March 26, 5:00PM

I've been sitting here figuring out how to write this. Let's start with this morning.

I had a rather exciting dream yesterday (this morning?). It was heavily influenced by Tales of Vesperia (gahahaha!). In the dream, I wanted to break away from the rules of society so I created my own guild. My guild grew to be the most powerful guild in the world. There were plans for my assassination because I was just that powerful and it was believed that someone in our own guild was trying to betray me. There was a conference/speech scheduled to happen (with other guilds/the world), so I went to join my appointed guild commanders who were already there. I didn't know which side they were on so I randomly went left and there they were. My commanders were made up of some of my irl friends, though I only remember seeing Simon and Jason. I had a hunch that Jason was the one who betrayed me so I interrogated him. He continued to be suspicious by avoiding eye contact and refusing to answer my questions. The speech was about to start so I fixed my seat on the front row (there were only three rows, my dudes were on the 2nd and 3rd). The first row was empty so I sprawled myself across 4-5 seats.

The speech began and more of my people lined up across the stage. Then my 2nd-in-command who was called Gary for some reason (but had no face I recognized) announced himself as the new guild leader, which was actually my plan. Apparently that saves the guild and me and all the problems get resolved.

Now that I was an anybody, I roamed around freely. I used my car to travel to places (my irl car) but this one time my car gets electrocuted by lightning with me in it, but I was fine. My car stops working but apparently lightning is common in that area so I was not surprised. The next thing you know, I was on one of those one-footed scooters standing in a river of other one-footed scooter riders and one of the opposing enemy guild members (who was Korean for some reason) recognized me in the crowd. I guess she didn't like me. I swear there was more to it, but that's as far as my memory goes.

Ok, back to reality. I woke up again at 8 and was like ugh school so I forced myself up and arrived at the academia at 9:30. That morning I struggled with CSS amnesia due to my rustiness. I should really go back to some good ol' coding.

On my way home after school, I got a call from a Withheld number who was actually a girl who tried to steal my identity. The whole conversation was in mandarin unless otherwise stated:

Me: (English) Hello?
Girl: (English) Hello, do you speak Chinese?
Me: (English) Yes.
Girl: [really fast mandarin I didn't understand]
Me: I don't understand. Can you speak Cantonese?
Girl: Oh you speak Cantonese. Can you understand Mandarin?
Me: A little bit.
Girl: Where do you live?
Me: What? I don't understand why you're asking me...
Girl: Where do you live? Vancouver? Richmond?
Me: [ugh fine see what she's up to] uh, Vancouver
Girl: Where do you work?
Me: I don't work.
Girl: Where do you work?
Me: I have no work; I'm a student. Hey, I'm driving, can you call me back later?
Girl: Oh you're driving?
Me: Yes.
Girl: Oh okay, what's your last name?
Me: Uh..... I don't understand why you're...
Girl: What's your last name?
Me: Cheung.. maybe.
Girl: Your last name is Cheung? What is your first name?
Me: ......
Girl: Hello? What's your first name? Hello?
Me: *hangs up*

K, so I was kind of slow in realizing that, oops, shit!, this person isn't normal and I have no idea why I went with it. I was plenty confused and I just went with the flow without realizing. It was my first time experiencing something like this so it caught me off guard. Those identity thieves, they're tricky. (Or just that I'm just that dumb...) Luckily I don't think I have anything important registered to my cell phone number, assuming that's the only thing they got ahold of.

When I got home after an afternoon of errands (at ~5pm), I got a call from my aunt telling me that my grandma passed away. It was way too sudden considering my parents saw her the day before, but it was obvious that she was weakening drastically the past week. My mom and I waited for my dad and bro to come home early and we headed to the hospital where she passed. My Auntie Lily, and two cousins were already there. It was a relief to know that she passed away peacefully (rather than painfully) during one of her regular heimo-something appointments (manual kidney cleaning with blood). The nurse who assisted her throughout the day told us her last moments and we regret that not one of us were there to see her off. Her body was already failing quickly throughout the day and we were told that she did not show any weakness or pain... though, it was just her personality to not show or express that. It wasn't until we did a short prayer, I felt a pierce in my heart and I couldn't control my tears.

