There is nothing quite as awesome, or as lovable, as a cat on a roomba. I need to get a roomba. We have a lot of cats...

Okay, with regards to the whole NaBloPoMo thing, so far so good. On the other hand, with our upcoming move of residence, I have a feeling that my 30 posts in 30 days goal might be in peril once again. Sigh. Oh well. Perhaps I didn't pick a good month to jump into this whole thing, but I suppose I'll still go ahead and try my best to hit that number. :D

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A recent conversation with friends over Plurk has recently given me the idea for probably the perfect illustration of how I see call center life:



Haha! Not intending to be mean and all, and no offense meant to people who actually LIKE being in call centers. It's just me. I've always said that it's never been my first choice as a career, and most probably never will be, but necessity sometimes drives people to do things... which is also why I'm currently fighting the hard fight to try to get out of the whole outsourced customer service business. I'm still trying to find ways, and we'll see how far that takes me this time around.

I'm hoping for some change to happen soon, and I'm crossing my fingers. :D In the meantime, someone hand me a Lego head and a chainsaw. Hehe.

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K's book bargain of the day:

Brand new, sealed, purchased from Fully Booked. Price: Php100.00
Whee~!

Hehe... sorry, but I just gotta get this out of the way first or I won't be able to write a proper update at all. XD To be honest, I'm starting to suspect that I have my 2-D boyfriend on my mind for more than what's healthy, but at the same time, I'm thankful that my REAL boyfriend doesn't seem to mind the obsession much. It does bother him a bit when I try to buy him clothes that look like Ryuuji's though. XD

I think I may be getting addicted to the rabu-rabu rush that the game provides, which would probably make me an endorphin addict. XD

WARNING: IMAGE-HEAVY post, containing bishonen images from the Web-Kare boards, as well as some screenies of my own Web-kare.

( AHAAAAAAAA~Y!! XD )

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. If you've read my previous post, then you know where this is going.

I'VE SIGNED UP FOR A WEB-KARE ACCOUNT~!! WHEEE~~!!!! LOVE~!! XD XD XD XD XD

Hehehe. :3

This doesn't mean that I'm any closer to speaking in Japanese any time soon, though. In fact, having been able to successfully sign up for an account in the first place AND editing my profile (some of it anyway) without any assistance of any kind, is already considered as a major accomplishment in my book. However, having a miniscule vocabulary and being able to read hiragana, katakana and a tiny bit of Kanji, also turned out to be helpful. At least I can navigate the site without any problems since Kanji characters for "Home", "Message", "Album" and "Minilog" haven't been invented yet.

I also learned how to accept friendship requests and read PMs via trial and error, and then, a short guide in English has also been offered up on the site's boards (my eternal gratitude goes to khursten  for this), PLUS an international BBS has also been recently added for the non-Japanese people who stubbornly insist on playing a game written entirely in Japanese.

I still have no idea what my virtual boyfriend is saying, though, but if he's muttering my name in his sleep and he's talking about me with other people's Kare, I'm really hoping it's something nice. :3

Seriously, though... WHADDHESAY???? O_O

Why does he have to be so damned cute...? :3 Hehe... I've been squee-ing and giggling like a 13-year-old for the past two days, I can't stop thinking aout how my Web-Kare is doing, or what SCENARIOS I can possibly be missing by not being online, and Ian has already become pretty jealous over his 2-D rival. Haha! XD

The same day I got my Web-Kare account, I also promptly added a link to it in my LJ profile, as well as a widget on my food blog. The widget is especially nice. :3

In the meantime, I'm already expecting the so many ways that money is probably going to go into this game. The site is currently making money via advertising, but I can just imagine all the possible Web-Kare merchandise, books, CDs, doujinshi, posters, plush toys, figurines, cellphone straps, promos or possibly special/premium in-game items/events/features that the developers can possibly add. Can you say, "Christmas/Summer/Hot Springs/Hanabi/Sakura Viewing/Summer Festival/Beach Special"???

Evil, evil developers, playing with womens' hearts like this...

