Another day goes by...

Well, was planning to go to look for job oppourtunities today, but woke up late, really late...at about 1 pm, and so that didn't happen. Guess I'll try again tomolo. Spent most of my day doing miscellaneous chores around the house and more reading. I'm like 3/4's of the way done all the dnd modules that are on the wizard's site now, they're still pretty interesting, though some of them are done stupidly and thus beastly long when they don't need to be. Bao, if you're ever stuck on ideas for your campaign, I could probably easily suggest to you some modules that would be easily adaptable into d20 modern. Though from the looks of what you sent me, you have enough ideas to last you a LONG time...hehe.

At one point during the day, I was just browsing around, and I found something that reminded me of Yugioh. Now, back when all the little kids were into it, I used to play it with Jon and his bros and Trevor, using their decks. It's got nothing on Magic, but I wasn't paying any money for it, and it still was fun, so I learned how to play and got to know the game somewhat. Now that I'm back at home and have a TV again, I started watching the show 'cause I usually have nothing else to do at that time, and after my trip to Untouchables on the weekend with the Tings, I kinda got interested in the game again. So I eventually went over to pojo and started browsing through the spoliers of all the sets that came out after I stopped "playing" Yugioh. (basically the beginning of second year) Some of the new cards are crazy...the power level is going up waay too fast...too many monsters now have 1900 attack for four stars, whereas before there was only one. (basically, in Magic terms, that would be equivalent to each colour getting their own versions of Savannah Lions, a 2/1 creature for W) I predict that eventually, beatdown decks will become omni powerful and own everything else in that game, unless they start making overpowered control cards too.

They've also continued the trend of having really stupid/bad names on their cards. Although it may just be due to bad translation, I don't see why it would be so hard just to proofread their card names in each set. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't feel very powerful when I control a monster named "People Running About" or "Outstanding Dog Marron" or "The Thing in the Crater". Nor do I feel really cool when I get to play cards called "Really Eternal Rest" or "Trap of Board Eraser" or "Thunder of Ruler" or "Autonomous Action Unit". I think you get the point...there are other better examples, but I've forgotten them for now. Some of the cards also have pretty humourous flavour text that I'm pretty sure wasn't intentional. For example, the flavour text of the card "Mad Dog of Darkness" reads: He used to be a normal dog who played around in a park, but was corrupted by the powers of darkness. I thought that a really cheesy way to describe this card, though it was a really good card game-wise. (Dark Beast, 4 stars, 1900 attack, 1400 defense) I had that quote on my MSN name for a while, and then at one point Howard asks me, "Are you talking about Bobo?" (David Chiou's Dog)That was really funny, 'cause first I thought he said, "Are you talking about Bobobo bobobobo...?" (The name of a really weird and comical Anime that Bao really likes) and I was thinking "whoa, he's heard of Bobobo too!?" And then I just imagined Bobo, that small little guy, as a 'Mad Dog of Darkness' and I laughed even more. :)
David, just thought you might like to know, I was going to tell you about this directly, but figured I'd just post it here. There's a card called Silpheed.

IOC-022
Silpheed
Wind
Fairy/4/1700/700
This card can only be Special Summoned by removing 1 WIND monster in your Graveyard from play. When this card is destroyed and sent to the Graveyard as a result of battle, your opponent discards 1 card randomly from his/her hand.

and here's a link to a pic of it:
http://www.pojo.com/yu-gi-oh/cotd/2004May/06S.shtml

Later on at night, watched this AE documentary called Troy: Behind the Blockbuster, or something like that. It retold this historical account of the Battle of Troy, and had the actors from the movie commenting on the reenactments; it also had amazing CG effects. :) The focus throughout the whole thing was on Helen of Troy, whether she really existed or not, and whether or not she was to blame for the whole Trojan War and the start of the decline of the Greeks. It was pretty interesting...anyone wanna see the movie later? heh, love 'war' movies

So yeah...didn't really accomplish much today, nor this week for that matter. But today was cool, got to talk a bit with my parents, without getting into any real arguments or fights about anything. And it might not be true, but I feel like I've changed a bit after 2B...I dunno, but things suddenly started seeming a bit different this week, today espeically. It's a good change, too.

whoops, double post...

Continuing from yesterday...

Since nothing really interesting happened today, (besides getting hooked on reading DND modules and reading like 5 in one day), I figure I'd write about the two things I said I'd talk about yesterday, and also mention a couple of other things as well. I said I'd start writing again when I woke up, but oversleeping for a long time (past noon) doesn't really make you feel good, right?

Anyways, Gunslinger Girl 12 and 13 - what a beautiful way to end the series. Episode 12 was a thrilling climax of massive action, involving heavily armed terrorists and a risky plan to use one of the gitais as decoy to foil their kidnapping attempt. There is also a strange kinda plot twist near the middle of the episode, involving the 'bad' guys. And Angelica was kinda stupid during the mission...she was the one that asked to get put on the mission in the first place too...

Anyone know where this quote comes from? Claes says it during the episode.
"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it produces much grain."
At first, I thought it might be a Bible quote, but I searched online for it, and nothing came up, so now I'm stuck. =/

In episdoe 13, no real action happened, but there were a lot of dramatic and emotional moments. All/most of the girls were together during most of the episode, which was cool 'cause that hardly ever happens. There also is a great deal of character development, not just with Henrietta, but also the other girls and their trainers as well. And we get to see a cool astronomical event. :) Lastly, there's a really sad ending to the episode...can't really say too much or I'd be spoiling it, but I should've seen it coming, given the aura of sadness that was prevalent throughout most of the series. At least they left lots of possible room for a sequel, though.

