THE WORLD AND ITS NONSENSE

I watched Life of Pi and thought “How can he believe?”. But I chose the 1st story, knowing that it’s not my correct answer, just because I refuse to deny the “existence” of the first story. It seems quite ridiculous to  choose the second story, because by doing so, you just denied the value of your time spent watching/reading a story that you believe to be false.

I went for reservist and at the end, thought “It’s just that there’s always 2 sides to everything”. On the morning of 21st Dec 2012, I was standing by my subpar shellscrap and craving for a proper place to sit down and stone, but it was all muddy and wet around me, so I have to stand throughout the whole time and converse intermittently with those in my section. I was properly waiting for the world to end in an exciting manner. though I  knew it was not going to happen. To be honest, the company wasn’t too bad and I met some nice people during this reservist, but I guess it was just a little depressing in the end.

I thought “there’s such a thing as a pressure to be happy”. No matter who you are or what your life is, people expect you to be happy. I guess it’s just natural and part of the way we are made to be. But I hate it when people take that expectation, and made it such that it should be that you have to make the people around you happy.

Of course the world will be a much better place if everyone is happy and smiling all the time. But since the world isn’t perfect and people are full of flaws all over, I don’t really see why we must pursue this pressure to be happy.

After 24 years, I still find myself tripping over the same problem all the time. It’s a cycle that I’m starting to get used to, which may or may not be a bad thing. I’m going to be 25 next year and the world will continue to have more and more expectations for me, of which it is required that I continued to participate in such nonsense so everyone will have a good time ahead.

Su I guess I will just sit here and wait for 2013 to arrive. Happy New Year everyone.

END OF DANGAN RONPA

After being locked out from the Let’s Play forums for about a month or more, it’s finally open for non-members to visit again!

And that was how I was able to finish the rest of Dangan Ronpa all at one go. On hindsight, I guess it’s good to be able to finish it in one sitting, because it would be extremely difficult to end on a cliff-hanger each time and wait for the next weekly update, not when it’s so close to the ending and we are unraveling the truth behind the game.

For the game itself, now that I finished reading through the LP thread and gotten a better picture of what the entire game is about, I must say it’s a good attempt at trying to be epic. Similar to 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors, the game is entertaining and gets you really engrossed in it once it’s past the initial introduction phase. Aside from the mystery and whodunnit portions, the main story has plenty of twists and the revelation at the end is nicely done I guess. The story revolves around hope and despair and I was always wondering how the game is going to "induce maximum despair” in the characters, but they did it in the last chapter, and I must say I approve of the induced level of despair – in that it managed to live up to the theme of the game. Yet, it wasn’t as epic as 9 hours, 9 doors, 9 persons for me, partly cause some parts of the story/plot were somewhat unbelievable went unexplained, although I must say the game would have less impact or may become somewhat like a joke if they had tried to explain everything. A nice and sad photo that was posted on the thread at the end after all the horrors and pain and despair has come and gone – it’s a fitting way to end it I guess.

Now that Dangan Ronpa is over, I ‘m waiting for them to start the thread for Dangan Ronpa 2, which has been out for quite some time already. And I’m hopinh someone will do a thread for Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward (sequel to 9 hours, 9 persons, 9 doors) as well, cause it’s on PSP Vita and I can't play it myself. And after what seems like forrever, OG2 is coming out end of this month!

I just have to get rid of this stupid 3217 website and folder assignments, finish the painful pseudo-CP for 3217, study Film Art, and smooth out all the kinks in CP, and I can start my holidays proper…

LOCKED UP

I always hate it when I make stupid mistakes and create trouble/problems for other people. Although I didn’t do it on purpose and strictly speaking it’s not that big a deal, but it doesn’t make the consequences any easier to deal with.

I see the implications and the guilt hanging all around me and it totally wreck my “overdrive” mood, when I felt like I could just go into overdrive and get all the work done properly.

