Thanks for your nice comments and for showing concern with regards to my previous entry! Firstly, to answer a frequently asked question: where did I get my pretty dress from? I got it from www.miwitch.com, a local distributor that conducts accumulation orders with a few Chinese (i think) brands that specialize in lolita fashion. The bad news is, I bought the one and only piece that was brought in. The good news is, there are other lovely designs you can choose from. If you are from the US or Europe, you will certainly find their prices more than reasonable. So happy shopping! I’m also grateful for your tips on the prevention of running colors. There’s a virtually unanimous opinion that vinegar will hit the spot, so I’ll try it out soon. I haven’t worn the dress yet because I’m fretting about how to wash it lol. I know dry cleaning is probably the best solution, but it would be troublesome and expensive if I want to wear it often.

Now about Nana chapter 77, I’ve received suggested edits and notifications about my mistakes, so I’ll fix them soon. Thanks for taking the trouble to point them out! and if you’re unable to access the pages because my photobucket bandwidth is almost diminished, please wait patiently for the zip file, which I’ll try to post up this weekend.
Note to css: I didn’t update on Hachi’s day on purpose. It must be the demon lord’s influence! lol

I’m starting to get the hang of work. I don’t groan inwardly when I wake up everyday. I’m resigned to the fact that i’ll probably get the dvd of the korean drama that I’m missing because of work. I’ve learnt that I can survive without spending 10 hours or so surfing the internet. In fact, it seems now that most of my time online (at work) is dedicated to surfing news websites (Yay I’m no longer ignorant about current affairs)! I’ve also been able to stay up a little later (up to 12am! Ha!) and still get up at 6.40am the next day! I think I’m leading a healthier life too because I make it a point to jog every morning before I go to work. I had my first taste of job satisfaction when the client I was doing poster designs for accepted my work without requesting for much edits. I was really pleasantly surprised! Honestly though, I hope I won’t have to do any more designing work. It is tedious for someone like me who isn’t artistically inclined. This week, I’ve been tasked with editing articles and writing speeches instead. I love editing, because it makes light work and great entertainment; not much brainstorming to be done and some grammatical errors are hilarious. However, the headache comes in when some writings are so unfocused that I have absolutely no clue what the writer is talking about, let alone edit it. I’m quite apprehensive when it comes to writing speeches. I’ve only ever written one years ago for a school assignment. Besides, the speakers never tell us what they want to talk about in their speeches, so it’s up to us to brainstorm ideas for them. I learnt during public relations class that when writing speeches, one should interview the speaker to get to know about his speaking habits, his related experiences and what he would like to talk about. At work, we are just told about the venue and audience of the speech and then we have to produce the ideas and message for the speech ourselves. This is a fine example of how things we learn in school aren’t always applied at work! I’ve written 2 informal speeches so far with not too many edits required, so I’m getting more confident about writing speeches. I’m sure that as time goes by, I’ll be tasked with more challenging topics and lengths to write, but I’ll worry about that later. In fact, I think it’s amazing that a small fry like me can influence what an important person says and then convey my ideas to his audience through him!

Since I mentioned the Olympics in my last entry, I might as well continue talking about it. Isn’t it sad that at ages younger than 10, little children are already subject to scrutiny of their physical appearances? If you’ve been keeping up with the Olympics news, you’d know what I’m talking about. The controversy of Lin Miaoke’s lipsynching to Yang Peiyi’s singing of Ode to Motherland is making almost as big a splash as Michael Phelps’ olympic campaign. I do not agree that national pride can be an excuse for this ridiculous course of action. Firstly, I find it degrading that the Chinese officials think that all of us are so shallow as to base our impression of a country on the appearance of a young performer. Secondly, we once again witness the Chinese officials’ lack of humanity as a result of their obsession with perfectionism. Yang Peiyi isn’t even ugly to begin with. With the miracles of make-up, I’m sure she will be photogenic to enough for the ceremony. But the Chinese officials simply had turn the two young children into tools of deception, tainting their innocent young minds with the beliefs that appearances are paramount even to talent, and that it is all right to lie to make yourself look good. Truly, the issue here is not about whether it is ethical to deceive spectators. In fact, I’m not upset at all to learn that some fireworks were digitally implemented. It concerns the astonishing lack of compassion and common sense in regard to the extent that supposedly sensible top-ranking officials would go to in trying times. Will the lessons that the young girls bring away from their Olympic debut affect their mentalities and beliefs in life? Only time will tell.

