I have safely returned from my Grand World Tournée, much to the dismay of those who wished my untimely demise.
... Unfortunately, I can't claim to have made a very glorious homecoming. The slight cough that I had for the last day or two of my trip decided to morph into a high fever, runny nose and general misery during my long flights home.

Since my arrival home, I have pretty much just slept and I'm still not doing any better, really. The fever appears to be gone, though to ensure that this does not mean I'm getting healthier, my body temperature is now actually below my normal level, what with the constant sweating. I'm not as miserably sick as I was this past spring, but I am pretty much all sapped out of any energy or ability to function. My schedule for the past 3 days has been sleep about 8 hours, stay up for 2, rinse and repeat. And by "stay up" I mean "sit in a chair drinking cold medicine and hot tea", which is enough to exhaust me and make me need to lay down again.

*crawls off to hack up a lung*

To my lovely USA dwelling friends: HALP!
Would someone be willing to help me with YaoiCon pre-registration? Since I attended last year, they won't require a photocopy of proof of identification, so there is nothing that requires *me* to send the registration package. Obviously I did do it myself last year, so why would I require help this time around, you may wonder. The answer is simple; the approved methods of payment are ones that for some reason end up being painfully expensive and difficult to get from here. Thus, it would save me money and great deal of trouble, if someone was willing to help me out with this one.

In related news, yes, I am going to YaoiCon again this year for real. I bought plane tickets to San Francisco this Monday, so it's pretty much a done deal. I'll be flying in on 28th of October and returning back home on 4th of November. Anyone on my f-list from around the area willing to have a cup of tea/hang out with me, just let me know. ^_^

So, with flights confirmed and all, I guess my remaining main concern is cosplay (since even if I can't get help for the pre-reg, there is always the option to just register at the actual con). It's always much more fun to do *with* someone, but I highly doubt I'll have such a stroke of luck as I did last year. Either way, this is about the time to start worrying about the cosplay(s?), because while YCon is almost two months away still, my calender is starting to look frighteningly booked up and full. x_X;;;

The biggest thing making the cosplay very much timely concern is that I will be taking a trip to Japan right before going to the States. *sweatdrop*. I'll be going to Tokyo for 10 days at mid-October. Yes, I booked these tickets just last Sunday. Yes, I just might be a bit crazy. XD

I spend better part of last weekend sweating over whether or not I should book one or both of these trips. There were special flight bargains to both Tokyo and San Francisco, and I had decided already during the spring that if the summer didn't bring any answer to my immediate future, I'd like to take a trip to Japan and then return via States to stop by for YCon. Thanks to the special offers, it was much cheaper and actually kind of affordable to go to both destinations, but on separate trips. Still, I did have quite the inner battle over whether or not I could really justify doing such a thing. It's not exactly the most responsible choice in financial terms and it is always difficult to feel like it is ok to do something for no other reason than for my personal happiness.

In the end though, I came to the conclusion that I am fast running out of time in terms of being able to do irresponsible things without causing any real damage. I've been really responsible for my whole life, and right now I really only have to worry about myself, so if I am to indulge myself and be a bit less responsible and smart, now is the time. I can afford to do these trips and while there surely would be more sensible things to use or save the money for... I'm going to try to live a little and enjoy myself. Just for my own sake. Who knows where in life I will be a year from now. Who knows when, and if, there will be next opportunity to do something a bit crazy simply because it gives me joy. Who knows, maybe in the long run seizing this chance now might even turn out to be the smart thing to do. ^_^

I'm so ridiculously back-logged in posting photos that it is not even funny. I mean, I still haven't even posted YaoiCon stuff and that was almost a year ago! *shakes head*. There's been a lot going on with losing my server space and my computer resigning from connecting to the internet and so on. However, in an attempt to work my way out of the pile of "post these" photos, here's a post of the pics of my cosplay from the Animecon here in Finland about month ago. Other photos from Animecon and Desucon will be posted in a separate post, with comments on the actual cons.

I haven't cosplayed in any Finnish con for a good few years, mainly because I didn't really attend any of them due to the massive amount of suck that the cons tended to be. However, this year I was going any way thanks to work and seeing all the cosplay at Desucon earlier this summer made me *really* want to cosplay.

I had managed to talk Kii, jellicle_kii, into promising to do a Kuroshitsuji cosplay. She's not much of an anime fan, but I had been showing Kuroshitsuji to her and, well, I wanted to try cosplaying Sebastian, ok? For that, naturally I needed Ciel. Kii is one of those depressing people who look cute no matter what, not to mention she is quite petite, so I picked her. Long story short, we cosplayed as Sebastian and Ciel at the Animecon on Saturday. The whole preparation process was very rushed and full of problems, but everything did miraculously come together in the end. Part of the miracle was definitely our photographer mayfly_ whom we forced to help us sew a lot of stuff for us the night between Friday and Saturday. Thank you for all the buttons!

Unfortunately my Photoshop skills are kind of FAIL, so I never know what to do with the photos to make them look better. Actually, this time it wasn't just my lack of Photoshop skills since I only had super old version of Pain(t) Shop Pro to use. At times like these, I miss my own computer so very much. The Pain(t) Shop on this computer, aka the family spare one, had obviously had some sort of big fight with .jpg format because those two were not being friends. Saving images in .jpg made them all grainy, which I of course only discovered once I had done all of them. The worst suffering images I did re-do and save in different format, but most I didn't feel like bothering with. What's the point, since I don't know how to make them all pretty and shiny anyway, I figure.

