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 So,
I didn't win the site competition. I'm not really too bothered about it,
actually... I'm wondering why I bothered in the first place, I guess. Though it
does put me in a rightful position to make an observation about these site
competitions, so I will.
Even though it's quite hypocritical of me to say this, I think the majority of
people who join these competitions just want to prove how good their sites are;
when most of the time, they look awful and consist solely of a
none-too-interesting blog and a nasty layout. Amanda of Obsidian Rhapsody (sorry)
recently moved to a new domain
and reduced it to a blog, and one of her recent entries got me thinking.
Why is it that winning these awards and competitions (and, therefore, being
popular) matters so much? On the surface, they're worth nothing, and usually
aren't an accurate reflection of your design skills, your content or your
ability to entertain (because usually, to win them you need to cheat). So if you
go out of your way to win them and don't deserve that recognition, everyone will
know that you're completely insecure, and crave undue attention like a 9 year
old craves turkey twizzlers.
But on the other hand, why shouldn't we be proud of our own web sites and want
some sort of recognition for them? In the lifespan of a run-of-the-mill personal
web site, the owner will spend obscene amounts of time and effort developing
their site and filling it with goodies for little or no profit at all, bar the
satisfaction one gets when a stranger drops in and leaves a comment saying, 'I
love your site!'. Which does matter a great deal to the person who runs the
site, even if they get a lot of comments like that.
Also, about blogging for personal reasons rather than sticking to 'witty'
subjects that visitors will find more entertaining. I'm not going to appease my
own ego by pretending that people who know me don't make up the largest
percentage of those who visit my web site regularly. In fact, if anything, these
people only drop in intermittently to 'check up' on me, so to speak. I do the
same thing. In which case, isn't personal content something to be cherished
rather than looked down upon by the so-called 'elite'?
(On a side note, I got the ROUND TABLE featuring Nino fanlisting, and
Lisa See (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan) is an amazing writer. Oh, and
Aria-shachou arrived yesterday morning)
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Saffy ♥
Isama ♥
Ashley ♥
Ngoc ♥
Shizune ♥
 I'm
looking forward to a few things arriving in the post shortly; namely a
Waterboys
VCD, some ARIA
music CDs, an ARIA artbook and a life-size Aria-shachou plushie (obsessed or what?).
The VCD and CDs are coming from YesAsia, which now accepts PayPal as a form of payment. Which is a
mixed blessing... it means I can finally get hold of stuff I couldn't before, but it also means
there's more temptation to spend.
I think the Japanese lessons are finally paying off, as last night I managed to translate half of
one of the ending themes of ARIA, 夏待ち, by ROUND TABLE featuring Nino.
I also put the evidence in my Japanese portfolio, which I handed in today as part of my course. I really
hope I get a good mark...! Now I have to decide whether or not to continue it in the new semester.
 Speaking
of ROUND TABLE featuring Nino, I applied to run the fanlisting. Along with
Isama.
It turns out we both want it and applied at more or less the same time... it'll
be interesting to see who gets it. Nevertheless, I already designed a layout
(which will be a gift to her if she gets it!).
Also, surprisingly enough, I got into the final round of that SOTF site contest I've been
wittering on about for weeks. I'm actually quite surprised
that I got through... but thank you so much to everyone who's been voting for me!
Please keep doing so, I might even win!
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Ngoc ♥
Ashley ♥
 Hehe,
I had my Japanese exam yesterday, and boy was that fun. I really do not like exams,
and even though I know I should have been relatively confident about this one, I still
turned a rather becoming shade of green on arrival at uni.
Truth be told, this exam was easier than last year's Chinese (perhaps because
Cherry was a really efficient teacher?), but I made some very daft mistakes -
such as forgetting what a keitai was and first putting 'magazine' then
'umbrella' (it's a mobile phone). I think I did quite well in remembering the
hiragana though, as I answered the vast majority of the questions in hiragana
(though I can't imagine that this wasn't what everyone else was able to do).
I was pretty confident though until the point when sensei took us upstairs into
the language lab, gave us each a tape and told us to RECORD OURSELVES answering
questions in Japanese. Regardless of whether you actually know how to
answer them in Japanese, that is. And you can bet everyone else is listening to
you doing it. Especially for myself, as some rather amusing delays (namely, my
headphones/mic being attached to my next-door neighbour's tape machine,
convincing both me and sensei that my machine was going mental. It's a good
thing she hadn't started recording, as she'd have had me going 'what the hell's
it doing?' over her watashi was) resulted in me
recording when the majority of the class had already finished and were listening
to sensei talking about something or other. As I later found out, I wasn't the
last person to finish; but I'm pretty sure my hands were shaking.
When I'm nervous, I tend to speak really fast, though understandably when I
speak in another language, I speak slower. And the rather amusing result was, I
spoke at a normal tempo... and it didn't sound too bad. I think. Though I'm sure
that was a smirk when I went to hand in my tape and sensei asked me if I had
checked that everything was recorded (he's probably having a good laugh marking
the exams). Of course, I should have screamed 'WAKARANAIIIIIII!' half-way
through (as Nam Nam later suggested), but it kinda kills the effect when the
teacher's in the same room, listening to every word, don't you think?
However, today went much more smoothly. I went to meet Grace in the town and we
went shopping (mostly for stuff for one of my assignments - Boots' sushi
is really nice!), then after she'd had to go, I met Nam Nam and we went clothes
shopping.
I finished the Love Hina
manga profile. Oh, and before I forget, voting started again for the third round in the
SOTF contest!
