Turning Into A Sloth

Somebody save me from my sloth-y-ness..... (Z_Z)

Santas Rampage Cinema

BWHAHAHHAHA!!!

I was browsing on the BBC website and found this!

I love this video!! WHAHA!!

Merry Christmas!!

Mmm.. Yah. It's a bit late, about 1.5hrs late, but what the hell.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

I just spent my FIRST ever Christmas away from home, in Aberdeen.

It wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. Mainly because I was invited to my friend's place for dinner. It was a small group, just four of us - 2 Japanese, 1 Australian and 1 Singaporean.

Random isn't it? And I've just realized that we're all from the Asia-Pacific region. Haha.. What a coincidence.

It was a simple dinner, but one of the nicest I've had this year. H-san made a vegetable quiche which she learnt in Malta. She's a really nice person! I'm glad I got to meet her. She and K-kun make a really nice couple I think. Hee~ (^_^)

I made a chocolate-coated strawberry & banana sandwich sponge cake for the dinner. I ran out of sugar so I had to split one portion of cake mix into 2 layers instead of making two portions. Then, I forgot to halve the cooking time since the layers were now thinner than they should've been. So.... The sponge layers turned out slightly... crispier... than I had hoped. It was still pretty tasty in the end, so it was only a demi-failure. (^_^''') Haha~ Unfortunately my camera ran out of battery, so I couldn't take a photo. I think H-san did though, so I'll see if I can get it off her or K-kun.

Boxing day tomorrow! All the sales start!! Heheheh~ Friends and I are going shopping.. I wonder what we'll find........ Woot woot!~~

Alone In My Flat

As the title says. My winter break started on Saturday. So that means that I'm 1 week into it.

......

OMG!! ONE WEEK OF MY BREAK IS ALREADY GONE!?!?!

Dammit.... Let me tell you how I've been passing my time... I set up this LiveJournal account right, so that I could use it for my translation practice (and also so I could join a certain fandom community... *ahem*). Then last Friday, I decided, "What the heck! I'll try translating an entire video instead of just short articles!"

So I started translating a 55-minute Japanese video into English.

I have been absolutely obsessed with it. Within 3 days, I had finished translating the first 3 sections of it (roughly the first 16 minutes). 1 section a day. Not that it's easy translating mind you, nor does it mean that my Japanese has somehow improved by leaps and bounds over the last year. Noooooooo.... I stayed up until unearthly hours (the 2nd day I stayed up until 4-something) doing each section, simply because I was.. well... Obsessed!!! I don't know why, but I had to prove something! That I could do it!! That I WILL do it!!

Of course, then my classmates called me on Monday and reminded me of the fact that exams are in January. I needed to start studying NOW. So we made plans to study. Which we have! But it hasn't curbed my translational-obsession... Its slowed it down, definitely, but more than anything, its fired my obsession up! Because, now I need to get this out of my system before I can concentrate 100% on revision! That's a LOUSY excuse, I know. But I need to do this!

So, the last 2 sections of the video took me about 2 days each to finish. There are 3 sections left... Can I get them done by this weekend I wonder? I must, if I want to give full attention to studying by Monday.

Oh, and... I'm now officially alone in my flat. Alone for Christmas... N went home last Thursday (T_T) and D flew off to France on Friday (not that it made a difference... it hardly feels like D's been a part of the flat this year, and he's moving out with his gf in January anyhow).. And today... R left for home as well. (T_T)

It was fun the last week though. R and I finally managed to have time to hang out together, something we both missed doing since the new school term started. At least, I know I missed it. We had our usual banter, in between serious discussions or seriously random discussions. We made dinner together for the first time in a long, long time. We lived off leftovers for a week, and hey! We actually managed to whip up some pretty good meals with those leftovers! ♡

Hahaha.... I make it sound like we're a couple or something. But we're not. We do make that a running joke though, simply because we're so similar, we get along the best in the flat (in my own opinion anyway) and we work well together (I chop, he cooks. I clean, he makes tea). If anything, we're like brother and sister here, despite the fact that he's a guy from Chorley and I'm from Singapore. Anyway, I doubt R's girlfriend would appreciate the joke... (^^''')

Well. There's just me now. And my classmates. And my translation project.

