To be Free

Hurrah for public holidays! 

Things I need to get done: 
1) Ok, I'm hungry and I need breakfast
2) Would like to learn a new calligraphy script - one for writing with my pilot parallel pen
3) #100dayproject
4) BLACK PEAN SF post - been pending since Sunday night!
5) brainstorm designs and ideas for my washi tape venture. 
6) attempt to start actually putting down the designs to paper 
7) Game, because I'm a gamer 

Whee! So I've been keeping this under wraps.

But I guess it's time to let the cat out of the bag! 

I'm going on holiday! With my sis! In like... 6 day's time? AND! We JUST finished booking all the hotels and stuff a few hours ago. Lol. Needless to say I've not packed or even started packing my bags yet. Lol. And the flight in Sat 2am. Meaning that we have to leave for the airport on Friday night, after work... So I have to get all the packing done by Thurs. And money changing and stuff too. Whee. We still do not have a firm itenary planned out. Yay.

Oh wait, I've not said where we are going huh? Well. Japan. Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo, in that order. Yeah yeah I know, we missed Arashi's concert in Osaka. I mean, we don't have the tickets and all but at least we could have gotten some concert goods and stuff... But well... The timing just isn't right... So yeah, can't be helped. Really a last min trip and all. I only made up my mind to go on the 2nd of Jan. And air tix were only booked this monday. Lol.

Talk about it being rushed.

Will be the first time I'm going on a holiday with my sis. Yeah. Should be fun? Hopefully I'm not too tired to enjoy the trip. At least I'm getting hyped up so that's a good thing. 

Initially I was really hesitant to ask for leave. Two weeks at that. Right after coming back from another vacation. But then my sup was ok with it. And after waiting for a long time (a few days), the section leader approved my leave... So with that, my leave for last year is completely spent. Which means if I need to take more leave for whatever reasons this year, I need to be conservative about it... In case ya know, I don't stay the entire year and end up using too much leave... Then they'll deduct it from my salary! 

But well. In the end, I asked myself if I really really cared about this job all that much, and my answer was no. Hence off to Japan I go. I really still hate missing that research meeting. Well, meetings actually, since it's a weekly thing. But oh wells. I don't care anymore. Sure there are some aspects of this job that's nice, but I wouldn't like to stay long so off I go. 

But wells. Finally finished booking airbnb rooms for all three cities. Initially we wanted to stay at a ryokan in kyoto. But it's expensive and we got tired of searching... And it's quite late already so... Yeah, we just didn't bother in the end. Maybe next time... Now we have to find where to have a kaiseki lunch... But well... At least all the booking stuff is done. Pocket wifi booked. Air tix. Finally accommodation done today. Also travel insurance...

Finally, all the ingredients for this holiday has come together. All that's left is... Well.. Estimating how much Japanese yen to change, and packing our bags, and planning the itinerary... Yeah... 


Also tuned in to a live stream for once. For something besides newszero. My internet was acting up at times (and it was my internet, not the livestream), but otherwise it was really smooth and 99.9 was so freaking thrilling. I can't wait to see the rest of the episodes. Will definitely like to watch it in Japan! Newszero too! :P We purposely picked airbnb rooms with TVs so I definitely hope we'll get the time to watch it. Probably not many of their programs though, cos we'll be out... And probably reach the hotel rather late... But I hope to watch newszero at least! Keep up my streak as much as possible!

Also I'm gonna bring my journals to Japan! Hope to have some time to pen down a few sentences everyday, else... For a two week long trip, I won't be able to recall anything by the time I'm home. I mean if I were to fill up my daily entries by backdating... *shakes head* nah. Quite impossible. I did get my writing done in HK. Pretty much till the last two days. Well, only 1 night, cos the last day was the flight back (hence last two days). So that was a pretty good record IMO. Gonna bring my color gel pens and stuff there - bought some new ones especially for this occasion. Think it'll be fun. Just hoping that my energy levels will hold up lol. Cos recently, it hasn't been.

Alrights. That's it for now I supposed. Will try to see if I can get an NM post and a SF post out or something tonight... Hmmm... 

