Going off once again.

Damndamndamndamndamn. I'm so pissed with myself. A girl almost cracked her head on the floor today because i couldn't catch her on the way down. Dancing with that hoodie and mask on also made me so freakin tired that i was panting at the end of it. I just couldn't bring up a smile after that screw-up too, and after practice i was cursing cars on the way back. I parked my car at siglap and proceeded to eat my lunch there, on my own. Somehow, it kinda made me feel a little better.

Bad temper huh...weird, at least. Sigh ohwell. I'll be going off to Changi Airport in an hour's time to head off to Bangkok. Yup...it's going to be five guys and three girls from OG1 going off to a foreign country together to eat and shop for three days. But, if there're any gossip-mongers reading this blog, i can guarantee you that there WON'T be anything scandalous happening while we're there in Bangkok, trust me. Well, at least there won't be anything concerning me lah. I'm not too sure about the others. Lol.

And recently, i heard rumours from someone that kinda got me very worried. If any of you readers are from the law faculty, please spread the word that i did NOT sponsor anyone's airplane ticket to Bangkok. That is complete nonsense; i don't know how anyone ever got that idea. I DID offer to sponsor tickets for someone, but that was only provided that she washed my car - at any time i wanted - fifty times. For free, of course. And even then, that was mostly just a lame and sadistic joke coming from me. Would any of you young singaporeans wash a dirty car for S$6 each time?

Okay, time for me to finish packing my bags. Yup, i have yet to finish packing my bags.

0 comments

Too many things on my plate.

My goodness. After rag is over, and after the 10th of August - which means the end of that primary school reunion thing that i'm organising - i'm going on a period of non-commitment to anything. I'm exhausted. I've been so busy these days that i'm getting really worn out. Aside from rag training, i have like multiple birthday parties over the weekend and i still haven't gotten birthday gifts yet (an EXTREMELY difficult task haha).

Then, i'll be going to Bangkok for a 3 night, 2 day trip on thursday. Which means, once again, more catching up on rag when i get back. I think it's mostly going overseas to Japan that has gotten me in this fix. On arriving back in Singapore, it was as if i'd just returned from the wilderness...and i've yet to fully bring myself to terms with what's been going on. Urgh.

It's not really that i've been BUSY; rag practice is quite relaxing at times, and there isn't much work left to do for the class reunion. But it's more like there's just too many things on my plate at the moment that i'm struggling to organise myself and prioritise my tasks. And most of all, I haven't been able to find the time to spend some of it on my usual hobbies: reading books, watching anime, reading manga, baking bread, posting on MyAnimeList, studying Japanese and Economics, etc.

But i suppose i should've prepared myself for this. You can't have pre-university activities, plenty of outings and online socialising, and still have time for the things you used to do when those activities didn't exist. Something's gotta give, and the strain of keeping it all together is going to be too much eventually. So it's time to let some of it go, before that happens.

0 comments

Low on power...

Sigh...i've been pretty low on energy for the most part of today. I'm still low on energy. I just hope that it's because of sleepiness or my cough or anything other than what i think it is.

0 comments

Leaving Japan really soon...

Gosh. Finally, i have internet. So, i can finally update my blog! Well, actually i shouldn't be writing right now (once again) because i need to wake up at like 6.30am SG time tomorrow and there're other people who need to use the computer. But i don't think i'd have any time to post on my blog on friday or saturday since i'm gonna be so damn busy and stuff. So i'll just try to make it quick.

Anyway yesterday was totally great because we went to a hot spring inn to spend the day! A really fun and cultural experience. And the trip to Akihabara was awesome too and i ended up spending quite a bit there! Although most of it went to a FF7 collectible item that set me back SGD150+...okay don't ask me why i bought it...i can only say that i was in that sort of buying mood that i hardly ever get. No 18+ adult items though. As in seriously hahaha!

It kinda made the whole trip worth all the trouble, carrying luggages and taking the train under the hot, hot sun and melting crowds. I started this vacation hoping that it would end faster, but now i'm pretty sad to leave here. It's been really enjoyable. Towards the end. And without all that public transport and walking. And i really wish i had more luggage space!! >.<

The service staff here are really great too! It's true that tourists will find it hard getting around Japan, because hardly anyone here speaks proper english (and most can barely speak a word or two), and apart from the signs belonging to big establishments, like the JR train line and a few others, most of the signs on the road - not to mention the restaurant menus too - are in Hiragana/Katakana, which would make no sense at all to the regular Singaporean tourist.

