Two done, one more to go!

Finished building and decaling Aegis! I didn't marker it much since I wasn't able to find a decent marker. I was thinking of doing it with black paint + paint thinner, but I was scared that the paint thinner would remove the red coat of paint I had. Therefore, I took the lazy route and didn't marker at all!

Besides finishing Aegis, my day was pretty ordinary. I didn't go work out this morning since my legs were feeling sore from badminton yesterday. I did do push ups at home, just to try and get some chest exercises in. I also finished Baccano!, which was an interesting anime about mafias, alchemist, thieves and other eccentric personalities. Baccano! was very unique in that there's no linear plot. The 13 episodes focuses on a single event, but told through a multiple of viewpoints and in different time frames. I have to admit it was confusing at first, but everything made sense at the very end.

I'm in Love

with Narsha's "I'm in Love" song!

A simple piece featuring minimal instrumentation (Piano and Guitar) and her voice. I'm not sure how to classify this song... perhaps R&B? Either way, I find it to be very soothing to listen to this piece! I got to thank Invincible Youth for introducing me to Narsha, and quite possibly Brown Eyed Girls (her group). 

Besides discovering this song, life has been pretty normal for me. I'm mostly just preparing for interviews and slowly learning my hiragana. I'm also planning to take some pictures again soon! It's been quite a while since I last took pics. Perhaps I'll go do some street photography with my prime lens.

"ahh - eee - ooo - ehh - oh"

It's day three of learning Japanese. I've started by looking at the hiragana chart. There's a whole bunch of syllables to learn! So far, I got the 5 vowels, k group & g group, s/sh group & z(j?) group (can you call them groups?).

I have to say though that my characters look pretty messy =/

But of course, practice makes perfect!

Besides learning Japanese, this week is interview week for me! They're all for part time jobs, but an interview is an interview!

Credits: http://www.thejapanesejourney.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/japanese-hiragana-chart.png

Philosophical Thoughts #2: A Matter of Perspective

About seven or eight years ago, I was visiting my grandma at her nursing home. It was an unusual event, since I don't visit my grandma that often and when I do, it's usually with my brother in tow.

This time however, it was just my mother and myself. (My mother usually go visit/takes care my grandma. I came since I just had my mother pick me up from my music theory lessons). Anyways, we were waiting for my grandma to finish doing her business in the bathroom. My mother was explaining to me how my grandma was feeling quite depressed recently. Therefore, she (my mother) told/reminded her about an old Buddhist belief.

I believe it was Buddhist, but don't quote me if I'm wrong! For all I can remember, it could have been something that my mother heard from somewhere else or made up. The belief was that we humans have three lives. One life is destined to be full of happiness, one life is destined to be full of sadness and the last life is where you get to control your own destiny.

***

I haven't really thought about that belief till about now. Over the course of the past eight weeks, it just felt like I've been hit with misfortune after misfortune. Sick twice within five weeks (three weeks filled with sleepless nights due to coughing and a week of common cold), rejected by the CBE and FFCA, no positions suitable for me in the Catholic board, unable to teach in England due to current circumstances in my life not relating to what's listed so far, no responses from the private boards and other boards outside of Calgary and a whole bunch of other, what I classify, as misfortunes.

Essentially, over the past couple of weeks, these things made me think back to the belief that my mother told me about. I was thinking to myself that I must be living in my life of misfortune. But of course, my scientific mind was in conflict with that hypothesis. I only been hit by a string of unfortunate events recently, it's not like my whole life has been plagued by it... Perhaps I'm living my last life?

Or is it just simply how I'm perceiving things at the moment?

That really made me think about the "glass half full/half empty conundrum". (I'm a where-is-the-other-half kind of guy for the past couple of years). And so, I started looking back over the past eight week and tried thinking about what I have learnt through my misfortune. What's done is done. There isn't much point to dwell on these negative things if I don't try to make any changes to make my life more meaningful.

And thus, it's a matter of perspective. Throughout my reflection, I learnt that hard work doesn't always pay off, but it's never time wasted. There is always something I have gained, whether it's as simple as new experiences or new friendships, it's never time wasted.

So instead of moping and "laying on the ground" figuratively speaking, it's time to get back up on my feet and move on. Like the saying goes, what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger!

***

And there goes another philosophical thought blog. I never seem to be able to put my thoughts down properly =/.

Ah well, practice makes perfect!

Time for some summer goals

It feels like my brain is slowly leaking out of my ears... I've been doing the same thing every day pretty much.

