Good Smile Company's English Website Release!

*Clears the dust*

After yet another long period of absence (again, mostly due to Facebook, studying, and my most recent return to AnimeB.com), I come back to blogging with this great announcement. Great only if you're an avid collector of good Smile merch (figures and the like).

As you might've read from my contemporary blogs, the English Version of the Good Smile Company has finally been set up, thanks to the translators at dannychoo.com who offered to help (I did chip in, but only very little due to my insignificant command of the language) and Danny Choo himself, a loyal friend to the people at Good Smile, who set up the site. Learn about all your latest Revoltech and figma releases (I intend to get Figma Tsuruya and Ryouko end of this year btw) and drop by at Danny's corner where he will be reviewing his own Good Smile figures (given too him for free, damn). Do drop by to visit whenever you're free, yeah?

...

For lack of anything else better to say today in this post, apart from my concerns that I'm absolutely not ready for the final exams, I'll just be posting all the random pix I draw over MSN Messenger.





And a certain hand I happened to start a game of Hearts with:



You can tell. I'm bored as hell. Although, I did find plenty to do in my spare time, stuff which I can actually talk about on my blog. When I have the time. And when I'm not feeling lazy. Stuff like Touhou Hisouten (Scarlet Weather Rhapsody). Or all those Japanese-themed events I so happen to miss just because I don't even know of their existences. Or my lack of funds. Or the Stormtrooper outfit I intend to build one day. Or the Star Wars Expanded Universe story I'm writing (when I have the time, and when I'm not feeling lazy). But whatever. Nothing else for now.

Metal Gear Solid teasing in Bad Company trailer

Enjoy.

Captioned!

Follow Danny Choo's awesome stormtrooper life in Tokyo at dannychoo.com as he talks about daily living, hobbies and a bit of life lessons, with his masterful and upbeat photography and his vivid storytelling. Follow the feeds to your left.

Joining the Crowd

Seeing that a lot of people at DannyChoo.com have posted their wallies, I think I'd follow suit. Oh, the nostalgia. Found it at 4chan, here's the original if you want it.

Additionally, you might've noticed my newest 'mascot' by now, Foxkeh the Firefox (get the Foxkeh theme from Firefox add-ons if you haven't yet; it's cute, can attract the ladies, and is also highly user-friendly) promoting Firefox Download Day 2008.

I myself only got wind of this early this afternoon. You have around 24 hours to join approximately 1 million people across the globe to pledge your support for Mozilla and download Mozilla Firefox 3 (I've been beta-testing it for quite some time now, I can very confidently say it's a lot better) and set a world record for the most downloaded content off the internet! Just click on Foxkeh (and help my cause along the way) to find out more information. Thanks!

Clearing the Dust...

Damn. Sure has been a long time since I last updated. Sincerest apologies. Hopefully you all had a good time checking out my archives, checking archives can be really fun sometimes.

There's really not much I'd like to talk much about in particular, so I'll just proceed with a general update on my current situation.

Hadn't had much time for photojournalism due to my busy scheduule and the fact that my mum's Canon Powershot decided to die on me (not my fault!). Next event coming up for me would be the Singapore Movie Fiesta (going on as I speak, but I'll be there tomorrow on the last day), though with the help of Joshua (Picture-a-Week) and his dad's Prosumer he's lending me, I'll still be able to do some decent documentation, that and the upcoming Singapore Toy and Comic Convention; already registered for it, can't wait!

School's pretty much okay, although of late I haven't been doing any studying at all (typical me during the vacation season).

Nothing much ado with gaming, although I'm slowly picking up DotA now. My friends say I play it like an RPG, and that's probably not a very good thing.

I've been watching a lot of movies of late thanks to the fact that one of mum and dad's family friends are employees at a local cinema firm who can afford to give out complimentary passes and such. I went to the premiere screenings of Iron Man and Indy. Awesome stuff, I feel so lucky.

I've been a pirate of late, having torrented the entire KEY game compendium from some reliable and healthy source. All I gotta figure out is how to mess with all the ISO files and stuff inside...

Currently, no anime to watch.

Messing with Facebook a lot nowadays, playing around with applications like Battle of the Bands, the main reason I don't have time for blogging. Also, currently listening to Muse. They're an awesome band, I swear it.

