No, I've not started pimping women shorter then 4ft; that's merely the title of a particular spam email I received today which made me laugh to myself.
Well, it's been a while but I hope everybody's enjoying the festive season. So, what have I been up to lately? Read on and all will be revealed, and apologies for such a long blog entry; I've broken it up into chunks to make reading easier.
End of the semester
As most of you know, this academic semester has been driving me nuts and I couldn't wait to get home for the holidays. To liven things up, everybody at my place decided to throw a secret santa; I'd never actually taken part in one before and I was really quite looking forward to it.
I managed to pick the other Andy and coincedently, he'd managed to pick me. Knowing he's a Fullmetal Alchemist fan, I picked up a Roy Mustang keyring for him from Forbidden Planet. Thankfully, he liked it and currently has it attached to his keys as we speak.
He gave me an action figure of Yuzuki from Chobits; for those of you who don't know, Yuzuki is Minoru's (the boy genius) persocom maid. Simply awesome stuff.
I had one piece of coursework left to hand in by this stage of the semester and sadly, it was possibly the most ridiculous. The assignment required that I interview 6 different people about their favourite fragrances or perfumes for 30 minutes each. Who the hell can talk about their favourite fragrance for more than 5 minutes, let alone 30?! Needless to say, I faked every single interview and made up some bogus report and analysis to go with it. Not expecting great things in return, but then it's only 25% of a 10 credit module where I'm pretty shit-hot on the theory anyway.
And then came the day when my parents came to pick me up. Dave and Andy had already left and it was just me, Rob, and Becky left. Rob and I decided to play a few rounds of Soul Calibur 3 (a few actually meaning 20) which were really enjoyable. We'd never played each other before and it was refreshing to fight somebody other than Khang and Kilik! We both sussed out each other's weak and strong points early on and the matches were fairly even, though I ended up making a break away in the last few rounds. We called it quits when my parents arrived and we loaded up the car with some of my belongings and made the journey back to Birmingham.
Shopping in the land of Brum
After settling back into my room, I quickly rushed out to do some Chrimbo shopping. Managed to get everything I needed within 2 hours; it would have actually only taken 90 minutes but I was faffing about looking for a decent copy of The Count of Monte Cristo for myself...
The Bullring wasn't actually very busy that day so I was able to do my shopping at a fairly leisurely pace. For my brother, I got him a selection of DVDs including House of Flying Daggers, Crash, and Ong Bak. For Khang, I got him a bus powered USB2.0 hub that we'd both seen earlier in the year from Elecom. For my parents, I got them some Marks and Spencers gift vouchers for them to spend in the sales. And for my cousins, aunts, and uncles, I bought far too much Thorntons chocolate which seriously dented my wallet *sigh*.
As I said earlier, I was looking for The Count of Monte Cristo due to me re-watching Gankutsuou very recently. Every bookshop I went to had a copy instock that was all chewed up around the corners, and full of creases. I finally settled on a copy from Borders which was the least damaged of the lot; I suppose it's what's inside that counts at the end of the day or some shit like that.
Anime, anime, anime!
For the next few days, I decided to veg out in my room and indulge in some much needed anime lovin'. Managed to finish several series which I'd started recently including 2x2 Shinobuden, Mouse, and Oku-sama wa Mahou Shoujo, and the long awaited Fullmetal Alchemist movie (Conqueror of Shambala).
2x2 Shinobuden was a slight disappointment; the jokes had become a little retarded and the end was nothing like what I expected due to the opening sequence (why does Shinobu fight her twin at all?!).
Still, I enjoyed most of the episodes and the Christmas episode in particular was just right for the season, though it must have been really out of place considering the series aired during the summer of 2004...
Mouse: eugh the less said about it, the better. It's some retarded spy-thief anime full of really stupid female sidekicks who have enormous boobs. I love breasticles as much as the next perverted guy but these were gigantic; Lolo Ferarri would have been jealous!
Oku-sama wa Mahou Shoujo, which roughly translates to 'My wife is a magical girl'. Initially, it kinda starts off like an anime version of Bewitched but despite its extremely fanservicey nature (just check out the transformation sequence - yikes!), it's actually a pretty deep series.
Ureshika (played by Kikuko Inoue) is the lady in charge of a fictitious town, which has been passed down from generation to generation. Ond day, a new girl has been assigned the role since Ureshika is now too old to be a magical girl anymore (she's 26). The new girl wants to reset the town and start again from scratch, which Ureshika's not too fond of and thus sets about trying to change the new girl's mind.
It was enjoyable though nothing more than something to pass the time with.
Conqueror of Shambala was good, but not great. I didn't think it was destined for greatness because it spent too much time with stuff fans wouldn't care about and not enough on stuff that actually was interesting.
