So precious...

Today has been a precious day. It rained a good deal this morning, and snowed a good deal as well from afternoon until now, the weather very well puts me under a melacholic mood. Just yesterday and several days before, depressive bout of thoughts didn't leave me even for a second... I cried myself to sleep, to awake this morning feeling light and refreshed... as if a heavy cloak of dark clouds had finally lifted. Everything appears precious to me, even the little act of driving in the rain, to catching glimpses of snow falling outside of the windows as I sat working on my assignment, to seeing my parents back from work, to cooking spontaneously a fried rice dish... Then I know... I had been too hard on myself. If only I had looked a little bit closer to what really matters. I couldn't see it then, and suddenly, a revelation came, not from careful analysis of self-introspection like I always do, but from simply allow myself to live, to breathe in the moments, to experience everything as it is and as it comes. We humans are strange, and much stronger than one is able to give credits to. Perhaps, this feeling of tranquil happiness is just that, a fleeting moment of revelation, and the next day, stress and unhappiness will again take me captive... even so, I am happy just as I am now. Isn't that life? We struggle just for that brief moment of happiness? Let me be selfish for a little bit then... because yes, I am selfish, it has always been my weakness. But I'll keep trying to conquer it... because there will always be another better tomorrow.

Favorite manga introductions!

It is often not discussed on my blog, but I am a big manga lover. Not an obsessed fan that follows and collects all the titles that are put out on the market (nor am I fortunate enough to have the income to do so ^^), but I am more the type that reads and experiments with a lot of lesser known works, as long as they pick my interest.

I started counting my manga collection yesterday night out of boredom. Guess how many I have accumulated since the summer of 2007? 279 volumes! That's a lot more than I had expected, not that it's a bad thing :D. One thing though, many titles reside on the shelves were impulse purchases. Ahh, here come the memories of a golden time when I still had plenty of money to waste on buying bulk manga set on Ebay. That 2007 summer alone I must have acquired roughly 3/4 of all the volumes I have right now... And if I really talk about money, one manga costs averagely $10, and I have 279 books, that must make the amount I spent on money roughly about $2800!!! Even though, truthfully speaking, I bought most of them cheap... some dirt cheap like the whole 14 or 15 volumes of Firefighter! Daigo of M Company for like $20 total. And the series turned out to be amazing!!! I couldn't have been happier ^^. I stopped collecting for like 2 years due to financial crisis and the close down of the only cheap place I bought manga from, lol, but ever since I discovered the new&use link on Amazon (yes, I am very ignorant of a lot of things around me), I knew that I could finally resume this habit of collecting.

Too many scattered thoughts...

The diary I ordered from Korea finally arrived. It is such a pretty diary, though a little bit smaller than I'd imagined.

As you can see from the picture above, it came in a tin box, with a sheet of index stickers and a PVC cover to protect the diary from wears, stains, water, whatever you name it.

Everything about it spells high quality and I'm very happy with this purchase.

The illustrations are also very cute and endearing!

This diary is so precious that I almost don't want to write anything in it, in case I destroy its prettiness. Yes, I know it's ridiculous -__-;; but I can't help it!

Korea and Japan produce some of the cutest things on this tiny planet, I tell yah!

I am bewitched by their products all the time... ah, my wallet is weeping right now.

My mom is always puzzled over my obsessions with cute things, and keeps on telling me to 'grow up', but she just can't understand my joy whenever I come across a lovely illustration, a unique product, a stylish design *sighs*...

It's something that I don't think I'll ever 'grow out' of.

Gifts and more manga...

So my best friend returned from Vietnam last night and got me some cute stuff... in fact, she got me quite a bit of ... stuff, and uhm, ahahah I'm very grateful she did :D. I could never get enough of stuffie and while she was giving all these things at my other friend's house last night, he kept on laughing as though he got things in his throat. It was when I realized man, I really miss her, ehhehe... it was her presence that made me the happiest. I'm not sure how it's suppose to be since I've got somewhat of a cold personality and it's always hard for me to make friends and warm up to people, but once I do, I feel a great attachment or connection. And to realize that the last few weeks to me had been so dreary and bleak and lonely. However, she'll be moving again soon and it seems like it's gonna be where she'll be happier than here. It makes me feel useless and very sad actually, that I couldn't make her happier as my friend... I'm not sure how I can express these feelings though... that once away, she'll forget all about me and get on with her new life with new sets of people and I will be noone but a mere memory. That thought alone makes me somewhat depressed. I've already lost one friend that I truly treasure due to a mistake on my part, and until now when I look back I still cannot help but feel a great regret weighing down my heart... Sometimes I wish I'm more vulnerable and take more initiative, maybe, maybe then I won't appear to be so hard to approach, then I would allow people to come into my life easier. Sometimes I wish my life would be like in those dramas where friendship strikes in the most unusual circumstance and we'd hit it off really fast and become the best of buddies for a long time. You know, often I think how it's so unfair some people make new relationships so easily while others can't, how someone would lose a relationship and go on starting a new one and get really intimate while some find it a difficult task to have that kind of quality relationship again with another person. I'm more of the latter. Guess I expect too much out of the others and often get disappointed and in a sense, not feeling much attachment to the current relationship I have. Seriously, i don't understand what i want either... hence I don't give out as much... could be because i'm scared... fear of intimacy maybe... if there's such a fear in this world. A lot of time I don't know why I try so hard to understand myself and the people around me, don't you think those things can weigh a person down??? Ahh, too much sentimental stuff hihih... but I took a picture, so hehe :D




