some things are better left as memories

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As quoted by a friend, “…some things are better off as just memories.”

Couldn’t agree more.

Normally I wouldn’t start watching an anime series until I’ve got all the episodes. It’s a weird habit but I would rather have uninterrupted viewing than have to impatiently wait for a new episode to be released. This rule sticks unless I’m too excited about something. In this case, said friend wanted to discuss it a little and ok (I admit), I was curious.

So I watched it. The first two episodes of 美少女戦士セーラームーン Crystal (Bishoujo Sensei Sailor Moon Crystal) — a remake of an old anime series I watched when I was a kid. Halfway into the first episode, I decided that Sailor Moon was just too darn aho and her speech was annoying me to the max. Like seriously, I felt my brain cells were dying listening to her talk. The last time I felt like that while watching anime was バカとテストと召喚獣 (Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu). I deleted the entire series after watching the first episode because it was just too stupid.

I can’t believe I liked this anime as a kid. Maybe the speech pattern in the old series wasn’t as annoying? Maybe the Mandarin-dubbed version that I had watched was not as bad? I mean, I do occasionally watch kids/mahou shoujo anime, but this is too irritating. Even しゅごキャラ! (Shugo Chara!) was way better than this.

I think I’ll just sit through this entire anime series for the sake of…”reliving” my childhood, but I sure hope as hell that I don’t get frustrated halfway and start pulling my hair out.

Geez…

high school romance

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I used to go crazy on manga but stopped for a while since it became a little too costly to keep up. Instead, I turned to online scanlations. Yes, I broke the cardinal sin of turning to online English scanlations, but hey, I read English much faster than I do with Chinese.

Well, it lasted for a while until I realised that the online scanlations take awfully long to be updated. Unlike anime where the subbed episode gets uploaded in a matter of days, scanlations take months to have new updates and they could be slow by at least five books. Not that I don’t understand that scanlations take time to produce, but I don’t think I can wait that long… So, recently I bought a new manga series. 花君と恋する私 (Hana-kun to Koisuru Watashi) is a typical high school romance shoujo manga. (I’ve said thousand of times before that I’m a sucker for such manga/anime.)

I’ve read up to book four where the couple have just started dating. They both feel a little awkward…

(Will type the exact words in Chinese.)

Hana-kun: 我的心情，也跟你差不多。没什么真实感，觉得很紧张。感觉象是在。。。做梦一样。

(Translation: My feelings are about the same as yours. So surreal; I feel anxious. It feels like…I’m dreaming.)

Oh my goodness. I think I really felt that the first time I got together with my hubby. He was not my first love, but it was definitely my first relationship. The day after we got together, I was in an Asian Literature class and we were going through a lover’s poem. My TA called on me to figure out whether the narrator is male or female. To help me, she asked if I have a boyfriend. For a minute, I was stunned. Then it hit me. Yes…yes, I am attached. And suddenly I got this rush of emotions that made me feel a little embarrassed.

You must understand that I never thought I would find somebody. Me, the plain Jane. The one, whose sister said I might as well marry the computer since I never went out to socialise and was always stuck in front of the computer. The one, who was rejected twice. It all felt too surreal.

Oh well, but that was years ago. I am now happily married.

amnesia

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Another kyaa-ing post. I have discovered that such anime are usually part of an otome game or visual novel’s franchise. Yes, these anime usually have rather weak storylines but have characters that make you go all doki doki. In Amnesia, the main character (her name is not mentioned at all) loses her memory after an accident and she interacts with the different guys to recover her memory. However, a mishap (whether fatal or not) always happens and she is transported back to 1 August and a different world each time. In each world, she is romantically linked to each guy.

The guys represent each suit in a deck of cards.

Heart — Shin
Diamond — Toma
Spade — Ikki
Club — Kent
Joker — Ukyo

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uta wo utau

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Quite a bit has been going on but I’ll take my time to fill in the gap since my last post.

Since I made a status post on Facebook that I’ve perhaps found a new song to sing at KTV, I thought I’ll clear up some doubt on whether I memorise lyrics when I sing Japanese songs.

