Dragon Age: Origins - Cue Drama and Blood

I don't think I've ever died as many times as I did in a game before. Enter Dragon Age: Origins - it likes to kick you ass knowing you'd come back for more.

STORY 4/5
The main story's straightforward, but there were various routes that diverged from the main to support the story. Those scenarios, which usually played a major role in the outcome of the game, were optional and can be done in whatever order wished. Within each scenario presented various choices the player can make which would also affect the outcome of the game (or that scenario). Minor choices/actions can make an unexpected significant impact as well. However, ones choices/actions is really up to how the player wants to play anyways, so there's no real wrong or right choice... Maybe just better choices than others that can help or work against you.

Your character's background determines your beginning story (and influences the rest of your play though) so it varies from race but basically something dramatic and heart-wrenching happens and so you end up being forced into becoming a Grey Warden -- an order of guardians who protect the land from an evil race that's trying to destroy it. Of course, it's never that simple when politics are involved. The land and its cities have been divided due to the chaos so it's up to you to restore the peace.

I found it interesting how even a small choice you make can alter the game completely - sometimes immediately or in the future and then you'd be like OH I remember, oh damn. I've only played through the Human Noble scenario, but I imagine the other stories would give you a better insight on certain story characters and backgrounds.

CHARACTERS : 4.5/5
The travel companions were all very fun and you had the option to dismiss them permanently from your party at any time (I never actually tried). There were obvious personality clashes which made amusing idle conversations. Choices made throughout the game also affected the approval rating of those characters (if they are in your active party). Usually because of those personality clashes, you could never really satisfy everyone. Thus Morrigan, being known to be on the other side of that spectrum, likes to disapprove most things you did, unless you were a unmoral person to begin with, then vice versa, your other characters wouldn't like you very much. However, that's usually easily remedied with giving gifts, which I felt was TOO easy to remedy. You can max out any character's approval rating of you without trouble which kind of ruins the "importance of choice" aspect of the game a bit.

I'm not sure who wouldn't like Alistair. As the heroine, he was definitely my type. ;) He had a cute personality which made me giggle in more than one situation. Morrigan was a pretty sarcastic and blunt, which made interesting idle conversation with the other characters. The secret companion was also quite a surprise but I did not take him (he's too old and ugly anyway).

SOUND : 4/5
As the usual western RPG, you don't really notice the music all too much (as there wasn't much either). The strange pop rock vocal song that played during the credits felt really out of place though.

As for sound effects, there were a lot of explosion noises even though there weren't any explosions happening. My brother would hear me from the other room and tell me all he hears are explosions. And then of course, there's the screaming. As a warrior, I like shouting a lot.

The voice acting was excellent. The cast had completely charmed me (especially Alistair, can you blame me?) but I am not one familiar with any of the voice actors themselves. I only wished the hero you played as wasn't as mute as he/she was.

GAMEPLAY 4.5/5
Played like an MMO.

You had the option to control one character while the others were controlled by a set of tactics you determine (AI), or control them all yourself. For me, I controlled all the active party members myself since it ended up being easier doing so, but left them some basic actions for when they're idle. This definitely kept me busy and extremely active during battles. The only time you'd be bored would be when you had to travel. Traveling seems to suck no matter what game it is.

The game was definitely difficult a bit before mid-game, when you're still getting used to battle strategies and had a lack of abilities... and most of the death action happened during then. The biggest difficulty was healing at first, for sure. You only had a limited number of potions, potion making items were scarce, you had no money anyway, and you had little to no healing spells. The work around this was to basically strategize a plan of attack and try and try again. It was frustrating at first but funny I didn't give up. I saved like there was no tomorrow.

The beauty about this game was the magical pause button... because strategy such as crowd control was extremely important and controlling 4 members at a time is not really possible in real time, the pause button was able to provide some breathing room. Not to mention, it is also neat to pause during certain slo-mo dramatic death blow moments (see above image).

There were also an abundance of sidequests which were nice. The completionist in me probably spent way too many hours on them than I should've. Some yielded good items, other times, they were a waste of time. The random drop system can be frustrating at times (stop giving me garbage). Or then you'd have so many items you want to keep, even the storage box isn't enough.

Again, the amount of choices in this game really makes one think twice about what to say/do. I often paused to think hard about what's the best response. Hm, maybe something I should learn from for real life - ha.

The camera could've used some work in certain situations.
The game also liked to occasionally crash on me.
Also the occasional AI bug where a member controlled by your set of combat rules gets stuck trying to use that certain ability.

Little frustrations.

GRAPHICS 3.5/5
I can't stand that strange shiny/plastic look on some of the clothes and textures. Your clothes are surely fabric (wool, cotton.. what have you) not plastic, as it's not invented yet, my dear. So is your dragon's chest. Perhaps dragons bath regularly so it's always kept very clean and shiny - I do not know.

Graphics are generally pretty standard.. nothing too amazing. I wished they put in a bit more effort into creating more unique/different NPC faces. I spoke with Arl Wolff and saw Duncan instead. Some maid lady looked like my mom... actually I saw her a few other times. Character customization was not as amazing as I'd hoped. I did not particularly like my stoned face look in most cut scenes. If only I had more expression like how ugly I looked when I killed the last boss. Man, I was ugly but at least I demonstrated that I had more than just my stoned face expression.

I mentioned it before but the female body proportions were also kind of strange. We had men bodies with boobs.

The game also loved blood, which seems to be the running theme of the game. Just a bit of sword play with mice and I'm drenched in blood. Take off my clothes and lo and behold, I'm bloody under my armor too. Blood's apparently really, really messy.

Speaking of being naked, a side note: Morrigan's bra does not correspond to her revealing top.

OVERALL 4.5/5
I enjoyed this game quite a bit and I definitely took my time. I think I sunk at least 60 hours into it, and I only played through it once, completed as many sidequests as possible and both currently DLCs available are done as well. Again though, traveling is a pain in the ass. The game's "normal" mode was nice and challenging (can't imagine how it'd be beyond normal), and fortunately didn't scare me away from the rest of the game. The journey was well worth it but I'm still unsure if I want to run through the game again, taking on another character and personality.

I might just keep it around for the next DLC coming in January. My character and stats for those who have access and if are interested.

I am totally itching for a JRPG right now though.

Lack of Christmas Vegetation

Merry Christmas!
...and mere days before the end of the 2009 year.

School's been out for about a week and there's actually only a week left, which leaves me feeling sadfaced. I haven't had too many real "days off" yet where I do absolutely nothing but vegetate.. but I think that's what most of next week is going to be for.

