I have been tagged by viewfromnowhen! My very first LJ tag, haha. How sad is that. XD

FIRST: If you've been tagged, you must write your answers in your own LJ and replace any question that you dislike with a new, original question.

SECOND: Tag eight sexy people. Don't refuse to do that like a pansy. Unless you really don't want to of course. And if you're not tagged and you want to do it, then do! This is absolutely not tactful to one whose LJ is read by a maximum of 3-4 people only. I got tagged by one of said people, and I dunno if the rest want to do this. So whoever wants to do this, go ahead. XD




Whew. I took AGES doing this. XD

-J.A.-

But still I have to go on...

I've been having about 3 to 4 hours of sleep every night on average, sometimes less, sometimes a little more, but usually never enough at all. This semester is really killing, though I've already been expecting it and I've already complained a lot about it here. XD But sometimes expecting it doesn't mean you're actually prepared for what comes.

Some subjects I like or tolerate, some subjects I plain dislike, on the verge of hating them. I should tell you guys which, cause I need somewhere to express myself aside from my friends who already know what we're all going through.

First up, Drawing For Animation, AKA Analytical Drawing. I fairly like this subject as it's quite interesting and I've learned a lot from this subject, thought this subject is the one that kills the most. We get so much workload in this subject! We do marker rendering of spaceships, analyse mechanisms of ordinary objects such as the humble-yet-killing stapler and hole puncher, and our major project is designing a battle robot and analysing all the joints and mechanisms of said robot. Then we are to design either a transport vessel or a weapon for the robot. There're many more things we learn here but I don't want to get too long-winded.

So far we're at the final stages of designing the robot, we're going to hand up the project in about one half week. I never knew I can hate robots this much, haha! I have nothing against watching them or drawing them, but analysing the components, having to create something I've never done before, it's all kinda exhilarating; yet it was downright upsetting when I can't seem to please my lecturer with my designs. I admit that I put a lot of unnecessary pressure on myself and I fret a lot over the little things, but it's just that I want to do well, and it's frustrating to hit the wall where I can't seem to climb over. My robot is passable I suppose, so now I just want to get it over and done with. I never want to draw or analyse robots ever again.

Next, Moral Studies. Well. What can I say? The Education Ministry is just wasting our time making us learn such a pointless subject. They don't even really teach moral values!!! Excuse me, I very highly doubt we're all going to go around telling random people about utilitarianism(I find this very hard to say out XD), deonteleological and teleological theories, and who Immanuel Kant is. The part I'm quite worked up about is that we have to memorise these utter nonsense, when it doesn't help us in real life at all, plus I pity the Chinese-educated students as they're not so well-versed in English. Heck, even I don't fully understand half of the stuff they have in the textbook. Not to mention that I can detect so many grammatical and typo errors in the book.

Then, Life Drawing. This subject is just alright. I learn a lot about the human body, muscles and contours, and proportion. But I don't feel much enthusiasm in this class. It's partly due to the lecturer; he's a nice guy (dude, he's the Head of Digital Animation Department =.=), but somehow he's the kind of lecturer who tried hard at teaching, yet can't seem to command our attention or enthusiasm to work harder for his class. So far I've just been doing rather last-minute work in this class as I find the other subjects more important. But also, this subject is rather relaxing as we don't have to squeeze our brain juices out. It's somehow kind of relaxing to just draw without thinking too much (of course, we do have to spend time on studying the body and making sure the proportions are correct).

After that is Cartoon Character Design. I think this is my favourite subject out of the rest. I can't say much about the lecturer, as his teaching method isn't much of a teaching method. Basically what he does is show us many references and pictures of what he expects us to do, then leaves us to work it out. He doesn't demonstrate anything for us, and at one point I even wondered if he could actually draw (he can, quite well apparently as I've heard from my senior). He's a nice guy, very even temperament, but I didn't pay to look at pictures. But ANYHOW, I like this subject the most as I've designed so many different characters than I have ever done in my life. All through my life before I came to this college, I just doodled and drawn messy, half-hearted sketches of highschool girls. I've never produced any serious original work, but this subject pushed me to create so many interesting characters that I never knew I can come up with. (I will post up more stuff when the holidays are here :D)

