linterry's blogger

It's funny isn't it, that just discovering that my GF's cell phone has an SD card slot has induced me to flood this site with pictures. It's not that I've suddenly wanted to take pictures, rather, it's just the simple fact that the effort required in the [picture.take->picture.transfer->picture.upload] process has been reduced by more than 80%. The power of convenience is just unbelievable when it comes to controlling habitual behavior. Once a certain activity's convenience surpasses a critical point, we just can't stop doing it!


Peaceful Okinawa Street


Even more Peaceful Okinawa Street #2



Case of Coca Cola, Japanese version



Okinawan kids playing around in front of a shoe store...


What have I done to this family.....

Here are a bunch of random pics (from the Sharp V401SH)

Went to the skating rink again at southern hill haebaru. I got asked for the second time today how to do the hockey stop (even thought that's not really my forte, I'd much rather teach someone how to do the crossover because I have a lot more thoughts about it). Also, some kid today tugged me by the arm and asked me if I played hockey, I said no, then 5 minutes later he came back and asked me to play "onigokko" which is pretty much the same thing as "Tag". He already picked out everyone in the rink who knew how to skate well (ie can do crossovers, hockey stop, etc.) and got them all to play tag. I wasn't really enthusiastic about that because I'm not very good at hockey stopping and I can't say I skate very well under pressure (it takes a fair bit of concentration for me to maintain a crossover at full speed without having my skates falling out from underneath). Well after being tagged once and tagging someone else I was pretty much spent, so I told them I was too exhausted to continue. It was really fun interacting with the rink crowd in some ways. In Toronto, I'm basically invisible. Here, I'm a Big Monk in a Small Temple.


dinner at A&W (they call it "Enda" here, no idea why)


Random shot of the average okinawa road. as you can see it's very sedated and laid back. Life goes very slowly here, which at my current state in life, is really nice.


The cell phone display rack at BEST Denki. I used to never have an interest in this section, but now that I have seen what Japanese cell phones are capable of, I can't stop touching these things. The amazing thing is that most of the cell phones aren't super pricey or anything - as long as you get them with a contract, they basically cost nothing or next to nothing. I don't even think I should be calling them cell phones anymore - they can do some many things that talking on the phone is probably one of the less important functions. In fact, my girlfriend's sister said that if she had to choose between being able to talk on the phone and mail messaging, she would pick messaging.

Usually I don't get excited over cell phones but wow, check this one out (Yuri's new model):


This is Mitsubishi FOMA 902i provided by NTT DoCoMo. Once again, a huge, beautiful, pristinely clear LCD display, coupled with unbelievably sick functionality. I can see why Japanese people would be so engrossed in their phones that they use it while walking on the street - once you see a beautifully designed web page on a phone like this I don't see how anyone wouldn't get addicted.

I realized today that my GF's cell phone in Japan actually has an SD card slot - which makes transferring pictures from cell phone to PC relatively painless (the LG also has a built-in SD card slot). Combined with the fact that a cell phone is just 1000% times more practical in terms of taking "daily life" pictures, that means there should be more pics from now.

This was the incredible Fujitsu display I was talking about the other day. Well you can't see how good it is through a cell phone camera, but believe me, it's light years ahead of anything you can get outside Japan.

Incredibly, this was a vending machine at a restaurant, which basically had the entire menu in the form of buttons. You put in some cash and you press the buttons for what you want to eat, and then these cheezy printed tickets come out. You take the tickets to the attendant and they process your order. You'd wonder why Japanese people would even bother to automate this portion of the restaurant ordering process but I guess they just like the idea of automating things that can be automated. At the very least, it saves any human workers the trouble of dealing with cash and change, and thus at the end of every fiscal month the amount of miscalculated change due to human error should theoretically be zero.

In this case, the restaurant was a ramen place near my gf's house, and it was really really good. Their special was this incredible mix of pork fat broth and tons of minced garlic and it was just out of this world. It was so good I actually took the bowl of rice we got with the gyoza dumplings and dumped it into the soup - and it was awesome. Don't let the vending machine lead you to believe that this was fast food... it was anything but. They had proper seating areas, the kitchen was spacious and well maintained, it was a full fledged restaurants, minus the waiters and waitresses.

This is Haebaru Aeon Shopping Mall, one of the newest complexes to grace the Okinawa mega-mall landscape. It's so clean and commercialized that even the floor is carpeted, which I find very unusual even for mega-malls in North America. As I was sitting in the pristinely designed open-space Starbucks on the 1st floor with a Coffee Mist Decaf in my right hand, I couldn't help but think to myself "I am really indulging myself in the fruits of capitalism here." I think it's almost weird that within less than a couple of kilometres of this place, you can smell cow shit at nearby farms. Can I call that juxtaposition?
This was the athletic shoe rack at the Jusco department store in aforementioned shopping mall. If you notice the boxes, basically instead of finding a shoe you like and having to ask a salesperson to get your size from the back, all of the available stock is sitting right in front of you to take. I like that style much better because you don't have to go through some person everytime you want to try something on. Much like the restaurant vending machine example, it seems to be some universal goal of Japanese people to minimize human contact when it can be avoided.

