Because I’m using netgalley to get ARCs, I find its a hassle to use this general blog for it so I created another blog specifically for book reviewings and all things about books. I won’t dump all my goodreads stuff in it but for my 2012 challenge, I’m hoping to read and review 200 books. I’m have 100+ more books to read for 2012 so I think its appropriate for me to create a special blog for it.
I really hope I could gain more readership to do a proper book giveaway. Perhaps a malay books giveaway?
I will try to update this blog more frequently but I’m extremely lazy with all the night classes and night readings that I don’t really know what to talk about (I usually post random stuff on my twitter you know)
I’ve been using my laptop as my ereader. I’ve slept reading from my laptop a hundred time and soon it took a toll on my eyesight (read my old post on partial blinker). Curiously, I dont have any increase in my prescription (since I was 15 actually) but I do have dryness because reading requires me to not blink as frequently as I should and I got double vision and occasional migraine (which I blame on ear infection and wisdom tooth ache). But its really a small thing and I don’t complain a lot except to my optometrist and they usually recommend me the usual.. don’t read, stay away from laptop and etc… but dude, laptop and me are like an appendage, you can’t separate me from it! and I have to read or I go ballistic! Have you even seen me during my matriculation year? I didn’t have a laptop with me and I’m doom to rereading Harry Potter and some romance novel out of boredom. Of course, I study more but psychologically, the stress I had was scarring enough that I only get destress from reading.
But I can tell that story in other time. Flash forward to 2012, I actually had been thinking about getting an e-reader…. since I was a teenager. But an e-reader was still a foreign thing in this soil of people who rarely read in a month so if you want an e-reader, be prepared to fork out a THOUSAND ringgit for on black and white small tablet-looking usb drive. I don’t have thousands, I can’t even dream about asking my dad for it (which I usually see rich kids who show off these days, new money wastage…) so naturally, I give up the idea since a thousand ringgit could get a hundred book in Bookxcess and Big Bad Wolf Sale.
So.. one day, I went into local Goodreads.com forum about e-reader and I’ve been watching some pamphlets of iRiver getting cheaper to rm500 but I’m not convinced. I know Kindle is pretty expensive too (Kindle 3 is nearly rm700 right?) and imagine my surprise that they’ve decided to subsidized the Kindle so that it can be affordable. Yay…
So I decided to get them.
If you followed me on twitter, you’d notice I had a lot of tweets about Kindle. Its because I actually paid fully for Kindle 4 on 12/4 (my bank close on 11/4 because its Agong’s coronation day). But the seller decided to come up with some excuse that end up with him sending out the Kindle FIVE days AFTER I paid them which pissed me off. Not to mention, from 17th to 20th, the Singpost site didn’t update anything at all and what bugs me was that Singapore was very very very near to Malaysia. For a “world class” city country, they do have lousy courier.
Honestly, do you WALK from Singapore to KLIA? Because as far as I know, if I get out of the house before afternoon, I CAN reach to Tuas lane to Singapore by 6pm. I know this because my dad was a Singaporean until the 60s and my kampung is actually in Jurong so we go there every year (even so, 1Utama have daily KL-Singapore ride… kinda feel bad about it. I really wanna balik kampung frequently but… dad… errr….)
Oh well.. after spending bitching about Singpost and reading online horror stories from Singpost users. FINALLY, on 20/4’s SATURDAY morning, they updated with “Arrived at overseas”. So I checked with PosMalaysia’s registered postage tracker and found this.
OMG… so FAST and they UPDATED every single steps. Jeez… imagine my excitement seeing all these things… (Updates from below to up). The customs made me anxious a bit (since the box is slightly huge although very light), but it got through.
and… tadaaaa….
Seriously, for RM14 (SGD7) I’d expected the service would be a lot better than usual RM3 malaysian registered postage (which I don’t actually mind if it went AWOL for 4 days… the price doh). Next time, I would try asking the Singaporean people to consider Malaysian cheaper alternative but better service (like not let my rm315 float for 4 days while you conveniently forget about posting something or 4 days of parcel MIA… what did they do? bulk it in one truck? shouldn’t it be a lot cheaper that way?)
Oh well.. I’d recommend the seller if you’re willing to wait two weeks for it but thankfully for PosMalaysia and of course the Kindle itself!
I wanted to do a vlog but then my sister took the camera this morning so I have to rely on my webcam with bluish cast from the screen.
First impression, I really am surprised of how small the size of the K4NT is… all reading and watching those reviews doesn’t prepare me for this. But its quite fine, I think its cute and light and it does fit ONE hand on its own. I have ladies hands so, I don’t really thing the side buttons or stuff bother me.
