I was watching Ong Bak again yesterday and I'm going to have to reverse my opinion stated on LiveJournal: Ong Bak is better than Tom Yum Goong. The stories are pretty much the same. In Ong Bak, Tony Jaa goes after the stolen head of his village's Ong Bak statue. In Tom Yum Goong, he goes after his family's elephant. Both are sacred, but Ong Bak's story sounds just a little bit cooler... and the jaded viewer in me couldn't help but remember a certain Simpsons episode ("Where's my elephant?"). I definitely prefer the music in Ong Bak to Tom Yum Goong's. Ong Bak just seemed to have more... I don't know... martial arts-sounding music. Not that Tom Yum Goong's music was bad - it was definitely appropriate. I can't put my finger on it, but the action sequences in Ong Bak were better than Tom Yum Goong's after all. I remember watching Ong Bak in the theater and being amazed at not only Tony Jaa's moves but also how quickly he returned to his fighting stance. His form was absolutely flawless. I think he also hit MUCH harder in Ong Bak with his elbows and knees. I can't help but think he had to tone it down a bit for the Austrailian crew in Tom Yum Goong. Then again, Tom Yum Goong had the 4-minute no-cut action scene, the guy who looked and acted just like Eddy Gordo, and the bone breaking moves. Tom Yum Goong was supposed to be an international movie with more variety everywhere and they've succeeded. I think Ong Bak is better as a whole. In Ong Bak, Petchthai Wongkamlao (Hum-Lae) actually had a pretty big role; his role was rather cursory in Tom Yum Goong despite shooting a few bad guys. He was funnier in Ong Bak too. Tony Jaa was pretty much perfect in Ong Bak, but in Tom Yum Goong, he had about ten lines... and most of them were either "Where's Johnny?" or "Where's my elephant?"... and what did happen to Johnny anyway? At least everything was wrapped up nicely in Ong Bak. So to put this in Tekken terms: Ong Bak is like TTT in its prime, whereas Tom Yum Goong is like T5 in its prime... whenever that was.
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Sunday, December 25, 2005
LOLOLOL...
[ORIGINAL POST]
I was going to make my first MySpace blog entry extremely profound and highly cogent (and on the first day of the new year accompanied by some sort of introduction), but this was too friggin funny!
From Tekken Zaibatsu:
I must say, I like how the MySpace blog interface looks, but I don't like how I have to search for my "now reading / viewing / listening to" selection instead of just typing it in. Maybe I'll go ahead and make this the new home of my rants and pointless reflections. Too many bad memories on LiveJournal and my Xanga wasn't going anywhere.
Oh, and by the way: I don't usually write things like "LOL" except when I'm making fun of the people who do. This is probably one of those times...
From Tekken Zaibatsu:
WHAT THE HELL? YOU MADE A FUCKING TOPIC JUST FOR FUCKING ASKING HOW SHE FUCK THAT BITCHS NAME IS PRONOUNCED? I haaaatteeee yooouuu. Can't you just add someone on msn and then have a voice conversation to ask them? And by the way, why the hell would you ask such an idiotic question? My friend pronounceses Lee and Lei with just LEE. IT DOESNT BOTHER OR HURT ANYONE. Just fucking say whatever you want. You can call her a BITCH and give that name to her for the rest of her life. And haven't you read? NO FUCKING NONSENSE TOPICS. uuuhhhh GOD i hate humens like you.
I must say, I like how the MySpace blog interface looks, but I don't like how I have to search for my "now reading / viewing / listening to" selection instead of just typing it in. Maybe I'll go ahead and make this the new home of my rants and pointless reflections. Too many bad memories on LiveJournal and my Xanga wasn't going anywhere.
Oh, and by the way: I don't usually write things like "LOL" except when I'm making fun of the people who do. This is probably one of those times...
Thursday, December 8, 2005
*insert witty title here*
[ORIGINAL POST]
It's been a little over a month since my last entry and I've had a few days to decompress from the craziness of finals, so I guess it's time to write about it.
School stuff
JAPN 315 (Language in Japanese Society): I got "A"s on the first two tests and I'm sure I did okay on the third (and last) test which doubled as the final. The project I had to do turned out interesting... as usual I did it at the very last second and I got my material from people on AIM, including people I haven't even met in person! Many thanks and apologies.
JAPN 410 (Modern Japanese Literature): Er... I'll be happy to get a "B" in this class. This was surprisingly tough; I got high "C"s on the first quiz and midterm (as did almost everyone else), and I have no idea what I got on the second (and last) quiz. I'm sure I did well on the final, and I did surprisingly well on the paper ("B+"), especially when Yokota-sensei was saying how she was "grading strict" and that some weren't "following the paper instructions"... not to mention that I turned mine in a day late! She kept delaying the due date of the paper and I was always just putting it in the back of my mind. On the day I thought it might be due, we had an insane amount of homework (which meant to me that it couldn't have possibly been on that day), and I thought she said we could turn it in the next day anyway. Everything turned out okay, though. I did most of the homework and participated fairly often, so that has to mean something, right?
JAPN 300A (Advanced Japanese): The final was a little harder than I thought (especially that first question)... maybe I should have studied for more than a minute. I was more worried about the presentation I still had to do; I knew mine would be a bit long with the DVD and I didn't want to use up any more time for the final than I had to, so I tried to go through it as fast as I could. I'm still disappointed that I still had to read off my script - much more than I thought, anyway. I tried to at least memorize the first paragraph, the last paragraph, and the first few sentences of each paragraph (to give the illusion that I memorized it), but I couldn't even do that. My hat's off to the beauteous Pearl for the best presentation.
Fun stuff
Bujingai: It's the game Gackt helped make. I found the US and JP versions very cheap on eBay so I grabbed them (if I was crazy I'd get the European version too, but I won't). It looks and plays great! It comes with lots of extras like unlockable Gackt interviews and stuff. I'm pleasantly surprised that the US version not only kept them but subtitled the videos as well!
Tom Yum Goong: I had a hard time believing that anything could top Ong Bak unless it was by Tony Jaa himself. WOW. It's better in every way in terms of story, scope, and of course action.
A Love To Kill (aka "This Love I Want to Kill," aka "A Love of Death"): Whatever you call it, it's pretty spectacular. This of course stars Bi, who I revere about as much as Gackt. And what do you know - he's also a singer. I've only seen the first three episodes so I won't be reading a certain someone's LJ for a while...
Firefox 1.5: This browser is my favorite new toy. Even if it didn't load pages faster than Internet Explorer and didn't prevent your computer's security from being compromised unlike IE (which it does), I'd still use it. I've got so many extensions for Firefox that let me do so many cool and useful features (that IE could never do) it's insane. You know, I've always thought obsessing over cars was pretty stupid, but if it's because of the customizability (like with Firefox), I can understand.
I still need to decompress until the first day of school next year, whenever that is. With any luck a friend from high school will be dropping by (he damn well better), so I gotta have my days open...
| [ | mood | | | accomplished | ] |
| [ | music | | | Bujingai OST | ] |
It's been a little over a month since my last entry and I've had a few days to decompress from the craziness of finals, so I guess it's time to write about it.
School stuff
JAPN 315 (Language in Japanese Society): I got "A"s on the first two tests and I'm sure I did okay on the third (and last) test which doubled as the final. The project I had to do turned out interesting... as usual I did it at the very last second and I got my material from people on AIM, including people I haven't even met in person! Many thanks and apologies.
JAPN 410 (Modern Japanese Literature): Er... I'll be happy to get a "B" in this class. This was surprisingly tough; I got high "C"s on the first quiz and midterm (as did almost everyone else), and I have no idea what I got on the second (and last) quiz. I'm sure I did well on the final, and I did surprisingly well on the paper ("B+"), especially when Yokota-sensei was saying how she was "grading strict" and that some weren't "following the paper instructions"... not to mention that I turned mine in a day late! She kept delaying the due date of the paper and I was always just putting it in the back of my mind. On the day I thought it might be due, we had an insane amount of homework (which meant to me that it couldn't have possibly been on that day), and I thought she said we could turn it in the next day anyway. Everything turned out okay, though. I did most of the homework and participated fairly often, so that has to mean something, right?
JAPN 300A (Advanced Japanese): The final was a little harder than I thought (especially that first question)... maybe I should have studied for more than a minute. I was more worried about the presentation I still had to do; I knew mine would be a bit long with the DVD and I didn't want to use up any more time for the final than I had to, so I tried to go through it as fast as I could. I'm still disappointed that I still had to read off my script - much more than I thought, anyway. I tried to at least memorize the first paragraph, the last paragraph, and the first few sentences of each paragraph (to give the illusion that I memorized it), but I couldn't even do that. My hat's off to the beauteous Pearl for the best presentation.
Fun stuff
Bujingai: It's the game Gackt helped make. I found the US and JP versions very cheap on eBay so I grabbed them (if I was crazy I'd get the European version too, but I won't). It looks and plays great! It comes with lots of extras like unlockable Gackt interviews and stuff. I'm pleasantly surprised that the US version not only kept them but subtitled the videos as well!
Tom Yum Goong: I had a hard time believing that anything could top Ong Bak unless it was by Tony Jaa himself. WOW. It's better in every way in terms of story, scope, and of course action.
A Love To Kill (aka "This Love I Want to Kill," aka "A Love of Death"): Whatever you call it, it's pretty spectacular. This of course stars Bi, who I revere about as much as Gackt. And what do you know - he's also a singer. I've only seen the first three episodes so I won't be reading a certain someone's LJ for a while...
Firefox 1.5: This browser is my favorite new toy. Even if it didn't load pages faster than Internet Explorer and didn't prevent your computer's security from being compromised unlike IE (which it does), I'd still use it. I've got so many extensions for Firefox that let me do so many cool and useful features (that IE could never do) it's insane. You know, I've always thought obsessing over cars was pretty stupid, but if it's because of the customizability (like with Firefox), I can understand.
I still need to decompress until the first day of school next year, whenever that is. With any luck a friend from high school will be dropping by (he damn well better), so I gotta have my days open...
Saturday, November 5, 2005
Japan stuff
[ORIGINAL POST]
I spent pretty much the entire day working on the DVD for the Japanese oral presentation. Who knew it would all come down to 5 minutes of playing time?
My topic is 神威楽斗 (Gackt). I'm pretty sure I could do it on Gackt; Koike-sensei wrote "related to Japan, Japanese culture, language, something Japanese"... and, well, Gackt is Japanese, he's a popculture icon, and his songs play with the language - a point I intend to spend some time on. If I can't do it on Gackt, I'm screwed. What am I supposed to do it on... お盆？お正月？侍？ I wouldn't last a minute!
Since the presentation is supposed to be 7-10 minutes long, I felt I should make the video a maximum of 3 minutes just to be safe. I should have known, however, that no one can contain the greatness of Gackt in just 3 minutes... so I ended up doing it in 5, heh. But since we have to prepare 4 to 5 pages of script, that means I have to be able to read at least a page a minute!
On Monday, Lina asked me what I was going to do for my presentation. I said "Gackt", but she might have thought I was just clearing my throat or something, still not answering. I didn't get a chance to explain because I remember Pearl entering the room and grabbing everyone's attention with her Gakuen Alice costume. But I still feel bad about it, so someone please email her and tell her that my presentation is on Gackt. I can't do it myself for obvious reasons.
Which brings me to my next item: Monday was also my birthday. The fact that no one remembered wasn't what was bothering me; what was bothering me was that it was my birthday. I think I summed up my feelings about it pretty well in my last LJ entry though, so no need to dwell any further on that...
But on Thursday I went over to Kinokuniya and bought Kodansha's Dictionary of Basic Japanese Idioms for about $35. This thing is great; I finally learned how to use 「気になる」 in a sentence. It's more practical than the proverb dictionary and easier than the onomatopoeia book I bought before. I just never could get past the first chapter!
Then I treated myself to some curry rice. $5.25 is so worth the price of chicken curry mild and making other people on the bus hungry. And it's still cheaper than the sushi I usually buy!
| [ | mood | | |  excited | ] |
| [ | music | | | Gackt - Metamorphoze | ] |
I spent pretty much the entire day working on the DVD for the Japanese oral presentation. Who knew it would all come down to 5 minutes of playing time?
My topic is 神威楽斗 (Gackt). I'm pretty sure I could do it on Gackt; Koike-sensei wrote "related to Japan, Japanese culture, language, something Japanese"... and, well, Gackt is Japanese, he's a popculture icon, and his songs play with the language - a point I intend to spend some time on. If I can't do it on Gackt, I'm screwed. What am I supposed to do it on... お盆？お正月？侍？ I wouldn't last a minute!
Since the presentation is supposed to be 7-10 minutes long, I felt I should make the video a maximum of 3 minutes just to be safe. I should have known, however, that no one can contain the greatness of Gackt in just 3 minutes... so I ended up doing it in 5, heh. But since we have to prepare 4 to 5 pages of script, that means I have to be able to read at least a page a minute!
On Monday, Lina asked me what I was going to do for my presentation. I said "Gackt", but she might have thought I was just clearing my throat or something, still not answering. I didn't get a chance to explain because I remember Pearl entering the room and grabbing everyone's attention with her Gakuen Alice costume. But I still feel bad about it, so someone please email her and tell her that my presentation is on Gackt. I can't do it myself for obvious reasons.
Which brings me to my next item: Monday was also my birthday. The fact that no one remembered wasn't what was bothering me; what was bothering me was that it was my birthday. I think I summed up my feelings about it pretty well in my last LJ entry though, so no need to dwell any further on that...
But on Thursday I went over to Kinokuniya and bought Kodansha's Dictionary of Basic Japanese Idioms for about $35. This thing is great; I finally learned how to use 「気になる」 in a sentence. It's more practical than the proverb dictionary and easier than the onomatopoeia book I bought before. I just never could get past the first chapter!
Then I treated myself to some curry rice. $5.25 is so worth the price of chicken curry mild and making other people on the bus hungry. And it's still cheaper than the sushi I usually buy!
Tuesday, November 1, 2005
Hmm
[ORIGINAL POST]
Another year, another dozen things I should have / should be doing / should have done by now.
But it's not all bad... I got my brother's old 3rd gen iPod. So I'll go ahead and say that the 3rd gen iPods are the best.
But it's not all bad... I got my brother's old 3rd gen iPod. So I'll go ahead and say that the 3rd gen iPods are the best.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Knott's Scary Farm
[ORIGINAL POST]
I'm a little late with this, I know...
