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Wednesday, November 30, 2005
法被 (ハッピ)
i wrote this jap passage for a newsletter for a jap volunteer class that i go to. i would think there are still some errors in it... but, anyways, just post here as well lah.
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「法被を着るとハッピー」と言うものだ。
楽団の日本人の友達によると、そうと聞きました。
日本に来て初めは、友達はあまりいないので、ちょっと寂しかったです。日本語は下手なばかりに、日本人と簡単な会話さえできませんでした。中学生からずっと楽団に入っていたので、日本で参加しないでいるのは、ちょっと残念でした。
日本で、楽団に参加して以来、たくさん友達を作ったなどのみならず、様々な特別な経験も積みました。例えば、10月の磯子祭りの文化祭において、法被を着て演奏しました。とても楽しかったです。
楽団の友達とか、ボランティアクラスの皆さんとか、日本人の友達を通じて、日本人の親切や情熱をいっぱい感じられます。
日本にいることは、とてもハッピーなものです。法被を着たことからばかりでなく。
磯子祭り
美味しそうな食べ物いっぱい売っていた
私は法被を着ていた
クラリネットの皆さん
Update:
did a rough translation for the passage above since some friends asked ;) for your sake leh... hehe...
"whenever you wear a Happi (japanese festival clothes), you will be happy"
i heard this from my japanese band friends.
when i first came to japan, i was a little lonely because there werent many friends here. because my japanese wasnt up to mark, i couldnt even carry out simple conversations with japanese people. i also felt a bit ill-at-ease when i wasnt playing in any band (been playing since my secondary school days).
in japan, since i joined the band, not only did i make more friends, i also experienced various special things. one example was during the Isogo festival, when i performed with the band while wearing the Happi. it was really enjoyable.
through japanese friends such as those from the band and the volunteer class, i can greatly feel the warmth and passion of the japanese people.
very happy that i am in japan. and it's not only because i wore a Happi.
posted by winz at 9:33 AM
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Tuesday, November 29, 2005
mock test 1
the 1998 full results are out....
paper 1 - vocab : 67/90 (74.44/100)
paper 2 - listening : 13/31 (41.94/100)
paper 3 - grammar : 95/171 (111.11/200)
total : 227/400 FAIL
yup... failed... by 13 pts...
let's see... i can pass if i:
1. get 12 more raw points in either my paper 1 or paper 3; or
2. get 5 more correct in my paper 2...
sigh... seriously... the first time i tried the listening, the 2002 one, i scored a 71%, if replacing this score, i would have passed... but the 1998 one, really killer... dunno what they talking half of the time.... jialat.... if the real test is like this, i think kinda hard to pass liao...
wish me luck guys....
posted by winz at 9:27 AM
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Monday, November 28, 2005
notice of absence
to prepare for the upcoming JLPT on Dec 4th (this sunday)... i will be away for the whole week... i think. hehe...
unless i get too bored or too frustrated, i think i will be taking time off blogging during this period...
do forgive me, and come back again next week!
also well wishes and prayers are welcome and i thank you for them in advance... ;)
頑張ります！
posted by winz at 12:51 PM
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Thursday, November 24, 2005
difficult...
when you watch a movie, is it better to have high expectations of it when you watch it, or have low/no expectations?
for me, and i would believe for many others too, having low/no expectations before you watch a movie is better, cos more often than not, an okay movie would turn out disappointing if you have too high expectations of it. and i will enjoy an okay movie more if i have low/no expectations of it.
recently in the bar, there's this thread where some ppl were organising a trip to watch SAW2, and were getting pretty excited over it. i thought that i would try to help by posting that SAW2 "wasnt very good" and told them "dun keep your expectations too high". sure, i may be throwing a wet blanket, but i was just trying to help reduce the damage.
in actual fact, SAW2 wasnt just "wasnt very good". it sucked. and having no expectations may not help at all. so u see, i actually softened what i wanna say... so as to not douse their flames too much. if i could, i would have told them not to watch the movie at all.
and the next post was from someone, whom i communicate with more than most others, blasting me for posting such a negative post.
