This past week I went with 友也 who is the only one I know who enjoys Japanese Karaoke as much as I do (and it doesn’t hurt that he knows the “old school” songs I know.) We set the camera and just let it roll. Instead of taping the usual “Random Karaoke Pick” segments that I normally do, I decided to retry a song that I really effed up on the first time around. “真赤な太陽” (makkana taiyou) by 美空ひばり (Misora Hibari) is probably the only song I can dare to attempt from the famous singer, and it has turned out to be one of my most favorite to sing.

And if you’re wondering how that song is supposed to sound, there are lots of videos on YouTube including this performance by Misora Hibari:

And this one by African American enka singer Jero:

I don’t know how many more songs I can add to my repertoire as I am not exposed to Japanese music much lately, but I think I’ll be singing Japanese Karaoke for many years to come with the few songs I know. I think I’d have no other reason to retain my Japanese reading skills otherwise.

2009 has definitely been the year of me realizing my mortality, if you haven’t already figured that out. I can’t ignore every little thing going on with my body like I could before. I’m inclined to believe that this pain in my hand is a bad sign of things to come. I would like to hope for the best, but my recent lackluster medical treatment has left me with little confidence in leading a healthy, complication-free life. Oh well, we shall see what this hand specialist has to say when I see him…

Two months ago, as I had vaguely reported, I had to deal with some news about my health. I will go ahead and be open and honest in this entry about it. On March 9th, I was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes by my Primary Care Doctor. It was rather shocking news and to be honest, I was more than a bit embarrassed to disclose it to anyone, let alone the Internet. After all, my perception of the disease was that only older people got it, or if young people got it, it had to be because they were highly overweight and didn’t take care of their health. I could have easily put myself into the latter category, and it was not something that I wanted to share with everyone. Genetics may have very well taken a role in bringing on the chronic disease, but I have decided to take full ownership of it and over the past two months, I have been taking steps in mitigating the risks of the long term effects.

As far as putting this information on the blog, I decided that it could very well be my contribution to the Internet. By verbalizing everything I’m going through, I figure it can get people to take a greater inventory of their health. I don’t doubt that there are a lot of people out there who are like how I was then: in denial about their mortality. What’s more unfortunate about diabetes is that a lot of time, those who have it are asymptomatic, so there’s no urgency for people to get their health tested or at least to make them mindful of what they are doing to their bodies.

For those of you who don’t know what Type II Diabetes is, it is when your body becomes resistant to insulin, the receptors of glucose for your cells. This results in high blood sugar, which can lead to long term complications such as heart disease, kidney disease, and eye disease among other things. The cause can be partly genetic, but for the most part, is due to sedentary lifestyle and bad eating habits. My blood test indicated rather high blood sugar levels, which led to my diagnosis.

As soon as I was diagnosed, my doctor put me on medication but more importantly, she put me on the track to changing my lifestyle, which is going to be the key to my success in tackling this disease. I had a series of health education classes on how to cope with diabetes, and how to make everyday changes. It was kind of a bummer to have to make such drastic changes while in my happy rut, but on the other hand, I knew I had to take it as an opportunity to feeling better.

First thing I committed myself to doing, was writing down everything I was doing in terms of what I was eating and any exercise I was getting. That way, I would be more mindful of what I was doing or not doing. It also served a good excuse to use a cute little Chococat planner I had feasted my eyes on. (Note: Sanrio obsession for a future entry.) I also went back to keeping a personal journal about my successes and my frustrations. In making myself more aware of what I was doing, and then aware of what I am supposed to do, making the changes didn’t seem so overwhelming.

It can still be pretty hard having to count carbs and having to deny myself of things that I normally could have gotten when I wanted them, but after two months, I think I’ve coped really well. In addition to eating better, I have learned to value sleep more, and therefore not allowing myself to stay up all night wasting valuable time on my computers. What’s been really fun is getting more exercise, more so because Hunny is such a trooper and so supportive in joining me for the hikes and outdoor activities I’ve been trying to expose myself to. Most recently, we went to the Makapu’u Lighthouse Road hike. We took a lot of pictures and got a lot of healthy sunshine.

I have definitely seen changes such as my blood sugar going down, my weight going down a little bit, and perhaps the most fun — having more energy in my day to enjoy this paradise I live in! I still have quite a ways to go, but I think at this point in the ride, I am actually enjoying myself.

Just gotta keep on keeping on.

As for “Good Excuse #2,” we’ll see if anything comes out of that. I’ll keep that one a secret for now.

It’s great traveling with your fellow paparazzo! I hope we can take another trip sometime together soon!