Wake up, job search, find something to do on the internet. Mostly, that involves drama-ing/anime-ing or gaming.

So to help motivate me into doing something useful (like last summer), I decided to come up with a list of some goals to hopefully keep my brain stimulated as I slowly rot at home!

1) Exercise. I gained quite a bit of weight (if I haven't mentioned it before) over the past couple of months since I've been mostly at home in front of my monitor. Fortunately for me, I went and purchased a membership from LC on Tuesday!

2) Learn some basic basic Japanese. I bought a book in my 2nd (or was it 1st) year of university. Ever since then, I never cracked it open really... Therefore, it's high time I start and learn some basic Japanese. Despite research showing that learning another language at an older age takes more time (or is different, or whatever the research was), it's nevertheless an important skill to learn another language! Might as well since I watch so much dramas and animes!

And those are my two main goals for now. Oh and blogging too. Perhaps it's time to write another "Philosophical Thoughts" blog. It's been quite a while! My topic in mind is "It's a matter of perspectives"

Finished building my MG Aegis! Now to decal and detail. =/

Oh goal 3) Take more pictures. I've stopped doing Gundam pictures for a while, but it's fine time to get back right at it!

Extremely Frightening Morning...

I had an extremely weird morning. I was dreaming that I was watching a friend give a speech, but he got interrupted due to something (I think there was a flood). Somehow, Prime Minister Harper was there and tried to convince my friend to continue on, but my friend felt dejected and left the podium.

At this point, I woke up because I started hearing weird noises. I peeked to the side and noticed a dark shadow at the foot of my brother's bed. (For those who don't know, I share a room with my brother. We have two separate beds that are pretty much side by side). 

Anyways, I thought it was my mom initially, trying to wake my brother up since he had the morning shift at the hospital... but then I realized that my brother doesn't have any shifts at the moment...

After I realized that, I thought it was a burglar. But it couldn't have been since my windows were all shut and I didn't hear any broken glass. As these thoughts raced through my head, I continued to peek with my left eye. At this point, I thought I was hallucinating, but to have both an auditory and visual at the same time was something that never occurred to me before. The shadowy figure kept moving side to side, with little shuffling steps (that I could hear, or imagined hearing). 

When I thought that it may be something... from a different dimension/universe/ghost/spirit/etc, my eyes shot open, and at this point I saw and heard nothing anymore.

Now it could have been, that I was still dreaming, or waking up from such a state, but it felt so real at that time. After experiencing that, I had a hard time falling back to sleep since the adrenaline was pumping through my veins. 

And that was my extremely frightening morning! It's probably all a figment of my imagination, but it sure sent a cold chill down my spine. =/ 

PENTAAAAAAAAA

Had my first official penta kill in League of Legends today! Felt so proud of myself ^_^

I had two penta kills throughout my time playing LoL. The first time was against bots =/.

And yes! Had to blog about that since I was really excited after getting that penta. Unfortunately though, we lost the game due to bad communication. =/

Trip Recap! "Despite the temperature being lower in Calgary..."

(pictures scattered throughout this lengthy post so you won't get bored when you read... hopefully! Pictures are added in no particular order and may not relate to what was previously said in this post)

the humidity here makes it so much worse! It's quite the difference, when compared to being in Las Vegas with its lower humidity. In Vegas, you get the feeling that you're being baked. In Calgary, it's more like sitting in a "mild" sauna, in that your arms feel sticky (though not really glistening with sweat!) I think I preferred being baked! =P

Time to recap my trip to Vegas! I was planning to blog daily/nightly, but I often got tired when we returned to our hotel rooms at night.

The first night was rough, since I wasn't able to sleep till around 4:30 AM (5:30 Calgary/MST) since I usually find it hard to adjust to a new environment. Of course, that meant that I woke up at my usual time of around 7 AM (8 AM in Calgary... I think you get the point). Since everybody else was fast asleep, I went back to bed and reawaken at noon. Due to the lack of sleep, I had a massive headache.

We walked towards Bellagio and had our first buffet there. Bellagio's buffet was nice looking and there was quite a decent selection of food for lunch. I was amazed by the different drinks they had to offer, but due to my headache, I chose to go with my ol' trusty ginger ale. After lunch, we walked around the strips and visited different hotels. I can't remember all of them, but I believe we went to Caesar's Palace. How I remember is due to the small show they had in front of the Nike store there. The show was something about Atlantis, but I couldn't quite catch everything since the actors were robots/mannequins. I recall how it was quite impressive with all the fire effects, such as coming out from a man's sword.

