I Miss Battle Royale

Tough day, folks. Last night I slept at 1 after playing Knights in the Nightmare. And I woke up at 6 something to prepare for my private tuition at 8. History =). I have a History tutor starting last week. When my parents told me about it, I was horrified as I had been through tutoring experience before. Last time in 6th grade I had a tutor for Chinese. He's awesome, but I had restrain myself from yawning the whole time. I really didn't want to relive such a nightmare. Therefore I invited Mynci to come along to my house every Sunday morning. At RM50 a month, it's quite cheap for a tutor really.Well, contrary to my initial expectations, the tutor is fun! She has quite the sense of humor, we get our share of laughs, and I get to play music from my computer XD! I've always wanted to go to a school with a BGM, especially those video game ones (which ARE school themes) like Persona 3's Want To Be Close, Changing Seasons or Mana Khemia's Vayne and his Pleasant Friends. Revitalizing, fo sho. Sadly, schools don't realize this. Even though Lodge is a private school like Gekkoukan, no one thought about it. Like, speakers in class playing the music quite softly (like I do during History tuition). The speakers can also be used for breaking news/announcements by the higher ups like in Japanese schools. Cool. Last week during the exams I was suddenly thrust back into Persona-mania mode. Therefore, I bought a sling bag on purpose, and I jog into the foyer with the exact rhythm as the random Yosuke, Chie etc. who bump up on Souji when he is walking to school. And I hum Want To Be Close. There's that sense of true youth in it. I walk into class and shout, "Mornin'!" Wow, never done that before. Very, very refreshing. I wonder if Eugene does it too. Whenever I finish my papers I will be tap-a-tapping my fingers like Inspector Lunge and hum something. If it's cloudy, Hearbeat, Hearbreak. Sunny? Your Affection. When The Moon's Reaching Out Stars for rains. But then the rhythm of the falling rain is enough for rains, like in P4. A most carefree exam week. As of the last day of exams, I went to PBK for my replacement exam. I didn't meet Karen or Phil. So I was so down, down, down. I did meet Geraldine-dine-dine. I'm high (now, not then). After I'm done I went out with a big plan. Not exactly, but a plan. I wanted to go to The Gingerbread House, sit down, order a cup of coffee, and act all adult and cool, sipping coffee while playing Suikoden Tierkreis on my DS. Nevertheless, my plan failed, due to my mother already waiting for me. Huh. We were to go to Premier 101 to wait for my father. So off we go in her friend's car. Woosh! And it was like, ka-blam, and, like, we crashed into the main square of 101. It's the open area in front of the Yamisu tea house. I'm not calling it Zhen Gong Fu, because it's Jia Gong Fu. No, serious, it's fake. The real Zhen Gong Fu franchise in China is not that cheap. Cheapskate! It had been quite long since I went to an open-air coffee-shop. So why not? It's kinda wild and happening anyway. 101 is pretty tame during the day, so I didn't know. For people out side Malaysia ... 101 is a block of shops that is far from 109 in Shibuya, Tokyo =). Anyways I ordered mantou with cream milk. And off I went to the nearby cd store to jot down horror movies worth checking out at Wikipedia. It's one of my hobbies. I don't watch horror movies much (cos I don't do well with nightmares) but I am fascinated by them I constantly look up on horror movies in Wiki. I like reading about the deaths =). Don't worry, just a hobby. Willie ain't no psychopathy =). When I was done, my father was already at our table. Apparently he did something rude which I didn't find out until last night. I don't want to go into detail, I ALWAYS suck at explaining the cruelties of my father. The mantou there was good. Of course, my father HAD to go against it. He said it was unhealthy. Okay, whatever. Everything he recommends is good, and everything new I try is bad. Like I care. Actually I do. Hmm. 

