am still thinking of the avocado cheeseburger and mai cha (buckwheat tea) that i had with liu today.

got too full myself after my 4km runs for the past 3 days, that i decided to steel myself to retry the 8km route that i used to do without much problems (which was a long long time ago, when it was still in season and when i didnt spend all my time stationary at my desk glaring at some book).

uh.

am really ashamed to say that my knees almost buckled halfway. now my quadriceps arent working and i can hardly even sit on the toilet.

guess it was wishful thinking to want to lose the extra kilogram in time for next week keke.

was so happy that i completed my quota for physics paper 1s today that i logged on to read the newer chapters of the WORST manga (by mangaka takahashi hiroki). yesss. new chapter (chapter 90) released.

scene from chapter 1, just before hana bashes up sakota.


it's been a rather long time since i went this crazy over a non-yaoi manga in which male characters actually look like men. there's absoluely nothing remotely female about any of the characters. it'll probably never be made into a mainstream anime no matter how popular it is in japan, because it's violent and i think it kinds of glorifies gang culture. still, i really like the theme of loyalty, brotherhood, battle of strength and the unyielding-bravery-in-the face-of-adversity theme that runs in the manga.

hope to buy the entire series cheaply in original japanese when i get to go japan.

found a suitable temp job today. was actually quite relieved that i can turn down the office job offer and the restaurant waitressing job offer.

apparently the manager is native japanese, and i had to speak japanese throughout the interview. and mind you, he doesnt enunciate his words clearly like seiyuu do in audio dramas. also, he is the first native japanese i've spoken to other than my japanese sensei at bunka language school. even the application form was in japanese. now i wasnt only scared shitless like yesterday. i think my guts and my liver and all my insides (which i mistakenly thought was hardened by years of playing competitive sports) were practically frozen. i was completely incompetent. no, more like beyond incompetent. my speech centers werent functioning and i was stammering like an imbecile. an imbecile! i cant believe i'm handing in a JLPT 1 and 2 certificate to him with such lousy spoken japanese. he understood me, because i got all the right keywords out, but my grammar was an embarrassment.

eff. this, after 6 years of diligent studying of the language, and 2 years of conversation courses? i practically handed everything back to mizusaki sensei. i cant look her in the eye anymore.

goodness, i cant tell you how extremely pissed off i am with myself. self-improvement MAX. i must redeem myself at work next week.

我会好好表现的！

actually went job hunting today.

more like, went for a couple of job interviews after making calls yesterday.

believe me, i was scared shitless. it took a fair bit of control to stop my hands from shaking when filling up the forms and to smile naturally when getting eyed by all those bosses. one of them kept telling me that i should think about it for a few days. because he will give me a 'hard time'. and he went on to say that a couple of post O' level female students ran out on him after 2 days, apparently after being on the recieving end of harsh words from him or nasty customers. i wish he wouldnt draw parallels with them and me. i think he thinks i might burst out crying after getting scolded. it must have had been my face. maybe i should grow a goatee or larger biceps haha.

either that, or i sit in an air conditioned office in formal officewear and court shoes with makeup on, to give interviews and make phone calls. honestly i'd rather be sent scurrying or screamed at by customers.

and yes, i still have one last paper next monday.. just wanted to be one step ahead.

i actually feel like pulling party poopers.

am left with papers that dont frighten me.

also realised that irino miyu, kobayakawa sena's seiyuu. is also niwa daisuke's (dnangel) seiyuu. and that he's good friend of miyano mamoru. why is he not doing bl? what a waste. i think fangirls would collectively pay millions to hear him get laid.

yea, that's odagiri hotaru's newest manga, which will be anime-tized sometime at the end of this year.

after the narrative of her earlier acclaimed manga series 'sono yubi dake ga shitteiru' became increasingly vapid and colourless near the 3rd instalment, i was wondering how her next project would belike.

darhahaha.

i think you can tell how the manga is like just by looking at the covers and the character design.. androgynous bishounens with tear inducing tragic pasts and cruel destinies, shrouded in roses and rose vine. i could actually laugh haha. it's such a tired and regurgitated formula apparent in so many shoujo/shounen ai productions like meine liebe, kiniro no corda etc. that you wonder why it still works.

yuki, the protagonist, is an impossibly pure hearted person who is also impossibly weak and emotional. he happens to also be the catalyst to save the world. and throughout the series you can see everyone jumping in front of him to take blows and sustain wounds for him. there, he already resembles the archetypal female lead, the kind i take pains to avoid by watching only yaoi.

