Code-R

Only one day before the rest of the exams resume, and what I am I doing? Revision, of course! And no doubt along with several other stuffs that suppossedly should not be done during this period. But hey, this is me. I’m not really good at resisting temptation, especially if it concerns what I enjoy doing.

I just started doing the lineart for this page of Katekyo Hitman Reborn! manga chapter 191 yesterday. I’m planning to colour it when the whole Mid-Year-Examination ends. No doubt, I’m still watching anime too though it’s only a few episodes per day. And by ‘few’, I really mean ‘few’, as in one or two episodes.

I know I’m suppossed to be studying and such but I think one or two hours of ‘free time’ for relaxation wouldn’t hurt. And it’s not like I haven’t started revision yet. Even though it’s only very little, it still counts as revision, right? I believe in Miracles and in myself. So, hopefully, I’ll do well.

Oh, and I’ve been wanting to post my thoughts on the 4th episode of Code Geass R2.
[SPOILERS for those who watches Code Geass but haven't seen this episode yet.]

My favourite part of this episode was when Lelouch manipulates Rolo and sweet-talk him into joining him as one of the Order of The Black Knights and rebel against Britannia. Basically, Lelouch plans to use Rolo, his fake brother, for his own personal gain. The way he gains Rolo’s trust was very clichéd yet genuine, and he didn’t even have to use his Geass.

I think Lelouch is really evil because he didn’t even think twice about using Rolo and only thought about what he would gain from it, and he can gain a lot by having Rolo as his ‘chess piece’. But still, I think he’s really awesome anyways. And I think Rolo deserves it too (he being gay and all…), and not to mention stupid (it’s so obvious that Lelouch is lying to him…).

Well, that’s that. Must try to resume revision now…

I just had my English Mid-Year-Examination today. What do I think of it? Err….not very good.

Paper 1 was okay, I guess. Section one was simple enough but I must say, the narrative that I wrote as preparation yesterday was way much better than the one I wrote just now. It was a bit cliched, I think, about misunderstandings between friends that led to conflict. The one I jotted down yesterday was more….uncommon, I’d say. Maybe I’ll post it here if I have the time.

Section two of Paper 1 was…okay. Boring, but okay. I made the choice rather quickly because it only took me a short while to weigh which options had the least disadvantages. I barely finished it in time, though.

Paper 2 was tough. The passage itself was quite easy to understand but the questions were…..not simple. There were a lot of vocabulary-related questions and I suck at vocabulary. Even the summary was troublesome, I had to cancel quite a few things and I hope I didn’t cancel out any points because if I did, I’m doomed (to fail).

So all in all, I may pass.

But I cannot think negatively.

I’ll get a distinction!

But I cannot be absurd.

I’ll get C6.

But I cannot be pessimistic.

I’ll get B4.

Err….I’ll not be too pleased but it’ll have to do or now.

So all in all, I hope I can get at least a B4. I believe in luck and miracles, so may a miracle happen to me now (and the ‘O’ Levels too!).

So Friday’s my English exam and I don’t think I’m ready yet. I did a composition during class and was surprised to see that I took quite a lot of time to finish my planning, let alone the whole paper. Though I’ve been doing quite a bit of compositions this year, all of which were not done within a time limit, so that may be one of the reasons why I took so long.

Anyways, I just thought I’d post the essay I wrote here.
It’s edited and incomplete because it’s really long. Some parts may be illogical but just deal with it, I’m no genius.

Original concept by the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson.

____________________________________________________________

Flight
By: — R –

Flight has always been a dream for human beings. It was made possible with the invention of aeroplanes but there are some who feels that it is insufficient. Flying on an aeroplane does not, in their opinion, give a sense of freedom. They wanted something more natural that will give that which aeroplanes does not. This desire, this greed, is what drives them to look into genetic engineering to create a human-avian hybrid, a human with wings and the ability to fly. Thus, countless experiments were conducted on humans and as a result, lives were lost due to the failure of the experiments. After years of experimenting was there finally a successful experiment.

The hybrid, experiment number 431, was brought up in a cell located in the research laboratory and is constantly under the watchful eye of the scientists. He was given limited, if any, freedom. Everyday, he would be brought to several rooms to be experimented on or examined. All was going well for the scientists until one day, when 431 was being examined, a scientist detected an anomaly in the hybrid’s nervous system. He brought back 431 to his room and hastily approached his fellow colleagues to discuss the problem.

“From the look of things, it would seem that his nervous system is slowly being ineffective,” said the scientist who had examined 431. “This process would continue until it would one day be completely dead. Number 431 would be nothing but a piece of mindless flesh and meat.”

“So what do you suggest we do?” voiced another scientist, directing his question to no one in particular.

“Well, there is only one thing we can do,” answered another. “Elimination.” He continued, “We have no use for failures and keeping a defect will only waste precious space. It would be for the best if we dispose of him as soon as possible so that we can start work on another one.”

