Summer Vacation

I guess I missed making a post during June.  The last month of school took a real toll on me and I was feeling sick, weak, tired, but still had to take care of so many things before leaving school.  I was emotionless on the last week of school and tried to focus on getting things done.  Especially with studying for my last final "History of Contemporary Art," I was dealing with 3-5 other things outside of class that I don't even want to even talk about anymore.  I ended up getting a C in the class and was very upset (I do not deserve a C after all the time I sacrificed just for that class).  Inno, I hated school again because of all the things that happened in the Spring Quarter.  I did enjoy being around friends and being able to participate in so many club activities, but it was incredibly difficult to balance with all the work I put myself into.

Anyways, when I got back home, I main cleaned up my room a bit and tried to recover from not resting and eating well.  I've been getting quite a bit of sleep every night and eat tons of food everyday since I got back home, but it worries me since I have trouble falling asleep at night and not exercising enough.  I've been trying to find a balance in my Summer break to work as well as enjoying my freedom.  I end up each day doing minimal work and then doing misc. activities at night before going to sleep.  One of them being "reading!"  Yes, READING!  ME, READING!  It's really amazing that I find myself enjoying a book before going to sleep since I've never really done it before (I've read gaming magazines before going to sleep if that counts).  Other than that, I've been playing videogames here and there considering that I bought 30 games from Christmas time up until now.  I even said "I have enough games that I don't want to buy anymore until Phantasy Star Zero comes out."  My friend Danny was total shock that I even said such words, and it's not because it affected him but rather a real eye-opener.  So I corrected myself and said "...for now, I have enough, I'll want more later..."  Seriously, videogames are like books to me, they take a year or five before a finish it, haha.  I got to hang out with Danny, Vanna and Ken the past few weekends which made me very happy.  I've really missed seeing familiar faces ever since I got back.  I realized how grown up and busy everyone has gotten, even those that are younger than me.

Some of the work I said I wanted to balance out during the break relates to school (for once).  This summer, I had planned to work a lot with music, art and videogames mainly.  I asked to do independent studies under my Game Studies and Game Design Professor by creating a mod or original game out of a game editor he had built with a grad student from UC Irvine.  I'm also continuing on working for my Videogame Development Club by Mixing and arranging more music for the RPG we started a year ago.  Other than that, I've planned out some music arrangements, videos, artworks, and videogames I would work on and hopefully finish by the end of this summer as part of building my portfolio (which is pretty empty and sad right now, I've met some very talented artist throughout the year).

In the future, I'll share some of my work and also write some reviews/recommendations of games I've been playing since I get the chance to play (FINALLY!  Soooo happy~).  I've been playing mainly my DS, PSP, PS3, and PS2.  I've been meaning to play some more Wii and PC, but I've been doing so many things each day that I don't get to play them.  I've finally started exercising again and practicing Kendo.  I've been practicing piano and guitar as well, though I should find the time to practice violin too since I know I won't be able to when I go back to school.

In the past 3 weeks, I bought Sonic Rider: Zero Gravity for the Wii, Street Fighter IV for PS3 as a Birthday present from my parents, and Resistance: Fall of Man for PS3 which I beat in less than 3-4 days with my sister and my friend.  I also beat Kage Densetsu 2 (yes, The Japanese version of The Legend of Kage 2), Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword, Rhythm Tengoku Gold (The ruined the english version by translating the songs into english, ugh...), and several other games on the DS I can't remember at the moment as well as Irregular Hunter X (Japanese version of Megaman Maverick Hunter X, now I'm playing the American version) on the PSP.  It sounds like a lot, but I've been playing some of those DS games for more than half a year to a year now.  Although I don't plan on buying anymore games for a while, I took interest in BlazBlue for the PS3, the guys who developed Guilty Gear which I really got into in the past year.  Well, I've ranted on long enough.  Hopefully I'll have some art, music or videos to show you guys on the next post.  Either that, I'll give you some updates on some videogames.  Peace out~

Note: I didn't realize before, but I have a friend who posts videos of games that are very new or in beta stages of their development that I thought I should share with everyone.  His YT Channel is Sasuke13 and I added it to the right-side panel for you guys to check out.  It's a good way to check out gameplay videos for mostly online games, and I know there are a lot of who read my stuff that are looking for an online game to keep them busy throughout summer break.  Enjoy~

Videos relating to post:

Life and school

I got back from Tomo no Kai's Semi about an hour ago, and I'm so glad that I went.  Thanks to Tricia for convincing me to go, I would have so missed out.  And thanks to all my Tomo friends for cheering me up tonight, becuase I've been having a very difficult week/month/quarter.

