My Fake Birthday

Jonaes wished me Happy Belated Birthday today. I didin't know it was my birthday. It really is not my birthday. I guess it must be my Fake Birthday. I should have just pretend it is indeed the occasion and make him buy me dinner tonight.

Resident Evil 2 and Bourne Supremacy is showing in cinemas already. Awesomeness. Been waiting for those two since the watching the first. Don't you love Milla J? She looked so good in the Fifth Element with all that orange hair and dumb expression. But Bruce Willis in that orange tank top...was kinda disturbing.

Mmm, look.


Oh great, just recalled that I have a 2-hour Global HRIS meeting today. I'm thinking what I should doodle today. Lots of people doodle during draggy meetings, I noticed, even the Boss. She draw flowers and geometrical frames. My other colleague do random cross-hatching. For those who have newer mobile phones, they take candid shots of the girls in the room and SMS the files all over to their friends. Don't you agree it's creepy and pervy, taking pictures of girls when they're not looking and keeping them in your cellphone/distributing them? Just another step from taking pantyshots of unsuspecting female shoppers in malls. T_T

Anyway, it's good to know that I have something to look forward to this weekend. Keat's buying me dinner and booze with his very first Accenture pay! Margaritas margaritas margaritas margaritas!...hmm...I wonder what's the calorie-count in a glass of margarita....but whatzeheck do i care?!! It's seldom someone treats me because I'm the one footing the bills most of the time. I have the malicious habit of winning the battle for the bill amongst friends. XD

About the new page, didin't manage to go far. Drew Eli wearing his preppy sweater and that cap keeping his eyes in shadows as usual. If i don't make him appear capless soon, people will be convinced he doesn't have eyes at all (or is actually balding). I was planning to give him slitty baddy eyes, but I gave them to Jiwon instead. Maybe he should have sparkling shoujo eyes, but that would make him a pretty boy, therefore reducing the potential for him to be badass. Must be careful not to make him look too good-looking. Fangirls will be confused. XD Maybe I'll try another variation of slitty eyes. :O Yeah!

And for those who are trying to lose weights, the treadmill is your answer. Guys, you run. Girls, you briskwalk. Keep to it and soon you'll be shedding those pounds. No shit.

Sometimes...

Sometimes no matter how hard you try, things just don't work out. Always still not enough... And then it keeps sucking you dry because all you could do is to give give give...

But then again, you know how self-pity can damage your perspective on things. You think you've worked hard, but in fact you haven't.

I suppose it does not matter as long as everyone's doing their part in making it work out. No nonsense such as feeling cheated for getting less for your efforts, or deluding yourself to think that you deserve better...because there is no such thing. Giving more doesn't mean getting bigger returns. It's not necessarily that way, as life is rarely fair.

You think, so what's the point? You think it's a waste of everyone's time. The point is, I want to do this, and that makes all the difference, and thus it IS meaningful.

Happy Day!

It's a happy day today because I saw the new layout today! No linkie to it yet because it's not finished, just the front page and the comic page, but it's purdy :D. Muchas gracias Shin-chan! She's so hardworking that she even made the site a new Shoutbox. *gives Shin a shiny star*

Oh yeah, oh yeah. Completed the draft for the new page and there's lots of men to be drawn. It's kinda fun drawing guys. All those muscly limbs. :C~~ .... okay, that's so weird drooling at your own drawings. To balance the testosterone overload, I did some girls instead after that. Started out as some naked lady pressing a zit in front of the mirror, which later evolved into this. Very fun concept, but it's still a crappy pic anyhow. Haven't had the time to do some serious painting since god-knows-when. All I do now is slap on paint and use a heck lot of watercolor washes. You have NO idea how much I want to CG like YiLee and Kaneda. Man...do they rule or what.



So anyway, I have these huge swollen eyes today. Either I'm not getting enough sleep or the room needs to be swept soon. I'm bloody allergic to dust. My eyes are like super nuclear-powered detectors that tell me when the floor needs to be clean. When come in contact in dust, I itch all over, especially my eyes, and I'll rub and rub them until they catch fire (or swell up). Will need to wash all my sheets and covers soon before my eyeballs explode and goo all over me. Damn, I hate doing chores...but still I end up doing them...I guess I hate messes more than I hate doing chores. Very handy, yes.