So below is my manga purchase for the first two months of this year... and I kept on wondering where my money went when I don't even go shopping -___-;; Here it's missing After School Nightmare volume 5 since DeepDiscount doesn't have it in stock T___T... Aww, and I was looking forward to reading that one the most. I already read 12 days, tramps like us and Orange and well.. I love how Tramps like Us ended, as for the other two, they're just short stories and I still don't know even now how I feel towards them. One thing though, Orange's artwork is gorgeous and absolutely breathtaking!!! The whole graphic novel is in color, isn't that so neat? The original price is $15 but I got it cheaper for 11 bucks on Amazon. Benjamin is an amazing author, I <333 his arts. And I'm very exciting to read Solanin because I love the artwork and the synopsis so far :D. Flight vol 5 is just a must since I enjoyed the other 4 volumes.

A quiet week... & some manga reviews.

I'm not really in the mood for lengthy talks, I still want to briefly cover a few manga titles that I read and love recently. It might not seem like it, but I absolutely adore manga, especially those that deal with unusual subjects and dare to challenge readers' perspectives, not being afraid to get real and brutally honest. That is not to say that I just read everything and anything weird just for the sake of it... because until now I still completely behold this grudge against unnecessary gory and graphic manga. However, unusual art styles do attract me quite often, especially when it stays consistent throughout. Anyways, let's move on to the more important thing: the manga :D. What titles do I have high respect and love for so far... this list is in no particular order since I usually don't rank my manga much; though I tend to have a top 5.

Tramps like us



This is such a wonderful josei manga (josei is a term used for manga that targets older females like those in college and above). The premise might put some readers off however, I was one of them in the beginning. The story talks about Sumire, and beautiful and intelligent working woman who seems to have it all: from looks to brain. However, since she's so smart and beautiful, other people feel intimidated and envious of her and keep a distance from Sumire. At her workplace she faces discriminations even when her works are always done perfectly and topnotch, just because she's a female in a place stocked with male workers who don't like having a woman standing above them (literally and metaphorically, darn she's always shown half a head taller than most men, :D). So, even though from an outsider's point of view, Sumire is the lucky one who shouldn't have any worries at all... but in reality, away from her workplace, she converts into a lonely lady with low-self-esteem. One day, she happens to find a beaten guy outside her door and took him in. He doesn't want to leave, so she suggests to keep him as a pet and calls him Momo (the name of her dead dog). So there you go... from then on, the two of them stay under one roof, with one condition: the guy stays and acts like her pet dog: Momo. Sounds pretty sick huh. I knew of some people who were totally totally disgust by this manga. However, this manga doesn't focus on that pet-owner relationship for long... as we slowly see just how fragile and lonely Sumire is. She wants someone who care for her, but is too proud to admit it, hence the weird request. Read it if you want something a little more mature than the usual Sailormoon-ish soap opera romance.


Nodame Cantabile



I knew nothing of this manga beforehand. It wasn't even popular online as scanlations, nobody talked about it at all. So one day, I walked into Barns & Nobles and habitually browsed the graphic novels aisle and stumbled upon this one, thanks to its unique drawing style!!! (See, artstyles do help :D!). Upon reading the first volume, I fell in love instantly from the very first few pages!! It was just soo... different and carefree, and I love the subject matter: classical music. The first volume was one hell of a hilarity ride... never had I read something so silly like this and enjoyed it so much. It must have been the carefree attitude the author put into it that makes everything about this manga a breath of fresh air, so refreshing and bursting of energy! Read it, read it!!!


Moon Child



Hm... this is an older manga and is very... weird. I couldn't help but be drawn to its story, however. Let me dig up a synopsis (I can't think of doing it myself, since until now after 7 vols I'm still pretty much clueless, hahaha...):

According to prophecy, the daughter of the greatest traitor of mer-people, Seira, and her human husband, will either bring an end to the feud between humanity and the mer-people or bring about the destruction of all life on Earth. When the mer-man named Shona, who has seen the daughter of Seira many times in his dreams, comes to Earth to find her, he meets a young boy, Jimmy, suffering from amnesia. As Shona continues his search for the girl, he finds out that the mystery of Jimmy's identity might be the cause of Earth's destruction...

So... what do I like so much about it? Because it's just sooo... strange. You see this place that resembles earth, but at the same time so far removed from it. You see these people living as people but underneath that facade have another self. You get gender confusion, predestined love, hatred, and tons more and just have no clues where things will lead. This manga is a work of art, in my opinion. I don't care if it seems directionless sometimes, or just so... out there, I enjoyed it tremendously. Or perhaps, I'm just a romantic who likes to be emerged into an enchanted supernatural oasis, lets myself be moved around just as long as I get that feed of foreign stuff. I know... it's kinda sad, hahaa... but hey, let me tell you... it's a true joy :D.

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Well, that's it for now. It's getting so late, so I will be talking more about manga in another post when I'm not so constricted with time. By the way, all those titles are available in English so if you're interested, take a look at them at the bookstore or library. Ja ne!!!!