Soontar's Adventure

Happy Burfday, Sis

2011-02-25T16:22:00.001-05:00

It’s that time of year again. Late February, time to make my sister’s “birthday card.” I call upon the past year’s worth of saved images from my favorite website (and the occasional family photograph) to produce it in Photoshop. Enjoy “onnazakari,” sister!

Let’s contrast the asburd image above with something a little more serious? Also, some readers are interested in seeing more examples of my professional work. Below is a garage (with accessories) that I’ve modelled in Sketchup lately. This is about 3.5 hours of work:

Now for a little info on my volunteer activities / training. Here is a run-down of our sort of 3-step process of translating this recent comic.

First I get the original and read/enjoy it in Japanese.

Next is the hard part – converting to English while attempting to retain the original flavor. I just write on top of it with my good ole’ Wacom.

Next, I send the marked up pages to The Other Guy, who uses them to add text to another copy of the originals he has.

A few times I’ve skipped the last step (and half of the second step) and done the whole thing myself. This involves having one original open to read, and another open in photoshop with the text bubbles whited out to type text into. While I normally don’t like using two screens at the same time, it really helps get work done at times like this.

Valentine’s Day?

2011-02-13T16:56:00.001-05:00

Let’s talk about issues related to Valentine’s Day. One issue that has been weighing heavily on my mind lately is the skirt, or lack thereof, in modern American casual dress. Basically, my stance is that there should be more skirts and less tight jeans. Now, I’ll admit, it is really a matter of taste, and there are many pros and cons to both skirts and tight trousers. However, there is one thing I see more and more that is completely tasteless – the females wearing just leggings with no skirt or dress or tunic on top. I might make an exception if the girl is a gymnast. It just looks as though something blatantly obvious has been intentionally omitted from the ensemble. Either add to it or go all the way with a bodysuit a la Seven of Nine.

Let me explain a few of the skirt’s merits. Unlike the tight trouser, the skirt obscures the shape of the wearer’s crotch and arse regions somewhat, providing a tasteful degree of civility to the person’s attire. However, there is that one in a hundred chance of a gust of wind (or other fortunate series of events) creating a rare opportunity to see those aforementioned shapes – thus the allure of a skirt. Its just like the law of supply and demand.

Well, it’s time to move on. All of my readers should already be aware of such things. Valentine’s Day cards – and their boxes. This was my favorite thing about the day when I was young and in school. Making the boxes was great, and making cards was ok as well. Receiving a hand-made card, even if it didn’t have Darth Maul on it, was much better than getting some crummy mass-produced one. This brings me to an important point I’d like to make.

Humans should make effort to invest in their comrades’ happiness. Doing something special unique to you in a way that uniquely benefits your comrade will make them happy and feel special, in a special way. Like the difference between giving someone a box of donuts, and giving someone a box of donuts you yourself baked on Sunday morning, that are all their favorite flavors. An example: Steven is a farmer, and an loves to eat toast. One day there is only one piece left, but instead of quickly om-nom-noming it before any else appears for breakfast, he cuts it in half and offers part of it to his loving wife, Jeanine. Another: You find out over time that your executive officer has chronic back pains. Using your vast network of information sources and market knowledge, you arrange for a massage robot to be assigned to your squadron, earning the thanks and respect of your now-relaxing comrade. Go out of your way to do something that benefits comrades or the public, with no direct benefit to yourself. This is like Bushido.

The opposite of this is exploiting the public or comrades with direct benefit to yourself. Some people refer to this as ‘business’ or ‘marketing’ or ‘politics.’

Present, Future, no past today

2011-02-08T14:18:00.001-05:00

Usually when I go for a month (or three) without posting to my blog, I produce a long recap of things that happened. Not today. Although I’m pretty sure this blog serves more as a written history of myself for myself, I’m ready to throw a monkey wrench into those gears for the time being. And anyone reading this knows whatever is going on anyways.

It’s Winter, a season that I’m not very good at. The cold creeps into my bones and prohibits relaxation. Then there are the grey skies. A blue sky over a snowy winter day is quite something though. Of course I do enjoy snow. I know I’ve written about this probably the past two or three winters, but I really like the way fresh snow muffles the sounds of cars on the city streets. Plus, when the snowflakes get big enough it looks just like cherry blossoms floating down from the trees in Spring. During winter, though, I think the coolest time of day is at night. Moonlight, snow, bare trees, occasional streetlights, and the cold just go together very well and create that sort of spooky graveyard atmosphere.

Let’s move on to Winter activities. I mostly stay inside to avoid the cold. I am never at a loss for things to do, however. One of my new activities is translating manga, or, to be more precise, doujinshi – not quite “underground” but a kind of self-published comic which is usually a spin-off of a larger series. Its not so much that I enjoy doing it, as much as it is a fulfilling thing to do, but at the same time very discreet. There isn’t a really huge demand for these things to be translated, nor any real reward for doing so. Still, its interesting and someone somewhere is benefitting. My little way of giving back to some kind of world community.

Before I move on, a little note about translating. Reading or listening to Japanese and understanding it as I go along is relatively quick and easy. What really disturbs me though, is spitting it back out in English. There are so many untranslatable words/non-word sounds/phrases that just don’t have an equivalent feeling in English and you just have to make do with combinations or phrases that sound a little off. Sometimes a nuance is lost, or a punchline later on in the story is disrupted. Perhaps the best translation is one that adds something for everything lost while remaining as true to the source as possible… Though, anyone will tell you – the best translator is yourself.

Now for some future: March 23rd will be a road trip to Warshington D.C. for the rare chance to see Royksopp in the United States. Also, I should be able to see my old pal from study abroad - Pietro! It will be a long drive – similar to the Chicago trip, no doubt. Disappointingly as usual, driving with a mere two people in compact car is still much cheaper than any form of public transportation available to us. I’ll be sure to load an audiobook or two onto my bubble machine.

An item in the much more immediate future: my sister’s birfday! This will involve the great Imhoff sibling tradition of sending a horrendous photoshop/mspaint collage ‘birthday card’ via email. Every year they are very treasurefull. I’m so excited about making a new one, I might start right now!

(old practice round)

Well I hope you weren’t looking forward to any vital information on intense subjects such as my career, philosophy, love life; because you won’t get any. Besides I don’t even have any of those, ha! Until next time, keep your stick on the ice!

Building Cold

2010-10-22T19:39:00.001-04:00

The weather is getting quite cold, even down into the 30s in the morning now. I’ve been staying busy with school projects and continuing to read Murakami. I finished Norwegian Wood last week and am already about 2/3 of the way through Kafka on the Shore. The former was a really fun book to read, and I really enjoyed the atmospherics, but at times it was a little depressing. This one about a kid who uses the name Kafka while he runs away is a bit more positive. The story follows two completely different characters, alternating between them per chapter. Some bizarre and mysterious events happen to both of them and bit by bit everything is starting to become connected. I’d really liked Murakami’s way of writing a low-key story, but it looks like he knows how to build suspense too!

I took a bike ride the other day when the weather was nice, and compiled a bit of video footage while riding along the Olentangy trail. I suggest muting it and playing your own soundtrack if you don’t like German stadium techno. The quality isn’t the greatest, but I think I did my best with the tools at hand. Pictured is my trusty metal steed:

I’ve taken another series of photographs documenting the building where all of my classes are held. As I’ve described before, the building looks quite cool, but really, its a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. The few places where I get a nice feeling are the library, roof garden, and the warm place on the south side with all the beat-up furniture that gets decent sunlight. Other than that it is so cold and just looking around makes your skeleton feel uncomfortable.

Looking down the latrine on the top floor.

Anyways, most of my classes are good, but to be honest, it doesn’t seem very different from when I was doing my undergraduate degree. I expected something more from graduate school really. Ah well, disappointment lurks around every corner.

I did get to make a fun project with my construction partner recently. We were required to build a 30” tall “something” made out of wood, glass, metal, and concrete that could hold a glass of water. The only other requirement was to reused any wood used to form the concrete in the end product. I received some lovely extra plywood from Dan’s cabinet project that we used, as well as a large sake bottle, some random drywall screws I had around, and some cheap quickrete shared with classmates. My partner is a shy-ish foreign girl, but I made sure to show her how to use all the tools and stuff safely and we took turns cutting, drilling, and screwing it up. We both had fun and nobody was injured! Here’s a picture of it in its present state, holding a lamp in my living room:

It was clearly the standout project amongst the graduate section of the class. I came up with the design after a session of staring blankly at the kitchen while thinking about if I want to eat something, then I fleshed it out in Sketchup of course.

Another new item in our living room here is my custom-cobbled-together kotatsu. It is basically a coffee table with a heater under it and a cloth part that goes over your lap. So you sit there on your cushion being warmed up while you drink milk tea and read your book. In fact, I think I’ll go do that right now.

Dreams, at a price

2010-10-02T22:37:00.001-04:00

September is over, and now Autumn really begins. School is ramping up to a fast pace, but of course, as the brightest student in my year, I’m handling it with no problem. Well, the last week I didn’t get enough sleep and caught a cold, but I always catch a cold when the weather changes in the Autumn. The design studio coursework this term is mostly about conceptual b.s. which I guess is ok with me, as I realize not everyone starts out with an expansive imagination and needs some time to develop it. This should result in easier grading, as the projects are all basically a participation grade. The architecture building is nice except for how cold it is, both physically and visually. Made entirely of concrete, steel, and glass, it looks cool but feels dangerous and unfriendly. Perhaps I can elaborate with photos later on.

Anyways, enough about my school life. A couple albums I’ve been looking forward to, Senior and It’s What I’m Thinking Pt. 1, really take the edge off of any sort of stress. Both albums have that deeply soothing sort of sound that can hit you right in the gut if you’re not careful.

Also, I’ve made it through a few good books lately. I listened to the audiobook of The Wind-up Bird Chronicles and read Zero History on and off and finally finished both. Both were great, the former simply because it is such a bizarre story told very calmly. I highly recommend the audiobook version of it especially if only for the narrator’s great vocal talent. Zero History, I don’t know what to say about it, but you just get this cool feeling as you’re reading it. I also read Murakami’s (author of Wind-up Bird) After Dark, which is a pretty quick read in which the entire story takes place over the course of one night. A great mix of a sort of slice-of-life story and the surreal.

The day before I caught my cold, Brandonamp and I had a pizza at Hound Dog’s a couple blocks from the place, and it was incredible. Really, that place has the best pizza I know of, you should eat it.

Cave Chronicles

2010-09-20T23:36:00.001-04:00

Brandonamp and I have moved into a new apartment. This time it is a townhouse sort of affair, nearly 3x the size of the old place downtown. There are 3 floors, one of which is pseudo-subterranean. The location is extremely convenient while at the same time relatively quiet and unpolluted by traffic. In walking distance are a grocery store, two gas stations, post office, Goodwill, Tim Hortons, CVS, Hound Dogs pizza, the Blue Danube, and various other local establishments. Right out the back is a little patio, little yard, little forest, and then the bike path and Olentangy River. Pretty nice. Now all we have to do is find that special someone to become our 3rd flatmate.

Here’s the visual tour of the interesting parts. I’ve left out the bathroom, other bedrooms, and the kitchen (its so big compared to the old one, one photo wouldn’t do it justice).

The food consumption area above gets great sunlight around suppertime. (Photo not taken at suppertime)

Descend these stairs and you enter my lair:

So there are still boxes everywhere and my tripod-coatrack is blocking the view of my cool turntable and stuff, but you should get the idea that it is very cave-like. Really this picture looks terrible. I will do an improved in-depth story on my living quarters in a few days. The lounge chair is great for reading in when located over by the cave mouth. The walls around the whole place are still pretty barren, so I plan on rounding up some cool posters/maps/art to stick on them.

Tomorrow starts my life in the OSU architecture program with some department meetings and such at 9am. Here’s hoping for free donuts!

Deep in the Heat of Septombre!

2010-09-20T23:05:00.001-04:00

So a few weeks ago, the parents and I drove out to my sister’s place in Missouri and experienced various things there. The town of Columbia is like a slightly better/bigger version of Athens. More art on and around the streets, as evidenced below. Not to mention the painting of Admiral Ackbar in the ice cream shop.

On the way there we met Jed near his home in St. Louis and ate a meal with him. Some claimed this detour contributed to our participation in a large traffic jam later that evening. Nonetheless, we had a merry bicycle ride with him the next day. The parents rented a tandem, which was actually pretty cool considering it is basically a bike with two engines. I like being an engine… that sounds weird.

We met up with a lady friend of my parents from Neighboring Kansas and ate some great food including a lamb-burger and I had a great local cream-based lager of some sort that actually tasted good. Then we went on a boring hike near the river. There were lots of frogs & toads along the way, but that got old pretty fast.

There is a cave.

On the drive back home we stayed at a ‘nicer’ hotel. It was wonderfully underpopulated, leaving the indoor pool and jacuzzi to ourselves. After a dip in the cold and warm waters, father opened a beer and soon snores could be heard throughout the room:

The September Era

2010-08-28T00:35:00.001-04:00

August is almost over, which means it will soon be the Era Of September! For me at least, a lot of cool things will be happening in this era.

1: Grad School Starts

2: New Apartment

3: Royksopp album ‘Senior’ (out Sept. 13)

4: Badly Drawn Boy album ‘It’s What I’m Thinking’ (out Oct. 4)

5: William Gibson book ‘Zero History’ (out Sept. 7)

6: Lego Universe (out Oct. 26)

7: Visiting Sister in Missouri (Labor Day Weekend)

8: Less Hot Weather

Ok, so half of those things are just new forms of entertainment appearing, but to me, my preferred musical artists, writer, and building block are very important to me. Speaking of building blocks, here are some new Lego creations since my last post:

The last picture is of a little prototype ‘tansu’ I’ve made today out of cardboard. I was thinking it would be something cool and not too difficult to make out of wood, but since I don’t have wood, screws, or a saw and stuff around, I just made a mini-version out of cardboard and Elmer’s glue. The large compartment is decorated with a section cut out of a flyer for an art gallery. The car in there is a miniature approximation of my Civic.

Now, for the past month or so, I’ve been keeping a beard on my face. I find it quite nice, and it cuts down on time spent shaving. The beard is a wonderful thing, adding a sparkling crop of maturity to my image.

I hadn’t been studying much written Japanese in a long time, so my kanji (chinese characters) vocabulary was thinning out. Then, I started playing Amagami about a week ago. Yes, it is the popular Japanese dating simulation game for Playstation 2 released last year. An anime adaptation is currently airing, which is quality as well. Anyways, thanks to Computer Science, I am able to play this sort of ‘visual novel’ on my computer. However, the main character’s dialogue and narration come up as text, so I am forced to look up and re-learn a lot of characters. Fortunately, I have a great software dictionary, and Windows Vista has great Japanese handwriting recognition built-in, so I can quickly draw an unknown character with my Wacom tablet, have Windows tell me what word it is, then look it up. One of the characters in the story is the infamous Kaoru “sex hair” Tanamachi:

I don’t think I need to explain this picture. Going through this is also helpful because I learn more modern conversational phrases and such. The thing I like about this story is that the writers didn’t skimp on the side characters. By this I mean, even the minor characters have personalities. It would be nice if someday US game companies make a few visual novels like this instead of the same old shoot-em-up games over and over again.

In other news, I found a discarded bike without wheels, seat, or grips on the street and lifted it one night. It sat there for a few days, then I decided to take it completely apart, with help from my bike tool kit and bicycle repair manual (thanks pops!). I went to great lengths to remove all parts, including removing the chain, cranks, and bottom bracket (never done before). I think it was worth picking up off the street just for the fun of mechanic work, plus I got a few serviceable parts from it that might come in handy someday. The frame is a small size made-in-China steel one, painted the most hideous purple from the ‘90s, so I will surely toss it back to alley. Mid-deconstruction:

The only other cool thing happening lately is that I attached pops’ old record player to my hi-fi and got a couple used records to play on it, which sounds pretty cool. The Stranglers’ ‘Alive and All of the Night’ live album, and Midnight Oil’s ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’ are both great for just a few bucks at Lost Weekend Records shop up in Clintonville. Which is actually quite close to my future apartment… but more on that later.

Friday Model Team!

2010-08-06T17:54:00.001-04:00

Hello dear readers. Today is friday, and I’ve decided to bring you an exciting new series of Lego models, including some instructions to build your own!

