I figured I owe Hinano an apology for not playing the Renai Blogger game and saying my thoughts about it up until now, after all the work she’s put into making this, as I happen to be one of the characters in the game too. From the impression I get from the reviews, it seems that Hinano made me more sweet and cute and less flawed than I really am in real life, and I think of that as a compliment I can’t believe she featured Seleria too Then again, who am I to say this when I haven’t played the game myself?!

Last Saturday after I downloaded and installed the game on my PC, I was readying myself to play it, until I got invited by my aunt to watch the Cinderella musical (starring Lea Salonga). For free. Not once since I was born did I get to watch that kind of theatrical performance (or any kind of paid concert), so I thought it was quite a deal! I accompanied my busybody grandmother at home and helped out in doing chores in the house before the said concert, went to my aunt’s house to have an early dinner before going out, came home at 11pm after the show, and hit the sack not long after.

Then came Sunday, and I was greeted in the morning with the news about the real Skip Beat seiyuu cast (and discovery of ANN’s booboo), and it became a slippery slope after that. I went slice-of-life mode and reminisced about The Girl Who Leapt Through Time which I watched in the cinemas last last weekend, and finished up my thoughts on Nogizaka Haruka 1-3 which I’ve started writing since a week ago. Then I read the reviews of people about the Renai blogger instead of playing it myself, and I had such a great time reading their reviews that I already spent hours without knowing it T___T Then it was time to sleep orz. There goes my weekend!

I don’t have much time during weekdays as of late because I usually come home at around 9pm (or I don’t come home at all when I go total OT mode at work), peel apples for my brothers as a semi-daily routine, help my grandmother in the housework, and I have about 2 hours left to spend before going off to sleep. And because I wanted to enjoy the game to the fullest, I kept myself from playing it till I get at least one whole day (or one half-day) all to myself.

And now, just when I was thinking of finally playing the game this coming Saturday, then comes this invitation from a friend of mine to become a substitute teacher in his place (teaching basic computer programming concepts in our university) since he’ll be going on a trip the day before that, and won’t make it in time for his class. Since we’re talking about $70 (USD) at stake here, just for this one-time 9am to 4pm teaching gig, who am I to refuse? (That’s more than my pay at my regular work, mind you) I’m not so sure if I’ll have time to play afterwards, but what I do know is that I’ve set my Sunday free so I can finally play this game once and for all!

I was really excited to play this game, so excited that I was reluctant of clicking that executable button and actually play it because I know I’m gonna be sucked in and I’ll most likely be scolded by my grandma for staying up late yet again, only for her to see me playing lolz. Rest assured Hinano, I will play the game and I will write about it once I get to play it.

And, it turns out that this became a sorry excuse for a blog post, and I’m sorry about that too T__T

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)!!

My friends must have wondered why I was so excited over the chamomiles. I resisted the urge to go TS fangurl mode or I’ll be spouting random nonsense as I tell them that this is the great flower symbolizing the passion and fervor of the Librarians of Toshokan Sensou, as well as our love for the anime!! Seleria hasn’t watched Toshokan Sensou yet, so I couldn’t share my joy with her as well, at least not yet.

But that’s not all there was to the nature park visit we had. Aside from getting closer to nature on land, we also got closer to the skies, thanks to the pure awesome zip line SkyRider +__+ Now I know how those Amazing Race peeps feel in their zipline adventures. I felt like shouting “I’m the queen of the world!!!” throughout my “ride”. It was great, and would love to try it out again!!

The last activity we had was fishing, where I spent about 2 hours before catching at least one fish!! T__T I blame the worm bait I had, it didn’t attract enough of the fishies’ attention. I switched from one place to another in order to find a “good fishing spot”, and settled on the spot where a bunch of kids got hold of a bunch of fishes (They were better than me! what a shame) I was the last one among me and my two friends to catch a fish, so they had to wait for me in my fishing quest. That’s all for the bunny’s furry adventures!

Pictures c/o Seleria and her sexy cam

P.S. I should be able to make a proper anime/manga post by tomorrow… I must!