negative, yes it was, but i was just trying to help.
sigh. difficult... probably should shut myself up in the bar more liao.
posted by winz at 4:47 PM
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JLPT
as some of you may know, me gonna take JLPT 2 in 10 days time...
and as many of you may know, me currently is only JLPT 3 standard....
and as some of you may know, the leap from JLPT 3 to 2 is a very huge one....
and as many of you may know, me very lazy one...
and if some of you add 2 and 2 together, you will realise that chances of me passing is close to zilch.
just did the past year paper (2002 one) during the past nites... and the results, of course, werent encouraging.... in fact, after every question, it got more and more depressing... sigh...
initially, i was most apprehensive about the listening paper... cos i was scared that the people in the recording talk too fast, with too many high level language... but amazingly, that was the paper in which i (and cal) scored best in.... got about 71%.
although i havent finished studying the grammar as well as the vocab (ie. havent finished studying anything), did try the other papers too...
the vocab one, i scored about 68%, thanks to the kanji, ie. the chinese characters, which allowed me to guess the meaning as well as the pronunciation since i am somewhat proficient in chinese. so i didnt think that i was good in japanese at all, even though i manage to score enough to pass this... and of course, for those parts in which there werent any kanjis, i got almost everything wrong... sigh...
the grammar one, i didnt really finish, as i didnt really get down to reading the long comprehension passages. one thing for sure, 70 minutes for such a long paper (because of the numerous long passages for comprehension) will definitely be insufficient. and again, i depended on my chinese knowledge to guess the meanings (this time i dun even need to know the pronunciation cos its not tested in this paper) so that i can read faster. but still... not fast enough. and the grammar portion was tough. i did the grammar portion and scored 44/72, which was a 61%, but a lot of these were guessworks. and not counting the 105 pts undone, which were all the comprehension questions. and these were real tough as well...
it would seem that i may have passed the 60% passing requirement when you add all up... but a lot of those marks i earned were by luck (since MCQ), and the comprehension passages were really tough (and i didnt count them in). to pass this paper that i'd tried, i need at least 50 pts (10 correct answers) from my comprehension, out of the 105 pts available (21 qns). and this is really a tall feat... really.
and yesterday, i tried more grammar questions on some other mock papers that cal has... and was dismayed to find that i did much worse on that one than the one i tried earlier... ie. worse pts, hence passing seemingly more difficult...
calvin, on the other hand, scored better in both listening and vocab, and so could afford more mistakes in grammar. i didnt really know how his grammar was, since he didnt really do/guess the answers when we attempted the mock paper together... but anyways, i really think he got a higher chance of passing.
initially i signed up for this, so that i could have an external force motivating me to study japanese, so as to improve... but it seems that the way i am studying and doing the papers, it kinda defeats the purpose of studying japanese in the first place... i should be using the knowledge i gain to aid in better conversational skills, but now, i am only depending on luck and chinese to read and understand japanese, and not really building upon the conversational part.
sigh... really sucks... but already parted with so much money, so have to at least pass or something so that the money dont go to waste right?
gotta pray and study hard.... 10 days... clock is ticking....
posted by winz at 3:09 PM
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Tuesday, November 22, 2005
School Pageants
Miss Keio University
above is the pic of the newly crowned Miss Keio University (pic courtesy of MDN). Keio, as we know, is one of the best universities in Japan, so this gal got brains as well as beauty man.
anyways, here's another finalist whom i think is kinda cute too.
Finalist
and just discovered a page in MDN japanese site, where they have photo albums of lots of other university pageants as well... so if you wanna checkout other beauties from other schools, do visit here.
posted by winz at 10:32 AM
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Monday, November 21, 2005
wtf
Hi Chee Keong,
he is a bit special as his a/c is in OCBC and I couldn’t find one last few days during our lunch trips.
Have managed to deposit the cheque yesterday at Tampines branch so It should be credited today.