Cute vans. Short vans. Panel vans. I made three variations on the same design. Most of the parts for these come from Lego sets of the ‘90s, so they may look a little weathered or rustic, but that’s just the right sort of character for a van. The inspiration for these little vans is the entrepreneurial spirit I’ve been feeling lately while doing freelance work. Room for a driver and a good amount of cargo space is perfect for young people doing their own work wherever they please.

Anyways, enough talking, let’s commence the building. Here are the steps to complete the white van in the middle:

About 55 pieces.

The wheels and clear untinted windscreen on this are from some of my first Lego sets, and it feels great to put them into active use. Depending on the wheels you use, you can change the height of the van and the bodywork around the bottom of the chassis. Make your own pocket-sized custom van and feel the free spirit!

Crepes for a Starving Artist

2010-08-02T15:37:00.001-04:00

I’m not fond of cooking for just one person (myself), so I like to go out and get some food on the street sometimes. These two fine upstanding citizens have just began running a simple Japanese crepe cart on the streets of Columbus:

I was on my way home from a bike trip to the north end of Columbus feeling a bit peckish but reluctant to stop in some restaurant when I discovered them. Kenny and Misako are just a few years older than me, and serve the best crepes you will find in Columbus out of a shiny little street cart. Misako cooks the crepes with incredible prowess while the man takes your money (crepes are 4.50 USD). They are both friendly to talk to and are open to feedback on the crepes. Here they are having a business discussion:

The crepes are always delicious and made of fresh ingredients. I’ve had 4 or 5 different flavours now, (lemon pork belly, green tea tiramisu, okonomiyaki, karaage…) all wonderful, and the menu is always changing, so I can’t imagine growing tired of them. With their Japanese-style flavours, these crepes remind me of my visits to Japan – I’m so glad these folks appeared out of nowhere to bring a little bit of Japan to Ohio. Of course, there is a catch! Since they are street people, it can be hard to track them down without following their twitter and/or friendface pages.

In any case, I hope they stay in business for a good long while so I can eat crepes whenever I please. Also, I think it’d be great to have a few more unique sort of street food carts around the city. It just seems like a great way to provide good food to the people of the city while avoiding the hassle of owning/running an actual restaurant. I would totally choose street-cart over a restaurant/fastfood for lunch any day.

Incredulity 3/3

2010-07-10T22:09:00.001-04:00

Thanks to Denmark for my favourite building material: LEGO.

Pirate submersible combat robot. Fully poseable, yet uses hardly any TECHNIC parts. No room for a pilot, so it must be remotely operated. Propeller backpack instead of a jetpack.

Civilian seaplane (with folding landing gear, wings, solar panels). It can hold 3 minifigures, and I suppose it could be used for search-and-rescue.

Nice Little House. Not much room inside, so it mostly just looks cool. The balcony has a cool curved roof, and there’s a bit of storage space on top by the parrot and plant.

SunOut 2/3

2010-07-07T17:27:00.001-04:00

Based on the previous post, you might be thinking: “What is this guy doing, sitting round his flat all day reading books and comics and watching movies about talking wild animals and eating bonbons?!” Well yes I have been doing all those things, although bonbons consist of generic brand cookies, and I get a bit bonkers cooped up and have to get out for at least an hour or two most days.

Of course, I have been out doing things. Photographically, I was able to capture this weekend’s Doodah Parade. Enjoy a huge splatter of photographs taken by me, starting off with a lovely photo of me dad and a fish he has just caught:

I think I might just have to participate in this crazy procession next year if I can’t find an excuse not to…

In the interest of bolstering my entrepreneurial spirit (ugh) I got a yard-sale bike, fixed it up, left it sitting round my flat for a few weeks, then sold it for profit. I really enjoyed tinkering about with it… maybe someday when I’m retired I’ll start a bike shop. Which reminds me of a video I found somewhere about bikes.

The bicycle in question. Purchased by a gothic-looking couple driving a baby-blue Volkswagon New Beetle.

Some things I do when I’m out and about: explore Columbus and its hit/miss network of bike paths, poke around in the Metro Library, drink coffee in hip cafes, stalk around OSU’s architecture building, look for places to live during grad school, look for places to work during grad school, look for hidden trails and places to do stunts, watch trains go by, and lately, urban exploring.

Of course, work is really hard to come by in Ohio, so I have to scrape together freelance work here and there to pay the bills, and more importantly, have something worthwhile to keep busy with. Ah well, a couple more months and I’ll be busy enough with grad school finally.

Books, Foxes, Internets 1/3

2010-07-07T16:45:00.001-04:00

I’ll start off this post with my concise book/misc reviews.

Cat Eyed Boy Vol. 2 – a great retro horror/comedy manga by Kazuo Umezu. The main character is half-monster, half-boy, and the book contains several stories of his adventures bridging the gap between the human and monster worlds. I love how Cat Eyed Boy (does he have a real name?) doesn’t take crap from nobody – human or monster – and always has some tricks up his sleeve to win the day. Just a warning though – some of the stories can be quite gruesome and spooky. Don’t read it before going to bed eh?

Gantz Vol. 1 & 2 – I picked this up by chance while roaming the architecture/comics section of the library (funny thing, the shelves are right next to each other, not including the comics in the kids section). Anyways, this has more of a modern, realistic art style, but its another gruesome one! The story is quite odd; people who have just died are reconstructed somehow, but they’re required to compete in some sort of mission against aliens disguised as humans. The premise is very mysterious, but the characters are good, and the mystery makes me wish the library had the other 30+ volumes… ~_~

Copper – I suppose this is a compilation of webcomics in book form. The author is Kazu Kibuishi, but contrary to what you might think, the art style is not very manga-ish. Anyways, Copper really reminded me of Calvin & Hobbes in that it tells the story of a guy and his talking dog in either slice-of-life or adventure type short stories. The art is really good, especially the environments, and I can see how it could be published as a book – very coffee-table-worthy.

How to Say Goodbye in Robot – I read this because it was on the same library checkout receipt as the one I found Cat Eyed Boy and Copper on. Anyways it’s a novel told in first-person about a high school girl in Baltimore that listens to a late-night radio show. At first I thought it might be cool because there were a lot of quirky characters and she did weird things, but the more I read this less exciting and more predictable it got. Overall not totally rubbish, but I was able to finish it. Its really geared towards girls, so I’ll chalk it up to gathering intelligence on the enemy.

Coraline – the book by Neil Gaiman. Now this was a great short novel! I’ve seen the film sometime within the last year, which was spectacular, and after reading the book, I can appreciate what a great adaptation they’d done. It was quite interesting to read this book with all the visualizations in my head coming from a stop-motion animation film. Needless to say, I’m going to have to see the film again soon.

I’m in the middle of reading The Caryatids by Bruce Sterling, which so far has been kinda cool, kinda meh, but I’m sure I’ll appreciate it more when I reach the conclusion.

Repo Man – I finally used an old iTunes gift card to get this old movie. This is one of my favourite movies, even though it is a couple years older than myself. The soundtrack is gangbusters. All kinds of crazy things happen, but the main characters have a sort of relaxed atmosphere about them that I like. Aside from the aliens in the trunk of the Malibu – was it really like this during the ‘80s?

Fantastic Mr. Fox – another great stop-motion animation film! My uncle lent me this film that I’d heard about a few months ago but never got a chance to see. The visual style is a little reminiscent of Wallace & Grommit, but the characters and story remind me of *interruption* I was about to say they reminded me of a film like The Life Aquatic or The Royal Tenenbaums, but I guess this is directed by the same guy, Wes Anderson. Anyways, its lovely.

Franken Fran – a graphic novel I forgot to mention. Don’t think its been officially translated, so I had to find it on The Internet. Suggested by friend Jed, it is just as I’d suspect from him – humorous, crazy, and non-politically-correct in every way. Anyways its about a wonderful young lady who can surgically reconstruct and reanimate all kinds of living things, particularly humans, in many silly and gruesome situations. Quite lovely.

Hozuki-san Chi no Aneki (Hozuki Family Big Sister) – another untranslated manga I found on The Internet. This one is more risqué than gruesome, but just as politically incorrect. It mostly consists of 4-square comics about the typical loser main character high-school guy and his devilish older step-sister who teases him relentlessly. Shenanigans ensue, to say the least.

Joys of Urban Exploring

2010-07-03T02:00:00.001-04:00

It’s nice to have crazy new (actually quite old) stuff to take photographs of. Also, it can be very spooky to go to abandoned places at night, so it might be good to stick to daytime until the explorer is more experienced/prepared.

Admitted, I’ve edited these photos to get the most out of them, but nonetheless I’m still impressed with the photos coming out from my old Fujifilm e550 – are you?

Coming soon: new LEGO creations (small house and medium seaplane), and details of recent activities including but not limited to: book/comic book reviews!

Mein Kaiser

2010-06-14T02:45:00.001-04:00

The month of May has passed and the Earth is nearly half finished spinning through the month of June. I’ve put together a small list of things to write about though:

Classes are finished at Columbus State.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes

New Gundam Kit

What Food I’ve Eaten Recently

Brandonamp is Crazy

Railroad Tunnel

To start with, I’m done with classes until September when I start Graduate School, oh boy. I’m looking forward to no homework for a while, but then again, it is nice to have something to keep oneself busy. I told myself I’d learn some Revit on my own over the summer, but we’ll see how that turns out. When working on my final project for 3DS Max class, it grated on me how complicated and frustrating it was to make something very simple that could’ve been done in Sketchup in a fraction of the time. Oh well, just because a vessel is easy to pilot doesn’t mean it can haul 5,000 tons of cargo…

Architecture crew at Columbus State

Now, since the last post on the blog, things with that woman fell through, as they usually do, so I’ve been able to spend more leisure time enjoying the story of the Legend of the Galactic Heroes (and perfecting my run-on sentences). 銀河英雄伝説 as the story is called in its country of origin, is an animated version of a series of science fiction novels depicting the fates of the Galactic Empire and Free Planets Alliance from a historical point of view. It is a somewhat old show, starting in the late eighties, but nonetheless, everything about it; the animation, voices, narration, and of course the story itself, is consistently of superior quality. The characters are the best part of the Legend. Neither side is terrible good or evil, so in either case there are men and women showing great strengths of character, each with their own story to tell.

Walter von Schenkopp, great warrior, great sense of humour!

Before we get into the latest Gundam kit, I will mention that I turned 24 on May 12th of course. I had a great party out at the pub that day, and feasted on the cake remnants for the next several days. Don’t really feel terribly older though, I guess there’s not much difference between 23 and 24 except that now I’m in my “mid-twenties.” Anyways, I got the regular 1/100th scale Gundam Astray Red Frame. I was thinking about the Master Grade version, but that one is about 3x more expensive and comes with a silly giant gimmicky sword weapon instead of the normal jetpack, beam rifle, and shield that the mobile suit usually has equipped in the comic. The downside is that it can’t quite pull off all the crazy poses the MG can, and it is a little less detailed, but it is very satisfying. Also more expendable.

Holding a frog, scratchin’ his V-fin. Cool.

Now, food I’ve eaten recently is pretty good. Breakfast for the past week has been cookie-cereal. Lunch is usually a PBJ due to lack of will to cook anything for a meal I usually eat in less than 5 minutes. Dinner comes in waves – a ramen here, apples, a hot dog there, sometimes a huge wave of spaghetti with pesto sauce and parmesan cheese or a plate of chicken tenders with rice and vegetables will crash onto the beach and leave me incapacitated for a short while. As for drinking, now that its hot, I’ll make some tea in the fridge: put a teabag in a bottle of water, leave it in until its cold and brewed, then enjoy lovely iced tea. I need to get to an asian grocery and find some barley tea bags though – that stuff is the best kind of iced tea!

Don’t have any pictures of food, so I’ll depict something that has become a lifelong goal for me: Pumpkin-flavoured cereal! Joey’s sister in the animation Heroman, is shown here chowing down on his favoured limited-edition pumpkin flavour cereal. Now that I’ve seen him having a favourite cereal plundered from under his nose, I feel I can really connect with his character.

Moving on. Brandonamp is crazy. Somehow he found out I was applying for a job at COSI, whereupon he immediately decided I should put him in a bear so that he can scare children. Now that he has begun to realize his dream of scaring children from inside a bear may never come to fruition, let alone label him as a “furry,” he’s decided he’d like a pet Kodiak. Also, something about establishing an empire. Needless to say, he definitely seemed to enjoy it when I jokingly referred to him as “mein kaiser.”

Here he is now, investigating the rail tunnel.

Me and some comrades from school visited this rail tunnel nearby for fun. It was cool to be underground and stuff. Also, we got to see a really long train go by – I love trains! Under the overpasses along the railroad there is some cool graffiti:

Luckily we didn’t run into any crazy hobos, goblins, or trolls down there. Urban exploration is looking to be a pretty cool thing to do, might even get a chance to use my grappling hook to climb some stuff, too! Now to find a tough babe who doesn’t afraid of the underground…

Friday Evening Riding

2010-05-01T18:53:00.001-04:00

Photographs I took last night around sunset here in Columbus. Click on em to see them at full size. There were swarms of gnats all around the bike path – I think I might have swallowed/inhaled one or two – gross!

News, news, news!

2010-04-30T17:54:00.001-04:00

(and pictures)

Well, it is well into Springtime in Columbus, and things are looking up (and sideways too) for Soontar. I’m about halfway through what will be my last term studying at Columbus State Community College, which has been, all things considered, my favourite higher education experience thus far. I’m taking five classes: AutoCAD II, 3ds Max, Presentation Drawings, Sustainable Building Strategies, and Building Construction Standards. I have a lot of priceless colleagues in Presentation Drawings class, so it is always a fun time even on Mondays!

With a stroke of luck and I don’t know, gumption, I got a job on the side from a guy in my construction standards course. Hopefully I can get some more work with the connections I made here. I’m starting to feel satisfied now that I’m starting to do work using my talents and skills.

Recent Lego Creations

As you may know, I've ended up deciding on Ohio State University for graduate school. I think their Knowlton School of Architecture’s building alone erased (or at least blocked out temporary) and doubts I had about the quality of their program. OSU students in general appear to be a little to straight-laced for my taste, but I’m sure there are plenty of hyper-intelligent and unique graduate students like me ready to come out of the woodwork and rock-and-roll.

In my personal life, I’ve made quite a few quality friends at Columbus State, including a few of the instructors/architects there. One guy almost my parents’ age and I have started going mountain biking on Fridays. More interesting is a beautiful young architecture lady I’ve recently began accompanying.

On a bike ride last weekend we went to the Scioto Audubon Metro Park and checked out this new building. I’d been there a few weeks earlier with the family, but this time it was open and we went inside. It is really interesting architecturally, with lots of sustainable design features, so of course we had a great time. There is even a solar clock using a window/oculus in the ceiling, and a preserved 49lb giant snapping turtle. Also there were some really fun and cute animal puppets in the gift shop!

Washing off Little Fallen Seeds

2010-04-06T15:14:00.003-04:00

I've neglected this blog for quite the long time - over a month in fact. How very shameful of me, and a bad example as a blogging role model! Plenty of slightly interesting things have happened in the past month, yet I failed to record them in writing.

I think one of the main reasons I've not been blogging lately is that I am already communicating personally my news of interest to the people I know who read my blog. Therefore, from now on, I will look upon Soontar's Adventure as more of a journal of my trials and tribulations for myself to look back upon from time to time.

In true Soontar form, I am going to put off recording the events missed since the previous blog post for now. Instead, I will describe my situation as of this precise moment. I am at work in the ground floor of the Columbus State library computer lab. Due to either it being the beginning of the term or the weather being so nice, there is only one patron making use of the room I'm in charge of. I'm wearing a rather casual get-up: plain jeans, white socks, shoes off, white t-shirt, brown shirt unbuttoned with sleeves rolled up. I am, and have been for a while now, debating what to do with my hair. I could get a haircut, or I could keep it going. About a month ago I decided to keep it going, and now its up for debate again.

Admittedly, I've resorted to blogging out of boredom here at work. I brought only one half-finished comic to read today (Gundam SEED Astray R), and got tired of looking at the various architecture blogs I frequent. I'm working a 4-hour shift from noon to 4PM this quarter, and have 30 minutes left to go. I'll be riding to the library to return a few things and then continue home on my Haro. A great bike, but recently it has become extremely windy here in the city, and always seems to be gusting against me no matter what direction I'm headed.

