Start of 2011 post. Nothing new in particular, except that I hope that the Year of the Rabbit won't maul me like the Year of the Tiger has...check that, I hope my luck finally improves and I get all I need and want this year, because God knows I've been putting in three times more effort into looking for a job and finding stability than when I started living in Australia 5 years back.
This week is all in the 30's and up on the Centigrade scale.
I hate the heat. If it were somehow possible for me to joing an Antarctic Expedition for the next couple of years and STILL be able to do the Mech Workshop projects and mech modelling in general, I'd jump for it--Australia isn't that far away from Antarctica, but mail comes VERY slowly down there. Still get skeptical looks from people whenever I complain--after all, they say: "You're from a tropical country, you should be used to the heat." Why do you THINK I moved to Melbourne? It's wonderfully cold without being icy between May-September, and most times, March-April and October-December weather isn't too bad. MOST times. It's start of November, and we're on Day 3 of scorchers (from my perspective). Won't see the 20-degree temperatures until Sunday, I'm afraid. Also--finally read Orson Scott Card's book "Empire". I'm not American and really, REALLY don't like Politics in general, so whatever the Left or Right have to say good or bad about it, I don't really care. Personally, the criticisms levelled at the book probably would never have happened had Card written about a foreign or fictional country, but since the story takes place in America, some feathers were definitely ruffled. Back to the book--Not bad, and I can understand the criticisms levelled at the book, but it's an overall fun read. Which I think is a bit of the problem--I loved OSC's "Ender's Game", but felt that the sequels weren't as engaging character-wise. Empire at least is a bit different in direction, but I read the main characters and can't help but compare Cole with Bean (any OSC reader will know my reference) and Rube with Ender himself. Not personality-wise, but in terms of character dynamic. Don't get me wrong--Empire is a good sit-down entertainment, and Card does raise some valid points (Roman Empire comparisons to the US and how they fall flat). But I don't think people should be taking the book as seriously as they have been; again, maybe because I'm apolitical and not American, I may have a skewed view. Then again, Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" was most controversial back in the 1950's because it advocated a volunteer military. Also: Apology to OSC himself--I haven't read his books in a LONG while, and only read Empire because of it's connections to the (fantastic!) X360 platform game Shadow Complex. Well, I suppose allowing the Idolm@ster Revoltechs to play with the McFarlane Halo 3 figures wasn't the best of ideas...Haruka just loves dual-wielding those Brute Spikers. Slow going lately. Began seeing a chiropractor to hopefully help with my posture problems and blash. Never really been a fan of massages and other touchy-feely hands-on care, so me seeing a Chiro is like most people seeing the Dentist.
Anyway, it wasn't so bad. Though he did warn me that my next session might be a bit more 'ouch'... I feel terrible. Cough, backache, mild headache. For no apparent reason. And it's wonderfully sunny outside. I don't like the heat and humidity, but the outside looks good today.
Trouble is I'm all over the place, and not in the best of moods. This is Decade's fault. This is all Decade's fault. I'm sure you'll hear me complain about that at least as often as I complain about Murphy and Finagle and Sod and all those in-between. Does anybody ever freaking READ anymore? I mean, not podcasting, not webcasting, not twits, blogs or facebook. I mean, READ.
Books. Paper, plain text. INTELLIGENT STORY-F###NG-TELLING. I thought it was bad ages ago when I heard people sayign they won't bother with books, they'll wait for the movie--and if the movie never happens, they say it isn't worth looking up. People ask me why do I waste my time writing fanfiction--sad point is that it's the only thing most people read anymore. I mean, look at the Star Wars and Star Trek spinoff novels and stories--those are essentially fanfiction. Paid fanfiction. People don't read them because they're good storytelling or anything--they're read because the fans want to hear more stories about Television/movie/comic-book characters they like. Story depth and quality (to say nothing of writing!) play absolutely no part in it. I've just been to a Postgrad Open Day at Swinburne University and was really taken with the idea of getting a Graduate Degree in Writing. I love the idea of it--becoming a legit creative writer--but it's easily tempered by the fact that the audience I seek also happens to be the audience that probably couldn't get past my first paragraph. Because seriously, a writer has to write to the future. And if the future can no longer be bothered to read...what then? Skeleton version of the page is up, mostly just placeholders. Weebly works a bit differently to the old Geocities and other upload-only web services, so I'm getting used to this. On the one hand it's easier to start up and make new pages. On the other...well, I guess I'm too much of an old-school HTML codemonkey, so I'm still fumbling around with CSS and HTML formats where I can.
But overall this a good site. Hope to make the most of it. For those of you familiar with my old Geocities Shiori Shrine, no--I'm not going to recreate that here, this is a new site and fresh start. I'll probably include some elements from that site, but this is a completely new website and I'd like to keep it that way. It's always evolving. |