The premise for the movie is that it's now 2 years since the end of the series. Ed is now 18 and is living with our world's representation of Al. Everybody else is back in Rizembul and Central getting on with their lives. Ed befriends a gypsy girl who gets him in all kinds of trouble. Of course, we meet several familiar faces in the real world in positions of society we wouldn't expect.
All in all, it was a decent addition to the Fullmetal Alchemist universe, though this seriously should have been the end of the series rather than relying on a movie to provide closure. I won't say anymore about the movie to avoid spoilers, though if anybody wants to know more, then I'll spill the beans naturally.
Lunch with Khang and Matt
A few days before Christmas, Khang invited me out to lunch with himself and his friend, Matt. We went to Wagamama's at the Bullring where I had my usual Wagamama ramen with a side of negima yakitori. Khang had his usual yakisoba, and Matt had some udon noodle dish of some sort. I gave him his Chrimbo present which he liked, though admittedly still hasn't used yet. A surprise to me, he gave me a copy of Golden Ninja Warrior on DVD. From Godfrey Ho, these are some of the worst martial arts movies ever made using the technique of splicing two different movies together to get the final product. The trailers are hilarious to watch and a selection of these movies are available from The Works.
We moved on to lounging around in StarBucks where I gave Khang all of Miami Guns. A hilarious buddy cop parody done in anime, it's You're Under Arrest - No Mercy done as a TV series. All Initial D fans need to check out episode 4 which features the best Initial D parody ever, even featuring CG cars on a mountain pass!
Christmas Eve
I hooked up with some old school friends to go see King Kong, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was expecting it to drag like fuck, but I was completely immersed throughout the movie. The CG dinosaurs were shit though, still can't touch Jurassic Park's work there.
After the movie, we went to Nando's off Broad Street for dinner. The usual topics of university, work, and what not came up since 2 of us are still students, and 2 have now graduated. Also, much discussion about how some of us are slowly losing hair and going bald popped up regularly that evening, much to everyone bar Daniel's amusement...
Chrimbo
And so came Christmas. I received money from my parents which was much appreciated; my brother gave me volumes 2 - 6 of the xxxHolic manga by Clamp. This is the second time he's bought me manga for Christmas, the first being all of Chobits which is also by Clamp.
For the rest of the day, I decided to finish watching Gantz which I'd started on Christmas Eve. It's a series which I'd started almost 2 years ago, but had only ever seen episode 1 due to it being licensed very early on in its run. Not only that, but it was also heavily censored for TV, so much so in fact that 2 entire episodes had been cut.
Despite all that, it was definitely worth the wait to be able to watch it all uncut. It's one of the few series which I gave 10/10 to without hesitation, it's that good! Sadly, it's not for everybody. It features gory violence which makes Elfen Lied look tame, and also features several fairly graphic sex scenes, as well as violence towards women and children. But that's why it works because it relies on shock value attached to character development.
Plenty of poeple online bitch about the anime diverging too much from the manga source material and do you know what, that's a fair point because it does. What I can't understand is why they're complaining at all because I think the new ending is actually very good. The manga is over 19 volumes long and the anime managed to follow it until about volume 8 where it needed to change the last arc.
Incidentally, I've also started listening to Bonnie Pink's back catalogue due to her amazing song, "Last Kiss", featuring as the Gantz end theme. Great stuff, check it out if you're after something a bit twisted, violent, and deep.
Later on Christmas day, my family and I had Christmas lunch consisting of roast turkey with all the usual trimmings. I ate too much stuffing, which left me errr... stuffed for the rest of the day.
Later that evening, we went to my aunt and uncle's house in Dudley (Dudloi!) for Christmas dinner. More turkey and stuffing, oh joy... Whilst there, I received more money for Christmas from various relatives and took the piss out of my chav cousin. Didn't get home until about 2am, and it wasn't until about 4am before I went to bed since I stayed up reading the Gantz manga.
The day of boxing
Everybody met up again at Chung Ying Garden in China town for lunch. EVERY oriental family in Birmingham does this because Khang and his family were also there, though we didn't bump into each other despite both of us spending 2 hours on the premises. My parents did bump into him and Viet later that afternoon at the Bullring, where they told Khang I was at the Apple store, which I was earlier because my chav cousin decided to buy an iPod nano despite not being 100% certain it would work with his PC... Later, we all went for coffee at Druckers because StarBucks was closing. Our tab came to £28.95 for 11 coffees...
The excursion to London
I decided to pay a trip to the nation's capital since it had been over 6 months since I was last there and because my cousin had some business to do and asked me to tag along.