But the service here more than makes up for it! The people here are exceedingly nice, and they stick to very strict rules that allow for no tipping; they'd refuse your tip even if it seems like no one is around to see them take it. (Or maybe it's because they think tipping them is like being rude to them.) They try their best to communicate with you, never giving up even when the language barrier is obviously standing like a GIANT in the way (did that make sense). FURTHERMORE, EVERY SINGLE JAPANESE PERSON IN JAPAN STANDS ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE ELEVATOR, WHETHER IT GOES DOWN OR UP!!! EVEN WHEN THERE'S NO ONE ELSE ON THE ELEVATOR (something which i don't do myself)!!! They only go to the right side if they plan to walk or run on the escalator...and i highly approve! :) For reasons that most readers here would know, of course lol. The only people i saw who stood on the right side (aside from my family and myself initially of course :p) were like a few tourists from China. Man, this here's a cool place huh.

Today, i left my wallet on the train (it like fell out of my pocket because i did check the seats before leaving), and i found that out when i was searching for my train ticket at the barriers. I ran back to search for it, and the train was still there; the staff were cleaning the train - they never slack from that job. I asked around and sure enough one of them had found my wallet. And they gave it straight to me after confirming my identity. Anyway, i don't have the time to explain further (my dad's rushing me a lot) but hey, just an example of the awesome-ness of Japanese people (lol i'm such a convert).

I'm leaving tomorrow, by the way. I'll be going to the airport for a flight back to Singapore, which departs at 11.30am. To my dear readers, i'm STILL trying for find gifts. Still. To jac (and diana, as an extra service on my part), i couldn't find that cat thingee. I'm sorry. Ooops. Well, i bought two of these cat thingees which LOOKED like the one you (jac) showed me. But they probably aren't. So there you have it. Just in case i couldn't find it, i decided to buy two Code Geass hang-from-your-handphone thingees that you (and diana) can have. I'm not even sure you watch Code Geass but there you have it. One of them's Karen and the other's Lelouch (yeah, well i kinda support Karen x Lulu and not CC x Lulu although i WOULD've gotten CC if they sold one of her instead of that lameass Suzaku). So both of you get to have either one of them...post on my tagboard which one you want, first come, first serve!! XD

There were also two people who wanted ancient traditional umbrellas, but try as i might, i couldn't find such a thing on sale, and even if i did, i couldn't have possibly fit it into my luggage bags! So that one's out of the question. Then there was the Pocky that someone sorta hinted that i should get, but i could only find one flavour that i don't see in Singapore. Butter-milk flavour seems to be gone from supermarkets in Tokyo for good. Whoopsies.

Anyway i really gotta go now (no time to check for spelling/grammatical errors again)! So many things to prepare for but so little time! First things first, i gotta take a shower! I'll reply to the tagboard stuff tomorrow! :):):)

0 comments

Man, i'm tired again...

Okay, if i was tired the last time due to a lack of sleep, this time i'm tired for a totally different reason. (And here i am, making a post about it once again instead of doing the right thing and sleeping.) Late in the afternoon today, i went with my family from our hotel in Shinjuku to Harajuku - walking quite a long way from the hotel to the JR train station - and from there, we decided to visit the shrine of the emperor during the Meiji era, and walked and walked and walked until we finally reached it and did all the stuff that you normally do during japanese temple visits.

Then we walked and walked and walked all the way out and continued to walk and walk and walk as we explored the sprawling shops and malls in Harajuku.

After that, we walked and walked and walked all the way back to the train station, and proceeded from there to Shibuya, where we walked and walked and walked just to take a small peek at the women's fashion on sale at the malls there and the extensive pachinko and slot machine parlours crammed into the backstreets of Shibuya.

We then walked and walked and walked all the way back to the train station, where we took a train back to Shinjuku. We ended up at the wrong side of the station (and the station itself is HUGE because the trains just don't seem to arrive at the same location) and had to walk and walk and walk just to find the Takashimaya mall in Shinjuku.

We bought our dinner at the huge basement of Takashimaya Shinjuku (which reminds me a little of Takashimaya Singapore), and then carried it back to our hotel rooms, walking and walking and walking all the way.

Crud. My feet are still aching a little bit. And i must say that, although Singapore IS hot, Japanese summer is still comparable to Singapore at its WORST. I kinda wish that we had time to visit Japan during the autumn period instead of now, because the scenery and TEMPERATURES would be far better than they are at the moment.

Japan's been a real eye-opener though. Very interesting. Omoshiroi...

...although my japanese still needs a lot of work. I can understand what people are saying most of the time...but that's only when they speak a little slower. And i speak japanese pretty haltingly and slowly myself, and it's like...if i can't sound like a japanese person, why speak japanese at all, since most Japanese people can converse a little in english anyway? Why bother trying to fit in if it's easier for them to accomodate you? Not to mention that it's somehow much more embarrassing to try and fail than to not try at all. Like somehow, i feel like i'm troubling them even more by trying to converse in their own language.

