Progressively Geriatric

SPriNg iS hERe ^_^

2009-09-01T20:20:00.006+10:00

Spring is here! The cherry blossoms on my street have gone into full bloom overnight. At least I think they're cherry blossoms. Or they're blossoms of some kind. You can see I've obviously got a green thumb. They literally just sprung up overnight, it was still dry and bald looking one day and the next morning I was like "Woah, what is this!?". Nevertheless they're pretty to look at and a nice sight to come home to...if I manage to get home in daylight that is.

Today I decided I wanted to leave work at 5pm on the dot. So I did. It was a bright and sunny day, and I didn't even get to take a lunchtime stroll, so I figured I deserved to leave work on time.

Anyway, I got home and realised I actually had time to cook dinner (as opposed to heating up leftovers in the microwave), so I decided to make zucchini fritters. The reason for zucchini fritters was more because I had a wilting zucchini in my fridge that I didn't want to go rotten. It was already looking kind of wrinkled and black at one end. I originally bought two zucchini to make roast vegies, but in the end only used up one. With only one zucchini left, and no other roasting vegies to go with it, I was at a loss about what to do with this extra zucchini. Thank goodness for Google. How ever did we live before Google came along?! Out of all the recipes for zucchini I've found, only the fritter required ingredients I actually had in the house. Even so I had to skip the parsley because I don't normally buy herbs. And the recipe called for Feta cheese, which I again don't normally have in the house, so I figured cheddar cheese was just as good. After some "slight" modifications, the end results was this.

It suddenly dawned on me while I was mixing the ingredients that fritters are really just like the western version of the okonomiyaki. Instead of having cabbage and meat you fill it up with artery-clogging cheese, lots of eggs and random leftover vegetables. Anyway, the end result was quite nice, despite my personal adjustments. Afterall anything with melted cheese can't taste that bad.

Anyways, that's me for today. I hope the weather stays good for another couple of days so that I can take my lunchtime walk. I really need to get out of the office and exercise. Especially after eating greasy fritters laden with melted cheese......mmm...melted cheese...*drools*

Freaky weather

2009-07-22T19:26:00.004+10:00

It's thundering. In the middle of winter. This morning when I left home it was bright and sunny without a cloud in the sky. I had to wear sunnies to drive to work. If this doesn't constitute as freaky weather I'm not sure what will.

I hate thunder. If I was a dog I'd be the typical thunder phobic pooch that none of the behavouralists can do anything about.

I hope this is not an indication of the summer weather here =(

The leaning tower of pancakes

2009-07-19T12:50:00.004+10:00

Sunday morning is pancake morning. Well, not really. Last Sunday when my friend came up we thought we'd make something special for breakfast. So we made pancakes. My favourite pancake recipe called for buttermilk, and the smallest package I could get was a 500ml carton. So inevitably I had heaps of buttermilk left. Unfortunately buttermilk isn't really good for much else other than pancakes. I can only recall two other recipes off the top of my head which requires buttermilk, and neither of which I really want to cook (requires too much effort).

So instead of wasting the remaining buttermilk, I made another batch of pancakes this morning. I figured I can always freeze the extras and have them for breakfast during the week (says the queen of frozen food =P).

Behold, my leaning tower of pancakes.

The last pancake was the biggest, so it became the leaning tower of pancakes - with a hood! lol

Let there be internet

2009-07-18T20:35:00.005+10:00

I have internet access! \^o^/ Well, it wasn't like I didn't before, but surfing in the privacy of one's home is so much different than surfing at work. For one, it felt highly inappropriate to blog and go through my Google Reader whilst being paid for it. Email I can sort of excuse myself, seeing as a large portion of internal communications occur through email. But I doubt I'd be able to provide a credible reason why I'm on Google Reader should my supervisor decide to ask.

So being on my frugal living principles, I outright refused to pay for Telstra's outrageous prices for ADSL2+, which is pretty much the only provider here that does provide ADSL. All other companies provide only ADSL. Guess I should be grateful I could get some form of broadband at all. Where my friend was living, they could only get dial-up, which was about half the speed of normal dial-up for some reason. I think there's much to be worked on for Australia's broadband infrastructure.

Last weekend my friend came up for a visit, and she brought up a modem for me. On Tuesday I registered for ADSL. On Thursday I got the confirmation email saying my line is active. Thursday night I came home and there was ADSL signal. I thought I was up for a bit of tech-support tackling, but lo and behold, the line became active automatically on Friday night. Yipee! No need for frustrating and pointless phone calls to the tech support.

Sure the connection is slow (max download was at 232.3kbps), but it's defintely better than no internet at all. Plus I have infinite patience when it comes to slow internet connections. This is the girl who would wait 4 days for an episode of BLEACH to download on dial-up. =P Compared to the patience required for dial-up, this is nothing.

So expect to see more frequent blog updates for the next couple of weeks, till the novelty of living on one's own wears off, and I run out of things to blog about.

Yesterday when I came home, one of the neighbours told me that lady next door has a boyfriend who just got released from jail. So I might start hearing lots of racket and loud music. Hmm...... When I moved in, the landlord told me that my neighbours were "single mother with kid, single mother with kid, and young couple". I guess being an ex-criminal doesn't automatically make you a dangerous person. I remember one of the owners we had at the last work place was just released from jail, and he was actually a very nice person. Shouldn't form prejudices I guess.

I made stir-fried noodles for dinner.

Tada!

It was a big plateful. That's what happens when you guesstimate and make up your own recipes. At least it wasn't burnt, or over-seasoned, like the dishes I made when I first started cooking for myself. But that's a story for another time.

The eagle has landed......like a month ago

2009-06-26T13:00:00.009+10:00

Gee how time flies. Feels like I just moved here yesterday, but I've been here for nearly 4 weeks. This blog post probably should've happened a while ago, but I was wrestling with my office computer. I could swear that last time I opened up blogger, ready to post my arrival post, the computer refused to load blogger properly, but today it's fine. Maybe the computer hates me for taking it away from it's previous owner (who's office table I've also taken over, hope they don't hold a grudge and just suddenly collapse on me one day).

So anyway, after much stress and organising, I finally managed to find a place to live (see left - it's the front of the place, with a shared garden area with the other units). It's not in the best part of town, but probably not the worst either. It's like a small townhouse/unit, 2 bedrooms with a small garden out the back. Luckily the landlord does the gardening, coz else I would've killed their plants within the week.

The roof doesn't leak, which is a bit of a bonus (although according to the locals, it's so dry here that even if it was leaking, it wouldn't have made a difference). The place is not new, so it comes with that which you'd expect with an oldish house - leaking taps, weird lighting, musty smell. I'm slowly working on the musty smell.

According to the landlord the previous tenant trashed the place, so they had to change the carpet and repaint the place (that explains the red front porch). Unfortunately it also meant that that airconditioning that was upstairs is also gone. When it gets to summer I'm hoping I'll probably be migrating downstairs to sleep.

There's very little furniture in the place. Considering the cost of the move, I was being a little frugal. Afterall, it'll be only me, myself and I (apart from occasional visits from Melbourne), how much luxury do I really need? So I have a bed (which I bought up from Melbourne), and a make-shift "desk" in the bedroom.

Yes, it's a pile of boxes stacked up like lego to form a desk.

You think that's bad, this is my first attempt.

Talk about totally frugal living, eh?! Anyway, my parents are coming up this weekend, and they're bringing a desk, so after this weekend, I won't have to sit Japanese style and end up with very very numb legs (probably not good for the circulation either).

The drive up was suprisingly relaxing. Having never driven much myself, I really enjoyed the 5 hour drive up. Didn't scratch the car nor bump into anything. Then when we finally got into town, on the way out of the motel driveway I rammed into the bush on the side and badly scratched my car. T_T

Anyway, I'm slowly getting used to the town and living on my own. Living away from home is so overrated. The freedom is so not worth the extra time spent cooking, cleaning, washing, shopping for groceries. Who would've thought they took up so much time?? Especially the cooking. Whereas at home mum could easily have dinner with 2 dishes and soup on the table within an hour, it takes me like an hour just to stir fry the vegetables. What do I use all that time on you ask? I don't know! It just seems to be time consuming. So I've given up on the idea of 2 dishes a soup. I'm happy to have something just to go with the rice. Man am I looking forward to my parents' visit this weekend. No cooking = happiness.

Well, I'd better get back and actually do some work now. Now that I know I can blog here, I'll probably be spending much time ranting about my life away from home. =P Toodles!

Flying Solo? pfft This is so much more

2009-05-15T13:43:00.003+10:00

Well, I thought is was about time I posted another update, before I'm high and dry with no internet access.

Note profile change *points left*. Yes, currently NO LONGER employed to save the lives of fluffy little cuddle pots. By choice mind you, not because of this economic recession that's looming over our heads.

My last post over 2 months ago was about me driving solo for 3 weeks. Well I obviously made it without any hazardous collisions. I was all proud when I handed back the car to my Dad without a single scratch. Yay me. Although now the windscreen has a giant chip on it, but that's a totally different story for later posts.

So I thought at the time that was going to be my solo/independent stint for a while. Boy was I wrong.

In about a week's time, I'll not only be driving myself, but also living by myself, cooking for myself, washing my own clothes and making sure my living environment will not become a pig sty.

Yes I am moving out of home. To a completely different state. To a town in the middle of nowhere, one that's not even somewhere you'd bypass on the way between the capital cities.

When I first found out 3 weeks ago, it didn't seem real. Then when things sort of sank in, all that was looping in my head was "OMG what am I doing? OMG what am I doing?". Then it sort of went into this panic mode of "OMG I don't have a car, I don't have anywhere to live, I don't even know really how to cook properly!" The one time I lived by myself for work experience in Shepparton, I survived on porridge for breakfast, tuna sandwiches for lunch, and canned fish+rice for dinner. It was a lot of fish. And I'm sure that's not really a viable way to survive long term.

I guess when there's a bunch of stuff to do, you can only really tackle them one at a time.

So I started with living arrangements. Finding decent accomodation is so much more difficult than how I envisioned it to be. For one thing, the distance limits us from making daily trips to inspect a place when it suits the realestate agents. So when we could finally rock up to the town, either the places we were interested in was let, or the realesated agent couldn't let us see on the day. Also a lot of the times the places differ quite dramatically to what's seen on the photos.

So in regards to the accomodation, currently I'm still homeless. With only 1 week to go, the panic button's definitely firing off in that area. However, my supervisor said if need be, they can always find me temporary accomodation. I really hate to trouble people this way but at least that safety net is still there. Failing that, there's always motels.

At least the car is settled. I didn't want a brand new car, seeing as I'd likely drive long distances and depreciate it much faster. But I didn't want a totally old car that's likely to break down on me and leave me stranded in the middle of nowhere on a country road where I'd get attacked by wombats (or something more ferocious). In the end I settled for a 2007 Toyota Corolla. My family has this big customer loyalty to Toyota cars, simply because the ones we've had always stood by us and served us well.

When hunting around for second hand Corollas, I noticed that there were heaps more hatchbacks than sedans. I'd originally wanted a hatchback, because I like the rearwindow screenwipers. But then I realised that the luggage space is pretty limited, and seeing as I'll be relying on my car to transport my junk to my new place, I'd probably be better off settling for a sedan.

Nehoos, long story short (it's already been a pretty long story), I bought the first sedan with a colour that I didn't mind. Today we went and picked it up. It was an ex-rental car, so it's done some miles. Plus it's got these tiny scratches on the front bumper from flying stones. The dealer did some touch-up work on it, but it was pretty shoddy. Oh well, at least it drives. Plus if it looks a little delapidated, maybe it'll attract less attention when someone's looking for a car to steal or window to smash lol.

After deciding on the car, I went hunting around for car insurance, and OMG I never realised being on your P-plates and having less driving experience makes such a massive difference to the insurance premium. All the quotes I got were over $1000!! O_O Stupid insurance, they'd better be worth it. On a plus side though, apparently my premium is reduced by like $300 if I lived in my whoop-whoop town in the middle of nowhere as compared to here. lol I guess there is a benefit to me moving afterall (apart from the job of course).

So in conclusion, the one important thing I've learnt about moving out of home is that it makes you bleed money like you've severed an artery. There's still the accomodation, afterwards setting up a new home (e.g. fridge, microwave and washing machine etc). It's definitely going to take a year's worth of savings for this move, if not more. *sigh* It is so much more easier to use money than to make it, I've only truely come to appreciate this fact now...