Friday was the day I went to Knott's Scary Farm with the usual suspects. That day I only had a light lunch at noon and some ice cream at 3:30. I wasn't sure when I would be picked up; maybe I actuallywould enter the hallowed halls of Winnie's house, and I didn't want to be rude by being the only one not eating anything if we actually did have a snack or dinner before going, so I decided I would save some room. Boy, did I soon regret that...
We met at school and left at about 5:45. It took us a long time to find the place, a long time to find parking, and a long time to meet up with the rest of the group. We were probably finally ready at 8:00. I was getting a little hungry.
I don't know who said that the place wasn't scary, but it was pretty scary. Not just for the atmosphere, but for the random people in masks who would suddenly scream at you. Mask-wearing chainsaw-wielding maniacs I can handle; this I can't. Honestly, I get startled whenever someone knocks on my door! The fact that they couldn't legally grab people didn't help me, either!
I was getting pretty hungry after two mazes so it was either go on a ride or do something else. I usually go with the majority, and in this case it meant skipping dinner and going on a ride. Now, had I known the wait would be 90 minutes and the ride would be less than a minute, I probably would have chosen dinner. The ride (Supreme Scream) was actually scary; so scary, in fact, that I'm going to have to come up with an easier way of killing myself. We had to take off our shoes and remove everything from our pockets and we got up really... really high. I thought I could handle it, but it wasREALLY REALLY HIGH. And when we were falling (REALLY REALLY FAST), I was off the seat, my heart beating almost exponentially faster each half-second. It was a great view, though, second only to seeing Pearl in the blue light from the $3-a-bottle Pepsi vending machine. Man, I wish I snuck a picture when everyone else was looking at the map... I bet I could have said "I was just taking a picture of these outrageous prices", too... (hope no one's reading this part...)
At this point we all got back together and... no, we didn't eat (except for a few small pieces of Pearl's bizarrely cute Japanese chocolate candy)... we went on a log ride. At this point I was beyond hungry (my stomach didn't feel empty because it forgot that food was supposed to go there), but I probably would have fainted in half an hour so I caved and bought a $3 Sierra Mist and some more candy. That came out to an even $5 so I didn't feel too bad about the price.
The train ride was nice, if not a little cramped. It was really unbelievable how much I needed to sit down; it wasn't my feet that was killing me, it was my back! I didn't mind the occasional scare because I was luckily positioned so that I could see it coming, and if it did come my way it would only get Sammi... hehe...
The shows were pretty impressive. I saw a little bit of The Hanging which was a hilarious lampooning of some of the other theme parks. Ed Alzonzo's Howl-o-ween House Party was pretty good too, but a little lewd. The Haunted Hypnotist was ok... the crowd was great, but I've never been a huge fan of hypnotism. I think the idea of being powerless under someone else's control is a scarier than anything. It's only funny in sitcoms. Oh well... I guess I had to be there from the beginning.
I was the last to get dropped off at around 4:00 am. I found it amazing that Sam woke up at 5:00 am the day before. I woke up at about 10:00 feeling just fine.
The next time I go to an amusement park I'll be sure to actually eat something, and I'll save my camera batteries to watch dramas when I'm waiting in line instead of in the car.
Things to do:
Monday: japn 300a homework, register
Tuesday: japn 410 test, japn 315 homework
Wednesday: japn 300a speech outline
Thursday: japn 315 test
| [ | mood | | |  okay | ] |
| [ | music | | | Ace Combat 5 - The Unsung War | ] |
I'm a little late with this, I know...
Friday was the day I went to Knott's Scary Farm with the usual suspects. That day I only had a light lunch at noon and some ice cream at 3:30. I wasn't sure when I would be picked up; maybe I actuallywould enter the hallowed halls of Winnie's house, and I didn't want to be rude by being the only one not eating anything if we actually did have a snack or dinner before going, so I decided I would save some room. Boy, did I soon regret that...
We met at school and left at about 5:45. It took us a long time to find the place, a long time to find parking, and a long time to meet up with the rest of the group. We were probably finally ready at 8:00. I was getting a little hungry.
I don't know who said that the place wasn't scary, but it was pretty scary. Not just for the atmosphere, but for the random people in masks who would suddenly scream at you. Mask-wearing chainsaw-wielding maniacs I can handle; this I can't. Honestly, I get startled whenever someone knocks on my door! The fact that they couldn't legally grab people didn't help me, either!
I was getting pretty hungry after two mazes so it was either go on a ride or do something else. I usually go with the majority, and in this case it meant skipping dinner and going on a ride. Now, had I known the wait would be 90 minutes and the ride would be less than a minute, I probably would have chosen dinner. The ride (Supreme Scream) was actually scary; so scary, in fact, that I'm going to have to come up with an easier way of killing myself. We had to take off our shoes and remove everything from our pockets and we got up really... really high. I thought I could handle it, but it wasREALLY REALLY HIGH. And when we were falling (REALLY REALLY FAST), I was off the seat, my heart beating almost exponentially faster each half-second. It was a great view, though, second only to seeing Pearl in the blue light from the $3-a-bottle Pepsi vending machine. Man, I wish I snuck a picture when everyone else was looking at the map... I bet I could have said "I was just taking a picture of these outrageous prices", too... (hope no one's reading this part...)
At this point we all got back together and... no, we didn't eat (except for a few small pieces of Pearl's bizarrely cute Japanese chocolate candy)... we went on a log ride. At this point I was beyond hungry (my stomach didn't feel empty because it forgot that food was supposed to go there), but I probably would have fainted in half an hour so I caved and bought a $3 Sierra Mist and some more candy. That came out to an even $5 so I didn't feel too bad about the price.
The train ride was nice, if not a little cramped. It was really unbelievable how much I needed to sit down; it wasn't my feet that was killing me, it was my back! I didn't mind the occasional scare because I was luckily positioned so that I could see it coming, and if it did come my way it would only get Sammi... hehe...
The shows were pretty impressive. I saw a little bit of The Hanging which was a hilarious lampooning of some of the other theme parks. Ed Alzonzo's Howl-o-ween House Party was pretty good too, but a little lewd. The Haunted Hypnotist was ok... the crowd was great, but I've never been a huge fan of hypnotism. I think the idea of being powerless under someone else's control is a scarier than anything. It's only funny in sitcoms. Oh well... I guess I had to be there from the beginning.
I was the last to get dropped off at around 4:00 am. I found it amazing that Sam woke up at 5:00 am the day before. I woke up at about 10:00 feeling just fine.
The next time I go to an amusement park I'll be sure to actually eat something, and I'll save my camera batteries to watch dramas when I'm waiting in line instead of in the car.
Things to do:
Monday: japn 300a homework, register
Tuesday: japn 410 test, japn 315 homework
Wednesday: japn 300a speech outline
Thursday: japn 315 test
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Ahh what the hell...
[ORIGINAL POST]
I was watching some videos when the doorbell rang. It was about 9:30 so I wondered who the hell it could be. I peeked through the window and it was a fucking police officer! Now of course, more than a few things came to my mind.
1) Why the fuck is there a fucking police officer at the fucking front door?
2) What the fuck was the matter?
3) Is this shit for real? I've seen shows on TV about people impersonating police officers to get inside a house where they end up butchering everyone. And it's fucking nighttime already.
4) If I close my eyes will she go away?
Usually my dad watches TV until about 11:00... except for today when he decided to sleep early for some fucking reason, so I didn't know what the fuck I should do. At least until she (not so politely) told me to open the door and (not so politely) told me she needed to use the phone. And of course today I wasn't able to find the cordless phone quickly because my parents were moving everything around AGAIN to finish up the hardwood flooring installation. All the while my dad was putting some damn clothes on. Fucking... fuck...
FUUUUCK........
Apparently they got a call from our house so they came by to investigate. No one was using the damn phone, much less calling 911. Oh, but we got some warning anyway. Fuck.
So now we have some sort of fucking record with the police, we don't know how the fuck they could have gotten a call from our house, we don't fucking know if someone really WAS fucking with our phoneline, and if it happens again we're going to have to fucking pay for them coming over.
Fuck.
| [ | mood | | |  annoyed | ] |
I was watching some videos when the doorbell rang. It was about 9:30 so I wondered who the hell it could be. I peeked through the window and it was a fucking police officer! Now of course, more than a few things came to my mind.
1) Why the fuck is there a fucking police officer at the fucking front door?
2) What the fuck was the matter?
3) Is this shit for real? I've seen shows on TV about people impersonating police officers to get inside a house where they end up butchering everyone. And it's fucking nighttime already.
4) If I close my eyes will she go away?
Usually my dad watches TV until about 11:00... except for today when he decided to sleep early for some fucking reason, so I didn't know what the fuck I should do. At least until she (not so politely) told me to open the door and (not so politely) told me she needed to use the phone. And of course today I wasn't able to find the cordless phone quickly because my parents were moving everything around AGAIN to finish up the hardwood flooring installation. All the while my dad was putting some damn clothes on. Fucking... fuck...
FUUUUCK........
Apparently they got a call from our house so they came by to investigate. No one was using the damn phone, much less calling 911. Oh, but we got some warning anyway. Fuck.
So now we have some sort of fucking record with the police, we don't know how the fuck they could have gotten a call from our house, we don't fucking know if someone really WAS fucking with our phoneline, and if it happens again we're going to have to fucking pay for them coming over.
Fuck.
Saturday, October 8, 2005
紀伊國屋
[ORIGINAL POST]
Well, yesterday was interesting.
I went to Kinokuniya (...all by myself...) in search of another origami book and at least one other book. That's right, origami （折り紙）.
On Monday, Sam went to Kinokuniya to buy a new electronic dictionary and I tagged along, wondering if I could / should get a music CD. I was about to leave without getting anything when I sawThe Buck Book: All Sorts of Things to do with a Dollar - Besides Spend It. Maybe it was the catchy title (if I was at least a little bit wittier and knowledgeable about a topic I'd name it something like that), or the free $1 bill they give you ("Instant $1 Rebate"... gotta love it), but I remembered that I really needed a new hobby and origami was one of them, so I bought the book. It really is great; the writing is entertaining and the instructions and diagrams are very clear, making use of the marks on the dollar. The only downside to the book is that there are only seven patterns. Also, the word "origami" is nowhere in the book.
So yesterday (Friday), I got another book on origami: Sticky Note Origami: 25 Designs to Make at Your Desk. This book, like the other book, seemed like a very practical book on origami so I grabbed it. I'm unsure if this book is better or worse than the other one; this has 25 designs compared to 7, and while some of them seem very impressive (those molecules and fold-able cubes come to mind), others are just too simple. The first one was in fact an elephant made from a single fold. That didn't stop the diagrams from being several times more complicated than the ones found in The Buck Book, though that may be because sticky notes don't have the visual aids that dollar bills provide. The book did provide info on origami as a whole, so that's a plus.
It took me a long time to choose the second book. I first wanted a book to supplement my Japanese studies, but I didn't want it to be just a glossary of terms. Some were just too expensive and the rest were too elementary. Luckily I wandered into the "Martial Arts" section and found The Book of Five Rings （五輪書） by Miyamoto Musashi （宮本武蔵）. Not only does this match The Art of War by Sun Tzu, but the English translation is accompanied by the original Japanese text and a modern translation!
I was feeling pretty good until I got back to the bus station when I decided to buy something to drink. I usually don't drink soda except when wolfing down a burger since that's already unhealthy (thanks in part to the movie Supersize Me), but it was hot, I wasn't in the mood for water or an ice cream bar, and I figured that "if I spent this much money on books, what's another $1.25?" I got my Cherry Coke and it turned out to be warm. Hmm. Then when I opened it, it spilled into the bag with my new books! I was seriously pissed off (to say the least). My new books were possibly ruined and I wasn't able to wash my hands until about 40 minutes later. Maybe it was karma for killing a cricket by throwing a rug over it and walking until I heard a sickening (yet satisfying) crunch?
I got home and I was able to minimize the damage; the soda washed off the covers rather easily, and since the books were closed and the pages were thick, you could only see stains on the very top of the books, and only if you looked carefully.
My thoughts on origami:
Appreciation comes when you realize how much variety there is. Traditionally it's about making objects out of nothing more than a piece of paper without cutting or using other materials. Purists will insist that it must only be from perfectly square pieces of paper. That's just limiting, and I think part of my excitement comes from being able to make things from common items like dollar bills and sticky notes.
Fascination comes from simply admiring and attempting your own. Even after making my "dollar peacock," I'm still amazed it turned out as well as it did. Some of those folds are surprisingly complex, and I can only wonder how many objects can be made out of a plain piece of paper, with or without cutting or gluing. It's not for nothing that origami fascinates math heads, too.
Beauty comes rather easily. There's something for everyone; the "less is more" crowd enjoys simple designs and competing for the least number of folds. Others make startingly detailed models. I'm a little of both.
I think this is definitely right up my alley. It's fun, great to look at, and it's easier to show off with than handstand walking (not strong or balanced enough), juggling (not coordinated enough), or unicycling (don't even know where to begin). Card houses are still fun but they're a pain to clean up, and I'm afraid learning kanji will stop being fun once I start tackling vocabulary.
The amazingly talented can draw manga; the adorably cute can knit. That leaves me with origami. Here's what I've done so far:
| [ | mood | | | peaceful | ] |
| [ | music | | | 世界はそれを愛と呼ぶんだぜ （サンボマスター） | ] |
Well, yesterday was interesting.
I went to Kinokuniya (...all by myself...) in search of another origami book and at least one other book. That's right, origami （折り紙）.
On Monday, Sam went to Kinokuniya to buy a new electronic dictionary and I tagged along, wondering if I could / should get a music CD. I was about to leave without getting anything when I sawThe Buck Book: All Sorts of Things to do with a Dollar - Besides Spend It. Maybe it was the catchy title (if I was at least a little bit wittier and knowledgeable about a topic I'd name it something like that), or the free $1 bill they give you ("Instant $1 Rebate"... gotta love it), but I remembered that I really needed a new hobby and origami was one of them, so I bought the book. It really is great; the writing is entertaining and the instructions and diagrams are very clear, making use of the marks on the dollar. The only downside to the book is that there are only seven patterns. Also, the word "origami" is nowhere in the book.
