Journey Photo Log, Interlude

I'll be leaving for a week to Borsec. This is a recreational camp (which means no Internet connection), so I'll have to leave the log a bit suspended. However, I leave you with two movies that we made in camp. Enjoy:

Journey Photo Log, Part 2

Here you go, everyone! Part 2!

Cristian: (before camp)

Well, as soon as I got to Cristian, I met the people I was going to work with. Some of them had already been there for the previous camps and those of them were really glad to see reinforcements coming. Of course, I had known them from before, the correct way to say it would have been "I met up with". Whatever.

The day before camp, we went to Busteni to see Babele and Sfinxul. For those of you who don't know, these are two famous rock formations which respectively resemble old women and a human face. Here are two photos, one with me and Babele in the background (I never understood where the old women were in those stones; personally I think they look like nuclear explosion mushrooms, but in school books they claim they look like old women, so who am I to argue?), and one with the whole group (not everyone here is an instructor, some are participants from the previous camp who stayed for the next one too).

The interesting part of the journey was the journey itself, not really the rock formations. Besides waiting in line 3 hours, I got an insight on cool/stupid Romanian signs. Check these out:

What's the word for "velocity" in Romanian?

"Viteza", you say? Check again:

I've been to other countries, but I've never seen a "stationing table" before:

Let's suppose I'm looking for a coffin...

Found the best place! Open 24/7:

Where do I park? On the right? Gotcha...

Houston, we have a problem...

Journey Photo Log, Part 1

Well, most of you know, I've been on quite a trip these past weeks. First of all, I went to Bucharest to see my girlfriend, then to camp in Cristian and after that to Szarvas. I got home 3 days ago, but i needed the time to rest. Now the time has come to talk about my journeys.

Thanks to my brother's benevolence, I got a digital camera for my birthday (Thank you, Tibi!). Using this camera, I took a lot of photos during my travels, which I'm going to share with you through the following days, as I review the past weeks.


Bucharest:

I'll start my log by telling about what it was like in Bucharest. I got my camera here, 2 days before leaving, so sadly I have not enough photos. I especially regret not having taken pictures of TNT Games, the official retailer of NCSoft games in Romania. It was such a cool workplace. What was I doing there? Well, I went to buy a PS1 memory card in order to be able to save my FFIX games. Yes, we all know that Sony are bitches, not letting you save PS1 games on a PS2 memory card. Anyway, this place was really cool and I got to play the Wii here, too! Yay!

Anyway, the purpose of my visit to Bucharest was seeing my girlfriend, Ioana! And here she is!

(by the way, this is the very first photo taken with my new camera)

Ok, let's have some more photos with her, cause she deserves it. Beautiful, isn't she?... (sigh)

Another event was Mariuca's birthday. Who is Mariuca? She's Ioana's older sister. Here's a photo. Happy Birthday! It was a really cool birthday. The whole family got together. It was a ball!

Overall, it was a heavenly time (mostly thanks to Ioana). I can't wait to meet you again...
I'll end here, and resume my stories tomorrow, with events from Cristian, from before the camp.

Kiddy Grade 2 (the waiting's simply killing me)

I don't know about most of you, but among my favourite anime I count Gonzo's 24-episode science fiction TV series about girls with super powers, an organization bearing the name of God, fanservice and even some unexpected (even outrageous to some) plot twists. Yes, I'm talking about Kiddy Grade.

Views and critics about Kiddy Grade vary wildly. I personally like it. I like the pacing, the visuals, the music, the characters, the setting, the plot, even the fanservice... And just when it was about to get interesting, you suddenly notice that you've just finished watching episode 24 and there are no more... You then re-watch it (well, that's what I did) and enjoy it at a different level, knowing all the subtleties that you've learnt throughout the series. But then, it ends again...

Well, it doesn't have to end there. There will be 3 digest movies coming out, retelling the story of the series, and as far as I know, it will contain new material as well. But what's really exciting, is the fact that they've announced (yes, I know that this happened in October 2006) a sequel. The preview (which I would more accurately call a teaser) was released 2 months ago and I've finally gotten my hands on it. I've watched it and re-watched it as much as the series. I just can't wait...

