Playing catchup

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Isn't this always the case? It's barely the first week of the year and I'm already behind with my LJ entries. I'm back posting here because the MySpace blogging system sucked, but it's still better than the Xanga system ("in the same way," in the words of CJayC, "a 15-car collision is better than a 16-car collision"). Well, maybe not... I can't even enter in any Japanese on MySpace, so screw that.

Let me catch up with Fall '05 grades:

JAPN 315 (Language in Japanese Society): "B+"? WTF... I guess either my project sucked after all or the last test (= final) was harder than I thought. I did all the other crap in the class in a clean and timely matter, too...

JAPN 410 (Modern Japanese Literature): Now this is a surprise... where did that "B+" come from? I won't say it wasn't a struggle, but it wasn't a cake walk either. I prepared myself for a plain old "B", but I'll take it.

JAPN 300A (Advanced Japanese): My grade was "RD" for an unusually long time. Glad I barely cranked out that "A"... though I'm still too scared to look at the stuff Koike-sensei passed back in class today.

Yesterday was the first day of classes. And what a way to start the year - the friggin bookstore and food court were closed! What other university does that? "Blackout from the storm"... pfft. Well, at least I'm proud that I didn't give into the Carl's Jr truck. I actually was hungry and I didn't have fast food for a long time so this probably would have been the perfect excuse... but... I don't know. I just didn't like "giving in," even if that truck was the savior of everyone else at school. Man, I suck. Or maybe I'm just a bigger idiot than I thought.

My class on Tuesdays and Thursdays is JAPN 310 (Japanese Civilization to 1945), with the same small group that made those last two other Japanese classes so enjoyable. They're cool and even though they're better than me in every way, they don't give me an inferiority complex! Love those guys. Without the books available, though, it's hard to keep up with the class. Hard as in "impossible."

Mondays and Wednesdays is JAPN 300B (Advanced Japanese). It doesn't seem too bad and there are two new people... though we lost even more cool people, and earlier than expected. I guess I'm going to have to be more... er, fun to fill in the void. And I (being an idiot) didn't bring enough money to buy the book. $20 short.

There's also some other class after JAPN 300B but who cares lolololomgwtfbbqlmaohaha... ok it's ENGL 200C (British Literature Survey II). It's another class I don't really need, but those 12 credits have to come from somewhere (you can trace that to me being an idiot), and at least I don't need to buy any expensive books because I still have the book from 200B. I got an "A-" in that class and this professor seems to be even better (according to ratemyprofessors.com), so I'm remaining cautiously optimistic.

And this is after I was dropping and adding classes because of a scheduling mistake I only noticedafter I got the official class schedule in the mail. It seems I had two classes at the exact same time. While it's entirely possible that the school suddenly changed the time on me (because how could they not catch the scheduling conflict?), it's even more possible that I was an idiot.

So, this year I'm really going to try to work on the things I should have / should be doing / should have done by now. I do have hopes that this year will be good, but it's all relative - it'll only be good because last year... all things considered... I sucked. But it can't happen twice in a row, right? I've started making lists: not just the usual "things I should have / should be doing / should have done by now" lists, but other lists. One is a list of "Japanese words I don't get" (saving them on POPjisyo and emailing the list to myself on Sundays), and a "things I hate" list, which I'm considering throwing on my site. I'm intending it to be slightly humorous, but there's a good chance I'll be the only one who "gets" it, and I don't want it to turn into a "did you ever notice?" type thing... I mean I'm not Seinfeld!


Things-to-watch backlog

Dreams of Romance (ep 5/12)
A Love to Kill (ep 10/16)
Rurouni Kenshin (ep 22/lots)

How I spent my winter vacation

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By Triple Lei.

- read half a book

- discussed how Batman: The Animated Series > Batman Begins > The early Batman movies (if only for Kevin Conroy) at a Christmas party

- watched Mr. & Mrs. Smith twice at said Christmas party, but didn't understand the finer details of the story due to the volume being turned down and none of us being smart enough to work the DVD remote to add subtitles or captions

- watched Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle three times and Dude, Where's My Car? twice

- actually made some progress in Dodonpachi Dai-ou-jou, won an eBay auction forMushihimesama, and got stuck in Bujingai


...


Yeah, I figured I'd get this all down so I don't forget - I'm probably going to have to say it all in Japanese tomorrow. In fact, can MySpace even handle Japanese?


EDIT: NO IT CAN'T. LOOKS LIKE IT'S BACK TO LIVEJOURNAL FOR BLOGGING AFTER ALL.

EDIT #2: Okay, I'll just use my MySpace blog for my really pointless daily rants and my LiveJournal for my slightly better-worded rants.

Ong Bak VS Tom Yum Goong

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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.

LOLOLOL...

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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:

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...

*insert witty title here*

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[	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...

Japan stuff

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[	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!

Hmm

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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.