Then I have 2D animation. This subject is quite interesting as well, what we do is draw short scenes depending on what the syllabus requires traditionally. As in, frame-by-frame, like classic cartoons. But it's quite troublesome as well as we have to draw so many frames while dealing with mountainloads of other assignments. Nevertheless, I quite like this subject as well. The lecturer is very nice and fun to talk to, he's quite experienced in this industry (he's some high-ranking dude in one of the few animation studios in Malaysia). And I never knew that Malaysia is actually very capable of producing amazing animations! My lecturer's company is doing a joint work with Australia, they handle the cartoon while the Australian side does the story, voiceacting and such. The cartoon my lecturer's company produced is the same level as Nickelodeon's "Fairly Oddparents", with very similar style and quality. I was amazed when he showed us the short clip of an episode in production; never in my life would I have expected that we are capable of producing such high-quality animation. But storyline and plot are a different story... XD

Finally, Typography. I don't like this subject. NOT. AT. ALL. I don't really know how to explain why I dislike it so much. It's basically designing a title for a movie or a music album, then coming up with poster designs and website layouts. I hate playing around with layout, designing the stuff in Adobe Illustrator using just fonts because I have absolutely no idea what to do with them. I thank God I didn't go into Multimedia and Graphic Design. I just can't deal with this stuff at all.

What I need is better time management, and time itself. I've gotten into a realy bad habit of turning off the alarm and going back to sleep, which means that I sleep till 6.15am when I'm supposed to be up by 5.30am to continue my work since I slept early (early by digi students standards is 2am XD). Plus piano lessons are not exactly helping. But I do feel that I'm whining and complaining too much, since the syllabus and workload in the past was practically double of what I'm having now. But I need my life to live, I dont' want to go through college and tell people that my whole college experience was just doing assignments. And I don't want to be so caught up in the stress of having to complete assignments on time and losing my enthusiasm in doing what I love. My college is famous for having the heaviest workload among all art institutes, and sometimes I wish they wouldn't create robots out of us. Sigh.

This is quite a long post huh. And I'm not supposed to be typing this at all, seeing that I have so much work to do (I had only two hours of sleep this morning =.=). But I need to get all these out of my system. Sigh. Just one half months left, I gotta hang in there. I hope I can get through this without a having a nervous breakdown. XD

Thanks for reading :D

-J.A.-

I just got back from my Drawing For Animation class a few hours ago, and decided to share my list of assignments with you guys as it's just too powderfull to be kept to oneself. XD

Drawing For Animation

- We were given a photostated drawing of a spaceship, and were told to redraw it in a different angle/perspective, and then use markers to colour TWO copies of it.

- Draw FIVE joint/mechanical mechanisms, such as the table lamp joints, and have to describe the movement and functions as much as possible.

- Draw FIVE unknown mechanical objects. We have to come up with random geometrical shapes and then expand on them, add details and stuff, to create spaceship-like objects.

- Our main project is a robot design. Sketch out many silhouettes and rough drafts of your robot ideas, and pick-and-choose from them, and finally expand on THREE main, different robot designs.

All those by next Monday, just for one subject. Oh the holy-ness. XD Of course, the lecturer gave us chance to pass up the minor assignments by a certain deadline without deducting marks, but it's better to just complete everything on time instead of letting the work pile up, cause there's always gonna be more assignments by the next class.


Not to mention:

 - For Life Drawing 2, draw a male human form in perspective, from the fron, side and three quarter views, by this Wednesday.

- Write a paper for Moral on the title of pre-marital sex. Group work, deadline is next month I think. But it's still a hassle! Moral's such a useless subject.

- Come up with THREE characters, you can choose either heroes or villains, by this Friday. With all the rough drafts and ideas of each character.

- Be prepared for Typography project! Research on fonts, come up with layout design. Deadline is the end of semester but there's tons to do.

And those are due this week, so I'm expecting more assignments by the end of this week.

Why, why did I choose this major again? XD

P/S: My friends and I are fully prepared to attack and cause grievous bodily harm to anyone who dares to say that studying art is "so easy, all you have to do is draw. You don't even have to study or memorise anything!".

