Pinky: Tenjotenge

Yay~! Didn't think I'd be able to get these at all. Thanks so much, CK, for letting me buy them off you.

Sigh... looks like I'm becoming a Pinky collector. These 3 are usually auctioned off at jacked up price. And they're too nice (and expensive) to be cut up. Right now I'm practicing using bootleg Pinky, though. Wish I had an airbrush...

Eat! Vancouver... today (I mean, yesterday.)

Rob Feenie (middle) on Celebrity Stage
I gotta meet a friend in Richmond and was an hour-and-a-half late by the time I got to BC Place. (Sorry, Steven! And thanks so much for waiting!) This year's show is pretty much the same as last years. Ah! Didn't see Saveway there! They had good samples last time! Oh well. And... didn't get to see Rob Feenie close up! Last year I was in line to shake his hand but he had to leave right after I took a picture of him shaking my friend's hand! Aaaargh! No fair! And no hand shaking this year either! Sob sob sob...

The more memorable samples are...

• The smoke salmon nuggets are the best!
• The flavored water is weird. It's like pop diluted with water and without carbonation. But actually quite nice with no after taste. However... it's probably gone through some artificial or chemical process as they use "components of the fruit's sugar". I'd stay away from it.
• The "queen of all fruit" (sorry, forgot its name) juice at $40 a bottle ($50 outside the show) is unbelievably expensive. Well, they're selling it as health supplement instead of juice, though.
• And... of course, ya gotta try the chickenless chicken nuggets! They're made with tofu and... hmm... not too bad, but you can tell right away it's not chicken.
• The truffle spread was nice too! It was my first time ever to experience truffle at last year's show. Somehow I forgot what it tasted like. This time it's like condensing 50 cans of cream of mushroom soup into the size of your thumb nail. And a little woody too. Nice.
• The pet food section was interesting. I didn't know dogs are eating better than humans! (Boneless Chicken! Turkey! Buffalo! Wheatless!) And every booth has take-home sample, including the "raw" dog food that needs to be refrigerated. (That's like uncooked meat...)
  

"Have A Rice Day" car! So cute! (And yup, got their sample bag of brown rice.) And I never imagine making sushi with brown rice! Well, too bad they didn't actually have any sushi sample of that, but I imagine it wouldn't feel right.

A weird sign near the exit. Does this mean the exit is disabled, or an exit for disabled people???

Didn't sample any wine this year. Too tired and I'd probably pass out immediately if I did.

Link (Nanaca-crash)

http://www.geocities.jp/lledoece/nanaca-crash.html

Sneaky phone card

Ya know those long distant phone cards? They seem like a better deal than the phone companies, but they're very sneaky. I just had a bad experience with this Asia Direct card.

Ya know, they advertise with posters. And the rate for this one is 1 cent per minute. At the beginning of my call, I had 450+ minutes. Seems like a very good deal, right? The signal disappeared every now and then but I won't go into that. My call was disconnected after one hour and I had to retype the number and everything. This time 267 minutes were left! What? That's NOT one cent per minute! Nevertheless, I kept talking. My call was again disconnected after another hour! And this time 76 minutes were left! No way! This has to be a mistake! At this ratio, I should still have 20 minutes, right? No! After only 5 minutes, I got the 60-second warning and yup, it cut me off! So, instead of 450+ minutes, I only got 125 minutes!!!

So I called up their customer service and waited for 10 minutes to talk to a real person. There are hidden charges!!! Yeah, it says no connection fee, but there are network and other fees. And "everything is clearly written on the poster"! Blaming it on me? Go figure. I did spend 5 minutes trying to read it. I'm only 5 feet tall and the poster was 2+ feet above my head. The "details" are probably printed in 10 point type. That girl was probably only a phone operator and there was no use yelling at her. But I was too mad to even reason with "then why was my call cut off at every hour? So that you guys can charge me those fees every time?"

So, don't by any phone card from Direct.

Open house

Went to check out Backbone's open house last night. It wasn't as good as I expected. I thought EA is bad, but this place is worse! It's set up like a prison and quite intimidating. Woooow~ Big brother is watching~!

So, I didn't drop off any demo reel. Don't think I will. At least for now.

Last sakura

It's May already! I didn't expect the cherry blossom to last this long. (I mean, the blooming time of different species is slightly offset, so there's been continuously some trees in bloom.) But this would probably be the last. The pavement turns pink from the fallen petals, looking very pretty. (But I'm just glad that I don't have to clean up that car.)