Oh yeah baby. Proof that Shinyu is sick despite her docile demeanor.

Shinyu : brb washroom
Shinyu : back
chinjulian: so long...tot u dropped into the hole
Shinyu : wash face
Shinyu : but forgot to bring hankerchief
Shinyu : so now water dripping from my face
chinjulian: wah...shortcircuit the keyboard!!!
chinjulian: die
Shinyu : hahahaha
Shinyu : keyboard can work fine after it's dried one
Shinyu : hahahaha
chinjulian: then go walk to your sitting colleague, and stand near him...drip on him...
chinjulian: tell him its your saliva
Shinyu : ........
Shinyu : no lah
Shinyu : it's liquid from my nose
chinjulian: wow, you're grosser than me
chinjulian: im pasting this in my blog
Shinyu : go ahead

Argh, lots of work to do and I'm blogging and chatting! It's a happy day! :D :D :D :D

I suck

I don't know what's wrong with me. I never fail to screw up at work, especially on the highly critical stuffs, and Susan will have to call me in the middle of the night from Chicago, apologise for waking me up, and ask me questions I don't have the answers to. Then I'll pull the covers back over my head (if i get any sleep at all), and unleash a mighty mental tirade on myself for being such a stupid craphead for bumbling through important tasks. This is already the 3rd time around. I won't be surprised if they decide to give me the boot....or peel off my bonus....T_T

How the hell did I end up in such a highly strung environment like this. Didin't I join ACS in Motorola for a comfy support job? The things they keep from you just to string in someone for the dirty job. Ugh. But i'm not really complaining. THere ARE perks, like working from home and the flexi-hours I keep. It's just that... when things get hot and heavy during the Go-Live stage, I find my brain slowly unravelling under the stress and the constant need to be alert 24 hours. And I finally understand why I can't stand timed game sequences in my RPGs. It's an after-effect of my job.

I'm having this massive food-poisoning today and I still drag myself to work. Was worried that my boss will fuss if I fail to show my face in the office too often. I'm just glad that I'm not puking and stuff right now. Must be something I cooked yesterday. Keat had slight stomach discomfort too but nothing more, while I tossed and turned most of last night due to the pain. Way to go Ju! You managed to poison yourself with your own cooking! This is so like Akane in Ranma. People die when they catch a whiff of her cooking. How awesome is that?!

So yeah, still waiting for Shin to show me the new ROMB layout. But would you actually believe me if I told you that I dreamt of the layout yesterday? And it was awesome, by the way. Kinda very hi-tech like with semi-transparent layers and nifty animated menus. Can't remember if I was happy with it in my dream, but I do remember that the layout was pretty creative and space-saving, cuz Shin and I was having some problems with the ever-growing menus and the annoyingly long page which require much vertical scrolling. Meh. It's high time we put up a new layout.

I'm kinda puzzling over the new page, on how the dialogues should be. I hate how sometimes stories have multiple POV (point of views) in a single scene. Gets really inconsistent and confusing. And I think Matt deserves at least one splashpage. Chapter 7 it will be. Him and Jem, maybe, cuz he's such a retard around her. And I wonder if there are really relationships like that; where the semi-masochistic guy is attracted to the cold unfeeling bitch. And the more she hurts and dominates him, the more he feels attached to her. Not saying that it will end badly, because people tend to leech off each other anyhows. Interesting, ne.

And a Gackt pic to start your day. Ain't he beautiful?

Cheesy Breadsticks

Someone bought Cheesy Breadsticks and put it in the chill-out corner in the office. Because the corner is less than 1-metre away from my cube, I already claimed 50% of those sticks. Someone please shoot me before I shove the whole box down my throat!!

Ah, but anyway, this is to be an ROMB Update Blog Entry, no? So, if you're here by clicking from ROMB, welcome my lovelies...! I got the blog in the first place because I thought I could go on a hiatus/missing anytime without having to have poor Shinyu update the announcement in main page all the time. People won't have to mail me asking when's the next page. All they have to do is to check here for signs of life. But do beware, I might post spoilers from time to time because I like mumbling a lot to myself. Good way to generate ideas. Will add huge signage before I do so, I promise. Also, those with Blogger accounts feel free to post comments if you're feeling argumentative or just plain bored.

