So... I arrived at 8.30. Dammit. I forgot about the legendary queues. There I was, 30 minutes early, and there's a queue all the way past 402. It's like, 100m. Doors only opened at 9.10 am.
Dammit. Everybody else was smart enough to queue for 402 the moment 401 opened. At least I got my Yuki strap and Yui shirt.
...
Seriously, the male emcee is named Daisuki? I love you?!
WTF.
K-ON!! is one of the teasers. Wednesday 8pm.
May I remind you it's all on animeseason.com?
Oh well, at least they left out the TearJerker ending.
God, the subwoofers are powerful. I can feel it, and I'm not exactly at the front. Still, it's a rather cheap cinema. Alright, trailers are over, people start talking, and there's another 10 minutes to go.
NaNo just hit 30k words, and I've got a 5k word buffer. Tomorrow will be the start of Hell Week, so let's have fun today.
What. They just showed a random ad for Yoshiki Fukuyama. And they cut back to soothing piano music.
Yay.
Have I mentioned how cute Disappearance!Yuki is? Hell, I wouldn't have blamed Kyon for staying and turning the series into a romantic slice-of-life comedy with a ton of references to Ryoko's previous incarnation as a knife nut.
Took quite a lot of pictures. 129 of them. 132 including my purchases, which consisted of a Yui shirt, a Disappearance shirt and a Yuki handphone strap. Alright, so I can't attach it to my iPhone, but I can use it for my wallet. The ring of my dog tag is starting to suffer the effects of wear and tear, so it's moving to my bag. I also got a ton of badges, a Disappearance poster and Danny Choo's autograph.
Yay.
Most of my pics were of, and to a smaller extent, with cosplayers. I saw a pretty cool Leafeon and Lucario, though I don't know where they went after that. There was cosplaying a TF2 spy, disguising himself as Len. Or Rin. I didn't get a good look, though I think it's Len.
Nice.
So, yeah. Met a few friends, made a few friends, and we had a great deal of fun chatting about stuff. One guy wanted me to cosplay as Hatsune Miku next AFA. I suggested Len, because it's easier to pull off the hairstyle, and I'd rather wear shorts than a miniskirt and a Grade A zettai ryouiki. Then I told him to cosplay as Rin with me if he wanted me to cosplay so badly.
I didn't go see Kaname, mainly because I know he's an awesome cosplayer and all, but apart from his buffness and looks, nothing much to look at.
If you're saying I'm a hypocrite, then yes, I agree. One of the main reasons I watched K-ON was for the cute girls. The Yui T-shirt, was worn immediately on Monday.
Yeah, lots of people liked it. I'm convinced. There are a ton of bisexual/bicurious people in my school.
My Disappearance 3D poster now hangs on the wall above the head of my bed, or whatever you call the end of the bed opposite the foot. Considering I sleep with my head at the foot of the bed due to a habit formed years ago that I never kicked due to it having no bad repercussions, it's a decent sight to wake up to every morning.
I'm considering getting my hands on the K-ON movie's poster once it comes out. Failing that, I'm going for a high-quality scan, printed at A2 size at Queenstown. High quality, as in I can print it in A2 without noticeable losses in quality.
So, that's why I haven't put this up. Got a whole lot of stuff to do for the whole damn week (hence the Hell Week). My only free day would be Wednesday. Scratch that, it was Wednesday. And I spent it on NaNo. Right now at 33k, excluding a 2k word buffer, which is a character using a Portal Gun to kill a crab, by turning its exoskeleton into a deathtrap using the power of space. And physics. And a flexible LCD screen.
Come to think of it, why not cosplay? My complying friends from AFA have noted that I could do it easily. I can do most Tsundere characters, which I take as a compliment. I can take most bishonen and bishoujo characters, which I'd close a blind eye to. So, that leaves me with quite a wide variety of characters.
Friday. Class outing. ::insert celebratory music::
Wonderful way to end a week of intensive training, with a barbecue. My parents warned me to be careful. Failing that, be safe. Failing that, name it after my best friend.
I really don't want to know what they're expecting in there. The barbecue's at some landed property my friend owns. Always the first place we go for, because it's freaking big. More than enough space for all of us, even for a sleepover.
NaNo's been horribly slow, due to me running out of inspiration and because of the training. Well, Wednesday's output was decent because it was a public holiday, and our only rest day.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Friday, November 19, 2010
I remember how, during tuition, my teacher would bring down knifes and scalpels for Bio practicals. I remember how I would always take them with this odd mixture of glee and fear. They were blades. Using physics, they broke the intermolecular bonds between objects, separating them.
I remember how Kelly always said that if I ever became a serial killer, she'd never say "I'd never expect someone like my best friend to do such things."
I remember how I've always been entranced with details. The more, the merrier. Accurate details too. I'd like to know how things work, and give accurate and detailed descriptions.
I described the Portal Gun in loving detail in my NaNovel. It made sense in context, alright? Fine, even if I mention the context, it still wouldn't. I killed a giant crab off using it, by throwing a character strapped in an exoskeleton into space so that it could collapse the shell with the power of pressure. And two portals.
Got my hands on the K-ON OSTs.
Don't worry, AFAX stuff is coming up. Soon. It's on my iPhone, and I really don't feel like typing on it now. It'll come by Saturday, I promise. Even though I'll be out the whole damn day anyway.
Alright. Got that out of my system.
Time to give one of my characters a knife and watch magic occur.
Mabel, Completely Out Of Ideas.
I remember how Kelly always said that if I ever became a serial killer, she'd never say "I'd never expect someone like my best friend to do such things."
I remember how I've always been entranced with details. The more, the merrier. Accurate details too. I'd like to know how things work, and give accurate and detailed descriptions.
I described the Portal Gun in loving detail in my NaNovel. It made sense in context, alright? Fine, even if I mention the context, it still wouldn't. I killed a giant crab off using it, by throwing a character strapped in an exoskeleton into space so that it could collapse the shell with the power of pressure. And two portals.
Got my hands on the K-ON OSTs.
Don't worry, AFAX stuff is coming up. Soon. It's on my iPhone, and I really don't feel like typing on it now. It'll come by Saturday, I promise. Even though I'll be out the whole damn day anyway.
Alright. Got that out of my system.
Time to give one of my characters a knife and watch magic occur.
Mabel, Completely Out Of Ideas.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Class Outing
...has been cancelled. I'd wrap my hands around someone's neck, except that it's all our faults. We started organizing it during the holidays. All of us can just say it's someone else's problem. During the school term, there's still pressure from everybody else. Nobody shirks because everybody will come down on them. There's also faster communication, and...
Ah screw it. The main thing is that it's been postponed to next Wednesday or Friday. Knowing us, no way it's gonna happen already. It's gonna get pushed until next year, then h damn, we're in different classes, and people start gift wrapping the blame and call it an overdue Christmas present.
So, now that I'm typing this, on my iPhone, no less, let's talk about NaNo. New pep talk's out. Quite interesting, it's about not quitting. I'm at 27k, with a 4k buffer. At this rate, I could finish by 25th.
