I didn’t get into Saizen, haha. Oh well, I can move on.

So when I first went to Saizen-fansubs.com for Hajime no Ippo New Challenger subs, they were apparently in the need for some fresh staff members. Translators, typesetters, editors, timers, quality checkers, and even people in charge of distrobuting the episodes. I toyed around with the idea of applying, but I thought, “Nah. I won’t have time, I might let them down if I do get accepted, I won’t get in anyways due to no experience, and etc.” So about a week later I revisit the site for episode two. They were still asking for help. I grabbed the episode awent on my merry way. But then when it came time for the thrid episode and they said they were still looking for new members, I though, “Oh hell, why not?”

So I decided to try and be an editor. To be honest I’d rather be a quality checker, but you need a good deal of experience to get that role. I filled out the form, metioning that I often see subs that I know can be worded better. Later, I get an email with a “test” to complete. I won’t go into specifics, but I was assigned a short clip of something in French. My test was to edit the included .ssa file, which is the subtitle file, and make the English better. It was kind of interesting since I was picking up on some French words being in French 4 and all, but I get through it, slightly proud of my work.

I explain the thing about me being in French 4, and the person I’m corresponding with is pretty cool about it. We have some simple polite conversation. Later though, I get news saying I didn’t make the cut. I had grammatical errors, and I had left out words. I found that to be pretty weird, since I;m pretty proud of my grammer skills. I didn’t know what the person meant by “missing words,” until just right now as I type. There were a lot of lines of dialogue that opened with, “oui,” which is yes in French. However, I didn’t want to put a “yes,” “yeah,” or “that’s right,” each time it was brought up, so I left it out. That’s just a guess though. I asked them/him if they could explain what I did wrong, and I’m hoping I can either try again or explain my word choice.

It was pretty cool though, editing a .ssa. Haha, if worst comes to worst and I get utterly rejected,  I’ll just try to find work elsewhere. It would be nice to be part of a fansub group.

I’m still up because my dad wanted me to burn more copies of my sister’s wedding DVDs. The first time around he asked for 4 copies. The wedding is on two DVDs, broken up into the house ceremony and the restaurant reception thing. So I burned 8 discs haha. My dad passed them out to some relatives on Tuesday or Wednesday, I can’t remember. We were at my grandma’s house with some other relatives to celebrate the New Years. When we got home my dad said, “A lot of people wanted the DVDs. Can you make more copies?” I asked him how many. “Hmm, I think 7 is a good number.” Hoo boy. I started at like, 10-11ish, and I only burned 9 discs total, 7 of the house ceremony and only 2 of the restaurant. I’m done for today though, haha. The burn speed dropped like all hell when I started burning the restaurant DVD, so I don’t feel as though I should keep going.

Have more to talk about, but I’ll save it for tomorrow if I can remember. The events and topics I remember to write about days later are the good ones, lol. (weak defense for laziness).

Timestamp – 12:29 AM

Edit: Lol, that’s 8 posts this month. I’m not entirely sure, but I think that’s a personal best, haha.

Early Morning Alex #3

What? Two posts in a day? Only 2 hours between no less? Yeah I know, its weird, but I felt like writing pushing myself to write an Early Morning post. I stayed up to burn the recently picked up DVDs of my sister Julie’s wedding. I made four copies of the two disc thing. I also tackled some French homework. It took a while haha. Anyways…

There’s something about me I realize I’ve never talked about, although it’s definitely something to talk about. It all started in either kindergarden or first grade, and I can’t remember which. Even at that early age, I enjoyed being one of the smart kids. You could say I was attached to the acceptance the teachers gave to the smart kids. Anyways, we were told to close our eyes and imagine ourselves in a nice open meadow, with green grass and lots of flowers. This is were things get weird. I tried picturing the meadow, but then I thought, “Well, how am I supposed to tell if I’m doing this right? What is it supposed to look like in my head? What is the correct way to envision a meadow?” This left a big impact on me. Whenever I’m told to imagine or picture something, I can’t help but remember this event and think the same thoughts. You see it in television, movies, and all sorts of media; people imagining things. For example, in the manga Berserk Farneze, while training to become witch, is told to practice with an apple. She looks at an apple she is holding, then closes her eyes, and then attempts to draw the imagine of the apple in her mind. The basis for magic in Berserk is being able to call upon the unseeable forces that govern the world. I then thought, “Heck, why don’t I try to recreate the image of an apple in my head.” Then I ponder, how much detail am I supposed to envision? When trying to remember someone’s face, or the look of a landscape, or just thinking about anything, wht should you be able to see? In Saving Private Ryan, private Ryan remarks that he can’t remember his brother’s faces when told the news about their deaths. Tom Hank’s character then tells him he need to picture his brothers in context; he needs to think of a specific memory involving his brothers. It works for Ryan. Then back to me.