So yesterday (Friday), I got another book on origami: Sticky Note Origami: 25 Designs to Make at Your Desk. This book, like the other book, seemed like a very practical book on origami so I grabbed it. I'm unsure if this book is better or worse than the other one; this has 25 designs compared to 7, and while some of them seem very impressive (those molecules and fold-able cubes come to mind), others are just too simple. The first one was in fact an elephant made from a single fold. That didn't stop the diagrams from being several times more complicated than the ones found in The Buck Book, though that may be because sticky notes don't have the visual aids that dollar bills provide. The book did provide info on origami as a whole, so that's a plus.
It took me a long time to choose the second book. I first wanted a book to supplement my Japanese studies, but I didn't want it to be just a glossary of terms. Some were just too expensive and the rest were too elementary. Luckily I wandered into the "Martial Arts" section and found The Book of Five Rings （五輪書） by Miyamoto Musashi （宮本武蔵）. Not only does this match The Art of War by Sun Tzu, but the English translation is accompanied by the original Japanese text and a modern translation!
I was feeling pretty good until I got back to the bus station when I decided to buy something to drink. I usually don't drink soda except when wolfing down a burger since that's already unhealthy (thanks in part to the movie Supersize Me), but it was hot, I wasn't in the mood for water or an ice cream bar, and I figured that "if I spent this much money on books, what's another $1.25?" I got my Cherry Coke and it turned out to be warm. Hmm. Then when I opened it, it spilled into the bag with my new books! I was seriously pissed off (to say the least). My new books were possibly ruined and I wasn't able to wash my hands until about 40 minutes later. Maybe it was karma for killing a cricket by throwing a rug over it and walking until I heard a sickening (yet satisfying) crunch?
I got home and I was able to minimize the damage; the soda washed off the covers rather easily, and since the books were closed and the pages were thick, you could only see stains on the very top of the books, and only if you looked carefully.
My thoughts on origami:
Appreciation comes when you realize how much variety there is. Traditionally it's about making objects out of nothing more than a piece of paper without cutting or using other materials. Purists will insist that it must only be from perfectly square pieces of paper. That's just limiting, and I think part of my excitement comes from being able to make things from common items like dollar bills and sticky notes.
Fascination comes from simply admiring and attempting your own. Even after making my "dollar peacock," I'm still amazed it turned out as well as it did. Some of those folds are surprisingly complex, and I can only wonder how many objects can be made out of a plain piece of paper, with or without cutting or gluing. It's not for nothing that origami fascinates math heads, too.
Beauty comes rather easily. There's something for everyone; the "less is more" crowd enjoys simple designs and competing for the least number of folds. Others make startingly detailed models. I'm a little of both.
I think this is definitely right up my alley. It's fun, great to look at, and it's easier to show off with than handstand walking (not strong or balanced enough), juggling (not coordinated enough), or unicycling (don't even know where to begin). Card houses are still fun but they're a pain to clean up, and I'm afraid learning kanji will stop being fun once I start tackling vocabulary.
The amazingly talented can draw manga; the adorably cute can knit. That leaves me with origami. Here's what I've done so far:
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
My... vacation?
[ORIGINAL POST]
Has it really been a month since my last entry? Huh.
My "vacation" so far has been moving stuff around and out of the house to prepare for the installation of hardwood flooring. And now that that's done (4 days of noise and dust), the rest of my vacation will probably be moving stuff back to my room... after my parents get done repainting the walls. Not quite the vacation I had in mind. I miss being in my room, but must say that it's awfully convenient having my computer and the TiVo in the same room.
I recently got my test results from the two kanji tests I took in June (９級 and ８級) and I passed both of them! I've been studying kanji for years but I only studied for these particular tests for about 10 minutes total. ９級 was a piece of cake, and although ８級 was quite a bit harder, it was still doable. I just feel a little bad for a guy I know (he introduced me to the tests) because he missed passing the ８級 three times (by 5 or 10 points)!
So with those tests under my belt, I've decided to really dedicate myself to studying Japanese... even more. Which, in this case, means anime. Even before I got the test results I started watching Bleach because of a certain someone and caught up to episode 46 from the very beginning in three or four days. (I was a bit of an idiot here, though... I downloaded the ANBU / Anime Keep batch and after fully seeding that, I saw the better batch by Lunar Anime and downloaded and seeded that batch!) I've made it a habit of putting the more interesting or useful phrases into a Word document, like this gem from 石田雨竜: 「勝負しないか、一護？君と僕と、どっちが優れているのか分からせたい。」
There's other anime, too. I've been downloading Tsubasa Chronicle alongside Naruto but I haven't even seen a single episode until a "DVD quality" version of episode 1 was available a few days ago. I decided to finally check out the episode 1 I already downloaded and I was pleasantly surprised... such a beautiful, beautiful series.
I also decided to check out Daddy Long Legs because it had the same title as a Korean movie I downloaded. Not quite the same, but I'd challenge anyone to view the first few episodes and not cry.
Episode 1 of Shuffle! was released ago and I gave it a try. Seems like a nice contrast to all the other series I'm watching. Reminds me of Tenchi Muyo... (bah, I just checked animesuki and I downloaded episode 1 from Anime Source like an idiot when I could have been downloading up to episode 8 from Froth-Bite!)
And then there's the whole j-drama scene. I have a dozen or so downloaded/seeded/burned dramas of which I haven't seen a single episode, and that includes Densha Otoko. It was recommended by a fellow drama addict, the series was always surpisingly well seeded at d-addicts, and subtitles were coming out mere days after the release of each raw episode. But when there was a topic about it on afighting game forum, I figured it had to be good. I think I'll start watching it... (too...)
And... aaaand... a friend dropped by and handed me FF7 Advent Children. I'll admit that I haven't exactly been keeping tabs on that, even though I beat the game three times. It seems to be all the rage now (and a certain someone is just raving about it), so I'll watch it... eventually.
My "vacation" so far has been moving stuff around and out of the house to prepare for the installation of hardwood flooring. And now that that's done (4 days of noise and dust), the rest of my vacation will probably be moving stuff back to my room... after my parents get done repainting the walls. Not quite the vacation I had in mind. I miss being in my room, but must say that it's awfully convenient having my computer and the TiVo in the same room.
I recently got my test results from the two kanji tests I took in June (９級 and ８級) and I passed both of them! I've been studying kanji for years but I only studied for these particular tests for about 10 minutes total. ９級 was a piece of cake, and although ８級 was quite a bit harder, it was still doable. I just feel a little bad for a guy I know (he introduced me to the tests) because he missed passing the ８級 three times (by 5 or 10 points)!
So with those tests under my belt, I've decided to really dedicate myself to studying Japanese... even more. Which, in this case, means anime. Even before I got the test results I started watching Bleach because of a certain someone and caught up to episode 46 from the very beginning in three or four days. (I was a bit of an idiot here, though... I downloaded the ANBU / Anime Keep batch and after fully seeding that, I saw the better batch by Lunar Anime and downloaded and seeded that batch!) I've made it a habit of putting the more interesting or useful phrases into a Word document, like this gem from 石田雨竜: 「勝負しないか、一護？君と僕と、どっちが優れているのか分からせたい。」
There's other anime, too. I've been downloading Tsubasa Chronicle alongside Naruto but I haven't even seen a single episode until a "DVD quality" version of episode 1 was available a few days ago. I decided to finally check out the episode 1 I already downloaded and I was pleasantly surprised... such a beautiful, beautiful series.
I also decided to check out Daddy Long Legs because it had the same title as a Korean movie I downloaded. Not quite the same, but I'd challenge anyone to view the first few episodes and not cry.
Episode 1 of Shuffle! was released ago and I gave it a try. Seems like a nice contrast to all the other series I'm watching. Reminds me of Tenchi Muyo... (bah, I just checked animesuki and I downloaded episode 1 from Anime Source like an idiot when I could have been downloading up to episode 8 from Froth-Bite!)
And then there's the whole j-drama scene. I have a dozen or so downloaded/seeded/burned dramas of which I haven't seen a single episode, and that includes Densha Otoko. It was recommended by a fellow drama addict, the series was always surpisingly well seeded at d-addicts, and subtitles were coming out mere days after the release of each raw episode. But when there was a topic about it on afighting game forum, I figured it had to be good. I think I'll start watching it... (too...)
And... aaaand... a friend dropped by and handed me FF7 Advent Children. I'll admit that I haven't exactly been keeping tabs on that, even though I beat the game three times. It seems to be all the rage now (and a certain someone is just raving about it), so I'll watch it... eventually.
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Last month
[ORIGINAL POST]
First, my mini-review of Best of YesJapan Volume 1:
This thing is SO FREAKING FUNNY!!! And, oh yeah, it teaches you real, practical Japanese too. It's definitely more advanced than the two "Yan-san" series and more accessible than the 新にほんごでくらそう series, both of which I've downloaded and burned to two separate DVDs. I'm pretty sure one of the samples they have on their front page (Techniques to Impress Your Japanese Friends) is the same episode they have on the DVD, so give it a download. I got my copy from JBOX.com for just under $25 (including shipping) and it arrived six days after I sent the money order. Pretty good!
Other stuff:
Three weeks ago I went to the Japanese American National Museum as an activity for the Japan Club. It was a Saturday and despite everyone telling the organizer (Japan Club President Chris) that Saturday was the best day, I was the only one able to make it. He also brought along his Japanese g/f. After a small lunch (which he paid for), we went into the blissfully air-conditioned museum (also paid for). The big exhibition was the Taiko (太鼓) and it was very impressive! After that we all hung out around Little Tokyo for awhile, making it a sort of "3-person date" (actually, it was more along the lines of a real date with me being the loser girlfriend-less tag-along).
School:
You know that paper I did at the last second? I got an "A". Even the smarter, more vocal people in class got "C"s, so I'd be feeling pretty good if it didn't make me seem like a jerk. All I can say is that (1) proofreading is overrated (I just type it all correctly the first time and check right then and there... of course it does take me an hour per page), and (2) it doesn't matter how stupid your ideas are - if you can support them (i.e., pad your paper) with quotes in the right places, you'll get a good grade! So if any of you fine ladies need someone to proofread your papers...
yeah. (It was because of my ostensibly high grades on English papers that I wanted to major in English at one point, but it's already too late for that, and besides, literature and reading are also overrated. I'll bet whatever little money I have that I'm the least well-read person in any class... that is to say, I'm not very well-read at all! 
)
I got a "B+" for my Anthro midterm, yay.
I also recently got an "A" on my second English quiz, even though it was definitely harder, I thought I messed up more, and I got something like a "B--" on my last quiz. Good thing he graded easier and I loaded up on the extra credit!
I don't know what I got on my Anthro paper, and I still don't know what I got on my English midterm even though I got it back more than two weeks ago (I'm too scared to take a look).
I have another English paper due Monday... hopefully I'll at least finish rereading the story before 1:00 am this time.
| [ | mood | | | okay | ] |
| [ | music | | | Tekken 5 OST - Formless Like Water | ] |
First, my mini-review of Best of YesJapan Volume 1:
This thing is SO FREAKING FUNNY!!! And, oh yeah, it teaches you real, practical Japanese too. It's definitely more advanced than the two "Yan-san" series and more accessible than the 新にほんごでくらそう series, both of which I've downloaded and burned to two separate DVDs. I'm pretty sure one of the samples they have on their front page (Techniques to Impress Your Japanese Friends) is the same episode they have on the DVD, so give it a download. I got my copy from JBOX.com for just under $25 (including shipping) and it arrived six days after I sent the money order. Pretty good!
Other stuff:
Three weeks ago I went to the Japanese American National Museum as an activity for the Japan Club. It was a Saturday and despite everyone telling the organizer (Japan Club President Chris) that Saturday was the best day, I was the only one able to make it. He also brought along his Japanese g/f. After a small lunch (which he paid for), we went into the blissfully air-conditioned museum (also paid for). The big exhibition was the Taiko (太鼓) and it was very impressive! After that we all hung out around Little Tokyo for awhile, making it a sort of "3-person date" (actually, it was more along the lines of a real date with me being the loser girlfriend-less tag-along).
School:
You know that paper I did at the last second? I got an "A". Even the smarter, more vocal people in class got "C"s, so I'd be feeling pretty good if it didn't make me seem like a jerk. All I can say is that (1) proofreading is overrated (I just type it all correctly the first time and check right then and there... of course it does take me an hour per page), and (2) it doesn't matter how stupid your ideas are - if you can support them (i.e., pad your paper) with quotes in the right places, you'll get a good grade! So if any of you fine ladies need someone to proofread your papers...
yeah. (It was because of my ostensibly high grades on English papers that I wanted to major in English at one point, but it's already too late for that, and besides, literature and reading are also overrated. I'll bet whatever little money I have that I'm the least well-read person in any class... that is to say, I'm not very well-read at all! )I got a "B+" for my Anthro midterm, yay.
I also recently got an "A" on my second English quiz, even though it was definitely harder, I thought I messed up more, and I got something like a "B--" on my last quiz. Good thing he graded easier and I loaded up on the extra credit!
I don't know what I got on my Anthro paper, and I still don't know what I got on my English midterm even though I got it back more than two weeks ago (I'm too scared to take a look).
I have another English paper due Monday... hopefully I'll at least finish rereading the story before 1:00 am this time.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
A pleasant turn of events...
[ORIGINAL POST]
Well hey, it turns out my week wasn't so bad after all.
That new Gackt single (Metamorphoze) with the limited edition Zeta Gundam stuff? Awesome.
That English quiz I was worried about? Turns out I did get a "B". Not bad for only 10 minutes of last-minute studying.
That English paper? Done. I seem to outdo myself everytime: I finished rereading the story at 1:20 am... got 1 hour of sleep... then 3 hours of sleep. Then I started at about 6:00 am and finished at 10:00 am! Right now I'm feeling great because it's the longest possible time before another paper!
Another quiz that was supposed to be today was postponed until Thursday. Sweetness.
I finally sat down and actually started watching my downloaded dramas. Mars is freaking cool - much better than any of the other manga-based dramas I've seen before, Full House included. And that main guy looks cool (can't say "hot" because I'm a guy)... in fact I'm pretty sure that was the look I was going for with my long hair a year ago:
And last but not least, through some happy coincidence (or perhaps a special alignment of the stars), I bumped into Pearl again, and she looked even better than I remembered...