The last few days of school were kind of ugh. Last Tuesday consisted of 8 straight hours of presentations in the conference hall for our major projects, 20 mins allocated for each student and a lot of teachers with on-the-spot critiquing. Didn't help that I was scheduled for after lunch and they fed us bad cafeteria pizza. It sure was a big sigh of relief when it was all over though. We had Cactus Club at the end of the day to celebrate. One more semester to go but I am so sick of my project.

Then the following day was my meeting with my actual major project clients. The second time ever. They seem stoked and it looks like it'll be more busier next semester with them wanting me to set up some focus groups. We got drenched walking to our lunch location (yay for Vancouver rain) since they dismissed my idea to drive there (lawl lazy student). It got worse when I ended up ordering a sandwich with fries plus a drink and they both only had a salad. I only minded because they ended up treating me! A lazyass AND a pig.

I've been hacking away at Dragon Age for the past while and been tempted to play Borderlands. I'll be good and finish what I started first. I don't understand why nekkid women in western RPGs are so buff and unattractive. Deja vu, Fable 2.

(Note: the game forced me naked... I am not a perv to my own characters! D:)

I've also been marathoning anime whenever. Higashi no Eden movie(s) nao prz.

* Watched Avatar in 3D the other day - very awesome.
* Ninja Assassin. What happened to Rain? I thought he was supposed to be hot.
* New Moon was earlier in November during our exploit-the-fan-girls cupcake fundraiser at Oakridge. Those fan girls were frightening.
* Sherlock Holmes tomorrow. Robert Downey Jr squee~

Speaking of fangirls...

/geek
My only irk with it is that the colour on glass is peeling off a bit. I've drank one and will save the other. Next they need more flavours and blood types.

I am also sad that I missed my package today. I was expecting the post office guy but he came an hour too early for me to wake up and hear him. Yep, slept right through it and now I have to wait until Tuesday to get it.

I finish with donuts.

Black Ice

It snowed, then froze over. Not happy. :|

Half a week left to go. Now I shower you with random photos, mostly on food.

(the yellow one is DURIAN MOUSSE CAKE *EXCITEMENT*)


I think me and my friends, now, have posted three version of this.

A Breather

Hi! I'd like to believe I'm still alive.

Near semester end... stuff happened. A lot... and yet it wasn't a lot, really.

But I can say this much: I'M EXHAUSTED.
I'm running on 3 hours right now and my red bull effect has just wore off so I'm really feeling it. Energy draining @20hp/tick.

The past week consisted of writing up a RFP response, an interview report, a 20-pager essay--which all took about 3 or so days each--and finally the 3rd stage of my major project. Hermit week is over!

No school vs School (it's been cleaned up a bit already).

The RFP was just number frustration.


I had to interview my interview guy for a second time because our first meet wasn't long enough. I really didn't want to meet a second time because my laptop's out of commission (as I already mentioned) so I only had one fully charged battery left just in case I had to retrieve anything from there. BUT he was doing ME the favour so sucked it up. The information I got was valuable though, especially for myself, but it was nothing really applicable to the rest of the class so I had to fill it in most with what I already know. A case of good BS.

The essay was tragic. Let's not speak of it again.

When Tuesday rolled around, I didn't get a chance to present ANYTHING. That was upsetting; I was hoping to get the presentations out of the way but now they're all pushed to next week. HAET PRESENTATIONS.

I also seem to eat a lot when I'm under stress. Whenever I took a break, I went straight to the kitchen for something. Since my other break options (video gamesssaaaa, anime) were out of the question, eating(?) was my only choice. Cream cheese was my best friend.

Speaking of video games, I've been video game FREE for THIRTEEN DAYS NOW. I will go and experience again how awesome it is to get my ass kicked in Dragon Age right after this.

I have over 900 unread RSS posts and I consider myself a casual RSSer as I only follow a few websites. It will take a bit of time.

So I left my phone at school yesterday but I was swamped with completing the next stage of my major project so I left it where it was. The security guard (aka. The Transporter) was smart enough to know how to go through my phone and call my house to leave me a message on my answering machine. I also found out that I cannot live without my phone. My phone's alarm clock that is. I failed to wake up today because I did not have it with me.

Blahblah I have a conference room presentation for my major project in two weeks. UGH. WHY.

So I've been dreaming about Christmas and all the wonderful free time I'll have. And so here's some for the to-do list:
- finish reading my bro's Watchmen comic book so I can watch the movie already
- *watch* the Watchmen movie
- get a haircut
- read my manga backlog (both offline/online)
- ugh no one vacuums if I don't do it.
- Dragon Age raaaaaage
- preorder my LE PSP
- marathon another anime?
- something else I haven't thought of yet.

2 presentations, 2 more individual projects, one class project and tweaking major project+conf. presentation left to go. Two more weeks...!

Lost Odyssey - 1000 years and counting

It started as a discussion over consoles, then it turned into RPGs then to how amazing Lost Odyssey was. Thanks to a classmate, I ended up digging for the game in the pile of backlog as soon as I got home from school and popped it in.


STORY 4.5/5
Kaim, for as long as he remembers, is a soldier who fought in many wars. He's been known as the immortal, thus lived through all the wars he has participated in. More recently, a war ends abruptly by a magical storm of lava spewing from the skies killing everyone on the battlefield. As expected, he emerges the only one alive from the battle and encounters a fellow immortal on his way back to report to the superior he works under.

He ends up teaming up with that immortal and one other [mortal] to check out happenings at a magic generator tower and ruh roh, something's fishy there. Where'd all the magic come from? Why's there so much magic here and what were they doing with it?

The story stood out in the beginning as something refreshingly different, but sadly it headed towards the cliche JRPG mid-game: save the world, hoo-rah. The "side stories" involving Kaim remembering his past were probably the best mini stories I've ever read (that's a pretty high claim). If only there were more! Those stories sold the game for me, despite the rest of the main story direction.

[spoiler]As for the ending, it was cliche to the max, besides the fact that one of the immortals get sent back to the other side. It was a fixed and timed final boss battle where you basically pressed enter to win automatically. Then basically everyone lived happily ever after.[/spoiler]

CHARACTERS 3.5/5
Kaim is the cool and collected guy who has the most annoying strand of hair in his face (until I eventually got used to it). His woman is less to be desired. The kids, the boy in particular, has the worst hair. Seth is great too, but (spoiler) why her! The wrinkly is so wrinkly and old. YansenJansen wears eyeliner. My second favourite character is (spoiler) Tolten, a timid guy with good skills up until the end when the wrinkly dude takes over his spot to be the better overall mortal character.

