yes, a lot has happened in my life since then, and attempting to catalog it all would be potentially futile, but here goes.

I met a girl, I lost a girl, they may not have been the same girl. I wrote a lot. I read a lot. I finished my thesis. I finished my uni course. I said goodbye to too many friends, and hello to many others. I finished NaNoWriMo. I didn't play Wrath of the Lich King. I saved some phone numbers. I drank chocolate in a restaurant with people I care about. I acted. I am about to act. I organized, performed, impassionated, raged about Proposition 8, rejoiced at Supreme Emperor Obamadeus. I updated FaceBook. I neglected this blog. I took improv lessons. I looked longingly at old photos. I stayed up late looking at ways to deal with facial hair. I woke up early and stared at the sun. I wished I could be as good as I thought I could be. I knew I was as good as I could be at this time. I missed plays. I saw plays. I wondered at the length of my fingers. I rode the train. I walked in the rain, water squelching my shoes. I laughed with my brother. I respecced my mage. I lusted after Diablo 3, Left 4 Dead. I stopped playing Team Fortess 2. I felt isolated. I felt blessed. I wished the world were smaller. I looked up plane fares. I talked to people. I got angry. I listened to my heart. I listened to music that broke my heart. I celebrated some anniversaries.

It's been a helluva five months. It's fucking good to be alive.

Partied

2008-07-11T02:47:00.002+08:00

just got back from a party, it is 3 in the morning, and I am listening to imogen heap's video blog.

So the party was great. Spent it with the right people but not with some of them either. Sorry to those who couldn't come. Twas great.

So yes. Collapsing. Should think about doing that.

If any of you would consent to being interviewed by me about your blogs for a school assignment, hit me.

Commander Shepard, Galactica Hero

2008-07-05T16:56:00.002+08:00

So it took a bit, but I finally finished Mass Effect, and oh boy is it a wonderful and joyous experience. I mean, wow. What a great experience.

It does, in the tradition of all RPGs ever, get bogged slightly in the middle by sidequests. Ah, sidequests. Fun on their own, don't get me wrong, but there's something inexorable about _narrative_.

Speaking of which, just wow. It's like being in your own sci-fi movie. It's awesome. It's so much fun, and very very good. I'd play it again right now (because once you've finished you can start again with your souped up character and be uberbadass for no good reason other than you've earned it) but I have homework. :(

But yes. I loves it. Very nice. Whoohoo.

Certainties disappear

2008-07-04T06:14:00.001+08:00

Where do we go from here?

For one: I was up at five am for no good reason other than it was five am. That alone wants me to monkey wrench my day.

2nd: has anyone been reading the news lately? Dear fucking god. We already knew, but now we _know_.

3rd bother this I'm going back to bed. Must not listen to Andrew Lloyd Webber at six am. Not healthy.

If you're reading this

2008-06-26T20:33:00.000+08:00

There is some evidence of intelligence at work.

Retail Therapy

2008-06-25T17:04:00.002+08:00

omg rofls who r u n wut hv u dun 2 d real sigma83 lololololol

I retail therapied.

Don't look at me like that, I know. I'd feel bad, only what I retail therapied was a copy of Assassin's Creed, the install for which is now merrily putting away in the background while I blog this. I also bought a copy of FREAKING MASS EFFECT which I purposely left at my neighbor's for him to play because I don't have the hard drive space/need to sleep at some point in the next 3 weeks.

So this blog post will essentially last until the install completes. Wheeee.

(twiddles thumbs)

So I ate at Delicious for lunch, and they served a very decent shepards pie with epic salad and uber wedges. My friend whom I ate with (Nicholas Chin, see his blog here) had a mushroom spaghetti thing and it tasted like chinese noodles with cheese added in. I like my potato-bedecked concoctions ^^

And you'd think after I blew all that money on lunch I'd have the sense to not pick up 40 ringgit worth of games but noooooooooooo.

(Insert disk 2. Click okay. Install continues to putter.)

At least I buy substantial things. Soul improving things. Other people buy clothes, handphones, iPods, I buy video games.

Fuck, I am so dying alone.

Day Between

2008-06-24T17:42:00.003+08:00

Quiz: What's the best opportunity a day off gives you?

A: More chances to procrastinate, of course!

I've just not been feeling the work ethic recently. As in, the last two days. Sunday was alright, I had a big deadline due Monday morning but since then it's just been bleh. Blehness should be a codified human emotion, right next to Bigness and Buffoonery.

So I realized that what I liked about comic books; the visual medium, sometimes truly gorgeous art, can be laid low by the same. Sometimes big art and large splash pages with all the shiney colors and heroic contours (is there an A-cup superhero? I don't think so. Even The Wasp, whose powers involve becoming really small, is at least a B-C as far as I've always seen her portrayed) serves to draw away from the point. Or maybe there is no point.

Anyway, Ultimate Power, which is about how the Fantastic Four inadvertently piss off another superhero team from a parallel universe and need Iron Man et al. to rescue them. It opened very promisingly but devolved into panel-to-panel violence and not very precisely-executed plot.

And a _lot_ of D-cups. Come _on_.

Meanwhile I read a real comic (The Order of the Stick, it's in my sidebar -> way) and procrastinate some more.

Just like riding a bike

2008-06-23T10:24:00.003+08:00

Except that blogging doesn't burn calories. Or maybe it does if I type super super fast.

awehruiohsfuasdhfuioaJSuiasehpfuisdnfuasdhauhegtawe okay that didn't work. Darnitall.

So you know what else comes naturally? Creating ads, or at least all the parts up until you show it to your lecturer and she squints a bit and goes 'didn't they do that concept in an ad last time?' and you go 'fuckfuckfuckfuck' under your breath.

What doesn't come naturally is spending hours and hours typing a proposal. oy.

Or waking up at 6:30. That's not natural either.

Speaking of unnatural, Alanis Morisette's new album! It is fantastic! (the 4 songs I've heard from it are super duper awesome) She's doing the Ray of Light thing (information shameless ripped from wikipedia. So much for being a creative person and coming up with my own analogy) and changing her tone while still being alanisey at her core.

New adjective: Alanisey. Synonyms: Emo, but in a stylistically cool way that goes far beyond No One Understands My Painism.

Speaking of emoness, did I already mention that my freaking ad concept got done before!!! By someone else who wasn't me??? THE OUTRAGE

I'm going to drown my sorrows in brunch.

Cheer

2008-06-22T11:44:00.003+08:00

So I've missed this blog's birthday by 8 days.

So... happy 1 year 8 day presence on the internet for me!

And I've missed it because I haven't been updating. I don't really have a reason for all the people who've kept asking me other than I stopped for some reason that I can't quite remember. More than likely it was related to laziness. Anyway, after that, getting back into it kind of always seemed awkward and like 'what would I say?'

But self-inflicted barriers are always easier torn than erected, so yeah, hi internet. I like setting things on fire. How about you?

BURN! BURN! BWAHAHAHA!

How to make a human being:
Add procrastination, sense of art and self into a large angst bowl.
Dash intelligence in minor sprinklings, but only once properly soaked in emotional marinade. Deploy sense of humor.
Mix hobbies into resulting batter until smooth.
Pour into self-centered container.
Season with reason.
Add perspective to taste.
Sunbake for x number of years, until brown and wrinkly.

I've been enjoying a bunch of new things recently. I write a column for this lady 's magazine, and now that I've said that I fear I have to stop because I called her a lady and she might have me killed for slander or something.

I saw some awesome movies. Kung Fu Panda in particular was a very pleasant surprise. Ian McShane is a marvelous actor, and while Dustin Hoffman is always entertaining, look at this face and tell me you can't imagine him being a kung fu villian.
I haven't seen a non-pixar aniflick I liked better since Shrek. At this point I could go on and mention how awesome Hard Candy, In Bruges, and Perfume are, but you won't listen. (oh wait, Perfume has Dustin Hoffman in it too! And Alan Rickman! And In Bruges has Colin Farrell! Ralph Fiennes! Hard Candy is about pedophiles! Aaaaaaaaa)

Random stuff of the moment: God it's been a lovely day!

p.s. I should probably go do my assignments now eh.

Qu Ni Sheng Er Kuai Le

2008-04-20T10:56:00.002+08:00

The Cake is a Lie.
But that is okay, because my birthday is not.

Dear me,

Happy 22!

Best regards,
Me.

Aww, how sweet.

MASSIVE apologies to those of you who attempted to surprise me by being where you thought I was going to be but actually turned out to be somewhere else! I will make it up to all of you in monetary form!

...

okay maybe not!

How about hugs?

<3

It's gonna be a great year I can feel it in my keyboard fingers.

Last day of work

2008-04-17T11:24:00.002+08:00

my internship, begun at the start of the year, is no more.

Is this a soppy reflection of my time spent at this company? Not really. I do remember what it was about this job that made me halt blogging, in that there's always so much job. I've been crazed this last week trying to finish up the last of my things before I go, and now I'm so close to the end I can see the little flag.

I did learn a lot.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go party like it's 1599.

After I finish scanning these newspapers, obv.

Advertorial Interlude

2008-03-29T13:45:00.002+08:00

Ads for beer traditionally (don't ask me why) have really high production values and tend to be quite entertaining. Anyone who's seen the Jennifer Aniston spot for Heineken will agree.

So imagine my delight when I found a truly fantastic one for (of all things?) Bud Light.

My inner linguist is pleased.

Follow ups here and here. Watch all three, they're equally phenomenal.

see this is why I need to play more WoW

2008-03-26T13:57:00.002+08:00

I missed this during Valentine's Day.

Le sigh.

A Brother to Dragons

2008-03-26T10:32:00.002+08:00

Rediscovering an old flame can be such bliss. In my case, working had removed a large part of my ability to play World of Warcraft. Coupled with the lack of raiding my guild had been doing
being able to get back into the groove this past weekend was great. There's something viscerally satisfying about slinging fireballs that crit for three thousand damage and leave residual burn on a target, knowing that every time I do this the giant monster/dragon/boss thing in front of us is that much closer to falling down dead, leaving precious precious loot for us to cheer over and distribute.

So yea, that was fun. Unfortunately the long weekend ended and I'm back here at work, tapping out this blog entry in the periods of waiting for files to download that constitute my job. They added a new island to the World of Warcraft yesterday; I got a brief look at it this morning, all rain-soaked and misty (I woke up early because I was sleeping on my arm and my elbow fucking hurt.) and as I swooped in for a landing amongst the teeming population of people who'd also came in on Day One to have a look at the place. I stood on a ship where the Commander of the Shattered Sun Offensive pored over a map of the island (they're trying to capture it) while flaming arrows flew overhead and in the foggy distance ships drifted in the tide; a blockade? Supply convoy? I don't know, and I didn't have the time to find out.

But as I rode beneath the spires and ramps of gold, I knew in my heart only one thing.

Somewhere on this island, there is a dragon. And I want nothing more than to throw fireballs at it until it falls down.

Happy Holiday everyone

2008-03-20T18:21:00.001+08:00

*busies himself Not Blogging*

Arthur C Clarke is dead.

2008-03-19T12:49:00.002+08:00

Adams, dead. Gygax, dead. Pratchett, Alzheimer's (although apparently the good kind)

RIP A.C. Clarke.

'The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.'

-Clarke's 2nd Law

The Abyss Gazes Also

2008-03-19T11:06:00.005+08:00

So I saw Memento yesterday. Christopher Nolan currently has a perfect track record for me: Memento, Batman Begins, The Prestige.

Now I have to see Insomnia I guess.

Memento is.. surreal. It's a movie about a man with Drew Barrymore's condition in 50 First Dates, i.e. he has no short term memory. The scenes are shown in reverse order, so the climax of the film actually happens right up front. The thing is that although this is shown, there is no context. We don't understand why the character did what he did or who he did it to. So then it moves backwards, until we find out why.

It's not precisely the same as United 93, which is another film in which we already know the ending when we begin (hint: the plane crashes. Not really a spoiler. It's like telling someone at the start of Titanic that the ship sinks)

So the movie is a useful glimpse into the workings of a mind with no short term memory. A memorable scene opens with the main character running in a car park.
Narration: So... what am I doing?
He sees a man running.
Okay, I'm chasing this guy.
The man sees him, fires a gun.
Nope, he's chasing me.

It has a large number of actors in it who I really enjoy. It has Carrie Anne Moss, fresh from the Matrix, and displaying much more acting ability here than in the entire trilogy. Most people love to diss Keanu Reeves, but they haven't seen him in proper roles, like Scanner Darkly or Constantine, and I suspect the lack of acting in the Matrix by the protagonists was intentional. Some parts it worked, some parts it didn't, but the movies are still fun anyway.

