Thursday evening, between sleep and wakefulness.

Almost midnight. Several hours into the game, and you're already doing your second lengthy dungeon run in that single session. You're lying down in front of the TV, head propped up on two plump pillows, with feet resting on the slightly warm PS2. You can feel the console's almost imperceptible trembling as its laser read the contents of the game disc from time to time.

At this point your fingers are now on auto-pilot, knowing which buttons to press and the order on how they should be pressed to surf through the menu effortlessly as your tiny people in the TV did your battles for you. At first you dedicate a minuscule part of your thinking processes to consider your next move while battling Shadows. Pressing down, down, X brings you to the Persona page, where you select your newly-acquired Persona and use it in battle. You do this so you can register its card in the Velvet Room.

About an half hour (or more, you could not tell anymore) later your eyes feel heavy and your body wants to assume the fetal position that it usually takes during sleep. But you want to forge on through the dungeon - you want to know what would happen in the following days, whether someone else appears on the Midnight Channel, or if you passed the first midterm exams in the tiny virtual world.

So you did. Your hands still cradle the controller, fingers - which already developed minds of their own - dancing on the buttons, waiting for your decisions no longer. Your eyes remain trained on the TV screen, but are focused no longer.

Eventually you encounter a fox in one of the red-carpeted rooms, and it's looking up at your character with its sly yet coy half-smile. As you notice the small hearts printed on the fox's frilly apron you hazily wonder, in the back of your mind, whether or not the animal is a pooftie.

You tentatively reach out a hand and touched his fur, and suddenly you notice an unrecognizable scent of a subtle yet consistent, flat quality. Your mind is in a haze; you cannot tell if the scent came from the strange fox.

Then you hear a knocking on your door, and you try to turn your head towards the noise but instead you feel your body jolting mildly - suddenly your mind and your awareness are back in your room, and you realize that you were not running your hands on the fox's fur but instead remained cradling your controller. You also realize that the knocking on the door which snapped you back to reality wasn't real as well.

With great effort you sit up and reach behind the PS2 to switch off the console, and with shivering fingers press the power switch of your TV. Staying in that narrow border between sleep and wakefulness never failed to make you feel utterly disoriented.

Then you pick up your DS and booted up Space Invaders Extreme 2.

Haruki Murakami candy bar.

"It's like a Haruki Murakami candy bar," he said as he chewed my last packet of granola bar with utter relish while we waited in line at the ATM queue. "I don't like it. I have my reasons for not liking it, but I understand why you love it so much."

He masticated my favorite treat with a tentative relish; he hadn't eaten anything substantial for a good several hours, and yet I asked him to accompany me on a longhaul trip on a quest to pick up my new DS. I knew how much he needed to eat something, anything; and his apparent need for nourishment somehow made his statement worthless.

It IS a Haruki Murakami candy bar. The petty intellectual side of you does not like it - and yet look at you; chewing it, swallowing it as readily as you would every single sentence that flowed out of Alan Moore's pen.

Fly high, Gamera.

...and let's spew out turtly fireballs in the sky.

(thanks to Nyan for drawing this awesome Gamera and Mai doodle. X3)

Installing XP via USB, wurk, oekaki.

1. Finally got rid of Vistaids. It took sometime, but thanks to some good articles (this one did the most help), my Mini-Note is now running without any excess baggage. Speedy booting times! Minimal to no lag! D:

I'm thinking of writing my own guide on how to install Windows XP on netbooks (or any laptops, for that matter) that do not have any optical drives, since I found out that installing via USB sticks is mainly a hit-and-miss affair. It's just that I'm either always too tired when I finally get home or simply have something else to do. :/

The one I linked above is good, but I here are some things that I learned elsewhere in the murky corners of the Net:

• Windows XP Installers with Service Pack 3 are not recommended (SATA problems?). Install Win XP SP2 and just upgrade afterwards to SP3. However, if you're one of the people who try out exotic XP installers (like Black, etc), you'd best buy at least four installer variants so you have back ups in case some don't work. Custom installers have settings that may cause compatibility problems. I tried out a Black installer but it didn't work, despite it being SP2.
• If you can't boot from your hard drive after a successful install and are queasy about modifying the boot.ini file, do this: just delete the boot.ini file. All you'll get by deleting it is an error message appearing for a split-second in the booting sequence, but the machine will just right itself afterwards and load Windows. Too nervous? Back up, back up, back up.
  

