A week of flicking.
Jan. 7th, 2007 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elwen[For new readers (?) and those who never caught the explanation, which I'm sure I had somewhere... "flicking" is Caltech slang for avoiding work and getting nothing done.]
It's been an awesome, much-needed winter break. First, of course, there was the trip to Hawaii. I think there could have been nothing better for getting my mind completely off of law school -- there were just so many new things to see and do. After getting back, I got to hang out with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nendil and other high school and junior high friends, which was great fun. I never want to let go of times like those. For New Year's Eve, we had a family get-together to eat hotpot and play lots of mah-jong. As when my third aunt visited over the summer, it was heart-warming to see so much of the family gathered together, bantering and enjoying themselves.
For all that awesomeness, though, I am in the end an introvert, and this past week has been essential to completing my recharge cycle. I just needed time to flick -- with job applications being the convenient thing to avoid doing -- and revisit things I haven't had the chance to do since starting law school.
I read novels. When I left for Hawaii, I dug out my PDA and started reading eBooks. I've been rereading Piers Anthony's Tarot series. Back in high school, a fellow Piers fan lent me the first two books, but couldn't find his copy of the third, so I never knew the conclusion to the series. I've just started the third book now, so it'll be good finally find out what happens. I've come to realize that one of the things I enjoy about Piers Anthony is that his books are full of little glimpses of very widely dispersed areas of knowledge. The Tarot series likes to drop judo moves as well as glimpses of many different world religions. It's somewhat like a long-defunct anthology website I used to worship, Clockwork Storybook. [I wonder if anyone remembers that anymore?] I think as I become more mature and know more things on my own, it's more likely to be tiresome or feel slightly inaccurate, but I still enjoy reading his works.
I still remember reading one of the Xanth books, and one of Humfrey's challenges was a sort of repeated prisoner's dilemma game. The character overcame the challenge by using the tit-for-tat strategy (cooperate the first round, then do whatever the other person did the previous round). At the time, the concept blew my mind. In Psy15, and probably even back in Psy101, I remember learning how tit-for-tat is a fairly successful not to mention simple strategy for repeat prisoner's dilemma games. So if I had read the book after that, it wouldn't have been nearly as amazing. But there's enough out there to know that I'm sure there will always be parts that I find fascinating. Plus, Xanth has puns.
Of course, I probably was first attracted to the Tarot series because of, well, tarot. I can't remember when relative to my tarot obsession I read the book, so maybe it was the foundation of my obsession and maybe not. Actually, perhaps it is, because it's the only thing I can think of that made me so initially interested in the Thoth deck. (But I never did get around to reading the Book of Thoth.) All I remember is getting into an argument with Murasaki (now of Monou.net) about who CLAMP would assign to the remaining Major Arcana. I thought Kusanagi would be The Sun, and she thought Nataku would be The Star. We were both wrong, but hey. [Kusanagi is The Star and Nataku is The Moon.] I don't think we can possibly be wrong about Fuuma being The Judgment. And we always were one character short, so I have no clue who The Sun will be. Keiichi is the brightest character, but he hasn't shown up lately. There are no more un-assigned Angels or Seals nor any major characters I can think of. Perhaps Daisuke, but he's hardly sunny. With X in the state it is, we may never find out. =/
I played video games. I haven't touched anything besides DDR (well, In the Groove) since starting law school. I've been sorely tempted to buy Final Fantasy XII, which even some of my friends who don't play console RPGs were excited about.nendil showed me how absolutely gorgeous a game Okami is, although attempting another action RPG might be a bad idea. (As sad as this sounds, bad things happened when I tried to play Ocarina of Time. I beat the spider thing in the Deku Tree, and I went through part of the Dodongo dungeon, I think, but then I got killed by skeletons while trying to cross Hyrule Field and was traumatized. Sad, I know.) I'd also like to progress in the Kingdom Hearts storyline. I read the first manga series which, while absolutely no substitute for playing the game, at least catches me up with the story. [Apparently there are now 4 manga series: the first, which I own; Chain of Memories, which appears to be finished at 2 volumes and which TokyoPop has decided to sell for its usual $10 each instead of $7 each for the first series; and Final Mix and Kingdom Hearts II, each of whose first volumes are now available at Kinokuniya. I'm still torn about whether to get CoM in Japanese. It's cheaper, and I like reading things raw, but on the other hand I think I might grasp the Disney-ness better if it's translated. I can't imagine what Goofy's saying in the Japanese version instead of "a-hyuk". o_O]
In the end, though, I settled for Golden Sun on GameBoy Advance. It's a great RPG. I really like its puzzles, and the whole Psynergy system adds a lot. The Djinn system is kind of overpowered if you can foresee when the boss battles are coming, but overall it's neat. (I haven't really played around with classes that much yet. Not since I only had 4 Djinn each, and the most I could manage then was to teach Garet healing moves.) I usually hate games that limit the number of items you can carry, but the fact that you can always buy back unique items you sell calmed many of my anxieties about upgrading equipment. I'm almost done with the first game now, but I'm not sure whether I should start The Lost Age as school starts.
