something is wrong.

Why can't I talk like how i always talk?
Because no one wants to see what i see
Why can't I say what i want to say?
Because no one may agree with me
Why can't I smile like how i used to smile?
Because I can't seem to make you smile
Why then, will you not smile?

I do not slouch
I bend over to clearly listen to your every word
I do not keep silent due to lack of understanding
I just do not wish to interrupt you

Why is it getting harder to talk?
Drifting apart. Divided now. Classes in a mess. Left behind. Left 4 dead.

Your smile hides something, so does mine.
How can i know what lies behind that smile?
How can i tell you that my smile hides fear?
How can i make you smile, really smile?

I am afraid.
I am afraid of what may come, of how the waves might drift us further apart.
I am scared
I am scared of what lies in the deepest recesses of my mind.
I am terrified
I am terrified of being left behind.

Hello, anybody? Please...........don't leave me behind.........I am scared.

the biggest Fiasco

2 nights ago.

New semester course pre-registration.

I CANNOT BELIEVE I HAVE TO GO THROUGH THAT EVERY END OF SEMESTER.

I didnt get the combination i wanted, or even needed.
Yes in my case, it is a need since due to my timetable and time allocation of courses.

Everything was so frantic. The entire registration exercise was a complete fiasco from the start. Why couldnt they just group us according to out Majors into the various classes????!!?!?

From what i can figure, only one of my friends managed to get the combination of choice.

Oh well, i still got this wednesday. Have to pray hard.

(very short, yes i know. I've been writing on ppl's blogs for so long, im tired. hahahah)

Terminator tie ups

Had this really good conversation about terminator in school. We were talking about how Terminator Salvation might lead up to Terminator 1 and i just decided to type it down here

1) Why doesnt Skynet send Terminators to kill Kyle Reese in the past?
- Destruction of Skynet central in 2018 or some other EMP or Virus attack between 2018 to 2029(as referenced in the books and comic respectively) caused a major loss of data for skynet. Among the data lost or corrupted was all data regarding Kyle Reese.

2) Where is Derek Reese? Kyle's Brother.
- Around. Just not with Kyle at 2018(most likely separated). Derek Reese was only seen Serving with Kyle for a short year while Kyle was serving "under Perry, from 2021 to 2027". Which kind ties in to the fact that Kyle and Derek were seperated again in 2027 with Kyle being transferrd back to John Connor's personal unit and Derek once again on the search for Kyle until he finally gained access to John Connor and got sent back in time.

3)Kyle Reese told Sarah Connor "we move around during the night, makes it less easier for them to spot us". But in Terminator Salvation he says moving around in the day is less likely to get spotted.
- With the development of the infiltrator units and the humans increasing victories, Skynet must have changed its tactics. Increased ariel surveillance would make moving around in the day more risky than the night. Plus, at night, the machines can only rely on heat signature to track humans(which can be easily fooled by explosions or fires). In the day, they can track via heat signature AND light visual.
Not that moving around at night is not risky, its just the lesser of 2 evils.

4)What happens to the fully functional airforce that John had in 2018?
That was back when the humans were fighting out of the deserts and areas uaffected by the fallout. By 2029(the flashbacks in Terminator 1) they moved to the cities. Airplanes and helicopters would not be very useful for urban combat. Even less so for the squad based hit and run tactics employed by the humans at that time.

5)What happens to the massive human army that could hold its own against Terminators and even invade skynet central to extract Connor?
- Killed slowly via attrition.

6)Where are the plasma rifles??
- havent been developed as of 2018. Most likely developed later in the war.

7) How come normal bullets can take out terminators so easily but in T1 it didnt even scratch the T800?
- Bullets only took out the T600 when they were shot in their weak spot which was the exposed part on their left side of the skull. And mostly likely higher calibre or armour piercing rounds were used in the machine guns and assult rifles. In T1, only shotgun shells and pistols were used against the T800.

