Challenges

I've been getting back into writing fiction and fanfiction lately. That's when I saw a forum offering a challenge on a Harvest Moon story. There is one where the challenge is to write 100 chapter with a given theme for each chapter, 100 words only revolving the life of 1 HM character.

I am so intrigued by this challenge and wanted to get on with it then and there. However, I've been busying myself with making music lately... It's been going pretty well. There are more listeners now mostly gained by the Sims 3 Seasons cover song I did recently. Now it's growing up to 200+ subscribers! Wow..

There's so many things I want to do yet I'm just here writing about what I want to do. Time is really the main decider.. Which large portion of my time would I be willing to offer for a certain project.

No, perhaps I should just divide it to which artistic ... action ... I'd like to do more. Surely I should do music more because it's what I do best. But sometimes I wish I can just spend the whole day writing, yet there's always something that would keep me from finishing a chapter..

Life is full of challenge...

You start off not know what you want to do.. experience a mid-life crisis.. then you began to know what you want to do.. and now not sure which one to do first..

Life in the Sims seems much simpler than real life. Perhaps that's why it became so big..

Kitchen Candy-Candy Princess

There's a manga that I recently read called Kitchen Princess.. It's a story about an orphaned girl who has the sense of taste that moved to Tokyo to fulfill her parents dream to become the best pastry chef. Her ability allows her to taste a food and always remember it forever along with identifying ingredients within it. The girl was soon acquainted herself with 2 attractive boys and becomes the school's talk because of her having such an "ordinary" talent --which they thought was eating.

This lead her to be bullied yet starting to have a closer bond with the 2 attractive boys which leads to even more bullying by a girl who secretly likes one of the boys she's close with. Of course, aside from her dream, she is secretly hoping to find this "flan prince" that saved her from drowning when she was younger.

For some reason, when I was reading this, I immediately thought of Candy-Candy. There were several similarities I noticed in both stories.

Candy-Candy

Najika

Hairstyle
This is just me nitpicking, but they both have blond pigtails. Though Candy-Candy's hair is curly, but.. the way it's tied, with ribbons on top, is similar.

Personality
"Different from other girls" and independent. Always want to make her friends smile. Cheerful, strong on the outside but is hurting on the inside.

Circumstances.
They're both orphaned since young. Living in a orphanage that is in the middle of nowhere with a nice old lady as the head of the orphanage with little children that thinks of her as the big sister.
Went to live in the city, and studied in a school of "rich" people, staying in its dormitory.

Romance

Candy's fake prince.

Are both looking for the "prince" who cheered them up when they were crying at a younger age. Najika's clue was a silver spoon, Candy-Candy's clue was a clothing accessories (that I dont know the english term of). They both found a guy that they thought was their prince and even fell in love with him and he with them.

Najika's fake prince

But he was actually not the prince, so the author killed him off in order for the girls to end up being with the actual prince, if she just moved hearts while he's alive she might be considered a slut, though killing them didn't really justify the idea.

Their destined loved ones, was not their first choice at first due to their first impression, (Najika's guy was cold and anti-her at the beginning, Candy's guy was a man that lived in the woods for so long he grew beard and could talk to animals.) They eventually changed and became a better gentleman before end up being with the girls.


I assume that the Kitchen Princess was somehow inspired by it or without realizing it wrote it similar to Candy-Candy because s/he once read the manga when s/he was younger.
There are a couple of differences, first of all, the book is about cooking which means competition and similar plot idea on several chapters.

The story had a nice idea, and I liked the titling of the chapters but soon it just gets tiring/annoying and it felt dragged so I skipped through a few chapters all the way till the end. The whole romance plot was easy to figure out. It's obvious who she'll end up being with and there was the overly used love square problem where, as usual, the main character always gets all the boys to like her.

Overall the drawing was well done, but I wouldn't continue buying Nakayoshi to keep reading it.. I'd rather just go online and read for free.. yet still think it wasted my time.

Typical Manga Story

My sister is a manga collector.. or at least she has TONS of manga in our house and when I'm bored I ended up reading some of the books.. However, it seems like most of the books I chose to read at random has a similar story / character personality and ending..

1. Girl always gets the boy.
No matter how stupid / "ugly" / silly / mean / uninterested the girl is or no matter how anti-girl / uninterested / anti-social the guy is, the girl for whatever reason, always gets the guy.. No matter if the guy is engaged, or married.. somehow, the guy would end up falling for her.

