Thursday, September 22, 2005

Insectious Infectious!

There’s going to be a very buggy section in this blogpost so those that hate beetles and scream and run away when you see a massive moth in class should not read it.

But I shall now begin things on a light note.
Power98fm has started this competition called Mars VS Venus. Currently the girls are leading 4:2, so I’m not particularly worried yet. Besides, they get to win money, which makes it rather competitive, and also, one should listen because of the answers the people give to the questions.
Rules are that the guys will be asked ‘girl’ type of questions and vice versa. So there was this guy, on the Morning Jam with Joe Augustin and Maggie Lim, who had this question:
‘What is gelato?’
‘Errr… Gel?’
Joe Augustin blasted the guy later. The girl didn’t know the answer to her question, which was:
‘What letter of the alphabet does an Allen Key take?’
Answer to both, I think, is ice cream and the letter S.
But there’s this guy that takes the cake for the stupid answers of all stupid answers.
So his question was probably this:
‘Jack and Jill went up the hill, to fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown…
What happened to Jill?’
The guy answered one of the best answers I have ever heard. Actually I think it’d be better if I recite the poem again.
‘Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill drowned not long after.’

Sadako, anyone?
Yes. The girl’s answer was rather weird too, her question was:
‘What film does a digital camera use?’
‘Errr… Kodak?’
Digital cameras don’t use film.
Sebastian came in later and said, ‘Today we’re gathered here to mourn the loss of a great friend, whom we are all very familiar with. We mourn the loss of Jill… What’s her surname?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Okay, never mind, we mourn the loss of Jill, who drowned after seeing Jack breaking his crown.’
Yes. Must listen. This was almost as good as Henry the Rooster all over again or the What-Not-To-Say-On-Your-First-Date advertisements.
And so ends the funny bits.

Warning: This blogpost is not for the faint-hearted. Those who get squeamish if you see hair in your rice or that very memorable green caterpillar in your food or that equally memorable green frozen caterpillar I found on the frozen corn, should not read this.

After two weeks of battling with the obnoxious animal known as the Rice Weevil… Hell, no, I’ve been infected with two bloody kinds of weevils… according to this site.
But anyway, yes, currently my family is under siege from the blasted creatures known as the Rice Weevil, or Sitophilus oryzae, and the Granary Weevil, or Sitophilus Granarius. Yes I have two bloody types of weevils in one rice bin. How fascinating. How do I know? Because of that lovely website and because of the hands-on experience I’ve been getting these few days.
One of the most disgusting things known to us now, is to look into your food and see an insect waving at you. I just have to scoop a damned cup out of my rice bin and pour it into a plate and start sorting and all the damn little weevils will come out.
Thus, I have adopted a no-nonsense kind of attitude when it comes to de-infestation.

There are ways to get rid of them, unfortunately, according to that site and hands-on experience, insecticide isn’t encouraged. You can’t bloody well see the damn kids of the adults, because they’re in the bloody rice eating it before your eyes. Actually I don’t mind the adults that much, they’re adaptable, hard, and drown most satisfyingly in a bowl of water. It’s the kids I hate. They are in the rice, so you don’t know that they’re there. And when you see them, it’s gross.
I find butterflies okay. Beetles are cool too, provided they don’t sting me. Bees are fine… 3 kilometres away, or separated by mesh, but I draw the line at grubs.
I hate grubs.
They squirm and they wriggle and it’s terribly disgusting in a weirdly fascinating way. Then I pick them up with a pair of tweezers and drown them most satisfyingly.
And also, I can’t stand pupae. Especially the going-to-be-adults-pupae as one can see the black outline of the weevil in your now worthless rice. But actually, they’re rather interesting, after you smash the rice kernel and play with the frantic weevils for a while…
Yes I’m cruel. Wa hahaha.
And I have no qualms about picking the live adults out and watching them scuttle across my hands before flushing them into the welcoming drain pipe. But I stop at grubs. Grubs are gross!
Alas, it’s now the norm to take rice out to wash and see little black things floating all over it. Ah that reminds me. One more thing I don’t like about the weevils is that they don’t float. Why don’t they float…?