.......

I should go to bed.

10 Minutes to 3a.m.

And I have more or less just finished my last laboratory logbook entry for the Winter term of 2007. Ok, there's still a huge chunk of it missing but I can no longer be bothered about it at 3a.m. in the morning and the fact that I'm already in holiday mode doesn't help.

It is now officially 3a.m.

My brain has switched off. Screw the logbook. I'm going to bed.

47! Christmas Present for Myself???

I WANT!

(T_T)

But am I desperate enough??

This... (*_*)

Hoshiiiiiiiiiiiii~~~

Then the question comes: Do I want the regular version or the limited edition more. Well... Although the behind-the-scene clips looked VERY interesting, I kinda want to see their Neoki Dokkiri clips more. Saw some previews posted on youtube... Yoko's was ADORABLE!!! And Hina... That man's brain is one fast processor.

But... $$$.

Haiz. Oh well. Maybe if I ignore it long enough, I'll forget how badly I want it right now.

2 more days to the start of the Winter Break!!! AAH! I'm already in holiday mode!

The Geek In Me Says...

I officially love HJSplit.

It's a freeware program that allows you to split or join files that are too big to send through e-mails, or to upload onto the numerous online storage spaces you have nowadays. It's particularly good for say... homemade videos that you may want to send to a friend through e-mail. Now we all know that e-mails have some attachment size limit. Just split your video up into little bits, and send to your friend as separate attachments. The downside is that this only works if your friend has HJSplit (or it's smaller cousin, HJJoin) as well, since he or she will need it to patch the video up again. But once it's done, the video just plays as it should! Magic!!!

Plus, it doesn't actually need any installation. It functions just by running the .exe file! And it doesn't take that much space either!

Oh man... I sound like a paid advertisment... Haha.. Didn't mean to. But it really is such a convenient little piece of programming.

Can't Breathe Now That I Can Breathe

I am sick.

I have been sick since the Saturday before. Actually it may have started on Friday but in any case, that's more than a week now. BOTH my ears are now blocked and yesterday I developed a cough for some reason. I was still coughing this morning, although it seems to have disappeared right now.

I blame the weather most of all. If it wasn't cold and damp all the time now, I probably would have recovered by now, without any of this irritating deafness.

But what brought it on was a combination of stress and inactivity. Yes, I haven't actually done very much exercise for about a month. I have grown fat and soft once again. The stress part was the start of the Design Week that all Level 3 engineering students have to go through. That started 2 weeks ago on the 19th. The point of the exercise was that we were all assigned a topic relating to engineering design and a group to work with. For an entire week, we would have no scheduled classes, but instead would meet up in various labs in FN to work on the design of whatever it is we got. What made it worse for my group is that at first we were told our report was due in on the Friday that week, with a presentation by the MEng students (me included (T.T)). 1 week to design and write a report on the preliminary design of a hydropower scheme is pretty fierce, let me tell you that. So as we all stressed and stayed in the engineering building til late at night to produce individual reports, we suddenly got word from our supervisor that she was extending the deadline to the following Friday.

On Thursday evening.

And there was no e-mail. No, no. She only told people she happened to bump into, and asked us to pass the word around.

$*#&^&*#*^$!!! Don't get me wrong. It WAS a good thing that she extended the deadline. BUT, the last minute notification and the mode of communication was just... lame, for a lack of better words. Plus, we learnt that the later Friday was supposed to have been the deadline in the first place, just that she got it wrong. Of all the #*$&#*%*.

Sigh.

The result was a horrendous onset of the flu. Of course, it didn't help that we had yet ANOTHER piece of work due in the same Friday. 1 formal report and 2 written logbooks. All due in the same day, at the same time. For 2 whole weeks, I was sleeping at 3am and waking up at 9am to be in for 10am. On the last Thursday I slept at 4.30am tidying up my work before submission.

But, at least everything's done now. I only have one last report due in 2 weeks. So I can breathe easier now. Except that I can't actually breathe without a tonne of drugs and nasal decongestants... (-_-''')