Without wasting any time, the scientist ordered for their specially trained personnel to take experiment number 431 to their private island which was specifically built to dispose of failures. 431 was placed in a cage and loaded onto a ship headed towards the private island. 431 had been around the lab for nearly 15 years and he knew all too well where he was going. His suspicions were confirmed when he overheard a pair of scientists’ conversation, “What a waste, and he lived for pretty long too, compared to other experiments.”

_____

431 had had enough. He was tired of being caged up for years and yearned for freedom. On his trip to the island, he started to formulate a plan to escape from the clutches of the scientists and his preordained fate. The journey did not take long and soon he was making his way towards a high-tech looking building. He knew that if he were to escape, he would have to act now because once he was inside, there would be no more chances left. Fortunately for him, only his hands were bound with chains. His legs and wings were free. “And I thought they were supposed to be smart,” he thought to himself silently.

The hybrid’s eyes darted left and right, confirming his position among the lab’s military personnel. There were only three people, one in front of him and the other two flanked him on both sides. Again, he was lucky because there were only three people for him to deal with. When he was a couple of hundred metres from the building, he set his plan in motion. He suddenly unfurled his wings without any warning and this caused the two men at his sides to halt momentarily. The dust that was being blown around by the wind created by the sudden movement only added to the confusion. 431 took this chaos as an opportunity to ram the person in front of him and in the process, taking the key for his chains. When that was done, he summoned all of his energy into his legs and within a second, he was soaring in the sky. He then transferred the energy from his legs into his wings and brought them up and down with as much strength as he could to get away from the scene as fast as possible.

_____

Within the chaos on the island below, one of the specially trained personnel, the one who got knocked down, quickly grabbed a rifle strapped onto his belt and took aim. Only thing was, there was nothing to aim at except for a small dot that was getting smaller by the second. He brought it back down and scowled.

“Shit….,” mumbled the one that was to the left of 431, “How troublesome….”

“They are so gonna kill us,” grumbled the other one.

_____

When the news of 431’s escape reached the research lab, the scientists were ferocious. No doubt they blamed the guards for this escape.

“What the hell do we do now!?” yelled a scientist.

“We cannot afford for the public to know what we are doing here. If word gets out, we would be put to jail or even death for toying with human lives,” said another, though this one was fairly calm.

“True, that’s why we must find and kill him at all cost,” said a feminine voice. “We need to set aside all other experiments and concentrate on finding number 431 first. Eliminating him is our top priority now.”

“Yes,” said another. “Good thing for us, we inserted a tracker in him,” he continued and smirked menacingly.

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Well, that’s it for now.

It’s still incomplete and I don’t know whether to end it with the next ‘chapter’ like I originally planned it at school, or continue and make it into a multi-chapter story kind of thing.

Anyway, as I’ve mentioned earlier, this piece has been edited because there’s no way I’m gonna get away with writing ‘Shit’ in a composition and also, it’s really very long (No way am I gonna be able to finish it in an hour…).

Hmm….it’s not good to keep looking at the downside of stuff. So, instead of posting about my negligence to revise and all that, I’ll post about something light and good this time.

In the course of the past few days, I have completed watching Dragonaut, Gundam 00 and Clannad! Oh, and I’ve also caught up with the latest of Katekyoushi Hitman Reborn! Not bad, eh? Maybe this is what I just need. If there’s ‘no more’ anime episodes to watch, I’ll have nothing to do, so maybe I’ll finally start my revision!

In any case, I have also been regularly downloading and watching all the new series that I recently picked up at a steady pace. So I hope this will continue but maybe I shoud miss one or two weeks’ worth of episodes to make time for revising.

Besides, I may have found a motivation to study. Maybe. I don’t know if it’s worth it to start revising for but, hey, I can hope, right? In fact, I should believe that it should work. If you’re wondering what it is, it’s a game. Or perhaps a ‘memory card that can store games’ would be a much better explanation.

Now, you must be wondering why I made three signatures consecutively…
It’s not only that, actually. I also just finished sketching a chibi picture of Hitsugaya to get my mind off things.

(Will scan and upload the sketch at a later time, most likely along with the sketch of Gundam Kyrios I made a while back.)

Lately, my mind seem to be confused(?).
I want to revise yet I do not want to. Every night before sleeping and everyday at school, I will be planning my revision for the day but in the end, I won’t do anything. Naturally, I’m angry because I hate feeling this way (this uncertainty-ness thingy).

So in order to get the anger out of my mind, or at least try to subside it (I’ll tend to get angry and frustrated real easy - but won’t show it, of course), I create signatures and draw. But it doesn’t seem to be working though.

Honestly, I have no idea what to do. Nevertheless, I’ll still try to convince the ‘other me’ into starting my revision. I’ll also try to figure out what’s really wrong with me. And I hope that’ll happen soon, because MYE is only a week away.

