Decembering and Christmasing

Merry Christmas! A final post before the new year.

It's been a long time since I've had to work through the Christmas holiday. The last time was also in the retail business. Surprise surprise. :( Although I haven't had a lot of personal leisure time, December didn't disappoint with all sorts of stuff happening out of the norm.

There was another PZAG gathering mid-December where we hot potted indoors but for some reason had the front door open. I found out that Jicky also applied for JET this year and if we both get accepted, we're going to raid the host bars and spend all our money on seiyuu events. I very much like that idea so I hope it really does happen. ;>

The following weekend was Tofu's bday which involved eating, Tron, and ogling at maids. Crazy optimistic entrepreneuring discussing also happened. The Sunday was supposed to be dedicated to a shopping-filled day in the states but my bro finds out that his passport expired over half a year ago the night before. GJ.

Family celebrated Chinese Winter Thanksgiving at Fleuri in the Sutton Place hotel (yep, very Chinese I know). They had no bison and no chocolate buffet but the food was still excellent as usual. Later that night, I picked up my new baby - the SH-01C:


Merry Christmas to me!
The red is dead gorgeous in real life. Most of the awesomely extra features are tied with the service provider so I'm sadly locked out of them (e.g. i-mode, gps, i-concierge). The biggest upset is probably the change of ringtone format from mmf to mld. As there's no real good software support for the mld, my music customization's going to be limited. If only au KDDI phones were importable. Oh and I actually already dropped it once - fuck me.

Continuing on with the Christmas week... Christmas eve was spent at Sty's place where we had ham and this monstrosity:


Actual Christmas Day was dedicated to sleeping in and dinner at my aunt's place where we had giant turkey and experimental candied mashed yam. The experiment was a delicious success btw. As an added Christmas bonus, I got a tour around the Relic Entertainment office downtown after dinner. I would've stole some pictures if I could. Especially of the giant space marine out at the front. P:

Boxing Day: I'm glad I didn't work that day. They would've have paid me anyway. Later that night, our company dinner (+ boss' relatives) was held at the Chinese restaurant on the 2nd floor of Continental Centre where we hogged up 5 big tables to ourselves. Many beers were passed around and deliciously expensive shark's fin was served. The Caucasians stayed far away from the delicious delicacy which meant more for us! :V

I agreed to work the following stat holiday day just to relieve the load off the web-related stuff piled up on the weekend. The boss treated us to a nice and long dim sum lunch for those few of us who showed up. Yay to long breaks and free food.

The last of the major events was Mina's ahem, secret, civil wedding held at Gudrun. I took half the day off to attend the private event where we ate homemade food and had the papers lady come in to do the ceremony and documentation. Clearly just the food wasn't enough as we went out for bubble tea and snacks right after.

To top off the week, NYE tomorrow... er today. Stuff will happen.

It's depressing knowing that I haven't had the chance to vegetate this winter break. It's even more depressing realizing that I don't see a chance in the near future to take a break anytime either.

Anyway, cheers to 2011. Bring it on!

T'was a good run, 902sh.

5 years and 6 months later, my Sharp 902sh has finally croaked. I've been meaning to get a new phone for the past *cough* year anyway and didn't get more serious about it until the past few months when the Nokia N8 was looking like an excellent candidate. Sadly my phone couldn't last a month or two more for me before I'm able to finalize my decision. Then again, I probably would've just held it off as long as I could.


Clearly the one that's looks like a phone is my phone.
Now I'm scrambling to get a new phone. I'm not particularly a fan of touchscreens but the features on the N8 were really delicious so I was already ready to try something new. I was almost dead set on it until I got word that it's being released here with Rogers. It's definitely great news that Canada's finally catching up with the latest mobile phones though. But as for me... I think my heart's still with my Japanese phones.

I think I've narrowed down my choices but it seems like the mobiles nowadays lean on the hypersim unlock rather than the software. I've been so used to software unlocking that I don't know what to feel about this whole hypersim thing and how it's going to be like. But! I'm all up and ready for an adventure so why not.

My mom lent me her old Sony Ericsson for the time being though. Every time I felt like getting it set up, I turn it on to be reminded that my mom's old data's still in there and then I don't feel like it anymore. Doesn't help that my phone data isn't compatible with my ancient sim card and it's been backed up into a file that the SE can't read. I might just have to get over that soon though since I won't be getting my new phone immediately. I so do prefer starting fresh. :(

*Rant: iPhone/iPod Touch shitty tap games have consumed my mom. :(

Gar's Annual (?) Halloween Party + Aftermath

Alright! It's that time of year again! Partying it up, Halloween style.

