Good evening folks; I hope everybody's doing well.
Well, summer is now in full swing. How can I tell? The air is chock full of pollen making it a wonderful experience for me right now, not. I've got eyedrops and anti-histimine nasal spray which made me really drowsy earlier, so I had a late afternoon siesta. If it gets any worse, I may just go to the private medical clinic I'm a member of and get a steroid injection that I received a few years ago which sorted the problem right out.
I'm now back at work at Quizno's. Why? Well, my boss offered me a promotion to supervisor as well as a pay rise. The first few days were rough as fuck; I was being harassed by everyone. I've gotten into the swing of things now and it's definitely getting easier. It also helps that I often close up with a lovely Polish girl who just happens to have a fantastic looking ass. What's not so great is that yesterday, her boyfriend came to visit her towards the end of the day. Ah well, pretty girls usually aren't single and if they are, it's not normally for long anyway.
British Gas recently sent me the final bill for the flat in Aber. The grand total dated from February through to the beginning of June (just over a quarter) came to £285. This is a ridiculous amount and is over twice what I paid for my entire annual supply of gas last year.
According to the bill, they somehow think I've used 990 units of gas in the space of five days. Bearing in mind that from February through to May 25th, both Khang and myself had used just 98 units. They did change the meter over to a new metric one on May 25th so I'm guessing they must have cocked something up on their end. Chris (bless him) went round to check the meter properly for me and I'll use that as reference when British Gas get back to me. Thieving fuckers!
It's official, anime is boring, or at least has become boring. It also doesn't help that all the fansubs seem to have dried up due to exam season. As a result, I've taken to reading lots of manga to fill the void. I am a very fast reader and being able to zip through manga at my own actual pace is rather refreshing. I worked through 15 volumes of Ichigo 100% in just under 2 days last week. A fantastic read though the mangaka is definitely fucking with the readers; it's the typical 1 step forward and 3 steps back kind of relationship being depicted in the story; argh, so frustrating! I'm probably going to die an old man before I see a conclusion for that one since I only just recently discovered it features in Shounen Jump in Japan, the same Shounen Jump that features hits like Dragonball and Naruto...
Today, I started reading the BECK manga. The initial startup for the story is pretty much the same though a few scenes are extended which makes later events far clearer; Leon Sykes is introduced in the second volume for example. I must say, it is rather strange reading a story which relies so heavily on aural and visual cues. I'm finding myself playing each of the songs from the soundtrack to compensate which is working, but I can only wonder what it was like for the manga readers before the anime had been released, having to imagine what each song may have sounded like. The art style sadly leaves little to be desired; you can kinda see where the team behind the anime have gotten their inspiration for chracters but at most times, to me it looks like a crude rendition of a shoujo manga, featuring characters with very large eyes and angular faces. Koyuki also looks somewhat retarded, pulling all these idiotic faces and poses. Definitely prefer the look they've given Koyuki in the anime. And Maho's face keeps changing! Ah well, hopefully it'll settle down in later chapters (I have up to volume 22 so far...).
It's time for my mobile phone contract to end and it's actually proving quite difficult to choose a new one. I've narrowed it down to two candidates; the Sony Ericsson S700i and the Nokia 8800.
The Sony Ericsson S700i can be had for free with all O2 contracts now but unfortunately, most places have discontinued it. I do like the design of it alot and it isn't a common phone which is always a plus; problem is it is now at least a year old in terms of features and technology.
The Nokia 8800 on the other hand hasn't even been released yet. The successor to the flagship 8910, Nokia can at least do something right these days by making nice high-end phones. Featuring a stainless steel body with the popular sliding mechanism of today, it oozes class and has slowly but surely lured me in to its charming ways. Problem is it is expensive, too expensive. With a new contract, it would set me back £350. Bought sim-free, it would set me back £675. No matter how you look at it, that is a lot of money for what is at the end of the day, a communications device. It would have excellent resale value, much like all the other 8xxx series phones from Nokia; the 8910 still fetches around £300 - £400 today despite being 2-3 years old now. Another problem is Nokia's first release firmware for their phones is nothing short of craptacular. I bought a first generation 6210 years ago and it was terrible; random reboots, missing functionality, terrible battery life, the works. I can only hope that a phone with such a high premium on it will have most of the bugs dealt with by initial release. Nokia also make it so that you must get a firmware update flashed by an authorised dealer, unlike Sony Ericsson and almost every other consumer electronics company who let you apply the updates yourself. Get with it, Nokia!
Right, that's enough from me, I'm gonna get a few more chapters of BECK in before I completely pass out again from the drugs but just before that, here's a .gif I made of the lovely Ayumi Yamada from the hit series, Honey & Clover which has yet to fail me:
Nighty-night all!
