"All I wanted was to save you, even if it meant my life. "

I've been bumming around for more than 6 months and never bothered to blog even once throughout the entire period but now that I've (finally) started working, I decided to write/type again. Yup, that sounds like me alright. I have a thousand and one rants about my entire job situation but since it's dangerous to bitch about work, I have decided to talk about Final Fantasy XV because I just finished it last week before my induction started and it's also much easier talking about a game than it is talking about my feelings. And goodness knows when we'll be getting another major Final Fantasy title, they spent 10 years on XV, might be another 10 or more before XVI comes out.

Spoilers abound, naturally.

The game has been on a mind a lot because the ending was so (unnecessarily) tragic. Throughout the whole game, I, as Noctis, was motivated by the desire to destroy my bitter and vengeful ancestor Ardyn as well as all the daemons and restore light to my awesome kingdom of Lucis. Seriously, pre-daemon infestation Lucis is such a beautiful place, if it were a real country the main industry would be tourism and and it would beat Switzerland in terms of annual number of tourists. Just look at the scenery!

To be fair, Altissa is really gorgeous too, it's like Venice but even better. Except it's still a rip-off of Venice so Lucis is better.

(Looted from ulric-nyx's tumblr)

Really big kudos to the design team for designing such a beautiful world. Anyway back to the issue at hand. I was so pumped up because I thought in the end Noctis would be able to save his people, reclaim his throne (that's one of the game's taglines isn't it?) and marry the girl of his dreams, Luna. But I completely forgot that the FF team luuuuuurves tragic endings now not only does dream girl Luna die before Noct gets to meet her (And they haven't met for 12 years goddamit!), Noct had to sacrifice himself to bring down Ardyn so guess what? No more Oracle and Lucis Caelum bloodline. Great. So Lucis is gonna be a republic now? I was mad enough because I was shipping Noct and Luna so hard and not only do they kill her, they kill her OFFSCREEN ("Oh, her body just disappeared in the waves!" or some nonsense) after so little screentime. Romance in real life is frustrating enough, can we not have the star-crossed lovers theme for once? You know, at least in Westworld even though Dolores and Will were star-crossed lovers they were still together for a short period of time, but we're not even given that small satisfaction in this game. Noct and Luna just... never properly meet, unless you count looking at each other through a crowd of people as meeting. Sigh, they just wanted to get into each other's pants, but Square Enix is cold and heartless. It's also a lot of wasted potential, because Luna was such a strong female character. She went through a lot just to make sure Noctis became king and without her Noctis couldn't have defeated Leviathan. Seriously, taking down a boss monster together? #relationshipgoals enough said. I was quite upset when Luna died and the scene with the blue flowers was heart-breaking, but there are people on Reddit saying that they felt more emotional when Ignis went blind because they didn't really know Luna. So, Square Enix, Episode Luna as DLC please, if you would be so kind.

Omg Luna whyyyy *dries eyes* (Looted from mistress-light's tumblr)

Ok, if you want to kill Luna off, fine, did you have to kill Noctis too? Why couldn't he have survived and gotten together with Iris and have beautiful Lucis Caelum babies who continue to rule over Lucis? Joanne calls Iris a homewrecker because she's constantly fangirling over Noctis even though he's engaged to Luna and all but honestly, what girl wouldn't go crazy over him? If I were Iris I would pick up sewing and stitch moogle plushies for Noct-oniichan too. Heck, my ovaries would never be calm in his company. I say cut Iris some slack. Speaking of Iris, we never actually get to see her after the 10 years time skip, nor Cindy nor Aranea nor Cid. Hey Square, how about cutting some budget from the Cindy car washing scenes and channeling them into a few minutes of screentime for post-time skip Iris and Cindy? It sucks to hear Talcott (who's totally legal now, ladies) speak of how they have become strong, successful women but never actually get to see them in person. Oh it's not only the good guys who get shafted, besides Ardyn all the "bad guys" combined get even less screentime than Iris. I didn't know that this ugly bat-like daemon was the emperor Iedolas until I read Reddit:

I think a lot of people must have been clueless too, because the developers added a sidestory where you play as Gladiolus and finally showed Iedolas becoming a daemon in the latest patch. Ravus's downfall was really disappointing too. When Gladiolus got his ass handed to him by Ravus early on in the game, I was so certain that Ravus would be a major baddie, like the second-in-command to Ardyn, and that I would have to face him again in the future. Well, face him again I did, but he was weakened by Ardyn already (something they only revealed in the patch, not in the original game) and I defeated him so easily, the battle was kinda anticlimactic. It could be because I was like more than 15 levels above the recommended level at that point though haha. Still, I really don't know anything about Ravus other than he's Luna's brother and is actually a good guy? And I'm not even sure about the latter.

