This is going to be a long rant.

I know this because all I've been doing today is reading other people's rants, and even though I agree with most of them and they've said what I've wanted to say sometimes, I still feel like adding more, or just doing some ranting on my own.

First, before I forget, here's that picture of Prince Baka that I finished today. I don't have all that much to say about it, except that he isn't wearing any clothes XD only 'cause I was too lazy to draw them, and I still don't really feel like I'm going anywhere with my art. Sigh. I do like how is eyes turned out though. I've been drawing more of this type of Level-E-Togashi stuff than the typical more-like-Clamp-style lately, I even did this half-finished self-portrait today, but I am Highly Doubtful that I'd ever post that up.

Anyway, so now that I've remembered posting that picture, back to the rant.

Where was I? Oh yes, Life is all about Choices. Okay, that's not really where I was but it's a place to start, anyway. And I don't really know why I capitalized the first letter of those words except that I wanted to highlight them and I did, didn't I?

So we all knew that anyway. Life is all about Choices, like I have a choice to type my thought freely like I am now, just transferring whatever pops into my mind onto the screen, thus making everything long-winded and ultimately boring the reader the death, or I could concentrate on each point I want to cover and deliver it succinctly in order to get it across in the most direct possible way. Unfortunately for you I've already chosen the former option, so now you have a choice to read on, if you really have nothing better to do and are not afraid to be potentially bored to death...

See, I often like to insert unnecessarily complicated words where a simpler one would suffice, why say 'talkative' when I can say 'loquacious', why say 'tendancy' when I can say 'proclivity'? (And so now if I say 'I have a proclivity towards loquaciousness', you know what I'm talking about). This is especially evident in my old journal. Now, having a blog generally meant shorter entries, but once in a while the verbal diahorrea kicks in again, and you get one of these entries, that's really more like a journal entry than a blog entry, but maybe some people are glad to read something more journalesque. In any case, in the end, I'm writing all this just for me, anyway, even though at this point I'm still not really sure what the hell I'm on about.

Oh, right, choices. See, I'm a very grey person. As in, if some people see the world in black and white then I linger mostly on the grey, because I've learnt more and more over the years that there are always two sides to every single argument, and if you listen to one side long enough and they come up with enough plausible reasoning, you'll start to believe it. I believe that's actually called debating.

Anyway, that's why I generally like to sit on 'the fence', on most issues, and give either side at least a fair chance before making my own choice, and even afterwards I start having second thoughts and starting to wonder if I should have chosen the other option. This applies to pretty much everything in my life, but no matter how hard you try it's pretty impossible to unmake a choice so you end up having to live with whatever you decided anyway, whether the choice ended up being the right one or not. However more often than not you'll end up discovering that there are no right and wrong choices, only different choices with different consequences, just depends on which consequences you like better, but once again, more often than not you don't even know what the consequences are until they come so you can't really base your choice on that, either, so basically you're choosing on blind luck, anyway, so like The Irresponsible Captain Tylor taught me, the most important thing is luck.

But it's hard to decide what the most important thing is, because there are so many, but another thing that's definately very important is friends. I've been doing a bit of pondering, on friendships and all that, and I've come to quite a few conclusions, quite a few which conflict with each other but conclusions nonetheless, and the conflicting bit goes back to the whole I'm-a-grey-person thing, so here are my conclusions about friendship anyway.

The most obvious one is that friends are precious things, that one should treasure and always try to keep in touch with, because you never know, tomorrow they might be dead, or you might be dead. Okay, that's overly morbid, but you know what I mean. Sometimes I get those annoying little chain emails or ICQ message things, that says some touching little thing about friendship, and then say 'forward this to all your friends including the person who sent it to you!' and I guess it's a nice idea, really, but I never read them and I never forward them. It's not because I don't care about my friends, but first, I hate chain mail. Second, I know that the person who sent it to me in all likelihood didn't write it, and so what's the meaning in that? It's a nice gesture, but slightly empty. Now if an actual friend wrote a personal and touching message about friendship, then I would definately read it and probably get all sentimental and send them an equally sappy reply, but that rarely happens. So we should all keep in touch with our friends, because we'll regret it later if we don't, right?

