Seriously, I hope you have a nice time these final days of the year, no matter how or if you celebrate.
Personally, it started out a bit rocky for me this year, mostly because I had to deal with the typical conservative family bullshit. It was really tiresome, and I just wish these people would realize what they are putting me through, but if they notice anything off about my mood they'll probably think I'm just still in somerebellous teen phase. But I've had too much therapy for that at this point, I just sometimes wish I was far away from these people (Usually whenever I'm not).
But I don't wanna dwell too much on that. Once I was done with family Christmas, friend Christmas started, and that's the shit I'm here for. I had a few really nice days just catching up now, meeting some old friends I haven't seen for quite some time now. There is just one thing I didn't get around to do, and that's also why this blog post is a little bit later than I would've liked. Fun fact: I'm writing on the family laptop right now, because I'm sick of using the neocities internal editor on my tablet for a bunch of reasons. I wanted to have my own Laptop running at this point, but it isn't. I wanted to install Linux Mint on it to make it run a bit smoother. Nowadays I only use it as a media station, external disk drive and for writing this blog when I`m with my parents anyway. However, the Mint install was missing drivers and I can't fix it or install something else because this fucking household doesn't have a goddamn USB-stick. And for some reason smart me removed hers from her car radio. I think I wanted to rework the music selection and then never did, good job me!
So yeah, now I'm writing on my moms boyfriends laptop for now. But even here the neocities editor is struggling... I think I'll have to take this years blog post and archive them in another html file once we're a few posts into the new year. I'm beginning to understand why other people have so many files and subpages for all their shit.
So yeah, if you don't hear back from me until the 7th of January, I was probably unable to get my hands on a usb stick and couldn't or didn't bother to use this family pc again. But I'll try to get it to run, and if I do, I'll exist! I might even start working on the button page that I'm owing to some other webmasters who totally deserve that you check them out.
Seriously, this week is fucking exhausting. Starting your shift at 7:30am and university life just don't mix well.
I mean on Monday, when I arrived home 2,5h late because of whacky trains, that was supposed to be an exception. But then on Monday I had my DnD campaign and missed a bus, so that I would had to walk home. It was a nice 5km stroll with a friend, but I got home way to late yet again. On Tuesday I wanted to go home earlier, but my friends wanted to go get something to eat together. We ended up getting sushi and it was super worth it, so that was actually quite cool, it just got late again. Wednesday I stayed at uni because a teacher of mine has presented his language-learning application which seemed very promising. It was, but the presentation took quite a bit longer than expected. So it got late again. Too late for a girl that has to get out of bed at 5:30am. But hey, uni is over for the week, so today I just went home after work and finally got some time for myself for the first time this week. And tomorrow I will do the same, though I also promised to meet with a friend to go on the christmas market.
Oh, one other cool thing happened today! I finally asked at work if I can have the old CRT they still have sitting around in the break room. And I can! I was pretty sure that they wouldn't need it anymore and that I could have it, but asking for it kinda required courage, considering how this type of stuff is scrap metal to most people nowadays. But this is a TV that's actually small enough to fit in my flat, and it supports both 50 and 60Hz, which is important because I want to play both my old PAL consoles as well as the ones I got in Japan. This should do it, so now all I have to do is carry it to my place, which I really should use my car for. I'll probably just go to work by car even if a parking ticket will probably eat my salary for the day. But having it here will be really quite awesome.
Another tired attempt at writing a blog post on my Tablet. Why would I put up with this? Oh, maybe because I'm in a Railjet Express from Linz (Austria) to Munich (Germany) that is 70 minutes late. Which means I can only pray for a train there around the time of my arrival that can actually bring me home. It's always like this, but I don't want to go everywhere by car all the time either.
It's worth it though. I got to spend a great weekend with a friend of mine. We played video games, watched a bunch of movies I've been meaning to check out, cooked together... it was great fun and I'd love to go again. So arriving home in the middle of the night despite having to work tomorrow doesn't ruin it, it's just annoying and also forever tainted my view of the Austrian rail services which I assumed could only be much better than what I'm used to from Germany, but it seems to be just as bad.
But hey, at least I have time now. When this blog post is live I will probably watch some Anime I thoughtfully pushed to my tablet from my HDD. It's the 10th, and since I'm still on episode 4 of Toradora!, which I am viewing as an advent calendar, I have some catching up to do. Might also watch Lucky Star though, I wanna get done with that one.
Either way, I have no idea if she'll read this but I really wanna thank Golfink for an amazing weekend, even if I'm looking forward to my on bed.
Yeah, I don't really dwell on shitty things that happened to me on here, which isn't even because I don't want to share it or because I think it sucks to read or anything like that, I just think that if it becomes a habit it might affect my own mental health negatively. But this week was so shit, I wouldn't even know how to make things worse, and I'm just really glad it's over.
It all started on Monday, when I wanted to go to the office of my weird scholarship-loan thing to get some shit sorted regarding my monetary situation. I planned on arriving at 12:30pm, which would've been possible if I had not received an email, asking me if I would still come to the therapy session I am supposed to have right this fucking now. This put me in some kind of execution paralysis and I just sat around being mad at myself until I was already late for my next appointment. On the evening I went home. Usually I would go to the weekly dnd session I have right now, but since a few people didn't feel so good, we decided to play online, which meant I had to go home. On my way from the busstop it was raining, so I decided to walk alongside the river, since the path there is straight below the street, which shields it from rain. It was still blocked off, but it often is because the people are just slow at reopening it. I did it often enough and it was fine usually. So I started walking, and today it was different. There still was a lot of slippery mud on the path. Kinda annoying but I wouldn't turn around for it. So I stepped through the mud further. And the mud went deeper and deeper, and eventually I started to regret not turning back. But now it's too late right? I already made it half the way so turning back would be the same but worse... right?
Eventually I start to see it. The tunnel to the other side of the street that was shielding me from the rain. This is where the paths converge, this is just 5 minutes from my home, my bed and my hot-water bottle (Except that I had to sit at the PC for our dnd session). But what is this? the floor at the entrance of the tunnel seems to be reflecting the city lights... no. no no noNO!
The fucking tunnel was flooded. The entire thing. Like, gallons of river water, sitting at a hight of 20 centimeters in this fucking 15 meter long tunnel. What do I do now? I fucked up. Turning back now means spending another 10 minutes of walking through mud and THEN all that way through the rain. But it's either that or... stepping through the flooded tunnel... I decided that's what I would do, that I would not take of my shoes because god knows what the fuck is in this water, and that I would just cut my losses. I arrived home slowly after, feeling like shit, but I kinda needed new shoes anyway.
Forward to next morning. I wake up with an undescribable tummy ache that won't go away no matter how many hours I spend on the toilet. I end up not going to university, and also not going to the study meeting a friend had set up for me. This horrible pain was probably caused by me walking through a fucking river at 5° C. I will never do this again.
Next up is Wednesday. I feel better. At least my body does. My mental health is still on the bottom of the river. This is why I am utterly unable to leave my bed, causing me to not go to the scholarship-things office again, and also being like 30 minutes late for class. Afterwards I go straight home because I have a Splatoon game that day. Then Thursday. I have no appointment because I already told my friend I wouldn't come to tandem today. I still feel bad because by now I realized that this entire week just seems to hate me. Or maybe not just me. Everyone in my social circle seems to be doing quite shitty as well, some of them coming up to me asking for my help. "I can't give any, I can't even carry myself right now. Sorry." Shutting them down like this makes me feel worse about myself also. I go to bed.
Friday. I have one objective: Get to the city, doesn't even matter when, and get the delivery car so I can work next week. I can do this. I get ready, go outside and on the bus to the pharmarcy, where I will get my keys. Halfway there some guy gets up and walks to the door to get off. He stares at me. I look back. He dismissively calls me a slur and leaves the bus. What the fucking fuck. What is wrong with this weak? Why does it treat me like this?
I get off on my stop. On the way to the pharmarcy I impulsively call quaka and ask them if they are home and if I can come over for a coffee. They say I can. So I get the keys, get the car, and ride there.
Talking, vibing, and doing something that just feels easy and nice really helps me to stop wanting punch wood until my fingers bleed. So much so in fact that I end up staying until 9pm, even though I really need to go shopping. Or I'll have to leave the house again this week, which I really don't want at this point. So I leave, but not without first being screwed over by fate one more time of cause. Because as I try to pay for my parking ticket, which was 8,10€ already, I realize that you can only pay with cash. I don't really carry cash around right now. Because every Euro in my wallet instead of my bank account might make the difference between me being able to pay rent or not. So I go searching for the nearest ATM. It's not my bank, but that's fine I can just use my debit card to get cash without paying extra... Or I cannot because this specific bank seems to have disabled that feature. Either that or I lost it because I'm not considered an "active customer" at my bank because I don't have an income of at least 700€/month. So I pay 5€ to get 10€ of cash from this shitty ATM, and just barely make it to the super market to buy bread and mozzarella sticks, which I promptly eat to treat my depression.
Which brings us to today, Saturday. The day nothing bad happened. So I kinda took a breather. This week is now officially over. And through the power of the manmade concept of calender time imposing on the inner workings of fate itself, next week will surely be better. I mean it has to be. Christmas time starts. I go on a fucking Babymetal concert on Friday. And work is gonna force me out of bed so I'll actually get shit done. It's literally gonna be so awesome. I even have chocolate! A friend from my Splatoon team sent me a care package with so much nice stuff and it was the cutest thing when it came in the mail and I realized she actually did it. That also happened this week, and to be honest, dnd was fun too. The bad stuff just really was a lot this week, so it kinda overshadowed things. But not anymore, this chapter is now closed and the next blog entry will be epic again!
So, to make my media log more consistant, I have been avoiding addendums for the media I added to the log. But today I had to break with that. I was too blown away by Scott Pilgrim Takes Off today, so I really need you to check it out. The anime I mean, you shouldn't read my ramblings unless you watched it because it goes heavily into spoilers and kinda assumes you know what I'm talking about. And if you spoil yourself for this awesome experience I will be very sad and cry a lot.
So yeah, apart from that, my life got a little harder again this week! I learned that I don't have a permit to even study my minor in sociology anymore, because I didn't take some time sensitive test because my major was very much consuming me and and it kinda felt more important. Well, turns out that fucks me over now, yippie.
But I'll get through it. It's just a metric fuckton of buerocratic bullshit. Why shouldn't I get through that no problem? I just have crippling ADHD to the point where the reason I even went back to sociology was because the paper work to change my minor felt more crushing than just getting through the few courses I didn't like.
To be completely real with you, I start writing this blog post just because I remembered this absolute banger of a song while watching Lucky Star, noticing that some of the instrumental sounds quite similar. Like, not entirely, but enough to be of the same (sub-)genre? I wouldn't know what to call it other than electric though.