( Sebastian: tutor-version, Ciel: one of the frilly blue outfits )

Today, for the first time in a long while, I cried during therapy. It was quite unexpected and unlike the cleansing effect that crying usually has, it left me feeling crappy and down for the whole day so far.

Quarter of a century old and *still* having Mommy&Daddy issues? Why yes, I do feel quite pathetic, thank you for asking. *sigh~*.

Perhaps the worst part is that I actually feel/felt reluctant to post about it all even though I know that writing out things has been helpful in the past when sorting through emotional turmoil. The reason for my reluctance was the thought of "*gasp, shock* what would people think!" which is far too close to the way my parents prefer to wipe things under the carpet and never speak of them in order to keep the public image crispy clean. I've sworn to myself over and over that I will not be one of those people who don't deal with their issues and who care about maintaining their public image rather than openly admitting truth. Yet, I find myself having those thoughts and that scares me a lot, honestly. I'm not ashamed of myself. I refuse to be ashamed of myself! I've made sure for years now to not hide the fact that I go to therapy, that I take anti-depressants, that I have been broken and that I used to be suicidal and cut myself. All of that has had a big impact on who I am as a person now and I'll be damned if I start hiding that stuff now. *determined*

( Thus, here is what happened. )

As of late, I have been feeling rather lonely. Unfortunately, it is the special brand of lonely that is not simply fixed by being around people or meeting friends. It's the type of lonely that comes from the longing to have a person you truly feel close to, feel connected to. It's the type of thing that you *can't* really have with very many people at the same time, simply because the emotional investment and involvement is so heavy. I'd even say it is the type of thing many people don't even really want; it takes certain mentality and certain personality for someone to want such thing. People who aren't that type can go through their life perfectly happy without ever having that level of closeness, I think. It might even be that most people are perfectly happy without it and feel no need for it. I'm just one of the people who *do* want it, who *do* need to it truly feel content. That doesn't mean I think I will find it, now or ever, but... that doesn't stop the longing.
( Perhaps warm and fuzzy feelings, but not really all that rose colored )


One of the signs that you're getting old is that you start disapproving "kids these days" aka teenagers, I think. Today, for a moment, I wondered if I had truly crossed that line for good. Sure, I have previously run into incidents where I have found myself thinking somewhat along those lines, such as when seeing the teen fashion of wearing tennis shoes in the middle of the winter with bunch of snow on the ground, but mostly I have still felt rather sympathetic and understanding towards teens.
( It's not that I'm getting old, it's that I'm holding grudges! )

I decided to take a break before resuming the backlog of what I have been up to and do a lovely little collection of memes. Here's a chance to get to know me better~! Or to be bored death by having me talk about myself. *shrugs* Rather same difference, I figure.

Meme rules: Reply to this meme by yelling - or typing - "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you. Or explain in the comments.
( Click for the 5 words I got! )

1. Leave me a comment saying "interview me"
2. I will respond by asking you 5 questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will post the questions and the answers to the questions in your journal.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
( Click for the interview of... Me~! )

List 10 of your favorite characters from different fandoms, and ask people to spot patterns in your choices, and if they're so inclined, to draw conclusions about you based on the patterns they've spotted.
( I'm on your couch, so analyse me! )

It's been, what, over 2 months already? Time sure flies when you're ridiculously busy. *sigh*

The "ridiculous" part of me being busy lately is because all my classes ended early May already, so technically this should had been vacation time for me! In reality though, there have been University related matters to take care all the way until last week. I had several deadlines throughout May, including but not limited to my Bachelor's Thesis and the article for the conference publication. There was also a book exam and seemingly endless amount of running around filling and filing papers in order to officially get my degree. I was quite stressed and worried that I would not have everything by the deadline. It's awfully frustrating when you have done everything you can and all there is left is hoping and praying the heavy byrocracy doesn't screw you over. For example, by University rules, we are supposed to get any course registered within two weeks after the officially ending date of the course, but sometimes it can take up to months for it to actually happen and I did not have the luxury of time on my side. Still, by some small miracle or because I was constantly emailing the professors and staff, I got everything put together in time and as of Tuesday last week, I have officially been Bachelor of Arts in Asia Pacific Studies~!
Congratulations and presents are most graciously accepted, should anyone feel inclined. >D

Now, Bachelor's degree isn't that big of a deal, I know, especially not around here. On a personal level to me, it is somewhat of a big deal, though. For one, the subject I majored in is only available here up to Bachelor's, so whereas most people here continue without any notable difference from their Bachelor's studies to their Master's studies, I'm forced to change department, even if I go with the "normal" route and continue my studies come fall. Seeing how there will be a change regardless, I am actually hoping to make it into a much bigger one, but everything is still pretty much up in the air when it comes to more concrete plans. Hopefully I will find time to start putting time and energy into this soon or I'll run out of time all together and that would quite devastate me, since the hope of getting certain changes is what has helped me to push through so far.

