the fingers of your thoughts are molding your face ceaselessly

this is why autumn is my favourite season:



(in the AU where I went to America, that sentence would've been written this is why fall is my favorite season!)

four ways in which my life is currently, unashamedly, awesome:

1. so, lunch yesterday with miss ng and another junior. we brought cake and tea, and 'lunch' turned into a nine and a half hour conversation. I watched the sky go dark. we drank copious amounts of tea and went to the bathroom millions of times. NINE HOURS. WHAT UP. there are no words for how much I love this teacher.

2. I saw a fox run across the street yesterday on my way home. A fox. I mistook it for a stray dog at first, until I looked closer and realised it was actually a fox. A fox! Then it leapt into the hospital basement and I couldn't see it anymore. ):

3. This month, I'm going to see Andrew Bird, Great Lake Swimmers, The Decemberists, The Antlers and possibly Lisa Hannigan live in concerts/smaller gigs. I am such a spoilt person. But oh man oh man when these bands come you can't not go because you don't know if you'll ever get the chance to see them live ever again in your life!

I love London. Everything comes to London. which brings me to #4:

4. My father's coming to London this week YEAH!!!

This, right, is brilliant oh man oh man I totally marvel at its brilliance.

this is incredibly random right but if I were in the harry potter universe I would totally have discovered the half-blood prince's potions book since

1. I never buy any books, but borrow them (from the library and photocopy the relevant chapters)
2. I find annotations by the sides very useful and use them

http://comicbooks.tumblr.com/post/208622920/agentmlovestacos-marvelfest-nyc-2009-10-28

the only time I ever wished I was studying in NYC instead of London. :P

just watched the royal tenebaums. really really like it even if and especially because it's offbeat at parts. (gwyneth paltrow is mad awesome, then I again I tend to like the female characters in everything anyway. I can't believe the only other thing I've seen her as is pepper potts in iron man.)

going to st andrews next weekend to visit nyx!! finally. it's too good an opportunity to miss- I can leave on thursday afternoon and come back on monday afternoon. this is like- going to visit the life I'll never have which I almost did? it's sort of like diving in to view a parallel universe for a bit, the one where char chose st andrews instead of lse. I can't deny that I'm curious.

a bit scared of my OCF group. afraid that I won't fit in my group- not outgoing enough. last year there was no pressure being in my OCF group, I could just be myself and everyone accepted me anyway cos I was a fresher and OCF loves freshers. and my group was really wonderful to the point that I kept going to strand even though it was incredibly out of the way. I miss my old group already, especially just after we had dinner at gold mine to celebrate my birthday (!!) last night. this year I feel some slight pressure since I'm a group leader. sigh.

my birthday this year was infinitely less lonely and angsty than last year; last year I didn't know anyone here yet since it was my second day in london and I was homesick and angsty and sad.

living in a (rented) flat/apartment/house is awesome, by the way. this feeling was totally absent last year- the feeling of coming back from wherever I went out to, turning the keys in the main door of the building and then our unit door, in a non-student neighbourhood, to a room that is mine, a contained space that is (mostly) mine, a kitchen, a toilet that I have claim to. I suppose I just really like that sense of possession and ownership- and above that, that sense of belonging manifested over an actual physical space.

I also like anchors, and familiarity, and compasses. and home.

I'm flying off to London tomorrow afternoon (26 September) on the 1245h flight. not sure how long the internet at my new place will take to be set up and fully functional, so this is an indefinite brb!

sorry this is super geeky (yeah yeah the most common refrain on my LJ here nowadays but eh it's my LJ so whatever), but regarding Dani Moonstar- I know 'Mirage' is the most accurate codename she's had so far, since she "originally possessed the ability to create illusions of her opponents’ fears or wishes. (She later developed a wide range of psionic and energy manipulation powers.)"

but surely it's tactically unwise to CALL her Mirage when she's fighting villains? it just gives away the nature of her power of calling up illusions to scare people, that it's unreal no matter how realistic it looks. isn't that completely undermining and self-defeating?

