That Was… Surreal…

I don’t usually dream. I’m usually too tired/boring to dream much, but when I do, it tends to be a tad too realistic for me.

Had a strange dream last night. Wasn’t particularly spectacular though, but I’m just wondering what it means…

Dreamt I was playing an acoustic version of Norah Jones’ Don’t Know Why to someone… not sure who it was, the details’ve gone fuzzy, but… the strange thing about it is, I started out playing Lucille, but suddenly, she started sounding and feeling different. And when I looked down, I was playing this weird hybrid acoustic guitar, a cross between a twelve and a six string… six for the bass strings, and three normal steel strings for the 1st to 3rd. I got dumbfounded and stopped, and started wondering if I’d accidentally taken someone else’s guitar by mistake [AS IF THAT EVER HAPPENS.].

I still can’t make sense of it.

[Edit]

… Interesting interpretation I found online. Corroborated with several sites, and they all say the same thing…

Guitar To dream that you have a guitar, or is playing one in a dream, signifies a merry gathering and serious love making. For a young woman to think it is unstrung or broken, foretells that disappointments in love are sure to overtake her. Upon hearing the weird music of a guitar, the dreamer should fortify herself against flattery and soft persuasion, for she is in danger of being tempted by a fascinating evil. If the dreamer be a man, he will be courted, and will be likely to lose his judgment under the wiles of seductive women. If you play on a guitar, your family affairs will be harmonious.

… oh dear. *keels over laughing*…

Right.. like that’ll ever happen…

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When Internal OSTs Repeat…

Tags

akai ito, bad names, benjamin, lego big morl, orange, ray

I’m not sure what it is about this particular song that I like, but… I do like lego big morl‘s sound, silly name aside. It’s not quite as dramatic as HY’s 366日, but it does stand out on its own in the 赤い糸 OST, even when used as a insert theme.

Think I shall do some hunting. This band seems promising.

… and it’s bloody amazing what kinda news appears on the BBC. This hilarious article hits a chord close to home for me, given my real name is kinda… embarassing at times. Gods though… For someone to be named Stan Still… or Olivier Moron… or Paige Turner… what were their parents THINKING?!…

Came across this book when I was doing random browsing at Kino. Tokyopop’s recently released an English translation of the original Chinese version, and it’s bloody gorgeous.

The book’s called Orange, by Benjamin Zhang Bin, an artist from Mainland China. The cover is deceptively happy. The theme of the book is the title character’s obsession with suicide.

It’s a rather easy, if disturbing read. The style is matter-of-fact, and brutally straightforward, and focuses on the internal monologue of Orange as she lives her life and thinks of ending it, simultaneously showcasing what life in China has become like in recent years [Book was published in 2006]. The impact of the book is both in the plot and in the art, so I’m not gonna say too much.

Worth a browse, at least, just for the art. He really does wonderful work, he does.

Protected: Of Sleep Debt and Fatigue.

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Of New Things and Silliness

Tags

17 again, kamen rider G, kurosagi, optimouse prime, skip beat, spectacles

… I have just put down a downpayment on a pair of Ojisan Megane. They’re Nikon frameless spectacles that look remarkably… salariman. I hope my head’s screwed on straight… but I do need a change from my current pair of spectacles, which, according to half the world, makes me look pissed off and homicidal, and, according to the other half of the world, sleepy.

… I’ll settle for ojisan, I guess…

Have just watched Skip Beat! 20… and I gnash my teeth at how kayu Ren is. Kyoko is so entertaining to watch though. かわいいがすぎる…

And… I have watched… KAMEN RIDER G… LOL. It was born from SMAP Challenge, where Goro decides that, to challenge himself, he wanted to be… a Kamen Rider. OMFG, it was HILARIOUS… His henshin involves shoving a bottle of wine into his belt… his sword [a huge G] has a corkscrew on the end of it… and his hissatsu waza is… Swirling Rider Kick… a rip off of Faiz’s Rider Kick, but one which so ridiculous I couldn’t stop laughing…

Random Poster Comparison!