Current Issues on the Mind include: mailing in taxes, finding a job, deciding if and where to go to grad school, washing off those little seeds that fell all over my car, renewing said car's registration tags, and turning 24 next month.

Visual Updates

2010-02-25T16:13:00.001-05:00

Winter’s almost over

2010-02-06T21:25:00.001-05:00

Since the previous post, nothing really new has happened around here. It’s starting to get warmer, and there are more days when its warm enough to ride Haro. Weekends are spent mostly sleeping in, building some Lego or Sketchup creation, and lolling about. I’ve stopped playing WoW – it was getting old and nobody else was playing as much either. Really looking forward to warmer weather and more opportunities to be out on Haro exploring the city. Of course, I’m also anxious to hear the results of my grad school applications, although that won’t be until mid-April. Grrr.

Anyways, lets show some pictures:

Collage of stuff that went on the title page of my portfolio:

The above Gunpla are two of the models Emilz salvaged for me this Christmas. I just now got round to properly applying decals and panel lining to them. Jamesgun top, and Shining Gundam receiving the pizza.

I also brought some semblance of order and organization to my desk by clearing it of stereo equipment. Speakers on the windsill and receiver is below and to the right of the cyberspace deck there. Nice to get some natural light inside for once by employing some of Emilz’s ghetto-window-insulation-technique to the window and opening the curtains.

Ah and its also at this time of year that a Ronin such as me needs to start compiling options for what to do during the summer. Lease is until mid-October, so ideally it will be something in Columbo so I don’t have to sublet my room to some weirdo. Of course, if its something or somewhere awesome or pays great that’s fine. By then I will have pretty good AutoCAD skill and of course I’m old hat at Sketchup by now, so maybe I can snag something with an architecture firm…

Before we begin… 2009 of the Years

2010-01-22T19:43:00.001-05:00

I was thinking you know, people do awards like Bean Curd of the Year or something, to show that that was the best bean curd of the whole year, so I’ve decided to do my own.

I’ll start with music, with Album of the Year going to Röyksopp’s album that got me hooked on their energetic sound: Junior. I’ve been listening to it constantly since this summer when I heard the song Happy Up Here on Zeilsteen radio. Runner-up is a tie between Muse’s The Resistance and Apoptygma Berzerk’s album; Rocket Science.

Game of the Year is going to go to Grand Theft Auto IV. The game is wonderful because not only can you drive around like a crazy person in a huge variety of cars, you can also fly helicopters and drive boats. You can also do crime, but the game is really about flipping out like a ninja almost. Runner-up I’ll give to World of Warcraft due to the sheer amount of time spent on it within the past 3-4 months, although I did have some genuinely fun times on there.

Transport Vehicle of the Year Award goes to the Haro Flightline I purchased brand new and have been enjoying ever since. It’s light, maneuverable, and so far, really durable. Good for launching over things. Runner-up goes to Battle Accord for its amazing performance despite looking like its been through a couple wars. My Civic gets honorable mention for having a tidy minimalistic appearance, but the failmatic transmission keeps it from any higher award.

Toy of the Year goes to my Bandai VF-25G kit I assembled this summer. The amazing construction and articulation of the jet/robot is, well, amazing. Someday I hope to have the ability to design something as complicated as that. Runner-up would have gone to my Nerf Maverick, but I got that in 2010, so I’ll give it to the Lego Technic mini-dozer. It is probably the smallest Technic set I’ve ever seen and is cool to plow things with.

Film of the Year is a hard one, as I’ve seen a lot of good films this year and don’t really remember all of them. One film I’ve seen this year but didn’t really come out this year is Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain. It has a mischievous-looking young woman’s face on the cover and is from France, but is one of the best film’s I’ve ever seen I think. Runner-up is easily District 9. Pig cannon.

City of the Year goes to Chicago. I had a great time there, even though we only went for a day. Lots of nice architecture, especially if you know where to look, not to mention the great art museum and feeling like Ferris Bueller! Runner-up goes to Columbus, because after living here for a while, it is really not as bad as I used to think it was, and there are some actually cool places to go here.

Pub of the year goes to Tip-Top for its great atmosphere and very excellent food! Not a bad place to go to with a friend or two when you’re hungry/thirsty. I think runner-up should go to Jackie-O’s in Athens, if only for the memorable ‘Ken incident’ which I am sure Brandonamp remembers fondly.

2010: Proton Torpedoes

2010-01-13T16:27:00.001-05:00

This is now the final year of the decade. Only two more years left until the end of the world. A lot of things have happened since my previous blog poast, way back in 2009. The Holidays. Not everything has been good, but a lot of things were.

It’s been very snowy and cold here in Columbus lately. Last week I took sister to the airport, the car gradually becoming more and more encrusted with gunk from the road. Sent her off to England, though she’ll be back in another month and a half it seems. Something to do with crayfish research – a world yet unfathomable to me.

The night before, we went on a trek to the nearby Donatos to pickup a pizza we ordered. We walked through the snow, and had to stand outside at the drive-by pickup window while the incompetent help failed miserably to provide adequate service to customers both in and outside of automobiles. We took the pizza back to my apartment through the cold and the mud and the dead. Chunks of road grime ice/snow were thrown at each other with glee. We played Carcassone late at night. There was much amusement and revelry at each other’s mastery of the various gameplay techniques: Thief Roads, Castles, and Cloisters.

Earlier that week, the new term of classes had started here at Columbus State. AutoCAD, manual drafting, landscape 101, and architectural history this time. I’m very pleased with my new round of classes, with the exception of the architectural history lectures. The man drones on in a very soothing, sleep-facilitating voice, and I am afraid most of what he talks about are names and dates. Having read Phaidon’s The Story of Architecture given to me by sister, I feel that this class will be largely review and boring. However, the final project is to make a scale model of some historic building, which I think will be enjoyable. Coincidentally, the final project for the drafting class is also a model, albeit limited to one of the projects drafted earlier in the class.

New Year’s was a time spent somewhat merrily, Brandonamp and I careening about the streets of downtown Columbus visiting a few local drinking establishments. Our feet took us to Tip Top, The Elevator, and The Jury Room. Memorable moments were Brandonamp ordering 13 USD apiece glasses of brandy, and being fed pork & kraut at the Jury Room at midnight for ‘Pork & Prosperity.’ I acquired a hubcap on the way home, which is now displayed in our dining room.

Closer to Christmastime, some other things happened, like the group visit to my apartment of Potato, Observer, Jed, and Sister. Journeys were made to Tim Horton’s, and later Easton, where we enjoyed a shopping experience at the wonderful Lego Shop, and enjoyed an eating experience at… some chinese restaurant with a overly outgoing waiter. Lulz and comradery were had. Back at the apartment, everyone enjoyed playing with the Brandonamp’s cheap swords and riding on the skateboard inside. Amazingly, no one was hurt let alone maimed.

Sometime around then, there was a trip to Cincinnati to visit relatives with mum, dad, and sister, who stopped by my apartment to use the bathroom and pick me up for the drive down, in that order of priority. On the way back, Dan slipped and said something like “what time do you think we’ll get to Soontar’s bathroom?” Needless to say, I am not terribly excited about my apartment being known primarily as a bathroom destination by the family. The visit to Cincy itself was largely successful, with a great lunch, dessert, and table tennis at Gramma Thelma’s, followed by a largely uneventful visit to the Cincy aunt, uncle, & cousins.

Christmas itself now, was pretty good. Got some stuff I didn’t need, some stuff I did need, and some stuff I have already eaten. I think my favourite present (the one I played with the most) were some reject Gundam models sister found at some charity shop in England. I was given some dough to get boots with, but haven’t the motivation to go boot shopping, and just walk the snow and slush with my old trainers. I am wondering lately - how old will I have to be to receive liquor as a present at Christmastime?

Now, immediately prior to Christmas was a long drive with mother to New York’s JFK airport to pick up sister’s dog – the Pie Master. Due to complications, sister was not on the same plane as the Master, but that didn’t make the journey any less important. I didn’t mind the driving so much as I minded having to drive with mother in the car. Luckily the weather stayed fairly good during the trip, and the only hitch was massive amounts of traffic in the New York metropolitan area.

Now, I have mostly described the good things that have happened so far in the time period since my previous blog poast. I must now delve into the darkness of unfortunate things. The first is not really an unfortunate thing, but a thing of great stress and anxiety – graduate school applications. At one point I was on the brink of destruction, as one of my key recommendors was hospitalized for walking pneumonia and almost died, which would’ve been terrible because he is one of the best teachers I have had so far in my entire academic career. In any case, a giant weight has been lifted off my shoulders today because I have finished mailing in all of my materials for said graduate school applications.

The other unfortunate thing was the split with girlfriend Convenience Store. Now, she is merely friend, even though I gave her a customized Nerf Maverick for Christmas. I won’t go into the details, but lets just say it was a sort of a mutual surrender. Even though I somehow knew it was doomed from the start, I certainly enjoyed it while it lasted, and now I am at a loss for someone to cook French toast for. I won’t forget the memories of the weird pods, the trip to Chicago (complete with the Cheeseburger Effect), and all the other good times that had with the young lass.

Now, a minor problem lately, has been in the apartment itself. Someone moved in upstairs, and not only do they complain about the slightest bit of sound issued from our apartment while they bang around at random times of day, there has become some huge plumbing issue due to their place, which resulted in a gaping hole in our ceiling. Showering our shower in bits of ceiling and no doubt delicious asbestos. Today they are smashing yet another hole in the wall, which they will supposedly fix tomorrow. The first hole has been there nearly a week. I do enjoy living in the area, but I guess the apartment is really a sort of get-what-you-pay-for kind of deal as far as the quality of the building goes.

So, continuing with 2010, I’m hoping for warmer weather, more garls, arse, drink and feck.

Oh, and I made chocolate-covered-bacon again for the holiday potluck at work before christmas break and it was great and everyone loved it and ate it.

Season in Review: Autumn

2009-12-09T21:13:00.001-05:00

It's time to sit back with a cold St. Pauli Girl and ponder the results of the past season's activities. I'll start with work and end with pleasure.

Work has been what it's been: dull, yet not uneventful. I occasionally get a reasonable person in the lab who uses it for it's intended purpose: multimedia production. I'm on a first-name basis with a couple regulars who've been working on projects that happen to be in my areas of expertise: Photoshop and 3D modeling. We've been closed the last few days having new ridiculous cubicle-style desks installed in the room. Rumor says it cost the state nearly 21,000 USD and it obviously provides only enough cubicle space for 8 computer workstations tops. Don't you just love bureaucracy?

Last night I finished my last final exam - blueprint reading. It was actually quite painless, and just involved looking up some data on the set of blueprints and accompanying documents we'd been practicing on all quarter. Even though that sounds kind of boring, I liked the class, and the instructor's teaching style was very straightforward. The construction materials class was good too, if only for the hands-on labs where we made and ran tests of stuff, including awesome compression tests on concrete. That same teacher's residential construction class was decent - although the textbook was rubbish, the quality of instructors and guest speakers kept it from sucking. Sketchup class has been over for a while now, and it was great. The Sketchup instructor's manual drafting class is over now too, even though he almost died of pneumonia a couple weeks ago. Fortunately he didn't, and his final was a piece of cake. That drafting class was probably the hardest in terms of actual work involved, but also my favourite class. I think I'll have no problem enjoying any class that lets me draw things.

Columbus State in general seems like a really good college to go to. It's cheap, yet instruction quality is outstanding, so you get good bang for your buck. Also, the students are totally different from what I've experienced at "real" universities - they are more casual and lack the "OMG I'm going to college" attitude, but at the same time are more serious about learning. Also something I definitely didn't see at Ohio University at least: people of different races, nationalities, etc. interacting, studying, hanging out with each other as though they were all actually human beings.

Although its gotten ultra-cold recently, this autumn we had pretty good weather, and I enjoyed exploring around Columbus, and realize that it is actually not that bad a place to live. The only thing missing that I really want is a nice, Japanese-style convenience store with like, a couple blocks from the apartment. Inner-city traffic really is not that bad. There are cool places to go. Fun can be had.

Fun has indeed been had, and mostly in the company of this autumn's two closest comrades: dear flatmate-salaryman Brandonamp, and dear girlfriend-unit Convenience Store. Thinking back, it's amazing what all fun stuff we've done in the last few months. Campfires. Midnight death marches. We even went to Chicago. I think everyone managed to hurl once for some reason or another! Of course, lots of other people were involved in our merrymaking, and I'd like to give a special shout-out to Amaya, me mum & dad, her mum, Saines family, potato, Diana, & the Columbus Imhoffs. Also that one guy in my classes who is always friendly to everybody - you da man.

And, on that note, I'll end with some breakfast imagery:

Conservatory, Woo Woooo

2009-11-25T14:07:00.001-05:00

Have I really not blogged in nearlly two weeks? How criminal.

Anyways, the usual sort of things have been happening. Work and school during the week. School is winding down with finals in a couple weeks, and a couple projects looming overhead. They're actually going to be really easy - just a couple powerpoints to make and present for like 5 minutes. I've already finished my final project for Sketchup class, yet I'm continuing to build things. Lately I've been working on this house:

...and yesterday I was bored and made an ugly SUV:

Last weekend was pretty special though. Convenience Store and I went to the Franklin Park Conservatory, both of us forgetting our cameras. We made do with our cameraphones, although as you will see, the image quality is not as good. (Side note: writing this at work, I didn't have my phone's USB cable, so through necessity I finally figured out how to transfer pics over Bluetooth - really isn't that hard!)

I love that combination of trains, castle, and plants! Also silly girl.

Also love the bonsai trees. Look at it!

A man dumping his child into the koi pond.

A loud & nasty parrot and a playful strange sounding parrot, from left.

A scene from Chernobyl?

...and many many geese we walked amongst.

While we were there, we ran into Convenience Store's crazy art teacher, Endo-sensei, and his wife. He did not seem as crazy/dirty as she'd described him, but I could see the gleam in his eyes of a very silly man.

After the conservatory, we went back to the apartment and gathered Brandonamp to go to Tip Top. It seems to be the best pub in the area. The food there is amazing. I got fried chicken and it was the best I'd had in ages. Everyone agreed the food was gangbusters. I drank some drinks and so did Brandonamp, although I was a little disappointed in his consumption of booze. I had a couple Belgian lagers and a LeVeque Tower (cocktail). Then we all ate apple pie. I felt like I was gonna explode walking back to the apaato! Everyone should get to eat and drink like that every once in a while.

Speaking of eating and drinking - Thanksgiving Day is tomorrow and I am certainly excited to be feasting in memory of successful conquest of North America!

3D Eyeballs

2009-11-13T17:01:00.001-05:00

Some 3D models I made for class...

Night of Desirable Objects

2009-11-10T12:32:00.001-05:00

Friday night, at school, in the drafting room, listening to EuroTrance dancing around like a fool while working on drawings for architecture class...

Spotted this Autobot disguised as a Honda Accord on Broad St. the other day while walking back from a ginormous meal with the parents at Tip Top. (Food was great there again!) Mum made me some nice German-looking curtains for the window in my room - thanks mum! Someday perhaps I'll have a pic of the room up on this blog..

Later that day we drove down to Rockbridge for Diana's B-Day party. We picked up a present (Lucky Star vol. 1) at the Book Loft in German Village and heading through the ghetto to 33.

Oh, but before we left we made this chocolate-covered-bacon. It is delicious! Om nom nom nom!

Sunday we went to Waffle House and lazed about the apartment all day long. We being me and Convenience Store. Brandonamp was in some kind of tizzy, pacing about and discovering aprons. Later that night though, he got himself sorted with some drink. I relaxed and hung out with Louie a while, eventually sleeping on the cold floor because I was too tired to drive home. ~_~

Columbus Continues

2009-11-01T22:26:00.001-05:00

Life in Columbus has been continuing eventfully the past week or two. Things are going pretty well lately I suppose. I got to work, class (getting excellent marks, as usual), and occasionally do some long-range jaunts to visit the girlie or the homeland or both. I might get sick again, due to extreme proximity to a certain mono-carrier, but oh well, I'm good at taking care of myself and drink plenty of orange juice. Also, my work schedule allows me to sleep in most days so I shouldn't be lacking in that department.

