half-real worlds of paper and ink

Things accomplished:

• Income tax -- filed! LHDN owes me a few bucks. One day, probably in the far and distant future, I'll start doing it before the last week of April. Obviously this year is not the year.

• That application thing at the office that has been niggling me for the whole week -- sent and done with. They can do whatever they want with it now; I shall stop hurting my head thinking about it.



Things not done:

• My Doink! Final Fantasy Exchange fic! It only has an outline and I have about a week to get it done. asddl;kdgf. A good thing this is a long weekend -- we get Monday off because 1 May is Labour Day -- and I think I'll just spend the weekend curled up in bed, trying to write. Of course it has to be sunny and hot today -- why isn't it raining like the rest of the week? >.>

Or maybe I should go out and get ice cream first before writing. Ice cream, hmmm. And grocery shopping. And dinner, too. (I'll never get this fic done.)




Things I am considering:

• I'm thinking of getting myself an iPad! It would be awesome, don't you think, an iPad? It's my birthday in less than two weeks (I can't believe it's my birthday in less than two weeks) and it's a nice present for myself, yes? Though I'm sort of waiting on how that thing at work is going to work out first, because if it does work out, then I certainly deserve a nice present. (The word "work": the current bane of my existence.)

A few things, in no actual order of importance:

• There is a style class being conducted over at style_system; the first session starts here, and the syllabus is here. If you want to learn how to modify or make a layout, that is the place to go. It starts from the very basics, so even without any knowledge of CSS or S2, you'd be able to follow.

I guess I actually already know most of the things listed in the syllabus, but it'd be great to actually properly learn S2 this time around. XD

• There's an April Showers Challenge over at Archive of Our Own, where the challenge is to upload your fanworks. Which reminds me, I still have a few fics I had meant to upload but kept . . . putting off. (I'm not even entirely sure I want my name attached to some of those any more, ahaha. We'll see.) If you don't have an AO3 account, I have an extra invite. PM me your email address and I'll send it your way. :)

• I've been taking the bus to work lately so it's been giving me something like an extra 1.5 hours a day to read. (For some reason I can't seem to fall asleep on the bus despite knowing that it's quite impossible for me to miss my stop.) So I've been reading instead. I'm awfully flighty about reviewing stuff, but my Goodreads profile is here if you're interested. I also try to keep an updated list here in this journal.

What I'm still grappling with right now: Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver and I curse the thickness of the book every time I try to stuff it into my bag. Woe. I've been reading it for almost a month (a month!) on and off, and I'm only around two-thirds done with it asfdfljg;flg. A good thing it's interesting. If nothing else it gets an A+ for diagrams annotated in Latin.

• What I should be doing: writing fic for Doink! Final Fantasy Exchange. I haven't started yet! It is far too early to panic, but I am terrified of the tonberry.


Apparently there are only four things! I'm getting worse and worse at this updating thing.

The books I'm reading: I just finished Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger at around midnight, and that book seriously gave me the creeps. I ended up sleeping in the living room with the TV on because going up to my messy bedroom felt too spooky for me.

I have Robert Charles Wilson's Julian Commstock somewhere midway through, and for some reason I've been stuck there since the end of last year.

I haven't picked up the next book to read yet, though I've been eyeing AS Byatt's The Children's Book and the latest two books of The Wheel of Time series (my brother actually has them in hardback!).

The books I'm writing: Uh. No writing going on for now, books or otherwise.

The book I love the most: Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, quite possibly. It's hard to choose favourite books. Dorothy Dunnett's The Game of Kings is another one I love.

The last book I received as a gift: Probably Diana Wynne Jones's House of Many Ways, given by arianur years ago. I picked the book myself at the bookstore, and I'm pretty sure that's the only reason she actually dared to buy me that book. People generally don't gift me books unless I ask for a specific title, probably because they can't be sure whether I've read the book and have no idea whether I'd like it.

The last book I gave as a gift: Matilda by Roald Dahl, given ages ago, incidentally, to arianur. Though if you count "books I bought for my siblings but not actually calling them gifts" it would be Conn Iggulden's Wolf of the Plains, simply because my brother couldn't seem to find a copy of it on his own.

The nearest book: I'm sitting in the living room facing whole shelves of books, but there's one on the floor there, probably my brother couldn't be bothered to put it back on the shelf, silly boy. It's Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, which is one absurdly long book about Thomas Cromwell.

The last book I bought myself: Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. I wanted a copy for myself.

What I have right now is a headache.

Soooo. I have a car in the workshop and it will be stuck there for two weeks. I feel like banging my head against the desk.

Had dinner with my sister yesterday, since it was her birthday. It was a rather nice dinner, too. Unfortunately it was a rainy day and the road was slippery and the guy behind us was a bit too close and hit the brakes a bit too late, so he hit my car with a bang. Not hard enough to cause the airbags to deploy, but loud enough to make me think the whole car had fallen apart. It hadn't -- the left rear lights and bumper and things within that vicinity got sheared off and crumpled and broken pretty bad, but the car was still able to move. Now I get to deal with things like repairs and insurance and quite possibly negotiating public transport.

So there was a visit to the police station, and I must say I do not know how a place that empty can have service that slow. It seemed like we had to wait forever for a constable behind a computer to pass me a printout of my report. She didn't even have to type it out -- I had typed it out myself when I filed it; they have an online system. Which looked like it was designed in the 1990s.

I have no idea how I'm going to get to work the next two weeks. Two weeks! The repairs are taking that long (or maybe longer) because the workshop is closed most of this week for Chinese New Year. I took today off to deal with . . . things. Thursday and Friday are public holidays, so that's another two days I don't have to worry about. Tuesday and Wednesday . . . I wonder if I can get them to let me work from home, it's not like I have anything urgent that I need to finish from the office anyway.

