Sequence Without Before and After

Beware of convoluted sentences

2009-12-26T08:22:25Z

Those $10 LJ coupons? I'm afraid that sending those to people without them asking me to can be seen as rude - yeah, I did that, before I fully understood what those coupons mean. Really, LJ. It would've been better if you, say, give each of us three $5 coupons, so we can give two months of paid accounts to three fellow users.

On December last year I posted a lot of entries and drabbles at lilacfield. Compare that with this December. -_- My excuse is none other than NaNo 2009 and year's end work.

Last night I managed 1,500 words of non-fiction, with the help of caffeine and while watching snatches of Legend of the Condor Heroes 1983. I agree that every Huang Rong actress might have brought some of her own personality into the role, though IMO not so much in the case of Ariel Lin - her cute acts are more like something the director tells her to pull, and her mature Huang Rong is the work of a seasoned actress.

Happy Saturday, folks

2009-12-19T02:27:39Z

Random personal fact: I type using what Indonesians call "eleven fingers," meaning I mostly use my middle fingers, while the other ones do very little. I find nothing shameful about this.

Yao Ming urged China to say no to shark fin soup because the excessive hunting endangers them and deprives them of their habitat.

A Campaign to Combat Suicide: During the five years since he retired, a former policeman has been on a mission to stop suicides at Tojimbo, one of the best-known places for suicide in Japan. He now has 77 volunteers and they have saved 222 lives. The article makes me think how loneliness can drive you to extreme measures, unless you're strong enough to face it, but it does tend to wear you down.

The best of 2009:
Word or phrase: "2009 was pulling my act together."
Shop: DVDs, I guess? I bought the Heaven Sword Dragon Saber 1986 and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince original DVDs.

Looking back

2009-12-13T23:26:06Z

The Best of 2009 blog challenge. I wish I'd heard of this before December started. Not that I discovered that many new things during 2009. I might start doing it now, although not in daily posts.

Challenge: Goes without saying, doesn't it? The NaNo novel. It keeps me writing and may even make me finish a story.
The best place: FAB Cafe, Gramedia bookstore, Grand Indonesia. A great place to write. It's also the place where this picture was taken.
New food: ...Would you believe me if said I just discovered cordon bleu this year?

Saint Seiya The Lost Canvas 154

Interesting color illustration of a two-faced Gemini.

Defteros and Aspros are fiercer than Saga and Kanon, and personality-wise, they don't remind me that much of the later Gemini twins. Thankfully.

Genromaoken: a version of Minos's strings?

BUT WHAT IS THIS. The Pope choosing Sagittarius over Gemini, again. And the older Gemini becoming frustrated and WHOA EVIL as a result, again. orz

At least now we know how Defteros knows about Athena's blood?

Happy day

2009-12-10T08:31:29Z

This morning I was thinking, "I need more bookmarks." (The RL kind, the ones made of paper) Then a package from lurk_stiltzkin arrived, containing, among other things - a Fullmetal Alchemist bookmark set.

♥

I watched Ninja Assassin. Awesome movie, if you like body parts being sliced off and blood flood.

So how's your weekend?

2009-12-06T03:17:48Z

These days I try to vary my reading, i.e. I don't read two books by the same author in succession.

Speaking of, I found the paperback and translated version of Jin Yong's Tian Long Ba Bu in an online store, and the price at US$ would be about $60. To me that's just too expensive for one single book. I know it's more than 3,000 pages long but still.

The article about Indonesian NaNo-ers is planned for publication on the December 13th edition of The Jakarta Post.

Saint Seiya The Lost Canvas 152

Teshirogi was sad because in TOS Saga and Kanon are never shown to be actually fighting, so she went and wrote a clash between the previous Gemini brothers. I can think of no other explanation.

And the fourth OVA will be on sale in late December, instead of this month. No wonder I can't find the episodes anywhere.

474

2009-12-03T01:06:21Z

Naruto 474: There may be a lot of screwy logic in this chapter but Sai's revelation breaks my heart. Maybe in a good way.
And Gaara. The kid has grown up most satisfyingly.

Long weekend

2009-11-27T03:03:27Z

From LJ-dom:
Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile."
I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity
Update your journal with the answers to the questions
Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions

We Indonesians are having a long weekend, thanks to Eid ul Adha, which is today.

I've been having this idea of making posts about writing wuxia but but (insert multiple headdesking here) presumptuous doesn't even begin to cover this.

From here.

Type 1: The perfectionists. These are the people who find it almost impossible to contain their inner editors, who go back and correct spelling and grammar and change words every five minutes, and who frequently have days when they don't write because they want to keep the plot on track because it's important to them that the book makes sense.