I mean, I knew I missed her (and, uh, the rest of the people in our Japanese class...), but wow. I missed her even when I was with her, looking at her. (It's a good thing she doesn't read my LJ or I'd be in trouble! 
)
| [ | mood | | | cheerful | ] |
Well hey, it turns out my week wasn't so bad after all.
That new Gackt single (Metamorphoze) with the limited edition Zeta Gundam stuff? Awesome.
That English quiz I was worried about? Turns out I did get a "B". Not bad for only 10 minutes of last-minute studying.
That English paper? Done. I seem to outdo myself everytime: I finished rereading the story at 1:20 am... got 1 hour of sleep... then 3 hours of sleep. Then I started at about 6:00 am and finished at 10:00 am! Right now I'm feeling great because it's the longest possible time before another paper!
Another quiz that was supposed to be today was postponed until Thursday. Sweetness.
I finally sat down and actually started watching my downloaded dramas. Mars is freaking cool - much better than any of the other manga-based dramas I've seen before, Full House included. And that main guy looks cool (can't say "hot" because I'm a guy)... in fact I'm pretty sure that was the look I was going for with my long hair a year ago:
And last but not least, through some happy coincidence (or perhaps a special alignment of the stars), I bumped into Pearl again, and she looked even better than I remembered...
I mean, I knew I missed her (and, uh, the rest of the people in our Japanese class...), but wow. I missed her even when I was with her, looking at her. (It's a good thing she doesn't read my LJ or I'd be in trouble! )Saturday, July 16, 2005
Summer classes
[ORIGINAL POST]
It's already midterms so I'm going to write a bit about my classes:
Monday & Wednesday
ENGL 305, English Grammar and Usage: This was supposed to be the "easy" class this quarter. The professor is really laid-back, and for the first few weeks we didn't really do anything because the books weren't available yet. The material at first was pathetically easy (come on, I know what the passive voice is already...), but it was a little harder each day - certainly not hard enough to make me want to buckle down and study everyday, though. So when first (of three) quizzes came along, it turns out to be surprisingly hard - I'll be lucky if I got a "B"!
ENGL 200B, British Literature Survey: The best thing I can say about this class is that I now know for sure that I don't want to aim for that double major in Japanese and English, because even though I consciously make sure my written sentences are error-free, and I don't do too badly on written papers either... I don't care about literature at all. That means that I'm just going for the minor in Comparative Linguistics... which also means that I don't even need this class! I'd drop this class too (I already dropped that BS "ENGL 441, Major Critics" class), except I need 12 credits. But it's not just the class material I hate... I hate pretty much everyone in the class! Now, if I may be allowed to make broad, purely superficial generalizations: we have two annoying over-achievers who clearly need to be told that finishing a whole book doesn't prove anything. And then there are these two guys that make me want to tear my ears off - their voices are so annoying! I seriously want to punch them in the neck or the stomach just so they would speak differently, if only for a second. Adding to that, there's another guy sitting next to me that has more hair on his arms than I do on my entire body... SO FREAKIN' GROSS!!! The professor is left-handed and has this odd habit of writing things upward at a 45 degree angle and I'm always having to tilt my head... what the heck is up with that?? (not that I have anything against left-handed people... in fact, someone who I may or may not admit to liking is left-handed...) And as for the rest of the people in the class: I don't know them, but I'm pretty sure they're jerks too. The 40-year-old+ crowd is okay, though. (and I know I'm not looking forward to the paper due on Monday at all...)
Tuesday & Thursday
ANTH 470, Language and Culture: I had this professor before for ENGL 401 and he was great, so taking this class was a no-brainer. I even saw some of my buddies from ENGL 401, so that's cool. The only thing bad is that girl who gets on EVERYONE's nerves (who was also in ENGL 401) by interrupting lectures and asking very tangential questions... it's probably something you could only understand if you spent weeks in a class with her, and you really don't want that.
To summarize: my summer sucks. It's the complete opposite of Disneyland. And I miss my 4-day weekends. The fall quarter can't come quick enough... serenity now!
| [ | mood | | | angry | ] |
| [ | music | | | kagrra - 桜花爛漫（おうからんまん） | ] |
It's already midterms so I'm going to write a bit about my classes:
Monday & Wednesday
ENGL 305, English Grammar and Usage: This was supposed to be the "easy" class this quarter. The professor is really laid-back, and for the first few weeks we didn't really do anything because the books weren't available yet. The material at first was pathetically easy (come on, I know what the passive voice is already...), but it was a little harder each day - certainly not hard enough to make me want to buckle down and study everyday, though. So when first (of three) quizzes came along, it turns out to be surprisingly hard - I'll be lucky if I got a "B"!
ENGL 200B, British Literature Survey: The best thing I can say about this class is that I now know for sure that I don't want to aim for that double major in Japanese and English, because even though I consciously make sure my written sentences are error-free, and I don't do too badly on written papers either... I don't care about literature at all. That means that I'm just going for the minor in Comparative Linguistics... which also means that I don't even need this class! I'd drop this class too (I already dropped that BS "ENGL 441, Major Critics" class), except I need 12 credits. But it's not just the class material I hate... I hate pretty much everyone in the class! Now, if I may be allowed to make broad, purely superficial generalizations: we have two annoying over-achievers who clearly need to be told that finishing a whole book doesn't prove anything. And then there are these two guys that make me want to tear my ears off - their voices are so annoying! I seriously want to punch them in the neck or the stomach just so they would speak differently, if only for a second. Adding to that, there's another guy sitting next to me that has more hair on his arms than I do on my entire body... SO FREAKIN' GROSS!!! The professor is left-handed and has this odd habit of writing things upward at a 45 degree angle and I'm always having to tilt my head... what the heck is up with that?? (not that I have anything against left-handed people... in fact, someone who I may or may not admit to liking is left-handed...) And as for the rest of the people in the class: I don't know them, but I'm pretty sure they're jerks too. The 40-year-old+ crowd is okay, though. (and I know I'm not looking forward to the paper due on Monday at all...)
Tuesday & Thursday
ANTH 470, Language and Culture: I had this professor before for ENGL 401 and he was great, so taking this class was a no-brainer. I even saw some of my buddies from ENGL 401, so that's cool. The only thing bad is that girl who gets on EVERYONE's nerves (who was also in ENGL 401) by interrupting lectures and asking very tangential questions... it's probably something you could only understand if you spent weeks in a class with her, and you really don't want that.
To summarize: my summer sucks. It's the complete opposite of Disneyland. And I miss my 4-day weekends. The fall quarter can't come quick enough... serenity now!
Monday, June 27, 2005
Tags, Grads, Games, and Grades
[ORIGINAL POST]
Long overdue, but I was busy and lazy. And I don't know five people on LJ.
List five songs that you are currently digging ... it doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether they have words, or even if they're any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying right now.
Post these instructions, the artist, and the song in your blog along with your five songs. Then tag five other people to see what they're listening to.
Things you enjoy, even when no one around you wants to go out and play. What lowers your stress/blood pressure/anxiety level? Make a list, post it to your journal... and then tag 5 friends and ask them to post it to theirs.
Tagged by![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=3)
atozuka
I can't say I have anyone for the meme, though. Well actually I might, but actually posting the name would just be asking for trouble. So forget it!
Grads:
My older cousin graduated a while ago. Now the pressure's on (again) for me to do just as well! Geez. And I know I'll hear the same stupid comments when any of my older relatives get married. 放っておけよ！
I think I'm supposed to go to the (semi-formal) graduation party on Friday. And I may or may not have to bring someone... but uh... yeah. (Free food, anyone?)
Games:
I don't have the time or patience to learn any new game so I've been playing Final Fantasy Tactics, which I've had since high school. It takes me back to (generally) happier times... plus I didn't really get the story back then and I didn't get everything so it's like a new game. The FAQs available really make the experience complete.
Grades:
ENGL 301: "A". I was more confident of my "A" for that class than in Japanese!
ENGL 405: "B". Can't complain... this was the "40% homework, 60% final" class. I got an "A" on the homework, but the final was surprisingly hard! Still love the class though. Frankly, I didn't know what I would get for the class.
JAPN 200C: "A". I was half an hour late to the final because of traffic caused by that stupid hostage situation. I happened to be wearing a hat that day, so now whenever I put on that hat I'll be thinking of that damn day!
JAPN 450: "B+". I didn't know what I'd be getting for this class either, but why couldn't I have gotten the "A"?! I wouldn't be so upset if I just got a regular "B"!
I'm not too thrilled about the classes I have now... but that's another post.
List five songs that you are currently digging ... it doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether they have words, or even if they're any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying right now.
Post these instructions, the artist, and the song in your blog along with your five songs. Then tag five other people to see what they're listening to.
- Penny Tai - 你要的愛 (Meteor Garden Ending Theme)
- The Tick (1994) - Opening Theme
- Hitoshi Sakimoto - 編成画面 (Final Fantasy Tactics OST)
- Hitoshi Sakimoto - Universe -Stage1- (Gradius V OST)
- Hideaki Kobayashi - Pioneer2 (Phantasy Star Online OST)
Things you enjoy, even when no one around you wants to go out and play. What lowers your stress/blood pressure/anxiety level? Make a list, post it to your journal... and then tag 5 friends and ask them to post it to theirs.
- Working out (It's like leveling up your own body! "HP Up!")... but for stress, nothing beats punching air or walls.
- Watching / reading about old TV shows
- Playing / reading about old video games
- The whole C/J/K drama and movie scene
- Card houses?
Tagged by
atozukaI can't say I have anyone for the meme, though. Well actually I might, but actually posting the name would just be asking for trouble. So forget it!
Grads:
My older cousin graduated a while ago. Now the pressure's on (again) for me to do just as well! Geez. And I know I'll hear the same stupid comments when any of my older relatives get married. 放っておけよ！
I think I'm supposed to go to the (semi-formal) graduation party on Friday. And I may or may not have to bring someone... but uh... yeah. (Free food, anyone?)
Games:
I don't have the time or patience to learn any new game so I've been playing Final Fantasy Tactics, which I've had since high school. It takes me back to (generally) happier times... plus I didn't really get the story back then and I didn't get everything so it's like a new game. The FAQs available really make the experience complete.
Grades:
ENGL 301: "A". I was more confident of my "A" for that class than in Japanese!
ENGL 405: "B". Can't complain... this was the "40% homework, 60% final" class. I got an "A" on the homework, but the final was surprisingly hard! Still love the class though. Frankly, I didn't know what I would get for the class.
JAPN 200C: "A". I was half an hour late to the final because of traffic caused by that stupid hostage situation. I happened to be wearing a hat that day, so now whenever I put on that hat I'll be thinking of that damn day!
JAPN 450: "B+". I didn't know what I'd be getting for this class either, but why couldn't I have gotten the "A"?! I wouldn't be so upset if I just got a regular "B"!
I'm not too thrilled about the classes I have now... but that's another post.
Monday, June 13, 2005
Disneyland
[ORIGINAL POST]
First off, my profuse apologies to atozuka for making the drive home difficult; whatever "poor driving skills" she may have claimed she had is clearly overshadowed by my poor direction-giving.
(I'll edit this post later in the morning...)
-
EDIT: Alright, it's three days later (2005.06.17 / 16:50) and it's not the morning, but I had to do this sometime:
Yes, Disneyland was great fun. I was actually walking around campus when I saw Nadia and her friend, and they said they were meeting with Lina at McDonalds... so I tagged along. We made it to the parking lot exactly 9:00. Funny story, though... we didn't see the rest of our group at the parking lot, but we did see this gang of bikers. Nadia's friend Ami said, "Wow are those your friends!?" Ha, yeah... we have some pretty hardcore friends. ¬_¬
Driving around, we finally saw our group, and we all came at pretty much the same time. We took three cars and I was lucky enough to go with Fiore, Mai, and Kumiko. I was happily recording with Sam's camcorder until someone said "stop filming, stop filming..." and without thinking I pressed stop. Funny how I'd do anything and everything she'd tell me to do. I recorded most of the drive to Disneyland though, including Fiore getting lost... there were also some amusing conversations which I all got on tape (now a 350 mb avi file... it didn't need to be on a DVD).
We sure did a lot at Disneyland! We even went on Indiana Jones twice. Our route was mercifully planned so that when we got on It's a Small World, our feet would be taking a much needed rest. The fireworks show was also very impressive. And insanely pricey food and drinks aside, some points of interest were:
1) Jason eats fast. I thought I was a fast eater myself (I still think I am) but, consider this: I was halfway done with my burger when Jason sat down with his lunch. He was talking all the time while eating and he still finished his burger before I did! Sure, I got the cheeseburger and he got the chicken (or was it fish?) burger, and sure, he focused solely on the burger while I was eating a few fries and taking a few sips of soda in between bites, but that is still fast.
2) I couldn't help but think of The Simpsons the entire time. I was looking for "BORT" license plates, I wondered what happened if I drank the ride water or used flash photography on those animatronic robots, and I was humming "Duff beer for me, duff beer for you, I'll have a Duff, you have one too" the entire time I was on It's a Small World. Speaking of which...
3) When I was riding on It's a Small World, I noticed they wrote 「今日は」 when they had "hello" in different languages. Oddly enough, I understood "你好", but not 「今日は」 ("today?"). Then it hit me: 「今日は」 is a rarely- (ok, never-) used orthographic variant of "konnichiwa". You can even type in 「こんにちは」 and you'll get 「今日は」. (yeah, this is something only I would notice or care about...)
I went home inatozuka's car with Sammi and I was either too tired or too dumb to put on my glasses so I could see the streets, but I probably pissed her off somehow. I'll spend the rest of the summer trying to make it up to her - but only if she'll let me... -_-
atozuka for making the drive home difficult; whatever "poor driving skills" she may have claimed she had is clearly overshadowed by my poor direction-giving.(I'll edit this post later in the morning...)
-
EDIT: Alright, it's three days later (2005.06.17 / 16:50) and it's not the morning, but I had to do this sometime:
Yes, Disneyland was great fun. I was actually walking around campus when I saw Nadia and her friend, and they said they were meeting with Lina at McDonalds... so I tagged along. We made it to the parking lot exactly 9:00. Funny story, though... we didn't see the rest of our group at the parking lot, but we did see this gang of bikers. Nadia's friend Ami said, "Wow are those your friends!?" Ha, yeah... we have some pretty hardcore friends. ¬_¬
Driving around, we finally saw our group, and we all came at pretty much the same time. We took three cars and I was lucky enough to go with Fiore, Mai, and Kumiko. I was happily recording with Sam's camcorder until someone said "stop filming, stop filming..." and without thinking I pressed stop. Funny how I'd do anything and everything she'd tell me to do. I recorded most of the drive to Disneyland though, including Fiore getting lost... there were also some amusing conversations which I all got on tape (now a 350 mb avi file... it didn't need to be on a DVD).
