Exams are approaching. Having my Chinese paper next mth. LC & Oral actually. Received the full timetable and schedule slip already. Tension is slowly building up inside me. I have been pretty much laid back these few months, but this is like the final straw for me. Gonna mug the books hard and get ready for hell to break loose. Bring it on, for the masquerade awaits me. The fruits of chaos waiting to be savored by me.

Anyway, sorry for the short hiatus. This is not a blog leave on purpose. I didn’t lose my flair for writing either. I actually do have quite alot of stuffs to write about, but I always seem to have stuffs to do, so I decided to just push my blogging aside. Life has been good. Caught a few good movies. Chilling with my company of good friends. I even went back to clubbing a few days ago with my girl buddy. Zouk was alright, I guess. Haven’t been there for quite awhile, was there last Fri with Pris, Michelle and her bf. Saw lotsa hot babes, but not gonna go into details about that, haha. Overall it was quite enjoyable, I actually went there because of Pris since she wanted company, and also I enjoy dancing so I was thinking why not. 28 bucks for only two hours there was a disaster though, I would have preferred going KTV instead if I had a choice. Guess clubbing ain’t really my cup of tea anymore, heh guess I really did changed afterall. (^.^'’)

And what else? I finally bought my Sony NW-HD5 HDD-Walkman. It was launched on the 18th this month, and because of my purchase @ Juzz 1 at Funan I also got a pretty nifty 50 bucks iPod Shuffle for cheap, good deal ya? I gave the iPod Shuffle to my Mum in the end, figured that since she has no MP3 player this would do her good. A pretty basic DAP though, it’s not to my taste but having tested the SQ with my canalphones, it was pretty decent. The controls are pretty intuitive too which is an advantage, explained to my Mum about the controls etc in less than 5 minutes and she got the hold of it pretty much. The ability to be able to use it as a thumbdrive comes in useful as well, 50 bucks for a 512Mb thumbdrive is a real bargain I say.

Things aside, I had been thinking about lotsa stuffs recently. Dreams. Horizon. Friends. Love. Life. Pondering on random thoughts. Broken memories, some good, some bad. Aplenty of questions. Still seeking for various answers. Sometimes I think we really think too much. I use ‘we’ because it happens to each and everyone of us. Sometimes we just blatantly question our existence in life, even though we are living and making the best out of it. Foolish? Maybe. Pointless? Maybe not. Sometimes it’s only having thoughts like this, that makes you what you are. Dreaming about dreams. Craving for accomplishing that certain goal or satisfying that desire of yours. Without these, life would probably be so defunct, so frigid dull and a waste to live. But having said these, sometimes too much of questioning seems to be able to create alternative problems instead. Just another random thought of my, heh don’t mind me.

Whatever it is, I just hope I can be always happy. I realised that most of the time, we seem to be asking too much. Way too much really. Perhaps we should just be contented with what we have. Frankly I’m pretty much happy with my current life, maybe occasionally still missing that certain vibe or that certain someone, but on the whole I’m really quite contented overall. And I’m really thankful to my family and friends for that, it’s you guys and gurls that makes me what I am today, and with you people around, it makes my day a great one everyday. Just wanna let you people know I really appreciate your existence and presence around me, it’s you people that make things happen and thanks for rocking my life hard. You guys know who you are, heh.

So it’s yet another mellowy and peaceful night. I shall go study awhile more before I go to bed. Good night everyone. (^_^)V

Oh where are you graciousness?
Come back at one and reside in my heart
For my heart longs for warmth again
The kind that tugs my heart so longingly, lovingly
That melts all resentment, sadness and disappointment inside me
Those beloved memories that dries my tears away….

Today, I’m gonna write two short movie reviews since I watched them recently. Let’s start with Azumi 2: Death or Love first. As usual we get to see the cast from the previous title like Aya Ueto, Shun Oguri, Yuma Ishigaki make a comeback, as well as some new faces like Chiaki Kuriyama and Ai Maeda. The film is fairly short, about one hour and thirty minutes in length, and it’s directed by Shusuke Kaneko this time, instead of the fanatic Ryuhei Kitamura (of Azumi 1, Versus fame) whose crazy shooting styles are something which I’ve come to love with. Action was pretty steady, nothing too crazy this time, no fanciful camera angles or shooting styles, in fact I would call it a pretty normal samurai versus ninja kind of flick, but it’s the characters involved around Azumi and of course Azumi herself too, that makes the story interesting and on-going. Though this time there’s actually quite an imminent and obvious factor that viewers would notice, that is we get to see the entanglement of emotional struggles and the more humane side of Azumi this time, as she finds her stuck in a perplexing confusion as she tries to uphold her responsibility, beliefs and her affections for the one she loves. My verdict? 3 out of 5 popcorns. Gonna love the characters development and plot in the movie, but the action department falls short of expectations. (so for this I believe Ryuhei Kitamura has an upper-hand in the action dept)

