Post 200 In 200 Seconds
27 July 2007
As the title suggests, this post is going to be written in 200 seconds. First draft, no second tries! Well, I've reached another landmark in this blog. The last few months haven't exactly been the best of times but I reckon it's only going to get better from here. Thank you to Tamara for always reading my posts. I bet you're pretty much the only one who does /laugh. My friend Mike is another regular reader, though he's probably only doing it to be nice /laugh. Gah, can't think of anything to write. I'm running out of time. Quick quick, 10 seconds left. What to write?! See you for another 100!
Posted byHocchan at 5:02 pm 3 comments
Kao Dekai!
25 July 2007
Was feeling a bit gloomy yesterday, but I don't really want to go into the reason why. All that matters now is that I've cheered up a lot. And it's thanks in part to Proposal Daisakusen. It's just full of moments that make you grin like and idiot. Sometimes because the stuff that happens is so funny, other times because the moments are so touching. The soundtrack is particularly brilliant too. Full of emotional music that can make you feel melancholic in one instance, and full of hope the next. It's great stuff. One reason I like dramas about high school is because I have a longing to return to those times. I missed a lot of it for various reasons and I now regret not having more memories to reminisce about. People used to tell us that you should enjoy school while you can. Because once it's finished you'll never get to experience it again. I never truly believed them at the time but now I totally agree. If I could go back and do it all again like Ken in Proposal Daisakusen, I would make sure I lived life to the full. However, since I can't I'll have to do the next best thing. Live life to the full right now. Make sure that every day I experience is something I'll look back on and smile about. That's very much the same ethos that Ichi Rittoru no Namida was trying to teach. The world is our oyster as the saying goes. In which case, let's eat a plateful of it!
Posted byHocchan at 8:16 pm 3 comments
Chiisana Koi No Uta
24 July 2007
No more Horie Yui pictures so instead you have Konno Asami, ex-fifth generation Morning Musume member! OK, let's continue with the news that I left out of the last update. Last Saturday we had a Chains of Promathia event in the linkshell. We were attempting to clear mission 4-2, the fight with Ouryu. The group was as follows: Siraji, Ophidian, Lanevo, Katie, Toadis and myself. I was the Paladin and had the unenviable task of tanking Ouryu. We made our way to Monarch Linn where the fight would take place. Unfortunately, just before got there Katie had to leave so we were left with 5. We decided to give it a go anyway since heading back without attempting it would be a waste. We went in, buffed up and engaged Ouryu. The strategy was to sleep him and then have Siraji and Ophidian cast Freeze, then sleep him again and repeat. It was all going well, we had him down to about 40% health and it looked like we might win first try. However, he began to resist the sleeps and I was having trouble keeping hate. Eventually he killed Ophidian and it all went to hell after that. After that fight Lanevo ran out of time and had to go too so we were left with 4 people. Just for the hell of it we decided to have another go anyway. As you can imagine it didn't go too well. We all died and got chucked out of the BCNM. The fight got rescheduled to the next day when we would get Electricgirl to join us as BLM.
The next day came and we were ready to try again. We got a lot more equipment this time - plenty of Hi-Ethers for the mages, and a whole inventory of Hi-Potions for me. We also stocked up with Mistmelts to stop Ouryu from flying. Toadis was running late so we took Lanevo with us. Arriving at Monarch Linn we did our pre-fight preparation. We decided to use a different strategy this time. Tried to melee him for a little while before the BLMs used Manafont and did their spell cycle. Unfortunately we couldn't hurt him at all with melee attacks so Manafont got used early. As luck would have it the sod used a massive dispel on me and I had zero buffs. Needless to say he killed me pretty quick without any Protect III or food. He went after the mages and we failed the mission. Not wanting to give up we went in and tried again. This time we went back to the Sleep/Freeze method. I did everything I could to build hate and spammed Hi-Potions instead of trying to cure. We got lucky with the sleep, they all went unresisted and I kept hate for most of the fight. With a few more Freezes Ouryu was brought down to 30% health and we won! Oh yeah, now that was a good fight! Showed that stupid dragon who's boss.