-J.A.-

That's the nickname I've given to my Freddie Highmore(Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Spiderwick Chronicles) caricature. XD

I just discovered my utter lack of talent in drawing caricatures! Thanks to my Cartoon Character Design class.

I'm kinda sad about this since I actually like Freddie Highmore, post-grown up manly looks. He was so adorable! XD



( Click for a freak show )


I can't draw this well, seriously. Sigh.

As for what's going on in life, it's pretty much the same, only with the 'Assignments' bar starting to rocket sky-high. Haha.

-J.A.-

The first week of college has ended, and work is already piling up. Oh man, what did I sign up for?? XD

Life Drawing 2
We got photocopies of Renaissance-style sketches of humans in various poses, and we had to draw four of them in basic form using rectangular and cylindrical shapes. [DONE]

Cartoon Character Design
1. Research for pictures of human facial expressions [Not done]

2. Draw the face of a friend portraying the following six expressions : happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust and surprise, with each having 3 levels of emotion. For example, draw the face holding a happy expression at Level 1, 5 and 10. So all in all, we have 18 faces to draw. [DONE, but needs a bit of refinement if I have the time]

2D Animation
We had to buy two blank memo pads, 150 pages each, and have to make flipbooks out of them by next week. We can draw anything we like, even a little dot. But I don't want to show that I'm such a lazy bum! I saw a senior's flipbook; he just drew a little ball bouncing along the bottom of the pages. That doesn't require much effort and just shows that laziness and lack of creativity. I don't want to do that, but I'm worried about the lack of time. [Not done]

Typography Fundamentals
1. Trace a set of the Helvetica font provided by the lecturer [Halfway done]

2. Begin research on five fonts (self-chosen), such as the history and creator of the fonts. [Not done]

I'm most worried about the flipbooks, not to mention that I haven't started one subject due to a public holiday on that day. More assignments are gonna pour in. Sigh, just have to try my best. Wish me luck! XD

-J.A.-

Classes started again yesterday, after about one and a half months of semester break. My journey in hell has officially begun. XD

Anyway, I got my previous semester's results.

Language and Communication Skills 3 (Drama) - A

Life Drawing - A

Culture and Society in Malaysia - A

Perspective Studies - A

Visual Communication - A-

So, am very happy with my results, though I do wonder if the lecturers were lenient. But an A is still an A, so I won't question it. XD


My second year subjects for this semester are:

1. 2D Animation

2. Life Drawing 2

3. Cartoon Character Design

4. Typography Fundamentals

5. Drawing for Animation

6. Moral Studies (you evillll OAO)

Apparently we're gonna be required to come up with 20 character designs each week for Cartoon Character Design, then choose 2 of the best drafts and refine them with 20 more thumbs. I'm preparing my will already. XD

Nothing much happened recently, except for just now. I was doing the washing up after dinner, and in a fit of absent-mindedness, dumped the sponge into the rubbish bag instead of the soap container. Wonderful. XD

So I shall see how the weeks go for my hell-ish course. Until then.

-J.A.-

That I made for phoenixlyn!

Done on watercolour paper (It's quite thick with a bumpy kind of texture) with watercolour and pencil. Took me about 6 hours-ish on the colouring, several days on conceiving the idea (though it's pretty generic... XD).
( Click for the pic )
So yeah, that's it. Nothing very interesting going on in my life.

-J.A.-

My semester is officially over! Uh, well, not exactly, since I plan to attend an extra class tomorrow (Thanks for nothing Seamus!). But after that I'm free as a bird!

... Uh well. Not really too. Apparently my mum's trying to find me a job at her office aka be the office slave. =_= If not that, then she's gonna send me and my younger sister for a seminar about money( you have to pay to go for it but she got us free trials. Having contacts is everything in the advertising industry.)

So I'm guessing I won't have THAT much time to laze around at home, but I'm gonna take all the free time I have and enjoy it now, cause according to my seniors, the next semester is going to be hell. I really think I signed my death warrant by choosing my major.

