At some stage during Manifest, I made my friend Misun walk around the traders hall holding a sign saying “I’m a trap” for a little while. It provided a few laughs as some people would stop to ask for photos, then stare at their cameras for a little while trying to figure out if [she] really was a trap or not. A lot of people would stop and stare at Misun, looking down at the legs, then back up either in awe or confusion.

Now, I’m going to set you a challenge. Is Misun a trap? If you answer correctly, you’ll win… uh… 4 toothpicks!

Here are a couple of extra photos to help you out:

Arrived back home last night after a long, tiring but fantastic trip to Melbourne for Manifest. Saw a lot of interstate friends, made new ones and had a brilliant time!

Staying at a hostel with multiple cosplayer friends meant waking up at very early hours each day and I’ve been running off pure adrenalin ever since waking up at 3:30am Thursday morning for my flight. The hostel beds were uncomfortable, and we had a lot of very noisy, inconsiderate people on our floor constantly waking us up, but it was still quite fun ^^;

I was silly enough not to mark today off at work, which meant I had to wake up early for work after being so very exhausted. It turns out I have another day of work ahead of me before I get a much needed day off to catch up on some extra Z’s which I’ve been missing out on for almost a week.

Anyway, I probably won’t be making a Manifest post for at least a few days as I have a lot of stuff to do besides work, such as catching up on 1000+ blog posts since last Thursday! x_x; I also have some more bookshelves to put more figures on display! So I’ll be spending a bit of time after work to reorganize my bedroom and make everything sparkle with Anime goodness.

So until then friends, take care and behave

Two words: Tax return. It’s Christmas in July. This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment purchase though, I’ve been wanting this camera for some time now, and I’ve finally got it! Well to be fair, I’d actually been VERY interested in the Lumix LX3 longer than the GF1. The problem was I couldn’t find one locally, everything I found online was either second hand or a grey import (I want an Australian warranty thanks!) and buying one in a store in Melbourne at the time cost about $800.

I actually got a Lumix ZR1 as a present and it was actually a decent compact, except I think mine had a bit of a problem with stabilization. I’ve only had it for less than a year, but I kept finding myself wanting to produce better images. So that’s when I decided I wanted to jump up to the GF1 with its sexy little 20mm f1.7 lens. And I tell you what, it’s brilliant. The more I use it, the more I want to KEEP using it and get used to taking better pictures.

I’m getting the hang of using it, since this Micro Four Thirds camera is closer to an SLR and I’ve only had experience using compacts. I don’t find myself using Intelligent Auto at all and I’m finding it a breeze tweaking the settings to suit the scene or to suit what I want to achieve. I may not have used an SLR before this, but I do have a bit more knowledge than the casual happy snapper has, so that helps a lot :3

I even bought a digital photography magazine and found a few tips on how to achieve certain effects in your photos. I got the idea for this one and fiddled with my camera’s settings accordingly to produce an abstract effect. It’s actually the installation screen (actually I think that might be the update window, I wasn’t paying attention) for Star Craft 2 ^^

The other day I found a note in the letterbox saying I have a registered article to pick up at the local Post Office. It was a bit weird, because I’d already received all the packages I was expecting so I had no idea what it might have been. Of course I was hoping it might have been a cheque for a million bucks that my future-self sent through the time machine postal service, but I was wrong. It turned out to be my Manifest weekend pass, which is almost just as good :3

I keep forgetting Manifest isn’t very far away. In fact, it’s only less than a month away now o_o;; I’m totally looking forward to it this year. I now have my Lumix GF1 so I’ll be able to take much better photos of cosplayers and the convention itself.

I’d also be very happy to meet up with other bloggers that are attending as well! Just let me know if you want to hang out a little and maybe even walk around taking photos together XD

While I was over in Melbourne back in April, I came across Nintendo promoting their new DSi XL at Melbourne Central to promote the Australian launch.

They had an area amongst heavy foot-traffic where you could lounge around and try out the new DSi XL just before stores started stocking them. Nintendo also treated passersby with a free coffee (poured in custom Nintendo mugs) while you sat down and chatted away about the new handheld built for people with large hands and tiny eyes.

I love it when companies do nifty promotions like this. Posters and TV ads are often ignored, but when something like this pops up, people take the time to stop and look.

I realize there are a lot of people out there who don’t know a heck of a lot about today’s technology. There are people out there who are scared of change and close themselves off from the rest of the world because they don’t want to adapt.

But still, I can’t help but find humor in customers who either just don’t get it, or are new to things that most of us have been used to for years now. I sometimes think my knowledge of technology and gadgets helps people in my sales position, and in 95% of cases it does, but in few cases it can seemingly make things worse.

