Wow an update many many years later, I wonder if anyone whom I started this blog ring with a long time ago from /jp/ is still around to see this. Just some random day I googled my old username I always use (an embarrassing amalgamation of just my given name plus some numbers, seems so chuu-ni like, except more boring) and came across thy old blog. Feeling nostalgic, and needing to reflect on my life thus far, I feel an urge to post.

Such a long time has passed that I guess I'll update what's been goin on in the life of me. I need something to do to yet again fix a crazy sleep schedule I have, and I'll write in my blog-o-journal to pass the time. Beware it might be very tl;dr, and if anyone's reading this, depending on how far I get before I pass out and nap.

Let's see, since my last post here this was around the time I had dropped out of my College's computer engineering program, and subsequently became super neet. Thus with my /jp/ nakama, concorted this plan of making some sort of dough in the blog ring. I don't know how it works now, but from the pageviews I actually got something of $50 it said for it? But you couldn't cash out until $100, and the prospect of actually making money from it was pretty nil, so I gave up.

Around that time I was actively searching for work too, and I did find it eventually with Safeway (for those not in the west coast USA, its a big grocery store chain). An old female friend of mine's mom used to work there, she said it was alright, and I'd take anything, so when they offered me the job (even doing a position I originally didn't want; deli vs. night-shelver) I took it. I was just happy to have some sort of means to be independent, take a break from school and think over my life. The job was dumb of course, but the people I worked with were cool so it wasn't so bad. I gained some good skills to interact with total strangers, because I wasn't used to it before, but it gave me a push to be more comfortable talking with strangers in general.

Well lets fast forward super far to now, I graduated from Uni finally, not in CS or anything but in a throwaway liberal arts degree International Studies. I just wanted to finish college as fast as possible and that was the way. My intention was to teach English abroad, which is what I'm finally currently doing here now in Taiwan. I wanted to go to Japan and Korea initially, but the process was taking a while so I expanded my options. I had been to Taiwan when I was a teenager; my father is from there, and he gave me the opportunity to learn language and culture there one summer. That's a story in its own save for another time perhaps. So anyways I applied to random buxiban, or cram school here. For those not in the know, basically this is the bottom-of-barrel teaching gigs in Asia, but for someone with no experience like me, you can't bite the hand that feeds you so to speak, when not many hands will even give you anything. Public school or government programs are usually much better but also much more competitive. And I had been searching for a long time... after graduating from college, I went on another extended NEET vacation, but I traveled and yolo'd more, visiting friends across west coast. But when my money ran low, had to couch it up with some friends. They were gracious enough to let me leech off them for 6 months, but that time had to go and I moved back home. It was depressing, but I guess that motivated me to really leave that much more.

So here I am, working at this very sketchy cram school called Gloria English Schools. Granted, its not as bad as it might seem, and some other foreign teachers like me stayed here a long time, so they like it. And I really do love Taiwan too. You get that modernized asian culture at a fraction of the price, and people here are friendly. The arcades aren't as awesome as they are in Japan, but hey, you can't beat the holy land ya know? Anyways, when I got here, I didn't know jack shit about teaching. And they didn't really train me at all. Just observe some classes, and then they throw you right in. I was fine with that kind of unpreparedness of the situation, but they just have ridiculous expectations of you. And it entirely depends on how your coteacher (the native teacher who teaches with you; we don't teach a class alone, which is nice, at least at first). You get a school or teacher that's just jaded and hates dealing with newbies like me, then whelp, they fuck you and don't give you hours. They didn't totally screw me over, I still made enough to get by and save quite a bit, but it could have been better.

Without going into a giant rant (or have I already), basically the take away here I think, is for people like us, work will always suck. Dealing with people enough as it is is really taxing, and when those people really don't like you, for whatever illogical reason it is, it really wears you down. At safeway, even if I was doing backbreaking work for 8 hours a day, if the people I was with were cool and I could be real with them, it let me keep going. Here, and this is an Asia-culturual thing with face and all that, some people here just cannot be real with anyone who is not their immediate family. They act two faced, and will throw you under a bus at the drop of a hat. Its unfortunate this happened to me, and I really want to say my experience was good here. I think Taiwan is still an awesome place, taking Chinese classes at the nearby uni was very enjoyable, but this kind of work, when treated by people like this, is just so demeaning and soul crushing. We're not really teachers here; we're clowns. It's more like a glorified daycare center, but this culture of cram school, and school school school demands kids learn something from it. But they're kids and its not possible to study so much in a day.

