![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Hail, hail, the gang's all here
Tonight I hung out with Carl, Kevin, Roman, and Andrew. We went to Kiku for dinner and ate a lot of random Japanese food. They had a special on toro, (fatty tuna), so we tried it. I thought it was ok but not horribly wonderful - I can quite live without it. They weren't kidding - while we were finishing our desserts we watched the head sushi chef cut up a gigantic pink fish that had to be tuna. Anyway... the food was yummy and it was good to listen to the waitstaff speaking Japanese. The place was so empty that it wasn't hard to hear them. At one point one waitress was like "kinyoubi desu! kinyoubi desu!" which means "It's Friday!" and I was like "anou... kyou wa, suiyoubi desu ne?" to Carl (Which actually meant "Isn't today Wednesday?"). The person was then like "Mokuyoubi desu..." which means "Today is Thursday". Then I realized that it is, infact, Tuesday, otherwise known as kayoubi. I've always had trouble remembering the days of the week except for kinyoubi, so I guess that wasn't so weird. I had plenty of chances to speak Japanese to the staff, but I didn't want to embarrass my friends (read: Carl).
Afterwards we came back here. I demonstrated Para Para Paradise, and everyone decided it was freaky. Then we played Ricochet Robot for a game, and Apples to Apples for waaaaaaaay too long. I made up some new cards on the blanks Carl gave me for Christmas last year. So now we have cards for "Harry Potter", "Sushi", "Dance Dance Revolution", "The Settlers of Catan", "The Post-IPO Implosion", "Corey Kosak", "Scott Robbins", "The CS Undergraduate Lounge", and such.
I guess it wasn't the games that made it fun, it was more hanging out with my old gang. See, these guys have been friends since fall of '96 or so (if you add in Oren and Brad and Li (and Tom)), and I barged in on their social group in the spring of '98 because of Japanese class. Well, Oren and Brad and Li and Kevin left town when they all graduated in spring 2000, and then Kevin came back, but now Andrew is leaving around Thanksgiving time, and Roman is graduating this semester and also most likely leaving. So, although these are people I still get to see semi-regularly and talk to online regularly, it's not an everyday thing like it used to be, which is weird. Soon it will be down to me, Carl, and Kevin, the unholy trinity of procrastination. Blah. Well, we should be catching up with Li in New York in a few weeks when we go up to take the nouryoku shiken, and I'm sure we'll find some way to hang out with Oren and Brad again (heck, maybe this summer the four of us will go back to Japan again! I can only hope...)
Well, so anyway, after everyone left I played PPP for a while. I tried like 20 different song routines. There are some I could do almost instantly and some that were really hard to catch on to. I think I have almost all of the hand motions down for Velfarre 2000, and now I am trying to get the feet right. The thing is, I discovered that if you just hold your arms to block the beams of the PPP controller, you will get "good"s, not "great"s on the arrows. And a lot of the routines sort of involve you keeping the beams blocked while you do hand windmills or waves or whatever. So, I dunno. By 20 November I should have at least 3-4 PPP routines memorized though. But I look really stupid doing them - I'm not really that stylish a club dancer, I'm really more of a ballroom dancer. I kind of see why people would rather be a technical player than a freestyler at DDR - freestyling involves looking cool because of dancing, and technical stuff just means you do so many complicated songs that nobody watches you, they watch the screen and are astounded by your combos.
I guess that's about all I have to say for the evening. I really feel like I'm kind of in my own little world both at work, home, and so on. Blah.
Oh, and Kevin showed me how to play Simcity 3000. Whee!
Afterwards we came back here. I demonstrated Para Para Paradise, and everyone decided it was freaky. Then we played Ricochet Robot for a game, and Apples to Apples for waaaaaaaay too long. I made up some new cards on the blanks Carl gave me for Christmas last year. So now we have cards for "Harry Potter", "Sushi", "Dance Dance Revolution", "The Settlers of Catan", "The Post-IPO Implosion", "Corey Kosak", "Scott Robbins", "The CS Undergraduate Lounge", and such.
I guess it wasn't the games that made it fun, it was more hanging out with my old gang. See, these guys have been friends since fall of '96 or so (if you add in Oren and Brad and Li (and Tom)), and I barged in on their social group in the spring of '98 because of Japanese class. Well, Oren and Brad and Li and Kevin left town when they all graduated in spring 2000, and then Kevin came back, but now Andrew is leaving around Thanksgiving time, and Roman is graduating this semester and also most likely leaving. So, although these are people I still get to see semi-regularly and talk to online regularly, it's not an everyday thing like it used to be, which is weird. Soon it will be down to me, Carl, and Kevin, the unholy trinity of procrastination. Blah. Well, we should be catching up with Li in New York in a few weeks when we go up to take the nouryoku shiken, and I'm sure we'll find some way to hang out with Oren and Brad again (heck, maybe this summer the four of us will go back to Japan again! I can only hope...)
Well, so anyway, after everyone left I played PPP for a while. I tried like 20 different song routines. There are some I could do almost instantly and some that were really hard to catch on to. I think I have almost all of the hand motions down for Velfarre 2000, and now I am trying to get the feet right. The thing is, I discovered that if you just hold your arms to block the beams of the PPP controller, you will get "good"s, not "great"s on the arrows. And a lot of the routines sort of involve you keeping the beams blocked while you do hand windmills or waves or whatever. So, I dunno. By 20 November I should have at least 3-4 PPP routines memorized though. But I look really stupid doing them - I'm not really that stylish a club dancer, I'm really more of a ballroom dancer. I kind of see why people would rather be a technical player than a freestyler at DDR - freestyling involves looking cool because of dancing, and technical stuff just means you do so many complicated songs that nobody watches you, they watch the screen and are astounded by your combos.
I guess that's about all I have to say for the evening. I really feel like I'm kind of in my own little world both at work, home, and so on. Blah.
Oh, and Kevin showed me how to play Simcity 3000. Whee!
no subject
> club dancer, I'm really more of a ballroom dancer.
I used to be really horrible at dancing. I'd watch a few people (this was like junior high or something) and their older siblings who looked really good on the floor and be totally amazed. I couldn't even begin to copy it. Then someone said to me "just go out and loosen up" and eventually when I got up the nerve to start dancing (uh, like college), I tried to just move fluidly and not worry about what I was doing. People didn't laugh at me or give me weird stares, so I didn't get scared off.
I still really don't have any idea what I look like when I dance. I mean, ballroom is cool and all because once I have the footwork, it's not much more to imitate the rest of the body movement patterns from watching people. I don't know if I look stupid when I club dance or not, but I basically decided that I like doing it, so I don't really care.
Um, this isn't actually giving advice or saying anything, I'm just rambling about things I thought of. Yeah. But I want to come over and play a bunch of that stuff because it sounds really fun. Hopefully I can make it over soon.