However, that doesn't mean I'm not gonna try though. I used to do it all the time, just writing about banal things that came to my mind at any given day, not because I had big things from my life to share, but because I wanted to write. That kinda changed, because nowadays I don't find the time to tend to this site as much as I used to, even though it's still very dear to me. But that doesn't mean I can't still do these ramblings when I want, and now I do!
I got myself an advent calendar, the Pokémon TCG one, to be precise. And I'm looking really forward to get really into Christmas mood with this. And some other stuff. I had a long talk with my mom on the phone a while back which was actually really pleasant, and we also talked about christmas stuff, which she said she is looking forward to which is great to hear because I like my family to be in a good mood, especially when I visit them. Also she said she got her first bag of clementines this year and they were really good, so I had to go and get some myself, and she was right, they are great! When an opportunity arises I'll also get Speculaas. They aren't just great cookies by themselves, they are like the best thing to dip into tea, and tea is the best thing to dip them in. And they are dirt cheap compared to other cookies. You know... because I'm still waiting for that salary. Which I will also have to get christmas presents with!
Today I went to the makerspace to get some stuff fixed, and it was all successfull and now I feel very good. For one, the lever of our flats sodastream broke down, which is apparently a common issue. Luckily this meant that a lot of people already were kind enough to offer .stl files of their better versions of this very lever, and I just needed to get one printed.
Since that took some time, I took it opon myself to fix my old iPhone 6. I got it from my dad way back when, and because my Samsung Galaxy S8 finally starts to give up completely, and I couldn't fix the boot loop issue with my S20, I needed something else for cheap. The only problem: Old iPhone means old battery, and for some reason iPhone batteries are especially bad. So I had to change it, and while I was at it, I also got a new lightning socket because the old one was getting really unreliable and I didn't want to have to open up this phone again later. Getting through everything was a bit of a hassle, but it was all possible with the help of the corrosponding ifixit pages, and I didn't even need to do any troubleshooting! So yeah, I will now downgrade back to my iPhone 6. It's not like I need a lot more anyway.
Also, you might already know this if you checked out the media log, but I've been checking out quite some stuff there recently. I played a lot of Mario Wonder (I'm basically just missing the final level but I kinda really suck at the firebar section), I finallystarted lucky star, and I watched Star Virgin recently, which is a 1988 tokusatsu movie about a girl that gains magical powers whenever her virginity is threatened. Which sounds weird, and it is, but it's pretty fun. I had a good time, and I recommend you give it a watch.
Other than that... oh right, Halloween happened. I went to a small party with a few close friends and we all made pizza together and had a good time. I really liked my chūnibyō costume. A few days later I also started a weekly DnD campaign with that same friend group, and it feels really good to finally be playing in person again after all these years. My dice are pleased. So yeah, despite the fact that my salary didn't arrive yet, which I am in deep monetary trouble for, I'm actually having a surprisingly good time! Yippie!
Yesterday was my last day at work, because that's how it is when you are in temporary employment. But hey, it pays much better than any part-time job would, and they even already asked me to come back a third time in December, so I just might do that any actually be able to get christmas presents for once. But that's future-Kurisu stuff. I for one am now impatiently waiting for my salary to hit my bank account, for one so I might be able to pay rent, but mostly because I really want to get a GBA flashcard. Or rather two, one for myself and one for a friend I plan on playing Pokémon with.
I don't know if I ever talked about that on here, but I am currently in the process of playing every mainline Pokémon game in order. I started with Pokémon Blue and currently work on Pokémon Crystal (the versions I play are kinda pick and choose because I mostly work with what I got physically), and after that I will go on to play Pokémon Emerald. But that, I do not intend on doing by myself. I want to get a friend on board, since it's more fun that way and Gen 3 is where multiplayer features really picked up. Since she doesn't have a Gen 3 Pokémon game though, and I would never ask her to buy one, we're getting flashcards. I found this ez flash card which promises to even feauture DS-link functionality, which if true, would be infinitively cool because we could transfer our Pokémon and even make a Ribbon Master! Personally I have the dream of getting a Dunsparce in Pokémon colloseum, and resetting for nature and ability so I can get a three segmented ribbon master Dudunsparce in the end. I also plan on doing this with Shroomish, my favorite Pokémon, which I will probably shiny hunt, and one more Pokémon from every game we play, until we're in Scarlet and Violet. It's a challenge that will probably take me quite a while, but I am already looking forward to it. Just need that salary... oh, and get through Pokémon Crystal. I usually only play on the go when I have waiting times long enough to justify taking out the Gameboy, but maybe I'll change that. I just also gotta get through my first playthrough of Pokémon Violet eventually... but hey, it will work itself out eventually.
I'm sick again. Why am I sick again? I haven't been sick in forever before this year and now it feels like my body turnes into a slime except there's bones in there and those bones hurt and so it's even worse than being a slime. And of course this wouldn't happen when I was at work. No, I come home from work, still feeling fine, then sit down in my room, get super tired immediatly, take a nap which I never do during the daytime because it fucks up my sleep schedule, and when I wake up again I feel like I've been zapped with a cold-inator. Yeah, that's the worst part, it isn't even an illness, it's mostly just a sneezinh and runny nose type of shit. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm also starting to caugh. Which is a great time because the new semester just started and I am supposed to do shit. I even said I could work for another week on Friday before I started feeling like this. I just hope it passes quickly. Sorry for the ranty blog it's just that I can't really do fun stuff that I could talk about when I'm like this.
Nothing to recharge from wage labor like a chill weekend
You know, I actually really like my current job. I'm doing meaningful work, for a decent wage and when there's something I can't do people are usually really understanding.
But of course, especially with having to get up so early for work, it is still a little draining, so this weekend was really just what I needed. Today I had a brunch with my flat mates, Quaka came over to watch the first two episodes of SPY x FAMILY season 2 with me and play some games, and also I started playing Super Mario Bros. Wonder, which has been great fun. The game is so innovative and charming that it really made me feel like a kid again. I really think this is something that only Mario is capable of doing, and it feels like a dream to get this experience back after four times the same game.
Oh right, another thing I did this week was finally picking my audiobooks back up. Right now I'm almost through "Queen's Shadow", the Star Wars novel by E. K. Johnston with Padme as it's protagonist. Or well, the first one of it's trilogy. It's been really fun and a good way to make me feel like my time at work is well spent not only for the people I work for, but also myself.
Now I just have to add all of this stuff to my new and improved backlog! Even though the "completed" section is more important to me than the "ongoing" one, I just think it's fun to let all of you know what I'm spending my time with right now. I don't know if I'm entirely happy with how I threw stuff with collapsable text and stuff without it together like that, but it's gonna be like this for now. It serves its purpose. And well, tomorrow I will go back to work again. Can't not have money, sadly.
So, I was at the Splatoon 3 European Championships this weekend, and it was very epic. In general, it was nice to go to a gaming related venue again, since I haven't been going to gamescom since 2016 due to... gamescom not really feeling lika a gaming convention anymore. But yeah, this weekend was great. It wasn't too crowded, the venue was cool, the people were nice, and the games were superexiting. I don't really see people talk about it at all though, which is why I would highly recommend you watch at least the group phase matches of group D as well as the first semi-finals of Alliance Rogue against KaiZer. I'd love to see competent analysis of at least some of these matches but I guess the intrest is just not there for the European scene.
Now you may be wondering: "But Kurisu, if you went there for the weekend why are you only talking about it now?"
And if you read the title you already know: I'm kinda drowning in work right now. Which is good, I really need the money. But after arriving home from Frankfurt Sunday evening I went straight to bed, and then the first day was kinda overwhelming because it always is when you have to overtake someone elses existing workflow with no idea what's going on. So the 5 hour workload took me the whole day, which is fine, I get paid by the hour, but it was still exhausting and when I got home I just did some chores that I couldn't do at the weekend because I was gone and then I hit the hay. Today was better. I was done a good bit earlier, so I could actually do some stuff. Which is why I watched America: The motion picture with my girlfriend. Honestly, we expected nothing and were suprised to find a decent b-movie. It's one of these dumb movies you throw on during a house party where you get drunk with your friends, and it made us laugh a few times despite being, well, a bad movie.
What wasn't so fun was my doctors oppointment. I've had this small issue that started to cause me pain again so I went there expecting to just go there, get some meds precribed and then I would take them for a week or two and everything would be well again. However, it's not that easy. It's not anything dangerous, but it would be better to get a surgery. A really small thing. A lot of people might not even consider it a surgery at all, but I've never been under the knife, and I didn't plan to. I'm really scared of surgery, and I'm very nervous, but even if it temporarily stops hurting, if I put it off I will probably end up making it worse for myself in the long run, which can't be the answer either. So yeah, I guess after 24 years I'll finally have my seal of warranty broken.
Yeah... so Week of Charity ended, it was awesome, we raised over 2000€ for the animal shelter in Berlin, which was really nice. Less nice however was that right after the Week of Charity was done, I caught Covid again. I didn't even really feel ill, which is nice I guess, but since I was still in my hometown I was hoping to meet some more friends before going back to the city. Obviously that didn't work out because I stayed at home. Just because I wasn't that sick that doesn't mean I wanna go around infecting my friends. Since I still needed to recover from one week of a lot of streaming, I also didn't really play any games. But that meant I had lots of time for other media that now makes me want to rethink the way the media log works. It was supposed to contain everything, not just the stuff I watched/read/played and then felt like writing an essay about. Maybe I'll just experiment a bit.
Other than that... after I got healthy again I still had very few days to meet one friend that I really wanted to meet. We played games together and were vibing, which was mostly really cool because she was actually interested in playing Pikmin vs. modes with me! Which is super cool because it's so hard to play these with Pikmin being as niche as it is and none of the multiplayer supporting online play. Oh, and on my way home on that day I got caught speeding while eating an Xtra long chilly cheese. I'm looking forward to that photo.
So then after that I basically went home and now everything is normal again. At that point I didn't want to make this blog post because so much happened, but mostly smaller things, and putting such a long time into a single text is kinda hard. But hey, I tried and now I can go back to regular posting and everything is gonna be fine, right?
Don't worry I just vblog my live on Week of Charity right now
Who would have guessed? Live streaming literally 24/7 kinda doesn't leave a lot of time for blogging. If you speak German, then you're in luck, because me streaming basically just gives you infinite more content then what I could ever put on this blog. If not, I wanna apologize. However, I am very proud of what me and my friends are doing here. As of me writing this, we collected 1356€ of charity money for one of Germanys biggest animal shelters, and that is very cool, especially since there's still quite some week to go!