Just after we won Toadis logged on and we told him to get to Monarch Linn so we could get the mission completed for him too. Lanevo stepped out and Toadis joined the party. We went for the same technique and it worked pretty much the same. The only worrying bit was near the end when I ran out of Mistmelts and couldn't stop Ouryu from flying. He almost got me down to 0HP before I used Invincible. About 2 seconds after I used it a Freeze went off and we won again. So now we have seven people all ready for mission 4-3 in the Sacrarium, which is scheduled for Wednesday. I can't wait! The Chains of Promathia missions are once again progressing. I might get my Rajas Ring yet. Keep the faith!
Posted byHocchan at 7:59 pm 0 comments
Proposal Daisakusen
23 July 2007
I've been meaning to make a new post for a few days now so I've got quite a bit of news to report. Where to start? Guess I'll get my grievances out of the way first. I've only been a customer of BT for a month and they've already incurred my wrath! I received my first quarterly bill for phone line and expected it to be around £33.00 (being that each month is £10.50). But you know what they've gone and done? They've added some crappy "payment processing fee" onto the bill. Apparently I'm supposed to pay an extra £5 so they can send me a piece of paper? Little sod-faces. This was after I signed up to Direct Debit in order to avoid this ridiculous charge. They STILL took that £5 out of my account. I'm in the process of trying to get them to refund me that money. I feel I've been unfairly treated, especially since I'm a bloody new customer. It's about time someone brought BT down! They have a total monopoly on phone lines and it's stupid what they can get away with. Payment processing fee, my arse!
Right, that's the unpleasant stuff out of the way, onto the good stuff. I went a bit mad on eBay recently. I was looking through the store of the guy who's getting me the Morning Musume album and I came across some items with low prices and no bids. I put a few of them onto my watch list and waited until the day they were due to end. With about 30 mins to go I checked on the auctions and some still didn't have bids so I thought, what the hell, lets bid for a couple. I decided on the 3 CD set of Petit Best 1, 2 and 3, and the Tanpopo album. I ended up being the sole bidder and won them at their starting price. So now there'll be 5 CDs on their way to me this week. Whole lot came to about £25.00, including postage and packaging. I can't wait for them to arrive. I'll have a lot of new stuff to listen to /joy.
On the drama front, I've finished watching Hotelier. The ending disappointed me a little, I felt they took the easy way out. I would like to have seen a bit more of the relationship between Odagiri and Ogata, and also what happened to the hotel. But overall the series was decent enough. It certainly had one of the best ending themes of any drama. Ueto Aya's "Namida No Niji" is a beautiful song that's very addictive. The video for it is also fantastic and adds a lot of depth to the lyrics. I don't think there have been many music videos that have had the same impact on me. I love it.
Another thing I love is the new drama I've started watching. It's called Proposal Daisakusen and the first episode is superb. It starts off with Iwase Ken rushing in order to get to the church in time for what you think is his wedding. In fact it turns out that he's merely a guest who's a friend of Rei, the bride. It's not a happy occasion as he's now watching the girl he loves getting married to another man. He spends the whole ceremony regretting the fact that he never told her how he felt. During a slide show of old photos he sees one that was taken at the end of a baseball match they'd lost. It was Rei's last game as manager and he remembers how sad she looked in the photo. All of a sudden the room goes dark and Ken is blinded by a spotlight. Out of nowhere a man appears and tells Ken that he can have another chance to relive a part of his life in order to win the girl's affection. After another blinding light Ken finds himself at the baseball game from 5 years ago!