After Bellagio, we visited the Fashion Show mall. Sure there were a lot of shops there that sold clothing, though there wasn't really anything that caught my eye. I wanted to purchase some things from the Superdry store, but I decided not too in the end.

After shopping for a while, we took a taxi backed to our hotel. We lounged around our rooms for a while and then went down to see Cirque du Soleil's Ka. To be honest, I had mixed feelings about the show. The beginning was a bit boring for me since I've seen similar things from other performers. However, it got really exciting when the performers performed extremely dangerous stunts. For example, climbing up, what seems to be 30 meters to reach the top of a stage, or the death wheels, where it seems like the performers were running on top of a hamster wheel without any visible safety ropes! Onto a side note, the day after we saw the performance, a performer passed away after a fatal accident. It reminded me of how these performers put their lives on the line to entertain us. May her soul rest in peace.

Soon after Ka, we scoped out a Sandwich shop, though I don't recall the name of the shop. I just remembered that when we reached the front of the line, they closed down for a while for some maintenance. It was past midnight and I was getting hungry =P. Fortunately, they reopened after 10 minutes or so and I got to get my sandwich. It was a good sandwich, and I had a salad on the side since I wasn't getting my greens in. =P After dinner, was back to our hotels for sleep!

Onto the third day (Saturday). We woke up late again, so we headed off to lunch. We went an AYCE sushi and seafood place. I can't say that I enjoyed the sushi, since the pieces weren't presented well, and the selection was small, but they had an amazing selection of dessert. After lunch, we walked for a bit and then took a taxi to the North Outlet mall. There were many brands up here, though I didn't find anything that I really liked. After shopping, we headed back to our rooms to relax for a bit before dinner. Since Vegas has a ton of buffets, we decided to try out the one at the Rio hotel.

The buffet at Rio was AMAZING. It was ENORMOUS. I barely ate 1/3 of the food selection they had there and I'm quite confident of my eating skills (trying to cut back on the amount of food I eat of course!) When I was on my fourth plate of food (trying out the Mexican cuisine they had), I was getting sick of food. Too many buffets in such a short amount of time was making me feel ill. It made me think of how lucky I am to be able to eat all this food while the vast majority of people don't have the same opportunity that I do.

After dinner, we headed back to our rooms and just talked for a couple of hours before bed.

Our fourth, and final full day in Vegas started out late once again. Since some of us was missing Chinese food, we went to P.F. Changs for lunch. We ordered a whole bunch of food, and somehow managed to finish. It was difficult to finish since each dish pretty much tasted the same. Nevertheless, we got our fill of Chinese food, which allowed us to go walk around more hotels and shop at the South Outlet. The South Outlet had a "cheaper" feeling to it, which suited me quite fine! I purchased a couple shirts/socks at Puma as souvenirs for my family and bought myself a new Coach wallet. (I could have bought the same wallet at CrossIron, but meh =P)

We taxied back to our hotel room to relax before going out for dinner. We tried an Italian place at New York New York hotel. I knew that Italians are mostly known for their pasta, but I got myself a steak instead... I can't say it's as good as Alberta steaks (not as tender I find), but it was a decent meal. Right after dinner, we went and played a bit on the slot machines. I put in $25 in total, and came out with $0... I wasn't having any luck in Vegas. =(

Fifth and final day... Got up and cleaned up our room before we checked out. We then went to a couple more hotels, which included Excalibur, Lux and Wynn (I believe). We went to shop for a bit and tried yogurt at yogurtland. Amazing yogurt! I need to find an equivalent in Calgary, where you can mix/match your own flavours and toppings!

We were soon pooped from the shopping, so we headed back to MGM to relax a bit before picking up our luggage and head back to the airport. It was extremely quick to go through security. After dinner at Pei Wei (a branch off from PF Changs I believe due to how similar the food tasted there), we boarded our plane back to Calgary. I had to say though that I wasn't disappointed since I was getting bored of Las Vegas. It's a great city, but since I'm not the party type, it wasn't that intriguing for me.

What I did realize on the trip was how vast the world is. I never really gotten the feeling in Calgary since I would see familiar faces on a daily basis. Calgary felt kinda like a huge town to me. Las Vegas, or more specifically, The Strip, probably (no research done) had more visitors than residents. There wasn't a single face that I recognized as the days passed by. I guess that fact really hit me and made me realize how many people there are on this planet!

All in all, Las Vegas is a great place to visit, though not really my cup of tea. It was a good experience though, and a well-needed vacation. =)