Monday, November 22, 2010

Uh, my laundry.

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I've run out of comfortable jeans, so I've resorted to wearing those uber-long, ultra-girly, spinster-worthy skirts my mother gave me over the summer. They're actually quite cool to wear - except when people make it a point to comment on my chosen outfit - but I think I've gotten too used to wearing pants.

Um. In case you haven't noticed, this entry isn't going anywhere. It's just a random blog post. See, I've just entered the main lib's computer room, and it's embarrassing to just leave when I haven't even been here for half an hour. I was hoping to get the call numbers for textbooks I have to read by tomorrow, see, but then it turns out even if I did get their access codes today, I wouldn't be able to borrow them, not tonight. So gah. I'm stuck. Worse, I don't have three chapters' worth of readings for tomorrow.

And it's not even my fault! I'm not being lazy or anything! Our professor had left e-copies of our readings with the PolSc department, but for the past three instances that I've tried saving them in my USB, they've been corrupted. And I doubt I can save the thing in a CD, 'cause the department might not even have a CD burner, not with an OS like that. Sigh. Sucks worrying about material. I'd actually love to start working, instead of just moping around, pondering what else I could have been doing if I had the proper stuff to read.

On a lighter note, an American kid reported on Rizal today. (Not altogether surprising, since our shared class is on Rizal, after all.) He actually put up with the rest of the class' antics quite well; I don't think a normal person could have maintained a cheerful expression while his classmates giggled at his inability to pronounce Noli Me Tangere. To think, at the start of his report, I even saw his hand shaking as he handed his report outline to our teacher - and I was sitting in the second-to-the-last row. Pretty strong character that kid's got. Moral fibre, Ludo Bagman would call it.

I wonder how I would have fared had I studied in a foreign country?

Bah. Anyway, since I can't read any 'proper' stuff tonight - not having the right material, as mentioned previously - I'm going to skim through La Corda d'Oro Chaps 70-71. I hope, pray, sincerely and fervently that Len finally confesses to Kahoko. Pleaaaase. End the manga NOW.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

The Awakening

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Let's pretend I'm actually good at tracking dates and say that two full weeks have passed since I started watching Bleach. To be honest, it's not that good. It's long-winded, has a tendency to underplay emotions, and to paraphrase Mary, "half of the series is spent with Ichigo trying to learn bankai." At least it was up to the point where she dropped the show altogether and gave it up as a bad job. Then again, Mary and I usually don't see eye to eye when it comes to these things. She loved Clannad, which I gave up on after Episode3. But, well.

Point is, Bleach is interesting. For all its unnecessary (in my opinion) emphasis on battle scenes - which are mostly predictable, given this is Kurosaki *freakin'* Ichigo we're talking about - Bleach keeps me hooked because of its characters. Fine. I admit to having a soft spot for handsome men (ehem, boys) with troubled pasts and stormy eyes, but even if Byakuya and Toshirou weren't there, I'd probably still watch the series. Probably. The zanpakuto are interesting in their diversity, and the enemies are swell, too.

My beef with this series (the main one) is that it gives very little thought to death. Of course, you could argue that the story deals with people who see death as a natural, inevitable end (the shinagami being what they are) but still, I watched this series after Gundam SEED, where Kira was all "What have I done? How do I atone? Can I atone? No, I can't!" I suppose it's somewhat wrong to judge one series based on another one's criteria, but still. I think Bleach slaughters too many people.

Joyce, who introduced me to the world of Bleach, once complained that the series puts too much emphasis on Toshirou. And having seen a considerable part of the show, I say, Hell yeah. But given I was a Toshirou fan even before I started watching the show, I don't mind much. Not really, no. Although I wish they'd feature Byakuya more often, too.

Love this series for its music, its characters. I also like Kubo Tite's way of creating "romance", where he doesn't explicitly say if his characters love each other or not - it's up to the audience to make sense of the "It's complicated" relationship. I hate it for a lot of things, including its length. And Ichigo being all-powerful, invincible. And the fact that a lot of things keep popping up halfway through the series - the King's Key, for example, which is apparently what Aizen's really after - just to make the plot more complicated that it originally was. Gah. A Meitantei Conan in the making. Only with hotter guys in kick-ass uniforms. Roy Mustang would drool if he saw Matsumoto in her battle gear.

PS Ep146 is in wmp min mode right now. Photo courtesy of the unsuspecting KalvinK, deviantartist extraordinaire.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Undas 2010

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As I've mentioned in my previous post, I have no idea how to flip pictures like this. In any case, this is a picture of me taken just a few moments ago, sitting on top of two connected beds in Rm6 of the UP Alumni Hostel. Basically, I'm here because my dorm doesn't open until tomorrow, and I have to race to my college early so my thesis partner (Sunshine, who didn't tell me she had suffered from dengue over the sembreak) and me can get a decent adviser. And yeah, I'm scared as hell, so scared I'm plotting possible attack maneuvers vs both live invaders of my privacy and spirit fiends. Most of them involving my rather heavy water bottle and screaming at the top of my lungs.

Shame though, 'cause as I was preparing for my undeniably long evening, the idea for a story came to me. Shame 'cause it's a horror story, of all things. And yeah, I've a tendency to jump headfirst into things without thinking them through, but I'm not reckless enough to forcibly attract spirits floating around relatively peacefully by increasing the negative aura in my room through writing horror-farce. I may be in the non-sensitive side of the Uriarte Clan, but I ain't taking chances.

On the soft side, I came across a brief reference to Super Gals! earlier - natsukashii! I wanna watch it, not for the sake of watching Kotobuki Ran rule Shibuya singlehandedly, but just because I want to fall for, get hurt by, and fangirl over the Rei - Aya pairing. Sigh.