You can choose not to connect it to the pc but whatever…
My first try with the wifi and the keyboard. I found that the wifi ATE the battery life so quickly. So honestly, why do you need to use this kindle to surf when your laptop do even better performance than this.
My kindle store… which I don’t buy stuff from it since there’s the line of paranoidism among publisher who doesn’t want people in other part of the world to obtain their ebooks legally reducing us to wacky e-stores (like overpriced Maxis and weird MPH ebook section which baffled me..) but there’s hundred of out-of-copyright books which you can get for freely. I do read classics from time to time.
Darn ads… actually I want this Decalgirl offer but I can’t. Am sooo sad…. 😦
The list of ads which is fine actually. No one watch the screensaver and the bottom ads doesn’t bother me much since it does leave a lot of space to the book listing.
Where I left of…
Food sanitation PDF notes which I will never bother print again. Its not really that tiny. You people are babied lots.. this is actually the real font on paper of 90% of my universities’ powerpoints. Its still readable. I don’t understand why people complain about it.
This is another PDF example. My real fourth year final semester lecture note on H5N1 with MOST of the three dozen slides that contain ONLY words. I tell you what, it does annoyed me that I don’t have Kindle while I’m still doing my undergraduate studies. I don’t like reading slides of my computer and kept enlarging them to read on paper. This is actually modified form of the lecture notes which I enlarge to fit the square slides for printing. You can only imagine how small it was before…..yes, its called MALAYSIAN universities. No, its not really that hard, that was one slide after all.. try combining the other dozens….
You can transfer your comics to PDF too and read them. This Game of Thrones comic are in colour but you can still appreciate it in black and white. Although you do need to put it on landscape mode to read the tiny fonts. Seriously this is one reason why I prefer japanese manga.
I know the screen is really fragile (everything is) so having a case is basically a logical solution. Although I’m favouring tablet sleeves. There’s a LOT of phone accessories shop around me and I do hope I find one thats suitable for this kindle. The e-ink really do its job well. I know its grey and if you haven’t read a lot.. pure white and black will cast a shadow in your eyes because the chromocytes were adjusting to the contrasts. Its like seeing invisible dots etc. I do keep my screen as low contrast as possible (except when I play skyrim) at night since the backlight really does bother my eyes. I always use dimscreen but it doesn’t really work with the brightness.
Anyway, i use my laptop as a book light in the dark when I’m reading physical book. It work with Kindle 4 too. I can actually read with my back facing the tv.
I actually don’t care for Touch. I’ve seen its quite sluggish for a IR touchscreen. Besides, its first generation touch kindle, unlike K4, there’s a long way to go for Touch to reinvent itself. But I do hope they supply physical button in future generation since I really do like K4’s side buttons. And if I was willing to wait.. I would have chosen Nook Touch over Kindle Touch for the physical button and non-ads alone.
I noticed the fingerprints on the device but you don’t really notice its there. Its kinda like my Acer’s touchpad. However, the real problem came when I eat while reading, which I actually guarantee I will do just that. I wipe my laptop once a day when it felt tacky. Considering K4 is an electronic, I’d suspect its a dust attractor (static) too. So always have a microfiber on hand.
And DICTIONARIES. I do have a lot of dictionaries, being a serious authorand all. I do want to look up new words and you can continuously expand the vocabularies. This is way cheaper too since I’ve seen people were sold by the idea of rm500 mini computer-like dictionary. Tch tch tch…
Honestly, I do expect more option for the fonts since I like Times New Roman and Calibri so the basic fonts is a bit messy to get used to. I do want to adjust the margin. I get unnerved when one side is too thin and another is too wide.
If you’re a student. Just get this. You’ll thank me.
I’ll continue updating this review since I don’t like writing multiple ones after a long duration of time. I’ll think of something.
I ordered RM 60 worth of NYX cosmetics last month and its just arrived today in parcel. Ack!!
I got myself 4 new lipstick and a white eyeliner. For review, I added my other vampire NYX lipstick in a bunch. Damn loads of liptick. I’m not a lipstick girl but damn, this is a lot for a self-employed nerd like me.
I’m too lazy bum to get the real camera so I’m using just my laptop cam. My backlight monitor cast a bluish shade to all the pics but apparently its still HighDef. Since you’d notice the bumps on my chin. (Need to stop touching them but some guy idiotically point it out one day that girls have ‘hairy’ chin (which is just sebum and facial hair!) and I just couldn’t stop touching it now and now it breakout often there)
Upper : Heredes and Ulysses
Lower : Hades and Heather
In real light, there’s real lines and colour that separates them but even now you could see darker Ulysses, frosty Hades and bluish-rose Heather. You could see Heredes shadowed at the lower side of my upper lip that it made me look that I’ve overlined or something.
