The Emperor of All Maladies A Biography of Cancer (Siddharta Mukherjee)
[ current anime ]
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Sunday, March 12, 2006
The waltzing butterfly
After a while I realise that when I'm not completely nuts or stressed out there's nothing much for me to blog about; writing is perhaps a good way of relieving stress. On a completely related yet totally inane note, just a few days ago I had this sudden realisation that I get some weird euphoria from typing; the sensation of hitting keys and feeling them bounce back is akin to squeezing bubble wrap.
To keep you updated on my J-drama madness (I am sure no one's interested, but that's what blogging's about), the wonderful drama Oh-oku hits its final episode tomorrow, so I'm greatly looking forward to it, glee. And to my greatest delight there are a total of three Oh-oku drama serials, being the First Chapter (第一章）, which is set in the beginnings of the Tokugawa shogunate, the Meiji chapter, which is the one I'm watching on cable now, and Hana no Ran (華の乱） which is set in the decadent golden years of the shogunate. This makes me a very happy Oh-oku fan, and thanks to the wonders of the Internet (ahem) I have procured episodes of all three series. They're all really really good, and although the acting can get rather dramatic at times (which I totally love, anyway, because women scheming against one another and generally being quite evil are a joy to watch) it's a compelling series, in terms of good acting, superb costumes (you can't go wrong with kimonos that beautiful), riveting storyline and heart-rending soundtrack.
The holidays are really short this time round, but I'm enjoying them in the company of good books and great dramas, so even a short break can be enjoyable. With the upcoming posting being Psychomed, I hope that I can continue having time to read and not need to study too much. Taking advantage of the weekend discount offers in MPH and Times, I went and bought Diana Gabaldon's A Breath of Snow and Ashes, which still hurt my wallet a lot after the discount. My theory is, if the large paperback is 1000 pages thick and has a font size of something like 11, how are they going to squeeze all that text into a small paperback? Thus I decided to buy the large version and give up waiting for the small paperback to come out, if it even does. Mwahaha, after I finish the Dune series I'm going to totally enjoy reading A Breath of Snow and Ashes.
It seems the in thing on the Internet now is Youtube, and it's certainly kept me quite entertained throughout the studying period and even now, but I suppose that entertainment comes from knowing what videos to look for, or from videos that other people find and recommend to you. Elpis' blog is a veritable goldmine of these good videos, but the latest video he posted gave me a pretty bad shock (because I'm the kind who gets shocked witless rather easily). There really should be some kind of unspoken rule about not scaring your friends when they're reading your blog, heh. Other gems that I've turned up on Youtube include the video of the RJC GP tutor scolding a student and tearing his work up, which created a big hoohah in the media some years ago, and which I've never had the chance to watch until now, poor old deprived me.
To keep all of you entertained here's a hilarious commercial - Ek Khoon described it to me a couple of days ago and I couldn't stop laughing, so I decided to look for it on Youtube, and behold, there were more than a dozen copies of the same commercial uploaded (how absolutely redundant, but perhaps it goes to show how many people find it amusing and want to share it with the world). Enjoy.
In other mundane news, the recent release of the Goblet of Fire DVD has incited another wave of Cedric Diggory/Rob Pattison loving from his rather passionate fanbase (which no longer includes me, because, hey, I'm so over it [and because Nishijima Hidetoshi is the cutest person in my universe now]), and has turned up interesting pieces of fangirling like this picture, which gives a whole new meaning to fanart. I am totally bewildered by the madness.