the blog i never update

tropo red for insanejournal

Mon, 23 Nov 2015 08:40:09 GMT

Yeah. I know. We've come full circle.

So, if you've stumbled across my journal before totally unrelated to the RP sphere, then it's probably because you wanted to use my now totally defunct livejournal colour scheme for Dreamwidth. Long story short, Dreamwidth ended up doing so many code pushes that would bork the script that I got irritated trying to keep up with them and finally stopped.

In a hilarious but not unexpected turn of events, now that I've gotten used to it, I actually quite like Dreamwidth's default Tropospherical Red layout these days. I would go so far as to say I prefer it over whatever new eye searing design option Livejournal has got going on this month.

THE SAME HOWEVER CANNOT BE SAID OF INSANEJOURNAL.

Despite IJ being several levels more offensive-looking than anything either DW or LJ could ever dream up, I don't spend much time on it anymore these days, so I could never be bothered making a script for it. But I finally got off my butt and did it this month. Would that I had done this in 2011 during the Sabra years, god. Anyway, this isn't an exact clone of Dreamwidth, but it's as close as I could get it.

Fortunately, I've been on IJ for years, and I don't think they've done a single site-chanigng code push in the entire time I've been there. So. Hopefully, this one won't get borked. Without further ado, here you go:

A script to make InsaneJournal's site scheme look like it belongs in the 21st century.

I also use the simple icons skin in the preview screenshot above, which should be installed also if you want to reach optimal pretty. Feel free to edit whatever you want in the code itself, I'm not going to care. Hey, if you do something that looks cool, take a screenshot and show me. I'd love to see!

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(unfinished) EMIRI'S NON-EXHAUSTIVE, POSSIBLY BIASED REC LIST OF AUSTRALIAN FILM & TV

Fri, 28 Aug 2015 15:05:52 GMT

Before you read: Where applicable, I will be putting content warnings in reviews, but whiting-out ones that I consider to be spoilers. If you are concerned about possible content warnings more than spoilers, highlight the white text at your own risk! If you are not overly concerned about content warnings but worried about spoilers, do not highlight the white text. Easy!

PLEASE ALSO NOTE that I am just one person who has her own biases, so I may have missed some content warnings on account of simply not even thinking about them, or not having seen the movie in so long I forgot about it. If that happens at any point, please feel free to drop me a line. Additionally, being both white and cis, I'm aware I am not an authority on racism or trans issues. If I've overlooked anything or overstepped my bounds in any of these reviews, please do tell me.

Nothing expressed here is fact except the parts I have labeled "movie synopsis." Everything else is opinion. I have a lot of yelly, Capital F Feelings about things, but at the end of the day I'm just one person. Take everything I say with a grain of salt. I'm no media critic. If you have a wildly differing view of a movie from mine, that's fine! In fact, please sound off if you have differing opinions in the comments, and maybe we can have a discussion about it! I occasionally enjoy being proven wrong about things. (No, that's a lie. I hate being proven wrong about things, but it's probably good for me. Or something.)

PLEASE NOTE THE TITLE OF THIS POST. It would probably be better titled as "Stuff What I Personally Like." This is not an unbiased review post of all Australian media ever. Basically: if you trust my taste and opinion on things, you will probably like the things on this list! If we have wildly differing tastes, you will probably not. Simple. I AM NOT AN AUTHORITY ON AUSTRALIAN FILM, NOR DO I WORK FOR THE FILM INDUSTRY. I AM JUST AN AUSTRALIAN. WHO LIKES STUFF. That's all!

If you have not noticed by now, I am a wordy motherfucker who likes the sound of my own voice and has trouble being both concise and coherent at the best of times. So sorry, not sorry. Strap yourselves in and buckle up motherfuckers, because this is going to be a long-ass post. Hope you like word-vomit.

As a final aside, if you do decide to watch any of these films and subsequently enjoy them, I hope that you'll leave a comment or hit me up on plurk (exclamationmarks) or gchat (athousandsmiles) or tumblr (emirin or cassaru) or twitter (ecphonemes) somewhere to tell me your thoughts!! I LOVE seeing/reading people's reactions to things. ALWAYS. Even when they're not always good!

Right! Now that that's all cleared up, without further ado:( ONTO THE MOVIES. )

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SECRET SANTA

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 05:05:03 GMT

THIS IS A SECRET SANTA POST

WOOHOO

feel free to comment stuff here

and stuff

yeah

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Tue, 18 Jan 2011 04:05:52 GMT

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS

GOOGLE SKETCHUP IS LIKE CRACK

REALLY REALLY GOOD 3D CRACK

Well, I know what I'm doing for the next three days.

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Yes, I do still exist. Yes, I realise I never post.

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 12:09:27 GMT

Finally imported all my Inksome entries over to this journal, since Inksome is going under. They're all old entries though (2008-9), so you shouldn't see any change to the front page of your feeds, f-lists, this journal, etc. Dreamwidth is pretty neato about that.

Though man, re-reading back over them, I realised that 2010 was a much more emotionally and mentally stable year for me than 2009. Despite, you know, being in a foreign country and all the problems that entails, especially when you're a white person in Japan. I have ... thoughts on that, but I'm not really expressing them very well. It certainly wasn't because I grew up a little, I don't think. I still feel as immature as ever. I keep deleting the rest of what I type out so I guess I'll just leave it at that. I've never been very good with words anyway.

Here's to hoping 2011 will continue on this trend of good mental and emotional health.

