I will update the diary once a couple of days...as long as my body allows me to stay up further to draw and type some stuff.

Just found that Sakamoto Maaya (坂本真綾) acted as the role of Eponine in the Japanese version of Les Misérables (the musical). Eponine is my favourite character from it!! I love both of her major songs. Maaya's voice has to fit the role perfectly (in Japanese)! Eponine has a clear, strong voice, like a blooming flower in the cold snow (clichéd and old way of saying it? =p), and her songs, arguably, are the first ones that I memorized and sang all the time (how old was I? hrm...11?). On My Own, my absolute favourite, acted as a lullaby for my then-still-baby brother.

Although it seems weird at first that it is an Asian Eponine singing in Japanese, I didn't watch the original version to begin with anyway^^; The original is French...and I guess I can only see it in France.

Without him, the world around me changes
The trees are bare and everywhere the streets are full of strangers

這一兩個禮拜真是過的混亂啊。根本沒精神做功課。好不容易打起精神來，又因為睡眠不足而做不好...不行啊，還有兩個禮拜我的學生生活就結束了，我要努力做最後衝刺～～

睡眠不足是我自己的問題吧...互聯網上的誘惑太多了 @_@ 心魔嗎...要根除真難呢（應該說是完全不可能）。

Got a surprising gift a few days ago...more surprised than happy, really^^; I will skip the details of it (#・_・#)

It has been a couple of messy weeks. Don't feel like doing homework. When I tried actually doing homework, I am too tired and either my head or my eyes hurt. No good...only 2 weeks until my student life ends, I need to go through the end~~

Sleep deprivation is basically my own problem instead of the classes'. The Internet is a huge distraction @_@ It is hard to stop my urge to "browse" the net while doing homework...

Not this time. I relaunched Safari and logged in to my diary only to find that no half-finished drawing is waiting for me.

Orz.

Now I fully understand the meaning of that.

It has always been said that you should compete with yourself and best yourself. It doesn't matter how well others are doing as long as you are improving.

That has been the principle I've led my life on. That is where my pride came from. Everything I do, I try to beat my own results from the last time around.

It was a defeat today. I spent more time studying but I did not improve. Not one mark, not even half a mark. The grade after curving looks fine, but the mark is exactly the same as the mark I got from the first exam.

I spent some time lamenting in my own defeat. Some people might have been offended since my grade is actually not bad at all (in fact, similar situations happened and I found myself offending people unintentionally). For me, it is not a comparison to other people, no matter how well or how poorly they did. I haven't done my best and haven't improved upon myself, and that is my fault.

It's been some time (a couple of months?) and after finishing Ichigo 100% (manga) I decided to pick up an anime again. I picked this because it really does sound interesting.

Guess what, I finished the first arc of the story and felt fear during it. Literally fear. I talked to Julian online, stopped viewing the anime fullscreen, ran to Ayumi's room to talk to her, all to make sure I remain calm. In fact, the anime scared the sh*t out of me. It has a seemingly cute and harmless style, and the protagonist is being surrounded by a bunch of loli girls, but don't let that fool you...it's a murder mystery anime. The atmosphere is really well-made, to the point where I'm being scared for the first time in my adult life, by something that is not real. Even live-action movies don't scare me anymore (scary movies feature more gore than anything. It's not scary, rather it's disgusting).

For anyone who wants a good scare, this should suffice. I am going to put it aside for now though, so I can watch with Julian later. It is a mystery and hints are littered here and there for you to solve it -- I would like to go through some thinking before jumping to watching too much of it in one setting.

Since I finished Ichigo 100% I wanted to start another manga. Not sure if it's the effect from finishing a good manga (it's well-drawn and I like her way of drawing manga, her color drawings are sometimes very good and sometimes just meh though), I tried starting Macross 7 Trash but the style is too "sketchy" for me. I haven't seen the anime so it's pretty damn confusing too. Right now I'm on Love Hina, which is only OK. The pace is slightly too fast in the beginning and the style is simplistic comparing to Ichigo 100%.

I partially love Ichigo 100% because each female character looks different in it while the style is consistent. You can look at one person with different hairstyles and still recognize that person. In a lot of manga though, all the girls are essentially alike with different hair style or accessories (like I've mistaken girls to be Naru in Love Hina for a couple of times...).

What's with some people saying Love Hina's girls are well-drawn? Well, it's not badly drawn, it's OK, but really pretty? No way. I know tons of manga with better-drawn females than that. The color drawings are much better than the manga black-and-color drawings though.

Picture is an imitation of Nishino Tsukasa, one of the main female leads in Ichigo 100%.

My graphics tablet pen tip is still miserably broken (been using the huge eraser part to draw), so there is not much precision when I sketch on the computer. I'm thinking of drawing with a pen or a pencil on paper (to scale) first and then scanning it.

