Viva Forever

Listening to: “Mmmbop” by Hanson. ^^ Remember this song? Such a happy song, many found annoying, I personally adored (and still do). Ahhh lovely 90s music…

*tears of happiness* ALL SCHOOL ASSESSMENTS ARE OVER!!!!!!!! WEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! DID YOU MISS ME????? ^__^ OMG, the past two weeks has been HELL, so bloody stressful. A total of 21+ hours of pure examination, 14.5 of those hours crammed in the first week. Got this horrible sinking feeling that I failed all my exams. >_< Then there is the dreaded HSC in 2 months… *shudders*

Observations I’ve made during exam weeks:
1. It’s probably due to stress, but damn my skin gets so oily!!! It was pretty bad, felt like a walking oil company. My skin = Teen Grease Inc. Washing my face twice a day as per usual doesn’t help much. O_o Weird.

2. Exams can make you more of a lameo than you usually are. Last Friday, got home and basically just laid there in a near comatose state because of 5 hours of English and Chemistry exams. Started listening to music, and the song “The State I’m In” by Belle and Sebastian came on and the first thing that came to mind was, “Solid?” -_-; How incredibly sad was that?

3. Confusion. On the first day of exams (4th August), for the date I put 7th July. I would have kept putting July in my other exams if it weren’t for someone jokingly asked rhetorically if it was August. I was like, “REALLY????” O_O Oops.

4. Strange fixations to certain songs. I listened to one of my anime CDs 5 times in a row before realising that the tracks sounded rather familar. The only way I survived all that horrid studying is with my music collection. For example, studying Physics (especially the space topic) would be alot more excruciating if it wasn’t for the Gravitation tracks which I find highly amusing in the way it related to the topic. ^^

5. After doing 6 hours of English exams (+ 8 minute speech), English skills regress to ten year old standards. In the Chem exam, I wrote “significantly” and I couldn’t think of the proper word following it and so wrote, “bad”. Yeah, check out my extensive English vocabulary. Good thing my brain spat out the proper word after a while and was able to replace “bad” with “detrimental”.

6. Who needs coffee/cocaine/LSD to get high when you have exam stress? I absolutely hate having exams in the afternoon, I usually cram like a maniac in the morning and 1/2 hour before the exam, I go extremely high with stress. A *clutches nearly person and flings to and fro* OMGOMGOMGICAN’TREMEMBERATHING SHITSHIT@&$(#)AS!W43SK! AHHHHHHH!!! kinda high. Not good.

7. Experiments which go normally well in class JUST SO HAPPENS to screw up on you when it’s getting examined. STUPID TITRATIONS!!!! May all burettes, pipettes and indicators burn in the firey pits of hell. T_T

Anyway, off exam stuff, onwards to happier things! ^__^

First of all, Spin has been updated, sorry for the rotation being 24 days late. From now on, rotations begin on the 15th of each month. Anyway, Spin has a new layout (rather plain and annoyingly small, gomen!) along with a new section: Winamp skins! ^__^ As for this site, the archives need revamp, it’s taking too long to load, the “layout” (not that it really is, just a totoro pic slapped on) is pissing me off and the right column is getting too big. The content of the personal side needs to be redone too, very outdated (some of those pages hasn’t been changed for 2 years).

As I’ve mentioned in my previous post, hosting is open!! With Fiona’s excellent standards and help, I’ll be scouting for potential future iNET citizens. I’ve made a hosting form if anyone is interested in being hosted, go to the hosting page for more information. Now with all this space, it’s definitely an incentive to start working on web related projects, as I hate seeing empty space go to waste, especially space I’ve paid for.

Nothing much else to say, the non-school related portion of brain has not been functioning for the past 2 weeks. Except Miyavi is really cute and you should go listen to his music. Even if you’re on a 28.8k modem (GOD I FEEL SORRY FOR YOU), you NEED to download his PV, “Jibun Kakumei”. I would send it to people if it wasn’t the fact that I’m on a 56k myself and it’ll take years. HE IS SO CUTE THERE!!!!!!! EVERYONE MUST GO WATCH IT! My gosh, I think I like it even better than Gackt’s “Vanilla” clip. ^^;;

Time to start working on the backlog of projects, some having accumulated for several years.

