June 2005 Archives

So I finally moved into my big room over here at the Handai guesthouse, but unfortunately one of the first things they told me was no, I can't have friends staying over despite the fact I have two twin beds and this is a large enough room. :/ AUGH. What's the point of having a large room if I can't give any of my friends crash space?! *bangs head against wall*

This is ass. Aside from the fact that my room is now a little over twice as large as it was before. I have SPACE! In which to run and jump and do fun things! It makes me wish I had brought my Playstation over so I can game. (Well, there's still the ROMs on my laptop, I suppose.)

Hey Mel, do you still have your place on July 18th? Cause I'm homeless that day. Stupid place has a rule that you can only stay consecutively for 30 days, so I gotta check my ass out that night. Boo.

Anyways...this marks day 5 of my stomach trying to kill me. FUCK.

For Frodo MIT!

do it for my alma mater. ^_^

And on the vein of LotRness, here's your GIF of the day, and one of my favorite Sam lines.

So I've ruled down my currently rebelling gastrointestinal tract to two things:

1. Something bad I ate in Kyoto (the oyako-don or the yakitori, most likely)
2. The pot I smoked for two days in a row

or some horrible mix of both that has exploded in my intestines. Thanks body, for keeping things interesting.

On happier things, Eike, Kevin, and I had a great day yesterday. We met up in the afternoon, hit the Umeda Mandarake, the Mos Burger, and the Comic City store before hitting up Den Den Town for more shopping. I was proud that the only thing I bought for myself was a 210yen Omega 2-D Death Note doujin, the rest of the Death Note doujin are going right to Asphodel, who has recently been proving that her Japanese skills are better than mine by beginning to translate the Mirage of Blaze novels. O_o;;

Either that or she is more of an obsessive fangirl than me, which is something I'm actually willing to let slide. X3 I should start doing some translation projects here in Japan (is anybody actually scanslating D. Grayman or Trinity Blood? They both look awesomely pretty, things I'd like to check out at the mangakissa this weekend.) but then the laziness and the fanfiction-I-need-to-write takes over (mostly the laziness) and all my aspirations of one day becoming awesomely fluent go out the window. Maybe I'll grab a random shounen-ai novel or the Gakuen Heaven novel and try my hand at doing that. Haha, we'll see how long my attention span lasts for that. The betting pool starts at 15 mins. and goes in increments of 5 mins. Place your bets here, laddies.

After shopping we went to karaoke, and had a fun hour failing to read fast enough in Japanese. I certainly had a lot of fun doing that too. X3 I really need to find the places with the good anime songs, so we can sing those. I actually mistook one of the places for someplace else, and we got screwed over. *sad* Time to do more scouting soon... who wants to come and karaoke with me?

I sincerely apologize to Rhole for missing our date on Monday evening. I was just getting back from Kyoto and I was so totally exhausted I just wanted to topple over and sleep. T____T We'll meet next week, promise. *so sad* And we'll have a good time.

Got my hands on a copy of Meine Liebe, which I hope plays similarly enough to TokiMemo Girls Side (they're both made by Konami) that I don't have to spend too long figuring shit out, though the speaking-in-formal-Japanese bit might put a damper on things. Oh well, my love for Seki Toshihiko's Legato voice will keep me going. *swoon*

I am ded. So fucking dead and tired and I think I want to go home, lie down in bed, and just sleep and sleep and sleep for as long as I fucking can.

(When're you coming in tomorrow, Eike? I suppose I should call you.)

Anyhoos, did I mention that I'm dead?

So here's a recap of the weekend:

On Friday afternoon I packed some extra clothes and all my travel goodies and headed over to Umeda to pick up Mel's friend, Rudy, who wanted to go to Den Den Town. He was a little late coming into Himeji, but it was a good thing because Mel happened to get there about the same time as us, and we all walked around, browsed the Animate, Mandarake, and the new K-Books they opened there after I left. I tried to hold myself back getting doujinshi, but we all know how that eventually ends up. -_-;; Didn't spend as much as I could have, mind you, but I did get all the of the Luffy/Zoro/Sanji-line books, as the covers were pretty and shiny and made me happy. ^_^ (And they were only 210yen each!)

I'm actually glad I didn't spend as much as I could have, because I only about 100yen on me by the time I made it home Monday afternoon. O_o;;

(Swag: One Piece Grand Battle 3, Gakuen Heaven 18+ original, 8 doujinshi)

After the Den Den Town adventure we headed over to Namba to eat dinner and have fun doing the karaoke, which Mel and I always seem to enjoy extremely. It was a good time, and we made it back to her pad to crash.

We got up around 6am in the morning to make it to Kyoto by 7am, where we met a bunch of the rest of the MIT Japan interns at a very small (and very crappy, IMHO) sento. We could only spend a few hours there before hauling ass over to all the Kyoto attractions. I can't remember exactly, but I think we hit Kinkakuji, Ginkakuji, Tofukuji, and Heian Jingu all in one day, which is quite a feat for a group of 24 college-age obnoxious, slow-moving gaijin. We ended the night at NAIST (Nara Institute of Science and Technology) where we had dinner and slept for the night. Or rather, the rest of the kids from Tokyo stayed the night there, and all of Mel's friends and the ATR interns went back to their collection of apartments. There we drank a little more, smoked some (Dan managed to find some weed here in Japan), and then crashed. (There was also an interesting event involving a shower, Rudy, Dan, and me, but it's just amusing and there are no juicy details to speak of, so...carry on, carry on.)

