status quo:

1) the somewhat much-awaited A.P.C. catalogue that I had ordered last month is here! I am a little disappointed though, because everything in the catalogue were the same as the things at their website. But my mum's pleased because apparently the pictures were placed spread-out enough for her to let her kindergarteners use it for their arts and crafts lessons. Ah well. But I really like the brown jacket you see on their front page! I tried hinting to my parents, but then again, it's kinda warm. And 'kinda' is perhaps an understatement.

2) I want to go back to Mie and cycle around the rice fields during sunset! And ride on the cool bicycle with my blue plaid lunchbox in the basket in front! And laugh with my host because it's so chilly. And see the trains pass by. But these moments are things that one tends to get lost in during daydreams. On a less romantic note, I love the 4 PM sunsets and the sunrise at 5 AM because the daylight's there in the mornings when I need it the most.

3) On the same day that I received the A.P.C. catalogue, my dad came home with Mac OS X 10.5 which comes in really cool holographic packaging. My happiness was short-lived, however, when (i) someone accidently pulled the plug on the external DVD drive that I was using to install it in, and (ii) when I re-installed it and woke up the next morning to face the horrifying Blue Screen Of Death. After fsck-ing it several times (the equivalent of CPR on a computer), and rebooting it with the original installation disk, and trying to hack into the root user of the operating system (and encountering a confusing myriad of coding that was reminiscent of A Maths Paper 2), and incurring the 'You Are Such A Geek' grimace of my sister whilst typing a line of code, I have learnt to accept the Inevitable. And thus the continuous struggle between man and machine lives on through our little technological tragedies.

I am now typing on my mum's macbook pro, and its metal casing is giving my wrists tiny annoying electric shocks.

4) My parents are marvelling at the perceived increase of productivity away from the computer, mainly because in my frustration, I decided pay homage to the Tokyo shinkansen station to alleviate my aggrieved state through drawing on my sister's canvas that has been stowed away along with the rest of her intentions to run off and join SOTA.

5) I want to go to Disneyland in California, Colette in Paris (and see what all the hype about it is about), Shibuya in Tokyo and Manhattan in New York! I'm rather disappointed with the Tokyo part of my trip because I missed out on going to all the, well, cool places that put Tokyo on the map. I mean, we spent an entire day visting shrines and temples. Not that's anything bad per se, but I've already seen enough of ancient Japan to last at least half a century, thank you very much. Where are the freaky cosplay people in Harajuku, the neon lights, and the quirky avant-garde shops that make Tokyo so wonderful to go to? Having said that, the whole breathlessness of exiting the train station and entering Tokyo watching reporters run around in front of TV crew and cameras for the opening of Daimaru in Ginza made the stressful-bullet-train-rushing all worthwhile.

6) I have too many spiral-ring bound notebooks.