 First post of the year. Gosh. It's so late already, but I'm not even sleepy lol. Been sleeping late and waking up even later the past few days... Guess I *should* sleep soon though... It's almost 3am already... Goodness... How will I be able to wake up for work on Tuesday? Sigh. I hate work... I need a new job... 

I did it.

I went to my 'Entries and comments' DW inbox subfolder and DELETED everything. Sorry. No time to reply all those comments... They are long overdue by now anyway.... And all the really important stuff are PMs, which I've kept.

Also, Ohnoex finally started posting, thank you to the mysterious helper who jumped in to save the day <3. I hope the mod is doing well too.... ><
And my gawd, I was really shocked to refresh the page today and see my name. The first fic is for me, whut? Thank you mysterious writer-san. 


In other news: DNA finally has the proper membership settings. Took me a good long period of trying to get the thing properly updated. Sigh. The bad thing about DW is how slow things move. It's a known bug with the membership settings but it's taking ages to get fixed because all the people working on DW are volunteers. Or something to that effect. Which means things move really, really slowly. Can't blame them... But I do wish we'd see features like the new post editor WITH rich text support and tags selector sooner....

In yet more news.

2018 is almost upon us. What do I hope for?

I don't know...

But I do know that I'll say goodbye to my current position. Either earlier, or by the time my contract ends. I don't know how long more I can last here. It's bad for my physical and mental health.... sigh.

Haven't read much books this year. Hardly any at all... Hope I'll get to read 1 book a month next year... But with my current schedule, it's really hard. Doesn't mean I haven't been learning though. With the insane amount of podcasts I've been listening to... definitely been learning a lot. And it's also taken time away from my reading, since I listen to podcasts and game on the trains now instead of reading. Then again, previously I read during my lunch break... So yeah. New job, no time to read...


I hope that I'll have more time with Arashi stuff. Watching their shows... And then getting active online again. Will try to post more here... And I'm also hoping to start a new fanfic related comm :P

Meh... Just hope that life in generally gets better.... Definitely need that new job/career.... 

Phew. It's been a long time since I last posted here... Yeah... Cos i"ve been busy writing on my physical diaries with all the new notebooks and fountain pens I have.... All those inks and colors... :P

So...

What's up?

Just had a long nap cos... I was just so sleepy for unknown reasons. 

Nothing much special to talk about other than that I've been very slowly catching up with Arashi shows and I'm now watching April shows. Maybe someday I'll actually catch up. Alrights. Nothing much else to say for now lol. Maybe next time~! 

久しぶり！日本語使いるのは、何年前のことですか？

ま。最近はネットあんまり使ってないな。

何で？

それはね…

万年筆のせいですね。

最近お金の状況はちょっと厳しいくなってるもその万年筆のせいです。

そう。

嵌まります。

その黒い、深い穴に落ちました。

もう身に抜けない状態だ。

かなり好きになちゃったね。

万年筆もうなん個買ったん。今は安いもだけ買ったんだけども、次はもっと良い物試したいですね。今買ったんの万年筆の値段を全部重ねたらも、かなり高いですね。そしてこれはまだまだです。この興味は始まりばかりです。

万年筆だけじゃない。

墨も。

そう。墨。墨の種類は驚きぐらいの数があります。色だけじゃなく、油性、光沢…　いろんな物性があります。そして特殊の墨もあります。香り付け墨。金と銀粉付け墨。本当になん万種類ある。今私もう２０種類以上持ってます。でももうっともうっと欲し。かなりやばいな。

そして紙。

そう。

簡単に見えるの紙。

でも紙の種類とか紙に対しでの知恵もうたくさんあります。

厚さ。耐水性。そしで墨によっての浸透性。万年筆を使ったら、良い紙と不良い紙の違うは一目瞭然。

そう。私はこの数か月でずうっとこの万年筆とカリグラフィーに嵌まって、夜仕事帰ったら、カリグラフィーする。週末もそうだし、嵐の番組もう見てない…

本当に嵌まったそうです。

時間は足りないな。

ま。

今日はそこまで。じゃねー！

And so... I've pinned my DW reading page on chrome and now it sits there besides my LJ friend feed.

