Dog Days of Spring...

This week isn't exactly the hottest week of spring... but I couldn't think of a different title. However, it's been a lazy week so far, which usually is due to hot weather for me... but anyways, moving on!

I've been busy watching Hajime no Ippo (old classic boxing anime) and playing D3 over the past couple of days. I've been going to LC in the morning to exercise, to help with the placid lifestyle I have at home...

So since my life is pretty... boring at the moment, I might as well explain the anime I'm watching at the moment. Pretty much, its a story about a boy named Makunouchi Ippo, a shy high schooler who was bullied by three guys. One day, a man stopped the bullies during a particular beating. At this time, Ippo swore never to be a wimp, ever again. He finds out that the man belongs to a boxing gym, and so he goes and joins this gym. It turns out that Ippo has a natural talent for boxing due to his strong punches. Very soon, the manager/principal of the dojo takes on Ippo and trains him to be the best he can be.

Like other stories, this one is full of motivational quotes and inspirations. Ippo never boxed before, but he worked his BUTT off to get to where he is (currently, he's the East Japan Rookie Champion, or whatever the full title is). This show also have its comedic moments, normally when Ippo's teammates tease him. Also, there is a bit of romance, where Ippo falls in love with one of his rival boxer's sister. To sum it up, this show has a bit of all! It makes it a really interesting show to watch (which explains why I haven't been watching Lucky Seven recently since it's kinda... plain...)

To end of my post today, here's a picture of the anime

credits: http://download.minitokyo.net/Hajime.no.Ippo.Wallpaper.297583.jpg

I don't understand how Ippo is so light, being so jacked. He is a featherweight boxer weighing in at 124 pounds... He must be short, or maybe I'm just ignorant lol

Calaway Park

To be honest, I'm not sure why I'm so grateful for this Friday since I don't have work/school at the moment! It's been a pretty relaxing week so far.

Today, I got the chance to help out my old practicum (can't believe its my old practicum...) school by being a supervisor for Junior Science day at Calaway park. It's been about 8 years since I last been to the park (grade 9 graduation trip). It seemed somewhat similar to what I remember, which brought upon a feeling of nostalgia. However, they had some new rides like the storm chaser and high drop(?).

I was in charge of ten students today. Luckily for me, I got a pretty good group of students that I taught during my three weeks at the school. They were quite obedient and nothing out of the ordinary happened that day. It was quite a relaxing, first time supervision for me today. I went on a couple rides, since I can't do spinning rides anymore =(. I blame it on old age... till my students told me that their parents are able to ride on those spinning rides... maybe its just cowardliness? Lol...

It was a great experience, though tiring experience. =P

Moving onto the picture of the day: I've been learning more tricks about photoshop from a friend. Here's a technique I learnt recently!

This was done by creating a background copy, making that black and white, creating a mask and painting over the parts I wanted to be color (from the original of course) =P I may have missed some parts, but I'm working on it! I also learnt the other method, where I would simply highlight a section, turn that into black and white via the layer method (or so I call it) and inverse the colors. =P

Long Weekend Recap

Ah! I was busy with stuff over the long weekend that I didn't bother to post.

So on Friday was Montana's and Diablo, which I briefly mentioned in my last post.

Saturday was a Car Day! Got it serviced and spent time to clean it with a friend. We spent six hours on it, but my car ended up being super shiny after it was done. First step was clay baring, then compound, then polish and finally wax. The interior was pretty straight forward, just wet vacuuming and I took some pictures, though it was hard for me to get the right lighting conditions. Therefore, no pictures, but just imagine driving out a new car from the parking lot. Now take that shininess and times it by three and thats what I have! =D


Sunday... was karate. I wasn't able to participate in the morning class due to my foot, so I watched from outside. I also had the chance to converse with a student's mother. It was a very good conversation for I learnt about a parent's perspective in terms of their children. At times, I believe that I understand what goes on my parents' own mind, but perhaps I don't really know until I have kids on my own. Either way, I was glad that I had the chance to enlighten myself that day.

The main reason why I was there was to teach my karate class, but it turned out that I didn't do much teaching. I sat mostly to do some "helping point" work/calculations which I've been storing in a notebook. I was pleased though that my assistant instructors are capable of taking care of the class, which shows how much growth they went through over this past year! =D

Monday... well I mostly spent time with my family. We usually don't do activities together, but we're rarely all together at home due to stuff we need to get done.

Tuesday... Long weekend was over, but I'm still on break...

Good news though! I got my HDMI cable for my camera and most importantly, my Tamron lens adapter for my dad's two Tamron lens. I wasn't quite sure it'll work since these lenses are 30 years old, but it did! Here's a picture taken by a 500 mm mirror lens. It can sure take pictures from far away!

Don't mind the tree branches... lol the main focus should be on the mountains!

First time at Montana's

Interesting glasses! They're like mini jars. I took the picture with my iPhone so I decided to write on my phone as well for today.

Pretty average day today. I went to the doctor to get a plantar wart treated from my right foot. As of now, I'm limping all over the place. =(

D3

Not my first RPG, but my first from Blizzard.

