A Bad Day

The powers that be took my bad exam results a lot worse than I had thought them too. Perhaps I shouldn't have tempted fate by remarking to my brother that they had been taking the news rather well. My mum stormed upstairs, demanded I hand over my laptop. I refused. She started rampaging around in my room for it, and then her eyes fell on the boxes of Gundam models that I had stashed on top of my wardrobe. That was when I lost my nerve and handed it over to her. Then my dad came home ... thank goodness I decided not to wander downstairs for anything - they would have gone off at me like a 10 megaton nuke. Not to mention now they've fallen back on the timeworn standby of taking away privileges - money, broadband, etc. For gods' sake, I'm 19 years old! I'm a little old for taking things away to have much of a positive effect on me! I have resolved to work much harder this semester after slacking off so much last semester. Although I'll probably have to repeat next year, at least it'll only be mostly semester one, leaving the second half of the year free for me to do whatever I like.

If they're going to treat me like a little kid, then I'm going to have to show them just HOW much I can act my age. They say I should act my age, I'll act my age. I'll free myself of them. Let's see how mum likes it when I buy my own groceries, cook my own meals, and then when she remarks about how it's a bother and makes you tired, smile widely. If they try to cut off my broadband, I'll start paying for it myself. They can't touch it because I'm paying for it, not them. I'll get a job, one independent of them. It might not be as cushy as the job I have now, with my parents as my boss, but at least then I won't be financially dependent on them. I'll learn bus routes so that I don't have to take their car anywhere. If they ask me if it isn't hard and difficult to do everything myself, I'll smile widely and tell them that I am dependent on them for nothing except board. And then, I'll throw my HD results in their faces and go "HA! Nothing you did had any impact on my studies! It was all me! Your confiscation of my fun did nothing, You domineering, narrow-minded, egotistical control freaks!"

Now let's hope I have the willpower and courage to follow through.

Back to work

I sit here, waiting for the inevitable to come ... and I heave a sigh. I wasted these holidays. I didn't manage to get on a diet, I didn't play that 40K campaign, I didn't manage to finish even one Gundam model. Of course, it didn't help that the holidays had to be some of the coldest weeks I've ever experienced. I'd stay up late, playing games on my laptop, and then go to sleep, and then wake up about 8:30pm, and then curl up in bed with thoughts of "it's too damn cold to get up tnis morning," before cocooning myself with my blanket and going back to sleep for another three to five hours. But it seems those days are over.

I am really worried. I got some really bad results. I failed all subjects but one. There's no way to sugarcoat it, but I'm going to have to figure out the way to tell my parents without them getting really angry and blaming it on stuff. Not to mention hiding most of my gear so they can't confiscate/destroy it. Now I have to try to make it up this semester by really studying throughout the whole 5-6 months, so that there's no big panic crash at the end where I desperately try to cram as much info into my head as I can. I suppose thse were my downfalls, next to no studying (except for tests), and then two weeks of desperate cramming to get as much into my head as possible, with the thought of impending doom.

Let's hope I can still slim down a bit, even though my timetable this semester is really crazy. Mondays and Tuesdays, nothing in the mornings, lessons starting at midday, with every other Tuesday having a *gasp* 5 hour prac. Then I come to the Wedneday to Friday block, which is crazy. Wednesday alone has a 5 hour prac from 2-7pm ... let's hope I never have to stay the whole length of time.

*sigh* Once more into the breach, my friends ...

Whew!

What a whirlwind week. It isn't over yet, as later on today I'm going to a friend's house for some Warhammer 40k games ... a good chance to test out my new Tyranid army.

As I type, I'm listening to the music on my new PSP. It is verrry nice. Although all I have now is the 32mb memory stick to play with, the music sounds very nice, and I'm going to try to load Star Ocean on it later on to play. As soon as I can find the damn rom, anyways. Maybe I'll try Chrono Trigger on it in the mean time. My favourite game ever. Speaking of games, I finished downloading Gundam: True Odyssey earlier today, and, as I knew, the whole game is in Japanese. Not even voice-acting to help me identify some semblance of what's happening. Despite that, the game looks and feels very nice. I like the cel-shaded style they're using for it, although I wished they used proper scale instead of SD style Gundams.

I took a seduction test recently: http://www.blogthings.com/seducerquiz/

I ended up with this:


You don't really try to seduce people... it just seems to happen.
Fun loving and free spirited, you bring out the inner child in people.
You are spontaneous, sincere, and unpretentious - a hard combo to find!
People drop their guard around you, and find themselves falling fast.

