It’s been a while! And this isn’t even going to be a proper post. I have plans to move this blog over to a fresh domain soon, and I plan to slightly adjust the scope of the blog to be a little more kpop bias. I think I’ll migrate only a selection of the older posts as opposed to them all – still planning that one out.
The transition will still take a few more weeks, so for now you can catch me on LJ at http://shiawasegolucky.livejournal.com/.
See you guys soon!
Well here we go again, it’s the end of the midsession break and I did barely anything compared to what I had planned in terms of uni work. Today was actually a surprisingly productive day, I got through a lot more than I expected. I just hope I can keep this momentum up and that it’s not too little too late.
The title of this post isn’t supposed to be related to the name of a 2PM song, but since it is anyway I’ll make only a short comment on the whole ordeal. Fuck Korean netizens. And the power of fanning is amazing. As reflected by this image.
Anyway, back to me. Despite having an unproductive midsession in regards to uni work, I actually had a really fulfulling time. I feel really social and stuff. Yeah.
I also ran out of money, which was lame. Budgeting went terribly wrong and my funds ended up in the negatives which hasn’t happened for a long time. Feeling extremely stressed about it considering I’m supposed to be saving up to move my stuff from one place to the other once the session is over. The only thing keeping me going is knowing how much more I’ll be working again during summer, yum yum. Loads of stuff I want to buy, but most of all I need to save for Japan which I’m finally going to go to in July next year. The timing works out perfectly in several aspects including financially and hopefully getting time off work won’t be a hassle. Considering it will be winter break I’m sure it won’t be hard to get myself replaced for a few weeks.
Hmm I forgot what else I was going to blog about.
A trip down memory lane seems to be a common theme for my motivation as of late, and about 20 minutes ago I started randomly watching old High and Mighty Color lives, wow was that a saga.
I can’t even remember what year I was in. Year 9? Possibly 10, but at the time there was a website named ‘Rage Guy’ that uploaded jpop MVs/albums as soon as they hit the interwebs. This was the time before YouTube and Megaupload and were popular (or even around, I can’t remember!). I was recommended a download, the latest MV from the band High and Mighty Color titled Style ~ Get Glory in this Hand~. Holy fuck I found it awesome, I was a fan upon watching the first 30 seconds of the MV. And then it began, I was a haikara fan.
I used to camp up late refreshing jpopsuki with my friend James (see his shitty LJ by clicking it in my blogroll) waiting for torrents of thier new MVs or albums to leak, and I even made a fan site at one point (which I got bored of fairly fast, but hey I made it!).
One thing I loved so much about haikara was the consistency of releasing new songs, it was never a few months before something new hit, and an album almost yearly which was perfect. There was never a black hole.
As the band progressed there were always rumors of their break up, or certain members leaving, or internal disputes or whatever. I never wanted to believe them, it was heart breaking to even imagine I wouldn’t get to pursue my dream of seeing them live one day. Then it happened… Maki, the lead vocalist and the one person I fanned the most in my whole life, got engaged. Got married. Got preggers. Good bye H&MC.
H&MC however stated, as a band, they would continue on and replace Maki with someone suitable. Eventually they recruited Halca, however it’s just not the same. It will never be the same.
I miss Maki…
JAPN1A at UNSW, “Hi I’m Mike, this is Kevin, Johnni, Alex, Linda and Sonia”. Shitsu… shitsu… shit… streshimasu???!
I miss my first year at UNSW, when there were 14 weeks per session. A memory that will never leave me for the rest of my life is my very first tutorial for Japanese 1A with Fukui-sensei. We had to memorise everyones name on our table, then introduce everyone to the class. I was wearing my Tofu Records shirt (which I still wear), and Johnni was wearing his aqua blue shirt which I can’t find the words to explain, but he still has it too. With the little characters on the front.
I remember my first encounter with NSA, it was actually during O-week and I was too nervous to go up to the stall. I remember Risa was there and she was eating chocolate, and Toshi and Emi were there too chatting away.
Later on, during my actual first week of class, I bumped into Risa with Kevin in the Round House. She tried to convince us to go with her to the NSA welcome party but I didn’t, I had to get home to the gong which was 2 hours one way. Kevin of course went along to the NSA Tea Party.
Skip forward a few years. I’m sitting here at 1am stressing over my Japanese 3B interaction test tomorrow. THREE FUCKING B. It’s my final Japanese Communication course at UNSW, and it completes my Japanese major.
I was having a massive bitch to my girlfriend earlier that I feel as if I have not improved at all in Japanese, that my time has been worthless. But when I remember back to trying to pronounce shitsureishimasu, I feel amazed at how far I really have come. How far we have all come.
I am now the NSA Marketing Manager (for the second year), Johnni is the Creative Consultant (also for the second year) and Kevin is on exchange in Japan – to be undertaking NSA presidential duties once he returns. I like how Johnni put it once… “we were like little kids back then, but now we run the uni”. This was of course in reference to all our friends, not just ourselves. We’re a little more humble than that.
