Dear Bobbie / Friday, February 17, 2012
I was watching some music videos on Youtube and somehow ended up watching the MV of Psychosocial by Slipknot. Out of their other videos I chose to click on that one since it showed a staggering 45 million hits. The song sounded like a toned-down heavy metal number to me initially because it wasn't all death growls and demonic screeches. So I was watching the video while listening to it. After the first chorus or so my surroundings became eerily quiet and all I could hear and see was this bunch of ghoulish masked demons amidst roaring flames shouting PSYCHOSOCIAL! PSYCHOSOCIAL! in my face. I recognised that additional background vocals were amplifying their chants, but I couldn't help feeling like I was listening to possessed people. A sense of insecurity started gnawing at me until I finally closed the window and removed those murderous-looking singers from my sight. Thinking back, the lead artiste reminds me of the masked perpetrator of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I guess I'll just stick to bands like Yellowcard and Muse...
I have 90 albums on my shelf now, so there's really no room for impulsive buys. Out of 90, I'd say that around 6 were bought at a moment's fancy. It's bad because every single album costs something, but it's not bad in the sense that the 6 albums have, probably more than the others, taught me to decide whether or not an album is worth buying.
Anyway, I remember when I was much younger, I'd listen to the same album over and over again until I knew how to sing all the songs by heart. Back then when China Dolls were still popular, I was so keen on learning a Thai rap in one of their songs (because they'd rapped with such flourish!) that repeated the song many times just to listen, transcribe, jot down and memorise. As for Japanese songs, I sang by ear. My Internet connection speed was extraordinarily slow back then and I didn't have the liberty to check the romaji as and when I wanted. I seriously think that, if not for Ayu, I wouldn't ever have picked up Japanese. Or perhaps I would have a much harder time learning the language.
Understanding every single line of every Japanese song I've ever known would be a dream come true. The accompanying benefits are not too pale in comparison either: Serving the role of a friendly and capable tour guide for my family and friends in Japan and being able to translate and help fulfill their every demand e.g. "can you help me ask them for their freshest and most expensive fatty tuna?!", watching One Piece anime or Japanese drama without having to glance at the subtitles at all, reading authentic manga, visiting Akihabara to check out the latest gaming technology, ordering Ayu's concert tickets online(!!!) etc.
Everything in Japanese will become accessible for me and the people around me.
Hmm the part above is sort of an extended digression, actually. I was going to lament about how, when you have a lot of songs available to you, you begin to dedicate less time to listening to each song. When you had just 1 album, you might have listened to just Track 1 alone for 100 times. However, now that you have 100 albums, you might only have listened to Track 1 in album 1 for 10 times. Sad right!
Okay I'm going to rest now and try to stem the flow of mucus from my nose. Update again soon!
JN
4:24 PM
Hello, New Year / Saturday, December 31, 2011
Busy with loads of stuff today and will have no time for blog posts the next few days. It will be kinda meaningless to do up my resolutions tomorrow, so I'll post a short list here! (the entry always turns out to be longer than expected)
Academic achievement:
1. Get all As for my modules
Personal development:
1. Have more self-confidence
Look people in the eye. Speak without tripping over words. (I'm a victim of metathesis in stressful situations and I always get tongue-tied. This has to stop!) When you say something, you want others to turn their attention to you -even though it feels better the other way. I realise that sometimes when I talk in a group setting and everyone's just silently listening and not even laughing or smiling at me or nodding, a growing sense of unease gnaws at me. Again, this has to stop.
2. Handle stress more effectively
Yea save my sympathetic nervous system. I think too much and get too stressed about many trivial stuff. Like, I get stressed when my day with Koh is coming to an end ._.
3. Listen to my heart
Sometimes I ignore the alarm bells ringing in my head and proceed to commit myself to something not worth my time. Usually nothing good comes out of such forced deals. Learn to Just Say No!
4. Better time management
Set definite rules to abide by. When the school year starts, don't read a book until 5+AM even on a weekend, because that will destroy you even before the Monday blues set in. Time management is always gonna be a tricky issue -but just remember that while CAP is important, studying is not everything and the time set aside for family, close friends and interests should not be compromised.
Okay that already feels like a lot. There are other aspects of myself that I need to work on, but I feel that for next year these would be the most important attributes to pay attention to. Okay I'll seeyallz soon.