Type 2: The people who just write anything, even if it doesn't really make a coherent story, just to get word count. These people ignore the fact that it'll take months to edit and just focus on finishing and getting that 50k or whatever their goal is, and it doesn't worry them that their plot makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

I'm type 1.5. I do go back and correct grammar and typos, and sometimes add more details, but I dare not spend days not writing anything.

Warning: This post is written by a fangirl

2009-11-26T04:57:20Z

The most embarrassing dream last night: I meet Zhou Xun (2003's Huang Rong) and it turns out she speaks passable English so we talk for some time. *brb headdesking forever* This might have been caused by me being excited that she's going to play Xiao Ao Jiang Hu's Ren Yingying. Opposite Kaneshiro Takeshi, not Li Yapeng. (News)

Saint Seiya The Lost Canvas 151:

No matter how many times I see it, the full version of Athena Cloth is always awesome.

LOL Dohko is a snatcher. (...I don't think that English word is a perfect translation, but it's pretty close)

Defteros, manly as always. *sporfles*

In today's episode of NaNo Ate My Life and Won't Even Spit It Back Out

2009-11-21T14:47:02Z

Rokkaku releases an album. Standard upbeat music - I wonder where the songwriters from the early 2000's have gone to?

An important lesson I've learned from NaNo but one that I always forget come December (probably because I'm usually dead by then): People are able to write 2,000 to 3,000 words a day because they're used to writing. They know what they want to do with the next sentence, they know how to keep the characters' personalities consistent, they know what keeps them invested in the story and what doesn't. It really is something you learn from continuous practice and nowhere else.

I feel like re-reading my Michael Ondaatje novels but I'm not even catching up with the new books. orz

Trying things out/please move on

2009-11-04T16:28:40Z

Write or Die has a progress bar now. Mine for day 4:

Your result for If you were water... quiz...

Iceberg

If you were smaller and more hard edged you'd be straight out of a tray from the freezer.

You killed the titanic! Just kidding, but if you had you probably wouldn't have been overly sentimental about it. Not that you're viscious, you just don't really care about a lot of things. You seem pretty cold and calculating. True, the world needs logical minds, and you're probably very good at staying calm and planning things out carefully, but it's important to balance that. Remember, icebergs look nice, but most of them is hidden below the surface. No one really knows you because you don't open up to people. It might help if you remember, that no one is perfect, so don't try to be, and don't expect other people to be. If a giant massive ship full of screaming idiots is about to crash into you, get out of the way! (ie, accept that some people aren't as smart or sensible as you, and work around that rather than holding them in contempt.) This might all seem a bit harsh, but you can take it because you probably understand more than you let on. Don't afraid to feel, or let others see that you do. Start melting.

you scored 28% Energy, 48% Complexity, 69% Direction and 56% Size.

Here's what the variables mean:

High Energy: Energetic, passionate, hyper.

Low Energy: Calm, cold, collected.

High Complexity: complicated personality, interesting, original maybe a bit eccentric.

Low Complexity: Simple, straightforward, traditional, maybe a bit boring

High Direction: ordered, organized, everything planned ou

Low Direction: chaotic, unplanned, let fate or whims decide.

High Size: Big ideas, big physical size, maybe a bit arrogant.

Low Size: Smaller ideas or plans, humble, smaller in physical size.

Take If you were water... quiz at HelloQuizzy

Hit me baby one more time

2009-11-03T02:11:43Z

And this is why I haven't been drinking soft drinks for the past couple of years.

These days I talk about nothing but:

. wuxia
Xiao Ao Jiang Hu: Finished the book yesterday, all 1,141 .pdf pages of it. Two more Jin Yong novels await.
Heaven Sword Dragon Saber 2009: Whose idea is it to broadcast two episodes per day and release the DVD simultaneously anyway? The story flow gets better after all the kid actors are gone, fighting choreography is decent, and acting is good.

. NaNo
I'm still using migratory's 2007 calendar to keep track of the ideal daily output. (Nnn, don't ask about yesterday's wordcount. There was a general blackout and I had to use Sai's battery wisely)

. wuxia and NaNo
I've promised myself to use English terms when writing wuxia, which is also a useful choice wordcount-wise, e.g. First Brother instead of dashixiong - that's two words, not one. No, I'm not writing a Xiao Ao Jiang Hu fanfic.

Live report

2009-11-01T06:15:57Z

I'm at Oh La La Cafe, Pondok Indah Mall, South Jakarta, NaNo-ing with two other Indonesian NaNo-ers, clueless_psycho and Dee (picture). I'm wearing the Seigaku pin brooch from februaryfour, though of course you can't tell from that distance.