Flying Solo

2009-02-25T09:43:00.002+11:00

For the next 3 weeks I will be driving myself around. Not that big a deal eh, says many. But for those of you who know something about me, I have had the luxury of being driven around by other people pretty much since I've been in Australia. Usually it's by my dad, sometimes friends of mine that I can leach a ride from, and of course, the good people of the public transport system. I've always used the excuse that our family only has one car to avoid having to drive myself. Secretly I enjoy blanking out during a ride whilst someone else takes care of the stresses of the road. A close friend of mine has been nagging me to drive more ever since I got my P-plates, and I've always just nonchalantly replied "if I have to, I will". And so, now I have to.

The first trip is always frought with tension. And it didn't help that the first solo trip was on a high speed freeway coming home from the airport. A lot of internal screaming was involved.

Firstly I have officially confirmed that I have a poor sense of direction, as well as the inability to interpret road signs whilst under high tension. Coming home from the airport on the Tullamarine fwy, for some reason I thought I was on, and meant to continue on the Hume. So lo and behold, I took the Hume turn off and found myself driving away from the city instead of towards. So after many missed heart beats and a short period of internal screaming, I managed to rectify the situation with a massive u-turn at the next exit, and got safely back on the right path.

Then there were the lane changes. I'm good when cars are more than 50 meters behind me, but any closer and I just panic. So when nearing my exit (this time the correct one), I found I had to suddenly change lanes to get to the exit. Stupid sudden insert of extra lanes near my exit. So I did the right thing, looked in the rear view mirror, did my head check and pulled to my left. But somehow I must've misjudged how fast the car behind me was coming, because next thing I knew there was some very loud and angry honking behind me. Oops. Sorry to the person I suddenly cut in front of on the Tulla. Hopefully it'll be the only near miss I'll have during these 3 weeks.

I've only been driving solo for 6 hours and already I hate it.

I have a doctors appointment this afternoon. I think I'll take the bus...

I have a cold

2009-01-30T12:52:00.003+11:00

I have a cold. In this blistering 43 degree (celsius) weather I'm harbouring a sore throat and a snotty nose. How is that even possible? I blame it on my work's air-con, or lack of. There's only 4 places in the whole workplace that's properly air conditioned - the CEO/admin office upstairs, theatre, intensive care and the waiting room/recpetion. The rest of the place is constantly in a state of lukewarm humidity. Unless you have business in any of the abovementioned places (and most of the time you don't), one is doomed to suffer the feeling of having a film of moisture on your skin. Every year we have the same problem, every year they send for the a/c people, and every year we get told that the a/c wasn't installed properly, so there's very little you can do to correct the problem. I am hoping not every year will be having 40 degree plus days that last for a whole week.

So it's been a while since I last blogged. My friend (the one and only that bothers following this blog at all) mentioned the other night at dinner that I don't blog anymore. I guess there's just not been anything to blog about (plus I've gotten more lazy). I'm still stuck in the unsatisfying job as I've been in for the past 2 years. I still don't really know a precise direction for my life. Everything's pretty much in status quo. The only things changing are probably what I read and watch these days. So here goes.

ANIME: Not been following much lately. Still trailing along with Bleach, although truth be told I haven't actually watched the last 15 episodes which is just sitting on the harddrive. For a while I was stuck into Skip Beat because I really liked the manga, but somehow the anime adaptation just didn't have the right zing, so that's another show that I'm just trailing waiting for it to finish. There's one I really like at the moment called Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou, which is a story about a teenage boy who is trying to return the names of spirits contained in a book inherited from his grandmother. It's not a very action packed nor very funny show, but I really like it for it's soothing calmness. Maybe I am getting old, but a lot of anime these days are just too extreme for my liking. This one's just got a simple concept with a dash of touching storyline now and then to spice things up. Nothing overly convoluted or twisted. I'm currently watching the second season (hence the zoku part of the title, which means continuation in Jap). The first season was just called Natsume Yuujinchou, which was only 13 episodes long. That's another thing I like about the series, each season is short, so it finishes before I lose interest (an important factor with my shortened attention span).

TV: House M.D is still going, but my interest is starting to wane. I guess 5 seasons in, it just doesnt' have that appeal of a fresh new concept anymore. Someone comes in with a weird unsolvable disease, House insults people, then miraculously gets inspired from a random conversation and solves the mystery. There's the occasional Cuddy and Wilson interlude inserted somewhere, but these days they're more like a non-existent entity, and the storyline with Cuddy's really just not going anywhere.

The one TV series I'm currently chasing up is Gilmore Girls. It's actually quite an old show now, I think it's last season was in 2006 or 2007, but I only became aquainted with it late 2007/early 2008. The entire show pretty much revolves around Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, portraying a mother-daughter relationship that is based more on friendship than one of guardian-child. The show has really fast paced dialogue with much reference to pop culture. Three-quarters of the time I don't know what they're refering to, but their dialogue is funny to follow. Currently I'm almost through season 6 and it's still got it's appeal.

Something else I got stuck into these days is Top Gear (UK of course). A friend of mine who works with the automobile industry gave me season 10, and told me it was a great show. I was like, pft, it's a show about cars, how interesting can it get. But once I started watching it I couldn't stop. It's not so much for the cars but the incessant bagging that goes on between the 3 presenters that appeals to me. They also do some pretty crazy things on this show. It definitely has entertainment value even for people like me who knows zilch about cars, and who's ideal car is like a Toyota Corolla lol.

BOOKS: I'm currently reading The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella, the author of Confessions of a Shopaholic (movie soon to be out in cinemas). It's really a brainless read, funny but doesn't require an ounce of brain power. The last one I read from her is Can You Keep a Secret? and I could finish the book in 2 days (allowing time for other activities as well). If one wants to read purely for relaxation, then her book is definitely one I would choose.

Lately I've also been pretty stuck into books by Philippa Gregory, author of The Other Boleyn Girl. Much of the historical facts in her ficitonal novel is actually accurate, which is great for me because reading her book is like studying English history, except with much more drama involved. Somehow in my high school education I must've missed out on English history, I remember the Vikings invasion etc, but nothing further from then. King Henry VIII and his multitude of wives didn't make their way at all into my high school education. I feel under-educated. lol

I've also a mind to start reading Charles Dickens, after watching the BBC series of David Copperfield (with young Harry Potter playing the role of young David). Again another novel missed during my high school education. I've heard much of the novel, but never actually got down to reading it. The thing with these classic novels is I need to have watched it first as a television adaptation before I can actually get into the book, it was the way with Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice.

Well, enough blabbing from me. Update again in one year's time. lol

Updating time...

2008-04-25T12:25:00.004+10:00

I'm happy. Yes, it's such a rare event that I have to blog about it.

lol

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. But I am in an awfully good mood, and the reason is I've got this weekend off work! It may sound like a trivial thing to be happy over, but the amount of effort taken to achieve this makes it feel like some major life achievement. Due to some sudden last minute change of plans on my friend's behalf, I wasn't able to give work the 10 month "head's up I need a holiday" notice, therefore had to organise my own replacement or not be able to take the leave. When no one would say yes after a million sms messages and overuse of my wheedling voice, things were starting to look really grim. Yet surprisingly yesterday one guy (who I'd already asked and was quite reluctant) suddenly changed his mind! I'm not a strongly religious person, but someone up there definitely liked me yesterday.

I think I was bordering on needing a mini break anyway, which is why I insisted on taking both days off, even though I'm only meeting up with my friend on one evening. I didn't really have anything else planned for the mini break (btw, the reason why it's a mini break is because having this weekend off coupled with my normal off days around the weekend gives me 6 days off altogether!). Feel like I really want to do something, but organising the two days off has somehow drained all my imaginative resources. So I thought I'd update this long abadoned blog.

WORK Status quo. That's all I have to say about that.

BOOKS Managed to finish all seven books of The Chronicles of Narnia finally. The reason why I got started in it is because the second movie Prince Caspian is due to be released, and I didn't mind it judging from the preview. I wasn't really that thrilled about the first movie when it came out. The preview wasn't that interesting and the casting wasn't enough to entice me to actually watch the movie. When I read the series, The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe was also one of my least favourite out of the seven books. Considering it's one of the more popular book out the series, I was surprised. I enjoyed the style of writing employed by C.S. Lewis. I know it's aimed at young children, so it's meant to be easy reading. However despite it's simplicity the books were quite engaging. The last book was a bit strange though. The ending was slightly too outworldly for my liking.

ANIME Finished watching Rental Magica. Would never ever recommend anyone watch this series. So much cliche. So much facepalm moments that at the end of each episode my forehead smarts from the amount of facepalming. When you reach the climatic ending bit, when the guy says something emotional to convert the girl back to the good side, I was like "WTH?! Not only does what you've said not make sense, I cannot see how anyone could be swayed by lines like that to convert back to the good side." If anything I'd be tempted to proceed with the evil spell just so the guy would stop talking. Either I'm getting too cynical with old age, or anime these days just don't live up to their golden age standards.

The 2008 Spring Anime season has started in Japan. Which means brand new shows for people to debate and argue over. There were a few series out of the list which had taken my interest, but due to the download limit, I've settled to follow one series, called Special A. It's a light-hearted shoujo comedy which have been described to bear similarities to Ouran High Host Club. Two episodes into the season and so far it's been quite disappointing (to me at least). Nothing in the show has made me laugh out loud. No tear wrenching moments. The guy's obsession with the girl feels nauseating, and the girl's inability to see the guy's attention is cliched and borders on stupidity. The portrayed elitism feels like a failed attempt at emulating Ouran, and the onigiri joke (which is coming in the third episode) feels like a remake concept from Fruits Basket. The poor girl in a rich school of rich snobs again is similar to that in Hana Yori Dango. The main girl feels like a clash of concepts in herself. I don't really know how to explain it. It's like in one way they want to portray her as the girl who's excellent in everything (except cooking), but also make her stupid enough so the show can go on revolving around the anticipation of whether she'll ever figure out the guy she's competed against her whole life actually has a thing for her. Not to mention the way they describe how good these students are in studies/sports etc are just way overboard. To the point where it just feels non-realistic and ridiculous. In short, it's like a collection of ingredients that made series such as Ouran and Fruits Basket popular, but downsized to B-grade levels so not only does it not have it's own individuality, it's also crappier.

In my desperation to prove that I have not just picked up another dud show with many facepalm moments ahead of me, I went ahead and downloaded the 6 volumes of manga that have been scanlated so far. After reading about one and a half volumes, I sob with despair. I guess one can only live in the hope that time will prove me wrong.

Perhaps as I have said before, I am just getting more cynical with time. I'm sure at one point in my life, I would have enjoyed a show such as this. Perhaps I'd enjoy this show more if I've never watched the previous shows which were better. Afterall everything is relative. If I've never seen anything A-grade, I wouldn't know the difference between A and B grades anyway.

OTHER In other news, after much pottering and lurking at sites like overclockers.com.au, I've finally purchased an external hard drive. Despite my earlier aims I ended up just getting a 500Gb Mybook. Originally I was planning on getting a 750Gb or 1Tb drive, but then I figured with my current download limit, I'd probably never use up the entire disk anyway. I really only need it as a temporary park till I can burn the files off on a DVD. I have a strange thing about accumulating the whole show or enough of the show so I can burn the DVD once. I find that a DVD burnt in multisessions loses a lot of space for some reason. A friend mentioned the possibility that DVDs were never really designed to be burnt in multisessions. Who knows. So anyhoos, hopefully the drive won't die on me and wipe all my files. It was either the WD Mybook or Seagate Freeagent Pro. There were more user reviews mentioning FA pro with overheating problems than Mybook disk failing after a couple of months' use. So I took that as a sort of statistical indication.

Well, that's it for this update. Now I feel like baking. But there's not enough ingredients at home for me to bake anything, which means I have to go to the shops. Ponders......

Tsubasa Tokyo Revelations

2008-03-09T15:48:00.004+11:00

Just finished watching episodes 1 and 2 of Tsubasa Tokyo Revelations, which is the OVA of the TV series Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. OMG the two short episodes had more material in it than the entire 2 seasons/52 episodes added together. I so can't wait for the third OVA to be released later this month. It's really got me back into Tsubasa. I was actually very very bored with the 2 TV season, to the point where I'd be watching the show and doing something else altogether, yet still manage to keep up with the plot. The only reason I kept up with the series is purely for the fact that it's work by CLAMP, and they don't have much going these days other than xxxHolic. The Tsubasa TV series itself was just about their travels through random worlds, and most stories are sort of stand alone. It keeps on setting mysteries (at a very slow pace), but never tries to explain, whereas Tokyo Revelations was probably designed more to explain some of the mysteries left behind by the TV series. Yay for Tokyo Revelations! I like mysteries only when they get solved. A mystery that drags out for 52 episodes without even getting anywhere near being solved tends to lose it's appeal.