The great thing to draw on a computer is that you can avoid using screentones (laugh). Screentones are annoying to stick and I haven't been very good at it (insufficient practice too...^^;).

The picture of the day is a picture of the 2 characters of the story. However it might change in the future as I further develop the story (laugh). I still haven't thought of names for the characters (that's kind of outrageous) nor the name of the story..

Finished reading Ichigo 100%. What should I say, I started reading when I was bored and wasn't really taken into the story, especially when there is just way too much fan service, as a shonen manga. However, I ended up liking the shoujo touch to it a lot, and when I finished reading I have this huge void inside of me.

I had wanted the main character to be together with this one particular girl which was really his first love. However, he chose another one in the end, after reassuring his feelings for her after 2 years. Usually when an ending is not what you have expected, you feel surprised, astonished and then angered. Not this time. The ending and the resolve to the story is well-written, and even though it is not as I wish, I still like it. Although there is some minor problem with not telling you what happened to some other characters that are pretty important in some parts of the story (especially Yui, she's one of the main side-characters, but she wasn't mentioned anywhere in the last chapter...).

I have been feeling like I don't want to do anything. I don't know whether I just want to procrastinate or I'm just depressed, esp. when I'm playing a game or reading manga I don't really feel like doing them either. Playing WoW somehow felt like a chore from time to time, and reading mangas give me headaches. Going to class means drawing lots of random meaningless things on my notebook, and meal time, while, instant food or cereal will do (PMS symptoms anyone?).

This is annoying. I have wanted to start work (in fact I started group work with Ayumi because, well, it's group work) but however hard I tried to start other homework, I always end up doing something else.

I also have had ideas for drawing a short manga (as opposed to my big long epic idea before that have yet to be completely thought out), and this time I laid out the whole story and am aiming at 30-40 pages (typically 1 chapter manga). Maybe I can spend some time drawing ネーム (what's the english name for that? It's like a sketch of the scenes and camera angles...).

Maybe that should be the next step.

Talking about which, I have not made progress on my Nuriko drawing ^^;; I'm sorry...recently I have been worrying too much about homework (but not really doing it), transcribing El Cazador de la Bruja so I would learn some Japanese, and doing random things online. The Internet is a great invention and distraction.

Apart from the humour (involving nuns and cross-dressers) they inserted into the episode, I also found a cameo appearance (?) of both Madlax and NOIR, as in the uploaded pic (sorry I don't really have time to draw today..). For the NOIR one, this time "Kirika" (or the Kirika-counterpart of the NOIR maidens) appeared. Mireille already appeared in episode 1^^; Madlax only has a title up though.

好熱～雖然只有二十五度，但因為教學大樓的暖氣都沒關，上課時熱到不行。不過跑到外面去的話，一陣陣的涼風吹到身上，配合著不太強的陽光，超舒服的。就像香港的秋天一樣，乾乾爽爽、不黏不膩的感覺最舒暢怡人了。

可這邊是春天啊。食慾之春...通常是食慾之秋吧？！我的生理時鐘也大概錯認為現在是秋天吧。溫度，濕度也十分相似。這兩天都吃夜宵了...還要是公仔麵。嗚...今天吃太飽了，會睡得著嗎？

話說回來，既然是春天，就談談戀愛吧。最近我都在看「草莓100%」。雖說是少年漫畫，但作者是女生，對男女感情的描寫都非常細膩（←個人感覺）。雖然主角是男生，看著看著我也不知不覺代入了角色，以男生的感覺去體驗戀愛。每一回都看得我熱血沸騰的（笑）。

Translation (roughly =p):
So hot~ Although it was only 25 degrees Celcius during daytime, because heating in the school buildings are still on, it was really hot during classes. But outdoors, the cool breeze coupling with the not-too-strong sun is super comfortable. Just like Hong Kong's autumn, the dry, non-sticky feeling is the most comfortable and relaxing.

But it's spring here. Spring of appetite...although usually it's autumn that appetite is associated with. Maybe my biological clock thinks that it is autumn now since the temperature and the humidity are very similar. I had a midnight snack both yesterday and today...instant noodles though^^; I ate too much today, will I be able to sleep well...?!

No, not some weird reason. I know why. World of Warcraft.

I have been playing it on and off these few days. Not like I particular want to, but I didn't feel like there was a better thing to do and I don't want to do homework or study.

I had better stop playing this much because the end of the semester (busy time..) is here...

當一個人寂寞的時候，是否會覺得無精打采呢？我最近對什麼都沒勁兒，就只想攤在床上睡懶覺。

相思病？（笑）沒可能吧。大概是已經對學校的生活厭倦了。快畢業了，一想到要踏出社會，房子、起居飲食都要自己打點，也沒有「同學」可以一起互相吵鬧，就沒精打采了...