AIKBA! A day spent navigating up and down one cramped, crazy multisensory, multifloor store after another. Akiba, the venerable Mecca of otaku the world over, was a long street filled with tall skinny buildings all trying to outshout each other as throngs of geeks made their way down it, occasionally vanishing into one of the shining, gaping maws that awaited them. Was it an eye-opener? Most certainly. Would I want to go again? I'd say yes, but my wallet is sitting in a corner screaming "No! No! NO!" You figure it out.

We spent the day there, going in succession from Kotobukiya, K-Books, Gamers, Asobit Chara City, the @thome maid cafe, Toranoana, and Animate. Each of the shops was overflowing, absolutely overflowing, with varying portions of CDs, DVDs, games, manga, doujinshi, hobby kits and character goods. The madness didn't end where the merch did: the walls, the stairs, the gantries, even the interior of the damn lifts were literally plastered over with posters, ads, prices, and more anime than the eyes could stand. I didn't take many pictures of the places we went: where the hell would I start? Akihabara is not a place, it's an experience.

The absolute best part of our day was the time we spent in the maid cafe. We weren't actually planning on going, but we needed to find a place to sit down and sort through the stuff we'd bought, and we had been given directions to the place by my sister's otaku guy friend, so we decided to give it a try. What we found inside was a delight: the maids were cheerful and friendly, who held a rock-paper-scissors game for all the patrons, taught us to do a little "MOE, MOE, KYUNN~" handsign-and-chant thing before tucking into our sweets, and talked to us despite our general failure in speaking Japanese. One of the maids serving us saw us sorting through the b00bies doujin we'd bought and told us she was a fan of the series too (she liked Lockon and Patrick). When she saw the Tieria-centric ecchi doujin menelvir had bought for me, she said "Banshi ni attai suru!" Which was the title of the doujin, but left us all in a fit of senseless giggles anyway. menelvir asked another of the maids about the ring she was wearing which was this little thing with a faux macaroon on it, because she wanted to see if she could buy one like it. But it turned out that the girl had made it herself, and then she insisted on giving it to menelvir. Oh man! We left the cafe feeling slightly guilty about it, but also completely bubbly and giggly-- it gets infectious. I highly recommend visiting this cafe if you're ever in Akiba, it takes up several floors on a building on the left of the first big cross junction after coming out of the station. (@thome cafe's website)

The worst part of the day, if I had to say, was probably our time in K-books while we were browsing through the used CD section, which was also in the doujin and character good section. That place just gave off... weird vibes, from the body pillows on sale to the shelves of hentai stuff all over, and the men there who were giving us all sorts of strange looks. We three were the only girls in that entire half of the store, and it felt really skeezy in a way that the normal, non-yaoi hentai doujin part of Toranoana didn't (even though the latter had ginormous nipples on display everywhere you looked. Everywhere, I assure you). Maybe guys would have been comfortable hanging up, but we certainly weren't.

What else can I say about Akiba? By the end of the day we had bags filled with anime merch of all sorts, gotten entirely sick of the theme songs to K-on (they were playing in every shop we went into. EVERY shop), and spent more money than we had capacity to not feel guilty for. I'm just thoroughly glad that I'm not a huge fan of any of the anime series that have come out this year, or I would be much, much poorer.

( Pictures of the shops, and my swag! )

And finally, a catalogue of the stuff that I couldn't take out and photograph in public. I have no idea why I thought making a video of it would be a good idea, since I hate my voice and how dumb I sound when I talk, but there you go.




Today's flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jyyang/sets/72157618685353139/

Tomorrow: Ikebukuro, and a butler cafe!

I've had my 3G-enabled iPhone for about half a year now, and I've gotten used to having the Internet in my pocket: instant access to email, IM, Twitter and LJ no matter where I am in the country, even sixteen feet underground on a moving subway train. Nifty? You bet. I've sent work emails while on the bus to the train station, browsed ontd_political on the cycle machine at the gym for breaking news during the election season, even carried out 2 IM conversations while jaywalking across a busy 6-lane traffic junction. I've done lots of neat stuff.

But it was today that I realized the iPhone's true, gobsmacking potential for awesome.

The backstory: in the morning my boss pounced on me and announced, out of the blue, "Around four-ish today we're going to our partner studio to discuss the project we'll be working on, you and I." Fine and well. I'd been there before, not a big deal. 'Cept for the part where I had exactly six hours to jazz up the project pitch I'd written a week before so that it would be presentable.

