Key Notes From Australia:

• It is dark at night.
• Seriously, like I can't even see my fingers when I put them in front of my face.
• Nature(of the eight-legged variety) got into the garage, the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom...
• Everything closes at 5pm.
• The sun doesn't get out of the sky until 9pm.
• Ginger cost $3.99 a piece ("It's Chinese New Year," explains the shopkeeper.)
• Almost no one wears glasses.

We sure ain't in Kansas anymore.

Well, this is it I suppose.

I don't think I have much sense of the word 'home' like what it means to others. There is no specific place where I tie myself down to and sometimes I think being a nomad isn't so bad except that there isn't broadband connection at my fingertips.

Yet, it's kinda bittersweet to be leaving a place where you spend 10 years growing up, grousing about the government, the education system , the public transport...Each and every minute nuance is so clear and familiar that the place is declared boring.

The people maketh the place. Friendships built in the last ten years means everything to me because I could care less about where I am if there were no company , conversation or laughter.

So, I'll be leaving this small island (64km wide, 1hr drive from East to West) and traveling 6076km across the across the Indian ocean to another island.

No idea what I'll discover there. Maybe more angst, a couple of kangaroos and an early driver's license(yey!)

Even as everything changes, this blog will still be around. And Facebook. And MSN. It'll be difficult to trawl the internet without bumping into each other.

I'll miss everyone(really) and everything.

Goodbye,Singapore!

Advertorial

“Fork in the road. Which way should we go?” Prayer asked placidly.

“Simple,” Crux grinned and pointed at the wall separating the two roads.

There, written in light pink chalk, were two words. Each one had an arrow which pointed to their respective passageways.

“So do we go to the sea or do we go to Rhannatoa?” Crux turned to Prayer and grinned.

“Please bless these brainless people,” Prayer muttered

“Amen.”-The Chronicles of Cadenza,Book One

And that pretty much sums up one of the many philosophies of Weng Jun J.Shezo,16, who believes that Walking In The Rain Will Kill Brain Cells and Why Are We Running Three Rounds In The Sun Are They Trying To Murder Us.

Philosophies that are in abundance in her debut book "The Chronicles of Cadenza" which we kinda published and unleashed unto the world.

Heavily influences by geography and biology textbooks, 'Cadenza' follows a political vampire named Crux who is sent to find the 'Lost One' to prevent the collapse of the world as he knows it.

In his sea voyage, he comes across others who are also seeking it for their own means. Eve, a voodoo witch, who wants to end discrimination in her clan; Don, a werewolf, who wants to avenge his family and Night, a Prince of Thieves, who wants to delay his coronation date.

It's a very jarring clash of old(a ship) and new(an island with hovering robots) which, more often than, not ends with hilarious results.

No idea whether the book will make any sense if you have never opened a textbook but a light read on its own.

I think there are sequels.

For the curious and the interested, click the badge on my sidebar to preview the first two chapters of the book. There is original art included.

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Anyway, I made a resolution last year that I would stop boring people with techy details because whenever I try to explain something about 'Why the picture is this colour' or 'You have to right-click and save and then download the 7zip to open rar files or else you can't extract it' I get glazed eyes.

Mostly kept to that resolution but I'm breaking it today because publishing a book is too interesting not to detail down. (and by interesting I mean the way maths teacher's say that a particular problem is unsolvable and thus proclaim it interesting).

1. The Writing
No idea about this bit because I didn't write this book, the last time I did write one,it was embarrassing. Anything that involves acorns and environmentalist is probably not a good idea.
Anyway, J.Shezo took about 6 months to complete her book before leaping into the yet to be named sequel.

2.The Typing
Most people type directly into the laptop. Unless, you happen to be writing during class time. Props to Jazreel and Louisa who risked Carpal tunnel syndrome and were responsible for transcribing 360 pages of minuscule writing to digital form.

3. The Editing
I am not the world's best editor, hell, I'm not even qualified. Editing was okay, although I did have to find out how to do paragraph spacing right.

4.The Formatting
And this is probably where the nightmares start.

Booksmart by Blurb.com was used to format the book. I'm sure it works wonderful if you're doing a 20 page picture book but a 360 page fantasy novel? What's the worse that can happen? It crashes every five minutes and clicking the space button takes a minute for the programme to react? Ha ha...

Ha.

It happens.

When you are on a shoe string budget, you turn to Open source/freeware programmes. The thing about Open source/freeware programmes are that they make everything more difficult than necessary.

No, you cannot format a book in Microsoft Word, unless you have never ending patience like a turtle.

5. The Designing
This was mostly for the front cover and the back. It was my first attempt at actual lineart and colouring.

Needless to say, I suck.

There is something I didn't quite get between my first and last art lesson. Photoshop didn't help me much here because I actually had to colour. Although, I did find out that if you hit the transparency lock mode, you could basically colour within the lines.


And then it was done and it was my first experience with self-publishing and I'm not entirely sure I went about it the right way.

Courage.

Resources: Texture,Vector

I've done what I've been threatening to do since I discovered free fonts.

Made my own.
I swear my handwriting is better in real life. A little.

Okay, maybe not so much.

Anyway,disregarding the fact that typography is an art that has been perfected over centuries first by quills then by Apple.

The Internet has a nifty site for creating your own font. It doesn't take 10 minutes to have your own writing for download at FontStruct. You won't be able to enlarge your font beyond a size 22(it becomes pixellated) but it's still rather good for casual use.

For whatever reason, if you're interested in this font you can download it here.

Anyway,I did an internship at Strait's Times IN newspaper a couple of weeks ago. I apologize for any inconvenience caused when I called to interview/annoy you.

But, the fruits of labour are out. I am less than happy (no not cheerful, more like thinly veiled embarrassment laced with oh I don't know,anger is a bit strong a word. Disgruntled maybe. Yeah. Disgruntled.) with the way the article was written and how it got edited.

Mmm, I wouldn't say it was fantastic at first but it now has less flow between paragraphs and some of the more inventive phrasing got left out.

The article seems dead.

Original article(click to view)



So, let's commentate!


Well, back to doing things.

Busy busy.

And that's how we do it in St Nicks, with Hermione like studying habits of course.

Although I might need to go off and practise that Accio spell again.(not perfect but like many other things, workable.)

Congratulations to everyone else who has done swell academically or otherwise.

I think I have built up an aversion to hordes of crying girls.

I thank the teachers especially who have been inspiring.

Oh and my parents. Hi Daddy!

You wouldn't be able to pay me to do Secondary School Education again.

But 4 years in St Nicholas was seriously, best time of my life(so far.)

No.

TODAY IS NOT JUDGEMENT DAY AND I REFUSE TO RSVP.

Not lest, the goverment made me do it.

And yes, I'm scared. Scaredy-scared-scare.

Does the word 'scare' look weird to you now?

Good.

(Oh God. I just wasted my 800th post.)

(You go missing for 10 days and you come up with a post like that?
I was kinda busy.
That's not excuse.
I was very busy. Very Busy Indeed. But I will post more stuff soon.
Hmph.
I promise.
It better be good.)

We have finally crossed the borders between years!

2008 was mellow and 2009 will be awesome.

Till tomorrow! Have a Happy New Year!

Mary-sue and pillow step out in style.