Oha minna! So it’s been about 28 days (or sixhundredandeighty hours) since my last entry. Some people must had thought that this site was gonna be on some long hiatus or something. Well it’s not. Actually it’s just yours truly here, who has been feeling quite ambivalent about blogging his personal life here, in this little space on this little wired planet. But I digress. I still love writing, though sometimes due to circumstances whereby I cannot truly express or convey my feelings through my own words, so at the same time it’s also quite a semantical baggage; I felt that my entries are just a whole lot of vacuous thoughts and opinions, and I’m not someone who tends to procrastinate alot, cause it’s not really my cup of tea. (or probably it’s just because I can be quite nonchalant towards certain things or people nowadays)

So what’s new in our protagonist’s life? Of course, CNY has been good. My Ang-baos had been quite bountiful, had a fun and fulfilling KTV on lunar eve, had lo-hei with some of my bestest friends, and then some. Though I didn’t get to eat much CNY goodies this year due to my bad sore throat (I digress; I was already in this sorry state even before CNY officially started, due to the freaking weather) it was still pretty good, able to do catching up and of course bai-nian-ing with friends and relatives during this festive period. Of course not forgetting that Nintendo has also dropped off a piece of good news (or in other sense, bad for ex-DS owners?) to start off the new year, with the official announcement release of the upcoming Nintendo DS Lite (which in short also stands for ‘light’ and ‘bright’) which is basically a remodeled NDS featuring a lighter and slimmer form-factor, as well as sporting 4-levels of brightness settings. To be released in Japan on the March of 2nd, for a nifty price-tag of 16,800 yen. So some of you might ask, is this actually a good or bad thing? Well, it’s definitely good news for new DS owners to-be, who wants to try out the games on the Nintendo DS platform so far, but never got down to buying it. Well now they have a better reason to, cause it comes in a smaller and sleeker form-factor. As for current DS owners, this might be seen as been shortchanged by Nintendo, since the current NDS has only been released for about 1 year and 3 mths. (I got my imported White NDS within a month after its release in Japan) So far, I’ve heard alot of fanboys ranting about this, but sadly all I can say is this was to be expected. The same old reason why the GBMicro was released to replace the GBASP. Newer models will always overtake the old models (not necessarily deemed obsolete, but you get the idea) with technology improvements, just like how for PC technology, processors and graphic cards come in smaller die sizes as time goes by. The exact same logics applies here, for console platforms and portables. Of course, for yours truly here who’s such a gadget freak, you can be sure when I get hold of my new NDS Lite, I will do up a mini-review of it, at my site and at my expense. Of course I welcome any donations too, just feel free to leave me a msg together with your contacts or msn at the comments page, and I will be very obliged and grateful to accept your kind donations, hehe.

So all that geek-talk aside, the exam results for the GCE O-Levels has been released since yesterday. Sadly to say, I didn’t do too well for it, since I only managed to pass 3 subjects out of the 6 subjects that I took. (my aggregate for L1R4 is 35pts, fuck lor) And the thing that really shocked and shooked me, I actually got an E8 for my English. Fucking hell, the examiner who had marked my English paper really ought to be shot. Then again this is not the time to procrastinate, cause what’s over is over. Now my plans is to retake those papers I failed (especially my E Maths, I seriously need help for this one (-_-’) while I wait for my appeal letter to get accepted by NAFA. There’s a high probability that I won’t get accepted by them due to my grade for my English, but still all I can do now is hope. So yeah, that basically sums up my damn results nightmare. To be honest, I think most of my papers can still be better, cause I actually ran out of time to do some of them (especially my English and Chinese) and it was actually a real miracle I can actually pass my Art paper too, and there I was thinking perhaps my skill really rusty liao, hurhur. Still, resitting for the papers this year is not going to be an easy task, since now I have my japanese to worry about, and also the JLPT exams in December, which is another burden altogether. But I guess it’s no use giving up now, cause I’m already half-way here, and if I give up on myself now, then what for I started all these in the first place right? Might as well strive for it and try again, since you will never know how far you will go till you’ve unlocked the hidden potential within you. There’s a phrase that goes like this; Give yourself a second chance. Take a second shot. Confront and overcoming your adversity will definitely help unleash the hidden potential in you. The limit is boundless.