About CSI:M. Bao already has posted a lot of stuff about it, and for the most part, I agree with his opinions. The second episode of yesterday was better than the first. The second two cases had a lot of twists and turns, while the first one was just kinda odd...with Federal Marshalls getting involved and whatnot. And I never even knew that those baby microphone things that the bad guy who killed Gina used even existed. All in all, I'd say I like CSI:LV more, though mainly 'cause of the characters. As I keep watching more of Miami, however, I think I might actually get to know its characters better and like them more, even though there are less of them. Horatio does seem to be pretty smart and cool, and the Caucasian female investigator seems to have an interesting past. Miami is a differnet kinda show, there's more character development in the episodes, whereas Las Vegas is almost totally centred around solving the cases. (at least in the eps I've seen.) And once CSI:New York comes out, I'll have 3 CSI shows to watch. Looking forward to it. :)

And now, for two things involving Bao, haha. So I just read recently that he got the 5-6 player expansion for Settlers. Way to go! Now we can try it next week for sure...hehe...as long as this d20 game finishes a bit earlier this time. Speaking of the d20 games, I guess I'm now officially dropping out as a player and joining Bao as assitant GM since he sent me his story outline for the next few missions. It sounds really...interesting lol. Many many different plot threads...and some cool references for those that know Bao really well. Okay, I'll stop saying stuff in case I give too much away. The thing is though, for the last campaign, when I was gming that one time, I actually had more fun than when I was playing...hmmm...

BOOO!!! to Funanimation, they just licensed Full Metal Alchemist...so now we'll have to wait "2 years" until we can see the rest of it. (past ep. 31)

I told Cecilia that I'd help her plan games for the JOY Fellowship, but I thought that they games would be taking place next next Friday, after the grocery run, and not this Friday. So now I might not be able to help them as much...Baptism is this Sunday too...though I don't really know any of the ppl who are getting dunked really well, I'll still be going.

Well...if anyone can help me think of some interesting ice breaker games, that can be played within a group of about 30 ppl with little or no props, then please tell me! And thanks!

Power Node Linking Complete

The inspiration for the title of this entry comes from the fact that I just found the blog of an old friend - Sina. I found it through a link on some stranger's blog, which I decided to randomly browse from a link on Lowry's blog, which I found from a link on Ambrose's blog, which I found from...wait, never mind. Wow, never knew so many ppl had one of these things.

Anyways, I was going to blog about two significant things that happened to me today, and maybe more too. The two things were watching two episodes of CSI:Miami and polishing off the last two episodes of Gunslinger girls. (Both things were amazing) But, just as I sat down to blog, my stomach decided to ninja and started causing me great pain, so I had to run to the washroom. Dunno what happened, but I feel a bit better now. But now it's really late, and I really need to sleep so posting now wouldn't be giving those two topics justice. Post to be continued tomolo, when I wake up.

Until then, since I don't think anyone else is going to try the challenges, (Duy doesn't read blogs, and I know Jon doesn't anymore either, and Jeff is probably busy) I'm going to just put up the answers :P

1) Dun Dun Dun, Dah Dah Dun Dun Dun Dun! actually is my attempt to type out what the first few beats of the Melee menu theme would sound like. (The main one.) For some reason, I really started liking that track a while ago, and I got Duy to send it to me, and I still listen to it from time to time. Eventually, it got to a point that I would just refer to game by humming those first few beats whenever talking to ppl; it started with Jeff,and then I started using it with Duy and the rest of the Waterloo ppl too. The funny thing is that one day, I was at Jeff's house, and we were both talking to Vicky on MSN. Later on, we wanted to play some Melee, so I said to her, "Well, me and Jeff are going to play some Dun Dun Dun, Dah Dah Dun Dun Dun Dun! now, ttyl!" (or something like that)...and she actually understood us! hahaha...that was really unexpected. Her explanation for it was, "Well, yeah, what other games do you guys play!?" I guess she does have a point there though...

2) "A good thing to do is to use the forward B, to make them flinch, and then you do the up B and 'hiya!' and they get blasted to another dimension!!"

-Stephen Ting, said in the back of the car on the way to the mall, while talking about SSBM, obviously. More specifically, though no one really guessed this, what he was describing was one of his favourite strategies with Link. He described a bunch of battles that took place when one of his mom's friends stayed over at his house for a few days, and she brought her kids too. He was playing Melee against one of them, and was owning Kirby with Link. So, his plan was to forward B and hit them with the boomerang, when they get in a bit close, to stun them. Then, doing the up and B for spinstrike (Shyat!! or as he calls it "hiya!") would send them off "to another dimension" if they were at high enough damage. (In the words of Duy, they'd be "Spinning Door'd!"...knocked diagonally downwards.)

Wow, now that I think of it, these challenges were pretty weird...I still feel like doing more of them in the future, though.

Three Tings, Two Challenges, and One Omnifish

Today...after church...had to drive Jon Ting and his two brothers home, since their mom was busy working for this Mother's Day. Anyways, it was pretty cool: went back to that Chinese Restaurant with the AAA Supermarket beside it (Kingsley) to try and yum cha, but discovered that it was too crowded, and decided to go to The Wokker, which was near the church, instead. So we ended up driving in a really big and convoluted loop - the food was good though. Afterwards, parents decided to go to Central Parkway Mall. so of course the Jon jumped at the chance to be able to go Untouchables again, and all the rest of the kids ended up going with him. I looked at Magic stuff with his bros, while he tried to shark little kids who played Yugioh...

a while later, he decided to go down to the tournament room, which was by the Kumon place, so I followed him down since I'd never seen it before. Stephen and Matthew came along too, and always complained of dying of heat; understandable, since the room was pretty poorly ventilated, and they were wearing sweatshirts. I was watching a few of the kids play Yugioh matches against one another, and the tournament seemed to be very loosely organized, and some of the kids didn't really seem to know what they were doing. (Ex: Guy A has 2 monsters in play, Guy B has one. Guy A tries to Snatch Steal B's monster, but gets stopped by a Mystical Space Typhoon. Guy A then thinks things over for a bit, and decides to play Dark Hole, thus losing 3 cards while B only loses one - effectively giving B an Ancestral Recall. Dunno for sure, but something like that is usually a really bad move to do...) Also, Jon was watching ppl's matches, trying to get them to trade, and he was correcting some ppl a lot, especially this table of two white kids near the end of the time while we were there. He also was trying to get one of those kids to trade him his Chaos Emporer Dragon; Jon wanted it badly, and the kid said that he'd think about it after the game or something, but the kid ninjaed him and just said "I'm not trading it," after the game was over.

While we were waiting for Jon to come back up, the rest of us got money from my parents and went to go by drinks...eventually, we settled for getting bottles of pop from Shopper's Drug Mart, but were held up by an old man in front of us who was mad at the clerk 'cause he didn't notice that the man had give him a cupon. "I gave you that cupon!" x ten times. When we got back, my mom was like "you were smart for buying the drinks from there," but I had no idea why.

