TK8315 in Active Deployment!

Credit: Keith E Moss

The no-post drought over the past weeks was due to my mid-year exams, which lasted a good part of last week, and will end this Thursday. I sit here typing this as I think to myself "I really ought to be studying for chemistry tomorrow".


Me and the respectable man I worked for over the June holidays, Reno Tan. Credit: Jason

My job commitment over the June holidays had prevented me from performing the bulk of my revi- No, it only took up my weekends. I was simply too lazy to study much in the weekda- No, I just didn't want to study. I tried to stay away from studying by doing housework, as though I do housework for a living. I simply dread revising, especially for physics, chemistry and mathematics, when I am forced to attempt questions which I have no idea to answer, or have the misconceptions to answer incorrectly. This needs to change, and fast.

Needless to say, my grades are gonna suffer. I don't need to see my results to know it. My parents are gonna be so pissed...


I'm not actually a lefty, but... Credit: Keith E Moss

Me and my badass sound system. :D Makes me sound just like a Stormie Credit: Rid Rahman

But that's besides the point. what I really want to talk about is my developments regarding the 501st Legion. After a month's worth of hard work (I shouldn't even consider it as 'hard work' since I enjoyed every session of it), I finally managed to raise a substantial amount to get done on my very first armour kit for entry into the 501st Legion, the standard and ever-popular Stormtrooper.

Over three seperate days, my fellow Legion members and I worked hand-in-hand to trim, Dremel, file, velcro, screw and paste bits of vacuum-formed ABS plastic together to get the armour into a wearable state.


After an armour-building session, it's nice to chill out and relax in a jacuzzi pool. Credit: Picture, Pool: keith E Moss

TK8316 is happy at my joining him in the legion. Credit: Rid Rahman

The photos were sent in, the application was approved, and I went home from the armour party at 12 midnight that day as the Legion's newest member, TK8315, with the Stormtrooper ID that comes just before TK8316.


Can't find me. Credit: Jason

But I'm quite easy to spot here. Credit: Brian Benitez

The very next day marked my official maiden trooping event (my unofficial one being the St. Pat's Day Parade), Toy Carnival at the Singapore Art Museum. Having put on costumes numerous times for Movie Mania, and doing minding work for my fellow troopers during previous trooping events, I had modified my armour to be more easily wearable, and dressing up as a Stormtrooper all by myself was like putting on a new set of clothes. I clocked a timing of 5 minutes, exceptional for a raw 501st recruit (I'm cheating D:). The plan for the day was basically traipsing around, 'droid hunting', posing for pictures, posing with civilians for pictures, and posing for funny pictures.


Guess which?

The 'Heaven and Hell' stance from Grenado Espada. Credits: Picture: Brian Benitez, Lightsaber: Olivine Lin

Trooping aside, the Toy Carnival was also where i made a very unexpected purchase. There were only 5 boxes when I first spotted the both while in armour, 3 when I returned during my lunch break to secure mine, and none left 15 minutes later. After all, Figma Yuki was Max Factory's very first Figma product, released around this time last year IIRC, so I should think finding her would be very difficult. The best part was that she was on sale at nearly a 40% discount. A most worthy buy. I chose her over the other models available like Mikuru (waitress ver., cheerleader ver.), Haruhi (ponytail ver., cheerleader ver.) and waitress ver. Tsuruya, since she would complete my mini collection of the humanoid interface characters in the Suzumiya Haruhi series.


The photographer. Credit: Rid Rahman

The photograph. Credit: Camera: Demonick Angel

The girls are very pleased.

Two more points of note that day:

1. One half-inactive member in the Singapore garrison lives in the same apartment block as me, on the same floor, two doors down from me. He has 3 Clone Trooper costumes, and the CT was my very first costuming objective when I joined the 501st community as a volunteer (before I had to settle for the regular TK due to time and monetary constraints). I can hopefully get tips on how I shall get about doing my own Clone Trooper in future, and maybe even hitch rides in his car if we're ever going to trooping events together, as he suggested. Very nice man indeed. It was kind of embarrassing that he recognized me when I didn't. I guess, I haven't been maintaining close relations with neighbours after my under-10 childhood days, and also, because my door is just beside the lift landing, I rarely walk down the common corridor past their gates, so I don't make any acquaintances through passing compliments and casual exchanges, etc.