Yes, anticlimactic is the perfect word to describe FFXV's story, especially the ending. At the end I was just like "Is that it? I worked so hard and Noctis died?". It makes it hard to finish all the side quests and to play the upcoming DLCs because I already know that in the end Noctis is going to die. The rest of my boyband Ignis, Prompto and Gladiolus might all be dead too, for all I know, it's never explicitly stated in the game so it's all speculation. I really loved the boys' interactions, it was probably one of the best things about the game. Not much backstory nor character development was given to any of them except Noctis (No I did not watch the anime), but I still ended up liking all of them through their banters and quirks ("I came up with a new recipe!"). Which brings me to another gripe of mine. So Noctis disappears for 10 years before returning, and none of his friends are mad at him for being ditched? I would get mad if my good friend didn't reply to my Facebook message within a few days and the remaining 3 are so chill when Noctis finally turns up. I was expecting more drama, like some "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!!?" and tears and abandonment issues, but everyone acts like they've been expecting me. Did they manage to find another Oracle while Noct was gone that predicted his return? As consolation, there was a campfire scene before the final boss fight that was really poignant. I think Noctis' seiyuu and the animators did a pretty good job capturing the emotions of the character in that situation.

It's more than I can take too, Noct :'(

At the end, when Noctis said "俺 …お前らのこと好きだわ!", ahhh it was like being hit by a truc... eh not really, maybe a car. The truck came with the wedding scene:

Ok, make that 2 trucks. (Looted from kousuisetsu's tumblr)

Noctis is so dreamily handsome here. :') (Looted from kousuisetsu's tumblr)
Sometimes the development team handles emotional scenes so well, and sometimes they suck so bad. I'm so confused.

Anyway so the storytelling in FFXV is flawed, but the plot is actually pretty easy to follow, unlike Type 0, which was so confusing, although the tragic ending worked quite well in that game, and also FFVII, which is the most famous game in the series right? Well I never played the original, but I've read about the plot numerous times and I still find it incredibly difficult to understand. I probably play less than 5 games per year so I don't think I'll be much good at commenting on the gameplay and battle system, I will just say that it was fun enough for me most of the time. The Leviathan boss battle was the most epic (well the second part, because in the first part Noctis was close to useless), especially with Apocalypsis Aquarius playing in the background (My favourite song from the game hands down) and Noctis going all god-mode on Leviathan, I think I was close to spazzing. The only small letdown was that I was just mashing the O button 90% of the time during the fight, unlike in normal fights where I usually warp and defend and do teamwork stuff with my boys Ignis, Prompto and Gladiolus.

Eh, am I done already? Somehow I remembered having crazy lots of things to rant about FFXV. It sounds like I didn't like the game, but I actually really did, despite its flaws especially in the storytelling department. I do think that 10 years of development time is too long though, and with that much time, an even better game should have been produced compared to the one we actually got. The game is depressing enough as it is, so I'll end this post with a happier picture:

Genius! (Screenshot from achromatic-cai's tumblr)

Ok now that I've express all my thoughts and emotions, I hope I can move on and focus on work. I have to move outstation sometime later this month, feeling extremely apprehensive about the whole thing. :(

"Always. "

Yes, every summer I write a blog post, in a weak attempt to practice whatever remains of my writing skills. I haven't even started yet but I already feel so demotivated. Why is it so hard to collect my thoughts and express myself in a way that's not dull?

Words cannot express the amount of gratitude I feel for being given the opportunity to do research in the University of Tokyo, not only because Japan is cool and has great food (I think I had cheap sashimi once every 2 days) but also because I really wanted to try my hand at research since I'm considering that as a future job option. I only wished the programme was longer because I felt like I didn't manage to accomplish much in the span of 5 weeks, but I am grateful enough that I had the opportunity to make my own plug flow and batch reactors and hydrotalcite catalyst from scratch, something which I have never done before:

I could go on all day about my month there, but I'm far too lazy and too inept at articulating everything I want to say, so I'm just going to list down some facets that I found interesting:

