I am currently preparing for my SAT reasoning test and I am disgusted by how a year of not studying rendered my academic capabilities to almost nil. =.= Thinking of whether to take the SAT subject tests too but then that's another matter all together since I cannot take both tests on the same day. One thing at a time… *shrugs* I cleared my desk just so I can start studying and my mum claims that it will get messy again within 3 days. .__. (Actually, it is a bit messed up after like 2 hours of studying already. =X)

My days nowadays revolve around re-doing my manicure and pedicure every week and other non-productive stuff. I better get that part-time job (I don't see one in sight yet =.=) so I can pay for lessons to take up a third language in Japanese. (I can see myself asking the nerdy secondary one me why I didn't choose Jap as a 3^rd language though my mum encouraged me too. LOL.) I am also more inclined to be less of a "People will contact me if they wanna meet up" person and started asking out people who I have not met for like ages. (Except for Xuewen because she should be having prelims soon based on Phyllis's prelims schedule.) I guessed it's because I read some random person's blog about how you should always try to contact friends because they, like you are waiting for them to contact you too!

Ok, I came up with a post of reasonable length. Next post whenever I feel like it. =P

Oh I just remembered:

I have a bottle of nail polish from The Face Shop to give away. It's a shimmery green colour and I sort of liked it when I saw the shade on the bottle but then it totally didn't match my skin tone. T__T If anyone want it you can tell me and I will pass it to ya the next time we meet up. =) It looks like the bottle on the left in the picture. I only used it like on one nail once to test the colour at home and decided I do not want it so you can consider it new. In case you were wondering why I bought it… It's because my nails were manicured when I bought it and I didn't want to ruin my nails by testing random colours during shopping. =P

Edit: I found out I updated my blog after more than half a month! :D

Had a short meet-up with JiaYing and Phyllis today. Ended up staying late with JiaYing till 10 plus at a coffeehouse. We wanted alcohol but I am anti-club haha, so we settled for coffee!

The talk we have made me think of something ironic. When I was young, I wanted to grow up, snag a rich old guy, earn money and live by myself or something. However, when I reached this crossroad whereby I am close to what I used to want, I waver and try to shrink back into the days when I am fresh, dumb and carefree.

Maybe it's because I didn't have things go the way I want.

But thinking that alone means I have not accepted that I am about to mature and fly free.

Maybe it's because growing up means you must have bumps in your path in life.

But if that's the case, I rather stay stagnant in time.

Maybe I am just dreaming when I visualize my future happy self in the past.

But I have to wake up eventually…

Instead of going around scanning and translating manga alone, which was a lonely an enjoyable experiment, I decided find someplace where I can help out. It IS better than me sitting down and floating around various sites for hours plus leeching others works when I have loads of free time and have experience in this erm, industry. =D So, I ended up with my beloved Alice Dreams family and am working as a translator currently! =)

People keep asking me what I do when scanlating. Basically, it goes like this:

Step 1:

Getting the raw. You get the raw source (we just call it the "raw") which normally comes in horrible condition such as being too gray or too yellow or simply crooked. Although you cannot really complain about it when people are nice enough to tear apart their manga and scan it for leechers.

Step 2:

Cleaning. The cleaners or/and editors have to erm… clean the raw. Which consists of taking away the words in speech bubbles, cutting double pages into half, re-drawing on the raw plus a whole hell lot of crap like "leveling" the page's colour to pure black-and-white.

The end product is a very pretty and presentable raw!

Step 3:

Ok, I skipped the translating and proof-reading stage. I will just make translating Step 3 (actually, translating can be done at anytime =.=). Translating consists of making translators like me go bonkers due to the mast amount of research we need to do beforehand. If we picked up on a series in the middle of nowhere, we'll have to force ourselves to read the story from the beginning first. Not to mention finding "official" English names of the manga characters plus the story style, food names, drinks names & names of places blah blah blah. Normally I do it while opening 2 windows – one with the raw and one with Notepad, and I get brain-dead from like 15 minutes of translating.

Step 4:

Proofreading by editors. (Crucial step right after translating.) Ensures that leeches won't read nonsensical grammatical and spelling errors made by the translators. Also makes sure that the script flows nicely and adheres to the story style.

Step 5:

Typesetting. Adding in the translations into the cleaned raws. Easiest thing to do in my opinion. (Others may beg to differ. =x)

Step 6 (Optional):

Quality checking. Checking for final errors such as typesetting mistakes and whether the picture is presentable (redrawing done, tone of black-and-white is correct etc.).

Step 7:

Uploading to stupid uploading/downloading sites like MediaFire, RapidShare (=.=), DepositFiles (=.=), MegaUpload blahblahblah for leeches to download and view.

I DID say it was a boring post didn't I? =P

I had an intense but wonderful dream about an impossible wish coming true. (Impossible to me anyway.)

Maybe I shouldn't have woke up.

Edit: Ignore whatever I wrote at the bottom. I was just in some unexplained state of the mond yesterday :D

Life has been pretty much dull lately, but my emotions sure aren't keeping in pace with it. I am not complaining though. Emo-ing at home beats dabbing at the side of my eyes with tissues while pretending to be working during the times when I was still working at Great World City. I mean, I was WORKING and cannot even afford to allow my tears to fall lest my mascara plus eyeliner smudge. -_- Not that I am crying at home lah, I just stare at my lappy screen 99% of the time I am awake. I swear that my tears only come out during times when I am like in public or someplace where I am supposed to keep emotions in check.

Being quite the optimistic person I always am, I can easily see the bright side of stuff quickly. Trust me when I say that for my current case, I tried like a gazillion times to nudge myself into the optimistic side of things. However… Guess what?

I fail. All the time.

The times when I succeed in convincing myself that my future is not bleak at all turned out to last for like erm, a day… =.=

It doesn't help that no matter whose dumbass blog I read consists of contents that will invariably jolt the "emo" wire in me either. It doesn't help too when everyone's so excited about their the start of a new chapter in their life. I mean, I am happy for all of them, but there is still some part deep inside that don't feel elated about it.

I blame myself for this, I blame myself for lacking the intelligence & diligence that landed me in this mess in the first place. It isn't fair if I push my situation now to bad luck or anything else. Still, it does not help matters when people don't even acknowledge letters you sent them and that I feel bad for wasting a lot of my friends' time on this issue with them worrying for me here and there.

Sometimes I wish I am as good as consoling myself as I am in consoling others.

How many months are there left till April of next year?