Now if I could only use this as inspiration to study rather than procrastinate by blogging! Midsession break is around the corner, expect more soon! 
The past few weeks I have been so busy, but shit just isn’t getting done. I guess it’s fairly typical of a university student, but I have had literally no time to get anything done properly and I’m not quite sure where my time is going. I’m not spending too much time watching drama, I’m not going out that often and I’m even working one less shift a fortnight. Yet I feel majorly behind in every single subject I’m doing.
I have a Korean assignment due tomorrow which isn’t getting done, luckily the awesome girls in my class are going to lend me a much needed helping hand in the morning. I’m so lucky to have such awesome class mates… I need to think of a way to make it up to them.
Other than the usual (being SCREWED for uni stuff), quite a few changes as of late. Friends going off for exchange, some returning in a matter of months, a place secured to move into at the end of this session and a new beginning.
Currently watching: Buzzer Beat. No subtitles, need to improve Japanese.
For anyone who knows me well, they would know my weakest point when it comes to Japanese is kanji (weaken than even my conversational skills). This is something I am working towards improving, which is why for my major project I’ve selected something my sensei has titled “Reading Clinic”. It involves translating articles every week and making vocab/kanji lists from them.
Anyway, back to my terrible kanji skills. The other day in Japanese I was slightly late to class, and unforunately all my friends were on a table fully occupied by them and some other randoms so I had to sit on a differeny table. Luckily I had some friends on that table (Missy and Anthony, who are both PRO at Japanese) so it wasn’t all daunting, and a guy sat next to me who seemed like a decent fellow. He introduced himself and made some chit-chat so it was all nice and swell.
Eventually we had to do some pair work (activies in class based on interaction). We just had to follow some simple examples in the course notes, and there was quite a bit of kanji I didn’t understand. I asked him a few times what some of the kanji were, and made a note of all the ones he filled me in on so I wouldn’t forget them again. His Japanese was quite fantastic, I must admit. As we moved on, I continued to stumble upon kanji I didn’t recognise. I could tell he was getting a little frustrated so I apologised and tried to make a joke of it, something along the lines of “sorry about this man, my kanji is terrible! Haha I probably shouldn’t have been so lazy during the break and actually studied rather than just not touching Japanese at all hahaha”. I expected something along the lines of him telling me not to worry and that I’d eventually pick it up, you know a generic response that wouldn’t make me feel like shit. However his response was, quite bluntly “yea, you’ve got that right“. What the fuck you asshole.
Anyway, I laughed it off. I wasn’t sure how intentional it was or if that was his idea of a joke or whatever. Moving along I was struggling with the excercise we were doing, it was one of those passages that you just can’t translate into English, so it took me some real thinking before I could understand what the fuck was going on. I eventually got there, just took some brain twisting.
Next up, more pair work. Based on the reading. As we started the pair work there were parts of the reading I still couldn’t fully comprehend, making it hard for me to continue with the task. Our friend in question thought he’d ask me a question inbetween our focus on the task – “so why DO you study Japanese?“. The tone was a frustrated one, and whether or not he meant it to be or not – I took it personally. I said something along the lines of “I’m majoring in it…” or something generic, I can’t even remember. But I was fuming. I didn’t say anything to him, there’s still the possibility he didn’t mean to be a dick but wow. Fuck that shit, all I could think of was piss off.
Although I might seem behind in comparison to some of my cohort, I believe this was totally uncalled for. I’m far from a bad student, I’m far from a student who doesn’t try. Quite frankly, I seem to be on a similar level to anyone else (if not slightly above some) who started from 1A and doesn’t have previous knowledge of Chinese characters. The fellow in question both studied Japanese in high school and has a Chinese character background (which makes things a SHIT LOAD easier).
Anyway, I felt like shit so I just stopped caring for the rest of the class. I stopped cooperating with him and just ignored him when we had to do more pair work, I don’t care if I came off as a snob. I just sat there, mind boggled and PISSED OFF for the rest of the class. I think Okamoto-sensei (<3) noticed because she came over to me when we were supposed to be doing a “fill in the answers” type activity and saw I had nothing written down, and she whispered to me what page the answers were on as opposed to questioning my apathy.
At the same time as being highly depressed because of this shithead I’m actually motivated because of it. I’ve been doing kanji every night and I’m hoping to get a routine of at least 30mins a day of Japanese study (an hour on better days, and a few hours on my Japanese study night – I have a night for each subject… well kind of, still working this one out).
As a follow up to my last update, I can’t believe how much work I already have for uni only 2 days in. I’m in the middle of studying Korean vocab right now for my quiz tomorrow, and I was reminded at the same time that I have an assignment for it due next week.
