| Da Capo Review | ||||
| 04:14pm 24/02/2005 | ||||
"Recommended Audience: This is pretty much preteen stuff. There's some fan service, but it's not too much compared to other dating-sim anime. It would be fine for little kids, but they probably won't get it." I told myself I would write a detailed analysis of Da Capo to counter such unfounded claims, but like most of my other projects, I never got around to it. Until now. Be warned - since this is a detailed explanation of the story, it goes without saying that this is a MAJOR SPOILER ALERT. It's also somewhat unrefined - I might revise it later, but I just want to get this rant off my chest. ( The Story of Da Capo ) Preteen stuff? In your face! God, I'm such a sap for romance. |
||||
| Post | ||||
| ah! megami-sama, episode 1 | ||||
| 08:27pm 09/01/2005 | ||||
|
||||
| Read 1 - Post | ||||
bored| cracks for sibelius? not for me | ||||
| 10:33am 09/01/2005 | ||||
I tried looking for sheet music composition freeware, but all I got was crap. so I went out on a limb and looked for open source. lo and behold, lilypond beckoned to me. think of it as a programming language for music. their essay on traditional engraving was quite fascinating. anyone interested in the difference between handprinted and computer sheet music should definitely check this out. so many nuances for something so subtle. after working for about a day, I finally finished transposing. while learning lilypond, I realized "kyoudai nan da kara" didn't need any clef changes, so I wrote it out on finale notepad because the MIDI synthesizer rox. then I had to painstakingly copy the notes into lilypond format. while the song doesn't sound quite as neat as I expected, it's still a keeper. |
||||
| Post | ||||
content| ... is this mike still on? | ||||
| 04:32pm 07/01/2005 | ||||
christmas was fantastic this year. to be accurate, I should say "christmas presents." we broke the family tradition of going to reno, nevada for some skiing. for some reason, my parents thought school started early for me, shortly after new year's. nothing could be farther from the truth. right now, school has already started for my sister while I wait until the 17th for the bus to take me back. anyways, the list of presents I got (the first two for myself):
seriously, I have never seen a half price bookstore with such a semi-decent collection of manga. just sitting there. half price. it just boggles the mind. I found out about the "what if?" books from discover magazine. original price was 24 bucks. selling price was 8 plus the 20% off deal. and the hard drive... I had to decide between that and a new cd drive to replace the crappy matSHITa combo drive that gives me a 50% success rate for burning cds, refuses to recognize the new cd-r's I just burned with the stupid thing, and chokes when trying to play my burned "someday's dreamers" ost (among other things, like the installation cd for my exteral hard drive). I'm praying that all this is a drive issue. I'm gonna run knoppix and see if I have luck with that. heck, I'm backing up my stuff in preparation for a linux install. yes, ANOTHER linux install. I WILL make the switch. now for the issue you've all been wondering. yes, I am still alive. yes, this is a blog update. yes, I haven't touched this at all during the school semester. why? hmm. I would say that andi's entry influenced me to go out and start living my life instead of writing about it. ironically enough, that wasn't her last entry - heck, she's still going at it. more to the point, I can't use that excuse because I haven't been doing that all the time. I am doing that more this time around, though. I also started this blog not out of necessity, but out of something I wanted to do. this was supposed to be a place where I can unload my thoughts and catalog the stuff that's important to me. perhaps it's my fear of not saying anything important. I don't like making one-line entries or e-mails because it just doesn't seem worthwhile. if I have to say something, I want it to be something significant. it's something I started after allison pointed out my habit of making random amusing yet meaningless noises all the time in high school. sadly, as my lack of updates as shown, this can sometimes lead to me not saying anything at all. during arugments and discussions, two things can happen to me. sometimes I'll come up with an interesting point but think about it too much. by the time I get everything sorted out, the topic has already changed. other times, I'll come up with something long after the topic has passed. I apologize for the rambling. I'm not sure if the last two paragraphs were coherent. this school semester has turned out fairly well. A's in diff eq and philosophy, and B's in comp sci, logic, and psychology. differential equations with beckner wasn't hard at all for the first two-thirds of the course. mainly about recognizing certian types of equations and learning how to solve them, with some of the techniques being as simple as finding roots of polynomials. the last third got ugly, with higher powers and partial derivatives. I must thank the TA, michael carleglio, for his awesomeness. if it wasn't for him, most of the class probably would have failed (including me). his "don't tell beckner" rule for one of the extra credit problems (which was erased on the scanned version) still brings a smile to my face. philosophy was omg. words cannot adequately describe the unorthodox teachings of seung, the husband of my piano teacher. if you view him the wrong way, you might say he's racist and abusive, both mentally and physically. heck, even if you view him the right way, he's still like that. but he has no malicious intent whatsoever... although he seems to get a kick out of bashing christianity. plus he won't listen to your opinions 90% of the time. you can try arguing, but it probably won't get you anywhere. even arguing with him is an ordeal - if you're not persistent about it, he'll just move on. he's nowhere near as arrogant as schaack was, though. and he really does a good job connecting philosophy to the real world. I won't even talk about the story that he made taylor share to the class. yay for quirky plan II teachers. comp sci with downing was all right. he had a decent lecturing style... although sometimes I would still doze off. the homework puzzlers were annoying. for stuff that only counts for 1% of your grade, some of the puzzler weren't worth doing. and the project... I will never understand how keith and I did so well on those. we usually slack off and play magic until the last minute. as keith stated, "saturday is too early for comp sci." keep in mind that the projects were 2 weeks long and were due at the end of Mondays. we would turn in our projects at the last minute - sometimes later, since the inaccurate time stamp gave us some leeway. and we would usually end get the 3rd highest grade in the class. the moral of this story, kids? >_> psychology with domjan was a fun class to go to, mainly because of the anecdotes. I stopped reading the book altogether when I realized it was easier to take notes in class. that might be why I got a B. oh well. logic with causey sucked. period. one time, I tried to stay awake during the entire lecture. it was a miracle. the guy next to me was out cold for most of the class. I think the only exciting thing that happened was the guest speaker we had. I don't remember his name, but I think he was the chairman of the comp sci department. he worked with a partner on LISP and helped logically verify one of AMD's microprocessors after IBM's pentium chip was recalled for division miscalculations. I love logic. in fact, I kept the plan II logic textbook because it was easy to understand. causey's presentation was just so dull, convoluted, and uninspiring. this post has gone on long enough. yet another reason why I should sit my ass down and update on a more regular basis. I'll throw up another entry soon. I just finished watching Da Capo, a series that continues the strange trend of hgame-based anime turning out really, really good. and I am drowning myself in the first half of the 2nd OST because IT IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL DEPRESSING STUFF I HAVE EVER HEARD BUT THEN I SAY THAT ABOUT A BUNCH OF OTHER THINGS AND I MUST STOP typing in caps. right. off to finish my coffee and learn "sakura to junichi no yakusoku" and "fuan" on the piano. |
||||
| Post | ||||
enthralled| yay for the olympics | ||||
| 12:15am 19/08/2004 | ||||
now that last one is the epitome of leetness. my contacts are still getting on my nerves. it's not about taking them off (that's easy now) or putting the on (although I still have to move them into place). it's the fact that only one eye improves each time. first it was the right eye that could see far. now it's the left eye. and after an hour watching chobits tonight, my left eye is going back to normal. I WANT VISION IN BOTH EYES, DAMNIT >< maybe the switcharoo is related to which eye gets the contact first. or maybe I can get balanced vision if I don't use my eyes at all while wearing the contacts (by wearing them while I sleep). this is a problem because I won't be able to see jack during the day. I need to ask the optometrist about this friday morning, when we make our payment. and hopefully things will get better before saturday -_- and now I must go to bed. at 12:15. because my vision sucks too much for me to do anything else. besides, I finished chobits so this is a good stopping point for the day. |
||||
| Read 1 - Post | ||||
frustrated| *gouges his eyes out, king lear style* | ||||
| 01:28am 16/08/2004 | ||||
having said that, I must make a confession. thanks to this, I have committed the cardinal sin of switching to contacts. I suspect that most of you are too lazy to RTFM (*cough cough KEVIN cough*), so I will explain.
