Merry Christmas

Wish all a Merry Christmas! ^_^

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Megami Magazine Volume 92

Yesterday, I camped at Kinokuniya along with some friends, waiting for this volume of Megami Magazine. Waited from 5:45pm - 7:45pm before we saw the magazines on the moving tray, ready to be shelved. And I only paid abt $15, thanks to a discount card and christamas additional discount. ^_^


This pencilboard art is by Ito Noizi. She's a well known artist, illustrating many light novel works such as Shakugan no Shana and Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu.


Comparison of the Cover vs the Pencil board. Somehow, I prefer the Cover. The red background doesnt seem to mar any of Shana's beauty and in fact made her stand out more. Or maybe I'm just overwhelmed by the moe.


This is the flip side of the Pencil board.


The first large scan of the book and they gave us a scene of Shana, Yoshida Kasumi and Konoe (aka Hecate clone) bathing. Interesting face made by Shana...


CLANNAD! Nagisa, Kyou and Tomoyo.


Da Capo II's Nanaka. She's supposingly the school's idol, but the stupid male lead seems to think otherwise.


Gakou Mizuki shot of some of the characters in Kimi Kiss Pure Rogue


KyoAni doing a parody of its own works. This was based on the Bunny Girls of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu. Of course, Konata being Haruhi, she had to sit in Haruhi's spot. What's more interesting is, why is Kagamin depicted as Ryouko here...


Danger Alert! Remember a certain demotivational poster where it said: "You can cite mutual consent, but you are still going to jail".


Minaki-ke. With all the hype about Haruka nee-san I am tempted...


Ef~A Tale of Memories' Miyamura Miyako.


A glimpse of all of this month's posters. Most of them are quite well drawn, with a few exceptions such as the poster of moetan. =_= I can never understand the hype behind it.


Bamboo Blade's Tama-chan. She's small, cute, strong, has a strong sense of justice and loves anime.


And this is Dark Miya-miya. Only Dan-kun (which coincidently her 彼氏) can control her.


A bathing Shana is fine.






After so many episodes of harem management lessons, we are finally going to get some real action from the series. The magazine has stated the return of Phelles and I hope the plot + action will go up from before.


Rena Dakimakura! Omochikaeri! T_T


I'll give my own opinions about each series harems in this section, since Megami has conveniently put thumbnails of the harems.

Da Capo II
1. Minatsu should die.
2. Koko was right to dump him. But should have gone the Nice Boat way.
3. Nanaka should have back stabbed
4. Yume and Otone should have imprisoned him in the house.


Kimi Kiss
This series has the girls overlap less compared to other harems. Looks promising so far, with a plot interesting enough to follow compared to some other flops of the season...

Hoshino Yuumi - My preferred choice for ending with Kouichi. Though I can see it wouldnt happen.


Problem with Yuumi and Kouichi is both are too shy. So I cant see the "good end"...


Ef~ A Tale of memories. Actually, out of the 5, I've never seen Mizuki before... Yuko is not a real character, and it actually played out in 2 parts - Miyako and Kei fighting for Hirono, and Chihiro and Renji. Chihiro has an illness that makes her memory no longer than 13 hours. Renji seems to like Chihiro still...


Bod wise, I prefer Kei to Miyako. Miyako's too big...


And the very dissapointing Hayate no Gotoku. Despite a strong storyline in the Light Novel, the anime chose to squander them all and instead earn the most from merchandise and CD sales...


Only scenes such as Maria can salvage the show from being at the rock bottom...


And occasionally the staff decided to throw in some real storyline for viewers. It's as if they treat us as trash.


Wow. Someone actually put the Bikina Nanoha and Feito on the car as vinyls. O_O


And Megami being the offical Nanoha Mascot, of course there will be Nanoha artworks in them ^_^. Although people are tired of the endless barrage of Nanoha related works, I dont mind them at all. In fact they are part of the reason that I got to buying Megami monthly in the first place.




Of all the sketches I like the Tea one best.


Before the sketches became art, the characters looked like this.


Syuuri, Aoi and Hoshino Asami from Myself; Yourself. I'm surprised that Hoshino-san managed to keep herself safe from the "winds".


Ichijo Eika is 美人... o_O


And to end off, Higurahi no Naku koro ni is going to have a movie. If they act out the gore in real life, I think it will be too gory for me though. Anyways, I'll wait for it's release.

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Thoughts on Minister pay rise

I'm late in commenting on this, and prior to reading the Spring and Autumn Analects, I dont even give a damn to this round of pay rise. Why?

