The Olympic Break

The two week long reading/spring/oympic break is almost over. I'm not sure what happened to it, but it's close to gone.


First there was Chinese New Year... week. The first few days had me spewing CNY phrases to get my lucky envelopes from the adults. That might continue on during tonight's dinner with an uncle who finally decided to join us over on this side of the world after CNY had already passed.

School never misses the chance to get in my face during my break of course. My practicum had gone to sh|t at one point where every attempted placement negotiation had failed. I was extremely looking forward to working at Tribal DDB as the conversation was initially really positive, and they were probably the most fitting with my interests and goals. Karo, Switch, and Blast Radius was also considered. The level of desperateness reached a point where I was willing to give in to working with Cactus Club, but even that didn't work out. Strange enough, Switch came back and said OK. That is, OK -plus- come in for an interview plz. I now have an interview scheduled for tomorrow. I am ready for freak out mode.


The Olympic break wouldn't be complete without more Olympic action. Thursday was dedicated to Our Lady Peace live at the Ozone in Richmond. Before the concert, me and Sty had some good ol' fashion pho in the area. We then followed to park at Richmond Centre and walked our way to the venue which was surprisingly right at the library. We payed a bit of attention to the band that played before them (The Arkells?). The concert was awesome minus the stupid crowd... and by stupid I mean:

(15 mins left of the concert and a girl tries to push our way through us, when we're already super constrained with space)

Girl: I need to get by you guys. My friends are like just right up there.
Us: So? Do you really need to be with them right now? There's only 15 minutes left in the concert anyway.
Girl: If I gave you 15 minutes to live, wouldn't you want to spend it with your family?!
Us: What?! That's totally unrelated!
Girl: It's the same thing!

WHAT.

Stupid people aside, I felt sorry for the old Chinese lady behind me who got pushed around by the hyper jumping and cheering crowd beside her.


Saturday Tofu and I did some touristy things around downtown. Hot dog Bratwurst:


Met up with Sty afterwards for drinks and late night sushi. Must stop going for all you can eat. Fail samosa:


Wanted to watch a figure skating event but my dad isn't a hockey fan and doesn't do much parent-son bonding, so he went with my mom. Hot damn, Canada's Virtue and Moir were on fire though. As for the hockey game we were insanely lucky to land the Canada vs Germany match. Our seats were awesome and we were right beside the sportcaster guys' table.



Fill in the rest of my days with games (FFX-2 is so girly D:), anime (marathoned 5~6 series) and a pinch of school (two major things due next week!). Next few days will be dedicated more to school.. and soon the end of school forever countdown begins.

Kouhaku 60

It's that time of the year again! My post is quite a number of weeks late but that's okay. There was Tezuka in my Kouhaku... or I mean Shirota Yuu, in my judges panel. It was strange.. because I can only see him as TEZUKA!

• Ayumi started off the event but sang with much difficulty as usual, versus EXILE.
• Then there were a bunch of children performances like the Ponyo girl.
• AKB48 were cute as usual but then there were the NYC boys (lawl?)... oh wait, they're part of the Johnny's, no wonder. I see now.
• Speaking of Johnny's, Snow Prince Gasshoudan kids debuted, not officially however...
• I was surprised to finally see Arashi on Kouhaku. I figured they would've been on it a long time ago, considering their popularity and the fact that the other Johnny's groups like SMAP, TOKIO, Kinki Kids have all been on it before.
• Funky Monkey BabYS - what?  it's like school food punishment wtf.
• Somehow Susan Boyle made it onto the program.
• SMAP did a Michael Jackson tribute.
• misono got publicity via Koda Kumi's medley performance.
• Angela Aki always sings the same few songs.  I don't find her all that impressive.
• There was a Korean group, Tohoshiki (I think - popular?)
• Perfume's One Room Disco was <3
• Then there was Mizuki Nana's *fantastic* debut. Awesome. I'm quite happy for her.