And then we have H2G2, which is shortform for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, based on the books by Douglas Adams. A wholesome cast of british actors and actresses, no real familiar faces here. (at least to me) But they have a really cute robot called Marvin in it, and he’s uber cute I tell ya. Programmed and built around a technology called GPP which is also known as “Genuine People Personalities”. He has a informative brain that holds the size of a planet, but seldom gets the chance to use it. Severely depressed, he often procrastinates and whines about his problems, irritating the people around him. Interestingly, some people might recognise the VA cast for Marvin, he’s voiced by no other than Alan Rickman, notably famous for his VA cast in the Harry Potter movie series, as Professor Severus Snape. As for the story, it’s very fantasy-like, as were the fictional books it was based on. But I like how the movie conveyed the sensible and spastic messages about “Life” through the various quotes used, as well as the funny little moments, like vomitting strings, the claymen-like scene, and also how everyone looked upon ‘Deep Thought’ as the ultimate god, forty-two anyone? *laughs* And my verdict for it? 4.5 out of 5 popcorns I say. This is hilariously one of those light-hearted movies you would enjoy any day without too much complexity about the plot, just relax and enjoy the show, good for the laughs and characters in it.

Oh, and did I mention that I’m so damn glad that the air-con goodness is finally back? The air-con system at home broke down somewhere since May, and Dad finally arranged someone to come down to install the new air-con system today, Mitsubishi Electric Starmex series. Can’t believe that I actually lived without the air-con for one whole freaking month, and not to mention the weather was terribly hot these days. Feeling snugged I am, in contentment of solace I feel.

Gonna head down to SLS tomorrow to buy some stuffs for my sister’s PC, the stubborn old system refused to boot up even after I did some troubleshooting today. Freaking problematic piece of crap machine, which is actually not surprising considered that I reused the parts from my Athlon XP system DIYed back in 2001, so all these had to come sooner or later. Time to do an upgrade for it, hrms it’s gonna be a busy Sunday for me.

Can’t wait for next week. My precious baby my Sony NW-HD5 Network Walkman. Oh drown me in the goodness of mellowy music oh please.

The Walkman history has certainly come a long way. I could still vividly remember those nostalgic days back when I was still a young playful kid, during my primary school days, I kept playing with the tape recorder back at home, recording my own various stuffs, which they called it audioblogging or ‘podcasting’ in these days. The first Walkman stereo was originally invented by Sony and officially unveiled on June 22th, 1979. Since then the cassette stereo format has been generally replaced in favor of the digital technologies of CD, MiniDisc as well as flash or harddisk-based MP3 players, due to the technology obsolescence as the format slowly fades away.

Still, these days the word ‘Walkman’ has been widely used and associated with Sony’s own line of MD and Network HDD-DAPs. And in a few days time, I would be getting my first Sony DAP (read: digital audio player) with the recent release of the Sony HW-HD5 locally here. It was actually just launched in Japan last month and ever since I saw the pictures and info unveiled on various websites online, I have been waiting impatiently for its release here. I dropped by Sony Square at Funan yesterday when I was out with Jimmy, to check the availability for it and was told by the salesperson there that it has been officially launched as advertised on its website, but official stocks will only been in by next week. So I guess I would have to wait till next week to purchase it, will make sure I make a call before I go down first this time. The official SRP for it is S$499 with some sort of free speakers promotion. Well luckily it’s still within my budget, as I was estimating the launch price to be between $500 to $600 at least. And I have gotten word from Adam yesterday that he might be able to help me get staff discount for my purchase with his brother’s help (think his brother is working at Sony) though I wouldn’t bet on it but it’s quite nice of him actually. Here are some pictures I had found on some review sites of this cool and stylish portable HDD-DAP, do check it out.

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