Yourself?

Taking a break!

Haha yesterday was a really good day. I bought a PS2 finally, my first console ever, while I started a new RPG (The Legend Of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time) and listened to lots of music. There was this instance yesterday where I realized some TV programme started with this series of chords, and I could feel the music in my head, Like see it on the keyboard. But I've forgotten the chords to that. Oops. Haha it's a silly Kenneth thing. I'd make up a song and forget the melody afterwards. Or I'd write down the chords and forget the rhythm and how many bars to play each chord. But part of life is coming to terms with your own limitations and working around it isn't it?

Hmm yesterday was emo Thursday. Somehow I felt really accepted by others on wednesday, and it kinda carried over to Thursday which was a self declared break. After playing Zelda, the theme just stuck in my head and the entire plot of the story just came crashing down. The Legend of Zelda is this series in which a young boy named Link meets up with this prophetic princess, rescues her and saves the world. Part of the charm of playing this game is the feeling of being young again. I was reading these essays about Nintendo game creators, and the experience of the Zelda series was about his experiences as a youth, exploring a cave near his home with a torch. I haven't been in touch with those ideas in a while now, that of a young boy of 12, alone, brave, seeking adventure and a friend and saving the world. Perhaps my view of the world is shaped by one too many RPGs, one too many Japanese stories of adventuring and seeking the unknown. But what really made me very touched about the game was how they succeded in putting in all the idiosyncrasies of youth. You hold a wooden sword and a wooden shield. Climbing around a forst with faeries and elves. Sneaking around palace guards, climbing walls and keeping silent. Shooting at spiders with a catapult. My sister was watching me play, and at parts she was ordering my character around while I played, especially through the sneaking bits. And when I finally met the princess, it was just such a magical moment. I haven't been so touched in ages.

Sometimes I think the world I am in now takes itself too seriously. When did I lose my sense of adventure? My sense of adventure and that youthful desire to just surprise someone. When did we lose our sense of imagination?

I have weird taste in games, cos I bought the PS2 to play this violent heavy metal music based fighting game called Guilty Gear XX. What I love about it is the heavy metal background music, and the character design. I don't really want to describe it here, but it is really a blast to play. You can read about the various character designs on the web.

Fighting games is my new hobby. I'm starting to understand the passion people have for fighting games. It's really like chess, when you play with the right equipment and everything just works (i.e at an arcade) Playing with my younger brother now, and we're pretty much evenly matched. We play differently though. He's more offensive, and just rains attacks on me, while i look for openings, watching the screen for a particular animation frame and counterattacking. I lose more often than not though. I'm a bit over the hill for twitch games, and my brother's at his peak.

Medical school has been stressful. It's a strange feeling to be repeating the same lectures again, but I realize that last year I didn't really learn what was most important about the whole medical process. I found it really dreary to just keep memorizing and memorizing facts, which as you can see above, isn't really my strong point. Putting meaning to the facts that I am learning really helps, and so I'm going through all my notes again and making sense of the assorted facts and classifying them for better understanding. The human body is really well designed, and there are all these limitations that the body has found a way around. I'm really loving the biochemistry component this year, especially the textbook of Biochemistry by Devlin, but the profs are also great sources of information on the function of the parts. In the end, the human body is really just a machine, which doctors attempt to maintain its proper function at different levels (chemical level and physical level).

It's like a good story/bad story. I read a few segments of plays to my tutee on Thursday night, and part of his literature exam is on plays. Just reading out the plays with him was so much fun as we were really into it. Our voices took on different tones as we played different characters, and he picked up the cadence of the lines after I emphasized the rhythm during my parts. My tongue has slowed though, partially because I haven't been talking much with proper English pronunciation, partially because I haven't been reading aloud for quite some time. But they were really good plays, compared to some other plays I'm supposed to produce. I don't know if I've become too critical about plays, I realize I've watched a great number of production over the years and they've just become part of my theatre vocabulary. Really thankful to Geraldine for dragging me to these shows. Just reading a script allows me to see the action on stage, and it is so easy to draw sketches of the action.

Really regret not helping out in the hall plays and medicine plays taking place this year, but I'm not really ready for a directing or acting role. I think it takes a lot of time, time that I can't afford. Life is a bunch of choices, and I don't think I can sacrifice the amount of time and energy that some other director might be willing to sacrifice. Plus, I'm probably a bit too picky and crazy. Probably will drive the other creatives mad. I don't mind working alone though. Like if I only had an actor or actress and write a play I could film. And I'll do all of the directing and filming work and someone else will take up all the production details. Haha but that's just a dream yah. No one will take a silly chance on that.

Well so I've spent my anatomy time typing all this out, since people have wondered what has happened to me. :D good luck guys!

posted by Downhere. @ 8:59 am