On Thursday, the doorbell rang and I was so excited to see my NOOK come, but it was just my hard drive and I was so disappointed =[ But then when I got home from uni, my mum said my eReader came! I'm so happy with this eReader, I love it! I had a few problems trying to get it started and navigating my way around but for a technologically incapable person, it's quite alright. It has this really cool screensaver of pics of famous authors done in this cool line drawing style but I can't find or take any pictures to justify it =[
Anyway, when I got home from uni, I immediately got Mockingjay on it and started reading it and I finished it just today!
This was so intense, especially the second half! It's the last book in the series so it's full of action near the end. The title of this blog is actually a recurring quote "Real or Not Real" that's really powerful throughout the whole book but I can't give anything away so yeah I'll just leave it at that.
Out of the whole series, I think the second book was the best, but I'm not too sure where to place book 1 and book 3. They are totally different things: the first book is the hunger games and the third book is about politics and strategies and things like that. I think the third book may be better than the first book in terms of intensity and plot twists, but the first book's plot was still really good and set everything in motion.
I like this book, and the series, because the concept is really clever. It gives you heroes who aren't really heroes, they're just ordinary people (teenagers actually) who can't ever be heroes unless they all work together as a team; no one deserves the sole credit of being the hero at the end, it's just what everyone does together that makes it happen. The ending, which is beautiful, shows how damaging it could be to go through these sorts of things, the terrible aftermath of actually attempting to be a hero when you're not ready for it and the terrible things you might have to leave behind and let go of for the better (which is kind of why I liked Iron Man 3).
It's also a political statement, forcing us to question our own lives and whether or not we are just pawns in a bigger game played by powerful people, and who exactly those powerful people are and whether what we believe is real or not real. So yeah, it's really deep and even though the language is overly simplistic in the first book, it gets better throughout and the intensity and cleverness of the series more than makes up for it.
SO enough of that, do you know what I realised?!
From this week onwards, I have an assessment every single week of the term except weeks 10 and 11! =[ It's gonna be intense. And next week I have a multiple choice quiz where there are either 1, 2 or 3 correct answers and you have to get exactly all the correct answers to get the mark. We've been doing practice questions and I can't remember if I've gotten one right at all... I'm defs getting zero =[
Also, I saw Now You See Me
I was so excited when I saw the trailer because it has such an amazing cast and I love the concept of magic and stuff so I was so happy walking into the theatre. BUT, walking out of the theatre... I was severely disappointed. The whole movie was amazing with the plot and the magic tricks and the amazing cast, but the ending was TERRIBLE! It was the cheapest cop out ever. It was as if the film makers were telling us, "Dear Audience, we would never make a profit if we just had a movie with really cool magic tricks so we had to put some sort of plot twist and we couldn't really think of one so this is all you're going to get." It literally doesn't make ANY sense, they don't follow through on what they did throughout the movie.
Anyway, I think if you watch this, you should watch it as a cool magic show and not a suspenseful intense film because that's all it is.
And on Friday I volunteered at Parra for Daffodil Day for the Cancer Council!
It was so surprising to see Aharani there haha and Pamela joined us later after uni.
It went pretty good, it was quite a lot of fun but later my legs started hurting because I haven't been standing for hours at a time since January 2012 when I quit work. It's annoying to see some people come up to you and ask, "IS IT FREE" and you're just like, "NO WE ARE RAISING MONEY FOR CANCER YOU IDIOT!"
But I mainly enjoyed it because I kept rearranging the table of merchandise throughout the day.
And here are some of my lovely OCD results:
See how lovely everything is when neatened up!
And lastly,
I've played two games recently:
Hanabi
It's another cooperative game, except no one is allowed to see their own cards. You have 5 or 6 colours and you need teamwork to be able to effectively communicate to people what cards they have (using certain clues) so that everyone can place down cards in order 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 for each colour. It's a really simple game, but tiring to try and memorise the properties of your cards, where they are and figure out how to tell others what cards they have. I don't really like this game because it's kind of weird and too repetitive and tedious for my liking.
Shadows Over Camelot
I really like this game. It's another cooperative but the thing is, there MAY or may not be a traitor in the group (depending on what you draw). It's set in the Medieval and we are the Knights of the Round Table and have to do these quests. The entire game is very suspicious, like whenever you play a card you have to put it face down and even discarding a card makes you put it face down so you don't actually know if you can trust what the person is doing. Some cards you can choose to play it face down or up. If you play it face down you get to pick up another card which entices you into playing it face down, but then others are suspicious of you being the traitor. It's really fun. At first it was a bit complex but it's one of those games where you have to play it to learn the rules and get used to it so it got better over time. Very enjoyable and a great fun for groups.
And for your enjoyment, here are two cool videos:
Here's a decapitated snake biting its body as part of its reflexes even after death
And here's Celia Pavey's (from The Voice) audition prior to getting to the BLind Auditions
I love this so much, it's such a cool quirky way of singing it. I heard the original and decided this was way better so don't bother.