Alas, trouble. My characters are arriving back home, 30 minutes before an attack of unknown size. My CrazyAwesome supercomputers, who happened to call themselves the MAGI, and read Nobody Dies, have to drag things out, for another 20k words. I've got another 8 CurbStompBattles to go, so that's about 10k words down. Things are becoming less realistic, but I'm keeping stuff as grounded as possible. No way are my scientists gonna exclaim like in Star Trek that a pound of antimatter can obliterate a solar system. I'm using 3kg charges of antimatter, which is about 128MT each. Fired from a network of railguns. Field a giant mecha, and we'll show you why we love big targets. Add drillbits with a point a few molecules across, and we'll have the antimatter charge go off inside you. And, of course, bits of Giant Mecha flies all over, and it's a matter of taking them out with conventional fire. There's also the option of saturating the battlefield with conventional forces. Not very creative though. So, that battle's gonna be about 3k in total, or somewhere around there.
Finally, I've gotta settle how the whole thing started. That's gonna take a while, so that's the whole damn novel done.
Who said 50k was tough? I did 27k already, and my characters just finished Arc 2 of 3. Oh wait... So that's why...
Screw it. I'm going to successfully complete my first NaNovel, no matter what. Even if I have to pull a plot twist from my ass. Well, not really. I've got a few plot lines for my use.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Monday, November 8, 2010
JCC
I went for the Anime and Manga exhibition at 4 Nassim Road. They close at 12 November, or the day AFA starts. Well, for the businessmen. We mere mortals (read: otakus) have to settle for the weekend.
It's kinda small, really. No mention of Haruhi (how blasphemous!), but there's a ton of K-ON and Death Note, so I guess it's okay. There was only a passing mention to Lucky Star, except it was in K-ON's info board.
Lots of pics, mainly for K-ON. If you were wondering about Mio's "ahem" in her bass figma, it's white, not striped blue and white. Don't ask too much why I was looking. The K-ON OP they were showing was Go Go Maniac. I was hoping for Utauyo Miracle, but I guess you can't have everything. My original plan was to go on Monday, not today anyway.
Fine. I'm going for Incite Mill tomorrow. I still haven't checked whether it's NC16. If it is, well, dammit. I was hoping to stimulate some writing muscles. I now can officially say that my NaNo novel is over 9000 words long, though I've already started the actual rescue.
Yes, I'm doing a different plot and I can't remember whether I've mentioned it here. Still, there's a number of plot lines I've yet to use. For example, the supercomputers have a small network connecting them. There's a lot I could do, but quite a few ideas are predictable. For example, supercomputers gaining sentience (which they already have) and taking over. That's overdone, and pretty much a dead horse if you ask me.
On my way home. It's a boring ride, from Orchard. The pics are on FB if you want to know more.
I'm going to start Maid Sama, hopefully after NaNo. I've got enough problems from settling the class outing, Ore no Imouto, and my fanatical urge to get the details right. I don't want to invoke DidNotDoTheResearch, nor the DanBrowned trope.
I should download anime soon. Haruhi season 1, all of K-ON and that's about it. I need them all subbed, hopefully in one piece. Lucky Star was just annoying because I had to download then in 3 parts each off YouTube.
God, it was tiring. I forgot about Google Maps until I finally blundered my way there. There's a ton of wireless networks, and Google can calculate it easily enough. Well, usually.
Sleep. And thus, I woke up 2 stations too late.
I saw someone on the way there, who was wearing awesome clothes from Yishun to Newton. She was about my age, and very cute. Somewhat tight, ripped jeans, kinda like mine except that mine have no tears/holes. A plain white T-shirt to finish it off, and white/dark blue Nikes. I think she was wearing white ankle socks, though it was quite tough. Her jeans were the correct length, not baggy, and not the kind that shows the ankle.
I'm pretty sure she got more than a few looks. One of the rips was higher, on her upper thigh. Bare, white flesh.
I'm so gonna use her as a template for a character of mine.
I looked through what I've written, all the entries. If it wasn't for prior knowledge, there's no way to know my gender.
Right. NaNo's pretty well off for now. I haven't written much for now, mainly because I found an awesome fanfic called Nobody Dies. It's NGE, but way more light and... fluffy. So, Yui Ikari doesn't die, instead sending Shinji to live with his uncle and aunt. Kyoko Soryu doesn't die too, and Gendo raises Rei with Yui. Thus, Shinji is less cowardly. Rei's a crazy awesome cloudcuckoolander. Asuka's still the most screwed up one, but she's now a shy woobie, who transforms into a hyper focused gadgeteer genius. CMoA/CMoF occur every chapter. Chapter 5, for instance as Rei trapping herself and a classmate in an Angel. She falcon punches the core, and we get a small monologue from the Angel that sounds like it's drunk and falling. Well, it is falling, but in a surreal way.
Badass!Shinji/Woobie!Asuka is an awesome ship, let me tell you. Also, "Hee~eey!" from Rei is cool. Especially because her saying this means the listener is not gonna like what's about to happen, or bystanders are about to be amused greatly.
Rei's clones are even more awesome. They smashed through the fourth wall at one point and are producing an anime about our characters named Neon Genesis Evangelion, and they talk about Woobie!Shinji being canon. They're right, of course, but nobody takes them seriously enough.
And of course, they adopt the remnants of an Angel as a pet. Then they adopt a few more, and even build a giant mecha for one of them. One Angel visits 4chan and thus, wants to kill us all. Right after it fixes up its messed up processors after one too many applications of brain bleach.
Finished all 75 chapters, then saw 76. Right. A BeachEpisode. Then again, judging by the last 75 chapters, things never go normally. And the Ree get a new pet. It's like a crackfic, except that everything makes sense after a while.
It's 3 days since I've been to JCC, and I'm still not done. WTF. Anyway, I've got a nice backlog for NaNo, and I'm gonna try hitting 20k by tomorrow. I'll update my official wordcount slowly, because I want a backlog in case I lose my muse. It's more about being prepared. I've found that sometimes, when everything goes dry, it's time for someone to crack their knuckles and say, "Let's fight."
Or I do something so awesome it breaks the laws of physics. Then I have everybody scramble, because clearly, something big just happened.
I haven't watched Incite Mill yet. Urgh. On the other hand, the class outing has been finalized. 12 November. If we get the reservations, paintball, followed by BBQ. Oh god, this will be fun.
Let's see how many combat tropes I get to observe/see played straight, subverted, double subverted, deconstructed, and reconstructed. I doubt I can play epic music through my earbuds, but eh...
I'm not wishing for that much. All I want is a fun day, and a great end to our two years of friendship.
So, what's with today? Well, I'm off to Funan to buy AFA tickets. I'm going for 14th, mainly for the cosplay, to watch Disappearance and for Kaname. My mom may come along, also for Kaname. With any luck, I can dump her into Atelier, then go spend my meager savings on merchandise. K-ON, mainly.
My story is drifting from my original plans. I wanted a simple rescue story, but with more fighting and subterfuge than a normal story.
One of my characters justified his HyperspaceArsenal with a Dirac Sea. With a limitless pocket universe, which could easily hold an Evangelion and a whole lot more. His main use for it? As a bullet-absorbing armor. And of course, to store his weapons.
Another character just created a small fusion bomb, which created a very short-lived star. With nothing but a whole lot of explosives, cars and machine gun nests. And maybe a few other things. And the shockwave didn't even harm him. Yes, I lampshaded the hell out of it. No, it's gonna stay, just to show the badassness. This might turn into an AT field, if the NGE references continue.