Over the past 4 days I've been spending my afternoons out at sea, participating in some sailing regatta (race). While I'm not exactly at the top of the ranks (26 out of 38), at least I'm not behind my fellow school sailors (a good sign, I'm still better than them). Although, I do worry for my inter-school competition in late July. I had better buck up fast. Still, I'm only more concerned for my sunburnt complexion, heavily tanned arms and legs, and sore hands and feet.

Picture of the day! Didn't think I'd forget, did you?


Upon request, I can choose to start uploading ecchi pix and the like. I'm starting to be a bit more liberal now, and with my computer account guarded by a strong and secure password, I feel more safer downloading and hoarding whatever NSFW stuff I find on 4chan adn the like into my HD without having anyone find out. I've taken a leaf from Danny Choo, and have promptly dumped all my NSFW stuff under a folder titled 'Healthcare Products'. ^^

Orientation 2 (Day Two)

Only two weeks ago, a second round of Orientation took place in my school to welcome the second batch of Junior College (High School) students into the school (ever since God knows when till this year there have been two seperate admissions exercises to stream students into the various junior colleges in Singapore: JAE, Joint admissions Exercise, which took place mid-February this year in contrast to previous years when it would be in April, and PAE, dunno what it stands for, which took place on the 27th of December last year and which was how I got into Meridian Junior College) took place, and the days that me and my fellow Orientation Group Leaders have been preparing and hyping up for during OGL camp have finally dawned on us.

Being the leader that I am, during the three days of orientation I had to get up by 4 and be in school by 6.45. As I found out on the first morning, the PAE batch has had a major reshuffling of houses (classes too, since most people have decided to change their subject combinations. I exchanged China Studies for Literature), and even though I was an OGL under Atlas, my former house, I have been shifted to a class belonging to another house, Callisto (for the curious, our five houses are named Atlas, Callisto, Miranda, Phobos and Triton - Moons of the outer rim planets). At least the girl I like is in the same house. ^_^

We got to meet new friends, some of them PAE students like me who chose to pass the opportunity to be an OGL, a handful of them former classmates, one cheerful bugger who eventually got put into the same class as me (only cos my class has KI, a Philosophy-esque subject), most of them fresh faces from the JAE batch, and one daft punk (pun not intended) named Syahabuddin (Malay) who calls himself Sam and proclaims to do Yoga, and intends to transfer himself out and go to a polytechnic instead.

The first day was all about icebreakers and teaching them our school's Mass Dances. (I should think all Junior Colleges in Singapore have their own; I gatecrashed Temasek Junior College's Orientation a few days prior to mine and found out that they were even planning to display theirs to the public by getting the freshmen to perform it at Suntec City.) (Theirs were tremendously inferior to ours, I should say.) (I should also add that they even get their freshmen to do community service during the orientation by folding paper stars for charity or something. How awesomely stupendously fun.) (At least I got to see this really cool half-Japanese tennis-playing chick. Woowee.) The first day was also the day I forgot to charge the batteries of my camera, so I gots no footage at the end of it all. T_T

The second day was all about MMM, Meridian's Magnificent Marathon, that Amazing-Race-ish game we played and I documented in OGL Camp where we would run around like mad in the Central District, play games and find ice-cream sticks (it's a quest thing).
This was at our first station at Read Bridge.


The fellows had to forfeit this memory game and duck-walk down the bridge:

This was at a card-arranging game at Fort Canning park:

Every station has this game of Chance Cards. Pick a card, end up wasting your time or a game or two if you're unlucky, or immediately set out and find the ice-cream stick before proceeding to the next station.

At Vivocity.

For this year's MMM the organizers have decided to integrate the Amazing Race's Yield element of the game, so we ended up get yielded at one of our 'pit stops' at Somerset train station. We didn't feel to bad about it though, it only gave us more time to rest and enjoy the air-con.

As you can see, it takes a lot of appeasing to satisfy our station in-charges when they're not. Mostly it's just clapping and cheering.

We take every opportunity we can for group photos:

I had to stand on the bus bay to take this one.

Congralutions, go find your ice-cream stick, scram, and don't tell me I suck at English.

Nice shoes.

amidst all that action in the hall, I found a Triiton sign peacefully resting.

a familiar face; The in-charge of Orientation 2 at the mikea gain with his usual skywards-gazing look.

