The end of my break is here! I weep bitter tears. So before I lack the time to write again, would anyone like some random mail to spice up their mailbox? [I'm the Prince of Nigeria?] I shall copy-pasta what I wrote back in May -

In point form:
- I'm offering to send local (Singaporean) advertisement postcards to you. No swap needed, it's just for fun.
- Knowing me I'll prolly write some silly crap on your postcard, so if you'd like more meaningful content in writing, let me know what you want to hear about. My day. My cat. Politics. Whatever.
- If you'd like to get some rando-mail from M, comment with your address. It'll be screened.
- BONUS: It's a crapshoot if it'll be a postage label or some awful local abstract art stamp. Awful as hell, by the way.

Getting stuff in the mail is fun when it's not the bills.

( - though I probably shall not exclaim as I die - )

- "oh willow, LoudTwitter, tit willow."
[stereophilic twittery.]

I'd suspended Postcrossing for college, so I was all too happy to start it up again when I wasn't homicidal. And I really enjoy it! So far I've only thoroughly traded 7 [since my birthday], but they're pretty much all awesome. 8D I do have a few favourite picks, though:

( 3xPostcards Received )

I've sent out a bunch meself but here are the ones I find moar interesting:

( 3xPostcards Sent: 1 scrapped, 2 sad animals quickly becoming a theme. )

Man, I really like Postcrossing. It's so horrifically maudlin but brilliant. I've got another 'Sad Animal' in transit, so when it gets there, I'll be sure to post it too. Much to its chagrin, probably.

EDIT: I must mention that Postcrossing has a great image sorting system now - so you can check out my page for the images of all the postcards I've sent and gotten this year if you'd like! I have the received ones from last year uploaded, but I can't backlog the ones I sent. I look forward to a nice, complete archive for this year though. ::rubs hands together::

Anyway, my birthday. So full of win-type wonderful. I stayed up with silencestation who was obsessively finishing up my gifts that I had berated her the upteenth time not to kill herself over [though a good part of it was me selfish fault, since she asked 'option A or B' and I said 'gosh I can't make up my mind, both? 8DDDD'], to finish this up:

( inking progression... )

Until Djinn was completely out of it and done, so after rudimentary breakfast off to bed until a few hours later. Got up just in time to have the Dad pop by with deliriously $12 cake, that has a strangely long and complicated story of Djinn not revealing what's on it until the day of my birthday itself. Long story short, I had no idea what was on it, and Djinn was being self-derogatory as per usual so I don't trust a fucking word she says.



So lovely and adorable it's mad.. I spent probably 15 straight minutes bashing Djinn's head in until she stopped complaining about it so I'm just reiterating the long-short here.

Past that it was just a lot of cooking, as far as I could remember: brining, soaking, washing, de-scaling, etc… And then it was dinner. The light over the dining table had blown, so the Dad moved the table outwards towards the lit area of the living room – a little off the area of the telly, where Man U was playing Arsenal at home at 7.40pm. I was craning my head over as I poured the sparkling juice, because of my now not-so-recent revelations that I am alcohol-intolerant…

( Yay seaaaafood! )

After dinner the dad dutifully washed up, while - get this, Djinn and I sat there in front of the telly gaping while Man U boringly inched closer to wrapping up the English Premier League title. My dad passed by, sat down, got bored and went away. He came back a while later, looked over, clucked his tongue about how the match must suck because there no goals at all [we conclusively agreed, though still not peeling our eyes from the screen] and then went to play with the cat. He was kind enough to agree to cake-time after the match. In the meantime, we went crazy over the crappy footage, and my dad went downstairs to buy a newspaper and retrieve the mail [I got three postcards: GB-75134, PT-82389 and NL-164079! Got a bunny one the day before, too.]

On another note, my presents were a little complicated on the Djinn side – largely that she couldn't give 'em to me in front of the Dad [no, not like that] so when we went to pick up the Transformers Encore Big Cassette Mission Set 1 we also delightedly picked up a nice discounted bundle of TFA Blurr and Swindle [I paid for the Mission Set and she paid for the TFA] so the TFA made it as her present to me in front of the Dad.



My cake and prezzies. TFA bundle in that big spotted bag over there, the plaid with the Chinese from me Dad, and the last one ostensibly from me Dad's girlfriend [which was really dictated by me Dad]. Oh, and my Guitar Hero Les Paul says hello on the left.

