New Computer!

Listening to:  Hello - Evanescence
Feeling: Happy
Got a new PC!! Finally... the old one was pretty ancient. I think I had it for about 10 or so years, so it was time for it to "kick the bucket". The only annoying part about a new computer is that you have to load everything onto it such as basic programs and old files from the previous PC. Some of the stuff makes me question if I want to keep them. Like old music that I liked a few years back, old photos... or if I wanted to keep 500+ pictures of DBSK (don't ask). I cleaned out most of the old stuff, but yeah, I ended up keeping 500+ pictures of my favourite boy band. Hey, it used to be about 900, but I painfully filtered some out and made the sad decision to get rid of nearly half. On the bright side, my new PC runs a lot faster and it's a newer operating system. :)

 Image credit: Google

1 Year Old

Listening to: Call Me When You're Sober - Evanescence
Feeling: Sleepy
So early in the morning and there's still time before my statistics class starts, so I decided to put up a post to kind of celebrate my blog's first birthday! Never thought that I'd be able to keep this blog running for this long after so many attempts in the past and failing each time. But I can finally say that I was able to keep one alive for at least a year. And hopefully next year too. Although there's not much that I post about, it's kind of nice to have a place to put your thoughts in. So, Happy Blogoversary!

With All My Soul Mini-Reading Challenge Participation Post

Image credit to Fiktshun   Oh my god. The last book of the Soul Screamers series, With All My Soul, will be released a month from today! I remember picking up the very first book, My Soul to Take, about 2(?) years ago and I was intrigued with the promise of banshees, hellions and of course, reapers. Upon finishing the first one, I was instantly hooked into reading the rest of the series. And I'm so glad that I did because this is one of my favourite series!

I participated in the Soul Screamers Reading Challenge last year while waiting for the 6th (Before I Wake) to be released and I had a great time re-reading and reviewing the series, so I decided to join in the challenge for the very last one. I'm so not ready to say goodbye to all of my favourite characters, especially Tod, but I can't wait to see what Rachel Vincent has in store for us.

If interested, signups are on Fiktshun's page.

Back to zombie mornings

Listening to: Given Up - Linkin park
Feeling: Tired

Where did it go? My break was so nice and yet it had to end. It was a very relaxing break for me and since I didn't have any homework, it was awesome. I spent the first few days not really doing anything but relaxing at home and reading The Indigo Spell (review to come). The last few days were pretty good; I got to see my friends from both uni and high school. I hosted a hot pot party at my house and watched X-Men: First Class for what I think would be the 5th time. It never gets old. Especially not with James McAvoy afterall he was the source of a house filled with happy squeals. It was successful and the food was great. No setting tables on fire, which is always a good thing.

Had a sushi lunch out with high school friends downtown while chilling with our Lat-Teas at a stone park and talking about pigeons and pigeon boyfriends. The latter part refers to the otome game, Hatoful Boyfriend, which I haven't played, but heard a lot from a friend who plays it every so often. Then dinner out with family and family friends.

During the last day, I got a new desktop computer! Hurrah! My old one is pretty ancient and I decided that it was finally time that it could retire. Haven't set up the new one yet since school is draining me already on the first day back, but will do that soon. Hung out with high school friends again in the evening at SB's house and it was a fun time talking about our post-secondary life while fooling around. 

So, now my break is over and I'm back to attending school 5 days a week. Sigh, zombie morning mode is now in effect, referring to unwillingness to get out of bed and groaning at the idea of school. On the bright side, it's about the middle of the semester, so I'm about half way there. Once this semester ends, I can enjoy my summer vacation!

Last but not least, drew these quickly for my friend, Alasyn of Crimson Amethyst, who has been a wonderful, amazing supporter and fellow fanfic writer. These sketches were done for her latest story, Forbidden. Please excuse the mediocre camera quality; I was too lazy to use my scanner.

If I had him as my calculus professor, I'd be so motivated. But unfortunately, I can only dream.

Super adorable scene in a diner/coffee shop type of place. Sadly, I ran out of space and was unable to draw the pie that was the main idea of the chapter.