1. One can go cycling at 10 pm without fear of getting mugged
The University of Tokyo Kashiwa campus is located in well, Kashiwa (duh), which is in Chiba prefecture. Compared to the hustle and bustle that is downtown Tokyo, it's much more serene here and a lot of people cycle to work and school, there are even bicycle lanes and bicycle parking lots:

Not sure if this is the norm throughout Japan, but I love this system because it is a much greener way to get around. I wish the same could be implemented in Malaysia, but cycling here feels like asking to be knocked down by a car.
Since there were plenty of events going on and running experiments in the lab is a full day business, there were many times where I left the university campus late at night. And whenever I could get my hands on Daniyar's bike, I would cycle back to the hotel. With the crickets and cicadas chirping and the wind on your face and hair, cycling in the night feels amazing, even more so than in the day - You're lost in the moment and for a while, all your problems don't matter in the very slightest.

2. The onsen experience
I told myself I would try going to the onsen at least once and I am proud to say I accomplished my mission and went a total of 4 or 5 times, albeit only in the last 2 weeks I was there. I find it interesting that a country with such a reserved culture would have a tradition of public bathing. I can't stand looking at myself naked, let alone looking at other people or letting others see me in this way, but everyone was telling me how awesome soaking in the onsen felt and the hotel's onsen was exceptionally beautiful so I thought, what the heck right? I should at least partake in this cultural experience at least once. After a few failed attempts at finding a time when the onsen is completely vacant (NEWSFLASH IT IS NEVER EMPTY), I gave up and just went during a time when there were less than 5 people around. Being short-sighed is a blessing in this case, the moment I took off my glasses in the changing room, I couldn't see anything but rough shapes, so public bathing ended up being not that mortifying after all. After the first attempt, I decided I kinda enjoyed it so I ended up going a few more times when there were less people around, namely after midnight.

3. Japan is a wonderland for drinks
I can't help spending money on drinks, it's been a really bad habit of mine since young. Every time I catch sight of some cool-sounding beverage on the menu, it takes enormous self-restraint to prevent myself from shelling out the sad remains of my purse. Most of the time I just give in and treat myself. Lucky for me, there is no lack of variety in Japanese supermarkets when it comes to drinks, alcoholic and non-alcoholic alike, and every season, beverage companies come up with new varieties of existing drinks or completely new drinks that are limited to that particular season. I remember there being a lot of melon-based drinks as well as isotonic drinks since it's summer right now. I regret not taking pictures of my favourites, I only have one of the green tea I love:

Normal green tea (Summer version, which is supposed to be more refreshing), ice lemon tea and jasmine green tea all by the same company, Suntory, coincidentally, whose whisky distillery we also got to visit.
After coming back to Malaysia, I tried looking for the same green tea in Shojikiya and they actually have it! Joy! And then I found out they wanted RM 8 for it. ROBBERY IT'S ONLY 100+ YEN IN JAPAN.
I really love this one too:

Kirin's Salty Lychee isotonic drink, picture looted from Kirin's website because I was a fool and forget to take a photo.
And back here I'm stuck with plain ol' 100 plus. :'( Don't even get me started on the alcoholic drinks, I miss Suntory's yubari melon chuuhai and Horoyoi drinks so much it hurts. Actually, I think variety is present in almost everything here. If you walk down the snacks aisle in the supermarket, you can see more than ten flavours of Calbee on the shelves and Calbee is but one brand.

4. Conveyor belt sushi is amazing
And I am not talking about Sushi King. I only went to two different conveyor belt sushi chains during my stay, the first (and, according to Masahiro, the best conveyor belt sushi chain) was Sushiro and the other was Kurazushi, and each restaurant has their own unique ordering system. Sushiro goes by a colour system where each table is identified by its own individual colour and everything you order on your personal screen will be delivered on the conveyor belt to you on plates with aforementioned colour, so that you know which is yours. You also know when your food will be coming because of a burst of cheery music from the screen and an announcement of "Your food is arriving shortly!"".

Photo from the time I Sushiro-ed alone because everyone had already left Kashiwa at that time. :'(
I should really franchise Sushiro and bring it to Malaysia, then it'll be goodbye Sushi Zanmai your service has been steadily deteriorating anyway. A potential problem will be having your food stolen by others who just couldn't be bothered to order their own, since there's nothing stopping people from taking someone else's food. So maybe Kurazushi's system would be more easily implemented in Malaysia...
Besides the normal conveyor belt with the different types of sushi on it, Kurashi has another belt? or what Masahiro calls "the shinkansen track", because after ordering on the screen, your food will be delivered by zooming straight to your table on this track (Hence shinkansen), bypassing the other customers' tables. HOW INNOVATIVE IS THAT. :D I was so fascinated I felt like ordering more stuff just to see them zoomed to me. I should also mention that not only is the tech cool, the food in all these conveyor belt restaurants is actually really tasty, no Sushi King or Sakae Sushi nonsense, but I guess that's kinda a given since it's local fare.