I just looked at my reading page and gosh... So many updates. Nice nice... Things are getting more lively here. Hoping that more comms will moveover... Cos gah... Who knows what's gonna happen in LJ now? I don't want to see my favourite comms disappearing... Or if my own LJ disappears... That'll really suck too...

So I'm now flooded with emails from LJ because I get an email notification every time I get a PM. Sigh. I'll settle the membership stuff... This weekend I guess.

No more holiday. :(

It's my last day of work at this job tmr. Next monday I'll be reporting to a new job at a new location...

And well, I spent the last few hours looking at the flood of emails in my inbox on my phone... While not being able to do anything about it cos I was helping my dad.

Well, it's definitely not a waste of time, but it still makes me feel like a whole chunk of time disappeared because in a sense it did....

Not a waste of time though.

So...

My dad's Note 4 died a sudden death this morning. Apparently it was super hot when he checked the phone this morning to turn the power off the charger. And then he just couldn't power on the phone. Black screen all the way. Not even like, stuck in a boot loop or anything of that sort. Nope. It just won't power on. Black screen all the way. Take out battery, replace, press power button... Charge again, put in battery while plugged in etc... He even has a spare battery to try and nope. Nothing works. The phone is dead as a dodo.` 

Thankfully, I've got some spare phones lying around...

My dad's iPhone 4s that he used, and passed over to my when my iPhone 5s died, and the xiaomi note red my parents got for me as a holdover phone when my 5s died and my contract was still far from ending. In the end I used my dad's 4s for about... Half a year or so.

Yeah. Both phones still work. The 4s is what.... Hmmm, 5, 5s, 6, 6s, 7, now 5 going 6 years old. Still works fine. Why oh why did my 5s get burnt out :( Sigh. Cos I freaking fell asleep while playing on my phone and somehow because of the game, the screen didn't turn off. It just ran the whole night. Worst still, I freaking slept on my phone and it basically just got sooo hot till I finally woke up. And in that process, the insides got burnt up. Sigh.

So we spent like... 3 hours or so getting some of the basic stuff to work on the xiaomi. Cos well, the 4s has such a tiny screen and my dad's eyesight isn't what it used to be anymore. Heck, in this age of large phones, even the 4s looks tiny to me. It took us super long to get the google calendar set up cos we kept getting a server error. In the end it turns out that we had to reinstall the google calendar app..

And then there was the on/off button to fix by stuffing some paper underneath the casing...

And loads of other stuff that we did here and there to try and recover some data onto the phone and all...

Now my dad's deciding between the galaxy S8+ and the iPhone 7+. Cos well... He's not really willing to wait all the way till sept/oct, and now after the sudden death of his note 4, he's no longer keen on getting the note.

Oh wells. We'll see...

Ultimately it's his own decision to make on whether to stick with samsung or go back to iOS. He's used both OS before and the pros and cons of each side is still the same...

Hmm... I guess that's all for now... Let me go clear some of my DW inbox... And I'll think about the LJ stuff after my last day of work. Maybe I'll go PM some comm mods too... I think it's better for the community as a whole if we all move to DW.... :X

Crazy days ahead?

Well definitely crazy days ahead in SG. We're stepping into the hot season again. The weather is getting crazy hot. It's almost 2am and still 29.2 °C . Worst still, insects are everywhere. I'm getting new insect bites every single day. And that's despite all the mosquito repellent I spray... Started burning some incense today but I'm still seeing insects flying around the room. WTF? Already got another fresh bite on my wrist. Worst still are the ones on your feet. Like the one on the bottom of my left foot that I 'acquired' two days ago. Geez. Thankfully none on my toes so far... Those are super duper itchy....!!!

Possibly crazy days on LJ too? Not sure if a mass deletion is coming but I've seen quite a few accounts suspended just looking through the list of members in arashi-on. Not a good sign...? I have an ominous feeling that something bad is coming...