I'm not sure if I want to talk about the page. It has been too long since a last scene change and I'm embarassed that I haven't updated in such a long time. THe next new scene will be in 1-2 pages. If everything goes as planned, we'll see some Matt action soon. Matt in posh school uniform, in his classroom. It's a fun scene. Hopefully it'll be short, because I'm dying to end the chapter to draw a new chapter 7 splashpage. Woohoo!

Anyway, it's Friday today! I'm ridiculously happy! For no particular reason at all, you know, because it's not like I have anything planned. I just like the idea of getting to spend time at home. It's funny, really, I tend to find a lot of things worth being happy about nowadays since the last slump I went through. It's true what they say. You need to spend some time in darkness before you can learn to appreciate the light. Otherwise it's just...light. Dull boring everyday light, and not omg!omg!LIGHT!!!

Hey, I'm starting to drone. Apologies...

Billy Corgan

Was looking for my car service log today and found a bunch of Smashing Pumpkins cassettes which i've forgotten. Popped one into the casette player in the car and was assaulted with waves of high-pitched nasal whining and frenzied guitar. Man, haven't heard something so good for some time now. Billy Corgan, I love you.

This morning, got a call from the Maestro operators. The CoreID job's abending mysteriously again. Talk about annoying. To solve that issue, I had to spend all my early morning drawing time on it. So instead of completing the ROMB page, I drew a Legolas wannabe instead. I've decided to name him Lego. Behold my 15 mins burst of power. :p



Oh damn, I forgot to remove the fish from the freezer. Am so going to have a hard time defrosting it this evening for dinner. Crappety crap.

Slowpoke Network

The office network's constipated again. How the hell do they expect to work under such restrains. Oh geesh.

I'm thinking of using this blog as the update blog in Jushin as well. Shinyu's got one here too. So it's going to be cool. No need to manual update everytime I have a new page. And if possible, I'll Shinyu to make the blog entries ftp to the iwindow in the page. Awesomeness....or not, cuz that will eat up some new space in the new ROMB layout. It's great to fall back into my comfortable old pattern of thinking of ROMB stuff again.

Met Geejay on Yahoo IM today. He's settling well into Melbourne with the wife. Talked a bit about what we wish we could do, should do, and not been doing. It's surprising how some of us go through the same of phases of recline and growth. Recline is necessary for growth I think, and my art pilgrimage can be represented as spikes in a xy graph. It's so much like climbing a mountain, where you skid and fallback, and sometimes you need to stop to chip off some frozen appendage; but the most important thing is that you make sure you go on. Only difference is that there might not be an end to the climb. I don't think I want to end up stagnant in a place where I will be drawing the same awesome things everyday. It's not about maxing stats.


Am finishing San scene. Some foreshadowing that might give people some ideas. Gonna put in a way that will keep them guessing. I'm still wondering if I should snuck in some small scene after this before ending the chapter. Maybe I should, just to flesh out some of the characters/plot. But that would pull in more and more side-characters. I was looking through my Little Black Book of Plots and if I'm putting in a scene after this, it will be one of Matt and Gabriella (name inpired by Geejay). Gabriella will play a huge part in developing Matt and telling the story between MattxAida. I think it will do ROMB good to have some sane young romance in the story...if they go that direction, that is. They might turn out as a pervie S&M couple. God knows I'm not in control here.

Yes, I had this wonderful vision of a Jem fanservice picture today while I was driving. She's like stripped to her piggyprint underwear, straddling this half-naked guy, smothering him something serious with a huge heartshaped pillow. Jem'll have this crazed wide-eyed look on her face and she'll look so wrong in the candypink setting, and her hair's all over (in her mouth, in her eyes). If there are readers who are sick enough to like Jem, they'll be sick enough to appreciate the perversion of the pic. And oh yes...the half-naked guy under her will be San, but you won't be able to tell exactly. Whoa, it'd be so fun to see the completed piece. T_T


Aww shucks. Need to go to the gym today. Going uphill on the treadmill for 30 minutes is really torture. I should really stop shoving saturated fat into my mouth if I want to see some results. Will be meeting up with Jonaes and Pei at the saloon. I pray I will not succumb to signing up for facial packages because if I do, I won't have much time left at home to do stuff like....play FFX.

