Happier :)

I refuse to get suckered into Multiply, and yet...XD

(I will post more pictures someday. Soon. I hope.)

Watched OoTP with Fritz last Sunday. I'm not really inclined to discuss the nuances of this movie and the HP series in general because I was too busy noticing Dan's well-defined pecs I'm not a big fan, but it was...okay. Dark. As Harry put it, "I feel so ANGRY all the time!"

WHAT I AM EXCITED ABOUT though, is The Dark is Rising! It's based on one of my favorite fantasy book sequences so no-brainer, I am watching this. :D Plus The Simpsons, because deep in my heart I believe my father is a smarter, more driven, less-potbellied, less-beer consuming Homer Simpson. Although I have an exam on Wednesday plus a play to watch the next night. D:

I've also finished 2 out of the 3 translation things I was working on. My smutty manga days are over. :P I'm still not sure whether I should take the proficiency test this December, but I have until next month to decide.

My academic life, while not in tatters, is still far from the thing of beauty it ought to be. I am delving deeper into the annals of chemical engineering, and I do not like what I see: Pipes. Tubings. Valves. Reaction rates. Reactors.

But, like I wrote in my 123 exam, I'll just grin and bear it. I'll be a chemical engineer. And after that, showbiz! Bwahaha. Just kidding, I have a dream job to pursue. :)

...Whaddyaknow

There are lots of interesting people in the world I live and breathe in.

:)

That-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named*

I have some a lot of moments of breathtaking stupidity, but what happened takes the cake, hands down.

It's hard to be optimistic.

*Which may cause a prolonged hiatus. Not that I have been posting interesting stuff lately, on account of I have no life! Brilliant.

HAHAHA

2 exams this week, a probset due tomorrow, KEM shirt everything to stress about facilitate, an interview + smutty manga + video to translate, postcards to send, and all I can think of is...

RYOKANJANILURVEJOHNNY'SJOHNNY'SMUSTDOWNLOAD

Gah.

Today is special! :D

Why:

1. 7.7.07

2. It's Tanabata. Make a wish and hang it on a tree~ Mine is like Ryo-chan's: 愛が欲しい。愛が欲しい。愛が欲しい。ie, I want love. Three times. LOL. XD

3. Wala lang. Nothing really big, but three 7's is always a good thing (if life was one big slot machine). :D

Old as the hills.

Marshall-ed for the Freshie Welcome Assembly and became profoundly aware of how old I was. :P It didn't help that in the afternoon, the first freshie in line chatted me up when he found out we were from the same college:

F: Ate, anong year na po kayo?
Me: 2nd year. *smiles*

...Of course not. And let's face it, it's not like I could get away with that sort of lie. Hehe. I told him that I was in 5th year, then proceeded to give out survival kits to the freshmen. After that I paid my tuition, said hi to some sisses, and hied off to the KEM Blockhandling facilitating event, where I had to dance Kering-keri. Don't even know where it's from, and I sucked at dancing (sorry Jabellz =_=) but it was fun. :D

*

In other news: Finished Nodame Cantabile! Comedic acting, funny characters, decent plot, scenes in Kyushu (OK so it was in Saga, which is really just rice fields, but still: Kyushu-ben! *hearts*), and of course Tamaki!HOTNESS! [Don't worry Steph, he is all yours as Ryo-chan ownz me heart and soul.) Even my barbaric (haha) sister, who turned down watching HanaDan, was enthralled. Even though we are totally not into classical music.

I swear, when we move into our new house on top of a mountain (Why? Father's solution to global warming: While Manila and the rest of the country sinks, we will be safe in Antipolo! Bwahaha!) next year, we will fully be getting DSL. And I can live not waiting for subbed versions since my Japanese is enough to catch maybe 80%-100% of what they're saying! Excellent.

When I'm fangirling, it's like things are so simple: I like adore with every fiber of my being ______, who is smexy and belongs to ______ (likely a JE group). To date they have released the following: *insert discography here*. He also stars in *insert drama here*. XD

Aaand it's so fulfilling when you find out someone gets into the fandom you've been promoting (like Ouran, which will have its own drama HURRAH). :DDD

Vacation stats

Movies watched: 2
Unnecessary calories consumed: Now in the thousands range, am sure
Musicals watched: 1
Excellent musicals watched: 1!!! (The Wedding Singer, Summer Workshop 07 of Rep Philippines) :D
Books read: 2.5ish (Eragon a disappointment so far. Give me Earthsea anytime.)
Additional subjects enlisted: 0
No. of unsuccessful attempts to get into CRS: 4 and counting
New songs downloaded: 3
New songs downloaded using connection at home: 0
No. of times wished I could visit friends in Japan: lots
No. of outings: 0
No. of zits: Gaaah

I have poverty* hanging over my head!

