Ver.Ka....

Oh Katoki Hajime (designer of the kit I'm building at the moment)...

You'll be the end of me...

I'm DEFINATELY not going to build another Version Katoki (Ver Ka) kit for a long long time. It's been over a week and I'm still working on the decals! Today, I just gave up on decals and started putting on stickers. In about 4 hours, I finished stickering the body (shoulders, arms, legs, chest and waist) and the shields. In total, that was about 100+ stickers.

Now, if it were decals... I'll still be on decal number 40 or something...

To end of today's post:

BoA has plans of releasing a MV for her second track: The Shadow. The song isn't one of my favorites, but I'll definitely check out the MV.

Here's a snapshot taken from a sneak peak of the MV.

Credits: forums.boajjang.com

Decal Galore

A lot of gundam building jargon is used in this post, so be aware! I will explain these terms once I'm done building my gundam!

When I build gundams, I follow a general three step process.

The first step is to paint the runners with spray paint. Normally, I would buy cans from Canadian Tire since they don't run/smudge when compared to the model spray paints I used to use. They're also a LOT cheaper than model spray paint. Pros tend to spray each piece separately with an air brush after they cut out each piece and sand/file down the nubs (little bits of plastic left after detaching it from the runner). Unfortunately, I am not as patient as a professional, thus I just spray  the entire runner. Ironically, I bought an air brush last year but never really ended up using it...

For a master grade, this normally takes about 2 hours or so, depending on the size of the kit. (PG Strike Freedom took me 3 and a half hours, and I had help from a friend to paint...)

Next step after painting is to build the gundam. I would follow an instruction manual (provided with the kit) thoroughly since if you leave out one part, or put it in incorrectly, then your model will tend to not "fit" together. There are many times where I would have to pay close attention to how I insert a specific part into another part. 

For a master grade, this normally takes me about 25-30 hours or so, spread out over a week. If it was me last summer, where I built three gundams, then it may take as little as 15-20 hours (due to experience/"ready" state, whatever its called).

The third and final step is detailing. This involves putting on stickers, decals and touching up nibs with paint. Depending on the amount of stickers/decals in the kit, it can take as little as 6 hours to as long as 30 hours... My PG Strike Freedom took me almost as long to decal it, as it is to build the actual kit!

What I usual find that if I build a Katoki (Ver. Ka) kit, there is a HUGE sticker sheet attached to it.

WELL with FA Unicorn... not only is there a pretty large amount of stickers, there is also a substantial amount of tiny decals to be placed on the kit (especially on the mass amount of weapons that this kit has). 

So far, I spent yesterday afternoon and about 4 hours today putting on decals. The tiny ones are an EXTREME pain in the butt to put on, especially if the surface I'm working on is small.

How it normally works: I cut out the decal from the decal sheet, remove the translucent-ish protective wax-like paper underneath it, place a piece of scotch tape on top of the decal, place the decal on the desired location, make sure the decal is firmly in place (so that it doesn't move during the transfer process) by placing more scotch tape on top of the decal, AND finally scratch it on!

[Pardon for the run-on sentence]

So... the problem is, if the surface I'm working on is extremely small, then I would need to cut the decal out so that the piece I'm working with is small (which is hard with my fingers). Then I would need to use a very tiny piece of scotch tape to cover the decal and to secure it into place...

So key point is

I have difficulty working with very fine motor coordination! =(

To illustrate how small these decals are

Oh well... that's just part of building a gundam! =)

BoA's 7th "Album" - Only One Review

The word album is in quotes because usually her albums would have more than ten tracks. This time though, BoA only has seven songs (plus two instrumentals). Anyways, let's get started with the review! Unlike other reviews, I won't be using the proper terminology (ie: genre of song) since I don't know all the different types of terminology. I know, I know, I took classical music training for about 15 years, but in my defence, I never studied the difference between ballads, R&B, funk, trance, techno, house, etc.

