Wandering with the Wind...

Saturday, May 23, 2009

I don't have much time here for now, mom wants me to read the cambridge family instruction thing before I sleep, so I'll just post 2 more artworks that I did over the duration of yesterday to today afternoon. They're not new, just coloured versions of previous sketches. I'll be fast. O_O

And I mean, real fast. My *cough* dad's screaming already.

1) Age - Coloured

Description: Coloured with photoshop, took a long time before I managed to get the desired sky, sun and field colours. At first the old lady was supp to be wearing white, but then it made her look like a ghost in all the warm colours, so I coloured it black.

2) Evening

Description: Naruto x Hinata pairing!

3) Doushita, Anbu-chan? - Coloured

Description: This one sucked, but I was bored, so, oh well.

Okay, I really gtg! Cya! Good night!

***

~~~*Played with the winds at 11.59pm*~~~

Aurinya blogged at 11:52 PM

Roaming the Winds

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

19th May 2009 (Tuesday)

Today's a bad day, and I have A LOT to rant about, but...well, first things first.

Right, apparently my e-mail's experiencing some problems now so I'm having difficulties sending the poem to Mrs Tan; she asked if she could read it today morning, and yea, of course she can. It's supposed to be a parody of "To Be or Not to Be", but then I called it off and decided that it was more like a poem inspired by Shakespeare's roundabout ramblings rather than a parody.

Rule number 1: Parodies are funny. Mine, no.

Rule number 2: Parodies can mock the original creator's works - pushing aside the copyrights for now since Shakie is...well, put it in a nice way, gone to the "undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns". Ah, stuck in his own philosophies.

But what is written is written, and as the teacher commented, mine was pretty but sombre like I had a LOT to say. Actually I did, and one of my major writing problems is to manipulate humour skillfully enough to wrench the breath out of readers. Okies call it off - I'll put up the poem, maybe as my perspective and opinions towards war?

Hope the thing makes sense.

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Literature Choral Reading
Theme: War

To kill or not to kill: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis kinder in the heart to falter
With shots and bullets of tenebrous presage,
Or to hem in the remains of living love
And with heartlessness burn them? To die: to run;
No more; and by our deaths to reach the end
Of aimless escapade; the thousand winding roads
Our souls are enchained to, ‘tis a resolution
Ardently to be wish’d. To die, to run;
To run; perchance to flee: ay, there’s the rub;
For whilst we flee what darkness ahead may lie
When we have eschewed these bullets of ice,
And yet face more? There’s the torment
That stirs adversity into cold war;
For who could take the disparities of life,
The prejudiced cries, the rebellions’ say,
The pinch of hatred brewed, the people’s pain,
The slighting of beings of same living rights,
That, unseeing, draws us from our common stand,
When we ourselves our own quietus had made
With a glinting blade? Who would farther venture,
To cut and drown in swirling blood,
Oppressed by the dread of life so fast gone,
Toward the seeing eye in whose realm
No answer resides, benumbs the will
And makes us rather walk on paths underfoot
Than to wander whither we know not of?
Thus mystery does make cowards of us all;
And thus the humane light of acceptance
Is bleared o’er with the unsavory dust of thought,
And to think of all arduous trips embarked
Toward the hollow of this emptied pith,
Our call loses its reason.
To die: to run; at this crucial point
Whether ‘tis nobler to seek the words we hear
And adrift the sea be laid to peter; or run,
When life with mocking eye held in blackness
Of falling night sky, a light bereft of truth
Fading into future? There lies the wood
For one man’s fire, and a thousand spreads
From scintillating blade to dulling heart,
To die, to kill; by our misery take another
Into hell with us. Should our sanity hear
The cry we have yanked from the deeps of his gut,
The rustling of breath from his pale blue lips,
And dying, feel the weight of his pain?
To kill or not to kill;
There is no other question
That burns our hearts greater than any flame
Upon despair feeds.

