so this is it. the last day.

i'll be more or less offline from now... duration indefinite. no more msn or blogging away... though i might make the occasional appearance should the opportunity arise.

'til next we meet... take care :)

just finished reading lost japan by alex kerr. a most fascinating and very insightful read, giving lots of filling-in-the-background info on various aspects of japan's society and culture. here's a review google found. wonder how much i'll be able to soak up while i'm there in person.

drove an 11-seater toyota "troopcarrier" 4wd yesterday. in peak hour traffic... :o

even though that drive only lasted less than an hour, i'm still re-adjusting somewhat to my much smaller, much lighter echo (even though i've been driving *that* for 3+ years!)

been listening to an album (soliloquy) by karin schaupp... classical music on the guitar. found it hard to appreciate, being somewhat of an ignoramus when it comes to classical music (and probably not helped by only ever listening to it in bits and pieces, while driving in the car). then the subject of sonatas and movements came up with my passengers this morning, and i thought i'd try to educate myself a bit more by google-whacking on the topic... found one site which looked helpful - incompetech's musical genres. maybe not the most in-depth coverage of the topic you could find, but suited me for now :)

and now i'm listening to more classical sounding stuff - vanessae mae's "the classical album 3: the italian album" (the original four seasons and the devil's trill sonata). i think i need a tour guide.

one for diehard nokia buffs, i gather:

"Want to get a higher score on Snake? Try out this new Snake Joystick..."

see it for yourself!

came across this site while browsing: gracenotworks.com. seems useful... shall have to return and have more of a read of their articles/past issues.

watched kate and leopold. amusing, mostly nice, fluffy... with the odd enjoyable bits of dialogue / one-liners from the antiquated mouth of 1876 leopold :) otherwise, i think i preferred meg ryan in her earlier romantic comedy roles, esp sleepless in seattle and you've got mail.

speaking of antiquated, i much prefer blockbuster to video ezy when it comes to dvd rental. pretty much all of video ezy's new rentals are overnight (return by 6pm), whereas blockbuster has a lot more new releases on 3 and sometimes 7 day loans, and even the overnight ones can be returned by midnight. with the amount of bonus/additional material you get on some dvds, you pretty much need >1 night/sitting to see it all. only reason i'm renting from video ezy is to use my free rentals... two left on that account. will have to see if the scenery changes after my freebies run out :o

resignation form: signed, (not quite) sealed, and delivered.

i think i hit a butterfly the other day, while driving... saw it fly across in front of me and then it went up. looking in the rearview mirror i saw the black coloured shape flutter to the ground behind me...

bowled (ten pin bowling) almost four games last night... now my arm is sore. i got progressively worse with each game, never bettering my initial score of 139. i was pretty happy, being a very occasional bowler who only aims to break a century with each outing! maybe i should aim a bit higher next time :)

found a new online photo album hosting site today, so did a little experimenting with it. generally speaking, i like it. comparable to what i'm currently using (imagestation), but much better in the sense that

1. it allows albums to be shared PUBLICLY, and doesn't require visitors to sign up/log in just to view albums
   
2. the uploading tool works SO much better than imagestation's one, which is at best fickle

the only reason i've stuck with imagestations is that i had not found any other site with comparable features, allowed public viewing, AND offered unlimited storage. i'm yet to confirm whether this site has that, but so far i haven't seen any limits stated... so to test it out i have uploaded some photos from the wedding i attended on the weekend... congrats to ted & emi.

boy dental care is expensive! $105 for a basic filling... well that's what i *would* have paid saturday morning had i not known the dentist. sometimes it pays (or rather saves) to have connections.

had a lazy-ish rest of the morning and afternoon hanging out with some uni friends, including attending the wedding of another uni friend. it was nice and relaxing and refreshing in a way to catch up. oh waiter, x2 please...

and it turns out that my friends had all seen "my sassy girl" - fancy that! actually they were talking about it using the chinese title for the movie... which of course i didn't recognise (i think the translation was something like "my crazy girlfriend"... and of course i wasn't readily expecting that there were too many other fans of korean cinema out there). but when one person quoted "coke? you wanna die?! drink coffee!" the identity of the movie was unmistakable :) we all enjoyed it, so if that's not a good enough recommendation, i don't know what is :p

ahh... this is the life... internet to your bed :)

poor man's version of course - thanks to an long phone extension cord and the work laptop, which will soon be a distant memory of a luxury.

there are probably 15-20 people in my house at the moment. all downstairs. and i'm upstairs in my room connected online... yeah i'm bored. can you tell?

forgot to mention that i thought many aspects of road to perdition were quite predictable. granted, it's not meant to be a mystery/suspense flick, but still. i think that took a bit of the enjoyment out of it.

anyhow, off to do a spot of surfing and newsgroup browsing... have a full-ish day tomorrow and not in the mood for anything too mentally draining tonight.

no slow, lazy afternoon for me this friday! been on the go since i got into work 8+ hours ago... ah well, i guess you gotta take the busy with the not so busy...

watched road to perdition wednesday night. it was pretty good, but i think i was expecting more. maybe because of the whole "tom hanks" factor and implicit hype, though hype isn't really the right term. anyway, definitely passable movie viewing material, and has a few rather funny moments too. it's probably worth a re-watch to pick up on more of the father-son relationship themes, which is probably where the heart of the story lies. but that can happen via video/free-to-air tv - i managed to watch this for free too, so aren't about to pay to watch it a second time!

apparently my blog has had a few more visitors in recent days, how exciting :) speaking of blogs, i've discovered a fellow rambler and longer-time blogger at this peachy site: check the journals link for her blog.

the free japanese film festival is on this weekend in town... details can be seen here. i actually found out the details for it last week (at japanime 02), but wasn't intending to go. of the films on offer, i've seen postman blues (i think two years ago at biff), not sure how keen i'm on wrt lily of the valley, and would have gone to see princess mononoke, but found out that someone i know has it (along with many a other miyazaki films!) on dvd, so that sounds a much tempting alternative.

hmm... time to think about going home, perhaps...