"...MANCHESTER UNITED AND CHELSEA HAVE BOOKED THEIR PLACES IN THE SEMI-FINALS OF THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE, AS UNITED OVERTURNED A 2-1 DEFICIT FROM THE FIRST-LEG TO THRASH ROMA AT HOME WITH AN ASTOUNDING 7-1 VICTORY..." Roomie's tuner alarm + BBC News Channel = Bringing you exciting, hard-hitting news in the morning, 100 decibels at a time. I'm also pretty sure BBC had refrained from using "thrash", but that's the only word I could associate with this piece of news, now, so ye can't stop me from using that. =========== With the exam period looming large in the near distance, s.C. has come to conclude - with her own special logic - that few people would be dropping by this journal isn't this already happening since a year ago, hence providing a timely opportunity to do QUESTIONAIRES. (I was going to make the text sparkle, but having not touched old-school html for 100 years, I forget if there's such an attribute.) These are not your ordinary questionaires; these are The Memes Forgotten by Time. Passers-by: Are you done being retarded? Are you done now?? Today, I shall deign to do stormy's questionaire (stormy gasps), which I've owed since approximately B.C.1829. (Edit: Apparently she has forgotten all about it.) And since the -next- questionaire on my to-do-list requires me to list 24 things about myself, I shall dedicate the 1st section of -this- meme to the 5 "Truth or Lie?" about myself that I never quite came around to answer. 7 Things Quizthing! 7 random things about myself: Nope, I don't have piercings in either of my ears. Yeah, I have an old back injury that still recurs. Prevents me from playing things like hockey and floorball :( Nope, no blue highlights in my hair. No dye job whatsoever, for that matter. Probably never will have one, unless - as I always say so delicately - somebody sponsors me! Then I've have it done red, please. :D (Somebody said she might buy a DIY and try it on me... before she uses it on herself. Oi guinea pig much?? :D And then somebody else suggested purple, so that I'll "look even more like an anime character" >_>) Yeah, the in thing to say now is that I look like a comic character... zomg why everaybody sez tat?? Yep, I'm right-handed. But whether I'm left-footed is another matter. My right-foot has the power, but I've trained myself a left-footer. I use chopsticks according to which hand is not holding a book free. Though I do use my left hand by default. (Oi stormy you cheated! You only did six! :O ) I love bittergourd. And other bitter stuff. 7 things that scare me: Having a stomachache and no detecto washroom in the near vicinity. SCARIEST THING EVER. The proliferation of the "its" and "it's" confusion on the internet. W-will I be assimilated someday?? I cannot stress this enough: playing the Fatal Frame/Silent Hill series, alone, at night, in the dark, with nothing to lean back on, using a gamepad with vibrating capabilities. Haven't tried it, but doesn't it sound absolutely terrifying? *copies stormy's* Finding out that my laptop has suddenly died and all my data gone!! (External harddrives included) Riding a bike on the roadside when there's heavy traffic. Being asked what scares me, much less SEVEN things. Oh wait, I thought of one: FLOODED FRIDGE. My brain degenerating from sleeping too much. (I just thought of that too.) Suffering permanent injuries that inhibit your lifestyle. 7 random songs at the moment: Random, eh? *turns to winamp* Blur - Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club   囧 you can't get any more random than that... Dir en grey - Increase Blue Evanescence - Hello Red Hot Chili Peppers - Can't Stop Ayumi Hamasaki - Hanabi Dir en grey - Garbage [LIVE]   (Oi what's with all the Dir en greys??) Backstreet Boys - As Long As You Love Me   囧 I didn't know it still lives in my computer... one of the many, many reasons why I have XXGB of songs taking up my harddisk space... 7 things i like the most: (So I can't include things I like -doing- the most?) My football! Tennis! I miss my softball gloves... Wait, why are they all sports-related... My parents! :) My trusty sketchbooks (guilty-love due to negligence) My favouritest manga series (i.e., Saiyuki, Gintama, Tsubasa) + my most favouritest characters (oi wait that's already more than seven things in itself...) Jigsaw puzzles! Days in which I can cycle around, laze around, do things I like to do! 7 things i say most: Yo! Okayy Yay! *mumbles* (Sarcastic stuff) *mumbles* I'm a girl of few mumbleswords. "Won't get lost one lah, Singapore so small." Famous Last Words in the making. 7 people to do this: I don't even have 7 people to tag 己所不欲，勿施于人。 Do not do unto others what you, er, do not want others to do to you. Er. Howzit go again? Just do it if you want. =========== I have a question. So when somebody rolls his eyes at you, did you just get eye-rolled? Or roll-eyed? What is a one-word expression to use when you got somebody's eyes rolled at you?? There MUST be one word that can convey this intricate meaning. I MUST KNOW. I say we coin the word "eye-rolled". Not as tasty as it sounds, but it's one step closer to sweetness for English. (Somewhere, a punster chokes and dies.)