5. The curious case of the lack of rubbish bins
There is a serious lack of rubbish bins in Tokyo. I experienced this first hand when, after eating about three quarters of the crepe I bought in Harajuku I wanted to chuck it because I was feeling jelat from all the whipped cream that all these crepes seem to have. Walked down half a street, and not just any street but the main tourist attraction street Takeshita Doori and we couldn't find a single bin. Reddy was convinced there would be one in the JR Harajuku train station so we walked back there since we were going home anyway but we failed to find one there either which really surprised all of us but no matter, we were getting off at Akihabara to change to another line, the Tsukuba Express, that would take us back to Kashiwa, so there was bound to be one somewhere along the way right? Nope. We didn't find any until we got back to our hotel rooms. On the bright side I got tired of holding my half-finished crepe, so somewhere along the way back I finished it. Despite there being no bins around, the streets of Tokyo are still almost spotlessly clean though.

6. Summer is a great time to be in Japan
If you can stand the heat and humidity, summer in Japan is great because there are a lot of different festivals going on and every city seems to have its own fireworks festival. I was lucky enough to have had the chance to go for the one at Arakawa River near Kita-Senjuu, just a few train stops away from Kashiwa. By that time, everyone from my programme had already left, but Matsuoka-san from my lab said he was going too, so I had great company watching the most amazing fireworks I have ever seen in my life (Sorry Hong Kong Disneyland, I'm booting you to second place):

In my blog post about my 3 day visit to Japan last year I said

Next time I'm going to visit Hakone, Kyoto, Osaka, Hokkaido, Okinawa...... You know what I'm just gonna travel all across Japan.

Despite my month long stay, I didn't manage to visit any of the 5 places for a multitude of reasons: Having too much fun with my program mates and lab mates in Tokyo, not enough cash to shinkansen my way around Japan etc . etc., but I did visit Yamanashi and Tochigi (Gotta thank my lab mates for this trip). So... including Chiba and Tokyo, that's 4 prefectures down, and 43 more to visit! I'm pumped up and ready! Now I just need the cash and some good company. ;)

“Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.”

2014 was a very Square Enix year. :D First of all there was the Distant Worlds Concert at the Royal Albert Hall back in November:

What else can I say? It was amazing to hear One Winged Angel and the theme from Final Fantasy VII live. Two hours is too short I say, too short.
Thanks to Joanne's info, I also managed to attend the launch of Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix in London with Daniel and Eujin:

I mentally prepared a few lines of thank yous and similar appreciative words in Japanese to say to Nishi Rie and Yasue Tai but I was too starstruck and squeaked thank you in English instead when the moment came. Typical me.

Yes I am very proud of my loot (SQUEEE autographed card and Ventus phone charm!!). I love how they made this model of the Twilight Balcony and we could take pictures there. I just wish the sea salt ice creams were real.
Then last weekend I forced my lazy ass to go to KLCC for Comic Fiesta Day 2. I've missed it for more than 2 years now, because I've always been in the UK for winter holidays and my interest in CF has been waning too. Way back when it first started CF felt more fun, maybe I've just outgrown it. Now none of the cosplays really catch my eye (Have I become a snob?!) and there's a lot of going-ons that I find irrelevant like League of Legends gaming tournaments and Alienware exhibiting their products. No, not only have I outgrown it, CF has grown a lot too. It also doesn't work in my favour that I either hate or don't watch the current popular anime series i.e. Sword Art Online (Please stop. ), Haikyuu!, Free!, Kuroko no Basuke.

My view was like that most of the time.

Blast from the past.

Improvement from my first encounter with famous peeps: I managed to say something! I told both of them I was looking forward to FF15 and thanked Wan Hazmer for developing Type 0 and Hashimoto Shinji for coming to CF (In Japanese!). Wan Hazmer was really friendly but Hashimoto Shinji seemed kinda bored. Not sure if he even heard what I said. I'm guessing he hates all these meet and greet stuff.

