omg omg

6600 yen. thats about the amount i'm going 2 b paying for my hp juz for calls alone this month. y? the stupid ol' me din check the call rate for international calls so the day i got my hp, i spent like half n hr calling home n 2 a few other numbers. ish. good thing i found out how 2 check my call credit juz today...or who noes wat sort of bill i wud hv racked up at the end of the month...

anyway, for those interesting in knowing wat my phone looks like:






























cool, no? i like the shape a lot..n its got a nice camera dat can take pics at 1024x768...

unfortunately, it dusnt hv memory card support n theres a model wif an even better camera (3.2 megapixel)...yst took one of those, as did chee siang. at 1st i was complaining a lot :P but now i got 2 like my fon liao...

anyway, my number is +81 80 66284197 BUT dun try 2 sms me cuz in japan, they dun hv sms...for phone to phone msging they hv sumting called cmail which is not compatible wif sms. (calls r okay tho :P) i can oso receive email on my hp but since i'll b charged for every 128-byte 'packet' i receive, i'd better not post the address here...if u wanna noe, juz tell me...i guess its ok to receive text-only emails lah..

well..on to other stuff....last saturday a bunch of us international students went to tokyo YWCA to listen a talk about the 'Japanese Mother for International Students' movement....basically its sumting in which they pair u up wif a japanese 'mother' whom u can contact 2 ask about stuff n get help etc (no money lending tho :P).....its like a homestay program minus the homestay, if u get my drift...anyway, since many of the other guys r signing up, i think i'll give it a try too...its a good chance 2 practice speaking japanese after all...

besides that, nothing much 2 talk about except my 2 recent disastrous attempts at cooking. 1stly was the speghetti i 'cooked' last friday. the 500g of speghetti i bought for 100yen made enuf for 4 meals! n big meals too...since i became a glutton after coming 2 japan, i'm eating about 1.5 times my normal (malaysian) amount. unfortunately, (1) sum of the noodles stuck together in unsightly clumps cuz i din put oil or salt in when boiling the them; n (2) the sauce i bought (oso for 100 yen) was totally shit....not only was it not enuf for the huge batch of noodles, it had totally no meat taste...only tomato...n not very nice tomatoes at that...

ur ingenious fren here got around the problem tho, by using the noodles as 'rice' n eating it wif cafeteria-bought meat, salad etc. clever, no?

2nd disaster was when i made a 1cm-thick rice cake when i tried to cook rice wif a normal saucepan. i duno wat happened, but mebbe i din stir it enuf or turned the heat up too high. anyway, the rice above the 'cake' (read: burnt crust) was still edible so it wasnt a total waste.

well, dats it for now, signing off liao cuz got other stuff 2 do. n sum baka told my mom i had been on9 too much lately so now i better go do sum 'productive' stuff...

ja mata!

short note

ok i think i restored most of the links from my previous template...damn mendoukusai it was, but oso taisetsu....anyway, if anyone's link is missing from here pls tell me cuz rite now all i did was cut n paste from dan's blog :P

me thinking of changing me blog-no-template soon, any ideas? sumting dark n moody as usual...

today i ate lunch n dinner for less than 500 yen! lunch was 3 pieces of bread (half a loaf, they cut the slices really thick here) plus tuna, cheese n margarine...oishikunai but yasui deshitane......n i heard from my senior bout a nearby stall dat sells packets of noodles at 250 yen so tml will b checking it out...

there was sumting else i wanted 2 blog about but i forgot liao, dats y i was crapping so much about the lunch n stuff. oh yeah, i found this when pasting june (ooi)'s link from dan's blog. u can check the error by visiting the link to june's from dan's.

osoi deshita, ja mata!

Raptor's Untitled Blog

hey guys

1st of all, sum disaster happened while i was updating the frens' blogs links this afternoon...so now i lost my template n hv 2 use this stinkin' one for the time being (no time to fiddle around wif html at the moment)

anyway, a few updates on wat i'v been up to. as usual, no photos, cuz the very excellent photographer in our group, yst has already kindly settled that mendoukusai aspect of life ;P

last saturday 3 senpai's (japanese for senior) took the 4 of us malaysian 'noobs' to the central city area of tokyo, namely shinjuku, hanajuku, akihabara n shibuya. man, the crowds there...all u can see is a sea of bobbing heads...n the noise level is like totally deafening....definitely not a place i wan 2 live or study in....