-J.A.-

This time it's my life drawing that has ended! Oh joyous heaven above tralalala! XD

Even though the subject can be quite boring when the lecturer was teaching us about the muscles of the body, this subject has really taught me a lot about the human bone and muscle structure. I realise that most of my drawings last time are out of proportion. XD

And though the lecturer is very soft-spoken and not so adept at communicating with us, I still feel a little endeared to him. I've never seen him with an angry expression on his face (always smiling or passive expressions only), but this type of people are one of the scariest as well. I can notice when he is angry or getting frustrated even though he keeps smiling.  And I actually feel nervous when I can see his tension even though he's so soft. XD

ANYWAY. I've gone off topic. What I wanted to post here is my final life drawing assignment/project thingy. The theme is "Character X saves Character Y from Character Z", included with shading, perspective and all that.
( Guess what I drew? XD )
-J.A.-

It's finally over. I do love the class and all the excitement of presenting and learning new techniques, but I am very glad for the extra time to concentrate on the other subjects. We no longer have Culture and Society as well, so we have rather plentiful time to do our other assignments. That is, if I don't procrastinate like I always do. XD

Anyway. Here are some pics taken on the final day of drama class.
( Click for pics )
That's it, nothing much here. Gonna go sleep soon anyway.

How have you guys been? =D

-J.A.-

You read that right. XD

I reported yesterday that I bruised my pinky finger in drama class right? And oh, how pretty it was, with all its shades of red, pink, brown and blue. XD It kinda looked like a finger that's half-dead and about to drop off the hand. How exciting! XD

Anyway. I came home late yesterday due to a meeting for our drama final and thought that I should photograph my finger just for laughs, but then I forgot till about 11 something at night. By then it was too late cause my house has terrible lighting and I have a lousy camera that refuses to take nice clear closeup shots of my finger. So no pictures. Then I thought of taking the photo today, and so I proceeded to abuse my finger some more (by hitting it against my bathroom wall XD) to retain the lovely bruises. XD

But... The bruises faded even though I abused it so much! T_T And it's not pretty anymore~~~

Sigh. Just a random post to let you guys know of my misery and heartache. Oh, to long for a pretty finger~~~

-J.A.-

It's already the 6th week of my semester. The official semester is only 7 weeks long. But thanks to lecturers postponing lessons and interfering holidays, my semester only truly ends around 20th July. Which is nearly a month later than what it's supposed to! Grrrrrr.

Perspective Studies has 10 lessons, 3 more than the others. So naturally this class will end late. However, Visual Communication started one week later than the other classes, and due to holidays and the lecturer taking off for her hometown visit, we end up being behind the other classes by two whole lessons. I want my lovely two month holiday nuuuuuz. T_T

Anyway, drama has been absolute fun. Sadly, it ends next Wednesday. So far I've been doing pretty well in this subject as I like it so much. We have two kinds of assignments, which are group dramas that we create according to specific objectives, and Appearances, which are individual work in which you portray different emotions. Currently my grades go like these:

Appearances

1. Fear - A

2. Happiness - Good A minus (this emotion required us to basically be demented, jumping and flailing about in "excitement. I can't do this very well, lol)

3. Physical pain - A (this one's so easy. Just fall on the ground and scream and writh around 8D)

4. Suppressed anger - A (a little less easy but not so hard to pull off)

5. Released anger - A (had to scream and shout and hit the ground, wall, whatever)


Creative speaking (we write short passages directed to a person based on these emotions)

1. Anger - Good A minus (not enough energy)

2. Love - A (i was the only girl in the room who didn't cry while doing this yet i still got an A. Wacha! XD)

3. Excitement - Good A minus (again, I'm just not great in being hyper and jumping about. XD)


Dramas

First drama - B++ (storyline had a gaping plothole. Theme of this drama is based on senses. such as see/smell/touch/hear/taste good/bad. Example: touch bad is touching poop, smell good is perfume and so on.)

Second drama - Very good A minus (Theme is SEDE - Strength, Energy, Dramatic, Emotional. Our drama is marked based on how prominent those factors feature in the play.)

Third drama - A (thanks to my drama-crazy friend! XD Theme is: each person thinks of a movie and chooses a particular scene. Then we had to come up with a short phrase that describes the scene. Eg: necessary sacrifice, immeasurable kindness, unreachable love, etc. Then we have to create the short drama based on the phrases we had.)