the initial cost is around $1200 for both eyes, but afterwards it only costs as much as a pair of glasses every year. I went for it, because I was fine with wearing contacts while sleeping. I somehow got the impression that this was a permanent treatment - that in a year or so, I can walk around 24/7 with no eyewear at all. hah. if I stop wearing these things alltogether, my old vision will come back in as little as 72 hours. I also underestimated the time it would take for me to learn how to work with contacts. contacts are a bitch. the first time at the optometrist was a fluke. it took me hours afterwards to put them on and take them off again. it didn't help that my parents were shouting at me about learning the "tricks" to this. my mom kept making frustrated expressions because she can do all this in a matter of seconds. right now, it probably takes me around 15-20 minutes for me to put them in. and that's just "putting them in". they keep going to the bottom or the side of my eye, so I have to nudge them into place. WHICH EVENTUALLY HURTS LIKE HELL. well, maybe not that extreme. but it's not a pleasant feeling. at one point, the bottom part of my eyelid was dark red, like it was bleeding. taking them off is a bit easier. I learned that you have to get a mirror and stare yourself down while you place the plunger right on the center of your eye. if you don't keep looking, you may make contact (no pun intended), but you won't be able to get the lens out. it also helps to keep telling yourself that you won't hurt your eye with the plunger because you're just using it on the lens. then again, that's if you don't miss completely and hit the white part. right now, my right eye is slightly uncomfortable. I can't really do anything about it, though. if I try messing with my eye, I might move the lens. and that's the last thing I want to happen. the experience is almost as miserable as when I got a stomach virus in bali (or maybe it was from taiwan). no, wait. there's nothing that compares to that. in any case, the reshaping thing seems to be working. I just got these on saturday, and if I try wearing glasses everything's both sharp and blurry at the same time (because the prescription was too strong). hopefully I'll get used to all this by the end of the week, since I go back to UT this saturday. right now: these contacts are a pain in the ASS in the future (hopefully): these contacts are the best thing since sliced bread in other news, I have most of my stuff sorted out for my dorm room. and I have discovered another song to listen to. my sister was playing it on winamp, and I just had to figure out what it was. it has a nice, unique upbeat style to it. although I don't see why detective conan needs 15 opening and ending songs. look how far naruto is at. and I think they only have 3. detective conan doesn't even get anywhere, from what my sister tell me (since she watches it). this cool detective suddenly gets shrunk to a little kid by some mysterious antagonist, and he's trying to figure out who did it and how to reverse the process. at least, that was the premise in the beginning. IT NEVER PROGRESSES. occasionally, there will be some case that offers a few clues. but for the most part, it's all about random cases that he always manages to solve. I'm not frustrated about the "always manages to solve" part (after reading rand's philosophy on art), but about the story not getting anywhere. then again, there's galaxy angel, which is now on its fourth season. and I keep up with that. so I can't really complain. and then there's di gi charat. but 15 op/ed songs. either that's a lot of episodes/random cases or the producers were just being indulgent. also, thanks to the anime instrumentality project's release of rizelmine, I was forced to back up some stuff to the external hard drive. after reformatting this computer countless times and having 20 gigs to work with earlier this summer. I need to get me some cd-r's when I get back on campus. |
||||
| Read 3 - Post | ||||
| more random shizzle | ||||
| 12:02pm 13/08/2004 | ||||
I was preparing with a bunch of people for some kind of play/show that involved a bunch of sword duels. somehow, I was given the air sword, which looked like a sabre with a yellow blade. kinda reminds me of secret of mana. anyways, people started switching swords because they weren't happy with the ones that were assigned to them. when they saw my air sword, they all started bugging me for it. for a while, I kept it away from them, but then decided to swap with someone for a weaker blade, since I was confident that I could still kick ass with my skills. so the show starts, and I'm in the audience watching the action. the format was that anyone can go up there and perform, as long as you keep the play going. think of it as a big improv exercise. on stage, flames flare out of a door on the right, while some guy runs out and asks if anyone can help. a swordsman from the left comes out and dives into the door. the next scene was in the burning building, which quickly degenerated into a bunch of people dueling each other. suddenly I'm watching a bunch of mega man based duels on some kind of screen, using crappy renditions of the robots. in one duel, airman had these fan canisters on each shoulder, so he was walking really slow. after chucking them at his opponent (taking away half of his life and one bar respectively), he was back to regular speed. one particularly bad scene was when robots would leap into the air and change transformers-style into crappy cg flying mechs photoshopped in, where they would dive back towards their opponent. in one interlude, mega man was trying to get these small beret-shaped powerups in high gravity. there was one in the air that he couldn't reach, so he waited until the ground started falling away diagonally. just before he disappeared off the screen. he ran and jumped for the item. after that, he almost couldn't jump across the hole he made. then I was playing blaster master on the nes. actually, it was some kind of modified version because your vehicle had all kinds of crazy powerups like those in phalanx for the GBA (which I played briefly a few days ago). some guy was playing earlier, and he let me play while he left to do something. unfortunately, I hit an enemy and lost most of the powerups he worked hard for. after that, I was playing some flight simulation game where I was soaring around this bridge structure. scene changes. I'm waiting for my turn to come up in some piano competition. sarah thiessen walks by. we greet each other and then run off for some last-minute runthroughs on our required piece. in this competition, we had one required piece and one piece of our own. kind of like the solo contest for piano. then I'm sitting back in the audience with gail watching some multiplayer kirby game. she leans back on me and her fuzzy hair gets in my mouth. why she had fuzzy hair like me, I have no idea. but it felt really nice and relaxing. scene changes again. we're now at some complex out in the middle of the ocean. I can tell because of the metallic structure around me and the water splashing on the edge of the platform I'm standing on. gail asks me if I'm okay with it. I assumed she was talking about what happened earlier, and I fumble for an answer. she says she was talking about borrowing anime from me. I regain my composure and say it's fine. then my parents come by and tell me to give her a monetary gift for reasons unknown to me. it was supposed to be some multiple of 15 or 12, I can't remember. I do remember not having enough (even though I had around $30) and my parents yelling at me for it. finally, my family ends up at this hotel restaurant, after returning from some trip, with a bunch of asian adults that I assumed were our friends. we were eating lightly fried shrimp when my mom starts complaining about me eating too much on this trip. I counter that by saying I only ate twice like this and I don't even remember eating on the airplane. besides, those two meals of mine were expected if she wanted to go on this trip, which she did. all that was from last night. if you're still here reading this after going through stuff that you couldn't care less for, I salute you. watched the first episode of rizelmine. I already have it, but I stumbled upon The Anime Instrumentality Project and figured I should get better versions of it. plus I'm also getting Angel's Egg from them. apparently, they helped out the UT anime club in subbing the last 4 episodes of Brother, Dear Brother. anyways, "danna-sama" is such an ass. I don't see why rizel bothers to go for him. and I feel like I might lose a few brain cells after watching this. but I love the intro. has that light, airy style to it, from both the music and the singer. also has a tropical feel. and the intro itself is pretty simple and cute. nothing too convoluted. it also seems like the intro is longer than those in other series, which means they use more of the actual song. now I have to wait in a queue of 43 on irc to get the song. and I don't know how I forgot to mention this. it's about a fansubber who quit for ethical reasons due to the way most fans feel about licensed anime. it makes for good reading - both his farewell letter/rant and the (currently) 154 comments he got. I have a few posts of my own on there too. just look for "DFuzzy1". |
||||
| Read 1 - Post | ||||
| random dream sequence time! | ||||
| 10:56am 12/08/2004 | ||||
robber: yeah... me: so since there are twelve of us, could someone just pay four dollars to set us all free? robber: ha ha ha... no. [shoots gun, bullet whizzes by my head] just one small segment in my dream. some guy was robbing a bank and took me and some other orchestra people captive. as it turned out, all that stuff was staged, since it was part of some competition between the orchestra and the band. later on, we went to a fountain outside some theme park, where I joked around with mrs. williams and the rest of the orchestra. then I ended up at the shoes department of some store, where I was talking with kristen about anime like kaleidostar and class exchange (which does not exist, although I seemed to remember her mentioning it at an earlier point) and then dropped everything to jam to some old skool synthesizer pop music that started playing from a stereo lying in a pile of shoe boxes. my dreams typically don't make much sense. occasionally, they correspond to something I was thinking about earlier. and chong, I just tell them like I see them, so don't freak out. I know you've had weird dreams like that too :P the weird thing is that I don't remember if I had that dream during the night or during the half-hour transition period where I got out of bed and took a small nap in my parents' bedroom. finished watching midori no hibi the other day. currently writing a review for it. went on a wallpaper downloading spree last night. and I'm still feeling a bit bitter about that ai yori aoshi manga because scans(lations) for volume 3 are nowhere to be found. I effectively disarmed my parents on the spending issue (since I never get opportunities to spend money on this stuff) but I have to do something about the "do you have enough time for this" question. I seem to be more of an anime collector than a watcher, since most of my stuff remains unwatched (despite all the free time I have right now). at the moment, I have fallen in love with the ending song to midori no hibi. I love mellow music like this. which reminds me that I need to order a cd by "the indigo" when I get back on campus. and in other news, I may have spared my parents a few hundred dollars on a new computer. my mom is using our old compaq presario 5240 to visit sites on f4 and jerry yan, and she has to keep restarting because the computer freezes on her. she was thinking of getting a new computer from dell, but I refused to believe that you need windows xp and 128-256 mb of ram to browse chinese websites and handle all those popups. so I ran scandisk, defragmenter, and installed mozilla firefox as a replacement for IE. she tried it out this morning, and there seems to be no problems at the moment. heck, even I switched to firefox. because open source is good. who needs word and IE? |
||||
| Read 1 - Post | ||||
| crankiness for half price | ||||
| 05:19pm 07/08/2004 | ||||
then my mom came back from target to pick me up. I was originally at half price books to find books for my classes. I showed her the book. she asked for the price. I said 5 bucks. and like the prick that she is, she told me to put it back. I admit, I may have gone a bit overboard in taiwan/japan, buying artbooks for full price. but this is the last straw. even at half price, she makes me throw it away. the point of a hobby is that it's never-ending, a concept my parents don't seem to understand. it's not like I buy everything in sight. I maintain some amount of selectivity - heck, I'm only looking for azumanga, ai yori aoshi, and someday's dreamers manga right now because I want to complete what I have first. I have half a mind to steal the car one day and head back there. getting the keys will be a problem, though. speaking of artbooks, I think my parents (and possibly my relatives) found out about my "other" purchases. my mom was talking in chinese to my dad about it a day or two after we got back, but I got the gist of it. on the last day in taiwan, my uncle, aunt, and some others were curious about my artbook hobby, so my mom showed them the books. and I wasn't around to stop her. showing them the suigetsu artbook would be bad enough. if she showed them my other purchase... I would probably get weird looks on my next visit. something like this had to happen sooner or later anyway. oh well. ugh. my mom is on the phone talking to a friend about her car trunk full of shoes she got at low prices. and here I am, without my half-priced book. if you don't like to hear me bitch and whine like a spoiled brat, too bad. to anyone who knows me at UT, I may be coming back with special contacts. they gently reshape the eye to correct your vision. who knows, I may not need glasses anymore in the future. which would be weird, because I like my glasses and seeing myself in the mirror without them just isn't right. my two anime music video projects are on hold until I either get around to watching some of my older series for more material or get some video editing software to work with. even then, I still need to get some actual sources, since making an AMV with fansubs is not kosher. |