I don't know what game this was exactly but there was a huge crowd around these mini-game machines at the Jusco game centre. Not just any crowd, but a crowd made up entirely of elementary prepubscent schoolgirls. I tried to sneak a few looks but I only managed to gather the following: the game works at lot like the game "Mushi King" where you buy cards at a separate vending machine and then use the cards in the game. In this case you get to become a model and dress her up according to what cards you have - and then you partcipate in various competitions like dancing and singing to gain popularity points. Some of these girls brought entire binders full of cards which is a real testament to how addictive this game must be. The card/game model seems to be really taking off along with gambling machines and of course ... the infamous

UFO Catcher. Well, let me tell you what happened here. It's already become a routine of sorts that I scan every UFO Catcher machine at a game centre - it's progressed to OCD levels so basically its no longer in my control. When I see a mark, that is a prize that I think is practically obtainable in this lifetime, my motvation prorities get really messed up and for a good 10 minutes I am totally focused on getting that prize. In the above picture, you'll notice that the brown plush toy closest to me on the left side is dangling extremely close to the prize hole - in fact his arm is dangling over it. The whole idea (and I got this from a site), is to not use the claw as a grappling tool but as a nudging tool of sorts.

Unforutnatley, thanks to my bonehead nervousness, I spent too much time positioning the claw which triggered a timeout and the claw descended way before I expected. I pushed the buttons as a panic reflex response which stopped the claw way up in the air. Bam, there went 200 yen. Now, you'd think I should at least give it another shot but I was already so apprehensive to begin with I didn't feel like getting pwned by the UFO Catcher again, at least not for today.

UFO Catcher: 1900 yen stolen
Me: 0 prizes won
---------------------------------
Conclusion: Total pwnage.

I would just like to point out that the quality of these cell phone pics is just phenomenal. The white balance circuitry and automatic exposure correction are virtually the same as a full-fledged digital camera, which results in really decent color and contrast ranges. It even has a macro mode switch for closesups, which is totally awesome. Even though it's only 1.2 megapixels (640x480 max) I don't even shoot in that mode since it's a lot more convenient to upload 320x240 pics and not even bother with resizing. Combined with the fact that the three year old cell phone is "old junk" that my GF's sister doesn't want to use anymore, you can already sense that imaging quality standards in Japan are just that much higher than the rest of the world. The built-in camera in my Motorola V551 (which is actually newer than the cell phone that took the above pics) would simply be unacceptable here, yet nobody back home seems to toot their horn when pics come out horribly blurry and with terrible colors time after time.

Today was a great day. My girlfriend and I went skating at Okinawa's one and only skating rink: Southern Hill. To my surprise, there were a lot of people there, I mean it's almost comparable to Wednesday nights at Bayview Arena (which is often so jam packed with people you have to line up due to safety regulations). Apparenlty the Winter Olympics triggered a huge fad in Japan and now everybody is into ice skating, even in tropical Okinawa. It was pretty pricey, 1300 yen per person. However, it's unlimited, and on Friday's it's couple day - 1600 for two people, so Shinobu and I are definitely going to go at least once a week.

So finally, I got some media for you, all thanks to my uncontrollable narcissistic tendencies. I got my girlfriend to take a video of me skating around in circles. What you get to occasionally see here is my own beloved right-handed crossover. There are a few good moments in there but by and large it was difficult to maintain constnat action becuase 1. there are too many people and if I keep up that kind of speed I'll end up crashing into somebody and 2. my girlfriend can't rotate on ice standing still so she could only shoot in a 180 degree radius.

Well, here is the video:

Ice Skating at Southern Hill (1.2MB XviD AVI)

I hope to take a better video next week when I can borrow my girlfriend's sister 60fps IXY Digital Camera.

After a week I think I've finally got rid of the jet lag. It's incredible that it's taken so long because when I was a few years younger, it took about two days at most to adjust. I think I can feel my body slowing down in some ways now that I am 26 years old - agility, suppleness, aggressiveness, deftness, flexibility, all seem to be declining. The only thing that seems to be increasing are my desires and impatience.

I've finally got the hang of the living pattern at Shinobu's house. I still can't do the laundry at will but at least it's gotten to the point where I can open the fridge (which is really messy) and get what I want, and serve myself a meal from the kitchen pot when I want. You'd think these are really basic things but without a certain degree of familiarity with one's living environment, it's difficult to take action in a foreign living space. It just feels strange raiding someone else's fridge, like you're not supposed to touch anything becuase it's not your living space.

I often surprise myself at how much my Japanese has improved over the last few years. (ugh, I'm sorry I have to make a braggy statement like that, since it seems 50% of the foreign world is in a rat race to improve their Japanese skills, but it's my blogger space so screw you). It's gotten to the point where I can ask someone in an electronics store whether or not they carry a PS2 S-Video cable without any forethought - it feels like 2nd nature. Of course I could have done the same thing three years ago but I would have to premediate my sentence beforehand and if the conversation deviated even the slightest from the expected I would be totally lost. There's a difference - a huge difference - between being able to construct sentences in three seconds and the ability to construct sentences instantly. If I may be allowed a World of Warcraft analogy, it's the same reason why a 3 sec Healing Touch is almost worthless in PvP but an instant-cast Healing Touch (with Nature's Swiftness) is downright uber, you'd think, "Gee, what's 3 seconds of your life", but in the fast-paced, reactive PvP environment, 3 seconds is an eternity. The same is with conversation environments. If it even takes more than a couple of seoncds for someone to formulate the average sentence, the conversation loses its agility and suppleness very quickly and nobody wants to talk anymore.

