Hong Kong Trip - Day 2 & 3

We woke up bright and early and headed straight to the government building to hand in our applications, knowing it'll take them a while to respond. We got it over and done with and made our way back towards our hotel. We walked around our area and found Pioneer Mall where we stopped to have dim sum at a "fancy" restaurant. They had three floors to themselves, where each floor had a different interior design. After satisfying our hunger, we went on a search for travel agencies. We ended up at the Bank Center which was nearby where there were two floors dedicated to just travel agencies, which is insane. Seems like quite the common thing for HK though.. grouping like companies together into one building. Really makes me wonder how all of them can stay alive together like that. But anyway, after a few hours of frustration, we finally found a suitable tour for us to take to Taiwan for the 5 days we scheduled not to stay at our hotel. We then went to explore the rest of the mall. I then acquired my second bag and did a few rounds of gashapons.

Finally deciding to leave, we went to check out where we were to have our Taiwan pre-trip meeting. After finding the place in Wan Chai, we did some extensive walking and browsing in the area, and then we (mainly my dad) wanted to rest somewhere and snack. We ended up trying this HK-style cafe that was located underground o_o. Screamed shady and dangerous.

However, looks being deceiving once again, it was good cheap food. We learnt later that night that that HK-style cafe was popular for it's good and cheap food and that it has been around for ages. After some good cheap food, we headed back to our hotels for some proper rest for our feet. The start of so-called legendary HK feet, I swear.

Later that night we taxi'd to Hung Hom and met up with Auntie Maime and Uncle Jacky again, but this time with Auntie Irene as well. I don't recall the meal, tho it was probably decent. After dinner, we walked down "Miu Guy" = Miu Street (which was a bit of Flower Street with stands and such). The actual stores were about to close, so we only quickly browsed through and called it a day.

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Next morning for breakfast/lunch we tried out the dim sum in the restaurant in our own hotel. After we walked to Mongkok to get some glasses prescribed with an acquaintance of our grandfather's. My dad, brother and I got a pair of new glasses that had the same frame style, except different colours. Blue, green, and pink respectively. Mine was the cheapest considering it required no prescription. Yay some more fun glasses. :b

After we got our glasses ordered, me and my bro went off to do our own [serious] shopping. First we picked up his baggage and then MTR'd to Causeway to his friend's place, where he was going to stay for the rest of our stay. His friend's apartment was nice and cozy, two rooms, mini kitchen, built-in washer/dryer and washroom. And not to mention INTERNET! After dropping off his stuff, we went to Wan Chai to find the famous 188 building full of juicy gaming, figures, and everything of the geeky-like on 3 wonderful floors. My brother couldn't quite remember the way, so we ended up going around in a circle until finding the actual place. Our goal was not to buy that day, but to only look and come back on the last week and blow it all, all at once! :b Even at 2pm, some of the stores weren't even open yet, so it was only destiny for us to come again, at a later time!

After browsing, we traveled back to Causeway and walked to Sogo and headed straight to the Sogo Club level (@11) where the juicy Japanese bookstore was. The way up was pretty tempting too... every floor had something worth looking at. When we reached the heavenly floor, the atmosphere was completely different than the other floors -- it was dimmed, quiet, much like a library.

Grabbed Vampire Knight 7 cuz I needed my sexy vampire fix, limited editions of Air Gear, special editions of Erementar Gerad Red and Blue... then I spotted the recently released Code Geass illustration book and quickly snatched myself a copy. The comics section was decent as they had most of the recently released stuff, but not as big as an actual Japanese bookstore of course. We used the remaining time to look around the other malls in the area - we swore to return.

We also took a walk around the malls in the area. There was this jewelry store that had a crazy sale so I joined in on the fun and grabbed some fun earrings. Evening rolls around and we head back to the hotel to meet up with our parents to make our way to a family gathering of my mom's side. We taxi to a restaurant in Jordan and have a great feast, as usual. At the end, me and my bro was bored so we split the last can of beer and scarfed down the last two dessert balls in one go just so we didn't have to waste anything. ;b

Later that night, the whole hotel room was mine. The only night I'd have the whole room myself tho, however. Hell begins after a brief moment of peace as I soon discovered that even earplugs cannot save me from the hell of snoring.

Hong Kong Trip - Day 1

So I'm finally reviving my blog after a year's worth of hiatus and starting it fresh with the regurgitation of my 3-week HK trip.

It has been 10+ years since I last returned, and things have sure changed. However, the first thing I recognized is the distinct smell. It was 6am when we landed... we took a one-stop subway (built into the airport...!) to the main arrivals area where we picked up our baggage and went through customs. Customs offered fruity gummy candy on the counter, in which I gladly picked one up for the trip. When we got out, the first thing I noticed was an Ajisen! So that's where our local Ajisen comes from! We grabbed ourselves some newly loaded Octopus cards for the MTR and then grabbed a car service provided by our travel agency to our hotel at Prince Edward.

