lacrimae rerum

I feel really awkward doing this. >_> But I am really stressed about several things right now and it might cheer me up.

My thread at the Holiday Love Meme.

Meme taken from both steadfast and sunflower_mynah.

1. List 10 or more fandoms you like;
2. Your f-list will guess your favourite characters in each.

1. Harry Potter (4) - Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Hermione Granger and Luna Lovegood.
2. Tolkien (6, only because it's been more than six years since I read The Silmarillion and cannot remember one of Feanor's sons I liked) - Aragorn,
3. The Sandman comics (5) - Death, Morpheus, Delirium,
4. Discworld (10) - Sam Vimes, Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson, Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, DEATH, Susan Sto Helit, the Death of Rats, Rob Anybody Feegle, Tiffany Aching, and the Librarian.
5. Good Omens (4) - Aziraphale and Crowley,
6. The Chronicles of Narnia (5) - Edmund Pevensie,
7. The Lucifer comics (5) - Mazikeen,
8. The Dresden Files (4) - Michael Carpenter, Harry Dresden, Bob the Skull,
9. Disney (like the font isn't a clue XD) (4)- Simba,
10. Supernatural (3) - Gabriel,

Today I returned home from another awesome day out (I rarely spend my days off at home these days, it seems; friends and family are all clamouring for my time. I feel loved.) and was placing my necklace and earrings back in one of the tiny drawers I keep my [numerous] accessories in, when I noticed something that most of the contents seemed to have in common.



I was wearing that long necklace of polished garnet chips, those red-and-brass earrings, and that red-and-beige wooden bead bracelet with a red tartan hair scrunchie and glittery red hairband, a figure-hugging red blouse, a long ochre skirt with a few flowers embroidered in red and green thread and with red tartan on the hem, and very dark red shoes. And even my pottu was dark red and gold. GUESS WHAT MY FAVOURITE COLOUR IS. XD

So, in the morning I met Vatchala, an old friend of mine (she's seven years older than I am and used to be one of my mum's favourite students years ago; she became a family friend :D) for some delicious brunch and catching up. Awesome food, awesome company. <3 We need to meet up more often! :D

Later I went to Gena's house so we could work on our appeal letters for the universities together. We only got a little bit done, though. >_> Then we packed up and went to another friend's (Liying) house. Gena and Liying are singing at some charity performance to raise funds for dyslexic kids, so they were practising; they're really good singers. Alvie joined us later and we had lots of fun. :D

On to the book meme!


( 16. Adaptation: What book would you most like to see made into a film? Do you like to read the book first or see the film? Any books you have read after seeing the film version? )

( 17. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read? )

( 18. Your favourite book series & your favourite book out of that series )

( 19. Your favourite picture, junior fiction and Young Adult books )

( 20. Least favourite plot device employed by way too many books you actually enjoyed otherwise )

Now to read some fanfiction minselding  has sent me. :D

I've been either too busy or too tired for LJ. My new job keeps me really busy - I work five to six days a week, either 9.30AM to 6.45PM or 12.45PM to 10PM (10.30 on Saturdays), and then there's travelling time, so generally by the time I get home it's late, I'm tired, and I just want to curl up and read, or chat with friends on AIM, or watch Supernatural or The Mentalist or Justice League Unlimited, or one of the Ancient Egypt documentaries if I'm not too braindead.

Also, I recently bought and read the John Constantine graphic novel Hellblazer: Pandemonium and it was AWESOME. It has ancient Sumerian ruins and the goddesh Ishtar and Christian demons who were once worshipped as gods in the Middle East and ruined temples and a poker game with the gods and of course John himself... basically, almost everything I love. ♥ And there was this awesome bit on the last page that really resonated with me (Singapore just had an election, and I am disappointed, although proud of some areas). Here's the quote:

Blame the gods' cold machinations, or the fundamental violence of human nature; but which of us with the privilege to vote can claim innocence for the filthy crime of war? We have the choice who leads us, apathetic, into pandemonium." - John Constantine in Hellblazer: Pandemonium.

Awesome, isn't it?