Thank you, WebKare. (as ganked from magnetic_rose ).

Oh, and dibs on Ryuuji. (AHAAAAAAAA~~Y~~!!)

I would like to take this opportunity to announce that after eight long years of searching and waiting, I've finally found a deck of tarot cards for myself, and I am very, very happy.

I first learned about tarot in elementary school, in an episode of Candy Candy. I still remember it very clealy: Candy decided to sneak out of the mansion for a day out with her aristocratic love interest, and of all the places they could have gone to, she took him to the circus where they had cotton candy, candied apples, hotdogs (I remember the guy being bewildered at having to eat food with your hands. I still find it funny until now...), and... a trip to the fortune teller.

My fascination grew in high school when I started watching paranormal shows on TV, and I also started hanging around some college students who liked to show off their tarot cards. I spent hours upon hours at the humanities section of the UST main library, as well as the UST Ecclessiastical library, just devouring any book on the topic I could get my hands on. I also did a lot of reading on astrology and ancient mythology during this time, which is to blame for the online username which I have been using all these years.

And then came college, when I met certain people from AEGIS and the UP Hill People, who were familiar with the art, as well as magiqa who always brought her Vertigo deck around, and the rest of the UST co-op gang. It was the first time that I got to regularly see different types of decks in action, each with different personalities, and I got to watch as their respective owners gave their own unique interpretations. This taught me a lot of things about the tarot that I don't think any book can sufficiently explain, and I was very impressed and it looked like so much fun, so my fascination only grew.

So, since then, I've set my mind on getting myself a tarot deck of my own. Ive often been disappointed because of either the utter scarcity of the item at local specialty shops and bookstores, its tag price, or the few decks that I did fancy just simply didn't like me very much (a throbbing headache after walking around the shop for a few minutes with a certain deck in hand was just SO not worth it...), or ALL OF THE ABOVE. Haha! XD

So, last September 13 (yes, after attending Animania), and after dinner, we headed for the bookstore because of the huge banner at the front that announced that a sale was underway. I didn't expect to find any cards there, but Elea pointed me to the stack of cards behind the counter (it now seems rather apt that it was her who pointed me to my new cards, ne? Haha!)

There was a whole bunch to choose from at that time, but when I saw the Universal Fantasy deck from Lo Scarabeo, with the face of the Queen of Swords on the side of the box (I didn't even know which card it was at the time, since it was a close-up of her face), I fell in love. The bonus? It was on sale, and I didn't find out until I checked the receipt. Hehehehe...

She's pretty, ne? ^_^ Elea claims that the deck is rather emo, but it's actually not emo at all. The illustrations do remind me so much of either Magic Knight Rayearth (which will always be close to my heart, no matter what people say), and the feel of Final Fantasy XII (which is one of my all-time favorite games), which probably adds to it's LURVE factor for me.

( Meet some of my favorites. :3 )

I love the artwork because I find it to be particularly lively and vivid, plus all those... um... swirlies all hearken back to my CLAMP fangirl days, which I don't think I've quite grown out of anyway. ^_^;;

I suppose another thing that I love about the deck is that it bases its illustrations on classic Rider-Waite symbolism and then some. This makes it easy for beginners like me who are only familiar with R-W, but find the original deck too boring, or just simply not fitting. On the other hand, despite the obvious reference, the illustrations also offer a bit more flexibility with the additions or rearrangements of some of the standard elements on some of the cards.

Long story short, I LOVE IT! ^_______^

I discovered this movie, thanks to Daryl's Plurks, and I am so glad I did. After all, who'd want to miss 2007's highest-grossing film? In Iceland? :D

Anyway, I love the concept, and it involves a topic which is close to my heart, and I know A LOT, if not ALL of my friends can also relate to. I'm considering calling everyone to our apartment once we've obtained a copy, so that we can watch it all at home, with bowls of popcorn and bottles of soda, just so we can all cringe in unison. You know, good times. Haha!

