Nothing much happened today, just thought I’d take a picture of what I often have for lunch - instant spaghetti with bacon and corn, plus a sausage (actually the first time I ever added in a sausage). Whole thing costs ~$3, pretty cost effective.

I can’t remember how I came across this movie, probably because I was craving to see Rena Tanaka’s performance. Turned out to be a really really interesting one (interesting is really the best way to describe the movie). It was shown in Japan in year 2006, starred by Rena Tanaka / ???? and Wilson Chen / ??? (He’s Chinese). Even though Wilson is Chinese, I think he’s really able to speak Japanese rather fluently (could have just been result of practices, but still really good pronunciation.)

The story is about a blind girl and a young guy that was a murder suspect. The girl’s mother left her and her father when she was really little. One day her father died all of a sudden (not sure why) and she had to start living alone. While she tried to adapt to the life as a blind person without any family member, something strange happened. There was this young guy that entered her house without she knowing it. The story became really interesting from this point and on since the guy would hide at her place without speaking a word, at this corner of the house. He would take the food and drinks from the fridge when the girl went to bed. The girl was somehow able to sense something strange going on but she wasn’t able to tell it was a person hiding in her house until one day she almost dropped a clay container onto the floor off a shelf while the guy silently caught it and then placed it on the floor. The girl thanked the “person”, and from that point and on she also prepared dinner for the guy (In my opinion this could never happen in reality since I think anyone would have freaked out when someone enters his or her property without permission….but oh well, no point to acknowledge it.) It was really entertaining and interesting to see how the girl and the guy reacted to each other. Both of them performed brilliantly in this regard - I thought it’s really hard to play a blind person but Rena really scored it well this time. The story went on to talk about how the girl tried to adapt to the outside world, and the guy’s quest to prove his innocence.

The story was pretty simple, and the plot was straight forward. What worths watching was definitely the chemistry between two main characters. It was mainly silence for most of the time, since the girl’s living alone, and the guy had to keep his mouth shut in order to not let the girl know that he’s hiding in the house. It was really interesting and suspenseful. And lastly of course, it’s always a pleasure just to behold Rena’s performance I would give this simple but interesting film a 4/5. It’s hightly recommended for anyone to watch.

Since Wendy is back I now have a good reason to resume my work on fixing up my Wii. My previously modified Wii wasn’t able to play Mario Galaxy and a couple other newer games, getting this “001 unauthorized hardware detected” warning. I was searching online for Wii modders (or the so-called Mod Chippers, lol) in Vancouver and was prepared to pay $50-$100 for a new mod chip installation, and I found this site which looked pretty pro (at the descriptions, not the site design, lol) I emailed him right away telling him about my case and see if he’s able to fix up my crippled Wii. The guy was surprisingly nice. He asked me a couple questions, telling me that he’s trying to save me a trip out to his place if my mod chip can be updated via DVD. Since he’s nice I decided to actually open up my Wii to check out the brand and model for my mod chip (I had no idea which chip was installed).

I went onto YouTube in hopes of finding a video tutorial on how to disassemble the Wii and wheee I found this really good walk through. I followed the video step by step taking the Wii apart, making sure all the screws wouldn’t go missing, memorizing where each type of screw goes to….etc. There were a whole lot of screws, and a few different types of them too. Luckily I had all the necessary screw drivers like the 3-pointed “Nintendo screwdriver”, and some really small tiny ones for screws on small electronics. It took me about 45 minutes to take the entire thing apart, while trying to stay calm and to not do anything wrong (I didn’t want to snap a wire, drop a screw to the floor and thus losing it…etc).

I was having fun taking everything apart as the video instructed, and actually didn’t realize that I had taken far more parts out than required, lol. The mod chip was actually soldered on the DVD drive which was the first thing I took apart…so I didn’t really have to take the motherboard out even though I ended up doing it. Well, it was fun so who cares (also gave me the rare opportunity to witness everything inside a Wii). I even took the heatsink of the CPU off and sort of looked at it for a bit.

Finally everything was put back together. Gave it a quick test and it still worked like a charm After feeling a bit relieved and impressed about how good I was at taking things apart (lol), I started downloading the “Wiikey Updater” which was a DVD image that I need that was suggested by the guy. I downloaded it, burned it onto a DVD, ran it to update the chip and, viola! Mario Galaxy LOADED UP! :):):):):):)

I’m really moody lately for a variety of reasons, and I really feel like writing some piano songs. I’ve been wanting to write songs for several years, but was never able to figure out a reliable and easy way of “recording” what I improvise on the piano. I play on the piano from time to time, usually at night when it’s dead silence all around. I had actually made quite a few tunes/melodies that were quite impressive IMO but sadly was never able to take note of / record them on a piece of paper. Lately I’m starting to feel bad since it’s actually a waste of my talent not being able to actually create songs from beginning to end.

