linterry's blogger

Yesterday night my fever rose to 39.4 Degrees which was pretty nasty. I was slightly delirious and in general just felt like total shit. I've been taking continuous dosages of ibuprofen to manage the chills, fever, and nausea, but it didn't seem to be getting any better after a few days so at around 1am in the morning I went to the emergency ward at a nearby hospital in Haebaru.

At this hospital, I was examined by two of the most incompetent doctors I have seen in my life.

Like in many medical establishments, there was a extremely young "doctor in training" who kept asking endless quesitons and typing in my responses into the computer. The guy kept shrugging his shoulders and saying "hmm, sou desu ne" like he had no idea what was wrong with me. Occasionally the woman behind him would chime in and give us some fairly useless information, little did I know that she was the real doctor on duty. She looked like she was barely over 30, and the guy was probably around my age.

Basically, I had inexperienced juniors diagnosing my illness.

After a blood test and influenza test, which pretty much showed nothing except that I was "likely already on the way to recovering", I was still left with one burning quesiton: "what the hell was wrong with me?" Why were the chills so intense? Why was the fever so cyclic? Why did I sweat profusely everytime I took ibuprofen? They could not provide any answers or any pointers to what was wrong with me, except that it was probably a "Generic viral infection". It's not a cold, it's not the flu, it's probably just a "Viral infection". Come again?

Which virus?
"Don't know"
Will I recover?
" I hope so".

Wow, I thought part of the doctors job is to reassure the patient and tell them what's going on. Needless to say, I was really frustrated. To add insult to injury the bill came to 18,000 yen.

I don't know about you but my MP3 playlist has been pretty much stagnant over the past year or so, with very few additions. I guess without a radio, it just takes too much effort to wade through all the new releases out there to find something that I like.

Of course, it's just a matter of time before I hear something in a store or a restaurant that really catches my ear when I'm just minding my own business. About three weeks ago I was wandering through the BEST Denki electronics superstore in downtown Naha when this awesome, Naruto opening-esque track comes on. It featured a really passionate, in-your-face young vocalist and really well-engineered distortion guitar backings. Immediately I wanted to know who was the artist, but I guess I'm just too embarassed to ask the clerk, so I let it pass.

Today, I found out who that track belonged to, ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION (also known as ajikan to the locals here). I personally think this is one of the dumbest names for a band. It's not funny, it's not cool, it's just plain stupid... but the stuff the band produces is quite something. You may have heard one of their badass hit songs from the opening of earlier episdoes of Naruto - "Haruka Kanata" (remember the screaming vocals?)



I know nobody would want to listen to a band called ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION, but trust me, as someone who is a total sucker for hit sounds and never gets suckered by "fringe music", this stuff is pretty good (they are a total hit in Japan)

http://www.sonymusic.co.jp/Music/Info/AKG/disco/index.html

Take a listen to the second track of their newest album World Apart (ワールドアパー) which is a hit song similar to Haruka Kanata (遙か彼方) from their oldest album. Haruka Kanata is a total kick-ass track so if you listen to just one song listen to that one. Amazingly, their stuff is practically all the same, using the same instruments and harmony techniques over and over again, so once you've heard a few, you've heard them all, but they're all pretty good stuff.

OMFG, only like a few weeks after recovering from a nasty double cold, I now have the shivers and a mild fever. I'm guessing it's becausde yesterday, I went skating, and it was so goddamn humid inside that the whole rink was smothered in fog (it was mildly entertaining at first, to be sure). Going with what I said about humidity last time, when it's really high (70%+) it allows cold to penetrate all resists (ie clothes). A couple of times during skating I unusually had to resign to the counter area where it's a lot warmer, because I felt so cold despite wearing many layers of clothing.

The same damn thing happened at Hualien a couple of years ago. That was just about the worst vacation trip I took, waking up at 6:00am, not getting enough sleep, getting a severe case of the shivers, and even barfing my guts out at a restaurant. I have lived through countless -25?C winters in Toronto without a hitch, yet when it's humid, even -3?C can be simply unbearable.

