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Europe trip: Day 14 (Venice Day 2)

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Places visited (11 June): Binale sites. Former republic of Slovakia, Korea art museum Second day in Venice. Went to the supermarket to buy more food supplies, and walking through the streets that range from being at the two sides of the river, to random dark and narrow pathway that oddly has a lot of people walking through it. As if encountered by accident, I stumbled upon Iuav University of Venice (Università Iuav di Venezia; IUAV), probably the only college there. There are so many things about this city that you can't find elsewhere: plenty of old buildings that are older than most buildings that I know of, the lack of roads (which also means the absence of things associated with vehicles) and having boats in their place, houses that are that close to the water as you can see in pictures (and the algae markings visible). Partly because of how long ago the buildings were built, and their conservation status, it's hard to tell if buildings are shops, houses, schools,

Yononaka no Okugi (Part 2)

To avoid alerting people on what I am up to, I would only head to the library when no one wants me to join them to walk home or somehow only get released from school late enough for the library to be closing. I do not know why I do not want other people to know about it, but something tells me that I shouldn't tell anyone. The school library is smaller than the local community library. It shouldn't take that long to find any kind of book relating to my school, but... There are only four school yearbooks on the shelf, and all of them are of those who graduated earlier this year and the three years immediately prior to that. For a school that is established about half a century ago, this is shocking. My guess from this is that it either happened four years ago, or after the graduation of five years ago. So that should also mean that people who were in this school at the time the transformation happened should be in the books between two to four years ago. I wonder if I can

Europe trip: Day 11 (Paris Day 10)

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Places visited: Montparnasse Binvenüe, Montmartre, Marcadet Poissonniers, Bastille (line 4, 12, line 5)

673rd post: Creation of Ebook version + Renamed first story

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Having used my Kindle 4 for half a year already, I enjoyed reading on it. Well, apart from not being able to read in some dark places due to the absence of built-in light, but being able to read under room light without hurting my eyes, or bright sunlight outdoors, which are primary advantages over an LCD screen, are big advantages. Well, the problem with reading my stories on my blog is that it requires a constant internet connection if you were to read more than one part of it. On top of that, neither the desktop nor "mobile versions" (iOS and Android versions actually) offer a comfortable experience of reading because the text is just too small, and zooming in doesn't re-flow the text and requiring to pan around, only to start over when heading to the next page. So, I am proud to announce that I will be making an e-book version of all of my stories (except the 5th story). To make this accessible, I will also include a QR code so that you can use your smartphone to

Alternate Dimension (Part 93)

The first day attending Mizuho's Middle School department has just ended. Due to high demand from other departments and the public, staying at the school's dormitory is discouraged to those born before the "evolution" and know someone related who is also born before that time,  or those who can reach the school within a short time with any transport. Of course, I have my own car, so I'm not staying there. (The concept of family is relatively unknown and non-existent to those born after the evolution, and existing ones are being naturally degraded to something like a group of close friends among existing ones. Well, how exactly do you see a family if everyone in it are now young girls wearing mostly the same outfit behaving alike instead of men and women of various ages with distinct differences?) Because of Mizuho's massive size and the lack of ground transportation infrastructure (apart from rail-based ones), getting to the car park where my car is p

Europe trip: Day 17

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Places visited: Venice Marco Polo airport, London Bridge station, Vauxhall station, Westminster palace (Note: this was written on day 29, so details might not be in detail until i have image reference. Day 11, and days 14 through 16, are currently skipped) The last day in Venice, and also the first day (second if you count as transit to Paris) in London. Having a morning flight means that my time in Venice that day is just limited to travelling to the airport. The streets were empty, though as we got closer to the bus terminal (Plaza Roma), there are people walking around to get to work. Not clear which direction as Venice itself is a maze: even narrow passageways can be a major route with many possible routes, and random dead ends. The Venice airport took quite a number of minutes to get to from the main city area. The interior looks like the kind I would expect of an European airport actually. As Italy is part of the Schengen zone, flights to other European countrie

Europe trip: Day 12 & 13 (Paris Day 11 + Venice Day 1)

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Places visited (Day 12): Château de Vincennes, Gare de Lyon (via Vallorbe, Switzerland) Places visited (Day 13): Santa Lucia (Northern Venice) (Note: this was written on day 27) Day 12 The last day in Paris, and also where I would make my way to Venice. Because I was so cheap on expenses, the owner told me that I had to clean the room, or pay €20. Knowing how strong European European currency is, that is quite an amount in my home currency. So where do I go between check out and boarding the train? Well, there is this place I always walk past, but never went in, to a place called Château de Vincennes . (Pronounced as sha-tou-deh-varn-sen ) It's an old castle, but I didn't know the significance of it until I read that some well known authors were imprisoned there. Spent about 3 hours there. Where to next? Well, there is this big library near one of the station I went past days earlier (don't remember the name, but it interchanges with RER C and Métro lin