The truth is…no, I don’t. Apart from YUI’s “Goodbye Days“, ZONE’s “Secret Base ~君がくれたもの~” and Perfume’s “My Color“, I do not remember the lyrics to any other song. The only reason why I know the lyrics to these three songs by heart is coz of repeated listening and singing. So, I did not purposely memorise them.

When I want to try singing a song, I find the Japanese lyrics to the song. Not romanji, but the actual Japanese lyrics. I will only peek at the romanji for kanji that I can’t read. This helps me to keep up with my Japanese reading skills. Besides, there’s no romanji when you sing Japanese songs at KTV. This also explains why I sing rather slow tempo songs or songs with easy lyrics. I just can’t read Japanese as fast!

A good site I go to for lyrics is JpopAsia, which has the Japanese lyrics, romanji and translation of songs.

Trust me, it’s really no fun singing along with romanji lyrics in hand.

upgraded

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My blog was down for awhile coz it exceeded the 8GB bandwidth. I’m quite sure it was the doing of spam bots as I receive tons of spam comments and all my pictures and embedded videos are hosted elsewhere. As much as I like the sound of thousands of page views, I prefer if actual people are reading and not spam bots.

I had to upgrade my plan coz of this problem. Not that I really wanted to in the first place…boooo…

Any idea how to prevent them from even visiting my site?

alma mater returns

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I got my first birthday present of 2014 in the form of watching Alma Mater return to her pedestal via the very cool Alma Cam. She was taken down in 2012 for restoration.

After years of braving the rain and snow, she had obtained a shade of green. This was how she looked like when I graduated.

I began checking out Alma Cam on the morning of 9 April, but due to the time difference, all I saw were drunk people passing by. At about 7pm (8am there), I got excited coz I noticed someone taking measurements. The action only began around 9.30pm (10.30am there).

Note: I didn’t think of taking screen shots earlier, so I only grabbed some when they were beginning to return her to her pedestal.

Prepping to lift her…

And she’s in the air!

Putting her down gently…

I couldn’t watch the final adjustments coz it was already midnight and I had to turn in. I suppose there was some sort of ceremony as there is supposed to be a time capsule put in her to be opened in 10 year’s time.

And here’s what I saw this morning…

Alma’s back in business with a nice bronze shade!

it doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white

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Tolerance. Something that not everyone has. Sometimes I wonder why we allow society to shape how we think or act.

“The only thing wrong in this little girl’s world is the people who won’t accept her for who she is.”

Jazz was not allowed to play girl’s soccer coz she’s biologically a boy and they are afraid she’ll hurt the other girls. What bullshit! Look at her. She walks and talks like a girl! She is most definitely a girl.

Watching her swim in her homemade mermaid’s tail is just incredible and sad at the same time. She loves mermaids because they have nothing between their legs to define which gender they are.

I have nothing to say except that she is awesome and that she gives hope to transgender people. I also think her parents are awesome for not conforming to what society wants us to think or act.

bokura ga ita

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Yet another film adapted from a manga series. 僕等がいた (Bokura ga Ita) is a high school romance story about a girl named Takahashi Nanami who fell for the popular boy, Yano Motoharu. Always the same trope but I never get sick of such stories. Haha.

I started out watching the anime series and liked it so much that I continued reading the manga. The anime series ends where Yano moves to Tokyo, leaving Takahashi back in Sapporo. That’s about halfway through the whole story. A lot of things happen after that. (No spoilers.)

I had high hopes for the movie, but was a teeny weeny bit disappointed. They changed a couple of scenes to fit the flow of the movie. Other than that, they managed to capture the essence of the story in two parts…kind of like an extended movie. Part one was their high school days and part two when they grew up. I thought the choice of actors was quite accurate.

Toma Ikuta played Yano, a character that has a playful streak and also a serious side. Was kinda happy that I watched this movie with Toma taking the lead role. I’ve missed seeing him on screen. Toma and YamaP came as a pair in Johnny’s, but as they grew up, YamaP overshadowed Toma. When NewS formed, I was crushed that Toma wasn’t in it. Eventually, Toma just faded away. He didn’t even debut in any group.