Wednesday, April 11, 2007 :: 11:03 p.m.

spluttering over the latest tsubasa

OAO asjf.nags;ofh;ieowe4nnksputter Ooooh, CLAMP. Once again, you have killed another reader when her brain was flung 125 metres off trail upon the little plot twist and it's so near the exams too gimme back mah brain. Misdirection, thy name is CLAMP. And tomorrow, I shall get my hands on the long-awaited copy of Zerosum. Since the end of Death Note and Honey&Clover, I fret to think that when, and if, and after Tsubasa and xxxHOLiC end (presumably together), I will be left only with Gintama as the weekly fix of manga, and Saiyuki and Ouran the monthly fix. Cross Game? Can't remember where I left off - or, indeed, if the series have even ended. Mushishi? I don't read 'em; I collect them. :D Wild Adapter? Too impatient for its bizillionmonthly serialisation; I'll rather just grab the tankoubon when it comes out. FRIGHTENING.   Mummy I haven't drawn in a long time, so I did a quick inksketch of... something. ... NO. IT'S NOT SAILORMOON ON THE LEFT. Or Sailorvenus?, or even a girl, for that matter. It's... well, they're probably the two of the oldestmost ancient (because they both have a-sad-lonely-incarcerated-past-with-snow-falling-all-around-me, plus are arguably the most strongestest-when-I-mean-it) characters in Tsubasa and Saiyuki. Shed a tear for them, won't ya. Ididn'tmeanforchibifaitocomeoutlookinglikesailormoonnnn *sheds tear* Bad idea to sketch it though; I never knew it's so hard to nail the kneeling posture down right the first time with ink D: And they turned out looking like teenagers when they're supposed to be little kids (it's the evil curse of CLAMPstyle longlimbedness DX). What's awesome about this picture is... It's a photo taken with my spanking shiny new handphone[camera]! Since my scanner's software has been rendered useless and all... when I carelessly let in a virus some time back. Damn, this pic needs to be reincarnated as an -actual- drawing. Sadly, 99% of past evidence points to the fact that I won't be accomplishing that anytime soon. Even if I tried. . . . WHY DOES HE LOOK LIKE A SAILORUNIFORMED SCHOOL GIRL I WANT TO KILL MYSELF

Friday, March 30, 2007 :: 08:19 p.m.

I have, last Sunday, become the proud owner of a new pair of soft contact lenses. They have gadgets these days that disinfect/cleanse/maintain the lens all in one step! Perfect for lazy people like me. Look bubbles! Fun magical science brought to you by some hydrogen peroxide neutralisation technology schwiz   Full-adder not involved. The arrival of the lens is all good and well, for the consequences of playing football matches with spectacles on was unfortunately experienced a fortnight ago, on the tadpole habitatmuddy field that is Bish_n Arsenal's homeswampground. In rather reminiscent fashion (please refer to the tragic tale that I had wailed of about 2 entries below), the ball whacked me in my face again, and my eyewear promptly found affinity with the... slosh... below again, and as I took a few staggered steps to right my bearings, I apparently stomped my specs deeper into the mud... ...and my teammate had to push me("Oh dammit my glasses. Where.") away so I won't afflict further damage to the downtrodden(HA!) specs... ...and she -fished- out my glasses("Mghmfp. Omg. Hurhurhur.") from the muddy depths... ...(it really looked like a mudcake in the shape of glasses.) To cut short, I went off the pitch on the ref's advice to "wash your glasses first" (like duh), and found that even after washing it, the frame was totally crooked... ...and I spent the rest of the match sitting with ONE piece of ice (stingy drink-vendor D:) over my left eyelids. 妈妈，我毁容了   囧 Well actually, not really, since my specs did a rather respectable job of hiding the cuts afterwards. And I learnt that when you have eye injuries, it may be best when you wake up in the morning to NOT RUB YOUR EYESADSKJFHFWNPAIN. Now that sure rubs the sleep out of your eye... Unfortunately, I couldn't stop doing that every morning since I was retarded it was sorta a habit. Wearing the contacts for the first time yesterday was a whole new fun experience. THE RIGHT LENS JUST WOULD NOT GO IN. D: *stabs eye* And after training... THEY JUST WOULD NOT COME OUT. D: D: D: *stabs* But it's still a significant improvement from 7 years ago when my lens-virgin friends and I took 1 billion years trying to put on disposable lens for snorkelling purposes. I was the first one to put it in... halleluya! ...and I didn't even know it went in... ...and it must have been 30mins(or more?). And that was just the left eye. Anyway, to top it all off for training, I found that I had left my boots at home. -_- So I wore shoes to training. (Thank GOODNESS it was the first dry day for many weeks.) ...To proof once more that I can do football skillz better with shoes. -_-   Oh well.