Things to do (actually DOING them in is another story but anyway):
1. PROCRASTINATE!!!!! :D
2. Write. Something. Or at least think on it.
3. FRUITS BASKET SHRINES!!!!!!!! Must do must do… *mutters to self*
4. Other still very important shrines to commence.
5. Skin. I will conquer you one day, Winamp 3!!! *shakes fists*
6. Read manga that has been hoarded.
7. Play FF9 again! Weeeee! ^_^
8. Layouts? Bah. Haven’t touched anime layouting in SOOOOOOOO long.
9. Study. Again. < -- so not happening.

I make no promises that I would be able to get past #1. ^_^;;

*excess school knowledge commences to leaks out of ears* Ah.... ignorance is bliss. ^^

Ooh look, I did this quiz (as recommended by Alex) and hmmmm it is pretty accurate. It’s much more indepth than other quizzes, although I thought the questions were a bit repetitive in nature. I got Firebird (Air and fire) as my Primary Mythical creature and Satyr (Water and Earth) as my shadow creature. I think it’s fairly spot on. I like the firebird’s description, “They have a strong sense of social justice associated with powerful moral and religious convictions. These convictions are often chosen by the individual on the basis of reason rather than simply received from an existing tradition… They are unconventional and often radical.” XD, nah my dad just calls me irrational. The Satyr description is creepily accurate too. How about this, “They [me!] want power and can be ruthless in their attempts to get it”. I’m surprised, I hope I’m not that bad (or at least not that obvious ^_^;;). (Reminds me of the funny misquote of “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” to “Power corrupts and absolute power… is kinda neat” XD ) It says I have to overcome greed, self-centredness, insensitivity and alienation. O_o *puts it on list of to-do’s* ^_^

Ugh, need to empty out mail and reply to people. >< I’m thinking of getting a new email address, the current one is so bloody spammed. Anyway, haven’t said hello to people for months (or so it seems), say ‘ello now.

Kiskeki - No I didn’t do the UMAT, I wasn’t planning to get into Medicine at Uni anyway. Even if I past the test (a very big *if*), there is the interview required and my “extracurricular” list is not looking good. Unless I can put “bludging and webdesign” as extracurricular stuff. ^^ Besides, I had no idea you needed to do a different test to get into Medicine, thought it was a post graduate thing. It was only when half the people in my class didn’t show up did someone mention it, and I was like “ooh really?? *clueless*”. Did you do it? Btw, very much agree with your rant on wallpapers and layouts. XD Rather tacky aren’t they?

Trinity - Sorry for disappearing the other day, phone rang, mum talked for ages, thought I should stay offline to study. Spiffy new layout!!! ^^ I really like the effect on the book, all those pretty warm colours, looks very stylish. ^^ Chobits isn’t a smashingly good anime/manga, but it is amusing. I haven’t finished watching it but supposedly it gets really good in the end. I think everyone oogles over it because of Chii’s hair. Such niceeeeeeeeee hair… *_* And the 3mb I mentioned was space, not bandwidth. ^^;; I wouldn’t survive with 3mb of bandwidth.

Samatha - Happy belated birthday!!!! Speaking of desks, you should see Fiona’s desk. Oh wait, there is so much junk on it, you can’t see her desk. XD I need to clean my room. I can’t see the carpet, there is newspaper everywhere.

Daimira - Happy birthday to you too! I went to a University lab a few weeks ago, rather intimidating place, with all that glassware and chemicals (I got silver nitrate all over the bottom of my pants, lovely -_-’). The place you work at sounds rather scary too, with all that breakage and furnace wrecking. Do you have to pay for damages?

Kiara - Glad to see you’ve made it home safely (even if the ride was beserk). I totally agree with you on little children growing up too fast entry. At talent quests at our school, I remember the whole group of my friends and I absolutely shocked when these little 12 year olds (year seven) started prancing around in the shortest of mini-skirts and dancing provocatively around chairs. What the hell? And the thing is, the school I attend is more or less has pretty conservative people, but it seems a new wave of youngsters are coming. XD Ah I feel like an old grandma complaining about “back in my days…”.