This time Ken is determined to change the outcome of the match. When he goes up to bat at the end of the last innings he hits the ball to the far end of the field. While the fielders rush to get the ball Ken races round the bases. In the previous reality he would have stopped at third base but, remembering that the next batter would have struck out, he gambles for fourth. Despite performing a diving reach for the base he is tapped out and they lose the game again. Feeling totally upset he isolates himself amongst the stands at the end of the game. Rei appears and they end up talking. She asks him why he carried on running after third base and he replies, because of a promise he made to her. This seems to cheer Rei up and Ken begins to feel better. They get interrupted by Eri (a friend of Rei) for the group photo. As the flash of the camera fills the screen he gets transported back to the wedding. He feels as though he's failed until he notices the photo has changed. Rei is now smiling and looking happy. But nothing has changed, she's still married to someone else. The man from earlier reappears and tells him that a picture cannot be retaken twice, but there are other photos. And that's where the episode ends. I can't wait for the next one. I have a feeling this drama is going to be excellent. I need more!
Phew! After that synopsis I can't really go on and report some more news. Instead I'll save it for the next post. Look forward to it!
Posted byHocchan at 9:27 pm 7 comments
Shoujo A
18 July 2007
The wireless PC card I ordered from eBay arrived this morning. I was a little anxious during the installation due to a bad experience with that US Robotics USB stick. Thankfully, this time everything went smoothly. I followed the instructions to the letter and it all worked out perfectly. I'm getting a better connection than before and the speed seems about the same. The card slots nicely into the side of my laptop and the regular rhythm of the blinking lights is a reassuring sight. It only cost me £9.50 too, great stuff.
I borrowed the Korean film, The Host a couple of days ago. I wanted to see this film as soon as I heard about it. It's the highest grossing film in Korean cinema history and it's not hard to see why. Starring Song Kang-Ho, an extremely popular male actor in South Korea, it delivers an engrossing storyline with loads of memorable scenes. It's refreshing to see a film that isn't scared of distressing the audience with character deaths. Where as most Hollywood affairs would provide impossible feats of luck just to avoid throngs of crying cinema-goers, Korean cinema (and film industries elsewhere as a matter of fact) just tells you to suck it up and stop being a pansy. Besides the slightly implausible beginning sequence, the plot is very well written. I expected the film to be in the style of most monster films (ie. Godzilla) in that there would be lots of killing, followed by swift retribution by the lead characters. While it does follow that general outline, the film also incorporates some nice character developments. I would even go as far as to say that The Host is not so much about the monster but rather its effects on the people that come into contact with it. Whatever its intentions, it doesn't change the fact that it's a brilliant film that's worth every second of its two hour runtime.
I've managed to save a little bit of spare cash this month so I'm going to get another one of Morning Musume's albums. I saw a limited edition copy of their sixth album on eBay. It came with the cardboard sleeve and a photo card. Some copies came with a poster though and that was the one I was after. I e-mailed the seller and asked him if he would be able to locate a copy of the CD that had the photo card and poster together. Luckily he said he could so I've asked him to get it for me. Comes to $27.00 in total (including postage). That's another album in collection. I just have Rainbow 7 and Sexy 8 Beat to get now, and since they're fairly recent it shouldn't be too hard to find them for sale.
Posted byHocchan at 7:15 pm 0 comments
Asia No Junshin
16 July 2007
It's a return to Horie Yui! It's been awhile since she featured on the blog picture. It's not been through choice though, I would never do that. The reason for the absence was because I couldn't find any new pictures of her on the image board I usually get them from. You can be sure that once I do find some new ones they'll be posted here. For now I've found a couple in my library that I hadn't uploaded yet so I'll include them in the next few updates.
