Have been very, very bad. it's been weeks since i last updated. it's silly. back in school, and i can't even claim to be all that busy...

why haven't i blogged? well, partially it was the disgust when i last tried to update and the update failed and i lost my text when it got replaced with bits of someone else's _spanish_ blog. i can't even conceive how a mess up like that could happen, so i won't rack my brain trying.

so let me start off with what's been happening:
in short:
i'm back in school. this is the end of the 1st week. i'll comment on classes later. been involved in the singaporean student's association, and a couple of extremely addictive computer games. away from nessa. feeling slightly lonely already, but still content. been busy and involved in stuff so can say i'm distracted.

details:

i hate flying JAL. food is inedible. seats are cramped. everything's in japanese. ugh.

We played late night football again early this week. &(&#@ cold outside. =( in either case figured i'd better get back in shape because i suck these days. attempt to make 1 1/2 rounds round the campus on thursday was stymied by a)steeeeep hill leading up to my dorm (should have run the other way around the campus, dammit) and b) early onset of night (and thus a plunge in local temperature. still completed the ~4-5klick route, so relatively satisfied.

have watched till ep 18 of Read or Die. excellent anime. can't wait for the rest to turn up. have also finished season 3 of babylon 5. straczynski is very good at the long plot, and playing off his hooks against new events, though i think gaiman's work on sandman (another 5 year piece i might add) was better done. bab 5 is cool.

getting more involved with my batch of s'poreans during the CNY season. don't know if this is a good thing. *wry grin* they remind me of home, in their attitudes. when i cracked a suggestion that a particular relationship may have been homosexual, they went "please, they're both girls." they were also pestering me for ang pows, being the closest to married. wonder how they'd react if they realise that most of my closer friends are bi or gay.... and that i'm bi myself. i feel a little like an outsider in that bunch, and practicality asks if it's worth the trouble of hanging out for what little company there can be... d just made me realise that no one likes acting like something they're not... and if that's really the price of hanging around with the SMSA, maybe i won't bother.

addictive games!!!! i now have an alpha of the open source version of starcon 2. i'm not doing the campaign because it'll probably crash mid-game, but i am playing hypermelee! chmrr rock!!!!!!!!gunbound has consumed 10 hours of consecutive gaming too. i won't release websites or stuff. enough people have been contaminated by it's horrible taint.
one thing i wonder though, is why people are so abusive playing gunbound. it's just a game, after all... online games really do have a tendency to become the province of experienced and committed players, who will lord their superiority over the casual players till they drive them all away. which turns an "open" community into a closed one. hm... similar effects probably take place in most discussion forums, both real world and on-line. it takes central direction and a committment to openness to counter this trend.... bears thinking about, no?

class: i don't know if i have too many or too little! i know people with more, and i'm competitive enough to want more. but i already have an upper division class, and my rhetoric class is bleeding scary. prof young says: "we don't want to teach you the basics of writing, but to be great writers with style" ouch! poor engineer me has a nasty sem ahead of himself. *grin* but hopefully can probably handle it. am sharpening (metaphorical) knives and readying mental armour already. amsuing i think of myself as "mage", but when faced with conflict what i want is a nice _sharp_ bladed implement to dice things with. (more like leave embedded in various major arteries, but you get the idea)

hm... speaking of self-image: what do you guys have in mind when you think of yourselves? i mean, idealised self-image, if that's even an applicable concept. given your favourite game systems (or within each game system) what char would you think is the coolest (note it doesn't have to be realistic) version of you?
me:
Cyperpunk: either a really cybered street sam (full body replacement. like briareos in appleseed) or decker. (mage imagery again)
WoD: glass walker philodox, but with max freebie points on rage
DnD: battlemage. duh. i like the elven bladesingers. good mix of spells and combat.
damn i like killing things too much. blood thirsty maniac....

sorry, D, two corrections:
aragorn is 87. theoden probably hasn't reached 60, so A is older than T. and quite a bit too...
the witch king "cannot be killed by man." unless eomer is a eunuch, the wraith is immune to the worst eomer can throw at him. legolas and gimli are not men. moreover, gimli may very well be female. ergo, they're the logical people to kill the wraith lord. of course, you can argue for a horse, and olifant, a ghost, another ringwraith or random sheep (when the people of minas tirith are forced to fling livestock at invaders due to a lack of masonry. this is the most embarassing way to die, in all probability. except for the common cold, but it's questionable if the undead are vulnerable to disease)

some ROTK/DnD notes:
yeah, why doesn't aragorn ride into battle? all the big shots do. he inspires his people on a horse, rides up the the gate to piss of sauron, then dismounts to fight. someone is missing the mounted combat feat, obviously.
aragorn's bracers are boromir's. think he

okay. i'll fill in the gap later

thinking about something C posted on her blog, about where we belong, and i think my only real answer (for myself, of course) is "among friends." mostly because i have a rather prickly personality and it takes friends to know who i am and where i'm coming from. ;)

went to fremantle today: crepe suzette's is as good as ever! (Chicken aquilera crepe with chese, mushrooms and mayo!!! yum!) it's in fremantle markets, along one of the walls. you'll have to search, dear reader.

into camelot had some really nice outfits on sale today. but at $900 for a gown (yes, no mistype. that's 2 zeros and no decimal point), it's seriously overbudget. nessa intends to get some of their stuff for our wedding. (i think the one we saw today was really gorgeous, even though it screamed "bride of dracula!" to me. nessa says it looks like the one in vampire hunter D.)

love actually is actually a very, very good movie. detractors of the current US "administration" (haha. stupid name. call it a dictatorship and it'd be more appropriate) will love hugh grant as the british PM who finally stands up to the US "bully" (and yes, the movie does call the US a "bully") funny, touching. there could be problems with believability (so many people falling for each other in such close proximity) but it is rescued by some poignantly true relationships (rickman and thompson is a prime example, as is keira knightley's one). some relationships were just off the wall for the heck of it though, which is really cool. is it a fun movie? yes. is it a deep, serious, arthouse thing? nope. watch it for fun, but it's not nearly as silly as most hollywood fare.