EDDIEWONG

Ulala (XX Nov 2001 – 18 Apr 2007)

Here are some collage of Ulala photos taken via my many cellphones during the last few years. I have more cellphone pics of Ulala than from a normal camera since my cellphone is always close by allowing me to take snaps of him whenever I feel like…

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Finally, the Dr. Slump Ncha DVD set is now on display (but it doesn’t hit the market till the end of March)! Just look at those lovely figures, the cover arts and the packaging! Someone gimme ¥105,000 pleeeeeease~

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… who is the king now?

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Well, here he is. Isn’t he strong?

As soon as I entered the clinic to pick up Ulala after his operation, I could already see the top of his head moving around in the cage. The vet also told me that he ate cabbage as soon as he woke up… hahahahaha. When the vet transferred him into the carry case, he pee’d himself. I’m not sure if he lost control due to the operation, or he was trying to make himself safe by marking territory. But anyway…

When I got him home, I placed him deep inside his cage but he came out right away to drink water. He then ran and circled the living room before going back into the cage and lied down. Every now and again he gets up and looks around and drink lots of water before lying down again. I think he is trying hard to break out of the effects of the anaesthetics. Pain-wise, its kinda suppressed right now via an injection. From tomorrow, I’d have to feed him pain killers.

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By now, I guess Ulala’s operation is over and he’s probably about to wake up soon. I dropped him off at the rabbit specialists this morning at 10:30am and will need to go to pick him up at 5pm.

After leaving the vets, I went to a pet store to buy a new hard carry case and a few pet blankets. I already have a carry case for Ulala but it is a soft case which makes it hardly ideal to carry the poor fella in after an operation especially considering it will be rush hour on the trains when I pick him up. Anyway, the shop had the case I wanted but it was only available in green, not the beige I wanted. I was tempted to go to another pet store to find a beige one but since I have ¥3,000 worth of points at this shop, it would have been silly to go elsewhere and pay full price for one since I’m pretty sure the case will only be used for this one occasion.

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… like crazy! The vest is to hide his patchy fur…

Yesterday, I attended Geoff’s farewell party at his place along with like 25 other people, out of which, I knew only 5 people. Geoff is about to leave Tokyo and return home to France with his gf, after spending the last 2 years here.

These are the kind of times that make me realise how fast time really flies. I remember as if it was only yesterday when I interviewed Geoff for a designer position at the company I was working for. We worked together for only a year before I resigned. And even that was close to a year ago.

Anyway, Geoff’s place was pretty big and easily accommodated all 25 of us with even more-than-enough space left for dancing! And you should have seen the amount of food he and his gf prepared! They spent like 2 days preparing it all. There was just so much food, even after 25 people had been at it, there was definitely about 80% of it remaining – enough to last weeks! And that is not including the drinks and cakes.

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… after moulting like crazy for the past month. He’s so beautiful now…

Hardly surprising since the Japanese launch of the Playstation 3 is only 6 days away (November 11). Here, there are three Playstation 3 displays (each hooked up to a Sony Bravia TV): one was looping game trailers, one was running a tennis game, and the last one running Ridge Racer 7. To be honest, both the tennis game and Ridge Racer didn’t look impressive in real-time. Ridge Racer actually looked a little jaggy… hmmmmmm…

Anyway, after thinking about it, I have decided that I will not buy a PS3 on launch day (if ever). Reasons being:

1. I am not a hardcore gamer
2. there are no killer launch games
3. I don’t see the appeal of Blu-Ray just yet
4. JP¥70,000 is too steep for me
5. these are revision A units and I ain’t no guinea pig for Sony
6. the thought of having to camp outside a reseller for a night or two with a few hundred geeks… doesn’t exactly turn me on. And to make this worse, the originally promised 100,000 units for launch (nationwide) has been dropped to 80,000 units.

Last night, I met up for dinner with 2 friends whom are visiting from Hong Kong. One of them had this BlackBerry device (supposedly very popular with business people in US?) which has to be the least ugly model I have seen. It’s a little wide but its not so thick nor long and the screen is nice. But don’t ask me which model this is, I wouldn’t know to save my life (this is the first one I’ve ever touched).

Despite all models being… well… ugly, they do seem rather convenient having the whole keyboard layed out. But I’d very much prefer not having the keyboard just thrown onto the body like that – more thought should have went into the design. This brings me to the Japanese equivilents, namely Wilcom’s W-ZERO3 and Softbank’s X01HT. Much better thought out and sexier in appearance, don’t you think? This is design…

Apparently so, according to this poster on the train. The drama version came out on DVD on October 27. I’d love to watch one…

Update: 2006 November 3
Yes, a real-life drama does exist and I can’t believe I missed it! Here is the official website. And here are the opening and closing themes. Isn’t she kawaii?

… at train stations across Tokyo.

