song of the day: Little by Little

To get this straight, this version of Little by Little that I'm talking about isn't the actual song, by Ji-yeon, but rather a cover by one of the most talented voices I've heard on YouTube in all the time I've been using it.

(I know many people get millions of views for their covers, but I feel only half of those people deserve their million hits. Others, like that eight-year-old Philippine/Canadian girl who's crazily viral right now, just don't. That kid is getting compliments like "Wow, how superb! She sings so well!" heaped on her, but to be honest I don't hear anything special in her voice. It's a video of a kid singing, and she sounds like a kid singing. That's it. It's a child's voice, people.)

Vietnamese boy Alan JW N., however, ranks higher in my book, simply because he has such a lovely voice. He may not be at the ready-to-record stage yet, but he definitely has the talent to do so. His cover of Little by Little is gorgeous, uplifting in a moment and melancholy the next, though admittedly the lyrics end rather tragically. It's sung in his lower range, which I prefer to his (much) higher one. He can sound quite unnervingly female if he wants to, I kid you not.

Please, please check his channel out. I gave little Maria a shot; surely you can give Alan one?

song(s) of the day: Lotus and Hazy

I'm gonna start posting about random songs for a bit. What I'll do is keep an eye on which song I'm listening to most on a particular day and then do a little review/recommendation. And no, I'm not J-music biased. I'm just not going to bother with the stuff you've already heard on the radio, because then there'd be no point to this. Cheers. :)

Lotus, Arashi's latest single, is nice and upbeat so it's good for keeping me bouncing on the balls of my feet and generally quite cheery. I suspect it might annoy the heck out of me in a bad mood though. I've only just seen the PV today, too, and it's not bad as far as Japanese PVs go. A pretty piece of work, though I can't tell if there's supposed to be a meaning to the dark rooms and white objects.

Hazy is on the other hand a rather old song, by Rosi Golan and William Fitzsimmons. It's also the kind that some people (cue the dagger-glaring at narrow-minded, underexposed little brother) claim will make them fall asleep. I happen to think it's beautiful. It's soft, calm and composed; the overall feel is that of a rather sweetly phrased question. I especially love how it doesn't come across as your typical love song, considering they never once expressly imply what kind of love it is. It could be a song between best friends or lovers or both, depending on how you want to hear it. Beautiful.

w/o notice??

If anyone even bothered to suffer through the KAT-TUN meme I did earlier this week, they would've noticed the abnormal number of times I cited w/o notice?? as one of my admittedly many personal favourites. I myself didn't really realise I was doing it until I found myself typing the title for the third time. Heh.



I don't know why exactly this song appeals to me so much; but it's just so hard to not include such a happifying song in your favourites! And I swear it's not because of this hilariously cute performance. It works miracles, this song does. You'd think going on a massive downloading spree, watching a cute, fluffy movie and listening to some pretty hardcore rock music would be my ultimate cure for moody moments, but nope. Somehow this light, playful song worked better.

Though to be honest, my real cure-all is a shower. Lol.

none of my business

I'm not angry. I want you to know that. Even though so many times I've felt like I wanted to break things or just scream long and loud, the overall result isn't anger. I'm too tired for that. Instead, all I feel is a sense of hopelessness. Even as I try to explain to you what exactly is wrong, I know it won't make a difference because you're making your disinterest as visible as you can. You simply don't want to hear it. I guess it's because you're at a "rebellious age", when you think no-one who's of a different age could ever possibly understand what you're going through or what you think about things. Although you'll probably disagree with that statement as well.

Fine, I'll admit it. I don't understand. I really don't. I could theorize and hypothesize based on normal patterns to suggest logical outcomes, but I don't understand what exactly you might be thinking that would cause such horrible behaviour. I personally think being rebellious for the sake of being rebellious is a load of bullshit, but hey, lots of teens do it without thinking too much about it. But just one question. Do you really think I would even bother going out of my way just to make you angry, because I and the the rest of the world have it in for you? I don't know what you think I do in my spare time, but I assure you I have much, much better things to do than to piss you off just for kicks.

I give up. I'm tired, sick and bloody tired of trying to explain as clearly as I can to you why you're doing something wrong and why you should stop, but nothing works. Whether I raise my voice to scream or keep it level to talk reason, the moment you sense a serious conversation coming up, you stop listening. You sit there and you hear what you're told, but you don't even try to assess it to see if it might be true because from the very beginning you already believe (whether consciously or not) that it's just another lecture, full of stuff you've heard before and don't enjoy hearing. I don't know what to do. I just don't know.