After we dropped off our stuff, the first order of business was visiting the Immigration Office for our citizenship applications (for me and my bro). We first arrived at what we thought was the right building to realize that we had to head to the main office instead. When we arrived at the main office, we climbed up a few dozen levels, grabbed some apps, saw a vending machine that sold applications, and then decided we needed some grub. It was around ~10ish, so we decided that dim sum was appropriate. We headed to Times Square at Causeway, and looked over the list of restaurants. At that time, only one restaurant (Chung's) just opened so we didn't exactly have a choice. However, it wasn't a bad choice at all. We got to see their open kitchen and enjoy some good food. It was also the beginning of the tissueless journey in Asia.

None of the stores were open yet so we returned to our hotel and got our rooms. Took a break and then headed out again and started wandering in the area. We checked out a building that sold computer and electronics at pretty good prices. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find that building ever again the next time I tried looking for it. After about a dozen blocks, we somehow wandered our way to a mall called Langham Place. We shopped at the Snoopy (!) store, and I got my first (out of the many that are to come) bag there. We took a break at the food court and enjoyed some afternoon dessert at Honeymoon Dessert which is a popular dessert place that has opened up many franchises. After going up 8ish floors, we took the express elevator that brought you straight down to the first floor. We left Langham and made our way into Ladies' Street and Flower Street where the cheap bargaining happens, which was our original destination. My mom attacked the video stand here.

Later that night, we met up with my aunt Maime and uncle Jacky and had bloody clams at this shady back alley restaurant. Clams that were not fully cooked and were gushing out blood. There was also this disgusting-looking bowl of chicken that tasted really good. Don't let barf-worthy-looking food deceive you. It may indeed be barf-inducing, and if it really is then it's not my fault.

After the surprisingly great dinner my bro left us to tend his own matters while the rest of us taxi'd to the back street of Stanford Hotel where it was filled with foreign gourmet cuisine. It was crowded by foreigners and the like, and didn't feel a bit cheap at all. Thus, the dessert meal that went with a nice girly drink was mighty pricey but good nonetheless.

It was around this time, I started taking up 2nd hand smoking.

A Semester of Excitement

Sept 2007~Dec 2007
School starts up again... we get this new teacher who transferred from Emily Carr and... he's hard D:! Then the usual other teachers...

So we have this printing class where we get field trips (!) to the actual printers to get some real experience. The printer places ranged from someone's backyard to a multi-building company. So unfortunately I don't remember all the places... but let me try and think! PacBlu - digital printing near 4th.. shared the building with some radio stations like TheBeat, has a Starbucks across the street, has a hidden second building... we went to Granville Island afterwards and sat at the park; Hazzard Screen Printing - screen printing in Burnaby near Metro... building looks skinny and small at first, but alas, the looks tricked us once again as they had a hidden second building as well... They did a lot of N64 game floor stickies, Iris banners; SomeGuy'sHouse (I forgot the name of his business... orz), but it was literally someone's house all the way out by New Westminister... he did the old school offset printing and gave us all a little memento letter block... he also did his own old school book blindings and did the printing all by hand.. impressive, and sadly it's going extinct; _____ in Richmond by Bridgeport... they do flexo meaning lots of plastic and the related packaging; Norampac also in Richmond by Viking Way = moar flexo.. this company that the one before this one work together often it seems; Hemlock Printers...; Blanchette Press on River Road, Richmond.. giant printing place.. lady from there also gave us the 411 on paper. On top of that, she let us dig through their garbage bin for misprinted paper and etc... we also got a pretty poster to bring home; Gryphon Graphics on Viking Way in Richmond did foil stamping and all the pretty shiny, metallic, sticker, embossing stuff; Lastly Pacific Bindery by Marine Drive right beside Coast Paper, did all the nifty binding.. which was literally everything imaginable. There we also had a guest speaker from R&M Laminating who did, duh, laminations come and talk about the different types of laminations on top of mmm samples~ We also had a rep from Coast Paper come by and talk... we also left with handful armsful of samples.

In our societies class, we ended the semester with a group project (as usual) and our topic was Asian Stereotypes (mainly the ones we are most familiar with - Chinese, Japanese, etc.) just cuz the topic's so broad. We had fun EXCEPT, we presented from my laptop and my "entertainment" remote aka. not suitable for presentations, didn't work so well lol. We also didn't bother rechecking the clips we inserted so some were not even properly cut =_=... それと、ある仲間はスゲーうるさくて、なまけものくさすぎたっ Never again, I hope.

Onto the gaming side again.. yes. Finished Gurumin, Tales of Eternia and Final Fantasy X (omg, finally? XD)...

Gurumin
Gameplay 4/5 - Pretty fun action adventure rpg... 'cept aiming where to jump and ending up missing... multiple times can get pretty annoying. And then landing into annoying lava-like gaps on the floor make it that much better.
Music 4/5 - Fun music, I liked.
Character 4/5 - The voice acting wasn't bad! Some were quite cute.. might be because of the character designs themselves.
Overall 4/5 - Ending battle was a bit confusing... But all in all good! Underrated.

Tales of Eternia
Gameplay 3.5/5 - It's old school style so I can't say too much about it. It's the original Tales game after all.
Music 3/5 - Good Sakuraba stuff. I hate the underwater music.
Character 2.5/5 - Voice acting is so bad...characters weren't all that exciting except maybe Meryl. However, I watched the anime 12-ep version before playing this too so... well, doesn't look like it changed my opinion of the characters :b
Overall 3/5 - Decent.