The theme this year was the "power of song" and the white team definitely stood out and won it. That's quite a number of years in a row now...

Star Ocean: The First Departure

I rushed to start this (many months ago) to play SO4 on the 360. Now that it's being released on PS3 with additional goodies later this year, I gradually gotten lazier with the game.

Long story short though, it felt like I was playing Star Ocean: Second Story but with different characters and story. SO1 in SO2's skin.


STORY 2.5/5
One day, Roak, an underdeveloped planet is contracted with a strange disease that turns people to stone by touch. The infected town's only hope were Roddick and Millie, who are part of their little town's safety patrol, to find the herb that they think will save them. On their way to find the cure, they encounter two strangely dressed people, Ronyx and Ilia, who beamed down from thin air and followed to claim that another race had brought the infection to kill the planet off.

Roddick and Millie agree to help Ronyx and Ilia to find the cure and they end up having to travel back in time for that cure.

The main story isn't all that bad, though there was nothing too special about it. Essentially even up to the end, nothing really had changed much since the start of the journey.

CHARACTERS 3/5
Roddick is your pure hero with your typical flaw when it comes to love. Although in my game, Roddick made some moves on Ilia, stirring up some commotion with Millie and Ronyx. Then there's Millie, your boring and typical annoying girl who gets jealous easily. Though, I wonder what kind of kid would've popped out of Roddick and Ilia instead of Claude. Sadly the private actions didn't seem to affect the ending all too much as they had to make Claude happen no matter what, for the sake of SO2.

My optional characters were Ashlay, Ioshua, Mavelle, and Welch (the conditions needed to get another secret character). Mavelle's story was interesting until her story ended. Then it felt like there was no real follow up with the other character involved with her scenario. I hoped for something more coming from Welch too because she was our awesome shopping/crafting lady from SO3. She had this whole mysterious background of "waiting for us all this time" and the fact that she was not a local but the truth was never revealed. Ever so disappointed.

SOUND 3/5
I did not particularly like the theme song. 'Nuff said.

The music was your typical Sakuraba Motoi stuff. The sound effects were all recycled from SO2. The voices were decent though there were many of those awkwardly spoken sentences. Strangely enough I recognized Yuri though. Also in the credits, there was a voice actor called Dick Smallberries Jr. *snicker*

GRAPHICS 3/5
Again recycled so it's hard to judge it as it is.

The new character designs aren't bad, though I'm not a fan of the anime-style. The character designs themselves are clean but quite plain. As for the other characters, T'nique looked like a direct rip off of Ranma. What's with that...?

The opening movie was the usual Production I.G. quality but the music that went with it was kinda of meh.

GAMEPLAY 2.5/5
Recycled. Even how you can jump on someone's head in battle. /cry

Only one (or two) optional side quests... a dungeon and the hardest enemy in the game, so there wasn't much extra you can do to extend the game.

OVERALL 3/5
I think I would've appreciated this game a lot more if I played the original. Maybe if I haven't already heard so much of Motoi Sakuraba's music, I would've enjoyed the music more too. Maybe I'm just expecting too much from a remake, even though it's Star Ocean. :|

20 or so hours, one playthrough, completed everything. The voice gallery is another story however.

I still love my SO LE PSP regardless.

I fear a bit for SO4 though. What is this...?!

Hydraulics Fail

Just returned from the insanity that is downtown Vancouver and watched a fail of an opening ceremony to the Olympics. I met up with Moni, Braman, and [new challenger] Andrew downtown after helping out at Bonchaz. We munched at Yaletown Brewery during most of the beginning of the ceremony. We were unexpectedly visited by a professional magician while we waited for food - Yeeri was his name (found him!). None of us experienced a magician first hand before and it was more amazing how every trick he did was illogically mind bogging AND he had his sleeves up. There were your card tricks but he changed a pile of cards sandwiched right in my hands into a block of plastic (?!), folded a $20 bill into a $5 and back, rubber bands that passed through each other when normally they couldn't... it was an amazing 10 minutes.