With listneing however I still have problems with the speed and vocabulary of the average Japanese speaker particuarily in specific circumstances like banking. I have realized that listneing ability has everything to do with expectation. Almost eeringly similar to the strategies used in speech recognition algorithms, it seems that humans lack the sheer processing power to decode foreign sounds in real time, even when armed with the knowledge of how to decode these sounds. In order to understand a language in real-time, you must have heard a similar sentence more than fifty times so that your brain almost knows what to expect - the best example of such a phenmoenon is evn whn I wrte lke ths, yu cn stll undrstnd! Learning a language to the native level is almost entirely built upon experience, you have to construct in your mind a massive Look-Up Table of sorts with all of the most common speech patterns so that almost zero processing power is required when you hear something. When it comes to languages, it's not about the grammar or logically understanding the pattenrs, but about buidling that massive Look-Up Table that can only be built thorugh experience. This is why nobody can take massive shortcuts to learning a language to the native level - becuase almost by definition native level is the same thing as possessing a massive Look-Up Table.

I'm sorry there are very few pictures but that's because I have no convenient way of taking pictures. You'd think a digital camera is convenient enough but it's just a hassle to try to find the damn thing everytime I leave the house, and it's such a hassle carrying such a bulky device in my pocket. I thought I might get started with the cell phone camera (which are pretty damn good in Japan, very decent color cabliration), but since there is no convenient method for linking the picture sin the cell phone with my computer (aside from e-maling each pic to myself which costs money), I gave up on that too. My motivation for taking pictures is there, it's like ten points of motivation, but all the methods that are available to me cost twenty points and above. So, no pictures

Yesterday at Naha Main Place I blew another 700 yen on the UFO Catcher machines. This time, I thought I could be a bit more clever and try to use the claw to "squeeze nudge" a Doraemon into the hole. However, I must have mispositioned the claw because it didn't even come close to turning out the way I thought it would. I don't know why I am so obsessed with UFO Catching now but it's just like MMORPG's - if you've never tried it, you just won't understand.

I've visited several Best Denki stores recently and I've totally shocked at how mindblowingly awesome LCD's in Japan are. I swear to god there must be a conspiracy going on because in Japan it's not hard to find an entire row of LCD's with near-perfect color calibration and super clear coatings - whereas anywhere else in the world (including Canada), just finding one LCD that's not overcalibrated to the blue end is an ordeal in itself. I thought I was just overly paranoid and shit, but no, because when I go to just about any electronics store in Japan, I keep flailing my arms in the air and saying "OH MY GOD, FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLY" Yes, people do stare. Talk about catharsis.

In particular, the Fujitsu and NEC displays are drop dead gorgeous and have a certain depth to the colors that makes you want to stare at it for hours. It got to the point where I was thinking about buying a Fujitsu display right then and there (even though it came with speakers, which I don't like), because it looked UNBELIEVABLE. The colors were SO deep and natural, and the picture actually had a beautiful warmth to it, in contrast to the stark, cold, 10,000k blues of 90% of the LCD's outside Japan. I have never wanted to buy any LCD's in North America simply because I know that 95% of them are just shit when it comes to color purity and clarity. In fact it's almost depressing that all the newer models are getting worse with shitty coatings and even more absurd color calibrations.

It's not that Japan has some voodoo technology that America doesn't. My theory is that Japanese people are more fussy and visually sensitive to things like colors - in other words, the consumers are smarter in general and that reflects in the products that are available on the market. (This could also explain why Japanese web pages seem to hold a higher standard in terms of page design) Or, it could be just a simple case that Japanese people care more than just about the price - they actually want something that's designed well and to spec. In the case of North America, practically 95%+ of LCD's dont' even have the right color calibration - just look at 20 random LCD Displays at Future Shop and you'll find 15 different whites. Even if you set them all to sRGB, which stipulates a 6500k NTSC white standard, you'll probably still find more than 10 differnet whites.

I thought the display on my LG notebook was good, and clarity-wise it is, but in terms of color rendition it's pretty bad. As with the Samsung 17" display I have to use Entech's Powerstrip to continually modify the video card's DAC to lessen the blues and greens, which is definitely something I would avoid if I could because that lessens the maximum number of representable colors from 16.7 millino to 13 million. Sometimes I wonder why I am fighting this endless battle against the mysterious enemy in North America that keeps on putting inconsistent bluish whites in every display that exists. Everytime I pass by a display in a computer store I absolutely must adjust the colors so that it's not so fricking BLUE. For some models I also turn down the contrast and brightness to something reasonable, almost as a courtesy to the store so that the LCD doesn't burn itself out in half a year. Why do companies still pump out poorly calibrated LCD's endlessly year after year?

Yesterday at Jusco shopping mall I stumbled upon a vast array of UFO Catcher machines on the 3rd floor. For those of you who don't know UFO Catcher is SEGA's very own "prize catching" machine. Instead of explaining how it works, just go to this site: http://segaprize.com/amuse/ufo/home.html where you can play a cheezy Macromedia version of it.

It looks something like this:


Now usually I don't even bother looking at these machines but because of the whole culture surrounding UFO Catchers and the fact that I played a virtual version of it in the SEGA Game "Ryu Ga Gotoku" (竜が如く), I decided to give it a try. I was aiming for a little pouch in the shape of Gaara's Gourd from Naruto (the one which has the words MWM on it) and after spending 900 yen for twelve tries, I ended up with absolutely nothing.