Also started downloading Rental Magica, which I had been resisting in doing for a while. It was originally brought to my attention by one of my nurses, who said it had looked interesting. I read around a little, and the show wasn't that great to warrant my immediate downloading attention. However, I was bored and out of things to download (well, that's not strictly true, but for simplicity lets just say I've run out of things to download), so I though I'd give it a go. Watched the first episode, which was not as bad as I had anticipated. I mean a show with magic users, monsters and curses can never really be truely boring. There were moments of cliche, but at least there's more than one male in the show that has more than 5 second screen time. The female:male ratio is still fairly large though, so am a little weary about where show could go. Hopefully it won't be a waste of my download quota. Well, on to watch episode 2...

I feel jibed

2008-03-05T13:44:00.007+11:00

I feel jibed. Of my monthly download quota. I had assumed the quota would date one month from when I first connected, which would have made it the 15th of this month. However, little did I know, that because this broadband deal couples with out home phone line statement, they changed the quota counting period to coincide with the phone payment period, hence shortening it by about 10 days. I HAD 4 GB OF QUOTA LEFT!! T_T If I had known it sooner, I'd have downloaded so much crap yesterday... stupid Telstra.

Nehoos, went out with friends for dinner and hot choc afterwards yesterday. Surprising considering the anti-social tendecies that usually grips my life. But I'm in a sociable mood, that and my star signs this week tells to me go out and socialise, as it may enlighten me in my future career path. Last night didn't really help, but I had fun. Afterwards ended up at a friend's place to fiddle with her newly acquired Wii. Played Super Mario Galaxy which was much fun. Again it reinforced the fact that I'm not made for coordination. It was hard enough for me to direct the actions of mario when the world was 2-D on my Super Nintendo. Imagine the trauma when everything expands into 3-D, and the world revolves around as you move. So so confusing for my senses. I can see how it can become really addictive though. Too bad it wasn't a weekend night yesterday, else would have considered all night gaming.

Speaking of game addictions, my latest craze would be Professor Layton and the Curious Village. I don't own a NDS, but managed to find an emulator that allows me to play the game on my laptop. X3 It's so addictive. Makes you want to solve puzzle after puzzle non-stop. Some are fairly straight forward but some really racks your brain. Or racks my brain at least. I suppose one of the reason why I'm so addicted to the game is because there're very few other games I can get properly working on the emulator (e.g. Nintendogs).

Speaking of my laptop, I THINK IT MAY BE DYING T___T. This morning when I turned it on, it gave a blue screen of death telling me it could not locate my hard drive. I was like O_O "What do you mean you can't locate my hard drive?" Luckily after rebooting, it started up okay again, but it's starting to get me worried. Time to start backing up things I think.

Well that's about it. Oh, finally finished watching Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu, and now am in a semi-Suzumiya-Haruhi craze. By that I mean downloading all the music and random extra clips out there related to the series. Again, frsutrated that I didn't use up all of last "month"'s quota to finish downloading all the tracks. Note the use of " ". Stupid Telstra with their bizzare definition of a month.

Posting for the sake of posting

2008-02-29T12:41:00.005+11:00

Today is the 29th of Feburary. It's a day that comes only once every 4 years, hence I wanted to post for the sake of posting on a day that doesn't come around too often. Ironically, that's really all I have to say for this post... what a waste of space.

A littel update on life:

1) The updated more speedy internet is not really as fast as I had hope it would be. But that has an upside in that it limits me downloading and exceeding the monthly quota too fast. It's also limiting my downloading by doing funny things with port forwarding. I guess if I could really be bothered, I could go through all those set up again, but I can't really be bothered. And like I said, these limitations are helping me curb my tendency to download just any crap.

2) Work is not so bad lately. Mainly because nothing has yet to die on me. Death always brings about a period of melancholy and questioning about my career choice. Having ungrateful demanding clients also brings about such periods of depression, but usually with more anger mixed within. Still I think I should be looking into a possible career change. I can't avoid death forever. Nor nasty clients.

3) I need a holiday, but my big dilemma is when to take it. Whilst I'm pondering on this issue, my chances of actually taking a break this year is slipping away. Holiday leave gets snapped up really quick at my workplace. I just think if I take any time off, I'd just be wasting the time by sleeping at home anywa. If I'm going to take a holiday, then I want to do something. But then, to do something means having to organise it. If it's an overseas trip, I'll have to factor in the parents. I'll feel bad if I leave them behind and go travelling myself. But if I take them along, it'll limit where we go, and who else I go with. It'll be really strange if I decided to take a trip to Japan with my friends and have my parents tag along as well. Decisions decisions. There's a world vet conference which is held in Dublin this year. It's one thing I like about being a vet. There's always conferences which are held throughout the year, that gives you a chance to travel, if your work allows it that is. That could be a possibility, as it means I could tour Europe. But then cost factors in as well. *sigh* I'm such a bum that it'll probably mean I'll waste another year away not taking any leave. Or I'll drop dead working. Who knows. 4) Currently watching Suzymiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. I realised I'm jumping on the crazy bandwagon a little late, but I can see how it would've triggered off a bit of mania back when it was at the peak of it form. It's a really bizzare series, where the episodes are not in chronological order, and every episode's some crazy occurence which on never turns out as normal as it starts off to be. It's one of those anime where you don't really have to think too deeply into things, but still enjoy the wackiness of it all without fully understanding what's happening. Am glad I used up 1/6 of my monthly download quota to acquire this series.

5) Have joined and started playing the ASX sharemarket game. It's free, so why not. You get to start with $50,000 with a limited list of companies you can buy shares from. The market prices actually follow the current market, so no one really is able to predict the outcome. Although many more people playing this game probably have a better idea of what they're doing than me. Currently I am holding less money than when I started the game a week ago. This can't bode well for my prospects in this game. Am I glad it's not actually my own money I'm playing with...

6) Have started reading The Stone Key, which is the long awaited fifth book of the Obernewtyn series. It's thick, heavy to carry around, and my biggest grudge against this book is that it's not hte last one of the series. I had actually went back and re-read the 4 books earlier in the series, and on first page of the second book it was distinctly stated that the chronicle is going to be a 5 book seires. She lies. Or it lies. Don't really know the gender of the person who wrote that little bit at the front of the book which briefs us on the author and her life. The book itself is actually quite good so far, and I'm grateful there are more books to come in this series which means I won't be going into a book drought hopefully anytime soon.

7) Am currently angry at this new desalination plant which has been scheduled to be build down in Wonthaggi. Mainly because it's robbing my friend and her family of their house and home. Literally. My friend's family owns a little dairy farm down in Wonthaggi, which had belonged to her grandfather before now. It's not a large farm, but it's their home. I've actually been lucky enough to stay with their family a couple of times and I love it! It's a beautiful place, maybe not to some, as it has a reputation for being wet and windy, but I loved it. It's also conveniently situated next to a relatively isolated beach, which literally sits at their backdoor. Earlier this month, the family suddenly received a notice saything that their property is needed for this new desalination plant, and they have till the end of the month to evacuate. Just like that, generations of work down the drain. Not to mention their newly built house as well. Now not only are they looking at possibly selling off their dairy herd, they're also looking at the prospect of not having a permanent home at the end of the year. Not to mention unemployment. The "compensation" they'll get for losing their home is going to be hardly enough for them to acquire another farm elsewhere. Land is expensive these days, and house prices for that matter. I'm just outraged that in this land and country, people can just lose their homes like that, without a second say in the issue. Apparently there's this law that permits the government to take one's home if it's required for building of public service facilities (e.g. freeways and such). The legal system is screwed. So my poor friend, it's not been a good time for her. First her job's getting her down (like me) and now this. Hopefully something will come right out of this schemozzle.

Well that's all for now. For someone who had nothing to say, I sure managed to write quite a bit. Now will waste away the rest of this once-every-4-year day doing nothing. Yay... *moves arms about lethargically*

JUMPER

2008-02-19T22:51:00.003+11:00

Went and watched Jumper today. Was a bit of a last minute change, originally was planning to watch Sweeny Todd, and I wish we had watched Sweeny Todd instead.

My summary of the movie is: they took a really good concept and trashed it. The movie wasn't entirely crap, but in my limited amount of movie going experience, it definitely ranked on the lower end of the scale. The storyline lacked depth and was slightly scattered. For a moment there it looked like potentially there could be something going for it, but then the movie ended. Stupid Hollywood producers who believe in making sequels rather than making a decent single stand-alone movie. The main character was so stupid that it's hard to empathise or sympathise with him in any possible way. The effects were fair enough, although we were sitting too close to the screen and the action scenes sometimes moved too fast for my eyes to take in properly, hence ended up being just a bunch of motion blur, or random flashes of images that doesn't really connect together. That probably is just me and myself though, can't really blame it on the movie.

All in all, must say the trailer looked so much better than the movie. The concept was good, but there was so much room for improvement. If there ever was a sequel (which it appears likely to have, given the way the movie's carried out) I would definitely not want to watch the sequel.

On the plus side though, for dinner we went to a Sushi Train. It's my first time and the experience wasn't too bad, though tonight was special Tuesday deal, so they offered a limited variety of dishes, which just kept on repeating itself on the belt. After a while there was definitely a sense of deja vu going on. Dinner was followed by gelati, and I was content. Mmm green tea icecream~ (so much better than out home made effort, but that's another story...)

IT failure I am...

2008-02-18T15:42:00.003+11:00

Was having a conversation with my friend the other night regarding my recently acquired fast internet. The issue of security came up, and so in a daring move I decided to dedicate this morning to configuring the modem so the network's secure.

It was definitely a disaster in the making. For one thing I didn't get up till noon. It has been ages since I've been able to sleep in like this. Anhoos, firstly I went through the manual on the installation CD, which went through the modem's function. Was okay initially but as more and more acronyms poured out, things started to get muddled up. WEP, WPA, MAC. Random words that didn't really clear up with the glossary explaination. Guess I'm not made for the IT business afterall. So I dived head in anyway, figured it may be simpler when I actually see the procedures in action. Which was true to start with, except after I fiddled with the security settings, my laptop no longer can connect via the wireless network.

In total panick, I reset all the options back to normal, rebooted the modem, but the connection refused to work. Worse still my laptop doesn't even ask me for a password anymore when trying to connect to the wireless connection, it just tries to connect for about 2 minutes, then closes the connecting dialogue box, and sits there. After about 2 hours of twiddling, I finally caved in and rang Telstra Technical Support (with head hanging in shame). Surprisingly the guy on the phone was quite helpful and we managed to get things sorted out. My esteem in Telstra is raising by the day (though am still anticipating the day I receive the bill, which will probably crush whatever little esteem I have and set it in the negative region). In the end I think the problem is in my panick to reset the modem, I didn't do it properly, which is why it kind of screwed up. Lesson for the day, do not attempt to fiddle with ones modem too much. Or better yet, just don't fiddle with anything...

No longer in the slow lane

2008-02-15T17:26:00.002+11:00

After all these years of patiently waiting days for an episode of BLEACH to download, I'm finally moved on. Yes, I have graduated from the world of dial-up to the high speed information highway. Well, not high speed exactly. Everyone knowns in this land of the downunder, we're severely deprived of our fair share of high speed internet. Nevertheless, it's much MUCH faster than what I had previously.

I had half expected the whole thing not to go ahead today. Telstra has their infamous reputation for screwing up, and I was psyching myself up for a day on the phone engaged in a heated debate with an operator who's likely not even on the Australian soil. I got up at 7am (I had chosen the time frame of 7am-12pm, as I thought if the installer didn't come before noon, it'd give me sometime to call up Telstra before the weekend sets in), dressed, had breakfast, then laid down on the bed with a bood to await the guy who's going to install our cable. Lo and behold, just before 9am, I got a call on my mobile enquiring our home address. Within about 1 and 1/2 hour, the entire network's set up and running. It was way less dramatic than I had envisioned.

Strangely, after I had downloaded all the security updates etc, I found my self depleted of things to do. Usually I'd be on the net 24/7 because that's how long it takes to download the things I want. Now I've got my latest episodes of House and BLEACH, leaving me feeling strangely void. Although I guess this feeling probably won't last long, soon I'd be exceeding my monthly download quota in no time!

I suppose the only screw-up Telstra can do now is the billing (i.e. not working out the discounts as they're suppose to happen). But hey, at least I now have (relatively) high speed internet!

So does that mean one should be expecting more blog posts on this site? Probably not, as the motivation for writing only arises once in a blue moon.

First 2008 Post

2008-02-01T17:19:00.000+11:00

First 2008 post, in February. It's a good sign of frequent posting in the year to come. Not.