Wednesday, January 31, 2007 :: 01:14 p.m.

The only inevitable thing in life is sleeping in lectures

Summing up the school weeks with Paper Mario It doesn't matter if I slept 16 hours or 3 hours the night before, I'll still end up sleeping in lectures the next day. It's like a Pavlov reaction no one wants to have. So. Why do I even care to set my bedtime at 11pm??(<-which I've kept fairly faithful to, mind) Well, it -did- help keep me awake for the better half of each lecture, at least. I guess.

Friday, January 26, 2007 :: 10:17 p.m.

Lost and Not Found

By way of the motto at s.C. School of Excellence for Losing At Life, one should always abide by the following code of honour in order to achieve true distinction: Thou shalt lose one shinpad after a training session. Just ONE, mind, or you will not reach the pinacle of oddity that you so need for losing at life. Thou shalt lose your softball glove (the one given by your sec.2 teacher as a momento) in the IHG season. Thou shalt never be satisfied with losing your own glove. Lose someone else's glove when he so kindly decided to let you use it. Thou shalt get whacked in the face with a ball and thus lose one (ONE) contact lens during your training session. To complete the look of the utterly desolate, grapple vainly with the grass+mud under the pouring skies and/or borrow a handphone light in hopes that you might actually find the lens. In short: I now wear an odd pair of shinpads for training. And I totally lose at life. omg I lost someone else's glove ._. Good grief, I can't believe I lost 3 softballs gloves within a couple of years. (Oh, not to mention I lost my waterbottle during last year's ISG as well. -_-) ----------- Have just came back from helping out as a linesman for the ihg tennis finals matches. And such wonderful excitement there was! Like, a bird flew across court and the ball totally nicked its wing (my umpire friend and I heard - with absolute wonder - the "fap" sound as the ball just barely glanced across the wing) o_o And, a player mishit a shot to the other side of the court during warm up and the ball bounced up and went inside the shirt of his oblivious opponent o_o   o_o The only thing missing was that nobody got the ball stuck in the triangular hollow of the tennis racket from a mis-swing. It's always hilarious when it happens. Well, because, my doubles partner and I are particularly ace at it. :D Oh, and the matches were exciting too. :D ...Shall continue this entry tomorrow when I'm not dying with sleepiness -_- I will post tomorrow! I will. I will. That would sound so much more convincing had I not already broken several of my new year resolutions ALREADYALREADYALREADY. D: =========== [Jan 16 EDIT:] I... surrender... Too... tired... from training... must sleep... now... Will post tomorrow... I guess. =_=

Monday, January 15, 2007 :: 11:17 p.m.

Hi ho, hi ho,

off to Thailand we go What's with the hat??

Tuesday, December 19, 2006 :: 07:20 a.m.

Lawliet for the win.

