Chasing After Rainbows

Having been to many different countries, I have accumulated quite a number of coins. As you probably know, the money changer do not carry coins besides that of the local currency. Sure I could create a collection out of these, but there are extras left over for it. How to deal with these? I don't know what is the smallest denomination the money changer would accept, but it's certainly banknotes instead of coins. I have received RM 1 notes, which are worth only US$0.31, and sometimes, the highest denominated notes of that currency aren't worth much, so exchanging a few pieces, and getting the equivalent in foreign currency back as thick stacks of notes. Well, if going to the country again, make sure to bring those coins along, and try to use as much of the smallest denomination as possible, or pay in a way that you don't get small denominations. Example: Paying the exact change (or as close as possible) with as many of the low-denominated coins as possible inste

I've talked from time to time about my posts ( blog stories and anime posts especially) being late/early and such. However, with a lot of things to do, including doing household chores, it's hard to keep a schedule. Blog stories are supposed to be out once a week. But as time went past, they get unknowingly longer and longer (in terms of the number of words per part/post). On top of that I have a busier schedule and things that have higher priority that it's hard to maintain that. Eventually, that weekly thing became every fortnight Mondays, and now... well whenever I say it's ready. Sometimes, it just sits in my drafts for days and then publish it at a later date without any editing. Before you ask, it's not scheduled either. Also, I am writing only because I want to write what I want, but, unfortunately, I don't earn enough from those to make a living. (Not even enough to afford one subway train ride) Wasting my effort on something that doesn't r

These past few years, I have traveled to several regions and countries that are quite far away from home. As I traveled, certain aspects about how different a place may be from what I'm familiar with is become more apparent. Things that I take for granted too. Depending on what country it is, cost of living may be lower than where I'm from. Although, if I'm unfamiliar with the currency of the country, that can be a hard thing to tell, especially if the rates are not dividable by 10 without a remainder. Well, 2 and 5 too, but that requires more thinking. However, some products, especially ones produced from my country, or an another country, may be more expensive than back home if you calculated the exchange rate of the price you see there. Although, for some places, spending $100 (around there, and something like that in other currencies, and stated price might be before/after tax, and if the store participates) would allow you to refund the tax. While planing for tra

You may have come across some (fictional) stories, or a part involving, where one finds themselves in a body of something different from what they are used to. This can be to an animal, an item, or even a robot, but most authors usually restrict this concept to between humans of the same gender not too far away, and know each other prior to it happening. So what you find yourself in someone else's body and then someone else talks to you as if you are their parent/child/sibling. Psychologically, these people are complete strangers to you, but the body you are in makes you to be related to them by blood. Your original family members would also not recognize you. Methods of how that happens, or what happens later on, is different, but "waking up one morning" and "demanding to change back" are usually the typical things that happens. For the latter, it usually involves someone else who cause it to happen (usually a scientist), various difficulties (expense, co

It has been exactly a year since the large earthquake happened in the Tohoku region. I remember a year ago when people were calling and messaging me to check if I'm okay. I'm relatively unscathed, and I don't have relatives affected by this. Tokyo was relatively unaffected, and buildings remain standing as they are designed to withstand strong earthquakes. Although, food supplies, and things like radios and batteries were mostly empty shortly after due to people rushing to buy this and/or supply routes/factories were affected by it. Outside Japan, and most foreigners inside Japan, the situation at that time was kind of exaggerated by the lack of knowledge (and spreading their misinformed knowledge to others) of what is happening, and the areas affected. The fear in these people seem to imply that the whole of Japan is affected. As for the radiation, yes there was dangerous radiation around the Fukushima 1st nuclear plant, and, yes, radiation levels in other parts

The 29th of February is something that happens only once every 4 years. Even in the other years, February is still the only month that has less than 30 days. Seemingly coincidental is that the summer Olympics takes place in every leap year, though the event itself is a few months after February. I somehow see the summer Olympics as something more significant than the winter one. The timing of this summer Olympics signifies how much time has passed. The Beijing and Athens Olympics are still fresh in my mind, but those were in 2008 and 2004 respectively! This tells me how fast time has passed, and I feel old.