In the later half however, I will be a little bit less busy. I'll still try to watch my friends whenever I can, but since it's my moms birthday, I wanna spend some time with her as well. Which doesn't mean I have no stream slots. I'll do a sliding puzzle-race tomorrow morning, then have another solo-stream where I just spin a wheel to decide on a game that I have to finish, where I will also host me and my friends watching the Nintendo Direct that was announced today. Maybe I'll also do a blog entry for that tomorrow though. Depending on how spicy it turns out. And in the finale I'll embarrass myself in another quiz, it'll be fun!
So, I'm back with my family now. I came back here on Saturday, which was a little bit later than I had planned, but I wanted to meet a friend that I hadn't seen since I left Japan last year. She moved back to Germany now, but in a city kinda far from my and her former university, so meeting is still hard. Since it was on the way for my trip home though, I still managed to meet up with her, have some really nice pizza and overall good time.
Since then not much happened. I visited my grandparents, spent some time with my mother and her sweet doggo, but I mostly actually worked on preparing for this years Week of Charity. A charity event I'm doing with a friend group for the third year in the row now. It's mostly in German, but if you can, I'd be really grateful if you would like to check it out!
But yeah, that's eating up a lot of free time right now. I got my desktop with me so I'll be able to do proper streams and everything, I'm attempting to run the social media presence, I'm preparing my own program, and also there's this festival where I'm catering on Saturday that I'm really looking forward to! So yeah, lots of stuff. I'm gonna get through it.
Oh right, I barely played, but I got silver in the last big run, and for the splatfest I'm team Shiver. I like Frye better, but the question was "Who would be the best boss!" and my lovable forehead gremlin just isn't that. Also #CancelBigMan because he big betrayaled his friends.
Not me working under the hood of this site without even explaining what's going on! I didn't even throw out rss updates, but hey I'm here for that now.
So, I've been playing with the idea of implementing a counter on my site to check site visits. But I really don't know how much I can trust those numbers, you know with bots scanning random pages all the day searching for data to exploit and whatnot. The neocities native counter claims my site has been visited by 300 different people just yesterday. Which I kinda don't believe. The global counter is at 15000 views, but I don't know if those are unique visits or not (Probably not). But that's not even the point. The point is, I decided to put an mf like button on my page, for you to click and let the world know you've been here. 6 people already did! Or at least 6 IP-adresses. But still that should be more representative of how many people actually check out my site.
Another thing you may or may not have noticed is that my buttons look ever so slightly different now. That is because I used to use <button> to make things move on here, but since those buttons don't contain any metadata they can be a little annoying to work with. Now I just use <a> with a certain class that looks like a button, so you can rightclick them and see the link preview and all that fancy stuff.
Are you here for my private life shenanigans? Okay I'll tell you. Since I got back from my roadtrip, there has been quite a bit going on!
A good friend of mine had to return to Japan, but we managed to organize a small farewell party where we made Gyōza and sang karaoke. It was really nice, and I already miss her. Can't wait to go back to Japan to meet her!
I then went to the doc and got new e-presciptions, went to the pharmacist and they were like "Nah we can't give you what it says there because your insurance only covers this brand." which sucked because they have less in them. But I guess there is nothing I can do about that.
And yeah, today I celebrated my Birthday. I baked melon pan, invited a few friends over. We played Mario Kart and Nintendo Land, ordered pizza and were vibing. It was pretty nice.
So, I'm back home. Actually, I've been back home since Tuesday, the 15th of August. I just needed a lot of time to get my shit back together. Kind off like a vacation from the vacation.
Never the less, I will now proceed to what happened after we left Madrid:
We uh... realized that we were broke. We originally wanted to see the Atlantic coast and Paris on our way back, but had to realize that we can't really afford to spend any more money if we want to get home with the money we have left. So we decided that from that point on, we would only pay for tolls and gas. (And maybe some snacks)
Because beach is free, we made the following plan: Going from Madrid to Irun, a coastal city on the Spanish/French border in one day, and then all the way home from the Atlantic to Germany in the next. And that's what we did! We went to see the ocean, were like "woah this is an Ocean", admired the bay there were one side of it was Spanish and the other French, finally had some churros and then left to a parking area for campers on a highway truckstop. Meaning they even had toilets, showers, and everything you could wish for. The only annoying thing was that only one side of the highway had this thing. That being the side that goes towards Spain. So we had to pass three fucking toll gates to get there, even though we already had paid for that part of the highway. Honestly, as a German I'm probably just pampered but this toll system is sometimes really annoying.
But whatever. That parking area was really nice. And we had a good nights rest, which was important, because we still had around 1200 kilometers of road ahead of us, and we wanted to get through that shit in one day. And get through that shit we did. It took 16 hours. But as a treat we got our bed back one night earlier. Honerable mentions go out to the highway scammers in Bordeaux, who stood at a signal and started "cleaning" my car windows. Luckily I locked the doors quickly enough and we could get through them without many issues. And also to the cops at the French/German border. They were doing drug checks, and because we were rather young people in a poor people car, of course they wanted to search my car. And search my car they did. They stole us 30 minutes, because this whole ordeal didn't already take long enough! At least they didn't misgender me, unlike Quaka, who for some reason wasn't searched at all, I got body checked by their only female officer. Kind of affirming, I gotta admit. When she searched my handbag and pulled out my Gameboy Camera, one of the officers started fanboying. I couldn't understand it because I don't speak baguette, but he knew what they had found and was clearly amazed by it. Watching them like that almost made us sympathize with them. But only for a second. It wasn't hard for us to get angry at them again because really. We could've been home half an hour earlier. And if we had, we would've been able to go to the super market before going to bed, which would have been really nice.
But yeah. I brought Quaka home, helped them take their shit to their flat, and then proceeded to ride home. Around 2am I got there, and I had a really good rest, even though it's still waaaaay to hot here.
Since then there was already some stuff going on, but I will put that into the next blog. I want this to be kind of self contained. And maybe I will add some pictures to the blog entries later. You can also find them on my Mastodon though.
But yeah, thanks for reading!
The perfect conditions to finally write another travel blog.
The last few days were quite something. We did a lot of stuff, and spent most of our nights on the road, where we wanted to go to sleep as soon as possible, because as soon as the sun rises, the car will become pretty unbearable. So now I will do my best to do a longer blog entry to fill you in on the blanks.
So, we were on our way to Barcelona, and decided that we wanted to spend two nights there. However, since Quaka didn't want to sleep in a random parking lot again (which I can kinda understand, nothing happened the first time but it's really kinda scary), we spent three hours at Burger King, trying to figure out how other campers do this thing. Turns out, there's tons of websites where campers log every kind of caravan-lot, and here in Spain a lot of them are even free!
Sure, some of them are nicer than others, but the one we found clos to Barcelona was basically perfect. We decided to stay two nights and two days. One day to check out the city, and one to check out the beach.
The city of Barcelona is quite impressive. It's unlike anything I've evr seen in real life. And it's how I imagine California from how it's portrait in media. Tons of sky scrapers between mountains and a great, blue sea, with palm trees everywhere.
After struggling to find a parkign lot, we settled for a kinda whack 0,05ct/min deal at a mall called Diagonal Mar. From there we walked all the way to Barri Gòtic making a stop at La Sagrada Familia and a very nice bubble tea café called Buscaté. To top it all off, we went up this hill in a park, from where you could see the entire part of te city we walked through, as well as the Mediterranean Sea. Also there were some very cute parrots in that park. After that we went back to the car with public transport and paid our dumb 18€ for parking.
Next day, the parking situation wasn't much better, so we just went to the same parking lot again. We got a parasol, because we just couldn't bear the sun any longer, and sat down at the beach. It was perally perfect. In fact it was so perfect, that for the first time since 2019, I swam in public waters! Well, swimming might be a huge word, considering that I never stopped touching the sand below my feet, because I didn't want to get my hair to get wet. Next time I'll be better prepared.
So we spent some real quality time at the beach, but as with all good things, they eventually have to end. We originally planned to go all the way to Madrid after chilling at the beach, but it became evident that that's impossibe. Instead, we looked for another one of those sweet caravan lots halfway across our path.
After a long drive, we arrived in a very small town with a few parking spaces at the roadsite. A few of them having a sign saying that they are reserved for autocaravans. Not the fanciest thing, apart from that little fact that my car with a matress arguably is no autocaravan, but whose there to judge. It was well lit and didn't seem threatening, so we made camp there.
Which brings us to today. Where we woke up really early, so we could arrive in Madrid before the heat of noon. Which is important not only for our own wellbeing, but also for my cars. My car is a little on the older and weaker side, it grew up in the cold flatlands of East Frisia, and now I'm pushing it fully packed with camping shit all across the mountains of Spain, in the middle of what might be this summers toughest heat wave. It was really close to overheating a few times already, and while I know how to handle that, that doesn't mean that I need to force it.
So now we've been chilling at the campsite for half a day, and I've been writing this blog. Later today we wanna check out Chueca, Madrids queer district. And tomorrow? How knows. Maybe I'll have time to tell you about it.
So, despite our plans, we didn't make it to the Mediterranean Sea today, even though we're so close!
We arrived at a nice, chill campsite close to Montpellier yesterday, and chose to stay for two nights, because we wanted some more time to check out the city, and go to the Mediterranean Sea. We did go to the city, which had a really nice park and ride place where you could park all day for 5,20€ and you get two rides with the tram.
...which I didn't realize, so I bought tickets instead, like the little fool I am. But it was still quite cheap compared to Germany.
So yeah, in the city we went to the historic parts to have some really nice authentic crepés, check out some parks and garden, and the aqueduct they still had there behind the Porte du Peyrou, Montpelliers own triumphal arch. And while we didn't get to the beach today, I *swear* I could see the Mediterranean Sea from the plateau. So I am content. We'll go to the beach tomorrow, before we go to Barcelona, which is our next destination. It's gonna be awesome!
We went 600km southwest, and reached Mâcon in France. It wad a long and exhausting ride, we spent about 20€ just in tolls, but we made it pretty far, and I'm proud.
Right now we are in our shitty little car bed, on a shitty little parking lot in front of a department store. I like it here, but Quaka, my travel partner would rather have us visiting a campsite. I get them, I just kinda wanted to keep the costs as low as possible, but we will debate that tomorrow.
For now I will try to get some rest, because we want to reach the middle sea by tomorrow. So it's gonna be another rather long ride. But I'm having fun, it's really unlike anything I've ever done for a vacation.
Hi, I'm writing this blog here in a bus because I'm still super busy and I can't really do it otherwise, but I need to do this because huge things are coming up:
Starting tomorrow, this blog will become a travel blog!