ffffuuu ranting again, but I guess I just need to get this off my chest. Point is, working will always suck. There might be an awesome dream job that you can 100% enjoy and have it not feel like work, but I don't know what that might be for me, and I think jobs like that are so rare. But its the people you work with that make the difference. Your coworkers are awesome, and a shit job can be awesome. Your coworkers and management hate you, for whatever bullshit, illogical reason (also noted the vast majority of this school is staffed by women) and its your end. Granted I do have some cool coteachers, but a few sour apples can still completely kill you, especially if its management. And for me, being halfway across the world from my home, friends, and family, for sure affects our psyche here. Maybe I didn't do enough ass kissing at first, or maybe its completely a race thing, as I'm half Asian, and its an established thing in Asia that really discriminates against Asian-American English teachers, because as we know, this place is full of racist ass fucks. America is racist too, but at least we actually have diversity and different people in our culture. For most of Asia, their only view into the west is through our media, which as we know is not indicitive of how it really is. Of course that goes both ways if just watching animoo and we think Japan is some magikaru anime rando, but we're smart and know better than that. Either way, this is what I wanted to do after college, and I'm still glad I did it. I wish the experience working here coould have been more positive, as my other friends and people have had, but I suppose it could be worse. Perhaps too I don't know how good or bad I have it as this was my first gig here.

But there you have it, this is my rant/story of what i've been doing to pay the bills at least. I guess I followed my dreams and goals of teaching abroad here to try it out, but for sure I won't keep doing this. I guess I'll keep studying moonrunes here, learn Chinese, Japanese, and use it to do what I suppose? Or maybe I'll go back to computers since that'd be way better money, and could find a job back in my hometowns in that field. I just can't wait for my last day and go on a yolo vacation all around Asia. Haven't planned it at all, but I'm looking forward to bumming around and not doing this shit joke job.

It's so funny, finding this blog after almost 5 years, and the situation I was in then versus now. I wonder what the next 5 years holds for me. If anyone actually read this, you have my regards space cowboy. I miss being a neet though, those were good times. Just not a very sustainable lifestyle, unless you're very rich unfortunately.

Downloading DDPDFK Black Label

Thing is halfway done downloading as I speak, and really excited to play it, its at 71% now fffffffff. Here have a video of it.

Other than that, I'm sorta sticking to my goals as I mentioned last time. Filling out 1 job app a day online, and perhaps maybe even just walking around near I live if anywhere has a help wanted sign or something. I don't have the courage to straight away just walk into a store should it be like that, I still need to work on a resume for smaller places if they don't do applications. And then the mental preparation for actually talking to someone in a store about it might take me a while too, as that stuff petrifies me. I'm really procrastinating the Japanese studying though, there's just too many games to play at the moment, plus with my irregular sleeping schedule I wake up at 4pm, and I study best with natural daylight but then it gets dark at 5pm so yeah... ;_;

1st of February resolutions

I'm not the one who believes in the whole new years resolution thing; if there's something you want to change about oneself, why wait for some arbitrary number on the calender to change? Unfortunately, I feel like this way of thinking has left me pretty unmotivated to do any sort change by always thinking pessimistically of illogical things like that. But after neeting for a little while, the least I can do is somewhat try to use my time productively, to work towards those silly weaboo dreams of mine like teaching english in Japan or doing something there (so I can actually go to some arcades and game centers that aren't crap, as well as embracing all the things of glorious nihonese culture, and be closer to all sorts of /jp/ goods and merchandise, just like in my japanese animes). But first things first, there's some crap I should deal with such as:

• Getting some sort of job, all I need is roughly $450/mo for rent/food to survive at the bare minimum. This will no doubt be the hardest task of them all
• Study Japanese seriously again, did about a year of it in community college, review all that and continue on my own.
• Get a BA/BS degree in SOMETHING (it does not matter what, its all bullshit) as its required for pretty much any serious gig over there, however I'm butthurt from uni as some of you may know so I won't do this immediately.

Basically dots 1 and 2 are what I want to focus on immediately, and all this will take some serious work. Working hard towards anything not video-game related is extremely difficult for me, so I don't know how much success I'll have. It really is hard to change from my hikkikomori ways, and no Misaki-chan will knock on my door to try to cure those ways so I'm on my own. Especially with Japanese, I feel ashamed for being so monolingual, but every time I try to seriously start up studying it again, I'll do it for a few hours for the day, and then never touch it again for months. And getting a job is pretty hard as fuck considering the shitty economy and all, something a lot of you know looking for extra money to fuel your hobbies. If only I could apply for SSI and neet moneys, but I honestly don't suffer from severe psychological "disorders," besides the usual aversion to people and introversion, and I'm a horrible liar so I don't think I could fake it either. Plus I think ones parents have to be in on the process, and I really wouldn't want them involved.