The other reason getting my Bachelor's is a big deal for me is because that silly piece of paper is a concrete proof of something I have achieved. Sure, it's not exactly world altering achievement or even a very rare one, but I want to be proud of myself for having gotten this far. I mean, at the time I entered University, I could not even handle studying a book all the way through for an exam because of my stress issues. Even the fact that I was even able to study at all for an exam was a huge step from the breaking point during the last year of Middle School, which rendered me incapable of even really picking up the book for studying without triggering a fit of stressed out hysteria. So managing to not only get my degree in pretty much the average time on really good grades but to also get to the point where I could handle reading a book through as a preparation for an exam and writing a thesis doesn't seem too shabby to me. Yeah, there are people who have done tons more, certainly, but I figure it is better for me to try to focus on what I have achieved rather than what could had been achieved if this or that was different.

Besides school related matters, there have of course been several other things eating up my time as well. Right now though, I am off to the summer house for the first time this year, so further ramblings on these other issues shall happen another day.

Glada vappen to everyone who celebrates it~! (aka who are Finnish)
Me? No time for such silly things like national holidays! I have school work to do!
...
*crawls into a corner to weep*

Oh alright, so admittedly even if I wasn't up to my neck buried in deadlines, I wouldn't be out there partying. This is for several reasons, out of which the most pathetic one is that I don't really have any to party with. My idea of nice celebration is good food and maybe some anime or a movie, which doesn't go so well with the concept of going out to drink. I do actually really love dancing, but that's rather impossible to do without having to put up with being surrounded by drunk people, which just kind of kills the mood. I haven't gotten to properly dance since YaoiCon and that was in September! Most displeasing. Anyhow, to return to the the original topic: while I don't think most of my friends actually do go out to drink heavily or anything, but most of them do have a bit less, ah, socially challenged preferences when it comes to celebration. XD;;

( The Record of My Academic Progress aka What the H*ll I've Been up to )

Happy Easter~!
On this glorious day that the Christ overcame death, I have also returned back among the living! Admittedly my feat is slightly less impressive in scale, seeing how I only faced a cold, but it was an evil cold of DOOM and TORTURE, I'll have you know. Far worse than any cold I have had in years. Still, I am feeling quite a bit better by now, thanks to spending a whole week doing nothing while taking ridiculous amounts of medicines.

I'm not yet up to 100% health points, with stuffy nose and nasty cough slowing me down, but at least I 1)can sleep, 2)am not in constant pain and 3)am below max recommended doze with daily medicine intake. Well, ok, 3. is not *completely* true, since I still take double the maximum dosage, but that is with the blessing of a doctor. My pollen allergies are quite wicked during early spring.

Of course, having spend a week pretty much incapacitated, I am horrible behind in everything. On the bright side, part of this week has been Easter break from University, so I didn't miss that many classes. Unfortunately I had planned to use the break to catch up on all the essay and thesis writing that I have to do and that plan has been pretty much destroyed. *unhappy moan of suffering* Where on Earth am I supposed to find time for it all?! Adding it all up comes to roughly 50 pages~

To avoid dwelling in the stress of school work, I shall employ the ever clever tactic of "When in doubt, babble about anime"! Once the worst part of the sickness passed, which would be on the 5th day, I could switch horrible brain-numbing daytime TV to watching anime from computer. Admittedly I didn't get much watching done, since the chair isn't very comfortable for cuddling into a blanket. However, I was able to watch the first two episodes of the new Fullmetal Alchemist anime.
( I have OPINIONS! )

Can't really claim to have gotten better. Yesterday seemed rather promising; my fever going down, the aches giving up and so on. Coughing got worse, as did pain in throat, but you can't win them all, right? Unfortunately I'm not sure I won any in this deal.

I could barely get any sleep last night, because swallowing hurt almost unbearably much. I haven't done much better in the sleep front during today, either. By now the throat pain is kind of constant, though swallowing still manages to make the pain flare up with renewed vigour. Most of the muscles of my body are sore from the coughing I've been doing. And as an extra icing on the cake, the pollen season has begun bringing with it the delight of allergies. Not only am I in pain and aching, I also itch like crazy! The allergies are messing up my nose, the pain is messing up my throat and I keep running into moments when I don't know what way I'm supposed to breath. Nose bleeds and thus having blood dry up in there are not helping either.

... I've way over-dozed all the cold and anti-allergy medication I have gotten my hands on and there's still the world of constant pain! Why?! For the love of anything holy, can't I just pass some of this misery asleep?! I just want to sleep and wake up feeling better, can't I please have that?


The thing worse than being sick is being sick alone. As in, having no one to help you out. It's one of those aspects I always mildly tread when thinking about living alone. I guess I really shouldn't though, because if I was on my own, at least there would be no one snapping at me for "annoying mumbling" when I can't get any more voice out than that and no one getting annoyed at being asked to pick up medicine from the pharmacy for me when they are already going out.
... Makes me want to cry. Except I'd probably choke for real if I even dared to try. Not to mention that it'd just make my body hurt worse. Thanks a lot life, just what I needed and with *perfect* timing.

I have no idea how I've managed it, but somehow I have gotten sick.