That's all nice and sweet, it's like wishing for world peace, but then the cynic kicks in and realises that first, you can't be best buds with every single person that you come across. Logically, first because you won't even get along with every single person you come across, and secondly, if I tried to keep in intimate touch with every single friend I'd ever made in my entire life then I'd be a very busy person, probably too busy to even sleep. That's how impossible it would be. But even saying that I feel a bit guilty for everyone who I know I should have emailed back or called or sent a birthday card to but didn't because I was too busy with my own life or just plain forgot. It doesn't mean I stopped being their friend, it just means that the part of our lives that crossed paths was over, for the meanwhile, anyway, and we were both making new friends that we would, in turn, not speak to until years later or ever again. I guess a good sort of friend to have is the kind that, after not seeing for months or years, you can just sit down and laugh and have a good time and catch up with and the lost time just melts away like you were never apart. And then when you go back to your own lives you exchange new contact details and promise never to lose touch again even though you know it'll happen anyway.

Like with Makiko, the girl I stayed with for a week in Japan two years ago, it's my turn to write back and I haven't just 'cause my Japanese has gone rusty. And Mela, the wonderful Italian fellow-YYH-fan who shared my fun in Rome and Florence. And Schufan, my best friend all the way back in primary school, who I exchanged mobile phone numbers with not so long ago and we both promised to make plans in the holidays but we never messaged each other. And Heidi, the first person I ever met in real life after first meeting on the internet, who I saw online quite often when I used to be online all the time and all I had to do was click and type but I just... didn't. And lately Susan, my high-school bud, who I've heard is not at all pleased at my tendancy (I mean proclivity =P) to not-call people but I still haven't called her yet, just 'cause I heard some rumours that she wasn't even living at home anymore. Since when do rumours equal fact? But it's just enough doubt for me to not pick up the phone, anyway. Plus I just hardly ever call my friends to arrange things, it's bad of me, really. But it all goes back to that we all have our own lives to go on with stuff. But it doesn't mean that I'm not sorry that I've lost touch with a few friends along the way. Oh well, maybe I'll start getting better at that.

Sitting here, reading II stix, understanding every single gem of an article and eating my Nissin seafood cup noodles, I wonder if I could be any more Asian. ::LoL::

Apparently my blog loads veeery slooowly, maybe it's something to do with orcon, but I didn't think it was that graphic intensive, equally so as the previous layouts, anyway. Ah well, it's something I can't do much about at the moment, anyway...

Funny how time seems to just fly by now that I've totally surrendered to the reading bug and spent yet another day waking up late then doing nothing but read and read. I read The Books of Magic, another Neil Gaiman graphic novel, which had absolutely stunning artwork... And Timothy Hunter more than bears a strong resemblance to Harry Potter, for some reason. In fact I was nearly surprised that the owl wasn't named Hedwig, though I have to admit Yo-yo is the most sensible name for it. Anyway, after that was finished I started Hart's Hope, a fantasy tale by (you guessed it) Orson Scott Card, which... didn't usurp the Ender saga as my favourite OSC book, and didn't really leave a deep impression, either. Of course that's not going to discourage me from digging up all of OSC's books and reading them, I guess it just means that a book reads differently to each different person, and for every fascinating book there's ten not-so-fascinating ones, and that could vary with each different person also, so... oops, starting to ramble, moving on quickly...

Now I've only got High Hunt and The Losers (both by David Eddings) left to finish before I have to revisit the library, which will probably be on Monday. Then again that coincides nicely with the start of university again so I guess that I won't have as much time to read after all. Plus my aunt is arriving to visit next Saturday so I'll have even less time. Not that I mind, 'cause this is my very very cool aunt without whom I wouldn't have most of my manga collection, and she already sent me a message saying she's bringing over volume 3 of Angelic Layer, volume 11 of Hunter X Hunter, volumes 1 to 4 of D.N.Angel, among a few other things... =D It's so nice to have an aunt who has no kids so spoils you (I'm the youngest among all my cousins) shamelessly. =D And everyone keeps saying how much I'm like her (in terms of personality), even more than my mum (who's her younger sister). Hmm.

