あけましておめでとうございまãï¼ Happy new year! Actually by my timezone it’s already almost the end of the first day of 2011 (actually exactly 1 minute left), but a huge chunk of my day mysteriously disappeared in a time slip, so I can only post this now.

Hopefully 2011 is a great year for me because I’m finally heading back to school after two years. Woohoo, California here I come!

My resolution for this year shall be to write more. I feel the quality of my writing has been abysmal of late and I am quite out of touch.

On another note, I will most probably be in Japan from late March to mid April to catch the Osaka leg of Maaya’s “You can’t catch me” live tour and hopefully visit some of the places that I’ve always wanted to see but was too lazy to. And I know that I say this every time, but I think this will really be my last trip to Japan. Ever. Or at least until I graduate from college.

Vol.1 of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya will be released on May 29th. The limited edition will come with some yet-to-be-revealed extras and a box to hold the rest of the DVDs. Remember what Yuki says: You can appreciate Haruhi fully only by using a more advanced data manipulation and transfer device… such as a DVD.

Quote of the Day:

I can’t believe that my fans will do such a thing as to snatch away grains of rice from the hungry mouths of the animators…at Kyoto Animation.

Lelouch is busy with his plans for world domination and harem-building right now. With great powers come great responsibiltiy でãã€‚

I woke up today at 1.30pm. I guess it’s not that bad considering I slept at 5am. Gao. So anyway, here’s how I spent my last day of 2006. (Yet another year closer to my eventual death.)

I woke up on the 31st at 9.00am and left home at 9.30am. かったるい。Arrived at Funan at around 10.20am to help out with Urban Attic’s sale. Tj han was late because his new $80 School Rumble alarm clock failed to wake up him. lol.

LianYL and I left just before the sale started to give out flyers at a certain other location. I told Weiye, the owner of Urban Attic, to reserve a 1/7 Kanu Unchou PVC figure for me because I knew that it’d be gone by the time I returned. We gave out flyers until almost 3pm and returned to Funan. The Kanu was sold out! Apparently Weiye thought I asked for Ryofu instead of Kanu. Gao. But at least I got $50 for my work. Kind of sad that I ended up buying nothing at the sale.

By now the otaku gathering is getting quite big. The group of us walked to Sunshine Plaza where I proceeded to spend nearly 4/5 of my income for the day at KKnM‘s 50% sale.

Two hard plastic posters from Shirow Masamune‘s Galgrease illustration series. They are pretty big. They are almost as tall as the backrest of my living room couch. Still trying to decide on where to stick them…

After the usual otaku chit-chat, we wasted away remaining two hours till dinnertime by lanning Counterstrike. It’s been some time since I last played that game. Then we had dinner at Raffles City. At around 9.00pm, we arrived at the Cosafe Maid Cafe, Singapore’s first maid cafe, where we spent the rest of the night.

It was actually the first time I patronized Cosafe since their opening two weeks ago. I’ve been to maid and cosplay cafes a few times in Japan and I must say that Cosafe felt very different, not in the good or bad sense but just different. It’s an intangible thing.

Other than maid costumes, there were also seifuku, Misa from Death Note and some other character cosplays I couldn’t identify.

I ordered a Milky Vanilla milkshake, but they ran out of vanilla ice-cream, so I became the first customer ever to have a vanilla milkshake made using chocolate ice-cream. Wee.

The tropical penguin

I thought the service was pretty okay, but then again some of the guys in our group were regulars there who knew every girl by name (we got our table without having to wait), so my experience may not be a very accurate gauge. Still, it’s a far cry from all the negative reviews that have been floating round the net. Perhaps the service has improved a lot since the cafe’s opening.

Who’s that Pokemon?

The price is pretty scary — my milkshake was S$7.80 + service charge, though it’s expected since CHIJMES is a pretty posh area with a large number of tourists and expats. On an interesting note, if you look at the current exchange rate, food in Japanese maid cafes actually cost less, but the difference isn’t great.

It’s Tripeman!

2007 started off with a lot of party spray strings and popping balloons
The maids were well-armed

Just look at all the cups

A balloon fight was soon under way. Many died

Lelouch survived

I only drank half a cup of beer because I’m still below the legal drinking age (犯罪でãã‚ˆã€‚) so I was still pretty awake at 1.30am when we finally decided to make a move.

I missed the last train home by 4 minutes or so. At least 30 police officers were clearing out the City Hall train station and securing the entrances after the last train. There were a lot of people still on the streets. Some were queuing for taxis at the taxi stand, but queue was so long that a lot of people just gave up.

I took a NightRider Bus home. It took one entire hour to circle around every part of the city district, from City Hall to Chinatown to Clarke Quay to Orchard Road, before travelling the rest of the way to my house within 20 minutes. Worst bus right ever, but it’s better than being stranded until the first train at 5am. The bus stop was about 2 km away from my house (5 km for tj han apparently) because NightRider bus routes are pretty limited (considering you have less than 10 NR service routes for the whole of Singapore), but I somehow managed to find my way home at 3.30am in a semi-conscious state. Bought a cup noodle from 7-Eleven on the way because I was really hungry. May Haruhi bless whoever invented 24/7 convenience stores.

All in all a pretty interesting New Year’s Eve. At least compared to how I usually spend them. (Asleep and in my bed.)

So anyway, it’s just about 4am here and I had been out since around 9am yesterday. I just got home about 30 minutes ago after counting down to the new year at a certain cafe in the City Hall area. My head is sort of spinning right now.

I need to go and drop dead ASAP, so I’ll only post a more detailed account of my New Year Eve tomorrow today after I wake up, which is probably going to take a while. x_x

So yeah, happy new year and may Haruhi bless us with another year of moé goodness, amen.

But anyway, just one more year till I get out of this hellhole and move into the one next door. God bless escalator school promotion.

I know it’s a bit late, but I was busy playing WoW, so here’re my new year resolutions for 2006! Waaaai! In descending order of importance, we have:

1. Pass JLPT level 1 with at least 80% check
2. Hit level 60 in WoW and buy an epic mount check
3. Trip to Japan in June with Pear (not the fruit) check
4. Buy a PS3 before the year ends failed
5. Buy a Yonah-based laptop (after the price drops to an acceptable range) check
6. Stop making my penpal wait for weeks at a time for a reply semi-check
7. Blog more oftenly check
8. Watch more anime check
9. Kill the creators of Da Capo Second Season
10. Buy Da Capo II (I know, I know) check
11. Do okay for Higher Chinese O’level examinations check
12. Get a GPA of at least 3.8 by pulling up my maths by a bit failed
13. Sleep more failed
14. Translate Gunparade March episode 4…? lost cause

That is all. I do realize that most of my other resolutions are in direct conflict with No. 2… Oh well.