I had my first Marketing Communications and Promotions Management (marcoms for short) today, the lecture is hilariously enthusiastic which I think is awesome. Sadly however, the textbook for the course is bat shit boring, there’s practically no colour in the book and it’s just full of words (barely any photos/pictures). It’s an adverstising related course, yet there’s no pictures. What the fuck. Oh well, I’ll get through it somehow. It’s just a bit sad because I was really excited by this course going into it since this is my favourite area of marketing, and as fun as it still seems, the textbook is such a put off.
Marcoms also has an assignment due next week, seriously… argh! But I guess it’s a good way to get me rolling with the content and to dig straight into it.
Japanese tutorial tomorrow, hopefully Kazue is my tutor again. SHE’S SO CUTE!
“Fuck I’m tired” is pretty much all that floats around in my head during the day while I’m at uni. I then come home, settle down and get ready for bed. I then realise it’s 1am, that I’m no longer tired, and I feel like updating my blog.
It’s week 2… but actually it’s week 1, but it’s not… UNSW decided to change their 12 week semester system into a “12 in 13″ week system, which is basically the same as the 12 week session since almost all my classes started this week. Regardless I feel motivated already this session, and hopefully can kick this session off on a positive note. I do find it amazing however that this is only my “first” week and I already feel bombarded. But hey that’s uni I guess… funny that it’s always session 2 that feels this way, maybe it’s because I was just in the stage of getting nice and comfortable with my time off.
One thing I need to also work on this session is NSA’s marketing. I’ve fallen quite far behind with it, and I need to pick back up. The committee is supporting me with this, waiving my compulsory event organisation giving me more time to focus on marketing. Hopefully I can score some form of sponsorship by the end of the semester, if all goes well.
Anyway that’s all for this entry, just a small 1am update.
As my closest friends know, I am severely addicted to Tekken. At this point, this is something I am proud of.
The majority of my uni break has been dedicated to developing my skill and play style, spending time with Sydney’s (Australia’s) best players and even entering tournaments.
Last week Good Games Sydney and The Electronic Gamers Guild @ UTS held Ozhadou 8 (OHN) which was essentially a gathering of the best fighting game players from all over Australia, including Soul Calibur 4, Street Fighter 4, 3s and of course Tekken to name a few of the games. I entered the Tekken tournament knowing I probably wouldn’t do that well as I have only been playing Tekken seriously for around a year now (on and off). Regardless I wanted to experience it.
An experience it was, I met a number of interstate players who are really cool guys. As expected I didn’t qualify for the top 8, but the people who knocked me out did manage to qualify – making me even more proud of my performance in the tournament. The tournament in way always turns into an unofficial state vs state rivalry, and I am proud to say Sydney came out on top. Places 1-6 went to Sydney, meaning only two interstate players made it into the top 8. Regardless they all played really really well.
As well as improving game-wise in Tekken, I’ve recently made friends with a lot of the regular players in Sydney. It’s good to have some new friends (as always!), had a good long DnM with a few of them on Friday night in Good Games Sydney – the result being me arriving home at 5:30am.
It’s interesting, the stereotype of most “pro gamers” are nerdy, lifeless individuals who are extremely anti-social. This could very well be the case for some games like MMO’s and stuff I guess, but in terms of Tekken anyone who I have met who can be considered pro really are individuals with very interesting lives – far more interesting than a lot of people who claim to be social kings/queens and go clubbing every weekend or whatever. The case was the same for the interstate players. Not sure what the point of posting this is, just an observation.
Hopefully in a years time I’ll be making a new entry with better results in regards to OHN!
Not long ago I made a post ripping at ShenYue and her terrible blog site. Good news! Just earlier she made a blog post announcing her departure from the intertubes, hurrah!
Farewell ShenYue, I originally saved your blog to my favourites because it was a brilliant source of kpop gossip and news, and I enjoyed watching it turn into a pile of shit that was pretty much just trying to rip at SNSD and any other up and coming kpop girl group you were jealous of! I hope I never see a reform of your terrible site and that karma hits you, hard.
——–
In other news I just received my Semester 1 2009 results. Mixed feelings, did better than I expected in some subjects (distinction for Korean, what!! WOOO!!) and worse in others (Marketing Research… 
). My consumer behaviour mark was slightly lower than expected also, but a result I’m still happy with. Japanese was what I expected (Yay?). All in all the amount of effort I put in was shown in most of my results, and that’s something I’m always pleased with. There’s nothing worse than trying really hard and getting a terrible mark back, which is what I’m always scared of. Good to see it’s not a reality (and hopefully won’t be in the future).
I know some of my friends are appalled at their results, but as I said to them – Don’t let it get to you! There’s still time to make up for it, and your overall results are still brilliant and nothing to be ashamed of 
Good luck to everyone yet to check their results!
I finally feel free from session 1, and I feel very motivated for session 2 for some weird reason. Still a few weeks to go, but if I’m bothered I might start studying some Korean in advance. Perhaps it would be better to revise what I already know, let’s see how I feel at the time.
