Home Sweet Home

Aaah... It is so good to be home. There's so much variety in the food available... And there's a DVD player... And the Christmas tree... And my sisters! Yeah, being home makes me happy. ^_^ I've spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out how JBuilder works. I figured it was time to re-teach myself Java since my software engineering lab next semester is taught in Java and they don't really teach you Java - they expect you to already know it, which is kind of evil. <_< Heh, so my sister gave me a problem from her programming class and it was nasty and tricky (and also really really short). It made me pretty sad. It's like when I see her artwork - I feel like I'm falling behind. She's moving forward so fast and I'm stuck at a standstill. I totally blame MIT. Darned school sucking up all my free time and not letting me do what I want. Oh yeah, I've got a couple of my final grades in. I passed 6.002! My grade is low and it's doing murder to my GPA, but at least I passed! I was terrified that I would have to retake the class, which would be the worst thing ever. I'm worried about 6.042 as well... I hope I did okay, and that my final grade isn't going to trash my GPA beyond all recognition. I got an A in Japanese, but I was expecting no less. That was a cool class... I have to remind myself to study up on Japanese over vacation and IAP so I'm not all rusty in the spring.

I decided that I need to learn to read Japanese faster, and I'm mad that I left my Japanese Di Gi Charat manga at school. There's nothing at home that I can easily read - there's too much kanji. So my mom suggested that I hop online and check out Kinokuniya's online bookstore, since they have a ton of Japanese books (manga included!). She'd been wanting to look up some Japanese books there too, but she needed to wait 'til I came home to use my laptop (since it's got Japanese support). I tried it out, but I can't use the search engine since it requires you to type in actual Japanese characters. I was able to look up Chrno Crusade only my surfing over to the Japanese site and copying the title from that page and pasting into the search engine. I was dismayed by how expensive the Chrno Crusade books are - $13 each! That's a lot.... >_< I consider English manga expensive, and it tends to run around $10 a book. Japanese stuff tends to be around $7. I've seen some for as low as $5, and they do go up to about $10.... But $13?! That's as much as those overpriced Di Gi Charat English mangas that I buy (I returned the fourth one yesterday - I was really disappointed by it). Didn't really see anything I wanted at Borders yesterday either... Though the second book of Kenshin is out already. I know if I start buying into that series though, it'll be bad, since it's what, about thirty volumes long? *shudders* Pita Ten doesn't come out until January and Galaxy Angel's release date is in April so I'm going to have to wait for those shoujo series that I'm interested in. And I keep saying that I don't like shoujo. Such a lie, seeing that half my collection is Di Gi Charat. ^^; Well well, I just found out that Bleach has been licensed, so that's kind of cool. Don't think I'd really buy it though. Hikaru no Go is set to come out soon too, which is way cool, though that's another horribly long series (not as long as Kenshin though - only about twenty volumes :P). But what I really want is some good Chrno Crusade manga. Chrno is the best! Eheh. So is Fullmetal Alchemist, for that matter. But neither of those two titles have been licensed. Hm, not sure what else I'd be interested in...

Anyway, I have a plan for getting my hands on some good Japanese manga. Sarah and Vikki and I are planning to take a trip to New York City during our three-day weekend in January, just for kicks. Sarah wants to go skating in Central Park, and I want to go see some museums and it would just be a really fun thing to do. Aaanyway.... Since we're going to be there, I can probably get over to Kinokuniya for a bit! So exciting - we went there last summer. It's an awesome place, and they have a ton of manga in both English and Japanese! So yeah, Chrno, wait for me! Though that still won't solve the price issue... At least I won't have to worry about shipping. Ahahaha..... I am so excited. Sarah's going to kill me. ^_^;

Myah, well, I just started writing since I didn't have a good idea of what to work on in Java. Still don't. But I guess I ought to try to think of something. If I don't write before then... Have a very merry Christmas, everyone! Or whatever other holidays you do or don't celebrate.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Stabbing Westward - Save Yourself
Current mood: Blaaah....