The One with Titanic: The Sequel
I never really liked this movie and I never really get why people loved it so much. The song was quite empowering when I heard it for the first few times, but subsequently for the following weeks after the premier, after hearing the bloody song EVERYWHERE, the empowering music that I once loved as well turned into a screeching bald eagle to my ears.
Why a bald eagle?
I have absolutely no idea.
That, however, is beside the point because today I am going to present to you the trailer for the sequel of Titanic. Surprisingly I found myself enjoying this trailer thoroughly, even though that wailing horror is being played in it.
Wasn’t it beautiful?
=P
(4) Her Hero and His Love: The Rewrite
Momentary slowdown.
No, I didn’t get hit by a bus or anything of the like. The reason why there will be a temporary slowdown is due to two reasons:
1. School Projects
I’ve just begun a new module at the beginning of this week (The way my school works is you rush through 1 or 2 modules within a month and then get new ones at the following month) and there appears to be quite a lot of work involved with the projects – actually there are only two projects but both appear to be very tedious.
Weekends are still free for me to write (I can’t say the same when the second project comes) so I have those, but for the rest of this week and next week until Thursday, I might be a little too tired to do heavy thinking.
Now one might bring up the fact that I’ve mentioned something before along the lines of “I enjoy writing and I do it in my leisure time.” Which in other words means that writing shouldn’t be energy consuming for me.
This brings me to point 2.
2. I hit a wall in the plot
Right now there’s an obstacle in front of me that is preventing me for proceeding with the story. Something just feels out of place about this particular chapter, and I want to change it but I’m not exactly sure how. I’ll be able to get it out of the way with some brainstorming, but brainstorming for me takes both energy + inspiration.
And that is why sometimes I might be too worn out to write anything of substance, and instead prefer to just proofread the previous chapters.
At the very most this slowdown will last till the end of the month – and by slowdown I mean to the rate of producing only one chapters in 2 to 3 days, sometimes even four. However… I’ll be having my holidays right after this month.
A month-long holiday to write as much as I want =P
- Derick
(3) Her Hero and His Love: The Rewrite
No more a novella.
I’ve reached roughly the middle of the rewrite this afternoon and when I click the ‘Word Count’ button, Microsoft Word fed me this number,
31,881
And my response to it was,
“Wah seh” which more or less means “Woah” for all you non-Singaporeans.
The original length of HHHL is only 45,000 words and that is one whole story, so I estimate the rewrite to be about twice the length, putting it at 90,000 words. For your information, that would roughly be about 15,000 more words than Harry Potter: The Philosopher’s Stone.
To be honest here, I’m a little worried that the length might turn off some people and make them decide to not read my story. However, I’m only at the middle of the story and 90,000 is just an estimation based on the assumption than the other half would be of about equal length. There is a chance that the second half will be a lot shorter than the original’s second half, so the length in the end might still balance out.
One thing that’s for sure is that the rewrite will result in a longer story, due to additional plot elements and a change of writing style.
And I believe the question that begs to be asked here is, “Longer by how many words?”
All I can say now is that the integrity of the story will be maintained. It will still be an entertaining read and the chapters are still very short and concise.
- Derick
The One with Girlfriend 1.0
Hey, do you still remember the Boyfriend 1.0 joke thingy that I posted a couple of days earlier? Well, I received a comment – the only comment… – from a reader who kindly shared with me the Girlfriend 1.0 version!
I’m going to repost her comment here but only because my blog is still new, and I think that most people tend to overlook the commenting area right now.
- Which for your information can be accessed by clicking either the ‘title of the post’ or the ‘comments’ link.
Anyway, here’s what Janet has kindly shared:
Dear Technical Support,
18 months ago, I upgraded to Girlfriend 1.0 from DrinkingMates 4.2, which I had used for years without any trouble. However, there are apparently conflicts between these two products and the only solution was to try and run Girlfriend 1.0 with the sound
turned off.To make matters worse, Girlfriend 1.0 is incompatible with several other applications, such as LadsNightOut 3.1, Football 4.5, and Playboy 6.9. Successive versions of GirlFriend proved no better. I tried a shareware program, Slapper 2.1, but it had many bugs and left a virus in my system, forcing me to shut down completely for several
weeks.Eventually, I tried to run GirlFriend 1.2 and Girlfriend 1.0 at the same time, only to discover that when these two systems detected each other and they caused severe damage to my hardware.
I eventually upgraded to Fiancie 1.0, only to discover that this product soon had to be upgraded further to Wife 1.0. While Wife 1.0 tends to use up all my available resources, it does come bundled with FreeSexPlus and Cleanhouse2004. Shortly after this upgrade, however, I found that Wife 1.0 could be very unstable and costly to run.
Any mistakes I made were automatically stored in Wife 1.0’s memory and could not be deleted. They then resurfaced months later when I had forgotten about them. Wife 1.0 also has an automatic Diary, Explorer and E-mail filter, and can, without warning, launch TurboStrop and Whinge. These latter products have no Help files, and I have to try to guess what the problem is.