unfortunately we din c much of shinjuku...in fact we left almost as soon as we arrived..cuz the *someone* in our group claimed to hv went there b4 n thus din wan 2 waste time touring the place again..so we headed to hanajuku, then akihabara to see the electronic n electric stuff there. yst especially needed an electronic dictionary while i was checking out the laptops there. (they suck btw, since apparently pc gaming isnt a hot thing in japan)

anyway dat day was damn cold esp for this poor guy who went out in only 1 layer of clothing...so at nite the senpai brought us to a 'tsu-ke' noodle shop for dinner. the thing about that place is the price for small, medium n large helpings r the same....of course, being malaysians, chinese n penangites, we all took large. n boy it was large....a whole basin....about twice wat i usually eat for a full meal! sumhow, we all managed to cram everything down tho...

well, nothing much more 2 say about that day trip, esp since as usual i was blur blur n din notice much things. oh, n we passed by a red light district of sorts dat nite. but nothing 2 c except the prices, so move along here....

anyway, as usual i'm blogging during the last minutes of the library so now its closing again n i gtg. cya guys!

raptor ravenlord's japan journal

ok guys i'm safely in japan n i juz got my computer account on monday but i left it in the computer room so i only got to on9 yesterday but the post i submitted last nite wasnt pubilshed so now i'm juz dropping a few lines here....

for a better (n more graphical) description of japan pls refer to see tatt's blog http://escapist5.blogspot.com cuz i had been kinda lazy wif photo taking n since he took most of the pics n posted them liao i guess i dunnit 2 do redundant work :P

the keyboards in japan suck....not relly lah...but the special characters like '@' n '_' (n even the apostrophe n brackets) r in different places..so i kept typing the wrong things on msn n such...but ah...its good to b on9....i cant imagine how i lasted the whole week without the internet (n without dota....god...i miss pwning ppl.....)

well..japan's cold n dry...i've kinda got used to the cold but the dryness still sucks...cuz it was so bad dat the skin was flaking off from my face...n the corners of my mouth dried so much it hurt to open my mouth..so last week talking n eating was sucky...luckily i started using lip balm n the skin oil my mom gave me n it helped lah..kind of. its weird dat now i like rainy days more here in japan despite it being colder..cuz the air becomes more humid when its raining.....

japan's like, really clean. u can hardly see any rubbish like plastic bags etc on the streets n even the backways n alleys r well...not-smelly. its great how they manage to blend in technology wif nature...like...the convenience stores in the smallest village oso hv stuff like electronic scanners n microwave oven...while mebbe a few steps away is a park wif subarashi landscaping....

one thing tho..the stuff here r really expensive...we malaysians hv been living like meanies for the last week......buying only the cheapest stuff from the cheapest place...so far our daily food budget is like 1000 yen but even that is around RM30 liao.....

well, library is closing soon...at least i think dats wat the announcement voice is saying...another thing about japan is dat everything is in japanese cuz they'r so self sufficient they hardly need any imported stuff wif english on....so many times we hv 2 guess wat a particular notice or document or announcement is saying.....

so minasan, ja mata, i'll prob b on9 again tml nite to blog about the classes n sum other stuff....if got anything u wanna noe about japan juz leave a comment lah...cuz i relly duno wat to write when i sit down here....

memoirs of a - SCRATCH THAT - last memories of penang..?

ah...2 more days n i'll b off to japan...i suppose i hv a lot to write about....not least the stuff dats been happening since my last, ancient post.....but no time lah, hv 2 go over 2 sue lyn's hse in half n hr, then tml morning got one final dota session wif my classmates...

anyway, now i noe how u overseas ppl feel when u were leaving for d 1st time...man, i'm scared to death! much as i hate to admit it, i've been completely dependent on my family (n frens) for my life here in penang...going to a place where the language, customs n surroundings r all so different seems so...intimidating....

luckily i've managed to buy everything (well, almost) dat i need...now its juz a matter of cramming them into my luggage cases....it took me about 7 trips to this n dat stores n supermarkets to get everything..whew...n i probably bought more clothes in one week than i ever bought in a year...

well anyway, my mind's at a blank rite now, will try to continue this post when i've cleared it wif a few rounds of dota...n when an annoying junior isnt bugging u about academic stuff :P