*replace with all or any of the following: ES, Van Ness, JLPT Level 2, impending doom [although poverty wouldn't exactly be a lie...]

That be all. *goes back into cave*

Menfolk (mainly)

Now that Dochin has a large black vicious animal making its home on top of his head and eating his ears, I had to turn to my other boyzzz to ease my pain. (Kawabata is also going through a weird hair phase --- what is with that curling sideburn fuzz thing? Huh?)

Met up with Vigs and Dale at Divi for ChESI stuff. Of course, I couldn't go there and not buy a DVD. :P Went home happily with My Name is Kim Sam Soon (MNIKSS), then Gokusen (mainly because of the MatsuJun goodness, for Ceres). Since I watched Gokusen on YouTube (courtesy of high-speed Internet in the Nagasaki University library :P), I watched Kim San Soon.

I'm not particularly a Koreanovela fan, but I liked MNIKSS. It made me laugh out loud pretty often. The heroine of the story is overweight, nearing her 30's, and has been unlucky in love: think a Korean Bridget Jones. She gets hired (or maybe coerced?) into becoming the patissierie chef for a restaurant run by a demanding, well-dressed (to the highest level, I swear) and thus extremely attractive man 3 years her junior (Cyrus in the GMA version, according to my sister). Their story progresses with a major roadbump in the form of his ex-girlfriend. But all in all they have sex (done nicely, v. cute) and live happily ever after. :D

The lead actress actually gained 7 kg for this role! Wow. And here I was thinking she was naturally big-boned. :P Her character is very maternal, a bit coarse but she seems to have a lot of fun. She reminds me of my friend Mi Hee. She's not a martyr, but she's nice enough to be taken advantage of. I think she portrayed what it's like to feel your biological clock ticking and having no one to love you pretty well. A memorable line was, "I just want a man who loves me, who will treat me well and we can lead an average life together," or something like that. Maybe that's at heart what makes women happy: not riches, not fame, but love. *cue cheesy music* Anyway, she and her partner had great chemistry.

Her partner is Hyun Bin, who now has a whole folder in my laptop. Eye candy! I think it's his dimples, and that deep voice. When he and Sam Soon, the main character, end up together, he can be sweet and whiny and all in all little boy-ish, even though as an arrogant bastard he's pretty hot. And he (the character) plays the piano! And loves his niece v. much! Aww.

Also v. hot, but not with his own folder in my laptop, is Korean-American Daniel Henney. Now Hyun Bin is great, but he can't speak English. And with the sprinkling of Korean I've picked up, we wouldn't be able to talk. A fan who met him while they were shooting in Malaysia (WRONG SEAsian country! Augh!) said Hyun Bin was kind of aloof, while Dan was v. nice and accommodating. In the drama he also plays a nice guy, so I'm sold. Haha.

The ex-girlfriend is played by a dead ringer for Heart Evangelista! She's easy to hate: pretty, dimpled, skinny, fluent in English, and she gets to kiss/be kissed by Hyun Bin AND Daniel Henney. (T_T) Apparently she moved to Australia when she was 12, which explains the English. The character had her wearing all these feminine, floaty outfits. She really is v. pretty. (And has a nice set of teeth. :P)

All these got me thinking: Korea's great at spreading their culture through music, drama, etc. This allows so many of their hot (and not-so-hot, I mean look at Rain :P) stars and in turn Korea itself recognition the world over. Heck, there are whole sites, whole social networks founded on a common love for Korean pop culture.

We could learn from their example. Though I hardly think Maging Sino Ka Man or a similar drama would gain a loyal following in other countries (although Pangako Sayo and Esperanza was quite popular in Malaysia, I heard). There's a whole lot of talent in Philippine showbiz, if you know how to sift through all the flashes-in-the-pan and talentless mestizos. :P Who knows, someday soon Sam Milby (also of mixed blood, like Dan Henney) will be able to make the hearts of girls all over the world beat faster...Maybe.

Thanks to all my picture-hunting, I stumbled upon this blog. Yay for attractive men! And it featured John Lloyd Cruz, so this is truly an excellent site (with a minor booboo: they also had Carlos Agassi *rolls eyes*). I've bookmarked it already. :D

A Mundane and Whiny Post

Or how, at the very worst-case scenario, I could be delayed yet another year (never mind that I was delayed in the first place because of Japan, as it all boils down to DELAYED) because of a major. *sigh*

Please no.

When will all this be over??? Do not want to be some sort of chemical engineering goddess, as know this is not what I want to do for the rest of my life, but just want to graduate in 2009. That's all I ask.

Because they said it better.

First it was
You know, Mother Lucille, there's a psychological concept known as denial, that I believe you're evincing. It's when a thought is so hateful that the mind literally rejects it.
- Tobias Funke, Arrested Development

Then
This isn't just a spoke in my menstrual cycle.
- Veronica Sawyer, Heathers (BTW one of the. FUNNIEST. MOVIES. EVAARRR. :D)

Also had me wondering
I'm not sure if there is an exact definition for what we are, but I do think it falls somewhere in the bizarro friends-ish realm.

