Welcoming the next age bracket

Birthdays are great reminders that YOU ARE GETTING OLD. DO SOMETHING WORTHWHILE WITH YOUR LIFE BEFORE YOU BECOME EVEN OLDER.

I must admit, my original plan post grad was pretty well set if JET worked out. Now that Japan is still having trouble getting back up on their feet because of their nuclear mismanagement and frequent semi-big earthquakes, I'm not at all happy leaving home knowing that my parents will be worried sick every day. I only did just check my email to find that I was accepted as an alternate (the filler for those who decline). Almost wished I was outright rejected so I don't have this choice at all. I've still got a week-ish to sit on it and respond which I will definitely do with all my weight.

So, about age brackets. I now get to select the next age bracket up. To celebrate, I bought myself something... a bit big.


My very first purchase at Book Off!

Then had the best cake in the world.


DURIAN. FILLED.

One particular geeky gift card also did well persuading.


Looks like black sesame sponge cake.
Filled with a GTX570 though~

Speaking of food, I tried McDix's Angus Burger (Mushroom & Swiss version) for 1/2 off and it was a bit of a letdown.

Also attempted natto for the first time just earlier this month. Sadly not my cup of tea. It's fun to mix and make stringier though?

Other than getting old, I prepared for the worst (for my JET results) by redoing my portfolio (yet again) so I can get out of this hellhole job asap. I'll need some time to recover my drive to jump ship after spending all my energy this past weekend at Sakuracon though. Next up: con report.

Limbo

Time has never moved this painfully slowly. I mean that in the both literal and figurative sense.

My work area (at work) was never really comfortable. I was given the opportunity to pick my own chair from the company's office furniture supplier on my first week but little did I know how it would feel in context, with the table and everything else. The chair's arms ended up being too high for the keyboard tray pull out and as a habit I would rest on the arms. As for the keyboard tray pull out, it's adjustable to a certain extent - the lowest position touches my legs so I can't move or cross them; the highest position, I tried to level with the chair arm height, scrapes the bottom of the tabletop and either blocks access to most of the top left keyboard keys (my important keys: ESC and F2) or traps my fingers. There's also a built-in bar cushion for the keyboard on the tray which is just annoying and unhelpful in wrist cushioning. The mouse is not any better; I'm supposed to use the built-in, permanently inclined and non-adjustable mouse tray that's connected to the keyboard tray. In other words, it doesn't work for me because it's too low so I'm forced to share the keyboard space with the mouse.

It would be easy to ignore it, which I did for the past half a year I've been here and now it seems to have caught up to me. The veins running down my fingers, through my wrist and forearm are now showing signs of CTS. I bought a wrist brace for my dominant hand and it seems to be helping me wonders. Although I think I need to get another brace for the other hand now too.

I refuse to be burdened with such an avoidable issue so early in my life. Fuck this.

In other depressing news, after many, many awesome years of imported Japanese book goodness, Iwase is closing down mid-March. I remember buying my first super expensive "air-mail"-priced magazine ($20+ bucks) which was either an Animage or a Animedia. Every month after that I bought and tried out another magazine and eventually stuck with Newtype until I finally stopped my monthly magazine buying habit altogether last summer when I realized that I was 1. running out of space to store them 2. I've stopped watching anime regularly 3. money priorities have changed.

I recall my first manga bought there was Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne. I had all these fabulous plans on an amazing manga collection that included super long running series I always wanted to own for myself. Every time I visited, I'd stare longingly at the Sazan Eyes and Rurouni Kenshin shelves aiming to complete these series one day. As a side note: till this day they're still both quite incomplete. Having said that I still did start and complete a few series with Iwase (Card Captor Sakura comes to mind), although not many did see to completion after I discovered a much, much cheaper alternative called the Internet.

It was also because of Iwase I started this crazy, but brief obsession for pinky:st. As much as I wanted to support them, their ridiculous yen to cnd exchange rate couldn't be justified. I was grateful for their old school video rentals for my once a year visit after the new year for the latest Kouhaku event. Speaking of which, I didn't get to rent it this year and so I'll have to resort to downloading. :/

So I decided to stop by for the very last time last Saturday for a final farewell and to take a look at what this "sale" was all about. It was probably the busiest I've ever seen the place and the sale was more than just tempting. Sadly the manga and artbooks were not on sale but there were some tasty magazines and plenty of other books that were worth picking up depending on your interests. I honestly didn't really need to buy anything but 70% off just sounds so good, doesn't it? ...said the inner-shopaholic. I ended up buying some random, borderline gag-merch I knew some people would appreciate and at the very end, it didn't even really turn out that cheap for me.


My trivial distresses aside, the world hasn't been all too happy this year seeing all the earthquakes and weird weather patterns occurring all around the world. :/

One definitely positive thing I can say right now is that king crab season has started and I've already had my first.

But really though, work just feels like the calm before the storm. I can sense the danger looming before me, the workplace meteorologist within me warns me so.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope is first

I'm going to see if I can remember the game from a year ago.

Story 3.5/5
World War III destroys the living conditions on Earth, leaving the survivors to find a new planet to live on by traversing into outer space. A new organization is created dedicating itself to space explorations and research. As part of the space fleet, Eeedji-kun and Reimi venture into space on their first mission only to be disrupted by an unexpected meteor which forces them to emergency warp out from their travel course. They crash land on a monster-infested planet and create a new team to continue on the main mission while the old team stays behind to figure out what exactly happened. They find and destroy planets, combat diseases, and answer a number of questions from the Star Ocean series.