I really miss Toronto now... especialy the food. I would f*cking kill for a ribs dinner at Baton Rogue, or even a simple Quiznos Italian Sub with Miss Vickie's Potato Chips. Or a goddamn Vietnamese Pho.. ohhh mannnn. The food in Okinawa, I have to admit after being here for a month, sucks. It was all rather interesing and tasty the first few times, but I'm very surprsied how quickly a diet of Ramen, Sushi, and Soy Sauce Meats becomes repulsively unappealing. To reconcile my craving for Western foods, I've been hitting up Mister Donuts and A&W more often than I should, but that's like trying to appease your sexual appetite by masturbating - it just abates the cravings instead of actually hitting the spot.



Ok, here's a picture of the landscape surrounding Southern Hill Sports World (the only place to skate in Okinawa). Nice view huh? If only they did something about the goddamn humidity!

Exciting stuff in this year's UEFA Champions League: The Finals will feature Arsenal against Barcelona in Paris on May 17th. The Arsenal vs. Villareal 2nd leg was heart-stopping drama - in the 88th minute, with the game still scoreless and Arsenal being 1-0 up on aggregate, Arsenal concede a penalty! But Jens Lehmann makes a million dollar save against Villareal's marksman Riquelme, thus preventing extra time and securing Arsenal the win. If Arsenal go on to win the Finals, this will be a unforgettable save for the history books



The other semi-final match was a goalless draw and thus Arsenal and Barcelona (my favorite two clubs) will now meet each other in the UEFA Champions League finals.

Even though I ordered OCN digital cable with more than five sports channels all the Champions League matches are annoyingly on J-Sports Plus, which costs a ridiculous 1330yen/month. Luckily, it seems all the Champions League matches can be downloaded via BitTorrent only hours after the live match ends. Thankfully, NTT Flets (the name of the defasco Internet provider in Japan) does not throttle torrents like Rogers.

In totally different news, yesterday my gf brought out a dehumidifier to dry some clothes late at night, and I've been hanging around the damn machine ever since then. I know most people don't give a shit about something as trite as humidity but to me it's become very important. When humidity is really high here (like 70%+) it's really uncomfortable - clothes get sticky really fast and the heat becomes simply unbearable. In fact, even the cold becomes unbearable, because it seems no matter how many layers of clothing you put on, humidity allows the cold to penetrate through it (kinda like the Cold Mastery ability in Diablo II - ignore resists)

I feel like half my brain is wasted on containing the annoyance generated by humidity. Perhaps this is why tropical countries always seem to be underdeveloped - when it's hot and humid, people just can't settle down. They're always on the move, wanting to do this, do that, and they're rarely at home. In fact, I'm sure if someone accumulated statistics on Average Time Spent At Home between tropical countries and temperate countries, I'm sure there would be a huge discrepancy. It's hard to imagine anyone in Taiwan or Okinawa spending the entire day at home on a hot summer day with the Air Conditionier running 24/7, but in North America it's perfectly normal.

The funny thing is I lived three years in Taiwan and never complained about the humidity, but I guess I'm like a cranky old geezer now - all the small discomforts bother me to no end. I had to pressure my gf to kick her sister out of her room because she is the only one who has a real mattress with springs (everyone else just sleeps on the floor, it's okay for a few nights, but after a month my body is starting to ache like crazy).

I've applied to a few schools to be a part-time English teacher. Obviously this isn't exactly something I really want to do, but it would be nice to earn some money just to stop myself from being paranoid about Shinobu's family thinking I'm a total bum (which in all fairness, I currently am). To redeem myself, I wash the dishes religiously and consistnetly. I think it makes some of them feel uncomfortable.

I found this old guitar wrapped up in a leather bag in our room upstairs. No strings broken, tuning was a bit difficult, but all in all it's in very playable shape. I belongs to my gf's mother, who is pretty good at the guitar.

