台風が来る

Technically by now it's still summer's time, but since yesterday the weather had been behaving unusually cooler as it supposed to be in the summer. Temperature slightly dropped below 25'C, and for the first time the rain feels cold (normally although it rains but it still hot & dry) in the summer.
It was weekend and I didn't went out, was a lazy Sunday I mostly spent in my room.

Today Monday, when I woke up it was unusually cold which reminds me of the late spring days. It was raining heavily. Already expected this since I've checked weather forecast last night. Feeling lazy, decided to head to school by train instead of bike. I had enough of riding to school under the rain and arrive there soaked. Riding bike in such windy and rainy condition is dangerous as well.

While preparing to walk to the train station a female hostelmate teases me and another friend "hah guys going to school by train?". I didn't take it personally but seems like my friend dislike being said like that, hah.

The train ticket cost 290 yen (~MYR 11.40) for single journey. Machiya (町屋) via Tokyo Metro Chiyoda line -> Nishi-Nippori (西日暮里) via JR Yamanote line -> Komagome (駒込).

The Chiyoda metro was kinda crowded but still manage to squeeze in while on the other hand, JR Yamanote line was kinda empty although it's one of the most important train in Tokyo.

JR Yamanote line's train, damn long.


Inside the JR Yamanote train. One station before my school is Tabata.


The Komagome station and my school is separated by some distance away so gonna walk for another 10 mins before reaching school. Overall commuting time was 40 mins, consider short according to Tokyo's standard.
At least, I wasn't that soaked as compared to riding the bike.

Well I only realised the freak change in weather is due to a typhoon currently approaching the Kanto region where Tokyo is located. It's still some distance away in the sea but one of the significant sign of typhoon is such that it brought together with large amount of rain, effectively chill off the summer heat of Tokyo.

The rain continues to pour til late noon when I've finished my class. Another 40 mins commuting~

It's quite normal to see that some of the train lines are affected by the incoming typhoon. The trains are traveling at slower speed than usual for precaution measurement.


This is the weather forecast for the next few days from iGoogle, usually it's kinda accurate for the next day's forecast. Look at the huge temperature gap. O_o


I've learn that typhoon activities are active around Aug-Sept this period. Thankfully this one is not something that devastating, stay in the room is the safest.

Anyway to end this post, here's a least-successful attempt to fry a perfect egg.



May not look appetizing but nevertheless it's edible lol. :P

Lost and Found

Last month, I had my bicycle taken away from where I parked in front of the school compound. If memory serves me right, that day was 15 July. Was having class performance's practise for our school trip, so it was quite a blow for me at that time.

The missing bike, bought when I came here in April.


The bike was gone when I was to retrieve it to ride back to hostel. I carelessly left the key on the bike lock, and only realised the key is not with me when I'm about to leave. I look around the compound, thinking maybe someone would have place it at the other side or such, but unfortunately it was nowhere to be found.

Reported the incident to the school's office and was told to wait for any news of the stolen bike. Although the law enforcement in Japan is great, but given for a common theft report as such, I don't really have much hope to get it back.

Since bicycle is important for daily life, I straight away went to a nearby bike shop to get a 2nd hand bike. Was kinda lucky to have one in pretty good condition selling at 6,500 yen.

Well then, the 2nd hand bike I bought is actually better than the stolen bike lol..... It's much easier to cycle as it comes with changeable gears so make trip up and down the hill much easier than the previous ones.

Left: the 2nd hand bike. Right: stolen bike.


I've been using the 2nd hand bike since then and during this Monday, I received a call from the school's office for update regarding the stolen bike. It was being found somewhere not so far away from the school and it's being placed in the local police station.

The next day's noon I was brought to the police station by the office staff who helped me to settle this matter to collect the stolen bike. He kindly drove me to the police station which is just a few blocks away from the school.

The bike seems to be a little battered but still in usable condition. The key's getting rusty due to exposure of the weather. After checking my ID and the bike's identification paper, I was handed back the bike. Oh joy! :D

The 2 bikes, both are in silver colour.


I was consider very lucky that at least my bike was to be found and got it back. The staff who helped me told me that his daughter's bike were stolen twice and nowhere to be found.

So.... now that I had 2 bikes, what should I be doing with both? I plan to keep the 2nd hand one and sell the other to someone else, probably to new student who would be coming in this Oct. Although I might lose a few bucks doing so, but it's better than I lose the whole bike's price eh. :)

A big thanks for Mr Kondou for helping me up with the trouble! :D
近藤さん、本当にありがとうございました！

Mr Low's last lecture for SN8ABC

* This post is specifically dedicated to fellow TARC SPUS collegemates of class SN8ABC, year 2008.

Last night I received a voice clip from Siao Ying, the final lecture Mr Low gave for all of us before study leave for A2 exam.
Decided to scrambled out this video up here, put on some picture slides and the voice recording.


Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgGZLgdZ0cs

Mr Low is definitely one of the best lecturer who taught us in the 1.5 years time, many thanks for his hard work and the time he had dedicated for us. :)

Pictures Update

Hmm.... recently took lesser pics than usual, I guess as life slowly settle down things aren't that unusual or special to me now, hah.
Anyway, here it goes.

Experimental dish, Japanese's oyako don cooked with Nyonya curry paste. Tasted good but I'd prefer the watery version. Malaysian curry is heavenly, compared to Japanese's. :P


Bon-odori festival in the school next Friday! Likely to join. :D


This bicycle is fitted with electric motor so one don't need to pedal that hard to get the bike moving. If not mistaken a model as such cost more than 100k yen.


At the crossroad while cycling back to hostel.


SPAM!!!


Spotted this cool sports car. Looks like Ferrari but it's not. Heard it's a Japanese brand, which I didn't heard before.




Georgia Max Coffee. Tasted sweeter than most coffee out there, but still not bad.


Classmates plucked these Pomegranates from the outside. Reminds me of the tree I used to had behind my house's backyard.


Arakawa-ku, the area I'm currently staying in.


A corner in one of the department stores, dedicated for the mothers who prepare the bento lunch sets for their children.



Kamifukuoka, Fujimino city, Saitama. My designate university is located over here.
This is one of the shopping malls located just in front of the train station.


Today's trial class, mixdown. Trying to play around with Pro Tools on MacBook Pro, still not really used to a Mac's system though, totally different than Windows.



Quick peek, a room filled with digital pianos!!


Late lunch at Ikebukuro station. Soba for 480 yen.


That's all for now. :)

Pre & Post Holiday Exams

A little review of my school's performance so far....

The 2 weeks summer holiday is said to be sandwiched between 2 exams, before and after the holiday.

To cut things short from the pre-holiday exam, here's the result of the Japanese language exam.



Overall it was ~89%, with the teacher's comment "Had worked hard in studies, able to apply the language well. Please continue on with the good work!"

Personally I find it quite good but I still can do better in it. If it wasn't because of the blunder in the essay (off topic at the last paragraph), I would be more happy bout it.

School resumes this week onwards, and it was rather crazy to had another round of exam right after the summer holiday.

This time, other subjects were being included as well instead of the Japanese language only. I took General Subjects (consist of Geo, Socio and Econ subjects) and Maths.

Again to cut things short, here's the result of the Japanese language exam. No official slip though this time, just teacher wrote down the result for us.



~91%, slightly better than the previous exam given it's slightly trickier than the previous language exam, was kinda happy bout it. Hmm.... continue to work hard from this onwards too! :)

Talk about the other 2 subjects, the General Subjects paper was kinda interesting to deal with. First few pages were loaded with lots of badly-formatted questions with rather unclear instruction to ask us choose the answers.

My Japanese language is still not that good so I have to took a little time to digest word by word. Noticed that there's lots of BS before the line that leads you to the REAL question of the topic.

I think I can score better at the historical part, especially when it asked about the recent years' history, such as those of World Wars or related to the Cold War between USA & Soviet Union.

This is also the first time I came across Economics questions as such, the famous Supply, Demand & Price graph.


Not sure whether I did correctly or not, but it's actually interesting to study bout it. Need someone who studied Econs before to enlighten me on this! :)

The next paper, Maths. Hmm.... somehow I dislike it.

Reason? We weren't allowed to use calculator in the exam.

Casio fx-570MS scientific calculator.


Maths is not my best subject (though I somewhat had interest in it), but given that I've been solving Maths problem with a calculator since 2003, I find it hard to start off again without using it.

I couldn't really understand why the Japanese would not allow us to use calculator in the exam. Given that we've a tool to make things much easier and convenient, and able to achieve towards a higher level of understanding, why they would still rather stick with playing with the brain only?

As much as most people thought that Japan is a high-tech society, there are still many things that they would still stick with the traditional, manual way.
Examples:
- Limited shoplets that accept credit card transaction;
- Relying faxes & snail mail instead of e-mails;
- Using gas-based water heater instead of electric-based;
- Some still prefers VHS/cassette (magnetic tape) instead of DVD/CD (optical disc) media.
- Prefer pencil to pen even in university level.... etc.

Although I know the Japanese took pride in maintaining the traditions, but some I find it kinda ridiculous to still maintaining it until today, it should have been replaced by something much more convenient many moons ago!

That's the reality I'm gonna face. This is my future so I would just bear with it. Who knows, as time goes by I might be assimilated into such culture as well.

Hah seems that my argument has somewhat dislodged from the original topic regarding the exams. I would probably know the results for General Subjects & Maths by next week.

To end this post, here's a pic of Sumida river, not so far away from my place.


