It was only awhile ago that it finally dawned on Yoko that Kamina is dead.

Kyouka had the bad luck of walking past Yoko’s line of sight that time.

Saw this rainbow outside my window this afternoon. It was longer when I first saw it. It significantly shrank by the time I found a decent shooting angle from another window. And by the time I was done shooting, the rainbow had already completely disappeared because it had started raining again.

Large version download from my deviantart page. Wasn’t able to adjust settings properly since I was rushing to capture this moment.

Ah yes. I stepped into the Starbucks near my office and the shelves are now stocked with fresh new Christmas merchandise enough to make St. Nick binge on coffee. So of course, I could not resist stepping inside and look around at the stuff that will soon allow Starbucks to rob me of my well-earned money.

Christmas is pretty much my favorite season of the year. It’s when one can easily justify spending money on toys and gadgets and not get frowned upon. I’d just grin and say “it’s Christmas!” and it would easily slide.

And to welcome the official start of the Christmas season (it used to be September but since Halloween’s a big hit now in the Philippines, Christmas takes a backseat till after everyone takes down the skeletons and creepy-crawlies from their houses and offices)…

I bought a new mug~!

My friend, Emrys, immediately said “But you already have so many mugs (you twat). Why buy another one?”

“I don’t have a red one.” And that was it.

Now, Christmas season means them coffee addicts can once again start throwing away their money buying Christmas coffee in Starbucks and collect those stickers that eventually entitle them to planners they don’t really use since whatever plans they make don’t come to fruition MOST OF THE TIME.

I just got the stickers so that I’d have something to give away on Christmas day. (Yeah, right)

But seriously, this year’s design of Starbucks Planners looks like rubbish. I’d rather spend a grand to buy a moleskin annual planner.

So I’ll collect the stickers for the sake of collecting them but Chil can probably have my planner. I’ll just get a moleskin annual planner instead. Looks better, actually. Black matches the rest of my gear.

Any Christmas hols habits/promos you partake in during this time of the year?

So bored the girls are contemplating something that could spell utter disaster.

My 3-day Halloween weekend was uneventful, to be honest. Saturday was probably the best day of the weekend, going out with Chil and my two brothers to Greenhills for a wonderful lunch at Don Henrico’s (I missed their buffalo wings), did some window shopping and contemplated on whether it would be ideal to get a DS Lite (but that pink DSi made me want to take a bite out of it as my brother also claimed) and then had drinks at Grilla. Sunday was spent mostly at home and the same went for Monday, November 2nd.

We would have been over at Aringay, La Union, my mum’s hometown, if not for that damned tropical storm. These storms seem to have the habit of messing up plans by coming over during the weekends. Just goes to show how fucked up the environment already is. We got more storms enter our area of responsibility in October than in the span of May to September put together (I think…don’t quote me on that).

So now, at the office, catching up on mails and trying to get some stuff started.

So how’d your Halloween weekend go?

Alright, keeping this short but sweet. Above is the upcoming Nintendo DSi dubbed the DSi LL. The most significant change you’ll notice here is the larger bottom screen which is AWESOME in my opinion!

Kotaku has a comparison between the DS Lite, DSi and DSi LL. Once this baby hits the market, I’ll be really hard-pressed to get this over a new PSP. This one just looks awesome and I’m really hoping that Nintendo’s got oodles of new firmware features and capabilities for it.

I want this one. The white one. There’s a black version too among other shirt designs. But I’m a white shirt fan, primarily. Click the image to get the full article. Danny-sama will be putting these up for pre-order soon but they will be first sold during the Cospa event, he says.

Here at the office, people have started decorating the place for Halloween. I’ve started my decorations as far back as when Oktoberfest started by bringing some miniature pumpkins and having my two Melissa Seraphy Nendoroids pose beside them. But now that decorations are starting to increase, I’m bringing out Nozomu-sensei as well…in the form that I’ve never used him in. His zetsubou form.

If anything, my halloween decor is cute and not even remotely horrifying.

So much work has driven our poor Nozomu-sensei into despair. And with no kanojou to have icha-icha moments with, he was more than willing to use the noose.

