Ywrighting: Misc

Showing posts with label Misc. Show all posts

The Basic

I turned around from the bar and caught a glimpse of you. You were sitting next to the captain beside the pool, your hair orange red under the sun. The two of you were talking in the wind. I could not make out a word but the waves that were racing the cruiser.

The deck was wet from the morning swimmer. I finished my drink and ordered two more, for you and the captain. I knew I shouldn't be drinking that early in the day, I had promised you, but I just couldn't watch the good wine turn to waste in those Russian's stomach.

On my left, your favorite cocktail, on my right, the captain's water. I tilted my sailor hat at the bartender and gave her a tip. She carried a smile with a mild dimple like you, very lovely.

I got up from my seat and straightened my back, but the world turned dark on me. I closed my eyes and tasted salt, but not the fruity flavors from the wine. Ah, I had been leaning on the marble bar table for coolness, and now my bone's stiff. I should blame myself for not putting down that book last night when you begged me to. How did I not understand your concern about me?

The polished wooden floor felt warm under my bare feet. I trod lightly on the wet surface, and walked briskly on the dry, alternating my pace. You are just the pool's width away, and I did not look at you but at the bodies of the swimmers. Among them were children of different ages, their skins still burning red from yesterday's sun. Floating in the pool, treading water beside them, were their parents, mostly womanly, or rather, motherly figures that had scored a balance between healthy and attractive. My eyes were on those, even though my mind was on you.

For whatever stupidity that was still haunting me from the shore, just as I was closing in, I almost flipped backward as I stepped on a toy, a yellow, plastic duck on the floor. I flapped my hands and regained balance, but the drinks took a beating. I could only tell that no one was watching, or even realize where the contents of my glasses had went. A small amount of colored liquid into a pool of water, no problem.

You smiled when you saw me. You introduced me to the captain and we shook hands. You told him to stay when he politely excused himself. I intervened and told you that the captain had works to do, and your lips were angry. The captain stepped forward and hugged you and kissed you on the hand and say his goodbye and went away. You didn't say goodbye. You were looking everywhere, including the back of the captain, but me.

I held your hand, and we went to the bow to reenact the scene of the Titanic.

Summer is My Business & Other Unrelated Stuff

Have you ever felt like the Winter's too long and the Summer's too short? Are you like me who hate the both the cold and the hot but enjoy the nature? And why is that?

Do we despise the four seasons from our own experience, or do we prejudice against them in flavor of the Autumn?

How could people not sweat in such a hot day under the direct sunlight? Look at me, I am already sweating. My forehead, my nose, the skins that wrapped around my mouth, my chest, my back, my feet, they are all wet and stuff. How could you not sweat? Why am I sweating so much? So much so, I did less but received more. If it was only true and applied to my whole life.

Don't tell me you don't hate Summer, that you embrace its heat and the clear blue sky, or enjoy bathing under its unforgiving and scorching light. I don't believe that to be true, and even if it is, I won't accept it.

Suppose there's a place with four seasons that's as pleasant as Autumn. Forever Autumn. Only the Autumn winds and rains and lights. Why is that Autumn is always associated with death, and that Summer and Spring are related to energetic, lively, birthing events? Autumn is a nice season, everyone knows that. The fact that some trees are dying at that season doesn't mean the road is going to end. There's always a new beginning after Winter as well.

It is unfair for Autumn to stuck between Winter and Spring. Autumn is a place to rest, to prepare, to welcome the next Spring and Summer. We can't keep going forever, nothing ever is. You will need to replenish your strength and stamina before giving whatever it is another go(al), be it life (or soccer). The sun will explode someday, the moon will eventually enter a collision course with our Earth. ~~And Aliens will finally visit us.~~

Maybe it's too easy to get lazy. We're the hyper sensitive generation now, everything is our responsibility, everything is our primary concern. The fact that we lack a mutual focus on one thing at a time, because we think we can multitask ~~and man this shit and that shit~~ is what an irresponsible approach to anything. We take it just serious enough to create chaos out of order.

We probably have a crave for everything, that's what we are and we can't dream of change it because we don't know what the side effect would be. But find a focus, something to devote your life, your time, your money, your love, your passion, your family, your body, your soul(s), your dogs, your cats, your eyes, your legs, and your breath into.

