Most satisfying evening spent today in the company of four old secondary school classmates. No end to coincidences these few days - upon reaching Bugis, discovered that my friend and I had taken the same bus and train to reach our meeting point, and that altho' we both expected to be among the last to arrive, we were actually quite early. We chatted about the old times and exchanged the recent and not-so-recent gossip we had heard off the grapewine about the rest. Accompanied two of our group who were buying a house-warming gift for another secondary sch classmate. One of the group is having her wedding dinner on 11 April, a Sunday (which means my b-day will be a Monday, dammit!). And on the way home, we all met yet another secondary sch classmate and his gf. 26 February is Secondary Sch Classmates Reunion Day, heh.

You're Watership Down!

by Richard Adams

Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you're actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You'd be recognized as such if you weren't always talking about talking rabbits.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Another Amusing Thing today: Having a girl who had boarded the MRT come stand next to you, and a few seconds later, exclaim and go half a carriage away to greet her pleasantly surprised friend. Which in itself is not so amusing until you consider that I pondered over how familiar the girl was (the one who was surprised by her friend coming up to her) - wondering if she may be my secondary classmate, but thinking "Nah, it can't be her." Which does not really make the whole incident a twisted pretzel until you consider that the girl who had gone over to greet my secondary sch classmate was also my secondary sch classmate. WE ARE ALL SECONDARY SCH CLASSMATES! As the girl who had gone over had her back to me all the while (plus she had long dyed hair), I didn't really look at her. Imagine spotting a secondary sch friend some distance away but not seeing the one right next to you! And me not noticing it is really them until I saw the two of them together....wah, funny how life works.

"Of many secrets he the knowledge had. Should he reveal but the quarter of them, Europe into war plunged may be."

Most Amusing Thing Today: Realising mid-way through Agatha Christie's The Secret of Chimneys that Baron Lolopretjzyl talks like a Herzoslovakian Yoda. Am quite fascinated with the Superintendent Battle chronology of books - but haven't come across Cards on the Table and Murder is Easy in any of the rental stores or libraries. Chimneys is the funniest so far, but Seven Dials was the trickiest (for my 486 mind that is...)

Another nonsense entry - I genuinely had nothing to talk about the past few days...didn't manage to watch QotD - will probably keep it for the weekend or sumthin'

An idea of what's on my plate these days -
- work (duh)
- anime/manga/fics (duh)
- further studies (but the thot of all those readings makes me feel weak...)
- noting down family history (my mom's got some really interesting tales...for archival purposes if nothing else)
- writing a story (except I don't exactly have the discipline to finish it *sigh*)
- a dream journal (I have one now, but what to do with all that mumbo-jumbo is what I'm thinking of. Wonder if I can make a (don't laugh) hyperfiction out of it. What are the implications?)

Evanescence v. good after-work stress reliever. Ade recommend. LFO v. nice too. Brain v. dead. Nite' now - gonna watch Queen of the Damned, whee.

*sigh* got criticised at work again today - Who on earth gets criticised for being obliging?! Over one line in an email?! I feel like I can't be too friendly anymore because what I say would always get taken the wrong way. And I feel bad because it could be sincere advice if you take another point of view - maybe I'm being stood up for, for all I know....but with words like those used, it's a little hard to believe.

Have decided to strive for the Tao - try to take it in stride and not let it affect me too much. Three months later and I'll forget it already.

Wine-tasting at the monthly welfare tea - three sips (one white and two reds) stripped me of my long cherished dream that I'll enjoy wine. My first thought was - "People do this to themselves?!" Give me my Coke and my Ribena and I'll be happy liao.

Yay! Sometimes you should jump into things - got an encouraging reply and it is giving me some purpose now...

...had a good meal today *speechless*

FMA 18 (or was it 19?) is merrily downloading at home, can't wait for Elric bros' teacher to appear - bet she's someone super-scary...you'd have to be to keep Ed in line....either that or her scary personality rubbed off on Ed, making him the easily-irritated noisy *checks left and right* little twerp he is now...

*sigh* Was just thinking to myself that I ought to be happy with how I am now - look on the bright side that kinda thing, your choices make who you are, yadda yadda....I dun think I regret who I am, but sometimes I do wonder what if I did this or was more like that personality-wise, maybe I'd see and experience more stuff, stuff I didn't even know I could try...