Freedom.. for a little while

Listening to: Take It All Away - Owl City
Feeling: Happy

Three midterms in three days was exhausting. But at last, reading break is here! Since I finished my midterms before the break, I don't have much school work during the break other than reviewing and a paper due the week after. I spent the afternoon celebrating with my awesome uni buddies MF and LL at a new theater. The prices turned out to be amazing and never seen before, so I was definitely happy. We saw Warm Bodies, which was about a world taken over by zombies and a zombie named R who doesn't want to be a corpse any more. He sees a surviving human girl and his heart starts to beat, signifying his fragmented humanity. It was a short cute movie and starred Nicholas Hoult!! He was adorable in the movie. :)

So plans for the week? Nothing too much, but a few get-togethers with uni and high school friends. Not to mention, I'm totally stoked for the release of The Indigo Spell, a book that I've been waiting for since last year. It is going to be amazing and I really really can't wait. I'm kind of grateful that school's been busy so it hasn't been too torturous to wait in the last week. It'll be released 4 days!!! Gonna buy it and shut myself off from the world for a few hours. :D

Oh and I've found that shopping is a beautiful therapy for midterm stress. Saw how cute this was and had to buy it:

 

Attacked by a virus or food poisoning?

Listening to: Whisper of Hope - Gothic Storm
Feeling: Sick and tired
Oh my god this week. It started with my mom. Next my dad. Then me. And finally, my sister. We're not sure if it's food poisoning or what. I mean, we all went out to eat last week so it's not much of a stretch to say it was something we picked up at the restaurant. But yeah, I spent the past half week lying in bed and being energy drained. It is never a good sign to go three days without eating a full meal and not feel hungry at all. Now, I still have the never ending feeling of an impending stomach ache. UGH.

On the bright side, last week, I was able to finally finish the visual novel game, Train of Afterlife, which started out pretty boring compared to X-Note, but then as the pieces unravelled, it became really interesting. I love the monochromatic scheme of colours as well as the soundtrack. There are some endings that are pretty creepy, but it made more sense in the end.

Let this week be over

Listening to: The Prince of Persia - Main Title OST by Harry Gregson-Williams
Feeling: Exhausted

This week has been an energy-drainer. I spent most of my weekend doing an incredibly long statistics assignment and ready to hand it in the day before it was due when I realized that the assignment was supposed to be single-sided only. The reason why I wanted to hand it in the day before it was due was because I wouldn't be at that particular campus the next day. It didn't help that my faculty was promoting a bunch of activities all week long and I had to help out. So copying 8 pages full of graphs and answers took 2 hours out of my time between volunteering sessions.

Originally, if everything went according to plan like I had planned out, I would have been able to submit my statistics assignment a day early and have the evening to do my English 2 page paper which was due the next day (same day as statistics). So it was pretty stressful.

Yesterday was one heck of a day. At my school, it was the week to promote the school's science program and unfortunately, yesterday was my faculty's turn to show off. So I had to help out with that in between a long day of classes (Wednesdays are my longest days). Once my classes ended, it was time to help out with lab tours to show undergraduate students what kinesiology professors and researchers did in their labs. Since not a lot of my team members were available during that time slot, I ended up being a lab tour guide. I spent the morning freaking out because I didn't know the room numbers and having just the name of the lab didn't help. But eventually, I sorted things out and thankfully, it was all right.

Then it was career night time. I was helping out with that too. Answering questions, signing people in, making sure everyone had paid and guarding stuff took up most of my night. So, in the end, I was at school for literally half a day since my classes started early that day (and everyday).

Annoyingly enough, there's a physics assignment due today and with the other stuff going on, there wasn't much time to get it done before the actual day it was due, but mercifully, it was simple enough and within a few hours with the help of some friends, I was able to finish it and submit it. And now, I'm really thankful that the week is nearly over and the chaos can die down.

Image credit: Google

So tired

Listening to: Follow Your Heart - Gothic Storm
Feeling: Tired
Two weeks down, eleven more to go. It's only the second week but it's so tiring. 8:30 classes Monday-Friday really sucks when you don't live close to your school. That means getting up around 6ish. Luckily, I'm attending two campuses this semester, with one being a lot closer than the main campus. Another reason for my fatigue is that since it's a new semester, clubs and programs are trying to promote their activities and gain new members. I'm a member of my faculty's student association, so I'm out there whenever there's something like that going on. There was some of that this week and next week will be another busy one. More promotions, geek week and career night. Once that dies down, it'll be time for midterms! Fun stuff.

Well, this weekend will be a nice change from waking up super early every day, but it'll still be somewhat busy. I think it will mainly feature numbers as I'm taking physics, math, statistics and for a change of pace, English (drama). Probably not the smartest idea to take so many quantitative courses at once, but will careful planning and lots of study sessions every week (which I'm generally the planner for those).