The main boss of this game was a pretty boring dude with a pretty boring reason to take over the world so that was disappointing. He was extremely lenient with the hero's party which makes him seem hardly dangerous. Sadly there was nothing hidden behind the main boss.

SOUND 3.5/5
Voices... I had the Japanese track on the whole time but I realize I should've at least tried hearing the English track as well. But anyway - singers, talents, actors... it seems like the cast of most of the characters came from various places -except- the voice acting profession, which explains why the voices felt a bit inexperienced and awkward.

Music was composed by Nobuo Uematsu so you expect some good stuff, or so you'd think. There were two rock tracks (both for boss battles) that were excellent and the rest of the good ones were most of the ballads played during the mini stories. Overall, there weren't as many great tracks as I hoped. The vocal track for this game is ATROCIOUS. CORNY AS FUCK. 'Cuse the language but that's how much I hate it. Spit on it and throw it in a fire!

GAMEPLAY 3.5/5
K so they tried to make the player more involved by having this ring system where you had to hold and let go of the RT at a certain time to activate the ring's power you're currently equipped with. Yeah I suppose it worked but it made battles that much longer.

The whole system of A-1, B-3, etc (round and turn respectively) to figure out the character's required cast time was silly and close to useless. If you had more than one character with the same determined cast time, how do you figure out who goes first (when both of those characters also have the same cast delay)? Not knowing what the enemy's cast time makes this "strategy" further useless. Also if a character is delayed to a certain round (say the 2nd one), how do you know when during that round he/she is going to cast after you enter in more actions with your other characters who are going on the same round? USELESS.

Some other random thoughts: interestingly enough, there's no airship BUT you get two ships (one being a cruise ship); there were some unexpected minigames such as the cubic musical score which had you replay the notes listed in the description, an airship minigame where you avoided enemy attacks, chasing and sleeping giant monsters, and putting wreathes around statues; the treasure trove achievement is brutal (I didn't bother with it and it's my only missing achievement, minus DLC).

GRAPHICS 4.5/5
The in-game graphics vs the prerendered FMVs were pretty close. The graphics were pretty and pretty detailed. Though some of the cutscenes lacked the proper facial expression to match the voice coming out, which made it really weird.

OVERALL 4/5
The optional dungeon, optional boss fights (I ran into most of them accidentally), and the optional hardest boss in the game were all very challenging and fun.

I noticed the English subtitles and the Japanese dialog were quite different (though I think that's the case with most translated games just to fit the audience) but yeesh, they made Jansen sound like such a stupid douchebag in the English.

Disc swapping is so last gen. D:

For the record: I encountered two sound-related glitches, music tracks overlapping and music ceasing completely.

I can totally see a Lost Odyssey II. Mistwalker, MAKE IT HAPPEN.

November Reality

It's nice that Halloween came and all but that means that November is here. I hear Hell whispering in my ear again...

My laptop is out of commission. More precisely, either the power cord (which is most likely the problem) or the power plug has broked. The power cord is dead. I was able to cheat it for a few days by angling the cord a certain way so the inner metal touched and charged. Now it refuses it completely. Seems like eventual power cord deaths are a common occurrence. A whole new, official cord will cost a leg but a new laptop will cost me a few legs so I am relieved, though still not happy that the new cord will cost quite a bit.

So this finally came in the mail the other day:

This wasn't exactly what I was expecting but apparently my actual loot package got lost(?) or they just never sent it so this was my replacement. I was supposed to get the whole Tokunaga plushie set plus the Tales Vol.2 CD but instead came a [useless] L-size WHITE t-shirt, ONE Tokunaga plushie with its head severed and the Vol.3 CD instead. I thought Vol.3 was the one that was hard to get a hold of? I'm still waiting on that bonus for the Tales of Vesperia CE, which is supposedly the Vol.2 CD. I should go and bother them some more for it.

November means there's really only one month and a few weeks left of the semester (shock). The coming weeks will be brutal... which reminds me, registration was yesterday.

Parents also came back from their crazy cruise of crazy (Turkey, Israel, Ephesus, Greece) today. The past two weeks were pretty nice and peaceful ('sides all the school crap).

I swear I had more to say but now I can't remember.

(Domo straw courtesy of Tofu smuggling it up during his trip to join the Vancouver team. Team Vancouver +1)

Halloween, Costumes & Explosions

It's that time of the year when I scramble frantically for a relatively easy costume to put together for Halloween. This year instead of red gloves it's bunny ears. Not just any pair of bunny ears... No - not fuzzy, no glitter/sparkles/shiny, must be white, must be bendable and long would be a plus. I wandered through at least 8 different stores... It was Faith all over again! This year they were Reisen bunny ears. :3

You know you are a geek when you purposely dress up (hm, the more suitable term in my case would be cosplaying) as a character from an extremely niche market and you know that a good 97% of the people who will see it won't know where it's from. To my surprise though, one person did recognize my costume at the party but that was after I told them that it was from "an obscure Japanese shmupvertical shooter." And for those who really had no clue, "Japanese bunny school girl" was a good enough description for me.

Now that I have a new costume... I think I can reuse this again. Maybe I'll get a wig, though I am a disaster at maintaining wigs. I gave up on trying to straighten my Lacus mop-of-a-hair back in the day. I'm unsatisfied with my ears though, they just aren't long enough but there was one girl at the party who had an awesome pair of perfect long ears but she got it at a game stand at PNE/Playland. Not sure if I'd ever get a chance to go there and force myself to win myself a pair of ears... or if it'd even be there by the time I visit the place again.

I almost didn't end up going to the party. Sty's been busy packing and was tired so she didn't wanna go. It took me about three tries to actually get her moving, the main reason I used (and was the truth) was that I couldn't face the scary cupcake girl by myself. But the three tries took about three hours before we finally got to Gar's place three hours late. Luckily it was because we got there late, cupcake girl was already deep in conversing and boasting about her cupcakes so I had nothing to fear. I kept my box closed until the end of the party.

Sadly also because we got there late, there wasn't much food left. Although while I was waiting at home, I raided some of my brother's food so I was pretty good without. We watched "Halloween" movies on tv... the scary/horror flicks and the like. Ugh Saw II/I. ;(

When there's Halloween, there's fireworks. Fireworks are only cool when you're the one playing with them. Besides that, they're annoying and loud. A bit past midnight, we made our round of noises in backyard and came back in smelling deliciously smokey. That followed with the revealing of my cupcaaakes, and the consumption of more candy, baked+salted pumpkin seeds, garlic bread (?!), pop?!