We sure did a lot at Disneyland! We even went on Indiana Jones twice. Our route was mercifully planned so that when we got on It's a Small World, our feet would be taking a much needed rest. The fireworks show was also very impressive. And insanely pricey food and drinks aside, some points of interest were:
1) Jason eats fast. I thought I was a fast eater myself (I still think I am) but, consider this: I was halfway done with my burger when Jason sat down with his lunch. He was talking all the time while eating and he still finished his burger before I did! Sure, I got the cheeseburger and he got the chicken (or was it fish?) burger, and sure, he focused solely on the burger while I was eating a few fries and taking a few sips of soda in between bites, but that is still fast.
2) I couldn't help but think of The Simpsons the entire time. I was looking for "BORT" license plates, I wondered what happened if I drank the ride water or used flash photography on those animatronic robots, and I was humming "Duff beer for me, duff beer for you, I'll have a Duff, you have one too" the entire time I was on It's a Small World. Speaking of which...
3) When I was riding on It's a Small World, I noticed they wrote 「今日は」 when they had "hello" in different languages. Oddly enough, I understood "你好", but not 「今日は」 ("today?"). Then it hit me: 「今日は」 is a rarely- (ok, never-) used orthographic variant of "konnichiwa". You can even type in 「こんにちは」 and you'll get 「今日は」. (yeah, this is something only I would notice or care about...)
I went home in
atozuka's car with Sammi and I was either too tired or too dumb to put on my glasses so I could see the streets, but I probably pissed her off somehow. I'll spend the rest of the summer trying to make it up to her - but only if she'll let me... -_-Friday, June 3, 2005
The crazy life of Triple Lei
[ORIGINAL POST]
Time for another one of those day-by-day reviews...
Monday
I don't remember doing a lot on Monday, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't doing what I probably should have been doing (i.e., homework and projects). I think I saw the k-movie Arahan (阿羅漢), though, thanks to Pearl back from JAPN 200A! I'm trying to watch all the movies I have now (instead of downloading, seeding, burning, and putting them away without watching like I normally do). I guess it's to make up for my beloved k-dramas that I've been missing... and I hear Super Rookie is really good too... ah well...
Tuesday
Now this was a crazy day. I had the third and final quiz of my ENGL 301 class, so of course I started studying in the morning (the class starts at 11:40, so I thought I would be okay).
More crazy was the fact that I somehow had the good sense to prepare and finish my project for JAPN 450. I woke up relatively early on Tuesday (around 7:00), and I could leave the house as late as 10:20 and still catch the two buses to school, I so thought I would work on my JAPN 450 presentation due "sometime this week." Because, hey, maybe I might have to go on Tuesday (we were at least two days off schedule), and I spent about $4.00 making copies of my handouts just in case... but when several of us gathered at the door, I learned the terrifying truth - we were ALL supposed to go that day! It was news to me and a lot of the class. We didn't have class on Thursday for some reason so no one could do a presentation that day (Sam suspects that the professor didn't show up to avoid evaluations, and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense). Presenting on the day of the final (the original plan) wasn't an option either because the professor gave that day to a guest speaker only she's excited about.
Anyway, I had an especially rough time presenting... I had to go up after a guy who was seriouslyarguing with the professor about his project and the linguistic theory of "monosemy" and the professor basically said "No! You're all wrong!"... fighting words, really... the class was dead silent... so when I got up, I was all "Umm... I'm doing monosemy"... and although it was probably the worst presentation I've ever done, I'm just glad that presentation (which is essentially the final... which is 20% of the grade) is over with. Seriously, everytime I come home from that class, I just want to curl up in a fetal position. Whatever college throws at me now has got to be easier than that nightmare!
Wednesday
What I should have been doing: Preparing for my JAPN 200C presentation.
What I was doing instead: Not preparing for my JAPN 200C presentation; specifically, playing Final Fantasy Tactics. All it took was reading a thread on one of the several forums I lurk at, and before you know it I was hooking up my DexDrive so I could hack my save to give my (Squire) Ramza abilities such as "Teleport 2" and "All Swordskill", both of which are just a handful of the several abilities only available to NPCs and bosses.
I don't really regret it though... FFT had a great storyline, not to mention great music, character design, and, oh yeah, gameplay. All it was missing was a versus mode, though apparently you can use a cheat device to control the computer, effectively making it a two-player game! Sadly, I can't do that because (1) I don't have my GameShark anymore, (2) I play my PS1 games on my PS2, and (3) I probably couldn't use my original PS1 even if I wanted to.
I ended up sleeping at around 3:00 am.
Here's a pic that does a good job describing the day. (I didn't make it, I just stole it from a forum)
Thursday
I woke up at 7:00, started working on my JAPN 200C presentation, and left at about 10:25...
ENGL 301: All we did was get our quizzes back. I got an "A" despite a few mistakes.
ENGL 405: We got something for the final and left. Sweet.
JAPN 200C: I finally got around to showing Fioré the DVD (using Sam's laptop) and I also gave him all 25 episodes of 「新にほんごでくらそう」. As for the presentation...
For someone who, after promising not to do things until the last minute, waited until last minute to write and memorize a presentation, I don't think I did too badly. I know it wasn't the best, though. Mine was probably the shortest (on account of me speaking fast just to get it over with), and I didn't stumble over as many words as I thought I would, though I had to look at my script more than I wanted to. But I never liked these oral presentations... I could speak fine (I think), but memorizinglines is a bit too much. Isn't it enough that we memorized the grammar points?
You might have noticed that I only got about 4 hours of sleep between Wednesday and Thursday. Well, when I got home I turned on my computer and started my BitTorrent stuff (I always seed at least 125%), started my batch encodings on VirtualDub, and opened up WinMX just so I can hope I could download the other Kwon Sang-woo movies I haven't seen, and by 6:45 I was fast asleep... I woke up at around 1:20 today (it's 3:00 right now), I'm wide awake, and I still have to eat dinner, which may as well be breakfast.
It's surreal, but the final days of classes always are.
I'm still not sure when I'm going to Disneyland, though.
Monday
I don't remember doing a lot on Monday, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't doing what I probably should have been doing (i.e., homework and projects). I think I saw the k-movie Arahan (阿羅漢), though, thanks to Pearl back from JAPN 200A! I'm trying to watch all the movies I have now (instead of downloading, seeding, burning, and putting them away without watching like I normally do). I guess it's to make up for my beloved k-dramas that I've been missing... and I hear Super Rookie is really good too... ah well...
Tuesday
Now this was a crazy day. I had the third and final quiz of my ENGL 301 class, so of course I started studying in the morning (the class starts at 11:40, so I thought I would be okay).
More crazy was the fact that I somehow had the good sense to prepare and finish my project for JAPN 450. I woke up relatively early on Tuesday (around 7:00), and I could leave the house as late as 10:20 and still catch the two buses to school, I so thought I would work on my JAPN 450 presentation due "sometime this week." Because, hey, maybe I might have to go on Tuesday (we were at least two days off schedule), and I spent about $4.00 making copies of my handouts just in case... but when several of us gathered at the door, I learned the terrifying truth - we were ALL supposed to go that day! It was news to me and a lot of the class. We didn't have class on Thursday for some reason so no one could do a presentation that day (Sam suspects that the professor didn't show up to avoid evaluations, and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense). Presenting on the day of the final (the original plan) wasn't an option either because the professor gave that day to a guest speaker only she's excited about.
Anyway, I had an especially rough time presenting... I had to go up after a guy who was seriouslyarguing with the professor about his project and the linguistic theory of "monosemy" and the professor basically said "No! You're all wrong!"... fighting words, really... the class was dead silent... so when I got up, I was all "Umm... I'm doing monosemy"... and although it was probably the worst presentation I've ever done, I'm just glad that presentation (which is essentially the final... which is 20% of the grade) is over with. Seriously, everytime I come home from that class, I just want to curl up in a fetal position. Whatever college throws at me now has got to be easier than that nightmare!
Wednesday
What I should have been doing: Preparing for my JAPN 200C presentation.
What I was doing instead: Not preparing for my JAPN 200C presentation; specifically, playing Final Fantasy Tactics. All it took was reading a thread on one of the several forums I lurk at, and before you know it I was hooking up my DexDrive so I could hack my save to give my (Squire) Ramza abilities such as "Teleport 2" and "All Swordskill", both of which are just a handful of the several abilities only available to NPCs and bosses.
I don't really regret it though... FFT had a great storyline, not to mention great music, character design, and, oh yeah, gameplay. All it was missing was a versus mode, though apparently you can use a cheat device to control the computer, effectively making it a two-player game! Sadly, I can't do that because (1) I don't have my GameShark anymore, (2) I play my PS1 games on my PS2, and (3) I probably couldn't use my original PS1 even if I wanted to.
I ended up sleeping at around 3:00 am.
Here's a pic that does a good job describing the day. (I didn't make it, I just stole it from a forum)
Thursday
I woke up at 7:00, started working on my JAPN 200C presentation, and left at about 10:25...
ENGL 301: All we did was get our quizzes back. I got an "A" despite a few mistakes.
ENGL 405: We got something for the final and left. Sweet.
JAPN 200C: I finally got around to showing Fioré the DVD (using Sam's laptop) and I also gave him all 25 episodes of 「新にほんごでくらそう」. As for the presentation...
For someone who, after promising not to do things until the last minute, waited until last minute to write and memorize a presentation, I don't think I did too badly. I know it wasn't the best, though. Mine was probably the shortest (on account of me speaking fast just to get it over with), and I didn't stumble over as many words as I thought I would, though I had to look at my script more than I wanted to. But I never liked these oral presentations... I could speak fine (I think), but memorizinglines is a bit too much. Isn't it enough that we memorized the grammar points?
You might have noticed that I only got about 4 hours of sleep between Wednesday and Thursday. Well, when I got home I turned on my computer and started my BitTorrent stuff (I always seed at least 125%), started my batch encodings on VirtualDub, and opened up WinMX just so I can hope I could download the other Kwon Sang-woo movies I haven't seen, and by 6:45 I was fast asleep... I woke up at around 1:20 today (it's 3:00 right now), I'm wide awake, and I still have to eat dinner, which may as well be breakfast.
It's surreal, but the final days of classes always are.
I'm still not sure when I'm going to Disneyland, though.
Monday, May 2, 2005
See you in hell, spider
[ORIGINAL POST]
Question: Is there ever a good time to see a spider?
The answer, apparently, is no.
I opened my door and saw something black in the corner of my eye. I turned around and I saw the biggest spider I've seen in quite some time, right in front of my face. I tried to trap it so I could smack it but that didn't do any good, so I had to find some sort of anti-spider spray. Well, at least now I know that you can kill spiders with cologne, though that little bastard took most of the bottle! I delivered the final blow (with one of my mom's shoes), but I still had to clean up the legs it left behind.
I don't like thinking about spiders any more than I have to, so here's something better to look at:
(I'm not sure if this was the best pic I could have posted, but I'm still pretty dizzy from all that cologne)
The answer, apparently, is no.
I opened my door and saw something black in the corner of my eye. I turned around and I saw the biggest spider I've seen in quite some time, right in front of my face. I tried to trap it so I could smack it but that didn't do any good, so I had to find some sort of anti-spider spray. Well, at least now I know that you can kill spiders with cologne, though that little bastard took most of the bottle! I delivered the final blow (with one of my mom's shoes), but I still had to clean up the legs it left behind.
I don't like thinking about spiders any more than I have to, so here's something better to look at:
(I'm not sure if this was the best pic I could have posted, but I'm still pretty dizzy from all that cologne)
Thursday, April 7, 2005
Ugh
[ORIGINAL POST]
It's already the end of the second week, but here's what's been going on...
New music CDs
I didn't run into any more money than I usually get, but I bought two new music CDs anyway. I usually get Gackt stuff, but his latest offering (Love Letter) didn't really appeal to me. First of all, there are only ten songs, and "Dears" is an old song from... oh, four albums ago! Second, the title doesn't really give me much hope for an album I can proudly blast all the way up. Sure, I liked 君に逢いたくて, but only as a novelty in between his usually awesome rock songs; I wouldn't want a whole album of slow songs (The Seventh Night is hard enough to appreciate as it is). Sorry Gackt, I still think you're awesome and all, but I think I'll hold off on this album for now...
Anyway, the CDs I bought were of the trance / electronic variety. I used to listen to that stuff quite a bit before I got into j-pop, but I stopped for a number of reasons. 1) I thought the songs all kinda sounded the same (it's true). 2) There usually aren't any words you can "sing along" to. 3) You can't really describe the songs without sounding like an idiot. Really, how do you do it? Do you say "It's the song that goes do... do-do-do..."? Well, as I'm listening to Creamfields right now, I realize those points aren't really that valid. I think the listening experience is supposed to be a mind trip, and Creamfields does that great. (Also, I realized how much better iTunes is over Winamp... it's the Firefox of audio programs!)
Blood drawn
Since my mom is paranoid about my health, she took my dad and me to the hospital to get our blood drawn for, uh, testing purposes. According to my mom, my dad fainted when getting his blood drawn, and everyone else says they look away, but I stared right at the needle and the blood. Not because I'm super-manly or anything... it's just that I needed to know exactly how much of my life-force was being sucked out. All in all, not too bad, except for the whole "no eating for 12 hours" thing. I was freaking hungry.
Classes
ENG 301: This class seems ok. The professor is nice but he likes to get off topic a lot. In fact he writes so much stuff on the board, it's hard to keep track of what's really on the quizzes! And although his desire for spreading knowledge is commendable, I wish he would rephrase "Who doesn't know about [...]" to "Who knows about [...]"... you can't help but feel like an idiot when you're the only one in the class to raise your hand, but it's easy to hide in a sea of other raised hands. He grades crazy because: weekly assignments and class participation are 30%, written reports are 40%, and quizzes are 30% - notice that there's no final, which means I can't use the old "Eh, I'll make it up on the final" excuse.
