Monday 22 December 2008

Bah Humbug.

Sooo... I'm going to college! Whee. Ugh. 1 1/2 years of purgatory, I'm expecting (and if this is a-level, imagine what my degree course will be like). At KDU, because I have both employee sibling and former student sibling discount! yay! and will also be getting whatever fee waiver based on actual SPM results. Double yay!

Kind of looking forward to it, actually. If only out of curiosity.

Good news is, my throat hurts marginally less. May be able to swim tomorrow.

New motto: I will be svelte!

(In my dreams)

Still reading American Gods.

had a fantastic dream, can't remember it now.

Friday 19 December 2008

Carried forward from the previous post because it was too damn long already: A view of Steampunk.


Steampunk, if you don't know, is a kind of Victorian era science fiction. And I've recently fallen in love with it. Instead of having technology hidden away behind sleek interiors, the mechanics of technology, the whirrings and clickings of the innnards and gears, are allowed and encouraged to be displayed. It's about the intricacies of technology, you know, the delicate bits and pieces that is the makeup, the base of technology, and it heralds the unheralded, and all the mechanics, all the blood and sweat and tears and oil and coal and steam that goes into building something is seen.

And it's a lot more human, less detached from the common view of scifi, with all its workings hidden and known only to a select few who speak the jargon. It's not actually any less complicated, steampunk machinery, if anything, it's more, becuase you have to account for the decorative as well as practical usage. It enables you to see what's going on, in the machines of grandoise designs, and there's a lot of DIY as well, with people builing steampunk versions of handphones and laptops and ipods. Granted, a lot of those modifications are purely cosmetic, but the love for detail is there. Steampunk doesn't simplify, the way modern technology seems to do with everything nowadays, you know, everything is sleeker, smoother, shinier, and phones are marketed by their thinness; "The Samsung Gold 3000 is so thin when you turn it on it's side, it disappears!".

To me, steampunk brings beauty back into technology. Because mechanical beauty is really on the inside. Have you even seen the inside of a CPU and not felt impressed? And think of the car enthusiasts who open the hood of their rides to show the heart and soul of their babies. Surely technology doesn't have to be so sterilised, so mundane. If we opened our computers and handphones and cameras and ipods (actually, not so much the ipods, I opened mine, there's a battery and a harddisk and assorted wires, not very exciting at all), what wonders would we see?
(Disclaimer: Dee does not recommend opening expensive tech without professional help and claims poetic license)

The traditional view of steampunk is usually brass and copper and gears and clockwork. All very earthy and close to nature. Because steampunk encourages you to get in there and get your hands dirty, not only with mechanical things, but also with clothes, you know. Oh, and I love the clothes as well, top hats! and waistcoats! and brass goggles! and long bustle skirts! Fantastic! There's a very DIY attitude to all things steampunk, partly because they're not excatly available at your local hypermarket, but mostly, I like to think, because half the fun is in making your own things, and the pride you feel in wearing hand remade clothes and using hand modified tech.

I would like to say I am a fully active member of the steampunk community, but I'm not. I don't have the panache, sartorial daring or mechanical ability. Still, a girl can dream.

I'm off to bake muffins.

Edit: Okay, the muffins turned out shit. I hate Nigella.

Book Report: Perdido Street Station (China MiƩville)

It's 5:42 AM, according to the computer clock, and I've just finished PSS (and starting on American Gods).

PSS was brilliant. It's set in New Crobuzon, this great big city-state of steam-industry and grime and fantastic alienesque races.