Gosh, i really have some issues that i need to settle. Because it really sucks to just give up like this.

Anyway, to Jac and perhaps Diana too: i'm still looking for that cat thingee but i still haven't found it! Well, i found something that looked a little like it at the shrine but i didn't get it because i wasn't sure. In any case, i'll keep looking! I'll be going to Akihabara tomorrow (or rather today) so we'll see how things go!

0 comments

Sleepy and dying from it.

Oh gosh am i bloody tired right now. Put simply, i had to renew my passport in an emergency situation yesterday morning at around 8am and i suffered from insomnia the night before thanks to a practically broken biological clock. I've had three, maybe four hours of sleep altogether, made it through quite a large amount of driving today, spent loads of energy during rag practice and played host to an energetic bunch of people at my home. Yesterday was really fun, but it was also DAMN FREAKIN TIRING sia.

Anyway i've spent the large part of the early morning of the new day making a reservation at a hotel and booking airplane tickets, and i can say that the trip to Bangkok with my law camp orientation group-mates is almost completely settled! Whew, i think the experience is going to be totally fun and totally TIRING at the same time, but an eye-opener, nevertheless.

Oh, but anyway, the point is that i'm in dire need of sleep right now. Like my nose is dripping like crazy now thanks to some weird reaction that i get when i'm short on sleep, i'm starting to get a little bit of a headache and a sore throat, and i'm feeling the sensation of being both drunk and hungover, all rolled into one.

But here i am, being a complete dumbass and delaying my sleeping time even further by typing this blog entry, all because i feel that you dear readers deserve a post from me every now and then, and also because i want to capture this completely crappy moment of me dying from a lack of sleep in print before it's lost tomorrow. (As usual, forgive me for crappy grammar and crazy sentences that usually appear when i'm extremely sleepy)

Anyway, i'll be going to japan later TODAY! Like woah. My clothes are packed, but my bag hardly isn't, and i'm going to be so damn freakin busy tomorrow. Oh wait, that's today. I mean, i'm going to be so damn freakin busy AFTER i WAKE UP later today. Yep, that sounds about right hahaha.

So, well, i kinda hope that i'd be able to post on this blog or at least check my tagboard while i'm in japan, but with these things, you can never tell, huh. So i'm going to have to say sayonara to you readers for now! If you want anything from japan, please post it here and i'll TRY to get it for you IF i do get to read my tagboard. Nothing that is illegal in singapore, by the way!

Oh my goodness, it's nearly 3am. I better hurry up and brush my teeth and sleep or i'm like so going to die from sleepiness ahahaha...^_^"

0 comments

Cosplay Festival

Yesterday afternoon, i went with Jac and my sister to Downtown East to have a look at the Cosfest happening over there. Cosfest meaning Cosplay Fest; in other words, a festival where lots of people dress up as anime/manga/game characters and there're booths set up selling anime stuff, etc.

And, well, we didn't get anything while we were there (except for a KFC meal lol), but my sister and i left the festival with an amazing discovery...we're not exactly anime-otakus yet!

Like woah huh. We watch plenty of anime at home and i, personally, can discuss episodes for hours online with the proper people, but over at the festival, we felt completely out of place. Like there were crowds of people looking through anime collectibles, souvenirs and posters that i had no interest in buying, and i had zero interest in taking photographs of anime characters "coming to life". And, well...i don't know how to put it nicely, but a lot of the people there seemed like they didn't have much of a social life. Erps. Not that there's anything wrong with that. (And yes, that was my lame attempt at trying to be nice about it. :|)

Well, there were lots of people cosplaying yesterday in a great variety of characters. However, i only took one photograph of this woman cosplaying as a Suikoden V character, because not many people have played the game before and this woman decided to cosplay as Zerase from the game anyway. Pretty cool of her. The picture seems a little blurry, however, so i won't be uploading it. Apart from that, i can only think of a couple of cosplayers who looked decent. Most of the rest had like costumes and wigs that weren't properly done, had the wrong physiques (oops), were of the wrong race (oooops), and weren't good looking enough too (oooooops). All very superficial qualities, sad to say. But, let's be honest; you can't cover up those superficial qualities no matter how well you get into character. As American Idol's Simon would say: "It just wasn't good enough. Sorry!"

But i do know about the cosplaying scene a LITTLE bit, and i do know that cosplayers often have problems with their budgets. And, hey, as they always say, the most important thing about cosplaying is to have fun while doing it, right? And i COULD at least tell where most of the characters were from, in any case.

So maybe my sister and i ARE otakus after all. Otakus with a social life, a better dress sense, and a tighter control over our purse strings. Or something like that.