These are my opinions on BoA's new album. Of course, feel free to disagree with my opinions if they don't suit your taste/opinions of her album.

01. Only One
BoA's title track. It's a nice, mid-tempo R&Bish ballad that showcases BoA's composition and lyrical skills (BoA composed and wrote the lyrics to this track, though I have no idea what she's saying...). The piano motif that plays throughout the song is very pleasing to the ears. What really caught my attention in the song is the guitar part. I especially enjoyed the sections where it went down stepwise (around 8 seconds in the song and wherever else it was played).

Score: 10/10

02. The Shadow
I'm not quite sure what to categorize this song... it has a heavier bass than her first track. I can imagine a choreography to this song... so let's say its a dance track? (lol fail....). It doesn't quite catch my attention like Only One due to what I feel like a repetitive melody line. The chorus is fine, but I feel like it doesn't really bring out BoA's vocals.

Score: 6/10

03. Hope
Another mid-tempo ballad. How it differs from Only One is that the chorus brings out BoA's strong vocals. The middle eight, or the section which does not sound like the rest of the song, has an interesting tone. It brings tension, that makes listeners anticipate (or at least me anyways) to back to the chorus. I feel that she finishes strong at the end, while she belts out the last bit of the song, and then the sudden subito piano at the end. My only issue with the song is that, it's not very memorable.

Score:7.5/10

04. Not Over U
A faster song, but it sounds very balladish to me. The pre-chorus has a very seductive tone to it, as she "whispers" (not the proper word to describe it...) as she crescendos to the chorus. The chorus once again is quite powerful. Overall, this song is pleasant to the ears. There's no harsh tones throughout the piece at all, as if BoA is feeling melancholy for her previous love.

Score: 8/10

05. The Top
This song starts off with what I believe is a synthesizer. It's an upbeat pop song. It's also the shortest song on the album and I can see why... It's not that great in my opinion. The melody line is very repetitive and not really catchy... This will also be my shortest review on a piece... to match the style of the song.

Score: 5/10

06. Mayday! Mayday!
Interesting title, since I don't feel a sense of panic listening to the piece. The pre-chorus sections are relatively simple, for it features drums, strings and her voice. The chorus picks up in instrumentation, but there's really no panic evoked from the chorus. Makes me wonder why it's called what it's called... Anyways it's nice to listen to, but like Hope, it's not really memorable.

Score: 7.5/10

07. One Dream ft. Henry of Super Junior - M & Key of SHINee
This was a song that BoA released in March, apparently to be used as a theme song for K-Pop Star (a Korean version of American Idol where BoA is one of the three judges). The song starts off with rap... from one of the featured singers... I'm not sure which one... BoA comes in later singing "One Voice, One Dream, One Chance". It's a nice ballad rap with descending repetitive thirds (around the 50 second mark).

Score: 8.5/10



Album score: 7.5/10

The score was taken from the average of the seven songs. I did not include reviews, nor scores of the instrumentals (Only One & The Shadow).

Overall, BoA's comeback album (since it has been two years since her last album) is not too bad. Overall, I only really enjoyed Only One. The other pieces are alright, but to me, they're more like filler tracks. Unlike her Japanese work, BoA doesn't really release a lot of singles in Korea that she could put onto her album.

I was disappointed to see that only seven songs were included in this album, but I guess its due to the fact that she's been busy with her other activities at the moment. It's always nice to hear new works from my former celebrity crush & #1 singer! Even though I do not like all of her new songs, I do like how she's progressing and maturing as an adult singer when she started off as a 13-year-old pop sensation.

The cover to BoA's album! It's really simple but quite beautiful. She has a really pretty smile in the cover! =)

Where has the time gone?!?

I believe it has almost been a week since I last updated??? But I swear it didn't feel that long!

I've been working on my MG Unicorn for the past couple of days. I just finished the body and I'm quite pleased with how it looks so far!

