understanding

Ping Sern.. i forgive you. you're leading a very hectic life as of right now. i no longer wish to harp on a dead issue any longer.

i don't care so much even if we are galaxies apart in terms of long distance relationships. i also understand i might've been asking a tad much for that kind gathering of friends....in view of your schedule. had i known this i would've done something else.

what's over is over. while the scars of 2 previous performances are still there, the explanation is a pain-killer enough to ease it away. my only regret is being unable to learn of people's schedule ahead of time via confirmations.

there i feel much better having done this and patched up with you.

return to the salt mines

i guess its been an ok year. not the best i've had but could've been better. as of next week i am officially back in college but unofficially i'm back at college today. see i have a wall/mural painting project to do, so planning helps a lot especially when you consider the need to coordinate with a large group of people and at least get your idea heard across the board no matter how temporary or insignificant the contribution seems. my crew's pretty much settled on an idea we all can agree with and are now making final variations of it. we'll be using those and selecting the best of them to be used as our stake on influencing the outcome of our class's mural painting.

Now then, onto less serious matters. never ever park in malacca streets....never. see, my dad had to go down to kuala pilah in NS, to do somethings and my mum said make a roadtrip out of it and go all the way to malacca so we could do some sightseeing. sounds all hunky-dory till you can't figure out which place is jonker street, famous or in my case, infamous for the crowds and stalls spilling onto the streets to harp and sell their wares. We got out of the car after we parked on jonker street. if we knew it was jonker street we wouldn't have parked there...too bad some numb nut decided to change all the street names and we didn't know we ended up there. when we got back, the stalls and crowds have already settled in for the night in the street and quite literally, around our car. safe to say, we had a hell of time getting a 4 wheel drive out of the narrow street made narrower by the hawkers, not mentioning yet the ignorant people who still ease their butts outwards despite an oncoming car. we did manage to get out thanks to an opportunistic hawker; he went home RM20 richer for helping to clear the way a bit.

Next up....a deteriorating friendship. i've seen some of my friends i grew up with take wing and leave because there are better things out there in store for them. i've also seen friendships that simply went out the door just like that. in fact, so far i've only had one friendship that went that way and we patched up some 6 years later when we became more mature and met up by coincidence. it was kind of a wake up call for me then, an experience i knew that would play out differently now that i knew the ropes. in fact it happened again not too long ago during my term break back in malaysia...

ping sern... i am not sure if we can be friends anymore... i am saying this now for i am no longer certain and would like your valuable input into the matter as of now. i haven't yet erased you from any of my friends list on anything with regards to you. my questions are simple ones.... i'd like to know... how you would want to be treated as a friend and how you would expect others to treat you. if you'd like to know the few events that have disturbed me so, i can tell right now with a straight face. the first true event was sometime during our final year of school. i believe the term 'fong fei gei' would be right in what happened. you told me to turn up at a predesignated meeting point, i showed up. you didn't until much prompting later and some outside influences. the second one that truly had me questioning was when i got back to malaysia very recently... i don't like being treated like a guest of honour but certain things should be done right. in fact i was questioning myself... the reason i sent you the sms informing you that i am back in KL 1 week after i did get back was to get my head together and decide whether you have indeed changed. you did. i sms you, telling you i'm back and you ask me to arrange for a meeting with yourself and yuen haw. shouldn't it be the other way around?

i never did like sounding like a douchebag, but courtesy dictates that friends who return from abroad should be welcome home with open hands, not the other way around... if you somehow spot this ping sern... my e-mail addresses, you have them. my MSN addresses you have them. my STEAM ID you know who to look for. my blog itself has 2 types of feedback systems. if you truly are reading this, if you really consider yourself my friend. prove me wrong. tell me how you'd like to be treated and how you think people would want to be treated. also tell me something... do you truly value our friendship enough to warrant a change in this...detrimental and highly reprehensible attitude? i ask you as of now because i am no longer sure whether i should walk out on this friendship or not.

for the rest of you who are not ping sern and reading this....well let's see how the drama plays out. i'm all ears.