I had my last day at work today, and spent today at my local pride, which is also why we are departing on a Sunday. I'm still not done packing, but slowly getting there. At least my cars metamorphosis into the shittiest camper is finally complete. I wanna try to make blog posts everyday, sharing with you where we went, what we did, maybe some photos... a bunch of neat stuff!
It's vacation right? I should be able to make time for that. I hope. If not I'll do what I can and probably make some longer ones instead. It's gonna be so epic and I hope you're looking forward to reading about it!
Hi! First of all, that whole writing on a train thing didn't really work out for me. I did actually write a blog entry on last Thursday, but since I couldn't post it right away due to a lack of an internet connection, I kind off never did, and I don't wanna post it now because it is kind off outdated.
The jist of it was that I watched Barbie, and that I'm gonna write something about it, but I'll take my time, because I am already stressed enough.
So now you may ask yourself "But Kurisu, if you have no time, then why are you here now?" -you most certainly aren't asking that but just bear with me.
I gotta vent. I gotta write about this thing that pisses me off because of how extraordinarily cringe it is: I applied to a job. A job as social media manager for a company I am basically perfectly suited to work with. And they thought so too, because two days after I applied I received an invitation for a job interview. There was just one catch. They wanted the person for the job to be in their office for work at least every now and then. I said that would be hard for me, as their office is an expensive 5 hour train right away, but I could try to come as often as it is reasonable.
On the day I wrote that reply, I received a call from someone working there, saying they would talk it over and reconsider if maybe home-office is possible. In hindsight, this shouldn't have gotten me so pumped up. I saw it as a sign that they really wanted me for the job, so much so that they would reconsider their stance on home office work and see if they can make me have take the job interview via zoom. However, when I got the fruit of their discussions in form of a mail today, I got kinda pissed. It said they wouldn't be allowing extensive periods of home office work and that "most" of the work is supposed to be done in their office. If I think I would be able to arrange that, I can come to the interview. Physically of course, and without reimbursment for the trip.
So yeah, I went to a few people to vent already and most of them kinda seem to feel like I'm overreacting. And maybe I am, but honestly I don't care right now. It's not like a measured response to this problem could save me the job. It just really sucks to lose your shot at something for a reason like this. If I wasn't qualified it would be one thing. But I am. And they acknowledge that. But because they expect me to write tweets in their office instead of literally anywhere else in the world, I don't even have to try.
It's not like I can give up on studying and move over there for temporary employment of six months. It's just not worth it. So I guess I will continue to work as a cleaning lady for now.
When too much diffrent shit is going on for a single fitting headline
I've been gone for a while, and I have my reasons. Those being mostly that writing HTML on my tablet fucking sucks. I wonder if there's a decent note tool for android, then I could write blog entries there and would only have to copy/paste them into the code here. I really should look into that.
But yeah, I've not been home a hole lot recently. I went to my parents for last week, because I had my dad check up on my car, which is important because I don't want to have my car die while I'm on my roadtrip. While I was there I also met some old friends which is always nice, went to have Sushi, met my grandparents and whatever.
Then on Sunday I went home, because work started on Monday, and since then everything has been pretty exhausting. Which sucks because the work itself isn't even all that hard or demanding. It's just that it starts so early. I have to be there at 7:30am which means I have to get up at 5:30am, which isn't easy for me. Once I'm done I'll usually have dinner at the food court and then I have something to do elsewhere. Tandem, class, maybe just a meetup with friends, but yeah, I usually get home way too late and then I go to bed way too late and then the next morning will be horrible again. But hey, I am earning money. Which is important because the road trip next month will probably cost me a lot of money. Also it will probably take me like half a year until I can get my student loan again. If at all.
But hey, I'll live. And it's not like I don't have fun when I spend the afternoon out and about, it's just exhausting for my little neurodivergent introvert brain. In case I won't be able to write another blog entry as soon as I'd like, here's some stuff I'm currently looking forward to that I would probably write about if I had the time: Tomorrow I'll go on a trip to visit a friend I hadn't met in quite a while and we are going to watch Barbie together which will probably be fun; on Friday I'll have friends over at home and we'll watch a bunch of Ghibli movies together because I still haven't seen a lot of the classics; I'll finally finish the bed in my car (probably next week?) and hopefully get some stuff for university done. Can you believe I procrastinated my homework for the entire semester and gotta do it all now? Fun right.
But yeah. If I got time you'll here from me. Or maybe I'll find what I'm looking for in terms of android note apps. Then I'll maybe write on the train or something. If not: Don't worry, I'm not gone and I'm most likely fine, and I will totally come back if the situation allows it.
I was right, there's a lot to talk about! It really was an event. Or rather a chain of events even. I guess I should go through them in order, so I'll start with the summer fest. It was a fucking mess, but the fun kind. The theatre group couldn't do their thing because of technical difficulties, the mics didn't work, so they tried talking loud, but I couldn't hear shit despite sitting in the front row. Which is kinda sad, it seemed like a fun play. After that I got the first chance to talk to one of my Sensei in a really long time. Ever since the pandemic, I hadn't really spent a lot of time at campus, and since my classes ended while everything was online, or only real contact the past years were a few e-mails regarding my time in Japan. So it was really nice to just sit down and do some catching up. Other than that there was supposed to be food at the festival. Curry with rice, to be precise. However, the kitchen team wasn't able to get their tiny camping stoves to cook the industrial sized pots of rice. So while they were struggling, I was volenteering to help at the stand. We eventually had one pot of rice, but other than that we just had to give out the curry by itself for free. It really was kind of a disappointment. But hey, maybe next time things will run a little smoother.
On Saturday we met, after trying to solve some technical difficulties, and went on our merry way to the Netherlands. It was a fun ride, even if it was kind of exhausting. After arriving in our suprisingly big airbnb, we got some food at the supermarket and decided to chill and watch some TV. Megamind was on Comedy Central, I really can't get tired of that movie. After that we went to bed early, so that we would have some time to get our brains going before the test. That all worked fine, we arrived at Leiden university pretty early and everything in preperation of the test went smoothly. The test itself however... not so much. I found it to be really difficult. And I wasn't even the only one. My friends as well, even the ones who made me feel like they studied every day since I left Japan. Which is probably an exaggeration, but they certainly learned more than I did. And spent more time in Japan, so their feeling for the language is also just a little better.
Now, if even they aren't certain that they passed... then I probably didn't, unless maybe with dumb luck? But what are the chances.
However, after that we needed something uplifting. Luckily one of my friends organized a meetup with some old friends of theirs, who I was also acquainted with, and we had a really nice evening together. The only downside was that it got kind off late, and we had to get out on the next day on time for check-out at 10:30am.
So we did just that, and then decided to spend at least some more time in Amsterdam before leaving, since it was the first time in the Netherlands for some of us. That's where the real bummer happened: We couldn't find a parking garage, either because construction sites were blocking every path google maps wanted us to take, or because it was just... completely full. After rolling around for a while however, we found this really small parking lot that looked just the right size for my old, and by virtue luckily small car, and with my epic superpowers I parked it perfectly. We went looking for some kind of info on fees, like a sign, people having parking tickets, vending machines... but nothing! So we concluded it must be a free parking space and went on our way.
One of us wanted to go to a café at Amsterdam centraal, but it was closed, so we had to find something else. We eventually went to a Schnitzelhaus, had some lunch, and then went back to the car to find ourselves with a 73€ ticket under the wiper. A quick google search later, we learned that apparently every parking lot in Amsterdam now uses an online parking system, where you can tell them your license on a website and then pay there. HOW THE FUCK WERE WE SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT??? We were there for three hours! We didn't read up on everything we might need to know with a car in Amsterdam before going, and there wasn't anything in the whole city that would tell us about this! Frankly, I find this very mean. I'm not even against ways to keep cars out of the city. But this just seems unfair to me, especially towards outsiders, who in my view aren't even the problem. The problem are people who live in the city and use the city to get around in the city, unlike people who just have to use a car to get there from the outside because public transit is utter garbage! I would've went to a garage if I would have had the chance! But I hadn't! So that's really the only part that grinds my gears about this trip.
After that, we went home, humbled and humiliated. But at least on the way home we saw a really pretty rainbow.
It's the last Friday of June. That means today is gonna be the 夏祭り (summer fest) of my faculcy. Right now I'm looking forward to it, just a little scared that it might rain a lot.
This will be the first 夏祭り that I'm able to attend since the pandemic hit. I think they did something last year, but back then I was in Japan. And the worst part? My Japanese uni had their fest right after I had to leave. Not gonna lie, kinda mean of them since they threw us out. Usually the fest is right after the new students arrive, but in our case that wasn't possible because for the entire first semester the borders were closed. But sufficed to say, I am starved for festive shenanigans.
Now, before I go there however I really need to start getting ready for tomorrow. Because tomorrow I'm going on a trip to the Netherlands with some friends, in order to finally take my Japanese Language Proficiency Test. I'm "only" taking on the second highest level, but since I had no Japanese classes for almost a year now, it was a little hard to learn consistently. We did weekly 勉強会 (study meetings), but once a week is far from enough for a test as packed with niche grammar like this. We barely went through half of the forms. And aside from those study meetings, well I did Tandem. And I tried to do my daily vocabulary lessons. But autodidactic learning with ADHD? Yeah I got through like 10% of the words. It's a little scary, mostly just because of how expensive this test is. And not just the actual fee, we have to drive there and get an airbnb for two nights because I am not taking on a 7 hour car ride on the day of my exam. But hey, my friends are there, it'll probably be fun. And if I don't pass... I guess there's worse things than losing 200€... while you don't have a consistent income...
Gah, I just shouldn't think to much about it. I need 60% to pass! How likely is it that half of the questions are gonna be fucking hard? And since it's all multiple choice I should get 25% for free just based on propability.
Am I coping? Maybe I should stop and start to get my stuff together. Uhhh, I need to pack my bag, get the roof box of my car that I got for my roadtrip later this summer (special vacation blog coming soon???), get some gas because it's always cheaper in the evening and then get ready for the summer fest. I'll get back on Monday, and if I get the chance I'll write some more then. But for now, have a nice weekend!
This weekend was pretty nice. I met with some friends and we were having a really good time on Saturday. First we met up at the park and were just vibing, playing some card games and talking. Later we went bowling, which was fun, but I also had to notice how weak I have gotten. I didn't go bowling for years, and my body got tired of throwing this 5kg ball pretty quickly, which was reflected by my throws getting worse over time. I guess I need to practice more. The best thing about going bowling there was however, that on my way to the toilet I found out this bowling center has two pinball machines! You might know that I am quite fond of pinball, however I rarely ever had the chance to play on an actual physical table. I mostly just played virtual pinball games. So now I plan to go to this place more often, and by myself, so that I can take my time to try and actually get good at an irl pinball table.