Today at work I had an elderly customer come in first thing in the morning. She asked me if we had any “wireless.” I was a little tired, and a bit confused so I tried to get her to clarify what she was looking for. She kept repeating “wireless” so I made a few suggestions, like “do you mean wireless internet? or perhaps a wireless router?” No, just wireless. I was still very confused so I kept going through every wireless device I could think of off the top of my head, including wireless headphones and wireless powermats. “No.. wireless! Just.. a wireless! Oh never mind, I’ll look myself.” I really wanted to help her but it seemed that I couldn’t, so I let her be and went back to what I was doing.
It took me half the day until I thought about her again, and realized that she was probably referring to a radio. I remember my grandmother used to call her radio the “wireless” and so throughout the rest of the day I actually felt quite bad.

I get myself into a lot of confusing situations with customers though. It took me a little while to figure out what a customer meant by a “tograbot” once. She knew we sold these tograbots, so I walked her through the entire store until she came across a 1TB external hard drive. I apologized and told her that the TB stood for Terabyte. She wasn’t unhappy, she actually thanked me for correcting her, but prior to that it was a bit stressful for her.

Then there are people who misunderstand how things work. I once had a customer ask for gas for their CD burner…

So I got this cute little guy in the mail a few days ago :3 I had never heard of Mr Toast before, but I couldn’t resist buying a cute anthropomorphic toast. Mr Toast also has a few friends like lemon, egg, bacon and candy corn. If you’re interested in getting a Mr Toast plush, you can pick one up (along with his friends) here. I’m thinking of getting a candy corn next

Doug also seemed quite interested in Mr Toast too. At first he didn’t know what to think of it and kept his distance. Then he went a little crazy and kept trying to steal it x_x

He soon got used Mr Toast and became good friends with him

Time for snacks and a movie :3

Bye!

Here’s a quality Blog entry for you. See this picture? It’s black and white. It shows how serious my thoughts are right about now. The picture was taken at a bar, in a completely different state as to where I live. That shows that I’m always thinking about life, no matter where I am or how much fun I’m having. It also has a candle and some random person sitting at a bar. I have no idea what that’s supposed to tell you, but holy crap, there’s a candle and a person sitting at a bar.

This shows how deep I am. Well, not really. I just thought a black and white picture of a candle sitting on a table in a bar with a person pissed off their face taken by a slightly chipper photographer waiting for John Robertson’s comedy show to begin would look good on my black-themed blog. And it kind of does.

Have a nice day :3

There either needs to be more hours in the day, or I need to become a cyborg so I don’t need to rely on sleeping for a third of the day. I really want to get this blog moving along, but with work, other responsibilities and games piling up on my desk, I seem to be putting this blog at the back of my mind.

So what’s been happening besides watching Anime? I have a new job in a telecommunications store where I’ve recently been getting full-time hours, but I’m now down to normal part-time hours so I can actually have time to do other things. I’m hoping to get back into selling things online again and possibly at local events if there’s even the slightest level of demand.

I’ve been planning out a little community project I think would work reasonably well in Hobart, but I still have a few doubts about it. Besides, I don’t know how long I’ll be living down here to warrant me starting anything like that. Besides, it would require money to start it up, and I’d probably have to live off of a government allowance while working as a volunteer of some form. I may reveal more details about my idea in a future blog entry.

As far as my gaming life goes, I’ve been playing Star Ocean: Last Hope International. I’m really enjoying it and I’ve raked up 32 hours on it so far. Apparently it’s a 50-hour-long game – over 100 if you’re a perfectionist. I was kind of hoping that I’d complete it quickly before Final Fantasy XIII came out, but unfortunately I’ve been continuing on with Star Ocean while my copy of FF13 has been staring at me since I bought it. I generally hate playing two RPGs at the same time, so I’ve been trying to fight off the temptation of dropping Star Ocean to start playing FF13. I think I might be caving in however
I also recently traded in my old DS Lite which I’ve had for about 4 years and got myself a DSi finally. My girlfriend also bought me Pokemon Soul Silver for our 6 month anniversary :3 Yet another game to spend time on, but at least I can play it anywhere. The Pokewalker is quite nifty too, it’s just that I need to remember to put a Pokemon on it before I go out on a huge hike across the state. You do occasionally get the opportunity to have a Pokemon join you for a stroll if you don’t already have one on the Pokewalker. A little exclamation box will pop up to trigger the Pokemon to come along with you. I assume this feature occurs only after you’ve been walking for a while, because it’s only happened to me once so far and all other times it’s just been sitting still on my desk doing nothing.