( The big 2-0! Or the big two candles. Imagine that. A bunch of you have known me since I was 12. Most of you have known me since I was 14. Scary, huh? )

So I did wish for something as retarded as the last one I wished for, which essentially means it will not come true. The spoils of the day were awesome, at least:

( It's knowing and waiting, and knowing is half the battle. )

I'm going to have a time-warp interval a bit in the future just to mention that catatonic_cats is some kind of weirdo who has this totally unwarranted affection for my handsome self and was rebellious enough to send me not only all the blank ACEO cards I told her not to, but also sent me some lovely paint/tea/ink-stained ones, and it all came with this box with pretty dangling things.

( Seriously man! What is this?!?!?! )

Back to the 16th now. When the Dad went away full and satisfied and cheery about 12 dollar cake [he made off with almost 1/2 of it] Djinn and I kinda digested for a while and then proceeded on to get to Djinn's Real Gifts^TM.

Her real gifts were, and are, her gift of writing. ::dodges some wailing and unhappy swipes:: You will not remember that last year, she filled up a bunch of flash cards that one of my weirdest friends arrrghigiveup gave me with gay haiku. When we toddled about in Liang Court's Kinokuniya a few days before my birthday, we sighted them and she asked, "would you like haikus of Option A or Option B?" and I was like "man, I dunno…both? 8D" [::shifty eyed rephrasal::] Well, she took me seriously and she regretted it [recap top of entry anecdote].



4 different pen colours. Three days of writing. Two fandoms/pairings. A night of penning. 75+129=204 haikus.
That's what's in these things. And they both moved me to tears.

I don't cry. I particularly do not cry over writing. In fact, I am hardly impressed by writing. I avoid fanfiction and most sorts of 'serious writing' posted online because more often than not I sit down, read and start feeling so embarrassed for the writer that I can't focus on reading the words anymore. Often I rarely feel. I did not feel particularly sad when I read both of these [well, technically all of these]. But out of nowhere – I wept at the end. [Just like the last one…Do I see a trend here? Moving Haikus^TM?] Very strange! But here, I can't resist some excerpts even though you won't know what's going on anyway:

( From the black kitten… )

( And from the blue bird… )

Wow, it was really hard not to put everything there! They all fit into a Meiji Meltykiss box, which we bought on the same day we bought the flash cards.

Oh, you know Djinn, that wasn't all. First there was this:

( The image on my cake! )

And then there was this:



Which in my opinion is just really crazy beautiful. I was literally struck speechless.

And the full image is here in an incredibly romantic but also a very uh homoerotic [understatement] NSFW fashion. I've got it in a hard card on my table that I flip over to my cake image whenever my dad is in the house. 8D

So! That really about concludes it, I really could not think of anything better. It was pretty much bestest day ever, again. You know what, I really don't know what I've done to deserve this. Do I just inexplicably have some kind of weird good karma magnet or something? silencestation is just the most brilliant person in the world to me and I have her waiting me hand and foot [well, not really, but she's liek my artsy bitch or something]. Then I have so many of you out there who are just so strangely nice to me, nice beyond words, so…so awesome to me. I don't get it! But thank you so tremendously much! There are no words to describe, like I said, only lots of flailing and adoration.

A few days later we went to the Bird Park to test my lens [under the staunch insistence of my dad, too] so you can expect some spam coming from that sometime soon. But really, everybody, thank you.

Would anybody like some random mail to spice up their mailbox? I've got a crapton of advertisement cards - personally I find these a lot more interesting than the usual tourist cards, but that may just be me - and before I warily step into Postcrossing again, I thought it'd be fun to send some postcards to people I actually know. How about it? 8D

In point form:
- I'm offering to send local (Singaporean) advertisement postcards to you. No swap needed, it's just for fun.
- Knowing me I'll prolly write some silly crap on your postcard, so if you'd like more meaningful content in writing, let me know what you want to hear about. My day. My cat. Politics. Whatever.
- If you'd like to get some rando-mail from M [and Djinn, I guess I could make her write 'hi' or something] comment with your address. It'll be screened.