Hell, I’ve just wasted another week doing nothing…again…

Well, what do you know? It’s another signature. This time it’s Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII.

This one is really simple and plain.

To be honest, I think this signature is not nice at all. Lightning doesn’t blend in with the background one bit. I thought of changing the whole background altogether but was too lazy. I also wanted to just delete it, but thought the better of it. Might as well ‘complete’ it because I don’t really like to let things go unfinished.

Added this to the Gallery as well.

What’s this? Another signature after only a few hours?!
Haha, I must be full of motivation today, specifically for making signatures.

This signature was done in a very short amount of time because it’s really very simple.

Two versions; one with Cloud alone and the other featuring Zack as well. I thought that there was too much free space on version one, so I inserted Zack there to cover it up. The outcome didn’t turn out that well though, that’s why I didn’t deleted version one. Overall, I’m still not too pleased with the outcome though, it looks too plain.

Hmm…let’s see if I’m up for more signatures…

Added both versions to the Gallery.

I believe the last time I made a signature was in February. After that, my motivation of making another one seemed to have declined. Well, yesterday, all of a sudden (key word: sudden), my motivation flared, for reasons still unknown.

But reasons don’t matter. What matters is that I still haven’t forgotten how to make a signature.

There you have it, a signature featuring Sora from Kingdom Hearts II. I still think that something’s not quite right with the outcome but in general, I think it’s okay. Design’s pretty simple; just mainly used brushes and toggled around with the render here and there.

The render’s not mine this time. I took it from PlanetRenders.

I had wanted to create more signatures but maybe I’ll do it if I have some free time later or tomorrow. Lazy as I may be, I know my priorities, so I think I should start my revision now.

Added this to the Gallery too.

Well, here’s another food for thought. I was thinking of this during my trip home from school. It’s nothing too deep because my school isn’t really that far away from home and I only started to think about it around half-way of the journey, so yeah…

__________

I was thinking about thinking. I think it’s almost impossible to keep your mind completely and totally blank. You’re always thinking about something, no matter how trivial they may be. Then, lots of things came to my mind. The most prominent thought was; “What are other people thinking about?“. One can never really tell what’s going on in another’s head (except if you’re a psychic or something…). Never.

What’s with the emphasis on “never”? I hope it’ll become clear later. Hope. I know I’m not really good at expressing my opinion and thoughts and such, but I’ll try.

While I was thinking about that, I remembered a quote; “We aren’t only defined by what or who we are, but also by what we do and which choices we make.” I think this was said by Kira Yamato from Gundam Seed or Seed Destiny but I’m not too sure about that. I thought that there was one key ingredient missing in that statement. Thoughts. I think that a person is defined by what he thinks and not by what he does or which choices he make.

Of course the choices one makes and what he does are important, but I think that his thoughts are really the one that’s responsible for making him who he is. For starters, thoughts are the main driving force for choices and choices, in turn, leads to actions. So, without thoughts, one is nothing (as in, not defined).

Even if one carries out a certain action, does it really reflects who he is? He could be helpful, kind, gentle, etc, etc towards others but maybe, that’s not who he really is. There’s always a possibility that his inner thoughts are totally different, isn’t there? He could be helping others in order to gain their trust or something, right? Of course, it could also be the other way around.

I’m not trying to say that we shouldn’t trust anyone or anything, just that we never really know who a person really is, their true nature. That’s because one can never really tell what another is thinking.

We are defined by what we think.

__________

Well, that’s what I think anyways. Thoughts may change with time, but for now, those are my thoughts.

Well, as mentioned in the title, there’s good news and bad news that affects the upcoming Mid-Year-Examinations and possibly, the ‘O’ Levels.

The Good News:
I finally caught up with the latest Bleach episode!! Finally, after months of lagging behind by a few couple lot of episodes, I managed to catch up with the latest. In addition to that, I also finished watching Rental Magica, so that’s one anime off the list.

The Bad News:
I picked up 4 more new series in addition to the previous 4 mentioned in this post. Wow, I think that’s seriously gonna affect my studies. Not to mention, I still have at least 10 more episodes to watch before catching up with the latest of Katekyo Hitman Reborn and Konjiki no Gash Bell each. I also still haven’t finished watching Dragonaut (’bout 7 more to go). Oh, and I forgot to mention that I still have a whole series of .Hack//Roots (26 episodes) and Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 (The original Gundam!! XD - ’bout 15 episodes stored in my computer) still waiting to be watched.

Well, by looking at the statistics, the Bad News outweighs the Good News.

Ah~ whatever. I can always watch the episodes some other time, right? It’s just a matter of my whims and mood. (Hopefully, this will change soon and I will act rationally, according to priorities instead of whims.)

In any case, if anyone’s interested in the series that I picked up:
- Soul Eater
- Vampire Knight
- Kurenai
- Shakugan no Shana II