My long lost love for TV shows (a.k.a. guilty pleasures, no?) & Lost Girl

Well, actually, I think Lip Service deserves the guilty pleasure title most adequately, but I digress.

Anyhow, this is definitely a Lost Girl appreciation post. And I know this sounds mightily cliched, "How have I not started on this show sooner??" I frequent Auotstraddle and AfterEllen, where a considerable number of shows with lesbian/bisexual/queer ladies have been and are being discussed and/or recapped. Somehow, I've only ever watched Skins (S3 & S4), Glee and Lip Service, which is kinda sad... (HA!) Skins was a truly wonderful creation in the name of Naomily, somehow I've never really gotten to it on this blog, this shall be amended in due time.

I guess I kind of have to blame Glee for killing off a lot of my passion for TV shows. Skins was great, but the Skins I favored was also only 2 seasons and way shorter, but I did enjoy the hell out of it. Glee, on the other hand, is at the very least 3 seasons long, and with a (horrible) fourth season still running. I really liked Santana and Brittany's storyline, because:

“Have you ever fallen in love with your best friend? Of course you have, you’re a lesbian!”

--- AfterEllen.com describes it best

But then the show deteriorated and became only a shadow of what it once was with the inconsistencies, character assassinations, inequalities, misogynistic portrayals, etc. It really killed off my mood to watch TV shows, not just Glee.

Then, along came Lost Girl.

Hermione in Harry Potter 7

I think Harry Potter stands as a very important part of my childhood, and I've religiously went to the movies for all the big screen versions of them. But as I grow older, the passion has faded considerably. This does not mean I don't like Harry Potter anymore, I still do; it's just that I now have other stuff to be obsessed about. I realized some time ago that my memory of the Harry Potter books ends at volume four, literally. I remember most of what happened in the first four volumes, I know what happened, what transpired, and the endings. But from there on, my memories are blurred and need a lot of prodding to recall things.

And so, it took me a long time to get to theaters for this first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, mostly because I wasn't that enthusiastic at first. Only when the movie had almost stopped showing did I realize I've been present for all of the movies before, so I went to see it. Welllll, I remember only small details about the seventh book, so I saw this movie almost like someone who has never read the book, lol.

明日への扉 (迎向未來)

明日への扉 - I WISH

感覺是首適合夏天的歌，又讓人莫名充滿希望與感動，卻也使我感到一絲淡淡的感嘆。前幾年時這首歌好紅，我記得電視上會一直播，隔了幾年之後又翻出來聽別有一番風味。

陽光、戀愛、希望...迎向未來。

Ricoh GX200

我終於正式跟我爸講過我到底想要哪台相機，我選定了Ricoh GX200。 市價是18000，好可怕的數字，但我看網上都有12000~13400的平行輸入貨。

而且我也有發現有皮套可買!!! 官方版的是合成皮，反而比訂製的便宜多了。我真的心動了!!! 存錢啊...

CAMERA!!!

之前看上了Sony新推出的travel camera，不過考慮到它是新出的，再加上SONY價錢一向又都偏高... 我最近又看上了兩台相機!!! 價錢都在一萬出頭，我打算請我爸幫我出一半，應該存的到5,6千塊吧!!

Ricoh CX3

Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 (DMC-TZ7)

Panasonic那台是頗受好評，因為功能不錯、好操作、價錢OK、品質好。可是Ricoh那一台我認為比較有特色，它有個1cm超清晰近拍功能很吸引我... 怎麼辦，兩台都好棒，價錢又都差不多!!

ソ・ラ・ノ・ヲ・ト (空・之・音)

這是空・之・音的原聲帶封面，我好想買!!

這部動畫讓我打破了"只看完結的動畫"這自我規定的原則，但我一點也不後悔。雖然我很討厭每個禮拜都像白痴一樣在期待禮拜三出新一集，但真的很值得。不過因為我是看英文字幕的版本，所以名字部分我只能打英文的羅馬拼音。

這是Rio跟Kanata的Amazing Grace合奏，這段超感人。 :' )

SCU 110

Time is catching up with me again, and as I gazed upon the list of classes participating in the sports competitions, I only spotted one sophomore class and that was us. Freshman classes are actually forced to participate, just like we were last year. I still recall fairly well that we gave it our all and got 4 trohpies for the English major (with 16 people!!), which was awesome and so much so that we decided to try to accomplish or even exceed that achievement this year. The best thing was that we did, and though my body still aches from the 100m dash of the relay race, I am still giddy from excitement.

I missed the opening ceremony as of again this year, Saturdays are supposed to start late in my book, lol. I only volunteered for the women's 1200m relay race because I haven't really been exercising much lately. I already quit the volleyball team during summer vacation, and I didn't have P.E. class last semester, so you could say I'm quite out of shape compared to what I was like before. It was funny how that out of the 12 people who are to run the relay race, only a little over half showed up. We had to insert random people who were there, and we still WON. Our time was 3'20"69, and coincidentally the date was also 3/20. It was all about pride when I looked at the whole list and saw we were the only sophomore class and that we got 1rst place. The trophy this year was very tall, and everyone who ran got a gold medal!!

