I had the luxury of going to Eden nature park during my Davao trip, together with the hamster chef and another friend of ours. We took this opportunity to go on a guided shuttle tour around the vast land of Eden, where we felt really close to nature as we roamed around its beautiful botanical gardens~ There I had a close encounter with… the great chamomiles (or so that’s what I think it is)!!

I seem to have been living under a rock for not having known about the ongoing registration for WordCamp Philippines 2008, which started last week! Hope I can still make it in time for the 350 participants cut-off with this registration!

I was thinking of posting this yesterday but I didn’t quite have the leisure to do that due to my busy work and scheduled trip earlier today… to the clean and green Hamster’s Den! So yeah, I basically crashed in the hamster chef’s comfy cove (together with another friend of ours), and I’m gonna be spending a whooping 5 days here (today is the 1st day, the hamster chef Seleria fetched us from the airport, served us Scrumptious food, toured us around +___+). Tomorrow is the hamster chef’s birthday, and we’re going to spend most of the day in the Pearl Farm

I was doing a random Shugo Chara Googling today when this Scrumptious-looking Shugo Tama chocolate caught my eye in Peach Pit’s blog. *___* It was given away as free presents for damn lucky bastards in Japan in connection with this Peach Pit or Kodansha celebration, or whatsoever event I don’t really care anymore because the said promo has ended. Not like we can grab hold of it anyways, so let’s just all stare at the pic and imagine what this Theobroma chocolate egg tastes like.

Partial view of the crapload of mangas I bought

So yesterday I went to Manga Kissa, a local manga cafe in our area which is now closing down because their contract in the Philippines has ended (or so said the lady in the counter, or was she the manager?), whose existence I never really knew about until I heard about it from Zeroblade orz. I’m not really up-to-date with the local anime/manga scene so it’s not surprising that I never knew about this .___.;;;

In line with this, they put all their mangas and magazines for sale, a clearance sale of some sort, from 50 pesos (roughly 1.10 USD) when they first announced this closing down news in this year’s ToyCon, to 20-30 pesos a piece (roughly 0.5 cents (usd)). I wasn’t really expecting anything when I headed out for my little manga-shopping adventure, so imagine my surprise and shock when I saw the piles of mangas there. It felt like I was in a mini Mandarake!!

A pizza fat CC is fine too.

From NY Times:

Under a national law that came into effect two months ago, companies and local governments must now measure the waistlines of Japanese people between the ages of 40 and 74 as part of their annual checkups. That represents more than 56 million waistlines, or about 44 percent of the entire population.

Just a random plug to get this news around.

To all my fellow countrymen, [current and future] Wordpress bloggers and enthusiasts, I bring you good news of great joy! WordCamp is coming to the Philippines!! To those who don’t know what WordCamp is, it’s basically a Wordpress conference, organized by fellow Wordpress enthusiasts, for fellow enthusiasts, where you’ll get to learn tips and best practices on Wordpress development and/or blogging.

We owe a big thanks to the organizers of this event, a group of Mindanao bloggers who were also behind the success of the 1st Mindanao Blogging Summit held last year in Seleria’s hometown (Davao), for bringing WordCamp here ^^

Yoshitoshi Abe is one of my favorite Japanese illustrators. He is famous for his work in Serial Experiments Lain, NieA_7, Haibane Renmei and Texhnolyze.

One thing that I like about his art is the degree of realism in it. Compared with most anime/manga art which are simplistic in portrayal, Yoshitoshi Abe’s art has a lot of detail. It takes you to worlds beyond ours!

FACE MY WRATHH!

I never really intended to rant but sigh…

I was randomly checking my animesuki forum profile today when I noticed that I was given a negative reputation for my comment regarding episode 4 (and also episodes 1-3 if that person reacted to my deep-frying post), for praising the anime for the changes it made to the novel. It was way back April, but I just noticed it now. He/she gave this justification for deeming my post as realll baddd: “censorship is bad. approving it is even worse.” What’s this, have I lost all my freedom to choose which of the anime and novel I prefer now? Mind you, I wasn’t outright bashing the novel, I was actually showing both sides, with a strong leaning towards the anime. And what do you know, I’ve watched till episode 6, noticed bits of the novel that was changed or wasn’t included, and I thought how nice it would be if they included that (the scene where Murasaki got hurt, the elaborate details about Shinkurou’s past, etc)! ARGGHH. T___T

I couldn’t care less about the reputation stuffs, really, but I do know for a fact that I do not deserve this negative reputation. It’s not like I b*tched, like “Down with the Kure-nai novel!! you filthy book filled with pedo loli vibesss!!!!” Ok, so you (whoever you are) disapprove the censorship in the anime. Is it because you favor the additional innuendos in the novel, among others? Whatever your reasons are for preferring the novel, it’s your opinion, and I respect that. Respect mine too. Am I not a free citizen entitled to my own opinion? You’re like censoring my opinion too, with what you did.

While my fellow chef absolute0 prodded me to join MyAnimeList months back, lazy old me didn’t get to update my list until recently. While Owen and his constant MAL preaching did get me to stop bumming around MAL-ing, I’d like to think I did it for the sake of my fans (LOL!). So yeah, feel [...]