i have been wanting to write this for some time, but never got round to doing it. i have one idol in my class, whom i proclaimed myself. i find that, she looks like kitade nana.

the first time i saw her in my japanese language class, the first impression i got was, 'KITADE NANA!'

well granted she is not as pretty as her, and there are some obvious differences. but i kind of keep relating her to kitade-san (well i actually wanted to use nana-chan, but i guess nana-chan is already taken).

so everytime i go to my jap class, i will be looking forward to seeing my class idol. perhaps one day i may just be unable to control it and walk up to her. 'sumimasen kitade-san! can i have your autograph?'

roughly 4.5 years after i stopped writing a diary, i guess, i will start writing again. i used to write it by pen. i remembered taking stacks of 50 plain a4 size printing papers and go to the shop to have them binded. then i will write whatever i wanted to write, bit by bit, everyday, in that empty pages of the books.

over time, i had gathered quite a few books, all of them sitting nicely in my cupboard. although i don't really take them out to read, partly because i am lazy, partly because there is no point, and partly because i think i will be too embarrassed at my own immaturity, i guess, it is good to have a written record of what is happening to my life.

to those who know me, i guess they know my memory is super bad, and i tend to forget things easily. the same goes to my life, i usually only remember significant events. but significant events, sometimes, they lose their importances and standing over time. and then, memory gradually fails.

memories, good or bad, they make up part of your experiences, and turn them into the you now, be it for good or for bad. of course, to most of us, no matter how much we change, we don't have a very drastic change like what they show in hollywood movies.

well, this time, i am still deciding on how to write. to write in paper, or to write in microsoft word? if i write using the computer software, undoubtedly it would be in english, because it is easier. if i write down on paper, i think, i will write in chinese. because, i like chinese more than english. and chinese would have expressed my thoughts better. don't you think so? there is another bonus reason which came with this decision. people over here are so used to english that they got turned off by seeing long pages of words in chinese. although i will keep it a secret and protect it religiously, i guess, accidents do happen. i have to think of every single possibility and come up with an appropriate solution. haax.

actually, there were days when i really want to write something down. because of the password protected plugin that i installed, i could write some private posts inside here. but still, i think, this blog was not created for me to go emo or to write my personal life. so i guess, the limit is here.

of course, there will be times when i will definitely need to write password protected posts, but i hope, from today onwards, there will be as little emo posts on this blog as possible.

no matter what, i think, although life is screwed up sometimes, where your every course of action is blocked by obstacles and you start to get real irritated and pissed, i think, life, is still interesting.

i hope, years later when i look through my diary again, i will smile at it and not regret what i have done, what i am doing, and what i am going to do. this is my life, and i will record down as many details as possible. because memory always fails me.

well, to many of us chinese over here, i guess most of us are familiar with the famous song 月光 (literally translated into 'moonlight') by 王心凌 (cyndi wang), which was released in 2004 under the album 'cyndi loves you'. a gentle song with a smooth flowing melody which many of us like. in fact i used to like it a lot, and still quite like it now.

whether you have listened to it before or not, take a few minutes to go through this youtube video of the song.

then some of the people will go... NOOOOO THAT IS NOT THE ORIGINAL VERSION! SHE RIPPED OFF paid homage to 島谷ひとみ (shimatani hitomi)!! then you probably go... yeah she ripped off referenced quite a few other songs too like from M2M's 'the day you went away' and SweetS '虹色の永遠' (nijiiro no eien / rainbow-colored eternity). ok anyway that's not the main point, and i don't believe it is her fault. her job is to sing, not to decide what to sing, i think. those of us who noticed that she ripped off borrowed from shimatani hitomi will most likely also know that the original title is 亜麻色の髪の乙女 (amairo no kami no otome / the girl with the flaxen hair), released under the single 亜麻色の髪の乙女, in the year 2002.

so again, whether you have listened to it before or not, spend another few minutes to just go through the video below to see the difference. the tempo of the music as well as the melody had some obvious changes.