Dinner followed. Seems like there are plans for getting things organized and tidying up tomorrow and I'll be helping out with that. Surprisingly, my grandpa is coming back for the ceremony. A side note, we've been trying to get him to move back here permanently but there has been no progress.

I seem to be taking it slightly better than I expected, though this is the third time now. I'm glad there's something like this (blog) around for me to just dump my brains out on.

Skies of Arcadia Legends: 99.8% Completion, doh D:

Pulled out and dusted off the GC for this game. I said I'd play this game eventually, so now it has finally happened. A miracle it is! With a new pair of batteries for the wavebird, I only wish there was another game I want to play on the GC so it's not wasted on just one game... but anyway, I'll concern myself with that later.

Story - 3.5/5
Surprisingly I enjoyed the whole idea of sky pirates, as opposed to the real world sea and that there really is no "land". So the story follows Vyse, a newbie pirate who wants to sail the world, encounters mysterious girl on a mission and decides to help her and in turn he CAN sail the world (and save it) while doing it. The story itself wasn't very deep and the devastating events that do happen don't feel particularly devastating like it should. It could be because basically everyone is so extremely positive, absolutely nothing can go wrong... and if it does, no worries, we can overcome it! That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it sure makes the story a bit less realistic, thus in turn making it less engaging (for me anyway).

However upon saying that, I noticed myself playing it continuously... less for the story but more for the journey to that part of the story. That will fall under gameplay.

There were a few lolwut? moments like sailing into space and still breathing! and our ship can destory a planet-sized monster/creature/thing!

Characters - 2.5/5
Speaking of engaging, I didn't feel much connection with the characters. Again probably because of the absolutely blinding positivity everyone radiated. I won't say it was completely positive throughout the whole game... Ramirez, Belleza and Drachma had darker moments.

About the three main protagonists though... There was little to no character development. They came as they are, they left as they are. That's probably my main gripe with the characters. Vyse is the perfect hero - good looking, cool, strong, smart, a leader - the guy's flawless. Aika is the hyper happy spontaneous girl and Fina is her opposite. They balance each other out a bit too well perhaps. There was nothing really "deep" with any of them.

It was too obvious there was a triangle relationship happening with the three main characters too but at the same time, they're too friendly with each other to have anything really happen. If the story were to continue, I bet Vyse would end up with someone completely different.

Gameplay - 4.5/5
Now, the gameplay was deep. Deep as in there was a whole lot of stuff you can do.

Battles revolved around Spirit Points. At the beginning of every turn, you automatically get a certain amount. Unused points get carried over to the next "round". Casting spells and special moves relied heavily on those points, so as soon as you figured out how spirit points works, battles were relatively easy. I'd end up using the same set of moves all the time (magic protection, damage halved, charge up, unleash deadly move, rinse and repeat) which made it a bit, dare I say, boring. There were still difficult battles outside of the main storyline as sidequests so I still had my fill of challenges.

Some fun challenges were some of the ship battles. It still required a whole crap load of spirit points to do things but the fighting tactics offered variation.

A negative on gameplay was the pacing during battles, may it be with people or ship battles. You had to watch your ship circle around the enemy a few dozen times before the round was over or watch your player run to the enemy for a point blank gun shot (lol Gilder)... The little animations felt unnecessary and it all just made the game go slower than it should. At least you can skip special move animations, but not spells and the enemies' special moves D: ....

Traveling is a bit of a bitch too. I got lost so often, it's not even funny. However the book of polarity was godsend and made traveling a little less stressful.

Side quests were greatly fun. Cham collecting, moonfish collecting, ship battling, wanted battle battling, fishing if you care... even though the story lacked, the extra content there was there made it more worthwhile.

This game also seems to like to fight with me for the best camera position. Some camera positions are rather questionable and usually leaves me pretty frustrated.

Sound - 3.5/5
The voices were lol and benefitted little for being there. It gave an idea of the certain character's personality a bit more but the character design themselves spoke more than the voices themselves. Considering the date of this game, I'll let it pass.