Picture taken at Shinjuku JR station (I also spotted in Ikebukuro)

… a new TV drama which aired from October 11 (though, I’ve never watched it).

I love this billboard poster design! How it depicts an overall image of a foetus with the 14yr old girl enclosed in the center depicting her suffocation, isolation, sadness, helpless-ness, worries, etc., all in this one shot! Absolutely great stuff!

Picture taken at Shibuya JR station

I only just found out about this new LaLaport shopping mall in Toyosu a week or so ago via a TV program. The TV program mainly focused on the Kidzania part of the shopping mall which happens to be a huge in-house theme park. Because I was busy cleaning Ulala’s cage at the time, I didn’t pay a great deal of attention to the program but I do clearly remember seeing kids with their families riding on small coasters, seeing facilities for kids to learn how to put out fires, construction cranes which kids can control, etc., etc. I think it’s more than your average kinda themepark clearly with educational purposes in mind too.

The program didn’t say too much about the shopping aspects, which is understandable since all shopping malls are cloned with the same shops, anyway.

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From yesterday, I am no longer a Maid Cafe virgin. That’s right! I went to a Maid Cafe for the first (and probably last) time. Me and a visiting friend went around Akiba to get some stuff until we saw lots of maids on the streets and realised that despite how popular Maid Cafes are, we have never been to one before. Since we were tired and thirsty, we thought “ah, why not? Might as well try-out a Maid Cafe” therefore we strolled into the nearest one which is in the Don Quijote building on the 5F.

Upon arriving, we realised that the people queuing to get in were not just the everyday geeks of Akiba, instead there were some trendy males, couples and girl groups. I guess due to the recent popularity of Maid Cafes, people from all-walks-of-life are a little curious, just like me and my friend (^_-;). To my friends delight, which was to my disappointment, no photo signs were splattered all over the entrance area! Damn, I so wanted to take some pics of my friend being served by a maid, something which he disapproved of well before we came anywhere near the building (he knows how reckless and dangerous I can be with a cam).

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… from eating unhealthy food literally every day. Darn, I so love meat, oily and junk food!

Yep, flea market time again in Musashi-Koyama. I guess most of you will remember, I usually join the girls and participate twice a year (May and October). The one that was supposed to happen in May was cancelled due to bad weather therefore at todays market, most of us had quite a bit to sell. Sometimes I just wonder where all these things come from especially with the girls. They’re like here twice a year and each time, they have cases and cases of stuff to sell!?!

With it being a 3 day weekend coupled with nice weather, I guess most people are out of town hence todays sales was not as good as before. We were placed at our usual spot which is between the station and the shopping mall therefore a lot of people walk by and checkout our stuff. Biggest problem is, this area is not a posh area and most of the residents are pensioners. Also, there seems to be a lot of Chinese and Philipino shoppers. All this means, we cannot sell our stuff for a high price – we’ve always kept the pricing around ¥300-800.

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I was chilling this afternoon with Ulala at the usual spot cuz the weather was beautiful (after 2 days of solid rain). I decided to catch up with all my unread Metropolis magazines (a free foreigner magazine) there while Ulala hanged out beneath my feet. But as usual, he prefers to sit on my lap. And as you can see, he’s enjoying the magazine too and checking out the chick next to the huge Gundam… hahahaha! Anyway, I couldn’t get much reading done with him on my lap.

Suddenly, I spotted a cat appearing from beneath the bushes and sat down nearby staring at Ulala. Ulala also spotted the cat but he’s usually cool with cats because a few years ago, I had to go back to England for 2 weeks therefore I left him with a friend who owned 3 very old cats. I heard from my friend that Ulala would approach the cats face-to-face whenever he got his run-a-about. But obviously, with the cats being so old, they neglected him… hahahahaha… poor Ulala.

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… well, kinda. Yesterday while riding the local train home, I came across this overhead banner advertisement for the re-release of the Dr. Slump comics! Issues 1 and 2 came out yesterday and I wish I knew earlier as I was hanging out near a good few manga shops yesterday.

It seems like the comics are just reprints of the originals from the 80s but with a new cover design/illustration. If that is the case, I won’t be needing these cuz I have every issue of the 80s original anyway (bought them here in Tokyo from used book stores). I mean, these reprints cost ¥1,100 each – not so cheap.

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… and I touched it! Woohoo (no, I didn’t get close enough to it at the Tokyo Game Show)!!

Anyway, besides running a good handful of trailers for upcoming games, the PS3 unit is just sitting in the center of the booth with only the buttons/disc-slot area having a protection cover over it. The rest of the body is exposed in all it’s glory.

Now that I’ve gotten so close to it and touched it, I realise this thing is huge! I think it may even be comparable to the size of the original Xbox. The words PlayStation 3 is raised from the body, speaking of which, I hate the high-gloss material of the body – it looks cheesy and cheap. But the visuals produced by this beast are truly incredible, to say the least.

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