Sigh, ok I have to admit that I was actually pretty sad over my results yesterday. So sad that I didn’t even had dinner. (I didn’t even touched brunch, cause I woke up in the afternoon) So yeah yesterday was pretty much spent on self-reflecting and all that. And I didn’t even go for Pris’ birthday celebration; she had organised some KTV outing to celebrate her bday with her friends and she invited me, but obviously I didn’t had the mood to party thats why I didn’t go. And just a few days ago Yonghao actually wanted to call me out for a drink one to catch up on the old times, and I actually promised him to come out and go clubbing together one if I did well for my O’s. Well now because of my fucking results, my whole mood is so fucking dampened lor, knn. Don’t think I will be having any plans this weekend also, since I have no fucking mood to go anywhere also seriously.

So there you have it. I’m sorry that this entry’s turning out to be like a ranting post, and I’m sure you guys don’t really like to read something like this. I sincerely apologise again for ranting it all out here, but this entry will also hopefully make you guys understand how I fared for my exams, so please don’t ask me about it anymore ok? It’s time to move on and I wanna move on too, no use crying over spilled milk anyway.

I have quite alot of photos that’s yet to be uploaded, since I haven’t been blogging. So expect some pictures soon over the weekend, just to spice up this space here abit. So stay tuned, and have a nice weekend ahead everyone.

First of all, Akemashite Omedettou Gozaimasu to everyone. Yours truly here haven’t really wrote a proper entry ever since the start of this year, so here I am everyone. (hurhur) Hope the new year has been fine for everyone, with everyone going back to their usual school and work routines again, busy like usual. (but let’s not forget to stay fun and happy at the same time yeah?)

So it’s the weekends again. (hooray for everyone!) Well this week has been a pretty short week for everyone I believe, what with all the holidays and Lunar Chinese New Year just around the corner. It was a pretty alright week for me, ‘cept that I met into some mishap a few days ago. Lost my precious 4 years old JPG black wallet on Monday when I was out during the night, and I have no one else to blame but myself. Didn’t really got too upset over it, but am still feeling pretty sour over the fact that I’ve lost my precious pink IC and SAF 11B, as well as my important membership cards together with some puris I took with my friends last time. (alot of memorable stuffs) The cash and the rest of the misc stuffs inside the wallet is not all that important, I’m just concerned about my pink IC and SAF 11B since if someone with bad intentions picked them up, they could be misused and land me into some deep trouble. Well it’s over now and there’s no point in procrastinating, since I don’t believe that it will do any good out of it anyway. I can only pray now that somehow my wallet gets returned to some police station and the police will contact me abt it, since I had already lodged a police report regarding it during the night it happened. I guess I’ll need to go ICA and CMPB soon too to do my new pink IC and SAF 11B, since it’s already been a few days and there’s still not news about my missing wallet, and I’m actually not pinning much hope on getting my wallet back already anyway.

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Did quite abit of window-shopping recently due to the recent post-festive sales island-wide, and then just last week Nike had this island-wide sales promo going on at all official Nike outlets, so I decided to try my luck. And I was lucky enough to spot this stylish pair of Nike Air Force 1 Mid Premium (Houndstooth/Dark Oak) at The Heeren’s Nike outlet so I decided to go for it since I needed a new pair of sneakers badly. Turned out that they didn’t had the size (my usual shoe size is US10.5) that I wanted, so I panicked. Then I asked when does the sales offer end, and they told me that day (new year eve) was actually the last day of the promo offer, since it was intended to be a Christmas sale. (!) So without hesitation I asked them to help me check the other outlets for stock of my shoe size, and in the end they called and told me the Plaza Sing branch has a US size 10 left only for the Air Force 1s that I wanted and also the only last pair left in their shop. Without further ado, I immediately went down PS with both Syahmi and Brandon since we were out together that day. Went to the Nike outlet and tried out the dunks, turned out that US size 10 was actually pretty fine for me, so I decided to settled for it. Bought it for 159.70, instead of 177.50 due to 10% discount. A quick check on this site revealed that this pair of Air Force 1 Mid Premium was selling for abt 12600yen in Japan, which actually isn’t quite far off from the streetprice here locally too. So I think I didn’t get ripped off in any way. (^ ^)V

I did another check online here which also revealed that this particular model was launched sometime in Oct 2005, and is dubbed the “Euro” Air Force 1 special edition. The material consists of a mix of canvas plus premium leather, which is pretty good in my opinion though when it comes to rainy days or ‘wet’ conditions, I’m not so sure whether it’s gonna be advisable to wear them out, so I think I’d probably settle for a cheap pair of canvas sneakers to alternate btw this to prolong the lifespan of it. Then again my pair of Air Jordans IX lasted me for a good 3 years, so yea I think basically most Nike sneakers are pretty durable afterall.