Wow, I finally managed to digress. So after the tutor and Mynci went home, I had to go to Kuching for PBK. Ugh. I ditched my essay today, the teacher is too blur anyways. Which is kinda good actually. You can pick to write the essays which are decent and ditch those you don't like, he won't scold me. After all, I don't talk in class. No one to talk to. Pretty cold class. It wasn't like this back in grade school. Last time in tuition even when we were total strangers everyone would ease up to each other fast. Teenage life, sigh. Oh well, at least the Green Road girl sitting with me is beginning to warm up. My throat always feel stuck when I try speaking to her though. I hope everything's resolved by the end of the year. Or hopefully not. Then next year I can move on to Mr Willie's tuition with no regrets whatsoever. But if I DO manage to net myself some friends, I may stay in PBK. After all in PBK you can get 97/100 in essays. Serious. When it comes to marking essays it really all depends on the teacher marking it so don't be sad if your school teacher if you low grades. Some other teacher may just worship your essay! Let's positive thinking! Oh, talking about grades, I'm quite happy with myself this term =). My Maths shot up from 54 to 95. If only I got 59 in the first term exams, then my marks would be palindromic. Before I went off for PBK, I finished up Battle Royale's last two chapters. Sob, bye, BR! I will miss you! Currently looking for the original novel!

What did I do yesterday ~ I woke up abruptly thanks to my inconsiderate father who doesn't realize that people need more sleep. I couldn't get back to sleep, and instead of playing Knights in the Nightmare I went downstairs, switched on my PC. I spent most of the day watching Smile on Dramacrazy.net and Nobody Knows at the same time. I finally found the movie online. Don't worry, I don't entirely blame the class. That stupid teacher too. She DID know that she wasn't one of our teachers, right? Why show us a movie of hers which we know would not be finished in 2 periods? Crazy! I also actually logged into my supposedly-dead Facebook account out of boredom. 48 friend requests. Wow, crazier than that stupid crazy teacher. Sheesh, craziness these days. I'm Ken Amada on Facebook btw, not Williew or anything. That's why I had to accept 48 requests at a time =). Facebook hates Opera, so there are stuff I cannot do with my current browser, like, say, Mafia Wars, searching for apps or adding quizzes to my Page. I hope Facebook becomes more compatible with Opera soon. I may like it more. I tried playing Bubble Town. Very classic. Actually that was just a nice way of me saying, "What a Puyo Puyo/Puzzle Bobble rip-off!" But really, it does have its own ideas, like the walls bouncing off Borbs. 

On my way home from PBK, I also noticed a few houses that burned rubber, causing a tall pillar of black smoke rise up. Yeahhhhhhhhhh, maybe I was in Indonesia. *nudge* *nudge* Malaysians aren't really all that great and civilized, get real, know-nothings. There's a haze in West Malaysia now. Oh, I wonder what caused it. "Stupid haze from Indonesia"? I think not. Have you even been to Indonesia? Retard. Retard isn't a bad word, we have to learn it in Maths. Stupid dense commentators on haze who have serious retardation issues, geez.

I will try my best to keep up with consistent weekly updates. 

HeCuDePe

1. Knights in the Nightmare - This. It's also the must-use-stylus DS game I am currently playing. The learning curve is steep therefore I don't recommend it to Dawn. The story is pretty dark anyways. My current band of Knights includes Bonn, Oswald, Diora, Meryl, Reinhart, Giesche, Freiber and Hilgard.

2. Persona 3 - This.

3. Mana Khemia - This.

4. Gekkoukan - The elite private school you go to as main character of Persona 3. It's awesome.

5, 6, 7. Yosuke, Chie, Souji - Main protagonists in Persona 4, they wear glasses in battle (hence the coolness). Users of the Personas Jiraiya, Tomoe and Izanagi respectively. Souji can actually use any Persona, since he is the game's main character. Souji is his given name in the Persona 4 manga, there was never any real name given to him in the game.

8. Inspector Lunge - An eccentric, important character in the manga Monster. Read it, it's deep. I mean, c'mon, it's by Naoki Urasawa (author of 20th Century Boys), how can it not rock? Of course, 20th Century Boys is way better ..... obviously as it is even more popular than the rock song by T-Rex its name is based upon.

9. P4 - Persona 4.

10. Suikoden Tierkreis - The current non-stylus game I am playing on the DS. A spin-off of the original Suikoden series, with still 108 characters to recruit. My current party consists of Hero (named Williew), Sophia, Yod and Servillah (with Balsam as support character) all at Level 51. I'm near the end of the game , currently at the Rarohenga dungeon. I returned to HQ to rest after recruiting Zayin inside Rarohenga. I recommend this game to Dawn, it needs no experience in RPGs at all, the battles are too ridiculously easy (except when you get to Rarohenga), nice if not slow plot and you do not need to play previous Suikodens to understand this game. I mean, it's better than just revising in the weekends! For Sharon, get Suikoden and Suikoden 2 for the PlayStation. Even if you can't game now you can keep it until the year-end holidays. My favorite Suikoden game is Suikoden 2. 

