Okay so here we go. Aside from the regular personal stuff I do like go to LAN parties and eating Japanese food way too much, I’m going to start writing some more useful stuff in here too.

For starters, I figured I should cover how my mobile phone coverage while I was in Japan went. 🙂
I have an iPhone 3G on the Optus Yes $39 plan… something which I adore very much hehe. So before going to Japan, I did some research on how to set up my phone to work while I was over in Japan. Another blog I read really helped me on this… and if I remember it, I’ll post the address here. XP

Anyway, getting an Optus phone globally enabled isn’t hard. You simply call up customer service and request to have it enabled. At this point, if there are any hardware concerns that may arise (technology compatibilities etc), the operator will probably tell you about this. They’ll also probably put the spill on you to get your phone travel insured. I’m still not sure if this was a good idea or not, but I’ve signed up. XP

Continue reading →

Well… I’m baaaack! XD
I’m a bit slow, I actually arrived back in Australia on Tuesday morning, but it’s been pretty hectic since then with unpacking and stuff.
Anyway, Japan was awesome! I got to ski a lot, eat and drink tonnes of awesome stuff, meet up with old friends, go out and sing karaoke, as well as just going out and buying tonnes of nerdy crap for prices way lower than Australia.

So we basically arrived in Yuzawa on the Monday of the first week, and from there on, we spent until Saturday skiing at the NASPA ski resort. My dad and sister hadn’t skiied in 10 years so they spent a good amount of time rolling down hills, which resulted in epic lulz most of the time. XD
Yuzawa hasn’t changed one iota since I worked there in 2007 and the whole ordeal made me a bit nostalgic haha. maybe next year I’ll try and go back. 🙂

After Yuzawa, we went to Tokyo and stayed at a guest house in Asakusa. While there, we sightsee’d some various places, went and had dinner with some old friends and did tonnes of shopping. I spent a hefty bit of time in Akihabara of course pouring over the insanely geeky merchandise. However, since I recently managed to obtain a modchipped Wii, the main thing I did there was buy second hand games for it.

After Tokyo, I caught a Shinkansen down to Osaka, where one of my buddies from English school very very graciously let me crash at his house for a few days. While there, I visited the old English school I worked at, hung out with some good Osaka buddies, did some shopping in Den Den Town, as well as got drunk and had some nights out the town。

Either way, being back in Perth is a bit of a bittersweet feeling now. I really hope I can go back there for more than a year at some point hehe.

In any case, my idea for writing a new blog post every day was epic fail haha. There wasn’t enough time each night, so I’m hoping the fact I took around 600 pictures will help a little bit. XD

Hehe, ah well, as far as holidays go, that was awesome. 🙂

At the moment, I’m busy uploading photos to Facebook and mixi. If you’re on my list, please check them out!

Well, I’m pretty much packed now. Off to Japan!

I hear the whether is pretty cool over there right now. So much so that a little snow is even falling in Osaka.
Anyway, I have a great many things to do over there, including catching up with friends, lots of skiing, as well as lots of buying heheheh. XD

My plan is to try and update the blog as I go, half so people can see the crazy crap I’m up to, half so I can have a diary to remember this trip by.

I’ll also see about adding lots of pictures as well, both to here and my Facebook and mixi.

Until then, see you later!

Well……. it’s the last day of 2008 today. Damn that was quick!! O_O
I’m always a little saddened when the current year ends, but I’m also looking forward to the new year around the corner.

In any case, I figured I probably should do a little reflecting on the stuff that’s happened.
-This is the first year I’ve spent doing one constant full time job for the entire length of the year.
-Thanks to my job, I’ve picked up many new skills including better web design, introduction to MOSS, not to mention a lot of office lifestyle.
-Production of RPG-X2 wound down with 2 patch releases.
-The UberGames site was made live after 4 months of work.
-I set up and starting writing in this blog.
-UberGames releases SteamerCard onto blogs and Facebook.
-I got an iPhone and haranged everyone at work about it. XD
-I finally relented and bought a Wii and an Xbox 360 next-gen console.
-I volunteered to help work on a small scifi TV production.
-I joined a Perth community of Japanese language/culture exchange.
-I undertook the JLPT 2 exam to help bolster my Japanese.
-2 of my cousins got married (One older than me, one younger xD )
-My grandmother passed away after a pretty long fight with cancer. I miss her terribly.

There have certainly been some very good highs in this year, and some very terrible lows… some of which I will not forget quickly. Thankfully, I can say that everything that happened, probably happened in the best possible way it could have, and so I try not to let those bother me.

I had a pretty simple new year’s resolution for 2008: Get better at Japanese. At this point, more or less… I think I managed to get that far hehe.

And now for the next year…. I think I have a new one in mind, one which seems fitting given the current circumstances: Make myself more employable.
It’s a pretty vague resolution I know, but then that makes it very flexible. In any case, this will probably mean more Japanese study, not to mention starting to study the latest computer technologies and their languages coming out as well.

All in all, I’d say 2008 was a good year. At the very least, I can only hope 2009 will be just as good, if not better.

Happy New Year everyone!

Well, Merry Christmas everyone! I know it’s only halfway over for most of the world still, but it’s pretty much over here!
I’m reeeally tired, so I won’t go into what happened today too much, just… I think it went quite well. 🙂
We had a great time over a Christmas breakfast and a Christmas lunch, and then had the relatives over for a nice Christmas feast for dinner. 🙂

The spirit of Christmas was truely here today, and I was glad to be with my family to spend it.

P.S Also, an Xbox 360 in the stocking went pretty nicely as well. XD

Hello again! I’m already 2 days into my holidays and enjoying it very much! It’s been pretty busy so far, so I thought I’d post a bit of an update on what’s going on.

Last weekend was RFLan #24. As far as RFLans have gone, I think this was quite possibly the best one yet. Thankfully, we toned it down a bit since last time, and only roughly 230 people came instead of over 300! We thoroughly planned to power and networking systems this time, and as a result, we had absolutely no issues whatsoever. Because of this, I was luckily able to get a lot of quality game time down! I played mostly Left 4 Dead and TF2, as well as made a few new Steam buddies.

Next up, I’ve spent a bit more time working on my main shot for Cosmos. It’s taken a day or so of work, but it’s definitely taking shape now! Since my last update, I’ve refined the animation much better, remodeled some bits of the patrol ship, changed some of the colours, as well as added some more visual effects. It shouldn’t be too much longer before I can lock this in for a final render!

If I get time after this, I’ll see about writing up a bit of a brief of how I’m doing all of it. 🙂

Finally, I figured I probably should announce this on my blog now, it’s one of the main reasons I made it hehe.

I’m going back to Japan again!! 😀

It’s all my father’s crazy planning, he wants to go check out the town I worked in last year since he loved the photos I have of it. So we’re going back for 2 weeks, one of them being a ski trip, and the other being a week of playing around the country… mainly Tokyo. I’m very happy about this since it’s already been more than a year since I last went to Japan.
I’m also trying to see how feasible/expensive it would be to travel down to Osaka from Tokyo so I might be able to catch up with all of the friends I have down there. 🙂

In any case, when I go, I intend to ramp up the number of blog posts I do here to document everything I do over here hehe.

Should be good. Gotta start packing!