I was late in waking up the next morning, being too tired to even deal with 8 hours of sleep. I think I slept somewhere close to 9 hours before I got up, and with my excellent timing got to Nara just as the rest of the kids were about to board a bus to Todaiji. I was seriously lucky that day. Todaiji is gorgeous because it's home to the largest indoor statue of Buddha in Japan, and boy was it huge. O_o;; At least 2 or 3 stories. After spending a couple of hours there we took the train back to Kyoto and hung around at the Kawai Kanjiro museum before heading off to Kiyomizu-dera. I don't actually like it as much as Gingakuji, which is actually my favorite, but it's a great temple and gives a great view of Kyoto.

There, I met Eike and her carnivorous friend, Kevin (he's really eats nothing but meat, no joke) and we went down to the Gion district to shop and chill. There we (including Mel and Rudy, who I really got to get close to this time 'round) took some silly purikura (short for Print Clubs, you know, those little photo stickers) and had a good time making fun of ourselves in various ways. After dinner at a yakitori place Mel, Benazeer, Dan, Rocco (who is secretly gay, except for being a frat boy, I swear), Eike, Kevin, Rudy, and I went to the infamous A-Bar, this small theme bar in Kyoto where Mel and Benazeer, as well as my good old KCJS friends, Destra, Ian, and Dave like to hang. It was wonderful there, and I can see why Destra and the gang chose it as "their bar."

There we had arguments about the merits of ZoroLu vs. ZoroSan (I think Mel was just siding with ZoroSan to push my buttons--something she likes to do), the awesomeness leprosy (most of this discussion was actually done while I was drunk and high on Saturday night, wherein Rudy and I, who both think leprosy is quite cool and interesting informed everybody else in the room on our vast knowledge of leprosy. I told him to watch Kingdom of Heaven, cause he's the type who'd like it.), and the hotness of Edward Norton. It was almost unanimous that Edward Norton was hot, the only dissenters being Benazeer and Eike. Hell, even all the guys admitted to Edward Norton being t3h hotness. ^_^v It's still a win for Edward Norton. :D

Dan found this awesome smoke shop in Kyoto, and bought some Japanese tabacco as well as interesting metal pipe which served rather well as a bong. *laughs* So I was high at A-Bar too, and screaming about Edward Norton's hotness. :D We weren't quite sure where to take the debate of whether Johnny Depp was as awesome as Willem Dafoe or Christopher Walken, as a lot of the people at the table had no idea who either of those two people were. It was very sad. I want the Christopher Walken/Fatboy Slim music video. Anybody wanna hook me up?

Eike and I started notebook-roleplaying some Knives/Legato smut, and I was extremely amused while at the bar. :D There needs to be more abusive hot Knives/Legato action in the world. (Yes, I am aware that at the moment I'm not doing much to help the quota here. I'm hacking away at Miles 05. I fucking swear! ...I also happen to be hacking at three other things in my head at the moment.) We're going to continue our RP tomorrow, when Eike comes over to visit and we have nothing better to do with ourselves. ^_^

I spent Monday lazily in bed and accompanying Rudy on his last day in Japan. ^_^ We went to Sanjyusangen-do in Kyoto (where they have a thousand statues of the Buddhist deity Kannon) and barely made it back to JR Kyoto in time for him to catch his train to Kansai Airport. I'll miss you, Rudy. *sniffles*

Anyways, I'm off to crash. Pictures forthcoming, I promise. O_O;;

Hey all you Guilty Gear fans in Japan, it's time to haul your ass to Akihabara RIGHT THE FUCK NOW because it looks you get to get a load of Holy Orders Sol in GUILTY GEAR XX SLASH.

I never thought Guilty Gear could get more gay without explicit buttsex, but here they go, naming their next tweak of the XX engine "SLASH." It's called SLASH, my friends, and it features HOLY ORDERS SOL.

Guilty Gear made me gay. :)

(Off to Kyoto this weekend, but stopping off at Den Den Town tonight to buy things like video games, merchandise and doujinshi. Somebody hold me back! O____O I forgot to ask Paul if he wants anything at the Gundam store...oh well, he'll strangle me for merchandise later, I'm sure.)

Japan is crazy. Japan is schizophrenic. Japan is multiple personalities I don't understand and the country hardly seems to be aware of them all themselves.

Anyways, so one of my labmates, Kazuma, remarked today that my shirt really stands out. Everybody's been staring at me today, but I haven't really given much thought to it, because people always stare at me. I'm Asian, but I just reek of gaijin. Can't help it. Anyways, all my shirt says today is "Osaka Daigaku" (Osaka University), in kanji characters. I live and work here at Osaka Daigaku. Even when I was at MIT I wore lots of MIT shirts and nobody really gave me a second look-over. But here I am at Osaka Daigaku wearing one of their shirts and I don't think it's odd at all. I asked Kazuma why it was strange, and he replied that my shirt had kanji characters.