PEOPLE REQUIRED TO LEAVE ADDRESSES because I want to force rando-postcard upon you and I don't know if you've moved/are going to move in the near future, what with most of you being in college and house-hopping:
- scrunge [apartmento? house? which in the near future]
- kyashieru [there was something about moving soon, right? I don't want some poor Japanese lady staring at a rando-postcard in confusion]
- tom_kiper [kthrin get in here]
- bluestraggler [college kid 'nough said]
- eluneth [come on emface]

Let me know soooon before I trot off to buy stamps.

It's been a bit and I have lots of food to talk about. Uh, first off, our first attempt as chicken adobo :



It was pretty pleasing, though - gasp, we shame our Azn heritage by thinking there was a bit too much soy sauce. I'M SORRY MY AZN HERITAGE. With a bed of fungi. We kinda scrimped on presentation for this one because we were eating on our own, as opposed to with Dad.

Then there's Father's Day, whereupon we gave up giving him things he wouldn't use and cooked instead. So cue Asiatic music here, and enter loads of saltiness and garlic. Bastardised chicken adobo, which as the title might tell you, was vastly changed from our prior attempt; my dad's favourite food [prawn] in a post-humous drunken state and boiled vegetables with garlic sauce :



( Details, details... )

You know, nowadays [past the crepe...] I'm quite pleased with Djinn's cooking, because I like knowing what's in my food and somehow I feel terribly, terribly healthy! Particularly since I actually eat more than usual when she does. Unfortunately this ended when she decided to do peach cobbler for Father's Day dessert.



AAAAAAAA.

( Just another shot of the peach cobbler in the pan, very yellow lighting. XD; )

I am a sucker for peach cobbler, with both a soft crust, a crispy top, and streusel over the top. Crunchy, sweet and very very bad. DDD:

Also, one more before I go, baked dory with aubergine pate and grilled carrots.



Dory turned out faboo and soft, the aubergine pate the first aubergine dish I've ever been willing to eat [done by Djinn in the traditional Chinese style - i.e. THROW EVERYTHING AT IT] and the carrot is the first carrot dish that Djinn has been willing to eat. Done to approximate Chef Rob's grilled carrot recipe. I can't tell you how much I love his show. XD

Okay, I've finally caught up on food. Now let's see how long it lasts...and let's see how many postcards I can drown under before I post them. XD;;;

Expected Crap-ton of Postcards week was a bust from Monday through Friday, when suddenly Saturday suspicions of the post office hoarding cards were valid and five cards slid into the mailbox, all text-side up because the everyone and the mailman read other people's postcards.

My post office is fucking with me!

A lot has happened on the Postcrossing front - ie. I keep getting nice (East/)Euro addresses, whereupon they receive them really fast and very cheerily. These few weeks I've had the opportunity to send out two a week instead of my usual cautionary one [that's when I only have 2 addresses left to request out of the 5 address limit]. Astonishingly enough, an unearthy amount of them are getting me two-for-the-price-of-one, because majority of them have the receipients delighted and promptly promising to send a thank you card back. O_O!!

Oh, also, I have somehow picked up a couple of postcard pals - two sweet ladies, one called Merike from Estonia and the other I've posted about before, Vera Jesus from Portugal. Merike asked and I found no reason to refuse, while Vera keeps sending more adcards insistently. XD That results in some, uh, extracurricular postcards.

So today, just a few of the cards I've sent out and have been received, because it would be really silly to accidentally spoiler someone on the card they're getting. XD;;;

( Just the scrapped/handmade ones, now I think about it. )

( And the cards I've received, which is really quite a bit. )

And there we go, I've caught up on Postcrossing. :D My profile page is looking quite spiffy now, what with 12 cards sent, ee. XD One waiting to be received in America [which will take quite a while, your slow Americanos mail...>D] and two to request tomorrow.

Oh, that reminds me I've also forgotten to post about lovely things that came in the mail a while back, which is BPAL and Postcrossing. We bought a few scents from aichaku, who was so very kind to put in a whole ton of other scents – including bottles, goodness – to create a sumptuous, happy BPAL horde in an envelope. Thank you so much again Shorwei~! The delights that we hadn't reviewed before:

Halloween: Pumpkin Patch I and II 2006, Yuletide: Lick It Again, Monster Bait: Underpants and Bloody Mary, Zodiac: Taurus 2007, Carnaval Diabolique: Gennivre, L'Artiste du Diable,

( Yay! Happy BPALies from Shorwei~ )

And the other bit, Postcrossing~

( Somewhat recently received: 3 official, 2 gifts )

I've actually got one postcard I sent out that I'm hopping to show, really – it's my first scrapped card [or do you call it collage? I've no idea, really] and I did all I could to ensure it would reach it's destination safe and sound – but not in an envelope. Needless to say, it's been so reinforced [particularly since Singapore just fortuitously imported Mod-Podge] that you could whack someone unconscious with it. That would be an exaggeration, but I did hear it fall into the post box with a large, strong, ponk.