Ok that’s about it, I’m off to bed now. Gotta attend Lynn’s chalet and BBQ later at Costa Sands Resort and then in the evening gonna meet up with Jimmy (seizure) for dinner, freaking long day ahead. Ok oyasumi minna, monsieur aaron out.

To summarise in my own words, a true gamer’s spending is worth a million dollars. Ok maybe that’s just me trying to be exaggerated, but I think the most hardcore of the hardcore gamer could actually achieve that. In other words, it’s never easy to be a true gamer. Think of the hardware or software that you have to splurge each month, especially when keeping up with those game releases schedule, and you have one hell of a headache and finance planning to deal with already.

So my preorders from JP Playstation.com finally arrived earlier on this week. I spent quite alot this time for this order purchase, but what shocked me is the incurred shipping costs when I received my online shipping billing from VpostJapan, almost costing me a cool 50 dollars, and it’s not even some limited edition or special bulk order. I was puzzled as to why the shipping was so expensive this time, and when the parcel package finally came, I finally understood why.

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I’m heading out in like 10 minutes time, meeting up with Syahmi and Grace at Bugis for lunch so I don’t have much time to blog actually. Will just do a quickie summary and some thoughts about what I have for this year.

This year has been a pretty fluctuating one for me. Plenty of ups and downs, though I think the latter happened to me more often in life (heh what’s new). Yet drastically as a whole person, I felt that I didn’t improve at all. Academically wise, yes I had sort of improved, but it remains to be seen whether I will enter the school of my choice next year with my results. Ahead of me are plenty of challenges just waiting for me to hit them on, so I wonder what will happen. Of course for most who know me, I’m actually a pretty laid-back person, happy go lucky kind of guy. I always take one step at a time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t plan for my future at all. It’s just that sometimes, the fear is there. Yes I’m afraid, but honestly who isn’t about that uncertainty? But if you are not willing to even try, how would you know about anything? So yes, I will presevere no matter what happens. The motto in my life now is, as long as we believe, we can achieve.

Met and made a pretty few good friends this year, and they had wonderfully added lotsa colors into my life. Without them, I think I wouldn’t have found the emotional support I needed in my life, apart from having my family. My relationship with my sister had also improved by quite alot this year, hopefully we will be as close as now in time to come. It’s nice to be able to share and talk with your siblings when you need to when the situation arises, cause this is something you just can’t simply share or do with your friends that easily. And I’m glad things are so much different now, it feels great and motivating at the same time.

I had also been single for more than a year now. And I thought I won’t fall in love this year, but it actually happened. I met the person of my dreams, but too bad we seemingly ain’t meant to be together. (or at least that’s what I think) There’s also the pretty huge age gap btw us, so I wondered is that one of the reasons. She’s also academically much better than me, so I wondered if she did mind about that too. But frankly I’m just glad that I had the chance to have met her, the feeling of liking someone else on your own part, aka unrequited love is simply much better than not been able to fall in love with anyone at all. Those sweet memories, those are already enough for me to live by. I’m just simply contented enough to have met her in my life, really.

Pretty mixed feelings. About Love, about Friendship. I’m not sure if things are gonna look up on me in 2006, but I guess I will still continue and walk on. I still wanna believe, in people, in my friends. Just because a couple of people out there happens to be an antagonist in the story of your life, it doesn’t mean that they have to be that significant to change anything in your life. As long as you believe, you will survive. Fuck those adversaries, fuck Satan. If you believe you can overcome and achieve, you will do so as long as you make the effort to believe in yourself.

