THE Late Christmas Post

I know its way past Christmas by the time this is posted. So to make it seem like i actually wrote alot........ I'm gonna fill this with pictures!

First, how's the speakers below look? Its a completely DIY project of mine that involved lots of cutting, stripping[of the wires kind] and soldering to get. Its a set of speakers made out entirely of cardboard. Xmas present for the lucky one who got it~Lucky you its 10 hours of effort! Inspiration from MUJI lol.

Moving on.

Spent Christmas Eve with my beloved RJT at sl's house! Hahaha. Haven't had such a huge family gathering with everyone there in a long time liao... Sorry for not having green or red in my wardrobe! Wahahaha~

The tasty Muffin-lookalike Cookie Recipe Chocolate Cupcakes [MCRCC] made by the gals! [a.k.a a failed cookie. lol]

I dunno why but they took a photo of me the nemesis of cockroaches in action~ Gao~.

Lots of food~ Ehehe~

JJ with his "PURE BLEND" "LIMITED EDITION" bottle of god-knows-what cologne~ [Its called the Davidoff Silver Shadow Cool Water, so now we know!]

Big Big 全家福

And the corresponding Big Big lot of Christmas Gifts in the "lucky draw"!

Time portal to the mid 90's

This has got to be be the most rundown shopping centre in singapore. Note that most of the upper levels aren't occupied... and they couldn't be bothered to close the windows... took a walk around and found a handphone shop still selling samsung blue-i [circa 2001] and a game shop selling the original Playstation set new, along with alot of "brand-new" totally yellowed SNES and Sega cartridges. I swear I must have gone back in time, if not for the DVD shop's presence to wake me up.... [too dark to capture any pics inside]

夜間の町道。。。綺麗な～

小さいの人、一人わ歩く、心わ寒いで

and I got burnt by some idiot's cig while walking along this very street. Got a pretty large blister after that. Damn You.

Someday in the Rain

its 6am in the morning and it has rained all night. Can't get to sleep...I'm sitting in a chalet room that only has 2 people. The coldness of the silence strikes me like a lance of ice. It feels so warm, yet so cold here at the same time.

Oh well, she's hard at work, even at a chalet. To her at the table now: Fighto~! Dayo?

("her" does not carry any special connotations here)

Just a song

Nothing here but a song today, something to calm the spirit. From the anime "Fruits Basket" : "For Fruits Basket", for those who remembered this show on Mediacorp 8 years ago...

PO POPOPO POPO.

Those who have watched the Lucky Star OVA should have seen this part where Tsukasa goes "po popopopopo", and also Shiraishi singing some random song in the Lucky Channel segment. Here's the original. I lol-ed for a whole 5 mins watching this. Make sure you watch till the end! lol.

Enjoy~! popopopopopo PO PO~~~~~ popopopopopo po po popopo........

奇怪のお菓子 [weird candy]

Yup. As to the title... Today's post is all about edible stuff that you don't normally see on supermarket shelves, an entry I've been holding for a damn long time due to crappy photos. Been going to Yamakawa Super at Central too often to get candy nowadays... Some are just too good to pass up. The best is of course saved for last..

First up, the Calpis Cherry Soft Candy. This is like the Hichew that we always get, except its based on the popular Calpis milk drink from Japan, which tastes somewhat like Yakult in its carbonated version. Must say its an accquired taste... RJT guys who made it to the Shokudo meal last time will know exactly why... Anyway this is a sour yoghurt-tasting chewy candy... not sure exactly where the cherry taste went. Finished the whole stick and didn't taste any cherry inside. Then again, its made by the Calpis company themselves and they sure don't specialise in candy, so don't expect too much.

Now for the good stuff

Morinaga "Kotukou" Black Sugar Caramel

Really love the packaging on this sia.. looks like the traditional chinese medicine box where they usually paste a black/white photo of an old man [usually the founder]. Even has Kanji on the side that seems to be in Chinese rather than Kanji on the front package, claiming how the taste is the best and that its nutritious [though in what way i really don't want to know]. 