900 yen and nothing to show for it!?! That's some serious pwnage dished out by the UFO Catcher. It seems ridiculous, because at first I just wanted to try it, so we just put 200 yen for three tries. Despite nailing the timing for the positioning, the claw just refused to pick the damn thing up. So it was 200 yen, then another 200 yen, then 100 yen for one more try, then another 100 and another 100. I just couldn't stop. What was initially just a passing interest in the machine very quickly turned into an obsessive addiction. After a few tries, my mind was so focused on getting the the Gaara gourd that I just couldn't let go.

The other phenomenon that was present was that I already put money down towards the prize, so if I left with nothing, that would make the loss even worse. Something like the Irrational Escalation of Commitment as illustrated by the one dollar auction, where the 2nd highest bidder has to pay their bid but leave with nothing.

At any point my girlfriend had to intervene and beat some sense into me, at which point we left, but I was still grumbling in frustration, swearing to come back armed with a bunch of tactics gathered from the Internet.

A bit of casual research on the net led to a few interesing pages like these, written by a person who used to work at a game centre (arcade). Apparently the UFO Catcher shares the same design principles as the casino's Slot Machine, it's meticulously programmed to suck your money away. The claw apparently can be configured in a lot of ways to favor the establishment - most notably, the claw's "grappling strength" can be adjusted digitally anywhere from 1~100, and most of the time it's set very low. Other parameters like the catching strategy type and so forth can be modfiied, and clever establishments configure the claw so that it's nearly impossible to get anything worthwhile inside the machine. The exceptions are the toys that nobody wants, if you spot a machine that only has really unpopular stuff, chances are the claw is set really well because the establishment wants to get rid of the old stock. The other exception is on "service days", the establishment will kindly adjust the parameters towards the player's favor as a courtesy.

There are certain pro UFO Catchers who can get a prize every 10 tries or so, but that's only if they're allowed to choose which prize to catch. Certian prizes are apparently "uncatcheable" no matter how good you are, this has to do with the prize's positioning. The general idea is to try to latch onto something narrow like a string or a neck but if such parts are not accessible then it's generally not possible to get the prize.

I'm definitely commited to catching something from these damn machines while I am here, even if it costs me another 5000 yen.

I brought my Playstaton 2 to Okinawa and now it looks like my girlfriend's sisters are having a little too much fun with it. It's really funny watching them congregate around the machine like a brand new fantastic toy. In particular, Rino, the 2nd youngest sister, has not even touched a video game since Super Mario on the NES, so she's pretty much a Video Game Virgin. I set up Ape Escape 3 for her and it's so fascinating watching her play. To put it crudely, it's like that Rogers Lite commercial where an ape stares in awe at the bright Rogers Lite ad in the jungle. I can't even begin to imagine how many fresh neuronal connections are being made in her head per minute as she comes to grips with the altered reality of video games. She's having a LOT of fun though, like 20 years worth of repressed video gaming enjoyment shooting straight into her striatum.

I burned FF12 right before I left Toronto and I played it for about 10 minutes in Okinawa before I passed out from boredom. I think it's really World of Warcrack that ruined everything for me. Nothing compares to the feeling of critting an Alliance for 1500 off an Aimed Shot then hitting them for another 800 of a Multi-Shot and then getting a kill in Alterac.

I went to PC Depot, a Japanese version of Future Shop (except not quite as big) to purchase a couple of necessities for my notebook. One of those items included a Buffalo Wireless Router and a three-prong->two-prong adapater for the AC Adapter. So now I can warcraft anywhere at home and that's a huge relief because that pretty much eliminates any downtime problems where nobody is around to look after me.

9:51 EST Flight from Toronto to LA

Been on the plane for the last 4 hours or so. I initially was hoping this plane would have AC power outlets so that I woulodn't have to worry about my notebook runing out of power, but alas, it was not to be. They only have DC power which obviously isn't any good to me. Still, it was kinda fun being able to play a few rounds of Street Fighter instead of forcing myself to sleep or staring off into space.

I initially got one of those standard super cramped seats but apparently AA installs seats right next to the Emergency Exits which I thought was kind of weird (unsafe)? Due to FAA regulations anyone who sits in the Emergency Exit rows must give some kind of a confirmation that they are comfortable operating the door. So the flight attendant came by and gave a memorized speech about the emergency exits and that if anyone was not comfortable with the idea of opening the emergency exit doors, they could be reseated. Nobody complained however, and I can see why, the emergency exit rows have amazing legroom, like executive class grade legroom. Since there were quite a few empty seats in the emergency exit rows I didn't hesitate to snag one for myself once the plane reached cruising altitude. Ahh, it's so nice to have some decent legroom. Makes the whole flight a lot easier to bear.


Leaving Toronto still hasn't hit home yet. I guess I don't really view this as a big long trip even though it really is. I could be in Japan for 6 months or so, and that's a really long time. I guess being so absorbed into my new notebook and World of Warcraft over the last month has numbed my mind to life in general. I like feeling numb, it's comfortable and I think it's healthy for the mind. There was certain points in my life where my mind was like an extremely sensitive, infected wound. If you just grazed it or pricked it with a needle, it would react violently. But now, wheenver something comes along and seems to bother me, like say not knowing what's going to happen in the future or whether I will ever find the motivation to get a job, I just think of the fun things in my life (sex, video games, anime, etc.) and eventually the worries just fizzle away. It's kinda like containing a fire before it breaks out.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of fire is about 60% through. I'll save the last 20% of my battery and watch the movie for the last 90 minutes of the flight.