This morning I woke up with a sore throat and feeling kind of under the weather. By now I have had to take two naps and two dozes of cold medication, but keep feeling progressively worse.

Everywhere hurts and aches: my head, my insides, my back. My throat feels like it is full of something unpleasant and way too thin for me to breathe properly through. My head aches and feels empty and full of cotton and heavy, all at the same time. Even my stomach hurts, as a protest to me daring to try to eat in an attempt to give myself some energy.

Cold doesn't usually come with stomach pain, let alone resistance against cold medication, damn it!

Fuckity fuck. I really do *not* have the time to be sick. *would bang head against table, but has no energy for that* Going to crawl to bed now and pray that I miraculously feel better tomorrow and thus avoid being utterly screwed over.

Over a month with no update? Whoups. *scratches back of the head*
Well, unlike what some people may have been hoping for, I have not yet managed to fall of the face of this Earth or anything similar. Of course, it is great consolation that apparently people don't really even notice should I decide to crawl under my desk to hide for several weeks. Always good to know one is not missed. *tragic sigh~*

Explanation to my absence? It's rather simple: busyBusyBUSY. That, and a trip to Japan. *hearts~* There is no way to properly cover all that has been going on, so I think a quick re-cap would be the way to go here:

School - I survived all the exams and actually managed to get everything besides my Bachelor's thesis done. I'd feel worse about the failure to meet that deadline, but only 2 out of 4 students turned in anything by that deadline and I actually had made progress with my thesis. Of course there is no rest for the wicked, so while I did survive the crazy load of stuff that I had to do, I still have even more to complete in pretty much exactly a month. x_X;;

Japan - With one word: AWESOME. Made me full of magical sparkles and floating hearts. The 10 days of fairytale magic included (but were not limited to) HaruComi, Otome Road, Swallowtail *the* butler cafe, Seraphim High School Bar, Akihabara, Tokyo International Anime Fair, Sunshine City Aquarium, Cherry blossoms at Ueno park, soft ice at Tokyo Tower, cakes, sushi, shabu-shabu, tempura, yakiniku, onigiri, yakisoba, crepes and lots of green tea. Hopefully I will be able to write more about the my amazing adventures in the land of amazingfull!

Other - Still no internet connection for me. It's tragic. Tragic and annoying. Also tragic and annoying, though in lesser degree, is that I seem to suffer from a bit of a jetlag since I tend to get utterly exhausted by 9pm. *yawn*

Apparently whining about how I was busy before somehow earned me some sort of cosmic punishment in the form of life dumbing even more stuff for me to do. Either that, or some higher forces are having a good laugh at my expense while making bets on how long until I snap. If anyone is in on that bet, I suggest placing your money on "pretty bloody soon", because with the slight fever & cold that I seem to be having, I suspect I will be collapsing in very near future.

Things To Do:
-Study Kanji; tonight, tomorrow and Wednesday
-Write a speech in Japanese; tonight and tomorrow
-Do the "extra" Japanese exercise; tonight and tomorrow
-Extra, but not voluntary, Japanese class on Wednesday morning
-Kanji exam on Thursday
-Web course exam on Friday
-Study for Swedish exam; Friday, Saturday and Sunday
-Swedish exam on Monday
-Read 2 or 3 more books for my Bachelor's thesis
-Write, and finish, my Bachelor's thesis; next week
-Study for Japanese Grammar Exam; next week
-Update CV; sometime this week
+... usual homework, classes and work project

Life has been quite extraordinary busy for me the last couple of weeks. I can't even really put my finger on what exactly has been the cause of this, so most likely it is due to a lot of things piling up all at once. The increase of stress has manifested in form of nightmares and anxiety dreams, which in turn make me really damn tired all the time and thus less efficient with what needs to be done.

The list of things that needed my time and attention is a combination of Japanese course work (including a paper), the work project, writing my Bachelor's, checking and double-checking my courses to make sure I am still on the path of getting my degree this spring, and trying to figure out options for the future. Most of these tasks have also been made more complicated, or even impossible, by the lack of my own computer, which continues to quite grate on my nerves.

Of course, eating away my time was also the task of preparing the house for house guests aka cleaning and re-organizing like crazy to have space for extra bed. Said house guests just arrived and will be staying over for this whole weekend, so it definitely looks like my busy days are far from over. No rest for the wicked, eh?

Today is quite possibly the end of the world as we know it.
Why?
Because the Japanese classes were cancelled today due to the teacher being sick!

Yes, with any other class this would be far from scandalous, it might even be seen as a normal procedure, but the Japanese class is *not* any other class! It does not get cancelled, ever. I tried to desperately think what kind of illness could be the cause and nothing short from something highly contagious and dangerous is an option. Mere cold or fever would not prompt cancellation, even the loss of voice has not been enough in the past, and we can rule out things such as broken limbs because there are wheelchairs etc. to get around that!

Another sign of the end of times being near might be that I have now officially passed the first phase of the Swedish required for University degree. I went to see the teacher yesterday and she went over the exam with me, which was mildly painful seeing how she kept asking me "Well, what's the right word for this?" and I had to bite my tongue to keep from replying that if I knew that, I would had written so in the exam. *shakes head*. Still, I was highly surprised by the amount of words that I had gotten correct, since I was sure half of them were utterly ridiculous and made up by yours truly. Funny how that goes, eh?