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Ngoc ♥
Teresa ♥
 Well,
I'm finally back at uni... and thoroughly depressed at the amount of work that
lies ahead, as well as the stuff I'm struggling with now. I feel so depressed at
the moment, I've kinda been like this on and off for the last few months, to be
honest. *shrugs*
Last night was fun though - after I went to uni I phoned Nam Nam to see if she
was around, and arranged to meet up with her at the
Globe Café (a weekly club
for international students) later that evening. So I went shopping (lots of new
books: Geisha by Liza Dalby, Helen of Troy by Margaret George,
The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
by Lisa See), then read Geisha in the uni library before heading over to
the church where the Globe Café is held.
I had a great time - there was a cell group beforehand, then we chatted for a
bit, a group of us played badminton then we all played volleyball, which was a
lot of fun. Volleyball always is fun, especially if you're not playing it
professionally (hence, lots of falling over and clumsy running about looking up
into the air, shouting, 'get it! GET IT!'). Badminton and volleyball are my
favourite sports. I scored the winning shot as well, which was pretty cool!
Oh, and before I forget - I posted two new manga profiles in the
manga section -
D.N. Angel and
Fushigi Yūgi.
I also updated the glossary.
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Ngoc ♥
Shizune ♥
Isama ♥
 Argh!
Far from being seamless, my internet service went DOWN yesterday morning without
warning, after my brother assured me of the things I mentioned in my last post
AND that the switch would actually take place next Monday. After a lot of
confusion last night and an equal amount of hassle this afternoon, the internet
is back up, and it was NOTHING to do with the broadband upgrade, just some
badly-timed problems with the firmware. Which resulted in my getting fines from
the uni library; my books were due back yesterday, I needed to renew them and couldn't,
because I needed to get online to do it. It's only 60p, but urgh.
I also realised I missed the revision session on Monday for my Japanese exam
next week; but I'm not too worried. Yes, exams do terrify me, but the amount
of time I've spent practising my Japanese over the holidays
(宇山さんありがとうございます!)
will hopefully mean I'll be OK. Working out the numbers still fazes me though, I
can barely remember how to count to ten in Japanese and we're expected to be
able to count much higher than that.
On a happier note I made some new
linkware layouts
yesterday; I decided to start a series themed on the manga Fruits Basket. The
first two are up, Kyo Sohma and Tohru Honda. I also updated the glossary with
another term, BT.
Voting also started today for the second week of the SOTF contest, please continue
to vote!
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Saffy ♥
Ngoc ♥
...we're
getting 6.5MB broadband instead. For the same price! And what is even better, is
that when they make the switch (or whatever else it is they have to do for us to
upgrade) it'll be seamless, and so... no downtime! We won't even have to change any
settings... if we weren't going to get a connection that will be obviously so much
faster, we wouldn't have even noticed. Apparently also, the connection we've got now
is five years old, so no wonder it's lately been feeling the drag of DOWNLOAD LIMITS
(Daft brother moving in and downloading episodes of Seaquest and goodness knows
what else).
I finished reading Jane Eyre, so that's another one off the list of
1001
books I'm working my way through. I've now almost exhausted our house's supply
of books on that list - I say almost, as we have A Portrait of a Young Man
by James Joyce and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, and both of
those look really dry to me at the moment (Nineteen Eighty-Four is about
politics, apparently). I liked Jane Eyre though, much more than I would
have imagined before I began reading it. It's obviously a love story, but it's
better described as an adventurous life story with a romance at its core, in
my opinion. Adventurous is the word, too... I didn't realise there were so many
ghostly visitations and near-murders in it, for one; and Jane is such an amazing
(and unconventional) heroine.
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Ngoc ♥
 Just
a short entry today; we're having our broadband upgraded from 2MB to 5MB
(cheaper, apparently!) in the next few days, so I might not be around for
up to a week (hopefully no longer). So, if you apply for a fanlisting or
send me mail of any kind please be patient, I will reply as soon as I can.
I came fourth this week in the SOTF contest, if you voted last week please
vote again so I can hopefully stay in this week.
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Isama ♥
Taru ♥
Kokoro ♥
Ngoc ♥
Whew,
that took a lot of work. I've been thinking of making a new layout for a while,
and now finally here it is! It's a lot simpler than my usual layouts, and
hopefully easier to use. I actually hate coffee, so the choice of name is a bit
out of character too! I just love the image I used, which is from the artbook
River's End by Otohiko Takano. I finally added a
past layouts page to
the site, too.
Thank you to everyone who has been voting for me in Fantasy Nerd's SOTF contest,
please keep the votes coming!
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Isama ♥
Ayame ♥
Ngoc ♥
Shizune ♥
Happy
New Year, everyone. I've had a pretty sucky new year so far, as I
caught a cold a few days ago. Plus, I woke up this morning to find that all the Christmas
decorations have been taken down.
But I've been doing a lot of site updating this week and generally, staying
positive. I found a really cool site
today as well, that confirmed something I've long suspected; 80s band Wham! were
at no. 1 in the UK charts when I was born. With one of my favourite songs,
Wake Me Up Before You Go Go (Jitterbug). *so pleased* I was equally as
pleased to discover that my brother's song is Xanadu by Olivia
Newton-John and The Electric Light Orchestra. He isn't, though.
Also, voting started this week in Fantasy Nerd's
Survival of the Fittest 2006 contest, which Ancalima is taking part in. Please go
vote!
I also wrote a new review for a film I saw the other day,
The Holiday.
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Ngoc ♥
Silver ♥
Shizune ♥
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