Honestly, I find it very weird. Whenever I try to visualize something, I always think, “how clear is it supposed to be? What am I doing wrong?” Please tell me I’m not the only one who has pondered this before. Sigh, the mysterious of the human mind, haha.

Early Morning posts don’t always need to be poems haha. Although I hope not all of them will be rants o.o

Timestamp – 2:31 AM

Happy Lunar New Years!

Lol, someone in my neighborhood set off 4th of July styled fireworks.

Timestamp – 12:08 AM

The waves roll on…

Some of you may remember the lack of phone and Internet that I blogged about late December. Earlier on in the week, it happened again. This time around however, my parents called in the professionals to deal with it. After checking all of our phone cords, the found the faulty cord that connects from outside into the house. The cord had shorted or something like that, I wasn’t there for their explaination. Anywho, no more net problems for a while, yes?

Anyways, I’m still not sure how I would classify my opinion of Creative Writing class. We did an interesting take on the “I am” format thing. 15 lines of “I am…” but for each line was a different category. Example, the first line was color, so I wrote “I am silver.” After we made our 15, we were then instructed to pick out 3-5 of our favorite lines, then further develop them into stanzas.

I am silver,

Humble, yet proud,

Beautiful to those,

Who shun the shine of gold.

And on it went. The next assignment we had to do was write either an obituary or a dating advertisement about someone in the class. Ms. Thomas insisted that we pick someone that we didn’t know to well. I chose someone I kinda knew, Nicole. She’s in my French class as well. We then had to interview each other to get the information needed to write the obituary/dating ad. We talked about things like our future aspirations, hobbies, what kind of physical characteristics we lean towards, and etc. After a day to write, we had to present them to the class. Here’s something that I found rather embarassing. When we were talking about physical characteristics, I realized that I was listing a lot of physical traits, so I tried to soften it by saying, “You know, you don’t have to mention each physical trait. They aren’t all that important; they are just bonuses.” Well, oddly enough, the attempt to reduce embarrassment boomeranged and hit me harder than planned. Nicole listed the traits I had mentioned about hair and height, and then went on to say, “Certain other physical characteristics are a bonus.” I don’t think I need to spell out how that can be taken. I didn’t want to “back down” so to the class’s laughter I replied, “I’m honest.” It at least spares Nicole of me saying, “I did not say that!”

Although, I guess you could say I kind of got her back, also unintentionally. While writing her dating ad, I put myself in her shoes, trying to figure out how she would say the poetic lines I had in mind. We had the option of writing either poetry or prose. I’ll get my writings up on the Net later, but I had some lines like, “But that’s enough about the future./Let’s do something now./Let’s do yoga./Let’s….” Oddly enough, when I said, “Let’s do something now,” the class assumed I meant “Let’s have sex now” and reacted as such. I was slightly offended at that since I was shooting for that romance-born-of-spontaneity feel. A kid, well I shouldn’t say kid since he’s turn 18, Stephen asked me if I had ever considered writing romance novels in response to my dating ad for Nicole. Haha, I just thought that was funny. The class is responding well to my writing which is pretty cool, if it weren’t for the fact that they also sing high praise for the not so serious things as well.

I just find myself earnestly trying hard in the class. I don’t write often enough, especially things that come from the heart, and I like the fact that now I have to write for a grade. It gets my gears turning haha.

Once again rolling on, I still haven’t had a sleep reset day haha. After school on Friday I went to Dustin’s house since Derek was having his birthday party on Saturday. I stayed the night, as I often did in the past. We played Soul Calibur 4, SSB Brawl, Rockband 2, and other things. I had brought my laptop, but we didn’t really use it for anything besides Stepmania. Haha, I showed Dustin and Derek all of Ann’s crazy songs. Mainly it was Derek since he likes Stepmania better than Dustin. I told Derek that if he had any songs/simfiles he thought I should add to mine, but Dustin replied, “You should use “Jizz in my Pants.’” It was funny because Ann already had a simfile for “Jizz in my Pants,” and Dustin couldn’t actually believe it was there, haha.

In the last hour before I had to leave, I discovered a super fun online game called “Draw my Thing.” I’ll write more about that later, but it’s a fun game haha. I’m going to end the post here because I’m pretty worn out.

Oh yeah, I got accepted into University of the Pacific, or UoP. I also got a scholarship of $6,500 from them, renewable each year I attend. It’s pretty sweet haha.

