another idea...

...for a story. read on.

The young boy stood on the ground, holding his staff firmly in hand. Eyes closed, he kept on praying. Sweat dropped from his forehead, his clothes were drenched in them. The night breeze blew, shivering him, but he kept on.

In front of him, a corpse stood, shaking on its feet, its skull staring dead in the eyes. Rotting flesh dangled from the stinking bones and mottled skin. Maggots crawled through the holes, while flies buzzed around its cloying breath. But it never moved away, it kept standing in front of the boy.

A flash of light suddenly bursts out of thin air upon the shaking corpse. A shock wave pushed the boy back, his clothes stirred fiercely in the wind.

Seconds later, it ended. The corpse was gone.

Another successful cure, the boy thought to himself. He opened his eyes, and smiled when he saw the empty grave. Dug by corpse-robbers, their careless grave stirring had unsettled the dead that was sleeping beneath, causing the corpse to wander and scared the villagers who lived nearby.

And one by one they came, congratulating, thanking the boy's effort. They praised his knowledge and his courage, and even invited him to stay. Alas, they were disappointed to hear that the boy wanted to leave.

'I thank you all, but I must not stay. I will endanger you if I stand on this ground any longer.'

That's when it came. The sound of hooves. Of horses. The boy was startled, and started pushing through the crowd. The villagers didn't comprehend as horsemen of three came racing to him. They extended their hands to him, lifting the boy from his feet, and pushed him down the ground.

'Boy!' said a horseman with a deep, fierce voice. 'You are under arrest, for the charges of heresy, as decried by the Inquisition. Take him.'

The villagers were angered by their sudden appearance; the Inquisitors. They charged at the three, shoving them with force and with words, ripping the boy from the Inquisitors' hands, and pushing the horsemen down from their ride. They covered the boy as he scrambled on his feet, mounted upon one horse, and galloped away.

'After him!' cried the fierce-voiced man, and the other two managed to mount and chase after him. The man looked back to the villager crowd. 'Heretics of the Holy Cities! Condemned by the Temple, let your days see no light!' He grabbed his mud-splattered robes, and walked away from the jeering villagers.

lessons from wiki

for the past few months of my school holiday i spent a lot of time in front of the computer with the internet on. i didn't go for a holiday; my practicum term didn't allow for that. heck, 2 months of training and it was practically hard to travel. i had my dreams of going to japan, or somewhere out there, but alas, time is my eternal enemy.

so what did i do with my 3 month "holiday". well, a year ago, i got acquainted with wikipedia and became an editor there. spent much of my time working up on final fantasy articles, since that's the game I cherish most. then i got acquainted with another wiki, a fanbase final fantasy wiki, and i got active in there as well.

what i learnt from wikipedia as an editor for a fictional subject, was how hard it was too argue on the subject of its notability. not too mention that wikipedia, because it strives to become an encyclopedia, wants verifiable sources and less to nil fanboy edits. it was a serious encyclopedia, you can't make joke edits, it will be reverted. the people in wikipedia are serious in their work, even though what they did... what we did was writing about games. we scoured the net for gaming articles, sources that can help verify what we write.

and as it goes, I enjoyed their company, and they enjoyed mine, and we worked together as a team. we reverted edits from vandals; those people who like wasting their and others precious time, and argued with fanboys about this and that, and won because facts were on our side, and most of the editors are good at winning arguments. and they're mostly our age, teenagers, but they work like professionals. they follow policies and guidelines of wikipedia like the rulebook. some of them know how to work around the loopholes in the policies. Some of them are teens, some are mothers, they come from all ages and different countries. a formidable bunch.

then in ffwiki, the atmosphere was less serious. since I started off as a wikipedian editor it was pretty awkward to get used to such a less-serious place. i got over it eventually and editted to my heart's content. my expertise is on ivalice games, i said, and that's where I worked. they were an encouraging bunch who really love their FF games. some wikipedians, like me, have also found their way there, much earlier than me actually. they come from different countries and regions, and they also work like professionals. but they also work like a family, they make jokes at each other but they are an open-minded bunch. we were united in our love for final fantasy. i'm sure if they were reading this entry they'd joke about it.

alas, holidays come and go. I had to take my wikibreak and concentrate on my final year. i'll still do small edits from time to time, and visit when time permits. so what have I learned? I learned that you need to be concise in your arguments. no need to make strawman arguments, and create nonexistent cases just to prove your point. find verifiable sources to support your statements. always be polite and be civil-minded. no need to mix in emotions during your arguments. wikipedia is a neutral, emotionless place, somehow i fit there, but I really love the ffwiki more.

pay a visit to that place some time soon. My user name is Bluerfn. Just type in User:Bluerfn in the search page and you'll find tidbits about me, reader.

friends, family and transformers

went out to watch transformers with friends on the opening day! I'm so thrilled! the movie was great, lots of action, lots of suspense, and some dashes and pinches of humor thrown in for good measure! there's boom everywhere!

the villains made their appearance first. doomed military base, and a lot of american soldier action. propaganda, as always, but what'd you expect, it's their movie! it's so impressive how the humans fought against the lone decepticon together! it's teamwork! moral undertones are everywhere. not to mention teenage love, but hey, those things sell, don't they?

but what I like I most at the moment was that I was watching it with friends, like-minded people who share what I like. during the movie, we wowed, we laughed, we shouted, did we say we wowed? and we did it together! we didn't want to miss one freakin' scene, everyone suppressed the need to empty our bowels. we made a big wow when prime showed up. all of us. in the cinema, we were like a big family.

it was a good moment. it'll make me smile, always.