涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱 (Taiko no Tatsujin 7)

And now for the original:

27.12.2006 - Calm after the storm

We had three earthquakes yesterday. The whole room was shaking pretty heavily and i felt it was best to stand under the door way arch for some reason. I dont know why I thought to do this, I must have seen something somewhere. Also the weather is said to be the coldest so far tomorrow so I might have to strap the arctic gear back on before I head out of the house tomorrow morning. School has been going pretty well so far this week. We visited a quaint little Tea shop as part of our field trip and the children were very well behaved. I drank some cherry tea and a cup of coffee before returning to class to find out it was Japanese curry for lunch! It made me extremely happy and once I had taken care of the prep work for the afternoon I was able to squeeze in a thirty minute nap.

Tonight I plan to get some work done for the week and then generally relax for a while. Tomorrow is a pretty easy day since I dont have time to teach in the schedule of the day. I really feel that whatever feelings on loneliness and boredom brought about by the christmas holiday are behind me now and I can get back to normality, at least until the new years celebrations kick in. Im not sure what I'm going to be doing for "our" new year but the fact that I dont have to go to work on new years day means that at least I can go out and have a good time with my friends. I am still pretty strapped for cash this month though and the last few dollars I have have to go on some drumsticks come saturday. I'm kind of hoping I can find a way to explain to them that I cant pay for sticks until pay day comes around. At least that isnt so far away now.

One of the upsides of having very little money to go out for fun is that I'm dipping into all sorts of new anime and TV shows to fill the hours spent sitting on my sofa in the appartment. I have just finished re watching episode five of chobits with english dub and I also have a couple of things cued up for me. Three new promising series, Shingetsutan Tsukihime, Welcome to the NHK! and "Now and Then, here and there" look like they will be entertaining time fillers. All that and bleach fillers only last for one more episode it seems. What's left of my free time has been taken up by playing Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island on the Snes emulator which is a great game and so visually striking for its time. Its actually alot like Yoshi Touch and Go, just on a grander scale with a story, bosses and such. I am really enjoying that one.

I also hope to get around to putting out another podcast when get around to it and post up some of the pictures I have been taking on my lovely new IXUS camera.

Hope everyone is doing great back home!

Take care!

Until next time,
This has been MMI

24.12.2006 - Lazy Sunday

Another Sunday morning spent sitting on my sofa watching TV and not doing work it seems. Sunday definitely has a different atmosphere to the rest of the week; time stands still especially if you shut yourself off from the outside world. I always debate whether a venture outside to window shop would be a good idea but I guess the sensible thing to do would be clean up. I’ve been putting allot of thought into how to manage the MMI enterprise of late. Do I continue to blog as I am now, do I go forward with making videos or pod casts and how would this content be delivered in a way more unified than now? I certainly would welcome the opportunity to make use of my new camera as I have fallen in love with it.

So by now you are all probably very excited about the prospect of Christmas. I’m sure the fight for the Nintendo Wii is an amusing sight this year. Christmas day for me will be spent at work trying to do as little as possible and stay cheerful. There are many things I would like to buy if money weren't so tight at the moment. I have my eye on Metal Gear Portable Ops for the PSP. But alas, such things will need to wait for a while now as I rely solely on the appeal of the internet for entertainment. I’ve been watching the second season of Jonathan Ross's Japanorama from BBC3 via you tube along with a bunch of awful movies.

I feel it’s more relaxing to watch movies with absolutely no value or substance to facilitate the brain shutdown process which is required to fill my free time. It’s been a while since I sat down and took a film seriously and it seems like I haven’t exercised any intelligence or individual thought for a good long while. On the upside I have reached a sustainable level of mundanity which feels a little like routine, something which puts me incredibly at ease in my environment. I really feel like nothing is new or different about my surroundings and I am finding my Chinese is getting good enough that I can get by. Someone asked me a question in a restaurant the other day and without thinking I answered them, thinking to myself, "When did I pick up Chinese?".

The answer to that question is gradually and without realizing it. Its still necessary to hide the fact that understand what most people say to me time to time because of the benefits ignorance allows in this place i.e. People will not tell you to stop doing something if they don’t know how to tell you. This has helped me to avoid the restrictions on drinking and taking photographs in shops on many an occasion. And on the off chance someone tries to impart such restrictions by means of eye contact, arm waving or frowning, it pays to simply smile back, wave and continue to go about your business.

But anyway, despite majority of the excitement based on my location having faded away, I am still very happy to be here. I live in a great city with tons of stuff to do and places to go and people to hang out with. Life is still very special, but when you are broke this month and you sit in front of a computer screen for eight hours a day, its hard to remember the difference between south east Asia and south east Staffordshire. Someone told me the other day that they are constantly having "moments" in Asia that wakes them up to where they actually are. I said that I stopped having those a while ago, but then again, maybe I should take responsibility for that. Moments don’t occur when you are sitting on your sofa drinking tea and watching family guy, they occur when you are out there in the neon lit streets, buying capsule toys and drinking green tea. I used to remember that but somewhere along the way I just forgot. I guess now that I have my new camera I can take on the mission of finding images which epitomize the uniqueness of my situation. Well at least that would be something worth posting up right?

Till next time,
This has been MMI
Merry Christmas Everyone!

24.12.2006 - Merry Christmas!

Well, here we are, the day before christmas. I just thought I would pop up to give seasons greetings to my readers back in England. Hope you all have a great time and santa brings you everything you want. Here in Taiwan were not exactly overcome by the christmas spirit but at least I am happy. The self bought christmas present of my digital camera is giving me enough christmassy joy to make up for it. So until next time, happy holidays folks,

This has been MMI

17.12.2006 - Foray into Podcasting

Enjoy!