First off, a recount of my day:

I started off with a swim in the morning. I went a little bit later than usual, so it was filled with children learning how to swim (near the end of my swim).

After swimming, I went home to relax for a bit before driving my mom to the orthodontist to get her wisdom tooth removed. Once that was completed, I then took her to Costco to purchase her antibiotics and painkillers. After that, I went to pick up my brother from his clinicals.

And then finally, I had a chance to relax a bit at home. After dinner, I went with a friend to pick up Diablo 3. After purchasing D3, I went home and started to install it. During the installation process, I was finishing up a cover letter for a job application.

So all in all, what a busy day I had today!

Now onto Diablo 3...

Well... it's okay? It's not as fun as I thought it would be, but I guess because I'm not familiar with the game at all. Anyways, I started off as a wizard, since I normally play a physical character in these kind of games. So far, the spells are alright. I'm level 3, so I got a lightning spell and an ice spell. After playing for like 40 minutes, I got kicked out of the game! =0

That's it for today! Here's a picture of the box

Things look so much clearer with the T3i! Don't mind the dust on my keyboard. I was also practicing with the blur tool on PS, so that's why my keyboard looks a bit weird. =P

Happy Mother's Day!

For mother's day today, I played my mom's "favorite song that I play" on the piano: Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu.

I butchered it =(

Lol well today was a pretty typical day. Nothing really out of the ordinary. Karate was a bit empty though. Usually there are more people on Mother's Day. Also, since my dojo is beside a restaurant, I'm surprised that there didn't seem to be that many people waiting to go eat Dim Sum.

Once I got home, I played around with my camera some more. Here is a picture I took and tried to add a signature too =P

I finally took off that old screen protector on my phone. It has a pretty nice gloss screen, though of course, I ordered a couple more matte screen protectors off ebay =P

Avengers

Took more pictures yesterday! I think I took almost 300?

Besides the usual volunteering and work, I went to watch the Avengers today. It wasn't too bad! It was better than I expected. The story line was a typical super hero plot, but the comedy made it interesting. Also, the fight scenes were well done in my opinion.

Ah too tired to post, so I'll post more tomorrow! Here is my favorite picture from yesterday

Maybe I should have set the shutter speed faster, or the iso lower...

Not that I'm complaining, but so much for snow!

If I recall hearing the weather forecast yesterday, they said that today will start off with some flurries in the morning. Good thing there weren't any flurries, but it was quite windy today!

Anyways, besides swimming, I mostly stayed home today. I took the time to go through most of the instruction manual for the T3i and took some more pictures. In the evening, I watched the season finale of The Big Bang Theory. I can't wait for the new season!

Finally uploaded the pictures I took from yesterday onto Facebook! Here is my favorite shot from yesterday

Goals for this summer: #1- Take up photography... CHECK

I meant to post my goals for this summer earlier (on Monday) but yeah... forgot... so here it is!

1) Take up photography
2) Learn those pieces from Final Fantasy for piano
3) Workout a minium of four times a week
4) Look and hopefully work for at least two months

I can proudly say that I met my first goal! After my dentist appointment today (to get a temporary crown for my front tooth), I went to memory express and purchased a Canon T3i DSLR camera. After buying a couple of other accessaries, I went over to a friend's place to put it all together!

After a quick lunch, my friend and I went to downtown. First, I had to go to a dental clinic/mold sculpturing clinic-thingy, where they figured out my tooth shade, so when they make my crown, it'll hopefully match my teeth color. (Apparently, my remaining front tooth are a lot whiter than my canines).

This finished a lot sooner than I expected (about 5 minutes in total), so it was off to find some parking and stroll around downtown. We started at the Lion's Gate bridge and worked our way down to China Town. Very soon after, we went down 8th ave, and a couple of other streets that I don't remember... Anyways, I took around 200 pictures as I walked around downtown!

After dinner in downtown, I went back home and cracked open my manual for a bit. There's so much to learn! Here's a picture of it:

I'll hopefully upload some pictures onto facebook tomorrow when I install the programs onto my computer (or whatever method I need to use to upload those pictures).

Ahh, well time to work on the other three goals...

Love Shuffle

I didn't blog yesterday because I was preoccupied with a drama I started: Love Shuffle. It's a story about 4 characters (3 guys and a woman) who are having troubles/bland relationships. These four characters meet upon one fateful day in an elevator and decided to exchange partners (so we end up with 4 guys and 4 women) every week in an event called "Love Shuffle" to see whom has good chemistry with who. I got to say that this idea was very interesting and thus attracted me to watch the drama (plus a pretty solid cast).

So I finished the drama today. Interesting idea, though story line wasn't as great as I hoped it would be. However, there were some deep meaning embedded within the entire drama. The biggest question/topic in this drama, was of course, love. What is love? Why does love fade? Is love different from person to person? This show really made me think about my concept of love and relationships. Pretty much, the key point the screenwriter was trying to express is that love shouldn't always be about comfort, it should be about challenging one another.

