A couple of weeks ago, Yumeka put together the Ultimate Anime Questionnaire. She did not elaborate on what made it ultimate, but it’s rather comprehensive and I thought it would be fun to answer all of the questions. You can see her original post here and if you’re a big anime fan, you should try answering the questionnaire too.
As I get older, it seems that time is slowly slipping away and I have less of it to spend on things I enjoy. In all likelihood, there will come a time when it will no longer be feasible for me to continue watching anime every day. I may start my own company, raise a family, or just end up struggling through life trying to make ends meet. Whatever happens in the future is anyone’s guess, but if I do abandon anime for some reason, there are a few things that I hope I would’ve done by then.
@fkeroge from AOIA has started an Anime Bucket List and here is my contribution:
Some of you may have noticed a lack of posts in the last 2 weeks; that has been due to some decision-making in the real world. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you might remember when I talked about trying to get into graduate studies. Unfortunately, the program that I wanted to get in to is only really available in foreign (mainly American) schools, making it harder for me to get in because I have no connection to them, no money, and my GRE scores were only slightly above the entrance averages for top-tier schools. Getting those rejection letters hurt :(
I do not believe a single post-secondary degree is enough to get you through life comfortably though, especially considering half of people my age have one or are in the process of getting one. Thus, I have decided to apply for an MBA program and work at the same time. I will just barely meet the minimum work experience required to apply, but I’ll send in my application anyway in the hope that they don’t reject me for lack of experience. This means I will also have to write the GMAT within the next month to meet the application deadline. In order to make time to study, I will be taking a breather from my blogging activities. I will still be making posts, but instead of 2-3 every week it’ll be around 1 every week, and I will still be leaving comments throughout the aniblogosphere, but less frequently. Things will return to normal sometime in April.
Until then, I’ll probably be in this condition most nights:
As part of Kai’s call for anibloggers to share how they manage their time, I will be outlining how I schedule my life.
Everyone has to spend time on the necessary aspects of their lives – for me, that happens to be: sleeping, eating, and working. I don’t know anyone who can live without the first two, and I need to third in order to make money. Assuming I spend 7 hours per day sleeping, 2 hours eating, and 8 hours working, that leaves me with 7 hours for other things each day. That actually sounds like a lot of time, but a large chunk of it is taken by things like hygiene (brushing teeth, showering, etc.), travel, exercise, chatting with friends, and unforeseen events.
A little over a week ago, Exilehero posted an article questioning what reasons bloggers have for blogging. I don’t think I’ve covered this topic before so here’s a summary of my reasons for blogging.
I started Nopy’s Blog back in August of 2008 with a simple post titled “Hello world!” Little did I know that this blog I started would still be around 3.5 years later. So what made me decide to start a blog in the first place? To understand that, lets take a journey into my past, to 2005, the year I graduated from high school.
If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been for the last few weeks, I’ve been stuck in the real world. A combination of local festivals, dinners, get-togethers, more dinners, and lets not forget work, means I haven’t been able to get online much. Every time I try to sit down and read some blogs or write a post, it seems someone always manages to drag me out somewhere. Sometimes I wonder how Batman/Superman/Spiderman manages two lives at the same time.
Yesterday I was overjoyed when I found out that a company by the name of Kurushima was releasing a Ruri Hoshino figure, and not just any Ruri figure, but one of her before she became a captain. If any of you don’t know who Ruri is, all you have to do is take a look at my banner, gravatar, or any of my profile pics. She has been the unofficial mascot of Nopy’s Blog since its inception and is my favourite character of all time. Unfortunately, the anime she comes from, Martian Successor Nadesico, is from the mid-90′s, so good figures of the younger Ruri are almost non-existent. Most of the ones I’ve seen of her are garage kits from over a decade ago.
With that in mind, it was only natural that I would purchase this figure of Ruri returning from the bakery in a polka dot dress without a second thought, even with the hefty price tag of 14200 yen. However, I am now faced with a dilemma. A day after this figure of Ruri was put up for preorder, another figure showed up on the front pages of my favourite online figure stores.
The past two weeks have been very busy for me so I have not been able to update this blog as much as I’d like or even make comments on Twitter and reply to emails. Real life can be a real time killer. The good news is that most of the things I had to take care of are done so now I can get back to my regular activities. Unfortunately, I have a long list of emails to get back to, hundreds of unread articles in my feedreader, and an unhealthy backlog of anime. So if anyone’s wondering why I haven’t responded to something, I just haven’t gotten to it yet.