aptly, he's voiced by hoshi souichirou, whose voice sounds whiny even without him trying to be. the star studded cast includes sakurai takahiro, mikishin, koyasu, ono daisuke, miyano mamoru, fukujun, ishida akira. just like most bl animes.

and the dialogue! to give the bldrama credit, i actually laughed a few times out loud, due to the spasticness of it all. since it's shounen ai and not yaoi, they dont do things like hump one another (though ruka looks so hungry and deprived when he looks at yuki, so much that you begin to feel sorry for him). they say things like 'i will never betray you' or 'i will never leave you, not for eternity' or 'the worst thing is to be alone' until i wonder if humans can shut down from overload of cliche.

and i got bored halfway through the bldrama because i could guess the ending and the identity of reiga from the very beginning.. production companies dont pay through their noses for a seiyuu like ishida akira and cast him into a minor side role.

yet i can understand why 'uragiri wa boku no namae wo shitteiru' was commercialised in place of more sensible titles like 'migite ni mesu hidarite ni hanataba' series or 'esu' and 'deadlock' series... i would think most fangirls would rather subscribe to crazy emotional bishounen fantasy than to spend money on something that deals with the more realistic and unpleasant side of douseiai in japan. though i can't for the life of me figure out why.

though i have to admit, the art is indeed pretty.

i was reading about how lee kuan yew engendered much retaliatory vitriol from the chinese online community by saying something like "The size of China makes it impossible for the rest of Asia, including Japan and India, to match it in weight and capacity in about 20 to 30 years. So we need America to strike a balance." in his one of his higher profile speeches.

some of the comments were understanding, some marginally unpleasant, some were unreasonable, and some were just downright arrogant.

like how one commented that LKY treats chinese as "outsiders" while treating singaporeans as "among his own." there's something fundamentally wrong with these comment, like going against common sense. it's obvious, so i wont explain.

some simply go on about how singapore sides with the US against china, one going to say as far as (i quote) to say something like 新加坡人都是香蕉人~~~外黄里白.

the arrogant ones i was talking about say things along the line of 'singapore's so small, do you think we need to listen to you, do you think you would succeed?' by brushing us off because of our size. or even worse, things like 无耻的李光耀：挖着中国的人才建设新加坡还骂着中国. we depend on chinese talent to build up singapore? we import talent from everywhere as well. it's just that you happened to have the largest population in the world. dont fucking get too full of yourself.

the worse simply called on others to ignore LKY because he's old and doesnt know what he's talking about.

all written on an interent which is heavily censored. i may actually suppress a laugh, because even in the articles i've read, the word communism in chinese is censored out. maybe this blog post will also be censored in china's version of the internet.

somehow i feel my hackles rising?

i have always thought that america often makes things difficult for china because they tend to regard this rising power with distaste, and didnt like it when US representatives use rather.. strong language when it comes to china. i thought that US looked down on china. that's because i've always read english articles on TIME, newsweek and economist. i've been browsing chinese web articles and forums for the past half an hour, and it's clear that chinese can turn up their noses at others just as well, and their tone can be just as derogatory. i just feel.. sad that i'm seing such comments written in a language which i believe (still) is the most beautiful there is. お互いさまだね。

what is wrong with both world powers, man.

it has to be that i'm only seeing their worst sides. it has to be, because the only way i can not have anything to do with US or china in the future is to hide at the bottom of the atlantic sea.

i think that explains it all? i will hit anyone who dares call me angmohkia or 香蕉人. yet, i had the same sentiments as my classmates from my japanese class, who specifically asked to learn the word 'singaporean' instead of 'chinese' so that they could introduce themselves as such.

it figures.

it's tomorrow.

the first paper's tomorrow.

somehow i don't feel the usual pre-exam jitters or shortness of breath. they both disppeared after i dropped out of the A race.

do papers. check answers. rewatch some eyeshield 21 episodes. more papers. read textbooks and notes. flip through eyeshield manga, laugh at hiruma's antics. realise that i dont know how to do most of the past A level econs essay questions. start having dark and stormy thoughts dotted with lightning and thunder, reflecting the weather these days.. get up and go for a run before i start cutting myself. read GP notebook. puzzle over why people spend government money to debate the superiority of science over religion or vice versa. laugh at the fact that richard dawkins was glaring furiously at the camera in his feature photo. like the cameraman owed him a double chocolate sundae. thought about how i didnt like his arrogance. but nor do i like the condescending tone the Church adopts sometimes. decided that thinking such thoughts wouldnt help my essay. check online for fanfiction.net's updates. everything becomes kaleidoscopic. めちゃくちゃ. suddenly hope for a beer. realise i am regressing into incoherence. and yet i sit and think about how lucky i am to not be falling apart when A levels is next week.