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Okay guys I'm really sorry for dumping this whole chunk of words here without preamble, but for goodness' sake, thank Shakespeare for not paragraphing his originals. It was frustrating enough to analyse his hamlet speech; one question could stretch over a few lines, starting from what seems like a normal statement, chopped up with a few commas inbetween, and then ending with a darn question mark that totally throws you off and sets you revising the lines you've just read over and over. And the other thing is that he LOVES to use archaic words and olden day language.

Oh, but thanks to him, I did learn a few new words. Apparently some of my classmates were playing guessing games with his poetry and...yea, here's an example. Nan was just talking about roasting marshmallows over a bare bodkin ("bare bodkin", as adapted from Shakespeare's Hamlet Speech), trying to write her own parody of To Be or Not To Be, and I was like, "how do you do that?" and she was asking, "what's a bodkin anyway?"

A bodkin's a needle.

Roasting marshmallows over a needle.

Oh well, guess that makes perfect sense.

Hmm and now to my ultimate, honest, truthful reflections of yesterday's attempt at writing a poem based on To Be or Not To Be...it was FUN! Okay, challenging, and when I say that, I mean REALLY challenging, but fun in the meantime. His structure is a little...*cough* smothering if you try to imitate it, but all the same, literature is literature, and writing poems based on other works IS still poetry-writing after all. I haven't been writing poems for the past two months. This is a good break.

I think I'll just post another of my poem here, the one which I sent to my uncle over in America and, according to him, cheered him up from the mid-week fatigue. He works as a lawyer, and his English is awesome, but he needs to...well, melt his frozen report-like structure a little when he writes poetry. I've seen one of his poems before. I like his ideas and perspectives, but he's gotta open up, relax, be free and less rigid in his language.

Okay so here goes. This one's titled Wanderers, something I wrote when I was emoing and wondering over the joys and freedom of wanderers of all the ages behind us; well, I was thinking, maybe wanderers beyond our ages, our time, our world, and in something much more idealistic than what really holds the possibility of future existence. I'm kinda emotionally attached to wandering (spiritually, in a sense), and the wind is my favourite in nature. I hope that explains Pan's question about why I love to draw windblown leaves in my artworks.

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Wanderers

Down to the winds our path runs free
And follow its wake, past rock and tree
When night runs erelong with the day
And dawn treads genteel by our way
For along rivers we shall walk,
And ‘cross wild moorlands time has wrought,
Where ever our spirits are always born
To dance in the plains and sing this song!

Far, far, so far away!
Oceans swum and mountains lain!
Under the moon we wander afield,
Nary a sound to drown our lilt,
For so long a time we are free to fly
O’er the vales, and into the sky
Whence come thunder or wind or storm,
We’ll dance in the plains and sing this song!

Run, run, seers of time!
We know naught of past, and not of prime!
Yet ahead the road flows long,
And caverns deep with lights they shone,
For whither we head, we do not know
Past seas and hills and wealds of roe
And question then, why our spirits long
To dance in the plains and sing this song!

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Yup, that's about it for now. I don't have much time left and have to sign off soon. Well, just bfore I go, 2.4 almost killed me today and I got it done in 16.45 min, which sucked, but better than a fail anyway. Oh who cares about NAPFA. I don't like all those sports and physical stuff - well, with exceptions of team games like netball or relays though, anything in which we can work together to achieve a common goal.

And we're getting back our chem papers tomorrow, together with English Narrative Writing and Orals. Goodness, I'm so dead. Hope I don't fail chem.

I know it's too low of an expectation, and usually I look higher, but I like to set realistic goals. For now, judging by...circumstances, and our chem teacher's face regarding our class' performance, I think a pass is rewarding enough.

***
~~~*Played with the winds at 7.24pm*~~~

