Randomness

As promised, some screen shots I took while playing the Princess Maker game. From top: Having a conversation with the prince outside the castle, dancing with the prince during National Day celebration and having a Christmas dinner with the prince.

Also, I updated my shoutbox at the right there - feel free to spam anything in it =) I'm also in the process of designing some buttons and a banner for my blog, so please wait for it~

Oh ya, I just finished reading a book titled 'Memoirs of a Geisha'. I normally do not read books written from the first person point of view unless for academic purposes, because I simply do not like the word 'I', 'I', 'I' being constantly badgered around, and the revelations of their private emotions could be a little irritating if the author is not so skillful =.="

Still, this book fascinated me from the very moment I picked it up. First of all, the beautiful, almost surreal cover.


Besides, I have a passion for Japanese culture, and learning about geishas do not hurt, literally and figuratively. Some have the perception that a geisha is nothing better than a prostitute, but that's quite far away from the truth. From the first day of apprenticeship, they learn all the etiquette of a geisha, involving playing musical instruments, the arts serving tea, bowing, and a whole lot more.

What I really like about the book is the funny expressions the author uses in similes. To give you an idea: "as afraid of fire as sake must be of a thirsty old man", "as uncomfortable as the dog Taka must have felt when he swallowed a needle and Auntie and Grandma put their fingers in his throat to get the needle out", and lots more like that =D Besides, the author has a unique way of describing the things happening from Sayuri/Chiyo (the leading character)'s perspective which does not make people feel that he's forcing the details on us, but rather making us appreciate and imagine it vividly in our minds.

All in all, if you are looking for epic tales of romance, adventure or mystery, this book might not be your cup of tea. However, if like me, you appreciate a tale which contains historical facts, illustrates the lives of people during and before World War II in Japan, walks parallel to reality without being too dreary, then 'Memoirs of a Geisha' is definitely for you.

If you can't stand reading books (this book is really thick), you might opt to check out the movie adaptation of this book, which I didn't watch because Zhang ZiYi starred as Chiyo/Sayuri, and not a Japanese. Being one myself, I'm not prejudiced against Chinese though, I just think that a Japanese might be able to portray the culture and perspective better :)

By the way, I'm celebrating Chinese New Year, and today's New Year Eve~ If I'm up to it I will take some photos and post them in the next few posts. Gong Xi Fa Cai everyone!

I love you, Saray!!!

Remember my rant about not being able to see the words in Princess Maker 4? One friend of mine performed a miracle on my laptop, and suddenly all the words turned up perfectly =D

For those of you who are as clueless as I am, and if you are using Windows Vista Basic, go to Control Panel --> Regional and Language Options --> Administrative --> Change System Locale --> Choose the languages that you want. Now, I can even type in Chinese < 3

The friend who accomplished this is a teacher-in-training cum doujinshi artist. *advertising* You can see his site here. *CLICK*

After being able to understand the game, I played it immediately after classes yesterday for 6 hours straight, experimenting with all kinds of interaction, between my daughter and her friends, and the loveliest part of all is: I know which button to press to accept or reject the bishie's invitation for a date. And I got the marriage ending with the Demon Prince < 3 A rough translation of what he said when he first met my daughter was: "We were meant for each other since the day we were born"...and there's more, but I'm lazy to translate them.

My internet connection is retarded right now, and I can't upload the screenshots I took D= Next post, maybe ^^

Ah, and does anyone like Ayaka Hirahara? *hint: The person who sang the opening song for Saiunkoku Monogatari "Hajimari no Kaze"* I just love her voice - her vocals are so strong and moving, and you can hear her earnestness in every word. Well, I found a great site for downloading J-pop and anime soundtracks (there are more of the former though) and I downloaded her album "Path of Independence" < 3 If you like her voice, you should definitely go and download the album. Some of my favourites are...I can't really name them, because I love them all < 3

You can get her album, plus many other albums of various J-pop artists here


*shakes fist at retarded connection*

Wild Night

I mentioned in my last post that my friends and I smuggled some shandy into the hostel, right? Well, I finally deigned to upload some pictures I snapped of the empty bottles and write about the event.

Let's start with looking at the photos:




We drank shandy to celebrate Chinese New Year. Yea, I know, we are really early xP But it's all about having fun, isn't it? So, we toasted each others' health, single status, wealth and prosperity, and friendship. It's a great experience, and makes me feel eager for Chinese New Year too =)

At the same time, I also took the picture of my room, which my room mate went crazy and decorated her side of the bed with posters. Lots of them. I wonder how she is going to take them all off when we have to clear the room during semester break ^_^"



That's all for now~

P.S: The faceless body you see in two photos above belongs to my room mate >3

Windows Vista Basic =.="

I don't have anything special to write, so I will rant about my Windows Vista today >3

I'm currently using a Dell Inspiron 1420 laptop bought for RM 2599. It comes with 250 GB, 2 GB RAM, an Intel Core 2 Duo T5750 processor and Windows Vista Basic. Only until today have I realised that I can't type in Chinese (Mandarin) with it, though I can read normal Chinese words on display. Still, sometimes, the characters will turn out funny for me - imagine a foreigner swearing at you in a foreign language, without using the symbols '!@#$%^'....Yea, it's something like that.