Aaanyway. Oh, as everybody probably noticed, thecounter.com went all skitzy (probably due to the whole dotcom-collapse-effect-thingy) suddenly and to view any sort of statistics you had to upgrade to this premium version which involved, of course, forking over money. So I switched back to good ol' bravenet (I always liked their counter stats better, actually), not that you can even see the counter 'cause the only bad things about bravenet counters are how huge they are so I made it not. =P

I've been trying to draw lately, too. And the results have been... Ack. >_< I need to find myself some real life person, object, something different to draw, to somehow drag my pencil off this plateau that I seem to have been stuck on since the beginning of this year. ¬_¬

Anyway (I seem to like saying that a lot), I don't quite know how to end this blog but it must have been the reading frying my brain. And I'm usually so eloquent after a good long read, too. =_=

Spent pretty much the entire day vegging at home and reading Stone Tables, a retelling of the story of Moses by Orson Scott Card, which was actually quite fascinating, to the point that I felt compelled to refer back to the original story in the bible. Hmm. Anyway, I should keep going with the rest of the books though, maybe pick up an Eddings one next, so I can return them all at some stage before the end of the holidays...

Oh, dad raised the topic of when-exactly-do-you-want-to-go-back-to-Hong-Kong-this-year? again and the answer is basically anytime after my last exam (Stats, on the 9th of November) and then stay until the end of December to return to New Zealand in time for summer school at university. Speaking of which, I was messing around on nDeva today and found, to my surprise, that suddenly ALL the management streams were open, so I quickly grabbed the opportunity to swap lecture streams and now, tutorials nonwithstanding, I have a very nice-looking timetable. Well, I think so, anyway. Monday to Thursday I start at 9AM, have 3 consecutive lectures (Comlaw 101, Stats 101 & Econ 111 or Mgmt 101) and then finish at noon, on Friday there's no Comlaw so I start at 10 and finish at 12. Plus all the lecture streams in those papers mean that I could easily juggle times around at leisure (though of course I'm not really supposed to do that) so I'm pretty happy. And still really looking forward to uni starting up again. =D (And I'm sure that later, I'll re-read this and think I'm mad. ¬_¬)

Okay, sorry about that last entry, but I was slightly hyper since I've been spending the day with Rita, Yvonne & Tina, and that's definately gotta be one of my quickest tickets to hyperness. XD Anyway, our... uh, 'slogan' (?) that we made up today reads a lot better in Chinese, that's a direct translation... okay, it doesn't make any more sense in Chinese but after playing the milk-chugging kutar game and Virtua Cop 2 too much (don't ask), it just... yeah, doesn't translate all that well. Ah well. There were others, too, like "new starbucks = wedding dress?!" (again, doesn't translate well)... XD XD

::ahem:: Anyway, ooh, I remember what I was going to blog about now this morning until I forgot... I did that personality disorder test too, I first found it on Steph-chan's journal but didn't figure the results interesting enough to post, with me scoring 'low' on pretty much everything except for 'moderate' in 'obsessive-complusive' and... something else, I think maybe it was 'borderline'. Anyway, that's either a relief, or I scored excessively high in 'self-delusional' only they didn't have that, sooo... heh. Ah well.

Oh, got the rest of my grades back, got B+ in Accounting and B- in Economics... add that to the B+ in Maths and B+ in Compsci and... ::pulls a face:: I don't know, sure, I'm still happy about my Compsci but (especially after hearing what Rita got... neee... ¬_¬) the others, I know I slacked off and probably could've gotten A. Sigh. Next semester, then... But at least I can definately keep going with the conjoint.

Eep, now I gotta go grab the shower before everyone else makes a mad dash and there's no hot water left. O_O ::dashes off::

KILL PEOPLE LIGHT FIRES STREET FIGHT DRINK MILK!!! XD XD XD

Remember how I said that if you were going to see one movie these holidays you should go see Shrek? Well, if you're going to see two movies these holidays, the second one should be Evolution, that new David Duchovny movie. 'Cause it is frickin' hilarious. XD XD It's one of those movies that I really had heaps of fun laughing at, and the special effects were... okay, not pretty, but they were definately well done. In fact the only thing that irked me about the movie is that we didn't get to see any good trailers (I'd been hoping to see Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy or Lord of the Rings...) And I really identified with Julianne Moore's character's... klutziness. =P Anyway. I shall never be able to look at a bottle of Head & Shoulders shampoo the same again! XD XD

Okay, I have totally forgotten what I was supposed to blog about. Oh well.

