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2008 is here, will everything be fine?

And it’s been 4 years since I’ve started blogging.

So much has happened in the blink of an eye.

The things I’m proud of in 2007, the creation of The Tarutaru Times Online, with the help of friends, I planned and visited Japan alone and using my own money and reducing my FFXI addiction. Although now I’m addicted to another game, Monster Hunter Portable 2, I don’t know if it’s good or ending up back at square one. At least, I’ve begun catching up on anime and other interests.

Things haven’t been going well for me in FFXI. The thing that kept me addicted was the friends I have in-game. But when 2 groups of your friends don’t like each other, and then there’s nothing one can do because of language barrier, it kind of made FFXI stressful for me. :(

I spent the last few days of 2007 enjoying Monster Hunter 2 with friends instead of logging in to FFXI.

Anyway, enough of MMORPG talk!

I don’t know what I want to do for 2008. But I know for sure I want to increase my savings. Hopefully with these savings, I can afford a larger, more comfortable home for my family and myself. A home I can call my own and not some rented apartment from the government. A home with enough room for a large bookshelf for all my manga! Haha

I heard that a new condominium will be built on the empty plot of land behind AMK Hub. Though it’ll be a lot more expensive to buy a condo than a HDB apartment, that will be my first choice until I can confirm it’s price.

Ah… I just remembered I wanted to register for Japanese classes for 2008 but totally forgot about it. >_>

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Higurashi no naku koro ni

I watched the first season a while back, pretty mysterious, scary, disgusting, but still, I watched the second season to find out what the hell was going on actually. And like what many others told me, it explains everything.

I wonder what story will the 3rd season tell since everything seems pretty much complete. Perhaps the background story on oyashiro-sama?

Anyway, here’s a song from the higurashi game that’s been haunting me for the past month. Enjoy!

Lyrics

"You" by Dai

あなたは今どこで何をしていますか
この空の続く場所にいますか

今まで私の心を埋めていたもの
失って初めて気づいた
こんなにも私を支えてくれていたこと
こんなにも笑顔をくれていたこと

失ってしまった代償は
とてつもなく大きすぎて
取り戻そうと必死に
手を伸ばして もがくけれど
まるで風のようにすり抜けて
届きそうで届かない

孤独と絶望に胸を締め付けられ
心が壊れそうになるけれど
思い出に残るあなたの笑顔が
私をいつも励ましてくれる

もう一度あの頃に戻ろう
今度はきっと大丈夫
いつもそばで笑っていよう
あなたのすぐそばで

あなたは今どこで何をしていますか
この空の続く場所にいますか
いつものように笑顔でいてくれますか
今はただ それを願い続ける…

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[Japan] – Day 2

Woke up early for breakfast, it ends at 9am. I was expecting western, all you can eat style, but it turned out to be Japanese and fixed menu. I can’t identify what was on the huge plate but it was mostly vegetarian. Wasn’t bad, I finished everything.

There were a couple of other people there in the restaurant. From their accent, I’m guessing they are from China.

Anyway, today’s the day I meet with 2 Japanese friends whom I’ve made over Final Fantasy 11, J and Z, at Akihabara.

Z had already arrived when I went to the meeting place at JR Akihabara station. We instantly noticed each other and exchanged greetings. J was a little late, after he arrived, we went to a cafe nearby for coffee and chat. Both of them are a lot older than me. :o

Next, we went looking around for a maid cafe and ended up here. Not really what I expected though, perhaps it’s because it wasn’t a true maid cafe. The waitresses do not address you as "master" unless you have a member card and have spent a huge amount of money there.

Then we went for sushi, at a traditional sushi restaurant. It’s prepared and served right in front of you. Here, and finally, I tried what I’ve always wanted to, Ootoro sushi (Fatty tuna). It was fabulous.

Ramen next, we went to Yodobashi-Akiba, a building that sells a lot of electronic and hobby stuff. I think it was at level 6 or 7 where there’s restaurants.

Finally, we had a bit of sake (Japanese wine) at a place called Kakoiya. It had a maze-like layout and nice window view.