Got my AFA tickets! Cost me $15 and a bit of time, but yeah. I got them! Uh... Kelly, since you've hit this point, remember to pay me back the $10. It's kinda urgent. I saw a Haruhi figurine for $7, lots of K-ON beach figmas at La Tendo. Also, at RapidCulture, a Haruhi sigma for $49. Urgh. I hate my meager savings.
They were completely out of Day 1, which suited me. I'm not interested in the Gundam movie. I want Haruhi. Thank her that it's a proper sub, though I'm willing to wager that the subbing accuracy is similar to the camrip. Picture and sound should be well, at the very least, superior.
Pics will, as usual, be on FB, once I go home.
Dammit, I've yet to start the rescue, and I'm nearly halfway through. It shouldn't take too long, which leaves me with another 20,000 words so. I could mount a retaliatory attack, and have more craziness. Maybe I could have something happen to the guy in Mission Control and have them operate blind. Then they go back and rescue him.
I'll take the first option. There's enough plot lines and Chekhov's Guns in there for a pretty cool assault scene. I wonder if I can have a Transformers-inspired scene in there. Not a "IT'S STARSCREAM!" moment, mind you. Maybe a "IT'S THE CONSTRUCTICONS, AND THEY'RE FORMING DEVASTATOR!" moment. Something big, crazy yet slightly possible but highly implausible. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.
Back to AFA. No cosplaying this year. Not enough money. Damn me and my impulsive purchases. On the other hand, I'm going to Akihabara later in the year, so no complaints.
Mabel, Overjoyed
I went for the Anime and Manga exhibition at 4 Nassim Road. They close at 12 November, or the day AFA starts. Well, for the businessmen. We mere mortals (read: otakus) have to settle for the weekend.
It's kinda small, really. No mention of Haruhi (how blasphemous!), but there's a ton of K-ON and Death Note, so I guess it's okay. There was only a passing mention to Lucky Star, except it was in K-ON's info board.
Lots of pics, mainly for K-ON. If you were wondering about Mio's "ahem" in her bass figma, it's white, not striped blue and white. Don't ask too much why I was looking. The K-ON OP they were showing was Go Go Maniac. I was hoping for Utauyo Miracle, but I guess you can't have everything. My original plan was to go on Monday, not today anyway.
Fine. I'm going for Incite Mill tomorrow. I still haven't checked whether it's NC16. If it is, well, dammit. I was hoping to stimulate some writing muscles. I now can officially say that my NaNo novel is over 9000 words long, though I've already started the actual rescue.
Yes, I'm doing a different plot and I can't remember whether I've mentioned it here. Still, there's a number of plot lines I've yet to use. For example, the supercomputers have a small network connecting them. There's a lot I could do, but quite a few ideas are predictable. For example, supercomputers gaining sentience (which they already have) and taking over. That's overdone, and pretty much a dead horse if you ask me.
On my way home. It's a boring ride, from Orchard. The pics are on FB if you want to know more.
I'm going to start Maid Sama, hopefully after NaNo. I've got enough problems from settling the class outing, Ore no Imouto, and my fanatical urge to get the details right. I don't want to invoke DidNotDoTheResearch, nor the DanBrowned trope.
I should download anime soon. Haruhi season 1, all of K-ON and that's about it. I need them all subbed, hopefully in one piece. Lucky Star was just annoying because I had to download then in 3 parts each off YouTube.
God, it was tiring. I forgot about Google Maps until I finally blundered my way there. There's a ton of wireless networks, and Google can calculate it easily enough. Well, usually.
Sleep. And thus, I woke up 2 stations too late.
I saw someone on the way there, who was wearing awesome clothes from Yishun to Newton. She was about my age, and very cute. Somewhat tight, ripped jeans, kinda like mine except that mine have no tears/holes. A plain white T-shirt to finish it off, and white/dark blue Nikes. I think she was wearing white ankle socks, though it was quite tough. Her jeans were the correct length, not baggy, and not the kind that shows the ankle.
I'm pretty sure she got more than a few looks. One of the rips was higher, on her upper thigh. Bare, white flesh.
I'm so gonna use her as a template for a character of mine.
I looked through what I've written, all the entries. If it wasn't for prior knowledge, there's no way to know my gender.
Right. NaNo's pretty well off for now. I haven't written much for now, mainly because I found an awesome fanfic called Nobody Dies. It's NGE, but way more light and... fluffy. So, Yui Ikari doesn't die, instead sending Shinji to live with his uncle and aunt. Kyoko Soryu doesn't die too, and Gendo raises Rei with Yui. Thus, Shinji is less cowardly. Rei's a crazy awesome cloudcuckoolander. Asuka's still the most screwed up one, but she's now a shy woobie, who transforms into a hyper focused gadgeteer genius. CMoA/CMoF occur every chapter. Chapter 5, for instance as Rei trapping herself and a classmate in an Angel. She falcon punches the core, and we get a small monologue from the Angel that sounds like it's drunk and falling. Well, it is falling, but in a surreal way.
Badass!Shinji/Woobie!Asuka is an awesome ship, let me tell you. Also, "Hee~eey!" from Rei is cool. Especially because her saying this means the listener is not gonna like what's about to happen, or bystanders are about to be amused greatly.
Rei's clones are even more awesome. They smashed through the fourth wall at one point and are producing an anime about our characters named Neon Genesis Evangelion, and they talk about Woobie!Shinji being canon. They're right, of course, but nobody takes them seriously enough.
And of course, they adopt the remnants of an Angel as a pet. Then they adopt a few more, and even build a giant mecha for one of them. One Angel visits 4chan and thus, wants to kill us all. Right after it fixes up its messed up processors after one too many applications of brain bleach.
Finished all 75 chapters, then saw 76. Right. A BeachEpisode. Then again, judging by the last 75 chapters, things never go normally. And the Ree get a new pet. It's like a crackfic, except that everything makes sense after a while.
It's 3 days since I've been to JCC, and I'm still not done. WTF. Anyway, I've got a nice backlog for NaNo, and I'm gonna try hitting 20k by tomorrow. I'll update my official wordcount slowly, because I want a backlog in case I lose my muse. It's more about being prepared. I've found that sometimes, when everything goes dry, it's time for someone to crack their knuckles and say, "Let's fight."
Or I do something so awesome it breaks the laws of physics. Then I have everybody scramble, because clearly, something big just happened.
I haven't watched Incite Mill yet. Urgh. On the other hand, the class outing has been finalized. 12 November. If we get the reservations, paintball, followed by BBQ. Oh god, this will be fun.
Let's see how many combat tropes I get to observe/see played straight, subverted, double subverted, deconstructed, and reconstructed. I doubt I can play epic music through my earbuds, but eh...
I'm not wishing for that much. All I want is a fun day, and a great end to our two years of friendship.
So, what's with today? Well, I'm off to Funan to buy AFA tickets. I'm going for 14th, mainly for the cosplay, to watch Disappearance and for Kaname. My mom may come along, also for Kaname. With any luck, I can dump her into Atelier, then go spend my meager savings on merchandise. K-ON, mainly.
My story is drifting from my original plans. I wanted a simple rescue story, but with more fighting and subterfuge than a normal story.