If the guy is one of those loners, the girl would always "charm" the guy and be something different so that the guy will fall in love with her. Even if the guy is a common playboy and the girl is the exact opposite of his type, he would end up liking her and stop being playboy.

It comes to the point that the story becomes stupid that EVERY MALE CHARACTER falls in love with the main girl (if the story has multiple guy characters) even if the other guy was only pretending to be a rival.

2. Guys have stupid reasons not to be with her.
I once read a manga where the guy decides not to be with the main girl (that likes him so much she follows him around like a stalker yet it's considered sweet and cute because.. y'know it's a manga) because he wasn't able to "protect her". He came to that conclusion because she was kissed by another guy -- which was her own fault for wanting to follow him to a middle of an all boys dormitory -- and this, of course hurts the girl's heart etc.. and when confronted, he just said that he couldn't protect her and that she found another protector that is better than him (who is the guy that kissed her in the first place.) WTH!?

Usually, guys rejects the girl because they think they're not good enough for the girl.. it's a common reason.. which is stupid. If they think they're horrible then .. stop feeding her love soul and move away or something (which is probably a stupid solution but I was pretty pissed at the guy being all nice to the girl in the first place anyway). I mean, you never know if you're perfect for each other or not if you don't try, right? And it's not like good relationships means zero problems. Fighting is common in relationships, just learn how to deal with them properly.

3. The guy is always smart / hot / attractive.
Even if the main guy is a glasses nerd looking man, he'd be portrayed as a cute boy and would still get votes from girls. Unless it's a boy manga, I've never seen a chubby guy that gets chased around by lots of girl.. I mean, I've read a few short romance stories.. but then sometimes they end up being skinny in the end..
The girls are also pretty much skinny and proportional.. there are that are slightly chubby but not super obese and even if they are obese, they will try to diet.

4. Debts is cleared by engagement.
When the girl is deep in her debt, suddenly out of nowhere, she is now engaged to this rich young man and her debt is cleared! Sometimes she has no other choice, and sometimes her parents are the ones that insisted.. Of course the guy isn't interested in her because she's still a "kid" or not sexy enough to be taken advantage of.. and for some reason, this pisses off the girl because in the end, despite hating him, she'll fall in love with him. Surprise!

5. Overused personality.
Typically, the girl is always the bubbly type.. or she's a clutz.. often gets her skirt hiked up by the guy and gets all embarrassed yet she's cool about chasing the guy all around. Or the girl is quiet and gets misunderstood by the people but she's able to open up to this one guy and they end up falling in love, she gets stronger with his help and be more confident etc..

If the guy is bubbly, the girl is usually anti-social and the guy will drag her into doing silly things that'll open up her heart and make her see how fun the world can be..
If the guy is anti-social, it's somewhat the other way around.. and the guy will be paired with a clutz girl.

6. Over-reacting!
Girl characters often have stupid reasons to be heartbroken by their past.

They were rejected because they were ugly -- so they do a 180 personality and look change yet still scarred by the memory when she sees the rejecting guy..
They were double played by a playboy -- so they don't trust guys anymore, or they hurt guys and gets revenge.
They often misunderstood situation and end up thinking that the guy cheated on her / likes another girl just by seeing him walking with another girl. How shallow / stupid can they be?! Do they really not trust the guy that they'll run away and cry after seeing such a horrible scene. "Why is he together with that girl?" Well, she's his sister. Or they work together. Stop being stupid!

And sometimes they're not even together! She just has a crush on him so she gets heartbroken since all this time, she thinks he belongs to her. Well, no! You haven't confessed to him so why the hell do you think you're the only special one?
Of course, the guy will then clear up the whole mess and confess that he actually likes her too, etc, happy ending.

See, these overreacting is what caused people to kill themselves over a break-up or cheating bf/gf. It's not worth it and mangas aren't teaching any different. Nor movies. Nor media.


Overall, there are still a few good romance manga with an interesting plot: Kare Kano, Beyond the Blindfold, (and if you're into classic manga) Pop corn, etc. Some even have a fantasy theme to it like From Far Away.
With the price of manga going up compared to the old days, why isn't the quality of the stories increasing either? It seems a waste to buy a manga that has a predictable ending where the girl gets the guy.

Tips Tips and More Tips!

