A happy new start :D

So uni has started, there's not much to talk about, it's all pretty much the same as the first week of my undergrad but this time I'm actually happy, prepared and motivated. The difference in confidence levels are also vastly different, and I feel a bit more solidly about where I stand, for the first time in my life I think I see a benefit from studying at Imperial.

I've made a few friends and now I'm happily chatting around my way around the group, I am, for some reason, hoping to make more male friends as I think I failed in that aspect of my undergrad life (I have some male friends, but most guys hate my guts).

It's so weird saying I'm a postgraduate student.

I forgot my brand new umbrella in one of of the hospital locker rooms and found it just an hour ago so I'm extra happy, despite the miserable rain.

The workload is no doubt intensive, but for some reason that only excites me, I have not felt like that in a loong time, I only ever focused on negative scenarios and fell out of optimism in every light of life. BUT NOW! I'm rearing to go and ready to knuckle down from the start. BRING IT!

I also have extra stuff planned out, I.e. keeping a personal journal, this blog, swimming, as well as the manga reviews (obviously).

So.... manga of the month shall be the next post. Get ready to ignore it.

Manga of the Month - July

I'm sad and yet happy that I can only vent out my manga enthusiasm on this blog, writing my opinions down allows me to improve the way I present them, instead of being overly zealous (which happens while I'm speaking so I look like I'm talking jack), this unfortunately tends to scare my audiences away, even so, only the most patient of people read my manga talks on this blog, and to them, I am grateful. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside :D

So, time for some manga, well, I'll be talking about a series that is relatively newly started and I only finished reading yesterday. I really enjoyed it as I could relate to some aspects of it (as I will be detailing later on), but let me tell you how I got into this manga and the mangaka's works (the manga writer).

*Ahem* well, I came along the series name 'Kimi ni Todoke' or 'Reaching you' in english,.I read the blurb and thought 'this is not something I'd read' but what brought me into reading it was not the artwork, or the storyline, but the covering picture, it was of the two main characters just looking into each others eyes.... Now this little scene has been overly replayed in shoujo (girl's) manga, but for some reason this paticular picture really grabbed my attention and it made me sort of sink into the picture too.

I decided then and there that I'd read it, so I clicked onto the link for the prologue and LO! There was an example of one of the best drawing styles I've seen, simple but bold, delicate but affective, and most of all, wonderfully variable! (you'll understand me if you read it, which you won't, because not many people even read my recommendations.. or listen to me for that matter).

Well, let me get to the plot of the story, It's about this girl called Sawako, but she's accidentally called 'Sadako' as the scray girl character from the film 'The ring' (originally japanese) was called Sadako. And due to her unfortunate stereotypical appearance of a 'Traditional Japanese ghost' she's feard by her entire school, this had been going on scince elementary school when a rhumour became fact by word of mouth. (I hate it when that happens). She therefore gains no social skills of communicative skills, and her kind intentions are always misinterpreted. Resulting in an accumulated classroom fear of Sawako and her isolation.

The humour of the situation is well described in the manga, but the sadness is not ignored. I could understand Sawako's situation slightly (not to say i'm some sort of rhumoured ghost) but in the respect that I too could only start speking with people when I was 14/15, I even had no personality until I was 17. So I could relate to the female protagonist alot and it made me empathise with her too.

A word on the themes of the story must be mentioned, I'm doing a disrespect by mentioning it so late, so i'll just start now :D The romance is really cute, it is slowly drawn out and develops gradually, from a respect to a care to a deep feeling, which I assume is what's supposed to happen rather than a 'love at first sight' crap? But the importance of the romance in the story I believe is overshadowed by the indispensability of friendship. The great focus in 'Kimi ni Todoke' is the journey Sawako makes to enhance her communication skills and aquire friends, something I too can relate too and respect its difficulty.

It is a Shoujo but it does not exclude the male audience, however if you're looking for bad ass awesome fight and action this is not for you, if you're looking for something that relates to human relationships and good comedy with subtlty but not overly thoughtful, then this is for you.

I hope someone out there gets affected by this >_< I really do love this manga and give it 9/10.

A day to remember

Yesterday I spent an enjoyable time with my friends, I'd like to not spill their names out, so I'll call one of them Miss. Hiiiiii and the other Miss. Tooting :D I think more original names could be made but I simply can't think of any at the moment.

So I was devestated to say the least, when I found out that Miss. Hiiiiii would be joining myself and Miss. Tooting, 'she's going to be 3 hours late!' was what I exclaimed over the phone to Miss. Tooting, she didn't sound phased, but when I saw her the following day at Tooting Broadway station, she gave me a sort of reprimand and challenged my 'friend' material. I was then pleasently shocked to find that Miss. Hiiiiii had actually arrived only 10 minutes late!!!!!! A NEW WORLD RECORD HAS BEEN BROKEN! Miss. Hiiiiii has the capacity to be only 10 minutes late!!!! CELEBRATE PPL!!!!! I have a new found trust in Miss. Hiiiiii's punctuality. I feel 3000 steps closer to her.

But I really am glad Miss. Hiiiiii turned up, I'm even happier that she came on time! We ate hallal Italian food (I had a yummy pasta with spinach and prawns) and we talked and talked an talked I think we were there for like 2 and a half hours. Most of it was 'networking' and the other was 'talking shit' as Miss. Tooting eloquently described it. In fact alot of what we were talking about was shit. Like how Rodick (sp?) the tennis player sticks his bum out when he serves, or the debate we had about all adult films having sex in them, and other crap that I can't even remember.