So who was I? Faith from Mirror's Edge and it's not even out yet! Free plug!

The day before, I was busy trying to get the last few essential pieces of my costume done. I thought it would speed things up if I used a sewing machine so I headed to Lisa's place to borrow hers. It didn't work out as smoothly as I hoped - at all. Firstly, for the top: the white strips I needed to sew on the sides were really thick with the tank top's own layer so the two layers kept stretching in the machine at it's own lengths and so it ended up completely uneven. I wanted it to be perfect, so I had her help me remove it so I can redo it. She got frustrated and basically violently ripped it out, resulting in an insane number of holes in the tank top. As a perfectionist, I decided to go and buy myself a new one and hand sew the stripes on instead. Secondly, the gloves: so I found a pair of red gloves finally at the Richmond Centre dollar store except it had a Christmas theme so it had a chunk of green at the bottom, plus a little bell and bow accessory. The bow was easily removable (minus the glue which I easily melted with some hot water) but the green part was grr-worthy. After I cut it out, I tried out a few ways to close up the gap it left. Finally I ended with something I was fairly pleased with. but still not as close as the real thing as I'd hoped. But I did so much red gloves searching the past few days prior, I was ready to give in to what I had available (and so I did).

On the actual day, a few hours before I trip there, I had Monica help me draw in my tattoos. The body paint I got was pretty crappy and it made an effing mess everywhere because of its crappiness. It was also very crayon, so you can imagine how that's like already. Looked like garbage so we took the Sharpie method and outlined it pretty and then followed to colour it in. Monica was getting stressed with the stencil I made and also because we were pressed on time, we rushed it and winged a chunk of it.

We left my place at 6 and went to pick up Sty at her place. Got to his place to find that Gar the host wasn't dressed up. Instead he was busy being Cooking Papa (his new nickname now). We found the usual SG crew already there getting their Rockband on. The night followed with Castle Crashers, more Rockband (The Paperboy and the Papers) and random other games. The night was also filled with lots of food, food and more food. We also did the random flavoured jelly bean game (gosh, I'm glad I only ate normal flavours and no baby wipes or earwax flavours). We ended up staying there until 5am. I got home and realized I haven't camera whored yet, so I did some quick webcam fun on my laptop and ended up sleeping at 7am.

I woke up this morning and headed to EB to grab mah LittleBigPlanet! They called me the day before, but I was getting my costume ready at the time. Also picked up SOCOM and headset set! Mmmmm headset~ Can't wait to use it during LBP and whatever else in the future. Still impatiently waiting for Zellers to get the 360 Holiday Bundle. BestBuy apparently has it now. GRR.

Two Months Worth

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

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

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

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

Now onto the backlog...

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

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

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

Skip two weeks...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I cry. Inside.

Waho~

Don't you just love it when you're busy as hell during your only break from school?!

Anyways, life's a bit too eventful at the moment... as much as I like dynamism, it's beginning to be too much. Thank goodness (or maybe that should be 'Unfortunately'), I only have work until Christmas Eve. After that, it's dead for me. Maybe then I can actually catch up on the stuff I wanted to do for the past (uh..) half a year.

I recently broke the front usb ports of my tower. Go me. If I have the time (probably never) I'll see if I can replace it. So yeah, I messed up my current keyboard some more so I borrowed my bro's USB keyboard. As convenient (or inconvenient) as the front ports may be, I tripped over the damn cord and woosh, there flew the pieces of my usb plug. *head to desk/keyboard/tower* I am awsome.

At work the other day, I met some new sales associate in the fragrance department. Poor guy... Apparently, another fragrance demo girl invited him to join her for lunch. During lunch, she told him to meet her at the sushi store. He gets there and sees her sitting in the corner by herself at an obviously one-seater table. He notices that there isn't another seat for him to sit with her, so he shrugs and tells her he'll take a seat outside the store. She goes Okay and pretty much ditches him... in his face. Ouch. He comes back from lunch to tell me that D: and says he doesn't have many friends (cough) which is why he was really, really heartbroken when she did that to him. Aww!! That was mean though...