8)Marcus is definately more advanced than a T800. Why did skynet "downgrade" its infiltrators?
- Marcus was more advanced, but as an infiltrator he was too perfect. Skynet created a robot that mimiced all aspects of humans. Even loyalty to other humans and love. This resulted in skynet losing control of Marcus. T800 is more advanced in that, unlike Marcus which was solely a infiltrator, T800 was a combat unit encased in flesh. IT was designed for combat but doubled as an infiltrator unit. Plus, skynet had full control over it unlike Marcus.
By "downgrading", skynet was just learning from its past mistakes


If any more questions about inconsistencies come up i might most it here.

a long time coming

hi blog. Havent typed here in quite some time.

Been really busy.

Your brother blog is just soooo high maintainance and im sorry for not giving you the same amount of attention.

Here's the lowdown
-mid terms exams come and gone
-i think i may like someone in class(only problem is i dunno if she may like me)
-I must seriously treat my tuition teacher to lunch one day
-would LOVE to watch Transformers one of these days
-Discovered Math aint so bad afterall
-really nervous about the upcoming communications presentation(its 20% of the overall)

i promise i'll try to post more here. lol

THe other blog needs 2 more weeks(AND A LOT MORE COMMENTS) then im done.

Favorites list

A follow up to my previous post. Just to reveal my likes and dislikes.

Top 15 favorite animated films
1) Ghost in the Shell
2) Titan A.E
3) In a Scanner Darkly
4) Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme
5) Highlander: Vengence
6) Akira
7) Gundam F91
8) Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust
9) Titan A.E
10) Flight of Dragons
11) Ninja Scroll
12) Heavy Metal 2000
13) An American Tail
14) Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles
15) Tarzan

Top 15 favorite animated series
1) Batman the Animated Series
2) Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
3) Transformers: Beast Machines
4) Cowboy bebop
5) Trigun
6) Wolverine and the X-men
7) Justice League Unlimited
8) Evangelion
9) Exo Squad
10) Wolf's Rain
11) Last Exile
12) Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex
13) Batman Beyond
14) Argento Soma
15) Hellsing

"Anyway, do you like anime?

(Rhymes doesn't it?)

I was asked this question today. Not the first time i was asked this question and i doubt it would be the last. But honestly, for the first time ever, i could not answer the question.

Not because i didnt want to. But because i couldn't.

I replied, "yes and no"

To better understand my reasons for my reply, one must know of my relationship with japanese anime. If you just want to cut to the chase then scroll down

*****************************
*Begin mellow synthesizer music and cue background fog*
SAMUEL AND ANIME. A brief history.

My first bursh with anime was in the form of a video tape my great grandfather left to me. In it was a show about a young white lion and his animal friends fighting against a bunch of evil baboons and a toxic cloud monster.(I would, years later, discover this show to be "Kimba the White Lion". Created by the same guy who made Astro Boy.). Taro the Dragon Boy was another anime that caught my attention when i was young. I remember it was a holiday special back during the time of SBC 12.

I would say my first anime i watched voluntarily was Transformers: Headmasters on a malaysian channel, but back then, cartoons were cartoons and this show was no different from He-Man in the eyes of my young self.


Fast foward to 1999. The big 90s animation boom was over. Award winning shows like Batman: The Animated Series, Johnny Quest, Exo-Squad and many others came and went by without me paying much attention to them. Back then my idea of animated TV was that they were supposed to be FUNNY(like Looney toons and Freakazoid). Exo-Squad and Batman was just too serious for my taste, so i let them pass me by(a decision i REGRET years later and till this day. But thank goodness for DVDs.)

I was in sec 2. And pokemon was all the rage. I stuck around for at least 20 episodes until it got boring. Also, until i discovered the other anime lurking around the channels. Most of them was in chinese so i left them be, being terrible in chinese myself, i passed on Digimon, Shin Chan, Doraemon, Lupin III and a number of others.

Then along came "Magic Knight Rayearth" showing on the (back then) newly established Kids Central at 5.30pm on weekdays.

It was english, imported from USA(wait wait, i'll go into this soon). But the storyline was a fantasy one thus doing away with any cultural constraints. 3 school girls accidentally get transported to a fantasy world where they get involved with the local magical war.
So what was Samuel doing watching a girl's anime?? Honestly it was the acting. I could not differtiate the acting in this show, from the acting in live action TV shows. Emotions were, a first time for me, portrayed so realistically by 2D animated characters. They smiled, they cried, the laughed and they sighed. All of it, believable and easy to relate to. Coupled with the fantasy elements, some humour and a easy to understand story, I was officially hooked.
Oh, did i mention there were giant Robots in this show?