Of course, doing a fresh install using another OS apart from the one that came with your netbook will wipe out everything, even the preloaded installer. I read that there were some ways of not wiping the partition that contains the preloaded installer, but I didn't bother since Vista sucks and is not worth the 12GB that its installer takes up.


2.  Something work-related: Now that I'm finding myself conducting meetings (and quite possibly training, maybe), everything feels like my skin is gradually feeling, responding to the large bucket of ice-cold water dumped over my person. I think both my JT and JD are no longer just what they currently are.

I need to step up to see this curious development through. I want to read this very entry one year after today, wearing a nostalgic smile on my lips. Perhaps I'll even say "Ah, this is when everything picked up."

3. I've started changing some elements of my layout, thanks to the (cheap) tablet that Ryan and I got (yay, pseudo-conjugal property). The first few moments I've had with the device were fraught with words such as "sira naman to eh!" (it's malfunctioning!) though I eventually acquainted myself with the basics of tablet control. It's not a mouse, for one. Or at least, it's more precise than a mouse.

And after an hour of setting up everything, I finally made myself my first oekaki-ish doodle evar:

Not sure why she turned out like...that. Ah, well. I wanted to draw something, and a few minutes later out comes something else.

I'm like a printer that prints out documents like I should, only translated in gibberish.

In which I write about Cold, and mourning the loss of a day.

I always believe that cold is never synonymous to sadness, nor loneliness. 

Rain will always be a gift of joy, a nourishment of the soul, be it benevolent or violent.

This off the top of my head: Science teaches us that intense cold will lead to stasis, but if it meant that yesterday would never end, then I would have let it eternally preserve the moment when you held me in subzero. Everything will be motionless; but then again those around you will never leave your side. 


A trade-off for the selfish.

--

I lost a day yesterday. Yesterday's name was Maki.

Maki was a tiny Birthday Bear made out of black cloth decorated with moon and stars. His limbs were made of floppy felt material, his eyes tiny knots of thread.

Maki could sit comfortably in a small child's hand. Attached to him by a string was his tiny identification card; it stated his name both in the Western alphabet and Japanese katakana. The card also bore the date he represented: January 11. Yesterday. Maki was the January 11 Birthday Bear.

On January 11, 2009 I gave Yesterday to my beloved, and he proudly wore it on his shirt pocket.

We went off our merry way to celebrate January 11 in a theme park. Our cherished Maki bore witness to our precarious yet amusing moments when our eyes betrayed our irrational fears (his fear of heights, my fear of plummeting several feet into the water), and those sweet, wondrous moments when we braved the immense cold in an artificial winter almostwonderland, my hand in his.

When the day ended, Maki was no longer hanging from the button on my beloved's shirt pocket. He was nowhere to be found.

Maki, January 11, was gone. Yesterday came, and went, literally.

I still cry about it. It must be a bad omen, I told my beloved. Would this mean that we will no longer have another January 11?

To anyone who reads this: if you somehow find a tiny cloth bear, please pick him up regardless of the dirt obscuring the wonderful moon and stars on his small body. Consider him auspicious; after all, Maki - our January 11 - is the culmination of a year's worth of confusion, helplessness, and eventually bittersweet happiness.

I hope you're well, Maki. I hope that next year, on your day, you will bestow happiness on someone who needs it.

Dying inside, and hello, 2009.

1. I once read in a book somewhere that people cannot claim to know other people as they are, at any present moment.

It is because that body cells are always dying, replaced regularly by new cells. At any given time, a person is instantaneously shedding their former identity and is being born into a new one even while they talk to you about the most trivial of things. Thus, the person you knew at 10:31 am is not the same person, biologically speaking, as the one you have spoken to in the following evening.

Almost everything you've known about that person no longer holds as fact, but memories of the person who died shortly after 10:31 am, to be replaced by another one who thinks, acts, and feels like their predecessor.

That said, there's no need to write "I want to become a new person" in your New Year's Resolution list. It's a fact of life; you constantly die only to be reborn all the time, every so often. It's just a matter of not acting/thinking/feeling like the same guy who died inside you a few hours ago, whom you, as you are right now, have replaced.

