The past 3 weeks have been pretty awful. On Tuesday, three weeks ago, I was experiencing frequent heart palpitation (skipping) throughout the day. On Wednesday, of which I wrote an entry that day, the heart palpitation was at its worst with heavy skipping, dizziness, fatigue, nausea, blurry vision, constant hunger, and a bad headache. I continued each passing day with problems and then on Sunday that week, my father looked up my symptoms and found that they all led to hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). I realized I've been avoiding sugar for a while since I thought it was the cause of my stomach problems. I've also been staying up late a lot without eating in-between the night which lowers blood sugar. Whether I really was low on blood sugar is unknown, but my condition improved the following week when I was regulating my sugar count. But I was still having trouble maintaining my hunger. I had to eat more food and more meals a day. I went to see the doctor which I had made an appointment with over a month ago for a body check up since I haven't had one in 10 years. After checking with a blood test and my physical check up, the doctor said I was healthy and that I should be fine. That was just this past Friday when I went to see him again to review my blood test results. It seems I've been suffering from anxiety as well. By that point, the main problems I had left was always feeling hungry with a lot of gas generating and occurrences of heart palpitation whenever I was hungry or stressed. The doctor gave me a prescription for Omeprazole to regulate my stomach acids so that I won't constantly feel hungry throughout the day and stop it from creating so much air (which made me feel sick). So the past 3 weeks, it's been a roller coaster ride of feeling okay and feeling miserable. I generally feel a bit sick in the morning, then good during the day, and then awful again by evening. Yesterday, I felt pretty good throughout the entire day until night time. I felt so good that I did some recording for my remix project. Today, I've had some occurrences of heart palpitation again because the feeling of hunger won't go away for some reason. It's leading to a slight headache. I also have random body pains throughout my abdomen, arms and legs. It might be a culmination of stressed pent up from the past 3 weeks. But I'm slowly feeling okay again. I really don't want to experience the past 3 weeks ever again. I wasn't bedridden or anything, but I felt so abnormal and nauseated that I couldn't work, couldn't play games, couldn't do anything except watch videos. I tried playing games, but I felt nauseated after a short while. Watching videos allowed my mind to be distracted from all the maladies I've been suffering from. I started playing games again yesterday since I was feeling better. I've been mostly watching videos from Cinemassacre, some Super Smash videos, and a lot of reaction videos to Cloud's reveal in Super Smash Bros.
If I could contain the emotion and feelings I had when they revealed Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII to Super Smash Bros. in a bottle where I could open it and experience it all over again, I would do it and use it every time I felt disappointed or lacked excitement for videogames. This trailer was revealed at the end of the Nintendo Direct stream on November 12, 2015. I watched the 45-minute broadcast feeling mostly unimpressed as a lot of the updates weren't that exciting, announcements were further discussing games they've already revealed, or the new surprises they showed didn't get much of a reaction from me (such as Zelda: Twilight Princess HD on Wii U or Linkle as a new character, although I think she is very cute). So when it got to the end of the broadcast and Reggie says he "senses a trailer approaching", I was thinking "ooo, new game?" And then it started with the first three notes from the opening of Final Fantasy VII's bombing mission and I'm thinking "are they bringing the FF7 remake to Nintendo NX?" It was a very similar reaction to this year's reveal of the Final Fantasy VII remake when I heard the first note from Advent Children in the trailer where I went "Oh hey, it's Final Fantasy VII". And then all of a sudden, the logo for "Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Wii U" showed up and I freaked out going "NO WAY, ARE THEY REALLY GOING TO DO IT?!" And then I saw the "x Final Fantasy VII" logo pop-up. I fell over on the couch screaming "OMG, THEY'RE ACTUALLY DOING IT!" By the time it revealed Cloud's name, I was already sobbing and awestruck with the news right in front of me. FREAKING CLOUD STRIFE IN SUPER SMASH BROS.! This was something I talked and laughed about with my friends back in Super Smash Bros. N64 and how it was "impossible because Final Fantasy VII was on Sony Playstation". I honestly think this made me happier than the Final Fantasy VII Remake reveal. And just in time too since I'll be (trying) to get a Nintendo Wii U this week bundled with Super Smash Bros. and Splatoon. The following week after the announcement, I ended up watching a lot of reaction videos to see if anyone was as excited as I was. I never watch reaction videos because I find them mostly silly. But seeing the raw emotion coming from Final Fantasy fans has been wonderful. What I didn't expect is some very negative reactions from fans of Smash Bros. Comments like "Who's that?", "No, not Cloud, why him?!", or "Ewww, Final Fantasy?" weren't as rare as I thought. I was reminded that there were a lot of people that didn't like Cloud. I can understand why so many people didn't like Cloud for the same reasons people don't like Sasuke from Naruto, but I've always admired the character design of Cloud wielding his iconic Buster Sword. Anyways, here's some of my favorite reaction videos to the reveal of Cloud in Smash Bros.:
(Timestamp: 45:24)
(Timestamp: 44:35)
This is probably my favorite reaction.