As far as school goes, I'm enjoying classes, especially my architecture and blueprint reading classes. For my Sketchup class, I was assigned to design and model a skyscraper to meet certain specifications. Other than being a certain number of stories high and locating the building on a 9-block site, we can do whatever we want. Also, there wasn't really a time limit on the project, so I have been getting into some extremes of detail. When I mentioned to the teacher that the model is now pushing my computer to its performance limits, he insisted that I turn it in next week before it crashes my computer. Here are some images of steps along the way:

Halloween happened last night, but I didn't really make a costume this year, or even go to any cool parties or anything. Brandonamp and I did dress up like a couple Salarymen and head out. We made it up to the North end of Short North and back to the apartment on foot, visiting 3 establishments along the way. Disappointingly, Brandonamp did not partake of the drinking, but we both enjoyed a hell of a meal at a place called Tip Top in downtown. I had a sort of pot roast w/ onion marmalade sandwich and home-made sweet potato chips, he had sauerkraut with brats and potatoes.

Everybody was tryin' to get into that club. We just walked on by. When we got back to the place, I joined Convenience Store for a late night of World of Warcraft, followed by a good long sleep, waking up today around noon. She needed out of her house, being cooped up mildly ill for a while, so she came up to hang out here for the afternoon. I cooked rice cakes - delicious! The three of us enjoyed them thoroughly. For some reason or another, we went out to the nearby park to take some photographs. I used my camera on the old tripod I got from Uncle with good results.

Oops, how did they get in here?

I Like to Blog

2009-10-21T00:54:00.001-04:00

I really do. Sometimes, I'm just not feelin' it though. Maybe nothing interesting is happening - maybe too many interesting things are happening. Maybe everyone who reads this blog already knows about everything interesting that happened. In any case, I have to admit, things have been happening that I have neglected to present in blog format. In lieu of actually getting the blog caught up on what's been happening, I will follow Soontarian tradition and simply plaster a bunch of photos up:

Vibrant Student Life

Vibrant Work Atmosphere

Inconvenient Cafe Hours

Goodale Park Flora, Fauna, & Building

Vibrant Downtown Columbus Atmospherics

Vibrant LEGO

I haven't even been taking enough pictures to simply leave it at that! *Sigh* Maybe once the apartment starts looking lived in I will stick some photos of it up. I need to get some drawings and things up on the walls, still need a kitchen table, etc. Enough of my ramblings, time for some Event Summaries!

The Flu: I had it weekend before last. Or at least I think it was the flu. I didn't see a doctor or anything, but I felt a lot worse than a regular old cold. Took Friday off work and Saturday off class. Despite me being somewhat ill, I had a special visitor that Friday evening. Now, Soontar is not traditionally a touchy-feely kind of creature, but when I was ill, knowing that someone was going to come and say hi and stuff really felt special. ~_~ I had to work extra hard later in the week to get makeup work done for drafting class, but it wasn't so bad.

Spaghetti Warehouse: Nothing really to write home about... had an interesting meal there with Combini & her mum & grandmum & Vietgirl on their way to see a ballet. It was crowded, the table was wobbly, the waitress was monster fat scary, and everybody but us was having a bloody birthday, but it wasn't all bad. The interior of Spag Warehouse is full of old pop culture memorabilia, which was cool, and Combini & mum & g-mum were good company.

Lego Store in Easton: Went there on a Sunday afternoon, to find a smallish shop, filled with children of all ages! Just about every Lego set you can buy lined the walls, and at kid-height were little dioramas set into the walls showing various scenes built out of simple Lego bricks - very cute. Unique features to the store were the ability to buy select Lego pieces in bulk from a variety of shapes and colours running the length and height of the back wall, and the ability to put together minifigures and get 3 of them in a set. Unfortunately, selection of minifig torsos, faces, etc was somewhat limited, but as you can see above, a bit of fun can be had! I couldn't leave empty handed, so I got a smallish Space Police set featuring a sort of VTOL armored car and 4-armed alien. Handcuffs included. Combini got another smallish set with a Space Cop, his craft, and an alien called "Squidman."

Meanwhile, in World of Warcraft: Halloween events are going on all over the place with special quests and silly things like pumpkin heads and ninja costumes, which is a good spot of fun. However, there are so many people online because of it, it feels like the tubes are clogging - they're not a big truck - they're not something you just dump Halloween on! Nevertheless, I still haven't come up with a costume for myself!! What to do...

Life Post-Chicago

2009-09-30T23:20:00.001-04:00

Some things happened after the Chicago trip. I lived in Uncle & Aunt's house for about a week while they were away on Remulac. While there I busied myself with various trips to downtown Columbus in search of: housing, finalizing paperwork, and the first few days of classes at CSCC. That Tuesday I managed to attend a Shiny Toy Guns unpublicized concert at Ohio State. It was outdoors in the afternoon in the sunshine with a small crowd of young revelers.

After that I think I got Brandonamp dragged into cavorting about with Convenience Store and her Children's Crusade friends for a bit. Had some sub-par chinese food and then back to U&A's for a cuppa tea and relax on the sofa a bit.

Wednesday classes started at Columbus State. I'm taking 5 classes this term, and all of them are architecture-related: Drafting, Sketchup, Building Materials, Residential Construction, and Blueprint Reading (I simplified the course titles here of course). So far the teachers are great, especially the guy for Drafting and Sketchup: he seems almost like a realistic, post-middle-aged version of Howard Roark. So yeah, I'm pleased with my classes and teachers, but my schedule leaves a bit to be desired: most classes are 2 hours + in length and start in the late afternoon/evening, and two are on Saturday. Oh well, at least I get to sleep in late!

Leisure activities included mostly enjoying the decent internets at U&A's place, particularly World of Warcraft and notably catching the latest episode of Fringe. I did do a few 13 mile round-trip bike projs to downtown Columbus from U&A's - What a rush! I love dodging through congested inner-city traffic at speed with nothing between me and the death monsters but a thin layer of cotton.

Saturday I picked up the above Uncle & Aunt at CMH and ferried them to their home, which I had carefully arranged and prepared just as they left it with everything laundered and taken care of. It was nice to visit with them for a while and learn first-hand of their travels to the land of the frogs.

I also got to help change Convenience Store's tyre that night, just as we were leaving Columbus en convoy. No matter, I put her on the donut and restricted her speed to less than 60mph by "following best." That night also included a lovely rainstorm, making driving even more intense - a nice break from the usual boring drive down 33 to Logan. Spent that night at Diana's with Conbini and another crewmember (in guest bedroom) and stayed up late in a hot tub and watching K-PAX.

Sunday I came home to be socializing with family members: mum, dad, and grandma. Helped bake a delicious carrot cake (secret ingredient: Love). Smiles all around! Struggled to connect by telephone with the sister-unit in England.

Monday seemed like the real first day of classes because campus was really crowded and parking was scarce. Got some time between meeting my work supervisor and class to play WoW on the campus wifi, which got really crazy at times when it overloaded, leading to one accidental death of a bovine comrade.

Tuesday was the first real day of work, met my coworkers who are all relatively cool. First day of blueprints class, which seems like its gonna be easy and to my liking. Got out of class early at 9pm and headed back towards home but somehow didn't get there until 7:30am the next day. Hmmm I wonder how that happened...

Today, Wednesday, had class, work, all on very little sleep, but I made it home at the end of the day. Driving to Columbus is starting to drive me crazy, and it took like 20min to find parking on campus today - it was madness! Getting really anxious for word from Mr. Henn about the apartment!

Ok, now that you're brought up to speed I can rest for another week or so. Look at the twitter feed if you can't wait that long for amazing breaking news of Soontar.

4 AM Cont'd

2009-09-24T16:32:00.001-04:00

Ok, so 4am Last Saturday! We met up and started a long drive up to Chicago in the FiT. The drive was pretty uneventful, mostly me driving while the other two (Brandonamp and Convenience Store) slept or amused themselves. Brandonamp drove the first couple hours actually, and the last hour or so approaching and in Chicago proper. I kind of regret timing that to allow him to drive us around in Chicago, his driving, especially in inner-city traffic and around campuses, is less than comfortable.

Eventually we found Robie House and parked with eyeshot of it, luckily in an unregulated street-parking spot in a good neighborhood (University of Chicago). Went up to the house, marveled at it, and marveled at how it was not open yet. We'd gotten there an hour earlier than expected due to Chicago being in the central time zone. Oh well, no matter, we'll walk over to the train station several blocks away and travel into downtown Chicagoland. We stopped in a corner Starbucks first to use their facility and order some drinks in order to patronize(?) them. The 51st Street station was located in a bit of a ghetto, but other than an ambiguously gendered hobo asking for chips and complimenting either me or Brandonamp's asses, we made it to the station without incident.

Train fares seem to have gone up since the last time I was in Chicago, but no matter, we made it into downtown. Riding the train is fun! We went to the Institute of Art first thing. It, and the city in general, was much more crowded than I remember experiencing it being in the colder months when I've been there. Nonetheless, we enjoyed some nice arts, a disturbing installation featuring disturbing clown footage, enraged some pigeons, and gazed into the miniature rooms.

From there we hoofed it to a noodle shop that I'd been to a couple years ago and feasted upon noodles and root beer, cream soda, and green tea. I was root beer. The shop was filled with hip youngsters and one hip old guy. Next we moseyed on over to Millennium Park and examined the various displays existing there.

After a relaxing walk round the park, the next plan was to ride the train out to Oak Park, where more Frank Lloyd Wright buildings are. I led the way to another train station, where we once again hopped on the green line, and rode it all the way out to Oak Park. Oak Park is a nice suburban neighborhood with lots of nice old houses and etc. We walked around with the help of a map I snapped a pic of on my phone so we wouldn't get lost. Unfortunately it was too late in the evening to go inside any of the historic buildings, what a shame.

On the way back to the Oak Park station, we stopped at a local hot dog / burger place and got cheeseburgers and ate them. Thinking back on them, my mouth is watering, they were so good, with good fries too. Om nom nom nom. After eating, we suffered from/enjoyed The Cheeseburger Effect. Another train ride into downtown after a little help from the friendly and helpful station attendants led us to....

Millenium Park at Night!

Yeah, we put our feet in the cold cold water. It was soooo cold. Great Plan. We wanted to go up in the Sears Tower, but it was getting late, it was gonna be expensive (like 18 USD apiece!) and etc, so we headed back to the car for the long drive home.

On the way home, Convenience Store mostly slept, and Brandonamp and I were forced to consume energy drinks and play ruthless games of 20 questions to keep each other awake. An amusing account of Beowulf was retold by Brandonamp with a few additions by moi: Grendel's great-grandma's retirement home, etc. Brandonamp achieved some sort of unenviable state of mind on his second 5-Hour Energy bottle, but at least he was awake. We made it home safe and everything, and I slept until about 4pm Sunday afternoon. ~_~

Overall, it was a wonderful trip with wonderful company!

Last Week

2009-09-22T00:09:00.001-04:00

A lot of things have happened since the last post, so I might not remember and put down everything here. Anyways, Sunday through Thursday was work most of the day, but I managed to spend a little bit of free time in the afternoons/evenings hanging out at the convenience store. Some activities included hiking, watching young brother practice football, the vaguely grotesque county fair, walking around town picking up spider webs, and violating rules in local and state parks. But not in a destructive or anti-social way, mind you.

Thursday was my last day at that job, and not a day too soon. It was one of the busiest and more frustrating days there in a long time, which from a certain point of view was actually kinda good. It guaranteed I wouldn't miss the place or feel sad to leave. Or something like that.

Thursday evening was another trip to Cabin. Watched Father Ted, Shaun of the Dead, made a fire, and did some other stuff. Friday morning brought some delicious CoCo Wheats with it, among other things. In the afternoon I managed to rouse Brandonamp and we drove to Columbo to take a silly math test. While I was blasting the test to smitherines, Brandonamp looked at the apartment we are currently interested in. We met up afterwards and looked at the photos he took of the place, but not after Brandonamp completed some traffic violations. Went home.

I'll start the next poast at 4am Saturday morning.

On the Verge of Explosive Action

2009-09-12T22:19:00.001-04:00

Work continued as usual Sunday through Thursday. Tuesday we went to Columbus to see another apartment in a different ghetto area: Weinland Park. It was really dinky and somewhat beat up, but rather cheap. Meh. We're gonna hold out for something in a less-ghetto neighborhood. We (Brandonamp and I) also stopped by Uncle's place to visit and receive some instructions for a mission taking place later this month.

Wednesday evening I went with Convenience Store to Lancastershire, where we ate a bite at Panera cafe. I had no previous knowledge of said cafe's existence, but it was delicious bread product and Earl Grey tea. I couldn't help lol'ing at one of the cafe people who called it 'The Grey Earl.' The one cafe girl was super perky and totally into me. After the cafe, we went to the cinema in the shopping mall. We met several of the usual characters there, including Potato, Brandonamp, Diana, Fabio, and others.

We watched the film: Gamer. It was pretty cool, offering a new twist on cyberspace whereupon people control other people directly instead of a mere virtual avatar. I think more could have been done with some of the concepts in the film, but unfortunately it seemed to have been over-simplified. Basically a guy fights his way out of prison/death row and saves the world/his useless wife and cute little daughter. I'd like to see more movies with bad endings where the villain actually does take over the world... happy endings are starting to sicken me.

Thursday night we (Convenience Store and I) went to Nelsonbarf to see some form of hillbilly band from Kentucky or Tennessee perform out by the town square. They were entertaining, and we also saw Pete Thompson and his loved one there. We chatted for a bit, then decided to go back to my house for UFO training. On the way there we tried to find that old fire tower but kinda got lost in the dark instead. Anyways we made it back to the house, built a little fire in the dark and launched some UFOs. Only a couple had really good flights, and Convini's final one was the best of show. The night got really cold and we had to huddle around the fire for warmth like hobos. Mysterious sounds were heard in the woods. Jack and Foodbrick guarded us.

Friday mum drove me to the EPA whereupon I made the purchase of a 1995 Honda Civic LX from one of papa's co-worker buddies. I spent the next couple hours going around Courthouse, BMW, and online getting paperwork for the automobile taken care of and buying a little insurance. The car is very plain, but lovely in that minimalist way that I am fond of. Expect a poast on it later with photographs.

Later in the afternoon I went to Cabin where we had fire, watched Father Ted, ate Oreos and milk, roasted marshmallows and made smores, soaked in a hot tub, told stories, watched Shaun of the Dead, and so on. Yeah that's right, Oreos and Smores for dinner. Breakfast was wonderful though: CoCo Wheats made by Fire Team's very own Lieutenant Convenience Store. CoCo Wheats are a high level breakfast item - similar to Cream of Wheat, but chocolate flavoured. Got home, exhausted for some reason, around 2:30 or so, spent the rest of the day eating, napping, mowing grass, poking around with car, cleaned up my room a bit, watched a creepy movie, and tried to explain the unexplainable.

Now it's Time For Sleep and another early Sunday at work tomorrow. Remind me to take that watermelon to share with the good ole' Sunday crew.

Silent Wilderness

2009-09-05T00:25:00.001-04:00

News update: Soontar is back to living at home until I can get some housing in Columbus. That means going back to commuting by compact car. I totally prefer that 20min bike ride to this 40min drive.

Interesting detail: every morning on the way to work I would greet this one old timer walking his two dogs along the bike path. Very well-behaved dogs, and friendly old man who was sometimes joined by another old man and dog. Well anyways, on the last day of bicycle commuting I saw him on the way back home coming from the other direction. I waved to him out in the field, and he waved back. I felt a strange feeling of closure finally seeing him on the way back from wherever he went in the morning.

Not a whole lot else going on since the last poast. Working during the week, shennanigans on the weekends. Seeing some increased involvement with Convenience Store, featuring activities at a cabin out by Rockbridge. It is somewhat of a tainted cabin - contained within the original 200 year old restored hulk of cabin are modern, un-rusticized components such as an air conditioner, carpet, an ugly sofa, and complicated Korean microwave oven. Nevertheless, good times have been had there. One of the most popular activities is the midnight death march, which takes place at late night on or off the road and can last for several kilometers. Sometimes animals will make a noise and frighten the participants, who utilize no lighting equipment during the walk. Also, one must hide from cars passing by on the road.

Finding a place to live in Columbus, getting my credits transferred to Columbus State, scheduling classes there, getting all my paperwork in there, getting a car, and paying for everything are the major stresses in my life at this moment. If you're doing anything to help relieve those stresses or my stress in general right now, I super appreciate it.