Perhaps a better item to add to your New Year's Resolution list should say something along the lines of "I will be that person who I was on December 21, 2008, 10:31 am, when I was actually productive, when I didn't complain as much, when I actually felt good about myself, and remained non-judgmental."

It's interesting, the things that realizes when thinking on different perspectives.

2. I wonder how different this coming year would be; I've stopped adapting a brighter outlook every turn of the year, because I've realized that I can do it every day. In the same token I'm (still struggling to) fight off the temptation of being pessimistic every once in a while, because I'll never know when things will turn up for me, whatever fuck ups I've committed.

What do you have in store for me, 2009?

New fiction here:

re: Beyond Black Doors 

It's been a long while since I last wrote fiction, and it's really hard to pick up the pen again after a year of not writing anything that isn't work (or game) related.

The title of my new thread - Beyond Black Doors - may be very familiar to those who've followed my old works. This time, however, the story takes place in contemporary settings, and there's not much swordfighting or magic involved. Just a lot of weird people (either alive or dead), and some strangelove all around.

Simple joys.

Simple joys can be found anywhere if you look hard enough. Even your car's tires may hold a nice surprise for you, despite the fact that it ran over a dog yesterday.

Something to chew on before I go to sleep.

They BELIEVE in themselves because they can DO things THEMSELVES. It is difficult to look at yourself and say you don't exist.

- Anonymous

Being able to do so anyway is a great feat in itself.

Not again, L.

:[

Someone introduced me to that emote, and I'm going to use it on you, L.

Again.

You may have forgotten what I told you, a couple of years ago, but since you matter a lot to me I'll just go ahead and c/p them here (with some revisions).

They’re not worth losing your sanity or ideals. I know you love her, she may have love/d you, but not enough. You can go and off yourself, but nothing would change. The world turns, but will not cry for you. You snooze (forever), you lose.

Go read more Murakamis and listen to The Smiths for weird dreams. Weird dreams are always entertaining, yes?

It's annoying...

When someone clearly has a beef with you but can't say it upfront, has to either pussyfoot about it or just play hide and seek instead of directly confronting you about it.

Not my problem.

Imagine:

An image of you reflected in a mirror, all soft and vague and just a touch unreal; an entire world with a facsimile of yourself who appears to be blissfully unaware of your existence.

This reflection of you, mimicking your own movements...until the very moment that you turn your back. What does it do when you're not looking at it?

What does your mirror image do while you're sleeping, that one time when it doesn't have to fulfill its obligation to follow your every move? Will it yearn for the same things that you have, that it actually doesn't, yet act as if it does?

Would your shadow eventually be overcome with a very human sense of envy, that it will be forced to break the barrier separating your real world and its virtual own?

Would it want to become you?

What if you're the reflection?

1. My partner and I have been maintaining another blog for sometime now, and we've been using it for our writing exercises, or for those occasional times when we're inspired to collaborate on writing projects, only to gradually lose interest in a few weeks' time. The writing's decent to say the least, but there's a good reason why we don't really plug it, and it's due to the fact that all posts there are of the NSFW persuasion.

Nothing special, however. There's no fandom involved, save for the use of certain names plucked from favorite fictional characters...er, okay, there IS some fandom involved, to some extent. And I'm babbling.

Anyway.

I've just written a long, unfinished draft for a new post. It's been a long time since I updated that blog, so I felt a little bit guilty and made sure that this certain post will be...well, lengthy. If that will help, which I doubt it would.

Here's a worksafe (and nonsensical, with sucky grammar) snippet taken from my draft:

Then she stopped. She removed her hands from underneath Kana's blouse, stood up, and straightened her skirt. "Let's go?" she said, looking sideways towards the disheveled and immensely confused girl.

"What?" Kana looked as if she was on the verge of tears.

Looks like I already have power over you, you poor thing. Giving her an immaculate smile, she pointed towards the nearby lake. "I think it's time for a swim."

"We don't have extra clothing," said Kana matter-of-factly, quickly recovering from the beginnings of a fit of depression.

"We go skinny dipping," said Ryogi, even more matter-of-factly.