Also, the 7th of May was Free Comic Book Day! :D We celebrated it at Kinokuniya by giving away free comics, giving away little Green Lantern figurines with every purchase, giving members a 20% discount on all comics, and having Stormtroopers and Darth Vader himself turn up for photos. :D



I also took advantage of that discount (I don't have a staff discount) to get myself the tenth Lucifer volume, Lucifer: Morningstar, and the Absolute Death volume! EEEEE. :D







Okay, so I could not resist. That's me in a black tank top and an ankh pendant, with my Absolute Death volume. ♥ In retrospect, I should have let my hair down, it's wild enough that if I ever did dress as Death properly, I wouldn't need a wig. The book is GORGEOUS, isn't it? As befits a beautiful character, say I. I wish my Mac camera hadn't laterally inverted everything though. ;_;

Now, on to the book meme. Since I haven't been online for so many days, I'm going to cheat by answering questions 5 to 10 in one post. XD


( 5. A book you acquired in some interesting way. )

( 6. A book with a story for you, that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time). )

( 7. What fictional character are you (secretly) in love with? )

( 8. The last book you acquired, and how (begged, bought, borrowed?). )

( 9. Your current read, your last read and the book you’ll read next. )

( 10. What author do you own the most books by and why? )

There. :D Off to spend some quality time with my new comics and wrap them in plastic.

  In this post I mentioned going out with my friends, and the lovely snake ring I bought, and my regret that I hadn't been able to buy the angel wing earrings as well. Yesterday afternoon, after Kinokuniya called to inform me I was hired, my sister texted me asking if I wanted to meet her at Plaza Singapura (I knew she'd been planning to go there to get some stuff for her fish tank). I said sure, showered, dressed and went to meet her.

  I was walking past some of the shops in Plaza Sing, looking for her (she wasn't answering her phone) and then I saw her coming towards me, and after the greetings and the complaints that she wasn't answering her phone, she showed me a beautiful set of blue rings she'd bought at Diva. I showed her the snake ring I was wearing, saying I'd gotten it at Diva the day before. She said, "I figured as much. By the way, I got you something." And then she handed me the same pair of angel earrings I'd been eyeing the previous day.

 I think my initial reaction was "??!? OH MY GOD, YOU SAW MY BLOG POST?" and then I hugged the stuffing out of her. XD I honestly hadn't been expecting it; the most I'd expected was walking past Diva, having to pull her into it, and getting myself the earrings.

 



My iMac webcam's flash is a bit bright; the earrings don't actually shine quite that brightly, but they're gorgeous.

We had a delicious meal at PastaMania (their mushroom baked rice is amazing), walked around a bit and laughed at some stuff in Times (although I was also drooling over a Hellblazer graphic novel); they have spoof books like The Dragon with a Girl Tattoo. XD Then we went to the aquarium shop to get her pump and new fish and stuff, and took a cab home.

Now, on to the book meme.

3. Your favourite book aged 9 ½, or 13 ¾, whichever you remember best.

That's an easy one, as I remember both clearly. XD At the age of 9 ½, my favourite books (I couldn't choose at the time) were the first three Harry Potter books. :D

About a week before my ninth birthday in July 2001, my dad, his younger sister, his younger brother, my cousin (dad's sister's son) and I were seated at a table in a nursing home with my dozing paternal grandfather; my dad and I, and the others, went to see him every Sunday afternoon. My aunt handed me a nicely wrapped package, saying it was an early birthday gift. I opened it immediately (I was eight going on nine!) and was quite gleeful to find new books; they were Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

I remember stretching out on my stomach on the living room sofa at home and reading Philosopher's Stone. I remember flipping to the back cover to look at the artwork of Dumbledore when he was described in the book. It was a wonderful new world for me, and I fell in love. I was half-living in Harry's world, so much so that when I was telling my mother and sister that my primary school principal was leaving to work at the Ministry of Education, it accidentally came out as "Ministry of Magic" before I realised it.

Philosopher's Stone also spawned my current reading habit when it comes to new books that are really good; I speed-read the first time through, enthralled by the plot, though I don't miss out on much. (I do read, write and talk very fast.) After I finish reading it the first time I immediately re-read the book; this time I take my time with the descriptions, the nuances of character interaction etc, taking in details I may have missed out now that I'm no longer in a hurry to see what comes next. This is how I read most new books unless they're not that amazing or really thick (though LotR was an exception, I think I read it three times straight), this is how I read the entire HP series, and it started with the first HP book.

I also remember what my favourite book at the age 13 ¾ of was: JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. I had found it in the school library the previous year, when I was still 12 ¾, and since I was already a huge fan of all three movies I looked forward to finally reading the souce material. And I was utterly blown away, in love all over again.