He rang me up at 7am asking if I wanted to go; I was sound asleep since I'd gone to bed at around 3am. An hour later, he came to pick me up and I spent the rest of the journey asleep in the front passenger seat. We parked the car (a company BMW, nice) in Watford Junction since it's far cheaper and easier to just catch the train from there into London Euston and avoid the congestion charge and extortionate parking fees. Once we arrived at Euston, we went our separate ways and I got on the tube to my usual first stop at Goodge Street station. Walked past CEX to find them selling the Xbox 360 hard disk for £125 (a photo and others of the trip can be found here). I next went to Game Focus, one of the best import games stores I've ever visited, where they had such gems like Fighting for One Piece, and the BECK game on PS2, as well as Naruto - Gekitou Ninja Taisen 4 for the GameCube. Didn't buy anything sadly since the prices are very high and it was my first stop of the day.
I made my way up Oxford Street and then on to Regent Street where I visited the Apple store. It was heaving in there, chock-a-block with people who were mostly iPod noobs looking for accessories and what not for their Christmas presents no doubt. I decided to return later in the evening when it would hopefully be quieter.
My next stop was the Japan Centre. I went upstairs to see if they had any interesting Jpop albums, though sadly they're arranged in such a way which makes it very hard to browse unless you know exactly what you're looking for. They had an awesome poster sized One Piece calendar available which I almost bought. Then I realised how much it was, £22.95. This wouldn't be so bad if it was for 12 pages, but no, it's only for 6 pages with 2 months per page. It did however have a great fanservicey page with my beloved Nami-swaaan and Robin-chwaaan on there, though this wasn't enough to sway me. Another page with those two on might have though...
I went downstairs to the food section and bought some nori (seaweed) to munch on throughout the day.
I decided to pay a visit to Forbidden Planet next as well as a corner shop to buy some cigarettes and some Sprite. I'm not allowed to smoke as often since I'm at home now and my parents really, really don't like me doing it so I respect their wishes, I simply smoke when I'm away from home! Anyway, I went to a convenience store of some sort where I bought my stuff. The lady at the counter was really nice, and wished me a happy new year when she handed back my change, which was really surprising. I cheerfully thanked her and wished her a happy new year too.
Several minutes later, I'd made my way to the Forbidden Planet megastore (apparently the largest geek store of its kind in Europe!). Their anime section was both better and worse than usual. Better because they had a larger variety of products, but worse because the prices were all extortionate. They had a plushie of Naruto going for £45 (in the photo section) and an Ed from Fullmetal Alchemist for £20 which wasn't too bad. They had a nice looking Chun-Li poster from Streetfighter which I enquired about, but that was £15 which was shocking. Went downstairs to the manga and DVD section to find that they still had the best stocked sections I've ever seen in the UK. They had the One Piece - Colour Walk (manga art book) which I snapped up just for the before/inspiration for One Piece section, which has Nami with a robotic arm and a giant axe, and Luffy as a gunslinger. I also found some One Piece keyrings and decided on Chopper, since he was the only one who looked like himself and because he came with a mini Log Pose. Awesome stuff.
The next stop was the Trocadero arcade, where I was amazed to see them have House of the Dead 4. Based on the new Lindberg board, the graphics were phenominal with around 20 or so characters on screen at most times. They've gotten rid of the shotguns from 3 which nackered out your arms and have now provided full automatics, which you reload by shaking them upwards. I lasted maybe 3 minutes before I died and wasted all my hand grenades. I have a video along with the photos for those interested.
I had a few goes on OutRun 2 SP but passed on Initial D. I didn't have any of my cards (Celica GT4 and RX-7 FD3S) with me and I didn't have any more change, and wasn't prepared to break a £20 note.
I decided to head to Harrods in Knightsbridge to check out their sale, which was a BIG MISTAKE. Their sale had started that very day and it was impossible to get anywhere inside. Their technology section was heaving with people, though I did see several nice TVs which were heavily discounted. Their sports section was also good; I almost bought myself the new Japan team strip from Adidas for next year's world cup.
By this time, it was starting to get dark so I wanted to visit the newly opened iPod store, popExpress. It was somewhere around Liverpool Street station, and after maybe 15 minutes of looking, I'd found it down some sidestreet. It was a tiny shop, with an automatic sliding door. How they're still in business is beyond me; they don't have anything which you couldn't find elsewhere and their prices are no cheaper than anywhere else either. Hugely disappointed.
Figuring it was time to try the Apple store again, I headed back on the tube. My legs were aching by this point, since I'd already been in London for 8 hours and I'd spent less than 20 minutes sat down so far. 10 tube stops later, I was back at Regent Street. In the store, they had some fake DJ demonstrating the new iDJ which lets you hook up 2 iPods to some fake mixing deck at the same time. I went upstairs where I saw some awesome earphones from Ultimate Ears. Sadly, they were £200 so I put them back. I decided to take a breather at the Creative Studio theatre where I went online via my iBook. Downloaded a few Jpop albums and anime soundtracks via http and spoke to a few people online.