It apparently is very common for students to wear Osaka University shirts with the name spelled out in English, but for some odd reason it's very odd to be wearing a shirt with the name spelled out in kanji.

Okay Japan, look. I'm wearing a shirt with characters from YOUR OWN FUCKING LANGUAGE! (Well not quite, but close enough.) Let me repeat that in case you didn't get it the first time. YOUR OWN FUCKING LANGUAGE!

I think all I have to say right now is, "GODAMMIT, JAPAN!"

*more head banging ensues now*

Anyways, I met Rhole last night. :D I had to go find her at the JR Osaka station because Umeda is ridiculous to navigate. =_=;; There are still some times when I just can't find my way around, and it's ridiculously frustrating. :D We headed off to Mandarake to buy doujinshi (I got a lot of SnapexHarry for Asphodel), and I refrained from buying a used copy of the 18+ version of Gakuen Heaven. I hope I don't regret that! ^^;;

We wandered around for a bit, talking about life, the universe, and everything until we finally settled down at Gyoza no Osho (a cheap-but-yummy Chinese chain fast food place) and talked about fandom. ^_^ *laughs* We're not as old as they come in the X fandom, but I suppose we're still pretty old in terms of "oldies that haven't dropped off the face of the planet." :D We recounted the good old days of the fandom, mourned the downfall of the fandom (which I can actually trace back to one specific event. Whether it's causation or correlation is still open to debate.), and talked about the wankage that always ensues every 3 or 4 months without fail. Oh X fandom, I could set my watch to you.

We also talked about how Fushigi Yuugi is the horror that WILL NOT DIE even though it really ought to be dead. (I can't believe Yuu Watase is writing the story of the Genbu Seishi. How many times do we have to beat this dead horse, people?) It's one of those shows where you really like it when you watch it, and then within 24 hours of seeing the ending you completely realize what a shitty piece of work that was and you wish you could invent a time machine so you could go back and warn yourself not to waste 24 hours worth of your life on that show. =_=;; *sighs* (It was even more time-machine-creation inspiring than Matrix: Revolutions and Attack of the Clones combined, and that's saying something.)

And yet, somehow we both watched all the OAV series, even the third one which existed only to prove to us that once you think you've hit the bottom, somebody throws you a shovel.

We also talked about good old Weiss, which was my first yaoi fandom. We remember when the days were good there and the fans polite, constructive, and respectful. Of course, we might also have been on crack back then too, but we swear that's the way it was.

Ah, the glory days, my friends. :D

I discovered a new and interesting strategy card game that takes things to the next level, Sangokushi-Taisen. It's a novel cool concept, and were I not totally Japanese-incompetent, I'd try my hand at it. I really wish my clone was here, because he'd definitely know what was going on. And he'd help me get addicted to it. ;_____; *sad* I want my clone here. We have to go to Japan sometime and fanboy/girl over Sangoku things. ._. And play games. And be nerds. And do other unmentionable Japanese things.

Last of all, my friend from ATR, Luv (yes that's his real name) hooked me up with some of his "melodic death metal." I'm not particularly a fan of death metal, but I do like metal. I'm not sure how you really classify the metal that Daisuke Ishiwatari writes, but I'm going to call it "melodic metal."

Anyways, he's a real big metal head (you wouldn't think this, because he just looks like some normal, sweet, Indian guy) and gave me some tracks from these two bands called Opeth and Dark Tranquility. Except for the stereotypical growly parts of the death metal part, they sound pretty decent. Kind of like a mash of A Perfect Circle and growly death metal.

I gave him some of my Guilty Gear tracks to see if he'd like it. I prefer my metal less emo. What amused me the most I think, was that one of the tracks off the Opeth album he gave me is called "The Leper Affinity."

...and now I can't stop laughing inside. This sort of serendipity is trying to tell me someting, but I'm not sure what. X3

EDIT: We just had a massive, lab-wide discussion about my T-shirt. Not shitting you here. A couple more people started observing my T-shirt was weird, and eventually the discussion expanded to the whole lab. o_o;; At least I was laughing too... >____>

We came to the conclusion that:
1) Wearing an Osaka Daigaku shirt while being at Osaka Daigaku (and even in Japan, apparently) is massively uncool
2) Wearing a shirt with kanji or any Japanese characters on it while in Japan is massively uncool
3) It just reeks of "Hi, I'm a foreigner," which is apparently also massively uncool (because according to the people in lab, I'm actually not that foreign-looking)
4) I'm going to blame Destra, who encouraged me to bring this shirt along and wear it. :( That ho.

This might also be the appropriate time to reveal to her, if she hasn't already noticed, "Hey Destra, check your image folder called "DieSkuld." You might be in for a pleasant (or not so pleasant) surprise. :(

Thanks to my MIT confederate on Kaizoku Fansubs, Dythim, who also has an awesome FTP up, I am once again connected to cool things like anime. ^_^ and manga. :D *gringringrin*

Anyways, currently downloading the 4th movie of One Piece (wai wai! A Zoro-centric movie! I hope he has cool fight scenes with Luffy which make me think of ZoroLu smex), and maybe soon to leech Steamboy or the Clone Wars cartoon which I actually haven't seen, but really really want to. :D *happy Skuld*

Unfortunately I haven't done any writing yet because I feel wildly uninspired to create anything (this makes me really sad). Somebody please send inspiration my way. =____= Or I shall simply sit around and gorge myself on anime. (Nothing wrong with that, I suppose.)