||||
| Post | ||||
| vacation, part 2 | ||||
| 01:46pm 12/07/2004 | ||||
For the fourth time, thanks to the miracle of connections, we got tickets for Spiderman 2. Yes, for the day before the opening date. I think we know this family through one of our relatives, and their son is taking the entrance exam for a university. This family knows the manager of the Warner Theaters in Taipei, and to celebrate the son's success, the manager opened an entire Spiderman 2 theater room for him and his relatives and friends. I'm hoping my mom kept the tickets we got as proof :D Spiderman 2 was great. Otto Octavier is my favorite character, though. His animatronic arms are BAD-ASS. I'm not dissing Spidey, though. He's still cool. Judging from Mary Jane's expression in the end and Harry Osborn's discovery, it looks like yet another sequel is in the works. June 30 Yet another useless note on anime. To anyone else, this won't seem significant. But before I left UT, the last things I collected were Galaxy Angel and UFO Princess Valkyrie. And Galaxy Angel on Chinese tv was replaced with - guess what - UFO Princess Valkyrie. I'm such a dork. July 2 Made a full recovery. Woot. Went to another all-you-can-eat bakery with the twins. The same bakery as the first time, but in a different location. And we went in spite of the typhoon that hit Taiwan. And I walked by myself from the bakery to Greenwood in spite of said typhoon. The card I found was worth the trip, though. I'm surprised I actually found it. July 3 Moved to Michael's place. Nothing else to note, except for the fact that it was very, very windy because of the typhoon. You could hear the wind whooshing almost nonstop. July 4 Lots of rain today. Guess what's the cause of it? Michael's dad drove me, my sister, and our grandma to a bowling alley (just to watch people play) and Jason's high school (where we stayed in the car and drove around the campus). Afterwards, he wanted to drive all the way to Hualien for fun, but the highway system wasn't done yet. Should be done by next year, though. Dinner at a restaurant with a whole bunch of our relatives (and the older twin's boyfriend). 16 people total. All of us then went to Jyou^2 apartment to talk and sing kareoke. The best part was when people started dancing. Michael's parents started dancing, along with Jyou^2 and his mom. Good times all around. My sister and I also tried out this baseball game Jyou^2 had. Came with a foam bat and a sensor on the system so you could show off your mad batting skillz. Ran out of battery, though. It didn't occur to me that today was Independence Day until late at night. Yay for America. July 5 Went with Michael on his motorcycle to get lunch for everyone. We also got coffee and stopped by a comic library, although I told Michael there wasn't much point in me going there because I can't read Chinese. Do I represent or what? :P July 6 Jason went to someone's house for a party. Since I also wanted to stop by Greenwood and buy my shizzle, he gave me a ride. Unfortunately, right after he dropped me off, he got a ticket. He wanted to make a U-turn, but for a motorcycle you have to switch roads twice for safety reasons. I can't even make a simple illustration because Blurty doesn't display certain characters correctly. Imagine a 4-way intersection, with Jason on the south end. He wanted to head back south, but he had to first stop by the eastern end and then the northern end before he could do so. A cop was hiding nearby, so he got caught. I didn't even see it, and it happened about 5 seconds after I left. I am now the proud owner of Rei's Green Memory 1/2/2.5 books, in addition to some other works of his. I am also the proud owner of a Greenwood bag with Midori displayed on both sides, in all her splendor. There were wallscrolls with his pictures on them, but I had to pass up on those. First, we didn't have the space in our luggage, and second, I have too many wallscrolls for my dorm room as it is. But $3 for a wallscroll. Man. Greenwood also had the Sugietsu artbook for sale. And as I expected, it was more expensive than the one in Taiwan. Around $33, compared to $25 over there. I'm just surprised something like that managed to come over here. We tried to think of a new English name for grandma that night. Her current name is Mator, which is either a bastardization of the word "mother" or some kind of Japanese name (since she knows some Japanese). In any case, I've never seen an English name like that before. I don't think we ever came up with a new one, because there are just too many names in the English language. Grandma also gave me and my sister red envelope presents. Later on, she told us to switch the envelopes with new ones becuase she wrote English on the envelopes and thought the old stuff she wrote was bad. July 7 Left Taiwan that evening. Because of flight time and time zone differences, we spent more than a day getting back, but it was only the morning of June 8 when we finally arrived in Dallas. After watching Kylie Minogue's "Red Blooded Woman" music video, I suddenly got the idea of making an AMV for the song. I'm not quite sure if it'll happen, though. I've had AMV ideas in the past, but they never got off the ground. I have more motivation for this one, but I don't have good video sources (all fansubs, whoo), so it'll look like crap if I do put it together. I would have thought fansub sources were decent if not for an AMV on Afroman's "Because I Got High" - 173 MB of low quality fansub scenes put together. 173 MB and "low quality" should not go together for an AMV. Most good quality AMVs are only around 30-80 MB. Spent the last few hours in Taiwan trying to record this hilarious radio commercial from ICRT, Taiwan's only English radio station. Involved a guy apologizing to his grandma, where the grandma then says (in Chinese), "Call me "Emma". E-M-M-A. Not 'ah-ma'. We're screwed!" Unfortunately, I never managed to get it. What really pisses me off is that while I was erasing a useless radio recording, I forgot to start recording again, and the commercial started playing >< The problem is that the mp3 player takes a while to start recording, so I only got half of it. I did some other hilarious ICRT recordings, such as a section on learning English, where they talked about insults like "loser", "lame", and "feeble". Best recording ever. Next to that commercial I tried to get. Maybe I should go to their website and make a request. And thus concludes our vacation. *takes a bow* |
||||
| Post | ||||
accomplished| vacation, part 1 | ||||
| 01:25pm 12/07/2004 | ||||
*edit* I had to split this up, since Blurty can't handle such a huge post. May 26 ...and thus our month-long overseas vacation begins. The flight was relatively uneventful. From LA to Japan, the plane had a spiffy entertainment system, so I played Game Boy games on their crappy emulator and had fun watching Bird Thongchai Mcintyre's "Fan-Ja" (My Dear) music video over and over again on one of the MTV specials. From the Chood-Rub-Khak (Living Ram Suite), in case anyone's wondering. More for my personal memory than anything else. But damn, that song is addictive. Even though I have no idea what he's saying - and I can't place the language either; my best guess is Vietnamese - it's about the way he sings (as well as the 3 cute female singers with him). I must download this music video when I get back, either in Dallas or on the UT hub. Although I doubt anyone's heard of the guy. Then again, I did find out about The Notorious MSG from someone in my dorm using iTunes. So I guess anything's possible. I also watched Britney Spears' "Toxic" music video. Ugh. To think the little children of our country (and in others) are watching this kind of provocative material... Sorry, Emily. I'm okay with her songs, but I have no respect for her as a person, mainly because of how she changed from her first album. Hah. I've only covered one topic on my notepad, and it's already been ten minutes. This'll take a while. My first impression of Japan? Small. Very small. The streets leading to our hotel were probably as cramped as the ones from that exit on Mopac to UT. My first impression of our tour group members? Boring. Typical Chinese adults, although a few of them weren't quite as boring. There was also a dad and his son that didn't know any Mandarin, so this old lady (the dad's wife?) had to translate for them. Like most people, the first thing we did when we got to our room was check the television. Since we were a family of four, my sister and I ended up getting a room to ourselves. My sister grabs the remote and starts fiddling with it, stumbling upon the pay channels by mistake. I quickly grab the remote from her and switch back to regular programming before she could notice anything. There were 4 pay channels - one with movies and three with porn. Unlike pay channels in the US, you actually got around 5-10 seconds of preview time before the tv denies you access. How do I know the length of the preview period? Um... because it said so in the hotel services manual ^^; After that particular incident, we switched into the hotel yukatas. Very nice. I don't think guys wear "yukatas", but I'm not sure what the term would be. To our dismay, our laptop plug was incompatible with Japan's outlets. Not too big of a deal, though, since there was anime on tv - specifically, Naruto for that night. Somewhere out there in Japan, someone's probably recording these shows and sending it to fansubbers :) Like a typical otaku, I started thinking about the places that were now open to me. Two places on the top of my list were Gamers and Anna Miller's. Anyone familiar with Digi Charat knows what Gamers is, since they advertise the place. And anyone who reads Megatokyo knows about Anna Miller's and the waitresses there :D With an individual hotel room comes great responsibility. For instance, make sure you have the keycard with you at all times. Don't be like me and my sister by locking yourself out. Apparently, my dream that night involved Mayu in a scene from Ai Yori Aoshi - Enishi, magic broom flying lessons at some hotel, taking inventory, and some huge evil statue from a Naruto scene. It's July 3rd right now though, so I don't really remember much about this dream. May 27 Went to Kamakura to see the Hachimangu Shrine and the Kotoku-in Temple, which has one of, if not the, biggest Buddha statues in the world. Also got the chance to try sakura-flavored ice cream. Great stuff. Tastes like pink (yes, I already gave Tazoberry tea that description). If only they had this flavor back at home. Visited Odawara Castle afterwards, which was a museum with a small zoo on the outside. Saw a whole bunch of Dennys restaurants while on the road. I don't think I've ever been there. Cafeteria-style food doesn't quite appeal to me, since I've had more than enough of it in the past 12 years of my life. Checked in at a badass sea hotel. Situated on the side of a cliff, with the 17th floor as the main one. Welcomed us with cool sakura tea. Yummy stuff. I sense a pattern here. Hot springs were the main attraction there. Have you ever seen those "Fueled by Ramen" icons, with the bowl and the three squiggly lines? Thsoe are also hot springs icons, and each of those lines stands for a bath. In other words, we're supposed to bathe in the hot springs three times a day: one before dinner, one after dinner, and one in the morning. Pretty intense. So intense that we skipped the one after dinner :( Michelle, our tour guide, told us about the hot springs procedure and the different types of shampoo and soap available to us. Since she was female, I can forgive her for not telling us what the outdoor men's bath was like. None of that fancy cleaning stuff there. Just a small shower head to rinse yourself in. My dad and I decided to try the outdoors bath instead of the indoors one. Very lonely. Only two guys were in there when we came in, and they quickly left. Later on, the American guy and his son came in, but they also left before we did. The Mars Daybreak was on tv that night. Too bad I haven't started on it yet. Looks somewhat promising, but I'm not sure if it'll keep my interest. Dinner time was also kareoke time that night. I tried to sing to Eric Clapton's "Change the World", but the damn machine had the song in a different key. My switching between high and low voices made it worse. My sister, on the other hand, picked a Naruto song to sing along to while listening to it on her cd player. Despite the obvious synching problem between the player and the machine, she managed to sing half of the words, which still amazed everyone because she was the only person that sang a Japanese song (with the exception