Change of Plans

計画変更
It's halfway through the year and I'm where I wouldn't of hoped myself to be at. My JET interview wasn't perfect but the positivity level was high enough for me to believe that I had a pretty damn good chance of getting in. Then the unexpected of all unexpected happened -- a whopping earthquake shook the country and created a shitload of other problems bigger than the earthquake itself which then lead to frightened parents and uncertainty. After receiving word of my [partial] acceptance (waitlisted), there was no need for excitement since I well already knew I'd probably have to reject it. Having actually rejected the position left me with my current issue: finding a new job. I got this current job keeping in mind that it was temporary since the pay was no way up to par and the working conditions are extremely less than ideal. I figured the relative convenience for travel and it's relatedness to my skillset worked at the time. Not to mention it was a well known company in the area but I didn't know what kind of company it really was until I started working in it... no surprise there, really. Now that I'm here to stay (in Canada), I've begun thinking about myself, my career, and my future in the long term.

No, nothing philosophical here.

I don't think I've had this level of stress since my JET application (yeah, that sonuvabitch was stressful). I recently plowed through 3 interviews for a prospective global corporation but didn't make the final cut due to the less experience compared to the other candidate. It was unfortunate but it /was/ my first multi-tier interview, so it was a pretty good experience. Other than that, it has been extremely quiet on the battlefront since I've been picking my battles carefully.

On another front, I'm currently looking to invest in a place out of town. In-town (aka. Vancouver) has become unreasonably unaffordable and at this rate, the cities surrounding Vancouver will end up the same. Burnaby (see: Sovereign) is a good example of ridiculousness (it even sold out on the first day) and its prime location justifies its desirability, which in turn, jacks up the prices as well. Then there's Richmond which has become out of the question ever since earthquakes have become an ongoing global concern this year. Doesn't help that we also have to fight with foreign investors (aka. China people) who have way too much pocket change.

Although the job hunting hasn't been very fruitful, I've been well occupied and entertained by life's other diversions. Regrettably, Fable 3 has been doing quite the opposite and I'm just looking to get it over and done with. The inner [selective] completionist in me is making that rather difficult though. I definitely wasn't thinking straight when I decided to play Fable 3 when I was in the mood for a JRPG. Fable 3's disappointment aside, life's still being sprinkled with small moments of joys. The near completion of my brother's new place is one. The family will be taking a look over it tomorrow. And more recently I think I won something... kinda big. More on it when I actually get it.

Okay, now back to the hunt.

Ar Tonelico II: vine en vine, zweie arsye yor

Erm, slight review backlog. This is from a year ago. Didn't have the time to put in the final touches. Allow me to finally dump this here.


Story 4/5
AT2 brings us another tale of Ar Ciel, this time in Metafalss where Reyvateils are being affected by an epidemic of unknown origins. Croix (ku-ro-a), an exceptionally skilled knight, wounds up becoming a bodyguard for Cloche, the holy maiden of the Grand Bell, when she gets attacked during her holidaying by a resistance against the church/organization (governing body) she represents. This becomes the start of his investigation into the source of the epidemic and uncovering the powers and history of his land.

Croix isn't complete without his trusty childhood friend, Luca, who's the perfect polar opposite of Cloche. The two ladies butt heads throughout the story but, of course, there's a whole huge reason behind all of the bickering. The two eventually have to come to terms with each other for the sake of the world and their loved one (aka. the lucky protagonist) after they find out their wield more power than they think.

Saving the world isn't a surprising story but the references from the first game definitely make this experience a lot more deep and interesting. Just like the first game, the second allows you to choose one of the two paths (the two girls) which opens up a different part of the story but closes others. There's also a third girl option which usually takes a bit more effort to reach but she's worth it. I played through the game twice again (yes, it's absurd) to get both paths and to finish with two of the three girls. Luca was not one of them, so now you know.