Labels: New Year's Resolutions
JN
10:39 AM
TWD3: Soup's Served / Wednesday, December 28, 2011
JN's Note: Press Ctrl + to zoom and be nice to your eyes! Thank you very much.
Day 3, 13 Dec 2011, 花莲
Mom woke me up at 7+ and we headed down to the outdoor hot springs together, in our swimming costumes as required.
My dad had mistaken it for an outdoor pool from the pictures on the hotel's website. I was kinda disappointed when we discovered that swimming was prohibited in the waters, being a daughter of Poseidon and all.
Unfortunately, we waited for quite a long time before the gates to the hot springs were finally opened. Indeed, the hot springs did resemble a modern condominium's ensemble of swimming pools. One looked like a lap pool, snaking its way along the floor, while another one resembled a trail of smoke curling inwards. Wispy vapours rose from the artificial springs and a device by the side of each pool indicated the water temperature -either 39 or 40 degree Celsius.
We shrugged off our "yukata" and placed them with our oversized hotel slippers into a pigeon hole. Then we slowly made our way to the hot springs. I dipped my hand into the water to confirm safe and then we proceeded cautiously a step at a time, lowering ourselves into the pool.
Ahh~ it was comfortable. My mom pushed a magical button and waters surrounding us began to bubble furiously and I felt like witch fodder in a cauldron. How fun hehe. We got ourselves into another pool and this time the push of a button activated powerful jets of water to massage our backs.
Then a lady told us that we had to put on swimming caps. I had mine in the hotel room, but my mom obviously didn't bring one. We sighed and retrieved our belongings and I pointed out that we'd probably spent more time waiting for the springs to open than enjoying ourselves in the hot springs.
Walking towards the exit my mom cast another glance at the lap pool-like spring. And guess whattt! It turned out to be a fish reflexology pool! Somewhere we could go without swim caps! Can't believe my first time trying it out would be here, in Taiwan. It's very ticklish when the fish start nibbling at your feet. As more of them gather you have to grit your teeth to refrain from shrieking out loud from all the sole-tickling.
Then we returned to our rooms, had breakfast and soon checked out from the hotel. We were driven to 礁溪车站 and boarded the train to 花莲, the next area of interest.
From station to hotel, we were accosted by an average of 2 touts per street. "To Taroko Gorge?", "Where's your hotel? I can take you there with my van." and so on. We kept having to avoid stepping on dog poop as well, in spite of the fact that there didn't seem to be many dogs around.
After checking into 经典假日饭店 Classic City Resort, we set out to explore the place. More specifically, to hunt for food.
一品香扁食： 干面
一品香扁食： 虾仁扁食
扁食 is like the Taiwan version of 云吞. The noodles were chewy and tender and leaves both you and your stomach contented.
We bought this panda bubble tea from next door. It had this sliver of weirdness which I couldn't quite place. Maybe black and white pearls just aren't meant to coexist
Say hello to Kobe!
Right across the street there was this shop selling CDs, VCDs etc. B-I-N-G-O! The previous time I visited Taiwan with my girls, I had been highly impressed by the thorough collection of J-Pop and Mandopop albums stocked by the CD stores. This time, I wasn't let down either.
Jay Chou albums galore
Ayu albums with cool Chinese names and a calefare album on the left. Apparently calefare is NOT an English word?
Just as I had predicted, they had the CD-only version of Ayu's latest mini-album (I will kowtow to anyone who can find it for cheap/find it in Singapore). I bought it without hesitation. It cost around SGD$16.20. The CD+DVD version costs around SGD$18, a killer bargain compared to the SGD$29.95 ones in Singapore. Sigh Taiwan is like a music CD haven @_@
Then we returned to this place:
And we had dessert:
花生豆花
红豆牛奶冰
Sorry but I just need to comment that their logo looks to similar to the one used in Ayu's Tour of Secret =.=
Then we dropped by the highly-recommended 24-hours 公正包子店 for their 小笼包. These 包-lookalikes have yummy hearts of 小笼包 meat and ooze out rivulets of soup. Yum yummmm~!
You'll have to be quite careful when crossing the roads in 花莲市. Often there are no traffic lights to guide pedestrians. Be sure to look left right front for incoming cars and scooters everytime you cross the street, especially in the evening. Walking along the streets, I had to constantly exhale the residual stink of vehicle fumes from my nostrils like a bull.