WTF??!?!?!
i asked CK to mail the HR of my singapore office today for my 1-month overdue pay, and this is the reply that i got...
besides the apalling standard of email ettiquette and english, standard qualities i would expect a HR Manager to have, the reply pretty sums up one thing.
payroll is something so insignificant to the HR Manager, so much so that she relegated such a task to be done during lunchtimes, and, that being said, still didnt really bother to get it done.
shows how much value she sees in the "human resource" in the literal sense...
a HR Manager with poor HR handling skills.
just great.
Update:
here's my sister's comments after she read this...
well now you know HR actually is nothing but a hindrance block in most companies...
sad but true...
posted by winz at 11:33 AM
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my dream job...
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live up to your bet!
i can still remember a certain SN said that if he lost a game of cards, he would take off his pants and run around naked... he didnt live up to it.
well this guy made a worse bet, and he really did pay it up... he told his fren that if wales beat england in a rugby match, he would cut his balls off.
"After the match I got up for a pee and saw the cutters in the bathroom.
"I thought 'Oh no, I haven't got to do anything like that have I' and then I thought 'You can do it'.
"So I started hacking away at my tackle.
"It took about 10 minutes and there was quite a bit of pain but I just kept going.
"The cutters were blunt so I had to keep snipping."
After picking his testicles from the toilet bowl, he went to the social club.
"I went in and shouted out 'I've done it!'," Mr Huish said.
"I took my b*lls out and passed them in the bag to a friend.
madness.
he still cant explain why he actually did that... does he want to father any children next time??
"I can't have kids now but still want a family - maybe I'll adopt."
well... heh.
can't believe it.
for now, me still waiting for SN to run around butt naked... then maybe a certain okama will be happy to see him so... heh.
link (via boing boing)
posted by winz at 10:24 AM
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Don't Buy the Xbox 360
not words from my mouth... but words of Maxine Shen, a reporter/reviewer from nypost.com...
initial reviews haven't been outstanding either... can read them here....
maybe ps3 can draw some smiles next time?
posted by winz at 10:19 AM
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Friday, November 18, 2005
xbox360? ps3?
in my previous post, i've mentioned that i was torn between the xbox360 and the ps3... and today, there's news that kojima (MGS founder) said that xbox360 has enough juice in them to play the great videos that ps3 can... i.e. in terms of power, they may be equals...
link (via kotaku)
japanese have been wildly loyal to the sony lineup so far... but with their homebrewed games taking sides with microsoft (or for many, releasing multi-platformed), it is quite hard to see how japanese will choose between the 2. that being said, i feel that japanese aren't really very keen on the xbox360.
when i visited the big yodobashi at akihabara, in the games corner, which is about the size of 2 normal classrooms, most of everything is filled with playstation games, consoles, and nintendo ones... the xbox360? it was just occupying a desk space at a far corner, and no japanese was near it.
let me then compare the xbox360 and ps3 by my own standards....
games support:
ps2 used to hold the upper hand here, as most great games are made by japanese, for the japanese machine.
however, microsoft did well this time by pulling in many of the great game developers to release their popular games on their xbox360.
hence, probably a draw here.
graphics:
ps3 reputably runs on a cell microp, which should be much more powerful than the xbox360. but how they can utilise the full potential cannot be seen yet.
for now, probably the diff cannot be told.
ps3, by reputation, maybe a slight advantage.
release date:
xbox is out this week? next week? ps3, next spring. and if you remember how sony usually releases their new consoles (ps2, psp, etc.), you can expect ps3 to be released next spring probably only in japan. that of cse is my guess... so ppl somewhere else, can expect to get their hands on one much later than spring, maybe autumn or winter will be a better bet.
1 year later for a machine which may or may not be better?
clearly xbox360 wins this one.
piracy*:
there are so many mod chips that cater to ps1 and 2, enabling gamers to rip and burn games to play at a super low cost. there are too, for the xbox, but not as wide-spread. it is believed in some quarters that this ability boosted the sales of playstation consoles much more than it should have been, if without piracy. of cos, for the next generation of consoles, whichever the hackers and pirates can break down, the console will clearly be a better sell.
summary? i'm still torn. just sit and wait first lor...
