Lately I’ve been thinking about this blog. Sometimes I question and wonder why I even blog. Often I ask myself who my target audience are. Then I start self-doubting myself on my own blogging and writing ability.

This is not existential angst, people. This is what I call “blogential angst”.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been blogging since 2000. A decade has passed and personal blogs have really come a long way since. I’m not saying I’m an expert of blogs or anything, but I can say I am one of those “ancient” bloggers from the past. Well, that’s what I feel like, anyway. I just feel immensely old compared to all the younger bloggers on the Internet.

Anyway, let’s go back to my list of “blogential pondering” at the beginning.

I question and wonder why I even blog.

Why do I blog? I’ve always said I blogged because it’s a way to document “interesting” happenings in my life since I’ve moved away from paper journals. Yet how interesting is my life to document? I know I wouldn’t want to read about my daily routine on a regular basis. How many of those “I woke up, ate, went to work, came home, and wasted my time on Wikipedia” entries can I write before I sound repetitive and unoriginal? One of those is about all I can stand when I read blogs, so I don’t expect others to want to read my mundane life story every day. But I still blog the more unusual events in my life, and whenever I go back to re-read the entries, I find them to be quite helpful. I also wince when I read my earlier entries because I find myself wishing I’d been a bit more mature back then . . . but that’s a different story all together. Continue reading this entry »

Way back in May, I had read and written a review on Standish by Erastes. I was reminded that I needed to read Clippings by A.J. Mirag — a book that’s been on my to-read list for almost a year! I ended up buying the eBook from Lulu, because they accepted PayPal, and once I started reading, I was hooked and read the short novella for the next three hours. Now, I present you my spoiler-free review!

The Book’s Synopsis
From the author’s website.

Unfairly arrested and charged with the murder of a police officer, Daniel has been jailed indefinitely until trial. A Brazilian prison is a terrible place to lose his innocence. Daniel would have lost more than that — perhaps even his life — if not for Mephisto, his cellmate.

Clippings is the story of the challenges faced by a middle class young man in prison, and his relationship with a dark, mysterious man who seems eager to protect him, but who might have his own inscrutable plans . . .

Again, like with Standish, I wasn’t particularly drawn in by its summary, but I’m glad I took the plunge to read it — with a nudge from the reviews on the Internet!

Continue reading this entry »

With NaNoWriMo going on this month, I’ve been seeing a bunch of blog/LJ/whatever entries about individual’s experiences of such thing. I have yet to participate in it because I kind of don’t like the pressure of churning out 50,000 words in 30 days and because I’m always writing for a holiday fic exchange around this time of year. I actually finished the holiday fic earlier than anticipated, but I still didn’t want to participate in NaNoWriMo. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t write something else at my own pace! In fact, lately I’ve been putting Portie the netbook to a good use by going to Hell(o) Beans in Itaewon, my favourite coffee shop in Seoul. With Portie and one of my favourite drinks, I can stay there for hours as I surf the net (yay for Wi-Fi!) and write fics.

Stephanie at Lunsh wrote an entry asking why we write. That simple question actually stumped me. Why do I write? I mean the simplest answer to that question is that I enjoy it, but after reading her entry, I actually started to think about why I enjoy it.

That made me think about myself as a child and how a simple childhood enjoyment turned into something I still enjoy as an adult. I mentioned before that I grew up as an only child and how I had to learn to entertain by myself. Well, the easiest way was to read, and around third grade, I was introduced to the genius of Roald Dahl by my favourite elementary school teacher. She read us Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in class, and that became a major turning point for me as I discovered the joy of books. I devoured whatever I read, which in turn developed my skimming skills.

While I expanded my imagination, I never quite got into writing very much. However, that changed after I read The Diary of Anne Frank in fifth grade, which left an impact on me in so many ways that it’s not even funny. From there, I became an aficionado of the Holocaust, and I started to keep a diary. They were terribly written, mind you, nowhere near the standard of Anne’s, but I started to write these pre-pubescent diaries. Then in middle school, I tried to write a fantasy novel using the Megamorphs (aka Animorphs series by K.A.A. Applegate) technique of writing a chapter from a different character’s POV. Again, that was a mess of a story, and I am ashamed to think it was the best thing I had written. My writing skills disgusted me back then.

As I grew older and immersed myself into different hobbies such as animes, video games, and the big Internet, I discovered fanfictions. Oh. Man. That opened up a new can of worms right there. I became addicted to reading these stories written for fans by fans, and I decided to slowly try to write my own. The ones I wrote in my sophomore year make me cringe when I look at them, making me wonder why I was so stubborn to not have people proofread them for me. Luckily, I joined the Harry Potter fandom, and that influenced me to write and use beta readers!

Seven years later, I’m still in the Harry Potter fandom, I still write fanfics in this fandom, and I still read in this fandom. Being in fandom (and studying English literature in college) has given me so much — friends, writing experience, and most of all, learning experience. I’ve learned how different it is to write as a blogger, as a fanfic writer, and as an essay writer who learned to BS through the words. I love expressing myself through words, which has always been much easier for me to do than being verbal. When I write, I try to act out as that person, even if my acting skills are quite lacking. I use writing as a way to distract myself from whatever is bothering me. Simply put, I write because I enjoy it. That should be a good enough reason. Sometimes we don’t need to have a good reason to do anything as long as it makes us happy, and that, my friends, is why I write.

