私の生きた証拠

I managed to get the CPU fan replaced with some Arctic Cooling product (cost 70 bucks just for the fan alone). But after installing it I can understand the supreme sense of fear and inferiority the Soviet Navy felt w.r.t the United States Navy.

I mean - I can barely hear my new fan (unless I strain my ears to hear it) whereas my old fan was easily heard from outside the room. How can you even compare the two to start with? The Japanese expression for this is 桁違い (literally meaning ‘difference in number of zeroes/magnitude’).

Anyway that’s the end of my random post. Okay maybe it isn’t quite so random.

He just said that I sound like a machine he uses at SRP. Right.

I’m now at Desmond-chan’s birthday party at his place, and I am embroiled in a passionate discussion with Mr. Guan Xinyu about the details of Korean pronunciation (since he suddenly brought up the subject of the South Korean Anthem randomly.

I must tell my grandsons the story sometime.

I have decided that I’ll give up all the tea in China just to be with you.

If that isn’t enough I’ll give up on America (yes with its educational and currency-gathering opportunities).

Just don’t desert me or turn me away.

And stay healthy. Don’t let an earthquake or volcanic eruption hurt you.

Good night. Have a good winter.

Sincerely yours,
Pear

Maybe instead of sitting down to write epic entries that’ll never rival DM’s or make any extended sense anyway, why not write short, semi-meaningless posts with a central theme or just sheer randomness?

Hey this post itself qualifies. Perfect as a model.

And I need to do something about this bloody fan. Assuming my CPU doesn’t burn up on me first.

1. Sky Girls really really rocks.
2. Ditto Hitohira.
3. Ayako-sama shouldn’t be aging so rapidly. She must be overworked.
4. May some spiritual entity bless DM for getting me the goods from Nippon.
5. I really really miss Tokyo. I think of it at least once every five minutes or so. That’s way more often than I think of sex and about 2/3 as often as I think of Ayako-sama (whom I cannot by definition ‘miss’, having never known her).
6. Writing a book is a difficult task.
7. Translating things isn’t as straightforward as it seems. And the more you do it the more difficult it looks and feels. Which doesn’t make sense but that’s precisely why I am mentioning it here.

That’s it for now.

Oh and,

8. Sometimes 15-year-old singers can sing nice songs: 水橋舞 (Mizuhashi Mai) sang the ED for Hitohira. And yes I like it enough to loop it.

A lot of things have been going wrong.

1. My computer fans are kicking up a racket. Something’s got to be broken somewhere.
2. This website got taken off the ‘Net after I forgot to pay my hosting bills. I did (in the process typing my Mum’s credit card number so many times that I have it memorised)
3. I’m running out of DVD+Rs. ‘Nuff said.
4. I’m suffering from acute not-getting-enough-of-Ayako-sama syndrome. I’m not like listening to her songs day in day out (as my last.fm record will prove); it’s just that I can’t get her out of my mind.
5. I’ve been reading too many publications relating to Japan and its future. And that makes me really depressed.
6. I’ve been spending my way to bankruptcy at Kinokuniya. ‘Nuff said.
7. I need a new computer. Yes, not just harddrive or random parts, but a brand new rig.

Now to get the budget approved… This reeks of the 1975 Australian Constitutional Crisis… in which I’ll just get dismissed or something.

Whatever.

As of this Christmas, I am officially an atheist.

Some dudes (including Messrs. Chen Yuankang and George Carlin and Stephen Colbert) had something to do with it.

Happy Christmas.

I realize that the categorization system for this blog’s like almost unused at all, and that some fixing is in order, but since it’s Christmas Eve and I am not in the mood I shan’t touch it.

Well, on another front, I discovered a picture of Yamagata Satomi (山県さとみ)! Notice I didn’t place a hyperlink to a webpage - that’s because she’s sufficiently obscure that no one even knows which company she belongs to. The picture here is off her co-star in Touka Gettan (桃華月憚), Ise Mariya’s (伊瀬茉莉也) blog. For the record, Yamagata Satomi’s to the left of the picture (from the viewer’s perspective), standing to the right of Ise Mariya.

She’s cute, isn’t she? (In a normal-person sort of way)

Recall how your first experience at the hot springs was like?

Ok maybe this isn’t a terrific comparison, but I found a song that gives me roughly the same feeling!

If you’ve been paying attention to Japanese TV over the past half a year or so you’d know that there’s this absolutely fantastic anime called Sky Girls (and no I’m not crazy about this series purely because of the cute 15-year-old girls [besides, 15-year-olds are okay for seventeen-year-olds, strictly speaking, BUT THAT’S NOT THE ISSUE HERE]; anyway the 24-episode run has already ended - so catch it as the DVDs are released, or you could ask a certain very nice gentleman I know to help you out… ).

Now, with every anime series (okay, most) there’s a plethora of products released before, along and after it. A character mini-album released on December 12, the 19th year of Heisei features character songs by Ichijou Eika (一条瑛花) and Sonomiya Karen (園宮可憐), who were voiced by Itou Shizuka 伊藤静 and Gotou Saori 後藤沙緒里. Of the six songs in this album (there were another six in another character album feature Ayako-sama’s character songs [and one more but I can’t be bothered with German lolis]) the one that I found absolutely rocked was one by Itou Shizuka, titled 「虹を見に行こう」, meaning “Let’s go see the rainbow”.

Now, while I do like Itou Shizuka very much as a seiyuu (she’s right up there with Ayako-sama, Rie-sama, Noto-sama (Noto Mamiko 能登麻美子), Kuwashima Houko (桑島法子) and a few others. But as a singer her abilities have never been outstanding enough to catch my attention… until 「虹を見に行こう」, that is.

It’s rare to come across a song that excites me so, especially by someone whose voice I listen to pretty often (I watch quite a lot of Itou Shizuka productions, and played To Heart 2). But it might just be the start of yet another semi-fruitless and absolutely futile chase for all the songs ever sang by one person…

By the way, just a note (or personal comment, if you will): the pronunciation of the 行こう in 虹を見に行こう is い “i”, but I just thought ゆ “yu” would make the line better and smoother. Just my personal opinion, anyway.