cradle

Thank you omnipotent deity for a week without work. Now excuse me while I disappear into

12-1

Wahoo it's report cards time again! Though I've known my marks for a good week already.

English: 96 (Very satisfied, hours killing myself over the essay paid off. Now how not to screw myself over on the exam)
Advance Functions: 98 (yayy, except my trig test just dropped it e_e" Homework pays off as well haha)
Chemistry: 91 (ugh lowest mark. Stupid quizes that were out of 5 D<)
Physics: 92 (ughh. It's gonna go up, almost sure of it)
-------------------------------
Average for the 4 marks that's going to UT: 94.25% SO CLOSEEE


Earth and Space Science: 99 (yuhhhh)
-------------------------------
Average for 5 marks going into every other university: 95.2% ;D

Architectural Design: 93 (whatever, doesn't affect anything)
-------------------------------
Overall average: 94.83% durrr.

Oryx and Crake

Was so close to have an entire day of assessments: chemistry test, REPORT CARDS, physics quiz, English presentation and the narrowly missed math quiz.

Before I go off and submerge myself in organic chemistry, I want to share some quotations from Oryx and Crake. (My 8 pages of reading notes will not be wasted!)

Jimmy:

His time, what a bankrupt idea, as if he's been given a box of time belonging to him alone, stuffed to the brim with hours and minutes that he can spend like money. Trouble is, the box has holes in it and the time is running out, no matter what he does with it.

Jimmy's Mother and Father:

M: 'You use to be so...you had ideals then.'
F: 'Sure, [...] I've still got them. I just can't afford them'

Jimmy and Crake:

J: 'Why don't we use a real set? [...] The old kind. With plastic men' It did seemed weird to have the two of them in the same room, back to back, playing on computers.
C: 'Why [...] Anyways this is a real set'
J: 'No it's not'
C: 'Okay, granted, but neither is plastic men'
J: 'What?'
C: 'The real set is in your head'

Jimmy:

These planned departures made him uneasy: they reminded him of Alex the parrot sating I'm going away now. There was too fine a line between Alex the parrot and the assisted suicide and his mother and the notes she'd left for him. All three gave notice of their intentions; then all vanished.

'What is toast?' says Snowman to himself, once [the Crakers] have run off. Toast is when you take a piece of bread-What is bread? Bread is when you take some flour-What is flour [...] and then this 'toaster'shoots the slice up into the air, and it falls into the floor...
'Forget it' says Snowman. 'Let's try again.' Toast was a pointless invention from the Dark Ages. Toast was an implement of torture [...] Toast cannot be explained by any rational means.
Toast is me.
I am toast.

Crake:

But human beings hope they can stick their souls into someone else, some new version of themselves, and live on forever.
J: 'As a species we're doomed by hope, then?'
C: 'You could call it hope. That, or desperation'
J: ' But we're doomed without hope as well'
C: 'Only as individuals'
J: 'Well, it sucks'

Oryx:

Of course, having a money value was no substitute for love. Every child should have love, every person should have it. [...] -but love was undependable, it came and then it went, so it was good to have a money value, because then at least those who want to make a profit from you would make sure you were fed enough and not damaged too much. Also there were many who had neither love nor a money value, and having one of these things was better than having nothing.

J: 'Learned what?'
O: 'That everything has a price.'
J: 'Not everything. That can't be true. You can't buy time. You can't buy...' He wanted to say love, but hesitated.  It was too sappy.
O: 'You can't buy it, but it has a price. Everything has a price.'

J: 'I don't buy it' Where was her rage, how far down was it buried, what did he have to do to dig it up?
O: 'You don't buy what?'
J: 'Your whole fucking story. All this sweetness and acceptance and crap.'
O: 'If you don't want to buy that, Jimmy [...] what is it that you would like to buy instead?'

Jimmy:

He doesn't know which is worse, a past he can't regain or a present that wull destroy him if he looks at it too clearly. Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo.

'Tomorrow is another day' he declaims to the pink and purple clouds. But if tomorrow is another day, what's today?

Jimmy didn't understand how he could be so nil about it - it was horrible, the thought of Crake watching his own mother dissolve like that. [...] It was Crake preserving his dignity, because the alternative would have been losing it.

Crake:

C: 'Those walls and bars are there for a reason [...] Not to keep us out, but to keep them in. Mankind needs barriers in both cases.'
J: 'Them?'
C: 'Nature and God.'
J: 'I thought you didn't believe in God'
C: 'I don't believe in Nature either, or not with a capital N."

Jimmy:

So Crake never remembered his dreams. It's Snowman that remembers them instead. Worse than remembers: he's immersed in them, he'd wading through them, he's stuck in them. Every moment he's lived in the past few month was dreamed first by Crake. No wonder Crake screamed so much.