Quick summary of plot: In the winding streets of the sprawling city of New Crobuzon, a human scientist, Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, accidentally releases a monster that feeds on dreams and sentience: a slake-moth. This singular runt goes on to release its brothersisters (they're hermaphrodites) from captivity in the bowels of the Spike (I think, details all fuzzy now), and the five of them create havoc, as you can imagine, within New Crobuzon. They feed by sucking out the consciousness of all sapient beings, leaving a drooling, unresponsive shell, that cannot be revived. As dangerous as the slake-moths are, they are valuable. Motley, the ganglord of the city, wants them for the production of dreamshit, a hallucinogenic drug that allows the user to dream the dreams of others. The government wants them for... eh, come to think of it, I'm not entirely sure why they're so wanted by the government. Possibly a case of "I want mine back!". Oh, and research, also. Isaac is helped by Derkhan Blueday, a journalist for a renegade, anti-government newsletter, Yagharek, a wingless garuda (great flying bird-man; natural habitat desert; came to Isaac to ask for help with flight), Lemuel Pigeon, a criminal with many contacts (originally hired by Isaac to procure materials for research into flight), and, umm a construct (or robot) with Constructed Intelligence. Which means it's sentient. Or capable of independant thought, if you like. Also, Isaac's lover, Lin, a khepri (which looks like a human woman from the neck down, only with red skin; and an insectoid head) is kind of working for Motley, which rather complicates things.

That wasn't a quick summary at all. And I think I've given some plot away. Oops.

Anyway, reading PSS was... um, I don't want to say torturous, but like torturous, only a lot less. Frankly it was mostly because of me. You see, MiƩville likes to use words that escape a 17-year-old's (Malaysian) understanding, like vertiginous (characterized by or suffering from vertigo or dizziness) or etiolated (to make pale; to deprive of natural vigor), and usually when I face those kind of words I just ignore them, 'cause I figure I'll suss out the general meaning of the word from the surrounding, less challenging words, but I literally had to stop every five pages or so to write down an unfamiliar word so I could look it up. Have you any idea how annoying that is? To have to stop midflow in this twisty plot with all the descriptions to note down one word then stress about it for five seconds before being sucked back into the twisty plot so I can find out who gets killed and who doesn't?

And the descriptions, also. So many descriptions! I have issues with descriptions. I tend to gloss over them, which is why I do better with stories like They're Made Out Of Meat (Terry Bison). I suspect it's my obvious lack of fluency in language that stops me from visualising anything. Actually, if I do concentrate and go very very slowly, line by line, I can usually make something out. But I couldn't be bothered this time, because of the twisty plot! Damn you, twisty plot!

Griping aside, it is a great book. I loved the ideas in it. I'm now morbidly fascinated by the Remade. Remade are people who have been sent to the punishment factories to be, literally, remade into something else by adding, replacing, or removing parts of their anatomy. No overcrowded prisons in New Crobuzon. At the discretion of a magistrate, a person can be sentenced to, oh, having legs replaced by steam engines or insect legs, arms replaced by mantis claws, mouths smoothed over with a piece of flesh (the Remade in question ended up cutting himself a new mouth. Yech). One example in particular scared the hell out of me. A woman arrested for infanticide (by accident, she didn't mean to kill the baby, it was hers for heaven's sake) was sentenced to having her baby's arms grafted to her face so she could remember what she had done, while all the while she's going half mad in grief and disbelief.

New Crobuzon is a cruel, cruel place.

And it is, you know, its gritty and dirty and real, somehow. Which may explain my recent love for steampunk.

Oh and Perdido Street Station is the heart of the city, more or less. The railway and skyway lines fan out from the station, and the action eventually ends up there. Although it turns out to be a bit of a Macguffin.

Okay, okay, I'll have to stop before I give the whole thing away. Go read it! Beg borrow, or steal.

Thursday 18 December 2008

Now, the future!

College intakes start in january, which only serves to elicit a "fuck, what now?" from me. I really only have 3 options: Taylor's, KDU, HELP, in that order (A levels, you see).

I am still so much in a lazing mood. Pah. This is NOT good. I should be getting on with my education and everything, but meh.

Okay this is not going well. May resume some other time. Also, I need to find that icing book with the yule log recipe, which seems to have run off. Double pah.


Also, if Dylan Moran is right, and we should judge how much fun we had on a night out by how much it fucks us up, then with my odd new 3am to 3pm sleep schedule, prom was pretty rockin'.