of Michelle). Anime-wise, the kareoke machine had an impressive collection of songs to pick from. I can't remember any particular examples, but they had some very recent stuff in there. Too bad I never bothered to learn all the words to one song. Even if I did, most of the songs I like have female singers in them, so they would sound kinda odd ^^; Went to some special hotel event after dinner, where this guy was preparing the sticky flour for some sticky dessert. Muah-ji, although that's probably not the correct way to write it in English. Kids and adults got to go up to the stage and smack the dough with a wooden hammer - 5 times for kids, 7 times for adults. During the whole event, the host looked bored. His voice wasn't too enthusiastic either. Then again, I wouldn't be too thrilled if I had to host something like this on a regular basis. Caught a glimpse of a commercial for a Jungle wa Itsumo DVD. None of the scenes looked familiar to me, so this definitely caught my attention. guu~ There was some kind of funny drink commercial involving an old lady getting stuck in a beach umbrella. Don't remember it anymore, though. More thoughts on the Japanese landscape. Very humbling. Plus, each sector (commercial, agricultural, industrial) is very distinct and separated from the rest. May 28 The first thing I have written down on my sheet for this day is "sleeping". Whatever that means. Maybe I couldn't sleep well that night. Or maybe that's supposed to remind me about the dream I had. Oh well. Dad and I took a bath indoors this time. And at last, we got to enjoy the awesomeness that is soap and shampoo. So fresh and so clean clean. Actually, my parents already took a bath before my sister and I did. So both of us went down by ourselves. While waiting for my sister to come out, I noticed that the hotel looked pretty lonely. It had pretty chandeliers and nice decorating, but everything had a temporary look to it. Looking at the small arcade center, the closed-down bar, and the photos of women in borrowed dresses made me realize that this hotel has seen better days. After waiting for around 45 minutes, my family finally comes down the stairs. I thought my sister would do the smart thing and wait in the lobby area until I was done. Instead, she goes up to our parents' room and waits there :\ Breakfast was yummy. There was some strange egg white dessert with syrup lightly poured onto it. Best syrup ever. But I'll never know what kind of syrup it was :( Took one last look at the name of the hotel before we left. "new AKAO", if anyone wants to check it out. There's this girl in our tour group who came with her father. She looks like Gail's friend - the one who reportedly has conversations with her on how guys suck. One year her senior, but I can't remember her name. Vivian? Bah, I can point her out if I see her >< Visited Owakudani Mountain, with its natural sulfur hot springs. There are two special things about this place. The first is their black eggs. They take regular eggs and dunk them in the springs for about 10 minutes to make them black. I'm not sure if the taste is any different, since I wasn't in the mood for egg that day. Supposedly, eating them will make you younger. The second special thing is their wasabi ice cream. Yes, that wasabi. The kick-in-the-sinuses variety. Very weak, though, so you can actually finish the ice cream. Went to Hakone, I think. Large pond with pirate ships providing transportation every half hour. Extremely nice, cool weather. In fact, it was too cold at the top of the ship once it started moving. Best part was when the ship got swarmed by elementary schoolers. I should have taken a picture of the deck just when they got on. Ate lunch at a shabu-shabu/hot pot place nearby, where the inconceivable happened... ...there was a line for the men's restroom. ...and none for the women's. Nearly every woman going to the restroom noticed this and laughed. I expected one of them to pull out a camera and capture the moment on film/disk. Here's where the fun really began. We spent the afternoon driving back to Toyko for some evening shopping. On the way there, one Chinese kid (who sang Sugar Ray's "Every Morning" at kareoke night) let me listen to his "14:59" cd. I actually have the cd at home, but I haven't listened to it in years. Sugar Ray still sounds good, even after so long. Anyways, back to shopping. Unfortunately, Tokyo is big. Very big. And our tour guide intentionally avoided Akihabara - the center for anime goods - because stuff was too expensive there. But with the help of Cheap Bastard's Tokyo Shopping Guide, I managed to find one store. Yes, only one store. Let me explain. Our tour guide took us to the Shinjuku area, which only has 8 places on the shopping guide. We only had 2 hours to shop. The sidewalks/streets were packed at that time. And I had to go with my family, so I had less freedom (to wander around) and less time (because they wanted to shop around too). First we stopped by a bookstore in a mall. Just a generic bookstore, and it already has more stuff than you could ever find in an anime bookstore in the US. There was also a PS section where I saw Chrno Crusade and Yumeria cds. Badass. Useless too, since I don't have a PS. Then it was off to the Yellow Submarine. It's actually a hobby shop, but you never know what else you could find in there. We saw the lighted advertisement on top of a building, but couldn't figure out where the store was. I led my family up 6 flights in a narrow staircase, passing by a porn store (which made my mom say, "Aiyah! Scary!" in Chinese) before deciding that the store wasn't here ^^; Finally, we swung back to find Comic Tora no Ana. This one was much easier to find, since the advertisement actually said it was on the 6th floor. And Holy Saint Francis, this place was godlike. A floor devoted to books, books, and more books. Unfortunately, time was running short, so I had to quickly browse through the artbook section (while ignoring the shop's poor judgment in placing h-manga on the shelf behind me). I found a Sugietsu artbook, which has some pretty amazing CGs. Plus it has "Waha" Suzuran. Win by default. But while flipping through the top of the book (which was sealed), I realized it was an h-game, so I put it back on the shelf and eventually settled for a Tsukihime artbook. Around 25 bucks. Expensive? Not really, when you realize you aren't paying shipping/import fees. On the way back from the store, I started having second thoughts. I can probably find Tsukihime artbooks elsewhere - if not at Ushicon then online. H-game artbooks, on the other hand, are a rare commodity. And the point of going to Japan is to find rare shizzle you can't get anywhere else. So my dad went with me to exchange the book, which was an amusing process since the employees didn't understand "switch" but understood "exchange" or some other word similar to that. Turns out that the Sugietsu artbook was the same price. Good times. During this time, my dad felt sorry for all the otaku in the store, spending their hard earnings on this stuff. The way I think of it, we all have different hobbies. Some of us keep up with sports news. Some of us take up gardening. Some of us collect stamps/bottlecaps/trading cards. Some of us do drugs. And some of us are faithful followers of anime. But I admit, it can be an unhealthy obsession. Many series have made fun of the fat nerd who lives in a darkened room, comforted by the glow of his monitor/tv and the presence of his models. I hope I never get to that point. Sam once joked that I should work out and be buff while watching anime. It could happen :) Another weird dream that night. This time, it involved me shopping around for lasagna in the market, Mrs. Knifton talking about our final exam, and a shipment of Onegai Teacher tapes (not DVDs). May 29 Visited some castle in Tokyo. Didn't catch the name, though. I think the royal family used to live in it. Went to the national park afterwards. I picked up a pamphlet, but I'm not sure if I still have it. I think it has the biggest wooden gate in the world. Guess where the wood came from after the gate burned down in WWII? Taiwan -_- While checking out the gate, I noticed a bunch of coins wedged in the cracks of the wood. One of them fell out while I was there, so I took it as a kind of good luck omen. Unfortunately, I lost the coin a few weeks later :( Shinto-style weddings are the best you can get in Japan. As you might expect, they are also very expensive. All Shinto weddings are held at the national park, and we got to see 3 different wedding processions. Tokyo is now on my list of possible places to get married in. Did more shopping in Tokyo. Unfortunately, shopping for anime wasn't a possibility. We did stop by a Sony showcase center to check out the PS2 games there. There was this new PS2 camera peripheral that puts an image of yourself on the screen, where you can directly interact with the game. Played some DDR-like game, where I seriously felt like a guy in a sentai show, with the crazy arm gestures I was making. Went to the Panasonic technology center afterwards. Some pretty neat household appliances and technologies in there. It still baffles me how the average Japanese family can afford this stuff, especially when the economy is struggling. Plus, their houses/apartments aren't that big to begin with. Automated toilets are pretty freaky. They can talk, but that feature wasn't working (thankfully) when we were there. If I saw a toilet that said "Irraishai" while opening and "Arigato" while closing, I would seriously crack up. But the butt cleaning and drying functions... I can live without those. There was some Donkey Kong Congo game for the N64 set up in the center. A bit simple, but not too bad. Unfortunately, little kids kept hogging the game. Convenience stores in Japan really live up to their name. Ate dinner at a shopping complex near the Rainbow Bridge. There was a Sega game center there, but I didn't go because the free time we had wasn't worth the cost. Most of the stuff in there was riding simulations anyway. Instead, we listened to a one-armed singer outside. Goes by the name of Alchemist. He's on a Japanese a capella website, which makes no sense because he had a keyboard and a Japanese violin accompaniment (played by someone else, of course). On the way back to the hotel, Michelle amused us with some Chinese jokes. Afterwards, it was an open mike session, where some people took the opportunity to thank her for a wonderful job. Chris, the American guy, demonstrated some mad Mandarin skillz by saying, "you have pretty hair, very fun, thank you". Anime that night catered to a young girl audience - Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch (think Sailor Moon with three girls that can transform into mermaids and sing) and Pretty Cure (described by someone as "Sailor Moon" for today's generatio). I can see Chong groaning at the sight of this. Fool, I will bust out my "alternative" cd wallet and shatter those misconceptions of yours :D Then again, you tried watching Grave of the Fireflies when it messed up on you... no matter. I'll find a way. *slaps himself for suggesting Excel Saga as the first series to watch* May 30 Our family plastered a "tourist" nametag to our foreheads by wearing our yukatas to breakfast at the Hilton. It seemed odd that everyone else was wearing regular clothes... or that we weren't >< Since our tour was over, we flew to Taiwan to continue our vacation. Unfortunately, I never got to see Gamers or Anna Miller's. But we were with a tour group, so I guess that's to be expected. Next time... Stayed at Michael's/Jason's house for the night. Sons of one of my mom's sisters. Michael's already serving in the army - mandatory after you graduate from high school in Taiwan. Jason's cramming for the English portion of the university entrance exam. And their dad is hilarious. His skillful use of Chinglish is always amusing. The amount of anime on Chinese tv amazes me. Just for this night, you have Selfish Fairy Mirumo de Pon (Cartoon Network), HunterXHunter, and Puchi Puri Yucie (Cartoon Network). Since I'm writing this more than a month from May 30, I'll just stop listing the shows I've seen because there's just so many @_@ Heck, if you sat down in front of the tv and browsed for anime on each channel, you'd have a pretty big nonstop block of viewing time. Hmm, interesting. While finding out the name of Puchi Puri Yucie, I noticed that it was based on the Princess Maker video game series by Gainax - a series that I noticed while browsing through the computer stores here during the next few weeks. Also, Cartoon Network will be airing the Read or Die OAV on November 6th. Damn. If they don't mess it up with editing/censoring, they've got a winner in their hands. And yes, I noticed that they're also airing other cool stuff, but I haven't seen those yet so I can't evaluate =) May 31 Had a strange dream about this Indian (not Native American) who offered to give me a check for $20,000 if I did an improv gig on the violin. Is this a sign to take up violin again? Who knows. I can't improv, though. I just feel like I don't have enough material to draw from. Being somewhat self-conscious doesn't help. hack//dusk and Kenshin was on tv this morning. Only mentioning this because it's on my notepad. Saw a badass Chinese music video on Haven. If I recall, there were video game CGs in it, so I'm not sure if Haven's a band or a new MMORPG. Online games are all the rage in Taiwan, with advertisements everywhere. Cell phones too. Went to Hualien, where we spent the next couple of days. Both