Nope. I'm not about to give tips on anything when in fact I'm going to talk about those tips giving articles. I stumbled -- and by stumbling, I mean right on my face Yahoo! News article when I open my mail -- across a site that provides notes and tips on how to do things and I couldn’t help but check what people write in tips on dating. I read some of it and it just makes me laugh.

The tips would say something like: “Avoid putting too much food for you two to eat, it will make him think you’re an eating machine!” or “if you just developed the pimple on your nose, wear some make up so he doesn’t see it” and, the most frequent is “Make sure you do not smell offensive”

It seems like the people they’re trying to impress are that shallow. “Ew, you smell like garlic. I don’t like you.” or “I don’t want to see you again since you have that pimple.” How stupid/shallow could that person be? Somehow, those tips are making us feel self conscious that normally makes us uncomfortable. Having pimple is normal. It’s not a disease. It’s not something to be ashamed of. Pimple can happen from having oily skin and dusty areas but we can wash our face to help reduce that. But hormones also cause it and we can’t escape that.

Shouldn’t we look for a person who accept us for who we are and not cringe and the fact we have pimples? Or we have lots of snacks? Or we happen to like garlic-y food? If they do, that means they respect us and we should do the same. Do we stop liking someone just because they have too many pimples on their face, or because s/he forgot to put deodorant and has been sweating the whole day? Are we that shallow?

I do believe it’s nice to make a good first impression. But, wouldn’t that set a standard? We’re humans. It’s normal to have ups and downs during our life where we can be the most awesome humans and suddenly drops to the lowest creep. As long as there’s a balance, I think that’s still okay.

I’m not saying that it’s bad to want to be perfect all the time but aren’t you tired? (unless you’re a butler or someone who works under a royal/important people then you may want to keep things perfect)

How long would it take for someone to finally snap from having to keep things perfect and just want to slouch, slump on the sofa and say “I’m tired.” For those who doesn’t accept that attitude, what’s wrong with you? S/he’s not a robot. S/he can’t be perfect ALL the time. Give her/him some slack! Don’t be shallow.

Well, I just meant to write this because I want to share my opinion. I’ve seen movies and people that expect the best out of everyone all the time and sometimes I just want to say otherwise. This is the only way I can do it, I guess. So. Here’s my opinion ladies and gentlemen. It does not smell like garlic.

Tearless Death

I've never cried in a funeral.

This is one of the moments that makes me question if I am bitter and sadistic underneath my already open attitude about hating the world. I just received news that my friend from filmschool has fallen into death's grip; sliced by his scythe; called upon by the Father; reached his time; bottom line: he's dead.

I've been to a funeral before when I was young, about kindergarten, for my aunt's death. All I said during the funeral that I remember till now was: "Mom, why are the people so noisy?" There was another funeral that I believe was of my grandmother. We arrived late so the burial ceremony was over so I simply went around and looked at other people's death memoirs. "Aw, this baby was just 3 months when she died," was what I thought during that moment.

Sometimes I think that I wasn't familiar with death so I never felt any sadness when it happened. Years later, I began to realize that my whole family is also pretty much ... emotionless in a sense that they don't tell me when someone died.

Case #1: How did I find out about my grandfather's death? I stumbled across my sister's facebook status that her flight was delayed on the way to my grandfather's funeral. The reason why mom didn't tell me was because: "oh, but you're not close with him so you don't know him that welll," which is a bit true except that he stayed in my room when he visited dad. I was old enough to remember it happening all the time.

Case #2: What about my aunt's husband's death? During Christmas family vacation, my bro-in-law talked about how when the husband is "called", then he is called. I understood that it meant he's dead and I was shocked but I pretended that I knew. In June, the matter was brought up and I asked my sister what really happened. Apparently right after our cousin's November wedding, the husband collapsed. I wasn't there since I was away in the Philippines.

We've never been to a funeral as a whole family and I've never seen any of my family members cried for death reasons. Maybe it was the way I was brought up so I never get the chance to cry over a loss of a person.

This brings me to my current loss of a friend. I knew him. We worked together. He directed my music videos. We chatted, hugged, had shoots together. I was closer to him than my family that died but I didn't even bother crying. It never occurred to me that I should shed a tear. Sure, it was a sudden unexpected news and at least this time I was told directly from a mass email. I went to facebook saw all the status and picture posting of people in facebook, it made me think: "What's the point of saying all this when the person is dead?"

