Slice Of Life #293 - School's Reopening! - Tuesday, July 28th, 2020

    School's reopening again! I'm actually pretty delighted to hear that because I'm going to go insane if this goes on any longer. Before the Coronavirus, we all used to dread school because we were really busy, but because of the Coronavirus, lots of my classes have stopped, so I'm a lot less busy now, and on second thought, school's probably going to be the only thing keeping me sane.

    Also, a quick update on my comic-making: the final version, or the inking, is finally done! I've inked my drawings and Mr. Matt (check him out at smithvssmith.com!), who thought me about comic-making (trust me, I knew nothing), has helped me put the text. I'm very satisfied with the product. Check it out!!
    Now, I want to go read, and I don't have anything else to write about, so I'm going to be ending this post here. Bye!

Slice Of Life #292 - Currently... - Tuesday, July 21st, 2020

• I have just finished taking a bath.
• I'm going to be rushing this post as I want to be done before 9pm tonight.
• I'm working on my piano homework about transposition, which is SO HARD. I spent 30 minutes working on it yesterday and yet I'm still not done.
• For those of you that don't know, musical transposition is when you have a series of notes and you transpose them (well, I guess that's not a very good definition because I'm just repeating the same thing 😅) a certain amount.
• See it this way: You have a series of numbers and you have to increase them by a certain amount (ie. 5, so if the numbers were 10, 13, 15, the answers would be 15, 18, 20. Except that it's about 10 times harder to do that in musical theory). That's what transposition is.

Slice Of Life #291 - Comics = Fun - Tuesday, July 14th, 2020

Recently, I've taken a course on how to make comics from an ISKL alumni, Matt Smith. I'm pretty sure the school wants to publish a collection of authentic memories from ISKL, and since I signed up for the course, I get to contribute (YAY!)

I'm currently making a comic about my experience moving to our new campus from our old campus 2 years ago, and I'm really enjoying the experience. I've also realized that I'm a lot better at drawing than I really think I am (which doesn't really mean anything, because I'm still pretty bad 🤣). If you take a look at my thumbnails (basically a first draft), you can see that some parts look good, whereas some parts look pretty bad. Well, I may have copied the good parts from google... (ie. the audience in the first panel)

My script outline

On Sunday, I finished my script outline, which is just like my plan when making a story (it's a "comic story arc"). Then, yesterday, I was really into drawing and spent quite a long time (30 minutes) drawing my thumbnails. I don't really mind spending all that time, though. It was a pleasurable and fun experience, and I at least did something productive. I scanned it and sent it to Mr. Smith, who is offering me lots of guidance and is also my editor/letterer (basically, that means that he's going to take the comic and put it into photoshop so he can add the text in the speech balloons for me). At 11pm (he's in another country with a different timezone), he replied me telling me that he's shared my thumbnails with the other editors and that it's been approved (YAY AGAIN!!!!) Of course, I read the reply when I woke up the next day (it was a terribly good start to the day). He's also offered me some suggestions on how I can change the ISKL Panther (forgive my bad drawing, as it doesn't really look like a panther at all 😂). He suggested that I change the Panther to have a face that's more round, unlike the rest of his body. This gives him a really nice outline that is unique, and if we take a look at the silhouette of the new Panther (top right of comic), we can see that he is more easily recognized and differentiated from the other character, who is an ISKL student (who was originally intended to be me, but I changed the hairstyle and made the person very fat, so it's not me anymore...)

My comic thumbnails - still work in progress, so stay tuned to see the end product! :)

So, basically, that's my update of the week about my comic-making. I'll make sure to keep you updated about it!

Slice Of Life #290 - (Attempting) to Make My Identity Card - Tuesday, July 7th, 2020

    I'm 12 now! And that means that I have to go make an identity card (IC), as I can't use my MyKid (identity card for kids) anymore because it doesn't have a photo. Because of that, I did what any kid would do: I went to the immigration center with my parents today to make a new one.
    Upon reaching, we met a woman at the front door who asked us what we were here for. We told her that we were here to make my IC, and she asked us another question.
    "Do you have an appoinment?" She asked us.
    "Appointment?" I questioned. Since when do we have to make an appointment? I thought to myself.
    "Yeah. If you don't have an appointment, you have to go make one. Please take a look on our website.
    Okay, no big deal. We just have a make an appointment, and then we can make my IC later today.
    However, upon logging on to the website, I found out that all the slots were full until the end of the month. Woah! I thought to myself. There sure are lots of people turning 12 this year!
    Well, I'm back home now, and we've scheduled an appointment this Thursday - at another immigration center (I mean, I can't wait too long. I'm pretty sure it's a rule that I have to make it very soon right after I turned 12, and I turned 12 two months ago). I had to postpone making my IC by 2 months because I celebrated my birthday under lockdown, so now, I have to make it since the lockdown rules aren't as strict anymore. Until then, bye!