The reason why I went to CF and forked out RM 25 for a ticket AND queued up for over an hour. This file's duties of storing my Chemical Reaction Engineering notes shall be no more. It shall exist only as a prized souvenir.

The only cosplay photo I took that day. Unless you count the Maple mushroom.
Oh yes, since mum is a Sunway employee, we got a huge discount for The Banjaran Hotsprings Retreat in Ipoh and we managed to persuade dad to come along (Dad really loves his couch at home. ), making it the Lees' year end family holiday (Missing Joanne. Do Photoshop yourself in. ). It is a glorious place at the foot of a cluster of lime stone caves, full of greenery and insects chirping, a prime example of natural Malaysian beauty. There's nothing much to do there besides soak in the hotspring and meditate in the caves and go for a spa if you can fork out 200 bucks but to be fair I think that IS the point, since it's a retreat. Doing nothing at all suits me just fine and I was contented to just doze off on the couch in our beautiful villa surrounded by the sights and sounds of nature, which I eventually did in the night after spending the entire day dipping in the hotspring, visiting the Crystal Cave, Meditation Cave and Steam Cave, exfoliating my skin in the fish spa (Interesting mutualism. ) and then soaking again in our private Jacuzzi. I can say that it's definitely the prettiest and swankiest hotel I've ever stayed in. Not that I've stayed in many, we Lees are of the middle class, "da gong zai" as mum calls it.

I was really excited. And look! Dad is smiling! That is a rare sight.

My house has to be something like this in the future, that shall be one of my life goals.

Yes like this too.

The hotspring lake bordered by the caves. The mist rising off the lake surfaces makes the whole place seem even more out of the world.

The Fish Spa. Mum didn't like the sensation but dad was very sporting.

Dad's leg not mine haha. Fishes sucking your feet feels like a very tickly sort of vibration. I had to control every nerve and fibre of my body from twitching and shaking the fishes off.
Oh yes, because I'm a greedy cat and food is of the utmost importance to me, I feel the need to comment that the buffet breakfast was excellent, they served us fresh fruit juice and even had soy milk for cereal.

I am sorry to say I was extremely sulky on the way back from the trip to Ipoh because dad didn't want to stop by Funny Mountain in Ipoh town for tau foo fah. Yes I tried it the day before but the tau foo fah was so smooth I really wanted to have some more. The only place I can think of with tau foo fah of comparable standards is the one in the Taman Tun Dr Ismail wet market and we haven't gone there in years. Sadly dad just wanted to rush back home as usual.

Funny Mountain, please consider having a branch in SS15. Or London, haha.
Right. Now that I'm on the topic of my greediness I must talk some more about food. Since I only get a few months a year to enjoy wonderful Malaysian cuisine and everything related to green tea, naturally I gorge myself silly whenever I'm back home. This time I tried out Milk Cow cause it looked amazing in photos and Yeaji told me it was really creamy. I ordered the one that came with a cube of honeycomb from the chirpy worker who anyeonghaseyo-ed me because I was under the impression that honeycomb would taste amazing (And looks good in photos to boot. ) but on that day humanity received a grim reminder I learnt that once you licked off the honey from the surface honeycomb tastes like nothing and eating it feels like chewing wire. The ice-cream itself I thought was nice, but nothing spectacular. I thought Amaretto and Snowflake (The gelato parlour in London not the Malaysian Taiwanese dessert store. ) gelato tasted just as good or maybe even better since they have amazing flavours not like Milk Cow which serves plain ice cream only.

Photobombed by someone's butt.
Snowflake's Uji Matcha Supreme on the other hand I really loved. My favourite taro balls with my favourite green tea ice cream with jeng jeng jeng my favourite matcha to pour over? Wow. Now it would be prefect if it didn't have those annoying red beans. Why does everyone insist on pairing green tea/matcha with red bean? But no big deal I can easily ask to remove it. Another reason why I'm not stuffing myself every week with Uji Matcha Supreme is because it costs 15 bucks for a bowl. It's a big portion I grant you that, but I really can't finish it on my own. I wish Snowflake would just make a smaller portion and charge me less.

Looking at this makes me hungry.
I have a bunch of stuff to finish before term starts but yes I decided to blog instead. I feel like changing the layout of this blog because I hate how its wideness always makes it looks like I've written so little when I feel like I've written a considerable amount, but changing blogskin is tedious considering I've blogged less than five times in the last two years.