WE SEND ITTY BITTY KART ALL THE WAY BACK HOME!

k i'll be going back home...the malaysian one. just need to finalize a few things and then home.

going to try and do up some of the requests you guys asked for before then too X3

also went to AFA 09. lots going on, lots of people....too many... came in the morning of the 1st day and i'm greeted by at least a 100 over people lining up for tickets. thank god i followed victor, eclair n shanlyn to go n get tickets a day before. as expected the gundam section took up a full 1/4 of the hall as compared to the smaller sections of the various artist groups and exhibitors. the cosplayers came in full force on the second day as did the crowd. apparently the king of cosplaying was in suntec...i think his name was kaname...i have to ask eclair. didn't have much money on me at the time so most of my time was devoted to gawking at stuff and silently observing things....also meeting up with friends! XD

i did manage to glean a bit of very important information..digital painting! got it from the Imaginary Friends Studio guys who had set up shop in their own little nook. met ArtGerm there too. lol didn't realise it was him till he began doing a commish for victor, a pepper sketch. XD
anyway, the tips i got from them i put to use as some of you have noticed in the 2 newer pieces i submitted. also props to mike for some of his earlier advice regarding erasers and layering over.

dah! this will work!

omigod it's finally over! i can finally take a good long fucking rest. after 3 months of little sleep and headaches all around i can sleep as much as i want and drink till noon...or something...friends here recommend bacardi..i 'unno.

anyway, today is my assessment. scared? no. worried? nah. tired? very. almost gave myself a self-induced heart attack by running full tilt from the Novena MRT station to back to the apartment so i could pick up my bandage plaster cast hand == why do that you ask? well first and foremost, i didn't take the MRT since i didn't have time. i took a cab and i told the guy more or less where i wanted to go. the place doesn't register in his brain very well, so i had to opt for a more general stop...the Novena MRT. idiot....srsly, he goes in another way so i have to pay more...doesn't even know where united square is...my god...whatever. least i got it.

set up everything and it looks pretty ok. will post up a picture of my stuff soon. room's in a total mess. didn't sleep at all last night by my choice and as of now, i just woke up from a nice 5 hour nap, about an hour more than i get some nights =p

it was pretty cool this morning...a combination of overexertion and lack of sleep can somehow make you high...i felt kind of drunk. never ever been this loud in public and i could tell i think i slurred a bit...sry guys XP

ok so i'm just going to go and pack up my room stuff and then later tonight tf2 like crazy. internet should be fine; it's a school night, all the little itty bitty kiddies will be working their asses off and then sleeping early so least ways i do get some internet speed and slots on the only available servers  to me....starhub...srsly would be so ironic if i, as a starhub user cannot connect to their server. then again it has happened before ==

whatever. oh right, right, right. i'll back on doing the requests i haven't finished up seeing as i have much, MUCH more free time. ^^

requests still to be finished:

on the schedule board

t'was not very long ago my room was covered in dust bunnies after 3 weeks of neglect and this was rectified about a week ago from now. everything's going as planned so far. tonnes and tonnes of work. so far, i've managed to finish 2 big headaches. the problem is, they're for the same subject, so my overall number of worries is still the same. i'm yet to finish tuning up my drawing sketchbook and tonight, i have to complete 4 fingers for a new 3D hand project so as to be able to buy me some time over the next few days to finish up on my drawing.

fortunately the break is coming and i think most of us need it. the bad news is that we are kind of expected to work through the holiday. if this college had a very significant amount of local students, i can understand the expectation; however, this is not the case. anyway, it should be plain and simple. all we have to do is be split into groups, brainstorm for a mural idea and then comeback together as a class and do it. the irony is that we split up and then come back again just to ensure that everyone's part of the mural is in sync; hardly a point for splitting in the first place. Nevertheless, there is some time next year to go over that and i plan to.

ah well, onto personal issues to make up for the lack of updating. i was recently able to finish DLing Supreme Commander. Its a brilliant game and everything....perhaps too brilliant. i get side-tracked from what i'm doing a lot because since this game is a spiritual successor to Total Annihilation, this game can and will eat up a lot of time. the game immerses you deeply enough that you can't come back out till you've finished something in the game and that's how good it is. i've lost a lot of time thanks to the wonderful game but not that it worries me too much. thankfully, i've already planned out what needs doing so that's more than half the battle won already. on the other hand, gaming for 3-4 hours non-stop can be relatively relaxing, though it feels shitty to find that out in the middle of the night and you figured out what needs doing hasn't been done yet. no matter. just pulled an all-nighter if that's to prove anything.