Now watch the campy glory that is Astropia! XD

Well, as I've mentioned in a previous entry, through a series of circumstances, I somehow ended up at the judges' table at a recent cosplay competition. The event was organized by some college kids from Miriam College for their... er... Events Management course, and was held at Robinson's Galleria last September 13.

Anyway, the day didn't quite start right for me. For one, the event was advertised to begin at noon, and I arrived about 15 minutes early, expecting to immediately be asked to take my place and do what I had to do, but the event started a good 2 hours or so late. My contact with the organizers apologized profusely and she was nice and all, but I suppose it can't be helped that tardiness just happens to be one of my pet peeves, so that's unfortunate. Thankfully, magiqa and idle_eidolon were with me at the time, so I didn't get bored. I think I would have left and headed back for home after the first hour, had they not been with me then. Considering the fact that I just came straight from a tiring nine-hour shift that day, I don't think I would have had the patience to hang around until something finally happened. O_O;;

Um. Let's just say that there's LOTS of room for improvement with regards to how the entire show was handled. ^_^;;

Moving on...

So, the show finally started, Elea managed to get a seat behind me, Ian decided to wander off and join the MTG crowd which was on the same floor as the cosplay event, and the other judges also arrived. I was pretty surprised to look up from my scoring sheet to suddenly find Alodia taking her seat next to me, but I think I should have expected that the moment the everyone around me took out their cameras and just started snapping away. Haha! I just really didn't expect her or any known personality to be there since the website which announced the event wasn't particularly informative. Anyway, I eventually figured out that they invited Miriam College alumni like Alodia and one of the emcees (some lady who works as a DJ at a local radio station) to drop by, so it made sense.

Once everyone was settled down, the cosplay event finally started.

( IMAGE-HEAVY!! Cosplay pics ahead! )

Anyway, the cosplayers themselves were a lot of fun, but after the scores have been sumitted and the awarding ceremonies were about to begin, I was a bit disappointed to find that there were other people who were there in some really cool costumes, who didn't get to join the competition. It was a shame since we saw some pretty cool costumes for V, Haruhi, Sabre, etc. I think I even saw a guy in a Code Geass school uniform. :(

Before we went home, I tried taking a video of the crowd and of the band, and of Elea and Ian who were now both part of the audience, but I discovered that it was rather difficult when everyone who wanted to take their pictures taken with Alodia were rushing to get in front of you. Lol. Oh well. I still got what I wanted, and I even got footage of terrorists doing the Caramel Dansen, so it wasn't so bad. Here's the video. XD

Hi, world! Sorry to disappoint everyone, but no, I'm not dead. I'm actually alive and kicking, but just internet-less. Oh, and most of what little internet time that I do manage to snatch is instantly consumed by PLURK. So, yeah. In case you miss me, you can find me plurking away. I normally post from the office using Gmail, because Plurk is considered a banned site, so that means that I can't view other people's plurks or read replies posted until I manage to scrounge time and money to spend at a net cafe. On the upside, that also means that almost never a day goes by when I don't post something there.

Anyhoo, a lot of things have happened lately, both in K's narrow little world, and the rest of earth in general.

For one, there's the Hadron Collider which prompted me to text my friends and tell them that I love them. To be honest, when we first heard about the project back when we worked for QJ, it sounded funny at most. And yet, I wonder how it came about that on the day of the experiment itself, there was this twitch at the back of my head that screamed "OMGIT'STHEENDOFTHEWORLDRUN!!"

Until now, as people breathe easy that the first test went fine, each report of succeeding tests makes me want to duck for cover.

As we watched reports on CNN about how excited the whole scientific community was, all I could think of was how this is all how most comic book sagas begin. Think about it: crazy, HUGE, billion-dollar experiment, hailed by all scientists as a wonder of our times, meant to do amazing things, press releases left and right assuring the public that it's safe... and then the experiment goes wrong, all hell breaks loose, nuclear fallout, steadily growing black holes under Switzerland (of all places! It would have been more dramatic if it was, say... under the Tokyo Tower, or on Coney Island, ne?), genetic mutation, gigantic man-eating tomatoes, and we all end up as cat people! O_O;;

You get the picture, right? On top of that, my memory of old Wolfgang songs came back in bad timing, and the lyrics to "Semenelin" kept looping in my head. So yes, my paranoia had a soundtrack. Hm.