… does this smell like partial rip off to you?…

I mean… similar clothes…

… similar hair…

… same WIND DIRECTION…

… *shakes head*…

Come on Hollywood, you can try a LITTLE harder than that, can’t you?…

I mean… even if you DID wanna rip off a movie poster… can’t you do it for a LESS RECENT MOVIE?!…

*is disappointed*

In other news… Optimouse Prime is about to be released. I’m not sure whether to keel over from the stupidity of it all, or laugh my head off… It IS cute, and it smells so heavily of cash cow milking I’m not sure what to say… and I sorta want her. I’ve never watched Kara no Kyoukai [空の境界] before, but she looks pretty good, somehow… We shall see what she looks like in the f… resin.

… work today was interesting, in a way. Getting old frail aunties and grandmas coming for operations is always kinda nerve-wracking at times. They’re usually sweet old things [with the occasional harpy], but today’s seemed especially frail and worried… Tried to talk them down as much as I could, but there’s nothing like watching their paper-thin, superficial veins blanche and empty of blood as you’re injecting drugs to seriously make your face turn pale…

Of Stupidity and Inadvertant Hurt.

Tags

akai ito

Just finished watching Episode 9… and I’m rather bemused about how everything can go to hell just from one wrong decision.

It’s a solid, well-put together episode, don’t get me wrong, which doesn’t take things too far down either the melodramatic path [though it swings perilously close], or the quick finish path [which most Jdrama serials seem to like to do around this time]… but I keep having this recurrent urge to smack Atsushi.

More in the full post… don’t want to spoil people who don’t wanna be spoiled…

[Spoiler Alert]

Things Done When Half-Dead…

Tags

anew, Gundam 00, lockon, natsume yuujincho, regnant

So... Does that mean it looks like I taste bad?...

One thing good about post-call days… I get to catch up with my life and interests. Even if I’m dead tired.

Natsume Yuujinchou ｢夏目友人帳」7 was lovely. The second of a 2 part arc featuring Taki, a girl likely descended from a priest lineage who can make Youkai visible via drawing symbols similar to pentagrams on the ground, it wraps up how Natsume, Nyanko-sensei and her manage to seal a demon who had cursed her so it’d eat any person whose name she said unless she saw it again within the space of 366 days. What makes this episode interesting is that Natsume temporarily loses his powers, and can no longer see the Youkai. The art is as usual simple, but gorgeous, especially the colors, and I’m constantly impressed at how they manage to make even simple, short burst action sequences exciting. And I love the quirky, understated humour. Even though it occasionally sends my mind down the gutter. [^^;]

Gundam 00 S2 20 was… rather WTF. In part thanks to the subs I downloaded… the buggers at gSS are OBVIOUSLY as pissed off at the new OP for the series as I am… since they dubbed their own version over it… with g33k1 male voices!… I’m not sure which version I can’t stand more… they BOTH sound like bad karaoke attempts… LOL. Oh, and Fullmetal Alchemist V2 starts 5th April. うれしい!

[SPOILER ALERT] Ye who values not know the story before ye watches… claw out your eyes now…

Be Careful What You Wish For.

Tags

murphy's law, superstitions

Doctors, no matter how vehemently they deny it, are a rather superstitious bunch. There are always some things that, by convention, should NEVER be done to jinx themselves, especially when while on call, where a 24 to 48 hour stint in the hospital is involved with all the accompanying fatigue and mayhem.

Locally, there are a few unique conventions, and some more universal ones. We don’t eat ‘pau’ [stuffed buns] on call, cuz it seems to herald the onset of body-bagging. Or bad things happening in general. If things are bad, we whine a bit to destress, but when things are good, we NEVER say something that will jinx it.

Today, I have suppressed the irrational urge to throttle one of the members of my call team. Several times.

Upon arrival at the operating theater at the beginning of the call, she took a look at the Emergency OT board [the case list bascially], and went ‘How boring.’

… which is equivalent to summoning Murphy and, while laughing at his law, slapping him in the face a few times with a wet towel.

Uneasy as I felt at that juncture, I had no idea she was going to say the fateful words ‘I love laparotomies!’

Today, I have been involved in six of the sickest laparotomies to date since stepping into this new hospital, together with a smorgasbord of small cases. Two were sent to ICU [where the MO on call there looked at me in despair as I transferred in the second case and went ‘GODS, I just admitted THREE!~’], at least… two that I know of… another three to High Dependency [cuz the ICU was full, and they were sorta stable enough to be extubated… and one of them decided to play havoc with me in the recovery by throwing atrial fibrillation despite being stable as a rock intraoperatively], and the last gave me a nice roller coaster ride, but was still relatively stable enough to be pushed up to the general ward under close monitoring.

