Manga escapism

Many of you probably like to read manga, or Japanese comics that are so popular in Asia and other countries. Manga covers all kinds of genres, from friendship and love, to high-tech gimmic and mystery. You can pour all kinds of imagination you have into those sheets of papers and those tiny boxes of caricatures. That's why they are so entertaining and popular among young (and somewhat older) readers; they can be so intoxicating to some people up to a degree that they forget reality and spend their life daydreaming about the manga worlds.

Manga covers all kinds of genre, but some things they have in common are the emphasize of youth and (most of the time) male supremacy. The characters in manga are mostly high school age, with profession and capabilities of older people, and not to mention, impossible. Those youth characters are found as a professional gambler, detectives, CEO, swindler, or excellent students. Most excellence are shown by the leading male characters, and the leading females are depicted like a 'dumb-blonde' or just 'accessories' in the stories. If it was about love, it's almost always about an ordinary girl who fell in love with an extraordinary boy at her school, and rarely the other way around.

Male supremacy is something that's accepted almost wide-world, a touch of male supremacy can be found in every cultures or life style. What makes me wonder is the appeal of youth. What makes youth such an important factor in the story?

Of course manga is directed for young viewers. But in reality, youth goes by in a blink of an eye. Therefore it makes even more sad as the young readers get older, the fact spit in their face that you can no longer escape your age.

Are you afraid of the dark?

'Are you afraid of the dark?' is a TV series produced between 1991-1996, and 1999-2000. It run for seven season with 13 episodes each. The story evolves around supernatural and horror stories told by several members of Midnight Society, who were five or six teenagers with different backgrounds and lifestyles.

As their leader said, 'we don't go to the same school, we have different friends, but what draw us together is, the Dark': each episode run a story told by one member, in front of campfire at midnight. Most of the stories aren't that original (featuring ghost, goblins, vampires, ghouls. haunted mementos, etc), however some are quite new in term of ideas. The most appealing things about it are the way the story told and how the it happened to average teenagers, just like us. Well, us several years ago ;D

I happen to stumble on this series and apparently I like it a lot. It's a refreshment in this era where everything is all about sci-fi, detective and forensic science, cover model vampires and werewolves, or mumbo-jumbo cougar ladies soap operas. This is like coming back when everything was so simple: classic.

10 hours that makes me stronger

It's been a while since my last update. Many things have happened and changed, some people have come and some have gone away. But one thing is still the same: this is me in the middle of the night, alone in my room right after finishing my first assignment for tomorrow, it's time to sleep, and guess what? At a time like this the urge to write is suddenly so overwhelming; always at a time like this. Why can't it come at a better time, like, in the afternoon when I have nothing to do and just dozing off waiting for dinner?

Anyway, I'm beginning a new step in my life, closer to whatever I'm chasing, and I'm happy I can finally get here. There are still things left to be done, but at least all the essential things are here. I'm one of the three non-Dutch speaker person in the 70-people class (well I do speak Dutch better than the other two, but still), and I spend 2 hours everyday discussing about immune system and such, 2 hours again to do the assignments and read for the next day, 7 hours to sleep, 1.5hours in total to cook and eat, 45 minutes to take a shower and get pretty, 30minutes to cycle back and forth, and 10 hours left to spend as I like. Great! I wish...

For a period of almost two years, which ended just less than a month ago, I was running around for 9 hours a day at work, 1 hour busting my ass off doing Game2move or Step or Zumba, 7 hours to sleep, 1 hour to cycle around, 1 hour to eat, 45minutes to get pretty, which left me 4 hours to watch TV or get more sleep. Somehow I should have buckled down from all the rigorous things I did, but I didn't. Just like wise people say, what doesn't kill you make you stronger, and stronger was what I become. I grew some muscle I didn't know I have, I learned many things I didn't even know was possible, I was happy to know I deserve what I earned, and I found new family and people I cared about. At night I slept tightly because I know I'd done everything I could possibly do for one day.

Back to the present. With 10 hours to spend as I like and nothing or nobody to spend it with, I am lost and confused. My routine is disrupted greatly and at night I am not tired enough to sleep. That unsatisfied feeling linger, feeling that I haven't done enough and there's still many things to do. I start taking paracetamol and ibuprofen to help me sleep, watching some TV shows I've never ever watched otherwise, and I even go as far as doing laundry by hands just to let the clock ticking by faster. The quiet and privacy are great, but I miss my sport classes and rigorous biking. For at least 1 hour a day I miss the people who used to surround me 24/7, and I miss our gossip lunch and my 9 hours ass-busting work.

However, God is great indeed. He never let us suffer beyond our capabilities. Just before I get crazy of boredom, He guide me to a university sport center 3 minutes away from my home. They provide 40 different sport classes, there's always something for me so I can go there and sweating for at least one hour everyday. He guide me to an old friend whom I haven't met for a long time, and we spend great times together going to IKEA, building chairs and bookshelves, cooking some fancy stuffs, and talk an idling talks. He reunite me with someone who used to mean a lot to me at one point and have moved on, and through it He made me realize even more that what doesn't kill you, make you stronger.

That way, He show me a way to spend the 10hours left in my day.