Verdict? It's "Really Good". I actually end up buying this everytime I pass any Yamakawa now. It's a milky caramel with a very unique black sugar taste, a little bitter but fragrant and sweet. Its also very creamy and best of all its inexpensive, at only $1.50 a box. The cubes remind me of chicken stock though... and my family is finishing this faster than I can buy them

I actually bought even more recently, will photograph and review when I get my decent cameraphone fixed... its faulty at the moment. Till then~

of weird juices and more

Today's post was intended to be about some uncommon candy that I bought earlier on... thanks to the utterly incompetent camera on my current phone... that shall have to wait.

Gao~~
[Gao Gao Stegosaurus] -> hint to today's post.

Just completed AIR [the TV anime]. That means I have finished watching all the 3 Key/Visual Arts works in anime form [Kanon/Air/Clannad]!


The title card...


The main character


"RAMEN SETO!" - only a hungry person can do this in his dreams


Puhi!


In order: Tsukimiya Ayu, Minase Nayuki, Sawatari Makoto [Cameo from Kanon]


Like a leaf~


I want some of this "weird juice"! Now where can I buy some...


So moe~

AIR revolves around the story of a childish but really cute girl, Kamio Misuzu, who wishes to fly and believes that her other self is out there in the sky as a girl with wings. She sees a series of sad dreams every night, those of herself having wings and flying in the sky. Apparently this is the work of a long-standing curse on winged beings and Misuzu is the reincarnation of one. The curse will kill her once she dreams her last dream. It is up to a traveling puppeteer, Yukito and Misuzu's adoptive mother to stop that curse from coming true.

AIR has got to be the most devastating of the 3, since Misuzu has to be the most tragic character ever. She is always lonely, and is unable to make friends, as she will always suffer attacks when she becomes close to people. She also does not have close parents and chooses to remain in her childish world. *hint. the ending isn't quite expected*.




Story - 9/10
The story is solid and expansive, and of course, tragic. This is definitely a top notch KEY script, like all their other galge that have been adapted to anime.

Music - 7/10
The music is good. I give it 7/10 for the soaring "Tori no Uta" melody[opening], and the aptly named ending "Farewell Song", and also the insert song Aozora. All impressive tracks, but I guess I'm spoilt by the vast diversity of music in Kanon and Clannad that seems to be lacking here.

Animation/Visuals - 10/10
Its a Kyoto Animation work, what to expect? Scenes are finely detailed and fluidly animated, down to fluttering banners and the sea that seems alive. All the locations are real and are mostly located in the town of Kasumi in Japan, which is really as peaceful and serene as depicted in the show. All the characters' hair also have fluid animation put into them.


Now for the Gao~ overload. Cause its so cute I just have to

Gao.

空に光る

from CLANNAD - 空に光る [Shining in the Sky]


yeah~! All I want you to do right now is to listen and feel the song above.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Done listening?

Its one of the songs I like most in the CLANNAD OST. Does it feel like this song tells a story in itself? Doesn't the song evoke feelings of a journey? A journey that begins in solitude, with only the piano solo in the beginning, rising to a climax when it is joined by the other instruments, like companions joining the journey. Companionship marks the brightest point of this endeavour, but all has to come to an end as it all slowly fades away.

Key really made this song for Fuko's [that's the girl in the video] arc in the game, and I must say its impressive how the people at Kyoani managed to make it all fit together perfectly with the Episode title, 夢の最後まで [Till the Very End of the Dream]. Fuko started alone, then along came friends and everyone else who got her present and made her effort worthwhile, then comes the part where her dream ends and she fades away. Her existence though, was never forgotten.

Sidetrack abit..
My figma Tsukasa from Lucky Star isn't here yet!! zzzzz. gah. Can't wait for the whole set of 3 characters to arrive... LOL

Pasta (*¬*)~

I love food.