1. Knew about it before they publicly announced it.
2. Save myself from some anger and focus instead on some of my hobbies, like playing old PSX games, collecting a certain magazine of a certain genre, reading more crap on wikipedia, attending EOY 2007...
3. GST, CPI, inflation is not going to be solved by someone's rants.

---

Yesterday, I stumbled upon this particular entry in the Spring and Autumn Analects. The original text below:

襄公二十六年古
初，楚伍参与蔡太师子朝友，其子伍举与声子相善也。伍举娶于王子 牟，王子牟为申公而亡，楚人曰：“伍举实送之。”伍举奔郑，将遂奔晋。声子将如晋，遇之于郑郊，班荆相与食，而言复故。声子曰：“子行也！吾必复子。”及 宋向戌将平晋、楚，声子通使于晋。还如楚，令尹子木与之语，问晋故焉，且曰：“晋大夫与楚孰贤？”对曰：“晋卿不如楚，其大夫则贤，皆卿材也。如杞、梓、 皮革，自楚往也。虽楚有材，晋实用之。”子木曰：“夫独无族姻乎？”对曰：“虽有，而用楚材实多。归生闻之：‘善为国者，赏不僭而刑不滥。’赏僭，则惧及 淫人；刑滥，则惧及善人。若不幸而过，宁僭无滥。与其失善，宁其利淫。无善人，则国従之。《诗》曰：‘人之云亡，邦国殄瘁。’无善人之谓也。故《夏书》 曰：‘与其杀不幸，宁失不经。’惧失善也。《商颂》有之曰：‘不僭不滥，不敢怠皇，命于下国，封建厥福。’此汤所以获天福也。古之治民者，劝赏而畏刑，恤 民不倦。赏以春夏，刑以秋冬。是以将赏，为之加膳，加膳则饫赐，此以知其劝赏也。将刑，为之不举，不举则彻乐，此以知其畏刑也。夙兴夜寐，朝夕临政，此以 知其恤民也。三者，礼之大节也。有礼无败。今楚多淫刑，其大夫逃死于四方，而为之谋主，以害楚国，不可救疗，所谓不能也。子仪之乱，析公奔晋。晋人置诸戎 车之殿，以为谋主。绕角之役，晋将遁矣，析公曰：‘楚师轻窕，易震荡也。若多鼓钧声，以夜军之，楚师必遁。’晋人従之，楚师宵溃。晋遂侵蔡，袭沈，获其 君；败申、息之师于桑隧，获申丽而还。郑于是不敢南面。楚失华夏，则析公之为也。雍子之父兄谮雍子，君与大夫不善是也。雍子奔晋。晋人与之鄐，以为谋主。 彭城之役，晋、楚遇于靡角之谷。晋将遁矣。雍子发命于军曰：‘归老幼，反孤疾，二人役，归一人，简兵搜乘，秣马蓐食，师陈焚次，明日将战。’行归者而逸楚 囚，楚师宵溃。晋绛彭城而归诸宋，以鱼石归。楚失东夷，子辛死之，则雍子之为也。子反与子灵争夏姬，而雍害其事，子灵奔晋。晋人与之邢，以为谋主。扞御北 狄，通吴于晋，教吴判楚，教之乘车、射御、驱侵，使其子孤庸为吴行人焉。吴于是伐巢、取驾、克棘、入州来，楚罢于奔命，至今为患，则子灵之为也。若敖之 乱，伯贲之子贲皇奔晋。晋人与之苗，以为谋主。鄢陵之役，楚晨压晋军而陈，晋将遁矣。苗贲皇曰：‘楚师之良，在其中军王族而已。若塞井夷灶，成陈以当之， 栾、范易行以诱之，中行、二郤必克二穆。吾乃四萃于其王族，必大败之。’晋人従之，楚师大败，王夷师熠，子反死之。郑叛吴兴，楚失诸侯，则苗贲皇之为 也。”子木曰：“是皆然矣。”声子曰：“今又有甚于此。椒举娶于申公子牟，子牟得戾而亡，君大夫谓椒举：‘女实遣之！’惧而奔郑，引领南望曰：‘庶几赦 余！’亦弗图也。今在晋矣。晋人将与之县，以比叔向。彼若谋害楚国，岂不为患？”子木惧，言诸王，益其禄爵而复之。声子使椒鸣逆之。

---

The gist of the above text was that, "Its better to lavish rewards than to enforce harsh punishments". I believe this is what the current Government has been doing in regards to recruiting and keeping its current portfolio of Ministers. To keep the few good ministers, they'll rather risk bureaucracy than to have people leave.

