Friday, May 29, 2009

We're gonna keep an eye on this



The rate was .81 when I signed my contract a year ago, meaning for every NZ dollar I earned, it was worth .81 US cents. The rate has since plummetted to .42 at its worst I believe...... But it's climbing again. Let's hope it keeps on going!

Thursday, May 21, 2009

The Current Jam

It's thursday, i'm going on vacation tomorrow, but until then i'm stressseeddd. Gotta finish a couple things at work before then etc etc... Anyway, this song came up and made me a little happier, so I wanted to share.

The strokes- Under Control. I fucking love this song right now.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Ratatat

Hullo out there. Last night Joe and I went to see Ratatat right here in Wellington at Bodega bar. I was very very excited to go see a band that I am actually familiar with come through here! I hadn't been to Bodega before, it was a pretty cool venue inside. BUT everybody was like 20 and under. I just turned 25, and Joe will be 27 soon, and well... I felt old. It was sort of okay, I accepted that fact. It was just interesting to witness it, and feel it for nearly the first time. At work most everybody is in my age range or older. I'm rarely surrounded by "kids"...except of course if I happen to be out on Courtenay at night.

Perhaps I'm at my quarter life crisis. And perhaps that's why I chopped all of my hair off. I haven't taken any pictures and I know people don't read they just look at images, but too bad. You can just imagine me with really short hair for now. I like the cut though, I don't have to worry too much about what my hair's doing.


Here's some media to accompany this post, it's Ratatat's "SHEMPI", incredibly weird video, but this is a taste of my evening last night.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

What's going on?

Lots, and Nothing :P Haven't done anything crazy really... Joe and I went to the south island back in February, with Brandon visiting us. It was a lovely time, but it was probably well enough documented on their facebook albums... That and I'm lazy.

Currently I'm very into two things- sculpting that wolf girl project I talked about a year ago, and I'm back into studying Japanese. I'm attempting to save my language study for any time that I am -not- able to sculpt... But.. I haven't been the best at sitting down and sculpting, hence why I am not finished after pretty much one year of being on the project. I don't really feel that the images are worth sharing just yet, and I have a lot of changes in mind... Soon, though... Soon I should at least have the skull done, as I'm borrowing a replica skull as reference and I said I'd return it soon..

I got myself a Nintendo DS Lite. I hadn't rushed to get a handheld system for years since I realized I never really use them except for maybe an hours worth on the rare plane flight.. But while studying Japanese, I came across this super nifty gadget




It's a device that scans text and translates it for you! Better than the average denshi-jisho, because if you come across a Kanji you don't know, you can simply scan it and find out. Otherwise it's a much longer process trying to look up an unfamiliar kanji since you don't know the phonetics of it to base a search on...
ANYWAY I didn't end up getting one of those because it was like $500... but I found out that with a Nintendo DS, you can get a dictionary program that allows you to write in the kanji and have it looked up in the dictionary! Not as instant...but pretty good, and cheap! (That, and I can now waste time solving puzzles with Professor Layton too...)

So now I have a NintendoDS lite, ice blue, with pink crystal hearts dangling from it. It matches Sammy, my poor bicycle, quite nicely. I will have to update this post with pictures, because my DS is super cute :)

Quick nihongo lesson:

"Saikin, nani ni hamatteru?" What are you into recently?

"ikerukadouka wakaranai" I don't know if I can go or not.
"~~kadouka" whether or not

I learned these phrases from "Learnjapanesepod". It's a podcast run by Alex, a fun British guy and his native Japanese friends. It's very enjoyable to listen to because of their sense of humor, and I come away with useful little phrases. They also do "Fun Friday" in which they talk about Japanese culture for the session instead of language lessons. Highly recommend it!

http://japanese.libsyn.com/ (the archive of podcasts and shownotes)
http://learnjapanesepod.com/ (the new website)



Anyway, I'm doing just fine, but I miss my dear friends back home <3
looking forward to my brother's visit this month!