Work: The Week That Was and What's Ahead

Work during the week was pretty hectic for the most part. There were times where things got a bit slow, which allowed me to rest up a bit. Most of the work consisted of revising and finalizing invoicing and trying to working on lowering the firm's horrible accounts receivable. A good chunk of invoicing (for the disciplines I work for) are processed for, there's just a few loose ones here and there, but I think I'll be done invoicing by next week.

However, I'm worried about two events coming up next week. On Monday, one of the senior associates in my office will try to squeeze in my employee review interview on Monday before he leaves for a business trip in Dubai. He said the interview will be short and painless, but I have a feeling it'll be a bit more in-depth than he makes it seem. The interview will consist of him reviewing the comments and ratings I gave to myself on my employee review form and discussing my performance for the firm for the past year.

On Tuesday, the CFO will be coming into our office interviewing all the project managers who will be present in the office concerning their accounts receivable. I'm a bit more worried about the CFO's talk concerning accounts receivable because I haven't been able to tackle much of it until recently. It's been very hard trying to process invoices on one hand, and then e-mailing and calling up clients to pay up on another.

I had a talk with one of our collections employees up on Wednesday and told her my frustrations. She clearly understood my position, but she was glad that my partner and I have been working on some accounts receivable. She told me that the billers at headquarters haven't tackled their accounts receivable yet.

I'm eagerly hoping Monday and Tuesday goes by quickly, even though time has been flying by pretty quickly as is.

Reunion with Friends

On Thursday, I reunited with two college friends whom I haven't seen in over a year. Both of them are working in the attorney field, as they are currently attending law school.

My male friend, who currently attends the University of Miami Florida law school, told me how much harder graduate school is compared to undergraduate school. He studied much harder in graduate school, only to achieve Bs from his courses. His summary of his time at Florida, "A great place to visit, not a great place to live." He told me that a lot of his clazzmates come from rich families and spoiled, have big egos, but they are smart. The parking lot is primarily filled with Mercedes and BMWs. Most of his clazzmates come from top universities during their undergraduate studies: Stanford, Pennsylvania, Tuffs, UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke.

We stopped by a nearby bar and talked over what's been happening with our lives over a couple of beers. He wondered how I was handling work. I told him that work was pretty brutal since my supervisor left the firm earlier this year. He thinks it's about time for me to move on as I've already gotten enough experience from this job. I'll elaborate more on my thoughts concerning my future further down this entry. Both of us got slightly buzzed after drinking some top-quality beers. He told us we got lucky when our bill totaled $30.

He took me to his girlfriend's apartment room a couple of block away from the bar. She cooked us some dinner and had a conversation. Well, the couple pretty much dominated the conversation as they discussed a particular court case she was sitting in for. I just sat there, trying to been keen on the conversation (which got really weird toward the end) and enjoying being in their company. I didn't get home until 10PM that night.

During my lunch break today, I ran into another one of my college friends I haven't seen since we graduated. He took the day off because he hurt his ankle a few days before and decided to relax for the day. Our conversation was short since I had to run back to the office, but it was nice seeing him again.

Future Plans and Thoughts on My Current Job

After my discussion with my friend on Thursday, I began to think a lot concerning my immediate future today. I'm thinking a few months down (around September and October), I'll be looking for a new job. I hope to land a job where the work assists me in studying for the CPA exam. Since I am an accountant, I have to give the CPA a shot, even though it's long and very tough. Right now, I'll continue to work at my current position to the best of my ability. I have plenty of money to live on in the case that I find myself not working for a bit. I know my brother's college tuition is coming up, as well as my parent's next home mortgage payment, which will put me in a financial squeeze for a little while.

In the meantime, I have mixed thoughts concerning my current work. There are things that I like working here and things I don't.

The one thing I love working here are my co-workers. They all really nice people and easy to be around with. I've been making strides to build communication with some of my co-workers. I've managed to connect really with some people, while there's still others I haven't really gotten along well with yet. I'll guess I'll know what my reputation is when I have my employee review interview on Monday. The job also has given me great experience in administrative work (making copies), in communication (talking with co-workers, dealing with vendors and clients), and a few other intangibles.

The most disturbing thing I found during my time here is the frequency of people coming in and going out of the office. It's been a revolving door of employees on the way in and out. Though it is normal for a business to have people frequently moving in and out of the firm, but it just feels like there's something wrong when we lost someone one week and then hire a new one the next. A minor flaw concerning the type of work that I'm doing is that I really don't perform any actual accounting. I'm essentially a person who keeps track of budgets, bills clients, and a collector. I don't do any bookkeeping, financial statements, or other true accounting functions. In short, I believe I lost most of the important accounting information that is prevalent in working in a true accounting function. That's why I hope my new position would be a refresher course in accounting because I've been away from it for quite a while. I'm not doing much to justify my accounting degree.

