Ugh. I'm all awash with the Final Fantasy III love. I picked up the game last night and stayed up way too late playing it. I love it! Granted the customization system in this particular game (job system) is a little too simple compared to recent games like Final Fantasy X and XII, but still, it's great fun! The graphics are so cute and I just love it love it love it. I have been looking for this game for what seems like forever, and now I've found it! With only 5 days left until the release of Final Fantasy IV!

This means I am on a mission now. A mission to beat Final Fantasy III in 5 days so that I can play Final Fantasy IV soundly when I go back to China. I should also probably finish Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings, but that game just isn't really great. The storyline really disappointed me and the whole game is just about summoning a huge ass army of espers to do your dirty work. Not really all that much fun, plus everyone walks slow as $%$@#!

Two nights ago I finished reading Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans, and I loved it, all except for one thing: Mr. Ishiguro's actual writing style. In fact, I hate the slow, winding, suspense building way that he writes so much, I would like to bang my head in frustration and confusion because his stories are so good I get addicted to them and read them by flashlight all night.

Well, I guess I don't hate the way he writes because he's so good at building up the story layer by layer and piling on the suspense like that, and I'd definitely reccomend his books to anyone, I suppose I'm frustrated by his style because his stories are simply so addictive that I can't bear to put them down once I've started reading, and his style is probably what makes it so addictive, even though I hate to think of it like that because his way of using flashbacks and memories to tell the story is annoying. But good. Good and annoying.

Anyways, now that I've got 30 minutes to spare and there is freshly made soy milk and hot tea in front of me, I thought I ought to put down here what I plan to read this summer, otherwise known as my "Summer Reading List". Because even though I have here all the books I plan to read, I'll never get around to actually opening them up and reading through unless I have some sort of a plan, so here it is:

The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams
Neuromancer by William Gibson
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Infinite Jest: A Novel by David Foster Wallace
Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
The Bell Jar by Silvia Plath

That's all I've got for now. I realize it's not really a lot, but I'm leaving for China to see the Olympics in 3-1/2 weeks, and in that time, I've gotta get down at least 3 units of Bio 20, finally get my learners (I procrastinate a lot), and of course, make it at least 75% through Pokemon Diamond and beat The Subspace Emissary with 100% completion on SSBB. So, with that in mind, I plan to do a fair bit of reading at work, which will be done on the 13th, so after that I will have more time, but I managed to just about finish The Salmon of Doubt yesterday, so I'll be starting on A Brief History of Time today hopefully. If anyone has suggestions for books I should be reading, or opinions on books on my list, please let me know, I'd love to hear what you have on your summer reading list.

Now the other thing about summer is that there's no need to be getting up very early in the mornings, which means there's no need for me to try to get as much sleep as I can because I can always sleep in, which has meant long gaming sessions with my beloved DS at night. I've spent a lot of time playing Pokemon Diamond lately, but not only that, I've become re-addicted to Tetris, thanks to Tetris DS. As a kid I spent hours and hours honing my fine brick dropping skills on my mom's work computer with the Microsoft Entertainment Pack. At the time I thought I had the finest Tetris fingers in all the land. Maybe my skills have dropped off since then, or maybe I was just never really all that great at it to begin with. Either way, I sucked at Tetris DS when I first picked it up. I had to start off everything at level 1 and was constantly getting crushed by my CPU opponent. With hours and hours of practice now under my belt, I must say that I am getting better at it.

I also tried my hands at Arkanoid DS and Space Invaders Extreme, for the full retro trifecta. Arkanoid DS sucked ass in my opinion because the graphics look about as good as they did on the Commodore 64. I exaggerate. The graphics are slightly better, but the fact that the whole thing is laid out on two screens confuses my puny brain and I honestly didn't enjoy playing it as much as I did a few years ago on the PC. The touch moving makes the game easier in my opinion, but I like to keep the original feel of the game so I play with my control pad. Space Invaders Extreme, on the other hand, is so revamped from the original Space Invaders that I actually laughed out loud the first time I booted it up, and continued to laugh all the way through. It's just so... radical. Going from a Space Invaders game with literally about 3 colours to a full-on animated background with pretty coloured lasers and whatnot. It's different, and it's still as fun as Space Invaders was when I was 6 years old. Also in the region of retro games, I finally got my hands on a copy of Yoshi's Island DS! YAY!!! Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island was my favourite game of all time on the SNES. In my opinion, it is the greatest game in the whole Super Mario series. Better than all the other Super Mario Bros. and Lost Levels and whatnot. I just LOVE it, and if you don't own a SNES, you must either run out and buy a SNES along with Yoshi's Island, or run outside and grab this game on the DS. It is love. I also tried out Super Mario 64 DS, and loved it as well, but I didn't have such a huge attachment to Super Mario 64 as I did to Yoshi's Island, so while I loved it, I'm still spending most of my time playing Yoshi's Island DS.

Wow, that was an insanely long post. Well, I have to get back to studying Bio and going to work and all that sort of boring stuff.

OMFG.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53420

Chrono Trigger.
On the DS.
This Christmas.







I have cried tears of joy and happiness. Thank you, the gods of video games, for helping Square Enix bring about this wonderful news.

Things I've done today instead of studying for my Chem 25IB exam tomorrow:

• Leveled my SNW Orpesia family to lvl 21, 70% to lvl 22
• Played 2 hours straight of Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2. That game is the best thing ever.
• Played Mario Kart Wii online and kicked some "Barbie" playing Baby Peach's ass. Go Bowser!
• Leveled my Piplup to 15 and realized that Shinx is useless because it can't even beat a level 1 Bidoof at level 6. Obsessively leveling before I get to my first gym leader. Pokemon is my drug.
• Made it half way through the second chapter of Pheonix Wright.
• Played a bit of Kirby: Canvas Curse. A friend recommended it. I will... reserve judgment... But then again, Kirby games never have been my favourite. It's a cute kind of game, gets a little hectic at times when you're trying to draw.
• Tried The World Ends With You. Didn't really hate it, but didn't really love it either... ]= Too bad. I was so excited for this game, hoping it would really be totally awesome, but I feel about it the same way I felt about Kingdom Hearts : Chain of Memories. Weird battle system, imperfect controls.
• Ate all the bagels left in the house.
• Made this list.

Alright. So pretty much I'll wing my exam tomorrow because I don't even have time to study anymore. I have to leave in an hour to go see my acupuncturist. So productive.

So, what's everyone been up to so far?

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