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Webdesign & contents
by ClaireWorks.
Copyright 2000-2002
Beverly Claire L. Fangonon.
All rights reserved.
All graphics & photographs
by ClaireWorks,
unless otherwise indicated.
What's New: 2002
New for the Month of January
Akemashite Omedeto Gozaimasu! That's "Happy New Year" in Nihonggo. We say "Manigong Bagong Taon" in Filipino. How did you celebrate the coming of the new century? Me, I did nothing special. The reason I wasn't able to update for December 2001, however, has everything to do with the new year. I'm graduating this spring, you see, so the nengajo--obligatory Japanese new year cards that you send to everyone you know--list was longer than usual. I sent over a hundred and fifty this year, a quarter of it to my past profs and teachers in the uni. You can imagine just how long it took for the check marks to go all the way down the list. At any rate, here are the new stuff for January 2002. First and foremost would be my magnum opus, which happens to be, not surprisingly, on sumo. Long, tedious, yes and yes. But interesting, mind-tickling, thought-provoking? Yes, yes and yes! Just kidding. It's not all that fine a paper, in fact it is wanting in many respects, but that I am uploading it here means it has passed ClaireWorks.Net's strict quality control. Kidding again! But highly recommended for anyone with even just a tad of interest in Japan. If you don't want to read a word on sumo you may just want to browse the original photographs. This site's Grand Sumo section is still by far the most popular overall, though it is given tough competition by the Nihonggo version of ClaireWorks, which happens to draw in a constant flow of visitors day after day. Sumo aside, ClaireWorks Contributor Aik Hong of Malaysia sent a letter from Tokyo, the first of (hopefully) a series. This month he talks about the trials and tribulations of speaking English in Japan. Here in Nagoya, I did some tour guiding for a friend of a friend, and ended up having to blab out a shocking confession. Last and perhaps the least, I put up a new photograph in the About the Webmistress section, so that those of you complaining of my not having enough "latest pics of moi" in the site will have something to guffaw at. Hope you enjoy the latest updates! From now on there will be a feedback form at the end of every essay, so do use it to your heart's content. Thanks a lot for visiting! And thank you very much for your support of ClaireWorks.Net last year. Hope this year will also be all systems go.
What's New: 2001
New for the Month of November
Aieeeee! It's past 11 PM on the 30th of November. You can count on me to put up the monthly updates on the last day of the month, during the last hour. Pretty soon the clock will strike midnight so I had better type up this "What's New" entry else I shall suffer horrid consequences. I remember last year. I was taking a Labor Law class, and we were supposed to submit a term paper on a certain day, before 5 PM. Well, I was able to get to school at exactly 4:50 PM on that day, panting from exertion and clutching my 25-page paper. Whew! Hee hee. No, actually, it's not funny. I really should do something about my propensity to cram at the last minute and barely make it. Not a good habit. Anyhow, many thanks to the friends who got on my back for an English update-less October ClaireWorks! As promised, here are new stuff for November, and you better come back next month as well as there'll be more. For November, first we have an old essay I wrote as a teenager. Now don't you go groaning. I wrote better at that age than I do now, trust me. It's entitled Judo, Me and My Chicken Heart, and you'll like it, promise. Having said that, there's a new poetry folio, this time consisting of yes, juvenilia. Even if you don't like poetry, you really should take a peak at the folio's design. =) Our guest writer for this month is none other than my one and only sister, Sharon. The topic? Astronomy! Don't miss this one. It might just convert you to a star gazer. And last but not the least, I'm introducing the fine art of an old high school friend and classmate, Adrian Dimalanta. He's just graduated from the Vancouver Film School and is now working as a pro artist in Canada. You don't have to know him to enjoy the fun, unique and endearing characters in his classical animation portfolio.