And that concludes my blog. Just blogging about how I forgot what I was going to blog about. ¬_¬

NP: Kono Daremon Inai Heya de - Gackt

For anyone who's ever wondered exactly what a blog is.

Gee, and what's with all the blogging this week? O_o

NP: Mirror - Gackt

I couldn't resist. I linked it. XD XD Now if only the Initial D boys would come back... like tofu-boy... XD Damn, but I wanna see Gravitation now... Oh Jo~sh-nii~chaaaan... you had it, ne, ne? XD XD XD

Damn, I wonder why I'm all XD-y all of a sudden?

NP: Asran Dream - Gackt

I've been listening to a lot of Lain MP3s lately, and my desktop has gone all Lain-y, as you can see...

Strange, really, since I haven't even seen Lain lately, in fact the first and only time I saw it was with the AAC last year, back when Steve-niichan was still in NZ... Speaking of which, I get to be 'in charge' of the anime night tonight, am ever so slightly apprehensive, just hoping that we don't get any technical problems... ¬_¬ And hm, I should print out some more posters...

Oh, right. ::tentative wave to Shiori-san:: Surprised? =D I found your blog from looking at my counter referral hits (by the way, a lot of people come to this blog looking for ringtones, kogepan and initial d stuff via search engines... hmm) and was kinda surprised by the fact that I'm getting linked now. ::LoL:: And whoa but that is a big pile o' blogrings. I think I might join some more myself now, actually, just for the fun of it. =D And you have a very yummy Omittchi layout (he was always my favourite Weiß, after all XD) and an absolute gem of an Angelic Layer site, too... Yay, another blog for me to follow. Maybe one day I'll even have as long a list as you do...! =D

Eep, doesn't look like I'm going to be doing all that much reading today... Sigh.

So today's driving lesson, in my opinion, was ucky. >_< Well, of course I should aways be judging it by the fact that, okay, I still haven't crashed yet, and I should be giving myself more credit because it was only my third lesson, but still, it seemed like I was half asleep and not really concentrating so my reactions were slightly sluggish and there were too many close shaves for comfort. ¬_¬ It's the nagging inner-perfectionist again... Oh well. It was slightly amusing, though, how, while I was all unsuspecting, we turned into the motorway and I remember my train of thought being, "Hey, doesn't this lane go into the motorway? Are we going into the motorway? Are we going into the motorway? Oh my god we're going into the motorway oh my god we're going into the motorway ohmygod we're in the motorway and we're going at 100! O_O" ::LoL:: I don't know if it was 'cause it was quite warm & sunny in the car today or 'cause I was nervous 'cause I wasn't quite up to my usual alertness but my palms were sweaty and so I kept thinking the wheel would slip and I'd drift into another lane and crash 'n stuff... -_- Oh well. I guess that's why I need (and am having) lessons...

And is it true that only girls get their lefts and rights mixed up? That's what my driving instructor said, anyway... 99% of girls will mix up their left and right at some stage. Or maybe I was just too asleep. Ugh.

Oh well. Time for more reading. =D

Finally got out of bed 'cause of an insistent parcel-delivery guy. Ugh, everyone else in the house just totally ignored the doorbell and the knocks, of course, so I had to answer and sign in my pyjamas... not really a huge deal when I think about it, actually.

Breakfast time...