At any rate...*bored at work* Carry on, carry on.

The weekend was totally awesome. :D

I spent Saturday morning bumming around, waking up late, surfing the net and posting on /b before hauling my ass over to Nara where all my other MIT-ATR peeps are. ^_^ For Saturday afternoon we went to a sento (a public bath) and that was absolutely wonderful. o_o;; It had a sauna and a couple of pools to soak in, both inside and out, and it was thoroughly relaxing. After that we headed over to Mel's place, where there was a fun, kickass social party for all the foreign ATR interns. I met a lot of cool people there, and we even had a hilarious massage circle going before I kind of pass out from exhaustion and drink.

We woke up on Sunday to go to Nara-koen and Kofukuji, and I was sad that I forgot my shuuin book. Good thing they had a couple of really nice ones at Kofukuji and I got a new one. :D I guess that means I'm starting a new class now, since I'm actually only 4 away from 'mastering' my old shuuin book. *fufufu* Nara-koen was hilarious because Lily fed one of the deer this huge-ass carrot, and it couldn't chew it or swallow it but it kept trying. We were kind of afraid it would choke to death on it, so we ran away. Now in ignorant bliss, we can pretend we didn't kill the deer after all.

After grabbing lunch at a soba/udon place (poor Mel and Luv who are vegan/vegatarian have such a hard time finding stuff to eat) we headed over to a theatre to watch Batman Begins, which was released on the 18th here in Japan. :D It was actually really really good. O_o;; Christian Bale makes an absolutely sexy Batman (there goes me and my mask-moe) especially with the scratchy voice. *grins* ^_^ Better than Val Kilmer and George Clooney. The jury's still up on whether or not he makes a better Batman than Michael Keaton. Cause while Christopher Nolan did a really fucking good job with this one, it's hard to beat Tim Burton and the first two movies, cause Jack Nicholson was such a good Joker. @_@

Anyways, I liked the cast of this Batman. It could have turned out really shitty, but they did a good job with it. It's way better than the previous two Batmans (Batman Forever and Batman and Robin), so it's nice to see something fresh on the screen, especially with so many great familiar faces. Michael Caine was a wonderful Alfred, and even (Ninja!)Liam Neeson did a great job. Morgan Freeman's role was well-played if a bit small, and I liked seeing Gary Oldman in his role. Overall, it was nothing short of amazing. I want more of Christian Bale as Batman. ;_; He is very smexy. Makes me pine for seeing Velvet Goldmine.

Anyhoos, next weekend is the Heian Monogatari Kyoto trip with a whole bunch of MIT students. It's going to be hectic. O_o;; And then the weekend after that is Comic City Osaka, wherein I spend too much money on doujinshi. (I'm just going to convince myself that I spending for Asphodel, and not for me.) I'm also going to try to cut down on my games spending this summer, cause there's only 5 games I want to get really badly:

1. Gakuen Heaven, original 18+ version (cause the lack of sex scenes in my Type B version make me such a sad yaoi fangirl)
2. Gakuen Heaven Okawari! (more Gakuen Heaven, just for me! ^_^)
3. Fighting for One Piece (must...buy... @_@)
4. Angelique Etoile
5. Meine Liebe (only because Seki Toshihiko's voice is so much t3h smex...)

...and I'm sure other games (like Narutimett Hero 2, which I will pay for if I find it cheap and used) will pop up and I will cry because I have NO MONEY.

I got sketched on today. I guess I was asking for it. Short shorts (by Japanese standards, at least) and tank tops. =_=;; Some smarmy, slimy Japanese guy looking like an old salary man came up to me and asked if I had free time. O_o;;

Dude, I had just walked out of a comic book shop. Do you really want me? =_=;; I told him I had no time and that I didn't speak Japanese, and finally he got fed up and left. :/

I also ran into Jonathan Cho, a non-sketchy guy as I was on my way out today. He just looked right at me and asked, "Do you speak English?" and was genuinely surprised when I actually answered in a fluent American accent. *laughs* Apparently he's part of some Christian organization over here at this place called J-House, and they're doing community building, community service type of things, like teaching English. I'm always kind of leery of large religious organizations who go out and try to recruit people (this is because I lived in Utah for over 15 years and have had to deal with the Scientologists in Boston on occasion), but the guy actually seems kind of nice. *shrugs* Gave him my name, number, and e-mail so we can hang out. I told him I was Unitarian (which is probably the closest to my beliefs) so he wouldn't start preaching at me. >_>

Anyways, I bought some doujinshi at Mandarake today, and really had to hold off on buying 25" Darth Maul and Obi-Wan figures. While they're awesome, well made, pretty, nice, and cheap, I don't think they'd sit well in my luggage on the way home. =_=;; *is really sad* Cause you all know that I'd love nothing more than to have 25" of Darth Maul and Obi-Wan goodness. :D For only $30. I'm still tempted. I might just buy them, and pray they don't break in my suitcases or if I have to ship them home. >_>

I still ended up spending over 2000yen on doujinshi. I really tried hard not to spend too much (I did buy something for a friend! Honest!) but everything else was just stuff I had to have.