At least, that seems to be their rationale for the never-ending minister pay rise. If you read further into the text I've extracted from Spring/ Autumn, you may also get the impression that our former educational policies have failed to produce State-caliber talents. Or State-caliber talents have all flowed away, like in the case of the Warring State of Chu.

What does these mean to a state which seems to be as precarious as the Warring State of Jin?

Ironically, the reverse is also true for Singapore. Restrictions and punishments are just as strictly served to the people. Some of which are said to stifle creativity, encourage obedience, reliance of government. So much so that population growth are now fuelled mostly by immigration. That 5 persons in a group is technically a crime. That speaking out is only "offically allowed" in Hong Lim park; upon a police permit, or only through public forums and dialogue sessions conducted at who know where.

To the extent of our policies effectiveness will determine Singapore's future to come...

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Even more of Kyou

Again? Again! ^_^

This time, with charmlings!


These Charmlings cost S$3.00 each and can be ordered through email. You can collect them either through mail or collect them yourself (which I did).


Now that I have some food to fit this Kyou figurine, its time to improvise a bento box. Which I did hapazardly. I find the dictionary too small; as you can see it even fits in my "bento box". Still this is definitely not a book you would like to find near Kyou though. It might just end up flying straight at your head. (^_^)||


If she can hold them, they might just fit into her hand.


Kyou with all the Charmlings spread alongside her. Now if Kotobukiya makes a Ryou figurine, I would love to buy it too. Then I can make the perfect "Lunch setting" with Kyou and Ryou. ^_^


Close view of the Charmlings.


Top-down view. Now that I look at this picture, it seems to be slightly voyeuristic. (That was not my intention...)


Nice? I did this using ISO 100, Flash, Aperture -2 and Levels in Photoshop.


This monochrome version might be used for a demotivational poster...








Something I learnt with my Panasonic Camera is that Post-processing is VERY important. Especially if you want perfect pictures. Good post-processing with photo editors after good photo taking can create a picture much better than the original.

This should be my last Kyou figurine post for some time to come. Tomorrow I'll probably try to enquire about pre-ordering Alter Fate 2nd run and eating my own words on buying figurines before they sells out.

Enjoy the rest of the year.

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Foreign Talent in our country

It has been a touchy issue for Singaporeans and the Politicians ever since a few years back, but it became at a hot topic this year, after the Government relaxed laws to allow more of foreign workers to be employed locally.

While some had praised the hardworking attitude of the foreign workers, especially those from China, whose numbers are steadyly rising, reactions from others are less amicable, complaining that they took away local jobs or the difficulty of understanding them.

I dont blame corporations for employing foreign workers/ talent, but they should try to employ those that can communicate closer to our local Mandarin/ Dialect tonations. Or invest a few hundred dollars in them for a week or two's English lessons on answering simple questions.

The resentment of foreign workers in our Country, however, is only the surface of the problem. The root of the problem(importing of FT) stems from the Stop at 2 Policies made back when the Singapore population was mushrooming. It was too effective, so as to speak, so much so that most Singaporeans now prefer to remain single. This is part of the reason why Singapore needed foreign workers/ talent to fill in the labour shortage when our economy booms.

As the Online Citizen has written, the number of Singaporeans on the island now number 74%. If the percentage fall further, would it be us who will have to adapt to their customs? Then again, we have been doing so all along. Afterall, Singapore(that we know today) is a product of Globalisation...

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The Day of Infamy

Another year has passed since the attack on Pearl Harbour. Or actually, it is but part of a Pan-Pacific attack by the Japanese against the Major Powers. Striking simutaneously at Hawaii, the Phillippines, China and Malaya, it was a complete tatical victory for the Imperial Japanese Forces.

Unfortunately, the attack on Pearl Harbour was ultimately a strategic failure, as it remained functional and combined with the US production speed, Pearl Harbour was restored and replenished with ships ready to fight in months.

Military Lessons:
1. Be vigilant. Even if there is no enemy around you. Like Hawaii.

2. Communications is imperative to victory/ loss.

3. In Pearl Harbour's case, the IJN should have destroyed the oil stores and bomb the air fields instead of focusing on the Battleship row. Also they should had mined the approaches of Pearl Harbour so American ships cannot get out.

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Word Verification Added...

Seems like even quiet places like my blog are not spared from the occasional spam....

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Comtiq Heroines Vol 7

Bought it for Lucky Star and Hirano Aya, with some nice posters inside such as Da Capo II and Myself; Yourself. Got a Lucky Star CD inside also and a Christmas Lucky Star sticker ^_^. Maybe I'll use them for decorations...

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