Alrights that’s about it, I’m done. Gotta rush out now. New year resolutions? Haha will do it over the weekend when I have the time. Why not you people start one first? Then maybe I can see if it can inspire some ideas onto me, hahahah. Ok monsieur aaron out! (^ ^)

Sorry for the update delay, after Christmas was over I thought I needed some time off, to sort some things out. To do some reflections, to think about my new year resolutions. Blah blah blah, whatever.

And I just got reminded yesterday night that this weekend (Saturday) is actually New Year’s eve, which means there will be more havoc and stuffs like this happening everywhere, well almost. So I guess the only solution to avoid the crowd and the shit is just to stay at home, and be a good boy. But that would be so boring, no? And I’m supposed to meet Syahmi and Grace up this weekend, since we’re planning to come out to chill. Hrms, decisions and decisions. Prolly just need to find some good alternatives, Holland V would be nice I think? I so wanna go Essential Bar to chill again.

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I slept at 6am just now, and woke up not too long ago. Didn’t really slept well over the night (or rather morning), it was a pretty on and off thing. All the waking up and turning around in bed kind of stuff. I think it must be that coffee I had yesterday night with Jimmy (seizure). Anyway still feeling pretty groggy right now, but I guess I will be fine after a hot shower, before heading out for church later, and also going to catch up with Shaun for lunch too, it’s been awhile since I last saw him.

Anyway, just a quick update. Been real busy the past few days, doing my X’mas shopping and stuffs. Not all is for me though, some are for my friends. Though I did pamper myself with some shopping therapy too; bought 2 Levi’s jeans and a very nice grey color tote bag. (which can also function as a shoulder slingbag too) Also did 2 ear-piercings on my left ear, like finally. Been wanting to do a ear-piercing since ages ago but I’m always procrastinating it for God knows why, and also cause I was busy studying and preparing for my exams for the past few months, so yeah. Now waiting for my ear-hole to be seasoned, before I go put my own ear-rings/ear-studs. My sis said I should wait for about a week or two, but Ronald tells me the best is to wait for two or three weeks. So I guess I will just leave it as it is for awhile hehe.

Met up with the guys today to chill and also for dinner, initial plans was to actually head to Suntec or Marina for dinner, but in the end we ended up in Orchard again, as usual. Heavy crowds were everywhere in Orchard Rd (as expected), especially around the Wisma and Takashimaya area. There were some incidents happening around that area yesterday night actually, which you can read up more about it over here. We were lucky cause we were on the other side actually; we were on the opposite direction walking back to Orchard Heeren from the Meridien foodcourt area, so we didn’t really met or kana any bhangras or ginna kias on the way who are so fanatic with their spray-cans trying to spray anyone and everyone that they can see or catch, which was quite a nuisance obviously. I personally think that in times likes this, especially during festive seasons, they should deploy more police to maintain and control the crowd, so no-one will dare to try anything funny. Just reading about those bhangras trying to take advantage of the modesty of the girls and xiaomeimeis out there, is seriously making me feel like condemning them to the core. This is not about been a racist or what, but just WTF, just thinking about it, it’s always the case like this that only happens during festive seasons like X’mas or New Year countdowns. Why do they come out in a crowd during a time like this, and not during Deepavali? So can we form a Chinese crowd next time and go disturb the chio chio Malay and Indian xiaomeimeis and girls? Oh please, give me a break man.

So all crap aside, I think the Christmas celebration for this year was pretty alright. Spent the night and countdown at Cafe Cartel with them, and we exchanged presents with each other. I left shortly after the countdown was over, cause I was originally meeting Jimmy (seizure) outside Cineleisure since we were planning to go Holland V to chill. He drove over from home and fetched me from Orchard, then off we went to Holland V. Was supposingly having the plans to go for some drinking, but in the end we decided against it cause he needs to drive home safely (not to mention TP was all around the island during festive seasons like this) and I also have church the next morning. So initially we decided to go to Essential Bar to chill, but cause when we reach there it was gonna close soon, so in the end we had coffee instead at Coffee Bean & Tealeaf. Jimmy treated me to ice mocha and some really nice tiramisu cake, haha really appreciate it, thanks bro. We catched up and updated each other with our lives and current on-goings. He’s actually clearing leave right now since he can’t bring over his block leave over to next year, due to his unit’s policy, which is pretty bummer actually, since I believe every NSF servicemen was supposed to be entitled to this kind of privilege if I’m not wrong. Nevertheless I believe he’s also happy in a way, since he can have more free time for himself and also to spend with his gf.