So another year older. Another year sadder. Guess it's one of the reasons why there hasn't been any posts lately. There's literally nothing to post apart from the usual depressing rants. Each day follows the pattern of: wake up -> get dressed -> eat -> get to work -> throw myself against the wall in an attempt to overcome the need to run far far away from work -> come home -> eat -> sleep. On days when I don't work, the throwing myself against the wall part is replaced with sitting in front of the computer trying to find a way to get out of my current situation, followed by despair. Even meeting up with friends to moan about our jobs no longer cheers me up. The more I contemplate about where I could go the more depressed I become, because I can't see a way out. Or more like I don't have the capacity to go anywhere else.

In other not so depressing news, I've sucessfully (with quite a bit of help from a close friend) reformatted my hard drive, and installed a network card in my old comp. The way is paved for broadband. All that remains is the signing up. I'm getting myself geared up in preparation to deal with Telstra. I can forsee the headache. Possibly more despair. *sighz*

Extreme Bento

2007-12-10T13:07:00.000+11:00

Was bored the other day so I decided to go through my favourite links and deleting ones that no longer connect. By some random surfing I came across a site that's dedicated on making Bento, or Japanese lunch boxes. I was just amazed. The length people go through to make their bento. There are even special tools to help make your bento more interesting.

The most fascinating thing I found was that there are egg moulds to mould your hard boiled egg into a particular shape (see pic above). If everything goes well, the result's really cute! And I found there were face punches, to punch smiley face shapes out of nori to decorate your riceballs/eggs/breadrolls (see below). Note in the second pic the white bear face is actually an egg moulded using one of those egg moulds. OMG~~

There are even packaged pre-cut nori in novelty shapes!

What a crazy country Japan is! Although, personally I'd probably not want to have such a cute and pretty lunch box. I mean imagine eating one of those bear faces. Who would have the heart? lol

The life of a sloth

2007-12-01T21:56:00.000+11:00

For the last two weeks or so, when I'm not working, I've been watching stuff incessantly. My eyeballs feel dry, and I feel like a sloth.

The whole "sloth phase" started with the Gilmore Girls, which I had borrowed from the library. The fast talking is really really addictive. It's like watching Home and Away, but with more intelligence input. Watching the mother-daughter duo having movie night, with pizza and all sort of junk really further promoted my slothing behaviour.

Next it was Daria. A friend of a friend lent me 5 seasons of the show, which I used to love watching on ABC kids (yes, it's sad, but I watched ABC kids till I was way beyond my kiddy age). Again, the show attracted me with it's witty dialogues, plus the constant, blatant sarcasm and irony. It really made me miss high school. And it also made me feel very dumb. Might be just me, but when I was back in high school, my way of thinking was way less sophisticated than represented in these shows. It seemed like a common theme amongst all these American shows, whether it'd be Gilmore Girls or Daria. All these high school kids seem to have a much more enriched mind, and thinks about their future a whole lot more than I did when I was in high school. Might be just television. Or it might be because the competition in America's way more fierce. Which would kind of explain the recurring school gun shooting incidents. Well, I suppose there are more complicated factors, but this could be one of them.

So nehoos, after watching these two shows, I thought I needed a break from feeling dumb, hence switched to some anime. One of my nurses recently lent me a couple of anime series, so randomly I started watching a show called Chrno Crusade. I had heard of the show back in uni but never got a chance to watch it. The start of the show's pretty decent. Typical, but not boring. Story starts with this girl, who has a contract with a devil, to help her find her younger brother, who was taken by some other evil devil. The devil, Chrono, is actually on the good side for most of the show. He lost his horns which meant he depends on the contract with the heroin, Rosette, to survive. Each time he needs to battle or use his powers, he basically depletes Rosette's life span. Being the good devil that he is, he's reluctant to do so, and hence to conserve amount of energy needed, he normally travels around with a chibi body (not quite child statue, but short and cute! =P). But then the show got too involved with the whole bible thing, about God, his apostles, the devil, heaven and hell and such. AND THE ENDING WAS NOT A HAPPY ONE! So on top of feeling dumb, I'm also now depressed and mildly confused (the ending was slightly twisted about so that it gives you a sense of depth, but really it doesn't make sense the more you think about it...).

To top it all off, today I watched both High School Musical and High School Musical 2. Channel 7 was extremely lenient today, in showing one movie in the morning and one in the evening. I had read about HSM from someone's blog a couple of months ago. At the time I didn't really see what her craze was about. But now having watched both movies, I kind of know why. HSM is like a modern version of Grease, so in other words, a musical show, about a musical. In typical Disney style, everything's really cheesy and happy, costumes are colorful, and everything wraps up nicely in a perfect ending. The songs are really catchy, sort of along the lines of Hi5? Some nice harmonies going, but by the time I got to the second movie, the songs were starting to get to me a little. It was like a sugar overload. Apparently HSM is coming to Australian next year as part of Disney On Ice show. Would I be bothered going? Hmm......something to ponder. I've never been big on the whole bringing-Disney-shows-to-an-ice-rink thing, but this is not a cartoon show, so there'd be less props and more people skating. Might be interesting...

Well gotta catch up on some zzz's now. Such is the life of a sloth.

The Stone Key

2007-11-23T20:02:00.000+11:00

Just found out today that the 5th book of The Obernewtyn Chronicles - The Stone Key is due to be released Feburary next year. For those of you who don't know, it's written by one of my favourite but slightly frustration-inducing author, Isobelle Carmody. I first became acquainted with The Oberynewten Chronicles back when I was in year seven or eight, and in my hazy memory I recall at the time that the first three books were already out. I remembered loving the series to bits, and eagerly anticipated the release of the fourth book. By the time high school finished, I had given up hope of ever reading the fourth book. When The Keeping Place was finally released, rather than throwing a jubilee party, I felt more a moment of surprise. And because it had been so many years since I read the series, the only thing I remember from the series is the main character's name, Elspeth. I had even forgotten her love interest's name, that's how hazy the memory became. Which is a real shame. When I was reading the fourth book, I was just completely confused as to the who, what and where of the story, which completely ruined the enjoyment I would have had, had I remembered more than the heroine's name. The same thing happened with her Legendsong Saga. Luckily the second book came out not too long after I read the first book, hence I remembered a little more than just the heroine's name.

With that said, I AM actually looking forward to the release of this book. AND I have ample time before the release to re-read the other four books! On a more disappointing note, The Stone Key is still not the last book of the series. I had the impression that it was.

What I'm most looking forward to is actually the final book of The Legendsong Saga. And yes, it IS a confirmed last book of the series, which makes its appeal just a little more stronger.

One Year Blogging Anniversary

2007-11-12T15:47:00.000+11:00

It's been 1 year and 3 days since I started this blog (well, back at MSN spaces anyway). I went back the other day just to read what was happening at the time. It was the last day of my final year exams. I was in a very elated and excited mood. It seemed at the time that a new life is about to begin, everything seemed to be filled with hope, and the horrors of the exams were behind me.

A year later I sit here and reflect on the year past, and it seems life has done nothing but gone downhill......exponentially. I've become more jaded, pessimistic, and depressed. Life seems like nothing but a monotony of eat, work, sleep.

Today I actually went through my camera to sort out the photos to file away. The earliest photos on the camera dates back to just before exams last year. Going through the photos really brought back good memories of the past, where we did stupid things and had good laughs together. It seemed so long ago, although it's only been a year. Going through those photos makes me feel somewhat melancholy. I don't think I'll ever be as happy as I was back in those days. Despite the stress of exams and uni work, having people go through it all with you just seems to make it much more bearable. Now, despite being in touch with my friends still (to a degree), it's no longer the same. More times than not, it feels like there's this gigantic void around me and I can't feel nor see a living presence within this world I live in.

Sorting through the photos also made me feel acutely how far we've come. One of my close friends got married on the weekend. A year ago she was not even engaged, and now she's donned the cloak of matrimony and moved to the world where husband, children and family will become her focus in life. It was a beautiful wedding, filled with people who blessed their new life with well wishes. The bride was beautiful (I don't think there can ever be an ugly bride) and the groom handsome. The ceremony went smoothly, and dinner was absolutely exquisite. Yet at the end of a happy day, it felt like I was saying farewell permanently to my dear friend, as if I'll never see her again. That's just me being melodramatic but in some obscure way it probably was true.

What scares me the most is that there will be no end to all of this. It's not like school or uni, where once you graduate, you can put that life behind you and start afresh. There will never be another event that'll "graduate" me from the current life. Given the current trend, I don't know if I would like to keep on going......

O-hisashiburi...

2007-11-03T21:44:00.000+11:00

It's been a while since the last post. Went through another one of those depressed-semi-suicidal phases, and life just seemed dreary.

Soon it'll be almost a year since I graduated, and that concept scares me. In another month or two, I will no longer be considered a new grad, and loosing that cloak of protection makes me feel vulnerable. Also it makes me feel like I haven't achieved anything. Actually I feel like I've un-achieved the things I've had in the past years. What's worse, I have less idea of where I want to go than I did at the start of the year! Hence the state of depression. Well, that and in addition to a couple of other things which happened at work.

Nehoos, enough with the depression talk. Let's move on to something more positive. Well, one of my close friends is getting married in the coming week. It seemed so far away, yet all of a sudden it's here! I've known this friend since primary school. We went through the same Chinese school, and then through the same uni course. It seems unreal that she's going to become married and settled down. Strange how one's mind sees the state of being married and the state of being in a stable relationship as two entirely different things. It feels like after this she's gone into an entirely different world from us non-married people. Despite the happiness I feel for her at having found the love of her life, and about to enter what promises to be a happy marriage, I can't help but feel a little sad. Feels like she's moving on to another phase of life which I will not have a part in. Still, I am really looking forward to the wedding. I haven't had to sit through enough weddings yet to dread participating in the event.

Also I got to try out Indian food for the first time the other day. My friend had her b'day celebration at an Indian restaurant. I have decided my favourite Indian dish (currently) is Lamb Mikhani. But I'm still yet to understand the difference between roti and nan. Wouldn't say Indian food's my favourite. It's great for flavour and spices, but there's not enough good old plain vegetables in their dish. It's strange considering I'm quite a carnivorous person, and don't usually like my vegies. I can see the now and again craving for Indian food, but it's definitely something I'd have only once in a while.

Also at this aforementioned dinner, I was again crowned the queen of baking failure. There have been a previous instance where I attempted to make a brownie for another friend's birthday (seems like my failures at baking occur largely at friends' birthdays), which turned out hard as a rock. Literally. This time, similar thing happened, although (thank goodness) not as hard as before. I swear it was soft when I was icing it, but somehow between icing and eating, the cake became a lot more hard. Lesson for the day? Stop using 10-year-old baking powder. Or perhaps just give up baking for friends' birthdays.

Gruesome-ness

2007-10-10T11:14:00.000+10:00

Yes, another post about work. It's really the only thing happening in my life at the moment. Yesterday was a day of irony. Throughout the whole day, from 8:30am when we open till 6pm, it was so quiet that I was starting worry about the future prosperity of out practice. For an hour between 4pm and 5pm, I literally did not see a single consult (and not because I was slacking off). It was such a rare moment for us to be able to catch up on things that need doing. And then, it's like the general public made a pact to just rock up after 6:30pm, an hour before closing time, with their animals in dire need of attention.

Anyway, the point of the post was not to complain about the random late finish despite a day of total lack of activity, but to mention this patient who I saw which totally gave me nightmares. It was a bunny who's owners have brought it in coz it had maggots around the bum end. Okay. My first inner thought was "eww...". Despite my line of profession, there are certain gross things one never really gets used to, and maggots are one of them for me. Little did I realise how bad this rabbit was. I flipped it upside down, and on first glance to me it looked like there were literally HUNDREDs of creamy pale, plump, gigantic, wriggling maggots digging in and out of the back end of this poor bunny. It took a lot of self control for me not to fling this bunny out of the my hands and run out of the consult room screaming. Instead I calmly told the owners that "I'll take the bunny out the back and have a closer look where there's better lighting", which is talk for "I need to get out of this room right now". I bundled up the bunny, took it out the back and proceeded with a bit of a breakdown. It's like feeling goosebumps all over your body, and one can't help but want to scratch at oneself, as if the maggots are eating me alive. Empathy works in strange ways.

Nehoos, I admitted the bunny so we can try and clean him up, by which I mean, individually picking out the maggots, then cleaning the wound. Only when I had the courage to have a look at it the second time, did I realise the extent of damage. This bunny literally had a giant wound around the anus, with necrotic tissue, which extended at least 5cm under skin towards the head. With shaking hands I picked at least 20+ maggots out of the wound with still more wriggling in and out of the tissue. I guess my first impression wasn't that far off.

Unfortunately this is not a heart-warming story, because the bunny ended up going to bunny heaven. There was just too much damage done already, and given the fact that this bunny just laid on his back without a single attempt at struggling while I picked at the maggots probably meant that it was near death bed anyway.

Moral of the story? Check your bunny more than once a week! It's a lesson for me as well. I never thought rabbits could ever get fly-struck (like sheep), but obviously there are some than can.

