Whirlwind Rollercoaster
What a lot of time has passed since the last time I typed anything here! It speaks volumes about how dreadfully I tend to neglect my own need to record things in case they disappear off into the vague recesses of my memory, and in fact I wonder whether it's at all possible for me to record everything quite as fully as it would need to be, if it is to jog my memory at all in the future--at least, whether it's possible to do so without causing this particular post to cover about half the entire page; then again, at the speed at which I read, it shouldn't be too tough to read through anyway.
So, let's see. What has happened in the past 15 days that I've forgotten to record here? It's a mercy that I've got photos, though my method of separating them into various folders based on theme means that it's quite difficult to find out anything in any particular order: much like my own memory, really. I can probably list a lot of things that I know happened, but the order in which they happened is likely to get quite horribly messed up... but let's see what the photos tell me.
Well, for one thing, Gobbler arrived the day after my last post, on a night flight; my parents seem to enjoy sending the children on flights that require us to remain awake into the wee hours while catching bits of sleep on the plane, on the premise that when we arrive, the day is just starting and so our visiting time is increased by that little more time. My parents didn't go to the airport to fetch him, rather letting myself and the two kid siblings go; the advantage of working in a moderately prestigious company here is that the company car (and accompanying driver) are most obliging even on personal desires, and it's a pretty large car too: a 7-seater, I think, which isn't quite luxurious but serves its purpose satisfactorily. We left the house, travelled there, and as my photos attest, we passed several rather interesting vehicles that my camera responded too slowly to to take a good shot; I have now several blurry images that memory says were interesting at the time. The trouble with my camera is that it works very poorly in bad light, and good light is rare enough that many of my photos rather resemble a work of abstract art.
In any case the airport was rather empty when we arrived, apart from the usual assemblage of people awaiting other people; I amused myself taking photos of the surrounding area, including noticeboards, trashcans with particularly reflective lids, bystanders, and airport security. The two younger siblings stood around with their iPods (one a Touch and one a Nano), looking generally bored with the waiting process and slightly embarrassed by me. I don't know what the driver was doing, as he soon wandered off and vanished from my attention (although he shows up in several cameo appearances on my photos). Unfortunately, my camera batteries ran out shortly before midnight--darn rechargeable things and their shorter lifespan--and so my photos of that night end abruptly. Gobbler did eventually arrive, although the electronic display insisted that his plane was "COMMING" and never "ARRIVING"; the computer must've been asleep or something. Then again, he did only emerge one hour after his estimated time of arrival--we found out later that both his flights had been delayed--so perhaps the computer might be forgiven for that.
Ever since then? We've been eating and playing badminton and shopping and going to church on weekends... in effect, of course, it's exactly what we've been doing before he arrived, just that now there's one less space in the car. After all, it's just family, which may sound rather callous, but the novelty of seeing each other tends to wear off of me extremely quickly: there's only so long before you fall back into the rut of "Can we send him back to the hospital for a refund?" instead of "I wish he'd be around forever!", though the youngest siblings seem to want him to hang around for longer so that they can take a little more time to arrange his music files for him and copy it onto their iPods. They've planned the same for my music too, except I've already got my own music arranged somewhat better, though I admit it's not the best it could be; systematic arrangement has its limits when you wish you could arrange everything in several different categories and you have about (at last count) 20GB of music, or more precisely 5982 files. Admittedly those may not all be unique, as I've already found at least 4 copies of the same song several times; but even so, that's a lot of songs to work with. I'm even considering downloading iTunes just so I can detect the repetitions more easily.
At least I've managed to finish watching Heroes in the past couple of weeks, me and my kid siblings; the Gobbler is much more interested in basketball, volleyball, and various other activities ending in -ball to bother with us. I found the series to be enjoyable for the most part, because (as I've said before) I still harbor a wish to wake up some day and find myself able to do something that heretofore only existed in TV. A very improbable wish, of course, but everybody must have their oddities or they'd be insane. And, of course, that's exactly the main premise of Heroes... in any case, my kid brother and I have established that our dislike of Sylar is definite and long-lasting: his ability--to understand how abilities work--shouldn't, by our logic, lead to him being able to use those abilities himself, any more than knowing how a watch works should enable you to measure time down to the femtosecond; and especially here, where the abilities seem to be tied in to the genetic code, it's even less probable. I later Wikipedia'ed Sylar, and from there followed the links to the actor who actually plays the villain--pulling off a bad guy that can be universally hated isn't the easiest feat, I should say--and then I realised that I can't see that actor smile without associating it with impending death: I must have formed a prejudice somewhere. Possibly they'll retcon it later to say that Sylar also possesses the ability to copy the properties of objects he's studied, which would make it more plausible.
