how to write good.

ripped this off a link kokphai sent me. had a good laugh.

how to write good:
1. Avoid alliteration. Always.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren't necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
13. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. Be more or less specific.
15. Understatement is always best.
16. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
17. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
18. The passive voice is to be avoided.
19. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
20. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
21. Who needs rhetorical questions?
22. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
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it's nice to know someone's a worse writer than me. :)

God bless! tour in three days!

oh how my life bores me.

my parents are BACK! after one full week of absolute liberty, late night soccer [or as my brother insists on calling it, FOOTBALL] matches, and absolutely no money, my parents are back! i know it doesn't sound like something to be rejoicing about, but frankly, after a week of living like a pauper, having my parents back to give me allowance is a GREAT THING!

ha, i love being such a spoilt brat.

anyway, they brought back many many MANY dvds from china, including season one and two of GREY'S ANATOMY, which i am NOT going to watch until i come back from tour. i am NOT going to stay up and watch it and exhaust myself. absolutely NOT. [yes, continue saying that to yourself, jo, and it may eventually be true!]

in any case, they also brought back the da vinci code, which my younger brother and sister have been longing to watch. [even though, IMHO, the movie was pretty bad.] so my siblings make a beeline for my parents' dvd player. we sit on the bed, take out our stocked-up packets of potato chips, and settle down to watch the show just to pacify them. so the movie starts, and we see the old man running through the museum with a look of desperation on his face that in no way matches the stately speed at which is he moving. and then.. he starts speaking.

in chinese.

not just.. mandarin, but CHINESE mandarin. which includes, of course, all the inflections, drawls and run-on lines that form the chinese accent. [if you still are missing my point, basically the voiceover speaks like someone from the PRC] after we erupt into laughter [a completely unprejudiced and unoffensive laughter borne only of our surprise, i would like to add, just in case anyone incorrectly takes offence], my younger brother fumbles with the remote control, trying desperately to get to the english track.

but guess what?

THERE IS NO ENGLISH TRACK!

of course, anyone else would just watch the show in mandarin, but one has to understand that my younger siblings have a combined chinese language score of about what.. seventy percent? so yes, my siblings whine and complain and eventually give up and switch off the tv and slunk off to do whatever is it that they do when they're not attached to the couch.

okay that story's not as funny in print as it is when you're there. oh well. -shrugs-

i've gotten into the strange, and unsettling, habit of watching taiwanese tv shows. not just ANY taiwanese tv shows, but the really insipid, badly scripted ones that star young taiwanese singers/actors/hosts that can either do all three, or more often than not, can do neither. this is only strange and unsettling because.. i really like them! no, not the actors, the SERIALS. bad, cheesy scripts and actors notwithstanding, i just like the way they don't make the effort to speak in perfect, clipped chinese, but just drawl on in their badly pronounced, slang-tinged mandarin. it's interesting! kind of like.. a reflection of the taiwanese society. it's fairly intriguing to note the differences in culture. :p and of course, the prevalence of happy endings always helps, romantic that i am. :)

tour's coming up soon.

ciao.

too tired to function.

disclaimer: this will turn out to be a relatively nonsensical, illogical entry due to the complete shut down of my mental faculties about three seconds before i started typing.

it's quite depressing actually, the idea that something could at the same time give you immense satisfaction and completely drain you of all your energy. maybe it's just because i'm not resting enough. world cup syndrome. speaking of which... i thought the holland-ivory coast match was fantastic. sure, the netherlands' defence wasn't quite up to par, but their offensive maneuvers were pretty solid. and they've got robin van persie! :) arsenal players.. how can one argue with that?

okay, that was a very bad start. i'm rambling. bad.

i am VERY TIRED, i would like to stress.

anyway, yesterday i watched this really bad show called casanova. i actually bought the vcd, because, face it, i am a sucker for all victorian-regency-georgian era period dramas where guys are clad in waistcoats and girls wear humongous skirts. but yes, it was bad. entertaining, perhaps, but of no emotional/intellectual value as far as i could see. sienna miller is beautiful, as always. an unconventional sort of beauty, i find, is always more attractive than the doe-eyed goddess look.

again, i'm not quite sure where this train of thought is heading, but we'll see.

okay, maybe we won't. i'm too tired.

goodnight.

sometimes...

it's nice to know that after one year, eight months and thirteen days of fighting, arguing, sulking, screaming, shouting, yelling, complaining, whining and crying...

you're still the only one who can make me smile.

insanity and indecision.

anyone who knows me well would know that the past few days haven't exactly been "oh jolly good fun!" for me. why? perhaps it's due to the fact that my indecision has never been so clearly illustrated to me as it has been in the aforementioned past few days. and of course, it is always strangely awakening, and extremely uncomfortable, not to mention immensely embarrassing, to realise your own shortcomings without people having to tell you. just shows how OBVIOUS your shortcomings are.

i think my life [well, at least my life in jc] has been a constant struggle between natural romanticism, borne of an excessive influx of glorified emotion through romance novels and cheesy movies since my early adolescence, and rationality, pounded into my head by my amazingly effective teachers since secondary school. of course, being the typical arts student and FEMALE, i tend to make decisions using the former rather than the latter.

this time is no different.

of course, a certain amount of rationality does go into making the decision. i made pros and cons lists and all that jazz; but in the end i went with the little hypothalamic function that generates emotion [because face it, the heart is just a huge muscle] and decided to do something which i really think i would love.

why am i even saying this? it makes for a boring entry and the likelihood of the situation is that none of you would care any less.

anyway, yes. naturally, i face parental discontentment and disappointment daily due to this daring deed of deliberate daftness. [never underestimate the power of aliteration] i get strange looks; some pitying, some snide, some laced with such utter hatred and contempt that you cannot believe these people actually love you. but they do, and i know. :) i know they care, which is why i am all the more confused.

but the decision has been made, and as someone [who is probably infinitely older and wiser than me] once told me, "if you've made your decision, whatever it is, just bite the bullet and press on." and so i will. bite the bullet, that is. figuratively, of course. literally biting ammunition, live or otherwise, would do nothing to help my cause in the least.

i am rambling because it is one thirty-right and i am so damned sleepy i could fall asleep in my chair.

any... way... what i was trying to say, and plainly, failing to say, was that i have decided to go.

people who are going, "huh? go where?" probably don't know me or anything about me so you're just gonna have to live with the suspense. AH HAH! :P

well, that being said, let's move on to less complicated and much less important aspects of my day, yes? i cooked today! [and yes, that is rare enough an occurrence to deserve some sort of commemoration] i cooked today, and though i never profess to be THE IRON CHEF like some people :P, i can cook. and i am relatively proficient at it, too. i cooked for gina, jamie and geoff, and we had such a HUGEEEEEE feast that none of us could finish anything. we never really announced who the winner of our cook-off was, but i personally loved everything. :P yes, even the soup. my point was, [actually i never really have a point, i just talk for the sake of talking and garnering attention, but you already know that], i can cook. which means that i won't starve over there. now all i have to learn to do is knit and darn stockings and i'll be all ready for finishing school and my debut!

i need to go back to my books. i think i'm becoming slightly unhinged.