Monday 15 December 2008

Two days later,

Prom was fun! Danced so hard my shoes came off. Walked so far I got blisters. Ow. Worth it though. Now that damn "ayer" song is STUCK in my head. And now I realize why people like those songs.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. There was plenty high drama before prom. I'll just draft out a chronology.

1 to 2.30 pm
Went to the salon to do my hair, pretty uneventful, but ended up with mildly cliched hair. Very pageant-queen-cinderella look, because of the mad dramatic curls. But the lady suggested those cause prom was gonna be in the evening, and she assured me that they'd settle and look more natural by 7, which they did. Sort of.

2.30 to 4.45
watched tv and whatnot

4.45
Slipped into dress, contemplated ginormous palette of makeup warily, heaved a deep breath, got into it.

about 5.00
mum enters, suggests pantyhose (err...), but it has a run in it, so no go.

5.25
Frantically stuff things into infinitesimally minuscule clutch. I wish I has a TARDIS clutch. Someone should invent one.

5.30
coke arrives with ride! Jodie says I look nice (thanks!), coke contemplates his ever increasing age and the rapidity of my growing up ("It seems like just yesterday I was feeding her tomyam in the cot...")

6.00
Arrive in KL. But then...
HOLY FUCKAMOLY and CRAP ON A STICK.
I've forgotten my prom ticket.
desperate call to neal to get violet's number, then desperate call to violet.

"Hello, violet?"
"Yes?"
"This is di-anne."
"Di-anne?"
Awkward pause while she tries to remember who the hell I am.
Vague recollection.
"Oh...right, di-anne"
"Um. I've forgotten my prom ticket, so is it okay if I just turn up?"
"Ah... you'll have to pay 50 bucks [WHAT the FUCK]. Our policy is: no ticket, no entry."
"Okay, thank you [fucking HELL]."

No WAY in hell am I paying FIFTY RINGGIT. I have paid A HUNDRED AND FUCKING FIFTY for the damn ticket already, so piss off.
Dithering in the car to decide whether we turn around.
Not a good idea because KL is now jammed up tighter than a double sealed pneumatic safe.

6.20
Then...aha!
Frantic call to Haq (whose prom, mercifully, is on the same day as mine)

"Hello, err.. how far is your hotel from mine again?"
"Em. Walking distance. Why?"
"Right, this is the problem: I've forgotten my ticket, and I'm not gonna be allowed in unless I pay up, so can you please, please swing by my house to grab it, then I'll rendezvous with you somewhere to get it?"
"Eh... sure. Is your house open?"
"My parents are home, I'm calling them now."
" 'Kay."

[Meanwhile, coke & co. are marvelling at my "liaising" prowess]

6.30
Frantic call to mum.

"Go to my room, the blue cupboard [actually it was a shelf, but I was too frazzled to think of the word at the time], there's a styrofoam box, there's a black ticket in it, get it, and wait, Haq's coming over to get it."

I can tell this is going to take a while if I give a blow by blow description, so long story short, we went to pavilion, to some green tea shop (macha? ocha?), got drinks, went back downstairs to the entrance, w...a...i...t...e...d, jodie & david had to go off for the movie ( The Day The Earth Stood Still, which started at 7 ), waited somemore, then, outside Coach:

7.25
"Thank FUCK you're here!"

A few hasty compliments later, Haq heads off to Grand Millennium, and I, accompanied by coke, walk to Prince.

Oh, and by the way, I was in three-and-a-half inch pumps that night.

Whew!

I got jettisoned to a table with people I hardly knew cause I was late :(. But midway through, I realized Albert's table had 2 empty seats, so I moved over. Has a very nice time with Albert. Was walking around throughout the entire dinner as well.

Took pictures, which I will NOT upload because I look constipated in all of them. The camera quite obviously has issues with me.

Dance-dance-danced the night away.
First sweet if slightly awkward slow dance with Alberto.
After that, it was a free for all. Fun!

Met Coke & co at Starbucks, reached home at bout 2.30. Bathed, waited for hair to dry, stumbled into bed. Slept til 3pm, sleep schedule hasn't been the same since.

All in all, a pretty good night :)