Iris - Where art thou blog?????? *hops around impatiently* Don’t mind me if I remove you from the links list, I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN YOU, just that I should clear out dead links. Tell me when you get your blog up ASAP!!

A BIG HELLO TO ANYONE I’VE NOT PLUGGED, I haven’t forgotten any of you either! Long page. IT’S NOT LIKE I HAVEN’T BLOGGED IN AGES, it’s only been 2 weeks. Bah, tendency to ramble, I have. Anyway, I should go now, glad to see you’ve read up to here (or you’ve just skipped bits ^__^). *slaps hand* STOP TYPING!!! >_<

Listening to: Linkin Park album, “Meteora”.

Wow, the Linkin Park’s “Meteora” album is really good. Excellent music, although they seem to really bind themselves that that section of rock music. Because of that, there are definite variations but it’s more restricted than it needs to be. But hey, it has a very whole “Linkin Park” sound to it. Not alot of songs, but it’s all good.

New music over at Spin! Go leech! All favourites as per usual. It’s about time that I start halting my bloggings, exams/assessments looming very scarishly. Not a total haitus yet but soon. Sigh. School sucks muchly. Besides, I seemed to have run out of interesting things to say, so no point in wasting your energy. ^^

Mmm haven’t plugged people in a while. I couldn’t stop staring at the gorgeous closeup of Fuuma over at MonouNET. I have that picture but not of that size and detail of his face. *Drool* Damn, he looks good there. *fangirlness* For all you people who’ve seen CCS, check this out, I found it really funny. Amusing to see fangirls grasping at straws to maximise the proof of TouyaxYukito (although it’s rather obvious anyway) in the way how each episode from all 3 seasons where scanned for TxY references. XD

Speaking of CLAMPness, who finds it ironic, considering the huge legion of female fans, that the existing (or so he says) CLAMP collective left is run by a male? Check out Vespertinus (see Jay, there are good guy designers out there!), the layouts are very nice! But I do say, trying to put up a CLAMP collective is VEEEEERYYYY ambitious, especially if it is to be a good one. What happened to all the good X collectives anyway? There was the legendary sakurazukamori.net (which I hadn’t seen) that went splat and the more recent sorata.net which seemed to have also died. WTF? Considering how popular CLAMP is in general, I’m surprised that there aren’t more collectives for it. Sure there are LOTS of shrines and things, but a centralised group of sites is very rare. Or perhaps it exists but I haven’t seen it yet?

Listening to: “Melodies of Life” - FFIX OST. Both the English and Japanese version is very nice IMO, better and better than FFVIII’s theme, “Eyes On Me”.

Wee! Look how I’ve wasted my time! ^^ I’ve got a new winamp skin made in record time (for myself). Took the most of Saturday, approx 5-6 hours. It’s got no equalizer because I don’t use them and they are a pain in the ass to skin. It’s a FF9 winamp skin, but I do warn, it’s a bit of a spoiler to Disc 3 so I don’t recommend you look unless you’ve played the game. Preview || Download. It’s reasonably passable I guess, compared to a Kuja skin that I’ve made (and which would never see the light of day). Now that was horrendous. *shudders*

I’ve got the dates for the HSC timetable, so it’s confirmed that my first exam begins on Oct. 20 and the last is on Nov. 7th. After that, totally freedom for 3 months!!! Wooo!!!! God, everything is looming so fast but in a painfully slow way. >_< Watched Queen of the Damned movie. Bad bad movie *stabs* Read about it here. IT’S SO TOTALLY WRONG!!! >_<

Was listening to: The sweet, sweet, guilt-free sound of the modem dialing up…

TADAIMA!!!!

*frantically recreates shortcuts to chat programs*

I’m back! Did you miss me? ^______^ DO YOU KNOW HOW HAPPY I AM TO BE BLOGGING AGAIN!????! Ahhhhhhhh the beautiful feeling of being online without a worry about school! TWO WEEKS HOLIDAYS!!!! I swear, the next week at least is going to be fully bludging, to a sickeningly indulgent extent. 2 months!!!! 2 months of maths, physics, chemistry, english, and legal studies on my desk, facing the computer. It got to the point where I had to either go online and splurge, or I go and throw my computer out the window. Driven nuts!! NUTS I TELL YOU!!!! >_<

