The Pillows & Co

One of my favourite japanese bands, The Pillows, have released a new album "My Foot"(!) Got it the other day and had a listen. It's got a few true gems and is overall a damn good album. I like the title track especially (my foot), as well as "Third Eye". Those are the ones that get played most and are likely to be put on repeat quite often. Check them out, a brilliant rock band from japan.

On other news, been starting to think about my plans for after graduation and have my eyes set on continuing my psychology studies in Sweden. That's if i'm accepted to the course. Hopefully i will. If i do get accepted, i will study for one term until jan '07 then hopefully have enough money (either scraped from studen loan leftovers or charitable donations from my overworked doctor brother :D). Once you get settled in and get a job money isn't really an issue, but it's just the settling in part that can be quite expensive. Getting an apartment isn't always easy and once you do, there are some fees that must be paid, fees such as a deposit (which is usually the equivalent of 3 months rent) and key money, which is a one-off payment to the landlord (another months rent) who has been so gracious as to let you live there. So as you can see it all adds up and before you've even set foot in your home for the next year you've paid for almost half your time in it. Crazy huh, but that is the way of the japanese and one must follow the rules or be without a place to live, which isn't really an option :D

"hopefully" it will all go to plan and i can gradute -> start studying in sweden -> go to japan for 1year+

after that god knows what will happen!

iPod

Finally got my student loan today! Chi-ching. And what is the first thing i go and do? Straight to the local apple retailer and buy a new ipod :D Got me a 60gb Black (sexy as fuck) iPod Video and my god are they lovely. The video bit has proven to quite a mission (encoding for ipod format etc) but its all good. Especially impressed by the photo bit. The quality is amazing.

Well well, no time to write. gotta go drool abit more over my latest gadget, and maybe some more on the one before that (the new swedish keyboard arrived the other day as well free of charge, courtesy of Apple, so now i have two keyboards yeay)

ba-bai

never ever

Uni has started again and that means new things to study and more lectures to attend. I have 4 lectures a week with wednesdays off. Not much new going on at the moment. Have discovered a new fun pasttime and as usually im abit late to get on the bandwagon. What i'm talking about is Podcasts from iTunes (or other places now). One particular podcast i enjoy is MyExtraLife. Just a bunch of guys, geeks and talented webcomic artists alike, chatting about anything and everything that is geeky, dorky or in any other shape or form, female-repelling. Very funny in other words :P Movies, games, webcomics etc etc, those are the usual topics anyway. Great fun!

A crush

Can you fall in love with the sound of a voice? I think i just did...It's so weird. Got a call from Apple about an order i had cancelled. I missed the call so she had left a message and as soon as i heard that accent i was a goner. I'm really quite worried :) I think i'm moving to Australia...!

Powerless

So some quite interesting things have happened here lately. Late on friday night, 23:50 to be more precise, the power and water went off in our flat. I was out with my brother visiting a local drinking facility at the time but i received a text from our flatmates telling us what had happened. I thought, as you would, it was some small affair to be fixed within the hour and they shouldn't worry too much. It would probably come back on by the time we were back, which would be after 2 hours give or take a few minutes. To my astonishment my brother and I were met with a pitch black court and malfunctioning magnetic lock systems. Everything was off (apart from the two or three rooms that for some reason were being supplied). The power came back for a few minutes around 3 am but went off again shortly thereafter. And they were to remain off until about an hour and half ago.
Now, being without power and water for a few hours is not much of a hassle. If we would've had atleast water it would be another matter. Being without either for 1day and a half does become slightly problematic. Then there is the problem of light. After sundown you're pretty much forced to stop any work you were doing, can't read, can't use the bathroom (since you can't flush) and other things. So we were pretty much forced to go out and entertain ourselves. My brother and I went for a burger and to have a chat with the people outside now hard at work trying to fix a major problem even for them who are used to fixing powercuts etc.

Finally, after 36h we have power and water back. Though the water might come and go at times they tell us, as it's a temporary meausure. We'll see what happens, i'm just happy the power is back. And we have £50 each coming our way as compensation from Central Networks (the power company), hope we get to see the colour of that money sometime soon, you never know with these things.

New Year in Gothenburg

I apologise for the size of the image, I'm gonna get my site up and running soon and there will be much more for you guys to look at there. For now this will have to do. A panoramic city view on new year's eve 05. The stitching isn't perfect as i did this rather quick, might do a better one at some point.

Of Late

Some stuff has happened that hasn't really affected me as they should've perhaps. Broke up with the girl, which I've been waiting to do ever since I pretty much started to dislike her when she came to Sweden over Christmas.

Mental note to self: never invite a girl back to Sweden when you don't really know her, bad idea.

Now that I think back on it I don't even know why, or how even, I started going out with her. She was ok looking, cute. Petite, skinny even. Very white skintone, no haircolour to speak of (though if had to choose I would probably say it was...the colour of..washed out brown, oversaturated brown even, not something i'd prefer). I'm more into full, dark brown or other full colours.
After a few encounters with her in the beginning it becomes obvious that she is a pretty shy girl, which at first is sweet but comes to be slightly annoying.
When she arrived in Sweden, i will not lie, i was late to the airshed (as i have decided to call Gothenburg City "Airport") because of a slight misunderstanding between myself and the itiniery. My parents were in the car and it was all good, the first day passed without any problems to speak of.
I think the annoyances started on the second day, can't remember exactly what started it. A variety of factors i would say. Her extreme politeness, as much as to pur herself in discomfort for the sake of not being rude (my mum gave her some clothes to put on as it was pretty cold outside, -10C, but she was too hot but when i told her she refused to take anything off), now people say that's very English, in my opinion that's very stupid. I just gave up trying to convince her my mum just wants her to be comfortable.
Another point to worth noting before i wrap this up is her unwillingness to engage in any kind of discussion, all she wants to do is drink her tea and watch tv or something. I even tried playing the devil's advocate a few times to get her engaged but it didn't really work as i'd intended. She asked me why i always wanted to argue, and i replied i wanted to have some, ANY, kind of discussion or debate with her, but my cries fell on deaf ears.

So those things and alot more contributed to the fact that we just ain't meant for eachother. She was raised in a small town outside of colchester in a strict, conservative family while i've been raised, for the majority of my life, in a city in a open loving and very liberal family with close-knit ties to one another. It was bound to fail.
For some reason though i think i had to get this out of the way, now i feel my next choice for a girlfriend will be much wiser and last hopefully more than the last ones have (2 months to be precise).

On a lighter note, I LOVE my new iMac G5! Very recently the new iMacs with Intel processors were released and i couldn't return it for one of those but i've been told, reassured even, that that was for the best at this stage. And what a beauty it is, the perfect personal computer. I also got the extended Apple Care package for it so i won't have to worry about anything after the first year has passed. It's usually £140 but if you purchase the Protection Plan at the same time as you order you get a massive discount (50% i think it is). So my new computer i bought for £850 including Apple Protection Plan and another £73 for an extra 1GB of RAM purchased from Crucial.com.