There, see the giant robots??
Anyway, from this show i moved on other anime on TV. Very limited selection back then. I just watched whatever came my way. Magic Knight Rayearth ended and along came DRAGONBALL Z.

Oh bugger.............................
Despite the my friends' claims that it was possibly the greatest thing created since......erm.......the last greates thing created, i just could NOT bring myself to sit through another episode of that long drawn out, boring, silly, absurd, "Im charging my power to a new level", Brain rotting, "No, how can i defeat the new enemy?!?!", mind numbing PIECE OF GARBAGE!!
I do not care how influenctial it was or how much merchandise it generated. The campy 60s Batman and Robin was influential and generated a lot of merchandise. Yet you dont see many ppl claiming it was the jewel of TV history.
So, go away, dragonball Z.
Sailormoon was another one but i avoided it like a plague. Aside from it being the "barbie doll" of TV animation(as a guy i would not be caught dead watching it), the ridiculous formula each episode followed was..........ridiculous(and i have no idea to this day why POWER RANGERS copied that formula).

So the early 2000s came and i lost interest in anime due to a number of factors.
1) I discovered the original Japanese audio of anime(Particularly Magic Knight Rayearth itself). And it put me off. Compared to what i heard on MAgic Knight Rayearth's english voice track, the japanese voices were.........
Well, the girl voices for one were a whole octave higher than what my ears could take. And the overall acting feel was just.......not real. It felt like a stage play and not a real life senario with real people. The acting was just so over the top, emotions were overly exaggerated to the point of *pain*, and i just could not relate to the characters in the same way i did when i first watched it.(DO NOT flame me for this. I'll go more into my language preference later.)

2) Cardcaptor Sakura, Yu-Gi-Oh, Digimon, Detective Conan, etc. Channel I was on the rise with its own line of anime. BUT THEY WERE ALL VOICED BY LOCALS. YEs. Believe it. Locals. The accents in the voices are SINGAPOREAN!!!!!!!
OH THE HORROR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111!!!!!1111!!! WTFROFLMAOBBQ!!!!!!
Need proof??(youtube doesnt seem to have) well i got a VCD. it came free with a comic. Need proof? come see me for it.
Aside from the very singaporean voices, other shows were "Hamtaro" which i kinda liked just cos the hamsters were REAL CUTE.
However, Compared to the smooth animation and clever writing in shows like Justice League and Gargoyles, the anime on TV fell flat.

It was in Polytechnic that saw a huge resurgence of my interest in anime. Thanks to a few close friends, i was hooked once again. I discovered the various deeply philosophical pre-2000 "Gundam" Series,


and the humourous yet heart string tugging "Love Hina
",
Many others came my way and i embraced them. Lapping them up like a thirsty dog.
From the feudal fantasy styled Inuyasha, to horror genre like Hellsing and Vampire Hunter D.

From comedy like Azumanga Daioh to SciFi like Vandread and Full Metal Panic.

I came to an internal consensus about the voices at this time. A stand which i always bring up in many an anime discussion.
So long as the characters are
- non-japanese
- have hair colour other than black or brown
- have non-japanese names
I will listen to them in english. For it would be beyond WEIRD to have a blond, blue eyed man named "Vash" or "Edward Alric" rattle off perfect japanese would it not? Similarly, it would be weird for one named "Kagurazaki" or "Megumi" to sound like a texan or mid-westerner.

Things happen, things change. I grew not to hate anime, but the fans of anime. So stuck up in their own little worlds. Refusing to see the logic or reason. To them all anime was gold. They could never accept anyone calling their anime anything less than "good".
They could not accept anime in anything other than japanese(this led to many heated confrontations online between me and those of like mind, and the fans i hated)

They could not accept that for every great anime, there was 10 pieces of crap anime. THey could not accept that a woman named "Victoria" with blong hair, blue eyes, living in LONDON, wearing UK police uniform can speak any other language aside from Kansai accent japanese.

I hated their blatant disregard for logic. Their stubborn ways.
I hated their habits.

