Two Months Worth

Depressingly returning to work after an awsome trip (that just felt like a long weekend), things were back to "normal" again. Insanely busy work, only mere hours a day of 'free time' before having to go to bed for the next work day, too tired to do anything big, online shopping......

Speaking of online shopping... online shopping is such an exciting activity, is it not? The other day I finally bought clothes online! All this time, through my online shopping adventures, I've been over-worried about sizing and style. Clothing is one of those things you usually have to try on and see how well it suits you. This time, some of the stuff I've been eyeing for the longest time were on sale (!) so I decided to take this chance to take a chance. XD It arrives save and sound and to my surprise, they fit perfectly (minus two that were labeled "one size only" which turned out to be a LARGES D: -- might wash it and see if it shrinks on me). Now that I have clothes buying experience, I think I'll be doing more frequently in the [near] future~

You would think I'd stop buying so much after coming home from vacation and bringing back two suitcases packed full with good stuff.... hahaa.. that doesn't apply to me. :b

More on the topic of online shopping... MY LAPTOP! Finally decided to get one because I'll need it for work. I ordered my very first laptop the other day, ETA 2nd week of August. I totally spent too much on it! As my first AND just a laptop in general. But there was no way I'd go for something that I wouldn't be proud of lugging around and using. The two companies I drilled down to was Toshiba and HP. Toshiba mainly because of their comfortable touchpad I've used before and loved, decent builds, AND because it's 'Toshiba'! For HP, I have gotten a few negative comments about HP from a few of my friends, but I won't let that stop me. HP has more than just a few exceptional laptop builds... especially with the better GPU choices available and included, on top of good sound speakers (Altec Lansing!). That in itself is already a good enough reason for me to go HP. Built-in things won't do for me. So it was a nice try, Toshiba. Within HP, I had a few choices. However, still relatively limited for the Canadian market. My original choice was the dv9420ca from HP Canada. I tried to do some research on this model, but there weren't any reviews or comments on this machine at all. I also found myself looking at the expensive pretty stuff like the Dell XPS but was upset to see the value in price. By the end of my long journey around the online globe, I finalized on a dv9500t CTO notebook! I'll give my customized specs and my personal review when I finally get it. X3

Now onto the backlog...

Thu July 5 - Company BBQ in celebration of our successful commercial release (which I wasn't even here for cuz I was in Cali at the time! :b)! We closed down the office at 2 and headed down to Waterfront to catch the Seabus to the CEO's house out in North Van. I got chosen with another co-worker, DK, to join the CEO and the COO in their car for a joyride to their place instead of taking transit. And wow, go figure, it's North Van.. his house was big, new and pretty. We got to meet the rest of his family (wife, three boys and flip maid!)... We started off with chips and beer.. then I moved onto the lemonade. It wasn't until a few hours in we began finally getting the actual BBQ part. Then the water fights began... One of the boys had the insane supersoaker (with the backpack of water!) and he totally owned us (versus our manual hand-pumping action guns). I got to the point where I got ahold of the backpack supersoaker too and attacked a few people. They had a trampoline in the backyard and we had drunk Jeremy jump in it. Kinda scary to watch actually lol... There was also a waterslide which was called BANZAI MOUNTAIN rofl! Me and DK left at the same time (around 7ish) and took the transit back together. Wow, long time no Seabus for sure.

Fri July 6 - Long time no All-You-Can-Eat sushi @ Richmond Sushi for Trevor's bday.

Sat July 7 - Franky's 22nd Birthday at no other than Mike's place! So we have our usual rowdy group of the Liquids, Franky's work friends, Mike's work people (my work people too I guess) and lots of booze. Franky is such an adorable weak drinker XDD... So it's his birthday... the birthday boy has to drink unreservedly, of course. I had my first Flaming Lamborghini... recommended by the bartender (aka. Eric Chin XD) when I requested something 'different'. XD Then our "boss" (aka. Mike) tricked us (co-workers = me, Jeremy, Paulo, Matthias) that our toast shot was Tequila but turned out to be a friggin' 151. Destructively burning it was. Gross and disgusting surprise lol... Bastard Mike :b The soccer tournament between France-Jeremy and Brazil-Paulo was pretty amusing to watch (on Winning 11 lol~). Tried to get Matthias to join in (as Germany of course! XDDD) but he wasn't into games, boo. So after rounds of strange liquids, I had to start sobering up to drive home so I hid myself in the gaming room and tried to nap. I was accompanied by Franky who was completely out of it... *patpats* Poor guy... he wanted to stay sober to help clean up and be responsible but how could he, it's his birthday! :B

Skip two weeks...

July 16 - Registration for courses. Omg it's that time of year already?! School's back in a month...!!!!