I’ve been Googling around for two hours just now trying to figure out a way of recording my songs, not just to record it into a mp3 file or whatsoever, but to actually put it down onto a score/script so that it can be replayed at a later time. What I figured I really need to do is to, after coming up with some basic stuff, I’d have to start jot down the tune onto piece of paper before I completely forget about it. That would help a lot on both being able to replay what I just wrote way easier, also would give me an opportunity to actually review what I wrote structurally, see if I’m missing something like a bridge or a chord, or if certain part of the song can be done in a better way…etc. I had been too lazy doing that before since usually I would enjoy a lot playing random stuff on the piano and totally not in the mood of writing anything down or doing anything technical (well I guess I wasn’t the only person that had the experience, since it really feels “drowning” when you’re really into the music when you basically have no control of yourself to do anything else)

I found this guy’s (David Nevue) website really helpful, well, more like this particular web page that I read. It really gives a great intro to the elements of a song, something that I think I’ve known for a long time but somehow wasn’t on top of my head. So now I’m like, totally understand and ready to start writing something. He had two of his songs on his site, they sounded 90% my style, i.e. something that’s very similar to what I will be writing. Here are the two songs:

 

 One Night at Mozart's [2:59m]: Play Now | Download (9)

 

 No More Tears [4:06m]: Play Now | Download (10)

It caught my attention when I saw “Directed by Henry Selick”, who had directed “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, one of my favorite stop-motion movie and sound track. Read a couple reviews at IMdb and Rotten Tomatos I decided to give it a go - somehow I know it’s going to be on par or better than my expectations. Went for the 3:35pm show at the Silvercity Riverport Theater in Richmond with Wendy. There were a couple annoying senior people sitting behind us, constantly chatting about boring stuff, and making really stupid grinning noise throughout the show at scenes that weren’t even funny. Well but other than that, it was an amazing experience.

The story talks about Coraline, an ordinary 11-year old girl that was in an ordinary family with mom and dad both working as a gardener (I think they are, not 100% sure as the story didn’t talk too much about what they do.) The entire family just moved to this pretty giant 150 year-old mansion located in the middle or nowhere, but it’s huge, old, dusty, just as what you would expect an old mansion be like. Coraline’s parents were always busy preparing their garden catalog so that they could start getting some income flow, so she was told by them to leave them alone so they could focus on their work. There Coraline started wandering around the enormous house, counting “the number of leaky windows”, “number of boring paintings” as she was told to do so by her dad. She found this tiny little “door” that that was covered up with bricks during the day, but at night it was connected to “another world”, a world that was parallel to her “regular” world, just that everything seemed to be “better”. In this other world, Coraline has her “other mother” and “other father”, treating her like a princess. She was given the best food, the best decorated room of her own, surprises in the beautifully lit-up garden, and all kinds of “good” things that she’s never imagined that she would have been able to perceive. In this other world, her mom was very nice, and her dad knew how to play a piano and sung her songs. The only thing that was different was that, everyone in this “other” world has buttoned eyes - eyes that had buttons sewed on.

When everything seemed to be better, Coraline’s “other” parents requested Coraline to get buttons sewed onto her eyes, in order to become “part of them”. She was freaked out and was unwilling to have buttons sewed on her eyes, but her other mother insisted her to do so. She tried to run away, and the all of a sudden, her other mother turned into a tall, skeletonal witch-liked monster. Coraline was then put into a dark room where she met the souls of three kids. The kids told her about how they were just like Coraline, were lured to this other world and had been wanting more and more of the nice things, and ended up having their lives sucked up by the witch. That was when Coraline realized that this was a trap. The witch also caught Coraline’s parents up in the other world, and Coraline had to try her best to fight the witch in order to save her parents and return to her own world.

It was a very creative, imaginative, and beautiful journey in a perfect world. I completely forgot it was a dark tale, when everything seemed to be so magical and enchanting, until the scares filled the air. The story was also filled with highly fun and amusing characters, which I really enjoyed watching. Also what I can’t miss talking about was the sound track. I would say it’s on par if not better than the sounds and songs I heard from “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. The background music was so effective in bringing out the darkness and desolation in the dark world, but also was playful and musical in the other parts of the story where the “perfect world” was. There were a couple really amusing little musical shows, like the “Mice Dance” and the show done by the two elder women. I would say this story is very similar to “Alice In The Wonderland”, where there’s a “regular” world, and a “dark” world where everything seems to be magical in the beginning but eventually turns out to be evil. Another thing in the story of Coraline that resembles AITW is the cat. There’s a cat in both stories, the cat that “knows” about both “worlds”, and is able to traverse between the two. The cat also acts as the one and only ally that the girl has, which helps the girl throughout the story in order for her to escape from the darkness. This movie is a thumbs up, highly recommended. It brings you to a journey where everything is fun, creative, beautiful, magical, and musical.

Oh just for fun, I sewed buttons onto my own eyes, lol. You can do it at here

Finally got to meet with Wendy tonight~ We went out for dinner at a bubble tea restaurant and then went out to play some Wii Fit. For some reason the Wii Fit controller didn’t seem to work too well on my fluffy carpet - the weight Wendy was measured while leaving the board on the carpet is 29 pounds lighter than putting the board directly on the hardwood floor. I wonder why it wouldn’t work on the carpet. I guess it was because of the buffer created by the material of the carpet so when you step on the board, some of your weight/force is dissipated. Well guess I’ll have to roll up the carpet whenever I play it…

Also received some Valentine’s gifts/souvenir from Wendy for her Hokkaido (Japan) trip. Got a Shiroi Koibito ?????? chocolate box set, with her photo printed directly on the cover of the box! It was really cool and the chocolate was tasty too Also got a Strawberry Chocolate round box set made by Rokkatei ?????, which was apparently really popular in Hokkaido even though I hadn’t heard of it before. Lastly it was a music box that she assembled herself, added a star and a piggy with a heart to the top of the music box, both made with glass. The tune was Kimi o Nosete / ????? which was the theme song for my #1 favorite Miyazaki anime “Castle in the Sky” (????). Thanks Wenwen!