So I've come to the conclusion that I just suck at trying to teach you your basic manners. I won't blame it on your ability to learn, though the fact that you need to learn at all raises some questions. No, I blame myself for being a terrible teacher. And as such, I give up. From now on, go ahead and act as depraved as you like. Go ahead and grow into that full-fledged Asshole personality that you've been gunning towards. I just don't have the energy or time to deal with this shit. I'll leave you alone starting now. One cold, grey day in the future you'll look around you and see the crap you're mired in - and when you do, don't you dare blame anyone but yourself. Not your parents, not your family, not your friends, not your teachers, not society. You're the one with the problem you refuse to acknowledge, let alone tackle.

But I'm not angry. No, seriously, I swear I'm not. Anger takes up too much energy and is too detrimental to myself more often than not. But I want it known that just because I've decided to stop bothering with anger doesn't mean I've forgiven anyone anything. Let's be clear on that.

field trip

For someone who lived for nearly 15 years in Kuala Lumpur's satellite city of PJ, and whose daily classes are within technical boundaries of the federal territory, it seems unbelievable that I don't know my way around KL at all. (Have I really been living in Shah Alam for four years now?) For the most part, excursions to the city centre were pretty perfunctory - I need to go to Kinokuniya, let's go there and hurry back. I need to visit the convention centre, let's rush there and get everything settled quick. I'm catching a performance at Istana Budaya, no point in hanging around after the show.

Which was all such a mistake, now that I see how little of KL I know. I know KLCC and BNM and nothing else. Starhill and Imbi are vague shapes in my head, with only memories of having been there twice or thrice. How dare I make jokes about there only being one mall in Seremban when I haven't really explored everything in my vicinity? (I must clarify, however, that I do possess some knowledge of PJ's malls, excluding Sunway. That's just too bothersome.)

So today, I worked off a little ignorance. I had an excellent guide, of course, and the public transport system was actually really efficient. And along the way, we found a little time to have Starbucks! :P

my first KAT-TUN meme! :O

Stolen and adapted shamelessly from the KAT-TUN Worldwide website. Kill me :P

long post!

Forgive me if this post comes out not so well finished; I've only just finished watching the footage of the big live tour, the DVD I put aside because of the exams, and I wanted to hurry and get it written down here while this feeling is still at its peak.

Seriously?

cherry tree twisted metal spelling bee.

It's my new Line To Live By - not that I have any old ones, but this one is as good a first as any.

So I'm going through another of those phases where you've got plenty you feel like you have to say or do, but not enough time or energy to do it. Which is what everyone feels all the time, yes, but still.

I might have the tiniest bit of interest in that weird, arrogant jerk of a Glee character. And in the history of Laciel and Lydia from Inotia 3, but this is all of very little consequence.

Library Wars!

Because it's probably the only story that can make a guy shorter than his girlfriend look so cool and dependable. Lol.

I want to go to the bookshop! Well, I wanted to go even before the exams ended, but now I really am quite desperate to go! Watching a show about the beauty of books definitely made it worse. I want shelves and shelves to stroll between! Or just a single, massive one would be nice, too - like the one Joo-won has in Secret Garden. Of course, I don't think it's very practical, and I'd never accumulate that many books, but hey, it looks like something to dream about.

Oh and yes, my copy of Ultimate Wheels finally arrived today! :) I love how nicely CDJapan wraps its stuff, but now from experience I can say that YesAsia appears to be the winner. And whoa, are the go-nin looking crazy awesome in that badass Mafia styling or what? Love love love love love, there's not enough space on the Internet for me to finish expressing it!

...and because I seem to have exhausted my daily quota of exclamation marks at six in the morning, I shall take my leave. Hasta la vista!

festive :)

of exhaustion

I'm back! *insert crazy tapdance*

It's funny how I always feel, during an event, that there're so many things I want to blog about, yet immediately afterward I realise I'm too tired for anything to be worth saying. It's not just blogging either - any activity that tempts me like sin doesn't actually get done as soon as I'm free to do it. Exams ended a good four days ago, and though I was so animatedly making lists of things I wanted to do over the week-long break, I haven't done anything I said I would, except perhaps the shopping... and even that isn't really done yet. I've been extremely unproductive in the face of the massive hordes.

It feels like all that sleep deficiency caught up with me; I've done nothing but sleep and shop for three days now, a horrible state to be in. I still haven't watched the Secret Garden specials, the seven movies on my list, the Summer Premium Live, my beloved DVD, and all those episodes of Chuck, backdated as I am. That's a huge amount of telly-time, isn't it? And when I think about the next DVD which will arrive in a few days...

And books! I've not finished Nation, Sense and Sensibility, Memories of Midnight, The Splendour Falls, The Magician's Apprentice, The Folklore of Discworld... the only ones I finished in single sittings recently are If Tomorrow Comes and I Shall Wear Midnight. That is a pretty massive pile of stuff waiting to be read, since I usually don't start a book and leave it aside for more than a day. I lose the sense of things, you know? So yeah, that's a lot. Not to mention my Complete Japanese book which was abandoned for the sake of the exams.

Meh. I need glasses.