Birthday Update

'Cause Nad put me up to it. :P

So yeah. I'm seventeen now. Don't feel any different. xD Spent the last few hours of being sixteen wondering about how I'm turning an odd number.

Soooo, BIRTHDAY HAUL. Very good this year. :D
There's a sketchbook that Ling Shin gave me afterwards (Thankee Shinna!!) that's not in the pic.

Sooo, I now have a tablet. I love it to bits. Its name is Bamboo. :D So yeah. I can't stop using it. So much fun.

And, um, I don't have much to say. *twiddles thumbs* Just, thanks to everyone who wished me! And especially to everyone who gave cards and presents. Seriously. I love you guys. <3

Pretty fluffy clouds

Sokka: Pretty clouds.
Zuko: Yeah. Fluffy.
---
Zuko: Sometimes clouds have two sides. A dark and light ... and a silver lining in between. It's like a silver sandwich. So when life seems hard, take a bite out of the silver sandwich.
Sokka: Maybe we haven't failed after all!
Zuko: That's the spirit! I can't believe that worked. I didn't even know what I was saying.
Sokka: No, what you said made no sense at all.
---
Zuko: I had a girlfriend. Her name was Mai.
Sokka: That gloomy girl who sighs a lot?
Zuko: Yeah.
Sokka: My first girlfriend turned into the moon.
Zuko: That's rough, buddy.
- AtLA, The Boiling Rock Part 1

Seriously, these two prodeuce the cutest character moments. Man, I really really love this show.

Something fishy.

Lookit him, swimming around in his clean tank, all aggressive and smug. D:<

After months of procrastination, I finally cleaned Peach's tank this morning. The water was turning yellow and all. ^^; So I took Peach out of the tank, pop him into the bekas then proceeded with giving everything a good scrub in the bathroom sink. Everything was going well, and I went to look in my cupboard for my supply of old newspaper, when I heard a faint splish sound.

I turn around, and the first thing I see is the bekas, with the water sloshing inside. Silly fish, I think, splashing around ... be patient! Then my eyes drifted over to the space beside it ... and there was Peach, lying motionless on my study table.

I went into panic mode and tried to put him back into the water, but he kept jumping away, messing up the whole table. I kept screaming, "Stupid fish, stupid fish!", because not only was he jumpy, he had really spiky scales. After Peach had jumped around the table a total of three times (it felt like eternity to me) I finally got him back into the water.

I worked like a maniac after that, moving faster because I was scared he would jump out again. Everytime he started splashing, I'd spin around in panic. Mama came into the room and called out, "Sara!" And I practically jumped out of my skin, I was so paranoid.

Seriously, I've never been so jumpy in ... I can't remember.

Here's the newspaper I used to cover up the table. It was completely wet afterwards, as was my floor. Gah, good thing I don't have to clean his tank for another month or so.

Your complimentary weekly update.

School's pretty blah lately. People keep being absent, and CLP lectured us on how it's important to not miss class when we go to uni ... I'm not worried for myself, since that I've got a crazy obsession with not being absent. But more steadfast people than me have switched ideas, so here's to hoping the obsession with never missing a day continues.

Then Pn. B lectured us on getting money together for class layout. And the people who keep being absent, because she wants their excuses and whatnot ... it's crazy, every morning it's the same thing. In the end, I just turn my brain off, I can't stand to listen anymore.

On the other hand, there's been a lot of Avatar news. The show's ending in July, which is a long way away. I don't mind, prolong the days till SPM plskthx. But the trailer looks so cool! It's only 2 minutes long, but it's like throwing a hungry dog a miserable little bone, the way the fandom are reacting. Then there's stuff about the Twilight movie, which is partially very amusing and partially kinda suffocating. I don't feel right belonging to a fandom consisting of 95% females. At least with Avatar, it's half and half.

I just realised how boring this post is. Hmmm. Have some Jasper/Alice love. They're my favourite couple in Twilight. Bella and Edward can go on dodging her eventual vampirism, as long as we get more Jasper/Alice goodness. <3Brush credits can be found on my DeviantArt page.

Lemme hear you fangirls squee.

Who's a pretty, pretty boy? :D

Seriously. Shasha actually did a fangirl flap (ie. flapping your hands up and down in a strange imitation of a chicken when very excited) when I made her look him up. And he's Mira's permanent phone wallpaper. And Tarsha stopped thinking of Alex Pettyfer enough to make space for him. Well, those are the more interesting reactions anyway.

As for me? I'm just sad he isn't Edward Cullen. ;_;
(It's OK Robert Pattinson, I know you're doing your best. <3)
Ps. His name's Tom Sturridge.

What do these three have in common?

I've been finishing a lot of stuff this week, so I can focus on studying for mid-term next week. So what have I been doing online for so long, eh?

One, I've been watching Blood+. Which is an anime (ooh, shock, horror! Sara, since when did you watch anime?!). Like I said before, it's the trade-off Tarsha and I did. She's watching Avatar. Anyhoo, it is definitely good stuff. How can I describe it? It's a complicated story, and definitely not for the faint-hearted. The animation is good and the drawings aren't as bug-eyed as most animes, so that's what made it for me. Basically, it's about some vampire-like beings and bat-like demons ... lots of blood, and filled with enough plot-twists to kill your intestines with. It's got your classic main character, Saya, who just wants to be normal, but is willing to sacrifice herself for the good of mankind, and the generic evil twin, Diva ... whom you'll hate up until the end, where you realise that she's the product of neglection. That, and the sidekicks - especially Hagi and Kai - really grow on you by the end of the series. If you've got some free time and a sudden need for watching a serious drama with horror movie-worthy blood splatter, search for the english dubs on YouTube.