One of my characters justified his HyperspaceArsenal with a Dirac Sea. With a limitless pocket universe, which could easily hold an Evangelion and a whole lot more. His main use for it? As a bullet-absorbing armor. And of course, to store his weapons.
Another character just created a small fusion bomb, which created a very short-lived star. With nothing but a whole lot of explosives, cars and machine gun nests. And maybe a few other things. And the shockwave didn't even harm him. Yes, I lampshaded the hell out of it. No, it's gonna stay, just to show the badassness. This might turn into an AT field, if the NGE references continue.
Got my AFA tickets! Cost me $15 and a bit of time, but yeah. I got them! Uh... Kelly, since you've hit this point, remember to pay me back the $10. It's kinda urgent. I saw a Haruhi figurine for $7, lots of K-ON beach figmas at La Tendo. Also, at RapidCulture, a Haruhi sigma for $49. Urgh. I hate my meager savings.
They were completely out of Day 1, which suited me. I'm not interested in the Gundam movie. I want Haruhi. Thank her that it's a proper sub, though I'm willing to wager that the subbing accuracy is similar to the camrip. Picture and sound should be well, at the very least, superior.
Pics will, as usual, be on FB, once I go home.
Dammit, I've yet to start the rescue, and I'm nearly halfway through. It shouldn't take too long, which leaves me with another 20,000 words so. I could mount a retaliatory attack, and have more craziness. Maybe I could have something happen to the guy in Mission Control and have them operate blind. Then they go back and rescue him.
I'll take the first option. There's enough plot lines and Chekhov's Guns in there for a pretty cool assault scene. I wonder if I can have a Transformers-inspired scene in there. Not a "IT'S STARSCREAM!" moment, mind you. Maybe a "IT'S THE CONSTRUCTICONS, AND THEY'RE FORMING DEVASTATOR!" moment. Something big, crazy yet slightly possible but highly implausible. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.
Back to AFA. No cosplaying this year. Not enough money. Damn me and my impulsive purchases. On the other hand, I'm going to Akihabara later in the year, so no complaints.
Mabel, Overjoyed
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Camp Reflections (Slightly Overdue)
Day1
I've gotta say, I can't bear to be strict with my juniors. Those idiots know what they're supposed to do, they know what we need them to do.
They just refuse to do it. It's like in NCC. Get in the squad, line up straight, and act as a united body.
They're the kind of people who refuse to take things seriously, and they'll make noise just to piss my seniors off. And since we're in the middle, we're obliged to be the kinder ones, no matter how pissed off we get.
The problem is, I find that we're not so different. We were all like that back then, except we actually knew when we had crossed the line. Our juniors are the kind of people who'd cross the line, and cross it a few more times until someone blows up.
It's technically the second day now. We're supposed to be asleep. Eh.
Our seniors are next door, watching Burn Notice. A few are here with us, waiting for McDonalds.
Nevertheless, I wouldn't have it any other way. The juniors, at this rate, will be the kind of procrastinating insomniacs that will take over, and make the camps epic.
I still worry. It's one of those weird things. Seniors one year above you will be awesome people who won't punish you. With few exceptions. Seniors two years above you will be evil bastards who everybody hates. It's like Lelouch's final fate, y'know? He makes people hate him, and unite under those feelings. It happens all the time in history. My enemy's enemy is always my friend. Well, until our mutual enemy is gone... I don't know who's gonna be the scapegoat, the target for next year's batch. Nobody wants to.
We all brought stuff. There's a guy snapping random shots, a small group clustered around a Gameboy playing Pokemon Emerald, a group talking about their PSLE results for some odd reason. I'm listening to my music now. It's so tempting, sleep. Just sleep, and reset your thoughts. We're using this camp to see who we can trust next year to fill our shoes. We're in charge of almost everything, except discipline. It's amazingly tiring, though it's incredibly enjoyable. None of us wants to sleep, even though it's more than an hour after lights out. I'm betting if anybody lies their head on the table, they'll fall asleep in less than a minute.
McDonalds isn't here yet. Dammit, what's taking 'em so long? We want to sleep too!
Huh. There's three laptops open now. Excuse me while I check on my FB apps and update myself on the world.
Macs are here. My food cost $7. It's a real mess. Some people are doing last-minute prep. One of my friends destroyed my senior's large material advantage in chess, but he still lost.
As usual, I got the Double Cheeseburger meal. Right. Imma go sleep now. It's 0115, according to my watch, and there's gonna be lots of work tomorrow.
Day2
We went for a walk after breakfast. A nice, relaxing walk. A nice, relaxing 5km long walk. Trust me, everybody enjoyed it partially. Specifically, the awesome views we got from being so damn high. We went for that walkway near Hort Park, then up Mount Faber, then down. By the time we were done, we were near Vivocity.
Came back after 3 hours. We're all tired, but we still have work to do. All those prepping last night paid off, though our juniors were still hyper. As always. We yelled. As always. We've taken a liking to some of them. One guy I like is this kid named Wen Xi. He's kinda small, so he pretty much invokes BigBrotherInstinct on me. The silent kind, and best of all, he knows his anime. His favorite is Code Geass, and he's got the same disdain for Naruto, Bleach and One Piece as me.
Yeah, I'll look for him after the camp on FB. We don't really spend much time with the juniors anyway.
It's officially the third, and final day. I lost, and found the keys to my group's dorms. I've gotta say, I think I might have succeeded.
It's always been my belief that there are too many firm instructors. They're too quick to shout, too quick to punish, too fast to criticize. Too slow to praise, too slow to give thanks.
So, I wasn't surprised when I was the least wet in the water bomb fight, excluding the juniors. I'm the one giving water bombs to them, the one pointing at the seniors and the one laughing with them.
Nobody wants to bomb the friendly girl who sides with you. It's one of those things in game theory that I can't remember the name to. Basically, people will do more if you give them a small unconditional thing, than promise a larger reward given after completion. I become the nice person who's extremely lax, doesn't yell, and help get refills. I'm more popular than my friends who doesn't grant unconditional favors, but fulfills every promise to the hilt, and nothing more.
God, I'm tired. Right. I'll sleep more tonight. It's 30 minutes past midnight. Goodnight, world.
Day3
The seniors have left us in charge. Well, that's gonna be fun. We're now supposed to be doing area cleaning, but we already got them to pack up everything, because a few bright sparks decided to wake up everybody at 5am. I'm not too happy about getting one less hour of sleep, but the fact is I'm now at the canteen, chatting with the juniors in my group.
We're talking about teachers now, and exchanging horror stories about them. Come on. We're students. We talk about schools.
Overall, this was an extremely fun, but tiring camp. My juniors beg to differ. They disliked the seniors, though they've learnt that they are all nice people who screw up all the time. We broke that impression by talking about their stupidity, inanity and general mischief.
We also explained to them the main reason behind the meanness. It's basically like a carrot and stick approach. Harshness comes from them, good news comes from us. In time, they grow as a team, and they become united. At the end of the three days, all 5 groups are now close-knit.
Still, they refuse to use the female showers. Come on! It's cleaner, emptier and much more appealing. None of them dared enter, no matter how much I reassured that I would check for girls to prevent accidents.
Ah, to hell with all that. The camp was fun, and that's all that matters in the end. We've all got great and not-so-great memories for all of them.
The whole event ended at noon. Say goodbye, exchange FB names and promises to upload pics ASAP. I lent out too much money this time. I have to get the $15 back before, you guessed it, AFA.