I have priority vision - everything gets prioritised and anything lower than three gets totally ignored because I hate having too much stuff on my plate. But lately have been thinking maybe that's the way to go - I justify that the precious 4 hrs free time after work is for relaxing but at the end of the day I dun feel I've accomplished enough...that I dun have any long term goals aside from saving - not even buying a digital camera or getting a domain or taking up a sport, that kinda thing. It goes against all I've learnt from my experiences, books (and manga) - that it doesn't matter if you haven't reached your goal, it is enough that you are constantly striving for it. Banal, I know, but that exactly what seems to be missing from my lifestyle nowadays....

Was swearing up and down to go straight home on Saturday, close all the windows and lock all the doors to avoid the germs, heheh....but wasn't going to waste my precious free time like dat, so braved the crowds anyway. I must have mellowed because I was frequently thinking, ahh young love, that's how teenagers ought to be....until I realise how obaasan that sounded! Argh!

And thank you juline, for tho' I managed to avoid falling too far into PoT fangirlism, I was driven insanely curious by that 10.5 busines..ade am such a sucker for character books (still haven't finished the Naruto and Hana Yori Dango one...)very funny, esp the parts about what is inside everyone's bag (Why does Oishi carry a comb for?!!) Wish the fanart inside was better though, and the colour pages could have been put to better use...

Another Elizabeth Peters novel! Check it out here. Was expecting more of the twins (and more of their wonderful hilarious dialogue) but seems Guardian of the Horizon is located sometime before Ramses and Nefret got married. Now maybe we'll know why there's so much ado about The List, heheh...high probability for angst too, so hmm....

Now would also be a good time to compare the change in Peters' writing. Previously you could say her subjects have all grown up/old/just been born so the book gets too plot-ridden, but now that we are going back to the pre-Evil-Percy (stabbity stab stab!...ahem) era...imagine reading Guardian right after er....can't remember, but it was the book where Ramses confides in David that he might go become an ascetic. *snerk*

A very anime entry....

Naruto 69 (otherwise known as ".........argh! Bad imagery!")

1) Yay! Finally that cute doggy scene! But the voice! Now I finally get the joke. Kinda like that guy lady bug from Bugs huh?

2) Heh, Shikamaru pretending to be asleep....Pakkun....soft and bouncy, hiak hiak! Reminds me of the time Jiraiya said he wasn't a pervert, he was a super pervert!

3) Yummy! Long time no Kakashi action ne?

4) Shino is The Stealth Guy. I bet he's gonna be head of the espionage dept when he grows up. And one of the rare times we get to see his face! actually, in principle, all the kiddies from Konoha look good, once you take away the various facial marks, apparel and weird hairstyles...

5) Eck! Was eagerly watching the Sarutobi Vs Orochimaru fight when Oro did one of his attacks that used his tongue...totally turned me off my dinner liao.

6) Orochimaru's hand being the same colourless shade was his coat. Dat guy seriously needs a suntan...

7) Eh! The teachers' discussion table just doesn't make sense! How to have a meeting with a pillar splat in the middle? Though I guess if you are ninjas with super hearing, you dun need to see the face of the speaker to understand the tone...

8) I thought the Fourth can't be summoned because his soul got eaten when he used the sealing technique on Kyuubi?

9) Kyaaa! The First and the Second both look v v v good! Doesn't the first look just like a Hyuuga except without the eyes?


Full Metal Alchemist 18

1) More red eyes....so the plot the unfolds....

2) I think Gluttony has won over Lina Inverse in terms of scariness when it comes to er....food

3) Hahahahahahahahah! Maybe the Furher deliberately gave Ed that nick because he knew people would always mistake Al for him? Although if he had named him the Vertically Challenged Alchemist, Ed might have just given up being State Alchemist and we won't have any FMA!

4) Sparkles and tears! - deadly combination handed down from Armstrong's ancestors...

5) Eh! blood-covered clothes? Dunno whther he is alive or not? It would be a real shame if he got really eaten by Gluttony...what an end....

6) "...and get married!" - Hahaha!

7) Kya!!! Human photocopying machine! Imagine if we could write out so many books in just three days! Not need to buy textbooks anymore!