Corrrection.

I love Pasta de Waraku! lol.

Went to dinner with xuan at abovementioned place last week and took random pics.

Lesson learnt? Never doublesize your pasta. They really mean DOUBLE the size.

xuan's sukiyaki pasta

macro of my squid, octopus and spicy cod roe pasta

shot from inside of Central mall

shot from the outside

the obligatory night shot of clarke quay

looks like the buildings in Tokyo-3 in Evangelion. wonder if they retract into the ground?

imposing columns

That's the end for the food part. Now for the must-have song of the day.

ROUND TABLE - feat. Nino - Puzzle [NHK ni Yokoso! Opening][from the same people who did the Chobits theme]

you know how you usually like a song you heard in an anime opening/ending and go out to acquire the full version? but the full version ends up disappointing and you get tired of it after a few listens? the feeling is just (>.<") isn't it? then in the end you stop listening to it altogether....

Anime Review: H2O ~Footprints in the Sand~

Today's post is an anime review~! Its the first of more to come...

I'll try to update whenever i finish a new series, which, at the pace i'm going, isn't exactly very fast... On to the review!

H2O ~FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND~ is a story about a blind high school boy [Hirose Takuma] from the city who moved to a little remote village after his mother passed away. He goes to a new high school in the village and gets to know several girls, and one "girl", which the story revolves around. They are...

Kohinata Hayami

The heroine of the story. From the first episode, she seems like a cold, aloof character who disregards everyone. She is continuously bullied beaten up and called a "roach" by the rest of the villagers. Later on in the story, we find out that Takuma [in background] has fallen in love with her over time. I almost cried during the scenes where she got beaten up by her male classmates, and refused to retaliate for she believed she deserved that treatment. A classic tragic character.

Kagura Hinata

The boring competitor in the quest of "turn-Takuma-into-my-boyfriend". She's your typical nice girl, excellent in studies, well-liked, except for one problem. She is actually the younger sister of the real Kagura Hinata, who drowned when they were still children, and has assumed the identity of her superior [in the eyes of the villagers] sister since then. Her conflict with her grandfather, the villain of the show, could have been fleshed out much more, but somehow in the anime it seemed to mysteriously be left hanging in the air without anything happening until the last episode.

Those are the characters really worth an introduction in this show. The rest are, to me, just "pei jiao" [auxillary characters], most of which are colorless in their personalities. The show, however, is worth a watch just for the sake of Hayami's story, one that shows us the ugly side of human discrimination. The pace seems a bit slow though, even though its only 13 episodes. Nevertheless i found it a good watch, and surprisingly for an anime adapted from a adult visual novel, there's almost no panty shots in this one!

100 Questions

C.f Luxuan's blog. We did this at the same time. haha

01. What have you been doing recently ?
---> Getting stuck in TNB and watching alot of anime in the process
02. Do you ever turn your cell phone off ?
---> Never, except when it crashes, which is, very often
03. What happened at 10.00am today ?
---> Sleeping
04. When did you last cry ?
---> Dunno
05. What is your favourite thing to eat with peanut butter ?
---> Er bread? If nt bacon meh? siao
06. What do you want in your life right now ?
---> Xing fu.
07. Do you carry an umbrella when it rains, or just put up your hood ?
---> Neither
08. What's your favourite thing to have on your bed ?
---> Pillow
09. What bottom are you wearing now ?
---> this. lol

