As a child, I learnt that you can't have everything. You can't have all the toys, or the icecream that you could scoop out from vats at your disposal. Sometimes I watched from afar as two of some of the joys of my preteen age -a swimming pool and an ice cream bar next to each other, the funny thing- were unaccessible to me.
Sometimes I saw my friends get better presents than me on a hot, Christmas day, comparing their gifts with each other, whilst I would keep to myself, bringing up different topics. I secretly blamed my parents, for not getting me what I wished for. I found the seemingly third-rate items gift-wrapped not to my liking, and I was disappointed on occasion.
Sometimes, I would get whipped, spanked, whacked, rapped on the head, belted, caned and all other forms of physical punishment short of being abused. I felt sad, and cried more than once, not because of the pain that I received. That was merely secondary. It was the concept of having it dished to me, the act of it coming to me, like how prophets of doom fear the Armageddon, only that I would receive it. My father's (and on some occasion, my mother) anger struck fear into my heart more than anything else, so much so that when he asked me once what it was that I feared the most. Out of fear (as I had just been beaten a little while before), I responded that I feared death, because I feared getting beaten for the wrong answer.
It is of no secret that I am a creature that longs for attention of others, which is perhaps why I repeat my phrases every once in a while to attain a response from others, lest they ignore me and think nothing of me. As many others, I crave attention, yet I have the longing of being a loner, one who remains in the shadows, yet is not far from the minds of others. To be far away in solitude, I sometimes seek, yet to be in the centre of the crowd, mingling and so forth.
Just random thoughts.
Currently listening to: Loreena McKennit - Cymbeline
In a day or two, a good number of the pictures that were on this blog will not be seen, thus perfecting the Art of Not Being Seen.
First off, the site http://unladenswallow.elerians.com, where I happen to have hosted a good number of my work, pictures and whatnot is now being taken down. The reason? It's not my domain, originally belonging to one of my friends who used it to some end, though not very much, so he decided not to pay for the fees this year. Still, he was gracious enough to come and tell me about, and I then went along and FTPed everything in one fell swoop.
With elerians, I could only get PHP, though there were some MySql capabilities. Even so, my friend did not seem to know how to work it, to much avail. Not that he cared anyway, as he was probably using it as I did. Just for the sake of uploading files. Though I would very much want my own site, free of annoying ads or the top bar that you see here on Blogger sites.
So as a disclaimer, a good load of the pictures that I have posted on this site will not be seen. Sorry about that. However, when I get my own domain, I won't see a need for this site, though of course, I will have bandwidth and space to worry about, but that's another story.
Well, here I am, cooped up in my room for the past few days, or should I say at least until the middle of the next fortnight to come? It's not something I've come to enjoy doing, sitting in front of the damn computer screen, just typing away, think and hit the books in order to attain good grades. To think I would have never done something like this had I still remained in Malaysia, because I know that I did slack off more often than not, therefore bringing about a bit of well, badness to my score, so as soon as I entered uni in a foreign land, I decided to put in all my effort to buck up and whatever.
But as much as I'd like to admit, I'm not a computer genius, not one of those types who has been coding since he was ten years of age, starting off at BASIC and making his own compilers and all that as how they would have done so in the good ol' days. I for one, have started into this a little less than four years ago, being immersed into the basics that is programming in a patronizing wanker's institution (APIIT, as some of you might know), and thus I was given skills, but not without being made to understand what they were there for, and it was only in my second last year that I began to understand what the heck all those things were for, and how relevant the course materials were to my line of well, work and stuff.
And then somewhere along the way I discovered to date a talent which I knew had always been there, but never harnessed until somewhere in the middle of the first year of my studies: Writing. In all types, really, whether it was raising my thoughts such as these or in the way of fiction (I have them somewhere on the Net, will show upon request), poetry of the odd flavour and so on and so forth.