Yes. War is cruel. But it's when people were being honest about their intentions and personal objectives. I am not saying that the unstable situation the world is facing now should escalated into a full blown war, instead, I say we should look into what war taught us and apply it into something. Because war is about fighting, either an internal fight with yourself, or an external, International battle with others, it ought to have some kind of impact on everyone, dead or alive.

Enough blah blah blah.

Aliens are coming. The truth is out there. I wonder if there's a hidden message under that statement. It is true that the truth is out there. But if we look at it closely, take it into pieces, we will have something like this.

The - Truth - Is - Out - There

Does it mean anything to you? Anything at all? I can't help but joke. The Truth Is Out! There!

Maybe you have been looking at the wrong direction all along.

P.S.: If you are still wondering what this article is about, please DO NOT ask me. I personally vouch for myself that I am writing under naught influence but still came up with this (Well, Junk DNA is more useful that the rest of the DNA we know. So, yeah, who knows).

Birdy

It would be some days later when that car crash actually happen, but it had already happened though, I had seen it in my sleep.

I have this visions that allow me to peak at the future at night, during sleep. What triggers it, how exactly it works, when would the event take place, why do I see what I see, I don't know. I can't answer you. It is beyond my control. I'm just the receiver at the end. I can't communicate with the future, I can't decide what I see, I can't perform any decisive action, or alter the course of the future. Sometimes I couldn't even distinguish between dreams or visions if my dreams weren't ridiculously off the chart. But what I see in my vision, they are real, they happens. It has happened many times, and since I wasn't counting, I could not tell you the exact number. But it happened enough to convince myself that it is real, and that it wasn't my own perception or some twisted, false memories.

I always see just a few seconds of what would happen in the future. Sometimes I would be aware of myself, but I could not take control over my body in my vision, I could think, I could see what was around me through my own eyes in the future, but not perform any action that would happen. And when it actually happens, sometimes I would think what I was thinking in my vision, but other times I would think differently.

I tried to think about the causes of these vision. However I came up with none so far. If I could find out what really triggers it, maybe I could harness this kind of power, and see into the future. And maybe I would be living in the future as much as living in the presence when I lay asleep.

Would it be possible that I could find the answer to this question? Very unlikely, but don't give up hope I say, for hope has traveled far.

The future is rigged. That's all I could say for now.

House Moving--Done

I'm back. I have been slacking off again because, one, I was moving, and two, the World Cup (Go Netherlands/Germany, either team winning will satisfy my ego and desire and so many restless night).

Back to moving. So far as I remember, I have moved house four times. The first to the third times I couldn't recall being of any significant help. And by significant I mean that I didn't help moving large household utilities or furniture or any objects physically. I was weak then, okay?

The first time my family moved from our second floor apartment, an old two-story concrete building, to the seventh floor of my childhood memories, I was about six or seven or so. I didn't know how I got there. My mom said I had asked her repeatedly about where I was, and when could I go home, the home that we were moving away from. I have no memory of that, and of course I had little memory of my childhood as well.

Time passed, I was in my boyhood when we moved from a small, unimportant village in the Mainland to Hong Kong. We settled in a room no more that ten short steps that my grandfather rented. I think we hadn't brought anything with us except money and health. And I bet it was the easiest moving process anyone could imagine.

Then we moved again, when I was still a junior in secondary school. This time we moved to an apartment just next door. As you could probably imagine, we were living in a small room with a lot of scattered tiny clusters. Maybe I had helped in moving the computer, but other things, nah, I don't remember. For about six years I stayed there, but it was time to move again.

Only this time I have grown up, and our home have so many stuff collected over the years that I was busy organizing them into boxes for so many days. And then there was this harsh condition we had to comply--move everything away, which means we have to clear out everything. So besides moving, I was also dumping aging furniture to the landfill. They were all of second hand that my family received from some relative or found abandoned on the street. So throwing them away now didn't seem to be wasteful at all. We have prolonged their life as being useful.

Anyway, In about three days we have moved everything, fortunately the distance was just a street away and going down the slope, so the transporting by hand and carts was very smooth and relatively hassle-free. Even though there were times when I accidentally cut or injured myself unaware. The scars are still here, especially the one on my right wrist, which is very close to the spring of my life. Luckily it was a shallow cut and didn't slice through the soft tissue, or else I wouldn't be writing right now.

