Sunday, January 16, 2005

Co-morbidity

I'm finally back, and blogging again. It's about time, I suppose, since it's almost one week after the horrible nightmare that was the CAs. Just some mundane updates on things, just so that you have something to read, heh. And a new song update, even though I would love to keep Akatsuki no Kuruma here longer. Maybe I'll upload a different version of the song sometime later.

Watching the AnimeJunkies fansub of Gundam Seed makes me feel rather cheated, because the subbers are pretty bad at doing translations of the names of the various characters, weapons and Gundams to English. Not that Gundam Seed is really easy to sub (in fact it's probably a subber's greatest nightmare), but some of the translations are really really bad. I cringe in horror when they call the Raider the Radar. I wish I had better fansubs to watch, but the collection from Boxtorrents is the only one I managed to find, and unfortunately most of the episodes in that collection are subbed by AnimeJunkies. Well, if anything, it provides a bit of humour. And no matter how bad the translations, I still think it beats watching the English dub on Kids Central; I watched one episode the other day and was tormented by the voices of the dubbers. American English does not go with anime.

Other than watching Gundam Seed, the time after CAs has also been spent playing Myst IV: Revelation, which I finally gave in to endless temptation and bought, to my wallet's great protestation. Every cent is worth it, though, because the Myst world is so expansive and immersive that one gets totally lost in it. Until, that is, one has to solve a puzzle, which is often a mind-numbing complexity that eludes logic. But everything still makes sense, unlike Uru, which I rather regret buying because it made absolutely no sense at all, and some of the puzzles were wholly unsolvable.

One of the things I really like about the Myst universe is how the games only begin the scratch the surface of the world created by Rand Miller, and there is just so much history and background supporting the main storyline of each of the games that it is simply staggering. There are even three novels written about the world of Myst, which hopefully I can get around to reading. Hardly any other computer game has such elaborate foundations and vastness, except maybe the notable strategy games like Warcraft and Starcraft.

I'm actually in a rather morbid mood currently, because like plhu says on her blog there is just too little time left in this semester, and I'd really hate to spend all of it studying. It just seems like there's so much to do that I have no idea how to prioritise and I feel myself being torn in all directions. It is the same feeling as just after the last CA, and now I'm beginning to dread the feeling even as I look forward to the end of a CA. There's just too much I would like to spend my time on, other than studying, because there is this looming fear that as the years go by I'll have less and less time to do those things, so I might as well do them now.

When I'm in a morbid mood I write morbid stories.

If anyone wants to know how PBL with Prof Wong Mee Lian went (remember the debacle with our PBL group complaining terribly about our PRC PBL tutor LJH which ended in Prof Wong agreeing to take us for Unit 7? Yeah that's the one), I think it went quite well. Definitely a lot better than with the PRC guy (I'll reiterate that he's a really nice guy, but hell, there has to be a distinction between whether a person is nice and whether or not a person is competent at the task he's been given, and sadly in this case, he was really incompetent at leading a PBL session, no offense meant). And strangely Prof Wong made no mention of the unhappiness that led to the change of PBL tutor, and for a few moments we all felt like we were groping around in a minefield, trying not to trip off any explosives. Some say that it's to be expected that she didn't say anything about the matter, since she's so politically correct, but I don't know. It makes me feel very uneasy not knowing what she thinks about the entire situation and what she thinks of our viewpoint when we haven't had a chance to make our point. Are we wilful? I don't think so. We have the right, I believe, to point out inadequacies in the system and to ask for improvements. I think playing the money card is rather sensitive, but yes, we do pay exorbitant amounts for our school fees, and if that doesn't give us the right to air our grievances then the system is just wrong. But ideally of course we should be able to make our views heard even if we were paying nothing at all, because this is not a dictatorship. I am in a way glad that Prof Wong agreed to take us, because there really is a world of difference, even if she might not be able to see it. Even with her minimal intervention approach to PBL, she still imparts to us a gazillion times more clinical knowledge than LJH, even if she cannot compare to our brilliant prof we had for the first 4 units. A little change can make a big difference.

That's about all for the updates. I never thought it's possible to type so much your fingers start shaking, but my fingers are shaking a lot. Maybe it's not just the typing, but also the panel-lining I was doing for my Justice Gundam model just now. Been using my hands a lot today.

Enjoy the music file: it's the symphonic version of the first ending theme Anna Ni Isshou Datta No Ni, another beautiful song. The symphonic version sounds pretty cool, and it's performed by the London Symphonic Orchestra.

Avaris / 1/16/2005 05:39:00 PM

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