It also has Joe Pantaliano, who was Cypher from the Matrix. He's great in this one, much more subtle and less over the top serial villain.

And rounding it out is Keith Callum Rennie, who admittedly has only a tiny role in this film and doesn't say much. His most memorable line is 'You did?', but he gets to talk a lot more on Battlestar Galactica, where he is killed, many, many times by Starbuck et al and speaks cryptically about what hovers between life and death. Leoben Conoy, we love ya.

Speaking of Galactica, new episodes begin airing April 4th. APRIL FOURTH. That's like no time away. Fuck you America's Next Top Model, fuck you Who Wants To Be A Superhero, it's Battlestar fucking Galactica, and it is going to rock your tiny little world.

Is there truly any other show (besides Firefly and possibly Six Feet Under) that manages to be as uniformly excellent as Galactica? I'm open to suggestions!

Fearful Symmetry

2008-03-18T09:41:00.003+08:00

There's a Chinese saying that I love. I don't love it as much as 'May you live in interesting times' but it's still great.

It goes: We are born wet, naked, and hungry.

From there it gets worse.

Life is symmetrical, in a way. You may not think so given the random permutations of everyday lifery but there's a certain... well, okay. You start out helpless, thoughtless, and unable to communicate with anyone about how you feel think or do. You wear diapers and eat liquids. What happens at the end? Same deal, except you don't get to finish as an orgasm.

is a short film about life, I guess, by way of a 14-year-old with tremendous acting ability and what appears to be a pernicious amount of freckles. My Name is Lisa is up for a Youtube Award for Best Short Film and although I have a soft spot for some of the others (My First Crush is beautiful) Carlie Nettle, for that be the name of the highly talented teenager, absolutely nailed the performance here. It's so spot on as to be almost invisible. Myself I think the film might have worked better with more 4th wall for a more 'homemade feel' but the- oh fuck it, WATCH THE DAMN THING ALREADY.

Someone said to me yesterday (if you're reading this, sif not comment) that she wanted to collaborate with me on something different from my usual purview 'You know, not science fiction or thriller. Something real world.'

As if there is any other kind of real world. Now where's my lightsaber.

Musical Interlude

2008-03-17T12:59:00.002+08:00

This is for all the children of the 80's.

I fuckin' love this stuff.

Watchmaker

2008-03-17T10:13:00.002+08:00

Cowl of the Grand Engineer.

SIGH.

So yesterday we dropped Void Reaver:
who is a fifty foot robot who shoots balls of energy from his hands and has five million hit points. For contrast, Illidan who is the final big nasty in all of World of Warcraft (and is about, ooh, 20 bosses away from Void Reaver) has 6.8 million.

In essence, he's a clocktock contraption gone mad (MAD I SAY!!) and he needed to be put down for our own safeties. And loot, of course. Never forget the loot. You gotta wonder sometimes about the suspension of disbelief in this game when 25 people throw fireballs at a fifty foot robot for 10 minutes and after he falls over and breaks apart, we rummage through his broken metallic innards for magic items.

Like the Cowl of the Grand Engineer. SIGH.

I seriously gotta get out of my Spellstrike gear soon. It's awesome, but aged. I've been wearing it for a year now. It's served well, but I have an upgrade plan all lined out (once we can kill the actual bosses involved) to replace it.

Part of which was the Cowl of the Grand Engineer (SIGH!!!!!!!)

It was Einstein who said in regret over the development of the atom bomb that had he known, he should have become a watchmaker. Speaking of old German men, Happie Berfdae Andreas!

The Judge of all the Earth

2008-03-15T11:04:00.004+08:00

There was a play I went to yesterday. One of the shorts was about a self-confessed god-fearing virtuous man, who worked in a job who exposed him to corruption yet he remained strong. In a momentary lapse, he fell to weakness and was overtempted by sin.

I liked the play because it portrayed both sides convincingly. The religious absolutist vs the 'liberal' who espoused the truth of human nature.

It's not a duality that you get to see established often. I have Views about religion, but the play danced through these conventions with ease and ended up sympathizing with the protag even though he represented that which usually makes me uneasy; blind morality, unswerving faith, the jazz.

I'm currently working on a play called Icarus, which is about the sun, obv. It's about how the sun affects us as people (see what I did there? I just made it sound about fifty times deeper than it actually is. Try this at home kids!)

More precisely it's about how we as a people... let me rephrase, how you or I as a person would react to a world-changing event such as a man-made solar eclipse that lasted for months.

What would allow for such power to be put into the right / wrong hands? Who gets the say? Who gets to take responsbility for the devastating effects to the ecology? To anthropology? Human psychology? What's to stop us from emulating Arthur C Clarke's Nightfall, where an entire planet goes insane because of fear of darkness?

Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?

Edit: Isaac Asimov, not Arthur C. Clarke, wrote Nightfall. Thank you Naoko.

Absent Friends

2008-03-14T16:35:00.002+08:00

Speaking on gtalk to people who are no longer in my immediate vicinity has been very illuminating to me as a person.

First of all, it made me realize how inferior MSN is as an instant messenger. I already much prefer gmail, and now I much prefer gtalk.

I'm a minimalist with my computer things. I just downloaded the new version of Nero (Nero 8) and I was aghast when it told me it was 180 megabytes. WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU PUT IN IT YOU TWITS? Does it open the CD, reach out into the world, and attempt to locate an empty CD-R? Does it scratch the CD label into the disc with its sheer psychic powers? It fucking better! One! Hundred! And Eighty! Megabytes!

I haven't installed it yet because it detected Nero 6 on my PC, and Nero 6 refuses to uninstall. I therefore need a new CD burning program that doesn't suck. Suggestions.

Back to the topic at hand. Gtalk. Gtalk is lovely. If you don't have gmail, you really should get it. It's the epitome of what email should be, convenient, easy, FAST. The simplistic beauty of an email client that lets you IM chat in the same place you browse your email and is 100% browser based with no downloads is so mind bogglingly awesome I didn't even realize it was mind bogglingly awesome until after I started using it for a bit.

It also helps me keep in contact, like I said, with my friends. Said friends I suspect have the same irrational hatred of MSN as me. ____ has come online! deserves to die. Die a horrible, painful death, mostly because it alt-tabs me from programs that really do not like to be alt-tabbed from.

That's another pet peeve. When I review a game, if I review a game, you know, professionally, if I have to give it a score card, you know, graphics, sound, gameplay, there'll be a column for 'Alt-tab friendliness' i.e., to what degree can I alt-tab this game and alt-tab back in and still have it work?

Some do well. Sins of a Solar Empire simply pauses and waits for you, and has decent load times back and forth. World of Warcraft has a decent wait sometimes and every so often there's a memory leak, but that can be fixed by alt-tabbing back and forth.

Team Fortress 2 sucks at this. I love the game but if I alt-tab out of it I may as well just quit and load it up again. Extra bonus suck when my antivirus decides to update in the background and instead of headshotting that heavy from across the map I click 'OK' to the 'your update has completed!' box of AVG

That's ANOTHER thing. Do I really, really need a 'your update has been completed!' box? I know it's been completed, and even if I didn't, I don't care. If I needed to know, really really, burningly NEEDED to know, I'd check! And it absolutely, 100%, does NOT need to minimize the game which takes forever to load and will never ever ever load probably after it's been minimized, TYVM!

Sigh.

World In Conflict impressed me with the alt-tabbage. If you alt-tab, the game will go 'Please wait, reloading resources' which reeks of 'hey we thought of this first, check us out, we're awesome.' but in a good way.

Stay tuned; tomorrow I will ramble on even more impressively about something even more random. OR MAYBE I WON'T!

I'm sick

2008-03-13T13:22:00.001+08:00

filling in for me is Terry Fator and Emma Taylor.

Watch this. The whole video is one long wtf moment.

At midnight all the agents

2008-03-12T10:22:00.003+08:00

I've discovered Tristan Prettyman.

Apparently she used to date Jason Mraz, and she makes nice music (heard two songs so far) and I hope there's more where that came from.

Saw this great piece of copywriting for BMW. The ad shows the car, and the copy reads 'Sometimes history repeats itself. Sometimes it gets lapped.'

Speaking of clever sayings, the girls kissing poster friend from yesterday's post (was it yesterday? can't remember. Day before if it isn't) had a great one:

'She opened my mind to a whole new world of possibilities and emotions. It was really inconsiderate of her.'

anyway I'm at work, thinking about way too many things to accurately capture, and for once I think I'm just going to let them slide.

The Adventures of Intern

2008-03-11T09:25:00.003+08:00

Chapter 2, Volume 9

So I'm in the office early, kind of wishing I wasn't, cause I would much rather be running heroics and getting badges for all the shiny new items coming out in the next patch of WoW, but what the heck.

I've always found the token-for-items concept slightly amusing. It's like saying 'hey, you've killed Arglegax VII, the insect queen of Silithus. Have a badge.' It's like the boy scouts, only with much more violence. Because let's face it, WoW is an incredibly violent game. Committing (or at least aiding and abetting, in the case of healer classes) mass genocide of indigenous flora and fauna to achieve your goals is not exactly a kid friendly message aye?

Worse still is the 'remorse' some of the quest givers feel.

Rachaela Starshine: 'I hate to say it, but it seems like the infection has spread. We must put down the entire bear population of Ashenvale.'
Me: 'Wat.'

or the quest before that, which goes:

Starshine: 'We need to ascertain how widespread the infection is. Here, have a-'
Me: 'Syringe? Magic thermometer? Geiger counter?'
Starshine: '...bag for collecting their livers.'
Me: 'wheeee (fireballs)'

People are always talking about AI in games, but if the WoW creatures ever developed enough intelligence to form unions, we're booped.

While we're on the subject of games, I got one yesterday called Shadowgrounds: Survivor. I haven't played it yet, but it's a top-down shooter that allows for co-op play on the same PC. Yes that's right. This game comes with multiple mouse/keyboard support. I plugged in my old mouse, checked the 'detect multiple devices' button and soon the two little marines were moving and shooting independently of each other. Oh the thrills I will soon have.

Non-gaming: I was told by my friend recently that she really really wanted a poster of one of the works of photographer Tanya Chalkin. Having a passing interest in fine art photography I said 'oh that's nice, what's it called?' and she said 'Google girls kissing poster.'

Me: ...
Her: What? It's nice!
Me: ...I'm sure.
Her: Just google it.
Me: (googles)
Me: Oh I've seen this. (chances are good that you've seen it too, it's a very famous photo)
Her: Yeah, isn't it great! My friend has it, and I want it so bad.
Me: Isn't it kind of, you know, out? I mean, you live in a dorm.
Her: But it's so cool!!!
Me: Whatever you say dear.

Which about sums up the relationship I have with this friend, minus the awesome taste in music.

The first day of a brave, new world

2008-03-10T10:04:00.002+08:00

Life has changed, not suddenly, but gradually, over a period of time. Deep inside, the changes could be felt, slowly, but niggling, as though a toothache. Now they rise to the surface in bubbles, carrying with them nuggets of discontent, themselves merely oysters hiding the pearls of the inside truth which had been shining to get out all along.

Today is the first day of a brave, new world.

Burying the familiar, it is time to venture awkwardly, strangely forward, into the varying and unknown future.

Vote for Malaysia

2008-03-09T09:48:00.002+08:00

And so they have.

Kelantan, Kedah, Perak, Penang, and Selangor no longer Barisan Nasional majorities.

I'll probably be ISA'ed for this, but woot!

No 2/3 majority for BN either. Personally I wanted a 50-49-1 split but a start is a start.

Jelly, jam, preserves, conserves, fruit?

2008-03-08T17:26:00.003+08:00

What's the difference? :P

Just a random thought I had while eating the most exquisite jam (conserve? Jelly? INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW!!!) sandwiches. Sweet and sour make my tastebuds very excited. Try this at home: Lightly butter a slice of bread. Place strawberry jam on another slice of bread. Place slice o cheese in between, eat slowly. If you like any of the above ingredients, this is something you should try.

But how easy it can be to switch ones mood. Something so small, a sandwich, a gesture, a random statement by an anonymous stranger on the series of tubes that is this internet. A headshot from halfway across the map onto an enemy soldier who'd killed me five or six different times before I landed the revenging blow. You know, little things.

So I just tried to google image headshot so I could find an appropriate image to illustrate my point and I get:

meh, can't complain. It was either that or:

Haphazard

2008-03-07T11:54:00.002+08:00

It is the nature of the blog to be momentary; ephemeral. The thoughts you have this minute are not the thoughts you had sixty seconds earlier. It brings into the mind a fleeting sensation of infinity; if I had written this at 11:53 instead of 11:54, how much different would it be? Would my word choice be influenced? My thought process? I was reading about Annie Oakley earlier; would the knowledge of a girl marksman who lived in the 19th century have changed my post any? (it already has, but I read a lot of things this morning)

If the Cuban Missile Crisis had taken place a day later or earlier, how would it go?