Not surprisingly, maggots dominated my dreams last night. Eww~ *twitch twitch*

No electricity but still blogging...mwahahahaha evil

2007-09-28T11:40:00.000+10:00

I am sitting in the middle of a power failure. Blogging. Thank the heavens for laptops with portable batteries. Although this computer is going to die in 2 hours.

It feels kind of wrong, when every electrical equipment around me sits in silence that this computer is still functional. Hence I felt compelled to blog. That probably doesn't make sense to people, but then I don't make sense a lot of times.

Dad made me ring up the power company to report this outage. I didn't even get to speak to a real person. There was a pre-recorded message that informed me that my area is experiencing a power outage, and unless I have precise information relating to why this is so, I should hang up and ring back in 2 hours. Automated messages are so helpful. That's the last time I'll be ringing the power company during a power failure. Guess I'll just sit tight, and hope that the power will be back before this battery runs out...

I hear honking cars. The beauty of living near a busy road is that in a situation such as this, one can always opt to watch the traffic havoc as road travellers try to negotiate intersections without the help of traffic lights. I feel so evil sometimes.

I woke up feeling happy...

2007-09-26T00:45:00.000+10:00

I woke up this morning feeling happy (or I should say yesterday morning, considering it's past midnight now). For one delicious moment I thought to myself, 'How nice is it on a day off to sleep in and not having to wake up at a set time!'. Then I remembered that I was actually meant to be working. Which made getting up a whole lot more painful. For some reason I just kept on thinking I didn't have to work today. On Monday, during my late lunch break, I made a happy announcement to my fellow collegues that 'at least I'm not working tomorrow', only to realise minutes later that I was. There's something about today. A work collegue who was meant to start at 10am with me was late. He also slept in, and was late for work.

So what's so special about today. Well the only thing I could think of is that it's Moon Festival today. Happy Moon Festival everyone! Hope everyone enjoyed them mooncakes whilst they lasted. That's the best bit about moon festival. It's the only time of the year when mooncakes are available. I'm sure Moon Festival is meant to celebrate something a whole lot more deep and meaningful, but to me, it means being able to eat moon cakes. Food means a lot to me.

What else is special about today? Well, the 4th season of House is starting in the US. Definitely something to look forward to. Although the concept is starting to wear a little thing, and the medical material is starting to be less exciting, but still a worthwhile show to watch. Well, more downloading on my meagre dial-up account. I should really invest in broadband.

In the end, nothing really explains this urge to deny that I'm meant to work today. I guess it's just psychologically I feel like a break. Oh well, better go and get some beauty sleep. Tomorrow morning I can really wake up and feel happy without the pitfalls.

Death by meat

2007-09-19T15:36:00.000+10:00

Last night went and watched Ratatouille, which is the latest Disney-Pixar collaboration. The story is about Remi (pictured), a rat with a unique sense of smell, who wanted to cook human food. He teamed up with this guy with absolutely no talent for cooking, and through him achieved his dreams. Typical heart-warming, happy ending story by Disney, coupled with decent dollop of humour, and a sprinkle of tear-jerking moments. Definitely one of the best movies I've seen lately. My favourite part of the movie? The pink nose of the rat! XD It's definitely in the extremely squeezeable category, along with Snoopy's and TMNT's noses. *coughdon'tmindme*. Anyways, we saw the movie on an empty stomach, and the food just made the whole thing worse, and by the end of the movie, my friends and I were quite ready to devour a whole cow.

It just so happens there's a restaurant called Blue Fire right near the cinema. Given it was a Tuesday, there was a split the bill deal going on, which made the menu slightly less pricey than it was. The restaurant offered this type of BBQ where they give you unlimited servings of barbecued chorizo, beef, lamb, chicken, pork, calamari and fish till you say 'stop'. Despite being tight-assed, we decided to give this a go. Which is a really bad mistake. At the end of the night all three of us were stuffed to the brim with an assortment of meat (because being tigh-assed as we are, we just had to eat as much as possible). It was actually litereally painful. I was at a stage where I felt impossible to bend over. Definitely won't be repeating that experience any time soon. As one of the friends nicely put it, it was definitely death by meat.

This morning woke up feeling nauseous at the sight of food. Met up with a couple of friends for lunch, one of whom is going to get married soon. The subject of marriage always inspires lot of female talking, so it was great to catch up, hearing her plan for the wedding. It seems unreal as I've known this friend since primary school pretty much, and it still feels we're not old enough for marriage, despite our current age.

Afterwards, as I was walking towards the bus stop for home, I walked past this shop called Shibuya. Judging by the shop name, I had assumed that they sell Japanese clothing, but I was not prepared for them selling loli-goth stuff. Loli-goth is like a fusion of lolita and gothic fashion. The fashion revolves around doll like clothing items with lots of frills, but with a touch of gothic fashion. There's probably a proper definition out there but that's my take on it.

The dresses were sooo~ cute!! >w< It's definitely not something I would wear to everyday occasions, but tempting to own nevertheless. Definitely can see why there's a whole cult out there dedicated to loli-goth fashion. Even the famous CLAMP, could not resist using loli-goth fashion in their drawings (see pic of Chii from Chobits).

Nehoos, going back to work tomorrow. Six days of break and still I feel as tired as when I started the mini-break...

Random rants

2007-09-17T21:14:00.000+10:00

I just realised how boring the current site design is. I've been meaning to brighten it up a little bit but just never gotten around to doing it. But then again, I've been meaning to do quite a number of things (e.g. my tax returns ^_^|||).

I'm currently on my self-imposed 6-day mini-break AKA annual leave without supervisor knowing. Normally I work on the weekend that just passed, but seeing as a number of my work collegues wanted to swap weekend days with me, I managed to get this weekend off. Which is a bit of a bonus, because usually I have one day before and three days after my weekend on which are normally rostered as my day off. Hence the self-imposed non-supervisor knowing part. It's rather sad, but this is the only way I can manage to get a break from work, as all the annual leave allocations have been taken up till Feb next year. It was like this when I started working full time, so hence my chances of getting annual leave any time this year would've been nil to...... well nil.

I've been meaning to do so much with my semi-holiday, but so far I haven't done anything. Been procrastinating like mad. Didn't think I could procrastinate now that I'm no longer a student, but old habits die hard. But redecorating this site was amongst my to-do list.

It was kind of stupid of me, but when I changed the layout of this site a while ago, I forgot that the html code gets completely re-written, which wipes out my site counter. So for the last 10 days or so, my site counter have been sitting at 15 visits (yes that's how few people visit this site, especially consider half these counts are probably from me checking my own site T_T), which I found quite weird, as I KNOW that at least I've made a couple of visits to the site within the last week or so. It took me that long to figure out that the counter code must've been wiped when I played around with the layout design. Seems as age increases, sharpness of mind declines exponentially.

Anyway, the past weekend was also the long awaited annual anime convention - Manifest. Which I didn't go. Again. It just doesn't have the same force of attraction as it used to anymore. That and because I couldn't find someone to go with me, and Manifest isn't half as much fun without the company of friends. But anyhoos, one of my vet friends from Adelaide came down for the event, and we met up for dinner. It's so good to catch up with my vet friends. Despite the fact that somehow our conversation always wanders back to vet-related discussions, even though we made a point of stating "Let's not talk about any vet-related stuff". Still, it was good to catch up with people and see what they're up to. It feels a little depressing afterwards though, because the more you talk with people, the more it feel that we're all sort of going our separate ways. Sure we meet up and we keep in contact via emails and such, but it just doesn't feel like it used to, when we'd see eachother pretty much every day, and had lectures together and did our rotations together. It was good times, and I guess it's something that'll never come back. The sense of loss makes me feel slightly depressed.

Finally read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

[WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. SKIP THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE BOOK YET]

It wasn't below expectations by all means, and everything was tied up pretty nicely with a happy ending. But the ending was slightly confusing. It felt like the Rowling was trying to fit what's happened so far all into a neat little package of explainations, which somehow didn't make 100% sense. Like how Harry didn't die in the woods when Voldermort 'killed' him and the piece of Voldermort's soul in him. Unless the piece of soul protected Harry from dying. But then why would a piece of Voldermort's soul protect Harry when they're mortal enemies? I guess there's probably some roundabout explaination, but I'm just not seeing it. There was a LOT of deaths in the book, but the saddest will have to be the death of Dobby the elf. Didn't feel too bad about Hedwig as I knew it was coming. However I didn't really see the point of killing off Hedwig apart from the fact that it saves the author from having to account for the owl later on in the book. The whether or not the owl died wouldn't have made much of a difference to how the rest of the story would go. The death of the other characters were met with slight indifference on my part, mainly cause I couldn't really remember them well, hence the lack of raport. The character of Snape was a little bit of a surprise, but it was kind of stupid that he only made like three appearances in the entire book, and gets randomly killed in the third appearance. Then his past history spills out. I was like WTH? We barely see him throughout the whole book and now he's dead, and THEN they decide to talk about him more? Well at least the whole thing with Lily was sweet. Although despite his undyling love, it does make him appear slightly more stupid, and hence dropped slightly in my estimation. I think I would've liked Snape to be a little less human than the way he was portrayed. I mean this guy dedicated pretty much his entire life to this girl who never could have and never will return his feelings. I mean it's touching and all, but slightly unrealistic. It's something that'll happen in a fairy tale. But then again, Harry Potter is a kids book, and I suppose it must contain some element of idealistic preachings.

Whew! That was a long rant about HP. Next up: discussion of Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo lol. Which is a random anime movie that I just downloaded off the net. I ended up watching that on Sunday rather than doing anything useful. The movie's a slice of life story with a touch of sci-fi. It's one of those sweet, pretty movies that makes you think a little, but brightens up your day in the end. The story goes basically that Makoto, the 17-year old heroine of the story, one day finds herself able to travel back in time. She ended up doing really petty things with this temporary ability to time travel, and in the end somehow falls in love, and finds her direction of life. But overall the movie's not bad. It's definitely worth re-watching at least 2-3 times when I'm bored, which is more than what I can say about the anime produced these days. Rarely are there any anime series these days that I feel is worthwhile watching more than once.

Well that's enough ranting for now. I think I should either go to sleep or do something productive with my time, rather than procrastinating and blogging. I'm finding blogging an excellent procrastination activity. Whenever I don't feel like anything, I can always find some mundane piece of my life to blog about. lol

Weekend away

2007-09-11T22:19:00.001+10:00

Work finished on time today. Miracle day. Love the rain. Really keeps those clients away.

Nehoos, for the weekend, I was invited to stay with my friend who lives in Wonthaggi, a small country town by the seaside. Her family owns a dairy farm, and I had spent some time with them for work experience during my course. It was her Dad's 50th birthday party and I thought it was awfully nice of her to invite me as well.

I went down on Saturday night. I really missed the place, and I didn't really realise it till I got there again. The night sky was just so beautiful when it doesn't have to compete with the city lights.

For the first time in my life, I also got to sleep in a double bed. Sounds like I've really had a deprived life, but it's true. All my life I've only ever slept on a single bed, except when we used to live in a 1-bedroom flat and I slept with my parents on a queen-sized bed. It's really not quite the same when you have to share it with 2 other people. Anyway, the guest bedroom had the most beautiful bed set up. The doona covers were creamy white with simple embossed line patterns, and the lilac sheets offsets the pillows and doona perfectly. And there was so many pillows which all looked really fluffy! It's one of those beds that you see at display furniture stores that just makes you want to dive in and sleep. lol

The party was great. I helped my friend to decorate the place before her extended family showed up. There was like 50 odd people at this party, all of whom were new acquaintences to me. I spent the majority of the time trying to remember the names of the guests without much success. The party was held at the local golf club, and the dining area overlooked the golf course.

Must say that the weekend really provided a relaxing getaway. I was actually getting quite grumpy from work (again) and after the weekend away I felt much better. I'm kind of envious of my friend's family though. Despite their troubles (what with the drought and not being able to feed their cows and thus financial difficulties etc.), they still seem content with their way of life. I wouldn't say they life is a comfortable one, I mean the parents have to get up 6 in the morning to work the farm, and then often does not finish till 10 or 11 in the evening. It's a harsh lifestyle, but they seem to love it. Don't think I'd ever be able to live their kind of life, but seeing them the way they are makes me also feel a little more appreciative of what I have, and reminds me to enjoy the life that I lead.

Have started reading Harry Potter 7 finally. I was planning to wait for the reserve list in the libraries to die down, which was going to be a while, but my friend lent me her copy of the book. So far it's been pretty good, although the magic of Harry Potter seems to have deemed a little in this book. It feels more like a political battle or a war story rather than magical fantasy. However it's still captivating, and if it weren't for work, I wouldn't have put it down till I've read the whole thing. More thoughts on that later.