###
Anyway, NaNo has started. I'm on my way to 8,000 words, and I want, no, need to write on average, 2,000 words a day. I've got a nice 2 day buffer, mainly because I haven't wrote for today. That would be spent on AFA, because, depending on how well I do it, I may, or may not get Anisong tickets.
Class stuff now. We've got the designs down, so hoodies should be ready in a week or so. We're planning a class gathering.
1) Movie. Not a good idea getting all of us to gather and watch a movie. For one, have you tried getting 2 rows to yourself in a cinema? We have. That's why our June attempt to get a class gathering failed.
2) CIP. No. Just no.
3) Chalet/Cycling at East Coast or Sentosa. Thanks a lot, Halloween dude. Now our parents refuse.
4) Crash someone's place and have a BBQ. That actually might work, because we've got ideas. Kelly isn't averse to letting the class come over.
5) Restaurant. Possible. Just rather risky. We might get banned for starting a food fight. Also, there's the slight issue of all of us walking in, making a huge amount of noise, and pissing off people. Have I mentioned the trouble of catering for large amounts of people on the fly? And that means that we'll slow down a lot of people, make lots of noise, and there's a chance people will bring laptops, and set up a LAN center there. Urgh.
So, yeah. Until NaNo ends, I won't be updating much. Except for AFA, for the class outing (if it occurs) and for announcing my success, and my prizes, if any.
I'm really hoping for something simple like a shirt. It most probably won't be free, but there's always the option of asking my dad really nicely.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
My computer's back, and damn, I'm pleased. Well, actually it came back on Sunday, but I spent the whole of it restoring everything manually from a Time Machine backup that the computer refused to copy from. Hence, manually. Monday was spent getting my preferences back, and
Yeah. Prepping for NaNoWriMo already. I really do want to go for the party. Have fun working out who the hell I am.
I've chosen to write a different story after watching the third season of Leverage. I want to rewrite The Inside Job, except that we've got a tougher security system, more villainous foes, more badass characters, and a more epic end to everything.
Sigh. Got a camp to prepare for. A 3D2N camp, and we've just started planning. We always make it, but the way we're pushing it, that's just TemptingFate.
Got to go. There's a lot of stuff to be done.
Mabel, Overworked.
Yeah. Prepping for NaNoWriMo already. I really do want to go for the party. Have fun working out who the hell I am.
I've chosen to write a different story after watching the third season of Leverage. I want to rewrite The Inside Job, except that we've got a tougher security system, more villainous foes, more badass characters, and a more epic end to everything.
Sigh. Got a camp to prepare for. A 3D2N camp, and we've just started planning. We always make it, but the way we're pushing it, that's just TemptingFate.
Got to go. There's a lot of stuff to be done.
Mabel, Overworked.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
On RPing and Fictional Documents
I RP. No, that's not Singapore's replacement to the ERP. It means Role Play. That means I act as a different character. I have a few profiles. An economic superpower with a peace-loving military that avoids battles at all costs unless it's necessary, at which point they completely crush and annihilate the opposition, a planet that specializes in ship-building, providing services to anybody who has money no matter their alignments, a ChaoticGood merchant who's still in the business for the thrill of a good deal, and a NeutralGood mercenary with the ability to find anything he needs in his hands.
Something I pride myself on is accuracy. Thankfully, I have resources at home. There's a university-level Biology textbook focussing on the human body. There's an encyclopedia on guns, shotguns and practically anything handheld that fires a bullet shaped projectile. There's a book on fighters and bombers of the World Wars and modern militaries. There's even a military atlas to World War 2.
I have practically everything I need. At one point, I described my superpower's water recycling systems, police forces, legal systems, emergency protocols in the event of war, threats to sovereignty, assassinations of members of state, different forms of attacks, coups, natural disasters and economic sanctions, among others. For the planet, I have planned out the Daemon for it, and gave it an evolutionary algorithm to create experimental technologies such as electrolasers, coil guns and kinetic penetrators. I also gave it backup plans and a last ditch failsafe I copied straight from the Daemon. In my case, my Daemon gave its companies a letter that it had been taken over and from that point on, they were no longer the masters, but the slaves.
So, I watched the rest of Leverage today. The ending was odd. Still, there was a nice breather, talking about the dagger, and their various mockeries of Sophie's accent. The first time it was done, Sophie returned the favor by portraying Elliot as a drunk, drawling Southerner with a smoking problem. Another running gag was how Elliot saved the Zimbabwe minister, AKA Hardison from anaphylactic shock with a tracheotomy. Sophie's version involved a letter-opener. His version used a corkscrew. Hardison claimed he smiled like Dexter and used a large chopper. Parker added in her version that she passed the weapon. Nate's final version left that in. Seriously, a oversized chopper that looked like a baby version of Cloud's blade? Why the hell is it at a reception table?
On second thoughts, let's not question that too much. I'm beginning Dexter tomorrow. My dad is ambivalent, because he finds it a tad too slow.
Yeah. Short post for tonight. I'll continue tomorrow.
I got an idea for NaNoWriMo. If I write the story from a few viewpoints, and have various unexplained events that are explained when we look at it from another character's perspective, I get to pad the story, and create free comic relief at how they accidentally screw it up for each other.
Using a simple retrieval mission for instance, I have 4 agents trying to get the MacGuffin at the same time because they want to look good. Therefore, all I have to do is write at least 12,500 words for each agent, which would be easy as when you get more than 2 people working to achieve the same goal and they think they're the only ones on the job, it gets really weird and amusing. I could hit 70-80k on this one, assuming the editor in me doesn't slow the writer in me too much.
Still, there aren't many situations where I could use this scenario. We're talking about a secret organization here, not a loose collections of mercenaries. You can't have agents running around screwing up one another's plans without someone noticing.
The IdiotBall will be passed around a lot, that's for sure. I won't like that, but it's a cost I'll have to pay for a comedy of errors.
If I finish prepping before October 31st, before the kickoff, I mean, I should continue on creating the fictional documents and the information for my individual RP characters. The superpower is done, the planet is just about done, with the specs of all its major ships done. The mercenary's profile, limitations and style is done. I've done very little on my merchant. I know I want him to be a BadassNormal who has extremely powerful tools. He's shaping out to become a space merchant, so I might grab one of the ships from my ship-building planet and give it to him. He hasn't done much dog-fighting. He has gotten out of fights with his reputation and an implied threat. Most of the time anyway, I make him into a coward like Rincewind. He's a major gems trader, has connections to the leaders of three major crime families that alternate between asking for his help and asking thugs to kill him, and has a sentient AI that frequently discuss plans to kill him, take over the ship and enslave humanity. Yes, most of my characters could easily become a MartyStu/MarySue, but there's a difference. MarySues face no challenges. In the RPGs, everybody is extremely powerful, and we're all out for our personal agendas. Therefore, the GM doesn't have to give us constant problems. We end up complicating things for each other anyway, with our odd alliances and rivalries.
In school. We're playing... Some weird variation of Chess. 4v4 Chess. We seat in a row of 4 on each side, and captured pieces are passed to the right, which can be inserted into the battlefield in lieu of moving. When the right-most guy loses a piece, it goes out of play for good. First team to capture all 4 kings wins.