My partner is eight years older than I am, but he told me his major complaints about the job is that the work isn't challenging and doesn't believe the accounting initiative isn't as great as it seems. I completely understand his complaints. The work is mostly tedious due to the volume of projects we have to oversee. Keeping track of budgets, billing clients, calling/e-mailing clients and vendors isn't really hard at all. It's when you have over 50 projects with numerous clients and vendors to deal with, that's where the stress comes from. It's also not that invigorating to the mind when you're swamped doing the same tedious work day in and day out. My partner's other complaint I can summarize in this old saying... "a jack of all trades but a master to none." Sure, we're doing fine in budgets, invoicing, and collections, but that doesn't mean we're doing a really good job in all three aspects. Both of us thought that if one of us was primarily doing billing and the other primarily doing collections, we might make more of an impact on both jobs. My partner can spend his entire day going after clients while I can focus my time pushing invoices out the door. Unfortunately, our bosses shot our idea down. It's been hard juggling budgeting, collections, and billing in a day and in the end (I feel like) we haven't made as much progress as we could have achieved.

Oh well, that's work.

Did I Miss Anything? (E3)

Well, this week E3 came and went. Unfortunately, work prevented me from knowing all the big news coming from the famous video game convention. Aside from the announcement that Final Fantasy XIII is coming to the X-Box 360, it didn't sound like there wasn't anything from the convention that "stole the show."

Another DS Purchase, This Time It's For Me

Last weekend, I ended up purchasing another DS. This time, the DS is solely mine. My brother took over the first DS I had purchased and I was tired of sharing the DS with him.

Where's The Fire?

Lately, I haven't been playing a lot of video games nore watching a lot of anime. All of a sudden, I just don't have that urge to play a game or watch an anime. The feeling just went away! My mind's been so swamped by work during the day, all I can think about when I get home is to eat dinner and go to sleep. Today was a small exception, where I did get in some playing done on the DS.

I still have a backlog of games and animes to watch, but I just haven't had that jolt of the moment to get at it. It's not like my job is giving me a lot of fits, nor my tendencies to just self-mutilate mentally. I've been able to go through the rough days at work and I've been feeling better and haven't been depressed much at all for the last month or so. It's just that, I must've lost something on the way. During my college days, I was keeping up with all the animes I was tracking even though I had assignments to deal with. Earlier this year, gaming was a savior to me when things got rough a work. But now, I just chill out by browsing through the internet, watching TV and listening to music. Not a thought of gaming nor anime have popped up in my head recently.

The fire will be back... once I get that spark.

Funimation, Soon to Be Only U.S. Anime Company?

Anime fans already know that Funimation has picked up a lot of anime lost by Geneon (due to their demise) and ADV Films (in bad shape, lost licensing partnership). But doesn't it feel strange that a majority of animes are going to be handled by Funimation? I know we have Bandai, Nozumi, and a few others in the U.S. anime market, but it feels like Funimation has a stranglehold of almost all of the biggest animes being released in the U.S. currently. Will the U.S. anime market eventually fall into a monopoly by Funimation?

Of course, that's all undermined by fansubs, which has potential to destroy the U.S. anime business itself. Anime is in a very volatile position right now.

Ruri's Music Library Continues to Grow

There's one thing that I continue to do frequently, buying albums. I purchased two more albums on Wednesday, which are The Notwist's The Devil, You & Me and Ratatat's LP3. I purchased both albums on vinyl. Luckily, both vinyls had MP3 coupons packaged in the the album sleeve to download and upload to an MP3 device. I know my brother and I have been purchasing A LOT of albums this year. But it's okay since all of our album purchases for the past year have come from my own income instead of my parents, as their business continues to struggle.

And I'm spent... thanks for reading. Till next entry...

And now for something different!

I got inspired for this post after hearing some pretty catchy songs from Pitchfork Media's Forkcast section. I'm going to feature those songs along with a few songs from my IMEEM profile and try to explain to the best of my ability on why I enjoy the featured songs. Each song will be linked so that you have a chance to listen to a song, if you'd like to listen to them.