I still marvel at how much time it takes to learn the guitar to the point where you can play chords cleanly without accidentally muting other strings... compared to the piano, where just about anybody can play any chord cleanly if told which keys to press. Sometimes I want to karaoke with a few songs but when I find that a really plain vanilla chord like say Bmaj has the most ridiculously impossible fingering, I just let out a big sigh and curse this blasted instrument. So really, it's just random luck that any given song can be guitar karaoke-able for a beginner like me. If it's got chords like Cmaj, Dmaj, Amin, Emaj etc. etc., I'm good to go. If it just has a few chords like Fmin or Bmaj, it's over.

Hopefully this time around I will have enough motivation and perserverance to actually surpass a critical point and condition my body and hands to play a guitar effectively. I'm roughly at the point where I'm getting close to playing that goddamn Fmaj chord cleanly. I'm so amazed at how people get good at this instrument - unlike the piano or drums, it's not very beginner-friendly and it's difficult to produce just a nice sound without proper training.

So, as you can probably notice, I finally got around to changing the super-old template (or lack of one, I should say) to something more modern and visually appealing. I don't know what prompted me to do this except that I was really bored on a Sunday afternoon and I got a case of "upgrade-itis" - where I have these sudden urges to upgrade or improve something in my life. Generally I try to stay away from modifying things like blogger templates because I personally feel it's really tacky whenever someone changes their blogger design.... again.... yet I have to admit that that stark white page with no self-picture wasn't very inviting or appealing for random viewers (should they even exist).



Today we went to to Jef, a seemingly Okinawa-exclusive fast food chain store. This particular Jef was located at the Costa Village Espana, a complex of sorts situated right next to the ocean. It was a really nice place.


Jef is really good, in terms of food engineering technique I think they are almost on par with McDonalds. Most local people here think it's pretty much the same as A&W, which isn't too far from the truth.



Their fries were surprisingly good, probably ranking slightly behind McDonalds and somewhat ahead of A&W. I had their Fried Chicken, Bacon Cheeseburger, Chili Dog, and a local speciality "agepan" which is fried bread laced with powdered spices - all of them were very satisfying.



What else is new... we're going to get digital cable tv in a few days, which means I can finally watch some sports (the four default channels are nothing but repetitive variety shows). Champions League, NBA Playoffs, and of course World Cup 2006. This World Cup will mean so much more to me this year now that I know a lot more players and who they are. I will be cheering mostly for France, of course, because of Thierry Henry, and because I went to a French immersion school at elementary school. Hopefully they won't bomb out like 2002. I'll also have an interest in Brazil, Portugal, and England, just because there are a few players I really like on each team.

I've been here more than a month and gradually my lifestyle has slipped once again into a "aimless drift" of sorts. I don't have any schedule or pattern to speak of other l than eating and sleeping (and even those I have trouble maintaining). At times, yes, while I'm lying in bed and staring at a dark ceiling, I wonder, "why the hell am I even here" and that question quickly expands into "what am I going to do with my life?". Just thinking about these questions gets my head running in circles real quick.

One thought that comes into my mind is this: Most certainly, I have no ambition. I don't have any motivaiton to put forth the effort required to become a lawyer, a doctor, or even just a regular joe schmoe working 9 to 5. I'm pretty much a poster boy of the ill effects of spoiling your child - they become mentally incapable of appreciating money. I sometimes find it mysterious how I'm fighting against myself - "MONEY IS IMPORTANT", I keep saying to myself, but it just doens't click. It's kinda like telling yourself to fall in love with someone, or fall out of love in someone - the brain just doesn't respond to simple orders like that. That's pretty much how I ended up, and I have to deal with that reality I suppose by taking criticism left and right. I suppose once the criticism hits a critical point that will provide enough fuel to motivate me to do something - I wonder if it will be too late at that point.

I guess it would have been really nice if I grew up properly.

Another thought that has plagued me recently: all desires come from voids. When there is a void in your soul, it means there is something in reality that you do not like, and you would like to fix that. This gives birth to motivation. You are compelled to change reality as you see fit in order to fill the void in your heart. Should you succeed in filling the void, you are rewarded with transient feelings of pleasure, elation, and euphoria. Should you fail, you will be punished with transient feelings of anger, frustration, and hopelessness.