However, for the next few weeks, I'll be more than a little busy, therefore I won't be having enough time for other people, let alone myself, since I'm doing so much just to make sure that I try my best, because the first two years of my tertiary life, I have spent in having as much fun as possible. A fool I was, as I will be in many things, but in this I am less one than I was before.
But so is the beginning to things to come, no?
Currently listening to: Doro & Udo - Dancing with an Angel
By the way, the story behind the music video above is the result of searching far and wide for videos of the 80s metal queen Doro Pesch. Funny that though I would consider myself to be the prominent 80s rocker amongst all my peers, I have never heard of Doro Pesch until a friend of mine gave me a few songs with her in it, when she was still in Warlock. Something of a Lita Ford type, except she doesn't sing about love, fucking and sex so much, and sticks to the fantasy scale of things.
When I first heard Doro and her siren-like voice, I thought awesome! Why have I not heard of her before? Which was when I turned to seeking what she looked like, via Google and other means of medium, in this case being YouTube. After some searching, I came up with a few hits, and then this very odd-sounding love duet between her and Udo Dirkschneider, the lead vocalist of Accept.
Those of you familiar with Accept would recall his cackling tone (the same friend who gave me the Doro songs thought Udo had one of those old grandmother types that would be better suited for a Wicked Witch of the West sort). Some would say it's horrible, or just funny, though I would think that Udo has a unique way of expressing himself, that sounds pretty good for some of his metal tunes.
But definitely not something that I would have liked to hear in Dancing With an Angel. I mean, he gives the first impression of a respectable, middle-aged soloist, with his clean haircut and demure facial expression. At least until he opens his mouth, and then out comes the voice. Not the words, but the way they sound. Not something you'd want to be giving to a potential girlfriend, if you want to keep her, that is. My jaw dropped when he started singing, and I laughed.
If they wanted to keep it all German, should they have asked Klaus Meine (Scorpions) perhaps? He certainly has the voice for the mellow stuff.
I also made a comment to one of my other friends and told her that this is what Pastor Sam Evans might have become if she had cruised into the rock scene instead of singing praises to God. Your thoughts?
I got them about less than half a year ago from a sale at EB Games, at the same time I had broken a very similar set that had belonged to one of my friends (it got run over by a car, I'm not kidding). So I set off to buy two pairs, fifty dollars for the both of them, and for a time, I was satisfied. However, after that short while, I began to feel a sense of discomfort. Unlike some headphones which I had familiarized myself with the year before, such as in the vicinity of true sound-applicable environments (church sound, for example?), where the headphones would fit around the whole of your ears snugly, or did not press upon them as if to disallow any escaping sound waves.
This PowerWave one, wasn't comfortable for extended periods of time, as they would press on the head, and leave behind a slightly pressed feeling, if you know what I mean. And as of such, my housemates have been complaining to me about the volume that I allow for my speakers to rise to, though I doubt it could be high enough to travel beyond the doors. No thanks to the thin, plaster walls that separate my room from theirs.
So these past few weeks (or should I say months?), I either turn my speakers down really low, or just put the PowerWave over my head and feel it trying to push on the head again. Though, I would want to get new headphones, such as those nifty-looking Grado SR-60s that I've seen get really good reviews on some sites, or those that Shure make (even if I could find Shure phones, I would never fork out the cash required for one such item). Unfortunately, whereabouts I live don't really cater to any brands other than Sony, Phillips and Sennheiser, the brands for the masses.
Well, one has to make do with what he has for now.
On another note, out of the bands that contribute to the power metal scene in my playlists, I'm beginning to think that Blind Guardian tops all the others, in terms of listenability and the true dedication to metal, or something like that. There will be an opinion on this genre in posts to come.
Currently listening to: Blind Guardian - Punishment Divine
Part rocker, part classic, without the musical talent. Though I do have some reaches into some places. If I get the chance, I do would like to play with sound engineering, perhaps even learn. I enjoy writing, though not necessarily fiction.