Aurinya blogged at 6:36 PM

Roaming the Winds

Saturday, May 16, 2009

16th May 2009 (Saturday)

Alright it's been another long gap and I'm gonna make this an art post. XD Well I DID promise to post some of my recent drawings after exams, which is, thank goodness, now. Then after that, it's gonna be more personal UPDATES! Naw, just daily life registration. I'm just suddenly a little more in the mood to blog for some unknown reason.

Well, prepare yourselves, it's gonna be another long post after a long time.
Hmm...yup so here goes; u can find these drawings in my deviantart account too but I wanted to post them up on my blog anyway. Feels better when things in your life get into your personal diary, I guess?
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1) The Lost Civilization
Description: An imaginary scene drawn with charcoal, and the main things are the house, the empty field, the fallen chunks of rocks (if you can see they are rocks - I think they look a little more like wood, screwed up the wiping so the sharp edges weren't salient enough), the black sky, weird sun/moon, the pitcher and the little wild plant inside. Spent a total of about 4 hours on it, did it in 2 parts. Do try to ignore the quality of this photo though, was taken with my phone cam that is a pitiful 2.0 megapixels since the scanner couldn't scan anything larger than A4.
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Well, pretty fun I guess. Did the main touches after exams. This pic implies something though, especially the midnight sun (or moon, I decided not to give it a fixed perspective), and the flower in the broken pitcher. I'm too lazy to explain my implications so I shall just leave it to you to perceive this pic the way you want. I think the title alone conveys quite a lot already in a sense.
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Sums up my second try with charcoal.
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2) Age
Description: This one's a little more sombre. I was emoing while sketching this pic; didn't shade much since it was a rough sketch. Basically it's my perception of age; this old lady sitting on a swing (that doesn't work, if you judge by its distance from the trunk) and the knobby tree, the blank field before her and the setting sun and wind, and, as Pan Yu says, the random leaves. Well, to me, age isn't particularly a sad thing. This pic implies a bit of sadness because of the loneliness and gradual feeling that we're really being abandoned while we age, that we can't catch up and, soon, never will. Hmm...an interesting situation, ain't it? Somehow age does have an intriguing effect on people; we just feel different, think different, and our whole world becomes different.
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And meanwhile, we attempt to return to what we used to do as a child in the form of nostalgia. The old lady sits on the swing, yet she can't and never will play on it like she had used to. It's like that, while we age, we will come to lose some of the things we used to have as kids; the innocence, the purity, the time and acceptance and freedom from social influences etc. Just like sitting on the swing but not playing it. In truth people can still be who they used to be even if, in society's eyes, you're too old for it. That's what exists in ourselves. This knowing that we can and should be like who we used to be from the original start.
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Yet society's influences stop us from truly returning to our very beginnings. We are forced to look back, and constantly look back, and never really reach that point where our whole world returns to that place we look back to. This is my perception of age. It's funny how the cycle returns to its start in the end; just in a different way.
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Oh well, I get the feeling that you won't really understand what I've just rambled.
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3) Inner World
Description: A corel pic done with bamboo tablet and corel painter essentials 4. Shows a place in my inner world, that's all. The wooden frame thing was utterly out of randomness; but somehow, though unexpected, I guess it enhances the lonely and (supposed to be) sorta ethereal ambience. Yup, that's how it's usually like in my inner world. The sun is just about that colour, but of course in my world it's more realistic and there's really the shine, and more red when it sets, not a mere blob of pale yellowish *cough* digital paint.
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4) 拝見！(Haiken!)
Description: A random OC character that was the result of suddenly altering the intentions of this pic from Naruto fanart to self-design. In the end the guy turned out to be a little more fighter type than intended, but oh well, since it was set that way, I decided to gear in that direction halfway through. Not much to say about this though, was done during a mid-revision break sometime before history exam.
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5) Despair
Description: Another emo pic drawn while listening to sad Naruto music. It's Fanart! - and as Pan Yu says, there's the RANDOM LEAVES again. But oh well, I just love leaves, and wind, and I think there's nothing really wrong with that. It gives me a cooling feeling that I would really need - partly cuz of SG's terrible temperature and another the stress of real life.
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Don't call me a sadist, but I just like it when plot characters are sad or stuck in situations a little more...difficult to handle. Maybe it's just a side-effect from my overall liking of sadness itself. The pure, cooling and cleansing feeling. Feels real nice...
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6) Despair (Coloured)
Description: Okay this one's just the coloured version of the original sketch, done with photoshop. My first try at photoshop; the blending sucked, but I have to give it to photoshop for being better than Corel Painter in several ways. At least there were more effects to choose from.