The GC version is well known to have the shitty BGM version compared to the DC and true, it did sound pretty old school. It made the game feel more ancient than it really was. Trading the bgm for new content... eeh, a little iffy but the content did give the game a new level of difficulty.

Some tracks totally had a Wild ARMs vibe, which makes me wonder if either party found inspiration from each other... Either way, I found myself loving those tracks in particular :b

I also noticed this one sound glitch during battle. Some random person's battle grunt noise would be heard from nowhere during battle sometimes. Often occurs before a player's turn.

Graphics - 3/5
I'm surprised at the draw distance in this game (during ship sailing). I often found discoveries by paying attention to the smallest specs in the far distance.

Speaking of draw distance and just rendering in general, there were quite a few graphical glitches here and there. Walls would disappear (Dangral or Soltis, I think) and Aika would fall from the sky after that 12 spirit point special move. Nothing major but it sure makes the same less solid.

Less about glitches... the actual character renders were a bit kiddy. Kind of reminds of the issue Tales of Legendia had where characters look younger than they should. Facial expressions were kept anime-style which made it a little awkward looking but I got used to it afterwards. Again, considering the age of this game, I will let it pass!

Overall - 3/5
Indeed at 99.8%, it's frustrating as hell, but it cannot be helped. I seemed to have missed a treasure chest (and I bet I know which one) that is unattainable now that prevents me from getting the "Vyse the Legend" title which is a bit of a shame.

The ending was more or less predictable 'cept the wtf giant planet. I was expecting a bit more to the ending boss... and the planet didn't cut it, sorry.

If only the game was a bit more deeper in terms of story and character. The ending was almost a bit like Suikoden... in fact, the whole crew collecting and base creating was very Suikoden. Speaking of base creating, I wish there were more customization options. I should, like, pull out a Sim game just to relieve myself of that urge.

Shopping... and things

I want this SHIRT http://www.hlj.com/product/CSP35279 to go with this figurine to finish the set. Here's hoping I can find the figurine, at least, at AX(it isn't released until August 09 D:). I might just have to buy that t-shirt online.. like, NOW. Or soon...... maybe. I'll probably rarely (to never) wear it, like my Monster Hunter geek shirt but still. COSPA IS EVIL. They stuff needs to be more accessible.

While on the topic of shopping and the such, this year I'll be aiming for either Rocker version Haruhi or/and Kasumi or/and Sumika. I figure my budget will only allow maybe two out of the four. I've given up on fate/unlimited codes version Saber and a few others, so the list is better already!

And I'm having a designer's block right now. I should be working diligently on my homework right now, doing serious overhauls on my work but NO GOOD. I ended up ONLINE WINDOW SHOPPING INSTEAD AGRGHHGAGH.

LJ Posts Import Complete!

Alright! About 150 some odd posts from my LJ has been successfully imported. I've scanned through to toss out the really, really worthless posts (which was about ~200 posts or so) and saved ones that seemed to have some sort of worth. I've probably mentioned this before when I was tagging my old blog posts from Forevermore, but man, during the early LJ years, I was such an annoying teenybopper. So many of these effing ^_^ ^^ faces plus lots of spazzgasmic posts that went on like HOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!

It was quite difficult to go through, but I like how this blog has truly become the main blog/diary of me. I don't think anyone would want to read something from 2001, but for some reason if you do decide to, you were forewarned.

Also, I think I'll start doing more memes again now. I forgot how amusing they actually are. Not to mention, such time wasters. It's great!

Marchtastic

Before I start typing away at my review on Skies of Arcadia Legends and while taking a break from posting up (aka. tagging) my old LJ entries, let's talk about this week and stuff in general.

I suddenly had this itch to clean yesterday night, at like, 1am SO I went and cleaned out the whole front room that used to be my computer room, which used to be the gaming room, which also used to be my brother's room before that. The room's now a giant closet slash the place where I put all my empty figurine packaging. The room was once piled messily with huge empty boxes (my computer parts, my mom's laptop box, my mom's massage machine box) and clothes but now they're neatly sorted and organized thanks to moi. I then followed to vacuum the place the next morning (earlier this morning). My room was recently cleaned too... Hm, I should seriously take a picture of it before it piles up again.