The Image of Snape Die Hard

2007-09-03T17:41:00.000+10:00

For Father's Day, I got my Dad the Die Hard box set from JB. Dad's a bit of an action movie guy, reason being you don't need to know much English to enjoy the juicy bits of the movie. An explosion is afterall an explosion regardless of the language. I must admit though that the present had one of those semi-ulterior motives. I'm not much of an action movie fan, but I did enjoy the recently released Die Hard 4.0, which a friend downloaded off the net for us. Well, that and because I'm a semi-closet fan of Bruce Willis, but that's a different story.

So before my Dad had a chance to enjoy his present, I ended up watching the first movie today. For a movie made in 1988, it's really quite impressive, although those gun shots scenes with blood splattering everywhere was just a tad overdone. I'm sure when you shoot at someone's knees, it would not spurt out blood like you just shot a juicy red tomato. But hey, that was the 80's, and I think these days shoot scenes have much less splurting of blood. Anyway, the most shocking thing from the movie (apart from the fashion) was that the evil dude was played by Alan Rickman! Who in case you don't remember actor names like I do, is the guy who plays Professor Snape in Harry Potter! The funniest thing is though, because I came to know the actor as Professor Snape (despite his many other acting roles), it's an image that I have stuck in my mind. So despite the different dress, the different character, it looked to me like Professor Snape shed his Hogwarts robes, traded in his wand for a gun, and decided he wanted to rob a giant successful international company instead. =P I think it's to do with the way he speaks and way he pronounce his words, even though in this movie he was meant to be German, and speaks English with an apparent German accent (which wasn't too convincing). The same happened when I saw him in Love Actually, his Snape image will stick with him forever in my mind.

Alan Rickman isn't the only actor who's one acting role labelled him forever as that character in my mind. Hugh Laurie who plays Dr. House in HOUSE M.D. is another one. When I saw him as the dad in Stuart Little, somehow his lines just all come out sarcastic, even though it was meant to be a heart-warming family scene. Several other actor/esses have similar images stuck to them but to a lesser degree. Amongst them, Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy and Renee Zellweger as Bridget Jones. Perhaps this phenomenon only occurs with me because of my lack of familiarisation with the Hollywood family. Only very few western movies/TV shows attract my interest, and if the character is memorable enough, then the actor will forever stick in my mind as that particular character.

Speaking of House, season 4 is about to start in the States (to be exact, September 25th). Really looking forward to the new season of House, but dreading the downloading. I had envisioned myself acquiring broadband before the season starts, but obviously haven't been motivated enough to do so. So back to persistent dial-up connection, phone calls not getting through, and losing touch with all other interests other than BLEACH and House.

Finally finished reading Rich Woman, which was the book my friend lent me regarding investment and financial management. Feeling very inspired, but not sure what to do now. Certain things just don't work. For example, when it comes to rental property investments, the author's advice is to stay local. Yet the properties around my area are selling at prices in the millions. Starting small does not appear to be a real option these days, with the way the market's going, what's small to a seasoned investor is like astronomical to me (well, maybe a slight exaggeration there, but nevertheless, a huge amount is the idea I'm trying to convert). So these days starting to feel a little more down now. For a moment there I thought there was hope, but now I'm feeling dragged back down the quicksand again. =( Surprisingly though, quite a few people at work seems quite interested in property investment, I've caught people studying properties online during work before. Perhaps our line of work drives people to seek wealth elsewhere seeing as it's never gonna happen through actual work. lol

Another 2 weeks and my friend's coming down to Melbourne for the weekend! Yay get to catch up and reminesce the old times again! Feels like it's been a while since I've caught up with my vet friends (actually I think it has been a while). With everyone having different work schedules, we've all just kind of fallen out of contact. But it's good that this friend's coming down, coz it'll give us a real good reason to organise something and make an effor to be there.

Whew......I've sure waffled on quite a bit there. Nehoos, dinner time!

Got lost around the block

2007-08-29T22:18:00.000+10:00

Went for a two-hour walk today. Totally unintentional. In other words, mum and I got lost on our planned short walk around the block.

It all kinda happened because my friend lent me this book on money management and investments, which has gotten me really hyped up about the whole working-your-money-to-become-rich thing. Anyway, coincidentally, near out place at the moment there's a huge piece of land which was recently cleared for a large scale building of private homes. So in my enthusiastic state I thought it'd be interesting just to check out the real estate in the area, and proposed a walk to the info centre. The homes were kinda out of my price range, what with starting at 1.5 million and all. I mean, I haven't even paid off my student debts yet. So anyway, after a nice chat which the info centre lady, mum and I wandered down a random street, which is where the getting lost started. We had a general idea of which direction to go to get home, but because the area is mainly parkland and hills, the paths are not straight grid form street patterns. We went down this windy road only to find ourselves further away from home. Stupid windy mountain roads. Halfway through, mum suggested we ring Dad to come and pick us up, but given we were lost, we can't exactly tell him where to pick us up from. And given it's a week day, there was no one on the roads, except for the odd cyclists who whooshed by before we were even aware they were there. Well, we eventually got home. Definitely got my week's dose of exercises. So not doing that again. Next time will stick to known routes.

Finally finished watching Ouran High Host Club. It is stupid but in a hilarious-not-so-annoying way. Really good to watch because it doens't require any brain work. It reminds me of the comedy portion of Fruits Basket, but never really gets too serious.

Also watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which was less entertaining. The movie's not bad, but the storyline's got no grip. Storyline's kinda predictable, and there were several WTH moments. The ending was also kinda like "Huh?! That's it?". Well, at least I can tick it off my ever-growing "to watch movies" list. I went on a mini DVD buying rampage from JB, and bought a bunch of movies which I've wanted to watch but never got around to watching, and also a couple of movies that I didn't want to watch, but bought anyway as it's like part of a deal (I'm a real sucker when it comes to these so-called deals, "buy 2 and get 1 free" always seems to be a tickler). =P

Nehoos, off to bed now. So so very tired......zzz

The world's gonna end!

2007-08-23T20:49:00.001+10:00

Why do I say that? Coz today for the first time since I've started working, I managed to finish BEFORE MY ROSTERED FINISH TIME!! I clocked out at 5:30pm!! I was in surgery today, and OMG the hospital list was reduced to a point where there was no jobs to do!! XD This has never happened in my entire working history and I was convinced that the world's gonna end. Even consulting vets were really free and wandering around free.

There was this one vet who was bored and surfing on the web. Off handedly I glanced at her comp screen wondering what she was doing and she was googling something. Being my typical sticky-beak, I checked out what she was searching, and in the search box on Google.com, she had typed "Yahoo". O_o I was like, "Umm, did you just google yahoo?", and she replied, "Yeah, I always google yahoo." O_o. I think it took a couple of seconds for her to realise the irony and the redundancy of what she was doing. I mean I know we vets are not a great technologically advanced sub-species, but using a search engine to search for another search engine is just a classic. At least everyone got a good laugh out of it.

Am a little concerned about tomorrow and the day after though. Usually when things are this happy at the clinic, it's bound to turn sour. *fugitively looks around* I'm sure life's just waiting to spring it on to me now...

PG Bounces Back

2007-08-21T13:04:00.000+10:00

Yes, last week was fairly bad. After that last post, I had an animal die under anaesthesia. I think that really was the rock bottom of suckiness. Had a complete breakdown at work, which was kinda embarassing. I think it was like one thing on top of another, which just piled up till the dam broke. And once the dam broke, there's nothing you can do till the pressure relieves itself. People at work kept on telling me how it wasn't my fault, and that these things happen under anaesthetic and everything, but still it didn't make me feel any less worthless. It felt like it was seriously a sign from above telling me I'm not meant to be a vet. To top if off, I came home from work to find a Melb Uni brochure waiting in my room, with details of how to apply for postgrad studies. I'm not the superstitious type, but geez it's an awful lot of incidences that seems to spell something out for me.

It didn't help that the owners of the animal that died under anaesthesia took the news really REALLY badly. Like threatening to sue and such, despite the fact that they signed a form that says they understand that there is always a risk with anaesthetics, and that their animal may pass away under anaesthetic. Oh well, I'll worry about that later when the time comes. At least if I get sued, I can have a valid reason for quitting this profession (plus declare bankrupcy).

Nehoos, luckily I had a day off after the incident, but the day was pretty melancholy, with some serious contemplation of quitting. This past weekend was my weekend on, so I really couldn't get away from work properly. Surprisingly though, working actually got me slightly over the depression slump. Guess with me being so preoccupied with the busy-ness of work, I had little time for melacholy thoughts. Also it helped that I had to anaesthetise another animal which thankfully survived the anaesthetic to full recovery. *whew*

Still I am actually contemplating doing something else with my life, but perhaps I'll stick with the profession a little bit longer.

****

In other news, I've finished watching Witchblade. I kinda really liked it. The story was heart warming, but not to the point of disgustingly soppy. The ending was not a happy one, but okay. Lots of unexplained things, but that's the way with a one season anime. Plus I found out that the Witchblade is actually American! It was originally an American comic, that was even adapted to an American TV series! 8D Except the story had nothing to do with the Japanese anime. But still, it's fairly rare for a western concept to be adapted to a Japanese one, usually it's the other way around (e.g. The Ring).

Had a work collegue wanting to swap weekend shifts with me. Looks like I might actually get the Manifest weekend free! But don't know about attending the convention though. Today was checking out the website for late reg prices, and noticed they've uploaded a preliminary schedule. Wasn't that exciting, but found this new comp called the Hare Hare Yukai Dance Competition. Out of curiosity went and read more about it. It's to do with this recently popular anime, Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu, or otherwise known as The Melacholy of Suzumiya Haruhi. It's actually fairly old now, more like end of last year, start of this year craze, but I've been out of the anime picture for a while. I found the song on YouTube (surprise) and it's really cool!

The song Hare Hare Yukai is the ending song, and they've actually animated the characters to be doing a cute dance to the song, with matching lip movements and everything. The choreograph is similar to that of Berry Koubou, and it almost feels like watching them but animated! lol It's gotten me interested in the anime, wonder how long it'd take to download on my dial up...*shudders*

Anyway, also found the live action human version of the song, perfomed by the voice actresses of the three characters from the anime - Hirano Aya (as Suzumiya Haruhi), Chihara Minori (as Nagato Yuki), and Gotou Yuuko (as Asahina Mikuru).

I can see why this song can set off a dancing craze, with people trying to learn the dance. I'd be tempted too if I was more coordinated. But as it is I think I'll just try to enjoy the show. This would be the one part of Manifest that I would really want to see.

To go or not to go, that is the question.

A sign from above

2007-08-15T00:27:00.000+10:00

I shouldn't be a vet.

Today I found out that a mistake I made lead to one of my patients possibly suffering from a life long illness. And it was all just an honest mistake. A moment of not-thinking. A moment of doing-what-I'm-used-to-doing. And now I carry the guilt of knowing that a moment of mistake on my part lead to a monumental change for another life.

A person who's thoughtless as I should not be a vet.

For some weeks now I've actually been feeling quite down when it comes to work. It's no longer dread. It's dread mixed with something more, with resentment, with despair. Everyday I turn up to work feeling like I don't want to be there, yet I still plaster a smile on my face and pretend things are going okay. But they're not and this is a sign from above telling me that things are not okay. It's a sign telling me the same thing that's been hanging at the back of my mind - that I shouldn't be a vet. A person like me, who's prone to thoughtless actions, should not hold the responsibility of another life in my hands. No. I should just stick to brainless jobs like working at the cash register as a check-out chick. At least if I made a mistake, the most it's going to cost anyone is money. Money which probably won't be missed by anyone. Money that's not going to change the course of anyone's life. Money that's only an object, a thing, passive.

I kept asking myself why did I not just take a moment to think about what I was doing? Why did it not strike me to double check? Why? But in the end no amount of "why"s is going to change anything. I'll learn the lesson, but it's a costly lesson. It's a lesson that I would've rather learnt another way, with less dire consequences. But I suppose such is life. *sigh*

Random post

2007-08-09T21:51:00.000+10:00

My eyebrow won't stop twitching. To be more specific, my left eyebrow, just near the centre. Makes me feel like a nervous person. Also makes me nervous when I'm with a client and my eyebrow twitches. I keep on thinking to myself "What if they think I'm nervous?", hence I become more nervous. It's a vicious cycle. Why am I posting about my eyebrow twitch? Because I'm bored. It's almost 10pm and I should really go to bed considering I have work tomorrow, but I don't want to, so instead I'm making a random blog post.

