After Bagyong Ondoy.
Picture taken by my sister.

I haven’t written much lately, but I was inpired yesterday, to write something, so I opened up OneNote (where I kept most of my little scribbles) and I started clicking on the tabbed pages and read some of my old works, and some are pretty good, so I thought I’d share it with you guys.

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Signs

She is strangely superstitious.
She looks for signs,
no,
she chases them.
She believes in dreams and
what they tell her.

The universe is her master,
she listens to him.

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This Girl

She takes the train everyday.
She stands at the station and waits
for the wave of people
like ocean tide to pour her into
the train that just arrived at the station.

She walks the streets everyday.
She stares ahead, oblivious to everything around her,
the steel and glass buildings that rise into the sky,
the fast-driven cars that leaves a trail of smog,
and the wave, again,
of people with countless faces
that blends into one another.

If you get close enough,
you can hear her hum a song to herself,
as if a band is playing in her head.

If you get close enough,
you can see how her hand seem to clasp itself,
as if holding on to the hand of a friend,
or a lover.

Even if you get close enough,
you can feel her look through you,
and make you wonder,
what’s behind you that’s so interesting.
But when you turn around, there’s nothing there.

She tears of the last of her toenail
from her bleeding toes,
the people on the train had
stepped on her feet again.

She rubs a sore
on her shoulder,
The people on the street had
bumped into her again.

She wonders why people,
even if she gets close enough,
look through her.
Am I that uninteresting?
When she looks in the mirror,
she feels, it’s true.

She takes the train everyday.
She stands at the station,
and closes her eyes.
She hears the sound of the distant train
approaching.
She takes a step forward.

The wave pours in,
the train pulls out of the station.

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Strange Little Girl

Title from Tori Amos’ “Strange Little Girl”

She sets up a board game for one.

She hums to herself the songs in her head.

She has conversations with characters
from her dreams,
and stories she read.

She picks up a pen and writes,
and writes and writes
until there is nothing left
to write.

She picks up a brush and paints the sky
with rainbows
and stars that never fade.

She smiles her secret smile,
as she crosses the street
holding on to the hands
of air.

She listens,
closes her eyes and listens,
the sound of the train approaching.

She takes a step forward,
and joins her imaginary friends,
Forever.

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Untitled

It seems to be a must for bloggers. Well, it’s late, but I’m still gonna write something anyway. I was planning to write it before my birthday, but my DSL has been crappy the past weeks. Anyhoo…

So I’m 22 now. And insignificant age, it’s not like 21 or 18. So I’d rather turn 21 again, than turn 22. ‘coz 21 was a big. Last year, I graduated (thesis submission was actually on my birthday), I started working (and has been working for almost almost a year now). Big stuff.

The other day on my way to work (the very long walk from the MRT to the office, which is about 3 blocks away), I was thinking, did I know that I was going to be a game developer? To make games for a living, how cool is that. But I’m just thinking, that last year, when I was graduating, I didn’t know I’d be where I am right now. I’ve been hanging out in game engine forums lately and most of the people there are 13-14 year olds. Kiddies, who at their age already set their minds on making games for the rest of their lives. While I, at 13 I think I wanted to be a fashion designer, with a sketchbook filled with designs and all that. But that’s not where I am. The year before I entered college, when we were picking out courses, I wasn’t even sure then what I wanted to do. I was just telling my officemate the other day (who was CompSci and then shifted to Multimedia Arts), that when I entered CompSci that, it was the same as MMA, and I wanted to shift too, but I graduated and that’s that. I still thought about it, after graduation, but after entering work, I figured that I don’t need it. I’ll try to pick up some 3D stuff from watching my artist officemates. And I don’t know, even though I’m supposedly an adult now, I still feel like a kid, or like a student anyway, mostly since I don’t wear work clothes nor have a fixed time schedule. And mostly, because I don’t really know what I’m going to do with the rest of my life yet.

I used to make lots of plans, but now, I don’t want to. ‘coz they don’t turn out the way we want and we’d only get disappointed. Instead, I want to just live you know. Just flow. Mostly it feels like sleepwalking, but I’m okay, I like it, it has this dreamy feel to it, and I’m happy.

Lately, I am dreaming, or at least living feels like dreaming. Blurry and glowing around the edges (or maybe it’s just my glasses getting fuzzy or the fact that I’m not wearing glasses when I’m cosplaying, lol).

I don’t want to wake up, yet. I’ll maybe wake up eventually. But right now, I don’t want to. I just want to keep daydreaming and sleepwalking.

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Currently Reading: “Dear John” by Nicholas Sparks

Currently Watching: “Men in Trees”

Currently Listening to: Skillet

Korenovela like cutscene.

Again, I am obsessed with lists, remember? Now after a couple months of working, and bumming after work. I have come up with a new list of things to do, to lessen my bumming and be more productive.

1.Take up a short course on Fashion Construction and Pattern Making in SoFA.

So that I can pursue my childhood dream to be a fashion designer. I think I mentioned this in my previous blog posts. I wanted to be a fashion designer and I drew fashion illustrations. And since SoFA(School of Fashion and the Arts)  is near my office, hopefully I can work something out, if only the tuition is not so expensive. Hmm…

2. Make swords.

For cosplay, of course. Specifically a rapier for Stella (from FFXIII Versus) and a gun blade for Lightning (from FFXIII). And yeah, make their outfits too. Though I plan to buy some of the pieces and just customize it. I do plan to make Lightning’s boots by myself though.

3. Make a machinima using Cryengine2.

‘coz it’s so pretty. And at he Crymod forums, they have this NanoAwards thing, which is basically make a movie using the CE2. And I thought of (as mentioned in my previous blog post), recreating the story of Aurora (from Princess Tutu), and use lots of cloth and hair simulation. I have tried cloth simulation before, but I still need to brush up on weight painting and stuff in 3DS Max. Now all I have to do is get the installers for Max and  CE2 Sandbox and hope my laptop would run them without dying.