of my parents came from there, so I got to see my grandparents on my dad's side. On my mom's side, my grandma went to the US at the same time we went to Japan, so she needs to make her way back first. Taiwan apple cider soda is great stuff. Drank it ever since I was a little kid. But never leave a finished cup unwashed, unless you want to have ants crawling all over it minutes later. Had dinner at some fancy Japanese place with some of my parents' friends. Yay for connections. Six years since I came back to Taiwan. Man, it's great to see relatives and family again. June 4 Not too much happened while we were in Hualien, apart from the occasional friend/relative reunion. That's why I skipped a few days on this thing. Lunch was at the most badass seafood place I have ever seen. Forget Red Lobster. We're talking 9 floors of high class eating. We ate at the 7th floor - the VIP section. The floor was laid out like a hotel, with private numbered rooms. Among one of the dishes we ate was a pot of freshly cooked shrimp. And by "freshly cooked", I mean the shrimp was still jumping around when the waiter threw a match into the pot. Hot damn. No pun intended. The miracle of connections. Dad -> dad's friend -> manager of the place. I think it was the same thing last night. A few days ago, my sister and I went with my dad to hike up a mountain that he used to go to when he was in high school. While walking down the road, I accidentally kicked a rock and busted my right big toe. Stupid rock. I swear, that thing just popped out of nowhere. Didn't hurt too much, though. Got some nice pictures in the end, although we didn't climb to the top. Even if there was a path, there's no way we could climb that thing. Walked across a semi-rickety bridge on the way back. Dad cleared the bridge of giant spiderwebs with a branch. He also got a huge spider and threw it off the bridge. Dad and his friends used to go to a swimming hole up in the mountains. Now it's closed off to prevent hooligans like him from contaminating the water. Earlier in Hualien, we also visited an aunt who ran a computer store. 6 years ago (or even earlier), I remember getting Red Alert and RA: Counterstrike as a gift from that place. The family there (with 3 kids) also visited us in Houston a long time ago (along with some other relatives) when we went on a road trip to Disneyworld. 13 people in a Ford Windstar. Woot? Times have changed, though. The store used to have at least 2 floors, but the government said something about letting people live in the building, so now it just has one floor. No more games either, although the back section had boxes of old junk. We also didn't get to see any of the kids. Actually, I think my mom might have, since she visited again the next day on her own. I think we also visited my grandma's place (from my mom's side). I said "think" because I'm still not sure if that's her place. Another aunt lives there, with a kid who smashed my sister's finger with a door a long time ago and made her fingernail fall off. The kid seems better now, but we didn't stay for too long. Didn't get a chance to see if they still had the manga I used to read the last time I was there. I remember reading some Evangelion back in the day. June 5 Had a dream about me having clay dentures that fell apart. Went back to Taipei, where my dad got stopped by a tv interviewer who wanted to ask him about one of Taipei's senators. Too bad we had no idea who the senator was. Otherwise my dad could have been on tv. Mom -> one of mom's sisters -> someone (manager?) working in the Caesar Hotel near the Taipei train station. I think we got something near a 50% discount. Cash money~~ June 6 Had another bizzare dream. First part was about an APUSH exam review with Mrs. Saenz. Second part was about these guys trying to prevent some bio hazard bomb from exploding, which they failed to do because the bad guy was "one step ahead". Mom's brother, Jyou Jyou (which I will shorten to Jyou^2), took us to a food market for lunch. Oyster omlette and tempura. Pretty yummy, actually. Although my mom is a fanatic for tempura. My sister and I eventually got sick of trying to finish what she gave us. Had dinner with another of my mom's sisters. Her husband runs a clock/glasses store and has four daughters - a fact I learned recently because we usually just see the twins. I think the younger twin was there, along with her boyfriend. The twins are fun to talk with. Being cute doesn't hurt either. Mouth was in crappy condition. I had a cut on my bottom right gum, an infection on the bottom left part of my tongue, a sore spot on the left part of my tongue, and a soft upper left gum. Bleah. Occasionally, relatives would come visit us in our hotel room. Inevitably, the conversation would drift towards my hobby of collecting anime artbooks. At this point, my mom would use my Sugietsu artbook as an example. I had to make an effort to keep people from exploring past the first few pages >_> One of my mom's high school friends came later that night, along with her daughter. This friend, along with her husband, runs a small photography studio, which I later found out did a few high-profile jobs. And she's pretty silly. I think she's in her 40s, but she still acts (and can dress) like a college student. Ended the day with a runny nose. At one point, I sneezed seven times in a row. June 7 Had lunch with the clock uncle (from last night's dinner) and stopped by their shop/house. I forgot to mention that he has a belly dancing talent. But not just any kind of belly dancing. The kind where you draw a face on your stomach, put a hat/wig over your face, and go from there. It sounds bizzare, and it is. Just one of his quirks that I'm used to. His other quirk is cross-dressing. Complete with makeup and fake hair/breasts. He's actually performed (both types) at various big parties. Think of him however you want, but he's a cool uncle to have. Stopped by my photo aunt's place afterwards. Amazing what you can do with an apartment room. They helped make some photo advertisements with Nokia, but I can't find pictures of them. They're the ones with the camera cellphone. Two of them have a karate guy and a Rambo-like dude trapped in the screen, while a few others involved people (such as a cat burglar) getting caught in awkward situations with the camera. They also do smaller gigs, but those are more of a hassle. For bigger gigs, the company involved usually does most of the preparatory work, so all my aunt and uncle have to do is catch the perfect shot. Admittedly, it sounds easier than it really is. But for smaller gigs, they also have to prepare and set up that perfect shot, which results in more work for less reward. One of their stories involved a bakery that wanted an advertisement on their mooncakes. To help out with the "perfect mooncake shot", they sent around a hundred boxes of the stuff. Mooncakes are somewhat expensive, so getting all those free snacks sounds like a good deal. You end up getting sick of it. Eventually, after finishing the job, they gave most of the boxes away because they couldn't finish them. Went with my dad's brother's family to the new Living Mall. It's supposed to be the next big thing, but it seems like there's still a bit of controversy over it. Most people still prefer Sogo for their shopping needs. Anyways, the bookstore there had a pretty amazing aniem collection. Complete VCD collections of Card Captor Sakura, Ojamajo Doremi, and even Cooking Master Boy. Cooking Master Boy. How leet is that? Chong, don't say anything :P The bookstore also had Someday's Dreamers manga, which is pretty amazing considering how relatively obscure it is. I was tempted to buy it just so I could enjoy the artwork without having to stare at my computer screen. The anime artbook/episode guide was also there... I think. If it was, it was probably too expensive, since I didn't get it. The computer stores had Condition Zero all over the place. No sign of UT2K4, though. Unreal Tournament in general doesn't seem to be too popular in Taiwan. On the other hand, Medal of Honor is hot stuff. I'm not sure if it was today or a few days ago, but we went to the apartment of one of my parents' friends. They had a kid who was almost my age. Chinese, but knows a bit of English. Although my mom says I can talk easily, I'm actually a bit shy when it comes to meeting new people. This guy was rather open, though, so we ended up having a good time. But since his younger sister was also shy, I didn't talk much with her. She also didn't know as much English. I ended up playing Medal of Honor at their place, where they were amazed at my FPS skills. Since the guy didn't know what Unreal Tournament was, I couldn't really tell him that I had some experience with first-person shooters. Back in Hualien, we also had dinner with one of my parents' friends, who also had a kid around my age. He didn't talk much, though. I think he was just there for the food. After a few feeble attempts on my part, I gave up. He also was into Medal of Honor, though. Alex Ma burned the game and the sequel for me, but I never tried it out, and now I think it's lost somewhere in one of the moving boxes, along with most of my games. Ronald Reagan died today. Ironically, I found out about this historical American event only because I was staying in a hotel outside of the US. If we had stayed home for the summer, I probably would have missed it. Then again, my dad would have heard about it from work and told us when he came home. June 8 Ate dinner with some of my mom's high school friends. While walking there, I distinctly heard my mom say that we were going to a big bookstore, so I was rather disgruntled when we ended up at a small restaurant. Dad had to leave after dinner to go back to the US so we could remain financially secure. Speaking of financial security, we moved to a cheaper hotel that night, near Taiwan Normal University and some high school. Despite our discount, staying at the Ceasar Hotel was still too pricey. While walking to the restaurant, I found UT2K4 at a small bookstore. I told my dad to ask for the price, but he never got around to it. It probably wasn't the DVD version anyway. And I'm not sure if it's in Chinese or not. June 9 Had the freakiest dream, where this person who was my sister, but didn't look like her at all, was in love with me. Pretty much stayed in all day at the hotel. This eventually became a trend during the rest of our stay here. June 10 Twins came by to take us to a night market. Taiwan night markets consist of people selling all kinds of foods, from fried chicken to smoothies and teas to those round Japanese thingies on a stick. I should go to one on my own at some point. There's some pretty exotic stuff in these markets. We also shopped around a bit, where I tried to find cds by "The Indigo" (not to be mistaken with the "Indigo Girls"), but to no avail. Taiwan only imports the really popular J-pop stuff, and "The Indigo" doesn't fall under "really popular" or "J-pop". June 11 Had a dream about LOTR and contacts, despite the fact that I never saw LOTR or wore contacts in my life. I don't remember anything about this dream, so that's all you get. Went to Sogo with the younger twin. Bought two artbooks at the bookstore there, one of which was by Shin Takehashi. Since it's a "Shin Takehashi" artbook and not just a "Saikano" artbook, it also includes his other works. I think the book was cheaper than most artbooks because it's in Chinese, so there probably aren't any import costs. The Sogo elevator girls are creepy. Especially when they switch places with another one. It's like you're watching this girl perform some ritual with her mirror image. Jeekies. June 12 Ate at an Italian cafe for lunch with the camera aunt. Some employee noob bumped into me twice. It was all good, though. Tried out some fancy pasta with meat and XO wine/sauce, but it wasn't too great. My sister had seafood pasta, which I've lost all appetite for after some bad cafeteria meals at UT and elsewhere. Or maybe me with seafood pasta just wasn't meant to be, even though I love seafood in general. Traveled to some town with the younger twin, her boyfriend, and her mom for the evening for some night market browsing. On the way, I saw a tow truck being towed by - what else - another tow truck. The night market had some pretty crazy games, such as a Playcreation game system (which looks like a Nintendo clone) and some ghetto Adventure Island hack with Mario as the main character. I actually have the game (not the hack), but I don't think I ever managed to beat it. One-hit deaths, a time limit, and having to eat food all the time (but not eggplants) to keep your health up. Intense. June 13 Went to visit another of my mom's friends. My sister and I brought the laptop along, since it was going to be nothing but talk for the remaining half of the day. However, her husband came in to talk with me in decent Chinglish about exercise, interacting with others in the workplace, and women. According to what he's learned, women categorize men into 5 categories, although I forgot one of them. 1. Ugly and mean (I think) 2. Handsome, but mean 3. Handsome, nice, but gay 4. Handsome, nice, hetero, but taken/married 5. Ugly, but nice... but also no money Afterwards, we went biking to get dinner for everyone. Even though my bike is rusting from years of neglect, biking is one of those skills you never forget. Although I had to learn to control my speed, since my bike could brake when you backpedaled. I should bike more often. Feels pretty nice. My sister told me that I missed Jungle wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu while talking with the uncle. No big loss. It was rather refreshing to have a decent conversation with someone in Taiwan. While talking about social interaction, I tried to teach him Ayn Rand's philosophy, but the language barrier was a bit too high. He did come across it before, so he wasn't totally clueless. Nevertheless, I'm rather surprised Taiwan tv would have Hale Nochi Guu. That show is hilarious. Guu is the Alpha and the Omega. June 14 Just a boring day in the hotel. Although in the evening, we decided to walk to the clock uncle's place. On the way, we found an anime store. Only a third of the store actually had books, though. One third was devoted to trading cards (mostly Yugioh), and the basement was filled with models and a few posters. I did find another store earlier while going for an afternoon walk to escape the hotel boredom. That place wasn't too great either. It had manga, but the place was rather small and dimly lit. June 15 Went all the way to Sogo for dinner. But I felt like we should save money, so all I ate was a bowl of udon. And some cream puffs that my mom bought for a snack. In retrospect, I should have ate more to make the trip worthwhile. June 16 Walked around by myself again this afternoon. Ended up finding another anime store near the university. This one was godlike. Artbooks, posters, wallscrolls, trading cards, and three layers of rolling shelves of manga/vcds/dvds. Too bad I didn't have any money at the time. Spent the evening with Jyou^2 and his wife. They make one crazy pair. We visited the Taipei 101 area, and afterwards they coerced us to go sing kareoke. In Taiwan and Japan, KTV places are everywhere. I have to admit, the experience wasn't too bad. Jyou^2 has mad kareoke skillz. And I think Chinese songs naturally sound better on kareoke than English songs. While checking out a bookstore in the Taiwan 101 complex (not the actual tower), I found this guidebook to anime. Flipping through it, I found out about one of the public's misconceptions about anime in the past - that they thought Belldandy was a softcore porn goddess. Uneducated comments like that piss me off more than anything else. Besides, Urd is more of an appropriate first-glance fit for the title :D June 17 Had a dream where I moved to New England, and while flying back to Texas the plane crashed into a Home Depot just after taxiing. Then I was riding on a train and going to the mall with my sister. June 18 Spent the whole day with Michael. First we went to Taipei's "technology district", which consists of a few blocks of computer stores and a bridge filled with more computer stores. Didn't find any computer games that interested me, probably because the only games I'm looking for are UT2K4 and Emperor of Dune. My sister and I bought spiffy mp3 players for around $90. 128 MB of memory with USB plug-and-play support, FM radio, and voice recording. Plus it has a built-in rechargable battery. Good enough for my needs, although my sister now says that 128 MB isn't enough for all her songs. Then again, she's the kind of person who takes out her mp3 player whenever she has to go outside for a significant amount of time. I have issues with that, since it seems like people who do that tune out reality (pun intended). For things like long airplane flights, where there's nothing to pay attention to, I'm okay with. Walking around town, I'd rather enjoy the atmosphere, with the occasional exception. Ate lunch at an all-you-can-eat bakery. Only around $6 per person. From 2 to 6 pm. Can you find a deal like that here? To my mom, it was heaven. Although you can only eat so many cakes. Visited a teenager shopping district afterwards. Attempted to look for "The Indigo", but finally had to give up because Taiwan cd stores will never import stuff like that. Found yet another anime store where I found a Tsukihime book at a decent price. Naturally, my mom never gave me the chance to buy it, so I acted like a whiny kid afterwards :x June 19 Big family reunion in the morning in our hotel room. My mom's sisters (I think there were 3), her brother, and her mom came over to chat. The clock uncle's oldest daughter also came over with her baby girl. I guess I'm an uncle now =| Thanks to Jyou^2, I now have the Tsukihime book I saw yesterday, along with some clear posters that were $1 each. Although getting the Tsukihime book was a challenge. Yesterday evening, after leaving Michael at the metro, we walked to the clock uncle's place to get glasses for my sister and mom. On the way there (in the opposite direction from last time), we passed by yet another anime store. Unfortunately, we were in a hurry to get to the store before it closed, so I couldn't check it out. So this afternoon, I decided to walk there. This turned out to be quite an adventure. I tried making an ASCII picture, but it came out as crap on IE, so the following directions are mainly for my reference. The fastest way to get to the anime store is to go north (relative to the now-nonexistent map) from the hotel, take a left and go west along the park, then take a right and go north to the store. The problem was that I needed to know where the clock store was so I could get my bearings. The first time we went to the store, we went west on the back street next to the hotel, then took a right and went north to the highway, where we then took a left and went west to the store. When I tried to get there on my own, I went north instead and then went west along the park. Consequently, I didn't recognize our old route, so I kept going west for quite a while. I soon realized this wasn't the right path, so I decided to head south and loop back around, hopefully to the hotel or at least to an area I knew. By a stroke of luck, I ended up hitting store 2 - the manga/card/model store from before. This time, by following the old route, I realized that we walked by a huge park on the way to the clock store, so I finally made my way to the anime store. This place was pretty good in terms of artbooks. I found the Someday's Dreamers artbook and the Kino no Tabi artbook, but those were around 30 bucks each. The Kino no Tabi artbook looked extremely badass, even though I haven't gotten around to watching the series yet. I still haven't managed to find all of it. The store also had the Tsukihime book from the day before. I was a bit short on cash, but the lady took pity on me and lowered the price. In retrospect, the Tsukihime book wasn't a good deal, since it was mainly an episode/character guide. I'm looking for artwork, especially Arcueid artwork :D The book I found in Japan might have had some. Oh well. The problem with getting books in Taiwan is that they're sealed up, so you can't browse through them like in Barnes and Noble. As much as I hate to admit it, it's a pretty good idea. The whole trip took around 3 hours. All hot, sweaty, and thirsty afterwards. But it was worth it. June 20 Revisited the "technology district". Mom found some drama vcds in the lower section of the bridge. There was a Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien artbook, but it was too pricey. Younger twin took us to another all-you-can-eat bakery. We took the 4-6 pm time slot, which was a bad idea because most of the cakes were gone. The last bakery had around 20-30 different cakes and desserts to choose from. This one only had around 5-6, with 2-3 pieces left for each one. The manager said more would be on the way, so we decided to stick around. All I ended up eating were two cakes, a few pizza slices, and lots of pasta. When my mom saw me bring back some bread crusts covered with chocolate and sprinkles, she and the twin got up to talk with the manager. Here's the gist of the conversation (my sister and I stayed at the table): -mom and twin talk about how they stayed only because of the promise of more desserts -manager gives us a 2-for-1 deal -twin talks about feeling bad because we went to an awesome bakery a few days ago and this doesn't compare -manager says we can just pay for the drinks -mom wonders how much the drinks cost, since they were a bit expensive -twin argues that if we just wanted good drinks, we could have gone to starbucks instead -manager (in a quiet voice) says that our meal is free There wasn't any yelling, both because all three of them were nice people to begin with and because loud arguments would get everyone else's attention. After their triumph, the two of them came back to the table and had a little pep talk/debriefing about what just happened. Then my mom made fun of me, asking me how I would have handled something like this. To which I replied, "I would have complained about the meal too, but I would also leave after getting my free deal instead of sitting here for half an hour talking about it afterwards." It seriously sounded like they were trying to justify themselves, as if they did something bad and wanted to cover it up. My mom had fun telling the story afterwards. A free meal is always nice, even if you don't get much out of it. June 21 Went to Danshui with one of the twins (can't remember which one) via the metro to check out the small markets there. Nothing too exciting happened, although we did eat grilled squid and raid a Chinese bakery by taking their huge free samples. June 22 Had a big lunch at the clock uncle's place. A change from the bakery stuff our mom would buy for us for breakfast/lunch at the hotel. My sister and I also had a big shabu shabu/hot pot dinner with Jyou^2 and his wife. I'm not sure if I ate too much or if I ate something bad, because I had a stomach ache in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep face down. Revisited the anime store near the university. Actually, there were two. One of them was Comi-Chiyan Fun House. It's slightly smaller, but the selection is pretty good. Then there's the godlike store from before. It turned out to be Greenwood. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but it all made sense once I saw that they sold Rei's artbooks. I am in love with this man's art. Especially the Midori mascot that he made for Greenwood. Unfortunately, I don't think he has a picture of her on his website. All artists need a publisher for their work, and for Rei, he uses Greenwood. There are only two places where Greenwood exists - one store in Japan and one in Taiwan. The Chinese Greenwood website only lists one address - the one near the university. If there's a Japanese Greenwood website, I can't find it. After realizing what this place was, I promised myself to get the rest of Rei's work before we went back to the US, since all I had was Green Memory 2.0 from the time I also got those clear posters (also done by Rei). If we went back, I'd have to use mail order, and if Greenwood has a mail order option, I haven't found it yet. Plus it's probably going to be in Chinese, so I can't fill it out on my own. There are other online stores that probably have his stuff, but I doubt the mail order form will be in English. Then there's shipping fees. June 23 Went with a tour group to Bali. Unexpected twist, huh? My mom wanted to take the opportunity to explore outside of Taiwan for a few days while on vacation. Thailand was our first choice, but after getting opinions from a few people, we decided on Bali. The tour group consisted of 5 people. Including us. The other two people were a pair of newlyweds. This might have been their honeymoon. In any case, it was quite amusing having such a small tour group, when most groups consist of around 20-30 people. I didn't get a good first impression of Bali. When we arrived at the airport, we learned that airport employees voluntarily "helped" you out with your luggage for the price of a dollar. If you don't pay up, they'll keep your luggage for a few hours. To me, it looked like nationalized robbery. Things got better once we got outside the airport. A woman greeted us with leis (those flower necklace thingies) and straw hats. Either it was part of the tour, or the tourist industry is really really nice here. My observations on the landscape between the US, Taiwan, and Bali: US - wide open streets and landscapes because residential areas are far away from the city Taiwan - narrow streets and repetitive scenery of buildings closing you in because shops and residential areas are bundled together Bali - a few main, developed streets with a bunch of narrow, partially developed streets lined with one-story stores/houses and lots of vegetation On the traffic: US - relatively safe and relaxed because the streets are so big Taiwan - edge-of-your-seat action because of narrow streets, an abundance of vehicles, and crazy weaving in and out of traffic. My mom gets freaked out in taxis and keeps telling the driver to be careful. I swear, Taiwanese drivers never stop or slow down until the last second, and then only when they have no other choice. If you can drive in Taiwan, you can drive anywhere. Strangely enough, you rarely see accidents in Taiwan because everyone has to pay attention to traffic. On the other hand, people don't pay as much attention in the US and get complacent Bali - cramped yet unstressful because people don't switch lanes abruptly, plus they do it often so it's expected (to avoid processions, people in the street, etc). Overtaking happens often, though Stayed at the Bora Bora Villas for the next two days. Since there were five of us, we got the 5-bedroom Kubun Suite, but we only used two of the bedrooms. Still, it was very, very nice. And beautiful. Private pool and outdoor rooms (except the bedroom). I have digital photos, but I need to find