Now, after that we went and had sushi before everyone went home. Also really nice.
Today however I spent at home. And I tried taking my Switch modding endeavours one step further: I installed the Splatoon 2 rainbow DLC, a custom level pack for Octo Canyon and Octo Expansion. It seems to be pretty though, and I wanted to take a look at it. Might do that on stream though, that could be funny.
So, last week was very exhausting. Work started, and my body and life are absolutely not ready for a day that starts at 5:30am. So I ended up being very productive, not at home a whole lot, and also my sleep is very weird and sometimes I will only get 4 hours of sleep and as a consequence I will sleep 11 hours. Today I am taking the time to write this blog entry, so it'll probably be more on the 4 hour end.
But why am I here today? Well obviously because I missed you. But also because we have a glorified advertisment to talk about!
There've been a lot of fun things I think! For example, one of the first things they showed in the Japanese cut of the direct: Uma Musume: Pretty Derby - Party Dash! I'll admit, I'm not even into Uma Musume, even though I've been meaning to change that, but the huge thing for me is that this horse girl-racing game looks like it answers the question: What if Exite mother fucking Bike was fun? And I am here to find that out.
Next thing of interest: Fashion Dreamer. Now, I am really glad that this game is coming. It looks like a competent spiritual successor to the Style Boutique games. However... I still got a lot of those on my backlog, so I probably won't play this one until I'm done with those.
New Splatfest? Team cum. Thanks for making it easy by having chocolate mint instead of chocolate.
Detective Pikachu 2 kinda interests me... but I think I'll be fine with watching a stream or let's play of that rather then spending money on it.
Regarding all this Mario stuff: I'm torn on Super Mario RPG. It looks cute, but having played the Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi games, I can't help feeling bored when I think of a Mario RPG without action commands. It just feels wrong, even though a lot of elements of this game seem really interesting to me. The Luigi's Mansion 2 remake looks fine. But honestly I don't need to get that over again. I already can decide on either going back to this game on my 3DS or finally fucking finishing Luigi's Mansion 3, which I somehow still haven't. The Peach game. Well, we don't know a lot about it, but it's a new Peach game, Nintendo is trying something new again, and I'm all here for it. Also certified Super Princess Peach defender here.
And then there was the big one. Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Can you believe it? After four games in the Mario Bros. series that felt exactly the same we finally have a game that tries something original again. And I love that. Also love that they at least try to make it look more 2Dish. Obviously it's not the handdrawn big budget 2D-platformer of my dreams, but it's still pretty neat. But really, I'm just glad we are finally getting something new, as apposed to something New, if you get what I mean.
Oh, and there's a Metal Gear Solid collection coming! I won't get it at release, because sadly with these port collections you never know what you get. But if it turns out to be good I would certainly like to find my way into the series with it.
We also had Pikmin stuff! Man, I really don't run out of things to talk about, despite really wanting to go to bed at this point. But yeah, Pikmin 4 is coming, and Pikmin 1 and 2 are getting ports. Which is nice because I never actually played Pikmin 2. (I really should though before Pikmin 4 comes out preferably.) However, the coolest thing about that is that Pikmin 1+2 is coming as a physical release! That's really nice, because then I can own every Pikmin game physically not just on one console, but in general! Since Pikmin 1 and 2 for both Wii and Gamecube are so expensive at this point it would certainly like having another way to own them. Also if the Pikmin 4 multiplayer doesn't work online I will commit crying like a little bitch.
Finally: A new Wario Ware that actually looks fucking fun! They were experimenting with the last two entries, especially Game & Wario (To the point where it's even up to debate if that one is part of the series), but also with Get it Together where every microgame sadly ended up feeling kinda similar due to the stream lined controls. The control variety is half the fun, that's why Wario Ware Gold worked so well. But with this game they seem to walk a step back and then take one in a direction I am vibing more with. The microgames we saw all seemed really fun and there's already such a variety in the controls. I think it's gonna be great.
Now, I think that was it. I mean I could tell you more about all of the shit I'm doing all day, but this entry is long enough and I really need to sleep. So good night!
So, I watched Spider-Verse 2 yesterday. And it was great. So great in fact, that I needed to write about it. A lot. More then I ever would allow myself to write here on this blog. And that is why the media log is there now! I just reused my trusted blog template, which kind of works, even if I would've liked something fancier, more organized. But I neither have the time, nor the spoons for that right now. So for the forseeable future it will look like this, and I will just post everything I want there, games, movies, books, whatever. And Spider-Verse gets the totally deserved honor of being the first thing I write about. Check it out here if you like!
It's Big Run again! This one I actually played quite a bit, because the double scales from the king salmonids do be kinda nice. I also managed to get a highscore of 158 eggs. How? I got completely lucky in freelance. So thanks to those randos.
I've also been working on my new wardrobe. It's mostly done, to the point where I've already put some shit in there, but it's not completely complete, so I'll probably safe the photos for when I'm actually satisfied with everything. I hope I'll have the time though! Because next week is gonna be packed. I have a lot of stuff that I need to pick up again after getting sick. Tomorrow I'll have a study meeting to learn for my JLPT exam, I'll have therapy, and I also want to go to one of these maker spaces. I think a membership there could take a lot of logistical bullshit off my chest while maybe even motivating me to work on stuff more often. I just need some space! And maybe tools. My own tools suck. That place is supposed to fix both of these issues!
This reminds me of that time when I got sick and started building a website
The last few days, not much interesting things really happened. I am still sick, I didn't go outside except for when I went to the doctor to get some shitty antibiotics that don't even have these funny little virus monsters on the box that you can push out. I also still haven't seen Across the Spider-Verse which really pisses me off because if I were healthy I would've gone day one and wouldn't have been spoiled some things that probably aren't even important but they feel important to me. So that kinda sucks.
On the bright side: I didn't have an incredible paralyzing headache today! So I went and actually did something on this site again which isn't just a new blog entry. And depending on what kind of person you are, this can either be huge or completely useless. I have an rss feed now! If you actually use an rss reader, you might be really happy to hear this. If not, maybe you should consider getting one. I recently did (today) and it already made it a lot easier to keep track of all the sites I follow that aren't hosted straight on neocities. Now, mine is on neocities, but some of my readers don't have an account and this is basically to make noticing updates a little bit easier for them. And then I also continued to watch Pretty Cure after a kinda long break. So my life is basically just the way it was back when I was sick with COVID. What a vibe.
I got sick. My flatmate got sick during his vacation, and I guess I got infected. Now I'm sitting here, everything hurts, my body is always either freezing or burning, and I got that annoying cough to deal with.
This really sucks, because I had a lot of stuff planned that I now won't do I guess. You know, going to pride, visiting friends and stuff. I never went to pride before, can you believe that? My urge to visit these really big state level events is pretty nonexistent, because I hate rainbow capitalism, but I always wanted to go to some smaller rally during pride month, I just always missed those. As I probably will this year. But hey, if we're lucky, Germany won't classify queer people as a terror organization by next year and I will be able to go then.
I also, after 8 months of living here, finally found a wardrobe for my room. This is a big deal for me, okay? I live in a very small room, and I collect lots of garbage. I used to have a basement compartment, but this place doesn't have that and if it did that would mean I wouldn't be able to afford that. So I figured that I need the perfect wardrobe for my room. One that perfectly fits into the space I reserved for it, and that fits all my shit that is currently still in moving boxes. It was hard to find one like that, especially since I also wanted it to fit with the other interior of my room, it's mostly light wood. Not all birch, it is kind of a mix, but I think it fits well enough. But anyway, I finally found it. And tomorrow I'll go get it even if it kills me. It probably won't, it will most certainly just be very unpleasent, but I will not turn down this offer.
Anyway, I hope you're all having a nicer start into pride month, and I hope you can all have a gay ol' time. Yaba-daba-doo.
For real my allergies are going wild. I don't know why, it might be because I'm basically living in the middle of a forest now, or maybe my allergies just got worse. Or both. As a kid I never had any hay fever problems. Then eventually I started to get red eyes that were burning quite a lot around this time of the year, and now it's the full package with sneezes until my nose bursts. When I leave tomorrow I really gotta get something for that at the pharmacy.
But hey, even though my nose was dripping the entire fucking day, I was quite productive! I did the laundry, played some more Tears of the Kingdom and also made some melon pan again! This time it's vegan, so I might even end up making a recipe and uploading it here. Tomorrow is a holiday, and we usually have our study-meeting for JLPT on Monday. Now we still have, but we're gonna be learning all day, because we don't have any other appointments. The others were like "Why don't we all bring snacks?" on Saturday but I didn't get to buy anything anymore, so instead I made melon pan as a snack. I hope they will like it at least half as much as I do. And do you know what? I feel wild today, so I'm gonna put a photo into a blog entry for the first time ever. Just because I'm kinda proud of how it looks. Almost as if it came straight from the Japanese bakery.
I was at the hairdresser today. And you won't believe it but I actually like my new, much shorter haircut. I will update my self-portrait at about me soon if you're interested, I just don't wanna do it right now because I don't feel like connecting the Gamecube to my capture card right now and also it's already to dark to shoot decent photos with the GB Camera.
But yeah. I feel better now. Monday and Tuesday I just didn't really do anything exept for our little weekly Japanese grammar session that we do in preperation for the JLPT, but today I got my hair done and also met a friend, which was nice. I also wanted to meet someone tomorrow, but they are busy so I'm gonna try to be productive in other ways. I still have some paperwork I could do, I could cut the lawn, the possibilities are endless. Maybe I'll stream again. But that's then. For now I think I will just vibe a little and then go to bed.
I'm not even gonna attempt to make a funny or smart headline
I had a really nice weekend. I really had. I used the new German ticket, that allows you to use public transport across the entire country for 49€ a month, to go to my girlfoes birthday party. It might have been the slowest I've ever traveled this path, because the ticket doesn't cover long-range-services, but I didn't mind too much because it was so cheap. I did mind a little when that huge family sat down everywhere around me, while always having some people stand in the hall between the seat even though there were many free seats. They were also talking very loud. And eating very smelly McDonalds. It sucked. But eventually I arrived at my girlfoes place, realized she wasn't there and that she hadn't really planned anything and just invited a lot of people of people over and no one knew who was coming and who wasn't. So I helped my girlfoes partner to prepare as much Birthday stuff as possible, and eventually my girlfoe came back and a bunch of people came and we had an overall nice but very chaotic and sometimes overstimulating birthday party.