Well, if all of this is going to be in Kiddy Grade 2, then I guess it's worth waiting. The space battle seems a lot more dynamic, since the battle with Deucalion was a bit dull. The two new main characters seem pretty cool. If in the first series Eclair was the brawn and Lumiere was the brains, I don't see that clear dissociation in these two. Also, if they're taking out Eclair, they will probably have less fanservice. At the very end, did you notice that the sign is different? It doesn't say GOTT, it says GTO! All these little details make me tingle. Help me someone... I'm dying!

New Gadget

Well, everyone, as you can see on the right hand side of the blog, where you have all the goodies (those cool comics and the archive, which is of absolutely no use to you, I guess), a new gadget has just appeared. "Is that a map?" you might ponder. Indeed it is. But it isn't just any kind of map. It's a ClustrMap. This cool gizmo I took from my brother's blog and it shows how many hits my blog gets and, the cool part, where I get them from. I have high hopes of world domination with it. Who knows...

Anyway, if you want to decorate your own blog with it, check out:
http://www.clustrmaps.com/

Let's Put Our Sins to Good Use... Amusement!

As I was browsing through the forum of my Guild Wars guild, some of my guildies posted interesting Quizes, Tests and the like. No, these are not psychologically approved personality tests or such. They are for mere fun!

I personally liked two of the tests, namely:

1. Dante's Inferno Test - http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-test.mv
2. Seven Deadly Sins Quiz - http://www.4degreez.com/misc/seven_deadly_sins.html?g=m

Enjoy!


On the first one I scored Purgatory:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very High
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Moderate
Level 2 (Lustful)	Moderate
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Very Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

On the Second I scored Sloth:

Greed:	Medium
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	Low
Sloth:	High
Envy:	Low
Lust:	Medium
Pride:	Very Low

Hell! It's about time...

No, this post is not about Starcraft 2 (I guess that's old news now, but if you haven't heard about it, visit http://www.starcraft2.com). No, this post is about another great game that's about to come out. It's probably erroneous to call something 'great' if it's still more than a year away, but when we (or at least I) say "A great game is coming out", we mean that it's a game we have great expectations of, knowing the producer, past releases, trailers and various other bits of information.

Indeed, the game I'm talking about now is an RPG, is just as old as Starcraft (in fact it's older), had a sequel, a tactics spin-off with an add-on and even a table-top game. We've been waiting for the second sequel for a long time now, but the company went bankrupt and nothing became of it. Another company has bought the rights and is now making the long-awaited sequel.

Have you guessed the game yet?



Beautiful, isn't it? (For a higher quality teaser, check http://fallout.bethsoft.com/teaser.html) The first impression it gives me is that the game seems to retain the whole feel of the Fallout universe, which, of course, is the most captivating thing in the game. I am glad that it's Bethesda who's working on Fallout 3 (not some stupid commercial company, like EA). I just hope they will keep the style of the game as well. I really wouldn't like to see a simple Elder Scrolls set in the Fallout universe, but a game that retains its tradition. It will most likely be 3D, we can't help that nowadays, I just hope they don't screw it up.

Like I said before, I think this will be a great game (as in I have high hopes and expectations, as from Starcraft 2, by the way). However, I have a fear for both of these games. Will they run on a low-end PC? Both Starcraft and Fallout (as well as Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics) ran on minimal system requirements. Will they be able to do the same for Starcraft 2 and Fallout 3? A more appropriate question would be: Is this even among their priorities? We'll have to wait and see... (unless humanity destroys itself till then, in which case we'll be playing these games on the Vault's computer)

Psychedelic ecstasy!

WATCH THE TRAILER FIRST, THEN READ!

Yesterday (actually 2 days ago, since it's past midnight) me and the boys went out to see a movie! Within TIFF (Transylvanian International Film Festival) there is always one anime screening. Last year, it was Howl's Moving Castle (which I sadly couldn't attend, since I was still in Oradea back then), this year, it was Paprika. This is the movie we went to see.

As Serban observed, this was the first anime he'd seen in a cinema in Romania. It was the same for me, though the first anime I'd seen in a cinema was in Hungary, at Szarvas, when I went to see Spirited Away. I had expected to see very few people in the room, yet it was full, to my utmost surprise and joy.