I think I'm eventually going to run out of easy costumes to do...

Then I get to go back to elaborate sewing.
Before that though, I'd probably have to get myself a sewing machine.

Halloween and Cupcakes

My plan was great. It was going to be awesome.
Bring awesomely delicious halloween-themed cupcakes to a party while being considerate to that one attending sensitive vegan, and maybe even score some additional orders from her! I imagined her awesome surprised look and then followed to indulge in the sugary goodness...

On Friday night, her facebook message noted she was making cupcakes for the party. The first ohsh- moment. Wanting to avoid having her feel upset on the night of the party, I decided to drop her an sms telling her I was bringing the same. A call came a minute later. From her.

It was an interrogation.

You're bringing cupcakes?
Why didn't you tell me?
Why are you bringing cupcakes?
How are they vegan?
How much are you bringing?

Questions and the answers that followed were filled with awkward silences.

At the end of all of it, I offered to only bring my giant box of regular sizes since she had minis. I knew it wasn't going to end happy either way at this rate, but there was no reason why I should not bring mine because she made some too. I purposely made this order and reserved it for the sake of the party.

Saturday afternoon, I get a call from someone I least expect - her again. She lets me know there's no vegetables at the party and asks if I can get some. Sure, why not but why me? Ooh, that's why...

Are you still bringing the cupcakes?

Yes.. do you not want me to?

Yes.

YES? How selfish and immature can one get? She followed to ask me what flavours I had.. and I felt bad listing it since I knew it was nothing close to what she'd be bringing (cough). I don't want to admit it either but I can bet mine will look and taste better... which is the only reason why I'd be hesitant on bringing it, but the whole reason of bringing it to begin with was for HER SAKE (and because damn our cupcakes are good - vegan/organic or not.).

WHOLE PLAN WENT DOWN THE SHIT HOLE FUCK.

Now she gets to glare at me all night.
Snap at me if I try and distribute my cupcakes.
Maybe punch them when we're not looking.
All while ruining the night's mood.

Here's hoping all my premonitions are wrong.

To hell and back...

School inevitably means frequent visits to hell.
The weekend before was one of those bad visits... Saturday and Sunday was dedicated to my soon-to-be 20+ page major research report proposal which was fortunately only a few pages in comparison. However, our marketing instructor is a stickler for proper writing, reference (APA for some reason instead of MLA) and critique.

The dread continued into Monday (luckily it was a statue holiday) and Tuesday after class when I stayed at school until closing for my final major project research proposal. I had a few hours of sleep that night before I had to wake up to get my report printed and binded before class started at 8.

Lack of sleep hooo!
Well at least the visit to hell was nicely balanced by a visit from ToFu that following weekend... and apparently he's going to be a permanent resident! :>

So I drove through the Second Narrows for the first time - the tunnel is pretty cool. North Van isn't as bad as I thought, though that one lane traffic thing they're have during construction is not very smart. The weather was relatively shat so we decided to hang around locally. I also got to see MINI for the second time in my life and the three of us roamed Daiso, had Posh and e-spot arcaded. During, we met our destined bff - Ben Posh. Oh, Ben~

The next day was visit all the stores you think you used to know but apparently does not exist anymore. It was a rather depressing. My further research has revealed me to me that indeed the import games and figure stores are dying and everything has probably moved to the internet.

Hm it seems Sty was sick when I met her. I didn't touch her but... my throat hurts now. Hm, I worry. I thought I'm H1N1 immune already. :(

Here's something to finish this off, the 20min rushedly edited video for shits and giggles.. and for marks:

FF Distant Worlds

The long awaited FF Distant Worlds concert happened in Vancouver yesterday night. I met up with el gang (Sty, Steph, Saboo, Gar, Nina, Michael) at 5:30-6 and grabbed dinner first at Earl's. We contemplated whether to get drunk before the concert so we'd feel no embarrassment screaming "Sephiroooooooooth~~" but nah, maybe at another concert. I swear we were probably half serious. The low balls were on special too.

We made our way to the Orpheum 7:30ish, met up with some other people (Val, Clara) and headed in. So about "merch"... there was this lol!book that went for $30 and it consisted of about 10 coloured pages with bits of Final Fantasy CG and artwork you'd find on the internets. I ended up getting the CD which I will probably never listen to if I didn't mention it now, so I will follow to open it and listen to it in the car later... perhaps.

The concert playlist was nothing spectacular as there was nothing out of the expected. Do I sound a bit disappointed? I am, a bit. It felt like there was too much 8 and 7, and not enough love for the other numbers. For example, where was the appreciation for 1, 2 and 3? I expected that medley to be played but it didn't happen. I suppose that got replaced by Ronfaure which isn't bad actually but the video didn't have enough rabbits, orcs and sheep to make it the Ronfaure I know (maybe I'm just asking for too much). Speaking of videos, whoever that put together the videos is a douche and did a crap job at it.

The tracks that gave me the most goosebumps and feeling were: 1. FFXI - Distant Worlds (so many CoP memories) 2. FFVII - Intro (Bombing Mission) 3. FFIX - Vamo alla Flameco. The opera scene from FFVI was pretty awesome too. The One Winged Angel encore was also expected too. There was no video footage of Sephiroth throughout the concert so it was pretty obvious. Speaking of that song, a girl who sat two seats to my left literally spazzed/flipped out when One Winged Angel started. And speaking of fangirls, the one in front of me was definitely one too. She squee'd. A lot.

During intermission we stuffed ourselves with chocolate covered marshmallows that was left from that mornings bake sale at school. I don't think food was allowed.

Uematsu Nobuo wasn't there as expected. I forgive him because he's busy with FFXIV. Hurry up and finish it already, Uematsu.

After the concert, we waited around for the place to clear a bit before we went out and then we followed to debate whether to get drinks, go to Timmy Ho's or McDix. McDix somehow won. What does TP mean on a McDonalds cup lid? Probably isn't Tactical Points or Toilet Paper.

Arnie, the FF Distant World's traveling conductor, mentioned the Square-Enix concert he helped out at and so I looked it up. Symphonic Fantasies seems to have only done two concerts so far in Germany. I'll be keeping a close eye on this and hopefully they'll go world-wide if their demand is high. I have high hopes! I'd kill to meet Mitsuda Yasunori (and Shimomura Yoko).

Feels like winter, where did autumn go?

Project milestones crunch time! This week: Video Monday, Research and presentation Tuesday, Logo redesign Thursday. Next week: Research proposal Tuesday, some group project marketing plan Tuesday, Research and presentation Wednesday.