Boarding! I finally went boarding for the first time this season! And it was a horrible location at that! [/regrets buying Seymour pass] I purposely took a day off work (out of the few work days I have left) to go.. we end up getting there later than planned (from originally 10:30 to being 2:30ish =_=) because of other things that came up and things they decided to do on that day instead of another frickin' day. The runs were a bit icy and we ended up staying for night skiing so it was dark and creepy ~_~... There was only one run open at night too so it was kinda boring. The lifts were slow and tedious... the lift up took 10x longer than the run so most of the time went wasted, waiting to get up to the top. I got lost from the group after taking the wrong turn that brought me to a kiddy park and the entrance @#%%. The kiddy park rope (instead of a lift) was frickin' FAST! I had so much trouble just trying to get up the damn HILL! I don't know how the kids do it, but they're good XDD;; For the second half, I just went a few times by myself before I received an SMS and I suddenly remembered I received an SMS a bit before that. Apparently it was an SMS from the other group, telling me they were LEAVING. So I rushed down after that, after worrying them for a good half 'n hour, reported to the snow patrol even :X

I forgot I need new bindings.

Yesterday I hung out downtown with Simon. We originally wanted to [finally] try KINTARO but, we got screwed over again! We got there to find out [AGAIN] that they're closed on MONDAYS! Aahahahaha...ha.. We ate at Gyoza King instead. Ironically, everything there was really good EXCEPT THE GYOZA. We also visited an awsome art bookstore called Oscar on Broadway and Granville. If only we were able to spend more time there...! But parking is brutal and our plans were mainly Downtown so we left after a mere 45mins that only allowed me to go through TWO BOOKSHELVES (1/12 of the store?)... Not to mention the windy weather was insanely cold and painful to walk in. We did some good ol' window shopping after food... I DID find stuff I wanted (new stock, in fact), BUT they didn't have my sizes (go figure). Could be a good thing... I'm still quite financially unstable. The money I save will SOMEHOW have to be preserved until AX07. Insanely impossible. Not that I'm earning much to begin with (with the little hours I'm working..)... and I have my orders of manga goodness to fulfill and the occassional figurine here and there (*cough Wild Arms pinky:st*).

Agh why are we doing Dynamis-Windurst again.

Year 1, First Semester = 終了 FINISH

おめでとう?
The first semester has come and gone pretty quickly. Now's the start of a brutal one month break of WORK (wtf!). Oh how much I detest having to work... but knowing I'm seriously going to DIE if I don't work to get some money, I have no choice! The things I want to get! The things I need to do! The stuff I need to PAY! The insanity!

Ugh, I haven't been able to get some new bindings yet and I plan on going up this Saturday too... I really hope my current ones don't break on me up there. I'm giving up a days work to go up... now that I think of it, it's a bit of a waste of a precious work day. Can't turn back now! It just better be good! I haven't gone up this season and I'm itching to use my pass. I'm gunna feel so shit after my first trip though... Good ol' soreness for the next few days.. I can see it now.

A bit of a recap: The past week was, yes, the last week of school. Tuesday, handed in the last project for our computer class. It was a photo composition and manipulation project and the only pictures I had were really old crap from 2003, so I used those. Then I realized that my Adobe's colour colaboration's all off again! AGH.. another thing to add to the list of to-dos. Wednesday rolls around... handed in the last project for that class -- our sports logos. Oh how I hate paint and yet I ended up using paint as my medium. Friday, we all handed in our final essays. Ugh I had so much trouble condensing all my content (which, I guess, could be a good thing...) since my topic's sources were so resourceful. I got to the point when I didn't know if I was on topic anymore.. but I kept going anyways. I'm not THAT worried about this essay (even though it's 25%)... my overall average's pretty good in that class, so phew.

Over the weekend, I had to WORK. Worked at the The Bay Richmond for the first time. The staff there are rather nice in comparison to Oakridge's.. but at the same time, there are still staff that you can't seem to get along with. And another thing! The stock and supplies at the Richmond location were so lacking, it was deadly to my lines. I mainly lacked tester bottles and gift sets, which is like, pretty much all the necessities to sell my product. Woohoo. So I worked with what I was limited with on the weekend and spammed a bit to my rep. She hasn't replied to me yet so I don't know if I'll show up to work tomorrow with a face full of new stock. If not.. well... more death for me [and the company].

Oh, also over the weekend... I, who, for some reason, became blind for a split second [or more] couldn't see where I was backing into and ended up scratching the paint of my CAR. Such cruel fate. Oh how it must taunt me so. Something not pleasant for the wallet. I am now the new Sofa King.