We all know I’m excited for this event, if my previous announcement wasn’t enough proof. It’s not until recently that I’ve turned into a Wordpress geek, so to speak, and I only have our accidental blog upgrade to thank for that. I’ve been mystified with Wordpress ever since, much more than when I was just a passive user. All I’ve done for the blog is Wordpress tweaking, themes and plugins tweaking specifically, and if there’s one thing this has taught me, it’s that the possibilities of Wordpress (and much about every open source projects out there) are endless. I’m just at the tip of the iceberg in my Wordpress journey, and with the WordCamp, I am hoping to enrich the puny little knowledge I have.

This blog is my precious little baby, if I might say, so what better way to nurture it but to learn THE ways on how to best take care of it, from the experts at that.

Wordpress creator Matt Mullenweg is coming to this momentous event, along with other blogging enthusiasts. Admission is free too. So should there be any reason for you to NOT attend this (unless you don’t live in the Philippines or you don’t reside near Manila)?? Time and inability to commute using the LRT will be the only acceptable excuses.

Organized by Mindanao Bloggers, WordCamp Philippines 2008 will be held on September 6, 2008 (Saturday) at the Augusto-Rosario Gonzalez Theater, 5th Floor Mutien Building of La Salle Tafat College of Saint Benilde in Taft Avenue, Manila.

We owe a big thanks to the following sponsors who made this event possible (and free! ):

• i.PH: the Domain for Individuals
• Free Online Flash Games
• Wazzup Manila Philippines
• Real Estate CRM
• Real Estate Website Designers
• Orange County Real Estate
• Auto Insurance Quotes
• Lane Systems Inc.
• RedMedia

Oh, and you need not be a blogger to attend this event (being enthusiastic for Wordpress is enough). There will just be a different registration track for you guys I think, details of which you’d have to check out the registration page for. So what else are you waiting for, register NOW!

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

To cut the story short, I won’t be able to update the blog throughout my stay here, to make the most out of my free time :3 Just for the record, I lost my cellphone earlier due to twittering. In other words, I used my cellphone inside the taxi to update twitter, and left it there due to my ever carelessness T_T So yeah, that should be all the more reason for me to fully enjoy this trip!

Don’t miss me too much till then ok? I should be finishing my Shugo Chara 30 post and my summer anime selections by the time I get home. Ja!

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.

Free or not, I don’t think I’ll be able to eat these chocolates (if I ever had the chance of owning it, that is). It’s exhibit-material! It’s the kind that you preserve and put on display, for life. Only not-so-avid Shugo Chara fans will have the heart to eat this I believe. Then again, we can make a DIY version of this so we can eat it without much remorse. My lazy self just can’t do that, at least not now. If I was in a baking spree like I was years back, I probably would’ve made a Haro cake based on the recipe I got from Newtype by now. Then I probably would’ve made my own Antique Bakery or something.

In connection with the Peach Pit Kodansha celebration, there’s also a Desktop icon set (and wallpaper) up for grabs in Peach Pit’s site, so you can go Shugo Chara-nari your PC while lamenting over not being able to get one of these Chocolate eggs. I wish they made the icons aqua version instead, but then beggars can’t be choosers. The wallpaper looks lovely, nonetheless.

P.S. This must be one of the first few posts we have dedicated to food. It might be a good idea to dedicate a space of the blog for these real scrumptious stuffs, and live up to our name.

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 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!!

On the left corner! I saw SaiKano, and a few volumes of Greenwood. GRAB. There were also a few scattered One Piece, Naruto, Ppoi and HatsuKare volumes, as well as Hareluya Boy, etc. but I wasn’t really interested in those (Thank God).

And on the right corner! Behold, the shoujo mangas *__* There was a complete set of Basara, KareKano, Koucha Ouji, Kare First Love, Baby Love, Alexandrite, 18 volumes of Perfect Girl Evolution, some mangas by Waki Yamato, among others. When I saw Basara… I was mesmerized. It’s one of my ultimate fave mangas, which I still have to get my lazy ass to write a noteworthy review about, so yeah, I grabbed the entire 27-volume set .____.;; If I still don’t have the entire set of Alexandrite I might have bought that too And if Tokyo Crazy Paradise or Skip Beat was there, I would’ve grabbed them instead of Basara. Once I get rid of my HanaKimi and My MVP Valentine chinese mangas (interested buyers can just contact me ), or the Vampire Knight japanese manga even, I might just go purchase the entire TCP set which I’ve been dreaming of for years now.