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I accidently made this pic a little brighter than what "despair" would have been like; didn't manage to achieve a bit of grayscale or washout feeling. Should put more effort into that next time. Oh well, give me more time to hone my digital art.
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7) Alone in Autumn (Rough Sketch)
Description: Oh wow I just typed "Despair" instead of "Description"! Gah. *Clears mind* Anyway, this was a very quick and rough sketch done on paint with bamboo tablet. Was feeling random so I just drew it. I think I prefer the coloured version below a little more.
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8) Alone in Autumn (Coloured)
Description: Here goes the coloured version. This one wasn't made with photoshop though, it's corel painter. Screwed up the lighting, but oh well, I got over it soon after. First time trying sketching from an up to down perspective. It was originally meant to be a father-son pic of Naruto and his father Minato, but I got too lazy to draw Minato and there wasn't space anyway so I just left it as it is. Hmm...maybe that's how Naruto got to be alone in the first place? Kishimoto got a lil too lazy to draw an extra person eh?
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Mwahaha.
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9) A Sketch of Minato
Description: A very quick sketch of his face done on a piece of scrap paper from my notebook. Did this during a break in revision again; got a lil heated up that time, if I remember correctly, and just decided to cool down via doodling. It helped. First time getting Minato's eyes somewhat better than the older versions I used to draw.
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10) 六代目火影波風ナルト (Rokudaime Hokage Namikaze Naruto)
Description: Another fanart of Naruto in the grownup Rokudaime form. Messed up the face but otherwise I think it's sorta okay. The shading was screwed though, next time I should really use wooden 2Bs to shade instead of mechanical leads. And woohoo this is my FIRST scanned picture! XD
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*Hugs scanner*
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11) Girl
Description: Okay, this was random, really random, done during a shopping trip with my parents. They were looking for some sort of kitchen thing so I just hung around near the desks and started doodling on my notebook. I liked her eyes though, the proportions were kinda off, and the shading was basically cheap-work, but considering the fact that I was rushing around wherever my parents moved and having a headache from the taxi ride, I shall call it off lols.
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12) 1st Page of Doujinshi
Description: Okay this is the first page of this doujinshi that I was doing for a fanfic written by Talia or somebody of the like; the one I spent 6 hours on, from 12 am to 6am. I messed up the ANBUs cuz now then I realized thay had guards all the way till the elbows and their clothes were a little different, and Minato doesn't look like Minato AT ALL, since at that time I didn't really know how to draw his eyes and face. It was fun doing the hokage tower though, the whole up to down perspective. The tedium was a little unbearable at some points but overall it was good practice.
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13) どうした、暗部ちゃん。 (Doushita, Anbu-chan?)
Description: Another Naruto fanart! Shows my view on how Naruto will treat his ANBUs when he becomes Rokudaime. Yup, that's how the Anbu should look like, I mean, comparing to the screwed-up ANBU in my previous doujinshi pic. Hehe poor ANBU-chan. I realized Naruto's facial features made him look a little younger than he should, considering his possible age by the time he becomes hokage, but oh well. What's done is done. Ididn't want more annoying eraser smudges.
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PHEW! It was TIRING! TIRING I tellya - posting all the drawings and adding descriptions for them in one go. A wonder how blogging can become a drag if you do it for too long.
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Yeah, Pan Yu says my posts are too darn long. I suppose she's right. Readers can get real pissed off eh?
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Okay so let's get on to the words. Groan if you want, I'm still writing.
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So today's Sat, there was supposed to be the inter-class relay thing on today but then Damini called me yesterday and told me it was called off cuz many ppl couldn't make it. Then apparently when I reached sch today (for lit choral reading project) Jiao and Kana told me Julia sent an email saying the whole thing was back on, cuz they found replacements! I didn't wear PE shorts thanks to the miscommunication. Tried borrowing from Mrs Wee, but she told me all the girls didn't return the PE shorts so they didn't have and that she was really sorry and all that...oh well. The rest of them tried calling for *cough* reinforcements (!) but apparently it was alr 9.20 and nobody could rush here within 10 minutes, so...
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In the end, they voided the run.
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Jiao was pissed.
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Hmm yup so my lit group went up to class to do a lil bit of discussion on the parody, which wasn't very fruitful, and I left at 10 for art. Turns out that I reached art lesson 2 minutes late, which was 28 minutes earlier than I estimated. I kept overestimating travelling times. Maybe it's just because I feel safer when there's more allowance time in a sense. You know how annoying it can get when things happen...uh, unexpectedly.
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For art we're currently working on a basket of four teddy bears and another toy dog beside it. I got sick of the toy dog. I've been drawing it for the first few lessons and other subsequent lessons which was about 2 years ago and I never wanted to see it again. But, well, fate says otherwise.