My friend and I went to visit the Lake District yesterday in his new car. We decided to explore the Haweswater Reservoir and its surrounding villages. We stopped off in the village of Shap first to see Boggleby Stone, a big lump of rock that'd been moved from miles away and placed just outside the settlement. We then headed to Keld, a hamlet of just a few houses and a farm. It did, however, have a really old chapel which people could go in an look around. As it was a Sunday we didn't feel like disturbing Mr and Mrs Taylor who held the key to the place so we settled for a couple of photos from outside. We proceeded to trek through miles of thistle-infested fields until we saw Shap Abbey from the top a hill. The abbey was built in 1199 and is an impressive sight. The entrance tower is the only bit of the main structure that remains standing. The rest of the building is in ruins at ground level. Even in its ruined stated you get a sense of how grand the whole abbey was. From one end to the other must have been about 100 metres. We spent some time taking some photos (including one where Mike went and lay down in an old grave) before departing. Once we got back to the car we set off for Haweswater.
The drive down the lake's edge to the car park was breath-taking. The whole thing is enclosed by mountains on every side. Arriving at the car park we set off for a small growth of trees called The Rigg that growa on a little piece of land that juts out into the lake. The journey there was over gravel and large stones which is my favourite type of terrain. We got to The Rigg a short time later and went to explore inside. It seems like it's a popular spot for campers because we found a few burnt out camp fires dotted around. It certainly had that sort of spooky atmosphere that draws you in but doesn't let you out. After getting to the other side we headed back and drove home. It was a great day out in which we got to see some spectacular scenery. I wouldn't mind going back some time in the future to climb those mountains we saw. Better get some more exercise first though /laugh.
Posted byHocchan at 3:19 pm 3 comments
Nantettatte Idol
12 July 2007
Today was my final day at the offices of MBW. I spent the last four days doing a work placement in their administration section. I did some general filing, answered calls that came into reception, and lots of photocopying. I loved the photocopying. It might sound strange but churning out thousands of sheets of paper in a day is just so satisfying. The guy in reception and one of the staff from Basic Skills were impressed with my uber photocopying abilities /laugh. I'm not sure if they were being serious or not but they said that I was a fast worker. I'd get through stacks of 25-30 page booklets and have 8 copies of each done in a single morning. It was a hell of a lot of fun. The rest of the staff were very complimentary of my standard of work. They've even told me to forward a CV to the boss of the centre. I'll be doing that tomorrow on the last day of the course. These past two weeks have gone by quite quickly and I've learnt a lot in that time. I have to thank all the staff for making me feel welcome.
My internet connection went balls up last night. I'd just gotten a party on Final Fantasy XI with my Corsair and was heading out to the camp. All of a sudden I got disconnected and had to wait a couple of minutes before I could connect again. I logged back in and continued my journey. Just before I got to the camp I got disconnected again. Same stupid problem of dropped connection. Logged back in for the second time and joined the party. After a few enemies it did it again. I was getting so pissed off by this point. I felt really bad for my party. Eventually it wouldn't connect at all and I had to give up. I wouldn't blame them if they never invited me again after that palaver. I'm going to try again tonight for a party. I'll have to pray the internet doesn't bugger up again.
PS. Need to reduce the amount of times the word "I"/"I'll"/I've" comes up in my posts...
Posted byHocchan at 5:23 pm 4 comments
Mou Koi Nante Shinai
10 July 2007
Something I forgot to mention in my previous post was Morning Musume's new single "Onna Ni Sachi Are". It's their 34th single and the first with Takahashi Ai as leader (though it should have been Fujimoto Miki but she decided she couldn't care less about the group). After the disastrous year they've had so far they really need a good song to get them back on track. And thankfully, in the words of Frank Carson, it's a cracker! The song is an uptempo affair that sounds very similar to Eurobeat. I'm not a particular fan of that style of music but Morning Musume have pulled it off in style. The arrangement is excellent and the new Chinese members fit in nicely. They don't get too much in the way of lines but what they do get they sing perfectly. The video isn't very original but it is entertaining. It's worth watching just to see the unique way each of the girls mime the word "baka" (stupid). Tanaka Reina's is possibly the cutest of the lot, but new girl JunJun's expression is frighteningly realistic. I really hope this single does well in the charts when it's released. They need to maintain their record of having every single chart in the top ten in the opening week. If not for that then it would be nice to see them back at the forefront of Japanese music again.