can't wait for this shit to blow over....seriously.

the weird and wonderful world we live in

huh.... well i'm almost done with a long and hectic assignment and moving onto the 2nd one next week. everything's fine. also taking some requests to kinda kill time for the week after.

well what i do want to talk about is something that happened a few days ago. see me and my classmates, we went down to the college green or fake grass patch on the campus ground floor. there's this buncha....i'm not sure...sikhs? indians? anyway weird guys in their turbans sitting in the middle of the patch. not that we minded. the fake grass patch is large and we don't normally sit in the centre anyway. so we just strode by and sat ourselves down in a group. not sure what possessed them to kinda stare at me... so in response. i said out loudly : "O HAI!" they sheepishly greeted back quietly and resumed doing their own thing....

by this time i had moved to the other end where my other classmates had already set themselves up and were working on some assignments. so i sit down and we begin talking about some random thing and then one of the turban guys asks me if to come over to to them. Now you must be thinking, why would i go and sit next to some turban guys i don't know of. i asked myself the same question but i figured, all the bases have been covered. sure they're big, but not that big and not that young....in fact most of them looked 60 going on 70.  so i sit down and ask them: "yes?"

so then a really old turban guy...i think he's like the oldest in the group starts telling me something.... and if i heard correctly asked if he could get my opinion or something on the matter.... i couldn't hear what he said, so i looked at the group...they weren't very helpful since they were probing my face for some sort of emotional response...technically i was hoping they could help me understand what he was saying but i figured they probably wanted me to listen so i said: "ok"

so the old guy launches into his....speech or something. not that i'm being rude or anything but i'm straining to hear what this guy is saying. he's got a monotone so much lower than mine and i don't think his thick, scraggly beard is helping the sound come out any louder. i could hear 80%...no 90% of what he was saying. the only time i kind of figured out what he was saying was when he mentioned something about the body being the embodiment of some spirit crap like that and the trunk of the body was......tree? ok i was totally lost then, and then he asked me what i thought. how do i respond? well i just said: "uhh...yea ok." actually, most of the time was me trying to listen to what he was saying and looking at the group for some kind of translation.

they let me go after that... not that wasn't interested in what he was saying, but it's just that i can't hear what he's saying....but now i look at it in retrospect, it was probably some religious crap or something. i kind of saw the the similarities between this guy and one of the pastors in the Assunta church, who despite the microphone and PA system is relatively inaudible and the most you hear is something like someone muttering on the pedestal, kinda like the turban guy despite me sitting only about less than a foot away from him. 

old inaudible men aside, things have been going....slow no trouble but slow. too slow. if it's anything i miss about home its the internet. i can't tf2 for shit over here unless i'm sitting in starbucks or in the campus library with my headphones. even then, it's not the full experience, i can't speak in the library and starbucks is too public...in 2 ways. firstly, little privacy. secondly, there are always people waiting and if you happen to come by at night, it'll most likely be at around 8pm when the crowds are gone and they close shop in an hours time.

now that i've stayed in Singapore for almost more than 2 months, i can finally start to see some of the more subtle differences in not just the way of thinking but also the culture here. if anyone said singapore has no culture, they are severely mistaken. Singaporean culture happens to be something akin to Japanese work mentality, work, work, work. not that it's a bad thing. i get the right people i want to work with more often here than i did when i was in TOA. pfft....thanks tatsun and debbie for being such asses. on the other hand, this probably breeds the singaporeans i see most of the time; fashion driven engines of inexplicable obliviousness and...of few english words though in mandarin it's plentiful. in crowds you get pushed and pulled by the tide....especially the buses, curse you bus people who cram into the bus and not wait like i do ==

these people can also be seen at food courts. the work mentality is bit more obvious there from my experience and its mostly from the women working there, they show you the ugly side of things, and it's not just their face....seriously. most of the time, you need to choose what you want to order not just cos its your wallet, rather in my case, its also how it tastes and yes, KL does indeed make better coffee shop food for most of the part. these women don't really care much about what you order, they just want you to do it quickly and sometimes when you do ask for some of the little things, they just balk and say whatever. they also end up doing the things you told them not to; i asked one for a 100 plus less ice, she tells me rudely don't care about the ice...$1.30..(no please) not big surprise to me but, it's mostly the women so please don't call me sexist.