EDIT: Just found this
(Timestamp: 1:46) We can't even joke about this anymore BECAUSE IT'S REAL!
In any case, I hope to make a 100% recovery in time to play some Nintendo Wii U and work on some more remixes along the way.
Monday, November 23, 2015
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Maintaining my health
I wanted to take better care of myself this year because I became rather ill in November and December last year and the same thing happened in 2012. I can't say that it's been working out this year. Around April and May, I suffered through a string of problems with allergies, then back pains, and then stomach problems, etc. I got better and felt pretty healthy throughout the summer. And then all of a sudden I started feeling not right yesterday. In the past 2-3 months, I've been experiencing my heart skipping out of nowhere. It doesn't hurt and it feels no different from the heart skipping when you get excited, surprised, or something of the nature that causes shock; however, I've been experiencing it in normal situations such as when I'm just sitting or lying down. I looked it up and found out it's called "heart palpitations" which occur for a number of reasons. Since they were very rare, I thought nothing of it. But yesterday, I was experiencing frequently throughout the day. I tried not to think about it too much and hoped that it would go away the next day. But I was experiencing it even more today and it got to a point I was starting to feel dizzy. It could be anything that triggered it: I ate a bunch of spicy food on Halloween day, the weather became very cold just yesterday, I haven't been getting enough sunlight (Vitamin D), I haven't been exercising regularly and exercise too hard when I do go to the gym (I go about 1-2 times a week recently), the sudden change in time for the end of Daylight Saving Time, or I'm really hungry and it's causing problems. I'll admit that I have a problem of going to sleep really late and often pass a good amount of time without eating which has caused various problems for me in the past (sour stomach, feeling sick, headaches,etc.). I did wake up with a headache and feeling hungry this morning while I experienced the heart skipping. And now that I've actually had two meals throughout the day, my heart stopped skipping as much. I still feel hungry and have a headache. I need to seriously go to sleep earlier today. I also need to add that 2 nights ago, one of my bottom tooth on my right jaw started to hurt when I chew food. I don't know if it's a cavity or sensitivity, but it's tiring chewing only on the left side.
It can also be triggered by anxiety, which I don't really feel like I am. But it's possible that it's subconscious. Something I never mentioned on my blog here or even to anyone else is that for the past half year, I've been experiencing an eerie phenomenon that every time I check the clock it says 4:44. It's been appearing in other places such as the games I play: a score of 444, remaining gold of 444, etc. As you might know, the number 4 is bad luck in Chinese and in a lot of Asian culture because it sounds a lot like the word "death". What's also confusing is that in Chinese superstition, 4 is actually a lucky number for those who are born in the year of the Rabbit. So what the heck am I supposed to believe? I actually try not to think of it. I also can't deny the fear of my own mortality. It was just two years ago that my friend and distant-cousin, Jessica, had passed away from cancer. She was barely 25 years old. Although I wasn't very close to her, I took it really hard and couldn't bring myself to even see her before she had passed. Then this past February, Monty Oum (who was very influential to me as an artist and got me interested in animation) was announced to have passed away at the age of 33 from an allergic reaction during a simple medical procedure. Just last week, Miyu Matsuki passed away from acute pneumonia at the age of 38. I mainly know her roles for Hisui from Melty Blood & Carnival Phantasm and for Harumi Fujiyoshi from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. She also voiced the character Lailah in Tales of Zestiria, which just released here 2 weeks ago. What I fear right now is going without even putting anything substantial out in the world. I have so many ideas and so much work I want to do and so much of life I want to experience before that happens. I don't think anything is seriously wrong with me, but it doesn't stop of the fear of that possibility.
I have been trying to take better care of myself, but perhaps I've been neglecting going to sleep early and going out for sunlight. I had fixed my sleep schedule for a short time in the middle of summer, but quickly lost control of it again. There's just too much I want to do in a day and I never really feel like doing any of it during the morning and feel more "right" during the afternoon and night. Because of the summer heat, I haven't been walking out as much. So I've been lacking Vitamin D, again. I've also been working really hard on my remix project the past 2 months so I haven't been going to the gym as regularly. I'm down to the last 3 remixes in the album remix for The Guardian Legend and am keen on finishing it quickly so I can work on new projects. I already have plans on finding making new original compositions so I can put it on my portfolio as new work and start advertising those on my resumé. I also have a ton of new remix ideas that will help me work more efficiently and get the most out of what I want from the projects.