I'll also try to post more often on here, with progress of learning as evidence that I'll actually stick to this. So far my goal is applying everywhere, one online application a day, and as for Japanese review one chapter of Genki (the textbook our class used) a day, getting through the book in 12 days.

What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

Got the idea from the shmups forums, and thought "if that was on /jp/ someone would reply 'cool blog post' and sage." Well shit, this is a blog so I can make all sorts of cool blog posts, something I don't do often enough. So what are you guys playing? I've been getting way too autistic into Cosmic Break grinding, with some shmups on the side like dodonpachi daifukkatsu v1.5 on the 360, and have Bayonetta coming in the mail soon. Some amusing shots from Cosmic Break:

Problem Mami?

From JPCB, they're quite good at skin editing

Posted on /jp/, this game isn't free from BR's either

DRAM log

No, not about dynamic Ram, but I have a folder called that on my computer for my dreams I've written down. I had a whole bunch this morning, ranging from ronery to aweseome. I'll start with the first:

As the image implies, this one involved Yuri and Tenshi from the Angel Beats! series, and almost seemed like some fanservice SOL anime. It started out as the three of us were just watching TV in which I think was my dad's house, and apparently some cutesy dialogue happened between us and I was thinking how much I love them both but couldn't decide which one I would pursue ala which route to go through. It then proceeded to some sort of bathhouse where your typical animu antics occur and we somehow end up in the same bath and Tenshi is all flustered and embarrassed and it was so hnnnnnng worthy I could die. This wasn't like a japanese bathhouse in your onsen episode, but was a very fancy one that had water slides connecting from one kind of hot tub to another. It turns out this whole place is owned by my former neighbor who I used to do yard work for a long time ago, and I guess because I was trespassing, he made me organize a speaker configuration for some stereo system in the bathhouse, and then the dream ended there.
This dream made me really ronery after waking up because I will never be in that painful situation to decide over between Yuri or Tenshi to show my affection for ;_;  Soonafter I fell asleep to have another dream...

This next one involves me being at an arcade in China. I was in China this last summer as a part of some college program, and one of my fondest memories was being anti-social from the group and going off and searching where the best arcades in Beijing and Shanghai were. Actually I told some about them and took about half my group there to a good one in Shanghai and they all liked it, but in all honesty I enjoyed it more when I didn't have to bring anyone (playing tour guide is not fun and with our limited time, having others always slow down travel time I noticed). But anyways, about the dream itself, I found myself yet again in China after this trip, although I don't even know why but I was at some game center there. I must have somehow just transported there because even all my money was still in USD, and not much use at their change machines. However I met some cool dude there who could speak english and helped me out, we made a deal on the current exchange and paid for some of his Chinese money, to then get some tokens for the arcade. We then played some game I don't remember, and then asked me what kind of games I'd like to play and of course replied with my favorite of Shmups and STG's. He too got excited and claimed he liked them, and showed me that section of the arcade. At first appearance their shmup section looked fantastic, with all dodonpachis in nice viewlix cabs. However, there were fighting games inbetween and those were so crowded with onlookers they rudely took up those shmup cabinet seats just to sit down and watch the fighters, so I couldn't play those. The only thing I could get to was some sort of abomination of dodonpachi, like some incredibly knockoff version of it that had this horrible control system in the cab that resembled one of those "throw basketballs into the hoop as quickly as possible" games, and which you could only move with this shitty dial, and basically it was the worst experience playing a shmup ever. The dream ends there, and overall it was kind of cool having a dream about being in a Chinese arcade again, except that last part.

I'm not the one to seriously psychoanalyze my dreams and see what they mean in relation to my life or whatnot with Freudian mumbo-jumbo, but I wonder if they have any DEEPer meaning other than me just being ronery as usual (in the first one). I've somewhat been recording my dreams whenever I have interesting ones that are worth remembering, and I'll share more in the future if I have any! Usually when I get lots of sleep is when you remember them the most, which is easy to do in my current NEET status.

Normalfag friends inviting me to a party

What do? There will be 3DPD females there

Not dead yet!

Just thought I'd make this filler post to let you all know I haven't abandoned this yet. Perhaps like many other of you, I've been dragged to many family outings for kurisumasu, letting them remind me of how ronery and disappoint I am, so yeah. Our immediate family decided to boycott x-mas this year though, so no one got presents for each other, although I did get some money as a present to NEET that much longer which is nice. Overall these get-togethers make me appreciate my room, vidya, and japanese cartoons all the more when I get back so in that sense they are good, as well as all the free food and getting fat as well. Hope you all survived your holiday outings too!