So well, that’s about it. I actually have some very mixed thoughts about Christmas this year, which has also brought me some light in terms of some matters also, which I will elaborate about it the next time, when I have the chance and the mood to write abt it. In the meantime, let’s just say some matters are really hard to comprehend or control within our own will or power; sometimes you just can’t do anything abt it yourself, since it really takes two hands to clap.

Ok I’m really running late, so that’s about it. Will prolly upload some photos that I had taken over the past few days tonight, so catch you guys again soon. Oh and it’s the birthday of Jesus today also, praise the Lord. And hope everyone will have a very nice Christmas and Happy Holidays too, laters everyone! (^ ^)

By the way, I didn’t know that ‘Dango’ means rice cake in the first place. Did some reading up, then found out about it’s true meaning. I was actually thinking that it has reference to boys, since I originally knew of this term from Hana Yori Dango, which in short also means Flower Over Boys. Pretty lame translation eh? Oh whatever.

Talking about rice cakes, I think it’s a pretty delicious and cheap delicacy. Japan definitely has some of the nicest poor man’s food around, like ramen and okonomiyaki. I think if given a choice of choosing what to eat for the rest of my life, I would choose japanese crusine, even if it means surviving merely on cheap food like ramen, rice cakes or miso soup. I really don’t mind eating all these for the rest of my life, since I know I won’t be sick of it. Heck what’s more, I have been eating these all these years without complaints too.

Of course there’s also the expensive japanese food too. Kobe Beef anyone? And how about Pepper’s Lunch? Or even Takopachi? But of course, those who know me, knows that I don’t really mind splurging on good food. Nothing beats enjoying a good meal with a bunch of good friends and company.

Shit, now I’m thinking about food, in the middle of the night like this. Cheese pies man, and my fridge has nothing for me to whip a good meal now. No instant noodles for me, godly unhealthy piece of flour and crap MSG. Another reason is also because I don’t wanna lose my hair, yes I know I’m a sinner, vanity is a sin, but who fucking cares? (^ ^)V

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Sometime ago, I came across this article online titled “Can Videogames Make You Cry?” and I thought I should mention it, since it was a pretty interesting read.

So most of you might ask, can a videogame literally make you cry or weep? I personally think that it’s possible. Nowadays, we’re not just talking and emphasizing on the killing and violence in games anymore (think Counterstrike). Good videogames does more than that; it tries to reach out the general audience by conveying intended emotions through it, either with good character development in the seemingly linear story-line, or through interesting gameplay fundamentals in a game itself. Graphics and music plays an important role as well; a state-of-the-art technology if used correctly in a game can certainly help to heighten the sense and emotions as well as convey the hidden message in a game which the game developer originally wishes to convey to the audience who’s playing it.

These days, I feel that a videogame is not just simply a videogame anymore. It’s on the same kind of entertainment level as what a book, a movie or even a piece of music could achieve. It’s a kind of vision that game developers wishes to share with the public out there. That same kind of feeling that you experience after watching a good movie or had listened to an excellent piece of music, which can be done with a good videogame too, if done correctly. But how many game developers can actually achieve that, with their games? Sadly, not much.

Frankly, nowadays alot of major game companies emphasize more on the marketing factor and the revenue that their games could bring, rather than the core aspect of how ‘fun’ and ‘interesting’ their games should be. This is sad really, but that’s how the current industry is right now. Not to mention even more so with some American game companies. I for one do not really consider myself to be an ‘American’ gamer, I’m actually more of a ‘Japanese’ gamer myself, because most of the games I like and play are developed by Japanese game companies. Game industry prodigies like Hideo Kojima, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Shinji Mikami, Yuji Naka and Keita Takahashi has certainly earned my respect with their games and I consider myself to be very fortunate to be able to play and experience them, cause it was one of a kind of ‘vision’ that they manage to input and convey with their games to all the gamers out there. Not everyone can achieve this through the games they create, so if you thought that this was easy then you are absolutely wrong about it.

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Now now, the future is definitely not flux. (pun intended)
Read on to find out why. (Warning: might contain spoilers)

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