Nyanko's Basket

I haven't posted in a while, because I have been way too busy with work and other things, but here's a quick update:

- meerkat is coming on Friday for the weekend!! This makes me *very* happy and I've been planning things for both of us to do over the weekend! (as well as frantically cleaning up my place)
- wao is coming in December for a month! This is great news because I haven't seen her since February and she's been very envious of Belle and my general cat-ownershipness.
- Speaking of Belle, she's going to be getting a big sister tomorrow! I am adopting Lillian from the King County animal shelter in Bellevue (near the post office!) and bringing her back home tomorrow. It'll be fun getting both of them used to each other's presence!
- I bought an 8GB Zune on Monday. It's a nice blue color and I really love it! The interface is definitely much improved from the first and second-generation models.

I also have a lot of photographs to post, but I am just going to be lazy and link you to the Flickr sets individually.

( Cherry Blossom Festival )

( Sheep and Tulips )

( Woodland Park Zoo )

( Fanimecon 2008 )

( Seattle Mariners baseball game )

( Hypericon 2008 )

( The Grand Canyon and Arizona )

( HeroCon 2008 and the San Jose Sharks )

I just stumbled across this site after haplo3k mentioned it in IRC, and it totally appeals to my senses! For one thing, it's all about rescuing cats from being euthanized, and I can have my own long-distance cat too!

Project Cat: Our Story Thus Far
Project Cat: THE RAFFLE

I'm planning on donating it, and I've sent an email to the person running the project with some questions before I commit.

edit: I donated $150 to the project, and now I'm deciding which cats I want to sponsor by looking at the pictures on Project Cat - flickr. This is going to be really interesting...

edit2: They did it!! They raised more than $1000 to trap, neuter and release the feral cats!

I've had a really exciting weekend, although it was pretty tiring ^^;;

I went to a cheese and wine party on Friday night, and I met several people from IRC and had a really good time sampling various cheeses as well as a few glasses of wine. It also helped that my friend has 4 cats and they're all very adorable. ^_^ There was also some really cool Wii Sports and Katamari action, in addition to Gears of War (in which I was actually surprisingly decent for once). Now I want to buy a Wii and a PS2

On Saturday, I went to an annual picnic organized by Microsoft which was really exciting though it was more of a family event. ^^;; I had a great time there with itsacz and some other friends from work. After the picnic we went for dinner and had a really nice pasta while some people played mahjong. I can't play it though. XD

Sunday was pretty quiet except for catching up on sleep and playing some of the new scores and CDs I've got recently. I might post more about those soon. ^^;;

Next week will be pretty interesting since I won't be in the office for about half the week. Let's see if anything happens to my office. XD

This was totally not prompted by another trip report posted elsewhere

I met relsqui and testing4l on Friday afternoon at San Francisco airport, where they were picking me up from even though they don't actually live in SF. We had a nice time overall, eating at several different restaurants (a Jewish deli, a real Chinese restaurant, Pizz'a Chicago and a Mongolian BBQ - twice!), and I really enjoyed hanging out with them and having fun together. :)

I played Guitar Hero and Gran Turismo at their place, and although I didn't exactly do well in either game, I did enjoy myself lots. :) I also watched testing4l play Okami and Tony Hawk and he seems to be quite good at both.

The highlight of the visit was going to an impromptu "game night" that a friend of theirs organized, and I learnt a few things there:
- I definitely can't sing country music at all without failing totally.
- There are actually people who can sing country songs well, and perhaps more scarily actually know most of the songs featured in Karaoke Revolution Country.
- Somehow, I seem to do much better at singing songs featured on American Idol
- Karaoke Revolution is very addictive~ And a very good way of breaking the ice, even when I totally fail at singing country duets and the person I was singing with looked more and more embarrassed ^^;;;

[Edit: I totally forgot to mention TheTech Museum! >_< It was made of awesome and win, both for all the exhibits - how often do you get a chance to design a car starter, especially one that starts the car when the door is open? And whacking spam (literally) has such a therapeutic effect~ - and for the loads of fun I had there (including being in an 'earthquake', playing with lots of coloured foam tubes, and lots of other stuff). The IMAX movie we watched ("The Human Body") was also jaw-droppingly awesome, and I would totally go back to TheTech again just for the IMAX experience. XD I also bought several shirts and other things to remind me of my visit and to wear when I run out of clothes.]

( Photos while I was there! )

I wish I had been able to stay longer, so that I could have seen more of California, spent more time with them and their cats, and even gone for a ride in the famous MR2. But it was still a good experience. :)

There was a minor scare at the airport when I thought I'd left my cellphone in their van, but it turned out that it was actually in a pocket of my bag. *embarrassed laugh* One unexpected benefit was that I got an exit row seat because there were three passengers on my flight who were willing to give up their seats and take a later flight...

I got home at around 1:15 am on Tuesday morning and promptly crashed in bed. XD

On Wednesday, there was a Korean documentary, 송환 (Repatriation), that marked the end of Korean movie screenings for this quarter and which I went for even though I was probably the only student in the audience.

( More about the documentary )

I hope that I'll be able to take Korean classes again next quarter. ^^;; And in other news, I'm going to be playing in a cricket match on Saturday. o_o

So, I got my email accounts and most of my work environment set up today. I feel much more productive now that I can actually read documents and get meeting reminders. :P

I also had a great dinner with my aunt and "uncle" (actually her friend), as well as his son, his wife, and their two children, at Kabab Palace near NE 24th Street (next to Performance Bicycle Shop and around the corner from the Malay Satay Hut of itsacz fame). And there were leftovers, so I don't need to worry about dinner for the next two days! ^^

This video is made of awesome.