Haha, due to Released Anger yesterday, I bruised my hand a little by hitting the wall. XD I clenched my hand into a fist and whacked the wall with the side of my fist and arm. So now the area above the portruding wrist bone is a little swollen, and my pinky knuckle has a lovely reddish-brownish-purple tone to it. AWESOME. XD It's actually really fun to poke and abuse the bruised areas lol. XD

So far it's been really busy eventhough I have only 5 subjects compared to the previous 7 and 8 subjects in the first and second semester. But now all our free time is devoted to drama, so I end up doing most of my assignments at the last minute. Not good, but it's unavoidable. Sigh.

Anyway, will be busy till the semester ends. Pray that I won't die from all the work! XD

-J.A.-

Yesterday morning during my piano lesson, my teacher suddenly told me that she had my exam results and asked if I wanted to see it. This was a surprise, since I took my Grade 6 practical about, what, slightly more than two weeks ago? O.o

Anwyay. I got a merit again, whoot! Am only two marks away from a distinction but I'm really happy with what I got since I wasn't expecting much. Sight reading was a major pain, as always. XD

Am currently learning "Clair de Lune" by Debussy. Which is way advanced for a noob like me. But it's fun trying to learn, and I want to be able to play it well as it's such a beautiful song. Tried Chopin's "Revolutionary Etude in C Minor" last time and it was murder to play it, since the tempo is supposed to be 321657498 times faster than the speed I was able to play it. Chopin must have been pirouetting in his grave then. XD

The first week of college has ended! We digital animation students have only five subjects and four days of classes this semester, so I'm hoping it will be a little less stressful this time. XD Let's move on to my experiences in classes, yes? =3

Culture and Society in Malaysia

When I saw this subject in the schedule I went all "Nuuuuu, not this kind of subject again!". But surprisingly this subject isn't that bad at all. Our lecturer is currently vacationing in Brussels (lucky man!), so we will be having a replacement for about two or three more lessons. His name is Grey and he's a pretty good lecturer.

This class is divided into two parts, the lecture session and the tutorial session. The lecture session is obviously all about lectures, but for the tutorials we get to sit in a circle and just talk and voice our opinions on the topics that will be provided beforehand.

HOWEVER, since my class consists of students from all the CD088 classes(separated by proficiency in English), about 95% of my classmates are not so proficient in English, and they tend to be much less outspoken and have little initiative. In the tutorial class, Grey asked someone to start giving their opinion on a topic, and there was stony silence for a moment till I caved in a spoke out first. Not only that, only me and two other guys who were more proficient in English were the ones who talked the most throughout the class. The others can speak in Chinese if they preferred, but still they did not want to. Hmmm.

Perspective Studies

We learn about perspective in this class, and for the first lesson we learned how to draw cubes and circles from different angles and perspectives. I was... kind of bored in this class to be honest... It's because of the atmosphere of the class. Our lecturer is the head of the Digital Animation department of the college, and he teaches well. But somehow he doesn't have that "aura" that makes the students feel more interested in the subject. But I don't blame him cause he teaches well. The class was really silent throughout, maybe that's what made it so boring. My old CD088-1 class would have made a huge racket in the class, and I'm sure I would enjoy the subject more with them.

Language and Communication Skils: Drama

(for some reason, everything I type now is underlined no matter how many times I try to undo the darn thing. Just have to bear with it I guess.)

Now this class I LOVE. We have Gary as our lecturer, and boy, I'd forgotten how wonderful a lecturer he is. He made the subject SO exciting and fun, despite some of the classmates being rather quiet. This class, I tell you, is a class in which you can't be SELF-CONSCIOUS. The warm-ups we did required some rather embarassing facial expressions and body movements. One such warm-up was imagining that you're chewing on bitter or sour and spicy gum, and so you have to stretch and contort every part of your face, therefor resulting in rather strange and ugly facial expressions. XD