I just want to express my feeling about moving. It's a lot of work, work that would wear one down, and bring back buried memories. I have always been a guy who hates clusters, I don't need too many stuff in my life because I know I don't necessarily need them. Clothes, shoes, junk foods, electronics. Just simply ask yourself, what is enough?

We want things, I want things. But we are not restricted to ownership of things we don't have. Moving doesn't mean losing the past, or getting the future. Moving is more like controlling the present, and start living, adapting in a different environment, have a different perspective, a brand new view.

Now I have got a view of the trees and the buildings surrounding me, whereas before I had only the road and street and city's noise. I really should treasure the view I have now, because I still haven't glance away from where I am.

As with writing, I have been thinking, drafting ideas, nothing concrete yet. I have three unfinished long story and they desperately need rewriting and a stronger, more sensitive story, and relatable characters.

I find my writing different than what was in my brain. When I write, I can think and play the scene inside my head like a film, but when it comes out in word-form, it just changed. It offers none of the pleasure reading gave me, or the visual that exist in films. Maybe I focused too much on the environment, the description that I dismissed ideas and story development. Or maybe I relied too much on short, no-ending story practices, that I ignored the important aspect in writing.

Words matters. So long, battery is at 2%.

Water For Life

You Are Water

Formless

Shapeless

Tangible

You Are Life

Formless

Shapeless

Tangible

Beon

Beon [/'bē:än,ôn]

Verb

1. To be

My First Medium

Need For Weep

Jazz Appreciation

Remember that I've talked about studying a course on edX that's called Jazz Appreciation back in my monthly update? Well, it's finally come to the end of the course. And here is the certificate. It's also the first certificate I've received from edX since it's launch back in 2012.

So, I wonder how fast my hair will grow in a month. Camp NaNoWriMo is wearing me down, but I am not dead yet. pic.twitter.com/oNDRlUtfJF
— Stephen Y (@writeryuii) April 5, 2014

Hong Kong Rugby Sevens

It's been quite an extraordinary day at the field of Hong Kong Stadium, where teams from different continents gathered and played Rugby against each other.

While the weather has not been the perfect sunshine, with occasional heavy rain, but it seemed that the fans and the players had not been steamed-off by it. It was an all around hype, the never ceasing cheers and the fumbling turn over had everyone dazed.

I personally had never ever been to a Rugby match or played the sport, I vaguely recall watching it broadcasting live and on the news, but never really finished marvelling one match to the end. It was, to me, a sport that I didn't want to get to know about. But after seeing it today? Man, I could just tell you I'm hooked. All those physical play and running and pulling and tackling and jumping and bumping and fumbling and scratching and passing and sliding and kicking and spinning, just weren't getting enough.

I don't know why I haven't been watching it, but now that I knew half of the fun of the sport, there's no stopping me from getting into the game!

Well, what can I say, I'm easily attracted, equally distracted.

Have you seen the game in any form of media? What's the moment to you?

For me, it's the short span but high intensity gameplay, the seven minute of non-stop excitement and agony. But I saw that it's mostly dominated by a team, and the other team rarely had a chance to fight back and regain the position. Though when it happened, it was usually the moment when your heart started racing and the cheers from the crowd grew louder and louder. Though again, it usually went to a foul at the edge of the goal line, and shattered the hope entirely.

It's a brutal game, but the brutality is one of the major attraction. And it's a foreigner's game, based on what I could see on the spectator stands. But you know, it's an ever growing sport, maybe someday Hong Kong would get into the big league, like Japan did today, and play out well enough to attract the attention of the locals.

So, this happened. Don't worry, its not like I've cancer or anything, the hair'll grow back, people. It'll be back. pic.twitter.com/aJucwv7boz
— Stephen Y (@writeryuii) March 29, 2014

You Are Not Dizzy? How About Now?

