Life in the Eastern Fantastic Land

I suddenly remembered a very important reason to continue blogging. It seems that in the pursuit of a higher journalistic ideal I have forgotten the most important reason of this blog: to log my own memories. I became obssessed with newsworthiness and failed to realise that significant things are never spontaneously made, they are the sum of many small but beautiful things. Just like Touhou.



Today is TAM's Birthday. Happy Birthdat TAM!.

Just like TAM's birthday video, which tracks his year-on-year achievements, this blog serves a similar purpose, to record my own victories and trials. Of course, defeats will also be logged. It just so happens that today is also an important anniversary.

This time last year, I was in Singapore recovering from the breathtaking Reitaisai 7 trip. School started in late April and by July my foundation programme was complete. In August I became a student on the University of Newcastle Australia, reading Communications.

As time went on I became really involved in school. I still found time to continue being a Touhou fan. I attended various local events, including A.C.M.E, AFAX, Comifest, SOY'C, and most recently, Cosfest X.1.

I've become increasingly engaged on Facebook. You can find my profile here. I've actually taken a lot of photos of recent events, including the 5 events I mentioned earlier, and put them onto my facebook. If not for webs' clunky upload system, I wouldn't mind putting them up here too. It's too bad they make me upload one file at a time... For the half-a-soul out there who isn't sick of seeing cosplay photos, you can find them photos on Facebook.

Just a random crow that happened to be passing by.
Nothing significant about him.

On the academic and journalistic side of my life, I wrote several papers and articles, and made several websites. I am still quite a noob at web programming but this module has me learning flash, which is pretty interesting. I also had the chance to interview face-to-face two Signaporean political bloggers, whose writing is several hundred times more intelligent than mine. These are Gilbert Koh, the man behind Mr Wang Says So and Alex Au, of Yawning Bread. It turned out that my fears meeting these influential online personalities were unfounded.

I also learnt a couple of tricks with video production and editing, both in school and in my own time, and made a little video with some friends in the local scene dancing to Cirno's Perfect Maths Class.



I've also learnt some things about Photoshop, though I am still pretty new to it(that's how I got that first frame with the Cirno Cosplayer and the illustration together). I also made some attempt to learn the piano but have largely realised that it's not something easy.

Those 3 subscribers who actually are real people who follow my Youtube account would also know I've been spending a lot of time playing Hisoutensoku(Touhou 12.3), largely due to the influence of a certain Gravity-free person. On the Danmaku front, I've  been playing a lot of the games' normal modes. I've managed to clear some of them with 1cc, but have been very much stumped by Yukari in PCB Phantasm stage.

I had initially made near-confirmed plans to head over to Tokyo in March for Reitaisai 8. Thankfully my friends couldn't make it at the last minute, because the even was eventually postponed to May because of the earthquake and tsunami. The May 8th event was wedged right into my current school semester and thus I gave it a miss. Nonetheless I kept abreast with the releases online(apologies to the doujin circles who I blatantly pirated) and through deputy services(photos included).

P.S. The trail version of shinreibyou was so easy I managed to 1cc it with Reimu on normal on the first time I started the game.

I guess that's about it for the significant events up to now, and now a little about the plans in the future.

For now, I have been considering whether to attend Summer Comiket and Winter Comiket. I feel that it will likely be a very interesting experience. I've been talking with a more experienced person who has advised that Natsukomi is extremely demanding and Fuyukomi is more relaxing. This, combined with my limited budget, and the fact that Fuyukomi is likely to take place during my term break, means that I am probably going for only the Winter rendition.

Nonetheless, I expect it to be a challenging experience, considering what one guy went through. Nothing more stimulating than a mad rush for limited-edition doujinshi/goods in the morning after a frozen night in the rain, eh?

Also, I will probably be making my way down for AFA, EOY, ACME 3, and any other cosplay events this year..

One very important thing, which I keep forgetting, is to get some kind of name card/business card or cos-card to give to friends and circles I meet. I think it's pretty important, at least if you want them to remember you. I was thinking of some kind of spellcard-like design, but its hard to convery an image of moving or dynamic danmaku with a static picture.... Something to ponder about for the moment, I guess...