Sunday, August 27, 2006

Trip to Dover

Hey all!

Just got back from a day trip to Dover. It's about a 2-hour drive from my house in South-West London, by taking the M25. An awesome, but long journey. You can take a nap and wake up 10-minutes before arrival; lovely if you're a passenger, but not so much if you're the driver.

Upon arrival, we went straight to Dover Castle, which is an incredible piece of history with so much to do. Too much to cover in one day. One thing I have to say, is that I hate the people who built it, because there are just too many stairs going up, and when you're checking out the tunnels there are just too many incredibly steep walkways. Plus it's dark and I almost tripped and fell over, if it hadn't been for my brother who grabbed me from behind. I was also reprimanded by an old man and his female companion to be more careful, because I could have broken my neck.

We plan on going a second time and covering a lot more during October, which is when they're holding archery; a sport I have had my heart set on since as far back as I can remember. We may also be dragging my friend, Bhavna, along too. Upon deciding to call it a day around 4pm, my mum and youngest brother went to check out information on joining the Heritage Membership, which grants free access to Heritage Landmarks and half-price on certain events. This was suggested by a friend of my mum's, who's a plumber and does work on her houses, that we ran into while returning from the Castle Keep.

My mum then took us to dinner at a Chinese Restaurant, and then took us for a walk along the coast. It's really nice and peaceful, and we plan on making a proper holiday soon; you know, staying at a hotel and stuff, because there's just so much to do and see.

We then headed home and stopped over at Twickenham's BlockBuster, because my youngest brother wanted to get a game. He got 50 Cent: Bulletproof for the X-Box. I don't have to express my feelings about this, other than I really hate these kinds of games. They make idols out of ordinary humans, who don't appear to have any real good qualities about them. They play on racial stereotypes, and are chock-full of bad and disgusting language and highly promote violence against people. It's a game that only my youngest brother would call "cool" and buy. Want to know something completely retarded about the promotion of the game by his truly (50 Cent)? I read that he said that even though the game is rated 18 (for good reason, I might add) he still wants children of all ages to buy and play it...

Anyway, today's Sunday, so as per my promise I checked out Shortpacked! at TNI and found that you have to click "next" to get to the new comic. They have an archive with the newest comic at the top, and so I went and changed the link to reflect this.

Monday, August 21, 2006

Naruto! Believe It!

So, I realise this is pretty late; it was originally meant to be posted last Wednesday, 16th August. Well, thanks to my ever wonderful friend Bhavna, I was hooked on reading a webcomic by the title of Joyce and Walky! The link takes you to the latest comic, which is part of an arc of fun stuff. The actual story started almost 10 years ago, and I'm not going to force you to read it from the beginning. That's your choice. Aw to heck with it, here: Roomies!

As of last night/wee hours of early this morning, I was finally up-to-date with the comic and feel pretty unfulfilled what with the cliffhanger, and some issues related to the personal lives of the characters. Anyhow, not my story...all I can hope for is some out-of-the-hey! miracle.

You'll find three new links under "Webcomics": Shortpacked!, Joyce and Walky!, and Shortpacked! at TNI

I'll check out TNI on Sunday and see how the new comic will be put up, i.e. whether it will replace the current one or if you will have to navigate to it. Depending on this, I will change the link on Sunday.

Right, back to business. I have one other piece of news, but I figure this post will become too long what with having to include my review of the dubbed Naruto (oh God...here it comes, not another fan raving). So, I'll save the other piece of news for like...tomorrow.

Before any of you think that I'm an angry fan, I'm not. Yes, I'm angry, but no, I'm not a fan. In fact my love for Naruto died when the 100+ episodes of fillers were brought in; I kid not...there are really 100+ filler episodes. In these fillers, the characters have been totally dumbed down and Naruto has been turned into your typical "I-care-not-for-authority" sort of character. What really got me peeved was how Rock Lee was really weakened, when he's one of the really powerful ninjas in the village. Oh and don't get me started on Shikamaru.