The server my domains are currently sitting on is officially mine. My friend (Mike) who was sharing it with me for the last 10? years has decided to give up on it for good. It'll be a bit of a toll on my wallet, being unemployed and all still but I will continue to keep it. I am considering hosting other people to balance off the bill but I don't know anyone who needs it. That just means I'll need to work harder to find a job... that is, if I'm aiming for both AX and PAX...

Speaking of which, AX days planned are July 1 - 7. Just waiting on more better hotel announcements and Shi2 to hurry up and find time off to buy plane tickets. Not to mention, they need more guest announcements. Effing smile.dk, Yamaguchi Kappei and Nozomu Sasaki's appearance at sakuracon d-doesn't faze me one bit...!!

PAX's "limited number of badges" is a bit concerning... But budget is not confirmed so I better not yet.Semester end approaches and I've got some serious revamping to do for most of the projects I've done thus far. Been quite unsatisfied with how most of them have turned out so I'll be (hopefully) dedicating this weekend to do just that.

While on the topic of projects, my upcoming portfolio revamp turns out to be the same colours I used in my current. I was having trouble figuring out what colours "suited" me, and my classmate kept urging me to use orange because I was an "orange person." She can imagine me wearing orange (I have no orange clothes) and said it was perhaps it was because my hair is orange?! Either way, I didn't accept such a crappy answer so I kept looking for a colour combo. I somehow ended up poking around the Pantone community and (re)encountered the colorology page to find that my colour was indeed orange. That wasn't the only thing... Back at school, while I was working on my portfolio, I began looking at my old portfolio site just to see what stuff I plan on keeping and in fact, I've forgotten that my page was actually already orange. So finally, hey, what the heck, sure orange it is. So it's official, I'm orange.

Stereotype Meme

I just realized that my LJ was often used as a meme/quiz dump. I guess I'll start dumping some that seem amusing enough to keep here.

Amusing meme.. ready.. go!

Tsunderekko
[x] You come off as sort of aloof to other people.
[x] In public, you intentionally refrain from showing much weakness.
[x] You have a secret obsession with something cute.
[ ] You pretend that you hate your crush even though you really love him/her.
[x] You blush when people point out your sensitivites.
[ ] You blush when people tell sexual jokes.
Total: 4

Yanderekko
[ ] You’re very sweet and kind in public.
[ ] When romance becomes a topic of discussion, people say your personality changes drastically.
[ ] You know some sort of martial art, swordplay, or otherwise.
[ ] You have a crush who you’d literally kill for.
[x] You have a pet-peeve that makes you snap.
[ ] Bipolar?
Total: 1

Meganekko
[ ] You have glasses.
[ ] You can sometimes be clumsy, ditzy, or absent-minded.
[ ] You are always very polite in your speech.
[x] You are fairly intelligent in some field.
[ ] You take discipline seriously.
[x] You have some sort of fetish for something.
Total: 2

Tsukkomi
[x] You have a friend who often makes dumb or embarrassing remarks.
[x] You smack/beat up this friend in some way.
[x] You do your best to maintain a calm facade, only to be thwarted by this friend.
[ ] If you & your friend were a yin-yang, you’d be the “yang”.
[ ] You swear a lot.
[ ] You try to bring out the more serious side of your ridiculous friend.
Total: 3

Boke
[ ] You often make silly or embarrassing comments.
[ ] You like annoying the heck out of your best friend.
[ ] You often get beaten up by your friend in some way, but you take it in good stride.
[ ] If you & your friend were a yin-yang, you’d be the “yin”.
[x] You are normally very laidback and carefree.
[ ] You try to bring out the happier side of your angry friend.
Total: 1