Now all that I'm hoping to see on DW is for the new post editor to get finished and come out of beta. Or for these two points of improvements to the current post editor. 1) the ability to select tags from a list 2) show the rich text editor menu bar in the HTML editor. That way I can do my post in HTML and still use the button for adding in a link instead of switching over to the rich text editor or typing out the entire thing in html myself cos well, I'm lazy ok? And it's much faster to just press a button rather than type out all that a href stuff. A better interface when inserting photos and the ability to link to accounts like instagram would be much appreciated too, though not as important as the ability to select tags from a list, rather than typing from memory or posting first then editing and adding in the tags later.

--------------------

Last day of my leave left. Next week I'm starting on my new job....

Spent the last two days doing nothing but watching Arashi shows. Today in particular was watching TSD all the way up till... End of Aug. Yeah... Still at the start of June for the rest of the shows... But progress!!!

Not done a single thing with my 3D pen though, and it feels like I won't tmr either... Oh wells... Bulk of my time last week was spent on DW... Moving communities over... Updating 1 masterpost... Ok, I did update my masterpost for The Chronicles as well as all the links back to the masterpost on each chapter. And then I got sick/bored of it and cried "enough!". And started watching Arashi shows instead.

Have I already mentioned that I watched 99.9? It was so fucking good. Great cast, solid storyline... Jun was cute... Oh I think I did talk about it previously already...

So... Still 2 months more to go till my target Aug... And there's still so many other things to do...

Suddenly I'm feeling the urgent need to get my comms up and running on DW again...

Oh yeah... I did pick a new layout for my DW personal blog, but I've not customised it yet....

New job next week... Excited... Hope it's good.

Wanted to write more... But now I'm too tired to make sense anymore... So that's all. Nights.

storm_freaks  is now open for sign ups!

So that's two comms that are officially open on DW. 

Two more to go... *takes a deep breath*

Next up I'll be looking at the layout and then masterpost on nutty_arashi. And then being busy with the membership stuff for SF.



In other news. Spent last night and this morning binge watching 99.9 and $%!)&%)!&$)! I LOVE IT SO MUCH. It's not that I wasn't willing to watch it last time ok? It's just purely lack of time. I couldn't resist it anymore after watching all the osama no brunch episodes... Esp when they introduce the part about Miyama being arrested. I was like FUCK I NEED TO WATCH IT NOW. And so I did.

It was... Perfect.

Detective work.

Solid script/story.

Great cast.

With the right amount of humor...

Every one of the cast members brought their character to life... And literally gave it character. Whether it's the proud and quirky Miyama, or the equally proud rival Sada... Or the hilarious Akashi...

Love it. Finally there's a Jun drama that I absolutely love.

Even better than kagi heya? Possibly so. You have to give it up to Jun, that guy is a classy actor. And hurrah for him playing in a non-romantic drama for once? (Ok there was Lukcy 7, but it was only so so IMO.)

The kind of crazy/eccentric character that's Miyama... Arghs I just love it. And so adorable too. Despite his attitude and everything he's such an adorable, loveable character. Arghs. Love it.


So...

Half of my staycation is over. And all I've really done is... Watch some arashi shows (ok, at least I finished a drama series. That's a big accomplishment IMO.) And move two communities over to DW. Have not played with my 3D pen yet... And then there's still my personal DW to set up --> the layouts and making a new sticky post...

*sigh*

Alright... That's all for Today's post I guess.... 

- Finish updating arashi_bangumi masterpost
- Update nutty_arashi  masterposts
- Do layouts for nutty_arashi  etc, then open it
- Figure out how to removed the forced small letters for arashi bangumi post titles. Also by the same regard how to remove forced ALL CAPS for arashics... I probably have to write my own custom CSS... Let's see if I remember how to do it...
- Make a new intro post for my own blog. I guess I should start over? My old intro was written years ago and many things don't hold true anymore. For instance, I no longer play maplestory.
- Figure out how to handle the moving of SF to DW properly
- Oh... Making some guides on how to move to DW... Though it feels like a visual guide isn't exactly needed anymore since so many people have moved already but still...
- Finally move that last comm of mine over...
- Oh no... then I have to do the layout for my own blog too? 

Man. DW is gonna keep me sooo busy. Crazy.