The combinations and permutations of the random chaos of the human mind are essentially infinite, but what is perceived to be chaotic is sometimes deterministic: a butterfly's wing a nanometer out of step with the nature of the universe leading to a total waveform collapse, and a storm, perhaps, or a teacup drizzling. If the same butterfly in the same environment with the same variables (air pressure, wind, etc) were to perform the exact same movement, the results, due to the immutable laws of physics, would be precisely the same in every outcome.

In much the same way, a replication (it is assumed) of every single moment of a human life will produce the same thought processes, the same internal consciousness, and the same return output. It's a little tempting to go 'but hang on a minute...' and argue that nothing is truly constant, especially something so vexingly infinite as the human mind, and invoke quantum laws like 'the act of observation changes that which is being observed', but on the whole, I think, it's pretty much constant.

Okay, philosophical random rant over with. I HAVE A NEW FUCKING PC.
It runs team fortress GREAT. Max resolution, texture settings, smooth as butter melting on a Heavy's minigun barrel. I loaded the game up and my brother said 'Go watch that teleporter build' so I stared at a rotating piece of automated metal for ten seconds and we collectively 'oohed' and 'aahed' at the prettiness.

Okay, he oohed. I just went 'nice' and went back to wholesale manslaughter.

While we're on the subject of collaborations, the theater calls once more; although I am significantly more out of touch with the 'scene' than my thespian sibling, a recent open mic gig (The Platform at KLPAC, for those of you who didn't go, hang your heads in shame. Shame!) saw him performing a script half penned by himself and half hammered, slaved, bloodied, sweated, teared, and transformed by me. I felt he did my work justice (so much so as justice can be referred to in theater) and the organizer (one Gavin Yap) liked the 3 performers that night enough that he recruited us to do a collaborative effort for the next month's gig.

Awesomes. Ideas spin, gears form, and the universe becomes, once more, a small place, reducible to the sum of its parts by the vivisection of ideas.

(what the fuck, I thought I left this verbose crap in the first section. Never mind. Boobs guns massive hard drives. Explosions ammo ultraviolence. Backstabs grenades gams beer television superbowl bosoms jugs pillows breasts hooters shakers stonking great TITS)

Geekgasm

2008-01-27T06:28:00.000+08:00

If you're a human being with a functioning pop culture sensibility and was born within the last 40 years, you need to watch this now.

The tingles I felt at 0:50 were practically palpable.

Right

2008-01-25T20:59:00.000+08:00

So commutes lasting THREE HOURS are not bloody acceptable...

TGIF is all I have to say

Ride Your Music

2008-01-21T10:23:00.000+08:00

So this weekend I got into the beta for this rather amazing game called Audiosurf...

...and after pondering about how to tell you people about it I realized it's really freaking difficult. Okay, how to explain it.

It's really quite a clever system; the basic premise is that you load any music file into the game, and it will automatically generate a 'track' for you to ride on with a little mouse-controlled car, and the object of the game is to collect the colored bricks which appear in time with the beat / rhythm of your song and score points by creating combinations of 3 or more.

.... It's really really addictive >.< Especially in the 2-player co-op mode (2 player co-op mode! On a PC!!) where each player is responsible for half the track and combinations that join both halves score mondo points. TRES MAGNIFIQUE.

It's coming out soon, so make sure you get it. This is seriously fantastic stuff.

The Return of the King

2008-01-17T15:33:00.000+08:00

So according to this it has been 13 days since I last updated. My excuse is that I've been working. 'What about weekends?' Asked the friend who I was on the phone with on whether or not I'd updated my blog, to which I had no witty comeback.

WORK, the great panacea, has been in equal amounts fun and tedious. Actual work is balanced out by me doing Creative Things, which don't count as work because the hours pass by quik. I drink cold Milo and type a lot, run things to and fro from the various departments and participate in the gargantuan e-mail threads that have been running through my days.

Currently the only thing I dislike about work is the journey, both ways. It sucks. It should not take three hours off my life to travel every day. Tis unreasonable. The good news is no one really cares if you're in by nine or not, and most people aren't, this being the creative industry.

I have recently played through the very very good World In Conflict, a very very good video for which you absolutely positively 100% must watch here. The game is permeated by cinema-like qualities, including and up to impeccable acting from each of the characters and solid writing to back it up.

It doesn't hurt that it has possibly the prettiest nuclear explosions ever.

The crux of the game is that you control a very small number of units (never exceeding 12 or thereabouts) in a theater of operations where several other allied commanders assist you in one of many specialized 'roles', either infantry, air, armor, or support. Most battles will be fought in towns and cities, like shown in the video above, and a major feature of the game is the ability to call in off-map support aid, such as paratroopers, artillery barrages, airstrikes, and the aforementioned nukes, which is so difficult to obtain that you're practically cackling with glee as you order the strike upon your unsuspecting enemy.

The first time I dropped the bomb, it was in the middle of downtown Seattle in a simulated skirmish against the AI. I had my back against the wall, and ordered the attack straight into the space needle where a huge concentration of enemy forces were clumped. I watched as the missile came, seemingly from nowhere, and the blinding flash of light heralded the destruction of everything beneath, leveling the city and turning everything in its gigantic blast radius to smoke and mushroom cloud ash.

Victory for me, as my tanks rolled in to claim the ground, but as my troops navigated the massive ruins left by the blast, I came to the sobering realization. I'd nuked Seattle. It seems really silly to have moral conflicts over a strategic decision in a videogame, but downtown was dust, and the iconic Space Needle rubble.

Note to prospective mates; the author does not approve of the wholesale destruction of major american cities, nor does he condone or accept this act in any way. The author is actually a kind, compassionate individual who loves rabbits and likes to propose his affectations in flowers.

Another excellent video from World in Conflict

2008-01-17T14:00:00.000+08:00

Haunting and harsh; why can't all games have storytelling this good?

TV is a medium because it is neither rare nor well done

2008-01-04T07:30:00.000+08:00

So I've started my internship at Company X!

Company X is a big ad firm. Company X has won lots of awards. Company X has tons of big clients. (I'm going to go see Car Maker Y today with my supervisor)

Company X also has nice people working in it who were nice to me. They asked me how I thought of my first day, and I told them I was optimistic and hopeful. Then they stared off into space and said 'yeah, I was like that too.' which did nothing for my confidence.

While I was there I sat in on a meeting about the ads for Electronics Company Z and tinkered on some copy for Shopping Mall A. My desk is located at the end of a hall (it has a window!) and for the first time in my life, I have an extension number.

Today I hope to receive my laptop and be able to blog er I mean work online. So far it has been fairly easy on the amount of things I've had to do but I get the feeling that's going to change before long. Some of the Nice People lent me some advertising books which I am slowly devouring.

Right, it's 7:30. Off to work I go.

'Research shows the customer likes X, Y, and Z. But showing them X Y and Z isn't advertising, it's journalism.'

Messages

2008-01-01T18:12:00.000+08:00

I was going to write about my overnight New Year's Party with the writers at the Legend, about how we drank nice drinks and talked good talk and were quite happy indeed with the new year, but then I found this, and my desire to say anything else pretty much vanished.

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't to forget make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

-Neil Gaiman

P.S. When the new Mia Palencia album comes out at the end of the month, I will be a very happy person indeed.

Nix that.

2007-12-29T12:49:00.001+08:00

So I've just completed the Abhorsen Trilogy from Garth Nix. It's not bad considering it's from an Aussie writer (I kid I kid)

I do think he's kind of taken the easy way out; as in, the first book does stand on its own really well and leaves you wanting to find out what happens next, and the second book has some of the best scenes, but the third book is essentially Book 2 Part 2. Which isn't bad, but feels like we could have gotten more story. It's kind of cheating, in my opinion.

Speaking of Cheating, I picked up a copy of George R. R. (R. R. R. R. R.) Martin's 2nd Song of Ice and Fire book. In my previous post about the series I marvel that a book with 800 pages still didn't conclude any of the stories it introduced. Sequeldom ahoy.

While we're on the subject of Fantasy I saw the Golden Compass, which I enjoyed thoroughly. People I know say it wasn't that good and the people I saw it with only thought it was so so. I am sad for them because they haven't read the book. Reading the book then watching this movie greatly enhances the experience. It's like having the best bits read out to you by Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. It's a great book, and a good film, not the kind of film you'd buy on DVD and watch for ever and ever but I like it more than, say, the fellowship of the ring.

Right, trudging through fantasy stuff done. Let's get some sci-fi in.

Pushing the video off the links

2007-12-27T01:31:00.000+08:00

edit: if you're here from facebook, this is the 'selling out' post.

But there's more to this blog entry than moving troublesome screen real estate. I just came off watching the film The Brave One which has one of my favorite actresses, Jodie Foster, in what I can only describe as a perfect Jodie Foster role. The word is plucky. This woman can act, and is, to my mind, very, very beautiful.

Which is difficult, really, because very few famous people truly are beautiful. They may be sexy (however the media wishes to define it) but there are but a scant (pun intended) handful (pun intended) of truly gorgeous women in the movies. There's something about 'perfect' beauty which really doesn't do anything for me. Good makeup and straight blond hair; boring. A smile like lightning and a delightful accent; zing. I actually had a discussion about this with Queer Ranter and he helped pick some of the choices here.

I don't know, honestly, how we got from me wanting to write about The Brave One (which is very very good) to me putting up pictures of celebrities I find attractive, but that is the dichotomy of me, I guess. Trying to be high-minded but falling just short of ribald.

The list, as far as my brain could make: (and in no order at all)

Jodie Foster

While trying to find a decent picture of her on the internet, I stumbled accidentally across a little known fact: She's gay. Or, if not gay, living with a woman for 13 years. :P

She's also astonishingly beautiful, while being the oldest person on this list. She's got a presence that very few other actors can touch, and it doesn't hurt that she's jaw-droppingly amazing in terms of ability. Watch any Foster movie; you can see why she's a big name.

Jennifer Morrison

I'm almost 100% sure I misspelled that, but the masculine/feminine not quite androgynous Ms. Morisson is pretty enough to make me want to strangle her House co-star Spencer for being lucky enough to be marrying the girl.

As Dr. Cameron she can be at turns uninteresting and the best thing on the show. Her outfits can be _SO CUTE_. She did a turn as Lt. Kirce James in the last Command and Conquer game and was quite hot in the uniform, although the major quibble is she never got to fire any kind of weapon.

Sarah Shahi

Er, let's see. Iranian, raised in Texas, plays a Latino on a Los Angeles TV show... For no good reason at all, The L Word has the highest concentration of beautiful women on a show, ever. Clearly they want king of the hill and don't like to share...

Shahi plays a DJ named Carmen who dates the infamous Shane. Their relationship is... I think the word I'm looking for is somewhere between 'melting' and 'plasmatic', but rest assured, it's not mindless. Not that I'm against mindless sex, on a show about lesbians no less, but somehow Sarah manages to rise above that by (surprise surprise) being actually able to act. It would be easy to write the L Word off as soft porn posing as high context, but who the hell cares. It's got Sarah Shahi, and that's all that matters.

Keira Knightley

The most traditional beauty on this list. I don't even know what to say that will be interesting, save the fact that she's still doing small, non-blockbuster films (on your list to see: Atonement). She has a disturbing propensity to get naked at the drop of a hat, which isn't a bad quality in a person but certainly spoils the fun for people trying to make lists of beautiful women, because all the photos on google are NSFW and not quite what you're looking for.

I settled on this one because polka dots are cute. Don't get me started on her accent.

Charlize Theron

The most superficial entry, not due to any fault of hers, but because the sheer hawtness of her Aeon Flux outfit is her only reason for inclusion.

...don't look at me like that >.>

Kate Winslet

Is there really anything to say? She's got the accent, she's got the looks, she takes the Tube, and she makes inadvertent lesbian jokes about Cameron Diaz. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of the great love stories of our generation, and her performance is so spot on as to be flawless.

Lauren Ambrose

Slightly more deranged than the rest of the family Fisher, the youngest child Claire from HBO's delightful Six Feet Under exudes charm, insecurity, and humanity. It didn't hurt her case that she's a redhead, and got to make out with Mena Suvari.

I had a crush on Lauren for the longest time. JUST LOOK AT HER. Her character's story is a major crux of the show's end arc, and her final scene is just heartbreaking. To inject so much humanity into a fictional character so breathlessly and with so much punch is no mean effort, and she deserves to find her way into the greater public consciousness, because this girl is amazing.

