November, I have been waiting for you.

Oh. I had been through my biggest stress.
Every time I get stressed, the stress is bigger than the other, or I just forgot how stressed I was the last time. People tend to forget stressful events if they were relieved or became happy after that.

My talkative inner self returns tonight after being away for a few weeks.

The last time I got so stressed up was when I had to vomit out a concept video in less than 6 hours, that's the time frame I could barely afford to get all things done (6 hours for me is short) Not to mention that it was a group work by 2 people, so one person's work could greatly affect the other's marks. I could not afford to have my friend holding grudges over me if I should fail, and she seemed to believe that I could get things done in time (where came her confidence? lol). Editing and putting together a video is painful if you have to rush it. After preparing source images and soundtrack (stressful process number one), putting them together so that they synched is just oh-so-very stressful (stressful process number two). But I managed to get it done in time, though at the expense of not getting my other work done. 

The strain level can be described as this: You know you just can't stop doing work, you have to keep going because time ticks away, then you kind of work like a robot but can't speed up the process 'cause there is no way to speed it up except doing it bits by bits. Time ticks away and you can't speed up, ಠ_ಠ 
From that day onwards, I start to believe that human can achieve anything if they are desperate. Though one cannot really race pass time.


So I spent last week preparing presentation. I could barely cope. This was due to the fact that I changed my design 3 - 2 weeks before final presentation. It means that though the semester is 13-week long, I only used less than 3 weeks to develop things. It was not fun at all, but I changed it for good, and it turned out better than before. In the end, when presentation time was fast approaching and I was still at home finalising my works, half of my inner self gave up. Not giving up on presentation but giving up racing against time. Travelling to school would take 20 minutes, stuffing models into a box would take 10 mintes, getting my panels printed out would take more than 30 minutes. I didn't give a damn anymore though I know I sure would be late for my allocated presentation time. So tired, so strained. Working speed slower than ever. It was this moment that one started to curse the world for its existence.

In the end when I was finally at uni with my panels (the largest sum I had ever spent on printing, the sum is like, woah),  I was next to go presenting. I could only use the time when I was on the bus to think of what to talk. So I went and talked.

Then it was over.
I was the happiest human when it was over.
After that I slept for one whole day.

Because I slept for so long, I had a weird dream (What reasoning is this?). It was a battle-royale kind of dream. 4 troops of girls went to the jungle fighting against each other (they chose to go, no one forcing them), only 2 troops would survive. I was in one of the troops. From my memory in the dream, my troop was the winner last time in this battle royale thingy. Somehow we also survived this time, along with the other troop. These 2 troops will then fight each other again in another location to decide a winner. The girls in the other troop were rather normal before going through the jungle, but when they managed to come out of it, they all transformed into the  I-will-kill-whoever-standing-in-my-way  type. Ehemhem.

So this troop and my troop tried to eradicate one another. I don't really know how, the dream wasn't that clear about rules. Somehow the opponent troop got the upperhand and could use all facilities provided to them firsthand (by who-knows-who), and they occupied those places. My troop could only sneak into these facilities when the opponents were not around.

I can only remember the dream ended with a gun-firing scene, in a place where my troop thought was safe but in fact was already infiltrated by the enemy. The complexity of the dream goes beyond this and it even includes an organization from the manga "20th Century Boys" (One of my favourites). Man, it's ridiculous. Then I woke up. Then I slept again but the dream didn't continue.

Nawwwww. I want to know what happened! Or what would happen, actually.

Weird, just weird. Of all dreams that I could dream... ʘ_ʘ
I always want to dream about design concepts but they never happen.