BTW, I’ve just woke up and haven’t showered or anything when the parcel arrived so I just go on testing the products while I’m in the mood and since I end up washing everything off again.
I’ve push-lined my eyes with gel liner and put white eyeliner on my tightlines. It does make my allergy-induced insomnia-dark under eyes disappear. Point for being a girl.
For the White eye liner product itself; Its pretty chalky and didn’t quite spread on the tightlines but shimmery enough that you don’t really need silver eyeliner for the effect. As its really chalky, you really have to brave through pressing it long against your eyes. For the effect alone, It does made my round eyes way much rounder and weirdly, I don’t really need eye concealer. GODSEND!
I gel-eye lined my left eye fully from top to bottom and didn’t for the right eyes. Funny how fully lining the eyes didn’t make it go smaller. I’m absolutely convinced with white eyeliner now. And its quite hard to find anything other than black and brown liner in the drugstore counters and you don’t really use it in heavy duty way so NYX’s eye pencil for rm14 really does last you long enough. I want the glossy NYX Noir eyeliner but a lot of the local NYX dealers didnt have it so I’ll wait a bit longer.
BTW, I finally got the hang with Benefit mascara (I know I should throw it out by now but it didnt go smelly or awful – important indicator that you need to throw your mascara ASAP was the solvent chemical separation, smell of rancidity and those goddamn fumes – so im glad to say the expensive mascara can last long) and it only went to falsies level if you use the tip horizontally for each lashes. I didn’t even curl here. But if you don’t like clumps, the mascara wont suit you.
Hades The lightest lipstic of the bunch is Hades which was a frosty brownish-peach with slight shimmer. To wear it on its own, it need to be applied generously to show colour. It look pale on my lips mostly because my lips are darker and in light, it really does look frosty (means your lips will look pale in flash pictures). Doesn’t seem to be pigmented and it does need to be applied heavily or layered over a much pigmented lipstick. Its okay to use for heavy smokey eyes but can be quite bland on its own as it quickly fades. Paired nicely with heredes. Be sure to wear a light coloured lip liner under them if you really want nudish look.
For example, I think I did this look once during dinner college… but the light lipstick was eaten off already since this is the end of the day and its already past midnight.
So, as you can see, the eyes really does go vavoom with muted lips and I eventually eat so I don’t really care about big red lipstick in dinner events.
Heather Its a blue-pink rose cream lipstick. It appear darker on my lips but quite pigmented on its own. Compared to my usual warm-rose lipstick Stage Bewitching Brandy, Heather is much bluer, hence its a night lipstick than a day. However the lipstick broke at the base, probably a manufacturing defect but its okay if you’re using with lip liner brush. It complements well with Ulysses. Be sure to use whitening toothpaste, mouthwash and chewing gum for this. There’s a shimmer in it so it does shine with camera flash.
Heredes I’m surprised that its more orange-pink warm colour with a slightly rose tone to it and its much creamy. Since its a bright colour, its quite overwhelming on a face (in a good way). You can wear it on its own since it does make the lips a prominent feature on a face. It definitely make you look healthier even when you haven’t bathe yet, LOL.
Ulysses You can actually see the camera settings warmed to my skin with this lipstick, haha.Its a really warm brown-red lipstick. Its heavily pigmented but you’re definitely looked much professional wearing this i.e. it make me look like i’m 23 being a 23 year old and not being 20 or 18. It complements well to my tanned skin and but seemed muted enough for day look. It doesn’t show much of the dry cracks on the lips and it fades to a good warm red stain on the lips.Definitely a work-environment lipstick. Hell, I can give this to my mom if I want to.
Decadent
Finally, this is one dark bluish-red blood Irene Adler lipstick. I love it but I hardly find any events for it. (I actually bought it in case I need it for a night event or something) It stained to a very dark red and slightly matte for a cream lipstick. It can look harsh but its a great night lipstick if you go to a goth mood or ehem.. dominatrix. And its dark bluish-red undertone, it naturally make your teeth look whiter. And the lipstick melted completely in the car but its still usable.
You can absolutely do Ombre lips with Decadent and Hades. So blood red lipstick can be seasonal. But I didnt have clean lip brush for it.. yes, I shall buy more brushes.
I’ve done swatches on my arm but I dont really like skin swatches so I left it off.