Jennifer Beals

The 2nd most beautiful woman on the L Word, and the 2nd oldest person here. Beals is a force of nature. 2 of my favorite scenes on the entire show are hers:

A heartbroken Beals walks into the kitchen, and burns her hand on the kettle. The anguished 'Fuuuuuck!' she emits, and the way her face crumbles as what was meant to be a cup of tea turns into only more pain was positively ethereal in its power and sadness. I rewatched the scene ten times, each time growing more impressed.

She and Marlee Matlin, another wonderful actor, share marijuana smoke by the pool. The shot is closer than close, their lips fill the frame, barely touching, the smoke like life passing between them. It's eros beyond your normal T&A, and it's chemistry like nothing you've ever seen in fiction. They are without a doubt my favorite TV couple of all time.

Emma Watson

Even Roger Ebert said of her in Chamber of Secrets, 'firmly in the early stages of babehood.' She's English. She's a babe. She's Hermione. And in a few movies time, she'll be onscreen with Helena Bonham Carter (who is a bloody genius) There is nothing bad to say about this girl.

Scarlett Johansson

The word is smoky. Hazel. She was, and forever will be, Lost in Translation, but I do hope she does more films; she's hands down the sexiest traditional Hollywood girl. It is rare indeed that tabloid girls catch my eye, but don't take that to mean that her reputation is in any way sully. Besides her extremely ample asseture, she has actual talent, believe it or not, and I would be lying if I said part of it did not stem from the fact that LiT is possibly the most beautiful movie about love I have ever seen.

Merry Orthodoxically Approved Religious Holiday!

2007-12-24T15:34:00.000+08:00

Allow me to be the good pagan and link:

Geeks unite!

Comic Fiesta

2007-12-16T22:01:00.000+08:00

Well I've survived my first anime convention. Honestly, besides the fact that I had to stand a lot, it wasn't so bad. There were a lot of cosplayers; most of the girls dressed up as either elaborately themed or scantily-clad female anime characters, and most of the guys dressed up as either Darth Maul or scantily-clad female anime characters. I had the distinct feeling that I'd arrived at Planet Geek, but had taken a wrong turn somewhere in high orbit and ended up on the wrong continent. Everywhere around me was sold art or figurines (both usually of the scantily clad variety) and people saying 'kawaii!!!'.

My brother and I joked: At an otaku convention, they say Kawaii. At a western convention, they go Omg. Both have approximately the same meaning...

The winner of 'best cosplayer' was Hellboy. The Red Right Hand Rules! Take THAT Yuffie! Take that Sailor Moon! Take that random anime character! (feels he has to defend his western geekness against all of otakudom)

The highlight of the entire day was the human chess game, played by the 32 finalists of the cosplay competition. The rules: Do battle in character. It was brilliant. The combative characters would fight (Hellboy and another anime character armed with a staff were particularly entertaining), the scurrier characters chased their prey about with brooms or other decorative props, the non-combat ones would talk their opponents into submission or flee before the sight of a cardboard blade. The inevitable pawnlock at the end of the game was dissolved into a melee, and you could see the cosplayers grinning with barely suppressed glee as they proceeded to dispatch each other.

There was, as I could see, no rehearsal to the entire thing, but there was unspoken agreement between the combatants. On some unspoken cue, a swung attack would 'hit' home, and the defeated would fall to their knees valiantly as the coup de grace delivered with flair. It was brilliant, and funny, and exuberant.

The match ended with the two 'kings', in actuality both rival queens from the same anime, faced off alone. One, unarmed, begged the other for her life, entirely in character. The other responded with mercy, and as the crown rolled off the defeated monarch's head, I found myself thinking 'wow'. These are people living the characters they know and love, and having so much fun doing so. This is why cons are the roaring success they are; like minded people doing the things they love and doing it with passion.

Now I want my convention: Marines and Dwarves wandering amongst the crowd, greeting guests with 'Elune De la Nore' or 'Adun Torinas,' the posters, the art books, the throng of fans. I want to end up on my planet.

p.s. the people I went with were pretty cool too. :P

Threefor1

2007-12-14T16:45:00.000+08:00

Being:

My exams are over! *hooray* I am now bereft of a reason to fret and worry and peer obsessively at little scraps of paper. This feels GREAT. I feel fantastic; and I never felt as good as how I do right now
except maybe for maybe when I think of how I felt that day
when I felt the way
that I do right now
Right now

...yes I did just burst into song. So what? <.< >.>

I have changed my 'C is For:' in celebration. Damnit, that should have been my new word. Celebration. Bah! My change committee will hear of this.

I am tonight going to a play!

My brother is in it, and if you have not realized by now my brother is a babe. So knowing as I am that my blog demographic is mostly full of... shall we say, happy people? (JANVIER I CAN SEE YOU SMIRKING STOP IT RIGHT NOW) this should be more than enough encouragement for you to come.

If you're playing for a different team, you may then be pleased to know that the play is freaking excellent. I went for the preview night and was horrified to learn that the director had removed some of the more verbose patois. My inner hyperpolysyllabicssesquipedalianist was offended, to say the least. Could not the actors have at least said 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' in place of some of the more prolixic lexicography?

But rest assured, what remains is fantastic.

'He speaks such beautiful words, but he throws them about like leaves. When he speaks, you lose track of where you end and he begins, and after five minutes you find you're breathing in tempo with him.'

And I don't have the script book with me right now so I can't quote more, much as I would like to.

Terry Pratchett has alzheimer's. It's like a family tragedy that you heard about only distantly. How long before we say so long, and thanks for all the fish?

And at the same time, Dan Brown remains in the peak of health? WTF?

'All this thinking about the human brain has led me to believe in the existence of God. Evolution is a very efficient process, and would not have created something so palpably stupid.' - Terry Pratchett.

The Grim Cleaner

2007-12-11T00:16:00.000+08:00

I am the bringer of death, the reaper of souls
The cleaner of carpet, the mender of holes.

I rise on wings of pure darkness and night
The strong then shall tremble, and cower ‘fore my might
But at home, the life is all sweetness and sour
With my handy dishcloth using lemon-clean power.

My names are Charon, and Kali, and Death
The Charbidis and Scylla, the Last Final Test
But the dishes won’t just do themselves in the blender
And so the air fills with the softest lavender

After that I take to my Hoover most trusted
Whose body is old, broken, battered and crusted
But save it I have from the edge of my scythe
For if I can bring death, so too I give life.

I am the bringer of death, the end of the hill.
But if I don’t clean up around here, no one will.

White Tape

2007-12-10T23:39:00.000+08:00

I've just come off finishing the absolutely massive A Game of Thrones, a book which I recommend to anyone who enjoys the English language, but also caution that the damn thing is 807 pages long and has the decency to end in a cliffhanger, possibly because the author was told he couldn't have any more paper in the damn thing or else it'd fall apart in shipping.

I read that last paragraph again and I realize I called it 'the damn thing' twice when the book is really quite lovely. The first of seven books, A Game of Thrones tells the story of House Stark of the North, who live in perpetual winter and the way their family is drawn into conflict against the King of the Seven Kingdoms and the antagonistic House Lannister, whose eldest daughter lies Queen of the realm. The book reminds me very much of Dune in terms of plot depth and personal drive, but there are two key differences for me:

Dune was excellent up until the part where Atreides is betrayed and the protagonist left for dead in the desert. After that, bleh. Huge sagging middle bit. I had to struggle to get through most of it. Don't get me wrong, Bene Gesserit witches rule, and Paul is no slouch himself but I honestly had to slog through. Not so with Game of Thrones, and this brings me to the 2nd difference:

The story is told from the perspective of nine (!!!!) different characters and never gets stale; the blood tingled in my spine after several of the really awesome bits. Not everything is surface value in this book, even the twisted Lannisters hold honor and pride, and the valiant heroes often rub away to reveal something else entirely. Through it you are guessing and leaping on every page, and the man can really write, even if I suspect he's got a thing for young girls.

I hadn't finished the book before, even though it's been in my possession for nearly a month because I was afraid that reading it would spoil my novel. I was right. It has. I look at the misshapen thing I tinkered out and I want to cry in dismay. Then I want to print it all out so I can burn it, and throw it and myself into the rainy night, shouting cries of anguish and grief.

The other reason I hadn't finished it before now is mentioned in the first paragraph: IT'S FUCKING HUGE.

In other news: my exam went well, I finished the paper, which is an achievement, believe you me.

p.s. A very huge thanks to Al for enriching my life by lending me this book. I can only hope to repay the kindness by slicing small parts of my internal organs into a jar and growing a fruit tree from the parts, then picking the ripened product and making from it the best damn salad ever created by human hands, but unfortunately I'm crap at cooking, so 'thanks' will have to suffice.

CELEBRATION INCOMING

2007-12-10T11:44:00.000+08:00

Well a couple reasons to celebrate here...

First of all, this is my 100th blog entry! though it certainly doesn't feel like it. Blogger tells me my first post was June 14th, 5 months ago, which gives me 20 posts a month, or
one every 1.5 days. That's not too shabby, given how SLACK I've been lately...

That already feels like a different time, with me in a different place, in a different semester. Reading back through the old entries feels like a time capsule. It's awesome; it's what I started this blog to do, record slices of my life and keep them forevar.

I wanted to do something special as I approached 100 posts, such as a Best Of highlight, or a Reunion Tour, perhaps a Video Countdown, but unfortunately we've run into the other reason to celebrate, which is:

Corporate Identity Exam in 2 hours. *freakout*

The Unbearable Slackness Of Me

2007-12-09T14:00:00.000+08:00

or: What I Did On My Holidays

Nah, not so general. Let's talk about Saturday in particular, the other days were boring.

Yesterday was Saturday (I'm beginning to lose TRACK!!!!) and it started with me waking up rather late because I'd stayed up until 6am writing my novel. It progresses, slowly, and I haven't gotten to do much with my characters because I'm mopping up scenes I glossed over last time.

Then I called my choir leader and arranged transportation to the Curve where we were going to sing Carols and be Festive and Joyful. So we go, we park (and recited the parking mantra while orbiting the vast parking lot) and get up to Metrojaya to find that no one besides two other people have turned up, no one is turning up, and no one called to say they weren't going to turn up. So there we were, two basses, a tenor and an alto, to sing carols. Fucking aunties. To say this was irresponsible of them is a gross understatement. The choir leader asked me to stay on with them because they needed enthusiastic people even if my pitching was off. I felt so sorry for the poor woman, who is normally very lively and perky but her disappointment and anger upon realizing our predicament was palpable.

So after that I wandered about in Metro while waiting for the choir participated in by two of my fellow WriMos! Erna and Irene did marvellously, although I know for a fact that Erna was plotting against us by sending kids to do sickening saccharine choreography while attempting to look cute but ending up being facile. (To anyone who reads this: Children are cute. They are not, however, well coordinated by nature. Kids waving their hands in the air to christmas carols is good in theory, but smacks of brainwashing and people who care more about the result than anything else)

Then we had dinner, where Amelia proceeded to spend the entire evening making lewd jokes. The girl is tiny. She just finished SPM. WHAT ARE THEY TEACHING KIDS THESE DAYS!!?! but the dinner was overall pleasant and we had fun exchanging Firefly quotes and taking digs at everyone, as is WriMo fashion.

Then a few of us played pool a bit. Someone, Who Shall Remain Nameless, But You Know Who You Are, refused to play because quote 'I'm not leaning over a pool table in this dress' but proceeded to make dirty comments every time one of us guys bent over. Then said spoilsport drove me home, which I suppose redeems her in some way, and along the way Gnarls Barkley got on.

If you haven't head their song 'Crazy' yet, and like good music, click the video. If you haven't seen the video for the song, and appreciate quality music videos instead of the usual scantily clad gyration clips, click the video. If you feel like improving your quality of life by spending 5 minutes of your time, click the video. If you're a WriMo, click the video.

(although you can see scantily clad gyrations of a very high quality here.)

Then I went mamaking with Nicholas and Marvin. It was rather sedate, but the company is unparalleled.

Guest Blog

2007-12-04T19:56:00.001+08:00

I wrote a guest post over on my brother's blog a few days ago. Seeing as how I am being a lazy lazy bastard and not having anything to write about, I figured hey, backlog is free game.

'Marvin,' said I, 'When I am old and feeble, and my cold shriveled heart is a bitter shell of empty disappointment, will you be there to comfort and tend to me in my time of need?'

'Fuck no. I'll be knee deep in ho's and well-earned success.'

Marvin and I, in conversation

Hello! This is Marvin's repressed elder sibling. (obligatory link to my website) I'm here because having one blog is not enough, and in a phenomenon known as guest blogging, I've decided that the frogspawn I live with needs some wit and sophistication inserted into his space.