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The horror of THE TOY DOG!
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Gah! I just KNEW I would hate drawing stuff toys with charcoal...and the basket! THE BASKET! What a terrible prospect - it's RATTEN! RATTEN FOR GOODNESS SAKE-
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Ugh. And what was worse, I was feeling pretty feverish when I reached the art teacher's house (in the warm stuffy RG uniform since I rushed from sch in the morn), and apparently my distribution of space on the paper was totally screwed up. The teacher said the top right hand corner felt a little empty. Not just a little. It was "too" empty.
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Well, yea, he kindly...erased the whole thing.
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I had to draw it again on the underside of the paper, which was another failed attempt (at least I thought it was cuz I didn't get the usual feel - was feeling sicker every minute) and asked the teacher for a new piece of paper. Luckily he agreed without any complaint. So yea, afterwards, my feel got back, and the teacher actually liked the way I sketched the draft. He said I got much more relaxed and free with my charcoal strokes.
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I suppose...that's an improvement?
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Yea well afterwards exchanged a few words with Mao, who was getting a little envious about RG exams ending earlier than RI's, but for goodness sake, RG starts early and ends early, that's all. We have FRIGGIN 3 exams in one day. Maybe that's what they call...uh, efficient? Yeah, efficient to the point of *cough* excess scrimmage, which COULD actually be solved with a little bit more relaxation and flexibility of the timetable. Haiz who knows what ppl are thinking nowadays?
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Okay so that's basically it for the day, took a nap and dreamt of eating Japanese food with Az in the middle of a Jap and a dunno-what-race war (too much of history I guess), and it was darn life-like that I could actually taste the food, but, uh, I had to wake up cuz the cleaner got here at a totally unexpected timing. At least unexpected for me. My parents tend to arrange things without my knowledge sometimes. I guess they don't need me to know anyway.
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Got back my Jap and Math results. 50.6/55 for Jap CA2, 32.5/35 for Jap CA3, and 33/40 for Math. Oh, and 19/20 for Jap Show&Tell. All 4.0s so I'm kinda satisfied to a certain extent. But it's quite bad for math though, despite the improvement since last year, that's still there, but the fact that I lost 5 marks due to carelessness doesn't make this mark look so nice. Well, yes, I could've gotten 38/40 if not for all the stupid carelessness. Was rushing through 2 tougher questions in the last 10 minutes so I didn't get enough time to check.
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But some careless stuff, like reading the graph wrongly, was pretty much unacceptable for me. =.= I feel so...argh. Mrs Chia wants me to get full marks next time. I'll try.
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I think I'll flunk Chem and maybe some other subjects. Hope I don't though.
Hmm...what else...oh, I have to ask my tuition teacher that math trig ratio question tomorrow. I don't really understand it from whatever explanation the sch lesson provided.
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Kayz, that's enough for today, I think, it looks frighteningly long. Should go off now. Feeling a little lightheaded and drowsy. Nighties!
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***
~~~*Played with the winds at 10.26pm*~~~

Aurinya blogged at 8:49 PM

Roaming the Winds

Thursday, May 7, 2009

7th May 2009 (Thursday)

Okay I realized I haven't been blogging for something like one month and I seriously need to write something.

UH, but I seriously have very limited time now, cuz exams are cramping up our timetables for these few weeks and I've still got one whole Japanese powerpoint to crap up before rehearsal tomorrow. That makes things far worse. Forgive me for the time being - I really am experiencing a bit of a hectic lifestyle right now.

This is gonna be real short.

Ok, so we went for NAPFA today. I got Bs and Cs for almost everything, then 2 As and 1D. Thanks to shuttle run - I've always sucked at running, 1 second less and I could've gotten C. Goodness. And inclined pull-ups was hell since my arms were *cough* weakened from yesterday's...uh...full 5 minutes of hanging on the rock wall (without having a correct balance) since the PE teacher wanted me to go on. Well, the only good thing is, through this experience I finally knew how it felt to be at the point whereby you pull and pull and yet you just can't get past that level at all.

I guess the best for which I did was the Standing Broad Jump. I got 171cm, a 11cm improvement from last year's 160. Az retried and she got 170, not bad eh? XD She's got A for almost everything. Fit-o, pal!

Yup so I got a deviantart account like a few days ago and also a theOtaku fanart account, if you don't know it's Aurinya.deviantart.com and Eralight at theOtaku, and I've posted a few pictures so far. Not a lot, considering it's exam time. But...oh well. I hope you get the point. Will post some of my recent pics in my follow-up posts after exams.

Kay I really gotta go. Math was okay these few days; the effects of the china tuition hasn't yet worn off, and gee, I never said I hope it would. *Glares* Better stay there or ELSE.

Whew, this sure is rushed. Cya.

PS: Chem SPA was relatively okay. At least I got most of the stuff right. Forgot to write "moist" for the litmus papers though, what a darn careless mistake.

***
~~~*Dreamed with the winds at 6.50pm*~~~

Aurinya blogged at 6:40 PM

Roaming the Winds