Pros
RM10 (or RM13) each (definitely better shades than Avon RM10 lip stuff)
Shades are ENDLESS (I end up choosing these Greek shades instead)
Creamy
Some are very pigmented
Quite tasteless
Nice rubber shade under the lipstick so you can see the colour instead of memorizing the names
Cons
Too creamy for tropical environment (may need to put in fridge), two (Heather and Heredes) actually snapped at the base so be careful when you want to bring it along in your bag
It can leak out from the case if its hot enough
Have this curious soap scent which doesn’t bother much after initial usage. But still there.
Can make your lips dry so be sure to wear lip balm (happen with maybelline avon too because of the wax content)
Ingredients:
Bees Wax, Copernicia Cerifera (Carnauba) Wax, Euphorbia Cerifera (Candelilla) Wax, Ceresin, Microcrystalline Wax, Polyethylene, Octyldodeanol, Polyisobutene, Ethylhexyl Palmitate, Diisostearyl Malate, Polyglyceryl -2 Triisostearate, Isostearyl Isostearate, Bis-Digylceryl Polyacyladipade-2, Tocopheryl Acetate, B.H.A, Fragrance, Mica, and pigments depending on lipsticks : Titanium Dioxide, Iron Oxide Red, Iron Oxide Yellow, Iron Oxide Black, D&C Red No.6, D&C Red No.7, D&C Red No.27, FD&C Yellow No.5 Aluminum Lake, FD&C Blue No.1 Aluminum Lake, and D&C Red No.36 MAY CONTAIN: Mica (CI 77019), Titanium Dioxide (CI 77891), Iron Oxide Red (CI 77491), Iron Oxide Yellow (CI 77492), Iron Oxide Black (CI 77499), D&C Red No.6 (CI 15850), FD&C Blue No.1 Aluminum Lake (CI 42090), D&C Red No.7 (CI 15850), D&C Red No.27 (CI 45410:1), or FD&C Yellow No.5 Aluminum Lake (CI 19140)
Honestly, I don’t know why I always brings “Twilight” and “Bella” whenever I find the main character to be a total idiotic drone that are worthless to root for. Its inane and pathetically lazy to make this kind of character. Its okay if its a 200 page harlequin romance but not if its a series. Honestly, what sort of life a writer can have to choose these plain character as their main character. Narrow weh.. sempit!
In fact I have a character cheat sheet to make hundreds of characters. This is much better than my pathology cheat sheet which doesnt come in examinations.
I don’t get the idea of liking a main character that are based on being an ‘average’ girl and copy-paste character. No one is average. Everyone is unique. Everyone dreams their own dreams, and breathe their own air. Carve their own history on the stone when they died. They may be imaginary but they’re not stupid. This might sound pretty schizophrenic but do respect thy own imaginary character.
Bella is like a double shot of blonde/rambut_karat jokes around. No personality, robotic, soulless. And SUICIDAL! And the author call herself a feminist while basing female characters surrounded with males with moronic sexual deprivation issues.
jeez….
Published YA authors should know that making a paper thin main character is a very very lazy tactic. I am a bookworm first and writer-wannabe second. Honestly, I dont care about readers when I write a book, but with hell when I want to torture my proofreaders with inane characters.
this link include a long character with reference on how bella is not a good character to rely on.
and honestly, I do read bad fiction. It does made me want to be a good author in weaving stories despite my grammatical errors… oh well, its not really that bad, I do study in a convent school anyway, but gosh… if you dont like your own MAIN character, how can you expect others to like your paper characters? or you, for that matter.
…. thank heavens the government didn’t start calling me now for interviews (I think I’m axing PDRM because my left eye oh well.. just try2 la) because NaNoWriMo is truly draining my EXP and HP.
1. Get Some : Fuel
I found hot chocolate made me weirdly insomniac compared to plain coffee. The other one is diuretic but somehow the caffeine just went out from my system and I feel so dozy. Chocolate is comforting too so if you dont have overload yourself on caffeine (I accidentally use Java.. Java is my ethnicity not my coffee okay) its fine. You wont get those creative juices flowing if you are perked up so much that your brain and its creative self somehow suppressed. FYI, if you are attending a write in… dont drink coffee with an empty stomach. I always feel nausea after that.
2. GO AWAY!! : People Distraction a.k.a. My nieces and nephew without their mother.
The bane of writinghood. They would throw things at your laptop, spill drinks on you, vomit on you, yell at you, begging for food and drinks, for attentions and its endless. Alif now bonded with me somehow so I’m not complaining and the cute picture.