By now if you have met my brother in person, you would know that physically speaking he is as a god among men. Observe.

One simply has to glance upon his chiseled countenace and dapper demeanor to understand that his method of 'getting girls' simply involves him walking into a room. It would not be exaggeration by any stretch of the imagination to say that he exudes an aura of confidence and virility that proves to be far too much match for the average estrogen-burdened teenager. Common it is to see him poised in the middle of conversation with a flock of nubile females literally hanging from his every word. The general impression is that if he only smiled, their clothes would fall off.

This phenomenon is far more common than you might think. One merely has to look at his facebook profile, or in fact, his telephone address book to see a list of female monikers as long as your leg. (longer, if you're under 5'7") He befriends them like other men breathe air (that is to say, raggedly, and in short bursts). He knows dozens of them by their first name, whilst other lesser men struggle to be seen in the same room as one. In the midst of all this sexual prowess, of manly conquest, lies one tiny insignificant anomaly:

Me.

Example 1: Oh hello random gorgeous stranger I have never met before, why yes I will gladly autograph your bosom and lick strawberry jam from your forehead, oh by the way this is my brother. Say hi Calvin.

Example 2: Sorry I'm so late Calvin, I was merely rearranging my disheveled appearance with the help of a capricious little minx from my tuition center; you wouldn't believe the things you can get into while trying to sort out a perfectly honest misunderstanding, ha ha.

Or my personal favorite:

Me: (as he stumbles into our room at 3 in the morning) Alright, what's her name?
Him: Who? Oh... right. Er... Susan. I think.

Snarky jealousy aside, it is actually quite perplexing (on a purely intellectual level) for him to have received all the charm and dastardly good looks, while I'm left with all the 'important' things, i.e. an education, considerable capacity for creative expression, and an unjaded optimistic worldview.

Some cosmic force might refer to this as balance, or yin-yang perhaps; a celestial separation of male and unmale. Of chicked and chickless. Sexed and depressed.

But I know the truth; it's simply a test, a grand experiment. One day character and inner beauty will triumph over surface appearance and pheremones.

...right?

So yesterday...

2007-12-02T14:27:00.000+08:00

...I went partying! That's partying pronounced 'paaaarta-a-a-a-ying!'

Drinks, check
Dancing, check
Random sex, check
Not hungover next day, check!

I love all you nanowrimo people. :)

Extra special thanks to this man for being the designated driver. =D

Devotion

2007-12-01T09:14:00.000+08:00

As if I needed more proof that religion is screwed up:

A British schoolteacher at Unity High School in the Sudan named Gillian Gibbons has been sent to prison, and will be deported for 'insulting religion, inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs.'

Her school responded by saying "[we] offer an official apology to the students and their families and all Muslims for what came from an individual initiative." It said Gibbons had been "removed from her work at the school."

The Sudanese Foreign Ministry responded that the case was: "isolated despite our condemnation and rejection of it."

Sudan's top clerics said in a statement Wednesday that the full measure of the law should be applied against Gibbons, calling the incident part of a broader Western "plot" against Islam.

The crime was naming the class teddy bear Muhammad.

The class voted for the bear to be named after one of the boys in the class, and protesters are decrying Gibbons: 'no mercy - execution' 'Kill her, kill her by firing squad'

The real victim of the tragedy

The definition of irritating

2007-11-29T21:53:00.000+08:00

is when you're trying to catch some sleep before returning to work on assignments BUT ARE CONTINUOUSLY INTERRUPTED BY YOUR FUCKING PHONE RINGING.

Call 1: Hey, where are you, what are you doing, oh yes you have to do this for me later (remember: I already know I have to do this, you told me three fucking times)

Call 2, 30 seconds later. Same person: Did you burn the CDs for me like I asked you to? (yes I bloody well did)

Call 3, immediately after I'd returned to bed. Same person AGAIN:

'Could you put the phone to your mother please?'

What. The. Fuck.

Now I'm too irritated to sleep, too tired to work. Thanks.

Appreciation

2007-11-29T20:18:00.000+08:00

First I would like to say thanks to the people who've gratzed me re: nanowrimo. It's a great feeling...

...tempered by the still somewhat mountainous pile of assignments that have yet to disappear. Tomorrow's the last day but I spent nearly all of today working. I was at an internship position interview this afternoon, hope I get the job. It seems like it'd be a good position, plus I'm kind of bloody desperate at this point.

I find it somewhat ironic that I completed a 50,000 word thingo and I'm running out of juice on paragraph three of a blog post. Oy.

The Thank God It's Over party for NanoWrimo, oops missed two capitals, is on Saturday. Woot! There looks to be booze, and togas. Hopefully togas. If not, at least great conversation and attempting not to embarrass myself.

I wanted to say something here, I remembered when I started writing the bit about the party, but I can't remember it now. Huh.

Oh yes, Razor.

I've linked to Razor before, so I don't think I'll bombard you with it this time, but it's essentially a long episode of Battlestar Galactica. It's got everything the series has always had, great acting, fantastic set pieces, gripping morality (I'm tempted to say 'for a sci-fi' but I won't). Plus, it has chicks!

She is Portugese-Chinese-Norwegian-English, and was raised in Hong Kong. As a result, she's got the cutest accent, but she plays tough as rock Lt. Kendra Shaw, who looks spiffy in a uniform but is as hard as they come.

I think now I know why I watch Galactica. Good-looking chicks who fly spaceships and shoot guns. Forget all that story crap, naked cylons!

Verbosity, or the lack thereof

2007-11-28T19:04:00.001+08:00

Regular viewers will notice the lack of updates, and the relative shortness of each updates.

I blame this.

50000 words later, what have I learnt? In order:

Assignments fucking suck
Writing is easy... not.
Inspiration is only good for a little while. You have to rely on yourself for content.
Write every day. Even only a little. It's amazing the effect this has had on me as a person.
Meeting fellow Malaysian crazies is great (You lot know who you are!)

And last but not least...

I can write one, single, continuous 50,000 word story, with a unified plot, characters who live inside my head as much as on the page, and the best part is that I'm nowhere near done.

*blows party horn*

Right. Back to assignments (URHG!!!!!)

I can't think of a good pun right now, sorry

2007-11-25T21:11:00.000+08:00

So I am now on facebook. So far it has proven to be far less annoying than I thought it would be. My brother turns on all the email notifications and every day his inbox is stuffed to bursting. I have significantly better odds.

The novel is going terrifically. I've just introduced a new character who I am going to have great fun with, and the wordcount rises.

My assignment is done, I hope. What a terrible experience. I really didn't enjoy this one, in sharp contrast to the usual tune.

I managed to get into Zul'Aman again today (pause: did I blog about this yesterday? Not sure) which is basically a world of warcraft 'dungeon', dungeon being in inverted commas because the whole thing is set in a troll city outdoors, where all the enemies have awesome jamaican accents and all I have to do is throw fireballs until they fall down. Such freedom.

Creative Low

2007-11-24T23:23:00.001+08:00

I just polished off my proposal. Phew

Now to work some body copy, or perhaps tinker at my novel

Speaking of which, meet was fun, again. Less people turned up, you know who you are.

QR is back in town now. Oh what joys we will have.

Kk, going to go turn brain off now.

Edit: I'm really digging Jordin Sparks' new song. The girl's making good use of her recording contract so far, even if the music video is utter crap and the version with music is overproduced, but then I'm a purist.

BLOODY USELESS!

2007-11-23T20:47:00.000+08:00

See if you can follow this logic:

Today I was told several things by the lecturer I was complaining about this morning. They are, in order of least to most fucked up:

Your entire proposal should be in bullet points. Like hello. Tell me before I spend hours and hours writing and structuring the fucking thing.

You should attempt to bring sample packaging for your presentation on Monday. Lady, if you wanna give us 90 bucks so we can bring you a fucking box, at least have the fucking decency TO NOT TELL US THE FRIDAY BEFORE.

Your ad should not quote 'attempt to be too creative' unquote. She prefers quote 'more traditional advertising' unquote.

So what the fuck have I been busting my ass the last couple of days for then? HERE I'LL KNOCK AN AD UP RIGHT NOW

SEE? EASY! TWO MINUTES AND MS PAINT! IMAGINE IF I ACTUALLY TOOK SOME EFFORT, IT WOULD TAKE ME 30 SECONDS WITH PHOTOSHOP!

Fucking bitch! This woman is qualified to fucking teach?

I am so completely pissed off.

Deep in the AM

2007-11-23T08:07:00.000+08:00

Allow me to repeat my previous assertions about my mental state:

Urrrghghh

It's 8 am. I've been up for two hours trying to come up with a bloody ad idea but it's just not happening, nor did it happen the past 3 days I've been trying to come up with one once we'd decided on a media selection. It's not like the product is easy either (tongkat ali health supplement) but the saying goes that there are no boring products, only boring creatives

I even resorted to mind maps. I haven't felt this blocked in a very, very long time.

The deadline is monday and I'm very tempted to knock out a shoddy crap ad that won't stand out and has pretty design to make up for the inherent lack of content; the (forgive me for saying this, but it's 100% true) bloody useless lecturer probably won't even look at them properly. I've seen how she marked previous semester's assignments: Random tick marks followed by stupid comments like 'I like the flow of the fabric in this picture'

Read that again. Her only comment on an end of term assignment advertisement was: 'I like the flow of the fabric in this picture'

Bloody useless. Urrrggghhh my brain

This week I

2007-11-22T17:20:00.000+08:00

Didn't blog very much. Sorry!

Between the weekend, which was jabber, I wanted to write a post about the writer's meeting on Saturday but couldn't find the brainpower on Sunday, which was mostly spent going 'urgggh'

So in brief: It was awesome. Winks and hugs to i_serae if you're reading this. If anyone else from the NaNo is reading this, tough craps, you didn't comment on my posts so hah to you.

Speaking of writing my novel is at... 36,046 / 50,000 words. I am 600 words behind schedule and the only reason I'm not tinkering with it right now is that I actually have some work to do. Urgh.

Work: It's been alright recently, coming in sporadic bursts. I get the feeling that this semester, while cramped and murderous schedule wise, isn't quite the blistering logjam the last semester was. That and it'll be over quickly.

Oh and I still haven't found an internship position. This worries me greatly. I went for an interview with a management company who wanted some brand marketing but no dice. They need a chinese speaker. Who the bleeding heck speaks chinese in this day and age I would like to know.

So since they won't hire a banana, I left with vague I'll pass this to some of my clients stuff in my ears. Leaving that aside, I muddled through the rest of my week, tinking at my novel, doing work, playing the very excellent Call of Duty 4, which comes |---| close to being the best shooter I've played this year next to Half Life Episode 2, but fails due to the simple fact that:

I like to be challenged in a game featuring realistic combat, therefore I play without the crosshair, and on the 2nd highest difficulty setting.
And there is no fucking quicksave function.

Seriously. wtf.

No fucking quicksave? What is this, a console game? Oh wait, it is, you XBoX/PS3 morons who can't afford a decent fucking PC. Checkpoint, ooh! You may argue that quicksaving spoils people and makes them reliant on just brute-forcing their way through situations, but I don't quicksave that way, at all. In fact I only realized there was no quicksave button somewhere in Act II of the game, when I reached a level so mind-bogglingly hard that I instinctively hit F5 after the first couple of retries only to realize IT DIDN'T FUCKING HAVE ONE.

I played that one bit of that one level for 3 hours. Fuck you console people. Seriously. That one level, and another one after, where you run up a hill, run down the hill, and have bad guys shooting at you from every conceivable direction, I can do in my sleep now. Why? They were so freaking hard that I ended up finding ways to sit in a stupid spot fifty miles off course and plink at the AI until they were all dead.

In other words, I had to break the mission. GG no quicksave. I would normally play the game on the hardest setting now, but fuck having to respawn 5 minutes back because one terrorist offs me as I turn a corner.

Apart from that, I'm juicy!

A-Z

2007-11-17T23:41:00.000+08:00

When your brain refuses to work, meme.

[A is for age]
Legal.

[B is for booze of choice]
Kampai, which is carbonated vodka with lemon.

[C is for career:]
Ideally, the career of my choice would be one where I sit in front of my computer, call my agent every few months, and get paid enormous sums of money.

[D is for your drug of choice]
As a mind altering substance, chocolate works pretty well.

[E is for one essential item you use everyday]
Keyboard.

[F is for favorite song at the moment:]
Victims of Science - The Device Has Been Modified

[G is for favorite game:]
World of Warcraft. Best game ever made.

[H is for Hometown:]
Kay El. I wouldn't have it any other way, really, except for maybe New York

[I is for dream invention:]
Device which disables the need for sleep.