*the blogger is against piracy and what he wrote was just an observation...
posted by winz at 9:57 AM
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Thursday, November 17, 2005
Tokyo Game Show
finally... after 2 months (exactly).... when everyone has already forgotten about this, i will now blog about my visit to the tokyo game show....hehe... very slow i know.. but i am known to be a procrastinator mah...
anyway it was held in makuhari messe (or something like that), which was a bit further then where disneyland is. there were many ppl there, since it was quite a big thing...
banners lining up, doing promo for the new kof fighting game, on our way to the exhibition halls.
entrance
we of course expected a lot of cool gals games to gape at and drool over... well but i dun exactly think it was a disappointment, but it wasnt mind-blowing as well.
the first thing i saw when i enter was this...
some caucasian trying his hand at some flight(?) simulation, with a booth babe looking on.
obviously, the big names (as well as some small, unheard-of ones) set up booths there.... among them were konami, square enix, namco, tecmo, capcom, etc. well, if you are a gamer, you certainly won't wanna miss out on square enix, makers of arguably the world's best rpg series, final fantasy.
square enix booth
it was here that i queued up for more than half an hour, to try my hands on the new, yet-to-be-released Final Fantasy VII - Dirge of Cerberus. it is actually an extension to the FF7 world, but this is not an RPG - a 3rd person shooting game - and the main character this time is the vampire, Vincent. the controls werent very fantastic, the gameplay as well... i see many better games there, but i guess this will still be a good sell, since there are so many FF7 fans out there.
another booth that i visited was this ATARI one...
ATARI booth, featuring Matrix: Path of Neo
their upcoming big game is, as shown above, Matrix: Path of Neo. unlike the Matrix Reloaded (which has its own unique story), this new game starts from the beginning of Matrix 1... so you start off by having to escape from agents from your office cubicle, and you get to choose whether to take the red or blue pill... and you need to master the combat simulation and stuff as well... controls are not bad... feels quite good, and well, the story was quite good, wasnt it? it may be interesting to replay the movie as Neo himself. but i dunno how long of the story this game serves. cannot be until end of Matrix 3 rite?
anyway, for those eagled-eyes ones, you will notice that the game being featured on the big screen below the matrix poster was a driving game instead.
driving game from ATARI
they had a small challenge, where if you complete it successfully, you win a T-shirt. of course, being a keen racing gamer, i put my skills into test. in the challenge, i had to drive the car onto a ramp to fly past a few stacked barrels without knocking any of them. sounds simple right? apparantly not to everyone. well of course, i cleared the challenge, and was rewarded an ATARI T-shirt.. hehe.
there.. my prize... gal not included (darn)
well, one big hype before this game show was the supposed match-off between xbox360 and ps3. and xbox came prepared to kick some ass.
xbox360
xbox360 demo booths
xbox360 was really impressive. the games lineup was impressive as well. the graphics were awesome, but well, game mechanics, havent found anything that really blew me away... i mean, the games just look prettier, but gameplay wise, nothing new. that being said, was still very impressed by the demos, i myself tried some of the games.
ps3
ps3, on the other hand, didnt offer any hands-on demos. they did show fmv's supposedly run by ps3 console though... and the MGS4 looked really impressive (and humurous). as attached as i am to the playstation brand consoles, i may waver and seriously consider an xbox360 next... why? 2 of my favorite series, Metal Gear and Final Fantasy, will publishing with xbox360. in the past, popular games such as these are monopolised by the playstation 1 & 2... but not anymore... so not much reason for me to still stick to ps3, is there? hmm... gotta wait and see...
went over to konami's booth to take a look... and look who i saw...
guess who? the guy in the centre...
he is none other than kojima, the guy behind the whole Metal Gear series... he conceptualised, designed and produced the whole series... and how cool was that? i didnt bother to stay around to listen to his interview in japanese though... so i snapped some pics and left....
the next time i passed by this booth, i saw another person being interviewed...
who is she? i dunno.