People usually don't see me angry. When I do, it would be because of the frustration of things I dislike built up over time. My tolerance is high, so that means it would take a lot for that to happen. Of course, understanding the situation is also a contributing factor too, but it does built up faster if the anger of others are directed towards me. If it to someone I had known for a while, it is usually for the things that has been accumulated over time that I had previously tolerated, but the most recent being too much. Example: once in a while is okay, but too much of it is unacceptable. Maybe I'll let it slide if enough time has passed, but if done again before then, my tolerance level is pushed closer to the limit. In other words, try to tolorate, but if if kept pushing towards the limit, let them know. If enough time has passed, but still no improvement, it would be better to move on instead of still holding on.

Having grown up overseas and travelled to different countries, I am used to having people to be talking  loudly on their mobile phones, and on a packed train on top of that. I wouldn't mind if people were to be talking loudly on the train, but that doesn't mean that others won't. Of course, having an otherwise quiet train to be disrupted by someone talking loudly does bother me.

Having come across many things in many different languages and culture, I got exposed to several languages. Being exposed to at least more than two languages, I saw that words could not be translated directly, different sentence structure, requiring context that needs to be understood to be able to translate properly, and things that are just not normally used. When thinking of what to say in a language, it would be different in an another. However, language proficiency and knowing the words to use does affect what to say. If you're seriously thinking of learning a new language, don't just learn "hello" or "where is...?", learn how to say things like "The rental rates seems expensive" and understand what the reply would be. I've experienced the language barrier while I was in Shenzen (深圳市; a Chinese city north of Hong Kong). Every sign there is in Chinese, and there isn't any other language besides terrible English. Roughly being ab

(I somehow felt like writing this here instead of the anime blog) K-On! (Spring 2009) Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure (Spring 1999) Excluding anime that seem to go on forever (eg. Bleach ) or targeted at children (eg. Doraemon ), I have watched new anime, since 2006. Of course, I had watched some older ones like Kahimashi, Cowboy Bebop, and Lain . I never noticed it unless I looked back (for anime since 2006) or watched older ones, but character design and background details in general has improved. Or it could simply because more recent ones looked better in widescreen in HD over the older lower-definition letterbox standard. The early 2000s was a transitioning period for animation studios for doing each frame using computers over a cell sheet. To the viewers, this means that higher detail could be inserted, and scenes with things moving would not have everything else on the scene to be "moving". Character designs can sometimes be timeless or be specific

Happy New Year everyone! I was hoping that 2011 would be an uneventful one, but as you are aware, there are so many events taking place more than the previous years combined. It was also the year where I travelled to quite a number of countries, and got more active on twitter. You could say that it was a fun year. If you're wondering about why this is post number is 583, and not 584, remember that the numbers are based on the order I created them. That means that the previous post (S2P81) is technically the 581st post that was first created before the (numbered) 582nd post.

It's about 4-5 days after Christmas, and just another 2-3 days to New Year of 2012. I don't celebrate Christmas to begin with, and I now have a hectic schedule that everyday seems the same to me. With me hardly watching the TV or listening to the radio these days I never even heard any Christmas songs at all. On top of that, Christmas day falls on a Sunday, and it seems no different from any other weekend. In other words, Christmas is a non-even to me. I don't know if I would be up for the New Year countdown. You know, this is actually my first time in a long time that I'm not away, and actually at home. I brought this up because someone I followed on Twitter who is also following me said that I (or someone else named Haruka) am a bad girl for ignoring Christmas.

Dad, I want you to sell the car instead of getting a new one for the following reasons: 1. Tax 2. Depreciation in car value over time 3. Maintence costs, including other expenses and inconviences that may happen because of it. 4. Cost of fuel rising and pollution it causes 4a. Calculating the cost per liter, and fuel consumption, it's already clear that a train fare of the same distance is less. 5. There is a direct train form the house to the workplace, and the time you head to, or leave from, work is within operation hours. 6. Parking and toll fees 7. I usually never hear you taking the public transport. Don't you see the expenses? You probably don't as total price per trip is not shown in your face. Can't you at least see the price of fuel and parking at least? I don't know how much more money there would be in the household as you had drove cars for about 15 years now, and a motorcycle for some number of years before you married mum.