What do typing, playing piano, and playing video games all have in common? Buttons, buttons, buttons! Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to announce a new and unusual pseudo-disease and mental illness called Chronic Buttonitis. I’ve self-diagnosed this particular problem on myself, and here are the medical reports.

Symptoms
A person who has the extreme tendencies of wanting to push anything that is button-like, even more so when there’s a reaction that follows the action.

First Diagnosis
Age: Four or five years of age.
Setting: Daddy’s office.
Why: Daddy needed to his daughter be distracted while he did something work-like.
Solution: Daddy set his daughter in front of an old computer that displayed in two colours — typical of old DOS computers — and he let his daughter type away on the keyboard, who watched in fascination at the nonsensical letters that popped up on the screen.

Second Diagnosis
Age: Five or six years of age.
Setting: Bowling Alley arcade game area.
Why: Daddy’s daughter was bored.
Solution: Daddy gave quarters to the bored daughter and let her play old arcade games like Pac-Man and pinball machines. Daughter fell in love with video games after that and became an expert at button mashing — which led to crappy game playing skills in the future.

Third Diagnosis
Age: Six years of age.
Setting: Piano school.
Why: Mother wanted her daughter to be like every other Korean child.
Solution: Mother sent her daughter to piano school, and the daughter began to push down the keys and learn Do-Re-Mi. She didn’t really learn much at that age, but she tried piano school again in sixth grade and learned repetitive piano exercises.

Conclusion
Daughter grew up to be very obsessed with buttons

// End medical report.

Bottom line, I like pushing buttons. Any time I go into an elevator with someone, I usually want to push the button. Any time I pass by a piano, I am sorely tempted to push the keys to make harmonious sounds. Any time I am playing video games or I am typing on a keyboard, I am happily pressing down a key or button! Call me strange, call me unusual, but that’s me! Ever since I was a kid, I always liked to push stuff with my fingers. I guess I like the feeling of being in control.

Oh and one place you should never take me to? A toy store. See that toy cash register? Having those near me is quite a dangerous situation. Whenever I see a toy like that or a toy that makes noise . . . I’ll push it, especially if it says “Try Me”. It tempted me, so I will push it!

Anybody else has a weird trait like this embedded in them? Just wondering because I find this trait of mine to be rather fascinating. It’s strange how a lot of my favourite hobbies are tied into this strange habit! I wonder if I should just call this a Button Fetish? It probably makes more sense . . . but I don’t derive any sexual pleasure from pushing buttons, so probably not. Ahahahaha!

Yesterday, there was an unexpected (for me) family gathering to celebrate my mum’s birthday. I have nothing against my relatives — I just hate being around them in large numbers. Fortunately, they wanted to go eat seafood, which gave me and Daddy an excuse to not go since we are picky or allergic to certain seafood. Several hours later, two of my cousin and a cousin-in-law came over to my house to drop off some gifts — grapes and a wallet.

Just as I was trying to figure out how to entertain these cousins, the phone rings and I’m told to come down with the cousins to go climb up the mountain to reach Namsan Tower. Against my better judgement, I somehow got conned into that, and next thing I know I climbed up the damn mountain and got a good workout. Oh and I discovered Tim Tams were being sold in the stores there. Very strange location to sell them. After that, we went back down by the evil, evil, evil cable car of doom, where I felt suffocated. Not a good feeling for a semi-claustrophobic victim like me. Now, I’m home, and I had an interesting conversation with my mummy.

My cousin, “Ann”, who’s three years younger than me, is the first of us cousins of this “generation” to get married. I have three older cousins who were born in the 70s. Then there are four of us who are the 80s babies. Then there are two cousins born in the 90s. Ann is the first of us 80s babies to get married. I sort of tried to converse with her husband-to-be (who I claimed looked a lot like Bak Ji-Sung) and her about their upcoming marriage. They are getting married next month, and when I asked how long they have known each other, they gave me a rather sketchy avoid-the-question answer. Not sure why until I talked with my mum.

It’s strange. When I found out today that Ann was getting married, I felt unsettled by that announcement. I wouldn’t say I felt jealous of her, but more like I was jealous of the fact that she was getting married before me. However, I found out from Mum some interesting things.

1) Apparently Ann and Bak dude really haven’t known or dated each other that long. Maybe six months at the most.

2) She’s already three months pregnant, and because of the pregnancy, that’s why she’s getting married so fast.

3) Because of these two situation, my gut instincts tell me the marriage will not last that long. Meaning if it lasts long, kudos. If not, I wouldn’t be surprised.

With that said, I am no longer feeling that jealousness towards her. In fact, I honestly would not want to be in her shoes. When I was her age at 21, I had no feelings of marriage or of becoming a mother. The only thing I cared about at 21 was to finish my damn college degree, procrastinate on the computer, play my games, read my mangas and books, watch movies and animes, and hang out with my friends. I don’t mean to criticise her, but I don’t see why she’d want to give up the single lifestyle so soon. Plus becoming a mother already? Uh, no. Where were those condoms or morning after pills?!

Here I am at the age of 24, and I have no desire to get married or have my own spawns of devil. Then there’s Ann going for just the lifestyle I do not want. I do wish her luck, though. Her getting into this situation at least showed me one thing! One great thing actually! I don’t have to worry about my mother plodding me to get married like her. My mum was actually in an agreement with all the comments I made. She told me to wait until I find a man who truly loves me and then marry him. She told me don’t just marry the first guy who shows interest in me. Thanks, Mum! Your advices are duly noted and duly accepted!