Hehe, now to see if it actually works. I doubt it though. Haven't had much luck with girls recently. Now that I think about it, I haven't had much luck with girls period. *sigh* a wasted youth. Woe is me and all that crap. Sometimes I really do wish I did go to a co-ed high school instead of an all boys one. They say that chances of a guy coming out of the closet increases if you go to an all-boys school. I sincerely hope that isn't true, and it should be, if my brother's rampant homophobicism is anything to go by. Oh wait ... that might be the sign of repressed homosexuality ... I think I should stop right there.

Saturday night fever

Another Saturday night. Another night of much eagerly awaited new material in the form of the latest episode of Gundam SEED Destiny. And as I browse through a forum trying to get the latest info on this episode, I scroll through pages and pages of "Shinn sux, Lunamaria is a slut, they both must DIE!" "ZOMG Kira pwnz j00 all" and so forth. I just wish people would stop with such rampant fanboyism and get on with just enjoying the show. It may not be as good as SEED was (perhaps I should watch the whole thing as a marathon when it finishes to see how I interpret it then), but it's still good enough. And while Fukuda is no Tomino, he is probably doing his best under the circumstances to deliver a good half-hour's entertainment. Anyways ... today marked the premier of a new OP for GSD. Having heard the music it's being done to, I don't really feel that much for it, in fact, it's rather "meh" for a Gundam OP, which is usually dance, rock or techno of some sort.

In other related news, Gundam: True Odyssey has come out! The sad thing is that it's in Japanese, which renders the game largely inaccessible to me. Despite that, I'm still downloading it, and hoping that someone will provide a guide so I know what buttons to press. There's only two reasons why I'm downloading it: MS customisation, and I want to hear what the Japanese voice-over sounds like before they decide to port it over to the US. I wonder how long it'll be before that happens.

I went out for dinner with friends tonight. We met at the Cafe Kowloon, and generally had a good time. It's a pity I couldn't catch up with the waitress who gave us the bill, since by the way she said "thank you" and bowing in response to my thanking her for giving me the bill tells me that she just might be Japanese. If so, then there'd be nothing wrong with getting to know her face. Maybe next time I could start hitting on her or something. Gotta work on those skills first though -_- going to an all-guys school for high school and having an inactive social life really hit me hard - lack of experience of hitting on girls. I'm sure that's starting to come back and bite me in the ass now that I'm in uni, where the ratio of guys to girls in my classes are like 60:40 in favour of the girls. Looking at myself in the photos I took, I think I don't look too good. I never fancied my face as being that of a fat man's, but looking at the photos, it seems I have what appears to be a 1.3 chin. Not quite a double chin, but you can see the flab drooping down at the back. Not good. I wanted a nice, chiselled face that girls could fall for. *sigh* losing the weight's gonna be a lot of troublesome work over a long period. And that leads us to ... ugh ... finances.

I really shouldn't have gone into retail therapy as a way of relieving stress for my exams. Net result: my credit card is almost maxed, my bank account has about a hundred and fifty bucks left, and I've become a compulsive spender. Despite that, I am the proud owner of several unassembled Master Grade Gundam models, and a Perfect Grade Strike (which I doubt I'll touch for a while - assembly and painting of the others will take me at least 3-4 months), as well as the Tyranid army to paint. Oh, and the jungle terrain I want to get done by the end of this coming week. *sigh* , so much to do. I think I might have to give up gaming for the week.

Stunning revelations

Being somewhat a japanophile, I also have developed an affinity for Asian girls. Not too bad, considering I'm Vietnamese and therefore it doesn't seem as unnatural as white guys. I've been reading the latest entries on a diary by Azrael, a fellow who's living in Japan and teaching English. They provide a huge amount of humour, and a good reason why I prefer Japanese literature to Australian free-to-air and ... aw fuck. My crappy lappy has started chugging. I think it's a sign that I've either finally finished downloading something big on Azureus, or I've left the laptop on for too long (usually the latter) and it needs a reboot. And the results are ... cool, finally finished the 6gb download that is the entire series of Azumanga Daioh. Although I wonder whether I should have simply bought the DVDs, since they came with a little booklet with little notes on the little cultural things western gaijin wouldn't understand.