People come pre-installed with a bunch of voids. They need to eat, sleep, and have a comfortable home. They also need to feel accepted, feel loved, feel like they're worth something to someone. These needs are universal and are built into us from the day we exit our mother's womb.

People nowadays however, have a lot more voids than the standard set. Some feel they are nothing until they get rich (or die trying). Some need to acquire more than 50 articles of clothing per month. Some need to acquire the best gear in online games. Some need to be around a Internet computer 24/7. Some need to touch a cell phone every two minutes. Some need to drink five cups of a coffee a day. Some need their TV to be calibrated to 6500K. These needs are associated with the standard set but have somehow been taken to unprecented levels, mostly through the over-abundance of capitalism.

People who carry too many voids at once seem to suffer from a plethora of symptoms. They are impatient, fidgety, have a bad attention span, and seem to require some kind of mental stimulation device (cigarettes, cell phone, Internet) ready at hand at all times. The last thing you should ever do to them is to leave them sitting there with absolutely nothing to do - their heads will be buzzing so hard it will be impossible for them to sit still. They are also prone to anger and frustration should reality refuse to bend to their will. This is the kind of people modern society seems to be churning out recently, at faster and faster rates.

The exact opposite - a person who carries few voids - is fast becoming extinct. Maybe there are still some amongst the eldery, or some hardcore Buddhists who meditate daily... but by and large the average number of voids per person is increasing steadily day by day. In other words, as a whole modern society is getting harder and harder to satiate.

What is better? To let yourself become endlessly saddled with voids and struggle all your life to fill them? Like I have discussed with the homeostasis theory, voids do not just disappear forever once you've satisfied the most current set. By and large the more you entertain your voids, the more prone you are to create more of them in the future. They perpetuate themselves, so to speak.

The Buddhist way I suppose is to try to keep your voids in check - be wary of anything that involves gratifying yourself (filling voids) because the voids will just keep coming back stronger than ever. A Buddhist life is probably very boring and uninteresting but it is also devoid of suffering, anger, and frustration. In a lot of theoretical ways, it also seems to be ideal in terms of preserving the environment and living at peace with the world.

WTF Is this?



















It's a Menu at Bikkuri Donkey Restaurant!
Japanese people always seem to invent the most zaniest, useless stuff.
















Winning Eleven 10 Promotional Display

Only in Japan would there be so much hype for this game. While I'm looking forward to the game, I have a feeling it's just going to be the same thing again with really strange tweaks that will take weeks to get used to.













Sports Depot

In Okinawa's newest Ameku district, there are lots of American superstore retail outelts like this one. I must confess I enjoy stores like this because of how anonymous I become and the sheer amount of freshly shrink-wrapped goods surrounding me.

So, not much has happened lately. I'm finally in the recovering stages of a really nasty cold, thank god it's finally over. Unfortunately I spread the virus to my gf and if she ends up spreading it to the rest of the family I'm going to have to hang my head in guilt for the next week. I've occasionally helped my gf's father at his farm doing random manual labour like pruning trees n shit - it's totally random stuff. Unfortuantely I really don't think I'm of much help since when it comes to manual labor I really do suck ass, the only things my hands are good at are playing video games and whacking off.

Right, so here's a picture of a wild chicken that was strolling around the area.



My gf gave him some food, and then all of a sudden her dad came along and threw a wooden branch at it's head. Apparently this chicken has been here for two years and has bitten a number of passerbys. I'm surprised the fowl didn't drop dead from the impact. Well, that pretty much gave me a preview of what would happen to me if I did any inapprorpaite things to my gf's sisters.



Okinawa Bank. I guess it's kinda weird that within only a few kms of wild chickens, you have modern banks like these. Oh yeah, did I mention that Japanese service is just out of this world? Since coming here I have yet to meet a single rude cashier/waitress/teller. From restaurants to gas stations to love hotels, everyone in the Japanese service industry seems to follow the same manual. Voice intonation, body language, facial expression, everyting is honed to perfection to make the customer feel like he is the king. Body langauge and intonation I think are underestimated. Sometimes in Toronto a McDonalds cashier will say "Can I take your order" but their body langauge and intonation makes it feel like he's saying "what the fuck do you want, bitch?" Here, it's like "please, sir, I'll do anything you tell me to, what would you like today?" Very pleasant.