a place to host them. And I need to get around to doing it sometime. I think this was the day I found out my whiny sister was becoming a woman. My mind turns inside out just thinking about it. I just can't see her that way. June 24 Second time I woke up in the middle of the night because of my stomach. Foreshadowing for the days to come. Today's itinerary: -store with wood carvings, where my sister bought some (more) fans for her friends -gold and silver store, where my sister bought a necklace for herself. The tour guide said we could bargain down to 30% of the listed cost. I feel sorry for the people who don't have a tour guide to tell them this -clothes dying store afterwards, where I saw some pretty neat shirts that my mom wouldn't let me buy -Museum Neka, Indonesia's largest privately owned art museum, yet I don't think we spent half an hour in it. I tried to stay longer because some of the art in there was amazing, but everyone else was already bored -some monkey refuge, where I saw the most interesting scenes. Monkeys fighting each other, a baby monkey trying to drink an empty can of Pocari Sweat, and a monkey messing with a guy's pockets. One monkey was climbing down a vine, but I was too slow with the digital camera -lunch at an outdoor cafe, which consisted of rice, bbq sticks with some peanut sauce, and some other stuff -a bird zoo, where the husband and the tour guide had their pictures taken with a huge bird clinging to their arm. After taking a picture of the tour guide, our digital camera ran out of battery, so the husband had to recharge it for us that night. After some convincing, I tried to take the bird onto my arm, but by that time it got cranky. The zoo was pretty neat. I think one section was actually left in its natural state, with a cage built around it to keep the birds in -afternoon snack at another cafe with nasty, oversweetened, unfiltered coffee and oversweetened chocolate nut brownies -a bargain mall, where my mom convinced me to get some wooden African-looking figurines for Sam. I wanted to give him a shirt or something a bit less exotic, but nothing else really caught my attention -coffee store, where my mom bought some coffee because Indonesian coffee is supposed to be really good -hot pot dinner at a Chinese restaurant Took night pictures of our place back at the hotel. Since you need a really still camera for night pictures, I had to use chairs, rocks, and even my sister's head to take them. They came out really nice, though. June 25 Some pretty weird dreams that night. Unfortunately, all I wrote were "weird ass dreams" in my notepad, which once again tells me nothing. But as a result, I couldn't sleep again and woke up with a small headache. Today's itinerary: -river rafting, which was a pain because we had to walk down a ton of stairs to the river and walk up a ton of stairs back to the parking lot. Fortunately, the locals decided to spare us by building an elevator cart for part of the path up. Rafting was awesome. My mom kept freaking out about my sister falling off of the raft, but there was no problem. Our rafting guide had fun splashing us and the other boats that passed by. One guide swam out in the shallow swimming area and tried to tip a raft over. We also passed by a section full of bats flying overhead. Now that was something. Unfortunately, my headache got worse after we were done -lunch at the rafting area, since there was a small restaurant there -a seaside temple with a huge outdoor market nearby. Bought some Bali postcards for around $2 after a bit of bargaining and some pity for the seller -supermarket. By this time, my headache was unbearable. We bought a big bag of Lays chips for 30 cents... or so we thought. Turns out that the 30 cent price was for the small bags of chips that we didn't see. The big bag actually cost 3 bucks. At first I thought they swindled us, RO style (in reference to the people who sell healing pots for 10-100x the price by adding a few zeros), so I called the tour guide over. Talk about bad inventory placement Changed hotels to the Bali Intercontinental Resort. And I thought Bora Bora was badass. This place was pimp. That's all I can say. June 26 Tossing and turning the whole night. I tried every position I could think, but I couldn't fall asleep. Had feverish dreams about my body being split up into some kind of trinity, where I had to satisfy each part before I could rest. One part involved metal balls, like those Chinese palm relaxers. Yeah, I don't understand it either. But I woke up sore all over from all those contortions. Also had a fever, that headache from before (which has now evolved into a vise on the back of my head), and a mosquito bite on my wrist that soon broke out into hives around my body. Although they didn't itch, and they could have come from bad seafood the day before. Weird thing is that I've never had a reaction to seafood before. In spite of this, I pressed on with the tour. Today's itinerary: -waterskiing at a beach. My first time, so I spent almost half the time wiping out while trying to stand up. Not like regular skiing at all. The only similarity is that you have to keep your skiis straight (unless you want to trip over yourself or do the splits) and not point them down (unless you want to tumble). My sister also went, but after around 2-3 falls her contacts started hurting, so they gave me her turn. Personally, waterskiing seems like too much hassle for too little benefit -parasailing at the same beach. This was so surreal. Nothing but the wind in a piece of cloth is keeping you up in the air. When you see yourself only a foot off the ground, with nothing tugging you up or down, it just blows your mind. The whole thing lasted only a few minutes, but it was worth it. My sister had to go with someone because she wasn't strong enough to pull down on the ropes and lower herself -water park in the afternoon. It wasn't Schlitterbahn, but it was still pretty good. Body slides rock. Even convinced my sister to go on them. She still can't believe she went down something that steep. Boogie boards rock too. But there's nothing like a lazy river ride. Afterwards, we relaxed at a cafe with free drinks. I got a glass of Sprite, and a bee instantly came by to take a sip and get stuck in the drink. My mom just poured the bee out, but after I was done with the glass another bee came by to drink what was left in the straw. I think Indonesian Sprite is extra sweet, since I've never seen a drink attract bees that fast before I think adrenaline, or simply focusing on the fun at hand, suppresses my headache. After I sit down for a break, my headache starts coming back again. Took night pictures of our resort, because it was so pimp. Thank goodness for conveniently placed pillars, tables, and chairs. Explosive diarrhea takes a lot out of you. Oog. June 27 More soreness when I woke up. I couldn't even walk normally because I couldn't extend my right leg out all the way. Fever of 102. And more diarrhea and headaches. Physically, it was the most miserable period of my life. With the exception of post-oral surgery, but that wasn't a random event. I think I've had nightmares and bad dreams during my stay in Bali. And they all went away when we went back to Taiwan. Strange. I was hoping the two-hour body massage would make things better. I thought of it as washing away all my aches and pains and leaving only a temporary soreness that would go away in a few hours. Didn't happen. But the massage was still nice, with the oils and the milk and the bath salts. When the lady worked on my thighs, it felt like a surge of energy traveling through my muscles. I was on the verge of telling her to stop. Freakiest feeling ever. Up with the feeling I got when everyone in orchestra linked hands and one end touched the shock box. Then there was the milk. I'm assuming it was milk because the feeling matched everyone else's description and I had my eyes closed for most of the massage. Cold as hell. But then they wrap you in plastic and it gets nice and warm. I think I blanked out for a few minutes because I could not remember what I was thinking about when it was time to wash the stuff off. Visited this hotel afterwards to check out a view of the ocean. According to the tour guide, the hotel was perfect except for the fact that it was too far away. Went to a department store and a shopping area for the evening. While checking out a fashion store called Mooks, there was this really phat techno song playing, so I asked an employee what the song was. Fortunately, they knew enough English to understand me and pulled out the cd case. "West Koast Kooler", mixed by Shane Norton of Ku-Ling Brothers. Now I just have to wait until I get back to UT... After we finished window shopping, we went to the meeting point and waited for the honeymooners to return. Nearby, there was a watch vendor, so my mom told me to check it out because my sister and I needed new watches anyway. The vendor was a pretty funny guy. Had an equally funny Chinese accent. His asking price was $24. I didn't think the price would be that high, so I thought he meant $2.40. After I realized my mistake, my mom told me to ask for $3 and ignore him otherwise. $3 isn't that unreasonable because watch vendors in Taipei ask for that price. Needless to say, once I punched the price in his calculator, he wouldn't take it. But we wouldn't compromise, so the priced dropped to $16, then to $12, then to $7, then to $5, then to $4. At $4, we took pity on him because watch vendors in Taipei have a limited selection, while this guy had 3 booths of watches to choose from. I ended up buying a Nike watch while my sister got an Adidas. My sister's watch seems to be a bit too fast, though. Earlier in the day, we were talking with the tour guide about stuff in Taiwan. He's Chinese, but he lives in Bali and he's never been to Taiwan before so he's curious about what it's like. My mom told him about my dad's brother in Hualien and how much he has to pay for a parking space in his apartment complex. Apparently, the price was pretty ludicrous. The tour guide busted out laughing, and when he told the Balinese driver about it, I saw the guy's jaw muscles twitch. For that price, you could buy a 3-story house in Bali and a motorcycle, with money to spare. In general, our tour guide was an awesome guy. Fairly good looking, in my opinion, plus he has a good sense of humor and a distinctive manner of speaking Mandarin, since he's not too fluent in it yet. One of his stories was about a bunch of couples he escorted. During dinner one day, one couple got into a big argument, but by this time the tour guide was back at home with his family. Late into the night (around 2 am), he got a call from the girlfriend, who said that her boyfriend had a stomach ache and might have to go to the hospital. Naturally, the tour guide headed straight for the restaurant right away. When he got there, they apologized and said they were fighting. Crazy kids. Another story was about his friend recording a video of himself eating monkey brains with wine straight from the monkey and sending it to the tour guide. That was pretty disturbing. After dinner, he tried to show us pictures of his "wife" on his cellphone. We got a kick out of that, saying that his wife wouldn't be happy if she saw those pictures of "herself". One more reason why our tour guide was cool. The stuff with the waterskiing and parasailing (where the honeymooners also went scuba diving)... that wasn't part of the itinerary. Some other stuff wasn't on there as well, but he added them because we finished stuff quickly as a small group. He told us not to say anything about the activities at the beach on the evaluation form because his company wouldn't be too happy (liability issues and stuff like that). June 28 Said goodbye to Bali and went back to Taiwan. At the airport, I wrote about my condition on the disease form, which immediately drew attention from the officials. They were taking up the forms, saying "thank you", and then they saw my form and told us to come back. After talking some more, filling out an additional form, and taking anal samples for them (because of the diarrhea), they let us go. Ugh. I don't see how people can take pleasure in - *cough* While walking back from getting breakfast at a bakery, I was lagging behind my mom. I never lag behind my mom. Stupid sore muscles. Anyways, this schoolteacher walked by (we were next to a high school) and said my butt was unbalanced. I didn't believe it and told her it was the sore muscles, but then she told my mom and she agreed with her. After thinking about it some more, I have to agree as well. Hopefully it won't get worse later on, making me one of those unbalanced walkers. Detective Conan that night was very amusing. I think the mystery that day involved tampons, so they showed a total of 7 tampon commercials during that half hour segment, some of them consecutively. You're probably thinking, "What kind of messed up mystery was this?" I assure you, it was pretty ingeneous. |
||||
| Post | ||||
| pre-vacation preparations | ||||
| 03:59pm 10/07/2004 | ||||
