2014 Vacation: Japan and Taiwan, Part VIII: Japan Final

After fantastic weather for the first week of our trip to Japan, our final days in Japan were marred by heavy, heavy rains. In fact, it was the effects of Typhoon Phanfone, which had just got done pummeling Southeast Asia.

Despite the heavy rains, since we technically had another full day left in Tokyo, we decided to brave the weather for one more outing. Our destination of choice on this day was actually not listed particularly high as a tourist spot, though it is a very heavily trafficked local district. Instead it was featured heavily in the 2009 Nintendo DS game, The World Ends with You. Of course, this location is none other than Shibuya! This awesome game really gave us Westerner's a contemporary glimpse into life in modern Tokyo, ranging from hipster styles to local eats, all the while progressing through one of the more unique video game plots and combat systems we've ever seen!

But most importantly, for purposes of today's travelogue post, it gave me an inspiration to see the real Shibuya!

Shibuya's famous "Scramble Crossing", as seen in the mobile version of "The World Ends With You...

... and as seen from the lens of my Moto X on a very rainy day, after some Auto Awesome treatment!

Due to the heavy rains, we were not able to properly explore Shibuya much outside of the Shibuya Station. However, the Shibuya Station itself has another famous story - one that's much older than The World Ends With You, though, once again, if it weren't for seeing this spot in the game, I would not have known to look for it in real life!

But of course I am talking about the Statue of Hachiko! Hachiko was a Japanese Akita dog that belonged to a professor who lived in Shibuya in the 1920s. Every day, Hachiko (who's name means "Eighth", indicating his birth position in his litter) would come to Shibuya Station to wait for his master until one day, the good professor passed away. however, Hachiko would continue his loyal practice of waiting for the professor for nearly a decade until his own death! His loyalty was an inspiration for the Japanese and thus this statue was erected in his honor!

The Statue of Hachiko as seen on the DS version of "The World Ends With You"...

Hachiko with Fifi

I had to go back and get a shot with him m'self!

Due to the rains, we retreated to the hotel for the remainder of the day in hopes that it would clear up later. It didn't - but in retrospect, we needed the rest too - instead I went out and did a little exploring around Akasaka:

Arming myself with fuel for the walk - this is Peach Nectar

I had a ton of this stuff in Japan - Orange flavored water!

I wish we'd spent more time in this huge toy store that was right down the street!

Dragonball dolls!

Disney and Nintendo characters!

One Piece Models!

3DS!!!

Nintendo Games!

A Shrimp burger from McDonald's!

Japan Observation #12: Food in Japan, like transportation, is quite expensive. The magazine, The Economist, runs an annual feature called the "Big Mac Index", where they attempt to gauge the purchasing power parity in various countries around the world by using the cost of a Big Mac in said country. In theory, Big Macs would cost more in countries with higher cost of living. For the most part, in China, it seems to be fairly priced, as a Big Mac will run you around 20 RMB (around $3.50 USD), meaning that the cost of living is somewhat on par with that of the U.S. (though the cost of housing in China usually blows that of the U.S. out of the water). In Japan, the cost of a Big Mac is around 700 Yen - or almost SEVEN DOLLARS! Which would usually get you a burger at a mid-tier sports bar and grill in Florida! I learned that this is largely attributed to the high cost of fresh food - especially vegetables - in Japan. In fact, through our whole trip in Japan, I nary had any vegetables at all - it seems that most Japanese live on a diet of large quantities of rice, Ramen, or Udon, paired with small quantities of picked vegetables and beef, as well the occasional squid ball (Takoyaki)... Mostly tasty stuff, but it would take some getting used to no doubt!

On our last day in Tokyo, we were scheduled originally to depart from Narita International at about 2 in the afternoon, so we took the shuttle bus from the nearby Tokyu Excel hotel at around 10 AM to account for the 90 minute bus ride. However, due to Typoon-induced delays, we ended up hanging out in the airport until around 6 PM - giving us some time to catch a last (but rather poor) meal in the Tokyo. On the plus side, we got to see the famous Tokyo Tower from the bus! The Tokyo Tower is also a  tourist destination that is somewhat near and dear to the Otaku part of my heart... it was prominently featured in the full length Tenchi Muyo feature film, "Tenchi Muyo in Love" back in the 90s!