Work today was kind of depressing. It's my surgery day, which is usually my favourite day of the roster. There's no set schedule so I can leisurely do things at my own pace, well sort of. Usually in a day I manage to get 6 or 7 procedures done, usually a couple of speys and castrations plus one or two hospital jobs. Today I barely managed to finish my allocated desexings. Reason being I had a fat bitch spey who happens to be in season (for my non-vet friends, just skip this paragraph). I actually had 3 bitch speys and all of them just happen to be fatty, even the Whippet cross! (who would've thought). The lab and the whippet was okay, but the heeler cross (who's the in-heat dog) was just a disaster. The ovarian pedicle could not be stretched beyond 2mm, and on top of that, one had to work with a mass of fatty omentum blocking your surgical view. In the end one of my collegue had to scrub in to help me with the pedicles. Even then, the dog just bled like crazy. To think, I thought I was finally getting the hang of speying fat dogs, and this just totally annillates that theory. So yeah. They say practice makes perfect, but in the case of fat in-season bitch speys, you can never be perfect. Heck, with surgery, you can never be perfect. There's always a potential for disaster.

Started watching a new anime series called "Witchblade", thanks to my anime addicted nurse. The first episode looked quite interesting, the story being set in furture Tokyo, where global warming has obviously taken it's toll, and half of Tokyo is underwater. So far that's all I got. That and the fact that children have become scarce, and there's some creepy child protection societ that tries to take children off their parents. On top of that, you have this struggling single mum who just happened to be able to transform into some elite killing machine. O_o I'm sure the story will develop much more, but this is my current understanding of the series after watching 1 episode.

Nehoos, really should be heading off to bed. Think I'll read a little bit of Agatha Christie's "Hercule Poirot's Christmas" before going to bed. Hallo ~ murder mystery dreams!

Harry Potter and Dinner

2007-08-07T23:01:00.000+10:00

It's Tightass Tuesday today for movies, and in true PG style, went to watch the 5th Harry Potter movie. From the previous movies, I wasn't really expecting too much, but it turned out a little better than I expected. I guess there was a reason why this movie was rated M, but I liked the acting a lot more. Finally these kids are learning some acting skills. However the heavy hyperventilation which seems to overtake Harry or Hermione seems a little excessive, especially when Hermione, feels like she's putting too much feeling into a small situation, hence appearing unnatural. Umbridge freaked me out a little with her smiles and laughs, and pissed me off about 5 minutes after her first appearance. Makes you just want to strangle her there and then at the start of the movie. I read the 5th book a long time ago, so I don't really remember how exactly she was described in the book, but I don't remember feeling this irritated by the character. But then again, I did read the book a while ago, and I'm not the best when it comes to information.

Afterwards went to dinner in one of the random restaurants downstairs. Had lamb souvalaki which was nice, was kinda on the sweet side which is the way I like my food. Had olives in my salad which I traded with my friend who didn't like her tomatoes. It's nice how things work out nicely like that.

My poor friend who I went to the movies with was hobbling on crutches coz she had a skii accident and possibly torn her knee ligaments. At the moment she's splintered up and walking around with crutches. Yet amazingly she still manages to drive around okay, and also manages to use the escalators better than I can with two functional legs. But then again I've never been a great one with coordination. I could unbalance from standing still (don't ask me how that works...). Nehoos, being the "considerate" friend I am, I tried not to be in the way of her crutches by walking slightly in front of her, which in hindsight was probably not very considerate, as everytime she advanced her crutches, it'd catch on my heels. ^_^||| In the end it worked out better that I was actually walking normally beside her. Guess me being considerate is probably in it's own way a danger to the world lol.

Watase Yuu's New Venture

2007-07-29T15:02:00.000+10:00

One of my favourite shoujo mangaka is now trying her hand in yaoi. O_o Watase Yuu has started a new series called Sakura Gari, the first chapter was released in the July issue of RINKA (which coincidentally is the first issue of the magazine).

I mean her manga always had pretty boys in them, and I suppose there's plenty of fanfics/doujin comics out there involving male x male pairings, but I'd never thought she'd personally dip her pen in that pot. Not that I'm complaining mind you =P. Just slightly shocked.

The first chapter was just translated by Watase's Sorai. It was 100p long! Talk about a long chapter. The story was a little confusing though, probably partially due to the translation. There's promise in this story, but also lots of potential for angst. Reminds me of Ayashi no Ceres, when her style took a turn to the darker side.

Hmm...something interesting to keep an eye on...

Living on a banana and a packet of crackers......plus other rants

2007-07-28T11:56:00.000+10:00

Had a horrid day at work yesterday. Seems like it's the horrid days that makes me feel like posting here. Wells it's one way of letting off the steam.

The day had the promise of being a good one. Had no hospital rounds to do, and all staff were on board. It all kinda turned sour around noon, when one after another the consults just ended up being hour-long, headache-inducing, multi-problem consults. Didn't help when several of the clients came in all aggro cause I've kept them waiting for an hour. Of course, then THEY proceed to conduct an hour long consult with me after ranting about how long they've had to wait. It's like......hello...doesn't logic strike you that just like you, other people can also take just as long a time with me, and perhaps THAT'S the reason why I'm running behind an hour? And now thanks to you, I'll be running behind TWO hours instead of one. So anyhoos, despite having other people help out with a couple of consults, I ended up having only a 15 minute break throughout the day to visit the toilet and chow down a banana and couple of crackers. Going from 7am (when I had my breakfast) to 11pm (when I got home to have dinner) with just a banana and a couple of crackers really isn't the best formulation for good health. By the end of the day I was aggro, had holes burning in my stomach, and my brain simply did not function.

This used to happen when I first started work at our hospital. I thought I'd gotten better than that, but evidently I was wrong. I guess I was under the illusion of getting things under control because on all the other days when I had appointments all day, I relied on some of them cancelling and also other people to helping me out. So in essence I haven't really gotten better at all. That's depressing. Seven months out and I'm still not able to keep up with the appointment schedules.

Work is starting to introduce a new graduate entry program. And seeing as at the moment I'm their one and only new graduate, I guess I'm their new guinea pig. Personally I think it's a bit beyond the point. I mean I've already survived through seven months without any special program, don't see how it's gonna change things now. But yeah, I just got told this two days ago, and the CEO said my mentor will contact me in a couple of days. Pft. Oh well, we'll see if it helps. I guess at least if we get the program properly established, the future generations of new grads coming to our hospital won't be put through what I and my predecessors had to go through.

****

In other news......am watching a new anime these days called Fate/Stay Night. Was lent to me by one of my nurses. It's nice how the love of anime seems to infiltrate into any profession and environment. The series itself is actually a bit old (think I heard about it last year). It's not bad. At least it's not one of those where I watch the first episode, scoff at it and never touch it again. However, I'm a bit confused because the translation was pretty shocky. I think it's one of those pirate HK DVDs, so the English translation is a bit dodgey. In many lines, they just replace the character name with aaa, or eee, which if I wasn't listening properly, would've just gotten over my head. Also because I can semi-understand some of the things they say, makes me even more critical of the translation provided.

All in all though, it's still quite enjoyable, although it's not something I'd be obsessed about. Am so not in touch with the anime scene these days. Have no idea about anything that's out. Although there's not that much to attract my attention. Makes me miss the old days when I used to obsess about Card Captor Sakura, or Fushigi Yuugi. Anime/manga these days are just not the same.

****

In other news, I've started doing crochet. Yes, I know it's an old lady pass time. And yes, it does make me feel geriatric. But it's actually quite fun!

Mum borrowed this chinese crochet book from the library, and it had some of the most fascinating patterns! Real potential for some creative work. So I started my had at crochet, and I kinda like it. Although it's time consuming. After doing one square of pattern, my eyes were really strained and so was my neck. The original intention was to do a scarf out of crochet patterns, but I can't see myself repeating this exercise so many times. Nehoos, thought I'd post a pick of the one pattern that I've done so far.

Friday the 13th

2007-07-14T00:56:00.000+10:00

I never was too superstitious about Friday the 13th. Infact, I've always been optimistic and seen it as a day where mystical things may happen. Well, the fact that I'm sitting here, writing this entry at 1am on the morning of the 14th should say something of how my Friday the 13th went.

First shock of the day, we're one vet down. For some reason, management move a vet to another shift, which meant that only 2 vets (including myself) will finishing the day's walk-in consults. Okay, not so much of a panic, we can manage as long as the night stays relatively quiet.

Second shock of the day, the second vet who was meant to finish the day with me also called in sick. O_O Could feel panic mode starting to kick in. Okay, still okay, management will just have to get one of the locums in to replace the shift. It's still going to be okay.

Lunch time, management still haven't got anyone in. 3pm, still no one in. This is when panic mode starts screeching in my head.

I know it probably doesn't sound like much being left on your own. I'm sure many of my uni mates have done it, but in my practice, this just spells disaster. On one of the more busy nights, I have finished the night's walk-in consults at 10:30pm. This was with one other vet there finishing with me. So imagine, slow poke me, all by myself, on one of the nights where it's most likely to get busy, finishing the walk-in consults. I'd be there till daybreak the next day! There's something about Friday nights and people wanting to just squeeze in to that last minute before closing. Because you see, consults on a weekday is $33, whereas consults on a Saturday is $40. So to save $7, some people would rather see a vet on Friday night, or wait till Monday morning.

Anyhoos, luckily people pitied my state of constant moaning, so management managed (haha) to guilt-trip one of the senior vets (who mind you started at 8am) to finish the day with me. I felt so sorry for him, but at the same time, much relieved that I won't be left alone. Reception also helped by letting in only the ones requiring immediate attention. Still, walk-ins didn't finish till 8pm. AND on top of it all, had 2 FB obstructions in a row!! What are the chances of getting 2 FBs within an hour of each other?! Nehoos, seeing as I'm still the new grad, sx was slightly out of the question for me, mainly because if I do the surgery, chances are I'd have to get someone else to scrub in with me, where as if another vet does the sx, they can do it themselves, and I can continue with the walk-ins. Turned out the first dog had a linear FB, and so did the second! Well, the second didn't got to sx, because at that point it was already 9pm, the first FB sx was well into it's 3rd hour, and there'd be no way it could be done tonight. Owners couldn't afford transfer to a 24 hour clinic, so the cat just has to stay on IVF and wait the night before sx. Hope it survives the night.

So, finished walk-ins, thought I'd radiograph this kitten I admitted during the day. We thought it might have had a fracture as owners thought it was hit by a car. The xray developer decided to play dead just as we took the xray, so that was a bit of a nuisance. Then, as I was clipping up the matted fur on it's side, found it actually had a large gash underneath. I think the kitten was actually attacked by another animal. So anyhoos, the radiograph turned into a EUGA and stitch up. Yay. (note the sarcasm). The bite went through a couple of layers of muscle, but not through to the body cavity, which was a relief. Stitched that up, meanwhile still trying to get the xray developer to work. Eventually it did, and spat out this mangled looking xray. Couldn't see anything wrong with the bones, but then again, I did a cat-o-gram, which has the potential to be non-specific.

Finished the day with ringing up owners, then typed up the consult seen throughout the day. Managed to get out 3 minutes before midnight. Woo hoo! Hope I haven't forgotten to do anything though... =P

So now I've had dinner, and thought I'd waste some time on the net before showering and going to sleep. Although, strangely enough, I actually feel quite invigorated now that I've done my complaining. Are the magical healing powers of complaining...

Time flies...

2007-07-11T19:26:00.000+10:00

Time flies when one's not doing much. I've come to the end of my 3-day break, and I so do not feel ready to face work again. That's the problem with breaks, at the end of it you never want to go back to actually doing things.

****

Today met up with a vet friend for some catchin' up with lunch and movies. Given it is the premiere of the Potter movie, we weren't too hopeful on getting tickets, especially at a cinema in the city. We med at 12:30, and the line at Hoyts was GI~~NORMOUS. I've never seen the queue so big! Not suprisingly the next session of HP was sold out, and the 2 following sessions were in yellow (meaning if we tried to get tickest, they'd probably be shotty seats). So anyway, we resolved to see Knocked Up instead. I could do with a laugh. So instead of lining up at the line, we decided to go for lunch instead and see how the queues look when we get back.

The lunch venue was Shanghai Dumplings. It's been a while since I've been there and the quality of the dumplings appear to be on the decline. At the entrance there's a sign saying they're hiring staff to make the dumplings, so maybe that's a reason. The taste of the dumpling filling is still pretty much the same, but the way they fried it was horrid. Like almost half cooked dumplings. Still, we managed fill the both of us up for under $15, which given it's in the city, is a pretty good deal.

The line was a little more reasonable when we got back. At least the line is within the barracades. Got our tickets, wandered around Melbourne Central a bit before the movie started. The most exciting find of the day was that the cinema snack bar now serve Newzealand Natural icecream! =D No more choc tops, you can now actually enjoy the movie with REAL icecream! Naturally I couldn't resist (no pun intended), so got meself some cookies and cream, with a dollop of cool bananas. I was happy.

