This only took me all day. -_-

Good grief some of these things were hard to track down!


2000-2009 Improvement Meme by ~TheGrandHero on deviantART

But here's my end-of-the-year summary anyway. Whenever I do these, I'm always surprised at how fast a year passes... while at the same time, the first half of the year seems so far away. I can barely remember anything from before summer my holidays at this point. But then again, that could also just mean that the first couple of months of the year really were that forgettable.

HEALTH: Not too great, actually. Looking back at some posts from earlier this year, and more recent illnesses, I've actually felt pretty sick several times this year. Most were caused by the combination of stress and lack of sleep that comes with studying architecture sometimes. The worst one was the one at the beginning of the year, when I was finishing up last year's project, not getting any sleep while my pounding headache got worse and worse. The resulting cold lasted for weeks and pretty much screwed up the beginning of the following semester :(

The other big one was... (drumroll) SWINE FLU. Yes people, it turns out I have actually survived Swine Flu '09. Swine flu wasn't fun at all, but as far as flus go, it was incredibly wimpy. I only found out I had swine flu when I read the list of symptoms weeks after I was better - it seemed more like a really bad cold than the flu to me. Swine flu was seriously overhyped. All that mass panic over essentially nothing. This is a good thing, though. The potential was there, and we should all be glad it didn't turn out as bad as it could've been.

But to end on a positive note, 2009 was pretty good in terms of sleeping. I somehow managed to keep a fairly steady sleeping schedule for at least the second half of the year.

MONEY: I spent more money than ever, got the closest I've ever been to having no money at all, but also managed to work enough to make up for nearly all the money I spent. And some of that work was actual architectural work that I can put into my resume/portfolio at some point, so I can't complain.

Still, if things go as planned with school (and I'm really hoping they will), I won't have nearly as much time to work this year. Hell, depending on the workload, I may not have any time to make money in my non-existent free time. I will admit this worries me somewhat :(

GAMING: Still no new consoles/handhelds, and I'm not sure I'll ever catch up with recent gaming anymore. Free time to play games has been almost depressingly low. Still, I can't call 2009 a bad year for gaming either. I played (and enjoyed) a number of free MMORPGs, but more than that, I played and finished Persona 4. I hadn't finished a game in forever, and Persona 4 was a great game to boot. It's somewhat amusing that the gaming highlights of my year have been taking place in Brazil for the last two years.

SCHOOL: Downs and ups, but sadly it's still too early to give a final verdict on this one.

First the bad, I suppose. I failed the master 1 course I started at the beginning of the year, in part due to having a really bad start after getting sick finishing a previous project. I did finish that project, but that doesn't take away the fact I failed a MSc1 design project twice now. I took a bit of a confidence hit from that :(. It did confirm that the graduation studio that MSc1 falls under is not where I want to be, though. When teachers and teaching methods clash with your own views, it just doesn't work.

On the upside, the courses I did pass, I passed with pretty great grades (which helped alleviate the confidence thing a little), and I'm pretty sure I matured as a designer over the course of these two failed projects as well. And thanks to taking some extra classes I managed to scrape enough MSc2 credits together to only delay my graduation by half a year instead of one. Which is still 2 years faster than the average 7.5 years it takes. Another upside is that the graduation direction I'm currently in also feels like the right choice.

To achieve this, I do need to pass every class/project from this point on without fail, and finish my history thesis soon. Should I fail any class, no matter how minor, I can add at least 6 months to my graduation date, my student loans and all that good stuff - without actually having any classes to take in the meantime because I've finished everything else. Our current design project is going pretty well, but we're now working on the final presentation stuff and we have no idea what to expect from our teacher, and one of our groupmates leaves a week before the presentation. Which is traditionally the week that requires by far the most work. After that, it's time to study for exams. None of them seem are easy subjects.

The amount of stress that comes with it all of this is really bad ;_;

FRIENDS: Probably the worst part of 2009. With work and school taking up most of my time, the free time I had this year was extremely limited. Talking/hanging out with friends both online and offline took the biggest hit. I think I've managed to avoid completely estranging most people, but still.

This makes me pretty sad, and I hope 2010 can be a little better in this area. ilu guys :(

One notable exception is my student house: Our housemate of several years turned into a complete jerk after his formerly underage Polish girlfriend moved in, and eventually moved out without notifying anyone in advance. Stealing the house xbox and threatening to "find us a new housemate himself" while I was doing research in Casablanca. But we managed to avoid that, and now the guy is just gone. Good riddance. Although I'm sad it had to end on such bad terms, since he was a perfectly fine housemate for years.

Fortunately, the rest of us get together great. I don't think the atmosphere in our student house has ever been better, and we're slowly fixing and upgrading various parts of the house. It changed so much since I first moved in, and all for the better, even with our broken dishwasher.

LOVE: For love, 2009 was a great year once again. ishtar_vr and me managed to meet up 3 times this year, and it was great every time. Even if there were no fireworks in Paris, and fireworks in São Paulo were not as good as we'd hoped because of the rain :')

As impossible as long-distance relationships are supposed to be, we're still going strong and doing better than either of us could've expected when we started dating over 2 years ago. It's certainly not always easy, and with our relationship/future plans becoming more serious a certain amount of stress is inevitable, but I'm 100% convinced we're making this happen.

I love you, Isa.

2009, Overall Score: 80/100

Goodbye, 2009. You were not without your flaws, and because of the increased stress levels you didn't manage to top 2008. But that doesn't change that I've been quite happy this year, and any year you can honestly say you've been happy in should be considered a good year. You've certainly made the cut for me.