[J is for favorite juice?:]
Carrot with milk. Second is orange. A very distant third is grape.

[K is for kids?:]
They can be delicious lightly seasoned with nutmeg.

[L is for last hug:]
Can't remember.

[M is for marriage]
Someday!

[N is for nickname:]
C. Sigma83. Ithy. Nubcake.

[O is for overnight hospital stays:]
Hasn't happened since I was born.

[P is for phobia's:]
I'm scared that I'm incapable of love.

[Q is for quote:]
It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift; the baffled king composing hallelujah.

[R is for biggest regret]
Not studying harder. PSYCHE.

[S is for singing:]
All the damn time. You cannot stop the voice machine.

[T is for time you wake up:]
Variable, but mostly in the AM.

[U is for underwear:]
Could you repeat the question?

[V is for vegetable you love:]
Is a carrot a vegetable? Or how about a potato?

[W is for worst habit]
I'll answer this question tomorrow.

[X is for x-rays you've got:]
I've never had one. It looks like fun.

[Y is for yummy food you make]
Cheese & jam sammich.

[Z is for zodiac sign:]
Aries/Taurus

Small lessons

2007-11-17T02:18:00.000+08:00

Lesson: after an incredibly long and tiring day, wherein one's emotional state is somewhat rocky and perilously close to the emo side of things, it is a bad idea to go onto facebook and look at photos of your ex girlfriend in London doing the clubbing thing and having lots of fun.

That doesn't even really make much sense, but I figure I'm entitled to one irrational post per 2-3 months, and I'm just going to go to sleep now, and try not to think very much.

StarCraft

2007-11-15T22:32:00.000+08:00

Many Thanks to Janvier for having a nice dinner with me, and tipping me off to buying the StarCraft board game for cheap!

I don't have any pictures of my initial play through *curse my phonelessness!* but I will attempt to give my initial impressions.

First of all, the little plastic units are GORGEOUS.

My neighbor G and I were very impressed at the time that we spent poking all the little cardboard bits from their blisters and arranging the units by race. I immediately announced my choosing of Raynor's rebel forces, while he quickly commandeered Kerrigan's armies.

Then we spent 2 hours reading the rules, which in the end was too much reading for what is a very simple concept. Each turn consists of planning, in which you place your orders, execution, in which you execute said orders and resolve combat, and regrouping, which is basically sorting the aftermath.

As an example, when we were stumbling through the concepts, our first turn took 20 minutes. The 2nd turn took 5.

And I couldn't tell you how long the third turn was, because by then the game was over.

We had four planets in a linear A-B-C-D configuration:

Braken -> Tarsonis <-> Torus <- Halycon

He placed his base on Braken, one planet away from the front line. I placed mine on Torus, planning to leave my other planet in reserve as a resource gathering operation. On the first turn I had built dropships that connected Torus to Tarsonis, whereas he had to move his forces from Braken, which cost him the turn.

The first attack was mine. My forces on Torus shortly made quick work of the Tarsonian defenders, but unable to press the attack fully due to lack of resources, I ended the turn.

He quickly built a response force of zerglings and hydralisks, as well as sending his reserve units to the front.

Meanwhile, I had received a siege tank.

With the tank leading the charge, supported by 5-6 infantry units, I utterly destroyed every single zerg unit on the planet. Losses were minimal, and victory was mine.

It was only after I was preparing research for the next turn (assuming that he would be able to muster enough units for a heroic last stand) that he reminded me that I had already won, due to special victory.

I instantly felt bad.

But the game is excellent! And fast with two players. To be fair, this was a 2 round skirmish on a highly linear map. Any more entry points and things would have gotten very interesting very fast as his higher production capabilities swarmed my flanks. I had a lot of fun despite the high learning time, and I definitely want to play again

THANKS JANVIER!!!

Funny things you read on the internet while trying to do assignments

2007-11-14T16:40:00.001+08:00

Geoffrey Rush has appeared in many Victorian era films, two of them with Joseph Fiennes, in 'Shakespeare in Love' & the new 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age.'

Of his co-star he remarks: 'He got to make love to Gwyneth Paltrow and Cate Blanchett. All I got was an Oscar nomation.'

The aussies really do have their priorities right eh.

One hell of a long shot

2007-11-12T13:26:00.000+08:00

There is a scene in ‘Children of Men’ where, if I’m remembering correctly, Clive Owen wakes up after having a nap in a car with 4 other passengers (pay attention to that number, it’s important). He asks where they are, how long before they get there, and if there’s a hotel. That last part is a joke; he wants to get it on with Julianne Moore, who’s lovely, but no longer his girlfriend, but she still thinks fondly of him. They share a private joke involving a ping pong ball, and reminisce about old times, but they’re distracted by the impromptu roadblock; their car is under attack. Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is driving, pulls into full reverse as out from the woods around them emerge a screaming horde of attackers, throwing Molotov cocktails and bashing the windows with sticks. There is a motorcycle; the pillion rider shoots at the car, kills one of the passengers. Clive, ducking and panicking, opens his door and smashes the motorcycle away. They pull out of reverse and drive like hell. Then the police show up; and demand that they pull over. Chiwetel manages to evade arrest, they drive off into the horizon at full speed, and then the shot is over.

Read that last part again. I didn’t say ‘the scene is over,’ I said ‘the shot is over.’

That’s right. One Take.

There are 5 people in the car. One of them is a large woman who nearly takes up the entire back seat herself. Where the hell did they put the camera? How the crap does the camera leave the car, reenter, and how on god’s good earth did they manage to coordinate an entire freaking action scene in a moving vehicle in a single take?

Google tells me: The crew rode on the roof. The camera was made from a special rig. Some digital cleverness was used for some of the effects. But jesus christ on a freaking stick; it also tells me the scene was four minutes long.

There is another, more famous shot from the movie. Tanks. Guns. Hundreds of extras. Sixandahalffreakingminutes. An interview with the director (Alfonso Cuaron, of Prisoner of Azakaban fame) reveals that he hired a computer artist to digitally remove blood which had inadvertently splattered the lens halfway through the shot, and he quips ‘she must have hated us.’

You may or may not have heard of ‘Children of Men’. You may or may not have watched it. You should. Technical virtuoso aside, it’s an excellent film. It’s got Michael Caine in it. Why would you want to not watch a Michael Caine film?

New discovery

2007-11-11T21:19:00.000+08:00

In a break from our regular programming: I want to direct you to Deceptively cute, delightfully cuddly, dangerously complex.

Remember the cool people I met? This is one of them.

It doesn't have many entries, but I like the blog very much, and because I'm not feeling very eloquent right now, I'll C&P what I wrote earlier which sounds much nicer than anything I will probably be able to produce at the moment.

'It's eloquent, evocative, and truly a joy to read. The incisivity (is that a word? It is now) of your observations and openness in your speech is disarming at worst, beautiful at best.'

I just tried to write something nice to add to that, but it sounded flat and misrepresenting. This is a sign that I probably shouldn't work on my novel.

On the other hand, I cannot wait to see how hers turns out.

Instead I shall greatly improve the quality of your life by making you download this.

Malaise

2007-11-09T13:31:00.000+08:00

Here is the major problem with hanging out with a bunch of really cool people and having a really good time.

The next day feels like shit.

It could be in concert with an unrelated minor depression, like some perverse duet, where one plays the strings and the other cuts them.

Going back to a day filled with classes and bus rides and bloody bloody assignments after leaving one full of talkative, creative, exuberant people who listen to what you have to say and then participate in the conversation is like having the color drained out of your world.

I dunno, perhaps general malaise could be part of having stayed up until very late trying to complete a project proposal/write up, and I could be assigning more weight to this than I should be, but it's a weird time right now.

TGIF is all I can say, now if only I didn't have to do slides for the rest of the evening, I would probably be pumpkin pie.

The Meet up

2007-11-08T17:58:00.000+08:00

History:

NaNoWriMo is a global initiative to help writers get started by writing a 50,000 word novel in november, no easy task. They have a Malaysian chapter, which I am glad to say I went to a meeting this morning where I met a bunch of nice people who are passionate about their craft and have a great many interesting things to say.

Who the hell am I kidding. We're all loony nutwits, every single last one of us. The conversation move from plot twists to arguing about Garth Nix, discussing plot holes in Harry Potter to decrying the romance novel, the inability to talk about computer games to the advancements in Korean MMOs, debating the merits of short skirts to involving talking hamsters, and the inevitable, sex.

I suppose when you put a lot of people who've never met before but are enjoying each other's company very much, sex always comes up as a topic of reference.

Some quotes:
'I've heard the word 'jackhammer' being used [as a descriptive term].'
'The Worst Written Sex Scenes awards are in their fourth year.'
'Cue the tentacle hentai jokes.'
'That rice of yours looks a lot like a breast.'
'One of my characters seduced another character, and I'm trying to decide how smug to make him the morning after.'
'Draco/Hermione... mm...'

And of course, redheads came up.

I got a nice book (The Ragwitch, by Garth Nix, which I traded a fellow author for A Game of Thrones, by George R R Martin) and I bought a copy of Craig Thompson's Good Bye Chunky Rice, which I finished on the train home (it is a graphic novel, hence it is short and full of piktures) and it is an absolutely heartbreaking book.

I have to do actual work now (grrr) but I am glad I met these wonderful people, and to my mind this is already better than any novel I could possibly write this month.

Memeitude

2007-11-06T17:09:00.000+08:00

Quick meme while at school:

Name one person who made you laugh last night?
I find my brother to be a constant source of amusement.

What were you doing at 0800?
I was asleep, blissfully.

What were you doing 30 minutes ago?
Listening to a lecture on brand architecture.

What happened to you in 2006?
The period of time in between 2005 and 2007.

What was the last thing you said out loud?
Is that chapter going to be covered in the mid-term? (sigh...)

How many beverages did you have today?
1L dihydrous monoxide.

What color is your hairbrush?
Gray, because I stole it from my mom. Mine would be black, LIKE MY SOUL.

What was the last thing you paid for?
Bus ride to campus.

Where were you last night?
The Aperture Science Computer Aided Enrichment Center

What color is your front door?
I refuse to dignify questions of a highly personal nature with a response.

Where do you keep your change?
In the closet, with the rest of them.

What’s the weather like today?
Malaysian. Hot and wet. No wonder we're so prudish, our weather is oppressing us.

What’s the best ice-cream flavor?
Chocolate.

What excites you?
Donkeys.

Do you want to cut your hair?
Want, no. Need, probably.

Are you over the age of 25?
If I say yes, will you finally love me?

Do you talk a lot?
My brother finds me to be a constant source of amusement.

Do you watch the O.C.?
I know they use Imogen Heap, but I can't stand that entire genre.

Do you know anyone named Steven?
What the fuck kind of random question is this? Do you know someone named Kwanzi? Yes, as a matter of fact I do! :P

Do you make up your own words?
This is one of the funnest activities a person can engayge in.

Are you a jealous person?
I will kill any of you that do this meme as well as me.

Name a friend whose name starts with the letter ‘A’
Alex

Name a friend whose name starts with the letter ‘K’
Kody The Space Squirrel

Who’s the first person on your received call list?
grr, I just put my phone away. My brother.

What does the last text message you received say?
My dad's arrived in china. Here's his phone number. Love, etc.

Do you chew on your straw?
People that do this need to order more food instead of making us suffer looking at the sad stick of plastic you've left behind.

Do you have curly hair?
Everyone does. Oh you mean on your HEAD.

Where’s the next place you’re going to?
Back to class.

Who’s the rudest person in your life?
I plead the fifth.

What was the last thing you ate?
Marmite chicken rice. Very pleasant, actually.

Will you get married in the future?
I see myself as more of a cohabitator, but anything goes. I'm not one for tradition, but I won't oppose it.

What’s the best movie you’ve seen in the past 2 weeks?
Extend to 1 month, haven't seen anything in the past 2. United 93.

Is there anyone you like right now?
There are... possibilites. *waggles eyebrows*

When was the last time you did the dishes?
That's women's work. =P

Are you currently depressed?
This meme is killing me.

Did you cry today?
WHY DO YOU PERSIST!?!?!? CAN YOU NOT SEE MY FRAGILE EMOTIONAL STATE?!?

Why did you answer and post this?
I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! GET OUT OF MY LIFE AND NEVER COME BACK!

Tag 5 people who would do this survey…
I would never subject the people in my life to this cruelty.

Expanding the Blogosphere

2007-11-04T11:19:00.000+08:00

My brother just got his own blog.

It is with great dismay that I state with full honest that for this event I cannot blame:

Queer Ranter
Peer Pressure
The Crushing Societal Ills Plaguing Our Youth Today
George Bush.

http://singwhenyourewinning.blogspot.com

Go visit, yes, even if it means having to tolerate his taste in music.