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Tropospherical Blue for Dreamwidth!

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 22:51:33 GMT

This is a master post for installation instructions and other FAQ regarding using the Trophospherical Blue skin for Dreamwidth!

What's that?
Simply put, it's a code that will convert Dreamwidth's Tropospherical Purple site scheme into a blue and white scheme reminiscent of Livejournal.

Okay ... why bother?
Some people don't like the Dreamwidth default Tropo layouts, but like the journaling service just fine! If you're happy with Dreamwidth's current site schemes then this is probably not the page for you. This skin was originally designed with LJ's original default colours in mind (white background, light blue comment boxes, wider page width, etc). There currently are not any skins in the works based on Celerity or with a vertical sidebar, so please don't ask. Sorry :(.

How do I know if I'll like it?
Here, have some handy preview pictures!

Click for a bigger preview! If you still need more, there is also this and this!

( Awesome. That sounds like something I'm interested in! How do I do it? )

ETA 7/01/11: Fixed a line after a code change that was causing the entry buttons box to be borked. If you installed this skin before this ETA date, click "Find Updates" in Stylish and it should be fixed! If that doesn't work for some reason, please tell me.

ETA 14/01/11: Edited in a proper greasemonkey-like extension link for Google Chrome into the FAQ, thanks to howdivine!

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Situation update

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 07:31:01 GMT

Went to the hospital today to get my head checked out since I promised several people (my mother not the least of them) that I'd go if my head still hurt today.

One CT scan, three hours of waiting, and $200 later... we found out what I was already pretty certain of:

My head's fine, no internal damage to be seen, probably just a very mild concussion.

Doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt like hell though. For future reference? I don't recommend it.

Anyway, at least I got some peace and mind and what are (hopefully) some heavy-duty pain meds out of it, so it wasn't a total bust. Have to take them with food, so waiting until dinner time to take them and we'll see if they make a difference.

Thank goodness tomorrow is a national holiday.

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PSA: dangerous things are dangerous.

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 07:39:56 GMT

I have had the worst day.

I've been really, really sick this last week, to the point that I missed almost an entire week of classes. I'm getting better now, but today I got told in my Japanese Writing class that if I missed one more class or was late even just once, I'd automatically fail the class. Wonderful! (On the other hand, I'm passing the Japanese Speaking class with flying colours, but GUESS WHAT? I need to pass BOTH to pass my LAST language credit back home, which is only ONE CLASS, NOT TWO. fml.)

But that wasn't the really bad bit.

The really bad bit was that on the way home, I crashed my bicycle into a vespa.

(!!!)

THANKFULLY I am okay-- the vespa was going SUPER SLOW and slowed down even more before we crashed so I got off pretty lightly. Thankfully almost a lifetime's worth of tripping over my feet and falling on tennis courts has taught me pretty much instinctively how to fall properly so as to minimize damage (ie, not break your wrists and graze your palms), but unfortunately I was still tangled up on a bike so I couldn't exactly roll away to cushion impact either. Instead I landed weirdly on my right knee and elbow and they hurt, but not to the point that I can't move them, so hopefully I will be fine. The most worrying is the knee, but we'll see how that goes. The inside of my top lip is also bleeding in three places and swollen, and I also hit my head and the side of my face, but I don't even have a bump on my head, so aside from a mild headache right now, I think that will be okay too. My cheekbone has a HUGE bump on it though, luckily it's on the side of my face I can hide with my ~emo side bangs~ lmfao. I wouldn't be able to do that if I hadn't cut my hair recently.

Oh yeah, I cut my hair recently! I forgot to mention that. Here, have a picture.

Webcam shot from the halloween dress up day on campus on Friday. That's the only shot I have and it's a webcam shot, but it'll have to do until I upload proper photos. You can't see it well here, but I basically cut the front half short (from the back of my ears to the front) to my chin, and left the back half long (which is the bit that's tied up in plaits). My long hair has been bugging me a lot lately, but I didn't want to cut it all off either, so I made an anime-ish compromise. (I was aided in this decision by the fact that I can't see the back of my head and am not double jointed, so cutting the back myself would've been rather difficult.) It looks a little silly but I don't really care, since it still looks fine on me. Actually I've gotten several compliments on it, lol. I still tie the long-half back in my usual single braid most days (so from the front you can't even tell that I don't have just normal short hair) but I can finally wear the front half loose again without having to worry that it'll get tangled, or that it'll get in my food when I eat. It's great.

OH RIGHT. ANYWAY. Back to the bike incident.

So yes, that was the list of injuries. Not seriously hurt (we think, yada yada yada).

Really, the worst of it was shock. I've ... never been in shock before? I don't think. Not that I can remember anyway. But that was really terrible. There I was on, on the ground, sobbing huge fat tears like a big baby and getting soaking wet (it was raining, hence why I crashed in the first place-- I was riding my bike while holding an umbrella YES SHUT UP I KNOW IT'S ILLEGAL I'M NOT GOING TO DO IT ANYMORE and I was turning around a sharp corner and couldn't maneuver away from the oncoming vespa in time because I still had one hand on the umbrella) and there I was just hyperventilating away. People were speaking to me and I could understand perfectly what they were saying and I knew what I wanted to say back to them but I couldn't speak. I couldn't get any words out. It was horrible. Two other foreigners from my dorm though were walking home at the time and saw the crash and came over to help.