I'm a failure as a computer user. I switched from Windows... to Linux... to Windows. Before you techies start bashing me, let me explain. Recently, I had the urge to clean out my computer and make a fresh start. A laptop only for doing work, watching videos, viewing images, listening to music, and downloading more videos/images/music. Notice the lack of "games" in that list. After trying out all sorts of new games during my first year at UT, from Civ 3 to Painkiller to old skool Quake, I feel burned out. I'm still up for a game of Quake 3 or UT2K4, but with the exception of emulators, I've lost the spirit of gaming. Anyways, I figured this would be a perfect time to switch over to Linux. No more unstable OS or useless programs to bog me down. So when we went to Half Price Books to find some Japanese phrase books (more on this later), I found "Linux for Dummies" for 15 bucks (as opposed to 40). Also came with Red Hat 8.0, although I later found out that 9.0 was already out. I went through a Linux tutorial online and looked through part of the book, then decided to take the plunge. At first, I went for Mandrake. Mandrake 10.0 is out, but the ISOs are available only to those with membership (basically stating that you'll help out financially with the project). They should be available by the end of the month, but I managed to find a website that had the ISOs. During installation, Mandrake did ask for a 4th cd, and I only had 3. Didn't make much of a difference, though. So I was now a proud Mandrake user. Let's fire up Kopete (Mandrake's IM program) and spread the news. Oop. Kopete crashed while connecting to AIM. Let's get the latest version and install it. Oop. How the hell do I install stuff on Linux? I tried installing, but it didn't seem to work. Oh well. Let's install VideoLAN instead. By the way, VideoLAN is an excellent video program. I think it comes with a whole bunch of codecs, because it plays almost anything I throw at it. With the exception of .rm, .qt, and .wmv files, since those are proprietary. Damn you Windows/Real/Apple. If there was one program I couldn't live without on Linux, it's VideoLAN. And I couldn't get that to work either. So I decided to bust out the Red Hat cds. While doing Linux-on-laptop research online, I found out that Red Hat had problems detecting the ethernet card on Inspiron 5100s. Unfortunately, Linux couldn't read my CD-RW, and the external hard drive we bought for backup purposes wouldn't work on Linux (except if a network hub was between them). Since Dell decided floppy drives were so last decade, I had to use an entire CD-R for about 100 kilobytes of material. And guess what? I couldn't set up that driver either! From the two procedures I found, none of them worked. So once again, I went back to Mandrake. And suddenly I couldn't get the internet anymore. By now, it was getting late, so I reinstalled Windows and called it a night. The next day, I found out that our router was acting funky. My mom couldn't get the internet either, but my sister was doing fine downloading stuff on Bittorrent. So once again, I fired up Mandrake and encountered the same problems. Plus, hotplugging (think plug and play for Linux) would hang up my laptop when shutting down. I had no other choice. The one benefit from all this? I cleaned out my computer. =) I usually have to live with a gig or less of space. I had around 15 gb free after cleaning it out before installing Linux. Now after reinstalling Windows and moving back all my anime/videos/manga/music/emulator games, I have around 20 gb free. woot! Now I have to work on the two desktops... oy. So why didn't I just tinker with Linux some more? Because tomorrow morning we leave for Japan. 5-6 days there, then Taiwan for about a month. We might hit Thailand sometime between going to Taiwan and going back home. Since I wanted to bring the laptop, we (the whole family) wanted something that actually worked. Japan. The mecca for anime fans. Although there is a catch. If you don't know Japanese (like some of my friends at anime club), then you won't get maximum enjoyment because you can't understand the stuff you buy. =( I'll probably have to restrict myself to artbooks (since those will be in Japanese anyway) and rare merchandise I can't get here. Hmm. Getting late. I probably won't be able to finish another topic. This site is god-like when it comes to anime wallpaper. Heck, it's not really "wallpaper" but uber high quality drawings and CGs from all sorts of artists and studios (from Japanese games and series to Talesweaver and Ragnarok Online). 18 pages down. 147 total. *eep* |
||||
| Post | ||||
| funbags | ||||
| 06:38am 02/05/2004 | ||||
at least, revelry for most people. thanks to my principles, I refrained from getting drunk. I told myself I would start drinking only after the toast started, and even then I restricted mysef to wine and champagne. my position on drinking is that drinking is suitable for special occasions, such as the celebration of a successful show. thus, champagne and wine is fine. beer/vodka/etc. is something you just chug down on a regular basis to get wasted, so I don't touch those. I only managed to drink between half and 3/4 of a plastic cup's worth of champagne. I wanted to try some more, but by then the wine bottle and all the champagne bottles were empty. all except one, which margot wouldn't share. I still don't understand why people drink alcohol. it doesn't taste particularly good. and getting wasted off your ass has its consequences. although I have to admit, it seems to make you do crazy stuff. sadly, I remained sober. I think I felt a little flare in my chest a while after I drank the champagne, but that was it. as for everyone else there... from beth getting it on with anyone that came nearby to parth getting wasted on the couch halfway through the party, tonight proved to be a memorable experience. and of course, you had people kissing and dirty dancing later on. once again, my principles are messing around with me. the problem isn't that I don't get opportunities, but that I end up not taking them. ironically, I act more conservatively than quinn. and guess which one of us has a girlfriend? =) I'm not sure if I should describe the party in more detail or not. I'm sure there are some people who believe in the concept that what happens at the party stays at the party. then again, this is my journal. one thing's for sure - I'm not gonna write about it now. and in another ironic twist, I just finished listening to J-Kwon's "Tipsy". |
||||
| Read 1 - Post | ||||
tired| all in good taste | ||||
| 04:50am 01/05/2004 | ||||
...hoooooly shit. too much stuff has happened since then. whoo. where to begin... well, it's 4:25 am right now. just got back from a party at watts' apartment. jonathon watts plays the main character in our play. tonight's party consisted of listening to music, getting drunk, and playing "pit" (a crazy wall street-type card game where you hear people yelling out numbers like crazy) and "evil jenga". what is this evil jenga, you ask? each block has a certain action written on it, from "left/right/girls/boys/all drink" to "grab ass/boob" to "kiss left/right/across". some of the more interesting actions: "girls kiss watts" (lucky bastard), "body shot", and "take off top". and what happens if you knock over the tower? let's just say that I have been privileged to witness a glorious moment. ye-ow! being the loser that I am, I decided to stick by my standards and remain an observer. eventually, I gave in, but by then people were heading out. heck, I ended up kissing two guys and one girl. shaft1j for me. this night wouldn't be such a big deal for me if not for the fact that I'm a kissing virgin. quinn doesn't count because that was for a play, so I'm not trying to make something out of it. and we have our cast party tomorrow night. as katie would say, "good lord." so what have the past two weeks been like? well, I skipped 4 days of class last week, if that says anything. I caught up on sleep for one, went to westwood for another, and worked on homework for the other two. all because of rehearsal. we literally threw all the play and tech stuff together during the week before opening night. and by that, I don't mean putting it together from scratch. separately, all the stuff was ready. but that doesn't mean jack. the night before thursday, we went from 6 to 6. I kid you not. and I thought west side story rehearsal until 11 pm was bad. I also managed to spend the last of my money during these rehearsals. when call time is around 5:30, you can't get a decent dinner beforehand. because of that, I'm down to less than 2 dollars on both my bank account and in hard cash. it sucks. david, quinn, and parth had to pitch in for me so I could get potato soup at bennigans tonight. and now I'm too tired to finish the rest of this. |
||||
| Post | ||||
impressed| "I'm Rick James, BITCH" | |||
| 02:42am 19/04/2004 | |||
jeez, every time I think I'll have some free time to do stuff (such as write in this thing), stuff pops up. two weeks ago, it was the rough draft for my ayn rand paper. last week, it was initial research for my world lit film project and throwing together the final draft for said ayn rand paper. now, it's preparing for a class presentation of what I've done so far for world lit. during hell week, since we perform our play this thursday. night rehearsals from 6 to 12, possibly 2 or 3 am. so what is this play, you ask? "searching for a narrative". adam rappold's plan II senior thesis. basically, it's about a guy named Hiro, who realizes he's in a play. he has no desire to change things, since he ends up with a girl named Rachel and they live happily every after. but his two friends, Black and Red (Brian and Samantha), decide to mess up the play, since they (mainly Red) are tired of being treated as second-rate objects. things rapidly go out of control for different reasons, and Hiro ends up wandering from scene to scene, trying to recover his "narrative" at any cost. this thing was supposed to be over by february. unfortunately, our main character, mike, decided to break off and do his own play. furthermore, the only spot we could get for the utopia theater was end of april/beginning of may. is the play good? well, go watch it and find out :P april 22-24 and april 30-may 1 at 7:30. from what I've heard, we've done more rehearsal for this than any other broccoli project play. broccoli theater = ghetto theater, in the sense that we don't impose strict standards like regular theater groups. this play has six scenes, each in a different setting. the technical effort put into this is incredible. as someone put it, we have to live up to the set =) we've also choreographed a ton of stuff, from kung-fu fighting sequences to fencing duels to waltzes. as much of a hassle as it was to stick with the play for so long, it's been fun watching the script slowly come together. I actually like the ending we have right now. the one before it was more confrontational and uplifting, but this works too. of course, none of this will mean anything to you guys until you watch =) I also love my cast members. such a crazy bunch. I still feel hesitant about the cast party, though =\ speaking of parties, the plan II formal ball was last friday, on april 16. surprisingly, I didn't go. anime club came first. under any other circumstance, I would have gone to the ball. but on that friday, we were wrapping up banner of the stars II and scrapped princess, as well as nearing the end of tsukihime. besides, someone's gotta hold down the fort. our little group has been shrinking over the months. eva's in new zealand. rick got a job, I think. john's been going to houston and doing other stuff. elizabeth and john are still here, but elizabeth leaves before kimi ga nozomu eien and godannar come on. we did get someone new, though. yay for alexa. april 16th was also my birthday. for some reason, I'm unsure on whether I should announce this fact or not. case in point: someone in allison's class wrote down that she was having a birthday party on the board, with the message "presents expected". I realize that the message isn't that callous, since the only people who would go are the people who want to celebrate for her, but I still feel hesitant. one thing's for sure - if I announce it to my plan II friends, they'll drag me to the house of guys and get me to do crazy shit after getting me boozed up. heck, look at katie and kan =) did I do much on that day? not as much as I hoped to. we (the guys at the end of the hall) did play a lan game of civ3. but besides that and anime club, nothing too spectacular happened. saturday was acutally more interesting - tech rehearsal and then the tga vs acm lan party. man, I was a fool to think I would make myself leave at around 1 to get some sleep. ut2k4 was fun, but my computer would take a few minutes to load up each map, so I fell behind each time. someone did set up para para paradise there, although we never did figure out who owned the stuff. the raffle prizes were disappointing. no 3D card or memory sticks here. I think there were cases of bawls and ati bags of random stuff. chong, you hyped up the leviathan too much for me. it's a cool vehicle, I will admit. but if you're playing against a semi-intelligent team, you probably won't have a chance to deploy it in a good spot. raptors will strafe you and people will go kamikaze style to bust up your ride. the most amusing death message I saw on ut2k4 - when someone ran over himself. I still have no idea how the hell he managed to do that. actually, there might be a possibility - if you're in a vehicle, and a bigger vehicle slams into you, flips you over, and then drives over you while you're still inside. like what happened to me =( if you watch amvs at all, get random variable's "euphoria" - rahxephon to the tune of frou frou's "must be dreaming". the more I watch it, the more I start to believe that this ranks among the best amvs ever made. it's mainly about the visual effects, but it never seems cluttered or pointless. plus the style also seems to fit. | |||