When I finally staggered into the common room for dinner at about 8ish [having only spent about 15 minutes for lunch earlier… and no other breaks in between], said colleague looked up at me, slightly ashen faced, and said, ‘God, I’m so tired. I must’ve been involved in… twelve laparotomies today? All sick… and an [intracranial] aneurysm clipping…’

I’m writing this at… almost 6am in the morning… To say today was hellish would be a gross understatement.

Truly, be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

Reading Material. Graphical or Otherwise.

Tags

house of mystery, tad williams, the alcoholic, war of the flowers

Online conversations can usually lead you down strange avenues, depending on which avenues you deem fit to set off in pursuit of. Where shared interests are concerned, they tend to unveil lesser known things that you’d never have realized you’d like till you actually heard of them and gave them a try, seeing that they belonged to a similar genre to your own personal interests…

I currently await a copy of Tad Williams’ The War Of The Flowers to read. I’ve heard nothing but good things about it so far, and given how Tad hasn’t disappointed me yet, I’m hoping this lives up to expectations. I started off with Otherland, and I loved his standalone Tailchaser’s Song [yes, I’m a cat person], and the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series, so I’m feeling vaguely optimistic. Most of the other authors I’ve been following have been rather… inactive of late, and I need more reading material.

In other news, I’ve recently decided to cave and get my grubby mitts on the first issue of House of Mystery, which actually debuted in June 2008 by Vertigo. I’ve been tempted a long time, given the premise is centered around a house that serves as Limbo/Purgatory, sitting at the crossroads of reality, and which five lost souls have unwillingly made their home – the Poet, the Pirate, the Drama Queen, the Bartender, and the New Recruit. It’s interesting, since the house attacts only the finest storytellers, who pay with stories as currency. The stories, naturally, are macabre and fantastical, and bloody interesting, pun intended.

Those who’ve read Fables before would find the art style familiar, and this first book is fricking beautiful. The character stylings swing from modern day to Victorian/goth/steampunk to fantasy, and from a quick first read, the stories are solid, and the pacing well done. It makes me feel tempted to go hunting for the original House of Mystery series done from 1953 to 1981 actually, which I’d imagine would be bloody murder to obtain…

Still, this looks like a very promising new series to follow. Looks like my graphic novel shelves are gonna swell again…

Also happened to chance upon a rather interesting book called The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames. It’s a rather strange little tale about a drunken writer done autobiography-style, where he chronicles his life and his issues with drinking, drug addiction, experiments with homosexuality, and his failings in love. It’s done black and white, with a simple, yet effective graphical style that emphasizes how stark the story gets, and it’s rather interesting how he tells it factually, without trying to preach or vilify or condone what happens. There’s no attempt to show condemnation or redemption. It’s just a chronicle of events, and shows, in the end how the protagonist tries to piece together his life, with no indication of any permanence of success or failure in the light of constant ongoing temptation and the weakness of the human resolve. A fun read, and a sobering one at the same time.

I’ve started on the first fic. Both are gonna be HELL self-indulgent, but what the hell. My story, my rules. I’m entitled to torture my characters a little as long as it helps me vent a bit.

… I would SO not make a benevolent god.

Life’s Little Mysteries.

Strange how things pan out sometimes.

Was having lunch with an old med school friend today when he got a call from his family in KL, saying that his uncle had just got a heart attack, and they wanted him back to help them sort things out. Given that the treatment they were thinking of administering sounded kinda weird, he was worried, and decided to fly home for the weekend to oversee things, so he could make sure his uncle was ok. Gave him a lift to his place to grab his passport, then to the airport to take a flight to KL. We were lucky – he managed to get a flight out tonight to KL at a relatively decent time, so he should be home now and hopefully in the process of sorting things.