Well, there's the snippet, for what it's worth. Using Japanese or Oriental names for original fiction - especially slice-of-life - isn't exactly to my taste, however, but like all good couples, there has to be compromise. He wanted to write about porn set in Japanese-style steampunk or maybe the zombie apocalypse (nope, he wasn't kidding); I said screw that, I just want good old PWP with schoolgirls and professors.

We settled for doing slice-of-life erotica with characters bearing oriental names. Not bad for a compromise.

2. I've been losing sleep recently because of Kingdom of Goddamn Paradise on the PSP...yeah, without the "Goddamn" bit. That game and I share a small bit of recent history - Kingdom of Paradise was my first decent game on my first PSP (fuck you, Metal Gear Acid, fuck you), and I invested a lot of free time (converted from work time or otherwise) into playing that game. I rushed through it, eager to see the story unfold, and eventually managed to reach the final stages of the game.

But I saved the game before the encounter with the final boss and got me some shut-eye. When I woke up, PSP, along with the Kingdom of Goddamn Paradise UMD, was gone. Stolen. Pooftie. *cue sad panda* This happened sometime in 2006, I think.

I've been making up for it, so I'm currently in zombie mode during work. Ah, well.

3. Sleep, here I cometh. *rollth rollth*

Potpourri

"Mind yourself now," his wife called out when he slowly pulled out the car from the garage. "And take care of yourself!"

"Yeah, I will," he answered through the rolled-down car window. As soon as the car was properly positioned by the road outside, he beckoned to his wife for a good-bye kiss. "Take care, too. And thanks for the present. I'll use it. My word."

"And control yourself, beloved," she whispered against his ear.

"Yeah. I promise." He drove off happily, and in slightly good sprits. The present in question, an unopened pot of peppermint-scented potpourri taped to the leather dashboard, waiting to be given proper acknowledgement. The man turned on the radio and listened to his MP3 player, whose playlist was altered by his wife, who deemed the song selection as too 'provocative'. His lip slightly curled in distaste when he found out that his wife had inserted a couple of Simon and Garfunkle songs, which he promptly skipped with a deft flick of his finger.

"Goddamn b...graah," he groaned and gritted his teeth in a great effort to stop himself from cursing loudly. He promised his wife. I promised. "Emo of the sixties, they are," he grudgingly blurted out, frustrated and at the same time relieved that he was able to voice out his aversion without breaking his word.

The traffic started to slow down, with his car stopping near the center of the intersection, where he could clearly see the traffic enforcer wave and dance like a lunatic in an effort to tame the flow of automobiles.

Wanting to distract himself from the cloying music wafting through the speakers, he removed the scotch tape that fastened the peppermint potpourri pot to the dashboard, and peered at it closely. Hmm. Mood uplifting, helps relieve mental fatigue, improves mental clarity, alertness, concentration, and memory...I can see why she chose this one for me, he thought. Well, I'll open the can and put it to good use once I get to park in the office. He then shifted his attention to the traffic enforcer, who was still motioning to the other wave of cars to pass through. He closely watch the steady stream of traffic pass by him, waiting for his lane's turn to move.

Five minutes passed. Ten minutes passed. Twenty minutes passed.

He was clenching his fists by then. Other cars in his lane were already honking their horns impatiently, unheeding by the traffic enforcer who was still merrily waving and dancing his way to let the other lane pass by. What the fuck is this guy's problem?! he screamed in his head, his anger causing him to rage and tremble and go red in the face all over again, just the very thing that his wife cautioned against.

Reason still winning over his consciousness, he decided to give the traffic enforcer three more minutes before he got out his car to confront him. Three more minutes. Surely he wouldn't be so stupid as to let us stew for three more minutes! He struggled to rein in his anger. I promised. I promised.

Three minutes passed.

I...

The passing of those final three minutes saw the man slamming the door behind him, walking towards the traffic enforcer in great strides, effortlessly avoiding the incoming traffic despite his rage.

The traffic enforcer, upon seeing him walking towards his direction like a beast to a prey--holding a wrench--wisely motioned for the man's lane to move--but not quite.

Despite the fact that it was already their turn to cross the intersection, it was too late; he was already blinded with rage.

As the man saw red and flesh and blood, the pot of peppermint potpourri was still sitting patiently on the leather dashboard, waiting for its master to make use of it, to serve its purpose.