I suppose the cool thing about this is that 60 years from now, I could probably tell the neighborhood kids about how back in my time, the first particle collider was created and it was as big as a town, as opposed to the current pen-sized ones that summoned burgers from the nearest McDonald's. Haha!

In domestic news, Makati has been damned RAINY recently. Almost every evening, this torrent of rain would come down and streets would be flooded again in minutes. Several days ago, I was forced to wade through shin-high floodwater, during a heavy downpour, AND Iin the middle of a scary-ass lightning storm. On one hand I was scared for my life, and the prospect of lightning hitting the nearby floodwater while was in it was irrationally frightening (I know there's some explanation out there which states exactly why I would NOT get hit by lightning, but I don't like to push my luck THAT far), and on the other hand, there was this warm fuzzy feeling as I realized that the activity reminded me so much of college.

Hehe... yes, attending UST and living within its vicinity for nine years does that to a person.


This coming Saturday, I'll be at Galleria to act as a proxy judge for a cosplay contest-thingy. Hehe... guia was actually supposed to be the one there, but she had better things to do so she tossed it my way. I, on the other hand, does not have anything better to do after work that day, and I figured I should probably try as many things as possible at least once. Plus, I love the Krispy Kreme branch in that mall, AND they also have a Ribbon Fries and a Nomimono stall which I plan to camp out at after all the activity. Om nom nom nom....

Anyway, we'll see how the whole thing goes. ^_^;;;

Rosa: I promise I will do my best to not do anything horrifyingly embarrassing.

I know I have more things that I wanted to rattle on about, but I'm hungry now, and I need to forage for food.

For now, let me leave you with a detailed instructional video on the finer points of man-hugging, as ganked from jylichan , on Plurk. (Reasons why I love the British...)

Yep! More delayed photo posts, coming right up! Hehe.

Anyway, I've mentioned in a previous post that the day before Lem's birthday, we met up with magiqa  since I wanted to borrow a DVD rom her. In the end, and pretty much at the spur of the moment, we found ourselves at Bonifacio High Street and Serendra, in a sugar high, and giggling over toys. It being a snap decision and all... I didn't have my camera with me, so I had to work with just my phone cam. Erk. T_T

The main reason why we headed to that area in the first place, was because Lem decided  that he wanted to treat us to some cupcakes at Sonja's. Apparently, after we tried it for the first time during James' birthday dinner last July, Lem has taken quite a liking to the pricey, pastel-colored desserts (though we still wouldn't dare go beyond the one-cupcake-a-month limit for fear of diabetic shock). It turned out to be a good thing, too, since it was Elea's first time to go to that area as well. ^_^

Being still full from the hefty lunches that we ate at Market! Market!, though, we decided to NOT head straight for Sonja's immediately aftewards. Instead, we headed for the local Hobbes & Landes branch to try to help Elea look for a mood ring, and there, we just simply went crazy. It's really a sight to behold when you place geeks inside a specialty store like H&L...



And finally, after all that running around the H&L store, the food we had for lunch was finally burned away, and we trooped to Sonja's for a bite to eat.


After all that, we headed back to Makati where Elea boarded a jeep bound for her mom's place, and we went back home to enjoy and admire our purchases. Hehe.

And thus ended Lem's pre-birthday celebration for 2008. With cupcakes and geekery. XD

Well, it's been another week since I've last been able to post, just as expected. Haha! Anyway, Lem celebrated his 26th birthday last weekend, and it was great.

