Wednesday, April 07, 2004

As The Dust Settles...

...the time for making plans is upon us.

The culmination of three years of studying Anatomy, Physiology and Biochemistry. Hah. Am I glad to move on to something novel. A little late now to be whooping in joy and screaming, "It's over!" but still, it is such a relief to have closed off the academic year with a fullstop that is, if not extremely accomplished, at least satisfactory. Whether or not Vivas come a calling, I will be leaving to Luck and maybe divine intervention. Sigh, I must resolve not to be so competitive and academically-oriented next year. Just look at all the white hair I have and you will realise that it does not really do me any good. (Which makes me wonder why my white hair proliferates like duckweed on a pond. Are my hair follicles being deprived of nutrients? A question for FRS? [not free-radical substitution, foundation research s--whatever i forgot])

I have this feeling this is going to be a really long blogpost since basically the floodgates have been opened on my never ending rambling which I could not do before the exams due to time constraints (do you know it takes me at least an hour to type my blogposts, I type so slowly). You have been warned.

Post-exam Celebrations

Monday after the exams was a blast. Received a treat from a friend, which is really nice of him. Did so much that day, as well as playing CounterStrike for the first time. Heh. It was evident from the way I would run for one second before being shot down or mistakenly shoot my team members. Apologies to those I might have offended with my amateurishness. And I watched The Eye 2 after that because the timeslot for The Passion was too early for us to watch it. Not too bad a movie, and as usual I eeked a few times, being the faint-hearted mouse I am, when no one else in the theatre was eeking. How embarrassing. It wasn't really a horror-filled kind of horror movie, it had a pretty good storyline, kind of like how the Sixth Sense has a good storyline but is not really scary heh.

Reading Plans

I am just so stoning around at home now. I went to the library yesterday to get a few Agatha Christie books and one P.G. Wodehouse omnibus since his novels are apparently quite humerous. No good fantasy books to borrow though. I wanted to borrow Marrion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon series, but they didn't have the first book. Pooh. And I saw the Ender Shadow series, namely Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon and Shadow Puppets, but I wasn't really in the mood to go back to reading Orson Scott Card novels since science fiction tries my patience sometimes. I have some ambitious reading plans for this holidays, which I hope I can accomplish. The thing about fantasy is that I have read so many series that all the remaining ones just do not reach the standard of the ones I have read. Especially Janny Wurts'. I think her Wars of Light and Shadow series is just the best series I have ever read.

So here's my reading list:
Tad Williams Otherland series (I only just found out it's a complete series. I have this fear now of reading uncompleted series since there are too many uncompleted series in the books that I've read that I forget most of the stories when the new novels come out).
Janny Wurts' standalone novels To Ride Hell's Chasm and That Way Lies Camelot
Marrion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon series.
Terry Goodkind's Naked Empire, the latest Sword of Truth novel which rather frustratingly has yet to appear in paperback.
Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children series, of which I purchased the first 3 novels at a NLB booksale.
Diana Gabaldon's Lord John and the Private Matter, because I like Lord John a lot haha.
Robert Jordan's New Spring, a prequel to the Wheel of Time series, but I feel a bit apprehensive because I cannot remember much of the beginning to Wheel of Time sigh.
Robin Hobb's The Tawny Man series, since it's complete and a continuation of the Farseer series I read last year. And maybe I'll read the Liveship Traders trilogy too.
Try other fantasy authors like Robert Newcomb and Cecilia Dart-Thornton.
Read all the remaining Poirot novels in hopefully chronological order, and start on Miss Marple novels too.
Make an effort to read something other than fantasy and Agatha Christie.

Ooh what a long list now I look at it. Hopefully I can finish reading all of them and more.

Mad About Anime

Of course I'm not only going to read this holidays. I must watch anime too! I have a backlog of about 20 episodes of FullMetal Alchemist but I can go through that slowly since there are still so many episodes to be released. I want to savour the goodness of a truly touching anime. I feel a bit fooled into downloading 25 episodes of Violinist of Hamelin (which as I've said before is a terribly mistranslated misnomer) because aside from the haunting violin music and the cute High Priest Clarinet is nothing much in terms of storyline, since it's all about revenge and a lot of angry screaming and demonic stuff. Rather disturbing, so thankfully there's some humour at times. Maybe I'll go purchase some VCD boxsets to watch. I really want to watch Vandread and Vandread 2 since the graphics look cool. Fushigi Yuugi looks cool too (i.e. the Suzaku Warriors look really cute). But I must not spend too much money or risk being stuck at home when people are going out.

There aren't a lot of good fansubbed anime out there I think. FMA is the exception of course.

I like watching Fruits Basket on Saturday afternoons. Although the characters aren't very good looking, the dialogue is pretty optimistic and inspiring sometimes, which touches me, and is good since I think I'm spending more time wallowing in pessimism than I should. I remember one episode when the main character tells this guy that she thinks everyone is a big rice ball, and every rice ball has its own special sour plum that is unique, but it's stuck on the back of the rice ball so every rice ball cannot see it's own special sour plum but only other rice balls' sour plums and so complains about how it's not as good as the others, but does not realise that he is also special. Only other rice balls that see the sour plum on the back of this rice ball can tell him how special he is. Which is really meaningful. Why compare yourself with others when all of us have our unique abilities and things that we are especially good at? Then again I suppose comparison is good when it spurs you on to adopt the good things you see in others, but not when you feel inferior and that you can never be as good as the people around you.

Orionway had a pretty similar post on the subject of comparison on his blog (ooh what an interesting sentence), and I think that particular entry is especially good since I feel it is characterisic of his ability to see things that most people are blind to most of the time. Go read it =).

Drawing

Just the other day (actually many days ago, on a Thursday afternoon two weeks ago to be exact) I had a nice conversation with the Chinese lady who runs the photocopying room in the Medicine library. She's a really nice person, and ever since school started I have always been very amused by her voice drifting out from the photocopying room to where I sit in the library because she speaks very animatedly. Yes so I was talking for a while to her after collecting my photocopied stuff, and I found out to my horror that the Medicine library does not have a scanner available for student usage. That's really outrageous. What kind of self-respecting library doesn't have a scanner? Even the RJ library had a scanner, for goodness' sakes.

Erm, why do I need a scanner, you might ask. I had this little idea to scan the anime characters that I draw and post them online so other people can look at them (Haha an ego-boosting trip for me again eh?). But it seems to me that that plan has fallen apart since the library does not have a scanner and I don't think I would use a scanner often enough to actually go and purchase one. Bleh.

I think I'll be doing some drawing this holidays, when I have the time and inspiration. And I will surely be inspired when I watch anime, which is something I will be doing as well =).

Erm I'm running out of things to write so I'll stop here. Not so long after all heh.

Avaris / 4/07/2004 12:41:00 PM

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