During the meeting with the teacher, I also discovered that there has been a slight, ah, miscommunication between us. What I thought I was doing is taking the exam for the first two credits and then going to a course for the remaining three credits. Apparently the teacher thought I was looking to self-study the whole 5 credits. *nervous laugh*. Naturally it is too late to set the situation straight aka I have already passed the first of the two things I need to do for the self-study, but it does not correlate with the courses so if I went to a course now, all the suffering for the exam would had been for nothing. Whoups? Basically this all means I'm kind of stuck doing the self-study option, which means I will have one more written exam and one spoken one. The written one will be making a 200 word summary in Swedish of some article that is in Finnish and spoken exam will be talking with the teacher, in Swedish. I guess that if I passed this first phase, I can get through those too, right? *scratches back of the neck*

Today I attended a seminar about contemporary China. While I have no particular passion towards China myself, I figured it might be a useful opportunity to get some information. A lot of people still see Asia, and especially East Asia, as more or less single entity. This leads to that there will likely be an assumption that I will know about China because I know about Japan. Thus, it can't hurt to try to learn at least some stuff. So, with this as my motivation, I dragged myself out of the bed at the ungodly hour of 6 am and dressed in nice semi-business like clothes and even did make up. I was somewhat worried of how I would stay awake for the 4 hours of presentations, but it all went quite well in the end. They offered us tea and coffee right of the bat and the space they had reserved was actually large enough to not run out of oxygen, which is sadly rare at Uni.

I've felt relatively good both yesterday and today. It might be the lack of horrible evil Japanese assignments for couple of more days, I think. Another thing I suspect to be part of the reason is that I've actually doodled some on both days. I can't claim I took time to draw, since yesterday I doodled during a class and today during the seminar, but it's still been rather nice. Even if yesterday was a bad art day, meaning that nothing turned out looking even half-way decent. Today was much better though and while none of it is high quality art, it's decent enough that I would be ok showing them to someone. Alas, still no webspace that would function for hot-linking, not to mention my sketches probably wouldn't be at all interesting for anyone. XD;;
Oh, and no, I was not slacking off by doodling, it generally helps me to focus on the listening the lecture, thank you very much. Unfortunately I can only do it during lectures that do not require insane amount of note taking, such as Japanese.

Still no working internet connection from my computer. *sigh*. Yesterday it worked for hour and a half before promptly dying on me. Again. I'm far from a happy trooper with this situation continuing to drag on until the unforeseeable future.

Time sure flies when you're too frikkin' busy to even properly sit down and relax, AUGH! *whimper*. Sure, admittedly not all of the things causing my life to be busy have been bad or unpleasant, but there has been more than enough of those too. Such as the, oh, closer to 3 hours I just spend agonizing over Japanese translation homework. So many words I didn't know, so many evil grammatical structures to hammer together~ *twirl of despair*

Yesterday, however, was on the side of less unpleasant things: the local comic book store *finally* gave me a chance to work there! I've been trying to hint in less than subtle ways for the past year that I sure would like to work for them and now they seem to be willing to at least have me help occasionally. Next weekend there is a one day con happening, so yesterday I was helping to organize and pack up the yaoi manga for that. That took 5 hours, minus some time for food. It was... just like working at a comic book store as I know it, both in good and in bad. Up and including socially awkward boss, subways for food and facing different standards & requirements for being a female. I know one of their male employee sometimes just doesn't show up for his shift, yet I get repeatedly reminded of having missed a single title while doing the new weird organizing this store insists on. *shakes head*
... Call me crazy, but it was really nice to work in a comic book store again. There's just something that's good for my soul in working with comics and manga, surrounded by said goods and toys.

Another thing more on the pleasant side of the scale was the invitation-only opening for this new Japanese art exhibit taking place on Wednesday evening. I was quite sincerely surprised by getting the invitation and I'm still not exactly sure where or why one was sent to me, but that's details~! Since the invitation was for two, rather than "with avec", I figured I should ask a friend to go with me. While trying to decide who to ask, I came to the rather alarming realization that while I have hard time getting a friend to come along for amusement park, there is no shortage of friends available for art exhibits. This might have something to do with the fat that most significant others of my friends are not into art exhibits, so there is no "boyfriend gets first pick" issue. Still, clearly I need more friends who are into amusement parks!

Anyhow, back to the issue of art exhibit opening! For an art show opening, it was quite disappointing in terms of refreshments; that is to say, there were none. They did however offer all kinds of performances. After the opening speeches they had a female quartet playing rather interesting instruments, including one playing a koto. It was quite interesting, though I think a bit shorter performance would had served the purpose better. After the music, an older lady, who was a Japanese calligraphy master, had a calligraphy performance. She made 4 pieces all together, with the first one being a huge one panning through the room while the other 3 were of normal size. Personally I found the calligraphy more interesting than the music, but this might had also been influenced by the fact that one did not have to stand in a stuffy over-packed room for it. What can I say, I am a creature of comfort at the heart.