Actually there’s more I wanted to type but I’ll stop here for now, after grossing everyone out… seriously, with my bug epidemic…

PS- On a lighter note, again, today is Tom Felton's birthday!

Posted by norbert at 9/22/2005 11:27:00 PM

Sunday, September 11, 2005

And so it came to pass that the September holidays were here/ over, along with the death and destruction that it wrought over us all. For directly after the September holidays (would come)/ (came) the Dreaded Prelims!
Oooh scary.
Yeah so now basically, I’m bullying my brain into studying and it’s doing a good job of running away and avoiding me…
But I want to digress a little, to talk trash and basically bore everyone around me into tears.

My CA marks have come back! I’m very happy with my marks. I got a pass in A Maths, which means I’m not really caring about anything else, I just know that this term my Biology failed me as I, haha, didn’t study for one test, no thanks to A Maths, and thus failed it. So I got a B4. Ole!
I passed A Maths! The world is rosy today. And tomorrow… and the day after that.
Yeah I got 11 points! That’s close enough! Haha! I got like 22 in Mid-Years but I know I know, this term was waaay easier… so I better work hard for the Prelims then.
Yeah!

Ah yes, on Monday I was dragged into this stay at this weird country club for like less than twenty-four hours. Ultimately, it was a bore-fest but I got to watch Big Fish on the country club’s HBO channel and that movie is an excellent movie, about a son who doesn’t believe in all his father’s stories, which are extravagant and touching, almost bordering on good luck, and goes to check them out. Finding that they are all true, he returns to discover that his father has gotten a stroke and stays with him in the hospital for the night. In the early morning, the father wakes up and asks the son to tell him the story about The River. The son hasn’t heard this story before and the father tells him to make up the story then. The son tells of how the father wakes up in the hospital and is suddenly much better then they go to the river, which I suppose is near the house or something, with all the father’s friends gathered around the banks of the river. The son, carrying his father who waves goodbye to the crowd of smiling friends he had made, gently drops his father into the river. The father changes into a big fish, hence the title and swims away, having found his ‘true form’.
The son ends the story just as the father nods his head and smiles for the last time. The movie ends with the funeral of the father and in the future, the son’s son telling his friends about his grandfather’s extraordinary achievements.
I nearly cried at the end of the movie. It was so touching.

Also, having read up a book on cats in the Popular at North Point, I have decided on what cats I want to keep when I grow up. I want to keep a Bombay cat, a lovely pure jet black cat bred in Bombay originally to mimic the black panthers there; and it is a lovely little cute creature who loves friends and attention, and a Singapura cat. Yes the humble cats roaming Singapore has been bred into one of the rarest breed in the world. Funny how it takes Westerners to realize something from Singapore before we take notice of it, like the age-old Cleopatra Wong tracksuit thing, which made Quentin the director go mad in his Kill Bill series… unfortunately, Singapura cats are very expensive and rare and are also small. So I shall downgrade to a Non-pedigree. But I want a Bombay cat. They are so cute and friendly. Balinese cats are also quite beautiful; their tails are wonderfully fluffy, like the Norwegian Forest Cat, with its wild look. Ah yes, and I also want a Snowshoe cat. They are like a mix of Siamese cats and something else, and are actually short fur cats, which means they can take warm temperatures here in sunny Singapore, unlike the recent spate in Siberian Huskies.
Yes they’re gorgeous dogs, one of my favourites as they look the most like wolves and I like wolves.

Now on with the bore-fest:

Warning: You will be inexplicitly bored to death. So please do not read this.
I just want somewhere to rant.

Watch Scrapped Princess! At first I watched it for the art, which is gorgeous, then it switched to the completely hot brother there… now it’s partially because of the hot brother and also the story and the art.
Whhhyyy is Shannon soooo hot??
Actually I never watched the first three episodes, but thank goodness for a smart sense, which made me feel that Scrapped Princess was actually a good anime so I taped all of them down. On Thursday, last Thursday, I was doing my Testimonial, and searching up on Scrapped Princess. I had been reading the story a little, which was vaguely interesting, and seeing the people and characters when suddenly it hit me: Shannon was hot.
I think I have a very warped version of hot. What I think is cute, no one thinks is cute. For example: lizards. They are soooo adorable. But noooo everyone cringes away from them. But I have my standards and they stop at cockroaches. Cockroaches are evil little buggers, so I do not hesitate to squash them. Aside from the fact that they are one of the most highly evolved creatures of this Earth, with their flat bodies and ability to survive for a couple of days even with their heads cut off…
Not like that time I caught a baby lizard and played with it for a few minutes before I told my mom and she shrieked at me to get rid of it. Poor lizard. I think it’s happily living somewhere in the trees below my block. Yes I threw it out of the window. I am teh cool.
Hey at least it’s alive right. You don’t want lizard guts on your hands, trust me.