- Rory, Gilmore Girls

Which made me feel
Judas, you betray me!
- Wonsuk, Along Came Polly

But then
Mongo only pawn...in game of life.
- Mongo, Blazing Saddles (Also v. funny movie :D)

Confirming that
I guess I really will end up bitter and alone.
- Summer Roberts, The OC

And maybe I felt a little bit of
I want this guy dead! I want his family dead! I want his house burned to the ground! I want to go there in the middle of the night and piss on his ashes.
- Al Capone, The Untouchables

And this. This:
Pain, you just have to ride it out, hope it goes away on its own, hope the wound that caused it heals. There are no solutions, no easy answers, you just breathe deep and wait for it to subside. Most of the time pain can be managed but sometimes the pain gets you where you least expect it. Hits way below the belt and doesn't let up. Pain, you just have to fight through, because the truth is you can't outrun it and life always makes more.
- Meredith Grey, Grey's Anatomy

But really, it's just
I just want you to be happy, Mary.
- Ted, There's Something About Mary

And finally
Goodbye, Ichabod Crane. I curse the day you came into Sleepy Hollow.
- Katrina Van Tassel, Sleepy Hollow

Equilibrium

Yup. Can breathe again now.

This week not too acad-heavy, which bodes badly for the next week. Feel as if I am in limbo and just waiting for the sem to end, but then it's going to be summer and FOPC. *nail-biting ensues*

Bring it on, though.

Need to really write posts with more content. Maybe when I get my brain back...

flashes in the pan

Ugh, 197. Not too bad but it wasn't great.

I fear for the (society that the) mediocre chemical engineer I might end up being in the future (will serve).

I wonder who the excluded friend is. (It can't be me, right?)

I'm not sure what this is, but I'm happy when you're here. And I care when you aren't here, except maybe when he's here. Which kind of doesn't make sense and is kind of selfish.

I miss playing videogames.

Onse is gone! Goooone!

Glad to be with some of the coolest people in the planet. :)

Somebody watch The Promise with me. :P

The amazing new presentation software (and Gids' brainchild), FlashPoint! XD

A month to go. Go, go, go.

Back to the desert

That's what my mom will be in a couple of days. She leaves on Thursday so I have to go home on Wednesday for our last dinner together for maybe a year. Oh well. For the first time I actually feel really, truly, gut-wrenchingly sad that she'll be gone. :( It's so comforting to have her around pala. We finally get each other, so there was no major fight or dramatic crap. And we poke fun at my dad together, which is cool. Hehe.

Our 131 long exam is moved to ??? and Sir T moved the deadline for the 122 thingy to next week. Whew. I MUST learn this whole Excel thing. I mean, I only used it for tables and linear regression. And now I find out you can build a city using Excel (OK, so this is an exaggeration). What else...197, I think I did decently on the exam. Not great, but enough to pull up my grade (I hope). It's an elective but I'm hoping for a 2. That should tell you something about my first exam. Onse, as usual, is pain. I studied centroids, but just in 2D, and the lab turns out to be integration. Brilliant. Here's to my first to-drop subject ever, although people tell me I should not lose hope and battle it to the bitter end, where either a 3 or 5 await.

I miss having a GE. I actually miss wandering AS wearing my ID, having my neurons stimulated by a non-Engg topic, having a non-Engg dude to daydream about in class, browsing the book stalls in the AS Walk and (surprisingly) eating at CASAA. Hmm.

Sykes phoned me last week about my OJT application. Apparently the HR person wanted to endorse me to her boss, which is nice. I didn't pass an actual resume, just filled out the forms and chatted with the booth person. She was asking me when I could start, and I was all like, "Uh. When classes end. March." She said she was going to have to check with her boss, which means...what? A no? It's been 3 days excluding the weekend, and she hasn't called back.

Next week is going to be crazy. And not just because there's Valentine's Day. (Which is a total commercialization of love, and I say this not just because I'm single. Or not. :P)

A Non-Fairytale

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, there lived a prince. This prince wasn't classically handsome, or dashing, like princes in other fairytales. (This is, after all, a non-fairytale, but I'm getting ahead of myself.) Mainly he was funny and witty and had a smile that could light up a room. He had a good heart, and his subjects adored him.

There was a princess traveling through this prince's domain. She was on the run from the clutches of her evil stepmother, who hired some ninjas to find and get rid of her so that she [evil stepmom] could be queen. Now this princess, she was kind of socially inept, as she was practically raised by wolves and had been imprisoned in a cave for the past few years by said evil stepmother. She also had bad hair, zits and the grace of an ostrich, as expected from someone who lived in a cave without proper plumbing and ventilation. (Needless to say, this princess was not self-actualized at all.)