- 2 SolxKy by Hot Boys, one of my favorite GG circles. (I have several.) They do the hottest and most graphic stuff, so I can't pass up SolxKy pr0n! Ever!

- 2 Trigun by Shayoukan, one of the Trigun circles I'm collecting. You guys have no idea how hard it was for me not to start collection Death Powder too (they're another circle), because all their books were 210 yen a piece. AUGH! I'd give in, but there are games I want to buy! And boy are games expensive. @_@

- 2 ZoroxLuffy by Royal Garden, one of my favorite One Piece circles because their stuff is just so adorable. *squee*

- 2 SeiferxZell by Crushers, because I'm collecting them too. Jesus. I need to stop collecting doujinshi.

- 1 InuKai for Ali-chan. :3 Tried to find RyoKai, but failed. She said she'd settle for InuKai so I got her one. Still have yet to find a decent looking MomoRyo (all the Ryoma uke is TezukaxRyoma...WTF) and a KiraAthrun (because there was a mob around the SEED section and I didn't feel like being squished in the middle of a million Japanese fangirls, I'll just put that off 'til later. It's not like the most popular SEED pairing is suddenly going to walk off.)

There's been a slew of Gankutsuou lately, and a whole SHITLOAD of Death Note. So if you guys have requests, start paypalling me money and I'll see what I can do.

Once again, no luck on finding KnivesxLegato, because IT JUST DOESN'T EXIST. I don't understand why the Japanese don't see it, but it's just not there. I want to beat my head against a post or something. Time to go and make some, I think. I haven't updated Miles since Thanksgiving. :x I'll be genuinely surprised if people are still reading.

'til later, kiddos. X3

I hate my life, and it seems that it hates me. T____T Or rather, I think Kugashira Bunji, my computer, is displeased. This may be for a number of reasons, the most likely of which the fact that I am giving him no love by being too busy to write fanfiction for him. =_=;;

*grovel grovel* Bunji, PLEASE GIVE ME MY MUSIC FILES BACK! *cries*

So I was trying to move my music folder to another folder (one that I could share over the network here in lab), and it seemed like what it did was a complete copy of my 20-something gigs. So I was like, 'WTF, whatever.' I decided sharing was too much of a pain and that I'd just delete the extra folder.

WOE.

Little did I know that somehow some of my music files had actually transferred over to the extra folder, and now they're GONE. T_T They're ALL GONE. I'm missing my random collection of rock, anything with filenames beginning A-R. =____=;; *wails!* My tiny collection of Aerosmith! My tiny collection of Beatles! No more "Bitches Love Me" or "All Day Long I Dream About Sex." *cry*

My entire "Soundtracks" folder is also gone. There goes Moulin Rouge. There goes both versions of Phantom. There goes my Shrek soundtracks (which I was REALLY FOND OF, GODAMMIT), my Les Mis, my Kingdom of Heaven, and my Hedwig.

FUCK.

*sob* And I'm not getting this back until I get to L.A. where my computer currently is. *falls over* And I have no download-friendly ports open.

WOE.

T____T Bunji?! How could you do this to me?! *wail*

Quote of the day: (from late last night when Seiji and I were talking)

Seiji: You know, I've always wondered...if you feed an animal too much, will it explode?

HAHAHAHAHA. I love our late night conversations in lab.

Anyways...
Instead of going to dinner last night we decided to hang around lab and cook. :D Skuld made her signature hot and sour soup, but unfortunately it turned out only so-so. *sad* I'm not sure what I was missing. I also realized that the Japanese, mysteriously, do not sell canned soup. At all. O_o;; It just doesn't really exist as a concept. I used to think everybody sold canned soup, but I suppose I am wrong. It's so odd when things you take for granted are suddenly tossed for a spin. WTF, seriously.

Borrowed some nice CDs from Seiji too. :D One Everclear (Slow Motion Daydream), Two Offspring, and one of the Red Hot Chili Peppers albums I actually don't have. More music for me. X3 Huzzah.

Anyways, I think the actual work in lab starts today. =_=;; Boo. I still haven't had the time to write yet, mostly because I've been staying in lab later and later lately. :D Last night I went home at about 1:30 (I blame Roni!) and stayed up until 2:30 reading some roleplay logs from last year (Ky/MIT!Frederick) because it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. :3 ~<3 *hearts*

Anyhoos, off to keep slogging through eigenvectors, eigenvalues, covariance matrices, principal components analysis, and math in general. ...ew. Math.

=_= I have done virtually nothing in lab today. Well, nothing productive at any rate. So far I've read one paper, and that's about all the work so far. Granted, I've done plenty of other things, like write a post in Guilty Gear Academy, eat lunch, talk about the otaku/2ch slang "moe," discuss MMORPGs with my labmates, get myself a cell phone, shop at the local hyaku-en store, and discover that AIM is actually open on port 80 and 21 (there are about 6 ports open through the firewall here, and thankfully AIM is giving me love at the moment).