11. Let's positive thinking - Catchphrase of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment's main character Maya Amano.

12. Battle Royale - Oh I love BR! BR starts as a novel by Koushun Takami on a government project where a class of students is sent to an island and they are forced to kill each other until one remains. It was later made into a manga, which bore a sequel (Battle Royale II: Blitz Royale) and also a live action film, which also bore a sequel (Battle Royale II: Requiem). Both sequels don't rock as hard as their prequels. I've watched the films, read the manga, now I'm hoping to chance upon the novel sometime soon. It's really awesome, and sadly you can't read it at OneManga. Go to this website instead. Beware, it may be deep, but there's nudity and gore. The gore is really cheap though. Ask Sharon. She saw Yutaka's head drilled through with bullets by Kiriyama. Not very scary actually. You just may at most be surprised since it's a manga. Well, tough luck, CuDePe. Manga isn't limited to stuff like Naruto. Talking about shonen battle manga, I'm addicted to Fairy Tail! It's pwntastic! And I like it that Katekyo Hitman Reborn finally realizes that it sucks as a comedy manga and is moving on to become a real battle manga.

13. Smile - A Japanese drama. You have to watch it. I mean, it's the first drama EVER which got me crying in the first five minutes of the FIRST EPISODE. And I cried two more times i nthe first episode. How good do you think it is? It is subbed and watchable for free.

14. Dramacrazy.net - A website that hosts countless asian dramas and movies (Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese). Yes, you can watch Battle Royale and Battle Royale II: Requiem on that site. Don't worry, the films have hardly any gore.

15. Nobody Knows - The sad movie based on the affair of the four abandoned children of Sugamo. The movie is unappreciated and underrated ... here at least. I'm happy it got the awards it received. I don't like Shigeru, unlike Sharon who had finished the movie online. I think Susan finished it too. Damn, I wanna finish it myself. Awesome stuff. 

16. Puyo Puyo/Puzzle Bobble - Play Bubble Town in Facebook and you get the idea of both games. They already exist in arcades years ago. You can't find them in Hock Lee. But why play a puzzle game at an arcade anyways?

Snake Snake Cobra Cobra

Photofest post galore (from last year) ~

^ Yiew Chiew sure looks the part here, doesn't he?

^ Picture at Borneo Springs, I used Lens Distort to pincushion it first, then I added a water effect.

^ A candid shot! Yay! Once again with Lens Distort, I barrelled the pic to have the TV look. Then I solarized it. Congrats, posing girl, you're on TV!

^ Custom duotoning, then add a canvas layer.

^ Believe it or not, this is Jocelyn.

^ James, stamped. Scary!

^ The view behind the canteen with stained glass effect.

^ This was taken au natural, without any effects. Even Sharon was befuddled by it. I don't know how my phone managed it, but it's unique, alright.

^ To get this photocopy-like color, emboss it 3 times, then use chalk and charcoal.

^ The watercolor effect just makes Phil handsomer, doesn't it?

^ Barrel, and then I disabled the green filter (IIRC). I like the mist look and the crimson skies.

^ Let it glow with custom diffusion and intensity. Canvas layering next.

^ Plain ol' chalk n' charcoal. The basketball court never looked as charming.

^ Custom aging and really light water effect.

^ Custom posterization, then solarization.

^ Kaleidoscope'd Dawn, pincushioned beforehand.

^ It was a 1-on-1, mano-a-mano photo-taking face-off!


^ It was the snake thing in the wildlife center. I grey scaled it, barrelled and finally vignetted.

^ Simple glowing.

^ Aged orgasm. Hmm.

^ Notice the linked hands? At first when I saw the one around Karen's right arm I thought it was a ghost's arm. Creepy.

Oh phew I can finally delete those photos! Awesome! Btw try to click on the pics in your eyesight fails you.

Clutch Shot Wins The Game

Hi. I am back from my 3/4-months-long hiatus. I'll try to make my blog friendlier for the culturally dense (NO offense), therefore whenever you see something that is both bolded and italicised like this, I will explain the word/phrase by the end of the post. 

Why was I on hiatus again? I suppose I was tired (read: lazy), as in real tired(read: real lazy). Um, I wanted to talk about many things that happened during my break off blogging, but then again EHEM isn't helping. 