Mmm ... The Tsubasa Chronicle OST was just released onto the internet by Nipponsei. I love it. I love all of Yuki Kajiura's work, especially her work from .hack//SIGN (the gateway and still the best) and Xenosaga Episode II. The music from Tsubasa Chronicle is just as good, especially "A Song of Storm and Fire." At least now I have something new to listen to, after the last couple of months of j-rock and j-pop. Hmm, the dance style music from Initial D looks like a good bet, especially after my mp3 player somehow wandered from the Z Gundam music folder to Initial D. I swear, that iRiver has a life of its own sometimes. If I leave the thing to play by itself for several hours, I come back about an hour and a half later and it's playing something far away from the folder I'd expect it to be playing music from.

Mmm .. maybe some more internet browsing and then I'll watch some anime or something. Maybe it's time to finally break out that Galaxy Angel S2 DVD and actually watch it. Now that I think about it, I haven't touched the Gundam SEED, Fullmetal Alchemist, or Samurai Champloo DVDs I bought a while ago either. Of course, I've already seen those series fansubbed, but I bought the DVDs so I could watch them again. *sigh* too little time.

Holidays holidays holidays

Holidays are upon us! At least here where I live. After a semester of long, gruelling lectures and practicals, it feels nice to kick back and do what I like. But still .. so much to do, so little time it seems. I have a stack of Gundam models sitting beside my desk waiting to be built, a Warhammer 40,000 Tyranid army to build and paint, and several RPGs to play: La Pucelle Tactics, Phantom Brave, Disgaea, Xenosaga Episodes I and II, and Suikoden 3. I also have a pile of anime to watch: Tsukiyomi ~Moon Phase~, Tsubasa Chronicle, Turn A Gundam, Tekkaman Blade 1 & 2, Fist of the North Star, Azumanga Daioh, and Galaxy Angel season 2. *sigh* so much to do, so little time (incidentally, I love the way they stylised the 2 on the cover of the GA season 2 DVD, mocking Zeta Gundam ^_^ )

I decided to start the festivities off by watching a few episodes of Turn A. I swear, Tomino is a brilliant director. Having watched many of his other Gundam works, I have to say that Turn A is the most compelling. The mecha design is weird, especially the Gundam (honestly, a mustached Gundam? Controversial), and they do recycle mech designs for a few things, but I really like it. Yoko Kanno does the music, and is brilliant, but my favourite music composer is still Yuki Kajiura. I just love her violin and folklorish compositions, they sound beautiful. Anyways, I watched a few episodes, then decided to stop and wait until Hero-Legends finished fansubbing the entire series, so then I can have a nice Turn A marathon. I just hope they can release the last six or so episodes quickly, otherwise I'll get impatient and watch up to the current subbed episode.

So in order to keep myself busy between the weekly Gundam Seed Destiny fix and waiting for the next Turn A episode to download, I've been watching Tsukiyomi ~Moon Phase~. The subbing is proceeding at a snail's pace, with mahou releasing a new episode roughly once a month. There's a new group doing it too, here's to hoping they're faster than mahou currently is.

In between the normal activities, there are other things. I've been keeping myself busy playing La Pucelle Tactics - and after 10 hours, am still on chapter 1. Never being one for game mechanics and gameplay, I've just been having fun demolishing a whole map full of enemies in one go, setting up a huge purification chain and grinning stupidly as I rack up huge bonuses. Hopefully, I'll get bored of this soon, otherwise I'll be fighting my brother to get off playing Conker's Bad Fur Day on the Xbox so I can get on to play. It is a real bother being forced to have both game systems wired into the same TV, simply because the parents (AKA the tyrants, the supreme overlords, the powers that be) don't like having the machines set up elsewhere. On top of that, it's set up in their bedroom, and they are early sleepers. I swear, it is such a bother.

I'm also trying to squeeze in going to the gym for exercise. I am not a slim man. Rather, the opposite. My BMI claims that I'm composed of about 30% fat, and since Asian people on the BMI enter the obese category at a lower level, this makes me rather worried, since it could be higher, or more unhealthy. Therefore, I'm embarking on a special diet and a regime at the gym that will hopefully help me to shed that extra weight. Maybe it'll attract more girls too. Maybe even one! ^_^;

Well, we'll have to see how these holidays turn out. With luck, I'll be able to do almost everything I planned. And with more luck, my parents won't confiscate my PS2 on the grounds of the fact that I play it too much and am neglecting my studies. Of course, that's only a half-truth. I neglect my studies anyway, if my latest exam results (unreleased) will be anything to go by.