Overburnt Toast

2009-08-20T23:55:00.001-04:00

Things have been movin' and shakin' around here lately. I've started playing World of Warcraft after about 2 years of abstinence. I've been putting in a lot of hours on the model VF-25G and its finally paid off in a magnificent completion. I had a great previous weekend and am looking forward to another good one this week. Also, the next step of Soontar's Life Plan is falling into place: starting an architecture degree at Columbus State this fall.

World of Warcraft has been going pretty well. Perhaps too well. I started playing to hang out with Diana and Lawson Station in cyberspace, but I got a little too hardcore and I'm now about twice their level. That doesn't mean I can't hang around with them and vaporize/have-my-pet-turtle-eat their enemies when they're in a pinch. I don't know if I'll ever put in the time necessary to be really extreme into raiding and PvP, but its still fun and worth the measly fee.

The model is simply fantastic. It was a little costly to import from the Nihon, but totally worth half a day's wages. Building it was a little tedious at times, but absurdly interesting and addictive as well. The amount of detail and complexity in the little plastic bits it is built out of is astounding. Many ancient Japanese temples are built without nails, and this incredible plastic model is built without glue (or paint even). Oh and it transforms from fighter to gerwalk to battroid without switching out parts or any kind of cheating. The man who designs these kits is an absolute genius.

So last weekend started Thursday night. Brandonamp and I met the girls and went to Stuart's Opera House's outdoor concert in Nelsonville. Christabel and the Jons played some soothing tunes to compliment the excellent evening weather. We sat on a crumbling wall, various parents appeared, and kids of all ages danced like idiots.

Friday some bros and I saw District 9. I loved it. Very very cool smart sci-fi film. Presents hard world issues with a twist: this time space aliens are the ones in the slums being oppressed. Favourite movie so far this year? Yeah I think so. Also, the main character really reminded me of Murray from Flight of the Conchords (Rhys Darby)...

The rest of my spare time since then has been taken up with building/detailing the VF-25G. (Just finished it today) Tomorrow starts a new exciting weekend with a hair appointment at 1, followed by a journey back to hometown Logan to meet the kids for a little cookout/campfire at my home house. The folks assured me there was an adequate surplus of fresh corn in the garden to be eaten. Yum, corn on the cob, grilled meat, smores, etc... I like corm.

As far as the life plan goes, I'm going to get a room somewhere near downtown Columbus and take classes at Columbus State for this school year. Housing: ideal situation is one of my people's people has a room or two I can live in for cheap in the vicinity. Another ideal situation is Brandonamp and I get a cheap apartment together in the vicinity, although this option would be much more costly and require both of us to get jobs very quickly. I'll obviously need to get part-time work while studying, but I should be able to get my student loans deferred, so I won't have that big red 230USD every month. I'm going to fire off another round of grad school applications this fall/winter using a different strategy and new material and skills I've gained over the past year.

Also, today a big but short storm swept in during the late afternoon (with advance warning, as usual, from Brandonamp north of here).

Work Interlude

2009-08-12T20:43:00.001-04:00

Some of you readers might wander what I do at work. I don't think I've ever really give a big explanation of what I go through at work, and I don't really want to, so I doodled a little 4 panel for you.

Yeah that's a lab coat I'm wearing. Yeah I pop the collar.

Augustus

2009-08-02T20:41:00.001-04:00

So, continuing into August, we see Soontar's operations continuing as usual. Work and stuff during the week, one day of going somewhere/ hanging out on the weekend, followed by a lazy relaxation day. Repeat.

This weekend I visited Diana's place, where we enjoyed three different bodies of water. First a pond, where we canoed and harvested pods. Second a pool, where we swam and harvested dead amphibians and rodents. Third a hot tub, where we enjoyed hot water jets and getting hot in the hot tub. We included me, Diana, and another young lady named after a chain of Japanese convenience stores. Here's some pods in the canoe:

That evening I went to my mum's birthday party, where we ate, drank and were merry. We launched some UFOs at the campfire, which was sweet. Me and my papa are the best UFO builders. Spent the night at home there and had a dream about Lego snowboarding.

Saturday I came home, rode a little bit on the trails, then spent pretty much the rest of the day vegetating. I finished Toradora! which was really good. It was nice to watch a high-school-based anime and it not follow the same plot formula that every other show uses. I highly recommend it for humour and plot value.

Today I worked, and fortunately they had enough staff there (it's a Sunday, so there's a skeleton crew) so we could get out on time. The last couple Sundays were super long and although I generally like working Sundays because there's less annoying people, it was getting to the point of unhappiness.

After arriving home, I've done nothing more than talk to my crew online and OH YEAH I ordered a sweeeet 1/72 scale VF-25 model kit! I've been meaning to do another gunpla kit for a while now, and this one is going to be a step up from my little HG Gundam and Zaku. I can't wait to get building!

Late July

2009-07-27T22:41:00.001-04:00

Summer is over halfway over, and what do I have to show for it? Living away from home. That's about it. I haven't saved up any money. Never got a car. Haven't gotten any leads on a better job. Didn't get into grad school. Didn't get a kiss from a cute girl.

I went into summer knowing this would happen though, so it's no shock to me. I'm not even disappointed. I'm really starting to hate my job though, something I wasn't really expecting - at least not to this degree. Maybe hate isn't the right word. "Resent," perhaps. Also, I now have an intermittent twitch in my one eye. I don't think it's from job-related stress, probably just from life-related stresses. The quarter-life crisis.
Regarding my job, I hate that it's me doing it. There must be plenty of non-extremely-overqualified people in the region that need a job - that need this job - who should have it instead. If I wasn't so poor, I'd quit this job right now. Part of my quarter-life crisis is anger at society for letting educated people like myself go to waste in a place like this.

Another troublesome item is that I haven't been able to draw lately. I'll sit down with the paper and nothing will come out, or if I force it, something rubbish appears on the page and I want to erase it from existence. Should have taken more art classes I suppose...

Perhaps there are simply too many people, more chaff than wheat, or something like that. I know that I'm a nice little piece of wheat, and I'm gonna get out of the bottom of this stupid mill and go somewhere pleasant, get baked into a nice croissant or something.

So I'm currently investigating some new options. I've been living contingencies for too long. It's time to do something new and unexpected.

New Fone

2009-07-20T23:03:00.001-04:00

OK so lately I've been using my mobile phone enough that it's become too costly to keep using prepaid, so I got a contract & phone with T-mobile. Mostly because they had a sale, I suppose. Anyways I'm getting 1000 minutes, 300 texts, and free nights/weekends for 45 pesos a month. Internet and email are extra, but that's what a computer is for, and this isn't exactly a smartphone anyways.

The phone is same size as my old one, but better in every way. It's got a 2mp camera (very meh), very nice screen (about equivalent to the iPod nano's), plays mp3s and videos and FM radio even (and can use mp3s as ringtone), and has a really loud speaker (for listening or annoying nearby citizens). Its easy as pie to connect to the PC with a micro-usb cable (not so easy with Bluetooth) and transfer some pictures, mp3s, etc.

Now my challenge is to use 1000 minutes a month to make sure I get my money's worth! Oh and also figure out how to blog via picture text message!

The Footage

2009-07-13T01:41:00.001-04:00

Assembled from some surveillance data provided by Brandonamp's camera.

Next time, a remote shutter release would be ideal to keep the background exposures identical. Then again, I admit that these results are quite good considering the level of equipment and expertise provided.

Drunk in a Can

2009-07-07T19:20:00.001-04:00

This is some mighty fine strong lager!

You can definitely tell it's 8.1% when you drink it, but after a whole 16 oz, it seems like more than that! At 5 USD per 6-pack, it's not too bad a value, either. Especially considering how many normal beers it would take, and the time it would take to drink them, to achieve the same effect.

In other news... lately I really feel like buying a car. Why the hell shouldn't I? I also really want to move to a city and have a real job. I really don't think I could stand another year of 9/hour in that bloody lab. I'm worth more than that, I graduated 6th in my high school class, cum laude from university, what more do people want? Oh that's right, they want 240 USD a month in loan payments for all that studying.

Doo Dah Day

2009-07-04T22:18:00.001-04:00

Today I travelled with Sir Brandonamp to Columbus' Short North to witness the Doo Dah Parade & related festivities. First we thought we'd be able to grab lunch at the Warehouse Cafe, but alas, it was closed for the holiday. So, we went up to Short North, found a parking spot nearby, and walked over to Betty's, where we enjoyed some delicious brats & sauerkraut. There was a bit of a wait for a table there, but I think it was worth it. (Would've been good if I had brought my DS to kill the time though.)

(another satisfied customer!)

After the meal, we went out and sat on the curb for a few minutes, and the parade started. It was not quite as crazily absurd as I remember it from my childhood, but that was a loooong time ago. Overall I was pleased to have been there. Commence the photo:

(cool motorbikes)

(The Batman)

(Captain Ohio)

(Optimus WHO?)

(Policeman that gave Brandonamp a ticket recently)

(Motorized Citizenry)

(Sweet mural of some sweet old trains)

(Nice courtyard ((not for peeing in)))

(The kinda art I want to see in galleries, not that useless hippy junk)

(The kinda art I like seeing on random walls in the city)

We met up with Pirate Nathan during the parade, and afterwards we walked about the neighborhood with him, eventually ending up at his place. He lives in a huge house with OSU student-people it would appear, and the place was a mess. Despite the mess, the place was pretty cool, with Gundam models, electronic gear of various sorts, weapons, chainmail, vidja games, and etc all over the place. The yard was full of firework debri from the night before.

Pirate Nathan offered kindly to transport us to our parking spot due to the light rain. I drove his '90s Eclipse over there. It was a pretty cool car, with sporty suspension and good power. However, you had to take it easy going into 2nd gear otherwise it made a horrific grinding noise!

I also drove the rest of the way back in the Jazz, which felt exceedingly pedestrian in comparison to the modded Eclipse. Again, no cruise control = wat. Now I'm a little tuckered out and super hungry and my rice is taking Forever to steam. Guess I put in too much water... ~_~

Creepydog

2009-06-27T13:20:00.001-04:00

It's been another week down here at Soontar's pad. Not much has been going on other than a multitude of excursions to the cinema.

First we saw The Hangover with Sainez Boiz, Bramp, & Potato. It was a really funny and overall well done film I thought. Made me wish I lived on the West Coast. East Coast is so dull, boring, and omnipresent.

Next was Transformers 2 with Bramp & Louie. I was satisfied with the robo-action sequences - they're getting better at blending CGI with the footage. I would've liked more Autobot/Decepticon involvement in the plot, there was way too much of the silly humans crawling around. On the way back home Brandonamp scared some couple kissing by the street when he went around a corner pretty fast.

The third and final movie of the week was UP with Ayaka. I liked it a whole lot. The plot and everything didn't seem rushed like some movies, but still a lot of things happened. I really liked the style of animation in this one, kind of cartoony, simplistic, yet properly detailed. The digital 3D was also really cool, and totally worth the extra price.

In other news my housemates moved in a couple days ago. They're cool people I guess. They're not around much it seems. Townies are out in the town being townies I guess. They have this creepy old dog that looks at you with it's head crooked:

Moar Haus

2009-06-20T10:56:00.001-04:00

Soontar's Decrepit Office

Jungle of a Garden

Not A House I'd Buy

Kitchen: Works, Not Clean, Can you spot the Mech?

Nearby Mysterious Building

Mitsubishi Minicab Cache!

What are they, Farm Equipment?

Right Hand Drive: Yes!

So in conclusion, I believe that Ohio University has collected these Minicabs from a source in Japan - possibly one of it's sister universities there. As you can see in the second photo, the maximum load weight is written in Japanese on the tailgate. I can only imagine how fun they are to drive around in - they're even 4 wheel drive! If I was going to buy a pickup truck, I'd get one of these.

In other news... oh wait there is no other news. I have started playing Mirror's Edge, which runs surprisingly well on my massive cyberspace deck. It involves running and jumping on the rooftops of skyscrapers and other parts of the city. Main character is a Parkour artist. The game looks great - the shoe graphics are fantastic. Environments are also well done, with action taking place in vast, brightly lit cityscapes. Gameplay is pretty fun, but it involves a lot of platforming a la Tomb Raider. Although I'm only a few hours into the game, it seems like the people are always sneaking around on the rooftops during the day. I dunno, but wouldn't it be easier to avoid attention by sneaking around on the rooftops at night?

Das Haus

2009-06-15T20:11:00.001-04:00

So here's the haus I'm renting for the next 2.5 months. It's small, somewhat old, and ~~a little beat up~~ has plenty of character.

(Mustang not included)

Right now I'm living in the living room. As redundant it may sound, I've got pretty much everything in there until Peter the Loser (*peterisaloser is the wifi password here) moves out later this week. I don't really feel like moving into a room then moving into another room like 3 days later, so I'll live interstitially for a bit.

(The forbidden fruit of Peter's room lies through those doors)

Anyways, now I am back into a situation where I get to operate my own Machine for Living. It's a very quaint machine with a bit of dust on it, but with a little oil and gumption it will operate a pleasing level of efficiency. Because efficiency is what Soontar is all about.

Um, Last Weekend

2009-06-08T23:12:00.001-04:00

Text-based poast.

Friday. Viewed Land of the Lost and Angels & Demons at the Skyview with Bramp. The latter was much worse than the former, which really didn't impress or even adequately entertain me. Perhaps those who've seen the television program it was based upon would have been more moved by it's screen presence. Sometimes movies these days are just plain not very good. Should I demand a refund next time?

Saturday I stayed home, washed and waxed the car and van which took forever. I don't know, the wax got super hard - it was a different kind from the stuff I used to use, and it was a hot sunny day, so maybe the sunlight got through the shade the vehicles were under... ugh, it was starting to really drive me nuts. Then I realized I hadn't eaten any lunch and it was like 16:30. I'm a very hungry young man, and I've noticed that my stamina, concentration, and mood in particular can be severely affected by hunger. I ate a big bowl o' cereal and felt better.

Sunday I loaded up the van with five Japanese girls and drove them to Easton Mall in Columbus to go shopping. I really don't like shopping or driving the van, so for me it was a good opportunity to practice Japanese and do community service. All the girls bought sexy bikinis. I bought a tank of gasoline. We ate at a moderately expensive Japanese restaurant - I had the Lobster Dynamite. When we got back to Athens, everybody was tired from the naked orgy in the back of the van on the way back. I received a quaint box of overpriced Godiva chocolates in return for my services that day.

Epilogue: Today was Monday. The day of work wasn't too bad really. I drove home and cleaned out the van with the shop-vac. It's nice to see something transformed from hideously decrepit to not very decrepit. Really, the carpets look nice except all the various shades of coffee stains which I suppose are here to stay. It made me think though: how come all cars have carpet, but none have, say, hardwood or tile floors? Maybe when I get my 240Z I can install some lovely custom floors~!

New Items Acquired!

2009-06-01T20:05:00.001-04:00

It's been a while since my last poast, but that's because there's not much to poast about and little time to poast in. Anyways, this year's expensive purchase #2 is a new mountain bike. I bought a new 2009 Haro at the local bike shop - not on sale, not used or anything - my little way of stimulating the economy by paying full price for this item. It's a Flightline One DX, a low-mid level mountain bike I suppose. Whatever level it is doesn't matter much to me, as it is superior in many ways to my old bike (but not enough that I want to simply discard my trusty old steel GT). The frame is lightweight aluminum, the front fork features some nice and bouncy shocks, the brakes are this amazing new technology called disc brakes, and the trigger shifters are pretty slick.

Disc brakes = more powerful and controllable.

Next isn't quite an item, but I have completed negotiations to sublease part of a house in Athens this summer. It'll cost more than driving to work from home, but it will be a small price to pay for the vast gains in FREEDOM and of course, BROADBAND. Living in the town will cut my commute from 45 minutes in the car destroying the environment to 20 minutes on my bike becoming stronger / saving the whales. I don't have a picture now, but I assure you I'll have plenty when I move in a couple weeks from now.

In other news, I went canoeing with a gal I know on Saturday morning. I kind of expected her to be a ditz for some reason, but she surprised me with her canoe handling competency. I think the best moment was drifting across the lake under light cloud cover while folks on the shore were playing pleasant music on banjo and guitar.

