NabuYES

I started playing FFXII again.

After about 9 months of mourning, I was ready. Afterall, this blog was named after it. It was bound to happen sometime. I had to start from the very beginning but it was ok, since I had forgotten a lot of things about the game. Like how to change leaders. I'm pretty sure there was an easier way to doing this but I sort of figured it out. This time I have the strategy guidebook with me which makes it a bit easier. I felt like I was cheating though, but when I said this William simply replied, "You've already done all this". True.

Gardening: Day 30 something

So, gardening. I haven't updated anything for about a month, but my plants have been making some progress. I took some pictures to compare what they looked like a month ago.



Mint is definitely more bushy, and the Aloe looks greener. I think it also sporouted more leaves (are they called leaves?).


Tomato plant is way taller, and look!

An actual tomato! I only have one tomato fruit growing so far... I hope i'll have more.

The lavenders are doing alright, aside from the fact that the English Lavender looks a little tired.

The okra and basil seedlings were doing fine for a while, but it stoped growing after a while. My okra never sprouted more leaves, and remained long and skinny. I tried to repot them too soon, which resulted in them wilting :( I had given up on my basil as well, and had left one pot sitting outside for a few days without water. Surely, it would have dried up and died...? But to my pleasant surprise, it was still alive! And kickin'!

It now had four leaves. I have kept it outside since, watering it occasionally without drowning it. It is growing slowly, but seems to be doing fine for now. I woinder how long it will take to become a decent plant that i can get basil leaves from.

Pies are best eaten at night

I just came home from the House of Pies Family Restaurant and Bakery in Los Feliz. I had passed by several times but never had had the opportunity to go inside. But tonight was the night.

After a pretty healthy meal of chicken patties with vegetable sauce and some tofu salad, William announced that he wanted some pastries. "Pastries??" I asked him what kind, and he started to name various baked goods. Apple pie, sweet potato pie, vanilla cake... I sat there trying to think of a place that served pastries after 9pm, and finally remembered House of Pies on the corner of Vermont and Franklin. It was hard to find parking because apparently everyone wants some pies on a Monday night. William was at first a little bummed to see that they didn't have any sweet potato pie, but decided on Southern Pecan pie a la mode. I got Dutch Apple and a decaf coffee. The best thing about family restaurants is that they have decaf. You can't get decaf at a cafe. Or can you? Either way, why would you go to a cafe to get decaffeinated coffee? I love my pastries with coffee, but as it was late at night, I gladly ordered decaf and it was awesome. So were the pies. The pecan pie reminded me of this pastry that my mom makes, and I reminded myself to ask her for the recipe.

There is something about going to a random place for a late-night indulgence that I love. It's spontaneous, carefree, and fun. It makes me feel like all of it is a part of a bigger plan. But the best part is that it isn't. All it is is eating pies. Then we go home.

Gardening: Day 3

Ok, so Day 3. I don't have a photo of my seedlings because nothing has happened yet. I'm impatient so I always assume it's not going to happen when I don't see any sprouting action in the first couple of days, but it says it will take about a week to two weeks on the seed packet. Patience, patience. Instead I am going to post some photos of the rest of the garden.

Three different lavenders. The last one is supposedly French Lavender.




Mint and Aloe.


Tomato


The Lily that Lived


Damn you, palm trees!!


The embarassing reality of our backyard

Gardening: Day 1

I started reading "You Grow Girl", a guidebook to gardening for the urban, younger generation. I've bought plants from time to time (especially this time of year) in hopes of starting a garden, but they have always ended up dying due to the lack of water. This time it'll be different, I would always say to myself. But so far, the results have been the same. The only survivor out of all the plants that I have attempted to grow in the past is Aloe Vera, plus a pot of lily that my roommate (3 roommates ago) had. There is also some lavender that I planted a while ago in the front of the house in the ground, which I'm assuming would not have survived this long if I had planted it in a pot. I just forget to water my plants. It's sad. I feel like a failure every time a leaf turns brown and crispy, crying out for water in this dry, severe SoCal climate.

Ok, so this time, for real. I can do this. That's what I'd like to think. For starters, I actually read a book on gardening this time. The book is really good, and makes understanding about soils much more easier than I had thought. After reading a couple of chapters, I decided to go out and get some plants.

