mina-san, i haven't written for days and bet you all know how thoughts can pile up. and so many tiny bits of stuff took place i have to store them away somewhere, just like how i freed up my laptop hard-drive this afternoon - well, the WHOLE afternoon, i'm cutting pasting deleting burning data cds. Can't believe how i had the patience to sit through this mundane work with the lure of nice movies hanging around.
I remeber this style of recounting a day's happening - liu shui zhang, lunatic ramblings, which i won't shy to admit my utter proficency in it. I used to write LOTS OF liu shui zhang essays back in primary school. It was really second nature. or maybe everybody did that coz we couldn't write properly. 'What a sunny beautiful day![how i love exclamation marks, they're the supreme decorations in a successful essay] I got up at 7am. ate my breakfast. Breakfast consisted of two you2 tiao2, one shao1 bin3 and bean soup...' This dread dragged on till primary six. I remember I wrote a four page long zuo wen on spring trip, recounting every single detail from the green mold growing on the fish to our growling stomachs. Mum and dad read it and happily commented 'wow, this child is so good at writing liu shui zhang' I was so demoralised I crushed the paper and binned it. And so I didn't turn in my essay and teacher asked for an explanation. My parents after learning why the essay was binned were sort of taken by surprise. They later explained they actually thought it was a good essay. who the hell cares. i'm not going to dig it up from the trash.
So to relive childhood glory, i announce today's topic to be - liu shui zhang
Thursday, Feb 10th
3am
Why am I not sleeping. Jady exclaimed I was mad. That's the last sentence I remember she typed in our conversation box. I logged off MSN and decided it was bed time. Something tragic happened.
I decided to check the forum to see if the latest samurai champloo episode was out. A topic caught my eyes.
'why do those samurai carry two swords while they effectively only use one in combat'
Good question. I want to know too. But I was too lazy to find out.
mmm, and i was really blown away by how thorough and devoted those die hard fans are. They did extensive research on samurai culture and picked out nitty gritty details from the animation all of which I failed to notice.
Quoting from one of the members
[there were different types of swords samurai carried..
it wasn't always a katana. I think the other sword Jin has is a wakizashi..
it's shorter and is there in case the other sword is unavailable. It's sorta like a pistol/sidearm, kept with it's person at all times even when entering a building when they left their katana at the door..
put both the katana and the wakizashi together and it's called 'daisho' (large and small).. ]
One katana and one wakizashi. Wakizashi, expounded on by another member
["Medium Sword (wakizashi): between one and two shaku (11.93 inches) in length. These were worn by samurai as auxiliary swords, or by persons of non-samurai class, who were allowed to wear no more than one sword of a length no longer than two shaku." ]
And another member popped up with this 'Is the thing Mugen used in episode 11 a wakizashi then?'
And gawd believe you know there're actually pple who can answer this...
quote
'Looked more like a tanto, which is what Fuu carries. It's basically a glorified knife, under one shaku in length, and frequently carried by women and tradesmen as defensive weapons. Since the general populace was limited to carrying only one sword, I imagine the average person had to choose between a tanto and a wakizashi.
Of course, it's Mugen, so it could actually be any god-knows-what thing'
New term, tanto... short dagger knife, glorified(i wonder what it means)
And so the discussion went on and on... Arguments backed up with concrete evidence from the character design sheet...
And I stared n stared and stared until eyebags grew n replicated like ecoli on agar plate. It's a disgusting simile but that's exactly what happened when you forgot to blink for quite some time.
430am
I crashed into bed and thus became dead to the world, until...
130pm
The sun shone right through the window. What a fine day!! Took a shower, instant noodle for lunch, started to clear my dear jammed up laptop. What a huge collection of stuff. I could make a living selling data DVD in black markets like those from whom I bought the complele conan episodes, inuyasha and a whole lot more.
Sometimes my dear laptop would suddenly go into a rage and the hard drive started running for no apparent reason. There wasn't any programme I clicked on, no video/audio files playing but the light just kept flashing.
'What r u busy with, dear IBM laptop?'
'Why are you so constipated?'
'Did I mistreat you?'
Yes I did.
'Did I mistreat you THAT MUCH?'
And I know even if I slap you, you won't come back to life.
So I just stared out of the window while waiting for the rage to appease. Today's one of those days when you see golden smoke. What brilliant sunset.
And to wander off the topic for a while, the korean animation feature film called 'wonderful days' , one of the contenders for this year's Oscar but didn't make it to the final list(sure it won't, for lots reasons) based its story on a hypothetical future world where men virtually fed on pollution. They constructed a new 'ecosystem' where the energy was derived through creating more pollution. nobody knew the colour of the real sky. Only on rare occasions did the clouds break and the blue bled through together with the golden sunlight. They call it the 'wonderful days'. Wide eyes gaped in wonder.
Right in front of me is the 'wonderful day'. When such easy bless becomes rarety ,our sorrows will scream in despair. I wonder how many people truly appreciate the elements, wind, fire, water, earth. I'm not one of those. I'm too careless to truly behold them. Or only the wild vagabonds living outside this artificially constructed world have this genuine gift I wonder.
500pm
Guizi came back from school. Dumped her bag on the floor, switched on laptop, took off her coat. You could adapt that into a 3 second camera intro.
She was swift because she couldn't wait to watch the comedy anime 'naruto', which goes on and on to 120 episodes and still airing.
Ever since my roommate became addicted to naruto, she had been acting like an idiot. Typical behaviours include bursting out horse/asthma/hyena - like laughters middle of watching and 'you're so cute, Takashi sensei!!' 'Takashi sensei!!' 'Takashi sensei!!' middle of walking (wasn't really proper walking gesture so to speak) Was actually shaking with excitement. I only turned blind eye.
600pm
'Quick, dinner!! Let's go now i'm starved to death!'
'No problem. Call them down for dinner'
Nobody did the calling thing. We sat glued to our laptops.
ten minutes later,
Gang called 'dinner!'
'ok, cya downstairs'
Finally we went down for dinner, on the way blaming on each other'why don't you call earlier, so starved damn'
'i thought you're going to call.'
'i told YOU to call. i was clearnig up the space on my drive. was busy.'
'me busy too!'
'huh? u call that busy? watching naruto?'
'and you call yourself busy??'
we laughed our way to the dining room.
630pm
Dinner Conversation
Famous saying goes 'food and conversation'
one without the other is unforgivable, although i'm fine with just the former.
Gang's topic:
Zhu, you told me 'innocence' is good watch?? I dun understand what is going on!
Guizi:
xian1 jian4 qi2 xia2 zhuan4
Me:
explaining 'innocence', recommending 'samurai champloo'
after dinner
......[not worth recounting]
and finally,
typing this stupid liu shui zhang blog.
and now it's
2am
and decided I should sleep.
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