Hola, February – I’ve managed to get myself here to write another post! Methinks this is actually going to be a bit long (because of the many events in the past week) – but eh, let’s see how I fare.

I guess the main highlight of this month has gotta be Jerry turning 15. Seems like only yesterday he was my lil’ kid brother (there’s a 2-years-and-7-months gap) asking for a tickle-fest – he was only a toddler then.
Now, he takes every opportunity to remind me of how much shorter I am compared to him (even though he’s my younger brother, pah!) It’s pretty obvious that I love the guy to bits; so have a good birthday on the 28th, Jerry! It’s a shame I’m 6800+ miles away when that happens, but you know what my present for you is already

In other news, I’ve been “signed on” to choreograph (along with my friend Gem) some numbers for the Lower School Play (11 to 14-year-olds) this summer. It’s awesome because:

• They’re doing “Bugsy Malone”.
• I get to work with a bunch of juniors I already know – and personal experience has reminded me that I can work with/handle juniors better than those doing the Senior plays.
• It’s dancing – so it’s a breather from the technical/backstage stuff I usually do (generally, as a behind-the-scenes production member, I light + provide sound + keep basic admin stuffo in check.)

Rehearsals have started *already*; owing to the extensive amount of choreography that goes into Bugsy (as opposed to something like Macbeth.) In about 4 weeks, Gemma and I have successfully completed the routine for 1 song (Fat Sam’s Grand Slam), are partway through another (Bad Guys/You Give A Little Love) with the help of the boys’ improvisations, and will be collaborating with some of the girls on another (Tomorrow.) Pretty impressive, I must say! We’re also going to let the boys devise their own dances for So You Wanna Be A Boxer…well, as much as they can do. The play’s a ton of fun; especially when you have a bunch of Year Sevens attempting to look flirtatious with a Year Nine boy (our Bugsy, that is) – and failing.

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Over the years, blogging is something I’ve sorta developed a love-irk (not love-hate; hate is too strong) relationship with. While it was something I looked forward to doing every now and then in the early years (we’re talking 2005-ish here), real life took over – though not entirely. There were bigger fish to dry than to spend hours tweaking errors on a blog post.

To me, when I started out, it was sacrilege to post just 1-2 lines of content in a post. (That’s what IM – and in recent years, microblogging at Tumblr – is for.) I guess it must’ve been the mentality I had: “if you have a visitor, don’t give some half-baked crap for them to glance at. Let them have some juicy content to pore over.”

In retrospect, it’s perhaps a bit too taxing to do on a regular basis. So I spoke to a couple of other people IRL, who agreed that maybe posting more often, but tailoring post sizes to something moderately/medium-sized may suit me better. Meaty enough so that people have enough to take in; but not sooooo jam-packed that a “below-the-cut” (i.e. “read the rest of this entry”) link is required. I find that may just click better with my thought processes; after all, another reason I’ve left this place pretty quiet is because my brain tends to work like this:

1. Have random idea for post.
2. Spend forever trying to think of how best to present/phrase said post.
3. Take too long that said post would be awfully old news by the time it got out (I’d be blogging about an event that happened 3 months ago – exciting a few days after it happens; but kinda “bleh” aeons after.)
4. Feel slightly frustrated with myself.
5. Repeat cycle.

It’s a darn shame; and the reason why my mum keeps telling me to “gather my thoughts” all the time. It’s also why I tend to find writing [exam] essays tedious (thankfully, I haven’t got anything below an A – touch wood.)

So I guess it’s time for me to take a leaf outta my brother Jerry’s book – who, by the way, is a very entertaining writer in my opinion. Short (or moderate) and snappy is how he works.

Let’s see how it goes – I’ll re-evaluate in a month.

Believe me; if there were a quick fix to help my ailing, outta-date HTML/PHP/Wordpress knowledge, I would’ve used it by now.

Sadly, there isn’t; but there IS an alternative – pinching a free template to use on your site. Even the simple act of using a premade WP theme isn’t so simple after all; especially when you’re using one like this that has widgets and whatnot. For the record, since YM.net was launched in 05, I had NEVER touched the “Widgets” tab in my WordPress dashboard. And now I’ve suddenly discovered that widgets make life a WHOLE lot easier…but not before you “suffer” first – in the form of having to code your layout meticulously so that it’s widget-ready. Flip.

Gee, the amount of work that must’ve gone in this…the same amount that I’d much rather spend on bumming around, now that I’m an A-level student.

Doesn’t mean that I haven’t made a few tweaks here and on Surrealle (like I mentioned in the post before.) Some stuff that’s happened, for a start…

YM.net

• Spring-cleaned blogroll
• Gotten rid of some pages, edited others
• Plans to rewrite some preexisting pages; after all, some of them were written back in 05/06, when I was 14. I’m 17 now, and tend not to use some of the “right-way-round” smilies anymore (like ^_^, for instance.) Actually, I don’t use smilies as much now.

Surrealle

• Fished for ALL my previous design works to “file” them neatly
• Started work on new page layout

And just to prove that I -am- working on that new layout, here you go!