But I pulled it off. Skin of my teeth. Sent the final document to print at four on the dot. Breathed a sigh of relief, started packing my stuff in order to hit the road.

Then Bossman came up to me and said, "Alright, you'll be joining us at the studio for a short while to pitch your story. After that, you'll be taking this to meet my wife at Dempsey Road for another project meeting." And he handed me a mockup sample of a book we wanted to put into printing.

Meet her what where?

He explained in the cab on the way to the studio. Botanical Gardens, British embassy, Gleneagles Hospital... somewhere in that vicinity. I nodded. I knew the general area. Big fucking wilderness somewhere in between a nature reserve and downtown. I have a hard enough time navigating urban areas with right-angle roads and plenty of landmarks, much less remote suburbs with road layouts like birds' intestines. Just great. I got the bosses' wife's number, figuring that I could call her in the very likely event I got lost on the way.

We met up with the studio guys, I pitched my thing, it all went well. 5.30 my boss said, "I think you'd better go. You know the place, right? It's at Dempsey Hill... some place called Jones The Grocer."

No, I didn't know the place, and I had no idea why there would be a meeting in a grocer's place, either. Fantastic. Full of misgivings, I hailed a cab from the street. "I'm going to Dempsey Hill," I told the driver. "Someplace called Joe The Grocer, I think."

He frowned at me. "Dempsey Road?"

"No, Dempsey Hill. Er, it's near the Botanical Gardens, I think."

"Oh. Okay."

I got in, clutching the book mockup, and he drove off.

Half an hour later, as the taxi idled in a snarl of traffic just off the Botanical Gardens, the driver said to me, pointing out the windscreen: "Look, it's all jammed up down here, all the cars trying to turn into Dempsey Road. It might take another half-hour just to get all the way in. Why don't I drop you here, and you can walk right up? Dempsey Road is just up that hill, and you'll get there faster walking." And he waved his hand in the direction of the window, where a path by the road led up a slope crested by a car park.

I got out of the taxi. See, the thing was, I did recognize the place. I had been there once, when we had a joint company dinner at some fancy Indian restaurant with the folks from Animax over the LaMB project. At that time, I had been in a producer's car, and he had known where we were going. And we had gotten lost on Dempsey Hill, because the area was a labyrinth of tiny curving interconnecting roads all labeled "DEMPSEY RD", peppered with dozens upon dozens of chi-chi little eateries and specialty shops snuggled against each other. Finding the hill was not an issue. Finding the exact spot we were supposed to go on the hill itself? Not so easy.

I dialed my bosses' wife. No answer. I remembered what my boss said: she would be starting the meeting without me, because of my pitch. She wouldn't be picking up the phone.

So. There I was. Alone, standing in the middle of the road with my book mockup and my lousy sense of direction and not even a clue as to whether I was to meet them in a cafe cleverly named Joe The Grocer's or an actual grocer's shop. Fuck. It looked like I was screwed. Dead. Done for.

And then I thought: Hang on, doesn't my iPhone come with a Maps application? The one I thought I'd never get to use?

I slid the app panels over and tapped on the Maps icon. Splash screen came up: "Maps would like to make use of your current location." Another tap: ALLOW.

A target icon flashed up for a few minutes, and then: a big blue dot on a satellite picture of the big fucking wilderness. Why hello there GoogleMaps. I switched to pure Map view, and here I was, on an unlabelled road parallel to Holland Road, and there it was, the fabled tangled multi-tongued self-consuming ouroboros of Dempsey Road, not a hundred meters ahead.

I began walking, and as I walked, the big blue dot started to move. In the direction away from Dempsey Road.

"This thing," I said to myself in wonder, "live updates itself! Holy crap!"

I reoriented the map in my mind, and started walking the right way, towards Dempsey Road. iPhone before me as I tracked my progress, I felt like an extra on the set of a Star Trek film, holding up my tricorder as scanned the vicinity for Joe The Grocer's.

Up the main fork of Dempsey road. A welcome fountain, with dozens of little signs pointing the way to various eateries. A tiny blue one read: JONES THE GROCER. Fine, Jones the Grocer, not Joe. I had remembered the name wrongly, with a hearty "fuck you" in the direction of Joe The Plumber. The blue sign had a little arrow that seemed to be pointing in no particular direction at all, so I continued down the road in hopes that Jones The Grocer would eventually show up.