Red bean blowfish.


Fish heads, fish heads - eat them up - yum!
As you can see, this one was really ugly though.


Cupcakes were baked. A whole crap load.

Our grad fundraising progress seems to moving along slowly. Though there's been a lot of planning and not enough doing. Cupcakes on the other hand have been doing well since it started last year but it'd be nice if our grad year was known for something else rather than good cupcakes. C'mon we're graphic designers, not bakers.

So last Saturday: "Your daughter should get her car waxed [by that acquaintance who's willing to do it for cheap]," said mom. Later that morning, dad's interpretation: "Your mom says you need to wax your car." I ask about the acquaintance guy who would do it, in which he responds: "Do you know how expensive it is? Are you going to pay for it? I know how to do it so why do I need to get someone else to do it?!" Dad forever wins.

Thanks to my mom (as always), my Saturday was dedicated to waxing my car. I am in the white collar field for a reason, Dad.


Awesome signage.

Night of Indulgence

Cheesecake crew (minus V) decided on gathering before Lisa's departure to Taiwan at the end of next month. We first watched 9, which was a pretty neat movie (Lisa: "The writer must've been playing too much LittleBigPlanet.") but the ending was pretty boring. Since the theme and the story in general wasn't very kid-friendly, they should've went all the way and made it sad instead of this half-sad-but-not-really thing. [spoiler]What's the point of a world with only dolls and 4/9th of a soul?[/spoiler]


After the movie we went to try out Gudrun, a cheese tasting room, at Steveston. It was cheese paradise. We had the waiter recommend our drinks, although we didn't do any pairings - I had a Malbec selection (06' from Vancouver, BC) for the first time and it was excellent. For the real deal, we ordered a cheese and charcuterie combo of the day which came with bread and some fruits.


After salty we, of course, craved sweet so we followed to order a Hazelnut Mousse _____ (insert dessert name for boob shape). Absolutely. DELICIOUS.


My second RMA. This time for my poor, poor, poor WD Raptor. I don't know what happened exactly but my brother killed it to the point of no recovery. It only made scary noises when being accessed. I drive analyzed it and it was reported to be indeed dead. It's only on its 3rd year (I actually couldn't believe it until I checked the receipt again) so having it die as soon as it reached my brother's fingertips was shocking and upsetting all at the same time.


カッッコイイイ！(≧∇≦)ノ

Tires

Sakuya, you've been a pain in the butt this year.

Earlier this week, I got attacked by another nail - this time in my left rear tire (last time it was my right rear tire). Unluckily for me, this one was unrepairable since she got nailed in an unfixable spot. Though it's not as simple as to replace just one tire either. Apparently the tread on my other tires are wearing out anyways (I've been on the same OEM tires since I first got the car) so yeah, it was time.

After some phone mixed with internet research earlier today, I have my tire choices narrowed. I'll go get this over and done with tomorrow morning. Tire shopping is so stressful. Why are tires so expensive??! I think my parents will have to help me with this so I feel as though I should get a job to help pay it off a bit... and here I was hoping for a school-only year.

While on the topic of driving(ish): apparently the government is considering putting a toll on the Knight Street bridge to counter the money lost from granting transit passes to university students. Tell me the relation - oh wait there is none! They're just finding any excuse they can to take more money from us and this excuse sucks just as much as the additional levy the transit people are going to put on vehicle owners/drivers because they're not transit users (WUT!). If they need a bridge to toll, go build a new one and do it!

Sleep... MOAR

Usually sleep cures most flus but apparently this nerd-mutated flu is a stubborn one.

Basically my first week of school was trying to stay/look alive. I also refrained from coughing in public since I might scare people if they heard I was at a convention that just so happened to find someone who had H1N1 and a huge chunk of the people who left were all sick too. Then again, I might be secretly and quietly killing the school (/classmates) instead.

Mornings consisted of Advil C&S and Buckley's and the nights were Nyquil. On Friday I had 15 hours of sleep (wow really) and Saturday I had an additional 11. I figured a whole weekend of sleep would probably do the trick but nope, still woke up feeling like crap. Though, now, what's left is the most nastiest cough.

Onto brighter news, I spent all Sunday building my new PC. My friend's old case was way too hot for a SLI setup plus three (doesn't even fit four) harddrives. It felt like a laundry dryer machine right after completing its cycle. As a person paranoid of overheating, I finally decided to switch back to my old computer case and swap the guts. I've finally departed with Takumi-II and gave him to my brother who has yet to even plug him in. My fingers hurt at the end from breaking apart and rebuilding two PCs but, excuse my nerdiness, but gosh it was fun~ A Sunday well spent!

Windows 7 is interesting. The new taskbar and notification area is mind boggling. I completely agree that it's an upgraded, faster Vista though. Still a serious gloss-fest though. Oh right, that's the new trend.

Aion beta came and gone. There's no way you can make an ugly character in that game (not that I've tried but why would you!). Scouts' battle screams are amazingly annoying but everything is forgiven because everyone's so pretty~ But no grind for me, thanks.

PAX 09 Report - Part 2

And the PAX Report continues...
Still getting owned by the PAX flu though...

Saturday September 5
Tried to get to the expo hall lineup earlier that morning but failed while waiting on the rest of the gang. The day's goal was L4D2.

The L4D2 lineup was already massive when we got there but we persevered. 2 hours later, it was finally our turn! It was us three plus a random guy and only Lester and I managed to survive till the end. The wait was long but it was well worth it for a game I don't plan on buying but it's plenty fun (though just like the first game!). Also controller L4D2 is a pain in the butt for me. We also get a t-shirt for our efforts but no small sizes, so that was a major disappointment!

The rest of the early afternoon was spent going around to some other game booths such as Torchwhat?! - I already forgot the name. I also bumped into Matt and his gang (well more like he found me) while hovering around what I thought was the most awesomest looking booth at the hall:


As for the rest of the afternoon, the gang decided they wanted to visit the Pike Place Market and so we did. We had, again, a late lunch and then did a whole lot of walking around the area. We headed by around 6 for some more panels. The most disappointing panel was the Aesthetics of Play Control panel which was, I thought, about the design of interfaces in video games but instead it was an hour listening to this guy's lecture about his weakly argued thesis on video games as art. WASTE. OF. TIME. I wish I went to the Giant Bomb Re-reunion Tour panel instead. Afterwards though we went to the Brodeo Reunion panel where this crazy Korean guy brought a garbage bag full of Korean snacks and shared it with the audience. Could be the start of H1N1 right there. I tried a few because I was curious but that was probably a deadly move right there.