See, there's nothing much really going on in my life. Just the same old routine of slacking off at work, think about ROMB, guilt trip myself, look for game reviews and boss hints occasionally, blog about getting fat, draw if I'm really in the mood because I don't want to "force" myself, gym, wash my face with extremely expensive Kanebo products, and putting on Azureus to download the same old crap. See how boring I'm becoming. And to think I actually don't mind. Menial everyday tasks are keeping me amused. Well, lets see how long all these are going to last.

Money Money

Money not spent, is not Money. That's what I tell myself when I make a huge dent in my own pockets. Yesterday I threw 600 bucks into getting Kanebo products for my gray tired skin. Will be throwing more away this Wednesday when i sign up for facials. I'm suddenly this birthday-phobic obasan who checks her face for lines in the mirror every morning. Never underestimate the power of uber-effective salestalk. But yes, Money not spent is not Money, right? Mmmhmm.

So anyway, I was happy during the weekends. There were some spills, but we managed to patch things up. It's like so fragile. Living my life treading on broken glass? Think that was an Annie Lennox song. Maybe she wasn't singing about the same thing? But enough about that, because I'm happy now and I should stop sounding like I'm not.

Things to do:
-Laundry
-ROMB page
-Learn some Blitzball skills on Exhibition matches in FFX
-Haircut
-Workout
-Cook Dinner

Weather's beautiful and it's raining almost everyday. I love it when it's like this. Breezes in the evening, crows caw-cawing in the afternoon and frogs singing in the wet field at night. Almost like I'm living in somewhere NOT KL. Not that I dislike KL or anything, but the traffic congestion and pollution just gets to me sometimes.

Thoughtful

Slept so good yesterday.

Really happy to see people posting sketchies again in the Random Picture Thread. Have not seen Soli and Shan stuff in a while. From all the topics in the forum, this thread is one of my favorite. So good to have a bunch of people doing things together.

My teeth's stuck with chilli right now and I'm supposed conduct training later this morning. Damn I love eating breakfast at work.

I wish you enough

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.
I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.
I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.
I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.
I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.
I wish you enough helloes to get you through the final good-bye.

That's from a fwd from Jonaes.

Torture

I wonder how will I react under torture. Doubt I'm good martyr material. Always been scared of pain, big or small. I've heard of people being tortured for many reasons; most people break, while some emerge stronger. Guess I just don't have it in me at all. And that's why I always have this paranoid fear of getting hurt. So tangible it is that I render myself useless before I can take action. Sometimes the thought of getting cut is more painful that the cut itself. Remember what they said about burn victims feeling less pain during treatment when their minds are distracted elsewhere. Remember it was a VR experiment where researchers strapped HMDs to victims showing ice/water imagery while their burn wounds are being treated. Reduces the pain by 30-40% if I'm not mistaken. Pretty interesting how your body betrays you sometimes.

Phillip Yancey mentioned that leprosy is not a disease where your limbs fall off (Dr. Paul Brand's "The Gift of Pain"). Accurately, it should be a disease that disables your pain nerves. Leprosy patients will be incapable of feeling any discomfort even if they happen to rest their arm on a scalding kettle or stick their fingers into a blender. A small pebble in a shoe can be overlooked as a patient puts it on daily, continuously chafing his toes raw to the point where it breaks into a festering wound that makes the rotting toe fall off. So pain is a blessing when seen in this light, a way our bodies communicates with us to tell us that something is not quite right and ought to be rectified. I guess this is the same with emotional anguish. Source of the problem might in internal or external, but internal problems can only be solved by internal means. I don't believe there is any ointment or medication that can truly make a person happy and content.

But external means can distract one from his or her problems. Like the PS2 I bought. I don't really need it, you know. Don't even have the time to really sit down and complete a game. But it sure as hell silences the hollering issues in my mind. But these things usually manifest itself as an addiction that numbs, while not really solving the problem itself. So, for a short period of time, like 1-2 hours a day, my mind's focused on how to get Tidus to learn that Overdrive, instead of the stuff I should be taking care of. A waste of time, yes, but still...