I then spent the night at their place and got ready to enter public transportation hell again, but instead of going straight home I would visit my girlfriend and spend some quality time with them, which was really nice. Eventually I had to go because I didn't want to arrive home in the absolute middle of the night. German public transport however had other plans, and I missed three different connecting trains. I literally arrived over two hours late stacked onto this already way to long ride. And because that isn't fucked enough, there were these two fucking garbage asshole excuses of biomatter on the third alternative train to the connection that I missed. They sat right next to me an thought I couldn't hear them. They clocked me and proceeded to talk freely about how I make them feel. How people like me (and also black people, as they mentioned) make them have really violent thoughts and they want to just collapse onto me. They then proceeded to crack jokes about my appearance, my mental health, and their violent fantasies about me, all while mocking me trying to ignore them, because I was terrified for my life. I had pepper spray on me, but to be honest, I don't know if I would have been able to physically use it if I would have had too. I was just glad they left at some point without literally assaulting me.
So yeah, that just happened, and it kinda put me into a really shitty mood, despite my weekend being an overall baller experience. Blogging helped though, I think. Just recollecting all my thoughts about all the stuff I did while I didn't feel like a deer in headlights fearing for it's fucking life. But hey, it wasn't the first time that something like this happened, and it won't be the last time. It just is part of life. Would be pog though if cis people actually stepped in when they witness stuff like this. So if you're cis and reading this: I know stepping into shit like this is scary, I really do because I am the one who can never choose not to be involved. But if you see someone getting harrassed and even just like, nicely talk to them without interacting with the harrassers, you can really change someones life. So please do.
Today was a chill day. I went to the doctor! There have been a lot of things I've not really been taking care of for the last few months. Ever since I have been to Japan to be honest. So today I went there with a list and talked about everything. And now I have like a billion prescriptions and I'm gonna use them to make the most out of my public health insurance. Well, unless I get my request through and actually get paid that one big thing I need, that would probably dwarf everything else. But for now I'm gonna get myself a nice new pair of orthopedic insoles. My current ones are still in an alright shape, but I can get new ones twice a year and these are now over a year old, so I figured I would get new ones and put the old pair into my other pair of shoes. Would also be good for the insoles if I don't shove them into a different pair of shoes twice a day. In the end, both would probably have a longer lifespan from this.
Oh right, a friend came over on Sunday. He went to Japan yesterday and wanted to come over one more time before leaving. He also gave me his day-one Switch, which I now plan on hacking! He gave it to me at an absolutely unfair price, for him I mean, but I'm really glad he wanted to give me this chance, and sadly I couldn't give him any more. Switch hacking seems really interesting, I'd love to try some of the mods that were made up until now. So for now I bought myself a RCM jig so that I can get into hacking (I tried the paperclip, but I couldn't get it to work), and one of those nice mini dock shells. Because I have two docks now! And wouldn't it be nice to have one original deck on the desk and one smaller one for travel? I take the Switch to friends a lot, and to my family, and basically anywhere whenever I go places for more than two or three days. So I'm looking forward to that. But I don't have money so mail is gonna be slow. That's fine, I still have Zelda to keep me occupied. And also other life things.
For example, I really need to start working on this page for real again. Even if it's just uploading new GB Player pics. But that would require me to get them off the camera and that's always a drag. I use my Gamecube with GB Interface to capture GB Camera software and then take screenshots. It's neither practical nor the best or cheapest method, but it's what I can do with the stuff I already have. One day I should invest in one of those fancy cartridge readers, but that's not a priority right now.
So yeah, yesterday I went to the drug store. Because they have a media and toy section where they also sell video games and real video game stores don't exist anymore. But hey, at least they had it. And so I took it, went to the counter and found myself next to a young kid yelling "OMG THEY ARE GETTING TEARS OF THE KINGDOM TOO!" After that they actually talked to me and told me how long they have been waiting for this game and that they are now buying it AND the amiibo. It was really cute, but sadly when I was about to answer, their parents took them away. So yeah, I have Tears of the Kingdom now, and already played it quite a bit. It really is just like playing Breath of the Wild for the first time all over again. I won't go into too much detail though. Hopefully that is what the media log is for... eventually...
Just like me talking about the movie I watched today: 5-25-77 a movie about the first ever Star Wars fan. It's a fun little story about a guy who loves making movies, but lives on the countryside where he is a total outcast and can't chase his dream. As someone who grew up on the countryside as well, and still has tons of great friends there after moving 500km to go to university and just... be on the map. Capable of getting to know more people like me. Because as I said, as much as I love my countryside friends, there way things work up there is just... you end up befriending people because there is one thing you have in common: You do not fit in. Every oddball, every target of bullying and person disliking the countryside-youth lifestyle of just... drinking your life away because there is nothing else to do, they all ended up in one of these groups of outcasts. But I needed more, to really find myself I needed to get to know people who are more like me than just being an outcast for literally whatever reason ever. So yeah, I really felt that movie there. Oh, it's also a fan-film for a ton of big movies from the 60's and 70's, and that made me remember how many absoulte classics of movies I've never even seen.
I also was in the garden today. My cucumbers were starting to look sad in their little pot, so I planted them outside. I'm afraid they might not make it though. The pot they were in was way to small for their size and number, and so I had to rip apart a lot of the roots, and they might not survive that. But hey, that's kinda my own fault. Maybe just some of them will make it, that would be kinda cool.
I'm gonna be honest, I feel like I'm kinda derealizing a little right now. I'm so busy with things that I can't even properly process them. And it's also not busy in a sense that I work for 8 hours a day and have nothing in life but my one job, but rather that there's too many different things all the time. Is there such a thing as too much variety in life?
Well, as soon as I'm gonna be done with a lot of these shorter things, it should get better again. And right now I don't think I can really complain about how my life is rolling. I got a grade for my essay that I am satisfied with, I'm working to getting my student loan situation fixed, I'm in class for university and also preparing for my JLPT N2 exam, I have a lot of fun plans to make the most of my health insurance (mostly getting new hair, but I also seriously need a health checkup because I haven't been to a general physician since I was at the hospital in Japan with ligament injury which was almost a year ago and still no one ever checked how it healed up), I'm playing in a Splatoon team with fun people, I might have a job soon, which would be a huge help in relieving me from my existential dread... I guess I'm just impatiently waiting for a lot of things to wrap up.
But yeah. Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom releases tomorrow. I kinda forgot about it, even though I've seen all of the Majoras Mask countdown thingies posted everywhere. I kinda didn't look at the last few trailers and much of discussion to avoid spoilers, but I guess with that I also kinda tanked my hype for the game. I mean I'll still go and buy it tomorrow, but... right now I'd be fine if I wouldn't. I even considered waiting a little to get it used in a few weeks. But if it's like Breath of the Wild it will have me under its charm in no time. We'll see. For now... I should do some cleaning because I haven't since the last post where I said I would.
So, yesterday I finished Cadence of Hyrule on stream and I still don't know how to implement it into the media log. Maybe I should look at some other pages some more to figure that out.
Also Team Power won the Splatfest! That's epic because I was Team Power. Everyone and their mother chose Wisdom but I concluded that because it is "what I seek" and not "what I value" I had to go with power. I'm fine with how wise I am, but like... imagine having the power to do stuff like... stop the rise of fascism. Wouldn't that be nice?
Anyway, today was a kinda short day for me, because I went to my bimonthly laser session to have lightning bolts shot at my face and that means I couldn't shave before and now my face is very red. So I just went there and back again without being percived more than absolutely nessecary. And now I won't go out for the rest of the day. No idea what I'm gonna do with that time. I should probably do some cleaning though. Well, time will tell.
That essay is over... I still can't believe it.
I could finally enjoy all the nice little things that my life throws at me. I could stream again. I could work a little on the website. Yeah, that's why there's now collapsibles for the older blog entries so that you don't have to scroll through quite so much. I also finally got around to get a nice favicon that I really like! Actually I just stole it from the old Ika Musume website, but I changed it a little because that website is so old and hasn't been maintained for so long that the favicon isn't transparent. So I guess that makes my Ika Musume website the definitive one. >:]
Yeah, I also played my first Splatoon 3 league battle. Like, not league as in Splatoon 2 but like the German Splatoon League where I am with a team and we play around for fun mostly just to get better at team coordination and have fun. We lost 4-5, but I'm still proud of us. I think we delivered some pretty fun to watch matches.
Also yeah, I was streaming again. Cadence of Hyrule. I mean it's free on Nintendo Switch Online this week and it's not that long, so I thought I might be able to pull it of. I might still do, depending on how much time I will have this weekend. If I can't do it, I might just buy it, it's a fun game. But that's actually not for here! I've been working on a media log, a place where I can talk about all the stuff I consume because this blog kinda turned into a bad movie review place for a while where I didn't even commit because I didn't actually want reviews in my blog, but I still wanted to talk about that stuff. So now that's getting it's own area, but I'm not sure how exactly I wanna do it, because especially for shows and video games I don't wanna have to finish them before I can talk about them. So how do I do that without drowning some stuff out? I'll think about it. Until then I guess I'll keep on dumping my media related thoughts here.
But anyway, I should go to bed, I have karaoke tomorrow at noon.
The last few days were bad. Really bad. I only lived for this shitty essay. I even streamed myself working on it to hold myself accountable. I was live for 5 hours on Friday and 7 hours today. But now I am here. With my essay handed in. One of my biggest accomplishments at university, and I am not even kidding. I kinda wish I was in more of a party mood, but I am too exhausted. Maybe tomorrow. Even though tomorrow I have to do all the house work that I didn't do because of this shitty essay. But hey, that also means I can finally go into the garden again. A past time that I am still suprised brings me a lot of joy if I do it for myself, and not for my parents who force me to do it even though their lawn is obscenely huge and I never used the garden. Well, this garden I will use! But not for boring shit like sitting there, turning into イカ焼き (fried squid) while my ADHD brain dies from unterstimulation. No, I will grow veggies! That's how I will kill inflation!
So yeah. Not really more to say today because... well I had no life other than suffering through getting that essay done. But now there is so much shit I'm gonna do that I have so much less stress on my shoulders.
Yesterday I was at the lesbian movie nights of the local communal cinema. They held a yuri double feature, and there were like 10 people and all of them were some flavor of lesbian and all of them knew each other. Like I went with a friend and we both noticed we had someone in the audience we knew. And the person I knew knew the person that my friend knew! It was really weird.
Oh, if you're actually interested in the movies: We watched Kase-san and morning glories and Fragtime. I liked them both, but I think they fell flat for a lot of the people who aren't like, actually invested in the concept of yuri. They were so busy waiting for some heroes journey-esk plot to happen that I think they kinda missed out on all the stuff there was to appreciate. The visuals, the music, the character interaction and character development are what drives yuri, and it's what I like about them. Kase-san and morning glories was really just a wholesome movie about two people in love who just grew on their feelings for one another. And Fragtime was... a little less wholesome but also that. It was basically two people who got their significant other to actually start processing their trauma instead of running away constantly. Really nice for different reasons, I don't even wanna pick a favorite.