1) Annie - "Songs Remind Me of You"

Yes, it's your proto-typical techno song with female vocals, but that shouldn't stop anyone if the song is executed well. I found the song to be quite enjoyable. The bass beat goes pretty fast and it's got the atmospheric keyboards that surround Annie's wonderful vocals. What sticks out a bit for me is the context of lyrics enhances the song for me. She sings out lyrics to someone about the feeling one has about hearing their particular song heard through the radio. It adds a bit of an emotional layer that is mostly absent from 99 percent of all techno songs.

This song will be featured in her upcoming album Don't Stop later this year.

2) The Lord Dog Bird - "The Gift of Song in the Lion's Den"

A simple but affectionate song that contains a simple guitar riff, a simple drum beat, and vocals. The strength of the song comes from the vocalist himself. The volume and delivery of his voice definitely shines out as he sings on how music can bring about peace in all of us. [His voice kind of sounds like Phil Collins to a point.] The simple guitar riff along with the drums accompany his voice well. The song sounds very upfront as well, as if he's singing in the vicinity of your own room. The song proves you can do much more with less.

This song will be featured in his upcoming self-titled album in August.

3) Wale - "The Kramer"

Hip-hop is one of those genres that some people just loathe. I used to be one of those people, who discounted hop-hop without giving it a chance. Unfortunately, the popular hip-hop songs that are heard by the masses aren't helping the cause. Many people think a hip-hop song is either about violence or sex. This song destroys the stereotype by actually sending out a message on a touchy topic.

If you think the song's title stems from the famous Kramer charcter from Seinfeld, you are correct. The beginning of the song plays out the infamous "n-word" tirade that Michael Richards had during a stint at a Los Angeles comedy club. My favorite part of the song is the lyrics he rhymes in the second verse of the song, where he compares on how the "n-word" is used in different contexts. The song is pretty simple, only going on with a simple drum beat with a chorus backdrop accompaying Wale's rhymes. The song is very serious in tone and the message he rhymes ring true. The song ends with Richard's apology on his tirade during his guest appearance on David Letterman's late night show.

4) Beirut - "Prenzlauerberg"

Now for some international flavor. Beirut is actually an American musician that got inspired from Balkian music during his trip that he gathered some musicians and play out songs similar to what he heard. The song moves in a steady waltz time (3/4) by the accordian with chants, jangling tambourines, and blaring horns that makes you want to dance in one instance, but also makes you reflect upon things in another instance. It took me a while to get comfortable listening to the song, but I loved the song ever since. It's nice to listen to a song outside to what you've used to listening to throughout your life.

This song appears in Gulag Orkestar, released in 2007.

5) Red Sparowes - "A Message of Avarice Rained Down and Carried Us Away into False Dreams of Endless Riches"

Lately, I've been listening to a lot of post-rock. What is post-rock? Wikipedia defines post-rock as "a genre of alternative rockmusical instruments commonly associated with rock music, but using rhythms, harmonies, melodies, timbre, and chord progressions that are not found in rock tradition." In simpler terms, it's instrumental rock. However, there's more than meets the eye when you listen to a post-rock song. The songs are constructed similar (to a point) to clazzical music, where rhythms, harmonies, melodies, and dynamics are employed to evoke emotions to the song. Typically, there are no vocals featured in a post-rock song.

I chose this song because I think it's one of the better post-rock songs I can post to "break-the-ice." The song starts off with a simple riff by a slide guitar, which gives off an "evil force" with each note plucked. A few minutes in, the band starts to kick in. The song goes into a steady rhythm till it gets toward midway, where the song goes quiet for a bit until it heads to it's uphill climax toward the end of the song. There is no verse-chorus-verse structure to follow, but many post-rock songs will feature particular "segments" that a person can pick up to notify them that they've entered a different phase of the song.

There's something about instrumentals, whether it's from a post-rock song or from clazzical music, that easily evokes a certain kind of emotion, event, situation, setting, etc. without the assistance of vocals. I hope you find a little bit of that in this song.

This song is featured in Every Red Heart Shines Toward the Sun, released in 2006.

6) Ratatat - "Mirando"

I'll end this post on a light-hearted note with this unique electronica/instrumental song by Ratatat. The song is catchy with the unique Indian-like beat with crazy synths and guitars grazing above the beat. The director of the music video did a nice job matching clips from the Predator movie with the song. I'm not sure if this is your "cup of tea", but it suits me fine. I might be picking up the album featuring this song soon.

This song is featured on LP3, released just this past Tuesday.

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I hope you enjoyed this post and the songs I featured here tonight. No comments necessary. Hope all of you are doing well.

BTW, I'm doing fine. The week was okay, nothing fun but nothing bad. Just a bit mundane.