I didn't want to go to the hospital though, because hospitals and ambulances are expensive and an initial check of my body seemed to reveal that I could move all right, so nothing was broken or serious. Also I knew I was completely in the wrong for the crash, so I didn't want it to get back to the university and be scolded, I just wanted to go home and be warm and dry and have a bit of a cry. I couldn't communicate that though because no words were coming out, so we had a few (in retrospect) hilarious exchanges, like so:

(Italics = in Japanese)
(Also this is paraphrased and cutting out a lot of repeated exclamations of "What do I do?!" and other repeated questions and long pauses for hyperventilating and the like. Real conversation was much longer than it appears, but this was the gist of it.)

VESPA LADY: [Freaking out] Oh my god are you okay are you okay?
ME: [BAWLING BAWWWW everything hurts bawwwww]
VESPA LADY: Should I call an ambulance?!
ME: [VEHEMENT HEAD SHAKING]
VESPA LADY: [Turns to the other two foreigners] .............Does she understand Japanese?
LEWIS: She understands!
ERIC: She can understand better than we do, haha.
VESPA LADY: [Back to me] Do you want to go to the hospital?
ME: [More head shaking and hyperventalating]
VESPA LADY: [Back to Lewis] Does she really understand?! Can you translate for me? Ask her why she doesn't want to go to the hospital!
LEWIS: Uh...
ME: [Struggling to get words out] I... understand...
LEWIS: [Helping me up and gripping me hard while I test my leg and do a check of my body and bawl some more because everything still hurts]
VESPA LADY: Why don't you want to go to the hospital?!
ME: [Hyperventalating too hard to speak]
VESPA LADY: Hey calm down! I'm gonna call an ambulance okay?! [To Lewis] Does she really understand?
LEWIS: [Trying not to eyeroll] She's in shock.
ME: I'm okay! It's the shock. I'm ... okay.
VESPA LADY: Are you really okay?! Why can't I call the hospital??
ME: Costs... money...
VESPA LADY: I'll pay! Okay?
ME: [Headshaking "no" again] I want to... go home...
VESPA LADY: .............................................................
LEWIS: She just wants to go home.
VESPA LADY: Can you really go home like that?! I don't think I can see you getting back on that bike like that!
LEWIS: [Quickly] We'll walk the bike.
VESPA LADY: Okay ... well if you're sure ...

She was so confused. Poor lady.

The really funny part was, though, because almost this whole conversation had been in Japanese and the first language I heard after I fell down was Japanese, after the lady left and Lewis and Eric were walking me home and talking in English, even though I could understand them, for a few minutes there I couldn't think of what to say in English at all. All I could think of was responses in Japanese. It was like my brain got stuck in Japanese mode. Sob.

I really have to thank Lewis though. He was a big help. I don't know what I would've done if he wasn't there. He helped me stand back up again and held on to me very firmly during that whole conversation when I felt shaky and like I was going fall back down again at any second, and then helped walk my bike back home in the rain. Then I got home and Brittany let me cry on her pathetically for a few minutes and hugged me tight and then helped me change out of my sopping wet clothes.

So that was my day.

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Happy end.

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 12:26:25 GMT

There are sometimes benefits to living in a small town community.

It came to my attention today that there is an advertisement in my local supermarket for anyone wanting a kitten. More specifically, the kitten we found last week. There was a picture of it on the ad, looking much healthier than when we found it and snug up in blankets. It read something along the lines of: (I can't do a direct translation this time because it was full of kanji I still can't read but I got the main gist...)

"We found this adorable cat abandoned in a box at [the place where we left it]. We're taking care of it now, but we can't take care of it forever [due to various reasons], so we're currently looking for a proper owner who can. We took it to the vet, so it's now neutered, had its' shots and been cleared of fleas. If you're interested, please contact us!"

And then it had pull-off tabs of paper with their phone number down the bottom, and quite a few tabs had already been ripped off.

So we know our kitten is being taken good care of currently, and is hopefully now well on its' way to a good home.

I'm really glad.

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子猫物語

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 05:27:56 GMT

So much has happened this year that I haven't written about, I wouldn't even know where to start if I were to try and catch up with it all. So instead, have a true story that happened to me last night.

This is a story about a kitten.

Last night around 7 PM, I said to my fellow dormmates, "I don't feel like cooking! Hey, who wants to go to Kappa-zushi?" Kappa-zushi, for the record, is a local sushi train near where I live. It's extremely cheap (around $1 US a plate) and delicious and healthy. So as I'm sure you can imagine, this particular conversation comes up about ... oh, twice a week or so. It's pretty much par for the course. And so we set out, myself and three others, on the twenty minute walk to Kappa-zushi.

However, when we were just five minutes away from the dorm, A THING occurred.

We heard a tiny but insistent, very shrill meow, meow, meow. A stray kitten, about the size that would fit easily in the palm of your hand came running out onto the road to us. Fortunately there were no cars around, so we picked the tiny thing up and headed back in the direction it came from to try to find its' mother, kitten mewling raucously all the way. After a good search, it became evident that the mother had either died or abandoned it; there was no evidence of other cats or other kittens, and no mewling in response to our kitten's. Once we got it under a street light, we realised it definitely wasn't someone's pet. If you know anything about cats at all, there were a few tell-tale signs, namely:

1) It was far too young to be someone's cat; if you've ever owned a kitten before, you know what size they're supposed to be when you get them. This one was definitely not old enough. It was still too young to take solid foods.
2) It was far too scruffy and underfed to be someone's cat, not to mention, we later realised, flea infested. (It's okay, we checked and triple checked ourselves for fleas later and all spent a good long time in the shower afterwards; none were found.)
3) It had lost an eye somehow

Fleas or no fleas, there was no way we could just leave this poor animal on the street to starve or be run over. (It certainly didn't seem to have any reservations about the road.) Of course, since we all live in the dorms, there was no way any of us could keep it ourselves. The dorms have a strict and iron policy about animals: none allowed whatsoever, under any circumstances. You can't even sneak one in; to get into the dorm you have to go through the main foyer which is never empty-- not to mention, the dorm is Japanese style so the walls are impossibly thin-- even if you got the kitten past the main foyer, it'd only be a matter of minutes before someone heard it.