Anyway, onto the anime! I'm not sure I can describe it in any one word. I would like to search www.dictionary.com for synonyms of the word GREAT and put them in a list here... Come to think of it, I'll do that:

The anime Paprika was able, absolute, aces, adept, admirable, adroit, bad, best, brutal, cold, complete, consummate, crack, downright, dynamite, exceptional, expert, fab, fantastic, fine, first-rate, good, heavy, hellacious, marvelous, masterly, mostest, number one, out-and-out, perfect, positive, proficient, skilled, skillful, super dupe, surpassing, terrific, total, tough, transcendent, tremendous, unmitigated, unqualified, utter, wonderful, zero cool!

Having said that, lets get into details. The anime is the well-known style of Satoshi Kon. As I saw Paprika prancing around during the opening credits, it kind of reminds me of the 'evil' Mima from Perfect Blue. The camera movement and impact of the two movies are so much alike. Paprika, however is less scary and more confusing. It's not because of the plot though, I believe he could have easily made it scarier had he wanted to. Dreams can be really scary (just listen to Iron Maiden's Dream of Mirrors and you'll understand what I mean.), but I think he wanted something different. The metaplot, I believe, resembles Serial Experiments Lain the most. In what way? Well, go watch them both and you'll understand. :P

As for the technical aspects, well, what can I say? Animation and production were done by Madhouse Studios. Do a search on that at Anime News Network and you'll soon find some attractive titles and understand what this means. The visuals are just stunning. The carnival scenes are most impressive. It kind of grabs you and folds around you, really taking you into the action. The audio is likewise amazing. The theme song is just wonderful (I got hooked on it from the very beginning). Also, as a personal delight, the main character is voiced by Megumi Hayashibara. I think it is a most befitting role for both her Lina Inverse and Rei Ayanami attitudes.

Say hello to Paprika and Dr. Atsuko Chiba!

This anime is a must-see! Don't expect something light though. It is a typical Satoshi Kon movie, in which you don't know where reality ends and dreams begin.

It's that day...

Well, today is 31 May. Which means... we have a birthday today! Wait? I'm wrong? What do you mean I'm wrong? Aaaaaaa! You mean there's not just one birthday, but two birthdays today?! Well then, let's have the lucky winners step up on the podium please:

First up is Ioana! (to those of you who don't know, Ioana is my girlfriend) Let's all put our hands together for Ioana who is turning 18 today. That means drinking, driving and sex are now legal for you! Cool!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, IOANA!!!







Second up is myBlog! Everyone cheer for the blog we all know and love. myBlog becomes one-year-old today. I was hoping I'd hit 100 posts before this day is over, but hopefully that will happen before next year.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MYBLOG!!!







For those of you who are wondering about this coincidence, check out the very first post. (NOTE: Back then, Ioana and I were not together... who would have thought we'd come all this way...)

Inspiration

It is amazing where one can find inspiration nowadays. Wherever you look, you may find something of great interest. There exist only 2 conditions:

- You have to keep your eyes open;
- You have to have something to use the inspiration for.
Now, these conditions can be dealt with in an extremely hasty manner.

First, if the source of inspiration is shocking, you don't need to keep your eyes open. However, it has to be really shocking. You know, the kind that hits you and leaves you traumatized for weeks without end. The kind that makes you go "You are shock!" (the source of inspiration I'm talking about did this to me)

Second, you need to have something to direct valuable inspiration towards. And what is the best place the a blog? You can throw anything here, whether it is interesting or boring, cute or disgusting, violent or pornographic, everything goes. What? There is more worthy a target for inspiration? Yes, there is! I'm talking about motivational posters.

For those of you who don't know, motivational posters are little framed photos with a title and tagline that "Inspire! Motivate! Mock!" They are the perfect things. You will see an example below (I hope it inspires you to make more).

Yes, 'motivational poster' was the first thing that popped into my mind as soon as I saw my room mate's rice and chicken. What's so inspiring about rice and chicken? Nothing much, usually. But after keeping it in the fridge a few weeks, it becomes really shocking. Remember, 'shocking' was the first condition for a successful source of inspiration? I've always thought mould to be green, but there are many other colours of mould: blue, white, brown, black, yellow, grey... The photo is not high quality, since it was taken with a mobile phone, I hope you enjoy it though. So without further a due:




If you want to make your own motivational poster, visit:
http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/motivator.php

Eurovision 2007

For those of you who are not up to date, the 52nd edition of the Eurovision Song Contest ended this weekend with Serbia's Marija Sherifovich claiming a 268 point victory (with the song Molitva, meaning 'Prayer').