I've never read the short story, but for esmé with love and squalor seems like a gorgeous title. I mean, seriously the effect of putting the words love and squalor together is stunning! not a commonplace combination, and the contrast turns out very nicely. and there's just something about the name esmé that sounds very french, very exotic and suited for love and squalor. definitely a line I want to quote if I ever...get a chance to play with the stepford cuckoo, or something.

edit: also I really, really like the name Esmé. check it out- it means esteemed; loved. HOW GREAT IS THAT?

I got this video link off a friend's facebook page- night time in Singapore. it's very pretty!

(also, highlighted my hair today but it's not showing very well- the red's far too dark, looks more like dark brown. sadly. next time I'm going either fully redhead or dark blue or dark purple! then again that's what I said the last time :/)

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman 90% Spider-Man 65% Robin 65% Supergirl 47% Batman 35% The Flash 25% Catwoman 25% Hulk 20% Wonder Woman 17% Iron Man 15% Green Lantern 10%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz


I'm less concerned with the fact that I got Superman first than with the fact that the Green Lantern is at the bottom of the pile, even below Catwoman and the Hulk lol. Also, the DC to Marvel ratio is 7:3 ):

This is absolutely hilarious- I love the snark. ♥ the last one takes the cake, of course.

just read the x-men messiah complex trade paperback I borrowed from the library- and I really really like it. a lot of action and chasing around, and a few teams- it's a crossover after all- but somehow I still really like it. gg I think scott summers is really growing on me. it felt like half the graphic novel was focusing on his not-so-subtle leadership struggle with xavier- he won, by the way, cyclops is alpha dog now- and yeah he really is growing on me. I used to be extremely disinterested in bordering on disliking him, but not anymore. what's up with the whole hard choices thing for the x-men? there's never an everybody wins option. it makes for good stories, yes, but it seems a whole lot more stark when it comes to the x-men.

the killer part definitely was in the last few pages, when Scott was deciding whether or not to give the baby to Cable. the flashback page to when he himself had to give Cable up to Askani!Rachel, that was glorious: 1, 2, 3, 4. ♥ (Cable being Scott's son who went to the future to grow up because the present wasn't safe. And the mutant baby here being the first mutant baby born since 99% of the mutant population lost their powers, hence extremely important.)

oh, and the first 23 issues of astonishing x-men, which I'd never really sat down properly to read all at one shot before. this includes the danger arc and about half of the breakworld arc. I knew AXM was great, everyone (okay bangendedscoot and astonishing_xt) said so, but oh man nothing beats reading it myself. it's so great. there's impressive, massive character development which whedon specifically said he was focusing on, and there's also sufficient action going on. the art's really nice, but oh man possibly most impressive was how some parts were genuinely funny. I actually laughed out loud! the quips here and there scattered across the issues were nice touches, proper english-speaking kid!wolverine was hilarious, and the bit where everyone has a telepathic conversation to fool Ord was a killer.

here, have the six-page sequence in AXM 4 which more or less has no words but is totally a heartwrencher: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. (the backstory being, kitty and colossus were a couple before but then he sacrificed himself to save all of mutantkind. none of the x-men know he's alive, and they haven't seen him in a decade's worth of comics.)

man both these graphic novels are really good. I haven't actually bought any x-men graphic novels (which are the only ones I've ever bought) in a terribly long time- the last x-men comic I bought was Grant Morrison's Planet X and Here Comes Tomorrow arcs, issue by issue, because I was collecting every month and I couldn't wait for the trade paperback to come out. (this means I have that heartbreaking Jean death and gorgeous-White-Phoenix-fixing-things in paper! whoohoo.) I think it might be high time to get some ;)

I also want to read:
- UXM 475-486, ie the Rise & Fall of the Shi'ar Empire. if only mostly for Havok :P I've read the first three issues of Kingbreaker, but still...want more Havok!

- The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, this one I want to read really really badly. I want to see Slym and Redd and young!Cable interaction! actually having a normal family life, as normal as X-Men go anyway.