This is what I am starting out with:

- mint [POT]: Can't remember how many time's I've tried to grow this
- lavender [GROUND]: I had a positive experience with it so why not get more
- tomatoes [POT]: Wasn't too sure about this one but maybe actually having some tomatoes to look forward to and harvest might help me water them on a regular basis

- basil [SEED]: Had bought seeds a while back and attempted to grow them once unsuccessfully
- okra [SEED]: Had randomly bought seeds a few weeks ago.

I am worried about the seeds, but I am going to try to keep a journal with photo documentation.

Now that I've put all this up on the Internet, hopefully this will help me keep up my garden.

Making a difference (with baby steps)

When I was at a graduation party in Palmdale last night, I was reminded by a friend about this blog. And how I have not written in it. I was surprised to hear that he had been checking up on it every now and then. But when he told me that the last post I had made was about the Darth Vader samurai doll, I felt better. I had forcasted ahead enough that the topic of my last entry was Children's Day, which just happened a week ago. I had been bloggin on Mixi (Japanese version of myspace) and micro blogging on Twitter, but it's true I had neglected Nabudis and Nabudat.

Lately I have been trying to make small differences to bring back order into my life. Or at least trying to get into the mindset of it. The house was a mess and had been for a long time, the backyard was a jungle, I was arriving at work late, cats were running amok leaving hair everywhere. Something needed to be done.

Cat hair was a problem. They are shedding more due to the season. I bought sitcky roller things to roll up hair on carpet and furniture (and clothes). I try to vacuum more. I also bought an amazing brush called the Furminator. The amount of hair it removes is unbelievable. Too bad the cats kind of freak out when I use it. Another change I made was getting up at before 9 (yes, nine). I have only managed to get to work 30 minutes earlier, but it's better than feeling guilty for being the last one to walk into the office. There was also some home improvement that went on. Nothing more than putting away my countless magazines and moving the unused computer desk into the livingroom so I can finally use my Powerbook on a desk instead of on top of a tiny bookshelf with no room for my legs, but it's made my life and the living room much better. More home improvement to come.

I started on the backyard today which is the biggest obstacle of all. The palm trees that tower between our house and the neighbors (but is technically on their property) drop huge "leaves" on the yard. These leaves are over 10ft long, heavy, dangerously spikey, and there were over 40 of them. While I think about how to get rid of these, I am going to read the book "You Grow Girl" that was delivered in the same Amazon box as the Furminator and figure out how to start a decent garden.

Darth Vader the Samurai

In Mexico May 5 is Cinco de Mayo. In Japan, it's Childrens' Day, also known as "Boys' Day". It was originally just for boys, I guess, since girls have a day to themselves on March 3. So even though it's called "Kodomono hi" (litereally Childrens' Day) all the tradition that go with it pertain to boys. One of them is putting up a samurai outfit doll in your house. It's way too expensive and fragile so you can't play with it or anything, and besides, playing with dolls is for girls anyway with the exception of GI Joe's and Kinnikuman figurines. It just sits there looking angry with its crazy black mask that usually has a white mustache and crazy teeth. At least the one we had did.

But there is a new samurai doll in town. The Darth Vader samurai, available for approximately $2,800. I'm not particularly a Star Wars fan and to tell you the truth I haven't even seen all the movies (not even all the original ones), but it looks pretty cool. He looks like he's been doing it for years. He's a natural.

Ok, so I was only mildy amused by this doll and decided to blog about it because the photos were pretty nice. What I wanted to say was that this reminded me of the Imperial March, which to me is just Dave Dameshek singing "Creep of the Week".

A Weekend Guide to Palm Springs

I spent the weekend in Palm Springs. In my nine years of living in SoCal, I had never been to Palm Springs. I only had a vague picture of the place in my head, of gold courses and palm trees (duh) and hot springs (duh). But it turned out not to be entirely how I had imagined it. There were palm trees, planted unnaturally in the California desert. There were hotel resorts that said "spa". But I actually didn't see any golf courses (I think you have to drive to them somewhere), and I was surprised to see the mountains right there, just bam! In your face. The weather was dry, nice and warm enough for a tank top during the day but not blazing hot, and quite cold at night. The downtown area was nice and laid back, with a retro old hollywood feel complete with its own star walk of fame. The main street was lined with restaurants, souvenir shops, and several icecream shops. And yes, there were quite a few senior citizens. William and I ended up playing a game while sitting outside in the sun and waiting for our food at a cafe/bar/coffee place (I know, it's redundant, but that's what it said). The rule was simple. We look towards different ends of the street and whoever spots anyone younger/same age as us first, wins. This game lasted for at least 10 minutes, and this is a busy street with constant traffic.