[Get ready, 'cause it's a lot of complaining]  It's mainly due to school.  This quarter, I was juggling 5 classes (20 units), 3 clubs (I'm staff for one of them), 2 recreational classes at the ARC, and in between I was signing up for housing, subletting for the summer, enrolling into classes, and getting ready to get into the Game Culture Program.  4 out of 5 of my classes are boring, I recieve 3-4 essays average a week, I barely get time to enjoy my World of Warcraft class (Game Design), and I'm only doing very average in my classes.  After a while, I got used to the consistant flow of the quarter, until mid-terms hit.

Stu Art 11A - History of Contemporary Arts class is very difficult to follow, and so I had a hard time writing a good paper for mid-terms (got a b-).  In my Visual Culture class, we have critiques on our artworks.  Before I presented mines, the people ahead of me showed theirs and people clapped and commented on them.  After presenting mines, the whole class was silent for the longest time....and when I did get some comments, they were negative ones are questions that challenged my project's intention.  I wanted to make my 3rd project really good, so I started planning right away.  I planned out to have 7 of my friends in the video, and we had very little time to work on it.  To make it things shorter: Everyone was busy on separate days, so I changed the story so that I could film each person individually.  I looked all morning the first day just trying to find a camcorder I could used.  After filming my first footage on the first day in the grass, I started having an allergic reaction, so my skin got really itchy and I started sneezing a lot.  When I finally got my footage recorded and tried to load it onto my video editor, none of them could read the format (MPEG).  I spent 6 hours just trying to find codecs and convertors and nothing was helping.  I just found out about 2 days ago that the Window's movie maker on my Vista side of the laptop works with it, it just freezes every few moments on me.  So I'm still working on the video.  But what worries me now is that I have 3 other projects other than that to finish and present this week.  So I'm already freaking about this, and more happens this month that makes it worse.....

I go to the counsoler's office often to check on my schdules and classes and see what requirements I could fulfill.  When we were looking through classes for next quarter, we realized that I had conflicting times for a series I need for my Major and for my minor.  Because of this, I have to stay an entire year longer in order to finish one of the series.  I chose to finish my Major series first because it was more important.  I really don't know what to do, 'cause I could drop my minor and graduate by next year.  If I stay an extra year, my parents have to support me fully, which I don't want to burden them with.  I'm still keeping that option open right now, and I got 4 classes (16 units) that I could sign up for.  Then more problems occured.  When my window opened, I couldn't sign up for all my classes except for Asian Art History.  I went to the Arts office again to straighten it out.  My interactive arts class couldn't be taken because I did not take 65A - Digital Imaging (I petitioned).  So now I have to petition for that class too (still haven't got a response).  I was able to get into my Artists as Writers class by having one of the counsoler's lifting whatever was blocking me from enrolling to get in.  My Independent studies I'm not sure how it goes yet, but I might not get to get the credits for it until next quarter.  So I was left with 8 units at that point.  Then on the same day I recieved a message about my housing (which was yesturday (May 29th at night), I get a e-mail that says my writing class had a schedule change, and it conflicts my Asian Art History Class.  So now I'm back to 4 units again.  I don't get financial aid unless I have 12 units or more.  I think the most frustrating thing more than anything was housing.....

Living in Campus Village has benefitted me a lot this year academically and mentally because of the enviornment and atmosphere.  I worked on trying to get into Campus Village again, and when I finally did, it kept erroring when I tried to accept it.  I was so busy during that time that I didn't get a chance to ask for help.  1 day before the deadline, I was already in a rush to get to classes and run errands.  I went into the housing office to get help and they got me through the process and I accepted it.  Then afterwards, I found out that I, myself, had to find someone to sublet my apartment over the summer since CV doesn't do it for me.   If not, I have to pay $1500+ just having it for the summer.  I knew I was signing a contract from June to June though.  So I'm still going through this stress of trying to find someone to sublet from me.  I was having troubles looking for friends to live with at CV next year, and I finally found 3.  Sucks, 'cause all 3 didn't get in.  Not only that, I found out that I got placed on the far end of campus village farthest from the campus grounds, on the bottom floor, next to the streets when I asked for a 2nd floor apartment close to the campus and community center.

If you've read up to this point, I thank you from the bottom of my heart that you would care enough to know how I'm feeling right now.  This isn't a first of dealing hardship, but I write like this to blow off some steam.  I think going to semi helped me more than anything.  Please message me or let me know that you have read this so that I know that my friends (you) care.  Thanks, and good luck to all of you on your finals.