We walked back to the dorm anyway to see if our (Japanese) dorm RAs knew of a vet or shelter nearby we could take it to. They didn't know of a shelter, but they gave us directions to a small vet clinic about a 20 minute walk away. So kitten in tow, we set off.

Luckily for us, the clinic was open until 8pm. (It's almost unheard of for places in Japan except food places to be open late.) We got there at 7:30. The vet looked a little displeased to see a group of four foreigners and a flea-ridden kitten walk in half an hour before he was scheduled to close, but he talked to us anyway. Unfortunately, however, he said they couldn't keep kittens that weren't old enough to eat solid foods, so we'd have to find someone else who could take care of it. He didn't know where a shelter was.

Unfortunately, none of us knew any Japanese people in the area well enough to ring them up and say "Hey, I know it's sudden, but could you take care of a stray kitten?" Pets in Japan are a little bit of an issue, too: a lot of people live in apartment complexes thanks to population density problems, and most apartment complexes in Japan, like our dorm, have a zero-tolerance policy towards pets.

Eventually we bought a small carton of cat milk from the vet, went back home, picked up a large cardboard box from someone's room, got someone else to donate an old sweater they didn't want and another person's plastic saucer, and then trapsed BACK again to the more-trafficked town area near the vet clinic. We didn't know if the kitten would drink the cat milk if it wasn't from a teat, but it was worth a try. So we poured some in the saucer and then set it, the cat and the old sweater inside the big cardboard box and left him there, together with a sign I wrote in Japanese saying:

Hello,
My mother is gone. I'm a baby who can still only drink this special milk.
I'm a stray who was found by foreigners who didn't know what to do with me.
So please take me home with you.
Or maybe call a friend if you know one that can take care of cats.
Or take me to a shelter if you know where one exists.
Thank you ♥

As we walked away, the kitten-- who had become silent as we'd been carrying him around the town in a sweater for the past forty minutes-- started mewling after as and trying to get out of the box to follow us. (We'd made sure it was big enough that it couldn't accidentally escape.) My heart just about broke into a million pieces hearing it cry out like that and having to just walk away, not knowing whether it would live or die, not being able to do anything for it.

Needless to say, we never got to Kappa-zushi.

--

Today after class, I took a detour on my bike. Instead of going straight home, I biked back to the spot we'd left the kitten last night. The box was gone in its entirety. I have no way of knowing for sure what happened, but I hope it's in a better place now.

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Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:32:02 GMT

"Hey, that reminds me of the time when we first met! Haha, when we got all super lost looking for the super market... man, that was a story and a half."

"I know, right? Oh, but that wasn't the first time we met."

"Wasn't it? Well, that was the first time we met that I actually remembered you as an individual, anyway! Give me a break, it was orientation week, there were like 200 names and faces to remember all at once, 60 in our dorm alone!"

"Gee, thanks."

"Well okay then, when was the first time we met?"

"Haha, I only remember it because you made such an impression on me. It was when you like, ran into the elevator at the last minute on the first or second day, remember?"

"... Not really. ... I do that every day."

"Well, you got in at the last minute and it was just me on the elevator and you turned to me all cheery and go

'HI my name's Cassandra but you can call me Cassie I mean actually I prefer if you call me Cassie because even though Cassandra is my real name the only person who ever calls me that is my mother you know especially when I'm in trouble so it's not exactly my favourite thing to be called anyway so what's your name??'

without even stopping for breath despite the fact that you looked like you'd just run a marathon and it took me a minute to get over my shock and respond because all I could think of was 'Wow. This girl is excited to make friends'."

"... How the hell do you even remember all that."

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Mon, 31 May 2010 10:40:15 GMT

What's going on with me right now:

1) I've moved in to a new place in the city, since it's now summer holidays and the dorms are closed.
2) I have a never-ending cough of doom!

I really like the new place. The location is great-- it's right in the middle of Osaka, close to everything. There's a subway station entrance literally 20 metres away from my door. There's a huge 2-floor supermarket (groceries first floor, living goods second floor) about 100 metres across the street. There's a convenience store 30 metres in another direction, with a small 100yen shop attached to it. (I've yet to find a large 100yen shop nearby, but tomorrow's another day.) There's lots of little boutique cafes around the area too. I'm surrounded by large buildings on all sides, so while I don't get a view, the building is in shade pretty much all day long so it's reasonably cool inside, which is great because I don't really have to worry about cranking up the electricity bill using the air conditioning in summer.

Took a walk around the area today, got to know the city a little better. I've been to most of the major cities of Japan, and I have to say... I really love Osaka the best. Don't get me wrong, I'm not viewing it with rose-coloured glasses. There are still aspects of Japan that I could definitely do without. But I've still totally fallen for Osaka. I'll do a post on why later.