Anyhow, this is the dub we're talking about, and so the dub we'll focus on. The dub of Naruto was aired on Saturday 22nd July 2006 on Jetix. The adverts were shown about a week prior, and my ears recoiled at the mispronounciation of the title..."Na-ROO-toe", with "Na" being pronounced like it is in "Nathan". I've just been watching subs so long, that english pronounciation of foreign words have gotten kinda on my nerves. What's more is that dubs don't seem to help that at all, I mean...would it kill them to actually have someone teach them proper pronounciation? I don't think so.

The first thing you're exposed to, when watching an episode, is of course the opening sequence. I really liked the original opening, but it's a sad thing that they couldn't get the license to actually use the song. So, I understand that they had to go and make their own one, but they could have made it more...decent. What we get is a pretty bad rockish tune, full of not-so-cool electric guitar sounds, all rounded off with random bits of voice that say something I can hardly make out. What I could make out was the following: "Huh!" and "Fight!" and the rest is pretty unintelligible. Also, the clips put to the "music" was not so cool...I seriously could have done a better job with the opening. I know whining isn't going to get me anywhere, but I really do feel strongly about some aspects. I accept that they didn't get a sweet deal, but at least they could have made a better job of it.

Next, a lot of mispronounciations, but I've already covered that. Ah yes, the title characters voice. Not so cool. It sounded okay to me at first, then it just got annoying and unemotional. You see, because the actress makes the voice kinda scrappy and gravelly, she's compromising emotion. Like when Naruto is kinda angry or summat, he sounds just like he normally does. Oh and when he's crying and feeling emotional? He sounds like he peeved about something. Very bad directing there.

Rock Lee's voice sounds good, I just dislike how they've given him this "I-must-pronounce-every-single-word-I-utter" kind of dialect. Makes him sound like an annoying robot.

The use of "Jutsu". Why could they not have just used the word "Technique"? Okay, so you want it to sound good and true...but if you use an entirely english translation for a phrase, you may as well use english all the way, rather than a 3/4:1/4 phrase.

"The Village Hidden in the Leaves" Too long for my liking. "Hidden Leaf Village" made just as much sense, and sounded better when mentioning the "Hidden Sound Village". I wonder how they phrased it in the manga translations...

Pretty much the last thing to note, would be how they chopped the episodes and threw in their own "neato-mad-computer-skills". They've chopped bits out, which I can live with since the West has different broadcasting regulations, but they've also overlapped scenes to make a "cool" effect. Also, to compensate for the lower episode content due to chopping and overlapping, they actually pause episodes at a certain point while characters are speaking off-screen or thinking.

Personally, I'm not sure if I'll buy the DVD...cool it's uncut, but I dunno. I have a lack of shelf-space as it is, and the series is nearing 200+ episodes.

Oh, also the series sometimes feels rushed. That makes sense, because the license for the series was only acquired early this year, with the goal of releasing the dubs during the 3rd Quarter.

What has me fearful is that Bleach has been picked up by the same studio...

Monday, August 14, 2006

Busy Day

Well, I haven't had an internet connection for the past few days and finally had it sorted out in the wee early hours of this morning. Turns out it was the way we had set up hour phone socket. Well we really only have one main socket and an extension line, so all phone-related stuff is connected to this one main socket. All that will change...soon. We're planning on having another mains fitted in near the PC, so that the mobile phone and router can occupy that and the original main socket will connect the other phone and Sky Digital.

Anyways, yesterday. Yes, yesterday. My mum took my brother, (the older of the two), and me to Southall; the town I personally dub Little India. Why? Well, it's not small enough to resemble China Town, which spans a few streets; it actually covers the entire town of Southall. Everywhere you look, it's all Indian shops and the majority of the population is Indian. Hounslow is quickly being taken over too.

