Distant Thoughts

Looking back...

31st Oct etc: With the closure of acad year 2007 we've finished our secondary education. For us, the significance probably only dawned on us a bit late due to it well... not, at face value, being significant in the first place.

The end of this academic year naturally would make me start reflecting on what happened. The year started quite early on with LDP, which I didn't really enjoy until the end. I have faint memories of the GE Enrichment Camp and planning the Mind Games during term 2, as well as the various random events and competitions like the math olympiad and Geotrail during the holidays. Term 3 made me scramble to finish many projects on time; the holidays after that and term 4 sent me into mugging mode. And, of course, the mugging season culminated in the exams, after which we reached the post-exam period which, for this year, for me (pardon the bad English), was very stressful due to the many non-academic (relationships, other activities) concerns then.

I, probably much like you, have done much both right and wrong. Mistakes have been made; chances wasted, friends lost, exams failed. Somehow, at least to me, the wrong stands out much more brightly than the right. Perhaps, I need to become more contented with myself or more contented with life...? Or perhaps I really have done so much wrong and really need to change myself.

I can't really say very much. I'm so confused and scared.

5 - 7 Nov: The class chalet. Honestly, this time I didn't enjoy the chalet as much as I remember enjoying the one at the end of last year. Still, this year definitely had its very high points, although most of these were near the end.

6 Nov, evening: I had the opportunity to take a nice walk by the seaside with you to watch the sunset. Of course I won't go into the details too much (this is public domain), but I really enjoyed it, and it was... refreshing? I'm not sure how to pick the right adjective. Thanks for that opportunity though =)

6 Nov, night: Touhou 9 - 東方花映塚, or Phantasmagoria of Flower View, is quite an interesting game. Essentially, it's much like the rest of the Touhou series in that you fire shots at enemies, have a small hitbox and manipulate your character's motions to dodge utter swarms of bullets that are fired off at you. I tried my hand at Sikieiki's Extra Stage, which was nuts... I only managed to get to round 7 furthest. I'm not sure how far Sheu Zhi got, but he couldn't clear it, so seeing as there are 9 stages I didn't do too badly. Playing at home, however, the regular Story Mode on Hard features a ridiculous Final battle; the difficulty seemed to soar against Sikieiki in Round 9 vs Komachi in Round 8, whom I beat with like 6 or 7 out of 10 units of health left. Personally, for PoFV I think Medicine, Komachi, Lunasa and Sikieiki are cheap in match mode... Medicine's slow fields really mess around with game play, Komachi's EX attack is a particularly nasty spread of coins, Lunasa's spells are... like Youmu's, except from the bottom of the screen (VERY confusing) and Sikieiki's vortices spawn loads of unremovable bullets.

Touhou 10, Mountain of Faith, which I tried proved very difficult on Lunatic, though quite ok on Normal. I managed to capture 1 card on Lunatic though - the first Stage 1 spellcard. I generally have fewer problems with big clouds of slow bullets (to a limit. Lyrica's Hard spellcard is still way too difficult for me) than fewer fast bullets. I seem to have preference for Reimu B - I prefer the high damage attacks.

7 Nov, early morning: Fatal Frame III. I remember watching this last year - it was one of the higher points of the chalet. I read the guide carefully enough to remind Sheu Zhi to get Measure by phototaking one old lady in one of the corridors of the dreamworld. He played for about 5, maybe 6 hours and fought his way through to Hour XII, but then the projector started screwing up so we decided to end there and let the projector rest...

I'll post more later. The time is so weird now...

i don't know if i made a mistake or not
but i had to do it. otherwise i wouldn't have stayed true to myself.

jk