Phase Two, the devil

You know how they always say, there're a couple of phases when it comes to writing? And they always say, phase number two is always the hardest. It's when you start to think you should give up, because your plot isn't going anywhere, your characters are about as interesting as dry bread, and the dialouges just blah.

And you give up, because you really should've left all that writing to the proffesionals.

But, they also DID say that you should continue no, regardless of how bleak your whole story seem to be, 'cause when you read back much later, it wouldn't seem so hopeless afterall.

Well, I didn't believe what they said.

And how I regret it.

I stopped NaNo-ing a week and a few days ago, because my plot was on a downward spiral, and my characters weren't even as interesting as me (and Chooiyen isn't very interesting to begin with anyway).

Now, reading back on what I wrote, I wasn't all THAT bad. No, I'm not starting to think I'm the greatest writer, but I see now that what they (who, actually?) said does make sense. What I thought about my story sucking harder than a vacuum cleaner, well, that's just Phase Two at its devil work.

I should've continued. Now I cannot finish by November 31st already.

Stupid NaNoWriMo. Stupid Phase Two.

Out. Not in.

Foremost, an apology to my (possibly non-existantial) readers. (I know people visit, but I have no idea if they actually read through the posts.)

If you've been following my blog religiously (which I know you haven't), and you've been looking forward to my posts (which I know you don't), I'm sorry I haven't been posting for the past week and a half.

Let's just say I'm forced to take a couple of weeks off from the internet, from my house, and from Taman Mayang, Petaling Jaya on the whole.

I had no idea this was coming, the whole thing just pranced upon me one saturday morning (y'know, the saturday after my last post). I woke up, and my dad went, "pack your bags ah, we're moving out for a couple of days." And so, I stuffed a couple of days' worth of clothes into my bag, and off we went. Only, 'a couple of days' became 'a couple of weeks'.

I've got the laptop, but no internet connection. Say bye-bye to internet surfing.

I'm doing this in Starbucks now, if you're wondering.

I'll probably be staying here until next week. Oh joy.

If you're wondering what drove my parents to having to move out like this, it's the Renovate and Revamp thing going on in our house. Big scale renovation lah.

My house is in a HUGE mess!
But, I don't mind the dust and pieces of wood everywhere as much as I do the SOUND.

Every morning, just a little past eight, practically the whole house would be vibrating with the LOUD noise from the drilling. NO ONE can sleep through that, so every single morning I have to wake up for one and a half hours, before going back to sleep again.

It is now a routine, and it is irritating.

And when you go out the front door and into the lawn, you have to be extra careful of the stray nails and ladders that are set up.

Walk into the kitchen, you have to manuver around the washing machine and the dryer before you even get to the fridge. Imagine having to wash the dishes in the bathroom sink!

Even the bathroom downstairs is rendered useless with the huge kitty cage and various pails taking up most of it's space. Because they got in the way of the construction works.

And when you're on the computer in the living room upstairs, and you feel like a little fresh air and a break from staring at the screen too much, well too bad for you, 'cause pull the curtains apart and be greeted by some indian guy laying bricks instead of the usual blue sky.

And every now and then, strangers walk up the stairs. They're always either the people who install sinks and toilets or the air-cond guy or stuff like that.

And before long, they will be in my room, making a mess there, too.

But you know what? I'll SO be looking forward to when everything is built and installed and painted and cleaned! 'Cause almost everything will be nicer and better looking! And more spacious too.

And best yet, I'll have my orange tiled bathroom! Orange, because it's the BEST colour ever. I feel a little guilty though, because I had insisted my mom order the large 40cm x 30cm tiles, as opposed to the 20 x 25 tiles she wanted to buy. And being so much larger, it costs more. She probably isn't too happy, since she's already spending so much.

But hey, when it's all done, I'll have a very nice looking bathroom!

Did I mention I'll be painting my room orange, too? Yeap, finally!

Anyway, not having internet connection does not mean I'm not inspired to write, does it? When my inspiration hits, it hits hard.

So I gotta write. In Microsoft Word, then save. Then post when in Starbucks.

Darn, of all days to forget my cell phone, it had to be today. Now I hafta lug this thing around while I look for my mom.

Planet Shaken

I told a friggin' huge lie today, just to get out of tuition class. I'm glad I did, I don't regret it one bit!
(This is probably the one time I told a lie and not feel guilty about it, okay.)

I did say Wednesday night lacked something, didn't I?
Well today made up for whatever it lacked, and then some!

I probably didn't feel too much on Wednesday.
This night, I felt like I've not felt in a long time. Brought me back to December last year.

Tonight was AWESOME. I can't think of a better word to describe it right now.

Tonight was emotional. Tonight was overwhelming. Tonight was everything you'd have wanted in a gathering of Christian youths. Tonight was just too friggin' awesome!

Maybe the fact that Fui reserved fourth row seats for us helped a lot. Hey, with over 5000 youths in that hall, fourth row seats are a HUGE deal =)

Being at the front was intense. People around were emotional, I was almost doubled over and my palms were tingling bad and my knees almost buckled , and at one point everything just... clicked. Darn, I dunno how to put it into words. You have a mental picture of something, but you just can't tell what it is. It was most surreal.