A fangirl by any other name would be as hyper

2009-10-27T01:12:15Z

Code:Breaker 62

A great believer in the usefulness of cannon fodder is Kamijou.

It's too bad shadow manipulation is a ninja-only technique. I wouldn't mind incorporating it in a wuxia story.

I wonder why people IRL sometimes mistakenly call me Eva. Sometimes, also, I don't bother correcting them. (Am not irritated or anything, just amused)

Via issen4: The anatomy of a Hello Kitty toy. That's...creepy-cute? lol.

With strings attached?

2009-10-21T00:51:50Z

Pixar intro parody behind the cut.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

+ Someone compiled a list of differences between the 1983 version and the novel. It's a pretty long list and hasn't even touched on season 3 yet.

+ Qiu Qianren's actor was 70 years old in 1983, wow. I guess he must've been an exceptionally fit person, since he could still do some of his own stunts.

+ Mei Chaofeng looks ugly in 1983 because the series goes by the first edition, where she grows uglier as she practices the White Bone Claw.

Dreamhost offers two years of free hosting for Geocities refugees. Since I already have my own domain and all that...

Countdowns

2009-10-15T13:57:50Z

The closer it gets to NaNo, the more bunnies there are. *wants to glare balefully, doesn't know where to look* I've been reassured that this is pretty normal, which doesn't make it less annoying.

I'm very slowly catching up with Darker Than Black season 1 (thanks, guys). Ahh, Kanno Youko's piano and jazzy scores :) The series hasn't gotten too cerebral yet, and I like listening to Kiuchi Hidenobu when he's not being *~sultry and sexy~* like he does in TeniPuri.

The Arctic ice cap will disappear completely in summer months within 20 to 30 years. The global climate change is also believed to trigger earthquakes. I guess having more Earth Hours would be a good place to start?

Obviously one has to forget about sleeping in order to accomplish this

2009-10-12T10:11:04Z

I plan to work on two stories at once this upcoming November.
...
Having stated this outrageous intention, I can only see two possible outcomes: 1) I'll gradually grow scared and even more scared, and settle for just one story 2) I'll feel compelled to prove that I can do it, given enough caffeine. We'll just see which one it's going to be.

I've finished Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, and a list of books I've started reading and haven't finished yet already awaits.

All Under Heaven: A Complete History of China - Rayne Kruger
The use of the Wade-Giles romanization system rather than pinyin disappoints me, but since I've acquired the book, I might as well read it.

The Silmarillion - JRR Tolkien
The stately writing style can be a bit hypnotic at times.

Mass Communication Theory: Foundations, Ferment, and Future - Stanley J. Baran and Dennis K. Davis
Mass communication theories, mostly from a historical POV.

Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Source - Martin Lings
The account is of a different style than that of the sirah nabawwiyah usually translated into Bahasa Indonesia.

And of course, Jin Yong novels - which, sadly, can only be read on my cell phone or a computer.

Xiao Ao Jiang Hu - I've read it up to chapter 23 (there's a total of 144 chapters in this translation).

. The English titles differ, from The Smiling Proud Wanderer (most commonly used), State of Divinity (said to be inaccurate), to Laughing in the Wind (mostly used for the 2001 TV series).

. The only TV adaptation I've watched is the 1984 version. Now that I've read the novel, I think the inimitable Chow Yun-fat is perfect as Linghu Chong - smart, worldly, a little wicked but also kind-hearted. I'd like to watch the 2001 version, since Li Yapeng's Linghu Chong is said to be his best portrayed wuxia role, and because Linghu Chong's personality is worlds apart from Guo Jing's. *laughs*

. In the novel, ~~Uchiha Sasuke~~ Lin Pingzhi is described as "pretty like a girl". This description definitely doesn't physically suit 2001's Li Jie, let alone 1984's Tung Wei, but, Tung Wei being all kinds of awesome, it doesn't bother me at all.

Tian Long Ba Bu - I've only read a few paragraphs.

. Since I had to reformat the entire e-book, I've accidentally read the ending, meaning I've been spoiled about what finally happens to the villain. (lol)

. The only TV adaptation I've watched is the 1981 one, and my memory about it is blurry, maybe because I was still very young then. Two things that stand out to me, though, are:
- Cecilia Wong looks absolutely, absolutely lovely (as you can see, I've been a fangirl since an early age :D)
- In the beginning, every time Duan Yu, one of the male MCs, meets a girl and grows fond of her, she turns out to be her half-sister or otherwise related to him. His father was, er, something of a busy (cough) man during his younger days, you see. I want to know what my much younger self thought of this, ahaha.
For some weird reason, this version changes the characters' names into Anglo-Saxon (e.g. Joseph, Kelvin, Julie) ones. *_*

In lieu of a useful post

2009-10-11T06:41:13Z

the THIS or THAT meme

Dear laptop: please be able to connect to the internet, I'm begging you.