After food we decided not to stay (though we should've) and wandered around outside, eventually finding dry and warm place to stand and watch the outdoor TVs that broadcasted the ceremony. The whole white attire was almost ghost/clone/robot-like. That aside, the first building of the crystal campfire sadly failed which I bet will be one of the hotter topics in the next little while. When the secondary campfire was finally lit, we went to give the real thing a visit. On our way we stopped by the Royal Canadian Mint museum and encountered the one million dollar coin.


Thiiis big.


Now that the Olympics are here, that means I have two weeks of no schooling. Sadly it won't all be just break as there's still a crap of school things to do during this time. Our grad show progress is still a disaster, there's a workshop to prepare for and then there's also my major project to worry about. I'll see how well I can pace myself between school work and play.

My previous weekend was devoured by the revampment of my portfolio. It's in a working order I can say I can be pleased with for the time being (before I probably get bored of it) and it seems like my prospective design firm for my practicum has also thumbs up'd it. It's up to the creative director and his schedule during that time. Crossing fingers and toes. While working on my port, I've also realized once again how difficult it is for me to merge my online identity with my offline. My type of people does not seem to translate well.

Monday we had a field trip to our future grad show location. Looks fancy but smaller than (I think) most of us expected. The view from above the residential building is nice. After our short field trip we went to the Granville Brewery and uh did some tasting rounds just for the fun of it.







Few days ago we had some more fundraising activities at school and a fellow classmate did henna. I wanted something different so when the idea of Sasuke's cursed seal came up I went oh what the hell and got it. She didn't have much experience doing something out of her norm but it was a pretty interesting interpretation. Because of its relative obscurity, I've been getting a lot of comments on how they thought my arm caught a bad burn. /narutarding it up. This geek thing is doing me no good.

Caaake.

Salty, Bitter & Sweet

What I had for breakfast yesterday. Usually the instructor brings in food for us when we have big presentation days. This time cheese was added to the plate which was different from the norm which consisted of usually just bread and fruit. I found that it was a pretty interesting combination: a bite of cheese, a bite of banana bread and then a sip of coffee to help it go down. Very nice~

[insert Olympic picture]
So, data recovery programs are pretty spiffy but still not advanced enough to retrieve all the photos I accidentally deleted off my phone memory card. It somehow managed to save my breakfast picture though... But anyway, imagine a photo of a mural made with stacked Coca-Cola cases. It was pretty cool. An obvious sign that OHSH-IT'S NEXT WEEK.


I offered to help out at Mike's upcoming bun shoppe, Bonchaz, by doing the menus. It's interesting how menu drawing turned into an interesting designing opportunity and amazingly enough, two blackboards took a whole day to do. But it was really refreshing to design something using a completely different medium. The official opening day ETA is next Monday. Look out for it!!

The day has mentally exhausted me. I had to help facilitate a focus group today at the Surrey campus. Driving to Surrey was a nerve-wracking experience. The focus session was an hour and a half long and, as usual, the conversation went on a tangent but we got some pretty interesting feedback out of it. But ugh, focus groups are so energy consuming...

I've been putting this off for as long as possible, but it's finally time for serious portfolio revision action. I've been having difficulty narrowing down a mentorship opportunity for my practicum class but I finally got a few leads. Unfortunately (fortunately?) the placements are of pretty high caliber so I have to [somehow] show a certain level of skill that's at least close to their standard. Unfortunately my half-assed port done just for the sake of completing the course req's from last year won't do.

While gathering my port stuff, I looked back at my old layouts and damn, I must've lost my creative skills somewhere. I think I'm jealous of my past self. Whatever happened to me after I entered post secondary?? It feels like I can't seem to design anything I'm happy with nowadays... These graphic design standards/expectations of "reality" really does bind you down.

Okay, must stop typing. I foresee a busy weekend. Portfolio first.