I'm going to Hong Kong sometime today or tomorrow; the itinerary is still unclear to me. Actually the reason it's today, is because the Gobbler must return to Spore pretty soon as his classes will resume after this weekend; my parents decided it'd be convenient for us all to travel down to Shenzhen with him. There are no direct flights from Wuhan to the rest of the world, apparently, so I'll be taking a transit too (though more likely unaccompanied) when I leave. In any case, he, the kid siblings, and myself, are travelling down by train later; he'll go from the station we arrive at to the airport, and the rest of us will be meeting an aunt that I haven't seen in 3 years or so to accompany her back to Hong Kong, from which we'll return around the 24th, also by train. The list of desirable places to visit in Hong Kong on a short budget is, unfortunately, not a long one. We did consider Disneyland, though it's not exactly a budget item, but rejected the idea when we realised we'd probably be surrounded in squalling mites and be meeting lots of fuzzy suits: I dislike the idea of meeting a cartoon character in the flesh, although I have no objection to cosplay conventions.
In any case the idea was changed to Ocean Park, which is relatively cheaper and promises me rather more interesting pictures. Disneyland is all very well in its way, but I can sympathise with Bill Watterson's feelings about commercialisation of a cartoon; somehow, the idea that you can actually meet and shake hands with the cartoon character of your choice rather spoils the entire cartoon; in all the years of cartoons and anime and manga that I've seen, I've never wanted to meet a character from that series, or worse, meet a person whose entire job was dressing up as that character.
I was talking last night with my kid brother, and it turns out we share a common gripe against the Western world of animation: the series are created with no intention of ever ending. Where a manga series is written with a definite beginning and a possible ending in the mind of the artist, the Western counterpart seems to just start and meander on and on through several different artists' idea of what the series should be like and where it might go, and hence multiple retcons and universes and timelines and complicated stuff that could've been avoided had they simply decided that a series doesn't have to last forever... though, of course, the series being managed by a company instead of the artist themselves, the series is never intended to end, and that is why the average Western series has a longer lifespan than any manga series--the longest-running one I know is Detective Conan, at about 600-odd chapters so far.
So, let's see. What has happened in the past 15 days that I've forgotten to record here? It's a mercy that I've got photos, though my method of separating them into various folders based on theme means that it's quite difficult to find out anything in any particular order: much like my own memory, really. I can probably list a lot of things that I know happened, but the order in which they happened is likely to get quite horribly messed up... but let's see what the photos tell me.
Well, for one thing, Gobbler arrived the day after my last post, on a night flight; my parents seem to enjoy sending the children on flights that require us to remain awake into the wee hours while catching bits of sleep on the plane, on the premise that when we arrive, the day is just starting and so our visiting time is increased by that little more time. My parents didn't go to the airport to fetch him, rather letting myself and the two kid siblings go; the advantage of working in a moderately prestigious company here is that the company car (and accompanying driver) are most obliging even on personal desires, and it's a pretty large car too: a 7-seater, I think, which isn't quite luxurious but serves its purpose satisfactorily. We left the house, travelled there, and as my photos attest, we passed several rather interesting vehicles that my camera responded too slowly to to take a good shot; I have now several blurry images that memory says were interesting at the time. The trouble with my camera is that it works very poorly in bad light, and good light is rare enough that many of my photos rather resemble a work of abstract art.
In any case the airport was rather empty when we arrived, apart from the usual assemblage of people awaiting other people; I amused myself taking photos of the surrounding area, including noticeboards, trashcans with particularly reflective lids, bystanders, and airport security. The two younger siblings stood around with their iPods (one a Touch and one a Nano), looking generally bored with the waiting process and slightly embarrassed by me. I don't know what the driver was doing, as he soon wandered off and vanished from my attention (although he shows up in several cameo appearances on my photos). Unfortunately, my camera batteries ran out shortly before midnight--darn rechargeable things and their shorter lifespan--and so my photos of that night end abruptly. Gobbler did eventually arrive, although the electronic display insisted that his plane was "COMMING" and never "ARRIVING"; the computer must've been asleep or something. Then again, he did only emerge one hour after his estimated time of arrival--we found out later that both his flights had been delayed--so perhaps the computer might be forgiven for that.