2. An acquaintance of mine, this very pretty girl who was at that event, commented to a friend that I looked cute in my stormtrooper armour, as he related to me later on (he even ventured as far as to tell her that I was still a virgin @_@). If anything, that was a big morale boost for me, and it made me feel great the whole day, knowing that people have good opinions of my looks. I don't normally receive compliments like that, call me deprived of whatever, but I was still very happy about it all the same. I can't wait for my next opportunity of meeting her, when I can say, "you look very pretty too". Ah, whatever.


Dual-wielding trooper. Credit: Keith E Moss

For now, TK8315 signing off. Next stop, the trip to Batam, then Cosfest 2009. See you then.

Team Fortress 2!

That's right folks, AK here has found himself yet another activity he can generate unproductive hours on!

The real way one should play TF2.

However, I do still get dragged down by immense lagging, even in the low latency servers. I blame the lappie once again. Almost all the games I run through with System Requirements Lab declare that everything in my computer meets the sysreqs, except that shitty Intel Graphics Processor graphcard. It is the sole reason this comp keeps failing epicly at sysreqs.

Looks like it's gonna be a whole of LAN for me again. I'm starting to get better at the game already, all it takes is a willingness to part with $1.60 per hour of smooth gameplay with fairly respectable sound, graphics and hardware.

As it turns out, mum just got her Canon Powershot Prosumer back from repairs, and she's not ready to loan it to me just yet (look, it wasn't my fault it went caput, bro was hogging it the whole time to do his camwhoring). I don't expect any photojournalism soon. Ish sadded.

Reminds me, I should post a rant about my brother one day. Of late I've been getting really pissed off at him for various reasons (mostly the inconsiderate things he does). then again, I'm still as lazy as ever to do something like that. Besides, I don't think I should be acting that negatively. So yeah. A rant about my brother, in one paragraph.

I decided to pick up the Sekirei manga, having watched the first few episodes on Crunchyroll (anime hardly ever satisfies me as much as the manga does). My progress has been slow, as of now I'm only at the second chapter. Despite this, I've got more than my fair share of ecchi already. Looks like Sakurako-san is really liberal about the boobaga, there's no 'censorship' (like how Akamatsu Ken-san does it) whatsoever.

I've been making plenty of trips down to Toys R' Us lately. I had recently decided to relive my deprived childhood by buying as many Star Wars action figures as I could and playing around with them (in more mature terms, creating dioramas). So far I've got me a bunch of Episode III clones, a handful of Confederate droids (I can hold them alll in one hand), and pretty neat Captain Rex and a General Grievous, both from the same series. This should make for some decent fan-made storytelling. All I need now are some vehicles, and substantial background elements to create an environment.

Also Star Wars-related, my friend has finally persuaded me to get my own Clone trooper armour. Having admired Danny Choo (link at left) and other Storm/Clone trooper costumers for so long, yet put off by the immense capital and effort one had to put in, I finally made myself submit, just so I can have better things to do in my time rather than Facebooking all day (which just got even worse, now that I've added plenty more applications to my playlist). I would expect to pay about $1200 in total for a full suit (see below; this is what I'm making), as well as a lot of careful attention when cutting parts up. I've already started work on the soft parts (non-armour accessories), but it hasn't been looking to good. And I don't have a camera to show it. ARGH.

Finally reached level 10 in Forumwarz. Currently waiting for episode II. If you're a fan of the Internets, memes and everything, you should consider giving this game a go too. You play as an 'agent' who visits forums and literally pwns them by posting non-related griefing business. It works like a turn-based RPG system, complete with items, equips, shops, interactive NPCs, and achievements (the best part)!

Not forgetting studies, now that the promotional exams are done (Ds for Chinese and Math, Es for Physics and Literature, and an S for Chemistry, KI unknown as of yet), the focus has shifted to KI (and fooling around in the school library). Oral Presentation is the next target, and the timetable for the next two weeks counting down to OP is practically filled with nothing but preparations. I shouldn't worry too much about the speaking part of it, just I'm having problems coming up with ways I can up the standard of the presentation by injecting jabs of humour here and there. Much as I try to be a comedian (seeing people listen and laugh at my comments is what gets me through the day happily), I tend to fail at come up with funny stuff.

My Japanese is languishing. And I can't do anything about it except attempt to converse with my Japanese friends, with embarrassing results. I just wish I had more time and freedom... And less laziness.

I should seriously start learning not to feel so pathetic with myself all the time, and just live and let live. I keep scrutinizing myself and revisiting awful memories of failure in hopes that I can improve myself one day. It doesn't seem to be working though. To think that I know what I'm supposed to do, yet I'm still too LAZY to do it. Oh well, one step at a time. First step would be updating this blog with some incredibly long post. That oughta warm my blogging spirits up.