This entry is a continuation of the one two entries ago, as I had promised Tomoya after receiving his thoughtful gifts. No one cares to know about how crazy I am for this band, except for maybe Tomoya, but I definitely will love writing this entry!

In some shape or form, I have every video that LUNA SEA released through DVD or VHS. There is a chemistry and intensity to this band that gives me “chicken skin,” especially when I see their concert footage. Though I got turned on to LUNA SEA later in their career (1997), I tend to enjoy their earlier material than their later material. It has almost everything to do with lead singer RYUICHI’s voice changing as he built his pop persona for his solo career as “Ryuichi Kawamura.” That being said, I really enjoy 真冬の野外 from 1996 much more than 真夏の野外 from 1998. Even though they are only two years apart, there’s a big difference between the two albums they promoted at the time, STYLE and SHINE respectively, in their mood and style of music. Both are great concerts though, because there are performance of songs that you don’t hear in their later concerts, such as “c/w” songs or obscure titles from those albums. I especially like the inclusion of one of my deeply personal favorite songs “RA-SE-N” in both DVDs.

My favorite album from LUNA SEA (and possibly out of any other album I own) is their 1994 album titled, EDEN. It’s unfortunate that they don’t release any additional promotional concert footage from that time. Ryuichi’s voice wasn’t too “nasal” like his pop voice is nor was it too “raw” like it was with the first two albums. I also liked where the whole band went musically and in their lyrics where it wasn’t too dark nor was it too pop. It’s like the “Goldilocks” period of their career. Some could argue that their next album MOTHER was, but I think my preference lies in their earlier days with EDEN.

Not that mind their really earlier stuff, back when RYUICHI wasn’t afraid to show his tattoo!

And this is is Ryuichi Kawamura now? Kind of sad.

Yay for the Internets and YouTube and being able to look back on LUNA SEA’s phenomenal career. I do however miss the old school fansites of long ago (and by long ago I mean 8 years ago?) I think I want to continue this entry later with more reflection, because there is so much more to say.

For now, it’s time to enjoy my long put off vacation!

I can’t remember when or why I first signed up for Twitter, but in the beginning, I hardly put it to use. I knew of a couple of social media gurus who used it, and I think I just signed up for the sake of signing up. It was when iPhone 2.0 came out that I had started to use it more and more; it made all the difference. Though I could have used Twitter via mobile web, it didn’t provide the fluidity of a native app which 2.0 offered. Needless to say, I twitter from my iPhone almost all the time.

I recognize that Twitter takes a lot away from my regular blogging as it meets the need of getting quick and sometimes random sentences and thoughts out there on the Internet. I think with Twitter, I may never get into that groove of blogging nearly everyday like I had back with my old blog back in 2001 - 2002. Things roll so much faster when all I need to do is get a thought out in 140 characters or less.

When I do put a blog out on aspiraling.com, I try to put a little more thought and cohesion to my entries, but more than half the time, I get distracted and end up giving up altogether. For 2009, I had hoped to make it a New Year’s Resolution that I would write at least one entry a week. Perhaps if I had verbalized it here, I might have actually stuck to it; but then again, I’m not very good at verbalizing things a lot of the time so that’s why it never happened. As I am trying to get more into the routine of things, I am placing hope that I can get myself and my thoughts more organized and that this current run of my blog will have more significant and interesting entries in its second year.

I definitely find my Twitter entries (or “tweets”) to be rather significant and sometimes interesting as I go through them. I find Twitter as an awesome tool to post-remember things that I’ve felt and experienced, even if they are about the most trivial things (and maybe not so trivial. Anyone remember the blackout aka #hipower?) And though I put them on the Internet to share with others, I don’t think I use it much as a tool for communicating with the world like many other people do. A lot of the time, I end up forgetting how much of the world is actually reading my rants and blurbs.

To celebrate my one year with Twitter, I went ahead and archived all 776 of my tweets into a .csv file using a web app called Tweettake. The app works fairly well. I’m a little sour that I hadn’t thought of creating the app first. It would have been an awesome challenge to create it for myself, but I guess I can be relieved that someone made it so that I can use it right here and right now.

Upon seeing what I’ve written in the past year in tweets and entries, I’m finding that it would be awesome to utilize my blog more and to make something meaningful out of my online presence, even if it is just for myself. I can definitely celebrate the success of my blog, but I would love to reach for more.