9:52 PST Waiting at LAX

I have to admit that even with a notebook and the emergency exit seats, the flight was still quite enduring. It'd be allright if my final destination was LA but it's not. As such I still have a grueling 14:30 hour flight to look forward too. Harry Potter was only mildly entertaining.

There's something wrong with LAX. I can't quite put my finger on it, but the moment I stepped off the plane, I was greeted by a very unsightly scene: the air was stale, there were far too many people, there were so many lineups, and the whole place just felt extremely frenetic and disorganized. It's the kind of place where you're really likely to lose something or forgot your kids at the counter, if you know what I mean.

While the Domestic Airport (Terminal 4) was still acceptable, the Tom Bradley International Airport was a complete mess. Probably still due to the aftersthock of 9/11, security was very strict about bags that would be checked-in. You were not allowed to bring your check-in bags to the counter while you line up, instead, you leave your bags in a separate lineup and when its your turn a security guard gives you your bags back. It generally causes chaos because you have this huge lineups of bags and this huge lineup of people and when the people get to the end of the queue you have to match them up with their bags.

When you enter the departure area, you have to line up TWICE - once, to actually get your bags checked in (this lineup was huge), and the second time for your carry-ons. Once again, the stale air and the general chaos and overcrowding made me feel very uncomfortable. LA is supposed to be a world class city but to me it just seemed to be one big mess. Even the Japanese announcer seemed to have a really bad accent and it just added to the feeling that this city just doens't have its act together. Of course, it's not really accurate to judge an entire city by its aiport, but it certainly does leave a lasting impression. Not only was the whole placed messy and disorganized but the decorations and atmosphere really left something to be desired. It was in general dark, glooomy, and inexplicably unpleasant.

I found an AC outlet in the departure waiting area and I'm trying to juice up my notebook as much as possible before boarding the Death Flight - a 14h30min duration flight from LA to Taipei. I tried to ask for another emergency exit seat but the counter dude said it's probably impossible since those seats get booked super early. I actually managed to connect to some default "belkin45g" WAP but it only lasted like 2 minutes.

I still have to take off my contacts and brush my teeth, but I'm guessing I'll be doing that on the plane. I need to get as much juice for my laptop for the Death Flight.

(minor update from Taipei)

This airport (Tom Bradley International) is just about the most ghetto POS I have ever seen. Usually when you board an aircraft from a terminal you just go through a walkway and you're there. However, at LAX, once you step out of the terminal, there is nothing but a BUS waiting for you. No plane, just a bus. What's even worse is that the bus is jam packed with people and for some reason when it's driving all the lights turn off, making it really creepy. The last time I had to board a bus before getting on a plane was in Okinawa International Aiport, and that's understable since practically nothing flies international thrrough Okinawa.

LAX needs to be overhauled in a big, big way.

12:18am PST On the Plane

SCORE! I suppose asking for the emergency seat made a difference, because I'm sitting next to nobody! Two seats all to myself, three if you count the fact that the old man on the other side sleeps upright and isn't even using his own free seat. SCORE!

6:13AM Taipei Time Waiting at Airport

Quite honestly the 14 hour flight was not as bad as I initally thought for two big reasons: 1. I had three seats to myself so I slept as soundly as you can reasonably sleep on a plane and 2. China Airlines has this nifty "Personal LCD Entertainment System" of sorts installed for everyone including those flying Economy. It's like a TV station and game system and GPS all rolled into one. You can watch like 30 different channels (and most programs are multilingual with english subtitles), or you can play a lot of cheesy games like Big 2 or Poker, or you can just view a realtime GPS map and monitor things like Time to Desination and Current Ground Speed and stuff.

Although it was a 14 hour flight, I probably slept for 7 of those hours, and spent four hours in total playing endless rounds of Big 2 and screwing around on my laptop. Another hour was knocked off for the in-flight meals (which weren't that great but weren't that bad either, sure beats getting absolutely nothing from AA). So really, there was only about two or three hours of pure downtime, which wasn't that bad.

Now at the Taipei International Airport, there's nobody here at 6:22 in the morning, and I"m sitting all alone at a random departure gate. I have my laptop plugged into one of the sockets in the wall and I've hooked up to the China Airlines VIP Lounge Wireless Access Point. So yeah, that's why I"m able to upload these log entries and at the same time I'm playing Warcraft in the goddamn airport! That's so random, don't you think? I should take pictures of my ghetto setup. I'm in queue for Alterac Valley so in a few minutes I'll be doing some random pvp until my flight to Okinawa.

Wow, Toronto seems to finally have city-wide wireless Internet! I'm at the Starbucks on York Mills and Leslie, currently connected to SSID "wirelesstoronto". I wonder how the Rogers venture HotSpot will respond since they charge 0.15cents a minute for extremely localized access.

Anyways, I spent a couple of hours here typing up something I've been reflecting upon the last few days. Here it is!

Motivation Theory

http://nikefootball.nike.com/nikefootball/siteshell/index.jsp

I personally thought Nike did an amazing job with their latest campaign "Joga Bonito". Their TV segment is ruthlessly short, like less than 10 seconds, and it kinda leaves you going "huh, wtf was that?" But there's something about that cheezy Joga Bonito logo and Eric Cantona's heavy English accent that gives the ad some kind of undefinable attraction, and eventually persuaded me to visit the site (this happens like once every thousand ads I would think).