Otherwise, the week have been pretty much ordinary. Wake up, swim, come home, work on my gundam, relax, work some more, etc.

Oh, BoA's 7th Korean album came out today. It's called "Only One". I'll do a full review of the album tomorrow!

In the meanwhile, here's the MV

Wow, it almost has 800 k views in a DAY! I must say that the choreography is pretty good for this song! =P

And for today's picture

A picture from BoA's new album.

Popcorn & Pop: My Ten Days at Stampede

So all in all, 10 days have passed that marked the 100th anniversary of the Calgary Stampede. For those who are reading that do not know what Stampede is, it's pretty much a annual summer event celebrating our western heritage. There's the rodeo (which I believe was the origins of the stampede), a carnival and various musical/talent acts.

Like how I stated in my other post(s) on Stampede, I was working as a floor supervisor at the Grandstand. Throughout these ten days, I learnt a lot about working in the food industry and, perhaps, the most important, the value of money. I don't think I will frivolously spend money again.

Anyways, these ten days were long, but full of exciting events. I got the chance to work with an amazing crew. Sure, at dull times, we were slacking off, but when it got busy, they were working their butts off. We never had a real system established in our stand, but we managed to get things done.

Throughout this role, I managed to see how different people work together, whether they were my superiors or my "subordinates". As always, there were times were everything was running smoothly, and at times when things were out of control. For example, not ordering enough supplies for the day, to a fight almost breaking out, to rising tensions between who takes on a particular job. During this time, I started to learn how to manage these situations in where I could passively gain control of the situation without escalating the problem to a point that I would need to ask my boss to handle the situation.

I also learnt the importance of praise and how that could really help motivate people to work hard. I never really praised those who worked under me before (ie: Karate), and now I see why it's important. People want to be acknowledged for the work they put in. It's a form of external motivation! =)

Well all in all (I'm still tired and recovering from STampeded =P) it has been a fun experience. Will I do it again next year? Who knows? It was definitely a challenging role to be a supervisor. Throughout my 10 days, I never really gotten the chance to take my break and eat lunch. (Kind of good, seeing that my waist have shrunk even more! =P) Throughout the 10 days, all I had to snack on was popcorn and pop (and the occasional hotdog during the last couple of days... even though I wasn't supposed too!)

To end an unremarkable post for today... here's a picture I took near the grandstand at night during the firework show.

Despite the top right being slightly cut out, this was perhaps my best shot of the night, last night. I learned that I got to keep my iso to around 100, aperture to around 8 and shutter speed to about 4 seconds or so. When I tried a higher iso and faster shutter speed, I got too much noise in the picture =(

Dress Code Fail

Posting on my phone again since I don't want to plug it into my computer again. Going off on a tangent, blogger should allow landscape mode on their app. It's kind of hard to write in portrait mode for a long time...

I woke up today to the sounds of people on my roof. At first I thought somebody was trying to break in, but I remembered seeing tons of building supplies on top of my roof last night.

Those people were there to put on new shingles on my house and garage. They started at around 6:30 AM. Bright and early!

Today marked Day 5 of work. Unlike the previous days, I was tired at the beginning of my shift. Long days of standing is quite difficult, but I'm starting to get used to it. My feet don't hurt as much anymore, but it could be due to another reason (which I will elaborate in a bit). Today was Senior's Day at the stampede. However, the customer's age range was about the same like any other day. It seemed like, though, we had good sales today. It started slowly, but we were constantly busy.

When I got home today, the roofers (im not quite sure what the appropriate term is) were still going at it. I ate dinner quickly and settled down to watch an episode of Hellsing Ultimate. Overall, I have to say its better than the original anime!

I was nodding off at around 8, so I played some SC to wake me up, which actually helped me wake up! At around 9:30, the roofers finished with the installation. I haven't gotten the chance to look at it yet, but I'm sure they did a pretty good job!