Nadeshiko
[ ] You are always, almost overly polite.
[x] You love traditional Japanese culture.
[ ] You often wear either a kimono, yukata (summer cotton kimono), or apron.
[ ] You’re an excellent cook.
[ ] You are hardly ever angry.
[ ] You have really long hair.
Total: 1

Tomboy Character
[x] You feel comfortable in boy’s clothing.
[ ] You have short hair
[x] You have a crush whom you act friendly with rather than romantically.
[ ] You are really good at sport/s.
[ ] You are admired by girls and boys for your talents, though you’re sort of in denial.
[ ] You show your girly features on rare occasions.
Total: 2

Sexy Character
[ ] Your bust/package is...formidable.
[ ] You like making sexual innuendos.
[ ] You encourage trips to the beach, pool, or onsen.
[ ] There are some sexual things that you are ignorant to or need explained to you.
[ ] You’re an expert cosplayer.
[x] You like the taste of alcohol.
Total: 1

And at last...Lolita/Shota Character
[ ] You like sweets or chocolate.
[x] You adore cute things and/or the word “kawaii”. (Super Kawaii~)
[ ] You use Japanese suffixes like “-chan,” “-tan,” “-sempai,” etc...
[ ] You add unnecessary suffixes to the ends of your sentences, like “nyo,” “nyu,” “un,” etc...
[x] You are considered gullible or naive.
[ ] You have a tall/powerful friend who protects you.
Total: 2

I'm not surprised I'm tsundere.
Wait, that feels a bit weird to acknowledge...

Retsu Talk About FOOD - Part 2

I've been eating out a lot lately, and it's been hurting my no-income wallet a bit, but hey I have more to add to this food talk.

So we had the new ramen place I mentioned on Sunday with Team Cupcakes (school group project people). G-men was the name. No, there were no men catering, except doing the cooking. The inside felt very much like their other store, Gyoza King in DT, but the theme here was ramen. The bar area was designed to look like a ramen stand which held a HDTV broadcasting old school kungfu vids. Vee couldn't stop staring at the actor's rather protruding pecs.

About the food, I'm a salty person so the not-as-salty-as-Kintarou's-ramen was not as good, but it was decent. The bowls were not as ginormous, so I wasn't insanely full after which is a good and bad thing ;D... The place was surprisingly packed and I recall they did little to no marketing (aka. ads) but the AzN people just poured in like it's been around forever.

Tuesday (yesterday) I had AYCE Hot Pot at Top Gun with mo2 and shi2. Insanely much food and yet we still went for bubble tea afterward.

Earlier today, I had a three course lobster meal at the Boathouse for Lisa's bday and - gawd - it was awesomely good. Bisque, then sirloin+lobster bits (that was perfectly medium rare like I wanted it), then finished with a chocolate mud pie. Oh, and you can't forget the ENDLESS BREAD HURHUR!

Cough, I'm a bit sick in the throat too and somehow got a cut inside my mouth (stings like a bitch) but that doesn't stop me from having good food! Now I just sound (and feel) like a pig.

I'll write about other stuff I wanted to talk about tomorrow. I better stop slacking and get to bed for class early tomorrow morning.

Let's talk about FOOD

Every week, me and my group of classmate friends have been visiting new and old restaurants throughout the lower mainland. Usually we manage one a week. I must say, we've been quite ambitious and tried quite a few places.

Today we had Posh, not exactly new nor first time, but exceptionally awesome - all you can eat sukiyaki. I think most of us are in a food coma right about now.

However! For first timers, we tried Ebisu downtown. The food was awesome except our fried potatoes were forgotten and we agreed to wait an additional 30-45 minutes for them!

Also downtown, we had Kintarou and Guu with Garlic. We actually wanted to eat at the organic ramen place next door instead of Kintarou but they were closed. I've yet to try the organic one... :/

Oh, we also had Himalayan food too. Or.. so I thought.. it was pretty Indian to me.

I only went out for one dinner for Dine Out Vancouver this year. We decided on the Shaughnessy Restaurant in Vandusen Gardens and it was actually not bad. The plates were small but surprisingly filling. I wasn't able to finish my creme brulee D:

A new ramen shop is opening at Continental Centre where there used to be pho restaurant. That's probably where we wanna try next... if it ever decides to open.