I give this drama, an 8/10. For the first time, I didn't mind all the love triangles that were in this drama (probably because these love triangles were very very short lived =P) Also, the panda played a prominent role in this drama as a source of puns (hard to explain since the puns were in Japanese). It was ingenious in how they were able to create some of the puns!!

So today's picture is a picture of my chandelier. This was taken on my iPhone again with the rear camera (no HDR or flash). It was very hard to do =(

Plan B...

For my project this summer, I was hoping to amass enough money to purchase a used car and start working on it. I was interested in a 05-06 RSX Type S, but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any ones that I'm interested in... and I don't have the income to support it. =( I already had plans for that car!!

So, my plan B is to get into photography! I've been researching the different dslrs for beginners and have picked out one (secret still =P). I'm just waiting to see if the price will drop a little bit before purchasing that certain dslr! =)

So for now, I've been practicing taking pictures from different angles. Here's one of my keyboard. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Guest Blogger: Box in a Cat

When I was little, the use deduction and logical assumptions were considered traits of a clever child. I was often told the story of Zhuge Liang, a brilliant tactician who lived in the era of the three kingdoms. In almost every occasion, Zhuge Liang manages to outwit an opponent which he does not personally know by correctly predicting his opponent’s behaviour. He has even outwitted Mother Nature herself on many occasions by predicting rain and the current of the wind at a particular time and place. His cunning employment of logical assumptions has earned him feats of legend. I enjoyed his stories; but not because of how he made his assumptions but because of the fact that the events miraculously turnout as he predicted. After all, even if he has made the most logical assumption and picked the best alternative based on the facts given, there is always a chance that things don’t turn out as he predicted. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the logical assumptions he made have little to do with his success.

If we assume that everything is interconnected and follows a certain collective laws of the universe, then universal determinism might apply. And in that case, what Zhuge Liang did was what he must have done and he could not have done it any other way. Suddenly, his ability to make conclusions based on logical assumptions is just part of a chain of inevitable events. And his feats no longer seem so impressive. Now assume that there is free will, the ability to deduce logical assumptions form known variables will be a relevant factor in Zhuge Liang`s victories. But the question is to what extent? To forecast weather, state to the art supercomputers and satellites are employed for the job and yet it is still difficult to forecast the weather accurately. There are simply too many variables to consider to accurately predicting future events. Now compare the factors and variables that a man could account for and the infinitely many that is out there; we soon realize how minute of information we have to make our assumptions. Suddenly anything that we predicted correctly based on our assumptions seems like a miracle. 

I take pride in my ability to make logical assumptions. The results based on the decisions I chose grounded on the assumptions I’ve made are often positive. But when I consider the infinitely many variables I did not account for and could not account for when forming my assumptions, I couldn’t help but to thank the gods that things worked out the way they have (and I’m not religious). When you realize how much the future is outside of your control, it is good to be lucky. And Zhuge Liang is a lucky man.

Loki

I can't believe I'm saying this...

I'm actually enjoying watching this romantic comedy drama! It's helping to bring back the love (no pun intended) I used to have for this genre.

Spoiler alert

The scene where Yuna (main actresses that is the star) professes her love to Kouhei (main actor that is the body guard) in Korean despite the fact that she believes he only sees her as her bodyguard, actually touched my heart. =(

The softsub English was on top of the Japanese hardsub, showing that she was speaking in Korean.

AHHHHH well moving on now...

Today was an interesting day... I got a flat tire last week, so the earliest appointment they had to fix my tire was today. I went to the dealership and waited for an hr, when they told me that my tire wasn't fixable and that I had to pay nearly $250 for a new set of rubber... So not wanting to replace just one tire for that amount, I told them to keep my spare tire on and I'll drive home on that.

After waiting another hour for them to put my car back together, I went home. I then went to Sunridge to visit Good Year with my tire and my dad for a second opinion. They said they would look at the tire and let my dad know its status tomorrow. I hope for the best! I rather spent 30ish dollars than buying at least two new tires...

Boku to Star no 99 Nichi

Another dreary day in Calgary. When will the rain end??

This morning, I finished "torrenting" (is this a word?) a relatively new series (so hard to download directly now due to recent events going on, on the internet) called Boku to Star no 99 Nichi. In English, it's "My 99 days with a star". To sum it up, its a romantic comedy between a Japanese body guard and a Korean actresses that entered Japan. (Somehow, Whitney Houston's The Bodyguard movie pops into my head).

I've watched three episodes so far and it's not too bad so far! I have avoided romance dramas like the plague because I find them to be too cliché and full of love triangles. However, despite the clichés in this drama, it has been quite comedic so far! It's interesting to see a production with a Japanese cast and partly Korean cast.

On a side note, I have to say that Kim Tae Hee is gorgeous!

Lol, back on track now, so yes, so far so good! The only problem I have so far, is that their relationship (between the bodyguard and star) is progressing a bit too quickly. I guess it's because this series is only 10 episodes in length with each episode being about 45 minutes. I guess they don't have time as a luxury, compared to the Taiwanese romantic comedies I watch!

Today's picture comes straight from dramawiki. It's the poster shot for this drama series!