The day After

2007-11-02T19:47:00.001+08:00

Ooh.

oh god.

Aches. Everywhere. My knees, when I landed on them

Thighs. Elbows. Shoulders. Forearms.

Eck god

Neck a little.

aassdhawepm

Day One

2007-11-01T23:20:00.000+08:00

The shoot!

I woke up at 5:30 and took a cab (FORTY DOLLARS!!! Luckily my boss covered it) to 1 Utama. That place is damn lonely before hours. All the mannequins (especially the lingerie ones) look so sinister and creepy in the dark.

At 7 the crew started arriving, and the location opened for us to start planning. I spent some time trying on my wardrobe (fit like a glove. Such nice clothes to wear) and spent some time having the makeup girl, who had the biggest brown eyes I've ever seen, and was extremely sweet, making me look presentable for once in my miserable life.

Shooting proper began at 9:30, we did some establishing scenes and took dialogue from the main characters (not me). At about 10:30 I returned to Cat (Makeup girl) to spend half an hour having my face bashed in.

I wish I had a photo to show you guys. Curse my non-camera enabled phone! Basically, I was bruised up, my cheek puffed, cuts added to my lip and my nose bloodied, in a manner so realistic that all of the crew members immediately took their phones and took pictures with me, usually in a pose where one of them has just sucker punched me.

The sacrifices we make for our art.

Then we filmed my one line, cleaned all the makeup off, and spent three hours filming my action scene. I ran a lot.

Break for lunch, we had food at Dragon-I, which serves fantastic Chinese food. I'm very picky about chinese food, and this stuff was top-notch. Xiao Lung Bao, which is dumplings filled with soup and pork, absolutely delicious. Chilli'd chicken? Yum! Tomato & Cucumber Garoupa? Mouth-watering.

Drove to Avenue K for next location. Napped in car. Began shooting once crew arrived with equipment. I ran a lot. I mean a lot. One scene required me to run up 4 escalators. If ever you desire to find yourself in a position where you have no breath at all, and indeed feel like collapsing onto the escalator stairs, I suggest you try it.

Actually I don't. Those damn stairs are sharp.

Insert more running.

Then I filmed the Fall.

Three crew members held a pile of mattresses about a foot thick on the ground, and another held a boom mike. My task: To fall, face first, tripping myself and not bending my knees. (try this. Fall onto any soft surface at floor height from a running start, without bending your knees. No diving, that's cheating. Both feet firmly on floor, touching each other. See how many tries it takes you to get it right; I took 23)

Then more lying face down on floor to record my 2nd line of dialogue. Wrap at 11. Cue train home, and blog post.

Sheer brilliance

2007-10-31T22:08:00.001+08:00

Brought to you courtesy of XKCD

Shop Shop Shop

2007-10-31T21:34:00.001+08:00

Today I went to get fitted for my wardrobe for the filming of the MOVIE!!!!!! which will require me to travel to 1 Utama by 7am tomorrow, stay there for half the day, move to Avenue K and film some more.

Remember how I said I have the only action scene in the film? Yeah. This is gonna be really fun.

How hard could it possibly have been to find a plain white non-patterned non-striped shirt in 17" or larger collar size costing less than RM 1 bazillion in the entire department store?

Pretty darn hard, actually.

Spent 2 hours shirt hunting, then gave up to do pants. Found a shirt that was just a leetle too small and the production assistant threw up her hands and said she'd try Mid Valley instead. The poor girl looked worked to death. She was very sweet.

Also we could not find a single magenta tie. Actually I lie, we did find one, it cost a hundred dollars and we needed six. (makes hanging motions) Budgets for films appear to be so exorbitant as to be insane. This wardrobe is only going to be worn once and then goodness knows what's going to happen to it

Maybe I should buy it. The outfit isn't half bad actually. I could do with some new ones.

ZOMG I'M TALKING ABOUT CLOTHES ON MY BLOG THE GAYDIATION IS PIERCING MY BRAAAAAAIN

Wait wait wait. Stay calm. Breathe deeply, and find something nice, and feminine to gravitate towards. I need a pink blog. (opens Queer Ranter's) THE GOGGLES! THEY DO NOTHING!!!!!!!

Tik tik tik

2007-10-31T01:22:00.000+08:00

Slowly the word count rises.

Too tired now, I'm off. I wrote some really funny scenes today. I giggled a lot when I read them.

I also inserted a redhead. Glee. She's tons of fun to write.

Still Alive

2007-10-29T19:42:00.000+08:00

Oh god. Longest day ever.

Because of my writing stint I ended up sleeping late, then rushing my work in the computer lab, having meeting extended, finding out about the industrial attachment briefing after that, ending up going home at five, ugh.

While I was in the lab today I saw the girl in front of me browsing the World of Warcraft Armory, which is basically a page that shows you the items and stats of every character in the game. (all 9 million of them) This is a site that no one but WoW players would access, since all of its content is tailored specifically for those who already play the game.

So I walked up and spoke to her. Striking a conversation with random strangers, especially in a quiet place, takes nerve, I will say now. It was not fruitless; she has a level 70 Affliction/Destruction gnome warlock and does the same raids as I do. She's up on the parlance and terminology, balefully noting that her spell hit rating needs to go up as she compliments me on my tier 4 armor.

Needless to say, she has a boyfriend. /headdesk.

I'm going to peck at my short story (Novel? NaNoWriMo is starting soon, and I got plenty of material floating around) and perhaps, maybe, do the shooting script for the video we're shooting on wednesday.

Mostly I'm just going to frag things.

Statistics

2007-10-29T00:20:00.000+08:00

Time: 9 hours 30 minutes
Pages: 24
Words: 10,414
Characters (no spaces): 47,100
Characters (with spaces): 57,225
Paragraphs: 301
Lines: 1,096

Title: To be determined
Mood of author: Bloody euphoric.
Status of assignment due tomorrow morning: huh what?

Assortment

2007-10-26T02:55:00.000+08:00

Life is like a box of chocolates. Sweet and exuberant until the very end.

I received my exam results for my previous semester and am rather pleased with them! My CGPA refuses to budge from it's esconched 3.2 position, in either direction, and I can now live life in peace.

I now read the blog of the highly funny and fun Felicia Day. What's not to like? She likes games, reading books, is a professional actor, a fun blogger, and a redhead. That she lives in California only proves that there is a God, and He indeed has a wretched sense of humor.

MEME: (stolen from this gentleman)
1. I've come to realise my last kiss was pretty good.

2. I am listening to the Half Life 2 soundtrack, because I like eclectic electric guitar very much.

3. I talk about many things, at length, usually when no one is listening.

4. I love taking time out for creative expression, even in small doses.

5. My best friend is absent.

6. My car is in potentia; nonexistent.

7. My love life writes postcards. 'Wish you were here!'

8. I hate it when people ask something that I already explained, at length, many times, only you weren't bloody listening the first three times.

9. Love is being content.

10. Marriage is an institutionalization of a concept which most of us understand anyway.

11. Somewhere, someone is thinking 'Sigh... I wish I could meet a guy who likes games, writing fiction, reads Neil Gaiman, and will understand me for who I am.'

12. I'm always putting one foot in front of the other.

13. I have a secret cheesy crush on Emma Watson.

14. My cell phone needs to be able to play THIS SONG DAMNIT.

15. When I wake up in the morning for half a moment, everything is perfect.

16. When I go to bed at night it is with the assurance that the world will still be there when I'm done.

17. Right now I'm thinking about the Christmas party I will not be attending this year, and how much I will miss it.

18. Babies are usually a lot less adorable than, say, kittens.

19. I get on MySpace never.

20. Today I spent a lot of time writing a design brief that will not resemble the finished work by much.

21. Tonight I will finish said brief.

22. Tomorrow I will try and find something nice to read, something nice to eat, and hopefully someone nice to eat with.

23. I really want to get on a plane; destination Montreal/New York/Pennsylvania/London/Wisconsin.

24. Someone that will most likely repost this is probably as sleepy as I am.

A sudden change of Direction

2007-10-25T20:52:00.000+08:00

I've always insisted that science fiction is a better medium than fantasy, partly because of the Guiding Rule of science fiction, being that anything in Sci-Fi is essentially current human civilization extrapolated.

Strapping guns to robots is not sci-fi. The Three Laws is sci-fi. Flying police in jetpacks is not sci-fi. Minority Report is sci-fi.

It is telling that Orson Scott Card, one of the premier modern SF writers (Ender's Game ring a bell?) considers two of hiss favorite sci-fi films to be Being John Malkovich, and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.

A lot of sci-fi nowadays is actually fantasy. You create a setting, you stock it with characters, and you circumvent the known laws and make it do anything you want, only instead of 'magic' you call it 'technology.'

Okay I seriously was not intending for this to turn into so long a post. I honestly only brought it up so I could say 'but some fun things do come out of fantasy, i.e. Babes in Chain Mail.'

in order from least to most scantily-clad.

I however felt compelled to add this particular gem:
THE RIGHT TO ARM BEARS! "IT IS A GOOD DAY TEDDY!"

'Armed to her fangs K'Tanya the Klingon Teddy roared her defiance, "For Beartle come to ME !!"'
(includes 'beartleth')

Edit: I caved. Here is a picture of a stormtrooper.

Out of the system

2007-10-24T23:21:00.000+08:00

Entree:

Team Fortress is really a wonderful gaming experience. My little account management thingo says I've spent far more hours on it than I'm entirely comfortable admitting. I'm balancing it out by doing lots of schoolwork, honest.

I'm therefore also balancing out the schoolwork by listening to lots and lots of husky females.
Mm.
Norah Jones. Feist. Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls. Rachel Yamagata. Amy Lee. Tori Amos. Sia. Jem. Regina Spektor. Ellen McLain, who is technically a soprano, but sings in a voice that I guarantee none of you have ever heard before.

I'm balancing that out by sleeping much more than I suppose is strictly necessary, but practically a given based on the amount of estrogen I'm being exposed to aurally. (I wish it could be the homophone of the previous, but alas)

I balance the sleeping by doing a fair amount of reading, which stimulates the mind and heightens the vocabulary. A notable gem I've discovered is Rock Paper Shotgun, a gaming blog run by a bunch of real life journalists with an irreverant sense of humor and an update rate that would put this man to shame. (If you have any interest in games whatsoever, Rock Paper Shotgun should be something to add to your daily reading list. It is truly something.)

I balance the reading about games by playing Team Fortress. And so the circle of life moves onwards.

The G-virus is EVERYWHERE

2007-10-21T19:10:00.000+08:00

The gay virus, this is what I speak of.

It's being spread like a massive infection of ebola, or T-virus, only more insidious, because the organisms it creates are not easily identifiable, even by the fabulosity index.

Even Harry Potter is not immune.

WHAT HAVE YOU PEOPLE DONE?!?!?

It's like destroying childhood memories. Or kicking puppies. Why will you not desist!

(reaches for his Gaygon)

Homoerotic undertones

2007-10-20T00:00:00.000+08:00

I'm like fly paper for gay people, I swear.

First the blogger meet (Meat? God the gaydiation is getting to me) then round 2 of same.

Then I spoke to an old friend, who is bi, and on the Pill, and listened to her gush about her new boyfriend.

Now I'm speaking to a slightly younger friend, who's gay, and dating this insanely hot redhead, and she's also gushing about all the lesbian sex they're having.

Which is nice, I mean, good for them.

*goes to have a lie down*

Long Time Coming

2007-10-18T10:04:00.000+08:00

EDIT: I added a new term, see below.

Class!

I'm doing classes again, sitting in the computer lab typing blog entries. It's actually kind of nostalgic. I used to do this back in the old days. (September)

So a very big Welcome Back to Higher Education for me. 2 days in and I have 3 assignments, all due in 3 weeks. ergh.

Speaking of assignments:

Yesterday I went to Mid Valley with Queer Ranter and a collection of fine folk from the local blogosphere, also to snap pictures for my Corporate Identity class. I would link you to their blogs, but since I only know them by name and not by handle that would be an exercise in futility. Suffice to say that much fun was had by all, and I felt utterly unfabulous being in the company of 5 gay guys.

On the bus to Mid Valley, learning how many people were coming to this meet, I remarked to QR how it seemed he was the center of this vast social hub that I had only had glimpses of. He told me it was for the sake of my sanity, and by god he was right. It is a testament to the tone of the evening's events that a few new terms were coined by the collective, which I will put forth to you here:

Gayging: The process of gay aging. Gayging is caused by the fact that gay people have more fun, thereby compressing approximately 5 years of life into six months of actual time. Thus gay people age faster, proven by how at 25 they're off the shelves, and by 30 completely off market.

