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For the record, I think of 1337 as no more than ornamentation (me la huh... to each his own). Outside of gameplay, 1 7#1|\||< \/\/|-171|\|6 |1|<3 7#15 15 \/\/4`/ 0\/3|-|<1||. N even tho I cn reed it, I dnt lyk ppl writin lyk dis. I sometimes have a headache comprehending text, let alone unnecessarily coded ones.



My name is Renhao. I find myself experiencing alot of unease and momentary unconfidence when I introduce myself with my Chinese name. It sucks big time to have someone give you a 0_0 face and bellow 'WHAT?' or 'AGAIN SORRY?' Sometimes people take the initiative to give me a nickname they can remember, like Rennie or Ren, but more often than not, bless them, they warp my name 180 degrees... I've had Ren-ho, Wren-ho, Renao... whatever. But hey, look at my Friendster URL below. One straightforward name to remember easily, instead of like weston638 or imcutebitemehahaz, you know what I mean. I don't blame the poor things for joining the ship later, I just feel blessed that the uniqueness of my name allows me to keep it undistorted in times like this.

I'm 18, having joined SIM/UB right after my 'O' levels. I have a Friendster account, and it is the reason why I didn't join Facebook sooner. I don't really want a ton of these things under my name. But well... just join lor. So here's my new Facebook account, if anyone else wishes to add me. My main blog... well, naming it mozartwannabe was quite a folly, but for the sake of my readers and for those who've kindly linked me I don't wish to put them through the trouble of changing their link. And I've no problem being a Mozart wannabe. :) But I might just move to Wordpress. Times be changing, I be lagging.

You might notice now that my writing style is highly informal and I love to digress into little lanes, and elaborate here and there. People say that's what they love in my writing, but it does get abit hard when I've to 'turn on' my Formal Write mode. Life's a game, they say, but we unfortunately can't yet do such things with a simple -fwmode.

Uh looks like I'm going on forever. I sometimes tell my readers not to bother reading till the end. People think 'Alright... finish this post and I'll go do XYZ.' The only problem is that I never seem to stop, and I really don't want my readers' loved ones to come back to find them unconscious from starvation or a burst bladder. So yes I'll say it now. I've only covered up to the URLs part from Kevin's rough guide on the Wordpress blog, so please if you have to go do whatever you need to do and come back later.

Alright. Special abilities... well I don't really think I have any to reeeaaally be proud of, so rather than special abilities I'll list my interests.

I love reading. I don't read as much fiction as I used to, but I still love reading things (except perhaps the papers, some textbooks, and the like). And from the love of reading I gained the love of writing. That's why I love blogging. I like telling people about my life, what I feel about certain things, the usual principles. I also do some of it, but Kevin's really kinda inspired me to make it a point to blog more about things that capture my attention or generates thoughts worthy (IMO) of sharing. Procrastination rears its ugly face in blogging, and when I don't complete the post the first time, or at least finish 3/4 of it, chances are you'll never see it. Procrastination tends to cut in when I write more serious posts, where I try to argue logically and soundly, especially in my Christian blog where my concern is that readers understand what and only what I'm trying to say, not gaining misconceptions from an ambiguous phrase. That is very hard for me, and when I hold off publishing to edit after I've had some time away from the post, it also sometimes never sees the light of day. I love blogging, but it highly depends on my mood. And blogging was the last thing on my mind during the holidays when I was wasting my life away. I love writing fiction as well, but that's taken a backseat (like... really really far back) with the million other things I have to do.

Music! Jazz, guitar, rock, metal, heavy metal, very heavy metal, death metal, black metal, classical, opera, oldies... I'm tempted to type you name it, I have it, but I've kinda grown to have a certain level of, shall we say integrity for myself, as a music aficionado/connoisseur, and the fact is that for every genre I know, there may well be 5 others that I'm not even aware of. Slowly, I'm discovering more genres. And, pardon for the seemingly arrogant phrasing, at this level of music appreciation, to me it's not about my taste anymore. Certainly my iTunes library contains music that I can click with. No sense to put stuff that I don't like in... as it is I have yet to hear every single MP3 in my library. Rather, I like to keep an open mind, where knowledge is the keyword. I explore music to know what a genre sounds like, it's characteristics, and proponents. And if I like it, I simply explore further. As for instruments, I can play the piano and the guitar (note: can play ≠ good)

I like anime. Don't ask me why. I just like it. Maybe it's the drawing, maybe the voices, maybe the special way they draw them when they're shocked/angry. Perhaps it's a way to escape from the drab depressing reality of the world we live in. It's nice to know that at least somewhere, you can be a Shinigami with insane spirit powers that run off the charts, or you actually can keep all sorts of animals from electric mice to psychic cats in palm-sized balls that interestingly shrink to pebble-size for storage on your belt. I don't really mind much, but to my knowledge I watch the most anime in my circle of friends. I'm following +-30 running series concurrently. Gasp.

On to IT skills. There isn't one I feel I'm particularly good at, but I find myself proficient in these areas...

I like to think, given that the information is there in the first place, that I can somehow get whatever I want out of the Net, without having to pay, and if possible, without having to register or signup. Through experience and some thinking I kinda sorted out the types of keywords one can use to get more accurate hits, without which you'd probably be digging aimlessly through 14, 534, 735 links. I taught myself HTML by playing around and editing my blog template, but that's fast going out of fashion. I edit audio files with Audacity, and recently tried my hand at video editing with (the desparingly sparse) Windows Movie Maker.

Photoshop. It was actually my brother who first picked it up to play with it. After seeing the wonders of the Healing Brush I picked the program up from... the uh appropriate sources and again taught myself how to use it, sometimes using my own photos to explore the vast capabilities of Photoshop. Gradually, that turned to me becoming the photo editor of the house, using the MS Office Picture Manager for minor adjustments, and Photoshop for adding stuff in, or really major editing, like Healing or removing subtitles from a snapshot of an anime episode... stuff like that. I'm proud of this particular piece, taken when my mother was enjoying the delicious green tea ice cream at Hilton's Japanese Buffet Dinner, where we celebrated my last birthday.



Whew. Ok. That's it. I'll be posting my thoughts on our dependence on the Internet next. Shalom till then.