The trend to multi-part games kind of bugs me. Maybe I'm just spoiled by Final Fantasy and its self-contained storylines. After all, Arc the Lad I and II were closely linked, too. I thought the .hack games were a cop-out, though. They really could have just combined them into one. Not so sure about Kingdom Hearts, but, moreso than multi-part games, I hate it when game publishers distribute essential parts of storyline on different platforms, so that's a whole 'nother gripe. Double the reason to just read the manga and screw the RPGs. But I want to go to Neverland and learn to fly. =/
I watched anime (although I've been doing that all along).![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
iconfiend100 is now responsible for my addiction to two animanga series. The first was Viewfinder, a yaoi manga by Yamane Ayano. *ahem* Actually, I'm not sure if the yaoi aspects really even matter, because if you ignore the gender of the characters, it reads a lot like Shinjou Mayu. Especially Ha Ou Ai Ren, what with the mafia thing and all.
My new addiction is an anime called Code Geass ~Lelouch of the Rebellion~ (ANN, AniDB). It's set in the future where the Empire of Britannia, which controls more than a third of the world (?) has defeated Japan with robots known as Knightmare Frames and renamed the region "Area 11" and its people Elevens. The natives then formed many terrorist organizations to reassert Japanese independence. Lelouch is actually a Britannian, but he grew up in Japan and dreams of overthrowing the Empire for the sake of his sister. When he gets embroiled in a terrorist escape, he meets a mysterious girl who gives him the power known as Geass, which allows him to give anyone an order by making eye contact. (It only works once on each person, though.) Geass sounds kind of like a cop-out, and some of its early appearances made it seem rather omni, but I think the single-use aspect and the difficulty of establishing eye contact with the really important people has toned down its importance in later episodes. It's more a lot of politics intermixed with school drama and is very, very good.
I was actually intrigued when I first saw in the AniDB calendar, but then I noticed that it was mecha and dismissed it. Later, when I saw a claim aticonfiend100, I decided that I really did like the art after all, and maybe I could put up with the mecha. The mecha are okay -- they don't feature too prominently, and their movements are fluid rather than clunky -- so it passed that hurdle. But watching the opening sequence was what really hooked me: the character designs are by CLAMP! Now that I think about it, Lelouch does kind of look like Kamui, but even skinnier and taller. Fortunately, he's much smarter and less angsty than Kamui.
I read manga. Beginning during study period, I started rereading Gokusen to try to prevent myself from dreaming about law. (I don't think it actually worked that well.) I'd gotten up to volume 10 or so previously (the arc with the rich, evil-looking student from another school), but I decided to start over. Shinkumi really does make me so happy. I still haven't caught up to where I was, but I skimmed through the whole thing, and then finally took the time to digest and squee over the (now old-ish) chapter where Shin almost confesses (!!!). *squees again* XD; I don't think I can wait until spring to find out what happens between the end of volume 14 and that chapter. Not to mention what happens after! <3 <3
... *cough*
*spoilers* But I'm kind of sad about Shinohara leaving. I don't think he belongs with Kumiko, but I liked him being in the kumi as a very savvy lawyer. With the replacement, it seems like Morimoto-sensei is taking out one of the things that made the Kuroda Ikka bad-ass and unique. Maybe it's a prelude to the series ending with everything being "ordinary". Shin tells Kumiko he won't tell her more (re: his confession) until after graduation, but I can't really imagine the series continuing beyond that. *sigh* I guess all good things must come to an end. Otherwise they just rehash the plot with slightly modified characters, like the second season of the drama. :P *spoilers*
So that has been my week, mostly, I think. Of course I can never get my fill of these things, but I think I'll be better prepared now for another go. And, I did make some progress on job applications. Just not as much as I probably should have or as I would like.
My schedule this semester looks kind of odd. All of my days end at or before 12:15pm except Thursday, when I have my climate change paper class from 4-6pm. This either means I'll generally be coming home early and reading at home -- gotta beat the traffic that starts to get bad around 4pm, which is when I'd leave after torts -- or I'll really be living in the library. -_-;; Last semester I worked really hard to get most of my reading done at the library because I didn't want to lug all my casebooks home, but amazingly only two of my classes have casebooks this semester (constitutional law and advanced civil procedure). My arms and my pocketbook are both grateful.