Gaythiesm: The unifying beliefs of all gay peoples. Principal tenets include abiding by the laws of Pinkdom, shopping at Philosophy, and being Fabulous.

Gayzing: The phenomenon of constantly being on the lookout for hot guys to scope out. Being gay is to know that ones life is entirely, constantly, slaved into gayzing mode. Experienced gayzers have highly developed peripheral vision, and a rich vocabulary of code words to describe gayzing targets to other members of the group.

Gaydiation: The powerful energy emitted by groups of gay people. Produced by the collision between queerons and normal particles, Gaydiation has the effect of permanently damaging fashion sense and causing excessive use of the word 'love' as an adjective. Secondary side effects include color blindness towards pink.

Today I hope to go meet them again, this time at 1 Utama. The only thing stopping me is my energy level, due to a couple of factors; arriving home late from yesterday's meet, having a long day of classes ahead, early class tomorrow again, etc.

I went to the gym before class today, which was a highly rewarding activity, and one I plan to repeat as many times as I can. The only major problem with waking up at 5:30, walking to the LRT, working out for an hour and then heading to class is that it leaves exactly no time for brekkie, and believe me, when you arrive at class after being awake for 3 hours and have been highly active the entire time, breakfast is something that's very much on your mind. I ended up running down to the cafeteria during the customary 5 minute break in the middle of the lecture.

So here's me, back after a long while without updates, and hopefully now will have many interesting things to talk about now that life is moving back into the fast lane. Blog posts consisting of 'Today I played Team Fortress until my eyes bled' are fun for me, but I suspect not for anyone else.

I HAVE MY ORANGE BOX!!!!

2007-10-12T13:14:00.000+08:00

Squeeeeee!!!

bbs

I'm waiting for my Orange Box

2007-10-12T02:05:00.000+08:00

Squeeeeeeeeeeeee

Cortina

2007-10-09T21:55:00.000+08:00

Partial excerpt from 'Cortina'
by Fabio Moon
As Published in 'Flight' Volume 4

If you think about it, it's like a conversation.
You're just waiting your turn to talk.
Or looking for the right words.

That's when someone asks you a question.

Maybe then you'll notice the music.

Maybe you won't remember which music was playing
Or what you were wearing
You'll be left with only one dance...
One moment of passion...
that will last long after the music is over.

Weaver

2007-10-07T00:18:00.000+08:00

She sleeps today, covered by dreams.
Her hands weaving herself into place
Her life, her story.
Picturesque, un-earth-bound.
A shooting star in a darkening age
Still; I watch her plummet upwards
Toward an ever brightening sky
Glory not without merit,
Beauty not without sacrifice
The angel riseth,
Her kingdom come.

Recently I:

2007-10-06T17:04:00.000+08:00

Got a cold. *sneeze* I'm fighting it by:

Playing Half Life 2 again. It is truly a marvel of game design. Bioshock which I finished recently is a marvelous game, brimming with excellence and oozing professionalism, but having finished both games in close proximity to one another, I'm really unsure about which I prefer. Both are fantastic story driven games, but with different approaches. Bioshock tells the story through disembodied radio voices and diary recordings, which is an entirely valid and wonderful approach. It introduces more resource management than Half Life, but Half Life's combat is just so glorious it makes the mind spin. Half Life's story unfolds entirely through its world and its characters, and the story for both is amazing, just like:

The Prestige, which is a movie I feel I could watch over and over again for eternity. Hugh Jackman when he isn't all 'rawr wolverine rawr' is truly fantastic, and Christian Bale is quickly rising to the very top of my favorite actor list. (Let us not forget the very voluptuous er I mean highly talented Ms. Johansson)

who is probably most famous for:

Lost in Translation which I still have on my hard drive. It's one of those films you absolutely fall in love with and cannot bear to delete, even with the hard drive spring cleaning I did yesterday. (600 MB free! AAAAAH) It's more of a mood piece than an actual film. Watching it for the plot is like listening to Enya for the lyrics. Speaking of missing the point:

My parents have decided that a dinner they told me about 36 hours in advance takes precedence over any and all plans I may have had on a Saturday night, and I am REALLY irritated by this turn of events. It's not the first time they're done it either. Try pulling this stunt on anyone other than your immediate family and see if they don't tell you to fuck off. So that brings that particular rant out of my system:

Done.

Retaliation

2007-10-04T20:14:00.000+08:00

QR has once again demonstrated his utter gayness (Gayification? Gaeity?) by posting about clay penises that he fondled. (See here)

I for one was unimpressed by the phallus in question and was more intrigued by the clever piece of copywriting on the condoms that were distributed during the AIDS awareness thingo.

'If it's not ON, the answer is NO.'

I was struck by this for two reasons. One, it's an incredibly clever piece of copywriting, and b) I'd just watched this ad a few days ago:

It's called 'What do you call them?', and it's really, really cute. It's also perfect as REVENGE against QR and his gaeity-ness.

Another amazing work of ad copy that I was recently was for Nike, and I'm sure many of you have seen it.

'Pick a number between 2 and 6.7 billion; because number one's taken.'

Razor

2007-10-02T23:29:00.001+08:00

Just you and the universe judging each other

2007-10-02T13:39:00.000+08:00

Queer Ranter decided to tag me with a meme.

Behold: The High School Meme

What's your favourite subject(s)?
English

Who's your favourite teacher?
Pretty much all of them; they were dedicated, hardworking individuals who were flawed just like any human being, but at least they didn't slack.

What's your worst subject?
Add Maths. I was terrible at it.

Did you sit beside a boy or a girl?
Boy, who was Queer Ranter.

Did you hold any position in school?
Unofficial go-to for creative expression. e.g.: C please write the script for this year's concert. C please help us create the school newsletter. C please go over this. etc.

It was actually fun, until the usual adult egos kicked in.

Is your school a co-ed or all-boys school?
Isn't this kind of a weird question considering the previous one?

Did you represent your school in any competition?
Actually no. We didn't compete in many inter-school things, despite our commitment to holistic education.

How did you go to school?
Bussery.

Do you still keep in touch with your school mates all these years?
Some very important ones. The rest are pretty much gone, much like the transient nature of youth and life.

Did you study Form 6?
God, no. Ugh.

k, that's that. I am now meme-free, and now I shall mention the weird oddity that is life. I got tagged by QR as I'm listening (for the, oh, 50th time?) to Nelly Furtado's Explode, which is a wonderful song about the volatility of youth, and the nowness of now, and like most Nelly Furtado music, is upbeat, fun, and dearly infectious.

I just want to add that the music video is gorgeous.

Deriviate

2007-10-01T02:10:00.000+08:00

Test.

I have been accused of overly favoring a specific kind of music, i.e. deep-voiced females singing vocally driven lyric-focused songs.

Guilty as charged.

Her name is Emmy Rossum. You might know her from the films Day After Tomorrow and Phantom of the Opera (she's certainly very pretty. My brother comments she'd look better with straight hair, I'm on the fence.)

At first listen I was of the opinion that the song was, in my own words, overproduced, and somewhat derivative from artists like Imogen Heap and Enya, but, intrigued by the vocals and the sliding harmonies, I gave it a couple more listens. I'm not reviewing the music, so I'm not obligated to say nice things, but it's really not that bad. The girl likes Jem and David Gray, it shows.

I'm enjoying this trend of moving away from all the crap that is on our radios today. Rihanna, I'm looking at you. While Emmy Rossum may not be producing great art (she's 21, I don't suppose there'll be a Jewel everywhere) it's certainly much more pleasant to listen to than most of the stuff that's coming out.

I don't hate R&B specifically (although it is very much often the subject of my ire). I feel the genre is misrepresented heavily by artists like Fifty Cent and Missy Elliot; hip-hop as an artform began with the desire to rail against perceived oppressions. It was, essentially, formed on anger. Now it's about bling and bootay. Where's Eminem to rescue us from the slough? Bring on the verse.

Meanwhile, we have Ms. Rossum.

p.s. the video is really rather crappy. Such a shame, because the song is quite wonderful.

Nerdgasm

2007-09-30T15:05:00.000+08:00

kk, so, points of interest: My full exams results have yet to be released

Bioshock is an amazing, amazing game. If you have any interest in any of the following:
First Person Shooters
Video Games
Storytelling
Writing
The Human Condition

You owe it to yourself to play this game.

Okay, now for the nerdgasm.

I find out (while randomly surfing the interwebs) that a new show is being produced called The Sarah Connor Chronicles (imdb link). It's the story of Sarah and John Connor as they move on from the events of Terminator 2.

The Terminator franchise doesn't hold any particular interest for me at all, until I saw who was going to be IN the show:

Lena Heady as Sarah Connor (That's the Queen from 300)
Thomas Dekker as John Connor (That's Zach from Heroes)
Summer Glau as THE FUCKING TERMINATOR (That's River Tam from Firefly)

River Tam = Terminator.
That is fucking brilliance.

I'm going to go into my corner and have a joygasm.

I've passed all of my exams

2007-09-27T23:05:00.000+08:00

Final results later.

Content may vary

2007-09-25T21:03:00.000+08:00

Today I thought: Hm, what should I blog about today. I took Monday off (which I spent reading, playing games, lazing about, thinking about life, and watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit) and I was going to recount what I did today (read, play games, laze about, think about life, not watching The Prestige) when I realized I had some PHOTOS TO POST:

I pre-ordered The Orange Box a few days ago online and I was pleasantly surprised to note that it came with a free gift:

It's a (very large) mousepad! It's got everything I've ever wanted in a mousepad. It's got a good surface, it looks really really good, it's reasonably large, it even came in a very awesome box!

So that's my cool post quota for the week, back to lazing about and playing games.

Absences

2007-09-23T18:58:00.000+08:00

A raid in World of Warcraft is when 25 people get together on a specific time and day, bring all their magic items and sharpen their swords to, essentially, go slay the dragon.

It's a lot of fun and I've been doing it 3-4 days a week for over a year now, with intermittent breaks for holidays / exams / lack of dragons.

Today my World of Warcraft guild has decided that the continuous absenteeism, lack of commitment, and overall laziness of some of the people we bring along has essentially gutted our ability to perform these raids, and we've put them on indefinite hold.

It's like someone threw a party, you make the reservations and bring in catering, and when they turn up (if they turn up) they're not socializing and leave after an hour.

It really ruins the fun for everyone, especially the ones who brought canapes and broke out the twister set.

What pisses me off the most is if we get started again it'll be pretty much square 1 in terms of achievement, as we'll probably have to retrain and re-outfit quite a few people.

Click for Hot Lesbian Action!

2007-09-22T15:14:00.000+08:00

Now that I have your attention...

Congratulations to my friend C on her first relationship!

I'm sure many of you can understand, and sometimes relate to how hard it is to come out of the closet, and C has been lucky enough to have recently moved to an environment where her sexuality is openly supported and accepted.

So Congratulations again to C and E. (She had to go and date a redhead... DAMN IT.)

Edit: I will retaliate by posting a picture of a redhead.

Edit edit: You have no idea how hard it was to find this picture, even after turning on google's search filter. Did you know there's a species of duck called the redhead? I'm not joking.

Edit edit edit: My brother thinks that the above picture is 'too lesbian.' Way to miss the point. He made me put up another one.

Research Methods, Warriors, and the Nation of Belgium

2007-09-21T13:09:00.001+08:00

Today was the last day of my exams, concluding with what I felt was a very well done Communications Research Methods paper by me. *yay!!!!* I feel so happy that they're over, and I'm slowly getting used to the fact that as a mindset I can now do nothing for an entire month

(for those of you who work, yes I'm looking at you again, sorry!)

I shall now go and play my level 51 Draenei warrior.

The draenei were added in the last world of warcraft expansion pack. To compensate for the relative smallness of the Alliance given our population is mostly gnomes and dwarfs, THEY'RE HUGE. The female stands 8 feet and the male is bulkier than a volkswagen on speed. They're almost as big as the Tauren.

I actually have a problem because the camera in this game has a fixed anchor perspective on the back of your character's head, and I'm used to a normal 6 feet. (my main character is a human mage) I really can't imagine being 3 feet from the ground as a gnome and then switching to the hulkers. The game really does play slightly differently for each height level.

Also I see that someone has attempted to sell the nation of Belgium on eBay. Best way to make a point I've ever seen.

Art break

2007-09-20T18:06:00.000+08:00

While (read: Instead of) studying, I had the urge to make a new wallpaper. Some googling later, this was the result.

The Adeptus Astartes (a.k.a. The Space Marines) are the elite supersoldiers of Warhammer 40000's Imperium of Man. They are by far my favorite race because of their background fiction, highly militarized and religious culture, and my love for ground infantry above all other forms of tactical combat.