These ads are good because they seem to have a certain degree of heavy substance to them, unlike other ads which are just too artistic. They feel like those art books you find in bookstores, ethereal, flimsy, transient. A recent example is that silly ad from the Heart and Stroke foundation ("what if we could stop a heart attack before it actually happens"). There's just too much postproduction, like some dude obsessed over the ad for ages or something. Green filters, "bad TV reception" effects, but overall the it just feels corny.

Yeah, there must be a LOT of postproduction and obsession over the Nike campaign too, but the difference is that the obsession is far more transparent. The whole overall package and pacing is so good I can really focus on the ad itself and not be distracted by cheezy techniques.

今日終わったらそれでトロントの最後の週末だな。どれぐらい日本にいるのはまだわからないけど、とにかく長いと思う。沖縄で何をするかな。仕事ビザ取ったから、何とか仕事をやるかな。

あんまりそこに行きたくないけど、あそこに彼女いるから、行きたくないけど行く。もう１ヶ月間会ってないから、多分始めの日はとても感動してすばらしいエッチすると思う。どっかのラブ・ホテルで泊まって超楽しみだ。

やっぱり、一番怖いのは、私はいい加減しなくて、彼女の家族とケンカになる。自分の家じゃないから、自分のスペースもないし、多分ほかの人がいるときにリラックスできない。これは真剣な問題になるかどうかってまだわからないけど、こっちは問題になりそうと思う。

後５日間。

Ok, so the final score was 2-1 Arsenal, and I....

FINALLY SAW AN HENRY GOAL

Thank god. And it wasn't a cheesy penalty either. Guess it's a good thing I don't know any bookies.

Let's put it this way. I've watched over 300 minutes of Arsenal soccer this season , and in those 300 minutes of soccer, I have yet to see a single goal. Since they average slightly more than one goal per 90 minute game, something is statistically fucked.

OMG, I wake up this morning, turn on the TV as soon as possible to catch the Arsenal vs. Liverpool match, and the scoreline? 1-0 Arsenal. Scorer? Thierry Henry. Hahah. I swear to go somebody up there is trying to fuck with me. How else can you explain this?

Champions League match 1st leg: Arsenal vs. Real Madrid
Scoreline: 1-0 Arsenal
Henry scored? Yes, one of the most brilliant goals of the season
Did I watch? No, missed the whole thing

Champions Leage match 2nd leg: Arsenal vs. Real Madrid
Scoreline: 0-0
Henry scored? No
Did I watch? The whole fucking thing while commentators kept remarking that the match would be filled of goals. There were none.

First EPL meeting: Arsenal vs. Liverpoool
Scoreline: 0-0
Henry Scored? No
Did I watch? A good 75 minutes of the match

Second EPL meeting: Arsenal vs. Liverpool
Scoreline: 1-0 Arsenal (Currently being played)
Henry Scored? Yes
Did I watch? I only missed the first fucking 20 minutes, there goes the Henry goal. Where are the bookies? I'll put anything on nobody scoring for the rest of the match. 40 minutes into the match now (watching live). I GUARANTEE you, check the final scoreline, it will be 1-0. I'm a fucking oracle.

Wow, this was an incredible WoW video:

Illegal Danish - Super Snacks

Editing and dialogue are so wacky and witty! Not to mention it seems made from the ground up for very short attention spans.

I have to admit that traffic in Toronto is an unbelievable stress builder. There is nothing more aggravating than being stuck in stop and go traffic, especially if it's four times a day. Today I went to pick up my Working Holiday Visa downtown, and for some retarded reason, traffic was horrible from Eglinton down to Don Mills at 2pm in the afternoon. On the way back, I should have taken local, but out of habit, back on the dvp, back for another stop and go fest.

Then just an hour after I came back home, I had to pick up my parents at the airport. Holy fucking god. Every single time, on the 401 both ways, stop and go, stop and go. Even last week, on a Saturday, it was stop and go. Stop and go, stop and go, stop and go. Average speed is like 10km/h. What made it even worse is that everytime I tried to vent my stress, my parents would say "Gee Terry, I'm so sorry for making you pick us up". Okay, fuck that. It's not about picking you up, it's about going through this god awful traffic. So I'm supposed to just hold all that stress in and say jack shit. According to modern health reports, that's a recipe for cancer.

I envisioned myself performing a vehicular verison of M.Bison's Flaming Torpedo, knocking over every car blocking my path and streaking down 200km/h on the highway while all the other cars are sent flying out in flames.

Do you ever see a super aggressive driver who cuts in front of people sponteously and you're thinking "What's wrong with this dude?". Well, if he didn't have to drive thorugh shit traffic all day long, he wouldn't be like that. A person's aggressiveness on the road is a function of how many times they have to drive through stop and go traffic, and whether or not they have a type A personality or not. If he also had a bad day at work, well that's just a cocktail for a total stress explosion.

I really do feel sorry for commuters who have to travel this route, in particular the 401 west of Yonge. You have to be nothing short of the Dalai Lama to endure traffic like this and go unfazed. Like my friend said, I would much rather drive four times the distance without traffic than to face another case of the Stop and Goes.

Right now, I feel like I need to undergo some kind of catharsis to release all this pent up stres of driving more than three hours in stop and go. If something isn't done about the dvp/401, I'm pretty sure Toronto will start accumulating some pretty bad statistics like higher rate of cancer or something and nobody will know why.

As I watch the Arsenal vs. Real Madrid match on TV while browsing the auction house in WoW on my wonderful LG notebook on a very peaceful Wednesday afternoon, a feeling of wonderful peace washes over me.