The movie itself wasn't bad. Humour at some stages were fairly crude, but most were kind of entertaining. Not entirely sure why it's been getting the ratings that it had though. I mean it was a funny movie, with a happy ending and stuff, but if you actually ask me what's good about it, I couldn't really say much. Definitely a movie you'd want to rent on DVD instead of seeing on large screen.

****

Well, that was my day. In the morning went to the Darebin library to return my books. Got another bunch of Christie Agatha's Poirot books, but there wasn't anything else interesting, borrowed a bunch of DVDs, amongst which included Indianna Jones. Good old Harrison Ford, I'll be lookin' forward to some nostalgic catch-up this weekend.

****

*sigh* Back to work I go tomorrow. I don't know why I complain so much about work, but I just do. Starting to feel like an old nag......

The Adventrues of Milo and Otis

2007-07-09T15:12:00.000+10:00

Just finished watching The Adventures of Milo and Otis, and came to the realisation that the movie was originally JAPANESE! @_@

Apparently the movie was shot originally in Kitakyushu in Japan, and released in Japan as Koneko Monogatari in 1986. Then Columbia westernised, revamped and edited the thing and released it with added music and English narratives as The Adventures of Milo and Otis in 1989. And here I thought the concept of Westerners releasing an Asian title under a different name was a recent fad. =P Well, I suppose at least with Milo and Otis the clips were still original, but just edited a bit more. Makes me want to watch the original Jap release now.

It's amazing though. What I originally always thought of as US/Canadian scenery was actually Japanese. The only thing that I thought was even remotely Japanese looking was the odd cherry blossom seen near the end. Well, just shows what I know......

Survivor of a long working week

2007-07-09T12:52:00.000+10:00

Am enjoying the first of a 3-day break. Well deserved after my 6-day week last week. It's normally my long week, but because I picked up someone else's shift, I ended up working 6 days last week. Out of curiousity I added the total number of hours I worked and OMG it was a grand total of 75.5 hours!!!!! O_O Not that I'm getting paid for all of those hours mind you. If you take away the unpaid-but-worked "breaks", and then the taxes, I'd bet what ends up in my bank account will be something meagre and make it totally not worth my while. Stupid tax system. Stupid unpaid-but-worked "breaks". *grrr*

****

On my one day off last week, apart from sleeping till midday, I went on a bit of a shopping splurge at Target. Actually all I really needed was lip balm, and ironically Target didn't sell the lip balm I wanted anyway. Ended up with a bunch of fairly useles things - 2 DVDs (Pirates 2, Milo and Otis), a Japanese cookbook, chocolate, green curry spice mix and 5 pairs of socks. Really really random. Apart from the socks which I actually need, everything else was pretty much impulse buying. I bought the Jap cookbook because it had a recipe for okonomiyaki. It's the first time I've seen a japanese cookbook with an okonomiyaki recipe, so I bought it. The Milo and Otis was purely due to an overwhelming sense of nostalgia. It's been so long since I last watched this cheesy talking animal movie, but it brings back a little bit of the good old days when I'd spend school holidays couped up at home, watching day time TV and daydreaming about what could lie in the future for me. Now holidays seem like wishful thinking, and the ability to daydream has been long lost.

More exciting news though, Robin Hobb has released a new book, "Renegade's Revenge" - book 3 of the soldier son trilogy 8D. It's been a while since any of my favourite authors have released anything. Doesn't help when one of your favourite author has a tendency to never finish her trilogy/chronicles. Recently I've started getting into Christie Agatha, and her Poirot series. I've always heard of Christie Agatha, but considering I didn't really enjoy reading Sherlock Holmes stories, I figured I'd probably not like hers. However, on a random channel surfing one night, I came upon ABC showing a Poirot story, and it was actually quite captivating. So I thought I'd give the books a go when I happend upon one in the library. I really like her writing style because it's easier to read than the Sherlock Holmes books. Also I find the character of Poirot and his big, immaculate moustache quite hilarious. The stories always have a nice twist in the ending, and most of the times it's unexpected.

Another thing I started reading recently is Megatokyo. It's an online comic that has a page updated regularly. However on my heavy download schedule and meagre dial-up bandwidth, I've never managed to follow the story properly. However, the other day I found a publicated manga in the library which compiles up the online comics, so naturally I thought I'd give it a go. It's this really ridiculous story based on some weird imagination, but set in the real city of Tokyo (sort of). There's multiple storylines going at the same time, and I love Largo, the insane, slightly-out-of-touch-with-reality, game/computer dude with his l33t talk. It's just hilarious what happens in the story that revolves around him. He also has this cute little hamster that is his conscience. You can read the comic online here. Check it out if you're ever bored and want something to read online. However it started back in 2001, so there's a huge back log of the story to read.

****

Nehoos, planning to use that green curry spice I bought the other day. Hopefully it'll turn out okay. If there are no more posts after this one, then it means either I've died from an overwhelmingly foul taste of the dish, or hospitalised for food poisoning. =P

Schemozzle!

2007-07-05T21:26:00.000+10:00

Learnt a new word today.

This morning was all fun and excitement. The computer network at the work place had a meltdown, which pretty much put the place in a complete standstill. It's always so much fun (maybe not afterwards, when the sytem comes back on and everyone rushes to do the rounds they should have done hours ago). I was rostered on to surgery today, and given the lack of access to the hospital list, it was all a bit of a mess.

So one of nurses commented, "It's all a bit of a schemozzle, really...", and I was like, "Pft, schemozzle, don't think that's really a word..." (I have my perculiarities about using words that are not actual words). This remark was universally contradicted by the rest of my work collegues.

Lo and behold, on dictionary.com, schemozzles is a word, and it means:

(Yiddish) a confused situation or affair; a mess

Well, so much for what I know. Although arguably, the word was not in my "Oxford Schoolmate Dictionary" (yes I think it's time to buy myself a decent English dictionary...).

Oh and I had to search what Yiddish meant as well *sweat*. It's apparently:

a High German language with an admixture of vocabulary from Hebrew and the Slavic languages, written in Hebrew letters, and spoken mainly by Jews in eastern and central Europe and by Jewish emigrants from these regions and their descendants.

*sigh* The joys of English...

****

The rest of the day didn't go so well. The last job I picked up was a dental with extraction of an upper carnassial tooth that's fractured. Removing the otherwise healthy teeth was really REALLY painfully tedious. Spent an hour and a half digging and loosening those periodontal ligaments, only at the end to have one of the roots fracture off anyway. In my short 6-month career I have come to dislike dentals with a passion. So far all of the dentals I've done have never been straight forward scale and polish, somehow it always ended up with me wrestling with a particularly stubborn tooth which I must remove.

****

Nehoos, better go and get some beauty sleep. In my infinite wisdom, I picked up one of my work collegues shift for tomorrow, which means no break before the weekend of hell to mentally prepare myself. *shudders* And working 4 days in a row (meaning doing 48 hours or more) at my work place is bound to drive me insane......I'll probably be singing the happy vegemite song by Sunday. *hum hum hum*

Manifest Program Book Cover Entry

2007-07-04T01:41:00.000+10:00

Nehoos, here's the pic I drew for Manifest Program Book cover comp. And it didn't get selected. Boo~ =P Guess I'll have to actually pay for entry now lol.

An Achievement!

2007-06-30T13:49:00.000+10:00

Finally I've managed to complete a picture! The sense of achievement is greatly overwhelming. lol

There are many many pictures I've started and dropped half way. I think it says a lot about the type of person I am, keen to start, but never to finish. But this time there was a deadline. The picture was for Manifest, and the deadline was today. It was close but I managed to just finish the picture this morning. *whew* It's not perfect, given more time I'd like to put more effort into the background but hey, for a last minute effort it's not that bad (I'm good at lowering my self standard). Nehoos, once I upload the pic to photobucket I'll link it here.

tanoshimi ni shite kudasai ne~ (don't think that's grammatically correct......)

random ramblings...

2007-06-22T15:15:00.000+10:00

So life goes on as usual......nothing much special to post...

**********

The other day I watched this random DVD I borrowed from the library called "Tess of the D'Ubervilles". It's an adaption of the book of the same name, written by Thomas Hardy. The thing that tempted me to pick up this miscellaneous title was the fact that the story was set in the old English times. Yes, I have a strange addiciton to them classical English costumes.

Nehoos, the story was a tragedy, of a young girl called Tess Duberfield, and how the inevitability of fate led to her eventural demise. It's heart wretching to watch the turn of events, to watch her change from a naive, innocent country girl, to an eventual killer. All she wanted was to be happy, but the 2 guys who shaped her life were just total idiots! The first was an arrogant bastard who just wanted to possess her, the second was an idealistic airhead whose intolerance of Tess's past was just infuriating. Many times throughout the story, one could not help but moan at the turn of events, and whishing it could be changed.

Well, the movie went a bit longer than anticipted. The back of the cover said it was only 170 minutes, but it went on for at least 4 hours (great use of my time off eh?). It was definitely better than I had anticipated, and now I'm tempted to read the the actual book. It's nice finally finding another author that I'd like to read, seeing as none of my usual preferred authors are releasing anything new. And it'd prevent me from reading "Pride and Prejudice" for the umpteenth time.

**********

Work has been kind of a rollercoaster ride, as usual. Just when you thought you had things under control, something happens to throw you way out of whack.

I had my first tom-cat "spey" yesterday. Yes, I opened up a male cat, and after half an hour of hunting for the non-existent uterus, found out that "she" was actually a "he". It didn't help that the cat was long-haired and the testicles were well hidden from view. Guess that's the trouble with cats, males can deceptively appear like females unless looked at closely. Let's hope it's the only time it'll ever happen again in my professional life. Well, another lesson learnt for the future, never trust the records, always check everytime.

**********

On a more exciting note, this year I may actually make it to Manifest! Originally Manifest falls on my weekend on, however, yesterday a work collegue asked if I wanted to swap a weekend with him. Amazingly the weekend he wants to change is in September! Maybe it's a sign from above that I was meant to go. Although, I don't know if he wanted to swap the entire weekend or just the Saturday...hmmm......well, guess I'll have to ask agin....

However, if I changed the weekend with him, the it would mean that I would work 6 days in a row! *sweats* I can barely tolerate working 3 days in a row...don't know if I'd be able to survive 6 days in a row. Oh well, we'll see.

Also my attempt at trying to score a free weekend pass to Manifest is not going so well. The program book cover comp is due in 1 week's time, and the work is still in the initial stages of creation *cringe*. Guess there's minimal chance that I'm gonna finish it on time. Maybe for next year.......*scratch scratch*

***********

Today's a day of rest before the weekend of hell. Slept till 10:30am, and then got up and played FFX till now. Another day wasted. Yay......

a new begining

2007-06-12T16:17:00.000+10:00

In my infinite boredom, I have started a new blog.

Well, it's not really a new blog, more like a move of my current blog. I've been meaning to move my blog from livespace.com for a while now, reason being that it just takes too long for the pages to load. Whenever I want to make any changes, it takes 5 minutes to do an action, and then another 5 minutes for me to undo it. Given how often I change my mind, it was starting to get just a little frustrating.

So anyhoos, decided to give Blogger a go, seeing as I already have a gmail account. Hopefully it's going to be a little faster to use on my lowly dial-up connection. So far it's looking quite promising, considering the pages managed to load even though I have my bittorrent running in the background.

Well, I'll have a little play around and see how things go.

Progressively Geriatric

SPriNg iS hERe ^_^

Freaky weather

The leaning tower of pancakes

Let there be internet

The eagle has landed......like a month ago

Flying Solo? *pfft* This is so much more

Flying Solo

I have a cold

Updating time...

Tsubasa Tokyo Revelations

I feel jibed

Posting for the sake of posting

JUMPER

IT failure I am...

No longer in the slow lane

First 2008 Post

Extreme Bento

The life of a sloth

The Stone Key

One Year Blogging Anniversary

O-hisashiburi...

Gruesome-ness

No electricity but still blogging...mwahahahaha *evil*

I woke up feeling happy...

Death by meat

Random rants

Weekend away

The Image of Snape Die Hard

Got lost around the block

The world's gonna end!

PG Bounces Back

A sign from above

Random post

Harry Potter and Dinner

Watase Yuu's New Venture

Living on a banana and a packet of crackers......plus other rants

Friday the 13th

Time flies...

The Adventrues of Milo and Otis

Survivor of a long working week

Schemozzle!

Manifest Program Book Cover Entry

An Achievement!

random ramblings...

a new begining

Flying Solo? pfft This is so much more

No electricity but still blogging...mwahahahaha evil