ENG 405: My ENG 301 class is in Salazar Hall and ends at 1:20. This class is in King Hall and starts at 1:30. That means I always have to walk extremely fast to get to class relatively on time! Thankfully she doesn't take attendence. Anyway, this class seems ok, although it was a rough start. As she says, "it's stuff we already know - the hard part is putting labels on everything." She grades crazy because: she gives us the option of 30% exercises, 30% term paper, 40% final exam.... OR 40% exercises, 60% final exam... OR 40% term paper and 60% final exam. She even admits - you don't even have to come to class and you can get an "A"!
JAPN 200C: Same old, same old. We lost more people, and we saw some new people, but there's a good chance they won't be sticking around for long, which is a shame. The material is harder, too... I swear those exalted / humble forms are going to kill me. She grades crazy because: I still have to work for my "A". It would be a lot easier if she would just acknowledge my genius already...
JAPN 450: It was good seeing some familiar faces again, but the class is still hard, and more often than not, boring. I really have to be at the top of my game to make it (I got a "B" on that last Japanese linguistics class...). She grades crazy because: class preparedness and preparation is 50%, the two quizzes are 10%, the oral presentation is 20%, and the project presentation is 20%. No final!
In conclusion...
Although there were a few good moments so far (like today, when I found my watch that I haven't seen since the beginning of the year), it's tough. Even though I'm broke-off-my-ass poor, I need time more than money. And I think I need a hug more than that. (If I can't get any of those, I'll take a bullet to the head instead...)
| [ | music | | | Paul Oakenfold - Creamfields | ] |
It's already the end of the second week, but here's what's been going on...
New music CDs
I didn't run into any more money than I usually get, but I bought two new music CDs anyway. I usually get Gackt stuff, but his latest offering (Love Letter) didn't really appeal to me. First of all, there are only ten songs, and "Dears" is an old song from... oh, four albums ago! Second, the title doesn't really give me much hope for an album I can proudly blast all the way up. Sure, I liked 君に逢いたくて, but only as a novelty in between his usually awesome rock songs; I wouldn't want a whole album of slow songs (The Seventh Night is hard enough to appreciate as it is). Sorry Gackt, I still think you're awesome and all, but I think I'll hold off on this album for now...
Anyway, the CDs I bought were of the trance / electronic variety. I used to listen to that stuff quite a bit before I got into j-pop, but I stopped for a number of reasons. 1) I thought the songs all kinda sounded the same (it's true). 2) There usually aren't any words you can "sing along" to. 3) You can't really describe the songs without sounding like an idiot. Really, how do you do it? Do you say "It's the song that goes do... do-do-do..."? Well, as I'm listening to Creamfields right now, I realize those points aren't really that valid. I think the listening experience is supposed to be a mind trip, and Creamfields does that great. (Also, I realized how much better iTunes is over Winamp... it's the Firefox of audio programs!)
Blood drawn
Since my mom is paranoid about my health, she took my dad and me to the hospital to get our blood drawn for, uh, testing purposes. According to my mom, my dad fainted when getting his blood drawn, and everyone else says they look away, but I stared right at the needle and the blood. Not because I'm super-manly or anything... it's just that I needed to know exactly how much of my life-force was being sucked out. All in all, not too bad, except for the whole "no eating for 12 hours" thing. I was freaking hungry.
Classes
ENG 301: This class seems ok. The professor is nice but he likes to get off topic a lot. In fact he writes so much stuff on the board, it's hard to keep track of what's really on the quizzes! And although his desire for spreading knowledge is commendable, I wish he would rephrase "Who doesn't know about [...]" to "Who knows about [...]"... you can't help but feel like an idiot when you're the only one in the class to raise your hand, but it's easy to hide in a sea of other raised hands. He grades crazy because: weekly assignments and class participation are 30%, written reports are 40%, and quizzes are 30% - notice that there's no final, which means I can't use the old "Eh, I'll make it up on the final" excuse.
ENG 405: My ENG 301 class is in Salazar Hall and ends at 1:20. This class is in King Hall and starts at 1:30. That means I always have to walk extremely fast to get to class relatively on time! Thankfully she doesn't take attendence. Anyway, this class seems ok, although it was a rough start. As she says, "it's stuff we already know - the hard part is putting labels on everything." She grades crazy because: she gives us the option of 30% exercises, 30% term paper, 40% final exam.... OR 40% exercises, 60% final exam... OR 40% term paper and 60% final exam. She even admits - you don't even have to come to class and you can get an "A"!
JAPN 200C: Same old, same old. We lost more people, and we saw some new people, but there's a good chance they won't be sticking around for long, which is a shame. The material is harder, too... I swear those exalted / humble forms are going to kill me. She grades crazy because: I still have to work for my "A". It would be a lot easier if she would just acknowledge my genius already...
JAPN 450: It was good seeing some familiar faces again, but the class is still hard, and more often than not, boring. I really have to be at the top of my game to make it (I got a "B" on that last Japanese linguistics class...). She grades crazy because: class preparedness and preparation is 50%, the two quizzes are 10%, the oral presentation is 20%, and the project presentation is 20%. No final!
In conclusion...
Although there were a few good moments so far (like today, when I found my watch that I haven't seen since the beginning of the year), it's tough. Even though I'm broke-off-my-ass poor, I need time more than money. And I think I need a hug more than that. (If I can't get any of those, I'll take a bullet to the head instead...)
Friday, March 25, 2005
Ouch.
[ORIGINAL POST]
Yes, "ouch" is precisely the right word...
Ouch... I didn't even get to do half of what I planned to do over this painfully short spring break. I slept most of it away and now someone gave me something to translate (though that last part wasn't entirely a complaint).
Oooh, ouch... I just found out my grades for the winter quarter. My GPA took a hit. I was a little disappointed with one class (ENG 401) - I thought I totally rocked the final, but I guess it was a "B" like everything else in that class. I really thought I would get an "A" on the final, though... just look at my beautifully crafted 3 x 5 index card (pics: 1 | 2)! As for my other class (KIN 345), I got a "B", and I really don't know what to make of it. I didn't know what I got on my mid-term (I think someone took my scantron) so I didn't know what grade I had coming into the final, but I did the five internet assignments and a... competent... job on the final paper. Japanese was just fine.
...OUCH! I am in physical pain right now since I decided to run (then walk, then jog, then walk again) to some place a little farther than Rosemead High School. I didn't know exactly where I wanted to go, but that was ok. I just needed to get out of the house! This act is apparently punishable because a few hours later, my ankles felt like they would fall off at any moment. Plus it now hurts when I laugh or cough, and I'm coughing a lot. Still, if there's anything I learned from that KIN 345 class (Physiological Effects of Exercise during Aging), it's that as we get older, it's all downhill, so we should get into a habit of exercising now. I've found some helpful info about exercising in these threads, though: "How do you work out?" and "The Gym Thread: Post your sessions here...".
I hope I'm not alone looking forward to school! (not the actual "learning" part... the meeting people part)
Ouch... I didn't even get to do half of what I planned to do over this painfully short spring break. I slept most of it away and now someone gave me something to translate (though that last part wasn't entirely a complaint).
Oooh, ouch... I just found out my grades for the winter quarter. My GPA took a hit. I was a little disappointed with one class (ENG 401) - I thought I totally rocked the final, but I guess it was a "B" like everything else in that class. I really thought I would get an "A" on the final, though... just look at my beautifully crafted 3 x 5 index card (pics: 1 | 2)! As for my other class (KIN 345), I got a "B", and I really don't know what to make of it. I didn't know what I got on my mid-term (I think someone took my scantron) so I didn't know what grade I had coming into the final, but I did the five internet assignments and a... competent... job on the final paper. Japanese was just fine.
...OUCH! I am in physical pain right now since I decided to run (then walk, then jog, then walk again) to some place a little farther than Rosemead High School. I didn't know exactly where I wanted to go, but that was ok. I just needed to get out of the house! This act is apparently punishable because a few hours later, my ankles felt like they would fall off at any moment. Plus it now hurts when I laugh or cough, and I'm coughing a lot. Still, if there's anything I learned from that KIN 345 class (Physiological Effects of Exercise during Aging), it's that as we get older, it's all downhill, so we should get into a habit of exercising now. I've found some helpful info about exercising in these threads, though: "How do you work out?" and "The Gym Thread: Post your sessions here...".
I hope I'm not alone looking forward to school! (not the actual "learning" part... the meeting people part)
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
It's over... sort of
[ORIGINAL POST]
Bah. Somehow I made it through the day with only about an hour of sleep (I'm not even kidding)! You all know what that meant - there was a paper due today! I finished at 5:57 and woke up at 6:57. It was quite a shock looking out the bathroom window; I was still expecting darkness but it was pretty bright.
Oh, right, finals. Well, my first final was alright; I did pretty well on the multiple guess section, but for the short answer part... I'm hoping I get partial credit, heh. The teacher can't be in too bad of a mood because his wife just gave birth, so...
Then I went to the language lab to kill some of the 5 hours of free time I had. It wasn't as fun as I hoped it would be... but at least I (sort of) studied for the test by listening to the old dialogues, and I (sort of) had fun playing around with the Japanese IME and listening to the Chinese audio exercises (I'm not mastering that language anytime soon...). I tried getting some sleep too but that was a little hard.
Bumped into Todd (from the speech contest) at lunch. Still a nice guy!
Japanese final. It wasn't hard, but it wasn't easy, either. Changing the verbs to honorific forms was tricky, like with 来ている - do you change 来る to いらっしゃる to make it 「いらっしゃっている」 or do you leave it as 来る and change the いる to いらっしゃる to make it 「来ていらっしゃる」? Grr. Translating English to Japanese wasn't as terrible as I thought (having listened to those dialogues at the language lab), though the word order might be a little different from the book. It took me two tries to get the listening part down... I'm still upset that I couldn't catch it all the first time. And as for the last part ("write a letter expressing thanks")... the hard part was remembering the expressions wedid learn! It would have been easier if something like "use ばよかった" was included... then I would know what to aim for...
Yeah, I feel bad about finishing first and leaving so quickly. I wanted to go home, but I also wanted to hang out with everyone... but I didn't know if everyone else felt that way too. Hanging around outside of the class just to hear people say "well, bye" and then walk away would make me feel kinda dumb. I just want an updated group pic!
Still one more final to go. Not too easy, but not too hard. I'm sitting comfortably with a "B", and that's not factoring in participation, so it looks like I'll have to come out with an "A" in the final to get an "A" in the class!
Oh, right, finals. Well, my first final was alright; I did pretty well on the multiple guess section, but for the short answer part... I'm hoping I get partial credit, heh. The teacher can't be in too bad of a mood because his wife just gave birth, so...
Then I went to the language lab to kill some of the 5 hours of free time I had. It wasn't as fun as I hoped it would be... but at least I (sort of) studied for the test by listening to the old dialogues, and I (sort of) had fun playing around with the Japanese IME and listening to the Chinese audio exercises (I'm not mastering that language anytime soon...). I tried getting some sleep too but that was a little hard.
Bumped into Todd (from the speech contest) at lunch. Still a nice guy!
Japanese final. It wasn't hard, but it wasn't easy, either. Changing the verbs to honorific forms was tricky, like with 来ている - do you change 来る to いらっしゃる to make it 「いらっしゃっている」 or do you leave it as 来る and change the いる to いらっしゃる to make it 「来ていらっしゃる」? Grr. Translating English to Japanese wasn't as terrible as I thought (having listened to those dialogues at the language lab), though the word order might be a little different from the book. It took me two tries to get the listening part down... I'm still upset that I couldn't catch it all the first time. And as for the last part ("write a letter expressing thanks")... the hard part was remembering the expressions wedid learn! It would have been easier if something like "use ばよかった" was included... then I would know what to aim for...
Yeah, I feel bad about finishing first and leaving so quickly. I wanted to go home, but I also wanted to hang out with everyone... but I didn't know if everyone else felt that way too. Hanging around outside of the class just to hear people say "well, bye" and then walk away would make me feel kinda dumb. I just want an updated group pic!
Still one more final to go. Not too easy, but not too hard. I'm sitting comfortably with a "B", and that's not factoring in participation, so it looks like I'll have to come out with an "A" in the final to get an "A" in the class!
Monday, March 7, 2005
Saturday - the best day ever?
[ORIGINAL POST]
Ok, so Saturday was two days ago. And yeah, I really should be studying right now. But last Saturday (3/5) was just so nice I have to write about it before I forget it all!
I owe most of the great experience to Sam. He picked me up at my house and before going to school to work on the role play, we stopped by his house where I met his VERY nice sister and father. He also treated me to some VERY good wontons! After saying 再見 we were off to school.
The roleplay was... um, fine, even without a Japanese tutor to make sure everything was ok. It's probably not going to win any awards, though.
Then we were off to Kinokuniya! He used those certificates he won and I bought some really good books: Jazz Up Your Japanese with Onomatopoeia and 日英故事ことわざ辞典 (Japanese-English Proverbs Dictionary). I think between these books, the three kanji dictionaries and the two grammar dictionaries that I already have (not to mention the internet), I have all the references I need.
Amazingly, he treated me to some curry rice at one of the places nearby. So, so good. おごってくれてありがとうね！
Later on my brother came by and we watched Ong-Bak... again! (I watched it the day after, too - yes, it really is that good!)
Even at night, I was able to watch episode 7 of ごくせん and episode 1 of Sassy Girl, Chun-hyang. It's actually airing right now (KXLA 44, Monday & Tuesday, from about 9:45 to 10:25), but as always, the episodes we see here are heavily edited from the original episodes shown in Korea - I'm talking at least 20 minutes cut out.
Of course by then it was about 2:00 am. What a day. (A great day for a change!)
I owe most of the great experience to Sam. He picked me up at my house and before going to school to work on the role play, we stopped by his house where I met his VERY nice sister and father. He also treated me to some VERY good wontons! After saying 再見 we were off to school.
The roleplay was... um, fine, even without a Japanese tutor to make sure everything was ok. It's probably not going to win any awards, though.
Then we were off to Kinokuniya! He used those certificates he won and I bought some really good books: Jazz Up Your Japanese with Onomatopoeia and 日英故事ことわざ辞典 (Japanese-English Proverbs Dictionary). I think between these books, the three kanji dictionaries and the two grammar dictionaries that I already have (not to mention the internet), I have all the references I need.