This is me:
Sees the computer:
Voice in Head: You know, if you just go on just that *little* bit, it won’t hurt…
Me: …. go away.
Voice in head: Don’t you feel bad about not even saying hello to your friends for so long?
Me: … >_<; *attempts to concentrate on work*
Voice in Head: It’s so easy just to plug the line back in… just reach down and…
Me: *severely bashes up Voice in Head*
Voice in Head: *continuously mimics the noise of modem*
Me: *devises ways to murder Voice in the most painful of ways*

Do you see? Absolutely mentally exhausting, arguing with yourself when you KNOW that the voice is absolutely right and you’re DYING to just listen to it and relent for at least a LITTLE WHILE. Tortorous. I admit, it got off on a rocky start. Just two days after the announcement, I couldn’t help but sneak on just for a *little* while, after seeing a gorgeous picture of Count Cain (more on that below) a few days prior. But it wasn’t for long. After that, I mustered up whatever shreds of decency and discipline I had and set off to work. Lasted a week, and came to a bit of a compromise, I did go on on the weekends and late at nights, but kept chatting to a minimum.

However, one thing I’m glad is that it’s all over. After 13 1/2 hours of exams, I don’t give a shit anymore (for a while at least). If I fail my exams, then I’ll fail with a smile on my face, because I known I’ve given all I’ve got. As a note, I reckon it’s INHUMANE, for teachers to be setting exams that last 3 hours without a break!! Horrid spending half the school day WITHOUT A REST, doing one maths exam that bloody long. Bah. Anyway, according to the schedule, after this two week break, the next term of school (10 weeks) will be alot less stressful. Only 2 assessments; a Legal Studies one (although that’s a huge project thing) and an English speech. Compared to this term’s 4 assessments and 7 exams, next term should be somewhat of a breeze.

Here’s my to-do list for the next two weeks. None could be garunteed except No.1.
1. Bludge and procrastinate to a sickening extent. XD
2. Probably rewatch anime like Fruits Basket. Would try to also get my hands on Chobits as well.
3. Work on shrine… *crosses fingers* unless I get too lazy. Likely.
4. Winamp skinning!! Fun they are, though very tedious.
5. Figure out how Paintshop Pro 7 works. In a very newbie, “pressing everything and see what happens” stage.
6. READ MANGA! WEEEEE!!!

SITEY STUFF NOW!!! New layout featuring Count Cain (yeah yeah, more on that below)! May I present, Act 6 - “God’s Child”, named after vol.6 of the manga. Not much change in style, however did pose a change as the skin is unsually “silent”. My layouts all have some kind of text on it, either from poetry or song that suits the layout. I couldn’t find a suitable text for the layout, thus kept it wordless. Gomen, tis graphics intensive. No downloads for this layout, I have to solve a bit of space problem (more on that below).

^__^ As I mentioned above, I saw a *gorgeous* image of a bishounen; Count Cain from the manga by Yuki Kaori. I first spotted it on a winamp skin, and KNEW I had to find more info. Although drawing style of the manga is a bit rusty (manga started in 1991) in the beginning, the story is still good. Set in olden time England, lots of beautiful costumes and scenery too. Lots of angst. However, big warning; it is quite twisted. Makes manga like X/1999 seem as innocent as CCS. Especially from vol.2 onwards.

Speaking of manga, I’ve read up to chap.5 of Yami no Matsuei. OMG, I nearly fell out of my chair from the sheer dejavu when reading about Muraki and Hisoka. Astoundingly similar to Tokyo Babylon. They even have a sakura tree with corpses under it!!! Innocent little Hisoka seen as the “cute toy” of Muraki, the memory blocking, the doctor thing (although Seishirou was a vet), the tying up and blood (oh wait, that didn’t occur in TB… happened in X though XD). I admit that the plot moved faster than TB, but I still like Seishirou more than Muraki. He has more personality and more subtly evil, as opposed to Muraki’s all out evil insanity. But after seeing a CERTAIN image Trinity sent…. I don’t think I have the guts to read on. @_@