Five hundred meters later and coming to a curve in the road that vanished somewhere in the horizon, I realized that with the dozens of shops in the area, I might take hours on foot to comb the hill and find the one I wanted. There was no-one around to ask for directions, except for the occasional passing car. And even if they knew what I was talking about, I was lousy with remembering directions.

I looked down at my iPhone screen, and saw a big blue button labelled "Directions". And thought, ah, fuck it. What have I got to lose?

I dropped a pin on my current location, fired up Directions, and in the "To:" field, filled up JONES THE GROCER. Not even an address. Just a painfully generic name. With a shrug I hit ENTER and sent my request flying out to the wide world with its million places that might be associated with "JONES" and "GROCER". My wild shot in the dark.

The map came back. A red pin appeared. A thick purple line, down the roads. And the words: "408 m 1 minute".


Follow the purple brick road! [1]

I realized at that moment that my iPhone, like Jack Sparrow's magic compass or Sophie's ring in Howl's Moving Castle, was showing me, live, a guide from where I was to the place I wanted. Every single step of the way.

I started walking. My blue dot started moving down the purple path. Down, down, down, until I came to a very Frostian fork in the road. I started down the one on the left, and I watched as the blue dot wandered off the purple path and into the grey unmarked wilderness-- a side road so insignificant it didn't even merit showing on a street directory. I went back, took the road not travelled, and the blue dot resumed its journey down the Road To Jones The Grocer.

"Holy fuck," I said, lost for all words save sacred profanity. "Holy flying fuck."


Lay on, MacPhone!

The walk, in fact, took me five minutes, as the instructions given had actually been meant for a car. Tapping on the pedestrian symbol gave you the exact same thing, except that the route was labelled "408m 4 minutes". 1 minute for photography. No separate paths for pedestrians-- everyone was expected to drive in. Too crazy to make it in on foot. Apparently.

Jones The Grocer turned out to be a fancy affair that sold both light meals and provisions, situated in a cluster of outlets at one of Dempsey's many stump ends. I walked in, triumphant, to find the bosses' wife in animated conversation. She seemed to delighted to see me. "Oh, you managed to find your way in here!"

"I did! I followed my iPhone's instructions!"

"I didn't know it could do that."

"Well, neither did I. I'm really impressed."

And I truly was.

You can only imagine what this discovery means for a geographically-challenged halfwit like myself. I don't have to go crazy finding places that are hard to get to anymore. Like middle-of-fucking-nowhere industrial complex offices. Or thurisaz83's house, one semi-detached in a labyrinthine estate of hundreds, fondly nicknamed "Longkang (rural storm drain) Land" for its refusal to be easily navigated. I've memorized the way in now, but the first time I tried finding the way myself I only remembered the first half of the route correctly, and spent half an hour wandering the inroads of the estate in a daze of confusion before thurisaz83 managed to rescue me.

Had I had my iPhone then, I might have saved everyone the trouble. Drop location pin. Type in 33 [ADDRESS REDACTED]. Follow purple line. Reach destination.

I thought that with my background as a science major, fully trained to work in a research lab, I would cease to be amazed by technological advancements. Nothing would be too wondrous for me, I would have seen it all, cloning and molecular histochemistry and nanotech.

And then things like these happen.

Of course, if I were a real child of the Web 2.0 I would have been firing up my Twitter client and live-updating everyone with my progress as I made my discovery. As it were, unfortunately, I was too busy squeeing "OMG OMG I'M NOT GOING TO GET LOST OMG!!!!!1!!!!oneoneone!!!" to remember. Darn!


In conclusion: Google + iPhone == EPIC LEGENDARY WIN. I was having a pretty awesome day already, but this? Made it a million times better.




[1] The blue dot looks like it's off the road, but it's really because I was under the foliage at the side of the road, so that sunlight wouldn't mess with the iPod screen for photographing. Sensitive GPS is sensitive. Also, if you'll notice, the entire clusterfuck of roads there constitutes the existence of Dempsey Road in all its plurality. Excellent stuff.

[2] Also Relevant: Lyrics to Immaculate Machine's Dear Confessor, where I got the title from. Refer also to this post, I have the song for D/L. It's fucking awesome.

It blows it out.

Like, totally.





"Yes I solved it while I was at work. With the help of an online scientific calculator. Because--surprisingly enough--despite my work as a writer I do not carry one around in my pocket at all times, ready to drop everything and solve quadratic equations on the whim of a hat."