It’s like being locked in a room with the key in my hands, but I can’t bring myself to unlock that door cause it’s too easy. And I think madness is an easier cure but I’m properly much too sane for that.

And the irony was that I was watching Code Geass and getting really irritated by some of the stupid characters and their silly mistakes with catastrophic consequences. And here I am trying to get past myself and stop dwelling upon my mistakes.

And in the end I guess it can only be a waiting game, when I’m just waiting for time to erase the walls for me.

如果我相信

我相信 当一个很想想幸福的人 也必须是一个能让人幸福的人

THE JAPANESE KIND OF TWISTS

Soumatou Kabushikigaisha - One of the Japanese drama that I started watching today. It’s 4 episodes in and each episode is only about 30min so it’s just right for my attention span. Essentially, it’s about this mysterious company which allows you to review your entire life from birth onwards. All these are recorded on dvds such that there’s one for every year of your life. From Ep 2 onwards, we find out that we can actually view other people’s records as long as we share a connection with that other person, which provides more room for plot development. Each episode is one complete story where the main character will stumble across this company and the things that happen after they stumble across the company.

Ep 1: What happens when you realize your psychotic “mother” stole you from your actual mother when you were a baby

Ep 2: What happens when you try to trace the identity of a stalker from your high school/college days

Ep 3: What happens when you are cursed by a fatal prophecy from a cult village

Ep 4: What happens when you accidentally bump into a friend of your dead father

Essentially, all of them had bad endings that reminds me of certain Japanese games like corpse party, 9 persons 9 doors 9 hours, Higurashi etc. which have plenty of those WTF moments/many bad endings with 1 true ending that will probably not end like a fairy tale. Out of the 4 episodes above, only Ep 4 ended on a slightly happier note, although it’s really not prefect as well. Ep 1 was very well done to draw viewers in and the suspense at the end was really good. Ep 2 was quite predictable and Ep 3 was a surprising change from 1 and 2, and it felt like I was watching some silent hill/fatal frame game for some parts.

I’m also watching Thursday Theater Keigo Higashino Mystery. It started off quite well but seems to be getting less interesting in the last few episodes. Each episode focus on a mystery story with a twist, and there’s apparently another story running parallel to the stories as each episode will start off with the dead narrator and the events that are taking place after his death before moving into the story for that episode.

AFTER A WORTHWHILE DETOUR

And it’s finally my the end of my internship with Redworks!

Based on my original job scope and what I actually did, its not surprising that I don’t feel very useful at times. They really don’t need to get an uni student to upload files into the system for them. But I did get to do some account servicing work here and there, and I guess it’s still a good experience for me, although I have limited successes in it. Work wise, it really doesn’t seem to be very interesting or satisfying.

However, I must say I really like the people there. Although I’m not particularly close to many of them, but I really think most of them are nice and fun people who can work and play equally well. They seem to be very balanced and well grounded, so I guess they can enjoy what they are doing, despite the ever-so-often moments of stress/shit and what not. Sometimes I do envy them cause it seems so easy for them to get together based on a common interest and have fun together, and how randomly we have a band drummer, a lyricist, a music producer, not-too-bad singers, lots of people who can play music all in the same place, so they can just come together randomly to form an impromptu band, do some jamming, and I think they are being asked to perform at some company event later on this month. And I like that sense of mutual understanding, at least where music or whichever area of interest is concerned, although it may be a different thing when it comes to work haha.

Putting aside the fact that this is like a level 1000 internship, that I can’t help but think that my 3-months-long internship could have been much more fruitful elsewhere, that I was bored and practically wasting each day away towards the end of the internship, I think I got some insights into how a design company and how advertising generally works, and I’m probably going to have to re-evaluate my career-options, and I did meet some amazingly talented friends as well.

I think I will miss sitting between Takai and Dennis -  listening to all the interesting experiences of Takai, and trying to get by but at the same time, being highly amused by the crap from Dennis, and just watching them banter among themselves haha. 