And Ghost! Ohmygosh. This my dears, is beautiful, living, breathing (*cough* pardon the contradiction) proof that Malaysians can produce rocking good tv shows. The story is about one Zack Imran (Nazrudin Rahman), a well-known celebrity who dies - and comes back as a ghost. The thing is, he has no idea who killed him. The world believes that he was killed in a horrific car crash, but he has the strange feeling that that's not true. So what's a spirit to do? Only one person, a gossip columnist for PANAS magazine, Eza Azmi (Cheryl Samad) can see him. And so begins this supernatural/mystery/thriller ... where things are not as they seem, and everyone is somehow strangely connected to Zack's death. The first season just finished airing, but you can watch it on 8tv's website. Apparently there's a second one ... but I'm honestly very unsure how they're going to continue the story. Anyhoo, take a look.

Ah, Eclipse. This series has become a pain in the neck for me ... mostly because Bella can't get Edward to put a pain in her neck. xD But I have to say, I prefer this book to Twilight and New Moon ... werewolf-vampire interactions are funny, especially if they include Jacob and Edward. Edward's a lot less hateable here, while Jacob climbs up my disappointed list. Bella somehow becomes really annoying and selfish. Everyone else ... Jasper and Rosalie in particular are now VIC ... Very Interesting Characters. Jasper especially, because he's awesome like that. And, this is what made this book the most exciting to me: we get to see some vampires get ripped to pieces. Oooh. Now that's more like it. And the ending redeemed Jacob in my eyes, just a notch ... it made me a little sad. But no matter how much I whine and complain about this series, no matter how many times I roll my eyes at it - I desperately want Edward and Bella to live happily ever after. Jacob too, but we can't have everything in the world, so ... now I can't wait for Breaking Dawn. Grarr. Can my willpower hold long enough for me to wait to read it till after SPM?

Drama Competition 2008

We didn't win.

But we had a hell of a fun time along the way, and that's what matters the most. :)

Overall, I think we did a good job ... it's just that two other teams did better (I refuse to include the third team that got a placing as 'better' ... their story was completely plotless: girl is extremely unfortunate. Parents are dead. Relatives don't want her. Runs away. Is turned away by friend's mom. Gets mugged by some gangsters. Abused as a housemaid. Then kidnapped by a weirdo tourist. The end. I mean, I don't want to be unsporting or whatever, but what the fish?).

After the competition, we all stopped by McD's and brought some food back to the kanteen. We spent the next two hours hanging around eating french fries and talking about discipline within the school, interjected by our opinions on how the competition went. It was fun.

But now it's all over ... and I'll miss it. I'll never be involved in inter-school drama ever again ... and I don't intend on taking performing arts, so I guess this is the current goodbye.

Taxi!

I really want to blog about prefects' camp, but I'm waiting for the super-cool photos first. We went to Eagle Ranch again, and Mz. Quek got her daughter and niece to take photos while all the 'roonies ran around doing stuff. The pictures are INCREDIBLE. I'm going to get my hands on a CD and upload some in future.

In other news, Mr. Louis Palmer visited the school on Monday, the day after camp (also the day where my entire body felt like lead). He brought his solar-powered taxi along with him. I've got photos of that too, but I have to get them from other people first ... hah. Anyway, he made a pretty big impression on the lot of us (all the form 5 science classes and one form 4 science class). I know for a fact that many people have added him to their 'idol' list.

He is indeed very cool. Listen to this: Bored schoolteacher buys bicycle and cycles across Africa. A couple of years later, he buys a little aeroplane. Then, when he realised that global warming was taking its toll on the world, he got a bunch of people to help him build a solar-powered car. And now he's driving it all over the world. He said that when he arrived in Malaysia, it was raining, hard. And someone told him: "Sorry about the rain. It's hot weather right now." And he's all: "=\ Uh, hot weather. OK."

Which is true. Global warming at work, folks. I'm leaving the link to his website in my 'Webs on the Net'.

Today, a whole lot of the form 5 and 4s went to UM to watch the TESL fourth-years perform for their course project. The lighting, props and music were brilliant. I want lighting like that for drama competition. But TP isn't all that well-equipped, so oh well. But I really didn't get the ending to the second drama. Any SA-ian who understood it, please leave a note on the Conteng Wall.
<--- :) Drama on the other hand is coming along fine. We came in at 22 minutes, which is awesome considering the props people were moving slowly at the time. We're aiming for the speed last year's team managed; we were so fast, we got the heavy-furnitured scenes done in less than seven seconds. Moving on ... Mama bought Eclipse for me. She went around all over the place, looking for the flipping thing. But apparently, it's sold out in all MPH outlets and Kinokuniya. Borders only has one copy left. Only a month ago, the shelves were bursting with them. Seriously, guys! When did it get so popular? xD