The days are getting shorter and the nights colder, and I have dusted off my winter wardrobe. Being the tropical gal that I am, winter is not really something I look forward to. Still am very, very busy with school. There are soooo many things to be done for my last semester as a Nagoya U student, things that I should have done years ago! Sigh! But then ClaireWorks.Net gets a steady stream of visitors from all around the world, and it is this fact that encourages me to keep on adding new content, despite several deadlines looming in the academic and corporate front (My company has required us new recruits to write several essays, and one is due on the 20th of December. Needless to say, I still haven't finished it!). I love webdesign and writing and graphics creation, and since I swore never ever to ignore this site ever again, you'll get them updates each month, even if they come at the very last minute. Thank you so very much for reading, and happy surfing! Don't forget to participate in the new poll on the index page!
New for the Month of October
Aieeeee!!! I not only broke my promise this month, but will also probably have to break it next month as well. (Nooooo!!! Beverly Claire, why you lazy potato!) It is probably obvious to you--especially if you're a regular visitor--that there are no updates for the month of October. I wish to apologize for this. I know that some of you have been coming back just to check if there's anything new and entertaining. The truth is that the month of October has been extremely hectic for me, so much so that there were times when I felt overwhelmed to the point of being incapable of accomplishing anything in the end. And there's not going to be any letup anytime soon. I just finished a website (one with a clean, simple design--sorry but it's password protected and not for public viewing) for my group in International Transaction Law, and I'm taking a short breather from webdesign and site management altogether. October is just the tip of the iceberg, though. Am so gosh darn busy these days that I have a dull headache most of the time. Still wanna kill the ex for what he did to me last school year...am suffering so much now with having to repeat classes! I have to take this big national licensing exam ("kokkashiken") for IT professional-wannabes this coming April, but instead of being able to review for it day in and day out like I should be, I have to go to school to repeat the subjects I failed last school year due to the breakup. Sigh oh sigh! December is due date for a required essay for my future company, plus a major presentation in school, January is exam period, February is due date for Office 2000 self-learning homework given to us by the company, March is extra-cram time for the "kokkashiken", plus my graduation, my family's visit to Japan, then moving. April is official entrance to the company, followed by a three-month intensive training, plus the big licensing exam. I'm deader than a dead duck!!!
So everything else has to fall to the background. I missed the poetry reading session of the Nagoya Writers Group this month, and feel real bad about it. Also, I promised some of my readers that I'd type up, edit and upload Part II of my critique paper on Huntington, and I wasn't able to do that either. I'm really sorry! (Beverly Claire, if this continues, you're gonna lose your visitors.)
And yet, in defense of my inexcusable self, I did finish the Japanese version of ClaireWorks. Just an initial offering of about 15 pages, but I hope to add more stuff soon. For those of you who can read Japanese, do go over for a look.
I'm sorry that in my drive to complete the Japanese version the English one had to take a backseat. This had better not happen again. There'll be cool stuff up for the month of November, but this time I won't promise anything because really, you don't believe me anymore do you now. That's all right. It's now up to me to make up for un-updated October. See you November, everyone. Thanks a lot for reading, and thank you for your patience.
New for the Month of September
I'm still reeling over the events that ocurred in New York and DC that it took me a while before I could sit down and work on this site. Inexcusable foot-dragging over the past month as well as the start of this month has caused the updates to come real late. But here they are, finally. I couldn't rouse myself to write new content, so I decided to put up the ClaireWorks Poetry Folio instead. It's not something I would strongly urge you to read, but I think the graphics are worth a look. I went for the "inlaid leather" style, selected 20 poems, and put it all together using nested tables. It was a lot of fun building a little pop-up book like that. This month we also welcome a guest writer, Aik Hong of Malaysia, an old friend of mine back when I was in Tokyo. It's always a joy to hear from him because he takes time out to write correspondence that is well put together. Here he gives his opinion on my falling for a married man. ClaireWorks Net is soliciting written contributions from friends, so if you're interested in having your stuff up here, then please read the guidelines. Aik Hong and I, as well as the rest of our batch from the Nihonggo school will graduate soon, so I thought it appropriate to put up links to my old Togaidai pages. Looking at the photos, I can't help but go, man, I was slimmer and younger then! I've made it a point to update the Grand Sumo section once a month, so here you are with a story about Chiyotenzan, the Betrayer.