Oooh, happy mail. There's some BPAL coming along soon, and the casual mode of sending postcards has ensured me one happy postcard a week. Now all we need for this week is for bottles of BPAL to come sliding into the box to finish it up. :D

I'm being determined not to use my own bandwidth in this post, so. XD

In happy Postcrossing news, I just got my first postcard through the system!

( FI-274413 )

Not all has been very rosy in Postcrossing land, since I've realised that the probability of the cards I sent actually being registered is about 50%. Nevertheless, here's a postcard that just got received this week by a lady in Estonia, who really liked it. I took the photo according to her wishlist, so I'm glad that worked out!

( Inside Out: SG-8597 )

There we go. First Postcrossing posty!

These two days I've taken off to do clip-making and graphic-doing work for one of Djinn's Transformers presentations. One of the things that resulted is this :

( Megs in an ushanka! )
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In other - old - news: I've finally joined flickr. This sordid tale of my joining flickr starts with one major cause –

Postcrossing. I joined it because Postcrossing's gallery of postcards is a pool on flickr.

I suppose for posterity's sake, I should talk a little about Postcrossing. I found it very-not-long-ago from shinsaber's innocent little entry about what to send to a Japanese lady in return. Upon prodding at the site and reading what it was about, I got inanely excited by the proposition. I suppose it's due to : 1. I like sending mail to people. 2. Postcards are awesome! 3. Making my own postcards is also awesome. 4. Taking photos for people's postcard preferences is rly interesting. I spent a couple of days going back and forth debating joining, until I bit the bullet and did it. On that same day, I set up my flickr account and along with it being used for Postcrossing purposes, I decided to plonk my greatest hits into it.

So re: Postcrossing, this is my Postcrossing profile. I've settled into a comfortable schedule of requesting two addresses a week [request on Friday, take appropriate action – i.e. photos, etc to their preferences, and send out latest Monday]. It's been a couple of weekends since I've joined, so yup, that means I've sent out 4 postcards. Today, joyfully, the first postcard was received, and now my profile page look a little happier. :] I hope the second one reaches the lady in one piece and soon. My flickr tag for sent postcards are here [information travels faster] - at the current moment you can only see that one which has been sent, the rest are waiting to be received and subsequently filed under public view.

And thus re: flicker, this is my flickr profile. So far there isn't anything spanking new [except for the latest photo I took for a lady in Estonia's postcard, which I am actually really raring to make public but I can't XD], but like said, they're my greatest hits collection. To my surprise, I've got a couple of comments, so I thought before I added some pictures to BJD-related pools as I was asked to, I'd post about it so you know I'm not shying away from you folks on flickr. XD;; I'll hopefully have something more to add soon.

Ooh, talking about postcards, that reminds me that we test-drived a BJD postcard of ours through Singaporean mail, and it came back safely after a day. XDDDD Just because I'm ridiculous, here's how it looks now!

( Sei from us to us. )
__________________________

Otherwise, I've decided to brave CGing my art again due to a little project that Djinn and I would like to embark on, and so with on-off periods have produced a couple of gurl peectures [which are both pretty huge] :

( Oops, I left this poor drow guy out, traditional media [i.e. copics]. )

( HERE are the CGed gurlies. This one's pinuppy, and you know pin-ups are not actually childsafe… )

( …it's sad to recognise that anything with roses and thorns looks Anna Sui. D: )
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And also, lovely lovely BPAL that kyashieru was so kind to send us in a fun gift package with chocolate even though she's rushing for Japan! Thank you so much again Cassiel. ♥

- Forum Exclusives : Enraged Groundhog Musk [2008], Monster Bait: Ventriloquist's Dummy, Sins and Salvation : Vice.
( BPAL~ )
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I suppose that's basically my tl;dr post for this time, and after gluing this flag together it'll be back to sewing the der fremde now…