Now onto the title of my post and why my feet don't hurt as much anymore. Actually, off onto another tangent: I'm notorious for wearing white socks with black dress pants. I started this habit of mine when I started working as a piano teacher at my old place since I only had like 2 pairs of black dress socks. Not wanting to buy more, I stuck to white socks.

Well I took it up a notch since Monday. I've been wearing sneakers with my dress pants or designer jeans. =P It looks weird, but my boss doesn't mind and that my feet don't hurt as much anymore! =D

Exhaustion

I don't think I said anything about it on my blog yet, but for this year, I'm working at the Calgary Stampede. My position, ironically, is floor supervisor at the Grandstand. This is my first year working at the stampede and I don't recall ever being in the grandstand before. My job is to ensure that the stands/vendors I'm in charge of, are running as smoothly as possible. Most of the staff have been working at the stampede for a couple years now, yet (here's the irony) I'm supposed to be their "superior". Truth be told, I don't really feel like their superior; besides having the ability to use a radio =P. All in all, we work side by side to make sure that things run smoothly!

So today marked Day 3 at work. I think I got the hang of my position and how my stand works. I don't really know my vendors as well since I don't go and try to sell snacks/booze/pop to the people sitting in the stands. Anyways, I realized how hard physical labour jobs are. I never would have imagined it to be this tough, and I'm a supervisor! I'm glad that I don't have to carry supply around. I have high respect for the people who get the supplies for my stations. It must be extremely exhausting to lug heavy foods/trays/bins under 25 degrees Celsuis weather (and higher! Today was 28 apparently!).

Pretty much, my day starts off with counting inventory. On the first day, it was quite slow, since there was a lot of stock and I had to go through them all (and I have one of the least amount of stations to look after... good thing I'm not on main!) After counting inventory, the other staff usually show up by now to help start up the stands/prepare vending trays. During this time, I usually help the stand set up. Afterwards, I usually work at the back of the stand, preparing drinks or passing hot dogs and such. Luckily for me, the staff at my stand are quite efficient at doing what they're doing (cashier, food wraper, etc).

At times, I also go check the vendors to see how they're doing. If either my stand or my vendors need supplies, I would radio down to someone to grab me some supplies. Usually, I get my supplies quickly, but sometimes it takes time. For example, it takes a while to get alcohol since they seem short on suppliers, yet have very high demands for their service... from my own point of view of course.

Once we're done for the day, I count inventory (starting yesterday, I actually got help from the other staff to do it- so it cuts my job down from 1 hour to about 15 minutes!)

Once that's done, I hand over the keys and radio to the next supervisor and trudge my way back home. I have to say that my feet are usually in great pain after each day, due to standing up for pretty much my entire shift (10-5:30). I don't regret working at the stampede though since it really taught me the value of money. It's definitely not like when I was teaching piano, where I could just sit there and critique my student's play.

Well I'm tired so a couple more minutes of relaxation and bed! =P

Money Spending Day

Just purchased a new bag for my camera! It holds a full sized DSLR with a battery pack and 5-6 lenses/flashes. It can also hold a 15.4 inch laptop and numerous accessories! All of that set me back around $70, which is not too bad considering a similar sized/feature bag in Calgary would cost me about $20 more (at Vistek). 

Before I go into more detail about my daily spendings, I want to rant a bit about my day. =P

Sooooo I had a food safety course today at 10 AM. I arrived at the location, 5 minutes late, and thus I was barred from entering. I was told to come back for either the 1 PM session or the 6 PM session. 

Now I understand that it's important to be on time and all, and that I should have left my house earlier (there were delays on transit today), but shouldn't there be some leeway??? Ahhhh, well so I was stranded with a dilema. 

1) I could go home, but if I did, I would have to leave right away (since I would be at the train station at around 10:30... get home at around 11:30... if I took the train back, I would have to leave so I would arrive back on the stampede grounds and at my location with about 15 minutes to spare.... or even if I drove, I would have to pay for parking and walk an extra 5-10 minutes to reach the other end of stampede to sign in and out.) 