I would describe the d20n game more in detail, but since most ppl who would really care a lot were there or can easily get that info from other sources, I've decided not to write anything about it yet. I just hope that this week will be more productive than the last, and things will actually get resolved this week. Though, am learning the reasons behind somethings now...

Quote of the Day:
"A good thing to do is to use the forward B, to make them flinch, and then you do the up B and 'hiya!' and they get blasted to another dimension!!"

-Stephen Ting, said in the back of the car on the way to the mall

The challenges:
(3 points to anyone who can figure out what he was talking about then, or the challenge from my Saturday post :P)

Massive Combat Session

What happened today?
1) First d20 game with Bao's campaign, lots of rocket launchering and killing and massive combat, was kinda too easy and unwieldy, the non combat characters didn't really do anything...Jason had to drop out of the whole thing, so only I, Ricky, Ambrose, Raymond, David ,and Wen came, and then David decided that he didn't really like the game :(
More on this later.
2) Afterwards, I played another game of Settlers of Catan with Bao, David, and Brose. Bao went for a wheat harbour and a settlement in the middle of 3 wheat hexes, but everyone else ended up closing him off and ninjaing him. Before I had to go, the rest of us were pretty even - Duy/David had 8 victory points, while me and Brose both had 7. But Brose still had like 3 development cards (he already had largest army and had played 2 other cards) and Duy was in a good position with longest road, and also a lot of resources. I got to go first and had many good brick producing places, 3 cities, and a brick harbour, but at one point late in the game, I got robbered 3 times in a row, and the robber was like always on one of my hexes. =/ Oh wells...I'm pretty sure that etiher Duy or Choy was going to win that game...I'll have to ask them what happened later. Settlers is a really fun game...we gotta get the expansion someday....

This day was filled with massive gameage, which is okay once in a while...heh. This weekend has been going great so far. Hopefully tomorrow won't be awkward.

Dun Dun Dun, Dah Dah Dun Dun Dun Dun!

(hmmm...wonder if anyone will get where that title comes from....)

Not much stuff really happened today, until the night...

-I got my printer fixed, and new ink cartridge too, yay!

-turns out that the sign at Meadowvale TC that I thought said "Extreme Pho" actually said "Extreme Pita" with the ita in Pita being arranged to look it the word Pho instead. Found out when mom bought some pitas back from there for dinner

-was going to finish off Gunslinger Girls today, but only made it through one ep 'cause I kept on getting distracted...the series just keeps getting better...poor gitai though

-Andrew offered me a ride, but I declined his offer...feel kinda bad sometimes when he has to go so far out of his way to get me

-Fellowship was WAY/JOY games night...lead by Silas, Sam, Amie, Betty, and Andrew kinda...a man, what a night it was! That was soooo fun!! Even though most of the games we played were really childish and kinda weird lol :) Props go to the organizers, Andrew for asking me "are you Season" during the first game, Trevor for being a robot (ask him about his Theory 6 shirt) and everyone else for coming and making it a blast.

-afterwards, had an interesting meeting for ppl who wanted to help out with JOY during the summer, led by Alan Liu. The handout he gave out says "Will you commit to making JOY fellowship a verb, not just a noun?" At that, I was like HAHAHAHAA!!!!! in my head, but couldn't really laugh that hard in front of all those ppl. Alan noticed that I found the "wording of the statement" funny, while he was talking to us. The reason it was so funny? Well, first of all, that statement kinda doesn't really make sense,and also that's what me and a lot of friends from Waterloo have been doing recently - making nouns into verbs....ex: Arrowed! Beasted! Jack Sparrow'd! Ninjaed! and now....JOY Fellowshipped! LOL :P

-decided to probably help out in communications, since that's what I did for WAY committee in my OAC year, and also decided to help out C Mok with the grocery run in two weeks, since I don't have much to do right now, and I love planning indoor/not really active games for ppl to play

-congratulated Jeff on his first guitar accessory tutorial, but it was really hard for him to hear me due to all of the music and noise in the bg

-while hanging out with ppl after the night ended, found Jane Wang's puffer on the piano. Since her and Wilfred and Jon and etc had already left for Dixie Park, that meant that I had to go over there and give it to her. Which was perfect for me, since I wanted to go there and hang out anyways, and so it gave me an even better excuse to go this time. It was also perfect how they finally decided to go to Dixie Park, after all the confusion, and perfect how Jon phoned me from there, so I knew where they were. My mom was at church for a cell group leader's meeting, so she was able to drive me home afterwards. And I didn't have any cash on me, and they didn't take any cards, so I was asking around to borrow money from ppl. Later on, I found a Chat and Tea house card in my wallet, with only one more stamp out of eight to go. Thanks to Jon, I got Arthur to get my card stamped, and thus ended up with a free large drink - finally after having that card for like two years! God always provides ;)

*** The Coolest Thing of All (well kinda...if your name is DB or Brose haha) ***
-so I hadn't been to Chat and Tea House in Dixie Park for a long time...and when I first got in...I was like...whoa...where'd all this extra space in the back come from? Cause the only ppl there were MCBC ppl, and I looked near the rear where there were supposed to be tables and stuff, but there was only like empty space...and a tv...on close inspection, I walked to the back and saw that they were indeed playing Mario Kart Double Dash (2 players) on a PLATINUM Gamecue . Jon had told me that he was playing Double Dash the first time he called me, and I was like "from where!? they have a gamecube there now??" That's soooo awesome!! After a while, I found that they actually did have four controllers hidden away in a bag with games...and that bag also contained SUPER SMASH BROS MELEE! I was like "yes!" 'cause I was really hoping that they would have it, and it makes sense for them to have it too, since it is the ultmate party game. They also had a cool looking platinum controller.