I looked into the Mirror

I am not the type who look into mirrors much, unless necessary, i.e. when putting on cosmetics, removing stuck lettuce from teeth, trying on clothes in fitting rooms, etc. I don't even do it when I'm putting on lipstick and combing my hair. So I didin't really realise how haggard I look until today when I was at the office loo, when I happened to catch a glance of my own reflection.

God forbid. My hair's all over the place, huge bags under my eyes, and a sickly swarthy complexion. What the hell happened to me?! I need a haircut. I'm starting to look like a Shih-Tzu, minus the cute factor. And I need to sleep earlier?...You don't handle stress well, Ju. I tell myself that and I feel ashamed for being inadequate.

But yes, the day I've been dreading has arrived. My tenant from hell is supposed to be moving out today. Keat and I will be driving 45 minutes down to the place to get my keys back. Yeah. But you don't understand. My tenant from hell is NOT just any tenant from hell. He has a his HUGE family living in my cramped apartment. The guy has 3 wives actually, and that's allowed in Islam. So whenever I visit, I see naked kids running around the house and full-grown adults lying around on the floor like refugees. Can't tell who is who, but I'm pretty sure they're all related to my tenant one way or another.

I can't even bear to look into the rooms yet because I know I will suffer countless sleepless nights when I see the mess they've made. From the plain view of the doorway, I can already spy my walls being scribbled over with crayons and markers. Neighbours call me up to complain that they mess up the surrounding area with soiled baby pampers and menses pads. I feel so defeated. I will even pay them to remove themselves from my premises. Last time I checked, I'm already doing that. Plus, they haven't been footing the electricity and water bills since June/July and the amount is unbelievable. This is a lesson for me to state the number of people in my next tenancy agreement. T_T

Sigh......I just hope they'll move out as promised today so I can clean up my place and have some nice Chinese family move in. If they don't, I'll have to make a police report and things will be ugly. Ugly would be when I padlock the house and force all the kids and babies and adult into the street. Ugly would be when I get beaten up by the few men who's somehow related to my tenant. Yippee.

I hate being an adult. Especially an adult who's starting to look like a Shih-Tzu.

Okay, lunch break. Believe it or not, I've actually been working since morning. Must be getting sick of slacking off.

Wading the Sewers

My first sketch after a dry spell. Nothing spectacular, but it's good to be drawing again. :)

For The Rose

I'm religiously watching the Taiwanese version of Akemi Yoshimura's Bara no Tameni. The woman writes awesome romances. The way she distribute encounters, plan plots and subplots are masterful. Most of her stories have really well-written secondary romances too. Best one I've read from her is Kirinkan Graffiti. It has two primary romances, each with two very different heroines who happen to stay together. She took a very huge risk in making the hero an abusive husband, YET successfully led me to symphatise and forgive him in the end. The depth of the characterization is incredible. Action and reaction. I can imagine the brain damage she suffers at the design stage of every new project. But the fun kind of brain damage. Ha ha ha.

Yes I'm allowed to laugh at my lame remarks in my blog.

Anyway, I think I look too free. Someone just gave me something to do. Sheesh.

Back from Hometown

I had a great time back in Ipoh, which is something I never expected. For the first time in many months, I lay around watching videos without having to worry about running errands, updating ROMB, or visiting friends, etc. It was so good. Slept with 2 cats, nobody yelled at me, didin't fight with my boyfriend, and I had a good lunch with his family, got amusingly tipsy, and came back to KL refreshed. Haven't felt so sane and fresh in a long long time. When I'm like that, it's almost like I'm almost out of the woods.

Dad's in some financial squeeze this month. Had to help out. Hope it's not something permanent or I'll start to suspect he's up to something out there with his drinking and mahjong. It's not the first time. But yes, I still love him and I am SO getting him some nice shoes. The cloth ones he's been wearing to the race turf everyweek are in tatters. I love buying people stuff. It's like some fetish.