Later Saturday, Brandonamp and I watched a couple films at mah house. Specifically, The Taste of Tea, and 5cm Per Second. The Taste of Tea I would first describe as crazy, but actually it is at the same time very calm. Whimsical, perhaps. I highly recommend it. 5cm Per Second is mostly good for the really high quality backgrounds and details in the animation, as the story is mostly just depressing.

Today was another typical day at work, however, in the afternoon I received a voicemail about interviewing for an actual job in the company (international customer service). With a little luck, gumption, and my winning smile, perhaps I'll have a slightly improved working stiffhood.

Delicious Vengeance

2009-05-21T16:59:00.001-04:00

I'm gravely sorry for the delay. My excuse is that many of these photos appeared on Facebook earlier and I didn't feel very excited to double-post them here too. Anywho, those who are reading this already know what all happened here probably. We went to the Largest Air Force Museum in the World. It was cool. Afterwards we went to Schmidt's - an uber German restaurant in Columbus' German Village. Ate loads of sausage and subsequent cream puff. Sorry non pics of the food.

Emily went back to her post in England, and I returned to my drudgery. Also, my birthday happened, I got a couple presents, had a low-key party, and am picking up my self-present tomorrow. It's a new Haro Flightline One DX mountain bike. I test-rode it the other day and it felt great - lightweight, good ramping-off-curb airtime, and generally a sweet bike.

Light Vacay

2009-05-03T19:05:00.001-04:00

Last weekend was the start of a 4 - day weekend journey/vacation. We picked up my sister, visited some folks, and stayed a couple nights at a lodge on a lake. Since we traveled all the way up to the Cleveland area, there was a lot of driving involved - four people driving long distances isn't real comfortable in a compact car. Oh and we had a canoe strapped to the top the whole time...

Saturday we went to Columbus and sat through a bunch of hootenanny because my dad is some guy's kid's godfather. It was boring, but I got to eat food. Eventually we made it to Cleveland, where I experienced respiratory discomfort and navigational difficulties. At about 4am we "met" sister at the train station. The train station was super lame.

So we slept and left the hotel, got some donuts, and entered Oberlin town, where we met George and Emily's old teacher/advisor/mentor. George had some cool new toys: a lens that catches things on fire with sunlight, and a whip. I cracked the whip. Then we ate chinese food for lunch. After that we left and went to Mohican State Park, but not before purchasing a fun water turtle to play with in the pool.

Arriving at the Lodge, we proceeded to lounge about in the air conditioning, swim in the pool, eat pizza, and stroll by the lake, where we saw a raccoon in a tree, a deer in the forest, and numerous squirrels and chipmunks scampering about.

Monday was pretty much more of the same, but we also went for a hike in the forest, leaving everyone thirsty and tired. Dinner was eaten in the lodge restaurant, adult drinks were consumed, shuffleboard and arcade game was played, and merriment obtained in sufficient quantities.

Tuesday we packed up and prepared to leave for home - but first guess what?! Time for another hike! Also it is now raining halfway through the hike - refreshing, isn't it? Before leaving the park, we went to a cool Fire Tower that you can climb up the stairs but rather unclimacticly you can't get onto the observation platform.

Driving back, we had lunch at Ruby Tuesday, which was rather quality, then in order to further satisfy the light-speed Imhoff metabolism, we purchased donuts immediately after! I drove the car home, and having the canoe on top was not exactly reassuring, but after a while you get used to it.

I finished off the week with three large helpings of boring work. Stay tuned for the Saturday Air Force Roadtrip Poast!

Dreams

2009-04-26T00:07:00.002-04:00

Last night I had a lot of dreaming going on, but I only remember a little bit. I was in a hip modern (as opposed to postmodern) bar / club drinking bourbon and characters from William Gibson's books were there. In particular I remember talking to Cayce Pollard about how clothes in North America didn't fit me properly and that I needed to get a new suit in Japan or somewhere - she knew someone who could hook me up with one or something.

Also, I just watched this week's episode of Fringe, which just happened to involve dreams. The show continues to send shivers down my spine every time! ZFT fo' lyfe, mofo!

More Consumer Products!

2009-04-21T20:22:00.001-04:00

What am I a consumer product reviewer? ~_~

Anyways I got a Pink 8gb iPod nano off Woot.com recently. I got it to replace my old 5gb iRiver. The iRiver's battery has gotten terrible lately, and it's mini hard drive sometimes freezes and is slow, so as much as I liked it, it was time for something new. The 'pod doesn't have ability to record voice or listen to FM radio, but it's screen is nice and the included earbuds really aren't that bad. Now I'll have something to reliably play my tunes during the commute.

I made a cozy little armature for it out of Lego, because it looked a bit unprofessional just laying there on the desk.

I also modified a Lego frigate I built last year into an underwater/space/surface frigate.

Legos are and always will be an important part of my life! Viva el Lego!

West Virginia Ballad

2009-04-16T23:05:00.001-04:00

OHHHHHHH in 1814 we took a little trip, along highway 70 and down to west virgina, we took a little pretzle and we took a little coke and we fought the bloody westies in the town of super buffet

We dug our spoons and they kept a comin, And there must have been a hundred of 'em beatin' on the check, They slopped so high and they made their tater tots zing, we stood behind our tables and didn't eat a thing.

(in collaboration with Brandonamp)

Blog Neglect

2009-04-13T15:39:00.002-04:00

Things have been going on lately, mostly just me going to work and hanging round with Toufu. I went on a trip to Parkersberg, WV and Marietta on Saturday with him, his woman, and another lady. We went to the mall there, which was kinda dull. The ladies went into Victoria's Secret and us boys went in Gamespot. We also went into Borders, the bookstore, and I got a book on the top architects today. After that we went to a "Japanese" restaurant. In fact it was owned by and staffed by mostly Chinese people it seemed. Good grief. We ate hot pot, but it a kinda strange way where each person has their own little hot pot. It was pretty good anyway. Nothing like cooking your own meat and eating it piping hot! I still prefer plain old yakiniku. I guess growing up male in the midwest gives you some mystical longing to grill things. Since we were in the area, we went to Marietta and walked a bit in the historic district, which is quite nice. Then we visited Toufu's dad's house for a bit and went back to Athens. After a couple drinks and some cool air my minor headache disappeared, and we walked to the student centre and saw the movie Yes Man, which was good.

I really should have taken the camera. It's size is a little discouraging though. I've been thinking about a new mobile phone, something 3G, Bluetoof, and decent camera, for those candid shots on the go. I'd probably have to have expensive monthly contract for that kinda hardware, but it could double as internet service through the Bluetooth, although judging from Jed's experience, that'd lead to high ping times so no online gaeming. I'll investigate...

In other news, I still haven't heard back from OSU or Washington regarding my acceptance to their architecture programs with massive scholarships and an executive suite... I'm a little worried about not getting into school and having nothing to do until a freakin' year from now when I'd be able to apply again.

Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Hosaka Cyberspace Deck

2009-04-04T21:12:00.003-04:00

Sorry to keep boring you dear readers with posts about my computers or desks, but it just proves that I blog about whatever is in front of me. Suppose I could blog about the wall, but I digress...

Today's post is about my new used cyberspace deck. It's a Lenovo Y730 (refurbished). It's what one might call a "desktop replacement" deck, with the big 17" screen, heavy weight, and short battery life. Indeed for me it does replace my desktop computer in just about every way possible. The most surprising thing was that it's Motorolla SM56 modem could hold a connection just as well as the massive US Robotics in my desktop.

Most of the big-ticket features are nothing really to get excited about though: Core 2 Duo P8400 runs cool and fast, Intel Wifilink 5100 picks up wifi as you'd expect it to, and the Radeon HD 3650 runs Left 4 Dead above average while remaining cool. Touch media control buttons are meh as usual, and the speakers are better than that cheesy Acer, but only on par with that Compaq burn victim, despite there being 4 of them and a tiny "subwoofer."

I upgraded the DDR3 ram from 3 to 4gb, which has made Vista a good deal snappier. I also added a second, faster, 7200rpm hard drive, raising the total space up to 520gb between the two in it. The upgrades were pretty easy, just one big panel on the bottom, and the 2nd hard drive bay on the side is hot-swappable. You can open it with just a fingernail, slip it out, and connect it to other stuff with a mini-usb cord.

The chassis is great. It's just plastic, but it really feels like hard plastic. There's really a noticeable difference between cheap plastic and good plastic, and this is the good stuff folks, yummy hardcore plastique. Keyboard feels really good with more hard plastic, and thank goodness I got the numpad instead of another wacky gimmicky "gaming zone" on the Y730s with the WUXGA screen and bigger processors. The touchpad is pretty much standard touchpad, but it's buttons feel nice and spring-loaded.

Ports are all along the sides, with nothing at all on the back, like most modern laptops. It's got the standard 4x USB, HDMI, LAN, Modem, IE1394, and VGA. The VGA port can take a signal in or out, so you can use this screen as a monitor for something else. What a strange feature, eh? I actually tried it just for kicks, and it works fine and dandy. Might come in handy someday I guess. The mic and line-out are on the front, which is good for headphones, kinda bad for my line to stereo receiver, but I really don't care. Also on the front are a couple switches for wifi/bluetoof and the subwoofer. Oh and a card reader and IR receiver.

Screen is pretty bright and the 1440x900 resolution looks good on it. I have a love/hate relationship with it being a glossy screen: it looks a bit better than a similar matte screen, but golly, this is almost the most reflective glossy screen I've ever used! I have to admit the Acer's full HD screen had noticeably better colours and less reflection. However, with that huge of a resolution on a 16" screen, it was a little hard on the eyes for reading and besides, it's weak Geforce 9500 was never going to be able to play games at that kind of resolution anyways. I digress. It would've been nice to have a newer LED screen as an option, but alas, this is an older, more power-consuming, more toxic, TFT screen. It does have a dandy fast response time though.

Overall, I'm super-pleased with the deck. The style is great, one of my big disappointments with the Acer. It's all black except navy blue on the lid, now if only it had some chrome trim... System stability is so far good, and seems to run cooler overall, with the fan only ramping up during gaming, and even then not loudly. Haven't had a single blue screen 'o' death yet, or any anomalous performance issues. Oh, and looking at it, one would never guess that it's refurbished except for the sticker that says so. The battery life is not very good (about 1hr 45min with wifi on), and the weight is typically heavy for a 17incher. Overall I'd have to say thumbs up to: Lenovo, Refurbishism, and Consistence in Quality. Thumbs down to: Buying New, Blue LEDs (yeah, there's a few tiny ones, but most are orange thank Pete), and old TFT backlit LCDs.

Final points: 1. Don't put Dolby Home Theater logos on laptops people - it's not physically possible to sound anything like a theater with speakers this small! 2. This is Energy Star compliant and RoHS certified, so it's pretty green for a consumer electronic. 3. I secretly love Windows Vista.

Can you spot the "subwoofer"?

Pretty cool cooling system huh? (pun)

Small vs. Big

2009-04-02T22:21:00.002-04:00

It has come to my attention that these days, many people are concerned about issues that are in a word, Big. Take global climate change for instance - people are worried about it, and trying to do some things about it. To me, this seems very silly. Why should some random guy have to worry about something like that? Instead of people running around worrying about Big issues they have little influence on, they ought to concern themselves with the small things in their own lives. After all, if you do what you do in a reasonably effective manner, then whatever you're doing will have a good impact on that particular issue and people won't have to worry about it.

Yeah I know, this sounds like it would have the same problems as communism, but humour me. Maybe someday someone will read this and think about a more lively way to live their life. Me, I'll continue to live a life of regret and longing, ever-searching for that mystical Tashi Station where I wanted to buy some power converters...

Cardboard City

2009-03-28T19:10:00.003-04:00

It was 3-o-clock today when I realized that if I didn't do something, the day would pass with nothing being accomplished. I decided on the spur of the moment to rearrange my furniture. I've not done this for a long time in my room at home, mostly because I had acheived the optimal arrangement. Or so I thought.

My new arrangement gives me a nice view out the front window from my desk. I also lowered the desk by switching support structure from my metal file cabinets to cardboard boxes. That's right - my heaven wooden door of a desk and it's denizens are held up by mere cardboard. The new height is much more comfortable for typing and writing on. Also, without the cabinets, the desk doesn't stick out from the wall as much, so it takes up less space in the room.

Notice how the 5-year old desktop computer sits in the dark corner. It's going to hide there for a while, biding its time until it can reemerge with new and unforseen powers!

Working Stiff

2009-03-26T17:13:00.002-04:00

The last time you heard from me, I had just been hired. Well I'm in my second week of working at yonder pharmaceuticals factory. Coworkers are neither great or horrible - the good thing about them is their variety. The work is very monotonous yet requires great care and attention due to the nature of the products (medical testing supplies). I'm just happy to be out of the house doing something. The money will keep me alive and my debtors profitable. My one relief is that it's a temp job, although I'm worried that they will ask me to continue permanently at the end of the assignment. Do I want to keep doing this job I'm super overqualified for? No. Not for more than like, a season. Economy is recovering, there has to be something better out there somewhere. Maybe it'll time to take the Great Leap, and use saved up money to move out to California or somewhere.

I've been commuting from home, which is worse for the environment, but cheaper than, finding some place in Athens to rent for a month. I've got my people on the lookout for a spare room somewhere, but so far no news. It'd be nice to live on the East Side and commute by cycle. So if you're reading this and know of anything, or need a friend to live with in Athens, let me know, eh? Preferably no cats or fur-producing creatures...

In other news, I sold my Acer laptop I bought new last summer. I never really liked it, and that crazy phaser media control was super-unprofessional looking. I sold it at very little loss, (especially considering its a computer) although the ebay and paypal fees put a large dent in the revenue than I would've liked. I used a little over half of what that sold for to get a new laptop. A refurbished Lenovo Y730. Sorry no pictures, I think I might do a more thorough review later in the week. So far I really like it. It came with 3gigs of ram instead of the 4 in the Acer, so startup is a little slower due to VistaAIDS. Will probably upgrade it to the maximum 4gb. Also it has a spot for an additional 2.5" hard drive, which can be removed and plugged into any pc via a simple mini-USB cable. Other unique features include VGA-in capable d-sub port, and facial recognition security. What I'm most excited about is the apparantly superior build quality and style of this computer, from the feel of the keys to the shape and texture of the plastic. Hey it might not be magnesium compound like a Thinkpad, but heck, car fenders and stuff are made of plastic these days.

Well, another day at the grind tomorrow and I'll have Saturday to relax. Oh and in case you haven't noticed: SPRING HAS SPRUNG!

Get Hired, Drink Coffee!

2009-03-14T22:07:00.002-04:00

News to those of you out there in lands of merriment: I got a job, yay! It's only a temp job, but it's full time and will last until early May, so that means two months of my bank account going up instead of going down, yeah!

So anyways, the day I got hired (yesterday) I had a cup of coffee for the first time in quite a while, and hadn't had lunch either, so for a bit there my mind was in overdrive and I couldn't concentrate on the book I was reading. Later that evening for some reason I looked at my old Nintendo 64 and saw this creepy face:

Then today, Brandonamp and I drove up to Westcott House in Springfield, Ohio. It is a pretty sweet house done by Frank Lloyd Wright a long time ago, like 1908. Way ahead of it's time. I guess it was just recently rennovated because we saw a bit of a film that showed it in really bad shape in 2001. We got to see the whole interior of the house with a tour guide dude and a middle-aged couple from Columbus. Brandonamp commented that it seemed more like a house to live in than... Fallingwater I guess?... and said that it was "another place I wouldn't enjoy living." Ah, now that phrase confused me a bit too, I guess he meant it was a place he wouldn't mind living in. Sorry but no indoor pictures were allowed, so I'll just give you a slightly touched-up outdoor shot. I know the sky is overexposed, yeah, but you're not missing much, it was just Central Ohio Grey Overcast. One more thing, the Westcott family's son had had an amateur radio rig back in the day, and they showed us a replica: it was about half the size of a car!

So yeah, I drove on the way up, and I have to say, I think all cars should have cruise control standard. If anything as a safety feature. It's also good because keeping constant speed uses less petrol and is easier on the engine/transmission. It eliminates the need to keep checking one's speedometer to see if you're speeding or not, and for me at least, it keeps me from accidentally speeding or accidentally going old-people slow. Also, be wary of creamhorn pastries: when biting into them powder sugar and crumbs will fall all over your pants while driving.

