Hit On The BC

The Curse of the Unforgiven

Somehow I wonder if there is an actual friend I can talk to, hold on to, to cry my shoulders on to, & not feel ashamed. I wonder if I can reciprocate when he’s also in pain.

I admit to my shame, my weakness, and my perversions. I wonder if I can find a way to make amends to my mistakes. I wonder if you truly forgive my mistakes. I wonder if I can forgive myself, too.

I have only myself to blame. How can I rid of this guilt? What can I do to remedy this shame? Whom shall I look for to lift this sin?

The only way to forgive is to start learning. Both myself and you. The past cannot be undone, so carry this burden I must. If this means an end to something, then I must accept it.

The only way forward is to remember the past and move on.

Some random musings to channel my thoughts. Nothing to see move on.

My Younger Brother Can’t Behave Like A Typical Anime Protagonist

I must be jealous of my younger brother, because it seems that almost all of his life fits perfectly like an anime scenario.

When he was in secondary school (middle high), he:

1. Got crushes from many girls (i.e. girls confessing their love to him) — which he kindly rejected —;
2. Had to contend with 3 idiotic schoolmates who likes to do insane Naruto-style stunts (jumping from one parapet to another, breaking their fall etc.); and
3. Defeated very prolific school bullies, which earned him recognition among his peers (and therefore, girls as mentioned in 1.).

When he was serving National Service (conscription), he:

1. Was posted to a vocation which calls for monitoring & controlling detainees & inmates in a detention barracks, thereby requiring him taking part in intensive defense training from a sensei in Japan — involving log crushes, twisting arms & punishing exercises;
2. Had to contend with “supernatural” elements in the detention barracks (owing to the fact that its construction had been rumored to involve a fatal accident by a foreign worker, its proximity to forested areas and a cemetery, and the fact that some inmates worship the dark powers);
3. Had to contend with inmates wanting to challenge him to a fight (due to the fact that he singlehandedly managed to apprehend some of the toughest inmates there — their original vocations dealt in heavy frontline work e.g. firefighting); and
4. dealing with unscrupulous senior colleagues who consistently gave him trouble (until karma dealt them hard — one was paralysed from a motorcycle accident so badly that his family refused to pay for surgery).

Now that he is studying in a college that I shall leave unnamed,

1. He attended a club fair, in which he found out a local anime clubroom which, whenever there aren’t teachers around, transformed into a Genshiken-style otaku heaven.
2. He scored among the top 5 out of 120 of his intake… in an English entrance test. Also, only 5 people passed.
3. He was invited to the student union, which is… completely made up of girls (according to him, there are no boys present when he was in the union room). The girls are watching… “Kore wa Zombie Desuka?”

Lots more I want to tell, but I shall make another post once my memory improves. (Or I write notes whenever my brother spoke of his anime protagonist life.)

Conflicted Between Freedom of Speech & Condemnation

I was inspired to write this after stumbling on an ero-doujin about high school girls being manipulated to perform sexual favours to donors of a school-cum-orphanage. There is not much of a so-called “plot” to expect from such materials (they even include the use of drugs to so-called allow the girls to be domicile while the guys engaged in their deviant deeds), but juxtaposing the earlier innocent scenes with the impending violations later has probably boiled my blood.

Such doujin, part of the “rape doujin” genre, are not uncommon within the hentai circles. They present a vision of forced submission and the devaluation of a person into a commodity. The girls are being forced into sex either due to a hidden agenda (manipulative rape), or the perpetrators force their way into the girls directly (direct rape). Either way, the girls will end up being the ultimate loser.

I am all for freedom of speech, as long as real-life doesn’t imitate art. However, hearing rumours of how upcoming female celebrities in Japan & Korea had to put up being used for sex by top-level honchos, and real-life anecdotes of girls from impoverished areas of the world being manipulated for the sex industry, I must question if we should really condone or tolerate such materials.

It presents a dilemma for us as individuals. If the materials helps to prevent more people from imitating the horrible deeds depicted (by way of distraction), and it is consumed within a private environment, there shouldn’t be a cause for concern against it. It could even be served as a form of reference on criminal behaviour (albeit the erotic nature may distract readers on their original intent).

As I said, I don’t like it. It repulsed me for its depiction, but I certainly do not have an authority on it. The Internet is truly a world of concern for many of us, but its nature is complex, there are no black-and-white on this.

What I Spent On Friday

Well, I woke up late (at 10:45 AM, so imagine my horrors). Rushed everything down to have a late breakfast, and then took a detour to the National Mosque for Friday prayers.

Top: Rojak buah (a mix of local fruits & molassed-based paste with nuts).
Above: Chendol (red beans & coconut-based flour mixed with coconut-flavored milk)

After a quick meal at the roadside outside the mosque compounds, I immediately hooked up to a local train… which takes some 15 minutes to wait. The bad spiel did not end there: I end up in the wrong station, forcing me to take a taxi which made a lot of roundabouts and turns before I got to my university to finally register and apply for studies there.

(Only those who follow me will know which university I attended to.)

Realizing that I could not withdraw my money above my pre-defined limit on my Malaysian card (I had a foresight to apply for a local bank card so that I can use this account for my studies in the future), I went to Sunway Pyramid’s local bank branch to get the limit re-defined beyond my current one. Then I had to rush back to my university’s Finance Counter to pay the registration fees upfront. That done, I was told to seek out the hostel office (which is a running distance nearby) in order to register for the hostel.

Got to the hostel (by running), was told by the guy there that they have no more single rooms anymore, told to go to the Open House tomorrow (since the dormitories are handled by another university -.-) to register for a single room waiting list, because they don’t accept cash upfront then and there. -.-“

So all in all, this is what happened on the 17 December 2010 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Above: My hotel room. I am now officially a hobbit.

Tomorrow, I shall be rushing down to Sunway University and get that damn hostel room settled. After that, I’ll be going back to Bukit Bintang’s Berjaya Times Square and meet up with the rest of the anime fans there for Comic Fiesta.

Such a hectic Friday today. Saturday promises to be no less hectic. =.=

Returned From the Dead(?)

I killed Facebook alright (don’t expect me to come in there anytime soon), but Twitter is the killer social media app that I find less intrusive and less prone to errors (Failwhales notwithstanding).

Now onto my biggest pet peeves: myself.

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With Twitter & Facebook Out Of The Picture…

I have decided to revamp the way I produce my written contents.

I have contacted one person to help me host up a primarily-anime blog, with a uniquely nice URL to boot. I’ll be getting it on 2nd June, if things goes as planned.

My original blog will still be up and about, but it won’t focus on either photography or anime. I found out that keeping three separate websites for different interests is the better way forward to go.

Also, I realized that Tumblr has some nice alternatives to Twitter’s constraints. Who’d thunk it that I get better contents from here than Twitter?