The day has finally come. I can hardly believe it. In a few short hours, I will be on a flight to…Incheon, South Korea, followed by a long transit before finally arriving at SFO. I will spend the next four years at Stanford and hopefully graduate with a few pieces of laminated paper.

My mind is kind of in a messed-up place right now, so that’s all I have to say for now. In the mean time, watch this awesome YouTube series.

See you in California.

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Post tags: california, real life, singapore, stanford

Scandinavia is not the most exciting place in the world but it has some beautiful sights. I spent ten nights last month in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland with my trusty Canon 400D and these are the results.

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Read the rest of Trip Report: Scandinavia (1,942 words)

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Post tags: bergen, copenhagen, denmark, finland, helsinki, norway, oslo, scandinavia, stockholm, sweden, trip

After disappearing off the face of this Earth for the past two weeks or so, I return from the mythical land known as “Northern Europe” to find a package left at my door step. Beware, for mere mortals cannot possibly withstand the power of geek that lies in this post.

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Read the rest of Spice and Magic (327 words)

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Post tags: altered art, holo, kraft lawrence, mtg, spice and wolf, tcg

In yet another breaking development that casts a blinding spotlight on the unrelenting passage of time and my lost teens, Maaya Sakamoto, my favourite singer in all dimensions of space and time, got married at the ripe age of 31 to fellow seiyuu Ken’ichi Suzumura.

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Read the rest of Maaya Sakamoto got married! (517 words)

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Post tags: gundam seed destiny, kenichi suzumura, maaya sakamoto, marriage, nostalgia, seiyuu

So I am moving soon and I have been spending the past week stacking things (mostly books) into boxes. Sifting through all the stuff I have accumulated in the past ten years really takes me back.

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Read the rest of Moving House (721 words)

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Post tags: college, moving, nostalgia, real life, trip

Once in a while, people tell me that they want to study in Japan. Most of the time, they speak no Japanese. Fortunately for these people, the Japanese government has been actively pushing a programme that will see numerous top Japanese universities offer full undergraduate courses in English.

Known as the Global 30 Project, the initiative by MEXT intends to bring 300,000 international students to Japan by 2020.

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Read the rest of English Undergrad Programmes in Japan (1,281 words)

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Post tags: college, education, japan, mext, nagoya university, university of tokyo, waseda university

It seems like I am forever playing catchup with my sources of entertainment. Half a decade after The West Wing finished airing, I finally took the time to finish all 156 episodes. Seeing as each episode is 42 minutes long, this is on hindsight an incredible waste of my short mortal life, but goddammit it is the best waste of life ever produced for American TV.

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Read the rest of The West Wing (1,112 words)

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Post tags: america, nbc, politics, the west wing, tv, white house

Magic: The Gathering, the most successful trading card game ever, and I have an on-again-off-again relationship spanning more than a decade since the time of 4th Edition and Ice Age. Recently, I have been reintroduced to the game in the form of the digital version and spent quite a bit of time and money on it. Magic: Not Even Once.

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Read the rest of Magic: The Gathering Online (1,266 words)

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Post tags: magic, mtg, mtgo, tcg, wotc

This is the post about my visit to Kagoshima in southern Japan. I am really pushing out these articles at the breakneck speed of a limping three-legged turtle, considering that I was in Japan in early April and so far have written on barely two places. At this rate I should be done around the time I graduate from college.

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Read the rest of Trip Report: Kagoshima (982 words)

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Post tags: japan, kagoshima, kyushu, meiji restoration, trip

Games of Thrones, a new HBO medieval fantasy drama series, scratches an itch of mine that had not been properly addressed since Twelve Kingdoms. It is probably the most amazing thing on BitTorrent television right now, edging out Community which lost points in the second season for recycling its best episode from the first season.

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Read the rest of Game of Thrones (1,178 words)

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Post tags: fantasy, games of thrones, hbo, tv