I think it's a good thing to be able to spend money for others and yourself. Hoarding it too much screws up your priorities. Sure I have grand delusions to be able to save enough to get a castle with servants who serve me hand and foot, but really, watching a good movie and making your loved ones happy beats owning a castle.

Talking about making loved ones happy. I know one guy who needs my loving. My bad for zoning out on him sometimes. I'm still wondering what I should get for him. Will need to scout the malls.

All's nice and peaceful at Ju-ville at the moment. Ju is getting back into groove!

Something clicked inside me today...

I felt something click inside me today....like I was stumbling around in chaos, trying to straighten things up, and all the while I'm falling apart myself, but somehow today...I felt something click inside me and I'm awashed with peace. I'm going to be fine after all. I'll get my life under control again and move on. Maybe I can even draw again.

I'm blaming all this insanity in my life right now to lack of sleep. Never underestimate how lacking in sleep can totally change a person. I was near suicidal at a point when I couldn't figure out how to get to some treasure chests in Kingdom Hearts. That bad, yes.

I had the weirdest dream yesterday. In the dream, someone vandalised a shophouse near my place with the words "ROMB Rocks!"..... I was like, what the hell?!?! And then my cousin brother was in it and I was engaged in some Counterstrike-like situation with him. I was shooting the hell outta some lasergun wielding fella. Forgot if he's in my team or not.

Funny how quickly our brain forgets dreams. I wonder how many I forgot. There's always this damning feeling of deja vu sometimes and it frustrates the crap outta me. If someone told me the secret of the universe in a dream, I'll be reliably forget it. Trust me to do that.

Asked Shin to get a blog too so we can form a blogring or something if this thing kicks off. She goes through more work stress than me. Hey, blogging is therapeutic!

Back to work.

Hiatus Hell

Decided to put ROMB into hiatus. I'm sick of guilt-tripping myself to update. It's not fun anymore. Better take a break now until I get really ill from all this. I should try to allow myself some free time to do other things like just lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling or something equally worthless.

Today's color is gray. Everything's so-so and .... just a paler version of what I hoped. I think I'll go do something useful like cook lunch and clean the room or something, rather than having another MSG-charged meal outside again. I'm consuming so much of that stuff that I'm no longer feeling the side-effects of it anymore. Funny how your body adapts to even the worst things.

And Kingdom Hearts has a timed sequence crucial to unlock an area. It's stupid. Not everyone can perform acrobat with the controls. Hate it when they render the player helpless with that. I bet I can't beat the game without making it through the sequence. El Sucko.

Just read the papers. I'm so so sickened by the whole Beslan hostage situation in Russia. Kids as human shield. How evil can people get?

Hear, hear!

Decided to restart blogging. Hope this one will have a better fate than the previous one in Livejournal. I realise it's inevitable, because sooner or later, I need somewhere to rant. Ranting is SO addictive, especially if you have much to complain and do not dare to do so in Real Life.

But don't get me wrong, I'm not like that. Honest.

So there. I don't even have to worry that nobody will read my whines because I'm into this together with ArchStud. Awesome nick, huh? I'm guessing that she has this secret fantasy to pollinate all the strapping young males of the human kind. Some sick Freudian thing maybe.

So I'm at work now, laboriously tapping away at the keyboard, trying to preserve the illusion that I'm working and is expecting to get something done by today, which is true. But nothing's started yet. Work's sitting around to be done by yours truly since yesterday and it's still sitting around right now. Gotta start revving up my coding engine before 5.30pm, because today's Friday and I should at least get something done or else I'll stressed myself out by Monday morning by thinking about it throughout the weekend. Am I lazy or what?

Am thinking of putting my comic on a hiatus, but that will probably make it easier for me to start quitting and the urge to update dulls. Maybe I should slog through for another week or two before deciding. Small steps at one time, yes, small steps.

Everything's looking unreal nowadays. Must be the blur of events passing me by as I sit in front of the TV trying to beat Kingdom Hearts, a game about a kid named Sora. Damn Squaresoft for their RPG games and superbly insane CGs. They're the reason why bazillions of nerds (of all color and ages) around the world...are nerds. I foresee many previous hours of my life being sucked into KH 1, KH 2, FFX, FFX-2. Hoorah.

Okay, now i REALLY need to get to work.