Ever since then? We've been eating and playing badminton and shopping and going to church on weekends... in effect, of course, it's exactly what we've been doing before he arrived, just that now there's one less space in the car. After all, it's just family, which may sound rather callous, but the novelty of seeing each other tends to wear off of me extremely quickly: there's only so long before you fall back into the rut of "Can we send him back to the hospital for a refund?" instead of "I wish he'd be around forever!", though the youngest siblings seem to want him to hang around for longer so that they can take a little more time to arrange his music files for him and copy it onto their iPods. They've planned the same for my music too, except I've already got my own music arranged somewhat better, though I admit it's not the best it could be; systematic arrangement has its limits when you wish you could arrange everything in several different categories and you have about (at last count) 20GB of music, or more precisely 5982 files. Admittedly those may not all be unique, as I've already found at least 4 copies of the same song several times; but even so, that's a lot of songs to work with. I'm even considering downloading iTunes just so I can detect the repetitions more easily.
At least I've managed to finish watching Heroes in the past couple of weeks, me and my kid siblings; the Gobbler is much more interested in basketball, volleyball, and various other activities ending in -ball to bother with us. I found the series to be enjoyable for the most part, because (as I've said before) I still harbor a wish to wake up some day and find myself able to do something that heretofore only existed in TV. A very improbable wish, of course, but everybody must have their oddities or they'd be insane. And, of course, that's exactly the main premise of Heroes... in any case, my kid brother and I have established that our dislike of Sylar is definite and long-lasting: his ability--to understand how abilities work--shouldn't, by our logic, lead to him being able to use those abilities himself, any more than knowing how a watch works should enable you to measure time down to the femtosecond; and especially here, where the abilities seem to be tied in to the genetic code, it's even less probable. I later Wikipedia'ed Sylar, and from there followed the links to the actor who actually plays the villain--pulling off a bad guy that can be universally hated isn't the easiest feat, I should say--and then I realised that I can't see that actor smile without associating it with impending death: I must have formed a prejudice somewhere. Possibly they'll retcon it later to say that Sylar also possesses the ability to copy the properties of objects he's studied, which would make it more plausible.
I'm going to Hong Kong sometime today or tomorrow; the itinerary is still unclear to me. Actually the reason it's today, is because the Gobbler must return to Spore pretty soon as his classes will resume after this weekend; my parents decided it'd be convenient for us all to travel down to Shenzhen with him. There are no direct flights from Wuhan to the rest of the world, apparently, so I'll be taking a transit too (though more likely unaccompanied) when I leave. In any case, he, the kid siblings, and myself, are travelling down by train later; he'll go from the station we arrive at to the airport, and the rest of us will be meeting an aunt that I haven't seen in 3 years or so to accompany her back to Hong Kong, from which we'll return around the 24th, also by train. The list of desirable places to visit in Hong Kong on a short budget is, unfortunately, not a long one. We did consider Disneyland, though it's not exactly a budget item, but rejected the idea when we realised we'd probably be surrounded in squalling mites and be meeting lots of fuzzy suits: I dislike the idea of meeting a cartoon character in the flesh, although I have no objection to cosplay conventions.
In any case the idea was changed to Ocean Park, which is relatively cheaper and promises me rather more interesting pictures. Disneyland is all very well in its way, but I can sympathise with Bill Watterson's feelings about commercialisation of a cartoon; somehow, the idea that you can actually meet and shake hands with the cartoon character of your choice rather spoils the entire cartoon; in all the years of cartoons and anime and manga that I've seen, I've never wanted to meet a character from that series, or worse, meet a person whose entire job was dressing up as that character.
I was talking last night with my kid brother, and it turns out we share a common gripe against the Western world of animation: the series are created with no intention of ever ending. Where a manga series is written with a definite beginning and a possible ending in the mind of the artist, the Western counterpart seems to just start and meander on and on through several different artists' idea of what the series should be like and where it might go, and hence multiple retcons and universes and timelines and complicated stuff that could've been avoided had they simply decided that a series doesn't have to last forever... though, of course, the series being managed by a company instead of the artist themselves, the series is never intended to end, and that is why the average Western series has a longer lifespan than any manga series--the longest-running one I know is Detective Conan, at about 600-odd chapters so far.
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