This is the One, Utada's third english album. Released last may 2009

Hikaru Utada’s been doing another concert tour which launched last Janaury 15 . Her last concert tour was Utada United in 2006 which was held in various locations across Japan, this time though the tour is around the USA!

She’s doing the tour to promote her 2nd english album (3rd if you include her Cubic U days) This is the One. Some youtubers were able to sneak in their cameras and get videos! She sang soem of her japanese songs during the show! She also Sang Sanctuary and Passion together… AT THE SAME TIME! and she sang the backward-lyrics live as well!

I wish I had a VISA right now… I’d kill for tickets to see Utada.

For music interest though, if any of you guys reading this have never listened to Utada before, you should definitely try listening to the This is the One album. Its seriously not a Jpop/anime/asian music album at all and I think anyone and everyone can seriously enjoy it. I have the special edition US retail version (with additional bonus tracks) and its been part of my “study playlist” for quite a while! Some interesting songs to note:

Apple and Cinnamon

A very simple piano R&B ballad. I find it has a good mix of melody, well-written lyrics and deep pulsating beats. A great love song which focuses on a failing relationship with an interesting allusion to apple pie being Apples and Cinnamon work so well together.

Automatic Part II

A direct allusion to her first japanese single AUTOMATIC in 1999.  Interesting here is if you compare the two songs and play them one after the other you can really see the difference between Hikki back then and Hikki now as well as how different R&B music was 10 years ago from now. Automatic is less melodic than its predecessor but uses a heavier R&B beat. The lyrics are also… quite provocative with which in part shows how Utada 10 years ago was just a young 16/17 year old girl and now she’s a 27 year old woman.

Come back to me

The first single released for the album. After seeing the epic failure I thought Easy Breezy was as a lead single for an album during her Exodus days, its nice to see a single that reminds you why Hikki is such a powerful artist. Come back to me is a soft sad ballad which is reminiscent Flavor of Life and Prisoner of Love but uses a more western approach and style to the arrangement and treatment. Its a good break considering that I was getting sick of utada’s dance electronica english songs already.

There’s one particular line here I really like. It goes “I wish that I could photoshop all our bad memories” I think we don’t need to ask why

First of all Gurdy says happy gregorian calendar new year!

Gurdy says happy new year

My way of starting the new year is by getting a 39 degree celsius fever and a soar throat that cripples my speech I’m actually feeling better now after spending most of the day not talking at all (I actually replied to my philosophy teacher’s question by writing a note on a scratch paper:lol:).

I also started my Communication 14 “Dream Project” today by not drinking any carbonated or sugar-compressed drinks (coke and my school C2 addiction). I actually do feel healthier after a day of drinking 80% water (10% was my morning fresh milk and 10% was my evening tea).

Unfortunately I won’t be able to do one of the things that I was looking forward to do this year. Because of a) my dad’s unpro-activeness and procastination (he kept saying oh there’s going to be a voter’s registration at the club house) b) my inability to keep track of things that made me ID-less the whole Christmas break (thanks to Joseph Teoxon by the way for keeping my ID safe), I am still NOT a registered voter. So kill me if you deem me extremely sinful. Again this is a justification of why I should get a driver’s license already (where else in the world would you see a 21-year-old city kid without a drivers license).

I’m retiring early (if you count 20 minutes before 12pm early… this post seems to have a lot of asides) tonight lol maybe I should continue the I can’t speak charade tomorrow

The Cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Yes, Mark is a huge Buffy geek. I actually have copies of the Season 8 comics! As much as I like Buffy, nothing can defeat the original female butt-kicker of the 90′s and early 2000′s generation.

Xena in Samurai armor

YEAH!!! I’ve been watching Xena: Warrior Princess reruns on the SciFi channel for a while and has secretly been part of my geekyness since it was showing on Star World when I was a freshman high school.

Fun Facts:

1. Xena is actually a spin-off from the Hercules series (the one with Kevin Sorbo). Most internet people actually know this already but I was shocked when my mother asked “is that Xena? the female version of He-man?”… I know the inner guy geek in me had a face-palm moment.

2. Buffy was originally a full feature comedy film created in 1992 with another actress. It was sort of a flop but the idea was good enough that people wanted to turn it into a TV show.

3. Xena’s Chakram is actually a real weapon used by sikhs (makes you wanna go aahlalalalallalala-shiiiaaah!)

4. There was originally a planned Buffy The Vampire Slayer animated series. Search around Youtube you’ll likey.

5. Xena has a daughter hahahaha yes warrior woman is a mommy. Actually she had a son before that she gave up because she was a bad warlord (Solan) who eventually died and then Eve, the divinely concieved (yes we’re talking about the angel gabriel thingy here) daughter. Yes Xena has all this weirdness in it.

… Yes Mark is a geek

The best part I have to say about being there during a championship game was feeling the intense energy the crowd had. UE had more spectators than last time but that didn’t stop the blue army!

Thankfully the mosquito bites, the dozens of trike rides and the such for an upper A ticket paid off! BONFIRE TOMORROW!!!

I got bored this afternoon

I finally got to upgrade to snow leopard this week. I have to say its a pretty good value for money upgrade specially if you have an older mac (imagine a technical overhaul for only 29 dollars)! It feels like Anita’s been given new life. All my apps run faster, start up and shutdown is faster as well. It’s a drastic change from what I was experiencing with the last few Leopard updates (slower and slower startup, hotter CPU), now she feels 2 months old again!

Snow Leopard

Here’s some things that I noticed that I really liked.

• Faster and shorter startup
  During the last few updates of Leopard, my startup was probably at 4 or 5 minutes already (like I never switched from windows). Now that I switched to Snow Leopard, startup and shutdown is under a minute! As the gay looking guy in the Sky broadband says “I can barely have time to finish this cup of coffee”.
• Applications run smoother and faster
  All of my applications run smoother and faster now thanks to the utilization of both processor cores sharing the load. Photoshop takes only 10 seconds to fully load and I rarely see the loading ring now. Indesign crashes less as well and even Safari runs faster.
• Regained disc space
  I regained around 6 to 7 gigs of disc spaces from the code overhaul apple did with snow leopard giving me more space for my stuff and lengthening Anita’s life.
• A better Expose
  Expose now shows windows in a more organized manner with a new grid for a less cluttered look. Also if you turned it on in the settings, Expose will hide windows you’ve clicked to be hidden in the same icons for the programs saving space on the dock. You can also now launch expose by holding down the dock icons.
• Improved Stacks
  You can now browse things in the dock if your in grid view which makes so much help to find files and to send files to specific folders!
• Improved Preview
  I don’t need Skim anymore, preview can highlight and add comments on my PDF readings for school natively

What do you like about Snow Leopard?

For some reason everything seems to be going so well lately. I’m tired alot and I get sleepy a lot during statistics class but I’m getting through everything pretty well. I dunno I’m just in such a happy mood this semester! Everything is just going so well.

I also got back in the GUIDON! Finally after re-applying 4 times I got my job back! The GUIDON sure has changed though, not in a bad way but in a good way. A lot of the things I wish we’re there specially for the webteam is actually being done now and my co-staffers are all so brilliant! I haven’t felt surrounded by colleagues who can actually speak my geek language for a very long time!

Tomorrow’s gonna be a party day, I have the ACTM 1st GA from 430-6 then from 6pm onwards the G online magazine launch! Can’t wait!