I finally finished translating the much-awaited chapter 77! It was quite a pain because I spent the whole week staring at the computer at work and working on poster designs, so by the end of the week, I wanted to be spared of looking at the Photoshop interface. But I know how unpleasant the feeling of longing and anticipation can be, so I worked on it during my off-day yesterday, and now it’s complete! Enjoy! As usual, do notify me of any mistakes in the translation that I may have. I’ll hopefully have an error-free translation in a zip file by next weekend.

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Although I’ve only been to work for a week, I feel exhausted everyday. I work in an office environment and my working hours are 10 am to 6.30 pm. The workload is actually not bad and the people at my workplace are nice. My boss used to teach at my school and apparently, he set up this company with the purpose of having something meaningful to do in his retirement days and training interns. It does seem like a good place to gain experience. Most public relations interns do things like media monitoring, which just strikes me as regular admin work. But in my first week here, I’ve already done some hands-on stuff like editing, poster designing and writing, and I’m due to attend a press conference next week. Hence, although I’ve been bemoaning how I should be slacking at home, I know this is supposed to be good for me. Hopefully, I’ll get used to working life and find my momentum soon.

To those who are still in school, do treasure your school life and your classmates. Once you start working, you will find that you have a lot less time to do the things you want to do. I practically go straight to bed on week days after shower, dinner and a little tv. I miss my favorite Korean drama at 7 because I reach home at around 8. Maybe I still need to get accustomed to working life because I know some people find energy to go clubbing and all. Yesterday, I managed to meet up with an old school friend that I hadn’t met in virtually a year. We had been haggling over a meeting place, day and time for practically a year! I can’t believe it! I really hope I can have more time to hang out with my friends. When I officially step into the working world, I’m sure it will be even more difficult to get hold of my friends.

I recall trying to arrange a meet up with someone whom I bought stuff online from for the past fortnight. Both of us had work and on days that she could make it, I couldn’t, and vice versa. It was a right pain, and I was anxious to collect it because I have been waiting for it for a month! I also felt bad about giving her so much inconvenience and spamming her phone with messages. Fortunately, I had my off-day yesterday, so I went to her workplace to collect it. The wait is worthwhile though. This is my new purchase!

There was only one size, and I was afraid it would be too small for me, but I bought it anyway because it was cheap, and thankfully, it fitted me well! The only issue now is that according to the seller, the red color runs, so I can’t dip the whole thing in water because it would no doubt stain the white portion. Does anyone have remedies for color runs? I’ve heard that salt water can stabilize the color or something.

Did anyone watch the Olympics opening ceremony yesterday? I watched it on tv and I think it was magnificent. It must have looked even better if the viewer was at the Bird’s Nest itself. Actually, this is the first Olympics ceremony I bothered to watch, so I can’t make comparisons. But it’s the most expensive Olympics so far, so I’m quite sure the ceremony isn’t inferior to the previous ones. The way the giant torch was lit was impressive. I love how they had the last torch bearer sailing through the air to light the giant torch. I wonder if there’s an auto-relighting mechanism in the torches, because the wind seemed pretty strong, and it would have been downright embarrassing if the torch just went out halfway. I’m glad that there were a lot of Chinese elements incorporated in the ceremony. Then again, the Chinese are very proud and patriotic people, so that should come as no surprise. Even all that suspension of people in the air reminded me of flying pugilists in Chinese period dramas. Strangely I felt a kind of Asian pride when I watched the ceremony. I wonder why. I’m not even Chinese Chinese, though I suppose my ancestors must have come from China.

It’s a bit of an unfortunate coincidence that my National Day falls one day after the Olympics opening! I meant to watch the national day speech yesterday but it coincided with the Olympics Ceremony broadcast. Obviously, I chose the one that only takes place once every 4 years. But it’s ok, I’ll read the speech online One of the Olympics events featuring our athletes also coincides with today’s National Day Parade. I’d watch it, but I believe it will only be broadcast on the premium sports channel :(. I suppose viewership for national day programmes will slip this year, thanks to the Olympics, which would probably not reflect well on patriotism. Then again, I believe a person who is concerned about what happens to and in his country is more patriotic then one who just watches the National Day Parade.

With this, I conclude my exceptionally long entry: Happy 43rd Birthday Singapore!

Sorry for taking so long to translate chapter 77. The reason is pretty stupid. A few days ago, some imbecile put up a thread on room708 claiming that Chapter 77 will be out in November O_o! So I took the news for granted and didn’t visit room708 again until my friend told me yesterday that she found raws of Chapter 77 floating around. I have a lot of swear words for that imbecile but I’ll keep them in my head.