Okay ... so I went back to my last non-tag post. Seems I've not even done with the China trip. Oh fine. 

After I left school on Friday, I flew to Singapore. Wow, I haven't been there in years. All this while I've been seeing Singapore through the television only. I went there expecting to meet Singapore artistes, like Li Nanxing, Dawn Yeoh, Xiang Yun, Zhu Houren ... well, you get my gist. Especially since I landed at Changi Airport (IIRC there's another airport in Singapore) where a lot of Singaporean dramas film their later episodes (parts where I usually cry) - um, think Love At Zero Degrees or The Defining Moment. I did take pictures. But I'm too lazy to post them up. Maybe some other time ~

We were welcomed by one of my father's friends whom I've known for quite some time but never knew that he's a Singaporean resident. His wife is the chief stewardess of Singapore Airlines. So says my father. Whatever, not that it matters. Eh, that rhymed (this is a running gag between Phil and me specifically)! We went to his car and I saw that it was a ..... TOYOTA VIOS. Wow. It's my dream to sit in one. It's a silver Vios, but oh well, it's still a Vios, so who cares? The law in Singapore also demands that those sitting in the back put on their seatbelts, so I tried putting mine on. It wouldn't stick into the freaking slot! Therefore, I just put on my cool mysterious face, seatbelt pulled down to the slot, and acting cool. Along the way to the hotel I painstakingly SMS-ed with QQ. 

It was a shame that I arrived in Singapore at night, but I did recognize a few places filmed on dramas. We reached a hotel and I had to say goodbye to the silver Vios. Boohoo. Blah. While waiting for my father to get us checked in (an annoying wait) I listened to a band performing in the lounge. Oldies. People started singing along and clapping and so did I. Yay. 

In the hotel room I stripped nude and started doing gravure play on the bed, all the while camwhoring. I did all the sexy poses while everyone dozed off. HMM ... I wonder if I was kidding ... I should be ..... right? Anyways I also watched a chinese horror movie on TV. Quite an old one, in fact. Then some gaming on the DS - basically testing my new games at that time. 

I wanna play badminton, I haven't played in over a week, so I'll be off. Maybe another update tonight. Tara ~

HeCuDePe (pronounced hay-q-deep ... Helping Culturally Dense People)

1. hiatus - A break or interruption in the continuity of a series, work etc. Think the mangaka of Hunter X Hunter who has been on quite a hiatus now.

2. EHEM - Fine, so it has nothing to do with culture. It stands for Evil Housing Estate Manager Memory. My memory system is like a housing estate, where I am the manager. People (memories) come to me to buy residences (memory niche) and I issue the houses. These days people are very cautious of criminals, thus they basically lock themselves up in their houses with their family (strongly related memories) and install all sorts of security systems (memory locks). At night (times when I reach out for memories), I transform into my alter ego - a serial killer (memory seeker). Sadly I cannot kill people without entering their houses, and to do so I must disable their security systems (unlock memory locks). To do so I must obtain password(s) (related clues that can link to the memories residing in the niche I want to unlock). If I can find the password(s), then I can infiltrate the residence and kill the family inside (basically, trigger a full recollection). Otherwise, the family inside will stay safe (forever in my brain waiting to be remembered). There, finally cleared up that one debt to you readers. Btw, (getting into self-promotion mode) I am able to metaphorize ANYTHING (given enough time).

3. QQ - My crush, simple as that =). The week before the March holidays I confessed after so many years =). Our relationship ship is like the Mashiro-Azuki pairing in Bakuman. Anyways also like Mashiro and Azuki, we communicate only via SMS. Mashiro proposed at 15, I wonder if I can do that. If there's one thing for sure, I lack Mashiro's courage. He just went straight up to Azu's house and said, "Will you marry me after we achieve our dreams?" That was the first time they talked! Even I was shocked! Bakuman is among my favorite manga, and I read a new chapter every Saturday (weekly scanlations). My favorite character is Nakai. You can't blame me liking a guy who actually drew manga in the harsh winter snow just to prove his devotion. I cried =).

4. gravure - Gravure idols are practically swimsuit models, except they pose way more provocatively. So actually you CAN'T be nude if you're doing gravure.

P. S. PTCs are disabled. Not fun anymore, especially due to the low number of participants.