I personally didn't like the songs that much. My favourites were the opening and in-between songs, namely Lordi's Hard Rock Hallelujah (last year's winner with a record-breaking score of 292 points) and Apocalyptica (though I don't know what song). I have to admit, Finnish music is very good. However, despite being the host, they didn't do too well, obtaining only 53 points, landing them on the 17th place (behind Romania's bullshit song... which scored 13th with 84 points). They should have participated with Loituma's Leva's Polka, I'm sure that would have gotten them many more votes.

One of the most interesting things was the distribution of the points. It was notable that most countries voted for their neighbours, which is understandable (except for the United Kingdom, which is even more understandable). Romania enjoyed two 12-point votes (this being the maximum), from Moldova, which is unexpected, yet somewhat understandable and mostly pleasant, and from Spain, which is extremely understandable and equally hilarious (prietenii ştiu de ce!).

Kana -Little Sister-

Yesterday, I played Kana -Little Sister-...

... it changed me

First Post of the Year!!!

Happy New Year!!!

Well, everyone, we're looking forward to a new year full of happiness and fulfilments, right? And let's not forget: great, enriching, entertaining posts.

Thankfully, I got a great idea for my first post this year. It occurred to me that Mom was watching Starship Troopers on TV last night. We all know and love this movie, right? Remember the part when Private Ace (or whatever his name is) misthrows the knife and says: "Sir, why do we have to learn how to throw a knife when all you need to do is press a button... Sir." And then the Sergeant makes him put his hand on the wall and sticks it to it with the knife saying: "The enemy can't press the button if you disable his hand." And then comes the scene with the showers... So why did they cut the part with the knife and suddenly shifted to the shower room straight after Ace's comments? And what's this, they cut out the part with the arachnids tearing the guy apart? What the Hell?!?!?!

I really don't understand TV. I mean, they had this sign in the lower right corner:
So then why cut out the bloody scenes of the movie? I mean, those are the coolest parts. It's the same with Romanian TV. They keep from translating curse words even during the night-time movies. People lacking English knowledge still think that "fuck you!" means "du-te dracului!" I think this is plain stupid. If you rate it 'R'... then dammit, put in some 'R' content into it, don't leave out all the juice...

Review -> Scrapped Princess

I was going to do a review of Desire, an absolutely wonderful hentai game that I've just finished. However, something a lot more wonderful and heart-filling stumbled across my way. No, I'm not talking about the recently downloaded Final Fantasy XII that I'm currently playing, though that's really awesome too. I'm talking about this 2003 anime which I've been wanting to download and finally had the time to do it. There may be some spoilers in the review, though not any direct ones, only through comparison; I hope that you can forgive me (I felt like I needed to make that statement). So, let's start!


Full Title: Scrapped Princess
Structure: TV series - 24 episodes
Personal Comment: This anime has got it all!
Favourite Quote: Way too many to add here!

Plot (10/10): That's right, you've read the score correctly! The Casull family: Raquel, Shannon and Pacifica are on the run. A prophecy from the almighty Lord Mauser declares that Pacifica is "the poison that will the destroy the world" when she turns sixteen. Her foster brother and sister swear to protect her against the entire kingdom of Leinwan and against the followers of the Mauser faith. It starts out as a simple high fantasy story, but hastily turns from that into a truly unique experience. Spoiler warning: To put it simply, this anime is a perfect combination of Black Company, Final Fantasy, The Matrix and Dark City. I have never seen such a good blend of techno-fantasy. Most of it is implemented through Clarke's Third Law. Spoilers end here.