Due to these performances and having to stop by occasionally to talk with familiar faces (Look ma', I'm trying that crazy networking thing!), I didn't have time to check out the actual art exhibit. *sweatdrop* Funny how that goes, huh? It just means I'll have to try to find time to go again for the actual art work. There are some ukiyo-e pieces and some modern art by Japanese female artists from different decades, both which from the glance I did manage to get, it seemed rather interesting.

I haven't really had time to do more work on my Bachelor's paper, which is a bit of an issue. There has been next deadline set in little over a week from here and I really need to get ton of stuff done by then. The final deadline has been set just before my trip to Japan, mEep~! It's rather scary having to actually *finish* the paper, because then that will be it, no more chances to adjust little here and improve a bit there and my perfectionist side is not ok with that! Especially since I found out that apparently 2 other people are working on making their Bachelor's papers on same/really similar topic, so I'm feeling somewhat competitive and have a need to make mine the best, which makes it even more difficult to let go of tweaking my work.

A project that I have gotten some work done on is the art & writing contest that I'm helping to organize. The deadline for the entries was on Friday and I was really worried up until the last minute that we would get no entries. Especially I was concerned with the art contest, since that was my responsibility. To my huge relief, I actually received an email from one of the schools I had tried to get to enter the contest letting me know that they indeed had decided to take part and asking if I could pick up the entries from their school. It's probably not a coincidence that the school was the one I used to go to when I was only widdle Wind, but hey, I was not above using that to coerce someone into participating. You'd think schools would be happy to have the kids draw something for art contests, but apparently not many of them feel like bothering. I feel somewhat bad for the kids, 'cause I know I loved entering art contests when I was young (and when I was older, but that is neither here or there). Especially contests with good prices and a decent shot at winning.

Tomorrow, I will have to go meet up with the Swedish teacher who made and checked the exam I took. *wince*. We'll "go over my exam together", whatever that will mean. I'm not looking forward to that, not one bit. The silver lining on this storm cloud of DOOM is that by doing this, I will actually pass the exam! Booyah~! *booty shaking dance*. Considering how horrible the exam was, I'm just quite relieved to be done and over with it. That is, assuming I *survive* tomorrow. x_X

Oh, and my internet connection is STILL not working. *annoyed~* In fact, the situation is getting worse! While a week ago there would still be couple of days when the connection would work for several hours, now even when the connection miraculously happens it will die in less than an hour. Not only does this really get in the way of relaxation activities, such as LJ or chatting or downloading & watching anime, but I also need internet connection to be able to email out school projects and to do my Japanese homework (hi thar kanji dictionaries~). There seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel, either. Waaah, it's downright cruel to deprive an internet addicted person like me of a functioning connection of my own~!

I tried to avoid LJ and internet in general for most parts these last few days. The reason behind such strange and uncharacteristic behavior? I had Swedish exam on Friday and I wanted to avoid using English to be avoid influence of the wrong language. Admittedly it was fairly easy to keep my time online to bare minimum seeing how my internet connection still isn't really up and functioning. I am currently on my computer, but this is the first time in almost a week that the connection has even worked out, let alone stayed up. *knocks on wood*. At least I managed to use this oppurtunity to download couple of the new anime releases~ Would be downright tragic to be deprived of anime altogether!

Anyway, back to the tale of pain and suffering! While I miraculously have managed to learn English to the point where I am quite fluent, languages have never been my strong suit and I'm currently having my hands more than full enough trying to struggle with Japanese, so I was hoping to get the Swedish done and over with. From what I had heard of the exam, it was more about the grammar and less about the vocabulary. This had me fairly optimistic that I stood a chance of, since while my vocabulary is dreadfully small and my brain incabable of remembering words of that language, I was able to cram the grammar rules into my head.

Sadly though, my sacrifice of internet time and efforts of studying for the exam were utterly wasted. For whatever reason, the exam this time was super short and consisted of only Finnish-to-Swedish translation. There were some full sentences to translate and then there were some single words to translate and the single words then needed to be used to make sentences. I had been expecting and hoping for grammar oriented exam and ended up with vocabulary oriented one. The best part? I have no clue where I supposedly could had studied up some of that vocabulary, because the listed/required reading for the exam was a grammar book! Hell, some of those words I don't even know in English because they were such freaky specialized academic words! T_T

So, how did I do? Well, I think I haven't made up that many whole new words in ages! ... Yeah, doesn't look too likely I passed, which sucks big time. I wanted to be done and over with this stupid oblicatory stuff so I could concentrate on the things I'm actually studying! Urgh.

It was quite the blessing that I had agreed to meet up with a friend afterwards, so I couldn't just spend the whole day moping. She had actually volunteered to celebrate my birthday with me on the actual day even, but since there was the exam of evilDOOM, I had figured I shouls study for it on my actual birthday and save the fun stuff for later. Blessed little good that ended up doing for me, huh? -_- Still, no matter, the late-birthday was really nice. ^_^

We watched anime while having sushi and cake, which totally is my idea of celebration, thank you very much. The sushi we got from a restaurant, since I would had been too hungry at that point of the day to actually wait while we cook properly, not to mention that sushi is the only real and proper birthday food. *nodnod*. Watched some Kuroshitsuji and then some Antique Bakery *while* having assortment of cakes. There's this convinience store/deli that I pass every day and they have always had really nice looking Cheese cake that I've been wanting to try, so I had gotten some of that and couple of others too. Mmmm~! There was also a small candle for me to blow out, provided by my friend~! And she even sang to me when I did blow it out. It was pretty silly, but really sweet. She really gave me a proper mini-birthday party~