Things I'm interested in at the moment

2009-10-08T10:23:15Z

The beginning of Anansi Boys is reminiscent of The Silmarillion's. Or maybe that's the whole idea.

I used to have Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad. Did I give it away? *tries to remember*

These days I know where to get wuxia series, but not older anime series. Which sucks, since I still want to watch Darker Than Black all the way to the end.

Writing softwares like these tend to make me slightly nervous, perhaps because they imply planning and discipline in a greater amount than what I'm willing to tolerate, being a total pantser.

I don't have a Seigaku-related icon for this account, do I?

2009-10-07T03:02:53Z

Tezuka's latest album: the new arrangements sometimes tamper with the original too much. Still a fun listen, though.

Code:Breaker 60

Kamijou likes the dominatrix type, eh? In Samurai Deeper KYO, said dominatrix is a transsexual, while here it is a girl.

Also, adorable domestic life is adorable.

Doing everything but write

2009-09-28T14:06:02Z

Saint Seiya The Lost Canvas 131-134

What made Teshirogi think we want to see a rehash of the Shiryuu vs Algol battle?

That's the second time this year I saw a dead female character being used as a puppet.

134: The first real surprise I had after many a chapter.

Results from puttering around in WuxiaSociety:
Ancient Chinese weapons
(Is there a special requirement for fans that are to be wielded as weapons?)
Wuxia salutations
(However, I've resolved to use the language I write in when it comes to salutations, rather than using the original terms, if only to make the whole story more accessible to readers)
Mini-bios of popular sects and schools
On internal strength
Also:
Brief Introduction to Chinese Culture: Colors in Traditional Chinese Culture

Mobile posting doesn't allow for paragraph breaks

2009-09-23T01:17:01Z

* Bought a tube of facial foam & just saw that it's for "fine-wrinkle care". Talk about realizing one's age, lol. * Have been contemplating NaNo ideas. Fun activity, contemplating. * Bought a hardcover copy of HP7 since there was a sale. My 1st time ever buying a HP book.

Post from mobile portal m.livejournal.com

Just passing through

2009-09-15T06:52:38Z

E-book: Hi Eve, I'm Jin Yong's Xiao Ao Jiang Hu, in e-book format! And I'm 2,402 pages long! Hope we'll have fun times together!
Eve: T_T

I also acquired two other Jin Yong e-books, Xueshan Fei Hu and Tian Long Ba Bu. All are Indonesian translations from way back when. TLBB is still written in 1950's Indonesian spelling, so I changed around a few letters in MS Word.

I also have to get used to Fujianese romanization again.

Slow progress is slow

2009-09-12T01:41:09Z

I've been reading sites on blood type diets. What do you mean my type should avoid caffeine :(

Contributed another 800 words toward my getyourwordsout goal, after having not written since the end of August. I've also been editing the novel and dicovered,
that a literary pugilist's weapon of choice need not always be a writing brush.
scenes that prove I enjoy working on this story, despite the mental stumbling blocks.

Seven days of sharing, day seven.
day one. a song
day two. a picture
day three. a book/ebook/fanfic
day four. a site
day five. a youtube clip
day six. a quote
day seven. whatever tickles your fancy

You might have seen this YouTube vid before before: a kitten tries either to harrass or shower luv on a bunny.

Reach for the moon, fall among the stars

2009-09-11T03:08:30Z

Seven days of sharing, day six.

day one. a song
day two. a picture
day three. a book/ebook/fanfic
day four. a site
day five. a youtube clip
day six. a quote
day seven. whatever tickles your fancy

Your dream is not big enough if it doesn't scare you. - Matthias Schmelz

There's a possibility that you're the nervous type who'd get scared in any case, but I dig the point.

Embeds this time around

2009-09-10T01:29:44Z

Seven days of sharing, day five.
day one. a song
day two. a picture
day three. a book/ebook/fanfic
day four. a site
day five. a youtube clip
day six. a quote
day seven. whatever tickles your fancy

Legend of the Condor Heroes 2003:
The "making of" segment from the final episode.

The openings for two early-2000's mecha series that I watched and used to like, RahXephon ("Hemisphere") and Argento Soma ("Silent Wind"). Listening to "Hemisphere" is like listening to rapid bursts of emotion, while "Silent Wind" is more mellow and poignant. (There's an Indonesian pilot in RahXephon and her character made us Indonesians go LOLWHUT)