Currently Playing: Theories of Personality

Getting enough sleep, now that’s the problem.

Last Thursday night/Friday morning, I slept at three a.m. because… well, no reason, really. I then woke up two hours later, cursed myself for forgetting that I wouldn’t be having my first class, and then slept for another three hours before going to school for my first class– which was also cancelled that day.

Got home at around eight-thirty because of insane traffic, and proceeded to piss away about three hours procrastinating before starting to study for the Math 101 exam the next day.

Friday night/Saturday morning: Didn’t sleep that night. I just pulled an all-nighter reviewing, and got to school at around six-thirty in the morning, some time before the exam started (at seven). The exam turned out to be ridiculously easy to finish (though my score turned out lower than expected!), and I spent one hour answering until I could answer no more, and then I turned my paper in. The exam ended an hour earlier than expected– and so I went home and went to sleep.

Woke up around… two, I think. Did nothing of value. Ended up sleeping at 4 am, because I’m retarded like that. Then my body clock finally couldn’t take it anymore, and I slept for a full 11 hours, waking up at three.

Then, I played TS3 and did nothing of value, again. Slept at 1 am, woke up at 1 pm– when left unchecked, I really will sleep through 12 hours like that.

I am very glad I don’t have classes on Mondays this semester. It gives me time to do all the crap that I didn’t do over the weekend. I started studying for CS123 then.

Monday night — My dad took me out to dinner, and I brought my Quiwa book along with me so that I could review. Then we watched G.I. Joe, which was a lot of fun to watch, but is not the kind of movie for which I’ll bother spending more than a sentence or two on reviewing. Then I got home, and I reviewed for CS123 until three in the morning, at which point I slept. Woke up at eight in the morning on Tuesday to get ready and go to school. There was also the lab exam for CS22 scheduled for that day, but I felt like it wasn’t the kind of exam that you really reviewed for– it was just gonna be a matter of knowing, and properly applying what you knew.

Exam in CS22 – I think I messed up a little bit. I think I did the hands-on part very well, but I messed up because I got mixed up about the properties of private and default modifiers. I’m hopeful about partial points, though, and I am sure about answers to the first three problems and the last two. It’s just the middle three or four that tripped me up.

After CS22 ended, we stayed in GAB-203 to review. There was no CS123 lab or CS22 lec that day, so we got four hours of spare time to review. Which we did utilize, just not all of it, and just not as optimally as we would have liked. There were distractions. Like Labyrinth, and David Bowie throwing babies into the air, and Lockon wallpapers, and the typing game on Maykol’s laptop.

The CS123 exam, well…. that left me in despair. I am 100% sure I failed it. As in, no hope, I counted and my highest possible score is about 43 out of 100. Yeah, so  it’s like CS55 all over again. But according to the grades that Sir posted (publicly, and with NAMES) to his Facebook way back then– it seems like you can make bawi your grades. (Wow! So conyo naman my sentence!) So – though I despaired, there is still hope.

So. I got home at about nine-thirty, and… procrastinated, and then studied a little, and then procrastinated, and then studied, and then… you get the picture. Now it’s 1:41 in the morning and I’m a little bit stuck on how I’m feeling right now.

Yesterday was kind of a horrible day. I didn’t get enough sleep, of course, and then there was the tiny, soul-crushing matter of having two computer science exams in one day, at least one of which I am sure I have failed.

Did I mention that the Lady Gaga concert was yesterday? I really wanted to attend, of course, but having an exam that ended at seven-thirty (in reality, eight) in the evening did not really mesh well with the date and time of the concert. I keep missing concerts I want to attend. Ah, well, that’s life. As I quoted on Plurk and Facebook, ‘There’s no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying until you run out of cake.’