You know how I sometimes say I could hardly breathe with the, uhh, loud sobs? Well, it happened to me tonight, too. I was that close to falling over.

I know this is completely irrelevant, but there was a weird sort of comfort in knowing that while you were going through all that, your friends were on either side of you, experiencing the very same thing. I'm probably the only one who feels like this, it sounds weird even to me, but it definitely made the whole experience even more... something. Surreal?

I cannot emphasize on this more. Tonight was WAY awesome. I only regretted not going last night.

The only complaint I have is, my right ear is temporarily partially deaf. I am not kidding. I had my cellphone pressed to it and I couldn't make out what my dad was saying. I had to switch to the left ear. All my right ear hears now is a constant subtle ringing.

Oh, one more complaint. I should've made my sister go! She really should've went. She would've gotten a lot out of it.

'I'll proclaim, Evermore'!

Spread the good (songs)!

Every now and then, you find a song so beautiful, you almost want to cry just listening to it. But despite the torrent of (somewhat gloomy) emotions it sends you, you listen to it over and over again, because it is so damn awesome.

Man That You Fear is one of those songs, for me at least.
This goes on to show just how much of a genius Marilyn Manson is.

I love the melancholy mood and the gloom and the anguish and the vengeance (at least to my interpretation) of the whole song.
I love every single bit of it.

Some people (and I already know of a handful of them) happen to think that "Jika artis ialah Manson, maka muzik adalah teruk".
Goodness, I urge you to click on that song title up there, where it is a linkie and made clickable, download the song (not too huge, 5.6 MB), then go through the lyrics while you enjoy the genius works of Manson.

Go watch the video, because that's (very) good, too.

"Peel off all those eyes, crawl into the dark". That really got to me. That's the work of the genius that is Manson!

Sweet, sweet melancholy.

It's been a year and a half, but my GAWD, this song floors me, everytime!

(Hey I'm only doing this because I am of the opinion that impossibly good songs should never be kept to oneself. It's a whole lot like Love, you gotta spred it!)

-----

I missed the concert tonight, but Fui went (again), and she said it was GOOD.

I'm going to do something extremely wrong and tell my tuition teacher that I have a Very Important Function to attend, and that I'll have to skip tuition tomorrow night.

She will most probably be Very Mad at me, and think that I am a Completely Useless Student, because I've been canceling classes and she has had to postpone teaching new chapters until I return. Either that, or she has to repeat everything to me. And she is an Extremely Impatient Woman.

But tuitions on a Friday night and Sunday afternoon are too much of a nuisance. They cripple all your holiday plans. It's the holidays lah for goodness sake!

I have to go to the concert! Fui's going, Michelle too.

Last night was awesome, and I only hope tomorrow will be better =)

Karaoke and movies and concerts, oh my!

"Na na na na na na na na... Wake me up when september ends...
Na na na na na na na na... Wake me up when september ends!"

See? I did say we should've learned the words to that song, did I not?

But the singing session was really fun anyway! Everybody was jumping around, everybody sang waaaaay out of tune, everybody got high, and at one point everybody even tried to dance like N*sync! ('Cept for Li-ann. She was doing her favourite Special Dance. Hahah!)
The others were practically screaming the words out instead of singing them, apparently trying to outdo each other. One hogged the microphone, while another practically snatched it away from this other person she was s'posed to be sharing it with. (No I'm neither of them.)

Wutoodooo. Kiasu-ness.

One girl even more geng, it was all dark and everybody was crowded in front of the set, singing (shouting?) loudly, but she didn't have the mike mar, so during the chorus somewhere she probably decided she wanted the mike and she was going to do something about it, but she wasn't able to get the mike, so she went ahead and friggin' pull the microphone's jack out, because heck, if she couldn't have it, then she wasn't going to let this other girl have fun with it either!
She said it was an accident la, but I don't know... (haha, just kidding la!)

But this wasn't the highlight of the day.

Then we went and bought tickets for this:













You remember my gripe when it comes to Umum rated horror movies? That they are never proper horror movies. But among all the Umum rated horror movies that turn out to be anything but scary, Koma 2 takes the cake. Hell, 20 minutes into the movie and you can already tell how the story would progress and how it'd end, it is so laden with clues. And there are no ghosts, not even one.

But among all the Umum rated horror movies with (extremely!) misleading posters, Koma 2 is the one most worthy of the RM6 ('cause Wednesday mah). It's the best not because it was scary (anything but!).

Towards the end of the show, I had tears streaming down my face, my eyes were red, I had uncontrollable sobs, with my hand over my mouth to muffle the sounds, and I'm not kidding when I say, I could hardly even breathe!
Yeah the show was THAT moving!
The Green Mile and Titanic were tear jerkers enough, right? Koma 2 stirs you up five times more than that!

(OMGWTFBBQ this is becoming something of a movie review!)

But, this still wasn't the highlight of the day.