Eeep, I’m severely running out of space. Was down to my last 4mb. Went through my domain with FTP, realised how much unlinked to junk there is. Like, 6mbs alone of past free layouts and wallpapers, that for some reason I didn’t delete. Now, I have and yay!, up to 11mb. Good thing, I don’t have anything major planned that requires uploading to iNET. Nevertheless, I stil want to upload things, and 11mb can barely fit 3 mp3s. My yearly plan won’t end till August, so for the next *4 months* uploading needs to be at a minimum or I get something of my stuff hosted. When August approaches, I’m thinking of perhaps changing from e-starr to another host. I’m looking into HostRadius, the prices are reasonable and I’ve heard good things about them. However, it only offers 3gb transfer for 100mb. E-starr offers 10gb. From my webstats, I go through approx 3gb of transfer a month, so it’ll be way too tight for comfort. But we’ll see.

Listened to a whole lot of mp3s, most being Japanese and anime. There are quite a few I’d definitely recommend, but there is no way I’m going to upload them (think, I’m on a 56k modem AND only have 11mb left). Would anyone be interested to know? If so, I could easily type a page up, with my ratings and recommendations. If not, then well, I can’t be bothered. XP Sigh, if only I had a bit more space, I’d upload a few of my favourites.

Speaking of music, thanks to my obsessed Jrock fan, NOW I’M FREAKING OBSESSED TOO. >_< Actually wouldn’t have been, until *someone* had to remind me about a certain Gackt pic, and we spent approx 40min looking up Gackt shrines and galleries! Shrines are scary places as they are very good at brainwashing people. It was hard to get used to the deep sounds of Jap. guy voices (hey, in relation to guy voices, I almost exclusively only listened to Darren Hayes’ and that’s not exactly deep ^^;; NOT THAT I’M COMPLAINING!), but I’m adjusting. I like Gackt’s “Vanilla”, very chirpy and summery sounding (until I looked at the English translation of the lyrics… O_O) and “Birdcage”, Malice Mizer’s “Syunikiss” and L’arc en Ciel’s “Butterfly’s Sleep”. I plan to butcher my modem and download heaps more to listen to. Ahhhh…. *hugs internet* ^__^

———

This is more like part 2 of this entry, reserved for a WHOLE BUNCH OF PLUGGING AND SOCIALISING, thus making this a very long entry.

Eeeeeee!!! Anthy is gone again!!! And just when I was having fun checking out her lovely blog skins. -__-; But I understand, school work and all. Sigh, her thoughts were very insightful.

O_o Zeruel has left too? Shame, his stuff was also amusing to read. But I guess everyone has their own reasons to move on eh? And his kickass domain… 11 sites…. gone… ;__; Would be sorely missed too. Sigh, always a shame when excellent collectives die. Like belldandy.net that was was so mad! And a whole heap of others that either close down or become permanently static. There is really just a handful of really excellent ones left.

Hi Trin!!! Ooooh new domain ne? Poor you, exams coming up, I KNOW HOW IT FEELS!!! Hi Jay!!! Hi Ka!!! Hi Diana!!! Hi Tas!!! Ooooh Hellsing layout, groovy. ^__^ Nothing much to say to you people, SEE YOU IN CHATS OK?????

Very nice original CG bishounen layout!!! I like very much. ^__^ Also, don’t feel like you have to sound “sophisticated” or whatever, just be yourself and find your own style. Being cramped into a style that’s not “you” is not only awkward and uncomfortable, it’s no fun. Besides, your stuff are interesting in it’s own right. BTW, your art is really improving, the recent ones are really good, especially the shading! As a general note, does it not suck how anime characters have such ENVIABLE HAIR???? -__-;

‘Ello Daimira!!! Interesting new layout (definitely CAN’T live without music), sorry to see your collective having to go on haitus too. BUT CONGRATS ON FINDING THE JOB!!!!! Money is good. Yes. *nods* Your mentions of pipettes and things… eek reminds me of titrations and annoying measuring experiments that you have to get JUST RIGHT and which I always fail to do. DAMN YOU ELUSIVE BOTTOM OF MENISCUS, DAMN YOU! >_< Remember how you recommended me a whole load of Jap. artists a while ago? Well I agree with you, Maaya Sakamoto’s got an excellent voice, I love “Gravity”, the song from Wolfs Rain.