Also on the watch list were Nabari no Ou and Boku no Pico. Yes, Pico. What kind of birthday of mine would it be without graphic shota pr0n, anyway~? >3 I know it wasn't exactly her cup of tea, but she is one of the extremely few people I could show something like that to. One has to be familiar with yaoi to understand to not take it too seriously. I mean, Boku no Pico is like the perfect epitome of the most generic shota story elements and cliches all wrapped in one and I find it really entertaining. However, to people unfamiliar with the genre many things in it would not go over too well. XD;;;

Seeing how this past week, especially the last couple of days, were all busy with studying, it is pretty much given that I would suddenly recieve numerous interesting things trying to tempt me and steal my attention. This includes last volume of After School Nightmare being released and my two doujinshi purchases arriving. Oooh, how hard it was to not abandon boring ol' grammar book and instead bask in the glory of pretty doujinshi or to find out the mysteries of one of the manga series I am most into at the moment! *wibbles* It took a great deal of self-control, but I did actually manage to only briefly pet the pretties rather than spend hours reading through them. Ah, sometimes I amaze even myself!
... Of course, this all means that today has been spend by reading the manga and checking out couple of the new doujinshi. Ranting and rambling of them is sure to come sooner rather than later~!

One week of the semester down, 13 more to go! Of course, there is almost 2 weeks of random breaks, so the overall time until the end of the school term is longer than that. I've decided that I prefer counting down the weeks though, since that somehow makes it feel like less of an endlessly long torture. I mean, I can survive 14 Japanese speaking classes, right? One is already done and one will be an exam, so it's really only 12 normal sessions. I can do it, I can! ... maybe. ;_;

Today marks the day of my charming presence having graced this Earth for 25 whole years. As I pretty much expected, it hasn't been exactly remarkable day in any way. Some people did remember (or I did better job reminding people this year? XD;;) and congratulated, which was very nice of them. And waterpuzzle_ drew me a lovely picture; thank you so much for it~! ^_^ The picture was definitely one of the highlights of the day~

Another plus side would had been the cake because I do love me cake. Except that the cake, which looked really yummy and chocolaty and full of delicious, wasn't actually that good. Why would anyone think peanut butter and no sugar in chocolate cake is good idea?! Boo! Fortunately, not all was lost because there was also some whipped-cream filled chocolate puffs.

I haven't really had time to work on my age crises, because there are some rather more pressing issues to stress over. Mainly the fact that I am so busy that my head spins! Not to mention that I have signed up to take a Swedish exam this upcoming Friday. Languages are *really* not my strong suit and Swedish words are something my brains have never really been able to wrap around, so I am more than mildly terrified. I've tried, and managed a bit, to read the grammar book, but my lack of vocabulary is painfully obvious even when confronted with the simple example sentences! Oh the woe~! I'm sure to I will be quite full of panic before Friday rolls around.

To fight the stress and to try to make today just a bit nicer for myself since hey, it's supposed to be my special day, I heated up the sauna for tonight. This clever tactic worked quite wonderfully, since I am currently just feeling really deeply cleansed and somewhat sleepy. I do so love the feeling one get from after sauna or good soak in hot spring or Japanese style bath. You just feel so soft and smooth and clean in a way no shower or normal bath can ever match up. Aaah~ *happy sigh* I really should take the time more often to use the sauna.

I was actually going to update here already yesterday, but my internet connection decided to fail me. It's been quite a while since the last time there has been this type of connection failure and I think this episode is quite probably thanks to the new router my father decided to randomly get on Friday. I know that with modern technology, one should be constantly updating everything, but it never really goes smoothly according to my experience, so I'm quite reluctant to switch a perfectly working system. If it's working, just leave it well alone! -_- Grrr. It doesn't help either that my connection is currently down *again*. It came to life for some time during today, but then it died again and I am stuck on the shared computer, which just feels kind of wrong with it's different keyboard and different screen settings and everything.

For me, my computer is rather personal thing. While I may have a bit of hate-love relationship with it at times, it's still *mine* and I don't want people messing around with it. This contributes to my dislike of issues arising, because they then lead to other people going onto my computer to try to fix it when they refuse to believe that I know and have already tried every trick they do. Last night, my dad tried to fix it, since he wanted to shared computer for himself, and it was all around unpleasant. Complaining about my room, complaining about my desk top, complaining about how I have organized my computer, and so on. Made me quite unhappy and I constantly felt the urge to tell him to just get away from my computer. Complaining about my room is enough of a personal insult, but doing so about my computer is crossing the line.

I know some women feel their purses are very personal and don't want other people going to their purse. For me, the personal item is definitely my computer. Hands off, no touchy, mine~! Permission to use may be granted to special people. >P

The Japanese course that I am convinsed is trying to kill me?
It's trying to kill me. And it hasn't even re-started yet! *curls into a ball and sobs~*

Today, I went to copy the materials for this period, since we are required to have the material and be pre-pared the minute the course does kick off again. Now, on avarage, we get roughly 90 pages of material to copy for each period and it's devided into 3 different sets, one set per each different type of lesson: grammar, speaking and listening&reading. I figured I'd copy two of those sets today, since my copy card had around 70 pages left. Oh how blissfully ignorant and wrong I was~!