July 18 - Flare & Sakura: k it took us weeks to convince these people to come out of their cave in Langley, for serious. Two people who were part of our #Digimon channel way back when... Flare came to visit Sakura so duh, we're nearby, come visit us too! We decided to meet up at Metro at 7. I drove us to White Spot so we can enjoy the awsomeness that is the burger and their BLUEBERRY PIE! We didn't think about bubble tea until hours later and realized it was probably too late to grab bubble tea so we rescheduled for Saturday. みんなすごっく妙なやつだった。考えたよりすげーオタクくさい…

July 20 - Point Roberts. Requested that I got off work early (2AM) to head down to the states early (to beat the Friday afternoon/evening traffic). There was already nasty traffic forming on Knight street which delayed me a lot. I asked Tek to come with me (paranoid to go anywhere far by myself) and had him wait at Aberdeen so I can pick him and some bubble tea(!) up. It was relatively straightforward... got to see a lot of nothing. I was starting to panic when we got to the border. Gah I'm talking to the border guy not someone else like it usually is like! Tek was under suspicion both times there and back :b... We were there to sightsee... which is exactly what happened. The border guy on the US side had a stern face on the whole time... He paused a lot after our question and answers... then when we said it was our first time here, he suddenly got up and walked into the office. He came back a few seconds later, he gave us a map of Point Roberts and let us through. O_O!! Well.. sightseeing is one thing, our first and most important stop (and the whole purpose of the trip!) was to visit TBS Shipping to grab myself my own number for my nummy packages from the states. The place was a house.. which was why it all makes sense and put some light on how things worked. Grabbed the number and yay, mission complete! We took the opportunity to take a tour of the rest of the little town. The beach. The lighthouse which was NOT a "lighthouse" but was a mini reflective tower! We didn't see any WHALES! NO FREE WILLY! We stopped by a cafe for dinner that was by the marina and had, of course, seafood! We also visited the border obelisk (which had exact coordinates on it :0!!), saw some impressive mansions (with tennis courts, basketball courts, etcetc), some poorly painted houses, and then visited their convenience store (we were wondering where people bought their groceries!)... They had a number of products that have been discontinued here in Canada (lots of childhood favourites -- cereals, etc). It was getting late so we headed back around 8-9ish... the weather was crappy and we pretty much took a tour of the whole town already so we made our way back. Now I know Point Roberts from the back of my hand! Ask me anything! XD

July 21 - Flare & Sakura PT2: Aye. Metro again that evening. Walked to Crystal Mall. Was pissing rain like fack! Had bubble tea, oy full. Sakura even had two O_O! Unfortunately everything was closed by the time we got there except for a few. They ended up buying stuff from the stores that were open. Metro was still open at the time so we walked by the Metro and visited the arcade. A few rounds of bad guitar playing and a few expensive mario kart games. Flare had to start packin' so we disbanded early.

I got home... prepared for AU22. We tried it... 5 times? 75WHM 75RDM 73PLD... and once we got sooo close (1 frickin' percent left!); it was super depressing. It was already late by then (um 5AM?) so I decided to give up for now.

July 25 - It's that time of year again for FIREWORKS! I got off at 5, headed to Monica's work at Burrard station by 5:45ish. We ordered ourselves a party tray and more and headed off to 7-11 for some snacks. Headed back, grabbed our order and made our way to English Bay. As usual, all busses were full no matter which street you tried so we walked the whole way there. We arrived as the relief party for the other members who then went to grab their food. We start off with Spain this year... doing Star Wars and Iron Chef. It was actually quite well done~ We'll see how the other two countries do though. That is, if we plan on going next Wednesday and have to go through this whole after work rush thing again. XP I must admit, I was tired. And it was hot too, so it didn't help one bit. :[

July 28 - I woke up late so I told Mo2 to go first to meet up with Shi2 at McDix. I arrive a few minutes later, had some awesomely good greasey breakfast and then we finally headed downtown. We were all kinda tired so we laid around and cooked. I was lazy to put on sunscreen so I tried to protect myself with the umbrellas. Unfortunately it didn't work as I went home red and itchy. But anyways, the time flew by pretty fast. Other people started joining us around 5ish~6. I am known as the beach monster btw. The sun's radiance is a nuisance to my PSP gaming. I will finish Gurumin soon enough.... We had Fat Burger for dinner. It was not fat. They lie. But anyways, Canada's jazz-themed performance was pretty good. The synchronization was excellent but jazz is not my thing so it was good but not as good as Spain's.

Got home. AU22 again. This time we got another RDM. Hella easy with a fourth lol.

Aug 1 - Holy crap it's August already. Only a mere month left before the start of school again.. I look forward to it, to be honest. Full time work is hella boring. So CHINA. I met up with Mo2 by the Burrard skytrain again. We couldn't decide what we wanted to eat so we made our way there and walked down Robson to do some quick window shopping. We were in a lack of time so we decided to hold it off until Saturday. We picked up Triple-O's on the way (yay!) and ate our soggy fries at the beach. So China gave off this insane war-like angry emotions. I heard some people left feeling scared. I felt their performance was less all pretty stuff but more figurative and deep. Well, they called their performance "The Time Machine" so I'd imagine it was something related to their history :D. To us chinese though, it was to signal for us that it's time to take over the world. The chips that were implanted in our head when we were babies are finally resonating. Becareful.