Brandonamp's Pub

2009-03-04T02:22:00.002-05:00

Just built this corner pub in one evening. It even has a revolving door.

Now that the top floors and roofs are in place, it's hard to see inside.
Have a fancy stylized x-ray image:

I'm not really sure how that traffic light tower came about, but it inspired the name of the place: Traffic Lite. This building is in what I call "atomic-punk" style. It's a blend of futuristic art-deco, traditional 20th-century buildings, and glorification of atomic-age technology. If you really like it, I'll go ahead and do the furnishing of the inside.

TOP SECRET SUPER SPECIAL

2009-03-03T16:01:00.000-05:00

Well, in regards to friend Brandonamp's recent sad times, I felt that maybe I should share some information on my own personal life. I've never talked about it much on this blog, so I won't go into it too deeply, and try to confine it to a single poast. To any non-regular readers/my parents who are reading this: please honor and appreciate this wealth of declassified information!

First of all, I've never really had a girlfriend in the common sense of the word. I've always had friends who were girls, but I didn't really hold quarter with the idea of dating. During high school I had an annoying crush which kept me focused on someone who wasn't even one of my friends. In university I had a few episodes with a Miss J. and a Miss A., but there was agreeably no magic and the relationships faded away.

Then there was Miss H. At first I was mildly interested, then we became allies, and then I put some clues together and realized she was into me, so before long we were into each other. I was really lucky to be into someone who was into me - such a mutual intoness is pretty rare. However, at the back of my mind, I knew it wouldn't last. It sure didn't, and she left me. It wasn't a clean break, and she hasn't been willing to talk ever since. It really ate me up for a long time. Imagine one of your best friends suddenly says "I don't like you." and won't talk to you anymore. That's what it feels like.

It still bothers me a little, but it's not something I can't deal with. After that there were a couple short episodes as well, but they're not really worth mentioning other than for the fact that at one point I had makeup on. More recently there were a couple Miss Ys who I wasn't involved with, but would've liked to if I had more time with them. Both Miss Ys were situations where I didn't want to start something only to blast off into space leaving a smoldering crater. The one Miss Y. I still owe a favor I'd love to repay but I'm worried I might never get the chance.

I think my main problem is that I'm never living in one place for a very long time. It's hard to develop deep friendships when you're not around someone physically. Grad school should fix that problem by keeping me in a city for 3+ years at a time. In the meantime, I'll just continue being the Lonely Driver I've been for the past year.

Atomic Powered Aircraft

2009-03-02T22:29:00.003-05:00

The other day I built this Lego jet after seeing some cool ones in Gundam Wing. Brandonamp wanted to see it I think. It ended up like a sort of amphibian craft because of the two pontoon-like pods on the lower flanks of the fuselage.

I was thinking about atomic energy for some reason, and started reading about atomic-powered aircraft on wikipedia yesterday, but not before I saw that hideous picture of a vulture (baby?).

(Photo from Wikipedia)

And no, nuclear planes don't exist, aside from a few testbeds that just carried a reactor to study radiation shielding requirements. The idea was to have the reactor supply heat for the turbofans (jet engines), but the planes were going to be really heavy and before long they were made obsolete by ICBMs. I still think an airplane that could stay up flying around for weeks at a time would be sweet. Get the scientists back on that research and before long we'll have flying castles!

Farewell February

2009-02-26T21:15:00.004-05:00

February is about to come to its customary early end, and there has been little development in the Soontar. I designed a few houses for my best friends Brandonamp and Emilz. I have to admit I put extra special effort into Emilz's house because it was her birthday. Brandonamp's house (pictured below) was a bit more fanciful, and I had images of Star Wars architecture and Rebel bases in my head when I designed it.

I did get some good news recently: I passed the treacherous level 2 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test! In order to celebrate, I let the little plastic ones have a dance party:

Wedge tolerates the shenanigans (and Yomi's advances!)

Tsuruya and Hobbie: good couple or best couple?

Zaku II has started hanging out with the wrong crowd...

I finally came up with a better cover for my hanging light - it's an old map folded into a nice long box. It reminds me of some wall lamps in our favourite pub in Japan, which used mechanical schematics to a similar effect.

Fortunately, February coming to and end also means Winter is coming to an end, yay! I'm excited to enjoy the springtime of my youth!

NDY

2009-02-22T12:37:00.002-05:00

In case you're wondering, I am indeed still alive, and yes, the blog will continue when things pick up. I've been reluctant to blog lately because, A: it's been same-old-same-old around here, B: internet is slow and inhibits blogging, C: it's still cold out.

Some things that have happened lately: Mr. Tofu and Ms. Yang-yang visited my house yesterday and spent the night. We ate homemade curry for dinner and ate delicious German chocolate cake for dessert, followed up by playing with Legos and watching Dog of Flanders. I had a weird dream about a giant diagram explaining what kettle materials were good for brewing tea.

In other news: I sold my laptop, and am planning to replace it with a less-expensive refurbished model. Probably a refurbished business-model notebook, as those are generally tougher than consumer-level products. I really did like my Compaq business-model laptop - before that train heater killed it.

On the job front: I've got a phone interview for a summer internship on Monday, and an interview at a temp agency on Wednesday of this week. With a little luck and a bit of gumption, I'll finally be earning some hard-earned dough.

Post-Blizzard Update

2009-02-03T22:48:00.001-05:00

One week ago there came a great winter storm which dumped snow, ice, and more snow on everybody and everything. Wednesday the power and comm systems went out due to trees and ice on the transmission lines. We spent the next three days stuck at the ranch. It wasn't too bad, because we have a wood burning fireplace/stove to heat with, and stuff from the freezer we could just put outside to keep it frozen. Also, we had plenty of candles, lights, and batteries. Somehow I didn't get bored at all. Wednesday I went hiking in the snow and did some sled riding. Thursday I read through X-Wing: Solo Command. Friday I slept in and eventually broke down and did some stuff on the computer with battery power. Of course I have some photos of the Winter Wonderland for y'all:

Saturday I drove up to Columbo to hang out with Brandonamp, Observer, and other anime club people at Ohayocon. It was much more crowded than I remember, and about as unentertaining as I remember. The Peelander Z concert was most enjoyable, and I got to see a lot of good cosplay. Sorry, I didn't take many pictures of people. Hanging out with Brandonamp was cool, and I met a fabled member of the club who I hadn't known about before. Brandonamp's girlfriend was pretty annoying, but I had known about that going in. ~_~

(Seeing people with cool costumes and me with just a variable-fighter-shaped backpack left me thinking I really need to make a cool costume again sometime.)

When I got home Sunday the power was back on, and communications were restored on Monday. The thing that bothered me the most during the outage was the extreme quiet. After a day of no background noise at all, even flipping over a few dominos was hurting my ears!

This month threatens to be really boring. Hopefully I will put the time to good use and do some more work towards the comic book. I always make sure to find something constructive to do each day - today I designed a little cottage in Sketchup:

LONG BOY

2009-01-19T23:11:00.001-05:00

.....and Echo Bunny

Echo Bunny is the rabbits master of becoming ultra-sound compatible by means of high powered equipment and mind control. The bunny of the spirit in popular youth culture.

Fighting the Doldrums

2009-01-15T21:50:00.002-05:00

THE DOLDRUMS!

..and those who fight them:

(Gundam and his girlfriend Tsuruya)

January, Month of Doldrums

2009-01-13T22:01:00.003-05:00

The doldrums of winter have set in, and there's nothing to be done. The air is cold and dry. I'll be finished reading all of Sergeant Frog in a couple days. I really want a job more as a way to get out and do something somewhere more than I want it for the money.

So, as is his wont, Soontar has done something new with his desk. The new member is a piece of scrap wood from the depths of The Garage. It holds two keyboards and the good mouse. The new monitor configuration is working pretty well, although I imagine it will be uncomfortable in the head department to look at the top one for extended periods of time-o.

So, as a little reward to myself for completing not one, but three gradual school application procedures, I ordered a Gundam model kit. It's got a Gundam and Zaku from 08th MS Team, and it should be here soon, yippee! I'll be sure to post pics!

2009 I Eat It

2009-01-05T16:04:00.001-05:00

Welcome to 2009, kids! A number has changed on your calendar! It seems meaningless, but it's not! It's important because you gotta remember it when you sign and date your contract to sell soul to devil, etc.

I saw a sweet Central Ohio Lego Train Club thing in Groveport. It was so rad. Maybe I should join a Lego club. By pooling our Lego bricks, we can create something this massive and awe-inspiring.

I baked a sweet Bundt Cake. It's carrot cake with raisins - not my favourite by any means, but it's still a delicious cake and I had to eat it.

I went with mum and sis to play glow-in-the-dark mini-golf. It was really psychedelic and undersea-themed. There were crabs eating stuff and mermaids with strategically placed seaweed. It was really cool - almost as cool as eating steak.

For Christmas presents, I got some sweet surprises, like the grappling hook I'd had on my list for several years. I also got a pirate eye patch, a nice pair of trainers, and assorted goodies.

OH AND DID I MENTION I GOT THE COOLEST BACKPACK EVAR??!!

BEHOLD IT'S HOME-MADE MAGNIFICENCE!!!

'Tis now the season for getting a job! It looks like I'll end up working in Columbus or somewhere, which pretty much means I'll need a car. I have very little moneys, so I'll have to grab a beater. Ideally, I can snag a quality high-class car that is just old or has a lot of miles - like an old Acura Legend or Volvo 240. The other option is a newer/more reliable compact car like a 90s Corolla with a dented rear fender. Of course, what I really want is a Datsun 240Z. ~_~

Roboman

2008-12-18T00:04:00.002-05:00

Hi guys, robo man here.

Robo man found a photograph.

It's Hiragi. She was great.

Time for exercise. Hoo-aah!

Overdue Toast

2008-12-10T12:15:00.002-05:00

OK lads and lasses - I told you it would be a long and desolate winter severely lacking in posts, didn't I? I bring you a post today about the complete destruction of one of my primary objectives - the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, or 日本語能力試験!

Well, I didn't actually destroy the test, I just took it. While it would have felt better to strafe the frigid test center in Chicago from inside the warm cockpit of an attack craft, I have to admit it felt good. I can safely say my Japanese hasn't degraded at all in the past year, and in some areas it has improved perhaps. After the test I joined some of my Ohio University comrades for a dervishly delectable dinner at a local family restaurant. ("The Golden Nugget" in Lincoln Park - I highly recommend it!)

The thing that concerned me was the high cost and low speed of available public transportation. It really concerns me that a person can't get a ticket to another city in the same region on the cheapest mode of transport without paying more than a day's wages. I managed to get to from Columbus to Chicago for 90 dollars on the cheapest transit available (Megabus). Looking for transit service from my hometown to Columbus, a mere 1 hour drive, I found it would cost 55 dollars each way. Does this not seem mad to you? My blood boils!

Freedom is at stake here, people. Freedom of movement is being impeded by forces beyond our control. I fear this may be part of the Dark Prime Minister's plan.

Home

2008-11-26T00:12:00.002-05:00

...most beautiful word in the world, ain't it?

Anyways, Soontar finally returned home a few days ago. The day of, it was already snowing. So Soontar now descends into another cold winter of scarce blog poasts, much lamenting, and gnashing of teeth.

There are several large hurdles to leap over this winter. The first and arguably the most important, is to successfully complete graduate school applications - the most difficult part of which has been a particular "personal history statement" wherein I'm asked to write a one-page narrative on my life background including work experience. One page. ~_~

The next hurdle is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test on December 6th. I am re-taking level 2 in hopes of passing this year. Last year I failed to pass level 2 by a small margin, so I'll give it another shot this year. I gotta cram a bunch of kanji for serious.

The final and perhaps most daunting hurdle is finding a new job. My options are either finding a crummy job in my hometown, or finding a better-paying job in a city and rooming somewhere in said city.

A major hindrance to accomplishing these giant leaps for mankind is the molasses-speed 20th century internet back here at the ranch. Another major hindrance is my lack of super powers, such as the ability to slow down time or absorb knowledge from mind-melding...

New York, New York?

2008-11-19T20:38:00.003-05:00

I spent today in New York. Yay. I've just been on Manhattan here, which is not, in fact, very big at all. Well, okay, it is big, but not xbox hueg. I spent nearly 3 hours in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That might have been too long actually. There were a lot of the kind of expensive old famous paintings that I don't really care for. However, there was also a lot of cool stuff that I liked, so I got to see some really nice art stuff that I normally wouldn't even realize existed. INNNNNPUT!

After the Met, I met my cousin for Lunch. She brought her little baby and we went to a hip restaurant which (coincidentially or not) had a bunch of other hip young mums with babies & toddlers. It was OM NOM. We then walked through Central Park and visited the Guggenheim. Woohoo for Space Age architecture by my favourite architct - FraLloWri. The exhibits were pretty cool too. Afterwards I saw cousin & baby off and walked a bit more in the park, which was scenic as one would expect.

As the sun set, I made a visit to Washington Square only to find it mysteriously fenced off for "renovations" or something. Looking through the fence I could see no construction or anything going on at all. Lame. I melded with the NYU student crowd and got back into the tubes. Back at my base of operations I rested my feet a little bit. Suddenly I felt really hungry so I found a cafe and got an xbox hueg slice of pizza, some bar-b-q crisps, and an orange juice (2 servings of fruit, bro!). Then I realized I had better go to Times Square since I'm in NY, so I did.

Last Bits of England

2008-11-18T17:08:00.001-05:00

Leeds Street Scene

Dan-esque Boat

Leeds Dual Carriageway at Night

HOLD ON!

Downtown Leeds at Night

Driving to The Coast

Riding to The Coast

The Coast (Scarborough)

Oh Look a Castle

Yeah, Those are Surfers

Look at That City

Sweet! Coast Guard Station

Freaky Staring Pigeon

Leeds Train Station - 4:30am

Zombie Attack

2008-11-14T09:57:00.002-05:00

As you all know, I'm in England. Be here until next Tuesday. So far the weather has been very desolate. Even the inside of the apartment's maximum temperature is about 72 F with the heat at maximum. Of course, it's not so bad once you're outside walking around with the Pie Master.

We haven't really done anything exciting around here, and it isn't really a particularly exciting place. We went to the pub. We went to the marketplace. I put some direction in my sister's life by persuading her to finally purchase a toaster. The toast is now a great part of her life.

Multinational Visionitarianism

2008-11-07T08:16:00.005-05:00

TOKYO!

Tokyo was neat I guess. It wasn't really all that special though, just like an extremely large version of any other Japanese city with a lot more tourists.

The Great

2008-11-04T20:19:00.005-05:00

OK, here's the update you've all been waiting for. Soontar is now in Tokyo, blogging from the hostel lobby. Hooray for free wifi! Anyways, Saturday went just as planned. The hydrofoil was really great - fast, extremely smooth (smoother than jet, bus, or even bullet train), and more legroom than a jet. It was so cool, I didn't even notice when it switched from regular boat mode to flying mode. On the bus to the train station from the port, I talked to a Polish guy and his Korean girlfriend. Guess what: he also had a crappy teaching job in Korea and was quitting before Christmas. Anyways he was a cool guy (Ralph) and I hope his future is bright.

I rode the Nozomi 40 bullet train all the way from Fukuoka to Osaka. It was the newest model in use, the N700, and it was extremely fast and smooth. There was even an electrical outlet so I was able to recharge my DS finally. It was really quite worth the extra cost. Anyways, at Osaka I met this large millipede/centipede and spent the night at his apartment. No, actually I stayed at my sister's former roommate(Katie)'s apartment. We did some fun stuff like, eat okonomiyaki, drink while sitting in a parking space in front of the convenience store, eat cookies, and receive presents. Her roommate, who is a big old guy, was given a toy gun won at an arcade by her friend. Oh yes, we met Katie's friend who is supposedly middle-age but pretty young in personality and good-looking too. She hung out in front of the convenience store with us, which is pretty cool.

From Osaka I took the Kintetsu Urban Liner Plus to Nagoya. Quite fast for a normal non-bullet train. I was really quite lucky when boarding it, as I went up to the counter by the platform to get a reserved seat ticket I said(in moonspeak) "Can I get a reserved seat for the next Urban Liner?" and the guy was like "You mean this one, lol?" and pointed to the train that had just appeared out of nowhere. I was like "Yeah!" and quickly paid and leaped aboard. It was an off-peak time (about noon) so the train was mostly empty, and didn't make any stops on the way to Nagoya. I got to Nagoya and took the great public transit all the way out to Chubu University and without a mobile phone to call anyone with, I just kind of plowed my way into the school festival which was under way until I ran into someone I knew. It was quite amazing how many old friends I ran into just by coincidence over the next couple days.