Pick it up here

Till next time,

This has been MMI

10.12.2006 - Back to Bleach

I moved my computer into my bedroom last night which was a great idea. Not only does this allow me to bask in the morning sunlight whilst slowly waking up on a sunday, listening to music and watching the winamp visualisations but it has also afforded me time to catch up a great deal on all my favourite moving images and a few new interesting ones. The most promising of these of late has been the series Eureka 7. High production values throughout its 50 episodes, a great sub, great story and mech robots on air boards really brought anime back to the forefront of all things which are entertaining. As I grow up I'm really finding anime to be one of those last bastions of childlike drip feed programming which prooves hard to shake off, simply because it seems to be getting better. I also had time to catch up with bleach, especially the manga which has such a huge unbelievable story arc going on that it seems imposible that the anime will do it justice, although I hold that hope in my heart, remembering how great Bleach used to be. The latest episode of bleach bumps it usual OP and ED titles to showcase footage from the Bleach movie which looks great, if suffering from the same kind of self contained story which plagues filler episodes. But when it looks that great It cant go wrong.

This morning I was actually woken up by someone drilling continually for an hour in one of the floors upstairs. It sounded like a dinosaur wailing and knocking its head against a wall. I actually stood up to see if something was happening in my living room since it was that loud. The noise pollution in this area really gets to you sometimes and it all seems to be the kind of stock sound effects you hear in movies. Shouting, revving of engines, a dust bin falling over and a sound of clinking bottles following closely by a cat wailing and then a dog barking back in response. The neighbours are also incredibly noisy, chatting at all hours and opening draws and shutting them again repeatedly. When it gets too much I just get the Taiko out and beat out a defiant rythem right back at them to the tune of some sickly sweet Jpop gem.

So what has been happening this week despite vegetating in bed infront of a screen. Well, I bought a 120GB usb stick from nova and consider buying a PS3 or a camera next week when I get paid. I also took up drumming propper at a music classroom across town which looks like its going to be great fun. I felt like it was a time to learn a new instrument and it was a toss up between that or the ocarina, the fiveteen ocarina melody Cds we seem to have inherited at school must have gotten into my brain somehow, at least its not the Cd of little kids reinterpreting rock classics or I might have taken up choir. Drumming is actually harder than I thought, I started off doing everything wrong, especially with the way I would imagine someone would drum as far as holding the sticks and positioning yourself in front of them. I hope it works out for me.

Ive been watching some movies too, some good, some bad, some downright depressing. I watched MI3 which was better than I thought it was going to be, I watched swingers again which was great as always, I watched you me and dupree which reminded me how much more I expect from those group of people not helped by the fact that I watched Talladega Nights the week before which I consider a comedic masterpiece. Finally i watched An Inconvenient truth, the Al Gore global warming documentary which just made me feel guilty. Were all going to fry unlike Al Gore gets more power seems to be the over riding message of that one.

So as today is Sunday, its my day for cleaning and work which never actually comes to pass. For the next two weeks we are celebrating christmas and the classroom looks great already. The christmas tree is up, I turned the white board into a chimney and next week the over compensation for missing the holiday season out here will continue. Hopefully the excess decoration and lights wont proove too much of a fire hazard.

Well, that all for me for now, Im going to attempt to do something productive without leaving the house since i spent all my budget this month, luckily I get paid tomorrow and I spent my last 50 dollars on a big bottle of sprite, my new favourite drink.

Till next time,
Take it easy guys
Enjoy the holiday season!!
This has been MMI

02.12.2006 - Appearing as suddenly as the programmer of Mortal Kombat 3, "Toasty!"

Saturdays always get wasted. You think about all the work you can get done and then end up watching TV or catching up on some much needed relaxation. Today was no different. After spending the morning in a trance potting about here and there, I retired to my home and watched a bunch of worthless TV shows. And now as the hits nine, I feel it could be just about time to do something productive. So here I am, firing up the old blog one more time.

Alot has happened in this last month, I put on a school play, I got the internet which is as much a hinderence to work as it is a blessing. Although I do feel like Im slipping back into the cocoon like repetition of university evenings whereby I line up the day's shows and just vegetate contributing nothing to my actual life and improving nothing about my situation. But, its comforting, its comforting to watch mindless drivel in my own language for a change.

There is no way to recap all of the blogging I could have been doing during my month long break so the best thing to do is just pick up exactly where I left off. So, right now i am contemplating getting something to eat since I dont have the drive to cook for myself, or get bitten by the mosquitos waiting in my kitchen. But Im not sure what to get. I know I dont want to go out tonight, or for that matter drink any alcohol since I really want to dedicate my sunday for planning for the week.

I do however want to eat a comforting western style meal. There are many options, although nothing spicy. This is due to that fact that I just spent the last two hours watching Talladega Nights and eating Kimchi from the jar and now my stomach feels like it has been stripped down a couple of layers. I might try my luck at getting a roast dinner at the American diner, although its a little late. Hmm, what to do...

Well, Im sure I will think of something, the best idea is just to hop on the scooter and buzz around until I see something shiny and inviting. This place really comes alive at night, especially for food stalls. If you find the right street corner at the right time you will find yourself stumbling through some market or another with people serving all types of stuff. The great thing is that you can usually just point at something you want and nod. Things like that, noodle stands or whatever are all so cheap you really dont feel like you are spending any money on eating at all.

Regardless of my need to eat, I would quickly like to say that I hope everyone is happy and good and glad to see that I am back blogging, Its been so long since I thought up a pretentious subtitle that I feel there is no way I get back on form. Wait Ill give it a shot..

Till next time,
Still here, Still alive,
Still finding the O.C. essential viewing,
This has been MMI,