As the prequel, things surprisingly made sense. There were some recurring themes that linked with the other stories. I still question the last boss though. The biggest wtf was definitely [spoiler] the space dragon!! [/spoiler]

Characters 3/5
Everyone's so lawl about this. This game's the greatest generic stereotype library: we've got the happy-go-lucky protagonist who turns emo at some point, the cute childhood friend who gets jealous easily, the orderly one, the loli, the father figure, the megane airhead/kultz, the cat fetish, the boobs, and the goth. They covered most of their bases.

Personality-wise, I don't think there's a character I particularly loved (although I suppose Reimi scores pretty high) but I can definitely tell you my most hated character was Meracle. Eleyna, who was just a side character, might've been even more interesting than the main cast. Playability-wise, I enjoyed using Edge, Reimi, and Lymle.

Oh and wtf happened to Welch? Welch in her early days or not, she's no pink-haired ditz. Super disappointment. :(

Sound 3/5
More yays for the international version. Fortunately I avoided the English voices completely so my game was graced by the voices of Kishio Daisuke (Edge), Sawashiro Miyuki (Lymle) and Saiga Mitsuki's (Faize). The unfortunate part is that their voice actors couldn't make up for their in-game counterparts.

Sakuraba Motoi's music style really shone through in the battle tracks. Can't say much for the other stuff though.

Graphics 4/5
Pretty decent looking game with blinding lightning effects. The glassy doll eyes are really creepy at first. Like Magna Carta 2 but they actually stare straight at you as opposed to looking away.

PS3 wins with 2D character profiles.

Gameplay 4.5/5
4 brings back all the classic gameplay features from the other games - crafting, real-time battles, private actions - and adds blindsiding (going behind the enemy), battle bonuses (wait were there bonuses in 3?), and a special attack gauge (Rush Mode - a la Tales' Hi-Ougi). Rush mode is one of the more exciting parts of the gameplay since it can be super cheap if used correctly.

Swapping characters mid-battle is a great added feature. If you're so dying to the point that it's hopeless during the ass-pain that is the second optional dungeon, the Wandering Dungeon, then this is the function to use to your advantage stat.

Overall 4/5
Speaking of the Wandering Dungeon, gee-zeus it's so tedious so no I didn't kill the hardest boss in the game although the Seven Star Dungeon was deliciously fun and entertaining.

With a passable story, not so desirable characters but excellent gameplay, the game is still worth many, many hours of gaming dedication. Just remember this game is Japanese so playing with Japanese voice overs will help those strangely awkward moments.

Stumping Interviews

The JET Interview has come and gone. My half hour appointment felt like it would never end. Kept catching myself looking away when I was gathering my thoughts but that's out of habit so it was unavoidable. Overall it felt positive although I got stumped twice by the same guy with his only two questions. Even now I still don't know how to measure the success of the program upon returning (which was the first q). The other question was something about what I'd teach in 15 mins to a bunch of career-driven high level English-speaking/understanding Japanese students about Canada. It looked like he was looking for a specific answer which I suppose I failed to identify. Woe is me.

I only saw one other interviewee that whole morning when I was heading out. Wished her good luck. Other than that, the place felt so deserted. Fortunately the stormy, windy, wet and cold weather morning of Vancouver was revived by a pipping hot earl grey milk tea handmade by Mike at his bun factory. I hadn't seen him in ages but Bonchaz and his cafe seems to be doing really well. The rest of the day was superbly relaxing with some delicious ginka bishounen.

I wish I took more days off.

Alright back to the waiting game.

Taihen Exciting: 2010 to 2011

あけおめ～
Happy New Year & Lunar New Year~

/welcome 2011

Looking back at 2010 now, 2010 was a beast. From losing my last grandparent, to the mess that was the Olympics, to graduating university, to getting into my first major car accident, to Las Vegas, to AX again and met Horie Yui and Konishi Katsuyuki, to finally getting a new phone... and a lot of amazing things in between. Yeah, it's been quite fulfilling. Thanks 2010.

Now, looking ahead... Hows you, 2011?

JET had been on my mind the last two weeks since interview notifications were sent out and, to follow up on that, I got word of my interview for mid February (ughh reading break that doesn't apply to me at all...!). And as much as I'd put to put all my eggs in one basket, I finally decided on a Plan B just to be safe. SO thus began my portfolio revamp project with a self-set deadline (so I couldn't keep slacking off) and spent the past week plus to update and tweak. Although I lost a bit of sleep, I feel a bit more prepared and now it'll be up to the companies I applied for to answer my plead call. As for JET prepping, I'd like a few days to recuperate first (ahem, kick some FF12 Gilgamesh ass)...

Having experiencing the mind-blowingnumbing excitement of full time work again, I've begun looking forward to all the possible events that may come my way. The next closest thing is probably Sakuracon which is scheduled a bit later than usual to follow Easter's shift in mid/late April. It's not at all bad as I'll either be going there feeling super excited or super bummed after getting my JET results two weeks before. Then there's AX - hm, will deal with later when the time comes.

The lunar new year is already upon us though - the year of the rabbit. It's especially tasty for my year. I took a look at my forecast and it got me pretty hyped up... aside from the fact that the only two of the zodiac fortune tellers I read (from a list) both said something about traffic accidents. It's definitely made me paranoid. And one of the two had an obsession with placing cups of water in certain places. Oh and pink things.

Ah yes, new years resolutions:
Since I'm entering the next age bracket this year (omg! D:), I'm putting on the serious hat to save big money for big investments.


Serious hat with serious sheep.
(btw I've stopped playing but I needed my serious hat pic)

So, after using the SH-01C for a good month plus now I can officially say that the Signal Out on a hypersim is so much more of a pain in the ass than the simple firmware unlock. Oh where have those good old days gone?

Remember this?


It's slowly turning into this:

What is this trend...?
I just need this and this.
Get back to me in about a year and I'll tell you how well I do.