So this was the rest of his life. It felt like a party to which he'd been invited, but at an address he couldn't actually locate. Someone must be having fun at it, this life of his; only right at the moment, it wasn't him.

He was drinking alone now, at night, a bad sign. He shouldn't be doing that, it only depressed him, but he had to dull the pain. The pain of what? The pain of the raw torn places, the damaged membranes where he'd whanged up against the Great Indifference of the Universe. One big shark's mouth, the universe. Row after row of razor-sharp teeth.

He doesn't expect to hear anything, but expectation isn't the same as desire.

J: 'What pays for all of [the state of the art Luxuries Mall]?'
C: 'Grief in the face of inevitable death, the wish to stop time. The human condition.'

and lastly, the comparson of Crake's fridge magnets, in school versus working:

No Brain, No Pain                                                          Where God is, Man is not.
Siliconsciousness                                                            There are two moons, the you can see and the
I wonder from Space to Space                                                 one you cannot
Wanna Meet a Meat Machine?                                       Du musz dein Leben andern
Take Your Time, Leave Mine Alone.                             We understand more than we know.
Little spoat/gider, who made thee?                                 To stay human is to break a limitation.
Life experiments like a rakunk at play.                          Dream steals from its lair towards its prey.
I think, therefore I spam.                                                I think, therefore.
The proper study of Mankind is Everything.

fridge in the milk

This song makes me happy ;D



Would very much like Honey & Clover's OST for christmas (or even a good dl link, such a hassle to track it down online e_e")

You can tell I have free time this week, posting daily haha~

the sheppard pie effect

A good day is a day when Knight Run updates. (waiting for KR ranks probably 2nd most painful)
uh huhh.

(and Id, Masca, Tower of God, Noblesse)

hurray chill week.

relativistic

Ugh. math test, ughhhh. It was quite an easy test too "orz
sighhh.
Gonna allocate this evening to sulking over it ._."

but I got to wear a panda head, so that distracted me for a while. 

Camera+ is for days when I'm too lazy to fire up photoshop :]

Catching up with what happened over the weekend in reverse chronological order:

math
sim city videos (Anyone gots a windows xp disc? I would go through the trouble of virturalizing just to play that again. Probably the other reason why I became interested in civil engineering)
math
math
Donna was awesome and brought over this:

Planning on going through these in March break, though probably wiser to do so in the summer when I actually know calculus. Perhaps MIT calc lectures in march break? Also linear algebra videos in summer. I feel ill prepared for university math e_e
math
math
dimsum! Fun time haha, pretty cheap too. Affordable socializing while filling stomach /gasp.
haircut

Long weekend is nice.

ultima

Damn, why am I procrastinating on math e_e"

Really liked the style of Vaan here, so I tried to achieve a similar feel.
paper texture via dA.
reference via Forever21 (a random sweater model).
yeah I know the left hand looks like a shallot bulb "orz




there Jason, I post my sketches.

identities

I am bad at algebra.
Therefore, I am bad at trig identities.
^deductive reasoning e_e"

So this long weekend will be dedicated to proving the above statements false.

But when does the time invested becomes not worth it?
Case study: spent at least 12 hours last weekend making IRP notes. While that increased the enjoyment that I got from the book (paradice -> pair of dice *mind blown*), it didn't significantly improve my mark (an assumption, since I believe that I'll be lucky to get an 80 on that in class test).
Though trig is probably more useful than narrative analysis.

Blah less talking, more proving.

(Shall end with two sunset pictures taken from walk home from school. Darn daylight savings time T_T)

babes

Sleepover fun at Patricia's ;D

First is dinner at Matsuda, which is actually good all-you-can-eat japaneses food.


Bottom is Spicy Salmon Roll, it's so delicious omg *u*








Black Dragon Roll at the back and Manga Roll in the middle. Manga is amaaaazing, we ordered at least 4 more plates of that.




Desserts ;D So yummy! And cute too, the puddings come in shot glasses LOL.


Like an engineer ;D


Ate waaay too much "orz Took a stroll in T&T afterwards and saw these adorable panda bao:


Back at her house, even more food e_e"

(First time trying Pocari Sweat @ the back. It's what Gatorade should taste like if it tasted good.)
That chocolate cake is heart attack in disguise, eating it at midnight didn't help either. The sugar rush did keep us all awake until the wee hours of the morning. Sugar rush and Mahjong, finally learned how to play that haha.