Late night food time! Since we had no idea what to eat that night, we ended up going back to Taphouse. Matt and co joined us for dinner. This time, we had a bitchy waitress which didn't make the night all that great.

After the better panel and filling stomaches, we went to watch Jonathan Coulton perform. All of us only knew him for his Still Alive song so that's what we ended up waiting around for. His other songs were kind of funny I suppose.


The swag haul from the first two days.

Sleeping at 4am is great!

Sunday September 6
The day's goal: DIABLO 3. That was the only thing left on my mind.


I got to the lineup around 9am, my throat was feeling a bit scratchy and the line was already well formed. While they made us wait around, there was another Star Wars: The Old Republic promotion and they handed out more stuff. I nabbed myself a t-shirt because I was a small but in return I got elbowed in the head by another guy in the process.

So, Diablo 3. I decided to try Monk because of all the hype (and is a class I probably won't be playing when the game comes out anyway) and he was pretty damn cool if I must say so myself. I was sad when the words "Thanks for playing!" showed up on screen to show that my time was already up. :(

After my short but sweet moment with Diablo 3, I headed to the Game Localization panel. The panel was a bit FFXII spoilerific but besides that, it was a pretty neat insight into game localization. It was specially cool that the team (and random other staff) there worked with S-E and even on some older titles like Vagrant Story.

Checkout time at our hotel was 12, so I headed back to the hotel to do just that and meet up with the rest of my travel companions. We headed back the convention center once more for some final rounds around the expo hall. I tried out Strong Bad (d'aww strong bad~) to pass the time. Left with some extra stuff:


We were finally done by then so we did some quick shopping (or more like just Victoria's Secret :b) before taking my car back from valet to drive back to Uwajimaya. We ate at the food court and did some additional shopping. We wanted to head to the Pink Gorilla's official store so we blindly followed Neku's GPS which failed. We got fed up from the unnecessary walking and went back to my map print out to lead us there. The store was disappointing - they didn't sell any imported PSPs. The hobby shop next door was also disappointing - too many gundams, not enough figurines. Oh well, at least we tried.

Next stop was Neku's place which was in Bellevue to pick up his unwanted PC and monitor. After that, we hit the road again and made our way to the Seattle Premium outlet. There were a lot of people but it was still managable. Either there was something we liked but they didn't have our sizes or the stuff we liked did not have any sales - go figure. At the end, I was the only one who managed to get something. My throat, by then, was feeling more painful than before.

We made our way to the border to find 9 lines open which was wow but no wonder the traffic wasn't as bad as we thought. The heavy rain and strong winds were not very helpful though. On our way to Lester's place, we stopped at Wings for cheap Sunday wings which was awesome. I soothed my throat with tea but the groggy feeling that was building up couldn't be remedied. After driving everyone home though, I managed to get to my own home by 2am. I then noticed that the PC I brought home scratched up my car interior. My heart ached but what's done is done. I can only stare and cry. When I got inside, I also noticed a bit of a fever.

After all that, I figured I just must be tired from all the driving, irregular eating schedule, lack of sleep, etc which made me a little sickly. Who would've thunk there's actually a number of people getting sick from PAX. There's even a case of H1N1 as well. Talk about bad luck. One retard probably ruined it for us all.

I spent all Monday feeling dreadful. All the sleep I forced myself to do did not help but I am still drugging myself on a daily basis. Even if it was early H1N1, I think I fended it off pretty well but then again, I'm not getting any better. I'll probably head to the doctor on the weekend if it doesn't brighten up.

EDIT: Yay Happy Birthday Blogger! New features!

PAX 09 Report - Part 1

SOU TIRED. SOU SICK.

So I returned with the PAX nerd flu and I'm feeling pretty damn crappy because of it. Looks like some people has contracted more serious symptoms which lead to H1N1 apparently. It doesn't help that I have a proposal summary to write for Wednesday and the first day of classes was a full 9 hour lecture-intensive day.

I figured I'm going to be long winded like I usually am so I'm making this report a 2 parter.

Thursday Sept 3
The gang aimed for 10am. I got to the first stop to pick up Gar and Saboo at 10, though I waited in the car for 30 mins for them to get ready. Got out of Vancouver and headed to Burnaby to pick up bastard friend Lester (he's a bastard friend because he made me drive alll the way to his place in BURNABY which is not on the way at all to Seattle) and even got lost on the way, following HIS directions. We finally do get to his place at 11 and so we were finally on our way.

The Peace Arch lineup wasn't as bad as the radio reported and only took about a half n hour or so to get through. We stopped at Jack in the Box for a late lunch and ate a 1200 caloried sammich plus a medium drink (= our large; oops forgot their sizes are all BIGGER). I should've weighted myself before the trip.

Going down a freeway at 120km/h doesn't feel all that fast actually. At first I was frightened that I'd have to follow the speeds of a crazy American driver but now I think I've become used to the speeding. Hm, that's dangerous.

We finally arrive in downtown Seattle sometime around 3 and decided to visit Uwajimaya for some snacks and the such for the weekend. After we got our fill of asian goodness, we headed to our hotel (the Roosevelt) and dropped off our stuff. The old furniture smell took a while to get used to but the place wasn't bad. Also, the window in our room was openable from the 15th floor... a perfect suicide/spiderman location. The room didn't have a fridge (nor a safe) so we had to make do with the sink which became our wicked cooler for the weekend. After the break we picked up our badges at the Hyatt which is GAWD pretty inside, did a stroll around the convention and then headed to Cheesecake Factory for dinner.


I actually wasn't at all hungry after the 1200 calorie lunch.

With lots of time left to spare, we then hung out at Gameworks for all you can play from 10-12 for $10 which was a sweet deal. It felt like Playdium all over again. The best game was "Let's Go! Jungle" which was unexpected awesomeness.

South Park and sake kept us entertained at night.

Friday Sept 4
Come morning, we made our way to the expo hall first as it opened at 10, grabbing swag left and right. Met up with Neku sometime in the middle of it all. A few games I remember trying Friday: Aion (I made a loli), Quake Arena (felt like any other Quake), Doofus (what a boring, doofus game), Fallen Earth and our "Skittles", Champions Online and "Skittlette", Nostalgia, Dungeon Fighter Dragon Nest (kicking is great), Army of Two 2, Little Big Planet PSP, Divinity 2 (more like watching the guy play but really pretty!)...

PS: Tritton Technologies' headset apparently makes your brain work better!


I had no guts to ride this bullhorse ride.


Only found in the girls' washroom. Who would want to use this on their behind though?!