According to my Gamespot profile, I've been a member for five years now. It nothing to really boast about though, I haven't made much of an impact here. But I don't mind that, I've enjoyed the company I've managed to create in my tenure here. Sure, I don't have a lot of friends here, but I know all of you are good genuine people. Yes, all of us have gone through our hardships. That's just life, it will always push back. Sometimes we manage to push it back and win, sometimes we can't budge an inch. In face of all the obstacles we face, all of us has to take something out of it. I believe that's the hardest part of life, taking the positives out from all the negatives. I'm guilty in that I haven't looked at the things I'm doing well while I stew in my the mistakes that I've made at times. Maybe I'll get out of the slump I've been feeling lately, maybe not. It's all in the eyes of the beholder.

Time has certainly flown by. There are things where I have improved upon, some things where I've faltered since then, and some things that haven't changed during that span. Five years ago, I was a lost soul. I was trying to enjoy my summer vacation, but was nervous on what college would be. I was also regretting my decision to room with a high school friend whom I've had a love-hate deal going on. I didn't have any great goals set up, I was wallowing in my own depression and thought life was going to dictate what I ended up being. But I handled myself quite well during college, and then moved on to the working life. You'd think I figured things out by now.

Nope, I'm still a lost soul. Sure, I have a college degree, money, and a job. But that doesn't mean I'm happy. Hell, I'm far from it. I'm twenty-three years old and still frustrated as ever. My fears of being around people have diminished for the most part, and I don't have to worry about school work anymore, but the business world is a completely different kind of monster. It's all about earning the money in any means necessary. That's the environment at my current job that I loathe so much. That aggressive behavior to get things done to get paid. I've been spending 40-45 hours a week simply keeping up with the demands at work that I haven't been able to stop to gather myself. There's nothing worse in life where you're stuck living in a cycle.

You'd think that it'd be easy to solve the problem. But life always throws in a wrench or two to make things harder to accomplish. Right now, I'd love to simply quit my job and try to catch up on enjoying life once in a while. There's animes that needs to be watched, manga that needs to be read, and video games that needs to be played. It's not that simple to cut ties. Since this is my first job, I have to make sure that I end my tenure at the right time and on a good note. I'll end up using some of my co-workers as references as I apply for my future jobs. When you're starting off your working life after graduation, the most important thing recruiters will tell you is to establish networks.

That's just one of the challenges I'm facing on my current situation right now. There are other components that I have to consider, such as the state of the economy and the state of my family. We all face multiple obstacles. It's not easy to know the best way to clear all the barriers that get in our way. Even if we get past one, there's always another one after it. That's another part of life that I'm having a hard time confronting. You've done so much to get past one thing and then all of sudden, there's something else right there to stop your momentum. It wears you out, and you feel like you don't have anything left in the tank to get over the next hump.

Some people are able to find that extra energy within themselves to continue to fight, while others continue to struggle. Again, it's all on the eyes of the beholder. For me, I'm always at fault for not getting back up to tackle the next obstacle ahead. I don't know how bad you guys have been going through, and I don't think I'll make much of an impact with this blog entry today.

But sometimes we forget, that there are some obstacles that one person can't do alone. There are some obstacles that we need help from a friend to accomplish. Whether it's completing a group project, raising capital to start a business, or going over personal issues, it takes two to get over the hump. I am guilty for refusing assistance in battling over an obstacle, only to realize that I needed that help all that time. Again, I don't think I'll make much of an impact here, but I hope some of you get the message.

We are all in a battle to search something within ourselves. It will not be easy. It will take time and effort. Things will be bad for a while. But I hope that all of you will find it within themselves to continue to go forth. Maybe tackle some smaller obstacles first and build from that. Don't be afraid to lose or fail. Don't be afraid to look like an idiot. As long as you take something from it, you can continue to go forth in tackling that obstacle that's been in your way

I know I haven't been in the best of moods lately, so this blog is a small redeeming thing for myself. I know I haven't commented much on your blog entries, but I thank all of you for reading my entry tonight. No comments necessary.

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"So you've got no friends and you wander through the night. And now you watch the sunrise through a rifle-sight. Well, don't believe in people who say it's all been done. They have time to talk because their race is run.

So get in some licks, and hold your head up. And soon you'll be drinking from that crystal cup."

-Silver Jews's "Advice to the Graduate"

It's been a while, hasn't it? Let's see what I can pull from my tired mind tonight. I apologize if this blog entry isn't interesting to read.