On Saturday, we met up with magiqa in the morning to hang out, and also because I was borrowing a copy of live-action Nodame Cantabile from her. Hehe... in the end, instead of having lunch at RCBC Plaza as we originally planned, Lem managed to convince us to hop into a cab, head for Serendra and have lunch at the open-air area at Market! Market! instead. Lunch was good and filling (we were hungrier than we thought, apparently), and after that, we headed for the local Hobbes & Landes branch where there was a Lego Star Destroyer, baby pandas, kittens, giant Lego people, and a whole lot of other fun things. Us being the children that we insist we are, we ran happily ran around the store for a good couple of hours. We didn't walk away empty-handed though, because as Elea has put it, that store causes an auto-cancel on all will saves.

I ended up purchasing Kiwido, Lem ended up with a cute doggie-shaped pouch for his MTG cards, and Elea got herself a copy of Super Munchkin.

After that excursion, Lem then treated us to cupcakes at Sonja's. I did mention in a previous entry that the said cupcakes are only meant to be eaten about once a month on average, due to its off-the-charts sugar content, so we stuck with the schedule and gave Elea a reason to put her phone cam to good use. :D

Pictures to follow! ^_^

The next day, we celebrated with Lem's family at The Columns. There was a lot of food, the kids were all there, and it was just fun, basically. Lem got to make good use of the swimming goggles that I got him for his birthday, so all's good. I suppose the only thing that ruined it for me was the fact that my stupid knee decided to do cartwheels as I was walking inside the room, thus sending me sprawling on the floor, in pain, and in front of everybody. T_T;;;

It's been 4 days since I took a dive back there, and I still have a nasty, purple bruise on my left knee, and I still can't run or climb up and down stairs quickly. It's gonna take me about another half week before the damned knee starts functioning normally again. Oh well. ^_^;;

(If it seems that I'm spamming your friends page, I'm really sorry, but... I am. XD It could be another half-month again before I get to even see my LJ, so this is just me posting a half-month's worth. It gives me great comfort, the same way that I'm happy leaving our cats with enough food and water while I'm away. :p)

Some time last July, I picked up a book from a second-hand bookstore (again) which I initially thought only Lem would enjoy, but in the end, has proved me wrong and has actually provided me with much entertainment and lulz. I'd recommend it to anyone. In case you do pass by a bookstore, just look for this cover:


As for the blurb at the back, it pretty much gives an accurate description of what to expect from the book, which is always nice, I think. Authors are rarely honest, nowadays.



Awesome, I tell you. Oh yeah.

That is the only way that I can probably describe the experience of having watched both The Dark Knight in the theater, AND finally being able to watch the final episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender (all thanks to Jed who burned a copy for us, and Rosa who agreed to meet me so that I can claim the precious from her).

I could type out an entire post, praising Ledger's performance as The Joker, and bleeding my heart out over all the moral dilemmas that have been posed within the story, but Moriarty has already done a much better job of it, and I should probably just let everyone else read his review. I'm pretty happy that Lem shared the review with me before we got to see the movie, since in the end, I was equally astounded at how much I agreed with the review in the first place. Oh, and the review also mentions Hellboy 2, which we plan to watch because it is made of AWESOME, and I think I'm in love with Prince Nuada AND his righteous anger. ^_^;;

As for Avatar, I'd like to quote James who emailed me immediately after he got to watch the finale:

"as in P*TA! gusto ko magwala, mag-amok, lumipad at bumuga ng apoy all at the same time!"
Hehe... my sentiments, exactly.

Sigh. TDK (for which we got the complete set of tumblers with TDK designs from KFC) and Avatar. Good times. ^__^

Meanwhile, over at Plurk, Lem, Elea and I have already been discussing possible episodes for the not-coming Book 4 of Avatar. One of the first suggestions have been "WHERE'S ZUKO'S MOM, BIATCH??" and "The Boulder's Day Out".

No. Don't ask. XD

I was browsing through old posts, as well as checking old blogs that I haven't visited in a VERY long time, when I ended up visiting one of Lem's old blogs. He had a phase where he only posted images that he edited/created, which served as his whole entry, and I found one particular old entry of his which made me melt into a fit of giggles:

This tickled me pink the first time he posted it all those years ago, and I think it still amuses me endlessly even until now. Needless to say, I love the fact that he knows me so well. XD