So it's been a fairly productive day...just not in the academic sense.

and the paper that I've promised to slog through for the moment really isn't helping things. I hate it how my minds just shuts down when it reads this:

The dominant form feature is defined by the eigenvector that corresponds to the largest eigenvalue of the covariance matrix obtained from the luminance values.

AUGH! Now I wish I had payed more attention/actually remembered shit from Differential Equations/Linear Algebra. =_=;; Time to sit around and review math. Yippee. :/

I can troll 4chan again, thanks to open proxy servers.
I WIN!

USA Today examines the appeal of masks.

I love it when big news sites (*snort* I guess you can't really count USA Today as news, really) talk about my fetishes. *grin*

Of course they mentioned Baldwin and The Phantom. X3 *fangirlfangirlfangirl* Fwee.

On a sad note, because of a meeting with my professor, I was unable to meet Rhole. ._. I'll meet up with her next week. *so sad* ;_____; There goes my chance to get into Osaka tonight. It'll be raining the rest of next week (damn you, rainy season!), but oh well, shou ga nai. -_-;; Time to have some serious time with myself and write fic, I think.

According to the clone I need to be drunk more often. This is because the only time I can really speak smoothly in Japanese is when I've got a decent buzz going. It's probably because at that point in time I don't care what mistakes I'm making, words just kind of fall out of me. The problem is I'm not sure if they're falling out in some sort of semblance of grammatical order or correctness, or if they're just kinda tumbling about willy nilly. I really hope it's the former. ^_^

So yesterday was my welcome party at a nearby izakaya, and it was awesome and fun. :D I love my One Piece lab. (Cause just about everybody here reads One Piece. X3 It is also, incidentally, quickly becoming the Death Note lab. O_o;;) *huggles it a lot* I was sad because at one point in time I was talking with Tanaka-san and Yoshiya-san about what bands they liked, and they both hated Orange Range. Apparently Orange Range has the boy-band idol status that the Backstreet Boys have in the US. <_< They also called it "fake music" though I guess I didn't press that point. (Do they compose their own songs? I thought they did, I have no idea.) At least they liked Asian Kung-Fu Generation ("Ajiakan" for short). ._. that's about all I remember of last night of note.

Lalalalala. Meeting up with Rhole today in Umeda. X3 Whee! My first trip to Osaka proper. :D I can't wait. :3 Never fear, I'm sure there will be stories abounding.

Catch ya bitches later. ^_^/

In case some of you didn't already know, SOMETHING AWFUL RULES.

Given that I don't have 4chan anymore, and am too lazy to troll 2chan, I think I shall finally give in, throw some money at SA, and become an SA forum goon.

"w00t!" is the sound Skuld makes when she's back in Japan. :D

Yup yup yup, Skuld has hauled her ass back to Japan. ^_^ I'm currently sitting at the same desk I sat at last year, and it's weird because it feels like very little has changed. :3 I'm glad I'm in extra early today, the room is completely deserted so I have some time for my thoughts.

It's really nice to be back here in Osaka. I still get funny looks cause I dress completely like a foreigner (short shorts, tank top, bandana--things that no self-respecting Japanese girl would ever wear) and I carry my bag around which has a million anime keychain danglies on it, I still have trouble understanding my labmates when they talk fast, but all in all, it's great. Five of the guys (Ikezoe-san, Yoshiya-san, Mikio-san, Takahiro-san, and Seiji-kun) picked me up from Osaka Itami airport last night, and the first thing they did was give me a straw hat. ^_^ I even think it's the official One Piece straw hat. I was so happy to see those guys (and get a straw hat, since I left mine in Boston by mistake. :3 I'm such a bad Luffy. *sob*). It's nice to see familiar faces, talk casually about things, and go to crowded kaitenzushi places. I will really miss these guys when I go. ^_^

But the meantime...! I am here! :D *rawr* So all you Osaka/Kansai peeps have to hang out with me now. X3 I will terrorize the general area with my horrendous gaijin-ness. :3 *fufufu*

*sighs* And my goldfish I caught at the kingyou sukui last year has grown so large. :D And everything in lab still almost seems the same. Familiarity makes me comfortable, makes me feel at home.

The Last Hurrah on Friday night was great. ^_^ I got to see nearly everybody one last time, and I even got to see Twig and Lunar for the first time. :D I finished the card and got my Sunset T-shirt I've been wanting for years, and I went home and chilled with my buds on Mario Party and Mario Kart. ^_^ I got pillaged and plundered by Cocoa, who graciously accepted my stuff so I don't have to deal with it.

The plane flight was long and boring, I think was traveling straight for about 28 hours, including plane flights and layovers. Luckily I got the superpower of being able to sleep at anywhere at any time, so I have no jetlag, and I was only minimally exhausted. The in-flight movies were kind of bad, the only two watchable things were Million Dollar Baby (which is one of those things you see only once, because it's too depressing to watch it a second time) and The Phantom of the Opera, which I am now thoroughly sick of. (You would be too if it was the only thing you had on a 14 hour flight.) Met a cute girl sitting next to me, who was into anime and Phantom too and got her Livejournal name. (Which I guess now is almost synonymous to getting somebody's number? X3 Haha.)

