Wyndslash's blog

QotD: Fluent in...

If you could be fluent in any language (that you don't currently read or speak), which one would it be?

Mandarin. Technically, I currently can speak Fukien so that does not count as Chinese. XD

Wow!

It's been a really long time since I posted here. Again, but I haven't forgotten this place. It's where I keep coming back to, even though there's a lack of vox-user friends and comments. xD

So I'm a Japanese language teacher now. Making lesson plans is tough.

Yeah, I graduated from university on July. It was postponed a month because the swine flu epidemic reached our school. And uhm, now working at a small language school. The people are very nice and lovely, so the working environment is a big encouragement. :)

Post-studies stress

Great. I've finished my undergraduate studies, technically. The ceremony itself won't be until June. Already, my parents have found a new way to aggravate me and my mental instability.

They want me to take a second degree. Why not? Suuure. Bring it on. They want me to study Multimedia Arts. Sounds really interesting, right? Except that the basis for that decision is poor drawings in my youth. Also, they haven't seen the works from the other artists that I have, which just proves that I am not talented enough for it. True, you learn a new skill, but most times, if you don't have a knack for it, it's just a total waste of time.

Blah.

One last hurdle...

...at least before I graduate! I finally managed to put guns to the heads of my thesis mates and made them stay overnight at my house last weekend. I tied them to the chairs with laptops in front of them so they would stay put and type away. :)

I suppose a normal group wouldn't take that long to finish a thesis (it took us all Saturday night and all of Sunday!), but then I guess it depends on how lazy everyone is feeling like. Once we were able to settle down, we began reading very slowly and adding stuff to our RRL (very slowly too!). It doesn't help that lots of scholars use deep words and run-on sentences to make themselves sound academic!

In the end, however, we persevered and managed to churn out the first draft by 6 PM of Sunday. My thesis mate passed it to our mentor this afternoon, and we're going to meet up with him on Wednesday morning. Hopefully we won't have to change too much, and that we can have our defense next week, because I'm leaving for the States on April 1...

It's a long story. My family wanted to go for several reasons. My mom and sister went first, my brother's going on the 28th, and my dad and I are leaving on April 1st. I didn't want to go because of schoolwork and finals, but my dad wouldn't go without me and so that meant I had to go too, or suffer his indirect whining for the rest of the year. Well, I do want to go too, just not at such a crucial point in my academic life! He's offered to sacrifice his vacation for me several times, but I know I'll never hear the end of it if I took that offer! So I had all my finals scheduled; good thing my other professors are understanding.

And besides that, Holy Week is really the only time (this early in the year) when we can take a vacation as a whole family. My eldest sister, who is working in Singapore, will be leaving on the 2nd of April.

Let's hope everything goes well! :)

Busy busy busy

Thesis, OJT, graduation preparations and scholarship matters all rolled into 3 hellish months!

What fun this will be!

x_x

The good stuff in life...and why doesn't vox automatically censor adult stuff?

I finished two books just recently; Eat Cake and How to Marry a Duke. The latter is a compilation of three semi-erotic short stories on romance, and the former is a novel. Frankly, I've always enjoyed novels like Eat Cake, where the mood is light but the philosophical reflections are more realistic but not as heavy.

Eat Cake

How To Marry A Duke

And on to my brief rant on censorship. I wish Vox would automatically censor items of an adult nature. I hate clicking 'Explore Vox' then getting horribly surprised when I see uploads by other people of an adult nature. For example, I just got another surprise when I scrolled down and saw videos of a woman giving a blowjob. EW. I don't think these people would voluntary click the 'exclude from public explore pages' checkbox. I guess they don't think it's offensive. x_x

On losing weight and being good

Bridget Jones's Diary: A Novel

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

How to Be Good

At this rate, I have probably read almost all of the books in my sister's shelf. The rest I do not find that interesting.

I find it more interesting reading about the love lives of other people, for lack of one. Maybe someday I will have a boyfriend, or even a husband and a family, but it will never be as glamorous as book romances. Because book romances aren't real, at least in my point of view. Marriage in real life is boring, and you get to hate each other once you've been together long enough. You also don't get to have as much sex as when you were newlyweds. Maybe that's why so many people are into pre-marital sex. By the time the children are old enough and leave home, you two are just old and don't have the energy to go at it. Besides, who'd want to look at each other's sagging, naked flesh?

How to be Good is a story about a married couple, and it's not at all an exciting story about them. In fact, they are tired of each other but soon realize that they would be worse off if they divorce, so they don't. Instead, the husband finds a renewed spiritual purpose in life, and the wife puts up with it. The ending is anti-climatic, but it is so very reminiscent of real life.

Shopaholic movie

It's apparently going to be released on February of 2009.

Isla Fisher is going to play Rebecca Bloomwood and Hugh Dancy as Luke Brandon.

No offense to Hugh, but his looks weren't exactly what I thought of Luke (I thought he looked a bit gay, but then it might just be the angle of the picture; besides, the more I look at him, the more I'm getting used to it) as I read the books, though Isla Fisher fits the descriptions nicely. I've always imagined Luke, if he were a real person, to be very dominant and a bit rough-looking but hot.

Still, I am looking forward to seeing this, though you know what they say about books and movies being adapted to it.

On a roll

Well, so for last weekend I read more books! That's right, I went sneaking into my eldest sister's bookshelf and found some books I haven't read yet, specifically the last two installments of the Shopaholic series (don't remember if I've already read Shopaholic & Sister, but who cares) , so I decided to read it, and after that, I decided to re-read the first three books in the series as well.

I honestly love the author's male lead character, which is Luke Brandon. Very masculine.

I also really much wanted to bash Venetia Carter's face on the wall after all her antics.

But of course, it all ended well, much to my relief and expectation.

And then I got a bit sad after, just because I always get that way after finishing a series of books or a very long book. By the time I'm finished, I'm already very much connected to the characters, and in a way, finishing reading them means that that is the extent of their life span between the covers.

So I re-read and read more books. The list is below, though not in any chronological order. Besides, it's nice to see the covers as well.

Confessions of a Shopaholic

Shopaholic Takes Manhattan

Shopaholic Ties the Knot

Shopaholic & Sister

Shopaholic & Baby

Jane Austen's Guide to Romance

The Guy Next Door (UK Edition)

A lovely day

Yes, it's shaping up to be a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and I've just finished reading the book I started last night. After some suspense and nail-biting, it was a nicely put-together novel. Of course, the fact that I've peeked at later chapters once in a while did help to ease the tension.

The Debutante Divorcee

Plum Sykes

It's basically about a newlywed girl meeting a bunch of so-called Debutante Divorcees, and chapters of celebrating the blessed, single life. Except for said newlywed, since someone is out to get her spouse. I can't spill too much, and I do write a rotten review just because I'm too excited. It would definitely make a nice read on a boring afternoon.

Yes, I've also changed my layout again. I might change it again soon. There are too many nice ones, and I can't be bothered to make a personalized banner. ;)