Hm, interesting. I can't login to my Blogger account on my laptop, but I can from work. I wonder why. Anyway, I haven't written in forever for a variety of reasons - my laptop doesn't like Blogger, I'm too lazy to write, and I'm just too darn busy. 6.270 is sucking away my life. Time for IAP to be over. I just want a robot that works. Still, building robots is a pretty cool thing. 6.270 is MIT's Autonomous Robot Competition. I'll leave it at that - I don't feel like explaining more. Mostly, we just spend our lives in the lab, and it is a sad thing.
Haha, my friends and I went to New York City over this weekend (well, Sunday and Monday, at least). It was fun, albeit a tad bit stressful for me. It's because I worry about everything and I did all the reservations and stuff. We stayed at the good old Days Hotel where my family always stays when we're in NYC. The location's great - it's only a block away from Times Square. We left really early on Sunday - we took the 7 am Chinatown bus. The Chinatown bus is a great deal! Only $10 either way. The only problem is that it's terribly boring. Going down was okay, but coming back wasn't so great because my CD player's batteries died and I had nothing to listen to for several hours. But that's getting ahead of myself.
We were dropped off in NYC's Chinatown, so we went and had lunch in a little restaurant in Little Italy. It was good! And the place was warm, which was a relief because it was cold and rainy. We took a cab to get to our hotel (should've taken the subway - would've been cheaper), got all checked in without any problems (and they only charged for three people even though there were four of us - I messed up on the reservation, heh), and then went to wander around Times Square a bit. We wanted to get tickets to some sort of show, but we had to wait until after 3 to get in line so that all the matinee crowds would go away. We spent much time in the Virgin Megastore - it's huge! And Neo was flying around on like, a million TV screens, so that was interesting. We got in line for tickets and it was cold and snowing. So we waited, and waited. But I'll bet it would have been worse if the weather were nicer. In the end, we got tickets for Beauty and the Beast. We decided on that because it started earlier than most of the other shows, and we didn't have time to eat beforehand. So then we had a couple of hours to spare, so we went to go look at the ice rink at Rockefeller Center, and then we went to Kinokuniya (that's the main reason that I wanted this trip to go through ^_^;)!! It was great. The first time I ever went was this past summer, and I could read like, five hiragana characters, and things were sad. But this time, I went upstairs to the floor with all the Japanese manga, and wandered through, reading the titles. It was so cool. I saw the first book of the Chrno Crusade manga, and I realized that it's so expensive because it's so large. Since I've already read it, I decided to look for something different. Shounen Jump stuff is great, but the series never end, so I just admired the pretty book covers. There's something about Japanese manga that makes it so much more appealing than the English-translated stuff. It's definitely got to do with the way it's bound, and how the Japanese books come with dust jackets. Maybe they can get more vibrant colors on that material or something. Shrug. So I was totally tempted to get some Fullmetal Alchemist manga, and I probably would have, but they didn't have the first book in stock. Too bad, because it was cheap too. A lot of Japanese manga can be bought for about $5 a book. That's half the price of the English stuff! I was also thinking of getting some more Di Gi Charat manga, but I already have a book of it, plus it's kind of expensive. So then I was looking through the shoujo section and at the end, where there were more interesting titles (like Fullmetal Alchemist), I found Legend of Zelda manga! Ah! It was the most exciting thing in the world. There was an Ocarina of Time manga that consisted of two books. It was exactly the sort of thing I'd be interested in, heh heh, I'm so sad. But I bought it. And I planned ahead and brought my lovely Japanese-English dictionary with me so I could read on the bus ride home. Yaaaay! It's the happiest thing I've ever seen, especially since I've played through most of the game. It's really quite easy to read - I can understand a good deal of it, even without the dictionary. And the pictures are so cute. I love the anime-style Link to death. And there's this one part when he's an adult and he gets burned up by Volvagia the dragon, and he wakes up in Goron City and he's not wearing his hat and he has a ponytail! Waah, it's just too cute. *fangirlish scream* Uh, okay, I'll stop before I embarrass myself any further. Anyway, it's great. I love it. I can't wait to sit down and actually read it all. Haha. In my free time. Hahaha.
So we saw Beauty and the Beast, and it was good, although I was disturbed by the great amount of innuendo present. After that, we ate at the East Restaurant - this good Japanese place that I've been to several times. People seemed to enjoy it, so that's good. Then we went back to the hotel and went to bed, since we wanted to get a kind of early start. In the morning, we went to Munson's Diner. Another place I've been to with my family, heh. I actually found the address by Googling for it and finding the location mentioned in the credits of an Utada Hikaru music video. Who'dve thought?! It was good too, and after that, we walked down to the end of the block to see the water and New Jersey... A whole different country! :P Sarah took pictures so she could tell Jim that she's looked upon his homeland. ^^ Then we went back to the hotel and checked out, and rode the subway to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We spent several hours there - it was good times, especially since we checked all our luggage at the coat check. We got to see the Egyptian temple, and the Hall of Armor and Japanese swords (yay!) and lots and lots of European paintings. The funniest one was probably this one with the Virgin Mary holding the Christ child and there's some other people around including this other little kid, and everyone's fully clothed! Unusual to say the least. If you read the plaque by the picture, it explains that the nuns who commissioned the painting insisted that the children be clothed. Figures. ^_^ Well, we eventually ran out of time and had to go - we rode the subway back to Chinatown, muddled around in confusion because the bus line switched on us. It was much like Return of the King - we thought we were near the head of the line, but the line was really further down the street. So weird. The bus ride took much longer this time because of the traffic - more than five hours. And like I said, my CD player gave out near the end of the second CD. So Vikki and I went through my first Ocarina of Time manga, and it was good because she's played that game too. We were highly entertained, even if I didn't go and actually read all the words. I've fully translated the first section though - there's a lot of talk about Hyrule's history, which was annoying. But I read it all anyway. Go me. And now, I should get back to work and stop writing this overly long entry.
- Flykyr Skysong
Current song: None - but NPR is playing in the background
Current mood: Tired
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