Happy new year, everyone. I hope 2010 will treat everyone better.

First off, GOOD NEWS EVERYONE: The person I was talking about in my previous entries is responding well to the antibiotics. Again, still a-prayin', and we are most definitely not out of the woods yet, but things are lookin a *little* better.

Anyways, I suppose it's a year in revuu time thingy...not so big on that though. I think 2009 was a bit better than 2008, at least, so here's hoping 2010 is even better. Hell, I managed to graduate from COLLIJ! so that counts for something, right? :D

Same old, same old. Take the first line or two from the first post of each month this year yadda-yadda and so forth.

Serious version may follow sometime in the coming week.

JANUARY
11,000 words in two days. Not bad!

FEBRUARY
SaGa 2, better known as Final Fantasy Legend II in the States, is getting a remake on the DS.

MARCH
The fact that Jefferson!Adams shipping exists does not startle me. The popularity of it, however, does. My word...

APRIL
Google just bought out Apple. D:

MAY
Dear Republican Party, for the love of moogles, please stop trying to rebrand yourselves as Democrats Lite™.

JUNE
And they could have done it without all that taxpayer money, thank you very much. Of course, now they've been awarded another $30 billion. -_-

JULY
I must admit that I'm rather disappointed with the way today's page turned out.

AUGUST
Am I the only one who thought the "D" in the Disney logo always looked like a "G" as a child?

SEPTEMBER
Why is cp_science not official yet?

OCTOBER
So I finally made good on my threat.

NOVEMBER
Apparently November is National Novel Writing Month.

DECEMBER
Instead of working, I wasted a whole other day watching anime.

Long story short: good series, horrible ending.

( Long story version (contains spoilers) )

po(*kjJ@09duj;90@Q)

Bad nuus: The person with the stroke has reported an increase in the pressure inside his head. Thankfully, there's no moar bleeding, but this combined with his previous health problems does not bode well. They might have to do surgery on him again...here's hoping things work out. ~_~

A bunch of things, I suppose.

First of all, late holiday wishes to everyone from Brazil. Hope everyone had a great Christmas, although I already know that's sadly not the case for everyone :(

But yeah, I'm currently in Brazil (have been for two weeks now), spending time with ishtar_vr and enjoying a surprisingly mild summer (and missing out on the first white Christmas in the Netherlands since '81 in the process XD). It's a more than welcome change from the depressing weather I left behind, although I sadly couldn't do the same with my architecture work. Final presentation is coming up on the 12th of January, and since it's groupwork and kind of important I pass this design course... "sob" expresses my feelings well enough.

But that and the fact I'm leaving in a week (sob. ;_;.) aside, there's a much bigger reason for this post: today we saw Avatar in 3D.

That shouldn't even be a reason for a post, really. The movie itself was "pretty okay" more than anything. It pretty much lived up to my expectations, not that I had many to begin with. It has a completely unoriginal and predictable storyline (Pocahontas and Ferngully meet Halo sounds about right), and the characters are more caricatures than actual characters. The visuals are fairly impressive: the world of Pandora looks great, mechanical design/animation and the Na'vi were pretty good too, although hardly inspired. The other creatures were a lot less impressive and most of them looked and felt like minor characters. But in the end, it all came together quite nicely, and the 3D effect definitely added something to the experience as well, but the movie also pointed out plenty of weak points with the format.

Despite/thanks to the above, Avatar was a very entertaining film for the almost 3 hours. It certainly didn't feel like we'd spent that much time staring at the ridiculous love story "unfolding" on the screen, which makes it a worthy movie in its own right already. Although there are many things I could go deeper into, mostly related to the visuals for me, I don't think that'd be enough reason for me to actually make this post.

No, that reason would be the ridiculous amount of good reviews this movie is gathering. It's just mind-blowing. "Best movie of the decade/last 30 years/ever"? "A powerful love story"? "Amazing spiritual movie"? "James Cameron brings the CHANGE that Obama could not deliver"? "The Mona Lisa of film"?

No. If you're open to the movie's premise and technique, Avatar can be an engrossing experience. But it doesn't even come close to any of the superlatives above. A movie with such a huge list of faults is not any kind of best movie. The "love story" is nonexistant. Its message is shallow. It's not going to be the movie that'll change cinema forever because of the ridiculous budget required to even make a movie like this. And the Mona Lisa one is just silly. I honestly can't fathom how people can seriously make these statements.

So I guess in the end this is just a post about how I don't understand most people and how they make me sad :(


also lol unobtainium

A recipe:

The Turkey/Stuffing Sandwich

2 slices of bread (any kind)
Some turkey (can substitute any meat)
Some sliced stuffing (no substitute)
Mayonnaise or mustard to taste

Combine all ingredients in a sandwich fashion, heat if desired. Serve alone or with pickles.

This is the traditional after-Christmas lunch in my family, and I must say, quite delicious. :3

I can now add Willfor to the list of FESSers who've appeared in my dreams. Apparently he lives in Kentucky near my parents, and we decided to go out to eat. An old friend of mine from school also showed up, though it looked like she'd been smoking for about twenty years. Um... ew.

No food was ever actually served. What a waste of a dream. T_T

Please accept this terrible (fragment of a) rendition of an old hit as a seasonal greeting of some sort.

Yeah.

I have an ad-supported account with LJ because that's the only way to get extra user pics since LJ is retarded and won't let me pay them just for the pics. I honestly don't mind a banner ad or two. However, these Flash pop-up ads are too much, and it's ticking me off.

I swear, if it weren't for the fact I have friends with active journals here, I would have abandoned this ship years ago...