Additional problems are that Wife 1.0 needs updating regularly, requiring ShoeShop Browser for new attachments and Hairstyle Express which needs to be reinstalled every other week. Also, when Wife 1.0 attaches itself to my Saab 93 Convertable hard drive, it often crashes.
Wife 1.0 also comes with an irritating pop-up called MotherInLaw, which can’t be turned off. Recently I’ve been tempted to install Mistress 2003, but there could be problems. A friend of mine has alerted me to the fact that if Wife 1.0 detects Mistress 2003, it tends to delete all of your Money before uninstalling itself.
Help requested please?!
I had a good laugh while reading that so hopefully you did as well!
- Derick
The One with Giving Your 100%
It is common knowledge that whenever we do any work, we should put in our best efforts and give our 100%.
The phrase “give our 100%”, however, is open to many interpretation.
This here is how I interpret that phrase.
You are welcome to agree with me.
- Derick
The One For Bernie Mac
Rest In Peace, Mr Bernie Mac.
( October 5, 1957 – August 9, 2008 )
CHICAGO (AP) — Bernie Mac, the actor and comedian who teamed up in the casino heist caper “Ocean’s Eleven” and gained a prestigious Peabody Award for his sitcom “The Bernie Mac Show,” died Saturday at age 50. Full story here.
It wasn’t his time to go yet if you ask me, and worse is that it had to f***ing happen on national day as well.
*sigh*
Thanks for all the laughs and smiles…
- Derick
The One with ‘Democracy’
I was bored so I switched on my television with every intention to channel surf, until I realize…
Channel 5 – National Day Parade
Vasantham Central - National Day Parade
Suria - National Day Parade
Channel 8 - National Day Parade
Channel U - National Day Parade
Democracy my ass.
- Derick
The One with Boyfriend 1.0
I was just looking through some folders on my computers – not for pornography you pervs – and I stumbled upon a bunch of really funny stuff. Well at least I find them funny enough to be kept so anyway, I’ll share some of them over the next few days, starting with this one:
Note: Special thanks to Honey Chiang for sharing this with me =P
Boyfriend 1.0
Dear Tech Support,Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0, and noticed a distinct slow-down in overall system performance – particularly in The Flower and Jewellery applications, which operated flawlessly
under Boyfriend 5.0.
In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as NFL 5.0, MLB 3.0, NBA 4.0, NASCAR 4.2 and Golf Clubs 4.1. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I’ve tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.What can I do?
Signed,
Desperate
********************************************************************
Dear Desperate:
First keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an Operating System. Please enter the command: “http//www.I-Thought-You-Loved-Me.com” and try to download Tears 6.2, and don’t forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewellery 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.
But remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0, or Beer 6.1. Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Snoring Loudly Beta. Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-in-law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background, that will eventually seize control of all your system resources). Also, do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. This is an unsupported application and will crash Husband 1.0.
In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory, and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Hot Food 3.0 and Lingerie 7.7.
Hope this Helps,
Tech Support Department
Haha, anyway, Happy National Day everyone!
- Derick
(2) Her Hero and His Love: The Rewrite
Reminder: “Her Hero and His Love: The Rewrite” is NOT the official title of the rewrite.
Slow and steady wins the race.
That used to be my motto whenever I ran my 2.4km run in school during P.E. lessons, and 90% of the time I would fail the run. Fortunately, I believe this motto would not result in failure should I apply it to writing.
Currently I’m only at Chapter 7 of the rewrite, but I feel that the standard has gone up a few levels. The writing isn’t so chunky and amateurish anymore, in the sense that the story flows more smoothly now. I’ve incorporated the writing style that I picked up after writing HHHL, which I hope will make the story much more readable.
The writing style basically brings out the actions in the story, and helps to reinforce the “Show and don’t tell” rule that we writers have.
At the rate I’m writing, I’m going at about a chapter a day right now, I’ll say that I am not going to be done so soon. Previously I wrote about two chapters a day and finished HHHL in a month with five drafts. Now I’m doing one chapter a day, and I’m paying a lot more attention to details and the plot. Add the fact that this story is in a series, I will definitely take a lot longer than just one month.
Of course, I’ll continue to keep you guys updated here and from time to time I will post up excerpts.
Oh and before I end off, I want to share with you this new word that I just learnt, haha! It’s not exactly a new word but I never knew that the plural form was spelled in this manner.
wannabes | wan·na·bes
–noun, plural -bes. Informal. one who aspires, often vainly, to emulate another’s success or attain eminence in some area.
Actually, the fact that ‘wannabe’ is a real word in the dictionary - considering the fact that ‘wanna’ is an American slang of the words ‘want to’ - is quite interesting on its own already. Or at least it is to me…
Anyway, that’s all for this entry =)
- Derick