Yeah he got chocolate overdose from me. I am guilty as charged.
My dad always berated me for writing after midnight when everyone is asleep but me. Its okay, I endure it, I like the silence, and people wont see me make faces and start gesturing something invisible and trying out vocabularies with my tongue.
3. My lovely laptop
But sadly, my laptop seems dying.. physically. I haven’t been that hard with it but my nephews love wrecking my keyboard and my nieces love slamming the lid down that one of the plastic has come loose. Which now worries me quite A LOT!
….. ….Dennis the Menace….. …..
4. Internet
Good for research and good for keeping your draft in the cloud. I make another blog for my writing but I kept it private though. Its purely for my NaNo and other draft writing.
Turn it off since it WILL bother you! Twitter and Facebook need to be ban from November. But I cant… Y_Y
it will started to annoy you or better yet just set it to Kamikaze and Evil mode and you’ll be speed writing when the redness of doom start coming.
its also good to start updating your word count daily.. I was on 2 days depression so I had a day to catch up with my word count.
5. Familiarize With The Idea
Like I said in some post ago, I thought about making a story about a serial killing acid attacker when KL was bombarded with random acid attack. But nothing come into my head and I was already intending to do a medical science fiction/dystopian world but I really dont have anything after writing 1 chapter.
As NaNo is coming, I was already reading a lot on serial killers and serial rapist (I do read forensic stuff while I’m bored) so thats why I’m doing the story which by far.
Somehow I made it a psychedelic road trip. I shall clue you in how I change some of the storyline to let it fit the thriller genre more. I never actually done anything in thriller as a lot of the books I read kind of failed spectacularly and bore me to near death. So its a new way for me.
6. Dont Read How-To books including No Plot No Problem
They distracts you a lot. I have suffered
7. BRAG!
I’m bragging now anyway. That’s motivating. I might have to face the wall of shame in the end if I didnt finish my ‘k’s – thousands of words.
8. Publishing
I have intended to submit some chapters after I finished this to some local publication houses. I have spotted a lot of people who do a great help for me to do some proof-reading and side-editing. This is my motivation to finish 60k for now.
If you never yet pass 30k, DONT EVER bug people about publishing. Seriously.
And if you are in Teens, better stop thinking about it first. Just improve your grammar and style. My English for blogs and tweets are not my usual English as I found a lot of people have difficulties in it. So practice well and if you are currently having the exam, study la…
9. Find Good Quotes, NEVER Plagiarize It and Instead: ELABORATE It
I actually get a lot of quotes coming from my favourite shows like The Mentalist, Fringe, etc. Instead of using them, I was thinking about the situation that inspired from the quotes. Procedural police tv shows help me a lot with my wordings as my character is a cop.
I was actually not comfortable with writing a lot of talking dialogues (being antisocial and people speaking Malay all the time is unhelpful) but I tried and somehow the story is more descriptive like Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus. I do everything in bite pieces and somehow left with minimal dialogues and get into the scene straight forward.
I try to avoid fluff so I created another dimension for my character. And I started to sound like Lovely Bones the Movie.
10. BACKUP!
Like in my thesis month, everything will fail on you. Your printer, your charger etc. Try to keep everything in thumbdrive or better yet, keep your draft in the ‘cloud’.
Always backup daily!
No one will care when you cry a river.
—-
I am now able to be a full-time fiction writer now. Which is quite a relief as along these few years, November was my most busiest month. It was exam weeks. I mean literally, WEEKS of examinations. Since I’m a graduate now, so I can concentrate on writing this story which is progressively well.
I am a writer btw, I write a lot of medical essays and assignments. So that does count… right?
p/s: BTW I should be doing 2k more today but hey… I think I could catch up later in midnight… ouch)
p/p/s : I emphasize on the fiction author as I had plenty of essays on medical stuff which only my lecturers could understand anyway.
p/p/p/s: Malaysia won against Myanmar for Semi-Final in Football’s SEA Games. Woot! I rarely watch Malaysian team since I got turned off with how lazy they are before but now it seems that the FAM is doing a right thing for picking the players. I hope Indonesian won for the Semis so that we can kick their asses again. I’m a bit pissed off with the Indonesian treatment to the Malaysian teams in every tournaments. Apparently, now I know what to add to my antagonist character sheet.
p/p/p/p/s : I’ve tried “The Defacer” and “Defacer” but someone need one word novel for submission and there’s an underground black metal group named “Defacer” so.. avoiding the copyright scenario on me by those cheap-publicity people.. sigh
(Since this post is near 1k, I really do need to go back to my writing)
Take Me To The Circus 