Because I've been working a bit harder, I didn't complete that many games in October. I finished up Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms and was pretty disappointed with it. I bought another top-down, Action-RPG yesterday on sale in hopes of playing a fun party based RPG (It's called Kyn. It's kind of like Krater where you control multiple characters. Krater had 3, Kyn has 6 characters you control in live time). I also finished Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson which I loved. I'm still playing it to max out levels and bought the 3 DLC packs with new campaigns. I'll probably write a long rant about it once I feel completely satisfied with playing it. It's a really fun beat-em-up. As I've mentioned in the past few months, I've been watching Angry Video Game Nerd reviews again and started watching their other videos. In one of them, Mike Matei talks about some obscure SNES games that he found was worth playing. One of those games was Run Saber which I tried out. It was okay. I'm reminded more of the fact that there was thunder and lightning loud and bright enough that it lit up the house and made the ground shake that night I was playing. I finally finished Lost Planet 3 and immediately deleted it. It was a rather mediocre game. Traversing and quest collecting was slow and boring. The combat was okay, but I think I only experienced it half the time playing the game. I recorded an iOS game as completed for once! I've been playing a game called Retimo Adventure the past few months and finally reached the end of story mode in which it prompted a message "to be continued". It's an interesting mobile RPG where it's mostly about party management by leveling up characters, skill levels, equipment, and rank. What got me initially interested was that it claimed to "redefine the concept of cuteness" which sounded ridiculous, but I couldn't deny the characters in the game looked really cute. I'm still playing it now to get my characters stronger and try to climb the PvP rank ladder. For the past few weeks, I've also started playing Gamecube again to finish the 2 games I borrowed from my friend over a year ago. I finished Super Mario Sunshine and had one heck of a frustrating experience playing that game. Now I'm frustrating myself with Mega Man Network Transmission. I might write a rant about Super Mario Sunshine because there's a lot to say about that game. I finally got around to playing and finishing Dark Void which only required 2 sittings to finish (4.8 hours of playtime). Despite the negative feedback from critics and steam users, the game was really fun. The jumping and flying was really fun for me, at the very least. I do think that combat wasn't the best and was, at times, annoying to shoot an entire clip towards an enemy and still not kill them. Lastly, I beat a game called "Cast of the Seven Godsends" on Halloween day as I was itching for a Ghosts 'n Goblins game. It wasn't very good. Just this past weekend, Dying Light was on sale for $30 and a 4-pack was $90. I discussed it with my friends and we decided that I'll buy the 4-pack while they bought me games on steam to pay back the amount as giving money to each other is a bit difficult. So along with Dying Light, I got 9 games altogether that night. Then just 2 nights ago, BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma Extend and Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- finally went on sale for $20 each. Adding with buying Kyn last night, I have accumulated 12 games in the span of one week. I felt really happy with the new games I got and been trying to enjoy them before I started feeling "not right" yesterday and today.
In terms of animé, I've been trying to watch all the cute ones. I watched Wakaba Girls, the 2nd season of Kiniro Mosaic, the 2nd season of Non Non Biyori, and today I started watching the 3rd season of Fate/Kaleid. I was going to start watching Devil May Cry or Nobunaga Concerto, but my heart skipping making me feel ill today made me decide to watch something cute and funny instead. The 2nd season of Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka? (Is the Order a Rabbit?) is airing right now and I'm definitely watching it when it finishes. When I'm not feeling well, I want cuteness to help me get through it.
I wrote quite a bit...I just want to feel normal again so I can finish up my remixes and start on the new projects...
It can also be triggered by anxiety, which I don't really feel like I am. But it's possible that it's subconscious. Something I never mentioned on my blog here or even to anyone else is that for the past half year, I've been experiencing an eerie phenomenon that every time I check the clock it says 4:44. It's been appearing in other places such as the games I play: a score of 444, remaining gold of 444, etc. As you might know, the number 4 is bad luck in Chinese and in a lot of Asian culture because it sounds a lot like the word "death". What's also confusing is that in Chinese superstition, 4 is actually a lucky number for those who are born in the year of the Rabbit. So what the heck am I supposed to believe? I actually try not to think of it. I also can't deny the fear of my own mortality. It was just two years ago that my friend and distant-cousin, Jessica, had passed away from cancer. She was barely 25 years old. Although I wasn't very close to her, I took it really hard and couldn't bring myself to even see her before she had passed. Then this past February, Monty Oum (who was very influential to me as an artist and got me interested in animation) was announced to have passed away at the age of 33 from an allergic reaction during a simple medical procedure. Just last week, Miyu Matsuki passed away from acute pneumonia at the age of 38. I mainly know her roles for Hisui from Melty Blood & Carnival Phantasm and for Harumi Fujiyoshi from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. She also voiced the character Lailah in Tales of Zestiria, which just released here 2 weeks ago. What I fear right now is going without even putting anything substantial out in the world. I have so many ideas and so much work I want to do and so much of life I want to experience before that happens. I don't think anything is seriously wrong with me, but it doesn't stop of the fear of that possibility.