Getting quite sick of Taiwanese shows that get girls or female celebrities to remove their makeup so that others can pinpoint their facial flaws and engage in a spot-the-difference session, between their au naturel and the made-up face/faces. The starker the difference (in other words, the more horrific she looks without makeup), the greater the shock factor and the more excited the participants and hosts get in their discussion of the victim's ugliness.
Don't such programmes just make females even more unhealthily self-conscious? This is a serious issue, given that many of us are already fussing over our appearances all day all week and all year. If there were a universal superficiality or vanity index, such shows would do nothing but increase it. These programmes do no good to the girls watching it as it compels them to obssess over their looks. It's like a disease -once a good girl friend of yours goes crazy about her appearance, your risk of infection increases significantly.
Anyway, we had dinner at a seafood place nearby the hotel. The fried rice was hard and unappetising. The fish was so hard it could have been a squid. The main attraction of the place was an unlikely, live creature -a superduperultrauber cute pig!!! It was covered by a mix of tan and white fur and had a tiny pink snout and tiny trotters and a tail shaped like a broad crescent. Could he/she be a cousin of Wilbur??? Or a possible rival of Kermit the Frog?
Anyway, Mr. Piggy (I would assume it's male) mostly had his snout to the ground, sniffing around for food most adorably. When the owner carried him back to the counter area, the petite cutiepie squeezed his head out from a 15cm gap at the bottom of the door and when he could get no further he started grunting in annoyance! Hahaha! Maaad cute what on earth. Even cuter, the owner scolded him and he immediately quit his act. Heheh I'm tempted to have a pet pig!
Well that's all for Day 3, the Eating Day. It seems like we'll be cycling tomorrow! Labels: Hualian, Taiwan, Travel
JN
12:21 AM
A We-Party / Monday, December 26, 2011
23 Dec 2011
Read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo until 5:30AM. Being a bookworm is nothing short of cool, if you ask me. I'd wanted to finish it before the weekend, so that the movie will enhance my reading experience and not divulge anything I didn't already know from the book. Reading past midnight had an empowering touch to it; it was my take on teenage rebellion and I could read until as late into the night as I pleased.
24 Dec 2011
Spent a nice Christmas eve with Koh and a couple we've known for some time. First it was couple-couple pool where the victories were determined by the more skilled halves of each whole, then it was chit-chatting while the halves battled it out. Next up was L4D2 campaigning at a LAN shop, where we fired, chainsawed and charged our way through zombie hell holes, while screaming at the same time to lend it further semblance of an adrenaline-charged massacre. It was my first time playing in a LAN shop and whoa I had fun.
Returned home and did some work for a social enterprise project meeting next week. Then read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo till the end and slept at 5:00AM.
25 Dec 2011
No cookies for guessing who I'd spent my Christmas with -someone who has kept my heart safe year after year. I received two pleasant presents from him this year -the first a G-masking of my phone with the Crowned Dragon symbol (I love it to quarks my goodness), making me feel like a superstar with my own merchandise; the second a key chain with my name in crystal lettering on a strap.
My eyeballs nearly popped out of their sockets when I saw the G-mask. We had exchanged phones two days ago and I hadn't suspected anything because we had done this before several times and I thought he just needed Temple Run to accompany him during the MRT ride home. When I got my phone back on Christmas eve, the on/off button and the volume button felt mysteriously sunken. I did take the phone out of the cover to check, but luck had it that I didn't turn it over to discover the makeover that had gone on behind.
I guess anything bearing the Crowned Dragon symbol would earn my unquestionable affection. This symbol has come a long way. From drafts on foolscap paper, a bitmap version of the chosen model was created. It was fitted to a 96x96 pixels square for MSN display picture use, inverted in colour to represent a counterpart relationship and used in my blogskins numerous times. It has a diverse breed of offsprings -glittery cardboard decoration, basketball board with twine net, picture within a key chain and even a hand-drawn version by my other half on a Beijing Olympics box. Now there's a G-mask version of it!
Gift number two came completely out of the blue and somehow brought tears to my eyes, which I readily wiped upon the tip of the Empire State building on his shirt. Thank you for the gifts, I like them a lot.
We had an enjoyable time wandering around Vivocity. We visited the pet shop and cast our judgment that the staff didn't groom the dogs properly as their hair was growing all over their faces and their tails were like frayed ends of nylon ropes. We saw our first bichon frise too, but it seemed unkempt and we suspected that it was ill from the redness around its eyes.