It took us 3 hours to finish a game. At one point, my team had 6 queens on a single board. It was epic, mind you, and there'll be much to add to my personal list of CMoAs and CMoFs.
I just sent my brother for tuition class. Since the teacher isn't here yet, I'm obliged to stay. I've got some tropes to read through.
OneTwoThreeFourGo is an interesting trope/pun. I should put that into the female agent's story, which is already filled with language-based jokes. I could have her walk into the room with 5 items of any kind excitedly and have her announce this trope name in full while she dumps them individually on the table. Knifes, anime DVDs or light novels, perhaps.
Then she could reenact the conversation between Kyon and Ryoko before... you know. That. Complete with the exact responses, even though the subject she's talking to has no idea what she's doing. He'll most probably go, "Damn, this only happens in cheap crappy hentai films, not real life!" Then he sees the way she holds the knives, and we get Kyon's panic. Voila!
So, I played NFS Carbon today. Had some fun with the customization, then I proceeded to do thirty minute long chases. Despite how far I've went in the game, how much money I coated the state, for some reason, they never did use spike strips on me. Even with a dozen cars chasing mr at one shot, with 4 dozen cars assigned on me, and more than 20 disabled cars. Still, no spike strips.
I still like my original Mazda RX-8. It's one of my easiest vehicles. Decent handling, good acceleration, it gets me through those impromptu street races easily.
Mabel, Racer Wannabe
I RP. No, that's not Singapore's replacement to the ERP. It means Role Play. That means I act as a different character. I have a few profiles. An economic superpower with a peace-loving military that avoids battles at all costs unless it's necessary, at which point they completely crush and annihilate the opposition, a planet that specializes in ship-building, providing services to anybody who has money no matter their alignments, a ChaoticGood merchant who's still in the business for the thrill of a good deal, and a NeutralGood mercenary with the ability to find anything he needs in his hands.
Something I pride myself on is accuracy. Thankfully, I have resources at home. There's a university-level Biology textbook focussing on the human body. There's an encyclopedia on guns, shotguns and practically anything handheld that fires a bullet shaped projectile. There's a book on fighters and bombers of the World Wars and modern militaries. There's even a military atlas to World War 2.
I have practically everything I need. At one point, I described my superpower's water recycling systems, police forces, legal systems, emergency protocols in the event of war, threats to sovereignty, assassinations of members of state, different forms of attacks, coups, natural disasters and economic sanctions, among others. For the planet, I have planned out the Daemon for it, and gave it an evolutionary algorithm to create experimental technologies such as electrolasers, coil guns and kinetic penetrators. I also gave it backup plans and a last ditch failsafe I copied straight from the Daemon. In my case, my Daemon gave its companies a letter that it had been taken over and from that point on, they were no longer the masters, but the slaves.
So, I watched the rest of Leverage today. The ending was odd. Still, there was a nice breather, talking about the dagger, and their various mockeries of Sophie's accent. The first time it was done, Sophie returned the favor by portraying Elliot as a drunk, drawling Southerner with a smoking problem. Another running gag was how Elliot saved the Zimbabwe minister, AKA Hardison from anaphylactic shock with a tracheotomy. Sophie's version involved a letter-opener. His version used a corkscrew. Hardison claimed he smiled like Dexter and used a large chopper. Parker added in her version that she passed the weapon. Nate's final version left that in. Seriously, a oversized chopper that looked like a baby version of Cloud's blade? Why the hell is it at a reception table?
On second thoughts, let's not question that too much. I'm beginning Dexter tomorrow. My dad is ambivalent, because he finds it a tad too slow.
Yeah. Short post for tonight. I'll continue tomorrow.
I got an idea for NaNoWriMo. If I write the story from a few viewpoints, and have various unexplained events that are explained when we look at it from another character's perspective, I get to pad the story, and create free comic relief at how they accidentally screw it up for each other.
Using a simple retrieval mission for instance, I have 4 agents trying to get the MacGuffin at the same time because they want to look good. Therefore, all I have to do is write at least 12,500 words for each agent, which would be easy as when you get more than 2 people working to achieve the same goal and they think they're the only ones on the job, it gets really weird and amusing. I could hit 70-80k on this one, assuming the editor in me doesn't slow the writer in me too much.
Still, there aren't many situations where I could use this scenario. We're talking about a secret organization here, not a loose collections of mercenaries. You can't have agents running around screwing up one another's plans without someone noticing.
The IdiotBall will be passed around a lot, that's for sure. I won't like that, but it's a cost I'll have to pay for a comedy of errors.
If I finish prepping before October 31st, before the kickoff, I mean, I should continue on creating the fictional documents and the information for my individual RP characters. The superpower is done, the planet is just about done, with the specs of all its major ships done. The mercenary's profile, limitations and style is done. I've done very little on my merchant. I know I want him to be a BadassNormal who has extremely powerful tools. He's shaping out to become a space merchant, so I might grab one of the ships from my ship-building planet and give it to him. He hasn't done much dog-fighting. He has gotten out of fights with his reputation and an implied threat. Most of the time anyway, I make him into a coward like Rincewind. He's a major gems trader, has connections to the leaders of three major crime families that alternate between asking for his help and asking thugs to kill him, and has a sentient AI that frequently discuss plans to kill him, take over the ship and enslave humanity. Yes, most of my characters could easily become a MartyStu/MarySue, but there's a difference. MarySues face no challenges. In the RPGs, everybody is extremely powerful, and we're all out for our personal agendas. Therefore, the GM doesn't have to give us constant problems. We end up complicating things for each other anyway, with our odd alliances and rivalries.
In school. We're playing... Some weird variation of Chess. 4v4 Chess. We seat in a row of 4 on each side, and captured pieces are passed to the right, which can be inserted into the battlefield in lieu of moving. When the right-most guy loses a piece, it goes out of play for good. First team to capture all 4 kings wins.
It took us 3 hours to finish a game. At one point, my team had 6 queens on a single board. It was epic, mind you, and there'll be much to add to my personal list of CMoAs and CMoFs.
I just sent my brother for tuition class. Since the teacher isn't here yet, I'm obliged to stay. I've got some tropes to read through.
OneTwoThreeFourGo is an interesting trope/pun. I should put that into the female agent's story, which is already filled with language-based jokes. I could have her walk into the room with 5 items of any kind excitedly and have her announce this trope name in full while she dumps them individually on the table. Knifes, anime DVDs or light novels, perhaps.
Then she could reenact the conversation between Kyon and Ryoko before... you know. That. Complete with the exact responses, even though the subject she's talking to has no idea what she's doing. He'll most probably go, "Damn, this only happens in cheap crappy hentai films, not real life!" Then he sees the way she holds the knives, and we get Kyon's panic. Voila!
So, I played NFS Carbon today. Had some fun with the customization, then I proceeded to do thirty minute long chases. Despite how far I've went in the game, how much money I coated the state, for some reason, they never did use spike strips on me. Even with a dozen cars chasing mr at one shot, with 4 dozen cars assigned on me, and more than 20 disabled cars. Still, no spike strips.
I still like my original Mazda RX-8. It's one of my easiest vehicles. Decent handling, good acceleration, it gets me through those impromptu street races easily.
