So, after the week where I said I would try to blog every week, I kind of ran out of time to do anything personal, because there were a number of things I had to do, including assignments, a pitch, and a wedding. Fortunately, I managed to find time to meet with Cx, Avelin, and Stefanie for Crimes of Grindelwald, but I was pretty much left with little enough free time for me to not feel compelled to blog.

Anyway, those things that kept me busy were, for the most part, good things, so let me talk about some of them chronologically.

Participated in SAS's Pitchfest
For the first time ever, I got shortlisted in a writing competition. It is a whole new experience for me to be pitching to a panel for any reason other than an assignment, but I guess there must be a first step somewhere, sometime. I was so out of touch with the whole pitching thing. In Digipen, no one really cares about how well you pitch, but back in DTVM, pitching was a huge focus and there were so many things to take note of. To make matters worse, it was crunch time for the game project in school, so I had very little mental capacity to be doing this.

Still, I recognised that it was completely not worth it to not put effort into this just because there were some assignments, so I gave it my all and survived the day.

There were twelve other finalists whom I was "competing" against, but really, it was more of a networking session. Once again, I have never networked before, so I was pretty bad at it. Two of us ended up sticking to ourselves and chatting, which I guess wasn't a good idea. I guess I'll have to work on stuff like that. Also, I really do need to return to watching some local TV shows if I'm considering writing for them.

The other ideas were of variety. There were some that I really liked. The idea by the person I stuck to the whole time was pretty cool, but I shall not talk about it here because it isn't my idea.

Flora's Wedding
It is my cousin, Flora's, turn to get married. It is the age, or at least it is soon to be the age. I believe the only weddings I ever attended were Chinese ones and they were all my relatives. No one I was close enough to had gotten married and invited me. Heck, the DTVM gang (me included) are still all single. It's quite funny. We even dubbed ourselves the "self-love club".

It's a pretty beautiful wedding. There were the exchange of vows, some preach, some songs, and generally a nice atmosphere. Despite not being a Christian, one thing I like about Christian weddings (or at least the only one I've ever been to) is how significant the day is made to be, complete with the long aisle, confetti, and long speeches. The Chinese ones just care about tea.

GAM Project
The rest of my time were spent doing miscellaneous stuff, assignments, and the game project. To repeat the context, we have a semester or year-long game project every semester. The current one my level is working on is a year-long project in which the team is made of three "departments"; the programmers had to build a game engine, the artist(s) had to draw and animate, and the designers had to design and implement the game.

It was super stressful because a lot needed to be done with very little time. Everyone ended up being really demoralised. I tried my best to stay calm and chill for the most part, but I lost my shit on Jaryl (the producer) once and Min Teck (another guy) multiple times. I'd also been super pessimistic and I regret that. However, to be fair, I didn't lose my shit on Jaryl because of stress, but because of something else which I shouldn't talk about.

So, as of submission, our game wasn't in a super good state. It was quite sad because we were rushing so much that we didn't get to see other people's presentations. The whole thing felt like a huge mess, but we'll probably fix it in the time to come.

Manga: A Silent Voice
I just want to point out that the manga I had been reading in pockets of time was really good and made me feel all sorts of things inside. It is about a deaf girl and a reformed bully and how the bully is trying to redeem himself by becoming friends with the deaf girl, falling in love with her as a result. The romance part of it is predictable, but it is the whole idea about the deaf girl and the fact that she really hates herself but is trying her best that gets to me. On one hand, it can be a little annoying; on the other, in a particular scene where she cried and said that she wanted to die, it really dug straight into my heart.

This manga also portrayed suicide and pretty heavy themes without dramatising them. I found it impressive. There is an animated film for it and I'm probably going to find a way to watch it now that I'm almost freed up.

So, yeah. The upcoming holiday is almost 3.5 weeks and a lot can be done. I had been neglecting my body, so it's time to hit the gym again and watch lots of stuff I wanted to watch, play lots of games I wanted to play, go for that Vietnam trip, and do some stuff in preparation of the next semester, such as practicing on C++ and doing a bit of the game project.

On a parting note, I have been pretty moody these few days over some stuff and I hope I get over them soon, but taking some time away from Digipen will probably help. Let's just hope we don't return to a situation where I postpone my unhappiness only to face them in bulk when I am re-exposed to the stimulus.

Labels: digipen, family, things that happened, writing