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Enjoy the first 10 pages. I wish I could translate more but I got a job attachment last Friday and I’m supposed to work on poster designs this Monday and because I suck at this sort of stuff, I decided to do a little research over the weekend. Imagine working over the weekend after my first day at work! Anyway, this is going to make my translating and editing a little slow. You’ll probably get the rest next weekend.

I spent the last free days before work trying to clamp in as much slacking as possible before I lose my freedom. Thanks to said imbecile, instead of using the free time to translate Nana, I did other stuff like playing The Sims 2 and writing fanfiction (both which I quickly grew bored of), and reading Getbackers from where I last left off. I gave up the last time because the drawing got horrible and the arc I read was a drag, but I’m glad I gave Getbackers another chance. The stories just keep getting more exciting and the drawing got better again. However, it’s definitely not suitable for light reading as the plots are very complicated and it’s especially a pain reading them in Chinese because the author utilizes names and history from olden day European history and folklore. However, if one can spare the time and effort to read and analyze it properly, one can learn a lot from it. It’s too bad that there aren’t any English scans online because the series is really underrated. Tokyopop serialized it pretty early when the series was published, but we all know how Tokyopop sucks. The author is also the great mind behind Kindaichi Case Files and Detective School Q, though he used a different pen name. I read Kindaichi Case Files and it was one of the most mind-stimulating detective stories I’ve ever read. Getbackers is an intellectual shounen series with tragic characters, strong friendship bonds, cute guys, slight yaoi implications for the imaginative minds, lots of fighting, violence and some gore, so if this is your cup of tea, go ahead and drink it. The only complaint I have is that there are plenty of fan service drawings with girls with barely covered boobs that make Naruto’s Tsunade look flat. These I try to put up with for the sake of the plot and fairly nice art otherwise, but I find fan service completely redundant and a pain to my eyes (At least draw proportionate boobs!).

Finally wrote something new, and I made a start on my new DW fanfic!

Ice cold winds slip past me,
Mocking me.
On the strange and empty street,
It blew away the covers of a faded dream.
Only emptiness lay beside me,
Only helplessness embraced me.
The dim light from the evening
Revealed my tired face.

Love is a stranger to me.
What do I have to cherish?
After so many thunderstorms,
My heart has stopped dreaming.
The street lamps emit a soft light,
As tender as those feelings of old.
Tonight they harshly illuminated
My lonely shadow in the night.

Rain drops crash against my skin,
But my tears were not washed away.
Cold wind dispersed my lethargy,
But my feelings of longing were not cast away.
If only the rain would drown me
Along with the fallen leaves.

Lately I have been keeping busy with spring cleaning my computer and playing Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI so I’ve neglected my writing. That’s sad because I really meant to finish my Dynasty Warriors fanfic (which has somehow spawned another short piece so I now have 2 on the cards) but now I have no motivation or time to do it. I’ve got lots of half-finished poetry and stuff floating around too, hopefully one day I’ll find the motivation to finish them.

Anyway, I decided to take a little time off to update my blog because I finally got my hands on a copy of Versaille’s Noble which was released in early July and I wanted to listen and review it! I’ve been anticipating it with bated breath ever since I found out its release date. Maybe that’s why I was a tad disappointed because I had high hopes for it. Now, don’t get me wrong, Versailles’ music is indisputably good and I enjoyed listening to every one of them. However, unlike Versailles’ previous singles/albums like The Revenant Choir (especially The Revenant Choir) and Lyrical Sympathy, the compositions for the new tracks in this album are comparatively bland. The band’s image and previous compositions have always promised nobility, but this new album doesn’t really live up to its regal-sounding title in my opinion. Somehow, I’m missing the unique mix of rock and classical music and grandiose that were exhibited in Versailles’ previous works. I thought it was a mistake to re-record The Revenant Choir. The new recording doesn’t sound as grand as the debut version and I’ve gotten so used to Kamijo’s heavily accented Engrish that this new version sounded weird. Nevertheless, NOBLE is a great Visual Kei album on its own and besides, epic pieces like The Revenant Choir really don’t come by very often for any artiste, no matter how talented he/she/they is. I’m rating it 4 out of 5 and am once again eagerly anticipating Versailles’ next album.

I’ve uploaded the tracks for you to listen and judge for yourself. (no, they are not downloadable, and I’m not going to send them to you, so don’t ask), so enjoy!