And after all that, it’s time to head back to school.

TRANSITING FROM ONE TO ANOTHER

Internship is ending in about exactly 1 weeks’ time! I have been rather slack and “avoiding” additional works lately, so I guess it’s good that it’s finally ending.

Today is the start of CORS round 1A! This is the most stressful CORS for me since start of Uni. Oh hindsight, I really should have dumped more points into the mods but well, we will see when results are out in about am hour’s time. And I also have to help Weiren plan and allocate his very limited points, which definitely make things a lot more stressful. To make things worse, he’s actually uncontactable due to reservist, so I basically guessed and assumed lots of things for him, and hopefully he won’t kill me for that. And I was quite drained (the kind after an unusually intense activity) after that. I had some “post-bidding dissonance” as well but I felt better later after plugging into some comfort songs haha. That said, I hope I don’t have to go for round 1B tomorrow.

CP/FSP has started! We got a project with Tambyah and sometimes I wonder if it will turn out fine. Nothing much about the project is concrete at this point so I hope it gets better and clearer once everything is sorted out and under way.

And the slew of Commencement and Convocation photos on fb- it scares me to think about what mine will be like.

ACCEPT

有些事自己知道就好

不用去确认也不想去了解

我才可以accept

有些话 思索太久 放着太久

反而更加写不出

太复杂麻烦的思绪

很累

所以就这样accept 也许好过一点

长镜头

Despite not having any work to do, I am significantly more productive in the office this week =)

A song I discovered while tuning in to radio during work:

长镜头

看得见彩虹 我们却都看不见风
於是爱看风筝被操弄
满足好奇的瞳孔
突然间轰隆 倒也是仁慈的一种
不忍心看风筝被摆弄
雨季总那灱有系统

看得见彩虹 我们却都看不见风
蛮横是爱结束的帮凶
我们当时还不懂
突然的重逢 倒也是仁慈的一种
总算能换个纬度想通
我感激缘份这系统

喔 长镜头
我们的回忆没拍下太多泪流
只有凉风蓝海和沙丘
到哪天碰头
你轻巧回避我荒谬的旧伤口
故事结构 就不必追究

A MOMENT OF MOMENT

Its when I sit there and wonder what else to do

Its when I put the tip of the pen against the paper and didn’t know what to write/draw

Its when I put forth a contradictory statement and frown

Its when I hear of all the things I have missed

Its when you try to measure the distance between expectations and reality

Its when I lost a smile, ever so briefly, momentarily

Its when I notice the rays of the afternoon sun falling on the keyboard and the table

“when minutes become hours
when days become years”

A VERY UNFORTUNATE MESS

Just a quick update about my internship: yes apparently my "job" has evolved to a temp project manager for this week! But its for a rotten problematic acc that has been abandoned by some retarded "something something director" (and strangely nobody else seems to know what she does in her job).

Anyway to cut the long story short, there was a series of convoluted events(made worse by rather slow witted designers and partly my lack of knowledge abt lots of stupid tedious process) that is making everything into a complete mess. That said, I can say that its really not my fault and everything was probably not going to work out anyway.

Partly why this account is so difficult is because its like a cross-departmental issue with too many layers of administration and accounting to do. And now I really think i'm quite lucky to be in redworks digital department with nice and sensible people.

And when the original pm comes in next monday I am so going to throw this back to her and that her retarded something something director.

Just need to survive one more tomorrow though. Sigh.

THE SEASON FOR MYSTERIES

Here’s my latest craze – “Dangan Ronpa (Dangan Ronpa: Academy of Hope and High School Students of Despair)”.