Send help.


eta: Oh yeah, I'm pretty aware I suddenly switched from s = distance traveled to s = speed and d = distance traveled in the second part of the proof. Remember, folks, I have touched neither hair nor hide of physics since I entered college, SEVEN YEARS AGO. You can't blame me for this. D:

Okay. So. Vitas. Fucken amazing Latvian-born Russian pop opera singer. Attempting to sing his Opera #2 is how I discovered that I have a separate head range in the whistle register that upsets my dogs when I sing it. This is a dude who can reach notes that sound like dolphins would use them to echolate, or as I said when I first watched the linked video: "My god, that man is a a walking, piano-playing whistling kettle".

Anyway, as pigtail87 and I were discussing Allelujah's combined Russian/Chinese heritage the other day, I confessed that ever since I decided that Sergei was Alle's father somewhere early season 1, I've been wanting to do fanart of Alle in a hat and a scarf, standing one of the domes of St. Basil's Cathedral, singing Opera #2 (because in my head, Alle is a Russian countertenor who can totally sing operatic notes that would shatter glass in a hundred-foot radius).

Several digs on YouTube later, she found this amazing, hilarious video and showed it to me: a Taiwanese professional singer covering Opera #2 by dubbing it in a mixture of gibberish, Chinese, and Hokkien:



I COULD NOT STOP LAUGHING. Especially when he started singing "OMG cannot hear lyrics" in Hokkien.

(See, if you want to make a Singaporean laugh until their sides ache, all you'd have to do is to dub over everything in Hokkien. I found this out after thurisaz83 and I were discussing Gundam dubbed in Cantonese, and I said, "Screw Cantonese, I want to hear b00bies dubbed in Hokkien." And then we tried translating a few choice phrases into Hokkien *coughIAMGUNDAMcough*. We took several minutes to catch our breaths after that.)

Anyway, fucking amazing video, as I said. I am incredibly impressed that he not only managed to hit every single note on key, he managed to do so while playing the acoustic guitar accompaniment. Fuck. Watch it and be wowed too.

While we're at it, here's the original live performance of Opera #2 that introduced me to the wonder that is Vitas back in 2006. This time with Russian and Chinese subs (not the nuclear sort).

The Chinese subs aren't all that accurate, though. I was under the impression that "Plachet opyat nado mnoy" means "it cries once again about me", and not "I cry once again", Jesus Christ, cases, people, cases.

Also: Il dolce suono. You know the opera song featured in the Fifth Element, one of my favorite cinematic sequences ever? Yes. That song. He covered it, which is something I only discovered the day before. Although the techno arrangement is different and sounds a bit like something Sarah Brightman would do. (I still prefer the version in the Fifth Element, though. The sopranista had a lot better control of her voice.)


...aaaaand that's your dose of utter randomness from yours truly for today.

The news on the Internet this evening has just been giving me fit after fit of the giggles. Who cares about the coming global recession when you have gems like these?

#1: Simpsons ditched by Venezuelan TV Basically, the've pulled the Simpsons off morning TV because it gave messages that were contrary to "the whole education of boys, girls and adolescents".

So they replaced it with Baywatch instead.

Let me get this clear:

UNWHOLESOME FOR KIDS	WHOLESOME FOR KIDS

Good to know they've got their priorities straight!

#2: Man 'targeted by aliens': A Bosnian man whose home has been hit an incredible five times by meteorites believes he is being targeted by aliens. I know who's responsible. Zim milos, stop throwing space rocks at this poor bastard's home!

#3: Roboticist plans real-world Gundam model Serisously, a $746 million? I mean, it's cool and all, but who gives a Gundam nut that much money to build the real deal? What the hell are you going to with it after you're done?

...okay, let's just pretend I never asked that question.

Sign me up, I want one too

Speaking of which, the lovely thurisaz83 apparently got me the 1/100 Wing Zero Custom gunpla that I had been asfdjkla-ing about, and she was about to surprise me with it this Saturday, except that she confessed to the deed while under torture, thereby failing her Internation Woman Of Mystery exams. Which left me in a bit more asfdjkla, because I had wanted to get her that, or the Deathscythe one in the same line, for her birthday. And then she not only got me the Wing Zero Custom, she also got the Deathscythe one for herself. Durr!

Now I'll have to think of something else to get. Possibly this Perfect-Grade thing, which will, naturally, have to be a collaborative purchase. I direct this pointedly to my other RL friends and family. *coughyouknowwhoyouarecough*

(Also, the Gundam Assembly Unit will most decidedly spend the whole of the next entire year trying to figure out how to wire the whole thing together.)