After dinner at Ichiban Ramen, 'twas the concert!
It lacked something, I can't quite put my finger on it though, but it was very good nonetheless!
Chocolate church with people doing it chocolate style!
And that "Big Black Man" got everybody in stitches! (Or me, at least.)
Note: I always thought scooping off the toothpaste back onto your toothbrush was disgusting. Now I think boys are disgusting. Haha!

And it's a bit of a miracle, how one night can change another person, just like that.

If you haven't already guessed, the concert was the highlight of the day =)

Late morning left home, came back late night. Extremely worn out, am having a dry, sore-ish throat from abusing my voice box, and having a head full of thoughts, from the movie ('twas so sad, y'know?) and from the concert at night. I'll probably be laying on my bed half the night thinking about them.

But I had fun!

Confusion itself is confusing

How to know if your English is deteriorating:

When you don't know if the noun for 'confuse' is 'confusal' or 'confusement'.

Goodness, I spent all of 20 minutes looking up those words, on Dictionary.com and Answers.com, even on Google (people have used both "look of confusement" and "look of confusal".). Apparently, none of them are correct.

Then I went and asked my mom.

She didn't even have to think! "It's confusion lah!"

Waaaaaah how bad it is to spend 20 minutes pondering over it when my mom can answer it in 0.20 seconds!

***

Anyway, had lunch at the J W Marriott hotel in PutraJaya. I dunno how my cousins can eat so much; I was bloated even before the first plate of dimsum arrived.

Them adult people took almost 45 minutes to sit and settle down over at their tables. That's why it's always good to be a kid =)

We left home at 11 am, and came home around 4.30 pm. That was how long lunch took.

I wish I had spent more time on my NaNo work lah. I'm 3000 words behind from what I had planned to reach by now.

And I think my add maths teacher is getting sick of me calling and rescheduling classes so often.

Whatoodoo. Add maths twice a week, at such odd times somemore, they're bound to clash with my holiday plans lah.

The better God?

You remember all that we have been learning about in Form Four Sejarah? About Nabi Muhammad and Islam and all?

Nabi Muhammad was a respected man, wasn't he? He made all the right decisions and all.


"Islam was founded by Muhammad, a demon-possessed pedophile who had 12
wives - and his last one was a 9-year-old girl. And I will tell you Allah
is not Jehovah either. Jehovah's not going to turn you into a terrorist
that'll try to bomb people and take the lives of thousands and thousands
of people."

That was quoted from a pastor living in the U.S. It backlashes all that we've been reading about Nabi Muhammad.

Demon possesed pedophile? This guy was engaged in the age old "my God is better than your God" war.

It gets you thinking. Religion is supposed to be good, isn't it? But now people are doing hateful things and having malicious thoughts, all in the name of religion. It seems to me, religion is now the catalyst of the modern day evil we see. And to have a pastor say something spiteful like that... it really does make you think.

I USED to think religion existed merely to give people a sense of security. You know, from believeing that up there, among the stars far far away or something, there exists a divine being capable of listening to the softest of our whispers and answering the most impossible of our prayers.

I'm not sure if I still think that now, but really, I don't know just what to think of religion. Just think, a God that sends everyone else who doesn't believe in him to suffer eternally?

But then again, almost every religion says that. So I guess we would all be eternally damned or something, regardless of which God we believe in. Because we believe only in our God, but doubt all other Gods.

Come to think of it, you know what's the sure fire way of attaining world peace?

Having only ONE religion.

But then it brings up the question of... just WHICH religion?

And then the fighting arise again.

(I'm sorry, I've been thinking too much of late. My MC has loads of questions regarding God, and that got me thinking too!)

NaNo post #1

NaNoWriMo
It appears to me that everyone else has already gotten to the 5,000 word mark. I'm still at 1,700. How am I going to finish 50,000 words by the end of November is a mystery to me. I blame MSN Messenger. Friggin' huge culprit of novel-writing distraction.

It also appears to me that every WriMo has a NaNo-blog, or something equivalent to that la. They write about their characters and their plots and keep people up-to-date with their progress. I am not kiasu. I don't NEED a NaNo-blog.

But I AM going to write everything I would've written if I WERE to have a NaNo-blog here.

I don't have a title yet, because only stupid people have titles even before their work is complete. And I am not stupid. Hopefully it's nothing dumbass, because I tend to come up with dumbass titles, evident from the blog name that I had to choose.

The MC in my novel (it sounds posh, doesn't it? My novel!) is loosely based on, uhhh, myself. Because I know myself so much better than I do other people, it's easier to flesh out my main character. She's not an exact duplicate of me, though, which is a relief. No one wants to expose themselves too much =)

Here's a little secret, though. My MC questions the Lord almost all the time! She has her doubts, which I kind of enjoyed writing, because in all seriousness, I never get to ask questions like these and not get stares from devout Christians. I tried asking the one person who's understanding, and patient, enough to answer them, but really, they weren't the answers I was looking for. I have weird questions, and my MC voices them out for me. Something like that la.

No lah, my story is not about religion or Christianity. I'd include an excerpt, but... nahh, duwan lah.

I've brought my MC far from home, now I have no idea where to bring her next. Or where she eventually ends up. In other words, I've only just begun, and I'm already stuck. Help!