A Song of Ice and Fire

I recently saw the news of HBO's green-lit for the epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, also using the Stark words, "Winter is coming," as motto. I was instantly struck with a flood of memories concerning this series, which I had first started reading in jr. high and then into my high school years as well, but the fifth volume, A Dance With Dragons, still hasn't come out after more than 5 years of waiting.

"quote"

"I soooo want a new camera!!!! SONY!!! Cyber-shot!!!! 1020 pixels!!!!!!!!!!!"

噢，這款相機大概是超過一萬元(死)，然後台灣還沒上市。

Sasameki Koto 13 [Final]

I just finished the first season of Sasameki Koto, and I thought it was really good, really really GOOD!! What a coincidence it is that these 13 episodes came to an end on volume 2 of the manga, which is exactly the same as the progress of the manga licensed in Taiwan. I didn't really read onward, even though there are scans available online. Maybe I should catch up on the manga, and I am a little more intrigued as to what happens afterwards concerning the story after I finished this season one of the anime. I am definitely looking forward to the second season, and I hope the quality will remain this good!

The anime pretty much stayed faithful to the plot of the manga, with the exception of ep. 11, but that was also a pleasant episode. The art is great, I mean it is a lot more detailed and looks better than the manga, which is the first positive sign of a decent adaptation. A lot more attention was paid to the background in the anime, meaning that most people had a face complete with eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. Lol. And side characters like Azusa, Akemiya, Tomoe, and Miyako were inserted into the background, making appearances even before they were to enter the main plot. Kiyori was much more detailed and looks more like a real character, she was like a part of the background a lot in the manga.

Hey Digimon!

After falling into the world of Pokémon, I guess I'm still stuck in this whirlpool of memories. (sighs) Pokémon was one of the three main cartoons that I remember from my days in the States, the other two is Digimon and Cardcaptor Sakura. Digimon has forever been compared with Pokémon and not without good reasons too, they're both about the adventure of kids and monster-like creatures. I've already made it pretty clear that I love Pokémon from the bottom of my heart in the last post, lol, but that doesn't mean I prefer Pokémon over Digimon! Actually, I watched Digimon 01 and 02, yep, two complete series, and I gotta say that Digimon has a much more interesting plot than Pokémon. I know that a bunch of kids accidentally trapped in an other world and then ended up being the destined saviors all sound very cliché, but hey, that cartoon was from almost a decade ago!! And it was aired in the US, where not too much JP stuff has been introduced yet in those days. Kids loved that show, and that included me!!

I do have some preferences in this show, meaning that I liked those kids from 01 much more than 02. I mean, Tai is the ultimate one and only main-protagonist-looking-goggle-wearing guy that I would never hate, lol!!! I liked Matt, the best friend that gone bad but returned good, and I recall that I prefered his looks, ah... the blonde guy. I liked T.K. and Kari, the siblings type with the matching angels Digimons! These two were a large part of the reason that I continued with the second season, I'll get into that later. I liked the feminine Mimi with her cool hat and the computer geek Izzy and the nerdy-looking Joe. Seriously, I really think this group is the BEST in all of the Digimon series!

Good ol' Pokémon

Pokémon is THE memories of my elementary school days in Chicago of the USA, it was all the rage back in those days. It was a time when kids thought Game Boy Color was the best invention like ever, I'm joking of course, that was what I thought. lol It always kind of urks me nowadays that what little kids hold in their hands are the super expensive and high-tech looking PSPs, no offense to the hand-held counsel itself. You get to watch movies, take photos, listen to MP3s, and play fancy games with that one little machine. Now this is a long way off from what I lovingly held in my hands and played Pokémon with, yep, almost a decade ago... I'm feeling old and cynical.

Pokémon was so popular, it had the anime airing on TV (note: my Pokémon memories are all in English, including the anime and the songs), mangas selling in bookstores, trading cards literally everywhere, and the Game Boy games making kids like me even more addicted. I would wake up early on weekends just to see the Pokemon anime, and would save my pocket money to buy trading cards. Pokémon was the alpha one, next to Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh. Oh, and I still have the trading cards stashed away in the house somewhere because I couldn't bring myself to throw them away. I think of these cards like photos that bring back fond old memories of times past...

Today is Gonna Be a Great Day

I admit, I like to watch Disney Channel in my leisure time. For one thing, it's cartoons in ENGLISH, which I really really miss. I would gladly watch Cartoon Network too, IF it had the dual language option. It's such a great pity since CN has some of the most ridiculous cartoons from the US (e.g. Cow and Chicken, Johny Bravo, Tom & Jerry, Dexter, etc.). I have heard that kids my age in the US or other foreign countries at that don't watch Disney at all, in fact some of them even look down on Disney. I know it's a kiddy channel and all, but what harms are there in enjoying simplistic and funny kiddy shows.

I remember really clearly one summer when my ABChinese friends from the US came to Taiwan, my brother and I showed them around a department store. We came upon the CDs section, and the ABC brothers saw the High School Musical Soundtrack. They started laughing and pointing at the cover, and scoffed at the singers. That high school drama never really appealed to me, but some of those songs are pretty decent enough. I guess I don't understand or relate with Americans my age. *shrugs*

Fangirling & FF13

Fang and Vanille