Chasing After Rainbows

These past few years, I have traveled to several regions and countries that are quite far away from home. As I traveled, certain aspects about how different a place may be from what I'm familiar with is become more apparent. Things that I take for granted too. Depending on what country it is, cost of living may be lower than where I'm from. Although, if I'm unfamiliar with the currency of the country, that can be a hard thing to tell, especially if the rates are not dividable by 10 without a remainder. Well, 2 and 5 too, but that requires more thinking. However, some products, especially ones produced from my country, or an another country, may be more expensive than back home if you calculated the exchange rate of the price you see there. Although, for some places, spending $100 (around there, and something like that in other currencies, and stated price might be before/after tax, and if the store participates) would allow you to refund the tax. While planing for tra...

This month, I had taken a lot of pictures with my new camera. However, something happened about 1.5 weeks later that caused the memory card to become messed up. Cause is unknown, but I'm sure it has nothing to do with the camera itself as it wasn't in it when it happened. However this caused the data on the memory card to become corrupted. Except for those taken on two days, pictures were mostly recoverable.

People usually don't see me angry. When I do, it would be because of the frustration of things I dislike built up over time. My tolerance is high, so that means it would take a lot for that to happen. Of course, understanding the situation is also a contributing factor too, but it does built up faster if the anger of others are directed towards me. If it to someone I had known for a while, it is usually for the things that has been accumulated over time that I had previously tolerated, but the most recent being too much. Example: once in a while is okay, but too much of it is unacceptable. Maybe I'll let it slide if enough time has passed, but if done again before then, my tolerance level is pushed closer to the limit. In other words, try to tolorate, but if if kept pushing towards the limit, let them know. If enough time has passed, but still no improvement, it would be better to move on instead of still holding on.

Having come across many things in many different languages and culture, I got exposed to several languages. Being exposed to at least more than two languages, I saw that words could not be translated directly, different sentence structure, requiring context that needs to be understood to be able to translate properly, and things that are just not normally used. When thinking of what to say in a language, it would be different in an another. However, language proficiency and knowing the words to use does affect what to say. If you're seriously thinking of learning a new language, don't just learn "hello" or "where is...?", learn how to say things like "The rental rates seems expensive" and understand what the reply would be. I've experienced the language barrier while I was in Shenzen (深圳市; a Chinese city north of Hong Kong). Every sign there is in Chinese, and there isn't any other language besides terrible English. Roughly being ab...

Dad, I want you to sell the car instead of getting a new one for the following reasons: 1. Tax 2. Depreciation in car value over time 3. Maintence costs, including other expenses and inconviences that may happen because of it. 4. Cost of fuel rising and pollution it causes 4a. Calculating the cost per liter, and fuel consumption, it's already clear that a train fare of the same distance is less. 5. There is a direct train form the house to the workplace, and the time you head to, or leave from, work is within operation hours. 6. Parking and toll fees 7. I usually never hear you taking the public transport. Don't you see the expenses? You probably don't as total price per trip is not shown in your face. Can't you at least see the price of fuel and parking at least? I don't know how much more money there would be in the household as you had drove cars for about 15 years now, and a motorcycle for some number of years before you married mum.

I currently have an assignment that's to due quite soon, and most likely a test a week after. Also, I'm having a hard time thinking of what to write for it. I am thinking of writing of part 11 of "Tearful Promise" (6th story), but nothing has actually been planned or written yet. I'll start doing it when I can. Keep an eye on my twitter profile for updates, and the little things that indirectly affects me writing it. Updates for my blogs should have a #twitter hashtag.

If you were to look at the URL of this blog, you would find that the odd name of 'the1iam' being used here. You might be wondering why that is being used, or why takhsiru.blogspot.com points to my anime blog instead of here, or the current @THE1IAM user on twitter is someone else. Well, it dates back to when I created this blog in 2006 and that name was chosen simply I couldn't think of a creative original name. In fact, 'the1iam' was the name I used when I first signed up for twitter. Long time followers of me there would also notice that I used 'asuna888' between that and now. Unlike quitting, changing the username also means that the former username is available to others. This means that my former usernames has been snatched up by other people on twitter: 'the1iam' by an African man, and 'asuna888' by (fortunately) my sister. I had used 'takhsiru' since 2010.

Browsing through the numerous twitter accounts, I came across quite a number of people that self-proclaim as an "otaku". Looking at their description, I can't help but to notice that mainstream anime (eg. Bleach, Naruto) gets mentioned a lot. With services like Crunchyroll, this has been diluted as people are more exposed to a wider and more recent ones. I've been cleaning up my room for the past few week, but progress is rather slow. This is not only because of the usual daily things, but not having the mood to do it or being distracted by something else. From what I've cleaned up, I've accumulate about 5 bags (the kind you get from shopping at the supermarket) that has been filled full to the brim filled with things that I now realize are just trash that has accumulated over the years or things that don't work now. They each seem to have quite some weight. There were some things that had been thrown out, but cleaning up one area messes up an another, ...

On March 6, I was discussing with other Twitter users about how I've been to McD. I've said this before: I lived and grew up overseas until recent years. If you were to convert the prices of the same meal to a common currency, I would say that the country neighboring where I grew up in is a lot cheaper than ones in my homeland. Oh, and what is this " country I grew up in " and " home country " I kept mentioning, but didn't give details about? I'm not telling, but I've dropped hints around. ( Hint: Photo on the right is of an outlet of a place called Ameyoko) Somethings wrong about how I grew up: My foreign language skills are a lot more fluent than the native language of my family. I'm even writing in that s a id foreign language right now that even I'm scared of how good I am in it. I know enough that I'm now surrounded with bad English (though I've seen worse ). I could have grown up in my homeland, with a completely d...