I renewed and returned and re-borrowed and renewed my loan of the book, tattered and torn as it already was (though I took care of it, it was already very old when I found it), so that it was in my possession for more than a year, taking up lots of space on my school desk (there were multiple copies in the library, so I felt no guilt). A teacher eventually confiscated and returned it since I couldn't keep my hands and eyes off it for long. XD Two years later, considering that it was literally in pieces (the cover separate from the books, the pages themselves torn into two thick sections, pages missing) the library condemned it to be shredded and I rescued it, using copious amounts of scotch tape to put it back together and photocopying the missing pages from other copies, cutting them out, gluing them back to back, and pasting them into the book so that it was whole again. I took it home and today it is still on my top shelf, together with all the other Tolkien books I own. And to this day, despite all the other authors I've fallen for, The Lord of the Rings remains my all-time favourite book and Tolkien my favourite and most respected author.

What about you, friends-list? What spawned your first fandom obsessions?

So sunflower_mynah  linked me to this lovely 30-day book meme at book_memes , and I'll be doing it. :D

1. A fictional character you identify with and why

This is actually a pretty hard one. XD I think I share traits with many characters, and some years ago I'd probably have given you a long list of characters I thought I identified with, but now... I really don't know.

Hmm. Maybe Aziraphale from Good Omens? We both have what would probably be called an awfully outdated fashion sense (I'd like to think that I'm not nearly as bad, though... and since my two-week paid trial expired, my two Adam Lambert icons have replaced two of my GO icons, so I can't use this icon for this post; it'd have been fitting), we both worship books, particularly rare and/or old ones, we both call people "dear", and I have a dreadful fondness for tartan. Also... between Aziraphale and Crowley, it seems like Crowley's actually the more optimistic one while Aziraphale seems to have the more jaded view of humanity; Crowley's the one who has to go and get drunk for a week after seeing the Spanish Inquisition. While I am constantly shocked by what humanity's capable of, overall I do tend to take a more pessimistic view of it. XD However, I do prefer cocoa to tea.

There's also Remus J Lupin from Harry Potter, to some extent. Mostly because of the chocolate and books. XD Also, maybe it's just me reading too much into things and forcing my head!canon onto him, but it seemed to me that sometimes he couldn't quite get why he was a Marauder, why the popular James Potter and Sirius Black cared so much about him; he didn't see what he had to offer people, and we see that repeated later on with Tonks (putting aside my inner Remus/Sirius fangirl and my slashy reasons for that). And sometimes I, too, wonder (in a good way, usually) why my friends are here, what they see in me, what I can offer them.

And of course, from the same fandom, there's also Hermione Granger and Luna Lovegood. Hermione for obvious reasons - I'm also a huge bookworm and I think all the answers to everything can be found in books/the library (or Google), and I'd like to think I'm as loyal to my friends as she is. I'm not always very logical, though, and I'm only a top student for certain subjects that I enjoy, like English/GP/Lit. And I am a proud nerd; with certain subjects, I genuinely enjoy learning and will voluntarily read more about them for fun. And my hair is just as bushy; I swear, it's like a longer, black version of hers. And Luna because, again, for obvious reasons. I'm not nearly as spacey as she is, but a lot of my peers would consider me "Loony" as well because of what I read, the things I say and do, the things I believe, the way I dress, etc. I say weird things at odd moments too. And I do love the way she dresses. XD

From vnfan !

Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Note that the wording is "will always stick with you" which I'm going to say does not mean favorite, which we've done before. It could, in theory, be something horrible that you hated, but can't shake off.

As far as I'm concerned, comics/graphic novels count as books. Especially if they're by Neil Gaiman or Mike Carey. Also, I cheated by putting quite a lot of series there. XD

1. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
2. Harry Potter (series) by JK Rowling
3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
4. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
5. The Chronicles of Narnia (series) by CS Lewis
6. River God by Wilbur Smith
7. I don't remember the title of this very very thin yellow volume for young readers, but it was about the Norse myth of Loki and Baldur.
8. The Sandman (series) by Neil Gaiman
9. The Famous Five (series) by Enid Blyton
10. Everworld: Discover the Destroyer by KA Applegate (I think. It has been years since I looked at that book)
11. What Katy Did (series) by Susan Coolidge
12. Little Women (series) by Louisa May Alcott
13. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
14. Ramses (series) by Christian Jacq
15. Lucifer (series) by Mike Carey