Today being March 17th, I am now 29 “and a half” years old. I have been thinking about this day for awhile now. I figured when the day came, I would just be thinking about how I can savor the next 6 months of being a “twenty-something.” The big 3-0 seems like a huge deal to me and I guess it has a lot to do with the unrealized potential I’ve had throughout my twenties and earlier. The sensible part of me says that age really is just a number, and that I shouldn’t let a number tell me that it’s too late to follow my dreams or to strive for something better. Then there’s a passionately sensitive part of me that says that I just can’t ignore the significance of two whole digits changing in my age.

A week ago, I got a HUGE wake up call about how I’ve been living my life these past 5 years. At this time, I won’t go into details except to say that it has to do with going to the doctor for the first time in 10+ years. My outlook on life, in a matter of a 15 minute visit with the doctor, ended up changing entirely. In this past week, I’ve gone through a range of emotions such as embarrassment, disappointment, and sadness. Perhaps a sense of relief came over me as well as I have finally gotten explanation of what was going on with me as mentioned in an earlier entry. I’ve approached the news with humor and also with anger, but I have no choice but to look my situation in the face and just deal with it. So today, instead of thinking of unrealized dreams and lamenting on the past, I ended up thinking of the future — knowing that my situation presents an opportunity I have NO CHOICE but to take.

In realizing my mortality, my thirties are definitely going to be different. It definitely takes something like being told that you can die if you don’t change that can motivate you to realize your potential. I know it’s not going to be easy, and so I’m very grateful for the support system I have and for those who haven’t been so supportive because of their lack of understanding, I won’t take it personally nor will I let it set me back.

I know 30 is really just a number, and when I get there, I probably will think it’s not such a big deal after all. I have friends who are already there who say that ends up being the case. So maybe this news comes as a coincidence coming near my “29 and a half birthday.” Whatever the case, I have quite a road ahead of me.

Over a week ago, I had twittered about making my way to Hakubundo after work so that I could see if they had Ryuichi Kawamura’s newly released single, “ヒロイン” (Heroine). I wasn’t entirely expecting them to have the CD single in stock, but I thought that maybe they could special order it for me and I could just add more points to my membership card with them. Since coming back from Japan in 2000, I had pretty much bought all of my Japanese CDs from them and my purchases accumulated a bit over the years. After so many purchases, you can get a free CD single, and even an album (limited to the stock on hand when you decide to redeem, of course.)

Upon arriving at Hakubundo that day, I was distressed by this sign they had posted:

I could understand that times that are hard, and the nature of their business probably had changed quite a bit since starting that program whenever they did. I should have been surprised that the program lasted as long as it did. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but feel a bit shafted. I was able to tolerate paying the high prices they charged me when I special ordered items from Japan, because I thought as a loyal customer I would be rewarded with at least the recognition that I had spent so much money there over the years.

And when I realized that they did not have RK’s new single, I walked out and decided that my 8 year old customer relationship with Hakubundo was over.

I did my little whine on Twitter and then on to iChat to the one person who knows my RK fanaticism more than anyone else, my “good friend” whom I refer to as “ii.Tomo.” I expressed my feeling to Tomo that I should just stop with this ファンガール business of needing to get any new CD single or album that RK releases. I’ve known for a long time now that I don’t connect so much with what RK releases now than before when he was full of angst and raw energy. I did feel though that buying RK’s work was my way of connecting with an artist that I greatly and deeply admire. Isn’t that always the case?

A week later, I got a slip of paper in my mailbox telling me that there is an Express Mail package waiting for me at my local post office.

And so, you can see where this is going. My “good friend,” who is currently in Japan for an extended stay bought me RK’s “ヒロイン” single along with LUNA SEA’s “真夏の野外” DVD and their “真冬の野外” DVD. As happy as I am to add more of Ryuichi’s stuff to my collection, I was more stoked that Tomo got the stuff for me just to surprise me and to make me bounce off the walls in glee!

In the package, Tomo wrote a note telling me that I owe him an blog entry to be all ファンガール about Ryuichi and LUNA SEA, but I decided this should be an entry about how I should be all ファンガール about having such a thoughtful buddy.

This has made my day and then some, you will not believe:

Thank you, 友也君.

ファンガール post about RYUICHI/RK in progress…

Out of curiosity, I decided to check out Circuit City after work. Looking throughout the store, it appeared that everything was at least 10% off, with CDs and DVDs at about 20% off. Considering Circuit City’s regular prices, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. There might have been some pretty good deals at the beginning of the day but with a line of people waiting since the crack of morning, it’s likely it was long gone by the time I got there at around 5PM.