L is so adorable in the movie. <3 Matsuyama Kenichi wins a million strawberry shortcakes for portraying L's wicked cuteness so well. And I loved the way he melded the first part of his next sentences with the last part of the previous. (blahblahblahblahDEMO. blahblahblahblahSOSHITE. XD) As a stand-alone movie, Death Note isn't half bad. Though it REALLY lacks supporting sound effects for certain scenes. But compared with the original, the movie definitely lacks something. All the same, Ryuk was appropriately cute as well :D I can't wait to see how Rem will look like in the second movie (well, assuming s/he'll be in there...). =========== [Edit:] Since I'm on the topic of Death Note, I might as well put up some screencaps of the first episode of the DN anime for review. It looks pretty slick with all the dark backgrounds and stuff. At the same time, let me utilise my uber self-made journal-cut-of-doom for the first time. Click the 2nd link below to reveal the screencaps! You can see how much fun I've had trying to refine this code. Warning: The following will totally be a waste of a third of your life YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Click!   OI WAIT THIS IS SO NOT DEATH NOTE =========== Yagami Raito. Hey wait. Why is he wearing spectacles? Oi, and why do you have black hair? Enter Gin-sanNear. "According to my deductions, Yagami Raito has dyed his hair black in response to fandom's insistent questioning of his status as the only redhead in the family." "And the glasses makes me evil +1." "Is there no way to stop him? Is there no way??" "And now," "The one who strikes first shall prevail!" Amano Misa.wrong Near decides to take her out of the equation. He also decides to overlook the existence of "that strange creature". We can only assume he's referring to Ryuk.WRONG "Now I shall use this trick...!" "And I thought...! I could keep up this facade forever!" "No good, I won't get a second chance for this." And that is how Raito got his Shinigami Eye. OIIIII ENOUGH WITH THIS COMMENTARY ALREADYYYYY EVERYONE KNOWS THIS IS NOT DN ANYMORRRRRE "And the winner shall be... ME!" "No, wait... What is this... pain... in my... heart..." "That woman...!" "Hurhurhur I have a piece of your heart in my chopstick plz die" Obligatory half-crazed-character screencaps. "Hn. You think?" (The object at the side is, um, a door knob. Or a saucer. That you hang on the wall. Like a clock. Yeah. Ahhh actually it is a clock. Just not "the strange creature"'s eye. No indeed.) "zomg no not the saucer" (Look, Matsuda is right beside her. Will you quit it already) Yes it is. With cheap pork on top. (But that's what the subtitles say *bricked*) Misa: I won't trust anybody ever again *ded* "One down." "But that guy remains the key issue." "Let's settle this once and for all." "He's trying the same trick again...!" Kusarechattaaaa Gin-san looks so cute here getting elbowed in the face. <3 Oh so you're finally admitting this is not a DN commentary after all EH. =========== Heck no. If this is not the Death Note anime, WHY IS RYUK FREAKING APPEARING HERE? "Humans are such silly creatures." Yeah. This can only happen in Gintama. XD (The opening episode of Season 3, to be precise.) And hey, Shinsen-subs have picked up Gintama, so I guess we can expect quicker subs of it coming out. I'll continue watching the Chinese subs though, cos Gintama sounds cruder (and thus truer to nature XD) with the right Chinese words. And they have smaller-sized rmvb releases too, which is always good news for my hard drive. Go watch it you bastaaaards! <-and you'll learn to speak like that :D As for the -real- DN anime, well... I haven't gotten around to watching it yet. *sheepish* I have them downloaded but have yet to find free time to touch them. Which means... I haven't heard L speak yet. D: D: D: I'm reasonably confident that Miyano Mamoru can pull off the Raito role, just because. I can imagine him being the next-gen seiyuu who owns THE "floaty-high-classy" voice. But for L... what I've heard of Yamaguchi Kappei's renditions are the normal anti-hero voices (Inuyasha, Kudou Shinichi, Ranma...), which will fit L very nicely as a normal voice... BUT. I want L to have an un-normal voice dammit. XD I shall see. =========== Yeah, I know I said I would update last Friday. ... When will I ever learn not to "go for a nap" before doing anything?

Monday, October 30, 2006 :: 03:07 p.m.

MY BRAIN IS DEAD. *placeholder entry for a future post later today (hopefully)* =========== [Edit:] 80m Hurdles Broomsticks Dash. Broomsticks sticking out into the corridor -- an amusing sight to behold, which becomes less funny when you imagine that one of these days -- most likely a fine sunny day when the neighbours would deploy a big-ass laundry rack to put clothes out to dry and inadvertently reduce the effective width of the corridor -- I will walk my stomach into one of these things, if you know what I mean, and it will be painful. Painful. And on that note, I might as well list out a few of the things that I suffered [from] in the past month or so: $70 - new football boots $120 - new tennis racket(??!?!!!! <-never thought I'll ever buy one for myself) $XX - various manga expenses :D Wobbly Head Syndrome - from heading the ball with the wrong part of the head :D Pseudo Concussion Syndrome - got KO-ed in the head during match, had to be taken off, D: and the bruise still hurts now, 5 days on. It explains why I've been sleeping so much and am not in the greatest responsive mode lately. ("Well but how do you explain the -other- days when you didn't get whacked in the head?") Moving on... I can't remember anything else to add. See reasons 4 and 5. And at the time of writing the "my brain iz dead" sentence, I was suffering from brain-overload from HT201 project. If I had appeared unresponsive during the discussion, ...see reason 5. ^________^