There must be still some interesting places around my area which I've yet to discovered it. Gonna hunt 'em down one by one from time to time eh....

'til then.

Testing Webcam Video Recording

This Summer Holiday

Here's a brief summary on what I did this summer holiday.

* 31 July 2009 (Fri)
Visited Ueno Zoo.




* 2 ~ 9 Aug 2009.
One week back in KL.

Prologue.



KL Update #1.



KL Update #2.




KL Update #3.



* 14 Aug 2009 (Fri).
Tokyo skyline view and Naruto exhibit at Sunshine City, Ikebukuro.




Hmm.... so today's the last day of the 17 days summer holiday. I've mixed feelings while writing this.

I've no issues whether this summer holiday is too short or too long, it's just nice for me. Been busy with lots of stuffs keeping myself kinda occupied, but there's still the free time to chill out too, relaxing moments.

Well sometimes when we're too free, our mind tend to wonders around thinking and analysing things. It's not all the time that the result of the thought is something we're happy bout.

There has been ups and downs in my thought, a sensation I don't really like as it's like lack of security, uncertainties in life.

I hope that going back to school tomorrow, my feelings can somewhat settled down. Looking forward to attend the class again, and joke along with friends~ Hopefully by that I'll feel better. And besides, gonna work hard for my Japanese language studies.

As for part-time job which I'm kinda worried lately, I'll just look around. After all, it's not easy to balance both study and job together. My family understand this as well but I just don't feel like put more burden on them.

LOL kinda funny.... now am feeling good writing here. Moments ago I was gloomy but now seems to be fine. Emotional imbalance eh....

Anyway I'll be doing good here, am able to take care of myself and most importantly, work hard for my future!! :D

Ikebukuro again

Friday headed to Ikebukuro again, thinking that I might be catching up with the "The Celestial Railroad" show I mentioned few days ago.
The location is at Sunshine City Ikebukuro, which hosted an education fair months ago. This time I went along with 2 hostelmates.

Wasn't that lucky as it was Friday and the whole complex were flooded with people! Lately it's the summer holiday so you can see parents bringing their kids around here and there.
The show I'm supposed to watch, was fully-booked.

Well at least we still have something to enjoy....
Naruto's artworks exhibition on top of the observatory deck at the 60th floor.

Have to pay 620 yen for the ticket though.

The elevator that brought us to the top of the observatory deck was moving rather fast, at 600m/min rate. I jokingly asked my friend, jumping down from top of the building and taking the elevator, which'll be faster? Heh....

View of Tokyo city from the observatory deck!



Tokyo Dome spotted!








Highways




Shinjuku skyscrapers.



Ikebukuro station + shopping malls.


Not sure what the tower's function.


Start of Naruto's exhibition.

Introducing characters from Akatsuki!
Uchiha Itachi. Love his eye-technique.


Tobi. Mysterious yet dangerous character, the de facto leader of Akatsuki.


Kisame. Shark-like swordsman.


Deidara. Explosive clay-bomber.


Artworks.
Naruto VS Sasuke. Rasengan VS Chidori.


Group photo, fated characters.


The Uchiha brothers, Sasuke and Itachi.


Akatsuki again.


Itachi VS Kakashi, Kisame VS Guy.


Kazekage & Hokage. Gaara & Tsunade.


The partners.


Group characters.



Shikamaru Nara, one of my favourite character. Brilliant strategist.



Yamanaka Ino.


Rock Lee. Martial art pro.


Sai. Emotionless painter.


Hyuga Hinata.



Animation concept art..




Briefing of the organisation "Akatsuki".


Other members of Akatsuki which didn't been introduced earlier.

Zetsu. Split personality freak.


Hidan. #1 Undead.


Kakuzu. Comse with 5 hearts in total.


Sasori. Puppeteer.


Special effect artworks.
Sasuke charging up Chidori.


Again, Naruto VS Sasuke.


Kakashi, Raikiri.


Akatsuki group pic.


The teacher and student.


Naruto-related snacks. What a rip off...


After the Naruto exhibition walked up to the rooftop for some open air view.

Tokyo Tower spotted far away.


Again, skyline of Shinjuku.





If you're sharp enough, you can see the Tokyo Bay far far away.


Passed-by this Godiva shop while leaving Sunshine City. Reminds me of the hot chili chocolate I had in Godiva Pavilion KL last week...


Headed to the Toyota's Ikebukuro showroom to had some fun with car simulator, Gran Turismo 5 running on PS3.



The new Toyota Prius.



Toyota Vellfire, the more luxurious and sportier version of Alphard.



Japan's Toyota Camry looks a different than those of South East Asia version.


On the way back to the train station. Crowded!


I like Ikebukuro! It's actually a nice place to do shopping or hangout, but the crowd is a problem.... so try to come here during weekdays or working hours!