2) Or I could hang around stampede/downtown/etc until the 1:00 session.

I decided on the latter. I always wanted to see what its like going down the south end of CT, so I took a train all the way down to Sommerset/Bridlewood. It took about 30 minutes from the Stampede station and I wasn't all the excited when I arrived... but at least I can say I did it... though who would I boast it too... Train junkies I guess?

Once I arrived at the Sommerset station (at around 10:55), I thought to myself that I should go eat lunch before heading back. The closest restaurant I saw was Wendy's so there I went! (Errr... English sounded weird here...)

This was my 2nd time eating a burger at Wendy's (my first time was when I was like 10... I don't recall the taste at all). I had to say that I was quite satisfied with my meal: 1/4 pounder single combo. The patty was actually quite tasty!

Once I was done eating, I stayed at the restaurant a bit to read up about the discovery of a particle that has a strong chance of being the elusive Higgs Boson particle AKA God Particle (even though Higgs dislike that name... the media gave it... go figure =P)

Once I was done reading, I headed back to the train station and back towards Stampede. After signing in and walking, I managed to arrive 45 minutes early. To my surprise, there were already about 30 people waiting for the course 0.o

Anyways, I wanted to see what was so special about the first 5 minutes of the presentation, which turned out not to be too important IMO, since it was mostly an introduction (or maybe I'm still bitter about it). The presentation ended after 45 minutes and I went to go get my food safety card. After signing out, I headed back to the train station to 

go....

DOWNTOWN to purchase a gundam kit. I haven't built one at all this summer. 

1/100 MG Full Armor Unicorn Gundam

Pretty much, it's the regular Unicorn Gundam with a pretty cool weapon pack. It cost me about $120... my most expensive MG to date. I'll make sure to spend a good deal amount of time on this one!

And finally to wrap up my day of spending... I purchased a $2.07 case, off Ebay, for my iPhone. The reason being was that my old case was scratched up (after I dropped my phone on concrete last week) and I always wanted a clear plastic case. So why not? =P

And that pretty much marks my day, full of more purchases than I usually make in a day.

Canada Day!

It's been a while since I last posted! I was being lazy the last couple of days... My excuse is that I'm getting ready for work this coming week! Relax now and work hard for the next couple of weeks! =P

Today is Canada Day! I believe Canada is now 145 years old! We're a pretty young country compared to many other countries around the world. For today, my family went out to Banff National Park, since it's free on Canada Day. It has been about seven years since we last been to Banff as a family. The main purpose for today's trip was to take pictures with my dslr and smell the fresh air that the mountains have to offer! =)

Anywhoos... we left our house at around 6ish today (or was it near 7... I was so groggy that I don't remember). We first stopped at Banff. Parking was a breeze since it was so early. After walking around the Banff Spring's Hotel and town, we left Banff and headed to Lake Louis.

Lake Louis was a little bit more difficult to find parking, since we arrived there at around 11. However, we were lucky and found a spot relatively close to the lake. It has been about 12 years since I've been to Lake Louis, but it looks pretty much the same to me. It's busy as usual with a lot of tourists taking pictures (I saw many people with high end Canon dslrs; not a lot of Nikons for some reason). Today though, it was raining a bit, which made it slightly cold. After spending about an hour and a half, we left Lake Louis and travelled to Moraine Lake.

Apparently my parents brought me to Moraine Lake a long time ago, but I don't remember the place. The lake seems to be pretty famous, for it was the picture on the back of the old $20 bills. Also, it's apparently being used by Android as a wallpaper... but don't quote me on that! Moraine Lake had a really nice bluish-green tint! After spending time near the lake, we climbed up a trail that led us to a rocky cliff/plateau that gave us a nice view of the lake.

And that's my day! I'm pooped now so off to relax before bedtime =P