For a short acting demonstration, Gary picked me, Justin, Teng and Lucas, another classmate. Justin's character was an Arab terrorist who wants to take revenge against the Americans for his family member's deaths. Teng and I were the hostages, me being the main hostage. Lucas was a guy who was shot in the leg. Our first scene was Justin pointing his finger gun at my head with a short dialogue, in which he had to convey anger and me convey fear. In the second scene, Justin remains silent while I have some dialogue. The third scene: Justin with the same dialogue, with me and Teng conveying fear. Finally, the last scene has everything in the third scene with Lucas and his shot leg, conveying fear and pain with his back to the audience. We all did okay, though I much prefer silent acting than with dialogue. =S

Life Drawing 1

This class is about anatomy of the human body, as well postures and gestures of figures in dynamic poses. Perspective in involved too. I usually like this subject, but then... I'm sorry but the lecturer doesn't do much to make the subject interesting, same as Perspective Studies. He teaches well but HE. IS. TOO. SOFT-SPOKEN. His voice isn't loud enough, and he's a little... dull. I just want to do well in this subject... According to the lecturer, Life Drawing and Perspective Studies are the most important subjects for us Digital Animation students. *is worried*

Visual Communication

This class is on Saturdays, but will start only next week so we'll see how it goes. XD

That's all the subjects I have, wheehee. The semester will be only 7 weeks long, that's why we have so few subjects. X3

By the way, got my second semester results.


Language and Communication Skills: Copywriting - A

Figure Studies - A

Drawing 2 - B+

Design Workshop (photoshop) - B

Design Lecture - B

History of Art and Design 2 - B

Letterform and Calligraphy - B-


Am satisfied with my results; it's about the same or perhaps slightly better than last semester's results. =D

Signing out (Grrr this underline thing is REALLY annoying)

-J.A.-

I know, it's not a very nice side of me and I ought to just rip it away, but it's so hard to! And what I'm prejudiced against, precisely, are singers/actors/singer-actors. Not all, just some of them.

Let me name the ones I can remember:

- AKON (he makes me abuse caps all the more, ugh!)
- The Pussycat Dolls
- Rihanna
- Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana
- The High School Musical cast, especially the main two characters
- The Jonas Brothers
- Simple Plan

From the small list above you can probably figure out what type of singers I dislike, which are:

- rappers/singers(doesn't matter if they're Caucasian or African-American) who insist on having scantily-clad women gyrating obscenely in the background
- female singers/bands who insist on showing as much of their body as possible while striking sexual poses, in addition to breathy wispy vocals
- any singer/band that love to put bad taste lyrics into their songs, especially when the lyrics don't make sense in the first place ("Babeh where you getcha bo-day from?" "I got it from mah mama!" Please.)
- boy bands who have voices that make them sound like they have not struck puberty yet, especially those that are all into emo-ness
- most of the recent Disney young stars (HSM, Camp Rock, etc etc)

I'm pretty sure I have more categories but I can't recall exactly what they are now.

But this dude is pretty much an entire category of his own.

( Click for rantings )

It's already the last week of my break and so far I have not done anything to fulfill my promise to spicyasparagus(due to being glued to Neopets everytime I come online, XD), which is a testimony to my laziness and procrastinator-ness(not a word, I know). So now I shall post some of my final results NOW. No more delays. XD

Sadly, there're only very few that I can post up here, as I can't upload pictures from my camera(darn you, you missing camera cable!), which means I can't post any of my portraits or figure drawings or paintings. What I put up here are all done by computer. Maybe if you'd come over to my place SOMEDAY you can see everything it their full glory, spicyasparagus. XD (and steal me books while you're at it)
( Click for pics )

=_=''' One thing I don't like about posting a picspam of sorts is that it takes so long to finish. I took a whole hour, maybe even more just to post this up. Why dost thou do this to me, Photobucket!!! T_T

Signing off, -J.A.-

I promised to post what I did for my college, and I will. But but but I just feel SOOOO lazy to.T_T The process of uploading the pics to Photobucket just puts me off and I always spend more than one hour getting everything up, that I feel so unmotivated to do so. Sigh.

But I WILL post some stuff up. I. WILL. (that's me trying to force myself into doing so :P)

I guess I should start uploading pics to Photobucket now. Le sigh. T_T

I just came back from the airport about twenty minutes ago; we went there to send my older sis off to Australia (Her plane should be taking off any minute now). She'll be studying there for two years.