In Southall, my mum wanted to do some shopping, and with that done we had lunch/dinner at Chandini Chowk. The food there was awesome, and the sweets are lovely. I seriously want to learn how to make Indian sweets, and I have two options: 1) Look for lessons/apprenticeships, or 2) Search for recipes and make the sweets from scratch, just like how I make other foods I've never made before.

While exiting the restaurant, a jewellers caught my eye, because of its display. In the window, instead of the regular necklaces, earrings and bracelets that one normally sees, there were two large pieces of jewellery that cover the entire torso. They were beautiful, but ridiculous in that why would anyone want to wear something so obviously heavy? Well, turns out this type of jewellery is very popular among the Lybians and Arabians, and costs around £60,000. Like woah!

After doing a bit more window shopping and looking around here and there, we headed home.

Oh and other reasons as to why I refer to the place as Little India, well...people behave like it's India, i.e. crossing the road whenever you feel like it, especially when a car is not more than 5 metres away from you. The drivers also get pissy really fast and love tooting their horns to indicate this, even in situations where tooting your horn won't result in traffic moving faster.

But I love the place, really...sort of...

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Blood Test Results

So, yesterday I went to the doctor's with my mum to get my blood test results from the last test.

Well, according to the results I'm officially anaemic. My Iron level is 10.5, while it should be around 11.6. A slight difference, but a difference nonetheless.

As such, I have been prescribed Ferrous Sulphate tablets, which I need to take twice a day for a month. At the end of the month, I need to have another blood test to see if my Iron levels have gotten better. To my understanding, upon reading the information sheet that came with the tablets, these tablets replace the Iron in my blood and come with a set of not-so-nice side-effects.

These side-effects include:

1) Possible constipation
2) Possible diarrohea
3) Black...stools...

So far I haven't had the urge to go to the loo, so I guess I'm not experiencing Symptom #2. That means I could be experiencing Symptom #1, but I'm not all that sure. I don't even know if I'm experiecing Symptom #3 yet...and frankly, I don't quite want to know, because the thought of making black poop scares the poop out of me.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Day Out and Brainiac's Test Tube Baby.

Today we (as in my family and I) went to London. We've decided that since it's too late into the Summer holiday, what with touching up the house and my blood tests, we won't be going overseas and instead will try to enjoy our home country. So we planned to spend the day in London, well actually we went to London because the eldest of my two younger brothers has been wanting to go for like forever so he can pick up a book or three. We may actually spend a few days in Dover, just checking the place out and stuff.

So yeah, we went and had a good time, only when coming back did things start turning South. I hate it when that happens; you have such a good time all day only for it to be horribly ruined when you're heading home. Also, I am no longer a Subway virgin...I quite like the sandwiches; what I had was the Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki, yum yum ^_^

I bought Fruits Basket Volumes 9 and 10, and some Fruits Basket Pins, while my brother bought Bleach Volumes 11-13 and my youngest brother bought himself a book on Origami. Yep, he's currently obsessed with Origami, not that I have anything against it, I just really hate how he's using up all the printer paper. Paper doesn't come cheap you know, even the cheap stuff is pretty expensive -_- Oh yeah, by "bought" I mean that my mum bought them for us...

Right now, however, I'm watching Brainiac's Test Tube Baby...I quite like it, seems quite fun. It's trying pretty hard to live up to the original Brainiac: Science Abuse, but unlike History Abuse (which I never liked), I think this will actually survive :) Pretty much all the Brainiac gang is there, except for a few new faces, most notably the presenter.

Oh oh! I forgot to mention in last post, concerning Cars To everyone planning on watching this movie, be sure to stay until after the credits! Also, I really love the OST, it has some very nice songs.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Movie Reviews: Superman Returns and Cars

Two posts in one day?! Eh, what can you do...it's not like I planned on anything else interesting to happen.