Yoshitaka Yuriko played the timid Takahashi. I’m not too familiar with this actress and at first thought Miyazaki Aoi would have been a better choice. After all, Takahashi is supposed to be a cute girl. But as I watched the movie, I felt Yuriko was fine.

Higa Manami played Sengenji Akiko, Yano’s Tokyo high school classmate. Akiko is the cool beauty with long black hair. What makes this character so appealing is that she has both the brains and beauty. When Manami appeared in the movie, I felt “Yes! She totally fits the Akiko character!”

Takaoka Sousuke played Takeuchi Masafumi, Yano’s best friend who also holds a torch for Takahashi. I’m ok with the choice of actor, just that I felt he looks a bit old for a high schooler. Incidentally, the actor is the ex-husband of Miyazaki Aoi. Hmmm…coincidence…

The movie ending was quite like the manga series. There is not much of an elaboration of after they got together again, yet the story does not end abruptly.

kyou, koi wo hajimemasu

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I’m the kind of person that likes to watch and read the same series to compare the treatment of the story in different mediums.

今日、恋をはじめます (Kyou, Koi wo Hajimemasu) is another film adapted from a manga series about plain jane Hibino Tsubaki who gets teased by the popular guy in her high school, Tsubaki Kyouta but eventually falls for him. A very typical high school romance story line. The ending for the manga was pretty good…the usual happily ever after ending after the protagonist goes through hardship. There was an OVA for the manga series which had pretty choppy scenes and ended only somewhere in the beginning of the whole story.

Continue reading →

degeneration of our country?

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I was happily catching up on my anime when I took a break and switched over to the Facebook tab. That’s when I saw this…this disgusting piece of news and now I cannot sit still without giving my two cents’ worth. *fumes*

I studied Advertising, but even without that knowledge, I know for sure NOT to compare these two entirely different things. For sure, a child does not need SAVING because he/she does not get “good enough” grades. There may be a lot of reasons for not doing well. And anyway, what is “good enough grades” these days? In my time, kids were sent to tuition only if they were close to failing and/or their parents could not give them the help they needed in a subject. I was sent for Mandarin tuition because my parents do not speak the language and I was a little weak in the language because of that reason. And thanks to that, I also hated studying the language for a long time…but that’s a story for another time.

I am perfectly aware that before we criticise the advertiser, we should examine the motives behind putting up such an advertisement. Should the “blame” be shouldered by others as well? For example, parents? My facial therapist once told me that she is considering sending her daughter for tuition because her daughter is not doing well in Math. She commented that these days Singaporean parents send their kids for more than one tuition class for the same subject and that scoring 80 marks is not even acceptable. Heck, we even see parents sending their two-year-olds to school for booster classes for “a headstart in life”. Like WHAT THE HELL. I don’t even remember anything when I was two. (My dad says I was kidnapped by an alien so my memories begin only when I was four. Haha.) I think this crazy behaviour is fuelling tuition centres to pop up like mushrooms sprouting on a log (erm…ok, bad analogy, but you get what I mean.) But isn’t it true? Where there’s a demand, people will jump on the chance to supply.

Then there’s the usual argument of whether we are breeding elitism in Singapore. These days all I hear are parents trying to “fight” for a spot in a “good school” for their kids. So much that schools start to have volunteer programmes for parents and even grandparents to “redeem” a spot in the school for their kids. I don’t believe in this bullshit (and yes, I am horrified to learn that some of my close friends subscribe to this…their choice I guess). While there are schools that obviously cater for advanced learners or just simply the smarter kids, any other school (whether neighbourhood or not) is the same. The only difference should be the method of teaching. THAT is what matters because each kid learns differently. At this point, I’ll like to warn people that before you start wagging your finger and saying that I don’t have a kid so I don’t know what I’m talking about, remember the thing about supply and demand? Also, as much as you look to your Government to change things, they cannot work wonders for you. You want change then you got to start doing something about it too.

For now, I read the piece of news, shake my head and think to myself what is Singapore becoming? Is this degeneration of our country? Have we lost sight of what is important?