i also dunno her name... but i saw her before. when i was visiting the psp corner of konami, they were demoing the 3D goggles for psp. the next MGA (metal gear acid) game will be 3D... so they demoed the 3D goggles showing a video of a cute jap lass in bikini strutting around, so that you can see ... err... the parts of her body which protrudes really protruding from the screen... all the curves, all 3D ;p yup, and this gal above is the very gal in the video... i guess she must be quite a well-known gravure model bah... not that i know lah. ;)
there were also demos for many other upcoming games... and among those were...
biohazard 4 (aka resident evil 4)
devil may cry 4
yeah, and i realised that within the 2 months delay in posting, the RE4 has already been launched officially... hehe. ;p
besides the games, between the 2 exhibition halls, there were also many ppl taking this chance to have a cosplay gathering... some cute, some just errr... uncute? ;p... some better to stay at home... haha... you decide.
naruto bunch
from some game... cant remember the title... but they look very cute hor? seh pose man...
a couple of Mai's from KOF
a char from a popular manga/anime... again cant rem the name... check out her cleavage the reflection... see so many ppl taking photos of her...
tifa, from FF7
all i can say here is, for every yin, there's yang. ;p.
anyway, you may have noticed that in many photos, many of the gals (and some guys) werent looking at my camera when i was taking... the reason was that like anywhere else in japan, the japanese were very organised and they actually lined up to take pictures one-by-one, and one-on-one. and if you look at some reflections off the glass, you will know that i didnt wanna line up forever for each photo. hence i stood by the side and took their photo... faster that way.
ok... that's about it for the game show...
NOT.
hehe... some of you must be impatiently wondering, "where the heck are the gals????"
but before i start, you will notice that some gals werent looking at my camera... the reason for this is different from the one regarding the cosplay bunch... here, it is the biggest camera first... gals were more interested in posing for SLR cameras than normal digital cameras held by non-pro looking photographers. my guess is that those shots taken by SLR may end up featured at some media somewhere, and so would be good for their resume/ exposure. for cameras like mine, well... only end up at crap websites such as this.
that being so, there are some gals who cant be bothered posing for small digital ones... these high-and-mighty ones, well... cant really say much about them, can i? but there are some really nice ones who pose for each camera nicely and enthusiastically, hence i awarded a Miss Gracious award.. hehe.
without further ado, here they are... (no guarantee about the quality though)...
if i were standing beside another gal with nice abs, i would cover my own too... ;p
the heartbreak gals. nice hearts at that. ;p think i prefer the orange one...
posing with a car featured in a game perhaps?
the words look like "gung ho" to me... the ones on her chest. dunno...
i think i vote her the nicest lady for the day... she was very kind to give her attention, and posed for my camera.... cute too... my personal pick for Miss Gracious award.
while you are checking out the gal, do notice the poor guy mummified as well. ;p
i didnt say that all gals were cute, did i?
another gung ho gal.... i personally pick her as Miss Kawaii... she's really cute. and nice abs too.
the gal in the ATARI booth. real nice for the photo as well.
another gal with great figure.... i wonder how they maintain... must learn also ;p
square enix gal... a little sad that this photo didnt turn up well... i vote her the Miss Booth Babe of the day... imo, she was the prettiest of the lot, not that you can see from this photo...
a gal in ancient chinese getup? cute.
the gal showing the 3D video demo that i mentioned earlier... although she dun look really cute, but she really was... and her poses are all very kawaii also...
gals from some booth which featured games that looked a little like DOA... cant remember if it was or not.
capcom gal... my Miss Graceful choice... too bad the costume dun look graceful.
sega gal...
dunno from where... but saw the exact same uniform in the more recent Tokyo Motor Show...
and finally...
there's this gal who drew a staggering number of ppl snapping away at her... from a distance, i could only see a mob of photographers and lights from flashes crowding around...
this gal must be a heck of a beauty....
or so i thought.
so, this is the gal who's arguably the most popular booth babe of the day...
must be the hat lah!!
ok... so it's pretty obvious why she's so popular... the hat being so conspicuous and all... ;p
anyway, here's 2 final pics of her that really, ermm... outlines her assets...
can i hold your hat for you, miss?? may i try on for size? ;p
posted by winz at 2:04 PM
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