So I got them to switch from playing Double Dash for a while, and me, Trevor, a computer player and this other guy Marco (I think...sry, forgot your name...) played a couple games. Nothing really exciting happened during those games; I won the first one with Marth by default when Trevor's Samus had wrong move syndrome and kept missiling while falling off Yoshi's Story. Other people were getting bored with Samus and wanted to get back to DD - "only pros can play Smash well." - Arthur Lui. Thus, we played only one more game after that one, which was on Venom. This game wasn't as close, after many SD's, I barely beat the comp with Captain Falcon. During both games, Marco kept playing as Yoshi, and he would away from the battle and cower somewhere, and hold shield. When someone found him, he'd yell out something like, "Wah, gum yeung doe bay nay geen doe ah?!" (Whoa, I was hiding like this and you still saw me?!) This kept happening over and over again, with many ppl getting free hits on him. The times where no one bothered to go after him, he eventually got shield stupidity 'cause his shield broke from holding it too long. =/ I'm not sure he knew what he was doing...but he seemed to be having nonetheless.

Bao and Duy and Brose and etc, if you ever read this, we've got to go down there one day and play while drinking bubble tea lol. Makes me wish that more of my school friends would come to fellowship with me haha...well, Ambrose might, and so might Jason nowadays...probably would be hard to get David or the Waterloo Bros or anyone else to come though. Oh well...it still was basically the highlight of my day...I can see myself going there a lot after fellowship/church maybe. :)

*** End Coolest Thing of All ***

So all in all, a really good day. Sarah Sparrow asked me how Awake went, but I couldn't tell her 'cause I didn't go. Everything's fine and dandy, as she would say...well, almost everything....but yeah, long day of d20 tomolo...should go sleep now. nights all!

It's starting to become a habit again...

Oks, it's time for daily blog update. :P
Like the title implies, I'm kinda starting to blog regularly again, since it's summer and I dont' really have that much things holding me back....and some of my friends keep telling me to update...so also partially due to their encouragement, I'm blogging again. :)

Didn't really do anything special today...just looking forward to fellowship (combined JOY and WAY program, come Jason!) and d20 game over the weekend, and possibly getting a job soon. Watched more of Gunslinger Girl - man, that anime is still amazing...I'm kinda disappointed the only made it so short though. I have 3 more eps to go. Go Henrietta!

Also saw another ep of CSI today, it was a new one too. Cool stuff about a sabatoged roller coaster flying off the tracks and hitting a car, causing a dead body to fly out of the trunk. At the beginning of the episode, some kid was fooling around and decided to take off his seatbelt on the coaster, and I was like "he's sooo going to die," but he ended up living. It was the ppl on the next ride that died. And also, there was a story about how some single woman killed her 13 year old daughter because she thought the girl was trying to steal her boyfriend away from her. That was crazy...the mom was saying stuff like "I give you everything, and this is how you repay me?!" and yelling various insults at her daughter...reminds me of some other families...I know :(

favourite quotes from this episode:
=========================
Warrick (to woman's boyfriend): sir, can I have a word with you outside please?
Boyfriend: Why?
Warrick: Why not?

*later on*
Warrick: May I take a look inside your truck?
Boyfriend: Don't you need a warrant or something for that?
Warrick: Only if you deny me access.
Boyfriend: Okay...go ahead...
touche

========================

During commercial breaks, I saw a commercial that made me laugh out loud. It was this...car/tourism commercial, I think. And they were trying to promote tourism in Canada, and telling ppl to "drive it." The first bit that I found funny was that at one point, the speaker says, "From the East coast to the praries..." while talking about driving across Canada, and I'm like...what the, Canada doesn't end at the praries, you bakas. Then, at the end of the whole thing, their punch line was something like, "Drive Canada, the best country in the world!" Now that's a massively biased statement if I ever heard one! Considering that these people don't even have a good knowledge of Canada's geography, I hardly think they'd be qualified judges of whether or not it's the best country in the world. Like, for peacekeeping? Maybe we are the best. But in terms of military or economic strength, or something my cousin would love - street racing? No way. Funny commercials.

Last thing I saw on TV that I feel like mentioning, is an episode of Battlefield Investigators (on the History channel!) that talked all about how and why Napoloen failed at Waterloo. I've always been a way history buff, and I learned quite a few new things about that incident tonight. I now know what "canister shot" is. Interesting to note that back then, Napoleon's French artillery had cannons that were considered "the mother of all weapons" while nowadays, that honour would probably go to the hydrogen bomb. Or, in the case of C&C Generals, the Chinese Nuke Cannon. :P

I've also developed another habit...after running the d20 module Blood Sugar a while back, I've started to like the way each module tells kind of a mini-story. Thus, after finding out about the d20 modules and reading all of them, I started reading the normal DnD modules too. I recently started going through them alphabetically, reading at least one a day, and I'm on D now. Most of them are done pretty well, and some of them look like they could be adapted to fit a modern campaign pretty easily. Just wish that modern had all of the spells that Dnd had.

One last thing before I go....I just wanna wish a timely Happy Birthday! to my sis. Hope you had a good day...where ever you are... :)

Chinese Supermarkets are weird.

Today, I had the oppourtunity to visit a chinese supermarket somewhere in Brampton. But first, a small side story. Why was I there? The answer is that it was in the same plaza as this restaurant that my family was having an early Mother's Day dinner in. (it was Kingsley Chinese Restaurant, it sucks, don't bother trying it lol.) Anyways, in an economical move, my mom decided that we should have my cousins family give us a ride there, to save gas. So they get to our house, and my cousin Raymond is driving; he's a year younger than me, had his G2 for not even a year, and is really into cars. Right after we get in, he takes of speeding down the residential streets, going WAY too fast everytime he makes a turn. He also never signaled when he lane changed, tailgated, and always stopped just a bit short of hitting the guy in front of him. He was driving so crazily that his parents kept yelling at him to stop and slow down and etc, but he wouldn't listen. My mom couldn't talk him out of it either. All the inertia-ing was freaking out all the adults, but I just remained silent during the ride, knowing that nothing I said would've made a difference. Later on in the night, he says that he only likes driving really fast on turns, and not on straightaways, 'cause turns is "where the thrill is." To quote Trevor, "chee seen gah!" He seriously could've gotten us all in an accident tonight. But meh, I didn't really expect much less from my cousin, being selfish and arrogant like usual...weird how he's changed so much from when we were both in elementry school. I'm trying not to judge him, but it keeps getting harder and harder.

Now, about this Chinese supermarket. Firstly, you know it's a Chinese supermarket when it's called "AAA Supermarket". haha...it's not much unlike most other Chinese supermarkets, like H&H, only a bit dirtier. It was my second time there, and here's a sample of the stuff that went on this time:

- found out that they were selling brocolli in 2 different places in the store, both for the same price of 99c per head. If they're both the same price and item, why not hav them in the same place?