I have been trying to take better care of myself, but perhaps I've been neglecting going to sleep early and going out for sunlight. I had fixed my sleep schedule for a short time in the middle of summer, but quickly lost control of it again. There's just too much I want to do in a day and I never really feel like doing any of it during the morning and feel more "right" during the afternoon and night. Because of the summer heat, I haven't been walking out as much. So I've been lacking Vitamin D, again. I've also been working really hard on my remix project the past 2 months so I haven't been going to the gym as regularly. I'm down to the last 3 remixes in the album remix for The Guardian Legend and am keen on finishing it quickly so I can work on new projects. I already have plans on finding making new original compositions so I can put it on my portfolio as new work and start advertising those on my resumé. I also have a ton of new remix ideas that will help me work more efficiently and get the most out of what I want from the projects.
Because I've been working a bit harder, I didn't complete that many games in October. I finished up Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms and was pretty disappointed with it. I bought another top-down, Action-RPG yesterday on sale in hopes of playing a fun party based RPG (It's called Kyn. It's kind of like Krater where you control multiple characters. Krater had 3, Kyn has 6 characters you control in live time). I also finished Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson which I loved. I'm still playing it to max out levels and bought the 3 DLC packs with new campaigns. I'll probably write a long rant about it once I feel completely satisfied with playing it. It's a really fun beat-em-up. As I've mentioned in the past few months, I've been watching Angry Video Game Nerd reviews again and started watching their other videos. In one of them, Mike Matei talks about some obscure SNES games that he found was worth playing. One of those games was Run Saber which I tried out. It was okay. I'm reminded more of the fact that there was thunder and lightning loud and bright enough that it lit up the house and made the ground shake that night I was playing. I finally finished Lost Planet 3 and immediately deleted it. It was a rather mediocre game. Traversing and quest collecting was slow and boring. The combat was okay, but I think I only experienced it half the time playing the game. I recorded an iOS game as completed for once! I've been playing a game called Retimo Adventure the past few months and finally reached the end of story mode in which it prompted a message "to be continued". It's an interesting mobile RPG where it's mostly about party management by leveling up characters, skill levels, equipment, and rank. What got me initially interested was that it claimed to "redefine the concept of cuteness" which sounded ridiculous, but I couldn't deny the characters in the game looked really cute. I'm still playing it now to get my characters stronger and try to climb the PvP rank ladder. For the past few weeks, I've also started playing Gamecube again to finish the 2 games I borrowed from my friend over a year ago. I finished Super Mario Sunshine and had one heck of a frustrating experience playing that game. Now I'm frustrating myself with Mega Man Network Transmission. I might write a rant about Super Mario Sunshine because there's a lot to say about that game. I finally got around to playing and finishing Dark Void which only required 2 sittings to finish (4.8 hours of playtime). Despite the negative feedback from critics and steam users, the game was really fun. The jumping and flying was really fun for me, at the very least. I do think that combat wasn't the best and was, at times, annoying to shoot an entire clip towards an enemy and still not kill them. Lastly, I beat a game called "Cast of the Seven Godsends" on Halloween day as I was itching for a Ghosts 'n Goblins game. It wasn't very good. Just this past weekend, Dying Light was on sale for $30 and a 4-pack was $90. I discussed it with my friends and we decided that I'll buy the 4-pack while they bought me games on steam to pay back the amount as giving money to each other is a bit difficult. So along with Dying Light, I got 9 games altogether that night. Then just 2 nights ago, BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma Extend and Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- finally went on sale for $20 each. Adding with buying Kyn last night, I have accumulated 12 games in the span of one week. I felt really happy with the new games I got and been trying to enjoy them before I started feeling "not right" yesterday and today.
In terms of animé, I've been trying to watch all the cute ones. I watched Wakaba Girls, the 2nd season of Kiniro Mosaic, the 2nd season of Non Non Biyori, and today I started watching the 3rd season of Fate/Kaleid. I was going to start watching Devil May Cry or Nobunaga Concerto, but my heart skipping making me feel ill today made me decide to watch something cute and funny instead. The 2nd season of Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka? (Is the Order a Rabbit?) is airing right now and I'm definitely watching it when it finishes. When I'm not feeling well, I want cuteness to help me get through it.
I wrote quite a bit...I just want to feel normal again so I can finish up my remixes and start on the new projects...
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