Wireless internet isn’t something new to netizens anymore. A lot of people around the world have been walking around with their laptops and using postpaid or prepaid internet services for quite some time now. In recent years, the Philippines’s local mobile service providers have jumped onto the bandwagon as well. First with Smart Bro Wireless, then there was Globe Tattoo and then there’s Sun Cellular Wireless Internet.

Recently, we got a USB wireless internet device from Globe Telecom. This is mainly for Chil’s consumption and not mine since I have DSL where I’m staying at.

After using it for the first time, she noted it disconnects sometimes or the connection can be dragging or slow.

So I did some trawling on the internet, looking up forums that have discussed these three different services.

Smart Bro Wireless

User have said that the perk for Smart Bro Wireless is the fact that Smart really has the widest coverage across the country. Even as far up in the mountains like Benguet, you can get a steady Smart signal and where there’s signal, there’s internet access for the Smart Bro Wireless service.

The main complaint appears to be its frequent disconnection which can be annoying.

Their rate is Php10 per 30 minutes.

Globe Tattoo

A newer service and more modern 3G equipment than Smart, (so they claim) Globe Tattoo provides steady internet access. Not as frequent in disconnections as its competitor.

The major downside which I think pisses a lot of people off is its sluggish connection. Smart has up to 2Mbps wireless internet while speed tests for Globe barely make it to 1Mbps and this can be very frustrating for the user.

Their rate is Php5 per 15 minutes.

Sun Cellular Wireless Internet

The newest player in the scene is Sun Cellular and so far, users who have been on the above services previously are claiming that this is the best service by far. Faster speeds, more stable connection.

Downside is that it’s exclusively in certain areas of Metro Manila. And since my house’s roof acts like some sort of radioactive bomb shelter, Sun’s signal is pretty weak inside the house. Can’t bring it outside of Metro Manila either due to lack of coverage.

What’s interesting is that Sun has been able to maintain their unlimited calls and text service for this long and survive alongside the two main service providers. So only time will tell when Sun will be able to overshadow the biggest players in wireless communications with their services.

And to Globe and Smart, Kyouka-chan has only one message:

My question to you is do you already use any of these wireless internet services? (Note: prepaid service and not postpaid, primarily) What are you using and how is their service?

I don’t really buy spares ALL the time but I can count two instances of buying two pieces of a certain Nendoroid: Miku Hatsune and the upcoming Megurine Luka.

First Nendoroid I ever puchased was Nendoroid Miku Hatsune. She started my Mikutard streak. I got this from my colleague Coffeebugg. After that, I had added a select number of Nendoroids to my collection. I’m not like Coffeebugg who has craploads of Figmas. No budget and I’m not really that into the other Nendoroid releases although there are some that have been discontinued that I wished I had been able to purchase/own.

Nendoroid Miku is a second-hand Nendoroid so although it was still in pretty good condition when I got her, she’s not as spic-and-spam as the other Nendoroids in my collection. Also, since this is, I think, a first generation Nendoroid Miku Hatsune, the quality of the paint and the topcoating is significantly different from the newer releases.

Nendoroid hair normally come in two pieces (front and back). For this particular Nendoroid Miku Hatsune, the back piece’s color faded faster than the front piece. T_T You won’t really notice it until you look at it from above.

Being one of the first few Nendoroids that could stand on its own, I enjoyed carrying Nendoroid Miku Hatsune around without the stand. Same for its previous owner. Thus the paint at the tips had worn off over time. Now I ALWAYS use the stands.

There’s also some paint fading going on at the back. This particular Nendoroid also had a loose joint on one of its twintails. We had to use blu tac to fasten it back.

So when I managed to find a Nendoroid Miku Hatsune on sale, I jumped at the chance to own a second one. This one’s staying in the box though.

I said earlier that there were two instances where I ordered spare Nendoroids. The other instance is for the Nendoroid above: Megurine Luka. Yet another Vocaloid. I had already contacted my local supplier to reserve two of these for me when they put up the pre-order list.

This incident is the cause for a series of episodes where Gloomy starts harassing my small Nendoroid community.