Today was a pretty good day, I suppose. :)

And a question for people: How do you sleep without a fan? I'm finding it kinda hard to fall asleep when I have a heater in my room, but no fan to circulate air.. ^^;;;

Today, while going to my optician to send in my glasses for new lenses, I decided to take some pictures on my journey. This is the result. :P

( Canal no. 5, anyone? )

The visit to the optician was pretty uneventful (I have to go back on Thursday to collect my normal frame with new lenses), but on the way back, I had an opportunity to test out the "kids & pets" scene mode of the camera. :P

( Cat #1 (somewhat shy, not very friendly) )

( Cat #2 (very friendly and somewhat aggressive towards other cats, especially when someone's stroking him) )

Yes, I am in love with those cats, and I'm going to miss them when I go.

And finally...

( Spot the difference? )

I feel that I must say this: Cats are all sophisticated ladies and gentlemen, or Aristocats \o/

Especially for idealist:

( Neko-Shinku in all her glory ^_^ )

Also, the idea of having Shinku write a blog about herself and activities in her life has been floated. I'm not sure how I would be able to write without introducing some spoilers (especially for those who haven't watched Rozen Maiden: Träumend), though. That's something that needs to be worked out. ^_^;;;

But this is still an interesting project and something I'd consider doing. In fact, I already have some ideas for the first few entries. :P

Number 1
袋の中が大好き！ (It loves in the bag.)

Number 2
いい顔に撮れました (It was possible to take it influential.)

Number 3
拾ってきました (It has picked it up. )

Number 4
庭で小さい猫を発見
そしたら更に小さい猫が陰に……
なんつぅか中学生で子供産んじゃった
みたいな感じ
餌あげたけどヤンママ猫が一人で食っちゃうし
仔猫に分けるとかは一切なし
仔猫一匹てのも変だし、上手く子育てできて
(A small cat is discovered in the garden.
Then, it is feeling like that a smaller cat is a child supply
secretly and gives birth by the …… junior high school student.
It is none. all the alone division of the food Yammama cat into
eating Neco
Can strangeness, and good one Neco bringing up a child of)

I got my laptop repaired for free on Tuesday after waiting for about an hour. It needed a new motherboard, so all my files are still here. ^_^;; I should make a backup soon, though. Maybe when I have a little more time.

On the way home after buying some computer and audio cables, I stopped by the side gate to my condominium complex to see whether the cats were there. For those of you who haven't heard this before, there are three stray cats that live outside my condominium and they are absolutely adorable. :) Two of them are black, and one has a white patch of fur on its underside while another has a clipped ear, while the other non-black cat is a black and white one.

Anyway, the cat with the white patch decided that it liked my bare foot and nuzzled it with its nose. That was ticklish, to say the least, but more was to come.

I squatted on my legs to stroke the cat, and it attacked my side with its nose! ^^;; That was really too much for me to contain and I started laughing and backed away from the cat a little so I wouldn't hurt it. I don't know what it thought of the whole experience, though. Perhaps it was thinking "I will never understand these humans..." :P

Later that night, I went with my sister and cousin for an ice-cream treat at Haagen-Dazs in Holland Village (which is open until 12 am, not 10:30 or 11 pm like I thought) because my cousin was leaving on Wednesday afternoon, but we drove there and back and so I didn't see the cats. It was a very delicious treat though, as I had a Black Forest-themed ice-cream consisting of one scoop of brandied chocolate and another of chocolate together with some cherries, two chocolate sticks and lots of whipped cream. :)

When I came home today, all three cats were there again. The friendly one nuzzled my leg and rubbed itself over my boots while purring, and the other black cat decided it wanted to sharpen its claws on my boot. o_O Fortunately I was able to persuade it not to, and then I bent down again to stroke the cats. I guess I should have seen what was coming. :P

The friendly one attacked me with its nose again in my side. This time though, it aimed at the...softer part of my side. ^^;;; I really couldn't resist laughing and I nearly picked up the cat to cuddle it in my arms and stroke it endlessly. I didn't though, because it was already dark, being after 8 pm, and I was hungry.

I came home tired and somewhat worn out from a very long day, but lightened by the experience of being tickled by a very friendly black cat and by some other things that happened, although this entry isn't really the place to talk about them. :P

Speaking of cats, I believe I've seen 12 so far. There was 1 cat on my first day in Manila (it was preening itself on a table shamelessly), and I saw 7 cats at UST during the finals on Tuesday, and so far I've seen 4 cats around UP Diliman and in Ateneo. They're all mostly harmless, but very timid and run away as soon as I try to approach them, although I did manage to take some photographs of them (and thus wao should be happy).

Today I went for the adjudication test that determines what kind of adjudicator I get (chair, panelist or trainee) and we watched a taped debate as part of the test. The sound was generally okay, except that some speakers really tested the limits of the camera's microphone and I had to strain to hear some speakers. :P

After that, the debaters in our contingent went to spar against UPD and SMU, and I went along to adjudicate. We returned around 5:30 pm and got changed quickly to proceed to the opening night and cultural item.

While I got there too late to see the cultural item, I was still able to take photographs of myself and the others there while having dinner and then came back. It was good and I'm looking forward to tomorrow when the debates proper start. :)