It's the same opinion of mine about having people saying stuff about the dead person in funerals. Why are we saying all these nice things about them when they're dead? Can they hear it? Will they hear it? What's in it for them if they can hear it? "Oh, I am loved. Now I can die in peace" ?

In the end, I did post on his wall in a sarcastic tone without actually showing it. I didn't want to post anything since my opinion on people's death aforementioned simply told me that there's no point on doing so. However, I didn't want people to think that I don't care.

I guess, even though I don't cry for death, I cared more about people's opinion of me. Darn...

Emotional Blergh

I love to listen to music when I write. It helps me disconnect from the world and go somewhere else where I can easily see the stories I'm writing about. Then there are time when I would get immersed into the song that I ended up leaving completely. And by leaving, I mean filling my mind with that world I create that felt so good that I didn't want to leave. This usually ended up in causing my heart to ache. It's none of those physical ache like being punched but more of the about to burst pain.

It's during these moments that I wish I can curl into a ball and disappear. Let the beat of the music brings me somewhere else. To Neverland, perhaps, though less troublesome but more flying. Sometimes the feeling is so overwhelming that I would want to cry. I never do but I wish I was. Maybe it would make me feel more refreshed.

Being a lover of music -- And by lover of music, I don't mean that I've listened to all sorts of music but I do admire every type of music even those hated ones. Though it also depends on my mood. -- I would envy these people for being able to make such wonderful immerse-able music. I make music too but not in the advance level of bass, drums, guitar, rifts, keyboards, filler, solo part etc. that makes people want to dance or close their eyes and drift off. It really brings me down sometimes that I can't make songs like these... yet...

Here's one of the video that made me go all emotional immersion phase recently. Knowing the mind and hand of this mixer/dj belongs to a French teenager born 1994, simply kicks me in the ass for not being as awesome as he is. Sometimes I wonder if these immersion helps me move forward or simply brings me down for showing what stuff I didn't do and coulda shoulda woulda done be doing.

Boy Bands, Girl Bands, Goodbye Originality

I've been in the Philippines for 3 years now and I'm dragging the days where I'll have to go home.. which is soon. I should start planning on how to get all my stuff out from here. I'll miss my apartment here.. It's quite cheap for the comfort of the place. Don't think there will be any better apartment that I'll find for such price back home.

When I decided to browse videos on youtube, I saw on the "suggestion" box was a channel called standupcomedyindo and one of the guys was talking about a boy band group called "smash" so I was curious and I searched it. I'll regret it forever...

SM*SH which, according to wikipedia, stands for Seven Men as Seven Heroes. Oh dear god. Of course this pushed me to to look up on at least one of their music video and I did.

I pretty much laughed throughout the clip. It's not that they're comedic.. it's just that.. the video is filled with a bunch of highschool / young looking boys with "white skin", some with bleached hair, singing about love. It's so unoriginal, copying K-pop, with it's occasional English sentence and don't forget the rap part.

That, I think, is the best part because I laughed and played it over and over again.

Mind you, the kind of laugh I had was the type that's confused on whether it's crying or laughing. It was so horribly funny and sad at the same time. It just made me not want to go home..

Curiosity kills the cat or stabs you in the heart and eyes when I decide to go further. I typed "boy band indonesia" on google search and out came a list of boy band / girl band there are.

I can say I only liked 1 group which is "Kilau" because they're the least at trying to be K-pop / cute. They're experienced dancers that danced for big pop artist in Indonesia so they're not "young" and "fresh" and used as dolls to make money. Too bad the music video I saw was of a cover song they did. But after seeing the original songs that the other group did, I'd still choose Kilau any time.

I put pictures of them and sopa might bust me.. Then again, who cares?

And So I Start

My dear little public diary,

So i finally got myself into getting serious about this whole music thing. I mean why not? I have the product, I have the tools, I have the technology so why not I combine all these things and BAM SLAM a video tune. 

It's good to finally push myself into staring at the camera screen and voice out some tralalas. I may need to work out on my speech thus why I shall not go there just yet. I'll stick with typing. I like seeing my words better than hearing them. In due time, though, I shall hear them unmelodiously. Is that a made up word?

I've been listing in my head about what songs / music vids I have finished so that I can put them on youtube. Too bad I don't have internet connection at home or this all will be so much easier. I think I'll go back to my notebook and list them one more time.