Right now I have to say that I'm pretty hooked on the Hunter. She's at Lv 44 now. Wow. That's like, 20 levels in less than two weeks I think. Well I guess after playing this game like five times over, you start to memorize the quests and have a gut instinct as to where to go at any point in the game.

I'm really grateful that my GF picked a Troll Female to start off because I found that they have some of the nicest animations for shooting a bow. The NE female animation is surprisingly awful becuase they seem to stiffen up way too much. Female trolls shoot it much more gracefully Ona side note, male trolls shoot a bow "nigger style" which is pretty unique, they also cast spells "Hadoken" style. I find thatfemale trolls in general have nice posture and general aesthetic, especially when fully geared up. Unfortunately I'm really forced to cover up their head because their hairstyles are so awful. Their feet are also always exposed, and their jumping animations can't compare to the NE ones.

I think I'll probably take this Hunter to 60 and then call it quits until maybe the expansion comes out. Hopefully.....

I delayed my trip to Okinawa yet again. This marks the third time I pushed back the departure date, and quite honestly I'm confused as to why I keep doing this like a bad habit. It's almost ironic, that the once hypersexed Terry would actually think of delaying a trip to see his girlfriend. If anything, I should be pushing it forward.

Indeed, I do want to see Shinobu again, but this is tempered by the fact that I don't have my own personal space in Okinawa. I'll be living in her parents house, and to be honest it's a bit to small. There's only one bathroom, shared by everybody, which means everytime I want to take a shower I actually have to think about what articles of clothing to bring with me. Most likely I won't even have a room, sleeping ghetto style on the floor or sharing a convertable single bed. I won't have my own car meaning that I can't go anywhere on a whim. And, even though I'm bringing my laptop, I won't have my "Gaming station", which is simply a proper chair, table, and all the proper accessories for instant-access gaming without plugging or pulling any cables. And there's of course the grueling 20 hour fight plus the jet lag.

Just by typing that whole paragraph up, I feel like postponing the trip indefinitely. Five years ago, I would have slept on the streets for a single night with a decent Asian girl. But having completely milked that pleasure for more than three years, I have to say, it's kind of lost it's appeal. Everything is always fifty times more fun the first time. Honestly, even having sex with a different Asian girl has lost a lot of its appeal. I envision the whole thing happening and instead of the pleasure I only imagine the various issues that might along the way - the motivation is just no longer there I guess. Obviously that if girls come knocking on my door, I sure as hell won't say no, but that almost never happens.

One might wonder why I just don't cancel the whole thing. Well, that's certainly doable, but for some reason, knowing that I'm going to leave Toronto in the near future makes staying in Toronto that much more fun. I guess it forces me to appreciate it more everyday. I have to say while I'm not exactly having a total ball doing nothing in Toronto, if anything, it's comfortable, and whenever I settle into a comfortable pattern, intertia seems to prevent me from moving anywhere. It's kinda like that guy who plops down in his EZ Chair 5000 and can't be bothered to get up to get a drink, even though he's thirsty. Not that he wants to sit down in the EZ Chair for the rest of his life; that would be depressing; but just for the moment, he can't find the willpower to get out of the EZ Chair.

Having to take care of that cat is quite bothersome. Not because it involves a lot of actual work per se, but because I am always seem to be hypersensitive to what other people are thinking. In this case, I find myself always trying to second guess the cat when it's meowing or whatever. "What the hell could you possibly want?", I think to myself, and it drives me nuts. It looks like he really wants to go out but I'm not supposed to let him. So he just sits by the window looking outside and meowing.

Before my parents left I told them I would give a cat a strict diet and not feed him anything but the basic necessities. But when I look at him, sitting in the same goddamn place for 8 hours straight, I feel sorry for the dude so I feed him some Pounce (the cat equivlanet of potato chips). I think I've fed him like ten pieces already. So much for the strict diet.

I wonder how well I can look after my own kids, should I have any in the future. Given my psychotic neuroticism, I doubt I could make a good father. I believe that being a good parent involves not being overly attached to your own kids, which seems ironic at first I guess. The example that comes to mind is from the movie Syriana. Matt Damon and his wife are at a resort swimming pool, and their son is being bullied by kids on the other side. Matt sees this and is about to intervene, when his wife pulls his arm and says "Don't. It's good for his autonomy." I think a bit of disciplined laissez-faire is always in good order, and as long as you steer them away from the most horrendous of inescapable human desires (ie Schedule 1 drugs) they should turn out better than if you micromanaged their entire life.

Parents left for Seattle today, which means I'll be home alone for about a week. Not a big deal, except now I have to look after the cat. I generally suck at looking after things, so hopefully he doesn't end up dead by next week.

11:45am this morning, I suddenly realize it's Saturday, which means: possibility of an Arsenal match on Sportsnet

What do you know, there is an Arsenal Match

Already 88 minutes played, and the scoreline

4-0 Arsenal

Henry scored 2.

The play R.Madrid this Wednesday. Since they're not going to air that in North America, you can bet anything Henry will score on that match too. Thus preserving the curse percentage at a full 100%

Fuck.

Hunter is at lv36 now. The more I play the Hunter, the more I realize how unbalanced the classes are. Obviously people who've played Hunters all their lives will not understand since after 300 hours of playing, nothing's easy, nothing's hard, everything's just normalized. But I've played a Rogue, Mage, Shaman, till the 50's, and I've sampled a Warlock and Priest in their 30's, and nothing comes close to just how EASY it is to play a Hunter.

