Temporal Paralysis

Three words to describe myself now. The sands of time has conspired me to forget about pursuing further advancements into my hobby, or for that matter, anything else now.

It’s been four years since I graduated from my polytechnic. The job prospects in the industry I’m specialized in, sucked big time. Expect long hours and little pay, and a potential to burn out before I turn 30.

My personal life has never been this low. After a slow and painful realization process, I wished I was blissfully ignorant about life, but alas! Once known, twice shy.

Because of this, I don’t have anything constructive… wait, I do.

Cosplay photography

As I looked at the various galleries of various photographers I spotted on both Clubsnap and SGCafe, I realized that some of them have a very healthy income to fall back on. I mean, c’mon, I don’t expect to see a good quality image on a low-end camera–

I cut myself out on that part, realizing I just fell into the same category as MrMayat’s GWC people. That means I sucked at being a good photographer.

That’s probably me, because I think too much when it comes to things.

Personal Life

To be honest, I am quite screwed up with my personal life: no savings, no money, no nothing. I have spoken with a few that within a short period of time, I will be moving out of my home country, and that sucks, because I have to change all the things I got accustomed to.

I just don’t know if I had to stay in Singapore, or move out along with family. Here’s my line of thinking:

1. Move out of Singapore, be beholden in debt to my family, which means forget about pursuing your passions: feed the family first, then you can enjoy your passion.

2. Stay in Singapore, and be sucky for the rest of my life.

I don’t know. My language has degenerated into a 14-year-old kid who rants on Blogger. I’m just putting this out, because I simply sucked.

Sucked, sucked, sucked.

I need a motivation to do the things I wanted to do, and not hold back because of religious commitments or placating my parents or whatsoever. I’m having a Shinji Ikari moment here; sucks to be a Singaporean working adult, and a product of the mass-manufactured human labour factory that the managers (a.k.a. the Government) realized have been producing the wrong kind of crap for a totally-changed world.

This weekend, on the 18th to the 21st, I will be flying over to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to attend the following events:

1. Monash Open Day
2. Comic Fiesta

Monash Open Day 2009

Incidentally, Monash University is having their Open Day on the same Saturday which Comic Fiesta is to be held.

One of the reasons I’m attending this, is because I am interested in applying for their Bachelor in Information Technology & Systems course. I will be asking their staff on the requirements for the course, fees and miscellaneous enquiries.

I planned to enrol myself there for the July intake, so that would leave me plenty of time to sort out the administrative work and basically sit back and relax until I get the letter of acceptance. God Willing, all things should be as planned, and hopefully I can enjoy as many Ramly burgers as I want to! XD

Comic Fiesta 2009

This is one of the few events most followers of the anime/cosplay events scene would be interested.

For the uninitiated, Comic Fiesta is something like Singapore’s End-Of-Year festival, minus the EGL fashion and Makino Yui. I’m interested in the artworks of the various doujin artists, considering that the organizers have set up a countdown of sorts, featuring art from many contributors to support the event.

It is a refreshing take on the cosplay scene, as I understand that 3 people (that I know of, wink wink) are attending the festival. I may/may not go for the Saturday event, as I am probably busy with shopping spree at Petaling Street (already there have been requests for high-quality… err… imitation goods, which will make me go orz before the end is over).

Incidentally, both events are happening at the same district. Talk about ecological sustainability (if I minus the taxi cab…), Also, this is my first self-planned solo trip (I’ve been to other places alone before, but that was with a group), so backpacking here I come!

I am stuck in a rut, apparently.

Indeed, MrMayat has pointed out in my last post (which is more of a scheduled post, in celebration of a certain talent coming down to Singapore), that I am unemployed at the moment, and not very well emotionally. (It can also be said that I am at my most happy when everybody is down. I call this reverse trendsetting.)

In between idling at the Otaku Elimination Game blog, watching some streams of anime shows I’m catching up on, listening to massive loads of  Anime Trance collection, and loathing at myself for not going out to exercise, I began to see a side of myself that I refused to acknowledge, a side that, inadvertently, sparked this post.