and then, only the true pros would notice yet another thing! that shimatani hitomi is not the original singer of this song! and yes praise me more now you readers! this very song 亜麻色の髪の乙女 was sung by the boyband group ヴィレッジ・シンガーズ (village singers) in.... THE YEAR 1968!!

of course, for many of us chinese, few of us would have known that the song was taken from hitomi, except for those of us who are familiar with the japanese music circle. and even among us, even fewer would know that this was also actually taken from a song which was already floating around wayyyy back before we were born.

anyway, probably by now, if you have read until here, you would be very interested and probably shouting STOP THE NONSENSE AND TELL ME THE LINK TO THE LAST AND THE MOST ORIGINAL OF THE SONG! so, here we go. the user who uploaded the video on youtube disabled embedding of that particular video. so all you have to do is to click on the link below to bring you to youtube. enjoy, this particular song, which everyone thought was a song meant for female singers, yet actually sung by a group of males.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAvFoixk240

sometimes, when i listen to a particular song, a certain feeling or memory would come back to me. just like how i used to listen to mizuki nana's heaven knows and crystal letter when i was playing the game perfect world. at that time, i only had that few nana-chan's songs, and that's why the music kept looping. the 2 songs were at the top of my playlist, among other japanese songs.

anyway, my point is, sometimes when we do the things we used to do in the past, it brings back memories.

my friends would probably know, i usually only listen to japanese songs. i don't listen to english or chinese. i used to, though, but nowadays the music evolved to a state that i no longer like it.

i scrolled back my ipod to the playlist where i have my westlife, backstreet boys songs. yar, you guessed it, they are old. it brought back memories to when i was a teenager. up until the early 2000s, perhaps 2002 or 2003, the boybands were quite famous. but it was around 2004 onwards that their decline was obvious and fast, and before long bands like greenday and busted, and some individuals like akon came out. at that point in time, the songs had already evolved to a new kind of music. i still listened to it though, but after a while, i switched to japanese, and listened up till today.

i remembered the first boyband i liked was westlife. in fact i still kind of like them now. the first song that attracted me to them was 'coast to coast', and 'if i let you go' became my favorite at that time. 'larger than life' made me realized the existence of backstreet boys, and among their songs i like 'shape of my heart' the most. m2m was also one of my favorite bands, above backstreet boys and below westlife. 'pretty boy' got me hooked for a long long time. michael learns to rock, blue, n'sync, plus one, a1 and bands/singers of that 'era', well i suppossed you know them, they were really quite famous. i loved their songs. not all, but they always had that trademark songs which defined their success. sleeping child, 25 minutes, it's gonna be me, best in me, last flight out, learn to fly, caught in the middle.... etc. i am sure, you know them too.

as i listened to each of these songs, it brought back memories to which i had usually forgotten unless something happened which reminded me of them. the time when i fell in love for the first time, the time when everybody in school were using those cool songs for our drama production, when we sang along and memorized the lyrics, when i would envy my friend because he got a poster signed by westlife. actually i still envy him now.

the songs, at that time, were awfully like chinese songs, which talked mostly about failed relationships, one-sided love, and everything except a happy romantic relationship. although it was more to the sad side, i still kind of like it. it was just too bad that the the boybands had to disband, m2m had to split up...etc. the current cool songs now, be it chinese or english, did not really attract me. i seriously do not like them that much.

it is the same for chinese songs. i would rather listen to songs in the 1990s and the early 2000s than songs now. songs of current era, give me the japanese. haax.

for now, i would probably start compiling a list of the old songs i used to have but for some reason lost it, be it chinese or english. and probably for a while, i will stop listening to japanese. i wonder, how the future will change the way music is produced, and what i will listen to in a few year's time.

listen to one old chinese song. it used to be my favorite when i was in primary school. the first song i really really got addicted to. i was 10 at that time. although the lyrics did not apply to me then. hahahaha.

and yes! finally, after a few months, in the month of february 2010, i got a commission worth a grand total of 62 yen in my account! if you want to know, that is worth roughly 68 cents in american currency under the exchange rate in this day and time! i love you cdjapan!

i feel so proud of myself.