I did attempt to join on an MMO panel but the line was already massively long so yeah I gave up on it. Later that afternoon we regrouped and headed to the food court at Westlake for a super late lunch. After we took a break at the hotel before heading out again for the DS World Record Attempt.


Look at everyone feverishly playing their DS! I cheated and used my PSP at the same time.

After the strange little mad DS playing gathering, we headed to the 1UP Yours Panel to get lined up and met up with Gar who was already waiting in line. The panel started late and ended up finishing at midnight but it was well worth it. Very good discussions and humour. I ended up snagging myself the limited Muramasa tentacle rape print t-shirt because I just so happened to fit into a small and that was what they had.

We stopped by the concert hall on the way out and listened to a bit of Metroid Metal... meh. We went to the Taphouse for late night food and drinks. The place is pretty awesomely good. Headed to bed around 3ish. Who needs sleep at a convention!? :V

PAX Ready

So PAX is happening this weekend and since it's my first, I'm not sure how to prepare for it. Unlike an anime convention, I don't know my industry people as well as I think I should. However, there are a number of interesting panels I think I will attempt to visit though I hear they get packed quite quickly which may be troublesome. Of course, there's the expo hall to look forward to. You can't go wrong with shopping and game playing. DIABLO 3. K fine and other stuff too.

We'll be heading out tomorrow morning. Will be back Sunday night.

Then I gotta work on my major project proposal when I get back... ugh, will deal with that after the fun.

Also using this post to test out the "Link" feature.

K off to go play more DoW2.

Bakudanyaki

I visited the night market the other day and found a particularly new stand by the food section. They called themselves Tenkuuuu... Bakudanyaki! (seriously, it sounds like a SFIV move)


Doesn't it sound super exciting though? So of course, we went and bought one. The one that was labeled "Special" with the ingredients "??? - ???". To our dismay, the price tag was not "???" as well but at least that meant the secret ingredients had to be unlocked.


Verdict: A giant takoyaki.

It didn't look particularly appetizing in its takeout box and as for taste, if you like takoyaki, you can get this jumbo sized one. They had little extra bits of different things inside which I suppose helped differentiate it from an actual takoyaki. Having one of these right after all you can eat sukiyaki is not particularly smart either.

I looked into this Bomb-Yaki and found out that it's a Vancouver creation and their main store is located in an obscure location in Richmond. They only seem to show up at the night market on Fridays and we just so happened to catch them that night. However, 5 bucks (or as they wrote on their sign: 500 cents) for a giant takoyaki is a bit steep despite how filling it may be.

Oh Mondays...

This has absolutely nothing to do with it being a Monday but it all happened on a Monday so there.

Got to work to find a young seagull dead behind the fenced area at work. Kind of sad. My new supervisor's kid (who sometimes comes over to waste her summer time away) visited and made it a paper plaque and tapped it on the fence edge. She named it Mimi. Then again, we've been getting a few trapped baby seagulls in the fenced area as of late. Seems like they fall right off the roof where their nests are (thus why I always have so much birdSHIT! on my car) and being unable to fly out, they get stuck. We've been releasing them as fast as we see them and yet...

A new lady showed up today who's apparently going to be taking my place when I leave. How come I'm not surprised they picked an old lady as opposed to all the young'uns who applied. (btw, it's because it's less likely the old ones will jump ship) Anyway, she's a pretty nice lady who's Mandarin fluent and has pretty decent English... but because work's been dead the past few days, there was absolutely nothing to do. I tried to talk about work stuff for a bit but she probably can't retain all that information without actually having some hands-on experience. It was prolly boring as hell for her to sit beside me while I tried not to surf on the net (but there was nothing else...!). Uh should I have offered my computer? I'm not sure what I should've done. What is to happen tomorrow?!

Before speaking of tomorrow, on my drive home from work I felt my car do a little "tug" and then soon after I noticed my engine light on. ?! I ripped out my car manual then tried to flip to the right section on the rest of my way back but didn't get to the right page until I got into the garage. It's either related to a connection to the electricity or gas. I got out of the car and the garage reeked of gasoline. Bad sign. Really bad. Don't blow up on me, please. I called the service and found out they were busy all week. Well, I'm too scared to drive my car and busing to work will probably require me to leave home by 6:30am so I think I'll want this fixed asap. I'm going to take some hours off tomorrow morning to see if there are any well timed cancellations. Don't blow up on my way there, please. I promise I won't speed, I swear.

Eventful August Days

It's August and that means school is approaching soon (nuooo~)... The week itself has been eventful and busy and it wasn't until today I finally get to just bum around and just savor being one.

Work has all of a sudden become rather busy - my new supervisor put in an ad into the Chinese newspaper to find more permanent warehouse workers to replace the ones the previous psychotic supervisor hired who were mostly summer only workers. Everyday we'd get about 20 or so calls from all sorts of people for the job and only on Friday did we start bringing them in for brief interviews to screen them. I think the weirdest candidates I saw right before I left Friday were these two old couples (almost old enough to be my grandparents) who brought their grandkid with them. And no, it wasn't the grandchild who was applying, it was the COUPLE.

On top of all the insane number of calls, some of the customers who still use a portion of our warehouse to store things also decided to move their stuff out as well. I, who suddenly became in charge of that, had to fumble around to do counting, invoicing and arrangements... it didn't help that I had never done it before either.

Friday night was also, hrm, in a sense, interesting as well. My brother told us that he might introduce his girlfriend to us "casually" that evening. Casually which was not dining out I suppose. We gave him a call to see if they were coming by and he said no. Later in the late evening, past dinner, and we figured that she wouldn't be showing up that night at all. Considering the time of night, I went to shower and get into more comfortable clothing. After I was done, I heard noise outside my door and I figured it was my dad and brother talking as usual. I quickly wrapped a turban towel over my wet hair and half put on my top (half being not completely on) and swung open the door to find his girlfriend from across the my brother's room smiling at me.

Being dumbfounded at first and just staring back, my brother walks by and asks me what I was wearing and I followed to answer that it was obviously my PJs. Awkwardly, I kinda waved to her, said hi, then said I think I'll go back into my room now... and so I did. It will be dangerous around the house from now on. Since she's already seen me in my PJs, which I'd think is safe to say that it's one of the most casual way of meeting a person for the first time, I greeted her again in my PJs today as I bummed at home. She greeted me back and laughed, so I think we're cool.