… Interesting how we just so happened to be having lunch when he got the call… Given he doesn’t drive, if I hadn’t been there… he would’ve taken a LOT longer to get to the airport… hell, he might have only just boarded a flight if he’d tried to get there on his own… Not sure if it’s his lucky day, or my not-so-lucky one. Ah well. As long as his uncle comes out of this ok, it’s all good. This country is pretty small after all, so it wasn’t a lot of extra driving…

Spent most of the night reading fanfic. Sadly, most of it was HD from HP. Not exactly as mind-scarring as some of the others I’ve read/been plugged, but still a little disturbing. Well-written, yesh. Disturbing content nonetheless? Yesh. It was a rather… epic length too. 15 Chapters. Moderately scary… what’s scarier is that it’s actually decently written for once, with occasional innuendo and… rather too much kissing, but no buttsecks like what most HYFGs end up doing…

Am currently planning two fics for Imaginary Beasts… not sure how I’m going to do them, exactly, but I’m starting to get some ideas.

Of Music and Birthdays…

Tags

aishiteiru, callin', hibi no uta, Ignited, kourin, shokudo

Have just managed to get my hands on Kourin ｢高鈴」‘s album Hibi no Uta 「ヒビノウタ」. It’s quietish, wistful, playful at parts, and overall, easy on the ears, at least on first listen. She reminds me quite a fair bit of Ayaka Hirahara and Rie Fu… kinda folksy, but nice to listen to. The lyrics are kinda cutesy… and probably only survive because they’re in Japanese… I think if anyone tried to sing some of the songs in English, I’d laugh myself sick… Still. I’m tempted to order the album proper… seems like something nice to shove into my car’s CD changer to put on loop. Especially for those days when I’m feeling whimsical.

Still… the main reason why I want this album is for the song 愛してる, the ending to season 2 of 续夏目友人帐… There’s something ridiculously haunting about the song. It’s either the simplicity and the elegance of the song… or the lyrics… can’t decide which. The PV just makes me want it even more, really… It’s simple, no frills, showing cut scenes from what look to be home videos… and is amazingly sweet somehow…

While still on the topic of music, I’m rather irritated with how… fragile Audio-Techinca earphones tend to be. Most notably, the stupid jack. My current pair of earbuds, after serving me ok for about 2 months, has decided that mono is the way to go, so I’m hearing everything out of my left ear now, while my right is left with sensory deprivation of epic proportions. This is the FIFTH time this has happened, and I’m getting rather tired of it… Even the generic Apple earbuds, crappy as they are, seem sturdier in construction and more durable. I’m starting to wonder if I should experiment with other brands, or just start using my old Sennheisers again… at least they’ve lasted me longer…

Attended a friend’s birthday party tonight. Rather unexpectedly. I ran into some friends at RapidCulture, a shop I frequent, and found that a friend of mine was having a birthday, and two of the people there were going down to Shokudo at City Hall, where the party was being held. Feeling rather aimless, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to tag along. This was probably a suicide wish given that my insomnia’s flared again in light of recent events, and I’d ended up sleeping at 0330h last night [giving me a total sleeping time of about… oh, 3 hours optimistically before I had to wake up for work…].

Still. Had some fun, at least. Said friend is a cosplayer, and it was a party consisting of about… 30ish people, most of whom also cosplay [… I don’t. I draw, and collect stuff. I haven’t tried cosplay yet, largely cuz I think I’d look bloody ridiculous cuz of my body habitus, and I’ve always preferred to be behind the camera instead of in front of it.], and it was to celebrate two birthdays, hers and another girl’s, both of whom had birthdays in the next 2 weeks. It was rather fun, watching them fangirl and squeal at the presents, and gush about the food… and it was worth it just to see her expression when one of the the prettier/andro girls in the group turned up dressed up as Lockon Stratos to wish her happy birthday. I think she nearly passed out from sheer joy.

Still, just like most cosplay events, I ended up watching em have fun, which always leaves me feeling rather lonely, somehow. I’ve always felt like a bystander ever since I started school, I think, and it’s funny how things haven’t changed over the last couple of decades, no matter what I’ve been trying to do. I mean… I’m happy that people appreciate that I turned up and all, but I can never seem to get into the action, so to speak… I’ve never really felt like a part of any group I’ve been in, and I’ve always wondered if it was just me, or them, or both. Watching them just reinforces that fact… Granted I’m not that close to this group, and I’m not a regular to all their events and shoots, but… watching them crowd excitedly around a Puri machine taking shots, and seeing them chat excitedly about nothing at all just makes me feel… old. And out of place.

So many years, so few answers. One wonders if there ever will be any.