-one weird sign that caught my eye was one above a bunch of white and green vegetables that said "NAPA SHOT". I brought my mom over and asked her what the Chinese under it meant, and she said it said "sieu choy". Apparently, sieu choy is a kind of vegetablem (choy), and in English, it's translated into Napa. There's two different versions of Napa, the long and the short version, and this happened to be the short version, being advertised by a badly written sign lol. What made this sign funny for me was that, as I was walking by, I glanced at it and started thinking of a certain Dragonball Z character charging up a big energy blast...

-my mom was looking for red beans, among other things, so she approached one of the workers and asked them, in Cantonese, "Excuse me, where are the red beans?" When he replied "huh" in a mandarin accent, she asked him again in Mandarin and he showed her where they were. Later on, she was looking for a different kind of red beans, and stopped to ask a female employee, and the same kind of thing happened. Then, as we were about to leave the store, mom realized that she didn't have much cash left, and that these types of stores usually don't accept credit cards. So, she goes up to the nearest employee and asks, again in Cantonese, "Nae sul mmm sul card ah?" (Do you accept [credit] cards?) The employee, for some reason pulled an Anson, which is to stare blindly for a few seconds, and then look around and mumble a bit. Finally, he said something like, "ummm...uhhh..." Thinking that he also only spoke Mandarin, she asked him again in that language, but once again, he pulled another Anson. So my mom was like, "it's ok, let's just go," and as we turned to leave, the guy quickly turned to us and said in a quiet voice, "Ahh, yes, sul card, naw day sul card." (Ahh, yes, accept card, we accept card.) Unfortunately, my mom was too far away to hear him at that point, but she had enough cash anyways so it didn't matter.

oks...that part came out longer than I expected.
After getting home, I was going to watch some more Gunslinger Girl, when Bao told me of an upcoming CSI episode at 10. Since I'd hardly watched any of it, though I've played both games and really liked them, we decided to watch it "together". As in, we both watched it, and then talked about it afterwards....it was pretty nasty, with a lot of blood and dismemberment and etc. Not for the faint of heart haha. Tried to get Andrew into watching it, but he was preoccupied by other, more important matters...hehe :) Now that I know when it airs, I'll probably be watching a lot of it. I kinda wished that I had a tv with cable up in Waterloo now, so that I could watch stuff when I go back to school. Perhaps I could talk with the Waterloo Bros. about it. At least we'll each be able to have a phone next fall.

Tomorrow, is more cleaning and planning, and hopefully some resolution too...until then, cha!

A female who's not an Infiltrator

Okay, where was I? Stupid computers. Anyways, much thanks goes to David for his help on making gmail work for me. I tried it, and now I can read stuff! :) But I don't think I'll be using it much, since I'm already using Outlook Express for all my email needs. (Who needs 1 gig of storage space when you can use your whole hard drive with OE, right Jeff?) btw, anyone know the address of the gmail server, so that I can set up my OE to check that account as well? Thanks ya.

The main point of this post is going to be something I just started watching yesterday - Gunslinger Girl. I had already seen a bit of it with Bao and Wen and Jason during school, and I was pretty impressed, I just didn't have the time to watch it with them. I borrowed it from him later though, and I finally got around to seeing it. And now that I have, I must say that it's become one of my five favourite animes of all time, and I've only seen the first four episodes! There seems to be just enough action in each episode to advance the plot, and still satisfy action fans such as myself. The fighting and stuff is pretty realistic - well, as realistic as 14 year old girls with cybernetic implants gunning down terrorists is anyways. It's cool to see how the various gunslinger girls interact with each other, and how they each have a relationship with their own 'big brothers' that's unique. As Triela says in ep. 4 "Rico is [her brother's] tool, Henrietta is Jose's little sister....then what am I?"
Each of the girl's backgrounds also seems pretty sad, like being the sole survivor out of a mass murder and rape of your family, or being kidnapped and taken away to another country....etc. The secret agency they end up working for does "the government's dirty work" which makes them seem like both the bad guys and the good guys at the same time - though they're fighting terrorists and stuff, their orgainzation doesn't always follow the law, and sometimes innocent ppl have to be killed.
(I really found it sad that that guy [in ep. 3] had to die...won't say anything more in case I might be spoiling it for someone... those who've seen it should remember who I'm talking about.)

The story is set in Italy, and they show a lot of 'Italian' and 'European' scenery throughout the show. Which is why after watching the first bit of it, I started thinking that maybe auntie would like to see it :) After talking to Tim Kwan about it, he sounded like he'd be interested in watching it, and I figure Andrew would like it too, so maybe one day we could try and watch some of it together, since I'm pretty sure that we'll be meeting at least once this summer haha. Perhaps I could get BNao to make me a DVD copy of the series too.

Looking forward to first d20 game this weekend. And also maybe something else too; hoping for the best.

What the...

So I log into blogger again, to make a post about Settlers of Catan and Bao's party, and I see this ad for gmail. Since Wen told me about it a long time ago, and he and other people I know seem to be liking it, I decided to go ahead and sign up for my own account. I didn't really need one, since I use Outlook Express to check all my emails, but I figured I'd at least see how good it is. I got the account set up okay, but everytime I try to view a message, I see this loading sign in the upper right hand corner of my screen, and then nothing happens. I've tried everything, and I can send and receive stuff, but can't look at any of my emails. I'm thinking it's just my stupid MDG comp messing up again, but I'm not sure.

Unfortunately, after spending about 20 mins being frustrated at my comp for this and other problems, I'm not longer in the mood to write about anything. Plus, my parents are bugging me to go downstairs and do stuff, so I guess I'll just end off here. Wow, that was a really long and pointless rant...sry about that.

A random upate about signs

Supposed to be studying for Arthurian Legends right now, but since I haven't updated in a while, I guess I'll post something short up. I'll review Lost in Translation later..heh.