So, it's nearly a month since I came to Okinawa, yet still I don't feel accustomed to the surroundings. My biggest gripe is with the weather. Have you ever noticed that there isn't a single tropical country that is a leader in technology? All the biggest names in technology are from countries that are temperate or colder. In fact, it seems the colder the better - some of the most hardcore coders come Scandinavian countries (eg. Linus Torvalds, .MOD/.S3M trackers). Think of all the best international companies in the world and practically none of them are from tropical countries.

Pure coincidence? Maybe. It does seem funny that no matter how much Taiwan struggles to generate world class companies, they still end up primarily becoming OEM production facilities. All the breakthrough stuff, the newest CPU's, the newest GPU's, are all developed in the States,
Europe, or mainland Japan. Ditto with Hong Kong, they're really good at trading (Y.H.Yee Trading Co. etc. etc.) and ripping off brand name designs, but when's the last time you heard of an Intel killer or an ATI killer coming from Taiwan or HK?

I do have a wacky theory for this strange anomaly: the human brain simply thinks better in dry, cold envrionments. Why this is, I have no idea, but it seems to be true. When it's hot here in Okinawa, my brain is completely stifled by the heat. Thoughts are running around but they run around like crazy and I find myself far more impulsive than normal. In contrast, on a bleak, cold, winter day in Toronto, I can wrap myself in a blanket, sip a warm cup of coffee, and my thoughts are much more calm and collected. I'm more in a position to act on logical thought rather than an immediate impulse.

Even within Japan, it seems the prefecture of Okinawa shares a lot more in common with Taiwan than it does with the mainland. The mainland seems ruthlessly cold, efficient, and machine-like, whereas Okinawa feels more like a indifferent play-all-day resort.

South Korea broke onto the technology scene years ago with a bang - and they have truly achieved world class status thanks to Samsung. Dry winters in South Korea? Check.

Dumbass pic of me at a wharf in southern Okinawa, dribbling a ball rather dangerously. The ocean is so nice here, I can see why all the locals keep saying they can't live without the ocean nearby - the air is so clean, the wind is so refreshing, and it's so damn quiet - really a great place to let ones nerves cool down. I think I'll come here at least three or four times a week.


Lotteria, a fast food chain store that serves food remarkably similar to McDonalds.


I had their shrimp burger. It was eeringly similar to the McChicken, except with a shrimp aftertaste rather than a chicken aftertaste. The fries also were fairly similar, almost to the point where I was thinking Lotteria was busting their asses trying to copy the McDonalds Taste.


A food court at the Oroku Jusco.

I've started driving by myself lately and taking random solo car trips. It feels so good to break away from this "estrogen heavy" house. Three daughers and no brothers makes for a lot of talk about clothes, fashion, cute babies, and other female-only topics - it's okay a few times but to hear this kind of stuff day after day after day, it really gets to me. Sometimes just seeing any one of them coming home with another shopping bag full of clothes gets me unjustifiably irritated

Sometimes I feel that if it weren't for my irrepressable biological need for sex I would just as soon cut all ties with the female population. Make no mistake about it, the only reason I would pro-actively talk to a girl over a guy is because I fantastize about having sex with her. Most girls, especially the modern kind, are just downright annoying, they laugh, giggle, and scream at high pitches, they keep talking about babies and how this is cute and that is cute - it's gotten to the point where sometimes I even have sick thoughts ala American Psycho where I torture, rape, and kill them, but usually the plain ol' fucking thoughts come first. I had two sexual dreams about fucking my girlfriend's sister Rino already, yet she is the one who I find the most annoying when I'm awake. Isn't that screwed? It's like, I hate her as a person, but I'd do just about anything to get one fuck.