Trudging through the rain with our luggage in tow to get to the shuttle bus. Fortunately, the Japanese hotel staff were helpful as always, and they helped us pull some of our luggage all the way to the bus!

We could use these in China...

Tokyo Tower from the bus, during a typhoon

Narita International!

Our last meal in Japan - some Sobu, curry, and really, really bad sushi...

Sparkling peach beer at the First Class Lounge...

Twilight

Up Next - Taiwan!

Gators Google+ YouTube Spot!

Nice.

Ohio State Marching Band Video Game Tribute

As a University of Florida alumni and sports fan, I have ample reasons (cough cough Urban Meyer cough cough) for disliking Ohio State University (I refuse to use the word "The" in their name). However, their marching band has always been incredible. That's one thing UF never did get very good - a good marching band.

In this show, from a few weeks back, OSU's marching band pays tribute to classic video games such as Pokemon, Tetris, Mario, and Zelda. The marching choreography is superb!

Enjoy:

Final Fantasy VIII Spoof

I've been listening to music from Final Fantasy VIII the last few days. Final Fantasy fans tend to remember Final Fantasy VII in more fondly than they do Final Fantasy VIII, but the later game in my opinion was much more innovative than its predecessor, with the massive customization facilitated by the Guardian Force system. Sadly, I never got a chance to finish playing Final Fantasy VIII (I think my CDs were a little messed up), but with YouTube, I still get to enjoy its wonderful soundtrack, headlined by the hit single from Faye Wong, "Eyes On Me".

Of course, YouTube has a penchant for finding "related" videos, and on today's occasion, it pointed me to the following spoof:

 

Enjoy!

Phoenix Wright Orchestrated Soundtrack

After almost two years, I've finally finished the original Phoenix Wright Trilogy late last night, rocking Sofia to sleep! It's a bit bittersweet... these games had fantastic stories but the games themselves were sometimes frustrating beyond all comprehension. Thank goodness for GameFaqs, that's all I can say!

The series also has awesome music. I didn't get enough of it playing the games over the years, so I came across this orchestral arrangement on YouTube. Very nice!

Ignore the last two songs in the playlist. Not sure how those got in there. Otherwise, Enjoy!

Winter Break Wrapup

My winter break is over, but I think I had enough fun and excitement over those 11 days. A few days after my family brought Wei Wei's family over for an exhausting surprise holiday dinner, we took Sofia and Cherry's mom to Brevard Zoo. The cooler weather must have been better for the animals, because I'd never seen so many of the animals come out so close to us in our previous trips to the zoo. We even saw the elusive Red Wolves up close and personal - we never see those!

The next day, my good friend and kung fu brother Kir-Wei and his girlfriend, Victoria, came to visit. He got to our house pretty late; despite leaving the Disney park at around 7:40, getting out of the parking lot added almost an hour to the expected 1 hour, 15 minute travel time that it usually takes to get from Kissimmee to Melbourne. So, they got in around 10 PM, but we hadn't seen each other in over five years, so we had lots to talk about. To save them from getting into Fort Lauderdale (their final destination before going back to med school in Boston... brr!), we invited them to stay the night, which they appreciated.


The next evening, we headed out for a little journey of our own as well. After cleaning the house, we packed up all of Sofia's stuff, including her bottle equipment, stroller, changing pad, and crib, into the trusty tC and headed down to South Florida to visit my parents and siblings. When we got there, Mom had prepared a nice multi-course meal for us - the first of many good meals we would have over our stay.

We gave Cherry's mom a brief tour of the house and I showed her some of our old photo albums. I've often lamented that I don't have any idea what Cherry looked like as a child or a baby because they don't really have any photos of her. In fact, I only have this one photo in my possession, but it's pretty special - despite being taken in the 80s, it looks like it was taken in the 50s, really highlighting how rustic China was back then:


My family, in contrast, has numerous photo albums, and the number of photos, especially in recent years, has gone up exponentially because of Ed's new camera equipment! While looking through our old albums, we identified how much Sofia looks like I did when I was a baby! What do you think?