Back to the apartment.

It's pretty much a shoebox, but that's okay for now. Tomorrow I'm going to buy some shelving for cheap (500yen) and put them around the place so I actually have storage space to put stuff. (Food. Books. Etc.) Still need a coffee table or something I can eat at. Eating on the floor isn't all that fun. Kitchen needs a surface to prepare on-- it's pretty much just a gas stove and a sink.

Have a futon here too, which is great, I super love it. I've gotten pretty used to sleeping on a futon these past few months, though to be honest it never really bothered me to begin with. My bed back home is fairly hard, so it's no harder than that.

I ran into my real estate agent today wandering around town, she invited me to a party on the 26th of next month. Suppose I can look forward to that! As soon as this stupid cough/cold-thing has left me I'm looking forward to meeting new people in the area and making friends and searching for work. Otherwise it's gonna be a pretty lonely 3 months all by myself! (I uh. I don't know if I have the money anymore to visit people outside of Osaka like I said I would...)

Also met my landlord today and gave him a requisite "please-look-after-me" gift in typical Japanese fashion. He seems nice! Best of all, my area has NO TRASH SEPARATION RULES! HOORAY! (For those not in the know: trash separation rules in Japan differ from area to area-- like local council areas-- and MOST areas have insane separation rules, such as "burnable garbage," "non-burnable garbage," "PET bottles," "glass," and so on and so forth.)

What else did I do? Oh. I found a place that sells delicious savory crepes. Had a hot melted cheese + chicken teriyaki + lettuce crepe for brunch. (Wasn't early enough to be breakfast.) It was mouthwateringly good. I also won two little ... cat plushie thingies ... in those crane games/UFO catchers. I'm getting better at them! Not great yet, though, haha.

So that's been my day. Sorry for not updating recently... I really need to do a catch-up post on the last few months. Maybe now that I suddenly have an abundance of free time, I'll get around to doing it. Peace out!

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Sun, 23 May 2010 14:04:05 GMT

I don't want everyone else to go home.

Edit: This is the reason why living in an era of a "global community" really sucks. Sure you can make friends all over the world. You can make best friends all over the world, even. Living in a dorm with people from all over the world, you forge really close friendships with those people. Because you're sleeping together, eating together, going to class together, shopping together... it's impossible not to be close.

Over the internet you can talk to someone on the other side of the globe every day, know their worries and their joys, help them through their tough times and celebrate their victories.

But you can never be by their side. And that hurts. Sure we'll keep in touch. A few of them might even turn into close internet buddies.

But I'll never see them again, and every time I think of that I just start crying again. Term's over, graduation ceremony's done with, all that's left is everyone starting to leave, one by one. It just reminds me of the fact that eventually I'll have to return to Australia too. Why was I born in a country so far away?

Stupid plane tickets. Stupid exchange. Stupid internet.

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this icon is representative of my mental state right now

Tue, 11 May 2010 11:21:14 GMT

because so many people are asking!

what is going on in cassie's life right now 101:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

FINALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

... yep.

that's about it.

peace out.

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Tue, 27 Apr 2010 08:09:28 GMT

Guys guys I got just one thing to say:

THE REAL LIFE 1/1 SCALE GUNDAM IS BACK UP IN JAPAN, BABY

WITH A BEAM SABER

That is all.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

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Italics/bold/capslock abuse.

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 23:07:49 GMT

Okay guys. First of all, I want to make a disclaimer that this post is not aimed at any one person-- this is a public service announcement as a result of MANY incidents from several people.

It's time to lay some ground rules. Namely, about my phone email! Let me lay this down very simply so there is no misunderstanding.

1. My phone email (emiri.in.japan) is just that. A PHONE. It might be able to send and receive emails, but like any other phone, when it gets a message, IT RINGS! LOUDLY!

2. I cannot turn my phone on silent during the night because I use it as my alarm clock in the morning. THEREFORE. IF YOU SEND A MESSAGE TO MY PHONE EMAIL WHILE I AM SLEEPING? I WILL WAKE UP. AND I WILL BE JUSTIFIABLY ANNOYED. You wouldn't text someone with a regular phone at 4 AM or 6 AM. So DON'T DO IT WITH MINE EITHER. (I'd also like to note that I ALSO HAVE A ROOMMATE. WHO ALSO WAKES UP WHEN THIS HAPPENS. SO DON'T DO IT. IT'S RUDE.) Treat that email as you would a (free) phone number.

3. My regular email (athousandsmiles) STILL EXISTS. FOR A REASON. I STILL CHECK IT FIRST THING IN THE MORNING EVERY SINGLE DAY. If there's a real emergency (and I do mean a real one), then sure I won't mind being woken up in the middle of the night. But so far there never has been! It's just been people! Not thinking before they hit send! So please, please please PLEASE think first! Again: treat that email as you would a phone number. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough.

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE getting phone emails during the daytime. I heavily encourage people to email me at my phone email during the daytime. It makes my day! But I'm not appreciative of being woken up by my phone. Nobody is. And it has happened way too many times now!

Just so that this is unmistakably clear, here are the EXACT times within which you absolutely cannot phone email me unless there is a JUSTIFIABLE emergency (that I can actually do something about in the middle of the night, otherwise why are you bothering?):

Japan Standard Time: 12AM-9AM
Australian Eastern Time: 1AM-10AM
US Pacific Standard Time: 8AM-6PM
US Eastern Standard Time: 11AM-9PM
Greenwich Mean Time: 4PM-1AM

OKAY? Okay. Disabling comments on this entry as there is really nothing to discuss. It's out of my system now, I'm now no longer angry. The end.