Characters (10/10): What?! Max score again?! YES!!! And that's because the characters re so complex and well detailed that you'll have the impression of them being alive. Everyone has a hidden agenda and is torn between difficult choices. Loyal subjects who are tired of warring betray their king and those who are "evil-spirited" shall not turn upon seeing someone they care about suffer. People hide behind superficial faces while they endure pain deep inside. Trust is gained through hardship and even those tied by blood can turn to betrayal. The epic nature of the story keeps main characters from dying... all the more shocking when you really see that some are not coming back. Character design was made by Takahiro Komori (responsable for Cowboy Bebop... maybe it was his influence that the episode titles include a form of music, much like the aforementioned classic.) Let me just mention some of the seiyu (voice actors): Fumiko Orikasa (Celas Victoria from Hellsing, Hikari from Haibane Renmei) is Pacifica Casull, Shinichiro Miki (Kurz Weber from Full Metal Panic!, Mullin Shetland from Last Exile) is Shannon Casull, Sayaka Ohara (Kimura-sensei's wife from Azumanga Daioh, Alicia Florence from Aria the Animation) is Raquel Casull, Ayako Kawasumi (Osaka from Azumanga Web Daaioh, Kanako Ohno from Genshiken, Nomura Miu from Piano) is Winia Chester, Daisuke Ono (Yukito Kunisaki from Air) is Kidaf Gilott, Yuki Matsuoka (Osaka from Azumanga Daioh, Arumi Asahina from Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, Nana from Elfen Lief) is Seness Lulu Giat, Kaori Mizuhashi (Integra Hellsing child from Hellsing, Mercredi from Kiddy Grade) is Zefiris.

Approach (8/10): There are a few flaws about the approach of the anime. Even if you admit that the themes themselves are not original, the way they are presented is unique. The problems are as follows: 1. The humour, although diminished halfway through the series, persists until the very end. You will not see the stupid gap that you experience during Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid and you will forget about the humour due to the high immersion into the story, nevertheless, I believe less comic relief would have been better; 2. Most of the greater plot is revealed about halfway through the series, which I believe is bad. If they had kept ambiguity until the very end, it would have conferred a lot more suspense.

Visuals & Music (10/10): Perfect visuals. High quality , though not that of newer anime, but the scale of it all is truly epic with Sauer, the capital of Leinwan, resembling the White City from Tolkien's novels. The costumes are truly magnificent, making a visible difference between noble and commoner. Facial expressions are detailed and special effects are stunning. Music is extremely appropriate, whether it reflects the strings of bards or the tense orchestra accompanied battles. Responsable for this great musical theme is Hikaru Nanase, who made the music for the Azumanga Daioh characters.

Overall (38/40): Watch this anime! If not for the few flaws in approach, I would rate this as high as Neon Genesis Evangelion, and that's me, the NGE-obsessed freak talking!

OM Live!

It's been almost a week now, but I haven't thought about writing a post concerning the concert I attended last Sunday.

Where should I start? It was a concert held by Negura Bunget to promote their new album entitled OM. For those who don't know, Negura Bunget is a Romanian folk black metal band. What is this? Folk black metal? You heard me right! What makes it so special? Well, for starters, they have specific sounds which capture the beauty of Romanian folk. Any rocker who likes Gheorghe Zamfir is going to love Negura Bunget. :D

One thing that I found amazing was the use of a bucium during some of the songs. Actually, the whole concert started out with the sound of this Romanian Alpenhorn. As the keyboards played in the background you could feel the whole place being filled with electricity. It was incredible!

Also, the band really transmitted a weird sensation of folk through their style. They are truly unique. I guess that's why they have an international reputation. My favourite song was Hora Soarelui (cool title, huh?).

Also, the band was very friendly. Each member gave me not one, but two autographs, one on the ticket and one on a poster, which were handed out for free, by the way. You also got a free beer for the ticket. How cool is that? I'm not a fan of black metal (people know that I prefer heavy metal), but this was a great experience.

Party! (PARTY!!!)

Note: When reading this post, all present should shout the words in brackets, just like you do when you say King Torg. (ALL HAIL KING TORG!!!)

This post is somewhat overdue, but I couldn't help it, my network connection was very poor yesterday. With that said...

It's been a month since I started university in Cluj and we finally inaugurated my room in the bording house with a well deserved party! (PARTY!!!) We had a lot of people and before I continue I would like to thank everyone for coming (in order of appearance): Andrei, Gabor, Sheri, Endi, Kinga, Pete, Zsiga (pleaase excuse me in case I forgot someone).

We played MtG and even cooked some food, although not without the implicit issues of trying to cook a good meal in a bording house. In the spirit of Kintaro Oe, I will say that "I've learnt so much!" First of which is that food doesn't grow on trees (except for apples... but that's not real food). You need all sorts of shitty ingredients to make good food, ingredients which Endi thought I had around and I assumed he brought with himself. However, since everyone was extremely hungry, the majority of the people (meaning everyone except Endi) thought the food was good. The amount of food we made was huge and we all got seconds and even had left-overs for breakfast the next day. It was awesome!