Now, I have to keep trying to study all this Psych 10 stuff. Here goes.

qol ryk sdslpgslab glfrktx de nl hqocwxeri fkohairlfl qmlsys xfl: zmavy, agz iib [lt sz]

A splash of color (something completely different)

Team of Sheksna steamer, 1909

Originally uploaded by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky

This series of photos is blowing my mind. It was taken by the Russian photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, one hundred years ago.

Yeah, let me just… one hundred years ago. Isn’t that amazing?

Photographs of the past are usually in black and white. I’m not going to go so far as to say that I forgot that the past had color or something silly like that, but… wow.

Colors are the same. Blue skies then are like blue skies now, and trees are still green. I know that. It just takes an astonishing picture like this to remind me, to close the gap between then and now.

Er.

Introduction

It’s one of those nights again.

I don’t want to go to sleep. It’s not that I don’t feel sleepy– I do. My eyes are feeling tired, and I had to have a cup of coffee just to carry me until midnight. It’s not insomnia. I don’t have anything particularly important to do. I’m not cramming my brains out like I did just a week ago for a Chemistry exam that I ended up not having to take. I just want to stay awake.

And what does this mean? This means it’s time for an idiotic blog post. Perfect time for it, too, being the end of summer and all that jazz. A time for reflection, retrospection, and other words that begin with R (reminiscing? rambling? revelations?).

So, summer is ending. Is it right to say that? In a certain sense, summer has barely even started. In the sense that summer means ‘no classes’, since I followed up on my promise to myself to take summer classes.

It’s not a decision I regret. It’s great that I don’t have classes on Mondays this way anymore. But like any other, this decision’s consequences were both positive and negative, and I’m really feeling the burn of the negative consequences right now. I will, of course, reap the positive impact when I won’t have to take Chemistry next semester, but I’m not quite there yet and now I’m just resentful that I didn’t have any summer vacation. But hey, in a week I will be able to laugh at the poor sad sacks who have to balance Chem 14 on top of the two math and three comsci subjects we will have to take (no offense to you poor sad sacks, if you’re reading this!).

(Is that why I’m awake? Trying to savor every last little moment of summer vacation, in a conscious state?)

And because I just want to keep convincing myself that this was a good decision: If I hadn’t taken summer classes, what would I have been doing at home? I’d be doing absolutely nothing of value.

Nothing of value: basically, what I’ve been doing for the very short span of time that is my vacation. Wait. Let me check; what have I done lately? I’ve read some books, watched some movies, some anime (HARUHI!!!!!!!!!), thought about some things. Let’s talk about that. Ladies and gentlemen, presenting: What I Did On My Summer Vacation.

Do you like this school?

I've spent most of my game time talking to Sunohara so far.

So, school has finally released me from its evil clutches and I’m free… at least until summer classes start. I don’t know if I have to take summer classes on account of failing crap, but even if I don’t fail anything I plan on taking Chem 14 and 14.1 in advance. But until then, I have time to do things of no importance. Like play DDR to get back into shape, and finally, finally, play the Clannad visual novel.

I’ve had it on my PC for over a year now. The fact that I’d never played it was a combination of never having time to play it and sort of vaguely hoping Baka-Tsuki would release an official patch. That aside, I am finally getting to play it now. It’s interesting. I’ve seen most of what I’ve played so far in the anime already. Like it says in the image caption, there is a LOT of Sunohara. Tomoya & Sunohara are such an epic bromance. I heard that the character who actually has the most lines in Clannad is Sunohara, haha.

I don’t really have the patience for visual novels. I don’t, I really don’t. It took me so long to finish Narcissu. And so much of Tsukihime bored me that I remember skipping large parts of it (to be honest, I only played Tsukihime because I wanted to get to the legendary ‘This chair’ scene). Visual novels are a mode of storytelling that I’m not entirely used to yet.

Spring ‘09.

I would like to take a break from my other forms of procrastination to talk a little more about anime. New season, new series! I spent some time today looking up all the series that will be broadcast in this season, and deliberating on which anime I should follow.