[Happy] Monday flies in. I woke up early to do a bunch of errands in the morning then headed to the very last day of class. We handed in our wildlife park sign projects and presented our work based on criteria and the Instant Death system for evaluation. I was like... 1/2 into the first criteria before I got killed. At least my work smells like cinnamon~ (yay for Mr.Sketch!) After the lecture-ful last class, some of us headed off to go grab some munchies and drinks for the 'celebraion'-ish gettogether wrapup party (whatever it's called). We park by the wrong building [because of a particular someone] and we end up having to walk to the other building which was at the other end. We brought our portfolios for display and discussion and holy crap, were the portfolios impressive or what *_*! Made me kinda glad that most of my port is digital. I stayed until I was sober enough to drive home (which was 930-10ish.. so it was about 6 hours long).

Tuesday. A great day to sleep in. I wake up to realize I wasted the whole bloody day sleeping. Dynamis-Windurst'd until Mo2 and Braman came by to take a look at my basement. Looks liks she might be moving in in January~ XD

Agh I don't wanna work I don't wanna work I don't wanna work! *whine*

Ok I'm done. Touch on other things later. Gotta sleep... WORK tomorrow morning.

Merry Christmas!

Belated! But! Yay Christmas!

December's been quite the crazy month.

We're got so many damn sweets as Christmas gifts at work from the members. I horded all the Rocher. Victory.

Well, I've dropped my phone TWICE on the pavement now. Its one side's all chipped (it keeps falling on that one side)... it makes me cry everytime I see it. I think it's gradually suffering from the side effects now...

Oh, I watched King Kong the other day. Not my kind of movie; I didn't like it.

Christmas Eve dinner was spent eating by myself because of work. ;_; Leftovers of the family's roast beef dinner. At least it was yummy ;___;

Christmas day was unbelievable... I was finally able to go to church after 4 months! The only stores that were open were the Chinese stores and it was *packed*. We decided to go to Aberdeen because of a few other things we had to buy there. The main dim sum restaurant was flooded with people, literally. The wait for a table was an hour plus... not surprised... Soo, we made our way to the restaurant just next to it. Its specialty was hotpot but it served dim sum in the morning. The retail stores there were also squirming with crazy shoppers who wanted the discounts the stores had (for Christmas?). Oh did I mention parking was a bitch? Supposedly you'd think there'd be plenty of room in the Aberdeen parking lot (dude, 3 giant floors of parkade!) but it was so bloody packed (not to mention the swarms of HORRIBLE drivers), finding parking was rather difficult as well. We quickly fled as soon as we did everything we had to do there and headed back to Vancouver. We dropped by this lady's place who sold really beautiful handmade jewelry. She would apparently invite a bunch of guests over at a time to show her display of whatever featured or new jewelry up for sale. Some of the things there were pretty amazing. I picked up a pair of earrings myself! Afterwards, we visited my grandma and grandpa's grave to give our salutations. We headed to my relatives' place for dinner that night. Double roast beef! Well at least both chefs cook the meals differently. After the awsome dinner, I met up with Elie, Simon and Mike to watch Memoirs of a Geisha. That place, too, was crowded. We ran a bit late so all the good seats were already taken. We had no choice but to split up. Then I had to sit with the most annoying girl who gawked, "What stupid people come to the movies with their friends and not sit together?" And I was like.. uh, excuse me... is that directed to me bitch? D:< Well of course I didn't say it aloud to her so I just tried to ignore her for there rest of the movie. The movie was pretty good though... it's a shame I didn't read the book beforehand. After the movie, we searched for a place to chill for burbletea. We watched Leo Koo/Ku (sp? ;[) and his fishnet mask and Andy Lau dancing with his creepy garbage bin lids. [/insidejoke]

My highlighted Christmas presents this year... PSP (to myself, from myself), DKNY bag (from mom, chosen by me and her), $100 cash (from grandpa overseas), and Magna Carta (from bro, picked out and UP by myself -_-; but I have no PS2 right now so I can't play anyways..).. Actually, wait, that's my BIRTHDAY gift cuz I told him to get that for me a ways back and it's finally out now so :B... his actual Christmas gift to me, that I requested, isn't available until January 10th, which is Wild Arms 4. I even got my birthday present planned too! Kingdom Hearts 2 comes out in March, isn't that just perfect? :D The timing's awsome~ <3

Hm! I'm trying to get my hands on a Teal/Purple DS but apparently it's been out since November and yet I've never even seen it anywhere since its release. It's a limited edition colour as well, so I think it has already become a rarity anyway. The Seiken Densetsu: Children of Mana screens are making me itch to buy the DS... Oh well, I've still got time before that comes out here. Maybe some other crazier colours will appear...

