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Thursday, February 12, 2004

Less Updates These Days

Been updating less and less frequently...... Mainly this week I've been going back to NUS for Dr Foo's project, some filming. His subject pool is scheduled for next Tues so everything has to be done by then. Argh! And then after that I have to rush for tuition. As busy as I am, the remaining free time I have on the Net is devoted to.... READING ONLINE COMIX!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, due to the ease of publishing on the Net and the thousands of deluded individuals of artistic ability out there, [ok, meself included in there] you no longer have to pay money to read good comics. Indeed, some net comics out there are really good, and deserve to be published into books. One comic in point being Megatokyo - Relax, we understand j00, which chronicles the lives of 2 computer-geek-nerd guys, who are your typical gaming, roleplaying, manga reading geeks. Any wonder why I like this one? Ha..... Art is a bit sketchy, and looks like the guys don't know anything about inking basics, but other than that, it's a good comic to read, and shld appeal to the comic/gaming community. If you really like their stuff, a Megatokyo volume 2 is out at Kinokuniya right now.

Another online comic is Order of the Stick by Rich Burlew. Imagine a bunch of stick men [and 1 woman] playing a fantasy RPG, complete with warrior, wizard, cleric and cleavage-exposing warrioress. The art is a simple kindergarten style, yet the story is funny and the good thing is that it's also updated regularly. All hail the Order of the Stick! I recommend reading the character profiles first, before plunging into it. That way you get a good idea of who's who and what.

Nowhere Girl is a most fantastic online comic, and definitely tops the 2 in terms of story and art. It's written and drawn by Justine Shaw and tells the story of Jamie, who goes through her life struggling with low self-esteem, a crush on a gay friend and her own struggle with life, money and sexuality. [for the prudes out there, disregard the sexual references]. The first chapter is how she brings herself from her abyssmal [ did i spell that right?? ] life to forge a new beginning for herself. With the high quality of writing and art here it's amazing why this book isn't in print yet! The bad thing about it is that the story has been suspended indefinitely at chapter 2 because of lack of time on the part of the artist, and it's been that way for, er, almost a year. However, you can still read and enjoy chapter 1.

And if all that whets your appetite, check out the top 33 online manga list for more. More than ever, the Net proves itself to be the ideal launching pad for young, struggling artists. All hail the great struggle!

Sunday, February 08, 2004

We are a universe of misunderstood souls. There's something I like abt that line that i can't put my finger on right now.
A Lonely Night in Orchard

I went through 2 days of Japanese cultural immersion.

Ok, not intensive 2 days. :p but on Fri nite, I watched Lost in Translation with the Gamybird, went for the first Jap class in 2 weeks on Sat afternoon, followed by the Last Samurai with newbie on Sat night. So yea that's a lot of Jap. And I can't even string together a decent sentence yet. All we've been doing is stringing together words and making our own version of the Japanese language altogether. Hey! At least I understood a sentence or two in the movies! ( In the Last Samurai, "This is my house." No kidding )

But the nite I watched LS with newbie was crazy. Firstly, he got the meeting place wrong! Waiting for me in Bishan when we were supposed to meet in Orchard! Then when we went to Cineleisure, we realised that the next show with empty seats was at 155am!!!! Freaking shit! Who the heck airs movies at 2am in the morning?? Ok, cineleisure does anyway..... so in a moment of temporary insanity, we were like, i don't mind if you don't ok you don't mind let's do it then.

a 2am movie. Good god. Even now I don't believe I actually did it.

So naturally we had all the freakin' time before the show to do whatever.......... ate dinner, walked around, ate dessert, walked around, and ended up at the Lan cafe at cineleisure, where he *tried* to teach me CS. I'm so sorry, newbie, but I'll probably never play that game again, cos I kept getting *shot* by unknown parties........ You imagine: You log into the network, you take maybe 3 steps forward, and suddenly, there's a blood spot on your screen and everything turns dark. You're dead. (*_*) And that happened to me like almost everytime I entered the game lor. *sigh* Warcraft was slightly better, at least the graphics were awesome to look at, and I knew a bit abt the game. Still, when the enemy attacked, he smashed me to the ground! Argh! Where does the enemy get all those damn soliders!? Finally I got totally *crushed* and that was just the beginner's game........... (*_*!) I soooooo suck at these............ gimme my minesweeper or bejewelled............

Have to admit though, Gunbound was pretty damn cute. Hee! All those little manga characters trying to blast each other dead with their cannons! but bad luck for me, halfway through the game there was this ultra lag and no one could do anything for the longest time. Finally the cafe was closing, so we had to leave. And the people in my game were still stuck unable to do anything. Damn servers.

So yea! We spent most of the time at the lan cafe! Fortunately I drank a latte during dessert so didn't sleep through the movie. Even after the show, at abt 5am I still felt so awake...... terrible. My body totally cannot handle caffeine at night. We hung around a while in the empty streets of Orchard. There's something so surreal and peaceful about Orchard at night. There's nobody, except the odd straggler like us, so the streets have this empty, abandoned feeling. It gives you this funny feeling, walking down these streets that were thronged with the masses just 6 hrs before, but now were empty as space. You have more space to walk around, more seats to sit on, and you feel more of the wind blowing on your face, because now there's nobody to stand in your way and block it for you. So nice a feeling..... the empty road just stretching away before you...... I think I like to hang out at Orchard after 2am. Anyone game? hahaha....

Too bad I wasn't too quiet abt getting home though. I tot I managed to sneak in quietly, until my mom came out ( at 530 in the morning!! ) and demanded to know where I'd been and why didn't I call and did I know she'd been waiting for me to come in how can i just go out the whole night just like that blah blah blah with me thinking please just go sleep lemme alone i got home fine i always get home fine i only watched a movie i wasn't out drinking or screwing or anything like that i don't do this often just freakin let me sleep already...... urgh.....

Amazing though, that I did manage to squeeze in about 3 hrs of sleep before I woke up at 8 to prepare to go for tuition. The human body is much more amazing than we give it credit for.

Right enuff crap for now. I feel the writing juice just dripping out of me. I'll try to come up with a review for the 2 movies I watched so we'll see how it goes. Suffice it to say for that I think LS was a really good show and LIT was really humourous, watching 2 gaijin muck their way round Japan. Ja, mata for now.