All of those 70 pages were spend in copying just one of the sets, the grammar one. This is because on the top of the usual grammar explanation material and vocabulary, it had pages upon pages of extra exercises! About 6-8 pages worth per week! On top of the already far too time-consuming and insane amount of exercises that we have! That's more than doubling the grammar exercise amount and it's just fucking insane and evil and driving me into deep despair and depression. ぜつぼう~!!!

I have no idea how we supposedly have time to check those extra exercises, since we don't even have enough time to get us through checking the insane mountain of stuff that we have had to do weekly so far! I have even less of an idea how I'm supposed to survive this extra work, when I've been struggling this whole fall to try to hang on. There are only that many hours in the fucking day, I can't magically fit more stuff into that time than is possibly within the restrictions of reality! What the fuck am I supposed to do?! *bangs head against the nearest wall*

... The people I was with at the time when I found out this lovely addition remarked that they could actually *see* my stress levels rising. Good to know that the look of trapped terror actually shows, I guess. I keep going between just collapsing due to despair and the need to hurt someone (possibly me) because of this burning rage at the situation.

... oh, oh, I can almost smell that ulcer developing~! Let's see if that catches me before I have complite mental collapse!

I hope that the year 2009 has started in pleasant terms for everyone~!
In the honor of the new year, I am thinking about trying the "101 things in 1001 days" meme/challenge. I don't usually make any New Years resolutions, but maybe a list of goals for a longer period of time would work for me...? The problem is, I'm not sure I can come up with 101 things that I want to do and that are possibly within my powers. XD;;

Exactly two weeks from now, I will be officially quarter century old. Closer to being 50 than to the moment of my birth. Only half a decade away from 30. Everyone is more than welcome to remember me on such special day by fanfics or fanart, for example. Should some filthy rich most sweet and overly generous person wish to remember me by some material goods, my address will be revealed upon inquiry. *blows kisses~*
( Birthday Bemoaning )

On somewhat more pleasant topic, let there be fan rambling~!
The first volume of Code Geass: Suzaku of the Counterattack was published recently and I got my greedy little hands on it just couple of days ago. I'm quite enjoying it more than the default title of Geass manga.

For one, the differences in terms of the story are enough noteable from the anime to make it interesting and keep one from comparing it to the anime all the time. It would had been probably interesting enough to just follow the anime plot from Suzaku's point of view, but while many of the events of the beginning are similar, the plot takes a different course soon enough. I mean, for once, Suzaku's father issue is explained and portrayed in a way that makes sense! Plus replacing mecha with skin-thigh battle suit and mask creates quite a different world, even if it is admittedly carries the scent of gay and fanservice. Suzaku's ass sure gets a lot of attention, it does.

Another thing Suzaku of the Counterattack has over the default manga adaptation is the art. While the art still isn't stunning, it is much nicer to behold. Especially Suzaku and Lelouch look very pretty and have wonderfully expressive faces.

Speaking of Lelouch and Suzaku, I'm getting pretty convinced this indeed is the gay-est adaptation of the story, the anime possible excluded. The first volume is pretty much on the same levels as the first season of the anime had, having made certain scenes gayer while not having some of the lovely scenes the anime had. I find it endlessly amusing that Lelouch recognizes Suzaku as "Lancelot man" by having Suzaku on his hands and knees with his butt up in the air. >3 Ok, sure, one could argue he recognizes Suzaku because part of Suzaku's mask cracks away, but that simply means that Lelouch has an ear-fetish. People do not memorize the way someone's ear looks unless that's their kink and even then they probably are into the person whose ear they fancy.

Of course with Suzaku having been made into the main character, the "everyone wants Lelouch" vibes have changed to "many want Suzaku" vibes. Not only Lelouch and Nunnally, but interest is also expressed by the Euphie-replacement-girl, Orange and Schneizel. Lloyd might also fit into that list. It's kind of weird seeing Jeremiah and Schneizel give off the homolust vibes for Suzaku. o.O;;

One new manga, or actually manwah, title that I have picked up is Devil's Bride. I actually noticed a Finnish translation version of it at a kiosk not too long ago when I was killing time waiting for a bus. It's by the same author who did Boy Princess, which I ended up loving, so I wanted to check this new title out too. Since the Finnish version was translated from the English translation, I figured I'd rather get the English translation since texts don't tend to get more faithful to the original version to more they are translated.

The art is the same as with Boy Princess, so it is a little weird and kind of off at times, but it does grow on to you with time. With me, after all the volumes of Boy Princess, the art sits quite well. As for the story, I'm not comfortable giving any final verdict on, since Boy Princess started out with such typical and almost cliched yaoi plot but then evolved into this whole complicated web of power play and ambigious relationships. Devil's Bride starts off interestingly enough though and I'm really looking forward to the next volume, even if it is fairly obvious that this is a series with no happy endings in sight. It's sad, since the blond devil and his child bride were really adorable~!