Work conditions haven't improved since our meeting. I got this bad feeling that it isn't going to go the way we hoped it'd be...

Ugh I just realized I still got so much backlogged stuff to do.

Returning to Work...

I got paid to have BBQ at my boss' place. Hahaha... really, I'm serious.

It was strange that I got a call from my manager yesterday to go to work the next day... especially when there hasn't been any news about the truckers' strike ending anytime soon. So I got to work and I noticed and recognized a lot of cars that belonged to the on-call workers. Okay, I thought, maybe we're all just standing by because somehow we found out that the strike'll end very soon... so soon it could be anytime now. I get to my seat and no one tells me anything... I turn on the computer as usual... Soon, even MORE co-workers start showing up. About 45 mins into the day (@8:45AM), the manager comes down and tells me to follow everyone to the boss' house cuz he has some sort of 'meeting' and then meet up at the other branch. He also mentions that we were able to find some other independent company willing to grab some containers for us from the port to the other branch, so yay good news. So then I figured oh they must've called me in to help out on the other side. Everyone car-pools and gets to his house and then we start SITTING AROUND in his garden. Then the boss starts talking about how he plans on cleaning up his garden. Soon enough our warehouse workers officially become professional gardeners in a day. So we got swarms of warehouse guys hacking at the trees he wants to cut down. I, being office lady, just stare and watch the whole time. They soon find a beehive. It must be removed, yes. So someone starts a fire and begins the beehive extermination. It was rather quick and relatively painless but very amusing. More people start showing up and the uh oh, approaching lunch time. The boss gets me to follow him to shop for FOOD. ME ALONE WITH THE BOSS JFEIWOFJEWFWEOK! No details, but it took a lot of time. When we got back it was already approaching 2PM. Someone took up the grill and started cooking... not the best choice for the chef, but ah well. Everything was rather prematurely cooked. Then I got paid reading Kill Me, Kiss Me tank #5 (yay finished the series~) in his comfy living room. I love Jung-Woo... but I realize the story warped so much.. it's not even about the same people anymore (except Jung-Woo but he wasn't the main char >_>;;). The weird translation was... well.. weird. Not to mention they cut a lot of corners, literally. There would be incomplete faces and bubbles on every other page... it's just annoying. Anyways, returning to the day's events... I got driven back afterwards and went home. The end. :D Tomorrow: Repeat.

My paycheque is going to suck. A week + a day of no work because of the trip and then.. *counts* only 2 working days in total. Ha..hahaha... damn. Let's hope that won't be the case and that I have a counting problem instead.

Oh, btw I'm loving my phooooone~ The Fido-Rogers integration gave me a heart attack, almost. I thought my sexy phone was deemed glitchy because I couldn't call or receive. *shakes fist*

I need to give my blog -- er my whole website -- a makeover and then some. I feel creative and wanna do something yet I feel lazy at the same time.

Wow my computer desk is a mess.

We (my bro and I) are going to reserve the whopping $300USD FFVII: AC Ultimate Collection. Huuah~ We're definitely going to get it but we're still waiting on the North America SquEnix marketing side... impress us you smelly North Americaners! It's never that impressive but still.. :D Still got time, still got time.

Oh, we (parents + me) visited the Queensberg (is that the name of the area? I can't quite remember) new "outlet"-like mall (where the Walmart is). And I kinda went on a little shoppings spree at the Tommy Outlet store XD... weeeell, since I currently have an _especially_ _special_ _liking_ in polo shirts and their current style theme are POLO SHIRTS... I WENT MAD AND TRIED EVERYTHING O__O! And there was a sale on top of the sale items so woohoo! *will visit again, nodnods*

Mo^2, Shi^2 and Can^2 went to watch March of the Penguins. It reminded me of a cartoon movie I watched when I was young that was similiar though it wasn't in a documentary format. Unfortunately Mo^ and Shi^2 had no idea what I was blabbing about. Oakridge BBT is now deemed too sweet. I think I've unofficially fallen in love with the BBT store on Victoria (the one with PASSIONFRUITJELLY!!!).

Sigh. ため息。

Yeah, so like.. no phone now.
Long story short... the deal didn't work out. Man, after waiting like... half a month to find news that the guy CAN'T get it (he probably sold it off locally DD;)... Ah well, I shall wait patiently for my next chance at it. I'm determined to stick with my light blue now.

Duude, I saw some guy today with a Vodaphone. Urgaaa, left me feeling depressed after see him with it. I also saw an orange mazda that reminded me of the orange phone I wanted.. LOL! Everything reminds me of it, I swear. Yes, I'm just _that_ desperate for it now.