Today, after dinner, the Nguyen-huu's and I went with Wen to Home Hardware, 'cause he had to pick up some liquid Dranol to unclog this drain at his place that kept getting stuck. So while we were there, we saw three "interesting" signs:

Sign #1: Please Use The Other Door

This sign was wriiten with black font on an orange piece of paper taped to the left glass door in the main entrace of the store. Wen was leading the group, and unfortunately, he didn't seem to notice the sign, and decided to try and get in by pushing on the door with the sign. It was like "umm...I don't think that door will work..." It was fairly humourours, (no offense of course), and it also lends evidence to the theory that Wen was kinda out of it today; when we were leaving Wendy's, one of his classmates was in line, and kept calling to him while he was dumping out his garbage, but he couldn't hear him until like the third or fourth attempt, when we called his attention to the guy calling him. Later on in the car, Wen commented on how that was kinda weird, 'cause he usually notices when ppl call his name.

Sign #2: Assorted Bath Bombs

This sign was found over a tub of many ball-shaped objects that appeared to be made out of soap or something like that. They were of many different shades of mainly cool colours, such as blue and purple. They were pretty curious wares, since none of us had heard of them before. What we think you do with them is throw them into a bathtub full of water to get bubbles...but why they're named "bath bombs" is a good question...

Sign #3: Start Any Season

This phrase was found on an advertisement for some lawn/garden care products. It caught my interest for a couple reasons. First of all, it can be interpreted in more than one way. Does it mean that you can start doing this activity in any season? Or does it mean that you can start any season at will, as if you had an Allied Weather Control Device in your backyard? (Hmm...I have an exam tomorrow, I think I'll make it snow massively so it'll be a snow day :) ) Also, next to the words, there was a diagram showing the cycle of seasons, and how you can start caring for your lawn during each one. (ie: early summer, late summer, early fall...etc.) The funny thing is, they totally skipped winter completely in the diagram. So that means one of two things: either they made a big mistake and forgot to add in the winter stuff, or they're performing false advertising, since you can't really start in any season. =p

Yeah...pretty weird stuff, but I'm not that in the mood to study for AL right now...heh. But I guess I'll get to it soon after this post, with Duy, who's right now playing FF 11 lol. Shows how much we really care about this course. And oh yeah, here's a kinda new phrase that I'm going to start using:

Entwine - verb: used to describe choosing both/all options in a situation where more than one choice is available.
Ex: Should I have grapenut or chocolate ice cream? Or should I entwine them and have both?!

My promised update

hmmm...what to say, what to say? Well then, might as well talk about how today went. Today, I woke up finally at noon, after staying up till 4 the previous night doing other stuff when I should've been sleeping haha. Me and Duy were supposed to go to Jason's place to 'study' calculus 3 this afternoon at lunch time, but we ended up going at around 1:30, stopping to pick up some lunch at V1 along the way.

ahh..okay, here's something I can expand on. V1 is so cheap, their version of "take out' involves putting your order in one of those small dinky fry containers. So I ordered Curry Chicken to go, so th at I could bring it to Jason's, and then they end up putting it in one of those things, so I get like half of what I would've got if I had it on a plate. =( Oh wells...it still tasted pretty good though. I just wonder why they can't keep those styrofoam take out boxes there like they do at DC, I feel like I got ripped off.

so we arrive at Jason's, and him and Kevin Yip are playing Neverwinter Nights. So we watch them play for a while until we decide to trudge upstairs to the study room and try to study. Unfortunately, none of us are really in the mood for studying, so although we try, we aren't really that productive, so eventually Jason folds and we all go back down to see some more NVN. After a while, I decided that I should probably try and study more, since I had no idea about half of the questions on the sample final, and so I go out of Jason's room and into the main living area. Didn't get much done there, but I don't really know much about NVN anyways, so meh.

at about 6, Jason tells bao that we're coming back home, so the three of us trek back all the way across campus to our house, and on the way there, Duy tells us of this funny story about how someone had the idea of making a bot in an MMORPG that only says stuff like "dude" and "right on" lol. (I don't think a lot of ppl would understand what I'm talking about there, haha) Anyways, then went to eat dinner at Vinh Tin, (vietnamese restaurant); we hadn't been there in a long time, since Duy doesn't like it, and he's always the limiting reagent, so we usually go somewhere else in an attempt to keep everyone happy. This time, Jason got ninjaed by me almost 3 times kinda. (sry sir.) The first was when I was trying to pour his tea while in a really tired mode, and I ended up spilling some of it on the table. The second was when I wanted to order 409, but then I found out he wanted it too, so then he changed his order to something else, but then I changed mine, so he changed his back to 409. When the waitress came with our orders, however, Jason didn't get what he wanted- apparently she thought my "409" looked like a "404" or something. Finally, the last ninjaing was when I was trying to pay for both Jason and myself, and get the discount from my VSA cardc for both of us. "One card per person," the woman tells us. Ninjaed.

[edit] Oh, forgot to mention one thing, since my order and Jason's order got ninjaed, I ended up with noodles and beef and meatballs. And so near the end of the meal, I had some meatballs and beef left in my bowl, and the following convo ensues:

Duy: are those good?
Alan: I dunno, they taste just like normal meatballs.
Duy: they look pretty good....
*2 second pause*
*Duy suddenly reaches over and grabs a meatball out of my bowl, then eats it*
Duy: Ninja!

[/edit]

Outside the restaurant, Jason made his Will save and decided to go home and sleep instead of coming back to our house to play games. The three of us go back home, and Duy goes on FF 11, Bao goes up to his comp, and I go on msn and start talking to some ppl I needed to talk to. Bao tells me that I promised him to update my blog today, and I tell him that I will tonight, but he doesn't believe me. Then later on, he gets annoyed at me, 'cause it's 12:48 and I still haven't updated yet. But now I am! See Bao, I told you to trust me. Anyways, thankfully, my blog isn't giving out viruses to ppl who come and view it (stupid pop ups) and I should be getting to sleep so that I can actually study for both PMATH and calc 3 tomolo. ahhh...must pass those courses...

Hope it goes well....

Okay, Alan signed in now, cuz I told him to, but then 15 seconds later he fell on his bed and hasn't moved since. I think he's sleeping, but his eyes are open. Duy and Jason and Wen are looking at the videlectrix site. They're laughing, and Alan doesn't understand what they're laughing about.

Alan says he doesn't want to update because it's been so many days, so it's too much work. This, Bao says, creates a conundrum, a paradox if you may - if you don't update, it will be MORE days since the last update, and thus, it will always be a lot more work. Thus, I tell him to update now, and then update again tomorrow, so that it will be less days and stuff. But unfortunately, not 30 seconds after I leave the room, Alan is on his bed, lying down.