30 minutes later, I was pretty hungry since I'd only had 1 x bacon & egg & 1 sausage & egg McMuffin, 2 coffees, several Marlboro Lights, and a bottle of Sprite to keep me going all day. And where was my dinner location of choice? None other than KFC! I ordered a large Zinger Tower burger meal, 1 small portion of Popcorn chicken, and 6 hot wings. I managed to finish it all though I felt so fat afterwards!
I decided to check out HMV and the Trocadero once more. In HMV, I picked up the new 4 disc Back to the Future set for only £12.99 which is a complete bargain. I was prepared to pay £30 for it before Christmas and was so glad I didn't in the end. Back at the arcade, I didn't have anymore change so I just watched some people play House of the Dead 4 for a while. They didn't fare any better than I did sadly.
I went to China town next to pick up a few things for myself and my parents. I ended up bumping into 2 Chinese guys from my minor, information management, who were also there for the day from Aber. After a brief chat and wishing them a happy new year, I continued on with my shopping. I found some Pocari Sweat, the oddly named energy drink from Japan. Whilst in the queue of a Chinese supermarket, I saw a really hot Thai or Philipino girl. Sadly, she was taken *sigh*.
It was getting close to my train's departure time to go back to Brum, so I made my way to Leicester Square tube station. They had some sort of funfair over there though I didn't stop to look. Once at London Euston, they didn't have the platform number for my train (like they always do) so I was hanging around for maybe 20 minutes. I browsed a few Mac magazines over in WHSmiths and was pleasantly surprised to read that Mac Format officially recommends Brasso over all alternatives as an iPod scratch remover. See, all you nay-sayers can't say I'm crazy anymore!
Anyway, they finally announced the platform and I made my way over. Thankfully, it was a Pendolino train so they had power sockets for laptops etc so I could charge my iBook. The carriage I settled down at was fairly quiet, but then a group of 3 people decided to come sit at my table because all the other table seats were taken. Some metrosexual looking guy pulls out the huge 17" PowerBook, completely eclipsing my iBook in the process and taking up most of the table... I spent most of the journey catching up on the Gantz manga and watching the new bonus disc from my Back to the Future set. Got back to Brum at around 22:30 where my Dad picked me up. Didn't get to bed until 3am again though, sadly.
The great modded crystal Xbox mission
The day after, Khang and I made preparations for he would soon have a modded Xbox of his own.
The day before I went to London, I luckily spied a modded crystal Xbox for sale on the NTSC-UK forums. Fitted with an Xecuter 2.6 chip, but no after market hard disk, the guy wanted £100 which is a steal. I quickly contacted Khang and set up all the negotiations. Unfortunately, the guy got back in touch with me whilst I was in London so I got Khang to log into my account and check all my messages. Turned out the guy lived in Dudley (Dudloi!) so we decided to collect it in person.
Fast forward back to Thursday. Khang came to pick me up since I had to take my Xbox, laptop, and external hard disk over to his place to set everything up. We went into Brum to have lunch and do a spot of shopping. Khang bought an official Xbox remote and another S-pad from HMV as well as another iPod synch lead from the Apple store.
We had lunch at Pizza Hut on New Street which was heaving as expected. The staff were shite; the girl who served us gave our garlic bread with cheese away to the table next to us! As per usual, I overindulged (actually, we both did), and I felt queasy for the rest of the day.
We went to chill out in StarBucks at Borders as per usual until it was time to head over to the guy's house. It took a while to get there, and we almost knocked at the wrong house because Khang can't tell the difference between 12 and 112! When we found the correct house, we paid the guy and got the Xbox and drove back to Khang's place.
Once back at Khang's we plugged everything into make sure it all worked and as expected, it all did. I quickly formatted the crystal Xbox and cloned my Xbox's hard disk to put on his (easier to work with). After a few false starts down to RGB and weird blue tint problems, we got his Xbox into NTSC mode which would just be a lot less hassle in the long run. It would appear that the crystal Xbox has one of the new second generation Philips DVD-ROM drives fitted, which is capable of reading all current optical media. I have the first gen Philips drive which will read all DVD-/+R media and poor Mike has the Samsung drive, which will only read some brands of CD-R... I copied OutRun 2 and Kung-fu Chaos onto Khang's hard disk as well as lending him several games to play (Halo 2, Dead or Alive Ultimate, Marvel vs Capcom 2). Once everything had been verified to work, I went home.
The cold from hell
Today, I'm not feeling too hot since the lingering cold has hit me full on now. I'm all congested, I have a headache, I keep nodding off etc. Needless to say, I won't be doing any partying tomorrow evening. Instead, I'll be doing an anime of 2005 year in review type thing. I've seen several sites and blogs do their own so I figured why not. Other than that, I wish everybody a happy new year and I'll see you all in 2006.