The next day, on New Year's Eve, my family took Cherry's mom to her first American movie theater experience. It just so happened that the free movie event traditionally held by me and Melinda's orthodontist, Dr. Krumholtz (R.I.P.), was being held that day, so we had a number of options. We ended up selecting TRON: Legacy, which I thought was a good choice for Cherry's mom because you really don't need to have much understanding of the language in order to appreciate the images and sounds. To me, going to the theaters has never been about seeing the story - in fact, I tend to get a better feel for stories by watching movies at home. Rather, I usually reserve the movie theater for movies that have larger than life cinemetography - like superhero movies or films like last year's Avatar. TRON also falls into the category of a movie that is probably better served in the theater than on my 50 inch TV at home with shoddy sound!


That evening, we went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Fort Lauderdale with many of my parents' friends, who got their first opportunity to see my daughter! After dinner, Cherry, Sofia, and I went home while my family took Cherry's mom with them and the rest of the party to the New Year's celebration in downtown Fort Lauderdale.

For New Year's Day, we had a special event planned. Five years ago, we went to Vizcaya mansion in Miami with Cherry and my grandparents. I even included this event in the customized calendar I made for my parents this Christmas. Vizcaya is a huge house built by John Deering, an agricultural machinery manufacturer with too much money and no heirs to spend it on, in the early 20th century. This vacation home of sorts features hundreds of pieces imported straight from Europe, including a number of curious European crafted China-inspired pieces. Cherry's mom, who grew up in a rural environment, doesn't really share my enthusiasm for nature and the great outdoors - in fact she harbors an irrational dislike of trees. However, she appreciates big cities and architecture, both of which Vizcaya, and Miami in general, have in droves.


We spent about three hours at Vizcaya before heading out to dinner at one of my parents' favorite Chinese restaurants in Miami. I have to agree - this restaurant is way better than the one we went to on New Year's Eve. Unfortunately, its name escapes me! Before dinner, we demonstrated once again the versatility of my trusty Scion tC - it seems Sofia rather enjoys feeding in the front bucket seat, and we were even able to change her diaper using the folded down front bucket as a changing table!

That night, an all-important event occurred: I had my first experience with New Super Mario Bros. Wii! On the new special-edition Red Wii with Wii Remote Plus, the new Wii Remote that has Wii Motion Plus built right in so as to not have the additional bulky attachment at the back end of the "hilt"! I wish I had Wii Remote Pluses instead now... But, back to NSMB Wii, I had experienced the excellent New Super Mario Bros. on DS way back when it came out in 2006. I did feel that it was a little on the easy side, but it was a wonderful throwback to old school gaming. New Super Mario Bros. Wii takes care of that "too easy" feeling. Plus, the co-op multiplayer aspect takes the game to a whole new level of crazy fun. My friends who have played the game before commented that they thought the multiplayer was just too crazy, since it makes it fairly easy to kill your allies. But I feel that with the right team in place, the multiplayer allows from some pretty creative strategies that make the game that much more interesting. Plus, part of what makes Nintendo games fun is the chaos anyway! See exhibits A and B: Mario Kart and Smash Bros. franchises!


Our last day in South Florida was highlighted by a trip to Kyojin buffet. Cherry hadn't had sushi since getting pregnant and had been clamoring for it for months. Plus, it was an opportunity to introduce Cherry's mom to sushi and the concept of all-you-can-eat buffet. Amusingly, one of her first reactions was coming up with the idea to bring a large container to bring food home... and that is why there aren't that many all-you-can-eat buffets in China...

That concluded Sofia and Cherry's mom's first visit to my parents' house, as well as my winter break!

Video Game Obsessions

Checked out this funny article today - I think I'm guilty of about 10 of them! How about you?

Gaming's Most Obsessive Moments

Tim Tebow NCAA 2011 Cover Athlete

Some really nice high quality videos covering Tim Tebow at the Cover Athlete shoot for the NCAA 2011 game! I love the comments about him playing NCAA against his brother and friends!



Keep watching past the first break to see all the footage of Tim!

Be Amazed!

Video cop-out! Again, too awesome to ignore.