Before everyone left, we took some photos with one another. J and Z took the train back. Z lives further up north and takes about 3 hours to travel to Tokyo by train to meet me, so he had to leave early.


I’m the guy on the left by the way

I continued roaming Akiba since my hotel is near and I still have a lot of time. I walked so much my feet ached.

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Was gone on a very long break

I was clearing my paid leave. I had about 6 days left this year, together with a free day given by my boss to everyone, and 2 public holidays, 4 weekend days, I was away from work for 13 days. :D

Thought I would spend most of my time in FFXI? Sorry, nope! It was Monster Hunter 2 instead. Surprisingly, I spent about 1 or 2 hours a day on FF, doing campaign battles and sky.

I also had other tasks like backing up and replacing a 140GB harddisk with dead sectors. I only lost a single video file which I was able to re-download. And this harddisk was full. With only less than 200MB of free space left, lol.

I replaced it with a Western Digital 250GB harddisk. Harddisks these days are so cheap! It costs only SG$109 (US $75) and comes with 16MB buffer. I was going to buy a 500GB one for around SG$330, which Storage Studio (a shop) recommends for 24/7 operation but it was sold out.

I also have plans to get a NAS (Network Attached Storage) with 2 500GB harddisks in mirror-raid next year for all my media files. Like I mentioned before, I’m not going to make any huge purchases this year because I believe it’s a bad year for me, financially.

After everything’s done, I have 80GB of free space which is filling up fast now thanks to bittorrent. :(

Of course, there are many other things that happened during these 13 days but isn’t interesting enough to blog about.

Anyway, I’m back to work now, it’s been busy and I’ve got so much spam emails (270 of them!) to clear this morning. And yes, I’ll try to blog about my Japan trip soon! >_<

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Campaign!

So I finally got around to exploring some of the areas of the past in the new WotG expansion. I liked the new(or old?) West Sarutabaruta and it’s BGM. I now agree when Sireen told me the music for this new expansion is a lot better than the previous ones.

Or maybe we’re just sick of the old ones.

Anyway, I have now travelled to San d’Oria [S] and Windurst [S]. (What does S mean anyway?) But I still haven’t visited Bastok.

At first, I couldn’t decide which nation to pledge allegiance to. I couldn’t decide between San d’Oria or Windurst. So after I found out you could do the missions for all 3 nations and you can easily switch between the 3, I chose San d’Oria in the end.

Next is finding out about campaign battles. Tried to teleport to a battlefield but I didn’t have allied notes to spend. Figured I’d earn a few of them while killing EPs on my way to Passhow Marshlands [S] to activate the maw there, but I didn’t earn any.

Just then, a campain battle began in Passhow so I signed up for it and earned 400 AN at the end. It was a pretty quick battle and I got to see a large group of female DNC NPCs. :D

I’d say it’s because of this new campaign system, a lot of people who don’t get merit PTs easily now actively participate in campaign battles instead of hoping for besiged now. Which may also explain why the Astral Candescence was taken this morning, during the last 5 minutes of besieged, haha.

I’ve been participating in so many besieged battles, I think I’ve earned around 50 merit points from it.

The exp/time from campaign is a lot better than besieged. And it’s also more often, making it easy to earn exp/limit points. I’m going to try and see if I can finish my last 2 STR merits and then level WHM through campaign battles.

As DRK/WHM, I was able to solo the RNG and PLD orcs in Jugner’s battles. The warmachine here is crazy but you can survive if you have enough fire resistance. I think I had 60~65, and that already reduced a lot of damage from the warmachine’s fire weaponskills.

Another very good thing about campaign is, unlike besieged, all the effort you put in isn’t lost if you die at the end of the battle. You get awarded with your exp/limit and AN when you get raised.

I’ve only read a bit on campaign ops, but it seems that quite a few of them are designed for solo play. This is a great thing for a lot of people like me. There’s so much stuff in FFXI that I want to do, but can’t do because of timezone differences or language barrier or the need for a large group of people.

If there’s an equipment as good as Ares’ set or Adaman Hauberk and that’s redeemable through Allied Notes, you can be sure I’ll be happily grinding my way to be one of those well decorated soldiers :P