It’s a  japanese PSP game that was released in 2010 by Spike Chunsoft (the same company who released the very epic “9 hours 9 persons 9 doors” on NDS previously). Dangan Ronpa is like a whodunnit kind of game (with some Japanese brutality and psychoness) with lots of text and conversation and some investigative/reasoning gameplay.  Japanese trailer below:

Unfortunately, it wasn’t translated into English and I don’t really own a  PSP or a PSP emulator so I can’t play it. BUT someone has been kind enough to post his playthrough of the game (complete with english translations, pictures and videos) on a forum and I have been actively following all his posts for the past few nights. And I must say I have been rather good at solving the cases thus far although the game does give away important clues and hints quite liberally =) And I really like the way they present/design certain parts of the game – like how they presented a summary of the solution to the 1st case (with english translations):

I caught up to the forum all the way until the middle of the 3rd case now, so I will have to wait for future updates in order to “finish” the game =X

Additionally, there’s actually many Japanese detective/mystery dramas nowadays but after filtering, I ‘m only watching 2 of them – “Mikeneko Holmes no Suiri” and “Kagi no Kakatta Heya”.

“Mikeneko Holmes no Suiri” actually irritates me a lot due to the extremely incompetent and unappealing main character as well as a very “turn-offish” cross-dressing cat. But I’m still watching in hope of some good mysteries although it hasn’t been very exciting thus far.

“Kagi no Kakatta Heya” focus exclusively on locked-room mysteries and it is so much better than “Mikeneko Holmes no Suiri”. The cases are generally quite good although I’m not sure whether they were repeated from elsewhere cause some of them felt quite familiar, and the last mystery I watched was just a little far-fetched, but otherwise, an exciting drama for me to follow.

And I’m waiting and waiting for the sequel to “9 hours, 9 persons,  9 doors” to be translated and released! And Diablo 3? Although I must admit I’m not really hyped up about it that much and as of now, there are no plans to buy a copy for my house so we shall see how it goes.

THE SKY CRAWLERS

I came across this anime movie previously but didn’t have the motivation to hunt for it until today.

A really slow and heavy movie to watch, but its something I would like I guess, cause it gives you a lot to think and ponder over. I’m not sure if it is confusing and difficult to understand cause I already had some background knowledge before watching so I kind of knew what’s going on haha. But I think this is one of those movie where such “spoilers” doesn’t really matter cause its more about “how” the movie conveys the idea rather than “what” is going to happen in the movie.

My favourite scene in the movie (or at least it seems to be the most memorable). An animation/gif will probably do it more justice but I’m lazy to search for or figure how to do it.

Additionally, the flight/fight scenes in the sky are done very nicely – sometimes it looked as if its almost real to me, so I guess it was worth downloading a 8gb 1080p blu-ray mkv file to watch this haha.

There’s always this heavy sense of loss after watching stuff like this, when it feels inappropriate to do anything (there’s suppose to be a box of durians in the fridge but I don’t really feel like eating them now). Coming across the excellent theme-song on youtube just makes it worse, cause when its super nice, I will be stuck looping it for a long time.

And I came across this comment on youtube -

“After watching something inspiring from Japan its impossible to watch anything from Hollywood for months. two different worlds.”

Although it’s a very big generalization, I can’t help but think that it is exactly what I feel.

人生的某一面

人生也许就是这样

输一点的同时 却又让你得到那一点点

它从来不会十全十美

也从来不会让你彻底地绝望

其实有时干脆一点反而比较好过

大大方方地得胜

干干脆脆地失去

这样的安分 也许永远拿不起也放不下

INTERNSHIP ARC – BEGINNING

1st day of internship at Ogilvy!

I can only say I still don’t really know much about my internship or the company for that matter. In fact, I still don’t know how much is my pay, or maybe they are not paying me at all. There really wasn’t much of an opportunity or anyone appropriate for me to ask actually. I didn’t know what account I was doing or who was in charge of me or anything at all. That’s the problem when I get the internship without going for any interviews. Surprising, there were many other interns from NUS and 2 from NTU but most of us ended up in different departments in the end.