Tomorrow is my last day of break. The registrar apparently came up with this diabolical scheme whereby, if they began classes on Tuesday and ended on Wednesday, and turned a Tuesday and a Wednesday each into Mondays, they'd come out with the exact same number of school days on each day of the week. o_O;;
It's been an awesome, much-needed winter break. First, of course, there was the trip to Hawaii. I think there could have been nothing better for getting my mind completely off of law school -- there were just so many new things to see and do. After getting back, I got to hang out with
nendil and other high school and junior high friends, which was great fun. I never want to let go of times like those. For New Year's Eve, we had a family get-together to eat hotpot and play lots of mah-jong. As when my third aunt visited over the summer, it was heart-warming to see so much of the family gathered together, bantering and enjoying themselves.For all that awesomeness, though, I am in the end an introvert, and this past week has been essential to completing my recharge cycle. I just needed time to flick -- with job applications being the convenient thing to avoid doing -- and revisit things I haven't had the chance to do since starting law school.
I read novels. When I left for Hawaii, I dug out my PDA and started reading eBooks. I've been rereading Piers Anthony's Tarot series. Back in high school, a fellow Piers fan lent me the first two books, but couldn't find his copy of the third, so I never knew the conclusion to the series. I've just started the third book now, so it'll be good finally find out what happens. I've come to realize that one of the things I enjoy about Piers Anthony is that his books are full of little glimpses of very widely dispersed areas of knowledge. The Tarot series likes to drop judo moves as well as glimpses of many different world religions. It's somewhat like a long-defunct anthology website I used to worship, Clockwork Storybook. [I wonder if anyone remembers that anymore?] I think as I become more mature and know more things on my own, it's more likely to be tiresome or feel slightly inaccurate, but I still enjoy reading his works.
I still remember reading one of the Xanth books, and one of Humfrey's challenges was a sort of repeated prisoner's dilemma game. The character overcame the challenge by using the tit-for-tat strategy (cooperate the first round, then do whatever the other person did the previous round). At the time, the concept blew my mind. In Psy15, and probably even back in Psy101, I remember learning how tit-for-tat is a fairly successful not to mention simple strategy for repeat prisoner's dilemma games. So if I had read the book after that, it wouldn't have been nearly as amazing. But there's enough out there to know that I'm sure there will always be parts that I find fascinating. Plus, Xanth has puns.
Of course, I probably was first attracted to the Tarot series because of, well, tarot. I can't remember when relative to my tarot obsession I read the book, so maybe it was the foundation of my obsession and maybe not. Actually, perhaps it is, because it's the only thing I can think of that made me so initially interested in the Thoth deck. (But I never did get around to reading the Book of Thoth.) All I remember is getting into an argument with Murasaki (now of Monou.net) about who CLAMP would assign to the remaining Major Arcana. I thought Kusanagi would be The Sun, and she thought Nataku would be The Star. We were both wrong, but hey. [Kusanagi is The Star and Nataku is The Moon.] I don't think we can possibly be wrong about Fuuma being The Judgment. And we always were one character short, so I have no clue who The Sun will be. Keiichi is the brightest character, but he hasn't shown up lately. There are no more un-assigned Angels or Seals nor any major characters I can think of. Perhaps Daisuke, but he's hardly sunny. With X in the state it is, we may never find out. =/
I played video games. I haven't touched anything besides DDR (well, In the Groove) since starting law school. I've been sorely tempted to buy Final Fantasy XII, which even some of my friends who don't play console RPGs were excited about.
nendil showed me how absolutely gorgeous a game Okami is, although attempting another action RPG might be a bad idea. (As sad as this sounds, bad things happened when I tried to play Ocarina of Time. I beat the spider thing in the Deku Tree, and I went through part of the Dodongo dungeon, I think, but then I got killed by skeletons while trying to cross Hyrule Field and was traumatized. Sad, I know.) I'd also like to progress in the Kingdom Hearts storyline. I read the first manga series which, while absolutely no substitute for playing the game, at least catches me up with the story. [Apparently there are now 4 manga series: the first, which I own; Chain of Memories, which appears to be finished at 2 volumes and which TokyoPop has decided to sell for its usual $10 each instead of $7 each for the first series; and Final Mix and Kingdom Hearts II, each of whose first volumes are now available at Kinokuniya. I'm still torn about whether to get CoM in Japanese. It's cheaper, and I like reading things raw, but on the other hand I think I might grasp the Disney-ness better if it's translated. I can't imagine what Goofy's saying in the Japanese version instead of "a-hyuk". o_O]In the end, though, I settled for Golden Sun on GameBoy Advance. It's a great RPG. I really like its puzzles, and the whole Psynergy system adds a lot. The Djinn system is kind of overpowered if you can foresee when the boss battles are coming, but overall it's neat. (I haven't really played around with classes that much yet. Not since I only had 4 Djinn each, and the most I could manage then was to teach Garet healing moves.) I usually hate games that limit the number of items you can carry, but the fact that you can always buy back unique items you sell calmed many of my anxieties about upgrading equipment. I'm almost done with the first game now, but I'm not sure whether I should start The Lost Age as school starts.
