Whimsical.nu

Welcome to “Everything Angela”

I'm a true whimsical girl: I'm interested in many things (sometimes fleetingly), and talk about even more things: Big News™, activities, musings, the occasional quote and photo.

Resolution finale: life in 2011

It was difficult to come up with a general, all-encompassing “life” resolution for 2011. I’m actually on the fence about the whole new year’s resolutions practice–while it is a good time to take stock of one’s life, changing for the better should be something done more often than once a year.

That said, it is fun to make lists. Lists are fabulous.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I thought of many possible life resolutions:

  1. Do something new every week.
  2. Say yes.
  3. Be brave.
  4. Challenge myself.
  5. …and so on and so forth

–but as I sat down to write about these things, I realized that these were all “pretty phrases” but I had no real way of making sure I kept to this kind of resolution, or that it was impractical to structure the resolution in order to track “progress”. Do something new every week? WHAT new thing? Can I eat ampalaya and call it my “something new” for the week? Say yes–how do I measure “yes significance”? And so on. And so I kept going back to the drawing board.

And then, I realized–I already have a good list, a list I made quite a while ago. My 30 before 30 list is the best thing to draw resolutions from. Time is running out, after all! By June 2013, I should have done 30 things. (Iknowiknowiknow, the list isn’t even complete yet. Care to suggest something? :D)

By the end of 2011, I should have crossed off 15 things from my 30 before 30 list.

Talk about hitting two birds with one stone. The things listed are all “new” things, activities that require a bit of bravery, a dash of creativity. And I’ve (just about) finished three, so that leaves me to catch up with 12 items–roughly one item per month of 2011! It’s almost as if it was made for a new year resolution list. ;)

Here’s to 2011!

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Recap finale: my life in 2010

You know, at first, I was worrying about what I would have for the general life recap of 2010, if I would have anything left that’s actually worth writing about, after going through the different “categories” where my interest lies and doing a recap for those. I think that shows just how much I’ve taken to, and adopted as a “given”, the biggest change, the biggest Event, in 2010:

I moved to my own house.

Granted, it’s rented. It’s not the absolute perfect house; the heater is a bit cool for my tastes, and the house came with built-in ants, and I had a go at steam cleaning certain parts before I could bear to live in it. But it was perfect for me, at this stage in my life, so much that it feels like second nature. It feels like a given.

2010 started off rather poorly, to be honest. I was battling three different, very personal issues that made me very unhappy, each one of them. Each one of them, at any time, would have reduced me to tears; all of them all at the same damn time, well, it wasn’t great. I was depressed, I was hurting, and I was lonely with no one to talk to.

But life went on, as it does, and the unhappiness in the first half of the year was made up for the second half. The frenzy and bustle of a new home, the freedom and responsibilities of living “the adult life”: these filled the second half. I had friends and family over, I changed my own light bulbs, I decorated and filled my home with my things, I cooked everything from microwave dinners to roast chickens and ribs. I even weaseled in a quick last-minute baking project while back in the Philippines.

I think 2010 was a year where I was able to prove to myself that I can. I can do this. I can set my mind to almost anything, and I can follow through on it. That I do not need to be afraid or worried, although I will need to be prepared. That at the end of the day, the only one you can really rely on is yourself, to make you happy, to keep you contented: and then everything else will follow.

I can. And I will.

Tomorrow is the start of Resolution Week! One thing to aspire for each aspect of my life, each day. Stay tuned!

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Happy holidays!

Happy new year! And I hope you’ve all had a good holiday. My blog has obviously been on a bit of a holiday, too, but it’s time to come back down to the real world ;)

It’s been a good two weeks of holiday for me. I went back to the Philippines where I spent time with family and met with friends, as well as the usual shopping and errands. We had a generally quiet Christmas and New Year celebration, having relatives over the day of and other relatives calling over from overseas. I cooked my version of The Meatloaf, and baked a banana loaf for the first time. I dare say I’ve gained quite a few pounds :/

Christmas stash! I loff my family <3 Lunch with relatives Banana loaf and cookies! Our first shot at baking

On the health side though, my family tried out those Ion Cleanse foot bath/spas around, as well as those foot detox pads. Jury is still out, but rather promising, I think. My mom has seen more improvement with the detox pads than I have, so I’m just going along with it to see if it’s better later on.