Tuesday, September 12, 2006 :: 05:25 p.m.

Stormy, you totally know what I'm talking about. (I'm not hooked though; I'm just playing it 1000% more than I ever did.)

Monday, July 31, 2006 :: 09:58 a.m.

"Johnny Depp is real cool," she said.

XD Priceless. This is made from The Newspaper Clipping Generator. If I have time tomorrow morning, I'll follow up with this Dummies book cover generator thing. Otherwise, it's FOC aka camp time tomorrow noon onwards! This year there're 90 freshies coming for the camp. As the seniors told us, never in 5 years had we even broken the 70 mark, so this is fantastic and scary at the same time. Scary because, PROGRAMMERS (which are us) WILL VIRTUALLY NOT GET TO SLEEP IN THE NEXT 5 DAYS. Think I'll manage. Um, I should in fact go to bed right now. ...But, having to stand through 45 couples for the Ghostwalk is just... -_- (Seniors' Camp: 10couples=3 hrs. 45 couples=...?) Anyway even with this new wireless, the router is only switched on occasionally, so, no big difference.

Monday, July 31, 2006 :: 01:20 a.m.

CLAMP: Making fangirls scream since the beginning of time

3 nights ago this hour, in the hope of actually writing an entry, I started typing PORTUGAL WON ENGLA It was supposed to end something like HAHAHAHAHA but in retrospect, that was asking too much of myself, because I put my head down for a while -- I'd intended for it to be a while -- and when I got back up it was near-dawn ...and the neighbour's wireless had disappeared. At present it's half-time in the match between Germany and Italy. I'm so totally rooting for Italy. (This match only. *grinz* Part of the reason is at the end of this post. Heee.) And stormy's away to China for holidays! Have fun! take your time there! I'll have the room to myself for a week ♪ XD In other news, Gintama the anime wins 9349241 points for ACTUALLY MENTIONING THE WORLD CUP. AND NO, GIN-SAN, IT IS -NOT- World Baseball Classiccc. What the hell were you watching??? And Gintama the manga wins another 329472 points in its latest chapters for strengthening my belief in my first ever heteroOTP. Gintama is just magical. You can't resist the crack. How can you resist the crack? GO READ/WATCH THE CRACK. And here I shalt give thanks to the chinese fandom and their fansubs (as compared to the english fandom's all of, say, 0.5 fansub). But, moving on to more important topics... like the most recent chapter of Tsubasa... Syaoran so totally seme-d Fai. So totally. You would expect me to cry out now "I'M DYING" and bang my head against the desk. But I won't. Because I've already done that all lastlast week. Middle of chapter: "I'm dying" x10 End of chapter: *headdesk* *multipletimes* CLAMP = eyefetish = a bunch of evil women The really cruel thing was, CLAMP stopped Tsubasa for one week. ONE WEEEEK. As of now, I've finally waited 13 days since that chapitre 120, so tomorrow I might just be liberated from the suspense. Lib.er.ated. Then I might die again from chapter 121. Oh, and? This month's Saiyuki somehow reminded me of FMA. Must be all those houses and sandscape. I really like how things are panning out in there these days :D Let's go Italiaaaa! A MEAL IS AT STAKE HERE OI.

Sunday, July 5, 2006 :: 03:48 a.m.

Kamo ga negi shotte yatte kita.

