Every cough is like being punched in the chest and head

“Self-control is self-mastery. It is kingship over all life. At the center of your being sits yourself. Your seat ought to be a throne. If you are not in control, if there are any forces in your nature that are unruly, that do not acknowledge your sway, you are not the king you should be. Part of your kingdom is in insurrection. The strength of your life is divided. The strong man is he whose whole being is subject to him.”

I recently read this quote in an article about willpower. It made me realise how important it can be and how I can actually work towards it. Sometimes the first step is to acknowledge its presence. Now to go on from there.

I realise I haven't made a post in like, forever. I could make an excuse like too much uni work but that would be stupid since everyone else seems to have time and are doing fine. I guess it's just laziness on my end.

Uni's going okay, I suppose. I got my class test marks back for SCIF. Let's just say I didn't do awesome. That combined with huge amounts of homework and assignments is enough for anyone to hate it. However despite the random spectrum the course seems to cover, I wouldn't complain about it. I guess you could say it's a reminder of how it's not enough to just learn facts the other courses provides. If we're going to do something that isn't just done like the HSC then obviously we're going to do stuff outside our comfort zone. To the people who are bitching about this course constantly, I hope you never make it as doctors. Like hell I'd want people who get by with the minimum effort to become people who have lives in their hands for a living.

As everyone knows, I've been extremely sick lately, and it really sucks as assignments need to be done and exams are coming up so I don't really have much rest time. Sunday was audition day at Crossover for those doing Kpop summit. I got to the city at around 2pm and decided to eat lunch at Mappen. When I got to the studio, there was already a lot of people there practicing. After Jaye finished we set up studio 1 for auditions. Dan and Ellyn played judges while me and Yuki had the easiest job ever - camera operator and music player. What we didn't expect was the entire session lasting three hours. So much for our own rehearsals. After watching some of the good auditions, I wonder if our performance will be the same standards of how we expect theirs to be. I hope we can work towards it. It was also interesting watching people's body expressions. You could tell people who were nervous, attentive or just rude while the judges talked to them. Also people who want to do songs just because of how they're big fans of it without actually knowing the choreography properly shouldn't audition with it in the first place. It actually comes off as a selfish thing since you're clearly not doing it for the sake of entertaining others. It would have totally happened again for B.A.P if it wasn't already taken.

Afterwards was dinner at Eating World and then Karaoke at CEO. In hindsight I probably shouldn't have gone since I was sick and my voice was broken by the end of it. But it was a rare occasion and it was nice to do something recreational with the others.

Well I'm off to bed, hopefully I can finish my work tomorrow, since it is due Tuesday anyway.

Also it seems like literally everyone is playing Diablo III now. If it weren't for uni I would be playing it. But then again, catching up to others is going to suck. Well at least I could play with my brother. But won't be long till he also gets way ahead.

Struggles

Decided to do some exercise yesterday. Now all my limbs feel slightly sore. But it's not so bad, I felt much worse earlier this week. Guess it shows how weak I'm getting these days. And after some things, turns out my mind is also tired. I'm just tired everywhere.

Unrelated: the moon looks big and red today. Quite ominous.

Thank you Huy for telling me what options I have. Now the hard part is what to do. I honestly don't know what to do. Once again life reminds me that not everything can be so easy. Was so close too. You win this round life!

On another note, I feel uncertain about certain things. I feel like I've done something wrong. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong and it's too early to decide.

Why is it now that I feel this pain?

As you can tell I'm feeling quite down today, but hopefully things will get better soon. It usually does.

On a happier note, I finally watched The Avengers. It was quite good.

There's a lot of things I'd like to talk about, I just don't know where to start.

Now the moon is huge and yellow. Like a giant ball of cheese.

Nothing's Sober

Last weekend was pretty eventful. Let's see if I can recall it all from the start.

I woke up an hour later than I should have which meant by the time I got to the city it would already be twelve which is when I was supposed to go to Wesley theatre to do stage rehearsal with Lay's group. Sorry to everyone in IJGK!

So I got off at Town Hall and thanks to experience I was able to know exactly where to go. I bumped into Justin at the front of Wesley and we went in to find Lay with Tao, Johann and Vincent. It was then our turn to rehearse and the floor was a bit rough which made sliding difficult so we had to compensate for that. A little while later, everyone from Crossover arrived an then IJGK's practice was up. I found it funny that Jaye made our music a file that wasn't an mp3. Also funny was that we thought the old version we were using turned out to be the latest one. After that was the Kpop course rehearsal. After that I was really tired since I didn't eat all that time.

So to fix the situation I decided to go quickly to eat at Mappen. I thought about going to McDonald's but I didn't want to eat something unhealthy and possibly make me sick later on. I ordered a large udon with an ontoma bowl and some tempura sweet potato. The meal was really filling and satisfying.