*appaluse* Good for you Samatha, for not entering that competition. It is disturbing and quite sad to think how even things that are serious and deserve grave respect and thought, are turned into a commericalised revenues of sorts. If teachers and educational organisation use money as an incentive to motivate kids to learn about past events, then how can they criticise young people for being unfeeling to what had happened before?

Lovely new layout Rhian!!!!! Oooh cool bishie person with knife…. no wait, samurai sword. When I first glanced at it, I thought it was Kenshin. You know, I just found out that Mazohyst came from that Dir en Grey song! My fav. song from them would be Cage, but then again, that’s the only song I’ve heard from them. Thank you for the Illuminati mp3 on your site, I muchly like that song. ^__^ Actually, from all that I’ve heard, I really like Malice Mizer’s music.

Hoi Iris! lol, finally you’re blogging again! XD I guess finding time to blog and more importantly something important to blog about is difficult….. BUT GOOD TO SEE YOU’RE ALIVE!

And finally a BIG PLUUUUGGGG to Fiona, just for having to suffer through the past two examination hell as well. Just a note, she may be gone for a while playing Castlevania. Though knowing her, she’ll be online.

HAVE I MISSED ANYONE? Hope not!!! TO ALL YOU LOVELY PEOPLE WHO COMMENTED BELOW, thank you very much for your kind encouragements! But seriously, I need to end it here, this entry is getting ridiculously long. I’ll add anything I’ve forgotten in the next entry.

Listening to: “Korobushka” - Bond

*points down* I mentioned that I was going to go on about X but I decided not to. Instead, I’ve roughly reviewed it. Ack forgot most of what I was going to say. Sigh, now I terribly wish I could read more of the manga so that I could form theories of my own… *sighs* This kickass X shrine helped alot, with the past issues of the manga summarised… but still it’s not the real thing. But of an eyebrow raiser with the whole Subaru thing being completely different from the anime. O_O So anyway, second best thing was to look at fanfiction.

Now, I’ve already ranted about fanfiction before and so I won’t talk about that again. Fiona has also made a few good points too. I still generally avoid ff.net as it contains too much crap. So I do it the hard way, and actually surf for fanfiction sites.

Firstly, a big thank you to Tas for showing me Behold, the Void. This place cotains some of the most brillant writings I’ve read, and and deliciously ample supply of X/TB fanfiction. The way Leareth writes is really captivating (if not a bit slashy in a few stories ^^;), so I recommend that to fanfic readers.

However, not all fanfic sites have that quality of work. Here are a few I want to point out in my journey across various fanfiction archives:

1. First and foremost, PLEASE do not cross Lestat from Vampire Chronicles with various members of X. PLEASE!!!! Crossovers usually don’t work (maybe unless they are intentionally funny), and the few that I’ve read that cross these two lovely but TOTALLY UNCROSSABLE genres are, well, crap. I repeat, DON’T SHOVE LESTAT IN X!!!!

2. Love triangle between Subaru, Kamui and Seishirou COULD work if it’s SubaruxK (this was already implied in the manga anyway), SxS (duh). HOWEVER, Su and Sei getting jealous over each other FOR KAMUI, I can’t possibly see how that works. Like, Seishirou and Kamui? I DON’T THINK SO!!!

3. I came across a fanfic with the description along the lines of, “It is the end of the world and Arashi has her periods. What would she do?” This is acutally a serious fanfic as well. *bangs head on wall* Don’t understand why people write things like this.

The other thing is, bond music!!! I borrowed the DVD from a friend, and it was great! The highlight was definitely when they placed the acoustic version of Korobushka. I was in awe when I watched it, totally breathless. The way they so meticulously controlled every note, I was totally swept away. You can hear the rawness of the violins, viola and cello, how the notes just spring out, in a flow that seem to carry your soul away. I’ve watched it 3 times, and it hasn’t lessened its hold on me. Although not a serious piece (rather fun sounding), it’s played with an intensity that shows the talent of this quartet. I’ve rarely, if ever, felt this sort of concentration of emotions from music, I highly recommend it. It’s astounding what music can do to me, spent quite some time wandering around in a sort of daze, until the effect faded a little.

IF ANYONE COULD GET THE MP3 OF THIS, I’LL BE EXTREMELY GRATEFUL!