| Jul. 25th, 2005 @ 04:45 pm Random miscellany |
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You know, just when I make a post about my PC being A-OK, some fault developed on my phone line. This meant I could make no phone calls (well, at least no phone calls that didn't cost an arm and a leg) and could not connect to the internet. This was a travesty; a dire infraction of my rights as a human being, or at the very least, a severe inconvenience. Well, not even that, but it was annoying, and I dropped off the face of the internet. Again. Which I suppose is not all that surprising, really.
At least the PC was still OK.
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Finally finished Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. I almost didn't. I'd made it to the second-to-last boss, and was having extreme difficulty with him, getting absolutely nowhere. "He's supposed to be hard," I kept on reminding myself, "he's supposed to be hard." But he was being seriously annoying.
The rest of the game had been... well, not exactly *easy* (I died plenty of times), but manageable. But this penultimate boss was reminiscent of the difficulty levels in Ninja Gaiden. And to top it all off, I had to wrestle with the controls just to get an idea of what the hell was going on. (Trying to control a first-person shooter with a console gamepad was not helping, either.)
Finally, after getting my arse kicked for the umpteenth time, I put the game back on the shelf, swearing blind that I'd had enough and was going to give up.
For some crazy reason (let's call it masochism), I took it off the shelf the next day and attempted the second-last boss again. Somehow, I actually managed to defeat him. I don't know HOW it happened. I remember looking at his life bar, seeing it was down to 25%, and wondering how on earth I'd managed to do that much damage. Suddenly, thinking I might have a chance, I started blasting him with renewed vigor, and before I knew it down he went.
Through an amazing stroke of luck, I then managed to defeat the very last boss. I had about 39 energy (out of 1499) left at the end of that battle.
I now felt much better about putting the game on the shelf and not touching it again. ^_^
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The completion of Metroid Prime 2 doesn't mark the end of my unplayed games pile, but I'm getting close. Remaining are Grandia 2 (I'll so have to restart this, and hope that the Dreamcast still works), Panzer Dragoon Orta (have to restart this one, too, haven't played it in a year), Luigi's Mansion and most of the Resident Evil games for the Gamecube.
I'm wondering if I really want to bother with the RE games again. The few times I fired up the remake of the first RE game, I found myself getting very aggravated with the controls. However, I hate wasting money, and I would like to at least give them a shot.
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So just recently at BAS (the anime club I go to), there was the "speaking Japanese incident", as I have started to call it.
Someone I knew was there (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) knightessyamika), with a Japanese couple. (From what I understand, they're her calligraphy teachers.) Just a quick dropping-by, from what I could gather. We introduced ourselves, some in Japanese. I was encouraged to do so, though I was very embarassed and nervous about it - it has been many years since I last studied Japanese and actually *spoken* any. But in the end I gave a quick, strange, nerve-wracked, and somewhat stilted jikoshoukai (self-introduction).
It was kind of fun, speaking that much Japanese at once again, as horrible as it must have been.
I really must do something about this.
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Have just had a couple weeks break. Yay for time off. I'm not sure I achieved very much, but I did some stuff regardless.
* Read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
* Completed Metroid Prime 2 at last
* Made a dent in my unwatched anime / unread manga / unread books pile. A small dent, but a dent nonetheless.
* Went to the coast to visit the parents. I always like going to their place, because it is far away from my PC and my consoles, which can suck up absolutely amazing amounts of time in seconds flat. I feel inspired to live a cleaner, healthier life, and to exercise more regularly, going for long walks / jogs through the Noosa National Park. (Then, of course, I go home again, and up extremely corrupted again.)
* Got some much-needed new pants. Rather incredibly, they are not, in fact, blue.
* Saw Bewitched, which was nowhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be. |
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aggravated