Timestamp – 12:33 AM

You know, today I was supposed to reset my sleeping habits.

As I’ve mentioned earlier about the vicious sleep cycle I often succumb to, today was such a great opportunity to reset back into a normal sleeping pattern. For past few days I’ve been sleeping at 2-4 AM and getting up at 7 for school. I can take a lot of sleep pain, but not as much as I could a few years ago. Today looked like a very promising chance to not nap and sleep early. It’s 3 mins until 3AM as I write this sentence. So what went wrong? I’d rather start with what made the day promising. To do that, I’m going to describe how I started my day in general.

I slept around 2:40ish. I had stayed up planning on doing work, but I decided, “Hey, I don’t have French 4 until after 6th on Wednesday Lab days and I have Multimedia to do my French homework!” But due to the naps I had taken during the day to combat me sleeping at 4 AM before that, I couldn’t sleep. I woke up a few mins before 7, when I should be getting up at 6:30 to get ready for my carpool with Manish to school. So I went to school without my water bottle. I managed to get the work I needed to get done alright, but I was tired are I felt dehydrated, even though I wasn’t. I know you’re all probably tired of me saying things in one sentence then “bringing you back up to speed” and explaining it, but let me bring you back up to speed with the water bottle thing. Ever since the getting sick in December, I’ve taken to drinking more water daily. At first it was just to fight the illness, but the habits just stuck. So the day started off without me having a water bottle.

I slugged through the classes as best as I could, but it wasn’t easy. In Lemco’s class we’re going over Invisible Man, not to be confused with The Invisible Man. For some reason, he is reading it to us in class and making his commentary whenever it pops up. I’m kinda getting tired of entire class periods of us just reading along. Multimedia was interesting. For our 3rd Indy-project I was focused on creating this hexagon grid/screen to place over a flash animation. It took forever to do, and then I realized I have no ideas for the animation that would go behind the screen. Oh well! For 6th, my Gov teacher Mrs. Donahue is in D.C. for the inauguration and other things, so we had a sub. The sub played for us a documentary on Martin Luther King Jr. After the video, we had to read his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” silently to ourselves. She then made us read the letter out loud, with different people volunteering for paragraphs. Then in French we got a new story to read. The only thing is, I felt completely incompetent since I freeze up when speaking French. Also, the story is written in cursive, and i am utterly terrible at reading cursive. Because it took me longer than normal to recognize the letters, I felt even worse about my ability to speak French, and i stumbled over the words so bad.

During lunch and after school, we’ve hit a snag with DDR Club. At least, a snag in regards to playing Stepmania. The pad goes unresponsive from time to time when playing semi-difficult and higher songs. It bugged me. I’m hoping that this pad isn’t broken like our other one is .

My dad picked me up around 4, and I left my permit at home so he drove. We went to Maxim Market to buy some groceries, where I picked up NOS energy drink. I liked the bottle haha. It was good, it tasted like energy drink + juice. It wasn’t too sweet, had the energy drink tang to it, and the energy drink aftertaste. I waited until we got home to open it up, and I drank very conservatively. I would drink maybe half a gulp, then cap it. The constant short bursts of energy drink kept me from feeling the need to nap. I proceeded to burn most of the day with anime, trying to get the best Hajime no Ippo: New Challenger subs. Around 10ish, I laid down, to try and power nap. I couldn’t and so I paced around my room adding to another story idea. (I’m starting to think I’ll never write these stories down <.<) At 11ish, I decided, “Let’s get some work done!”

I got distracted reading a webcomic called Waspi Square. Now I regret accusing Franny of reading too many webcomics when I follow quite a few myself. Waspi Square, it’s interesting, to say the least haha. I don’t want to start explaining it because the story gets deep as you go along. I got myself up to date, and then realized, “Oh hey, its 1:30ish AM. I need to shower.” I take long showers, so I get out around 2 ish. For some strange reason, I then decided to read my first blog post again. I went to it, and re-read all of my posts up until about Decemeber 2008 since everything we recent by then. I had wanted to get a jump start on my English homework that’s due Friday, but oh well. I have to focus in on my French homework right now.

My sister Linda returns home from Vietnam again today(the 22nd). She timed her schedule to be home for Julie’s wedding, and the Lunar New Year. I don’t how she does it haha. She works too hard to be human o.o

I realize now that I haven’t been doing the Early Morning Alexs recently. If I have any energy left over from the French work, I might put one up. Peace out! (I guess Friday will be my reset day <.<)

Timestamp – 3:23 AM