I showed them my rough sketches for the manga I intend to finish drawing, and I was half disappointed half amused when I saw the fall in expression on Miss. Hiiiii's face, she seemed to be jealous that I had drawn other characters with sexy faces, while I had drawn her like a chav. I'm contemplating changing her character profile now, but I have faith that it will go well in the manga, so I'm also hesistant to change it.

Sadly Miss. Tooting had to seperate from us as she was too much in a hurry to floss her teeth (its unfair on her to explain this extraordinary motion of hers, but she doesn't read my blog, so I'll stay quiet) *evil grin*

As the trio had turned into a duo, I took Miss. Hiiiiii with me to my local park. We firstly went on this bad ass circular sort of swing that can fit two or three people perhaps, it was big enough to lie down on, so we did, and faced the sky as the swing moved, it was really peaceful. Miss. Hiiiii was too scared to get off of it actually. Then we moved to the swings, where I made the realisation that I was too fat to fit on the seat. Well, I managed to get into the seat, but now I'm slightly bruised. It was so fun swinging on the swings endlessly with Miss. Hiiiiii, it was a childhood act that I had never re-enacted with any of my university friends before. So it was really fun.

Thank you to Miss. Tooting and Miss. Hiiiiii for a wonderful afternoon, I'll never forget it!

To eat or not to eat?

So Im slightly happy because I think I've lost some weight, but I'm not letting it get to me as I've noticed various weight scales tend to show variable results... It toys with one's delicate emotions.

I started eating less carbs, not so much as a strategy to loose weight, but more to ease my guilt of times where I simply binged on food. I found that experiencing the feeling of hunger actually does make me feel more at ease, and it makes eating a final meal more rewarding, almost like fasting in Ramadan.

But yesterday at the gym, I realised that the lack of carbs took a toll and my phycial strength, I went on this machine thing that resembles virtical cycling, and usually I'd be able to do it for around 7 minutes (which isn't much btw), but yesterday I died after 3 minutes. So I thought perhaps I should eat something with crbs, and my grumbling stomach agreed with me. Hence, for the first time in 3 weeks, I broke my promise to myslef and ate lunch! It was a momentous occasion for me, but half way through my tuna baggette I felt inexplicably full.

Unfortunately this lucnh episode, has allowed me to excuse myself and actually eat lunch today too!! OH THE PAIN!!! OH THE GUILT!!

But I've gotten around this and merely hardly eat dinner....

Time for some Manga!

Well, it's been some time since I've reported on some Manga, I've decided to have a 'Manga of the Month' and 'Manga of the week' reccomendation system in order for me not to fall out of the habit. So for this month's Manga, I've decided to write about a paticular Shoujo Manga (girl's Manga) that I paticularly admire. It's called Gekka No Kimi, www.onemanga.com/Gekka_no_Kimi


This series is designated for fans of romance and history, ivery much love the draping Kimono's and Yukatas, I think they're beautiful and well drawn in this series. Well, the story can be considered 2 plots in one. This is because a loose adaptation of an old folk story 'The Tales of Genji' is portrayed in paralell with the story of a modern day couple.

The events that which happen in 'The Tales of Genji' transfer and modify themselves in order to occur in the modern day tale, hence you can see the occurrences that happened 1000 years ago, and what they would be like had they happened in these modern, urban times.

The drawing is very very good, I'm a fan of the mangaka (Ako Shimaki) as I quite like her feminine drawings, but I like how they're not typical and how each panel has a sort of silkiness to it, I'm also grateful for the lack of overt use of background tones... when you see flowers and blossoms in virtually every slide it's gets boring. Maybe I'm being over descriptice, but at the end of the day: the drawings are nice to look at. Being a female-audienced series I don't recommend it for the boys, plus they'd get bored with all the sophistication.

I reccomend this, but not soo much as it's not one of the best out there, it's a very very good shoujo though, however there is an over-use of girly poses on the male protagonist , which is not very good. There are also scenes of an adult nature so not one for the kids either. Overall, an enjoyable, fresh and new read. Dessa ratings = 7/10

My Dad's coming back!!!

My dad's coming back today!! I'm so happy! Yay!!!

Yay-ness!!!! :D

I haven't seen him in around 6 weeks, longest time ever I've been away... as a result I've been cleaning less and dossing more :(

I's funny that you only appreciate people's presence when they're absent.

My life is not worth blogging about. But......

Hello world!

I thought I should stop by this ultimately popular blog and speak my mind about how one may have a split personality. One that resides at home and one that resides outside home.

Let's name these characters Miss Sad and Miss Happy, respectively.

Miss Sad might arise from the dwellings she occupies in Miss Happy's heart. But she can only be summond. And that summons can only be chanted by a certain Miss Pain-in-the-ass, but as well as by Miss Short Fuse and by Mr. Too Logical as well as Miss In-her-own-world.

It's very tiring turning from Miss Happy to Miss Sad in complete iterations. I wish I could be one or the other and not alternating between the two. Or rather I wish I could be Miss happy constantly. But that's only in perfect world that won't exist because we have corrupted it.

Hmmm... I don't trust myself to say anymore. Except that I'm tired, and not in the physical sense.