While still on the topic of food, king crab cheap season has arrived. I've already had it three times this year.. <_<;; That's not necessarily a bad thing though. ;b

Odin Sphere: bounded to prophecies

Odin Sphere was one of those games I had no plan on playing anytime soon, considering all the other games that had priority for various reasons. A friend suggested it because it was nice and short. And it was Atlus. Atlus seems to do no wrong nowadays huh.

Story - 5/5
I'm a sucker for mythologies and the such so the story was excellent. Basically a prophecy foretold the end of the world and all the nations were part of it (in saving or destroying). But then there were cute romantic relationships with all the main characters that made every couple so canon. The good ending was bittersweet, and the additional ending made it even sweeter. The game made it so you played through a particular character's point of view, and then had you play through another persons. At the end, you were able to put all the pieces together to form the big picture.

Characters - 5/5
I don't think there was a single character I came to dislike in this game (bad guys don't really count because you're supposed to hate them :b). At first you would hate a particular someone until you played through their story to find out their background and why the scene happened the way it did. Though I think my favourite character is Ingway and yet he's not a playable character. It seems as though he could've been a playable character too (just to balance off the guy vs girl ratio). I swear it's not because I'm entranced by his awesome Morikubo Shoutarou voice (<_<)... As I mentioned, the couples were all so fit for each other. When does that really ever happen eh...

Gameplay - 4.5/5
Everyone complains about this - LAG. It's the strangest thing to happen in this game, and yet it happens so frequently. The graphics and the mechanics seem so simple, you would've never imagined this game would lag at all. When it lags, it really LAGS. It becomes a nuisance when it starts interrupting your flow.

Besides the horrible lag of death, the actual gameplay is really unique to this game. It's a 2D side scroller (much like, say, Mario) and areas are a continuous loop until you jump to another area that's also another continuous loop. In this game, you had to eat. A LOT. You basically fought, ate, mixed some concoctions and ate some more. But it's consumptions that helped you raise levels and boosted stats. The whole ring menu reminded me much of Seiken Densetsu but because of the amount of items you had, organizing and finding items were a bit of a pain. It was also funny to see that not only were your characters fighters, they were also gardeners too. Before/after/during battles, you can do some gardening by planting fruits and whatnot. Then you can eat them. Or make more food with them and still eat them. The whole vegetable hiding under the ground aspect was also very cute. Vegetables are alive at first (run around or hurt you even) until you give them a good smack after you find them. Same goes for sheep that grow from plants.

Graphics - 4/5
When I first saw this game, I first thought - whoa flash animation. But now, I don't really think of it that way anymore. I've come to really like the animation and art style to the point that I don't know what to think of it anymore really. It's nice and pretty... and different.

Sound - 3.5/5
The music for Odin Sphere was decent. There weren't that many tracks to begin with (I guess also because the game wasn't very long either) and tracks for certain stages were the stage for all characters you played through. You basically ended up listening through the same few tracks again and again. I think the most annoying noise was the "electricity" sound effects you would hear when you popped an Unlimited POW/Painkiller/a potion that boosted your stats for a limited time. The noise would stick around until the potion itself wears off. It was also hard to tell whether the potion was still active or not if you had more than one active at the same time if you were in the midst of battle. The only other way to tell was the thin coloured spark that surrounded your weapon. I can't quite see it when I'm swinging around like mad now can I.

Voice acting. I kept it on Japanese audio the whole time and wow, there were nothing but big names doing the roles, even the minor ones like for the Halja(Shinigami). The voices fit well with their characters.

Overall - 4.5/5
Odin Sphere was an extremely satisfying and refreshing game. Though may I say it was a bit short, it still executed the story nicely and the pacing was good. I did not grind, unless I was farming, and the variety of challenges that were presented were all fun. There were a number of exploits that made the game easier, but overall, I did take a few tries at some bosses. I can't imagine how this game would be like in Heroic mode though... {No Thanks.}

(。_。)

男の子ってみんなおかしいヤツばっか