Characters 4.5/5
I really liked how the design direction of the characters in this game felt more mature (although I think they're about the same age as the prev series). Neither main girls really spoke to me, but Cloche was a bit more interesting than Luca. Still, her ending left much to be desired. On the other hand, the third reyvateil was pretty amusing with her sarcastic personality and her quirkiness makes her all the more interesting. I already knew what was featured in the ending from the Concert OST so watching the scene for myself just topped it off for me.

Unfortunately the protagonist is, again, an indifferent guy who is unaffected by the pretty girls who'd die to get in his pants. His (or I guess yours) feelings will change according to how you advance with the girls but it comes off a tad bit forced. The fortunate part, though, is that his character design is refreshing a nice change in comparison to the genericness of Lyner of AT1. His look is complete when he wears his glasses when he's in normal clothing (glasses fetish? me? no way!). Perhaps I'm a sucker for cool guys. Maybe.. yeah, probably. He even uses a giant lance and his strongest move is called, ahem, maximum penetration. Who can resist a manly scream like that. ;)

Overall it felt like there were more character sub-stories (some selective merchants) and more background stories to be uncovered (if one wished to pursue them).

Sound 5.5/5
AT music has always been known to be nothing less than amazing. I was already well familiarized to the hymns prior to the game and playing the game put the tracks into context. I fell in love with the distinct music style of the vocal tracks just the same as how I did for the first one. Always loved the duets and multiple singer tracks and without a doubt, my most favourite track is featured in the third reyvateil's ending as a duet with Croix.

Yusa Kouji makes such a cool and delicious Croix and out of character Suwabe Junichi as Chester in the optional Cosmosphere was the icing on the cake for this game's Japanese voice track. I avoided the English language track as usual and it's a good thing I did as I heard it's quite distracting and embarrassing to play when the girl shouting for you to insert the thing into them, telling you its overflowing from the inside, and that they demand for more. Ahem.

Graphics 3/5
Average graphics although there's definitely improvement from AT1. Areas have more dimension as the perspective adjusts and move with your character now. Your pixel character, however, continues to be its pixel self. The still portraits and full background images return to provide that dating sim feel but the cutscene animations seemed to have dropped in quality.

Gameplay 3.5/5
The gameplay probably received the biggest upgrade from the first. The battle system has evolved and every action you take now counts for something towards your reyvateil's performance. You now also get up to two beautiful ladies to protect during battle - 2x more work but 2x more powerful. Battles are divided into turn phases (attack and defense) and your offensive turn is to be used as efficiently as possible as you're under a timer. Songs now have branches and evolve depending on your battle action and with the right circumstances, you can synchronize your reyvateils for a powerful attack, call on a satellite for help, or just evolve the song to its most powerful level.

Other nifty [mostly optional] gameplay features include the Cosmosphere (from AT1 - diving into the minds of the ladies to uncover deep dark secrets), bathing events (no you don't get to bath with them but you can watch!), crafting (the ridiculous inventions return) and finding infected reyvateils (which you then recruit to do your bidding).

Overall 4/5
As a second timer into the Ar Tonelico series, I knew what to expect and it definitely lived up to its name. The typos and bugs aside (it won't let me fight Raki :( ), the obvious sexual innuendos are so amusing and that itself just continues to entertain. Having a bit more than just a bit of reference from the first game ([spoiler]The third reyvateil[/spoiler]), made this game all the more interesting as well.


Creepy bug I felt like snapshotting.
Looking forward to diving into AT3 and whatever else they have planned for the world of Ar Tonelico!

Sakura Con 2011 Report

Admiring from a distance... Delicious Perfect Grade.
Easter weekend fell on the final weekend of April this year and Sakura Con followed suit. Things kind of worked out: worked furiously at my portfolio up until the week of Sakura Con to then work furiously on the changes for my costume. Thanks to stress, I had the worst migraine the night before but I managed to recover enough.

Thursday - Day 0
Would've took the day off from work if the workload wasn't so disgustingly big in the last month. Fortunately I was able to jet early and headed home to do some last minute packing before gathering the gang - ToFu and Sty. We ended up leaving Vancouver way later than planned due to all sorts of delays but luckily we still beat the border rush. We made a stop at the Premium Outlet which lasted longer than we originally wanted but it was a nice break from all the sitting.