Yeah, you probably saw this guy bouncing around the hall stage during OGL camp.

This is what you look like whenever you type 'LOL'. Now tell me, are you really laughing out loud or not?

Only the Miranda and Callisto OGLs were free enough for a group photo at the end of day two. In the end I never got to take Atlas, Phobos and Triton's.


Here's Atlas' unofficial mascot, Salta (actually a friend's Zinc bag. Yes, it's a bag, shaped like a bunny. I gave him the idea of drawing the face Rayman-Bunny style, but he wasn't much of an artist after all).

The reason I chose Companion^3 as my shirt name was cos I was addicted to Portals at that time, and I knew perfectly well that a lot of people were gonna ask me what that means, since Portals isn't very popular among them. I also knew perfectly well that the token few people who do know about Portls would be very impressed by it, too.


Since I'm tired of dumping my whole gallery here and am aware that not everybody who visits me uses Broadband or is interested in each and every picture I take, I'll just link you to my photobucket account and you can find out what happens on day 3 (pages 1 to 3, by the way. A lot of things happened, I might dump that into another post).

I should also seriously consider if I should put my comments above or below their corresponding pictures too. I get the feeling above won't work very well...

And yes, I also need to find out how I can improve on my camera's image quality. You can see for yourself how... Um, imperfect it is. I think it's got something to do with ISO, can a camera-versed person help me out here?

And on a last note, is there anybody out there hyped up about Iron Man? (Thought I forgot about my first picture, didn't you?) I'll be blogging about that soon.

School, Advertising, and Thanks for the Hits!

Hey guys, I know it's been a last time since the last post (which I don't doubt had you Rickrolled), and now that the brief March holidays are here I thought I'd add a few updates on my IRL situation. JC life's been going smoothly so far, I'm having no problems coping with homework as of yet (I'm in fact starting to develop a liking for doing schoolwork which I deem relatively easy).

Meridian Junior College is starting to become a sort of second home for me, these days. I find myself staying back in school more frequently, whether it's to watch soccer matches on the synthetic soccer field from the grandstands at the sports gallery, pump some iron at the gym, finish up work assignments in the 2nd level of the library, the quietest air-conditioned place in the college, rent and watch movies for free in the Audio room, or simply chill out at the canteen, a bowl of Gyuudon from the school's Sakae Sushi outlet beside my laptop, blasting Daft Punk in my earphones to mask the sound of the pouring rain outside, while playing a casual game of Single-Player Risk on the lappie while friends spectate and offer strategies, like what I am doing right now. Now this is the life. The best part is, they offer free wireless Internet too (only when it's working, of course).

My peers are the most motivating people I know. (Almost) everybody aspires to be a leader, like what the school encourages us to be, initiating social activities like celebrating birthdays and going out for lunches together. They are keen on helping out in schoolwork whenever I need assistance. They offer comments about how I do things, comments that are positive and constructive. They encourage me in whatever I set out to do. Most of all, they are honest and won't try to put someone down for the fun of it. There's nothing more I can ask for :D.
My new school uniform, stiff as it still is up to now, is actually really refreshing to wear. I simply love the colour (sky blue if you still don't know). It dries off quickly after I sweat. I can wear one set for two consecutive days since it doesn't crease very much. And it does not give off any smell. (^_^)

The teachers here are great too. they're sporty, outgoing, fun-loving, have good senses of humour, and are always there to lend a helping hand. We have hunky man teachers who not necessarily teach PE who are willing to offer a tip or two about bodybuilding and woman teachers with high-pitched 16 year-oldish voices that schoolboys here take a liking to (my gorgeous Physics teacher for example). Our principal is outspoken, charismatic, understanding and likeable. What more can I say?

Alright, enough of the shameless school advertising. I'd now like to direct your attention to the Advertising section of my blog. As you might have noticed (nor mostly likely have not), since December last year there had existed something called Google ads on my blog. I had actually hoped to drum up some pocket money to support myself (I'd hate to break this to you, but my family's currently financially strapped at the moment), so I thought I'd give Google a bit of advertising space. As of now my Google Adsense earnings make up a grand total of $0.00 :P. I really do hope that if you see something interesting being advertised on this site, just take the time to click on it and browse through for a moment, it won't take a lot.