I tried to write fanfic, but I guess the plane gives me no inspiration, as it drains me of just about everything. =_=;; Luckily, I won't be flying for another couple of months, so my sense of airplanes-as-adventures can have time to renew itself.

Anyhoos, to all you Japan peeps, SKULD IS BACK! So drop me a line and let's meet up. ^_^ ~<3

Leaving Boston in two and a half hours. :3 Hurrah! I will be arriving in Japan tomorrow night. ;_;

Goodbye to everybody, I really love you guys. ^_^ All of you. Come and visit me in LA and I will definitely try to visit you in Boston. :D

I have the hugest headache in the world right now. I think this is because I'm so tired from packing (finally sent off all of my boxes today) and it's so hot outside. Granted, Osaka isn't much better but at least where I live in Osaka there's this nice thing called air conditioning.

And oh yes, I got a new laptop earlier this week. Haven't had much time to use it thus far, so it's a cute little n00b to t3h interweb. Kugashira Bunji, meet the internets. Internets, this is my new laptop, Bunji. I would have named him Rocketbilly Redcadillac, but that's what my iPod shuffle is called. ^^;; Now that creates some interesting images when I "insert Rocketbilly into Bunji." o_O I think Juji (my other MP3 player) is jealous.

Anyways, I'm doin' the Power Hour tonight. One shot of beer every minute for an hour. ^_^ I think I can handle that. >_> That's what...two pints? I'm so golden. At least I'm not doing a Century. (That's 100 shots of beer each minute, for 100 minutes.)

Sorry I haven't been blogging these past few days, packing has totally swallowed me up and spit me out. I leave for Japan on Saturday morning, so don't expect to hear from me for a while there, either. :D Anyhoos...this summer is going to be rockin' hardcore. I look forward to meeting you all. ^_^/~~~

whoo! Did one of the things that's always been on my list for doing since freshman year. Jumped in the reflecting pool at the Church of Christian Science a couple of blocks across the street, and whoo! I am totally soaked! Destra and I waded and dunked ourselves in completely when the security guards were elsewhere, so huzzah! Something I won't regret having not done when I leave on Saturday.

anyways, this post is being made because...

Skuld's Last Hurrah
is going to be held at Sunset Grill & Tap on Friday, June 10th at 6pm. Friday will be my last full day in Boston, and after that I'm going to Japan for the summer. From Japan I will fly directly to my home in Salt Lake City, so this is my last chance to see you guys.

Getting into Sunset with a huge group was a pain in the ass last time, but I figure if we don't make do there, we can at least make do at the other place next door. ^_^

Either way, Sunset. 6pm. This Friday. Because Skuld is leaving for an undetermined amount of time. Be there! :D

Just finished Jade Empire.
Took me about 20 hours. O_o;; Did I just blast through it, or what? I must've missed something... =_=;; ugh. I guess I'll go check the FAQ tomorrow morning or something.

And yeah...>_> Dude. The plot spoiler? Kinda saw it coming. ^^;; Oh Bioware, you can't catch me off guard after KotOR! X3 Light-side ending is lame too. :/

Just before I try to finish up Jade Empire...

List six songs that are very important to you, then pick six other people that have to do the same. (ganked from ratherbrightred, my very good friend and the originator of the Baldwin Porn Bus.)

1. The Babystars - Hikari E
My One Piece song; the song that picks me up when I'm down and inspires me

2. Final Fantasy Dear Friends - Terra
This song moves me to tears almost every time I hear it. That game really meant a lot to me, and Uematsu's orchestration of it for the Dear Friends concert series really does it justice.

3. Guillaume Dufay - Ave Maris Stella
The human voice was never so beautiful as it is in renaissance polyphony.

4. Evanescence - October
The one emo song I'll allow on my 'favorite songs' list. Cause I think everybody feels a little emo occasionally, and every once in a while, they just want somebody to come and help them. Amy Lee has such a gorgeous voice, and this was the song that inspired my first Guilty Gear fic.

5. Yoko Kanno - Moon
The song of beauty. It conjures so many images in my head, I wish I could share them.

6. Queen - Under Pressure
...And love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves

And the six people who have to do this meme...
ummm... I don't know. How about all of my ex-girlfriends? ^_^ That's you, Roni and Mel-mel. And the rest of you, if you want to do it, you can. X3

I've decided to do a little perspective thing, my thoughts on my four years of college now that I've graduated. Today is Freshman Year, and then some highlights of graduation and the previous few days.

2001/2002: Freshman Year

I think freshman year was my toughest year here at MIT, but was not without its fun. I remember arriving in mid-August for a freshman pre-orientation program. I was in FAP (Freshman Arts Program), which nowadays is a hilarious acronym, especially for those of you who have read Sexy Losers. I met a lot of people there, most of whom I unfortunately no longer keep in touch with. Actually, maybe all of whom I no longer keep in touch with. Orientation was fun, getting to know the campus and how things worked. I remember rushing at a couple of places, Random Hall, East Campus, Senior House, Epsilon Theta, and Fenway House. I really like Epsilon Theta, but I didn't quite feel like I fit in entirely, so I opted for Fenway because it was the only other off campus place I was interested in. My life would have been really different had I decided to live in an on-campus dorm, but oh well, there's no regretting the things that will never be. I love Fenway House. It was lonely as a freshman because I was the only frosh there, but I made a lot of friends in the house.