OH! He's getting up! And he's leaving the room. I think he's in my room now. Yes, he is.

I hear music! Where's it comign from? It's coming from myroom, but I dunno what it is.

Ahh, it's the Kill Bill vol 2 trailer. Anyway, so today Alan went to a calculus3 study session, I'm not sure how that went because I was writing an exam during that time. It was a short exam, yet a hard exam... so it was okay. Hopefully my next few exams wouldn't be so hard.

Anyway, let's pretend this is Alan's most recent post. So hopefully he'll post tomorrow about the events that have happened tomorrow. Then he doesn't really have an excuse to not post.

Now I'm talking to Diana on msn. I might as well become Alan as long as I'm on his computer... so... what to do now...

Hmm... so... ASPARAGUS is still there.... hmm.. well, if Alan doesn't post soon, I might have to fill up his blog with more garbage :P or... hmm... I dunno. So... how is everyone doing? It's 12:44 am now... I should probably start studing for PM340 and 330... argh... hopefully 340 won't hurt me too badly... hmm... can't wait for the summer... will be lots of fun. More fun than other summers? Not sure... ahh, wait, gotta go pee... brb.

okay back. gotta do a favour for Diana... ::

"*ASPARAGUS, NEPHEW! Always remember ASPARAGUS!*"

anyway, now I still don't know what Asparagus means, but I guess it's important. Like a scar, or a memory, that reminds someone of who they are. I suppose it's something like that. Anyway, I'm going to just write a lot more now, just so we'll have something to read while Alan's not posting.

So once upon a time, there was a Pasta Prince in the Pasta kingdom. He loved Pasta, but he didn't like Cheese. Thus, he was in a paradox, because most pasta have cheeses. So he invented a new kinda pasta that didn't involve cheese, but it did involve icecream. Needless to say, the combination tasted pretty bad - not as bad as icecream and tuna fish, but still pretty bad. So he had to travel to the land of the Eastern Lava-lamp.

There, he found the unhunted Wooly Llama, who was the wisest Llama in all the land. Of course, there was the unhunted Wooly Bear, who was the wisest bear in all the land, and it wasn't duly noted which of the two was wiser. So the Pasta Prince was puzzled, whether to visit the Wooly Llama or the Wooly cow. But since the wooly cow didn't exist, he naturally decided to visit the Wooly Llama. So the Llama wins this round.

The Llama didn't know the answer to his question, but did offer her some good advice. "What you seek, my child, is not wisdom, but power." So she went to Powerland, because there she was able to obtain the most power. So the pasta princess arrived there, and there she couldn't find the power at first.

She looked hard and harder, until around night time, she saw some power just laying there in the dark, deep waters. She absorbed it, but it seemed to be alas too much for her. She couldn't take it, so she imploded. He then decided to quit on his journey, and go back home to the pasta kingdom. However, there was a problem.

It couldn't make it back, because its boat has disappeared from existence. It had to find an alternate method of transportation, and for that it went to the Wooly bear, because from past experience, it seemed the wooly llama was pretty useless. After arriving in Switzerland, he came along to the Wooly bear who sat on top of the biggest mountain in Denmark.

He asked the Bear how to get back to the Pasta Kingdom. "You can't, my child - you can't go back. Well, there is only one way."
"What is it?" Asked the princess politely.
"You must climb the forbidden path to the west side of the pasta kingdom. Only there can someone your age pass through the river of forbidden paths. You must know the hidden passcode, which you should find out during your travels."
So it left the bear, and started heading toward the forbidden paths. On the way, it/he/she got really hungry, and needed food badly. HE NEEDS FOOD BADLY. So he stopped by an inn, but not any inn, it was a magically enchanted urban arcana inn. There, it costs like, $2000000 to stay a night, and unfortunately, she did not have enough money. The only way to make money was to do some odd jobs around the town. So she did that.

To be continued.

Wow... (read post below first)
(this is Bao, if you're too lazy to read the post below - it's better if you read that first)

Anyway, Duy just got home, and I thought it was both Alan and Duy, but it was just Alan. Apparently Alan went shopping in the plaza... So he'll be back, and he'll tell you all about his plaza visit, in... the future... or maybe... not... at all. So he'll be back in 3 minutes, so I gotta log off for real this time. So read the post below first, and then read this one.

... hahaha. So see ya later vickees (sis)! and Auntie (diana, the one with the cool e-mail address). He's coming! Jason sees him from the lookout window!

BYe!

eta 3 seconds
2
1

Alright... it's 3:50, and Alan should be back from his AL class any minute now... oh yeah, this keyboard does feel kinda funny. AHH! I keep hitting... some key instead of some other key...yeah, \ instead of backspace.

Anyway, maybe from the chatterbox on the left, from Wen's message, maybe you can deduct that this is Bao. My animation class was shortened today, so I'm home early now. So Alan hasn't updated for over a week, so he requires updating so all of us, the viewers of his blog, can finally read something again. Of course, it's been over a week, and I'm not Alan, and he's going to be home any minute now so I can't write much. And I don't remember much. Read my blog ;) And comment! I've probably written about a lot of events that Alan might've written about, which might add to the reason he's not blogging about it if it's in my journal, but I'm sure Alan has a lot of stuff to write about, like... not daily events and stuff.

So... first of all...

hi vickees! Miss ya sis! Miss ya auntie! Bao's having a party eventually so you all should come to that! ;) Jeffoo, can we borrow more games? John, how's them Yugioh cards?

... so I tried. Anyway... CSI is fun. It's 3:55, Alan should be back really soon. Ooh, wen's messaging about something, lemme check it. Hmm... if Alan was here, maybe he'd know the answer, but unfortunately I don't recall much about Java. Sorry Wen ^_^

What else is new? Lots of stuff is new. This is actually much harder than I thought it would be... well, not really, but the keyboard's annoying me, and I don't really feel like typing too much.