An Awesome New Webcomic

Longtime visitors to Grant's Pad may have seen the list of webcomics in the sidebar, listed generally from my most highly regarded to the ones that are probably not updated all that often (cough cough, ED!!!).

Brian Clevinger was single-handedly responsible for my first foray into webcomic reading, with his parody/homage to the 8-bit Final Fantasy video games, 8-Bit Theater. To be completely fair, Brian wasn't actually responsible for me reading his comic - he just wrote it. In actuality, Kir-Wei was the one who introduced me to the comic itself, so technically he probably has more to do with my webcomic patronage.

However, as the years went by, I remained a loyal reader of 8-Bit-Theater, but Ryan Sohmer's Least I Could Do took over as my favorite webcomic due to his genius writing and the artistic prowess of his artist, Lar DeSouza. Brian Clevinger was now a distant second in my book.

Recently, Brian Clevinger struck back in fine fashion. In what he has claimed to be "A Kung Fu Movie, but a Comic", I bring to you How I Killed Your Master:

He's still no Sohmer, but with this well-drawn, well-written (and quite frankly well researched, as Clevinger  comic, Brian has now addressed two of my few passions with his webcomics: old-school video games, and now the Chinese Martial Arts. Consider it sidebar-marked!

Coolest. Toy. Ever

Might have to pick one of these up...

Mario's Maker

The long article below is an interview with Super Mario creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, conducted by the current president of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata. It's a very nice look into just what went on in creating the most famous video game mascot on Earth, even more famous than Mickey Mouse, and also gives us a look at the newest Mario game, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, available for sale today at Grant's Pad Super Store!

Iwata Asks: New Super Mario Bros. Wii


Enjoy!

I've Done It!!!

This week has been pretty much hell all the way up until today, thanks to having to prepare for my business law quiz, which was an adventure in its own right. I spent each night reading over 70 pages of notes and skimming over 100 pages in the book and watching hours of ridiculous lecture (our professor likes to dress up for his lectures to illustrate points... though I find it more of a distraction than anything else!).

But alas, I took the quiz and am done with that class... at least for today! I took the opportunity to relax by training Kung Fu for about an hour with Joe, then headed back home and ate supper, and finally it was on. Wii time. I hadn't really played Wii since my cousins from Taiwan came over our place a few weeks ago. I don't think I've yet posted on that visit - my mother's sister brought her kids to America for the first time to visit my mother and they decided to stop at our place before heading out fpr the rest of their vacation. To commemorate the occasion, we went out to Indialantic Beach, then had dinner at Island Pasta Company, where we had nothing but appetizers (sort of like dim sum! in a way...), and then went home and had cake to belatedly celebrate Cherry and Melinda's birthdays.

Anyhow, back to the main point of the story. After over a year of playing (albeit not continuously), I have finally acquired all 120 stars in Super Mario Galaxy! Huzzah!


Only problem is, now, I have to get all 120 again with Luigi!!!

Return of the Koopalings!

This just in! Bowser's seven children, collectively known as the Koopalings, were first introduced in 1989's mega-hit, Super Mario Bros. 3.


They made a few appearances after that, in Super Mario World and some spin-off games, but were largely replaced by the much more boring "chibi" style clone Bowser Jr. in later games such as the Mario Party series, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy.


However, IGN reports that the Koopalings will make a grand return to prominence in the upcoming New Super Mario Bros. Wii (which looks ridiculously awesome in its own right).

The video below is actual footage of a Larry Koopa sighting!


This incredible news makes it very hard for me to resist putting this game in the "must have" category. Sigh, always so many games, so little money/time!

Super Mario Bros. Protest at E3

The famous Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, took place just this last week. Some highlights from the show were Microsoft's unveiling of Project Natal, a camera-based motion-sensing peripheral that uses the player's body as control input for games. If it works well, there could be some awesome fighting games for XBox 360 in the future!



Less impressive was Sony's motion sensing controller, which was more or less a direct rip-off of the Wii's control scheme. Imitation is the best flattery!