Fall term was spent fighting the urge to punt instead of tool, only with mild success. It was hard adjusting to doing my homework without a parent's eye constantly watching over me, and it was hard getting up in the morning. I used to make my bed every single morning, and get up an hour and a half before class, so I could check my e-mail and eat breakfast. Ha! I laugh now. Fall term was tough. Fall term was when I was breaking down, realizing what my limitations were, and those are always hard to come to terms with. Fall term was when I decided I couldn't be a physicist, and that I really ought to be a neuroscientist after all. But in the end it was good and I pulled through passing all of my classes. I don't know what I would've done if MIT didn't have the pass/no record policy for their freshman. Died, probably. Or checked into the looney bin.

I met Destra that term, when I was still browsing the Yaoi no Hentais board (probably now defunct). I was a big into anime club, and was just discovering myself as a writer. I remember specifically freaking out the house by running around at midnigh shouting "GAY MEN!" really loudly, therefore dashing any thoughts that Mike Lewis entertained of me being a quiet, conservative type. Looks can be so deceiving. ^_^

IAP was the best ever. My team, ACME, won the MIT Mystery Hunt. I night-shifted myself, played a lot of Final Fantasy X (I think there was about a week in there where we played this non-stop in staggered rounds, Ray, Catherine, Me, Brad, and occasionally Lewis), and enjoyed my first game of "never have I ever" after work week. Those were the times.

Spring term was slightly kinder to me. My sleeping troubles went away after I moved to a single (the Chah Minh), and that's when my writing really started taking off. I guess I have FFX to thank for my large amounts (by my standards, at any rate) of fanfiction I've produced since freshman year. I can't quite remember how I got into the X fandom around that point in time, but I think it might've had something to do with the anime being released, thus sort of catapaulting me back into reading the manga. That cut short the FFX obsession (I don't think I've ever written an epic fanfic as quickly as I wrote "Saidan no Hitsuji"), and then I started writing massive amounts of X. I made a lot of online friends this term, started my own blog at pitas, and managed to survive yet another term at MIT, this one much less hellish than the previous. (It probably had to do with the diminished amount of weekly problem sets.)

I started my research in the summer with Dr. Lera Boroditsky's lab, and boy was that a lot of fun. ^_^ That summer I managed to make my first cosplay, and hang out with Ali-chan, Destra, Mel, and a couple of others at ShoujoCon 2002, my first anime con ever. It was good. And then fall term sophomore year started, and things stopped being so good. But that's a story for another day...

Anyways, you guys haven't seen me around for a while. This is because I was busy graduating. My mother's still around, so you guys are unlikely to see me until Monday or Tuesday or thereabouts. :D

Highlights of the past few days, aside from graduation pictures (here) was that Ridii, one-arm Alex came and visited and we had a blast. Played hide-and-seek-tag, sardines, and freeze tag late at night in the Boston public park along with the Irish girls living at Fenway this summer. Sardines was adequately humiliating the first round, because one of the girls cleverly hid herself in a large bush, and Alex and I couldn't see them in the dark, even when we were looking really hard. Gaaagh! Curses! We hit it up for some drinks later on, and I found out that Rydia owns almost all of Michael Moorcock's Elric Saga. Started reading it during Commencement, because ceremonies are so boring.

I'll miss you, Ridii. ;_; Come and visit me in LA sometime. That goes for the rest of y'all too. ^_^

This is the end.
This is the beginning.

Running off to Commencement folks, Skuld's going to officially graduate!

The Dive-In movie was a complete blast. ^_^ Inner tubes + pool + Pirates of the Caribbean = win!

I still feel kind of wrinkly, but that hopefully won't last too much longer. Anyways, met up with James/Toucan there again, one of the nice guys we picked up at the pub crawl last night. I vaguely remember being drunk in Pour House and explaining to him why I liked the Baldwin/Balian pairing. It's kind of hard doing that to somebody who hasn't seen Kingdom of Heaven, but maybe he'll be interested and go see it now, since he was interested enough to read my fics. X3 *grins* It was cool, halfway through the movie we all bored and started tossing a beach ball around. :D We have to do something like this again sometime. Fun was had all around.

Mom comes to Boston tomorrow, as does Ridii, whom I really miss. ^_^ It'll be nice to see him again before I head over to L.A. :D

Went on a pub crawl tonight with the rest of the class of 2005.

Pour House, Foggy Goggle all the way, baby.

I am so smashed right now. I just puked into a plastic bag. Dear god.

There's a Dive-In movie tomorrow. Kind of like a Drive-in movie, except it's a Dive-in movie held at a pool with inner tubes and wonderful pirate swag because we're watching "Pirates of the Caribbean."

It just doesn't get any better.