In which one talks of many things.

State of mind: in pain
Current soundtrack: Whatever it is they're playing at the printer's (but bless Mr. William and his wireless connection!)

The world has decided to treat me quite nicely as of late. Ideas and concepts for Motion Graphics and MM Production have been approved without too much fuss and flurry, which is pleasing to say the least! Online Media 3 is still about the same, though. It's a very complicated situation. Suffice it to say the 'client' wants us to sell the product without revealing anything about it and there are two 'managers' who can't seem to agree on what they would like us to do. No wonder my group is 'ResLes'. Yes, I made up that name. I iz smurt.

...I don't think 'real' projects are like this, are they? D:

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I have a penfriend in Japan, back from my school days. Online she's known as Delilah; she runs/used to run a fansite for Koumyou Sanzo. It's all kinds of cute, but now I can't even remember the URL. Or the site name. *swt* We haven't been keeping in touch for some time — my fault here, as preparing for the scholarship presentations and such last year took up a fair bit of time. I did, however, manage to send her a postcard last month just before the CNY hols, thanking her for her birthday wishes, filling her in on the situation here and apologising for the delay between replies.

Today the post came as I was looking out the upstairs window and I knew she'd written back. Would you believe I could pick her postcard ('tis almost always a postcard) right out from the pile of mail we'd received? Two floors down? In any case she congratulated me on the scholarship offer, included New Year's wishes and went on to reassure me that all was cool and everyone had busy times. She went on to add 'Besides...you and me are and will always be good friends after all.' Oh damn, she got me there. I hadn't written to her for so long and she had every right to think this fandom-based friendship was over, but it was like nothing had changed...except for the fact this time her postcard was really messy. ;) I hope she's doing OK. She's not the type to make so many spelling mistakes per postcard, my surname aside..I really must bring that up with her the next time I write.

One wishes one had or could make more friends like this, but in life sometimes you take what you get. Thanks Delilah-san, you're really, really something.
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The ninth day of Chinese New Year (out of 15, for the non-local readers) is said to be the Jade Emperor's birthday. Hokkiens hold this day in highest regard, and on that day we hold certain prayers and rites (Pai Thnee Gong, which is how the papers like to spell it). Marion D'Cruz would have a right good laugh at me, but this is the one day I feel most Hokkien out of the year. The rest of the time I'm the polytheistic Buddhist banana who goes round bending paradigms. At midnight on the ninth day, I may be praying to Thnee Kong in English, but I'm holding those joss-sticks and folding the gold offerings with the rest of the women. It's kind of comforting, and some kind of anchor, if you like. And this year, I have a new phone, so I took some pictures (coming as soon). This I can do. This I can profile. This is my festival.


The preparations start a bit earlier, when the offerings are set up for the altar. Pineapples, plums, pomeloes, oranges and longan Usually my grandmother puts red paper cuttings on top of and below the stuff, but this year we went without. She is 80-something, and those are small scissors...maybe next year I'll take her place. At about 9-10 pm the altar gets prepared for the prayers, and the front is draped (sort of) with this cloth. It's a fairly interesting cloth, what with the lions and the brass studs and the 8 Immortals round the top edge.


This is what the altar looks like after we're all done praying.
Sometimes I forget halfway what I want to ask Thnee Gong and end up with long gaps of silence as I wave the joss-sticks, but it went all right this year. What did I ask for? SECRET.


Now comes the good part. We fold the gold! Every year my gran goes out and buys this special type of hell's money paper, which is stamped with gold leaf and has a stylised picture of the 3 Gods of Prosperity (Fu, Lu, Shou). She prefolds it into these triangles, and after we finish prayers, out comes the paper and the little plastic stools, and all the ladies sit outside in the night air folding up a big pile of gold as an extra, final offering to Thnee Gong. After this there are more sheafs of hell's money on top, folded to look like sheafs, there is a last confirmation of prayers before the altar and the pile of gold is set aflame.


People say that when you see the sparks going up and disappearing into the sky, it's a sign the offering of gold has reached Thnee Gong. Logic tells you it's just little sparks borne up on a hot wind, going out and floating down in the darkness, but then you remember the one year where the sparks did NOT go up properly and your grandmother broke her leg, your mother got stuck in a horrible job and your sports house lost horribly in the school sports. True story, this.


My belief system condones midnight snacking. When the last embers have burned out and everyone's done with flouting the rules against open burning *shifty eyes* some of the cakes come off the altar and go back into the house, where we cut them up and eat them. :D I assume it's kinda like eating birthday cake. All the bright red ones are ang koo or 'red turtles'; the pink one is huat kueh or 'prosperity cake'; the flat white one is bee koh or sweet glutinous rice. I don't know why I like huat kueh — it's bright pink and doesn't really taste of much — but I'll happily cut off chunks and start munching contentedly.

After that everyone goes home and sleeps, hoping that they won't wake up late for classes or work tomorrow. Birthday or no birthday, Thnee Gong's people gotta EARN!

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Circumstances come together in long and convoluted chains (particularly when I try to relate them) and suffice it to say I read a manga called Star of Happiness: Haghall. It's about an alien from the moon who's trying to prove to God-the-balding-disembodied-head that humans need not be destroyed just yet and there are good people still among them. It's part alien comedy, part existential drama and occasionally rather heartwarming.

I had a rather disturbing dream a few days back where there was an animated version of Haghall - possibly a movie. They found him guilty of killing a whole bunch of babies by strangulation, and the way he put it he said he prevented them from becoming the 'flaws' they would have grown up to be. It was a bit disturbing, but it DID fit in creepily with the tone of the actual manga. And I could actually see him doing this, trying to save the Earth from being ruled by pillbugs and telling God see, there are good people, you need not kill everybody off yet.

What I don't understand is how nobody has yet screamed at Haghall "WHY ARE YOU LIGHT GREEN!?" even if he's 'supposed' to be some Mexican masked wrestler on an exchange program. :/