When I got back nothing much happened until later on when the show was about to start. I watched a few shows until 7:15PM when I had to go out and practice with Girls Are Stupid. At intermission, we did some more last minute practice. So the order for me was supposedly, Boyfriend/History/Party, then a song or two before doing Lay's showcase, then I Just Got K'd a bit after. What could possibly go wrong?

Getting ready for the my first performance of the night, I found out that Lay's showcase was right after this one and that my costume for it is completely different. There wasn't any way around it so my plan was to minimise the time to change my clothes and hope for the best. It was pretty funny actually. If you watch Boyfriend/History/Party you can see me off stage right during Party. I got changed and luckily Jaye was able to stall a bit by teaching more of the U-Turn routine to the audience. So thanks a bunch for that. Girls Are Stupid went off without a hitch, that's because girls are in fact stupid.

Soon after it was time for I Just Got K'd's showcase. Overall it was great, the crowd liked us and all. Though mistakes were definitely made especially on my behalf. I definitely won't be doing that mistake again! Also I think Warrior was done much better than MAMA. I also think maybe it wasn't the best song to end with, mainly because it goes from the high of Warrior's dance break to the first verse and chorus of MAMA which was low in comparison. Only the screaming part seemed to reset the equilibrium back to a high. I have no idea what I just said. Also despite comical moves such as spanking, it wasn't as cheer worthy as the performance at the Crossover. You know what I'm talking about.

Afterwards we got to relax and watch the rest of the show which involved the final battles and awesome showcases. Premature streamers were streamed and Devilicious once again blows everyone away with their amazing performance. Also I disagree, watching the practice isn't the same. The mood is set differently and they were giving their all into that final performance.

So concludes Upstaged 2012. The people started going home, and the people of Crossover headed over to Seoulria for the after party. Some of us stayed behind to do some cleaning. People can be so inconsiderate, leaving food garbage around when it clearly says not to bring food in. Well what's done is done and I managed to find the following items:

- Glow sticks (all given to Kelvin)
- An uneaten stick of gum
- A block of Hershey's chocolate still in its wrapper
- A lighter
- $2.65

That's a pretty good find if I say so myself. Though Kelvin got a toy car which I will forever envy. More voluntary labour was done and we were outside waiting for people to take the equipment away. Since the car was going to drive faster than we could walk, we told the girls who were still with us to head over to the party first. When the car arrived, me, Huy and Kelvin decided to race the car, with obligatory The Amazing Race commentary. Not only did we beat the car, apparently we got there before the girls did.

The place was really packed and most of just sat wherever. Me and Huy got invited to sit at Nancy, Aveline, Samantha and Terry's table, and eat their leftovers. Speaking of leftovers, that Shandy... Next time I will out eat you. I Just Got K'd managed to get their own table and Yuki ran away when it was time to drink. Jibbie however was the opposite. And turns out he's an interesting drunk.

We then went to Crossover for the night. We commandeered studio 4 where we just chilled and stuff. A ice cream run which turned into a 7/11 run because Gelatissimo was closed. MV's on Terry's iPad were watched and then we watched the rest of our showcases on the TV. I found a unoccupied couch and decided to relax on it. I ended up falling asleep for the rest of the night, which was lame because apparently I missed out on games and chats with the rest of the crew. It's almost as bad when I missed out on the reveal of jacket ship. Apparently things went down that night, so sad I missed out. What the hell happened?!

The day after we all got up and decided to go have breakfast, in the afternoon. We went to eat a cafe near World Square. We ate outside which was really cold. Afterwards we went back to Crossover where people were getting ready to watch The Avengers which made me sad cause I wanted to watch it, but I was going to watch it with my brother instead. I'll see it eventually. Decided to go back home and rest in my own home.

It felt weird training it home while it was still daylight. Mainly because I go home at night due to either uni or hanging out with the others during dance. I got home and instead of doing the natural thing and go straight to bed, I decided to watch the pilot episode of Sherlock. It was the same yet different to the actual first episode. I'm glad that the actual series was improved so much from the pilot. The pilot was interesting and had the same plot, but the style was noticeably different. Then came dinner and afterwards I went to take a long nap.

So this whole weekend was very interesting where no school work was done. Speaking of school work, I guess the mini break is over now, and now that it's post Upstaged, there's no events to prepare for anymore. Time to work on my studies. I suppose I should get into the exam mindset now as it'll probably make things easier in the long run, instead of leaving studies to the last minute.

This video was significant to me because when I was a kid I always thought a sword made of diamond would be the best cause you know, no other material can scratch diamond.