We walked around my favourite sky garden and I had no praise for the Christmas tree of 2011 naked in its greenness with no adornments whatsoever.
We discovered that Page One would be closing down on the 19th February 2012 and were devastated. According to The Straits Times, "Its publishing arm remains unaffected and the company will continue to operate its stores in China, Hong Kong, Thailand and Taiwan - an irony, given the 28-year-old business is a home-grown one."
Page One is where you could almost always find the book that you were looking for and where different versions of a title were available to cater to different customers. For instance, you could buy a plain-text copy of Jane Eyre with $5, or you could buy one furnished with an eye-catching cover and quality paper and even with a reading guide for $25. Book rebel me says yes to the former, by the way. I wish someone could save Page One from its impending doom.
We took our time browsing the racks of Toys 'R' Us. Tamiya cars, Pokemon figurines, the new generation beyblades, delightful portable Barbie doll houses, Lego blocks et cetera. Then we bought a deck of Monopoly Deal cards.
We then dropped by Candy Empire for Belgian chocolates and headed home for a Christmas party of our own.
JN
12:13 AM
TWD2: Water and Food / Thursday, December 22, 2011
JN's Note: Press Ctrl + to zoom and be nice to your eyes! Thank you very much.
Day 2, 13 Dec 2011, 宜兰
We walked around with no destination in mind for a while. My dad had suggested visiting a farm, but it was decided in the end that we would visit 五峰旗瀑布.
View of the streets of 礁溪
Little did we expect that the journey to the waterfalls will take so long on foot. In spite of that, the fresh air, greenery and cool weather did their part to provide us with much ease and comfort. Or at least they made the walk relaxing for me. Unfortunately, the occasional scooter that passes by becomes more of an irritant than usual, as it leaves behind a lingering and disruptive stench of exhaust.
The next few pictures will detail our hike upstream from the river to the dam to the magnificent waterfall!
Next to a glorious dam!
There are steps leading down to that precarious stone bridge across the dam!
Mango tree spotted along the way!
Upstream of the dam
Up up here we go!
A journey not meant for the barefooted
Am I dreaming?
Guys always need a chance to show off their machismo
Next, we went to 兰阳博物馆 and had sandwiches and coffee at Mr Brown Cafe. The chicken sandwich incredibly had not a single trace of chicken or even meat within it o_o scammed. Well we took our revenge by not paying to view the exhibits and left right after our meal hurhur.
Footsteps on the bridge
The exterior of the museum bears an even more picturesque view, though.
The ingenious umbrella rack for securing your umbrella.
Then we spammed seafood at this restaurant just across the mostly deserted street.
Following that, we took a taxi to 罗东夜市. I dunno where in the world the driver dropped us at or if we hollanded, because we had to walk for a distance before arriving at an area that resembled a night market -narrow streets crammed with people and food stalls flanking the sides.
卜肉 -fried pork cutlet we think. Not bad!
My bro with his 8-ounce chicken cutlet
Photographed with a nicely-fried squid or sotong or whatever you call it from the same stall.
Clockwise from top: 包心优格雪沙, 包心豆奶豆花, 包心综合豆花
Their trademark 包心粉圆. Similar to the tapioca pearls in bubble tea -chewy goodness spilling their hearts out at the mercy of your molars.
Later, we took a taxi back to our hotel. I fell asleep with Jay Chou playing in my ears again. When I woke up, we were somewhere near the hotel -there were familiar buildings -yet no one knew where exactly in Jiaoxi we were. I had scrutinised the map for quite some time on the day of check-in, and luckily and suddenly the name of the street just formed itself on my tongue: "仁爱路". Immediately, all was clear. The taxi U-turned and drove and there, about 300m ahead, the gleaming lights of the hotel twinkled at us.
Went to check out the gym afterwards with my bro while the rest went to the outdoor hot springs in their swimming costumes. We played around with the treadmill and stuff for 5 minutes and then my bro decided to use the computers nearby. I haven't even perspired =.= So much for gyming. I assessed Facebook for a few minutes, cleared the browser history and changed the desktop background to one of Ayu before shutting down the com. Not long after the adults came to find us and we retreated to our room.
Labels: Jiaoxi, Taiwan, Travel, Yilan
JN
2:10 PM