Sorry if that was too distribuing for you, sometimes I really have to let all those thoughts in the innermost part of my brain out. Catharsis feels so good.

Shooting hoops at a random park in Haebaru


Random shot of the park. It was so damn hot, a lot of kids took off their shoes and waded in the water.



This was a pic of a meal I got from Joyfull, this chain restaurant of sorts that serves a weird mix of Western + Japanese food. It was more Awfull than Joyfull, to tell you the truth (haha, couldn't resist). It reminded me a lot of those "Western wannabe" restaurants in Taiwan, you know, with the mass-produced IKEA interiors and and a mass-produced menu that always has an awful microwaved corn soup and bland salad as the set combo. Well that's pretty much Awfull in a nutshell - surprisingly this chian store is doing really good, showing that in order to succeed in the food business (on the cheap side), all you need is 24 hour availablity, good interiors, a colorful menu designed by professional graphic artists, and of course, cheap prices that make people say "hey, that's not too expensive". It's more of a commercial haven than a food joint, to be honest.



Continuining with the "minimizing human interaction" philosophy that Japanese people are so fond of, this is how you get the waiters attention at Joyfull. Just push the button.

Back to school!




There were even more scantier ones but you have to understand it's not exactly a walk in a park to take these kinds of pictures, apparently if you get caught you could be arrested and fined. My current methodology is to simply cough while taking the picture so that the shutter SFX doesn't get heard (and no, you can't disable it, at least not easily, because phone makers are well aware of the hentai photographer problem). Ok, I'll try to get better pics next time.

I've been suffering from bronchitis over the last week. It sucks coughing up phlegm every 10 minutes especially when I'm trying to sleep. It sucks even more that I got sick while staying at my gf's house. When I can't sleep one thing I always try is sleeping at another location... unfortunately because my gf's house is so small there's no where else but a tiny cramped bed...

Times like this I really wish I was back in Toronto. In fact recently every day has become a bit of a grind of sorts, to stay polite and contain myself while in front of my gf's family. It's ok to do this facade politeness thing once in a while but doing it day after day - it gets to me. Add to the fact that my gf's family is so tightly knit so I'm the who's usually ignored. It's rather irritating but I'm so tired of "struggling to get attention" by making inane comments like "oh wow, is that so?" that I quickly retreat to my laptop and indulge myself in whatever suits me. One thing I cannot stand is being the fifth wheel. I'd rather disappear from the scene than to stay around like a famished dog and pick up any of the attention scraps that are left behind. If I could only disable that automatic PR program in my brain instaed of constantly having to fight with it, that would be spectactular.

I've been driving quite a bit recently (picked up an IDP in Canada) - it's really fun driving around in Okinawa because the cars are so tiny and manuverable. The roads also curves and wind a lot which is obviously far more interesting than driving in a straight line for 5km. In case you didn't know the roads in Japan are reversed like the UK, that is people drive on the left side of the road. Surprisingly, it doesn't take much time getting used to, although sometimes I still use the wrong switch to signal a turn because the driver's seat is on the right side of the car.

I think I've spent so much time with my girlfriend that I've essentially exhausted the bulk of the pleasure of being with her. I guess it's kind of the same as WoW - at the beginning, it's like, holy shit, everything's so grand, so wonderful, so amazing... you'd be happy just walking around not killing anything and just exploring. But after 1000 hours, it's like the entire game gets reduced to getting loot, period. Nobody cares about the architecture or the landscapes or the lore, they just want their goddamn loot. I have seen some really bad cases where someone was denied their expected loot - it's a real volcanic explosion of anger and frustration.

I suppose the same analogy for my girlfriend applies, if you replace loot with sex. Every now and then I need my gf for sex, but it's almost to the point where she feels like a systematic means for gratification. At the beginning of course, it's so much fun getting to know each other and exploring the other person's personality, but just like WoW, after 1000 hours, all I care about is the sex (loot). When I hold her, I don't feel anything except sexual expectations, when I talk to her, it's just to unload my mind of by rambling - but recently I've found that I can do that even better online.

