Still in malaysia

As part of the cny celebration-- 'bai tian gong' on the 9th day of cny, i got to play with fireworks yesterday and it was sooooooooo beautiful. Even got to witness first hand the kind that we poor singaporeans only get to see during the national day parade. It's.... even more beautiful than the CLAMP artbook i got =X haha was super high from hearing the fire crackers and running away from the sparks.
No pictures yet.. =( my cousins are still sleeping and i doubt they will wake up before 2pm.

Will be back in singapore tmr and start work on wednesday.. sian

All About CLAMP

HAPPY VALENTINES' X CHINESE NEW YEAR PEOPLE

Received another portion of my pay last friday and i finally had an opportunity to spend it happily when i visited Kino at bugis. The 1st item i spent on my pay on (excluding topping up my ezlink card) feeeeeeels soooo gooooooooddd XDXD

The manga selection there is *ahem* pathetic *cough* so i went to look at the big books which are usually too expensive for poor students like us. But with my pay in hand, nothing is impossible ne? ;D

There was no competition-- i ended up taking home with me the 1st book i saw: All About CLAMP

Especially when it's a refreshing picture of Kobato on the cover

And 2 bishies at the back ---- no competition at all from the other books =D

This book is literally, all about CLAMP, with information on the group of mangaka, every single manga series, magazine covers and reports. It also contains X volume 18.5 which is the last we have seen of X since the hiatus.

Content page for the Pastel section

Content page for the Platinum section

Of course, who can forget Clamp school detective?

Though i think that boys (with long legs) in shorts are seriously gay

I honestly hate myself for being unable to read jap. I did not buy the book thinking that it would contain english translations but the substantial amount of written text which contains origins and extra information on each series is totally wasted on a person like me. IS SOMEONE WILLING TO TRANSLATE PRETTY PLEASE??? T____T

A glimpse of X 18.5, Kamui gets owned as usual X_X

Clover~~

Kazahaya and Rikuo from Legal drug!!! I've given up hope on this.. CLAMP announced 4 years ago that it plans/planned to resume it in the 'near future' but since we don't see anything.... oh well. I just hope that X gets completed soon, Legal drug and Clover can wait, no problem XD

Eh so this turned out to be more of a picture post with little and badly taken pictures. I'm really sorry about the lack of eye-candy k, cos my 3.2mp camera phone has been lagging and giving me alot of trouble with terrible mem card contact. I might add more pictures when i change my phone soon so for those who are interested, stay tuned!

Happy CNY again and don't forget to drink water after eating all those heaty snacks :D

Black Bird Manga

I first heard about Black Bird after it was awarded the 2009 Shogakukan Shoujo Manga Award and tried to search for the chapters sometime last year but the english translations were late to appear. Being jap illiterate and not so interested that i had to search for the chinese translations, i left it at that and hoped that the chapters would appear soon.

Sooo... i was rather delighted when i saw finally saw the english translations up on a few manga sites. Alas, my happiness was quickly replaced by disappointment after reading up to chapter 7. Perhaps due to the award, i expected more from the plot and certain reviews i read made me wonder why some people like Black Bird so much when it's...... nothing extremely spectacular D=

Misao is a teenage girl who has the unfortunate ability to see spirits and ghouls since young. After Misao's 16th birthday, the spirits and what nots started to harm her and in comes Kyo, Misao's long lost childhood friend and first love she can't seem to forget or remember clearly, to the rescue. It turns out Misao is the bride of prophecy, whose blood gives power to the demon clan who claims her. She also finds out that Kyo reappeared to claim her as his wife after becoming the head of the Tengu clan (aka crow aka black bird)

And so after a few chapters they get together officially but things aren't smooth sailing as Misao faces a dilemma to leave everything precious behind and become the Tengu's wife or enjoy the company of her family and friends but cause trouble for Kyo.

Pheeefffsh i hate summaries and the last sentence isnt completely accurate but you'll understand when you read the manga.

The drawings are average and rather pleasing to the eye with no shortage of bishies though Kyo looks cross eyed in many scenes X__X arrrgh it really spoils the mood when he's supposed to look dashing or drop dead gorgeous. It's a teeny weeny small problem really, but it bugs me alot!

Also, i dislike the sexual references which appear too often and are too bluntly placed, especially in the earlier chapters. Eg: Kyo's ablility to heal Misao's wounds by licking her, kissing to give energy/revive...... And the way the mangaka draws these situations makes me uncomfortable and not at all fangirly. I mean if these are supposed to be fan services, it's not working for me =(

Still there are definitely squeal worthy parts in the manga, like the 8 Great Tengus under Kyo's command 5 of which are all bishies and mysteriously alluring *faints* the other 3 are amazingly adorable chibis *melts* XD most of the parts i squeal at are the funny and cute parts not directly related to Kyo and Misao's relationship. What's the point of reading a shoujo manga then, when you are not interested in the relationship between the male and female protagonists. Sigh....

I've fallen prey... to the one in glasses XD Zenki kun~~

One last point (though i have many more) is regarding the Black Bird manga covers. What's with the strange cover illustrations of Kyo 'torturing' Misao???!! I don't get it, i don't exactly see Kyo as an abusive lover in the series though at times he was mean to Misao was in chapter 2 or 3 when he made Misao admit to needing him to survive by flying with her high up in the sky and then threatening to let go (or something like that) and in chapter 9 while healing her head injury. Still, it doesn't strike me that they have an abusive relationship in general. Again... if it's the mangaka's plot to attract readers by giving such an impression, she must have some pretty strange target audiences in mind.

Whooooopps i seem to have painted a terribly bleak picture of Black Bird.. i didnt mean to! Seriously Black Bird is a decent shoujo manga which a strong fan base and i plan to continue reading it. I'm pretty sure the reason why i have so little positive things to write is due to having too high expectations and the silly fan service (or whatever it's meant to be) which irritated the bile out of my liver and made me immune to the romance in this series

This could take some work

I achieved my goal (mentioned in the last post) of gaining a sense of accomplishment by the end of the week wheeeee~ It came with my 1st pay ever, in my entire 18 years of life. When the work you're doing as isnt personally satisfying, the pay matters a whole lot more. I don't think i mind not reading my fantasy books so much after knowing how much i earn per day XDXD

On the other hand... I really need to buy some clothes for cny. I've exhausted my very limited supply of new clothes because of work and surprisingly it isn't as hard as i thought to mix and match the clothings so that i wear sth different every single day. But i'm not exactly proud of my fashion sense so i can't brag about looking pretty and professional.

Of course, I won't miss my manga updates and will check the manga sites daily but they're currently not the focus of my life. Will be taking time to blog about Black Bird this weekend =DD

Point number 4 generated more responses than i though hahaha XD on both msn and the tagboard so i guess it's worth elaborating on. There's no need to feel excited for me *ahem yufei* cos i don't even see them for more than half a minute per day. 3 seconds when i arrive and say good morning. 2 seconds if one of them comes up to the office to speak to the boss (my eyes have to be permanently stuck to the computer monitor and files) 5 seconds when i say good bye before leaving.
There you go =D not much chance to talk, except on one rare occasion hehehe. Plus they are ehhh... over 25 years old i think? I don't know, it's really hard to tell.

Somehow, i feel that this post doesn't belong here. Blogging about money, clothes and guys all in the same post makes me sound.... different XD in a bad way