The school festival was great, and I got to eat a lot of crazy festival food that the various clubs and organizations were selling. I met some cardboard mechs and got my picture with them. Doesn't the guy in the Valkyrie look a bit too short to be operating that kind of machinery?

Later in the evening, I met my one friend's family and they took us out to eat at a nice restaurant and asked some token questions like what my favourite Japanese food is, and what did I do to get so good at Japanese. It was cool talking to a family, and they reminded me of my own family in some ways.

I went to Meiji Mura again by bicycle. This time I went with the friend, and although it was Monday, it was a holiday - Culture Day - so there were actually quite a few people there. In any case, it was cool to visit again, and I got to see some parts that I missed the first time around. For example there was a super-peaceful little hidden garden where I took a picture of this nice drinking fountain. There was an old man sitting on a bench enjoying the view of the lake, and another old guy laying on the grass sleeping. The bike ride was not nearly as tough as I remembered, even though I was using a borrowed 3-speed with hardly any tyre pressure and improper seat height.

I eventually had to part ways with everyone from Chubu University and head to Tokyo. I was so distraught at leaving them, I got on the train 5 minutes ahead of the one I was supposed to get on. As you can see from the picture, this is a Hikari bullet train, not the Nozomi which was clearly written on my ticket. The two trains have very distinctive nose shapes, so it was a rather stupid mistake to make. Fortunately the conductor didn't throw me off the train - which would have hurt a lot at speeds of about 150 mph or so. Unfortunately my late departure from Nagoya left me in Tokyo at rush hour, manhandling my massive luggage through the crowded Tokyo and Akihabara train stations. It wasn't as bad as one might have thought, and there were no men in uniforms shoving people into the trains to make them fit. After checking in and such, I went out with somebody in my room in the hostel over to Shibuya. It actually took quite a while to get there from here in Asakusa, but it was cool just riding the subway and such now that it wasn't so crowded. Anyways, here I am now Wednesday morning, with election news on the TV and surrounded by people from all sorts of countries speaking in tongues and drinking coffee.

What happens when you let your heart win

2008-10-31T09:01:00.003-04:00

Or: Get out of here Stalker!

OK So it's about 10pm, Friday night. Tomorrow I wake up at 6:30 and start a long day of travel. I'll walk to the taxi stand with my gear, get a taxi over to the train station for cheap. Then I'll take the same two trains I took last Saturday to Busan. About two hours. At Busan, I'll make my way to the International Ferry Terminal on subway and foot. There I'll board a Boeing 929 Jetfoil and take about 3 hours journey to Fukuoka. There I'll get a bus to Hakata station, buy a ticket, and enjoy a short 2.5 hour bullet train journey to Osaka. Once there, I'll grab a couple subways and meet up with a comrade.

Ok so enough of spilling my travel plans for any potential stalkers. I'll talk about leaving. In essence, this whole thing seems like an unavoidable exercise in naivity. It's one of those things that you know is going to be different from your expectations before you even start, but you still just plunge right in onto the spikes. However, I think after I finish pulling the spikes out of my flesh, it just might get a little stronger and more spike-resistant. So I'm not writing this off as time wasted - I've got some more world experience. However, as I'm sure you expect, I will return the same good old Soontar that left a few months ago.

Catch you on the flip side!

All Aboard the Fail Train (rant)

2008-10-29T08:49:00.002-04:00

Ok, so on Sunday night I was trying to get advance train tickets from London to Leeds for next Thursday. One of them refused my visa card, and when I went to try again that particular train had disappeared. So I went to Virgin Trains to try ordering it, and they had the train I wanted, with a cheap advance ticket for like 25 pounds. I go to order it and it refuses my card too, so I go back and make sure all my information is in word for word as it should be. Again I get an error, so I figure I'll try again tomorrow, since it was pretty late.

Just as I'm going to bed, phone rings and it's the parents - apparently my bank had called asking about my card activity. So I call them and talk to them. First they ask me a bunch of information to confirm my identity, and then they are like 'well we were watching your card because you entered the expiration date wrong on an order a few days ago.' I'm like uh, yeah, no, you were blocking my card. Anyways, I tell them everything is under control, and hopefully they didn't screw up something really important, like my plane ticket.

They did manage to screw up something pretty important, my train from London to Leeds I was talking about. According to my online bank statement, I paid for it, and according to Virgin Trains, I didn't pay for anything. Oh and guess what, now that a few days have gone by with me trying to get this sorted with the bank, I can't get the cheap advance fare and it's now 4x expensive, hooray! So I can buy another ticket and hope it actually exists, while meanwhile I've been charged for nothing. If I want refunded for my nothing, I have to send a cover letter and copy of my visa statement to some address in Edinborough - according to Virgin Trains' customer service guy in India.

So basically, because my bank freaked out about me putting the 11 where the 10 went and the 10 where the 11 went, I get to enjoy a lovely hassle. It's not really the fact that I'll have to pay more now that angers me, it's the fact something went wrong when nothing should have went wrong. It should have happened all very smoothly. I shouldn't have had anything to worry about.

ZOMG TRAINS

2008-10-25T08:33:00.003-04:00

TRAIN

OOPS A BOAT

TRAIN

CHOO CHOO!

TRAIN!!!

Dear Readers

2008-10-22T08:38:00.002-04:00

Okay folks, time to blog about Serious Life Issues. What I'd like to talk about today is one of the difficulties facing young adults (me) in the Modern World. The problem is that with globalization moving people around, it's getting harder to spend a long time in one place and get to know people really well. Just when you've got a tight runnin' crew set up, you get busted apart. On the other hand, globalization brings us better long-distance communication methods, so you can still roll with your crew... online.

Now, I think I am more susceptible to this problem than many people because I'm from a small town rural area, so everyone has to leave for university or work. Then I went to a small town for university, so of course I can't get work there. Suppose I was raised in a large city - I could basically have lived my whole life there. However, then the problem shifts from me moving about to the people I get to know moving about. There will always be a lad or lass coming from somewhere and another lad or lass leaving for somewhere. I think with so much moving about and spending less time with a larger number of people, it becomes harder for mankind to develop deep trusting friendships.

I think it's good to meet new people, but I would rather have a higher best-friend to acquaintance ratio. Now as I leave this place in about a week, I've yet again increased my amount of acquaintances with no change to my best-friend list.

To sum it up, I'm getting tired of all this interstitiality.

Field Trip + Guilt Trip

2008-10-17T20:59:00.004-04:00

Friday I had the option of either staying home, going on the middle school's field trip, or going on the elementary school field trip. I decided to go on the middle school trip, since if I stayed home I'd just be bored and not get anything done anyways. So we got on buses and rode about an hour to one of the Korean Navy's R&D centers. It was a mix of cool and boring, with cheesy powerpoints explaining torpedoes and stuff they developed. The kids also got to see a couple test facilities where they research pressure, hull strength, and water resistance on models. It was cool how they had big research pools with huge equipments and stuff hidden inside extremely ordinary-looking buildings. Of course, I was not about to start snapping photos around there, so use your imagination.

Then we went to a sort of park / museum place where the kids ate their packed lunches and us old people ate in the restaurant on the top floor. After eating the thing, we went out to check out the ships they had docked there. The biggest one was a destroyer built in New York in the fifties - you could walk around inside of the whole thing. It was really showing its age though, with some rust showing through on the outside and a pretty beat up interior. They also had a couple smaller ships tucked in along its starboard side - looked like some small support vessels.

Along the way to the Naval Academy, we passed nearby some real navy ships docked nearby. They could have been US or Korean, as both navies have bases in the same city (Jinhae). Getting off the bus, we saw the R&D centre's twin-hull research vessel right there. Then we went through a little museum about how great Admiral Yi Sun Shin is. Him and his Turtle Boat are highly revered because that was about the only time Korea ever beat Japan (or any other country) in battle.

Of course, on the bus the middle school english teacher kept trying to guilt trip me into staying longer. I admit that its a stupid and kinda selfish thing to leave early, but I've considered all the factors and made the decision. I'll probably regret it like I do most decisions, but oh well.

Bird Ghosts

2008-10-14T09:46:00.002-04:00

I didn't take this picture, some crazy satellite orbiting the Earth did. I was looking at Seattle on Google Maps satellite imagery and for some reason felt like zooming in on SeaTac. You can find many of these ghosts on the airport tarmac there, but this one looked the most beautiful.

This is yet more evidence that space is freaking awesome. I think people should be more excited about going to space, like they were back in the days of Apollo. SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER! Come on people! Maybe if governments didn't spend so much on "defense" we would actually have some proper spaceships and stuff.

My theory of the future is this: we need to be greener and more organic, but at the same time we really need more advanced technology so that the huge population of earth can have food and energy and health.

Tom Cruise Casserole Chicken Salad

2008-10-11T22:41:00.002-04:00

So among other things that happened in the past week, I had a dream last night where I had to star in and direct a commercial for a communist-themed grocery store advertising "Tom Cruise Casserole" on local television station. It wasn't even a casserole - more of a chicken salad type thing. I might even go so far as to say that having that dream was the highlight of my week.

The rest of the past week was unremarkable. I've been planning my "escape route." I just wish there were still ocean liners these days - wouldn't it be cool to take a sea voyage on a giant vessel? Or another cool but underutilized mode of transport: zeppelin! Imagine floating in a zeppelin over the Himalayas...

Other stuff: am I a hipster? I listen to NPR via iTunes internet radio and podcasts. I wear thrift-store clothes from time to time. I'm middle-class (who isn't?). I like alternative and indie rock. I like riding bicycles (I don't have a fixie though). Also, I like organic food. Next question: is being a hipster good?

Post Unrelated

2008-10-06T09:44:00.001-04:00

Man there's a mosquito in here, I think it's been eating my flesh the last couple nights as I sleep, I keep waking up with bites. Suckin' mah blood, gaining my strength.

I hit it with a book earlier, but I never found the body.

Is man really at the top of the food chain?

Fish Food

2008-10-03T20:30:00.006-04:00

Yesterday, Friday, was a holiday. I had the day off, but nonetheless, I was allowed no free time. Well, that's not true - I managed to squeeze in a little Team Fortress 2 with the guys in the morning. I got picked up at 10, and rode around in one of the elementary teacher's van for... quite a while. First it was me, her son (age 11), and her mom. Then we got another teacher and drove to Jinju city. There we met EKFG and the principal, and drove some more out to some place with lots of wildflowers (Cosmos). There was a wildflower festival, but we didn't stop. Instead, we got lost, despite the GPS navi. Eventually we ended up in a sort of seaside town and ate at this restaurant. It was ok I guess. The usual lots-of-tiny-shared-dishes plus a big thing of raw fish bits that you wrap in lettuce with some sauce. Oh and that's not all, after that they give you even more stuff, like bibimbap and the ever-present rediculously spicy hot soup. While eating this, I was made to drink like a sailor... at lunchtime.

The restaurant shall be known as "Good Restaurant" - see the sign on the left. As you can also see, they serve "Japanese Food" along with "Fish Food."

Here's a Traditional Korean Fishing Vessel....

Everyone enjoys Standing On Something, even girl-on-the-left, who enjoys standing on Napping Dad!

Most restaurants that serve seafood have fish tanks out front. "You are my luuuunch!"

So maybe these are the actual fishing vessels.

After driving a good deal more, and visiting a rest stop where you can "Pay money and get delicious foods" according to the kid, we got back to the city, and already the Nam river area was gettin' crowded. There were all kinds of crazy floats, some comical, some beautiful, and some nationalistic... also, I witnessed several roaming bands of white folk!

Everyone lines up to cross the pontoon bridge! Watch out for old ladies trying to ditch the queue! Old ladies ditch into queues like it's their God-given right around here...

Gerooogerogerogero!

I wonder who can demonstrate what sound this bird makes?

It ended with fireworks and a long car ride home being used as a pillow.
"You are my pillow!" The little weasel says!
It might look fun, but it was really kind of boring since I can't understand anything anybody is saying... I think I had about the same experience as the kid - like when you're little and your parents drag you around and you don't understand their jokes and stuff.

Octopus for Lunch

2008-10-02T03:58:00.004-04:00

Today is Thursday - Middle School Day. I get picked up by the cool teacher in her maroon hatchback. Today when I got in the car Badly Drawn Boy (my favourite artist/band) was playing. Morning classes went about as well one can imagine... at some point in the teacher's room, the gym teacher showed me his box full of many many bees. Apparently he is skilled at using the bees to practice acupuncture. How very frightful! "No thanks! I'm fine!"

Lunch was yummy. Which was surprising considering it contained tentacles - however, these tentacles were delicious. School lunches are generally pretty sweet here, and way healthier than what I remember from the states. The middle school and high school share a cafeteria, so I get a chance to run into some of the high school kids. They are about the same size as the 3rd year middle school kids but somehow they are cooler.

Middle School Day is the only thing that makes me rethink leaving. I receive a very positive vibe there compared to at the grade schools. There I have two lovely ladies who are really good at English, one of whom is (acts) about as young as me. I also have a few good students and a few fangirls. However, I only need to come up with one lesson a week to use at middle school - if I had to teach there every day, I can't help but think that it would become dull, boring, and omnipresent in a fashion similar to that of the elementary schools.

Thursday has always been my favourite day of the week.

Last Few Days In Review

2008-09-27T20:45:00.004-04:00

These last few days have been a little eventful, but not really. Yesterday I watched the final episode of Macross Frontier, which was totally awesome. It really makes me wish I could have become a fighter pilot or something. In a rare instance for my blog, I have posted a picture not from my camera or pen: the main Valkyrie variable fighter from the aforementioned series, the VF-25.

In other news, I really have decided I want to move on from this wretched job. I just feel like it was a really stupid career move, and don't even want to mention it on my resume or anything. You know, it's ok for you people to tell me when I'm about to do something that seems stupid! Now it's just a matter of giving notice of resignation and enduring everbody's guilt trip assaults to stay.

Thursday was one of those rare days that make me feel like maybe I could tough it out here. One of the nice young lady teachers from the middle school came over to my place and we baked a cake. I modified a recipe from some random website, and it ended up tasting like eggs and butter, but not too bad. I was surprised that it even baked properly in the microwave oven thingy. Thumbs up, bro!

Questions? Answers? Comments? Delicious cake?

Soontar's Adventure

Happy Burfday, Sis

Valentine’s Day?

Present, Future, no past today

Building Cold

Dreams, at a price

Cave Chronicles

Deep in the Heat of Septombre!

The September Era

Friday Model Team!

Crepes for a Starving Artist

Incredulity 3/3

SunOut 2/3

Books, Foxes, Internets 1/3

Joys of Urban Exploring

Mein Kaiser

Friday Evening Riding

News, news, news!

Washing off Little Fallen Seeds

Visual Updates

Winter’s *almost* over

Before we begin… 2009 of the Years

2010: Proton Torpedoes

Season in Review: Autumn

Conservatory, Woo Woooo

3D Eyeballs

Night of Desirable Objects

Columbus Continues

I Like to Blog

Life Post-Chicago

4 AM Cont'd

Last Week

On the Verge of Explosive Action

Silent Wilderness

Overburnt Toast

Work Interlude

Augustus

Late July

New Fone

The Footage

Drunk in a Can

Doo Dah Day

Creepydog

Moar Haus

Das Haus

Um, Last Weekend

New Items Acquired!

Delicious Vengeance

Light Vacay

Dreams

More Consumer Products!

West Virginia Ballad

Blog Neglect

Hosaka Cyberspace Deck

Small vs. Big

Cardboard City

Working Stiff

Get Hired, Drink Coffee!

Brandonamp's Pub

TOP SECRET SUPER SPECIAL

Atomic Powered Aircraft

Farewell February

NDY

Post-Blizzard Update

LONG BOY

Fighting the Doldrums

January, Month of Doldrums

2009 I Eat It

Roboman

Overdue Toast

Home

New York, New York?

Last Bits of England

Zombie Attack

Multinational Visionitarianism

The Great

What happens when you let your heart win

All Aboard the Fail Train (rant)

ZOMG TRAINS

Dear Readers

Winter’s almost over