8) Did anyone look at all those books of Marco's research and wish for a laptop, burner and cd-rom?

9) Homunculus? Dictionary.com sez it is "a diminutive human" or "a miniature, fully formed individual believed by adherents of the early biological theory of preformation to be present in the sperm cell." Hmmm...

10) Uh oh! Now that he has another Ishbal camp to protect, how will Scar's actions change then?

11) Hmm, live humans...dunno about other audiences, but I was kinda surprised, yet not so surprised...must be all those previous surprises that drained my surprise capacity....


Finished Full Metal Panic as well, but more on that another time...

Just finished reading a Resident Evil fic-saga. I dun play the game, but some writing just grabs you, you know?

Ouch! Stepped on a tiny staple a while back, right outside my bathroom door (where you would least expect staples to be lying in nefarious ambushes). Of course my reaction then was more colourful, especially when I realise it was embedded just far enuff so that pulling it out would involve blood and an OMG!-there's-something-stuck-past-the-epidermis-and-into-the-flesh reaction! Who the hell steps on staples anymore? *pout* Now I check my sole once and a while in fits of paranoia...

Today was...tiring. *yawn* G'nite.

Spent Sunday at my godmother's (who is now staying with her son, so actually it is my cousin's) playing bodyguard so my mom can have a nice day of relaxation (if you call learning to play tai tee and other related stuff relaxing)...It was quite interesting since I got a first look at my cousin's place (one of those two-level flats). It's bright and has cheery yellow curtains and lots of little doo-dads and thingies to draw your interest. He also has a collection of fish (big-enuff-to-eat ones, small ones, fat floaty ones, teeny-tiny ones that dart around) and there was this one fish which was particularly acrobatic, tilting over to brush its body flat against the floor of the tank, and then sweeping up and upright again quickly to jostle the rainbow marbles. The first time it happened I nearly jumped my skin...Went down to the coffee-shop for a bit and met my uncle and an elderly lady who related to me some funny stuff and the worries of a grandmother. Went back up to stone somemore when I stumbled across a fashion show documentary about the world of male fashion models ^_^ My fav was when, in the name of fashion, this model came out in black shorts, a colourful semi-transparent scarf and not much else. Glad to know those hormones are still working. Also the first time realised how tall those fellers have to be....it doesn't show when they all stand in a row, but then the designer comes out and whoa, the height difference...

Thought today would be another day of trying to scoruge enuff from the internet for work - then around three-thirty, received an interesting assignment to find out the details of some pple, to be done by five. Of course, finished only around five-forty and couldn't find good info for two pple....Heheh, was quite challenging to be given a time-limit to read and build up profiles on the fly.

Went to watch Torque today. Biker subculture, lots of badass music and innudendos tossed around like flying wrenches headed straight for the face. But it was fun - the bad guys (and most of the good ones) were so rude and tough-acting it was funny and there was a sweet (but short) romantic scene on a merry-go-round. There was a running joke about how everyone didn't know much about Thailand, where the hero disappeared to previously.

For some reason, the chick-fight became a duke-out between Mountain Dew and Pepsi, heh. But it was a real fight - acrobatics, clashing bikes and knives and all. And the heroine was the kind who didn't have to lose clothes to look tough. And she really does take care of herself, half the time the hero is the one with a wrecked bike and she strolls up with her ride all intact.

It's pretty funny too - my fav was when the hero's sidekicks (one of them the Korean villian in a Bond movie) ended up being addressed as Power Rangers because they were two against one....and losing.

The final scene had (of course) the fastest bike with the jet engine (and assorted impressive mechanical parts) zooming down a busy city street in LA so fast everything is all whirly-twirly like you are going faster than sound - think the Matrix bullet scene except faster. They made pretty intelligent use of it, like showing how two cars had definitely crashed into the way, but the next instant, the hero is tearing past between them. I was half expecting the guy's face to collapse in onto itself like Guld(?) in Macross Plus.

A pretty exciting watch, but seeing it made me realise how happy at how slo~w my life is going...

Oooh, saw the Spidey-2 commerical too...they must be pretty confident to just have a "2" as their logo...I expected Dr Octo-whatchamacallhim to be more imposing, in the cartoon he towers over Spidey....