I dl'ed Morrowind:Oblivion for PC recnetly. Wow, even on a (relatively) crippled Ati X600 it still manages to be breathtaking. It uses a "far distance rendering" engine like FarCry where you can see things kilometres away. Unforutnatley, it's just too easy to cheat and give yourslelf say 800,000 gold, so that totally ruins the authentic value of leveling up. Basically once you cheat you're just left with exploring the world and seeing how the game works.

Can you imagine what WoW would be like if you could level up to 60 just by typing /level 60 and get whatever epic item you coudl please by typing /giveitem [index number]? Boom, economy ruined, main hook ruined, the entire game collapses and nobody plays anything but BG PvP. "Why cheat if it ruins the game?" - well, that's another example of Rationality having no rightful place when it comes to explaining Autonomous Human Behavior. If such easily accessible cheats were implemeneted and more than 10% of the WoW population still grinded away like they do now, I'll stop having sex for the rest of my life.

So I finally leveled another character to 60, a Troll Hunter.


The moment of truth, last grind mob at Winterspring before hitting 60.



Testing out the last ranks of Aimed Shot + TrueShot Aura. 2.7k Aimed Shot crit! (on a lv7 Prarie wolf). Wowzers, and it's not like I have a smorgasboard of trinkets or epic set bonuses to pump that damage up. Just a vanilla regular 60 Hunter with a BloodSeeker. The highest crit I ever got with the 60 rogue was a 1.9k Ambush, and that's with an epic dagger.

Well right after I logged off, I immediately went to the account management page and canceled my account. I've been playing intensively, almost too intensively the last few days trying to get my way till 60. I tried joining a few PUG groups for instances to break the monotony but those just seem to take so much time and hassle to setup, mostly because I have no real friends on Mannoroth. After the 3rd time wiping on a UBRS PUG run I just thought, there's really nothing left in the game without buddies. In the later levels the game degraded into compulsive AH checking, a zillion LFG's with no success, and extremely monotonous grinding (while getting ganked by random 60 Alliance to boot).

Not to mention that spending over 1000 hours of one's life in a single game is not good for the mind or soul - everytime I finish a WoW session my head keeps rambling incessantly for the rest of the day. I should be playing the newly released Final Fantasy 12 but it simply cannotcompare to the sheer narcotic power of WoW.

Ocean-side Coffee Shop on the South side of Okinawa. Peaceful but f*cking expensive. 500 yen for a coffee, 500 yen for an Apricot Tea, and another 100 yen for a tasteless puff. Good location = monster premiums. The beach was a lot more fun.


At the beach we found a plethora of mollusks. These things are so weird... I don't think I've ever seen real live ones in my whole life. These guys walk backwards and hide really quick if they detect the slighest disturbance. It's really creepy having one of these things crawl on your hand.


I suppose you could call this the Hachi-kuro intersection of Okinawa. It's the busiest intersection in Naha city, with both the Naha Prefecture Office and Paretto Department Store looming nearby.



The KFC's in Okinawa are so unbelievably good. I attribute it to the fact that Okinawa is essentially an agriculture based prefecture/island with lots and lots of farms (you can smell pigs and cows all over the place) - so the chicken is "better" in certain ways. Also, thank god that Okinawan KFC's use the original recipe and not that crunchy chip-like spicy batter that Taiwanese KFC's use.

A really strange house in central Naha. Something about that window... makes it feel like gnomes live inside or something.



Yamada Electronics Store. This place is fricking huge! It's like the Future Shop of Japan. I also hear there's a Kojima which is equally as big.



A really high quality PS2 cable I found at Yamada... not sure what the exact format is, it's called a D-Connector, I imagine it's the same as component video just a different head.



My GF after getting her hair cut.


I can't get enough of Mister Donuts, even when I don't even want to eat Donuts! Their Yamcha menu is so damn good, even though it all tastes... "Scientific". Still, we all know how damn gratifying instant noodles can be, so imagine that instant-noodleness being applied to Yamcha... mmmmmmm....