A SQUASH'D Parkour POV

Camp NaNoWriMo is fast approaching, getting ready to type, and getting ready to blow your mind
— Stephen Y (@writeryuii) March 28, 2014

April marks the beginning the seventh month of my writing career, which is at a standstill. Well, not exactly. Even though no stories of mine had been published (it could take years, based on what I've seen or read about other writers, but it varies, so you'll never know). I've been trying my best to at least formulate a new idea everyday with no fore planning but instantaneous free form writing, all of which you can read here. More about what happened this month will be included in the Monthly post. I've also coming to notice how I write and what I write, and what I can do to improve it. But it's all too soon to even set the plan forth, I'll have to experiment with different styles and genres and voices, so as to find the perfect match to myself.

Anyway, Camp NaNoWriMo, as they branded it, is an escape to write wildly with a goal set by yourself. It sounds liberating at first, but not quite. For an writer barely starting out as myself, I still had no sense of scale, and don't even bother estimating how many words the writing would go (either too long or too short), so I decided to stick to the factory default, the golden 50,000 words. Be I an overachiever, or underachiever, I would be able to see how much I've improved since last November since my first took part in NaNoWriMo.

I mostly write stories without a general planning but a few essential core ideas in hearts, while as during NaNoWriMo, I tend to prepare myself in any extend as much as possible so as to anticipate the unforeseeable barriers and difficulties. And surely it worked very well, and I was able to write over 50,000 in only 14 days and nights. It was a selfless experience, of typing so many words in so little time, without minding the general context or the story or the flaws or the cliché.

I take NaNoWriMo as an escape to the greater good of writing, of being unconscious of my flaws and weakness and focused solely on my strengthen, in order to challenge my mind's durability on writing long prose.

And without winking, I signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo when the invitation email dropped by my Google Now.

A Walk

Today was a fine day, the sun was shining and the bird was tweeting their songs of nature, reminding me that we are still living alongside nature herself. And to access nature, the most convenient way is to the Hong Kong Park and the Botanic Garden, where a dozen flowers and animals were housed.

The day started late, and no until nine in the morning did the sun came through the cover of clouds. Ma and I took the tram, the cheap and obvious choice, to Admiralty. On the tram were people of different kind, and four of them were from German, or at least I thought I heard them spoke German (I heard them spoke of the word Wasser and Zeitung, which means water and newspaper in English, I know this because I'm currently learning German on Duolingo). It was a very interesting experience nonetheless, even though I couldn't understand their entire conversation.

Upon arrival at the entrance of Hong Kong Park, were flowers and an artificial waterfall. I always like that design, who thought of putting it there in the first place anyway, they are absolutely genius. And so we walked the park, revisited the ponds and saw turtles and fishes. We didn't pay much attention to them though for our true purpose there were to tour the bird house.

It's not exactly a house, but a space formed by a giant net in the sky (skynet if you will), and enclosed a space consisted of some dozen trees and streams and ponds and a constructed walkway. It's a fabulous experience to get so close with so many different birds, knowing they are around there somewhere and seeing them flying around and singing in their own tongue. Bird language is chic. Birds here were of different color and shades and sizes and sounds, but I could barely scratch my head around them so I could not give you a detailed description of them here. You must go there and see it for yourself, if you haven't already.

Later we went to the Botanic Garden and the Caged Animal Sector, and man did those mammals cry out loud. They were yelling in a sequence like an ambulance, I think they must have heard it and imitated it.

Well, it's dinner, so long.

Back and Home Again

I was away for a few days, as you might have probably noticed from the lack of new posts since last Thursday. I'd been sick though, on the third day, and had stayed for an extra day to recover (I'm still not cleared and am typing with dizziness).

But it was also during this downtime, without anymore audiobooks or podcast to listen to because I'd exhausted all of them on the road (which include the last few stories of Mirrorshades, dozen of Selected Shorts and some Nerdist and This American Life and Stuff You Should Know. I know I know, I've pretty eclectic taste), that I pondered the question about the stories that I'm working on (first drafts are above 10,000 words and 4,000 words)

I treasured these moments, of having nothing with me but myself. Where I could just drift off into my imaginations without focusing in anything in particular (daydreaming's the technical term). And I did too often went from one ideas into another totally different realm of space and time and place. I could not control myself, and the temptation of jumping around, fondling with ideas had me tipped over the original intention. It wasn't for nothing though, for I had found something, or I believe I had found something to contribute to my stories, to shape them into a constructed, fully realized body of works, while the draft remains a mental creation of my mind's free flow imagination and vivid visualization.