Man... I've received news that Hot Gimmick is ENDING. Gasp! That must mean there's only one book left... WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN コンチクショー！

Getting older sucks. Time flies so fast... you don't have time to do stuff you used to always do. Yeahh, I was just thinking of some new site ideas and old site renovations but nowadays I don't think I have the time. -_-; Always have to sleep early.. or sometimes I'm just too exhausted to concentrate on designing something. Bleh. Just today, feeling too exhausted from the work week I took a nap and that just ate half of my precious day. Yet after napping, I can STILL sleep at night without ruining my own sleep schedule. I guess I'm just that tired.

Something at work bit me. Now I'm paranoid and everything itches. Why is that I can't work in a clean environment? Daiso was(/is) dirty as hell. I had to do the vacuuming at Roots. Then the dentist place is well.. I gotta clean up after the nasty messes so yeah that's pretty bloody [literally] dirty. Sigh. Rantrantrantrant...

So the funny thing about this month... The first 15 days was truly happiness: new phone coming, a sh1t load of manga, everything was good. As soon at the 15th day hit, I found out I couldn't get my phone (and because I won't be getting my phone, my PLANS are RUINED), suddenly my allergies pop out of nowhere, I got cut under my tongue and everything stung like fack for a few days, the Rude Guy from work temp. went to another branch to help out so I was stuck with the little annoying *ahem* fucker for the next WEEK, I PKed down the work stairs, I got bitten(!), the list could be endless... I just hope this 不幸 misfortune doesn't carry on for too long (at least not for 15 days or something ;_;).

Well one thing that was good during this misfortunte period I got to watch BATMAN BEGINS! AND it was a damn good movie! The sfx and music really fit into the right spots~ It felt a little long at times though. I thank Mike for the lovely night. It was a nice change from the nasty work week.

Since I'm not getting my awsome phone... I'm looking for someone with a digicam that can record at least 2-3 mins (the more the better of course) so I can make a proper movie, unlike my out-of-date one that only takes 30secs max. Blah, my precious plans... Thanks Mr. Japanese Guy who sold my phone off to someone else. ;[[

Oh.

Bad news for my phone...

The Champion!

Yay winnage! Spur of the moment bid attack.. I am crazy. 902SH pwned. :o

Ahahahaha I can't wait, it's driving me nutsss~ Patience. 'Cuz I've decided to grab the newer colour instead (the guy offered to get the latest colour for me if I'm willing to wait... I'm actually not willing but...!!). Screw orange. I'm sorry. As much as I would've liked it to match my hair but nah.

Oh, I'm a red head right now. In a week or two, I'll be orange. A month or less, I'll be blonde. I love my hair.

I'm currently quite obsessed with Hot Gimmick. Yes! The first time I read it, it was in Chinese and I didn't get much of it. I got my hands on a chunk of the series last week (going home with a mighty heavy bag of MANGA on the BUS) after waiting almost two months for my order to come in. Gosh, I marathoned it... Only managed 3 books a day with my busy schedule. I'm on the 8th right now.. I think I'll go grab myself 9 and 10 Wednesday while I'm at it. I'm rooting for Azusa and Hatsumi even though Azusa was a horrible person in the beginning... he's just too cool (and I feel sorry for him too ;[[[). XD Oooh I'm such a spender, I hate myself. And to think only 25 days left...

Life is still good.

So much to do in so little time.... Time to get ready for the start of another week!

Obession Over Phones...

Ah~ I've been busy...
Busy looking at THIS! ステキ~!
I want that. $600CAD UNLOCKED (no tax). I think that's worth it, you?

- Japanese/English Menu
- 2.02 facking megapixels w/ 2x optical zoom camera
- mp3 ringtones uh huh uh huh
- 3d sound :o
- games (I see MahJong...)
- video
- tri/quad/???-band (SOME INSANE BAND that's GLOBAL USABLE XP)
- 2.4 inch LCD screen
- bluetooth :E
- SD memory card slot
- barcode reader (OMG I WANNA TRY IT SO BAD! SCAN MY anti-perspriant! Yes my anti-perspirant has a bar code and yet no phones here have the scan feature, so why? :D I don't know! What a mystery...!!!)
- 180 rotatable screen w/ like 4 different ways to fold the damn thing

BLOODY HELL! It's so tempting I swear. Buy? No buy... buy? No buy...

It's ONLY 600! ONLY! AND I'M GOING TO LA IN A MONTH! Okay I guess I can't. FUCK.