But yay! GUNDAM ASSEMBLY SUNDAY THIS WEEKEND! We're putting together the 1/100 Nadleeh. As thurisaz83 pointed out, it's fast becoming a tradition. Hey, it's one I could get used to.

I think I need to invest in a proper foldout worktable, one that isn't older than I am and falling to bits at the edges. Doom doom doom doomy doom doom doom.


100 word fiction!

#10: The Little Death

"This is something I learned from Ms. Sumeragi," he says, explaining why he sometimes collapses when they engage the HRL. "The next time we're on Earth, take a shower with the strong jets, and aim the head between your legs."

The orgasm that hits him shocks him with its force, snatching his breath away, leaving his calves curled, cramping, under him. For a moment he thought he would die.

"Now imagine the same happening to you. Only that it's pain, and you can't stop it, because there's no faucet to shut off." His companion turns to him, skin dusky in the moonlight, wrapped around horrors so intense words cannot explain it. "That's what it feels like, everytime. Can you understand now?"

So. Yesterday was the birthday of my little sister, pkyyr. In between juggling the immense amount of work I had to do this week, I managed to arrange a surprise birthday party for her with my family and her friends. With special cake.

Because what more fitting thing to give to a girl who not only found me the Sunrise Meistercake pictures and sent them to me, but also wrote Gundam b00bies cake porn and shared it with the world?


It was a 1kg chocolate sponge cake I'd gotten printed with b00bies promo art that I'd Photoshopped a birthday message onto. I'd picked this particular picture because a) my sister loves Yun Kouga's work, she's the one with the Loveless art collection, and b) I got this picture from buying the January Newtype edition, so at least I kind of paid some money to own it, at least for personal use.

For those who are asking , the cake company I ordered from was Sweet Secrets, which is the only cakestore in Singapore that does digital photoprinting on cakes. Yes, it's pricey, forty dollars I paid for a small cake that size, but all cake boutiques are like that.

(In a weird twist of fate, my dad's company is the one that sold the cakeshop the printer they use, since in addition to retailing things like Wacom tablets, Adobe software and Apple computers, they also sell high-end industrial Epson printers. My dad's company? Sells really cool geeky tech stuff.)

( More photos. L APPROVES OF THIS POST )



In completely unrelated news:

While driving to pick pkyyr up from school, we saw a car at an intersection which turned all heads, including ours. It was tiny, three-wheeled, and bright orange.

We'd never seen anything like it.



It had a car license plate, too, which means I'm perfectly qualified to drive one.

It reminded me of the Top Gear clip I once watched, in which Jeremy Clarkson crammed his nine-foot frame into a vintage microcar and drove it around on the inside of the BBC buildings.

Anybody know the car model? How much it costs?

EDIT: YouTube comments identify it as a Corbin Sparrow. But according to Wiki and this page, the company went out of business and they don't make them anymore. What? But I want one! I pout!

EVIL TWIN OF EDIT! Another company, Myer Motors, bought over Corbin and are still making them cars! WHO WANTS TO BUY ME ONE FOR MY BIRTHDAY

They tell me that that Star Trek movie J.J. Abrams is directing will star Zachary Quinto as a young Spock.

Zachary Quinto, a.k.a. Sylar Of Heroes Fame, a.k.a. Adam from 24.

...

Somebody explain to me why all my fangeek interests seem to be colliding into one huge monster of a thing?

~~June

ETA: ...ROBBIE WILLIAMS to play Captain Kirk in the movie? WTF, joke right?!

Early Monday morning madness again! It seems I'll spend the most of my Sunday nights doing strips like these from now on. I already have strips #3 and #4 planned, and I'm going to keep doing them until people start throwing things at my head and threatening legal action for offense to their comic sensibilities.

Test strip #2 of fried nerds. Made of uber-geeks, by uber-geeks, for uber-geeks. I won't blame you if you don't get this one.

I've been drawing too many chibis in the past couple of days.



Bigger On DeviantArt
Strip #001

Poll #1000870
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

...did you get it?

As always, comments are very much appreciated. I'm still working on the development at the moment, so any and all criticisms (about placement, dialogue, whatever) would be welcome-- right now I figure out I'm churning out buckets of slop, which is fine and all for swine, but you know. You guys deserve better than that.

~~June