Slice of Life #289 - Cooped Up At Home - Tuesday, June 30th, 2020

Yup, you've guessed it! I'm still cooped up at home. Fortunately, there's no law saying I can't go out now, so I can still freely go out whenever I want. But, because we have to social distance to stay safe, me and my family are staying home for most of the time. I'm not going to complain much about it though, as it is an improvement - I can at least go out now.

On Sunday, I went for my first ever badminton lesson in 3 months. And now, I'm not really regretting it at all, but my hand hurts a lot. Somehow, even though I ran a lot, it isn't even my leg that's sore, but instead my arms. Fortunately, only my right arm is sore because it was the only arm that I use when playing badminton.

Summer camp is over, which also means that I'm going to be really bored again. However, I have made a checklist which is actually making me busy, so I'm pretty grateful for that. I always underestimate how long it takes me to complete everything on the checklist I made, because in life, most things are easier said than done.

I always try to balance my computer time and non-computer time each day, and so far I'm finding that it's going pretty well. Now, I tend to do one activity off the computer (ie. piano, reading, etc.), then one activity on the computer (ie. Duolingo, which is an app that I use to help me practice my Spanish), and vice versa.

And then, after dinner and returning home from my daily walk after dinner, my computer is a no-go zone. My parents haven't created a rule that says I must do this, but for some reason I've just done it a lot and now it's a habit, so I just tend to not use the computer after dinner. I don't know what exactly it is that fuels this need to get off the computer, but there's just something in charge of doing it, and I'm grateful for it. Maybe it's the fact that I haven't been on the computer after dinner for so long, I just want to keep it a habit and not break it (It's kinda' like I'm on a "no computer streak", and I just don't want to break it).

Now, IT'S DINNERTIME (WHICH I REALLY NEED BECAUSE I'M SUPER HUNGRY), so bye!

Slice Of Life #288 - Nothing To Write About - Tuesday, June 23rd, 2020

    We're still in RMCO (basically lockdown), so life is still pretty boring. :( However, the country is starting to reopen again, as I can go to more of my classes now. I can go take piano lessons, swimming, and badminton lessons now - and we're talking REAL lessons (like, non-virtual ones).
    Other than summer school, life has been pretty boring today. I've played games for longer today, so my plan for today is to: GET OFF THE COMPUTER FOR THE REST OF THE DAY AFTER WRITING THIS. Wait. Actually, "get off the computer for the rest of the day after writing this and taking today's dose of coding lessons (I'm learning coding for free now because I have lots more free time, and also, why not learn something new?)
    After doing some coding, I'm going to practice on the piano, clarinet, read, write (maybe? kinda' not in the mood to do it today, but maybe I'll be in the mood later), and do anything that pops up in my head later.
    Well, since I have lots of things to do, I'm going to end this post here! Bye!

Slice Of Life #287 - SUMMER HOLIDAYS!!!!! - Tuesday, June 16th, 2020

YAY! It's finally summer! Except that we still have the quarantine, of course. Which means that I'm still going to be pretty bored...

Fortunately, this year, summer camp is free, and I won't be travelling anywhere during this period of uncertainty, so I'm taking summer camp this year. There are 2 periods for summer camp, with the first one being from 9:00am-10:00am, and the second one starting at 10:30am and ending at 11:30am. During the first period, I'm taking a class called Fun with Geography with my 4th-grade teacher (because my geography is pretty bad :) During the second period, I'm learning how to use an app called Garageband to create music. I'm really loving this class because it's pretty easy to make good music with it, and I've only spent 2 days learning so far, but I've already created 2 songs (one of them is complete, the other's not quite complete yet). Fun with Geography is pretty fun too, and I'm learning lots of new stuff because my school doesn't teach geography as a subject, so therefore my geography is pretty bad (haha).

The lockdown is not as strongly enforced anymore. We're currently in RMCO (Recovery Movement Control Order), which allows daycares to reopen and companies to start working (at their full working hours, in fact), but schools cannot reopen yet (not that it really matters for me, as school's already over). Because of the new rules, I'm now able to take piano lessons again (and hopefully badminton too), which I'll be taking tomorrow at 3:30pm. I'm really excited to have piano lessons again!

Now, I don't really have anything else to write about, so I'm going to end this post here and go read A Wrinkle in Time (which I've surprisingly not read yet!) Bye!