Mabel, Racer Wannabe
Monday, October 18, 2010
18/10/2010
I made a mistake in yesterday's post. Just to clarify, Smith isn't based on any character for certain. He's shaping out to be the OnlySaneMan, though I might change it to something else for fun, and if I find a character to move him into.
Back to school, today. I really didn't want to go back, but eh... What was I supposed to do at home? Thus, I went to school. It was the usual. We were loud, boisterous, and spent a good amount of time half, or completely asleep. I slept through Geography.
So, I'm now at home, typing this out on my iPhone. Just a few more days before I can collect my computer. It's... 5:45pm.
Ah, nice nap. Because my story is meant to be some weird science fiction adventure comedy, I went to check out the INeedToIronMyDog trope, just to see what I can use if I see the need to. For example, I could have a character claim, "I can't go for this mission. I have to... rugby tackle my grandmother." or something vaguely stupid and outrageous.
I went to watch Leverage, which my dad streamed for me last night. Watched 3 episodes. At this rate, Imma finish it by Thursday, and I ought to get my computer by then.
Today, Nate finds out he's gonna have to run a scam against his father, and gets to race Elliot's car, with slight modifications, including an EMP cannon and a nitrous injector, against a former racer. Hardison and Elliot pisses off a small army, and escapes with handcuffs to hitch a ride on a train Nate got the Department of Transportation to reroute. They go back, and Hardison creates a bomb using a cigarette, and a tank.
Sophie becomes the world's greatest salesperson, and convinces Nate that she could most probably fix the auto industry single-handedly.
Right. Got the camp details. Heh heh. I get to do the games, just like I wanted to. Imma call some friends soon and borrow a compressed air cannon. Sending a reply, suggesting that we let the attendees order McDonalds so long as they pay for it themselves for the movie night. I'm suggesting "Thank You for Smoking", "Taken", "Man on Fire" or "End of Evangelion". Somebody already asked for "Full Metal Jacket", so dammit.
Right, sent. Should I check out AR or MMK for AFA? On one hand, hot butlers. On the other hand, K-ON shoutout and schoolgirl kouhais. Both cafes are connected though, somewhat, so I'll get those going on Saturday to help me see. Ask the guys to go to the schoolgirl cafe to rec it, ask the girls to go to the butler cafe... I'll get quite a comprehensive report, eh?
Oh cool. My mom's trilingual. Turns out sometime before my mom got pregnant with me, she was selected to go for training in Japan for a year, and if things went smoothly, she'd be permanently stationed there. She went for classes for 9 months, then the whole thing fell through for reasons unknown. Still, she can swear quite well, she can hold conversations, and her writing skills are still pretty good. That's awesome, and not because of THAT. You do realize that while you can call yourself an otaku here in Singapore with pride, otakus aren't that well respected back home, especially with people like that Akihabara killer and a certain someone featured on Sankaku Complex making out with a picture of Azusa on his computer screen. Wrong image, people. Whatever you might think, that is not representative of the whole population. You don't pick out the three-legged dogs and say that all dogs are three-legged just because you found the amputees, dammit.
Back on topic, I got her to brush up on her skills with various puns and words. Yes, I got someone trained to check my BilingualBonuses for grammatical and spelling errors. Considering I was using Google Translate and some contextual knowledge, I say that's quite an improvement in quality. On the other hand, there were very little mistakes.
She noted that she could teach me Japanese quite easily. For starters, I already knew 1 of 3 scripts, but there were a few changes. Two more, and they focussed mainly on names, loanwords and the Jap equivalent of Hanyu Pinyin, except that that was no Romanji.
As for the new pronunciation, that was going to be a problem. My mother decided to teach me the pronunciation of the two aforementioned scripts, and use them with Romanji to learn the new pronunciation. The main side-effect was figuring out whether a line of Chinese characters were Kanji, or Chinese. The simplest way, she claimed was to look at the grammar. Does it sound normal in Chinese? What about Jap? Chances are, one sounds more natural than the other. If not, too bad.
Mabel, 2.5-lingual.
I made a mistake in yesterday's post. Just to clarify, Smith isn't based on any character for certain. He's shaping out to be the OnlySaneMan, though I might change it to something else for fun, and if I find a character to move him into.
Back to school, today. I really didn't want to go back, but eh... What was I supposed to do at home? Thus, I went to school. It was the usual. We were loud, boisterous, and spent a good amount of time half, or completely asleep. I slept through Geography.
So, I'm now at home, typing this out on my iPhone. Just a few more days before I can collect my computer. It's... 5:45pm.
Ah, nice nap. Because my story is meant to be some weird science fiction adventure comedy, I went to check out the INeedToIronMyDog trope, just to see what I can use if I see the need to. For example, I could have a character claim, "I can't go for this mission. I have to... rugby tackle my grandmother." or something vaguely stupid and outrageous.
I went to watch Leverage, which my dad streamed for me last night. Watched 3 episodes. At this rate, Imma finish it by Thursday, and I ought to get my computer by then.
Today, Nate finds out he's gonna have to run a scam against his father, and gets to race Elliot's car, with slight modifications, including an EMP cannon and a nitrous injector, against a former racer. Hardison and Elliot pisses off a small army, and escapes with handcuffs to hitch a ride on a train Nate got the Department of Transportation to reroute. They go back, and Hardison creates a bomb using a cigarette, and a tank.
Sophie becomes the world's greatest salesperson, and convinces Nate that she could most probably fix the auto industry single-handedly.
Right. Got the camp details. Heh heh. I get to do the games, just like I wanted to. Imma call some friends soon and borrow a compressed air cannon. Sending a reply, suggesting that we let the attendees order McDonalds so long as they pay for it themselves for the movie night. I'm suggesting "Thank You for Smoking", "Taken", "Man on Fire" or "End of Evangelion". Somebody already asked for "Full Metal Jacket", so dammit.
Right, sent. Should I check out AR or MMK for AFA? On one hand, hot butlers. On the other hand, K-ON shoutout and schoolgirl kouhais. Both cafes are connected though, somewhat, so I'll get those going on Saturday to help me see. Ask the guys to go to the schoolgirl cafe to rec it, ask the girls to go to the butler cafe... I'll get quite a comprehensive report, eh?
Oh cool. My mom's trilingual. Turns out sometime before my mom got pregnant with me, she was selected to go for training in Japan for a year, and if things went smoothly, she'd be permanently stationed there. She went for classes for 9 months, then the whole thing fell through for reasons unknown. Still, she can swear quite well, she can hold conversations, and her writing skills are still pretty good. That's awesome, and not because of THAT. You do realize that while you can call yourself an otaku here in Singapore with pride, otakus aren't that well respected back home, especially with people like that Akihabara killer and a certain someone featured on Sankaku Complex making out with a picture of Azusa on his computer screen. Wrong image, people. Whatever you might think, that is not representative of the whole population. You don't pick out the three-legged dogs and say that all dogs are three-legged just because you found the amputees, dammit.
Back on topic, I got her to brush up on her skills with various puns and words. Yes, I got someone trained to check my BilingualBonuses for grammatical and spelling errors. Considering I was using Google Translate and some contextual knowledge, I say that's quite an improvement in quality. On the other hand, there were very little mistakes.
She noted that she could teach me Japanese quite easily. For starters, I already knew 1 of 3 scripts, but there were a few changes. Two more, and they focussed mainly on names, loanwords and the Jap equivalent of Hanyu Pinyin, except that that was no Romanji.