Amazingly, he treated me to some curry rice at one of the places nearby. So, so good. おごってくれてありがとうね！
Later on my brother came by and we watched Ong-Bak... again! (I watched it the day after, too - yes, it really is that good!)
Even at night, I was able to watch episode 7 of ごくせん and episode 1 of Sassy Girl, Chun-hyang. It's actually airing right now (KXLA 44, Monday & Tuesday, from about 9:45 to 10:25), but as always, the episodes we see here are heavily edited from the original episodes shown in Korea - I'm talking at least 20 minutes cut out.
Of course by then it was about 2:00 am. What a day. (A great day for a change!)
Saturday, February 26, 2005
オレがヤツらをたおす！
[ORIGINAL POST]
The Japanese Speech Contest was today and it was great. I'm glad that I went to see it and I stilldon't have any regrets not participating this year because I don't really have much to talk about, especially in Japanese. Come on... I'm not known for talking... I'm happy being the quiet, good-natured doormat type. Lots of good topics and even better speakers... makes me wonder what I've been doing up till now. I'm not even sure I'm physically able to speak any faster than I can right now. I'll admit - saying stuff like みられる and ちつじょ（秩序）is hard!
I know I don't speak well, but that only strengthens my resolve. Hopefully my "20 kanji a week" plan will pay off eventually. Here's the short version of my kanji plan:
1) The more kanji I learn and the faster I learn it, the less time I'll waste studying it in the classroom. And there's no way I can ever learn the entire Joyo Kanji List (常用漢字表) in class. In other words,the sooner I learn all the kanji I ever need to know, the more time I'll have for learning the REALLY hard stuff like grammar, vocabulary, and honorifics. It's one less thing I have to worry about. Helpful links: Jim Breen's WWWJDIC Server, Learn the Japanese Kanji
2) The sooner I learn kanji (trying to remember all the readings), the sooner and easier it'll be learning new words. Just today I was looking over someone's speech and I was able to pronounce 「内容」, so I asked "What does ないよう mean?" and the guy answered, "contents". Makes sense... 内 = "inside"; 容 = "contain / appearance". If you ask me, recognizing the kanji and knowing how to pronounce the kanji in compounds counts as a victory. Helpful links: Quizzes on Commonly-used Japanese Words
3) The sooner I learn words, the sooner I can read books, newspapers, and magazines to solidify my grasp of the grammar. And that's really all there is to learning a language, right? Helpful links:POPjisyo.com, アサヒ・コム
It was also good seeing my old JAPN 320 classmates (who didn't recognize me immediately)... they were great too.
What wasn't great? I would have liked an intermission (I was hungry and nervous and tired and I wasn't even participating!). Also there was one guy who already won some prize (he was good but I'm sure he had some unfair advantage), and then when he won something from the raffle, he was all "I don't need another dictionary! I have three dictionaries at home!"... I don't know about you but I thought that was pretty rude. It was being given away and he said he didn't want it... and I'm sure there were many people (myself included) who would have wanted it!
And before I forget... CONGRATS TO FIORE FOR WINNING THE DAMN THING!!!
(...even though he's probably not going to read this.) Others from our class won stuff too, but I already forgot who won what. We're all awesome anyway.
I know I don't speak well, but that only strengthens my resolve. Hopefully my "20 kanji a week" plan will pay off eventually. Here's the short version of my kanji plan:
1) The more kanji I learn and the faster I learn it, the less time I'll waste studying it in the classroom. And there's no way I can ever learn the entire Joyo Kanji List (常用漢字表) in class. In other words,the sooner I learn all the kanji I ever need to know, the more time I'll have for learning the REALLY hard stuff like grammar, vocabulary, and honorifics. It's one less thing I have to worry about. Helpful links: Jim Breen's WWWJDIC Server, Learn the Japanese Kanji
2) The sooner I learn kanji (trying to remember all the readings), the sooner and easier it'll be learning new words. Just today I was looking over someone's speech and I was able to pronounce 「内容」, so I asked "What does ないよう mean?" and the guy answered, "contents". Makes sense... 内 = "inside"; 容 = "contain / appearance". If you ask me, recognizing the kanji and knowing how to pronounce the kanji in compounds counts as a victory. Helpful links: Quizzes on Commonly-used Japanese Words
3) The sooner I learn words, the sooner I can read books, newspapers, and magazines to solidify my grasp of the grammar. And that's really all there is to learning a language, right? Helpful links:POPjisyo.com, アサヒ・コム
It was also good seeing my old JAPN 320 classmates (who didn't recognize me immediately)... they were great too.
What wasn't great? I would have liked an intermission (I was hungry and nervous and tired and I wasn't even participating!). Also there was one guy who already won some prize (he was good but I'm sure he had some unfair advantage), and then when he won something from the raffle, he was all "I don't need another dictionary! I have three dictionaries at home!"... I don't know about you but I thought that was pretty rude. It was being given away and he said he didn't want it... and I'm sure there were many people (myself included) who would have wanted it!
And before I forget... CONGRATS TO FIORE FOR WINNING THE DAMN THING!!!
(...even though he's probably not going to read this.) Others from our class won stuff too, but I already forgot who won what. We're all awesome anyway.Saturday, February 12, 2005
ONG-BAK!!! (...and some other stuff)
[ORIGINAL POST]
Man. Today I just saw the movie Ong-Bak with my brother, thankfully in its original Thai language with English subtitles. I can honestly say, without the slightest fear of being accused of hyperbole, that it is the most mind-blowingly, super-fantastically, time-stoppingly AWESOME movie I have ever seen,or will ever see, in my entire life. The things Tony Jaa does... I swear. Wow. Now, the movie experience would have been perfect if some jerk wasn't kicking the back of my seat everytime the guy did something amazing... which was pretty much all the time. And seeing him nail guys in the head with flying elbows kinda made me want to try that on that jerk. I'm planning on seeing it again with a friend and / or my cousin next week. I don't know if I'm ever getting that DVD I bought on eBay though because the seller replied in an e-mail, "some mail has been lost / stolen"... just great.
Let's see what else happened:
Wednesday
I didn't have class that day so I told my cousin to take me to his school, Cal Poly Pomona. It was the school I was going to go to (my brother graduated there), but the Japanese program wasn't great. So anyway, it's... very big... and they have a recreation place not unlike our Pit (before it was closed down, that is). Of course, I was good enough at the games I played (including a game I haven't ever played before) that I gathered more than a few crowds and met some cool people.
I probably should have done some homework first because I had two big projects due on Thursday...
Thursday
I slept at around 3:45 am and woke up at 7:00, not feeling as miserable as I thought I would be (and for the record, the least number of hours I slept was 2... and of course that was because I had someproject due in a matter of hours).
Would you believe I still had homework in addition to the project? That turned out to be fun, actually. It was like a puzzle, and I was able to figure it out on the two buses to school. It turns out I was learning Swahili...
Language lab! Winnie gave me something incredibly cool and cute. How like her.
In Japanese class, Fioré was teaching everyone (or at least, just the girls) how to write Korean. I wish I got a chance to ask him some things because there are lots of Korean words I've learned (from the dozens of k-dramas I've watched) and I would have liked to see how they were written in Hangul. And before that he was showing how in Chinese, all the characters have only one pronunciation, and how tones are important, giving the tired old "ma" example. Bah, I could have told anyone that. Ok, well I know he's just a more popular, better-looking, successful version of me (if I can even be compared to him), but his knowledge of two foreign languages (not counting Japanese) compared to my one(counting Japanese) makes me feel less special. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the class who just knows English, and you know... there's a part of me that always hated my parents for not ever teaching me Tagalog. It wasn't a problem up until high school and including today. When I think about the number of opportunities I missed or the friends I didn't get to make because I didn't know Tagalog, I feel like crying... or punching walls. And now all I hear from my parents is "If you can learn Japanese now, you can learn Tagalog now." So I'm supposed to waste time as an adult learning something I should have been born with? What a load of crap!
...and after Japanese class I went home and to my surprise I didn't have to pay for the bus to El Monte Station because it was packed, or something. I still had to pay for the bus from the station to my house, but that's still $1.50 saved. Woo-hoo.
Friday
Spent most of the day wishing it was Saturday so I could go see Ong-Bak.
I also did a little translation job for someone. It was a good exercise.
Saturday
After Ong-Bak, my brother installed that bigger harddrive (leaving me with some... tens of dollars). Now I don't have to worry about running out of space when I capture shows from TV. The original plan was to copy my current (C:) drive to this bigger harddrive, but after about 4 hours of waiting, we found out it didn't work because the harddrive was too big for the program... without the patch. So he gets the patch but says we have to start all over. I didn't want to wait anymore, and I'm sure he didn't want to stick around any longer than he had to, so we went with Plan B: get rid of my CD burner and put it in that slot. I still have my DVD burner and I don't really burn CDs anymore, but if I needed to burn a CD I could still use the DVD burner.
Time to go to Target again...
Let's see what else happened:
Wednesday
I didn't have class that day so I told my cousin to take me to his school, Cal Poly Pomona. It was the school I was going to go to (my brother graduated there), but the Japanese program wasn't great. So anyway, it's... very big... and they have a recreation place not unlike our Pit (before it was closed down, that is). Of course, I was good enough at the games I played (including a game I haven't ever played before
) that I gathered more than a few crowds and met some cool people.I probably should have done some homework first because I had two big projects due on Thursday...
Thursday
I slept at around 3:45 am and woke up at 7:00, not feeling as miserable as I thought I would be (and for the record, the least number of hours I slept was 2... and of course that was because I had someproject due in a matter of hours).
Would you believe I still had homework in addition to the project? That turned out to be fun, actually. It was like a puzzle, and I was able to figure it out on the two buses to school. It turns out I was learning Swahili...
Language lab! Winnie gave me something incredibly cool and cute. How like her.
In Japanese class, Fioré was teaching everyone (or at least, just the girls) how to write Korean. I wish I got a chance to ask him some things because there are lots of Korean words I've learned (from the dozens of k-dramas I've watched) and I would have liked to see how they were written in Hangul. And before that he was showing how in Chinese, all the characters have only one pronunciation, and how tones are important, giving the tired old "ma" example. Bah, I could have told anyone that. Ok, well I know he's just a more popular, better-looking, successful version of me (if I can even be compared to him), but his knowledge of two foreign languages (not counting Japanese) compared to my one(counting Japanese) makes me feel less special. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the class who just knows English, and you know... there's a part of me that always hated my parents for not ever teaching me Tagalog. It wasn't a problem up until high school and including today. When I think about the number of opportunities I missed or the friends I didn't get to make because I didn't know Tagalog, I feel like crying... or punching walls. And now all I hear from my parents is "If you can learn Japanese now, you can learn Tagalog now." So I'm supposed to waste time as an adult learning something I should have been born with? What a load of crap!
...and after Japanese class I went home and to my surprise I didn't have to pay for the bus to El Monte Station because it was packed, or something. I still had to pay for the bus from the station to my house, but that's still $1.50 saved. Woo-hoo.
Friday
Spent most of the day wishing it was Saturday so I could go see Ong-Bak.
I also did a little translation job for someone. It was a good exercise.
Saturday
After Ong-Bak, my brother installed that bigger harddrive (leaving me with some... tens of dollars). Now I don't have to worry about running out of space when I capture shows from TV. The original plan was to copy my current (C:) drive to this bigger harddrive, but after about 4 hours of waiting, we found out it didn't work because the harddrive was too big for the program... without the patch. So he gets the patch but says we have to start all over. I didn't want to wait anymore, and I'm sure he didn't want to stick around any longer than he had to, so we went with Plan B: get rid of my CD burner and put it in that slot. I still have my DVD burner and I don't really burn CDs anymore, but if I needed to burn a CD I could still use the DVD burner.
Time to go to Target again...
Thursday, February 3, 2005
Out of the frying pan and into the fire
[ORIGINAL POST]
Today in my first class, I got the instructions for the second assignment even though the due date for the first assignment is still weeks away! I'm not looking forward to either of them.
Then in my second class, I struggled through a mid-term. It was multiple choice, sure, but choosing between things like "acute / chronic exercise", "resistance / endurance training", and "life expectancy / life span" just killed me. And I just know that if I didn't have to memorize the Japanese roleplay I would have done at least a little better...
Oh, but the fun didn't stop there! Winnie was at the language lab so I thought, "Well, today's not all bad..." But when I was about to leave, I realized I couldn't find that yellow attendance slip! After making a whole scene, I just ended up filling out another one. You know, it's kind of funny how I always act so clumsy with that one piece of paper - but only when Winnie's around... uh, heh... *nervous laugh*
By the way, I found that yellow paper real quick... I was using it as a bookmark for the Japanese book! Though I suppose I am a little lucky that I finished my mid-term early enough (such as it is) that I was able to finish the language lab assignment before 1:00 because I don't think that other guy would have been so cool about it.
My Japanese roleplay was pretty bad... just incomprehensible in every way... and not that I don't like Jason but I WANT A NEW PARTNER ALREADY! Because hey, it wasn't my idea to say ガキ instead of 子供... I heard Zabuza say it when referring to Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura, so I had an idea of how it was used... but by the time I remembered to point it out it was too late and it would have taken too long to explain, and without the episode playing, my own comments wouldn't have held much value anyway.
On the plus side, I downloaded all 16 episodes (700 mb each!) of the k-drama Full House, and I don't feel bad about wasting space on a third DVD-R (six 700 mb episodes can fit on one DVD-R, so there's only 4 episodes on the third) because I also got the Full House Extras, interview, and OST! I still have to watch them before I burn them to DVD, though, since those subtitles could use some cleaning up.
Also I made my first eBay purchase yesterday. It's the movie Ong Bak (aka Thai Warrior) on DVD with English subs. I heard it was all sorts of awesome so I just had to get it! And it's a good thing that guy accepts money orders because I don't have a credit card and I don't use PayPal. Usually I just bug my brother.
I still need to get that bigger harddrive with whatever little money I have left... but I can't afford not to download all day!
Then in my second class, I struggled through a mid-term. It was multiple choice, sure, but choosing between things like "acute / chronic exercise", "resistance / endurance training", and "life expectancy / life span" just killed me. And I just know that if I didn't have to memorize the Japanese roleplay I would have done at least a little better...