It was a real affordable deal, considering that the mangas were still in good condition. They’re second hand, so discolored pages and some scratches on the cover is to be expected, but the quality is good nonetheless. No pages were torn, all pages are clean, etc. I might just resell these mangas if I plan to buy the bunko versions of these old school classics instead, so as early as now, if anyone is interested in these stuff I bought, feel free to contact me and buy them from me

Carrying these pile of mangas were such a pain. Imagine carrying about 40 volumes of manga, along with my commute adventures. My arms still hurt =__=”’ This is what I get for buying these stuff without thinking of the consequences T__T

And in case anyone is wondering about the rest of the mangas I saw, there was also 22 volumes of Blade of the Immortal, Kaze Hikaru, Shin Angyo Onshi (complete set I think), City Hunter, etc. Oh and note that all the mangas are in Japanese.

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.

Those exceeding government limits — 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women, which are identical to thresholds established in 2005 for Japan by the International Diabetes Federation as an easy guideline for identifying health risks — and having a weight-related ailment will be given dieting guidance if after three months they do not lose weight. If necessary, those people will be steered toward further re-education after six more months.

To reach its goals of shrinking the overweight population by 10 percent over the next four years and 25 percent over the next seven years, the government will impose financial penalties on companies and local governments that fail to meet specific targets. The country’s Ministry of Health argues that the campaign will keep the spread of diseases like diabetes and strokes in check.

This news was brought to my attention the other day by an officemate who suddenly wept and mourned over his inability to enter the Land of the Rising Sun overflowing with otaku-milk and honey now that this Fitness Law has been passed. “Now it’s a sin to be endowed with great fats and muscles?!”, cries the young lad. I guess the rise of the obesity rate from 3% to 10% became so alarming for Japan that they were prompted to pass this law and make their country obese-free. And next thing you know, they’ll be banning chocolates to promote good health.

On a positive note, this means that oldies, parents and grandparents will be forced into a healthy and active lifestyle in order to stay fit and meet the aforementioned requirements, considering that 41% of Japanese people hardly exercise, according to Danny Choo. I just can’t help but think that this is some scheme by Nintendo to get more people into WiiFit.

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.

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 ^^

Mark your calendars everyone (those who are interested of course)! The event is scheduled on the 6th of September 2008, to be held in College of St. Benilde (DLSU-CSB), which is right across my Alma Mater I’m really happy with the venue they chose, really convenient for train commuters like me. Otherwise if it’d be held in UP or Mike’s Alma Mater (Ateneo), traveling will be quite a pain.

The schedule of activities is yet to be finalized, but whatever the organizers have in store for us, I’m certain that this will be a Wordpress/blogging-enlightening event ^__^

For more info you can just visit the official Wordcamp Philippines site.

So, anyone else in the local area who’s planning to attend this event?

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 Kure-nai 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.

Geez you purist coward novel fag fan. I was being civil and you STAB me behind my back, SHAME ON YOU!! If the one who did this is *that* one person I’m thinking of, shame on you indeed. I was close to becoming your fan because of the novel spoilers you’ve been giving, and you give me shit. Thanks pal!

~raging bunny, now signing off!

P.S. Please don’t mistake this post as a rant against the novel. The novel is good in its own right, and there really isn’t much loli pedo vibes in the source material either. There are a little additional innuendos in the novel, the introduction of the vulgar terms ‘condom’, ’sex friend’ and ‘lolicon’, and some naughty (yet innocent) remarks from Murasaki, but that’s it. The anime did show some of these innuendos in episode 5 as well, so they’re pretty much at par in this aspect.

P.P.S I’ve gotten over this now, and all I can say is… I love you faggots <3 Thank you for trolling my post!