Posted byHocchan at 5:15 pm 0 comments
Onna Ni Sachi Are
08 July 2007
I finally got my broadband back! /joy It got connected on Wednesday evening but was really slow for a couple of days. Just yesterday it started to get a good download speed. Good job too because I have a lot of stuff that I need to download on torrent. I'll need to finish off the last two episodes of Hotelier and then get those Uta Doki songs I've missed, then perhaps another drama after that. Main thing is that I get to play Final Fantasy again. Well, depending if I have time. The Jobcentre course takes up a lot of my time. But I have managed to get some Assault done as well as a couple of Corsair AF quests. Hopefully once this course has finished next week I'll be able to level my Corsair. I'll also need to start farming for money again. Even though I only did those Ninjutsu scroll quests not long ago I'm running out of cash already. Just preparing Corsair for a party makes a massive dent in your wallet. Thank God I'm stopping at 60...
Speaking of that training course, it's not been as bad as I thought it'd be. The first week we generally did job searching and various group activities. We even went bowling on Wednesday as part of a team building exercise which was fun. This week I've been put on a work placement in their offices until Thursday. I'll be able to get some valuable experience in administration which I can add to my CV. So far today I've only been doing filing. I'm not sure what else they'll get me to do during this week but as long as it doesn't involve answering the phone too much I won't mind. The people at the training centre are not too bad. The group that I'm in is pretty friendly and every gets along. Our tutor, John, is a cool guy. He's laid back and isn't dead strict like some teachers are. The days have gone by quite quickly. The work we do keeps up busy and we don't have opportunity to get bored. Just another four days too go. Should be easy to get through.
Posted byHocchan at 6:56 pm 0 comments
Where's My Cow?
01 July 2007
Completed Atelier Iris 2 today. It only took me 31 hours to play through the game for the first time which shows how easy it is. There were a few recipes and ingredients that I didn't find but they wouldn't really that much replay value. The last boss was probably the only real challenge in the whole game. It took quite a lot of effort to kill him but nothing too complicated. The soundtrack is probably the best feature of the game. The background music is catchy and fits nicely with the presentation style. The Japanese voice acting is pretty good too. Overall Atelier Iris 2 feels like a beginners' RPG game. Most of the quests and field maps are relatively straight forward and there isn't too much scope of exploration. It's good enough for some light entertainment but if you really want a proper in-depth experience, you'd be better off with something like the Final Fantasy or Suikoden series. I'd give the game a 7/10 rating.
For some reason I had an urge to watch Long Way Round again. If you haven't heard of this TV series it's about Ewan McGregor and his friend Charlie Boorman going around the world on their motorbikes. They set off from London and ride east through Europe, Ukraine, Kazahkstan and Mongolia, and then through Siberia to Magadan via the Road of Bones. Once there they fly over to Alaska and ride through Canada on their way to New York. It's a great series to watch and it really makes you want to go out and explore the world. Seeing them take their bikes across the harshest of terrains is awe inspiring. The people that they meet on their journey are really very memorable and sheds light on cultures that we wouldn't normally think about. As I was watching them I couldn't help the feeling of wanting to visit Japan. Just thinking about all the things I could see and do makes me giddy inside. I can really feel the pull of adventure. It certainly gives you a goal to aim for in life. My regularly waning resolve has been given a much needed boost yet again. I will make it, damn it!
The Job Centre have sent me on some sort of training course which starts tomorrow morning. It meant to be designed to help me develops the skills that will aid me in getting a job. I'm a little apprehensive as I don't really know what to expect. I guess if it I can gain some more confidence in myself then it'll be a good thing. I'm not sure how long I'm supposed to attend each day but it lasts 2 weeks. At the end of it I may be able to get some work experience. We shall see, wish me luck!
Posted byHocchan at 10:42 pm 0 comments