You know, it has been almost 4 years since I have graduated from High School * . The time passed since then is obviously longer than the time I've spent in it, but it's somewhat the best time of my life. Walking around near where I live, past schools and students in uniforms makes me recall about it. Kind of sad to think that the amount of time passed since graduating is longer than the time I had spent in it. Primary school seemed like an eternity, but looking back, I don't really remember what happened. In fact, in the working world, people usually never talked about what they did earlier than High School. There's no mention about Primary or Middle school unless they have children in it. I was taught to speak English since young (before kindergarten?) and with a method more effective than the schools at home. (Maybe it's the age they started learning it.) Dad could speak it, but with the accent. As for the rest of the family... Let's just say that they don...

Well, I figured that this blog is starting to look dull with most of my posts lacking images or videos, so here's a picture of a train at the platform. Writing stories for this blog started just like any other post that came before it back in... I forgot when that was. August 2008? I don't remember. I wanted to put in illustrations or pictures, but it turned out that it affected the quality of the content or spent too much time finding the suitable image that it died quietly. The schedule of me releasing my blog stories is originally when I felt like it. It's quite short compared to the more recent ones. Now, it's supposed to be once a week after the previous part that might be for an another story, but, instead, I do it every other Sunday. Then again, I have never actually gave out an actual schedule. I do mention on my twitter profile once in a while with a #takhsiru hashtag in it, but I usually give a blog story number instead of the title of the story itself....

I've come some old photos of my family from before I entered primary school (小学校) . The people in it seem different from what I had always known them as. The majority of these photos that were taken before the 1990s were starting to become brown/red-ish. Roughly, there are about 2000 images of them. Restoring the above-said images is time consuming due to the vast quantity, and amount of defects on the photo at the time it was scanned, it could take forever. It's very hard to restore them, and certainly very difficult to make it look like their digital counterparts. Not counting phones with camera below 3 megapixels, nobody in the family had a camera until late-2003. Imagine how excited I was, despite memory card space volumes back then being tiny for today's standards. I have even seen some rare photos of my mom and dad from their high school days (separately of course), and a set of grandparents that had died before I was born. Shame I don't know anything about them...

Even though I have been out of the house longer than I had been since last year, I've notice that my family's utility bill has been increasing. I can't be the culprit as I always unplug after use. On closer inspection, it's hard not to see why: LCD TV and the audio system is in standby overnight instead of being unplugged. The TV is apparently turned on only in evenings too. The power "bricks" of already-removed appliances at hard-to-reach-places are still plugged in even though the other end has already been removed for some months now The router has never been switched off since it was installed almost a year ago. Wonder how much power it consumes over the older one? Parents always switch on the air conditioner at night during summer, before they go to sleep (A major source?) and wearing jackets. Sometimes, I find that the fan or radio in the kitchen are left running when the place is obviously not in use Desktop PC in the living room is left idle, not...

My 21st birthday less than a month away and how times seem to have passed. My memories before 2006 weren't clear: probably the trauma I had that year that had the old me placed aside. My stress level was so high that my mind couldn't handle it and probably made me forget things. I don't even remember anything from kindergarten and primary school other than what the place looked like. I don't remember the names or faces I've met. What I've learn has so much become a part of me (languages, etc.) that I kind of forgot where and how I learn it. My coming-of-age-day was just earlier last month, and my mind is saying that it's still winter even though the heavy rain and the hot weather of summer. It's like the time has been fast-forwarded. Coming across a (64MB) memory card that had media relating to Spring 2007 anime, I realized that it was from more than a year ago. I was thinking that it's still 2007 or 2008, but it's already halfway through 201...

Since around 2005 until January 2010, there has been someone who has been copying everything I did and claiming it as theirs, even the way words are phrased. It started from a particular site the both of us went to, but never knew each other, that allowed customization to the profile layout. At first, it was just a random "view other people's profile through another" thing, but I was shocked to see how similar to my profile it is, or a revision before the current one. I kept a close eye on the situation, but careful not to alert that I'm being copied. As I was creating the initial version of the "Anime Watch List" with text as transparent background PNG images (the site didn't support non-ASCII characters then), it became more apparent that the person is copying me due to the blue or white background being added to the copied image that is mostly due to IE6 ( yes, the browser most business stubbornly still use today despite 2 newer versions out already...

For the past few weeks, I seem to be loosing things without me noticing, it's like there's a phantom thief at my workplace. The value I lost from this mysterious thief (or thieves) is about 36000 yen worth of things. This includes my 3rd gen iPod Touch you might have seen me being upset about around then. I've also lost some high-denomination notes too, but the low-denomination ones are still there. The problem is, I don't even have a clu What a bunch of dishonest colleagues of mine. When lending my stuff to people, I have to look at the location and situation. More importantly, their personality. With my colleagues, there's a 20% that my stuff would be returned. This has been dropped from 75% and above when I first came. Heck, those colleges already gave me a bad first impressions during my first few days there. A lot worse than the people I've met during my studying years combined. I've lost my emotions for many years now that I don't know what ...

From what I have read, I might have aphasia ( 失語症 ). I don't know why my spoken vocabulary is a lot different than my writing vocabulary, with the former being more limited. In fact, just trying to speak alone takes up a lot of effort. My mother said that I had a seizure somewhere just after I was born. I don't know the exact details of it though. What kind of aphasia do I have? As you can see, I can write meaningful sentences and not add meaningless words in it. If you had read the stories I wrote here for the past 20 months, or my Twitter posts ("tweets") for the past 15 months, you would have known that. Then again, I can't write as quickly as I type. Of course, I can understand speech too, or you wouldn't have noticed me talking about it unless it's about a silent film from more than a century ago or post screenshots with subtitles on it. Who knows, I'm not an expert in the medical field. I might not even have it, but the symptoms mentioned are...