Bought Blue Max's Full Metal Panic.

Funny anime and all - but the subtitling really needs some work! Chinese and English subs together at the same time (though I kinda guessed before I bought it) - but spotted some spelling errors - something like one per two or three episodes...

...but the up side is that with chinese sub, if you dun understand something, you can always look a little higher for the same thing in chinese, and chances are, you'll understand. It's also pretty funny how the chinese subs mean the same thing as the english subs but say it in a different way?

Another thing that impressed me was the packaging. Pretty standard fare to most, but then I've been out of the legit anime vcd market for a while, heh. They give you the colourful cover box/sleeve, plus a cd folder (with really cool cd sleeves) and a box sleeve to keep the folder in. Wah, give me the feeling that even if I kick the thing around also the cds won't be damaged!

And talking about the CDs - same image each cd, but in colour and pretty well printed. However, the down side is that they got a crappy player that auto-runs each time you pop the cd in. Luckily can be played on Windows Media Player - but the resolution is crummy and it can't be expanded all that much, basically 200% and full screen. If the avi subs are much better, I would say that the online ones are more worth the effort than the legit ones worth the money. If 'competitors' online can produce better quality stuff, of cos no one's gonna buy the legit ones...

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Actually can't blame the FMP much, developed a pisser of a mood non-anime-reated somewhere around the disc 5.

Haven't been so angry in a loooong time. You know how mad you get when someone knows why they shouldn't do something, and they know damned well how others will be affected but they blithely do so anyway? Doesn't that just make you throw your hands in the air and want to give up?! Doesn't that make you feel really disappointed? Yet you're trying not to be disappointed because that ruins your picture of a perfect life?

But then I figure, why get so mad? It won't benefit anyone other than make the situation more awkward and difficult. The most productive thing to do is to take pre-emptive action to ensure the same doesn't happen again. And if the same thing doesn't happen again, well, then there's not much need to be so mad anymore, right? Besides, there's probably a good reason...

Yup! <- My mood between 2 extremes -> Keep telling yourself that, sistah. Grrrr...

Today is the day! Now is the time! A whole new landmark in Adeline's short (for now) life history~! I finally swallowed not one but two pills, without the aid of bread or pulverising the tablet! Have realised the key is to not have water at all! Just have enough to wet my throat, and down the stupid thing goes! Of course, it does help that the pills are shaped like dark pink M&Ms, heheh. The same colour as those dark pinkchewable tablets they made us chew in lower primary school which was supposed to get rid of plaque or something. We would tote our little mugs and toothbrushes, and squat over the drains to brush our teeth. It was a really boring routine, until the Pink Tablet arrived. We would compare whose teeth got the pinkest after chewing the tablet, heh. Of course we had to brush it all off later. Bummer.

Full Metal Alchemist 17 - more Louis Armstrong sparklies!!! A very meaningful ep, with the Elric brothers returning back to their hometown. Got an eyeful of Shower!Ed too! And Ed is even shorter than Winly?! No Roy Mustang though *pout*

Have fallen in love with Meiji yoghurt recently. Although I tend to be biased againt health food, tried it out after a friend recommended it. Expected it to taste slightly sour and thick like the Yoplait one, but this one is surprising sweet. The grape flavour is like semi-solid grape Yakult ^_^

Finally a dream which I can remember some of. Warning: Brain stew! Please stop reading now if you expect any sort of correlation with reality and if you have very little free time.

Remember a big house - the English kind (think Thomas Hardy) with a long plain walkway and the main house (a rectangular beige house) is covered by fog when you looked at it. Everyone in the house looked normal but the dream POV got vampire-vibes from them. (So what if they were in the sunlight?) They seemed to be hunted by someone/thing because there was a tense atmosphere and one of them was sick.

Then moved onto a night scene on a road - again in some European city because of the cobblestoned roads and old street lamps. Everything was in shades of black and blue - it was on a street corner and lots of dark alleys between the shophouses. I think my POV entered one of these dark alleys.