While on a cart filled with vegetables on the way to the capital of the prince's kingdom, she had the misfortune to sit beside a fat, snoring peasant who so obviously had not taken a bath in days. Good thing her other traveling companions were more pleasant, nice-smelling people, so she made fast friends with these two girls (also secretly princesses haunted by the shadows of their pasts, but that's for another story). When they arrived at the town square, it was like they'd known each other for a lifetime. And like all normal females, they cemented the bonds of friendship by primping in front of shop windows and loudly complaining about, among other things, the stinky peasant on the vegetable cart.

It was while primping in front of the bookshop that they noticed a beautiful white coach parked across the street. It turned out to be the prince's coach, unmistakable because of the royal seal, sleek design and the proletariat masses gathered around it having their pictures taken with the horses. At that moment, the prince and his bodyguard came out of the bookstore, and one of the princess' newfound friends instantly recognized the bodyguard. It was her childhood playmate, now a tall, striking lad proficient in kung fu and handling firearms. This friend quickly rushed over to the bodyguard to greet him, while he thought she was going to attack the prince and karate-chopped her to unconsciousness. (He apologized later, though.) The point is, this was the prince and princess' first meeting.

The prince thought nothing of the princess. He didn't know her identity, and even if he did --- so what? It's not like she was pretty. But the princess was infatuated from that first moment that he smiled. The princess, as it happened, had a weakness for men with nice teeth (probably left over from the days of being raised by wolves, all of which had nice, sharp, shiny, white teeth). Of course, the princess knew that this was just something silly, and fully blamed her hormones, expecting the feeling to pass after a day or so.

But it didn't. The princess found a job as a lady's maid in the prince's court, and saw the prince everyday. The more she found out about him, the more she liked him, even with his bizarre antics and weird sense of humor. This prince was fundamentally kind, and extraordinary. Even when she had to go to a far-away land to be with her lady, she never stopped thinking of the prince. Even if all the odds were against her ever being with the prince, no matter how much she swore to stop adoring the prince with every fiber of her being, she always secretly held a twinkle of hope that they would be together someday. (AND she made an embarrassing gesture of affection that basically let the prince and the whole world know what she felt about him, probably unintentionally scaring the prince, or similar.)

So what happened? Well, the princess' stepmother died of a venereal disease (tsk tsk tsk) so the princess became queen of her own realm, a day's journey away from the prince's kingdom. Becoming queen had many benefits, and it moves one up the Jungian tree of self-actualization, as well as allow one to spend time with princes. She and the prince became...somewhat friends, and that's when it hit her: that was it. No matter how much she liked the prince, or strove to be more queenly to suit the prince, they were not going to be a golden royal couple.

But guess what? It was more than OK with the princess. Because she didn't want to be with the prince anymore, after she found out he was gay. (Just kidding.) She liked the prince as a person, respected him, thought he was the extra whipped cream in her frappucino, but it wasn't the all-consuming infatuation it used to be. The prince would always be special, but the princess had wasted enough time pining. (Besides, she had a harem of hot Japanese boys to cater to her every whim, so it really wasn't that bad.)

And they lived happily, not with each other, ever after.

THE END.

Mall of Asia (or not)

Finally made it to the great (literally) Mall of Asia after several months of whining to my family. It wasn't bad. It was just like SM Megamall on steroids, maybe?

I left the mall with:

1. A pair of nice blue flats. Yesss. I would've wanted them in red but due to my freakish, un-feminine, humonguous feet, that was all I could get.

2. Curiosity about the many Koreans buzzing in there. What are they doing here??? All of them studying English? Or maybe it's just cheaper to shop here. I swear, 1 out of 10 people in there was a Korean. [Note: I may be many things, but not racist. Nothing against them, really just wondering why there seems to be so many of them.]

3. Appreciation of the genius that is Henry Sy. He even had Mall of Asia designed in such a way that the fact that it was sinking a little every year [because of it being built on soft, reclaimed land] could be disguised. The roofs, I mean. And there's an SM in every major city in the country, practically! In any other country, a train station (or city hall, church, plaza...)would be considered the center of town, but in the Philippines it's...SM (and other malls).

4. Slight amusement. Or not. There was an alarming number of ugly old American + Filipina (with whole extended family in tow) couples, eating at family restaurants. But then again, there were some non-obese/hideously deformed young Caucasian + Filipina couples as well, so. There might not be a trend after all.

5. Realizations. Everyone in my family is a drama queen. Except for my dad, who is not female so is a drama...duke? We're all whiny, to certain degrees. But we all try. And that's what counts. Effort. :)

And newsflash! Chalk Magazine named John Lloyd Cruz the #2 hottest guy of 2006. :D