Sure, I was thinking that maybe I could find something at a good price, but what I really wanted to see was the type of crowd it would draw. I was thinking that no matter how crappy people say our economy is, there will be people willing to spend money on discretionary items if it’s on sale and as long as their credit card can take it. And sure enough, the liquidation event attracted quite a crowd. There were lines of people throughout the store with armfuls of items that they probably didn’t really need, particularly video games and DVDs. It was mostly amusing watching people react to what they saw in the store. Some people were just grabbing all sorts of titles despite the fact that the prices weren’t any lower than you would find them online.

Did I end up getting anything? I thought about a couple of things I could get like a second PS2 controller or another SD card for my Rebel XSi. However, when I did the math, I realized that I could get those things cheaper online or that the savings of a couple of bucks was not worth a 30 min to 1 hour wait in line. That being said, it certainly can’t be a surprise that Circuit City is going out of business just like CompUSA did; no one wants to pay the added on costs that come with items that are sold through big box retailers.

Major kudos to the people working at Circuit City today. I can imagine how tough it was for them to come into work, but a lot of them carried on professionally, and some of them in the face of horrible, demanding customers. My sympathies to those who lost their jobs…

2009 is off to its expected sucky start for a lot of of us, but at least we can hold on to hope for change.

This camera definitely pre-dates a lot of features you look for in a digital camera. First of all, it only outputs pictures with a resolution of 640 x 480, therefore pre-dating the word “megapixel” in its set of features. Also there was no USB connectivity. Instead it used the serial port of the olden days. It also used the SmartMedia Card for storage; it came with a 16MB card, which I did not replace or supplement with a bigger card because memory was so expensive back then!

It was a rather cool gadget to have, especially since I had taken so many pictures with disposable film cameras living in Japan and checking out all that living there had to offer. By today’s standards, it would be a bulky, weak camera, but for 1998, it was definitely awesome. In all honesty, I didn’t even know digital cameras actually existed when I got it. It was rather amazing concept to grasp while actually owning the device. As you can figure out, I was not an early adopter of technology back then.

The Fujifilm digital camera had a good run of about 8 years, but I unfortunately didn’t take a whole lot of pictures. It certainly wasn’t compact enough to take everywhere and needing to use alkaline batteries, it would be without juice much of the time. At some point, it would only work with AC power, and so it was mostly used to take pictures inside of the house. I have a set on Flickr that you can check out:

My second digital camera had an even shorter life of usefulness. I bought a Canon A510 in 2005 from a job I had at the time. I did hope to take lots of pictures. I remember installing and configuring Gallery onto my website with the intention of putting tons of pictures, but that idea didn’t quite work. For one thing, the camera was not as compact enough for me to carry around all the time. Also, at the time, I was also NOT encouraged to take pictures, to put it mildly. The camera still works to this very day, but since it needed batteries, I was never motivated to continue using it. I have since donated it to the day job.

In the here and now, I have three digital cameras. It all started when I got my iPhone in July 2007, where I found the concept of taking fairly decent pictures and emailing them from the device an absolutely marvelous idea. Then wanting to take better quality pictures, I bought another point and shoot, making sure that it was compact enough and that it did not rely on alkaline batteries. I have been very satisfied with my Canon PowerShot SD1100IS. And then recently this past November, after obtaining some funds from my work with Company X, I decided to splurge on my latest toy, a Canon Rebel XSi aka Canon 450D. I just got this camera and have yet to fully learn how to use it. Hunny has gotten me started, but I definitely need more practice.

Though I have had a digital camera for ten years, it was only when I met my boyfriend that I actually found the motivation to capture a lot of digital photos. For practical reasons, he carries a camera with him everywhere he goes and makes great use of it as a means of “post remembering” things. But also, he has a good eye for taking “good photographs” having taking photography film courses before. As a photo hobbyist, not only does he rock out with his point and shoot, but he also has a digital SLR camera.

So in the past year and half, I have aspired to do as he does: to take pictures to remember things but also to do it as a hobby. The first part is easy, especially having an iPhone or my handy Canon SD1100IS. 2008 has definitely been the year of sniping away in taking pictures of anything and everything. I am hoping that 2009 will be the year where I can actually say that I do photography as a hobby. Now with my first DSLR camera, I am hoping to take some fun and awesome shots. I am even enrolling in a photography class at the Outreach College at UH Manoa to expose myself to the routine of taking “good pictures.”

In the spirit of my newfound hobby, I have created visually aspiraling as a photo blog. Though I have a Flickr account (of which I’m a HUGE fan), I wanted to reserve pictures I am especially proud of for this new blog. So far, it’s mostly filled with pictures that my boyfriend took with my new Rebel, but hopefully 2009 will be contain my own pictures.

I can only imagine how many pictures I’ll have for this next decade.