Okay, I need to go to bed soon (right after this blog) since I have a driving lesson tomorrow morning (though not of the 8.30AM kind) and I have to be... awake, but a few things:

• I finished Shadow of the Hegemon (of course, I wasn't going to sleep until I had finished every word from cover to cover anyway) and... I am aaaall ready to bow down to Orson Scott Card as god. XD Okay, slight exaggeration there, and I guess slightly ironic too, considering the fact that the man's kinda religious himself (hey, turns out Mormons are also known as The Church of the Latter Day Saints, which I think I've seen a few of - churches, that is - around here... not that I'm going to convert or anything, but just thought it was slightly interesting)... Anyway, I find that sometimes if someone goes on too much about a particular book or author some people are put off or their expectations get stacked so high that when they come to read the actual thing it becomes a bit of an anticlimax, so I'll try to refrain from going on about it too much, but if you're looking for a book to read I could not recommend the Ender saga and the Shadow series by Orson Scott Card more. And yeah, I know I could be just using OSC but for some reason typing out his whole name is more fun. =D
• And thanks, Claire-chan! =) On the whole not a huge response on the new layout, though I guess you're all used to it by now. =P Ah well... and about the funeral-attire, I take that to mean that you dress quite often in black? Maybe your friend meant 'goth' and it... came out wrong? Though I don't know, I can't imagine Claire-chan the goth, actually. =D In fact, I know very little about goths in general except for the... generalisations, like black clothes, ghostly makeup, etc... o_O Hm. And for some reason you also made me think of KFC like 'Kentucky Fried Cats', which is slightly disturbing when you think about it... like the whole maggots-in-the-McDonald's-burger incident... okay, enough of eww-things... ¬_¬
• I finished all my wasabi peas. ::pulls a face:: And I think I had more constructive things to say, like... oh, right, EB-niichan, you know, this is not a bad webspace provider at all, you should really check it out, my layout images are all stored there at the moment and... you probably already know about it but just thought you might want to see for yourself, before you start forking out cash... that is, of course, unless you want to fork out cash... which I would, actually, if I could think of a domain name and any actual content. -_-
• Ohhh, right, turns out that MegaTokyo guest strip contest got nearly 400 entries in all, so I'm taking that to immediately mean that my one didn't go through or anything, then again the week isn't through yet so I never know... Though I do hope that they at least had a good laugh at it, as in hoping that no other fangirls had the same idea... ^^; Then again I sent in my strip pretty early, soo... Ah well. Anyway, thought I might as well post the link now, soo... here is my entry! Of course feedback is always always appreciated. =)

So today I ended up going to the local library and of course the book that I really really wanted wasn't there, though I did end up getting six others, including the rest of the Eddings books that I hadn't read before (the non-fantasy novels), and the first volume of Sandman plus this other Neil Gaiman thing, because I've heard so much about him. Anyway, the computer said that Shadow of the Hegemon was in at the Epsom library so I got my brother to drive me there and after a short bout of frantic searching (it wasn't on the shelves) I finally got my hands on it! =D Waaaai! I was going to wait and buy this thing but since the whole deciding-to-save-up-for-a-car business I thought I probably wouldn't splurge on it anyway, soo... I'm going to finish reading it far too soon, I know it. Ah well. And my family finally agreed to having hotcakes for afternoon tea so I got to make those as well, double wai. =D =D So the burning desire (and I'm not kidding when I mean burning desire) for hotcakes has been sated for the moment. Hm, I wonder what my next food obsession will be... currently it has to be hotcakes, and Kasugai wasabi peas. I cannot stress enough how it has to be Kasugai kind... I guess I'm picky. =P

Anyway. Give me hotcakes and Orson Scott Card, and I'm a happy, happy girl. =D

I got a B+ in Maths 151! =D Wai! I'm pretty happy, though yeah, I know, "if only I'd worked harder I could have gotten an A" but I'm not complaining about a B+ when I'm such a pessimist. =D

I hope this trend keeps up...

::blinks at counter:: Wow, someone at acld.auckland.clix.net.nz was my 5000th hit. Okay, not that it's strange or anything, but just... 5000 hits. Where do all these people come from? Ah well. Hey, at least they were using MSIE..! =D

And the reason why I keep changing layouts is generally 'cause I get tired of the old layout, or I'm bored and feel like messing around in photoshop, plus I'm trying to keep up my 'webdesign' skillz (hah) to a certain degree, and the blog lets me experiment with different sorts of layouts, that sort of thing... I've noticed that my layouts generally tend to stay up for 3 weeks or so, versions 2.x were essentially the same so I didn't really count them, but otherwise they all stuck to the 3-week-rule until the SilEighty one. That didn't stay up for the extra week, not 'cause I didn't like it, oh, it must've been my favourite layout up till now, actually, but I just happened to be fiddling with the next layout and I guess got too impatient to wait for another week to put it up. Ah well. And I don't even need to call this 'procrastination' 'cause it's aaaall in the holidays. =)