Well, I just came back from watching Pixar's new movie Cars, and man I have not seen so many trailers for 3D movies in one sitting. It's like it's all the rage right now o.O

Anyway back to Cars, without giving anything away, I utterly loved this movie. Even my mum loved it, which you can tell by her not sleeping through it (which she kinda did with the last three movies we saw, heh). Actually, I love all of Pixar's movies, they've just had gem after gem, and this one was just as good. It may have played on certain cliches, but it's story was enjoyable as well as the gags; if it's one thing Pixar knows how to do, it's to keep an audience entertained while telling a story.

While I know how I felt about this movie, I can't say much about Superman Returns (finally I get to it). I went into the movie, watched it, had a decent time and came out with mixed feelings. I couldn't tell if I liked it or not; never have I been able to tell if I like a movie or not. I'm not saying the movie was bad, but I don't know if I can say it was good either.

First off, the idea and plot was good. Second off, I liked how it was delivered and how the resources were used. But really, Lex Luthor as your villain kinda gets boring; it's no wonder why people only remember him as Superman's nemesis, he's only been the movie villain for like forever. Sure he's the big bad guy and seriously has it in for the boy scout superhero, attmepting to get rid of him in more ways than one and recurs in the comics, but it would be nice to see other villains step up to the plate...like the Batman movies, you don't see the Joker coming back in every movie. Same thing goes for the X-Men movies...Magneto is their arch nemesis, but it would be nice to see other villains like Mr. Sinister.

Another thing that annoyed me about this movie is that the guys who came up with the script decided to stick their little asses in; it's like they're saying "Ooh! Look at us, we wrote this movie and it gives us automatic rights to be in it, so hah!" I know, that's a bit of a whine, but it annoys me, I wanna watch a movie, not see if there's a cameo made by the guy(s) behind it. Even Stan Lee being in movies annoys me. If you throw Woody Allen in my face, I tell you now, I have never seen a single movie of his and don't plan to. Ever.

I liked the Superman costume in this movie, but I don't like how it makes him look like he's a freak. Have you seen how long his upper torso looks? It's like dude, is there something wrong with your body? Then you realise it's the way the costume was designed...

One final thing, something that I agree wholeheartedly with Bhavna on, is that...why make a sequel in the first place? As far as I know, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace didn't leave room for a sequel. It wouldn't have killed them to make a completely brand new movie and still dedicate it to Christopher Reeve and his mother. There's something about Lois that bugs me, but I can't mention it since there are those who haven't seen the movie, but plan to when it comes out on TV.

So, those are my movie reviews and I'm going to go off to do some stuff, toodles!

Ahh! Blood! Take 2

Today I had another blood test, where my blood was extracted for the second time in two weeks. Let's go back a bit, to last Friday, and explore my results and the reasons behind this second round of blood harvesting.

Well I got my blood test results, for the first round, last Friday. From these results, it was revealed that I do not have a Thyroid problem and maybe mine just swelled up because I was a tad sick, though I didn't feel sick. It was also revealed that my bad cholestorol is slightly high, while my good cholestorol is slightly low (by 0.1 to be exact). Also, I am apparently anaemic...something I did not see coming. A possible reason for this could be because I have quite heavy periods, but something that the doctor found to be quite strange was that the corpuscles in my blood were quite small, whereas in most anaemics it's quite large. So he ordered a second blood test that would check my ferritin level, which happens to be directly proportionate to the level of iron in my blood, to see if my body is actually absorbing iron. Well since he speculated that I look healthy, then surely my blood must be absorbing iron...just not enough of it.

And there you have why I needed a second blood test. Depending on the results, I may actually need to take vitamin supplements...oh joy, you can just hear the enthusiasm. I'm not a very keen pill-taker, I tend to like toughing things out even if it's a mind-splitting headache, though in some cases I do take the odd Ibuprofen, since Paracetamol does nothing for me; it just makes the pain even worse.

Heh, this time around I barely felt the needle, but I did feel it when the nurse took it out. Also, I did the silly thing and had blood taken out of the same arm again, and it feels quite sore. I'm sort of having a bit of trouble typing...the fingers on my left hand feel heavy and slow.