Nintendo had a pretty solid outing themselves. Although no particularly impressive hardware was revealed, the games announced were more than enough to make a fanboy like myself excited: New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Wii Sports Resort, Endless Ocean 2, and the surprise Metroid: Other M were the big hitters from Nintendo, while third party publishers showcased Ubisoft's Red Steel 2, sporting Wii's new MotionPlus capability, and SquareEnix's Final Fantasy IV direct sequel, which is downloadable off of the WiiWare channel your Wii.

Perhaps the biggest news of E3, however, was the protest below:



Who knew Super Mario Bros. was so offensive?

Final Fantasy: Dissidia

YouTube Cop-out time!



Ed showed me this video a while back. Give it a chance, even if you don't speak Japanese. Personally, I think this would be an absolutely fantastic crossover for the next Super Smash Bros. game!

New Stuff Yay!

Cherry came down for the weekend because I had a ton of work to do on Saturday. My MBA class had to turn in our draft for our country analysis, our second major homework assignment, and take an online quiz all by Saturday night. We were able to do it, amazingly, although our final submission was made with just 25 seconds to spare, as you can see in the screen capture below!


On Sunday,we decided to run a bunch of errands. We headed to Office Depot first to get some ink (finally) for my printer, which, for the past year or so, has been nothing but a scanner. We also picked up a webcam - those things are so much cheaper now than they used to be and have all these neat little filters that you can play with! Next, we headed over to the beach to try the famous pizzeria, Bizzaro's. I am not sure why Bizzaro's is so popular. The pizza, while good, is, in my opinion, not that much different from the other local pizzeria's in Melbourne, like Leaning Tower of Pizza or the late Peppe's. I think what really sets this restaurant apart is its beachside location as well as its true-to-their-NY-background rude attitude towards customers! It was pretty interesting. "You! Whaddya want? Hey buddy! No plastic!"


Our next stop was Ross. Believe it or not, we went to Ross for the sole purpose of replacing Cherry's SunPass battery. That's right. The turnpike employee told us for some reason that we could replace the battery at Ross for free. Ross, the discount clothing outlet. We were as surprised as you probably are now, and for good reason! Because, as we found out, Ross doesn't replace SunPass batteries! Instead, we headed over to the mall to get the battery replaced at Radio Shack. Some good did come from that side-trip, however! I finally picked up the last remaining copy of Okami for Wii at Gamestop! This amazing game won Game of the Year at IGN.com - it is a Zelda-esque adventure game from Capcom. You play as the wolf incarnation of the Shinto Sun Goddess Amaterasu from Japanese lore as she tries to rid ancient Japan of a terrible curse. The whole game is drawn a beautiful art style reminiscent of traditional Japanese art on rice paper, and the game takes that aspect one step further with its signature game mechanic, the Celestial Brush, which allows you to pause the world, converting it into a canvas, paint an object, and have that object come to life! If you have a Wii, do yourself a favor and get this game!


Finally, I got my last new toy for the week today after work. Using the handy $40 coupon from the FCC, I went to Target and picked up at digital converter box for my television. For those of you who don't know, my house has been without cable ever since November of 2007, shortly after we moved in. For the longest time, I watched fuzzy analog TV. Fortunately, 2009 came around and the government had decided to try to encourage people to make the transition to digital broadcast signal. So, I tried it today and was very pleasantly surprised at how clear it is, as long as you are able to get the signal! For the most part, all of the channels I am interested in are available - NBC, ABC, Fox, and CW18. I get some 15 other channels too, but as long as I have those three, I get most of the shows I care to watch as well as most of the football that is on TV... as long as it's not on CBS. Hopefully, CBS will one day broadcast strong enough for me to pick up their signal too!

Woah.

The Gators took care of business last night, waxing Vanderbilt 42-14, as Tebow stiff-armed his way to another five TD effort. More importantly, however, was the fall of previously unbeaten Penn State to Iowa in a last second field goal. That loss dropped Penn State to number 7 in the AP poll and virtually eliminated any chance of Penn State playing for this year's National Championship Game in Miami. Replacing them at number three is the Gators, who have three more games left before facing current number 1 Alabama! If we take care of all our business, we could very well see ourselves back in the National Championship for the second time in just three years!