啧

有时候会觉得，世上很多东西都叫人恶心。
 社会之下，尽是些恶心思想。

 什么“思想”会引向一个好的社会？ 有些思想人类无法操作，偏偏还是有人自以为是。
人类无法操作，因为人都难以摆脱贪婪、得寸进尺、自以为是的本性，幻想着这种思想可以改变世界，但做出来的东西却是另一回事，美好也只是个人的良好感觉，旁观者可在嘲笑呢。 有些思想，只有没有七情六欲的机器才能胜任。

有些思想，已经是几百几千年前的思想，只适合当时社会当时风气的思想，偏偏有人可以执迷不悟，认为这种思想精神不朽，在现代可以发挥其作用，制止社会的罪恶发生。这些井底之蛙，到死都依然相信，解决问题的方法就只有他相信的才是最正确的。问题是，执迷不悟的其他人依然乐意附和。

哗，想着想着就一股火。教育中少了灌输critical thinking,不鼓励 pluralism, 后果就是一群死守古老思想的人。旁观者可在嘲笑呢。非常庆幸，我不属于某一群人，一群根本没有余地勇气批判的人。

刚刚看到了养燕行业的新闻，火上加火。某当局的某人如是说：“虽然有人投诉噪音及担心卫生问题，但那些问题还不严重，现在只能加强养燕指南。” 噢，原来问题还不严重就是没有问题。这种人，我真的想说去死，但人身攻击还是算了吧。
我对这行业感到非常厌恶。如果“当局”可以更有规划，规定那些恨不得能多赚钱掺一脚养燕的家伙到某特定养燕区进行他们的生意，一切至少安好。现在，这行业不只毁了家乡的市容（简直就是disaster），居民还得忍受他们根本不想要的噪音及卫生问题。燕子屋建在住宅区很明显是错的，可有些贪心人就是没有大脑。因为人的贪婪，无辜的燕子代替了人类让人厌恶着。


噢，难道今天是久违了的extreme mode? 感觉好像回到了中学时期。
那没有灰，只有黑白的时期。

大半夜的你在干嘛？

我有一个坏习惯。如果隔天有课，半夜都不睡，做功课做到天亮，然后时间一到直接去上课。
听上去好像很勤劳。
才怪，这只是一个坏的习惯。
即日夜颠倒，加上临时抱佛脚。
但如果不这么做，我睡不着啊，感觉好像还有很多东西没做，内心不安得很。
内心不安，上课就会失去信心（是的，我上课可是需要信心的）

结果，大半夜一边紧张一边用脑，一点都不好玩。
我想我需要的是一股压力，可以逼着我把事情完成，但同时又超讨厌这股压力。

有一本书，叫做《Steal like an Artist》 (by Austin Kleon)
教你怎么偷别人的 ideas。
听上去好像很猖狂，其实作者只是把事实摊开来讲而已，即告诉你，nothing is original。我也觉得，世上哪有什么原始的 idea? 全都是源自于某些事物的。如果你这一刻突然灵光一闪，也别忘了世上可是有几十亿的人几十亿的头脑，当中若有几十个头脑和你想着同样的事情可一点也不出奇。所以，谁能先把 idea 实现，他就赢啦。

《Steal like an Artist》 里的十大条例：

1. Steal like an artist.
2. Don't wait until you know who you are to get started.
3. Write the book you want to read.
4. Use your hands.
5. Side projects and hobbies are important. （这个我非常支持噗）
6. The secret: Do good works and share it with people.
7. Geography is no longer our master.
8. Be nice. (The world is a small town) （是的）
9. Be boring. (It's the only way to get works done)
10. Creativity is substraction.

所以我要说的是，be boring, it's the only way to get works done. （哭） 
还以为你要长篇大论地开始谈创意？！
所以纵使压力大，唉还是得乖乖做下去，那是唯一的方法。中小学时，我可是个不懂什么叫压力的人，放学后可以慢慢地折 origami，然后玩玩 Minesweeper, 然后就去睡觉……呵。现在，头发都变少了啊啊啊。

大半夜紧张兮兮时，听听以前中学时常听的音乐能有镇静心灵的作用。这是为什么呢？是那怀念的感觉吧。


这是网上留传的一则鼓舞人心的话语：

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. 

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass


必须去一趟图书馆啦。