Noone seemed to miss the booze, but I'll make sure to have some for next time. Also, I promise to arrange a Booster Draft for the next party. (PARTY!!!) I just hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did and will come again. Thanks again guys! It was a great party. (PARTY!!!)

Windows 98 is the worst operating system ever!

"Windows 98 este cel mai prost sistem de operare dintre toate care exista!"... yep, that's what my teacher said. He's a respectable and knowledgable person, so I tend to believe him. He also described in detail how "Unfortunately, Windows stopped being good after version 3.11" and "Windows started becoming more and more unstable, culminating with Windows 98".

I'm thinking just how bad it could have been, for a university professor to give such declarations. I personally liked it more than 95, but he said that its colours attracted people more than its predecessor. However, he claims that computer magazines ("Real computer magazines, not magazines with photos of computers in them") declared Windows 98 a complete failure. It was funny to see him so passionate about telling us just how bad Windows 98 was, considering the fact that he is always very calm and precise.

He ended his lecture by saying that he is looking forward to seeing what Windows Vista will be like and mentioning that next lecture he will be talking about Unix-based operating systems , saying "Now those are real operating systems" (Peet is smiling now).

Out of curiosity, I took the liberty of looking up Windows Vista on Wikipedia. There were some interesting features there, I must admit, but the one that really caught my eye was a related article about "hybrid drives". Here is the link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_drive

I'm looking forward to comments (especially from the Dungeons-And-Stuff group).

Yours,
Viki

PS: Until next time, keep your systems Windows-free with "format.exe". "format.exe", the biztos solution!

Review -> Air

Finally, after some time, I manage to get down to updating the blog. Some time has passed since my last post and it is high time I did something about that. I'm not going to go on telling you all about the student life which I've just started, but I'm going to give you some reviews of the latest anime I've seen (in case the context didn't speak for itself, we're talking about more than one anime here). I'll give you the first one now, and the second one hopefully in about a day or two. Also, I'm going to change the rating system a bit, making it more harsh mostly. I'm not going to rerate the old reviews, but you should probably just extract around 2-5 points. So, here goes:

Full Title: Air
Structure: TV series - 26 episodes + Special - 2 episodes + Movie
Personal Comment: A story full of mystery, magic, friendship, trust, love and the sky.
Favourite Quote: "On the other side of this sky, there is a girl with wings."

Plot (7/10): It's really hard to give points here. It depends how many such anime you've seen. It starts out as your basic "traveller comes to town and helps everybody with their problems", but it rapidly evolves beyond that. Kunisaki Yukito is a travelling entertainer, who uses his magic to animate a little doll. With this act, he travels worldwide in search of a "girl with wings" in legacy of her mother. Upon arriving in a small town, where many strange girls become candidates for Yukito's search, he tries to find out who the true goal of his quest is and fabulous adventures begin.

Characters (9/10): The characters are splendid! It is the thing which gets a strong grip on you and makes you scream for more. You really get attached to the characters and empathise with them on such a level that you truly share their joy and suffering alike. Each one of them is unique and complex, but also consistent. They are all covered thoroughly and their attitude provokes many moments of laughter.

Approach (9/10): If I cut the rating of the plot, I had to give 9/10 for the approach. The atmosphere is great! It is a perfect concentration of comic relief, giving you opportunity to giggle at Misuzu's mishaps and childish nature, laugh at Kono's weird attitude, shudder at Minagi's ultra-formal dialect and amuse at Yukito's irony-filled remarks. However, all of this does not ruin the more serious scenes and the series goes as far as successfully making you cry at times. The three story arcs of the series are impressive, giving birth to the two-episode special (which I haven't seen, by the way, much like I haven't seen the movie either). It's entertaining throughout its full 13 episode length.

Visuals & Music (8/10): The visuals are splendid, especially in the more heart-filling scenes. Also, the music is extremely appropriate. To those who have seen Onegai! Teacher or Onegai! Twins, the musical effect is very similar. Sudden crescendoes and modern instrumentality accompany even the dramatic moments of the series.