But... thingieing. Fine, I accept your challenge. Hello sir. It is Bao. I don't say thingieing a lot anymore... and I gotta work on my communication and impatientness. Anyway, as I commented on Bao's blog, the wavebird controller works pretty well. Duy doesn't like it though, and Bao finds no problems with it. I think Bao has gotten used to it too. It's nice and light too, surprisingly, compared to wireless mice which are really heavy (at least for the wrist). I still have ASPARAGUS post-it on my computer, and Bao still doesn't know what it means, but it's an Auntie thing so it must be good.

AHH... where do we change post title? Oh well. That's okay. It's probably not too important. 3:59, he's still not home. I'm not sure what else to write, without sounding like I'm rambling, or just making stuff up... but, now you see, viewers of the blog, this is what happens when you don't update enough. That's right, Bao sneaks into your room and posts in your Blog, if you have the passwords and everything logged in already. Otherwise, Bao is harmless ^_^

Anyway, Jason just got here, with some Campus pizza. He's having Haiwaiian and Vegetarian Pizza.

Today was the last class of Arthurian Legends. The course was fun. We got 95% on our project. The teacher was very impressed, and said "that we must've put a lot of effort into it." LOL.

AHH! THEY"ERE HOME ! BYE! - Bao

Iced Tea Explosion/ UT 2004

Tank, Ninja, Beast, are used too much, define, not use them anymore like thing, thingieing

More about cool cooking dinner later. =)

Just some crazy thoughts...

As me and Duy were walking back from the convenience store after dinner today, we heard the radio commerical that ends with: "Coffee time is any time, any time is coffee time!" And so my crazy mathie mind started working, and I thought...hmmm...that can be true in real life, but it doesn't have to be true in say, a programming language. ( like how
a = b is not the same as b = a in C++) But yeah...I dunno...I guess I'm thinking too much about this since I'm taking a course about logic this term. =/ Any math ppl wanna try and find a way to misinterpret their slogan? heh

And also, as we were waiting to cross Philip Street, this crazy though just popped into my head. If someone were to just jump out purposefully and try and tank and get hit by a moving car, and get killed, whose fault would it be? And what kind of charges could the driver face? Manslaugher? Maybe some ppl who've taken law could give some input.

Those were just some thoughts that I had that kinda lead of to nowhere at the moment, just thought I'd throw them out to maybe provoke some discussion. I also finished up to episode 15 of Full Metal Alchemist today, and I must say that I really like the series; they manage to show a lot of the characters in different perspectives, and it's very emotional. (so no Wen, it's not cheesy like digimon...it's good lol.)

Second Sunrise

So...I haven't been updating for a long time, but now that the effects of busyness and other incidents have kind of abated, I guess I'll resume this blog. Hopefully I'll be more consisten this time. Anyways, I was going to post this up yesterday, but fell asleep haha.

Yesterday, I attended the CCF Grad Dinner with Ambrose, and met up with Tim Li and Chris Tsoi when we got there. We arrived at 6:30 like they told us to, but of course it being a CCF event and running on Chinese time, the dinner actually didn't start until like at least an hour later. The four of us passed some of the time by playing some Big 2, I haven't played that game in a long time. I always liked how it seemed really simple, yet there could still some very strategic decisions that one is forced to make during the game. Actually, that's something I could say about a lot of games that I like a lot. (ie: Super Smash Brothers Melee) Even Magic, though at first all the rules might seem confusing to new players, they new rules are actually much more clear, and learning the game is now a lot easier. Once you get into the game, however, there's basically an endless number of decks you can make and strategies you can try.

The food was good, roast beef, ham, mashed potatoes and salad. A lot of the frosh were helping out this year to make the food and serve. Nothing really special happened during the dinner, I didn't really know many of the grads that well, so I didn't really feel any emotional attachment during that night, nor did I understand a lot of the humour that was going on during the slideshows and such. The only interesting thing was that the table I was sitting at ending up being the 'future committee table' :) It just happened that way by chance, but the people at my table that night included:

Helen Tam, Jane Huang, Marianne Heppleston, Tim Li, Sam Ng, Eric Cheng, and Chris Tsoi.

what's so interesting about these people? Well, they're almost all the candidates that are running for CCF committee next year! (except we're missing one person only) Perhaps it's just a coincidence? Nah...foreshadowing of something that me, Simon, Ambrose, or Kevin Leung might do in the future? Maybe...hehe...I did committee back in WAY when I was in OAC, so I'm thinking I should be helping out in some capacity at least in CCF....

At first, I hadn't planned on going to grad dinner maybe, 'cause I was afraid that my clothes weren't appropriate enough (it was supposed to be 'business casual' and all I had at my house here were t-shirts and normal pants.) But now that it's over...I'm sooo glad that I went! Me, Brose, Simon and Chris decided to leave one the standard grad sharing time was over at about 10:45, to go to William's and get some coffee to have our own little sharing group. And we all shared how our life was going with each other, and some 'deep' stuff, and then I learned stuff that night, stuff that I needed to learn. Stuff that I should've learnt by last year at the latest, which would've saved me a lot of trouble. Thanks Chris and Simon for sharing that stuff with me, and also Ambrose for being 'some kind of robot' (I don't think anyone else caught that comment, but I did haha) and for using stuff from games to describe your spiritual life lol. It's cool that I kinda had this night just when I needed it...I'll remember it for a long time.

In calc 3 this morning, we were learning about triple integrals (integrating volumes in 3-D) an our prof was writing up an example on the board, and told us to sketch the area that we were goign to integrate and find the volume of. So I was lazy/tired, so I figured I'd just let someone else do it, when all of a sudden Jason beside me says "whoa...du fromage!!" And I look at his page, and there is a graph of what looks like a block of cheese in 3-D hehehe (it was basically a triangular prism like thingieing) and then later we had to do another example with the cheese, only this time it was flipped around. It was the highlight of the class haha.

Must start working on last PMATH assign now...thought my ECON exam was this wed as well, but good thing it's next wed. And oh, if you're wondering what else has been going on over here...you can look at Bao's blog , since he decided to do an update for me one time hehe. Hopefully we won't burn down the house tomolo....or give Betty and Vanessa food poisoning...haha....

Sorry for the lack of updates, haven't really been in the mood to post anything of substance recently, but I will pick it up again soon. I did want to post this though:

"He who controls the past, commands the future; He who controls the future, conquers the past." - George Orwell, 1984

It's final. From this day onwards, my past will no longer hinder me, I've moved on, and am trying to become a better person.