I hope I can keep up with going to the gym twice a week. Now that my gym buddies are attending the same campus, it's a lot easier to be motivated into going. Also hoping to take hip hop and kung fu. It's going to be an active semester.

On the bright side, I sleep great every night because usually I'm so wiped out that I fall asleep not long after I hit the pillow.

 Image credit: Google

...And here we go again

Listening to: I Swear - Group S
Feeling: Resigned

Well, it's back to school again. Big sigh. My glorious 3 and a half week break is done. Although going back to school is tiring, I'm usually pretty excited about the first few days of a new semester. It's like getting a clean slate all over again. Meeting new people, taking new classes etc. So I guess I should enjoy the new-ness while it lasts because I'm definitely sure that I'll be singing a different tune in a few weeks... when the first batch of midterms come (speaking of which, I have 3 in a row within 3 days UGH).

Haven't posted what I've been doing for the last few days before school started, so I'll do that now. Mainly visited friends and going to last minute get togethers. Everyone seems to like cramming events in that last week before school. It's been tiring, but it's been fun.

Cute keychain felt plushies that I made for my high school friends during a gathering at a friend's house. Each took about ~2-3 hours depending on complexity.

Ticket to Ride Europe version! I love this game so much despite it being only my second time playing this game. We played it at my uni friend's birthday party with teams. Great chance to meet people that you don't know by being on a team with them. I was Team Red and you can see my and my partner's train path on the board.

So the first week has gone and passed. It's been pretty good so far since the first few days are a warmup for the course. I'm taking math, physics, statistics and english! Ugh, 3 number-filled classes, but I think english will be a nice change of pace. Especially since we're doing Classical Greek Tragedies! It's a drama class, but I think I'll like it. The prof is super cool (all of my profs for this semester seem to be pretty good) and the workload seems fairly decent. 2 pages on each of the six plays we'll be doing.

The other day, I found this english otome game called X-Note and it's been my obsession for the past three days. I finally completed it yesterday. It's a pretty interesting game involving mystery while being a visual novel and dating sim. Basically, it's about a girl with psychic powers who gets hired as a PI for a school. Wanting to find the truth about her deceased mother's X-Note file, she agrees to the job and finds a lot more than she signed on for.

This is probably the first visual novel game that I've played, since my other dating sim games involve more running around and finding stuff. But let's just say that my first end result in this game was pretty shocking considering I died. But once I got the hang of choosing the right answers, it's a pretty good game.

(Left to right: Yuon's Path, Anon's Path, Oure's Path and Miscellanous stuff)

First path? Obviously Yuon's. Mysterious, cool-calm-collected, prodigy... what more can you ask for? Next was Anon's. If he wasn't so perverted, he'd be a cool character to end up with, but he's surprisingly pretty sweet. And finally, Oure!! Oure's so adorable and innocent, but a little too dopey. I wish Rexus (the red-haired character) was available as one of the paths you can take, but he remains the mysterious saviour throughout the game. Each guy has some sort of dark secret, though they range in terms of seriousness. Some of their dark pasts are seriously screwed up and traumatic. Each guy is somehow connected with the other guys and it was pretty cool to find the truth.

The Holidays

Listening to: Whisper of Hope - Gothic Storm
Feeling: Normal

My winter break is slowly nearing its end. Got one last week left. I did do quite a lot of stuff though. Finally finished the Lord of the Rings trilogy (courtesy of a present from my dad) and I enjoyed it very much. I'm the type that prefers battles over epic journeys, so I have to say that I like the 2nd and 3rd movie a lot better than the 1st and The Hobbit. Epic journeys are really beautiful, but after a while, they get kind of dull for me. I do better with action. 

Boxing day was a pretty busy day for me though I ended up not buying anything. It was more of accompanying my mom and my sister, who both spend a lot on various stuff. Had lunch at Cafe Crepe. I had a "french toast" crepe which consists of cinnamon, egg and maple syrup.

I did get my sneakers a few days later though. Adidas again. Unfortunately, I didn't like the design of the high tops that were on sale, so I settled for this:

I wonder if they'll look good with pink laces too? I'll probably test that out eventually too. After buying a punch card, my sister and I have been rock climbing a few times during the break and I now know how to properly belay a climber and am certified too. :) It's a lot of fun and I hope I can improve my climbing since I've always enjoyed it.


I saw this in the mall the other day and thought it was very cute, so I took a picture of it to share:

Only a week left and there's still a bunch of stuff to do. I'm swamped with events and get-togethers with friends since everyone seems to have planned to cram in as many as they can get in before school starts. It's going to be a fun but exhausting week.