AICon has been and gone, and being a volunteer looking after the Traders area was enjoyable and quite easy to be honest, as there really wasn’t a huge amount of people to look after. Infact, it was so enjoyable that I decided to become Traders Coordinator for AICon 2011. My main job appointed to me was to look out for bootlegs and prevent them from being sold. One group brought along a large amount of stock to sell at AICon, but unfortunately about 95% of it was bootlegged. I was asked to go through all the Anime merchandise they had, and I spent close to an hour going through it all. They were a bit upset about it, which was to be expected, but they became understanding and cooperated. Unfortunately, some people are genuinely uninformed about the risks of buying Anime merchandise these days and can’t tell the difference between legitimate and counterfeit goods. But rules against bootlegs being sold at conventions will be just as strict even if you unintentionally sell bootlegged products.

I also picked up a few UFS decks while I was at AICon for $2 each! Bargain! Although, I later discovered that UFS has actually been cancelled It was a card game I always wanted to try out, but never got around to doing it after 4 or 5 years of its existence. I’m kind of slapping myself for not getting into it sooner, but nothing’s stopping me from playing. Hopefully they’ll decide to restart the game again later on down the track. Or maybe there will be an official SNK vs Capcom card game based loosely on the Neo Geo and DS versions.

Anyway, that’s enough from me. Let’s hope I can set myself some time each day to make a blog post. Or at the very least one day of the week. I really need to stop being so damn lazy.

I bought a few jackets on eBay from South Korea which arrived earlier this week. Sometimes when you buy something from South Korea or China, the seller will mark the item as ‘gift’ on the Customs declaration form in an attempt to avoid Customs fees. In some cases, they actually will give you a freebie and in one of my packages I found a packet including a facial skin care mask ^^;

Uhh, I’m not too sure what the enjoyment is, so I decided to open it up and see this enjoyment for myself.

Instructions on the back of the packet. Simple enough.

On second thought, the smell and sliminess turned me off of trying it out.

And after taking it out of the package and unfolding it, I decided not to put something so creepy on my face D:
Sometimes I wonder if these things even work for people, especially things that smell awful and give you ‘the enjoyment to your skin’ without even knowing what that enjoyment is.

Would you put something like this on your face, or would you prefer using ointment to treat your skin?

It’s kind of cute, in its own way…

Something rather awesome arrived at my doorstep earlier today; a pair of Gloomy Bear arms! They ended up being much bigger than I expected them to be (approximately 32 inches long), especially considering how cheap they were. I have no doubt that judging by the tags these are fake, but they’re made really well. They cost around AU$22 each with free postage – not a bad buy These can be found easily enough on eBay, so go grab yourself a pair now!

And now, on with the cam-whoring XD

Here’s one of the more popular videos, Edamameshiba:

A week ago my girlfriend and I went out for some brunch. I ordered a lovely toasted ham and cheese sandwich with chips and salad, and an orange juice. When I took off the lid of my orange juice, I noticed there was something written on the inside of my lid:

This immediately reminded me of Mameshiba. It took me a small moment to regain my appetite after reading that ^^; I might end up buying more of this brand of juice to see what other crazy things they have written under their lids.

Doug welcomes you back to KuuBrog! :3

After months of neglecting this blog, I finally decided to look at things from a different angle and ‘remake’ KuuBrog. I guess I ended up getting a little overwhelmed from feeling the need to update my blog quite frequently, as I created KuuBrog to accommodate for size.
Well, things are going to be different from now on Instead of aiming this site as being an Anime/Japan/Tech news blog, I’ve decided to personalize it a bit, while still keeping the original intention of posting about Anime, Japanese pop-culture and some tech. I feel that it would be much more appropriate for this site to be my ‘home’ on the net and feel comfortable posting about what I want, when I want.

As you can see, I’ve purged KuuBrog of all posts from KuuBrog 1.0. I felt a little bad about doing it, as there were a couple of posts that ended up being quite popular, gathering thousands of page views, such as my Anime Papercraft writeup. But putting that aside, I’m all for a fresh start, and hopefully I’ll spend more time working on more quality posts like that one, instead of pushing myself to bring out heaps of small, boring posts (I’m sure no one cared much about me posting about new Anime figures, seriously XD).
So, of course things look a little empty now, but give me a day or two and KuuBrog will be a happier place :3

Anyway, I hope you guys haven’t forgotten about KuuBrog over the quarter-of-a-year I’ve been on.. well.. hiatus I guess you could say. Now, I’m off to bed, see you soon!
(And yes, that’s my pet dog, Doug; a Shih-tzu x Maltese Terrier. You may very well see more of him ^^)