365

Obligatory birthday retrospective post time!

I still remember what happened on my last birthday. It was during the time of SM Town gathering and I was relatively new in the crew. During one of our practices we were having break and then the lights went out to find that there was a cake for me. It was such a nice gesture and it really made me feel happy.

On my actual birthday I decided to go to Carmen's dessert thing instead of staying at home and study. Despite trackwork I managed to get to the place on time. Shortly Yuki, Huy, Carmen and Elena showed up and we went to Glebe for some churros. They were really good. Afterwards we went shopping in the city and then crashed at Crossover. I was feeling sleepy so I ended up crashing on the couch while the others were jamming.

Haha I started writing this a week ago and now I've put it off till now.

Sunday was interesting. Not everyday you get to do something like that. I enjoyed it. I want to see someone else play the exact games and see how they go. Had cake at the studio where I was presented with a really unique jumper/jersey thing! I should really wear it sometime but I have no idea what occasion would suit it. During a performance? haha.

Went to watch The Dark Knight Rises with my brother and father at IMAX. My thoughts would be that you would need to have watched the other two since the third draws a lot of elements and back story from them. It wasn't as awesome as The Dark Knight and I knew that would happen. Expectations were raised a little too high if you ask me.


I feel like as I have aged, everything around me has aged also. Things weren't the same as they used to be. Where things are going I don't feel like it's going to be good. But I don't know, maybe I'm just imagining the worst but by extrapolating facts it's hard not to. Sometimes I think I'm being biased, while the other times I think I'm the only person who feels nobody is willing to do the right thing.

On another note I don't feel like myself anymore, if that makes sense. Guess I'll have to find it again.

This year has brought me good times and happiness. And I'm grateful for that.

I don't know what to put here

Thursday I crossed another thing off my list which was to visit my old high school. During the year I've had a lot of people tell me that my old headmaster wanted to see me. So I visited him and we talked about last year and this year, my reasons for leaving UTS after first semester and reasons for choosing Medicinal Chemistry. He thought it was good that I decided to stop my old course after one semester and not longer than it could have been. He seemed to support my education in the medicine field, which I then found out that he did med at USYD back in the day. Not sure how far he went with that but yeah. He had to go from Castle Hill to uni for his first class in the early morning and then go to Westmead in the afternoon. And then go back to Castle Hill via multiple transports. Took hours from his day but he said he learned to study while travelling which was productive. All I do on the train is sleep.

Afterwards I went to the bus stop which I used to take to go to Parramatta. Luckily back then I didn't have to worry about which bus to take since all buses terminated at the terminal at Parra. And it still applied now. I took the next bus and got to Parra. Since I'm going to do some photo work soon, I decided to buy a new lens for my camera. I needed something for low light situations so I got the 50mm f/1.8 lens. The thing can't zoom in or out but that also means it can take generally nicer photos than zooms since they don't have all that extra parts. Also another thing is it's really wide aperture which is definitely good to catch more light in dark places like a theatre. It was also cheap, like the cheapest lens you could possibly buy. Not sure if that's a good thing actually. Now I need to do some practice shots, I suppose Friday will be good for doing that.

Walked home in the light rain, and pretty much spent the day reading everything I could about using my camera and all the functions. Turns out I need a program to work with all my photos and convert them from RAW to jpegs or something similar. I could use iPhoto but I feel like the program is doing more harm than good to my photos, which I previously used to work on the RAW photos I shot at Yuki's birthday when I forgot to set it to not shoot in RAW format. So far the two programs that I could use are either Apple's Aperture or Adobe's Lightroom. Aperture is cheaper I think but everyone seems to prefer the editing power of Lightroom. Sigh and I wanted to save money for upgrading my kit lens.


Guess that's all for today's blog. I should sleep. My sleep pattern is all over the place, especially when I was sick. After I had dinner I had a nap and I had no idea how long I slept. Perception of time is lost to me.

This episode looks promising.

Cleaning up

I can now cross off one of my things to do during the break, and that is:

• Clean my computer

As in literally get rid off all the dust and dirt collected inside my computer which meant manually pulling apart all the keys and give them a good vacuum.

Yesterday was Carmen's birthday party at her house. I woke up around three due to staying up the previous night playing games. I managed to get to Cabramatta by train and carpooled with David, Dan and Huy. We ended up lost and finding ourselves in steep dark holes. That's what we get for changing the address number to sixty nine.

There were snacks and party pies and pizza. Should also mention that I hadn't eaten anything beforehand so it was a very unhealthy day for me. People were playing Monopoly, and we were going to play Cluedo but never got around to it. Trivial Pursuit was played by the majority of us and the questions were so random. Eventually we had to go, which was like past midnight. Good thing my parents were out. I got dropped off by David and went straight to sleep so at least I would have a decent wake up time.

Woke up today around midday and got around to cleaning my room and my study room. My study room is better but still needs some more work, mainly dealing with all my previous semester work. I'll have to find somewhere to store it all. Also my brother came home from camp today, don't know if he'll be studying or playing games all break haha.

I suppose I should start being more productive since David said yesterday, we actually don't have much of a break before next semester. But I'll most likely have enough time. Also I should stop being on the computer so much, especially if I'm bored. That's always a recipe for disaster.

I started listening to The Chaser by Infinite more since Dan taught it on Wednesday. I find it very catchy. I like the sound of their voices and how their vocal range is usually higher than any other group. Also their music video for the song was weird for me since I found the slow mo car flip which felt like it took up good 45% of the MV to be distracting. I'm guessing that they spent a lot of effort getting that shot and felt like they needed to use it as much as they could in the MV. But other than that it's a nice song.

Mid Year Break

Now that my final exam is complete and my last assignment is left finished, though not necessarily perfect, I finally am able to catch a break from the craziness that is the final moments of semester. Speaking of crazy, I taught Crazy today (Saturday) at the studio. Yuki and Kelvin also came to my class along with three totally new people. Kelvin and Yuki were very helpful when my pupils found it really difficult. But in the end they managed to pull through. And yes we did the screaming.

On a side note I just finished downloading Diablo III. So as soon as I finish this post I'm so playing that.

Nao's class... was actually interesting. Maybe I'll keep it up Dan, MAYBE. Yeah next Friday is Carmen's birthday, also the Friday after that is another friend of mine's birthday. Not sure if I can make dance then. But then again their party is clubbing at King's Cross, which is probably late at night. Yeah I don't know the people at all who are confirmed so maybe I'll just not go. If more friends go then maybe.

Ate lunch at Eating World with Elena, Bec, Jibbie, Kelvin and Yuki and then walked to Star City gangsta style to get gelato. The mango flavour was so much better there. Maybe I shouldn't have got lemon but it was nice, like lemonade. Teaser parodies were made and we went back to studio where Jaye finished teaching some of the KCO people. We all jammed for a bit and everyone ended up going home. My parents were eating to city so I ended up eating with them since everyone went home and I did not want to go by train with track work. That meant going to Strathfield to catch a bus where I bet there were huge amounts of screaming people due to a certain bunch of people at a certain frozen yogurt place.

Now that break is on, time to fulfil my goals for this holidays! What are they? You'll find out when I actually do them.

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.