Aside from counting the number of people under 30 years old, we went to a little town west of Palm Springs called Cabazon to check out the outlet. I'm always hearing about this place from my friends who visit from Japan, and I was finally able to see it with my own eyes. It looked huge, but in the end it was not that much. I guess I was not in the right mood for it either. It was pretty funny to walk into Gucci and Prada with a 1 gallon jug of water and a ziploc bag filled with grapes. I did get one thing that I am very happy about from the outlet though. The pot. Yes, the one I had been dreaming about for a while, and already wrote about in this blog. There was actually a Le Creuset outlet store, so of course I had to go. After considering all the colors, I decided on a classic cherry red. Besides, they were having a sale where everything red got an additional 20% off. I ended up paying $128 for a 5.5 quart round French Oven. It doesn't get much better than this.

Low VS High tech

Spent the day looking through magazines and drawing. I felt like I was going through a slump, not being able to draw very well. I switched from a mechanical pencil to a pencil to a pen, then back to a pencil and finally my trusted Pentel R.S.V.P. ballpoint pen. It worked. I really love that pen.

Yesterday we made a plan to go hiking this morning at 9am, but that didn't happen due to staying up kind of late. William got himself an iPod yesterday, and we spent the night trying to get his newly downloaded iTunes to recognize it. It just wouldn't show up, and my years of experience with iTunes and the now vintage iPod mini was practically useless on a PC. But luckily after a good night's rest, William was able to figure it out. He now has the 5th Generation iPod with video and everything. Mine is a mini, which they don't even make any more. I think they made two generations, then decided that the mini was not mini enough. I'm jealous but I am looking to the future which is the iPhone. Well, I don't know if I'll really get it right away but my phone IS ancient (black and green screen). It's so hard to keep up with technology. I'll be happy as long as they keep making my pen.

What's all this then?

Where does the line "'Allo, 'allo 'allo. What's all this then?" come from???
One day William busted it out with this crazy voice (British accent, according to him). The way he said it bothered me and made me laugh at the same time, and when I asked him what the hell it was, he simply said "It's what British people say." I didn't believe him. Who says that?
But then today he told me that he heard it on "Futurama" as well as on "Class of 3000" (both are cartoons by the way). So I had to google it.
I was shocked to see the results.
However, I could not find the origin of this line. Is it a reference to something? Or is this what British people really say?

Nabuwhat?!

I started this blog about a month ago, at the height of my obsession with FFXII. A few weeks later, I lost it all. All my data, that is. Almost 80 hours into playing the game, it was gone in a matter of seconds. Life is fleeting, and so is data. I won't go into detail about how this tragedy happened, but I will just say that I was crushed.

Since then I have attempted to download a gamesave and load that onto PS2, but it was way too complicated for my mind to comprehend. I am beginning to consider starting the whole thing over again, but can't bring myself to do it. It took so much time and dedication to get to where I was, and knowing how obsessed I will become once again, I feel like I should be doing something else that is more productive instead.

So I am practicing Tekken Dark Resurrection.

I started out by attempting to learn Christie, the Capoeira girl. I have been intrigued by Capoeira, and have even taken a class once. ONCE. It required so much strength to do it (especially your legs) that I decided it was not the right time for me. I was unfit for muscle challenging activity. (Maybe I will try it again sometime when I am feeling a little more adept.) I played Christie for a while, and managed to learn one combo. Then PS3 came along, and I was onto trying out a different character. I chose Baek. I liked his kicks. He seemed like a good character for beginners. (Maybe not. I wouldn't know, I'm a beginner.) After I went through that phase, I somehow ended up with Asuka. Ok, she is Japanese and I am too, AND a girl, but that is the very reason I had avoided her. It was too obvious of a choice. I had this "Humph. Asuka my ass," attitude towards her. But for some reason which I can't recall, I decided to attempt learning her. I have learned a couple of combos, and am slowly trying to move away from button mashing. It's hard. I lose my cool real easily and panic, which leads to major button mashing and tight gripping of the controller, which then results in fatigue and a sore thumb. I can see a small improvement though, and it is encouraging me to keep practicing. Unlike data, skills will not be lost as long as I keep practicing.