Spring in Japan is summer here. Which means no classes (unless I take summer, but even if I take summer that means less classes). Which means I’ll have more time, which means I can follow more than just two series like I did for this season (Clannad and Gundam).

So here is a list. I like lists. This one in particular happens to be about what anime I am going to watch this season.

DEFINITELY WATCHING

K-ON! Another dose of moe served up KyoAni style. It looks very cute! The character designs remind me of Lucky Star (big duh), and the musical instruments+KyoAni remind me of Haruhi episode 12, Live A Live (The One with the Insert Song).

Eden of the East I will freely admit that I have no idea what this anime is supposed to be about. The picture I grabbed from the official site, seen above, is… well, a picture of a guy and a loli riding a merry-go-round. The summary I read on ANN has something to do with missile strikes and a naked man holding a cellphone. I… Look, I don’t know. Watching the trailer just confused me more. But it also makes me want to watch the series so I can be… less confused.

Fullmetal Alchemist [pretend i was not too lazy to put a picture here] THE SHOW EVERYONE AND THEIR MOTHER IS WATCHING. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY THAT HASN’T ALREADY BEEN SAID BEFORE. Except maybe that I forgive them for changing Roy’s seiyuu because they changed to Miki Shinichiro who voices Lockon who is my imaginary husband who sparkles in space, so I’m okay with that.

Clannad, pt. 1

As promised, my Clannad megapost.

I want to start from the very start. The first episode of the first season. Actually, it started before that. I’ll start there.

It started with the Dango Daikazoku.

Prelude

Ureshii koto kanashii koto mo zenbu marumete.

I had a funny dream of you, and me.

We're drinking wine along the Cote d'azur.

Rie fu lyrics that fit so very well.

It wasn’t funny, as in funny ha ha. It was funny as in ‘oh, that’s odd’.

First of all, it’s the first dream I’ve remembered in over two months. Remembered… but just barely. The details are hazy, but what I still remember about the dream still continues to bug me. Having so much of this dream lost from my memory is pissing me off a little.

And here it is (or, at least, what I remember of it):

Bright, clear day. I’m sitting by the side of a calm river. I’m wearing a white sundress, and this guy sits next to me. He’s wearing a very nice suit. We talk about the river. A boat arrives, I bid him goodbye, get on the boat… and wake up.

The way I described the dream doesn’t sound like much, does it? It really isn’t. I’m just a bit perplexed. Why is this the dream I end up remembering, what does it mean… and who was that guy?

I don’t remember the guy’s name or face. I’m not even sure if he had a face. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what is really pissing me off about this dream. Dream guy, do I know you? Are you a stranger I just made up for the purpose of this dream?

Rollcake Sunday, Sandwich Monday.

Huhuhu, good morning, world.

It’s the day right after the fun run, and my legs hurt every time I move them so much as half an inch. This is not entirely the fun run’s fault, though. Sure, running (in my case mostly walking, but a good amount of running, too!) twice around the Oval in UP Diliman can strain a person’s legs, especially if that person hasn’t gotten proper exercise in months, but I’d say it’s not the only thing that caused my legs to revolt in this way. I think the leg pain would have been completely tolerable if I hadn’t played DDR in the afternoon after the fun run. What’s that, self? You didn’t realize that your legs probably couldn’t take that much strain? Good going, self. Now you have to deal with pain every time you move for the next few days.

A to-do list of sorts

I feel like a squid is eating my brain (also, I want that hat.).  That’s what it feels like. I have two blog posts in the works, and a few more I’m still planning. I just haven’t had time to finish them up, especially since I’ve had so much to do. So, a list of what’s coming up next:

• Mega-post on Clannad, w/ final thoughts on the series and
• Post on the dream I had, and the subsequent attempts to interpret it on Plurk
• Report on the Fun Run!
• A photo post.

Hat is from here.

For now, though I’m going to work on my story for Natsci. Write or Die time.