TL;DR My life story currently. Nothing much that is interesting, just had to update this blog. In other news, the near future looks... Unpredictable.

Exams are OVAR!!!

Yup, it's official. It came and went, so quickly that I'm left asing, "what, already?"

Overall, the exams were quite breezy. The subjects weren't too hard, except for geography and perhaps Physics (surprisingly). English went well, I made sure not to go off-topic this time. My A. Math levels have improved a lot too.

Now that the exams are done and the holidays are at hand, it's time for me to set out to do what I've been planning to do since months ago. In fact, I sorta dreaded the end of exams, because I'm left to pack my schedules with all sorta stuff, mostly tedious work which I'd hate to embark on, though I very must have set my mind to doing. The list is as follows:

1. GET A JOB. (during exams, I compete against my peers in academics. After exams, I compete with them once again for job vacancies)
2. Revive my BF2142 account (currently getting the new patch).
3. Revive my PangYa! account.
4. Remove the excess baggage round my tummy.
5. Build up some bulk on my arms and torso.
6. Fix and get started with my animeblogger account (still awaiting a reply from the staff to my support ticket).
7. Watch and review some anime (Goshusho sama Ninomiya kun and such).
8. Get me some PVC figurines (targeting Minase Nayuki from Kanon and Asakura Ryoko from SHnY).
9. Write a few short stories / novellas (aiming for three).
10. Build a personal custom-built desktop computer.

By the way, this is the first post I'm making on this blog using my new Lenovo Laptop computer. Mom bought it about a week ago. It's even more advanced than my existing desktop computer that's about three years old already. Runs on Vista, 1GB of RAM, Nvidia graphics, and Intel Centrino duo.

speaking of new stuff, I also happen to have a new Sony Ericcson K530i. I've long since been a supporter of Sony Ericsson, and since I didn't want to spend a hundred bucks or so for a Walkman 880i, I went for the $0 K530i model instead (comes with student plan). The cool thing about my plan is that can finally use a mobile device to access the Internet. At the moment, I'm using it as a Feed Reader for dannychoo.com.

Pictures of them up soon.

19-10-07 Update

My animeblogger.net account is finally open (it runs on Wordpress, by the way. Something I'm not used to utilizing)! It's new and still under construction at the moment, but I promise to clear it up as soon as my O's are over (which will officially be on the 13th of November, though I expect to have a bit of free time before then). Once that's done, I'll commence with my Anime Review posts, starting with a non-mainstream ecchi anime I've just gotten acquainted to (thanks very much to Danny Choo). It's so non-mainstream that not enough info about it is up on Wikipedia yet.

Revisions for the O's are going smoothly. So smoothly I'm beginning to worry if I hadn't been putting in enough effort yet. True enough, I haven't (or so it seems). I can still afford to go arcade-ing and cycling round the park in the afternoons (it's consultation period now, graduating students taking the O's don't need to go to school, they studying wherever they like). And I keep telling myself it's cos I've got a schedule at hand and that freed up a lot of space for leisure, when actually, in the first place, my study hours to leisure hours ratio is alarmingly small.

See how efficient it is to be spotting your own mistakes? Would've been better if I were more pro-active and less lazy, then perhaps those mistakes could be more quickly resolved.

Recently I find myself unable to sleep well at night. I would toss and turn in my bed from eleven pm till 2 am plus, and wake up only after eight in the morning. A cause of worry for me as most of my exams would be starting from 8 am onwards. And it would be during the times of insomnia that I would start thinking about all kinds of things, like how successful people like Danny Choo or even Darkmirage are and how I'd wanna be like them, or plot ideas for potential stories forming in my head, perhaps even stuff that I plan to do after the exams (believe me, there's a lot in mind right now). I never think about studies, unless I had forced myself to get up, sit at my desk and attempt a few more Ten Years' Series papers (done that a few times now, at least it felt satisfying and tired my brains out).

It's been getting very rainy and cold recently. Either because the monsoon season's setting in or the effects of Global Warming are finally taking effect. Increased temperatures in Earth could cause increasingly heavy torrents in tropical areas, which might lead to flooding in Coastal and low-lying lands, so says Nat Geo magazines and Geography textbooks. Not that it really matters to me, but the rainy weather had gotten me wearing pyjamas in the house more often, and had once caused me to crash into another bicycle while cycling back home through Central Park in the rain because it severely limited my visibility and handling and breaking abilities. Ugh.

Now that I have a proper blog for anime and otaku-related stuff, this blog right here may very well revert back to its blogskin-dot-com layouts...