I was supposed to still be in class today, but with the late game last night, I couldn't get enough sleep so I am skipping my first class ever in the OEM program. I'll have to call Stephanie later on to catch up on all that I missed. The time I wasn't in class hasn't gone completely to waste, however, as I used some of it to work on my marketing project, and perhaps more importantly, my MBA application. The application date really kind of crept up on me - I didn't realize that many people have already applied!

Part of the problem might have been how much time I've been spending playing Animal Crossing: Wild World on DS. Animal Crossing is a really unusual game. It is one of Nintendo's first "non-game" offerings, as there is no real point to the game. You just walk around in your village, finding bugs, fishing, digging up fossils, planting and cutting down flowers and trees, and buying and selling furniture and clothing to your heart's content. What makes the game really cool for me, however, is your interaction with your animal neighbors. Each and every one of your neighbors has their own personality and tastes in furniture and clothing, and they have a real, live relationship with you, remembering previous conversations with you. You can even visit friends' villages over the wi-fi connection, and see and visit their neighbors as well. Visiting their neighbors in turn causes them to remember you and talk to your friend about you when you're not around. To cap all that off, your own neighbors move in and out of your village, and sometimes even show up in your friend's villages, complete with their memories of you! It's awesome... if a just a little bit creepy!


Keen regular readers might have noticed the new photo format. No longer will I mess around with alternating photos from the left side of the column to the right. Nope. Just straight shooting from here on out. Right down the middle. Just like that. Two reasons for this - one, Blogger's photo application seems to have changed and made it subsequently quite difficult to work with, and two, the photos actually look pretty nice all big and stuff. It might take a little while to get used to, but I'm sure we will get along just fine!

Said Musings

As promised, blog musings, and a brand new playlist in the sidebar featuring songs from Lilo and Stitch, the greatest Disney movie of this century!

As it is still college football season, it's only appropriate to reference the beat down Florida put on Kentucky this past Saturday. The weather was beautiful, a crisp 68 degree cloudy day, and our seats kicked ass, to the tune of 35 yard line, 55th row, where the stadium's stadium seating allowed us to watch the destruction to the fullest.

The ass kicking was fast and furious. We didn't score on our first drive, but on Kentucky's first and second drives, the Gator defense stopped them deep in their own territory and forced them to punt. On both occasions, the punt was blocked, giving the Gators the ball at 3 yards out and 1 yard out. After those two four-second drives, the Gators had nearly as many points (14) as they did yards (17)! In retrospect, it might not have been better if they actually had gotten those punts off, since, the way things went all day for Kentucky, it's very likely one Brandon James would have made both of those punts into zero-second touchdown drives!

The mayhem continued for most of the first half as the score at the half was 42-3. Things didn't get much better for the Wildcats in the second half - their first play from scrimmage was a pass intercepted and returned for a touchdown by Ahmad Black. Tebow stepped down in the fourth quarter and John Brantley fired a 35-yard touchdown on his second pass of the afternoon. The Gators finished the game 63-5, apparently messing up a punt in the last 5 minutes or so of the game to give Kentucky another 2 points to finish.

That win moved the Gators up to 8th in the BCS rankings... still somewhat of a long shot to the BCS National Championship, especially since the SEC's pinata (to use an awesome quote from a sportswriter I read earlier this year but can't remember who), Ohio State, couldn't muster up enough offense to beat Penn State, who will likely cruise through its remaining schedule and then get sliced and diced in the National Championship Game after nearly two months off after their last game in November...

Moving right along to musing number 2, I've been super busy at work - obviously busy enough to not be able to blog much! But I've been making up for my busy work days and homework sessions by playing a LOT of DS. I love my DS. I only wish I had toys like this when I was little. Then again, that probably would have resulted in me doing a lot less of just about everything else. My latest project game has been Trauma Center, one of the earliest releases on Nintendo's two-screened handheld. You play as Dr. Derek Stiles, an up-and-coming surgeon who is gifted with the "Healing Touch". Unfortunately, with great power comes great responsibility, and it is Dr. Stiles' responsibility to curb a medical terrorist attack epidemic called GUILT. The game is fast-paced, with great music, and tough as nails. Diamond ones. I seriously feel my tennis elbow acting up as I furiously remove tumors and stitch up lacerations in my patients!