On the terrorist attacks in America, a friend in Washington, DC, Yuan Kwan, has put up a page of prayer requests for missing/injured friends and relatives. Let us pray for the victims and their families, and also that the US government will respond to the situation with wisdom, prudence and self-control, especially on the issue of retaliation.
New for the Month of August
Ach! It's already August 31st and I haven't uploaded anything new for this month yet! My apologies to those expecting something new every month. I broke my promise, and at such an early stage, too! Sorry for that. Life has been topsy-turvy lately, to put it mildly. After hiding for ages I've finally come to admit to more people about my recent breakup. To my old friends whose emails I ignored: I'm not mad at you or anything. It's just that I've been such a mess lately that I couldn't bring myself to say hello and catch up with all the years we haven't been in touch. To Rosalie G., Michael-senpai, Jeff M., Masa I., Nicolas M. and Garry F., and all my former high school classmates, I'll get around to returning your emails someday. I'm sorry if my silence puzzled you. If only I'd known that falling in love and getting into a serious relationship and then being dumped and left in the cold would tear me apart and nearly kill me like it did, I wouldn't have dived into it in the first place. No, I take that back. There was no way I could have foreseen what happened. And as the cliche goes, there's no use crying over spilled milk. So I declare September to be the end of my grieving and mourning period, and from this month onward I'm going to take back my life and put myself back together again. After all the breakup-survival books I read, the suicide-helpline phonecalls I made, the hiding from friends that I did, the prolonged web hiatus I had to go through, after all the excruciating, curse-inducing pain, after quenching the uncontrollable desire to hunt him down and rip his balls apart like I should have done a long time ago, after making myself and the lives of those around me utterly miserable because of one man's rejection, after wallowing for months in self-pity and then anger and then depression and God knows what, after all the &%$# that I've been through, I'm back. Older and wiser and better. I've finally decided that I'm not that pathetic a woman to let one former lover ruin my whole life. Someday soon I'll finally be able to forgive him and myself, and then I'll truly be free. But until that day comes (I'm working on it), I'm going to throw myself into my work and studies and I swear never, ever to ignore this web site again.
New for the Month of July
The photo exhibit was over a couple of months ago, but I've only managed to write about it this month: check out my winning photograph here. More important news: I got me a job! Yey!!! More than two months of hectic job hunting has left me dead broke (broke financially, but not in spirit!), and even now I'm wondering why I decided to try to beat the Japanese in their own job hunting game. This month we feature an essay about the astonishing, mad, mad way the Japanese job hunt. I've been there, seen it all, and managed to survive. Brace yourself for a somewhat shocking article! Want something less tedious, more humorous? Try Adrian Escandor's article, Trees to the Rescue. ClaireWorks.net is currently looking for contributors: anyone with an article that falls under one of the categories on the blue menu you see on your left. Click here for details!
New for the Month of June
Everything's new! Okay, so not exactly, since there are articles carried over from some of my old sites, but then even these have been jazzed up and improved. Every essay now comes with accompanying illustrations and/or photographs. You'll find pop-up enlargements for many of these photos so that you can take a closer look. There's also a self-scrolling photoreel where you can just sit back and enjoy the show. This month's feature is the Nagoya Noh Theater. Perhaps the longest essay in this web site is the Chiyonofuji Story. I finally got to write it after all these years! Oh, and be sure to check out the other articles under the Grand Sumo section as well, for all of them have accompanying photos now. For those of you who've enjoyed the Internet Addiction page from Completely Claire, more symptoms have been added now so be sure to take a look! If you're wondering where all the photos in this site came from, well, a few years back I took up photography as a hobby, so you bet every shot here is original. I've also managed--after putting it off for a couple of years--to write about my Nihonggo classes at Meidai. Finally, I'm trying to get into the advertising game, despite the fact that the effectiveness of online ads is currently in question. You'll find clickable ads all over the site. My hope is that you'll find one that's interesting and helpful in the end. Enjoy reading! And please don't forget to sign the guestbook! Thank you very much for visiting. --Claire
