I’m still packing up even though I’ll be on the plane in about 12 hours. I don’t think I’m going to bed tonight so that I can sleep on the plane…it’s a 13-hour flight afterall.

Also watching the XJapan 2009 Countdown Live at Akasaka Blitz. The show can be watched here. I’m watching 09 now (there are 10 videos) and they are playing their new song I.V. (ending theme for Saw IV) It’s nice to hear something new from them, and a new piano solo from Yoshiki. The bass solo in this song is AWESOME.

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It’s a pretty boring day….nothing much happened. Just playing with my new binocular/digital camera that I got from Canadian Tire yesterday. A 8×32 binocular that has a built in 3 megapixel camera. It can take both pictures and short video clip….kinda cool. The picture quality was just so so but I think it’s quite adequate for such a small device. I’ll have to take more pictures during the day to tell whether it’s a take or a refund…lol.

Oh, and I took a picture of what I had for dinner *yesterday*…(today’s dinner was too boring to mention). It was a healthy salad with chicken strips, fruit and some egg slices…haven’t really had a salad for maybe half a year or so…

I was trying to take pictures of a water droplet dropping onto the surface of water. I had totally no clue how it should be done, even though I’ve looked at a couple nice ones on Google Image. I just grabbed a wine glass, a water funnel (for releasing the water droplets), and placed a black colored cardboard behind the glass. I experimented it a bit by using different DOF (changing F stops), using different shutter speed, different flash power…etc. Finally got the setting that seemed to be producing the best result: 1/250, F8, auto flash power (tried manual, either too bright or too dark).

After taking around 20-30 shots I started to grasp the right timing on releasing the water and pressing the shutter button on the camera. I then took a couple more shots, re-adjust the focus, took couple more shots…and ended up with something like this:

I think it’s pretty nice for my first try… I think it will be easier to control in terms of lighting if I own an external flash. The built in one is just barely doing the job.

Bought this instant French Onion Soup last week from Costco, my last time going to the store as my membership was expiring on Dec 31 (still not sure whether I should pay for the membership this year). Anyway, I tried eating it the day I bought it, heated it up using the microwave, it was really good. Today I decided to go one step further, heating it up following the recommended way says on the box, using my toaster oven. Had to cook it for 40 minutes but, well I thought it might worth the wait so I did it. Turned out to be very nice (and pro looking), lol. The cheese on top was very soft and a little burnt (tastes better this way). I put grounded black pepper on top and ate it…..so tasty…! lol… I think it rivals the ones I tried at some real French restaurants. Next time I will cook it a little longer so that it’s less watery, I think that would make it taste even better~

Today’s the first day..of 2009. Time passes way quicker than I thought…guess I should think positively though on the first day of the year. Anyway, last night I didn’t go countdown or anything related but instead I went for snowboarding again (on Cypress)…lol, with Davinder. We went for the “Night Owl” time frame again and since I bought a “Ski Pass” last time I went up I paid $30 instead of the regular $38 It was snowing very hard, and the visibility was marginal but the snow condition was AWESOME. I tended to stop more frequently on the runs just to sit down and enjoy the powdery, soft snow. Even though I didn’t do a lot of runs (did 14 last time) I enjoyed it a lot not only for the soft snow but I also got to try one or two of the blue runs (intermediate level) that I’ve never done before. They were full of bumps and stuff which caused me to fall down for quite a bit but it was fun and tiring. I picked up some new skills like braking when going down fairly fast and making narrower turns. Overall it was a pretty worthwhile trip.

I hate my fucking BlackBerry cellphone, it kept on dying. I put it in my pocket when I snowboard and maybe some moisture or something got into it, some keys stopped responding. I had to open up the casing, had it in front of my heater fan for like 30 minutes, and it started working again. This is probably my 4th BlackBerry phone and yes, it died 3 times for the exact same reason. This thing sucks (as a comparison I put my Canon SD1000 digital camera into my other pocket and it DIDN’T die)

Today I sold my Olympus E-520 DSLR and also the Zuiko 14-54mm lens that I got free with my Olympus E-3 purchase, for $750 (I love Craigslist) I could have sold it for maybe $50-$100 more but oh well, guess it’s still good. The transaction went pretty smooth and the lady actually owns a E-500 looking to upgrade to the E-520, so while she was testing out the cam, her husband and I started a conversation over diesel cars since he also drives a diesel car (one of those old Mercedes Benz). Now I got some cash to pay for my $5xxx VISA bill for the month….