Happy post coming soon!

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ugh

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 04:17:34 GMT

Super sick right now. I feel really bad, I haven't been running in a week and I put on another two kilos. On top of that I just got my period so I feel super moody. Ugh. Definite lowest point since I've been here.

Not really coherent enough to type up a long entry about Seoul or have the attention span to crop and resize and upload the last month's billion photos, but I feel bad about not updating so here have some photos from facebook that other people have uploaded instead. I'll post my own photos when I get better.

Phone picture taken by our dorm RA, Haruka, when she took me out to eat my favourite cuisine: omurice. (Omelette Rice.)

( Read more... )

THAT IS JUST A TASTE OF WHAT IS TO COME. Look forward to next time! Hopefully I will be more coherent then. For now I am going back to bed.

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wherein cassie fails at geography 101

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 22:35:26 GMT

OH MY GOD WHAT HAPPENED TO UPDATING

sorry too busy with life

just popping in to say GOING TO KOREA TODAY FOR THREE DAYS yay Spring Break!!

you can still always normal-email me, and if there's an emergency, I'm staying at Central Tourist Hotel Seoul and the number there is 02-6365-6500 !!

i have so much to update about holy craaapppp aaaaaahhhh falling behind falling behind!!

BYE GUYS SEE YOU ON THE 27th!!

ETA: ... wait what do you mean it's COLDER in Korea?!

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also, i put on 4 kilos. hopefully it's all muscle.

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:41:54 GMT

Long time since the last entry! Sorry! I've been flat-out the last week again, I never have a moment from myself from dawn til dusk and I'm asleep the second my head hits the pillow. This is just a quick update between classes to make points of note:

1) I have a microphone now! SO I can skype with people! In case you missed it last time, my skype account is cassaru. If you wanna chat with me, send me an email (either to my regular email or phone email, but phone email will reach me faster and is just as free) and I'll get online if I can. I don't know when that is though, since I'm still kind of really busy.

2) Next week is midterms. AAAAAAAAAAH. How did that happen? It feels like I only got here yesterday.

3) Week after that is spring break and I'm (probably) going to Korea \o/. (After hanging out with aragorn in Osaka.) Parents: I have to pay the travel agency the money by Friday, is that okay?

4) I went to Kyoto on the weekend and bought the most AMAZING genuine silk kimono. I'm still looking for an obi to go with it. I don't care if it makes me the biggest weaboo ever, I can't wait to wear it to hanami \o/. JUDGE ME IF YOU CAN.

5) I'm going to be making another batch of chocolate truffles again tomorrow afternoon for White Day on Sunday \o/. I know guys are supposed to give on White Day but really I just want the excuse to make more creative chocolate combinations.

6) We're learning how to glaze stuff in ceramics right now. Despite being a painting major, I'm no better at that than at making things \o/. I have yet to make anything I wouldn't be ashamed to show to someone else 8D;;;.

7) Running club is going well! On Saturday we jogged about 2.5km without stopping, and I can now jog for about 20 minutes non-stop before I start to feel strained. Yay!

I think that's most things of note! I'LL UPDATE WITH PHOTOS AGAIN SOON. SOMETIME. I DUNNO WHEN BUT. SOON. Promiiiiise.

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21st year in photos: 24.01.2010 to 31.01.2010

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 14:19:30 GMT

THE LONG AWAITED PHOTO POST... PART 1.

It has been a long time since the last 365 photo! So, picking back up where we left off...

( First week in Japan! )

WHOOOOOOO THAT TOOK FOREVER.

One week down, three more to go! ... Not sure when they're going to get done, but hey. Stay tuned! I know these photos are terrible, but I still haven't loaded photoshop on my computer, I'm just using IrfanView to batch resize and save to churn them out as fast as possible and get this blog up to speed. So I'm not colour adjusting or sharpening or doing anything to any of them. Sorry!

And now it's 11:15 PM, this entry took me an three hours to write, and now I'm going to bed!

ETA: NOBODY SAW THAT ok all the pictures and the HTML borks are fixed now.

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Feel the love

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 02:51:41 GMT

I've been told off from home for swearing too much here, oops. My apologies to the people it offended, I'll try to keep that to a minimum from now on.

So yesterday morning was the start of the running club! We run four times a week in the morning: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Well, the term "run" is probably a bit misleading since we're really only jogging ... really slowly ... but anyway. Weekdays runs start from 7, Saturdays I think a bit later. (Luckily the meeting place is right outside my dorm.) The early factor isn't so bad, because since my class schedule was re-arranged, I now have no sleep-in mornings anyway (all my classes start at 9 or 10 now). For a 9 AM class I'd be waking up at 7:30, and for the running club I'm waking up at 6:45, so... it's not that much earlier. Plus, on the days I have 10 AM classes, it means I have a little extra time to get to do my make up and get to school or do any last-minute homework I forgot to do the night before.

The runs themselves aren't very strenuous yet, we're starting out pretty easy, and I was fine after yesterday's run. But today's was a bit harder and now I'm totally feeling the burn, ahaha. Also I need to go into the city today to attempt to find a sports bra because OW, my boobs. They hurt.

What else has been happening...