So yeah, today I had Tandem. Tomorrow I will also have Tandem. And also see my psychologist. And also have a pizza party with a bunch of people. And you know what is falling short again? Me writing that fucking essay! And I love it but I hate it because I love every second I am not thinking about this essay that has now made me miserable for so long but also I hate every second I do think about it because time is running away and I'm not getting shit done even if I'm trying. I got until monday. I haven't even written half the pages to meet the minimum lengh. Something has to happen, even if it's just me tearing down my mental health even more to shit some pages out. But I can't do that now with all those appointments tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow. Even though I'm helping a friend move on the weekend... どうしよう?
Yeah, that essay? It's still driving me crazy. I met a friend at the café today, and I think I've been a horrible person to drink coffee with. My mood just makes me a much worse person than usually, at least that's how I feel about it. Anyway, I am planning to apply for a job. I don't have high hopes because they seem to want someone full time and I don't know if I'm ready to give up university, but if it works out, at least the paralyzing existential dread might go away.
Apart from that, I worked on a DS lite today. And yesterday. It's some junkware I got in Japan for 700 Yen or whatever. A few of the buttons didn't work and it looked gross, and since a friend who made some Gameboy Macros a while back sent me her spare parts that she didn't need, I tried to spice it up a little with a mostly new shell and a good clean. However, even if the shell swap looks nice, the left trigger still doesn't work, and also the top screen is dead! If I'm lucky I just didn't insert the ribbon cable properly. If it broke, I guess I can take everything apart again. I got other spare top screens, I just don't have the nerve. Or the time. This repair was meant to chill me down so that I can actually work on that essay again! I look so forward to being done with all of this.
Hi! Guess I lied about more frequent blog updates, huh? I'm sure you don't mind though.
This essay I'm still writing, or rather trying to write, and which I have asked for the second deadline extention for by now. I really suck at this. I love to research stuff and to think and talk about it, but putting it into academically digestible words? In a monologue? That is written? No thanks, if I'll ever end up in science I'll partner up with someone else for that.
Apart from that, I went to the movies again. Finally watched the Mario movie, and I gotta say it was okay. Played it really safe, but it was very inoffensive and since I'm not immune to propaganda it was kinda nice to be to be DiCaprio in that meme where he points at the screen whenever they refrenced something that wasn't super obvious.
Also I went to a café I've never been to and it had iced coffee and that was nice. And I made curry. Which was also nice. It just wasn't so nice how I basically haven't gotten anything done for my essay today. But hey, it's just 1am, I've got all night for the grind. :')
I'm back home!
And I promised myself I will not work on this site until my essay is done, but blog entries don't count so expect some ramblings from me, just not anything new in other places, even though I have many plans.
But yeah, I rode home on Wednesday, visited my girlfoe and their partner, helped them with moving a little and had some pretty nice udon in their city. Then I continued my ride home in the middle of the night and got caught by a speed camera. My brain kinda shorted and I got caught with what I think were around 130 km/h in a 100 km/h zone. The zone was super tiny and I didn't notice anything special, it really feels like it was only there for the speed camera to rake peoples cash in. But what can you do? It happened now.
Today I was in the garden, cut the lawn for the first time this year, and also for the first time since moving here. It's shit because the lawn is very... mountainy, but I like the result. Also I found the ruins of an old vegetable patch! Which is great because we wanted to build one anyway. Now we can just fix up that one! And after that I watched Suzume with a friend.
I rate that movie 3,5 out of 4 chair legs. Animation was stunning as always, story and characters were pretty nice. I think I liked this one more than Weathering with You, and about as much as Your Name, but it's been a long time since I watched that so take that with a grain of salt. I liked how they basically were like "Yeah remember the Kantō-earthquake? That disaster where almost 150.000 people died? A worm did that."
And seeing like, og Twitter in an anime feels weird now that Twitter turned into such a shitshow. But I think my favorite thing about, basically all recent Makoto Shinkai movies are these roadtrip aspects, and how the characters just meet complete strangers and they are all so kind to each other and have a great time. These movies just make you like strangers. Like, conceptually. Every car that passes me on the street, everyone in the bus or train, they might all be such cool people and we are just one chance encounter away from having a great time. Now, I'm not saying that these movies give me the courage to just walk up to people and befriend them, but they make me think I should. And maybe one day I'll be able to do that, and that would be great.
So, I spent more time with my family, some time with my friends too but they already seem to be quite busy again, so I guess it's for the best that I decided to go home tomorrow already. I really need to start grinding on that fucking essay, and I think I have a better chance doing it there because I just don't like using my tablet to write. I have a bluetooth keyboard, but it has a little bit of delay and a Japanese layout, so especially writing German is a pain with it because I'm missing some letters.
Anyway though, I recently watched Pinball, like the movie. It was basically the Tetris movie, but unironically good. The casting was great, the narration was great, which is done by the guy whose story this movie is based on was great, and the editing, oh god the editing was so good. I need to watch more smaller movies like this, and you should too! There is so much great art in this world we just barely miss nowadays because the bigger, more corporate things get such a bigger buget for marketing, I kinda wanna get myself to steer against that, even though it's hard. Especially since I don't hate big buget productions. I am actually quite the Marvel fan, even nowadays. I can't wait to see Across the Spider-Verse, or the Mario Movie (even though I hate Chris Pratt)... I just also want to to make room for smaller stuff, even though it's hard because you just can't consume infinite media.
That's kinda my personal problem with indie games. I know there are so many absolutely great indie games that I would love to death, but I just can't get myself to play them, because it's hard to get into something completely new. If I get a new mainline Mario, Zelda, Animal Crossing, Splatoon game or whatever, I know what I can expect. It's already within my comfort zone. But Demon Turf? Celeste? Stardew Valley? A Hat in Time? And those are even just the ones I eventually gave a chance anyway! It was hard to get into them from nothing, and with sometimes not really anyone to talk about with them. So a lot of the times instead of touching that really great indie gem... I'll just play Super Mario World for the 9000th time and stay in my comfort zone where nothing suprises me.
But yeah, I'll work on that. I should start on that media-log for this website soon, that will probably motivate me. Just gotta think of how where I wanna put it. And how. Probably somewhere with interests? Or maybe it's own place. We'll see!
Wow, I didn't imagine writing a simple blog on mobile could be so hard, otherwise I would've given a headsup about leaving for a while, I just didn't expect the mobile interface to suck this hard.
But yeah, a lot of stuff happened, I went visiting a lot of friends, yesterday I was bartending on a concert my friends organized... it's too much for a single blog post, sadly.
I also wanted to recommend the new Tetris movie to all of you. Is it capitalist propaganda? Hell yeah. Are the characters likable? Not a single one. But the casting is nice, the performances are great, and it's a really fun watch in a Spider-Man 3 like way. You probably shouldn't watch it alone, but with a friend? I had a blast watching with my partner.
More frequent updates should resume in a few days by the way. I wanted to stay until the weekend, but apparently ants invaded my room and I gotta go back to take care of them...
But what did Captain Falcon say in the little comic on the back of the original F-Zero box? "Real men don't need breaks." Now, I'm not a man, but I relate with the sentiment.
So, tomorrow I will go and visit my parents for two weeks. I wanted to get ready today... but I kinda didn't? I mean I did at least some stuff on my to-do list like writing that important email that I had
been procrastinating for weeks, but... I still haven't packed. And also I'm not in bed at a reasonable time. But what can you do.
Also it's trans day of visibility! And trans people are like, literally so cool, I love them! And they are visibile. I'm visible! On the trans day on visibility I kinda made it a ritual of mine to reflect on
my past year as a trans individual. Like, what did I personally accomplish, how did my transition continue and stuff. And I realized something: This was the first year since my coming out, where basically nothing really
changed. Sure, there is ongoing stuff like laser therapy and HRT obviously. This is kinda nice. I guess it means I made it. My transition doesn't feel "over" though. I don't know if it ever will. But as long as I can
be content with my life and with myself, I am content. And I really hope that every trans person on this planet will know what I feel today, rather sooner than later. That is what I am fighting for.
I hate coffee but I like Latte but not as much as I like tea
Today I went to therapy. That's nice because my therapist was like "If you've been meaning to write this one email for so long then why not just do it now, here in session."
and then I did and it took like less than 3 minutes and he was like "Yeah you're literally waisting more time by worrying about this stuff than it takes to do this stuff."
And he is completely correct, but this knowledge alone isn't enough to stop doing it. I need... I don't even know what I need. I need 10000€ in cash, then I'd feel less stressed.
So yeah therapy was nice I had a tea there because my therapist always makes me a tea which is pretty nice. After that I went to a café to meet a friend, and then I went home to vibe.
I also tried using my かき氷機 (shaved ice maker) for the first time today. The ice looked really nice, but as soon as I poured my selfmade banana syrup onto it, it completely melted. I don't really know why.
It was very tasty though! So even if I didn't get かき氷 (shaved ice), I still got a really nice banana milkshake. Or a milkshave you could say.
Oh, one other productive thing I did: I translated my Taiyaki recipe into English and added some explanaition on how it's made, rather than just listing the ingredients.
I'll add it to my projects list when I have decided where I want to host the pdfs.
Okay that's a lie I'm very tired. Remember how I was going on about going on a trip for the weekend? Yeah I did that, and it was really fun and nice and I learned a lot of things and got to know a lot of cool
people and I also spent a little bit of time with some epic friends. However it was also very exhausting. The organizing really could've been a lot better, and there was just way to much going on over a day. And then daylight saving time also stole us an hour of sleep,
so we were really lacking in that department. On my way home, some dude walked through the train with his dog and it pooped right next to my seat. It was smelling horribly. And while the owner tried to clean it,
that wasn't before someone seized the opportunity to walk through it and run everything into the carpet, so some of it was still there, smelling for quite some time until I either got so used to it or it stopped smelling
because it got dry. I don't know. And don't care. I've already been going on about this shitty experience for way too long.
Today I went to my endocrinologist. It was an important appointment because I was running low on meds and I haven't actually talked to my endocrinologist in a year.
Tiny problem though: The endo is in another town, and today German public transport saw a nation wide strike. Don't get me wrong, I totally support them! Power to all unions and everyone who isn't taking shit when fighting
for better wages. It just meant I had to go by car, and fuel is a little more expensive than using the train with a discount. Even worse: Usually place I park at has free parking if you go to the super market next to it,
which I usually do because chances are there's something I need anyway. But today for some reason they still charged me 4€ for staying less than 2 hours. Not a fan.