Oh and dont get me started on cosplay.
My dear, you are NOT beautiful, and do NOT look like a japanese school girl character from whatever anime. PLEEZE, refrain from making a mockery of japanese culture!!! And stop acting cute.
ITs not cute.
Its embarrassing. Stuff like that makes me embarrassed to call myself an anime fan.

Either find a character you resemble and dress like the character, or dont even bother. You fit yourself to the parameters of the charater in any form of costume acting, not the other way around.

Ok, anti-singapore-cosplay rant over. I got nothing against the foreign cosplayers. Many of them do take their thing very seriously and the effort and time invested in it shows.

So, after a lonnnnnnngggggg history. Back to the question at hand
***********************************************************************

I said, yes and no.

I like anime, and i dont like anime.
I love Ghost in the Shell, i hate Naruto. I like Akira, I hate Bleach. I like Zeta Gundam, I hate Gundam Seed.

So do i like or dislike anime??

Official statement: I like GOOD animated shows.
Country of origin, i heck care.
If it is a good show, i like it.
I like Justice League as much as i like Trigun
I like Heavy Metal(the movie) as much as i like Ninja Scroll

I hate powerpuff girls as much as i hate Naruto
I hate Robotboy as much as i hate Ouran Host Club.

So long as the show
- exibits a high standard of narrative and storytelling
- has implied thought provoking themes that are not presented blatantly "in-your-face"(a problem many japanese anime face but i shall have another post dedicated to this)
- balances art detail with quality and smoothness of animation
- balances style with realism
- easy to follow, understand and follow-up

I consider them good. Awards also are a good indicator for films dont just win awards for no reason.

I came to the realisation as to why i liked anime so much at first. It was a skewed perception. I was recieving all the gems all at once, making me think that anime in general was GREAT. But once the bottle of sweet wine is finished, you are left with the barrels of vinegar.
A great anime movie or series seem to be a once in a blue moon thing nowadays. The most recent being "Sky Crawlers".
Other than that, we have mediocre, formulaic anime series flooding the market on a monthly basis.

When will those people grow up and appreciate anime in its entireity? To appreciate a rose, one must respect the thorns. To get the diamond, one must dive into the mud. Without mud there can be no diamond.
To appreciate the good while at least acknowledging the bad.

2nd week

Captain's log stardate 1337-whatever.

We are. One week out in the. University mission.



AWWW enough with the Star trek talk SAM!!!!!!

University of first week was fun.(well 3/4 fun). The lessons are not the usual "sit and take notes" sessions. They are more like discussion groups where the teacher would constantly ask questions and we are required to answer and that is when the teacher will give us his/her own opinion. It is a style of teaching that makes me feel very comfortable. The professors are no longer portrayed as "the godlike dispenser of your results and fountain of all knowledge". Such discussion sessions help me remember that professors are human too.

I've always preferred this sort of learning anyway. Very engaging, very dynamic.

Especially since im studying communications and Sociology, i definitely have a lot to say.

taking 4 modules. Communications, Sociology, Advanced Reading and Writing and...........Maths.

Yes Maths. My bane since birth, My pain since primary school. Aside from chinese.(OH YA, i got exempted from chinese after passing the test. lol hahahahahahahahahh)
But things are looking up. Thanks to my bro, I am grasping the basics of algebra and quadratic stuff. Now just a matter of doing more and recognizing the patterns and which formula to use when.
Maybe i might even call on my other bro(technically not my biological bro but i consider him a brother anyway. Yes u know who you are if you read this.) to help me soon since my current math genius bro got exams.


People? My class people? Very very nice bunch. A number of us get mixed around different modules so basically i have a group of only 15 that take the same 4 modules as me. Once again, the pattern of my life. Since leaving the all boys Maris Stella, the common ratio of gender in my post secondary classes(including first 3 months in an JC) as never been less than 1:4 of guys:gals.
A sad thing is i can't seem to get along with the 3 other guys. Our personalities and interests just that different. And neither can i get along with the poly grads.
I find myself hanging around a group of JC grad gals most of the time. Not that im complaining. In fact, maybe this is proof afterall that i was meant for JC in the first place. OH well, whats past is past.

Now to make the most of my present.