I’ve also noticed a large increase in the number of spam comments being submitted here. I used to skim through all of them to make sure legitimate comments aren’t deleted, but it’s gotten to the point where I can’t take it any more (200+ spam comments per day = too much). As of now, I am no longer looking through any comments marked as spam. I know some real comments accidently get flagged as spam, so if your comment doesn’t show up after a day or two, it probably got deleted. To avoid being marked as spam, don’t leave comments with excessive links or use blacklisted words such as swears and the names of certain products.
As for the future, since I’m no longer in school, you guys can expect more anime posts from me because I’ll have more time for more series. I’m also planning on getting back into making AMVs (its been 7 years since my last one), and finally learning how to draw. Figure reviews might increase too as I have more money to spend now. In a nutshell, you’ll be seeing more of me starting next week for a year, or until I decide it’s time to start looking for one of: a house, a new job, or a serious relationship :)
I would like to propose a project. If you are reading this, there is a 99% chance that you watch anime, and I know that many of you have your own blogs. Since we all enjoy the same thing, I thought it would be nice for everyone to share their history regarding when/how they discovered anime, how it has become a part of their lives, and how they think it has changed since then. It can be as detailed or as short as you want, and it can be about anything anime-related such as: your favourite series, why you watch anime, difficulties in getting anime, collecting anime goodies, anime conventions, cosplaying, and drawing.
If you have a blog, simply write about your history with anime and send me the link. I will add your link to the list below and a new project page I created with links to everyone participating. If you have a banner you would like displayed, send that in too. In return, I simply ask for you to spread the word and link back to this post. If you don’t have a blog and would like to participate, worry not. Simply email me with your screen name and history, and I will create a page for you. I will also add links to any profile pages you may have (ie: Twitter, Youtube, MyAnimeList, MyFigureCollection). I look forward to reading everyone’s posts.
The list so far:
2-D Teleidoscope’s History with Anime
Arctic Kitsune’s History with Anime
Arianna Sterling’s History with Anime
Bobbierob’s History with Anime
Cutfilm Tovent’s History with Anime
Ephemeral Dreamer’s History with Anime
Fabrice Requin’s History with Anime
Falling Cirno’s History with Anime
Foxy Lady Ayame and Neko’s History with Anime
Lovelyduckie’s History with Anime
Meltedpoo’s History with Anime
Miette-chan’s History with Anime
Quentin Lau’s History with Anime
Tsurugiarashix’s History with Anime
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If you’re a regular visitor to my blog, you’ll know that I love anime, but what got me started with this addiction? Like many anime fans my age in North America, my first encounter with anime was the original Dragon Ball series which aired for a short while in the mid 90′s before being cancelled due to poor ratings. Shortly after, Sailor Moon hit the airwaves and took the cartoon world by storm. I remember seeing newspaper articles describing the Sailor Moon phenomenon and finding Sailor Moon merchandise in every asian and toy store in the city. I was also swept along with the Sailor Moon craze. That cartoon (I didn’t know what anime was at the time) had everything: pretty characters, neat powers (at least to a kid), plenty of action, a bit of controversy, and a good story. In fact, I liked Sailor Moon so much that I spent whatever loose change I could find on the ground on Sailor Moon stickers, cards, temporary tattoos, and posters (loose change bought you a lot back then).
Every once in a while I take a break from the blogging world, which is why sometimes you won’t see me for a week, but my latest absence was neither planned nor expected. Last week my computer died on me after years of faithful service. Of course, being an engineer, I thought fixing it would be no problem. I was wrong.
I had been getting error messages relating to hardware recently so when my computer finally belly-upped, checking all of the parts and connections was the first thing I did. I found a couple of problems with the help of my brother, but when those were fixed, my computer still wouldn’t run. After several days of testing, I concluded that the hardware was fine and there was something wrong with the software. Well, I don’t know anything about software so I decided to take the easy way out and just wiped my hard drive and reinstalled everything. Unfortunately, I forgot to save some files, some of them being my list of RSS feeds and favorited websites. Don’t worry though, if you’re a regular commenter here, I’m not going to forget you.
My computer problems have also delayed the completion of my grad school applications, so until I get those done, I probably won’t be around for a while more.
In other news, we finally got a fresh layer of snow over the weekend. The old snow was getting brown and gross, you couldn’t tell if you were stepping in dog poo, rabbit poo, squirrel poo, or just plain dirt mixed with snow. I took a few pics on my way to and from home/school/work.