Zero Sum July 2006, act 34 - The chapter that led to s.C. reading up on more kamonegi, kamonanban, kamonanba, and ducks and green onions than she'll ever ever need in her next 100 lifetimes. It is also the chapter that led to s.C. finding out that Otsuka Ai had singles that are titled "Salty Grilled Tongue of Black Japanese Beef". Tacky! s.C. also came across tentacle pron during her kamonegi research endeavour, but that's... another story. Thank you, Hazel. You've taught us well. =========== And oh, hm. Don't bother clicking the links on that page; the link colour was merely to indicate the start of a new page. I probably won't be scanning these stuff until my HD space actually exceeds 200MB or something, someday. Photoshop eats up 130+MB on startup alone. -_- Breaking news!: I have 6.21MB free space right now :D

Tuesday, June 6, 2006 :: 04:41 p.m.

So the other day (You just can't hope for a present-day entry from me anymore. You can't.) I went to Kino. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get all of what I wanted to buy, but I did get Reload 6 - it wasn't in my to- get list in the first place - which I'll bring with me back to hall so stormy you won't have to be behind the times again haaaahaha. (But I'm willing to bet I'd return to hall sooner than you'll read this entry, so.) What I -did- manage to see though, was THIS I almost wanted to nosebleed right onto the book. But willpower says noooo please don't mar the lustrous beauty that is this picture with your insignificant mortal hemoglobiiiin so I didn't. I mean, gosh. Dude. LOOK. SO... ugh. CUDDLY. So brilliant. So beautiful. NO they haven't got into Fai's past yet. YES DAMMIT they should make more splash pages like this. Oh yeah, and the plot was good too. As usual, credits to http://fukanounashigoto.free.fr/tsubasa-holic for the scan. Lovely, loverley, scan. My 3 favourite mangas had 3 colour pages each this(last) week. One even made the cover. Life is good. =========== I'm also watching the Tsubasa anime. Now, I don't know if it's just me or something, but -somehow-, Fai's voice sounds different. It's as if Namikawa Daisuke took away or gave a little something to his Fai voice, which made it that much slightly different from Fai in season 1 or even, the drama cds. (I love the drama albums :D) Unfortunately, rather than gaining something, the voice's now actually lost -something- to it. Granted, Fai's voice is not the easiest to reproduce consistently, even with Namikawa's own natural flair. (Seki Tomokazu doing Doraemon's Suneo, now that's a mystery something. Wonder if he doesn't get a sorethroat every two recordings...) But... Fai's and Kurogane's voices are sorta the two main reasons I still download the show, so... -_- Let's just hope it's the warmup for beginning-of-season. Or maybe it's really my ears' fault. =========== Ooh. Lookie here. In the above-mentioned newly-gotten copy of Reload 6, Dokugakuji calls Kougaiji "Xiao Hong". *DIES.* That would be the equivalent of Doku saying "Kou-chan". *IS KILLED.* This translator was still decent in the past 5 volumes! Why the sudden... ... *BRAINBLEEDS.*

Monday, June 5, 2006 :: 01:15 a.m.

What goes on in the mind of the short-lived insane

Because I'm quite inspired by PL's blog, I decided to copycat add another strip to my erstwhile L I F 3 comic. (Unfortunately I wanted to do it in Chinese.) And because I don't have a NEW TABLET LIKE SOMEBODY DOES, it's drawn in traditional pencil, un-ink, and ps. It happened a few weeks ago on a sunny afternoon... “呃，我突然很想搬掉梯子下D那堆书... 所以把它抬了起来..." "搬个头啊！白痴啊你！“ P.S. 请勿模仿。即使是天生的白痴，要达到这种境界 还是得练出来的。虽然 本人在这方面确实是属于天才型D。 To this day, the ladder has to weighed down by two Zerosum and two Lala hung from the lowest possible rung in a Kino bag. ...Also, there's a reason why people don't do calligraphy with flimsy watercolour paintbrushes... *looks at the ugly red words* (And no, my mother still doesn't know the truth behind this mysteriously hovering ladder.)

Wednesday, May 31, 2006 :: 11:51 a.m.