Then was a feeling of several main fighters against each other in some contest - they all seemed to represent each other or a faction - the Gundam Seed feeling this gave me crystalised when Kira appeared. But Xelloss was there as well. There was also a very strong fighter - couldn't see the face but dream POV informs me confidently informs me the entity is female. So this group of opponents (somewhere between six to twenty - it's a dream, you're never sure, right?) seemed to be fighting in this old broken-down building that would collapse anytime. Grey walls and tumbled-down pillars.

When it seemed only two of them was left, the girl and Xel, Xel escaped a room and he goes into this trance, seeing the immediate future (my first dream in a dream!!!) - where all of their friends died fighting against the super-fighter or against one another. Afterwards, they are transformed into (this is where it gets wiggy) semi-transparent silk handkerchiefs complete with sachets of the same material. Approaching Xel, the female fighter proposed a deal by bringing back two of them (one of his friends and one of her) by laying out the coloured sachets in a row and placing two handkerchiefs on their respective sachets. But Xelloss (who is, for a while, the dream POV) grapsed her actual peace message and said they might as well bring all of them back. He then laid the handkerchiefs on all of the shachets, colour matching colour. Coming back to himself, full of hope, Xel hastily goes back to the room but it became a kind of hospital sick room with no familiar faces.

Those on the sick beds - they look like soldiers in their blue uniform (sad to say, a little like the turquoise Seigaku tennis uniforms that second-year non-regulars wear, crossed with the bearing of military State Alchemist uniforms). All are surprised to see Xellos. The girl appears at the door, seemingly to finish them off. Xelloss is in the middle of the room (am seeing him in the middleground, with a shadowed sickbed partially blocking the view, so wow, I got camera angles in my head! ^_^) crying and asking why are they fighting (weirded me out to 'see' a Mazoku behave like that) - he wanted them to be friends. She seems to reject him because I couldn't hear any speech by then. Xel disappears and the sick people on the beds exclaim because Kira (who had been leaning against the wall onserving all along - wearing a the black shirt, green pants outfit I saw in a artbook image!) also leaves to join his friend.

The very next bit involves a giant uprooted tree stump (it's pretty clean, very little roots, effectively just a block of wood) and a guy pulling off a chunk in his hand. Almost didn't want to type this, because the dream POV then shifted backward to two guys observing the tree guy from a distance. They were sniggering between themselves, wondering distinctly "How is he gonna eat all that?".

Ade's reaction: "!!!" - That's when my brain decided to wake up in self-defence. This is as much as I remember - but still got the feeling also that I missed an important part of the dream...

Before I think I have weird on the brain - there's some perfectly reasonable real world stimuli that might have triggered this.

1) Xel crying - read the new chapter of Seryuun High Jinx recently and poor Xel got dumped by Candy - plus a whole load of other psychological problems.

2) The big English house and vamps - might be the Agatha Christie reminding me of Sherlock Holmes, but not sure also. Could also be because they were going on about how an indignant Bill Eversleigh in The Seven Dials had to pretend to be "vamped" by One o'clock because of their mission...

3) Full Metal Alchemist + PoT uniforms - 'enuff said.

4) Gundam Seed - went to the club screening on Friday and they were screening...you guessed it, GS. Though I didn't go in to watch, I was chatting with friends at the booth outside, and there was this GS card in front of me - would have preferred Asuran in my dream though ^_^ just from appearances, I think he and Cagalli make a very sophisticated couple - the kind you see in warm coats and scarves, arm in arm, strolling in Italy. While Kira and Lacus seem the type to have three kids, a house and a dog.

5) The black and blue street scene reminded me of something from Queen of the Damned movie - which reminds me of Anne Rice, which reminds me of the time I was explaining to my dad how Savage Garden got their name from an Anne Rice passage about New Orleans, which then reminds me of an angsty Gambit fic about how Iceman got initiated into the Thieves Guild. The road which I imagined he followed Remy along to the meeting is kinda like how it appeared in my dream I think. Yay, I can do circular reasoning/association too :P

6) Wanted to think the coloured handkerchiefs was 'original' - but I think they came from a dance video I was watching called "Burn the Floor" - in it there were these dancers dressed like Spanish ladies and their lush costumes were each of a different colour. Dunno if anyone remembers, but long ago there as this Princess Oscar (?) anime, and there was this one ep where some princes who died tranformed into giant red or white rose blooms that floated on a dark river with curtains. That ep really spooked me out as a kid.