Oh, but the fun didn't stop there! Winnie was at the language lab so I thought, "Well, today's not all bad..." But when I was about to leave, I realized I couldn't find that yellow attendance slip! After making a whole scene, I just ended up filling out another one. You know, it's kind of funny how I always act so clumsy with that one piece of paper - but only when Winnie's around... uh, heh... *nervous laugh*
By the way, I found that yellow paper real quick... I was using it as a bookmark for the Japanese book! Though I suppose I am a little lucky that I finished my mid-term early enough (such as it is) that I was able to finish the language lab assignment before 1:00 because I don't think that other guy would have been so cool about it.My Japanese roleplay was pretty bad... just incomprehensible in every way... and not that I don't like Jason but I WANT A NEW PARTNER ALREADY! Because hey, it wasn't my idea to say ガキ instead of 子供... I heard Zabuza say it when referring to Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura, so I had an idea of how it was used... but by the time I remembered to point it out it was too late and it would have taken too long to explain, and without the episode playing, my own comments wouldn't have held much value anyway.
On the plus side, I downloaded all 16 episodes (700 mb each!) of the k-drama Full House, and I don't feel bad about wasting space on a third DVD-R (six 700 mb episodes can fit on one DVD-R, so there's only 4 episodes on the third) because I also got the Full House Extras, interview, and OST! I still have to watch them before I burn them to DVD, though, since those subtitles could use some cleaning up.
Also I made my first eBay purchase yesterday. It's the movie Ong Bak (aka Thai Warrior) on DVD with English subs. I heard it was all sorts of awesome so I just had to get it! And it's a good thing that guy accepts money orders because I don't have a credit card and I don't use PayPal. Usually I just bug my brother.
I still need to get that bigger harddrive with whatever little money I have left... but I can't afford not to download all day!
Sunday, January 23, 2005
What a month...
[ORIGINAL POST]
It's been almost a month since my last entry, but it's not because nothing happened. I'll start with this:
The first day of classes
One of the worst days of my life actually began the second I woke up. My first class is at 9:50 and it takes about 30 minutes going to school taking two buses; knowing this, I set my alarm to 6:00. I woke up on Tuesday and I felt refreshed and not tired at all. Immediately I realized something was wrong (because if I'm not tired that only means I overslept), and with wide, worried eyes, I turned my head and looked at the clock. It was 7:55!
Of course, the day my alarm wouldn't go off just had to be the first day of classes - and no, the volume wasn't too low, and I didn't get the AM / PM mixed up... the switch was simply off, even though I made sure it was on the night before! I wasn't exactly sure when the bus would come by (I remembered it coming around before at 7:25, so I thought it would arrive at around 8:25, give or take 5 minutes), so I was extremely stressed. A five-minute shower and a half a glass of orange juice later, I was out of the house, running to the bus stop waiting for a bus that may have already come.
Luckily it came at around 8:45 and I made it to class on time. Now, I thought I had enough time for a real breakfast, so I bought something at the Carl's Jr. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to actually eatit, and with my second class immediately after my first (both having strict "no food" rules), I was only able to eat my (cold) French toast dips and (cold) hash browns at around 1:00, turning a good breakfast into a pretty lousy lunch. And even though I got the combo, they forgot to give me my orange juice - I thought it was in the bag!
This whole ordeal reminds me of my first day at this school, when I took the wrong bus. I took the "480", but I took the wrong one! Instead of going on the "480 Downtown L.A.", I got on the "480 Montclair"! I walked around for an hour or two, looking for some bus that would lead me back to the El Monte bus station. Thankfully, I got on a Foothill bus (good thing I carried a lot of change), which pointed me to another (MTA) bus stop, and I was moments away from missing that one, too! Anyway, I made it on time; the class was at 1:00 and I decided to catch the bus at around 9:00 AM, giving me plenty of time.
Japanese was fun of course, but I really wanted people to make a bigger deal about my new hair.There was one new guy, and it was over a year since he last took Japanese, but then we all found out that he should have enrolled in Japanese 200A instead of Japanese 200B. He'll have to wait anotheryear, and well, I felt pretty bad.
And what's just as bad as a blackout?
My computer hard drive apparently died right before the second week of school (the screen would freeze during the WinXP startup screen, and "Safe Mode" and "Last Known Good Configuration" didn't help either), which really slowed me down... more than anyone could imagine. I'm reminded of my early days at this school when my DSL connection died and I had to use dial-up like an animal - a problem made that much more irritating because I had online assignments, pretty much taking away the whole "go at your own pace" feature. And on the week my hard drive died, of course, I had to go online and write a summary of the results of an online quiz.
For an entire week I was wondering if I really lost everything that mattered to me (I'll be honest here: my computer is my life), and I set aside the money for a new hard drive, but luckily my brother came through and re-installed Windows XP, or something. I wasn't completely sure what the problem was, and I'm not sure what the solution was, either. I didn't enjoy downloading all those Windows updates and patches and service packs again, but after the longest week ever, I was still happy. I think I'm going to get a new hard drive anyway because I'm really running out of space, here; I have a lot of things just waiting to be burned to DVD, but I'd like them to be "complete" before I burn. It's really limiting my capturing capabilities (where 10 minutes is about 4 gigs), which means saving even moreprograms on TiVo - something I don't feel good about at all.
So how are those classes?
ENGL 401, English Language in America (Huld): I rather enjoy this class. It's all about linguistics, where you learn about the sounds of speech and such. There are lots of symbols to memorize, and for a kanji guy like me, it's right up my alley. Learning those transcription symbols and being able to write them is amazing - it's like using my very own 白眼 (BYAKUGAN!) on every written and spoken language on earth! I almost want to form hand seals before class...
KIN 345, Physiological Effects of Exercise during Aging (Hawkins): We didn't get to see the instructor until the second week, and when I finally saw him I was a little scared because he has a loud voice, but he's actually pretty cool. There was no book to buy so that's a plus, and the course seems pretty clear-cut: 5 internet assignments, a mid-term, and a final. There's also the choice of volunteer work (hah!), or a paper. And since he's giving us the sources, it's just up to us to write it! I can already tell that it's going to be easier than that Anthropology paper (5 pages instead of 7-8).
JAPN 200B, Intermediate Japanese (Yokota): Same old, same old. Love it. Right now I'm struggling to come up with something to write about for the speech contest, and I'm not even sure I can. It might just be easier to try for the JLPT (日本語能力試, or the Japanese Language Proficiency Test), even though it's only once a year, at the end of the year. I hear topics like "My vacation in Japan" win contests, so I'm out of luck anyway.
Anything else?
I saw two great movies: Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle is now my favorite movie of all-time, actually beating out Office Space! It's very, VERY funny (even the DVD menus are hilarious), but it also manages to drive a point home, something Dude, Where's My Car? lacked (though I like that movie just the same). More recently, I was digging through my rather large still-unwatched collection of "Stuff From Pearl" and decided to watch My Sassy Girl. I put off watching that one because it's split into two files, both over an hour each, but I am so very glad I made it through (and besides, I was encoding something on VirtualDub that took about two hours anyway). There's no wasted time in the movie, and the more you pay attention to the details, the better your viewing experience. And like with100 Days With Mr. Arrogant, I recognized a few of the actors here as well. The male lead was in the k-drama Prince's First Love which finished some time ago, and the aunt was in the k-drama My Precious Child where she plays a 40-year-old woman (could have fooled me...), and she looks even younger and prettier in the movie!
Currently listening to...
I'm really enjoying the soundtrack to the current MBC k-drama airing here in SoCal: Tropical Nights in December. I still don't know how they came up with the title (it could just as easily have been the title of the previous drama starring Kim Nam-Jin), but the drama is great. I really like Kim Nam-Jin's character (I like to believe I can empathize with his struggles). The soundtrack is great, too. Some tracks are hauntingly beautiful just like Stairway to Heaven (the k-drama), and some are infectiously catchy. Either way, the 1-minute intro theme is just so good... I'm considering making it my "Start Windows" sound or my ringtone or something. I'll just stick it on my phone anyway.
I still have lots to do, and I'm not just talking about homework, so I should probably end this right now. I've been dead tired the entire time I was writing this, and I could always edit this (I end up editing for typos and other minor things anyway)...
The first day of classes
One of the worst days of my life actually began the second I woke up. My first class is at 9:50 and it takes about 30 minutes going to school taking two buses; knowing this, I set my alarm to 6:00. I woke up on Tuesday and I felt refreshed and not tired at all. Immediately I realized something was wrong (because if I'm not tired that only means I overslept), and with wide, worried eyes, I turned my head and looked at the clock. It was 7:55!
Of course, the day my alarm wouldn't go off just had to be the first day of classes - and no, the volume wasn't too low, and I didn't get the AM / PM mixed up... the switch was simply off, even though I made sure it was on the night before! I wasn't exactly sure when the bus would come by (I remembered it coming around before at 7:25, so I thought it would arrive at around 8:25, give or take 5 minutes), so I was extremely stressed. A five-minute shower and a half a glass of orange juice later, I was out of the house, running to the bus stop waiting for a bus that may have already come.
Luckily it came at around 8:45 and I made it to class on time. Now, I thought I had enough time for a real breakfast, so I bought something at the Carl's Jr. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to actually eatit, and with my second class immediately after my first (both having strict "no food" rules), I was only able to eat my (cold) French toast dips and (cold) hash browns at around 1:00, turning a good breakfast into a pretty lousy lunch. And even though I got the combo, they forgot to give me my orange juice - I thought it was in the bag!
This whole ordeal reminds me of my first day at this school, when I took the wrong bus. I took the "480", but I took the wrong one! Instead of going on the "480 Downtown L.A.", I got on the "480 Montclair"! I walked around for an hour or two, looking for some bus that would lead me back to the El Monte bus station. Thankfully, I got on a Foothill bus (good thing I carried a lot of change), which pointed me to another (MTA) bus stop, and I was moments away from missing that one, too! Anyway, I made it on time; the class was at 1:00 and I decided to catch the bus at around 9:00 AM, giving me plenty of time.
Japanese was fun of course, but I really wanted people to make a bigger deal about my new hair.
There was one new guy, and it was over a year since he last took Japanese, but then we all found out that he should have enrolled in Japanese 200A instead of Japanese 200B. He'll have to wait anotheryear, and well, I felt pretty bad.And what's just as bad as a blackout?
My computer hard drive apparently died right before the second week of school (the screen would freeze during the WinXP startup screen, and "Safe Mode" and "Last Known Good Configuration" didn't help either), which really slowed me down... more than anyone could imagine. I'm reminded of my early days at this school when my DSL connection died and I had to use dial-up like an animal - a problem made that much more irritating because I had online assignments, pretty much taking away the whole "go at your own pace" feature. And on the week my hard drive died, of course, I had to go online and write a summary of the results of an online quiz.
For an entire week I was wondering if I really lost everything that mattered to me (I'll be honest here: my computer is my life), and I set aside the money for a new hard drive, but luckily my brother came through and re-installed Windows XP, or something. I wasn't completely sure what the problem was, and I'm not sure what the solution was, either. I didn't enjoy downloading all those Windows updates and patches and service packs again, but after the longest week ever, I was still happy. I think I'm going to get a new hard drive anyway because I'm really running out of space, here; I have a lot of things just waiting to be burned to DVD, but I'd like them to be "complete" before I burn. It's really limiting my capturing capabilities (where 10 minutes is about 4 gigs), which means saving even moreprograms on TiVo - something I don't feel good about at all.
So how are those classes?
ENGL 401, English Language in America (Huld): I rather enjoy this class. It's all about linguistics, where you learn about the sounds of speech and such. There are lots of symbols to memorize, and for a kanji guy like me, it's right up my alley. Learning those transcription symbols and being able to write them is amazing - it's like using my very own 白眼 (BYAKUGAN!) on every written and spoken language on earth! I almost want to form hand seals before class...
KIN 345, Physiological Effects of Exercise during Aging (Hawkins): We didn't get to see the instructor until the second week, and when I finally saw him I was a little scared because he has a loud voice, but he's actually pretty cool. There was no book to buy so that's a plus, and the course seems pretty clear-cut: 5 internet assignments, a mid-term, and a final. There's also the choice of volunteer work (hah!), or a paper. And since he's giving us the sources, it's just up to us to write it! I can already tell that it's going to be easier than that Anthropology paper (5 pages instead of 7-8).
JAPN 200B, Intermediate Japanese (Yokota): Same old, same old. Love it. Right now I'm struggling to come up with something to write about for the speech contest, and I'm not even sure I can. It might just be easier to try for the JLPT (日本語能力試, or the Japanese Language Proficiency Test), even though it's only once a year, at the end of the year. I hear topics like "My vacation in Japan" win contests, so I'm out of luck anyway.
Anything else?
I saw two great movies: Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle is now my favorite movie of all-time, actually beating out Office Space! It's very, VERY funny (even the DVD menus are hilarious), but it also manages to drive a point home, something Dude, Where's My Car? lacked (though I like that movie just the same). More recently, I was digging through my rather large still-unwatched collection of "Stuff From Pearl" and decided to watch My Sassy Girl. I put off watching that one because it's split into two files, both over an hour each, but I am so very glad I made it through (and besides, I was encoding something on VirtualDub that took about two hours anyway). There's no wasted time in the movie, and the more you pay attention to the details, the better your viewing experience. And like with100 Days With Mr. Arrogant, I recognized a few of the actors here as well. The male lead was in the k-drama Prince's First Love which finished some time ago, and the aunt was in the k-drama My Precious Child where she plays a 40-year-old woman (could have fooled me...), and she looks even younger and prettier in the movie!
Currently listening to...
I'm really enjoying the soundtrack to the current MBC k-drama airing here in SoCal: Tropical Nights in December. I still don't know how they came up with the title (it could just as easily have been the title of the previous drama starring Kim Nam-Jin), but the drama is great. I really like Kim Nam-Jin's character (I like to believe I can empathize with his struggles). The soundtrack is great, too. Some tracks are hauntingly beautiful just like Stairway to Heaven (the k-drama), and some are infectiously catchy. Either way, the 1-minute intro theme is just so good... I'm considering making it my "Start Windows" sound or my ringtone or something. I'll just stick it on my phone anyway.
I still have lots to do, and I'm not just talking about homework, so I should probably end this right now. I've been dead tired the entire time I was writing this, and I could always edit this (I end up editing for typos and other minor things anyway)...
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