Final musing for the day - couple of days ago, I came across the latest Consumer Reports reliability rankings for cars. To my delight, and a bit of surprise, the number one brand for reliability was Scion! Scion's xD came in as the most reliable vehicle in the country, with the xB following closely behind. Behind Scion was Acura, Honda, then Toyota and Lexus, with Lincoln coming in at 11th as the highest ranked American manufacturer. I guess there's another good reason to love Scions - they'll last forever!

Catch Up Time

Wow, it's been a long time since I've had such a long hiatus from writing! I guess the end of the fiscal year might have something to do with it, although in the past, it was never this hot. Or, maybe it was, but I never noticed because I was just a small fry. I'm still a small fry, but now I'm a seasoned small fry - kind of like the ones at Checkers!

The last couple weeks have been characterized by rhythm. Although I have been getting into work shamefully late day after day, I've also been staying late most days. Not super late, but later than usual. And it's not because I'm just dragging my feet to make it look like I'm working hard so I get a good review at the end of the year - I've actually had quite a bit of legitimate work. Really!

I managed to put on quite a few pounds in 2008 - by design at that. The goal was to bulk up on protein and carbs and then hit the gym to convert the additional 15 pounds into muscle. About 2 weeks ago, I weighed in at about 160 pounds, which is about 20 pounds heavier than my typical weight in college. I could lift about 225 pounds for a three-rep set on bench press. Unfortunately, after that, I was pretty much done, and couldn't really do much more exercise after that. Clearly, my plan wasn't really working, so I began a different plan - full body workouts on Monday, Wednesday, and once over the weekend, and kung fu on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and possibly once on the weekend as well. I've also shifted my diet to a lot of fruit juice and salad, and since then, I've dropped down to about 155 pounds, and I feel like I've made some gains in stamina and athleticism!

I've also finally gotten back into a little bit of rhythm when it comes to doing homework. This semester, our classes are quite a bit easier than last semester, and for a while, I got a bit lazy and wasn't really keeping up with schoolwork. However, I've finally gotten off my butt and completed my take-home Quality Management exam and the two Marketing Management assignments due this weekend. I even started my Marketing Management project, which is due in late November! Unprecedented!

Unfortunately, the Florida Gators didn't share my good rhythm last weekend, as we dropped a heartbreaker to Ole' Miss. Granted, Ole' Miss is a rising team with former Arkansas coach Houston Nutt and former Florida QB recruit Jevan Snead at the helm, but the Gators really killed themselves this time. Three fumbles lost, after not having turned the ball over once all season, plus atrociously poor playcalling (fourth and 3 in the first quarter? Run Chris Rainey up the middle??), and the unthinkable - a blocked extra point attempt - all contributed to the final 31-30 loss.

On the plus side, the Tri-Fectorate, that's Chris, Kaveh, and myself for those of you who haven't read Grant's Pad in its early months, met for the first time as a group since 2006 after the game. Kind of funny - looks like I wasn't the only one to put on weight these last few years! Of course, going to Red Lobster for their annual Endless Shrimp event didn't do much to help halt the problem of our growing bellies...

A couple of my friends have finally jumped on the Nintendo Wii bandwagon. First, my good friend Pablo picked one up - shortly after he went on a big shopping spree picking up first-person shooters and splurging on Virtual Console games like the original Super Mario Bros. Next, my colleague Shawn (been a while since I've blogged about him!) recently picked up a Wii "for his wife and kid". Riiiight. He must have practiced a lot of Mario Kart, because he's pretty damn good. In our first gaming session, I was able to smoke him most of the time after dropping the first few races, but on the very next day, I dropped all three sets to him! Playing Mario Kart with him has somewhat revived my Wii playing time, which has been suffering a bit lately (due to aforementioned rhythm and also largely due to spending a lot of time on my DS). After racing Shawn, Nick, and Chris several times this week, I managed to unlock my latest character - Birdo, who I thought was the last remaining racer to unlock. To my shock, however, unlocking him/her opened up four more question mark blocks, indicating that there were at least four more racers to unlock! Guess I better get to work unlocking them!