Saving up money sucks.

Talking about saving money..
Mo^2's Part II of her party yesterday.
We woke up nice and early to... WATCH STARWARS EP3! at Sty's theatre for FREE! "Noooooooooo!" is our favourite scene; we couldn't stop crackin' up. Hayden's really bad at acting still... it's quite a disappointment. Not to mention, there were cheesy lines everywhere. BUT overall it was a fun... and rather choppy paced movie. Yay Obiwan! Ewan rocks :3 So after the movie we made our way to the Macaroni Grill for dinner where they served no Macaroni. We sat outside in the garden which was nice. I got to see Irene again after wow a year and she hasn't changed one bit XD... Later in the day, we started going a little crazy and started laughing at things that weren't even that funny. We blame it on the Bellinis. We had mussels and then the entrees we couldn't even finish. After food, I followed Sty back to her theatre where we experimented on gummy bears for a few hours. Interesting results. Expanding gummy bears. Oh yeah.

Apparently Iwase called me to pick up something. I don't know what it is... My parents didn't pay attention. I also need to go to the library to pick up that stupid book I put on hold two months ago that I completely forgot about and I do not really need anymore.

About the hair dying. I'll try out the other new lady some other time. Apparently the 35 isn't for the whole head but 50 for whole head w/ two colours is pretty damn cheap too. Ah well, I might as well go back to my old style so the peeps in LA will recognize me (or at least the back of my head LOL).

Did I mention how awsome Sengoku Basara looks now?? Damn... and the seiyuu cast is awsome. They recently updated with new characters and a movie. Koyasu Iyasu is Sarutobi Sasuke and damn.. does the character designer rock XD His character's hot stuff! If only they'd bring it over and keep the voices. That reminds me, they better keep the original or at least allow us to choose from japanese and english for Magna Carta. Nooo that can't remove Hoshi-niisama's voice AGAIN! I also saw the latest KH2 trailer a while back... mmm I can't wait. Summon Nights. English version, I demand NOW! They've yet to bring ANY of them over here... :/ Front Mission Online gets high points on the game ranks. Now the question is... are they going to bring it over? Yes... just finding more reasons to get back on PO. :b Games games games... I haven't even finished SO3 yet. Right, gotta do that first.

I also need to gather some courage to break the news for my LA 'vacation' to work. Yes, I've yet to do it. Gotta figure out who to tell.. how to tell... when to tell... gotta get ready for the shower of questions. Gulp. Oooh at least I finally figured out what I'm going to have Sakamoto Maaya sign for meee~ I need to make myself a checklist of stuff to do and get before the trip.

Weekend comes and goes. 4 weeks left to gooo~

Ouch.

Soooo... I got hit by a heavy cart at work today and now I'm disabled. Well, not as bad as it sounds, but I got a giant bruise with some blood, yup. Still stings though.



I logged into POL today! Since Thurs August 26th 01:49! Only just to send a msg to my bro. :D I wonder if I should play ffxi again though, hn. New POL looks funny....



I got my mp3 player! WooooOoo the packaging was the most annoying thing I've ever encountered. But I lerve it anyways~~ Trying to get used to the earplugs... they slip out. Ear too small = Earphones too big. AND I already filled it up (too much high-quality music.. hm!). I can't stop bringing it everywhere I go too... That phase'll fade soon, I think. :D



I went window shopping in Richmond for the jacket I've been looking for and I found something pretty good except.. IT'S $199! WTF! So nevermind. I'll keep looking.



Need to get my snowboard soon.

Need to pay for ski trip soon.

Yay I love Shinshi Doumei Cross! *adds to must-buy manga list*

Pinky:st's are cool. :D Must get one (or two, or three, or.. more)

More yey, latest Naruto opening r0x0rz. But teh music sux0rz.



The lunar calendar predicted that I'd recklessly spend my money this year. It's so horrendously true.

*sigh*

An update on the status of my future mp3 player:

Apparently, it will be available on October 5th for ORDERING. I have to speciality order it with the guy at the store using a credit card fer deposit and THEN wait for it to come. Oy... that might take days... or weeks... even months?! And as if the 5th isn't already far enough already! 1.5 LONG WEEKS!



Anyhow, time to sleep... long day tomorrow.

Urg.

So.. like...



Iwase's behind on their monthly shipment again. FIST, I want my Newtype...



Cosmetic Night tomorrow... again... fun.