So back to the main question: Do I watch anime for the people or the story?
(Err my SS essay skills are rusty and errr I think I’m going to fail SS.)
Okay the question isn’t SS essay enough…. Is the character design an important factor in encouraging people to watch anime?

Firstly, there are many other factors which encourage people to watch anime, for example like the art of the anime and the storyline. The character design is undoubtedly an important factor, as seen in anime like Inuyasha or Fruits Basket, where the inevitable character angst catches up with the viewer and he or she is undeniably drawn into the story because of the feeling that such characters also feel what we humans feel. This humanity in the characters make people come back and watch it again. Always in an anime, there will be a few interesting characters, to entice people to watch it, like a pervert called Shigure in Fruits Basket, a schizophrenic ninja from Naruto and an arrogant flirty thief like Dark from D.N.Angel.
Still, the other factors play a part in encouraging people to watch anime, like the art. In fact, the art is a huge factor for me- I didn’t watch Shaman King, which was actually a very entertaining and excellent anime- because of the terrible art. To quote Bernice, who doesn’t like it either, ‘I don’t believe that anyone in this world can be so thin.’ However, I may have gotten her convinced, after introducing her to the great Itako Anna Kyouyama, who is a terror to all the characters in the anime, except Hao. Still, the art is something that I feel that needs improving on but that doesn’t stop me from saying that Asakura Hao is hot. Mua hahaha. Also the art of the anime defines how the people look like; and in today’s world, we see from first impressions, so if that art isn’t good, not many would want to watch it right? We see how the characters look like, decide whether we like them (Shannon!) then we slowly know their personalities as the series goes on and thus we like the anime.
Finally, the storyline of the anime- it is very important oh yes, practically all animes have very interesting storylines… okay maybe not Peace Maker, which I feel is a combination of bad art, bad characters and dull storyline, except for some funny bits. But there are those with common storylines, like Beyblade, Pokemon, and now Duel Monsters… actually I thought Shaman King was like this upgraded version of Pokemon. I got blasted at by Elizabeth Liew, which is not very nice. Twists and turns in the story hook the viewers and they are drawn into the fascinating storyline, like Inuyasha’s hanyou (Half demon) life and how his sword, the Tetsuseiga, given by his father actually is a lifesaver instead of the simple weapon Inuyasha thought it was…
Errr.
Arts Central better bring Inuyasha back. They didn’t even finish the second season before bringing on Peace Maker!
So in conclusion, I feel that the storyline of the anime is most important factor in an anime, the art, being a bonus factor. Examples include Shaman King, Scrapped Princess and D.N.Angel. Ultimately, it is the content of the anime which makes it interesting, like Naruto’s mad desire to be the best ninja in the world, or Pacifica’s, from Scrapped Princess, destiny as the ‘poison of the world which would bring forth mountains of corpses and rivers of blood’, which causes people to watch anime.

Finally, this is a message to Mildred Chew, who probably isn’t going to read this anyway:
Please get the names of the anime character you like correctly. I do not want to spend another cheering episode for Leopold of Scrapped Princess lore instead of Shannon, just because you got distracted by Leopold taking his shirt off in the show. Lol. Funny thing is- I swear that the anime’s medieval but Leopold distinctively wears bermudas in the second episode to swim. How weird is that?
Honestly, don’t you know how embarrassing it is to cheer for the wrong character? I mean, yeah cheering for Shannon is okay because I like him, but cheering for Leopold is like argh. Haha okay I’m an evil, evil person. ^_^

Posted by norbert at 9/11/2005 11:28:00 PM