I guess I've been more active at twitter lately. So, I have not even started writing any part of my stories as of late due to me being busy and worrying about serious things. My schedule is kind of tight at the moment. Hopefully, I would have more time on Saturday onwards.

When writing my stories, I tend to get confused as to what year the stories are currently at. Knowing what the year is, and in some cases, the exact time and date, is important for me to sort out the events that takes place in that story. As I write a different story right after the last one, it would make things even more confusing. Even more so if at least two or more coincide with each other a lot, with one being in a different year than the other. So, here are the positions of where the stories are at the latest part: Story 1 (completed) - Summer 2005 Story 2 (Part 79) - Autumn 2010 Story 3 (Part 41) - early 2020s Story 4 (Part 6) - Summer 2011 Story 5 (Part 1) - early 1990s Story 6 (Part 11) - October 2011 Note that the protagonist of story 4 (Nanami) and 6 (Yumiko) do not meet each other at all, but both have met the protagonist of story 2 (Saeko/Itsuki) at some point. Saeko/Itsuki and the protagonist of story 3 (Kotomi) are in a relationship with each other, so th

I currently have an assignment that's to due quite soon, and most likely a test a week after. Also, I'm having a hard time thinking of what to write for it. I am thinking of writing of part 11 of "Tearful Promise" (6th story), but nothing has actually been planned or written yet. I'll start doing it when I can. Keep an eye on my twitter profile for updates, and the little things that indirectly affects me writing it. Updates for my blogs should have a #twitter hashtag.

Although I'm not being paid to write the stories by me on this blog, or was asked by anyone to write, I need something to cover my day-to-day expenses. Since my focus is on my real life day-to-day activities, and those blog stories, my other blogs seems somewhat neglected. Twitter seems to have become the medium to talk about the updates to my blogs, though if I feel like I might want to search for it later on, or something so detailed that it wouldn't fit in a tweet, I might post it there. Having received no comments on most of my posts, sometimes I wonder if people are even reading my blog. If I didn't have Twitter followers in the hundreds or have people following this particular blog (via Google Friend Connect widget), I might have felt demotivated to continue from the lack of support. You know, these banners on this blog has been around for a while, but after a very long period of time (years), I've not made anything out of it. Oddly enough, the usual one, e

If you were to look at the URL of this blog, you would find that the odd name of 'the1iam' being used here. You might be wondering why that is being used, or why takhsiru.blogspot.com points to my anime blog instead of here, or the current @THE1IAM user on twitter is someone else. Well, it dates back to when I created this blog in 2006 and that name was chosen simply I couldn't think of a creative original name. In fact, 'the1iam' was the name I used when I first signed up for twitter. Long time followers of me there would also notice that I used 'asuna888' between that and now. Unlike quitting, changing the username also means that the former username is available to others. This means that my former usernames has been snatched up by other people on twitter: 'the1iam' by an African man, and 'asuna888' by (fortunately) my sister. I had used 'takhsiru' since 2010.

While watching Kami-sama no Memo-chou , I came across this image. This seems pretty close to what I had in mind for the student card as mentioned in the stories I write on this blog (that very lengthy image-less posts I publish on this blog these days). Next post I am likely to put up here is part 4 of "Teary Promise" (6th Story). I've only written the first paragraph as of the time of this post. My increasingly busy schedule might have it out late and shorter.

Lately, I've noticed that most profiles on twitter roughly say the same things in their bio, that longest chunk of text next to the profile image. Some of these common elements they put in commonly are: interests links (it's supposed to be in the homepage field) text that would appear correctly only on an iOS device journalists/companies that don't describe themselves from a personal point of view people claiming to be "otaku" (among anime fans) no text at all, not even an emoticon (ーー;) I have to admit, I myself don't even look at my own profile. From what I saw at a glance, it would also fall into at least 2 of the points above. Question is, what should I write for its replacement?