Hunters are the #1 PvE kings, end of story. You get a pet with Growl and Screech, and it holds aggro as tight as a virgin's pussy. With a Hunter, I can grind effectively and watch TV at the same time. Here's how you do it:

Step 1: Hunter's Mark, Pet attack (one macro)
Step 2: Serpent Sting
Step 3: Aimed Shot.
Step 4: Watch TV for 15 seconds (as Auto-Shot takes care of the rest)

Result: Dead mob, Pet suffers like 20% health dmg at most, which will recover fully by the time you move on to the next mob. Basically, ZERO Downtime. All the mana that was used up at the start of the fight is recovered completely by the end. Even if your Internet connection is unstable (which it was for me on wireless at the beginning), it doens't matter. You will not lose 1HP of health, even if the game freezes on you mid-fight. You could play WoW in the fucking South Pole with the shittest Internet Connection known to man and still grind effectively with a Hunter.

No other class can kill mobs in PvE with such automated efficiency. Even the rogue with SS spamming at least requires that you watch your combo points and health. The mage? Forget it. You need to time Frost Nova or you will suffer even more downtime. Warlock? It's too easy to pull aggro off a Voidwalker, and if you don't use the Voidwalker, then you probably have to pay attention to what's going on.

The Hunter also excels at killing multiple mobs that would put other classes in a real pinch. The pet and the Hunter combined have so much HP and armor that it would take a REAL disaster (like 5 mobs going after you and Feign Death being resisted) for you to wipe. I have had so many instances where I would pull THREE extra yellow mobs and still there's no sense of panic, since I have Feign Death on 30 secs or I can tell my pet to suicide aggro. A Hunter has so many ways of getting away from bad situations compared to like a Rogue, who is often caught in bad situations with their 5 minute vanish and sprint being used up.

Ok, so Hunters are the #1 PvE Kings. Maybe they suck at PvP for a counter-balance? Hell, no! I don't think I've had an easier time with field PvP since the Shaman. The #1 enemy in field PvP, is of course the Rogue, and a Hunter is unanimously the #1 anti-Rogue class.

All you have to do, before fighting any mob, is to lay a Freezing Trap (instant cast, 50 piddly mana, you just have to overcome your own laziness to push the button), stand on it, and then start the fight as normal. 90% of field PvP rogues are too jittery to think about Detecting Traps and trying to Disarm them. If you're worried about that last 10%, no worries! Just Flare the area you're standing on (again, Instant Cast, some inconsquential Mana Cost), and now Rogues have NO way of landing an opener. In any case, as long as you just push a few buttons before starting a fight, most of the time, you will have a Rogue frozen for 10-15 secs if they try to gank you. And as we all know, if you give a Hunter enough time to gain 30 yards of distance from any Melee class, they can so easily kite you to death, wihtout even getting touched. Once again, I have wonder, why does this class get Mail armor? It's just ridiculous.

Which brings me to my next point: kiting. It is almost baffling how a Hunter has THREE deadly insta-attack spells that can be cast from a max range of 43 yards. These are: Arcane Shot, Serpent Sting, and Concussive Shot. What's the big deal about insta-cast 43 yard spells? Well, it's just too easy to run around and mash these three buttons and emerge victorious. Not even a Shaman or Mage can compete with the Hunter's super-easy kiting. 43 yards!!!! To top that off, a Hunter can instant-cast Aspect of a Cheetah to gain even more distance making kiting even easier!

Yes, if a Rogue catches the Hunter in a bad situation, then more than 90% of the time, the Rogue wins. But if a Hunter catches the Rogue in any situation, than 100%, the Hunter will win, because of how cheap kiting is. As a Hunter, if I see any melee class within 10 levels of me, I will not hestiate to open fire, simply because I know kiting will always save my ass and give me the upper hand. However, as a Rogue, there are certain classes that I wouldn't even touch even if they were fighting another mob (pally, warrior, warlock).

These are all observations after playing a Hunter up to 36. Apparently they just keep getting better and better.

Been using the LG semi-intensively over the last.. uhh... two days? I'm still in disbelief that I'm satisfied with this notebook. I guess I made myself so paranoid about being disappointed that anything decent would have been good enough. Then again, in this frenzied cost-cutting world, finding a "decent" product is almost impossible. Good engineering principles are often in conflict with good business practices, and like any organism forced survive in a hostile environment, over time it's the engineering principles that are the first to go. Just look at the Toshiba laptops. I have been almost dumbfounded at how unreliable these machines are - the screens are of totally varying quality, the keyboard sometimes caves in the centre, every other model seems to have an overheating problem - it's simply stupendous how they can get away with this. Initially, when I still trusted Toshiba, I was on the verge of buying an A70 for it's glorious screen until I saw http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ihatemytoshibaa70/. It's a whole yahoo group dedicated to hating this model for it's overheating problems...

I've run into one issue with the LG that I guess should bother me, but not too much, is that the LCD's color gamut is very poor - in other words it can't naturally reproduce a large range of colors. This means that a lot of colorful images tend to lose their impact because certain highlights and subtle shades are not represented properly. But it's glare coating and super clear text make up for that I suppose.

Ok, enough about notebooks. This was the last goal by Henry against Real Madrid, a match that I absolutely didn't want to miss, but I missed it anyways. It seems my running curse of missing every Arsenal goal when I don't watch is still healthy as ever.