When we finally got into Seattle, we decided on Kylie's Chicago (deep dish) Pizza for dinner, a mere half n hour before the place closed. After filling up we headed to Garret's place around 10:30ish to finally settle down. We stalked the Will Call page for as long as we could before we decided to call it a night.

Friday - Day 1
Will call finally opened early in the morning so we finally registered. We made our way to the convention to make it to VOFAN and Jo Chen's first panel where they demoed how they collaborated and completed the Sakura Con exclusive Japan relief poster. The level of complexity of the two art styles (Jo Chen and her 3D-style; VOFAN and his character design process) and watching their progress fast forwarded was pretty amazing.

After our first panel we checked out the Artists Alley and then took a visit to the Exhibitor's Hall where I tried really hard to find something I really wanted. I did spot Fate Testarossa Movie version for a whopping 280$ (overpriced 2x) which came out earlier this year. Sadly not happening. With a passing interest in the panel's title, we stopped in to see Jo Chen's BL Circle panel where my respect for her grew even bigger. :D

We finally had our first meal of the day at the Tap House before returning back to check out the "How to Talk to Girls" panel. To our dismay it really was just a counselor girl studying psychology? telling us that anime is not real life. Thanks for the wake up call. We escaped a few minutes into the panel to revisit the Artists Alley before heading to this year's Iron Artist where ToFu reigned supreme again against Garret. After kicking some drawing ass we went to the Swimsuit Contest. Horo and her can crushing with her thighs of steel was kinda cool. Just saying. We have no idea who won though since we left before the results.

Saturday - Day 2

Here's some Moriyama.
Autograph day: VOFAN & Jo Chen, Mitsuishi Kotono (fsking long line + angry fans), Moriyama Daisuke and finally Atsushi Suzumi. Since Atsushi's autograph line was short, we were able to request artwork as well. Lined up on her table were some of her other works and Tokyo Ravens caught my eye so I decided to request that from her. A pouty Natsume was completely up my alley!


Dancing girls in the distance.
Finally after hours of autographing, we hung out outside for some fresh air and watched some photoshoots happen. Checked out the Berryz Koubou concert a bit before heading to Cheesecake Factory for some food and to meet up with the SF gang. I had some firecrackers:


After food we loitered outside before I was spotted by some Touhoes. Decided to check out their little pre-party meetup at Gameworks and, yeah, lots of people showed up. I helped myself to their veggie platter to keep myself busy. P: There was some sort of role playing happening in one corner, Touhoes on a laptop in another, a bunch of non-cosplayer friends chatting to each other or karaoke (aka a capella). Eh. Anyway, I wanted to see that one DJ from Japan at the dance so I headed back to the convention. Unfortunately there was no schedule for the DJs performing so I didn't get a chance to hear that guy's music and I sure wasn't willing to wait around until 4am to find out.

Sunday - Day 3
We failed to leave on time in the morning and ended up missing some of the potentially interesting fashion shows. Following the schedule, we went to VOFAN and Jo Chen's final panel for some fun, free for all Q&A time. We ended up throwing a number of entertaining questions at them. We suspected that VOFAN was probably holding back on some of the answers to the questions since his wife was in the audience.

VOFAN and Jo Chen
Stopped by the Touhou panel after the Q&A to find that they were already doing the photoshoot. We made our final visit to the exhibitor's hall for any last minute deals and purchases to finish off the convention.

There was also an amusing encounter with the niconico.com stream. I'll just leave it at that.

Post convention: we made our way to Uwajimaya and Kinokuniya for some more shopping before heading to Crab Pot for dinner.




What a delicious mess.
My damage which mainly consisted of games I bought and shipped to my friend's place for my pickup convenience:


Gawd too many games.
Then came Monday and normal work life resumed.

Welcoming the next age bracket

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

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

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


My very first purchase at Book Off!

Then had the best cake in the world.


DURIAN. FILLED.

One particular geeky gift card also did well persuading.


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

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

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

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

Limbo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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