And I'm scared of that fact.

I have been a really paranoid person ever since I matured enough mentally to realise how fragile the human life is. And because of that paranoia, I keep worrying that her plane might choose this exact moment to crash, or that she'll get hurt when she's in Australia, or many many other situations along that line. I try to reassure myself that God will watch over her, but a part of me keeps asking, "Will He?"

I know that God has His private plans for each and every person in the world, and that His plans are great. But what if His plan for my sister leads to harm on her behalf? Because she is a complete non-believer. Of course I absolutely believe that He will not let her come to harm just because she does not believe in Him, but I just don't want any form of harm to come to her even if it's all in His plans. It's contradictory and kind of insulting to Him, I know, because if I truly believe in Him I will not have to worry too much. But I just can't help what I'm feeling. I guess all I can do is to continue praying and hoping for the best.

But aside from that, I'm going to miss her very much. I guess it's because I'm so used to having her to rely upon for advise, answers, etc. She has been such a wonderful sister to me, and things won't be the same without her here. Her friends came to the airport to send her off, which is very sweet of them. But I kept getting pangs of resentment, watching her talk happily with them, because I felt that they were robbing my family and me of our last few minutes together. I feel kinda guilty for that. On a happier note, my dad is planning for us to go visit her in July.  I just hope that my college schedule won't clash with the date. =S

-J.A.-

P/S: I do believe my father is suicidal. He has high cholesterol and yet he keeps insisting on eating unhealthy food, eg curry, fried stuff, fatty pork, lots of crustaceans etc. And he continues to down beer and sugary drinks; his mother has diabetes, and so he's at risk of getting it as well. I suppose nothing short of getting a stroke will get him to change his eating habits. And sadly, I'm not typing this in a joking manner. SIGH.

... companies that record radio commercials, or more specifically the scriptwriters, are unable to come up with good ads that are pleasing to the brain. Most commercials are full of lame dialogues, lamer voice-acting, and unbearably lame plot/storyline. I had the misfortune to listen to what I feel is one of the most retarded radio commercial ever created TWICE today. Here's how it goes (can't remember the exact words they say, but will try to give the basic idea of how it goes:

Woman 1: [unimportant name]'s party yesterday was great. The food was good, especially the rice, which was so tasty and fragrant!

Woman 2: That's because [unimportant name] uses Bird Of Paradise Rice!

Woman 1: *with exaggerated surprise* Bird Of Paradise Rice?

Woman 2: *perkily and joyfully* Yes! And I happen to know that if you buy a ten kg packet of the Bird Of Paradise rice, you will get a pair of stainless-steel fork and spoon for FREE!

Woman 1: *in an amazed tone* Wow, that's so smart! I'd better go get MY ten kg packet of Bird Of Paradise rice myself!

*happy little Bird Of Paradise theme song plays*


... WHAT IN THE WORLD.

When I first heard this radio commercial this morning on the way to college, I thought to myself:

"ZOWEEEE, I'VE ABSOLUTELY GOTTA GET ME A PACK OF THAT AWESOME RICE CAUSE I'M JUST DYING TO OWN A GORGEOUS PAIR OF FREE STAINLESS-STEEL FORK AND SPOON!" 

I guess no one thought of telling the scriptwriters that you can get stainless-steel cutlery for as cheap as RM 3.

But seriously, is this the best Malaysia's advertising companies can come up with? I'm not going into advertising myself, but this is just plain sad. The part where Woman 1 says, "Wow, that's so smart!" completely destroyed my braincells with the inanity and sheer stupidity of that line.

Sigh.

On another note, I got my first semester results back today.

Language and Communication Skills - A minus
Finished Art - A minus
Figure studies - B plus
Design Lecture - B
Design Workshop - answer not available, I think the lecturer hasn't finish marking or something
History of Art - B
Drawing 1 - A minus
Malaysian Studies - B minus

I'm pretty happy with my results; I'm glad I didn't fail anything. At least, I hope I don't fail Design Workshop.

Just wanted to rant a little today. Signing off now...

-J.A.-