You Didn't Miss Anything

In case if you guys were wondering, you didn't miss much from me. For the most part, work has wore me out. The increased and constant workload from the accountant initiative has left me running on adrenaline to keep me running to get through the day. No matter if I had breakfast, or eat a heavy lunch, I always end up feeling so tired at the end of the day. I'm always falling asleep on my train rides going to work and coming home. I can barely motivate myself to do anything, but I still do my work, put in my time, and put in a smile for everyone. The accounting group is suffering, but someone's gotta do the dirty job.

Uh Oh, Didn't Make Budget

The firm I work for is going through some tough times this year. The e-mail I got on Tuesday reinforced that notion. The firm missed it's collections budget by a significant chunk, about $700K. The CEO sent a mass e-mail to everyone in the company to step up collection efforts in July. The shortfall in collection couldn't have come at a bad time. July is the month where employees get promoted to the next ladder in their rank and therefore, the payroll expenses increases.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do collections work on my end because my group of project managers were busy with their stuff as well as my end on taking care of extraneous errands for my co-workers. This month, I'll have to start picking up the phone and become one of those annoying hasslers to get our clients to pay us for outstanding receivables. We have some clients who haven't paid invoices to us in over four years!

The last thing I want to become is to be a thorn on someone's side. But I've got no choice, I'll have to be one.

A Friend Finally Triumphs! (One Year Later)

The only friend I've been talking with in life finally achieved his goal of attaining a job. He got a job with the I.R.S. two weeks ago. No, he's not one of those evil agents going after those who evade taxes. He's doing an administrative task with the I.R.S., being a mail clerk. You think it sounds easy sorting our the mail, but he says it's actually pretty involving. Hell, his salary is pretty good too.

In the past year, he's been the only friend I've been able to talk to face-to-face. He'd come down from his home to visit me during my lunch break to talk about Philly sports, how bad politics are, and our personal lives. He's been frustrated by not being able to attain a job, while I've been frustrated in my job. How ironic is that? Anyways, it's been just over a year since we both graduated and I'm happy that he finally found a job. A job that's suitable toward his credentials too. He didn't have a lot to ride on when he graduated.

I hate to admit it, but I do miss his presence, but he's got bills to pay. Congrats Brian!

Ruri, A New United States Citizen

Yesterday, I attended a "special" citizenship ceremony at the Pennsylvania Convention Center to be officially be sworn-in as a United States citizen. I still had to wake up early to go through the entrance process. I had to wait and sit in the ballroom for two hours before the ceremonies began. At least the ceremony went by quickly, only lasting an hour. I was one of 3,000 people newly inducted as a U.S. citizen yesterday.

Thanks to the ceremony, I had a day off from the office. But I felt extremely queasy during the day in fear of missing a lot of important work, which I did. Logging onto my computer this morning, I had 25 unread e-mail messages. D'oh!

Walked Around Philly (Ow, My Legs)

After the ceremony, we literally walked 40+ blocks around the city. My legs were severely sore once I finally got home. But it was nice to walk around the city on a nice (albeit a bit hot) day.

After the citizenship ceremony finished, my brother wanted to take me to a Vietnamese noodle shop to eat for lunch. Unfortunately, when we got there, there was a line of teenagers (around thirty or so) waiting outside the restaurant to eat. Since the restaurant was quite small and the line quite large, we decided to eat lunch elsewhere. We decided to walk over 10 blocks or so to eat some burritos at Qdoba. Once we finished eating, we decided to walk to three music record shops in the city.

The first one we visited was Long in the Tooth, which was the closest one from the Qdoba we were at. We quickly browsed around for twenty minutes, but didn't find anything noteworthy to purchase. After that, we walked 20+ blocks from there to Repo Records. There were a few records I was interested in purchasing, but both of us decided it'd be best to purchase them at the final record shop we were going to, AKA Music. That was an eleven block walk. At AKA, I purchased two music albums: Sigur Ros's Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust (With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly) on CD and The War on Drug's Wagonwheel Blues on vinyl. We walked the final nine blocks back to the closest train station to head back home.

Some exercise, eh? I probably should walk around more.

On Repeat

My brother and I have been only playing a few games on repeat recently. I've kept myself busy playing GRID and Puzzle Quest, while my brother's been playing Ouendan and Trauma Center.

GRID has been a very fun game to play. I hate the fact that each season is very short, only six race events per season. At the end of each season, you have your choice to race in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which they modified as racing the track for 24 minutes. I don't mind racing it because it brings in nice money and reputation, but the repetition of racing the track has gotten quite stale already. I expect to play this game a lot this weekend.