In my Japanese speaking class I was told to give a 2 minute oral presentation today on "anything I liked". The last two people who did them gave their presentations on things like their pets, and their winter vacation, which was kinda dull and sleep inducing, so... I decided to do mine on Austarlia's Dangerous Animals (Drop Bears Included). At the beginning of the speech, before you start you're supposed to write on the blackboard any vocab words that the class probably doesn't know, so before I even started the blackboard behind me was filled with things like:

"carnivore"
"to die a horrible death"
"to stomp on the ground"
"to be scared away"
"to drop on you from above"
"to be bitten to death"

And so on and so forth. It was pretty entertaining!

That's the end of this entry, so I'll leave you in total envy of what I'm cooking tonight: Pure deliciousness. Mmmm, omurice.

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Fri, 19 Feb 2010 07:22:17 GMT

Three Things Japan Does Better Than Australia:

1. Toilet seats
Normally number 1 would be trains, but I feel like that's talked about so often that it kinda now goes without saying. But can I just say, heated toilet seats in winter? Are the [REDACTED] best idea ever. Even if the rest of me is freezing, at least my butt will always be warm.

2. Convenience
OPENING HOURS! I'm so used to everything in Australia closing at 5 except for Thursday "late night shopping" nights and a few other special exceptions. Also HUNDRED YEN SHOPS ARE MY HERO. Jus' saying. Unlike "dollar" stores in Australia where things aren't really actually a dollar, just cheap. But you can get just about anything in a hundred yen shop for ACTUALLY a hundred yen. Even in a small town like Hirakata \o/.

3. Mobile/cell phones
I [REDACTED] love my phone. JUST SAYING. If you get on a plan, you have to pay around $200 upfront for the phone? And then after you've got the phone, the monthly service fee is ridiculously small (something like $10? It's either waived or halved for me because I'm on a special contract negotiated by the university, I think, I can't remember exactly) and I can text and call ANYONE on the same service provider FOR FREE. Which is basically everyone I know in Osaka, because all the exchange students here are with the same provider since the uni practically sets it up for you, and it also seems to be the most popular service provider in the Osaka area. Texts to other providers and to email addresses are both 0.21 yen per 30 characters. (For the record, 1 yen is about 1 cent, 100 yen is about a dollar, not taking the exchange rate into account.) Which, okay, 30 characters is not a lot if you're writing in English (though it's plenty if you're writing in Japanese). If I'm not sending a monosyllabic reply to someone, usually my texts will be around 60 characters in English? But that's still only 0.42 yen. Not 42 yen. Zero-point-four-two yen. That's like half of a cent. Yeeeeeeah. It can also surf the web, but I'm near enough to a computer most days anyway that I don't bother.

Three Things Australia Does Better Than Japan:

1. Toilet paper
Japan kind of fails at toilet paper. It's like nobody in this country has ever heard of multiple-ply. I have never found toilet paper anywhere that doesn't feel like I'm not rubbing my nether regions against sandpaper.

Is it bad that my number 1 on both lists are toilet related? Anyone could just wander in here and think that I am some sort of person who spends far too much time on the loo. GOING TO THE LOO IS SERIOUS BUSINESS. Clearly.

2. Insulation
And this is really saying something, considering that insulation in Aussie houses is PRETTY BAD. Australian houses are usually designed to keep heat out, but Japanese architecture is, if anything, even worse. It's understandable in Australia where our winter is pretty much a joke compared to the rest of the world (unless you live in Tasmania, but then, that's your own fault for living in Tasmania) and we have fairly hot summers, but in Japan? Where they get snow? What the hell were they thinking? Japanese houses and buildings are bitterly cold, if anything sometimes it's colder inside than out on a sunny day! You can bet I have the heater in my room cranked up really bloody high. I love my thick futon all night long.

3. Serrated edge knives
I don't know how anyone here cuts avocadoes up or lemons or limes or basically anything you need a serrated edge knife for, because I have searched and searched and I have yet to find one ANYWHERE. 8|a

Fushigi mystery.

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I JUST HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS.

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:33:29 GMT

It has-- somewhat ridiculously, I realise-- only just hit me how completely dependant I am on my journal as an emotional outlet or as a source of talking through my problems or crowing about a good day, etc. I still haven't got internet on my computer over here, and even if I had I don't think I'd be updating any more than I already am because every day just seems busy from start to finish. When I'm not at school or studying (because there are tests almost every day) or doing homework (something I suddenly have a LOT of again; I feel like I'm back in school, only it's been way too long since I studied this much for anything) or sorting my shit out (cleaning, doing laundry, cooking, shopping for groceries-- which I have to do every second or third day because my pantry and fridge is TINY), I'm ... actually having a social life or experiencing as much of the country as I can on my weekends. The second one I can understand, but the first?

Yeah, I'm just as shocked as you are. The words "Cass" and "social life" don't really seem to belong in the same sentence.

Don't get me wrong, that's not to say that I'm going out every night and partying or drinking or anything like that. Socialising here with the international students is a bit different to what passes as socialising back home. For starters, I do most of my socialising in the kitchen. Basically, after class finishes most days around 5, I go grocery shopping for whatever I (or someone else) is making for dinner that night. (If nobody is cooking and I don't feel like it, I buy a veggie, a fruit and a riceball. Or dumplings of some description if I want meat.) Then we get home around 6 and start cooking. The rice cooker takes 45 minutes to do rice, for some reason, so we spend around an hour in the kitchen just preparing the food and talking and then sit down to eat around 7. (By we, I mean the girls that I'm friends with and I. We're a group of around 5, though sometimes we eat with other girls too. The boys' kitchen is on the level below and it's fairly grody in comparison to ours, so we don't venture down there. Mostly they venture up to ours instead.)