The 390/395T iRiver isn't available in North America anymore, daymn. More like, they've stopped making it! I had my eye on the 790T but the red's really red, so the 795T is a possibility but the price different is yikes. And I just read all about the annoying software bugs (white noise, skipping)and horrible customer service they got too... Maybe I should stop attempting to buy an iRiver instead. Meh I could always go for those HK ones like WeWa!! and Foxda :/ Doesn't feeel the same thoughhhh~



I'm sleepy, gotta get stuff ready for tomorrow and then sleeeep. My internet's really crappy today.



EDIT: *waves to Valkyrie*

I fucked up my TI-83+ calc permanently it seems. I wanted this particlar app from Mo2's TI for a while now, and finally Matt H. had a cord. I quickly plugged it and attempted to download it, instead, causing it to freeze. Guys being their retarded selves goes and takes out the battery for mine, thus causing all my proggies to disappear and such and such. Then I wasted the whole IT class in attempt to accumulate another collection of games, proggies etc from other peoples' calc. I went through archiving and ram problems and finally just went and resetted the whole damn thing -- to find that it won't even graph properly anymore. My graphics calculator has just lost its sole purpose.



On a lighter side of that day, I finally received my sexy new burner. Right when I got home, I quickly swapped the new one with the old, and mad burned o_O... Hard to get used to its... fastness. Oh, I also started and finished up my geo term paper from maybe 9pm-4am. It turned out quite short, still within limits though... but I was hoping for at least 1200 words.



Another interesting highlight. I jab one of those pointy parts of an umbrella into my thumb... resulting to a little dinky, but painful bruise. Then we had the carnival with crappy weather (grey covered the skies and it trickled rain) at first and then it suddenly gets bloody hot 18 degrees or something... so everyone had to bloody strip. There weren't any good stands or attractions except the talent show, imo. The first guy that sang was probably the bravest... his singing was crap, he was alone up there, he was the first to go, everyone was laughing but he got right through it. So he was cool. After was a r&b girl duet, then a very loud alternative band. The main girl's singing wasn't good at all, but the music was great. After came Tony's group singing Tactics. Geheheh, their new temp vocalist didn't know Japanese so he had to bring up a piece of paper with lyrics, which was literally read right off the paper. Then there were a few more after them and then ended with hula dancing. XD After the carnival, I developed a painful headache and when I got home, tried to sleep but couldn't. Then I started feeling sick... ~_~ After taken two extra strength tylenol, they gradually disappeared...



THIS HORRID WEEK'S FINALLY OVER!! Cheers. :E

Ah, my mom saw this other digital camera available in The Bay catalog available for ordering and she decided to get it from there instead! Now I gotta wait a month+ for it! Great, I need it this month for annual and I don't have one at all.



I agreed to "Ah Lun" for lunch the day before so we went out for lunch today with Steve. We went to Kam Do... weird why we decided to eat there. They both ordered seafood 'something'... and didn't know there was such things as refills (for drinks.. o_o;;). Afterwards, Steve was driven home and I got to loiter around at Lun's place! It's so friggin messy, I don't think I'll be able to describe it. ^_^;; He lives alone though; bad excuse for leaving the house in that scary state. I was dropped off; more MJ for the rest of the day at Sakana-kun's place. Banzai, I lost so many chips in the beginning but I had a good comeback and won a few times straight after to get some chip mula back. ^__^

I got my wisdom teeth yanked out early this morning. A side of my face feels numb and my right arm is still somewhat in pain. The intravenous sedation smelled horrible at first... urg, the guy cranked it up at the very end; my head was ringing, the darkness was warping and then slowly everything around just died. Then the next thing I know, I woke up feeling partially dead. Blood tastes disgusting when it's mixed with saliva...



I got the scanner hooked up yesterday like I said I would. And definately scanned some nice pics of him here (his flashback's on the left; ooh somebody's screaming his name in the bottom left box!) and here (the hot guy on the right with that sexy evil smirk!).

I just HAD to mention this because I'm ever so proud of myself (again).. twice in a day (err.. sort of in a day... not exactly the same day anymore)! I for some reason had this urge to change my cell phone ringer. I was by the computer when I thought about which song would sound the best. Earlier that day I actually poked in a few keys to hear how particular songs would sound like. Finally, I ended up with Melodies of Life for some other odd reason. Well, "Melodies of Life" could relate to the "Ringer tones of my Cellphone"... XD Bah, the ending of the song was messed because I only had 3 more notes to go and I needed at least 10 more to finish it out of the 50 max. The odd thing is that it actually sounds like it... XDDD