It's really hard to cut myself off at 15 minutes because I have a huge bookworm and I will freely admit that I like showing off my reading list. I'm always glad to see someone else with similar lists and will gladly talk books with them. If you've read this, I'd like to see your list. Consider yourself tagged! :D

Regarding 7 - I found that book in a cupboard together with my audiobooks (as a kid, I had a lot of those book-plus-cassette combos) when I was very small (preschool, I think, or maybe kindergarten). The book was REALLY thin, a very simplified version, but none of the emotion was lost and I found myself weeping for Baldur and absolutely HATING Loki for killing him, and the old woman who refused to weep for him. (Later on I came across versions in which it was either Loki or Hel pretending to be the old woman, but I don't remember whether or not this book just had the old woman as a separate character or not. Since I remember wishing that I could make the old woman cry, it probably stopped there.) I suppose Loki was the first character I truly hated as a child. XD

Regarding 10 - That book is on there because it stays with me, but NOT because I like it. In retrospect, and with the help of Google, I think that had I discovered it in the past couple of years, I would have liked it. As a very young child, however, I was probably a little too young for it. I found myself drawn in by it, but at the same time I was rather uncomfortable with a lot of it. I found it in a bookshelf and it was probably my brother's, but I had found it in my parents' room, so perhaps it had been confiscated from him.

It was certainly a lot darker than the usual things I read at that time - I believe it started with the main characters having their hearts taken away, pulled out of their chests, and replaced by rubies by Nidhoggr - and while I recognised the names of Loki and Huitzilopochtli and a few others, and the satyrs and nymphs, at the time I had not yet read enough to catch all the mythological references like Nidhoggr himself, or the Celtic fairies and the cauldron of the Daghda. Years later, as I read more mythology, I wondered why these names sounded familiar before realising that I had indeed read about them before. But as I said, when I read Everworld: Discover the Destroyer at that age, I was unable to catch all the references, and things like David's obsession with Senna, and Chris's jokes, and a lot of other things about the young adult (I think) characters, made me feel slightly uneasy. At the same time, as I said, I was strangely drawn in by the book and read it a few times over some years, but it was a sort of love/hate relationship. I think I gave it away later. I know some of you are not fans of the 'you're too young for this book' idea, but I honestly think I was too young for that book, at that time, and I wish I could have discovered it now instead.

Found a shiny meme at _silverfox 's LJ.

IF YOU'RE ON MY FRIENDS LIST, I want to know 28 things about you. I don't care if we've never talked, never really clicked, or if we already know everything about each other. You are obviously on my f-list, so let me know with whom I'm friends!

1. Your Middle Name:
2. Age:
3. Single or Taken:
4. Favorite Movie:
5. Favorite Song or Album:
6. Favorite Band/Artist:
7. Dirty or Clean:
8. Tattoos and/or Piercings:
9. Do we know each other outside of LJ?
10. What's your philosophy on life?
11. Is the bottle half-full or half-empty?
12. Would you keep a secret from me if you thought it was in my best interest?
13. What is your favorite memory of us?
14. What is your favorite guilty pleasure?
15. Tell me one odd/interesting fact about you:
16. You can have three wishes (for yourself, so forget all the 'world peace etc' malarkey) - what are they?
17. Can we get together and make a cake?
18. Which country is your spiritual home?
19. What is your big weakness?
20. Do you think I'm a good person?
21. What was your best/favorite subject at school?
22. Describe your accent
23. If you could change anything about me, would you?
24. What do you wear to sleep?
25. Trousers or skirts?
26. Cigarettes or alcohol?
27. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together? (If you have no idea, just say something crazy, it'll entertain me!)
28. Will you repost this so I can fill it out for you?

I came across this at the LJ of irisbleufic , that goddess among fanfic writers. :D

Let’s keep this simple. As a writer, do you want to know what readers really think of your writing?




<pre><b><a href="THREAD LINK HERE"><font face="times new roman" size="+3" color="#000000">THE ANONYMOUS WRITING FEEDBACK MEME</font></A></b></pre>


Rules for the meme:

1. If you’re a writer, comment to this post with your username.
2. Commenters, no drama please. Play like adults. And writers, be prepared for any comment.
3. Pimp the meme out by posting the above code into your journal.
4. Be honest.