4. Make little 3D models

of random stuff for a 3D seek-and-find game. I used to keep my 3D seek-and-find game hush hush, but it doesn’t really matter now, ‘coz I already told tons of people about this one. Anyway, yeah, it would be a simple one room thing with little 3D stuff scattered around. And you have to find stuff from a list of stuff.

5.  Portfolio!!!

The never ending thing on my list, since I never gotten around to do it. I made this little buildings and connected them in the never-ending pan way, and it will be a horizontal website and you can click on those little buildings to enter a page.

6. Wizard of Oz Photoshoot

Yeah, I’m over my Alice Wonderland obsession. Now, I’m obsessed with Dorothy. Things that led to it: the Wizard of Oz inspired fashion show I went to, Gina’s ruby red shoes, “Son of a Witch” by Gregory Maguire (the sequel to “Wicked”) and “Home” by Breaking Benjamin. So yeah, I’m really into Oz. We could prolly do it at Liyan’s place, ‘coz the other time during our test shoot, we just saw some nicely chopped wood stacked in a pile. Tin Man, anyone? Which reminds me, I’m downloading this other series called “Tin Man” which stars my favorite Zooey Deschanel. So yeah, and we even have a hot air balloon paper lantern.

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Yeah so far that’s it.

Once upon a time…

… there appeared a young person…

… who wished to awaken a princess fallen into an eternal sleep…

… caused by a witch’s curse.

However, someone whispered…

“Waking the princess from her sleep…

what a cruel thing to do.”

Maybe what the princess wishes for…

… is not a kiss to awaken her…

but to stay asleep for all eternity.

- Princess Tutu

A quick model of a bed that I made in Blender.

I want to make a machinima using Cryengine2 that features that story: the Aurora that does not want to wake up. And being a techie and all the machinima would feature cloth and hair simulation (which I will attempt to make after I get the Sandbox and 3DS Max to run on my laptop).

I have not been bloggin for a while, so I am making up for lost time.

Recently, I have been hanging out in game engine forums, and there are a lot of crazy dedicated indie developers and modders. And there are off-topic posts wherein they would brag about how young they are and they are already making really cool stuff (not explicitly bragging, of course, but you get it). And they are not just crazy dedicated, but they are also crazy young, one woulf say that they’re only 15, then the other would say, well I’m only 10 or something. Yeah, you’re 10, that’s like elementary or something and they already got their minds set that they will be game developers when they grow up. Well, growing up is still a long way to go. But it’s good I guess, that they feel as if they already know what they want in their lives and they are already making a lot of effort to achieve it. Which is great.

And then I started thinking of what I was doing when I was their age. When I was in 5th grade, and I wanted to be a fashion designer and I drew bunches of stuff and came up with tons of crazy designs in my head and on paper. My dad also bought me tons of fashion books and magazines which I read and reread. I thought then that I would grow up to be a fashion designer.

I used to think that I was ambitious, that I got my mind set up and I was going to go through with it, and everything else will just fall into place. I had a plan. And up till I was in 3rd year high school, I thought that I was going to go through with it. I was eyeing an art school back then.

And then bam, comes fourth year high school, when we are picking college courses, I have no idea, but I picked Computer Science. Just like that. In all the schools that I applied in, I wrote Computer Science or some computer related course, while Fashion Design and Arts? They were the second choice. I don’t really know why I did that. Okay, I do know. I like computers as much as the next person, but that was surfing the net and Yahoo! Messenger and making personal websites and Flash stuff. I thought that Computer Science was the same as Multimedia Arts or Computer Applications. Well, that was a boo boo. But I also do know back then, that Computer Science graduates get tons of job opportunities and high salaries. At least that part I was right. At least.

If you noticed in my list of things that I used to do with computers, well it didn’t exactly include games. I wasn’t a gamer, nor am I a gamer now, actually. I wasn’t one of those classmates who picked CompSci because they wanted to make games. The irony is, now I get paid to make games.  I have no idea how that happened.

Though I didn’t plan on being a game developer. It turned out quite well for me. I am having fun at work, well, who can complain when you are getting paid play make games?

So what I am saying is, even though I had plans and ambitions then, plans don’t necessariliy fall through and you can always have new ambitions. So we can’t really tell what we are going to do when we grow up.

So yeah, there.

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Oh yeah, my updated cosplay list. (Hope this doesn’t ruin the mood of my prior ramblings.)

Stella from FFXIII Versus

Lightning from FFXIII

Illyasviel from Fate/Stay Night

I feel like a kid again.

June Photoshoots

Ruth and I wanted to do a photoshoot for the longest time and we finally gone through with it.

The White Rabbit and The Mad Hatter

Location: our garden

Photographer: Ruth and my sister

Models: myself and my little sister

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Paper Dress

The White Rabbit

Cosplay

Valentine’s

DeviantArt ID

This is me. The real me, without the makeup, and without the dress-ups.

There’s nothing wrong with dressing up and wanting to look pretty. And the photoshoots go on… tomorrow at Almost Bride Open Shoot, La Mesa Eco Park.

- Hsiao

Edit:

Almost Bride Preview

It was my first open model shoot, so I was too shy to pose and it was kind of hard moving around in a dress with a train, and the hair and make-up made me look different. But overall, it was a fun experience.

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Project 365 Floods

I reached about 215 of my Project 365. I’m extra creative lately so lotsa artworks. And I got a white pages (it’s like yellow pages, but with white paper) and doodled my heart out. For full views, visit my DeviantArt.

Living Paintings

Who Drew the Line

White Pages