---> 10. What's the nicest text in your inbox say ?
---> "You have won the lotterx"
11. Do you tend to make a relationship complicated ?
---> Don't like to
12. Are you wearing anything you borrowed from someone ?
---> Nope
13. What was the last movie you caught ?
---> part of " KUng Fu Panda "
14. What are you proud of ?
---> ? nothing
15. What does the oldest text message in your inbox say ?
---> hey. you sleep already?@
16. What was the last song you sang out loud ?
---> I dont sing Out loud
17. Do you have any nicknames ? What are they ?
---> "duty tech". lol
18. What does your last received text message say ? Who was it from ?
---> "One day we go see" frm Jiayi
19. What time did you do to bed last night ?
---> lets see.... ard 4am?
20. Are you currently happy ?
---> no.
21. Who gives you best advice ?
---> XUAN, YZ, JY
22. Do you eat whipped cream straight from the can ?
---> there's canned whipped cream?!?
23. Who did you talk on phone last night ?
---> No one.
24. Is anything bugging you right now ?
---> Alot.
25. What/who was the last thing/person to make you laugh ?
---> Can't remember
26. Do you wear toe socks ?
---> No.
27. Who was the last person you missed a call from ?
---> YZ
28. Have you ever had your heartbroken ?
---> Yea
29. What annoys you most in a person ?
---> Obstinate insurmountable stupidity.
30. Do you have a crush on anyone ?
---> No
31. Have you ever done cocaine ?
---> Never will
32. What is the colour of your room ?
---> "White" since 1988
33. Would you kill someone you hate for a billion dollar ?
---> Yea
34. Do you believe in the saying 'talk is cheap' ?
---> Talk isnt cheap, talk is free, but its definitely effective
35. Who was the last person to lie in your bed ?
---> me.
36. Who was the last person to hug you ?
---> No one
37. Did anyone see the last person you kissed ?
---> I havent yet
38. Do you have a life ?
---> Not really
39. Have you ever think someone died, when they really didn't ?
---> walking zombies?
40. What is the reason behind your profile song ?
---> Hare hare yukai! makes me happy to hear it
41. Who was the last person you saw in your dream ?
---> hmm. its a gal close to me. lol
42. Last time you smiled ?
---> i dont know
43. Have you changed this year ?
---> Not really
44. What are you listening right now ?
---> 4 different versions of Hare Hare Yukai from Haruhi
45. Are you talking to someone when you doing this ?
---> Ah xuan
46. Do you walk with your eyes open or closed ?
---> (*・_・)ノ⌒* *throw* who actually walks with closed eyes?
47. Is there a quote you live by ?
---> "Muz hv faith"
48. Do you want someone you can't have ?
---> Yea
49. Have you ever played an instrument ?
---> Recorder counted? lol
50. What was the worst idea you've had in week ?
---> i am full of bad ideas
51. What were you doing last night at 11.00pm ?
---> watching anime
52. Are you happy with your love life right now ?
---> its non-existent
53. What song best describe your love life ?
---> All out of love - Air Supply
54. Does the person know that you like him/her ?
---> No?
55. Who always make you laugh ?
---> Many people
56. Do you speak other language other than English ?
---> Yes?
57. Favourite website ?
---> Animenewsnetwork, wikipedia
58. What your middle name ?
---> Wei?
59. What are you doing tomorrow ?
---> Visit sgtoyandcomic con! for the cosplay haha
60. What do you think you are like ?
---> "unique" [pronounced yu-nik-ku in a monotonous manner(guess from where)] eccentric, nerd
61. Who will you choose to die with ?
---> gd question, not planning to ponder it yet
62. Where have you been today ?
---> SLS
63. What game do you play often ?
---> Stakker PSP, Beats PSP
64. Who are you missing right now ?
---> her who gives me light in my life.
65. If you've to choose between friend n loves, who will you choose ?
---> see q82
66. What are you doing right now ?
---> filling in this crap?
67. Which primary school are you from ?
---> Kebun Baru Primary, now an abandoned site
68. Name 3 colours that you like ?
---> Silver, Black, White
69. What emotion you like to show ?
---> ... (-__-lll), ヾ(-_-;) yes this is in real life
70. What is your life to you ?
---> a mess
71. If you have something troubling you, what will you do ?
---> nothing
72. Who did you last chat in msn today ?
---> ah xuan
73. Who so you admire most ?
---> no one
74. Which month are you born in ?
---> FEB .
75. How you feel right now ?
---> hungry, downcast
76. What is the time now ?
---> 0217H
77. Where are you now ?
---> Home
78. What colour did you use to dye hair ?
---> None
79. Why are you doing this test ?
---> cos ah xuan wans to do this
80. What do you do when you're moody ?
---> keep quiet and watch even more funny anime
81. At which age you wish to get married ?
---> havent thought of it
82. Who is more important to you ? Girlfriend or friends ?
---> its a 55:45 ratio. lol
83. Do you think you have enough confidence ?
---> no
84. Who is the person you trust the most ?
--->ah xuan..
85. Do you believe in seeing a rainbow after a rain ?
---> yup. literally. i always see them from my window
86. If you have a dream come true, what would it be ?
---> $ and a dango daikazoku-like family
87. What is your goal for this year ?
---> ORD in peace
88. Do you believe in eternity love ?
---> how long is eternity? is it as long as you live? or is it longer than
that?
89. What feeling do you love most ?
---> happiness
90. Do you really think its Gobal Warming now ?
--->probably been happening long enough, but being hyped up as an evil plot
for commercial purposes
91. What feeling you hate the most ?
---> Loneliness
92. Do you cherish every single friendship of yours ?
---> Yes
93. Do you believe in god ?
---> to some extent
94. Who cares for you most ?
---> i wonder
95. What do you think is the most important thing in your life ?
---> nothing.
96. What will you bring when you fight ?
---> a mobile PHALANX CIWS [search google] , if i'm really frustrated at the prospect of fighting
97. What have you done regretted doing in your whole life ?
---> alot
98. What would you feel that on one no longer cares for you ?
---> numb?
99. What if your Gf two-timed you ?
---> probably agitated first, then spiralling into a endless depression
cycle, until i actually start doing something about it
100. What do you want now ?
---> A Figma Haruhi figurine, Figma Lucky Star Konata figurine [uniform ver.], and Kushi
dango to feed my hunger!