"The Last Episode of Doraemon"

Watching the present day series of Doraemon left me with one nagging question -- why on earth is Shizuka addressing her friends with the suffix -san? "Nobita-san", "Suneo-san", "Gian-san"... aren't they boys of her very same age? Why isn't she saying "Nobita-kun" like she should... and -did- in the old Doraemon series? Nothing beats googling. And in doing so, I came across this interesting story - a fan's version of how the story ends. It's supposedly spread all over the net, and if you searched "doraemon 'nobita-san'" like I did, [all] you'll find [are] pages of sites posting this story. Granted, a couple of problematic little details rendered the story quite impossible as a valid ending if there ever be one, but it's nice and touching nonetheless. =========== The Last Episode of Doraemon Dedicated to all the fans of Doraemon - As you know, Doraemon is a story with no ending, but this small story is about the "last episode" of the famous cartoon. Someone made this story and uploaded it to his homepage, and it is now widely spread all around Japan through the internet. Here it goes; One day, a very normal day, Nobita came back from school and went upstairs of his house. Doraemon was there sleeping, just like the other normal day. "Hey, Doraemon, please wake up, let’s play!” but Doraemon does not wake up. Nobita thought that Doraemon is tired, so he went out to play with Shizuka-chan and other folks. After few hours, he returned to his home, but Doraemon was still sleeping. Nobita felt something strange, and tried to wake him up. But there was no reply. He became to feel afraid, and tried to wake him up, but whatever he does, Doraemon did not wake up. Nobita knew exactly that something was different. This never happened before. He began crying, but though he screamed or cried, the famous fat-cat-robot did not make a single move at all. He came up to one idea, and jumped into his desk -the time machine- and went to the future to meet Dorami-chan, Doraemon's sister. He begged her for help, and forced her to go with him back to 1998. After a short trip again back to 1998 by the time machine, Dorami-chan looked all over his brother Doraemon to see what was wrong with him. After few minutes, she said "the battery is out" Nobita was relieved, and said, "battery? so he is not broken right? Please replace or recharge his battery, and put him back like before" But Dorami-chan shook her head and said, "Nobita-san, should I really do that?" Nobita said "what? What do you mean?" Dorami-chan replied; "His main battery is here, close to his pocket. And it ran out. But originally, he had a back-up battery in his ears, but as you know, his ears were eaten by a rat very many years ago, so he does not have a back-up battery now" "So what do you mean?" "I mean, if I replace his battery, every memory of you will be eternally lost from his brain program" "WHAT?????" "Shall I do that?" Nobita closed his eyes. He cried, but after few minutes, he stopped crying, and quietly told Dorami-chan; "Dorami-chan, thanks for coming here. I will take care of the rest. You have to go back to your future time now" Dorami-chan could not decide what to do, but anyway she hugged Nobita quietly, and she went back home. After she went back, Nobita carried Doraemon and placed him into the shelf. .........TIME FLIES.......... Year 2010, Nobita grew up. Since that day, he changed. He studied hard, did not cry anymore and he lived without Doraemon. He told Shizuka and other folks that Doraemon had to go back to his future, and could not meet him anymore. Shizuka was impressed to Nobita's mysterious appearance which became completely different from 10years ago. They fell in love, and married. Nobita became a scientist. He made a laboratory in his room, and was studying hard with his job all day. He told Shizuka not to come into the room, as it is very dangerous inside. But one day, he called Shizuka and told her to come in to his room. It was the first time for her to enter his husband's room. The moment she went in, she lost her words ......There was her friend Doraemon, who she used to play in her childhood days. Doraemon was not moving. It seemed as he was sleeping. "Look, Shizuka, I will plug in from now" Nobita turned on the main switch on Doraemon. Doraemon quietly, very quietly started to open his eyes. It was the moment the inventor of Doraemon became clear. It was Nobita. He studied hard and hard jus t to meet and talk with his old friend again. Going back and forth of time, Nobita was the one who made Doraemon. He discovered all the programs and architecture of Doraemon-type-robot. Nobita and Shizuka were crying gently. Doraemon opened his eyes. He looked around, and finally said, "Nobita-kun, did you finish your homework?" There were the same white clouds in the sky like the times they used to spend together. =========== ... .... Heeee. *spoils mood* Anyway, after using the japanese equivalent of the search words, I came upon interesting answers to my original question (Obviously, there were Japanese and their kids who were as confused as I was about the -san issue). There was even the theory of gender equivalence that they are teaching in elementary school nowadays. Or something. But apparently, the answer is simply that the original manga itself uses the -san suffix, and the present series are just reflecting the speech nuance that the old series left out. Cultural epiphany of the day :D Btw, I'm loving the present Doraemon series a lot. It's cute and wonderful and nostalgic! Hope the recent movie "Nobita's Dinosaur" will be available for download someday. P.S. WHY ARE THERE NO DECENT FANSUBS DOING GINTAMA??!!

Monday, May 1, 2006 :: 08:14 p.m.