So it turns out that I just bought a game DVD, which is 'Princess Maker 4'. The game is essentially about you being a father (I know, I belong to the female species, but the game still sounds fun) to a daughter which seemingly comes to you because your ex-girlfriend/wife gave her to you for some reason (I will explain why I sound like a retard/person with Alzheimer's later). When the game starts, your daughter is already 10 years old, and your butler helps you to take care of her too. It's hard being a single parent, isn't it? You get to schedule your daughter's life - either you let her work, go for training, go on vacation or rest, either at home or in town. All the decisions you make will affect her stats either by increasing or decreasing them. And believe me, it's hard to increase the positive stats without decreasing some of them.

Now the problem comes: I can read Chinese, and the game is patched in Chinese. However, only a small portion of the words are displayed in Chinese, while the other essential ones (such as dialogue, people telling you how your daughter is progressing in her studies, are displayed in boxes. Yes, they are square boxes which only the computer and a genius can read. As I can't really understand Japanese (they speak in the language), I can only guess what is happening. I ran the game on my friend's laptop with Windows XP, and the characters show up perfectly 0_o Isn't that discrimination?

Then, I tried to download the Chinese language for my Vista, and the official website stated that it is not available for Vista Basic *shakes fist at whoever made that decision* and that means I still can't understand the game.

Even though all this happened, I still played the game a couple of times and had a different ending each time. Still, it was hard for me, especially when I have to make choices. I mean, how do you choose between the top and bottom choices when both say '00000' and '00000' (imagine the 0 are boxes).

Despite all these, the game is really nice to play. From what I gather from the pictures, you were a warrior in the past, and your ex-girlfriend or wife gave the baby to you because she was going to die soon or something, or maybe it was because you belong to different worlds. Then, some of the jobs available are really funny, like working on a farm, being a maid, working in a casino, being a private tutor and lots more. Somehow, I feel that I'm using my 'daughter' to earn money =.="

Apart from jobs, you can also send your daughter to classes. From fighting, etiquette and magic to dancing, it's kinda hard to decide what skills you want spend money on to develop in your daughter. I usually go for Magic though, it helps me get into the demon world easier.

Your daughter has a stat called 'Fatigue' - when you send her to classes or do errands, her fatigue will increase slowly. If you are not careful, she will fall sick and spend the whole week in bed. In Princess Maker 4, time is precious. Really precious. Still, letting her rest is the most fun part in the game. You can either let her lounge around in town, or bring her on a vacation. The former is free and you get to meet a lot of people (which means more job opportunities and more fame, another stats) while the vacation costs 30G per day, which is really costly unless you work your daughter to the bone to let her afford this vacation =D When your daughter reaches 14 years old, she will start to meet guys: from left - the demon prince, the old school human charming prince and the dragon prince < 3


On a positive note, I just downloaded the English patch for the game, and hopefully the whole game will be displayed in English for me next time =) If it does, I will post the screenshots on my blog.

By the way, yesterday my friends and I smuggled some shandy into our hostel. The word 'smuggle' is used because alcohol is not allowed in the hostel, together with all the stuff which are 'haram' (meaning something like illegal in the Muslim context). Not only that, I went and buy a J.D. Robbs/Nora Roberts book 'Creation in Death' for RM 19.90 too. I just love her books, and the couple Roarke and Eve Dallas is just my favourite in the fictional world < 3 Imagine the woman, marry Roarke but not taking his surname o_O And they lived happily ever after......I'm just kidding. They have had some disputes, mainly about their jobs, as Eve is a lieutanent while Roarke is the owner of a multinational security company, and he specialises at hacking. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the story is set in the futuristic world, somewhere in 2060 I guess.

Wish me luck in playing Princess Maker 4 - assignments have not been given out yet and I have a lot of free time on my hands =D

Starting Off

Oh well, to be exact, this is not really my first post. When I first created this account, I had no idea what a blog is all about, so I posted my fan fictions in it >3 That was two years ago. After the second chapter, I kind of abandoned this account and gradually forgot about it.

Around December 2008, I was inspired by Eva's (chibimisao) to create a blog after viewing hers. I like the layout of her blog pretty much, and blogging seems to be a fun thing to do ^_^ After a while of memory-digging, I managed to remember the password to my account, and voila, I deleted my fan-fictions and now, I will start anew.

Nothing much has happened today though, so I will start off with a brief introduction about myself. My real name is Huijia, but I'm more known as Yukina on the Net, and I'm going to turn 18 in June. I'm currently in a TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) programme ini IPBA, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Ah, and the most important thing about me is: I love Eyes Rutherford to death < 3 For those of you who don't know him, he's a character from the anime/manga Spiral: Suiri no Kizuna. You might have guessed by now - one of my hobbies is watching anime/reading manga. I also love to play the piano, violin, read novels and work on computer graphics.

I'm normally a cheerful, friendly person when I feel like it. If you are one of my friends, I won't hesitate to help you when you are in need. Still, you should be warned that I'm highly obsessive, especially about Eyes Rutherford, and I won't think twice about murdering someone who tries to snatch him away. I'm just joking...or am I?

Lastly, I will list my new year's resolution for 2009 (so that I won't forget them xP):
1) Be more active in blogging
2) Complete my wallpapers and computer graphics in progress. (Link to my AP account)
3) Work on my stories "The Curse of the Phoenix" (I know the title is cliche, I will change it once I have an inspiration) and "Her Most Beautiful Smile"
4) Take a more active part in class activities and hopefully improve my presentation skills.
5) Save money to buy a Wacom Bamboofun tablet by June
6) Eat less and exercise more :3

Ah, I'm also part of the Student Council this year, although I can't imagine someone as lazy as I am becoming one xD

This is all for now. Hopefully, my next post will have some photos in them, and also more interesting content ^_^