As for the new pronunciation, that was going to be a problem. My mother decided to teach me the pronunciation of the two aforementioned scripts, and use them with Romanji to learn the new pronunciation. The main side-effect was figuring out whether a line of Chinese characters were Kanji, or Chinese. The simplest way, she claimed was to look at the grammar. Does it sound normal in Chinese? What about Jap? Chances are, one sounds more natural than the other. If not, too bad.
Mabel, 2.5-lingual.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
I went to Suntec today. Firstly, to check out the halls, and to work out how long it would take me to get there, and less importantly, to get a new iPhone casing. No NDEs this time round. XD
One of the odd things I get involved in is I end up making friends with people I randomly add. One guy added for the apps happened to be a Singaporean otaku and a major Starcraft fan. A girl from AMKSS happened to be a fujoshi, cosplayer and a debater. There's gotta be at least a dozen of them already. The newest one was a girl from NUS High. She's an artist, pianist and an otaku. I've seen her anime list. It's large. Very.
The most interesting thing was how I met her. I was chatting with Kelly about NaNoWriMo. Despite its stupid name, I've got her interested. She can go ahead and write an extremely long light novel-esque story where K-ON gets the Higarushi treatment for all I care. I'm not so interested in the plot as long as she writes at least 50,000 words in 30 days.
Then again, that does sound like an interesting story.
But I digress. In comes one of my random adds, who expresses her curiosity about the K-ON/Higarushi plot. We laugh a bit, she gives her thoughts on the synopsis I wrote, and we end up chatting about Mio/Ritsu and Yui/Azusa.
And I'm still stuck with my iPhone. Dammit, why must it be 3 WORKING days?
That's rhetorical. Don't you dare act like a know-it-all and explain the importance of weekends and resting on them.
Still on the train. I'm at Yishun already. Just a dozen stops or so and a transfer of trains to Esplanade.
I should put in deeper puns into my stories. Nobody expects their short stories to be analyzed by literature classes when they are written. I want to write it for that purpose. StealthPuns. Foreshadowing. Chekhov'sGun. Etc.
For example, stealing an example from K-ON, we have girls running away from a person in a chicken costume. ItMakesSenseInContext. Anyway, it seems random, until you realize "molester" in Japanese sounds extremely similar to "chicken" in English. So, they're running away from a molester. There. It makes way more sense.
Right. There's a TCM convention, and a travel fair. That explains why the average age of Suntec's visitors is a triple-digit number.
Nothing more to do now that I've gotten my new iPhone cover. It cost me $59 for a piece of rubber, dammit. What justifies the cost, apart from the fact that there's a monopoly on such products?
Damn you.
I'm now in a toilet. Near my place, at a Community Center. It's amazingly quiet, most probably because I'm the only person on this floor. 3rd floor.
Silence.
God, it's calming.
Right. I'm home. It's boring, so I'm sketching out my NaNoWriMo characters out and their appearances. I'd prefer my stories to have less OOCness, even though I'm supposed to be the author. It's just that I know these characters are all heavily based of another character, so I'd like to remain faithful, or at the very least, not be completely opposite just for shoutouts or for jokes.
That would be bad.
I've completed my 4 main characters. One will be like Clef, Kondraki and a pure badass, and has the clear potential to be a MartyStu if it wasn't for the fact that we're doing a deconstruction of badasses here. His superiors don't dare give him too much responsibility, lest he accidentally destroys the whole organization. Like Clef and Kondraki, our musically-inclined badass with a MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate wears a labcoat almost all the time. His preferred choice of clothing is a Hawaiian shirt and long pants. Not jeans, long pants.
The second character also has a MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate, and is extremely similar to Doctor Bright of the SCP Foundation, but with a more meaningful name. This doctor, unlike the badass, is given responsibility, even though he cannot be registered on the biometrics, and he has shown that he's somewhat eccentric. This is because of his flawless records, and how if anything he runs screws up, someone happens to be at the right place to take the blame. It's an open secret that he's a lying, cheating jerk, but at least everybody trusts him to not fail too badly.
The third character is an agent for the organization, specializing in retrieval, rescue missions, and almost anything which, if everything goes according to plan, no blood is lost. Still, he's a pretty good fighter. I'll try and fit in a scene reminiscent of Kyon: Big Damn Hero, where he, and the next character shows that they're the muscle of the organization.
The last character is the only female, justified because in such environments, guys tend to fit their stereotypes. How often do you see muscular female thugs? She's the cold-blooded assassin, but in reality, she's much more warm-hearted and peaceful. If that sounds like Yuki Nagato, you're right. She's an Expy, right down to the blue hair. Over the course of the novel, she'll have different hairstyles to reflect different moods. I can't remember the trope name for this. Her name contrasts wildly with her job as a murderer. Come on. Yuki Yamato. Her nickname is "Tenshi". It's explained in my short stories that "Tenshi" came from the first character, who used to be an Evangelion fanboy/Otaku. Sorry, I just couldn't resist the urge. In that story, I put in shoutouts to Kenichi, Haruhi, Bleach, Evangelion and Strawberry Panic, and that's just in the names and nicknames of the characters. Since it was part of a small arc meant to explore the beginnings of the characters, there was much foreshadowing, placing of Chekhov'sGun and showing little quirks that remained with the characters throughout.
For the BadassBookworm, his story mentions his ease of picking up languages, when he swears up a storm in Chinese. It kinda helps that I'm pretty good in Chinese. He also picks up a white coat and wears it for a chunk of the story.
The immortal doctor does not have a beginning story, which I hopefully would address with NaNoWriMo, sooner or later. His story lies with his death, via a 60MT tactical nuke, passed off as a radioactive meteorite that happened to replicate Tunguska. It referenced a few stories, including the BadassBookworm's faked death.
The male agent's story showed his first mission, a transport mission, where he encountered an enemy agent, who offered him employment. It shows his love for his greatcoat, and its usefulness and general awesomeness due to the BadassLongcoat trope.
The female agent's story is about her entrance into the organization, as an interrogator, due to her skills. She took a spy, trained by her mentor to be as resilient as possible. Over the course of a few days, she found all his buttons, and pressed all of them in a single shot, tearing him down. Throughout the story, it draws attention to her tan hoodie, which reflects her greatcoat, which she modified to have a hood.
So, I'm watching Leverage's third season now. Got up to Episode 5. I don't know about you, but the Double Blind Job was filled with awesomeness. The introduction was cool, with Ashoey dashing into Hardison. Then he deadpans to the two fake FBI agents that they made two mistakes. One, their badges were crappy to the trained eye. Two, they spilled Elliot's coffee onto him. Cue CurbStompBattle. Hardison later told Nate that Elliot went to change his shirt. There was a coffee stain, some bloodstains, and a few teeth.
My god, Ashley was cute. Parker's reaction to seeing Hardison being chivalrous was laughably dramatic. The moment she sees the two of them, she becomes jealous and asks nearly immediately whether she's a terrorist. She spends the rest of the episode eyeing them closely. Then, just when you thought the UST hit a crescendo, and would be resolved when Parker told Hardison that she wanted to get something off her chest, she swaps it at the last minute to say that she craved for pretzels.
WallBanger.
Maybe I could write a Parker/Ashley slash?
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