Final Fantasy X
Gameplay 4/5 - No complaints. I hate blitzball. Sorry that was a complaint.
Music 3/5 - Not THAT memorable. Perhaps I wasn't a fan of the rock pieces...
Character 5/5 - Great characters... good voice acting... can't stand Yuna tho... I think that's the reason why I'm not going to touch X-2 anytime soon.
Overall - Overrated. Ending was probably overrated... I expected something more! But the last boss was sad. :b A beam comes out of his EYE OMG, someone, shoot me now. With that eye beam and paralyze me while you're at it.

And other gaming... in the world of FFXI, there once was a Salvage ls. Lasted a dozen or so runs. Then people began to go their separate ways.... then now it's on hold. I got a lv15 headpiece if anything... not that I would wear it for anything, considering all three of those jobs that can wear it don't need it anymore. Most amusing run was probably the first Madame Poroggo run, most rewarding was the Rampart bee run, and the most crappy run... apparently I didn't show up for those lol.

AU. I swear I attempted 44 at least 10 times! I was so sick of the damn mission until I picked up a party a few months later to finally finish it. Wish I grabbed the +acc ring instead. Hurry SE, give me an option to change it soon!

This Dynamis LS also tried doing Valkurm and failed pretty badly. Sigh. Everytime I think about it and the fact that this ls can't do it, makes me wish I followed Fortune <_<;; And with this ls for 4 months, I only got RNG head. Wow... what a waste of 4 months x 4 hours of my Sunday life! Then they ended up having this whole drama series, when the leader retired, co-leader took over, leader returned, co-leader did not give back rights, fightfightfightfight. Now.. it makes me wonder if I should've just stayed with the messed up ls instead of jumping ship... since right after the holidays, the leader gets hacked and there everything went poof. RIP. *head to desk*

COP. Finished. With a bit of awesome effort. Didn't plan on finishing it ever... until a Salvage member who's static ditched him asked to static with him so yeah :D So Sea is wonderful... with their UFOs... coming out of nowhere... I get to watch my teammate get eaten right in front of me... then we mad run any other way possible lol...

Also Nyzul. Only lasted one run before things came up and it had to cancel. Wot the fuk.

Oh yeah, expansion. It's.... fun I guess. Campaign only lasts so long before it gets boring. I'm only able to get full points on BST so far tho hm -_-

More recently, out of boredom, I went and joined a Bahamut "Storm of Fates" pick up pt. It has made me come to realize how much I miss doing big group endgame events.. ;_;

There was also a wedding on Nov 29. I somehow made myself cameraman... I need to finish that video already.

Mission: make money. Yeah I need moar gilz.

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.

Code Geass, Daily Stuff, Two Days 'Till Take-Off...

So after that first Code Geass post on.. mmm the 14th, I finished watching it on the 16th o_o You could say, intense marathoning? And yay it's not finished grr ep 24 and 25 but... AGH, LIVE, LELOUCH! You're too hot to die! But for Euphemia though... I almost cried.. I haven't cried for an anime since the Butterfree days!

Ohh, I watched two movies in a row last Sunday. Surf's Up then Ocean's 13 with Tek. When we came out from Surf's Up we looked up and noticed a sign saying Ocean's 13 4:00 and since it was 3:30, we just walked right into the next theatre instead of walking out. :D We both used vouchers, so two free movies in one day, fun! But that took up most of our day and wasn't able to do other things...

The rest of the week flew by rather quickly... must be because I have AX in my head. Well more like because our first commercial release is soon approaching and there's still lots of things to be done. I'm no QA but I've been bug catching like mad... to the point that the useless dev leader started complaining to me. Hey man, it's gotta be worth being commercialized right, deadline or no deadline... people'll be taking money out of their pockets to buy this so it better be good. It's was mainly because of his complaint and his incompetence of getting things done as a dev leader lead me bashing devs all week (sorry tek, I know you're a dev too). Not saying we don't have good devs, we have a few competent devs too! It's just unfortunate we don't have more of those guys to balance off the crappy ones.

So, in FFXI news... SE finally released server migration. I was informed that Fortune was going to move servers (Bismarck to be exact)... Shocked, depressed, saddened from the sudden news there isn't really much that can be done. They moved Saturday morning... I was greeted by a broken pearl when I woke up. Wow... 2 years.. gone, poof. Most of the players in the LS were from way back when too... 4..5 years. Man wtf why's this game so old? Well, there's some that didn't go... though I heard they'll eventually go as well. There'll never be a replacement as good. I think I'll put the end-game stuff aside for now and work on some Aht Urhgan stuff... Tried Lamia.13 the other day, it's so fun XD... I need an assault ls. einjarhar ls too. salvage too.

So the depressing stuff aside...
To imagine... I'm leaving in two days? Shrug... haven't started packing... haven't done much planning yet (some vague things here and there)... my money's ready though! The next two days at work will be tough though. Gotta make enough work for the devs to do for the whole week I'm gone orz... wootz ore, excitement.