A "staring incident"

Nagato Yuki the artificial human from the anime The Melacholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
This kept me busy for at least 5 minutes.. haha. Try staring into her eyes![they follow your mouse] Strangely fun ^__^.
Make sure you have flash installed!

DSC01078

DSC01078
Originally uploaded by cps9024

Had a sudden spurt of inspiration while at punggol beach.... a dying plant against the gloomy darkening sky. Picture taken with a Sony Ericsson K750i, which handled this picture much better than a dedicated digital camera. Guess I'm not going to sell it away anymore... It takes far too good pictures~!

rise of the otaku

lol. just a short post on the songs I've been listening to... by category. haha. I'm becoming a anime otaku nowadays... my playlists all anime songs....

~playlist of the anime otaku~ (^^,)"

Good stuff to listen to for those depressing moments:

Obsessively Happy Songs~


The Melacholy of Haruhi Suzumiya - Hare Hare Yukai


乙女はお姉さまに恋してる ED - Beautiful Day by Sakakibara Yui


乙女はお姉さまに恋してる OP - Love Power by Aice5

The Rozen Maiden Soundtrack! - [non obsessively happy]

Rozen Maiden OP1 - Kinjirareta Asobi [Forbidden Game]


Rozen Maiden ED1 - Toumei Shelter [Transparent Shelter]


Rozen Maiden OP2 - Seishoujo Ryoujiki [Realm of the Holy Girl]


Rozen Maiden ED2 - Hikari no Rasenritsu [Spiralling Rhythm of Light]


Well's that's really about all that I've been listening to recently...
This post of overwhelming anime fandom needs to end somewhere, like now. Till then, jya-ne-desu~~~

Photos from the random trip to punggol still not up. Rarely getting home at all nowadays, this whole month can't even count 6 solid days at home. Shall only update when I have enough time to. Till then.......

The random quiz

Which Rozen Maiden Doll Are You? Picture Results.

Shinku
Take this quiz!








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