良いお年を！

Hello!!!!!  This will be the last post I write for 2010.  How has everyone's year been?  Mine has been fabulous for the most part. :)

National Museum, S'pore (Pompeii Exhibit)

Japanese Creative Centre, Spore (manga exhibit)

I've completed a one year diploma course in 3D Animation and Visual Effects, got a job within 2 weeks of completing my final project, visited Hong Kong and Japan, attended my first concert in approximately ten years, got myself a new obsession, began new projects, finished old projects, made new friends, strengthen old relationships,visited lots of museums in Singapore, took lots of fun photos, ate lots of great and interesting food,

Paradise Dynasty - multi-flavoured Xiao Long Bao

 learnt lots of cool stuff.... (video - zbrush modelling project for school)

Yeah... it was a good year. :)

Victoria Habour, Hong Kong

 Due to the heavy workload in the first half of my diploma course, I found it near impossible to do anything meaningful on this blog at all in the first half of 2010 and it is with some regret that I did not manage to document any of my trip to Hong Kong.  I did shoot lots of photos of food though and ate my favourite roast pigeon in Hong Kong.

Roast Pigeon, Hong Kong

I only wished that I knew that my pay-per-use roaming had been turned off before I left Singapore so that I could have turned it on and updated via mobile blog at least once a day.

So just to commemorate my trip to Hong Kong so that I do not forget about it in the years to come, here is a quick and short write up. :)  I visited Hong Kong from the 12th - 15th July 2010.  I went there with 11 other classmates from my diploma class during our term break before we began our specialization term.

While in Hong Kong, I visited Victoria Peak and Ocean Park for the very first time.

Victoria Peak, Hong Kong

Ocean Park, Hong Kong

My previous other trip to Hong Kong was more than 10 years ago when I was an obsessed HK film fan and that trip was mostly concentrated around eating, shopping for HK films and TVB dramas and a visit to an old a dear friend who was then stationed in HK for work purposes.  On this trip, I met YTSL a fellow blogger and Asia film fan, whom I had not met for years and years and years.  We had dinner and watched a really funny HK film called La Comedie Humaine.  It was cool. :)

wanton noodles, Hong Kong

Aside from eating lots of Hong Kong food like awesome wanton noodles, Hong Kong will also need to be remembered for making me obsessed with going to Japan to catch Kalafina in concert. :)

While in Hong Kong, while we were making our way about the city using the subway system, I saw an ad for a Kalafina concert to be held in Hong Kong.  Now at that time, I was just becoming quite obssessed with Kajiura Yuki's music again.

Kalafina HK concert Ad, subway, HK

 After watching Noir in 2002, I had began to fall in love with Kajiura's music and that was further cemented by my love of her work in the .hack series and the Mai Hime series and sequels.  However, the lack of availability and the prohibitive cost of Japanese soundtrack cds in Singapore lead me to lose touch with her music and I listening to mostly techno/electronica fusion classical music, bossa nova, folk, country, classical music, Chinese pop music etc for a while before I began studying the Japanese language about 2 years ago.

postcard received w/cd purchase at concert

I decided sometime late last year that since I would not have very much time to study the Japanese language due to the extremely heavy workload for the diploma course, that the best way for me to try and keep in touch with the language as much as possible was to immerse myself with as much Japanese entertainment as possible.  So aside from watching Japanese dramas only for a while, I also started to listen only to Japanese music and started first with my Zard obsession when all I was listening to was Zard, then mixed in with lots of Utada Hikaru and finally, I revisited Kajiura Yuki after listening to some Kalafina music namely Hikari no Senritsu, Storia and Iirica while looking for more music to listen to.  Hahahaha... so I am slow... for some reason, it didn't occur to me to look for more Kajiura music first because I had forgotten that she also writes open and end themes for anime, not just lyric-less soundtrack music.



cds purchased in HK

small card received at concert

To cut a long story short, I loved Hikari no Senritsu, Storia and Iirica and virtually everything that I could get my hands on that was Kalafina and FictionJunction and Kajiura Yuki. :)  Still, I never really thought about going to a concert till I saw that ad in Hong Kong.  It then dawned on me how close and yet how very far it was for me to attend that concert.  The concert was only a few weeks away in August 2010 but I was already in Hong Kong in the middle of July with no realistic hope of attending the concert in August.  It also dawned on me that the last concert I had attended was more than 10 years ago when I saw Faye Wong (one of my previous obsessions :) ) live in Las Vegas.  This crazy desire to go to Kalafina's concert in December began to take root in my head and by September, I think, I had already began concrete plans to attend the concert in December.  The trip was meant to be my present to myself and in order to make this present mean something to me, I worked damn hard at finishing my reel by my personal deadline so that this trip would really be a celebration of a good end to what had been a very tiring year in school.

concert program

scan fr. concert program

In the end, I am glad I was in Hong Kong and I am glad I saw that Kalafina ad because that ad put in place a series of events that led me to Japan again, a country I had not intended to visit till perhaps 2011.  Not only did I love the Kagayaku Sora no Shijima ni wa (輝く空の静寂には) concert, the preparation to go to this concert led to my meeting old classmates and friends from the US and from work.  My second trip to Japan was FANTASTIC.  There were some hic-cups and a few frustrations but in the end, all I can remember is going to the concert with a very dear friend (thank you Danielle), meeting up with friends that I had not seen in ten years (Itsuko and Teiji), ex-colleagues whom I had not seen in 5 years (Koji) and 2 years (Manami) and having a ball of a time with Danielle, SY, Darlene and Christel.

onigiri & other snacks fr Family Mart

fish sperm

I also ate some strange stuff like fish sperm, visited a Maid Cafe, learnt "moe moe magic",  fell in love with Umeshu Soda, consumed enough onigiri to feed a small country and took lots of goofy photos.  Hahahaha... it was a good trip and I want to go back to Japan again.  :)




I'm happy I now have a job again.  Now I can start to seriously save again so that I can put some money away for the future and also to fund my trips and other obsessions.  =)  I'm seriously glad that I took up this diploma course too.  Yes, I know a lot of people thought I was crazy to ditch a perfectly good job to go back to school for an entire year and switch careers mid-way though my life.  But you know what?  If I didn't take advantage of the recession and reduction in earnings from my freelance work, if I didn't take advantage of the increase in government spending on subsided education for those looking to upgrade and do a mid-career switch, I would be the greater fool.  It was a risk and I am very happy that by the end of 2010, it proved to be a risk worth taking.

2010 was a great year.  It may not in the end become the greatest year in my life, fact is, I hope it doesn't because I want greater years to come.  I am greedy that way. :)  But what is certain is that 2010 was a very memorable year and a year I would like to remember for a very long time. :)

Here's to a great 2011, more good times, more good food, more fun trips, more safe journeys, more concerts, more good music, more success, more good health and more happiness.  I wish all my family, my friends and all who chance upon this blog the very best next year.  I wish you all much happiness, good health and good times. 良いお年を!!!   :)  I am off to make myself some Umeshu Soda to welcome the new year. :)