Anyway, I'd better go get some... brunch, my first meal of the day, anyway. Hey, seems like I'm falling into the bad-holiday-sleeping-patterns after all. ¬_¬

Yeah, it took me a while to line up all of those links perfectly down there... and yes, I added some new ones. =D And Finn-kun's URL works for me. ::shrugs:: Ah well.

Anyway, also added some new links in there, if you hadn't noticed... Isn't this really really neat? XD I had some pearl tea (I prefer calling it this since it is the literal Chinese translation) today and mmmmmm, I can totally remember why I'm always addicted to it while I'm in Hong Kong. It's too expensive over here though... XP there are so many variations on the flavour but I've gotta say I like it the traditional way best, just tea.

Actually, I've also found that the best way I like tea is Lipton Yellow Label with a big tablespoon of condensed milk in it. I've gone on about this before, because it's sooo nice, and it's the closest to HK-café-style I can get at home. Of course the BEST milk tea exists in Hong Kong cafés. Ohh, I'm getting thirsty just thinking about it. Anyway, I guess my second favourite tea would just be green tea, the Japanese kind... and then assorted Chinese tea, which I do not know the English names of, but I guess it's all so commonplace to me, really. But stuff like vanilla flavour... eep, can't seem to stomach it, for some reason. Certain fruit teas are nice though, like, of course, lemon tea... and peach tea, though I kinda lived off that for the week and a bit I was in Italy last year and that sort of put me off. I mean, sculling a few litres at a time of any liquid kinda does that to you. (And don't ask me why I was doing that.)

You know what? I give up. IE, you win completely and utterly, because I just went through my archives and... smack me silly with a harddrive case and call me b4k4, 'cause ALL of them look buggy and awful in netscape. ¬_¬ They really do. So now I don't even CARE about this one, as long as it's readable, you'll live, I'll live, and someday we'll all be using IE anyway. Or something like that. -_-

By the way, would some kind soul please tell me how to change my default browser back to IE? I know I could find out (and I probably will) but I'm sure someone already knows and could just tell me... right?

Sigh. Sometimes Quite often I feel like kicking the crap out of my computer. More like the whole... internet thing. Really.

Okay. Now this looks ever so slightly less awful in netscape, though of course there are still a few bugs... Of course all the while all the IE users (most people) would have been happily oblivious to this whole mess... -_- Why don't I just code in CSS or something? (Ohh, but then older browsers wouldn't support it... You. Can. Never. Win! >_<)

And somehow netscape also just barged in here and made itself the default browser of my computer. ::wails:: Must dig around and find out how to change that, ack.

And netscape's been installed on my computer, just like that...

Anyway. ::starts the cross-browser-compliant-salvage-operation:: -_-

Okay, I don't even have netscape on my computer, I've been running to borrow my brother's computer to see how... spewingly awful the layout was on there, so as to starting to fix the damn thing... well, I'll have to wait till my brother installs netscape for me on my computer before I can start the cross-browser-compliant-salvage-operation (that is also possibly one of the weirdest words I have ever made up). In the meanwhile, netscape loyalists, please bear with me and just click that evil 'e' icon?

OH MY GOD this looks spewingly awful in Netscape right now. >___< Must... fix...

Surprise!!!

Surprised? XD Okay, I know the last layout was theoretically supposed to stay up for another week, but I started fiddling around with v5.0 and so there you have it, in all its chocolatey-Sakura-and-Shaoran-goodness! =D What do you think? Personally I don't think it turned out too badly at all, considering, plus I am trying to see if I can vary each layout a bit in terms of... layout. ^.^; And to anyone who's sweating away at a northern-hemisphere-summer, it's frickin' freezing down here in New Zealand. >_< (Though I have to admit that it would be even colder down further south than Auckland, which is... most of the country.)