After dinner we'll sit around in the kitchen and talk or watch whatever hilarity is on the TV or play cards and then do the cleaning up. By about 8 everyone settles down either in the (now clean) kitchen/dining area or the common room to do their homework or study or surf the intenet on their laptop. (Or in my case, do my homework and study intermittently by helping other people do their homework. Of course, it doesn't help me study for my class, but it helps me to remember more basic grammar points that I might otherwise forget. I don't really know how it happened, but I kind of like suddenly being known as being someone people can go to for homework help, it makes me feel useful and competent again 8D.) The work gets done pretty slowly though because everyone's chatting inbetween homework questions. So by the time I'm finished that, it's 11pm and time for bed, because I have to be up ay 7:30 bright and early for class the next day.

And as for a typical weekend, well, that usually consists of going out sightseeing on both days with my group.

So as you can see, I still don't have a lot of time for the internet even if... I actually had working internet! Which I still don't, but am hoping to get fixed tomorrow. (Along with a cellphone, hopefully, a sports bra, and the ingredients for cream stew! Since I finish class early tomorrow.)

On the down side, I'm feeling pretty emotionally and mentally drained. I'm busy every day and while I am absolutely 100% LOVING every second of it, the introvert in me is really screaming for some quiet down-time, just being alone. And I haven't been really able to update about the emotional side of things and get stuff off my chest because I don't have the time, which then in turn feeds into feeling further emotionally drained! So I'm going to have to make time for that soon. Like the title of this entry (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) states: I JUST HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS.

As it took me five seconds to realise what was wrong with what I had just previously typed ("cheek-in-tongue" by accident), I'd say it's time for em to go to bed. My English gets steadily worse with every day that I'm here, but I'm not sure my Japanese is improving at a steady enough rate to keep up with it. Hrrk.

I'm also joining the running club next week to get fit and lose all the weight I've put back on from eating so many bloody carbs over here (they're unavoidable). Wish me luck! I shall try not to die. (Before that, though, I need to find a sports bra. Maybe wish me luck for that instead.)

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TODAY WAS BETTER

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:35:19 GMT

Good news: today was okay!

Point the first: my bike worked! Hurrah!

Point the second: I threw not one but TWO things on the wheel today without sensei's help :D! (It took me nearly two hours, and they weren't very good, but hey! IT'S AN IMPROVEMENT!)

Point the third: I had a test today that I am FAIRLY SURE I didn't fail! HURRAY FOR NOT FAILING TESTS.

Point the fourth: took my bike to the bike shop and they oiled the lock for free \o/.

Other points of interest: internet is still slow as molasses, the internet has ceased to work on my laptop so now I'm updating from the dorm comptuers, my dorm R.A. is really hot, and I have another test tomorrow so I BETTER GO AND STUDY. Peace outttt

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I'm not actually upset really; everything is hilarious in retrospect.

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:05:45 GMT

AAAAAAAAAUGH the internet here is driving me crazy. It's soooo sloooow. It's fine in the morning! But then at night you have like 200 international students all trying to access the same network at once? And it craaaaaaaawls. It takes me like, five minutes just to load gmail. Ffffff.

In other news: I love being in Japan, you guys, but sometimes you Just Have A Bad Day. Today was one of those days! I:

1) Overslept by 40 minutes
2) Lost one glove-- not both, but just one!
3) Managed to SOMEHOW get ready in time to make it to class by bike despite the massive oversleep, only to-- in my haste-- somehow jam my bike key in the lock and get it stuck, thus rendering the bike unusable (it was fixed this evening, no worries)
4) Realised that standing there and swearing at my bike was not going to get me to class any faster and that I had better start running and promptly did so, and again SOMEHOW made the 30 minute walk to class in a 15 minute near-dead-run, a feat which I would not have been able to do two weeks ago
5) Promptly nearly gave myself something akin to an asthma attack after the fact
6) Somehow arrived in class on time with exactly 30 seconds to spare (I should note here that they take being on time to class here VERY seriously-- even 30 seconds after the bell can get you marked as late, and 3 tardies counts as 1 absent and 3 absents means you fail the class), only to realise that there was another test I hadn't studied for :D!

AND THAT WAS JUST IN THE FIRST HOUR OF MY DAY \o/

We had ceramics in the afternoon, which somewhat unsurprisingly, was also an umitigated disaster. Fun! But a disaster.

So we learnt how to throw on the wheel today, which as it turns out, is exceedingly much harder than it looks! In four hours I only made two pieces, both with sensei's help. I mean, I made countless others but they were all invariably stuffed. It doesn't help that sensei insists on explaining everything-- even all the technical ceramics terms-- to me in Japanese because "my Japanese should be good enough to understand" and I just ... don't ... so I kind of have to guess from the context. On my last try I VERY nearly completely made a third piece all on my own, right down to the finishing step, until the very last part where you disconnect it from the wheel, at which point I screwed up and dislocated the bottom unevenly and it all fell apart \o/. HUZZAH.

So that was moderately embarrassing.

Came home. Had dinner. Studied (for another test tomorrow). Realised that I can't remember anything I just studied. Got on the computer and couldn't load my email because the internet is so slow. Decided to cry a bit on here and shall now just throw in the towel and go to bed.

GOOD NIGHT.

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