My brother's been mocking me whenever I play Puzzle Quest, but I don't mind. It's an addicting puzzle game. The gameplay is the main thing that keeps my interest in the game high. The battle between you and the computer, selecting the right move to make to win the battle. I don't mind the adventure and RPG aspects of the game that much. As long as there's battles to fight, I'll continue playing the game until I get sick of it.

My brother's very good at Ouendan. He's been playing the game at the hardest difficulty, which is the cheerleader tier in the game, and getting great scores in most of the songs he's been playing at. I'm still at the lowest difficulty of the game. My reactions aren't as sharp as it used to be. It's the same between him and I in similar rhythm music games we've played: Frequency, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, etc.

As for Trauma Center... he's progressing. The first game is quite sadistic.

A New Store in Town

I'm not sure if this has been happening in your area, but it looks like Gamestop has some competition in the video game retail market. In two malls in my area, I've seen a new Game Trader store open up. It's pretty much your non-thrills video game retail store. I find it funny, through I could see why, that their stores are located in the extreme opposite side of where Gamestop is located. A clever tactic if most of the traffic goes through that area, a dud if it doesn't.

How to Draw Manga Like the Pros... NOT

One day, my partner brought into work one of those How to Draw Manga Like the Pros book into work, since I told him I'm an anime fan. I browsed through the book and shook my head in disbelief. This is far from your typical anime/manga character sketch. It's just... ugh.

Why the Change in Avatar?

Not sure if any of you noticed during my blog hiatus, but I changed my avatar. I think I have the Livejournal curse when it comes to avatars. At Livejournal, you can store a number of avatars on your journal and select the one you'd like that represents closely with the context of the entry. I felt like the FLCL avatar was a true reflection of what I felt like during the stretch, so I switched it over to the one I have up now. It's Sakaki from Azumanga Daioh for some of you wanted to know who the character is in my avatar. I felt like the longing look in her face is reflective of what I've been feeling lately, longing for something.

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I might be writing up a second blog entry this weekend. I had something in mind, though it's still muddled in my mind for now. I apologize for not writing up a better blog entry tonight, but I just wanted to let you guys know about my recent events and such.

In the meantime, I hope things are going well with all of you! Till next entry...

I'd just to post a few other notes of interest in this blog today...

Hey, That's Wrong!

Two weeks ago, my brother ordered up a DS emulator card and flash memory to play any DS games available to download from emulator sites. He wanted it so that he can play Japanese DS games, as well as "check out" games released domestically to see if they're worth the purchase or not. Don't get me wrong, we have ten official DS games in our collection. But you can't resist the ability to attain something for "free", even if it's through the wrong means. He's already downloaded a couple of games, but not much. Here are some of the downloaded games I've played.

-Ouendan (Elite Beat Agents Japanese Version): This game is very fun and challenging! It's essentially the original version of Elite Beat Agents here in the United States. The gameplay is simple, you simply tap on the circle when it appears. There's numbers that appear that show you what order to hit the circle on. The circles usually sync up with the music very well, whether it's following the vocals or an instrument (drums, guitar). As you play, your performance affect what's going on in a particular scene. You play in various areas in Japan, where you help people overcome the obstacles they face.

The game is difficult though. It's hard to truly beat a song on your first try because you don't know what's going to come next. Also, if you make a mistake, it's very hard to recover. Most likely, you'll end of losing the song because they mistake you made is in the middle of a crazy section where are lot of tapping has to occur. It's no different than your other rtythm music games like Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero. You'll hit a roadbump somewhere down the road and sometimes you'll be stuck there for some time. But at least the game is fun enough that you'll continue to work at it until you succeed.

The game's boasts an impressive soundtrack. There isn't one song I hated, even though I didn't know all but one. The only song I knew is the song that was featured as the first opening song on Fullmetal Alchemist.

My brother also download the sequel to this game, as well as Elite Beat Agents.

-Puzzle Quest: Another game which I've been enjoying a lot lately. It's odd to play a puzzle game with RPG elements, but somehow this game does a great job with the concept. I'm still in the early stages of the game, so I can't provide a detailed description of the game. So far, I've just been performing many quests, battling enemies along the way. I don't mind the battling because that's the fun part of the game.

The battle consists of you and the enemy taking turns playing on the same board. The board consists of four magical elements, along with skulls, experience points, money, and multipliers. Both you and your enemy will collect mana to cast special attacks or spells onto each other. The game goes on until one's health is fully depleted. It may sound simple at first, but there's more than meets the eye. As you level up, you have the ability to decide which special powers you can implement in battle. You selection of special attacks adds another element outside of deciding what move to take on the board.