Overall (33/40): Overall, it is an anime worth watching. It gives you a warm feeling inside and is also good for first-timers and especially recommended for the romantic types among you. One small note, though this is a personal opinion: the title may not be what it had been intended to be during development. I believe the title Air is only a mistranslation (frequent occurrence). I believe this because the last episode's title is also translated Air, while the Japanese word used is "sora", which would translate into Sky, which I would personally find more appropriate.

Game Consoles - The Tool of Satan!

Many people use game consoles. Whether Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo, kids and grown-ups alike spend a lot of time in front of the TV playing their favourite games. However, they are oblivious to the pure evil that these game consoles feed into our very soul. No, I'm not talking about violence, nudity or bad language. I'm not talking about rasist or satanic content. I'm talking about the way these games eat away at your nerves and devour your brain cells!

Thanks to my loving brother, we now own a Playstation 2. My first experience playing it occured two days ago. The game - God of War. I'm not going to detail the content of the game. I must say, it is an awesome game and it is the best action/adventure game I've played till this moment. Though the story seems like it has no link whatsoever with real Greek mythology, the game is really brutal, the atmosphere is tense and dark, and it gives every Crimsonland fan a warm fuzzy feeling inside (despite not having an Ion Cannon or Gauss Shotgun, the Blades of Chaos this guy uses are pretty cool). Enough about the game, let me tell you about my experience. I have to mention that we didn't buy a memory card for our console. This means we couldn't save the game, and had to finish it out of one go (thank you for the many checkpoints; if not for them, I would have gone mad). After playing the game nine hours strait on Friday from about 9:00 pm until 6:00 am the next day and not finishing the game, I had to restart from scratch on Saturday at about 7:00 pm and played it until 3:00 am the next, finally conquering the game. I drew two conclusions after beating the game:

1. The most important accessory for a Playstation is the memory card! This is true. It is more important than the controller. I mean it! not being able to take a break for nine hours is Hell!!!

2. Game consoles are designed to break you! Mentally and physically! After the first session, I woke up the next day with blisters on my thumbs... And game developers aren't satisfied with that. They also give you a playmat for those dancing and jumping games, so you end up with cramps. Not to mention microphones for sing-alongs and karaoke, so you lose your voice. And not only that, but they also have ray gun whatevers, to make sure your fingers aren't working as they should the next day... And when we thought it'd end there, some people come up with this whole new thing they call 'Wii' (Wii? How gay is that?), which is garanteed to make your elbows ache after the first three hours of play.

So, in the end, do you doubt that game consoles and console games are the tools of Satan? I think not!

Long time, no post!

Hello world!

Finally after numerous adventures I'm home and safe and can continue posting this blog you all love so much (I hope). So, let me relate the happenings of the past three weeks (I have no excuse for not writing before these... sorry).

Well, the first two of the aforementioned three weeks concern my being a madrich ('instructor', for those who are not familiar with the term... or 'counsellor', as the USA group called it) at the camp whose logo you can see on the left. I've been a chanich (participant) at this camp for six years in a row and this was my first time as a madrich. I must say, it is completely different. While your occupations as a chanich include: eating, swimming, dancing, singing, hanging out, breaking the camp rules and just annoying your madrichim (the plural of madrich) in any way you can; the being a madrich is way different. At first, you have to be responsable for all those brats who enjoy annoying you and defying curfew hours (this means drawing your Magma Minigun - those who played Alien Shooter know what this baby can do - and wreaking havoc is out of the question, though it probably would have been fun). Besides that, you spend all your free time (even the little free time you've got) in the computer room, not surfing the net, but translating material for activities. The fun begins when some of the madrichim from other countries start screwing with you by not respecting the schedule or room reservations...

There is a very pleasant part of being a madrich though. You get really close to some of the chanichim (actually to most of them... the only ones left out are the troublemakers), and it warms your heart to see them work hard on a project or being very active during a programme. I've had a few such joys, but it was worth it. The only word I can find to define what it was like being a madrich would be: FLCL (what are you looking at? What did you expect me to say?).

After the camp, I've spent some time in Bucharest and Ploiesti. Now that was Exciting. I can't stop myself from braging, so I'll just have to mention that, despite David saying I'm not good at playing MTG, I finished second, out of 6 players, at a draft they held in Ploiesti (in your face!).

I'll finish short for now, but I'll hopefully update more frequently now that I'm home.

Goodbye world!