Aug 4 - The Finale. Me and Mo2 went down around 12ish and walked down Robson to do some shopping. We got to the beach around 1ish and had ourselves some hot dogs we wanted since day 1 (the evil aroma that lures us in when we walk by to the beach everytime!). We then meet Shi2 who was standing there on the beach figuring out what to do. My latest delivery of manga came the other day, so I brought some to read. Karat! is magical girl on crack. It's super messed up and super fun to read lol~ Later that night, we had Fat burger again. And again it fails! And around 4ish, other people finally started arriving. The finale. Was boring, as expected. The opening portion was out of sync and dumb. And for some reason Canada won this year. Canada wasn't as good as Spain, but hey, they allowed spectators to vote this year so no wonder everyone voted Canada. Biased I tell you.

Was going to do AU29 but I was too exhausted from the long day. Apparently the PLD didn't even show up on time anyways.

Long weekend! Went to the states on the Monday. Did some good ol' shopping yay! Visited the Daiso at Bellisfair. The place is puny compared to our giant two floor. However! They sell things at $1.50usd and things over $2! Even "designer" bags for like $14usd lol... Another good thing is that there's a lot of stock of everything! Not many people know about yet so I still got first grabs! AND $1.50usd IS cheaper than $2cnd so yay!

Aug 11 - AU29. Tried twice. RDM died during convert. Second time I died when we won.

Aug 18 - Anime Evolution is still major weak sauce. Met Shi2 at the Joyce skytrain SUPPOSEDLY at 11 but she showed up a half n hour late. Got there around 12ish, found a place to sit down and we had our Subway we bought on the way. We visited the dealer's room next. We had to wait in line for NOTHING. We went in, went around the puny room and thought, "That was IT??" So we walked around the room twice. Everyone kept crowding around the KH3 trailer... dudes, I thought you've already have seen it by now! After we went out to leave and lo and behold, there was an extension into the mini cafeteria. The Code Geass fan was very tempting... what's better than Lelouche looking hot on the fan :D? I ended up not getting it and kept wandering around. There were a few stores that sold lots of seriously fake shit. That really upsets me. I picked up a Haruhi artbook and wondered why the pictures were all kinda dark... Failed to find any publication information (e.g. ISBN, publication date, etc) Turn it around and see that was published by a Taiwanese company. Ouch. The place makes me shake my head. After that garbage we decided to visit the new Copperstone area and wow it's beautiful. It's like a community! We had bubble tea that was as sweet as fuck. We lounged around a bit and headed back a bit before 4 to make it to the VGcats guy's panel. It was pretty amusing. Though, as usual, there were the annoying stupid questions like "Pirates or ninjas!?"... and eventually there was another stupid girl that kept playing video game ringtones. Sigh I guess that's everywhere. Or just a lot here at this convention. After the panel we walked back to Copperstone and visited Prem's place. And wow, the place is nice and cozy! He even had one of those mini floor cleaning robots! I couldn't help but stare at it clean the whole time XD... We hung around until we were hungry and then we went out for Pho that Shi2 was dying to have for the past few days. After food, they dropped me off and I headed to meet up with Matt and his friend Daniel (?). I made in just in time to watch some G.I. Joe chant parade. o_O Then we went to the BACK-ON concert. And wow... Japanese artists ceast to amaze me. Their concerts are always crazy fun and really enjoyable. Speaking of concerts, they tried to sell $1 glow 'sticks' that were those bendable cheap thin weak ones rather than the thick, bright ones. Total ripoff :b~ After that insanity, me and Matt went to line up to grab their autograph. They're really cool people :D I had them sign their 'Chain' CD I got. And HEY surprise! I also saw Jenny too! Apparently she was volunteering as a translator, assistant, liaison person. She was busy with them so I couldn't stop to talk at all... :T And that ended AE 07. Look out Scon08!

When I got home I did AU31. Weak sauce. I can't carb pull even if my life depended on it.

I'm working hard on Alchemy lately. I am slowly getting poorer than before... I feel I won't get anywhere with it... oh well.

AU39 or something the following Saturday - we died, oh, only just abooout 5 times before we finally managed to pull it off. We were pressing it to finish it for the update the following Monday.

Monday rolls around.. update comes around... NEW GRIPS. Finished up the Lamia.13 assault later that week and got my hands on some hot Paluhwan Khazghand (sp XD) body.. daymn... I need to hurry up and lvl up RNG so I can show it off more. I considered getting the Yigit head but meh, the heads I have now for my mage jobs are better imho. Next round of assaults goes towards some Yigit pieces!

Oh yeah, I tried Einherharjarbargarharjar just for the hell of it with a pickup party-alliance. Lawl. You can imagine how that's like. But it was an interesting experience nonetheless. The lasted two runs until the co-leader decided to decide another time for us, confusing everyone which was then followed by the breaking of the shell. That was the end of that.

This week flew by rather quickly. School starts next week. I think I've prepared... mentally... materialistically... maybe. I need to clean my room.

Catching up on the gaming news...
Slim PSP has CLEAR BUTTONS! WTF! MINE'S 100X MORE GIMP THAN BEFORE! D:
It also has TV-out, it's lighter, loads faster... however the battery lasts less longer... which is, wait, the ONLY DOWNSIDE D:

I cry. Inside.