After squandering away 1/2 the morning sitting somewhere in the Ogilvy offices, I was told that I was supposed to move to another Ogilvy office in another building elsewhere and it was a good 10min walk away, which is slightly more inconvenient for me in terms of transportation. However, the entire office will move into the main Ogilvy building in another 2 weeks so I should be working in the main Ogilvy office again soon.

Anyway, I am supposedly working in REDWORKS (one of the many Ogilvy’s companies) helping with the Tiffany and Co. account. Including me, there’s about 4 of us in total. However, although they never specify any job-scopes for me, based on my conjunctions, I won’t really be doing much with the client, but more of helping out in administrative work =X In a way, it will explain why they didn’t interview me. When I asked Larry (the print project manager working on the Tiffany account), he said they didn’t do interviews and chose based on “gut feelings” (why am I writing in NM2220 jounrnalistic style anyway). Anyway my direct supervisor or the person whom I'm helping out is this other Takai person (the digital project manager, very nice and approachable but relatively new and just 3 weeks into the job). I didn’t really have the chance to leisure-talk or 闲谈 with him much today so I don’t really know much about him yet.

Other misc stuff to write about includes the horrible travelling times and conditions(relatively crowded and about 50min to 1h one way). But a positive point is that they seem to be slightly flexible on reporting time (bet 9 to 930) and very flexible on dressing. I actually bought some new business wear for the internship but now I don’t even think I will need business attire at all. I was so over-dressed today and everyone else was in casual except me and a few of the other interns. Oh and I’m using a winXP desktop =X

As of now, this internship seems to be the kind where you won’t really learn much but then again, its still a bit too early to say. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my job is going to evolve into something more worthwhile and fun haha.

MOMENTS

I was bored while studying for NM2220 so I  was planning to change my desktop’s wallpaper by hunting around for images on Google. I couldn’t really find any suitable ones so I changed my mind and decided to do a blog post with some of the interesting pictures I found.

Theme: Moment

what were you thinking at that moment?

misc picture - I have no idea what’s the link but its supposed to be a full-metal-alchemist pic.

at that one moment in time…

one frozen moment.

eternity in a moment.

that blurred moment.

a moment in space, whichever and whenever it may be.

ON A BRIGHT EARLY MORNING

I'm on a self proclaimed holiday right now, or at least until my next and last paper next wed.

And I am currently standing somewhere in the middle of 700 on my way down to shenton way just to see how long it will take me to get to work when my internship starts. And it doesn't look as if I will be able to make it there by 9, means i probably have to wake up earlier to catch earlier buses.

HELLO TO MYSELF

I had a presentation today for nm2219! it wasn’t too bad except the markers were just nit-picking about certain things but I don’t think its too much of a problem.
Had a 2101 lecture after that but I kept dozing off and it seemed like lecturer was just going to go through in accordance with the notes on not-very-useful stuff like how to be a good interviewer and what not. And I thought maybe I should treat myself better and just go home. So I decided to skip and waltz out of the LT happily, okay probably more like sleepily and “irritatedly”. 151 actually took a while to come and I felt a little more irritated waiting for the bus.
But things got much better after I got onto 184. I was sitting in the 2nd last row of seats on the right side of the new bus, and they have this like special head-rest for the window seat cause that’s where the engine compartment is. So I was resting against the head-rest, with the air-con coming down onto the left side of my face and enjoying a comfortable “nap”. My phone was almost flat also so I don’t have to do anything on my phone, and I can just sit/lie there while looping “Hello to myself” on my mp3 player.  

And I was thinking how right I was to skip the rest of the lecture.
Up to now, there’s so many things that I’m not doing for myself, not because I don’t want to, but because at this stage, I don’t have the resources and ability to achieve them. So right now, there’s a lot of things I’m doing for the sake of others, from more personal things like studying, looking for internships and even some ahem *national requirements*. I can’t help but complain about some obligations that were imposed without choice and to top it off, you get “punished” if you don’t do well enough. Essentially, its difficult to find the motivation and energy to move forward sometimes. But I guess for most of us, we all get through just fine in the end.
But once in a while, I just want to do something for myself, to make myself feel a little better before I have to go back in and deal with all the obligations and perseverance problems.