At least I applied for those 200€ inflation bonus for German university students today so I got a little extra money coming my way. And that's the high note I wanna go to bed on. Good night!
Today I went to Ikea to get a bunch of stuff. And also to look for a bunch of stuff. Despite having lived in this room for half a year at this point, I do not have a wardrobe. I don't have a lot of things!
But I don't need them to live, I just need them so my room feels like a home and not like a cave.
So I looked around and got quite a few things: Boxes for my shelf, clocks for the kitchen and bath, a new lamp (The old one was hanging so low that you would always bump your head against it).
I also had to realize that new wardrobes are like... extremely expensive. And they don't even have any in the color I want!
I wanted to go for a birch wood aesthetic, I always liked how it's very light but still has this natural vibe to it.
But have you tried to find a wardrobe below 200€ that's birch colored? I guess I'll have to go for a used one after all. Which sucks because...
I kinda had a gift card for 50€ that I should've used today but I forgot to take it with me. So now I gotta spend another 50 bucks there!
I haven't done anything here in a few days. But that's okay because the reason there was no blog entry was that nothing fucking happened. I was just vibing and feeling kinda mid.
But today I had therapy! That actually helped, we didn't do much but just me dumping a little already helped lifting my mood.
It helped me so much in fact, that I was motivated enough to do something that I've been meaning to try for a while: Bake melonpan!
I absolutely love melon pan with all my heart and stomach and I haven't had any since... I think when I was on my flight back to Germany last September.
I got one final one before boarding at a conbini in Narita and that was it. I've never seen them in Germany, not in any Asian super markets, restaurants or literally anywhere.
So obviously I had to do it myself, as I have previously done with Taiyaki. I love Taiyaki, and not to brag, but I think I have gotten quite good at baking them.
The best part about making them myself though is that I am able to make them vegan and then I can share them with all my friends which is literally the thing I love most about baking.
I also want to create a place on here dedicated to my baking endevours. Share some pictures, share my recipies... I mean most of them I stole from the internet but I'll usually have modified it to suit my own devious tastes.
I don't particuarly like anko (red bean paste) for example, which is the most common filling for Taiyaki, so I'll usually make them with sweet potato paste, as I've come to love it in Nipponbashi in Ōsaka.
That Taiyaki store in Denden Town? It's the best. The state of art. What I strive for.
I kinda derailed a bit though. I wanna share my recipies! I usually make them bilingual, German and Japanese, but I guess for this place I'll start adding English into the mix.
You totally gotta show me if you're ever actually gonna make something with them!
Today I had tandem with a Japanese friend of mine, but I also really wanted to go on a car ride and buy an electric guitar.
So I just forced my friend to come with! I mean we did talk a lot in the car and managed to get everything done both of us would have expected from todays tandem meeting, and also I got the chance to show him
just how bad the German Autobahn really is, despite the country acting like it's the best thing we have to offer. So that was nice!
I also played a lot of Splatoon again, but after that much totally focused "Japanese learning" I totally deserved that.
I didn't get work done today. Like, none that my mom would be proud of at least.
I did get the interests page for Yoshi Touch and Go done and played quite some Splatoon today though.
But yeah, nothing too fancy today. Basically I'm just abusing my blog as an update log today. ^^
But it's my page and I think it's fine to do it this way. Tomorrow I'll do some more adventuring, maybe then there will be more to tell.
I'm just sitting at the optician waiting for a clerk
Today a friend asked me if I would go to the optician with them, which I happily did! They had an appointment, but we still managed to wait for two hours until someone had time for us.
It's obviously bad, because... come on, what do you even hand out appointments for if you're gonna make us wait for so long, but I didn't mind to much. I got finally got to do some of my timekiller tasks again.
What those are? Playing Pokémon on my GBA SP and reading the Ika Musume manga. I always have a Gameboy and/or one manga volume with me, in case I have some time to kill.
So today I managed to get done with the 4th volume of Ika Musume and did some gringing on victory road in Pokémon Blue. I can't wait when I can finally go and play Crystal instead, but I'm very underleveled and
it will be a while until I'm done with it. Oh, also I got a free coffee as compensation for my time. It didn't really coffee coffee, but it was free so I don't mind.
After my friend found some actually really nice glasses and all of the paperwork was done, I went to the food court to get some dinner and hopefully work on my report a little, which I didn't.
Instead I met some other friends and was just vibing with them until the food court closed down. But hey, sometimes you need days like that. Socialization is a positive time investment, especially in real life.
Makes serotonin go brrrr.
I hope I'll get some work done tomorrow, but we'll see. I'll keep you up to date!
Today I feel like I did nothing. That's not even true though, I did quite a lot of housework. And I finally got around to plant my vegetables! The shared flat I moved to after coming back from Japan (aka. my home)
has a small backyard, so I thought of growing some cucumbers there over the summer. I'm also growing peppers, but I'm not sure yet if it wouldn't be better to keep those inside.
I also learned that I'm going on a weekend long trip later this month, which is nice because my friends will be there and I don't have to pay for anything.
But yeah, despite everything... right now I can't help feeling kinda unsatisfied. Maybe I should work a little more on the interest page to have something I can look at and say "I did that today."
Yeah, I think that's what I'll do. I also had the idea to maybe put my game log here. I used to have a twitter thread with games I finished over the last two years,
but with twitter kinda becoming uninhabitalbe I don't feel like keeping it going so I might do something similar here instead.
My family visited! I also showed them this webpage, so if you're reading this, hi!
To be honest, this is a very special occasion in my book, because I live pretty far away from where I grew up. I go home semi-reguarly, but really don't get visited often.
That is why I took this day of and spent the day with them, which was quite fun! We went to some toursity places that I have never seen before because I didn't wanna spend the money,
ate at a really good Indian restaurant and in the end went to see a classic 1980 Japanese action movie that peaked my interest: Crazy Thunder Road,
a punk-action movie about biker gangs. It was a very interesting movie, both as a political and historical artpiece. Also the soundtrack was a bob, I'll have to check it out eventually.
If you're into older movies and interested in Japans counter culture of the late 20th century, I recommend you check it out!
Seriously, this week is so packed, I shouldn't even be here. But it's just my little happy place, what can I do.
I also would've loved to do something for ミクの日 (Miku day) yesterday, but I was busy feeling bad because I should be working instead. But hey, happy MAR10-day!
Maybe I'll play a round of Super Mario World before going to bed. These 11-exit runs are great for a few nice minutes of comfort.
Oh, and on the topic of games I like: The interest page exists now!! It's really not much, right now you can only look at buttons that don't work. But I think they are pretty! Might add more later.
Maybe even a lot more, but then not everything will ever get a functionality, I think some of them will just be like "I like this stuff" so that you can look at it and be like "Woah, she likes that stuff?
I like that stuff, that's so cool!"
Yeah, so apart from that... I'll now go on to have a pretty exhausting weekend, and maybe next week will be better, but I don't know. Future me will let you know though!
I didn't write a blog or work on the website for TWO days! And the worst is, this is going to continue, I'm just too busy. There are so many annoying appointments that I can't even get myself to make progress
on the stuff that I have to do that prevents me from working on the website, even though the deadline is already passed and I am just waiting for my client to send me the message that they wanna have it done
by someone else because I took too long. :')
But I cannot allow this to drag me down, my therapist told me to "keep the ball rolling", so I I decided to write ab blog entry as a way to cheer myself up. And I think it works! I wanna write about how I got
a package today and it contained a power adapter for my Virtual Boy (I got it in Japan and live in Europe, so the original won't do)
and a bunch of replacement batteries for my gameboy games, that makes me pretty happy!
So I can't wait to use that stuff and show all of it off on here once the designated pages for projects and interests are done. I decided that I'll scrap the gallery and split it up into a section about media
that I like (kinda like shrines I dunno if I'll call them that), and hobbies that I pursue, like me modding game consoles or taking GB Camera pictures or whatever. It'll be fun! Just has to wait a little.
So yeah, now you know what's popping and I can go back to my work that I will hopefully get done today.
Oh, and happy international womens day! Women are so cool! And feminism is too!
Please do feel epic if you're woman or non-binary or transmasc person, and especially if you're trans, non-white, disabled or marginalized in any other way!
Working on a Sunday? It's more likely than you think
I didn't get to play the Big Run with my friends. Not even a duo. But I got lucky one time and had epic randos who I got 113 eggs with. That is satisfactory. However, what I am most satisfied with is that I actually kinda got shit done for my report on queer education in Japan today. I really suck at these reports. But this one I really wanna write.
When I was living in Japan, I was trying to get in touch with local queer communities, trying to make some friends, finding something to do, somewhere to go... but it didn't really work out.
Now, I don't know if this is because there were none, or because I just couldn't find them, but either way, I was kinda bummed I couldn't find any info on anything going on within Japanese queer spaces.
And that got me thinking: Even if there are some, it kinda sucks that they don't seem to be accessible. So I decided to write on that, kinda shine light on that issue.
Oh. And I also worked on the website. I added some pwetty pictures! It doesn't look like much, but there was a lot of learning involved. Today I learned how to crop images in css.
That's maybe a skill that might one day be useful to me again, so yay. And I also made the website mobile friendly! It's not the prettiest thing, but it's what I could do in css without having to go through every
html file, and it works. There is even a version for tablets that's more like the desktop version, just prettier on a slim screen.
So yeah, kinda proud of myself. That's nice! I should've picked up liveblogging YEARS ago if it's always so nice to reminisce about ones daily achievements.
Today I went to the city with a friend. I hoped we might be able to play some Big Run together at my place, but since she forgot her Switch we were just vibing at this overly fancy poutine restaurant and at the café.
Was still pretty nice, it's been a while since we've seen each other, but it might become a little more frequent in the future because German public transport is becoming a tiny bit more affordable!
So yeah, I spent most of my day with that and after coming home I played some Big Run with randos. It was horrible at first, but now that it's a little later it got a tiny bit better.
Still hope I'll get the chance to play in a coordinated group before it'll be over, 88 eggs isn't much of a high score. But hey, there's still one more day, so we'll see!
I gotta say, I'm proud of myself. I mean the gallery like, doesn't exist yet at all but I think I'll get there. It's just rare that I have an idea like "I wanna do this" and then I actually see it through.
But I really think that isn't the case here, I've already come too far for this. To think that I would ever try my hand at coding again after that computer class in high school...
(I dropped out because my laptop was too bad to handle java and I couldn't keep up with class when I was basically busy troubleshooting my PC the entire time.)
But I did it (mostly)! And soon I will be able to return to my normal procrastinating schenanigans. Either that or I will work on a mobile version for the site or some other junk.
We'll see, but I'll try to keep you up to date.