What can I say, I learned a lot from Selected Shorts, and I do find some of my weakness, or shady sides of my writing. I tend to write too long, longer than the writing should have. I don't blame them on my lack of vocabulary, but the fact that I don't have my own voice yet, a voice that I used to talk, to communicate. A crystal clear, defined vocal of my own is what I'm craving for. But I'm not good at conveying my ideas in speaking, I found myself more organized at words but still, the words of mine lack a certain kind of clarity, or depth.

I'm in touching with English merely on the literal term, on books and TV and Movie, but not as much as direct conversing with another flesh. I'm afraid, you know, afraid to say something wrong, of being stupid and stutter between words. It's a mental barrier to overcome, and it's one of those things that are easier said than done.

Well, it's been long, and I'm tired and dizzy, and that's my excuse. What's yours.

Total Overhaul

Just in the mood to something a normal tech-savvy person would do.

Revisited the good ole pale CSS and Google Font and ta-da, here we are, a new blogger design.

Well, technically it's just changes in here and there, most notably are the font and the color scheme.

For font, I used Muli as primary from Google Font, and Open Sans as fall-back. Most text should have a text-shadow of 1px and are either justified or center automatically. (Due to these changes, previous posts which are not written under the blogger's 'Normal' setting would remain the same, I'll make some time to alter them so as to retain the consistency by the magic of CSS!)

For colors, I opt for dim but soft, as you can see, soft gray and blue as background, while some dimmer blue for text.

P.S. I still hate the left side bar, it ruined everything.

24 Hours of Happy

24 Hours of Happiness on Youtube

24 Hours of Happiness on 24hoursofhappy.com/

Happy is simple.
Dance along, stranger.
May you find happiness from 24 hours of music.

Terrible

It has to come to this.

The owner of our flat's kicking us out, so that they could renovate the unit and rent it out for more money(they did the same things with two of their units just next to ours). The contract ends 15, June, about 3 months from now. But, I can't blame anyone but money itself, and it's kind of a problem for everything nowadays.

Mom said there's a place up on the 10th floor, maybe we could stay their until the public housing offer comes through. But I don't expect it to be cheap or affordable. I might have to get a job so as to keep up with the rent.

But the good thing is that we won't be living with other tenants anymore as we have decided. Ah, it will be great. I mean, living with other people is not bad if they were good, decent people(I'm implying that those who lived with us are not).

The whole thing is just, maddening, saddening. Frustration kicks in and I can do nothing about it. I'm just glad that I can keeping shouting and cursing and swearing, cuz who's there to stop me from venting out my anger when it's a terrible news to anyone.

It's not that I like where I'm living, It's just that I don't want to see my parents and sister work harder than they should be just to keep a shelter. Nobody should struggle with living like this, but there're just so many factors that things could go wrong. How glad I'm there's still a place for us to stay.

Indeed, it's not thanksgiving, but don't stop giving what mean to be given. And start asking, what's next?

I could go work for anyone or anything but McDonald's, that's for sure.

Hulu Movie Night: The Usual Suspects (1995)

Saw that it has maintained a high rating on IMDB, maybe worth a while, looks cool.

Watch now on Hulu for free (Expire 11 March)

News Flash!

Breaking news! Or not so breaking after all.

A flight went missing and people are worried.

The Internet broke the news even further with almost no delay, though the details are often vague or fake.

What a news flash means to people nowadays? Do we really care about it? Oh yeah, we care, we care how much we know about the thing so that we can talk about it.

Two weeks later. Blank, nothing, never heard of that.

In a way, breaking news is breaking the traditional delay, a time and space for accepting the unexpected, a time to drown the pain and kill the tears.

What's good about news flash is that people cares, they cares too freaking much that even though they have tons of work to do, they would pray for the misfortune, they would help spread the words out, and deliver a clear message to the world that they care.

I don't care what you cared about, it's creating a sort of panic, totally unnecessary panic, irrelevant panic that stressed everyone. Making it not normal to not care, making it personal even though it's just an virus of mind.

News Flash: So, what do you care?

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