And now all 5 of us are at home cramming for homework, wahoo ;D

UN-GO

95% chance I'll enjoy whatever airs in noitaminA's timeslot ;D




The series is based off the works of Sakaguchi Ango (info ripped from Kenn), with quite an interesting premise. By premise I mean the first minute of the first episode, it flashes a mysterious scene which is slowly explained in the subsequent episodes. This forms a nice overarching plot tying together each episode's individual detective case.
The main character is quite cynical haha, which is a refreshing change from most protagonists. It'll be quite interesting to see how his character develops throughout the series. It'll either be excellently done or a huge let down. So many ways to ruin a good mystery e_e"

ANYWAYS. The ED song is awesome ;D 



Watch it ;D

permeating wind

This weekend will be dedicated to IRP notes, next weekend will be Trig identities, joy.




真昼の光そよぐ風に乗って
君を迎えに行く
車走らせて
それは二人で観た映画の様に
影の中にずっと消えた幻

君はまだそこで泣いてるの
遠い日々を想って
なぜにそんなに悲しい顔するの
射し込んだ日射しに髪が光を揺らしてる

ああ  明日になればきっと届く今は聞こえないけど
そう  ずっと今よりそれ以前より上手に笑えるはず
ああ  明日になればきっと届く今は聞こえないけど
そう  ずっと今よりそれ以前より上手に笑えるはず

君はまだそこで泣いてるの
遠い雨に濡れて
なぜにそんなに悲しい顔するの
さめた日射しを光が突き抜けて

ああ  明日になればきっと届く今は聞こえないけど
そう  ずっと今よりそれ以前より上手に笑えるはず
ああ  明日になればきっと届く今は聞こえないけど
そう  ずっと今よりそれ以前より上手に笑えるはず

alert

Photoshop is a great way to procrastinate.



This place has ridiculously delicious orange iced tea.

there will be time

^oh Prufrock e_e"

The extra hour from Day Light Saving time was spent savoring the wonderful world of fiction before the inevitable return to face my UT National essay "orz

These two novels are great:

Awesome cover art to boost ;D

Super Sad True Love Story

The son of a Russian immigrant, protagonist Leonard (Lenny) Abramov, a middle-aged, middle class, and otherwise unremarkable man whose mentality is still in the past century, falls madly in love with Eunice Park, a young Korean-American struggling with materialism and the pressures of her traditional Korean family. The chapters alternate between profuse diary entries from the old fashioned Lenny and Eunice's biting e-mail correspondence on her "GlobalTeens" account. In the background of what appears to be a love story that oscillates between superficiality and despair, a grim political situation unravels. America is on the brink of economic collapse, threatened by their Chinese creditors. In the meantime, the totalitarian Bipartisan government's main mission is to encourage and promote consumerism while eliminating political dissidents. In the midst of all this, in a world where anyone's sexuality can be rated at the touch of the screen, where the privileged can live forever but the unfortunate die too soon, there is still value to being a real human being

This Is Where I Leave You

The death of Judd Foxman's father marks the first time that the entire Foxman family—including Judd’s mother, brothers, and sister—have been together in years. Conspicuously absent: Judd’s wife, Jen, whose fourteen-month affair with Judd’s radio-shock-jock boss has recently become painfully public. Simultaneously mourning the death of his father and the demise of his marriage, Judd joins the rest of the Foxmans as they reluctantly submit to their patriarch's dying request: to spend the seven days following the funeral together. In the same house. Like a family. As the week quickly spins out of control, longstanding grudges resurface, secrets are revealed, and old passions reawakened. For Judd, it's a weeklong attempt to make sense of the mess his life has become while trying in vain not to get sucked into the regressive battles of his madly dysfunctional family. All of which would be hard enough without the bomb Jen dropped the day Judd's father died: She's pregnant. This Is Where I Leave You is Jonathan Tropper's most accomplished work to date, a riotously funny, emotionally raw novel about love, marriage, divorce, family, and the ties that bind—whether we like it or not. 

Both books feature a rather chaotic setting which supplements the humor quite well. What I really enjoyed, more so was impressed by, in Super Sad True Love Story is the difference in perspective between Lenny and Eunice. Their account of the same event is painfully different, even the font changes haha. The author also managed to create sympathy, or at least pity, for both characters.

This Is Where I Leave You is also about falling apart and not quite coming back together. The Foxman siblings' constant exchange of sharp words is quite entertaining and offsets the severity of the events each of them went through. It was hard to put this novel down, evident in my early wake up this morning in attempt to finish it. It uses cool words too ;D "calamitous"

...
...
...

on a side note:
Wish my SimCity looked like this
and

eye of the beholder

Fuzion Autumn Experience prix-fix coincides perfectly. The service there is really good and well worth the price during this annual event.


Butternut Squash soap for starter




Mine & his entries


The hearts were a cute touch haha, chef you are awesome XD

milestone

love you<3

Crunch

I follow the seasons through starbucks drinks. Holiday cups have popped up already, aka 6 month of winter has started. Thankfully its makes a good occasion to wear scarves, dunno how else I would survive.

Their peppermint brownie cakepops are great :]