now, back to the college scene. i'm a little bit more amazed how some of the people i work with can either be so amazing or...just fucking dumb. i've got this person i know of who can ask you what the answer to this question is despite the answer being in front of her....directly. she also happens to consider herself quite trendy... now if it was just one person, i wouldn't mind, when i get confronted by more than one, i truly am surprised. there's this other person who can ask you for some of the things she doesn't know how to do despite the instructions being in the place i told you where it was....the bloody 'read me' word doc is in the folder i gave you dear....please. not too sure how this is but it probably is...she is also apparently very likely to take people for granted. the final straw was when i found out these people were heading into fashion...god bless that department.

now...for the guys...i told you all, i'm not sexist. let me start with the bad ones. there's this guy i met...he'd be pretty cute or some shit like that IF he was not a GUY. biiiig if...even then. firstly, i'd like to be frank. i can't stand high pitched squealers....and this guy is worse when he attempts to do that. it's ok if you do it every now and then, in fact, it breaks monotony which i am glad for...but it becomes monotonous if you do it eveyrtime i fucking see you... also he doesn't exactly behave like any other person his age should. now i haven't too much of a problem with that also if you do it every now and then but when you combine this factor with the squeal and somewhat dumb factor...you've got yourself a rather annoying 12 year old...who at least knows what he wants. the only redeeming factor i see in you mate, is your foresight and writing capabilities....but until you can shape up i don't think anyone's going to take you seriously.... a fact i will deliver to him personally and if need be, sever ties...can't stand these people no matter how good they write.

now for the other half. now these guys, i know through my campus class...in fact classmates. they not only behave like any person reaching maturity or rather reached it, they are so much more aware and experienced than....some people i've met thus far. it's these guys i look up to. ok there are also the girls who can be counted into this group whom i'm making a close bond with but that's besides the point. these people say what they can do and they will do what they can do and get the job done. also they handle themselves well in most situations mostly due to experience. so if my parents were wondering who i'm associating myself with, you can be assured it's not some pansy ass i'd rather not.

and that about sums up the absence of updates for the past few weeks.

lost and found

About a week ago, Sean the Vista laptop was sent to the Toshiba doctors for a motherboard organ transplant. The results were grim but we got by and for the moment, Sean is amnesiac.

I think what i'm trying to say here is that Sean's hard drive has been reformatted no thanks to a bug in the system that won't let me start up with my normal profile. =_='

Curse them, those who made vista so integral in new computers! but thank goodness i still have Jean the XP who i'm using to type this out now. sighz, i only hope that Windows will make Windows 7 more user friendly and not the RAM monster vista is. I've no contempt for the company but the absurdity lies in forcing people to accept an unreliable system. its like telling a soldier to use a rifle which has an ammo clip that keeps falling out.

well on a brighter note, most of my work there is more or less backed up or is off little importance to me. sure i lost the flash video i was working on but then again, i never had time for it and i was also planning to overhaul it so no biggie there either. yea sure i lost most of the songs there i DLed over the past month but i have this guy here who has at least 75% of the similar songs so again no stress.

Oh and speaking of songs, i've recently found this new band called Machinae Supremacy. For those of you who cannot stand rock and metal mixed in with some classic game music and sfx, LEAVE NOWz for i am about to expound a bit on the band. its a swedish metal band which mixes in some classic tunes from classis games to give them a nice retro or unique sound. Also their singer isn't that bad. if i compare this band to some of the other bands, i find this band nicer, they've got a brand new tune i've never really heard anywhere else and i can finally hear the words of a rock/metal band singer other than a few notable ones like linkin park. also unlike other bands, they do give a nice set of free downloadable music. check it out if you're interested here.