Continuing the ever so eventful weekend theme... Saturday morning, Moni, Braman and myself headed down to Chinatown for some Chinatown festival. We found parking and then had dim sum at Floata where we got tricked into eating a $16 coldplate! I didn't know that Floata still had the old school pushcarts so we waited around impatiently for food (since they didn't do special orders either!). After the decent lunch, we headed to the actual festival which was basically the MORNING nightmarket as there were all the same stands. There was this one Korean table that gave out free mini pottery pots and all you had to do was lineup for one (and so we did). While we waited, there was this European (?!) lady who sang country songs on the stage for her awesome audience made up of old Chinatown grandparents. After we got our pots, we went to my friend's bun stand (http://www.bonchaz.com) where we helped buy and eat some expensive buns. $2 a bun is pricy. At least it's good.

After the festival, I went home to drop off my pot and headed out to Matt's annual BBQ party at his place. When I got there, the guys were trying to put up a tarp over his porch in fear of rain. After watching the futile attempt, they gave up and forgot about it. They started cooking late but people came in late too expecting the food to be ready by the time they arrived which is smart thinking. The mandarin speaking group their own thing and played some board game in their corner while another group played rockband with only two instruments. Other groups were scattered everywhere, chatting and getting drunk. The types of people that were there were so varied, I wasn't actually sure where to be. I tried to keep myself busy eating but I could only eat so much. When most of the people had gone, the insane drunkards began going head to head on SF Puzzle Fighter. It was hilarious (and painful) watching drunk people play a game that was supposedly fastpaced.

Someone tried to get me drunk. NOPE wasn't going to happen.

Fireworks 2009 - Part 2

The fireworks has come and gone. Also means summer is close to its end...

Wednesday July 29, 2009 - UK
I had work that morning so I met up with Monica again at the sky train station after work. We ended up getting White Spot to go again just because we were indecisive on what to eat. When we arrived, everyone was already there so we relieved them from their post to go grab food for a bit. Sty decided to show up this time yay! The evening went by pretty quickly. There was the usual ungrateful bastardous crowd who did not say anything when we purposely gave up some of our beach space to them, and due to the massive crowd that showed up that night, most of us decided to stay standing for the show. Man, standing on uneven ground is tiring.

UK's performance was really symphonic (and even epic at times) which I really liked but the rest of the group thought otherwise.

Saturday August 1, 2009 - China
Wow August. That morning, Moni and I woke up early to ensure we'd get down to the beach earlier so that Sty won't end up getting mad at us for not showing up on time. On our way out, I was informed that Sty was waiting for Saboo to get ready so ok, they'd get there all around the same time as us - 11:30 was the plan. On our way down to the beach, we picked up Greek to go from Stephos and that was when I got a call from Saboo telling us that Sty was frantically looking for her beach stuff. *headdesk* Either way, me and Moni took our time walking down the rest of the way. We didn't have any camp items (e.g. mat, towels, umbrellas) so we just sat by our designated log until reinforcements arrived an hour or so later. At least the Greek was enjoyable... the bee that kept pestering us - not so much.

I brought out the beach monster and poked at the PSP for a while before more people came. Then the sun just made me sleepy and tired but dinnertime was approaching so me and Mo went for a walk and food. We got ourselves giant slurpee drinks to ensure no dehydration and also found ourselves a hidden gem restaurant which served fish and chips. When we got back, camp suddenly became 5 people more crowded (hm we had 15 people total?). It's good that we always make more space than we really need to accommodate unexpected people.

The night went on with cards and observing this poor guy who met this one girl for 5 months and came up from Seattle just to see her for the weekend. The poor part is that the girl doesn't seem at all interested in him and instead she makes him jealous by being more touchy and friendly with this other guy. But that other guy is not interested in her in a love way so he tries to make her disinterested by talking with some other girl. Complicated? I thought so too.

This year, China was back with vengeance because last year was obviously rigged. Their music lineup was quite unique and unexpected. They featured some orchestral, some tribal-style and yes, that Kung-Fu Fighting song BUT remixed version so it wasn't all THAT typical of them. The performance itself was creative and I even noticed they used some fireworks I've never seen before (or never noticed perhaps?). It was a shame the wind wasn't blowing in their favour that night. The smoke from the explosions mostly remained stationary and didn't move much so it blocked some of the fireworks. China still ended up winning the competition between the four countries so all was still well.

FF Distant Worlds Tickets~

Look what came in the mail! :D

The Clean Room Tour

Once every so often I suddenly get the urge to clean my room. The last two heatwave days were one of those every so often days. Strangely enough, in 35°C weather, I was even more determined to get the place cleaned up. Though I must admit, I was even more motivated after looking at the "show your otaku room" thing happening over at DC.com where people basically showed off their awesome geeky collections. Compared to them, my collection is laughable. I admire their pretty glass cases. They don't need to worry about this despicable thing called DUST. I also considered a before and after picture but considering I'm a girl, I don't think that would be appropriate. Hey, I don't know what you're thinking right now but don't go there.

Also more recently and a little bit more off topic, I began putting some effort into placing more images in my posts. As a blog reader myself, I finally (finally? really? took me 8 years to get it through my dense head I guess) figured that just straight blog posts with heavy text (since I'm a rambling long-air blog poster) would probably be boring as eff. So! to make that work better, I had to switch blog layouts to give me a wider blog posting area. The area before was restricting like hell, making me only post dinky photos... hoping this solves that. I'll probably do more layout tweaking when I'm not so lazy. K, let's do this.


Figures area which is unfortunately already too full for more.


A portion of my Pinky: st family.


The secondary figures area which is, uh, full too.


I'm proud of my Gloomy.


I don't consider myself a real daimakuradakimakura owner until I get a full size big one.


I haven't made room for the two figures sitting awkwardly at the top of my CD stand. Not sure if I ever will.


Convention badge history.


Digimans and Pokemans.


This is the first place that gets messy. You can just start imagining the mountain that will start building itself in the next few days.

I was also told to get myself an LCD already so I can make even more room. My CRT was 'dying' at a certain point this one time (strange high pitched noise plus the rare but happens blank screen when freshly booted up) but it seemed to have recovered itself at the moment so I'll try and delay having to get a new monitor as much as I can. Besides, there's plenty of other priorities (like wow, I fell in love with this!).


So... I buy a lot of manga and they get stored under my bed because - pfft - who needs a bookshelf?! It's close to full (yes, the back has reached the wall and you are looking the edge of the frontline) so I gotta start figuring out where to store them next.

And that ends the mini tour. I also have posters but my walls have been tame since my last room overhaul.

Here's a bonus photo:

LOL SH!T LOAD OF [UNOPENED] VIDEO GAMES