BETWEEN REAL AND FAKE

The last and the best Nisemonogatari episode! I just have to blog it here cause it has a very epic vibe which is very different from the previous episodes in this season.

Unlike other anime, this anime tends to rely more on words and dialogues to move the story along, and the flow and the art is more abstract too. But I really like the way they put the music, art and words together in this episode to give the epic feel.

Unfortunately I can only include links to the eng-subbed episode but I can’t embed them into my blog. The youtube video is the original one in Japanese but its of a better quality – just watch the 1st 2 min for the epic vibe.

The 1st 2 min is basically talking about this kind of  bird that waits for the mother bird of other species to leave the nests, push the original eggs out onto the ground and then lay its own eggs in the nest. A supernatural bird (named dying bird) actually did the same thing to the mother of the main character, and the end result is that his sister isn’t the original/real sister but more like a supernatural reincarnation of the dying bird. In the larger scheme of life, it can be considered harmless because it never really hurt anyone but then it’s still a fake who goes through the repeated cycle of death and reincarnation.

There’s another epic discussion about real/fake vs good/evil near the end of the episode but I couldn’t really understand everything cause its way too deep into the philosophical end.

There was something like between a real and a fake that was indistinguishable from the real, which has more value? There were 3 arguments – one for the real, one for equal value and the last one was that a fake has more value because of its deliberate attempt to be real. The 3rd one was really intriguing and needs some thinking to reason it out haha.

Eng-Subbed - http://www.animeshippuuden.com/nisemonogatari-episode-11/

Once in a while, I love to engage in this kind of philosophical deliberations and thoughts, although I must admit they are rather useless in the reality of life.

IN MEMORIES

I remember the intense heat and blazing sun back in Babina.

And the bunk in which we spend our days watching dramas and movies just to pass time.

The days would have probably been longer and harder if you weren’t there to accompany me.

Thank you.

It wasn’t that long a period of time but if you ask me what I remember most about you, I guess this is the only answer I can give you.

This was something we watched and heard together then.

So here is it for you.

Goodbye Jiawei.

再一次

想象一下

期待一下

然后继续

再一次的

等待

DREAM HIGH: DREAMING and A HIDDEN ROAD

My new-found project:

Dreaming

He’s not a singer but an actor with just 3 months of training before shooting Dream High. So its pretty amazing how he manage the song so well. It’s a song with context though, so its nicer when paired with one of the sub-plots from Dream High.
Dream High 2 is unfortunately not that nice but it’s a good way to listen to some nice Korean songs. Here’s another nice one which actually fits the plot-line at that moment perfectly haha, and there's some powerful singing near the end of the video (after all the drama cut-ins).

A Hidden Road

okay, time to get back to my profile story for nm2220, which is ridiculously difficult to write for some reason.

IT'S STILL THERE

And I wanted the sky to come crashing down for me but i guess it's still up there.

2012 #1 (for lack of any inspiration)

Back with my EPIC first post in 2012!

Actually no, there’s nothing epic here so you can stop reading now.

The 5 modules I’m taking this sem:
1) 2219 – hate it
2) 2220 – troublesome module
3) 2102 – statistics stuff but nth much for me to hate thus far (unless I screw up the first assignment)
4) 3412 – rather fun and don’t really need to prepare for lessons
5) 4411 – “ALTERNATIVE” mkt and don’t have to prepare for lessons

Open a can of worms - to create a situation that will cause trouble or be unpleasant.

To be honest, I don’t really like the expression, and the only reason why it’s here  is to show that I don’t like it.

Sometimes you know at the back of your mind that there are certain “universal truths” or “non-negotiable facts” that you simply cannot deny, especially so if it will “open a can of worms” for yourself.

And I really have to get back to my 2219 textbook. #$*F@!#^(^($(&^&(#$@~