We played quite a number of tabletop games, notably Settlers of Catan, Citadels, and of course, Cashflow. Tabletop and board games are things that I don’t really get to do while I’m here in Singapore, since most people prefer the instant gratification of Xboxes and PS3s, but I got plenty of it while back home. I also couldn’t pass up one round of Cluedo, my old favorite. They have intrigue cards now :O

Citadels card game with the family Settlers of Catan with @thankyougravity, Ate and Mom Cashflow game with relatives

We also watched Emma and Jane Eyre while I was there, Emma because my sister hasn’t watched it, and Jane Eyre because Tien hasn’t! Biel watched both and I’m happy that she has found understanding and enjoyment of the miniseries as well ;) she used to get bored and annoyed when Ate and I would watch period miniseries before :x And one mustn’t forget the in-flight movies. Eat Pray Love on the way to the Philippines, and Inception on the way back. I missed a big chunk of the middle, though. :/

Today, though, it is time for some spring cleaning. I cleaned before I left for the holidays, but I’m eyeing a couple of things that need to go and need to be done: like my sad monitor that keeps flickering, like the pile of clothes that need ironing.

It’s time to start the year right! And these two weeks will be just that: a time of introspection, and of looking forward. This week is recap week, culminating with a life-year recap next Monday, and the week after is resolution week.

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NaNoWriMo week 4 recap and roundup

One day to go! I did this vlog on Saturday, where I only had a bit over 41,000 words. This morning I hit 48k, but while this story is better than my 2007 NaNo win, I don’t know if I’ll go back and work on it. Maybe I will, later on. But I think I’ve kind of had it with the novel for now, and will be very very happy for December to arrive.

(Hopefully blogging will commence regularly again.)

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NaNoWriMo week 3 recap

Week 3 was horrible. And boring. So, really short video log.

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NaNoWriMo week 2 recap

NaNoWriMo week two: started out horribly, but it worked out in the end. Still have quite a bit to go!

I decided I’d post the NaNoWriMo weekly recap video up on Mondays instead of Wednesdays, because a half week from when I made the video is too long and loses its “timeliness” factor.

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Nine ways to not write a novel in November

PaperBecause it is November and it is NaNoWriMo, it is also the time of year when procrastination from writing becomes so fun and so…exciting! Procrastinating now feels so…rebellious.

Here are my top nine nifty ways to not write a novel in November!

  1. Play games. This is pretty bad for me this month. I only have roughly a month to go before Cataclysm (the next expansion of World of Warcraft) hits, I recently bought a PlayStation 3. Ohh the joys of killing pixelly things on a screen.
  2. Clean the house. What’s worse, it needs to be done. It is a valid excuse, is it not? And there is a certain sense of calm in the normalcy of house-cleaning, in how ordered it is, how everything has a process…which can’t really be said of my writing “process”.
  3. Watch movies. Outside with others, or at home, it doesn’t matter. I have DVDs to watch! TV movies to rent! I have fifteen free a month, I must not let it go to waste! (Or so I say.)
  4. Internet hopping. I am sadly really prone to this. I look up something quick in Wikipedia, and unless I’m dreadfully needed elsewhere, I will end up with 10 opened tabs with topics in Wikipedia. The worst sites for this is Wikipedia and Youtube, I find. I have ended up doing it a lot over the past days: I have a lot of research to go through!
  5. Write on my journal. Of course, sometimes, writing anything but my novel is just impossible to resist.
  6. Talk or write about NaNoWriMo. *cough* Hence, this post. Talk about writing the novel! Talk about how to write the novel! Talk about not writing the novel!
  7. Come up with a website or a book cover for the novel. Well, it’s still novel-related, right? So that’s part of NaNoWriMo, right? Right?
  8. Sleep. Writing can sometimes produce headaches, when the words just don’t come. Of which the only cure is not writing and sleeping.
  9. Have an online social life. Be it NaNoWriMo boards, sudden activity in journals and other communities–being active in online communities suddenly makes a lot of sense. “I’m on the computer anyway, so why not peek in at the forums?” 50 topics later, 0 words in novel.