I also have a headache from not enough sleep -- everything got settled around 1 am last night and then I was too agitated to fall asleep.

Arrrgh. The universe is conspiring against me.

December
No books finished :(



November
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin
A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner
The Outsiders by SE Hinton


October
Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson


September
The Tailor of Panama by John le Carré
A Clash of Kings by George RR Martin


August
Across the Universe by Beth Revis
A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin*


July
No books finished :O


June
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Warhost of Vastmark by Janny Wurts


May
And Another Thing . . . by Eoin Colfer
Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones*
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones*
The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne M Valente


April
Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson
The Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
The Ships of Merior by Janny Wurts
300 by Frank Miller


March
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Axis by Robert Charles Wilson
Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia A McKillip
Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings
Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay
Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik
Old Man's War by John Scalzi


February
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Curse of the Mistwraith by Janny Wurts


January
Hamlet by William Shakespeare



---
* denotes a reread

Saya rasa ini novel Bahasa Melayu pertama yang saya baca sejak sekolah menengah.

(Eh, mungkin tidak. Rasanya ada terbaca -- dan "ter" di sini memang bermaksud tak disengajakan -- sebuah novel cinta remaja berjudul Cinta Marissa (saya cuba Google tapi tak jumpa; mungkin saya salah ingat tajuknya) yang saya terjumpa di rumah nenek saya sewaktu pulang ke kampung. Mungkin kepunyaan sepupu saya. Segala klise kisah cinta remaja ada dalam buku tu -- lari dari rumah, cinta tiga segi, cinta tak berbalas, diperkosa kemudiannya insaf (hish, yang terakhir inilah trope yang paling menyakitkan hati saya) -- tapi sekali dah mula membaca, teruskan juga sampai habis. Lagi pun dah tak ada buku lain masa tu; yang dibawa dari rumah semua dah habis dibaca.)

Ini juga kali pertama saya cuba menulis dalam Bahasa Melayu di sini. Rasanya macam tidak berapa berjaya -- bunyinya kekok, kan?

Berbalik kepada novel ini: 1515 oleh Faisal Tehrani. ( ulasan pendek )



*


Here is where I lose all coherency to write in Malay. I lack the words, and whatever I say will sound harsher than I mean it, especially with that somewhat formal tone I was employing. (No, I do not sound like that when I speak.)

Quick notes for English-only readers, since the book's summary on Goodreads is in Malay apparently there's no summary there at all: the book presents an alternate history of Malacca, where in 1511 it isn't conquered by the Portuguese. It's told in a non-linear fashion, going back and forth from the past to the present where a young girl called Nyemah Mulya who had lived in Malacca around 1511 asks for help from a modern day historian to help her prevent Malacca's fall. Slightly mind-bending, I guess, and breaks as many rules of causality as The Terminator did. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though.

I checked the Institut Terjemahan Negara Malaysia's (Malaysian National Institute of Translation) website; it doesn't seem like there's a translated version of the book.

( other problems I have with the book )

I have a new camera! I need to learn how to use it! Also! Since it seems that I am incapable of writing anything at length, I thought this would be the perfect time to post photos!

So! Anything in particular you want to see?

I won't post pictures of myself, that's the only catch.

Good morning, world!

I was feeling awful and tired and all out of sorts yesterday, and when I got home from work I just threw myself on the bed and slept something like thirteen hours straight. I feel less cranky now.

It's partly a work thing -- when you get busy you get really, really busy. It didn't help that I was on sick leave for most of last week -- it just meant that I had a whole lot more to finish in less time. Also the air-conditioning is set to way too cold and, let's face it, there's no way in hell that combination of that chair and the desk is ergonomic (desk is too high, I can't raise the chair high enough without bumping the armrests into the desk, and I am crazy and I usually try to sit cross-legged in it but I couldn't this week because my foot still hurts and it made me more cranky than usual). And my shoulder tends to protest if I sit too long working, and, yeah, it was hurting pretty awful yesterday.


---

End-of-year assessment next Monday. I will probably just roll my eyes when asked what my goals are for next year.

So. I've been staring at this screen wondering how to write this without sounding stupid, and I've decided it's not possible.

I sprained my foot after slipping on my totally flat lawn. No, I can't explain it any better than that. I came home from work on Tuesday and I had parked the car, and I was going back to the front gate to lock it when I tripped over absolutely nothing and fell and sprained my left foot pretty badly. I also scraped my right knee pretty badly, but it seems totally minor when compared to the swollen foot.

The swelling's gone down now, mostly, and now it's all bruised and blue and black and green and I have to keep myself from poking it. I'm on medical leave for the rest of the week, and the doctor told me to sit down and watch television until Monday. (I wanted to tell her that I didn't watch much TV, but she glared at me so I nodded instead.) I rarely get sick, and I think this is only the second time this year I've been on medical leave and it's a three-day stretch at that (and then there's the weekend, and I'm still not allowed to hobble around even then). I don't know what to do with myself. It's really hard staying put in one place, and sometimes I forget I'm supposed to, especially since it only hurts when I stand up.

For some reason, staring at the computer gives me a headache (the painkillers, maybe? I know they make me drowsy) so I'm trying to catch up on my reading instead. I'm halfway through Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and I am sort of shaking my head at how little I know of European history.

gecko on the wall
hiding behind pots and pans
go away now, scram



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I have nothing against geckos, usually. It's only when they're hiding in the kitchen and startling the hell out of me when I am handling a big pot of hot water that I have issues.