Pretty soon I'll be putting up another ad, this time to promote a place called doingfine.org, a really neat-looking place where you can tell everybody how wonderful your day went, instead of bitching and going emo about everything bad that happens in your life, which is what LiveJournal is basically for. I might just consider being there myself, seeing how things in my life are going at the moment. I hope you'll take the time to check it out too when the ad comes out. you guys will be doing me a wonderful favour, and I am eternally grateful.

I am, in fact, already grateful for the fact that you have taken your time to come and read my blog. A recent check on Feedburner ensures that I get hits every day, from a minimum of 14 to a maximum of 42, with all sorts of browsers, all around the world, speaking all sorts of tongues, using all sorts of Operating systems and screen resolutions. I know it's not a lot of hits comparatively, but I simply can't ask for more, as this is already good enough for me :D. while I understand that most of you come by hoping I'd post something Otaku once in a while, I must apologize that it hasn't been very frequent of late due to time constraints and IRL business. However, I do promise that my next post will be very very soon. I'll do my very best to please, in return for your kindness and time.

Also, here's just to remind you that comments are still open to the public, and that anybody can speak their mind. I'm open to all sorts of comments, and I'd be more than happy to reply to them. I can already see a small but definite rising trend of increasing comments on my blog, and I'm very thankful for that.

well, till next time. For the Clannad fans with 1200 X 800, this one's for you:

Proof that the Internet is Still Serious Business

Time and time again, they are still able to catch you by surprise.

Orientation Group Leader Camp @ Meridian JC

Very simply put, I signed myself up to be a group leader for Meridian JC's 2nd orientation event for the second intake of JC students coming in after the Joint Admissions Exercise, so this meant having to take part in a 2 day 1 night camp in school for some leadership training and to test out the new concepts to be carried out during the actual orientation. Being the nifty guy I tend to be nowadays, I took my (mum's) Canon Powershot to snap some shots and have something to talk about on this blog.


Of course, nobody seemed to mind.

Plenty of stuff happened, but I'll just highlight the more interesting ones. I was supposed to be in charge of an obstacle game station located at a far, obscure end of the school as part of a certain 'amazing race' activity, and this is my crew. We were initially stationed behind the library, and equally obscure place in school, but got shifted to the end of the sports gallery due to the rain. So there we were, setting up a relatively easy obstacle course for our game which I'd like to call 'IRL Snake', meaning you play your favourite cellphone game with real people.
Got a lot of good feedback on that, but the most interesting thing about the whole event was when I was inspired to include a bonus game, just mere minutes before the event started, when I saw a crew member stash the fake prize money into one of fifty two lockers located just beside the course for safekeeping. (You can barely see the row of lockers to the let of the picture)
I immediately set up the whole row of lockers for use, and conceived the bonus game parodying Deal or No Deal, where contestants try their luck at locating the prize money after they've completed the first game by opening up 6 out of 26 lockers (I feel really blessed not just because we had lockers in our vicinity, but halving them exactly gives you 26, just like the real deal), failing which they have to do a forfeit. The end result was excellent, and everybody in the obstacle game station agrees that during Orientation, wet weather or not, we should be located at the obscure corner of the school known as the sports gallery.










The next day was the same thing, except I was not in charge of any station and was involved in the actual game, and that it was held in the Central area of Singapore. My group had to shuttle around first from school (in Pasir Ris) to Clark Quay, then to Harbourfront (where all 17-odd of us managed to squeeze into one lift at that unknown mall located beside Vivocity; see 1st picture), then to Dhoby Ghaut where we had lunch at Long John Silver's (and were serviced by this kindly old pirate; see 2nd picture), then to Somerset and Orchard for some 'fooling around' (see 4th, 5th and 6th pictures). Along the way we collected a bunch of rather interesting items (see 8th, 9th and 10th pictures)...

By the end of it all everybody had gotten pretty tired. I immediately seized the opportunity :P. If you see anything 'strange' in these photos (you know what I mean), you MUST tell me, cos I need to know and I WANT to see.






To compensate for my lack of anime pics I have this, taken in Orchard Road.


Okay, that didn't go as excitingly as i thought. Oh well, could get better next time. till then.