The trend to multi-part games kind of bugs me. Maybe I'm just spoiled by Final Fantasy and its self-contained storylines. After all, Arc the Lad I and II were closely linked, too. I thought the .hack games were a cop-out, though. They really could have just combined them into one. Not so sure about Kingdom Hearts, but, moreso than multi-part games, I hate it when game publishers distribute essential parts of storyline on different platforms, so that's a whole 'nother gripe. Double the reason to just read the manga and screw the RPGs. But I want to go to Neverland and learn to fly. =/
I watched anime (although I've been doing that all along).
iconfiend100 is now responsible for my addiction to two animanga series. The first was Viewfinder, a yaoi manga by Yamane Ayano. *ahem* Actually, I'm not sure if the yaoi aspects really even matter, because if you ignore the gender of the characters, it reads a lot like Shinjou Mayu. Especially Ha Ou Ai Ren, what with the mafia thing and all.My new addiction is an anime called Code Geass ~Lelouch of the Rebellion~ (ANN, AniDB). It's set in the future where the Empire of Britannia, which controls more than a third of the world (?) has defeated Japan with robots known as Knightmare Frames and renamed the region "Area 11" and its people Elevens. The natives then formed many terrorist organizations to reassert Japanese independence. Lelouch is actually a Britannian, but he grew up in Japan and dreams of overthrowing the Empire for the sake of his sister. When he gets embroiled in a terrorist escape, he meets a mysterious girl who gives him the power known as Geass, which allows him to give anyone an order by making eye contact. (It only works once on each person, though.) Geass sounds kind of like a cop-out, and some of its early appearances made it seem rather omni, but I think the single-use aspect and the difficulty of establishing eye contact with the really important people has toned down its importance in later episodes. It's more a lot of politics intermixed with school drama and is very, very good.
I was actually intrigued when I first saw in the AniDB calendar, but then I noticed that it was mecha and dismissed it. Later, when I saw a claim at
iconfiend100, I decided that I really did like the art after all, and maybe I could put up with the mecha. The mecha are okay -- they don't feature too prominently, and their movements are fluid rather than clunky -- so it passed that hurdle. But watching the opening sequence was what really hooked me: the character designs are by CLAMP! Now that I think about it, Lelouch does kind of look like Kamui, but even skinnier and taller. Fortunately, he's much smarter and less angsty than Kamui.I read manga. Beginning during study period, I started rereading Gokusen to try to prevent myself from dreaming about law. (I don't think it actually worked that well.) I'd gotten up to volume 10 or so previously (the arc with the rich, evil-looking student from another school), but I decided to start over. Shinkumi really does make me so happy. I still haven't caught up to where I was, but I skimmed through the whole thing, and then finally took the time to digest and squee over the (now old-ish) chapter where Shin almost confesses (!!!). *squees again* XD; I don't think I can wait until spring to find out what happens between the end of volume 14 and that chapter. Not to mention what happens after! <3 <3
... *cough*
*spoilers* But I'm kind of sad about Shinohara leaving. I don't think he belongs with Kumiko, but I liked him being in the kumi as a very savvy lawyer. With the replacement, it seems like Morimoto-sensei is taking out one of the things that made the Kuroda Ikka bad-ass and unique. Maybe it's a prelude to the series ending with everything being "ordinary". Shin tells Kumiko he won't tell her more (re: his confession) until after graduation, but I can't really imagine the series continuing beyond that. *sigh* I guess all good things must come to an end. Otherwise they just rehash the plot with slightly modified characters, like the second season of the drama. :P *spoilers*
So that has been my week, mostly, I think. Of course I can never get my fill of these things, but I think I'll be better prepared now for another go. And, I did make some progress on job applications. Just not as much as I probably should have or as I would like.
My schedule this semester looks kind of odd. All of my days end at or before 12:15pm except Thursday, when I have my climate change paper class from 4-6pm. This either means I'll generally be coming home early and reading at home -- gotta beat the traffic that starts to get bad around 4pm, which is when I'd leave after torts -- or I'll really be living in the library. -_-;; Last semester I worked really hard to get most of my reading done at the library because I didn't want to lug all my casebooks home, but amazingly only two of my classes have casebooks this semester (constitutional law and advanced civil procedure). My arms and my pocketbook are both grateful.
Tomorrow is my last day of break. The registrar apparently came up with this diabolical scheme whereby, if they began classes on Tuesday and ended on Wednesday, and turned a Tuesday and a Wednesday each into Mondays, they'd come out with the exact same number of school days on each day of the week. o_O;;
