Hydraulics Fail

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

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


Thiiis big.


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

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

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







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

Caaake.

Salty, Bitter & Sweet

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

One Thing After Another

Parents rush-flew to and from China/HK the last week to see family and bring back my grandpa's remains for a brief ceremony here later this week. The next few days will be busy-rushed-hectic with the service preparations.

Last Sunday, my friend got his car broken into the night before that, getting all his electronics taken. It really sucks to hear about these things and be unable to do anything about it...

Strong winds also decided to blow down our backyard gate pretty badly the other day but we were able to fix it to some extent. Ugly but more livable than before at least.

To make the week even better, school has been heavily involved in establishing a theme for our grad show. My team from Team Robots in 2nd year worked decided to work together again for our concept. It began as a harmless bubble tea outing after class which evolved into a 4 hour discussion. We then had another amazing 6-hour bubble tea session another day to finish up our presentation preparations. However, due to personality/ideal clashes with the class, our thoroughly developed concept was shot down. There just seems to be this extremely sinister hate coming from at least a good half of the class for anything remotely Asian or 'cute'. SO back to the drawing board...


On the flip side, although not recent in the last month, one of my best friends went to Japan for the winter holidays. I've been using a magazine (ION Magazine to be precise, it's nice and square) as my mousepad since the wireless mouse doesn't like tablets (for obvious reasons) and it also collects dust way too easily off the table. I've had to work on my PC for hours at a time (doing ugh homework) ever since my laptop was out of commission so the wrist pain has finally set in. So I ended up requesting for a boob/oppai mousepad. No butts, no nipples, no porn.


She came back with a pink-haired, twin tail maid. :3

So! This girl's an original character drawn by Kuuchu Yousai, the character designer for Nanael from Queen's Blade and the Djibril series. And! She even has a bio to go with it: Hoshizaki Fuuka, 17 years old (!) high school 2nd year. She lost her family in an accident and now lives with the protagonist as his maid. Even though she has a dark past, she puts up a strong front but is a dojikko. Her signature moves are to spill tea and collide into walls. She's a classmate with the protagonist (which it notes is obviously a guy). Born on May 10th, blood type A. My mousepad has a background apparently.. I find that very amusing.

So guys, girls' boobs do not feel like this. Stop trying to trick yourself.

As for the FFXIII elixir, that was an awesome surprise. Sadly I will never open it so I will never know what trading figure it comes with. I'll just hope it's Lightning or Yung Fang and leave it at that. It'll be saved for an emergency when I'll need to break things like benches and cars with my head. Hm, much like how I never touch elixirs ever in game either.. waiting for the right emergency, but it never happens.

Alright, week 4 commences... 3 weeks till the Olympics.

Gone But Not Forgotten

There were a large volume of phone calls, particularly those out of town earlier in the week. To add onto the strangeness, my parents also acted unusually suspiciously. Both me and my brother knew something was up. It wasn't until a few days later, they decided to break the news to us... My grandpa had passed away on the weekend. Some time midnight Sunday for us, Monday for them in China.

It was really all too sudden and unexpected. He fell down a few weeks back and had to be admitted to the hospital. They discovered that he was undernourished and wasn't eating well. We were working on getting him set up with those daily energy supplement shakes. It was reassuring to know he was at least in the comfort of his own home during his final moments.

It's frightening to realize I have no more grandparents.

Twenty Ten

あけおめことよろ～

Hello 2010! Happy New Year!
Great to start the new year by running a STALE RED light. I *think* there's no camera in that intersection, but you can never be so sure. Sigh, fml.

Anyway, winter break... there really wasn't much of one. Finished Dragon Age for the time being and marathoned a bunch of anime.

Then came New Years Eve which was a bit unexpected. There were a series of power outages on my way home late in the afternoon. My house and area was also affected so when the rest of the family got home, we headed out for food instead. Later that night I finally headed to Mike's place for the usual celebrations. I honestly had no intention of drinking a lot but I somehow got befriended by one of the party girls and she had me "catch up" to her... and that involved a lot of whiskey and jagerbombs. The night also involved eating really good chips I don't remember the name of and learning how to lap dance.

Before the end of the holidays, the family (+ my bro's gf) also headed down to the states for a day as his "Christmas present" to us. We had to fit 5 people into my car so it wasn't all that comfortable of a drive (I wasn't driver/shotgun). The buffet at the Tulalip casino wasn't as good as we all hoped either but I suppose the successful shopping trip balanced that out. Gotta hold off the spending (for serious this time!).

As for new year resolutions... I've been sleeping more than usual and I always felt oversleeping was a time waster (I still feel the same about it now) but I've been giving in to the awesome comfort and laziness of rolling in bed and not having to feel sleepy midway through the day. It's a sign that I must be becoming more of a lazy person (or lazier than before). Probably not a good thing considering my current position and the time of year. Hm, this would make a good new years resolution. The process of unlazying myself?

School has restarted and I'm not looking forward to the final semester. A fastforward 5 months button would be great right about now.