Possibly chiefly I want to read more Scott and Jean interaction, now that we don't get it in canon anymore :P

9- was ehhh not bad, by which I mean it was quite good but it could've been even better! it was kind of stressful in that I am easily stressed (I watched 99% of I Am Legend hiding behind a towel or something) and don't like suspenseful things jumping out everywhere BUT it was quite sweet. yey.

listening to the Up soundtrack by Michael Giacchino makes me smile and smile and smile and smile until my face aches. :) :) :)

other than that bit in the Married Life track, which makes me suddenly go .___.

okay this is really random but I was jumping from x-men wikipedia article to article (as I am wont to do) and I just re-discovered that the X-Corporation had a Singapore branch. a rundown on the X-Corporation in the X-Men world:

Its purpose is to provide support for "civilian" mutant populations on a global scale in a world where the mutant population was outgrowing the reach of the X-Men. X-Corp offices are located in many major cities in every continent, and each office is managed by a former member of the X-Men or one of their satellite teams...

!!! this fills me with a lot of squee and glee. I mean sure Madripoor is near and partially based off (old-time) Singapore, but this is actually a Marvel 616 thing IN Singapore.

1. there are mutants IN singapore (I mean, there have to be civilian mutants for them to support right?), or at the very least in south-east asian countries AROUND singapore (eg if shan/xi'an- who's vietnamese- had been discovered around this time she could actually have been referred to the singapore branch, not the paris branch).

2. hahaha I still can't decide if singapore would have welcomed local mutants and been proud of them (TALENT; HUMAN CAPITAL) or shunned them (the typical YOU FREAKS response)? most likely the Party would have CO-OPTED them or something lolol.

aiyoh have to go back again to london in slightly over two weeks. it's not the being there that I mind, it's the uprooting and upheaval that comes between being here and being there. so technically I'm just being lazy :P not that I'm ungrateful! just that, I will miss my family again- and for longer this time, since I'm not coming back for the december holidays. but london calls, and the possibility of stepping out onto the streets full of people and surrounded by landmarks, and in boots and a coat, and (yes really) attending international relations lectures and reading chapters and writing essays, is very appealing.

(on a more down-to-earth note, I am down with some sort of mild flu. oh well better now than later, when I'm trying to acclimatise to london again, and better now than earlier, otherwise I would've lost out on $50 per day I took an MC. also, I am really really very hungry right now. fooooood)

so I just watched the entire season of wolverine and the x-men. I love having no work. oh, man, I'd almost forgotten how much I love the x-men when the marvel universe and actual 616 canon isn't being all sprawly and annoying and hard to grasp- there's TOO MUCH going on. but ehh I really like wolverine and the x-men! it brings me back to when I was primary 5 and starting to get into the x-men for the first time- it was x-men the animated series that did it for me. that one was classic and almost camp, rather different from this cartoon, but very enjoyable too. this one's great!! they included so many characters, too. AGE OF APOCALYPSE, SQUEE! also, awwww, emma. nicely, nicely done.

I ended my eight-week internship at the ST Money desk on Friday! I was completely elated: it felt like the end of exams- looming freedom and the possibility of doing nothing. I love feeling so free and so happy. that night I went for the OCF freshers' welcome which made me realise I am looking forward to going back to london- one junior noted that it looked like we were really having a good time in london, which I realised was very true. I just got back from lynette's 21st birthday celebration, which was a disney-themed costume party and lots of fun if only because I have never and probably will never attend one of those again, and I secretly really like dressing up and indulging in my other worlds. I imagine photos will be up on facebook sometime in the near future, but suffice to say I had a lot of fun.

I have three more weeks before I fly back to london on the 26th. here come, again, what just might be my favourite part of the year- the dog days of summer, my endless numbered days, when I am at almost-perfect liberty to do everything and anything I want, even nothing. going out, staying home, surfing the net, reading library books- the anticipation is absolutely delightful.

so is owl city's fireflies! it reminds me a lot of the postal service's we will become silhouettes. :)