There's many more things that I've yet to uncover in the game. But so far, the game's been fun to play.

-Meteos: The essential pick-up and play puzzle game for me. It's another puzzle game, where you match three same element in a row, horizontally or vertically, to shoot anything above them upward. In the main story mode, you have to launch enough elements to destroy the planet. There are a few other modes to play as well, but there isn't a lot of depth in the game to keep you interested in the long run. I mainly play the game to pass the time when I find myself bored.

Stumbling Out of the Starting GRID

Yesterday, I purchased GRID for the X-Box 360. It took me some time to get the feel of the game, but now I think I've got a handle on how the race in the game. The game essentially revolves around you and your rise upthe racing elites. There are three different areas you race in, the United States, Europe, and Japan. Early on, you're racing as a driver for hire. You race for certain teams in one of the three areas. Each team has certain objectives that they want you accomplish. Some objectives you'll end up finding is finishing ahead of a rival team, attaining a certain speed for a car, and other objectives. After finishing numerous races, you get to start up your own team and work your way through various racing groups from each region with your team. I'm only in my second season with my new team, so I haven't delved into that portion of the game yet.

The racing took me some time to get used to. GRID is an arcade racing game for the most part, so you can succeed in many tracks without having to follow the proper line or breaking points in a simulation game. But there are also some sim aspects implemented in the game as well. You can suffer damage to you car, which affects the condition of your car depending on what you broke in your car. For the most part, you can still race competitively with a damaged car. The only type of damage that takes you out the race is where you crash your car head-on. However, the game provides a unique option once you crash your car.

GRID offers a "flashback replay" option, where you warp back to a section before you made that fatal mistake. It's cheating in a sense, but also a savior in another. The flashback replay is really great when you make a mistake at a critical time at a race. Take this situation for instance. You're in the lead for the entire race, coming toward the finish. Then all of a sudden, you veer off-track, lose the lead, and probably lost your win. No problem! Replay back and rectify your mistake! You win! How sinister is that?

The racing is fast and furious! Unlike in sim racers where everyone tries to stay in line and keep their cars intact to finish the race, the computers in this game are much more aggressive and will bump and grind with you to take over your position. Also, you can see your rivals make mistakes in front of you as well, which adds a more realistic tone to the racing than other racing games.

The only thing I found pretty bland was the overall presentation of the game. It looks stale compared to other games in the genre. This is just a small gripe against the game. Otherwise, I found the game very enjoyable.

A Small Glimpse into Ruri's Music

For over a year now, I've been using this website called IMEEM to create personal music playlists online. My initial intent of using IMEEM was to post playlists I created and embed them on my Livejournal blog for the few friends who read my LJ blog. Now I'm opening up the numerous amounts of playlists and songs I've uploaded onto my IMEEM account to share with you, if you guys are interested.

I believe most of the songs available in the full lengths for visitors, though there might be a numer of songs that are limited to 30-second song clips due to a few circumstances. I apologize if that's the case. Feel free to browse through my account! I think I have around 100 songs upload to my account. Enjoy the songs!

Ruri's IMEEM Website

At a Blogging Crossroads

I've come at a crossroads with my blog here. It's nothing too serious, but it's something that's been bothering me for a while.

I stated toward the end of my previous entry, I feel like I'm just surviving through life and not being able to truly enjoy life. I have a lot of things right now that have kept me interested. I just haven't been able to fully enjoy them as much as I used to. I've been playing Ouendan, Meteos, Puzzle Quest, GRID, and Rock Band and found myself having fin. But that moment of happiness soon disappears once I've had my gaming fill. It hasn't been "I finally beat that song in Ouendan", it's been more of a weak "yay."

I believe my monotonous emotion have affected my blog lately. I feel like there's a lack of "life" and "emotion" in my recent entries. Lately, my blog entries have come out by force and I'm beginning to feel like blogging has been more of a job than a hobby. It's like "I have to blog" instead of "I'm going to blog about this, this and that tonight." I know I'm being overly critical over a small thing, but I feel like I could offer so much more than what's been on this blog in the last month or so.

I've been thinking of making a few personal changes on this blog, as well as on my own personal blogging habits. They've been floating around in my head for some time. Whether I follow-up on my own ideas is a separate question, but I still feel like I need to do something to "jolt" this blog a bit.