What are your favorite non-novel-writing activities during NaNoWriMo?

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Life whirling by

Last week, and the days leading up to it, was crazy. My father was here last weekend after a business trip in Malaysia, and I got sick twice last week. I know that’s not really much of an excuse for not scheduling posts up, seeing as I did get to raid on Wednesday and Thursday (Kingslayer!), but there it is, nonetheless.

Dad has been here a couple of times, so we didn’t really do a lot of touristy things. He did a bit of shopping, we went for reflexology (I should really go more often–my parents have paid up for a good number of sessions), and we had a game in Settlers’ Cafe. At night he played through all the demos I downloaded in my Playsation 3, lol.

I accompanied him to the airport to send him off in the wee hours of Monday morning, got chilled by the almost-empty morning train on the way back, and then got rather soaked with the sudden downpour of rain when I got out of the station. Never underestimate Singapore weather, folks. Fact.

In any case, today marks the first day of NaNoWriMo. The plan as it stands now is virtually nonexistent. I haven’t done a lot of research, so my novel/first draft will be fantastically crappy; I crammed some research yesterday, which only made me feel a lot more unprepared (how do they count years? what is the marriageable age? when are the men considered adults, and the women?). Which should be okay, as long as I get somewhere with the story, yes? I’m planning to try and get around a thousand words written in the morning, and another thousand at night, which would result in 2,000 words a day: a good number over the minimum words a day (1,667). This should be interesting.

Over the weekend I’ve also tried to do a couple of scheduled posts, although I’m planning to give myself a bit of slack if I miss a week or so. To be honest, I have a lot of post ideas in my calendar, just haven’t the time to develop them all. Sometimes, it does feel a bit like a “job”, but it’s a nice sort of job. A job I can ignore for a while ;)

There will be plenty of means to procrastinate this November, which means my work is cut out for me ;)

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30 before 30

Thanks to Kim, I came across this gem: 30 before 30. Thirty things to do before one turns thirty. I have a bit less than three years to go, which is both “not a lot” and “plenty of time”.

It is quite challenging coming up with 30 different things to do, which is why I don’t have 30 things in this list yet. Given the time frame, I feel a good number needs to be fairly significant, but something that is conceivably attainable within three years, especially when looking at the whole list. I also wanted to put in experiences that I’ve never had before, that other people might say any thirty-year-old should have done. It needed to be fairly varied, and somewhat interesting.

Some things were easy to put in, such as experiences I wanted to have. Some things were scary, such as goals I wanted to achieve.

And so: this is my 30 before 30 list.

Some things I felt like I wanted to add, but relied too much on a couple things that didn’t seem to be even 75% reliable, such as participating in cosplay (I’d never do it without someone else doing it with me, and none of my friends are into it), or walking down the beach on a moonlit night and having a romantic dinner on the dunes (it wouldn’t be romantic unless it was with that special someone), etc. Maybe I’ll add them back someday.

Good luck to me :x

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Two months of myself

I'm talking about: solitude

Last August 8, I moved into my own place. I haven’t been by myself for a chunk of that time: the first week, my mother was with me to help me smooth things out at the new place, and the second week, I was back in the Philippines for dental surgery.

But it’s October now. I’ve held a housewarming dinner for relatives, holding a housewarming movie night (er, afternoon) this weekend, and I’ve smoothed into a normal routine. It’s business as usual in Casa Angela.

People sometimes ask me: aren’t you lonely?

I don’t think it’s for everyone. Living with others is cheaper, provides you with easy “entertainment” and distractions, divides the work of housekeeping between any number of capable hands, and you’d never have to be alone with your thoughts.

But you’d never be able to be alone with your thoughts.

In solitude, where we are least alone.

George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

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