Anyway i'm stopping here for today! I caught the flu from a friend who was ill while driving him back from a party yesterday. So i'm going to take a piss and a long water break hahaha. Damn, but i never knew that driving a friend home would come with an EXTRA sacrifice. *Sigh*...

0 comments

ComicsConvention kinda sucked, but ahwell...

Okay...i haven't posted in a while. Gosh and i posted a few times within a few hours a while back, didn't i...guess the motivation really does come in bursts.

Well, of note to me was last weekend, when i went with Jac to Singapore's first ever Toys and Comics Convention! It was...rather disappointing, to be honest. Aside from cheap manga and a few cosplayers, there really wasn't anything much to see or buy. There was a huge Nintendo booth which didn't exactly interest me much, and the only thing being featured regarding anime was this booth playing Animax non-stop and Odex VCD/DVD boxes like what the hell. Collectibles were few and far between, and most of them concerned the anime D.Gray-man. Lol like why the f*ck is D.Gray-man so bloody popular when it's not even in my top-20-or-30-anime-of-all-time-list??? >.<

Anyway. I was also quite disappointed, manga/comics-wise. Aside from a couple of ang-mohs, the rest of the comic authors were local and most, if not all of them were into drawing comics that looked a lot like the Calvin & Hobbes or Dilbert or Colin Goh's style of short strips - with easy-looking drawing, mild humour and plenty of "anecdotes" - which totally didn't catch my interest. And you might've noticed that i didn't mention manga authors. Because, well, there were no manga authors AT ALL like what the heck. The only "manga-related" authors at the convention were young people who did manga STILLS. Meaning "single screenshots". Sigh...the local manga industry here is still in the dumps huh...i wonder how my manga's ever going to be a success (if i ever do release it lol).

Hmmm what else...well, aside from that, the cosplay was so-so; i could see that the cosplayers had put in quite a bit of effort, but the quality of the materials and quantity of cosplayers were a little lacking (i'm going to a cosfest thingee with Jac again this saturday so maybe we'll get to see more there). Then there was this gundam showcase thing which was quite interesting. You could buy a gundam set and build it on the spot too, which's a pretty good way for young parents to spend time with their young children. Apart from that, there was nothing else that was interesting...oh wait, there was this customisable doll booth thing which was fascinating, rather sick and a little creepy all at once. Gosh. Anyway, i've a few pictures of the event that i'll upload. It'll appear at the bottom of this post. Don't expect much, though...i'm not a camera-phile after all!

Alright, time to take a short break to make an anime recommendation: BECK! This anime's about a boy who starts out as a weak-ass nobody, but ends up meeting a guitarist and getting involved in a rock band...the story/plot goes on from there, and it's really good stuff! It captured my interest immediately, although the graphical quality of the anime kinda sucks ass. Well, if you like amateur rock music and you're also familiar with the live-house scene, then this anime might just be the one for you.

This week, i've also been spending quite a bit of time practising with a number of NUS Law freshmen for Rag, which's like this little cheerleading nonsense that would've been quite a waste of time if it wasn't so damn fun. I've been spending afternoons with mainly my OG friends, which's cool. Especially since i've got nothing to do at home, anyway...well, apart from clearing that long queue of anime, learning Economics and Japanese, practising my touch-typing, baking bread, etc etc...X)

Yesterday evening, we went to watch a movie as an OG too. Hancock was...erm...okay i guess. The first half of the movie was pretty funny, but things turned rather cheesy later on. A slightly decent movie, but nothing spectacular. I'd rate it below Get Smart, which i watched with my parents last weeked. Get Smart was at least funny all the way, and when the movie had its cheesy bits, you could tell that it was somewhat DELIBERATE. Even then, i can't say that either movie's spectacular...it takes quite a lot of laughing for a movie to overtake Zoolander, still my favourite comedy movie of all time! Well, either's better than Narnia, in any case.

A random comment though...i would like to say that i am still quite irritated with all the limitations with BGRs that religions have placed on a freethinker/agnostic-theist like myself. As if my toxic mix of shyness, inferiority complex, introverted-ness, ADD and plenty of pride is not enough. *Gaah* i feel horrible right now. And very sleepy and brain-dead too. But mostly horrible. -.-

Okay people, it's time for me to go to bed.

COMICS CONVENTION PICTURES


The only Gundam picture that i took

CREEPY LOOKING DOLLS









COSPLAYERS

I think this's the bad guy that appears right at the end of FFVII: Dirge of Cerberus.


Is this supposed to be Ichigo?? His hair's a little too orange i think...



Two kids doing that rather famous pose from Naruto.


Two characters from Vampire Knight...but i don't watch this show.


AND THAT'S ALL!

0 comments