I also want to announce that I'm going on a blogging hiatus for a bit. Since I don't foresee anything interesting to occur, nor see myself having an outside inspired entry to hit me anytime soon, I'm going to stop blogging for a bit. That doesn't mean I'll be away from Gamespot entirely. I'll still be on this site, reading the latest news and reviews, reading your latest blog entries and possibly comment on them, and lurk through the boards. I need a break of forcing myself to blog and come up with something to talk about, instead of having the content flow out of my mind with some life behind it. This will also give me some extra rest from the time I've been spending typing up a blog entry.

I'm aiming for Independence Day weekend to make my re-appearance, unless something drastically happens to me in the meantime.

Well, that's all that I wanted to discuss for tonight. Thanks for reading. Till next entry, godspeed to all!

"Your job sounds stressful and rewarding at the same time."

That's the comment left by kingrich06 on my previous entry, and he's right on. The only way that anyone gets rewarded in the office is if they truly work hard AND show results for it. I felt that mentality once I started to work full-time and it grew as I continued to work in the office. Things have been getting tougher as the economy continues to slip. The mood around the office isn't as lively as it used to be. Things are harder to earn in these times where money is strapped as daily expenses are cutting deeper into everyone's pockets.

In an office meeting three months ago, the principal of our office stressed that if the firm was going to succeed, the output of services we provide to our clients has to be top notch. The stress was always there for me, but I'm starting to feel the extra stress of trying to truly succeed. For the accounting department, the "higher-ups" implemented a new "accounting initiative" to integrate the accounting elements better within the project itself.

Essentially, there are three significant goals set in this new accounting initiative. First, to shorten the billing processing time from three weeks down to two weeks. If we are successful in completing billings sooner, we would have more time within each month to attack other accounting objectives all project managers would like us to do. Second, to keep track of contracts and budgets. If we were to pay more attention to contract terms and making sure budgets are kept under control, then we'd have better relationship with our clients. Third, work on collecting the money we worked for. Right now, the entire firm is suffering from an enormous amount of uncollected money. We are given the task to continually nag clients who haven't paid us for the services the firm provided.

The biggest obstacle is to get the initiative running and going in the right direction. The initiative started this month and I can definitely say that the workload, along with the stress, has increased. The amount of activity I've had to go through is unbelievable. This week was the worst so far, as two crazy requests from two project managers took more than one full working day to complete. In fact, it took the entire day and the next morning to complete those tasks. To complete those tasks in the midst of all the other things my partner and I had to go through took more than what our bodies can handle. Today, both of us were running on fumes.

What about the results? It's still way to early to tell if we're truly making a difference yet. We have missed our target of getting all billings done within two weeks of when they are first drafted, but we are almost done, which is a step in the right direction. We're still behind on keeping track of budgets and contracts on all projects, but we are getting more involved. We also have done some collections work as well. So it seems like we're going in the right direction, but we still have a mountain to climb.

Of course, all of the work we've been is coming at the expense of something else. For both of us, it's starting to cut into our times to relax. Both of us have been coming into work before 9AM and leaving work after 5PM. My parents have been concerned about the long hours I've been working this year. Last year, I was always out of work by 5PM and home by 6:30PM. Now I've been coming home after 7:30PM. [Yes, I have a long commute. But at least it's through public transportation for 90% of the way.]

My aunt asked me last week if my job was getting stressful. I answered yes. She said that I should quit my current job and start looking for a new one immediately. I told her it was hard for me to leave now due to a few circumstances. She still insisted.

In the midst of everything I had to go through in the office this year (taking over accounting duties once my supervisor left, helping my partner get accustomed to our procedures, the new accounting initiative), I'm surprised I'm still here typing this blog entry. I'm tired as hell, but I still bring myself up to write out my thoughts for the night.

"It seems to me I can live my life, a lot better than I think I can. I guess that's why they call me... they call me the working man." -Rush

I've been reflecting upon that lyric for some time now. There are things that I could've done to better my life. I could leave the company now or take a vacation. Instead, I decided (for now) to stick with the gameplan I have right now. The current workload I have is too important to be pushed aside, so I have to tough it out now. There could be a slight break down the road, in which I hope to take a break from work once that opportunity arrives. The work's not great, but it's not horrible either. Sooner or later, I'll move on to a new job/place where the work is less stressful, but also allows me to enjoy life more. I'm living, but I haven't had much time to simply relax and truly enjoy the life I have right now. I have plenty of things to interest me, but I just haven't been able to truly enjoy them much as I used to.

For now, I'll continue to do my best. I can't let these things bother me much anymore.

I hope all of you guys are doing well! I plan on writing up a second entry this weekend, probably on Sunday. It'll be on the lighter things of my life. Thanks for reading my entry tonight!