Before continuing further, I would like to take this opportunity to remark on the various anime bloggers’ latest fashion post for “Best Anime of the Nought Decade”: Jason Miao started it first.

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I checked back on SGCafe, which is soon to be dismantled due to its founder’s inability to commit fully to the maintenance of the popular forum. I found an interesting snippet on one of the latest thread in that otherwise dead board.

The user, ToyFanatik, has recently found out that Odex has now indulge in distributing anime goods to shops. He found one product that was distributed under Odex’s name. He did not state the name of the shop, for otherwise there will be a form of hoohah here, with both the top bloggers and the rest of the anime fans dishing out their 2 cents worth like it’s Singapore 1942 all over again.

Somehow if Peter Go/Stephen Sing go for a genderswap... NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT IS!~ (Credits: {link:http://kouhukuya.blog111.fc2.com/}Marumi{/link})

I must say, after Peter Go and Stephen Sing’s undying love (and to a certain extent, hatred) of this subculture, I wonder if it’s really necessary to immerse myself in this hobby ever again. I have pretty much washed my hands on this affair. I gave up supporting the opposition, now long dead.

Sometimes, I wonder: what does it take to enjoy hentai?

Too bad Saber got first position, if you know what I mean.

As we know, the recent Japanese eroge companies’ ban on foreign IPs accessing their websites as well as the heightened awareness of this shady side of the genre, (with no thanks to Sankaku Complex for being such a scat), brought up the issue of putting into mainstream consciousness the existence of hentai and eroge materials that are put up freely everywhere.

In this OP/ED, I would like to express my deepest thoughts on this matter, why I felt that the Japanese have the right to block foreigners from providing such materials, and what is my prediction for the near-future.

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Have some Makinami Mari Illustrious. (Credits: {link:http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=5425150}否{/link})

This post is inspired by my desire to purchase a new mobile phone, and subsequently finding out that some phones do not have gapless playback.

Now many of you may be wondering what the heck is a gapless playback. So to take a leaf from Wikipedia:

Gapless playback is the uninterrupted playback of consecutive audio tracks without intervening silence or clicks at the point of the track change. Gapless playback is common with compact discs, gramophone records, or tapes, but is not always available with other formats that employ compressed digital audio. This may be a source of annoyance to listeners of music where tracks segue into each other, such as some classical music (opera in particular), progressive rock, electronic music, and live recordings with audience noise between tracks.

I’ve been eying on Sony Ericsson’s Walkman line for quite some time; I realized much later that none of their phones are equipped with gapless playback . I am irritated, but no less optimistic, since the only other gapless playback-enabled mobile phone is the iPhone. (To be honest though, I don’t see the hype behind the iPhone branding, other than the fact that its tactile screen loses its sensitivity every 6 months, which in my opinion, is a fatal mistake.)

Have some more of personification of inanimate objects — iPhoneko-san! (Credits: {link:http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=4913902}ギンガ{/link})

So thus, continues my search for a mobile phone that has gapless playback. I want to listen to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of The Moon on the go, and all the multimedia-attuned mobile phones out there have failed me!

I have a few cliques and significant others of mine who have started listening to Malay indie music. I had been ignorant about the scene for a long time — give my thanks to Los Angeles and Tokyo for infilitrating my consciousness — because, truth be told, my last interest in the Malay music scene was probably in 1997. Perhaps the only other song that I hold personal feelings with is Exist’s Untukmu Ibu (back in primary school the teacher asked me to sing that as a small mock karaoke contest with another – female – classmate of mine who sang another song that I forgot whose band it belonged to).

So for most of my musical journeys, I wandered to the West, searching for music that fits my interests at heart. When anime became a staple of my entertainment consumption, naturally I adopted the various idiosyncrasies of the Japanese music scene to suit my taste. Even so, I only favoured a few artists that came to mind – none of them are too niche to be considered “indie.”

So when my significant other tell me of Yuna, I was floored.

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